Right, so you think choosing subjective opinion over objective fact is scientific?
For something to be a science it has to be able to accept objective fact over subjective opinion, taxonomy has long been struggling to do that, and so cannot truly be called a science until it eliminates that completely. There is certainly room for subjectivity in science, but not when it overrides objective fact.
All that serves to tell us is that imperialism came with benefits, and that without imperialism there would not have been the resources to ship scientists around the world to do some of the most important and ground breaking science in history.
Or is that too inconvenient to your pre-conceived notion that nothing good ever came out of imperialism? If so then you're suffering from a case of "What did the Romans ever do for us?".
Sometimes good can come from bad, without World War II we'd never have had quite such a period of rapid technological advanced towards what is now the modern airline industry - jet engines and radar for air traffic control, and people like those at Bletchley and those in similar projects abroad may never have been given the funds to do the research necessary to get us the modern computer as soon as we have.
Your hatred of imperialism is clouding the fact that it was imperialism that was the engine for these voyages of discovery in the first place and that without them a lot of science would not have been done when it was, setting humanity back.
The problem is that DNA sequencing doesn't mean taxonomy is now straightforward, on the contrary it's created an identity crisis as to what the subject is even meant to achieve anymore. See my post here for a broader description of what I mean:
It used to be simple when DNA analysis wasn't available and the actual ancestry was hidden by time, back then you could name stuff based on things that were convenient for science at the time, and people who just wanted to know what to call things alike. Nowadays there's a stark divide between the two, the science has uncovered that it's not that simple, and in doing so has uncovered the fact that taxonomy as a science would not be useful for one of the things it has been historically most useful for, which wouldn't be a problem in itself if it weren't for the fact that for it to become a true science, it needs to cast of the shackles of the general public, and the business world alike, something which as I'm sure you can imagine is quite difficult given the vested interests involved and even within the profession of taxonomy itself. Getting people to change their ways isn't easy.
Exactly right, but it's worth warning there are still a lot of issues with the subject, not least the fact that in changing the way taxonomy is done there is confusion about what taxonomy is meant to actually achieve.
On one hand you have people who want easy names for things, so they can refer to them in conversation, or write books. Hey look at this "Blah blah" plant and so on.
On the other you have the needs of science - the need to be able to explicitly define a cut off point to say this is a different species, a different genus, a different family or whatever.
Historically taxonomy has had problems without DNA analysis because it's been based pretty much entirely on how a plant looks, it's features. If Plant A is a small fat round green cactus with 1 inch spines and small purple flowers and Plant B has the same then they must be the same species, or at least the same genus. This sounds well and good, but the advent of DNA analysis sometimes shows that plant A and plant B are in fact extremely genetically distinct and aren't closely related at all. So why did they look the same? Convergent evolution - if the two plant populations were 200 miles apart directly north-south to each other and the species that pollinates them likes small purple flowers then they've simply evolved the same traits through natural selection because of that pollinator. Meanwhile another plant 100 miles to the East of plant A may be a large tall thin cactus with a blue powdery coat and large white flowers but actually ends up being more genetically similar to the point it's in the same genus as plant A - it looks completely different because although it shares ancestry it's on the path of a completely different pollinator that likes tall blue plants with massive white flowers. The net result is that plants that are genetically close are not identified as such based on visual inspection, whilst those that aren't close are lumped together when they shouldn't be using classical taxonomy. This is why the AC above says classic taxonomy is sometimes outright wrong. Looks don't tell us anything like the sort of picture we need to know - without being able to track the growth and evolution of species through time we simply do not know the ancestry, so until the arrival of DNA taxonomy was a fundamentally flawed science.
So it seems like DNA solves everything right? Wrong. The problem we have now is that it's still arbitrary as to where you decide the cut off, how different does a subject have to be to be a distinct species from another subject? If their DNA varies by 0.00000000001% we can probably agree they're closely related enough to be the same species, but what about a 0.1% difference? what about a 1% difference? When we figure that out we then have to decide the boundaries for genus, for families, and also in the other direction for subspecies and so forth. Right now there is no fixed figure so it's still arbitrary - one taxonomist is separating species based on a 0.1% difference, and another is doing it on a 0.15% difference. This means we still have nonsense arguments about what genus a species belongs in or whatever - nonsense because it's completely down to personal opinion, and that's subjective.
The problem is that if we do do something objective and say right, well, the cut off points are 0.1% for species, 1% for genus and so on we end up with situations where subjects are lumped together in a manner that are inconvenient for the trade world, and for gardeners "Oh I've always called it that, I'm not changing the name, they need the same growing conditions so I'm going to treat them like they always used to be named" - sometimes the objective system can result in surprising classifications that are inconvenient for non-scientific users and so they refuse to adopt them.
Which takes us back to the original question - what is the point in taxonomy? From there we have to ask things like who does it exist to serve? What are it's goals? Does science even need it? would scientists be better off moving to a w
Have you ever been to the zoo? or been on a nature holiday?
Sometimes the reason for going places, even if you've seen it all in the books and on TV, is because experience different species in their own habitat is something you just cannot get any other way.
Life evolves many different things in many different ways, and each can be fascinating to observe.
The reason for coming here may simply be the reason we go to the zoo, because to see a termite mound is an impressive natural structure to see for yourself, and watching the termites work is fascinating. Our architecture, our culture, and the habits we've formed may simply give them a feeling that reading about theoretical versions of us in books just cannot give them.
That's before you consider other possibilities, that it may even be a sports thing - a competitive race seeing how many planets they can visit/destroy/troll/advance.
