So the U.N. is a perfect government structure, that represents everyone perfectly?
I suppose this is the same agency that put Syria on the Human Rights Committee. Somehow I have difficulty believing that the U.N. will adequately represent the dynamic landscape of internet names.
Start a new international body, or use an existing scientific body aside from a UN-based one. Or continue to use the current system, since there's no certainty that an international system is an improvement.
Sorry, you are wrong. I used to be a global warming doubter, but the scientific consensus has changed my mind.
As I understand it, there is consensus among scientists on two facts: (1) Global warming is happening (2) Humans are responsible for a significant amount of the global warming, or all of it.
The rest are conclusions that you draw yourself.
What nonsense! Economies have always thrived on challenge!
You're talking about imposing a challenge on ourselves voluntarily. I don't really think the economy will "thrive on a challenge" if people can't go to work because they have no oil, can't build a new building because the equipment takes oil, and can't get new shipments of supplies because the shipping companies run on oil.
I don't think your statement holds up logically. Even if innovation is greater (which might not be the case if they have to shut down research facilities due to high cost), it's not a win unless it's better than what we had before. If we set ourselves back by limiting fossil fuels, we have to get something better than fossil fuels in a reasonable amount of time. And in the interim, when the economy is hobbled, why aren't we burning the fossil fuels we do have? Limiting fossil fuels artificially is not a net win for the economy, and you have no evidence to back you up, aside from handwaving about "if it doesn't kill us it will make us stronger" reasoning. If it were really true, why not impose all kinds of artificial restrictions all the time? The economy will do great!
a change in technologies (reducing CO2 production) is likely to provide a long-term stimulation of the world economy, rather that letting it settle into oil-burning stagnation as at present.
Could be. Either way, fossil-fuel burning will be increasingly expensive as the supply of easily-accessible oil runs low. So if we're coasting on a free ride of cheap oil, why cut ourselves off now? Global warming will be reduced as fossil-fuel burning slows. The problem might correct itself this way.
Then why are so many remote root attacks through bind or sendmail?
It is theoretically possible to be secure while doing that. It's also theoretically possible to build a secure network daemon that runs entirely as root.
But the whole point of having users is practicality: someone writing a program like "My First FTP Daemon" shouldn't have to open his server up to the internet as root. It should be more like:
# chown myuser/proc/net/tcpip/127.0.0.1/21
and root would not need to do anything more, and myuser could run his server on port 21. Of course it could get a little complicated, so it probably makes more sense to have a policy file or some such with default access rights, and groups, and acl-like stuff.
"Dramatic" and "damaging" are relative. You imply "Dramatically damaging," but of course that's not what a majority of respectable scientists are saying.
So, is it dramatic compared to climate changes that happened in the past? Is it more damaging than if we just let the Earth change the climate on its own? How much more damaging? Is it worth grinding the world economy to a halt?
Perhaps. But you don't have a majority of scientists agreeing to those statements. You draw your own conclusions and then you pass them off as fact by putting words in the mouths of "a majority of respected scientists".
What we really need are honest predictions of damage, and honest predictions of the costs to mitigate that damage. Everything is a cost-benefit analysis.
My prediction is that oil will soon be too expensive anyway, and we need H2 cars and some nuke power or something. Whatever oil there is that is reasonably accessible will be used at some point, so I don't even see the point of the Kyoto protocol and that kind of thing. So, we have global warming for a few more decades (at which point -- and perhaps this is a leap of faith -- I believe that humans will still roam the planet). Then, when the fossil fuels are more scarce, it equalizes again.
I'm sure in 100 years there will be another argument going on about global warming due to radioactive waste deposits in the desert or some such.
One thing I noticed about security is that sometimes unecessary security measures make something less secure.
In UNIX, a non-root user can't open a port below 1024. Sounds like a good security plan to me: that way users don't claim port 80 and then speak www for the entire machine.
However, look at the problems it causes: -bind must run as root -apache must run as root -sendmail must run as root
and that accounts for what, like 90% of unix security problems right there?
I didn't mean to include all signing nations in that statement. I understand that Japan and Canada might have difficulties meeting the quotas (if I'm wrong about that please let me know), however. If Britain does, we'll see how that works out for them.
Right now I don't think that it would be good for the US to sign on to such a thing.
