No it's not. It's about 100 miles by 100 miles, if you check the scale. Still way too big to have been a city, but not even half the size of Portugal must less half the size of Europe.
There are plenty of calculations in finance where only a few digits of accuracy are needed, either because a price is expressed in only a few digits (e.g., an option value being $1.46 is fine as opposed to $1.46189503 which will get rounded to $1.46 anyway) or because the inputs to the model have large errors themselves (e.g., a volatility of 21% which could just as easily be 20% or 22%, making the less significant digits meaningless anyway). These calculations also happen to be the ones that are done in real time throughout a trading day with countless cycles being wasted on unnecessary accuracy.
In a larger context, there are a ton of financial products that are valued using Monte Carlo simulations. By definition, you've already got probabilistic inaccuracy there. Why not make the individual Monte Carlo paths a bit less precise and just run a lot more of them, since it's the average that really counts?
Now, it could be that what I'm asking for here is really adaptive/selectable precision, but the point is that not all calculations need to be 15-digits accurate or even reproducable to be useful.
This discussion reminds me of a story a former Texas state trooper told me. (He claimed to have been on the scene and observed this personally in the 1970s):
Apparently two deer hunters were walking toward an isolated rural road in west Texas, somewhere near Pecos. From a distance, they observed a state trooper standing next to a vehicle that he'd pulled over. They heard a bang and saw the trooper fall back away from the vehicle. A man stepped from the vehicle and fired a second shot at the trooper, who was apparently laying on the ground, now out of their sight.
At this point, the two hunters knelt down in the brush. Not noticing them, the man dragged the trooper's body into the ditch, then walked over and started poking through the trooper's car. After a bit of whispered discussion, one of the hunters shot the man in the chest as he stood next to the trooper's car.
They carefully came up to the car and found the man bleeding, but still alive, his handgun a few feet away. They took the gun and one of them got into the trooper's car and managed to radio for help. About 15 minutes later, another trooper arrived at the scene, and sometime thereafter an ambulance arrived.
This in of itself is an interesting story. However, the paramedics examined both the shot trooper and the man from the car, and found the former to be dead and the latter still alive. After some discussion with the second trooper, they took the dead trooper to the hospital in their ambulance, returning to pick up the wounded man over an hour later, by which time he had died.
The trooper who told me the story arrived after the ambulance had left with the first trooper, but before it returned to pick up the wounded man. That man, it turns out, was a prison escapee who'd been on the run for a week or so.
Anyway, it's not entirely relevant to this discussion, but an interesting story nonetheless.
Who defines "social justice"? Your concept of justice (e.g., everyone gets treated equally) may be different than mine (e.g., everyone has an equal opportunity to compete).
How do you implement "social justice"? In a society where people believe things are "unequal", equality can only be achieved by force in general. (If you don't believe me, just try paying a lower rate of tax than the IRS says you owe.) In other contexts, this is called "robbery."
More generally, though, what gives you the right to impose your "justice" on me? If you want to go have a "completely just" commune somewhere, feel free, but leave me out of it.
"Equity" is such a hang-up for liberals. But again, what is "fair"? Does that mean a "fair share regardless of my contribution" or a "fair chance to earn a share"?
"Community" is bunk. It means being around lazy, stupid people who think too little, spend too much, and expect government to solve their problems, instead of educating themselves and working to improve their lots in life. Hence why our nation is in its current state.
At my previous work email, I saw about one spam per month get through the filter. In terms of "false positives", I had a two or three in a one year period.
At my current work email (here for six months), I have not received any spam nor have I had any false positives when I've checked the spam folder.
For my Yahoo account, I get about one spam message missing the filter per week and my spam folder is completely full. I get about one false positive a month.
For my Hotmail account, I get about one spam slipping through per month. However, I have to be more careful about false positives, as desirable email (even from people I've emailed back previously) sometimes winds up in the spam folder.
Roosevelt was also a piece of shit who locked 100,000 Americans in internment camps. Liberals get bent out of shape about Bush's spotty record for civil rights but completely ignore Roosevelt's much bigger faults.
