Not only that, he's suggesting that the bot will be able to solve it the best way possible, to win the competition. But the best way possible is not algorithmically determinable, as of yet. If there was a way to solve an abitrary problem through computers - well, I guess that means that computers have achieved something like human intelligence, human beings are Turing machines, computers can program themselves, and they don't need us anymore. Welcome to the Matrix.
There is a correlation most likely, but it probably has a lot to do with what type of problem and so can't accurately be generalized to all product flaws. If my adapter stops working, I'm probably just going to get a new one. If my adapter explodes and plants a triangular piece of PowerBook shrapnel in my eye, I'm probably going to, you know, mention it the next time I'm in close contact with Steve Jobs or one of his many associates, perhaps weilding a knife of some sort.
To crystallize: the response that I made to *your* comment was arguing against *you*, and as far as I know you are not the top poster. Refer to my original reply, the one marked "Your Perspective is Stupid." Moreover, the top poster seemed to imply an entailment between bullet 3. and 4. meaning he can't watch YouTube videos, so therefore he doesn't want to, and then followed it up by saying "Why should I upload videos to YouTube?" as if it was YouTube's duty to accomodate his decision to not install Flash or convince him to use YouTube. The answer seemed self-evident: you shouldn't upload videos to YouTube if you don't want to.
Again, my reply was "If you don't want to install Flash, fine." That's your choice. So this whole argument is built on a straw man - basically framing the argument as if I said that you shouldn't be refusing and that you should download Flash to download YouTube videos. All I said was YouTube doesn't have to cater to you personally.
The word "coerce" has a connotation of forcing someone into an unfair agreement. More weakly, it has the connotation of compelling someone to enter into an agreement. In that sense all agreements are coercions. If YouTube forced you to download an open source, free player to enjoy its content, that would be a coercion too.
Users are being "coerced" in the sense that they are being offered something by YouTube - namely free content - at the same time as being compelled to agree to download the free Flash player to enjoy this content. The Flash player runs on all three major operating systems - Linux, Mac, and Windows. Are you unhappy about this "coercion?" Who is losing anything in that transaction, besides the people whose choice it is not to install Flash? It's not really YouTube's failing if they would rather guarantee cross-browser compatibility by choosing a standard interface that is guaranteed to play inside 99% of browsers, stably, and well, and by choosing how their content is delivered - that is, via a reliable, quick, cross-platform, easy-to-use streaming Flash application. That would be one of the great draws of YouTube, after all. Its flash player.
You have to decide what you're arguing against. Are you suggesting that YouTube should switch away from Flash to accomodate your decision not to use Flash? Fine, then you also have to convince the 99% of people who are willing to download Flash that using Flash is not good for them. If you are just saying that you refuse to install Flash, good for you. It's not YouTube's responsibility to accomodate you.
You're not being coerced into anything. Growing numbers of people install Flash. A few people don't install the *free* Flash player because they have some superior view of themselves and refuse being locked in by *free* content providers who don't even have advertising revenue into a "DRM'd" "proprietary" - oh yeah - *free* software player.
You might have a point if YouTube charged for its videos. But it doesn't. You have no right to dictate how they distribute their content, and you also have no ground to stand on. If you want them to change, convince the 99% of people who are willing to "give something back" for *free* content and take two seconds of their time to install the *free* Flash player to switch to completely open, completely free software. Pick your battles, geez.
Why do people start ranting on and on about how *everything* should be free and open and then start blaming companies like YouTube who have to spend $1.5 million a month just to stay alive for not accomodating their unrealistic worldview when I suggest that maybe that's narcissistic and even stupid to think that the whole world has to accomodate your personal choice? Free, open source software has its place. As I said to begin with "If you don't want to install Flash player, fine" implying that it was your choice, but don't expect YouTube to bend over backwards to support your decision. Stop complaining.
The AC said he refuses to install Flash, not that he can't or that it's hard to install Flash. By the time all processors are 64-bit I assume that a 64-bit version of Flash will have been released.
