Now you are changing what you meant by "personally". Your first post implied personalized profiling. Now you are saying you meant personnel doing the profiling and that it would not matter if the profile is not public.
We are all products of different experiences and have different thresholds for finding things creepy. No need to call names.
Yes, I am currently a foreigner. I also lived in US, close to a decade, in the past. I would understand NSA wanting to have surveillance on countries where the US (or even its allies) has security threats from and perhaps some additional heads-up intel on the directions of foreign policy of friendly nations. Everyone does that.
What shocked me (although many of us suspected this since 2006) and everyone else is that they seem to be collecting data on EVERYONE in them, not just suspects or governments; and they are archiving it all. I would not be surprised at all if US monitored governments and significant foreign actors, but blanket data collection on regular foreign citizens (these are not just communications with US residents, but all email of people simply using US based email and other services from their own countries) is unheard of. This is quite at odds with the policies of all modern democracies to date. If you cannot relate to it, imagine how US would react if China or Russia were found to have grabbed private emails of all US citizens, mainly to mop up their own dissidents, but will keep all other email as well, you know... just in case. Would you still call this a "game" and a "winning strategy"?
NSA previously clearly and repeatedly stated that they well understood that they were not allowed by law, to have domestic US population under surveillance. I am not sure how you can defend domestic surveillance of this nature by simply saying that this is how things work in a cloak and dagger world. I thought there was an explicit legal separation of duties between national and international security agencies in US after previous fiascoes.
And if I understand US law correctly, congressional committees are not allowed to make up secret laws that clearly violate the constitution to legalize such things, without amending the constitution first - that would be null and void. Now that there is documentary evidence of constitutional violations, it will go to supreme court. ACLU already filed the case.
Tell me, do you think it is OK for some congressional committee to make a secret law to allow a gun registry so that it may save lives? Or is only the fourth amendment expendable? One can't just "classify" away constitutional violations. A citizen's duty to the constitution overrides duty to any NDA. In this way, Snowden is an American patriot, however expensive and inconvenient his actions will end up as. No one said running a democracy is supposed to be easy.
> I know when I play a game that I've won, I'll sometimes share details on my plan to win, especially if they were very situational, but if there is some novel or sensitive strategy that I can re-use, I'll never mention that.
No one cares about your strategy secrets. There are still some very basic *rules* of the game you need to adhere to if you want to be seen as a player. Loading the dice isn't a "strategy".
> isn't actually an analyst who knows how this is used
Well, he is hardly the only one. There have been other high-level, very experienced, whistle-blowers (Binney, Drake) who opined the same. The new whistle blower just produced concrete documentary evidence such that there may be a proper legal challenge. Tell me, how do you differentiate the morality and conduct of this guy from that of Daniel Ellsberg?
I don't believe I have these views just because I am a foreigner or have views from a minority. So far, I see that the guy who invented the Web, the guy who wrote the Patriot Act and the guy who leaked the Pentagon Papers (and considered a courageous hero, once passions cooled down), all think this is out of line and not in the long-term interests of the health of American democracy and freedoms.
Seriously, US is supposed to be lecturing the developing world about the rule of law, individual freedoms etc, not the other way around.
I second this. I am nearly in the exact spot as you (although not naturalized, nor in US ATM) and cannot help feeling the same way (lived in and like US, important issue for me, read everything on this, points, threshold etc). It does indeed have a chilling effect on electronic free speech even if it is all imagined because the scale of this is just mind-boggling. Realistically, one could argue that it is unlikely to be that draconian at this point. But it feels like a Pascal's wager (small effects from free speech vs. potentially large personal losses). Even if things are probably nothing like this now, given that they have enough storage to keep permanent records of all text content, who knows how anything will be interpreted a few years from now.
What recourse would I have if I some algorithm decides to put me on a no-fly list? I trained for years in stuff that has employment opportunities only in limited job markets and restrictions on mobility hurt. I am not even a citizen; even many citizens had no clue on why they were on such lists and were not allowed to contest.
Developed countries are great because of transparency. This introduces a humongous black box into the equation. US was supposed to stand for everything against things like these, not lead the way.
I read this article earlier. I just wonder what they can possibly be doing with 5 zetabytes (I hope this part is wrong since this would cost at least a Trillion dollars for the having this kind of storage). Its almost as if Dilbert's pointy haired boss said: Go, make a copy of the Internet... and also wrote a check for it. Its a frikkin Panopticon. And all they have to show for it are two "maybe" cases?
Also Indian here. Relax. They all know that... at least on this site. I for one am looking for some original, good-natured call center jokes in a robot apocalypse. We can do Japanese Mecha jokes or Foxconn robot jokes next week.
Very odd indeed. Especially since in the past Pew polls, the percent of Indians who felt US could do no wrong were higher than Americans. In other words, US was more popular in India than in US itself.
I think this has to do with
a.) India having more Internet users b.) Indians using more or less the same (participating) Internet services as Americans (unlike say, the Chinese and perhaps the Russians).
It does not appear that the color in the heat map is population adjusted.
I am from India... trained as a physician here, completed a PhD in US, and returned back. While there, I took time to study western history and philosophy, particularly enlightenment philosophy, because I felt I could do better justice to my dissertation. I hold the enlightenment period and its values in highest regard. However, although I understand that the march through history has not always been forward, I hold enlightenment accomplishments at this point, as something resilient, rather than fragile.
> I can understand why you try and balance the debate with your statements.
Yes. I do that, consciously in fact... from my academic background. I would never make a good polemicist because I would not subscribe exclusively to any single narrative:-).
> It is hard to discriminate whether Alex Jones' is simply a loon or it is a false flag disinformation programme
Or perhaps just a shrewd businessman making a news product for specific audience.
> that that was then. Making "moral equivalence" between acts of the past
I am trying to compare actions at similar levels of intellectual/cultural/social/economic development. Since Islamic societies have not reached current western levels of maturity, it would be unfair to compare them simply on the axis of time. So I anachronistically compare them to pre-enlightenment western societies.
> instead of cementing a hard won piece (as was done for Germany, Japan and Korea)
I don't think that was ever an option. What happened with the reconstruction of Germany and Japan was rather unique in world history (Korea was a different case). Each had well-developed, top-down institutional apparatus, that was used to re-configure the respective societies (and thankfully, both the victors and the vanquished acted exactly as they should - neither exploitative nor vindictive). Especially in Afghanistan, no such apparatus exists, and with the concept of vendetta, a cherished tribal custom, with tribal loyalties overriding any national identity, and given that the colonial-era control systems are no longer acceptable, I don't think anything beyond loose control through proxies was ever a realistic option and even that took a long time to settle in. The work would take several generations.
> The country that your statement misses is Turkey.
Yes. In fact, it was the first country I looked across for in that pew poll when it came out and the general picture looked dismal. I was surprised, as I expected the numbers from there to be more reassuring. But then, I have Muslim acquaintances who say that they believe their scriptures literally while going about their lives as if they don't. Christians who say they are Biblical literalists, do the same (thankfully, literalism was a never a major problem with non-Abrahamic faiths). It's something to do with self-identity of being a good faithful person, I guess (or I am a romantic, seeing what I want to see, as you would charge). Trouble though is they would still vote on it, even if they really don't mean it or get it.
I actually did not read about Al Ghazali earlier, while I did read about Ibn Sina and Al-Farabi. So I assume that you read about the later two now. But I do have one more to read about.
