bascule

Okay, how about this: the loser must verbally dictate an SFN nutter (e.g. MotorDaddy, Graviphoton) post of the winner's choosing and post an MP3. Limit 1000 words, or something.

It's more like I hope he doesn't... I don't know what he actually has in mind. Not being versed in Constitutional law I really have no idea, but my guess is the pardon would probably be upheld. I thought it was supposed to be a friendly bet!

Well, let's just say I'm familiar with several types of combinator calculus and the Chomsky Hierarchy. I'm also reading the Annotated Turing, which is an excellent book. 1) It's a "Turing machine" 2) In what context are you using "trace"? Perhaps you mean "evaluate"? Trace has a number of specific meanings in this context, particularly in the theory of compilers. Again, I'm not sure what vernacular you're using so I keep defaulting back to Lisp. Are you trying to say you wish to pass an algorithm the S-expression if itself as its own argument, i.e. you want to feed the algorithm its own source code? (provided it was able to operate on it) Yes, because that's terribly important. Any algorithm which solves the Halting Problem should be universal. It should work on any algorithm, including itself. Yes, and such algorithms couldn't satisfy the halting problem, because they're not universal. Yes, within the scope of the Chomsky Hierarchy the algorithm should work for algorithms expressed in the entire set of recursively enumerable languages. This would, of course, include any halting decidability algorithms themselves. After all, they are algorithms. Otherwise, your solution isn't universal. There is no need for a halting algorithm to explicitly evaluate anything, but even if it does, if it recurses infinitely by doing so the algorithm is faulty because then there are sets of inputs which do not produce an answer. Any algorithm attempting to solve the halting problem that infinitely recurses is broken. Any solution to the halting problem must itself halt for ANY input, including itself. Otherwise it's not a solution. A halting decidability algorithm doesn't need to evaluate anything by definition. You should read about static analysis. There's a whole world of opportunities available to you using only static analysis and transformation of code. For example, the compilers for most languages are able to transform code from one language to another without ever executing it. There are wonderful tools for picking apart code, such as IDA. I'm out of gas for now on the rest of your comments, but feel free to respond...

I'm ambivalent about unions. I see their role in fighting for the rights of workers against a powerful corporate establishment who can fund armies of lobbyists and lawyers. However, if a corporation wants to replace a worker with a fully automated machine that can do his/her job better, that should be their prerogative. In that case, the employees are just angry and disenfranchised neo-Luddites.

In other news two wrongs make a right. Full story at 11.

*psst* it's "prosecuting" Yeah, that's what it really comes down to me. What Nixon did pales in comparison to the atrocities committed by the Bush administration, things like torture, treason, and spying on their own people. These aren't the kinds of things I'd really like to see the nation wash its hands of and pretend it never happened. These are crimes against both humanity and America and I'd like to see justice served. Sure, I'll bet on the side of justice... although I think it will be far more interesting if Bush pardons himself

FiveThirtyEight is predicting that Franken will beat Coleman by 27 votes. If so, this will effectively give the Democrats 59 seats in the Senate, meaning they need only one Republican to come to their side to end a filibuster.

No, I'm saying if you have a naive algorithm which contains something which can be thrown into an infinite loop, you don't have a valid solution. Any potential solution to the halting problem should ALWAYS halt itself. Otherwise it's invalid. Any solution to the halting problem should be able to operate on ANY algorithm, including itself. I'd strongly suggest you re-evaluate your opinion of Lisp, and I think it'd help greatly in understanding these sorts of problems. If your idea of "tracing" is execution, then you must be careful that such action can't throw your algorithm into an infinite loop, otherwise your algorithm won't be a valid solution. It's possible to execute code which recurses infinitely without the code doing the execution suspending infinitely itself. For example, I work in a functional language with several concurrent processes, all of which are executing infinite loops. However, this doesn't hang the scheduler, as the scheduler allows for a finite number of "reductions" (think calls to other functions) before suspending a given process and moving on to the next one. Any solution to the Halting problem which actually evaluates the code in question would need to incorporate some sort of similar mechanism to prevent an infinite recursion.

You're talking about 2000? Why'd you even bring Michael Moore up? That would actually make sense in the context of the 2004 election with Fahrenheit 9/11 (and in the context of the thread re: voting for a child repeatedly). Did you vote for Bush then?

You know, you really sound like Bill O'Reilly, claiming he's in a "no-ideology zone", attacking "the left" because of "groups like Media Matters and MoveOn.org PAC" I wouldn't consider you or myself "open-minded", Pangloss. You have an ideology to push (as do I, and as does Bill-O), and you generally accept things which conform to it. That said, I'm not going to argue that open-mindedness is a particularly good thing either... people who are genuinely "open-minded" I would generally consider gullible (I'm looking at you, swing voters) If you can't distill fact from spin, that's your own problem. Do you think I have trouble keeping my facts straight with people like Fox News/Bill O'Reilly/Sean Hannity, Michael Savage, Rush Limbaugh, and Ann Coulter out there? No. Nor do I blame these people for affecting my decision-making. I'm certainly not going to judge a large group like the Democratic or Republican parties based on the actions of fringe members which may not even be directly associated with the party.

