In politics, results do not feature strongly in the feedback cycle; politicians are not typically looking to see whether a policy achieves its purported end, but rather that it will be tolerated by the people.
And unfortunately, freedom-limiting measures are welcomed by a majority of people on this sceptred isle - two such examples are ID cards (which were overwhelmingly popular until it emerged that people were going to have to pay for them - and not just a token "don't lose it" fee) and 42-day detention without trial (which remains popular with just about everyone, because they somehow believe that it'll "only catch the bad guys"). My family still live in the town which first proclaimed that it had 100% CCTV coverage, and they said it made them feel safer - even though my brother-in-law has been hauled over by police a couple of times for trying to use an ATM at midnight. Yet it doesn't appear to have made the King's Lynn I remember (and ran the hell away from a decade ago) any less prone to violence or vandalism...
The great advantage of having perception define reality, rather than vice versa, is that it merely requires that people trust their perception unquestioningly. Manipulate their perception and they'll swallow any bullshit you throw at them.
If you swung an axe at a door and made a small chip, which would be more insane: Thinking that the next or subsequent blow would put the blade entirely through the door, or thinking that you could swing the axe at the door all day and do nothing but make small cuts?
Well, everyone has seen wood splinter under the assault of repeated blows.
But let's assume the door in question may be made of a foot's thickness of marble, and reapply your example...
I don't know. Eventually someone is going to take the observation that "X murdered someone because his parents didn't raise him properly" and extrapolate that into a ban on bad parents... obviously it won't win any votes, but it might just wipe out an entire generation of chavs in one fell swoop.
If one constructed a program which detected incoming infection attempts and counter-infected the attacking machine with a "friendly" worm - one might call it a "vaccine", even - couldn't that be classed as simple self-defence?
They may feed you a line of shit about your refusal to talk being suspicious. Ignore it.
Sound advice, but it's difficult to do so in Britain, where some jackass Home Secretary made that intimidation part of the PACE caution:
You do not have to say anything. But it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.
OK, sorry for being harsh with you. But remember, some people really can't bring themselves to be silly or childish in public, even if everyone else is doing it and they know they won't be judged adversely for it, simply because it requires a kind of relaxation around other people with which they just aren't comfortable. I can be thoroughly childish in the privacy of my own home, but I wouldn't be caught dead doing so elsewhere.
Yes, but remember that in the BBC of 30 years ago, the "state of the art" could be found in the meeting of genius and junk. Look at the Radiophonic Workshop...
Some quote is springing to mind, something jwz said about a bunch of kids with ADD being in charge of development... I'd go find it, shear it of original context and lob it in here, but I'd have lost interest by the time I got back...
> I've had friends, for whom playing games was childish and annoying (because they thought they sucked at it).
That doesn't necessarily follow. I find playing games in company childish and annoying, because I loathe competition. People like you who turn around and say "that's only because you think you suck" (optionally skipping the "you think" part) are equally childish and annoying... hmm, perhaps it's the prospect of playing games with you that turns them off...?
we could have pursued the case until the end of time.
That's interesting in itself, considering that most people who engage in litigation only pursue a case until they win; is he in fact implicitly admitting that the RIAA could not have won the case, merely strung it out for as long as it took to bankrupt everyone else involved?
> Computing should have been parallel from the start even on single-core processors.
Maybe. But the thing is that *humans* aren't parallel. Oh yes, at the implementation level we are, certainly - but at the application level, that parallelism is put to work emulating a single-threaded, mutable object. We even impose a serialised perception on time, despite strong evidence that it doesn't seem to work like that.
In any case, the notion of cause and effect (or maybe call and response) dictates sequentiality to pretty much any programming model that has to respond to external events. Moreover, what you describe in your second paragraph is nothing but simple pipelining, and that's been done (both in low-level processor implementations and in larger structures) for decades now.
Come on, with the size of demand that's been uncovered for them? Nah. Certainly I can't see Asus giving up any time soon, since they're shifting Eees faster than they can ship them... and since I'm both broke and cheap, I've promised myself an Elonex ONE if/when they arrive.
Yeah. That's great, in theory. I just moved into a new house, and BT quoted me the standard £124.99 for an engineer to come and install a phone line, because according to them there is "no record" of a line existing at the house.
