I say this as a 46-year-old... I'm able to find plenty of opportunities...
In my experience (being 57), there seems to something about the number 50. In my 40es I was still able to walk from one company to another, it seems, but after I turned 50, I was 'old'. Never mind the fact that my health is excellent, that I an physically very active and get along extremely well with especially younger colleagues, never mind my long experience; I'm old.
Perhaps what us old geezers should get together and start our own companies and compete the crap out of those young idiots that start companies, but are so desperately inept.
Since this is a tech site and people work or have worked in that field I would say that everyone here is in the top 1%.
Here's a reply from one those supposed 1%, seeing that I'm a tech guy. I can tell you that there's a difference between "financially comfortable" and "rich", which dawned on me recently, when I was compiling a list of hotels and room-prices in London. What I would think of as a basic, but acceptable room costs £30 per night in many places; I don't need much more than a place to sleep, so why pay for more? An outrageously room, in my view, would cost something like >£200 per night; however, you can find some that are rather dearer. The Lanesborough Hotel's Royal Suite: £12000 per night (VAT not included) - that's for 2 bedrooms, there are 7 in total, but I was too dizzy to enquire about the price. That, I think, highlights the difference between rich and just reasonably comfortable.
I'm not that I am envious of that sort of wealth; to my mind you would have to be a strange kind of person to spend what is close to a year's salary for low-paid workers, per day on nothing more than a room to stay in. But jealous or not, wealth should not be concentrated like that, on very, very few hands.
The current chancellor is a good example. Bangs on about opportunity for all, fairness, all in it together, party of the working class etc.
All you need is to adjust for perspective - to him 'working people' are the ones who 'work': business men, bankers, venture capitalists etc, not the other kind: manual labourers, people on low income etc, who are just plebs.
It is of course a remarkable situation the Conservatives are in. On one hand, they won a lot of seats in Parliament, but as the election of Jeremy Corbin shows, a large part of the explanation was probably that a lot of people were disillusioned with Labour. The problem since the Blair years has been that we had three Tory parties and none that really represented the traditional Labour voters - workers, well I mean plebs, of course. And it shouldn't surprise us that the Tories are better at being Tories - they grew up with the sense of "entitlement without effort" that you need as a genuine Tory.
The main takeaway, to me at least, is that very personal information of yours is not as personal as you think it is anymore.
That in itself is not so much of a problem - but what happens as a result can be. One thing is being targeted with a flood of inept advertising for things you don't want or need, but much worse is the fact that there are far too many people in the world, who are more than happy to jump to conclusions based on superficial evidence and a lack of understanding. A lot of them are hostile and some are in positions where they can make decisions against you.
Personally, I don't think there is any need to be paranoid, but a healthy dose of skepticism towards new technology is probably a good idea - or to put a more positive spin on it: everybody should have a set of quality standards that new, cool gadgets have to pass. We should always ask questions like "How much control do I have over the information this thing is collecting?", and if the answer is less than '100%', then you should probably not use it.
I think we are flogging a long dead horse - or perhaps the pile of compost that was once a horse. I don't claim to know a lot about Mrs Clinton, but I'm pretty sure she has little to no technical background, so anything she comes up with in that respect must rely on what others, who are supposed to know, tell her. So, her server turns out to not having been secured to the highest standards known to mankind? What a surprise!
I can't count all the appalling security holes I have come across in my time: Oracle production databases where careful thought had been given to the design of permissions and roles to each and every member of staff - yet the sys account still had password 'change_on_install' (sys is the account that can do everything - a bit like root - and 'change_on_install' used to be the default password). I once worked in a place where highly-sensitive information was stored on a mainframe, running MVS; they had three-levels of security and guarded entrances. I most certainly wasn't granted access to the data - but I did have the VM console on my desk, so I could have read everything, had I cared to, and without getting caught. The point is - all of these systems had been very carefully designed and implemented by competent people, so how reasonable is that to expect better from a home server?
The truth of all this mock-furore about Mrs Clinton's supposed 'dishonesty' is that she is no worse than any of us on either side; we all cheat and lie a little, some would even say it's a large part of what makes us human, the ability to deliberately mislead. This storm of nonsense is all about not giving the people and the press time to think about the real issues and make decisions based on common sense. Should she have used a mail-server based in her home, outside the official security checks and so on? Not really, that was a bit naughty, but is that more important than just about anything else a president has to deal with? Whether you are conservative, liberal or outright socialist, don't demean yourself by joining the mud-slingers; use your brain to think with.
You mean, when high-ranking Christians in the US come up with things like 'Muhammad was a "demon-possessed pedophile"' (Jerry Vines) and "This man was an absolute wild-eyed fanatic. He was a robber and a brigand." (Pat Robertson, about Muhammed) - then they are not extremists? (from http://www.counterpunch.org/20...).
