No, you appear to be right.
This site seems to think so, and a few encyclopedias agree.
Stupid RF engineers..."It's *omnidirectional*! It radiates equally in all two dimensions!". I guess when they figured out there are actually 3 dimensions of space, they decided to call something that does that "isotropic".
Okay, not really, but it does seem a little short-sighted...I mean they could have called it a "planar antenna" or an "isoplanar antenna" or something like that.
It's so nice of you to take each sentence I said on its own so that the sentences around it don't skew its meaning.
You seem quite able to express your alternative viewpoint. I don't see the IOC sending lawyers to stop you.
I never said I wasn't able to express my viewpoint. I never even implied it.
It is not an "alternative viewpoint" to broadcast women's spear-chucking on ABC. It is unlicensed use of Olympic content. ABC would love to profit by carrying Olympic games without having to pay the licensing fee. It is not censorship for them to be prevented from doing so.
Who says it has to be unlicensed? If there wasn't an exclusive contract for showing the Olympics, then every station or network could license it, if they so pleased.
I'm sure that there are a lot of wanna-be baseball commentators who would love to use AL and NL games as a background to promote themselves; it is not censorship that the AL and NL have contracts for carriage that prevent just anyone from broadcasting AL and NL games.
I'm not too familiar with the licensing scheme used in baseball, but as long as anyone who wants be a commentator can pay the license fee and comment, I'm ok with it. If they're restricting the licenses a single group, or based on what they think the wannabe commentators are going to say, it's censorship.
What would be a problem is exclusion of people from bidding on those contracts. ABC and CBS were free to bid, and probably did, they just didn't offer as much. "Free market capitalism" is not just the consumer, it also has to consider the producer.
The IOC has a monopoly on the Olympics. The exclusive contracts are a method of artificially limiting supply in order to raise prices. The exclusive contract also gives the purchaser a monopoly on the Olympics.
Unregulated monopolies are the least efficient structure in the capitalist system. They generally provide lower quality goods at higher costs than is present in other structures. In addition monopolies generally target their product only to the largest group. In other structures, competitors generally diversify to fill niches in the market, since targetting a few smaller groups may result in more market share than just focusing on the largest group.
If ABC had bid more than NBC for the Olympics, I'd still be posting this. The problem is not who won the bid, but the fact that the contract is exclusive. Exclusive contracts generally result in the creation of artificial monopolies.
I hate to nit-pick such an interesting post, but could you explain the difference between a 'point source' and an omnidirectional source?
From my emag classes in school, I remember a point source radiates in an ever expanding sphere (from this geometry you get the inverse square law).
From 6th grade English I remember that the prefix omni roughly means 'all'. So an omnidirectional signal propogates equally in all directions. That means the signal would have to by definition radiate in an ever-expanding sphere. Hence it *must* be a point source.
Though quite obviously a cellphone antenna is not a point source. And yet they're supposed to be omnidirectional. Hence the world is mad.
Ok, not really. For most purposes the cellphone can be treated as a point source, because it's small and so far away (relative to the tower). Next to a person's head it's somewhere between an infinite line source and a point source. This would make the signal stronger than if it were a point source (since an infinite line only attenuates at 1/r). I'd like to try to tell you how strong, but that involves crazy math, and besides, my world is so much simpler with cows shaped like spheres.
"Now, if it were possible to generate a message to collide with a given hash, that would be a big deal."
Really? I don't think so. In order to do anything with it it would also have to pass all the other sanity checks.
Use an faked md5 to put out rootkitted.tgz? Odds are that any other message with the same hash isn't going to be a valid.tgz.
Use md5 to verify logins? Then who cares if someone can generate a message to collide with your password's hash when it's computationally more difficult than regenerating your password.
For the all applications that I've heard md5 being used, I don't think it would be a big deal. But of course I probably am not thinking of some other places md5 is used...
You missed my point. http://www.imuna.org/manual/app_a.html#C defines censorship as "broadly, any government restrictions on speech or writing; more precisely, government restrictions on forms of expression before they are disseminated".
Regardless of how "accurate" this definition may seem to you, a lot of people think of censorship in this way. The parent to my post was thinking this way. It is precisely because this kind of thinking is dangerous that I (half-sarcastically) suggested we develop a new word for "censorship by corporation" (which I jokingly suggested naming "Intellectual Property Rights").
Also, in your post the example you list for corporate censorship was one restricting political speech. I'm sure you're already thinking this, but since the parent to my original post wasn't clear about this, I'm going to say it anyway. Censorship is not limited to political speech. Any form of speech may be subjected to censorship. Galileo faced censorship by the Church.
Is what is happening with the Olympics censorship? Yes and no. Yes because the policies involve prohibit alternative viewpoints from being expressed. I'm sure many stations and commentators have insights they would like to express during the competitions, but due to the exclusive contract, they are not able to. No because the producer's or artist's representative (the IOC) decided on a limited distribution via and exclusive contract (making it self-censorship).
Myself, I happen to believe that all exclusive contracts are and forever shall be an anathema to free market capitalism. And that was the point of my post. I don't care much to argue definitions, so I generally use the definitions of those I am responding to.
Capitalism works best when many suppliers exist. The many suppliers compete based on price and features. This "licensing" creates an artificial monopoly, and creates barriers preventing other companies from offering similar products.
In a free market, any network that wanted (after paying a fee) could show the Olympics. The networks would be competing for viewership, and thus would have to pay attention to what people wanted to see.
I'm not going to say it's censorship, because censorship is done by governments. Maybe we need a new word for "censorship by corporation". How about we call it IPR.
What if in order to carry out the intended effect of the religion, the assertion of religious superiority was necessary?
Jesus's statements are just statements. In order to understand them you have to look at the time, place and audience to which they were said. In order for a radical new religion to grow it is necessary to assert its superiority over the status quo. [However (I would argue) in other places in the new testament you can see seeds of tolerance. Of course these are minimized (and I would argue misunderstood) by the disciples in their writings, but that's probably mostly due to the effects of the difficulties in building their church in the years intervening the death of christ and when they finally got around to writing about it.]
