Capital idea! Somebody rewrite decades worth of technology for me, but design it better this time! Also, make sure that all competing software companies cooperate on fully supporting it. Also, ensure that it mixes presentation information with content. Plus, was Microsoft really doing the wrong thing by extending HTML?
In addition, please hurry, because I am a very busy person and I don't like waiting.
I've realised in the last few years I am a conservative.
During this administration? Wow. That's quite an achievement.
But I believe that if a man makes something of value or merit, he should be rewarded for that effort.
So, should women get royalties on their work, or is a penis required? Are ideas "things of value or merit" that can be owned (i.e. denied to other people through force)? They didn't used to be.
And a farkin licensing fee or royalty compensation is A-O-Fuggin-K in my book.
You must be a conservative if you have the urge for vulgar language but try to hide it behind made-up words. Grow the fuck up.
P.S. I have a trademark on the word "Fuggin", please cease and desist all use of my valuable intellectual property.
It is going to make HD-DVD/Blu-ray that much harder to gain acceptance and start driving prices down. And that's bad for everyone.
Oh god no! We have to keep those prices shored up, or my precious Blu-ray player will no longer be a status symbol! If I don't pay >$1000 for it, it must not be any good.
That's sounds more like a scifi buff talking point than a fact. Why can't we survive? Because the sun will kill us in 5 billion years? Because CERN will create a black hole that will eat the Earth? Global warming? Politics in the mideast?
Not that I disagree with the crux of your argument, but you missed the most plausible extinction-level event, an asteroid strike. Asteroids do hit Earth, and some are quite capable of killing most of the life on the planet. While there have been several terrible disaster movies that have sensationalized this scenario, it's still quite possible.
Are you certain of the provenance of all the images?
That's an idiotic question, even if it is rhetorical.
Sex slavery is endemic even in the western world, with victims forced to engage in sexual acts for money.
Filming or photographing sexual violence against such victims is both trivial, non-consensual and can go way beyond limits acceptable to that participant.
Then it's a good thing that sex slavery and non-consenual sex are already illegal.
We can certainly go your route, and everything which doesn't have proof of existence at all exists... but why bother? What will that gain us? Nothing really. So we infer from the lack of evidence that those things don't exist, until we do have evidence. Seems like a good convention to me.. otherwise we'd be drowning in theories which are totally useless.
I believe you misunderstood my point. I am a strong atheist and use reason, logic, and critical thinking as my guide in life. I didn't claim that "everything which doesn't have proof exists". I think that you must have evidence in support of a theory for a strong belief to be warranted. However, I stated that it is illogical to state that something can not exist, simply because you have no evidence. For instance, I believe that there is no credible, direct evidence of the existence any extraterrestrial life. It is reasonable to live your life as if they do not exist, despite however many people claim that they do, until irrefutable evidence for their existence is presented. However, it would be illogical to state that they do not exist, simply because we have no evidence, we have only seen a tiny fraction of this galaxy, much less the universe.
And I'm far more skeptical about the existence of gods than of aliens.
1) Lack of evidence is not evidence of lack
The great spagetti monster exists. I don't have any evidence but that doesn't mean he doesn't, right? I don't think you have a firm grasp of that statement nor of the scientific method.
What he's saying is that, logically speaking, a lack of evidence can never prove a universal negative. While there's certainly justification for claiming that the great and mighty FSM does exist when you have no evidence for it, there's also no justfication for claiming that he doesn't exist because of that same lack of evidence. Perhaps you haven't been looking in the right place, like on the other side of that galactic cluster. Perhaps the evidence was destroyed. There's many possible reasons for a lack of evidence.
As I was taught, the scientific method can only conditionally prove theories, but can certainly disprove them. If a mountain of evidence supports your theory, you may have great confidence in it, and may even claim that it is "true" as a shorthand for "confirmed by a great deal of evidence". However, if you find evidence that cannot be explained by your theory, you must either adjust the theory to accomidate the evidence (if possible), or consider it falsified and look for a better explanation. Newton's long-standing laws of motion were invalidated as a theory because it couldn't account for relativistic speeds and distances.