The problem is that throughout your assumptions about why are that you're assuming there must be an end, a goal in visiting us. What if the goal in itself is simply to visit us and watch us? or is an altruistic psychological need they have to help other intelligent species advance? Do we not send charity to poor 3rd world nations to help them advance and live better lives, because doing so in itself makes us feel better about ourselves?
"The question of why aliens might "want to come here" is fundamentally flawed because we are forming that question from our current (tiny) viewpoint. "
Ironically, I think that's the problem with your viewpoint - you're arguing that they wouldn't bother coming here based on arbitrary and very human logic. As you said, that might not even apply, it might not apply in a manner that means they have as much reason to visit us as it means they do not. Their reasons for visiting us may even be completely incomprehensible to all current human minds.
You've taken the argument of greater intelligence and tried to turn it into a suggestion that it's a reason not to visit us, when in reality, if it's an intelligence so great we cannot comprehend it, we also cannot rationally suggest it would give them reason not to visit anymore than it would give them reason to visit. If we don't understand it we simply have no idea what we would mean to them. We may mean a lot, or we may mean nothing.
For all we know an alien high school kid may simply be doing a school project studying various intergalactic intelligent life forms.
We just do not know, we cannot say one way or the other whether they would or wouldn't want to come here.
Yep, this is the difference between XBox Live and PlaystationPlus.
Basically, both offer users free games, Sony tends to offer about 12 months worth releasing one a month IIRC (been a while since I looked at my PS3) so you have a nice set of choice to download at any one time and you have a year to grab them. You can keep playing them as long as you keep paying for PSPlus.
In contrast, Xbox Live's Games with Gold program only has one free game at a time, it releases 2 a month changing game half way through the month. That means you only get about 15 days to a grab a game that's free, and if you miss it you miss out altogether on it. But the benefit is that although the window is much shorter (15 days vs. a whole year on PSPlus) you actually do get to keep it for good once you have downloaded it even if you ditch your gold subscription.
There are pros and cons to both approaches. Sony gives you a bigger library available at any one time, but forces you to keep subscribing. Microsoft give you a tiny library at any one time but whatever is in it is yours to keep forever once you download it.
I'm not sure how sensible that data is though, when I went to the site it says it pulls Job data from Twitter and I've frankly never heard of anyone getting or looking for a job, let alone a C# job from Twitter and that's even assuming that Jobstrator doesn't fail hard when trying to parse C# from hash tags or something similar. It'd be more interesting if it was from actual job sites, but if you visit the likes of Monster.com the job listings for many major cities correlate quite strongly with the Stackoverflow languages tags. I'd wager therefore that both these are better indicators. Certainly it seems a complete nonsense that there are more Ruby and Objective C jobs than C# jobs.
There's certainly been a massive uptick in Java jobs over the last year, so I've no doubt Java is on top again right now, but C# is still a clear second based on real actual job listings.
"Hollywood Accounting is another issue entirely (and is a horrible thing that should be stopped). Let's use the Harry Potter books as an example. They became very popular and so JK Rowling was able to sell the movie rights to them. The studio made some movies off of them and everyone was happy."
Were they? some people hated the film adaptations - I personally thought the first few films at least (the only ones I've seen) were slow and boring as shit. JK Rowling had disputes about payment. You can't just brush off Hollywood Accounting it's a separate thing - it fundamentally demonstrates the point that Copyright is broken if it's goal is to make sure the original author gets paid if there are always ways to get around that anyway, which there are.
"In a world without copyright, the minute a movie studio saw the first Harry Potter book selling well, they could rush out a horrible Harry Potter movie without the author's consent. Then another movie studio could do the same. And a third and a fourth. We'd be inundated with cheap Harry Potter knock-off films and the occasional decent production. JK Rowling wouldn't have any say in this nor would she be compensated at all."
Why must she be compensated for work she hasn't done? is Steven Hawking compensated each time his theories are discussed, and written about? Copyright is arbitrary, it's designed to let the select few lazy people who do a few years work as JK Rowling did live off it for life which is a nonsense. Your whole set of ideas is based on the premise that this is a good or necessary thing - it's not, it's a complete nonsense. The only professions in the world where you do work once and keep getting paid long after the fact are those covered by copyright whilst there are equally professions who produce similar material, but who have to keep working.
You're also running with another premise that you have no evidence for - that all we'd get is cheap knock offs and that there'd be no quality films, that we wouldn't have a choice but to suffer cheap knock offs. That's incorrect, there have been many a cheap knock off of many stories but I assure you, no one has ever forced me to watch them, I've always had the choice of watching the non-shit ones. Their existence hasn't in any way hampered my life, so you've failed to explain why the creation of them even matters? If a studio that has a bad reputation produces one, or that gets terrible reviews then don't watch it. But you not wanting to watch it doesn't mean it's better for others to not even have that choice, it doesn't mean it's better that everyone's forced into the one single mono-culture where everyone has to see the same thing and has to see the same take on it whether they like it or not.
Copyright tries to legislate against reality and human nature, and that's what makes it a nonsense.
Right but we're not in an era "since the beginning of time", we're in the modern world where there are in fact international norms that have been determined for deciding boundaries and defining sovereignty.
As I said, if you disagree, go tell your government you're declaring your house a sovereign state, send letters to the UN demanding it. See how well it works for you.
Given you didn't even respond to the rest of it though I'll assume your nitpicking of this particular point and pretending the distant past has any relevance to the discussion means you've conceded the fact that you did in fact have absolutely no idea what you were on about and not the slightest clue about the situation, so congratulations on that. It means you learnt something about geopolitics and the Ukraine situation today.