But getting back to what you said: A lot of religions claim that they are the only way to salvation. Christianity is one of them. The fact that some say this and some say that doesn't erase the fact that religions all fulfill the same roles.
Isn't it the standard Christian method of converting atheists to ask them about a "hole in their life". A hole to be filled by religion, by God. Is it that suprising that more than one thing fits in that hole? In that sense, you'd have to agree that all religions are the same.
I agree with you that a lot of people talk about things they know nothing about and act superior, but I would have to point out that it doesn't automatically mean they're wrong. It's just a thesis with no backing, a statement. Like all theses, it needs to be proven or disproven to truly have meaning.
Myself, I think that everyone has their own religion that they build for themselves out of the materials they found around them. If you look at all the members of any religion Christians, Muslims, Jews, Agnostics, and Atheists, you find that each member believes something different from all the others. Sometimes this is a matter of emphasis. Sometimes some people attribute or deny ideas that others might say are part of their religion, much as many homosexual Christians deny what they're doing is wrong. This is why, to me, organized religion can never seen as more than facade formed by people to create a constant, or objective perspective from which they can view reality, and assuage their loneliness by forming a group to which they can belong.
It corrupted everything? What do you mean by that? Would the machine not boot up (A)? Would it boot up, but all your data was gone (B)? Would it not boot up, and when you tried to roll back the update you found all your data was gone (C)?
If (A), you should probably keep an older kernel around in you bootloader so you can roll back if the kernel didn't work. Whenever I roll my own kernel it usually takes me a couple tries before I get one that boots (I usually forget something simple like Ext3 filesystem support, or the IDE controller driver...). If you do that then this situation isn't really a disaster.
Situation (B) and (C) are rather strange. I really don't see how this would happen short of a major fault in the kernel (the kind that doesn't leave a hacker's bench). If you're really paranoid you could create a special fstab that only mounts all the partitions as readonly. Then it would be really unlikely for the new kernel to corrupt your files. If it seems like it's working you could remount a partition you don't mind losing as rw and see if it gets corrupted. That being said I've never seen anything like this...the kernel either works or doesn't work at all.
Although, one disaster I did run into when I initially switched to Linux was that I accidentally trashed my Windows drive. This suprised me because I was installing Linux on hdb and Windows was on hda. I think I misconfigured the bootloader, and accidentally overwrote the partition table (eek) on hda. After resetting the partition values back to something sane, Windows actually booted. Of course windows couldn't actually access files on the second half of the disk (and since the drive was pretty fragmented, that was pretty much everything). I never found the correct cylinder/head/sector/size for that harddrive, so I ended up reformating and reinstalling. (40 GB...of anime....gone =( )
No sane person fights a war to "cover the whole country" with bases, disperse enemy army, and take the enemy leadership into custody. Those may be positive events that eventually lead up to fulfilling our objectives (as has been the case in traditional wars where the objective is conquest or subjugation) or they may be completely independent of our objectives (as has been the case in modern wars^Wpeacekeeping actions).
Let's apply your logic to the "war" against P2P (which shows many similarities). Our goal is to prevent copyright enfringement over the internet. If we take over Napster, sue Kazaa out of business and put their leadership in jail can you say that we truly have won -- even though the copyright enfringement continues?
You're probably right that we haven't won or lost yet, and I could even stretch to say that Iraq may be better off than it was before we came.
But what really bothers me is I still don't know why we invaded. The WMD excuse is stupid, as the administration is not incompetent. If the administration would explain truthfully why we ended up over there, the Iraq war would bother me less. As is, I have no method of evaluating its success, since I'm left only guessing at the objectives. And of course once it's all over, they'll look at the objectives we achieved and say those were what we were trying to accomplish to begin with.
What is the purpose of war? What were our objectives in going to war? Were our objectives to "cover the whole country" with bases, disperse the enemy army, and take enemy leader ship into custory? If so, then you're right. We won.
If our objective included peace in the Middle East, preventing attacks on America, saving the lives of innocent Iraqis or turning Iraq into a stable, free country, then we lost.
If a "solution" doesn't solve the problem as originally posed, then it is a failure, regardless of how someone would grade that solution by itself.
But who knows...maybe you're right and I'm wrong. Say, on a completely and totally unrelated note, I am now selling my clinically proven anti-Cancer anti-AIDS drug: PbUAs. This drug combines atomic age physics, and ancient herbal remedies into a powerful new drug with a heavy-metal feel. A couple doses are guaranteed to eliminate all known diseases. Unfortunately I am only able to offer this for a limited time as I have a licensing meeting next week in the Caymens, so act now!
What happens to your precious C and assembly when you compile and assemble them? They get converted into machine code for whatever processor you are running it on.
JVM stands for Java Virtual Machine. It is called that because it interprets the Java bytecodes as if they were machine instructions, and executes them as if they were running on a "Java Machine". The JVM is just an emulator for a standard "Java Machine". At the time Java was designed, there was no real machine that could execute Java bytecodes.
The specialized Java processors use Java bytecodes as their instruction set (to an extent, they leave out a few bytecodes and usually add I/O instructions). This is what I mean by mostly implemented in hardware. They still need a low-level operating system to handle linking and garbage collection, but this is usually already burned into the ROM (along with a few specialized classes to handle I/O and such), so the developer doesn't need to worry about it.
If you're still unclear how this is possible, feel free to read the JVM specification: http://java.sun.com/docs/books/vmspec/2nd-edition/ html/Instructions2.doc.html It doesn't specifically say that this can/should/has be/be/been done, but you can look at the instruction set and see if you think it could reasonably be implemented in hardware.
This post represents everything slashdot is about: -Elitism
Fact is most of the posters seem to think themselves above normal people. This post pokes at that in an annoyingly obvious, but still valid way.
In addition it uses one of the many slashdottisms that slashdotters as a group use to differentiate themselves. Sure he didn't refer to a beowulf cluster of hot grits Natalie Portman overlords bio-engineering (in Japan) you (in Soviet Russia), but he did include one, and that's worth something, right? -Geekyness
Reference to something obscure. Possibly he was referencing to an obscure television episode (was it/The Twilight Zone/?) in which, after misfeeding the ant colony, the ants (now really big) turn an entire town into a sort of "people colony". If I remember the episode correctly, the post even captured the feeling portrayed at the end where the little boy was wondering what the ants were going to do with them. Or maybe he was referencing that obscure movie with.....
