It kind of disappoints me when I read an article on slashdot that is about something worthwhile that humanity really needs to get behind and fund, yet there won't be many comments. This is one of those types of articles. Normally the surefire comment magnets are trolling articles, or feature a topic that has a lot of fanbois, or better yet a technological holy war between several factions of fanbois.
However, that shouldn't be a sign that no one is interested or cares about such things. We do. This site is about Stuff That Matters. Researching and preventing low probability cataclysms now we have the technology to attempt it is a very important and noble goal. Whether the average person realizes it or not, those goals are more important than 99% of other charitable goals, because without a habitable earth or human population there is no point to any charity.
So in future while I can't usually add much more than a boring "this is great, more of this please" or a dumb joke if at all, this stuff is important and yes, we need more of it. Don't take low numbers of comments for lack of interest or perceived priority.
I know I'm setting myself up for a flood of "that's what she said" jokes, but perhaps the only reason this hasn't been raised before is because of that very reason. So here goes.
What I could never understand about Subway is the distinct lack of options between the 6 inch and 12 inch. The 6 inch is not quite enough food, and furthermore it is much more expensive per gram than the 12. The 12 inch is much better value, and though it certainly can be eaten in one sitting I feel like a lard bucket for doing so. Something between 8 and 10 inches would be perfect.
Every other fast food joint has a range of different sized options suited to my specific caloric needs but not Subway. What gives? Is it part of their marketing strategy to encourage every cheap bastard to get the 12 inch option? Have they considered dividing a foot long sub into 3 segments (4, 8, 12) but realized that lots of women would order 4 inches instead of 6?
With the rise of competitors to challenge it, Microsoft is not seen as the big ogre it once was. And yet its reputation for reliability has never been exceptional.
HomeOS... would you really feel comfortable turning your back to it? Leaving your children alone in the care of HomeOS? And if you were in the shower, I can imagine that HomeOS might allow you to set the temperature on command, e.g. "Four degrees warmer, HomeOS." - "Fabulous!". But if you dropped the soap in there with HomeOS just how would that work exactly?
Call me old fashioned, but I'm just not yet ready to flirt with HomeOS. The whole thing might just be one big PITA.
Despite our modern bureaucracy and technology, something certainly made violent crime skyrocket after the non-violent times (domestically speaking) of the 1930s-1950s, despite the increase in police technology and effectiveness that IMO has driven violent crime rates down over the longer term. Over the longer term, you have to compare likelihoods that you were going to get caught for a crime, as that certainly affects the decisions of the vast majority of people who would be tempted to kill someone. It would be a lot easier to commit a murder and not get caught for it back before the days of telephones, cars, accurate time keeping, analysis of blood types, tests for human vs animal blood and a lot of the medical techniques for determining modes of death. Comparing that to modern day conditions is apples and oranges.
As to us living like kings, in some ways that is correct, in other ways not. I used to make the same argument you are making, btw. Quality of food and entertainment has improved for sure. Information and communications technology is amazing. Having a large family is harder, if that is what you want. The available land per person has certainly dropped.
This is horse shit. I've worked with plenty of religious folks that are great at solving problems.
This is very much true. I knew several very good engineers when I went through college, one of whom took his Christianity very seriously and still does today. It is to his credit that he put up with my obnoxious ribbing over his beliefs.
And I have to say that, even if Christianity is a big fairy tale, at least it promotes a morality that is just and peaceful within that society. The PC dogma that has largely replaced Christianity in the Western world as the defacto religion is definitely lacking in that respect. I used to question the response that older Christians would have when I would ask them difficult questions about their religion. Sometimes they would eventually say that if it wasn't for religion, people wouldn't behave nicely. I used to reply that people are nice, surely religion is taking the credit for something it's not responsible for.
