The system is designed so that on average amazon profits from it, which means that for the average user it's a bad deal...
Erm... that's kind of the way capitalism works. On average companies make money.
My baker profits from me buying their bread. If I were to make it at home, the ingredients and electricity used to bake one loaf would be more than it costs at the baker. It's not a bad deal buying for me from the baker, even though I'm giving them profit.
It seems like there's a never ending list of surprises from these creatures.
I don't find this surprising at all... I'd always assumed that the more intelligent mammals remembered stuff. My dog certainly remembers people he's not seen for years (though anyone who knows him would hesitate to classify him as intelligent). Elephants are noted for it too, and I'm surprised there isn't evidence they remember longer than 20 years.
Microsoft got OS lock in for a reason, and it wasn't just shoddy business practices. Win 95, 98, 2k, and XP were better than their competitors, for home users.
Now, Windows is not better, and they're losing market share all the time. Office 365 is an attempt to keep their standards in one segment, but it may not succeed.
Vista had fresh eye candy, but nuts-and-bolts problems. It sucked.
No, it didn't. It sucked on crappy hardware of the time, and it had driver issues early on. Windows 7 could never have happened without Vista... it is basically Vista, but by the time it was released hardware had moved on.
WinXP had fresh eye candy, and a more solid NT kernel underneath. It rocked gently.
XP rocked because it was based on 2k. There wasn't much different between 2k and XP, in the overall scheme of things. 2k was very good as an OS... it's just a shame it wasn't marketed as a consumer OS.
Vista's problems weren't caused by its eye-candy. They were it being a resource hog, and early driver issues. I'm still running Vista on a system I bought when it was first out (now upgraded RAM to 16gb, because it was going free,and gfx upgrade), and my uptime is basically measured in power cuts. Windows 7 is basically Vista with the hardware caught up.
Honestly, there is no legitimate reason to run Adblock if you live in an English speaking part of the world. You block, you're a thief.
I don't think I have once clicked on an ad (deliberately) online, in all of my 20 years or so of using the internet. I don't use advertisements as a decent source of information.
I've only recently started using adblock, because I see myself as a thief if I steal all the advertisers bandwidth without ever clicking or buying. They're paying for this exposure.
I generally try to buy from companies that advertise less... when you buy from companies that advertise a lot, you fund the advertisements.
It's good you've equated not looking at adverts to theft.... it makes your argument all the more persuasive.
The "reptile" class is a pretty crappy one... it's basically just a catch all for vertebrates that aren't something else. For example, crocodiles are more closely related to birds than they are to snakes or lizards. All of the aforementioned along with dinosaurs are more closely related to each other than they are to turtles (though this is coming under increased scrutiny - there are calls to move turtles back to diapsida).
Basically, our groups are a little crap, confused and vague, and dividing species into classes etc is notoriously difficult. This page has a table about half way down that's relevant - basically Lepidosauromorpha consists of snakes, lizards, pleisaurs, possibly turtles (no one really knows), and other stuff. Archosauromorpha consists of birds, crocodiles, pterosaurs, and other stuff. "Reptile" commonly refers to some in one clade, some in the other clade, and some outside both of these clades.
Dwelling inside the very secular European Union, we find Denmark with its state Lutheran religion.
Yeah... Denmark with all of its hardline stances on gay marriage, gay clergy, and banning gay people from the military, etc....
England has a state church too. I'm an English atheist, and happy with most of the way it works now. One thing I'm annoyed about is tax breaks and exceptions given to all recognised religions. The state decides what's a religion, and what isn't... but then that happens in the US too, with tax exemption, etc.
You see, the hard part of critical thinking isn't working out if someone's argument is valid or not, it's working out exactly what they're trying to argue in the first place. It's a safe bet that anyone playing "spot the logical fallacy" literally doesn't know the first thing about critical thinking, having skipped right to the seventh thing without understanding the previous steps.
This is an excuse for poor reasoning. If the person you're trying to understand does not make any sense, and you've got to guess what they're saying, they're doing it wrong, and you're doing it wrong. Your guess may be the exact opposite of what they were trying (poorly) to express. Interpretation is invaluable only if their expression and reasoning is basically sound.... if not, you're just guessing, and you could guess that they made a good argument when in fact they spoke drivel.
you know how in the gulf oil arab countries booze is banned?
No, no I don't. You whole rant sounds like deliberate racism... I'm not saying it is, you could just be ignorant.
Saudi is the "pin-up" insane ruling elite religious monarchy of the area (and it is bad in some ways, but we only hear the worst of it on the news - they hear the worst of us on their news), but most places in the gulf alcohol is legal. I'd guess you've not been most places in the gulf...