Here, take some statistics: "Fifty-six percent of domestic terrorist attacks and plots in the U.S. since 1995 have been perpetrated by right-wing extremists, as compared to 30 percent by ecoterrorists and 12 percent by Islamic extremists. Right-wing extremism has been responsible for the greatest number of terrorist incidents in the U.S. in 13 of the 17 years since the Oklahoma City bombing." (http://www.soundvision.com/article/some-statistics-and-facts-on-right-wing-extremism-in-the-united-states)
What "understanding" do you think people lack...
Speaking of understanding, I think it is clear that you haven't got a lot of it. If you want to solve a problem - any problem - then you have to let the real facts guide you, not just the facts that suit your own bigotry. Whatever you may think a religious text has to say about anything, what really matters in the end is the person and the actions, good or bad, performed by that person. Take Buddhism, widely recognised as one of the most pacifistic religions in the world, yet in Myanmar and Thailand there are Buddhists that carry out violent attacks against those from other religions - mostly Muslims, in fact. Or look to the history Christianity for a list of the vilest atrocities you can imagine; all carried out in the name of Christ by men and sometimes women who were deeply sincere in their faith.
This is clearly not a problem of Islam or any other, single religion; it is about people and what kind of background they come from. When you grow up to learn from day one that you are a nothing, a born loser who will never, ever make it, no matter how hard you work or how honest you are, because you are somehow the 'wrong sort' and never get a real opportunity, is it any wonder that you become bitter and hate the society so full of freedoms and opportunities that you can see, but which you can never reach? And when somebody - anybody - comes along pretending to give you the respect and the hope you crave, is it strange that you are willing to follow them, even if, in the end, it implies strapping a bomb-vest on and blowing up yourself and a load of innocent people belonging to the society that never allowed you in?
We clearly can't just roll over and take it from the likes of IS, but if we want to really solve the problem, we have to realise that we, ourselves, play a major role in feeding the fire, because we are unwilling to accept the responsibility we obviously have when we let too many people at the bottom of society down.
...a formula that yielded a safe but lucrative trading strategy.
That sentence in itself is probably hint that economics is not based on science, but faith. So, in essence, we can all make money off each other, sort of? If I make $100 by lending you money and you make $100 off me in the same way - who got richer?
Economics fails to be a science, as you say, for many reasons - one being that it makes unrealistic assumptions about the market, such as the idea that infinite growth is possible; and another being that all decisions within economics must by their nature be political. 'Economic science' is simply politics trying to pass itself off as a science, therefore being 'objective' - the truth of it is that the objectivity of economics is limited by the political interests behind the scenes. If your aim is to push capitalism and make the rich richer, you probably don't want to choose a model that looks too much like Marxism, even if it arguably is quite a sensible model in many respects.
Come on now, we all know they just replaced them with under cover officers...
From what I have heard on the news, it makes sense to stop wasting money on this. It was never necessary, really; he isn't going to be able to just walk out of the country, and he will still be arrested if he ventures out in the open. Placing somebody on guard outside was really more of a symbolic gesture - and probably directed more at Ecuador than Assange, to show them in a very public way that the British government was very unhappy about Ecuador's stance in this case. There is no reason to call this a trap - after all, you don't place a warning sign over a real trap.
Personally, I don't think the Swedish police would just hand him over to the Americans - the Scandinavian countries have demonstrated several times in the past that they don't simply roll over when the States tell them to. That said, it seems a bit stupid to engage in this kind of stand-off - and I think all sides have shown a spectacular lack of common sense; Assange could have maneuvered through this much more intelligently, I would have thought, but instead chose a course of action that made him appear both cowardly and suspicious, and the authorities in both UK, Sweden and the States could have shown more willing to be flexible. It is unfortunately often what happens when people with small minds get their hands on too much power.
No, far from it. The existence of pressing problems puts an emphasis on finding solutions, obviously, but finding a solution is only possible because enough research, often basic research, has taken place for years or decades of peace before, when the conditions favoured it. Most of the scientific development in the West was only made possible because a number of eminient scientists had the opportunity to think deeply about idle, philosophical curiosities some time in the middle of last millennium - idle curiosities like 'what is the nature of truth?' or 'how do we best discover what is true, when we don't know what to look for?'; at the time it would have appeared as sophistry and a waste of time, since we knew perfectly well that the ultimate truth was given by God's revelation in the Bible, and that was all there was to it.
There are four comments so far claiming Cortana is spyware but none of them offer any evidence of this. Is this just typical Slashdot irrational MS hatred, or am I missing something?
I don't think it is 'irrational MS hatred', and you do youself as disservice to describe those whp have a view different from yours when you use this sort of language.