I just started with Stephen Coughlin and I like his arguments. He made his points plainly and well so far and its generally informative to hear about institutions on that side. It will take a while before I finish his series.
I am not convinced about the arguments of Cultural Marxism yet. Maybe I will change my mind later, but for now it appears to be a simplistic and convenient explanation of what happened in the 60s to the US society. I need far more proof to attribute causality for such claims.
Lets close this discussion unless you have significant points to add (I don't). Thank you for your time. I did get to know the perspective of someone with whom I would not have agreed with at all on this topic.
I am familiar and agree with the failings of BBC and Al Jazeera. They are not perfect. BBC is now a sloppy bureaucracy that tries to be too politically correct while allowing sexual exploiters to exist in its ranks. Al Jazeera does have a blind spot when it comes to Qatar. But that's expected and it is easy enough to ignore those bits since better alternatives are absent for the purposes.
I see Qatar regime as progressive by local standards and generally considered their Wahabist affiliations more to appease the public than of actual conviction. Of course, in families like these, there generally tend to be a few genuine believers. But they are more business driven than theologically driven.
I hardly consider Obama administration to have fulfilled its promises. While it failed dismally in many areas for its actions to match its rhetoric, I still consider it a minor improvement over the failings of the previous administration. The bar was low. And I don't think the next administration will be truthful either. That's just how politics go. My general view of partisan politics is a jaded one. Its really not on my radar if a few died in Benghazi or if millions were placed in misguided Solyndra investments. All terrible things, but we are well past that point. With US foreign policy, I only take a look at far higher casualty figures and billions in losses. But the recent stories with regards to the justice department are quite troubling.
I am familiar with many of the anti-muslim sources you listed. When the New Atheist movement was in the news, quite a few were brought up. Later, I actually read much of Anders Brevick's manifesto in the days following his massacre trying to figure out what animated him to do something like that. Many of the arguments you present were covered in it and much much more. I already had read the depressing Pew survey.
Taqiyya may be real, but it often becomes a lazy argument, a non-falsifiable hypothesis, along the lines of Russell's teapot or Sagan's dragon. I differ from you in that I give a lot less credence to Islamic organization in trying to take over the world. Most of the radical talk comes off as hubris and flamboyance and little else. I listened to their so-called brilliant apologetics. They were intellectual light-weights.
My views are also shaped from by my contacts - some extremely smart muslim friends. They are quite modern. One, a particularly lucid minded one, is even a strong atheist (obviously not muslim now). But they all have doctoral degrees and do not represent general public. So I feel it is correlated to education.
> Just like Google, Breitbart is a news aggregator.
Big difference. Breitbart has a thick filter. Its an aggregater like HuffingtonPost and nothing like Google News which uses non-ideological machine filters.
> Islam is waging to destroy our civilization (just as it destroyed the Byzantine, Persian, Afghan Buddhist and various other civilizations throughout history
That it did. Just as Christianity destroyed Aztec, Mayan and several Pagan civilizations. Just as Aryans destroyed their Indus predecessors. Such is the nature of history. However, the current Islamic world is in disarray. Some may have grand ambitions to make the whole world Islamic, but they are in no shape to execute such ideas. Its all just talk and bluster. Later, I expect them to be better organized... get better educated... develop functioning modern political structures and such... and when they do, the ideological emotions will get blunted over generations. When there are enough advanced jobs, there will be fewer ideologically vulnerable youths. Of course, I realize that you think this is wishful thinking. I think that it was how it worked in the past. I realize that you feel Islam is unlike other instances from the past and should not be equated. I acknowledge that it has greater ideological strength that makes change difficult, but not immune to it.
> and most foreign media too (Al Jazeera, BBC etc).
I disagree. With local media, it is viable to tailor news to a specific audience. For an International news service, it is much harder to appear honest while doing the same. I trust a major European news outlet better when reporting a significant US event and a major US news outlet reporting on a significant European event, but not so much for their relative local coverage. Everyone gets more objective when they are less attached to conclusions.
For International analyses, I prefer ForeignPolicy.com. Economist has great analyses on a variety of topics. Their audience is fairly critical and generally compensates any skew. Generally speaking, financial publications have very little tolerance for political noise and propaganda (it costs money to be misinformed) and focus on the numbers and the big picture. London Financial Times and Bloomberg are good in my book.
> if you say "Al Jazeera" then I'll die laughing.
For middle-east matters, Al Jazeera is great. Feel free to die laughing. I don't pay much attention to their opinion sections which have a rather homogenous and strong liberal flavor. But for boots on the ground coverage in the region, there really isn't another choice. They are the ones getting shot at in conflict zones. They are the ones getting kicked out from countries. They are the ones with risky interviews. And if they do have an opinion from time to time, they earned that right, unlike others.
I found their coverage and programming better than most. They don't invite talking heads. For me to pay attention, the guest must have proper credentials and accomplishments outside of politics and their objective expertise must have relevance to the topic at hand. The reporter must not insinuate his/her opinions too much or talk over guests. I dislike when guests get pushy with their views. Such people should never have been invited in the first place, once they misbehaved on air. Their guests don't start praising the host or get called to just agree with the host on everything. In all these respects, Al Jazeera and BBC tower over US media in having more balanced debates. And these are basic things, hardly high standards.
> it is generally a better source of high-level facts that most of the alternatives
OK. Do list some non-political original journalism and analytical work that Breitbart produces. I just went there and it was impossible to glean anything useful. The signal to noise ratio is terrible. If there are occasional jewels, I certainly am not going to waste that much time finding those. I agree that all sites have some noise, but I just don't want to spend time where the balance is not in my favor.
> and as a medical professional I'm sure you understand that "phobia" has a precise meaning
My use of the term was colloquial, not clinical. I left practice a long time ago.
> Only the ignorant use or take notice of this word. Unfortunately, the ignorance about the doctrines of > Islam and its political machinations is staggering, even by most Muslims
We all know about the problems of Islamic fundamentalism. I have plenty of counter-arguments when middle-easterners say they are exploited by the West (mainly: you did all this too, when you were in charge...). But, I know enough Islamic history to understand it as a political and cultural phenomenon and in context of world history. The difference is when you see the current anachronistic and horrifying practices in the Islamic world, you seem to blame it exclusively on religion. I instead see it as a self-destructive response to a cultural defeat of a once proud civilization, worsened by mass poverty (Oil economies don't count, middle-east must have human/intellectual economies that they can take pride in, as individuals), without which Islam would be much more tame. There were times in Islamic history when scholars could actually discuss atheism and critique Islam without death threats because believers then felt secure in th
> Everyone dies at some point. By herding the "insert group here" into the gas chambers, we're only making the inevitable process more efficient
That's not my point. The question is whether the embryo qualifies as a person in the first place, not how long persons get to live. The discussion of terminating persons comes only once person-hood begins. I am of the opinion that a beating heart and a functioning body do not alone constitute person hood, but sentience and capacity to suffer do (if the brain can be moved into a jar, it is a person for me). That is my moral framework. The sentience is the locus of sanctity for me. If there was never a sentience to begin with (embryo) or if the sentience has been destroyed for good (brain death), debating murder is absurd. I argued that we cannot kill functioning brains because that is where person hood is situated. What do you believe that we should not destroy? Some vague and undefined notion of soul?
