I don't know... Maybe I'm coming at this from a different perspective, but as a HAM radio operator, my base station address (and home address) is public information, and is easily searchable by call sign. If you want to use a public resource, whether airwaves or airspace, you need to be traceable. That's, in fact, the entire point.
Put another way, the privacy implications of having untraceable drones outweigh the privacy implications of being able to track down who's controlling them.
Would you be OK with having your name and home address publicly searchable from your license plate?
So that anyone who sees your car can find out your name and where you live?
How about cell phones? Lots of people talk on the phone in inappropriate places. Would you be OK with having your name and home address searchable from the ESSID of your phone, which is displayed in all nearby phones while you talk?
Let's reverse this. If the database is online, it can be searched in reverse.
Would you be comfortable with having the online database of gun owners publicly searchable?
They'll have no exports. that means no source of cash to buy the things that Mars can't provide -- like modern medical supples, updated electronics, and other manufactured goods.
This may not be a problem.
GDP per capita has skyrocketed in recent decades, and would appear to be on an exponential curve. We're just about at the point where don't need as many workers as we have, to supply everyone with what they want.
The take-away is that automation and efficiency will continue to rise, so that less will be needed to make a self-sufficient colony. Machines which could mine raw materials and build more machines, for instance.
A breakthrough in AI would be enough to put us over the top.
Um, wouldn't "them" in this case be the local government which means the local community, i.e. people who are paying taxes in that town? Best case the police department is insured and the insurance company would pay any settlement and then just jack up insurance rates on the rest of their customers to make the money back. Yeah, good idea.
I really hate this type of reply.
It attempts to sway the reader into thinking that responsibility and/or justice will be expensive. It tries to dissuade the reader from commonsense actions which would tend to prevent future transgressions.
Don't fine the company - they'll only jack up their prices and it's the customers who would pay. Don't sue the government, they'll just jack up the taxes and the people will pay.
This might cost the taxpayers in one or two instances, but it would have a chilling effect on other abuses in other districts. It's an overall gain for the taxpayers everywhere.
We don't have to sit outraged and powerless while these sorts of abuses happen. One or two groups of taxpayers can take the hit and we will all benefit. They will benefit later when we take the hit for other types of abuse.
Let's work together to stop this nonsense.
Including, saying that commonsense punishments are futile.
There are already nearly 3 million Muslims in America, anything that makes them feel more discriminated against or ramps up the Muslims are dangerous rhetoric (which banning all Muslim immigrants clearly would) is very likely more dangerous than the risk that immigration poses.
Okay, that's starting point for rational discussion.
Firstly, you're saying that a temporary ban on Muslim immigration will rile up the Muslims *already* in the country, who will do more damage than the extremists coming in.
Really? Really? That's your argument?
To this I say: I'm not afraid. I'm not afraid of Muslims, and I won't fear what they *might* do. Making policy based on fear will get you beat up by every two-bit bully in the schoolyard.
In other debates, viz gun laws, we can compare what would have happened if such-and-so law had been enacted prior to the current situation.
I note that Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev were muslim, and preventing them from entering the country would have avoided the Boston Marathon attack.
I note also that Tashfeen Malik was muslim, and preventing her from entering the country might have prevented the San Bernardino attack.
Slashdot sure seems to have one hell of an axe to grind with Trump.
Trump's supporters are all low-class, uneducated, white males who drive rusty pickups(*) and want to take their country back.
<MorganFreeman>Didn't you get the memo?</MorganFreeman>
This seems to be the attack narrative passed around the news sites right now: if you're a trump supporter, you're low class.
(Subtext: "You wouldn't want to be considered low class now... would you?")
Slashdot readers are highly-educated, well paid, with liberal and progressive viewpoints. Of *course* we bash Trump.
The elites have completely misread the situation and still don't quite get it. Trump's support is real, and name-calling and ridiculing is not going to change peoples' views. If you can't counter his positions with real arguments you will be ignored.
The standard attack is to take something Trump said, extend it to mean something beyond all reason, and ridicule the beyond-reason meaning. So for example, he has a war on women (for ridiculing one woman's behaviour one time), he's Joe McCarthy (for wanting a registry of Muslims), he's Hitler (for wanting to ban Muslims), and so on. I actually read an article informing me that Trump hates people with chronic fatigue syndrome (for saying Ben Carson has low energy).
