Well, this applies to self-published books read through their Kindle Unlimited Program.

I agree with your sentiment, but having read a number of self-published books, it wouldn't be fair to the better self-published authors to pay them the same rate per free book download as the worst ones. While some self-published stuff is as good as most traditionally published fiction (albeit usually needing a bit more proof reading), there's a vast body of stuff that consists of unreadable manuscripts dumped on the ebook market.

Of course paying by page actually read is a crude measure of a story's value, paying a flat royalty per download is even cruder.

Personally I like a tightly plotted novels of 70-120 thousand words best, but we're living in the age of the endlessly sprawling epic.

That's certainly not the case for the arithmetical signs, which have non-arithmetical interpretations in many abstract algebras.

Well I guess that settles the question, then.

I actually though the divide by zero post was interesting -- not because I took the suggestion that language designers define x/0 to be 0 seriously, but because I thought it was an interesting challenge to explain to someone who thought this might be a good idea why it's really a terrible idea.

Also there are applications of algebra to sets of things other than numbers, like the permutations of a Rubik's cube, or to matrices, or to error correcting codes. These applications are called "abstract algebra", although in truth they're really no more or less abstract than the usual kinds of algebra. In these kinds of applications questions might arise that sound really strange, like "Is 1 necessarily different than 0?" Ask 99.9% of reasonably educated people that question and they'll consider it stupid, but press them and they can't provide any better answer than "it just is."

I think it's always interesting to try to explain something that most people think is "self-evidently" true -- by which they mean they have no idea why it's true. In 1984 when O'Brien torments Winston Smith with the non-sensical assertion that "2 + 2 = 5". But I doubt that a mathematician would find such a statement particularly disturbing; it depends on what you mean by "2", "+", "=" and "5".

Maybe struggling to obtain happiness is inconsistent with inner peace.

Sure, but the real way to resist subjugation by the state is to free your mind. The armored car and big gun thing is just fantasy. Look at how well it worked out for this guy.

What modern authoritarian states are vulnerable to are public opinion. They can absorb large amounts of paramilitary opposition and as long as they retain the upper hand the regime is stable -- in fact the military opposition is useful to it. But they are critically dependent upon the willing cooperation of the populace and vulnerable to even modest levels of coordinated civil disobedience.

Which is not to say guns don't have their uses in revolution. You just can't build a revolutionary movement around them. They're useful, but neither necessary nor sufficient.

For certain kinds of abstract algebras division by zero is even defined, although typically as a special element like infinty, but not 0 (the additive identity element) which would lead to all kinds of peculiar situations: like 0 * 1/0 = 0, so 1/0 has to be regarded as both 1 and 0 at the same time.

BUT if you're dealing with regular numbers or anything that obeys the axioms of an algebraic field, division by zero always represents a failure of the assumptions under which you undertake the calculation. Since it is a failure of assumptions it should always be treated as an exception to normal logic flow. If the correct -- or more accurately speaking the safest -- course of action to take is to assign a value of 0 to a calculation then of course you can do that, but that's still a case of exception handling. Building that as default behavior FORCES a certain response to an exception which of course the language designer can't possibly know is the safest response.

In fact, even implicitly allowing division by zero in a sequence of algebraic manipulations can lead to faulty results even without actually performing the arithmetic operation in question. That's behind several algebraic "paradoxes" that have made the rounds of the Internet over the years, such as the following algebraic "proof" that "2 = 1":

Let a = b
[1] a^2 = a*b // multiply both sides by a
[2] a^2 - b^2 = ab - b^2 // subtract b^2 from both sides
[3] (a-b)*(a+b) = b * (a - b) // factor both sides
[4] a + b = b // divide both sides by (a-b)
[5] b + b = b // substitute b for a on the left side
[6] 2b = b // collect terms
[7] 2 = 1 // factor out b

It all looks kosher, but it's not because there's a division by zero in the *algebra*. I've actually seen programs that give faulty errors because the programmer simplified expressions in ways that commit this exactly blunder. The language and compiler can't catch this because the division by zero occurred in the programmer's head.

