I'll meet you halfway: It's both fraud and theft. The fraud happened when they sold it (and turned into fraud with the removal), and the theft happens with the removal.
Though it is hard to say if it would meet the common law definition of either fraud (it miss the "the speaker's knowledge of the fact being false" part of the fraud test), it is in my opinion both morally fraud and morally theft (removal of something that had been sold to another).
As for the theft: Even for people not using OtherOS, value gets stolen. The overall value of a PS3 goes down when OtherOS is removed - it means that the resale value to supercomputers based on PS3s is gone, and the ability to repurpose an old PS3 as a media player gets worse.
Actually, that means that this even affects the people that have slim PS3s: Less "fat" PS3s get repurposed, which means a glut of PS3s in the market, which means decreased value of the used slim PS3s. That connection does not see fraudulent/immoral, though - you'd have a similar effect of e.g. MS lowering the prices on the XBox360.
I'm assuming the gene doesn't actually make you "religious", it just predisposes you to being suggestible and superstitious...
That doesn't look very skeptical from here. You're assuming it exists in the first place.
I think gullibility is just a least resistance path, which seems far more likely.
Everything follows a least resistance path; it's just a question of what is least resistance to the individual.
Anyway, a gene "for religion" or "against religion" don't have to deal with gullibility at all. Let me create an example. Assume you have
A group where there some amount of church attendance, but not 100%, so there's some individuals that can reasonably vary their church attendance
That there's some pro-religious effect of attending church - either the sermons to some degree work, or the social environment around it to some degree foster religious beliefs
That church involve sitting to listen to sermons
Under these assumptions, a gene that makes sitting less comfortable is going to be an atheism gene. The gene could make you itchy, or it could make you sensitive to sitting on hard benches, or just make you restless. Any of these would be an atheism gene - the phenotype of a gene for not liking to sit would also express itself as atheism. Conversely, a gene that make it more comfortable to sit (say, creating more padding in the bearer's behind) would make the bearer of the gene more likely to be religious.
Assuming there's no genes that correlate to the likelihood of being religious seems odd to me. There's so many, many ways they can correlate - assuming there's no correlation seems odd.
FreeBSD doesn't do 'repositories', so to speak. They do ports, and then FreeBSD. They're conveniently independent (I suspect so that the FreeBSD project can claim superior security to everything else).
They're technically handled extremely differently; the code for the main OS is directly edited and maintained in a single consistent source tree and build system, while the ports are just extracted, patched, and built using their own individual build system.
There's a slightly blurry line about some things in contrib vs ports; occasionally, things are moved to ports or moved from ports to contrib, and the code for contrib usually isn't edited that much, to facilitate updates. It could be argued that that code should go in ports and there should be "mandatory ports" rather than contrib.
I used to be an active committer in FreeBSD; I've never seen anybody say anything about using this to argue better security. All discussion about it has been about what's convenient in terms of what we do with code (and it being convenient to have a defined base system so we can deliver a consistent system).
Even then, ports don't really have 'guidelines'. "I maintain this port and I'll update it as I please, consequences be damned" seems to be the guiding message, though.
There's a Porter's handbook. There's a port manager team to clamp down on it, and before there was a port manager team there definitively Satoshi Asami (or before that Jordan Hubbard) to block bad changes.
Is there a particular port or set of ports you've had problems with? In general, I've found that a polite mail to the maintainer will take care of things - but maintainers clearly aren't perfect, and sometimes it's been necessary to bring technical points up for discussion in the mailing lists (or, if it's heated before it gets to that point, take it up in private with the port management team.)
That is immaterial. Please read up on and understand what a bait and switch is before you say anything about it.
Searching Google for "definition bait and switch" will give you some sort of reasonable answers; the first real result had a definition that should make this understandable.
When I bought it, it had the OtherOS feather AND I could do all the online stuff...not now
When I bought it, it had backwards comparability for almost all PS2 games...not now
Those features were removed by system updates that you had to explicitly agree to download and install.
I will grant that it is shady of Sony to require those system updates to run new media, but this was not a "bait and switch".
Look at the first definition from Google after searching for "define bait and switch".
PS3 was sold with advertising for four different features (and more):
(Explicitly) Ability to run OtherOS - was advertised even after the feature was removed.
Then Sony, unilaterally, said "You have to choose between either feature 1, OtherOS, or all the other features. You can't have both. If you choose to have the rest, you lose OtherOS permanently."
This was bait and switch. The bait was having all the features, advertised. The switch was removing it.
Nothing was taken, nothing was stolen.
In (A) Ability to re-sell based on the value of OtherOS. Ability to use OtherOS yourself or (B) Ability to play online, play new games, and play new BluRays, either (A) or (B) was taken, depending on user choice.
