_petronius

24 ms·

181.
by _petronius 11y ago
> Even if we discount the failures of other presidential democracies, though, we should not dismiss the fact that the U.S. Constitution was modeled on a system that collapsed into civil war, and that it is inherently fragile. Not to ment
182.
by _petronius 11y ago
> If past experience would prove this effective, then OK, but it just proves the opposite! Can you cite some examples? I'm interested, because I seem to read a lot about how experiments with basic income actually tend to work out v
183.
by _petronius 11y ago
I would say that is the only reasonable explanation. The US, for all of it's faults in the immigration department, really only has a bone to pick with illegal immigration. Unfortunately, in the UK, it's also the legal immigratio
184.
by _petronius 11y ago
True. And that's one reason why if I stay in my current country of residence long enough, I'm going to naturalize, even if it means having to give up my US passport.
185.
by _petronius 11y ago
The hassle and expense of UK immigration law was one reason I moved to Germany, even though I'd been living in London for about 8.5 years and was on track (in another three or four, with at least two further visa applications required)
186.
by _petronius 11y ago
Applications for citizenship (just asking, mind you, payable every time you apply, in case you have to re-apply for some reason) cost about GBP 1,000. So if ~600 quid is a kick in the teeth, 1,000 isn't any more affordable.
187.
by _petronius 11y ago
I didn't think about it that way -- valid criticism, and one that is strongly apparent when presented without context. In context ( https://groups.google.com/d/msg/comp.sys.mac.apps/uWq5nUOa-1... ) it was
188.
by _petronius 11y ago
I ran across a slightly more polemical phrasing of this principle once, while googling for something unrelated. I've long kept it in a file on my work desktop as a sort of reminder to myself: "There are often very valid (and even
189.
by _petronius 11y ago
Unfortunately, as a general solution, this doesn't really work. The enormous paperwork hassle aside, in some jurisdictions (like Germany), you can't change your name except in very limited circumstances (I think here the situation
190.
by _petronius 11y ago
Although I really like my Nexus 4 as a piece of hardware (generally, it just works) I have run into this problem before. Some googling around the issue indicates that it's fairly common, and may be related to the way the device does a
191.
by _petronius 11y ago
Yes, the division of concerns is important. I guess I'm more concerned with how we talk about what it is the climate models are predicting rather than how those models are constructed. I wouldn't want anyone to conflate "natu
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by _petronius 11y ago
Totally agree. I'm not saying we should be sanguine about the current situation just because it isn't as bad as previous extinction events or the like (and in fact, being even fractionally as bad as any of the worst ones would be
193.
by _petronius 11y ago
I think in the context of convincing people that we urgently need to address the current climate problem (for economic, ecological, and security reasons), that might be distracting. Assuming there are probably other interglacial periods in
194.
by _petronius 11y ago
Napoleon was a far more complex figure than you give him credit for, and reducto ad Hitleram is a very poor rhetorical tactic anyway. While I wouldn't hold him up as some kind of perfect hero, his legacy in a lot of parts of Europe, fr
195.
by _petronius 11y ago
For some reason the email you get sent when you sign up for the early-access program also trips Thunderbird's scam warning feature (in addition to the form being submitted over HTTP, despite the site being served over HTTPS). I wonder
196.
by _petronius 11y ago
No, we'd probably see a second vote only if the SNP took a majority in the Scottish parliament again and the UK voted to exit the EU. Leaving the EU is really bad for Scotland (arguably all parts of the UK, but Scotland especially fo
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by _petronius 11y ago
I think you may have misread the comment -- it's the Conservatives (who now have a parliamentary majority on the national level) that will prove problematic on technology, surveillance, and encryption issues, not the SNP. The SNP is ce
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by _petronius 11y ago
The plural of anecdote is not data, but I get the sense that many left-wing Labour voters who might support them avoid voting Green (especially in the last two elections) for fear of "wasting" their vote. It would be interesting t
199.
by _petronius 11y ago
Interestingly, Survation actually got it (mostly) right the day before, but didn't publish it because it looked like such an odd outlier: http://survation.com/snatching-defeat-from-the-jaws-of-victo...
200.
by _petronius 11y ago
It's going to be really interesting to see what happens at Holyrood next year, and what the result of the promised 2017 EU referendum is. Although I am sceptical that we'd see independence before 2020 for Scotland, a big constitut
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by _petronius 12y ago
True, but if we're going to discuss the piece we have to do so on its own merits.
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by _petronius 12y ago
>> If the environment that produced this horrific behavior in Atlanta is “toxic,” blame the people who control that environment, not the testing regime that attempts to hold those people accountable. The teachers unions that run our
203.
by _petronius 12y ago
To be a canny participant in the economy as it exists, we have to acknowledge how companies should behave doesn't always (or often) line up with how they do behave. In business, many (if not most) participants will seek to maximize
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by _petronius 12y ago
Every time a story like this comes up, I see a lot of people rush to downplay it as exaggeration, either in terms of the specific anecdotes related or in terms of the frequency with which it happens. Part of that is an inherent defensivenes
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by _petronius 12y ago
I'm not sure I was painting him as "different" from me, or even making it about him vs. me at all. The onus is on you, the person using the service, to understand what terms and conditions you have agreed to abide by when usi
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by _petronius 12y ago
The author used other people's content, packaged them into an app, and then repeatedly submitted the same app (with one minor modification -- the use of someone else's content) to the Play store. 'Beta' apps or apps that
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by _petronius 13y ago
Reminds me a lot of Caleb Larson's 2009 work "A Tool to Deceive and Slaughter"[1]. Sadly it looks like the project might have stopped completely by now, since the website for it is down[2]. [1]: http://caleblarsen.
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by _petronius 13y ago
That may be true of web development, but certainly isn't of software as a whole: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25