Looking back over history, I think it is very understandable that there are many who distruct Microsoft. Back in the early days, Microsoft was actually seen as cool and on the forefront, but we then seen to betray the ideals of their admirers, when they seemed to become increasingly greedy, anti-competitive etc. For a very long time they resisted implementing even basic security, they kept making claims that were obviously wrong (like 'the mainframe is dead' etc), thereby appearing to be either incompetent or dishonest - or possibly both. They have improved many things in recent years, that's true, but often at gun-point and often their improvements seem to include unwanted extras, like the forced upgrades that you apparently need to be a Windows expert to stop (Yes, I know there is an 'easy' option somewhere, but I doubt the average user would even know enough to look for it).
So, as for Cortana: if you have had any experience with speech recognition (like the automatic telephone systems that you speak to) and understanding natural language (try Google Translate), then you know just how hard a time they have understanding spoken words, especially if you are dialect speaker, and you'll know that computers have difficulty understanding the meaning of ambiguous statements that real people would pick up without difficulty. The obvious solution to these problems is to put a staff of real people in a call center and let them understand and answer, when the computers have to give up.
And of course, the computing power needed to implement even basic speech recognition and natural speech analysis means that it wouldn't fit into the average laptop, let alone a Windows mobile. All of which leads to the obvious conclusion, that Cortana, Siri and the like must communicate with one or more call centers, and it would be surprising if that traffic was not collected and used 'to improve services' - ie, target users with adverts. I'm sure, if somebody were to read the small print, it would be implied that you give them your permission to do so, simply by brething in the vicinity of a Windows or OSX system.
Political parties have lost much of their clout because candidates no longer need the machinery they provide.
Well, yes, and no. It has always been true that the wealthy, privileged have been able to buy power, and the tendency will always be for them to establish their own ruling elite, as long as wealth is allowed to overrule the will of the people. But I think there is something wider - and possibly more sinister - at play: the fact that the mainstream parties all look the same. We have all been sold the idea that "Capitalism has won, there is no other way" etc, so everybody is trying with varying success to be the same party, with slightly different tones of grey as the dominant colour. What is sinister about it is that is isn't exactly true - it is tale that has only been told from one side, and the assumption has always been that the economy MUST grow, no matter what. I think we will have to review that idea, sooner or later, is we wish to achieve a stable and sustainable society.
People - the ones that should have had a say in elections, but increasingly don't - are clearly sick of it; that's why Jeremy Corbyn became leader of the Labour Party in UK, surprising everybody, not least himself. And that is also why the sillier parties like UKIP or the Tea Party movement have so much popular support - at least they look different, and they appear to have another way of doing things.
There might be reasons to get rid of that law, but this reason is stupid.
I'm certainly with you there. But to solve the problem, I think one has to look at the deeper causes and find out why it is that so many people become outsiders, who then end up hating the world and their society enough to want to kill indiscriminately. And I think it is necessary to have an open-minded discussion about *ALL* the issues, even gun ownership and -control, as well as issues like the increasing inequality, disenfranchisement and hopelessness that too many people feel trapped in. If people would talk to each other with an honest view to solve the problems, it would without a doubt be solved; what keeps this from happening must be nothing better than narrow, abysmal egotism. I think that is deeply shameful.
I was simply pointing out that there are things which science has so far been unable to explain.
- and you were implying that this somehow has a bearing on the veracity of your faith. That's OK with me - each individual has the responsibility for their own conscience and therefore the freedom to choose their own reasons. To me, the fact that science doesn't know everything is comforting - the joy of science lies in the discovery, not in the knowing.
I have studied the article about 'Our Lady of Akita'; but again, it does not offer anything for a scientist to work on. There is no coherent, logical hypothesis that leads to predictions which can be tested. Why would God or any other supernatural entity choose to make a statue produce tears? Why would he choose to cure one person om disease and not somebody else? It is not difficult to think of many, natural explanations - the church or monastry that own a weeping statue can make loads of money from the increased number of visitors, for example, and it is not difficult to make a statuse produce 'tears' by fitting thin tubes in the right place, and as the many revelations about child sex abuse by Catholic priests all over the world show, the Catholic church is not above such things.
You can try to attribute that I am somehow blinded by religion,...
Not necessarily - mabye you see something that I can't. But if you start to talk about science to a scientist, then you will be met with the arguments of a scientist.
I'm not the guy to which you replied. This may explain why your reply seems so confused.
Whatever - the same observation holds. After comparing this reply to your previous one, I can see that you are simply repeating the same statis arguments combined with the same attempts at spinning mine as ill-conceived. In short, you argue like a Jehovah's Witness and it seems disingenious. I'm willing to discuss subjects in both science and religion, but a discussion is not what we are having, and there is no point in continuing.