OtherOS e.g. gives PS3 extra permanent value as a high quality media box.
I don't see the value in turning up in court in the circumstances, but I may see where you're coming from - something about getting some kind of "true judgement" of the situation?
My take on it is that not turning up in court would in general be considered a technical admission of guilt. There's no way to force a realistic non-technical judgement of guilt - somebody could choose to just go into court and say "While I do not admit to the charges, I refuse to spend the time and money to argue against them. I'll just pay the fine." With this, the non-technical (moral) judgement of guilt often wouldn't be present. Making it illegal to not mount a vigorous defense seems an unrealistic way of handling it, too.
Why does anything beyond the maximum issuable fine seem reasonable?
As far as I can understand, if neither he nor his lawyer is present, he would end up getting the maximum fine. The bond is there to guarantee for him taking his punishment. If the bond is the same as the maximum punishment, then that punishment is perfectly guaranteed (they can just take the bond and he'll be punished).
Is there some other factor that should be taken into consideration that I'm missing?
I'm a medicinal chemist working on a program to cure Alzheimer's disease, and I thank God for my abilities. I think you presume too much of the Doctor when you deny the existence of miracles.
Unfortunately, being a doctor isn't enough to learn how to judge religion. I think you presume too much of yourself if you proclaim the existence of miracles without being reasonably qualified in the relevant aspects of most of the below:
Psychology, to understand how basic beliefs are formed and when they are rational and irrational
Evolution, to understand what's the chance of features occurring naturally
Statistics/maths, to understand what's the chance of features occurring naturally
"Evolution" of beliefs (meme theory) in order to understand some of what happens with religions over time
Persuasion/influence, to see what happens when there's direct attempts at influencing beliefs
Social systems and cult forming, to understand how people get trapped in bad beliefs (so you can get some idea of whether this is a primary effect of religion)
Belief inheritance - which beliefs come from our parents, and how? When are these rational?
Hypnosis and stage magic, in order to see what happens in religious ceremonies and whether the effects people experience can be done in other ways
Meditation, same
Hallucinogens and their influence on brain chemistry, and how these experiences compare to "normal" religious experiences
History of religions (if you want to be religious, you have to understand both the origin of your religion and other religions, in order to do a reasonable comparison)
Computer Science, particularly AI, in order to understand the functioning of neural networks and natural selection on the practical level
Physical brain systems, including how hormones and neurotransmitters operate, and the chemical cascades of the body and cells (as a medical chemist, I assume you know this part well)
The elephant in the room: Why are there thousands of incompatible religious belief systems and why do you disbelieve most of them?
In Norway, juries are selected from a qualified pool - which means they tend to be educated and reasonably levelheaded. While certainly not perfect (there's wrong judgements there as everywhere), the system seems to work reasonably well.
For me, "space" has the advantage as an explanation that it can have much more parallelism and more time. Though I'm not sure that more is needed - even on earth, we get a lot of both.
I have less hope for that than you. Using libraries (modules/frameworks/whatever) written for another language isn't usually as nice as using something that's native. There's different conventions, and there's usually features in each language that makes for an improved experience - for that language.
For instance, in Ruby, I'd expect an API to actively use blocks (continuations) for resource tracking, and a DSL based on symbols and blocks would be common. Doing this in Python or Perl would be weird.
In Python, I'd expect docstrings, and I'd expect exceptions, and the use of the standard module system, with one module per file, and the need to use import to get at the right constants etc.
In Perl, I'd expect perldoc. I'd not expect exceptions, as that's not really well supported (at least in perl 5). And I'd expect there to be distinctions between references and 'real values'.
Overall, I think that anything that's written in one language and automatically accessed from another language will interface clumsily. And if you have to write an abstraction layer to make it work, you often might as well have a native module without the quirks.
3) So you have backups taken care of. 4) So you don't have to install software 5) So your machines are interchangeable. I love not having to care if I use my desktop or laptop. 6) So you can wipe your machines and things are still the same 7) "On the move" includes going from the bedroom to the living room
and for ChromeOS: So you can log in anywhere and still have your environment.
To me, the question is more one of "Why don't have everything in the cloud?"
The reasons I see are (A) You don't trust your (potential) cloud provider. (B) Too little bandwidth (C) Too high latency (D) The cloud apps for what you want aren't there yet (E) The cloud apps are somehow too expensive (F) You like to tinker
I can certainly respect all of these; but pretending the advantages don't exist seems narrowminded.
Well, all the Y chromosomes trace back to a single male, too. The only problem for the Adam-Eve myth is that they lived 150,000 years apart, so likely they were not married.
