No, the sensible thing would have been to have gotten rid of them ALL on BOTH SIDES in the heady years right after the Wall fell. Now a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity has passed, all because some people refused to let go of the Cold War. Now we're stuck with the fucking things, and more and more countries are desperate to get them because they see them as their only defense against a U.S. or Russian attack.
Oh, please. It shouldn't really be possible for someone to be that idealistic.
The once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be rid of all nuclear weapons everywhere was gone the moment physicists realized that maybe such a thing would be possible. From that point forward, somebody was going to figure out how to make one and invest the money, because it's too good of an advantage to have. After the cold war ended, if everyone had agreed to get rid of all their nuclear weapons, the game would be to either figure out how to hide a few without the other side knowing, or how to build new ones in secret. It's simply not feasible to prevent this from happening, the policing power isn't there. it's the equivalent to software piracy in the torrent age. You can make it illegal all you want, you can have several people who either agree with the law or want to avoid punishment, but you really can't ensure that NOBODY will do it. Because you can't monitor everything and everyone all the time.
Another thing to consider is that nuclear weapons have probably brought more peace and stability than they've done damage. MAD actually works, and if it weren't for nuclear weapons being invented the cold war wouldn't have been just a bunch of proxy wars everywhere. It would have turned into World War III in the middle of Europe. The existence of nukes made the cost far too high, which actually promotes peace. The last time nukes were used where in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, when there was no threat of retaliation. Get over it, it will never be used again, and the only reason it will never be used again is because multiple people still have them, so it's not just a question of who can rebuild their arsenal quicker.
If you are about to die (or your country is about to dissolve), what would stop you from trying to get a parting shot off at the enemy who is destroying you?
The knowledge that there's a difference between a government and a people. That even if your government is about to be dissolved, and your territory taken by a foreign enemy, the people living there will largely survive...unless you do a dumbass thing like an attack which won't actually win the war for you, but will cause retaliation which will kill those people who would have survived the invasion otherwise. Those people include your family and friends.
You don't use a nuclear weapon if you're not assured that you'll destroy their retaliation capabilities. It doesn't make any sense, it doesn't win you anything. It doesn't even win you the satisfaction of making them suffer, because you're going to be responsible for the suffering of your own people in that mix.
I feel I have every right to know what my lovely little government thugs are doing.
Is your point of view that there should be no such thing as classified information, and that every single thing the government does and knows should be public domain and easily accessible to everyone?
If so I disagree with you, but find your position internally consistent and wouldn't argue with it. It's just a matter of opinion, and I don't share yours as I find that secrets are sometimes necessary and unavoidable. If, however, you see the benefit in the government keeping some secrets, then you must expect people who are in position to have access to these secrets to exercise a high level of caution and discreteness when they find it necessary to overrule the system in place that decides what is classified and what is public. When necessary to stop illegal behavior, you disclose what it is absolutely necessary and not a single thing more.
They're paid for by your taxes. I'd say you have a right to see whether they're doing their job or whether your money is being squandered on frivolous crap like an "advice column".
Managing employees is hard. If you just crack the whip and make them do nothing but focus non-stop on the task at hand, they're going to be much less productive and waste much more of your money than if you actually invest a bit of money on keeping morale high and put out the small fires in human interaction that happens when not everyone in your team is socially compatible.
The NSA would be no different in this than a private company. You take a tremendously successful company like Google, and they're spending money on play rooms and free food for their employees. If that makes them more productive by causing some of them to not have a problem staying in the office longer to work on a problem and others to get a burst of creativity that you only get when you quit thinking about the problem for a bit and free your mind, then that investment is worth every penny. If that advice column is helping your team deal with problems they encounter in an effective way and thus making them able to work together more effectively, it's far from "frivolous crap."
If, on the other hand, it was a leak about the NSA giving every project manager a free Ferrari, you'd have a point.
Is there any reason this should have been leaked? Yeah, we can poke fun at the irony of NSA co-workers concerned about their office gossip being spied upon and how they consider that an intrusion of their privacy. Does it constitute information a whistleblower should disseminate? The point isn't that this is damaging to national security, it's an advice column, but it was happening inside their intranet and not cleared for public scrutiny.
My problem with Snowden isn't that he leaked info about NSA unconstitutional activities. If you see your employers doing something blatenly illegal, it's your duty to do something about. My problem is that his leaks are completely indiscrimate. He didn't just deliver the documents that contained information on what he considered were illegal activities by the NSA. He took everything he could get his hands on and turned it in to journalists. I don't know how he could possibly justify that.
But why should running off of electricity somehow make a car interesting? Because it's "new"? No, people have experimented with electric cars since the 19th century, the main difference now is we have batteries that make it semi-practical.
So you're saying there's something new now that wasn't possible before?
Seriously, what is so exciting about this car that it gets so many Slashdot stories?
Well, compare it to the other electric cars, and I don't mean golf carts or the ones that were being built in the 19th century. Compare the Model S to its contemporaries, who can and do use the same battery technology that makes electric cars feasible now. The Model S has a much larger range. The Model S accelerates faster. The Model S doesn't make the annoying high pitched sound the Prius does, and is relatively silent. The Model S looks better. The Model S isn't trying to get its range by being smaller and lighter, and is a nice spacious car. Tesla is making it such that you can drive everywhere it not by compromising and making it a hybrid, but by building an infrastructure of chargers and battery swapping stations.
What's exciting about the Model S isn't that it's an electric car. You're right, there's nothing interesting about that. What's exciting about the Model S is that it's a no compromise electric car. It's not just a great electric car, it's just a great car, period. You can't say that about any other electric car. If they weren't electric, you'd steer clear from them because a short-range, small and heavy vehicle is a horrible idea. But if the Model S was an internal combustion vehicle, people would still want to buy it, at that same price point. It wouldn't be making press, but it would still be a great car.
In terms of competition, verizon buying time-warner is a much bigger deal than the blocked attempt of at&t buying t-mobile. This purchase can't possibly be allowed to proceed.
If intelligent design was subject to disproof, we'd no more be having this conversation than we'd have a conversation about whether the Earth is flat.
Please. People still argue over whether men has been to the moon, or whether NASA faked it. The proof is there, but humans are irrational and simply don't accept evidence that goes against what they would like to belief.
This is unfortunate, because if you can't tell the difference between disproven and untestable then all of your statements about proof or disproof become suspect.
I'm fully willing to accept there are things which are untestable. Evolution isn't one of them. The age of the Earth isn't one of them. The age of the universe isn't one of them.
If you want to argue straight out creationism as a literal interpretation of Genesis? Well, every single prediction you can make from that model is directly refuted by every piece of evidence we can dig up. It's exactly equivalent to arguing that the moon landings never happened, it's just stupid.
HID still blows them away for lumens output at power consumed.
Do you have a source? Every google article that I hit while searching "HID vs. LED" says that although HID is a bit more efficient (not blow-away efficient) than LEDs at light-generation, there are a ton of losses in the lamp, related to light being reflected back, and absorbed by lenses and protective covering. Comparing actual lumens output from the lamp, instead of generated lumens at the source, LED seems to come out the winner, by a lot.