At 6 weeks, the embryo is a fertilized seed, germinated, but has not even definitively taken root yet. You are talking about it as if one is cutting down an oak, much less a sapling.
> I find your argument in support of abortion to be unconvincing and, frankly, sickening.
Feel free to be sickened all you like, I couldn't care less. But if you want a discussion, put forth your own moral framework and definitions based on objective notions. I have no emotional investment in my own framework and am open to a better one.
> So, when does a child become old enough that women no longer get to vote that it is legal to kill it?
Read my post again after you are done being snarky. I distinguished between an embryo, fetal development and a child. No one gets to vote to kill a child. And if the fetus has enough nervous system to suffer or think, it is a person.
I don't know anything about you. I do know how your arguments sound like.
> while acknowledging that late stage abortions do murder living organisms
I am opposed to late-term abortions because late-term fetuses perceive pain and have capacity to suffer (read my moral framework). I also place mother’s life in priority, when it is in danger (Eg: Eclampsia)
> but if you ever peruse Breitbart online
I don’t consider Breitbart as a news source. The site is political propaganda for the right like HuffingtonPost for the left. They may have entertainment value, but little intellectual value. Their job is to get you riled up, provide strong, emotional, one-sided arguments with simple narratives, to maintain your political loyalty for next elections and sufficiently immunize you against counter arguments when you stray, not to give you balanced arguments with confusing narratives. They are both preachers, not researchers.
> you will see that some of the later-term aborted babies are able to survive on their own
I don’t need a two-bit hack to tell me that. I have medical training and I actually delivered babies (no abortions). I know about fetal viability. You don’t know me either.
> You probably only get your news from the (left-leaning) mainstream media
I am not an American, although I lived there long enough and until recently, to understand your politics. The left-right divide is mostly an artificial, but entertaining facade for me.
I rely on non-partisan, international publications that put reporters on the ground, don’t rely on celebrity opinion-makers and personality-cults for ratings, report using statistics, rather than ideologies. US may be an advanced country and there are many things I admire about it, but most of your news sources just suck. That is true of left-wing news sources and even more true of right-wing news sources (notice how absolutely no one cites right-wing publications outside US, the left-wing newspapers have some credibility left, for now).
> many of the immigrants the US now gets as "refugees" are actually jihadis
You are not making any sense here and have some Islamophobia going there thanks to Breitbart, no doubt.
The top immigrant sources are not Islamic countries.
> Furthermore, consider the need for the US to import immigrants on a massive scale to keep its aging population in the life style to which they have become accustomed
Yes, you want cheap labor. You want weak labor laws that citizens won’t put up with.
> Now, if the US prevented abortion and instead gave money to support these native born Americans instead of using it to fund the lifestyles of the jihadis it is now importing then perhaps America would be on far less of a decline than it is now
How will that work, even in theory? First you are suggesting that US should discourage abortions because that will increase population and that will be better for US (collective good). Isn’t that precise what you accused me of just above? Around when you called me a Leftist and a Cultural Marxist.
> To a Leftist the value of an individual life is less important than the benefit to the Collective Good
Second, the US has a healthy fertility rate of 2.1, not great, but adequate to maintain the population, unlike Europe, admittedly not enough to handle Boomer retirement.
Third, a poor immigrant is content with even weak labor laws because it was worse back home, but why would a native born American put up with them? They end up on welfare, grow discontented as they see social inequality and riot.
You selectively picked a few points you felt safe defending. You have not told me if your moral framework is based on religious notions such as souls or on scientific notions (you did give me economic justifications - pretty socialist, if you ask me:-) ) or if you are ready to question the sexual morality of men as much as you do to women.
> in the case of a human child/embryo it has no choice and no voice
Do you understand what an embryo is? It doesn't think, suffer, feel or make choices of any kind. At 8 weeks, the nervous system is not at that stage yet. Equating an embryo to a human is almost like having an omelet and thinking you had fried chicken. 25% of embryos get spontaneously aborted by 6 weeks. By your definition, we have an avalanche of accidental deaths of full persons that overshadows deaths from any other cause. With elective abortions of embryos, we are not raising that by much.
A fetus is by definition, not a "child" as is convenient for you to frame as. But we can have a sane discussion here based on when the fetal capacity to suffer begins & develops self-awareness and draw moral/legal lines from that data. But if your positions are based on imaginary pre-scientific concepts such as "souls", there is no discussion to be had.
> yet perhaps you are happy for *millions* of murders to be carried out just so the mother can continue her lustful lifestyle?
You realize that married woman have abortions too, right? Are they being lustful? Many of the women seeking abortion are in monogamous relationships, even if unmarried. Do you also judge them as lustful? Do you consider fathers-to-be in these cases to also be lustful, or just mothers-to-be? A majority of women getting abortions are already mothers raising children who cannot handle one more, not party and one-night-stand types. A disproportionate number are poor at the time. Do you think it is moral to bring a child into a world when the mother is not in a position to provide a proper childhood yet? Are unplanned children statistically (don't care for anecdotes) poised to develop into superior citizens/human beings? Last one is rhetorical.
> Actually, I'm pro-choice
I doubt it. You sound like a conservative whose religious thought is in conflict with his libertarian thought. It just an association of political convenience, not philosophical parity. Don't bother with trying to reconcile them.
> That's the problem with young leftists, they believe in all diversities except the one that really matters - diversity of opinion.
When they do, they get branded as relativists with no moral compass who cannot be trusted. All that needs to be done is to base things on data at hand. When data changes, positions need to change. Diversity of opinion here is like giving a quack and a scientist equal time (and the left, with its New Age mumbo jumbo, is hardly spotless... but at least they don't impose those metaphysics on others). We can have standards of objectivity.
> to argue for enforcing your agenda on them shows the typical totalitarian streak of the political Left.
My position? Let women figure it out. Let them exclusively vote on whether it ought to be legal for them. Men don't get to choose. You can vote if you develop a uterus tomorrow. Do this sound totalitarian?
Yes, but people living in higher cost of living centers generally have higher relative incomes as well. So it is less of a proportional hit on the budget than elsewhere.
Nobody snivels at any priced hardware, as long as they are using it to make enough money to offset its price. There are as pricey workstation GPUs even now that people use for work.
> I got my XBox 360 in 2008 and paid £300 for it. (The mid-life RROD resulted in repair/replacement by Microsoft free of charge). To this day, that single unit still plays all the new games released for it. In five years time, will today's top end PC still play the newest games released for the PC?
Like you, I fancy a fast PC for my work, and so, the GPU is the only added cost. PC gaming is much cheaper when you build your PC. Like you, I find always-on requirements of games annoying and an all-seeing eye/ear... creepy. I could turn the camera off, but that is the significant component of the value proposition.
In late 2008, I got a GTX 260 for $200. I see at least another 2 years of life on it. Possibly more. One reason is that I accumulated a rather large library on online sales (many highly rated AAA titles at $2.50 - $5.00) that I have not gotten around to yet. The GPU pays for itself on cheaper games and no online fees alone.
Even for new games, only first-person perspective games need to be played at medium settings. Upcoming non-FP games like Company of Heroes 2 (a PC exclusive) will play just fine on my card. And even for new first-person games, I just need to tone down the settings to current console grade (medium), they play just fine. The card will further work for many more years if I find low settings acceptable.
