Religion, not just islam, is the root of all evil..
While I'd agree that religions are the root of much evil, I think this statement probably overgeneralises in several ways. For one, it seems to tar all religions with the same brush. While Judaism, Christianity, and Islam share a common heritage, many smaller religions developed independently (and many of them were wiped out by these three). I don't think it's fair to assume all were evil. Also, some ideologies were evil without having any supernatural components, so don't qualify as religions (e.g. Soviet Communism). Finally, I think some people just manage to be evil independently, without needing any particular religion or other ideology.
Islam is a mono-cultural ideology that by definition tolerates no other cultures on basis of equality.
Christianity is hardly a beacon of equality either. According to Christianity, Christians will be rewarded with everlasting paradise, and everyone else will be punished with everlasting torture, and this is right and just, because they are evil and deserve it, and it is the will of an all-loving god. By no means does this view espouse equality. Granted, Jesus tells his followers not to be violent, while he'll bring an army of angels to cast the unbelievers into the pit of fire that they deserve. (Do as I say, not as I do.) That said, if a Christian should kill an unbeliever, they will be forgiven, and still go to heaven, while the unbeliever will still burn in hell.
Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. (Matthew 10:34)
Christianity inspired the crusades, inquisitions, and witch hunts. (Seriously, if you think you've got the seed of Satan spreading evil among you, and they deserve to be killed, and you'll be forgiven for killing them, would you not?) The practice of religious tolerance in the West began begrudgingly in response to wariness from over a hundred years of Christian infighting in the European wars of religion. Modern liberal Christianity (the "don't be such a literalist, when Jesus said non-believers deserve to be burned, it was a metaphor for something nice" variety) draws its morals from the Enlightenment (atheist thought), not Christianity, although it steadfastly refuses to acknowledge it. Modern liberal Islam is relatively benign mental masturbation in the same vein.
Apparently we need better software, designed to be able to prove it is non-discriminatory. Furthermore, we probably should require this software to be transparent, enabling us, as society, if we think the grounds are acceptable.
I expect the algorithms are likely to be closely guarded secrets, because they are surely a big part of the way credit companies try to gain an edge over each other.
Thus we could lead discussions like this, is it acceptable policy to deny heavy drinkers a loan.
It sounds reasonable to me. It seems likely that it would be a predictor of the ability to repay debt, and it's something that, in some sense, people have the ability to choose, leaving them in control of the outcome.
With regard to race, I would be surprised if it was a useful predictor of the ability to repay debt. It would be a losing proposition to offer credit to someone solely on the basis of their race, and if credit history was available, I can't imagine that a person's race would usefully supplement this information in any way. Not that this would necessarily stop people from using it though, I guess.
Yeah, I kind of figured they wouldn't be available world-wide, but the links contain enough details (season 19, episodes 1 and 5) that you should be able to locate them on, shall we say, "other" sources.
I'm not sure what it's like in other places, but in New Zealand, copyright law requires ISPs to disclose information about accounts used for P2P, and account holders can be charged without trial. Law to fight internet piracy passed
I expect there are ways around this, but I tend to try to adhere to copyright law, even if I don't agree with it (while some other people I know seem to have it the other way around--go figure).
I moved to the EU a few years ago, so now I just pay for a VPN service.
Most are very affordable, and I don't have to put up with those invisible internet boarders anymore.
Thanks, but it seems likely that this is illegal in New Zealand. ISPs used to offer access to geo-blocked content, but this was challenged by the television companies, and ruled to be illegal (violating copyright law by importing without distribution rights, I think). Global Mode goes dark - broadcasters win legal fight
This probably wouldn't be an issue for VPN in practice, but I'd rather adhere to the law anyway, even if I don't agree with it.
Thanks for the suggestion, but no luck, unfortunately.
Sorry, currently our video library can only be watched from within the United States
Hulu is committed to making its content available worldwide. To do so, we must work through a number of legal and business issues, including obtaining international streaming rights. Know that we are working to make this happen and will continue to do so. Given the international background of the Hulu team, we have both a professional and personal interest in bringing Hulu to a global audience.
South Park has been covering this stuff brilliantly this season....