Yes, you can also make something Turing complete not Turing complete by removing one of the things that makes it Turing complete. What exactly is the point of that point exactly? What's the relevance? It still doesn't make CSS Turing complete, and it doesn't make something that is Turing complete not Turing complete, unless you actually do do something to make that Turing complete thing not Turing complete.
Legal in Ukraine's jurisdiction, it was still part of the Ukraine.
You don't just get to go home tonight, declare yourself the ruling authority of your household, and declare yourself an independent government that's going to hold a referendum on autonomy of your household. That's not how it works. People don't get to arbitrarily just seize areas of land and declare them the leaders of it - hell, even if you don't believe the interim government is legitimate you do realise the guy who called the Crimea referendum and who offered the invite wasn't actually elected right? You know Crimea had it's own elected government as an autonomous region that this guy backed by the Russian's overthrew right? You know then hence that even if Crimea was within it's rights to offer an invite then this wasn't the guy to do it because he wasn't the recognised leader of Crimea by either the Ukrainian population or the rest of the Ukraine? You know that the guy in question was leader of a pro-Russia party that only got 10% of the vote in the last Crimean election despite that being held under pro-Russia Yanukovych's rule?
What's that? You didn't know any of that? I didn't think so, but I guess you're one of those guys who thinks he's a bit cool for playing devil's advocate against the "evil Western media" or whatever right?
It doesn't matter how you try and spin it, this guy had no legal legitimacy to offer the invite - he didn't have authority from the Ukrainian government, and he wasn't the legitimate leader of the Crimean autonomous region's government. He was just some guy who turned up along with the Russian military and threw the elected Crimean representatives out.
Of course it's a random selection, what version are you even measuring against? The upcoming version brings the Start Menu back, the current version has the start button, and the old version has neither. It's not like it's even static throughout the version anyway. The upcoming version is better than any modern Linux UI, the original version is worse.
But why even focus on operating systems at all? What about Photoshop vs. Gimp? There are millions of examples of other pieces of software where the FOSS UIs are shit in comparison, which was his point. Christ he even said "Any software with a UI tends to be worse when it's FLOSS.". See that tends bit? know what that means? It means "normally", "on average", it doesn't mean "always". So even if Windows 8 isn't arbitrary because of the metrics you chose, it's also still not all proprietary software however you cut it, it's also not the majority of proprietary software, it's just one individual example, and that still, no matter how you desperately try and claw and spin it, doesn't prove him wrong.
To be fair I think the AC was pointing out Stallman's hypocrisy. On one hand he says he doesn't want a mobile phone because he doesn't want to be tracked and listened to. On the other hand he's using a PC, using e-mail and using the internet, all of which allow him to be tracked and listened to.
It's irrational, if you don't want to be snooped upon about the best you can do is only ever speak face to face with people. Simply saying I'll use this technology, but not that is nonsense. It's even more nonsense when he rubbishes the idea of open hardware - for all he knows the hardware he uses could be tapped even if his software is all FOSS, self-compiled, and self-verified. It's even more stupid again when he comes up with this idea of a pager that you choose to turn on and off- guess what cell phones let you do?
This is the issue, the guy is a hypocrite, his ideals are great but he's basically saying "Well I'll rubbish this technology because I've learnt to live without it and anyone who hasn't is stupid, meanwhile I'll continue to use this technology and that's not stupid because I haven't learnt to live without it even though it opens me up to the exact same things I rubbished the other technology for".
Oh my god, do we still have to see this childish argument?
Someone makes a point about the average case, then some idiot comes along and compares the best of one against the worst of the other and basically says "HAH, LOOK, MY ONE ANECDOTE PROVES EVERYTHING YOU SAID WRONG".
No it doesn't. For every Windows 8 there are a hundred infinitely worse FOSS UIs, and that's his point. You can't take the best of one and compare it against the worst of the other and then extrapolate that to the typical case, that's just stupid.
"3) Movie Studio C wants a cut of the profits and so makes a movie based on the book. They don't sign a deal with the author or give him any money."
Given that this happens anyway due to Hollywood Accounting where they manufacture a loss (and instead let all their sub-companies make the profit) I'm not entirely sure what difference copyright makes?
Besides, I'm not convinced it's a bad thing if people produce derivative works. Some out of copyright works have spawned numerous film creations over the years, and you know what's great about it? We actually have a choice of whose adaptation and interpretation of the story to watch because sometimes the "official" versions are completely shit.
"So what's the incentive to create works? How is an author paid?"
Well I don't know about you, but I'm paid a salary and I certainly create works. Copyright wouldn't change that in the slightest because it's all bespoke.
"No technical support needed for a book, you that red-herring can't be used."
You've still got large organisations (like governments) that would pay a salary for textbooks to be written for schools like they always have. Writing fiction would just become something you do because you enjoy and if you can sell copies on the side then great - this, and commissioned works are how things used to work anyway. Perhaps this way we could remove the 99% of dross that floods the shelves of places like WH Smith too.
But there's also a question as to whether some books are an outdated format anyway. I can't remember the last time I bought a programming book to teach me about APIs or a new language, the internet was always sufficient.
The idea that music, and written works and so forth would disappear without copyright implies that there were no written works or music before copyright was created in about the 18th century. Obviously this is false.