It's more profitable because it justifies military-scale law enforcement budgets, allows law enforcement to seize assets worth millions of dollars, allows the state to jail non-violent users to use as a cheap labor pool, and neccessitates the construction of prison after prison. We now have a higher percentage of our population in jail that the USSR at the height of the gulags.
Of course, prohibition has also been the largest factor in the erosion of our right to privacy.
I'm all for jailing violent offenders, but let the god-damn tokers out! Put our police to better use, like violent gangs and corporate criminals.
People reply, I try to give them the courtesy of a response.
It's appreciated.
In any case gravity, for example, doesn't appear to be information rich.
That's probably because we haven't had any means of measuring it. However, new interferometers are being built that astromomers hope to use for "gravitational" astronomy. So it may be more rich than you surmise.
And how are design advocate abusing it? Not only do they say that DNA has more information content than a book, but that DNA has complex specified information.
Well, one major point that I've heard from ID advocates state, and you stated before in this thread, that you can't get more information out of a system than you put into it. My point it that a perfectly random starting sequence is in fact the best possible initial configuration for a genetic algorithm, precisely because it contains the maximum amount of information.
Stating that the information is "complex" and "specified" is arbitrary and subjective. It's easy to come up with quite complex configurations using a recursive process on a discrete alphabet, like DNA. Stating that the information is "specified" only means that the features that the DNA codes for are produced, not exactly surprising.
Last I checked, the monkeys were still working on Shakespeare.
You should check again. It only took one monkey, and he did fantastic work. I'm partial to King Lear.
I can't believe you're still harping on this after the weekend, but I just have to point something out...
Except that DNA has more information content than a book. So evolution may be less of a "good bet" and more the necessary consequence of an a priori assumption.
If you really understood anything about information theory, other than ID talking points, you'd know that a perfectly random sequence contains more information than any other configuration. So a sufficiently long burst of white noise contains more information than your entire genome. It's the same reason that completely random information cannot be compressed, because there's no entropy. It's not the "information" that design advocates mean when they talk about it, but that's not going to stop them from abusing it. Once again, randomness wins.
So you'd have no objections to hard-core porn and Iraqi executions being broadcast on free-to-air TV and printed in newspapers then?
After all, you can always turn it off, right?
I wouldn't object at all, provided you had enough information to avoid them if you wish to. Information, including lurid pornography and graphic violence, cannot harm you. No one ever got pregnant from watching pornography. No one has ever been physically injured by seeing violence. Having a broad perspective, including knowledge of the more unseemly parts of life, can prevent more bad decisions that it causes.
This is war. Crazy things happen in a war, like it or not, and this is one of them.
This is a war in the same sense that the War on Crime and the War on Poverty are considered "wars". That is, it's not a war at all. Congress has reneged on its responsibility to declare war, and you cannot fight against a word. If this were a "War Against Al Quaeda", there would be a lot more support. Instead we have a president who has assumed "wartime powers" in a never-ending (that is unwinnable) war. What are the criteria for victory in a "War Against Terrorism"? When there are no more people in the world willing to use violence to advance their causes? Again, this is a neverending war and a "True American(tm)" would oppose such a monstrosity.
And to call me a coward? I already mentioned that I would be willing to fight myself - I AM TOO OLD TO DO SO. (Go back and read a previous post I wrote.)
Really? Call your recruiter and talk to them! Believe me, the rules for enlistment have loosened considerably since the services started hemmoraging troops due to this idiotic campaign. If you're under 45, I bet they'd seriously consider enlisting you. I know you won't, but think it over. Of course, you're possibly nearing retirement, but you (think you) owe it to your country, don't you?
It's pretty hypocritical to tell me I am a coward to not sign up for the military WHEN I AM NOT ALLOWED TO at this time, and if any of you have not done so yourself. Which is why I asked the question. And I am still waiting for an answer.
Again, you're showing a pre-911 mentality. Please, try to enlist. The troops are becoming very jaded, and they need more people with your conviction. I did enlist, and served 8 in the USAF, so I feel entitled to ask you.
And it's also very interesting that everyone here just assumes I think it's cool what the government's doing. I NEVER SAID I AGREED WITH IT. All I ever said is that they should do whatever they need to do to win a war. Do I like it? Hell no. But it needs to be done.
