However, going fast is not necessarily unsafe. If you are on the highway, there are often stretches where speeds of 100+ are perfectly safe. Also, depends on the car you have. I have a car that is not only perfectly able to handle high speeds, it is also superior to most others in stopping and handling turns. What is safe for me in my car is not so much for others with cheap basic cars.
The big problem with speeding & safety is speed differences. If all the traffic is driving 100 mph, you will nicely move in one flow. However, if one goes 65 and the other goes 100, then the big speed difference will cause big problems if someone makes a mistake like changing lanes just when you are approaching. Now, somehow I doubt that your car changes the laws of nature or your reaction time, so your high speed will make it harder for you to react to unforseen circumstances.
I'd say I consider myself to be a pretty darned courteous driver actually...I drive what is safe for the situation I am in (plenty of stopping distance, can avoid others about to wreck).
I know. 90% of the drivers think that they are above average in skill. The problem is when people like you get in an exceptional situation. At that point, reaction time and braking capacity is the only recourse and you will do much worse than a driver who doesn't speed (again, basic physics that can't be changed too much by the characteristics of your car).
The limits are the lowest common denominator for weak cars....and mostly, a source of REVENUE for the cops.
By making that statement, you show that you are incapable of making the decision to speed. Why? Because you fail to understand all the reasons why a speed limit is useful. Generally a lower speed limit helps to reduce: - congestion (speed delta's cause shock waves in traffic) - road wear - pollution - noise - and...
most importantly, a well enforced speed limit will reduce the number of accidents. Even if you would be the one who does not increase the risk to himself or others, the statistics show that strict speeding limits improve the general safety. So you simply have to pay for the people who think that they can speed safely, but who do increase the number of accidents.
If they took away the funds from speeding tickets from the police....and indeed payed them per homicide solved or other violent crimes...I can assure you they'd severely curtail traffic speed traps, and start to pursue REAL crimes that hurt us all...
Right, because no-one is ever killed by speeding. Except for that guy who thought he could speed perfectly safely and who killed my aunt and niece. But I guess you are right. It's not right to call people like that asshats, killers is more like it.
I certainly don't claim to be an expert in the Kyoto treaty or environmentalism in general, but why in the world is "per capita" considered the proper measurement of CO2 emissions rather than something like "per square mile?"
Actually there are no per capita or per square mile values in the treaty. All of that was only part of the negotiations where it was decided by which standards countries had to be held, which was set as a percentage value of the emissions during a certain period in the past. During those negotiations, the politicians of course all had their own ideas about what was fair, but the end result doesn't include a specific ideology (in favor of more objective rules, which is a good thing).
However, per square mile is certainly not a good measurement since the out- or input of a piece of land depends on the way that land is used. A forest may be a carbon sink (but not even necessarily), but a cattle farm is going to produce more greenhouse gasses than it absorbs. However, the treaty has provisions that allow for the use of carbon sinks to achieve the reductions. For instance, you might be able to use a tree farm to store carbon, although scientific studies have shown that this may not work that well (you have to prove actual reductions according to the protocol, but you can probably work around this by paying for the research results you want).
Personally I think that a net output per capita is most fair (what kind of sinks you count for that is a seperate question). If you accept that all humans deserve equal rights, but also that we cannot let everyone consume as much as they want, then it makes sense to allow every human the same number of flights, car trips, etc. It doesn't seem fair to me if we say to an Indian or Chinese guy: "Sorry, you can only use half of what we can use, you second-class #$%@". In short, everyone should have a budget of emissions that they can use or sell. Then the market forces allow people to optimize their uses, in that people prioritize their consumption in a way that keeps our planet in good shape. If Bob really wants to fly a lot he can offer me money for some of my emission rights and then I can decide that I like the money more than travelling. Kyoto is a first step to achieve this, on the level of nations (which is a necessary step).
It seems to me that given the US's low population density that our country is far better able to absorb what we churn out than other areas of the world.
Whether or not to allow 'natural resources' to help you is a difficult debate. A big problem is that you basically just have to be lucky as a country to have a huge sink. A country with a large rain forest and few citizens will be able to sell a lot of emission rights without a real effort. If you are born in such a country you will be rich (or your dictator), if you are born in a country with a lot of farting animal life (methane), you will be poor. In this way, emission control becomes less and less about taking responsibility for your use of our resources and more about where you were born.
On the other hand, it is important to preserve rain forests and other sinks, so that is a good reason to value them. Personally I think that a medium is best.
I've read frequent complaints about Kyoto not weighting carbon sinks enough, but all that I've seen from either side is rhetoric.
One of the big issues with carbon sinks that a lot of Kyoto opponents want to be counted more is that the goal is to replace underground stable reservoirs of carbon (oil, coal, gas) with above ground unstable sinks (trees). However, trees absorb carbon for a while, but they do not hold it indefinitely. At one point the tree will burn down or fall down and rot away, causing most of the carbon to be freed again. The result is that a lot of the sinks that are touted aren't really that great to offset the burning of fossil fuels. The important question to ask when people talk about carbon sinks is therefore always: "Where will all that
Re:low unemployment compared to europe
on
The Jobs Crunch
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· Score: 2, Insightful
That's why I feel that unemployment pay should be coupled to some sort of community service. It doesn't have to be hard work, or even particularly long hours, but if you want your unemployment money by all means do something for the community in return.
I disagree strongly. This idea looks good on the surface, but there are so many problems with it that it should never be instituted. First of all, people who are jobless are supposed to spend their time looking for a job. Social security is a safety net, not a job itself. That changes if you start requiring people to work for a 'pay check'. Then people can legitimately claim that they earn their money and aren't required to find a job. You also get into all kinds of trouble, for instance, what happens when people get hurt on the job?
Secondly, the notion that jobless people are lazy fu*ks is certainly not true. My father worked 60+ hours per week as a volunteer when he was unemployed (he is part of the so called 'lost generation' who got to the marketplace during a major recession and job drought). If he would be forced to do some idiotic job like cleaning the streets, he would probably kill himself. Then there is the sad fact that a considerable part of the jobless have physical or mental issues. Especially since in my country, only the very disabled/sick are counted as sick and get special social security for that. The rest are just counted as unemployed, but this certainly doesn't mean that they can necessarily do jobs like street sweeping (kind of hard from a wheelchair).
Thirdly, there is a serious risk of having real jobs be replaced by this kind of community work. Last time this idea was tried by our local right wing party, the plan was to have these people clean the homes of people who are to old or sick to do that themselves. There is little doubt who the employers would choose, cheap forced labor or expensive workers. And not only is it an incredible blow to the people who do this job and an enormous underestimation of the expertise required to correctly and respectfully clean other people's homes, it also ignores the problem of letting uneducated, unmotivated and untrained people, who are not bound by a contract loose in the homes of people who cannot take care of themselves. Now, cleaning the streets is obviously a bit less of a problem, although people who do that now are bound to be replaced by 'cheap labor'. However, I believe that there is a big chance that politicians will not stop there.
Finally, if you seriously want to combat unemployment, there are plenty of work projects and education that are possible. For instance, for people who lack a working rythm, there already exists a fake company where jobless people 'practice' having a job and prove to potential employers that they are good employees. Other possibilities are reeducation programs, such as the ones that were denied to my father who was written off due to his age. Then he finally got a chance to learn to be a programmer and now he is making his boss tons of money. Of course, this required an actual investment first, instead of just the tired old 'these people don't want to work' routine.
Skill plays a major factor in the long term. If it wouldn't, poker professionals would not be able to exist. But they do exist and they do earn a decent living. The reason why skill is so important is that odds are only part of the equation. Straightforward betting on good hands and folding when the odds are not in your favor is easily exploitable by just not calling the bets and bluffing to get the opponent to fold. So a good player must use deception. That element of deception turns the game into an unstructured game that is very hard to beat algorithmically, so I have my doubt about being able to create world-class bots.
If bots exist that are beating inexperienced players, how is this different from the poker pro who logs 10 hours of online poker a day?
The difference is that the bot doesn't have to sleep, eat, pay taxes, etc so there are much lower expenses for a bot and it can work 24 hours a day. That means that if good bots exist, they can be let loose at tables where most people play for fun and where it's currently not worth it for a professional player to play. Then the poker games will split up in very low limit games that nobody plays seriously and the high stakes games where only the best professionals can live. There will be no middle ground, but that is where most money is made for the casino's and where most semi-serious players play. The result might be that online poker loses its appeal to 90% of the players.
If you're looking for real human vs human action without worrying about cheat tools find a game in your neighborhood and go play there.
That's not really realistic, is it? First of all, online poker is different from 'live' poker because you don't need a poker face and a lot of players like that. Also, you can play it whenever you want, without having to coordinate schedules with other people. You also don't have to play with the same 9 neighbourhood guys all the time. Then there are more games to pick from online. You can play big tournaments online. You can play freerolls online, where you can win money for free. I could go on, but I think you get the point. Online poker is just a different ball game.
And if anyone is being alarmist and taking things out of context, it's you.
Sure pal, after all it was me that tried to scare people with the image of being forced to watch your wife and daughters be raped and it was you that rightfully pointed out that such crimes are very unlikely to happen to you and that you'd better worry about more likely threats to your life (if you do decide to worry). Oh wait...
If you read my post, you'll see exactly my point: No matter how enlightened you are, there's some other jerk that's not, and your enlightenment and education do exactly nothing to protect you from him.
But your point is extremely shallow. I can easily reposte with something like: no matter how much guns you own, they will never save you when you are squashed between two trucks or when you suffer from a heart attack. It's all as true as can be, yet it is quite meaningless. My point is that if you want to improve your safety, you should look at what the biggest threats are to your life. Unless you live in dangerous place or have a dangerous job (say cop or crook), the chance of you being murdered by a stranger are very small. But we are often not very rational about that sort of thing. It's the same with the current hype about terrorism. Every year, 14 9/11's happen on the road (42,000 vs 3,000 people killed). Considering that 9/11 doesn't happen every year and that it was in fact the largest terrorist attack on US soil ever (the Oklahoma city bombing killed 'only' 168), this skews the odds even more. And yet many people are all up in arms about terrorism, are willing to give up important freedoms and otherwise totally overreact.
