You also have to account for the queueing delay at the routers, which are store-and-forward devices. That said, I really have no clue whether 230ms is a realistic number.
Why the last requisite? If it weren't for it, most of the powerful governments of the world would fit the bill nicely.
In other words, and more to the point, why do people insist on only calling terrorists to people who have no affiliation with governments? (Unless it's a government that the establishment does not like, such as the Palestinian Authority or Iran). That kind of discourse aims at demonizing unaligned interests while implicitly condoning similarly unsavory actions of powerful states.
Of course, there's a trade-off to not tipping, such as the astonishingly poor service that Europeans seem to take for granted at anything less than very high-end dining establishments. Now, it doesn't seem to bother you all so you might as keep it the way it is. Americans, on the other hand, seem to place a much higher value on careful and conscientious service, and that's why our pay structure for servers is the way it is--to promote that good service.
That makes no sense to me. If you know (or are reasonably certain) that you're going to be tipped anyway, where's the incentive to provide a better service? On the other hand, if tipping is optional, you have a clear choice between putting in some effort (and maybe get a tip) or just do what you're supposed to in the most uninspiring way possible (and sure as hell not get one).
You dont have extended high unemployment in a free markets. See Hong Kong's history of unemployment. They have one of the best unemployment records in the world and its no coincidence that its the most free market. High unemployment is only sustainable under artificial constraints.
Is it a result of economic theory that it's not a coincidence? If it is, I would be truly interested if you could point me to a proof. It seems to me that the argument that unemployment in a free market leads to the creation of new jobs only holds if you assume that an excess in supply always leads to a corresponding increase in demand. I'm sure there is more than one counterexample to that.
They certainly are, but society has decided that it has a moral authority to enact some worker safety laws because members of the society are sometimes incapable of assessing risk in various working scenarios
I don't think that's the reason why worker safety laws exist. The problem is not so much the fact that I as a worker am unable to assess risk, but rather that I might end up in a world where all jobs that are available to me are risky, as there is no incentive for employers to take measures to eliminate those risks.
At this point, free-market types will argue that, if enough workers refuse to work for the risky jobs, there will be demand for an employer that actually takes measures to eliminate them, thus making a more competitive offer to prospective employees. Except that oftentimes the labor market does not work that way: usually the employer can afford not to hire someone, but that someone cannot afford to be unemployed. Doubly so in an economy with a high unemployment rate, and triply so for jobs that require little to no qualification --- and ironically, those are usually the riskier ones.
Here's the way I see it: worker safety laws are a way to correct the distortions in the labor market caused by the imbalance of bargaining power between employers and employees. If you don't have them, you will likely end up with something resembling feudalism more than a free market(*).
(*) I mean the one with all the nice properties put forth in microeconomics courses, not the "laissez-faire and hope for the best" approach.
Naturally; by no means am I presenting an exhaustive list. In fact, the amount of knowledge you would simply not have today (or the amount of additional work you would have had to have in order to achieve it) had the theory of complex numbers not been developed, is truly amazing:)
In the seventeenth century, Pierre de Fermat and Blaise Pascal spent quite a good time reasoning about "fucking brain teasers". The eventual outcome of this work was the theory of probabilities, without which much of today's knowledge in engineering, economics, biology and countless other fields would be pretty much impossible.
Also around the seventeenth century, other people who were also fond of "fucking brain teasers" wondered what could happen if one assumed some numerical quantity to exist whose square was -1. The eventual outcome was the theory of complex numbers, without which, arguably, modern quantum mechanics would never have been developed. Quantum mechanics itself, at the time of its discovery in the early twentieth century, was pretty much useless in practical terms; but modern electronics would have been impossible without it.
One could also mention the whole plethora of "fucking brain teasers" that led to the discovery of group theory, a branch of mathematics dating to the late nineteenth century. Without it, modern cryptography would not exist at all.
These stories are meant to illustrate that your ignorant comment fails to recognize the potential long-term consequences of discoveries that have no short-term practical outcome. And that's assuming practical outcomes are all that matter; in past times we used to think that "knowledge for knowledge's sake" was a motto to live by. People who think like you (and there are unfortunately a lot of them in positions where they can influence public policy) are ultimately setting back the scientific and technological progress of mankind.
In that manner, all other definitions of "human rights" can be accommodated by the simple expedient of mutually consenting co-habitation.
Maybe I don't get the idea, but how can you derive a set of socially agreed-upon rules from that single premise? What happens if you and I have different ideas of what constitutes "acceptable" co-habitation, and are unable to make compromises? At the end of the day societies must agree on a minimal set of rules on what absolutely cannot be denied to a human being, which form the basis for such mutual consent. This involves bargaining (or, in the worst case, bullying) and does not necessarily lead to a unique solution.
At no time did I state there was no third option. I was just making a contrast between two of the available options.
