That's my point: What if God is a Mormon God? What if, after you die, you find yourself in Hell because, as a Christian, you failed to read the Book of Mormon every day? You say that it's no skin off your nose if you're wrong about believing in God, because being wrong has no eternal consequences. But what if it does have eternal consequences because you rejected Mohammed as his prophet (Islam) or ate beef (Hinduism) or failed to acknowledge the Pope as God's Vicar on Earth (Catholic)?
Anyone can... state how stupid I am for not following the scientific wave of the support of evolution.
You're not stupid for not following the scientific wave. You're stupid because your reasons for rejecting evolution are ignorant and wrongheaded, and you show no interest in correcting those reasons.
Evolution is a theory and has not been proven, just as the belief of God is not proven.
Unlike God, evolution has a vast amount of evidence from a vast number of sources to support the theory. To the extent that anything can be considered "proven" in science, evolution is. In scientific terms the basic theory is as firmly supported as the theory that the earth orbits the sun.
If I'm wrong and their is no heaven and their is no hell. Then so what.
What if you're wrong, not about God's existence, but how he wants to be worshiped? What if your failure to be a good Mormon is what damns you to Hell?
That's the problem with Pascal's Wager, as you've expressed it: It takes no account of believing in the wrong God.
But what if your wrong?
If I'm wrong, and a plausible scientific theory successfully challenges evolution, then it will make no difference to my day to day life, or to my metaphysical view of the universe. My reasons for being a moral, happy person have nothing to do with either God or evolution.
I don't believe that we, just by chance, came into existence.
Evolution doesn't say that we came into existence "just by chance". See my first statement on why you're stupid.
You would be charged with *attempted* murder, if, had you died, a murder charge was supported. Generally speaking, "attempted" crimes draw the same penalty as successful crimes except when the attempt hasn't progressed all the way, such that failure is the difference.
In other words, if I plot to kill you (first degree murder) but miss when I start shooting (or hit you non-fatally), I'm not going to get a reduced sentence just because I wasn't successful.
That he failed is immaterial in sentencing terms. You get the same sentence for trying to shoot me and missing as you do for actually shooting me. Incompetence is not a mitigating factor, legally.
His name pops up every six months on Edge or./ or somewhere else, because somehow he got certified as a smart guy (TM), but for the life of me I can't think of anything interesting that he's done or contributed that would deserve that appelation. All I've ever seen of him is a bunch of tech punditry that's either obvious or empty speculation (which is supposed to be significant because he's a smart guy (TM)).
I mean, if Christie's really did fraudulently represent these as real props, more power to him in his lawsuit. Don't stop until you've got the auctioneer's gavel.
But, holy fuck, $24K on Star Trek memorabilia? The thousands of dollars a year I spend smoking is put to better use than this dude's cash.
Your government told those bureaucrats that they have that authority, by signing the membership treaty. Blame the ones who joined the WTO, or the ones who passed the law banning U.S. banks and credit card companies from paying to online gambling sites, thus triggering the binding arbitration.
You can't have it both ways. If you want your country to have the benefit of participating in a trade stabilizing/increasing bloc, you have to suffer the consequences of your country's protectionist actions.
In practice, your sacred individual rights are only as sacred as someone else's willingness to respect them, or enforce them. What's the real value of those natural rights if everyone else ignores them?
That's what puts them into the domain of negotiable instrument, to be used by your state as the cost of membership in an international trade organization.
Nonsense. The W.T.O. is accountable to the signatories. If a country doesn't like how it's run, it can withdraw. If you don't like your government levying tariffs that result in your IP being infringed without legal repercussion, then either lobby your government to withdraw, or to remove the tariffs to avoid results like this.
The alternative to arbitration by a third party, whose judges are appointed by the signatory nations, is long and destructive trade wars.
You don't. If the U.S. doesn't think that it's advantageous overall to be a member of the W.T.O., it can withdraw. But if it's going to remain a member in good standing, it has to submit to binding arbitration in trade disputes. That's the whole point of the W.T.O.