You're right. That's why thousands of dollars of the cost of a car go into providing safety: Even though you're not likely to be in an accident, it could happen, and you want to be ready. I'm not likely to ever need a gun. But if I ever did, it would be nice to have one.
And yet you would probably improve your safety much more by not speeding, not drinking before you crawl behind the wheel and wearing your seatbelt. Or by buying a safer car instead of that SUV (most of which are very prone to rollovers, which result in a very large percentage of occupant deaths). And yet so many Americans do speed, do drink and drive, don't wear seatbelts all the time and/or do buy a rollover-prone SUV. And then they get a gun for 'safety'. Sorry, but I can't call that rational behavior.
It's common for Europeans to believe that they're enlightened enough not to need guns. Unfortunately, they're living in a dream.
Remember the massacre of the Israeli olympians in Munich?
You mean the one that happened over 30 years ago? The crime that was committed by non-Europeans against non-Europeans and just happened to take place in Europe? Is that supposed to tell us anything more than that international events have to deal with the problem of 'imported' violence and need proper security?
You can be as enlightened and educated as you want, but when someone comes into your house with a baseball bat, smashes your face in, then rapes your wife and daughters as he chokes them to death, your enlightenment and education gained you exactly nothing. That's right, nothing.
OMG, think of the children!!! Look out for the terrorists!!! WMD!!! Terror alert red!!!
Thanks for discussing things objectively, without resorting to scare mongering. Now seriously: if someone breaks into your house in Europe, then 99.9% of the time they are there to steal your things and they carry at most a knife for self defense. Usually they are also smart enough to make sure you are not home, so you will usually notice the break in by simply missing stuff. If they do break in when you are present, calling the police and making a ruckus will nearly always be enough to scare the perp away.
Statistically, it is far more likely that you die in traffic than that you get murdered (unless you are a criminal). And even if you get murdered, it is more often by someone you know than a stranger, which means that it is unlikely that you will feel a need to get or pull out a gun until it is too late. Some of these statistical facts are also supported by my personal experience. I have had family members die in a traffic incident and many years ago, a girl in my class was killed by her father (who killed the rest of the family and himself too). Other people I know died from health problems. I have never seen a 'live' gun except when carried on the hip of the police officer. I have also never had a knife drawn on me.
So for my safety, I would first look at making my commute safer and then I would care about my personal health. Buying and carrying a gun for my safety would for me be like carrying a helmet to protect myself from tiles falling from the roof. Sure it can happen, but I refuse to worry about things that happen so rarely. If I stop living life because I go through life in a constant panic and fear, I might just as well kill myself right now and be done with it.
And "don't expose your belongings"? HAH! I had a car that was broken into four times in three months, all in different areas. In no case was there anything of value in the car, and nothing was taken. These worthless little streat punks cost me over a thousand dollars in broken windows just so that they could take a peek inside to see if there was anything of value. People are mugged and killed often when their total possessions are worth less than $20. For someone of such esteemed education, you seem to have very little dealings in reality.
Perhaps that is the society you live in. However, I don't and I won't be berated for not allowing my society to be overflowed with guns, even though it has never been proven that guns stop crime.
I find your attitude offensive. There are so many honest people in the world who have had desperate circumstances, unequal wealth, and bad situations - and who were good honest and even productive inspite of it all. In fact, the history if the United States is made of such people. You really slap these people in the face when you suggest that "well all we need is the right circumstances"
The thing I see is that there are many people in the US who are honest and who are productive, but who don't get rewarded. People who have two jobs, no time to raise their kids and who might not have healthcare. If you then get sick you are really in trouble. On the other hand, many of the people who earn a lot don't deserve to earn that much, at least not because they are honest or hard working. Take NBA stars who make millions. They just profit from the talent that they were born with and play a game, just like many other people are doing, but are not being paid for. The only difference between them and the guy at McD who plays basketball in his spare time is that the latter guy lacks a bit of talent. Or look at the high ups at Enron and other 'short-term profits over ethics' companies who pay themselves millions while they run the company into the ground. Or look at the people who just profit from the money that their parents earned. Or look at the people who only got where they are by having connections. Or look at the people who are dishonest and still make millions.
I don't see why hard-working people should be offended to ask those people to give up part of their wealth for the rest of society. Of course, then you also ask things from people who do earn their money by working hard and being honest, but those people generally have also gotten lucky. Not in the least by having good health.
The best way of all to stop crime it to show people that they are destined by choices and not circumstances.
True, but part of the problem is that poor kids see what happens to the people who are honest and hard working vs the people who choose a life style of crime. The first group usually has to work very hard just to get by and the second group has money to spare. Of course the downsides of the second choice are quite bad (jail-time or death), but most human beings have this wierd way of thinking that 'it won't happen to me'. Key to change this is to shove these downsides in their faces, but also to give kids the ability to really move up, whatever their inherent capability. Education is very important in achieving this. This is also why in EU, the state pays enough for your education (depending on how much your parents make) so that everyone can afford to go to college. Part of that deal is that you pay back the state when you profit from that education and earn a good living. Another important way to get people to make the right choice is to improve the life of the honest and hard working people, for instance by providing healthcare for low earners.
Taking money from one set of people just because they have more - is a great way to teach people why it's ok to steal and take things - just because you percieve you need it more than they do.
You can just as well turn it around and say that paying taxes is important to teach people to share and to mind those who can't take care of themselves. Also, I really doubt that the poor really steal from the rich, it's more the other way around.
Making social programs that center arround circumstance is a great way to teach people that it's not about their choices but their situations.
It really depends on what the program does. For example, a very big problem with junkies is that they see no way out. Many of them live their life going from crimescene to fence to dealer and that life style doesn't really give them the opportunity to find a job and a home. Putting them in jail really doesn't help either since it only provides punishment, but not a feeli
Originally, assembly lines weren't good for society at all. During the industrial revolution, workers were exploited quite heavily. Society consisted of a small class of wealthy owners and a large class of weak-skilled poor workers. 12x7 workdays and child labor were common. Pollution was incredible and coal mine workers got sick because they never got any sun. It is not surprising that communism was developed at the height of the industrial revolution, since there was much unrest among the working class. However, socialist ideas gained traction, such as public education and labor laws. This changed society by offering workers the ability to share in the wealth. However, it was not just a redistribution of wealth, since workers also became more productive as a result of the improved education, better healthcare and more reasonable working hours. This in turn also made the economy a better place for capitalists as well, which is why we now have a mix of capitalism and socialism in western countries.
Now, when we apply this bit of history to outsourcing, we see mixed results. India is one of the smartest IMO, since they focus a lot on performing relatively high quality jobs and getting people well-educated. This makes for a rapid increase in productivity and wealth, which can probably be sustained when outsourcing drops off. However, there is also plenty of exploitation in poor countries, which is rather dumb IMO. Performing low-skilled jobs (perhaps with child labor), where 99% of the profit goes to the elite is just a temporary boost. Once the wages go up a little, the industry leaves and you don't even end up with skilled workers or a good economy. It's no more sustainable than Spain's 'gold rush' which ended as soon as they couldn't get any more gold from their colonies.
As for the effect on the US, I don't understand the hang-up about cheaper prices at Wal-Mart. If you pay $1 and the people who profit are American, then one American's spend money is another person's income. However, if now you spend $0.75 and part of the money goes to a foreigner, there needs to be a form of compensation or the domestic economy loses. Now, it is a net win if we earn more due to increased exports to the newly developing countries than we lose by 'buying labor' from other countries. That requires us to produce products that the rest of the world wants. Unfortunately for the US, the trade deficit is bad and only becoming worse. Also, most of the benefits of outsourcing are going to a small elite, while unemployment is rising and wages are falling. The result is a return to the bad situation during the industrial revolution. Many people can no longer afford healthcare or good education, so productivity will fall. Workers are more likely to be exploited, which has never shown itself to be particularly good for productivity (it's better to have high productivity for 8 hours than low productivity at McD for 12 hours). And if your economy has a long-term downturn and/or other parts of the world become more profitable, investors who now offset the trade deficit and bankroll the governments debts, may pull out. That would require you to increase taxes, reduce spending (perhaps impacting productivity even more) and to improve the trade balance (by weakening the dollar and deflation). Those would in turn be dramatic for the domestic economy. So you might well be facing a very nasty implosion of your economy, in part caused by outsourcing (although that is certainly not the only reason why it may happen).
Well Valenti did serve in WWII, which strangly enough, civilians were considered appropriate targets.
True and I consider those war crimes as well. I'm not going to say: we did it too, for a good cause, so it's ok. Killing civilians on purpose and not as collatoral damage is just murder. Now, for the US bomber pilots like Valenti, there was a lot more justification, because the US did try to target only military targets. That is, in Europe, where Valanti flew. Bombs may still go off target or such, but war is not pretty.
However, Bob Kerrey did not limit his shooting to the enemy. He and his team purposely and deliberately murdered civilians, freely killing every men they found in 'free fire zones' and they used indiscriminate violence (in the most Kerrey-friendly explanation of what happened), causing the death of over a dozen women and children.
It wasn't until vietnam that even the basic notion of civilians as innocents in war came to be.
I'm sorry, but that is absolute horse shit. The Hague convention in 1907 already prohibited bombarding undefended towns 'by whatever means'. In 1923, Britain, France, Italy, Japan, and the United States prohibited bombing from the air "for the purpose of terrorizing the civilian population [...] or of injuring noncombatants." Also, when refugees and townspeople were purposely bombarded at Guernica, during the Spanish civil war, there was a big uproar.
So please don't come up with this revisionist nonsense. The US was not the country to come up with the idea of not targeting civilians, while the rest of the world happily engaged in that.
Do you really think the cold war would have ever existed without this concept?
The cold war was not about killing civilians. It was about both parties having the ability to completely annihilate the other party, to make war such an awful proposition, that it would never happen. Since even strategic bombing with nuclear weapons would cause enormous civilian casualties, preventing war was crucial. But I don't see how pointing a nuke at someone is somehow the same as killing civilians.
