Sure, but you can run the computation twice on different hardware. It's highly unlikely (though not entirely impossible) that two hardware faults would produce precisely the same error.
I do not have the power to not reelect a candidate. Democracy is tyranny of the majority and leaves me with no other options, unlike an unregulated market.
A free market is tyranny of the majority too. A sufficient number of people must have a certain need, and fulfilling that need must be profitable enough, in order for the market to fulfill it.
What I don't understand is why you think "vote with your dollars" works, yet "vote with your vote" must be doomed to fail.
I voted for none of the people in public office right now.
Sure. If you're one of very few people who think Pepsi is better, Coca Cola will achieve a monopoly.
An unregulated CEO is more trustworthy because he or she knows that I will switch in a heartbeat if I am dissatisfied with the product or if a competitor offers me a better deal.
Not if you are one of very few people who think Pepsi is a better deal than Coca Cola.
Direct control over revenue is far more persuasive than threats of voting against a candidate's eventual reelection.
By not reelecting a candidate, you are denying them revenue. Why is this any different than the free market mechanism?
So who shall decided the set of infrastructure? The kind and benevolent Government? When has Government ever facilitated competition? Never, except on K Street.
Why do you distrust a government you elect, yet trust a bunch of companies whose CEOs you don't?
I would venture that the bits refer to the input size. So 2.56e47 b/s/g means that, if you have a 2.56e47-bit input, an O(n) algorithm (the fastest you can have assuming the algorithm must look at all the input before making a decision) cannot terminate in less than a second in a computer whose mass is less than one gram.
I'm just speculating, of course. My interpretation might be totally wrong.
Perhaps it would be more accurately phrased as, "as successful in life as their personal capabilities and motivations allow, with no guarantees." Rather, that has always been my perception. Capitalism encourages and motivates one to aim high. Even if one never reaches one's ultimate pinnacle of success (or even gets close to it), the chances of improving one's situation in the process are far better.
I realise it's a debatable matter, but I still have a problem with people with less personal capabilities (physical, mental, social, etc) having a tougher life; it feels inhumane to me. That's where I see an advantage in communism.
But you are absolutely correct! Neither is a perfect system. As I said before, everyone has a choice to make, up to a certain point, ie:
Those in a capitalist system are generally free to migrate into a communist system if they so choose. Those in a communist system generally are not allowed the choice to migrate to a capitalist system (or any other system) without the permission of the central controlling authority.
Hopefully, they choose what's best for their situation.
Fair enough. But I think you still missed my point: the choice doesn't have to be between communism and capitalism (which, as we've agreed, both have their problems). You can have a system combining aspects of the two. I think that's where the real debate lies.
Your example is one of not providing equal access to healthcare for everyone, not one of enforcing habits through legislation.
Providing incentives to be healthy, on the other hand (e.g. taxes on tobacco and alcohol) are fine with me, though, as long as smokers and drinkers can still have access to healthcare.
The fallacy of communism is assuming that people will not become parasites if they don't have an incentive to work. The fallacy of capitalism is assuming that anyone can be as successful in life as they can, as long as they put in enough effort. I think neither are true.
I meant to say "as successful in life as they want". I'm sorry.
You're bipolarizing the question. There is a continuum of scenarios between the two extremes you describe. Our position within that continuum is the choice you and I have to make.
The fallacy of communism is assuming that people will not become parasites if they don't have an incentive to work. The fallacy of capitalism is assuming that anyone can be as successful in life as they can, as long as they put in enough effort. I think neither are true.
I find it funny that, being the United States the land of the free and all, most Americans just can't warp their heads around the fact that they've been brainwashed for the past 70 years into thinking that anything even remotely resembling socialism is evil. This is especially obvious considering the fact that a lot of Americans regard Obama as a dangerous socialist. Those who actually know what socialism is cannot help but laugh at such an idea.
But I digress. We've had what you call "universal health care" in Europe (and I don't mean the left bloc countries; I mean western and northern Europe as well) for decades, and in general it has worked acceptably, thank you very much. I've never seen the governments of any of those countries pushing to regulate what people eat and drink, how much exercise they make, when they go to sleep, or when they die. I don't know where you get the idea that universal health care implies that, but keep in mind that saying so does not make it true.
Sadly, the real question behind the universal health care debate really is the one most often forgotten, because you're too busy discussing how much control the government will have over you, and how much money the rich will have to fork over for universal health care to work. The real question is what should we do about people who absolutely cannot pay for health care or health insurance, because they are unemployed and have no savings; because they were marginalized and no one will give them a job; because they have become permanently disabled and cannot work. Should we let them live a miserable life and even die in the name of small government and the right to be rich? Until the "no universal health care" camp gives an acceptable answer to that question, their arguments are all moot to me.
If Google's OS is to become open source - why the need for binary diffs at all?
Isn't it feasible that the client store all the source and the patch process just involves a diff to the original source code that gets recompiled?
