If your book is about space marines and 90% of the characters are male, that's not misogyny... it's life. If the book were then to only refer to and treat women as sex objects, submissive servants, etc. That's misogyny.
I'll grant the characters are probably misogynistic, but that would not necessarily make the story or the author misogynistic.
Regardless, you can write good sci-fi in the constraints laid out by the SJW.
This, right here, is the problem. Who the hell is ANYONE for whatever reason to lay out constraints? "Hey, the writing was superb, and the story was great, but in chapter 5 someone said something the thought police don't agree with, so no award for you."
Your analogy at the end there is a good one (though I think people on either side of this election would disagree on who the cactus was) but you're ignoring the statement I'm responding to to take issue with mine. OP stated that "as it happens, the corrupt, incompetent, career-long liar isn't a woman" which is (at least) 2/3rds incorrect.
Except, assuming a simulation running at far slower than real time, you don't get the "we're probably in a simulation" implications that the parent poster was arguing in favor of.
I'm sorry, but why does this have to be the case? You're assuming that whatever is outside the simulation[1] has lifespans similar to ours, or perceives time the same way. You're assigning the rules of our reality to another one that can only be speculated on. Speculation is fine, but you're stating with authority.
"It is this way because I say it must be" is not a reasonable position to take in a discussion unless you happen to be an absolute monarch or ruthless dictator.
[1] - I see this is a cute exercise and indeed plausible, but don't personally buy into it. I'm arguing this position only for the sake of argument.
Hillary is certainly a corrupt, career-long liar. I'm not willing to label her as incompetent, I think we'll find that out for sure either way after the election (which I'm fairly certain she'll win). Just because Trump has, at best, a passing familiarity with the truth and has played fast and loose with the law does not somehow make Hillary as pure as the driven snow.
The current universe requires the total information-processing capacity of the universe just to keep track of the state of its own particles. Your assumption would imply that we could somehow increase the information-processing capacity of one tiny portion of the universe to the point that it exceeds the capacity of the entirety of the rest of the universe by many orders of magnitude. So far as I know, nothing in information theory suggests that is even remotely possible.
You're not thinking the problem through clearly. Why does a simulation have to be run in real time? It could require 100,000 years to simulate one second of subjective time, and the simulation itself wouldn't notice anything different.
To put it another way, you're saying something akin to "it's not possible to simulate a 64-bit CPU on a 32-bit CPU" which is patently false.
At least if you're talking about the SMB side and not the consumer side. I run a pair of PRIs and 50mbit service on this platform (which from their perspective is U-Verse, even though it's delivered over fiber) and the only problem I have is with service and support. It sucks. The biggest issue is that the support people see it in their systems as a U-Verse account, the IVR systems route you to U-Verse technicians when you call in, etc. If I didn't have an account team, it would be impossible to get anything done (it helps to have someone fighting the bureaucracy so you don't have to).
Technically, though, there are no problems beyond the crap that all legacy telecom has these days (five nines seems to be something that no one can manage anymore on even an enterprise grade circuit). There is no modem, only a Ciena box on the backboard and a Cisco ISR. There are no data caps or throttling, and my connection is symmetrical. We point our public wifi users at Google's DNS and it works fine. I'll grant that the consumer side probably does not provide a Ciena and an ISR to their end customers:) but the rest of the platform SHOULD be the same.
As we're in one of the metros that will get the gigabit speeds "soon" I'm looking forward to migrating to the higher speeds (the platform is maxed at 100mbit today, and at a higher cost).
I do agree with your point about paper trails (they are important, so a physical recount can be performed as both an audit tool and in the event of an issue with the machines), but the rest of your post is uninformative.
1. This is not one election, it's 51 separate elections. The elections determine the members of the electoral college, who actually vote for the president. Strictly speaking, there doesn't have to be an election at all--the states determine how to appoint electors. All of them currently choose to appoint their electors based on the result of a popular election, but they don't have to.