Strangely enough, those aren't even the worst words by Jack Valenti. In a letter to the LA Times, he defended the killing of civilians in war time, especially ex-senator Bob Kerrey, who was part of a terrorist operation in Vietnam (killing civilians in VC territory to terrorize the opposition).
Abortion is murder (simple biological fact, aborted human life == dead human)
Please define human. Is sperm human? Is an egg cell human? Is an egg cell that just merged with sperm human? If so, at what point does it become human? At the point where the sperm penetrates the egg cell, even though nothing has really changed yet? Later? How much later? Seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months? Before a nervous system has formed?
gay marriage is just a continuation of our unelected judges writing law in clear violation of their Constitutional restraints
I think the point is that the constitution is not clear about this and Republicans seem to want to change that. Even though this should normally be a right granted to the individual states, that is, unless you are an...evil socialist.
sex ed shouldn't be entrusted to the government education monopoly
In other words, you don't want to have your children taught to use condoms, even though 'teaching' abstinence is causing a enormous number of teen pregnancies in the US.
social programs should be funded by voluntary contributions and not tax money confiscated by force (try not paying your taxes sometime)
Ignoring the problem that voluntary contributions in practice tends to lead to very unfair contributions, where people give their aid based on effective marketing campaigns and not on effective aid. Or do you think you can assess who needs help and whether your money is used effectively? At least the government has an overview and can manage all the necessary money to take care of the sick and elderly.
And then we haven't even discussed the problem that people are probably going to spend far less on their programs if it is voluntary, by pointing at other stingy people or because they are just plain greedy (perhaps you won't do that, but how many people will?).
a rather large subset of Muslims have declared war on all Americans who don't think and act as they do (that includes you)
Ignoring the fact that no terrorist or militant has used that as a reason. They want you out of their country and to stop supporting non-Islamitic regimes in the middle east. But you keep believing in that lie if it makes you happy, even though it requires you to ignore what they are actually saying.
we shouldn't make environmentalism a substitute for traditional religion.
In other words, you don't care about pollution, toxics and hormones in your food, the enormous use of oil, global warming, etc. You probably just want to drive that big SUV for no good reason, eat that big cheap burger and dismiss all criticism by calling environmentalism a religion. I just hope that you still feel that way if your kids or grandkids get asthma, cross-gender issues, have to beg the oil producing countries for oil, see great changes in the weather patterns, etc, etc.
Well, if you cannot understand books by reading them and need help... do you really deserve to pass?
Metaphores and references to other works are an important part of more advanced literature. No matter how smart you are, if you haven't learned about these metaphores or haven't read that other literature, you will miss a lot. Reading reviews can help to quickly gain an appreciation for this depth in literary works and to understand some important parts of the story. After all, the goal of reading books and writing essays about them is not to test your IQ by having you come up with things on your own (and missing a lot of stuff), it is to teach you something by exposing you to the diversity and depth that literature has to offer.
But from an economic perspective the Israeli economy would not last very long without US support.
Well, actually there are Israeli economists who believe that the US aid is damaging the Israeli economy. Your statement might be true if you are talking about the trade agreements, but I really don't think that the foreign aid is crucial.
In the end the obvious solution is to annex the West Bank and Gaza and grant citizenship to everyone who lives there. Sure it will no longer be a 'Jewish' state, but it will be better than what there is today.
That can hardly be considered an obvious solution at all. I think that the extreme right in Israel is going to do whatever it takes to protect the 'Jewish' state, they are probably even willing to resort to terrorism (for some even just to fight a compromise, as was evidenced by Rabin's murder). Secondly, both groups have demonized each other, so I really can't see them working together in one state.
Anything that would have been useful to CIA before wouldn't be now that all this has been made public - any financial information would be useless, since with this online, they would have taken the money out. Intel is really only useful if not everyone knows it.
It can be pretty useful still for many things. First of all, you can discover the methodology of Al Qaeda. That is not something you can change overnight, even if you know that information about you is discovered (especially since Al Qaeda is very decentralized). It also tells you what kind of loopholes the group likes to use, which is useful because someone will usually only use the type of methods that they are familiar with. This can help you to predict replacement methods. Secondly, it allows you to track the past behaviour of the group. This allows you to build up evidence against already arrested Al Qaeda members or to detect sleeper cells, scouted targets and activity areas in general.
And as for freezing accounts, if the group has any common sense, transferred funds won't be left in the accounts for long anyway. A smart terrorist would take it out as cash and either pocket it or put most of it in another account (not the full amount and leaving some time between withdrawal and deposit). Voila, no link between the accounts.
Porter Goss ... Ok, I'm not Goss, I'm George Tenet.
Yes, a company could theoretically own itself. Much like a million and one Mom-and-Pop corner stores own themselves.
That is complete and utter nonsense. Buying back stock means that the value of the company and the number of investors is reduced, but the investors that remain still own the entire company. Let's give an example:
5 equivalent stocks are out there. The company is worth 5 million, so each stock is worth 1 million. The company now buys back 4 stocks for 4 million. The result is that the remaining stock is now worth the same as the company: 1 million. The company could buy back the last stock as well, but only by liquidating (selling all assets, thus going out of business). Another possibility is that the people who run the company use their own money to buy the remaining stocks, which would make them owners just like a Mom-and-Pop corner store. However, even then the company doesn't 'own itself', it just happens to be that the owners also run the company.
If MSFT happens to make so much money that they can afford to buy the risk back from Mr and Mrs Shareholder, then more power to them.
The reason that they are giving one-time dividends and buying back stock is actually that they make too little money. Let me explain: In the world of money, ROI is everything. Making 1 million on an investment of 1 million is good, making that same amount after investing 1 billion is not so good. Now, if a company has earned a lot of money in the past, but can't use this money to generate new profits, the value of the company becomes less and less. The stock is worth a lot (because of all the money in the company's coffers), but the profit is marginal. This makes investors very unhappy (unless the stock is increasing in value, but that is no longer a given for MS, since they are transforming from a growth stock to an income stock).
A way to fix this is to simply give the money to investors (one-time dividends). This effectively decreases the value of the company, resulting in a better profit per invested dollar (but not per share). A second possibility is to buy back stocks. This is very similar to a one-time dividend, since company money is given back to investors. However, the dividend per stock also increases, raising the value of stocks. Some more info on the advantages and disadvantages of stock buybacks.
That's not exactly true. In the west, we also found out that loaning money has its downsides, which is why we invented stocks. Now, there is nothing preventing a muslim from starting a company and only giving out stocks (and someone could even start a risk sharing company which has stocks in many companies and provides a fairly safe way to invest).
Honestly, I think that the problem is much greater with regard to mortgages.
First of all BSD people make use of GPL products a great deal. AFAIK gcc is still the compiler of choice for all the BSDs. It's not as if GPL people never give anything back.
That is true. I'm not saying that GPL people are selfish or anything. I just wanted to make the point that BSD license isn't necessarily without any obligations (not legal ones, but social/moral).
I sometimes wonder if the world would have been different if the *BSD had become Free earlier than Linux. Is that an artifact of the most popular Unix-like kernel license, or do more people really believe the FSF than they believe the BSD people? I don't know.
Me too. I think that a lot of people who start with Linux see the GPL as the 'default' license. If *BSD wouldn't have had the AT&T lawsuit and perhaps a bit better marketing, things might be just the other way around (perhaps with Linus forking *BSD).
However, I do think that many GPL-advocates genuinely believe in the GPL philosophy. However, from the past we know that many things can seem like 'clear' truths based on historical events. For instance, for a long time, people thought that you could determine character from the features of someone's face/head (many characters are analysed that way in Jane Eyre). Science has eradicated that idea. Now, I'm not saying that the FSF's ideas are wrong, because I don't have the science to back that up. It might be wrong, partially wrong or right. However, I don't think that popular opinion is a good indication.
Personally I have my own Free software project (http://imview.sf.net)
Looks nice!
I did this partly so that people who want to include parts of it in different, non-GPL projects ask my permission first (so far always given).
But that assumes that people will ask you for permission instead of moving on. Generally, when I see a GPL lib that I want to use, I will move on, unless I really can't do without. Obviously it will be a bit different for an application, but you probably will scare people away (also because you don't indicate anywhere that you are willing to sub-license, so people might be afraid to ask you).
I wouldn't want my work to participate indirectly in things I don't approve of. Call me paranoid if you want.
I understand you want to keep control, but what do you really hope to accomplish? Al Qaeda is not going to ask permission. We may dislike companies like MS, but having them move to open source is probably a good things. If you are a pacifist, you might want to deny the DoD/military from using your stuff, but that only means higher taxes and you won't stop any wars anyway. It seems quite unlikely that you actually want to forbid someone from using your code, so what is the point?
In your own words, BSD licensing is being idealistic here. Here's free stuff, use it, do what you want, do the right thing.
I think that pragmatism means that you try to solve the problem in the best possible way. If you think that the BSD license is best, then choosing it is a choice for pragmatism. Forcing people to contribute, when that doesn't advance your goals as well (according to your beliefs), is then idealistic.
Personally, I favor BSD in most cases, but GPL can be a better choice for some situations (since I think that neither is better than the other in all cases).
Similarly but in different contexts, the GPL will actually ensure that people are doing the right thing, using open source code and giving back stuff.
It is not clear how much is gained by 'forcing' people to contribute and how much is lost by scaring people away with a more restrictive license. Since no good research has been done on this topic, it's more about beliefs. Do you believe that: - sharing code is generally in the best interest of those who use open source code. - companies who do so will generally be more succesful. - the marketplace and common sense will 'force' companies to open source in the long term. - A permissive license will make adoption of open source easier and thus result in a faster adoption.
If you believe these things, then permissive licenses would be your preference. If you don't, and you are free to disagree, I ask only that you try to understand my standpoint.
Without the GLP, no Objective-C in gcc for example, no improvement to KHTML in Konqueror.
