I have no idea how aggregating someone's track record in rapes with a few pictures, a Google map widget, a time line and a brief description of the events is the same as.... umm, care to list the well-intentioned attacks on a minority that preceded the downfall of a democracy? The Reichskristallnacht doesn't count since it can hardly be called well-intentioned. Neither can the Civil War in pre-Franco Spain, Mussolini's coup d'etat in 1922, or Pinochet's more violent version in 1973. Heck, even the Roman Republic fell because of a coup-d'etat.
So historically, the biggest threats to a democracy are a politically engaged military, followed by an apathetic or bought-out voting public. Not the equivalent of an online police-blotter.
I think you've brought up another valid point: some researchers might take the data, rehash it and publish it as their own, getting credit for it, much as you have taken my point, restated it with a minor additions, and got all the mod points for it.
Creationists regularly mangle papers, taking quotes out of context and all.
Get ready for an onslaught of mangled data analysis, with data being taken out of context, the results published to some blog, and people making policy decision based on those blog postings.
the media will focus on the new controversies this will spawn
That's a guarantee. While in theory, I welcome this development, I suspect that in practice it will lead to more chaos than before. Not because the data is shoddy, but because some meteorologist will think that running a data set through an excel curve fitting algorithm is science.
After some quick googling, it looks like articles are being cross-posted. For a site that seems to be very close in spirit and content, see http://themujahidblog.com/
Fascinating stuff. Underestimating these people - or even misunderstanding them - could be fatal.
Get the Google cache. No images, but still some fascinating articles. The one about countering the counter terrorism experts displays significant intelligence, the ability to identify their own weaknesses and a very solid understanding how how counter terrorism experts work, and how to weaken the discussion among counter terrorism experts. These aren't run-of-the-mill yahoos with an axe to grind. http://74.125.155.132/search?q=cache:S0v4mrD31jYJ:www.revolutionmuslim.com/
It's kinda like Chinese nationalists flooding the comment section of a newspaper story that doesn't paint China in a glowing light with things like "Stop picking on China! You only do this with China!" It's a simple matter of look, and ye shall find. Some people just can't get over their confirmation bias.
I have only mentioned the deliberate destruction of an embryo.
What does the destruction of an embryo have to do with a story that deals with the manipulation of unfertilized eggs? I assumed your terminology didn't reflect your intent. I stand corrected - you did not misspeak, you were completely off-topic.
There are such things as objective truths
Now we're getting somewhere - you subscribe to the idea that there are objective truths that are knowable to us. Good luck with that. Every attempt by minds far greater than yours to identify those got stuck in a morass of conflicting definitions.
Patents protect small businesses and innovation from competition, including big companies that will do anything in their power to stomp little companies with disruptive technologies.
Nonsense. You want to know why? Because lawyers charge $500 an hour, and that includes the time they spend dreaming about the case while asleep. A small business does not have the money to litigate a tricky case against a large incumbent, unless the lawyers decide to take the case pro-bono. And even that's not a given, because even lawyers have to eat at some point, and can't run a pro-bono case forever. In other words: lawyers and customers protect a small business against a larger one. Patents are only marginally tied into that system.
Patents are part of capitalism, so no, there's no tide turning.
Patents are a government-granted monopoly. To be exact, they are actually the complete anti-thesis of capitalism.
So where does China fit into this? They are not US allies, as Taiwan is always a crisis waiting to happen for the US and China. China is not a Russian ally, as they've fought quite a few wars over the past 100 years. Russia has sold China some weapons, but Russia would sell nukes to North Korea if it would get the money for it. But they're certainly not primary allies. Let's say they're on speaking terms. And I would argue that in a global thermo-nuclear war, China will be important in one way or another.
So what is it? Oh, right: China is by the vast majority of economic and military metrics a first world nation, except that it is in polar opposition to the US.
The more I think about your post, the less it makes sense.
Because you still haven't explained how destroying an unfertilized egg is immoral in the scope of rule-set deontology. Your parent poster was giving an example of the many paradoxes to which deontologists open themselves up. Yes, that particular example is easy to dismiss - but others aren't. And unless you describe in more detail which rule-sets you subscribe to as part of your deontologic philosphy, it is impossible to understand how you initial assessment is anything more than an "I don't like this" with big words.
The trick is identifying who is skilled and who is lucky. No one has enough time to play an infinite amount of times. As a result, skill has to be identified over a limited amount of hands.
Also, Rary merely provided an explanation that poker has an element of skill - but not how much of a person's winnings is attributable to skill, and how much is to luck. That's the crux of the problem.
And yet all you provided was anecdotal evidence. Food for thought: if 1000 people make 1000 dice rolls, what are the odds that one person has an average dice roll of 4?