It's possible I only hit biased sites. This one website listed warmup of 5-10 minutes for HID, but I assume they've solved that problem if they're using them as headlights. I wasn't able to find an HID-favorable source, though.
Actually, according to your reference there is both a theory of gravity and a law of gravity.
The law quantitatively documents what happens.
The theory attempts to explain why.
Correct, and that's true whether the theory is proven or not. The point he was making is that theories don't become laws. They're separate concepts. That evolution happens is a fact, and an observable fact. The details of which mutations happened when, where exactly an extinct species lies in terms of being an ancestor to a current species of part of a failed branch closely related to the said ancestor, the role of epigenetics, these things can be revised. As scientists discover more evidence, they refine those details.
There is no law of evolution.
The analogous part you're looking for here would be the law of natural selection. That's a directly observable thing, which is that new species come about as a result of mutation and environmental selection of existing species. Just like the law of gravity, nobody is every going to say gravity doesn't exist, or that evolution through natural selection doesn't exist. The details of how those things happen get refined, but the main thrust of it will never go away any more than Newton's Laws went away with the Theory of Relativity (hey look. Theories superseding laws??? Madness!!)
We can't reliably quantify it.
Buddy, we can reliably quantify so many things about it, it's not even funny. We can build a family tree of species using the same DNA evidence and methods that can be used to build your family tree. We can date fossils at 60 million years old and we can even quantify that uncertainty at about plus or minus a million years. We can quantify the rate of mutations happening in a population. We can examine similarities, and we can tell when certain genes appeared or disappeared. For example, did you know most mammals can make their own vitamin C through absorption of sunlight, as well as vitamin D like we can? Actually, we have that vitamin C creation gene as well. So how come we get scurvy if we don't get vitamin C through our diet? Turns out our vitamin C-making gene is defective, as a result of a mutation. The same defect exists in other primates like chimps. So we can examine the DNA of related species, figure out which ones have the defect and which don't, and you know the mutation first occurred in a species that was the common ancestors to all of those that have the defect, but not all the way back to a common ancestor that encompasses species which do not have a defect, and maintain a working gene.
Which returns us to my thesis: that arguing equivalent confidence in evolution and gravity is as oafish as arguing equivalent confidence in creationism and evolution.
In a way, there is a lot of confidence in creationism. It's provably wrong, we have 100% confidence in that. It can't be refined into something that works, the fundamental idea is incorrect. In the example I gave above regarding figuring out when a mutation occurred, I could have used an example of an additional feature, instead of the removal of a feature (same method. Compare species that have and don't have the feature, feature must have developed after common ancestor to both groups). I chose that one, because it completely disproves not only creationism, but also intelligent design. A lot of creationists like to say, "of course we have so many similarities in DNA. They were all created by the same creator, who re-used the same genes." But given the vitamin C problem, that creator just happened to make a mistake copying that common gene around to his favored species that is supposed to rule the earth. And before you can say, "maybe he didn't want us to be able to have that feature, because he wanted to force us to eat vitamin C containing fruits," you'll have to explain why he made the same mistake with the non-planet-ruling primates.
Occam's Razor suggests that the more mundane the explanation, the greater the likelihood of its truth.
Although I agree the Cracked explanation is perfectly plausible and very likely, Occam's Razor says no such thing. It's a pet peeve of mine when people state it that it that way. Occam's Razor makes no claims at all on likelihood of correctness.
What Occam's Razor does say is that when choosing between hypotheses which all give the exact same predictions, you should pick the one that involves less variables. Not because it's more likely to be true than the others (it's not, there's no requirement on nature to make things simple), but because there's no point in doing extra work to achieve the same result. The moment there's any difference at all between the predictions, Occam's Razor can no longer be invoked. At that point, you've got to eliminate theories by attempting to falsify their predictions. For example, if one theory says the incident was the result of an avalanche and another says it wasn't, you should now look for characteristic signs of an avalanche at the site. The evidence should rule out or support an avalanche theory, but "an avalanche is the simpler explanation" isn't evidence for anything.
When you do invoke Occam's Razor is when the hypotheses make no testable difference. For example, you and I examine a black box that allows us to input a number via a keyboard, and watch a screen for an output. We type in 1 and get 3. We type in 24 and get 26. We type in 127 and get 129. Now you develop a hypothesis: "The black box outputs the input plus two." I develop a differnet hypothesis: "the black box first adds 5 to the input, then it subtracts 3." The predictive power of both hypotheses are exactly equal, and you can't devise a test to figure out what the exact computation happening inside the black box is. So, Occam's Razor says we should pick your hypothesis in order to make predictions, because adding the extra work is unecessary. However, it could very well be that my hypothesis is the one that is right...it just doesn't matter.
But having the dialog you mention as a default would be a big mistake. 99.9% of users wouldn't know what to do, and it would be a pure fluke if they selected the most appropriate action.
Well, I gave you the wrong idea about the dialog, if you think that's true. They certainly made the option to "ignore" seem like the worst of all choices, a scary and dangerous decision. If you ever clicked it, it would further nag you about how that was likely to be incredibly unwise and ask you to confirm that option. Then, on every subsequent scan, it would keep flagging that file anyway, and you'd have to ignore it every time.
Personally, I never treated anti-virus software as software to *clean* viruses. I use them for their virus scanner feature, and if they ever come up positive, it's time to reformat the box and start from scratch, hoping your BIOS is clean. The way I see it, if your system has been compromised, your anti-virus could be compromised. I think clicking, "delete" and getting that nice message on how your system is now clean at the end gives the user a dangerous feeling of false comfort. They're really not that much safer than if they had clicked ignore, they're fairly likely to be just as screwed.
From the sounds of it, this sounds like a delete immediately case. It happens on machines that are known to have the malware, and the TOR client is an old version installed in a specific hidden directory. There is no chance of a false positive.
Yeah, I'm not all up in arms against Microsoft for deleting this particular program, mind you. If anything I said implied that, then I was unclear in how I phrased my thoughts. Microsoft appeared very responsible in dealing with this particular case, down to contacting the Tor developers and making sure there was no legitimate reason why Tor would ever have been installed in that way. Kudos.
What gives me pause is that they have the capability of choosing to delete anything off a box. Because there's no guarantee they're going to be responsible with that tool tomorrow, and the next thing you know, a false positive gets deleted. I don't think such an action should even be legal, without explicit consent.
I moved to the Mac a long time ago...Developers shouldn't delegate the hard decisions to users. They should work out the right thing to do, and do it.
Well, that's certainly the Apple philosophy. I'm not saying that disparagingly, and I recognize the advantages of that philosophy, but I will like to point out that it's a preference, not a universal truth. Since you subscribe to it, you're probably very happy with that move to the Mac. I did the Mac thing myself for many years as a result of Apple switching to x86 compatible machines, and as a result of Mac OS X being UNIX. My latest laptop, however, is not an Apple, precisely because I personally hate that Apple philosophy, and it got in my way much more often than it was ever helpful.