The first was true, because Apple didn't want to open source Obj-C, once upon a time. But Apple has recently changed and has since returned changes when they used open source code from a third party (see Darwin/BSD). They have also open sourced some of their other infrastructure-level projects (ie. Streaming Server, Open Directory, Common Data Security Architecture, OpenPlay, Rendezvous, HeaderDoc). So I would definately assume that GPL enforcement would not be necessary for WebCode/KHTML, because Apple 'got it.' My hope is that more companies will 'get it' and then you don't need to force people to contribute (in most cases). They will see the advantages of doing so.
Microsoft is starting to give stuff back.
No, AFAIK the stuff that they are open and shared sourcing is 100% Microsoft code. It is not a case of taking open source, modifying it and giving back changes (which is actually very good, since MS seems to skipping steps on the path to adopting open source). However, it also clearly demonstrates that the GPL is not (always) necessary to get contributions. MS decided to open source, not because a license said they should, but because it made business sense (and conviction is always better than coercion).
The aims are the same. We should stop arguing.
No, we should not stop arguing. It's important for the BSD and GPL communities to understand and respect each other. That can only happen if we argue about our positions and through these clashes, find out the limitations of our views. Hiding in ivory towers, cuddling our ideas only results in blind idealism. We need pragmatism and cooperation.
Is it unfair that the GPL camp developers can use BSD code when BSD camp developers can't do the reverse? No. Absolutely not. When a BSD camp developer uses the BSD license this is precisely what they give up, and more. Their code can be used in proprietary software in fact. BSD camp developers cannot complain that their code is being used in ways they don't approve of.
Of course they can complain. The BSD license only makes it so that you can't go to a judge to get your way. However, there is a big different between morality and law. Just because something is legal, doesn't mean it is right (or vice versa). Because the BSD license doesn't specify what to do, it's up to the users of the code to use their own judgm
So what you are saying is that the BSD licence is idealistic and the GPL is pragmatic but both tend towards the same goal?
By using those words you are already showing bias. You have decided that the GPL is necessary to get contributions and that's why you call it pragmatic. If you believe that you get plenty, if not more, useful contributions with the BSD license, you could call the BSD license pragmatic and the GPL idealistic.
If that's the only important difference then can we stop arguing over which one is better?
No, another important difference is that you can't use GPLed code without GPLing your entire app (you can't have one part BSD and another part GPL). That means that in some cases, the GPL will actually prevent people from doing the right thing (using open source code and giving back code). Those practical considerations make it so that non-GPL open source developers have a big reason to lobby against using the GPL. I think that the arguments would be much less if the GPL-advocates would ask for the LGPL instead of the GPL.
You missed the Netherlands. Remember the guy lighting up the bong? That was his reference to the Netherlands (yes, the name of the Netherlands was displayed, too). The Netherlands have 1,300 troops in Iraq, making them one of the larger contingents. [...] His point was that the grand coalition numbers of countries included a number of countries who actually had nothing to contribute but lip service.
Actually it's a bit more complicated with regard to the Netherlands. The government said they supported the war, but they refused to send troops right away. Only after the war was 'won,' did they send troops, supposedly for peacekeeping (with support of the war-opposing opposition). This has been called brilliant diplomacy because war supporters remember that our government voiced support for the war and sent troops, while those who oppose war remember that we refused to send troops right away (and thus are not really part of the coalition).
Of course, another description could include the words: yellow, chicken, kiss, ass.
One thing The World At War will teach most people with its first episode is that comparing Emperor Dubyah and his band of neo-fascists to Hitler and the Nazis is pretty ridiculous, even though it is sometimes tempting.
The point is not that Bush & co will start a holocaust or are otherwise somehow similar to Hitler and the Nazi's. Hitler has taught us some incredibly important lessons, which apply to everyone. Not just insane jew-haters. One of the lessons is that an entire population can be brought to do evil if the government accumulates enough power to suppress dissent and control information sources. That lesson should be remembered when we look at this governments attempts to increase control and reduce accountability. Now, I don't care whether it's Jack the Ripper or Maria Magdalena who creates these laws, but I do now that once they are in place, a murderer can (and probably will) step in to abuse it. At that point, you will already be too late to stop it, so you have to act long before, to stop the people who try to 'protect' you.
Dubyah would never, for example, slaughter the entire citizenry of a town and destroy every building in it.
This comment makes no sense at all. An officer decided by himself to slaughter the population of the town. It was certainly not a directive by Hitler (although the officer wasn't court-martialed, but that decision was taken on a much lower level as well). Perhaps the best comparison in US history would be My Lai. The man responsible for that massacre was only given three years of light detention (house arrest). Colin Powell tried to cover-up this horrendous crime, btw.
I didn't assert that Java was bad. Personal disappointment is certainly my right.
The way you brought it I think most people would interpret it as saying that Java was indeed bad. It would be very different if you would have been disappointed in the benchmark, but this read as Java bashing without good arguments to back it up.
Actually, my "benchmark" was not flawed at all. It did exactly what it was supposed to do.
No, what you purported to show was that 'fair' memory handling would change the result. However, your benchmark does anything but show fair memory handling for Java. Java is supposed to do gc when it is convenient and make the most of available memory. Inherently, that means that it has an advantage for: - programs where all the objects fit in the allocated memory - programs where processing is, at least part of the time, non-CPU bound
Of course, there are also disadvantages to gc (and non-performance advantages). Garbage collection makes Java more useful for some uses and less useful for others. Exploring and quantifying these issues intelligently would certainly be interesting.
What my result attempted to prove was that these benchmarks were flawed and that they were purposely hiding java's gc overhead.
The benchmarks are only flawed in that respect if you want to generalize them for 'big' applications where gc will hamper processing (which does not have to be the case). However, it is simply impossible to alter the benchmark to account for all possible gc scenario's. Therefore, the best thing to do is probably to create seperate benchmarks for gc, which you can interpret based on the specifics of the application that you want to build. However, it is unfair to criticize a benchmark for not showing gc overhead when that doesn't have to be an issue in reality (for some kinds of apps).
What my "benchmark" also showed is that java's gc overhead can be significant.
Well duh. That is only surprising if you don't know Java at all.
It also highlighted the fact that since c++'s new and delete operators can be overloaded, a fair comparison would be to make the c++ implementation perform the same collection deferment.
Sure, gc collection libraries exist for c++. That would be so much more meaningful than simply killing Java's performance by doing something Java programmers are told not to do the instant they are introduced to gc.
Take them with a grain of salt but walk away with the lessons learned.
Creating good benchmarks (where the results are accurate and meaningful) is very hard and I'm certainly not able to do so (since it requires you to know every possible way to skew the results, knowledge that few people possess, and a certain attitude). Trust me, you can't do it either, so go easy with the wise old sage stuff.
"A man doesn't know what he knows until he knows what he doesn't know." -- Laurence Peter
That's why this talk about implications in video games is so silly. First of all, the oldest playable videogames are only about 20 years old, which is well under the copyright term, even with the old laws.
If we are talking about 28 years, with an extension to another 28 years (after registering + paying), then the initial terms would be in sight.
Second, most videogame companies are still around, or have been bought out by other companies, in which case the copyrights would be inhereted. The fact that these games can't be bought commercially anymore doesn't mean anything, the companies would still own the copyrights, and the games would not be public domain.
Nonsense. I think that most videogame companies that still exist don't even know what games they sold twenty years ago. I bet that if you asked, they probably couldn't even find the source code anymore. Those companies won't register their twenty year old games, except for some long lasting series (ie. Mario Brothers). Most games would just go into the public domain. Remember that the registering of copyright is very important. That means that you can always find out whether something is copyrighted and by whom and if something is not registered, you can safely use it. This in contrast with the current situation, where you have to try to find the copyright holder and get permission (both are often a problem). You are completely at the mercy of someone who has no interest in helping you. This makes it such an enormous burden to reuse copyrighted material that much of it is simply abandoned (or used illegally).
Calling System.gc() will usually result in a collection. The VM can't know whether a garbage collect will be useful, because only a full mark and sweep will reveal that. Thus, while the docs state that garbage collection will not necessarily happen after a call to System.gc(), all current VMs will do a full gc (AFAIK). That makes sense because the programmer can determine the need better than the VM.
The JVM is designed to make most efficient use of the available RAM and calling System.gc() totally defeats that. To 'forbid' Java from doing it's thing is as fair as disallowing the C++ from using pointers, non-objects (except primitives) and other features which can't be found in Java. Obviously, that is wrong because those features make C++ what it is, just like (unforced) gc is an inherent part of Java.
The only way to determine what the effects are of garbage collection vs (de)allocation is to design a benchmark specifically for this purpose. For instance, you could handle some big images and see how fast each language can complete the benchmark. Another interesting benchmark is to handle a large amount of small objects. However, in the end, the effect of garbage collection on real world apps can differ greatly, depending on: - the total amount of memory the app can use - the number of allocated objects - the size of objects - the lifetime of objects (Java is far more efficient with short-lived objects, for which it uses a mini-heap and mini-gc) - the workload of the app (can it do garbage collection during a time of low load?)
The results can differ greatly depending on the particular situation that you are looking at. Of course, it is true in general that it is rare for a language to be better on all fronts, so you always need to look at what you want to do and how well the language is suited to do that. That is also the reason why I hate broad generalizations like:
Sadly, I'm once again seriously disappointed in Java.
Just because the benchmark is flawed, doesn't mean that Java was somehow bad. Especially since your benchmark was a thousand times more flawed. Since you have shown little knowledge about Java (every beginning Java programmer learns that you should avoid calling gc directly), I suggest you stop making these stupid comments./end rant
Technically, the majority of the time, according to java's docs, it should do nothing at all.
It doesn't say that at all:
"Calling the gc method suggests that the Java Virtual Machine expend effort toward recycling unused objects in order to make the memory they currently occupy available for quick reuse. When control returns from the method call, the Java Virtual Machine has made a best effort to reclaim space from all discarded objects."
So, if the majority of the calls are more or less an empty function call, what's the harm in doing it?
The VM can't determine whether a gc is useful or not without a full heap scan. AFAIK, calling System.gc() will usually result in a full scan, totally defeating the standard gc'ing (which is supposed to be efficient as is). You aren't supposed to call System.gc() except in special circumstances.
