Scalia was very controversial and much of the left will be likely happy about this. But he was a human being, and by most accounts he was a decent one and a smart one. His best friend on the Court was Ruth Bader Ginsburg who is one of the most liberal justices. We should all take a lesson from them on being civil and friendly even with those we disagree with.
I hated his politics and thought he caused tremendous harm through them, at the same time he very well may have been a kind, generous, and generally delightful person to know.
I'm sad that he died though happy that he's left the court.
Out of morbid curiosity, I just checked out myspace.com. Just from the main page, I have no clue what their aim or angle is, let alone their audience. There is a blurb at the bottom that reads "The Best in Music & Culture. All In One Place." Yet that still doesn't shed a lot of light on whatever the hell that site is supposed to be.
I got the feeling they were trying to go for a flashier and more customizable look with the idea that bands would use them as a social networking homepage to interact with fans.
If Obama were a Islamic Manchurian candidate, what more could he have done for radical Islam?
Well he could have attacked the Iranian regime with heavy rhetoric and publicly allied himself with the protesters. That would have made it easy for the regime to discredit and kill the reformist movement.
Instead he stayed back and a few years later got a relatively reformist president who's on much better terms with the west.
He's allowed ISIS to grow.
Because a Whabbist Sunni Arab movement is totally relevant to this discussion about a Shia Persian country.
He gave nukes
Yeah, because there's no more effective way to give someone nukes than by having them shut down their nuclear program and undergo a level of inspections generally loved by weapons inspectors.
and $150 billion to the Iranian mullahs
Shame on him for giving Iran back their own money!
And leaving the mullahs in power wasn't based on non-interference principles. Just ask Muammar Gaddaffi about that...
Brilliant idea, take the Muslim country in the middle east with the most sympathetic population to the US and then launch an unprovoked war again them, that's the way to combat terrorism!
Great point using Gaddaffi as a reference too, because Libya is doing absolutely great since then!!
Is it possible that those women who don't feel it necessary to point out their gender in situations where gender doesn't matter tend to also be those more likely to communicate well?
Is it possible that those women who make it a point to draw attention to their gender in situations where there is no reason to bring up gender at all, are also more likely to be less convincing regarding the usefulness of their work?
Possibly but I'm really dubious. It's not like these are people prefacing each message with "I AM A WOMAN". They just have a picture name and/or profile picture that indicates their gender, I'm really dubious that those women are worse coders or communicators.
The authors also made a point of looking at men and presumably found no such effect, so one wonders why indicating gender as a woman is different than indicating gender as a man.
And really this is exactly the result I would have predicted. The idea that identified women get less respect for their contributions is backed up by tons of research and is really apparent just looking around on an anecdotal level.
Yeah I'm sure it's just a bunch of women with no obvious connections engaging in a giant conspiracy for no apparent reason like they did to Bill Cosby.
Most importantly your automatic assumption that the man innocent and is only being persecuted for his gender, despite a lot of evidence to the contrary, is in no way evidence that you might be sexist.
...it had been paleontology or geology that had been 'rocked' by this case. But I'm struggling to understand why such a story is relevant to a science/technology news website?
Because one of the big questions about the science and technology fields are why women are so under-represented.
Stories like this contain at least part of the answer.
It is just silly nonsense that misunderstands rights and prerogatives.
If a restaurant kicks you out for saying [REDACTED] in their business in front of other customers, that is not censorship.
I didn't say it was censorship, I said it was pushing people to self-censo, ie intimidating them into silence.
There is no censorship, because Tesla doesn't have an obligation to provide a platform for anybody to speak.
They weren't providing a platform or venue for anybody to speak, your restaurant analogy doesn't apply.
Them responding to negative speech by exercising their own prerogatives, that isn't censorship; that is in fact the value of speech that is protected when free speech is protected!
A private company doing it isn't government censorship, but it can be still be censorship. In fact if reddit bans a really offensive forum that can be both censorship and the right thing to do.
Of course since Telsa wasn't providing the platform for the speech it wasn't censorship.
This idea that consequences for your speech in your relationships in the community somehow implies that speech isn't free, it is just wrong and stupid.
And the consequence of Elon Musks behaviour is I'm now giving it bad PR.
Nobody is controlling anybody's speech or actions here.
Well Elon Musk is trying to, he's saying that he doesn't care if you already reserved a car, if you publicly criticize something about the company he'll take away your pre-order spot.
You're free to say whatever you want, and enter into any business relationships with other people who are willing to do business with you.