The problem is it's hard to imagine how we would live without copyright because we've been bought up to live with copyright, but you've got to realise the likes of the printing press came about as much as 400 years before Copyright as we know it today, but perhaps even more interesting is that the enlightenment began, lasting around 150 - 200 years and ended just about the same time as Copyright came about. Which isn't to blame Copyright for it's demise, but simply to point out that it happened without it. That one of our greatest periods of knowledge growth happened when works could be copied freely.
Finally, it's worth keeping in mind why Copyright came about - largely to control who could print what and to put the ability to perform censorship in the hands of a select few in the higher echelons of power.
To be perfectly honest, I'm just playing devils advocate to a degree here, I'm not sure that complete abolition of Copyright is the best option. But I'm also not sure it isn't. I do however think it's worth keeping an open mind and being aware of the idea that there's no evidence that copyright has been of inherent benefit to humanity though given that some of our most important historic works were written after the days of the printing press and mass copying, and before the creation of copyrights and that this period lasted for a much longer period of human history than the era of copyright has.
I think if you ask the question "But how will Miley Cyrus survive as an artist if everyone can freely copy her music, no one's willing to pay for it, and she's only willing to do a couple of actual days work a year?" then you'll get the answer that sure, you need copyright to protect her. But at that point I think the wrong question is being asked - instead it should be "Will people who love music still produce and distribute quality music if the only money in it for them is to go and perform live?" and I think the answer is yes, absolutely. It would in fact mean more live performances as how hard you work would determine how much you make, rather than the current status quo of how much of a monopoly your record producer is and how good you are at avoiding getting screwed in contract negotiation. It'd also mean more free music as that would be the greatest promotional material going. It's win-win for anyone that doesn't just want to do a few hours a month and spend the rest of their life working towards the inevitable heroin overdose from having too much money and too much time on their hands. Of course this is mostly hyperbole, the argument applies to a lesser or greater degree in other cases, but you get the point I'm sure.
Even throwing a human into the mix doesn't make CSS in itself Turing complete.
Your argument is effectively that if you throw in an outside executor then CSS becomes Turing complete. No fucking shit, I could literally make many things Turing complete by throwing Javascript or a human into the mix, but that doesn't mean they are in themselves Turing complete.
Which is probably about right in general if you look at job postings in various cities across the globe.
The majority of hires are still for C# and Java positions to this day.
There are areas where other languages shine (In the UK, London and Cambridge have a higher proportion of C++ roles for example) and hipster areas have high proportions of RoR and PHP hires.
But in general one thing seems to be a constant - that C# and Java are right at the top of the skills list both where other languages are strong, and where they are not.
But what does that metric achieve exactly? It tells us nothing of real use. It certainly doesn't answer the question most people are asking when they want to know these numbers - "What language(s) will best support my career?". It's useless knowing that there are 5 new PHP projects to every C++ project if each PHP project is a one man bottom of the rung near minimum wage "Hello World!" type application and the C++ ones are 100 developer massive scale high paying type applications.
What does it matter? Are you saying that if one nation doesn't get democracy exactly right then it's okay for other nations to invade their neighbours and annexe their territory? I'm struggling to see what your point can possibly be other than this because otherwise it's just not relevant.
An election observer is an actual profession requiring an actual skillset and knowledge. If you don't have that you're not an observer, you're someone pretending to be an observer. The people who went were people pretending to be observers but whose actual service is lying to pretend a vote is legitimate when it's not so that all the dumb people in the world and people with a similar bias towards pro-Russian and far-right ideals that this particular group supports can go "Hey look it was legitimate!".
"OSCE observers were invited, but the organization declined."
This is a gross oversimplification and I don't know why it keeps getting parroted here. The OSCE didn't decline, they said there was no legal basis on which the invitation was valid in the first place - you can't decline an invitation that isn't even valid. Other observers did try and enter in an unofficial capacity but were shot at as a result so gave up trying.
The non-OSCE observers are the same neo-Nazi (yes really) observer organisation that Putin's friends use to whitewash legitimacy into their elections in such pinnacles of democracy as Belarus.
So it's really a bit silly to say observers were there, you don't get to just declare yourself a doctor without having any training in medicine. Similarly you don't get to just declare yourself an observer and get to understand how to spot the many methods of electoral fraud, and how to objectively validate poll results in a verifiable way. The people that were actually able to go were just people pretending to be something they weren't - they were no more observers than were the Russian soldiers aiming the barrels of their guns at the electorate as a hint of how to vote.
You can say the same things about English too though but it doesn't really tell us much about their ethnic identity. The Scottish have their own languages (scots and scottish gaelic), as do the Welsh, but they pretty much all identify as Scottish and Welsh respectively. Try telling a Scotsman he's English because that's what he speaks and see how well that works out for you for example:)
Even if Russian is the dominant language, I think the fact people actually say "Ukrainian" in the poll still tells us all we need to know - that 67% favour declaring themselves in the ethnic Ukrainian category, whilst 30% favour declaring themselves in the ethnic Russian category. Even if the figures don't tell an honest picture about language use, they tell us about an honest a picture as we can get about preferred ethnic leaning - that the vast majority of Ukrainians prefer to declare themselves in the Ukrainian categories, rather than Russian categories.
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Right, so you think choosing subjective opinion over objective fact is scientific?
For something to be a science it has to be able to accept objective fact over subjective opinion, taxonomy has long been struggling to do that, and so cannot truly be called a science until it eliminates that completely. There is certainly room for subjectivity in science, but not when it overrides objective fact.
All that serves to tell us is that imperialism came with benefits, and that without imperialism there would not have been the resources to ship scientists around the world to do some of the most important and ground breaking science in history.
