"But a) they're only planning on buying 150 (and only 50 by 2020), while we already have 115 and will end up with 2,400+ and b) if the plan works dogfighting is irrelevant."
Which is good, because given how much smaller an economy Russia has than the US, France, Britain, Germany et. al. meaning there's no way it can both maintain a 5th gen fighter programme, and still manage to afford to keep up the maintenance to the same degree the West does, it'll have far less in the first place.
Once you factor in lower numbers, poorer stealth, general cheaper lower quality design, and higher maintenance requirements the PAK-FA isn't the great money efficient super-fighter many suggest. If it ever sees combat against the West there wont be enough of them flying to make much of an impact. Mostly it's only going to be useful in theatres like Georgia and Ukraine where it's got the backing of overwhelming force and is up against old Russian kit that might be able to detect and shoot down say, a Mig 29, but not a PAK-FA.
You have to remember that Russia is great at propaganda, much of what we know about the PAK-FA is overhyped. The F-35 didn't suffer it's first engine fire until about 100+ were produced and had logged thousands of flying hours. The PAK-FA was burning after only 5 had been produced:
Reduced order numbers already leaves the programme precariously close to cancellation. Another downturn in the Russian economy through sanctions or oil prices mean the programme will be dead and buried.
It's not even about being imitative, it's about interoperability. This basically would put a ban on software that can interoperate with software from companies that want to try and maintain a closed ecosystem.
I can't see European or Asian courts backing any such judgement, so this would basically hand over the reigns for leading the technology world to Europe or Asia, as America would be stuck with closed ecosystem non-interoperable software, and the rest of the world would be able to just get on with it and would have to ignore American most software.
"And Britain, which seems to prefer Ms St Louis to Professor Hunt, will get what it has chosen. Not to its advantage."
Hey, don't paint the whole country that way, a bunch of us agree with you, from the papers that are now putting forward the other side of the story through to other well known scientists putting their own reputations on the line to defend him (Brian Cox, Richard Dawkins). It's only the UCL that's going to lose out at this rate, not the country as a whole. Do you think if people like Cox, Dawkins and so forth are annoyed about this and putting their name publicly on the line to defend it that there wont similarly be many other scientists privately agreeing with them but not willing to put their name on the line?
How do you think the UCL will do for high quality guest lecturers in future if said lecturers know it's a university with an anti-science mindset that supports lynch mobs?
St. Louis is under investigation for her fraudulent CV now, hopefully it's only a matter of time until this is sorted out, and UCL is the only one left with it's reputation taking a massive blow.
Yeah, and he's married to an award winning female scientist in the same field as him. When he "doubled down" as you called it, he couldn't possibly have been merely referring to the fact he was reflecting on his own mistakes as a scientist in allow his personal relationship that developed in a lab to interfere with the science he was supposed to be doing could he?
I don't see how him admitting his own personal shortcomings is in any way a suggestion that it's a general and widespread problem unless you're on a witch hunt and have already decided you hate this guy because the Twitter hate mob has told you to.
It's sad watching someone who has done far more good in the world that any of his accusers including encouraging women into science and pioneering research that has and will continue to save the lives of men and women equally have his life destroyed by a hate mob of nobodies who have achieved nothing other than dragging the human race backwards to an era of lynchmobs and witch drownings based on a combination of gross out of context quoting, and outright lies.
What nonsense, so historical news might as well have not existed before the internet?
How do you think journalists used to dig up past stories and such? Requiring someone to get off their fat ass to find something does not mean it does not exist. It just means you have to put some effort in, and if the digging is worth the effort? well that's your call.
"Would you want the government to hide that record so they have a second chance? No."
You realise that's exactly what happens right? You know that in the UK such convictions only have to be disclosed for a certain amount of time afterwards yes?
"But simply hiding someone's history won't make me change what I would think about their history if I were to know it - it won't address the true problem, at best it might relieve the symptoms a bit."
Right, but that's a big if. If you weren't to know it then you're admitting that you will view them differently, which is kind of the point.
If we insist on condemning people indefinitely, making it impossible for rehabilitated offenders to get a job then what choice do you leave them but to go back to offending? If they can't earn money legitimately, then their only option for survival remains returning to crime.
Not going forward, but a lot of our existing contracts, for example for some of the large banks mandate that we continue to build with what we've always worked with, and the official Java packages weren't always that obnoxious.
The fact they've now reached a point where trying to force Ask on you without even offering an obvious opt-out is really the straw that broke the camels back.
As I say, it's not that I absolutely wont use Java any more, I suspect I will, and certain then I'd always tend towards OpenJDK going forward. But the very existence of such fragmentation coupled with this sort of obnoxiousness really hurts it as an option.
Technologies have to be easy to adopt to grow market share, and once they get lazy, and stop doing that, and start doing the opposite, decline is inevitable. Oracle needs a wake up call, because the very fact that you have to choose between different flavours in the first place is problematic enough.
We always joke here on Slashdot about "Oh no, not another language" but the fact we do is symptomatic of the fact that the world of technology is insanely competitive, and then why continue to use Java if something better comes along that doesn't require that you make choices between flavours, and have to go out your way to warn clients not to use _that_ version because it contains malware and to use this version that says to use that version but ignore that it says to use that version and use this version which you can download from this third party? It's all rather unnecessary.
We're seeing both Apple and Microsoft tred into what was classically Java's territory now, and these are both big names, so it's not like we're even talking about simply having to make a choice between a tried and tested technology supported by a big company and some fly by night pet language project run by a 13 year old kid in his bedroom. Java has real competition now.