Except that the current signing nations have no plans to actually meet their quotas. So, it looks like more of a short-term political ploy than anything to do with the environment.
Finally, someone I can talk sense with. You know what your positions are, and you know the logical conclusions of those positions. I respectfully disagree with you on many issues I'm sure, but that's better than you disagreeing with yourself (and trying to make a political party out of that idea).
when over 40 million Americans live without basic health coverage
Without health coverage does not mean without health care. Another interpretation of that statistic is that 40 million people think that they can manage their own health better than someone else managing it for them.
he DID win with rhetoric, and most certainly with image
But there was substance there, consider: * no gay marriage * continue with war in Iraq on course * hold Iraqi elections soon * don't increase government involvement in health care * avoid increasing tax burden * appoint SC justices wihtout a "litmus test"
Those are positions of substance. You and I may both disagree with some of his positions, but at least we knew who the man was. Kerry, we had no idea. During the debates he kept talking about a big government health program, but everytime Bush said "So you mean socialized heath"*, Kerry would say "No No No, it's all through a series of private companies that the government just pays"*. Of course that's dumb: the goverment paying for health is socialized health care, and everyone knew it. You say that's good and you might be right. But then Kerry won't call it what it is, so he looked like an idiot.
To this day I don't entirely know for sure a policy that Kerry supports. He really didn't have much substance. He basically ran the "I'm not Bush" ticket.
Freedom from tyranny by corporations, as well as from tyranny of the government.
Corporations are a government-imposed structure with rights above and beyond what private individuals or groups can achieve. Particularly, corporate owners have immunity from liability beyond their corporate investment in most cases. So perhaps those are one and the same? Or at least partially so?
Freedom from poverty.
Be a little careful with this one. Don't create a right for one person that enslaves another.
* Bush/Kerry quotes are paraphrased to the best of my recollection.
I consider leftism to work much better on a smaller scale. The countries you mentioned are small (with the exception of France, regarding which some might disagree about your claim of a higher standard of living).
I don't think leftism works on a large scale because governments are naturally heirarchical, and that model does not extend well to large numbers (or so I claim). The reason is that individuals have more information about any situation than a far-away government, so they tend to make better decisions. So, it's good for the economy to give them economic freedom. There are limits, of course. You must prevent stealing, extortion, etc.
So, be wary of the E.U. taking over, because it could destroy those countries.
I think there's a natural tendency to call any large group of people who disagree with you "brainwashed". I just don't think that's the case.
More foreign people enter the U.S. each year than any other country, so we're doing something right. Something tells me that even if one of those countries had an open-immigration policy, there wouldn't be nearly the influx there. I bet you could even discount Mexican immigration and it would still be more immigration here.
If you're saying that some previous posts misrepresented the denotation of blackmail, you're probably right. I was just trying to set the argument on the right track by seperating the connotation (what the other posts were talking about) from the denotation (what you were talking about).
English is a powerful language and the nuances and connotations matter. If you ignore them, you may be technically correct according to the dictionary, but you have failed to effectively communicate.
"Especially" is used to give you hints about the connotation. In this case, the connotation of blackmail is that you are threatening to reveal something.
You seem to be implying that Bush won the election because of rhetoric and image. Certainly that's partially true, as with any politician. However, as long as the Democrats keep thinking that, they will never win an election.
The reason Bush won is because people knew what Bush was about, knew what he stood for, and agreed with some of his ideas.
The Democratic party needs to put forth someone with a message that the people like, and positions the people agree with. It's that simple. The Democrats are having somewhat of an identity problem, and that was reflected last election.
The fiscal liberals (i.e. people who want to involve the federal government more in economic transactions) are a strong component of the Democratic party. However, for better or worse, those ideas just don't get votes. Neither do politicians who support gay marriage.
There are really two options: (1) Try to be honest about core values, like fiscal liberalism, abortion as a civil right, gay marriage, and more involvement with the U.N. This will initially cost the Democrats many positions, but will provide an opportunity to convince people of their ways.
(2) Continue their policy of Republican-Lite. The Democrats will hold more offices, but never will they gain the dominant position in the nation. They will never be able to convince anyone that liberalism is the way to go, because they can't even stand up and say it (or they'll lose votes).