Or is that too inconvenient to your pre-conceived notion that nothing good ever came out of imperialism? If so then you're suffering from a case of "What did the Romans ever do for us?".
Sometimes good can come from bad, without World War II we'd never have had quite such a period of rapid technological advanced towards what is now the modern airline industry - jet engines and radar for air traffic control, and people like those at Bletchley and those in similar projects abroad may never have been given the funds to do the research necessary to get us the modern computer as soon as we have.
Your hatred of imperialism is clouding the fact that it was imperialism that was the engine for these voyages of discovery in the first place and that without them a lot of science would not have been done when it was, setting humanity back.
The problem is that DNA sequencing doesn't mean taxonomy is now straightforward, on the contrary it's created an identity crisis as to what the subject is even meant to achieve anymore. See my post here for a broader description of what I mean:
http://science.slashdot.org/co...
It used to be simple when DNA analysis wasn't available and the actual ancestry was hidden by time, back then you could name stuff based on things that were convenient for science at the time, and people who just wanted to know what to call things alike. Nowadays there's a stark divide between the two, the science has uncovered that it's not that simple, and in doing so has uncovered the fact that taxonomy as a science would not be useful for one of the things it has been historically most useful for, which wouldn't be a problem in itself if it weren't for the fact that for it to become a true science, it needs to cast of the shackles of the general public, and the business world alike, something which as I'm sure you can imagine is quite difficult given the vested interests involved and even within the profession of taxonomy itself. Getting people to change their ways isn't easy.
Exactly right, but it's worth warning there are still a lot of issues with the subject, not least the fact that in changing the way taxonomy is done there is confusion about what taxonomy is meant to actually achieve.
On one hand you have people who want easy names for things, so they can refer to them in conversation, or write books. Hey look at this "Blah blah" plant and so on.
On the other you have the needs of science - the need to be able to explicitly define a cut off point to say this is a different species, a different genus, a different family or whatever.
Historically taxonomy has had problems without DNA analysis because it's been based pretty much entirely on how a plant looks, it's features. If Plant A is a small fat round green cactus with 1 inch spines and small purple flowers and Plant B has the same then they must be the same species, or at least the same genus. This sounds well and good, but the advent of DNA analysis sometimes shows that plant A and plant B are in fact extremely genetically distinct and aren't closely related at all. So why did they look the same? Convergent evolution - if the two plant populations were 200 miles apart directly north-south to each other and the species that pollinates them likes small purple flowers then they've simply evolved the same traits through natural selection because of that pollinator. Meanwhile another plant 100 miles to the East of plant A may be a large tall thin cactus with a blue powdery coat and large white flowers but actually ends up being more genetically similar to the point it's in the same genus as plant A - it looks completely different because although it shares ancestry it's on the path of a completely different pollinator that likes tall blue plants with massive white flowers. The net result is that plants that are genetically close are not identified as such based on visual inspection, whilst those that aren't close are lumped together when they shouldn't be using classical taxonomy. This is why the AC above says classic taxonomy is sometimes outright wrong. Looks don't tell us anything like the sort of picture we need to know - without being able to track the growth and evolution of species through time we simply do not know the ancestry, so until the arrival of DNA taxonomy was a fundamentally flawed science.
So it seems like DNA solves everything right? Wrong. The problem we have now is that it's still arbitrary as to where you decide the cut off, how different does a subject have to be to be a distinct species from another subject? If their DNA varies by 0.00000000001% we can probably agree they're closely related enough to be the same species, but what about a 0.1% difference? what about a 1% difference? When we figure that out we then have to decide the boundaries for genus, for families, and also in the other direction for subspecies and so forth. Right now there is no fixed figure so it's still arbitrary - one taxonomist is separating species based on a 0.1% difference, and another is doing it on a 0.15% difference. This means we still have nonsense arguments about what genus a species belongs in or whatever - nonsense because it's completely down to personal opinion, and that's subjective.
The problem is that if we do do something objective and say right, well, the cut off points are 0.1% for species, 1% for genus and so on we end up with situations where subjects are lumped together in a manner that are inconvenient for the trade world, and for gardeners "Oh I've always called it that, I'm not changing the name, they need the same growing conditions so I'm going to treat them like they always used to be named" - sometimes the objective system can result in surprising classifications that are inconvenient for non-scientific users and so they refuse to adopt them.
Which takes us back to the original question - what is the point in taxonomy? From there we have to ask things like who does it exist to serve? What are it's goals? Does science even need it? would scientists be better off moving to a w
Have you ever been to the zoo? or been on a nature holiday?
Sometimes the reason for going places, even if you've seen it all in the books and on TV, is because experience different species in their own habitat is something you just cannot get any other way.
Life evolves many different things in many different ways, and each can be fascinating to observe.
The reason for coming here may simply be the reason we go to the zoo, because to see a termite mound is an impressive natural structure to see for yourself, and watching the termites work is fascinating. Our architecture, our culture, and the habits we've formed may simply give them a feeling that reading about theoretical versions of us in books just cannot give them.
That's before you consider other possibilities, that it may even be a sports thing - a competitive race seeing how many planets they can visit/destroy/troll/advance.
The problem is that throughout your assumptions about why are that you're assuming there must be an end, a goal in visiting us. What if the goal in itself is simply to visit us and watch us? or is an altruistic psychological need they have to help other intelligent species advance? Do we not send charity to poor 3rd world nations to help them advance and live better lives, because doing so in itself makes us feel better about ourselves?