Considering that the biggest gripe of the WSP old-hands is that young players are ruining the game by relying too much on aggressive betting, I would like to argue that it is not nearly as much a game of skill as a lot of people think.
Yes, there's a big gap between someone who doesn't what they're doing and someone who knows the odds, the optimal bet associated with the odds and when someone's bluffing. At the same time, once you get to a certain level, it boils down to whether you get the cards you need. If you don't, you will lose - regardless of how awesome your strategy, card-counting and face-reading is.
So, yes, there's skill in Poker. But you can still do nothing but lose just because you're getting crap cards - or win just because you keep getting awesome cards.
I normally don't do this, but... this deserves a +5 mod asap. And a permanent page on the EFF site for being the singularly best description of why the recording industry is lying and about what.
That's more important to you than your civil liberties?
Congratulations. You just found an example for the case that when presented with the choice between food on the table and civil liberties, the vast majority of people will choose food on the table. The misleading part is that the choice is rarely that stark. I choose not to work in an industry that forces me to support stupid copyright laws. I could perhaps make more money there, but I don't need it that badly.
Civil liberties become important only when people realize that there is more than one way to get food on the table.
I've never been arrested, tasered, etc because I don't do stupid shit to provoke those outcomes.
Or, alternatively, it is because you never came across a cop who doesn't like the way you look, is looking for someone else when he "finds" you, or is just a general asshole on a power trip. Congratulations, you got lucky. Or, in other words, just because you win the lottery doesn't mean that God loves you.
Reading Comprehension, part 1. "You're correct that not being able to freely say to a black man "Niggers are like rats, and should not mingle with the White Race" is a restriction on your freedom." is a sentence that states a semantic fact. It says nothing about whether that restriction is positive, negative or in force anywhere. The other examples are also restrictions on freedoms, with again nothing being stated towards their net positive or negative effects on society. "And, if you want to restrict it to speech, you are not allowed to say to someone "I'll kill you if you don't vote my way", or the obligatory "Fire!" in a crowded theater." is the only sentence that declares the examples to actually be existing law somewhere.
Reading comprehension, part 2. "This was your quick introduction into the topic of the social contract, whereby you give up some of your rights to live among others." is a compound sentence, where the part after the comma defines the object of the part before the comma. Note that others is missing qualifier, as grammatically, it refers to "rights", not the implied "people". Note that at no point do I define what rights should be given up to live among other people. I only said that in the context of the social contract, some rights are given up to allow for peaceful co-existence.
In short, I compiled a list of rules. Nothing more, nothing less.
So yes, you made a whole bunch of assumptions that are not supported by what I wrote here. It's particularly funny since I'm frequently railing against laws that ban hate-speech.
As for Stonewallred being violent, ignorant and racist - you're correct, on a second reading, the sentence I quoted isn't nearly as damning as I thought. For that, you'd have to read one of his posts from earlier today. I must admit it tinged my perception of his post in this thread. There's the possibility that he's just being sarcastic, but... it's unlikely at this point.
Please point out where I am in favor of restricting free speech that goes beyond promising death or that is designed to cause significant and immediate physical harm? If you're stumped, I also offer reading comprehension lessons.
When you can not, by rule of law, call a person a name or state they are inferior just because of their race, or sex, or ethnicity, then freedom is lost, and probably will never be regained.
Followed immediately by....
And no I am not a racist.
Yikes. Cognitive dissonance, anyone? You do realize that sentence one is the definition of racist?
You're correct that not being able to freely say to a black man "Niggers are like rats, and should not mingle with the White Race" is a restriction on your freedom. Just like not being able to shoot anyone you want on sight is a restriction on your freedom, or not being able to fuck any woman you want, regardless of whether she agrees or not, or taking somebody's car, regardless of whether they want to give it to you. And, if you want to restrict it to speech, you are not allowed to say to someone "I'll kill you if you don't vote my way", or the obligatory "Fire!" in a crowded theater.
This was your quick introduction into the topic of the social contract, whereby you give up some of your rights to live among others.
Oh, and as for your last bit about "nigger" landing you in jail - Michael Richards didn't go to jail.
Racists would be funny if they wouldn't be so ignorant and violent.
What makes you think that this is idea has sprung fully formed from Obama's forehead, without input from anybody else? Do you really think decisions are made like this? Also, please point out where I endorse the plan because Obama endorses it. As it is, 90% of your post is a giant straw man.
Slashdot Mirror
I have no idea how aggregating someone's track record in rapes with a few pictures, a Google map widget, a time line and a brief description of the events is the same as.... umm, care to list the well-intentioned attacks on a minority that preceded the downfall of a democracy? The Reichskristallnacht doesn't count since it can hardly be called well-intentioned. Neither can the Civil War in pre-Franco Spain, Mussolini's coup d'etat in 1922, or Pinochet's more violent version in 1973. Heck, even the Roman Republic fell because of a coup-d'etat.