But now I see how society has turned out a few decades later as Christianity is withering and on the defensive, and I certainly question my former attitude. It seems that there is more evil these days and it is held in check far less effectively, both by the liberal attitude of "anything goes" which gives tacit approval for the criminally prone to explore criminality, and the other generally liberal attitude that we should allow murderers to live out the rest of their days in prison, and even regularly grant them the opportunity to con parole boards for a chance at freedom their victims never have. So as a practical matter, in some ways Christianity looks better than the current alternative.
If you're against Christian teaching and you think you're an analytic thinker, I challenge you find out what's wrong about the content of the bible and find an convincing argument why people who believe in Christ are doing it in vein.
I'm aware that some people take their religion pretty seriously, but mailining it has to be at the fringes of even the most extreme fundamentalist practice.
Exactly. One should never secure military grade computer systems with passwords like "Joshua" that will fail a simple dictionary attack (let alone open them up to public login).
You see this bullshit all the time from people who never took more than BIO 100 and presume that humans work like bacteria. Turns out, they don't. The proof of that is first world nations. They all have at most low population growth, and many have neutral or negative population growth. The "human bacteria" theory says they should be the prime places for a massive booming population. There's abundance in everything and IMR is low so population should explode... But it doesn't.
I'd be a bit more circumspect about my ability to judge the long term growth rates of humans just two generations after the introduction of the contraceptive pill and Roe vs Wade. It's like the equivalent of spraying some dilute poison in the petri dish that most but not every bacterium is affected by and thinking that the long term growth rates can be predicted by the growth rates of that bacteria in a few hours.
Maybe not exactly like it. Maybe a BWB or flying wing might have better payload/range, considering that the replacement would be able to be made more aerodynamic due to the availability of more powerful computational devices than a slide rule. However, possibly not that much better that the investment is going to be worth it.
To be honest though, the government has been doing this sort of thing for a very long time. Hopefully they can at least use the data they have to catch some murderers and child molesters.
You must be AC because you don't have a regular slashdot account. If there are people on slashdot who troll or enjoy so-called "troll exchanges" they wouldn't be site regulars.
So your contention is basically that there is a hypothetical large contingent of people who read slashdot - a site that is "New for Nerds, Stuff that Matters" - just for the humor? And that seemingly obtuse and thick headed people aren't just well... being obtuse and thick headed? Sorry, I just don't buy it. Hanlon's Razor and all.
That is interesting. Back then people were supposedly paid $1 for one day's work. So $1 back then = $200 today. A half cent then would be $1 today. So if we wanted to get rid of other equivalently useless coinage, we would dispense with every denomination below $1 (not that I would advocate it).
I agree that it is applying a temporary fix for a problem introduced by inflation. However, if we are going to keep the Keynesian system going it should at least be patched appropriately.
I'm in two minds about what I think about inflation. On the one hand, it is a form of taxation or perhaps theft, depending on who the recipient is (which is somewhat difficult to find out). On the other hand, it does induce people to spend money so that people remain employed. And if it is a tax, at least it is somewhat difficult to find loopholes for. If people weren't taxed through inflation they would have to raise taxes elsewhere to get the same tax revenue.
No one is forcing you to get a card. All they would do is get rid of denominations that inflation has caused to cost more to produce than they are worth. The price of a coffee is already too high and it is caused by forcing staff to count out small change when they could be doing something productive, and you are paying for it. This move will actually REDUCE the real price of a cup of coffee.
If you are worried about "rounding to the nearest "0.05", then logically you should be worried about rounding to the nearest "0.01" as well, since this is already what is being done. Are you up in arms about that? Do you want to bring in a "0.005" coin to stop the merchants you with the rounding? Well, once you get that "solved", you can move on to bringing in a "0.002" coin. And it's turtles all the way down.
If you go back far enough in history to when the dollar was worth 10 times what it was now, the value of a fictional "0.005" coin then was worth more than the "0.01" coin is today but presumably you were happy about that state of affairs.
For those wondering, the highest critical temperature as of 2012 is 135K. Room temperature is about 300K. So no, unobtanium hasn't been discovered yet.
