It was the greedy preying on the stupid to the detriment of the rest of us. But an unchained wolf will hunt when it sees food, and so will a sociopathic CEO. The blame lies with those who let them run free in the first place by deregulating the financial sector, not on animals following their instincts.
By default set everything to 24 fps, and just select some scenes and flag beginning and end frames for doubling up to 48 fps.
Seeing how video codecs store the difference between frames instead of frames themselves except for keyframes, and there would be less differences in 48 fps than 24 fps version, would there actually be any advantages to this? And if there is, shouldn't a decent codec vary the framerate automatically?
Basically you allocate more bitrate to scenes with motion, and less bitrate to mostly still scenes. Software can do this automatically, but humans with an artistic touch can do a much better job.
I wonder if this has anything to do with "artistic touch" rather than the fact that codecs typically try to maintain a stable bitrate over a few seconds to support streaming/DVD playback. If you built one to "think" in terms of large blocks (files) rather than a stream, it would probably outperform a human.
Isn't this a bit like the whole "teaching condoms in school is dangerous because then teens will have massive amounts of sex"? You're omitting a valid (even if imperfect) solution that may help stave off tragedy if people choose a particular path in order to defend and mandate that your "morally superior path" is the only option presented.
Well, one obvious difference is that condoms work and are available right now, while geoengineering is entirely hypothethical at this point. So condoms actually do solve the problems they're meant to - disease transmission and unwanted pregnancies - while geoengineering is simply an excuse to not do anything. So no, they're not really a tiniest bit similar situations.
Not that global warming can be stopped at this point, since renewables are a joke and anti-nuclear hysteria has kept us from building clean power plants, so it's not like it matters much. It's gonna be interesting, seeing who'll still be standing when the dust settles.
So as I ask directions from Siri, it may inform me that there's a 25% sale going on at a store in route of my final destination. So rather than looking at 'shiny', it tells me where and when to look for 'shiny' for me.. Nice!
What happens if the sale is merely near the route? Do the instruction get altered to make me pass as many advertisers as possible? Because "nice" is not the word I'd use for such things.
Re:They have lost all trust, but they retain distr
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In Nothing We Trust
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I agree, but its a chicken and the egg problem, as it will take a third party to get such a change to happen.
Not really. All it'll take is being pushed outside of your comfort zone. With China ascending towards world leader status and the US economy continuing to tailspin reality should reinforce itself over ideology in a decade or so.
In 20 years, we'll be getting coached on how to have the right brain wave patterns for getting through the airport unmolested, how to cheat on your final and not get detected by the brain wave readers, etc.
That could actually be useful, assuming that brain waves have some relation to how you're using said brains of course.
What they did was wrong. What they did was possibly morally unethical. But evil? No. Evil is reserved for a special breed of person/organization/action. What they did was not evil.
So no, the label of "evil" is not reserved for especially bad acts.
All you're doing by branding them "evil" is utterly watering down the meaning of the word and completely weakening your stance.
Frankly, I think that this weird notion that you need to start murdering people before your actions qualify as "evil" is doing far more harm than any "watering down" of the term would. What possible goal would rising the bar that high accomplish, besides letting people excuse their inexcusible actions?
If its illegal for Google to collude for the purpose of manipulating the labor market it should be illegal for you or anyone else to do so. There should be no special exceptions, around 'who'. If a law appears to need them, it means the definition of 'what' has been badly crafted.
Labour market is inherently imbalanced, since the natural state of one actor - companies - tends towards concentrating power and that of the other - employees - does not. Unions exist to correct this imbalance. Making an imbalanced situation more imbalanced - which is what Google and friends did - is not the same act as making it more balanced, which is what unions do, thus there's no reason why they should both be legal or illegal.
So I guess I'd say that the definition of 'what' needs to be clarified.
Unions can make sense when hiring temporary skilled workers from craft guilds and the like, but on a day-to-day basis, a typical "closed shop" only increases costs and decreases opportunities.
