Ideally, maybe, but most of the used textbooks I've flipped through that had significant notes and highlighting appear to have been previously owned by idiots.
Milton Freedman won a Nobel Prize in Economics, and argued that corporations should be abolished as incompatible with free-market capitalism (they're collectivist entities, in which decision-makers are neither using their own capital nor responsible for their decisions).
I mostly agree, but I think there is a range of middle grounds. Many people see the law as some sort of black magic that they couldn't possibly understand without "being a lawyer", much like many people view "programming" as this mythical thing that mere mortals couldn't ever even think of doing. I think both views are somewhat harmful on the whole, even if lawyers and programmers are still necessary: it would be better if a significant percentage of people (at least to whom it was relevant) had basic understandings of each.
In the legal context, I've fortunately not needed to actually participate in any lawsuits, but I've found that having a decent working knowledge of multiple areas of law is useful in even knowing when to find a lawyer, and which kind of lawyer to find. Some lawyers are good at telling you, "no no, this isn't my area, you really want to see someone who specializes in 'magic keywords'". But not all lawyers do this; some, much like the laypeople you describe, overestimate the complexity of other areas of law. And of course, many people will end up having to make many legal decisions over the course of their lives without consulting lawyers--- people sign contracts all the time without being able to run every single one by a lawyer, and it would be ideal if they had some basic idea of what they were signing and what kinds of tricks to watch out for. Computer scientists in particular could do well to know some basics of copyright and patent law--- not to the point of drafting a patent, but to at least the point of being able to converse semi-intelligently on something and know some things about, say, software licensing.
I believe it's intended in the sense of modeling a particular feature of human biology by using an animal whose biology supposedly functions similarly in the relevant respect.
I agree it's often over-used as a euphemism, though. It makes the most sense when used in a comparative context, for example explaining the pros and cons of "computational models" vs "animal models" (or even occasionally "physical models") for modeling particular elements of human biology.
Yeah, that's true. I'm not arguing Google actually did anything negative here. It was more pointing out that if hypothetically we all switched from mowing lawns to using goats to eat them (which likely would result in more goats being kept for that purpose), it might have negative effects. Then again, the positive effects might outweigh the negative ones.
How about the government for once having to do what everyone ELSE has to do in a recession? Do with LESS.
I'm not sure there are significant groups of economists, on either the left or right or in between, who actually think it'd be a good idea for governments to run pro-cyclical fiscal policies. If the government spends more in good times, and less in bad times, it compounds both bubbles and recessions.
It's net-zero carbon output, but not net-zero effect on global warming: methane is a much stronger greenhouse gas than CO2, and a number of animals do quite a bit of conversion of plant carbon to methane. This is a main reason that the meat industry has a non-negligible effect on global warming.
There was a piece on G4TV a while back about a game parodying airport security policies. While you might think Apple objected to the concept itself, they rejected it instead for "inappropriate sexual content", without telling the developer what specifically they objected to, leaving him rather confused since the game wasn't sexually explicit at all. It turned out, after some months of guessing and resubmission and trying to contact people, that what had offended Apple was the inclusion of items like underwire bras (which are notorious for setting off metal detectors).
If I recall correctly, it was an antitrust complaint: Adobe was complaining that Microsoft was leveraging their Office monopoly to undercut Acrobat Pro with a free workalike. Similar to the complaint Netscape made about Microsoft giving away IE with Windows.
I think they're more saying that you need some argument for why you're making the request. The fact that it's sufficient to make colorful posters and wave around a PhD just means that the MN court has put a fairly low bar on how good the argument has to be--- but they do require that you make some sort of argument. The guy whose request was rejected appears not to have made any argument at all for why retrieving the source code would plausibly help his trial; he just stated flatly that it might, which is not usually sufficient. The other guy made some effort to argue why the source code for this sort of device was relevant to his case.
That's not really the same fashion. You install Flash once to play all Flash games on the internet; you don't have to install a new browser plugin for each specific game. The advantage to the end-user there is that they can click around the internet and play things without installing new plugins, once they've done it once.
Now if id was proposing a new general browser plugin that many games could use, that'd be similar. But it seems that this is a Quake-Live-specific plugin, so it really is sort of like downloading an.exe and running it, only it's in the browser for no apparent reason.
There's bipartisan blame for that bill, but it was primarily pushed by Republicans.