The idea of extended life cycles of consoles is over-rated. The so called console optimization (fixed specs) only eeks out a certain percentage. It appears to be a larger effect with esoteric architectures since the devs produce worse products early on, not as much because they get so good later on. That, I can match later with CPU/GPU overclocks, that you cannot on a console. PC had 1080p, a generation ago. With inexpensive tuners, not only can I watch TV on my PC, I have been recording shows for a while, unlike what can be done with XBox One. Switch between TV, DVD, Game with no lag? OK, nothing new, apart from gesture and voice commands.
After the next gen consoles have been in the market for an year or two, I will get another mid-range GPU (which should be about $200 and considerably faster than a console GPU - the consoles have mid-range GPUs by today's standards, and won't by launch date, let alone later) after selling my old card (while maintaining backward compatibility with my library) to offset the price further. That should cover me easily for the next console generation. Previously, console ports performed worse on CPU load. This time, since they are all x86-64, the differences should be less noticeable.
I had a Sikh roommate for 3 years and many Sikh classmates at the university. They were about as religious as non-Sikhs (my roommate was more religious), respectful and never bothered women. I am sorry to hear that your experiences fared worse. Alcohol? My roommate did not want to be in the room if I used a bouillon sachet with chicken extract that I had to stop. Neither of us ever touched liquors (not for religious reasons in my case).
So what if some Sikh youths are not religious and are hedonistic. Is this a “No true Scotsman” argument? Isn’t it normal in a modern society for youths to be less religious and grow more religious as they get closer to their mortality? Isn’t there room for cultural Sikhs/Hindus etc. who don’t place any emphasis on the supernatural?
My roommate brought up Sardar jokes on perhaps a couple of occasions. It’s OK in my book for Kushwanth Singh to tell Sardar jokes, for Russell Peters to tell Indian jokes and for Jon Stewart to tell Jewish jokes. Never heard of Santa Banta Ha-Ha-Ha till now. I did read of bara bajje jokes in a Kushwant Singh book.
What exactly does Khalistan achieve? What will it allow Sikhs to do that they cannot now? Impose a state religion? Is that the teaching of the gurus? (I read Sikh scriptures, here and there. I liked their open philosophical views which I thought were quite compatible with a modern society)
India is not yet a developed country. People of such regions are better off organized into large countries, as long as there is a fair constitution in effect. When splintered, they simply get taken advantage of on the world stage. While not robust, India has better leverage due to its size in ways that its neighbors (Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal) of similar development levels do not have. For richer countries, size matters less.
I will respond to this obvious troll since there is an informational opportunity. I went for gratis Internet classes in 1996 (gopher, veronica, archie - remember them?). The cybercafes were in full force by 1998.
Cheapest unlimited & WiFi Internet access now is $5/month. Rural areas get cheaper rates. Smartphone Internet plans are at $4/month. In India, even a poor man on a bicycle can afford a mobile phone. I know people in huts who have 3 of them (no, they are not being spendy). Unlike US, there actually is a free market when it comes to telecom and even the dirt poor of us can afford it.
Duuuude. I am assuming you are a Pakistani who still gets fed this propaganda, because nobody in India cares about Khalistan anymore. After that dark period of violence, the Sikhs have been well integrated. We cannot imagine India without them. Of all the states, they now have the most popular culture. Mine does not even register. We love everything about them. Get over it.
As others have noted, this is completely wrong. Java bytecode, over a JVM in server config, after the JIT warmed up (which is the case for web apps), is very close to C++ in performance.
> Google/Youtube use python
Only for select portions of the site that see regular updates or have little logic (uploads, the labs potions etc). For the rest, they use a lot of Java, along with C and now Go.
Python and PHP web sites can be quite scalable. This is not because Python and PHP are themselves fast (they are 5-20 times slower than Java when run pure), but because most of the work is in fact done over C extensions (Python regex is actually a tad faster than Java regex because it uses a native module). If most of the CPU time is spent applying templates rather than any per-page logic, simply switching to a native templating engine works wonders. This is fine. I don't care where my code is run as long as I don't need to write managed code and I use Python a lot for scientific code without speed problems.
To query a database, run an XPath query, call a scientific extension or apply a template with native cheetah template engine, Python won't be much slower than C. But logic in Python itself is SLOW and it shows in a tight loop (not something web sites do much of anyway). So Python makes it easy to write C extensions without getting hands dirty (Cython, Shedskin etc). Put in another way, Python is a slow language (implementation, really) that does not let the slowness get in the way, most of the time. Same goes for PHP.
> * Yes, I know *in theory* in a certain very limited set of circumstances Java can be faster than compiled code, but the theory doesn't actually match the practical reality of the situation.
Many Java web frameworks do a lot more stuff than typical PHP setups. For example, I use ZK. It maintains the entire client UI model on the server. This is definitely not meant to scale. But the abstractions save me a lot of work for what I want to do.
> Disclosure: I run a high traffic website that get's millions of page views a day. Uses Yii php framework
But what does your site mostly do? Just serve static content for most part? with the pages filled with some straight-forward queried content? Yii framework looks like a basic MVC framework with few additional abstractions. It should not matter what language you use for something like this. I suspect that the same would be true for the OP. I don't disagree with your conclusions, just not for the same reasons.
The final advice to OP: Start with whatever takes the least capital. There are frameworks that have plugins for most of the common web stuff (Rails, Grails etc) and these are the right places to get started quickly. Hundreds of thousands of visitors/day is not much for modern machines. Even if the site is 20 times slow, clustering to 20 servers is cheaper if the slower, but more productive technology saves one developer year of work. A little optimization later will probably give you a lot of mileage later. Switching to a scalable architecture, using technology built for scalability like Go, Hadoop and NoSQL/HBase won't need to be concern until one is rolling in cash. They need more expensive devs. Premature optimization and all that.
> The right approach to software development is to do one thing and do that thing well.
There is no right approach. While that is the Unix philosophy, it does not suit every project's needs. Some projects like to have a most functionality to come from a single/few quality assuring source/vendor. This gives consistent quality, less updates to keep track of, consistent documentation, common interfaces across sub-components, one place to ask for help etc.
> Qt is becoming more and more bloated and duplicates a lot of other better and more specialized tools. It's shaping up to be a framework for everything
You can make the same arguments against most popular application (as opposed to system) programming languages. They all have, at varying degrees, wide reaching unified SDKs. Qt provides that aspect to C++ and many see that as an advantage. So yes, Qt moved from the GUI toolkit market space to a full stack C++ SDK market space. They now have a full suite, much like Java/.NET - complete with a modern IDE. Without it, C++ simply can't compete in this space... and IMO they should do a lot more to be a realistic alternative.
If all this does not appeal to you, you just aren't among the intended audience.
Also, Scribd loads pages just around the page you are reading. Useful on slower, metered connections for large PDFs. Registration requirement is still annoying of course.
Slashdot Mirror
> What you are envisioning is that there is some Aunt Bea kind of gossip going around
No, I was not envisioning that. In fact, no one in this thread said that they themselves envisioned that. It was presented as a strawman argument.
Now you are changing what you meant by "personally". Your first post implied personalized profiling. Now you are saying you meant personnel doing the profiling and that it would not matter if the profile is not public.
We are all products of different experiences and have different thresholds for finding things creepy. No need to call names.