Even ignoring a consensus, the conservative approach is to limit emissions until you know with high confidence that emissions are safe. People are trying to establish a 1% confidence level for AGW when they should really be establishing a 1% confidence level for emissions being safe.
That's arguable. Limiting emissions to a level where it makes an appreciable difference might be so expensive that it is the non-conservative choice. (To me, it seems like it is that expensive - the limitations we are doing only gives us a few years bonus time. Our only rational choice seems to be geo-engineering. Though TFA shows something that might change all calculations around the topic.)
My Social Psychology textbook (David Myer's "Social Psychology") spends a chapter arguing that the evidence shows that pornography leads to more rape, with fairly credible citations, in particular natural experiments where introduction has rapidly led to increase in rape, and as far as I remember one example (Hawaii?) where it had been introduced, rape had increased, and then removed, and rape had decreased, and it had been re-introduced and rape had increased again.
I'll also say that american textbooks are ridiculously expensive - I just searched on Amazon to find the book, and it costs over twice what I paid for it maybe three years ago in Norway. And it's the same book, just a more competitive market.
I think the definition of "porn" here is dependent on a particular country you're from. I'm from a less liberal country than Denmark (Norway), and I don't consider topless pictures to be anywhere near porn. I consider the page 3/9/whatever girls to be slightly tacky, but that's all.
My regular newspaper is the 3rd largest newspaper in Norway, and probably the one with the most influential mainstream cultural debate. They've fairly regularly had full frontal nudity on the front page of their online newspaper. They've also had people having sex (though not "moving private parts", as is the former porn limitation in Norway). And they're not considered an at all racy newspaper here. (It's also the second largest direct sales newspaper.)
The problem is that if Apple gets a stranglehold on a large part of the (paid) online market, then the censorship necessary to avoid offending the outer mainstream in the least liberal parts of America suddenly becomes global. And for many of us, this seems bad.
Now to be fair, way more often that not in the scenario that I described above, a lost bag is just a lost bag, but the question you have to ask yourself is that if it only takes one package that is actually filled with explosives to kill a bunch of people shouldn't additional security measures be taken to help deter that outcome, however unlikely it may actually be, from happening?
No. Clearly no.
There's a remote risk that you, avatar139 (918375), are going to snap and kill a lot of people with your bare hands. This does not warrant installing 24/7 surveillance to detect signs of you snapping.
The world is filled with risks. The only sane way to deal with them is by looking at the chance that they'll occur, and what cost they have if they occur. A few people killed is a fairly low cost. We take much higher costs from e.g. allowing McDonald's to advertise, or from allowing television, or from the low amount of training required from car drivers. Heck, as far as I've understood, building a skyscraper generally cost a couple of lives (accidents during construction).
The thing is: We shall all die some day. There's ways of decreasing risk, but a lot of deaths are clearly related to available resources - if we pushed more resources at the problem, we could decrease deaths. However, we don't have infinite resources, so the right thing is to use the ones we have where they can make the most difference. Regulating and enforcing "anti terror" laws likely isn't that place.
All of these are allowed in the name of freedom; we take the
This, chiefly. I am an American citizen. I have the right to judge how well the government that works for me is doing. And, since it only is legitimately empowered to govern if it has the consent of the governed, I have the right to grant or withdraw my consent as I see fit. All Americans have these rights.
I'm obviously not going to just trust them. The entire structure of the government is founded on distrust of power. If they keep secrets, then not only is it wholly appropriate to judge them on the basis of what information we do have, it is also fair to condemn them for keeping secrets.
I think it's perfectly sensible to say that you can only judge on the information you have. I think it's also important to consider the possibility that you may have incomplete information, particularly given that we're talking about organizations that we already know keep secrets. That doesn't require "just trusting them" -- not at all. I'm not suggesting a conclusion to draw -- I'm suggesting drawing no conclusion at all.
That seems unreasonable if you're going to vote in an election influencing this.
How was it a scam? At some point Sony decided that too many people were exploiting the OtherOS feature for piracy, and made people choose between using the PS3 for Linux OR for games by disabling the feature in a firmware update the user could choose not to install, even adding a stern warning as part of the upgrade process.
Sony sold the PS3 with the following features advertised:
Ability to run PS3 games, present and future
Ability to play online, present and future
Ability to play Blu-Ray movies, present and future
Ability to run Linux
Then they come in and force the end user to choose between either (1, 2 and 3) or (4).
Now, even if you don't use Linux, the ability to run Linux has value for the consumer. It allows for re-purposing the PS3 as a high end mediacenter (with continual software updates) after it is EOLed as a game machine, and it allows for the consumer to re-sell the PS3 to somebody that wants to run Linux - e.g, to one of the supercomputer builders.
