Recent submissions

Comment · 13 years ago
Are you living in a cave? The opinions that I am espousing are fully supported by huge modern nations such as Russia. I just gave you a link showing the government's unanimous support of bills banning gay propaganda. So why do you assume I'm a troll? Does it shatter your fragile world view to realize many intelligent and sane individuals are against gay marriage, so you have to imagine me as a joke?

That's what this whole news story is about. A dignified and successful author is against homosexuality, and the progressive community can't handle any opposition to their views so they tar and feather their reputation. So much for tolerating other viewpoints...

Comment · 13 years ago
Comment · 13 years ago
Comment · 13 years ago
Thanks Obama.
Comment · 13 years ago
Jobs are racist.
Comment · 13 years ago
What an embarrassing waste of taxpayer money. Perhaps they should study how much pointless studies cost the economy.
Comment · 13 years ago
Decimal system (well, numbers in general) is a great way to describe things as they provide infinite accuracy both in positive and in negative directions. But you must describe them relative to something - some kind of unit.

So your balloon, to fully described its length, you have chosen to describe it relative to meters. Here's the kicker - how well you can measure the length of the balloon depends also on how well you can measure a meter. In the real world, if you try to measure both, the decimal number that describes how relative a meter is to your balloon will only be limited by how accurate your methods of measuring are. You can develop better measuring technology that will forever approach but never reach the True value (only God knows). It is if you try to measure an analog signal, you can only get a digital estimation. But extracting knowledge requires energy, so you need greater computing power to measure an analog signal but all the computing power in the universe couldn't acquire the True value. This is the result of the real world being nondiscrete and containing infinite knowledge. You can measure things by proportion (such as tau (2*pi) being the relative constant of circle circumference to radius); these numbers are transcendental and we don't know their True value. Your "indescribable" numbers are as indescribable as transcendentals. So yes the decimal goes on forever, but you can still describe it in terms of itself and just give a constant name (like pi).

Comment · 13 years ago
They are real numbers, for which we have just proven it is impossible to find a description that will match them. We have proven that no description will ever describe them.

Of course you can describe them. But describe them in terms of what? I think that's the key. Let's say you have a pencil and you want to describe its length, which will be a unit multiplied by a number. If I were to try to describe the true length in meters it will be: 0.0178(...) * meters. This would be an "indescribable" number the author talks about.

However, I can just describe it in terms of itself and call it one pencil long - we use the pencil itself as the basis of the unit so the number we multiply the unit to is just: 1 * pencil long.

Comment · 13 years ago
This doesn't look like Hacker News to me...
Comment · 13 years ago
I agree, but for anyone who wants the summary:

The Bitcoin Foundation is not in the business of selling bitcoin to consumers and does not otherwise operate a bitcoin exchange. Even if it did sell bitcoin to consumers, however, the Foundation believes it would not be regulated as a seller or issuer of payment instruments because a bitcoin is not a payment instrument under California law.

Comment · 13 years ago
>It's pretty GD scary - how are we supposed to identify the good guys?

The bad guys are the ones initiating aggression - it doesn't matter what uniform they wear (or non-uniform).

The 4th amendment is being destroyed because other amendments are also being weakened that would normally protect it. The 1st and 2nd amendment could easily protect this shocking situation from occurring. The 1st allows us the free speech to inform the public of what's happening. In terms of the 2nd amendment - if this woman had been carrying a pistol in her purse (which is common in the South) to protect her from being overpowered, she would have a chance to defend herself. Just one incident of a citizen defending themselves would see the immediate halting of these kinds of thuggish tactics.

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