I was just rebutting the sentiment that many "power-users" have that the world should somehow always accomodate their whims even if their whims aren't those of 99% of people and are almost completely irrelevant given the context. I don't think I can think of a reason why YouTube not supporting people who don't want to use Flash is somehow morally wrong. They're giving you something practically for free - you can meet them half-way if you want to enjoy the benefits.
You might as well say - I refuse to connect to the Internet, YouTube only distributes video over the Internet, why should I upload videos to YouTube?
Don't take it personally. If you don't want to install Flash, fine. Most people have no problem with it. And as far as I know, YouTube is catering to most people, not you.
First of all, despite what all the Linux proponents say, Linux is not quite where either Apple or Windows is in terms of desktop usability. Running Linux means running an operating system without a standard set of widgets and interface elements and no cohesive user experience. It also just doesn't look or feel as snappy as OS X or Windows - when you drag a window, at least on the machines I've experienced, you can see the X server trying to catch up - the window has a "tail." The fonts aren't anti-aliased, making it look less attractiive. You have to deal with a variety of package formats just to install and use software, and some expected out of the box features are missing on most distributions. DVD playback, for instance. Printer support is still dodgy. All of these little oversights add up to a less satisfying user experience.
And yes, I do use Ubuntu Linux as my development platform at work, so I'm very aware of Linux's failings. Linux is not competitive (yet) for 90% of users at the moment, and it's going to take a "standard" distribution focused on tying together the user experience to make it competitive. I'm not ruling that possibility out, though.
If Apple ever gets the opportunity to switch its business model to OS licensing, it will obviously allow clone makers to bundle it pre-instaslled on their systems. It will be just like Windows licensing, most likely - the OEM wholesale price being much lower than retail. And to the average user, Apple does offer a lot more than Linux right now, and will probably continue to offer more than Linux because, unlike Linux, almost all of their developers are focused on user experience and out-competing Windows, and the success of the platform depends on a good user experience - unlike Linux, which can fall back on the fact that it is a superior server platform.
Yes, but in all of those cases you use the word 'intent' loosely, because as you say the concept of intent helps you to understand why there are prevalances of one trait over another. As such, all you are really saying is that the world follows laws that are predictable. You don't mean literal intent - evolution is not some teleological race to the finish line, intelligence. Any teleological view of evolution is an loose interpretation not based on the objective reality. Evolution is so natural as to be completely untainted by human constructions such as 'purpose', 'intent', 'utility.' When we assign purposes, utilities, or values to objects we are creating them out of thin air, or we are inheriting them from someone else - in which case we are also creating them out of language or concepts. Purpose is an invention. There are no preceding qualities or values for each object, there is nothing in them that tells us "This is what I am to be used for." All of these concepts are prescribed by the human mind and are used to impose on objects the character of a function.
Correction: Microsoft with DOS and then Windows, I mean. IBM really isn't a big player in the PC business anymore, so it's hard to say that they "won" at all - when they had their chance to crush Microsoft, they screwed it up too.
His conclusion was right but his premises were false. Apple made computers as well as or better than IBM. They just weren't as prescient on the business side. They failed to get a clue once they introduced the Macintosh, when it was time for both sides to lay down their chips. Microsoft, with Windows. Apple with the Macintosh Operating System. If Apple had chosen at that point to license its operating system we would be in a very different world today. I'm not sure that I would prefer that world, because chances are Apple would have become anti-competitive and monopolistic, and their product quality would have diminished. And Microsoft wouldn't have likely risen to be the resident industry source for R&D innovation like Apple has done in actuality.
In a way, they continue to make the same mistakes - only this time, they're not mistakes. They are still controlling every aspect of the platform. However, they are positioning themselves in such a way that will result in a much higher-profile competition with Microsoft - a head to head battle, the same hardware platform with different software. If Apple ever overtakes Microsoft in market share (in the distant future, if at all) they are then in a position to start licensing their operating system, and they will have recreated the opportunity they completely missed in 1984.
That still doesn't mean nihilist, which is a belief in nothing or against any prevailing notion of objective meaning. Jon Stewart, on the other hand, belongs to a fully formed majority of people who say that there is an objective reality, but it's just not the way the conservative establishment says it works. His satire belongs to that belief system.