Now, I'm not a member of the Democratic party, so maybe you shouldn't take my advice. I just want a healthy political landscape because that is better for me too. If the Democrats are constantly pandering and compromising and never really come up with a main issue that really creates a following, that means we have a bunch of Democrats, none of whom actually agree with the Democratic party.
I started my post with "Devil's Advocate" and ended by stating that more laws would probably be worse.
Yet you seem convinced that I want a government mandate to provide eternal property rights to anyone who generates a lead.
Anyway, yes, a free market is best when consumers are informed. But that assumes that they are informed of the product choices ahead of time. If they aren't, then company A is doing a service by informing the customers more than they were before. I could see how company A would be frustrated if they spent a lot of money informing consumers of a new product and then their competitors spent very little money informing consumers of the alternative places to buy. It probably can't be effectively stopped, but if you read the post I was replying to (that may be too much to ask since you didn't read mine...) you would see that he was having difficulty seeing any ethical problem that could arise. I provided the other side of the story.
Now, just in case there's any doubt:
I do not want the US to adopt any laws similar to that French ruling. If you are looking for a spark of dissent from your view to start arguing with, you have not found it yet, so keep moving.
Interesting point, but I wasn't talking about a product that should be protected by patents, I was talking about a product that is just not in the public mind. Maybe it was invented a century ago, but was ahead of its time. Ethics would say that the company that brings it back into the public mind and helps a lot of people (if it is actually helping a lot of people) should be compensated. However, it is probably worse to pass more laws, so just leave it alone and let's not end up like the French.
Remember, I replied to someone who didn't see anything unethical about the practice. I was just describing an unethical situation that might arise.
Although it's popular to dislike advertisements, many times a targeted advertisement is very helpful.
Next time company A won't advertise, and then nobody will know about the product. Then nobody gets the benefit of the product.
I'm not saying that we should ban that kind of thing like the French. But let's not pretend like there aren't legitimately helpful forms of advertisement. And if we discourage that kind of thing, it could be harmful (although most likely not as harmful as the French law).
Hence the "Devil's advocate" disclaimer. He said he didn't see how it could be unethical, I was showing him how it could be.
I think it's much worse to have laws and bans where they aren't absolutely necessary, so I say we do nothing. It's a shame for company A, but that's life.
I've never quite understood that. I just download the debian packages for postgres and it works right away. The source isn't much harder to install, and I can't really see how the mysql source would be easier.
If you have an actual suggestion to make it easier to install postgres I'm sure the developers would implement it.
I'd be interested to see some benchmark results. I doubt that is true for highly concurrent UPDATEs. And you also failed to mention whether you were using MyISAM or InnoDB.
I think that databases should be benchmarked based on the application, not a set of queries.
Also, you should take into account concurrency, since that usually matters when performance matters.
Perhaps there's room for a simple embedded database that allows you to filter the results easily? I think SQLite might fit this description.
If you're making a "DB agnostic" application (by which I mean you just dumb the application down so that it doesn't use any relational features), I think it's a better idea to just bundle SQLite and then it doesn't matter what database they have.
Personally, I usually have several applications accessing the same data set, so I use an RDBMS for that (for many reasons). But many off-the-shelf web apps just don't benefit from that kind of thing.
Company A starts selling a gadget that nobody knows about. It starts an expensive marketing campaign to show how it helps an average person in everyday life. People didn't know the product existed before, but are now very interested in the product.
Then they search for your creative, trademarked company name in google. Then they see an ad for company B (which cost company B $0.25). Company B is a factory outlet who has no marketing budget. The price from company B is half the price from company A because company A must recoup its marketing costs. Now the consumer buys from company B.
In this case it doesn't seem fair. Although the alternative (laws controlling advertising more) might be much worse.
Slashdot Mirror
So the U.N. is a perfect government structure, that represents everyone perfectly?
I suppose this is the same agency that put Syria on the Human Rights Committee. Somehow I have difficulty believing that the U.N. will adequately represent the dynamic landscape of internet names.
Start a new international body, or use an existing scientific body aside from a UN-based one. Or continue to use the current system, since there's no certainty that an international system is an improvement.
Haha. I didn't say which one I was.
/. discussions I sometimes degenerate into the former :)
I aspire to be more like the latter, but in
Perhaps you can suggest a better wording?
