itistoday

Net Neutrality is government enforcing non-control of the internet, over everybody. It says that no one, including the government, can make the internet a non-level playing field. Like national parks, it's a Good Thing™.

Service provider routers with deep packet inspection and similar technology will simply turn a little dial until bandwidth for GNUnet et. al. slows to a trickle.

That's why this is such a touchy issue.

Any attempt on the part of Google/Verizon to not come out directly in favor and clearly stating support of Network Neutrality, is in fact a PC way of saying that they don't support it.

I noticed though that you're including the user's password in the confirmation email. This isn't recommended for security reasons (as it's easy to intercept, and users often use the same password for multiple services). Also, I hope you're storing the salted hash of the password on your server (as opposed to the actual password).

That's someone I respect. Someone I'll get along with, and probably someone with a strong moral sense and therefore someone I'm more likely to trust. I don't want to hire people who just come for the "free lunch."

H. L. Mencken wrote in The American Mercury for April 1924 that the aim of public education is not "to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence. ... Nothing could be further from the truth. The aim ... is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States."

[.. snip ..]

For those of you that work within the system that I am condemning, I do not mean to insult; I intend to motivate. You have the power to change the incompetencies of this system. I know that you did not become a teacher or administrator to see your students bored. You cannot accept the authority of the governing bodies that tell you what to teach, how to teach it, and that you will be punished if you do not comply. Our potential is at stake.

For those of you that are now leaving this establishment, I say, do not forget what went on in these classrooms. Do not abandon those that come after you. We are the new future and we are not going to let tradition stand. We will break down the walls of corruption to let a garden of knowledge grow throughout America. Once educated properly, we will have the power to do anything, and best of all, we will only use that power for good, for we will be cultivated and wise. We will not accept anything at face value. We will ask questions, and we will demand truth.

The people from Western Europe would not go on a jihad. However, during the last decade their opinion on the USA plummeted, too. Twenty years ago, if you were an American in Berlin, you would be revered, and more honored than the Berliners around… Not anymore. Now, you can often hear: “The country that lied to the entire world about the Iraqi WMD? That created and still maintains the Guantanamo gulag? That ran Abu Graib? That bombed to destruction the civilians in Faluja? That shot the Italian hostage resque mission? That killed the BBC journalists in Baghdad? That photographs, fingerprints and tracks every visitor like a criminal? That created the ECHELON system? That is killing in Afghanistan maybe more civilians than terrorists?… If it is decent, then Stalin is, too. This country is a blemish to the humankind."

Although it's really hard to pick, you should just read the entire thing.

If you still prefer the reader's digest:

… Remember the great support Obama had among the ordinary people abroad before the president elections? Especially in Europe? There is a reason for this support. The ordinary people hoped that he will restore the US moral superiority, by bringing moral to the US politics… He failed to do it. The Guantanamo gulag stays. Some measures are taken to prevent the worst things the US Army does abroad – however, the “culture of concealment” is stronger than ever. Slowly, but surely one trend emerges and grows in the thinking of the people outside US. Namely, that this state has gone too far on the Evil Empire road. That it cannot be stopped anymore, even by a good-intended President. And that it is better late than never to say openly: “Things changed. This is not anymore the moral leader of the world – this is just another evil empire. One that the decent people must hate, loathe and oppose to.”

What will happen if this trend of thinking prevails? Easy guess. Al-Qaeda will grow and attract more and more people, and will probably obstruct more of the US activity abroad. In fact, it may gain enough support to carry its fight on American soil. The support for US in Europe and the rest of the world will gradually diminish, to the extent that even the pro-US politicians will have to become blind and deaf to the USA needs. And very surely there will be new “cold wars” – economic, cultural etc. – between USA and some other countries, but it will not be possible anymore to win them through moral superiority.

[.. snip ..]

To preserve moral superiority, the US must first learn what is the correct move in situations like the current one. Whether Wikileaks is its enemy, or the best friend they can find – one that is brave enough to tell you you have a nasty problem, and to press on you to solve it on time. And whether people like Mike Mullen are its best servants, or its best enemies – the ones that tell you “There is no problem, continue this way, people will never learn of the crimes, truth never comes out”.

If you are still not sure which is the correct position, ask one truly outstanding soldier – Gen. David Petraeus. He will surely be able to tell you the truth… Actually, you can tell it yourself, by using his simple principle – which action decreases the number of your enemies, and increases the number of your friends.

Have fun with that and your "dark energy." I will continue to laugh at you. :-D (And will get downvoted as a result, but it's worth it.)

I know, HN doesn't allow downvoting of responses. :-p

But you still do not seem to comprehend the fact that the standard theory assumes time is finite.

Really? I thought I was very clear in demonstrating that I understood this through and through, hence the accusation of faith. I did not simply use an assumption that time is infinite as disproof, in fact I did not disprove BBT at all in my response, but merely gave reasons why I thought it was extremely unlikely to have a start.

Again, I don't think I committed the "No True Scotsman" fallacy.

However, I did not commit it, I never asserted "true mystics" or anything along those lines. I in fact admitted that my choice of words was poor, and that I was having difficulty choosing a better description.

The spontaneous creation of particle pairs is not at all an example of "something from nothing", but simply an illustration of "something from something". Vacuum energy is not nothing. That should be obvious.

A proper understanding of what "nothing" means would prevent misunderstandings such as this from coming up. Nothing is literally, nothing. Non-existence. In other words, by definition, you'll never find it.

I should have been more specific, but it's rather difficult to be specific w.r.t. definitions of who is a mystic and who is not, it will likely lead to needless debate. :-\

I just hope that those who have studied a bit of comparative religion (and eastern religions specifically) will know what I'm referring to.