Sounds interesting, and I have some time to kill.
Sorry New Zealand
Full Episodes Coming Soon
We are working hard to resolve our pre-existing contractual obligations and bring you Full Episodes as soon as possible.
So it seems I can't watch it, but at least I can feel the progress of science and the useful arts being promoted as I don't.
I'm not very well read on this topic, and thought I'd better read something before responding, so had a browse through the Wikipedia page on the hockey stick graph, but don't feel I know a great deal more, except that it all sounds rather complicated. (Thanks, BTW, I didn't know what the AC's "45-degree slope" referred to--I assumed it was some temperature prediction, and had heard of the hockey stick graph, but didn't make a connection.)
My "understanding" of climate models still basically goes no further than: People are putting more CO2 in the atmosphere, and atmospheric CO2 traps heat. I guess it's the sceptics' view that this effect is relatively minor in the scheme of things?
The gist seems to be that he read about an omission in climate models, claims it's grounds to question the evidence for climate change, and takes umbrage that others disagree. In particular, he quotes:
The atmospheric chemists from France and Germany, however, could now show that isoprene could also be formed without biological sources in surface film of the oceans by sunlight and so explain the large discrepancy between field measurements and models. The new identified photochemical reaction is therefore important to improve the climate models.
From this he concludes:
The computer models on which anthropogenic global warming theory are based are inadequate to the task because they fail to take into account all the real-world data.
Earlier in the article he stated:
You don't need to be a climate scientist to understand this stuff. Or even a scientist.
I don't find the article convincing, because I think you do need an understanding of a model to determine how much of an impact a discrepancy in particular data will be likely to have on the model's reliability.
In some particular model, some data may be critical, and other data less so, and it may be possible to approximate some data without a large effect on the outcome. To take an extreme example, astronomical models often approximate stars and planets as point masses, thereby approximating all of us out of existence. This is clearly a gross approximation for many purposes, but often not so much of an issue for astronomy.
I know something about astronomical models, at least with regards to Newtonian physics, and am fairly comfortable making the above claim. I don't know much about climate models, and don't claim to know the significance of the discrepancy. There's nothing in the article, however, to convince me that the author knows any more about this than I do.
To allow "hacking" to circumvent encryption, the FBI must have (direct or indirect) access to a suspect's device.
For that, they must first have a suspect. Encryption can still prevent becoming a suspect in the first place.
According to them, encryption would still prevent people becoming suspects anyway, as I understand it. I believe they claim that they'd only ever use the back door* to access encrypted data of people who are already suspects, not to conduct fishing expeditions.
*Erm, I mean the "front door",which only they can use, leaving me to use the "back door" I suppose, meaning, metaphorically, I would have to walk around the house whenever I wanted to enter or leave it, which sounds rather metaphorically inconvenient, but I digress.
That's total bullshit, a lot of things CAN trigger a bomb. The trigger isn't the dangerous part, the exploding part is the dangerous part.
So you admit an alarm clock could be used to trigger a bomb. Worse, it could also be used to wake someone up on time to set that bomb. Frankly, I find your cavalier attitude unfathomable.
In fact, it wasn't a dangerous-looking thing. If it was, the teacher would not have confiscated it, put it in a desk drawer, and continued teaching the class.
Well put. I guess the teacher was afraid that other people might be afraid it was a bomb. That's what the police were afraid of. From what I understand, they didn't call the bomb squad, and they didn't arrest him for possessing a bomb, they arrested him for possessing a "hoax bomb". No-one was actually afraid it was a bomb. It wasn't a dangerous-looking thing. It was, perhaps, a kind of thing that looked like it might look dangerous to someone else, if there is such a kind of thing.
Walmart or google isn't going to kick down your doors in the middle of the night and shoot your dog.
Probably not, although Wilson Parking did threaten to send ex-criminals to bang on my door in the middle of the night. Besides, with all the public-private partnerships in "intelligence" and "defence", it's getting increasingly difficult to tell the difference.
Assuming "back door" means "any security bug, including a but that nobody knows about yet," well, "good luck with that."
