I _only_ write code where the control delimiters (e.g. "{" and "}" or ";") are on the same line as the conditional (e.g. "if" "else" "do" "while" "switch" etc.
I try to keep the control delimiters in sync with the program flow. This means that they don't belong on the same line as the conditional, because they are only executed (yes, they can represent stuff that the program needs to do) if the conditional is true. If they were on the same level as the conditional, that would mean that they are executed regardless of the conditional, which isn't the case.
if(condition) /* All of the following, up to and including the closing brace,
is executed only if condition is true. */
{
some_statement;
} else /* All of the following, up to and including the closing brace,
is executed only if condition is false. */
{
other_statement;
}
I am sugarcoating nothing. You are either confused, or deliberately choosing to not understand the difference between what is under discussion here and eugenics so that you can feel self-righteous.
What's under discussion here is "We'll kill you because we know better than you what's good for you.". Which I find repulsive.
DNA is a molecule.
And this molecule can tell you exactly whether the oragnism you're examining is of the species homo sapiens sapiens or not.
You're attributing some magical property to human DNA,
No, I am simply attributing the fact to human DNA that it is a pretty precise indicator of whether an organism is human or not. Absolutely nothing magical here.
You would choose to inflict years of intense suffering on a human being on the theory that a single enjoyable moment would justify it? You, sir, are either trolling or insane.
I'm not inflicting anything - that's done by bad luck, getting the short end of the stick, an act of $DEITY or however you may call it. Humans only get one life, it's either that or no life at all. If you don't live it, you'll never find out if you would have liked it.
Oh, and does that mean that you're going to euthanize everyone who has "years of intense suffering" ahead of them, and take this reason as implied consent ? I hope you enjoy running a death camp. But it probably doesn't mean that. Can't euthanize a person without their consent, only a potential person, right ?
Because every sentient being has a inborn urge to avoid pain, and suffers if it is thwarted.
And still, you're the one who wants to decide for everyone else how much pain and suffering is too much for them.
A person who lives a short life in intense pain will always be denied satisfaction of the most basic drive a sentient being knows - to not feel agony.
The most basic drive is to live. If it wasn't, then we wouldn't have torture and such. People would just stop breathing if faced with agony.
We're not deciding whether a person's life is worth living, because we're talking about potential people, people who do not exist yet.
With the definition of who's a potential person coming from... you. So, you get to decide who's a potential person and how much suffering is too much for an actual person. Isn't it really nice to have power over life and death ? You, sir, are on one enormous power trip. Which is understandable. Getting to decide who lives and who dies is a pretty cool thing, which people have sought for millenia.
I'm sticking with the basic assumption that human rights are gained by belonging to the species of homo sapiens, not some artificial "person" definition. And among these rights is the right to live. And "We know better than you, and right now you can't fight back anyway, because you're still trying to make sense of your limbs." isn't a reason to take that right away from anyone.
The GPS has to factor out both the effect from the satellite and the effect from your moving.
For some advanced system, maybe. Basic GPS just requires reception from four satellites, so the receiver can solve for time and three coordinates, as far as I know.
The satellite effect is easy to factor out because the satellite broadcasts its own ephemeris.
But to (correctly) receive anything from the satellite, the doppler shift must be known, unless you use a wide-band receiver that can receive the message regardless of the doppler shift, in which case it's not necessary anymore to actually know it.
But the GPS has to simultaneously solve for both your position and speed.
It's not a requirement. It might try to do so, but the only things it has to solve for are t, x, y and z.
I expect that probably, if you were driving in a straight line then it wouldn't matter too much,
With regards to the satellite, a straight line on the surface of Earth isn't a straight line. However, if you don't make any turns then your receiver will probably keep "seeing" the same set of satellites, see below.
if you turn the GPS on in a car as you pull out of your drive you're going to be making lots of speed and direction changes while the GPS receiver is trying to get a lock.