The act itself was named Gramm-Leach-Bliley after its three Republican drafters and promoters. The first version of the act passed both Houses with mainly Republican support, especially in the Senate. In the House, it passed 343-86, with a 205-16 tally for the Republicans, and 138-70 for the Democrats (counting Sanders as a D for the moment). In the Senate, it passed 54-44, with a 53-0 tally for the Republicans, and a 1-44 tally for the Democrats. Schumer actually voted against that version of the bill (Fritz Hollings was the lone Democrat in favor).
After reconciliation between the House and Senate versions failed, a new version was drafted that gave some concessions to Democrats, mainly in the form of strengthened anti-redlining provisions and strengthened medical and financial privacy regulations. The sweetened bill passed by large margins, though still with the Democrats (now reduced to only a smaller core) being the primary opposition. In the House, 57 still voted no, including 52 Democrats and only 5 Republicans. In the Senate, there were 8 nays, comprised of 7 Democrats and 1 Republican. Clinton (a Democrat) signed the bill.
That ignores supply/demand. Sure, there are a non-zero number of people who currently pay $900/ounce to use it as a conductor. But not nearly enough to account for the (rather large) supply of gold, so if its price stopped being bid up by people using it as a currency (and central banks artificially increasing its scarcity by hoarding it as currency), the price would collapse, because there is not enough demand for gold as a metal to support current prices.
Gold can't be worth $80 "for its use value" or nobody would pay $900 to use it!
Sure they would; that's how currencies get value! People are willing to pay for something that they believe to be currency even if they don't think it has any inherent value. Paper dollar bills have close to zero use value, yet people are willing to trade commodities for them, purely because of their currency value.
Indeed, it's been frequently pointed out that "casual games" aren't defined by how much people actually play them, but by the perceived time sink. If you in theory could play 20 minutes, it's a casual game, even if a large proportion of people play 5-hour stretches.
Sure, there's been inflation over a 10-year time span, especially if you have your cutoff in 2008. But stagflation is inflation concurrent with economic stagnation. That, I don't see: since the current major recession began sometime in early to mid 2008, there has been small to negative inflation. The price of crude oil has plummeted by 70% since mid-2008, the price of many food staples is down significantly over the past year (corn down 50%), etc. Where do you see the inflation concurrent with economic stagnation. What is more expensive in mid 2009 than in mid 2008?
It's a hypothetical of course, but it's not incoherent to consider the matter. Gold doesn't trade mainly as a commodity, but as a currency, so it's interesting to ponder what its commodity value is, if it weren't used as a currency. For example, what would happen to the price of all central banks sold their reserves of bullion? It wouldn't go to zero, because gold does have value as a metal--- it's in demand for jewelry and various industrial uses. But it would be considerably lower than $900/ounce.
You could use root on a VM to root all other VMs on the system, which is not normally expected. Certainly VPS providers don't expect their customers to be able to root their other customers' boxes.
On the plus side, the working exploit code appears only to be for a desktop board, which is not likely to be used in a lot of security-critical VMs.
I don't think that works either: the consensus of physicists at least presently is that entanglement alone cannot transmit classical information, stated as the "no-communication theorem". Quantum entanglement can be used together with a classical communication channel to transit information via quantum teleportation, in which information that doesn't flow over the classical communication channel nonetheless gets spookily transmitted. But the requirement of a classical communication channel does still mean no information can be transmitted faster than the speed of light.
I believe transmitting information faster than light is explicitly ruled out by the special theory of relativity, and leads to all sorts of paradoxes if it's posited to be possible. That's not just a practical limitation on materials science, but a fundamental physical law, so I suspect there must be some other explanation for why this marble thought experiment doesn't work.
My guess is that the intuition of the incompressible-marbles-transmit-signals-instantly example discounts relativistic effects, so only really works at much-lower-than-c speeds. I can't offhand explain what exactly the relativistic effect that makes it fail would be, but one guess is the one explained here, that you're setting up a scenario with infinite phase velocity, but where information can still only be transmitted at a lower group velocity.
It doesn't necessarily require a lot of subsidies. A large proportion of the fees paid for American internet access go to profits of the oligopolies who provide it; if it were provided on an at-cost basis, it would be considerably cheaper.
Slashdot Mirror
Ideally, maybe, but most of the used textbooks I've flipped through that had significant notes and highlighting appear to have been previously owned by idiots.