People's ability to run Linux on non-sold PS3s has value to Sony, in the form of making higher sales. People's ability to run Linux on already sold PS3s has no value to Sony; it has negative value in the form of PS3s being occupied doing something else than running games, making Sony not earn licensing money from sales of games. It also has slight negative value in the risk that somebody could use it to pirate games, but at the time when Sony shut down OtherOS, *no game had been pirated*.
Anyway, the value was all at the consumer side - the only value Sony had left in OtherOS was that they would keep their word. They chose to steal the value from the consumers.
This is why we call it a scam: They sold something with a particular set of features. Then they stole one of the features later. It's bait and switch - but bait and switch in an even worse form.
And it is why I boycott Sony, even though I did not have an affected PS3. I don't give my money to thieves.
From your low UID, you're too old to have kept track of how the net infrastructure evolved...
A/28 means 28 bits routing - ie, a router has to look at the first 28 bits of the IP address to know where to send it. Presently, the main (core) routers of the net will only accept/24s and there's problems with router memory just due to too many/24s; with/28s, there will be potentially 4 bits (16x) more routes.
Where are you living? Where I'm shopping (Norway and Ireland), non-blockbuster DVDs usually cost less than CDs. And I feel cheated if I pay more for a CD than a DVD - it just seems like a DVD has more in it than a CD (even if I play the CD many more times than the DVD.)
Your description of fractional reserve banking doesn't match what I've learned (which seems to make more sense).
Let's for a moment assume one bank - this can also be "the banking system", it sorts of average out. Let's start with a "fresh" $1000, coming from the federal reserve, and somehow paid to somebody (e.g, a bond buyback). Let's also assume that everything is deposited in the bank - this is almost but not quite true. Remember, if they spend it,
When A deposit $1000, then the bank can lend 90% - $900. This is $900 "created". The bank lend these $900 to B. The bank now has $100, A "has" $1000 (as a deposit), B has $900, for a total of $2000.
B then deposit $900 in the bank, and the bank can lend $810 to C. The bank now has $190 ($100 reserve for A, $90 for B), A "has" $1000 (as a deposit), B now "has" $900, and C now has $810, for a total of $2900.
C then deposit $810 in the bank, and the bank can now lend $729 to D. The bank now has $271 ($100 reverse for A, $90 for B, $81 for C). A "has" $1000, B "has" $900, C now "has" $810, and D now has $729, for a total of $3710.... and so on, ending up at a limit total of $9999.99, with $999.99 as reserve in the bank and $.01 lent to somebody. Effectively $10000.
Don't know where you've been. Most of the countries I've been to won't routinely accept US dollars; it'll be accepted at the airports and can be exchanged at the banks, of course, but that's it. Apart from the US, the only country I think would accept it was Ghana.
What evidence I've seen is that use of the death penalty increases illegal violence in the jurisdiction; possibly because it increase the legitimacy of using violence to solve problems.
My arguments against death penalty are pretty simple:
I don't accept the government murdering innocent people when there is an alternative. Since there is no justice system known to man that is able to weed out false positives, I don't accept the death penalty for civil crimes.
There seems to be a positive correlation where the death penalty leads to more (unrelated) victims of violence in society; I don't accept that cost to have people get their sense of revenge tickled.
The death penalty as implemented in the USA is horribly costly; it's much cheaper to keep people locked up for life, and this avoids the two problems above.
The introduction of DNA testing showed how horribly unreliable the justice system is - there were lots of death row inmates that were let go on the basis of DNA evidence, and if the system had avoided taking innocent people, there would have been none. There is little reason to believe that the system including DNA tests is so much more reliable that there now aren't innocent people there.
So, the question to any person in favor of the death penalty is: How many innocent people are you willing to have executed?
"The problem with books is that if the parent is a religious fundamentalist type, you end up donating to the local circular file."
That only indicates that you insist on picking things that will insult the child's parents. The question was phrased by someone who wants to get what is best for the child, not someone who wants to insult the family.
Yes, it is inappropriate to give a child books with sexual themes. It is inappropriate to give a child books that belittle what the parents believe. Even if you worship at the Throne of Darwin, not everyone does. When in doubt, ask the parents advice. It will help you win in the long run. The child will reach an age where they make up their own mind. If you want to still be in the kid's life, then show a little respect.
It's the adult thing to do.
"Worship at the Throne of Darwin" doesn't exactly show an example of being adult.