Bad ideas and false beliefs are going to exist in culture forever. The project of the Daily Show is exactly to correct those beliefs. Regardless of who's in power, there's always somewhere they can turn their satirical lens. The whole premise of the show is what you are criticizing - fake news. If you don't like the concept of fake news, that's your right. But I definitely wouldn't call it nihilistic, and in my opinion it's definitely a lot more incisive, funny and stimulating than the softballs they pitch every weekend on SNL's "Weekend Update" or Leno and Letterman.
Nihilism is a strong word. Many people confuse nihilism with a set of beliefs that is critical of the status quo. It's pretty clear from watching the Daily Show that Jon Stewart is an anti-war liberal who is living in a world dominated by people of the opposing pesuasion. This has the benefit of giving him plenty of material and opportunity for criticism - and the ability to make fun of those whose beliefs are not often challenged day to day by those who surround them, such as our president, for instance.
The beauty of irony and satire is that by stating or satirizing the opposite of what you believe in, you are actually *affirming* your own beliefs. Colbert is the most striking example - he sacrifices his actual persona in favor of a persona who professes the opposite of what he believes for the sake of illuminating the nature of his own beliefs. In this way he effectively replaces what he sees as "fallacy" with what he sees as "the truth" in every thing he says. Polemicism is another way of doing this, but I think irony is more subtle and in some ways more affecting. See Guy Debord who wrote the "Society of the Spectacle". Satire is not only desctructive - it's constructive too. That's why it's seen as an art.
Anyway, this is my third post in defense of the Daily Show and the Colbert Report. Back to work.
You would be under that "illusion" too if you were one of the most popular, most critically acclaimed sources of satire and political comedy in the country. Fortunately, you aren't.
I find him hysterical. Colbert has ups and downs, but occasionally he'll make me laugh out loud with one clever quip or another. He needs to keep his Colbert character fresh more consistently - or else it runs the risk of becoming tired. But, he's really good on his feet - he's funnier in interviews than in the main segment of the show.
Overdone? Not that this isn't a matter of opinion, but have you seen *actual* news lately? CNN has themed special effects graphics for tragedies within 2 hours of their occurence. Even local news filters everything through a overly-dramatic lens - it really shows when there is a slow news day, and they have to do an on-location shoot over some meaningless "public-awareness" story like highway sludge or how easy it is to steal a bike. The result is fear-mongering and alarmism being brought to bear on ultimately irrelevant issues.
Also, Stewart seems to be less prepared and more improvisionational on his show. Overdone is not the word I would use to describe it. I find him and Colbert entertaining - even so the words "politically slanted," and "obnoxiously sarcastic" may be a more apt way to negatively characterize the show. Stewart is under no illusion that his show actually counts as news, anyhow, so he has no real obligation to be either polite or objective.
Letterman and Leno give you the blunted, sanitized, and politically neutral jokes that Stewart tosses into the trash, and their sole purpose is to comfort you with harmless banter after the slew of bad news you just received at 11 o'clock and a hard day at work.
Not to mention legalizing drugs and allowing them to be manufactured domestically would deal a heavy blow to drug cartels in third world countries whose expertise lies in being able to traffic drugs across borders. Since many rebel guerilla groups are funded by cocaine trafficking, getting rid of that source of funding might go a long way in making Latin America more stable. It would also kill opiate sales from places like Afghanistan, where heroin is grown to subsidize terrorist training. So the score for/against legalizing drugs is:
Yay 10 Nay 0
when you account for the fact that most of the arguments against legalization of black market drugs are...flawed, to say the least. At the very least we should legalize marijuana, so that teens and college students who use it aren't automatically corralled into an illicit market where they are also vulnerable to being targeted for use of heavier drugs. Since they are already taking the risk of acquiring marijuana, why not also take the risk of acquiring cocaine?
I think the (flawed) logic is that since MS is 1) capable of producing false negatives, then 2) it follows that their method of identification is flawed in such a way that it's capable of producing false positives, and 3) if it is capable of producing false positives, then false positives have been produced. There is no logical entailment between any of those premises/conclusions, however, especially since we have limited knowledge of how Microsoft identifies pirated copies. As the other poster here points out, it's probably just the opposite, if empirical evidence of other filtering software holds true. That is, the capability of producing false negatives probably reduces the number of false positives.