Yes, I am currently a foreigner. I also lived in US, close to a decade, in the past. I would understand NSA wanting to have surveillance on countries where the US (or even its allies) has security threats from and perhaps some additional heads-up intel on the directions of foreign policy of friendly nations. Everyone does that.
What shocked me (although many of us suspected this since 2006) and everyone else is that they seem to be collecting data on EVERYONE in them, not just suspects or governments; and they are archiving it all. I would not be surprised at all if US monitored governments and significant foreign actors, but blanket data collection on regular foreign citizens (these are not just communications with US residents, but all email of people simply using US based email and other services from their own countries) is unheard of. This is quite at odds with the policies of all modern democracies to date. If you cannot relate to it, imagine how US would react if China or Russia were found to have grabbed private emails of all US citizens, mainly to mop up their own dissidents, but will keep all other email as well, you know... just in case. Would you still call this a "game" and a "winning strategy"?
NSA previously clearly and repeatedly stated that they well understood that they were not allowed by law, to have domestic US population under surveillance. I am not sure how you can defend domestic surveillance of this nature by simply saying that this is how things work in a cloak and dagger world. I thought there was an explicit legal separation of duties between national and international security agencies in US after previous fiascoes.
And if I understand US law correctly, congressional committees are not allowed to make up secret laws that clearly violate the constitution to legalize such things, without amending the constitution first - that would be null and void. Now that there is documentary evidence of constitutional violations, it will go to supreme court. ACLU already filed the case.
Tell me, do you think it is OK for some congressional committee to make a secret law to allow a gun registry so that it may save lives? Or is only the fourth amendment expendable? One can't just "classify" away constitutional violations. A citizen's duty to the constitution overrides duty to any NDA. In this way, Snowden is an American patriot, however expensive and inconvenient his actions will end up as. No one said running a democracy is supposed to be easy.
> I know when I play a game that I've won, I'll sometimes share details on my plan to win, especially if they were very situational, but if there is some novel or sensitive strategy that I can re-use, I'll never mention that.
No one cares about your strategy secrets. There are still some very basic *rules* of the game you need to adhere to if you want to be seen as a player. Loading the dice isn't a "strategy".
> isn't actually an analyst who knows how this is used
Well, he is hardly the only one. There have been other high-level, very experienced, whistle-blowers (Binney, Drake) who opined the same. The new whistle blower just produced concrete documentary evidence such that there may be a proper legal challenge. Tell me, how do you differentiate the morality and conduct of this guy from that of Daniel Ellsberg?
I don't believe I have these views just because I am a foreigner or have views from a minority. So far, I see that the guy who invented the Web, the guy who wrote the Patriot Act and the guy who leaked the Pentagon Papers (and considered a courageous hero, once passions cooled down), all think this is out of line and not in the long-term interests of the health of American democracy and freedoms.
Seriously, US is supposed to be lecturing the developing world about the rule of law, individual freedoms etc, not the other way around.
I second this. I am nearly in the exact spot as you (although not naturalized, nor in US ATM) and cannot help feeling the same way (lived in and like US, important issue for me, read everything on this, points, threshold etc). It does indeed have a chilling effect on electronic free speech even if it is all imagined because the scale of this is just mind-boggling. Realistically, one could argue that it is unlikely to be that draconian at this point. But it feels like a Pascal's wager (small effects from free speech vs. potentially large personal losses). Even if things are probably nothing like this now, given that they have enough storage to keep permanent records of all text content, who knows how anything will be interpreted a few years from now.
What recourse would I have if I some algorithm decides to put me on a no-fly list? I trained for years in stuff that has employment opportunities only in limited job markets and restrictions on mobility hurt. I am not even a citizen; even many citizens had no clue on why they were on such lists and were not allowed to contest.
Developed countries are great because of transparency. This introduces a humongous black box into the equation. US was supposed to stand for everything against things like these, not lead the way.
I read this article earlier. I just wonder what they can possibly be doing with 5 zetabytes (I hope this part is wrong since this would cost at least a Trillion dollars for the having this kind of storage). Its almost as if Dilbert's pointy haired boss said: Go, make a copy of the Internet... and also wrote a check for it. Its a frikkin Panopticon. And all they have to show for it are two "maybe" cases?
http://www.salon.com/2013/06/10/what_spying_apologists_dont_want_you_to_know/
Also Indian here. Relax. They all know that... at least on this site.
I for one am looking for some original, good-natured call center jokes in a robot apocalypse.
We can do Japanese Mecha jokes or Foxconn robot jokes next week.
Very odd indeed. Especially since in the past Pew polls, the percent of Indians who felt US could do no wrong were higher than Americans. In other words, US was more popular in India than in US itself.
I think this has to do with
a.) India having more Internet users
b.) Indians using more or less the same (participating) Internet services as Americans (unlike say, the Chinese and perhaps the Russians).
It does not appear that the color in the heat map is population adjusted.
In closing:
> nb: I'm from New Zealand
I am from India... trained as a physician here, completed a PhD in US, and returned back. While there, I took time to study western history and philosophy, particularly enlightenment philosophy, because I felt I could do better justice to my dissertation. I hold the enlightenment period and its values in highest regard. However, although I understand that the march through history has not always been forward, I hold enlightenment accomplishments at this point, as something resilient, rather than fragile.
> I can understand why you try and balance the debate with your statements.
Yes. I do that, consciously in fact... from my academic background. I would never make a good polemicist because I would not subscribe exclusively to any single narrative :-).
> It is hard to discriminate whether Alex Jones' is simply a loon or it is a false flag disinformation programme
Or perhaps just a shrewd businessman making a news product for specific audience.
> that that was then. Making "moral equivalence" between acts of the past
I am trying to compare actions at similar levels of intellectual/cultural/social/economic development. Since Islamic societies have not reached current western levels of maturity, it would be unfair to compare them simply on the axis of time. So I anachronistically compare them to pre-enlightenment western societies.
> instead of cementing a hard won piece (as was done for Germany, Japan and Korea)
I don't think that was ever an option. What happened with the reconstruction of Germany and Japan was rather unique in world history (Korea was a different case). Each had well-developed, top-down institutional apparatus, that was used to re-configure the respective societies (and thankfully, both the victors and the vanquished acted exactly as they should - neither exploitative nor vindictive). Especially in Afghanistan, no such apparatus exists, and with the concept of vendetta, a cherished tribal custom, with tribal loyalties overriding any national identity, and given that the colonial-era control systems are no longer acceptable, I don't think anything beyond loose control through proxies was ever a realistic option and even that took a long time to settle in. The work would take several generations.
> The country that your statement misses is Turkey.
Yes. In fact, it was the first country I looked across for in that pew poll when it came out and the general picture looked dismal. I was surprised, as I expected the numbers from there to be more reassuring. But then, I have Muslim acquaintances who say that they believe their scriptures literally while going about their lives as if they don't. Christians who say they are Biblical literalists, do the same (thankfully, literalism was a never a major problem with non-Abrahamic faiths). It's something to do with self-identity of being a good faithful person, I guess (or I am a romantic, seeing what I want to see, as you would charge). Trouble though is they would still vote on it, even if they really don't mean it or get it.
Addendum:
I actually did not read about Al Ghazali earlier, while I did read about Ibn Sina and Al-Farabi. So I assume that you read about the later two now. But I do have one more to read about.