Yes, but if you want to secure communications, you've essentially only got two options: 1) Secure the endpoints, or 2) secure everything between them. i.e. 1) Use unbreakable encryption on uncrackable machines, or 2) ensure no-one on the Internet (read: in the world) tries to intercept your messages or crack your machines. Ridiculous as it may be to try to do 1, it is not half as ridiculous as trying to do 2, so if you're going to try to do anything at all, your least worst option is to try to do 1.
I honestly thought you were joking (and apparently I'm not the only one--I notice you've been modded "funny"). Lucky I decided to check the article to be sure. But I don't think it actually has any basis in law. AFAIK, I don't need Lexmark's permission to open the package of a cartridge I bought, nor to use it, therefore I don't need to agree to a license in order to do either of these things.
I think software licenses base their claim primarily on the necessity of copying software onto a computer in order to use it--i.e. I am not allowed to copy the software without a copyright license, and therefore I am not allowed to use the software without agreeing to a copyright license, since using requires copying. This being the case, it wouldn't apply to Lexmark's cartridges. I don't need to copy Lexmark's cartridges in order to use them, so I don't need their permission, and needn't agree to a license.
I'd never looked at that, thanks. However I think the doctrine of exhaustion might apply. (Not sure though, I vaguely recall its applicability being discussed before in relation to something else--perhaps importation of cars?)
Copyright infringement is not really, not morally a crime
schnell:
Disagree.... we abstract things so the "victim" is someone we have no sympathy for.
I don't think there is a victim of copying (assuming it does not involve invasion of privacy or misattribution), as I don't think there is any harm caused by it. Imagine for a second that we discovered life on Mars... and they were copying our movies. Would you consider us on Earth to have been victims suffering harm all this time, but simply unaware of it?
If you were the party that made these things and then had other people redistributing them for free... you would be pissed, right?
If offered to do something for someone, and they accepted, but I didn't receive anything for my efforts, I may believe I did not get what I deserved, although I probably wouldn't feel resentful if I had made the decision freely, without the expectation of receiving anything. If I had expected to receive something I might well feel not just that I didn't get what I deserved, but that they had treated me unfairly. Even then, though, I can honestly say that I do not think I would consider myself entitled to forcibly take what I believed I deserved and had been expecting. I think there is a significant difference between deserving something and having a right to take it. (Further, in the case of copying, I think it is copyright law that creates the expectation, and copyright law has been created, and repeatedly expanded, due to pressure from people who benefit from it, making the expectation, and therefore claimed unfair treatment, seem kind of self-inflicted.)
What I think I would do, is stop offering to do things for the person who did not return the favour. I certainly can't imagine myself continuing to offer to do things for that person in the future, and subsequently claiming to have been stolen from each time.
Yes, it is piracy. And it's also copyright infringement. Because piracy in this case is basically a (somewhat) more colloquial term for the copyright infringement. If you don't believe me, look it up: there are TONS of citations going back to the 1600's.
You could also find many citations, for instance, that refer to heavy rain as "raining cats and dogs", but you could also find many people who, if asked whether heavy rain was actually cats and dogs, would consider it not to be.
How was the Apple II better or superior to the Commodore, TRS 80, Sinclaire Pet, or whatever the hell was out during the 1980's?
In case you're interested (or, more honestly, for my own nostalgia), Sinclair's most popular computer was the ZX Spectrum (the PET was an early Commodore). There were various iterations and clones, but the original was very much a computer for people who couldn't afford a computer. I wouldn't have had a computer when younger, if not for this machine.
Almost everything was run pretty much directly by the CPU. Normally an interrupt ran 50 times a second. The interrupt routine checked the keyboard (40 rubber keys: numbers, letters, shift, "symbol shift", enter, and space, with everything else accessed via various combinations of the shift keys, e.g. shift+space for "break"--the equivalent of escape). The interrupt routine also updated the internal clock (3 bytes in memory), which kept track of how long the computer had been on, up to about 4 days, excluding time spent playing sound or loading or saving. That was because interrupts had to be disabled for the CPU to run the speaker (1 bit sound) or external tape recorder (for loading and saving). There was dedicated hardware for outputting the 256x192 display to a TV (unlike with the Spectrum's predecessor, the ZX81, where the CPU spent 3/4 of its time generating the scan lines for the TV). Only two colours could be used in any 8x8 pixel square. There was no paging on the original, so memory addressing was limited by the 16-bit address bus to 64K, of which 16K was ROM and about 8K was screen memory. The expansion port was a bit of the circuit board sticking out the back.