The same can also be said of Woodrow Wilson, who is lauded for his "internationalism," but who was a racist to the core, encouraging discrimination against even fellow whites--e.g., by questioning the patriotism of German Americans who showed too much pride in their heritage. (I know because my great grandfather changed his German surname to an English one due to such questions at the time.)
The president does not need Congressional authorization to launch an attack. In the event of a nuclear strike, the president can (and presumably will) authorize a retaliatory strike without waiting for Congress to say "OK".
As another respondent has ably pointed out, the use of torture by Bush and company is not in violation of the 8th amendment. That amendment applies to criminals. Waterboarding and other methods were applied to so-called "enemy combatants". Such individuals are not protected under the 8th amendment. Please see this. (Note that Posner believes torture should remain illegal, but also says that any president who flatly refuses to consider torture in an emergency situation is not qualified to hold the office. I personally oppose torture simply because it's not a reliable method for information extraction, at least in the way the US or its proxies have practiced it. If torture worked, though, I would be all for it--please see next paragraph.)
Finally, "good" is a subjective concept. History is written by the victors, be they "good" or "bad". As a nation, we should strive for victory, not for being "good". The concern for being "good" is a legitimate only for public relations and should not be an overriding philosophy in achieving objectives.
Seldom are truer words spoken here. To paraphrase Dick Cheney, if the president has the power to unilaterally launch a nuclear strike and wipe out the human race, he has the power to have water poured in someone's face.
I personally think Bush is an idiot (and I'm a Texan who was born in the town next to where he grew up). Nevertheless, the chief executive is given broad powers and much of Bush's so-called "illegal" or "unconstitutional" actions fall within the use, however ill-considered, of those powers. The way to have dealt with it would have been to have decisively voted him out in 2004. No one who voted for him then can honestly say they thought he was a better man than he turned out to be. Now is the time to move forward, because we as a nation are facing much bigger challenges than worrying about dealing justice to this sorry lot.
The AC vs. DC discussion has focused on efficiency, but I'd think reliability would also increase with DC distribution. I've found the power supply to consistently be the most unreliable component in rackmount servers or blades, usually simply failing but at least once catching on fire. Some servers have redundant power supplies, but I'd rather have the redundancy at the rack level rather than at the server level. VDC converters would presumably be higher quality components as well, at least initially, until manufacturers start cutting corners just like they do on existing AC/DC converters.
The Geneva Conventions are for pussies. If you can have so-called "laws of war", why not simply outlaw war entirely? Then we can all sit and sing Kumbaya, put daisies in one another's hair, toke up, and listen to some groovy tunes. The whole concept of a "law of war" is a delusion and a farce.
In the end, the Arabs fought several wars with Israel and lost them (despite early success in the Yom Kippur War). When you lose a war, whatever happens to you happens. If you don't want such bad things to happen, you should either fight harder to win or at least force a truce, flee to a neighboring friendly country, or commit mass suicide.
And, no, I'm not pro-Israel: I have no love of Israel and think the US should cut off financial support for them, but I also think the US should withdraw entirely from the Geneva Conventions and get back to doing whatever it takes to win wars, which is exactly what the US did back when it actually won them. From Sherman's March to the Sea to the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the US has done plenty of things that violated (or would have violated) the Geneva Conventions, but such actions are the stepping stones to victory. Worrying about violating the Geneva Conventions when faced with an enemy that doesn't adhere to any such restrictions is a sure way to defeat.
Why don't you try clicking on the provided Wikipedia link for exbibyte, smarty pants? Then you'd find it's a different, though closely-related, concept.
In looking at the profiles so helpfully included in your post, it seems like all of the other executives joined after Jobs returned to Apple. Do you think those same people would be in those positions if Jobs weren't there? I think not. Thus, I would argue that he is essential, because hiring and retaining such top-level executive talent is one of the primary functions of a CEO. Sure, the company might steam on for a few years post his departure, but unless you get another executive who can keep the top positions stocked with the best people, the firm will eventually decline.
Is this really about wanting to keep citizens from knowing where they are, or is it more about not wanting to have a programmable GPS-enabled device that could be used to detonate a bomb when it nears a specified location?
If the above is the case, it's a pretty dumb approach, since a GPS-enabled iPhone could just be smuggled in. Either way, it would be interesting to know what the real motives behind this ban are.