Well, of course unions increase costs for the employer, since they exist to prevent abuse of employees and most such abuse is motivated by cutting costs. That's not a bug, it's a feature.
You seem to have a gross misunderstanding of libertarians.
Really? Because the Middle Ages combined a weak central government with great personal freedom for the rich (the nobility) with low taxes and no support for the poor and weak. That sounds pretty much what libertarians have constantly stated they want. Even the idea that people tend to gravitate to positions they "deserve" was present; they called it "Divine Right".
Because most people do not understand the connection between "who they vote for" and "what political decisions are taken".
Sure they do: there is none. Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who cast the bribes - sorry, "contributions" - decide everything.
At this point I think that we should just admit our leaders will always act against our best interests, and just figure out how to get around them. Various decentralized protocols and darknets are a beginning, but we'll still need to figure out how to prevent users from being cut off the Net and how to circumvent the various Great Firewalls more and more countries use nowadays. Maybe some kind of wireless mesh without ISPs would work better?
Is it possible to have every study "peer reviewed" by a completely independent, impartial party. And by that, I don't just mean the checking the paper itself, but overseeing the ENTIRE experiment from start to finish including the production of the data so that it can't be skewed.
The "impartial" party would need to be made scientists of the same area of research to have the know-how to oversee the experiment, at which point it becomes "you cover my ass and I cover yours".
Not for me. The hatred and fear I feel for people who try to keep me from reselling stuff I bought from them has far exceeded it. They want a future where I own nothing but merely "lease" things, for full price of course. They are public enemies and should be treated as such and stopped before this madness spreads to other industries.
What I'm wondering is how many people will remove this from their "these handful of unexplained results in not fully understood circumstances mean all of physics are wrong (and my pet theory is right)" lists?
None. They'll just claim it's a worldwide conspiracy of physicists publishing only articles conforming to the official story to keep funding. And if that fails they'll ask for unfiltered instrument readings: if those aren't provided then the scientists are hiding something, and if they, the inevitable presence of noise proves or disproves whatever a person wants (dis)proven when subjected to (in)appropriate analysis methods.
Nope. That would imply that the statements from either Apple or Greenpeace have any kind of connection to truth rather than being pure propaganda. So the truth is unknown.
Without the government eating up 25% of my paycheck before I see it, maybe I'll be able to pay for those services myself?
Without the government busting cartels and monopolies I doubt it. Not to mention whoever owns the last mile of road to your house can charge you whatever he wants. As can whatever gang provides "protection" in your neighbourhood in the absence of police.
We don't need a new government. We need the old government. You know, the one of the people, by the people, and FOR the people? The one that had a constitution that said no torturing would ever be allowed.
[...]
Perhaps it would be enough to simply mandate that all Supreme court judges be Agnostics or Atheists.
Try to make up your mind. Either you follow your Constitution, in which case your proposed religious test for holding a public office is illegal, or you don't, in which case why are you complaining when others won't either? Unless, of course, you are saying that your cause is worthwhile enough to warrant an exception while all others should still be bound by it? And then others say the same and you're right back at the current situation.
Where no one could be searched (or wiretapped) without just cause and a warrant issued by a judge.
[...]
step 8 - form an auditing corp branch of government. These individuals must be willing to have every moment of their life recorded, be well paid, and will have the power to investigate anyone, or anything at anytime for any kind of corruption. They will have the power to ask for and immediately receive any information they ask for. And if they do not receive it, they have the power to bring in any branch of the military they need to enforce their requests.
Again, try to make up your mind.
Note - the vast majority of the US population is Protestant Christian. Why then does the the Supreme Court of all the land consist of 6 catholics and 3 jews?
This is just a guess, but perhaps other people simply aren't as obsessed with religion as you? And its odd that you would worry about the underrepresentation of protestants in a body you propose barring them from entirely.
Partial list of other Possible other Gods to chat about:
At this point I can't tell if you're trolling or high.