One thing I *haven't* seen is a rational explanation of why a temporary ban on Muslim immigration isn't a common-sense response to an immediate problem. It's not unconstitutional, it's no less against "American Principles" than going to war on false premises, ordering the death of a citizen, or secret lists and laws. It's also fairly easy to implement - think it through a few minutes and you'll see that detection is relatively straightforward(**).
People don't seem capable of making the rational arguments, they'd rather point out how ridiculous his hair looks.
It's disingenuous, and the voters have caught on.
(*) Fair disclosure: I drive a pickup, although it's not rusty. (**) For those with little imagination, I refer you to any of a number of people who vetted refugees during WWII, such as Oreste Pinto. His books are a fascinating read.
Does he have insurance coverage for his selling idea? Seems very risky as he can be on the hook for big damages with stuff goes wrong.
Is he willing to have his code go under some thing like a FAA code audit?
How much redundancy is in that system?
Does his friends really want to take on the risk?
I think you're confusing engineering with science.
The difficult part of AI, or science in general, is getting something that works. Once you have a working demo, anyone can add the reliability, the redundancy, and do a code audit.
And indeed, visionary investors might examine the idea and think "I'll take on the responsibility for liability and development, because I believe that the value of your ideas will be worth more than the expense of dealing with those issues. Sell me your idea."
Searching to see if there are more terrorists engaged in a coordinated attack? Seems like a reasonable and responsible thing to do.
Another reasonable thing would be to get judicial approval afterwards, to ensure that exigent circumstances were warranted and that it was an appropriate use of the technology.
You know, so that it doesn't ratchet into future phone sweeps for just any little thing?
I don't remember Obama pointing out that it was unconstitutional, but it otherwise fits the description.
Telecoms had been spying on American citizens at the request of law enforcement with no warrant and no oversight, and telecoms were simply handing over the data. Several lawsuits against telecoms were ongoing at the time, this legislation torpedoed them. It gave telecoms immunity for all past offenses.
It would have passed without his support, and after the vote he got a huge campaign donation from the telecoms.
So this is a causation/correlation thing: happiness correlates with longevity, but is not by itself the *cause* of longevity.
From a practical standpoint, this means that techniques to increase one's happiness by psychological means will have no effect on longevity. Things like keeping a journal, or giving daily thanks, and so on.
This raises an interesting point. If longevity correlates with happiness but is not caused by happiness, then it follows that psychological techniques to increase happiness have no effect - else there would be a measure of causation. People who have successfully become happier using the techniques actually got happier due to other lifestyle changes, which increase both happiness and longevity.
(Or taken as a thought problem, suppose everyone took up the psychological techniques to become happier. Would this then invalidate the study?)
So in summary, don't bother trying to change your happiness level by psychological means. If the techniques worked then it would have an effect on one's longevity. Since it doesn't, the conclusion is that the techniques don't work.
God help us all should that moron get into office.
But when compared against Trump. It's like what options are we left with.
Idiots to the left. Idiots to the right. And no one supporting America's true interest in sight.
Don't tell me what he *is*, tell me what he *did*. Tell me what he *said*.
Anyone can case aspersions on a candidate(*).
Here's an example of something Trump actually *did*.
At the first [R] debate everyone was falling over themselves to pledge not to run as an independent... except Trump. He forced the GOP to make a deal with him, and knowing him he probably got something out of the deal.
That's a level of political savvy that we don't normally see in America. If he can bring that expertise to the white house, then we might start getting better trade deals and better laws. He's said he wants to make America great again.
All of Trump's controversial statements have put him front-and-center in the minds of Americans for the last 3 months. He's had more name recognition than all the other candidates put together, including Hillary.
I can name several things Donald has said in the last 3 months, none of which are without merit or irrational.
You may disagree whole heartedly, but you can't claim that any of them is irrational or without merit. Most of the controversy has been puffed up by the media by using sentence fragments taken without context.
In the last three months, what has Hillary said?
(*) I'm a fan of Trump, and would welcome informed debate about the candidates. Unfortunately, most people here can't rub two words together to spark a rational argument. Anyone is welcome to take that as a challenge, if you feel up to it.
bottom line: i'm done with her. she lies and lies even more to cover up those lies. thought she had a chance. no more.
Curiously, she seems to be polling higher than the lead republican candidate (Trump).
Every time she speaks, she mentions how "there should be a tax deduction for $x", where $x is tailored to the audience. There should be a deduction for college tuition, a deduction for caring for elderly parents, an individual deduction for health care costs, and so on.