Compiling takes time and CPU. Considering that they're aiming the Chrome OS at netbooks, I don't think they want to put that burden in the client. And even for better-than-average machines, I suspect (drawing from experience acquired during my Gentoo days) that compiling a whole browser application would take a considerable amount of time.
Let's not forget the whole reason that we can undelete from FAT and NTFS disks is because of inefficient design. [...] When you permanently delete something, it should be gone, not hanging around on the disk unbeknownst to your average user.
Actually, it is the other way around. It is more efficient to leave the old file contents intact, because that way the system doesn't have to spend time (and I/O resources) zeroing out disk blocks.
There might be concerns about leaving the old file around, but efficiency is not one of them.
Geez, Slashdot is full of people who don't know how to read (or don't have any sense of humour). I pointed out the exact same fallacy as post #28652295, except I was being facetious and he wasn't. He got modded insightful and I got modded troll.
It depends. Usually, you have to obey the laws of the state you're in, not where you reside.
In your example, it wouldn't be illegal, unless the state you lived in enacted a law specifically saying "No citizen under the age of 21 of this state is allowed to drink alcohol, even when in another state."
It shows you don't live in the US, by the way, because all 50 states have had the drinking age set at 21 for a few decades now.
I didn't even bother checking, since it was just for the sake of an example.:)
Like said, if its open website and theres no restrictions or info about the copyrights, its pretty much assumed you can visit that site and let your browser download what it needs. However that still doesn't mean you can reuse their graphics or code or whatever copyrighted.
By visiting the website and viewing their graphics and the page content dictated by their code, you're pretty much using that copyrighted material. I fail to see the difference between this and accessing a website to download some audio or video file to watch them myself without giving them to anybody else.
Uh, no ; because you gave permission for teh distribution so wetehr or not d/l is a copyright violation is irrelevant in your example.
On a related (offtopic) note, I always find it funny when I get those emails with the disclaimer "if you received this message in error, please do not take any action based on it and delete it immediately."
Especially because I'm never sure which of the two I should do.
Under what law or jurisdiction are they prosecuting these crimes under? Does that mean that it is illegal to go to Vegas?
More interestingly, I wonder if this applies as well within the United States themselves? What happens if I live in a state where e.g. drinking age is 21, and I have a drink at another state where drinking age is 18 (supposing I am between 18 and 21)? Can I get prosecuted when I return to my home state?
Obviously its only illegal if you do not have the rights to do so. When you go to microsoft.com or any other website, its assumed you have the right to download them. This is totally different than when you're downloading material that's copyrighted and you haven't got the permission to do so, be it either that you haven't paid for it or you do not have the licenses or any other reason.
So every time you want to visit a website you write them a letter first asking for permission to download their data? After all, you could be infringing on some copyrighted material, and you won't even know until it is in your possession.
True. But no matter how many boxes are behind a NAT, all packets coming from there are marked with the same source address. So it should have been fairly easy to look at the source addresses and block those 86 IPs, regardless of how many boxes are NATed behind them. I think that was the GP's point.
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Sure, but you can run the computation twice on different hardware. It's highly unlikely (though not entirely impossible) that two hardware faults would produce precisely the same error.
How can we be sure all those digits are correct?
You mathematically prove the algorithm is correct, and that the program faithfully implements the algorithm.
A free market is tyranny of the majority too. A sufficient number of people must have a certain need, and fulfilling that need must be profitable enough, in order for the market to fulfill it.
What I don't understand is why you think "vote with your dollars" works, yet "vote with your vote" must be doomed to fail.
Sure. If you're one of very few people who think Pepsi is better, Coca Cola will achieve a monopoly.
Not if you are one of very few people who think Pepsi is a better deal than Coca Cola.
By not reelecting a candidate, you are denying them revenue. Why is this any different than the free market mechanism?
Why do you distrust a government you elect, yet trust a bunch of companies whose CEOs you don't?
I would venture that the bits refer to the input size. So 2.56e47 b/s/g means that, if you have a 2.56e47-bit input, an O(n) algorithm (the fastest you can have assuming the algorithm must look at all the input before making a decision) cannot terminate in less than a second in a computer whose mass is less than one gram.
I'm just speculating, of course. My interpretation might be totally wrong.
Perhaps it would be more accurately phrased as, "as successful in life as their personal capabilities and motivations allow, with no guarantees." Rather, that has always been my perception. Capitalism encourages and motivates one to aim high. Even if one never reaches one's ultimate pinnacle of success (or even gets close to it), the chances of improving one's situation in the process are far better.
I realise it's a debatable matter, but I still have a problem with people with less personal capabilities (physical, mental, social, etc) having a tougher life; it feels inhumane to me. That's where I see an advantage in communism.
But you are absolutely correct! Neither is a perfect system. As I said before, everyone has a choice to make, up to a certain point, ie: Those in a capitalist system are generally free to migrate into a communist system if they so choose. Those in a communist system generally are not allowed the choice to migrate to a capitalist system (or any other system) without the permission of the central controlling authority.