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However, going fast is not necessarily unsafe. If you are on the highway, there are often stretches where speeds of 100+ are perfectly safe. Also, depends on the car you have. I have a car that is not only perfectly able to handle high speeds, it is also superior to most others in stopping and handling turns. What is safe for me in my car is not so much for others with cheap basic cars.
The big problem with speeding & safety is speed differences. If all the traffic is driving 100 mph, you will nicely move in one flow. However, if one goes 65 and the other goes 100, then the big speed difference will cause big problems if someone makes a mistake like changing lanes just when you are approaching. Now, somehow I doubt that your car changes the laws of nature or your reaction time, so your high speed will make it harder for you to react to unforseen circumstances.
I'd say I consider myself to be a pretty darned courteous driver actually...I drive what is safe for the situation I am in (plenty of stopping distance, can avoid others about to wreck).
I know. 90% of the drivers think that they are above average in skill. The problem is when people like you get in an exceptional situation. At that point, reaction time and braking capacity is the only recourse and you will do much worse than a driver who doesn't speed (again, basic physics that can't be changed too much by the characteristics of your car).
The limits are the lowest common denominator for weak cars....and mostly, a source of REVENUE for the cops.
By making that statement, you show that you are incapable of making the decision to speed. Why? Because you fail to understand all the reasons why a speed limit is useful. Generally a lower speed limit helps to reduce:
- congestion (speed delta's cause shock waves in traffic)
- road wear
- pollution
- noise
- and...
most importantly, a well enforced speed limit will reduce the number of accidents. Even if you would be the one who does not increase the risk to himself or others, the statistics show that strict speeding limits improve the general safety. So you simply have to pay for the people who think that they can speed safely, but who do increase the number of accidents.
If they took away the funds from speeding tickets from the police....and indeed payed them per homicide solved or other violent crimes...I can assure you they'd severely curtail traffic speed traps, and start to pursue REAL crimes that hurt us all...
Right, because no-one is ever killed by speeding. Except for that guy who thought he could speed perfectly safely and who killed my aunt and niece. But I guess you are right. It's not right to call people like that asshats, killers is more like it.
I certainly don't claim to be an expert in the Kyoto treaty or environmentalism in general, but why in the world is "per capita" considered the proper measurement of CO2 emissions rather than something like "per square mile?"
Actually there are no per capita or per square mile values in the treaty. All of that was only part of the negotiations where it was decided by which standards countries had to be held, which was set as a percentage value of the emissions during a certain period in the past. During those negotiations, the politicians of course all had their own ideas about what was fair, but the end result doesn't include a specific ideology (in favor of more objective rules, which is a good thing).
However, per square mile is certainly not a good measurement since the out- or input of a piece of land depends on the way that land is used. A forest may be a carbon sink (but not even necessarily), but a cattle farm is going to produce more greenhouse gasses than it absorbs. However, the treaty has provisions that allow for the use of carbon sinks to achieve the reductions. For instance, you might be able to use a tree farm to store carbon, although scientific studies have shown that this may not work that well (you have to prove actual reductions according to the protocol, but you can probably work around this by paying for the research results you want).
Personally I think that a net output per capita is most fair (what kind of sinks you count for that is a seperate question). If you accept that all humans deserve equal rights, but also that we cannot let everyone consume as much as they want, then it makes sense to allow every human the same number of flights, car trips, etc. It doesn't seem fair to me if we say to an Indian or Chinese guy: "Sorry, you can only use half of what we can use, you second-class #$%@". In short, everyone should have a budget of emissions that they can use or sell. Then the market forces allow people to optimize their uses, in that people prioritize their consumption in a way that keeps our planet in good shape. If Bob really wants to fly a lot he can offer me money for some of my emission rights and then I can decide that I like the money more than travelling. Kyoto is a first step to achieve this, on the level of nations (which is a necessary step).
It seems to me that given the US's low population density that our country is far better able to absorb what we churn out than other areas of the world.
Whether or not to allow 'natural resources' to help you is a difficult debate. A big problem is that you basically just have to be lucky as a country to have a huge sink. A country with a large rain forest and few citizens will be able to sell a lot of emission rights without a real effort. If you are born in such a country you will be rich (or your dictator), if you are born in a country with a lot of farting animal life (methane), you will be poor. In this way, emission control becomes less and less about taking responsibility for your use of our resources and more about where you were born.
On the other hand, it is important to preserve rain forests and other sinks, so that is a good reason to value them. Personally I think that a medium is best.
I've read frequent complaints about Kyoto not weighting carbon sinks enough, but all that I've seen from either side is rhetoric.
One of the big issues with carbon sinks that a lot of Kyoto opponents want to be counted more is that the goal is to replace underground stable reservoirs of carbon (oil, coal, gas) with above ground unstable sinks (trees). However, trees absorb carbon for a while, but they do not hold it indefinitely. At one point the tree will burn down or fall down and rot away, causing most of the carbon to be freed again. The result is that a lot of the sinks that are touted aren't really that great to offset the burning of fossil fuels. The important question to ask when people talk about carbon sinks is therefore always: "Where will all that
That's why I feel that unemployment pay should be coupled to some sort of community service. It doesn't have to be hard work, or even particularly long hours, but if you want your unemployment money by all means do something for the community in return.
I disagree strongly. This idea looks good on the surface, but there are so many problems with it that it should never be instituted. First of all, people who are jobless are supposed to spend their time looking for a job. Social security is a safety net, not a job itself. That changes if you start requiring people to work for a 'pay check'. Then people can legitimately claim that they earn their money and aren't required to find a job. You also get into all kinds of trouble, for instance, what happens when people get hurt on the job?
Secondly, the notion that jobless people are lazy fu*ks is certainly not true. My father worked 60+ hours per week as a volunteer when he was unemployed (he is part of the so called 'lost generation' who got to the marketplace during a major recession and job drought). If he would be forced to do some idiotic job like cleaning the streets, he would probably kill himself. Then there is the sad fact that a considerable part of the jobless have physical or mental issues. Especially since in my country, only the very disabled/sick are counted as sick and get special social security for that. The rest are just counted as unemployed, but this certainly doesn't mean that they can necessarily do jobs like street sweeping (kind of hard from a wheelchair).
Thirdly, there is a serious risk of having real jobs be replaced by this kind of community work. Last time this idea was tried by our local right wing party, the plan was to have these people clean the homes of people who are to old or sick to do that themselves. There is little doubt who the employers would choose, cheap forced labor or expensive workers. And not only is it an incredible blow to the people who do this job and an enormous underestimation of the expertise required to correctly and respectfully clean other people's homes, it also ignores the problem of letting uneducated, unmotivated and untrained people, who are not bound by a contract loose in the homes of people who cannot take care of themselves. Now, cleaning the streets is obviously a bit less of a problem, although people who do that now are bound to be replaced by 'cheap labor'. However, I believe that there is a big chance that politicians will not stop there.
Finally, if you seriously want to combat unemployment, there are plenty of work projects and education that are possible. For instance, for people who lack a working rythm, there already exists a fake company where jobless people 'practice' having a job and prove to potential employers that they are good employees. Other possibilities are reeducation programs, such as the ones that were denied to my father who was written off due to his age. Then he finally got a chance to learn to be a programmer and now he is making his boss tons of money. Of course, this required an actual investment first, instead of just the tired old 'these people don't want to work' routine.
As it stands poker is still a game of chance
Skill plays a major factor in the long term. If it wouldn't, poker professionals would not be able to exist. But they do exist and they do earn a decent living. The reason why skill is so important is that odds are only part of the equation. Straightforward betting on good hands and folding when the odds are not in your favor is easily exploitable by just not calling the bets and bluffing to get the opponent to fold. So a good player must use deception. That element of deception turns the game into an unstructured game that is very hard to beat algorithmically, so I have my doubt about being able to create world-class bots.
If bots exist that are beating inexperienced players, how is this different from the poker pro who logs 10 hours of online poker a day?
The difference is that the bot doesn't have to sleep, eat, pay taxes, etc so there are much lower expenses for a bot and it can work 24 hours a day. That means that if good bots exist, they can be let loose at tables where most people play for fun and where it's currently not worth it for a professional player to play. Then the poker games will split up in very low limit games that nobody plays seriously and the high stakes games where only the best professionals can live. There will be no middle ground, but that is where most money is made for the casino's and where most semi-serious players play. The result might be that online poker loses its appeal to 90% of the players.
If you're looking for real human vs human action without worrying about cheat tools find a game in your neighborhood and go play there.
That's not really realistic, is it? First of all, online poker is different from 'live' poker because you don't need a poker face and a lot of players like that. Also, you can play it whenever you want, without having to coordinate schedules with other people. You also don't have to play with the same 9 neighbourhood guys all the time. Then there are more games to pick from online. You can play big tournaments online. You can play freerolls online, where you can win money for free. I could go on, but I think you get the point. Online poker is just a different ball game.
And if anyone is being alarmist and taking things out of context, it's you.
Sure pal, after all it was me that tried to scare people with the image of being forced to watch your wife and daughters be raped and it was you that rightfully pointed out that such crimes are very unlikely to happen to you and that you'd better worry about more likely threats to your life (if you do decide to worry). Oh wait...
If you read my post, you'll see exactly my point: No matter how enlightened you are, there's some other jerk that's not, and your enlightenment and education do exactly nothing to protect you from him.
But your point is extremely shallow. I can easily reposte with something like: no matter how much guns you own, they will never save you when you are squashed between two trucks or when you suffer from a heart attack. It's all as true as can be, yet it is quite meaningless. My point is that if you want to improve your safety, you should look at what the biggest threats are to your life. Unless you live in dangerous place or have a dangerous job (say cop or crook), the chance of you being murdered by a stranger are very small. But we are often not very rational about that sort of thing. It's the same with the current hype about terrorism. Every year, 14 9/11's happen on the road (42,000 vs 3,000 people killed). Considering that 9/11 doesn't happen every year and that it was in fact the largest terrorist attack on US soil ever (the Oklahoma city bombing killed 'only' 168), this skews the odds even more. And yet many people are all up in arms about terrorism, are willing to give up important freedoms and otherwise totally overreact.