Given that we are dealing with a society and judicial system that is fine with beheading people with a sword
If I was given the death penalty, I'd far prefer beheading to most of the other options. The electric chair is just odd and wrong, when they use lethal injection they give a massive dose of muscle relaxant (what for?), hanging goes awry sometimes. The last beheading in France was in 1977...
Personally, I think executions should be done by oxygen deprivation. It's painless and effective.
That all being said, I'm not a massive fan of the practice generally.
This is the major reason why they keep pushing to "decentralize the internet" and wrest control from the US for their own purposes.
I don't think you quite understand how the internet works... if the US disappeared tomorrow, the internet everywhere else (shock horror) would still work. When I use a website or connect to someone this side of the pond, funnily enough the US doesn't come into the equation at all. There isn't a central server everyone routes through...
The trouble with this argument is that the US government spies on foreign citizens, and foreign governments spy on US citizens. Then the governments get together, and swap information. This is practically no different from the US spying on its own citizens.
This is amazingly shortsighted IMO. There's nothing enshrined in your laws that prevents the US government buying or trading that information from someone else. Foreign governments habitually spy on American citizens, then give the information to the US government. The spying may be illegal in the US, but that doesn't matter because it was those dang foreigners.
Let's also not forget that even after decades, Excel and Word are light years ahead of anything else that has attempted to challenge them.
Decades ago, everyone was using WordPerfect. Word and Excel bear little to no relation to what they were decades ago, and claiming that current rival word processors and spreadsheets are worse than decades old Microsoft products is disingenuous.
Wouldn't the indigenous (we won't call them "native" since they were merely the first to travel here) American peoples have killed all the European immigrants through their own diseases just the same?
They did. Syphilis is widely thought to have originated in the Americas, and the introduction of it to the rest of the world caused more deaths than diseases introduced to the Americas. It causes about 100,000 deaths a year now worldwide, and that is half the number of only 20 years ago.
Aside from a handful of cases where they were sold products intentionally infected with Smallpox, your argument doesn't hold.
There's not a huge amount of evidence showing deliberate infection. However, accidentally introduced disease caused devastation in the Americas - far, far more deaths than warfare.
If my posts upset you... good!, I hope they make you turn red in the face and maybe even cry a little. I'm not trying to sow discontent though, only a different way of looking at things, I find it hilarious how mad it makes some people that somebody should think different from them.
You're the one who sounds het up, not those you're responding to. You made a point claiming serial killers never had girlfriends or wives. That was false... even claiming most serial killers didn't have girfriends or wives is debatable.
Then again you sound pretty lame too with your direct attack on my person rather than post.
Again, you're the one with the ad hominems, not those you're responding to.
Isn't this what you would expect? Most people who are good enough to find exploits (as opposed to randomly crashing Windows) generally make a profession out of programming. And the good ones generally work for the big named companies (there are exceptions, of course).
Exceptions? Name a programmer. Name another. And another. How many of them work for the big name companies? (I got 0 in my top 3, 1 in my top 5).
Society was happier when people were focused on family and behaved in a (relatively) chaste manner.
When was that exactly? Because I know I'm very happy to be living now as opposed to any other time in history you'd care to mention.
When we go pluralistic, or make "anything goes" the new normal, this traditional order is threatened.
This is the same argument they were making in the 20's, 30's and 50's. We've accomplished a lot since then, and our society is better in most ways. If anything, I'd say it's more restrictive in many ways, rather than "anything goes".
This, this, and more this. I doubt there are many people alive who actually have this conviction though...
After the law was repealed, many gay men were unfairly prosecuted under different broad-reaching laws, ("public decency", etc), and I think we have to remember them too. It's got gradually better as time has gone on, but it is still far from perfect.
Mod parent up. Pardon implies that the action was wrong, but excusable. An apology would imply that Turing (+others) did nothing wrong and that it was in fact the law that was wrong.
Everyone knows the law was wrong. That's why we got rid of it.
Asking for an apology is like asking the current German government for an apology for WWII, or the UK government an apology for the opium wars. Everyone's retired or dead - the people in government now have as much to do with the criminalization of homosexuality in the 1950's as you do.
The reason given why he wasn't pardoned was so that we can accept our shameful history. Retroactively pardoning someone doesn't actually do anything... no one thinks just being gay should be illegal now in the UK (well, as close as possible to no one).
The pardon doesn't actually do anything about current issues with homosexuality, transgender issues, etc. It's just a self-congratulatory pat on the back, "weren't we awful back then", pointless exercise.
We'll be going around pardoning all the Catholics next, then the Protestants.
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The system is designed so that on average amazon profits from it, which means that for the average user it's a bad deal...
Erm... that's kind of the way capitalism works. On average companies make money.
My baker profits from me buying their bread. If I were to make it at home, the ingredients and electricity used to bake one loaf would be more than it costs at the baker. It's not a bad deal buying for me from the baker, even though I'm giving them profit.