So historically, the biggest threats to a democracy are a politically engaged military, followed by an apathetic or bought-out voting public. Not the equivalent of an online police-blotter.
I think you've brought up another valid point: some researchers might take the data, rehash it and publish it as their own, getting credit for it, much as you have taken my point, restated it with a minor additions, and got all the mod points for it.
I stand on the shoulder of giants. ;)
Creationists regularly mangle papers, taking quotes out of context and all.
Get ready for an onslaught of mangled data analysis, with data being taken out of context, the results published to some blog, and people making policy decision based on those blog postings.
the media will focus on the new controversies this will spawn
That's a guarantee. While in theory, I welcome this development, I suspect that in practice it will lead to more chaos than before. Not because the data is shoddy, but because some meteorologist will think that running a data set through an excel curve fitting algorithm is science.
After some quick googling, it looks like articles are being cross-posted. For a site that seems to be very close in spirit and content, see http://themujahidblog.com/
Fascinating stuff. Underestimating these people - or even misunderstanding them - could be fatal.
Get the Google cache. No images, but still some fascinating articles. The one about countering the counter terrorism experts displays significant intelligence, the ability to identify their own weaknesses and a very solid understanding how how counter terrorism experts work, and how to weaken the discussion among counter terrorism experts. These aren't run-of-the-mill yahoos with an axe to grind.
http://74.125.155.132/search?q=cache:S0v4mrD31jYJ:www.revolutionmuslim.com/
Global warming and volcanoes are related.
What's your source for this?
It's kinda like Chinese nationalists flooding the comment section of a newspaper story that doesn't paint China in a glowing light with things like "Stop picking on China! You only do this with China!" It's a simple matter of look, and ye shall find. Some people just can't get over their confirmation bias.
"Possession is 90% of the law." Words to remember.
In my history class in Europe, WW1 and WW2 were taught as having been one big war, with a 20 year interlude.
Spot-on analysis, in other words.
Schweet. I've created an old adage. :D
I have only mentioned the deliberate destruction of an embryo.
What does the destruction of an embryo have to do with a story that deals with the manipulation of unfertilized eggs? I assumed your terminology didn't reflect your intent. I stand corrected - you did not misspeak, you were completely off-topic.
There are such things as objective truths
Now we're getting somewhere - you subscribe to the idea that there are objective truths that are knowable to us. Good luck with that. Every attempt by minds far greater than yours to identify those got stuck in a morass of conflicting definitions.
Patents protect small businesses and innovation from competition, including big companies that will do anything in their power to stomp little companies with disruptive technologies.
Nonsense. You want to know why? Because lawyers charge $500 an hour, and that includes the time they spend dreaming about the case while asleep. A small business does not have the money to litigate a tricky case against a large incumbent, unless the lawyers decide to take the case pro-bono. And even that's not a given, because even lawyers have to eat at some point, and can't run a pro-bono case forever. In other words: lawyers and customers protect a small business against a larger one. Patents are only marginally tied into that system.
Patents are part of capitalism, so no, there's no tide turning.
Patents are a government-granted monopoly. To be exact, they are actually the complete anti-thesis of capitalism.
It seems then that the old terminology has outlived its usefulness.
So where does China fit into this? They are not US allies, as Taiwan is always a crisis waiting to happen for the US and China. China is not a Russian ally, as they've fought quite a few wars over the past 100 years. Russia has sold China some weapons, but Russia would sell nukes to North Korea if it would get the money for it. But they're certainly not primary allies. Let's say they're on speaking terms. And I would argue that in a global thermo-nuclear war, China will be important in one way or another.
So what is it? Oh, right: China is by the vast majority of economic and military metrics a first world nation, except that it is in polar opposition to the US.
The more I think about your post, the less it makes sense.
Because you still haven't explained how destroying an unfertilized egg is immoral in the scope of rule-set deontology. Your parent poster was giving an example of the many paradoxes to which deontologists open themselves up. Yes, that particular example is easy to dismiss - but others aren't. And unless you describe in more detail which rule-sets you subscribe to as part of your deontologic philosphy, it is impossible to understand how you initial assessment is anything more than an "I don't like this" with big words.
The trick is identifying who is skilled and who is lucky. No one has enough time to play an infinite amount of times. As a result, skill has to be identified over a limited amount of hands.
Also, Rary merely provided an explanation that poker has an element of skill - but not how much of a person's winnings is attributable to skill, and how much is to luck. That's the crux of the problem.
Please stop giving anecdotal evidence..