And I argue that you should be less willing to do business with Elon Musk because he's going to try and control what you say about him.
I think it's good that he got his order canceled. If you are going to complain in an "open letter", you are pretty much just attention seeking. If you wanted to help the company out or support it in a positive light, you would have kept your issues between you and the company. I also agree that it must be a slow news day.
Why is it my responsibility to help the company out and support it in a positive light?
If a public company treats me badly at a PR event why can't I make my complaint in public?
And likewise, if you have to "censor yourself" to keep from being an asshat towards companies whose products you covet, you're probably a dick and the CEO should have an assistant put you on a list of people not to do business with, because risk.
Which is why I respond with criticizing the company so they don't feel so free to retaliate against people criticizing them.
He's not a customer, and they don't have power over him. Contrary to your implication, their act of not doing business with him prevents him from being a customer, and prevents them from having any power over him at all.
A major company who has a product you want has power over you whether you have a business relationship with them or not, that's why you pay them for the product. This is more true if there's not many companies providing that product. To re-iterate my previous example, if an ISP says they won't sell to me because I said something bad about them that's a pretty severe consequence for me.
And in this case there was a business relationship as evidenced by the $5k he gave Tesla and the hours he spent driving to, and attending, the event in question.
Also, luxury cars are not necessities. There might not be any moral angle at all to be outraged about, because Freedom. Tesla presumably deserves Freedom as much as anybody else. They can choose. They made no demands of him; there is no retaliation for not doing what they say, or any other type of "control" tactic. There is simply them exercising a choice that is theirs to make.
If I were a Tesla customer who's currently on the waiting list and experienced some really crappy treatment by Tesla (which if the blog post is to be believed, these customers did) then I think I'd be a lot more hesitant about airing my complaints publicly. So they are actually making implicit demands about what their current customers say and have demonstrated it by retaliating against one of those customers to broke this rule.
And did you actually read the blog post? It wasn't actually that rude and if it was accurate and I'd gone to that event I'd probably by a little pissed off at the experience.
Surprise, surprise. Being rude to a company results in bad service from that company. Hardly news except that it was Tesla that was the victim. Maybe the blogger has learned his lesson, but probably not.
So if I complain about FB are they justified in cancelling my account? What if I complain about my ISP who's also the local backbone, do I get kicked off the Internet?
Corporations can have a lot of power over their customers, you shouldn't have to worry about censoring yourself because the CEO is a dick who might pursue a personal vendetta.
I think/. has this view of moderators as impartial judges of comment quality but I don't think that's the case.
The times I'm most impartial and unbiased are when I'm not remotely interested, and in those cases I don't moderate because I don't even open the article.
The times when I'm most interested and read the most comments are also the times when I'm really likely to post myself. I don't know how many times I've had to choose between remaining silent when I have an important post to write or writing that post and undoing all my mods.
By all means stop people from moderating the specific thread they're involved in, but the story itself? Give the users who are most involved in the discussion the ability to moderate the discussion.
Because we don't have one, people use mods like troll and flamebait inappropriately. We need an explicit "disagree" mod to allow mods to express their intent. Whether it's -1 is a different question, but I'd be OK with it either way. We really need to emphasize the idea that someone can disagree with you, but be sincere, not trolling, if we want to be different from the non-geek sites.
I disagree.
Mod scores should reflect the post, not the personal opinions of the moderator. Someone can post a well thought out post criticizing the scientific consensus on climate change. I'll disagree with their conclusion but that doesn't mean they aren't +5 insightful.
Even a "wrong" mod really just becomes a poll on whether the mods think the post is right or wrong. If the post is wrong then someone should reply with a rebuttal and if it's good it should be modded up.
I honestly think the moderation system is pretty good other than the fact that "Insightful", "Interesting", and "Informative" have far too much overlap. When I'm trying to make a serious contribution to the discussion I find it tends to be pretty random which of the three I get.
It is also remarkably more enjoyable than it looks like. It's not that exciting to watch if you're unfamiliar with the complexities involved and what the mechanisms are. However, if you're a player then it's kind of exciting to watch. There's also an assload of physics involved and to be considered. It's rather interesting, in my experience.
I actually think it's fairly comparable to golf, a skill based sport where fitness can help at the margins. The big difference is that curling has a lot more strategy and a team component, while golf has nice scenery.
That said, I don't really watch TV so I can only speculate, more or less, but I'd watch curling before I'd watch many, many other things that are much more popular.
Curling televises surprisingly well because it does have a lot of strategic and tactical drama. Unfortunately the viewer needs an understanding of the game to appreciate it. Also if a team does build a large lead things can get dull quickly.