I think we can all agree that most religions are mistaken. Zeus, Odin, Vishnu, Jesus' miracles - I think you'll agree that at least three out of the four do not exist. There is no one religious view that reach the majority of children. That means that most children are being taught lies. In my book, that's child abuse. You're saying that the "adult" thing to do is to allow child abuse - in the form of indoctrination - until the child is old enough to "make up their own mind" - which they don't. Most people believe the same thing as their parents. The chance of getting the abuse to stop - the children to stop re-doing the abuse on their own children - is to start when they're children.
Oh, and by the way: "The Throne of Darwin" indicates to me that you disagree with "evolution". I contend that I have never talked to a person that disagreed with modern evolutionary theory. Everybody that disagree disagree with something else - because they do not understand what modern evolutionary theory claims.
If you want to be consistent with evidence and believe that God made the Earth in six thousand years and that evolution had no place in it, there is only one way to do this: You have to believe that God created the Earth so that it was supposed to look like it had been made by evolution. And he could have created it five minutes ago, with fake memories in you.
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I'll meet you halfway: It's both fraud and theft. The fraud happened when they sold it (and turned into fraud with the removal), and the theft happens with the removal.
Though it is hard to say if it would meet the common law definition of either fraud (it miss the "the speaker's knowledge of the fact being false" part of the fraud test), it is in my opinion both morally fraud and morally theft (removal of something that had been sold to another).
As for the theft: Even for people not using OtherOS, value gets stolen. The overall value of a PS3 goes down when OtherOS is removed - it means that the resale value to supercomputers based on PS3s is gone, and the ability to repurpose an old PS3 as a media player gets worse.
Actually, that means that this even affects the people that have slim PS3s: Less "fat" PS3s get repurposed, which means a glut of PS3s in the market, which means decreased value of the used slim PS3s. That connection does not see fraudulent/immoral, though - you'd have a similar effect of e.g. MS lowering the prices on the XBox360.
Well, I personally don't accept Sony stealing from their customers *even though this time that customer wasn't me*.
Sony first advertised OtherOS (combined with the ability to play new games and the ability to get on PSN) and then removed this.
Theft.
I don't voluntarily give money to thieves, even if they so far haven't stolen from me.
So I've boycotted Sony, and they can say bye bye to the $1000+ per year I used to spend with them.
Whether "lots of people" are happy with them is immaterial - I was happy with what they delivered, until they started stealing from people.
That doesn't look very skeptical from here. You're assuming it exists in the first place.
I think gullibility is just a least resistance path, which seems far more likely.
Everything follows a least resistance path; it's just a question of what is least resistance to the individual.
Anyway, a gene "for religion" or "against religion" don't have to deal with gullibility at all. Let me create an example. Assume you have
Under these assumptions, a gene that makes sitting less comfortable is going to be an atheism gene. The gene could make you itchy, or it could make you sensitive to sitting on hard benches, or just make you restless. Any of these would be an atheism gene - the phenotype of a gene for not liking to sit would also express itself as atheism. Conversely, a gene that make it more comfortable to sit (say, creating more padding in the bearer's behind) would make the bearer of the gene more likely to be religious.
Assuming there's no genes that correlate to the likelihood of being religious seems odd to me. There's so many, many ways they can correlate - assuming there's no correlation seems odd.
FreeBSD doesn't do 'repositories', so to speak. They do ports, and then FreeBSD. They're conveniently independent (I suspect so that the FreeBSD project can claim superior security to everything else).
They're technically handled extremely differently; the code for the main OS is directly edited and maintained in a single consistent source tree and build system, while the ports are just extracted, patched, and built using their own individual build system.
There's a slightly blurry line about some things in contrib vs ports; occasionally, things are moved to ports or moved from ports to contrib, and the code for contrib usually isn't edited that much, to facilitate updates. It could be argued that that code should go in ports and there should be "mandatory ports" rather than contrib.
I used to be an active committer in FreeBSD; I've never seen anybody say anything about using this to argue better security. All discussion about it has been about what's convenient in terms of what we do with code (and it being convenient to have a defined base system so we can deliver a consistent system).
Even then, ports don't really have 'guidelines'. "I maintain this port and I'll update it as I please, consequences be damned" seems to be the guiding message, though.
There's a Porter's handbook. There's a port manager team to clamp down on it, and before there was a port manager team there definitively Satoshi Asami (or before that Jordan Hubbard) to block bad changes.
Is there a particular port or set of ports you've had problems with? In general, I've found that a polite mail to the maintainer will take care of things - but maintainers clearly aren't perfect, and sometimes it's been necessary to bring technical points up for discussion in the mailing lists (or, if it's heated before it gets to that point, take it up in private with the port management team.)
Eivind.
Let me start with your core argument.
Users explicitly agreed to the updates.
That is immaterial. Please read up on and understand what a bait and switch is before you say anything about it.
