Only "very easily" when used improperly. Condoms for instance have about a 98% success rate if used properly. The pill is essentially 100% if taken daily.
The only sure way to be free of pregnancies and STDs is abstinence.
It's not sure. What if you are raped?
I wouldn't be suprised if abstenance actually had a lower success rate at preventing pregnancy than abstenance.
It's simple, and it's free, it's worked since the dawn of time. Yes, it requires men to keep their trousers on, and girls to keep their legs together, but it's not rocket science. Try thinking with your brain rather than your dick.
So you're saying that people shouldn't take risks? Sure there's a risk of pregnancy and STDs, especially if you don't take precautions. But there's also a risk from skydiving, hiking, biking, swimming in the ocean, and driving to work. Should we advocate an abstenance view when it comes to those activities as well? What makes the risks from sex different? I doubt they are higher.
So you're saying in effect that if you don't like the law, you should be free to break it, and that if you get caught, then you should be let off as long as you tell the judge you think the law is unjust?
No, I'm saying that: a. the law should be changed, and b. people should keep in mind the shortcomings of the law when making judgements.
Well, perhaps you should reconsider the idea of extra-marital sex. Before everyone started sleeping around with everyone else we didn't have nearly so many STDs or underage pregnancies.
And if schools could actually teach proper use of condoms et. al., we wouldn't have nearly so many STDs or underage pregnancies. It's quite possible to have responsible sex.
As for a 19 year old having sex with his 17 year old girlfriend, well, he knew the law. She was underage, it was illegal, but then again the sort of people who get up to that sort of thing are rarely the most intelligent. No sympathy from me.
That's a stupid argument unless you accept that the law is always right. Do you?
We're not arguing that the guy didn't break the law, we're arguing that the guy isn't guilty of anything that should be criminally punished because the law is wrong.
Also, exactly how do you differentiate between "minor" and "major" sex offenses? A crime is a crime.
The law doesn't have a hard time... that's why there are violations, petty misdemeanors, misdemeanors, and first, second, and third degree felonies. (That's the model penal code's division I believe. YMMV. New York, for example, has violations, A and B misdemeanors, and A-E felonies.)
Without getting into whether both should be legal or both illegal, why should someone who is 19 and has sex with someone 17 get charged with rape, while neither someone who is 20 who has sex with someone 18 nor someone 17y 364d who has sex with someone 16?
It's illegal to take (or give) bribes here too. Sort of. "Campaign donations" are okay, as are "de minimis" gifts. Not sure what the difference is between a bribe and campaign donation except the agreement is explicit in the former and implied in the latter.;-)
(Some states don't allow riders BTW. This is one of the reforms I have for when I become supreme dictator of the US for a couple years one day.)
If a GAIM developer should walk into an attorney's office with proof that IMblaze is a ripoff of their code, there should be a compensation check and a court injunction against IMblaze within 24 hours.
So how does that work? Does IMblaze not get a chance to defend itself?
No one wants to pay Microsoft to let someone download their software for free.
It's not so much that, because you could probably find the support unless it was obscenely expensive. I bet companies that support Linux, like IBM, would help pay. Remember, the OSS movement raised a hundred grand (maybe three hundred, I don't remember) to buy Blender. Bit of a difference between a 3D renderer and filesystem spec, but I bet MS's price would reflect that.
Probably the catch is that MS wouldn't let you use the specs in a program that could be GPL'd.
Company A then sues B for copyright infringement for using their drivers.
The point of this argument is that better OSS drivers could be produced with open specs. It'd be kinda hard to get a judgement from someone who explicitly allows distribution.
Even if they were to not use an OSS driver, as long as they didn't ship the driver with their hardware and just said "d/l it from company A's site here", they'd be in the clear criminally. The only offense they might have done is an EULA violation.
Of course, this ignores any patents that might cover the card.
You'd think that Adaptec would be willing to spend a few $10k in order to gain $5M in revenue. Hell, I'd do it.
But spending that few $10K (if that cheap) comes with the risks of giving competeing companies the extra bit of information they need to improve their product (at the expense of product A), etc.
See other posts about the economics for other risks some companies would face. (If revealing the spec would reveal they've violated someone's patent or agreement, expose a vulnerability, etc.)
I agree that there are plenty of situations where you would favor response time over throughput, but surely you can concede that there are times at which it would be nice to have your computer working at its full potential and not restricted somewhat arbitrarily.