Perhaps Microsoft will complain less about piracy if governments force people to replace pirated versions of Windows with Linux instead of forcing them to buy Windows licenses.
In this case, though, I suspect that there are some other motives at work besides curbing piracy--namely supporting a local software developer/distributor over a foreign one and possibly the ability to better control/monitor internet access in the future.
Women are not a minority in the US--i.e., there are more women in the US than men. If by "minority" you mean "underprivileged class", then maybe women still qualify.
I didn't say that merely believing something (where that something could be anything) makes it come true. In the specific case of a right, which is a concept and not a physical entity, believing in a right and acting on that belief is what brings the right into existance. If no one but you believes you have a particular right ("natural" or otherwise) and everyone regularly acts so as to violate that supposed right without consequence, then you don't actually have that right in any meaningful way.
By the way, just for fun, what is the complete and correct list of natural rights, and how can you formally prove that the list is both complete and correct--i.e., that no natural right has been omitted from your list and that no right has been included which is not actually a natural right?
Rights don't exist "above" anything. They exist only because we believe they exist--and they stop existing as soon as we cease to believe they exist. When slavery was ended, a particular right to property ceased and a particular right to liberty began.
Moreover, you make reference to the "founding fathers." Well, thank them for the patent system, which was initially created in 1790, with the Patent Office being created in 1802. So, apparently the expects in "natural rights" think that patents are one of them.
The founding fathers also believed that people could be property--and indeed, people were property at the time, by the decree of those who were considered free and the threat and use of force against those who were considered property. So, the idea of "inherent rights" can change over time, meaning that they aren't really inherent/natural, but rather man-made.
Property is just a man-made concept, and it has no meaning as such unless the concept is respected or defended. Even physical property is not such if those around you do not agree and you are unable to defend your rights to it. Just ask the Native Americans about their "property" that all Americans now live on.
Yes, you are violating US law in that case. Whether or not you should be concerned about that violation depends on the consequences the US government would be able to impose upon you. That was the point of my original post: Any property is defined only by the consent of others in defining it as such, or by the ability of the "owner" to defend that property through various means (legal, military, etc.). The fact that the property is an intangible idea is irrelevant if the consequences are sufficient to make one respect it as property. One can in practice call *anything* property if others agree or one is able to defend it as such.
How exactly are patents more "phony" than any other property? All property has its status by common consent or force (legal, physical or otherwise): Without that consent or force you don't actually "own" anything. True, patents are not physical property, but neither are copyrights, trademarks, etc. For that matter, neither is "your data" or "your money", since both are mostly represented in bits and bytes today rather than as physical commodities.
I am not saying there is not a problem with the patent system, nor do I think you're necessarily entirely wrong in your assertion that a licensing model would dominate/impede if cheap production methods became widely available. However, to call property legally defined as such as "phony" is to not understand what property is--it's whatever we as a society define it to be, just like any other rights or privileges we have (many of which one could just as easily call "phony").
Residents of Puerto Rico, American Samoa and the Marshall Islands do not pay federal income tax. They do pay Social Security and Medicare taxes but they are also eligible for benefits from those programs. To have representation in Congress (relevant to "taxation without representation"), those territories would need to petition for statehood. Puerto Rico, in particular, has consistently voted not to do so.
These products provide functionality beyond simple messaging that abstract message sources and their destinations, such as:
subject-based messaging: Rather than publishing to specific destinations, one publishes to a particular subject. The middleware routes the message to all recipients subscribed to that subject. (Note that one can get point-to-point messaging just by having each recipient subscribe to a unique, identifying subject.)
transport abstraction: One theoretically need not worry about the transport used, which may be a TCP/IP connection, UDP multicast, Unix domain socket (locally), etc. (In practice, however, high-volume messaging will expose the limitations and pitfalls of the transport.)
guaranteed delivery: By abstracting the message sender from the receiver, the middleware can provide more reliable messaging. For example, it can replay a message to a receiver even if the sender has disappeared. Thus, message publishers and receivers need not be running simultaneously. (In practice, this also has pitfalls. You can accidentally replay messages from a previous session if you accidentally reuse old persistence files in your configuration.)
data conversion: Some middleware solutions provide conversion of binary data between architectures without forcing one to write everything out in text form.
