Why should someone suddenly be *forced* to have insurance to do something?

Because you're doing something where there's a reasonable liklihood you're going to do far more damage than you can afford to compensate someone for. Unfortunately, too many people's attitude would be "ha ha I wrecked you stuff fuck you!" which is why insurance is mandatory.

Actually in the UK, insurance isn't mandatory. But you have to prove you can pay out in the event that you cause damage. And that proof comes in the form of leaving a million pounds in the custody of Her Maj.

Memory fades fast. A lot of people forget the environment and conditions that spawned the GPL and the huge amount of code released under it. Things are on average better than then in no small part to the GPL and the early efforts, so the GPL will wane for now.

It won't stay that way for ever, and when things take a turn for the worse, the FSF will still be there.

Or in this case, it doens't because you're apparently completely ignorant of the GPL.

I really don't know why I have to repeat this. It'sd been said in this thread numerous time, repeated in the past many times all over the internet and it's even on the FSF's website.

You don't have to agree to the GPL to use the software.

Ergo, there is no possibly way in which the GPL can affect mere use of the software.

Let me analyse this:

Please do not license it under an L/GPL license. There's a lot of software I would like to use, but am not legally allowed to because it uses a GPL license. It sucks.

This has one of two meanings:

The first (kind) meaning is that the OP is merely astonishingly ignorant and believes that using GPL software like Linux, GCC, LibreOffice and so on somehow "traps" him under the GPL. I'm honestly not sure what he believes, but it's probably something along the lines of everything that touches the GPL software is FORCED to be released as GPL. This is so far from being true it's hilarious. One can trivially see it's true from the number of companies which use GPL software stacks (i.e. most internet servers) and don't release the application layer code.

The second meaning is that by "use" he means that he wants you to write source code for entirely free for him and not only that, he doesn't even want to contribute by sharing with others as you shared with him. If that's the case he's a wretched freeloader.

What's viral about that?

It's viral in that there's an awful lot of freeloaders out there who are convinced that somehow they have the right to use the code completely for free and are angry that the the owner of the code insists on "share and share alike". Oddly they don't apply the same logic to commercial software.

BUT people remember the "spikes" of accidents such as 3-Mile-Island.

Which just goes to show that people are beyod terrible at estimating risk. It's something like the third worse nuclear powerplant accident ever and no one died and very little leaked and pretty much all trace of that has gone. In the greater scheme of incidents involved in power generation, that's somewhere approching negative.

We probably have to just live with that fact unless somebody invents breakthrough persuasion technology.

Preach it, brother.

It's not tautology. One could come up with flawed definitions which preclude computers. If for example you defined learning in terms of physical neurons or chemical changes, for example.

You don't have to avoid the brain as reference, but if your definition of learning is too specific, then it becomes rather circular.

So anyway, do you have a definition of learning?

Turned on, eh? If you insist that's the case, I hope for your sake you never see a close relative breast feeding.

But that side, the less puritanical among us don't get raging boners every time we see a flash of ankle.

nor an article about how there are things human consciousness can do which no deterministic process can more than imperfectly mimic.

This implies that the only thing separating humans brains from Turing machines on a fundemental level is some out-right randomness, or, you are asserting that the human brain is a more powerful computing model in that it can solve problems that are formally non computable.

It's very easy to create a computer with genuine randomness. You need a source of noise (as someone who occasionally works in analog circuitry, I can assure you this is not hard to find), such as a reverse biased PN junction or a resistor, and amplifier and something that turns that all into logic levels. Shove that into a convenient input pin and you now have a deterministic machine which can make truly non deterministic decisions by using thr random noise.

Come to think of it if you just read from /dev/random, you'll get truly random noise since that's seeded from random exernal events like network packets and keypresses.

End result: you personally own several otherwise deterministic computers with good access to truly random processes for when you want some genuine nondeterminism.

Is that what you mean?

OK, mbeckman.

Here's a challenge for you: define "learning" in such a way that it could hypothetically be performed by a computer. Unless you also state good reason to claim that they are the only possible source of intelligence, you must avoid any reference to terran brain structures.

emale breasts are sex objects. Until males of our species stop being turned on by the sight or touch of them, they will be sex objects. The end.

Until humans stop shoving things up their arses to turn themselves on, arse-shovable-sized objects will be sex will be sex objects. The end.

Or possibly, in both cases it's context dependent. Nah.

Given the interest in diversity, it's perfectly reasonable to rule out the probability that there were any because the interest in diversity would have almost invariably lead to them being given hiring priority if they applied.

You can keep on repeating the same rubbish: it doesn't become true if you say it enough.

This is not about favouring unqualified "minorities", it's about actually getting them to apply in the first place.

Oh and equal opportunity so that when they do apply they're not being judged based on race/gender/whatever and instead on actual ability.

If

You're entire premise is based on an unsupported supposition, mixed with other random crap likethe feeble attempt at some sort of racism-reflection.

Rcruiting through peer networks (what a lot of tech companies do) tends very strongly to hit exactly the same demographic they've already got. FBs numbers are below the numbers on the courses at uni and in the industry so it implies strongly that their recruiting message isn't getting outside a rather select demographic.

IOW there are talented people who they're never going to recruit because their recruitment strategy is flawed.

I don't think that pointing out a fact to another person falls into "calling yourself something" .

Ah, so it's a fact that you are/were a C++ guru, eh? So my man, what precisely defines guru that makes such thing a fact? Calling yourself a guru is akin to insisting your nickname is Mr Awesome.

I don't think he's an intel fanboi as much as an Intel hater, which is fine, because they're pretty despicable. They're crooks but the legal system seems to love large companies so, for example when they dealt an illegal yet crippling blow, they got away with a $1bn payoff which is certainly less than they've made from their illegal activities.

When fines for bad behaviour have a strongly positive ROI, then there's something deeply broken with the system.

It's also funny that on Linux, with fully open benchmarks on phoronix, the AMD chips trade blows with the Intel ones and the top end ones of each are actually pretty close, with AMD being a bit slower on average than the top intel ones, but not far off. You don't have to be a fanboi to read the benchmark results.

These days I buy AMD if at all possible because they're fast in most cases and I'd rather not give my money to a crook if I can avoid it.