Of course I do, but I don't have any control over client deployments, and I never really saw any point going out of my way to explicitly install it on my home computer when it's already long had the consumer auto-updating version of the JRE on it.
Just because it's there, hidden out the way, doesn't mean it's guaranteed to be the one everyone will use.
As a professional developer who has led a number of fairly large scale Java projects I've always just accepted the existence of Java on my computer, it's a thing I've worked with so it's a thing I need. Or so my default thinking always went.
But the last time Java asked for permission to update on my computer at home there appeared to no longer be an obvious way of avoiding the Ask toolbar install. I had a choice of next, or cancel which cancelled the whole installation. I was getting fed up of it anyway, given that it seemed to be persistently asking to update every time I went to my computer anyway.
Java, therefore is gone from my home computer and I will no longer consider it for any spare time projects. This has the knock on effect that it's reduced in desirability for me as an option when determining what technology to use for new commercial projects at work too. If I have a choice between Java + Ask, or no Java, it's not really a difficult choice for me.
So for me, Yahoo can stick whatever they want on it, but under Oracle's stewardship it's going to end up a dying product. For some reason, Yahoo seems incredibly intent on consistently tying itself up with losers. Instead of continuously wasting money backing losers, they should probably just spend what needs to be spent on backing a winner for once.
I like Java as a technology, and a language - hell, I've posted enough times here defending it, but when the client distribution forces the installation of malware like Ask, it's pretty much a dead end for anything desktop based. You can't as a professional insist your clients install something that tries to bundle malware to use your product with a serious face, it's just not tenable. It'd be one thing if it was just a one off question you could say no to on initial installation, but the frequent updates often mean it can be an attempt to force it on you multiple times a week in some cases. It hopes that in just one of those cases, you'll forget to untick the checkbox and accidentally install, well, obviously that hoping was fruitless, because now there just is no checkbox to untick.
I understand that with command line switches you can tell Java to skip that crap, and that there are options to automate installation without it in corporate environments but frankly in the end it's just easier to not install Java in the first place unless you simply have no choice.
I can't say I've missed it one bit, I can't remember the last time I needed it for anything at home. So my "I need that because I work with it" attitude has changed to "Why did I ever put up with all those incessant update nag screens for years". I've got better things to do than play the "try and remember to avoid installing malware because Java wants to update" game every time I sit down at my computer.
There's not much they can do to specifically enforce it, but it probably opens the door for citizens whose property is damaged because of climate related issues to be able to claim compensation from the government I imagine.
If the government hasn't done what it both said and was legally obliged to do, and someone suffers loss as a result then it would seem to be a fairly clear cut case for compensation.
No, we grew past this idea in Europe after World War II after we found out the hard way that elected governments can do bad things.
The government of the day builds on law created by previous governments, the government is bound by the law as much as anyone, they don't get special status. As such you need someone to hold the government to those laws, and that's what the judiciary is for.
Though it's not really even remotely just a European thing. One might equally ask Americans why a few hundred year old piece of paper written by some dead guys gets to overrule the elected government of the day too following your logic.
The underlying problem is that governments are elected for an extended period (typically 4 - 5 years at a time) and their democratic mandate only exists at a snapshot in time when the elections are held. It could well be that the next day the new government announces everyone must die, at which point the democratic mandate is lost because basically no one will support that.
Having a national and even supranational judiciary strong enough to hold governments to laws past and present, as well as external conventions and treaties that countries have signed up to and ratified, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and it's respective treaties is a good thing. It limits the potential for governments to go off the rails.
Democracy is imperfect, it has it's limits, strong judicial systems exist to try and make sure those limits don't lead to bad things.
In this case the Dutch government is merely being held by the judiciary to the promises it made previously. If it doesn't want that it shouldn't have made those promises, or it should revoke those promises. Even better If the government was elected in part on those promises - people always whine about lying politicians, what's so bad about them being held to account for their lying?
Do not view a democratic government as an overriding power, it should not be. It should merely exists to run the country in the way it said and nothing more. What you talk about is merely elected dictatorship - where a guy and his friends get elected and then does whatever he wants regardless of the changing will of the people post-election. Government is just one of a number of entities that a healthy state requires, a strong, honest, and independent judiciary is another.
Whether it's irrelevant or not depends on the discussion at hand, given that I'm making the point about not turning her into an idol over a purely selfish, rather than selfless act, then it's wholly relevant.
I've already made the point that I agree it's good for other artists, but that doesn't mean I have to ignore the fact that there's a danger she's being idolised for something she really doesn't deserve respect for. She should only be given respect if she was acting wholly in the interests of smaller acts, but she's not doing that, because some of her other actions are harmful to smaller acts (i.e. propping up big music).
Yes this is as an aside helpful to smaller acts, but that doesn't make criticism as to why she is doing it irrelevant.
Yeah, the problem is the cost of game development has escalated drastically.
So instead of reducing prices they just opted to give us bigger and better games.
It's easy to make a promise about reducing prices if piracy reduces when all games can be made with a team of 3 in 6 months, but without the foresight that people demand bigger and better games that promise rings a bit naive.
I found my old Hero Quest video game the other day, price tag on it was £24.99. That would be £50 now and I typically only pay £40 for games, I think a 20% reduction in price coupled with a massive amount more effort put into art work and storyline nowadays is not a terrible deal. The headline price isn't an issue for me, I think it's fair.
What I do detest is this DLC crap and the fact that Season Passes are now standard from companies like Ubisoft - you're only buying half a game now and the other half is ready at or near release, you just have to pay more for it. That's what's really unfair and unacceptable.