Searching Google for "definition bait and switch" will give you some sort of reasonable answers; the first real result had a definition that should make this understandable.
When I bought it, it had the OtherOS feather AND I could do all the online stuff...not now
When I bought it, it had backwards comparability for almost all PS2 games...not now
Those features were removed by system updates that you had to explicitly agree to download and install.
I will grant that it is shady of Sony to require those system updates to run new media, but this was not a "bait and switch".
Look at the first definition from Google after searching for "define bait and switch".
PS3 was sold with advertising for four different features (and more):
Then Sony, unilaterally, said "You have to choose between either feature 1, OtherOS, or all the other features. You can't have both. If you choose to have the rest, you lose OtherOS permanently."
This was bait and switch. The bait was having all the features, advertised. The switch was removing it.
Nothing was taken, nothing was stolen.
In (A) Ability to re-sell based on the value of OtherOS. Ability to use OtherOS yourself or (B) Ability to play online, play new games, and play new BluRays, either (A) or (B) was taken, depending on user choice.
OtherOS e.g. gives PS3 extra permanent value as a high quality media box.
I don't see the value in turning up in court in the circumstances, but I may see where you're coming from - something about getting some kind of "true judgement" of the situation?
My take on it is that not turning up in court would in general be considered a technical admission of guilt. There's no way to force a realistic non-technical judgement of guilt - somebody could choose to just go into court and say "While I do not admit to the charges, I refuse to spend the time and money to argue against them. I'll just pay the fine." With this, the non-technical (moral) judgement of guilt often wouldn't be present. Making it illegal to not mount a vigorous defense seems an unrealistic way of handling it, too.
I'm confused.
Why does anything beyond the maximum issuable fine seem reasonable?
As far as I can understand, if neither he nor his lawyer is present, he would end up getting the maximum fine. The bond is there to guarantee for him taking his punishment. If the bond is the same as the maximum punishment, then that punishment is perfectly guaranteed (they can just take the bond and he'll be punished).
Is there some other factor that should be taken into consideration that I'm missing?
Eivind.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
I'm a medicinal chemist working on a program to cure Alzheimer's disease, and I thank God for my abilities. I think you presume too much of the Doctor when you deny the existence of miracles.
Unfortunately, being a doctor isn't enough to learn how to judge religion. I think you presume too much of yourself if you proclaim the existence of miracles without being reasonably qualified in the relevant aspects of most of the below:
Eivind.
In Norway, juries are selected from a qualified pool - which means they tend to be educated and reasonably levelheaded. While certainly not perfect (there's wrong judgements there as everywhere), the system seems to work reasonably well.
For me, "space" has the advantage as an explanation that it can have much more parallelism and more time. Though I'm not sure that more is needed - even on earth, we get a lot of both.
I have less hope for that than you. Using libraries (modules/frameworks/whatever) written for another language isn't usually as nice as using something that's native. There's different conventions, and there's usually features in each language that makes for an improved experience - for that language.
For instance, in Ruby, I'd expect an API to actively use blocks (continuations) for resource tracking, and a DSL based on symbols and blocks would be common. Doing this in Python or Perl would be weird.
In Python, I'd expect docstrings, and I'd expect exceptions, and the use of the standard module system, with one module per file, and the need to use import to get at the right constants etc.
In Perl, I'd expect perldoc. I'd not expect exceptions, as that's not really well supported (at least in perl 5). And I'd expect there to be distinctions between references and 'real values'.
Overall, I think that anything that's written in one language and automatically accessed from another language will interface clumsily. And if you have to write an abstraction layer to make it work, you often might as well have a native module without the quirks.
Eivind.
3) So you have backups taken care of.
4) So you don't have to install software
5) So your machines are interchangeable. I love not having to care if I use my desktop or laptop.
6) So you can wipe your machines and things are still the same
7) "On the move" includes going from the bedroom to the living room
and for ChromeOS: So you can log in anywhere and still have your environment.
To me, the question is more one of "Why don't have everything in the cloud?"
The reasons I see are
(A) You don't trust your (potential) cloud provider.
(B) Too little bandwidth
(C) Too high latency
(D) The cloud apps for what you want aren't there yet
(E) The cloud apps are somehow too expensive
(F) You like to tinker
I can certainly respect all of these; but pretending the advantages don't exist seems narrowminded.
Well, all the Y chromosomes trace back to a single male, too. The only problem for the Adam-Eve myth is that they lived 150,000 years apart, so likely they were not married.
Even ignoring a consensus, the conservative approach is to limit emissions until you know with high confidence that emissions are safe. People are trying to establish a 1% confidence level for AGW when they should really be establishing a 1% confidence level for emissions being safe.