Montana could decide, tomorrow, that their citizens aren't going to vote for president this year, but the legislature will choose Montana's delegation instead.
2. The idea that "votes were sent to the RNC to be counted and the state subtotals were removed" is absolutely nonsensical. You're either woefully misinformed (which would be par for the course in the US these days, as everybody seems to have either failed civics class or never taken it) or are purposefully spreading disinformation. If you have to ask why, see point 1 above.
You seem to think I'm a Trump supporter or otherwise a "wingnut." I am, in fact, neither. I'm just irritated by hypocrisy, and Clinton supporters have that in spades (to be fair, so do most Trump supporters).
But hey, in the post above, you've called me dishonest, implied I am a racist, and used the words "chicken-fucker" just because I made a pointed joke. Might want to look in the mirror next time you're thinking about how fucked up American politics are.
Remember, when someone like David Duke endorses Donald Trump and Trump says, "Who is David Duke, and why should I care?" this proves Trump is a racist. When Hillary Clinton talks about how Robert Byrd was her "friend and mentor" this also proves that Trump is a racist. See how easy that is?
We should have known that something was up with the Cos when he asked TI to implement a ROHYPNOL command in their BASIC. After they turned him down, they took out POKE just to be safe.
There is no need. Apple was violating existing EU law. There are no changes to the law being proposed here.
Actually, Apple didn't violate the law, Ireland did. Apple is just being punished for Ireland's violation of its treaty obligations, and the punishment is giving Ireland a bunch of money. That'll teach those guys!
SETI's cost is minimal. Not minimal in the governmental "a billion here, a billion there" sense, but in the "operating budget of a moderately successful mcdonalds" sense. We spend tens of billions on all the other things on your list, so saying "that SETI money could be better used over here" is simply not a credible statement.
My company opened another office in the Houston metro, and when we were looking for locations, one of our candidates was in a new industrial park that was literally across the street from a group of multi-million dollar homes (and not in the California sense where an 800sqft shithole sells for half a mil, but in the rural US sense of a 5k sqft mcmansion on 5 acres). I had someone explain the zoning laws (or lack thereof) to me and had my mind blown. NIMBY definitely does NOT seem to be a thing down there.
It's rather mind boggling to me, but it seems to work for them.
I wouldn't consider anything past Canal as 'downtown', that's financial district.
Manhattan has three basic divisions, "uptown," "midtown," and "downtown." The financial district is contained within the geographic area of "downtown" (which starts at the Battery and has a nebulous northern border somewhere between the Village and 34th St).
You're essentially claiming that "Times Square" is not located in midtown, it's in the theater district, or that Harlem is not "uptown."
You can't simply offset those billions of dollars against the number of jobs. You need to look at what would have happened had Ireland not made this deal to begin with. It's fair to say that Apple would never have funneled their profits through the Irish tax haven had this deal not been in place, so the question is really "Are the 6500 jobs, plus however much actual tax revenue was collected, a greater return for Ireland than not having Apple's money in the country at all?"
I don't know the answer to that question, and I won't speculate on the matter, but that's the calculation in play here. Claiming otherwise is either ignorance or bias.
For what it's worth, the use of "scheme" there is not pejorative (which is why I assume you have it in scare quotes), it's just a synonym for "plan" that is in common usage in British English (as opposed to American English, where it typically implies that something underhanded is occurring).
It was also the "done thing" to lurk for a while before posting. Well, that was the case before Eternal September, anyway...
This. If I would have made an account when I started using/., I'd have a 3 or low 4 digit uid, and given that both of us made accounts around the same time, I'd wager you would as well. There's something to be said for actually learning about a community before you join it.
Your fine rant, though, ignores the fact that the Iraq war is the one without an actual reason. The war in Afghanistan started because they were harboring Osama bin Laden, and we demanded they turn him over to answer for what al-Qaeda had done. It certainly went off the rails from there, with many people believing the Taliban had something to do with 9/11, but the original reason for the war was good enough to pass muster with a large coalition, including multiple nations that have had a significant aversion to military action since the mid 20th century sending troops as well.