It would appear she's "buying" votes with tax incentives.
Of course, these are just campaign promises, and she's going to pay for it by raising taxes on the rich. Go figure.
My biggest cringe is when something changes size - like when Dracula changes to a bat or someone (as for instance Hugh Jackman in Van Helsing) changes into a werewolf of 2x volume. (Or Odo changing into a mouse, or when his full human size fits in a bucket.)
My second biggest is when the bullets hit everything except the person - such as running along a waist-high cast iron fence and the bullets hit the vertical bars but not the person. (I don't so much mind the "spark" that a bullet makes when it hits concrete in the movies - that's a good visual cue.) Also, someone outrunning the swept arc of machine gun bullets. Also, someone behind a couch being shielded from bullets.
My third biggest cringe is people hanging on by their hands for more than 30 seconds. People in *really* good shape can hold on for 60 seconds (try it some time), but unless you are an elite climber you won't get past the minute mark. Viz: the scientists in the 1997 movie "Batman and Robin".
I was summoned to district court for an 8:00 AM hearing, and discovered - quite by accident - that the judge didn't bother to arrive until 10:00 AM. My lawyer mentioned that this was typical.
Everyone had to wait around and was forced to listen to some insipid video about drunk driving (irrelevant to my landlord/tenant purpose) for two hours over and over before the judge bothered to arrive.
I've often wondered how useful it would be to mount a trail camera behind the courthouse and log the judge's arrival times, and then make that information public. Say, 6 months of study.
I wonder how long it will be before someone modifies this software to automatically log the comings and goings of government servants to a public website.
I'd be interested to know if the people I'm paying (with my taxes) are putting in a full 40 hours.
> Perl isn't meant to be simple, it's meant to be expressive.
I can express myself by writing a comment, or I can run down the middle of my town naked with peanut butter smeared all over me while shouting gibberish.
I know which one I am doing right now.
If you need language constraints on your programming style to prevent you from, metaphorically, running around naked and screaming gibberish, then Python is right for you.
Perhaps it was momentary insanity, but I expected the syntax of Perl 6 to be more readable and less obstuse. Looking through the Perl 6 advent calendar, I noticed that, somehow, the people working on Perl 6 seem to have made it even worse.
Perl will always be the ugliest language in the world.
Perl isn't meant to be simple, it's meant to be expressive.
A simple language is wordy, requires a lot of typing and keywording to express a thought. Cobol has things like "move a to b", which is simple and readable, but requires a lot of typing. Basic has things like "for index = 1 to 10 step 2" which is very readable, but requires you to type out "step" and "to".
Perl is meant to be terse and expressive, which in practice means that things you typically want to do in programming can be called out in short sequences. Larry took a look at all the things that programmers want to do and encapsulated them in the syntax as a sort of short hand notation. Sort of like how emacs macros do complex things tersely, which could also be done with a bunch of keystrokes.
Perl is also a non Von Neumann language, meaning that it does not reflect the underlying Von Neumann architecture. It focuses on functionality instead of the machine, and as a result things like file operations are part of the syntax and not a library call.
For example, variables do not represent memory areas like they do in C. This allows Perl to do things like automatic allocation and garbage collection, and be unicode compliant. (Characters are not specifically 8-bit entities in Perl.)
This means that a lot of what you do in Perl is completely portable across architectures. File I/O and filename searching are part of the language, and thus not architecture specific.
Sometimes these are important. Being able to run on multiple architectures, or getting a prototype up and running quickly, or not having to debug allocation errors makes the act of programming more efficient.
...but at the cost of requiring the programmer to know a more complex syntax.
Giving the money to non-profits is largely going to be a waste. Zuckerberg would do much better to pick another big commercial project and focus on that: space travel, asteroid mining, human cloning, nanotech, whatever.
It's a fine idea, but it's missing a key ingredient: the drive and capability of the person spearheading the project.
Mark is not well known as an innovator, a leader, or even a creator.
I'm not saying that this is bad in any way, or that this is some sort of deficit in his character, I'm just saying that he's *probably* not the right person to pull off a big commercial project. Compare with Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, or Richard Branson.
And it's *highly* unlikely that he can find the right person to run such a venture, assuming that Mark would fund it.
And that assumes that Mark is even *interested* in running a big commercial venture. He might just want to settle down, and not devote the rest of his life to some aspiring goal.