"The question of why aliens might "want to come here" is fundamentally flawed because we are forming that question from our current (tiny) viewpoint. "
Ironically, I think that's the problem with your viewpoint - you're arguing that they wouldn't bother coming here based on arbitrary and very human logic. As you said, that might not even apply, it might not apply in a manner that means they have as much reason to visit us as it means they do not. Their reasons for visiting us may even be completely incomprehensible to all current human minds.
You've taken the argument of greater intelligence and tried to turn it into a suggestion that it's a reason not to visit us, when in reality, if it's an intelligence so great we cannot comprehend it, we also cannot rationally suggest it would give them reason not to visit anymore than it would give them reason to visit. If we don't understand it we simply have no idea what we would mean to them. We may mean a lot, or we may mean nothing.
For all we know an alien high school kid may simply be doing a school project studying various intergalactic intelligent life forms.
We just do not know, we cannot say one way or the other whether they would or wouldn't want to come here.
Yep, this is the difference between XBox Live and PlaystationPlus.
Basically, both offer users free games, Sony tends to offer about 12 months worth releasing one a month IIRC (been a while since I looked at my PS3) so you have a nice set of choice to download at any one time and you have a year to grab them. You can keep playing them as long as you keep paying for PSPlus.
In contrast, Xbox Live's Games with Gold program only has one free game at a time, it releases 2 a month changing game half way through the month. That means you only get about 15 days to a grab a game that's free, and if you miss it you miss out altogether on it. But the benefit is that although the window is much shorter (15 days vs. a whole year on PSPlus) you actually do get to keep it for good once you have downloaded it even if you ditch your gold subscription.
There are pros and cons to both approaches. Sony gives you a bigger library available at any one time, but forces you to keep subscribing. Microsoft give you a tiny library at any one time but whatever is in it is yours to keep forever once you download it.
I'm not sure how sensible that data is though, when I went to the site it says it pulls Job data from Twitter and I've frankly never heard of anyone getting or looking for a job, let alone a C# job from Twitter and that's even assuming that Jobstrator doesn't fail hard when trying to parse C# from hash tags or something similar. It'd be more interesting if it was from actual job sites, but if you visit the likes of Monster.com the job listings for many major cities correlate quite strongly with the Stackoverflow languages tags. I'd wager therefore that both these are better indicators. Certainly it seems a complete nonsense that there are more Ruby and Objective C jobs than C# jobs.
There's certainly been a massive uptick in Java jobs over the last year, so I've no doubt Java is on top again right now, but C# is still a clear second based on real actual job listings.
"Hollywood Accounting is another issue entirely (and is a horrible thing that should be stopped). Let's use the Harry Potter books as an example. They became very popular and so JK Rowling was able to sell the movie rights to them. The studio made some movies off of them and everyone was happy."
Were they? some people hated the film adaptations - I personally thought the first few films at least (the only ones I've seen) were slow and boring as shit. JK Rowling had disputes about payment. You can't just brush off Hollywood Accounting it's a separate thing - it fundamentally demonstrates the point that Copyright is broken if it's goal is to make sure the original author gets paid if there are always ways to get around that anyway, which there are.
"In a world without copyright, the minute a movie studio saw the first Harry Potter book selling well, they could rush out a horrible Harry Potter movie without the author's consent. Then another movie studio could do the same. And a third and a fourth. We'd be inundated with cheap Harry Potter knock-off films and the occasional decent production. JK Rowling wouldn't have any say in this nor would she be compensated at all."
Why must she be compensated for work she hasn't done? is Steven Hawking compensated each time his theories are discussed, and written about? Copyright is arbitrary, it's designed to let the select few lazy people who do a few years work as JK Rowling did live off it for life which is a nonsense. Your whole set of ideas is based on the premise that this is a good or necessary thing - it's not, it's a complete nonsense. The only professions in the world where you do work once and keep getting paid long after the fact are those covered by copyright whilst there are equally professions who produce similar material, but who have to keep working.
You're also running with another premise that you have no evidence for - that all we'd get is cheap knock offs and that there'd be no quality films, that we wouldn't have a choice but to suffer cheap knock offs. That's incorrect, there have been many a cheap knock off of many stories but I assure you, no one has ever forced me to watch them, I've always had the choice of watching the non-shit ones. Their existence hasn't in any way hampered my life, so you've failed to explain why the creation of them even matters? If a studio that has a bad reputation produces one, or that gets terrible reviews then don't watch it. But you not wanting to watch it doesn't mean it's better for others to not even have that choice, it doesn't mean it's better that everyone's forced into the one single mono-culture where everyone has to see the same thing and has to see the same take on it whether they like it or not.
Copyright tries to legislate against reality and human nature, and that's what makes it a nonsense.
Right but we're not in an era "since the beginning of time", we're in the modern world where there are in fact international norms that have been determined for deciding boundaries and defining sovereignty.
As I said, if you disagree, go tell your government you're declaring your house a sovereign state, send letters to the UN demanding it. See how well it works for you.
Given you didn't even respond to the rest of it though I'll assume your nitpicking of this particular point and pretending the distant past has any relevance to the discussion means you've conceded the fact that you did in fact have absolutely no idea what you were on about and not the slightest clue about the situation, so congratulations on that. It means you learnt something about geopolitics and the Ukraine situation today.
You're really struggling with this aren't you?
Yes, you can also make something Turing complete not Turing complete by removing one of the things that makes it Turing complete. What exactly is the point of that point exactly? What's the relevance? It still doesn't make CSS Turing complete, and it doesn't make something that is Turing complete not Turing complete, unless you actually do do something to make that Turing complete thing not Turing complete.