Is it just more publicized than that in other sports? I mean, you don't hear about cheating nearly as much in other "sports" where they depend upon mechanical equipment... Nascar, F1, MotoGP, etc...
You'd think that Bill Belichick were the coach...
When's the last time you watched a Hockey, Basketball, or Football game (of either kind) without seeing a penalty? Those guys cheat constantly.
The difference is how they cheat. In skill sports gaining a slight athletic edge doesn't help as much so the cheating is done at game time, and because it's detectable and so common the rules are pretty mild.
In track or cycling it's all about fitness, so the only way to cheat is through doping or in this case hidden motors.
curling is an Olympic sport, and I've seen plenty of guys with 30kg spare tires in the Olympics in that sport. As such, I request proof of your assertion.
Only the skip who's holding the broom, the guys doing the sweeping are generally in pretty good shape, particularly the first two who do the majority of the sweeping.
I've actually played against some top teams, they're not Olympic athletes, but they were fairly big athletic guys.
As much as people get frustrated with typical politicians I feel like "None of the Above" requests tend to be a bit vague.
For the US I think Obama fit this mold and turned out pretty well. On the other hand I think Republicans have been searching for "None of the Above" since 2010 and have gone well off the deep end searching for politicians who aren't politicians.
Up here in Canada I actually don't mind our selection of party leaders, the local MPs can sometimes be pretty nutty but the leaders tend to be reasonable people.
but the body is really really complex, and it's hard to do something to a really complex system without having some sort of side effect
Sure, but how is this different from any other medical treatment? We have no idea what most of the specific off-target effects of conventional pharmaceuticals (or any other internal therapy - that includes you, herbalists) are on humans at a molecular level, just a list of possible side effects, most of which are completely unrelated to the ailment being treated.
All I'm saying is that CRISPR doesn't magically eliminate all sideeffects.
How can there be side effects if the only modification is changing a specific already damaged gene back to it's known healthy setting?
If you are just stabbing around changing random stuff sure there will be random consequences. But if you can change specific genes and you know what the damaged state and the healthy states are, you are good to go.
It's a lot better but I don't think it's risk free. Consider a bad variant A and the good variant B.
B may have also had a developmental role. Only adding B as an adult and missing out on the developmental aspects might mean B functions improperly and causes bad things to happen.
Also the body may have adapted to A, for instance A is supposed to generate some hormone X and because A generates a crappy version of X your body is hypersensitive to X. Swapping in B and getting the right version of X means your hyper-sensitive body is suddenly overwhelmed by the effects of X and bad things happen.
Now CRISPR is awesome and revolutionary, but the body is really really complex, and it's hard to do something to a really complex system without having some sort of side effect.
Actually, Syria has a lot of Russian and Soviet weaponry. So does Iraq.
Strictly speaking, we didn't cause ISIS, we entered the country in a war, and then left it before we should have, but ISIS was created and abetted by those who have funded it and given it support.
Certainly the occupation of Iraq and the Syrian Civil War have given ISIS an opportunity to prosper, but you needed people willing to be ISIS for that to happen. It doesn't just happen automatically when you invade a country or when you leave it. We could have left in complete disorder and there didn't have to be an ISIS at the end of it. Let's put blame where blame belongs. The US and Soviet/Russian governments provided opportunities for ISIS, but ISIS is nothing without sympathizers in those countries and in the greater Muslim world who support them.
Fine.
What about the blame for the creation of those ISIS sympathizers? Doesn't the US deserve some responsibility for its policy of supporting brutal dictators who play nice with US interests. Or the US's role in the creation of Israel and it's enabling of Israel's current policy of occupation and land seizure?
The fanatical hatred that's emerged in segments of the Muslim world didn't come from nothing.
> Closing his eyes does not lead Minsky's memory to be erased
And, that's the point. He still has preconceived notions of what is in the room just as randomly wired neural net has preconceived notions. You just don't know what they are.
It's not his memory, it's that closing his eyes doesn't lead to the room being emptied.
Just because he can't see anyone in the room (due to his closed eyes) doesn't mean it's empty.
And just because a neural net was randomly wired doesn't mean it doesn't mean that random wiring lacks preconceived notions on how to play.
They can't. They lack standing until the law goes into effect.
Damn standing, I hate standing.
Perhaps. There's also concerns about power(I haven't heard of one larger than.22), durability, longevity, and cost.
