"legitimate" is such a disrespectful value judgment. Are you saying that people who do data analysis with Python are illegitimate? Are you calling them bastards?
No, seriously, you can have a profitable conversation all about the reasons why you think there are serious drawbacks to using Python as your data analysis tool. Lots of people might benefit from that. But when you start saying things like "That's not a legitimate data analysis tool" or "That's not a real programming language" or whatever, then you are getting down into contentless arguing, passing off disrespect as if it were legitimate discourse.
If you really think use of Python as a data analysis tool is that bad, go all the way: don't try to have a serious subject on the discussion, turn it into a humorous essay on people who are so stupid and unenlightened that they can't see what is blindingly obvious to you.
A long time ago in my academic life, I took a neural networks class that did a lot of data analysis with matlab. I poked around with octave, but I finally wound up writing my projects in Perl with PDL. I'm sure not many people would do that, but I just wanted the learning experience. It was legitimate for my purposes, which was learning and the joy of being able to say I did it. But you might want to mock me for it.:)
24.4% of eligible voters voted for W. 24.7% of eligible voters voted for Gore. 49% of eligible voters did not bother show up at the polls. Irrespective of your political leanings, it's more true to say that a quarter of you are idiots and half of you are dangerously apathetic.
Clearly, the winner was "nobody," and the office should have been left vacant.
It would certainly change things if we really tried this.
I find it hilarious how gold bugs and paultards are some of the biggest fans of a "currency" that has literally nothing behind it.
Actually in my experience most serious Paul supporters, such as the ones on lewrockwell.com and mises.org, were the first to dismiss bitcoin as not being backed. There are a few who drank the koolaid, but most of what I've seen about it from that camp is uncompromisingly critical.
I would like to see bitcoin extended to document secure open but anonymous exchanges of real gold or other commodities, backed by real gold on deposit at various "issuers" of bitcoin/bitgold notes. Instead of "mining" generating new currency units out of thin air, issuers could create notes based on grams of gold they really possess. A redemption operation could be added to support the destruction of a virtual currency unit when the gold is actually withdrawn. bitgold grams from different issuers might trade at different rates based on the reliability of the issuing institution, i.e., anybody could issue notes on the system, but you would only be able to get traction with your notes if you built up a track record of being able to reliably redeem them. I can see some problems with this approach that would need to be worked out, but I am hoping somebody takes it at some point and tries to do so.
At least our little fiat currency has an army and a bunch of nukes backing it
Quite surprising to see Roberts cross the aisle on this decision
Yes, especially for those of us who, seven years ago, were rabid Republicans who thought that the confirmation of John Roberts was the Second Coming for conservatism.
I'm a very different person now than I was then, and one reason for that is the realization that politicians will betray you every time. This is just more confirmation of that. That's not the only reason, but today this is the reason I'm reminded of.
Well of course on your own property, like your living room, you have the right to make people leave if they don't comply with how you want your house used. But I disagree that the group as a whole somehow "owns" the local municipality. This might be somebody's belief, but I think we are starting from the premise that we can't just force our beliefs on each other. You have a belief that people have implicitly agreed to this arrangement, but from my point of view the burden of proof would be on people holding that belief to prove it before forcing this belief on everyone else, too. And what about people who were born into the community? When did they agree? What about people who resided in a territory that was annexed, where often municipal annex votes do not only involve people inside the existing city territory, and not the actual people being annexed?
It's not like these ideas are new to me and I've been missing them; it's that I have examined them and concluded that I do not agree. I think what our culture has is justifications like this, but they are justifying the use of force. Thankfully there is typically not tarring and feathering, but there is fining and jailtime and other such coercive measures for people who do not comply with an arrangement other people believe they have "implicitly" agreed to.
If I'm born into democratic Ruritania, I have no more "implicitly agreed" to elections than being born into the Catholic Church means I've implicitly agreed to live by the Catholic hierarchy. And leaving the Catholic Church wouldn't mean giving up my property; it just means I quit doing what they say, because they have no authority to compel me.
I'm pacifist, too, but I also believe in letting people buy whatever computers they want! And I also believe in not pushing my beliefs on other people. After all, if you're pacifist, and other people don't want to believe that way, what are you going to do? Shoot them?
I was surprised how easily I got over the datedness of tos but that might not be so easy for everyone.
It's funny, today the datedness of TNG bothers me much more than the datedness of TOS. Which is weird, because I grew up in the eighties, and TNG hails from what I consider my halcyon days of youth.
For me as a boy, fantasy was the gateway to science fiction. I second the Dark is Rising Sequence; I loved those in about sixth grade or earlier. I also strongly recommend The Chronicles of Prydain, by Lloyd Alexander.