I knew already when I replied, that I wouldn't be able to convince you - but I think even a futile discussion can have a wider impact. If your well-meaning, but false ideas are not countered, some might think you have a point, which you don't.
What I'd like you to do is try to find an example or two written up in a proper peer-reviewed journal. You'll find it incredibly difficult.
Nope - it doesn't work like that. If you want you hypotheses to be taken serious, you work out the logic, design experiments, predict the outcome etc. No religious thinker has, as far as I know, ever done that and got a reliable result. Don't expect scientists to go and do your work for you; we have our own projects - that we are getting paid for doing.
Science, as it happens, is not the end of epistemology. Neither is it some static and unchanging thing necessarily beyond question.
Well, that is rather the point of science, isn't it? Scientific method is a tool by which we can improve our knowledge, false as it inevitably is, by cipping away the falsehoods and hopefully getting closer to some form of truth, that can actually be relied upon independently of whether any given individual actually believes in it or not. It is search for reality, if you will - as real as a brickwall.
I'm concerned that you've elevated science the same way a religious zealot would elevate some sacred texts.
I don't think you sincerely feel any concern about that, if I'm honest. You just trying to see if you can find a crack in my conviction, that you can pry open. But why don't you propose a better way of testing a hypothesis than the process known as the scientific method? Scientists are practical people - the Method is a tool, and we would all welcome one that is better.
There are things that no one can explain. Science doesn't have all the answers.
The link you give points to an advert for one of the many collections of miracle anecdotes that evangelical Christians like to read (and the Muslims, Jews, etc have their own versions, of course). The problem with such stories, nice as they are, is that they are not consistently reproducible. Every attempt at reproducing them fails - so, science has to conclude that the reasoning behind the story was wrong. There's no shame in that - scientists are proven wrong all the time, and usually don't mind too much. That is the thing about science and the scientific method: it can't prove that something is absolutely true, but it can definitely prove that something is false with absolute certainty. If your predictions based on your hypothesis fail, then your hypothesis is wrong in the absolute sense.
And of course there are lots of things nobody can ever explain - why did a lightning follow one rather than another of many equally possible paths? Science doesn't know, and nobody thinks they have all the answers - except the religious. It isn't desperately important for us to have absolute certainty about anything, except perhaps the scientific method; and even that one we only accept because there is no alternative. Scientists are doubters through and through, who positively revel in asking probing questions.
science and religion simply do not conflict. they examine entirely different realms that do not interact. if you think the realms do interact, you are simply announcing you don't understand what you are talking about
Well, up to a point. Science has no opinion to offer about whether there is a god or God, but science can and must offer input on any testable claims made by any religion. So far all statements saying that God does something real have tested false. Now, as a very open minded scientist, you still have to say "we don't know if God exists", but I think it is a very reasonable position to take, as a scientist, that since all positive statements about God's reality have been disproven, then he probably doesn't exist in any real sense.
The other part of your claim is also dubious, I think. You seem to claim that morality comes from God: "religion tells you how to live in the world". It is the other way around, actually: we have evolved certain moral behavious, because it gave us better chances of surviving as a social species, and our ideas of God are likely to spring from that as the ultimate 'because'. In a sense, God didn't create us, we created Him.
From the list of languages I suspect that the ones he design are built largely around Indo-European (all of the languages are from that family, except Arabic), which is a little disappointing. It was the same even in LotR - you would hope a linguist would be better placed than most to look around in to world of languages, of which there are apparently some 7000+, and find some inspiration.
We've had an anti-government undertone basically since the nation was founded.
Interesting. I read an article a few days agout some research about this - it seems that this increasing polarisation in the US has coincided with the deregulation of the press some time in the 90es; you probably know a lot more about it than I do. But it seems quite plausible to me that since it sells more papers/attracts more viewers, the media see their advantage in stoking the fires of controversy, which would explain why there seems to be such a lot of vitriolic idiots on American tv.
I could see Trump getting elected on name appeal alone.
Scary. I suppose I shouldn't mind, living in UK, because a primitive schoolyard bully like Trump will make the Chinese less interested in dealing with the US, and hence more interested in cultivating relations with UK; but it really pains me to see how America is sinking further and further down into this quagmire. Americans are good people, in general, and deserve better.
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I say this as a 46-year-old... I'm able to find plenty of opportunities ...
In my experience (being 57), there seems to something about the number 50. In my 40es I was still able to walk from one company to another, it seems, but after I turned 50, I was 'old'. Never mind the fact that my health is excellent, that I an physically very active and get along extremely well with especially younger colleagues, never mind my long experience; I'm old.