Amazingly, in the later years people got it to do 3d polygon graphics and 2 channel sound in software (although not at the same time, obviously). Ah, for the good old days.
Long term it was healthy for computing ecosystem. Even Intel today is making each new i5/i7 use less and less power which really started from Jobs perfection in the days of the Ipad which Intel wants in. How is this a bad thing?
I don't know how things would have played out without the Apple Mac. I wonder if perhaps there was enough room left in the market for one other computer besides the IBM PC, and if it hadn't been the Apple Mac, it might have been the Amiga.
Collecting massive amounts of data on people's personal lives could lead to new insights--I've heard this before. I'd rather have privacy. Why not collect massive amounts of data on governments and businesses instead? This could provide some actual evidence to base economic theories on, unstead of the naval gazing they're currently built on.
If it's a crime (fraud), then lawsuits are completely irrelevant. This is basic civics. Lawsuits are over torts, not crimes.
Okay, but, unless someone in a government department somewhere is actually paid to go looking, then to an extent it's a moot point. Nothing will be done unless someone, willing to submit to testimony and cross-examination, makes a complaint to the relevant government department. It's still a significant effort to make over a matter of a few dollars.
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While I'd agree that religions are the root of much evil, I think this statement probably overgeneralises in several ways. For one, it seems to tar all religions with the same brush. While Judaism, Christianity, and Islam share a common heritage, many smaller religions developed independently (and many of them were wiped out by these three). I don't think it's fair to assume all were evil. Also, some ideologies were evil without having any supernatural components, so don't qualify as religions (e.g. Soviet Communism). Finally, I think some people just manage to be evil independently, without needing any particular religion or other ideology.
Christianity is hardly a beacon of equality either. According to Christianity, Christians will be rewarded with everlasting paradise, and everyone else will be punished with everlasting torture, and this is right and just, because they are evil and deserve it, and it is the will of an all-loving god. By no means does this view espouse equality. Granted, Jesus tells his followers not to be violent, while he'll bring an army of angels to cast the unbelievers into the pit of fire that they deserve. (Do as I say, not as I do.) That said, if a Christian should kill an unbeliever, they will be forgiven, and still go to heaven, while the unbeliever will still burn in hell.
Christianity inspired the crusades, inquisitions, and witch hunts. (Seriously, if you think you've got the seed of Satan spreading evil among you, and they deserve to be killed, and you'll be forgiven for killing them, would you not?) The practice of religious tolerance in the West began begrudgingly in response to wariness from over a hundred years of Christian infighting in the European wars of religion. Modern liberal Christianity (the "don't be such a literalist, when Jesus said non-believers deserve to be burned, it was a metaphor for something nice" variety) draws its morals from the Enlightenment (atheist thought), not Christianity, although it steadfastly refuses to acknowledge it. Modern liberal Islam is relatively benign mental masturbation in the same vein.
No they shouldn't. I'm not saying it isn't deserved, but it wouldn't help.
I expect the algorithms are likely to be closely guarded secrets, because they are surely a big part of the way credit companies try to gain an edge over each other.
It sounds reasonable to me. It seems likely that it would be a predictor of the ability to repay debt, and it's something that, in some sense, people have the ability to choose, leaving them in control of the outcome.
With regard to race, I would be surprised if it was a useful predictor of the ability to repay debt. It would be a losing proposition to offer credit to someone solely on the basis of their race, and if credit history was available, I can't imagine that a person's race would usefully supplement this information in any way. Not that this would necessarily stop people from using it though, I guess.
I'm not sure what it's like in other places, but in New Zealand, copyright law requires ISPs to disclose information about accounts used for P2P, and account holders can be charged without trial. Law to fight internet piracy passed
I expect there are ways around this, but I tend to try to adhere to copyright law, even if I don't agree with it (while some other people I know seem to have it the other way around--go figure).