Middleware solutions also come with tools for monitoring, configuring, etc., that simpler solutions often do not. This being said, I've had my fair share of problems with middleware in the past. Like any complex piece of software, you get a lot of functionality, but you also get a lot of baggage and hidden pitfalls that can come back to bite you when your usage of that functionality becomes demanding.
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No it's not. It's about 100 miles by 100 miles, if you check the scale. Still way too big to have been a city, but not even half the size of Portugal must less half the size of Europe.
They will make hijacking someone's contact list for spam look like a walk in the park.
Other than that, it seems like it's just for setting up circle jerks to porn.
There are plenty of calculations in finance where only a few digits of accuracy are needed, either because a price is expressed in only a few digits (e.g., an option value being $1.46 is fine as opposed to $1.46189503 which will get rounded to $1.46 anyway) or because the inputs to the model have large errors themselves (e.g., a volatility of 21% which could just as easily be 20% or 22%, making the less significant digits meaningless anyway). These calculations also happen to be the ones that are done in real time throughout a trading day with countless cycles being wasted on unnecessary accuracy.
In a larger context, there are a ton of financial products that are valued using Monte Carlo simulations. By definition, you've already got probabilistic inaccuracy there. Why not make the individual Monte Carlo paths a bit less precise and just run a lot more of them, since it's the average that really counts?
Now, it could be that what I'm asking for here is really adaptive/selectable precision, but the point is that not all calculations need to be 15-digits accurate or even reproducable to be useful.
This discussion reminds me of a story a former Texas state trooper told me. (He claimed to have been on the scene and observed this personally in the 1970s):
Apparently two deer hunters were walking toward an isolated rural road in west Texas, somewhere near Pecos. From a distance, they observed a state trooper standing next to a vehicle that he'd pulled over. They heard a bang and saw the trooper fall back away from the vehicle. A man stepped from the vehicle and fired a second shot at the trooper, who was apparently laying on the ground, now out of their sight.
At this point, the two hunters knelt down in the brush. Not noticing them, the man dragged the trooper's body into the ditch, then walked over and started poking through the trooper's car. After a bit of whispered discussion, one of the hunters shot the man in the chest as he stood next to the trooper's car.
They carefully came up to the car and found the man bleeding, but still alive, his handgun a few feet away. They took the gun and one of them got into the trooper's car and managed to radio for help. About 15 minutes later, another trooper arrived at the scene, and sometime thereafter an ambulance arrived.
This in of itself is an interesting story. However, the paramedics examined both the shot trooper and the man from the car, and found the former to be dead and the latter still alive. After some discussion with the second trooper, they took the dead trooper to the hospital in their ambulance, returning to pick up the wounded man over an hour later, by which time he had died.
The trooper who told me the story arrived after the ambulance had left with the first trooper, but before it returned to pick up the wounded man. That man, it turns out, was a prison escapee who'd been on the run for a week or so.
Anyway, it's not entirely relevant to this discussion, but an interesting story nonetheless.
Who defines "social justice"? Your concept of justice (e.g., everyone gets treated equally) may be different than mine (e.g., everyone has an equal opportunity to compete).
How do you implement "social justice"? In a society where people believe things are "unequal", equality can only be achieved by force in general. (If you don't believe me, just try paying a lower rate of tax than the IRS says you owe.) In other contexts, this is called "robbery." More generally, though, what gives you the right to impose your "justice" on me? If you want to go have a "completely just" commune somewhere, feel free, but leave me out of it.
"Equity" is such a hang-up for liberals. But again, what is "fair"? Does that mean a "fair share regardless of my contribution" or a "fair chance to earn a share"?
"Community" is bunk. It means being around lazy, stupid people who think too little, spend too much, and expect government to solve their problems, instead of educating themselves and working to improve their lots in life. Hence why our nation is in its current state.
At my previous work email, I saw about one spam per month get through the filter. In terms of "false positives", I had a two or three in a one year period.
At my current work email (here for six months), I have not received any spam nor have I had any false positives when I've checked the spam folder.
For my Yahoo account, I get about one spam message missing the filter per week and my spam folder is completely full. I get about one false positive a month.