Perhaps what us old geezers should get together and start our own companies and compete the crap out of those young idiots that start companies, but are so desperately inept.
Since this is a tech site and people work or have worked in that field I would say that everyone here is in the top 1%.
Here's a reply from one those supposed 1%, seeing that I'm a tech guy. I can tell you that there's a difference between "financially comfortable" and "rich", which dawned on me recently, when I was compiling a list of hotels and room-prices in London. What I would think of as a basic, but acceptable room costs £30 per night in many places; I don't need much more than a place to sleep, so why pay for more? An outrageously room, in my view, would cost something like >£200 per night; however, you can find some that are rather dearer. The Lanesborough Hotel's Royal Suite: £12000 per night (VAT not included) - that's for 2 bedrooms, there are 7 in total, but I was too dizzy to enquire about the price. That, I think, highlights the difference between rich and just reasonably comfortable.
I'm not that I am envious of that sort of wealth; to my mind you would have to be a strange kind of person to spend what is close to a year's salary for low-paid workers, per day on nothing more than a room to stay in. But jealous or not, wealth should not be concentrated like that, on very, very few hands.
The current chancellor is a good example. Bangs on about opportunity for all, fairness, all in it together, party of the working class etc.
All you need is to adjust for perspective - to him 'working people' are the ones who 'work': business men, bankers, venture capitalists etc, not the other kind: manual labourers, people on low income etc, who are just plebs.
It is of course a remarkable situation the Conservatives are in. On one hand, they won a lot of seats in Parliament, but as the election of Jeremy Corbin shows, a large part of the explanation was probably that a lot of people were disillusioned with Labour. The problem since the Blair years has been that we had three Tory parties and none that really represented the traditional Labour voters - workers, well I mean plebs, of course. And it shouldn't surprise us that the Tories are better at being Tories - they grew up with the sense of "entitlement without effort" that you need as a genuine Tory.
The main takeaway, to me at least, is that very personal information of yours is not as personal as you think it is anymore.
That in itself is not so much of a problem - but what happens as a result can be. One thing is being targeted with a flood of inept advertising for things you don't want or need, but much worse is the fact that there are far too many people in the world, who are more than happy to jump to conclusions based on superficial evidence and a lack of understanding. A lot of them are hostile and some are in positions where they can make decisions against you.
Personally, I don't think there is any need to be paranoid, but a healthy dose of skepticism towards new technology is probably a good idea - or to put a more positive spin on it: everybody should have a set of quality standards that new, cool gadgets have to pass. We should always ask questions like "How much control do I have over the information this thing is collecting?", and if the answer is less than '100%', then you should probably not use it.
now claims the server was secured.
I think we are flogging a long dead horse - or perhaps the pile of compost that was once a horse. I don't claim to know a lot about Mrs Clinton, but I'm pretty sure she has little to no technical background, so anything she comes up with in that respect must rely on what others, who are supposed to know, tell her. So, her server turns out to not having been secured to the highest standards known to mankind? What a surprise!
I can't count all the appalling security holes I have come across in my time: Oracle production databases where careful thought had been given to the design of permissions and roles to each and every member of staff - yet the sys account still had password 'change_on_install' (sys is the account that can do everything - a bit like root - and 'change_on_install' used to be the default password). I once worked in a place where highly-sensitive information was stored on a mainframe, running MVS; they had three-levels of security and guarded entrances. I most certainly wasn't granted access to the data - but I did have the VM console on my desk, so I could have read everything, had I cared to, and without getting caught. The point is - all of these systems had been very carefully designed and implemented by competent people, so how reasonable is that to expect better from a home server?
The truth of all this mock-furore about Mrs Clinton's supposed 'dishonesty' is that she is no worse than any of us on either side; we all cheat and lie a little, some would even say it's a large part of what makes us human, the ability to deliberately mislead. This storm of nonsense is all about not giving the people and the press time to think about the real issues and make decisions based on common sense. Should she have used a mail-server based in her home, outside the official security checks and so on? Not really, that was a bit naughty, but is that more important than just about anything else a president has to deal with? Whether you are conservative, liberal or outright socialist, don't demean yourself by joining the mud-slingers; use your brain to think with.
...which are pretty much exclusively Muslim...
You mean, when high-ranking Christians in the US come up with things like 'Muhammad was a "demon-possessed pedophile"' (Jerry Vines) and "This man was an absolute wild-eyed fanatic. He was a robber and a brigand." (Pat Robertson, about Muhammed) - then they are not extremists? (from http://www.counterpunch.org/20...).