Sure, but that just restates the problem: drone operator is a low-status, dead-end job within the military. It's not that the huge, lucrative, civilian drone operator market is sucking the ranks dry, it's that the job offers career prospects and job satisfaction that aren't in line with the abilities it demands.

This in turn suggests there is something broken with the leadership of the Air Force -- which should come as no surprising given that we've heard exactly the same kind of stories of career burnout in officers who man nuclear missile launch sites. They're not paying attention to vital but non-glamorous missions.

He has to finish confiscating everyone's guns before the invasion can start.

Oh it's hell here. Practically as bad as Sweden without the blondes. And so socialist nobody here makes any money. They tax us so bad we're all as poor as church mice, every last lost soul.

I did. I was not impressed.

Well, like what, for example? What were you expecting to happen?

My definition of success in this case is collecting the data which were used to cost-justify the mission. Do you have a better definition of "success"?

Because the mission will be successful according to my definition of "success" (see above). You seem to have a "cost is no object" mindset. Since the ESA does not have any of its own RTG technology it would have to buy it from the Russians or Americans, and then build in the necessary safeguards required by the mission profile's three near-Earth fly-bys. Since solar panels are cheap, simplify the mission, and the ESA has access to high-efficiency solar technology that can do the job, it makes sense to use them.

Of course it's an acceptable risk. If total mission failure were not an acceptable risk, then the mission would be too expensive to conduct.

Hmm. A lot of "mal" in "malware" is poor execution, not necessarily in malicious intent. This was especially true in the early days when most of the stuff was written by people just to see whether they could. This goes right back to the Morris Worm.

We're in an age where people who are really malicious can pay to have someone do a pretty good job, in which case you won't necessarily ever know they're doing it. I'm thinking about whoever is in charge of Cuban "internal security". They must surely be aware of this phenomenon. If it were me I wouldn't try to stamp this out; I'd be looking to subvert it for surveillance purposes.

Still doesn't mean the solar panels aren't cheaper and more effective for the mission, at the cost of some additional risk. That's how engineering works: you don't get unlimited budget to drive risk to zero.

The important thing to realize here is that events have actually validated the engineers' choice to use solar. Had the interesting stuff been happening out at 5+ AU where you'd only be getting only 5% as much solar radiation as Philae is getting now, then failure to orient the lander ideally would have meant mission failure. But that's not the case. The interesting stuff is happening *now* around perihelion, where there's boatloads of solar radiation available even if the solar panels aren't pointed just so. There is not very much if anything substantive lost by the interim inactivity of the lander, other than a few years life expectancy for the program managers.

Given that we now know that the nitrocellulose powering the harpoon system is unreliable after ten years in a vacuum, you wouldn't design the lander the same way today. You might even choose to use an RTG; I don't know. But this result certain bears out the engineers' assessments of the net prior probabilities; in fact the current outcome was no doubt one of the possible scenarios the engineers considered and put in the success column.

Or we could rename the fish from "mudfish" to "sparkly rainbow fish" and people like you won't feel so bad about giving enough water to survive.

It's a lot like developing Type 2 diabetes. Quite a bit down the road you've looking at all kinds of things that could result in quick death, as well as other catastrophic results like blindness and limb amputations. But for the moment al you really need to do is get serious about exercise and eating better. Let's say it'll be five years or so before your body's cells start giving up and drowning in glucose.

Is that a crisis?

Well, if change were simply as easy as marking the flag day on your calendar then, no. You probably have a year or two before it becomes mandatory to make changes. Except that you have to expect false starts. You start to run every day but then you develop knee problems. Your plan to swear off bread falls apart. You have a rough stretch at work and suddenly you find yourself spending 18 hours a day trying to get through the week on junk food. If you allow for all the false starts and failures you'll experience it's important to start making changes now. So it *is* a crisis. A slowly unfolding crisis.

Any problem that requires future action that isn't guaranteed to fix things on the first try is potentially a slowly unfolding crisis.