"Yes because it is our species. Really any member of a species that does not put the survival of the other members of it's species over a different species is flawed from a biological viewpoint."
That assumes you have a complete grasp of the global ecosystem, which we don't. We do know that biodiversity reduction can lead to population collapse that can in turn hurt us though.
"A prey animal will not allow a starving predator to take another member of the herd just so predator can survive. A rhino will not worry about killing a human if it can to protect the herd. "
Though dogs have been known to die to protect humans. But this is really the point, one member of a species accepting a sacrifice for another is a well documented thing in nature because it's not about survival of an individual but survival of the species, and if killing people fuelling poaching which in turn leads to deaths of many other humans helps the species as a whole survive then you should be able to understand why your simplistic biological arguments fail to tell us anything much at all, contrary to what you're claiming.
I'm not going to pretend I've figured out the one true solution because I don't know how many dead poisoned people it would take to stop the trade relative to how many people killed directly and indirectly from poaching there would be without stopping the trade.
I also think there may well be other better options, like applying more political pressure on the Chinese government - as I say, I don't advocate the idea put forward, I'm merely pointing out that the person I responded to was wrong to claim it was a clear cut ethical choice, which it's not, just as it's not a clear cut choice from a biological standpoint as you're trying to argue either.
The fact is, we don't have the data to know either way. I'm not here to say my way is right and that's that, I'm merely here to point out that people who are saying that are arrogant and short sighted for not seeing that it's really not quite that simple.
Ecosystems are large and complex things, and you can't just simplify them down to us vs. them. Sometimes our existence is inextricably linked to theirs.
"You can try to spin it however you want. The vast majority of the people on earth do in fact see humans as having a greater right to exist than other animals."
I doesn't matter how I spin it, it doesn't mean it's right, whether it is or not is a wholly personal thing and doesn't make me any more wrong than someone that holds the opposite view. There's a fair argument backed by science though that allowing destruction of biodiversity only hurts us in the long run however.
"The poachers are only hurting animals."
Did you even read my post before replying? No they're not. Poachers are responsible for many, many human deaths both directly and indirectly.
Try and re-read my post, you'll see I absolutely haven't missed the point because I made it clear that no side is in the right here - I fully get the argument against what Apple did and I support that.
What I am saying is that Swift shouldn't be made out to be a saint for it because she's just doing this for herself whatever moral good she claims as there are a million ways she could help smaller acts, but the only ways she ever proclaims to help them are via methods that also happen to enrich her. Many of her acts, such as continuing to sign with and hence support large abusive studios in the first place are of massive detriment to the smaller acts she proclaims to be looking out for.
I don't necessarily think she's malicious or cut-throat, I just think her telling herself she's somehow helping smaller acts whilst also acting detrimentally to them is her way of justifying her own greed to herself- she tells herself it's okay that she's trying to milk even more money because it'll help the smaller acts.
If helping smaller acts is really what she cares about then she needs to prove it by doing things other than those that simply make her even more wealthy. Anything else is just a convenient side effect that she's waving around as an excuse for her real reasons for doing it.
I'm just saying that people should only be praised for genuine altruism, and this most definitely isn't that. This is a selfish, not a selfless act.
"Keep in mind your poisons have to have a long enough life, penetrate the entire horn of a living creature without harming it (likely impossible),"
Why? you'd just lace the horns once they've already been removed, or lace the fake ones and seed them into the market. It would only take a few casualties to massively drop demand.
"and in your BEST case scenario, end up hurting actual people"
Is this somehow worse than hurting actual rhinos? Is there some reason to class humans as a super species that have a greater right to exist than any others other than anthropomorphic arrogance?
What about the people whose lives are taken by poachers? what about the people whose livelihoods are destroyed by poachers potentially resulting in their lives being taken? Are the lives of rich Chinese folks more important than everyone else?
What about the fact that when poachers make a kill they often lace the animal carcass with poison so that the hundreds of vultures that descend on a fresh carcass are also wiped out because otherwise park rangers see the vulture swarm and know where the poachers are active? What about the people who are dying of disease because vulture populations have been decimated due to this practice meaning there are no vulture clean up flocks around in more populated areas any more to deal with decaying disease ridden carcasses of feral dogs and such that the vultures remove? Do those people not matter either?
What about the people who have died due to conflict and terrorism funded by spoils from poaching? do those victims no matter either?
I'm not advocating the GPs plan but I don't think it's as clear cut as you make out, certainly were that eventuality to occur, that given that the Chinese government wont do anything to quash the myth that rhino horn is magical, then if nothing else I'd have zero sympathy for the victims were this to happen- I'd rather have people like that suffer, than the people whose lives are taken, livelihoods are destroyed by poaching, or the poached animals themselves. Plenty of rangers and locals who have had the misfortune to run into poaching groups have also died because of these people, why should I care if something happened to the consumers at the other end? Their actions have killed enough people and animals.
Make no mistake, demand for these horns from the people buying the product have enough blood on their hands, it's not a victimless crime, on the contrary, there are many, many victims so the people who consume and feed this trade becoming victims is actually a very much preferable alternative to the status quo. It's much better that people responsible for a problem suffer, than innocent bystanders.
I think most of what she says is reasonable, well, if it was coming from someone that wasn't such a spoilt brat.
The problem with Taylor Swift making this argument, is that she already makes insane amounts of money, and it's not the first time she's held streaming services to ransom to try and solicit even more. She's the personification of greed.
The problem is here, that Apple is the same.