That's arguable. Limiting emissions to a level where it makes an appreciable difference might be so expensive that it is the non-conservative choice. (To me, it seems like it is that expensive - the limitations we are doing only gives us a few years bonus time. Our only rational choice seems to be geo-engineering. Though TFA shows something that might change all calculations around the topic.)
My Social Psychology textbook (David Myer's "Social Psychology") spends a chapter arguing that the evidence shows that pornography leads to more rape, with fairly credible citations, in particular natural experiments where introduction has rapidly led to increase in rape, and as far as I remember one example (Hawaii?) where it had been introduced, rape had increased, and then removed, and rape had decreased, and it had been re-introduced and rape had increased again.
I'll also say that american textbooks are ridiculously expensive - I just searched on Amazon to find the book, and it costs over twice what I paid for it maybe three years ago in Norway. And it's the same book, just a more competitive market.
I think the definition of "porn" here is dependent on a particular country you're from. I'm from a less liberal country than Denmark (Norway), and I don't consider topless pictures to be anywhere near porn. I consider the page 3/9/whatever girls to be slightly tacky, but that's all.
My regular newspaper is the 3rd largest newspaper in Norway, and probably the one with the most influential mainstream cultural debate. They've fairly regularly had full frontal nudity on the front page of their online newspaper. They've also had people having sex (though not "moving private parts", as is the former porn limitation in Norway). And they're not considered an at all racy newspaper here. (It's also the second largest direct sales newspaper.)
The problem is that if Apple gets a stranglehold on a large part of the (paid) online market, then the censorship necessary to avoid offending the outer mainstream in the least liberal parts of America suddenly becomes global. And for many of us, this seems bad.
Now to be fair, way more often that not in the scenario that I described above, a lost bag is just a lost bag, but the question you have to ask yourself is that if it only takes one package that is actually filled with explosives to kill a bunch of people shouldn't additional security measures be taken to help deter that outcome, however unlikely it may actually be, from happening?
No. Clearly no.
There's a remote risk that you, avatar139 (918375), are going to snap and kill a lot of people with your bare hands. This does not warrant installing 24/7 surveillance to detect signs of you snapping.
The world is filled with risks. The only sane way to deal with them is by looking at the chance that they'll occur, and what cost they have if they occur. A few people killed is a fairly low cost. We take much higher costs from e.g. allowing McDonald's to advertise, or from allowing television, or from the low amount of training required from car drivers. Heck, as far as I've understood, building a skyscraper generally cost a couple of lives (accidents during construction).
The thing is: We shall all die some day. There's ways of decreasing risk, but a lot of deaths are clearly related to available resources - if we pushed more resources at the problem, we could decrease deaths. However, we don't have infinite resources, so the right thing is to use the ones we have where they can make the most difference. Regulating and enforcing "anti terror" laws likely isn't that place.
All of these are allowed in the name of freedom; we take the
This, chiefly. I am an American citizen. I have the right to judge how well the government that works for me is doing. And, since it only is legitimately empowered to govern if it has the consent of the governed, I have the right to grant or withdraw my consent as I see fit. All Americans have these rights.
I'm obviously not going to just trust them. The entire structure of the government is founded on distrust of power. If they keep secrets, then not only is it wholly appropriate to judge them on the basis of what information we do have, it is also fair to condemn them for keeping secrets.
I think it's perfectly sensible to say that you can only judge on the information you have. I think it's also important to consider the possibility that you may have incomplete information, particularly given that we're talking about organizations that we already know keep secrets. That doesn't require "just trusting them" -- not at all. I'm not suggesting a conclusion to draw -- I'm suggesting drawing no conclusion at all.
That seems unreasonable if you're going to vote in an election influencing this.
How was it a scam? At some point Sony decided that too many people were exploiting the OtherOS feature for piracy, and made people choose between using the PS3 for Linux OR for games by disabling the feature in a firmware update the user could choose not to install, even adding a stern warning as part of the upgrade process.
Sony sold the PS3 with the following features advertised:
Then they come in and force the end user to choose between either (1, 2 and 3) or (4).
Now, even if you don't use Linux, the ability to run Linux has value for the consumer. It allows for re-purposing the PS3 as a high end mediacenter (with continual software updates) after it is EOLed as a game machine, and it allows for the consumer to re-sell the PS3 to somebody that wants to run Linux - e.g, to one of the supercomputer builders.
People's ability to run Linux on non-sold PS3s has value to Sony, in the form of making higher sales. People's ability to run Linux on already sold PS3s has no value to Sony; it has negative value in the form of PS3s being occupied doing something else than running games, making Sony not earn licensing money from sales of games. It also has slight negative value in the risk that somebody could use it to pirate games, but at the time when Sony shut down OtherOS, *no game had been pirated*.
