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Comment: Re:People Are Such Babies (Score 1) 181

by EuclideanSilence (#48683299) Attached to: Facebook Apologizes For 'Year In Review' Photos

This is how adults resolve things. There were no lawsuits. There were no mass protests. There was a guy who said "Yeah, that picture the algorithm picked? It hurt." And Facebook said "Wow, we can see that would hurt, and we're sorry it did. We will try to do better."

WTF is wrong with this exchange?

The problem is that the web designer's situation should be irrelevant to our evaluation of the choice Facebook made. Sure, it makes it easier for unreasonable people to draw emotional conclusions. What if the web designer was lying, and completely fabricating the complaint? Most people's opinion would change.

If Facebook posted aggregate pictures to their server, then there are 2 questions: do they break any (reasonable) law, and did they do something to upset their customers or users? "My child died of cancer" is not relevant. This is why courtrooms have to throw out "evidence", because only a small percentile of a small percentile of people can actually forcefully ignore such things in their considerations.

Comment: Re:Syntax looks gnarly (Score 1) 189

by EuclideanSilence (#48679217) Attached to: MIT Unifies Web Development In Single, Speedy New Language

Currying was developed to simplify the axioms of Church's lambda calculus. That is about as "low level" as is conceivable. It is not an application level feature. It should NEVER be used in an application programming language.

Just because you can define things in a shitty way doesn't mean you should.

Comment: Re:Dear SONY: (Score 2) 176

by EuclideanSilence (#48663139) Attached to: Sony: 'The Interview' Will Have a Limited Theatrical Release

Why though?

Maybe because today isn't the first day everyone has heard of Sony? They have a history of being assholes. They get away with illlegal or should-be-illegal behavior and product characteristics directed at their customers that makes us all hate them. If they weren't protected by an army of lawyers with chains of patents and copyrights, they would be out of business long ago.

And now they "oh, we're just going to show you a little bit of our crappy movie, hurry or you'll miss it!"...pass.

And. Fuck those guys.

Comment: Re:Stand back while he does real medicine (Score 1) 33

There is always profit motive. Always. It's just myopic to define profit only in terms of currency.

Getting a profit of medicinal development is still profit. Getting a profit of money is fine too. Pretending that this is being done without profit because you happen to like the form the profit takes is ridiculous.

Comment: Re:What are the implications for the textbook mark (Score 1) 170

by EuclideanSilence (#48640545) Attached to: Calculus Textbook Author James Stewart Has Died

So I'd place my actual learning at about 10% textbook(and I'm being generous), 30% lecture, 20% math tutoring/TA help, 40% internet.

Since I don't know your specific situation, I could be completely misinterpreting what you mean. But it seems you have 0% "figure out the problem".

Math isn't a subject that has to be learned the way foreign language or geography has to be learned. If you don't have something described to you in a book, then you absolutely need another reference to learn most subjects (such as a TA, Lecture, or Internet).

But with math you never need a reference for anything but definitions, and most definitions should be obvious anyway. There is always a first person to solve a math problem, and he had no references.

Like I said, I could be completely misreading your situation, but from what you wrote, it sounds like if there isn't a template for how to solve every single problem type that you give up. If all you know how to do is follow methods and change numbers around here and there, then you aren't learning math.

The greatest instruction anyone can give a person who pursues math is simply to ask a question that they can solve if they try. Many of us who study math seriously love nothing more than to be given a problem that's just barely out of reach.


by EuclideanSilence (#48614913) Attached to: Apparent Islamic Terrorism Strikes Sydney

There is no ambiguity in Matthew 10. It is clearly stating that the violence will be directed against the disciples, not encouraging the disciples promote violence. It is absolutely crystal clear. Just read it for yourself.

The actual fundamentals of christianity are peaceful. It is a 100% peaceful religion. The fact that some people can lie about the writings of christianity doesn't change it into a violent religion. Since when has lying about a subject been acceptable grounds for recharacterizing the subject? Would you apply this same standard to anything else?

And as far as legislation goes, legislation is never peaceful. It is always violently enforced. It was a nation of protestants that wrote "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof" -- that is, preventing legislation. Modern day crusaders who try to enforce their own beliefs through legislation know nothing of christianity.


by EuclideanSilence (#48606267) Attached to: Apparent Islamic Terrorism Strikes Sydney

So why is Leviticus used as the reason homosexuals are bad?

The reason Leviticus is used as an excuse to persecute homosexuals is because people are inherently uncomfortable with sexual concepts, and being homosexual is the current taboo. The bible repeatedly makes it clear that any whitelist/blacklist of rights/wrongs (slashdot should understand those words) is not the intent of the laws or any acceptable standard of behavior. Unfortunately, this doesn't prevent people from saying "hah! look there! that's not ok!" or "well nothing says I'm not allowed to do this..." as if somehow the authors of the books were trying to present some kind of uncaring legalistic code of conduct. For example:


You can go your whole life without killing someone, and still be guilty of murder according to biblical philosophy. Basically, anyone who tries to use the bible as a way to slander homosexuals is only airing their own prejudices and has misunderstood the entire biblical presentation of what makes a person decent, which is your intentions and caring (not as easy a standard as you might think though), but nothing like "do X and you'll be a good/bad person".

Comment: Re:The Pirate Bay (Score 1) 302

by EuclideanSilence (#48605657) Attached to: The Pirate Bay Responds To Raid

It was added to the US constitution because state governments were unable to implement copy laws. If someone had copy protection in one state, then someone else could just ignore the copy law in another state.

Which leads to one among many arguments against copy law: it requires universal government to implement it. That should be a nail in the coffin of any legal policy.