I just started with Stephen Coughlin and I like his arguments. He made his points plainly and well so far and its generally informative to hear about institutions on that side. It will take a while before I finish his series.
I am not convinced about the arguments of Cultural Marxism yet. Maybe I will change my mind later, but for now it appears to be a simplistic and convenient explanation of what happened in the 60s to the US society. I need far more proof to attribute causality for such claims.
Lets close this discussion unless you have significant points to add (I don't). Thank you for your time. I did get to know the perspective of someone with whom I would not have agreed with at all on this topic.
I am familiar and agree with the failings of BBC and Al Jazeera. They are not perfect. BBC is now a sloppy bureaucracy that tries to be too politically correct while allowing sexual exploiters to exist in its ranks. Al Jazeera does have a blind spot when it comes to Qatar. But that's expected and it is easy enough to ignore those bits since better alternatives are absent for the purposes.
I see Qatar regime as progressive by local standards and generally considered their Wahabist affiliations more to appease the public than of actual conviction. Of course, in families like these, there generally tend to be a few genuine believers. But they are more business driven than theologically driven.
I hardly consider Obama administration to have fulfilled its promises. While it failed dismally in many areas for its actions to match its rhetoric, I still consider it a minor improvement over the failings of the previous administration. The bar was low. And I don't think the next administration will be truthful either. That's just how politics go. My general view of partisan politics is a jaded one. Its really not on my radar if a few died in Benghazi or if millions were placed in misguided Solyndra investments. All terrible things, but we are well past that point. With US foreign policy, I only take a look at far higher casualty figures and billions in losses. But the recent stories with regards to the justice department are quite troubling.
I am familiar with many of the anti-muslim sources you listed. When the New Atheist movement was in the news, quite a few were brought up. Later, I actually read much of Anders Brevick's manifesto in the days following his massacre trying to figure out what animated him to do something like that. Many of the arguments you present were covered in it and much much more. I already had read the depressing Pew survey.
Taqiyya may be real, but it often becomes a lazy argument, a non-falsifiable hypothesis, along the lines of Russell's teapot or Sagan's dragon. I differ from you in that I give a lot less credence to Islamic organization in trying to take over the world. Most of the radical talk comes off as hubris and flamboyance and little else. I listened to their so-called brilliant apologetics. They were intellectual light-weights.
My views are also shaped from by my contacts - some extremely smart muslim friends. They are quite modern. One, a particularly lucid minded one, is even a strong atheist (obviously not muslim now). But they all have doctoral degrees and do not represent general public. So I feel it is correlated to education.
> Just like Google, Breitbart is a news aggregator.
Big difference. Breitbart has a thick filter. Its an aggregater like HuffingtonPost and nothing like Google News which uses non-ideological machine filters.
> Islam is waging to destroy our civilization (just as it destroyed the Byzantine, Persian, Afghan Buddhist and various other civilizations throughout history
That it did. Just as Christianity destroyed Aztec, Mayan and several Pagan civilizations. Just as Aryans destroyed their Indus predecessors. Such is the nature of history. However, the current Islamic world is in disarray. Some may have grand ambitions to make the whole world Islamic, but they are in no shape to execute such ideas. Its all just talk and bluster. Later, I expect them to be better organized... get better educated... develop functioning modern political structures and such... and when they do, the ideological emotions will get blunted over generations. When there are enough advanced jobs, there will be fewer ideologically vulnerable youths. Of course, I realize that you think this is wishful thinking. I think that it was how it worked in the past. I realize that you feel Islam is unlike other instances from the past and should not be equated. I acknowledge that it has greater ideological strength that makes change difficult, but not immune to it.
> It also highlights niche stories
Yes, just like Infowars. They may
> and most foreign media too (Al Jazeera, BBC etc).
I disagree. With local media, it is viable to tailor news to a specific audience. For an International news service, it is much harder to appear honest while doing the same. I trust a major European news outlet better when reporting a significant US event and a major US news outlet reporting on a significant European event, but not so much for their relative local coverage. Everyone gets more objective when they are less attached to conclusions.
For International analyses, I prefer ForeignPolicy.com. Economist has great analyses on a variety of topics. Their audience is fairly critical and generally compensates any skew. Generally speaking, financial publications have very little tolerance for political noise and propaganda (it costs money to be misinformed) and focus on the numbers and the big picture. London Financial Times and Bloomberg are good in my book.
> if you say "Al Jazeera" then I'll die laughing.
For middle-east matters, Al Jazeera is great. Feel free to die laughing. I don't pay much attention to their opinion sections which have a rather homogenous and strong liberal flavor. But for boots on the ground coverage in the region, there really isn't another choice. They are the ones getting shot at in conflict zones. They are the ones getting kicked out from countries. They are the ones with risky interviews. And if they do have an opinion from time to time, they earned that right, unlike others.
I found their coverage and programming better than most. They don't invite talking heads. For me to pay attention, the guest must have proper credentials and accomplishments outside of politics and their objective expertise must have relevance to the topic at hand. The reporter must not insinuate his/her opinions too much or talk over guests. I dislike when guests get pushy with their views. Such people should never have been invited in the first place, once they misbehaved on air. Their guests don't start praising the host or get called to just agree with the host on everything. In all these respects, Al Jazeera and BBC tower over US media in having more balanced debates. And these are basic things, hardly high standards.
> it is generally a better source of high-level facts that most of the alternatives
OK. Do list some non-political original journalism and analytical work that Breitbart produces. I just went there and it was impossible to glean anything useful. The signal to noise ratio is terrible. If there are occasional jewels, I certainly am not going to waste that much time finding those. I agree that all sites have some noise, but I just don't want to spend time where the balance is not in my favor.
> and as a medical professional I'm sure you understand that "phobia" has a precise meaning
My use of the term was colloquial, not clinical. I left practice a long time ago.
> Only the ignorant use or take notice of this word. Unfortunately, the ignorance about the doctrines of
> Islam and its political machinations is staggering, even by most Muslims
We all know about the problems of Islamic fundamentalism. I have plenty of counter-arguments when middle-easterners say they are exploited by the West (mainly: you did all this too, when you were in charge...). But, I know enough Islamic history to understand it as a political and cultural phenomenon and in context of world history. The difference is when you see the current anachronistic and horrifying practices in the Islamic world, you seem to blame it exclusively on religion. I instead see it as a self-destructive response to a cultural defeat of a once proud civilization, worsened by mass poverty (Oil economies don't count, middle-east must have human/intellectual economies that they can take pride in, as individuals), without which Islam would be much more tame. There were times in Islamic history when scholars could actually discuss atheism and critique Islam without death threats because believers then felt secure in th
> gas chambers
Bravo for invoking Godwin.
> Everyone dies at some point. By herding the "insert group here" into the gas chambers, we're only making the inevitable process more efficient
That's not my point. The question is whether the embryo qualifies as a person in the first place, not how long persons get to live. The discussion of terminating persons comes only once person-hood begins. I am of the opinion that a beating heart and a functioning body do not alone constitute person hood, but sentience and capacity to suffer do (if the brain can be moved into a jar, it is a person for me). That is my moral framework. The sentience is the locus of sanctity for me. If there was never a sentience to begin with (embryo) or if the sentience has been destroyed for good (brain death), debating murder is absurd. I argued that we cannot kill functioning brains because that is where person hood is situated. What do you believe that we should not destroy? Some vague and undefined notion of soul?