That might be mostly due to the receiver seeing different satellites as you turn, as the signals from some of them might be blocked by the metal parts of the car.
Infact, it's that doppler effect that can make handheld GPS slow to lock on if you're moving.
Err... I doubt that. The 50 mph or so that you might be going in your car aren't going to have as much of an effect on the doppler shift as the velocity of the satellite (GPS sats are not geostationary and hence do move with respect to someone who's stationary on Earth).
There's also a negative feedback loop for the poor.
Erm, sorry. As someone who's studied systems theory, I need to point out that it's still a positive feedback loop for the poor, i.e. the change in x has the same sign as x. The more debt you have, the faster your debt will rise (debt has a negative sign, an increase in debt also has a negative sign). The wealthier you are, the faster and easier your wealth will rise (positive signs).
Negative feedback would, in both cases, limit the increase in (debt/wealth) as (debt/wealth) increases, i.e. the change in x has the inverse sign of x. Taxation, especially progressive, for example, is negative feedback on wealth.
the issue is the suffering of individual persons, not "improving the race".
You can sugarcoat it any way you want.
If someone wants to end their own life, it's their decision. Not anyone else's.
I think we all agree that the answer is, no.
I am sorry, but I do not agree. The probability that there won't be a single enjoyable moment in a human life is just too low, possibly even nonexistant. And that's all that is necessary to make living worth it.
(Barring supernatural or superstitious arguments claiming that the zygote is a "person".)
Human DNA, viable (will survive and develop if kept in the right environment). Human. Where's the supernatural, where's the superstition ?
unsatisfactory (from their own perspective) life.
It's the only life they know and get. How can it be unsatisfactory ? Because they're not getting everything they want ? Because it could be better ? And you're deciding for them ?
You probably wouldn't want to have the disease I have (or any other shitty disease that's even worse... for example ALS), but be glad and give thanks to $DEITY that you don't and stay the heck away from deciding for someone else whether their life is "worth it".
(written, mostly, by people who subscribe to ancient myths)
agrees that birth conveys some extra meaning as to the legal status or spiritual status of a creature is not a myth.
No, it's just an indicator of how pervasive this ancient, unscientific myth is.
Also, as far as an arbitrary legal status as citizenship goes, birth is just an easy, convenient way to determine it, and the country simple isn't interested in your citizenship before your birth because you're not going to do anything where citizenship is relevant (vote, pay taxes, run for political office, apply for a passport, serve on a jury, be drafted, etc.). Hence, it is not necessary to go through more trouble than determining where you were born and/or who your parents were.
Citizenship of any nation does bring only marginal protections compared to the simple fact of being human and not something else (animal, inanimate object, etc). Therefore, the way of determining what is human life and what isn't needs to have higher standards than the way of determining who's a citizen of country X and who isn't - just like criminal trials (that put the accused in jeopardy of losing his freedom or even his life) need higher standards than civil lawsuits (which are just about money, mostly).
beings become citizens on birth indicates some legal status being conveyed at birth
And that status is... citizenship. Nothing else.
You are adding to that some additional mystical legal status before that
Sorry, "human being" isn't a mystical legal status. I can be a perfectly vaild human being without having citizenship of country X. Heck, without _any_ citizenship at all, even though that's rare nowadays.
I may not be able to vote in country X, but the penal code of most (non-scumbag) countries doesn't usually distinguish between crimes against citizens and crimes against non-citizens. If you injure or kill me, you'll be stuck in jail, regardless of my citizenship.
I can also change my citizenship, drop it, or acquire additional citizenships. Compared to my status as a human being, citizenships are as volatile as the clothes I wear.
You are adding complexity to a simple statement in order to make it fit your personal beliefs.
No, I'm just not reading something into a definition of citizenship that just isn't there.
"All men are created equal...". Why didn't the founding fathers save themselves two letters and replaced the fancy latin "created" word by one that's more easily understood ("born")? Heck, they could have copied the phrase, with "born" in it, from other documents of the time.