So in this battle I struggle to support either party, she's right that Apple has the money to cover the trial costs and it's Apple's trial for Apple's service so they should do exactly that. But when she says things like "We shouldn't be expected to work for free", I have to ask, what work are you doing exactly Taylor? Last I checked you've already been well compensated for actually doing the work involved in making these tracks. Having Apple sell them for you requires no input on your behalf, so how on earth do you define it as work? No one is making you work for free Taylor. What you're really saying is "I can't believe they weren't going to pay me even more money than they already are for doing absolutely nothing!".
That's not how the world works. In just about every other industry than music/movies people get paid to do actual work and that's that. Pretending that not being given free additional money for being sat on your ass is "working for free" is an insult to the other 99.9999% of the world's population that actually have to really work to make ALL their money, and typically much less to boot.
She's not standing up for the little guy like she claims, all she's doing is demanding she gets paid more for doing nothing, and I have no sympathy for that stance.
Personally even without kids (I don't have any) I'd never live there, but I actually like fresh air and having a decent sized garden.
Ultimately it depends what you want out of life, if you're happy living with shit air quality and having fuck all space to yourself then as you say London is great, otherwise there's just no real benefit to it - the London salary weighting is rapidly eaten up by the drastically higher cost of living, so you end up with less money to even get out of London and go on holiday and shit too.
You've really just got to love city lifestyle, if you do then London is about as good as any other major city, but some capital cities like those I mentioned - Ottawa, Wellington and so forth do an excellent job of providing a balance between city life and having more natural features, and personally for me I think that's optimal - you get the best of both worlds.
"Silicon Valley is about the only place you can have your startup fail, walk down the street a few blocks, and have a nice safe job to tide you over until you decide you need to do another startup (if you do). In other words, there's a job safety net that is not there elsewhere (the article as much as admits this, for London)."
Whilst I agree with the rest of what you say, I disagree on this. What you say is absolutely true of London where the market is drastically more competitive, but there are many other places where you have that safety net.
Here further north in the UK the exact same is also true as what you suggest, there is such a drastic shortage of developers and massive competition for us such that if I wanted to I could walk out the door tomorrow and have another well above average wage job within a week (and even then only because that's how long it takes to organise interviews). The safety net is most definitely not an issue here, but as you also mention, access to VCs most definitely is a problem.
I've never lived in Sheffield, but I have worked there for a few years and I do go there now and again because I miss the culture - it's very educated and liberal. But I also think what struck me is that so many people there are just great at organising themselves that many other cities like. This means that there are disproportionately more startups than most other British cities, there are many and varied festivals, and there are countless interesting clubs and societies such as a great astronomy society, through to an excellent maker scene, to chemistry clubs that convene regularly in a pub (Chemistry and Beer, what could possibly go wrong!). Even the homeless guy (an ex-Afghan translator for the British Army given asylum here) I used to walk past daily seemed in on the attitude, he was out there selling his magazines whether rain, snow, wind, or sun and never lost his smile.
Obviously London has much of this due to it's sheer size, but what makes Sheffield stand out in this respect is that it's all condensed into such a small area so you simply don't have to go far to access any of it and it's fairly unique to many other cities in the UK I've frequented in this respect.
There are still parts of the city that haven't really recovered from the collapse of the mining and steel industry, but the speed at which the shit parts have vanished is unparalleled by any other similarly affected cities and work is still well underway with no sign of slowing down. As such I suspect even the few remaining scratty pockets of the city will look modern and clean within a decade. It's really hard to understate how good a job Sheffield has done against the odds of transforming and modernising itself.
I also liked the Millennium Gardens there because having what is frankly a big tropical greenhouse to eat your lunch in when the inevitable English rain comes along meant you weren't stuck in your office at lunch time as you are in most cities either, then during the sunnier days sitting in the Peace Garden or the Botanical Garden meant there was always somewhere relaxing to eat.
There's a big proposal currently from what I understand to completely revamp the Chinese parts of the city and the plans look pretty impressive. The level of Chinese investment in the city cannot be understated - it's incredible how much the Chinese love Sheffield. Like London, it's incredibly multi-cultural, and the Chinese seem to be the largest grouping.
Oh, and it has one of the only four Taco Bells in the UK:)
There's lots to love about the city, I'd gladly work there again at the drop of a hat if a job that interested me came up.
"I have investments in various countries from India to Kenya to Colombia, amongst other countries"
Well good luck with that, most people don't do that because of the massively high risk of losing it due to corruption. In Western markets you have a relatively high assurance that you can invest based on your understanding of the market and have your return fit your talent on predicting that.
You don't have that in the countries you list, in Kenya and India your investment is one corrupt government official away from being wiped out.
This is why dealing with corruption is such a big focus by politicians, and India is a prime example of this. 15 years ago we were told India would be a top 3 world economy alongside China and the USA. Instead it's still stuck at 10 despite having over 21x the population and drastically higher land mass and natural resources than the half way further up the ladder France. India is 142nd out of 189 in the ease of doing business index for this reason, and Kenya is 136.
Colombia does much better for sure at 34 however so is indeed a sensible investment - and probably will continue to grow as such now that things finally seem to be calming down in a possible more permanent way with FARC.
So whilst it looks good whilst things are going fine, like DRM corruption in countries like India and Kenya is one of those things that looks harmless until it fucks you, and then that's the end of your investment. They may pay off, but they're incredibly high risk.
Slashdot Mirror
"But a) they're only planning on buying 150 (and only 50 by 2020), while we already have 115 and will end up with 2,400+ and b) if the plan works dogfighting is irrelevant."
They're now only planning on buying 12 actually:
https://medium.com/war-is-bori...