Anyway, how is this flamebait? It may not be worth a +5 funny, and probably not +2 funny, but probably should live at 0 or 1. -1 is for the trolls and people who intentionally do something stupid. But that's just my opinion...
Yeah, the latest versions of Azureus are really nice. It runs smoothly on my machine and doesn't seem to be slowing down other apps at all (an improvement over what I was seeing in 2.0.4, but it could be the 2.6 kernel which I adopted about the same time...).
But it's still Java, and so that means it eats memory for breakfast. If I use gtop (top says 20% for each of the 4 currently active java processes, but that doesn't have much meaning to me...) to check the memory usage it shows that the Java processes (with no other Java-based apps running -- checked using "ps -Af | grep java | grep -v Azureus") has a resident size of 7432128k, a shared size of 5953872k, a total size of 22875472k, a virtual size of 23247480k, and a swapped size of 15551328k. None of the other programs (including X which has mapped my Video memory) comes close. X is only using 23684k/276220k/291204k/290040k/266356k. Since I only have 512 MB of RAM it's kind of ridiculous for it to allocate that much memory... It also has used more CPU time than X, but with all the hashing it does I would expect that.
Did you even bother reading what the poster wrote?
He's not talking about using Java on PPC, ARM, or AD Blackfin. He's talking about using it on machines designed for Java. In these cases, most of the 'JVM' is implemented in hardware, so it's not slow. The included classes are scaled down to what you could conceivably use (none of the GUI stuff), so it's not really that bloated. The GC is still non-deterministic so you wouldn't want to use it in an avionics system, but it would work fine in embedded systems without hard realtime constraints. And since most embedded systems don't have hard realtime constraints they would work fine in most embedded systems.
That being said, I wouldn't want to use one....(eee...Java....).
How could that be useful for stenography? Don't most compilers just use pick one of the redundant instructions and use that throughout? If so you just have to look for an executable that alternates betweent redundant instructions, and then you know that data is in there. At that point you're no better off than if you used plain encryption (and encryption uses less bandwidth...).
How do you know there's information in a given executable? If you know what compiler it was compiled under you could look for opcodes that aren't generated by that compiler. But what if you don't know what compiler generated the executable? And what if the information isn't hidden in the opcodes at all, but merely in the ordering of rearrangeable instructions? Take the following two instructions for example: mov ax, 5 mov bx, 6 What if your stenography program would set them in alphabetical order by register for 0 and reverse alphabetical order by register for 1? Or what if it was instead based on the numerical order of the immediate values? Or heck, we don't really have to use bx here, we could use cx instead. But then again, all of those outputs could be generated from the same source file by different compilers (and possibly even with the same compiler -- just slightly different source files). This means that it would be impossible to know if a given file contains stenographic information, and even then, you would have to look at the exact right combination of features in order to decode the message, and anything else would give you garbage.
Though as I was writing that, I thought of a way to possibly detect stenographic executables: Compilers generally do the same thing the same way every time. If the executable appears to alternate or shift the way it does things, then it probably contains stenographic information. Images are definitely much better for information hiding (more randomness to hide in...). Yes the precious jpg's in my po^H^H art collection would be perfect...
Yeah, but that's not what we were talking about. We were talking about that website.
I agree with you that there is no way to prove the veracity of the bible and that the argument is circular (but millions of people can't be wrong =P, right?).
That's why I believe that the truth must stand on its own. If something is true, then it doesn't need faith or a book to back it up; it is true regardless. Of course that contradicts what the bible says, so that's one of the reasons (in addition to that whole 'Jesus' thing...) I identify myself as a non-Christian.
As far as slavery^Wservanthood goes, I can't really say I'd be that rabidly against it if it wasn't abusive. And really if you're going to point something like that out, the treatment of women is much worse in the bible than the treatment of slaves. Women were property first, people second, whereas servants were men firts, and property second. If you beat your wife, she deserved it; if you beat your servant he is free to go. The only time women are free to go is if their husbands abandon them.
Slavery: Most of the apparent contradictions in the slavery passages can be resolved if you let god not be against slavery, but merely abusive slavery. The remaining two I see are Mt. 4:10, Mt. 23:10 and 1Cor.7:23. Mt. 4:10 is talking about not worshiping the devil...not slavery. Mt 23:10 appears to be talking about the structure of the religious institution (don't serve rabbis, serve god). 1Cor. 7:23 is talking about something unrelated also. The preceding verse: "For he that is called in the Lord, being a servant, is the Lord's freeman: likewise also he that is called, being free, is Christ's servant.". This context makes it clear that the writer isn't talking against slavery.
Polygamy: The quotes almost speak for themselves here. On one side you have the commandments of God saying to do something, and on the other side you have the history of Jewish leadership doing something else. Could it be that the leaders were (*gasp*) not without sin? The only quote I feel the need to explain is 2 Sam.12:7-8. This verse has been...taken...out...of...context. This quote is from a passage where Nathan is telling David a narration of David's life from the Lord's perspective. After David took over Saul's kingdom David got everything that was formerly Saul's (including the wives). What their quote implied is that since David didn't inherit the punishment due to Saul, god must be pro-polygamy. Note however, the Lord's response when David gains an extra wife (who he steals after sending her previous husband off to war...): "Thus saith the LORD, Behold, I will raise up evil against thee out of thine own house, and I will take thy wives before thine eyes".
As for your assertion that straight quotes are as unbiased as possible, that is demonstratably false. What if I were to say "I was involved in promoting the initiative that created the internet". Then what if you were to quote me "I...created the internet". Then there's quite an obvious bias there (the quote was specifically designed to make me look stupid). Or if I were to say: "Women should not be slaves, but in the case they are, for their own protection, they should be submissive to their masters". Now let's pull two quotes out of that and compare them side by side: "Women should not be slaves". "Women..should be submissive to their masters". Those are obviously in conflict. How could a sane person hold both those views! It's an obvious contradiction. And I quoted them directly with no commentary, so no bias.