Here, take some statistics: "Fifty-six percent of domestic terrorist attacks and plots in the U.S. since 1995 have been perpetrated by right-wing extremists, as compared to 30 percent by ecoterrorists and 12 percent by Islamic extremists. Right-wing extremism has been responsible for the greatest number of terrorist incidents in the U.S. in 13 of the 17 years since the Oklahoma City bombing." (http://www.soundvision.com/article/some-statistics-and-facts-on-right-wing-extremism-in-the-united-states)
What "understanding" do you think people lack...
Speaking of understanding, I think it is clear that you haven't got a lot of it. If you want to solve a problem - any problem - then you have to let the real facts guide you, not just the facts that suit your own bigotry. Whatever you may think a religious text has to say about anything, what really matters in the end is the person and the actions, good or bad, performed by that person. Take Buddhism, widely recognised as one of the most pacifistic religions in the world, yet in Myanmar and Thailand there are Buddhists that carry out violent attacks against those from other religions - mostly Muslims, in fact. Or look to the history Christianity for a list of the vilest atrocities you can imagine; all carried out in the name of Christ by men and sometimes women who were deeply sincere in their faith.
This is clearly not a problem of Islam or any other, single religion; it is about people and what kind of background they come from. When you grow up to learn from day one that you are a nothing, a born loser who will never, ever make it, no matter how hard you work or how honest you are, because you are somehow the 'wrong sort' and never get a real opportunity, is it any wonder that you become bitter and hate the society so full of freedoms and opportunities that you can see, but which you can never reach? And when somebody - anybody - comes along pretending to give you the respect and the hope you crave, is it strange that you are willing to follow them, even if, in the end, it implies strapping a bomb-vest on and blowing up yourself and a load of innocent people belonging to the society that never allowed you in?
We clearly can't just roll over and take it from the likes of IS, but if we want to really solve the problem, we have to realise that we, ourselves, play a major role in feeding the fire, because we are unwilling to accept the responsibility we obviously have when we let too many people at the bottom of society down.
...a formula that yielded a safe but lucrative trading strategy.
That sentence in itself is probably hint that economics is not based on science, but faith. So, in essence, we can all make money off each other, sort of? If I make $100 by lending you money and you make $100 off me in the same way - who got richer?
Economics fails to be a science, as you say, for many reasons - one being that it makes unrealistic assumptions about the market, such as the idea that infinite growth is possible; and another being that all decisions within economics must by their nature be political. 'Economic science' is simply politics trying to pass itself off as a science, therefore being 'objective' - the truth of it is that the objectivity of economics is limited by the political interests behind the scenes. If your aim is to push capitalism and make the rich richer, you probably don't want to choose a model that looks too much like Marxism, even if it arguably is quite a sensible model in many respects.
Come on now, we all know they just replaced them with under cover officers...
From what I have heard on the news, it makes sense to stop wasting money on this. It was never necessary, really; he isn't going to be able to just walk out of the country, and he will still be arrested if he ventures out in the open. Placing somebody on guard outside was really more of a symbolic gesture - and probably directed more at Ecuador than Assange, to show them in a very public way that the British government was very unhappy about Ecuador's stance in this case. There is no reason to call this a trap - after all, you don't place a warning sign over a real trap.
Personally, I don't think the Swedish police would just hand him over to the Americans - the Scandinavian countries have demonstrated several times in the past that they don't simply roll over when the States tell them to. That said, it seems a bit stupid to engage in this kind of stand-off - and I think all sides have shown a spectacular lack of common sense; Assange could have maneuvered through this much more intelligently, I would have thought, but instead chose a course of action that made him appear both cowardly and suspicious, and the authorities in both UK, Sweden and the States could have shown more willing to be flexible. It is unfortunately often what happens when people with small minds get their hands on too much power.
Do we require strife to excel?
No, far from it. The existence of pressing problems puts an emphasis on finding solutions, obviously, but finding a solution is only possible because enough research, often basic research, has taken place for years or decades of peace before, when the conditions favoured it. Most of the scientific development in the West was only made possible because a number of eminient scientists had the opportunity to think deeply about idle, philosophical curiosities some time in the middle of last millennium - idle curiosities like 'what is the nature of truth?' or 'how do we best discover what is true, when we don't know what to look for?'; at the time it would have appeared as sophistry and a waste of time, since we knew perfectly well that the ultimate truth was given by God's revelation in the Bible, and that was all there was to it.
There are four comments so far claiming Cortana is spyware but none of them offer any evidence of this. Is this just typical Slashdot irrational MS hatred, or am I missing something?
I don't think it is 'irrational MS hatred', and you do youself as disservice to describe those whp have a view different from yours when you use this sort of language.