At 6 weeks, the embryo is a fertilized seed, germinated, but has not even definitively taken root yet. You are talking about it as if one is cutting down an oak, much less a sapling.
> I find your argument in support of abortion to be unconvincing and, frankly, sickening.
Feel free to be sickened all you like, I couldn't care less. But if you want a discussion, put forth your own moral framework and definitions based on objective notions. I have no emotional investment in my own framework and am open to a better one.
> So, when does a child become old enough that women no longer get to vote that it is legal to kill it?
Read my post again after you are done being snarky. I distinguished between an embryo, fetal development and a child. No one gets to vote to kill a child. And if the fetus has enough nervous system to suffer or think, it is a person.
> Don't pretend you know anything about me
I don't know anything about you. I do know how your arguments sound like.
> while acknowledging that late stage abortions do murder living organisms
I am opposed to late-term abortions because late-term fetuses perceive pain and have capacity to suffer (read my moral framework). I also place mother’s life in priority, when it is in danger (Eg: Eclampsia)
> but if you ever peruse Breitbart online
I don’t consider Breitbart as a news source. The site is political propaganda for the right like HuffingtonPost for the left. They may have entertainment value, but little intellectual value. Their job is to get you riled up, provide strong, emotional, one-sided arguments with simple narratives, to maintain your political loyalty for next elections and sufficiently immunize you against counter arguments when you stray, not to give you balanced arguments with confusing narratives. They are both preachers, not researchers.
> you will see that some of the later-term aborted babies are able to survive on their own
I don’t need a two-bit hack to tell me that. I have medical training and I actually delivered babies (no abortions). I know about fetal viability. You don’t know me either.
> You probably only get your news from the (left-leaning) mainstream media
I am not an American, although I lived there long enough and until recently, to understand your politics. The left-right divide is mostly an artificial, but entertaining facade for me.
I rely on non-partisan, international publications that put reporters on the ground, don’t rely on celebrity opinion-makers and personality-cults for ratings, report using statistics, rather than ideologies. US may be an advanced country and there are many things I admire about it, but most of your news sources just suck. That is true of left-wing news sources and even more true of right-wing news sources (notice how absolutely no one cites right-wing publications outside US, the left-wing newspapers have some credibility left, for now).
> many of the immigrants the US now gets as "refugees" are actually jihadis
You are not making any sense here and have some Islamophobia going there thanks to Breitbart, no doubt.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_the_United_States#Demographics
The top immigrant sources are not Islamic countries.
> Furthermore, consider the need for the US to import immigrants on a massive scale to keep its aging population in the life style to which they have become accustomed
Yes, you want cheap labor. You want weak labor laws that citizens won’t put up with.
> Now, if the US prevented abortion and instead gave money to support these native born Americans instead of using it to fund the lifestyles of the jihadis it is now importing then perhaps America would be on far less of a decline than it is now
How will that work, even in theory? First you are suggesting that US should discourage abortions because that will increase population and that will be better for US (collective good). Isn’t that precise what you accused me of just above? Around when you called me a Leftist and a Cultural Marxist.
> To a Leftist the value of an individual life is less important than the benefit to the Collective Good
Second, the US has a healthy fertility rate of 2.1, not great, but adequate to maintain the population, unlike Europe, admittedly not enough to handle Boomer retirement.
Third, a poor immigrant is content with even weak labor laws because it was worse back home, but why would a native born American put up with them? They end up on welfare, grow discontented as they see social inequality and riot.
You selectively picked a few points you felt safe defending. You have not told me if your moral framework is based on religious notions such as souls or on scientific notions (you did give me economic justifications - pretty socialist, if you ask me :-) ) or if you are ready to question the sexual morality of men as much as you do to women.
> in the case of a human child/embryo it has no choice and no voice
Do you understand what an embryo is? It doesn't think, suffer, feel or make choices of any kind. At 8 weeks, the nervous system is not at that stage yet. Equating an embryo to a human is almost like having an omelet and thinking you had fried chicken. 25% of embryos get spontaneously aborted by 6 weeks. By your definition, we have an avalanche of accidental deaths of full persons that overshadows deaths from any other cause. With elective abortions of embryos, we are not raising that by much.
A fetus is by definition, not a "child" as is convenient for you to frame as. But we can have a sane discussion here based on when the fetal capacity to suffer begins & develops self-awareness and draw moral/legal lines from that data. But if your positions are based on imaginary pre-scientific concepts such as "souls", there is no discussion to be had.
> yet perhaps you are happy for *millions* of murders to be carried out just so the mother can continue her lustful lifestyle?
You realize that married woman have abortions too, right? Are they being lustful? Many of the women seeking abortion are in monogamous relationships, even if unmarried. Do you also judge them as lustful? Do you consider fathers-to-be in these cases to also be lustful, or just mothers-to-be? A majority of women getting abortions are already mothers raising children who cannot handle one more, not party and one-night-stand types. A disproportionate number are poor at the time. Do you think it is moral to bring a child into a world when the mother is not in a position to provide a proper childhood yet? Are unplanned children statistically (don't care for anecdotes) poised to develop into superior citizens/human beings? Last one is rhetorical.
> Actually, I'm pro-choice
I doubt it. You sound like a conservative whose religious thought is in conflict with his libertarian thought. It just an association of political convenience, not philosophical parity. Don't bother with trying to reconcile them.
> That's the problem with young leftists, they believe in all diversities except the one that really matters - diversity of opinion.
When they do, they get branded as relativists with no moral compass who cannot be trusted. All that needs to be done is to base things on data at hand. When data changes, positions need to change. Diversity of opinion here is like giving a quack and a scientist equal time (and the left, with its New Age mumbo jumbo, is hardly spotless... but at least they don't impose those metaphysics on others). We can have standards of objectivity.
> to argue for enforcing your agenda on them shows the typical totalitarian streak of the political Left.
My position? Let women figure it out. Let them exclusively vote on whether it ought to be legal for them. Men don't get to choose. You can vote if you develop a uterus tomorrow. Do this sound totalitarian?
Yes, but people living in higher cost of living centers generally have higher relative incomes as well. So it is less of a proportional hit on the budget than elsewhere.
Nobody snivels at any priced hardware, as long as they are using it to make enough money to offset its price. There are as pricey workstation GPUs even now that people use for work.
> I got my XBox 360 in 2008 and paid £300 for it. (The mid-life RROD resulted in repair/replacement by Microsoft free of charge). To this day, that single unit still plays all the new games released for it. In five years time, will today's top end PC still play the newest games released for the PC?
Like you, I fancy a fast PC for my work, and so, the GPU is the only added cost. PC gaming is much cheaper when you build your PC. Like you, I find always-on requirements of games annoying and an all-seeing eye/ear... creepy. I could turn the camera off, but that is the significant component of the value proposition.
In late 2008, I got a GTX 260 for $200. I see at least another 2 years of life on it. Possibly more. One reason is that I accumulated a rather large library on online sales (many highly rated AAA titles at $2.50 - $5.00) that I have not gotten around to yet. The GPU pays for itself on cheaper games and no online fees alone.
Even for new games, only first-person perspective games need to be played at medium settings. Upcoming non-FP games like Company of Heroes 2 (a PC exclusive) will play just fine on my card. And even for new first-person games, I just need to tone down the settings to current console grade (medium), they play just fine. The card will further work for many more years if I find low settings acceptable.