The answer is of course context. Quotes need context to be meaningful. When you write a paper and use quotes to back your point you have to provide an interpretation of the context surrounding the quote in order for it to have meaning. Without context quotes have no more meaning than the words they are made of. In most writing you put the context in commentary around the quotation. For instance "While the author expresses his dislike of female slavery, he chauvanistically suggests that '[Women] should be submissive to their masters'. Quite clearly we can see that the author is a fucktard".
I wouldn't have a problem with the way that website does it (after all they do link to the actual biblical text they're quoting), except that they don't seem to be taking the context into account when they pull out the quotes. The instances I saw in there mostly argue semantics and definitions (which you can't really do with a work that old that has gone through so many translations -- at least if you expect to be taken seriously...). And all of the really serious sounding points are taken completely out of context in really obvious ways.
I still have to agree with the original poster-- it makes a great resource for aspiring Christians. To see opponents fail to make a valid point, it only reinforces their 'faith' (through a logical fallacy whose name presently slips my mind).
I appreciate your polite response, but I find your analogy comparing it to the "choice of driving fast" to be ill suited for your argument: "I like to drive fast. I can choose to do so, but face a possible ticket. Does that consequnece somehow take away my ability to make that choice?" I would say, "Yes, it does".
Our society developed arbitrary consequences for speeding (tickets) in order to coerce people to drive slower. I'm not saying that laws against speeding are wrong and should be abolished, but their coercive effects artificially restrict our choice. Without speeding tickets and fines the only consequences to driving fast would be possible (probable) accidents. People would weigh the risks to themselves and others against the benefits of driving fast. With speeding tickets, the entire choice is skewed. The addition of the artificial parameter (tickets) caused an increase in cost. Since this cost is not an integral part of the situation, I would classify this as coercion.
I would probably say the same thing with the threats of hellfire and brimstone. They aren't part of the situation (I don't remember hearing about any hellfire and brimstone in Eden...). The use of such a threat artificially skews all decisions infinitely in a certain way. I find it hard to believe that someone wielding such a weapon in that way really cares about my freedom of choice. It's like pointing a gun at someone's head and saying "You *love* me, don't you?". Would you seriously respect that person's actions in that situation as their 'choice'? And an eternity of torture is about as big a gun as you can pull out.
People still speed and people still Sin. People weigh a few minutes of time against a few tenths of a percent chance. People weigh momentary desires*(1) against the possibility an incoporeal entity will hold it against them some day.
Of course the speeding ticket situation is a bit different. We have speeding laws to protect those people that don't want to take the increased risks of accidents caused by fast driving. This balances the choice of some for speed with the choice of others for safety. I know it's fruitless for me to ask a Christian to divine the intentions of God (whose almighty ambiguity we are forever incapable of comprehending [there goes that pride again...]), but what reason does God have to provide such coercion?
Footnotes: *(1) desires: Speaking of desires...Isn't it odd that we are given these desires and then told exactly how we are or not to exercise them? I can't really imagine a worse torture than being made to want to do something and then being prevented (by force or coercion). You can try to blame desires on the devil, but you can see quite clearly the devil is only capable of making us rationalize our desires: in the garden of Eden, Eve already wanted the apple before the devil persuaded her to pick it.
I'm sorry but that still makes very little sense. If you're going to be writing any data to disk during a file copy, wouldn't it always be preferable to write the copied data?
Also, what happens if the file you are copying is larger than the amount of memory? It would be impossible for the entire file to fit into RAM for the copy. Swapping it to disk would be pointless, since if you're going to wait for it to be written to disk, you might as well write it to the right place on disk...
As a non-Christian I agree with your evaluation of that website: You're right. It is rather pathetic.
Most of the arguments on that site are nit-picky little things. There's nothing there that points to large gaping holes in Christian ideology. At best they point out one or two places where two passages were translated slightly differently or had different context. At worst they make a big show of pointing out nothing.
Me, I'm a non-Christian because I find Christianity to be full of fundamental ideological flaws. The most important flaws aren't the one on the written page, but the ones where broad ideas conflict. These are not resolvable through context or explanation without changing the religion. I won't go into specifics now because I need to get some dinner, but I did mention a couple in other posts in this story.
Even if you have critical thinking skills, maybe you're not using them. All Christians have an invested interest in their religion. Reading this book in particular they lack objectivity. Hence they are more likely to weave intricate and fallacious arguments debunking any exposed contradictions, and then not recognize the flaws in their own arguments.
In the past, such debunking was unthinkable. Christianity was THE TRUTH. If other people got the idea that you weren't entirely sure about this they sent you to god for explanation (usually on a fiery wooden chariot). It just wasn't a good idea to even think along this line of thought...
In the present, our society is more open to the questioning of the Christian version of the truth. People feel comfortable analyzing the works of God like they would other books. All books have contradictions, inconsistencies, and ambiguities. Can you say the bible is any different?
I'm not defending or justifying the parent's viewpoint, but explain why your point is somewhat moot.
Myself, I'm not a Christian. I look at the recorded actions of this "merciful" God and decided that if a God like that exists, I don't want to have anything to do with him. I'll stick with my own personal god (who hasn't murdered millions of people, destroyed cities, promoted murder and incest, and other things I find morally abhorrent).
If something can be so easily divided into right and wrong, then there is no choice. Do you want to burn in hellfire for an eternity?--If not give me a quarter. Where's the choice there? Would you really feel that avoiding eternal damnation is not worth a quarter? What sane person would really call that a choice?
Choices are made between options that are either approximately equally beneficial or equally harmful. If God really wanted us to choose, then he wouldn't have left a mountain of brimstone hanging over our head from behind and a carrot in front of our nose.
In fairness, from what I've read of the Bible, it doesn't place nearly as much emphasis on this aspect as Christians--especially Christians trying to convert someone. Of course I have too much pride for this tactic to work on me--I'd rather suffer for eternity (if I believed in it anyway) for believing what I think is right than give up control of my life.
Slashdot Mirror
"Of course that's based on the incorrect assumption that most users actually USE many of the features of MS Office."
Did you miss the part of the article where they mentioned the 100 custom office-based applications that they would need to port?
No, you appear to be right.
This site seems to think so, and a few encyclopedias agree.
