bluedanieru

I assume the name for CoffeeScript came from it being calling JavaScript.

On a related note, the more I would play Smash Brothers, the worse off I would be against people who had never played before and just picked up the controller and smashed buttons.

Just start calling it Mocha. That was to be the name originally, iirc, and it's heaps better.

I know one person who calls it ECMAScript. You probably know an awful lot about this person just by my telling you that one thing.

I imagine that, aside from porn (and maybe even including it - or most of it), our modern sex lives are a faint shadow of what our prehistoric ancestors got up to.

Look at what the bonobos do with each other - and we're more creative.

The problem is that the market has been compromised such that fair price discovery isn't happening.

Interesting you bring up DeBeers. I suppose you assert that the global diamond market is healthy as well?

Again, there would be nothing stopping the owners of those small businesses from donating to political campaigns, and fully exercising all of their other rights.

>Can they say that Newspapers that are owned by corporations don't have complete freedom to publish what they want? Let's say they passed a law saying no corporate political speech within 1 month of an election - would that mean no New York Times endorsements?

Yes, that's exactly what it means! We do the same thing with unions, and with religious organizations that are tax-exempt. What makes corporations so special?

You are, of course, always free to decline the privileges granted to a corporation. Draw up some contracts between you and your partners and write whatever you want, whenever you want. If your newspaper is guilty of libel, you may be liable for that. If your newspaper goes bankrupt and owes money all over town, you might be on the hook for it personally. Accept that in the course of securing privileges natural persons do not enjoy, your corporation may be asked to give up rights that natural persons possess.

Much like patents and copyright, corporations are a legal fiction, invented by society, for the benefit of society. On all three counts, the balance of power has shifted heavily in favor of patent holders, copyright holders, and corporations. This does not indicate some natural law, but rather corruption in our own governments.

Perhaps, but again, I'm not arguing that corporations should or shouldn't be able to do X, only that they have no 'rights' as such. If a group of people want to retain those rights, they can always act collectively without first asking the state for special treatment. And, of course they retain their rights as individual persons, no matter what.

Oh, and I totally read the article? Is this kind of snarky reply just sort of a default thing to do when you disagree with someone now? In that case: if you read the article, you will not find that it addresses these points I have made at all.

How are the union dues made mandatory? That's important. And, if there is government involvement in that, is there also some regulation involving how unions are expected to behave? Also important.

I don't have a problem with recipients of government assistance giving up their right to vote in principal, although America would cease to be a democracy at that point. However I don't think the likely outcome (disenfranchisement of the poor, eventual oppression without any means of placation of said poor, probable rebellion) would be good for society, so I don't think we should do it.

Keep in mind, I'm not saying "corporations receive special treatment and so shouldn't be allowed to contribute to political campaigns". I'm saying "corporations receive special treatment, and I have no problem with putting stipulations on that". All I'm arguing against here is the meme that a corporation is "just a group of people". It is not.

Oh fucking great, so now we can have the DEA confiscate your car because you have some laundry detergent in the trunk.

The last half of the article detailing the "detective work" (read: harassing destitute drug addicts) made me sick.

Yes this is great, but it ignores the fact that a corporation is more than a group of people. It enjoys considerable legal benefits in the form of protection of its owners from various liabilities. In the US they also tend to enjoy considerable tax and other legal benefits.

These are all benefits provided by the US government, and by extension every American.

The beef is:

>people should not be deprived of their constitutional rights when they act collectively

A corporation is more than a group of people acting collectively. A corporation is also a group of people who get together and petition their government for special treatment. This is not a bad thing as it is basically what allows any company of more than a handful of people to even exist. But, if that special treatment comes with strings attached (i.e. restricting what that group of people are allowed to do with their collective resources and in the name of that corporation), I personally do not take issue with that.

I have no problem with a group of people freely getting together and wreaking havoc on the American political system. In fact, I encourage it. But I don't think everyone else must subsidize their activity.

But, it's in the title. It shouldn't have been edited out.

I would go even further than that and state that this is a classic example of nerds completely failing to understand what the justice system is for (hint: it isn't a state machine).

Can you expand on this? I'm curious. It seems to me that with the glowworms, knowing the position of one worm tells you something about the position of every other worm in the sample. If it was truly random, wouldn't it tell you nothing?

Out.

That's what I meant, as well :-)

>nested ternary (please don't)

Eh, if you use whitespace effectively it is perfectly readable. Moreso than the alternative, IMO.

>I don't accept the premise that whatever man touches is somehow automatically tainted or corrupted. Nor do I accept the premise that man is somehow unnatural.