But again that's a question of use-cases and how the user balances risk. Personally I think there's a very strong argument that even for self-defense a semi-reliable smart gun is a better choice when you have people like teenagers in the house who have a non-trivial chance of attempting suicide or doing something stupid with a gun.
2. Why would they stop selling traditional guns?
Where did I say that? I said they'd have to face a boycott as long as the NJ law is in effect. I said 'if any', because I figure there's a good chance that any company getting into the business of selling a smart gun will be a new maker, selling a limited line up consisting only of smart guns. 3/4.
So you're basing all of your arguments on the NJ law and the boycott by current gun owners.
And I don't think that works for this argument because the police or military wouldn't involve themselves in a boycott, and a new maker could survive on a smaller initial market.
Welcome to the suck that is the NJ law. This just goes by to my original NRA statement: 1. I have nothing against smart guns ideologically. 2. I have problems with the NJ law politically 3. While acceptable models might quickly come out, especially if the political concerns are removed to enable more development money, none have thus far been produced.
Note that there are a number in this thread that mentioned that they'd be much more accepting if the police/marines/secret service(was that an earlier thread?)/etc... were using them as well.
I'm comfortable with your position here.
I will note that police and military are probably the worst market for smart guns since they don't really need to worry about 3rd parties getting their guns and their guns are explicitly for combat situations.
That's because you don't care, and are thus not thinking about it. NJ gets away with it's law, even briefly, and it'd likely spread to NY, California, and such. Thus to be opposed on all fronts.
And I'll note that the reason it's stopping smart guns 'across the country' is that the firearm doesn't have to be sold in NJ at all. As long as it's sold in the USA, it trips the statute.
If they really wanted the law gone they could challenge it in court, I haven't found any evidence that they tried this.
Irrelevant to you because you're not in the market. Relevant to ME because I am, and have knowledge of the issue at hand. Please note that I'm not saying it's not an unsolvable problem. I'm saying that it's no where near solved. Meanwhile we have legislation on the books and the occasional attempt to sell said buggy technology in order to trip the statute.
Believe it or not, but the market is actually mostly allowed - the manufacturer/dealer would just have to deal with: 1. Higher prices for their firearms meaning that they sell less, meaning higher costs per unit sold 2. Not having any police or military forces buying their weapons(they've campaigned hard to be exempt from any such proposals) 3. a probable boycott against their non-smart firearms(if any), as long as the NJ law is in effect. 4. Having the problem that they're pleasing non-customers more than their potential customers. Pleasing you means jack shit. Pleasing me means something to them. I'm opposed to smart guns in the current legal climate, and think lots of work needs to be done technologically.
1. New product category means new customers and taking competitors customers. 2. Why would they stop selling traditional guns? 3/4. So there's a market, except for the fact you make sure there's no market.
I was trying to explain WHY the NRA is leery of smart guns - they've said before that they believe that it should be a personal/market decision. What they object to is the NJ law mandating that ALL firearms sold there be smart a period after the FIRST is available for sale. Without considering issues like the recoil differences between a.22lr pistol, a.40S&W, a.44 Mag, or a magnum rifle.
I think that it's relevant because one of the implied reasons for the survey is that there's some crowd out there, supposedly the NRA, that's opposed to smart guns. Like I've said, they're actually NOT opposed.
I agree the law is dumb and I suspect it would die if subjected to a court challenge or simply be repealed. Even though that strikes me as weak reasoning for stopping smart guns across the country.
Your use of the word 'even' means that, really, you're not even part of the potential market. I am more than you. Even then, you put a conditional on it - a teenager in the house. Well, I don't have a teenager in the house, I DO have 3 firearm containers without including cases.
I'm not part of the market, but the reason to offer the teenager conditional was not because I thought that was the only applicable circumstance, it's because I though it was an example of a very compelling circumstance.
There's also the question of 'small chance of failure' - the last 'smart gun' offered for sale(briefly) couldn't even make it through a single 10 round magazine without failing. It also had numerous problems - half an hour to pair up to the watch, taking 5 minutes to activate via the watch for a shooting session, and having a remote kill option.
Irrelevant. The existence of buggy beta tech doesn't make it an unsolvable problem.
And they'll probably always cost a bit more but it shouldn't be massive, and I don't see any reason why gun manufacturers couldn't solve the performance issues if there was allowed to be enough of a market that they had a reason to invest.
Slashdot Mirror
Scalia was very controversial and much of the left will be likely happy about this. But he was a human being, and by most accounts he was a decent one and a smart one. His best friend on the Court was Ruth Bader Ginsburg who is one of the most liberal justices. We should all take a lesson from them on being civil and friendly even with those we disagree with.