In fact there are at least four options:
1. Murderers are punished, pickpockets are not
2. Pickpockets are punished, murderers are not
3. Neither pickpockets nor murderers are punished
4. Both pickpockets and murderers are punished
If you substitute "financial fraud" for "murder" and "copyright infringement" for "pickpocketing", then the original post by nEoN nOoDlE pointed out that the current situation, option 2 above, seems disproportionate. Your reply was to the lines of "So you think we should go for option 3 instead? Sorry, that is false logic". I then pointed out that your inference was the actual bad logic in the discussion (because nEoN nOodIE may actually prefer one of options 1 or 4, and you can't tell which by his/her post alone).
The other statement I made regarding proportion was merely intended to illustrate that, even between two arguably "wrong" options (1 and 2), one of them might be perceived as worse. I don't think this is "false logic" unless you see the world in purely black and white terms.
At any rate, any sane person, including me and you (as stated in your last post) would prefer option 4.
You're inferring a statement which is not in the grandparent post. Proportion is a valid way of judging how fair the society we live in is. Where would you rather live: in a society where murder is punished but pickpocketing is not (although formally forbidden), or in one where pickpockets always go to jail while murderers are never convicted?
Legislation might not be the answer: I favor a technical solution. Say, devices automatically disconnect at a certain speed from IM/ voice, except for 911, something like that.
Then you would make it impossible to use a cellphone aboard a train or even a bus.
The Shannon-Hartley Theorem places a fundamental limit on the data rate you can squeeze into a given bandwidth (for a given noise level). That said, I believe current technology is nowhere near this limit.
To be pedantic, the speed of light is not the result of a measurement; it is defined to be [i]exactly[/i] 299,792,458 m/s, so that the meter is defined in terms of the speed of light, and not the other way round. So what could actually be happening is that their "rulers" are not calibrated correctly; it would never be the case that the value of [i]c[/i] that they're using is wrong.
And you think this won't be used to block things other than illegal movies and music? Perhaps even things that would make people think if their brains weren't occupied by the aforementioned stuff?
Centralized DNS was good, but it's time for it to go the way of the bang path. Next stop, IP and its antiquated, centralist ideas about routing and addressing.
Centralist ideas? You clearly do not know how routing in the Internet works.
I know you jest, but poison reverse does not refer to truncating the hop count. It means not announcing your route to the neighbor you learned it from (which, by the way, alone is not enough to ensure convergence of the routing protocol).
Since in the original problem n is the prime number whose primality is to be determined, I'm not sure what you mean. Taking a liberal interpretation, n repeated applications of the algorithm do indeed take O(n^7) time, but since the input size has also grown by a factor of n, the overall complexity remains unchanged at O(n^6).
Ignoring this assumption, say you have an O(f(n)) algorithm to solve your problem. One way to make an algorithm of strictly (in O-terms) worse runtime is to just run that algorithm O(n) times, ignoring the solution every time but the last. [This is in fact strictly worse: for O(n f(n)) = O(f(n)) means there is a c such that for all n large enough n f(n) is less than c f(n), which makes no sense. Slightly informally, O(f(n)) = O(g(n) f(n)) if and only if g(n) is bounded.]
Yes, you're totally right. I was overlooking that possibility.
Slashdot Mirror
You also have to account for the queueing delay at the routers, which are store-and-forward devices. That said, I really have no clue whether 230ms is a realistic number.
Why the last requisite? If it weren't for it, most of the powerful governments of the world would fit the bill nicely.
In other words, and more to the point, why do people insist on only calling terrorists to people who have no affiliation with governments? (Unless it's a government that the establishment does not like, such as the Palestinian Authority or Iran). That kind of discourse aims at demonizing unaligned interests while implicitly condoning similarly unsavory actions of powerful states.
That makes no sense to me. If you know (or are reasonably certain) that you're going to be tipped anyway, where's the incentive to provide a better service? On the other hand, if tipping is optional, you have a clear choice between putting in some effort (and maybe get a tip) or just do what you're supposed to in the most uninspiring way possible (and sure as hell not get one).
CDMA techniques do not get you a free pass around Shannon-Hartley's channel capacity theorem.
Is it a result of economic theory that it's not a coincidence? If it is, I would be truly interested if you could point me to a proof. It seems to me that the argument that unemployment in a free market leads to the creation of new jobs only holds if you assume that an excess in supply always leads to a corresponding increase in demand. I'm sure there is more than one counterexample to that.
I don't think that's the reason why worker safety laws exist. The problem is not so much the fact that I as a worker am unable to assess risk, but rather that I might end up in a world where all jobs that are available to me are risky, as there is no incentive for employers to take measures to eliminate those risks.
At this point, free-market types will argue that, if enough workers refuse to work for the risky jobs, there will be demand for an employer that actually takes measures to eliminate them, thus making a more competitive offer to prospective employees. Except that oftentimes the labor market does not work that way: usually the employer can afford not to hire someone, but that someone cannot afford to be unemployed. Doubly so in an economy with a high unemployment rate, and triply so for jobs that require little to no qualification --- and ironically, those are usually the riskier ones.
Here's the way I see it: worker safety laws are a way to correct the distortions in the labor market caused by the imbalance of bargaining power between employers and employees. If you don't have them, you will likely end up with something resembling feudalism more than a free market(*).