I accept both, and especially the second, but I'm not anti-human or anything. It's just that we have really, really, rocketed past the rest of life on Earth, evolutionarily speaking. We destroy species, entire ecosystems, accidentally with little effort and often without even noticing until after the fact, if we notice at all. We are probably within the next 100-500 years going to reach a point where the existence of other life on Earth is not necessary for our survival. We have already passed the point where we can kill off most of it, perhaps all.

So, I don't know if you could say we have a "responsibility" to other life on Earth (although I tend to think we do), but, if we want to keep it around in anything resembling its current form, we do have to consider ourselves as apart from it in some sense. If we engage the rest of life on Earth as equals, we will likely kill most or all of it off, because there really is no contest.

Didn't Siegfried and Roy hack the maternal instinct of female cats to achieve some semblance of domestication? I mean, it didn't work out very well of course, because a cat mauled Roy and nearly killed him by grabbing him by the neck (to drag him to safety, according to them) like she would a cub.

So, I think there is a hook. It's just a really shitty one. Note that the hook for dogs can backfire as well, if they try to assert pack dominance vs. their owner. So we breed really submissive dogs.

>It's better than restricting speech through law AND enforcement.

Are you sure about that? If a government passes a law restricting speech because it has to, and then enforces it to restrict speech, it isn't clear to me that's worse than a government which doesn't bother with laws in the first place. Either way, you have no freedom of speech, but at least with the former you still have some semblance of rule of law. That's more important than speech, IMO (although of course without both you're already pretty fucked).

Is there any reason to think, that if there were many alien civilizations in our galaxy capable capable of radio transmission, that we would be have picked up on the signal? The last I checked (and I admit it has been a few years), the folks at SETI have basically said that even if the Milky Way galaxy was rife with technologically advanced civilizations the chance that we would have observed one is very small, given current efforts to date.

I've read a paper which pretty much lays out exactly the argument you describe, and the whole time I couldn't help but think the author was ignoring the very obvious. We can't even be sure that advanced civilizations would use radio that much, if at all, and even if they did, it's not as though we've conducted such a thorough search that we can confidently say "nope, no radios here". Not even close, in fact.

So... what? It would be hard for authorities in the US to pass a law restricting speech, so instead they just restrict speech without going through the bother of making a law about it? How is that better?

>"Negotiators from Denmark, the Czech Republic, Sweden, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Costa Rica and Kenya have said they would need to consult with their national governments about how to proceed and would also not be able to sign the treaty as planned on Friday."

The full list is available here. In particular I am glad to see Japan has also refused to ratify:

http://www.ipv.sx/wcit/

I infer from the article that it's not a perfectly consistent background noise across the entire grid, but rather that it's consistent enough to get a match as long as the recording is long enough. As such, even if you did have access to their recordings, or made recording of your own, you still wouldn't be able to just invert it like that.

Anyway, who uses a landline these days?

Hmmm, some of these are likely to prove to be correct (the last three).

I don't think you really need to append "of the <time-interval>", but I agree. Maybe he can explore why Apple prefers a closed ecosystem to an open one, and write about that. Is it because it's better for their customers? Because if not then it fucking sucks and he should be ashamed of himself for being such a tireless defender of it.

Also, yeah, about "tax". It's used pretty loosely sometimes, John. Like when mobsters talk about protection money. Welcome to language.

I wonder how much of that is the stupid, stupid name. Or the DRM. Probably not much I guess, but there is a good chance this is the first Nintendo console I'll sit out since ever, and those are the sole reasons in roughly equal measure.

You could get that kind of efficiency, or get closer to it anyway, if you just cut people a check. It turns out that's more effective at combating poverty than most social programs anyway. But it's politically impossible.

It might be what enables you to treat the subject humanely in the first place. It seems it would certainly make it easier, at least. Advocating empathy isn't the same as being soft on crime. It's perfectly possible to punish for crimes, even with death, and still display empathy and compassion.

Wow, what a disingenuous, bullshit comment you've made here.

From the article:

>We need to send a strong message to the world that the Internet has thrived under a decentralized, bottom-up, multi-stakeholder governance model.

While that statement was made by a Republican Congresswoman, I see no reason to think that it doesn't accurately represent the thoughts of most of the House - including Democrats - because, as she points out, it is a multi-stakeholder model. Some of the proposals before the ITU, the very ones the House is united against, would put significantly more power in the hands of the federal government - not less.

Why do Democrats oppose it anyway? Because they aren't fascists. Sorry to be the one to have to tell you.