I suspect that the theories you're speaking of aren't actually *that* carefully balanced. A factor of 2 might seem huge, but we currently think there's several times more dark matter than normal matter in the universe, so I don't think this will put *that* much of a dent in the status quo.
No, it's not. Not even a little bit. The wave-particle duality question has been answered *very* satisfactorily. The answer ("both*") has opened up new questions, many of which have been answered and so on.
The question of free will is still as much a chicken and egg as ever (then again, physics is my field and philosophy is only a passing interest, so maybe I'm not well-enough informed to say this).
Taxes on gas are still not high enough to cover the damage to the environment. Maybe taxing it more would make markets depressive, but it's important to remember that while we keep gas prices this low, we're mortgaging our environment.
I think the trouble with radiation in space is that the energies are so high. This stuff isn't a more effective shield than lead or water, I'd expect. The news is its ability to generate electricity in the process.
6) Make it a Federal Pound Me In The Butt Prison sentence for any legislator to accept ANY money of ANY kind from ANYBODY. We have enough communication infrastructures as it is right now. We don't need these people spending hundreds of millions to campaign. Any citizen that can get enough signatures can progressively go up the "ranks" and get more state sponsored time on whatever communication medium happens to be in use. Kind of like eminent domain, the government can either ask for, or pay the market rate for bandwidth, but a certain amount must be allocated. I don't see any reason why this cannot be done this way.
This is the reason that you need round-the-clock surveillance of public officials. It isn't enough to prevent them from taking money themselves, because they could have third parties taking it on their behalf (or making it through contracts, whatever). The surveillance would serve to force all corruption deep underground, where it's harder for it to live. You seem to be focused on campaign finance reform. I agree that campaign finance is a big problem, but back-room dealing has to be addressed as well.
Speaking as one of the purported knuckledragging retards, I would like to point out just how many people in the US are fanatically against what is happening here.
He didn't say we were *all* idiots. I'm an American and I don't have any problem agreeing that we have a lot of very stupid people there. You could try to say that most countries are just as bad, but all my personal experience supports his claim.
The astronomically high level of collusion, complicity, and corruption in the government, the military industrial complex, and special interests makes it nearly impossible to keep our rights from eroding faster and faster.
Are you sure that corruption wasn't worse before? A lot of despicable shit goes on, but I'm not sure you're applying enough cynicism to counter your natural nostalgia.
The US started out with the pretense of "liberty for all" and turned it to "power and property for the few".
It's gotten better in some ways, of course: property and voting rights for women and minorities, etc.
If anything, both of our systems of government are broken irreparably, and need to be tore down with something new put in its place. Of course, that will be awfully hard to do peacefully, which is my greatest fear.
What would you replace them with? I've been trying for months to think of some way for people to be protected from each other (corruption, etc.) without having their privacy violated. I've got nothing. (If wealthy and powerful people were continually surveilled, so that they could not abuse their power by manipulating the system to their advantage. But this is far from a utopian vision.)
That might make sense for other drugs, like strong dissociatives or hallucinogens, or even alcohol. Cocaine, on the other hand, doesn't really impair you or make you disoriented. Anyway, it would suck to have to try to fake the effects of cocaine (although not as much as it would suck to have to fake the effects of, say, ether, or something...)
Cocaine isn't poison. Trust me, there's no way they're going to put enough cocaine in you to hurt you. It's not cheap. Other than the addictive properties, it's a very benign drug.
The article talks about the reasons that storing a digital movie is expensive, but it doesn't break things down or give us any hard facts. The one truly important question that any reader should be asking (if he's a computer user) is "how many Gigabytes or Terabytes are we talking, here." I think the answer is in this case a few dozen terabytes, and while the cost of storing that much information is kind of meaningful now, it's decreasing continuously. That the article ignores this trend is a serious lapse, especially considering that they ask us to imagine a hundred-year storage period.
This article, and your reaction to it, make me wish that people got better technical educations, so that they wouldn't be so unnecessarily ignorant.
Because nobody wants to expend more than a few dozen gigabytes (at the MOST) on a movie for personal viewing purposes. The task here is to preserve the "originals," the full-resolution, lossless cuts that were filmed on the set. I think I read that the footage that actually appears in Spiderman 3 constitutes 4 TB of information. Consider that a bunch of un-used footage also needs to be saved, and you'll agree that only a few insane enthusiasts would ever be willing to download and preserve that amount of information (at least with technology as it is now).