I hated his politics and thought he caused tremendous harm through them, at the same time he very well may have been a kind, generous, and generally delightful person to know.
I'm sad that he died though happy that he's left the court.
Out of morbid curiosity, I just checked out myspace.com. Just from the main page, I have no clue what their aim or angle is, let alone their audience. There is a blurb at the bottom that reads "The Best in Music & Culture. All In One Place." Yet that still doesn't shed a lot of light on whatever the hell that site is supposed to be.
I got the feeling they were trying to go for a flashier and more customizable look with the idea that bands would use them as a social networking homepage to interact with fans.
Iranians were in open revolt in 2009
If Obama were a Islamic Manchurian candidate, what more could he have done for radical Islam?
Well he could have attacked the Iranian regime with heavy rhetoric and publicly allied himself with the protesters. That would have made it easy for the regime to discredit and kill the reformist movement.
Instead he stayed back and a few years later got a relatively reformist president who's on much better terms with the west.
He's allowed ISIS to grow.
Because a Whabbist Sunni Arab movement is totally relevant to this discussion about a Shia Persian country.
He gave nukes
Yeah, because there's no more effective way to give someone nukes than by having them shut down their nuclear program and undergo a level of inspections generally loved by weapons inspectors.
and $150 billion to the Iranian mullahs
Shame on him for giving Iran back their own money!
And leaving the mullahs in power wasn't based on non-interference principles. Just ask Muammar Gaddaffi about that...
Brilliant idea, take the Muslim country in the middle east with the most sympathetic population to the US and then launch an unprovoked war again them, that's the way to combat terrorism!
Great point using Gaddaffi as a reference too, because Libya is doing absolutely great since then!!
Is it possible that those women who don't feel it necessary to point out their gender in situations where gender doesn't matter tend to also be those more likely to communicate well?
Is it possible that those women who make it a point to draw attention to their gender in situations where there is no reason to bring up gender at all, are also more likely to be less convincing regarding the usefulness of their work?
Possibly but I'm really dubious. It's not like these are people prefacing each message with "I AM A WOMAN". They just have a picture name and/or profile picture that indicates their gender, I'm really dubious that those women are worse coders or communicators.
The authors also made a point of looking at men and presumably found no such effect, so one wonders why indicating gender as a woman is different than indicating gender as a man.
And really this is exactly the result I would have predicted. The idea that identified women get less respect for their contributions is backed up by tons of research and is really apparent just looking around on an anecdotal level.
Male, therefore guilty.
Yeah I'm sure it's just a bunch of women with no obvious connections engaging in a giant conspiracy for no apparent reason like they did to Bill Cosby.
Most importantly your automatic assumption that the man innocent and is only being persecuted for his gender, despite a lot of evidence to the contrary, is in no way evidence that you might be sexist.
...it had been paleontology or geology that had been 'rocked' by this case. But I'm struggling to understand why such a story is relevant to a science/technology news website?
Because one of the big questions about the science and technology fields are why women are so under-represented.
Stories like this contain at least part of the answer.
The letter isn't directed at the company Tesla Motors; He addressed it to Elon Musk (who responded in kind).
It was addressed to Musk in his role as Tesla's Chairman & CEO.
It is just silly nonsense that misunderstands rights and prerogatives.
If a restaurant kicks you out for saying [REDACTED] in their business in front of other customers, that is not censorship.
I didn't say it was censorship, I said it was pushing people to self-censo, ie intimidating them into silence.
There is no censorship, because Tesla doesn't have an obligation to provide a platform for anybody to speak.
They weren't providing a platform or venue for anybody to speak, your restaurant analogy doesn't apply.
Them responding to negative speech by exercising their own prerogatives, that isn't censorship; that is in fact the value of speech that is protected when free speech is protected!
A private company doing it isn't government censorship, but it can be still be censorship. In fact if reddit bans a really offensive forum that can be both censorship and the right thing to do.
Of course since Telsa wasn't providing the platform for the speech it wasn't censorship.
This idea that consequences for your speech in your relationships in the community somehow implies that speech isn't free, it is just wrong and stupid.
And the consequence of Elon Musks behaviour is I'm now giving it bad PR.
Nobody is controlling anybody's speech or actions here.
Well Elon Musk is trying to, he's saying that he doesn't care if you already reserved a car, if you publicly criticize something about the company he'll take away your pre-order spot.
You're free to say whatever you want, and enter into any business relationships with other people who are willing to do business with you.