Stupid RF engineers..."It's *omnidirectional*! It radiates equally in all two dimensions!". I guess when they figured out there are actually 3 dimensions of space, they decided to call something that does that "isotropic".
Okay, not really, but it does seem a little short-sighted...I mean they could have called it a "planar antenna" or an "isoplanar antenna" or something like that.
It's so nice of you to take each sentence I said on its own so that the sentences around it don't skew its meaning.
You seem quite able to express your alternative viewpoint. I don't see the IOC sending lawyers to stop you.
I never said I wasn't able to express my viewpoint. I never even implied it.
It is not an "alternative viewpoint" to broadcast women's spear-chucking on ABC. It is unlicensed use of Olympic content. ABC would love to profit by carrying Olympic games without having to pay the licensing fee. It is not censorship for them to be prevented from doing so.
Who says it has to be unlicensed? If there wasn't an exclusive contract for showing the Olympics, then every station or network could license it, if they so pleased.
I'm sure that there are a lot of wanna-be baseball commentators who would love to use AL and NL games as a background to promote themselves; it is not censorship that the AL and NL have contracts for carriage that prevent just anyone from broadcasting AL and NL games.
I'm not too familiar with the licensing scheme used in baseball, but as long as anyone who wants be a commentator can pay the license fee and comment, I'm ok with it. If they're restricting the licenses a single group, or based on what they think the wannabe commentators are going to say, it's censorship.
What would be a problem is exclusion of people from bidding on those contracts. ABC and CBS were free to bid, and probably did, they just didn't offer as much. "Free market capitalism" is not just the consumer, it also has to consider the producer.
The IOC has a monopoly on the Olympics. The exclusive contracts are a method of artificially limiting supply in order to raise prices. The exclusive contract also gives the purchaser a monopoly on the Olympics. Unregulated monopolies are the least efficient structure in the capitalist system. They generally provide lower quality goods at higher costs than is present in other structures. In addition monopolies generally target their product only to the largest group. In other structures, competitors generally diversify to fill niches in the market, since targetting a few smaller groups may result in more market share than just focusing on the largest group.
If ABC had bid more than NBC for the Olympics, I'd still be posting this. The problem is not who won the bid, but the fact that the contract is exclusive. Exclusive contracts generally result in the creation of artificial monopolies.
No, just make it so cowardly that if it sees something strange it freezes in fear and then calls 'mom' for help.
I hate to nit-pick such an interesting post, but could you explain the difference between a 'point source' and an omnidirectional source?
From my emag classes in school, I remember a point source radiates in an ever expanding sphere (from this geometry you get the inverse square law).
From 6th grade English I remember that the prefix omni roughly means 'all'. So an omnidirectional signal propogates equally in all directions. That means the signal would have to by definition radiate in an ever-expanding sphere. Hence it *must* be a point source.
Though quite obviously a cellphone antenna is not a point source. And yet they're supposed to be omnidirectional. Hence the world is mad.
Ok, not really. For most purposes the cellphone can be treated as a point source, because it's small and so far away (relative to the tower). Next to a person's head it's somewhere between an infinite line source and a point source. This would make the signal stronger than if it were a point source (since an infinite line only attenuates at 1/r). I'd like to try to tell you how strong, but that involves crazy math, and besides, my world is so much simpler with cows shaped like spheres.
"Now, if it were possible to generate a message to collide with a given hash, that would be a big deal."
.tgz? Odds are that any other message with the same hash isn't going to be a valid .tgz.
Really? I don't think so.
In order to do anything with it it would also have to pass all the other sanity checks.
Use an faked md5 to put out rootkitted
Use md5 to verify logins? Then who cares if someone can generate a message to collide with your password's hash when it's computationally more difficult than regenerating your password.
For the all applications that I've heard md5 being used, I don't think it would be a big deal. But of course I probably am not thinking of some other places md5 is used...
You missed my point.
http://www.imuna.org/manual/app_a.html#C defines censorship as "broadly, any government restrictions on speech or writing; more precisely, government restrictions on forms of expression before they are disseminated".
Regardless of how "accurate" this definition may seem to you, a lot of people think of censorship in this way. The parent to my post was thinking this way. It is precisely because this kind of thinking is dangerous that I (half-sarcastically) suggested we develop a new word for "censorship by corporation" (which I jokingly suggested naming "Intellectual Property Rights").
Also, in your post the example you list for corporate censorship was one restricting political speech. I'm sure you're already thinking this, but since the parent to my original post wasn't clear about this, I'm going to say it anyway. Censorship is not limited to political speech. Any form of speech may be subjected to censorship. Galileo faced censorship by the Church.
Is what is happening with the Olympics censorship? Yes and no.
Yes because the policies involve prohibit alternative viewpoints from being expressed. I'm sure many stations and commentators have insights they would like to express during the competitions, but due to the exclusive contract, they are not able to.
No because the producer's or artist's representative (the IOC) decided on a limited distribution via and exclusive contract (making it self-censorship).
Myself, I happen to believe that all exclusive contracts are and forever shall be an anathema to free market capitalism. And that was the point of my post. I don't care much to argue definitions, so I generally use the definitions of those I am responding to.
Capitalism works best when many suppliers exist. The many suppliers compete based on price and features. This "licensing" creates an artificial monopoly, and creates barriers preventing other companies from offering similar products.
In a free market, any network that wanted (after paying a fee) could show the Olympics. The networks would be competing for viewership, and thus would have to pay attention to what people wanted to see.
I'm not going to say it's censorship, because censorship is done by governments. Maybe we need a new word for "censorship by corporation". How about we call it IPR.
What if in order to carry out the intended effect of the religion, the assertion of religious superiority was necessary?
Jesus's statements are just statements. In order to understand them you have to look at the time, place and audience to which they were said. In order for a radical new religion to grow it is necessary to assert its superiority over the status quo. [However (I would argue) in other places in the new testament you can see seeds of tolerance. Of course these are minimized (and I would argue misunderstood) by the disciples in their writings, but that's probably mostly due to the effects of the difficulties in building their church in the years intervening the death of christ and when they finally got around to writing about it.]