Legal in Ukraine's jurisdiction, it was still part of the Ukraine.
You don't just get to go home tonight, declare yourself the ruling authority of your household, and declare yourself an independent government that's going to hold a referendum on autonomy of your household. That's not how it works. People don't get to arbitrarily just seize areas of land and declare them the leaders of it - hell, even if you don't believe the interim government is legitimate you do realise the guy who called the Crimea referendum and who offered the invite wasn't actually elected right? You know Crimea had it's own elected government as an autonomous region that this guy backed by the Russian's overthrew right? You know then hence that even if Crimea was within it's rights to offer an invite then this wasn't the guy to do it because he wasn't the recognised leader of Crimea by either the Ukrainian population or the rest of the Ukraine? You know that the guy in question was leader of a pro-Russia party that only got 10% of the vote in the last Crimean election despite that being held under pro-Russia Yanukovych's rule?
What's that? You didn't know any of that? I didn't think so, but I guess you're one of those guys who thinks he's a bit cool for playing devil's advocate against the "evil Western media" or whatever right?
It doesn't matter how you try and spin it, this guy had no legal legitimacy to offer the invite - he didn't have authority from the Ukrainian government, and he wasn't the legitimate leader of the Crimean autonomous region's government. He was just some guy who turned up along with the Russian military and threw the elected Crimean representatives out.
Of course it's a random selection, what version are you even measuring against? The upcoming version brings the Start Menu back, the current version has the start button, and the old version has neither. It's not like it's even static throughout the version anyway. The upcoming version is better than any modern Linux UI, the original version is worse.
But why even focus on operating systems at all? What about Photoshop vs. Gimp? There are millions of examples of other pieces of software where the FOSS UIs are shit in comparison, which was his point. Christ he even said "Any software with a UI tends to be worse when it's FLOSS.". See that tends bit? know what that means? It means "normally", "on average", it doesn't mean "always". So even if Windows 8 isn't arbitrary because of the metrics you chose, it's also still not all proprietary software however you cut it, it's also not the majority of proprietary software, it's just one individual example, and that still, no matter how you desperately try and claw and spin it, doesn't prove him wrong.
"And I'm fairly certain he'll read some of this"
To be fair I think the AC was pointing out Stallman's hypocrisy. On one hand he says he doesn't want a mobile phone because he doesn't want to be tracked and listened to. On the other hand he's using a PC, using e-mail and using the internet, all of which allow him to be tracked and listened to.
It's irrational, if you don't want to be snooped upon about the best you can do is only ever speak face to face with people. Simply saying I'll use this technology, but not that is nonsense. It's even more nonsense when he rubbishes the idea of open hardware - for all he knows the hardware he uses could be tapped even if his software is all FOSS, self-compiled, and self-verified. It's even more stupid again when he comes up with this idea of a pager that you choose to turn on and off- guess what cell phones let you do?
This is the issue, the guy is a hypocrite, his ideals are great but he's basically saying "Well I'll rubbish this technology because I've learnt to live without it and anyone who hasn't is stupid, meanwhile I'll continue to use this technology and that's not stupid because I haven't learnt to live without it even though it opens me up to the exact same things I rubbished the other technology for".
Oh my god, do we still have to see this childish argument?
Someone makes a point about the average case, then some idiot comes along and compares the best of one against the worst of the other and basically says "HAH, LOOK, MY ONE ANECDOTE PROVES EVERYTHING YOU SAID WRONG".
No it doesn't. For every Windows 8 there are a hundred infinitely worse FOSS UIs, and that's his point. You can't take the best of one and compare it against the worst of the other and then extrapolate that to the typical case, that's just stupid.
"3) Movie Studio C wants a cut of the profits and so makes a movie based on the book. They don't sign a deal with the author or give him any money."
Given that this happens anyway due to Hollywood Accounting where they manufacture a loss (and instead let all their sub-companies make the profit) I'm not entirely sure what difference copyright makes?
Besides, I'm not convinced it's a bad thing if people produce derivative works. Some out of copyright works have spawned numerous film creations over the years, and you know what's great about it? We actually have a choice of whose adaptation and interpretation of the story to watch because sometimes the "official" versions are completely shit.
"So what's the incentive to create works? How is an author paid?"
Well I don't know about you, but I'm paid a salary and I certainly create works. Copyright wouldn't change that in the slightest because it's all bespoke.
"No technical support needed for a book, you that red-herring can't be used."
You've still got large organisations (like governments) that would pay a salary for textbooks to be written for schools like they always have. Writing fiction would just become something you do because you enjoy and if you can sell copies on the side then great - this, and commissioned works are how things used to work anyway. Perhaps this way we could remove the 99% of dross that floods the shelves of places like WH Smith too.
But there's also a question as to whether some books are an outdated format anyway. I can't remember the last time I bought a programming book to teach me about APIs or a new language, the internet was always sufficient.
The idea that music, and written works and so forth would disappear without copyright implies that there were no written works or music before copyright was created in about the 18th century. Obviously this is false.
The problem is it's hard to imagine how we would live without copyright because we've been bought up to live with copyright, but you've got to realise the likes of the printing press came about as much as 400 years before Copyright as we know it today, but perhaps even more interesting is that the enlightenment began, lasting around 150 - 200 years and ended just about the same time as Copyright came about. Which isn't to blame Copyright for it's demise, but simply to point out that it happened without it. That one of our greatest periods of knowledge growth happened when works could be copied freely.
