gahahaha

> [Private schools] turn out better test scores and spend around 25% that of public schools per student.

I don't believe you. Proof?

"Apparently we're too primitive to get beyond the juvenile practice of cutting off our nose to spite our face"

Don't be too hard on yourself. A conservative coalition that includes a right wing populist party that want prison to be less about rehabilitation and more about suffering and punishment just won the general election here. The next four years will see how much impact they can have on the system..

The same reason it is hard to learn Emacs, but in the long run learning the tool is worth the startup cost a thousand times.

The GPL is not about being practical, it's about freedom. That's why it's the only licence I would consider releasing software under.

> A few drone strikes?

Surely it is possible to imagine more of them.

> An optional war in Libya.

With a UN mandate, almost completely fought by the Europeans.

> Continuing a failed war in Afghanistan. However what he is doing is quite different from starting a war in Afghanistan.

Here you might have a point.

> Continuing to operate Gitmo.

Congress did that.

> Continuing and expanding the spying on US citizens and others.

This is terrible.

> If anything, Obama has expanded warfare to anyplace in the world that can't stop drones. Peaceful isn't an adjective that should be used in conjunction with this President.

Relatively peaceful compared to W. That is what I said, and I think it is accurate.

The reasons cited by the committee was his "promotion of nuclear nonproliferation" and reaching out to the Muslim world.

That being said - a few drone strikes is a lot more peaceful than starting two big wars like his predecessor did.

Personally, i think we should never underestimate how petty people in power can be: I think the committee handing out the prize were like star-struck teenage girls and wanted to meet Obama.

But doesn't doctors insure themselves against such suits, so the end result is just higher prices?

> the most rudimentary technical chops

Working as a high school teacher, I can tell you that it is far less common among kids to have those chops than you imagine...

Thanks!

Beautiful, but where does it store the sound files, and will it soon be possible to delete recordings?

I believe in the idea of a united Europe, but it is hard to see how we can get to there from here. Right now it is a bit like a Polish parliament ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_parliament_%28expressio... ) in that a small country that has a particularly stupid government at the moment (or that can be strong-armed or corrupted by an empire like the US) can block sensible reform. And we all know how well Poland did when they were unable to make any decisions....

The accusation that Greenwald is using the leaks for self promotion are the same accusations that were/are used to smear Assange.

"""Do you plan to open the source code?

Currently not. Opening the source code of Wuala would consume quite some time and effort, and commitment to maintain it. If you are a software engineer and would like to see how Wuala works, feel free to apply for a job at Wuala."""

ಠ_ಠ So.. an alternative, but not the solution we need.

I honestly don't like this advice.

Remembering stuff is what gives you the tools to understand - you simply can't understand without a large collection of facts. Facts aren't sufficient, but they are necessary. Trying to jump over the "knowing stuff" phase leads to a very low quality understanding.

> Motorola stands out as a clunker.

When Google bought Motorola, the reasoning I read was all about patents. They still have those patents, and it might have been a good acquisition no matter the state of Motorola the company...

To be fair - half the political parties in Norway like to spit out the word socialist in debates with the social democrats and let the image of Stalinist oppression and Gulags hang in the air. When even the conservatives here in Norway are that immature, you can't expect more nuance from American conservatives.

Bitcoin is actually designed to be very deflationary, not stable.

I don't know, but from the Wine ARM wiki:

"""Possible goals: run the assembler parts of x86 in qemu and call function in Wine compiled for ARM"""

Nice - is it possible to combine it with existing SRS-systems? (I'm using Mnemosyne, so it would need to be possible to export the data in the mnemosyne xml format or as a tab separated text file)

If free will does not exist, then it is ultimately not anybody's fault if they do something. That includes murder and buying cigarettes. But at the same time it is easy to see that as a society it is advantageous for us to punish criminals because that punishment is part of the environment that influences behavior for criminals and non-criminals in a positive direction.

So - nobody is responsible for any action, but it is useful to pretend they are.