You seem unfamiliar with the trade dispute that originally led to this ruling. It's not "some international group", it's a signatory to the treaty that created the W.T.O., just like the U.S. is.
You also seem unfamiliar with the U.S.'s history of using the W.T.O. when arbitration favours it, and ignoring unfavourable rulings. In its softwood lumber dispute with Canada, the W.T.O. repeatedly ruled that the U.S.'s tariffs violated the agreement, and ordered them to pay tens of millions of dollars to the Canadian lumber industry; the U.S. refused to pay, and Canada was forced to negotiate a partial settlement in order to see any of the award.
The W.T.O. probably took that into account this time, and made an award that the U.S. couldn't avoid paying.
If MS wanted a clean break with the past, they probably could come up with a clean-sheet OS that rocks. Vista may suck, but when you think of the co-ordinated effort just to get something out the door with all that legacy support, all those years of cruft, of design commitments that are soooooooooo 1998... they're running really fast, but with a huge anchor chained to them.
Why don't they build that OS, and then add legacy support back in as emulation layers? If the Wine folks can run a bunch of Windows software on Linux, with absolutely no help from the kernel, you'd think MS would be able to actually build the same emulation layer in a quarter of the time without the need to reverse engineer themselves.
The problem is that TF2 has very strong art direction that ties team color to environment, which is also divided between blue and red. You can't arbitrarily flip the colours without overturning a bunch of aesthetic and gameplay decisions.
First, the linked article said that surrogate keys are always the better choice, not that natural/composite keys aren't always best. It presents some good arguments, too.
Second, the parent wasn't distinguishing between normalizing and not normalizing, he was pointing out that implementing 'extreme' normalization (like going all the way to sixth normal form) is usually counterproductive. I don't know about you, but I rarely go beyond third, and any references I've read about normalization agree that anything beyond that is rarely useful.
Way to keep up the./ tradition of loudly disagreeing with something you didn't read properly, or at all.
It's not auto-incrementing that was your problem there. Any production-quality RDBMS handles auto-incrementing exactly as you would in code--better, probably.
You're missing a more obvious explanation, I think: they just don't care that much about IE. They let IE6 stink up the web for six years, only restarting dev on IE7 after it became patently embarrassing to the company. Having updated IE with something that's (arguably) contemporary in terms of standards support, they've cut resources to it again to let it rot for another half decade while more glorious projects like Silverlight get all the love.
The parent isn't saying "Jimmy said it's good, and I believe him", it's poining out that the Reg article failed to give compelling (or any) evidence that the bans were *unfair*, the reasons *uncommunicated*, or the banned *prevented* from offering input--it's another one-sided attack job by El Reg, which has long had a vendetta against Wikipedia.
It would be an interesting story if it all happened as the article described, but I don't trust the Register any more than I trust Wikipedia, especially when the latter is the former's topic.
It's good of you to step like this, but part of the basic job description of an editor is proofreading. And your job isn't submitting stories, while his *is* proofreading them.
Seriously, the whole point of this site is viewing and discussing a set of links that have been vetted by a set of editors. When they fail to demonstrate basic editorialship, it really defeats the purpose.
My girlfriend is in her Masters in Ecological Education; one of her professors wants me to demo WoW for him because he's considering a project for an academic MMO based on playing a part of an ecosystem.
No, you wouldn't be a plant looking for the bursting seed pod powerup. You would be a lion hunting gazelles, or a gazelle dodging lions, and dealing with the normal cyclical changes environmental changes, or manmade ones. The idea would be to view an ecosystem from within it, but (hopefully) with enough of a "nature red in tooth and claw" angle to make it actually interesting as a playable environment.
It's a long shot concept that risks exactly what Arden failed at, but properly done it could be another Tale in the Desert.
Slashdot Mirror
That's my point: What if God is a Mormon God? What if, after you die, you find yourself in Hell because, as a Christian, you failed to read the Book of Mormon every day? You say that it's no skin off your nose if you're wrong about believing in God, because being wrong has no eternal consequences. But what if it does have eternal consequences because you rejected Mohammed as his prophet (Islam) or ate beef (Hinduism) or failed to acknowledge the Pope as God's Vicar on Earth (Catholic)?