It seems like there's a never ending list of surprises from these creatures.
I don't find this surprising at all... I'd always assumed that the more intelligent mammals remembered stuff. My dog certainly remembers people he's not seen for years (though anyone who knows him would hesitate to classify him as intelligent). Elephants are noted for it too, and I'm surprised there isn't evidence they remember longer than 20 years.
Microsoft got OS lock in for a reason, and it wasn't just shoddy business practices. Win 95, 98, 2k, and XP were better than their competitors, for home users.
Now, Windows is not better, and they're losing market share all the time. Office 365 is an attempt to keep their standards in one segment, but it may not succeed.
Vista had fresh eye candy, but nuts-and-bolts problems. It sucked.
No, it didn't. It sucked on crappy hardware of the time, and it had driver issues early on. Windows 7 could never have happened without Vista... it is basically Vista, but by the time it was released hardware had moved on.
WinXP had fresh eye candy, and a more solid NT kernel underneath. It rocked gently.
XP rocked because it was based on 2k. There wasn't much different between 2k and XP, in the overall scheme of things. 2k was very good as an OS... it's just a shame it wasn't marketed as a consumer OS.
Vista's problems weren't caused by its eye-candy. They were it being a resource hog, and early driver issues. I'm still running Vista on a system I bought when it was first out (now upgraded RAM to 16gb, because it was going free,and gfx upgrade), and my uptime is basically measured in power cuts. Windows 7 is basically Vista with the hardware caught up.
Honestly, there is no legitimate reason to run Adblock if you live in an English speaking part of the world. You block, you're a thief.
I don't think I have once clicked on an ad (deliberately) online, in all of my 20 years or so of using the internet. I don't use advertisements as a decent source of information.
I've only recently started using adblock, because I see myself as a thief if I steal all the advertisers bandwidth without ever clicking or buying. They're paying for this exposure.
I generally try to buy from companies that advertise less... when you buy from companies that advertise a lot, you fund the advertisements.
It's good you've equated not looking at adverts to theft.... it makes your argument all the more persuasive.
The sale of alcohol is restricted in just about every country on earth, including most gulf states.
And as to the deaf... most CAPTCHA's will offer a "press to speak" feature.
Very useful ;)
The "reptile" class is a pretty crappy one... it's basically just a catch all for vertebrates that aren't something else. For example, crocodiles are more closely related to birds than they are to snakes or lizards. All of the aforementioned along with dinosaurs are more closely related to each other than they are to turtles (though this is coming under increased scrutiny - there are calls to move turtles back to diapsida).
Basically, our groups are a little crap, confused and vague, and dividing species into classes etc is notoriously difficult. This page has a table about half way down that's relevant - basically Lepidosauromorpha consists of snakes, lizards, pleisaurs, possibly turtles (no one really knows), and other stuff. Archosauromorpha consists of birds, crocodiles, pterosaurs, and other stuff. "Reptile" commonly refers to some in one clade, some in the other clade, and some outside both of these clades.
Dwelling inside the very secular European Union, we find Denmark with its state Lutheran religion.
Yeah... Denmark with all of its hardline stances on gay marriage, gay clergy, and banning gay people from the military, etc....
England has a state church too. I'm an English atheist, and happy with most of the way it works now. One thing I'm annoyed about is tax breaks and exceptions given to all recognised religions. The state decides what's a religion, and what isn't... but then that happens in the US too, with tax exemption, etc.
You see, the hard part of critical thinking isn't working out if someone's argument is valid or not, it's working out exactly what they're trying to argue in the first place. It's a safe bet that anyone playing "spot the logical fallacy" literally doesn't know the first thing about critical thinking, having skipped right to the seventh thing without understanding the previous steps.
This is an excuse for poor reasoning. If the person you're trying to understand does not make any sense, and you've got to guess what they're saying, they're doing it wrong, and you're doing it wrong. Your guess may be the exact opposite of what they were trying (poorly) to express. Interpretation is invaluable only if their expression and reasoning is basically sound.... if not, you're just guessing, and you could guess that they made a good argument when in fact they spoke drivel.
you know how in the gulf oil arab countries booze is banned?
No, no I don't. You whole rant sounds like deliberate racism... I'm not saying it is, you could just be ignorant.
Saudi is the "pin-up" insane ruling elite religious monarchy of the area (and it is bad in some ways, but we only hear the worst of it on the news - they hear the worst of us on their news), but most places in the gulf alcohol is legal. I'd guess you've not been most places in the gulf...
Given that we are dealing with a society and judicial system that is fine with beheading people with a sword
If I was given the death penalty, I'd far prefer beheading to most of the other options. The electric chair is just odd and wrong, when they use lethal injection they give a massive dose of muscle relaxant (what for?), hanging goes awry sometimes. The last beheading in France was in 1977...