I am a software developer. My philosophy, as a developer and as a user, is that a developer doesn't make decisions ever, regardless of whether they're easy or hard. A developer makes suggestions, when the choice appear obvious, in the form of defaults that can be changed in an advanced menu. If it's a hard decision, either because you're not sure what should be chosen, or because the stakes are high (files are going to get deleted, overwritten, the user will have to log out or reboot, etc.), then you don't even pick a default. You ask the question, and allow the user to set his answer as the default in the future, if he so chooses.
Once again, I'm not trying to tell you my philosophy is right and yours is wrong here, I'm just explaining my own preferences. My philosophy is right for me, and I look to use, buy, and create software that abides by it. This is Windows vs. Mac, KDE vs. Gnome stuff...you always have to trade off control for initial user friendliness, and people draw the line of where the cutoff should be differently.
This is no different from anti-virus, because it WAS the Microsoft anti-virus tool that did it. A specific version of TOR in a specific hidden directory being part of the virus payload.
Talk of not owning your own computer is nonsense. You are free to not run AV software if you prefer. It would be a dumb move, but you are free to do it.
You know, I haven't seen a virus scanner log on any of my computers come up with any positive results since early 2000s, so maybe things have changed. However, the way it was done back then, and the way I assumed it was still done today, is that the anti-virus would flag the potentially malicious files, and then tell you in big red letters, "We detected virus blah. What would you like to do? Ignore / Delete / Quarantine"
In this mode of operation, nothing is being done without explicit user authorization. I actually don't even see anything wrong with having an option for automatically deleting anything that it detects as malicious as long as it's not the default option, which would therefore still be considered an user-authorized action. However, to have any anti-virus software delete files or uninstall software without any consent other than the decision to run anti-virus software is most certainly unacceptable. Even if you disagree with me from an ethical perspective, even looking at it from a practical viewpoint it's a bad idea. After all, there are such things as false positives in virus-scans.
if we can convince certain political groups that polio is not an appropriate weapon of terrorism, we'll soon eliminate it completely...Not making this up - some groups in Afghanistan think that spreading polio is a good way to get back at the Great Satan.
Even if it's difficult to sell the 'appropriate' part, which implies telling them there are lines they shouldn't cross (which I don't think is necessarily possible in militant religious groups of any denomination), I don't understand how we can't convince them that it's not effective. Everyone in the western world is vaccinated against polio, and they can't infect us. They can infect their nearby locations in a weird attempt to go, "nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah, your vaccination efforts are all for naught!" That strategy isn't likely to gain them much goodwill among the locals though, as they all start noticing that nobody who got vaccinated is getting the disease. They don't even need to notice this by themselves, it's a great vector for propaganda.
What do you mean "small amount". He's installing Linux (I assume) not Windows. A full install with LibreOffice, 3 browsers, Gimp and stuff is less than 6GB.
Well, I assumed the same, but my own linux install takes up a whole lot more space than that.
Basically, if all you use your box for is browse the web and open some documents, then I don't see why even bother taking Chrome OS out. It does the job, right? Heck, you can also go the tablet route. However, you decided you wanted a laptop, and you decided Chrome OS wasn't enough for your needs. So, what are your needs?
On my linux install, first of all I run gnome 3, which takes up a bunch of space. Then I have Eclipse installed for coding, along with the android sdk. I also have code:blocks for when I'm not doing java. I have Mono and MonoDevelop for C# coding. I store code and associated resources...
Let's say you're not a coder. You're a gamer? Ok, you install Steam and associated games. Wine, probably, in order to run the windows only games. I doubt you could install a single game on that drive, actually.
You like editing video? Again, that's out. It won't be able to store the project files.
I wiped the Chome OS off of the Chrombook. For me it was just a cheap netbook.
I don't get it. What the hell did you install in place of Chrome OS on the 16-32 GB hard drive? That's an impossibly small amount of storage, which is why Chrome OS takes the online apps approach so you don't have to actually install anything.
Go to some abandonware site, play a few of these ancient games...frankly, they rather stink. I mean, they were great in the day, no question.
I don't need to. With very few exceptions, 80's and 90's games are the only ones I play. Every once in a while I make an exception for something modern, like the Mass Effect series or the Arkham Asylum / Arkham City. The rest of the time, I'm playing games like the Genesis Sonic games, Mega Man (I really enjoyed the new Mega Man 9 and Mega Man 10 that Capcom released), Contra, Super Mario Bros, the original Legend of Zelda, Phantasy Star...in terms of computers games I tend to bust out the classic adventure games like King's Quest, Journeyman Project, the Tex Murphy games (really excited about the upcoming one).
I mean, taste isn't objective, and I have no problem with the fact that you like modern games more. I do want to point out that there are people out there who genuinely enjoyed those old games, and we're not motivated by nostalgia, we're not being fooled by rose-colored glasses. I genuinely like those games. I liked them when they were new, and as games evolved, I just didn't like where they were going. I remember when Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, and Quake were coming out, and I remember thinking, "these games are somewhat fun and all, but this 3D stuff is a gimmick, and it's only entertaining because there aren't many games like these. The genre is going to be forgotten in ten years." One of the many times I was utterly wrong about predicting the market, but my personal opinion didn't change. They feel gimmicky and unecessary, and I'd much rather play platformers and 2D adventure games. I remember how much King's Quest VIII angered me, and how I didn't even play it for more than ten minutes because controlling a character around and fighting made it a bad game. I just wanted to solve puzzles and unwrap the story.
Long story short, the types of games I used to enjoy are rarely made anymore, which means I still play the old ones. I'm not looking to have kids, but if I were to have them, they'd definitely be introduced to these old games, just because that's what they'd see me playing. I have no illusions about molding their preferences or anything like that, I know kids will want to play what their friends are playing. That's not a problem, they can play what they like.
Because of entertainment sources, laptops and desktop monitors are all wide-screen 16x9......but that resolution ONLY works for entertainment video. Reading requires vertical height and narrow width...In short, it just doesn't work when the medium is text.
Speak for yourself. As a coder, I find the widescreen switch finally made laptops usable for doing. A 4:3 aspect ratio made things impossible for me.
Sure, when I was sitting in a desktop, 4:3's were nice. That's because I always worked with a two-monitor configuration, though. Ever wonder why two-monitor configurations are so popular with coders? You get to code in one screen, have a browser on another screen for reference / browsing / running apps while simultaneously making changes. Then when we had to do work on a laptop, it became minimize / maximize / alt-tab hell.
With widescreen monitors, I get to have my code window taking half the screen, so it's horizontally narrow and doesn't violate the "comfortable 10-12 word limit" you mention. On the other half the screen I can have my browser or whatever else open. It's most of the benefits of a two-monitor in a mobile device. Screw movies, I never watch them on a laptop anyway, I have a TV for that. Widescreen made coding on a laptop not be a pain in the ass. The only complaint was the generally low resolution, but it looks like we're finally breaking out of that.
iOS 7.1 is probably coming next month... now surely whatever exploit was used will be analyzed by Apple and double-patched for the final 7.1 release.