The idea of extended life cycles of consoles is over-rated. The so called console optimization (fixed specs) only eeks out a certain percentage. It appears to be a larger effect with esoteric architectures since the devs produce worse products early on, not as much because they get so good later on. That, I can match later with CPU/GPU overclocks, that you cannot on a console. PC had 1080p, a generation ago. With inexpensive tuners, not only can I watch TV on my PC, I have been recording shows for a while, unlike what can be done with XBox One. Switch between TV, DVD, Game with no lag? OK, nothing new, apart from gesture and voice commands.
After the next gen consoles have been in the market for an year or two, I will get another mid-range GPU (which should be about $200 and considerably faster than a console GPU - the consoles have mid-range GPUs by today's standards, and won't by launch date, let alone later) after selling my old card (while maintaining backward compatibility with my library) to offset the price further. That should cover me easily for the next console generation. Previously, console ports performed worse on CPU load. This time, since they are all x86-64, the differences should be less noticeable.
I had a Sikh roommate for 3 years and many Sikh classmates at the university. They were about as religious as non-Sikhs (my roommate was more religious), respectful and never bothered women. I am sorry to hear that your experiences fared worse. Alcohol? My roommate did not want to be in the room if I used a bouillon sachet with chicken extract that I had to stop. Neither of us ever touched liquors (not for religious reasons in my case).
So what if some Sikh youths are not religious and are hedonistic. Is this a “No true Scotsman” argument? Isn’t it normal in a modern society for youths to be less religious and grow more religious as they get closer to their mortality? Isn’t there room for cultural Sikhs/Hindus etc. who don’t place any emphasis on the supernatural?
My roommate brought up Sardar jokes on perhaps a couple of occasions. It’s OK in my book for Kushwanth Singh to tell Sardar jokes, for Russell Peters to tell Indian jokes and for Jon Stewart to tell Jewish jokes. Never heard of Santa Banta Ha-Ha-Ha till now. I did read of bara bajje jokes in a Kushwant Singh book.
What exactly does Khalistan achieve? What will it allow Sikhs to do that they cannot now? Impose a state religion? Is that the teaching of the gurus? (I read Sikh scriptures, here and there. I liked their open philosophical views which I thought were quite compatible with a modern society)
India is not yet a developed country. People of such regions are better off organized into large countries, as long as there is a fair constitution in effect. When splintered, they simply get taken advantage of on the world stage. While not robust, India has better leverage due to its size in ways that its neighbors (Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal) of similar development levels do not have. For richer countries, size matters less.
I will respond to this obvious troll since there is an informational opportunity. I went for gratis Internet classes in 1996 (gopher, veronica, archie - remember them?). The cybercafes were in full force by 1998.
Cheapest unlimited & WiFi Internet access now is $5/month. Rural areas get cheaper rates. Smartphone Internet plans are at $4/month. In India, even a poor man on a bicycle can afford a mobile phone. I know people in huts who have 3 of them (no, they are not being spendy). Unlike US, there actually is a free market when it comes to telecom and even the dirt poor of us can afford it.
Duuuude. I am assuming you are a Pakistani who still gets fed this propaganda, because nobody in India cares about Khalistan anymore. After that dark period of violence, the Sikhs have been well integrated. We cannot imagine India without them. Of all the states, they now have the most popular culture. Mine does not even register. We love everything about them. Get over it.
> If it's a medical term, then it has to have an ICD-10 code
As someone who has done clinical terminology work: not at all. Only a fraction of medical terms have representation in ICD-10.
> Java is slow*
As others have noted, this is completely wrong. Java bytecode, over a JVM in server config, after the JIT warmed up (which is the case for web apps), is very close to C++ in performance.
> Google/Youtube use python
Only for select portions of the site that see regular updates or have little logic (uploads, the labs potions etc). For the rest, they use a lot of Java, along with C and now Go.
Python and PHP web sites can be quite scalable. This is not because Python and PHP are themselves fast (they are 5-20 times slower than Java when run pure), but because most of the work is in fact done over C extensions (Python regex is actually a tad faster than Java regex because it uses a native module). If most of the CPU time is spent applying templates rather than any per-page logic, simply switching to a native templating engine works wonders. This is fine. I don't care where my code is run as long as I don't need to write managed code and I use Python a lot for scientific code without speed problems.
To query a database, run an XPath query, call a scientific extension or apply a template with native cheetah template engine, Python won't be much slower than C. But logic in Python itself is SLOW and it shows in a tight loop (not something web sites do much of anyway). So Python makes it easy to write C extensions without getting hands dirty (Cython, Shedskin etc). Put in another way, Python is a slow language (implementation, really) that does not let the slowness get in the way, most of the time. Same goes for PHP.
> * Yes, I know *in theory* in a certain very limited set of circumstances Java can be faster than compiled code, but the theory doesn't actually match the practical reality of the situation.
Many Java web frameworks do a lot more stuff than typical PHP setups. For example, I use ZK. It maintains the entire client UI model on the server. This is definitely not meant to scale. But the abstractions save me a lot of work for what I want to do.
Here are some recent benchmarks on how Java and PHP perform under load, especially when straight Servlets are used. No comparison.
http://www.techempower.com/blog/2013/03/28/framework-benchmarks/
http://www.techempower.com/blog/2013/04/05/frameworks-round-2/
> Disclosure: I run a high traffic website that get's millions of page views a day. Uses Yii php framework
But what does your site mostly do? Just serve static content for most part? with the pages filled with some straight-forward queried content? Yii framework looks like a basic MVC framework with few additional abstractions. It should not matter what language you use for something like this. I suspect that the same would be true for the OP. I don't disagree with your conclusions, just not for the same reasons.
The final advice to OP: Start with whatever takes the least capital. There are frameworks that have plugins for most of the common web stuff (Rails, Grails etc) and these are the right places to get started quickly. Hundreds of thousands of visitors/day is not much for modern machines. Even if the site is 20 times slow, clustering to 20 servers is cheaper if the slower, but more productive technology saves one developer year of work. A little optimization later will probably give you a lot of mileage later. Switching to a scalable architecture, using technology built for scalability like Go, Hadoop and NoSQL/HBase won't need to be concern until one is rolling in cash. They need more expensive devs. Premature optimization and all that.
> The right approach to software development is to do one thing and do that thing well.
There is no right approach. While that is the Unix philosophy, it does not suit every project's needs. Some projects like to have a most functionality to come from a single/few quality assuring source/vendor. This gives consistent quality, less updates to keep track of, consistent documentation, common interfaces across sub-components, one place to ask for help etc.
> Qt is becoming more and more bloated and duplicates a lot of other better and more specialized tools. It's shaping up to be a framework for everything
You can make the same arguments against most popular application (as opposed to system) programming languages. They all have, at varying degrees, wide reaching unified SDKs. Qt provides that aspect to C++ and many see that as an advantage. So yes, Qt moved from the GUI toolkit market space to a full stack C++ SDK market space. They now have a full suite, much like Java/.NET - complete with a modern IDE. Without it, C++ simply can't compete in this space... and IMO they should do a lot more to be a realistic alternative.
If all this does not appeal to you, you just aren't among the intended audience.
Also, Scribd loads pages just around the page you are reading. Useful on slower, metered connections for large PDFs. Registration requirement is still annoying of course.