Your points are persuasive, but most people* would likely parse the phrases "twice as fast" and "two times faster" as meaning the same thing which throws your entire point into disarray. Percentages are obvious, "as fast/faster" appears to be a personal stylistic choice.
*: "most people" definitely falls afoul of the "no true scotsman" fallacy, but it's not like I'm going to go out and conduct a survey on the issue.
I'm still waiting to hear how Hillary being "extremely careless" does not rise to the level of "gross negligence" that should trigger prosecution. I'm assuming that I'll be waiting until the heat death of the universe for a reasonable explanation of that.
Remember that not all municipal utilities are not government owned. Most rural and semirural areas get their water and power from coops (where the residents are members, and (nominally) owners of the utility). The biggest problems involved are startup costs (this is where government can play a role in the form of USF grants from fedgov or loans/bonds from states and towns) and the 800lb gorillas (AT&T, Comcast, etc) who will do everything in their power to ensure these projects fail or are outlawed.
That second part is also where government needs to step in, but I'm not exactly optimistic about that.
I appear to have had a reading comprehension malfunction, and I thought OP was stating that "330% faster = 3.3x speed" which is definitely not what he was stating. With regard to your formula, I'll admit ignorance. I did some quick research and have found nothing definitive other than people arguing on the internet. I will not press my point (we've already proven that I am not responding to what people are actually saying, much less correct) but I'm unconvinced as to the accuracy of what you're saying. Can you link to something authoritative so I can cure my ignorance?
Slashdot Mirror
If your book is about space marines and 90% of the characters are male, that's not misogyny... it's life. If the book were then to only refer to and treat women as sex objects, submissive servants, etc. That's misogyny.
I'll grant the characters are probably misogynistic, but that would not necessarily make the story or the author misogynistic.
Regardless, you can write good sci-fi in the constraints laid out by the SJW.
This, right here, is the problem. Who the hell is ANYONE for whatever reason to lay out constraints? "Hey, the writing was superb, and the story was great, but in chapter 5 someone said something the thought police don't agree with, so no award for you."
Your analogy at the end there is a good one (though I think people on either side of this election would disagree on who the cactus was) but you're ignoring the statement I'm responding to to take issue with mine. OP stated that "as it happens, the corrupt, incompetent, career-long liar isn't a woman" which is (at least) 2/3rds incorrect.
Except, assuming a simulation running at far slower than real time, you don't get the "we're probably in a simulation" implications that the parent poster was arguing in favor of.
I'm sorry, but why does this have to be the case? You're assuming that whatever is outside the simulation[1] has lifespans similar to ours, or perceives time the same way. You're assigning the rules of our reality to another one that can only be speculated on. Speculation is fine, but you're stating with authority.
"It is this way because I say it must be" is not a reasonable position to take in a discussion unless you happen to be an absolute monarch or ruthless dictator.
[1] - I see this is a cute exercise and indeed plausible, but don't personally buy into it. I'm arguing this position only for the sake of argument.
Hillary is certainly a corrupt, career-long liar. I'm not willing to label her as incompetent, I think we'll find that out for sure either way after the election (which I'm fairly certain she'll win). Just because Trump has, at best, a passing familiarity with the truth and has played fast and loose with the law does not somehow make Hillary as pure as the driven snow.
The current universe requires the total information-processing capacity of the universe just to keep track of the state of its own particles. Your assumption would imply that we could somehow increase the information-processing capacity of one tiny portion of the universe to the point that it exceeds the capacity of the entirety of the rest of the universe by many orders of magnitude. So far as I know, nothing in information theory suggests that is even remotely possible.
You're not thinking the problem through clearly. Why does a simulation have to be run in real time? It could require 100,000 years to simulate one second of subjective time, and the simulation itself wouldn't notice anything different.