Oh yeah, and I agree with the grandparent poster. Taking mundane objects and making them interesting or emotionally provocative is very difficult. When done incorrectly(which is most of the time), it makes me cringe. This happens frequently on NPR, when authors read excerpts of their own work. I find I'm emotionally indifferent most of the time, if not annoyed. It doesn't help that the authors always take on this soft, lingering, pretentious tone of voice whenever they read their own work, as if to artificially elevate it to the level of 'art.' There's definitely an overproduction right now of this kind of writing. It's fluff.
There's a difference between 'emotive' and 'overwrought'. The fact that the reader finds it so transparently sentimental probably means the writer wasn't confident enough to stick to more subtle language and description.
Has never come home from a long day at work and settled down to a nice game of Shakespeare vs. Dante: An Interactive Post-Modernist Reconstruction of Hendecasyllabic Meter as Practiced Circa 1315
It may remind you of the robust Dance, Dance Revolution, only much less...hmm...how to say this without sounding like a snob....plebian.
Instead of contorting your body on a sweaty mat likely recycled from vagrant filth, you simply recline in your accent chair by the fire, light up a pipe, and compose eloquent verse in sync with the metronome, sprinkling it with chiasmus, litotes, synecdoche, elision and other poetic technique as the television screen instructs.
Sadly, it may no longer be on the market - though you may be able to borrow it from Oxford's archives. You might want to check out the sequel, Joyce's Dubliners: The Re-Imagining of Early 20th Century Literature
A fetching game indeed, my good man./takes a puff from his pipe
Slashdot Mirror
Not only that, he's suggesting that the bot will be able to solve it the best way possible, to win the competition. But the best way possible is not algorithmically determinable, as of yet. If there was a way to solve an abitrary problem through computers - well, I guess that means that computers have achieved something like human intelligence, human beings are Turing machines, computers can program themselves, and they don't need us anymore. Welcome to the Matrix.
This will not happen in the near future if ever.
I mean, I hate it when people "verbize" nouns.
There is a correlation most likely, but it probably has a lot to do with what type of problem and so can't accurately be generalized to all product flaws. If my adapter stops working, I'm probably just going to get a new one. If my adapter explodes and plants a triangular piece of PowerBook shrapnel in my eye, I'm probably going to, you know, mention it the next time I'm in close contact with Steve Jobs or one of his many associates, perhaps weilding a knife of some sort.
Examples:
I have some bad news: you have a scorching case of the syphilis.
-OR-
My bloog sugar is getting high, so I have to watch out for the diabetes.
To crystallize: the response that I made to *your* comment was arguing against *you*, and as far as I know you are not the top poster. Refer to my original reply, the one marked "Your Perspective is Stupid." Moreover, the top poster seemed to imply an entailment between bullet 3. and 4. meaning he can't watch YouTube videos, so therefore he doesn't want to, and then followed it up by saying "Why should I upload videos to YouTube?" as if it was YouTube's duty to accomodate his decision to not install Flash or convince him to use YouTube. The answer seemed self-evident: you shouldn't upload videos to YouTube if you don't want to.
Again, my reply was "If you don't want to install Flash, fine." That's your choice. So this whole argument is built on a straw man - basically framing the argument as if I said that you shouldn't be refusing and that you should download Flash to download YouTube videos. All I said was YouTube doesn't have to cater to you personally.
The word "coerce" has a connotation of forcing someone into an unfair agreement. More weakly, it has the connotation of compelling someone to enter into an agreement. In that sense all agreements are coercions. If YouTube forced you to download an open source, free player to enjoy its content, that would be a coercion too.
Users are being "coerced" in the sense that they are being offered something by YouTube - namely free content - at the same time as being compelled to agree to download the free Flash player to enjoy this content. The Flash player runs on all three major operating systems - Linux, Mac, and Windows. Are you unhappy about this "coercion?" Who is losing anything in that transaction, besides the people whose choice it is not to install Flash? It's not really YouTube's failing if they would rather guarantee cross-browser compatibility by choosing a standard interface that is guaranteed to play inside 99% of browsers, stably, and well, and by choosing how their content is delivered - that is, via a reliable, quick, cross-platform, easy-to-use streaming Flash application. That would be one of the great draws of YouTube, after all. Its flash player.