And yet all you provided was anecdotal evidence. Food for thought: if 1000 people make 1000 dice rolls, what are the odds that one person has an average dice roll of 4?
Considering that the biggest gripe of the WSP old-hands is that young players are ruining the game by relying too much on aggressive betting, I would like to argue that it is not nearly as much a game of skill as a lot of people think.
Yes, there's a big gap between someone who doesn't what they're doing and someone who knows the odds, the optimal bet associated with the odds and when someone's bluffing. At the same time, once you get to a certain level, it boils down to whether you get the cards you need. If you don't, you will lose - regardless of how awesome your strategy, card-counting and face-reading is.
So, yes, there's skill in Poker. But you can still do nothing but lose just because you're getting crap cards - or win just because you keep getting awesome cards.
I normally don't do this, but... this deserves a +5 mod asap. And a permanent page on the EFF site for being the singularly best description of why the recording industry is lying and about what.
Thanks.
That's more important to you than your civil liberties?
Congratulations. You just found an example for the case that when presented with the choice between food on the table and civil liberties, the vast majority of people will choose food on the table. The misleading part is that the choice is rarely that stark. I choose not to work in an industry that forces me to support stupid copyright laws. I could perhaps make more money there, but I don't need it that badly.
Civil liberties become important only when people realize that there is more than one way to get food on the table.
I've never been arrested, tasered, etc because I don't do stupid shit to provoke those outcomes.
Or, alternatively, it is because you never came across a cop who doesn't like the way you look, is looking for someone else when he "finds" you, or is just a general asshole on a power trip. Congratulations, you got lucky. Or, in other words, just because you win the lottery doesn't mean that God loves you.
Reading Comprehension, part 1.
"You're correct that not being able to freely say to a black man "Niggers are like rats, and should not mingle with the White Race" is a restriction on your freedom." is a sentence that states a semantic fact. It says nothing about whether that restriction is positive, negative or in force anywhere. The other examples are also restrictions on freedoms, with again nothing being stated towards their net positive or negative effects on society. "And, if you want to restrict it to speech, you are not allowed to say to someone "I'll kill you if you don't vote my way", or the obligatory "Fire!" in a crowded theater." is the only sentence that declares the examples to actually be existing law somewhere.
Reading comprehension, part 2.
"This was your quick introduction into the topic of the social contract, whereby you give up some of your rights to live among others." is a compound sentence, where the part after the comma defines the object of the part before the comma. Note that others is missing qualifier, as grammatically, it refers to "rights", not the implied "people".
Note that at no point do I define what rights should be given up to live among other people. I only said that in the context of the social contract, some rights are given up to allow for peaceful co-existence.
In short, I compiled a list of rules. Nothing more, nothing less.
So yes, you made a whole bunch of assumptions that are not supported by what I wrote here. It's particularly funny since I'm frequently railing against laws that ban hate-speech.
As for Stonewallred being violent, ignorant and racist - you're correct, on a second reading, the sentence I quoted isn't nearly as damning as I thought. For that, you'd have to read one of his posts from earlier today. I must admit it tinged my perception of his post in this thread. There's the possibility that he's just being sarcastic, but... it's unlikely at this point.
Please point out where I am in favor of restricting free speech that goes beyond promising death or that is designed to cause significant and immediate physical harm? If you're stumped, I also offer reading comprehension lessons.
When you can not, by rule of law, call a person a name or state they are inferior just because of their race, or sex, or ethnicity, then freedom is lost, and probably will never be regained.
Followed immediately by....
And no I am not a racist.
Yikes. Cognitive dissonance, anyone? You do realize that sentence one is the definition of racist?
You're correct that not being able to freely say to a black man "Niggers are like rats, and should not mingle with the White Race" is a restriction on your freedom. Just like not being able to shoot anyone you want on sight is a restriction on your freedom, or not being able to fuck any woman you want, regardless of whether she agrees or not, or taking somebody's car, regardless of whether they want to give it to you. And, if you want to restrict it to speech, you are not allowed to say to someone "I'll kill you if you don't vote my way", or the obligatory "Fire!" in a crowded theater.
This was your quick introduction into the topic of the social contract, whereby you give up some of your rights to live among others.
Oh, and as for your last bit about "nigger" landing you in jail - Michael Richards didn't go to jail.
Racists would be funny if they wouldn't be so ignorant and violent.
What makes you think that this is idea has sprung fully formed from Obama's forehead, without input from anybody else? Do you really think decisions are made like this? Also, please point out where I endorse the plan because Obama endorses it. As it is, 90% of your post is a giant straw man.
As for the rest of your arguments... I'll just point here as a start. That was 2008, and the problems have only gotten worse: http://www.universetoday.com/2008/04/03/report-constellation-program-has-serious-issues/