Interesting. I inherited a lot of my father's loves. Including science fiction, and westerns (TV shows, not books). About all I didn't get was a love for football.
To me it was like osmosis. This was just what the family did.
One series I loved as a kid was The Last Legionary, by Douglas Hill. There were five titles: a four part series, followed by a prequel. Basic synopsis: in the future, mankind has spread out over the galaxy, using "ultralight" drive. The galaxy doesn't contain other sentient races, but humans have evolved in different directions in many different environments. On the planet Moros, the Legions have honed themselves into the finest fighting force in the galaxy. Until a mysterious force wipes out the entire planetary population with radiation, leaving only one offworld survivor, Keill Randor, left alone to investigate what happened.
My parents basically got me into science fiction by watching Star Trek with me and giving me some of the Star Trek books from Pocket Books. I also read the Star Wars novels voraciously. I know both of these are probably not what a lot of hardcode SF fans think of when they think of "reading science fiction," but I treasure those memories. And I married a girl just like me, and our merged collection (sans duplicates) sits on our shelves waiting to be shared with our kids in a couple years.
To continue the marriage/divorce analogy: if husband and wife already live in separate houses, and the wife wants to divorce the husband for abuse, she shouldn't have to leave her house and let the husband have both.
In this case I am already separated from the millions of people to whom I am irrevocably joined against my will. I do not live in their house; I have my own. All that is needed is a formalization of the divorce.
People who believe that a threat exists should take steps to combat it, such as pooling their resources together and/or joining up in a military organization, and/or taking private action.
The entire past ten years of politics have been one big fight between a group of people who thought there was a thread and a group of people who disagreed. It would have been much less of a fight if the people who saw the threat did not have the right to force the ones who dissented into supporting them. Personally, ten years ago I thought there was a threat, and today I am convinced that I was completely wrong and that in fact most of the "threats" that have been faced in the last several decades were trumped up.
Yes, freedom. If you believe something is justified, persuade a bunch of people to join you, freely, and don't force other people to support your choice. Example: if you believe that Ruritania is amassing weapons of mass destruction and must be stopped, then you donate your money and time and go fight them yourself along with people who agree, rather than forcing others to disagree with you to bear that expense. Example 2: you are horrified at the damage to society that is resulting from the lack of sex education in schools, so you pay for sex education classes, solicit donations to help support your project, and mount a public awareness campaign to persuade people to go to your classes or send their children.
Freedom of speech, you are free to voice your 'OPINION' you are not free to lie, to make up any kind of bullshit
The thing is, that I don't believe that there are any divinely inspired humans walking around who can say with 100% reliability what is and is not bullshit. So we're all on an even playing field, with no mechanism for appointing some people to correct other people and make sure they never lie.
The alternative is to have the minority tell the majority "what to do".
That doesn't sound better to me.
Or perhaps you believe you can get a quarter of a billion people to come to a consensus on every decision?
The alternative I propose is that people not tell each other what to do, and not force each other to support their own independent decisions, but instead bear the expenses and the consequences themselves, along with whoever they can persuade to voluntarily participate with them.
I don't believe anyone should get to vote, because I don't believe the majority should get to tell the minority what to do.
My wife and I make joint decisions, because we are married. We like that arrangement, if that becomes intolerable for one of us, he or she can get a divorce.
Democracy is like being married to millions of people, against your will, with no possibility of divorce.
This is why so many people are so angry that people who disagree with them vote. They have no hope of getting out of the system of being subject to these joint decisions, but they can sure tell that it's wrong for those other people to force their will on them.
Actually, I am a creationist, and a libertarian, and I do not vote. I do not believe in telling people what to do, including trying to educate other people's children. As far as I can tell, my creationist beliefs don't hurt anybody; the only place where we would butt heads would be anywhere people believe they have a right to compel me to give my money and resources to support what they believe in.
Look, I'm happy to participate in crowd sourcing efforts like generating the sum total of human knowledge, or sharing reviews of products I've used online. But there's no way I'm going to participate in taking my neighbor down for the fake "crime" of copyright infringement.
So if I walk up to you and take something that belongs to you, in your world view I should track you down and ask nicely for it back before I call the cops?
In my worldview, imitating bit patterns is not "taking" anything.
Slashdot Mirror
"legitimate" is such a disrespectful value judgment. Are you saying that people who do data analysis with Python are illegitimate? Are you calling them bastards?
No, seriously, you can have a profitable conversation all about the reasons why you think there are serious drawbacks to using Python as your data analysis tool. Lots of people might benefit from that. But when you start saying things like "That's not a legitimate data analysis tool" or "That's not a real programming language" or whatever, then you are getting down into contentless arguing, passing off disrespect as if it were legitimate discourse.
