I've yet to hear of anyone suffering any repercussions from their party affiliation. Party registration is *not* meaningless: most people vote for the candidate that is in their party.
Yes it is meaningless to someone trying to force a vote out of you. It doesn't matter one whit to them who you say you're going to vote for when you can turn around and vote for someone else.
Then why aren't they doing this now? C'mon, all sorts of people openly advocate for one candidate or the other. Bumper stickers, T-shirts... free speech. If it is such a problem as you say it is, certainly it should be manifesting itself today, yes?
No, it shouldn't be! Not at all! If the CEO of EvilCorp tried to force a guy standing on the street corner with the Nader signs to vote for bush, the Nader activist would simply walk into the voting booth, vote for Nader, then walk out and tell the CEO that he voted for Bush. What's Mr. Evil CEO gonna do? The voters word is all he can go on in a secret ballot system such as our own.
I think that's ridiculous. People register in different political parties all the time, without ill effect.
I would argue in fact that it is vital we publish the ballots that people cast. It is the only way to be certain that an election is on the level. The arguments we always hear against this doing this never stand up to scrutiny.
Are you serious!? How do you suppose someone would use knowledge of your party registration against you? They can force you to register for any party they like, but when it comes down to the general election you can still vote for anyone. Party registration is meaningless. Your vote is what matters, and the people with the money or power could easily force your vote if they could only see who you voted for.
You haven't even tried to explain how this concern doesn't stand up to scrutiny.
The problem with your argument is that MS did that, as you pointed out, but without needing Java to be open sourced.
Any company powerful enough to be able to leverage people away from Solaris by releasing their own incompatible compiler already has the resources to do it, with or without Sun's blessing.
Go to www.jabber.org, download the free Jabber server and put it on a machine, download any of the free clients for Jabber and start using it.
Sure that's easy enough for us, but I think the part about running your own server would be a problem for the unwashed masses. Not everyone has a constant, unfirewalled connection and a computer that is always on to act as the server, and a domain name and the dynamic updating for it that is probably necessairy.
That's a lot to expect from people who could just download AIM instead and not have to worry about anything else.
Are you forgetting that the latency when communicationg with mars averages around 1200000 ms? I'd say that when you have to wait 20 minutes to see the result of anything you do you're going to have to substantially change your debugging strategy.
I guess it all depends on what you choose to do. There are plenty of things you can do in your free time that help other people and are a lot of fun. Something like Habitat for Humanity for instance was a great time for everyone I've known who did it.
I've never done it personally, but I'd really like to some day. Truth be told I have a bitch of a time getting myself organized, so I don't get to a lot of things I want to.
I would too. But, that's not what the scientists on the manhatten project did and same goes for the super-collider project.
For the record, I'm not opposed to this project. For various reasons I don't think there is a real possibility that a sub-sub-atomic black hole will destroy the earth. But if I thought there was a real possibility (like the 2% chance that the nuclear bomb guys thought) then it would be irresponsible to go on with the project. Knowing what they did at the time, they probably shouldn't have risked it.
Of course I'm not factoring the risk of not stopping Hitler into my decision, where for the Manhatten project guys that was probably the deciding factor.
I suspect there is a flavor of fun that will only come from the ultimately pointless, trivial, and goofy and that all the good fun from aiding humankind will never quite reproduce.
And I suspect there is a flavor of fun that will only come from aiding humankind and that all the good fun from the ultimately pointless, trivial, and goofy will never quite reproduce.
That's not free energy. It would take far more energy to make a 1 ton black hole then you'll ever get radiated back out of it. Consider that the physicists are hoping to make proton mass black holes and they need the worlds largest supercollider to get that far.
It doesn't matter that we now know their was no risk of igniting the atmosphere. The fact is that at the time, we didn't know it.
It's as if someone gave you a gun and said that there's a good chance it's not loaded, but it could be. Do you take the gun, stick it to your head and go *click*? Hell no! Maybe he knows there aren't any bullets in the gun, but you don't. From the knowledge available to you the risk is far too great.
It is quite obvious to me that the Earth is motionless and the Sun rotates around the Earth. Seems like a nice simple theory.
It is a nice simple theory, and it's one that worked for humanity for quite a long time. However, that theory becomes less and less simple as you try to explain the motion of the moon, the planets, the planet's moons, comets, astroids, and other stars.
The point is, what is "obvious" and "simple" depends a lot on what you think and what you know and is by not necessarily universal.
Actually, I'd say that the simpliest theory is entirely dependant on what you know and is almost certain to change as you learn new things.
Usually it's quite obvious which theory is simpler. If it's not quite obvious, then it doesn't matter anyway, as Occam's Razor is just a rule of thumb, not a law which is strictly enforced.