Milton Freedman won a Nobel Prize in Economics, and argued that corporations should be abolished as incompatible with free-market capitalism (they're collectivist entities, in which decision-makers are neither using their own capital nor responsible for their decisions).
I mostly agree, but I think there is a range of middle grounds. Many people see the law as some sort of black magic that they couldn't possibly understand without "being a lawyer", much like many people view "programming" as this mythical thing that mere mortals couldn't ever even think of doing. I think both views are somewhat harmful on the whole, even if lawyers and programmers are still necessary: it would be better if a significant percentage of people (at least to whom it was relevant) had basic understandings of each.
In the legal context, I've fortunately not needed to actually participate in any lawsuits, but I've found that having a decent working knowledge of multiple areas of law is useful in even knowing when to find a lawyer, and which kind of lawyer to find. Some lawyers are good at telling you, "no no, this isn't my area, you really want to see someone who specializes in 'magic keywords'". But not all lawyers do this; some, much like the laypeople you describe, overestimate the complexity of other areas of law. And of course, many people will end up having to make many legal decisions over the course of their lives without consulting lawyers--- people sign contracts all the time without being able to run every single one by a lawyer, and it would be ideal if they had some basic idea of what they were signing and what kinds of tricks to watch out for. Computer scientists in particular could do well to know some basics of copyright and patent law--- not to the point of drafting a patent, but to at least the point of being able to converse semi-intelligently on something and know some things about, say, software licensing.
The US has no blasphemy laws. Guess which country shows like Southpark are made in?
Europe, meanwhile does have blasphemy laws.
I believe it's intended in the sense of modeling a particular feature of human biology by using an animal whose biology supposedly functions similarly in the relevant respect.
I agree it's often over-used as a euphemism, though. It makes the most sense when used in a comparative context, for example explaining the pros and cons of "computational models" vs "animal models" (or even occasionally "physical models") for modeling particular elements of human biology.
Yeah, that's true. I'm not arguing Google actually did anything negative here. It was more pointing out that if hypothetically we all switched from mowing lawns to using goats to eat them (which likely would result in more goats being kept for that purpose), it might have negative effects. Then again, the positive effects might outweigh the negative ones.
I'm not sure there are significant groups of economists, on either the left or right or in between, who actually think it'd be a good idea for governments to run pro-cyclical fiscal policies. If the government spends more in good times, and less in bad times, it compounds both bubbles and recessions.
It's net-zero carbon output, but not net-zero effect on global warming: methane is a much stronger greenhouse gas than CO2, and a number of animals do quite a bit of conversion of plant carbon to methane. This is a main reason that the meat industry has a non-negligible effect on global warming.
They actually accepted it after he removed the supposedly sexual items, though, which makes that explanation strange.
There was a piece on G4TV a while back about a game parodying airport security policies. While you might think Apple objected to the concept itself, they rejected it instead for "inappropriate sexual content", without telling the developer what specifically they objected to, leaving him rather confused since the game wasn't sexually explicit at all. It turned out, after some months of guessing and resubmission and trying to contact people, that what had offended Apple was the inclusion of items like underwire bras (which are notorious for setting off metal detectors).
If I recall correctly, it was an antitrust complaint: Adobe was complaining that Microsoft was leveraging their Office monopoly to undercut Acrobat Pro with a free workalike. Similar to the complaint Netscape made about Microsoft giving away IE with Windows.
I think they're more saying that you need some argument for why you're making the request. The fact that it's sufficient to make colorful posters and wave around a PhD just means that the MN court has put a fairly low bar on how good the argument has to be--- but they do require that you make some sort of argument. The guy whose request was rejected appears not to have made any argument at all for why retrieving the source code would plausibly help his trial; he just stated flatly that it might, which is not usually sufficient. The other guy made some effort to argue why the source code for this sort of device was relevant to his case.
That's not really the same fashion. You install Flash once to play all Flash games on the internet; you don't have to install a new browser plugin for each specific game. The advantage to the end-user there is that they can click around the internet and play things without installing new plugins, once they've done it once.
Now if id was proposing a new general browser plugin that many games could use, that'd be similar. But it seems that this is a Quake-Live-specific plugin, so it really is sort of like downloading an .exe and running it, only it's in the browser for no apparent reason.
There's bipartisan blame for that bill, but it was primarily pushed by Republicans.