Oh come on. It should be evident from the context that I was referring to the life of humans as organisms, not the beginning of human species.
The personhood of a individual human begins sometime after birth,
Individual human and person are the same thing. Unless you're really looking for a convenient way of getting rid of undesirables.
(But not in all; Peter Singer makes good points about euthanasia of severely crippled infants.)
I am "living with a severe disability", or rather one that did have an extremely gloomy outlook at birth, but I nonetheless survived for over three decades and I _like my life the way it is_ and if that ever changes, _I_ am going to something about it, not anyone else. I'd like to introduce any nazi eugenics scumbag who would have suggested killing me to my fist first, then to my boots, and then to my four friends H&K and S&W. It's only fair.
So you are asserting that the Constitution recognizes that a person is human sometime after conception but before birth, but only becomes a citizen at birth?
The "a person is human" part makes my head spin. What it that supposed to mean?
But yes, you could say that I assert that. Citizenship is a fairly arbitrary legal status, which each country can define in their own way. Some define it by whether you're born in the country or not, some make it hereditary (and therefore completely independent of where the actual delivery happened). It says nothing about what is human or not, unless you subscribe to theories that only citizens of country X are human and everyone else must not be... quite human ? Sub-human ?
A much clearer interpretation would be that personhood and citizenship begin at birth, and not before.
Er, no. The paragraph says nothing about what constitutes a human, or a person. Your "clearer interpretation" is merely a more convenient interpretation by your personal belief that.
What did the declaration of independence say ? All mean are created equal... right ? Created. Not born.
That human life begins at birth is an ancient myth. It's even codified in the Old Testament. Do you subscribe to ancient myths?
rather than taking the simplest meaning of the words as written.
The simplest meaning of the words as written defines citizenship, nothing more. Interpreting a definition of personhood or human life into the words is neither simple nor words as written.
But none of that is actually relevant to the question at hand, which is not when "life" or "personhood" begins, but when Constitutional protection begins. And that's clear: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside."
That just defines citizenship. Non-citizens also enjoy some legal protections, for the simple fact that they are humans, too.
The greenhouse gas theory is fun and all until you look at how much of greenhouse gas is made up of CO2. It's a fraction of a percent.
Actually, CO2 contribution to the total greenhouse effect (i.e. the temperature difference between the about -10C that Earth's surface would have without an atmosphere, and the temperature we observe) is about 10% to 15%. Hardly insignificant, especially if you consider...
The major contributor? Water!
... that the average amount of water in the atmosphere is related to the average _temperature_ of the atmosphere, which in turn is a function of the greenhouse effect. So, the effect of adding _any_ greenhouse gas other than water to the atmosphere will be amplified by having more water vapor in the atmosphere as the temperature rises.
But they had the skills, and they knew what they were aiming for, and most importantly, they were handed bucketloads of cash to rebuild.
Well, they weren't handed more than other countries. Compared to the size of the country and the amount of destruction, they were handed less than average. Sucks to lose a world war (or two).
Well, US robots rented its robots for a long time, I'm not sure they want them to break...
Unless Asimov has a very rosy view of corporations, the rental contract for those robots will include a term that holds the person renting the robot liable for most damage to the robot (probably everything except for normal wear and tear, and acts of god).
Which is different from any other major candidate, how?
The other candidate is less eloquent and not quite as good at saying whatever he needs to to get elected. Not that he's not trying really hard, though.
Am I the only one who doesn't see a big difference between the two passages? The second one is pretty much just a rewritten, more detailed version of the first one.
The first one could be read as bashing the military (bad bad bad), the second one can't.
Slashdot Mirror
I _only_ write code where the control delimiters (e.g. "{" and "}" or ";") are on the same line as the conditional (e.g. "if" "else" "do" "while" "switch" etc.