You'd think they could have waited just a little bit more!
They may have downloaded the beta, realized the exploit had been patched, and released the jailbreak as a result, before a bunch of people update to 7.1 without thinking.
Pure speculation on my part, but the point is that we should wait to see if they say something about it before complaining that they were impatient. There may have been good reasons.
However, "offensive" is not the same as "humour" - good humour is when you are able to persuade the "victim" that you are playing, that you want them you to laugh with you.
Human beings are not like that. I wish you could just go up to someone, present a convincing argument that they're wrong about something, and have them say, "you know what, buddy? You're right. I'm going to abandon the position I've held for the last 25 years now that you've shown me my only justifications for this belief are fallacious." Hell, I strive to be that person, I strive to be that open-minded and I know I'm not. I've actually changed my mind on issues I used to strongly believed in, so I'm proud of the fact that at least I can do it. The thing is, it took years before I gradually reversed my position.
When you first make a joke, somebody's going to feel like the victim and be offended. However, if you really are making a good point, ten years down the road and hundreds of similar jokes later they may agree and laugh with you.
At the best of times "everything is a joke, and everyone should never be offended by my joke"
It's not that nobody should ever be offended by a joke. It's that people don't get to have a right to not be offended. If you're not offending someone, you didn't say anything of value. The point of free speech is to cause people to question their deeply held beliefs, which invariably will leads to taking offense, or they wouldn't be deeply held beliefs.
To put it bluntly, if you are not friends with the person, you absolutely should not be joking at them in a way that will provoke a response
As an example, I'm offended by your attitude. It violates my deeply held belief in the value of free speech and the nature of good jokes. Despite my offense, I don't wish you to get you fired, nor think you deserve to be. I just think you're an idiot, and move on with my life.
I'm not so sure, it seems like he was an intelligent and insightful man, he may well have understood the dangers of excessive coziness between church and state.
Maybe you're right. I have a great respect for anyone who lived in the world he lived in and still managed to put aside all the anger he accumulated from the injustices he saw to promote change through non-violent means. That could certainly only be done by those who were able to rationally consider what it takes to achieve the long-term goals of ending the nonsense of judging a human being by the color of their skin. So maybe it follows that he'd be able to see past his own approval of the ten commandments to the long-term consequences of having the state courthouse endorse the values of any one particular religion, even if it's his own.
I only guessed he probably wouldn't see it that way because placing a monument of the ten commandments at the a State Capitol isn't quite the same as adopting the rules in said monument officially. I would certainly argue it's a step toward officially sanctioning the religion, but if I were to play devil's advocate, I could say it's no more an endorsement of Christianity than a monument to Lady Justice at a courthouse is an endorsement of the old Roman religion and worship of the goddess Iustitia. It may just mean, "we generally approve of these values represented here, but are not legally bound by them." A simple artistic expression of, in the case of Iustitia, the idea of impartiality in the justice system; in the case of the ten commandments, of the value of a codified system of laws, which is the job of the legislature.
Honestly, the only reason I don't actually make that argument in favor of leaving the ten commandments there is because the people who generally want to place the ten commandments everywhere aren't really hiding their true intentions, and will joyfully tell everyone of the benefits of a government that attempts to be true to the Bible. I can't really abide by that attitude.
But that was one of the problems with the Gattaca universe. Everything was viewed through the lens of attaining genetic perfection. Going into space and being exposed to DNA-damaging radiation is precisely the sort of thing that this society would be pathologically afraid of.
True, but another aspect of the movie involved the reason for their obsession with genetic perfection. They believed a person's worth could be accurately measured by their genetic makeup, and therefore wouldn't trust somebody like Vincent to be able to complete the mission. He might be cheap in the sense of how much they would have to pay him, but that would be dwarfed by the cost of a failed mission if they send an incompetent person up.
The grand ironies would be yet another demonstration of the profound ignorance of the allegedly superior breed of human and the fact that unmodified humans such as the protagonist would continue to be excellent choices just due to having far less to lose, but are deliberately being screened out by perverse and illogical ideologies from one of the most important jobs that they could be tasked with.
I think the ignorance you're talking about was demonstrated, at least twice. There was an arrogance, a cognitive dissonance in the conversation director Josef had with detective Freeman:
Director Josef: "Bodies, with minds to match. Essential as we push out farther and farther." Detective Freeman: "Yet, you still constantly monitor performance. Director Josef: "You have to ensure the people are meeting their potential." Detective Freeman: "And exceeding it?" Director Josef: "No one exceeds his potential." Detective Freeman:"If he did?" Director Josef: "It would mean we did not accurately gauge his potential in the first place."
Here director Josef admits that it's possible to inaccurately gauge someone's potential. The problem with their society isn't that the genetic tests aren't correct, it's that they can't account for everything. Physically and mentally Jerome was superior to Vincent, and would have made a better Gattaca astronaut. However, Jerome had no motivation, no drive. He couldn't put in the work that's necessary to prepare yourself for the mission. He got his swimming silver medal because he train hard enough, didn't push himself to his limits. And when he realized his genes weren't sufficient to make him the best, he didn't care enough to do the work necessary to improve, instead he chose to try to kill himself. Vincent didn't have the advantages, but he was willing to do what others weren't. Maybe Jerome would have had to put in half as many hours studying as Vincent did, but Vincent wasn't afraid of putting in the time. Jerome would have breezed through the physical training requirements at Gattaca, but Vincent didn't mind pushing himself so hard that he'd collapse in the end. But while their society, and director Josef in particular, admitted that lack of drive was enough to cause a gifted individual to not achieve his full potential, they failed to recognize that an abundance of drive could make up for the lack of genetic advantages in another individual. They refused to test whether they had inaccurately measured someone's potential.
The real irony is that Josef, above all, should understand this. When he was being questioned by the police regarding the murder he proudly explained, "take another look at my profile. You won't find a violent bone in my body." Yet, his drive to ensure the mission he was planning would go ahead was sufficient to overcome that predisposition to non-violence and he was able to commit murder. It shouldn't surprise him that some people, like Vincent, would have the drive to compensate for something they were missing in their genetic profile.
I thought the treadmill scene, where his erratic heartbeat plays instead of the 'metronome' and he runs to the locker room clutching his chest, was supposed to show that he actually did have a heart condition.
I interpreted that scene as showing he was exercising beyond his ability. Remember, his "borrowed ladder", Jerome, was a swimming athlete before the accident. Vincent had to make himself not only meet the physical requirements, but also had to look like he had the conditioning of an athlete. So if I figured he always ran far in excess of what he had to, while making it seem like it was easy, using Jerome's recorded heat beats.
I don't think their intended message was that you could heal yourself from heart attacks if you had willpower. The way I interpret that scene wasn't Vincent with a heart condition, it was Vincent exhausted after far exceeding his actual conditioning. It fits with how he approached the swimming competitions with his brother. Save nothing. If he's not collapsing, he's going to keep running.