And I argue that you should be less willing to do business with Elon Musk because he's going to try and control what you say about him.
I think it's good that he got his order canceled. If you are going to complain in an "open letter", you are pretty much just attention seeking. If you wanted to help the company out or support it in a positive light, you would have kept your issues between you and the company. I also agree that it must be a slow news day.
Why is it my responsibility to help the company out and support it in a positive light?
If a public company treats me badly at a PR event why can't I make my complaint in public?
And likewise, if you have to "censor yourself" to keep from being an asshat towards companies whose products you covet, you're probably a dick and the CEO should have an assistant put you on a list of people not to do business with, because risk.
Which is why I respond with criticizing the company so they don't feel so free to retaliate against people criticizing them.
He's not a customer, and they don't have power over him. Contrary to your implication, their act of not doing business with him prevents him from being a customer, and prevents them from having any power over him at all.
A major company who has a product you want has power over you whether you have a business relationship with them or not, that's why you pay them for the product. This is more true if there's not many companies providing that product. To re-iterate my previous example, if an ISP says they won't sell to me because I said something bad about them that's a pretty severe consequence for me.
And in this case there was a business relationship as evidenced by the $5k he gave Tesla and the hours he spent driving to, and attending, the event in question.
Also, luxury cars are not necessities. There might not be any moral angle at all to be outraged about, because Freedom. Tesla presumably deserves Freedom as much as anybody else. They can choose. They made no demands of him; there is no retaliation for not doing what they say, or any other type of "control" tactic. There is simply them exercising a choice that is theirs to make.
If I were a Tesla customer who's currently on the waiting list and experienced some really crappy treatment by Tesla (which if the blog post is to be believed, these customers did) then I think I'd be a lot more hesitant about airing my complaints publicly. So they are actually making implicit demands about what their current customers say and have demonstrated it by retaliating against one of those customers to broke this rule.
And did you actually read the blog post? It wasn't actually that rude and if it was accurate and I'd gone to that event I'd probably by a little pissed off at the experience.
Surprise, surprise. Being rude to a company results in bad service from that company. Hardly news except that it was Tesla that was the victim. Maybe the blogger has learned his lesson, but probably not.
So if I complain about FB are they justified in cancelling my account? What if I complain about my ISP who's also the local backbone, do I get kicked off the Internet?
Corporations can have a lot of power over their customers, you shouldn't have to worry about censoring yourself because the CEO is a dick who might pursue a personal vendetta.
I think /. has this view of moderators as impartial judges of comment quality but I don't think that's the case.
The times I'm most impartial and unbiased are when I'm not remotely interested, and in those cases I don't moderate because I don't even open the article.
The times when I'm most interested and read the most comments are also the times when I'm really likely to post myself. I don't know how many times I've had to choose between remaining silent when I have an important post to write or writing that post and undoing all my mods.
By all means stop people from moderating the specific thread they're involved in, but the story itself? Give the users who are most involved in the discussion the ability to moderate the discussion.
Add a disagree mod.
Because we don't have one, people use mods like troll and flamebait inappropriately. We need an explicit "disagree" mod to allow mods to express their intent. Whether it's -1 is a different question, but I'd be OK with it either way. We really need to emphasize the idea that someone can disagree with you, but be sincere, not trolling, if we want to be different from the non-geek sites.
I disagree.
Mod scores should reflect the post, not the personal opinions of the moderator. Someone can post a well thought out post criticizing the scientific consensus on climate change. I'll disagree with their conclusion but that doesn't mean they aren't +5 insightful.
Even a "wrong" mod really just becomes a poll on whether the mods think the post is right or wrong. If the post is wrong then someone should reply with a rebuttal and if it's good it should be modded up.
I honestly think the moderation system is pretty good other than the fact that "Insightful", "Interesting", and "Informative" have far too much overlap. When I'm trying to make a serious contribution to the discussion I find it tends to be pretty random which of the three I get.
I wonder where this video of Sanders winning a coin toss came from then.
It is also remarkably more enjoyable than it looks like. It's not that exciting to watch if you're unfamiliar with the complexities involved and what the mechanisms are. However, if you're a player then it's kind of exciting to watch. There's also an assload of physics involved and to be considered. It's rather interesting, in my experience.
I actually think it's fairly comparable to golf, a skill based sport where fitness can help at the margins. The big difference is that curling has a lot more strategy and a team component, while golf has nice scenery.
That said, I don't really watch TV so I can only speculate, more or less, but I'd watch curling before I'd watch many, many other things that are much more popular.