Personally, I think executions should be done by oxygen deprivation. It's painless and effective.
That all being said, I'm not a massive fan of the practice generally.
This is the major reason why they keep pushing to "decentralize the internet" and wrest control from the US for their own purposes.
I don't think you quite understand how the internet works... if the US disappeared tomorrow, the internet everywhere else (shock horror) would still work. When I use a website or connect to someone this side of the pond, funnily enough the US doesn't come into the equation at all. There isn't a central server everyone routes through...
The trouble with this argument is that the US government spies on foreign citizens, and foreign governments spy on US citizens. Then the governments get together, and swap information. This is practically no different from the US spying on its own citizens.
This is amazingly shortsighted IMO. There's nothing enshrined in your laws that prevents the US government buying or trading that information from someone else. Foreign governments habitually spy on American citizens, then give the information to the US government. The spying may be illegal in the US, but that doesn't matter because it was those dang foreigners.
Let's also not forget that even after decades, Excel and Word are light years ahead of anything else that has attempted to challenge them.
Decades ago, everyone was using WordPerfect. Word and Excel bear little to no relation to what they were decades ago, and claiming that current rival word processors and spreadsheets are worse than decades old Microsoft products is disingenuous.
Here [senate.gov] he's character-assinating the director of the Ames Research Center.
Heh, can't fool me again... I've clicked links like that on slashdot before. At least you didn't try to disguise it.
Just googled it, and it has a meaning, apparently. You live and learn.
Wouldn't the indigenous (we won't call them "native" since they were merely the first to travel here) American peoples have killed all the European immigrants through their own diseases just the same?
They did. Syphilis is widely thought to have originated in the Americas, and the introduction of it to the rest of the world caused more deaths than diseases introduced to the Americas. It causes about 100,000 deaths a year now worldwide, and that is half the number of only 20 years ago.
Aside from a handful of cases where they were sold products intentionally infected with Smallpox, your argument doesn't hold.
There's not a huge amount of evidence showing deliberate infection. However, accidentally introduced disease caused devastation in the Americas - far, far more deaths than warfare.
Nice try troll.
If my posts upset you... good!, I hope they make you turn red in the face and maybe even cry a little. I'm not trying to sow discontent though, only a different way of looking at things, I find it hilarious how mad it makes some people that somebody should think different from them.
You're the one who sounds het up, not those you're responding to. You made a point claiming serial killers never had girlfriends or wives. That was false... even claiming most serial killers didn't have girfriends or wives is debatable.
Then again you sound pretty lame too with your direct attack on my person rather than post.
Again, you're the one with the ad hominems, not those you're responding to.
Isn't this what you would expect? Most people who are good enough to find exploits (as opposed to randomly crashing Windows) generally make a profession out of programming. And the good ones generally work for the big named companies (there are exceptions, of course).
Exceptions? Name a programmer. Name another. And another. How many of them work for the big name companies? (I got 0 in my top 3, 1 in my top 5).
Society was happier when people were focused on family and behaved in a (relatively) chaste manner.
When was that exactly? Because I know I'm very happy to be living now as opposed to any other time in history you'd care to mention.
When we go pluralistic, or make "anything goes" the new normal, this traditional order is threatened.
This is the same argument they were making in the 20's, 30's and 50's. We've accomplished a lot since then, and our society is better in most ways. If anything, I'd say it's more restrictive in many ways, rather than "anything goes".
No... no, we don't.
Wow... you really believe a western European state could have people in prison for being homosexual in 2013? That blows my mind.
This, this, and more this. I doubt there are many people alive who actually have this conviction though...
After the law was repealed, many gay men were unfairly prosecuted under different broad-reaching laws, ("public decency", etc), and I think we have to remember them too. It's got gradually better as time has gone on, but it is still far from perfect.
Mod parent up. Pardon implies that the action was wrong, but excusable. An apology would imply that Turing (+others) did nothing wrong and that it was in fact the law that was wrong.
Everyone knows the law was wrong. That's why we got rid of it.
Asking for an apology is like asking the current German government for an apology for WWII, or the UK government an apology for the opium wars. Everyone's retired or dead - the people in government now have as much to do with the criminalization of homosexuality in the 1950's as you do.
The reason given why he wasn't pardoned was so that we can accept our shameful history. Retroactively pardoning someone doesn't actually do anything... no one thinks just being gay should be illegal now in the UK (well, as close as possible to no one).
The pardon doesn't actually do anything about current issues with homosexuality, transgender issues, etc. It's just a self-congratulatory pat on the back, "weren't we awful back then", pointless exercise.
We'll be going around pardoning all the Catholics next, then the Protestants.