Looking back over history, I think it is very understandable that there are many who distruct Microsoft. Back in the early days, Microsoft was actually seen as cool and on the forefront, but we then seen to betray the ideals of their admirers, when they seemed to become increasingly greedy, anti-competitive etc. For a very long time they resisted implementing even basic security, they kept making claims that were obviously wrong (like 'the mainframe is dead' etc), thereby appearing to be either incompetent or dishonest - or possibly both. They have improved many things in recent years, that's true, but often at gun-point and often their improvements seem to include unwanted extras, like the forced upgrades that you apparently need to be a Windows expert to stop (Yes, I know there is an 'easy' option somewhere, but I doubt the average user would even know enough to look for it).
So, as for Cortana: if you have had any experience with speech recognition (like the automatic telephone systems that you speak to) and understanding natural language (try Google Translate), then you know just how hard a time they have understanding spoken words, especially if you are dialect speaker, and you'll know that computers have difficulty understanding the meaning of ambiguous statements that real people would pick up without difficulty. The obvious solution to these problems is to put a staff of real people in a call center and let them understand and answer, when the computers have to give up.
And of course, the computing power needed to implement even basic speech recognition and natural speech analysis means that it wouldn't fit into the average laptop, let alone a Windows mobile. All of which leads to the obvious conclusion, that Cortana, Siri and the like must communicate with one or more call centers, and it would be surprising if that traffic was not collected and used 'to improve services' - ie, target users with adverts. I'm sure, if somebody were to read the small print, it would be implied that you give them your permission to do so, simply by brething in the vicinity of a Windows or OSX system.
Political parties have lost much of their clout because candidates no longer need the machinery they provide.
Well, yes, and no. It has always been true that the wealthy, privileged have been able to buy power, and the tendency will always be for them to establish their own ruling elite, as long as wealth is allowed to overrule the will of the people. But I think there is something wider - and possibly more sinister - at play: the fact that the mainstream parties all look the same. We have all been sold the idea that "Capitalism has won, there is no other way" etc, so everybody is trying with varying success to be the same party, with slightly different tones of grey as the dominant colour. What is sinister about it is that is isn't exactly true - it is tale that has only been told from one side, and the assumption has always been that the economy MUST grow, no matter what. I think we will have to review that idea, sooner or later, is we wish to achieve a stable and sustainable society.
People - the ones that should have had a say in elections, but increasingly don't - are clearly sick of it; that's why Jeremy Corbyn became leader of the Labour Party in UK, surprising everybody, not least himself. And that is also why the sillier parties like UKIP or the Tea Party movement have so much popular support - at least they look different, and they appear to have another way of doing things.
Not a TARDIS, but a Portaloo, aka TURDIS.
There might be reasons to get rid of that law, but this reason is stupid.
I'm certainly with you there. But to solve the problem, I think one has to look at the deeper causes and find out why it is that so many people become outsiders, who then end up hating the world and their society enough to want to kill indiscriminately. And I think it is necessary to have an open-minded discussion about *ALL* the issues, even gun ownership and -control, as well as issues like the increasing inequality, disenfranchisement and hopelessness that too many people feel trapped in. If people would talk to each other with an honest view to solve the problems, it would without a doubt be solved; what keeps this from happening must be nothing better than narrow, abysmal egotism. I think that is deeply shameful.
I was simply pointing out that there are things which science has so far been unable to explain.
- and you were implying that this somehow has a bearing on the veracity of your faith. That's OK with me - each individual has the responsibility for their own conscience and therefore the freedom to choose their own reasons. To me, the fact that science doesn't know everything is comforting - the joy of science lies in the discovery, not in the knowing.
I have studied the article about 'Our Lady of Akita'; but again, it does not offer anything for a scientist to work on. There is no coherent, logical hypothesis that leads to predictions which can be tested. Why would God or any other supernatural entity choose to make a statue produce tears? Why would he choose to cure one person om disease and not somebody else? It is not difficult to think of many, natural explanations - the church or monastry that own a weeping statue can make loads of money from the increased number of visitors, for example, and it is not difficult to make a statuse produce 'tears' by fitting thin tubes in the right place, and as the many revelations about child sex abuse by Catholic priests all over the world show, the Catholic church is not above such things.
You can try to attribute that I am somehow blinded by religion,...
Not necessarily - mabye you see something that I can't. But if you start to talk about science to a scientist, then you will be met with the arguments of a scientist.
I'm not the guy to which you replied. This may explain why your reply seems so confused.
Whatever - the same observation holds. After comparing this reply to your previous one, I can see that you are simply repeating the same statis arguments combined with the same attempts at spinning mine as ill-conceived. In short, you argue like a Jehovah's Witness and it seems disingenious. I'm willing to discuss subjects in both science and religion, but a discussion is not what we are having, and there is no point in continuing.
You're not going to get anywhere.
I knew already when I replied, that I wouldn't be able to convince you - but I think even a futile discussion can have a wider impact. If your well-meaning, but false ideas are not countered, some might think you have a point, which you don't.