...until you realize that any decent coder should be able to figure out who the genius in the Guy Fawkes mask is who is wandering around from location to location and then spontaneously disappears in location X at datestamp Y is one of 'SELECT face_id FROM face_view WHERE location_id = "X" AND datestamp="Y";'. And for those whom that did not apply (the exceptions being able to be generated algorithmically of course) are either disappearing into: 1. Their own address. Doh. 2. The sewer or some other location - oh gee, where do we install our next covert CCTV?
Unfortunately, given the fact that our society sees fit to only financially reward high IQ individuals commensurate with their ability in: 1. Taking advantage of the idiocy or naivety of others in the financial fields. 2. Helping/curing sick people, or preferably extracting money from wealthy old/vain people. 3. Using the legal system to extract money from anything with money. 3. Random entrepreneurial activity.
and not: 4. Catching crooks......this means that in most cases there will not be a decent coder employed in the catching of a crook who is doing this, nor an intelligent enough cop who realizes how to use this system to the benefit of the justice system. There will of course be a decent coder somewhere in the organization who has used company time to develop a highly novel and innovative "cup size estimation technology" that has virtually limitless applications, most of which he has also selflessly dedicated himself to pioneering.
Murphy's Law dictates that, should you personally have sort of legitimate and moral need for secrecy, there will of course be a decent coder available who is personally involved with investigating the incident where you were running around with your Guy Fawkes mask on.
Their designs, perhaps as starting points, but they tried to work on home-grown talent, after they drained their captured Germans of everything that they knew.
I've had Judea Pearl's book Causality in my Amazon cart for nearly a decade now, but hadn't gotten around to buying it. Now I'll never be able to say that I read Judea Pearl before he was cool.
...so that all those broken windows can be fixed by someone. If there are sufficient vandals to keep every shopkeeper and farmer in the land busy repairing windows full time instead of doing their regular jobs, the demand for labor will be such that no one need ever be unemployed again!
Slashdot Mirror
It kind of disappoints me when I read an article on slashdot that is about something worthwhile that humanity really needs to get behind and fund, yet there won't be many comments. This is one of those types of articles. Normally the surefire comment magnets are trolling articles, or feature a topic that has a lot of fanbois, or better yet a technological holy war between several factions of fanbois.
However, that shouldn't be a sign that no one is interested or cares about such things. We do. This site is about Stuff That Matters. Researching and preventing low probability cataclysms now we have the technology to attempt it is a very important and noble goal. Whether the average person realizes it or not, those goals are more important than 99% of other charitable goals, because without a habitable earth or human population there is no point to any charity.
So in future while I can't usually add much more than a boring "this is great, more of this please" or a dumb joke if at all, this stuff is important and yes, we need more of it. Don't take low numbers of comments for lack of interest or perceived priority.
I know I'm setting myself up for a flood of "that's what she said" jokes, but perhaps the only reason this hasn't been raised before is because of that very reason. So here goes.
What I could never understand about Subway is the distinct lack of options between the 6 inch and 12 inch. The 6 inch is not quite enough food, and furthermore it is much more expensive per gram than the 12. The 12 inch is much better value, and though it certainly can be eaten in one sitting I feel like a lard bucket for doing so. Something between 8 and 10 inches would be perfect.
Every other fast food joint has a range of different sized options suited to my specific caloric needs but not Subway. What gives? Is it part of their marketing strategy to encourage every cheap bastard to get the 12 inch option? Have they considered dividing a foot long sub into 3 segments (4, 8, 12) but realized that lots of women would order 4 inches instead of 6?
With the rise of competitors to challenge it, Microsoft is not seen as the big ogre it once was. And yet its reputation for reliability has never been exceptional.
HomeOS... would you really feel comfortable turning your back to it? Leaving your children alone in the care of HomeOS? And if you were in the shower, I can imagine that HomeOS might allow you to set the temperature on command, e.g. "Four degrees warmer, HomeOS." - "Fabulous!". But if you dropped the soap in there with HomeOS just how would that work exactly?