For my Hotmail account, I get about one spam slipping through per month. However, I have to be more careful about false positives, as desirable email (even from people I've emailed back previously) sometimes winds up in the spam folder.
Roosevelt was also a piece of shit who locked 100,000 Americans in internment camps. Liberals get bent out of shape about Bush's spotty record for civil rights but completely ignore Roosevelt's much bigger faults.
The same can also be said of Woodrow Wilson, who is lauded for his "internationalism," but who was a racist to the core, encouraging discrimination against even fellow whites--e.g., by questioning the patriotism of German Americans who showed too much pride in their heritage. (I know because my great grandfather changed his German surname to an English one due to such questions at the time.)
The president does not need Congressional authorization to launch an attack. In the event of a nuclear strike, the president can (and presumably will) authorize a retaliatory strike without waiting for Congress to say "OK".
As another respondent has ably pointed out, the use of torture by Bush and company is not in violation of the 8th amendment. That amendment applies to criminals. Waterboarding and other methods were applied to so-called "enemy combatants". Such individuals are not protected under the 8th amendment. Please see this. (Note that Posner believes torture should remain illegal, but also says that any president who flatly refuses to consider torture in an emergency situation is not qualified to hold the office. I personally oppose torture simply because it's not a reliable method for information extraction, at least in the way the US or its proxies have practiced it. If torture worked, though, I would be all for it--please see next paragraph.)
Finally, "good" is a subjective concept. History is written by the victors, be they "good" or "bad". As a nation, we should strive for victory, not for being "good". The concern for being "good" is a legitimate only for public relations and should not be an overriding philosophy in achieving objectives.
Seldom are truer words spoken here. To paraphrase Dick Cheney, if the president has the power to unilaterally launch a nuclear strike and wipe out the human race, he has the power to have water poured in someone's face.
I personally think Bush is an idiot (and I'm a Texan who was born in the town next to where he grew up). Nevertheless, the chief executive is given broad powers and much of Bush's so-called "illegal" or "unconstitutional" actions fall within the use, however ill-considered, of those powers. The way to have dealt with it would have been to have decisively voted him out in 2004. No one who voted for him then can honestly say they thought he was a better man than he turned out to be. Now is the time to move forward, because we as a nation are facing much bigger challenges than worrying about dealing justice to this sorry lot.
The AC vs. DC discussion has focused on efficiency, but I'd think reliability would also increase with DC distribution. I've found the power supply to consistently be the most unreliable component in rackmount servers or blades, usually simply failing but at least once catching on fire. Some servers have redundant power supplies, but I'd rather have the redundancy at the rack level rather than at the server level. VDC converters would presumably be higher quality components as well, at least initially, until manufacturers start cutting corners just like they do on existing AC/DC converters.
The Geneva Conventions are for pussies. If you can have so-called "laws of war", why not simply outlaw war entirely? Then we can all sit and sing Kumbaya, put daisies in one another's hair, toke up, and listen to some groovy tunes. The whole concept of a "law of war" is a delusion and a farce.
In the end, the Arabs fought several wars with Israel and lost them (despite early success in the Yom Kippur War). When you lose a war, whatever happens to you happens. If you don't want such bad things to happen, you should either fight harder to win or at least force a truce, flee to a neighboring friendly country, or commit mass suicide.
And, no, I'm not pro-Israel: I have no love of Israel and think the US should cut off financial support for them, but I also think the US should withdraw entirely from the Geneva Conventions and get back to doing whatever it takes to win wars, which is exactly what the US did back when it actually won them. From Sherman's March to the Sea to the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the US has done plenty of things that violated (or would have violated) the Geneva Conventions, but such actions are the stepping stones to victory. Worrying about violating the Geneva Conventions when faced with an enemy that doesn't adhere to any such restrictions is a sure way to defeat.
Why don't you try clicking on the provided Wikipedia link for exbibyte, smarty pants? Then you'd find it's a different, though closely-related, concept.
In looking at the profiles so helpfully included in your post, it seems like all of the other executives joined after Jobs returned to Apple. Do you think those same people would be in those positions if Jobs weren't there? I think not. Thus, I would argue that he is essential, because hiring and retaining such top-level executive talent is one of the primary functions of a CEO. Sure, the company might steam on for a few years post his departure, but unless you get another executive who can keep the top positions stocked with the best people, the firm will eventually decline.