You're right. That's why thousands of dollars of the cost of a car go into providing safety: Even though you're not likely to be in an accident, it could happen, and you want to be ready. I'm not likely to ever need a gun. But if I ever did, it would be nice to have one.
And yet you would probably improve your safety much more by not speeding, not drinking before you crawl behind the wheel and wearing your seatbelt. Or by buying a safer car instead of that SUV (most of which are very prone to rollovers, which result in a very large percentage of occupant deaths). And yet so many Americans do speed, do drink and drive, don't wear seatbelts all the time and/or do buy a rollover-prone SUV. And then they get a gun for 'safety'. Sorry, but I can't call that rational behavior.
It's common for Europeans to believe that they're enlightened enough not to need guns. Unfortunately, they're living in a dream.
Remember the massacre of the Israeli olympians in Munich?
You mean the one that happened over 30 years ago? The crime that was committed by non-Europeans against non-Europeans and just happened to take place in Europe? Is that supposed to tell us anything more than that international events have to deal with the problem of 'imported' violence and need proper security?
You can be as enlightened and educated as you want, but when someone comes into your house with a baseball bat, smashes your face in, then rapes your wife and daughters as he chokes them to death, your enlightenment and education gained you exactly nothing. That's right, nothing.
OMG, think of the children!!! Look out for the terrorists!!! WMD!!! Terror alert red!!!
Thanks for discussing things objectively, without resorting to scare mongering. Now seriously: if someone breaks into your house in Europe, then 99.9% of the time they are there to steal your things and they carry at most a knife for self defense. Usually they are also smart enough to make sure you are not home, so you will usually notice the break in by simply missing stuff. If they do break in when you are present, calling the police and making a ruckus will nearly always be enough to scare the perp away.
Statistically, it is far more likely that you die in traffic than that you get murdered (unless you are a criminal). And even if you get murdered, it is more often by someone you know than a stranger, which means that it is unlikely that you will feel a need to get or pull out a gun until it is too late. Some of these statistical facts are also supported by my personal experience. I have had family members die in a traffic incident and many years ago, a girl in my class was killed by her father (who killed the rest of the family and himself too). Other people I know died from health problems. I have never seen a 'live' gun except when carried on the hip of the police officer. I have also never had a knife drawn on me.
So for my safety, I would first look at making my commute safer and then I would care about my personal health. Buying and carrying a gun for my safety would for me be like carrying a helmet to protect myself from tiles falling from the roof. Sure it can happen, but I refuse to worry about things that happen so rarely. If I stop living life because I go through life in a constant panic and fear, I might just as well kill myself right now and be done with it.
And "don't expose your belongings"? HAH! I had a car that was broken into four times in three months, all in different areas. In no case was there anything of value in the car, and nothing was taken. These worthless little streat punks cost me over a thousand dollars in broken windows just so that they could take a peek inside to see if there was anything of value. People are mugged and killed often when their total possessions are worth less than $20. For someone of such esteemed education, you seem to have very little dealings in reality.
Perhaps that is the society you live in. However, I don't and I won't be berated for not allowing my society to be overflowed with guns, even though it has never been proven that guns stop crime.
I find your attitude offensive. There are so many honest people in the world who have had desperate circumstances, unequal wealth, and bad situations - and who were good honest and even productive inspite of it all. In fact, the history if the United States is made of such people. You really slap these people in the face when you suggest that "well all we need is the right circumstances"
The thing I see is that there are many people in the US who are honest and who are productive, but who don't get rewarded. People who have two jobs, no time to raise their kids and who might not have healthcare. If you then get sick you are really in trouble. On the other hand, many of the people who earn a lot don't deserve to earn that much, at least not because they are honest or hard working. Take NBA stars who make millions. They just profit from the talent that they were born with and play a game, just like many other people are doing, but are not being paid for. The only difference between them and the guy at McD who plays basketball in his spare time is that the latter guy lacks a bit of talent. Or look at the high ups at Enron and other 'short-term profits over ethics' companies who pay themselves millions while they run the company into the ground. Or look at the people who just profit from the money that their parents earned. Or look at the people who only got where they are by having connections. Or look at the people who are dishonest and still make millions.
I don't see why hard-working people should be offended to ask those people to give up part of their wealth for the rest of society. Of course, then you also ask things from people who do earn their money by working hard and being honest, but those people generally have also gotten lucky. Not in the least by having good health.
The best way of all to stop crime it to show people that they are destined by choices and not circumstances.
True, but part of the problem is that poor kids see what happens to the people who are honest and hard working vs the people who choose a life style of crime. The first group usually has to work very hard just to get by and the second group has money to spare. Of course the downsides of the second choice are quite bad (jail-time or death), but most human beings have this wierd way of thinking that 'it won't happen to me'. Key to change this is to shove these downsides in their faces, but also to give kids the ability to really move up, whatever their inherent capability. Education is very important in achieving this. This is also why in EU, the state pays enough for your education (depending on how much your parents make) so that everyone can afford to go to college. Part of that deal is that you pay back the state when you profit from that education and earn a good living. Another important way to get people to make the right choice is to improve the life of the honest and hard working people, for instance by providing healthcare for low earners.
Taking money from one set of people just because they have more - is a great way to teach people why it's ok to steal and take things - just because you percieve you need it more than they do.
You can just as well turn it around and say that paying taxes is important to teach people to share and to mind those who can't take care of themselves. Also, I really doubt that the poor really steal from the rich, it's more the other way around.
Making social programs that center arround circumstance is a great way to teach people that it's not about their choices but their situations.
It really depends on what the program does. For example, a very big problem with junkies is that they see no way out. Many of them live their life going from crimescene to fence to dealer and that life style doesn't really give them the opportunity to find a job and a home. Putting them in jail really doesn't help either since it only provides punishment, but not a feeli
Originally, assembly lines weren't good for society at all. During the industrial revolution, workers were exploited quite heavily. Society consisted of a small class of wealthy owners and a large class of weak-skilled poor workers. 12x7 workdays and child labor were common. Pollution was incredible and coal mine workers got sick because they never got any sun. It is not surprising that communism was developed at the height of the industrial revolution, since there was much unrest among the working class. However, socialist ideas gained traction, such as public education and labor laws. This changed society by offering workers the ability to share in the wealth. However, it was not just a redistribution of wealth, since workers also became more productive as a result of the improved education, better healthcare and more reasonable working hours. This in turn also made the economy a better place for capitalists as well, which is why we now have a mix of capitalism and socialism in western countries.
Now, when we apply this bit of history to outsourcing, we see mixed results. India is one of the smartest IMO, since they focus a lot on performing relatively high quality jobs and getting people well-educated. This makes for a rapid increase in productivity and wealth, which can probably be sustained when outsourcing drops off. However, there is also plenty of exploitation in poor countries, which is rather dumb IMO. Performing low-skilled jobs (perhaps with child labor), where 99% of the profit goes to the elite is just a temporary boost. Once the wages go up a little, the industry leaves and you don't even end up with skilled workers or a good economy. It's no more sustainable than Spain's 'gold rush' which ended as soon as they couldn't get any more gold from their colonies.
As for the effect on the US, I don't understand the hang-up about cheaper prices at Wal-Mart. If you pay $1 and the people who profit are American, then one American's spend money is another person's income. However, if now you spend $0.75 and part of the money goes to a foreigner, there needs to be a form of compensation or the domestic economy loses. Now, it is a net win if we earn more due to increased exports to the newly developing countries than we lose by 'buying labor' from other countries. That requires us to produce products that the rest of the world wants. Unfortunately for the US, the trade deficit is bad and only becoming worse. Also, most of the benefits of outsourcing are going to a small elite, while unemployment is rising and wages are falling. The result is a return to the bad situation during the industrial revolution. Many people can no longer afford healthcare or good education, so productivity will fall. Workers are more likely to be exploited, which has never shown itself to be particularly good for productivity (it's better to have high productivity for 8 hours than low productivity at McD for 12 hours). And if your economy has a long-term downturn and/or other parts of the world become more profitable, investors who now offset the trade deficit and bankroll the governments debts, may pull out. That would require you to increase taxes, reduce spending (perhaps impacting productivity even more) and to improve the trade balance (by weakening the dollar and deflation). Those would in turn be dramatic for the domestic economy. So you might well be facing a very nasty implosion of your economy, in part caused by outsourcing (although that is certainly not the only reason why it may happen).
Well Valenti did serve in WWII, which strangly enough, civilians were considered appropriate targets.
True and I consider those war crimes as well. I'm not going to say: we did it too, for a good cause, so it's ok. Killing civilians on purpose and not as collatoral damage is just murder. Now, for the US bomber pilots like Valenti, there was a lot more justification, because the US did try to target only military targets. That is, in Europe, where Valanti flew. Bombs may still go off target or such, but war is not pretty.
However, Bob Kerrey did not limit his shooting to the enemy. He and his team purposely and deliberately murdered civilians, freely killing every men they found in 'free fire zones' and they used indiscriminate violence (in the most Kerrey-friendly explanation of what happened), causing the death of over a dozen women and children.
It wasn't until vietnam that even the basic notion of civilians as innocents in war came to be.
I'm sorry, but that is absolute horse shit. The Hague convention in 1907 already prohibited bombarding undefended towns 'by whatever means'. In 1923, Britain, France, Italy, Japan, and the United States prohibited bombing from the air "for the purpose of terrorizing the civilian population [...] or of injuring noncombatants." Also, when refugees and townspeople were purposely bombarded at Guernica, during the Spanish civil war, there was a big uproar.
So please don't come up with this revisionist nonsense. The US was not the country to come up with the idea of not targeting civilians, while the rest of the world happily engaged in that.
Do you really think the cold war would have ever existed without this concept?
The cold war was not about killing civilians. It was about both parties having the ability to completely annihilate the other party, to make war such an awful proposition, that it would never happen. Since even strategic bombing with nuclear weapons would cause enormous civilian casualties, preventing war was crucial. But I don't see how pointing a nuke at someone is somehow the same as killing civilians.