No, it's simply definition.

Again, the first law of thermodynamics is a "law" which describes everyday experiences within our own universe at the present epoch. But Big Bangs are not everyday in-universe events.

I've heard this one too, and if there ever was a weak objection to something, this is it. It amounts to: physics is worthless.

as there's plenty who will tell you the universe was belched out of the belly of a giant porpoise.

Your ignorance is showing and it's embarrassing. The mystical experience is remarkably consistent.

  The universe did not come from nothing. Consider the following two claims:
  * The universe has a finite age.
  * The universe has always existed.
  Both of these claims are true.

Here's the other bit:

  [1] It so happens that "negative time", or even time t=0, is equally as
  meaningless as Elephant Time or Verb Time. They are all undefined.

You can state it's "meaningless" to speak of t=0, but you provide zero backup for this, other than it satisfies your fantasy.

You can state it's "meaningless" to ask what happened X minutes before the Big Bang, but again, this is only in the service of satisfying your fantastical theory.

Meanwhile, back in the Universe and the realm of Logic, it's very meaningful to ask what happened at "t=0", because such a state did exist. It even existed in your Big Bang Theory, which states there was an "initial state."

It is highly improbable (if not provably impossible), that such an "initial state" is realistically feasible, and it certainly violates Occam's Razor. Your "initial state" has no explanation. You in fact vehemently object to any attempts at an explanation, deriding them as "undefined." This is faith in its purest form.

Sorry, but I think you are a very religious man and don't realize it. Thank you, however, for the wonderful illustration of my point, I can use it as a historical example of the problem. :-)

I've spoken with, and heard many professors speak of the Big Bang Theory as accepted fact, when in fact it is not, and not only that, but it has very serious, fundamental problems:

- It flies in the face of logical reasoning. Something cannot come out of nothing.

- The point above actually has a physical law. It's called the First Law of Thermodynamics, and the Big Bang Theory is in stark violation of it.

That's not to say it's completely invalid. There could have been a Big Bang, in fact it's very likely there was, but that doesn't mean it was the "start" of anything, other than rapid expansion, or, converting into mystical terms, a reincarnation.

The Universe will always be here. It has always been here. It cannot go away. It is indestructible and everlasting. The mystics understand this, and so does anyone who understands basics physics.

You're welcome to disagree, similarly as a child would insist on the existence of Santa Claus or a Christian on the existence of a paternal God-head.

Though that's not a perfect analogy, as proving either of those postulates wrong is impossible, and here we have a situation where there actually is strong evidence for the existence of sand granules (I hope you'll agree).

So in this case it actually is rather easy to see if you're correct. If you can "do just fine without it" then go and erase it out of existence. Come back when you are through and you'll have proven me wrong. :-)

See:

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Prat%C4%ABtya...

Though the wiki doesn't do a very good job discussing the topic. See also the section there "Madhyamaka and Pratityasamutpada" which goes a bit further in depth, but I recommend outside reading as well if you're interested.

What's interesting about this, is that when you put it that way some people are put off and call it "mysticism", when actually it is very precise and scientific, and in fact is simply another way of stating the First Law of thermodynamics.

</conspiracy>

(They start to appear after page 5 btw).

Here's the news release from their campus site, detailing some of the supposed applications:

http://www.wsunews.wsu.edu/pages/publications.asp?Action=Det...

http://macperformanceguide.com/SSD-RealWorld-Seasoning.html

http://www.barefeats.com/mbpp19.html

I took the plunge and am quite happy I did.

Clojure is quite a different Lisp, and to say that this is "Clojure for Cocoa" implies it has something in common with Clojure other than also being a member of the Lisp family, which it really doesn't.

Clojure is very functional, Nu is not. Clojure's language is designed to make it safe and simple to write multithreaded code. Nu is just an imperative Lisp with smalltalk syntax so that it can interface with Cocoa/Objective-C. Clojure takes a departure from all Lisps by treating lists as just any other datastructre, and therefore has literal syntax for arrays, hashtables, and sets, Nu has no such thing. Clojure places a huge emphasis on "data abstractions" like Seqs and builds its core functions around that. Clojure is compiled, Nu is interpreted, etc...

Don't get me wrong, I think Nu is really cool, but I can't think of a single thing that Nu shares with Clojure that is exclusive to Clojure and not Lisp.

Let's not nit-pick, it's an exercise in futility. By permission I meant he's not going to be killed or tossed in jail for saying that, that should be obvious.

"Our entire short history is a narrative of how the government erodes the Constitution and that basic idea at every opportunity"

Selective memory? Let's just forget all the examples where basic rights have been expanded to people. How about the restraint shown when women won the right to vote? Or when black people became officially recognized as people? It was in fact the government that enforced these laws and sent in military personnel to protect black kids from the angry white masses during desegregation.

It has rules and procedures in place on what each branch of government can and cannot do. Etc. Sometimes they break these rules, yes, but that's getting back into the same nit-picking of whether mudil had "permission" to speak his mind. For the most part these rules are followed, and for the most part when they're broken there are consequences.

The government created laws and amendments that clearly demonstrated restraint. How could it do this? Because our government, while imperfect, isn't (yet at least) completely in the hands of some aristocracy, and it has over the years both limited and expanded its powers.

"The Government" is also not an individual entity with a single consciousness that's out to get you. It's a synecdoche that refers to a large group of _elected_ officials. If there's something wrong, the entire country shares the blame.

To view it through a monochromatic lens is to ignore history and to be cynical for cynicism's sake.

The entire Bill of Rights is an example of government restraining itself. The Constitution is an example of that.