Picking and piloting a commercial venture is one way to change the world, but I just don't see Mark as that sort of person.
If you wanted to be charitable you could have [...], or you could remit that money to the government instead which is governed by the people.
Just to be clear, you are suggesting that money given to the government will go towards the needs of the people. That's what you're saying... yes?
Hypothetically speaking, a $1 million mutual fund well-invested can return roughly 7% over a long period and require 0.5% in management fees. Assuming 2.5% inflation, that amount would provide $50,000 per annum in perpetuity.
If you disagree with the numbers you can use other numbers, but the central point is the same.
$45 billion could be set up as a fund that supports 45,000 people in perpetuity.
Hypothetically, he could set up a system of "mini" Nobel prize awards given to people who do interesting research. For comparison, that's about the number of PhD candidates in the US.
We keep hearing about how little post graduate researchers are paid, how they can't have a family or any kind of life on their research stipends.
Instead of giving big lumps of money for particular areas of research, he could set up foundation grants that support *individuals* who have potentially interesting research ideas.
Just a thought. In any event, I don't think Mark reads slashdot anyway.
Melting aluminium is an *ideal* use for unreliable power: the primary cells can run at variable rates or even in reverse to stabilize the grid, or some of the molten product can be staged for running optimized Al air batteries. Germany is already doing this, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...
From that link, other energy-intensive processes may be suitable, "including those used to manufacture cement, paper, and chemicals. Making chlorine, used to produce paper, plastic, fabric, paint, drugs, and antiseptics, also requires electrolysis."
Don't forget Ammonia, by fixating Nitrogen from the atmosphere.
About half the "green revolution"(*) was due to availability of Ammonia due to the Haber process, which means our ammonia production supports about half the food production on the planet.
Haber is energy intensive, requiring half a million Joules of energy per mole (17g) of ammonia produced, which comes out to about 5% of all energy used worldwide.
It's largely startable/stoppable, so would make another good choice for unreliable or unneeded (ie - solar panels in uninhabited areas) power.
For those of you who think that voting Democratic is the lesser of two evils, note that the bill had strong bipartisan support in both the house and senate:
Yea 303: 179(R) 124(D)
[The USA Freedom Act] would make only incremental improvements, and at least one provision-the material-support provision-would represent a significant step backwards," ACLU deputy legal director Jameel Jaffer said in a statement.
Next up: the Trans Pacific Partnership. Let's all get together and vote for the party that does the least amount of damage to the American People! Yeah! That'll fix it!!!
One reasonable way to get good government to vote against all incumbents. Whether it's a red or blue congress critter, they'll fall in line once they realize that they only get 1 term if they screw over the people.
Another reasonable solution is to vote for non-insiders. Not Hillary, or Jeb or Chris or Marco.
This year the choices seem to be between "experience" and "change". Which of those would be the best for Americans?
The Republican situation is hard to call - the lead has changed hands a few times now.
I've been following the republican nomination thing with great interest for several months now, mostly as an exercise in insight and analysis.
Surprisingly, the republican lead has *not* changed hands a few times, and depending on your definition of "lead" it hasn't changed hands at all. Carson pulled ahead of Trump in one poll one time, but in the overall average and in the national polls he's consistently been in the lead, for the last 6 months.
Look at the link in the last paragraph, and look at the right-hand column and count the number of times it reads "Trump".
But if this is true, then why was the MSM hyping "Carson pulls ahead of Trump" all the time?
Two reasons.
As an exercise to the readership, can you identify the two reasons?
Comparing news reports with actual data has been an eye-opening experience. There's really a lot of shenanigans going on in this election. Applying Bayesian priors of "of all reasons causing *this*, choose the most likely" paints a surprising, infuriating, and depressing picture of American politics.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know... Maybe I'm coming at this from a different perspective, but as a HAM radio operator, my base station address (and home address) is public information, and is easily searchable by call sign. If you want to use a public resource, whether airwaves or airspace, you need to be traceable. That's, in fact, the entire point.
Put another way, the privacy implications of having untraceable drones outweigh the privacy implications of being able to track down who's controlling them.
Would you be OK with having your name and home address publicly searchable from your license plate?
So that anyone who sees your car can find out your name and where you live?
How about cell phones? Lots of people talk on the phone in inappropriate places. Would you be OK with having your name and home address searchable from the ESSID of your phone, which is displayed in all nearby phones while you talk?