Thanks, I was wondering what they were. They looked kind of like weapons to me too, but I thought they were too long and graceful (and probably fragile) to be missiles or torpedos or rockets.
I doubt that faith is often billed this way in the unenlightened circles where it is most successful. If your religious leader, whom your society reveres, tells you something, you'll be inclined to believe it not because you "have faith," but because it's the most reasonable explanation you've been given. Put another way, you can't have faith that's the antithesis of science unless you've been trained in science. Faith, then, does not have as long and illustrious a history as the faithful would make it out to have.
Slashdot Mirror
I suspect that the theories you're speaking of aren't actually *that* carefully balanced. A factor of 2 might seem huge, but we currently think there's several times more dark matter than normal matter in the universe, so I don't think this will put *that* much of a dent in the status quo.
Nice analogy. I might use that someday.
No, it's not. Not even a little bit. The wave-particle duality question has been answered *very* satisfactorily. The answer ("both*") has opened up new questions, many of which have been answered and so on.
The question of free will is still as much a chicken and egg as ever (then again, physics is my field and philosophy is only a passing interest, so maybe I'm not well-enough informed to say this).
Taxes on gas are still not high enough to cover the damage to the environment. Maybe taxing it more would make markets depressive, but it's important to remember that while we keep gas prices this low, we're mortgaging our environment.
I think the trouble with radiation in space is that the energies are so high. This stuff isn't a more effective shield than lead or water, I'd expect. The news is its ability to generate electricity in the process.
Re: 2) I've never met an office suite I liked. Has there everr been an office suite that was a wonderful application?
A B.A. in physics did it for me.
That's not the tragedy of the commons. It's the same game as flu shots.
That might make sense for other drugs, like strong dissociatives or hallucinogens, or even alcohol. Cocaine, on the other hand, doesn't really impair you or make you disoriented. Anyway, it would suck to have to try to fake the effects of cocaine (although not as much as it would suck to have to fake the effects of, say, ether, or something...)
Isn't it kind of telling that the primary detrimental effect is physical rather than chemical?
Cocaine isn't poison. Trust me, there's no way they're going to put enough cocaine in you to hurt you. It's not cheap. Other than the addictive properties, it's a very benign drug.
Some dishwashers have timers for that reason. The whole "step-outside" thing doesn't work if you want to be sleeping while it runs.
The article talks about the reasons that storing a digital movie is expensive, but it doesn't break things down or give us any hard facts. The one truly important question that any reader should be asking (if he's a computer user) is "how many Gigabytes or Terabytes are we talking, here." I think the answer is in this case a few dozen terabytes, and while the cost of storing that much information is kind of meaningful now, it's decreasing continuously. That the article ignores this trend is a serious lapse, especially considering that they ask us to imagine a hundred-year storage period.
This article, and your reaction to it, make me wish that people got better technical educations, so that they wouldn't be so unnecessarily ignorant.
Because nobody wants to expend more than a few dozen gigabytes (at the MOST) on a movie for personal viewing purposes. The task here is to preserve the "originals," the full-resolution, lossless cuts that were filmed on the set. I think I read that the footage that actually appears in Spiderman 3 constitutes 4 TB of information. Consider that a bunch of un-used footage also needs to be saved, and you'll agree that only a few insane enthusiasts would ever be willing to download and preserve that amount of information (at least with technology as it is now).
Because of people like you, it's more just to base taxation on luxury expenditures rather than to income. I don't know if that's practical or not.
Haha, what's a DVD glass master?
Crap. Accidentally modded flamebait because Opera does such a shitty job with slashdot. Posting to retract the mod.
Thanks, I was wondering what they were. They looked kind of like weapons to me too, but I thought they were too long and graceful (and probably fragile) to be missiles or torpedos or rockets.
isn't this really a case for svg?
I doubt that faith is often billed this way in the unenlightened circles where it is most successful. If your religious leader, whom your society reveres, tells you something, you'll be inclined to believe it not because you "have faith," but because it's the most reasonable explanation you've been given. Put another way, you can't have faith that's the antithesis of science unless you've been trained in science. Faith, then, does not have as long and illustrious a history as the faithful would make it out to have.
Shoot, that should be "is a morpheme." Morpheme is noun.
The "s" in "gets" is morpheme. This is why it is easier to make that mistake than one like thi's.