But getting back to what you said:
A lot of religions claim that they are the only way to salvation. Christianity is one of them. The fact that some say this and some say that doesn't erase the fact that religions all fulfill the same roles.
Isn't it the standard Christian method of converting atheists to ask them about a "hole in their life". A hole to be filled by religion, by God. Is it that suprising that more than one thing fits in that hole? In that sense, you'd have to agree that all religions are the same.
I agree with you that a lot of people talk about things they know nothing about and act superior, but I would have to point out that it doesn't automatically mean they're wrong. It's just a thesis with no backing, a statement. Like all theses, it needs to be proven or disproven to truly have meaning.
Myself, I think that everyone has their own religion that they build for themselves out of the materials they found around them. If you look at all the members of any religion Christians, Muslims, Jews, Agnostics, and Atheists, you find that each member believes something different from all the others. Sometimes this is a matter of emphasis. Sometimes some people attribute or deny ideas that others might say are part of their religion, much as many homosexual Christians deny what they're doing is wrong. This is why, to me, organized religion can never seen as more than facade formed by people to create a constant, or objective perspective from which they can view reality, and assuage their loneliness by forming a group to which they can belong.
It corrupted everything? What do you mean by that?
Would the machine not boot up (A)? Would it boot up, but all your data was gone (B)? Would it not boot up, and when you tried to roll back the update you found all your data was gone (C)?
If (A), you should probably keep an older kernel around in you bootloader so you can roll back if the kernel didn't work. Whenever I roll my own kernel it usually takes me a couple tries before I get one that boots (I usually forget something simple like Ext3 filesystem support, or the IDE controller driver...). If you do that then this situation isn't really a disaster.
Situation (B) and (C) are rather strange. I really don't see how this would happen short of a major fault in the kernel (the kind that doesn't leave a hacker's bench). If you're really paranoid you could create a special fstab that only mounts all the partitions as readonly. Then it would be really unlikely for the new kernel to corrupt your files. If it seems like it's working you could remount a partition you don't mind losing as rw and see if it gets corrupted. That being said I've never seen anything like this...the kernel either works or doesn't work at all.
Although, one disaster I did run into when I initially switched to Linux was that I accidentally trashed my Windows drive. This suprised me because I was installing Linux on hdb and Windows was on hda. I think I misconfigured the bootloader, and accidentally overwrote the partition table (eek) on hda. After resetting the partition values back to something sane, Windows actually booted. Of course windows couldn't actually access files on the second half of the disk (and since the drive was pretty fragmented, that was pretty much everything). I never found the correct cylinder/head/sector/size for that harddrive, so I ended up reformating and reinstalling. (40 GB...of anime....gone =( )
Those standards can hardly be considered wierd.
No sane person fights a war to "cover the whole country" with bases, disperse enemy army, and take the enemy leadership into custody. Those may be positive events that eventually lead up to fulfilling our objectives (as has been the case in traditional wars where the objective is conquest or subjugation) or they may be completely independent of our objectives (as has been the case in modern wars^Wpeacekeeping actions).
Let's apply your logic to the "war" against P2P (which shows many similarities). Our goal is to prevent copyright enfringement over the internet. If we take over Napster, sue Kazaa out of business and put their leadership in jail can you say that we truly have won -- even though the copyright enfringement continues?
You're probably right that we haven't won or lost yet, and I could even stretch to say that Iraq may be better off than it was before we came.
But what really bothers me is I still don't know why we invaded. The WMD excuse is stupid, as the administration is not incompetent. If the administration would explain truthfully why we ended up over there, the Iraq war would bother me less. As is, I have no method of evaluating its success, since I'm left only guessing at the objectives. And of course once it's all over, they'll look at the objectives we achieved and say those were what we were trying to accomplish to begin with.
What is the purpose of war?
What were our objectives in going to war?
Were our objectives to "cover the whole country" with bases, disperse the enemy army, and take enemy leader ship into custory? If so, then you're right. We won.
If our objective included peace in the Middle East, preventing attacks on America, saving the lives of innocent Iraqis or turning Iraq into a stable, free country, then we lost.
If a "solution" doesn't solve the problem as originally posed, then it is a failure, regardless of how someone would grade that solution by itself.
But who knows...maybe you're right and I'm wrong.
Say, on a completely and totally unrelated note, I am now selling my clinically proven anti-Cancer anti-AIDS drug: PbUAs. This drug combines atomic age physics, and ancient herbal remedies into a powerful new drug with a heavy-metal feel. A couple doses are guaranteed to eliminate all known diseases. Unfortunately I am only able to offer this for a limited time as I have a licensing meeting next week in the Caymens, so act now!
What happens to your precious C and assembly when you compile and assemble them? They get converted into machine code for whatever processor you are running it on.
/ html/Instructions2.doc.html
JVM stands for Java Virtual Machine.
It is called that because it interprets the Java bytecodes as if they were machine instructions, and executes them as if they were running on a "Java Machine".
The JVM is just an emulator for a standard "Java Machine". At the time Java was designed, there was no real machine that could execute Java bytecodes.
The specialized Java processors use Java bytecodes as their instruction set (to an extent, they leave out a few bytecodes and usually add I/O instructions). This is what I mean by mostly implemented in hardware. They still need a low-level operating system to handle linking and garbage collection, but this is usually already burned into the ROM (along with a few specialized classes to handle I/O and such), so the developer doesn't need to worry about it.
If you're still unclear how this is possible, feel free to read the JVM specification:
http://java.sun.com/docs/books/vmspec/2nd-edition
It doesn't specifically say that this can/should/has be/be/been done, but you can look at the instruction set and see if you think it could reasonably be implemented in hardware.
Why is this flamebait?
/The Twilight Zone/?) in which, after misfeeding the ant colony, the ants (now really big) turn an entire town into a sort of "people colony". If I remember the episode correctly, the post even captured the feeling portrayed at the end where the little boy was wondering what the ants were going to do with them. Or maybe he was referencing that obscure movie with.....
This post represents everything slashdot is about:
-Elitism
Fact is most of the posters seem to think themselves above normal people. This post pokes at that in an annoyingly obvious, but still valid way.