You have to decide what you're arguing against. Are you suggesting that YouTube should switch away from Flash to accomodate your decision not to use Flash? Fine, then you also have to convince the 99% of people who are willing to download Flash that using Flash is not good for them. If you are just saying that you refuse to install Flash, good for you. It's not YouTube's responsibility to accomodate you.
You're not being coerced into anything. Growing numbers of people install Flash. A few people don't install the *free* Flash player because they have some superior view of themselves and refuse being locked in by *free* content providers who don't even have advertising revenue into a "DRM'd" "proprietary" - oh yeah - *free* software player.
You might have a point if YouTube charged for its videos. But it doesn't. You have no right to dictate how they distribute their content, and you also have no ground to stand on. If you want them to change, convince the 99% of people who are willing to "give something back" for *free* content and take two seconds of their time to install the *free* Flash player to switch to completely open, completely free software. Pick your battles, geez.
Why do people start ranting on and on about how *everything* should be free and open and then start blaming companies like YouTube who have to spend $1.5 million a month just to stay alive for not accomodating their unrealistic worldview when I suggest that maybe that's narcissistic and even stupid to think that the whole world has to accomodate your personal choice? Free, open source software has its place. As I said to begin with "If you don't want to install Flash player, fine" implying that it was your choice, but don't expect YouTube to bend over backwards to support your decision. Stop complaining.
The horse came back alive, so I had to beat it to death again.
The AC said he refuses to install Flash, not that he can't or that it's hard to install Flash. By the time all processors are 64-bit I assume that a 64-bit version of Flash will have been released.
I was just rebutting the sentiment that many "power-users" have that the world should somehow always accomodate their whims even if their whims aren't those of 99% of people and are almost completely irrelevant given the context. I don't think I can think of a reason why YouTube not supporting people who don't want to use Flash is somehow morally wrong. They're giving you something practically for free - you can meet them half-way if you want to enjoy the benefits.
You might as well say - I refuse to connect to the Internet, YouTube only distributes video over the Internet, why should I upload videos to YouTube?
Stevens will be talking about how the internet is not a dumptruck, but a series of YouTubes.
Don't take it personally. If you don't want to install Flash, fine. Most people have no problem with it. And as far as I know, YouTube is catering to most people, not you.
Seriously, who cares?
First of all, despite what all the Linux proponents say, Linux is not quite where either Apple or Windows is in terms of desktop usability. Running Linux means running an operating system without a standard set of widgets and interface elements and no cohesive user experience. It also just doesn't look or feel as snappy as OS X or Windows - when you drag a window, at least on the machines I've experienced, you can see the X server trying to catch up - the window has a "tail." The fonts aren't anti-aliased, making it look less attractiive. You have to deal with a variety of package formats just to install and use software, and some expected out of the box features are missing on most distributions. DVD playback, for instance. Printer support is still dodgy. All of these little oversights add up to a less satisfying user experience.
And yes, I do use Ubuntu Linux as my development platform at work, so I'm very aware of Linux's failings. Linux is not competitive (yet) for 90% of users at the moment, and it's going to take a "standard" distribution focused on tying together the user experience to make it competitive. I'm not ruling that possibility out, though.
If Apple ever gets the opportunity to switch its business model to OS licensing, it will obviously allow clone makers to bundle it pre-instaslled on their systems. It will be just like Windows licensing, most likely - the OEM wholesale price being much lower than retail. And to the average user, Apple does offer a lot more than Linux right now, and will probably continue to offer more than Linux because, unlike Linux, almost all of their developers are focused on user experience and out-competing Windows, and the success of the platform depends on a good user experience - unlike Linux, which can fall back on the fact that it is a superior server platform.