The act itself was named Gramm-Leach-Bliley after its three Republican drafters and promoters. The first version of the act passed both Houses with mainly Republican support, especially in the Senate. In the House, it passed 343-86, with a 205-16 tally for the Republicans, and 138-70 for the Democrats (counting Sanders as a D for the moment). In the Senate, it passed 54-44, with a 53-0 tally for the Republicans, and a 1-44 tally for the Democrats. Schumer actually voted against that version of the bill (Fritz Hollings was the lone Democrat in favor).
After reconciliation between the House and Senate versions failed, a new version was drafted that gave some concessions to Democrats, mainly in the form of strengthened anti-redlining provisions and strengthened medical and financial privacy regulations. The sweetened bill passed by large margins, though still with the Democrats (now reduced to only a smaller core) being the primary opposition. In the House, 57 still voted no, including 52 Democrats and only 5 Republicans. In the Senate, there were 8 nays, comprised of 7 Democrats and 1 Republican. Clinton (a Democrat) signed the bill.
That ignores supply/demand. Sure, there are a non-zero number of people who currently pay $900/ounce to use it as a conductor. But not nearly enough to account for the (rather large) supply of gold, so if its price stopped being bid up by people using it as a currency (and central banks artificially increasing its scarcity by hoarding it as currency), the price would collapse, because there is not enough demand for gold as a metal to support current prices.
Gold can't be worth $80 "for its use value" or nobody would pay $900 to use it!
Sure they would; that's how currencies get value! People are willing to pay for something that they believe to be currency even if they don't think it has any inherent value. Paper dollar bills have close to zero use value, yet people are willing to trade commodities for them, purely because of their currency value.
Indeed, it's been frequently pointed out that "casual games" aren't defined by how much people actually play them, but by the perceived time sink. If you in theory could play 20 minutes, it's a casual game, even if a large proportion of people play 5-hour stretches.
Sure, there's been inflation over a 10-year time span, especially if you have your cutoff in 2008. But stagflation is inflation concurrent with economic stagnation. That, I don't see: since the current major recession began sometime in early to mid 2008, there has been small to negative inflation. The price of crude oil has plummeted by 70% since mid-2008, the price of many food staples is down significantly over the past year (corn down 50%), etc. Where do you see the inflation concurrent with economic stagnation. What is more expensive in mid 2009 than in mid 2008?
Where are the indication that we're seeing stagflation? I see mainly indications of deflation.
It's a hypothetical of course, but it's not incoherent to consider the matter. Gold doesn't trade mainly as a commodity, but as a currency, so it's interesting to ponder what its commodity value is, if it weren't used as a currency. For example, what would happen to the price of all central banks sold their reserves of bullion? It wouldn't go to zero, because gold does have value as a metal--- it's in demand for jewelry and various industrial uses. But it would be considerably lower than $900/ounce.
The US also ratified the more specific Convention Against Torture, which even provides a definition of torture, in 1994.
You could use root on a VM to root all other VMs on the system, which is not normally expected. Certainly VPS providers don't expect their customers to be able to root their other customers' boxes.
On the plus side, the working exploit code appears only to be for a desktop board, which is not likely to be used in a lot of security-critical VMs.
I don't think that works either: the consensus of physicists at least presently is that entanglement alone cannot transmit classical information, stated as the "no-communication theorem". Quantum entanglement can be used together with a classical communication channel to transit information via quantum teleportation, in which information that doesn't flow over the classical communication channel nonetheless gets spookily transmitted. But the requirement of a classical communication channel does still mean no information can be transmitted faster than the speed of light.
I believe transmitting information faster than light is explicitly ruled out by the special theory of relativity, and leads to all sorts of paradoxes if it's posited to be possible. That's not just a practical limitation on materials science, but a fundamental physical law, so I suspect there must be some other explanation for why this marble thought experiment doesn't work.
My guess is that the intuition of the incompressible-marbles-transmit-signals-instantly example discounts relativistic effects, so only really works at much-lower-than-c speeds. I can't offhand explain what exactly the relativistic effect that makes it fail would be, but one guess is the one explained here, that you're setting up a scenario with infinite phase velocity, but where information can still only be transmitted at a lower group velocity.
It doesn't necessarily require a lot of subsidies. A large proportion of the fees paid for American internet access go to profits of the oligopolies who provide it; if it were provided on an at-cost basis, it would be considerably cheaper.