Posts by Boork! 67 publicly visible posts • joined 26 Sep 2014
The way things are going, the government will reverse the burden of proof, so it will be up to the user to establish beyond doubt that their innocent photos do not conceal nefarious conspiracies, child pornography, and hate speech. This is, of course, impossible, which is why putting the burden of proof on the accuser was a principle of Common Law in the first place.
Using integer-only operations is a workable approach for addition and multiplication, but division is also necessary in financial calculations, the result of which cannot be guaranteed to be an integer value. Having the fractions after the decimal point disappear into the ether can lead very quickly to large errors if a division operation is carried out hundreds, or even millions of times, and especially if it is applied recursively. Fixed point arithmetic combined with an officially sanctioned rounding protocol has been the standard way of doing financial calculations. COBOL supported this, and it is a significant part of the technical debt that makes institutions reluctant to abandon COBOL.
That does not follow. If there is indeed a 'narrative,' or official version of reality, then the mere that a belief that contradicts this narrative is untrue does not exclude it from being 'against the narrative.' Added to this, there have been plenty of cases where the 'narrative' was false and the 'fringe' belief was actually true. The only way to eliminate error is through rational discussion. That requires a stance of fallibilism in regard to your own belief system. You can't just say "my belief is reality, and anyone who disagrees must be silenced because they are insane or evil!'
This is essentially the justification for free speech argued by John Stuart Mill, who warned about the dangers of groupthink and mob prejudice.
The communication could appear to be from someone you actually do know if their email or social media account has been compromised. For example, I have received bizarre emails from friends claiming to be stranded in Afghanistan and urgently in need money to be wired to them. I would phone them to say "If you are not actually in Afghanistan, then you had better change your Gmail password quickly."
The Spanish Inquisition was regarded as lawful by the Castilian state, being a division of the Catholic Church, and its role was to root out persons loyal to the previous Islamic occupiers of the territory, some of whom had been practicing a guerilla war against the new regime. In short, it does not qualify under the above definition of terrorism, any more than the FBI does.
You are mistaken. The reason for the conflict in Northern Ireland is ethnic. The descendants of the native Irish tend to be Catholic, and the descendants of the colonists, loyal to Britain, tend to embrace an array of Protestant beliefs, but the dispute is over ethnicity and national allegiance, not over theology.
The Official IRA, the Provisional IRA, the Continuity IRA, the INLA and other splinter groups are not Christian, but secular and Marxist. Not sure what Timothy McVeigh had to do with Christianity, as he was radicalized by reading a nasty anti-Semitic tract called the "Turner Diaries" which predicts an apocalyptic race war. It looks like you are not really trying to argue any case, but simply attribute guilt guilt through a vague cloud of association, which is highly irresponsible in these times, when calm heads and cold reasoning should prevail over sectarian demagoguery.
'Algorithm' comes from a blokes name, being a corruption of the last name of Baghdad mathematician Abu Ja'far Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi. 'Algebra' is a medieval Latin rendition of 'al jabara,' meaning to put back together again, and came from the title of a book written by the bloke above, 'al-mukhtasar fi hisab al-jabr wa al-muqabala' meaning "the compendium on calculation by restoring and balancing."
The Apple 5'' floppy drives had sturdy steel cases. The problem at the time was with the monitors, especially those made in Europe and the Far East, where the electromagnets were not shielded to FCC specifications. The standard use case for monitors in the early '80s was closed circuit TV, and even ones marketed for use with computers were often not built with shielding. I remember my boss at the time showing me one which a customer had returned and the readings were off the scale, even affecting transistor radios in the vicinity. You could see the bare coils at the back of the CRT.
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