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No, the sensible thing would have been to have gotten rid of them ALL on BOTH SIDES in the heady years right after the Wall fell. Now a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity has passed, all because some people refused to let go of the Cold War. Now we're stuck with the fucking things, and more and more countries are desperate to get them because they see them as their only defense against a U.S. or Russian attack.
Oh, please. It shouldn't really be possible for someone to be that idealistic.
The once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be rid of all nuclear weapons everywhere was gone the moment physicists realized that maybe such a thing would be possible. From that point forward, somebody was going to figure out how to make one and invest the money, because it's too good of an advantage to have. After the cold war ended, if everyone had agreed to get rid of all their nuclear weapons, the game would be to either figure out how to hide a few without the other side knowing, or how to build new ones in secret. It's simply not feasible to prevent this from happening, the policing power isn't there. it's the equivalent to software piracy in the torrent age. You can make it illegal all you want, you can have several people who either agree with the law or want to avoid punishment, but you really can't ensure that NOBODY will do it. Because you can't monitor everything and everyone all the time.
Another thing to consider is that nuclear weapons have probably brought more peace and stability than they've done damage. MAD actually works, and if it weren't for nuclear weapons being invented the cold war wouldn't have been just a bunch of proxy wars everywhere. It would have turned into World War III in the middle of Europe. The existence of nukes made the cost far too high, which actually promotes peace. The last time nukes were used where in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, when there was no threat of retaliation. Get over it, it will never be used again, and the only reason it will never be used again is because multiple people still have them, so it's not just a question of who can rebuild their arsenal quicker.
If you are about to die (or your country is about to dissolve), what would stop you from trying to get a parting shot off at the enemy who is destroying you?
The knowledge that there's a difference between a government and a people. That even if your government is about to be dissolved, and your territory taken by a foreign enemy, the people living there will largely survive...unless you do a dumbass thing like an attack which won't actually win the war for you, but will cause retaliation which will kill those people who would have survived the invasion otherwise. Those people include your family and friends.
You don't use a nuclear weapon if you're not assured that you'll destroy their retaliation capabilities. It doesn't make any sense, it doesn't win you anything. It doesn't even win you the satisfaction of making them suffer, because you're going to be responsible for the suffering of your own people in that mix.
I feel I have every right to know what my lovely little government thugs are doing.
Is your point of view that there should be no such thing as classified information, and that every single thing the government does and knows should be public domain and easily accessible to everyone?
If so I disagree with you, but find your position internally consistent and wouldn't argue with it. It's just a matter of opinion, and I don't share yours as I find that secrets are sometimes necessary and unavoidable. If, however, you see the benefit in the government keeping some secrets, then you must expect people who are in position to have access to these secrets to exercise a high level of caution and discreteness when they find it necessary to overrule the system in place that decides what is classified and what is public. When necessary to stop illegal behavior, you disclose what it is absolutely necessary and not a single thing more.
They're paid for by your taxes. I'd say you have a right to see whether they're doing their job or whether your money is being squandered on frivolous crap like an "advice column".
Managing employees is hard. If you just crack the whip and make them do nothing but focus non-stop on the task at hand, they're going to be much less productive and waste much more of your money than if you actually invest a bit of money on keeping morale high and put out the small fires in human interaction that happens when not everyone in your team is socially compatible.
The NSA would be no different in this than a private company. You take a tremendously successful company like Google, and they're spending money on play rooms and free food for their employees. If that makes them more productive by causing some of them to not have a problem staying in the office longer to work on a problem and others to get a burst of creativity that you only get when you quit thinking about the problem for a bit and free your mind, then that investment is worth every penny. If that advice column is helping your team deal with problems they encounter in an effective way and thus making them able to work together more effectively, it's far from "frivolous crap."
If, on the other hand, it was a leak about the NSA giving every project manager a free Ferrari, you'd have a point.
Is there any reason this should have been leaked? Yeah, we can poke fun at the irony of NSA co-workers concerned about their office gossip being spied upon and how they consider that an intrusion of their privacy. Does it constitute information a whistleblower should disseminate? The point isn't that this is damaging to national security, it's an advice column, but it was happening inside their intranet and not cleared for public scrutiny.
My problem with Snowden isn't that he leaked info about NSA unconstitutional activities. If you see your employers doing something blatenly illegal, it's your duty to do something about. My problem is that his leaks are completely indiscrimate. He didn't just deliver the documents that contained information on what he considered were illegal activities by the NSA. He took everything he could get his hands on and turned it in to journalists. I don't know how he could possibly justify that.
But why should running off of electricity somehow make a car interesting? Because it's "new"? No, people have experimented with electric cars since the 19th century, the main difference now is we have batteries that make it semi-practical.
So you're saying there's something new now that wasn't possible before?
Seriously, what is so exciting about this car that it gets so many Slashdot stories?
Well, compare it to the other electric cars, and I don't mean golf carts or the ones that were being built in the 19th century. Compare the Model S to its contemporaries, who can and do use the same battery technology that makes electric cars feasible now. The Model S has a much larger range. The Model S accelerates faster. The Model S doesn't make the annoying high pitched sound the Prius does, and is relatively silent. The Model S looks better. The Model S isn't trying to get its range by being smaller and lighter, and is a nice spacious car. Tesla is making it such that you can drive everywhere it not by compromising and making it a hybrid, but by building an infrastructure of chargers and battery swapping stations.
What's exciting about the Model S isn't that it's an electric car. You're right, there's nothing interesting about that. What's exciting about the Model S is that it's a no compromise electric car. It's not just a great electric car, it's just a great car, period. You can't say that about any other electric car. If they weren't electric, you'd steer clear from them because a short-range, small and heavy vehicle is a horrible idea. But if the Model S was an internal combustion vehicle, people would still want to buy it, at that same price point. It wouldn't be making press, but it would still be a great car.
Comcast buying time-warner, I mean. Was thinking about cell phone companies and screwed up.
In terms of competition, verizon buying time-warner is a much bigger deal than the blocked attempt of at&t buying t-mobile. This purchase can't possibly be allowed to proceed.
If intelligent design was subject to disproof, we'd no more be having this conversation than we'd have a conversation about whether the Earth is flat.
Please. People still argue over whether men has been to the moon, or whether NASA faked it. The proof is there, but humans are irrational and simply don't accept evidence that goes against what they would like to belief.
This is unfortunate, because if you can't tell the difference between disproven and untestable then all of your statements about proof or disproof become suspect.
I'm fully willing to accept there are things which are untestable. Evolution isn't one of them. The age of the Earth isn't one of them. The age of the universe isn't one of them.
If you want to argue straight out creationism as a literal interpretation of Genesis? Well, every single prediction you can make from that model is directly refuted by every piece of evidence we can dig up. It's exactly equivalent to arguing that the moon landings never happened, it's just stupid.
HID still blows them away for lumens output at power consumed.
Do you have a source? Every google article that I hit while searching "HID vs. LED" says that although HID is a bit more efficient (not blow-away efficient) than LEDs at light-generation, there are a ton of losses in the lamp, related to light being reflected back, and absorbed by lenses and protective covering. Comparing actual lumens output from the lamp, instead of generated lumens at the source, LED seems to come out the winner, by a lot.