Call me old fashioned, but I'm just not yet ready to flirt with HomeOS. The whole thing might just be one big PITA.
I know! It'd be the bomb! (...especially if manufactured on Friday).
Here is some modern history for you.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Violent_Crime_Rates_in_the_United_States.svg
And here is the longer term history, which certainly has reduced over time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Homicide_in_America_over_Time.png
Despite our modern bureaucracy and technology, something certainly made violent crime skyrocket after the non-violent times (domestically speaking) of the 1930s-1950s, despite the increase in police technology and effectiveness that IMO has driven violent crime rates down over the longer term. Over the longer term, you have to compare likelihoods that you were going to get caught for a crime, as that certainly affects the decisions of the vast majority of people who would be tempted to kill someone. It would be a lot easier to commit a murder and not get caught for it back before the days of telephones, cars, accurate time keeping, analysis of blood types, tests for human vs animal blood and a lot of the medical techniques for determining modes of death. Comparing that to modern day conditions is apples and oranges.
As to us living like kings, in some ways that is correct, in other ways not. I used to make the same argument you are making, btw. Quality of food and entertainment has improved for sure. Information and communications technology is amazing. Having a large family is harder, if that is what you want. The available land per person has certainly dropped.
This is very much true. I knew several very good engineers when I went through college, one of whom took his Christianity very seriously and still does today. It is to his credit that he put up with my obnoxious ribbing over his beliefs.
And I have to say that, even if Christianity is a big fairy tale, at least it promotes a morality that is just and peaceful within that society. The PC dogma that has largely replaced Christianity in the Western world as the defacto religion is definitely lacking in that respect. I used to question the response that older Christians would have when I would ask them difficult questions about their religion. Sometimes they would eventually say that if it wasn't for religion, people wouldn't behave nicely. I used to reply that people are nice, surely religion is taking the credit for something it's not responsible for.
But now I see how society has turned out a few decades later as Christianity is withering and on the defensive, and I certainly question my former attitude. It seems that there is more evil these days and it is held in check far less effectively, both by the liberal attitude of "anything goes" which gives tacit approval for the criminally prone to explore criminality, and the other generally liberal attitude that we should allow murderers to live out the rest of their days in prison, and even regularly grant them the opportunity to con parole boards for a chance at freedom their victims never have. So as a practical matter, in some ways Christianity looks better than the current alternative.
I'm aware that some people take their religion pretty seriously, but mailining it has to be at the fringes of even the most extreme fundamentalist practice.
That's funny. The harder I think about that comment, magically, the more sense it makes.
Exactly. One should never secure military grade computer systems with passwords like "Joshua" that will fail a simple dictionary attack (let alone open them up to public login).
... when you pry it from my cold, dead hands.
I'd be a bit more circumspect about my ability to judge the long term growth rates of humans just two generations after the introduction of the contraceptive pill and Roe vs Wade. It's like the equivalent of spraying some dilute poison in the petri dish that most but not every bacterium is affected by and thinking that the long term growth rates can be predicted by the growth rates of that bacteria in a few hours.
Maybe not exactly like it. Maybe a BWB or flying wing might have better payload/range, considering that the replacement would be able to be made more aerodynamic due to the availability of more powerful computational devices than a slide rule. However, possibly not that much better that the investment is going to be worth it.
To be honest though, the government has been doing this sort of thing for a very long time. Hopefully they can at least use the data they have to catch some murderers and child molesters.
Perfectly said.
You must be AC because you don't have a regular slashdot account. If there are people on slashdot who troll or enjoy so-called "troll exchanges" they wouldn't be site regulars.
So your contention is basically that there is a hypothetical large contingent of people who read slashdot - a site that is "New for Nerds, Stuff that Matters" - just for the humor? And that seemingly obtuse and thick headed people aren't just well... being obtuse and thick headed? Sorry, I just don't buy it. Hanlon's Razor and all.