Okay, you don't agree with it, but you think that they should do whatever they need to do? That's some really fine hair-splitting there. Your cognitive dissonance may be showing. Of course, as I said before, this war doesn't end. How could it possibly? So anything you surrender as an "emergency" measure is gone for good. Think about it.
Once we win, we go back to a peacetime mode, and you can damn well bet I will be right there saying stay out of my business along with every one else.
Again, how do you know when you've won? There's no Furher to commit suicide in a bunker. There's no borders to reclaim. There's no unified leader to surrender to us.
There have always been those who would use violence to create fear and control people. They're also a miniscule part of the world. Giving up the liberties that make this country great, and that many soldiers died to protect, in return for the illusion of safety from a minor threat will do more damage to this country than the murder of thousands and the destruction of its skyscrapers.
Home school is basically for people who want to raise badly socialized religious fundamentalist kids.
We're homeschooling our daughter. The wife and I are both secular humanists. There's a non-religious social network for homeschooled children in my area where children get group lessons and social interaction. One of the reasons for keeping her out of the public schools is because of the badly socialized kids who attend them. Another is because of incidents like this one. We also want to ensure that she can think for herself and isn't immediately cowed by authority as they teach you to be in public schools. We also don't want to dull her natural curiosity by dividing her studies into arbitrary timeframes. If you can get secular homeschooling in Alabama, you can get it anywhere. But don't let me stop you from beating that strawman.
I suspect it's that I've become "radioactive" on slashdot... I get to incisive, too deep, and too much for the readership.
Indeed, in fact the inner syndicate has decided to silence your message before you awaken the sleeping masses. As you say, if someone ever published an alternative theory of the Kennedy sanction, the US would erupt into total chaos!
Well, if that isn't a form of member censorship... (if/. is behind it, that is...) or government censorship (if "they are watching me" is true...)
You're still thinking bush league. Think bigger. Think undersea big.
In either case at what point does tampering with my local machine become tantamount an act of war? Bring it on...
Roger that, we confirm your declaration of war. We have a fix on your latitude, longitude and elevation. Please await our reply.
Slash image word: "bedbug"
We thought you'd like that.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
PS: Seek help, seriously. Sometimes a pipe is just a pipe.
He said the record wouldn't have to be hot
And no one ever seemed to care if it's not
It would depend on something else that I've got
And that the other ones who'd given it a shot
Had seen a modest sum grow geometrically
And then they had forgiven themselves
Because the net reward had justified
The colossal mess they'd made of their lives
Well, good for you. You really should feed your kids...three times a week at least. Of course, that has nothing to do with the fact that there are many non-MS computer jobs out there. I've been coding on different contracts for 10 years and have never had to code to a Windows API. Nor am I a sysadmin. I just work on the server side, where Windows is easy to avoid.
Web applications are a good solution for many database-oriented applications, and that's an area where MS tools are rather weak.
You should, of course, fulfill your clients expectations as a freelancer, but implying that if you don't support Windows that your children will starve is just stupid. (but not as stupid as the OS as drugs analogy)
Businesses respond to CASH. There is no way MS could force ALL of the PC makers from selling Linux boxes if it was more profitable than selling Windows boxes. But its not more profitable, the margins are nothing on hardware these days. Add in labor and you are making almost no money on the hardware. But, if MS will cover your marketing bills, you can make more money - so thats what you do. That's not a monopoly either.
Actually, you're arguing against yourself, let me rearrange that paragraph for you.
the margins are nothing on hardware these days. Add in labor and you are making almost no money on the hardware.
Very true. So Microsoft gives big discounts to resellers who only recommend their products.
There is no way MS could force ALL of the PC makers from selling Linux boxes if it was more profitable than selling Windows boxes.
Microsoft knows this, and the razor-thin margins on hardware. So they give deep volume discounts to VARs who only sell Windows. If you offer Linux (and are smaller than Dell) suddenly the price per unit for Windows is raised and your profit disappears. It's blackmail. Read for yourself.
Except that in the US all creative works are copyrighted by default. I think that the hidden text in the Kryptos statue would qualify, as it's "protected" by the cryptography. I know that the DMCA wasn't written with this situation in mind, and I don't think it's right, but a twisted attorney could spin it that way. Bad laws are often like that.