(*) I mean the one with all the nice properties put forth in microeconomics courses, not the "laissez-faire and hope for the best" approach.
Naturally; by no means am I presenting an exhaustive list. In fact, the amount of knowledge you would simply not have today (or the amount of additional work you would have had to have in order to achieve it) had the theory of complex numbers not been developed, is truly amazing :)
In the seventeenth century, Pierre de Fermat and Blaise Pascal spent quite a good time reasoning about "fucking brain teasers". The eventual outcome of this work was the theory of probabilities, without which much of today's knowledge in engineering, economics, biology and countless other fields would be pretty much impossible.
Also around the seventeenth century, other people who were also fond of "fucking brain teasers" wondered what could happen if one assumed some numerical quantity to exist whose square was -1. The eventual outcome was the theory of complex numbers, without which, arguably, modern quantum mechanics would never have been developed. Quantum mechanics itself, at the time of its discovery in the early twentieth century, was pretty much useless in practical terms; but modern electronics would have been impossible without it.
One could also mention the whole plethora of "fucking brain teasers" that led to the discovery of group theory, a branch of mathematics dating to the late nineteenth century. Without it, modern cryptography would not exist at all.
These stories are meant to illustrate that your ignorant comment fails to recognize the potential long-term consequences of discoveries that have no short-term practical outcome. And that's assuming practical outcomes are all that matter; in past times we used to think that "knowledge for knowledge's sake" was a motto to live by. People who think like you (and there are unfortunately a lot of them in positions where they can influence public policy) are ultimately setting back the scientific and technological progress of mankind.
In that manner, all other definitions of "human rights" can be accommodated by the simple expedient of mutually consenting co-habitation.
Maybe I don't get the idea, but how can you derive a set of socially agreed-upon rules from that single premise? What happens if you and I have different ideas of what constitutes "acceptable" co-habitation, and are unable to make compromises? At the end of the day societies must agree on a minimal set of rules on what absolutely cannot be denied to a human being, which form the basis for such mutual consent. This involves bargaining (or, in the worst case, bullying) and does not necessarily lead to a unique solution.
I do not use a QWERTY keyboard, you insensitive clod!
At no time did I state there was no third option. I was just making a contrast between two of the available options.
In fact there are at least four options:
If you substitute "financial fraud" for "murder" and "copyright infringement" for "pickpocketing", then the original post by nEoN nOoDlE pointed out that the current situation, option 2 above, seems disproportionate. Your reply was to the lines of "So you think we should go for option 3 instead? Sorry, that is false logic". I then pointed out that your inference was the actual bad logic in the discussion (because nEoN nOodIE may actually prefer one of options 1 or 4, and you can't tell which by his/her post alone).
The other statement I made regarding proportion was merely intended to illustrate that, even between two arguably "wrong" options (1 and 2), one of them might be perceived as worse. I don't think this is "false logic" unless you see the world in purely black and white terms.
At any rate, any sane person, including me and you (as stated in your last post) would prefer option 4.
You're inferring a statement which is not in the grandparent post. Proportion is a valid way of judging how fair the society we live in is. Where would you rather live: in a society where murder is punished but pickpocketing is not (although formally forbidden), or in one where pickpockets always go to jail while murderers are never convicted?
Then you would make it impossible to use a cellphone aboard a train or even a bus.
The Shannon-Hartley Theorem places a fundamental limit on the data rate you can squeeze into a given bandwidth (for a given noise level). That said, I believe current technology is nowhere near this limit.
Is it illegal to ride a horse on public roads in the USA?
(Honest question; in the place where I live it is permitted, except on motorways and other roads intended for high speed.)
Nevermind the [i]...[/i]. I guess I've spent too much time posting in phpBB-based boards today...
To be pedantic, the speed of light is not the result of a measurement; it is defined to be [i]exactly[/i] 299,792,458 m/s, so that the meter is defined in terms of the speed of light, and not the other way round. So what could actually be happening is that their "rulers" are not calibrated correctly; it would never be the case that the value of [i]c[/i] that they're using is wrong.
And you think this won't be used to block things other than illegal movies and music? Perhaps even things that would make people think if their brains weren't occupied by the aforementioned stuff?
Centralist ideas? You clearly do not know how routing in the Internet works.
You can use the exact same definition, except that the distance is defined according to the L-infinity norm instead of the Euclidean one!
Well, for starters you could *gasp* forbid the operators through legislation from charging for received messages...
I know you jest, but poison reverse does not refer to truncating the hop count. It means not announcing your route to the neighbor you learned it from (which, by the way, alone is not enough to ensure convergence of the routing protocol).
Since in the original problem n is the prime number whose primality is to be determined, I'm not sure what you mean. Taking a liberal interpretation, n repeated applications of the algorithm do indeed take O(n^7) time, but since the input size has also grown by a factor of n, the overall complexity remains unchanged at O(n^6).
Yes, you're totally right. I was overlooking that possibility.
Nice discussion, thanks!
Thanks :) But the essence of my point stands: do you know of any example for c=7, then?