What I'd like you to do is try to find an example or two written up in a proper peer-reviewed journal. You'll find it incredibly difficult.
Nope - it doesn't work like that. If you want you hypotheses to be taken serious, you work out the logic, design experiments, predict the outcome etc. No religious thinker has, as far as I know, ever done that and got a reliable result. Don't expect scientists to go and do your work for you; we have our own projects - that we are getting paid for doing.
Science, as it happens, is not the end of epistemology. Neither is it some static and unchanging thing necessarily beyond question.
Well, that is rather the point of science, isn't it? Scientific method is a tool by which we can improve our knowledge, false as it inevitably is, by cipping away the falsehoods and hopefully getting closer to some form of truth, that can actually be relied upon independently of whether any given individual actually believes in it or not. It is search for reality, if you will - as real as a brickwall.
I'm concerned that you've elevated science the same way a religious zealot would elevate some sacred texts.
I don't think you sincerely feel any concern about that, if I'm honest. You just trying to see if you can find a crack in my conviction, that you can pry open. But why don't you propose a better way of testing a hypothesis than the process known as the scientific method? Scientists are practical people - the Method is a tool, and we would all welcome one that is better.
There are things that no one can explain. Science doesn't have all the answers.
The link you give points to an advert for one of the many collections of miracle anecdotes that evangelical Christians like to read (and the Muslims, Jews, etc have their own versions, of course). The problem with such stories, nice as they are, is that they are not consistently reproducible. Every attempt at reproducing them fails - so, science has to conclude that the reasoning behind the story was wrong. There's no shame in that - scientists are proven wrong all the time, and usually don't mind too much. That is the thing about science and the scientific method: it can't prove that something is absolutely true, but it can definitely prove that something is false with absolute certainty. If your predictions based on your hypothesis fail, then your hypothesis is wrong in the absolute sense.
And of course there are lots of things nobody can ever explain - why did a lightning follow one rather than another of many equally possible paths? Science doesn't know, and nobody thinks they have all the answers - except the religious. It isn't desperately important for us to have absolute certainty about anything, except perhaps the scientific method; and even that one we only accept because there is no alternative. Scientists are doubters through and through, who positively revel in asking probing questions.
Surgical marketing messages are taken for granted on the Internet
This is quite startling news - I have never seen the word "surgical" used to mean "clumsy, useless". Novel, I grant.
science and religion simply do not conflict. they examine entirely different realms that do not interact. if you think the realms do interact, you are simply announcing you don't understand what you are talking about
Well, up to a point. Science has no opinion to offer about whether there is a god or God, but science can and must offer input on any testable claims made by any religion. So far all statements saying that God does something real have tested false. Now, as a very open minded scientist, you still have to say "we don't know if God exists", but I think it is a very reasonable position to take, as a scientist, that since all positive statements about God's reality have been disproven, then he probably doesn't exist in any real sense.
The other part of your claim is also dubious, I think. You seem to claim that morality comes from God: "religion tells you how to live in the world". It is the other way around, actually: we have evolved certain moral behavious, because it gave us better chances of surviving as a social species, and our ideas of God are likely to spring from that as the ultimate 'because'. In a sense, God didn't create us, we created Him.
"Give me Dick Cheney strapped to a folding table and a pitcher of water, and in 5 minutes I'll get him to confess to the Manson Family murders."
It would also make for an excellent reality tv show. I'm in favour.
Trump says her face is a form of waterboarding.
Which leads us to the question: what kind of atrocity is Trump's face? Or are we getting into something too horrible to discuss even on slashdot?
From the list of languages I suspect that the ones he design are built largely around Indo-European (all of the languages are from that family, except Arabic), which is a little disappointing. It was the same even in LotR - you would hope a linguist would be better placed than most to look around in to world of languages, of which there are apparently some 7000+, and find some inspiration.
We've had an anti-government undertone basically since the nation was founded.
Interesting. I read an article a few days agout some research about this - it seems that this increasing polarisation in the US has coincided with the deregulation of the press some time in the 90es; you probably know a lot more about it than I do. But it seems quite plausible to me that since it sells more papers/attracts more viewers, the media see their advantage in stoking the fires of controversy, which would explain why there seems to be such a lot of vitriolic idiots on American tv.
I could see Trump getting elected on name appeal alone.
Scary. I suppose I shouldn't mind, living in UK, because a primitive schoolyard bully like Trump will make the Chinese less interested in dealing with the US, and hence more interested in cultivating relations with UK; but it really pains me to see how America is sinking further and further down into this quagmire. Americans are good people, in general, and deserve better.
Nothing to do with me; I'm from Denmark. We may have discovered America, but didn't get involved in the later stages.