Thanks, but it seems likely that this is illegal in New Zealand. ISPs used to offer access to geo-blocked content, but this was challenged by the television companies, and ruled to be illegal (violating copyright law by importing without distribution rights, I think). Global Mode goes dark - broadcasters win legal fight
This probably wouldn't be an issue for VPN in practice, but I'd rather adhere to the law anyway, even if I don't agree with it.
Thanks for the suggestion, but no luck, unfortunately.
I'm tired of a lot of narratives, but I don't think death threats are an appropriate means of expressing it.
Sounds interesting, and I have some time to kill.
So it seems I can't watch it, but at least I can feel the progress of science and the useful arts being promoted as I don't.
Sorry, just checked this thread.
I'm not very well read on this topic, and thought I'd better read something before responding, so had a browse through the Wikipedia page on the hockey stick graph, but don't feel I know a great deal more, except that it all sounds rather complicated. (Thanks, BTW, I didn't know what the AC's "45-degree slope" referred to--I assumed it was some temperature prediction, and had heard of the hockey stick graph, but didn't make a connection.)
My "understanding" of climate models still basically goes no further than: People are putting more CO2 in the atmosphere, and atmospheric CO2 traps heat. I guess it's the sceptics' view that this effect is relatively minor in the scheme of things?
I don't think there's anything about this in the linked article, which is all I was responding to.
The gist seems to be that he read about an omission in climate models, claims it's grounds to question the evidence for climate change, and takes umbrage that others disagree. In particular, he quotes:
From this he concludes:
Earlier in the article he stated:
I don't find the article convincing, because I think you do need an understanding of a model to determine how much of an impact a discrepancy in particular data will be likely to have on the model's reliability.
In some particular model, some data may be critical, and other data less so, and it may be possible to approximate some data without a large effect on the outcome. To take an extreme example, astronomical models often approximate stars and planets as point masses, thereby approximating all of us out of existence. This is clearly a gross approximation for many purposes, but often not so much of an issue for astronomy.
I know something about astronomical models, at least with regards to Newtonian physics, and am fairly comfortable making the above claim. I don't know much about climate models, and don't claim to know the significance of the discrepancy. There's nothing in the article, however, to convince me that the author knows any more about this than I do.
According to them, encryption would still prevent people becoming suspects anyway, as I understand it. I believe they claim that they'd only ever use the back door* to access encrypted data of people who are already suspects, not to conduct fishing expeditions.
*Erm, I mean the "front door",which only they can use, leaving me to use the "back door" I suppose, meaning, metaphorically, I would have to walk around the house whenever I wanted to enter or leave it, which sounds rather metaphorically inconvenient, but I digress.
So you admit an alarm clock could be used to trigger a bomb. Worse, it could also be used to wake someone up on time to set that bomb. Frankly, I find your cavalier attitude unfathomable.
Well put. I guess the teacher was afraid that other people might be afraid it was a bomb. That's what the police were afraid of. From what I understand, they didn't call the bomb squad, and they didn't arrest him for possessing a bomb, they arrested him for possessing a "hoax bomb". No-one was actually afraid it was a bomb. It wasn't a dangerous-looking thing. It was, perhaps, a kind of thing that looked like it might look dangerous to someone else, if there is such a kind of thing.
Probably not, although Wilson Parking did threaten to send ex-criminals to bang on my door in the middle of the night. Besides, with all the public-private partnerships in "intelligence" and "defence", it's getting increasingly difficult to tell the difference.
Yes, but if you want to secure communications, you've essentially only got two options: 1) Secure the endpoints, or 2) secure everything between them. i.e. 1) Use unbreakable encryption on uncrackable machines, or 2) ensure no-one on the Internet (read: in the world) tries to intercept your messages or crack your machines. Ridiculous as it may be to try to do 1, it is not half as ridiculous as trying to do 2, so if you're going to try to do anything at all, your least worst option is to try to do 1.
I honestly thought you were joking (and apparently I'm not the only one--I notice you've been modded "funny"). Lucky I decided to check the article to be sure. But I don't think it actually has any basis in law. AFAIK, I don't need Lexmark's permission to open the package of a cartridge I bought, nor to use it, therefore I don't need to agree to a license in order to do either of these things.