It's some buffoon with a high school diploma (times 10,000) perverting the wireless market in favor of existing big players.
For the market to be perverted, a statistically significant amount of salesmen would need to find Windows Phone "crap" compared to its competitors. At that point, one might conclude that the problem isn't their education or personality but the Windows Phone itself.
I have every right as a free citizen (not a megacorp slave) to buy the cheapest copy I can find. It's called free trade.
It's only called free trade if it benefits the Megacorp. If it benefits a mere mortal, it's called infringement. What it actually infringes isn't quite clear, since you aren't actually copying anything, but that's unimportant. What's important is that the Megacorp paid good money to have the laws written and interpreted for its favour.
If I ever teach a programming class, I will give an automatic zero to such inanity.
Then you'd better be prepared to teach psychology and literature in your programming class, since knowing what others can easily figure out falls into the realm of the first and the ability to communicate your intent clearly into the second.
Writing (useful) technical documentation is its own skill, and if you require it you either must teach it yourself or list it as a pre-requisite.
Also, I wonder about the nature of measuring the defect density. If there's a "deep" error, but the spec and the software agree, does it count as a bug?
Depends on what you mean by "deep" error. There are guaranteed to be circumstances in every control system where they make sub-optimal decisions, simply because making optimal decisions in every circumstances requires an unbounded amount of processing power. Even assuming limited computing resources, you'd need to enumerate all possible circumstances and their likelihood to figure which of possible programs will perform the best overall, which is impossible.
I mean, was it a "deep" error that Challenger would launch when the temperature was too low? And was it a "deep" error that Columbia didn't download the video of its launch from the Internet, analyze it for possible problems, and then refuse to re-enter the atmosphere until someone had gone and investigated its heat tiles? Or, in a simpler hypothethical scenario, what if the shuttle is launched overloaded and is unable to reach orbital velocity - will the control system give up and properly handle landing (using up and ejecting the external tank first, not accelerate to speeds said tank couldn't handle in the atmosphere, etc)?
Once your system has to deal with the real world and its infinite variety of situations, any discussion about "deep" errors tends to go off the deep end pretty fast.
If somebody was really, consistently avoiding all magical thinking acts, they would carefully correct themselves and say "There is rain." instead. On learning that the days of the week or months are named after supernatural beings, they would consistantly attempt to correct that fact.
Trying to change the names of months or weeks because they have a connection to supernatural entities is about as magical as thinking can get. Why on Earth would you care if Mars is named after Roman war-god if you don't believe this god exists?
If you really believe that the car consciously dislikes going full throttle before getting warm, or the bottle has made a choice to hang onto the cap, that's magical thinking. But I don't think most who use those expressions mean them literally.
I think that what the summary is saying is that human brains think of everything in terms of agency, possible very simple agency - for example, water is an agent that wants to flow downwards, freeze when cooled and boil when heated. That actually makes quite a bit of sense: since it's possible to model the world in terms of entities that have minds, and since it's necessary to model at least part of it this way to live in a society, why would the brain contain redundant systems?
I don't know if the brain actually works this way, but if it does, then the guy who says his car liking or disliking something does mean it quite literally, and only uses the fact that the car is not actually capable of agency when he has to. Which, if it keeps him from damaging his car engine with the minimum of distraction, works quite well for him and other road-goers.
The problems start when the fact of non-agency fail to materialize when needed - and see, that very sentence structure gives agency to "facts" - at which point serious miscalculations follow.
Complain about the EU being undemocratic all you like, but I sure as hell didn't elect Oracle as president of anything.
The Almighty Dollar, through it's mighty Invisible Hand, appointed Oracle to sit on its right side in the Free Market. If the heathens of EU fail to recognize this, due to the demon of Socialism having blinded their eyes, then perhaps a crusade should be called to liberate them.
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It was the greedy preying on the stupid to the detriment of the rest of us. But an unchained wolf will hunt when it sees food, and so will a sociopathic CEO. The blame lies with those who let them run free in the first place by deregulating the financial sector, not on animals following their instincts.