If I were a video production house and have a rendering farm set up, I wouldn't gonna care if the machines are usable; I'd want them to be working at full load. And if the time comes when the only chips that are offered are dual or more core, I'd be pretty pissed if the software was only able to operate half as fast as it could.
The only time I really encountered SMT (apart from "Pentium 4: now with hyperthreading!" ads) was during a 15 minute discussion of a research problem I could have worked on, so it hadn't crossed my mind. I appreciate your discussion of it.
My only qualm with it is I would've liked to have the option of assigning the install a static address rather than having it grab one automatically from my DHCP server, but that was easily remedied after the install was finished. It's probably even a configurable option but Debian Sarge was so easy to install I didn't see much point in even looking at the release notes unless I had a problem.
If you do any other installations, or for other people, there's a boot parameter you can pass in so that it will turn this off. Section 5.2.1 in the installation manual:
netcfg/disable_dhcp
By default, the debian-installer automatically probes for network
configuration via DHCP. If the probe succeeds, you won't have a chance to
review and change the obtained settings. You can get to the manual network
setup only in case the DHCP probe fails.
If you have a DHCP server on your local network, but want to avoid it
because e.g. it gives wrong answers, you can use the parameter netcfg/
disable_dhcp=true to prevent configuring the network with DHCP and to enter
the information manually.
Worries you why? Remember, Debian's packages are pretty old so that it's more likely bugs have been ironed out. It's not like when there was the XFree86/X.org split Debian went with XFree86 instead of X.org, it's just that the version of X in Sarge is pre-schism.
And yeah, X.org moves to testing soon (if it hasn't already), so the next stable release will have it.
Rereading this, I'm not sure if you meant that instead of waiting for a branch to resolve it could start working on another thread; if you didn't, please ignore my other reply.
On the other hand, I don't see any other way to achieve what you suggest.
What about applications where substantial parts are inherently sequential?
Also, I'm not sure that even ignoring that if you'd get the performance benefits you claim. You're ignoring the overhead of switching threads for instance. Just in that process, you've got a nice collection of branches. Even if you were talking about lightweight application threads (instead of OS threads), the overhead of changing threads at each branch would more than negate the reduction of complexity brought about by the omission of branch prediction. (Remember that conditional branches are extremely common. The number that comes to mind is, on average, every 6-8 instructions there's a conditional branch, though I don't know if this is on RISC, CISC, something like the P4, even expressed in a high-level language, etc., or even if it's right.)
Like for instance, currently my CPU is running at about 90% idle. Let's say I add another CPU or another core. I want to encode a video. If the codec can't take advantage of the fact that I have two CPUs/cores at all, it's gonna sit there using 100% of one processor (assuming the OS is even smart enough to never context switch it out) and the second CPU/core is gonna sit there at 90% idle.
If the codec could take full advantage of my two processors, the time to encode would take a little over half as long.
The same can be said for a lot of other applications too.
You don't mod people down over Godwin's Law. You declare the argument over, and the person who tried to use nazis or Hitler to vilify their opponent is the loser. There is not "-1, Godwin" mod category, nor should there be.
Good point. Astronomy has saved innumerable lives. The next time you're in a serious accident, rest assured that you can immediately dial 911 on your telescope.
And dialing 911 at 35,000 feet will save someone's life how?
Besides, it's not as if most planes are probably gonna do anything special to support cell phones, just the restrictions will be lifted. Planes that DO do something will be relaying the signal anyway, so it seems to me (with admittedly little knowledge of the electronics) that it wouldn't be that much more difficult to relay them on a changed frequency.
Good point. People are never incredibly annoying on airplanes now, but that will change completely with cell phones.
Good point. Because things are bad now we shouldn't think about preventing it from getting worse.
Slashdot requires you to wait 2 minutes between each successful posting of a comment to allow everyone a fair chance at posting a comment.
It's been 17 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment
Stupid slashcode... anyone else having this problem? (I asked this before and got pointed to a bug report, but is it a widespread thing or isolated?)
I'm not trying to argue for his point (I'll leave the decision as an exercise for the reader; I will agree with you though), just trying to say what it is.
Slashdot Mirror
When the result of said risk is bringing an unwanted child into the world or murdering it, or propagating a lethal disease which kills millions
Driving down the road poses risks to other people on the road, walking down the sidewalk, even sitting in their home. Again, how is this different?