Yes. 12.
In practice, it's not much of a stretch to view it as anything other than a cancellation of the programme in everything but name.
Which is good, because given how much smaller an economy Russia has than the US, France, Britain, Germany et. al. meaning there's no way it can both maintain a 5th gen fighter programme, and still manage to afford to keep up the maintenance to the same degree the West does, it'll have far less in the first place.
Once you factor in lower numbers, poorer stealth, general cheaper lower quality design, and higher maintenance requirements the PAK-FA isn't the great money efficient super-fighter many suggest. If it ever sees combat against the West there wont be enough of them flying to make much of an impact. Mostly it's only going to be useful in theatres like Georgia and Ukraine where it's got the backing of overwhelming force and is up against old Russian kit that might be able to detect and shoot down say, a Mig 29, but not a PAK-FA.
You have to remember that Russia is great at propaganda, much of what we know about the PAK-FA is overhyped. The F-35 didn't suffer it's first engine fire until about 100+ were produced and had logged thousands of flying hours. The PAK-FA was burning after only 5 had been produced:
http://www.janes.com/article/4...
That's assuming the whole programme even remains financially viable in the first place:
http://theaviationist.com/2015...
Reduced order numbers already leaves the programme precariously close to cancellation. Another downturn in the Russian economy through sanctions or oil prices mean the programme will be dead and buried.
It's not even about being imitative, it's about interoperability. This basically would put a ban on software that can interoperate with software from companies that want to try and maintain a closed ecosystem.
I can't see European or Asian courts backing any such judgement, so this would basically hand over the reigns for leading the technology world to Europe or Asia, as America would be stuck with closed ecosystem non-interoperable software, and the rest of the world would be able to just get on with it and would have to ignore American most software.
"And Britain, which seems to prefer Ms St Louis to Professor Hunt, will get what it has chosen. Not to its advantage."
Hey, don't paint the whole country that way, a bunch of us agree with you, from the papers that are now putting forward the other side of the story through to other well known scientists putting their own reputations on the line to defend him (Brian Cox, Richard Dawkins). It's only the UCL that's going to lose out at this rate, not the country as a whole. Do you think if people like Cox, Dawkins and so forth are annoyed about this and putting their name publicly on the line to defend it that there wont similarly be many other scientists privately agreeing with them but not willing to put their name on the line?
How do you think the UCL will do for high quality guest lecturers in future if said lecturers know it's a university with an anti-science mindset that supports lynch mobs?
St. Louis is under investigation for her fraudulent CV now, hopefully it's only a matter of time until this is sorted out, and UCL is the only one left with it's reputation taking a massive blow.
Yeah, and he's married to an award winning female scientist in the same field as him. When he "doubled down" as you called it, he couldn't possibly have been merely referring to the fact he was reflecting on his own mistakes as a scientist in allow his personal relationship that developed in a lab to interfere with the science he was supposed to be doing could he?
I don't see how him admitting his own personal shortcomings is in any way a suggestion that it's a general and widespread problem unless you're on a witch hunt and have already decided you hate this guy because the Twitter hate mob has told you to.
It's sad watching someone who has done far more good in the world that any of his accusers including encouraging women into science and pioneering research that has and will continue to save the lives of men and women equally have his life destroyed by a hate mob of nobodies who have achieved nothing other than dragging the human race backwards to an era of lynchmobs and witch drownings based on a combination of gross out of context quoting, and outright lies.
What nonsense, so historical news might as well have not existed before the internet?
How do you think journalists used to dig up past stories and such? Requiring someone to get off their fat ass to find something does not mean it does not exist. It just means you have to put some effort in, and if the digging is worth the effort? well that's your call.
"Would you want the government to hide that record so they have a second chance? No."
You realise that's exactly what happens right? You know that in the UK such convictions only have to be disclosed for a certain amount of time afterwards yes?
"But simply hiding someone's history won't make me change what I would think about their history if I were to know it - it won't address the true problem, at best it might relieve the symptoms a bit."
Right, but that's a big if. If you weren't to know it then you're admitting that you will view them differently, which is kind of the point.
If we insist on condemning people indefinitely, making it impossible for rehabilitated offenders to get a job then what choice do you leave them but to go back to offending? If they can't earn money legitimately, then their only option for survival remains returning to crime.
Not going forward, but a lot of our existing contracts, for example for some of the large banks mandate that we continue to build with what we've always worked with, and the official Java packages weren't always that obnoxious.
The fact they've now reached a point where trying to force Ask on you without even offering an obvious opt-out is really the straw that broke the camels back.
As I say, it's not that I absolutely wont use Java any more, I suspect I will, and certain then I'd always tend towards OpenJDK going forward. But the very existence of such fragmentation coupled with this sort of obnoxiousness really hurts it as an option.
Technologies have to be easy to adopt to grow market share, and once they get lazy, and stop doing that, and start doing the opposite, decline is inevitable. Oracle needs a wake up call, because the very fact that you have to choose between different flavours in the first place is problematic enough.
We always joke here on Slashdot about "Oh no, not another language" but the fact we do is symptomatic of the fact that the world of technology is insanely competitive, and then why continue to use Java if something better comes along that doesn't require that you make choices between flavours, and have to go out your way to warn clients not to use _that_ version because it contains malware and to use this version that says to use that version but ignore that it says to use that version and use this version which you can download from this third party? It's all rather unnecessary.
We're seeing both Apple and Microsoft tred into what was classically Java's territory now, and these are both big names, so it's not like we're even talking about simply having to make a choice between a tried and tested technology supported by a big company and some fly by night pet language project run by a 13 year old kid in his bedroom. Java has real competition now.