Strangely enough, those aren't even the worst words by Jack Valenti. In a letter to the LA Times, he defended the killing of civilians in war time, especially ex-senator Bob Kerrey, who was part of a terrorist operation in Vietnam (killing civilians in VC territory to terrorize the opposition).
Abortion is murder (simple biological fact, aborted human life == dead human)
Please define human. Is sperm human? Is an egg cell human? Is an egg cell that just merged with sperm human? If so, at what point does it become human? At the point where the sperm penetrates the egg cell, even though nothing has really changed yet? Later? How much later? Seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months? Before a nervous system has formed?
gay marriage is just a continuation of our unelected judges writing law in clear violation of their Constitutional restraints
I think the point is that the constitution is not clear about this and Republicans seem to want to change that. Even though this should normally be a right granted to the individual states, that is, unless you are an...evil socialist.
sex ed shouldn't be entrusted to the government education monopoly
In other words, you don't want to have your children taught to use condoms, even though 'teaching' abstinence is causing a enormous number of teen pregnancies in the US.
social programs should be funded by voluntary contributions and not tax money confiscated by force (try not paying your taxes sometime)
Ignoring the problem that voluntary contributions in practice tends to lead to very unfair contributions, where people give their aid based on effective marketing campaigns and not on effective aid. Or do you think you can assess who needs help and whether your money is used effectively? At least the government has an overview and can manage all the necessary money to take care of the sick and elderly.
And then we haven't even discussed the problem that people are probably going to spend far less on their programs if it is voluntary, by pointing at other stingy people or because they are just plain greedy (perhaps you won't do that, but how many people will?).
a rather large subset of Muslims have declared war on all Americans who don't think and act as they do (that includes you)
Ignoring the fact that no terrorist or militant has used that as a reason. They want you out of their country and to stop supporting non-Islamitic regimes in the middle east. But you keep believing in that lie if it makes you happy, even though it requires you to ignore what they are actually saying.
we shouldn't make environmentalism a substitute for traditional religion.
In other words, you don't care about pollution, toxics and hormones in your food, the enormous use of oil, global warming, etc. You probably just want to drive that big SUV for no good reason, eat that big cheap burger and dismiss all criticism by calling environmentalism a religion. I just hope that you still feel that way if your kids or grandkids get asthma, cross-gender issues, have to beg the oil producing countries for oil, see great changes in the weather patterns, etc, etc.
Well, if you cannot understand books by reading them and need help... do you really deserve to pass?
Metaphores and references to other works are an important part of more advanced literature. No matter how smart you are, if you haven't learned about these metaphores or haven't read that other literature, you will miss a lot. Reading reviews can help to quickly gain an appreciation for this depth in literary works and to understand some important parts of the story. After all, the goal of reading books and writing essays about them is not to test your IQ by having you come up with things on your own (and missing a lot of stuff), it is to teach you something by exposing you to the diversity and depth that literature has to offer.
But from an economic perspective the Israeli economy would not last very long without US support.
Well, actually there are Israeli economists who believe that the US aid is damaging the Israeli economy. Your statement might be true if you are talking about the trade agreements, but I really don't think that the foreign aid is crucial.
In the end the obvious solution is to annex the West Bank and Gaza and grant citizenship to everyone who lives there. Sure it will no longer be a 'Jewish' state, but it will be better than what there is today.
That can hardly be considered an obvious solution at all. I think that the extreme right in Israel is going to do whatever it takes to protect the 'Jewish' state, they are probably even willing to resort to terrorism (for some even just to fight a compromise, as was evidenced by Rabin's murder). Secondly, both groups have demonized each other, so I really can't see them working together in one state.
Anything that would have been useful to CIA before wouldn't be now that all this has been made public - any financial information would be useless, since with this online, they would have taken the money out. Intel is really only useful if not everyone knows it.
It can be pretty useful still for many things. First of all, you can discover the methodology of Al Qaeda. That is not something you can change overnight, even if you know that information about you is discovered (especially since Al Qaeda is very decentralized). It also tells you what kind of loopholes the group likes to use, which is useful because someone will usually only use the type of methods that they are familiar with. This can help you to predict replacement methods. Secondly, it allows you to track the past behaviour of the group. This allows you to build up evidence against already arrested Al Qaeda members or to detect sleeper cells, scouted targets and activity areas in general.
And as for freezing accounts, if the group has any common sense, transferred funds won't be left in the accounts for long anyway. A smart terrorist would take it out as cash and either pocket it or put most of it in another account (not the full amount and leaving some time between withdrawal and deposit). Voila, no link between the accounts.
Porter Goss
...
Ok, I'm not Goss, I'm George Tenet.
Yes, a company could theoretically own itself. Much like a million and one Mom-and-Pop corner stores own themselves.
That is complete and utter nonsense. Buying back stock means that the value of the company and the number of investors is reduced, but the investors that remain still own the entire company. Let's give an example:
5 equivalent stocks are out there. The company is worth 5 million, so each stock is worth 1 million. The company now buys back 4 stocks for 4 million. The result is that the remaining stock is now worth the same as the company: 1 million. The company could buy back the last stock as well, but only by liquidating (selling all assets, thus going out of business). Another possibility is that the people who run the company use their own money to buy the remaining stocks, which would make them owners just like a Mom-and-Pop corner store. However, even then the company doesn't 'own itself', it just happens to be that the owners also run the company.
If MSFT happens to make so much money that they can afford to buy the risk back from Mr and Mrs Shareholder, then more power to them.
The reason that they are giving one-time dividends and buying back stock is actually that they make too little money. Let me explain: In the world of money, ROI is everything. Making 1 million on an investment of 1 million is good, making that same amount after investing 1 billion is not so good. Now, if a company has earned a lot of money in the past, but can't use this money to generate new profits, the value of the company becomes less and less. The stock is worth a lot (because of all the money in the company's coffers), but the profit is marginal. This makes investors very unhappy (unless the stock is increasing in value, but that is no longer a given for MS, since they are transforming from a growth stock to an income stock).
A way to fix this is to simply give the money to investors (one-time dividends). This effectively decreases the value of the company, resulting in a better profit per invested dollar (but not per share). A second possibility is to buy back stocks. This is very similar to a one-time dividend, since company money is given back to investors. However, the dividend per stock also increases, raising the value of stocks. Some more info on the advantages and disadvantages of stock buybacks.
That's not exactly true. In the west, we also found out that loaning money has its downsides, which is why we invented stocks. Now, there is nothing preventing a muslim from starting a company and only giving out stocks (and someone could even start a risk sharing company which has stocks in many companies and provides a fairly safe way to invest).
Honestly, I think that the problem is much greater with regard to mortgages.
First of all BSD people make use of GPL products a great deal. AFAIK gcc is still the compiler of choice for all the BSDs. It's not as if GPL people never give anything back.
That is true. I'm not saying that GPL people are selfish or anything. I just wanted to make the point that BSD license isn't necessarily without any obligations (not legal ones, but social/moral).
I sometimes wonder if the world would have been different if the *BSD had become Free earlier than Linux. Is that an artifact of the most popular Unix-like kernel license, or do more people really believe the FSF than they believe the BSD people? I don't know.
Me too. I think that a lot of people who start with Linux see the GPL as the 'default' license. If *BSD wouldn't have had the AT&T lawsuit and perhaps a bit better marketing, things might be just the other way around (perhaps with Linus forking *BSD).
However, I do think that many GPL-advocates genuinely believe in the GPL philosophy. However, from the past we know that many things can seem like 'clear' truths based on historical events. For instance, for a long time, people thought that you could determine character from the features of someone's face/head (many characters are analysed that way in Jane Eyre). Science has eradicated that idea. Now, I'm not saying that the FSF's ideas are wrong, because I don't have the science to back that up. It might be wrong, partially wrong or right. However, I don't think that popular opinion is a good indication.
Personally I have my own Free software project (http://imview.sf.net)
Looks nice!
I did this partly so that people who want to include parts of it in different, non-GPL projects ask my permission first (so far always given).
But that assumes that people will ask you for permission instead of moving on. Generally, when I see a GPL lib that I want to use, I will move on, unless I really can't do without. Obviously it will be a bit different for an application, but you probably will scare people away (also because you don't indicate anywhere that you are willing to sub-license, so people might be afraid to ask you).
I wouldn't want my work to participate indirectly in things I don't approve of. Call me paranoid if you want.
I understand you want to keep control, but what do you really hope to accomplish? Al Qaeda is not going to ask permission. We may dislike companies like MS, but having them move to open source is probably a good things. If you are a pacifist, you might want to deny the DoD/military from using your stuff, but that only means higher taxes and you won't stop any wars anyway. It seems quite unlikely that you actually want to forbid someone from using your code, so what is the point?
In your own words, BSD licensing is being idealistic here. Here's free stuff, use it, do what you want, do the right thing.
I think that pragmatism means that you try to solve the problem in the best possible way. If you think that the BSD license is best, then choosing it is a choice for pragmatism. Forcing people to contribute, when that doesn't advance your goals as well (according to your beliefs), is then idealistic.
Personally, I favor BSD in most cases, but GPL can be a better choice for some situations (since I think that neither is better than the other in all cases).
Similarly but in different contexts, the GPL will actually ensure that people are doing the right thing, using open source code and giving back stuff.
It is not clear how much is gained by 'forcing' people to contribute and how much is lost by scaring people away with a more restrictive license. Since no good research has been done on this topic, it's more about beliefs. Do you believe that:
- sharing code is generally in the best interest of those who use open source code.
- companies who do so will generally be more succesful.
- the marketplace and common sense will 'force' companies to open source in the long term.
- A permissive license will make adoption of open source easier and thus result in a faster adoption.
If you believe these things, then permissive licenses would be your preference. If you don't, and you are free to disagree, I ask only that you try to understand my standpoint.
Without the GLP, no Objective-C in gcc for example, no improvement to KHTML in Konqueror.