Curling televises surprisingly well because it does have a lot of strategic and tactical drama. Unfortunately the viewer needs an understanding of the game to appreciate it. Also if a team does build a large lead things can get dull quickly.
Why does cycling attract so much cheating?
Is it just more publicized than that in other sports? I mean, you don't hear about cheating nearly as much in other "sports" where they depend upon mechanical equipment... Nascar, F1, MotoGP, etc...
You'd think that Bill Belichick were the coach...
When's the last time you watched a Hockey, Basketball, or Football game (of either kind) without seeing a penalty? Those guys cheat constantly.
The difference is how they cheat. In skill sports gaining a slight athletic edge doesn't help as much so the cheating is done at game time, and because it's detectable and so common the rules are pretty mild.
In track or cycling it's all about fitness, so the only way to cheat is through doping or in this case hidden motors.
curling is an Olympic sport, and I've seen plenty of guys with 30kg spare tires in the Olympics in that sport. As such, I request proof of your assertion.
Only the skip who's holding the broom, the guys doing the sweeping are generally in pretty good shape, particularly the first two who do the majority of the sweeping.
I've actually played against some top teams, they're not Olympic athletes, but they were fairly big athletic guys.
As much as people get frustrated with typical politicians I feel like "None of the Above" requests tend to be a bit vague.
For the US I think Obama fit this mold and turned out pretty well. On the other hand I think Republicans have been searching for "None of the Above" since 2010 and have gone well off the deep end searching for politicians who aren't politicians.
Up here in Canada I actually don't mind our selection of party leaders, the local MPs can sometimes be pretty nutty but the leaders tend to be reasonable people.
but the body is really really complex, and it's hard to do something to a really complex system without having some sort of side effect
Sure, but how is this different from any other medical treatment? We have no idea what most of the specific off-target effects of conventional pharmaceuticals (or any other internal therapy - that includes you, herbalists) are on humans at a molecular level, just a list of possible side effects, most of which are completely unrelated to the ailment being treated.
All I'm saying is that CRISPR doesn't magically eliminate all sideeffects.
How can there be side effects if the only modification is changing a specific already damaged gene back to it's known healthy setting?
If you are just stabbing around changing random stuff sure there will be random consequences.
But if you can change specific genes and you know what the damaged state and the healthy states are, you are good to go.
It's a lot better but I don't think it's risk free. Consider a bad variant A and the good variant B.
B may have also had a developmental role. Only adding B as an adult and missing out on the developmental aspects might mean B functions improperly and causes bad things to happen.
Also the body may have adapted to A, for instance A is supposed to generate some hormone X and because A generates a crappy version of X your body is hypersensitive to X. Swapping in B and getting the right version of X means your hyper-sensitive body is suddenly overwhelmed by the effects of X and bad things happen.
Now CRISPR is awesome and revolutionary, but the body is really really complex, and it's hard to do something to a really complex system without having some sort of side effect.
Actually, Syria has a lot of Russian and Soviet weaponry. So does Iraq.
Strictly speaking, we didn't cause ISIS, we entered the country in a war, and then left it before we should have, but ISIS was created and abetted by those who have funded it and given it support.
Certainly the occupation of Iraq and the Syrian Civil War have given ISIS an opportunity to prosper, but you needed people willing to be ISIS for that to happen. It doesn't just happen automatically when you invade a country or when you leave it. We could have left in complete disorder and there didn't have to be an ISIS at the end of it. Let's put blame where blame belongs. The US and Soviet/Russian governments provided opportunities for ISIS, but ISIS is nothing without sympathizers in those countries and in the greater Muslim world who support them.
Fine.
What about the blame for the creation of those ISIS sympathizers? Doesn't the US deserve some responsibility for its policy of supporting brutal dictators who play nice with US interests. Or the US's role in the creation of Israel and it's enabling of Israel's current policy of occupation and land seizure?
The fanatical hatred that's emerged in segments of the Muslim world didn't come from nothing.
> Closing his eyes does not lead Minsky's memory to be erased
And, that's the point. He still has preconceived notions of what is in the room just as randomly wired neural net has preconceived notions. You just don't know what they are.
It's not his memory, it's that closing his eyes doesn't lead to the room being emptied.
Just because he can't see anyone in the room (due to his closed eyes) doesn't mean it's empty.
And just because a neural net was randomly wired doesn't mean it doesn't mean that random wiring lacks preconceived notions on how to play.
They can't. They lack standing until the law goes into effect.
Damn standing, I hate standing.
