Here are a list of his demands in order to make god happy: http://www.templeos.org/Wb/Doc... . These include MS ... VMware implementing PC speaker beeps.

And on that we can all agree.

Yeah, but they have the corpus, so in N years, when the algorithm improves, overnight revolution.

Now obviously they do lots of complicated analysis which is where a lot of the value added

Yeah, but a lot of that analysis is to figure out things about you, things you already know.

monetize their own information... I think that we need to fundamentally change the web so that Google and Facebook share their profits with us. They are after all making profits by selling your data

The problem is Facebook and Google already have sufficient amounts of information on sufficient numbers of people that your own higher quality data on your preferences isn't worth much. And FB/Google have scaling in their favor.

So, other than competing on cost (ick) what can you offer the marketer about you that FB/Google cannot?

Trusts always form by offering a deal that many people take voluntarily. That doesn't mean that it has to be allowed to use its monopoly position to keep the gains it has achieved.

Trust-breaking won the war of ideas like 100 years ago, and proved to be able to do little things like "prevent Standard Oil from running the world".

Dude, I thought that the heat couldn't dissipate through the vacuum of space. There's no "fear" about it. It's a technical question.

And, as has been said before, the best solution to incorrect facts is correct facts.

Just six plugins are used by more than 5% of users doesn't seem to be that significant. After all, 1000 plugins used by 1% of users will have far more impact than that.

Also, I do wonder if there is a correlation between people who use more plugins, and those who opt not to send anonymous data in.

If my admittedly weak knowledge of nuclear engineering is what's holding up our space program, methinks we have bigger issues..

Doesn't nuclear power work by boiling water? Doesn't it require that steam then turning back to water?

On the asteroid, I suppose you could use it as a giant heat sink (yay, destroying the thing we happen to be studying. That turns out well). But during the 12 years it took to get there, how would the heat bleed off? Emitting via radiation requires high temperatures that seem to make getting power via temperautre difference impossible.

See that word "assuming"? I thought people would be able to figure out that my meaning was: [omitted for obviousness]

You said that the OPs points were only valid if they were reasonable. You then explained why they are likely not reasonable. This is both what you really obviously said and what you just reiterated. This is a case you are making, as you recognize later.

. Seeing not much of anybody taking the Uber side, I suggested some reasoning to explain their actions and circumstances which might serve to justify them from an ethical standpoint.

So I'm confused as to why you are so upset that I thought you were in favor of that position. I quite clearly disagree with your position. Going three rounds of "that's not what I said" followed by "well, that is what I said, but only for the sake of argument" is being a troll, not a devil's advocate. For instance, if you do want to be an advocate, you have to, you know, advocate, not kinda retreat/claim you were misunderstood.

Or to make things blatantly clear:

What did I say that gave you the impression I was advocating extrajudicial resolution?

I suggested some reasoning to explain their actions and circumstances which might serve to justify them from an ethical standpoint. It's called "being a devil's advocate

From your original post:

I've seen some of the news coverage about them trying to move into a couple of cities. The cities are saying "OK, you need a license, the proper insurance, and you must do these things". Uber says "Yarg, we're not a taxi company, we're teh interweb company, we won't play by the rules". At which point you think, "wow, so these guys figure they're exempt from regulations". And then you don't have a lot of sympathy for them.

Assuming the regulations are actually halfway reasonable. People were saying they were obviously set up to protect the existing taxi system which has already "bought into" the exorbitant fees.

Here you were contended that the quoted parent was incorrect. You said one ought not feel antipathy towards Uber for ignoring the regulations. Given that the antipathy was moral in nature, you are implicitly making a case that Uber was in the right. This interpretation is reinforced by your explanation of why you thing the regulations are immoral and ignorable.

Further, you say:

As an engineer-type mindset, if there's an easy way to do something more efficiently and regulations are standing in the way, I blame the regulations, not the new solution for sufficiently stupid values of regulation (obviously safety regs are a different matter).

Here, you are clearly assigning blame for Uber violating the regulation to the regulation itself, not Uber.

It's possible I inferred incorrectly. I think it more likely you wrote hastily in an exaggerated way for effect and do not hold such an extreme position. Which is both something that happens and something that people mistake on the internet for non-exaggerated points.

Hopefully this answers " What did I say that gave you the impression I was advocating extrajudicial resolution?"

Nope, they just have enough money that they don't care what someone says about them. What's the worst that happens, they have to vacation on their yacht til the media forgets about it?

Assuming the regulations are actually halfway reasonable. People were saying they were obviously set up to protect the existing taxi system which has already "bought into" the exorbitant fees.

Which does not make them unreasonable on face. Having a robust taxi system is a good thing. Generating revenue for the city by selling licenses is a good thing. Whether the assurance of having taxis survive without a race to the bottom is worth interfering in the free market is outside the scope of conversation.

As an engineer-type mindset, if there's an easy way to do something more efficiently and regulations are standing in the way, I blame the regulations, not the new solution for sufficiently stupid values of regulation

And as an engineer, you are clearly able to determine the far reaching implications of policy changes, know which regulations are "stupid" and therefore ignorable, but unable to communicate that to your fellow citizens in order to get the regulations modified?

Look, you want to change the law, we have a process for that.

Or is changing regulations via democracy one of those "regulations" you feel exempt from?

Dude, it's not even that. Bennett is saying that ethnicity has a significant impact on whether people find breastfeeding inappropriate. Run a fucking t-test.

Here: http://www.graphpad.com/quickc...

For anybody who thought the overcrowded dystopian future feared in the 1970's failed to occur, China is one place where it already did.

Sheesh, another thing we outsourced to China

For example, about 20 minutes ago I needed a function to measure password strength.

Does it merely require sufficient inclusion of characters to make the estimated size of the character set above a threshold, and then do the same for length independently? Does it use(estimated size of the set of characters used) ^ (length)? Does it reference commonly used passwords to ensure things like "password" are weaker than "merhgqtrc"? Or reference the keyboard layout? How does it handle repeated letters? Does it deal with your N previous passwords to prevent password reuse? Does it allow for "horse battery staple correct"?

And, by the way, coming up with all those questions took under a minute. And coding a solution that implements the first couple of options would take (in my estimation) five minutes or so.