Say you visit a planet where the dominant species, the one responsible for things like math and science, experiences everything singly due to their funny optical and other sensory apparatus. How would you describe the concept of "half" to such an entity? That doesn't really make sense? If they had two apples in front of them, they would seem them as one? If they had a tree and an ocean in front of them, they couldn't distinguish between the two? It seems if that was the case then their "eyes" wouldn't be anymore developed than the eyespots of a protista. Explaining math to a species that primitive would be as pointless as explaining art to a door knob.
It is precisely as mathematically accurate that the universe rotates around the planet. Or that there is no difference between the star and the system (since the solar wind pushes out creating a region of relaively dense matter throughout the system, the planets can been seen as lumpy bits inside a less dense medium). Tha's all semantics and word games you're playing with. It is irrelevant how they define the surface of a star, or if they use an egocentric frame of reference when talking about cosmological motion.
A species used to near light speed, relativistic interactions may well have a totally different concept of time and movement. And that's using physics that we are pretty comfortable with. If they have integrated physics far beyond ours into their everyday technology, they may well have no concept of "time" or "movement" any more than early man understood gravity. Heck, most people today still think things "fall" "down"... a useful but totally fictional concept. It also doesn't matter if they experience relativistic travel frequently, they will still understand non-relativistic travel just as well. And, I would wager that our understanding of relativistic motion is sufficient that their experiences woudldn't leave us scratching our heads. The only thing that matters is that their math would be consistent with ours. I don't believe that anywhere in the universe 2 + 2 is equal to anything other than 4.
BTW, where do you get off saying that things falling down is fictional? I just took a pen off my desk and released it. It accelerated towards the gravitational center of the earth. What part of that am I imagining?
Also, I don't think that the seeds would need to be closer together than the land mines. The gas is going to disperse as it travels through the soil, it's not going to close in on a smaller point over the mine. I'm sure the engineers have thoroughly researched the optimal seed dispersion.
Aren't you forgetting that once upon a time everyone did use Netscape and Winamp. So what happened? MS bundled IE. It was the default browser, so everyone used it. MS bundled Media Player. It was the default player, so everyone used it.
Sure, these days most new users don't know about the alternatives, but that wasn't always the case. That's why I doubt that reminding them of the alternatives will do much. There will always be the few like us who have preferred programs, but the vast majority will just use whichever programs are convienient, and the convienient programs are those that are bundled with Windows.
. So when you tell that that the reason Firebird didn't work isn't because the car is broken, but instead it's because the road was intentionally made for specific cars to use and will cause non-equipped cars to crash, they may begin to understand.
Understand? Maybe. Care? Doubtful. Why would they want to keep using this nice new car that the roads weren't designed to support?
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I think that's ridiculous. People register in different political parties all the time, without ill effect.
I would argue in fact that it is vital we publish the ballots that people cast. It is the only way to be certain that an election is on the level. The arguments we always hear against this doing this never stand up to scrutiny.
Are you serious!? How do you suppose someone would use knowledge of your party registration against you? They can force you to register for any party they like, but when it comes down to the general election you can still vote for anyone. Party registration is meaningless. Your vote is what matters, and the people with the money or power could easily force your vote if they could only see who you voted for.
You haven't even tried to explain how this concern doesn't stand up to scrutiny.
Since when does the flipper and the caller get to be the same person in a fair toss?
The problem with your argument is that MS did that, as you pointed out, but without needing Java to be open sourced.
Any company powerful enough to be able to leverage people away from Solaris by releasing their own incompatible compiler already has the resources to do it, with or without Sun's blessing.
Because the bitchers are always the most vocal group. Regardless of the issue or their actual numbers.
I'm sure there's a mathematical proof to show that, but I'm way too lazy to figure it out...
Go to www.jabber.org, download the free Jabber server and put it on a machine, download any of the free clients for Jabber and start using it.
Sure that's easy enough for us, but I think the part about running your own server would be a problem for the unwashed masses. Not everyone has a constant, unfirewalled connection and a computer that is always on to act as the server, and a domain name and the dynamic updating for it that is probably necessairy.
That's a lot to expect from people who could just download AIM instead and not have to worry about anything else.
Personally I don't want Google reading/analysing my e-mail. Even if is just some algorithm.
Almost all email clients and servers analyse your mail these days. That's how the spam filters work.
Are you forgetting that the latency when communicationg with mars averages around 1200000 ms? I'd say that when you have to wait 20 minutes to see the result of anything you do you're going to have to substantially change your debugging strategy.
I guess it all depends on what you choose to do. There are plenty of things you can do in your free time that help other people and are a lot of fun. Something like Habitat for Humanity for instance was a great time for everyone I've known who did it.
I've never done it personally, but I'd really like to some day. Truth be told I have a bitch of a time getting myself organized, so I don't get to a lot of things I want to.
I'd look and see if the gun was loaded.
I would too. But, that's not what the scientists on the manhatten project did and same goes for the super-collider project.
For the record, I'm not opposed to this project. For various reasons I don't think there is a real possibility that a sub-sub-atomic black hole will destroy the earth. But if I thought there was a real possibility (like the 2% chance that the nuclear bomb guys thought) then it would be irresponsible to go on with the project. Knowing what they did at the time, they probably shouldn't have risked it.