It's possible I only hit biased sites. This one website listed warmup of 5-10 minutes for HID, but I assume they've solved that problem if they're using them as headlights. I wasn't able to find an HID-favorable source, though.
Actually, according to your reference there is both a theory of gravity and a law of gravity.
The law quantitatively documents what happens.
The theory attempts to explain why.
Correct, and that's true whether the theory is proven or not. The point he was making is that theories don't become laws. They're separate concepts. That evolution happens is a fact, and an observable fact. The details of which mutations happened when, where exactly an extinct species lies in terms of being an ancestor to a current species of part of a failed branch closely related to the said ancestor, the role of epigenetics, these things can be revised. As scientists discover more evidence, they refine those details.
There is no law of evolution.
The analogous part you're looking for here would be the law of natural selection. That's a directly observable thing, which is that new species come about as a result of mutation and environmental selection of existing species. Just like the law of gravity, nobody is every going to say gravity doesn't exist, or that evolution through natural selection doesn't exist. The details of how those things happen get refined, but the main thrust of it will never go away any more than Newton's Laws went away with the Theory of Relativity (hey look. Theories superseding laws??? Madness!!)
We can't reliably quantify it.
Buddy, we can reliably quantify so many things about it, it's not even funny. We can build a family tree of species using the same DNA evidence and methods that can be used to build your family tree. We can date fossils at 60 million years old and we can even quantify that uncertainty at about plus or minus a million years. We can quantify the rate of mutations happening in a population. We can examine similarities, and we can tell when certain genes appeared or disappeared. For example, did you know most mammals can make their own vitamin C through absorption of sunlight, as well as vitamin D like we can? Actually, we have that vitamin C creation gene as well. So how come we get scurvy if we don't get vitamin C through our diet? Turns out our vitamin C-making gene is defective, as a result of a mutation. The same defect exists in other primates like chimps. So we can examine the DNA of related species, figure out which ones have the defect and which don't, and you know the mutation first occurred in a species that was the common ancestors to all of those that have the defect, but not all the way back to a common ancestor that encompasses species which do not have a defect, and maintain a working gene.
Which returns us to my thesis: that arguing equivalent confidence in evolution and gravity is as oafish as arguing equivalent confidence in creationism and evolution.
In a way, there is a lot of confidence in creationism. It's provably wrong, we have 100% confidence in that. It can't be refined into something that works, the fundamental idea is incorrect. In the example I gave above regarding figuring out when a mutation occurred, I could have used an example of an additional feature, instead of the removal of a feature (same method. Compare species that have and don't have the feature, feature must have developed after common ancestor to both groups). I chose that one, because it completely disproves not only creationism, but also intelligent design. A lot of creationists like to say, "of course we have so many similarities in DNA. They were all created by the same creator, who re-used the same genes." But given the vitamin C problem, that creator just happened to make a mistake copying that common gene around to his favored species that is supposed to rule the earth. And before you can say, "maybe he didn't want us to be able to have that feature, because he wanted to force us to eat vitamin C containing fruits," you'll have to explain why he made the same mistake with the non-planet-ruling primates.
Occam's Razor suggests that the more mundane the explanation, the greater the likelihood of its truth.
Although I agree the Cracked explanation is perfectly plausible and very likely, Occam's Razor says no such thing. It's a pet peeve of mine when people state it that it that way. Occam's Razor makes no claims at all on likelihood of correctness.
What Occam's Razor does say is that when choosing between hypotheses which all give the exact same predictions, you should pick the one that involves less variables. Not because it's more likely to be true than the others (it's not, there's no requirement on nature to make things simple), but because there's no point in doing extra work to achieve the same result. The moment there's any difference at all between the predictions, Occam's Razor can no longer be invoked. At that point, you've got to eliminate theories by attempting to falsify their predictions. For example, if one theory says the incident was the result of an avalanche and another says it wasn't, you should now look for characteristic signs of an avalanche at the site. The evidence should rule out or support an avalanche theory, but "an avalanche is the simpler explanation" isn't evidence for anything.
When you do invoke Occam's Razor is when the hypotheses make no testable difference. For example, you and I examine a black box that allows us to input a number via a keyboard, and watch a screen for an output. We type in 1 and get 3. We type in 24 and get 26. We type in 127 and get 129. Now you develop a hypothesis: "The black box outputs the input plus two." I develop a differnet hypothesis: "the black box first adds 5 to the input, then it subtracts 3." The predictive power of both hypotheses are exactly equal, and you can't devise a test to figure out what the exact computation happening inside the black box is. So, Occam's Razor says we should pick your hypothesis in order to make predictions, because adding the extra work is unecessary. However, it could very well be that my hypothesis is the one that is right...it just doesn't matter.
But having the dialog you mention as a default would be a big mistake. 99.9% of users wouldn't know what to do, and it would be a pure fluke if they selected the most appropriate action.
Well, I gave you the wrong idea about the dialog, if you think that's true. They certainly made the option to "ignore" seem like the worst of all choices, a scary and dangerous decision. If you ever clicked it, it would further nag you about how that was likely to be incredibly unwise and ask you to confirm that option. Then, on every subsequent scan, it would keep flagging that file anyway, and you'd have to ignore it every time.
Personally, I never treated anti-virus software as software to *clean* viruses. I use them for their virus scanner feature, and if they ever come up positive, it's time to reformat the box and start from scratch, hoping your BIOS is clean. The way I see it, if your system has been compromised, your anti-virus could be compromised. I think clicking, "delete" and getting that nice message on how your system is now clean at the end gives the user a dangerous feeling of false comfort. They're really not that much safer than if they had clicked ignore, they're fairly likely to be just as screwed.
From the sounds of it, this sounds like a delete immediately case. It happens on machines that are known to have the malware, and the TOR client is an old version installed in a specific hidden directory. There is no chance of a false positive.
Yeah, I'm not all up in arms against Microsoft for deleting this particular program, mind you. If anything I said implied that, then I was unclear in how I phrased my thoughts. Microsoft appeared very responsible in dealing with this particular case, down to contacting the Tor developers and making sure there was no legitimate reason why Tor would ever have been installed in that way. Kudos.
What gives me pause is that they have the capability of choosing to delete anything off a box. Because there's no guarantee they're going to be responsible with that tool tomorrow, and the next thing you know, a false positive gets deleted. I don't think such an action should even be legal, without explicit consent.
I moved to the Mac a long time ago...Developers shouldn't delegate the hard decisions to users. They should work out the right thing to do, and do it.
Well, that's certainly the Apple philosophy. I'm not saying that disparagingly, and I recognize the advantages of that philosophy, but I will like to point out that it's a preference, not a universal truth. Since you subscribe to it, you're probably very happy with that move to the Mac. I did the Mac thing myself for many years as a result of Apple switching to x86 compatible machines, and as a result of Mac OS X being UNIX. My latest laptop, however, is not an Apple, precisely because I personally hate that Apple philosophy, and it got in my way much more often than it was ever helpful.