Of course I do, but I don't have any control over client deployments, and I never really saw any point going out of my way to explicitly install it on my home computer when it's already long had the consumer auto-updating version of the JRE on it.
Just because it's there, hidden out the way, doesn't mean it's guaranteed to be the one everyone will use.
As a professional developer who has led a number of fairly large scale Java projects I've always just accepted the existence of Java on my computer, it's a thing I've worked with so it's a thing I need. Or so my default thinking always went.
But the last time Java asked for permission to update on my computer at home there appeared to no longer be an obvious way of avoiding the Ask toolbar install. I had a choice of next, or cancel which cancelled the whole installation. I was getting fed up of it anyway, given that it seemed to be persistently asking to update every time I went to my computer anyway.
Java, therefore is gone from my home computer and I will no longer consider it for any spare time projects. This has the knock on effect that it's reduced in desirability for me as an option when determining what technology to use for new commercial projects at work too. If I have a choice between Java + Ask, or no Java, it's not really a difficult choice for me.
So for me, Yahoo can stick whatever they want on it, but under Oracle's stewardship it's going to end up a dying product. For some reason, Yahoo seems incredibly intent on consistently tying itself up with losers. Instead of continuously wasting money backing losers, they should probably just spend what needs to be spent on backing a winner for once.
I like Java as a technology, and a language - hell, I've posted enough times here defending it, but when the client distribution forces the installation of malware like Ask, it's pretty much a dead end for anything desktop based. You can't as a professional insist your clients install something that tries to bundle malware to use your product with a serious face, it's just not tenable. It'd be one thing if it was just a one off question you could say no to on initial installation, but the frequent updates often mean it can be an attempt to force it on you multiple times a week in some cases. It hopes that in just one of those cases, you'll forget to untick the checkbox and accidentally install, well, obviously that hoping was fruitless, because now there just is no checkbox to untick.
I understand that with command line switches you can tell Java to skip that crap, and that there are options to automate installation without it in corporate environments but frankly in the end it's just easier to not install Java in the first place unless you simply have no choice.
I can't say I've missed it one bit, I can't remember the last time I needed it for anything at home. So my "I need that because I work with it" attitude has changed to "Why did I ever put up with all those incessant update nag screens for years". I've got better things to do than play the "try and remember to avoid installing malware because Java wants to update" game every time I sit down at my computer.
There's not much they can do to specifically enforce it, but it probably opens the door for citizens whose property is damaged because of climate related issues to be able to claim compensation from the government I imagine.
If the government hasn't done what it both said and was legally obliged to do, and someone suffers loss as a result then it would seem to be a fairly clear cut case for compensation.
No, we grew past this idea in Europe after World War II after we found out the hard way that elected governments can do bad things.
The government of the day builds on law created by previous governments, the government is bound by the law as much as anyone, they don't get special status. As such you need someone to hold the government to those laws, and that's what the judiciary is for.
Though it's not really even remotely just a European thing. One might equally ask Americans why a few hundred year old piece of paper written by some dead guys gets to overrule the elected government of the day too following your logic.
The underlying problem is that governments are elected for an extended period (typically 4 - 5 years at a time) and their democratic mandate only exists at a snapshot in time when the elections are held. It could well be that the next day the new government announces everyone must die, at which point the democratic mandate is lost because basically no one will support that.
Having a national and even supranational judiciary strong enough to hold governments to laws past and present, as well as external conventions and treaties that countries have signed up to and ratified, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and it's respective treaties is a good thing. It limits the potential for governments to go off the rails.
Democracy is imperfect, it has it's limits, strong judicial systems exist to try and make sure those limits don't lead to bad things.
In this case the Dutch government is merely being held by the judiciary to the promises it made previously. If it doesn't want that it shouldn't have made those promises, or it should revoke those promises. Even better If the government was elected in part on those promises - people always whine about lying politicians, what's so bad about them being held to account for their lying?
Do not view a democratic government as an overriding power, it should not be. It should merely exists to run the country in the way it said and nothing more. What you talk about is merely elected dictatorship - where a guy and his friends get elected and then does whatever he wants regardless of the changing will of the people post-election. Government is just one of a number of entities that a healthy state requires, a strong, honest, and independent judiciary is another.
Whether it's irrelevant or not depends on the discussion at hand, given that I'm making the point about not turning her into an idol over a purely selfish, rather than selfless act, then it's wholly relevant.
I've already made the point that I agree it's good for other artists, but that doesn't mean I have to ignore the fact that there's a danger she's being idolised for something she really doesn't deserve respect for. She should only be given respect if she was acting wholly in the interests of smaller acts, but she's not doing that, because some of her other actions are harmful to smaller acts (i.e. propping up big music).
Yes this is as an aside helpful to smaller acts, but that doesn't make criticism as to why she is doing it irrelevant.
Yeah, the problem is the cost of game development has escalated drastically.
So instead of reducing prices they just opted to give us bigger and better games.
It's easy to make a promise about reducing prices if piracy reduces when all games can be made with a team of 3 in 6 months, but without the foresight that people demand bigger and better games that promise rings a bit naive.
I found my old Hero Quest video game the other day, price tag on it was £24.99. That would be £50 now and I typically only pay £40 for games, I think a 20% reduction in price coupled with a massive amount more effort put into art work and storyline nowadays is not a terrible deal. The headline price isn't an issue for me, I think it's fair.
What I do detest is this DLC crap and the fact that Season Passes are now standard from companies like Ubisoft - you're only buying half a game now and the other half is ready at or near release, you just have to pay more for it. That's what's really unfair and unacceptable.