First, it hurts the end user or consumer by imposing government restrictions on how we use things that we "own". Or more to the point, we no longer own things that we buy.
The problem is not "government" restrictions, but government enforcement of private restrictions. The DMCA allows corporations to renegotiate the terms of a sale at their whim. There's a long and sound tradition of case law covering the purchase of goods. (doctrine of first sale, fair use, reverse engineering, etc..) This gets thrown out the window when a company employs even utterly ineffective cryptographic measures. In short, I believe that this allows companies to unilaterally alter long-held traditions concerning private property.
Slashdot Mirror
Capital idea! Somebody rewrite decades worth of technology for me, but design it better this time! Also, make sure that all competing software companies cooperate on fully supporting it. Also, ensure that it mixes presentation information with content. Plus, was Microsoft really doing the wrong thing by extending HTML?
In addition, please hurry, because I am a very busy person and I don't like waiting.
During this administration? Wow. That's quite an achievement.
So, should women get royalties on their work, or is a penis required? Are ideas "things of value or merit" that can be owned (i.e. denied to other people through force)? They didn't used to be.
You must be a conservative if you have the urge for vulgar language but try to hide it behind made-up words. Grow the fuck up.
P.S. I have a trademark on the word "Fuggin", please cease and desist all use of my valuable intellectual property.
Oh god no! We have to keep those prices shored up, or my precious Blu-ray player will no longer be a status symbol! If I don't pay >$1000 for it, it must not be any good.
Not that I disagree with the crux of your argument, but you missed the most plausible extinction-level event, an asteroid strike. Asteroids do hit Earth, and some are quite capable of killing most of the life on the planet. While there have been several terrible disaster movies that have sensationalized this scenario, it's still quite possible.
That's an idiotic question, even if it is rhetorical.
Then it's a good thing that sex slavery and non-consenual sex are already illegal.
Wait a second, that reply was well-written, informative, and moderate.
I think you're in the wrong place...
I believe you misunderstood my point. I am a strong atheist and use reason, logic, and critical thinking as my guide in life. I didn't claim that "everything which doesn't have proof exists". I think that you must have evidence in support of a theory for a strong belief to be warranted. However, I stated that it is illogical to state that something can not exist, simply because you have no evidence. For instance, I believe that there is no credible, direct evidence of the existence any extraterrestrial life. It is reasonable to live your life as if they do not exist, despite however many people claim that they do, until irrefutable evidence for their existence is presented. However, it would be illogical to state that they do not exist, simply because we have no evidence, we have only seen a tiny fraction of this galaxy, much less the universe.
And I'm far more skeptical about the existence of gods than of aliens.
What he's saying is that, logically speaking, a lack of evidence can never prove a universal negative. While there's certainly justification for claiming that the great and mighty FSM does exist when you have no evidence for it, there's also no justfication for claiming that he doesn't exist because of that same lack of evidence. Perhaps you haven't been looking in the right place, like on the other side of that galactic cluster. Perhaps the evidence was destroyed. There's many possible reasons for a lack of evidence.
As I was taught, the scientific method can only conditionally prove theories, but can certainly disprove them. If a mountain of evidence supports your theory, you may have great confidence in it, and may even claim that it is "true" as a shorthand for "confirmed by a great deal of evidence". However, if you find evidence that cannot be explained by your theory, you must either adjust the theory to accomidate the evidence (if possible), or consider it falsified and look for a better explanation. Newton's long-standing laws of motion were invalidated as a theory because it couldn't account for relativistic speeds and distances.
Devolution is real.
It's more profitable because it justifies military-scale law enforcement budgets, allows law enforcement to seize assets worth millions of dollars, allows the state to jail non-violent users to use as a cheap labor pool, and neccessitates the construction of prison after prison. We now have a higher percentage of our population in jail that the USSR at the height of the gulags.
Of course, prohibition has also been the largest factor in the erosion of our right to privacy.
I'm all for jailing violent offenders, but let the god-damn tokers out! Put our police to better use, like violent gangs and corporate criminals.
It's appreciated.
That's probably because we haven't had any means of measuring it. However, new interferometers are being built that astromomers hope to use for "gravitational" astronomy. So it may be more rich than you surmise.