I am a software developer. My philosophy, as a developer and as a user, is that a developer doesn't make decisions ever, regardless of whether they're easy or hard. A developer makes suggestions, when the choice appear obvious, in the form of defaults that can be changed in an advanced menu. If it's a hard decision, either because you're not sure what should be chosen, or because the stakes are high (files are going to get deleted, overwritten, the user will have to log out or reboot, etc.), then you don't even pick a default. You ask the question, and allow the user to set his answer as the default in the future, if he so chooses.
Once again, I'm not trying to tell you my philosophy is right and yours is wrong here, I'm just explaining my own preferences. My philosophy is right for me, and I look to use, buy, and create software that abides by it. This is Windows vs. Mac, KDE vs. Gnome stuff...you always have to trade off control for initial user friendliness, and people draw the line of where the cutoff should be differently.
This is no different from anti-virus, because it WAS the Microsoft anti-virus tool that did it. A specific version of TOR in a specific hidden directory being part of the virus payload.
Talk of not owning your own computer is nonsense. You are free to not run AV software if you prefer. It would be a dumb move, but you are free to do it.
You know, I haven't seen a virus scanner log on any of my computers come up with any positive results since early 2000s, so maybe things have changed. However, the way it was done back then, and the way I assumed it was still done today, is that the anti-virus would flag the potentially malicious files, and then tell you in big red letters, "We detected virus blah. What would you like to do? Ignore / Delete / Quarantine"
In this mode of operation, nothing is being done without explicit user authorization. I actually don't even see anything wrong with having an option for automatically deleting anything that it detects as malicious as long as it's not the default option, which would therefore still be considered an user-authorized action. However, to have any anti-virus software delete files or uninstall software without any consent other than the decision to run anti-virus software is most certainly unacceptable. Even if you disagree with me from an ethical perspective, even looking at it from a practical viewpoint it's a bad idea. After all, there are such things as false positives in virus-scans.
if we can convince certain political groups that polio is not an appropriate weapon of terrorism, we'll soon eliminate it completely...Not making this up - some groups in Afghanistan think that spreading polio is a good way to get back at the Great Satan.
Even if it's difficult to sell the 'appropriate' part, which implies telling them there are lines they shouldn't cross (which I don't think is necessarily possible in militant religious groups of any denomination), I don't understand how we can't convince them that it's not effective. Everyone in the western world is vaccinated against polio, and they can't infect us. They can infect their nearby locations in a weird attempt to go, "nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah, your vaccination efforts are all for naught!" That strategy isn't likely to gain them much goodwill among the locals though, as they all start noticing that nobody who got vaccinated is getting the disease. They don't even need to notice this by themselves, it's a great vector for propaganda.
What do you mean "small amount". He's installing Linux (I assume) not Windows. A full install with LibreOffice, 3 browsers, Gimp and stuff is less than 6GB.
Well, I assumed the same, but my own linux install takes up a whole lot more space than that.
Basically, if all you use your box for is browse the web and open some documents, then I don't see why even bother taking Chrome OS out. It does the job, right? Heck, you can also go the tablet route. However, you decided you wanted a laptop, and you decided Chrome OS wasn't enough for your needs. So, what are your needs?
On my linux install, first of all I run gnome 3, which takes up a bunch of space. Then I have Eclipse installed for coding, along with the android sdk. I also have code:blocks for when I'm not doing java. I have Mono and MonoDevelop for C# coding. I store code and associated resources...
Let's say you're not a coder. You're a gamer? Ok, you install Steam and associated games. Wine, probably, in order to run the windows only games. I doubt you could install a single game on that drive, actually.
You like editing video? Again, that's out. It won't be able to store the project files.
I wiped the Chome OS off of the Chrombook. For me it was just a cheap netbook.
I don't get it. What the hell did you install in place of Chrome OS on the 16-32 GB hard drive? That's an impossibly small amount of storage, which is why Chrome OS takes the online apps approach so you don't have to actually install anything.
Go to some abandonware site, play a few of these ancient games...frankly, they rather stink. I mean, they were great in the day, no question.
I don't need to. With very few exceptions, 80's and 90's games are the only ones I play. Every once in a while I make an exception for something modern, like the Mass Effect series or the Arkham Asylum / Arkham City. The rest of the time, I'm playing games like the Genesis Sonic games, Mega Man (I really enjoyed the new Mega Man 9 and Mega Man 10 that Capcom released), Contra, Super Mario Bros, the original Legend of Zelda, Phantasy Star...in terms of computers games I tend to bust out the classic adventure games like King's Quest, Journeyman Project, the Tex Murphy games (really excited about the upcoming one).
I mean, taste isn't objective, and I have no problem with the fact that you like modern games more. I do want to point out that there are people out there who genuinely enjoyed those old games, and we're not motivated by nostalgia, we're not being fooled by rose-colored glasses. I genuinely like those games. I liked them when they were new, and as games evolved, I just didn't like where they were going. I remember when Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, and Quake were coming out, and I remember thinking, "these games are somewhat fun and all, but this 3D stuff is a gimmick, and it's only entertaining because there aren't many games like these. The genre is going to be forgotten in ten years." One of the many times I was utterly wrong about predicting the market, but my personal opinion didn't change. They feel gimmicky and unecessary, and I'd much rather play platformers and 2D adventure games. I remember how much King's Quest VIII angered me, and how I didn't even play it for more than ten minutes because controlling a character around and fighting made it a bad game. I just wanted to solve puzzles and unwrap the story.
Long story short, the types of games I used to enjoy are rarely made anymore, which means I still play the old ones. I'm not looking to have kids, but if I were to have them, they'd definitely be introduced to these old games, just because that's what they'd see me playing. I have no illusions about molding their preferences or anything like that, I know kids will want to play what their friends are playing. That's not a problem, they can play what they like.
Because of entertainment sources, laptops and desktop monitors are all wide-screen 16x9... ...but that resolution ONLY works for entertainment video. Reading requires vertical height and narrow width...In short, it just doesn't work when the medium is text.
Speak for yourself. As a coder, I find the widescreen switch finally made laptops usable for doing. A 4:3 aspect ratio made things impossible for me.
Sure, when I was sitting in a desktop, 4:3's were nice. That's because I always worked with a two-monitor configuration, though. Ever wonder why two-monitor configurations are so popular with coders? You get to code in one screen, have a browser on another screen for reference / browsing / running apps while simultaneously making changes. Then when we had to do work on a laptop, it became minimize / maximize / alt-tab hell.
With widescreen monitors, I get to have my code window taking half the screen, so it's horizontally narrow and doesn't violate the "comfortable 10-12 word limit" you mention. On the other half the screen I can have my browser or whatever else open. It's most of the benefits of a two-monitor in a mobile device. Screw movies, I never watch them on a laptop anyway, I have a TV for that. Widescreen made coding on a laptop not be a pain in the ass. The only complaint was the generally low resolution, but it looks like we're finally breaking out of that.
iOS 7.1 is probably coming next month... now surely whatever exploit was used will be analyzed by Apple and double-patched for the final 7.1 release.