Anyway, the value was all at the consumer side - the only value Sony had left in OtherOS was that they would keep their word. They chose to steal the value from the consumers.
This is why we call it a scam: They sold something with a particular set of features. Then they stole one of the features later. It's bait and switch - but bait and switch in an even worse form.
And it is why I boycott Sony, even though I did not have an affected PS3. I don't give my money to thieves.
From your low UID, you're too old to have kept track of how the net infrastructure evolved...
A /28 means 28 bits routing - ie, a router has to look at the first 28 bits of the IP address to know where to send it. Presently, the main (core) routers of the net will only accept /24s and there's problems with router memory just due to too many /24s; with /28s, there will be potentially 4 bits (16x) more routes.
Where are you living? Where I'm shopping (Norway and Ireland), non-blockbuster DVDs usually cost less than CDs. And I feel cheated if I pay more for a CD than a DVD - it just seems like a DVD has more in it than a CD (even if I play the CD many more times than the DVD.)
Your description of fractional reserve banking doesn't match what I've learned (which seems to make more sense).
Let's for a moment assume one bank - this can also be "the banking system", it sorts of average out. Let's start with a "fresh" $1000, coming from the federal reserve, and somehow paid to somebody (e.g, a bond buyback). Let's also assume that everything is deposited in the bank - this is almost but not quite true. Remember, if they spend it,
When A deposit $1000, then the bank can lend 90% - $900. This is $900 "created". The bank lend these $900 to B. The bank now has $100, A "has" $1000 (as a deposit), B has $900, for a total of $2000.
B then deposit $900 in the bank, and the bank can lend $810 to C. The bank now has $190 ($100 reserve for A, $90 for B), A "has" $1000 (as a deposit), B now "has" $900, and C now has $810, for a total of $2900.
C then deposit $810 in the bank, and the bank can now lend $729 to D. The bank now has $271 ($100 reverse for A, $90 for B, $81 for C). A "has" $1000, B "has" $900, C now "has" $810, and D now has $729, for a total of $3710. ... and so on, ending up at a limit total of $9999.99, with $999.99 as reserve in the bank and $.01 lent to somebody. Effectively $10000.
Don't know where you've been. Most of the countries I've been to won't routinely accept US dollars; it'll be accepted at the airports and can be exchanged at the banks, of course, but that's it. Apart from the US, the only country I think would accept it was Ghana.
What evidence I've seen is that use of the death penalty increases illegal violence in the jurisdiction; possibly because it increase the legitimacy of using violence to solve problems.
My arguments against death penalty are pretty simple:
The introduction of DNA testing showed how horribly unreliable the justice system is - there were lots of death row inmates that were let go on the basis of DNA evidence, and if the system had avoided taking innocent people, there would have been none. There is little reason to believe that the system including DNA tests is so much more reliable that there now aren't innocent people there.
So, the question to any person in favor of the death penalty is: How many innocent people are you willing to have executed?
"The problem with books is that if the parent is a religious fundamentalist type, you end up donating to the local circular file."
That only indicates that you insist on picking things that will insult the child's parents. The question was phrased by someone who wants to get what is best for the child, not someone who wants to insult the family.
Yes, it is inappropriate to give a child books with sexual themes. It is inappropriate to give a child books that belittle what the parents believe. Even if you worship at the Throne of Darwin, not everyone does. When in doubt, ask the parents advice. It will help you win in the long run. The child will reach an age where they make up their own mind. If you want to still be in the kid's life, then show a little respect.
It's the adult thing to do.
"Worship at the Throne of Darwin" doesn't exactly show an example of being adult.
I think we can all agree that most religions are mistaken. Zeus, Odin, Vishnu, Jesus' miracles - I think you'll agree that at least three out of the four do not exist. There is no one religious view that reach the majority of children. That means that most children are being taught lies. In my book, that's child abuse. You're saying that the "adult" thing to do is to allow child abuse - in the form of indoctrination - until the child is old enough to "make up their own mind" - which they don't. Most people believe the same thing as their parents. The chance of getting the abuse to stop - the children to stop re-doing the abuse on their own children - is to start when they're children.
Oh, and by the way: "The Throne of Darwin" indicates to me that you disagree with "evolution". I contend that I have never talked to a person that disagreed with modern evolutionary theory. Everybody that disagree disagree with something else - because they do not understand what modern evolutionary theory claims.
If you want to be consistent with evidence and believe that God made the Earth in six thousand years and that evolution had no place in it, there is only one way to do this: You have to believe that God created the Earth so that it was supposed to look like it had been made by evolution. And he could have created it five minutes ago, with fake memories in you.