Anyone can... state how stupid I am for not following the scientific wave of the support of evolution.
You're not stupid for not following the scientific wave. You're stupid because your reasons for rejecting evolution are ignorant and wrongheaded, and you show no interest in correcting those reasons.
Evolution is a theory and has not been proven, just as the belief of God is not proven.
Unlike God, evolution has a vast amount of evidence from a vast number of sources to support the theory. To the extent that anything can be considered "proven" in science, evolution is. In scientific terms the basic theory is as firmly supported as the theory that the earth orbits the sun.
If I'm wrong and their is no heaven and their is no hell. Then so what.
What if you're wrong, not about God's existence, but how he wants to be worshiped? What if your failure to be a good Mormon is what damns you to Hell?
That's the problem with Pascal's Wager, as you've expressed it: It takes no account of believing in the wrong God.
But what if your wrong?
If I'm wrong, and a plausible scientific theory successfully challenges evolution, then it will make no difference to my day to day life, or to my metaphysical view of the universe. My reasons for being a moral, happy person have nothing to do with either God or evolution.
I don't believe that we, just by chance, came into existence.
Evolution doesn't say that we came into existence "just by chance". See my first statement on why you're stupid.
You would be charged with *attempted* murder, if, had you died, a murder charge was supported. Generally speaking, "attempted" crimes draw the same penalty as successful crimes except when the attempt hasn't progressed all the way, such that failure is the difference.
In other words, if I plot to kill you (first degree murder) but miss when I start shooting (or hit you non-fatally), I'm not going to get a reduced sentence just because I wasn't successful.
That he failed is immaterial in sentencing terms. You get the same sentence for trying to shoot me and missing as you do for actually shooting me. Incompetence is not a mitigating factor, legally.
You win: Your e-peen is the biggest in the thread.
Obama's not a Muslim--not now, never was. But thanks for getting in early on the 2008 Swiftboating.
Why I should pay any attention to Jaron Lanier.
./ or somewhere else, because somehow he got certified as a smart guy (TM), but for the life of me I can't think of anything interesting that he's done or contributed that would deserve that appelation. All I've ever seen of him is a bunch of tech punditry that's either obvious or empty speculation (which is supposed to be significant because he's a smart guy (TM)).
His name pops up every six months on Edge or
Mod parent up +1 clever.
feeling any sympathy for this guy?
I mean, if Christie's really did fraudulently represent these as real props, more power to him in his lawsuit. Don't stop until you've got the auctioneer's gavel.
But, holy fuck, $24K on Star Trek memorabilia? The thousands of dollars a year I spend smoking is put to better use than this dude's cash.
Your government told those bureaucrats that they have that authority, by signing the membership treaty. Blame the ones who joined the WTO, or the ones who passed the law banning U.S. banks and credit card companies from paying to online gambling sites, thus triggering the binding arbitration.
You can't have it both ways. If you want your country to have the benefit of participating in a trade stabilizing/increasing bloc, you have to suffer the consequences of your country's protectionist actions.
In practice, your sacred individual rights are only as sacred as someone else's willingness to respect them, or enforce them. What's the real value of those natural rights if everyone else ignores them?
That's what puts them into the domain of negotiable instrument, to be used by your state as the cost of membership in an international trade organization.
Nonsense. The W.T.O. is accountable to the signatories. If a country doesn't like how it's run, it can withdraw. If you don't like your government levying tariffs that result in your IP being infringed without legal repercussion, then either lobby your government to withdraw, or to remove the tariffs to avoid results like this.
The alternative to arbitration by a third party, whose judges are appointed by the signatory nations, is long and destructive trade wars.
You don't. If the U.S. doesn't think that it's advantageous overall to be a member of the W.T.O., it can withdraw. But if it's going to remain a member in good standing, it has to submit to binding arbitration in trade disputes. That's the whole point of the W.T.O.
You seem unfamiliar with the trade dispute that originally led to this ruling. It's not "some international group", it's a signatory to the treaty that created the W.T.O., just like the U.S. is.