If you really think use of Python as a data analysis tool is that bad, go all the way: don't try to have a serious subject on the discussion, turn it into a humorous essay on people who are so stupid and unenlightened that they can't see what is blindingly obvious to you.
A long time ago in my academic life, I took a neural networks class that did a lot of data analysis with matlab. I poked around with octave, but I finally wound up writing my projects in Perl with PDL. I'm sure not many people would do that, but I just wanted the learning experience. It was legitimate for my purposes, which was learning and the joy of being able to say I did it. But you might want to mock me for it. :)
24.4% of eligible voters voted for W. 24.7% of eligible voters voted for Gore. 49% of eligible voters did not bother show up at the polls. Irrespective of your political leanings, it's more true to say that a quarter of you are idiots and half of you are dangerously apathetic.
Clearly, the winner was "nobody," and the office should have been left vacant.
It would certainly change things if we really tried this.
Weapons on a battlefield threaten people who are fighting.
Nuclear weapons threaten millions of innocent, non-fighting men, women, and children.
Judge for yourself if it is moral to protect yourself by threatening innocents.
I find it hilarious how gold bugs and paultards are some of the biggest fans of a "currency" that has literally nothing behind it.
Actually in my experience most serious Paul supporters, such as the ones on lewrockwell.com and mises.org, were the first to dismiss bitcoin as not being backed. There are a few who drank the koolaid, but most of what I've seen about it from that camp is uncompromisingly critical.
I would like to see bitcoin extended to document secure open but anonymous exchanges of real gold or other commodities, backed by real gold on deposit at various "issuers" of bitcoin/bitgold notes. Instead of "mining" generating new currency units out of thin air, issuers could create notes based on grams of gold they really possess. A redemption operation could be added to support the destruction of a virtual currency unit when the gold is actually withdrawn. bitgold grams from different issuers might trade at different rates based on the reliability of the issuing institution, i.e., anybody could issue notes on the system, but you would only be able to get traction with your notes if you built up a track record of being able to reliably redeem them. I can see some problems with this approach that would need to be worked out, but I am hoping somebody takes it at some point and tries to do so.
At least our little fiat currency has an army and a bunch of nukes backing it
Touche. For now that definitely beats bitcoin.
Bitcoin offers anonymity, but isn't backed by any government and has seen high-profile hacks and collapses in value
Clever wording there. Yes, you could say bitcoin "has seen high-profile hacks," but you couldn't say that bitcoin has been hacked.
Quite surprising to see Roberts cross the aisle on this decision
Yes, especially for those of us who, seven years ago, were rabid Republicans who thought that the confirmation of John Roberts was the Second Coming for conservatism.
I'm a very different person now than I was then, and one reason for that is the realization that politicians will betray you every time. This is just more confirmation of that. That's not the only reason, but today this is the reason I'm reminded of.
Well of course on your own property, like your living room, you have the right to make people leave if they don't comply with how you want your house used. But I disagree that the group as a whole somehow "owns" the local municipality. This might be somebody's belief, but I think we are starting from the premise that we can't just force our beliefs on each other. You have a belief that people have implicitly agreed to this arrangement, but from my point of view the burden of proof would be on people holding that belief to prove it before forcing this belief on everyone else, too. And what about people who were born into the community? When did they agree? What about people who resided in a territory that was annexed, where often municipal annex votes do not only involve people inside the existing city territory, and not the actual people being annexed?
It's not like these ideas are new to me and I've been missing them; it's that I have examined them and concluded that I do not agree. I think what our culture has is justifications like this, but they are justifying the use of force. Thankfully there is typically not tarring and feathering, but there is fining and jailtime and other such coercive measures for people who do not comply with an arrangement other people believe they have "implicitly" agreed to.
If I'm born into democratic Ruritania, I have no more "implicitly agreed" to elections than being born into the Catholic Church means I've implicitly agreed to live by the Catholic hierarchy. And leaving the Catholic Church wouldn't mean giving up my property; it just means I quit doing what they say, because they have no authority to compel me.
So it's not really a matter of pushing beliefs. It's a matter of people voting their conscience at the ballot box.
Those are synonymous. The ballot box is a means for forcing one's conscience onto other people.
If it was just a matter of beliefs/conscience, no ballot box would be needed.
I'm pacifist, too, but I also believe in letting people buy whatever computers they want! And I also believe in not pushing my beliefs on other people. After all, if you're pacifist, and other people don't want to believe that way, what are you going to do? Shoot them?
I was surprised how easily I got over the datedness of tos but that might not be so easy for everyone.
It's funny, today the datedness of TNG bothers me much more than the datedness of TOS. Which is weird, because I grew up in the eighties, and TNG hails from what I consider my halcyon days of youth.