Another reason why the concept of free will is so ingrained in western culture is the role it plays in religion - being saved/forever damned makes no sense without it. But like much of religion it is just an untruth that has (at least historically) proved useful for people. Since religion is so important to many people, they will also hold on to the idea of free will because understanding reality in a more accurate way wil undermine their religion.

I always like to think of self control the same way as free will. A useful abstraction, but not something that really exists. It is obviously beneficial for a person to believe that he is in control of his choices, of his behavior, because that increases the chance that he will take action to improve his lot. But that it is useful does not mean that it exists.

Has a child of christian parents who have never heard anything but religious music, books, stories, people had the opportunity to make a free choice? I don't think so. Has an American child who has seen thousands and thousands of ads for garbage food taken an independent choice to eat that? I don't think so.

We humans have precious limited mental resources and can’t afford to spend the time considering every decision rationally; therefore, we automatically subconsciously make decisions based on salient features of the current stimulus. In normal words, we make shortcuts based on limited information.

Since people are so very irrational (See Thinking fast and slow by Daniel Kahneman) the idea that we are rational can be used as an excuse by those (advertisers, politicians) who want to manipulate us. So, it is in fact a dangerous idea.

I sometimes entertain the notion that it would be better to live in a totalitarian dictatorship where some benevolent dictator manages the information people are exposed to and thus makes people make better choices of their own free will. (I'm aware that such a society has some dystopian aspects as well, of course)

Rereading my comment, I don't like my tone. Sorry about that.

I think we basically agree.

Surely you must understand that the current obesity epidemic CAN NOT be caused by people suddenly becoming more weak willed?

If you had been born in Japan you would almost certainly be thin now. Why? The answer is not that Japanese people have more will power.

The "poor fat people are just weak-willed" argument is SO despicable. Americans did not suddenly get poor habits in 1976 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obesity_in_the_United_States The obesity problem was caused by a change in the environment (and, yes, the increasing power of the food industry is one of those causes) and only a change in the environment will fix it.

In the sense that the quantity is not controlled by a government, BitCoin can be compared to gold. And the value of gold is highly unstable.

You don't understand how Austrians define inflation. If they had said it's "the supply of money growing faster than the demand for money" we wouldn't have an argument (oh, we would, but not over the definition of inflation) They claim it is the increase in money supply that is inflation. They don't care about prices. Also - Friedman (with his famous VM = PY ) obviously acknowledged the importance of demand for money affecting prices)

Both the Austrians and Friedman overestimated the role monetary policy can play. We've had a huge increase in the monetary base, but no price inflation since 2008. Austrians and to some extent Chicago-economists have predicted runaway inflation, and ended up with egg on their faces. But self criticism is of course nowhere to be seen as usual.

It is worth noting that in (the crazy cult of) Austrian economics, inflation is defined as increasing the money supply. This sometimes makes discussions with them difficult, since for rest of the world (all serious economists) inflation means increasing prices

Our distraction is a full-blown epidemic — a cognitive plague that has the potential to wipe out an entire generation of focused and productive thought. It can be compared to smoking: People aren’t aware what’s happening to their mental processes, in the same way that people years ago couldn’t look into their lungs and see the residual deposits.

You are correct. Felix Salmon comments: http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2012/08/06/chart-of-th...

> in 2008, a pattern starts to emerge: a big spike right at the close, at 4pm, which is soon mirrored by another spike at the open. This is the era of traders going off to play golf in the middle of the day, because nothing interesting happens except at the beginning and the end of the trading day. But it doesn’t last long.

Not at all. With bitcoin every transaction is publicly logged, and anyone can see the flow of Bitcoins from address to address. Alone, this information can't identify anyone because the addresses are just random numbers. However, if any of the addresses in a transaction's past or future can be tied to an actual identity, it might be possible to work from that point and figure out who owns all of the other addresses. This identity information might come from network analysis, surveillance, or just Googling the address.

So - Bitcoin won't keep you anonymous.

Edit: Sorry - I was reading your comment in the context of the previous commenter worrying about ending up on a government watch list.