Yes, but in all of those cases you use the word 'intent' loosely, because as you say the concept of intent helps you to understand why there are prevalances of one trait over another. As such, all you are really saying is that the world follows laws that are predictable. You don't mean literal intent - evolution is not some teleological race to the finish line, intelligence. Any teleological view of evolution is an loose interpretation not based on the objective reality. Evolution is so natural as to be completely untainted by human constructions such as 'purpose', 'intent', 'utility.' When we assign purposes, utilities, or values to objects we are creating them out of thin air, or we are inheriting them from someone else - in which case we are also creating them out of language or concepts. Purpose is an invention. There are no preceding qualities or values for each object, there is nothing in them that tells us "This is what I am to be used for." All of these concepts are prescribed by the human mind and are used to impose on objects the character of a function.
Correction: Microsoft with DOS and then Windows, I mean. IBM really isn't a big player in the PC business anymore, so it's hard to say that they "won" at all - when they had their chance to crush Microsoft, they screwed it up too.
His conclusion was right but his premises were false. Apple made computers as well as or better than IBM. They just weren't as prescient on the business side. They failed to get a clue once they introduced the Macintosh, when it was time for both sides to lay down their chips. Microsoft, with Windows. Apple with the Macintosh Operating System. If Apple had chosen at that point to license its operating system we would be in a very different world today. I'm not sure that I would prefer that world, because chances are Apple would have become anti-competitive and monopolistic, and their product quality would have diminished. And Microsoft wouldn't have likely risen to be the resident industry source for R&D innovation like Apple has done in actuality.
In a way, they continue to make the same mistakes - only this time, they're not mistakes. They are still controlling every aspect of the platform. However, they are positioning themselves in such a way that will result in a much higher-profile competition with Microsoft - a head to head battle, the same hardware platform with different software. If Apple ever overtakes Microsoft in market share (in the distant future, if at all) they are then in a position to start licensing their operating system, and they will have recreated the opportunity they completely missed in 1984.
That still doesn't mean nihilist, which is a belief in nothing or against any prevailing notion of objective meaning. Jon Stewart, on the other hand, belongs to a fully formed majority of people who say that there is an objective reality, but it's just not the way the conservative establishment says it works. His satire belongs to that belief system.
Bad ideas and false beliefs are going to exist in culture forever. The project of the Daily Show is exactly to correct those beliefs. Regardless of who's in power, there's always somewhere they can turn their satirical lens. The whole premise of the show is what you are criticizing - fake news. If you don't like the concept of fake news, that's your right. But I definitely wouldn't call it nihilistic, and in my opinion it's definitely a lot more incisive, funny and stimulating than the softballs they pitch every weekend on SNL's "Weekend Update" or Leno and Letterman.
Nihilism is a strong word. Many people confuse nihilism with a set of beliefs that is critical of the status quo. It's pretty clear from watching the Daily Show that Jon Stewart is an anti-war liberal who is living in a world dominated by people of the opposing pesuasion. This has the benefit of giving him plenty of material and opportunity for criticism - and the ability to make fun of those whose beliefs are not often challenged day to day by those who surround them, such as our president, for instance.
The beauty of irony and satire is that by stating or satirizing the opposite of what you believe in, you are actually *affirming* your own beliefs. Colbert is the most striking example - he sacrifices his actual persona in favor of a persona who professes the opposite of what he believes for the sake of illuminating the nature of his own beliefs. In this way he effectively replaces what he sees as "fallacy" with what he sees as "the truth" in every thing he says. Polemicism is another way of doing this, but I think irony is more subtle and in some ways more affecting. See Guy Debord who wrote the "Society of the Spectacle". Satire is not only desctructive - it's constructive too. That's why it's seen as an art.
Anyway, this is my third post in defense of the Daily Show and the Colbert Report. Back to work.
You would be under that "illusion" too if you were one of the most popular, most critically acclaimed sources of satire and political comedy in the country. Fortunately, you aren't.
I find him hysterical. Colbert has ups and downs, but occasionally he'll make me laugh out loud with one clever quip or another. He needs to keep his Colbert character fresh more consistently - or else it runs the risk of becoming tired. But, he's really good on his feet - he's funnier in interviews than in the main segment of the show.
Overdone? Not that this isn't a matter of opinion, but have you seen *actual* news lately? CNN has themed special effects graphics for tragedies within 2 hours of their occurence. Even local news filters everything through a overly-dramatic lens - it really shows when there is a slow news day, and they have to do an on-location shoot over some meaningless "public-awareness" story like highway sludge or how easy it is to steal a bike. The result is fear-mongering and alarmism being brought to bear on ultimately irrelevant issues.