Hopefully, they choose what's best for their situation.
Fair enough. But I think you still missed my point: the choice doesn't have to be between communism and capitalism (which, as we've agreed, both have their problems). You can have a system combining aspects of the two. I think that's where the real debate lies.
Your example is one of not providing equal access to healthcare for everyone, not one of enforcing habits through legislation.
Providing incentives to be healthy, on the other hand (e.g. taxes on tobacco and alcohol) are fine with me, though, as long as smokers and drinkers can still have access to healthcare.
I meant to say "as successful in life as they want". I'm sorry.
You're bipolarizing the question. There is a continuum of scenarios between the two extremes you describe. Our position within that continuum is the choice you and I have to make.
The fallacy of communism is assuming that people will not become parasites if they don't have an incentive to work. The fallacy of capitalism is assuming that anyone can be as successful in life as they can, as long as they put in enough effort. I think neither are true.
I wonder if it's me being the child, or those who think a perfect market is more than an idealized abstraction...
I find it funny that, being the United States the land of the free and all, most Americans just can't warp their heads around the fact that they've been brainwashed for the past 70 years into thinking that anything even remotely resembling socialism is evil. This is especially obvious considering the fact that a lot of Americans regard Obama as a dangerous socialist. Those who actually know what socialism is cannot help but laugh at such an idea.
But I digress. We've had what you call "universal health care" in Europe (and I don't mean the left bloc countries; I mean western and northern Europe as well) for decades, and in general it has worked acceptably, thank you very much. I've never seen the governments of any of those countries pushing to regulate what people eat and drink, how much exercise they make, when they go to sleep, or when they die. I don't know where you get the idea that universal health care implies that, but keep in mind that saying so does not make it true.
Sadly, the real question behind the universal health care debate really is the one most often forgotten, because you're too busy discussing how much control the government will have over you, and how much money the rich will have to fork over for universal health care to work. The real question is what should we do about people who absolutely cannot pay for health care or health insurance, because they are unemployed and have no savings; because they were marginalized and no one will give them a job; because they have become permanently disabled and cannot work. Should we let them live a miserable life and even die in the name of small government and the right to be rich? Until the "no universal health care" camp gives an acceptable answer to that question, their arguments are all moot to me.
The difference is that you vote for government, but you don't vote for Coca Cola's board of directors.
Since this will be released as open source, it should make distributing updates a lot easier for the open-source community.
We open source community don't have no F**KING business in binary distribution!
Not all of us run Gentoo.
Compiling takes time and CPU. Considering that they're aiming the Chrome OS at netbooks, I don't think they want to put that burden in the client. And even for better-than-average machines, I suspect (drawing from experience acquired during my Gentoo days) that compiling a whole browser application would take a considerable amount of time.
Actually, it is the other way around. It is more efficient to leave the old file contents intact, because that way the system doesn't have to spend time (and I/O resources) zeroing out disk blocks.
There might be concerns about leaving the old file around, but efficiency is not one of them.
Geez, Slashdot is full of people who don't know how to read (or don't have any sense of humour). I pointed out the exact same fallacy as post #28652295, except I was being facetious and he wasn't. He got modded insightful and I got modded troll.
Precisely. The original poster implied I, the downloader, had to have permission before downloading anything.
It depends. Usually, you have to obey the laws of the state you're in, not where you reside.
In your example, it wouldn't be illegal, unless the state you lived in enacted a law specifically saying "No citizen under the age of 21 of this state is allowed to drink alcohol, even when in another state."
It shows you don't live in the US, by the way, because all 50 states have had the drinking age set at 21 for a few decades now.
I didn't even bother checking, since it was just for the sake of an example. :)
Thanks for your explanation.
By visiting the website and viewing their graphics and the page content dictated by their code, you're pretty much using that copyrighted material. I fail to see the difference between this and accessing a website to download some audio or video file to watch them myself without giving them to anybody else.
On a related (offtopic) note, I always find it funny when I get those emails with the disclaimer "if you received this message in error, please do not take any action based on it and delete it immediately."
Especially because I'm never sure which of the two I should do.
More interestingly, I wonder if this applies as well within the United States themselves? What happens if I live in a state where e.g. drinking age is 21, and I have a drink at another state where drinking age is 18 (supposing I am between 18 and 21)? Can I get prosecuted when I return to my home state?
(Disclaimer: I do not live in the USA)
So every time you want to visit a website you write them a letter first asking for permission to download their data? After all, you could be infringing on some copyrighted material, and you won't even know until it is in your possession.
True. But no matter how many boxes are behind a NAT, all packets coming from there are marked with the same source address. So it should have been fairly easy to look at the source addresses and block those 86 IPs, regardless of how many boxes are NATed behind them. I think that was the GP's point.
What one markets to people is often what they want.
Fixed that for you.