To put it another way, you're saying something akin to "it's not possible to simulate a 64-bit CPU on a 32-bit CPU" which is patently false.
[citation needed]
At least if you're talking about the SMB side and not the consumer side. I run a pair of PRIs and 50mbit service on this platform (which from their perspective is U-Verse, even though it's delivered over fiber) and the only problem I have is with service and support. It sucks. The biggest issue is that the support people see it in their systems as a U-Verse account, the IVR systems route you to U-Verse technicians when you call in, etc. If I didn't have an account team, it would be impossible to get anything done (it helps to have someone fighting the bureaucracy so you don't have to).
Technically, though, there are no problems beyond the crap that all legacy telecom has these days (five nines seems to be something that no one can manage anymore on even an enterprise grade circuit). There is no modem, only a Ciena box on the backboard and a Cisco ISR. There are no data caps or throttling, and my connection is symmetrical. We point our public wifi users at Google's DNS and it works fine. I'll grant that the consumer side probably does not provide a Ciena and an ISR to their end customers :) but the rest of the platform SHOULD be the same.
As we're in one of the metros that will get the gigabit speeds "soon" I'm looking forward to migrating to the higher speeds (the platform is maxed at 100mbit today, and at a higher cost).
I do agree with your point about paper trails (they are important, so a physical recount can be performed as both an audit tool and in the event of an issue with the machines), but the rest of your post is uninformative.
1. This is not one election, it's 51 separate elections. The elections determine the members of the electoral college, who actually vote for the president. Strictly speaking, there doesn't have to be an election at all--the states determine how to appoint electors. All of them currently choose to appoint their electors based on the result of a popular election, but they don't have to.
Montana could decide, tomorrow, that their citizens aren't going to vote for president this year, but the legislature will choose Montana's delegation instead.
2. The idea that "votes were sent to the RNC to be counted and the state subtotals were removed" is absolutely nonsensical. You're either woefully misinformed (which would be par for the course in the US these days, as everybody seems to have either failed civics class or never taken it) or are purposefully spreading disinformation. If you have to ask why, see point 1 above.
You seem to think I'm a Trump supporter or otherwise a "wingnut." I am, in fact, neither. I'm just irritated by hypocrisy, and Clinton supporters have that in spades (to be fair, so do most Trump supporters).
But hey, in the post above, you've called me dishonest, implied I am a racist, and used the words "chicken-fucker" just because I made a pointed joke. Might want to look in the mirror next time you're thinking about how fucked up American politics are.
Remember, when someone like David Duke endorses Donald Trump and Trump says, "Who is David Duke, and why should I care?" this proves Trump is a racist. When Hillary Clinton talks about how Robert Byrd was her "friend and mentor" this also proves that Trump is a racist. See how easy that is?
What, as opposed to the Democrat families that raise the price of drugs into the stratosphere?
Blaming political parties for greed is ignoring the entirety of human history. Crawl back under your bridge.
Why do humans need to survive? What make Homo sapiens so special that it must be kept alive?
If you can't answer this yourself, there's no helping you.
We should have known that something was up with the Cos when he asked TI to implement a ROHYPNOL command in their BASIC. After they turned him down, they took out POKE just to be safe.
There is no need. Apple was violating existing EU law. There are no changes to the law being proposed here.
Actually, Apple didn't violate the law, Ireland did. Apple is just being punished for Ireland's violation of its treaty obligations, and the punishment is giving Ireland a bunch of money. That'll teach those guys!
SETI's cost is minimal. Not minimal in the governmental "a billion here, a billion there" sense, but in the "operating budget of a moderately successful mcdonalds" sense. We spend tens of billions on all the other things on your list, so saying "that SETI money could be better used over here" is simply not a credible statement.