For me as a boy, fantasy was the gateway to science fiction. I second the Dark is Rising Sequence; I loved those in about sixth grade or earlier. I also strongly recommend The Chronicles of Prydain, by Lloyd Alexander.
Another neat little treasure is Half Magic.
Interesting. I inherited a lot of my father's loves. Including science fiction, and westerns (TV shows, not books). About all I didn't get was a love for football.
To me it was like osmosis. This was just what the family did.
One series I loved as a kid was The Last Legionary, by Douglas Hill. There were five titles: a four part series, followed by a prequel. Basic synopsis: in the future, mankind has spread out over the galaxy, using "ultralight" drive. The galaxy doesn't contain other sentient races, but humans have evolved in different directions in many different environments. On the planet Moros, the Legions have honed themselves into the finest fighting force in the galaxy. Until a mysterious force wipes out the entire planetary population with radiation, leaving only one offworld survivor, Keill Randor, left alone to investigate what happened.
My parents basically got me into science fiction by watching Star Trek with me and giving me some of the Star Trek books from Pocket Books. I also read the Star Wars novels voraciously. I know both of these are probably not what a lot of hardcode SF fans think of when they think of "reading science fiction," but I treasure those memories. And I married a girl just like me, and our merged collection (sans duplicates) sits on our shelves waiting to be shared with our kids in a couple years.
they wouldn't have to worry about the pesky constitutional limitations our government operates under.
What a coincidence; our government doesn't worry about those limitations, either!
Somebody please clue me in on why my posts are still getting replies 12 days later! Are they linked from somewhere?
To continue the marriage/divorce analogy: if husband and wife already live in separate houses, and the wife wants to divorce the husband for abuse, she shouldn't have to leave her house and let the husband have both.
In this case I am already separated from the millions of people to whom I am irrevocably joined against my will. I do not live in their house; I have my own. All that is needed is a formalization of the divorce.
I should be able to divorce my government without giving up my property, i.e., land. I shouldn't have to go anywhere.
People who believe that a threat exists should take steps to combat it, such as pooling their resources together and/or joining up in a military organization, and/or taking private action.
The entire past ten years of politics have been one big fight between a group of people who thought there was a thread and a group of people who disagreed. It would have been much less of a fight if the people who saw the threat did not have the right to force the ones who dissented into supporting them. Personally, ten years ago I thought there was a threat, and today I am convinced that I was completely wrong and that in fact most of the "threats" that have been faced in the last several decades were trumped up.
Yes, freedom. If you believe something is justified, persuade a bunch of people to join you, freely, and don't force other people to support your choice. Example: if you believe that Ruritania is amassing weapons of mass destruction and must be stopped, then you donate your money and time and go fight them yourself along with people who agree, rather than forcing others to disagree with you to bear that expense. Example 2: you are horrified at the damage to society that is resulting from the lack of sex education in schools, so you pay for sex education classes, solicit donations to help support your project, and mount a public awareness campaign to persuade people to go to your classes or send their children.
Sounds perfectly fair to me.
Freedom of speech, you are free to voice your 'OPINION' you are not free to lie, to make up any kind of bullshit
The thing is, that I don't believe that there are any divinely inspired humans walking around who can say with 100% reliability what is and is not bullshit. So we're all on an even playing field, with no mechanism for appointing some people to correct other people and make sure they never lie.
The alternative is to have the minority tell the majority "what to do". That doesn't sound better to me. Or perhaps you believe you can get a quarter of a billion people to come to a consensus on every decision?
The alternative I propose is that people not tell each other what to do, and not force each other to support their own independent decisions, but instead bear the expenses and the consequences themselves, along with whoever they can persuade to voluntarily participate with them.
I don't believe anyone should get to vote, because I don't believe the majority should get to tell the minority what to do.
My wife and I make joint decisions, because we are married. We like that arrangement, if that becomes intolerable for one of us, he or she can get a divorce.
Democracy is like being married to millions of people, against your will, with no possibility of divorce.
This is why so many people are so angry that people who disagree with them vote. They have no hope of getting out of the system of being subject to these joint decisions, but they can sure tell that it's wrong for those other people to force their will on them.
Actually, I am a creationist, and a libertarian, and I do not vote. I do not believe in telling people what to do, including trying to educate other people's children. As far as I can tell, my creationist beliefs don't hurt anybody; the only place where we would butt heads would be anywhere people believe they have a right to compel me to give my money and resources to support what they believe in.
Look, I'm happy to participate in crowd sourcing efforts like generating the sum total of human knowledge, or sharing reviews of products I've used online. But there's no way I'm going to participate in taking my neighbor down for the fake "crime" of copyright infringement.
So if I walk up to you and take something that belongs to you, in your world view I should track you down and ask nicely for it back before I call the cops?
In my worldview, imitating bit patterns is not "taking" anything.