Seeing how video codecs store the difference between frames instead of frames themselves except for keyframes, and there would be less differences in 48 fps than 24 fps version, would there actually be any advantages to this? And if there is, shouldn't a decent codec vary the framerate automatically?
I wonder if this has anything to do with "artistic touch" rather than the fact that codecs typically try to maintain a stable bitrate over a few seconds to support streaming/DVD playback. If you built one to "think" in terms of large blocks (files) rather than a stream, it would probably outperform a human.
Well, one obvious difference is that condoms work and are available right now, while geoengineering is entirely hypothethical at this point. So condoms actually do solve the problems they're meant to - disease transmission and unwanted pregnancies - while geoengineering is simply an excuse to not do anything. So no, they're not really a tiniest bit similar situations.
Not that global warming can be stopped at this point, since renewables are a joke and anti-nuclear hysteria has kept us from building clean power plants, so it's not like it matters much. It's gonna be interesting, seeing who'll still be standing when the dust settles.
What happens if the sale is merely near the route? Do the instruction get altered to make me pass as many advertisers as possible? Because "nice" is not the word I'd use for such things.
Not really. All it'll take is being pushed outside of your comfort zone. With China ascending towards world leader status and the US economy continuing to tailspin reality should reinforce itself over ideology in a decade or so.
So how is mining your own iron for your own plowshare to harvest your independently domesticated wheat going?
Also, stop using the government-started Internet.
That could actually be useful, assuming that brain waves have some relation to how you're using said brains of course.
morally wrong or bad; immoral; wicked: evil deeds; an evil life.
So no, the label of "evil" is not reserved for especially bad acts.
Frankly, I think that this weird notion that you need to start murdering people before your actions qualify as "evil" is doing far more harm than any "watering down" of the term would. What possible goal would rising the bar that high accomplish, besides letting people excuse their inexcusible actions?
Labour market is inherently imbalanced, since the natural state of one actor - companies - tends towards concentrating power and that of the other - employees - does not. Unions exist to correct this imbalance. Making an imbalanced situation more imbalanced - which is what Google and friends did - is not the same act as making it more balanced, which is what unions do, thus there's no reason why they should both be legal or illegal.
So I guess I'd say that the definition of 'what' needs to be clarified.
Well, of course unions increase costs for the employer, since they exist to prevent abuse of employees and most such abuse is motivated by cutting costs. That's not a bug, it's a feature.
Really? Because the Middle Ages combined a weak central government with great personal freedom for the rich (the nobility) with low taxes and no support for the poor and weak. That sounds pretty much what libertarians have constantly stated they want. Even the idea that people tend to gravitate to positions they "deserve" was present; they called it "Divine Right".
Sure they do: there is none. Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who cast the bribes - sorry, "contributions" - decide everything.
At this point I think that we should just admit our leaders will always act against our best interests, and just figure out how to get around them. Various decentralized protocols and darknets are a beginning, but we'll still need to figure out how to prevent users from being cut off the Net and how to circumvent the various Great Firewalls more and more countries use nowadays. Maybe some kind of wireless mesh without ISPs would work better?
The "impartial" party would need to be made scientists of the same area of research to have the know-how to oversee the experiment, at which point it becomes "you cover my ass and I cover yours".
Not for me. The hatred and fear I feel for people who try to keep me from reselling stuff I bought from them has far exceeded it. They want a future where I own nothing but merely "lease" things, for full price of course. They are public enemies and should be treated as such and stopped before this madness spreads to other industries.
None. They'll just claim it's a worldwide conspiracy of physicists publishing only articles conforming to the official story to keep funding. And if that fails they'll ask for unfiltered instrument readings: if those aren't provided then the scientists are hiding something, and if they, the inevitable presence of noise proves or disproves whatever a person wants (dis)proven when subjected to (in)appropriate analysis methods.
Ask global warming "sceptics" for details.