Maybe it should be an international thing, but NOT the UN.
The UN is structured around things that have nothing to do with international names.
Overrepresented countries like France would probably love it, but underrepresented countries like India might not like it so much.
Sorry, you are wrong. I used to be a global warming doubter, but the scientific consensus has changed my mind.
As I understand it, there is consensus among scientists on two facts:
(1) Global warming is happening
(2) Humans are responsible for a significant amount of the global warming, or all of it.
The rest are conclusions that you draw yourself.
What nonsense! Economies have always thrived on challenge!
You're talking about imposing a challenge on ourselves voluntarily. I don't really think the economy will "thrive on a challenge" if people can't go to work because they have no oil, can't build a new building because the equipment takes oil, and can't get new shipments of supplies because the shipping companies run on oil.
I don't think your statement holds up logically. Even if innovation is greater (which might not be the case if they have to shut down research facilities due to high cost), it's not a win unless it's better than what we had before. If we set ourselves back by limiting fossil fuels, we have to get something better than fossil fuels in a reasonable amount of time. And in the interim, when the economy is hobbled, why aren't we burning the fossil fuels we do have? Limiting fossil fuels artificially is not a net win for the economy, and you have no evidence to back you up, aside from handwaving about "if it doesn't kill us it will make us stronger" reasoning. If it were really true, why not impose all kinds of artificial restrictions all the time? The economy will do great!
a change in technologies (reducing CO2 production) is likely to provide a long-term stimulation of the world economy, rather that letting it settle into oil-burning stagnation as at present.
Could be. Either way, fossil-fuel burning will be increasingly expensive as the supply of easily-accessible oil runs low. So if we're coasting on a free ride of cheap oil, why cut ourselves off now? Global warming will be reduced as fossil-fuel burning slows. The problem might correct itself this way.
Then why are so many remote root attacks through bind or sendmail?
/proc/net/tcpip/127.0.0.1/21
It is theoretically possible to be secure while doing that. It's also theoretically possible to build a secure network daemon that runs entirely as root.
But the whole point of having users is practicality: someone writing a program like "My First FTP Daemon" shouldn't have to open his server up to the internet as root. It should be more like:
# chown myuser
and root would not need to do anything more, and myuser could run his server on port 21. Of course it could get a little complicated, so it probably makes more sense to have a policy file or some such with default access rights, and groups, and acl-like stuff.
"Dramatic" and "damaging" are relative. You imply "Dramatically damaging," but of course that's not what a majority of respectable scientists are saying.
So, is it dramatic compared to climate changes that happened in the past? Is it more damaging than if we just let the Earth change the climate on its own? How much more damaging? Is it worth grinding the world economy to a halt?
Perhaps. But you don't have a majority of scientists agreeing to those statements. You draw your own conclusions and then you pass them off as fact by putting words in the mouths of "a majority of respected scientists".
What we really need are honest predictions of damage, and honest predictions of the costs to mitigate that damage. Everything is a cost-benefit analysis.
My prediction is that oil will soon be too expensive anyway, and we need H2 cars and some nuke power or something. Whatever oil there is that is reasonably accessible will be used at some point, so I don't even see the point of the Kyoto protocol and that kind of thing. So, we have global warming for a few more decades (at which point -- and perhaps this is a leap of faith -- I believe that humans will still roam the planet). Then, when the fossil fuels are more scarce, it equalizes again.
I'm sure in 100 years there will be another argument going on about global warming due to radioactive waste deposits in the desert or some such.
One thing I noticed about security is that sometimes unecessary security measures make something less secure.
In UNIX, a non-root user can't open a port below 1024. Sounds like a good security plan to me: that way users don't claim port 80 and then speak www for the entire machine.
However, look at the problems it causes:
-bind must run as root
-apache must run as root
-sendmail must run as root
and that accounts for what, like 90% of unix security problems right there?
I didn't mean to include all signing nations in that statement. I understand that Japan and Canada might have difficulties meeting the quotas (if I'm wrong about that please let me know), however. If Britain does, we'll see how that works out for them.
Right now I don't think that it would be good for the US to sign on to such a thing.
Now you are hearing from a majority of respectable scientists.
Huh? A majority of respectable scientists are saying doom is around the corner? I don't think so.