You'd think they could have waited just a little bit more!
They may have downloaded the beta, realized the exploit had been patched, and released the jailbreak as a result, before a bunch of people update to 7.1 without thinking.
Pure speculation on my part, but the point is that we should wait to see if they say something about it before complaining that they were impatient. There may have been good reasons.
However, "offensive" is not the same as "humour" - good humour is when you are able to persuade the "victim" that you are playing, that you want them you to laugh with you.
Human beings are not like that. I wish you could just go up to someone, present a convincing argument that they're wrong about something, and have them say, "you know what, buddy? You're right. I'm going to abandon the position I've held for the last 25 years now that you've shown me my only justifications for this belief are fallacious." Hell, I strive to be that person, I strive to be that open-minded and I know I'm not. I've actually changed my mind on issues I used to strongly believed in, so I'm proud of the fact that at least I can do it. The thing is, it took years before I gradually reversed my position.
When you first make a joke, somebody's going to feel like the victim and be offended. However, if you really are making a good point, ten years down the road and hundreds of similar jokes later they may agree and laugh with you.
At the best of times "everything is a joke, and everyone should never be offended by my joke"
It's not that nobody should ever be offended by a joke. It's that people don't get to have a right to not be offended. If you're not offending someone, you didn't say anything of value. The point of free speech is to cause people to question their deeply held beliefs, which invariably will leads to taking offense, or they wouldn't be deeply held beliefs.
To put it bluntly, if you are not friends with the person, you absolutely should not be joking at them in a way that will provoke a response
As an example, I'm offended by your attitude. It violates my deeply held belief in the value of free speech and the nature of good jokes. Despite my offense, I don't wish you to get you fired, nor think you deserve to be. I just think you're an idiot, and move on with my life.
I'm not so sure, it seems like he was an intelligent and insightful man, he may well have understood the dangers of excessive coziness between church and state.
Maybe you're right. I have a great respect for anyone who lived in the world he lived in and still managed to put aside all the anger he accumulated from the injustices he saw to promote change through non-violent means. That could certainly only be done by those who were able to rationally consider what it takes to achieve the long-term goals of ending the nonsense of judging a human being by the color of their skin. So maybe it follows that he'd be able to see past his own approval of the ten commandments to the long-term consequences of having the state courthouse endorse the values of any one particular religion, even if it's his own.
I only guessed he probably wouldn't see it that way because placing a monument of the ten commandments at the a State Capitol isn't quite the same as adopting the rules in said monument officially. I would certainly argue it's a step toward officially sanctioning the religion, but if I were to play devil's advocate, I could say it's no more an endorsement of Christianity than a monument to Lady Justice at a courthouse is an endorsement of the old Roman religion and worship of the goddess Iustitia. It may just mean, "we generally approve of these values represented here, but are not legally bound by them." A simple artistic expression of, in the case of Iustitia, the idea of impartiality in the justice system; in the case of the ten commandments, of the value of a codified system of laws, which is the job of the legislature.
Honestly, the only reason I don't actually make that argument in favor of leaving the ten commandments there is because the people who generally want to place the ten commandments everywhere aren't really hiding their true intentions, and will joyfully tell everyone of the benefits of a government that attempts to be true to the Bible. I can't really abide by that attitude.
But that was one of the problems with the Gattaca universe. Everything was viewed through the lens of attaining genetic perfection. Going into space and being exposed to DNA-damaging radiation is precisely the sort of thing that this society would be pathologically afraid of.
True, but another aspect of the movie involved the reason for their obsession with genetic perfection. They believed a person's worth could be accurately measured by their genetic makeup, and therefore wouldn't trust somebody like Vincent to be able to complete the mission. He might be cheap in the sense of how much they would have to pay him, but that would be dwarfed by the cost of a failed mission if they send an incompetent person up.
The grand ironies would be yet another demonstration of the profound ignorance of the allegedly superior breed of human and the fact that unmodified humans such as the protagonist would continue to be excellent choices just due to having far less to lose, but are deliberately being screened out by perverse and illogical ideologies from one of the most important jobs that they could be tasked with.
I think the ignorance you're talking about was demonstrated, at least twice. There was an arrogance, a cognitive dissonance in the conversation director Josef had with detective Freeman:
Director Josef: "Bodies, with minds to match. Essential as we push out farther and farther."
Detective Freeman: "Yet, you still constantly monitor performance.
Director Josef: "You have to ensure the people are meeting their potential."
Detective Freeman: "And exceeding it?"
Director Josef: "No one exceeds his potential."
Detective Freeman:"If he did?"
Director Josef: "It would mean we did not accurately gauge his potential in the first place."
Here director Josef admits that it's possible to inaccurately gauge someone's potential. The problem with their society isn't that the genetic tests aren't correct, it's that they can't account for everything. Physically and mentally Jerome was superior to Vincent, and would have made a better Gattaca astronaut. However, Jerome had no motivation, no drive. He couldn't put in the work that's necessary to prepare yourself for the mission. He got his swimming silver medal because he train hard enough, didn't push himself to his limits. And when he realized his genes weren't sufficient to make him the best, he didn't care enough to do the work necessary to improve, instead he chose to try to kill himself. Vincent didn't have the advantages, but he was willing to do what others weren't. Maybe Jerome would have had to put in half as many hours studying as Vincent did, but Vincent wasn't afraid of putting in the time. Jerome would have breezed through the physical training requirements at Gattaca, but Vincent didn't mind pushing himself so hard that he'd collapse in the end. But while their society, and director Josef in particular, admitted that lack of drive was enough to cause a gifted individual to not achieve his full potential, they failed to recognize that an abundance of drive could make up for the lack of genetic advantages in another individual. They refused to test whether they had inaccurately measured someone's potential.
The real irony is that Josef, above all, should understand this. When he was being questioned by the police regarding the murder he proudly explained, "take another look at my profile. You won't find a violent bone in my body." Yet, his drive to ensure the mission he was planning would go ahead was sufficient to overcome that predisposition to non-violence and he was able to commit murder. It shouldn't surprise him that some people, like Vincent, would have the drive to compensate for something they were missing in their genetic profile.
I thought the treadmill scene, where his erratic heartbeat plays instead of the 'metronome' and he runs to the locker room clutching his chest, was supposed to show that he actually did have a heart condition.
I interpreted that scene as showing he was exercising beyond his ability. Remember, his "borrowed ladder", Jerome, was a swimming athlete before the accident. Vincent had to make himself not only meet the physical requirements, but also had to look like he had the conditioning of an athlete. So if I figured he always ran far in excess of what he had to, while making it seem like it was easy, using Jerome's recorded heat beats.
I don't think their intended message was that you could heal yourself from heart attacks if you had willpower. The way I interpret that scene wasn't Vincent with a heart condition, it was Vincent exhausted after far exceeding his actual conditioning. It fits with how he approached the swimming competitions with his brother. Save nothing. If he's not collapsing, he's going to keep running.