Let's reverse this. If the database is online, it can be searched in reverse.
Would you be comfortable with having the online database of gun owners publicly searchable?
They'll have no exports. that means no source of cash to buy the things that Mars can't provide -- like modern medical supples, updated electronics, and other manufactured goods.
This may not be a problem.
GDP per capita has skyrocketed in recent decades, and would appear to be on an exponential curve. We're just about at the point where don't need as many workers as we have, to supply everyone with what they want.
The take-away is that automation and efficiency will continue to rise, so that less will be needed to make a self-sufficient colony. Machines which could mine raw materials and build more machines, for instance.
A breakthrough in AI would be enough to put us over the top.
Um, wouldn't "them" in this case be the local government which means the local community, i.e. people who are paying taxes in that town? Best case the police department is insured and the insurance company would pay any settlement and then just jack up insurance rates on the rest of their customers to make the money back. Yeah, good idea.
I really hate this type of reply.
It attempts to sway the reader into thinking that responsibility and/or justice will be expensive. It tries to dissuade the reader from commonsense actions which would tend to prevent future transgressions.
Don't fine the company - they'll only jack up their prices and it's the customers who would pay. Don't sue the government, they'll just jack up the taxes and the people will pay.
This might cost the taxpayers in one or two instances, but it would have a chilling effect on other abuses in other districts. It's an overall gain for the taxpayers everywhere.
We don't have to sit outraged and powerless while these sorts of abuses happen. One or two groups of taxpayers can take the hit and we will all benefit. They will benefit later when we take the hit for other types of abuse.
Let's work together to stop this nonsense.
Including, saying that commonsense punishments are futile.
There are already nearly 3 million Muslims in America, anything that makes them feel more discriminated against or ramps up the Muslims are dangerous rhetoric (which banning all Muslim immigrants clearly would) is very likely more dangerous than the risk that immigration poses.
Okay, that's starting point for rational discussion.
Firstly, you're saying that a temporary ban on Muslim immigration will rile up the Muslims *already* in the country, who will do more damage than the extremists coming in.
Really? Really ? That's your argument?
To this I say: I'm not afraid. I'm not afraid of Muslims, and I won't fear what they *might* do. Making policy based on fear will get you beat up by every two-bit bully in the schoolyard.
In other debates, viz gun laws, we can compare what would have happened if such-and-so law had been enacted prior to the current situation.
I note that Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev were muslim, and preventing them from entering the country would have avoided the Boston Marathon attack.
I note also that Tashfeen Malik was muslim, and preventing her from entering the country might have prevented the San Bernardino attack.
Richard Reid (the shoe bomber) was Muslim, as was Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab (the underwear bomber).
Slashdot sure seems to have one hell of an axe to grind with Trump.
Trump's supporters are all low-class, uneducated, white males who drive rusty pickups(*) and want to take their country back.
<MorganFreeman>Didn't you get the memo?</MorganFreeman>
This seems to be the attack narrative passed around the news sites right now: if you're a trump supporter, you're low class.
(Subtext: "You wouldn't want to be considered low class now... would you?")
Slashdot readers are highly-educated, well paid, with liberal and progressive viewpoints. Of *course* we bash Trump.
The elites have completely misread the situation and still don't quite get it. Trump's support is real, and name-calling and ridiculing is not going to change peoples' views. If you can't counter his positions with real arguments you will be ignored.
The standard attack is to take something Trump said, extend it to mean something beyond all reason, and ridicule the beyond-reason meaning. So for example, he has a war on women (for ridiculing one woman's behaviour one time), he's Joe McCarthy (for wanting a registry of Muslims), he's Hitler (for wanting to ban Muslims), and so on. I actually read an article informing me that Trump hates people with chronic fatigue syndrome (for saying Ben Carson has low energy).
One thing I *haven't* seen is a rational explanation of why a temporary ban on Muslim immigration isn't a common-sense response to an immediate problem. It's not unconstitutional, it's no less against "American Principles" than going to war on false premises, ordering the death of a citizen, or secret lists and laws. It's also fairly easy to implement - think it through a few minutes and you'll see that detection is relatively straightforward(**).
People don't seem capable of making the rational arguments, they'd rather point out how ridiculous his hair looks.
It's disingenuous, and the voters have caught on.
(*) Fair disclosure: I drive a pickup, although it's not rusty.