Or they're just assuming that any weapon intended for a high enough rate of fire that it needs a barrel shroud to improve cooling is clearly intended as an assault weapon.

Fortunately neither of them have a say in cases like Al Haramain Islamic Foundation v. George Bush et al. Thanks, separation of powers! Bush can be prosecuted, and the Democrats don't even need to get their hands dirty. Unless, of course, Bush pardons himself...

If you completely ignore the opinion he gave before being prompted by the reporter as to why he isn't completely against the bailout and instead claims he has "mixed feelings", then sure, you're right! Unfortunately he doesn't have a black-and-white opinion on the matter. His opinion is nuanced! Imagine that...

Is everyone clear that "assault weapons" bans are more inclusive than a ban on automatic weapons? Assault weapons bans are worded around various features present on the guns. The guns aren't automatic. It's like if we were trying to get rid of street racing by placing a ban on all "racing cars", racing cars defined as any car with a spoiler.

QFT... Ford, a Republican, pardoned Nixon, a Republican. I'm sure there was nothing partisan involved in his decision making. Well, just count me down as one of the people who would like to see Bush held responsible for his crimes. Although I'm still curious if he'll pardon himself...

You aren't surprised by your guess about his position? I'd hope not. However, a quick Googling reveals you're wrong: http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20081120/AUTO01/811200428

http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/Cheneys_lawyer_files_motion_to_quash_indictment.html The DA who filed these charges didn't even bother to show up to court... WTF?

But I mean... what real evidence or supporting argumentation is there for any of that? I could just as easily turn around and say that investors make more mistakes in a natural system because it's entirely subject to emergent effects which aren't easy to predict, whereas an economy regulated by the government is more predictable as the government actually has a vision for the direction it's taking the economy and will act to intervene when reality deviates from that vision. In some cases the model by which the government drives that vision was wrong, as was the case with the Friedman-inspired model that Greenspan was using. However, what I take away from that failure is that Friedman/Greenspan's model was fundamentally flawed and that Greenspan's hands off approach was what let the mortgage market run wild and that's why the economy is bucking us right now. Maybe it's just a glass is half empty / half full kind of thing...

So ecoli, the question that still remains from that is: are you arguing bubbles are the result of government intervention and wouldn't happen in a free-market economy?

Let's give the money to Tesla Motors instead

Bush has his name on the illegal wiretapping program dozens of times, and a federal judge has already ruled that he's a felon because of it. Then there's Scott McClellan's claim that Bush explicitly stated he was behind Scooter Libby leaking Valerie Plame as an undercover CIA operative... Bush has a giant cloud of allegations hanging over him I hope are investigated after he leaves office.

I don't see why it's particularly easier to assess risk if the government doesn't intervene. Why wouldn't it lead to increased volatility and make risk even harder to assess?

It's not for the simple reason that there are so many other factors affecting our economy that without some sort of absurdly inclusive model I just can't buy blaming the problems of today on events that occurred 20 years ago. The bottom line is after the S&L bailout the economy was on the up-and-up for almost a decade. That's not to say that the bailout was responsible, only that we did intervene with the economy and it did well. There is certainly evidence that such interventions can be pulled off. The alternative I'm seeing out of the Ron Paul camp is simply to let natural forces do what they will, even if the immediate outcome is extremely negative. I'd argue that through properly administered government intervention, natural forces can drive the economy back on track without that immediate, temporary collapse. As precedent I'd site the S&L bailout. Would you agree that Ron Paul would've argued against the S&L bailout? Do you think the outcome of the S&L bailout was favorable as opposed to non-intervention?

I *hate* Tucker Carlson, but in this video he's awesome: This video underlies the real problem with assault weapons bans: the legislation is authored by people who are unfamiliar with the items they're attempting to legislate, and the end-result is legislation that doesn't make any sense. For example, in this video, the proposed legislation defines guns with a barrel shroud as being assault weapons. This makes about as much sense as defining computers with a heat sink that can accommodate an 80mm fan as being supercomputers. Worse, the author of the legislation had no idea what a barrel shroud actually is. Asked repeatedly by that horrible douchebag and human slime Tucker Carlson, she simply couldn't answer what a barrel shroud actually is. I'm not against an assault weapons ban per se, but I haven't seen one worded in such a way that I could actually agree with it. The ones I've seen so far are a complete joke.

And let me reiterate with my libertarian hat on and my liberal hat off that I certainly oppose assault weapons legislation. Maybe I should start a thread on it...