Except that the current signing nations have no plans to actually meet their quotas. So, it looks like more of a short-term political ploy than anything to do with the environment.
That's convoluted and unenforcable. How would you track?
Say a Chinese guy just happens to open a factory that just happens to exclusively sell to Dell? What then?
I am a LIBERAL, I'm proud of it
Finally, someone I can talk sense with. You know what your positions are, and you know the logical conclusions of those positions. I respectfully disagree with you on many issues I'm sure, but that's better than you disagreeing with yourself (and trying to make a political party out of that idea).
when over 40 million Americans live without basic health coverage
Without health coverage does not mean without health care. Another interpretation of that statistic is that 40 million people think that they can manage their own health better than someone else managing it for them.
he DID win with rhetoric, and most certainly with image
But there was substance there, consider:
* no gay marriage
* continue with war in Iraq on course
* hold Iraqi elections soon
* don't increase government involvement in health care
* avoid increasing tax burden
* appoint SC justices wihtout a "litmus test"
Those are positions of substance. You and I may both disagree with some of his positions, but at least we knew who the man was. Kerry, we had no idea. During the debates he kept talking about a big government health program, but everytime Bush said "So you mean socialized heath"*, Kerry would say "No No No, it's all through a series of private companies that the government just pays"*. Of course that's dumb: the goverment paying for health is socialized health care, and everyone knew it. You say that's good and you might be right. But then Kerry won't call it what it is, so he looked like an idiot.
To this day I don't entirely know for sure a policy that Kerry supports. He really didn't have much substance. He basically ran the "I'm not Bush" ticket.
Freedom from tyranny by corporations, as well as from tyranny of the government.
Corporations are a government-imposed structure with rights above and beyond what private individuals or groups can achieve. Particularly, corporate owners have immunity from liability beyond their corporate investment in most cases. So perhaps those are one and the same? Or at least partially so?
Freedom from poverty.
Be a little careful with this one. Don't create a right for one person that enslaves another.
* Bush/Kerry quotes are paraphrased to the best of my recollection.
I consider leftism to work much better on a smaller scale. The countries you mentioned are small (with the exception of France, regarding which some might disagree about your claim of a higher standard of living).
I don't think leftism works on a large scale because governments are naturally heirarchical, and that model does not extend well to large numbers (or so I claim). The reason is that individuals have more information about any situation than a far-away government, so they tend to make better decisions. So, it's good for the economy to give them economic freedom. There are limits, of course. You must prevent stealing, extortion, etc.
So, be wary of the E.U. taking over, because it could destroy those countries.
I think there's a natural tendency to call any large group of people who disagree with you "brainwashed". I just don't think that's the case.
More foreign people enter the U.S. each year than any other country, so we're doing something right. Something tells me that even if one of those countries had an open-immigration policy, there wouldn't be nearly the influx there. I bet you could even discount Mexican immigration and it would still be more immigration here.
If you're saying that some previous posts misrepresented the denotation of blackmail, you're probably right. I was just trying to set the argument on the right track by seperating the connotation (what the other posts were talking about) from the denotation (what you were talking about).
English is a powerful language and the nuances and connotations matter. If you ignore them, you may be technically correct according to the dictionary, but you have failed to effectively communicate.
"Especially" is used to give you hints about the connotation. In this case, the connotation of blackmail is that you are threatening to reveal something.
You seem to be implying that Bush won the election because of rhetoric and image. Certainly that's partially true, as with any politician. However, as long as the Democrats keep thinking that, they will never win an election.
The reason Bush won is because people knew what Bush was about, knew what he stood for, and agreed with some of his ideas.
The Democratic party needs to put forth someone with a message that the people like, and positions the people agree with. It's that simple. The Democrats are having somewhat of an identity problem, and that was reflected last election.
The fiscal liberals (i.e. people who want to involve the federal government more in economic transactions) are a strong component of the Democratic party. However, for better or worse, those ideas just don't get votes. Neither do politicians who support gay marriage.
There are really two options:
(1) Try to be honest about core values, like fiscal liberalism, abortion as a civil right, gay marriage, and more involvement with the U.N. This will initially cost the Democrats many positions, but will provide an opportunity to convince people of their ways.