Is this really about wanting to keep citizens from knowing where they are, or is it more about not wanting to have a programmable GPS-enabled device that could be used to detonate a bomb when it nears a specified location?
If the above is the case, it's a pretty dumb approach, since a GPS-enabled iPhone could just be smuggled in. Either way, it would be interesting to know what the real motives behind this ban are.
Perhaps Microsoft will complain less about piracy if governments force people to replace pirated versions of Windows with Linux instead of forcing them to buy Windows licenses.
In this case, though, I suspect that there are some other motives at work besides curbing piracy--namely supporting a local software developer/distributor over a foreign one and possibly the ability to better control/monitor internet access in the future.
...or their spouse lied about being assulted, or because they could not pay the overburdensome child support.
Any issues at home, friend?
Women are not a minority in the US--i.e., there are more women in the US than men. If by "minority" you mean "underprivileged class", then maybe women still qualify.
Didn't Netcraft confirm that PC gaming is dying anyway?
I didn't say that merely believing something (where that something could be anything) makes it come true. In the specific case of a right, which is a concept and not a physical entity, believing in a right and acting on that belief is what brings the right into existance. If no one but you believes you have a particular right ("natural" or otherwise) and everyone regularly acts so as to violate that supposed right without consequence, then you don't actually have that right in any meaningful way.
By the way, just for fun, what is the complete and correct list of natural rights, and how can you formally prove that the list is both complete and correct--i.e., that no natural right has been omitted from your list and that no right has been included which is not actually a natural right?
Rights don't exist "above" anything. They exist only because we believe they exist--and they stop existing as soon as we cease to believe they exist. When slavery was ended, a particular right to property ceased and a particular right to liberty began.
Moreover, you make reference to the "founding fathers." Well, thank them for the patent system, which was initially created in 1790, with the Patent Office being created in 1802. So, apparently the expects in "natural rights" think that patents are one of them.
The founding fathers also believed that people could be property--and indeed, people were property at the time, by the decree of those who were considered free and the threat and use of force against those who were considered property. So, the idea of "inherent rights" can change over time, meaning that they aren't really inherent/natural, but rather man-made.
Property is just a man-made concept, and it has no meaning as such unless the concept is respected or defended. Even physical property is not such if those around you do not agree and you are unable to defend your rights to it. Just ask the Native Americans about their "property" that all Americans now live on.
Yes, you are violating US law in that case. Whether or not you should be concerned about that violation depends on the consequences the US government would be able to impose upon you. That was the point of my original post: Any property is defined only by the consent of others in defining it as such, or by the ability of the "owner" to defend that property through various means (legal, military, etc.). The fact that the property is an intangible idea is irrelevant if the consequences are sufficient to make one respect it as property. One can in practice call *anything* property if others agree or one is able to defend it as such.
How exactly are patents more "phony" than any other property? All property has its status by common consent or force (legal, physical or otherwise): Without that consent or force you don't actually "own" anything. True, patents are not physical property, but neither are copyrights, trademarks, etc. For that matter, neither is "your data" or "your money", since both are mostly represented in bits and bytes today rather than as physical commodities.
I am not saying there is not a problem with the patent system, nor do I think you're necessarily entirely wrong in your assertion that a licensing model would dominate/impede if cheap production methods became widely available. However, to call property legally defined as such as "phony" is to not understand what property is--it's whatever we as a society define it to be, just like any other rights or privileges we have (many of which one could just as easily call "phony").
Residents of Puerto Rico, American Samoa and the Marshall Islands do not pay federal income tax. They do pay Social Security and Medicare taxes but they are also eligible for benefits from those programs. To have representation in Congress (relevant to "taxation without representation"), those territories would need to petition for statehood. Puerto Rico, in particular, has consistently voted not to do so.
Middleware solutions also come with tools for monitoring, configuring, etc., that simpler solutions often do not. This being said, I've had my fair share of problems with middleware in the past. Like any complex piece of software, you get a lot of functionality, but you also get a lot of baggage and hidden pitfalls that can come back to bite you when your usage of that functionality becomes demanding.