My apologies, then. It was my mistake.
1,165 karma · joined April 18, 2010
(Of course, the Israeli-Arab conflict doesn't encapsulate the 'entire history' of the Jewish/Palestinian-Arab conflict either, some of whose bloodiest events happened before 1948. But that doesn't alter its magnitude.)
But failing to acknowledge the circumstances surrounding outbreaks of violence as being intrinsic to the nature of that violence is, generally, a matter of choice.
[Again, the fact that you don't like what I'm saying doesn't give you the right to set the terms of the discussion, and condescending comments about my ability to read don't really help either.]
[Edit: Your reply below, which doesn't yet have a reply button, is not coherent so I can't respond to it anyway. (A? B? Bozos? What?) I don't think there's much more that can be usefully said at this point. Speaking of non-falsifiability though, ain't evolutionary psychology a hoot?]
What I have pointed out, and what your own comments clearly demonstrate(d), is that this exercise in 'comparing data across conflicts' as you so euphemistically put it, has a distinctly political edge which could be missed by the unwary reader.
So, far from being a 'useless statistic', the relative hardships and pressures faced by each side have a direct bearing on the longevity of the conflict.
BTW, it's not necessary to speculate about how little I know. Let's stick to the facts.
[1] http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Backchannels/2012/1114/Is-Ham... [as-responsible-for-Gaza-rocket-fire-Not-exactly]
I'm not really interested in whether certain wars are bigger than other wars. I am interested in how the trivialisation of ongoing conflicts tends to dovetail neatly with pro-war agendas ('cost of doing business').
[Unexplained downvotes, how novel.]
You say that the 'cost' of the Iraq war is a mere 5,000 deaths, coldly ignoring the deaths of many tens of thousands of people just because they're on 'the other side'.
I hesitate to ask exactly which historians you recommend that would justify this selectivity.
Because of the gross disparity in casualties between the two sides, attempting to minimise perceptions of the conflict as a whole (with a frame of reference chosen for statistical convenience) amounts proportionally to discounting the importance of the (overwhelmingly Palestinian) deaths.
This attitude of "it's bad but we can live with it" is directly reflected in the policies of the current Israeli government with respect to peace.
Between 1860 and 2010 there were a reported (by Israel) 3,971 Israeli civilian casualties of terrorist attacks.[1]
Between 2000 and 2012 there were a reported (by Israel) 3,034-3,726 Palestinian non-combatant civilian casualties of IDF operations.[2]
Obviously, tank battles in Sinai are not going to produce the same casualty rates as wars of attrition fought at street level in densely populated cities. Air strikes on Gaza (10,000 people / km2) are precisely on the same order of devastation though. The broader you make the context, the more you mask that fact.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_casualties_of_war
[2] http://old.btselem.org/statistics/english/Casualties.asp
I don't think many people are claiming that all patented designs are 'obvious', even to a field expert. Just that quite a lot of the ones currently making news headlines are.
The issue of there being 'only one good way to do it' is completely separate. It is analytic that legally barring competitors from implementing even a non-obvious design, once it has been discovered/invented, restricts others from further innovating on it.
It would be difficult to argue that the US should license all of its military technology to China on FRAND-like terms. But when companies refuse to do this trans-nationally, it seems like trade war, especially if there is only one way to do it. It's an interesting question at what point the profitable IP owned by a country's corporations should be considered a strategic national asset (and IMO it illuminates some of the decisions by trade organisations and even courts).
The appropriation of any technology with potential military applications will always be governed the rules of the game -- there is no global legal authority to appeal to in such matters and nor would the USA want there to be one, for obvious reasons.
> A successful programmer is not just a programmer, he is also a personal representative, a salesman and a contract negotiator.
---
Having just read the PM's statement[1], I can't see any signs of actual corruption in the procedure that was followed. It seems reasonably likely that this was just a mistake.
[1] http://beehive.govt.nz/release/inspector-general%E2%80%99s-r...
(Not that it seems to have done much for Opera, but Mozilla is in a better position to capitalise.)
On a more substantive point: You acknowledge the difficulties faced by "soft sciences". Does that mean you accept that there are whole categories of real-world phenomena of which it would be extremely difficult if not impossible to systematise whatever "knowledge" we do have? I don't think that position is incompatible with respect for science.
In the modern world, science, technology and reason are central and vital, and this is widely recognised
So I don't see how you can say that anything was buried.
Also, to disengage as a reader is one thing. To take the time to then comment on what one hasn't read, misstating the author's point-of-view and encouraging others not to read, on the basis of one's own lazy misunderstanding, is just wilfully spreading ignorance.
But as you say, the author isn't standing up for these "sciences" (in scare-quotes). Rather, he takes issue with the claims of objectivity and rigour for certain fields, one of which you appear to feel is unfairly tarred. You don't need to mischaracterise the author's position to defend computational linguistics though.
Which the rest of your comment proves. Thanks for that.
But there's been a lot of rough-and-tumble and a lot of assaults on standards-as-process from all directions (Apple, Google, take a bow). That's why the WHAT-WG was formed, right? The browser makers who want to push the web forward as a platform. The big names like M..ozilla, Mi..Opera, Mmmi. Apple, Mgoo.. hey, has anyone seen Microsoft? Try their mobile, maybe they took a wrong turn.
BTW, the standards process is faltering again[1] (and I don't just mean the W3C's petrify-ray). If they're serious about the web, there's never been a better time for Microsoft to join the WHATWG.
[1] http://the-pastry-box-project.net/bruce-lawson/2012-august-4...
Nice resource though, even if 'web-safe' isn't the strait-jacket it used to be. :)
Is that a reason for us not to take you seriously? Feel free to disclose any connection you have with the subject but please don't disclaim responsibility for your comments. :)
Unless, of course, you want to..
(Sorry for the no-content post but I see this word used in every second thread these days and it's one of the things that might be driving me nuts.)
Now you can take your naive, tarbrush, self-adoring brand of racism, sandblast it, polish it and and stick it up your ass.
(Thanks for reposting, ars!)
The result looks like this: http://testing321.netau.net/betteridge-sample.png
Improvements welcome, especially if instructive. :)
[1] https://gist.github.com/2908570/
[Chrome: drag 'raw' link to omnibox to install]
[Based on http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3934937]
"We have an Airplay licensing program explicitly to assist companies in creating AirPlay capable products. Apple never said that we would pull the rug out from anyone, we in fact worked with this developer to ensure they update their app and remain on the App Store"
The clear implication there is that Apple had procedures available for getting this to work and RA just ignored them. RA's response directly contradicts this.
P.S. thanks for the unexplained downvotes.
"Kontra genuinely loathes Google right down to the ground."[1]
Why this should matter to anyone is a bit of a mystery. But he seems to have something of a following so I'm posting this because it's the second time I've seen a post of his show up on HN and as well as the axe-grinding I'm again seeing willful misdirection and misrepresentation of facts.
The funny thing about this post is that the only thing I actually learned from reading it is that Google Maps is pretty great (thanks for the bullet points!)
[1] http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2010/05/30/Feelings-A...
[IE6] http://www.cssplay.co.uk/layouts/fixed.html
(Not that it matters anymore.)