When I stare at the BT phone point just below the window, which is visibly and directly connected to the nearest telegraph pole outside, I'm not sure whether to cry, rage, or send BT the contents of the nearby litter tray.
Slashdot Mirror
And unfortunately, freedom-limiting measures are welcomed by a majority of people on this sceptred isle - two such examples are ID cards (which were overwhelmingly popular until it emerged that people were going to have to pay for them - and not just a token "don't lose it" fee) and 42-day detention without trial (which remains popular with just about everyone, because they somehow believe that it'll "only catch the bad guys"). My family still live in the town which first proclaimed that it had 100% CCTV coverage, and they said it made them feel safer - even though my brother-in-law has been hauled over by police a couple of times for trying to use an ATM at midnight. Yet it doesn't appear to have made the King's Lynn I remember (and ran the hell away from a decade ago) any less prone to violence or vandalism...
The great advantage of having perception define reality, rather than vice versa, is that it merely requires that people trust their perception unquestioningly. Manipulate their perception and they'll swallow any bullshit you throw at them.
Cross-cultural exchange only works if it's a 2-way process.
Well, everyone has seen wood splinter under the assault of repeated blows.
But let's assume the door in question may be made of a foot's thickness of marble, and reapply your example...
The grass is always greener, until you're the one under it.
I don't know. Eventually someone is going to take the observation that "X murdered someone because his parents didn't raise him properly" and extrapolate that into a ban on bad parents... obviously it won't win any votes, but it might just wipe out an entire generation of chavs in one fell swoop.
(note: I am not being entirely serious here)
If one constructed a program which detected incoming infection attempts and counter-infected the attacking machine with a "friendly" worm - one might call it a "vaccine", even - couldn't that be classed as simple self-defence?
Aye, but apparently not even the most self-conscious of spellcheckers can tell the difference between "of" and "off".
OK, sorry for being harsh with you. But remember, some people really can't bring themselves to be silly or childish in public, even if everyone else is doing it and they know they won't be judged adversely for it, simply because it requires a kind of relaxation around other people with which they just aren't comfortable. I can be thoroughly childish in the privacy of my own home, but I wouldn't be caught dead doing so elsewhere.
Yes, but remember that in the BBC of 30 years ago, the "state of the art" could be found in the meeting of genius and junk. Look at the Radiophonic Workshop...
Some quote is springing to mind, something jwz said about a bunch of kids with ADD being in charge of development... I'd go find it, shear it of original context and lob it in here, but I'd have lost interest by the time I got back...
> I've had friends, for whom playing games was childish and annoying (because they thought they sucked at it).
That doesn't necessarily follow. I find playing games in company childish and annoying, because I loathe competition. People like you who turn around and say "that's only because you think you suck" (optionally skipping the "you think" part) are equally childish and annoying... hmm, perhaps it's the prospect of playing games with you that turns them off...?
> Computing should have been parallel from the start even on single-core processors.
Maybe. But the thing is that *humans* aren't parallel. Oh yes, at the implementation level we are, certainly - but at the application level, that parallelism is put to work emulating a single-threaded, mutable object. We even impose a serialised perception on time, despite strong evidence that it doesn't seem to work like that.
In any case, the notion of cause and effect (or maybe call and response) dictates sequentiality to pretty much any programming model that has to respond to external events. Moreover, what you describe in your second paragraph is nothing but simple pipelining, and that's been done (both in low-level processor implementations and in larger structures) for decades now.
When it stops selling newspapers / making it to the front page of Slashdot?
Isn't that like saying we should abandon "thou shalt not kill" because most people can't even be nice to each other?
Come on, with the size of demand that's been uncovered for them? Nah. Certainly I can't see Asus giving up any time soon, since they're shifting Eees faster than they can ship them... and since I'm both broke and cheap, I've promised myself an Elonex ONE if/when they arrive.
See, this is what happens when you let Them into Our field.
Quorn is closer.
Can you provide an actual reference for this, so that the rest of us can actually check this out for ourselves?
Damien...?
No. No, I wouldn't. You're quite right there.
Yeah. That's great, in theory. I just moved into a new house, and BT quoted me the standard £124.99 for an engineer to come and install a phone line, because according to them there is "no record" of a line existing at the house.
When I stare at the BT phone point just below the window, which is visibly and directly connected to the nearest telegraph pole outside, I'm not sure whether to cry, rage, or send BT the contents of the nearby litter tray.