(**) For those with little imagination, I refer you to any of a number of people who vetted refugees during WWII, such as Oreste Pinto. His books are a fascinating read.
So say that I'm a Rep that is really trying hard to do the right thing and represent my constituent properly.
There's your problem in the first sentence.
If you're a rep, you got elected from deals with big corporations and monied interests in return for campaign donations.
If you're a rep, you're not representing your constituency.
[Congress is] all a bunch of crooks and flim flam artists.
And yet, when someone who isn't a career politician runs for office, everyone shouts "anyone but him!"
Does he have insurance coverage for his selling idea? Seems very risky as he can be on the hook for big damages with stuff goes wrong.
Is he willing to have his code go under some thing like a FAA code audit?
How much redundancy is in that system?
Does his friends really want to take on the risk?
I think you're confusing engineering with science.
The difficult part of AI, or science in general, is getting something that works. Once you have a working demo, anyone can add the reliability, the redundancy, and do a code audit.
And indeed, visionary investors might examine the idea and think "I'll take on the responsibility for liability and development, because I believe that the value of your ideas will be worth more than the expense of dealing with those issues. Sell me your idea."
But it all starts with getting something to work.
Searching to see if there are more terrorists engaged in a coordinated attack? Seems like a reasonable and responsible thing to do.
Another reasonable thing would be to get judicial approval afterwards, to ensure that exigent circumstances were warranted and that it was an appropriate use of the technology.
You know, so that it doesn't ratchet into future phone sweeps for just any little thing?
can we have a credible source for the last one?
That sounds like the telecom immunity bill.
I don't remember Obama pointing out that it was unconstitutional, but it otherwise fits the description.
Telecoms had been spying on American citizens at the request of law enforcement with no warrant and no oversight, and telecoms were simply handing over the data. Several lawsuits against telecoms were ongoing at the time, this legislation torpedoed them. It gave telecoms immunity for all past offenses.
It would have passed without his support, and after the vote he got a huge campaign donation from the telecoms.
So this is a causation/correlation thing: happiness correlates with longevity, but is not by itself the *cause* of longevity.
From a practical standpoint, this means that techniques to increase one's happiness by psychological means will have no effect on longevity. Things like keeping a journal, or giving daily thanks, and so on.
This raises an interesting point. If longevity correlates with happiness but is not caused by happiness, then it follows that psychological techniques to increase happiness have no effect - else there would be a measure of causation. People who have successfully become happier using the techniques actually got happier due to other lifestyle changes, which increase both happiness and longevity.
(Or taken as a thought problem, suppose everyone took up the psychological techniques to become happier. Would this then invalidate the study?)
So in summary, don't bother trying to change your happiness level by psychological means. If the techniques worked then it would have an effect on one's longevity. Since it doesn't, the conclusion is that the techniques don't work.
God help us all should that moron get into office.
But when compared against Trump. It's like what options are we left with.
Idiots to the left. Idiots to the right. And no one supporting America's true interest in sight.
Don't tell me what he *is*, tell me what he *did*. Tell me what he *said*.
Anyone can case aspersions on a candidate(*).
Here's an example of something Trump actually *did*.
At the first [R] debate everyone was falling over themselves to pledge not to run as an independent... except Trump. He forced the GOP to make a deal with him, and knowing him he probably got something out of the deal.
That's a level of political savvy that we don't normally see in America. If he can bring that expertise to the white house, then we might start getting better trade deals and better laws. He's said he wants to make America great again.
All of Trump's controversial statements have put him front-and-center in the minds of Americans for the last 3 months. He's had more name recognition than all the other candidates put together, including Hillary.
I can name several things Donald has said in the last 3 months, none of which are without merit or irrational.
You may disagree whole heartedly, but you can't claim that any of them is irrational or without merit. Most of the controversy has been puffed up by the media by using sentence fragments taken without context.
In the last three months, what has Hillary said?
(*) I'm a fan of Trump, and would welcome informed debate about the candidates. Unfortunately, most people here can't rub two words together to spark a rational argument. Anyone is welcome to take that as a challenge, if you feel up to it.
bottom line: i'm done with her. she lies and lies even more to cover up those lies. thought she had a chance. no more.
Curiously, she seems to be polling higher than the lead republican candidate (Trump).