I try to keep the control delimiters in sync with the program flow. This means that they don't belong on the same line as the conditional, because they are only executed (yes, they can represent stuff that the program needs to do) if the conditional is true. If they were on the same level as the conditional, that would mean that they are executed regardless of the conditional, which isn't the case.
if(condition)
is executed only if condition is true. */
{
some_statement;
}
else
is executed only if condition is false. */
{
other_statement;
}
yet_another_statement;
Isn't the opening brace where creating stack frames and other miscellaneous clerical stuff takes place ?
I am sugarcoating nothing. You are either confused, or deliberately choosing to not understand the difference between what is under discussion here and eugenics so that you can feel self-righteous.
What's under discussion here is "We'll kill you because we know better than you what's good for you.". Which I find repulsive.
DNA is a molecule.
And this molecule can tell you exactly whether the oragnism you're examining is of the species homo sapiens sapiens or not.
You're attributing some magical property to human DNA,
No, I am simply attributing the fact to human DNA that it is a pretty precise indicator of whether an organism is human or not. Absolutely nothing magical here.
You would choose to inflict years of intense suffering on a human being on the theory that a single enjoyable moment would justify it? You, sir, are either trolling or insane.
I'm not inflicting anything - that's done by bad luck, getting the short end of the stick, an act of $DEITY or however you may call it. Humans only get one life, it's either that or no life at all. If you don't live it, you'll never find out if you would have liked it.
Oh, and does that mean that you're going to euthanize everyone who has "years of intense suffering" ahead of them, and take this reason as implied consent ? I hope you enjoy running a death camp. But it probably doesn't mean that. Can't euthanize a person without their consent, only a potential person, right ?
Because every sentient being has a inborn urge to avoid pain, and suffers if it is thwarted.
And still, you're the one who wants to decide for everyone else how much pain and suffering is too much for them.
A person who lives a short life in intense pain will always be denied satisfaction of the most basic drive a sentient being knows - to not feel agony.
The most basic drive is to live. If it wasn't, then we wouldn't have torture and such. People would just stop breathing if faced with agony.
We're not deciding whether a person's life is worth living, because we're talking about potential people, people who do not exist yet.
With the definition of who's a potential person coming from ... you. So, you get to decide who's a potential person and how much suffering is too much for an actual person. Isn't it really nice to have power over life and death ? You, sir, are on one enormous power trip. Which is understandable. Getting to decide who lives and who dies is a pretty cool thing, which people have sought for millenia.
I'm sticking with the basic assumption that human rights are gained by belonging to the species of homo sapiens, not some artificial "person" definition. And among these rights is the right to live. And "We know better than you, and right now you can't fight back anyway, because you're still trying to make sense of your limbs." isn't a reason to take that right away from anyone.
The GPS has to factor out both the effect from the satellite and the effect from your moving.
For some advanced system, maybe. Basic GPS just requires reception from four satellites, so the receiver can solve for time and three coordinates, as far as I know.
The satellite effect is easy to factor out because the satellite broadcasts its own ephemeris.
But to (correctly) receive anything from the satellite, the doppler shift must be known, unless you use a wide-band receiver that can receive the message regardless of the doppler shift, in which case it's not necessary anymore to actually know it.
But the GPS has to simultaneously solve for both your position and speed.
It's not a requirement. It might try to do so, but the only things it has to solve for are t, x, y and z.
I expect that probably, if you were driving in a straight line then it wouldn't matter too much,
With regards to the satellite, a straight line on the surface of Earth isn't a straight line. However, if you don't make any turns then your receiver will probably keep "seeing" the same set of satellites, see below.
if you turn the GPS on in a car as you pull out of your drive you're going to be making lots of speed and direction changes while the GPS receiver is trying to get a lock.
That might be mostly due to the receiver seeing different satellites as you turn, as the signals from some of them might be blocked by the metal parts of the car.