I'm sorry, Are you a retard?
That was meant to say "I wouldn't be surprised if pure abstenance actually had a lower success rate at preventing pregnancy than the pill."
Contraception fails, very easily.
Only "very easily" when used improperly. Condoms for instance have about a 98% success rate if used properly. The pill is essentially 100% if taken daily.
The only sure way to be free of pregnancies and STDs is abstinence.
It's not sure. What if you are raped?
I wouldn't be suprised if abstenance actually had a lower success rate at preventing pregnancy than abstenance.
It's simple, and it's free, it's worked since the dawn of time. Yes, it requires men to keep their trousers on, and girls to keep their legs together, but it's not rocket science. Try thinking with your brain rather than your dick.
So you're saying that people shouldn't take risks? Sure there's a risk of pregnancy and STDs, especially if you don't take precautions. But there's also a risk from skydiving, hiking, biking, swimming in the ocean, and driving to work. Should we advocate an abstenance view when it comes to those activities as well? What makes the risks from sex different? I doubt they are higher.
So you're saying in effect that if you don't like the law, you should be free to break it, and that if you get caught, then you should be let off as long as you tell the judge you think the law is unjust?
No, I'm saying that:
a. the law should be changed, and
b. people should keep in mind the shortcomings of the law when making judgements.
Well, perhaps you should reconsider the idea of extra-marital sex. Before everyone started sleeping around with everyone else we didn't have nearly so many STDs or underage pregnancies.
And if schools could actually teach proper use of condoms et. al., we wouldn't have nearly so many STDs or underage pregnancies. It's quite possible to have responsible sex.
As for a 19 year old having sex with his 17 year old girlfriend, well, he knew the law. She was underage, it was illegal, but then again the sort of people who get up to that sort of thing are rarely the most intelligent. No sympathy from me.
That's a stupid argument unless you accept that the law is always right. Do you?
We're not arguing that the guy didn't break the law, we're arguing that the guy isn't guilty of anything that should be criminally punished because the law is wrong.
And why again is it his fault for doing what should be his due dilligence?
Also, exactly how do you differentiate between "minor" and "major" sex offenses? A crime is a crime.
The law doesn't have a hard time... that's why there are violations, petty misdemeanors, misdemeanors, and first, second, and third degree felonies. (That's the model penal code's division I believe. YMMV. New York, for example, has violations, A and B misdemeanors, and A-E felonies.)
Who said anything about married couple?
Without getting into whether both should be legal or both illegal, why should someone who is 19 and has sex with someone 17 get charged with rape, while neither someone who is 20 who has sex with someone 18 nor someone 17y 364d who has sex with someone 16?
It's illegal to take (or give) bribes here too. Sort of. "Campaign donations" are okay, as are "de minimis" gifts. Not sure what the difference is between a bribe and campaign donation except the agreement is explicit in the former and implied in the latter. ;-)
(Some states don't allow riders BTW. This is one of the reforms I have for when I become supreme dictator of the US for a couple years one day.)
If a GAIM developer should walk into an attorney's office with proof that IMblaze is a ripoff of their code, there should be a compensation check and a court injunction against IMblaze within 24 hours.
So how does that work? Does IMblaze not get a chance to defend itself?
Monad works substantially differently than the Unix tools.
I do some work just fine on an Athlon 500. This computer is about 6 years old, and it suits my purposes.
No one wants to pay Microsoft to let someone download their software for free.
It's not so much that, because you could probably find the support unless it was obscenely expensive. I bet companies that support Linux, like IBM, would help pay. Remember, the OSS movement raised a hundred grand (maybe three hundred, I don't remember) to buy Blender. Bit of a difference between a 3D renderer and filesystem spec, but I bet MS's price would reflect that.
Probably the catch is that MS wouldn't let you use the specs in a program that could be GPL'd.
Oh, I agree... I didn't mean my post to be construed in support for the overall argument...
Company A then sues B for copyright infringement for using their drivers.
The point of this argument is that better OSS drivers could be produced with open specs. It'd be kinda hard to get a judgement from someone who explicitly allows distribution.
Even if they were to not use an OSS driver, as long as they didn't ship the driver with their hardware and just said "d/l it from company A's site here", they'd be in the clear criminally. The only offense they might have done is an EULA violation.