Every time she speaks, she mentions how "there should be a tax deduction for $x", where $x is tailored to the audience. There should be a deduction for college tuition, a deduction for caring for elderly parents, an individual deduction for health care costs, and so on.
It would appear she's "buying" votes with tax incentives.
Of course, these are just campaign promises, and she's going to pay for it by raising taxes on the rich. Go figure.
We've got a cure for pain, a cure for fever (aspirin, Ibuprofin), now all we need is a cure for tiredness.
Once we have that, doctors will have a prescription cocktail of 3 medicines that will cure almost anything!
(Your symptoms went away - what's the problem?)
I was of the impression we detect dark matter indirectly, by the orbital velocities of galaxies and by gravitational lensing effects.
How did we determine that dark matter forms filaments, and how did we map the positions of these filaments?
My biggest cringe is when something changes size - like when Dracula changes to a bat or someone (as for instance Hugh Jackman in Van Helsing) changes into a werewolf of 2x volume. (Or Odo changing into a mouse, or when his full human size fits in a bucket.)
My second biggest is when the bullets hit everything except the person - such as running along a waist-high cast iron fence and the bullets hit the vertical bars but not the person. (I don't so much mind the "spark" that a bullet makes when it hits concrete in the movies - that's a good visual cue.) Also, someone outrunning the swept arc of machine gun bullets. Also, someone behind a couch being shielded from bullets.
My third biggest cringe is people hanging on by their hands for more than 30 seconds. People in *really* good shape can hold on for 60 seconds (try it some time), but unless you are an elite climber you won't get past the minute mark. Viz: the scientists in the 1997 movie "Batman and Robin".
I was summoned to district court for an 8:00 AM hearing, and discovered - quite by accident - that the judge didn't bother to arrive until 10:00 AM. My lawyer mentioned that this was typical.
Everyone had to wait around and was forced to listen to some insipid video about drunk driving (irrelevant to my landlord/tenant purpose) for two hours over and over before the judge bothered to arrive.
I've often wondered how useful it would be to mount a trail camera behind the courthouse and log the judge's arrival times, and then make that information public. Say, 6 months of study.
I wonder how long it will be before someone modifies this software to automatically log the comings and goings of government servants to a public website.
I'd be interested to know if the people I'm paying (with my taxes) are putting in a full 40 hours.
> Perl isn't meant to be simple, it's meant to be expressive.
I can express myself by writing a comment, or I can run down the middle of my town naked with peanut butter smeared all over me while shouting gibberish.
I know which one I am doing right now.
If you need language constraints on your programming style to prevent you from, metaphorically, running around naked and screaming gibberish, then Python is right for you.
Perhaps it was momentary insanity, but I expected the syntax of Perl 6 to be more readable and less obstuse. Looking through the Perl 6 advent calendar, I noticed that, somehow, the people working on Perl 6 seem to have made it even worse.
Perl will always be the ugliest language in the world.
Perl isn't meant to be simple, it's meant to be expressive.
A simple language is wordy, requires a lot of typing and keywording to express a thought. Cobol has things like "move a to b", which is simple and readable, but requires a lot of typing. Basic has things like "for index = 1 to 10 step 2" which is very readable, but requires you to type out "step" and "to".
Perl is meant to be terse and expressive, which in practice means that things you typically want to do in programming can be called out in short sequences. Larry took a look at all the things that programmers want to do and encapsulated them in the syntax as a sort of short hand notation. Sort of like how emacs macros do complex things tersely, which could also be done with a bunch of keystrokes.
Perl is also a non Von Neumann language, meaning that it does not reflect the underlying Von Neumann architecture. It focuses on functionality instead of the machine, and as a result things like file operations are part of the syntax and not a library call.
For example, variables do not represent memory areas like they do in C. This allows Perl to do things like automatic allocation and garbage collection, and be unicode compliant. (Characters are not specifically 8-bit entities in Perl.)
This means that a lot of what you do in Perl is completely portable across architectures. File I/O and filename searching are part of the language, and thus not architecture specific.
Sometimes these are important. Being able to run on multiple architectures, or getting a prototype up and running quickly, or not having to debug allocation errors makes the act of programming more efficient.
...but at the cost of requiring the programmer to know a more complex syntax.
Giving the money to non-profits is largely going to be a waste. Zuckerberg would do much better to pick another big commercial project and focus on that: space travel, asteroid mining, human cloning, nanotech, whatever.
It's a fine idea, but it's missing a key ingredient: the drive and capability of the person spearheading the project.