Err ... I doubt that. The 50 mph or so that you might be going in your car aren't going to have as much of an effect on the doppler shift as the velocity of the satellite (GPS sats are not geostationary and hence do move with respect to someone who's stationary on Earth).
Look up "grunt (noun)" on www.m-w.com
Just wait until they introduce a hydrostatic equilibrum requirement for moons. When that happens, it'll be a dwarf moon. Or a Phoboid.
Erm, sorry. As someone who's studied systems theory, I need to point out that it's still a positive feedback loop for the poor, i.e. the change in x has the same sign as x. The more debt you have, the faster your debt will rise (debt has a negative sign, an increase in debt also has a negative sign). The wealthier you are, the faster and easier your wealth will rise (positive signs).
Negative feedback would, in both cases, limit the increase in (debt/wealth) as (debt/wealth) increases, i.e. the change in x has the inverse sign of x. Taxation, especially progressive, for example, is negative feedback on wealth.
You can sugarcoat it any way you want.
If someone wants to end their own life, it's their decision. Not anyone else's.
I think we all agree that the answer is, no.
I am sorry, but I do not agree. The probability that there won't be a single enjoyable moment in a human life is just too low, possibly even nonexistant. And that's all that is necessary to make living worth it.
(Barring supernatural or superstitious arguments claiming that the zygote is a "person".)
Human DNA, viable (will survive and develop if kept in the right environment). Human. Where's the supernatural, where's the superstition ?
unsatisfactory (from their own perspective) life.
It's the only life they know and get. How can it be unsatisfactory ? Because they're not getting everything they want ? Because it could be better ? And you're deciding for them ?
You probably wouldn't want to have the disease I have (or any other shitty disease that's even worse ... for example ALS), but be glad and give thanks to $DEITY that you don't and stay the heck away from deciding for someone else whether their life is "worth it".
(written, mostly, by people who subscribe to ancient myths)
agrees that birth conveys some extra meaning as to the legal status or spiritual status of a creature is not a myth.
No, it's just an indicator of how pervasive this ancient, unscientific myth is.
Also, as far as an arbitrary legal status as citizenship goes, birth is just an easy, convenient way to determine it, and the country simple isn't interested in your citizenship before your birth because you're not going to do anything where citizenship is relevant (vote, pay taxes, run for political office, apply for a passport, serve on a jury, be drafted, etc.). Hence, it is not necessary to go through more trouble than determining where you were born and/or who your parents were.
Citizenship of any nation does bring only marginal protections compared to the simple fact of being human and not something else (animal, inanimate object, etc). Therefore, the way of determining what is human life and what isn't needs to have higher standards than the way of determining who's a citizen of country X and who isn't - just like criminal trials (that put the accused in jeopardy of losing his freedom or even his life) need higher standards than civil lawsuits (which are just about money, mostly).
beings become citizens on birth indicates some legal status being conveyed at birth
And that status is ... citizenship. Nothing else.
You are adding to that some additional mystical legal status before that
Sorry, "human being" isn't a mystical legal status. I can be a perfectly vaild human being without having citizenship of country X. Heck, without _any_ citizenship at all, even though that's rare nowadays.
I may not be able to vote in country X, but the penal code of most (non-scumbag) countries doesn't usually distinguish between crimes against citizens and crimes against non-citizens. If you injure or kill me, you'll be stuck in jail, regardless of my citizenship.
I can also change my citizenship, drop it, or acquire additional citizenships. Compared to my status as a human being, citizenships are as volatile as the clothes I wear.
You are adding complexity to a simple statement in order to make it fit your personal beliefs.
No, I'm just not reading something into a definition of citizenship that just isn't there.
"All men are created equal...". Why didn't the founding fathers save themselves two letters and replaced the fancy latin "created" word by one that's more easily understood ("born")? Heck, they could have copied the phrase, with "born" in it, from other documents of the time.
Parents apologize to kid.
Probably not.