Of course, this ignores any patents that might cover the card.
You'd think that Adaptec would be willing to spend a few $10k in order to gain $5M in revenue. Hell, I'd do it.
But spending that few $10K (if that cheap) comes with the risks of giving competeing companies the extra bit of information they need to improve their product (at the expense of product A), etc.
See other posts about the economics for other risks some companies would face. (If revealing the spec would reveal they've violated someone's patent or agreement, expose a vulnerability, etc.)
I agree that there are plenty of situations where you would favor response time over throughput, but surely you can concede that there are times at which it would be nice to have your computer working at its full potential and not restricted somewhat arbitrarily.
If I were a video production house and have a rendering farm set up, I wouldn't gonna care if the machines are usable; I'd want them to be working at full load. And if the time comes when the only chips that are offered are dual or more core, I'd be pretty pissed if the software was only able to operate half as fast as it could.
Okay, I see what you're saying.
The only time I really encountered SMT (apart from "Pentium 4: now with hyperthreading!" ads) was during a 15 minute discussion of a research problem I could have worked on, so it hadn't crossed my mind. I appreciate your discussion of it.
If you do any other installations, or for other people, there's a boot parameter you can pass in so that it will turn this off. Section 5.2.1 in the installation manual:
Worries you why? Remember, Debian's packages are pretty old so that it's more likely bugs have been ironed out. It's not like when there was the XFree86/X.org split Debian went with XFree86 instead of X.org, it's just that the version of X in Sarge is pre-schism.
And yeah, X.org moves to testing soon (if it hasn't already), so the next stable release will have it.
Rereading this, I'm not sure if you meant that instead of waiting for a branch to resolve it could start working on another thread; if you didn't, please ignore my other reply.
On the other hand, I don't see any other way to achieve what you suggest.
What about applications where substantial parts are inherently sequential?
Also, I'm not sure that even ignoring that if you'd get the performance benefits you claim. You're ignoring the overhead of switching threads for instance. Just in that process, you've got a nice collection of branches. Even if you were talking about lightweight application threads (instead of OS threads), the overhead of changing threads at each branch would more than negate the reduction of complexity brought about by the omission of branch prediction. (Remember that conditional branches are extremely common. The number that comes to mind is, on average, every 6-8 instructions there's a conditional branch, though I don't know if this is on RISC, CISC, something like the P4, even expressed in a high-level language, etc., or even if it's right.)
What if you're doing one lengthy task though?
Like for instance, currently my CPU is running at about 90% idle. Let's say I add another CPU or another core. I want to encode a video. If the codec can't take advantage of the fact that I have two CPUs/cores at all, it's gonna sit there using 100% of one processor (assuming the OS is even smart enough to never context switch it out) and the second CPU/core is gonna sit there at 90% idle.
If the codec could take full advantage of my two processors, the time to encode would take a little over half as long.
The same can be said for a lot of other applications too.
You don't mod people down over Godwin's Law. You declare the argument over, and the person who tried to use nazis or Hitler to vilify their opponent is the loser. There is not "-1, Godwin" mod category, nor should there be.
Maybe there should be a (0, Godwin) moderation.
Good point. Astronomy has saved innumerable lives. The next time you're in a serious accident, rest assured that you can immediately dial 911 on your telescope.
And dialing 911 at 35,000 feet will save someone's life how?
Besides, it's not as if most planes are probably gonna do anything special to support cell phones, just the restrictions will be lifted. Planes that DO do something will be relaying the signal anyway, so it seems to me (with admittedly little knowledge of the electronics) that it wouldn't be that much more difficult to relay them on a changed frequency.
Good point. People are never incredibly annoying on airplanes now, but that will change completely with cell phones.
Good point. Because things are bad now we shouldn't think about preventing it from getting worse.
Slashdot requires you to wait 2 minutes between each successful posting of a comment to allow everyone a fair chance at posting a comment.
It's been 17 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment
Stupid slashcode... anyone else having this problem? (I asked this before and got pointed to a bug report, but is it a widespread thing or isolated?)
I worry about the public's lack of concern for science especially given the extreme right wing movements...
We had better secure that then. It's difficult to stay in the air without wings.
I'm not trying to argue for his point (I'll leave the decision as an exercise for the reader; I will agree with you though), just trying to say what it is.
So mod this guy up a couple points