My company opened another office in the Houston metro, and when we were looking for locations, one of our candidates was in a new industrial park that was literally across the street from a group of multi-million dollar homes (and not in the California sense where an 800sqft shithole sells for half a mil, but in the rural US sense of a 5k sqft mcmansion on 5 acres). I had someone explain the zoning laws (or lack thereof) to me and had my mind blown. NIMBY definitely does NOT seem to be a thing down there.
It's rather mind boggling to me, but it seems to work for them.
> Wall street is downtown.
I wouldn't consider anything past Canal as 'downtown', that's financial district.
Manhattan has three basic divisions, "uptown," "midtown," and "downtown." The financial district is contained within the geographic area of "downtown" (which starts at the Battery and has a nebulous northern border somewhere between the Village and 34th St).
You're essentially claiming that "Times Square" is not located in midtown, it's in the theater district, or that Harlem is not "uptown."
You're making a fundamental error, here.
You can't simply offset those billions of dollars against the number of jobs. You need to look at what would have happened had Ireland not made this deal to begin with. It's fair to say that Apple would never have funneled their profits through the Irish tax haven had this deal not been in place, so the question is really "Are the 6500 jobs, plus however much actual tax revenue was collected, a greater return for Ireland than not having Apple's money in the country at all?"
I don't know the answer to that question, and I won't speculate on the matter, but that's the calculation in play here. Claiming otherwise is either ignorance or bias.
Tax avoidance "schemes" must be registered?
For what it's worth, the use of "scheme" there is not pejorative (which is why I assume you have it in scare quotes), it's just a synonym for "plan" that is in common usage in British English (as opposed to American English, where it typically implies that something underhanded is occurring).
It was also the "done thing" to lurk for a while before posting. Well, that was the case before Eternal September, anyway...
This. If I would have made an account when I started using /., I'd have a 3 or low 4 digit uid, and given that both of us made accounts around the same time, I'd wager you would as well. There's something to be said for actually learning about a community before you join it.
TL;DR.
Your fine rant, though, ignores the fact that the Iraq war is the one without an actual reason. The war in Afghanistan started because they were harboring Osama bin Laden, and we demanded they turn him over to answer for what al-Qaeda had done. It certainly went off the rails from there, with many people believing the Taliban had something to do with 9/11, but the original reason for the war was good enough to pass muster with a large coalition, including multiple nations that have had a significant aversion to military action since the mid 20th century sending troops as well.
Your points are persuasive, but most people* would likely parse the phrases "twice as fast" and "two times faster" as meaning the same thing which throws your entire point into disarray. Percentages are obvious, "as fast/faster" appears to be a personal stylistic choice.
*: "most people" definitely falls afoul of the "no true scotsman" fallacy, but it's not like I'm going to go out and conduct a survey on the issue.
I'm still waiting to hear how Hillary being "extremely careless" does not rise to the level of "gross negligence" that should trigger prosecution. I'm assuming that I'll be waiting until the heat death of the universe for a reasonable explanation of that.
If you want to make them consider the consequences, take them to an alley to talk to a homeless teenage single mother crackhead about her regrets.
Studies show that "scared straight" programs not only don't work, they can actually have a negative impact on the kids exposed to them.
Remember that not all municipal utilities are not government owned. Most rural and semirural areas get their water and power from coops (where the residents are members, and (nominally) owners of the utility). The biggest problems involved are startup costs (this is where government can play a role in the form of USF grants from fedgov or loans/bonds from states and towns) and the 800lb gorillas (AT&T, Comcast, etc) who will do everything in their power to ensure these projects fail or are outlawed.
That second part is also where government needs to step in, but I'm not exactly optimistic about that.
I appear to have had a reading comprehension malfunction, and I thought OP was stating that "330% faster = 3.3x speed" which is definitely not what he was stating. With regard to your formula, I'll admit ignorance. I did some quick research and have found nothing definitive other than people arguing on the internet. I will not press my point (we've already proven that I am not responding to what people are actually saying, much less correct) but I'm unconvinced as to the accuracy of what you're saying. Can you link to something authoritative so I can cure my ignorance?