Oh come on. It should be evident from the context that I was referring to the life of humans as organisms, not the beginning of human species.
The personhood of a individual human begins sometime after birth,
Individual human and person are the same thing. Unless you're really looking for a convenient way of getting rid of undesirables.
(But not in all; Peter Singer makes good points about euthanasia of severely crippled infants.)
I am "living with a severe disability", or rather one that did have an extremely gloomy outlook at birth, but I nonetheless survived for over three decades and I _like my life the way it is_ and if that ever changes, _I_ am going to something about it, not anyone else. I'd like to introduce any nazi eugenics scumbag who would have suggested killing me to my fist first, then to my boots, and then to my four friends H&K and S&W. It's only fair.
So you are asserting that the Constitution recognizes that a person is human sometime after conception but before birth, but only becomes a citizen at birth?
The "a person is human" part makes my head spin. What it that supposed to mean?
But yes, you could say that I assert that. Citizenship is a fairly arbitrary legal status, which each country can define in their own way. Some define it by whether you're born in the country or not, some make it hereditary (and therefore completely independent of where the actual delivery happened). It says nothing about what is human or not, unless you subscribe to theories that only citizens of country X are human and everyone else must not be ... quite human ? Sub-human ?
A much clearer interpretation would be that personhood and citizenship begin at birth, and not before.
Er, no. The paragraph says nothing about what constitutes a human, or a person. Your "clearer interpretation" is merely a more convenient interpretation by your personal belief that.
What did the declaration of independence say ? All mean are created equal ... right ? Created. Not born.
That human life begins at birth is an ancient myth. It's even codified in the Old Testament. Do you subscribe to ancient myths?
rather than taking the simplest meaning of the words as written.
The simplest meaning of the words as written defines citizenship, nothing more. Interpreting a definition of personhood or human life into the words is neither simple nor words as written.
But none of that is actually relevant to the question at hand, which is not when "life" or "personhood" begins, but when Constitutional protection begins. And that's clear: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside."
That just defines citizenship. Non-citizens also enjoy some legal protections, for the simple fact that they are humans, too.
The greenhouse gas theory is fun and all until you look at how much of greenhouse gas is made up of CO2. It's a fraction of a percent.
Actually, CO2 contribution to the total greenhouse effect (i.e. the temperature difference between the about -10C that Earth's surface would have without an atmosphere, and the temperature we observe) is about 10% to 15%. Hardly insignificant, especially if you consider ...
The major contributor? Water!
But they had the skills, and they knew what they were aiming for, and most importantly, they were handed bucketloads of cash to rebuild.
Well, they weren't handed more than other countries. Compared to the size of the country and the amount of destruction, they were handed less than average. Sucks to lose a world war (or two).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Plan#Expenditures
Unless Asimov has a very rosy view of corporations, the rental contract for those robots will include a term that holds the person renting the robot liable for most damage to the robot (probably everything except for normal wear and tear, and acts of god).
Who came up with the Marshall Plan again ?
I knew it: Quantum physics and statistics are insanity.
The other candidate is less eloquent and not quite as good at saying whatever he needs to to get elected. Not that he's not trying really hard, though.
Hello, where have you been the last 7 years ? Changing what you say makes you a flip-flopper. Real men stay the course.
The first one could be read as bashing the military (bad bad bad), the second one can't.
Looks like someone didn't read Asimov, because the robot's correct actions would have been to follow the orders even when they result in damage to it.
Hint to all new robot owners: As a first thing, _forbid_ the robot to damage any of your possessions. This includes your pets.
Unless you want the robot to sacrifice itself for you... Then order 2 preceding order 3 is VERY useful.
Such a case would be covered by the first law.
If you want to sacrifice the robot to save one of your other possessions, then the priority of the second law over the third is very useful.
In that case, it could still have damaged itself by trying to rotate against the pin and burning out its motor.
And the pin would be extra weight.