Of course I'm not factoring the risk of not stopping Hitler into my decision, where for the Manhatten project guys that was probably the deciding factor.
I suspect there is a flavor of fun that will only come from the ultimately pointless, trivial, and goofy and that all the good fun from aiding humankind will never quite reproduce.
And I suspect there is a flavor of fun that will only come from aiding humankind and that all the good fun from the ultimately pointless, trivial, and goofy will never quite reproduce.
The question is, which do you chose to persue?
That's not free energy. It would take far more energy to make a 1 ton black hole then you'll ever get radiated back out of it. Consider that the physicists are hoping to make proton mass black holes and they need the worlds largest supercollider to get that far.
It doesn't matter that we now know their was no risk of igniting the atmosphere. The fact is that at the time, we didn't know it.
It's as if someone gave you a gun and said that there's a good chance it's not loaded, but it could be. Do you take the gun, stick it to your head and go *click*? Hell no! Maybe he knows there aren't any bullets in the gun, but you don't. From the knowledge available to you the risk is far too great.
OSS isn't taken seriously? Maybe someone should tell all these poor suckers relying on it.
RTFA
It is quite obvious to me that the Earth is motionless and the Sun rotates around the Earth. Seems like a nice simple theory.
It is a nice simple theory, and it's one that worked for humanity for quite a long time. However, that theory becomes less and less simple as you try to explain the motion of the moon, the planets, the planet's moons, comets, astroids, and other stars.
The point is, what is "obvious" and "simple" depends a lot on what you think and what you know and is by not necessarily universal.
Actually, I'd say that the simpliest theory is entirely dependant on what you know and is almost certain to change as you learn new things.
Usually it's quite obvious which theory is simpler. If it's not quite obvious, then it doesn't matter anyway, as Occam's Razor is just a rule of thumb, not a law which is strictly enforced.
Your explanation makes sense. So long as we both agree that math won't change, I guess you're not as crazy as I though you were ;-)
Say you visit a planet where the dominant species, the one responsible for things like math and science, experiences everything singly due to their funny optical and other sensory apparatus. How would you describe the concept of "half" to such an entity?
That doesn't really make sense? If they had two apples in front of them, they would seem them as one? If they had a tree and an ocean in front of them, they couldn't distinguish between the two? It seems if that was the case then their "eyes" wouldn't be anymore developed than the eyespots of a protista. Explaining math to a species that primitive would be as pointless as explaining art to a door knob.
It is precisely as mathematically accurate that the universe rotates around the planet. Or that there is no difference between the star and the system (since the solar wind pushes out creating a region of relaively dense matter throughout the system, the planets can been seen as lumpy bits inside a less dense medium).
Tha's all semantics and word games you're playing with. It is irrelevant how they define the surface of a star, or if they use an egocentric frame of reference when talking about cosmological motion.
A species used to near light speed, relativistic interactions may well have a totally different concept of time and movement. And that's using physics that we are pretty comfortable with. If they have integrated physics far beyond ours into their everyday technology, they may well have no concept of "time" or "movement" any more than early man understood gravity. Heck, most people today still think things "fall" "down"... a useful but totally fictional concept.
It also doesn't matter if they experience relativistic travel frequently, they will still understand non-relativistic travel just as well. And, I would wager that our understanding of relativistic motion is sufficient that their experiences woudldn't leave us scratching our heads. The only thing that matters is that their math would be consistent with ours. I don't believe that anywhere in the universe 2 + 2 is equal to anything other than 4.
BTW, where do you get off saying that things falling down is fictional? I just took a pen off my desk and released it. It accelerated towards the gravitational center of the earth. What part of that am I imagining?
Sure it cools fast. But where do you think most of that heat goes? (hint: the moisture in your skin is a better conductor of heat than the air)
Doesn't matter. You're picking nits that ordinary users aren't interested in picking.
Also, I don't think that the seeds would need to be closer together than the land mines. The gas is going to disperse as it travels through the soil, it's not going to close in on a smaller point over the mine. I'm sure the engineers have thoroughly researched the optimal seed dispersion.
Aren't you forgetting that once upon a time everyone did use Netscape and Winamp. So what happened? MS bundled IE. It was the default browser, so everyone used it. MS bundled Media Player. It was the default player, so everyone used it.
Sure, these days most new users don't know about the alternatives, but that wasn't always the case. That's why I doubt that reminding them of the alternatives will do much. There will always be the few like us who have preferred programs, but the vast majority will just use whichever programs are convienient, and the convienient programs are those that are bundled with Windows.
. So when you tell that that the reason Firebird didn't work isn't because the car is broken, but instead it's because the road was intentionally made for specific cars to use and will cause non-equipped cars to crash, they may begin to understand.
Understand? Maybe. Care? Doubtful. Why would they want to keep using this nice new car that the roads weren't designed to support?