People aren't chemically addicted to rhino horn, you know that right?
"Yes because it is our species. Really any member of a species that does not put the survival of the other members of it's species over a different species is flawed from a biological viewpoint."
That assumes you have a complete grasp of the global ecosystem, which we don't. We do know that biodiversity reduction can lead to population collapse that can in turn hurt us though.
"A prey animal will not allow a starving predator to take another member of the herd just so predator can survive. A rhino will not worry about killing a human if it can to protect the herd. "
Though dogs have been known to die to protect humans. But this is really the point, one member of a species accepting a sacrifice for another is a well documented thing in nature because it's not about survival of an individual but survival of the species, and if killing people fuelling poaching which in turn leads to deaths of many other humans helps the species as a whole survive then you should be able to understand why your simplistic biological arguments fail to tell us anything much at all, contrary to what you're claiming.
I'm not going to pretend I've figured out the one true solution because I don't know how many dead poisoned people it would take to stop the trade relative to how many people killed directly and indirectly from poaching there would be without stopping the trade.
I also think there may well be other better options, like applying more political pressure on the Chinese government - as I say, I don't advocate the idea put forward, I'm merely pointing out that the person I responded to was wrong to claim it was a clear cut ethical choice, which it's not, just as it's not a clear cut choice from a biological standpoint as you're trying to argue either.
The fact is, we don't have the data to know either way. I'm not here to say my way is right and that's that, I'm merely here to point out that people who are saying that are arrogant and short sighted for not seeing that it's really not quite that simple.
Ecosystems are large and complex things, and you can't just simplify them down to us vs. them. Sometimes our existence is inextricably linked to theirs.
"You can try to spin it however you want. The vast majority of the people on earth do in fact see humans as having a greater right to exist than other animals."
I doesn't matter how I spin it, it doesn't mean it's right, whether it is or not is a wholly personal thing and doesn't make me any more wrong than someone that holds the opposite view. There's a fair argument backed by science though that allowing destruction of biodiversity only hurts us in the long run however.
"The poachers are only hurting animals."
Did you even read my post before replying? No they're not. Poachers are responsible for many, many human deaths both directly and indirectly.
Try and re-read my post, you'll see I absolutely haven't missed the point because I made it clear that no side is in the right here - I fully get the argument against what Apple did and I support that.
What I am saying is that Swift shouldn't be made out to be a saint for it because she's just doing this for herself whatever moral good she claims as there are a million ways she could help smaller acts, but the only ways she ever proclaims to help them are via methods that also happen to enrich her. Many of her acts, such as continuing to sign with and hence support large abusive studios in the first place are of massive detriment to the smaller acts she proclaims to be looking out for.
I don't necessarily think she's malicious or cut-throat, I just think her telling herself she's somehow helping smaller acts whilst also acting detrimentally to them is her way of justifying her own greed to herself- she tells herself it's okay that she's trying to milk even more money because it'll help the smaller acts.
If helping smaller acts is really what she cares about then she needs to prove it by doing things other than those that simply make her even more wealthy. Anything else is just a convenient side effect that she's waving around as an excuse for her real reasons for doing it.
I'm just saying that people should only be praised for genuine altruism, and this most definitely isn't that. This is a selfish, not a selfless act.
"Keep in mind your poisons have to have a long enough life, penetrate the entire horn of a living creature without harming it (likely impossible),"
Why? you'd just lace the horns once they've already been removed, or lace the fake ones and seed them into the market. It would only take a few casualties to massively drop demand.
"and in your BEST case scenario, end up hurting actual people"
Is this somehow worse than hurting actual rhinos? Is there some reason to class humans as a super species that have a greater right to exist than any others other than anthropomorphic arrogance?
What about the people whose lives are taken by poachers? what about the people whose livelihoods are destroyed by poachers potentially resulting in their lives being taken? Are the lives of rich Chinese folks more important than everyone else?
What about the fact that when poachers make a kill they often lace the animal carcass with poison so that the hundreds of vultures that descend on a fresh carcass are also wiped out because otherwise park rangers see the vulture swarm and know where the poachers are active? What about the people who are dying of disease because vulture populations have been decimated due to this practice meaning there are no vulture clean up flocks around in more populated areas any more to deal with decaying disease ridden carcasses of feral dogs and such that the vultures remove? Do those people not matter either?
What about the people who have died due to conflict and terrorism funded by spoils from poaching? do those victims no matter either?
I'm not advocating the GPs plan but I don't think it's as clear cut as you make out, certainly were that eventuality to occur, that given that the Chinese government wont do anything to quash the myth that rhino horn is magical, then if nothing else I'd have zero sympathy for the victims were this to happen- I'd rather have people like that suffer, than the people whose lives are taken, livelihoods are destroyed by poaching, or the poached animals themselves. Plenty of rangers and locals who have had the misfortune to run into poaching groups have also died because of these people, why should I care if something happened to the consumers at the other end? Their actions have killed enough people and animals.
Make no mistake, demand for these horns from the people buying the product have enough blood on their hands, it's not a victimless crime, on the contrary, there are many, many victims so the people who consume and feed this trade becoming victims is actually a very much preferable alternative to the status quo. It's much better that people responsible for a problem suffer, than innocent bystanders.
I think most of what she says is reasonable, well, if it was coming from someone that wasn't such a spoilt brat.
The problem with Taylor Swift making this argument, is that she already makes insane amounts of money, and it's not the first time she's held streaming services to ransom to try and solicit even more. She's the personification of greed.
