that's what she said?

"for entertainment purposes only" seems to be the necessary language. right?

ugh... who DIDN'T recognize that that was what verhoeven was going for?

but it's all so FACILE and obvious and redundant. his satire had the depth of insight attained by lampooning the fact that the sun is hot. :P

yes, it's satirical... but so on the nose and idiotically shallow that it gains no mileage from it. it could only be admired for "insight" (for fuck's sake) by children or imbecile.

i should sue the guy for my eye injury sustained when his film forced me to attempt eyerolling at speeds beyond which is possible for average human beings.

the critique of the movie back then was that it was stupid. and that's still goddamn right.

robocop - brilliant
total recall - awesome

but starship troopers is fucking garbage.

it's so poetic in its justice. america finds that it cannot, by fiat, defy world wide laws and it doesn't suit them... so they violate the law they disagree with (SHOCK)... and so, as judgment, the plaintiff, in turn, gets to violate laws that the U.S. would very much like not to be violated... because... THESE are laws they like.

oh WTO... i'd kiss you if you weren't swimming with disease....

the entirety of it is just nonsense.

the premise is ludicrous. i don't know exactly how the pins in a bowling alley will land before i throw the ball but that does not mitigate the fact that what happens to the pins is deterministic. same thing with billiard balls.

the article is simply hiding behind complexity.

*I* may not know how the billiard balls or bowling pins will go because i don't have access to all the information.

but that is the EXACT same issue with the brain. just more complex. difference is merely in scope, not in kind.

and several times, he uses the term "appears to have free will"... which is completely besides the point. NOBODY will contest that people APPEAR to have free will. what is at issue is whether human beings ACTUALLY have free will. and this article brings us not one iota closer.

gah.

being outside of government laws also puts you outside of government protection. the problem with libertarian/anarchist societies is that they are ripe to be taken over and subjugated by all the societies that are not like it.

should any of these really take off and become prosperous, it will be targeted by every OTHER government under the sun... and with the less scrupulous ones, it will come in the form of military might.

you either cracked the encryption key or you didn't.

and as with factoring large primes for cryptography, you can start a lot of problems with the answers and so can verify whether the q computer's results are correct or not. verify in this way for a wide variety of tests (where the answers are known), then you can have reasonably good confidence on the functionality of your device.

and there are a lot of tasks that have already been computed classically, just over weeks, months and years. and these are on record. ideally, the q computers will produce the same results... just much much faster. so there's yet another pre-existing answer key to check against.

completely agree. nobody wants a crippled windows machine. just go with that which is fully compatible.

they're insane NOT to go with their strongest asset - a gigantic world of programs.

and the republican strategy - if one war's not working, let's have TWO!

in most marriages, that's called children.

if the neighborhood is in fact high crime rate, i don't see a problem with using that data to advise accordingly. they can even make it explicitly non-racist by not providing any information at all about demographic.

sure, this could create a downward spiral situation but that's not really the responsibility of these kinds of utility apps and websites.

besides... everything is a feedback loop... can't help it. just the way of the world.

codea is awesome! i'm using that right now to teach myself programming... and i'm a grown ass man.

love the fact that it's a limited environment. for me, especially when it comes to programming, limitations are GOLD. i kick myself that i passed up the oppty to really learn programming when i was a kid with my atari 800xl back when the machine was simple enough to be truly knowable inside and out.

there should be something equivalently powerful for kids... not an ipad but something like a "python pad"... something that powers up instantly and dumps you right into a python interactive environment where you can execute shell commands... just like ataris and c64s dumped you into basic. 800x600 screen with hardware that's not very powerful. limited speed, limited ram. small enough and simple enough that the kids can actually hit the extents.

that's my hope with codea - that i can actually learn it so well and hit the upper limits of what it is capable of. then i think i will understand what i would and could do with all the power in modern computers and developing environments. (to my credit, i've at least discovered why i would want search and replace in an IDE... :) )

i think that would be as good of a teaching tool as the calculators and far better than ipads that are too powerful, too connected and too capable of use as devices for consumption.

if somebody ever makes that, let me know cuz i'll but one!

how flagrantly does a lawsuit have to violate every principle of law before it's immediately ejected from consideration? how is this even being considered in the legal system?

this is CLEARLY first ammendment. so what the hell are they pressing charges with?

goddamn... how can we have a ruling that basically evaluates activity as unconstitutional and not only does word of that not get out but also nothing is done about said unconstitutional activity???!?! and we have to get the EFF to fight tooth and nail just to GET THAT DECISION OUT? like, "you're guilty of murder.... have a nice day. see ya around. don't worry, we won't tell anyone." system has rotted out. we're fucking doomed.

gah. it's stupid that she had to make this about principles where it is indefensible. better thing would have been to just make the pragmatic argument - "hey, shit's going haywire so we're going to turn it down a notch". not everything has to be ideological... just keeping your house in order is enough.