Well, one major point that I've heard from ID advocates state, and you stated before in this thread, that you can't get more information out of a system than you put into it. My point it that a perfectly random starting sequence is in fact the best possible initial configuration for a genetic algorithm, precisely because it contains the maximum amount of information.
Stating that the information is "complex" and "specified" is arbitrary and subjective. It's easy to come up with quite complex configurations using a recursive process on a discrete alphabet, like DNA. Stating that the information is "specified" only means that the features that the DNA codes for are produced, not exactly surprising.
You should check again. It only took one monkey, and he did fantastic work. I'm partial to King Lear.
I can't believe you're still harping on this after the weekend, but I just have to point something out...
If you really understood anything about information theory, other than ID talking points, you'd know that a perfectly random sequence contains more information than any other configuration. So a sufficiently long burst of white noise contains more information than your entire genome. It's the same reason that completely random information cannot be compressed, because there's no entropy. It's not the "information" that design advocates mean when they talk about it, but that's not going to stop them from abusing it. Once again, randomness wins.
I wouldn't object at all, provided you had enough information to avoid them if you wish to. Information, including lurid pornography and graphic violence, cannot harm you. No one ever got pregnant from watching pornography. No one has ever been physically injured by seeing violence. Having a broad perspective, including knowledge of the more unseemly parts of life, can prevent more bad decisions that it causes.
This is war. Crazy things happen in a war, like it or not, and this is one of them.
This is a war in the same sense that the War on Crime and the War on Poverty are considered "wars". That is, it's not a war at all. Congress has reneged on its responsibility to declare war, and you cannot fight against a word. If this were a "War Against Al Quaeda", there would be a lot more support. Instead we have a president who has assumed "wartime powers" in a never-ending (that is unwinnable) war. What are the criteria for victory in a "War Against Terrorism"? When there are no more people in the world willing to use violence to advance their causes? Again, this is a neverending war and a "True American(tm)" would oppose such a monstrosity.
And to call me a coward? I already mentioned that I would be willing to fight myself - I AM TOO OLD TO DO SO. (Go back and read a previous post I wrote.)
Really? Call your recruiter and talk to them! Believe me, the rules for enlistment have loosened considerably since the services started hemmoraging troops due to this idiotic campaign. If you're under 45, I bet they'd seriously consider enlisting you. I know you won't, but think it over. Of course, you're possibly nearing retirement, but you (think you) owe it to your country, don't you?
It's pretty hypocritical to tell me I am a coward to not sign up for the military WHEN I AM NOT ALLOWED TO at this time, and if any of you have not done so yourself. Which is why I asked the question. And I am still waiting for an answer.
Again, you're showing a pre-911 mentality. Please, try to enlist. The troops are becoming very jaded, and they need more people with your conviction. I did enlist, and served 8 in the USAF, so I feel entitled to ask you.
And it's also very interesting that everyone here just assumes I think it's cool what the government's doing. I NEVER SAID I AGREED WITH IT. All I ever said is that they should do whatever they need to do to win a war. Do I like it? Hell no. But it needs to be done.
Okay, you don't agree with it, but you think that they should do whatever they need to do? That's some really fine hair-splitting there. Your cognitive dissonance may be showing. Of course, as I said before, this war doesn't end. How could it possibly? So anything you surrender as an "emergency" measure is gone for good. Think about it.
Once we win, we go back to a peacetime mode, and you can damn well bet I will be right there saying stay out of my business along with every one else.
Again, how do you know when you've won? There's no Furher to commit suicide in a bunker. There's no borders to reclaim. There's no unified leader to surrender to us.
There have always been those who would use violence to create fear and control people. They're also a miniscule part of the world. Giving up the liberties that make this country great, and that many soldiers died to protect, in return for the illusion of safety from a minor threat will do more damage to this country than the murder of thousands and the destruction of its skyscrapers.
Home school is basically for people who want to raise badly socialized religious fundamentalist kids.