The problem is here, that Apple is the same.
So in this battle I struggle to support either party, she's right that Apple has the money to cover the trial costs and it's Apple's trial for Apple's service so they should do exactly that. But when she says things like "We shouldn't be expected to work for free", I have to ask, what work are you doing exactly Taylor? Last I checked you've already been well compensated for actually doing the work involved in making these tracks. Having Apple sell them for you requires no input on your behalf, so how on earth do you define it as work? No one is making you work for free Taylor. What you're really saying is "I can't believe they weren't going to pay me even more money than they already are for doing absolutely nothing!".
That's not how the world works. In just about every other industry than music/movies people get paid to do actual work and that's that. Pretending that not being given free additional money for being sat on your ass is "working for free" is an insult to the other 99.9999% of the world's population that actually have to really work to make ALL their money, and typically much less to boot.
She's not standing up for the little guy like she claims, all she's doing is demanding she gets paid more for doing nothing, and I have no sympathy for that stance.
Personally even without kids (I don't have any) I'd never live there, but I actually like fresh air and having a decent sized garden.
Ultimately it depends what you want out of life, if you're happy living with shit air quality and having fuck all space to yourself then as you say London is great, otherwise there's just no real benefit to it - the London salary weighting is rapidly eaten up by the drastically higher cost of living, so you end up with less money to even get out of London and go on holiday and shit too.
You've really just got to love city lifestyle, if you do then London is about as good as any other major city, but some capital cities like those I mentioned - Ottawa, Wellington and so forth do an excellent job of providing a balance between city life and having more natural features, and personally for me I think that's optimal - you get the best of both worlds.
"Silicon Valley is about the only place you can have your startup fail, walk down the street a few blocks, and have a nice safe job to tide you over until you decide you need to do another startup (if you do). In other words, there's a job safety net that is not there elsewhere (the article as much as admits this, for London)."
Whilst I agree with the rest of what you say, I disagree on this. What you say is absolutely true of London where the market is drastically more competitive, but there are many other places where you have that safety net.
Here further north in the UK the exact same is also true as what you suggest, there is such a drastic shortage of developers and massive competition for us such that if I wanted to I could walk out the door tomorrow and have another well above average wage job within a week (and even then only because that's how long it takes to organise interviews). The safety net is most definitely not an issue here, but as you also mention, access to VCs most definitely is a problem.
I've never lived in Sheffield, but I have worked there for a few years and I do go there now and again because I miss the culture - it's very educated and liberal. But I also think what struck me is that so many people there are just great at organising themselves that many other cities like. This means that there are disproportionately more startups than most other British cities, there are many and varied festivals, and there are countless interesting clubs and societies such as a great astronomy society, through to an excellent maker scene, to chemistry clubs that convene regularly in a pub (Chemistry and Beer, what could possibly go wrong!). Even the homeless guy (an ex-Afghan translator for the British Army given asylum here) I used to walk past daily seemed in on the attitude, he was out there selling his magazines whether rain, snow, wind, or sun and never lost his smile.
Obviously London has much of this due to it's sheer size, but what makes Sheffield stand out in this respect is that it's all condensed into such a small area so you simply don't have to go far to access any of it and it's fairly unique to many other cities in the UK I've frequented in this respect.
There are still parts of the city that haven't really recovered from the collapse of the mining and steel industry, but the speed at which the shit parts have vanished is unparalleled by any other similarly affected cities and work is still well underway with no sign of slowing down. As such I suspect even the few remaining scratty pockets of the city will look modern and clean within a decade. It's really hard to understate how good a job Sheffield has done against the odds of transforming and modernising itself.
I also liked the Millennium Gardens there because having what is frankly a big tropical greenhouse to eat your lunch in when the inevitable English rain comes along meant you weren't stuck in your office at lunch time as you are in most cities either, then during the sunnier days sitting in the Peace Garden or the Botanical Garden meant there was always somewhere relaxing to eat.
There's a big proposal currently from what I understand to completely revamp the Chinese parts of the city and the plans look pretty impressive. The level of Chinese investment in the city cannot be understated - it's incredible how much the Chinese love Sheffield. Like London, it's incredibly multi-cultural, and the Chinese seem to be the largest grouping.
Oh, and it has one of the only four Taco Bells in the UK :)
There's lots to love about the city, I'd gladly work there again at the drop of a hat if a job that interested me came up.
Yeah, to be fair, there actually is. It's just that over here we simply call them by their English name of "inlets".
I know that doesn't make them sound quite as exotic though :)
"I have investments in various countries from India to Kenya to Colombia, amongst other countries"
Well good luck with that, most people don't do that because of the massively high risk of losing it due to corruption. In Western markets you have a relatively high assurance that you can invest based on your understanding of the market and have your return fit your talent on predicting that.
You don't have that in the countries you list, in Kenya and India your investment is one corrupt government official away from being wiped out.
This is why dealing with corruption is such a big focus by politicians, and India is a prime example of this. 15 years ago we were told India would be a top 3 world economy alongside China and the USA. Instead it's still stuck at 10 despite having over 21x the population and drastically higher land mass and natural resources than the half way further up the ladder France. India is 142nd out of 189 in the ease of doing business index for this reason, and Kenya is 136.
Colombia does much better for sure at 34 however so is indeed a sensible investment - and probably will continue to grow as such now that things finally seem to be calming down in a possible more permanent way with FARC.
So whilst it looks good whilst things are going fine, like DRM corruption in countries like India and Kenya is one of those things that looks harmless until it fucks you, and then that's the end of your investment. They may pay off, but they're incredibly high risk.