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Comment There's a deeper problem (Score 2) 105

Some of the problems that have arisen here are not the fault of Microsoft or Google or other platforms because they are due to a deeper problem in setting times: times must be set with respect to a particular place - a time should be recorded as a pair of a time and a geographical anchor. Since calendars and other such problems generally do not do this, changes in the relationship between time zones can cause problems.

I participate in a seminar whose organizer is in Ann Arbor. It takes place at 2pm on Fridays. That's 11am for me in British Columbia, three hours behind. Suppose that a change takes place that makes the difference only two hours. The time will become 12pm for me. Their calendars should still be marked for 2pm, but mine should now be marked for 12pm. This is because the time is set by the organizer in Ann Arbor. Hers is the fixed point and mine has to adapt to it.

But suppose I were the organizer? Then the time would be set with respect to my time zone. If I set the time for 11am my time and the difference between time zones drops to two hours, I will keep my calendar unchanged but people in Ann Arbor will have to change their calendars to 1pm.

The point is that it matters which location is the reference point. Does the seminar take place at 11am referenced to Prince George or at 2pm referenced to Ann Arbor? In the current situation, with organizer in Ann Arbor, my calendar needs to indicate that it starts at 2pm Ann Arbor time. The time it would display to me would be computed using the appropriate offset from Ann Arbor time. Any calendar that records a fixed time, whether in local time or GMT will be wrong when time zone offsets change if the time is one whose reference point is not in my time zone. What is needed here is lazy evaluation.

Comment This isn't Flock's fault. (Score 1) 128

This is not Flock's fault. It's the fault of the police. Flock provided correct information about the suspect car. The police towed the car on the basis of non-unique properties like the model and color, and they ignored the testimony of the owner's neighbors. The police followed a lead and acted as if they had a solid identification when they didn't, something that seems to happen all too often.

Comment Re:Why does such a level of notability really matt (Score 4, Informative) 60

The problem is, that is not true. I have seen multiple cases in which the information in an article is well sourced, in that the facts in the article are attributable to reliable sources, but the subject is considered not notable by many editors because he or she is not considered of sufficient interest. In some cases, the deletion is pretty clearly justified by a specific policy, namely that a person known only because of a single event is generally not considered notable. Even that policy is not a bright line since people known for a single event who have been in the public eye still have articles devoted to them. An example is Lee Harvey Oswald. He is only known for assassinating President Kennedy, but there is a lot of interest in him, so he has his own article, not merely a mention of his role in the article on the Kennedy assassination. Other cases are still more subjective.

One consequence of this is that there is a huge disparity between people in different walks of life. It seems like any band that ever got out of somebody's garage gets or any professional athlete, however minor, gets a detailed article, while people arguably of greater significance in areas that don't attract as much popular interest do not.

It is reasonable that Wikipedia should not want articles about your next door neighbor Joe, who may be a great guy but has not done anything notable, but the current policy is highly subjective and excludes a lot of people whom one might want to look up in an encyclopedia precisely because they turn up in the news or in a specialized area but are not widely known celebrities. The policy in its current form not only allows the deletion of interesting articles about people some people would want to know about, but it encourages unproductive deletion debates.

Comment Re:Thanks EMACS (Score 1) 101

I use Emacs daily, as I have done for 44 years. I use it for all of my programming, for editing flat-file databases, of which I do a great deal, for making notes, and for some kinds of writing. Even if I use LibreOffice Writer for a piece of writing, I will often draft it in Emacs first, then use LibreOffice Writer to format it. I find text-editing, as opposed to formatting, much more efficient in Emacs.

Comment what flock could do (Score 2) 30

This is mostly the fault of the police department, not Flock, but one thing that Flock could easily do that would reduce this kind of abuse is to make all accounts expire after a certain period, say six months. It would not be a large burden for police departments to reauthorize the accounts of personnel who need access from time to time.

Comment Is this legal? (Score 2) 109

I wonder whether this is legal. Riot has the right to ban players who cheat, but maybe not the right to misidentify them based on the hardware they are using. In this case, since the game is free, there may be no contract of which this is a breach. In the case of a paid game, it seems that it would be a breach of contract.

Comment Re:If he was Muslim (Score 5, Informative) 73

Not true. Islam forbids the consumption of pork as food and the use of other pig products, such as pigskin, but allows the use of pig organs to save a life if there is no alternative. Jews too may receive pig organs as transplants since Jewish law explicitly permits any commandment other than the ones against murder, idolatry, and forbidden sexual relations (adultery, incest, etc.) to be broken in order to save a life.

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