In addition it uses one of the many slashdottisms that slashdotters as a group use to differentiate themselves. Sure he didn't refer to a beowulf cluster of hot grits Natalie Portman overlords bio-engineering (in Japan) you (in Soviet Russia), but he did include one, and that's worth something, right?
-Geekyness
Reference to something obscure. Possibly he was referencing to an obscure television episode (was it
Anyway, how is this flamebait?
It may not be worth a +5 funny, and probably not +2 funny, but probably should live at 0 or 1. -1 is for the trolls and people who intentionally do something stupid. But that's just my opinion...
Yeah, the latest versions of Azureus are really nice. It runs smoothly on my machine and doesn't seem to be slowing down other apps at all (an improvement over what I was seeing in 2.0.4, but it could be the 2.6 kernel which I adopted about the same time...).
But it's still Java, and so that means it eats memory for breakfast. If I use gtop (top says 20% for each of the 4 currently active java processes, but that doesn't have much meaning to me...) to check the memory usage it shows that the Java processes (with no other Java-based apps running -- checked using "ps -Af | grep java | grep -v Azureus") has a resident size of 7432128k, a shared size of 5953872k, a total size of 22875472k, a virtual size of 23247480k, and a swapped size of 15551328k. None of the other programs (including X which has mapped my Video memory) comes close. X is only using 23684k/276220k/291204k/290040k/266356k. Since I only have 512 MB of RAM it's kind of ridiculous for it to allocate that much memory...
It also has used more CPU time than X, but with all the hashing it does I would expect that.
Did you even bother reading what the poster wrote?
He's not talking about using Java on PPC, ARM, or AD Blackfin. He's talking about using it on machines designed for Java.
In these cases, most of the 'JVM' is implemented in hardware, so it's not slow. The included classes are scaled down to what you could conceivably use (none of the GUI stuff), so it's not really that bloated.
The GC is still non-deterministic so you wouldn't want to use it in an avionics system, but it would work fine in embedded systems without hard realtime constraints. And since most embedded systems don't have hard realtime constraints they would work fine in most embedded systems.
That being said, I wouldn't want to use one....(eee...Java....).
How could that be useful for stenography?
Don't most compilers just use pick one of the redundant instructions and use that throughout? If so you just have to look for an executable that alternates betweent redundant instructions, and then you know that data is in there. At that point you're no better off than if you used plain encryption (and encryption uses less bandwidth...).
How do you know there's information in a given executable?
If you know what compiler it was compiled under you could look for opcodes that aren't generated by that compiler. But what if you don't know what compiler generated the executable?
And what if the information isn't hidden in the opcodes at all, but merely in the ordering of rearrangeable instructions?
Take the following two instructions for example:
mov ax, 5
mov bx, 6
What if your stenography program would set them in alphabetical order by register for 0 and reverse alphabetical order by register for 1? Or what if it was instead based on the numerical order of the immediate values? Or heck, we don't really have to use bx here, we could use cx instead.
But then again, all of those outputs could be generated from the same source file by different compilers (and possibly even with the same compiler -- just slightly different source files).
This means that it would be impossible to know if a given file contains stenographic information, and even then, you would have to look at the exact right combination of features in order to decode the message, and anything else would give you garbage.
Though as I was writing that, I thought of a way to possibly detect stenographic executables: Compilers generally do the same thing the same way every time. If the executable appears to alternate or shift the way it does things, then it probably contains stenographic information. Images are definitely much better for information hiding (more randomness to hide in...). Yes the precious jpg's in my po^H^H art collection would be perfect...
Yeah, but that's not what we were talking about.
We were talking about that website.
I agree with you that there is no way to prove the veracity of the bible and that the argument is circular (but millions of people can't be wrong =P, right?).
That's why I believe that the truth must stand on its own. If something is true, then it doesn't need faith or a book to back it up; it is true regardless. Of course that contradicts what the bible says, so that's one of the reasons (in addition to that whole 'Jesus' thing...) I identify myself as a non-Christian.
As far as slavery^Wservanthood goes, I can't really say I'd be that rabidly against it if it wasn't abusive. And really if you're going to point something like that out, the treatment of women is much worse in the bible than the treatment of slaves. Women were property first, people second, whereas servants were men firts, and property second. If you beat your wife, she deserved it; if you beat your servant he is free to go. The only time women are free to go is if their husbands abandon them.
Those aren't gaping holes.
Slavery:
Most of the apparent contradictions in the slavery passages can be resolved if you let god not be against slavery, but merely abusive slavery. The remaining two I see are Mt. 4:10, Mt. 23:10 and 1Cor.7:23.
Mt. 4:10 is talking about not worshiping the devil...not slavery.
Mt 23:10 appears to be talking about the structure of the religious institution (don't serve rabbis, serve god).
1Cor. 7:23 is talking about something unrelated also. The preceding verse: "For he that is called in the Lord, being a servant, is the Lord's freeman: likewise also he that is called, being free, is Christ's servant.". This context makes it clear that the writer isn't talking against slavery.
Polygamy:
The quotes almost speak for themselves here. On one side you have the commandments of God saying to do something, and on the other side you have the history of Jewish leadership doing something else. Could it be that the leaders were (*gasp*) not without sin? The only quote I feel the need to explain is 2 Sam.12:7-8. This verse has been...taken...out...of...context.
This quote is from a passage where Nathan is telling David a narration of David's life from the Lord's perspective. After David took over Saul's kingdom David got everything that was formerly Saul's (including the wives). What their quote implied is that since David didn't inherit the punishment due to Saul, god must be pro-polygamy. Note however, the Lord's response when David gains an extra wife (who he steals after sending her previous husband off to war...):
"Thus saith the LORD, Behold, I will raise up evil against thee out of thine own house, and I will take thy wives before thine eyes".
As for your assertion that straight quotes are as unbiased as possible, that is demonstratably false. What if I were to say "I was involved in promoting the initiative that created the internet". Then what if you were to quote me "I...created the internet". Then there's quite an obvious bias there (the quote was specifically designed to make me look stupid).
Or if I were to say:
"Women should not be slaves, but in the case they are, for their own protection, they should be submissive to their masters".
Now let's pull two quotes out of that and compare them side by side:
"Women should not be slaves". "Women..should be submissive to their masters".