We're homeschooling our daughter. The wife and I are both secular humanists. There's a non-religious social network for homeschooled children in my area where children get group lessons and social interaction. One of the reasons for keeping her out of the public schools is because of the badly socialized kids who attend them. Another is because of incidents like this one. We also want to ensure that she can think for herself and isn't immediately cowed by authority as they teach you to be in public schools. We also don't want to dull her natural curiosity by dividing her studies into arbitrary timeframes. If you can get secular homeschooling in Alabama, you can get it anywhere. But don't let me stop you from beating that strawman.
Not to mention that they have tons of Frank Zappa, which everyone should listen to instead of anything else....ever.
So long as you can have a doublecheese for $1
Bread.
and American Idol keeps going
Circuses.
the latter is NOT going to happen
History begs to differ.
God-damn right.
For the resource jammers:
Yes?
I suspect it's that I've become "radioactive" on slashdot... I get to incisive, too deep, and too much for the readership.
Indeed, in fact the inner syndicate has decided to silence your message before you awaken the sleeping masses. As you say, if someone ever published an alternative theory of the Kennedy sanction, the US would erupt into total chaos!
Well, if that isn't a form of member censorship... (if /. is behind it, that is...) or government censorship (if "they are watching me" is true...)
You're still thinking bush league. Think bigger. Think undersea big.
In either case at what point does tampering with my local machine become tantamount an act of war? Bring it on...
Roger that, we confirm your declaration of war. We have a fix on your latitude, longitude and elevation. Please await our reply.
Slash image word: "bedbug"
We thought you'd like that.
. . . . . . .PS: Seek help, seriously. Sometimes a pipe is just a pipe.
No doubt...
He said the record wouldn't have to be hot
And no one ever seemed to care if it's not
It would depend on something else that I've got
And that the other ones who'd given it a shot
Had seen a modest sum grow geometrically
And then they had forgiven themselves
Because the net reward had justified
The colossal mess they'd made of their lives
Well here's the deal... My kids need to eat.
Well, good for you. You really should feed your kids...three times a week at least. Of course, that has nothing to do with the fact that there are many non-MS computer jobs out there. I've been coding on different contracts for 10 years and have never had to code to a Windows API. Nor am I a sysadmin. I just work on the server side, where Windows is easy to avoid.
Web applications are a good solution for many database-oriented applications, and that's an area where MS tools are rather weak.
You should, of course, fulfill your clients expectations as a freelancer, but implying that if you don't support Windows that your children will starve is just stupid. (but not as stupid as the OS as drugs analogy)
Businesses respond to CASH. There is no way MS could force ALL of the PC makers from selling Linux boxes if it was more profitable than selling Windows boxes. But its not more profitable, the margins are nothing on hardware these days. Add in labor and you are making almost no money on the hardware. But, if MS will cover your marketing bills, you can make more money - so thats what you do. That's not a monopoly either.
Actually, you're arguing against yourself, let me rearrange that paragraph for you.
the margins are nothing on hardware these days. Add in labor and you are making almost no money on the hardware.
Very true. So Microsoft gives big discounts to resellers who only recommend their products.
There is no way MS could force ALL of the PC makers from selling Linux boxes if it was more profitable than selling Windows boxes.
Microsoft knows this, and the razor-thin margins on hardware. So they give deep volume discounts to VARs who only sell Windows. If you offer Linux (and are smaller than Dell) suddenly the price per unit for Windows is raised and your profit disappears. It's blackmail. Read for yourself.
Except that in the US all creative works are copyrighted by default. I think that the hidden text in the Kryptos statue would qualify, as it's "protected" by the cryptography. I know that the DMCA wasn't written with this situation in mind, and I don't think it's right, but a twisted attorney could spin it that way. Bad laws are often like that.
First, it hurts the end user or consumer by imposing government restrictions on how we use things that we "own". Or more to the point, we no longer own things that we buy.
The problem is not "government" restrictions, but government enforcement of private restrictions. The DMCA allows corporations to renegotiate the terms of a sale at their whim. There's a long and sound tradition of case law covering the purchase of goods. (doctrine of first sale, fair use, reverse engineering, etc..) This gets thrown out the window when a company employs even utterly ineffective cryptographic measures. In short, I believe that this allows companies to unilaterally alter long-held traditions concerning private property.
Well, T-Mobile is a provider in the US, but it's really a subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom AG