Perhaps. There's also concerns about power(I haven't heard of one larger than .22), durability, longevity, and cost.
But again that's a question of use-cases and how the user balances risk. Personally I think there's a very strong argument that even for self-defense a semi-reliable smart gun is a better choice when you have people like teenagers in the house who have a non-trivial chance of attempting suicide or doing something stupid with a gun.
2. Why would they stop selling traditional guns?
Where did I say that? I said they'd have to face a boycott as long as the NJ law is in effect. I said 'if any', because I figure there's a good chance that any company getting into the business of selling a smart gun will be a new maker, selling a limited line up consisting only of smart guns.
3/4.
So you're basing all of your arguments on the NJ law and the boycott by current gun owners.
And I don't think that works for this argument because the police or military wouldn't involve themselves in a boycott, and a new maker could survive on a smaller initial market.
Welcome to the suck that is the NJ law. This just goes by to my original NRA statement:
1. I have nothing against smart guns ideologically.
2. I have problems with the NJ law politically
3. While acceptable models might quickly come out, especially if the political concerns are removed to enable more development money, none have thus far been produced.
Note that there are a number in this thread that mentioned that they'd be much more accepting if the police/marines/secret service(was that an earlier thread?)/etc... were using them as well.
I'm comfortable with your position here.
I will note that police and military are probably the worst market for smart guns since they don't really need to worry about 3rd parties getting their guns and their guns are explicitly for combat situations.
That's because you don't care, and are thus not thinking about it. NJ gets away with it's law, even briefly, and it'd likely spread to NY, California, and such. Thus to be opposed on all fronts.
And I'll note that the reason it's stopping smart guns 'across the country' is that the firearm doesn't have to be sold in NJ at all. As long as it's sold in the USA, it trips the statute.
If they really wanted the law gone they could challenge it in court, I haven't found any evidence that they tried this.
Irrelevant to you because you're not in the market. Relevant to ME because I am, and have knowledge of the issue at hand. Please note that I'm not saying it's not an unsolvable problem. I'm saying that it's no where near solved. Meanwhile we have legislation on the books and the occasional attempt to sell said buggy technology in order to trip the statute.
Or it's a problem that has at least partially been solved.
Believe it or not, but the market is actually mostly allowed - the manufacturer/dealer would just have to deal with:
1. Higher prices for their firearms meaning that they sell less, meaning higher costs per unit sold
2. Not having any police or military forces buying their weapons(they've campaigned hard to be exempt from any such proposals)
3. a probable boycott against their non-smart firearms(if any), as long as the NJ law is in effect.
4. Having the problem that they're pleasing non-customers more than their potential customers. Pleasing you means jack shit. Pleasing me means something to them. I'm opposed to smart guns in the current legal climate, and think lots of work needs to be done technologically.
1. New product category means new customers and taking competitors customers.
2. Why would they stop selling traditional guns?
3/4. So there's a market, except for the fact you make sure there's no market.
I was trying to explain WHY the NRA is leery of smart guns - they've said before that they believe that it should be a personal/market decision. What they object to is the NJ law mandating that ALL firearms sold there be smart a period after the FIRST is available for sale. Without considering issues like the recoil differences between a .22lr pistol, a .40S&W, a .44 Mag, or a magnum rifle.
I think that it's relevant because one of the implied reasons for the survey is that there's some crowd out there, supposedly the NRA, that's opposed to smart guns. Like I've said, they're actually NOT opposed.
I agree the law is dumb and I suspect it would die if subjected to a court challenge or simply be repealed. Even though that strikes me as weak reasoning for stopping smart guns across the country.
Your use of the word 'even' means that, really, you're not even part of the potential market. I am more than you. Even then, you put a conditional on it - a teenager in the house. Well, I don't have a teenager in the house, I DO have 3 firearm containers without including cases.
I'm not part of the market, but the reason to offer the teenager conditional was not because I thought that was the only applicable circumstance, it's because I though it was an example of a very compelling circumstance.
There's also the question of 'small chance of failure' - the last 'smart gun' offered for sale(briefly) couldn't even make it through a single 10 round magazine without failing. It also had numerous problems - half an hour to pair up to the watch, taking 5 minutes to activate via the watch for a shooting session, and having a remote kill option.
Irrelevant. The existence of buggy beta tech doesn't make it an unsolvable problem.
And they'll probably always cost a bit more but it shouldn't be massive, and I don't see any reason why gun manufacturers couldn't solve the performance issues if there was allowed to be enough of a market that they had a reason to invest.