Those are obviously in conflict. How could a sane person hold both those views! It's an obvious contradiction. And I quoted them directly with no commentary, so no bias.
The answer is of course context. Quotes need context to be meaningful. When you write a paper and use quotes to back your point you have to provide an interpretation of the context surrounding the quote in order for it to have meaning. Without context quotes have no more meaning than the words they are made of. In most writing you put the context in commentary around the quotation. For instance "While the author expresses his dislike of female slavery, he chauvanistically suggests that '[Women] should be submissive to their masters'. Quite clearly we can see that the author is a fucktard".
I wouldn't have a problem with the way that website does it (after all they do link to the actual biblical text they're quoting), except that they don't seem to be taking the context into account when they pull out the quotes. The instances I saw in there mostly argue semantics and definitions (which you can't really do with a work that old that has gone through so many translations -- at least if you expect to be taken seriously...). And all of the really serious sounding points are taken completely out of context in really obvious ways.
I still have to agree with the original poster-- it makes a great resource for aspiring Christians. To see opponents fail to make a valid point, it only reinforces their 'faith' (through a logical fallacy whose name presently slips my mind).
I appreciate your polite response, but I find your analogy comparing it to the "choice of driving fast" to be ill suited for your argument:
"I like to drive fast. I can choose to do so, but face a possible ticket. Does that consequnece somehow take away my ability to make that choice?"
I would say, "Yes, it does".
Our society developed arbitrary consequences for speeding (tickets) in order to coerce people to drive slower. I'm not saying that laws against speeding are wrong and should be abolished, but their coercive effects artificially restrict our choice.
Without speeding tickets and fines the only consequences to driving fast would be possible (probable) accidents. People would weigh the risks to themselves and others against the benefits of driving fast.
With speeding tickets, the entire choice is skewed. The addition of the artificial parameter (tickets) caused an increase in cost. Since this cost is not an integral part of the situation, I would classify this as coercion.
I would probably say the same thing with the threats of hellfire and brimstone. They aren't part of the situation (I don't remember hearing about any hellfire and brimstone in Eden...). The use of such a threat artificially skews all decisions infinitely in a certain way. I find it hard to believe that someone wielding such a weapon in that way really cares about my freedom of choice. It's like pointing a gun at someone's head and saying "You *love* me, don't you?". Would you seriously respect that person's actions in that situation as their 'choice'? And an eternity of torture is about as big a gun as you can pull out.
People still speed and people still Sin. People weigh a few minutes of time against a few tenths of a percent chance. People weigh momentary desires*(1) against the possibility an incoporeal entity will hold it against them some day.
Of course the speeding ticket situation is a bit different. We have speeding laws to protect those people that don't want to take the increased risks of accidents caused by fast driving. This balances the choice of some for speed with the choice of others for safety.
I know it's fruitless for me to ask a Christian to divine the intentions of God (whose almighty ambiguity we are forever incapable of comprehending [there goes that pride again...]), but what reason does God have to provide such coercion?
Footnotes:
*(1) desires: Speaking of desires...Isn't it odd that we are given these desires and then told exactly how we are or not to exercise them? I can't really imagine a worse torture than being made to want to do something and then being prevented (by force or coercion). You can try to blame desires on the devil, but you can see quite clearly the devil is only capable of making us rationalize our desires: in the garden of Eden, Eve already wanted the apple before the devil persuaded her to pick it.
I'm sorry but that still makes very little sense.
If you're going to be writing any data to disk during a file copy, wouldn't it always be preferable to write the copied data?
Also, what happens if the file you are copying is larger than the amount of memory? It would be impossible for the entire file to fit into RAM for the copy. Swapping it to disk would be pointless, since if you're going to wait for it to be written to disk, you might as well write it to the right place on disk...
As a non-Christian I agree with your evaluation of that website:
You're right. It is rather pathetic.
Most of the arguments on that site are nit-picky little things. There's nothing there that points to large gaping holes in Christian ideology. At best they point out one or two places where two passages were translated slightly differently or had different context. At worst they make a big show of pointing out nothing.
Me, I'm a non-Christian because I find Christianity to be full of fundamental ideological flaws. The most important flaws aren't the one on the written page, but the ones where broad ideas conflict. These are not resolvable through context or explanation without changing the religion. I won't go into specifics now because I need to get some dinner, but I did mention a couple in other posts in this story.
Even if you have critical thinking skills, maybe you're not using them. All Christians have an invested interest in their religion. Reading this book in particular they lack objectivity. Hence they are more likely to weave intricate and fallacious arguments debunking any exposed contradictions, and then not recognize the flaws in their own arguments.
In the past, such debunking was unthinkable. Christianity was THE TRUTH. If other people got the idea that you weren't entirely sure about this they sent you to god for explanation (usually on a fiery wooden chariot). It just wasn't a good idea to even think along this line of thought...
In the present, our society is more open to the questioning of the Christian version of the truth. People feel comfortable analyzing the works of God like they would other books. All books have contradictions, inconsistencies, and ambiguities. Can you say the bible is any different?
I'm not defending or justifying the parent's viewpoint, but explain why your point is somewhat moot.
Myself, I'm not a Christian. I look at the recorded actions of this "merciful" God and decided that if a God like that exists, I don't want to have anything to do with him. I'll stick with my own personal god (who hasn't murdered millions of people, destroyed cities, promoted murder and incest, and other things I find morally abhorrent).
"Of course, the wrong choice has consequences."
If something can be so easily divided into right and wrong, then there is no choice.
Do you want to burn in hellfire for an eternity?--If not give me a quarter.
Where's the choice there? Would you really feel that avoiding eternal damnation is not worth a quarter? What sane person would really call that a choice?
Choices are made between options that are either approximately equally beneficial or equally harmful. If God really wanted us to choose, then he wouldn't have left a mountain of brimstone hanging over our head from behind and a carrot in front of our nose.
In fairness, from what I've read of the Bible, it doesn't place nearly as much emphasis on this aspect as Christians--especially Christians trying to convert someone.
Of course I have too much pride for this tactic to work on me--I'd rather suffer for eternity (if I believed in it anyway) for believing what I think is right than give up control of my life.