Mark is not well known as an innovator, a leader, or even a creator.
I'm not saying that this is bad in any way, or that this is some sort of deficit in his character, I'm just saying that he's *probably* not the right person to pull off a big commercial project. Compare with Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, or Richard Branson.
And it's *highly* unlikely that he can find the right person to run such a venture, assuming that Mark would fund it.
And that assumes that Mark is even *interested* in running a big commercial venture. He might just want to settle down, and not devote the rest of his life to some aspiring goal.
Picking and piloting a commercial venture is one way to change the world, but I just don't see Mark as that sort of person.
If you wanted to be charitable you could have [...], or you could remit that money to the government instead which is governed by the people.
Just to be clear, you are suggesting that money given to the government will go towards the needs of the people. That's what you're saying... yes?
Hypothetically speaking, a $1 million mutual fund well-invested can return roughly 7% over a long period and require 0.5% in management fees. Assuming 2.5% inflation, that amount would provide $50,000 per annum in perpetuity.
If you disagree with the numbers you can use other numbers, but the central point is the same.
$45 billion could be set up as a fund that supports 45,000 people in perpetuity.
Hypothetically, he could set up a system of "mini" Nobel prize awards given to people who do interesting research. For comparison, that's about the number of PhD candidates in the US.
We keep hearing about how little post graduate researchers are paid, how they can't have a family or any kind of life on their research stipends.
Instead of giving big lumps of money for particular areas of research, he could set up foundation grants that support *individuals* who have potentially interesting research ideas.
Just a thought. In any event, I don't think Mark reads slashdot anyway.
Melting aluminium is an *ideal* use for unreliable power: the primary cells can run at variable rates or even in reverse to stabilize the grid, or some of the molten product can be staged for running optimized Al air batteries. Germany is already doing this,
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...
From that link, other energy-intensive processes may be suitable, "including those used to manufacture cement, paper, and chemicals. Making chlorine, used to produce paper, plastic, fabric, paint, drugs, and antiseptics, also requires electrolysis."
Don't forget Ammonia, by fixating Nitrogen from the atmosphere.
About half the "green revolution"(*) was due to availability of Ammonia due to the Haber process, which means our ammonia production supports about half the food production on the planet.
Haber is energy intensive, requiring half a million Joules of energy per mole (17g) of ammonia produced, which comes out to about 5% of all energy used worldwide.
It's largely startable/stoppable, so would make another good choice for unreliable or unneeded (ie - solar panels in uninhabited areas) power.
(*) The other half due to pesticides.
For those of you who think that voting Democratic is the lesser of two evils, note that the bill had strong bipartisan support in both the house and senate:
Yea 303: 179(R) 124(D)
[The USA Freedom Act] would make only incremental improvements, and at least one provision-the material-support provision-would represent a significant step backwards," ACLU deputy legal director Jameel Jaffer said in a statement.
Next up: the Trans Pacific Partnership. Let's all get together and vote for the party that does the least amount of damage to the American People! Yeah! That'll fix it!!!
One reasonable way to get good government to vote against all incumbents. Whether it's a red or blue congress critter, they'll fall in line once they realize that they only get 1 term if they screw over the people.
Another reasonable solution is to vote for non-insiders. Not Hillary, or Jeb or Chris or Marco.
This year the choices seem to be between "experience" and "change". Which of those would be the best for Americans?
The Republican situation is hard to call - the lead has changed hands a few times now.
I've been following the republican nomination thing with great interest for several months now, mostly as an exercise in insight and analysis.
Surprisingly, the republican lead has *not* changed hands a few times, and depending on your definition of "lead" it hasn't changed hands at all. Carson pulled ahead of Trump in one poll one time, but in the overall average and in the national polls he's consistently been in the lead, for the last 6 months.
Look at the link in the last paragraph, and look at the right-hand column and count the number of times it reads "Trump".
This informative graphic from RealClearPolitics shows the overview situation.
But if this is true, then why was the MSM hyping "Carson pulls ahead of Trump" all the time?
Two reasons.
As an exercise to the readership, can you identify the two reasons?
Comparing news reports with actual data has been an eye-opening experience. There's really a lot of shenanigans going on in this election. Applying Bayesian priors of "of all reasons causing *this*, choose the most likely" paints a surprising, infuriating, and depressing picture of American politics.
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
That's the best sig I've seen in quite awhile.