I think software licenses base their claim primarily on the necessity of copying software onto a computer in order to use it--i.e. I am not allowed to copy the software without a copyright license, and therefore I am not allowed to use the software without agreeing to a copyright license, since using requires copying. This being the case, it wouldn't apply to Lexmark's cartridges. I don't need to copy Lexmark's cartridges in order to use them, so I don't need their permission, and needn't agree to a license.
I'd never looked at that, thanks. However I think the doctrine of exhaustion might apply. (Not sure though, I vaguely recall its applicability being discussed before in relation to something else--perhaps importation of cars?)
schnell:
I don't think there is a victim of copying (assuming it does not involve invasion of privacy or misattribution), as I don't think there is any harm caused by it. Imagine for a second that we discovered life on Mars... and they were copying our movies. Would you consider us on Earth to have been victims suffering harm all this time, but simply unaware of it?
If offered to do something for someone, and they accepted, but I didn't receive anything for my efforts, I may believe I did not get what I deserved, although I probably wouldn't feel resentful if I had made the decision freely, without the expectation of receiving anything. If I had expected to receive something I might well feel not just that I didn't get what I deserved, but that they had treated me unfairly. Even then, though, I can honestly say that I do not think I would consider myself entitled to forcibly take what I believed I deserved and had been expecting. I think there is a significant difference between deserving something and having a right to take it. (Further, in the case of copying, I think it is copyright law that creates the expectation, and copyright law has been created, and repeatedly expanded, due to pressure from people who benefit from it, making the expectation, and therefore claimed unfair treatment, seem kind of self-inflicted.)
What I think I would do, is stop offering to do things for the person who did not return the favour. I certainly can't imagine myself continuing to offer to do things for that person in the future, and subsequently claiming to have been stolen from each time.
You could also find many citations, for instance, that refer to heavy rain as "raining cats and dogs", but you could also find many people who, if asked whether heavy rain was actually cats and dogs, would consider it not to be.
In case you're interested (or, more honestly, for my own nostalgia), Sinclair's most popular computer was the ZX Spectrum (the PET was an early Commodore). There were various iterations and clones, but the original was very much a computer for people who couldn't afford a computer. I wouldn't have had a computer when younger, if not for this machine.
Almost everything was run pretty much directly by the CPU. Normally an interrupt ran 50 times a second. The interrupt routine checked the keyboard (40 rubber keys: numbers, letters, shift, "symbol shift", enter, and space, with everything else accessed via various combinations of the shift keys, e.g. shift+space for "break"--the equivalent of escape). The interrupt routine also updated the internal clock (3 bytes in memory), which kept track of how long the computer had been on, up to about 4 days, excluding time spent playing sound or loading or saving. That was because interrupts had to be disabled for the CPU to run the speaker (1 bit sound) or external tape recorder (for loading and saving). There was dedicated hardware for outputting the 256x192 display to a TV (unlike with the Spectrum's predecessor, the ZX81, where the CPU spent 3/4 of its time generating the scan lines for the TV). Only two colours could be used in any 8x8 pixel square. There was no paging on the original, so memory addressing was limited by the 16-bit address bus to 64K, of which 16K was ROM and about 8K was screen memory. The expansion port was a bit of the circuit board sticking out the back.
Amazingly, in the later years people got it to do 3d polygon graphics and 2 channel sound in software (although not at the same time, obviously). Ah, for the good old days.
I don't know how things would have played out without the Apple Mac. I wonder if perhaps there was enough room left in the market for one other computer besides the IBM PC, and if it hadn't been the Apple Mac, it might have been the Amiga.
^ Please pretend you didn't see that.
Collecting massive amounts of data on people's personal lives could lead to new insights--I've heard this before. I'd rather have privacy. Why not collect massive amounts of data on governments and businesses instead? This could provide some actual evidence to base economic theories on, unstead of the naval gazing they're currently built on.
Okay, but, unless someone in a government department somewhere is actually paid to go looking, then to an extent it's a moot point. Nothing will be done unless someone, willing to submit to testimony and cross-examination, makes a complaint to the relevant government department. It's still a significant effort to make over a matter of a few dollars.