Finally, it's worth keeping in mind why Copyright came about - largely to control who could print what and to put the ability to perform censorship in the hands of a select few in the higher echelons of power.
To be perfectly honest, I'm just playing devils advocate to a degree here, I'm not sure that complete abolition of Copyright is the best option. But I'm also not sure it isn't. I do however think it's worth keeping an open mind and being aware of the idea that there's no evidence that copyright has been of inherent benefit to humanity though given that some of our most important historic works were written after the days of the printing press and mass copying, and before the creation of copyrights and that this period lasted for a much longer period of human history than the era of copyright has.
I think if you ask the question "But how will Miley Cyrus survive as an artist if everyone can freely copy her music, no one's willing to pay for it, and she's only willing to do a couple of actual days work a year?" then you'll get the answer that sure, you need copyright to protect her. But at that point I think the wrong question is being asked - instead it should be "Will people who love music still produce and distribute quality music if the only money in it for them is to go and perform live?" and I think the answer is yes, absolutely. It would in fact mean more live performances as how hard you work would determine how much you make, rather than the current status quo of how much of a monopoly your record producer is and how good you are at avoiding getting screwed in contract negotiation. It'd also mean more free music as that would be the greatest promotional material going. It's win-win for anyone that doesn't just want to do a few hours a month and spend the rest of their life working towards the inevitable heroin overdose from having too much money and too much time on their hands. Of course this is mostly hyperbole, the argument applies to a lesser or greater degree in other cases, but you get the point I'm sure.
Even throwing a human into the mix doesn't make CSS in itself Turing complete.
Your argument is effectively that if you throw in an outside executor then CSS becomes Turing complete. No fucking shit, I could literally make many things Turing complete by throwing Javascript or a human into the mix, but that doesn't mean they are in themselves Turing complete.
Which is probably about right in general if you look at job postings in various cities across the globe.
The majority of hires are still for C# and Java positions to this day.
There are areas where other languages shine (In the UK, London and Cambridge have a higher proportion of C++ roles for example) and hipster areas have high proportions of RoR and PHP hires.
But in general one thing seems to be a constant - that C# and Java are right at the top of the skills list both where other languages are strong, and where they are not.
Once you involved JS you're already involving a turing complete language, so of course CSS becomes turing complete if you throw in Javascript.
That still doesn't make it turing complete by itself though.
"Not by a number-of-new-projects metric."
But what does that metric achieve exactly? It tells us nothing of real use. It certainly doesn't answer the question most people are asking when they want to know these numbers - "What language(s) will best support my career?". It's useless knowing that there are 5 new PHP projects to every C++ project if each PHP project is a one man bottom of the rung near minimum wage "Hello World!" type application and the C++ ones are 100 developer massive scale high paying type applications.
"I don't think the 80/20 I can get over BT VDSL is that slow, nor is the BT FTTP 330/30 I can get if I lived on a different street."
But neither of those things are BT's DSL network which is what Virgin uses to increase it's ISP numbers outside it's network area are they?
"Virgin customers won't be going near any form of DSL on the BT network."
Right, so why when I go to sign up to Virgin am I presented with the option of them as my ISP over BT's DSL network and nothing else?
What does it matter? Are you saying that if one nation doesn't get democracy exactly right then it's okay for other nations to invade their neighbours and annexe their territory? I'm struggling to see what your point can possibly be other than this because otherwise it's just not relevant.
Right and I'm a doctor, may I operate on you?
An election observer is an actual profession requiring an actual skillset and knowledge. If you don't have that you're not an observer, you're someone pretending to be an observer. The people who went were people pretending to be observers but whose actual service is lying to pretend a vote is legitimate when it's not so that all the dumb people in the world and people with a similar bias towards pro-Russian and far-right ideals that this particular group supports can go "Hey look it was legitimate!".
"OSCE observers were invited, but the organization declined."
This is a gross oversimplification and I don't know why it keeps getting parroted here. The OSCE didn't decline, they said there was no legal basis on which the invitation was valid in the first place - you can't decline an invitation that isn't even valid. Other observers did try and enter in an unofficial capacity but were shot at as a result so gave up trying.
The non-OSCE observers are the same neo-Nazi (yes really) observer organisation that Putin's friends use to whitewash legitimacy into their elections in such pinnacles of democracy as Belarus.
So it's really a bit silly to say observers were there, you don't get to just declare yourself a doctor without having any training in medicine. Similarly you don't get to just declare yourself an observer and get to understand how to spot the many methods of electoral fraud, and how to objectively validate poll results in a verifiable way. The people that were actually able to go were just people pretending to be something they weren't - they were no more observers than were the Russian soldiers aiming the barrels of their guns at the electorate as a hint of how to vote.
You can say the same things about English too though but it doesn't really tell us much about their ethnic identity. The Scottish have their own languages (scots and scottish gaelic), as do the Welsh, but they pretty much all identify as Scottish and Welsh respectively. Try telling a Scotsman he's English because that's what he speaks and see how well that works out for you for example :)
Even if Russian is the dominant language, I think the fact people actually say "Ukrainian" in the poll still tells us all we need to know - that 67% favour declaring themselves in the ethnic Ukrainian category, whilst 30% favour declaring themselves in the ethnic Russian category. Even if the figures don't tell an honest picture about language use, they tell us about an honest a picture as we can get about preferred ethnic leaning - that the vast majority of Ukrainians prefer to declare themselves in the Ukrainian categories, rather than Russian categories.