The first was true, because Apple didn't want to open source Obj-C, once upon a time. But Apple has recently changed and has since returned changes when they used open source code from a third party (see Darwin/BSD). They have also open sourced some of their other infrastructure-level projects (ie. Streaming Server, Open Directory, Common Data Security Architecture, OpenPlay, Rendezvous, HeaderDoc). So I would definately assume that GPL enforcement would not be necessary for WebCode/KHTML, because Apple 'got it.' My hope is that more companies will 'get it' and then you don't need to force people to contribute (in most cases). They will see the advantages of doing so.
Microsoft is starting to give stuff back.
No, AFAIK the stuff that they are open and shared sourcing is 100% Microsoft code. It is not a case of taking open source, modifying it and giving back changes (which is actually very good, since MS seems to skipping steps on the path to adopting open source). However, it also clearly demonstrates that the GPL is not (always) necessary to get contributions. MS decided to open source, not because a license said they should, but because it made business sense (and conviction is always better than coercion).
The aims are the same. We should stop arguing.
No, we should not stop arguing. It's important for the BSD and GPL communities to understand and respect each other. That can only happen if we argue about our positions and through these clashes, find out the limitations of our views. Hiding in ivory towers, cuddling our ideas only results in blind idealism. We need pragmatism and cooperation.
Is it unfair that the GPL camp developers can use BSD code when BSD camp developers can't do the reverse? No. Absolutely not. When a BSD camp developer uses the BSD license this is precisely what they give up, and more. Their code can be used in proprietary software in fact. BSD camp developers cannot complain that their code is being used in ways they don't approve of.
Of course they can complain. The BSD license only makes it so that you can't go to a judge to get your way. However, there is a big different between morality and law. Just because something is legal, doesn't mean it is right (or vice versa). Because the BSD license doesn't specify what to do, it's up to the users of the code to use their own judgm
So what you are saying is that the BSD licence is idealistic and the GPL is pragmatic but both tend towards the same goal?
By using those words you are already showing bias. You have decided that the GPL is necessary to get contributions and that's why you call it pragmatic. If you believe that you get plenty, if not more, useful contributions with the BSD license, you could call the BSD license pragmatic and the GPL idealistic.
If that's the only important difference then can we stop arguing over which one is better?
No, another important difference is that you can't use GPLed code without GPLing your entire app (you can't have one part BSD and another part GPL). That means that in some cases, the GPL will actually prevent people from doing the right thing (using open source code and giving back code). Those practical considerations make it so that non-GPL open source developers have a big reason to lobby against using the GPL. I think that the arguments would be much less if the GPL-advocates would ask for the LGPL instead of the GPL.
You missed the Netherlands. Remember the guy lighting up the bong? That was his reference to the Netherlands (yes, the name of the Netherlands was displayed, too). The Netherlands have 1,300 troops in Iraq, making them one of the larger contingents. [...] His point was that the grand coalition numbers of countries included a number of countries who actually had nothing to contribute but lip service.
Actually it's a bit more complicated with regard to the Netherlands. The government said they supported the war, but they refused to send troops right away. Only after the war was 'won,' did they send troops, supposedly for peacekeeping (with support of the war-opposing opposition). This has been called brilliant diplomacy because war supporters remember that our government voiced support for the war and sent troops, while those who oppose war remember that we refused to send troops right away (and thus are not really part of the coalition).
Of course, another description could include the words: yellow, chicken, kiss, ass.
One thing The World At War will teach most people with its first episode is that comparing Emperor Dubyah and his band of neo-fascists to Hitler and the Nazis is pretty ridiculous, even though it is sometimes tempting.
The point is not that Bush & co will start a holocaust or are otherwise somehow similar to Hitler and the Nazi's. Hitler has taught us some incredibly important lessons, which apply to everyone. Not just insane jew-haters. One of the lessons is that an entire population can be brought to do evil if the government accumulates enough power to suppress dissent and control information sources. That lesson should be remembered when we look at this governments attempts to increase control and reduce accountability. Now, I don't care whether it's Jack the Ripper or Maria Magdalena who creates these laws, but I do now that once they are in place, a murderer can (and probably will) step in to abuse it. At that point, you will already be too late to stop it, so you have to act long before, to stop the people who try to 'protect' you.
Dubyah would never, for example, slaughter the entire citizenry of a town and destroy every building in it.
This comment makes no sense at all. An officer decided by himself to slaughter the population of the town. It was certainly not a directive by Hitler (although the officer wasn't court-martialed, but that decision was taken on a much lower level as well). Perhaps the best comparison in US history would be My Lai. The man responsible for that massacre was only given three years of light detention (house arrest). Colin Powell tried to cover-up this horrendous crime, btw.
I didn't assert that Java was bad. Personal disappointment is certainly my right.
The way you brought it I think most people would interpret it as saying that Java was indeed bad. It would be very different if you would have been disappointed in the benchmark, but this read as Java bashing without good arguments to back it up.
Actually, my "benchmark" was not flawed at all. It did exactly what it was supposed to do.
No, what you purported to show was that 'fair' memory handling would change the result. However, your benchmark does anything but show fair memory handling for Java. Java is supposed to do gc when it is convenient and make the most of available memory. Inherently, that means that it has an advantage for:
- programs where all the objects fit in the allocated memory
- programs where processing is, at least part of the time, non-CPU bound
Of course, there are also disadvantages to gc (and non-performance advantages). Garbage collection makes Java more useful for some uses and less useful for others. Exploring and quantifying these issues intelligently would certainly be interesting.
What my result attempted to prove was that these benchmarks were flawed and that they were purposely hiding java's gc overhead.
The benchmarks are only flawed in that respect if you want to generalize them for 'big' applications where gc will hamper processing (which does not have to be the case). However, it is simply impossible to alter the benchmark to account for all possible gc scenario's. Therefore, the best thing to do is probably to create seperate benchmarks for gc, which you can interpret based on the specifics of the application that you want to build. However, it is unfair to criticize a benchmark for not showing gc overhead when that doesn't have to be an issue in reality (for some kinds of apps).
What my "benchmark" also showed is that java's gc overhead can be significant.
Well duh. That is only surprising if you don't know Java at all.
It also highlighted the fact that since c++'s new and delete operators can be overloaded, a fair comparison would be to make the c++ implementation perform the same collection deferment.
Sure, gc collection libraries exist for c++. That would be so much more meaningful than simply killing Java's performance by doing something Java programmers are told not to do the instant they are introduced to gc.
Take them with a grain of salt but walk away with the lessons learned.
Creating good benchmarks (where the results are accurate and meaningful) is very hard and I'm certainly not able to do so (since it requires you to know every possible way to skew the results, knowledge that few people possess, and a certain attitude). Trust me, you can't do it either, so go easy with the wise old sage stuff.
"A man doesn't know what he knows until he knows what he doesn't know." -- Laurence Peter
That's why this talk about implications in video games is so silly. First of all, the oldest playable videogames are only about 20 years old, which is well under the copyright term, even with the old laws.
If we are talking about 28 years, with an extension to another 28 years (after registering + paying), then the initial terms would be in sight.
Second, most videogame companies are still around, or have been bought out by other companies, in which case the copyrights would be inhereted. The fact that these games can't be bought commercially anymore doesn't mean anything, the companies would still own the copyrights, and the games would not be public domain.
Nonsense. I think that most videogame companies that still exist don't even know what games they sold twenty years ago. I bet that if you asked, they probably couldn't even find the source code anymore. Those companies won't register their twenty year old games, except for some long lasting series (ie. Mario Brothers). Most games would just go into the public domain. Remember that the registering of copyright is very important. That means that you can always find out whether something is copyrighted and by whom and if something is not registered, you can safely use it. This in contrast with the current situation, where you have to try to find the copyright holder and get permission (both are often a problem). You are completely at the mercy of someone who has no interest in helping you. This makes it such an enormous burden to reuse copyrighted material that much of it is simply abandoned (or used illegally).
Calling System.gc() will usually result in a collection. The VM can't know whether a garbage collect will be useful, because only a full mark and sweep will reveal that. Thus, while the docs state that garbage collection will not necessarily happen after a call to System.gc(), all current VMs will do a full gc (AFAIK). That makes sense because the programmer can determine the need better than the VM.
/end rant
The JVM is designed to make most efficient use of the available RAM and calling System.gc() totally defeats that. To 'forbid' Java from doing it's thing is as fair as disallowing the C++ from using pointers, non-objects (except primitives) and other features which can't be found in Java. Obviously, that is wrong because those features make C++ what it is, just like (unforced) gc is an inherent part of Java.
The only way to determine what the effects are of garbage collection vs (de)allocation is to design a benchmark specifically for this purpose. For instance, you could handle some big images and see how fast each language can complete the benchmark. Another interesting benchmark is to handle a large amount of small objects. However, in the end, the effect of garbage collection on real world apps can differ greatly, depending on:
- the total amount of memory the app can use
- the number of allocated objects
- the size of objects
- the lifetime of objects (Java is far more efficient with short-lived objects, for which it uses a mini-heap and mini-gc)
- the workload of the app (can it do garbage collection during a time of low load?)
The results can differ greatly depending on the particular situation that you are looking at. Of course, it is true in general that it is rare for a language to be better on all fronts, so you always need to look at what you want to do and how well the language is suited to do that. That is also the reason why I hate broad generalizations like:
Sadly, I'm once again seriously disappointed in Java.
Just because the benchmark is flawed, doesn't mean that Java was somehow bad. Especially since your benchmark was a thousand times more flawed. Since you have shown little knowledge about Java (every beginning Java programmer learns that you should avoid calling gc directly), I suggest you stop making these stupid comments.
Technically, the majority of the time, according to java's docs, it should do nothing at all.
It doesn't say that at all:
"Calling the gc method suggests that the Java Virtual Machine expend effort toward recycling unused objects in order to make the memory they currently occupy available for quick reuse. When control returns from the method call, the Java Virtual Machine has made a best effort to reclaim space from all discarded objects."
So, if the majority of the calls are more or less an empty function call, what's the harm in doing it?
The VM can't determine whether a gc is useful or not without a full heap scan. AFAIK, calling System.gc() will usually result in a full scan, totally defeating the standard gc'ing (which is supposed to be efficient as is). You aren't supposed to call System.gc() except in special circumstances.