Also, Stewart seems to be less prepared and more improvisionational on his show. Overdone is not the word I would use to describe it. I find him and Colbert entertaining - even so the words "politically slanted," and "obnoxiously sarcastic" may be a more apt way to negatively characterize the show. Stewart is under no illusion that his show actually counts as news, anyhow, so he has no real obligation to be either polite or objective.
Letterman and Leno give you the blunted, sanitized, and politically neutral jokes that Stewart tosses into the trash, and their sole purpose is to comfort you with harmless banter after the slew of bad news you just received at 11 o'clock and a hard day at work.
Not to mention legalizing drugs and allowing them to be manufactured domestically would deal a heavy blow to drug cartels in third world countries whose expertise lies in being able to traffic drugs across borders. Since many rebel guerilla groups are funded by cocaine trafficking, getting rid of that source of funding might go a long way in making Latin America more stable. It would also kill opiate sales from places like Afghanistan, where heroin is grown to subsidize terrorist training. So the score for/against legalizing drugs is:
Yay 10
Nay 0
when you account for the fact that most of the arguments against legalization of black market drugs are...flawed, to say the least. At the very least we should legalize marijuana, so that teens and college students who use it aren't automatically corralled into an illicit market where they are also vulnerable to being targeted for use of heavier drugs. Since they are already taking the risk of acquiring marijuana, why not also take the risk of acquiring cocaine?
I think the (flawed) logic is that since MS is 1) capable of producing false negatives, then 2) it follows that their method of identification is flawed in such a way that it's capable of producing false positives, and 3) if it is capable of producing false positives, then false positives have been produced. There is no logical entailment between any of those premises/conclusions, however, especially since we have limited knowledge of how Microsoft identifies pirated copies. As the other poster here points out, it's probably just the opposite, if empirical evidence of other filtering software holds true. That is, the capability of producing false negatives probably reduces the number of false positives.
Oh yeah, and I agree with the grandparent poster. Taking mundane objects and making them interesting or emotionally provocative is very difficult. When done incorrectly(which is most of the time), it makes me cringe. This happens frequently on NPR, when authors read excerpts of their own work. I find I'm emotionally indifferent most of the time, if not annoyed. It doesn't help that the authors always take on this soft, lingering, pretentious tone of voice whenever they read their own work, as if to artificially elevate it to the level of 'art.' There's definitely an overproduction right now of this kind of writing. It's fluff.
There's a difference between 'emotive' and 'overwrought'. The fact that the reader finds it so transparently sentimental probably means the writer wasn't confident enough to stick to more subtle language and description.
Has never come home from a long day at work and settled down to a nice game of Shakespeare vs. Dante: An Interactive Post-Modernist Reconstruction of Hendecasyllabic Meter as Practiced Circa 1315
/takes a puff from his pipe
It may remind you of the robust Dance, Dance Revolution, only much less...hmm...how to say this without sounding like a snob....plebian.
Instead of contorting your body on a sweaty mat likely recycled from vagrant filth, you simply recline in your accent chair by the fire, light up a pipe, and compose eloquent verse in sync with the metronome, sprinkling it with chiasmus, litotes, synecdoche, elision and other poetic technique as the television screen instructs.
Sadly, it may no longer be on the market - though you may be able to borrow it from Oxford's archives. You might want to check out the sequel, Joyce's Dubliners: The Re-Imagining of Early 20th Century Literature
A fetching game indeed, my good man.
If I were to guess, he probably hasn't spent more than $100 million of that.
Yeah, I bet he only uses one of them at a time! And he probably doesn't even go over 70mph!
He totally doesn't use any more than 10,000 square feet, I bet!
Point: welcome to the gratuitous world of the absurdly wealthy.
Why is Ubuntu kiling you? oh...sorry....
...still no good?
let me rephrase in a more congenial way...
In terms of eventually losing to Ubuntu, why are you?
Ok: About your opinion regarding Ubuntu, what do you think are the reasons for it causing your eventual demise?