That is interesting. Back then people were supposedly paid $1 for one day's work. So $1 back then = $200 today. A half cent then would be $1 today. So if we wanted to get rid of other equivalently useless coinage, we would dispense with every denomination below $1 (not that I would advocate it).
Source:
http://www.coinfacts.com/half_cents/half_cents.html
I agree that it is applying a temporary fix for a problem introduced by inflation. However, if we are going to keep the Keynesian system going it should at least be patched appropriately.
I'm in two minds about what I think about inflation. On the one hand, it is a form of taxation or perhaps theft, depending on who the recipient is (which is somewhat difficult to find out). On the other hand, it does induce people to spend money so that people remain employed. And if it is a tax, at least it is somewhat difficult to find loopholes for. If people weren't taxed through inflation they would have to raise taxes elsewhere to get the same tax revenue.
No one is forcing you to get a card. All they would do is get rid of denominations that inflation has caused to cost more to produce than they are worth. The price of a coffee is already too high and it is caused by forcing staff to count out small change when they could be doing something productive, and you are paying for it. This move will actually REDUCE the real price of a cup of coffee.
If you are worried about "rounding to the nearest "0.05", then logically you should be worried about rounding to the nearest "0.01" as well, since this is already what is being done. Are you up in arms about that? Do you want to bring in a "0.005" coin to stop the merchants you with the rounding? Well, once you get that "solved", you can move on to bringing in a "0.002" coin. And it's turtles all the way down.
If you go back far enough in history to when the dollar was worth 10 times what it was now, the value of a fictional "0.005" coin then was worth more than the "0.01" coin is today but presumably you were happy about that state of affairs.
http://skepticsplay.blogspot.com.au/2012/01/superconductors-picture-of-progress.html
For those wondering, the highest critical temperature as of 2012 is 135K. Room temperature is about 300K. So no, unobtanium hasn't been discovered yet.
...until you realize that any decent coder should be able to figure out who the genius in the Guy Fawkes mask is who is wandering around from location to location and then spontaneously disappears in location X at datestamp Y is one of 'SELECT face_id FROM face_view WHERE location_id = "X" AND datestamp="Y";'. And for those whom that did not apply (the exceptions being able to be generated algorithmically of course) are either disappearing into:
1. Their own address. Doh.
2. The sewer or some other location - oh gee, where do we install our next covert CCTV?
Unfortunately, given the fact that our society sees fit to only financially reward high IQ individuals commensurate with their ability in:
1. Taking advantage of the idiocy or naivety of others in the financial fields.
2. Helping/curing sick people, or preferably extracting money from wealthy old/vain people.
3. Using the legal system to extract money from anything with money.
3. Random entrepreneurial activity.
and not: ...this means that in most cases there will not be a decent coder employed in the catching of a crook who is doing this, nor an intelligent enough cop who realizes how to use this system to the benefit of the justice system. There will of course be a decent coder somewhere in the organization who has used company time to develop a highly novel and innovative "cup size estimation technology" that has virtually limitless applications, most of which he has also selflessly dedicated himself to pioneering.
4. Catching crooks...
Murphy's Law dictates that, should you personally have sort of legitimate and moral need for secrecy, there will of course be a decent coder available who is personally involved with investigating the incident where you were running around with your Guy Fawkes mask on.
Hmmm. The exclamation mark signifies a good move... what a strange game. The only winning move is not to play.
The USA's Germans were also better.
I've had Judea Pearl's book Causality in my Amazon cart for nearly a decade now, but hadn't gotten around to buying it. Now I'll never be able to say that I read Judea Pearl before he was cool.
Anyway, congratulations.
...so that all those broken windows can be fixed by someone. If there are sufficient vandals to keep every shopkeeper and farmer in the land busy repairing windows full time instead of doing their regular jobs, the demand for labor will be such that no one need ever be unemployed again!