You also seem unfamiliar with the U.S.'s history of using the W.T.O. when arbitration favours it, and ignoring unfavourable rulings. In its softwood lumber dispute with Canada, the W.T.O. repeatedly ruled that the U.S.'s tariffs violated the agreement, and ordered them to pay tens of millions of dollars to the Canadian lumber industry; the U.S. refused to pay, and Canada was forced to negotiate a partial settlement in order to see any of the award.
The W.T.O. probably took that into account this time, and made an award that the U.S. couldn't avoid paying.
If MS wanted a clean break with the past, they probably could come up with a clean-sheet OS that rocks. Vista may suck, but when you think of the co-ordinated effort just to get something out the door with all that legacy support, all those years of cruft, of design commitments that are soooooooooo 1998... they're running really fast, but with a huge anchor chained to them.
Why don't they build that OS, and then add legacy support back in as emulation layers? If the Wine folks can run a bunch of Windows software on Linux, with absolutely no help from the kernel, you'd think MS would be able to actually build the same emulation layer in a quarter of the time without the need to reverse engineer themselves.
The problem is that TF2 has very strong art direction that ties team color to environment, which is also divided between blue and red. You can't arbitrarily flip the colours without overturning a bunch of aesthetic and gameplay decisions.
Interesting contrast between your post and your sig.
You're a real jerk.
./ tradition of loudly disagreeing with something you didn't read properly, or at all.
First, the linked article said that surrogate keys are always the better choice, not that natural/composite keys aren't always best. It presents some good arguments, too.
Second, the parent wasn't distinguishing between normalizing and not normalizing, he was pointing out that implementing 'extreme' normalization (like going all the way to sixth normal form) is usually counterproductive. I don't know about you, but I rarely go beyond third, and any references I've read about normalization agree that anything beyond that is rarely useful.
Way to keep up the
It's not auto-incrementing that was your problem there. Any production-quality RDBMS handles auto-incrementing exactly as you would in code--better, probably.
You're missing a more obvious explanation, I think: they just don't care that much about IE. They let IE6 stink up the web for six years, only restarting dev on IE7 after it became patently embarrassing to the company. Having updated IE with something that's (arguably) contemporary in terms of standards support, they've cut resources to it again to let it rot for another half decade while more glorious projects like Silverlight get all the love.
The parent isn't saying "Jimmy said it's good, and I believe him", it's poining out that the Reg article failed to give compelling (or any) evidence that the bans were *unfair*, the reasons *uncommunicated*, or the banned *prevented* from offering input--it's another one-sided attack job by El Reg, which has long had a vendetta against Wikipedia.
It would be an interesting story if it all happened as the article described, but I don't trust the Register any more than I trust Wikipedia, especially when the latter is the former's topic.
It's good of you to step like this, but part of the basic job description of an editor is proofreading. And your job isn't submitting stories, while his *is* proofreading them.
Seriously, the whole point of this site is viewing and discussing a set of links that have been vetted by a set of editors. When they fail to demonstrate basic editorialship, it really defeats the purpose.
Nice... I correct the ./ editor's mistake, and get marked troll. Zonk's not alone, I guess.
It's ECMA, not EMCA. Christ, do you even read the summaries before you hit 'approve'?
My girlfriend is in her Masters in Ecological Education; one of her professors wants me to demo WoW for him because he's considering a project for an academic MMO based on playing a part of an ecosystem.
No, you wouldn't be a plant looking for the bursting seed pod powerup. You would be a lion hunting gazelles, or a gazelle dodging lions, and dealing with the normal cyclical changes environmental changes, or manmade ones. The idea would be to view an ecosystem from within it, but (hopefully) with enough of a "nature red in tooth and claw" angle to make it actually interesting as a playable environment.
It's a long shot concept that risks exactly what Arden failed at, but properly done it could be another Tale in the Desert.
No, you just bragged about your extremely clever system for memorizing passwords (that you didn't describe).
Regardless, Schneier's solution is vastly more useful in practice for, well, everyone else.
You still sound like you have no clue who this guy is.