(2) Continue their policy of Republican-Lite. The Democrats will hold more offices, but never will they gain the dominant position in the nation. They will never be able to convince anyone that liberalism is the way to go, because they can't even stand up and say it (or they'll lose votes).
Now, I'm not a member of the Democratic party, so maybe you shouldn't take my advice. I just want a healthy political landscape because that is better for me too. If the Democrats are constantly pandering and compromising and never really come up with a main issue that really creates a following, that means we have a bunch of Democrats, none of whom actually agree with the Democratic party.
Once the random walk has become (by random chance) sufficiently far from zero, the probabability of another zero crossing is very tiny indeed.
Actually, once that random walk has happened, the probability of going one step further from the zero is exactly 0.5.
I started my post with "Devil's Advocate" and ended by stating that more laws would probably be worse.
Yet you seem convinced that I want a government mandate to provide eternal property rights to anyone who generates a lead.
Anyway, yes, a free market is best when consumers are informed. But that assumes that they are informed of the product choices ahead of time. If they aren't, then company A is doing a service by informing the customers more than they were before. I could see how company A would be frustrated if they spent a lot of money informing consumers of a new product and then their competitors spent very little money informing consumers of the alternative places to buy. It probably can't be effectively stopped, but if you read the post I was replying to (that may be too much to ask since you didn't read mine...) you would see that he was having difficulty seeing any ethical problem that could arise. I provided the other side of the story.
Now, just in case there's any doubt:
I do not want the US to adopt any laws similar to that French ruling. If you are looking for a spark of dissent from your view to start arguing with, you have not found it yet, so keep moving.
Interesting point, but I wasn't talking about a product that should be protected by patents, I was talking about a product that is just not in the public mind. Maybe it was invented a century ago, but was ahead of its time. Ethics would say that the company that brings it back into the public mind and helps a lot of people (if it is actually helping a lot of people) should be compensated. However, it is probably worse to pass more laws, so just leave it alone and let's not end up like the French.
Remember, I replied to someone who didn't see anything unethical about the practice. I was just describing an unethical situation that might arise.
how many people buy Advil instead of ibuprofen?
I have absolutely no idea.
Although it's popular to dislike advertisements, many times a targeted advertisement is very helpful.
Next time company A won't advertise, and then nobody will know about the product. Then nobody gets the benefit of the product.
I'm not saying that we should ban that kind of thing like the French. But let's not pretend like there aren't legitimately helpful forms of advertisement. And if we discourage that kind of thing, it could be harmful (although most likely not as harmful as the French law).
Hence the "Devil's advocate" disclaimer. He said he didn't see how it could be unethical, I was showing him how it could be.
I think it's much worse to have laws and bans where they aren't absolutely necessary, so I say we do nothing. It's a shame for company A, but that's life.
I've never quite understood that. I just download the debian packages for postgres and it works right away. The source isn't much harder to install, and I can't really see how the mysql source would be easier.
If you have an actual suggestion to make it easier to install postgres I'm sure the developers would implement it.
waaaaaay faster on writing
I'd be interested to see some benchmark results. I doubt that is true for highly concurrent UPDATEs. And you also failed to mention whether you were using MyISAM or InnoDB.
I think that databases should be benchmarked based on the application, not a set of queries.
Also, you should take into account concurrency, since that usually matters when performance matters.
Interesting point.
Perhaps there's room for a simple embedded database that allows you to filter the results easily? I think SQLite might fit this description.
If you're making a "DB agnostic" application (by which I mean you just dumb the application down so that it doesn't use any relational features), I think it's a better idea to just bundle SQLite and then it doesn't matter what database they have.
Personally, I usually have several applications accessing the same data set, so I use an RDBMS for that (for many reasons). But many off-the-shelf web apps just don't benefit from that kind of thing.
To play devil's advocate:
Company A starts selling a gadget that nobody knows about. It starts an expensive marketing campaign to show how it helps an average person in everyday life. People didn't know the product existed before, but are now very interested in the product.
Then they search for your creative, trademarked company name in google. Then they see an ad for company B (which cost company B $0.25). Company B is a factory outlet who has no marketing budget. The price from company B is half the price from company A because company A must recoup its marketing costs. Now the consumer buys from company B.
In this case it doesn't seem fair. Although the alternative (laws controlling advertising more) might be much worse.