Nope. That would imply that the statements from either Apple or Greenpeace have any kind of connection to truth rather than being pure propaganda. So the truth is unknown.
Without the government busting cartels and monopolies I doubt it. Not to mention whoever owns the last mile of road to your house can charge you whatever he wants. As can whatever gang provides "protection" in your neighbourhood in the absence of police.
Try to make up your mind. Either you follow your Constitution, in which case your proposed religious test for holding a public office is illegal, or you don't, in which case why are you complaining when others won't either? Unless, of course, you are saying that your cause is worthwhile enough to warrant an exception while all others should still be bound by it? And then others say the same and you're right back at the current situation.
Again, try to make up your mind.
This is just a guess, but perhaps other people simply aren't as obsessed with religion as you? And its odd that you would worry about the underrepresentation of protestants in a body you propose barring them from entirely.
At this point I can't tell if you're trolling or high.
For the market to be perverted, a statistically significant amount of salesmen would need to find Windows Phone "crap" compared to its competitors. At that point, one might conclude that the problem isn't their education or personality but the Windows Phone itself.
It's only called free trade if it benefits the Megacorp. If it benefits a mere mortal, it's called infringement. What it actually infringes isn't quite clear, since you aren't actually copying anything, but that's unimportant. What's important is that the Megacorp paid good money to have the laws written and interpreted for its favour.
Then you'd better be prepared to teach psychology and literature in your programming class, since knowing what others can easily figure out falls into the realm of the first and the ability to communicate your intent clearly into the second.
Writing (useful) technical documentation is its own skill, and if you require it you either must teach it yourself or list it as a pre-requisite.
Depends on what you mean by "deep" error. There are guaranteed to be circumstances in every control system where they make sub-optimal decisions, simply because making optimal decisions in every circumstances requires an unbounded amount of processing power. Even assuming limited computing resources, you'd need to enumerate all possible circumstances and their likelihood to figure which of possible programs will perform the best overall, which is impossible.
I mean, was it a "deep" error that Challenger would launch when the temperature was too low? And was it a "deep" error that Columbia didn't download the video of its launch from the Internet, analyze it for possible problems, and then refuse to re-enter the atmosphere until someone had gone and investigated its heat tiles? Or, in a simpler hypothethical scenario, what if the shuttle is launched overloaded and is unable to reach orbital velocity - will the control system give up and properly handle landing (using up and ejecting the external tank first, not accelerate to speeds said tank couldn't handle in the atmosphere, etc)?
Once your system has to deal with the real world and its infinite variety of situations, any discussion about "deep" errors tends to go off the deep end pretty fast.
If somebody was really, consistently avoiding all magical thinking acts, they would carefully correct themselves and say "There is rain." instead. On learning that the days of the week or months are named after supernatural beings, they would consistantly attempt to correct that fact.
Trying to change the names of months or weeks because they have a connection to supernatural entities is about as magical as thinking can get. Why on Earth would you care if Mars is named after Roman war-god if you don't believe this god exists?
I think that what the summary is saying is that human brains think of everything in terms of agency, possible very simple agency - for example, water is an agent that wants to flow downwards, freeze when cooled and boil when heated. That actually makes quite a bit of sense: since it's possible to model the world in terms of entities that have minds, and since it's necessary to model at least part of it this way to live in a society, why would the brain contain redundant systems?
I don't know if the brain actually works this way, but if it does, then the guy who says his car liking or disliking something does mean it quite literally, and only uses the fact that the car is not actually capable of agency when he has to. Which, if it keeps him from damaging his car engine with the minimum of distraction, works quite well for him and other road-goers.
The problems start when the fact of non-agency fail to materialize when needed - and see, that very sentence structure gives agency to "facts" - at which point serious miscalculations follow.
The Almighty Dollar, through it's mighty Invisible Hand, appointed Oracle to sit on its right side in the Free Market. If the heathens of EU fail to recognize this, due to the demon of Socialism having blinded their eyes, then perhaps a crusade should be called to liberate them.