At work on Friday I mistyped a URL and it brought me to Bing. I didn't know what it was and assumed it was a re-routed parked domain or something - I didn't bother looking at it since I didn't recognize it. So my first impression of the site, thanks to the redirect, was that it was an annoying ad site.
(I'm just picking one of many possible comments to reply to)
We've been over this mainstream religion vs. Scientology thing at least a dozen times, and we all know it never gets far, so by this point posts like this are trollish given the lack of new input they can provide. Can people please move on and stay on point- the only reason most of these posts are not marked troll is because the idea is too popular here. As much as I appreciate that logical discussion of religion vs. atheism or vs. whatever is an interesting and worthwhile topic, I think it would much improve the quality of discussions if we had some stickied thread on this sort of stuff and made a rule that all criticism of religion is relegated to the one thread (criticism used in the general sense- positive or negative).
I think we've all seen this post 5 or more times before (no exaggeration) and yet it is modded interesting. Same goes with 80% of the anti-religion comments. I'm Catholic and I understand ignoring criticism doesn't make it go away or make it wrong, but religion-hating has kind of become its own cult here and this is getting silly. Knowingly starting a meaningless flame war is trolling. Posting an anti-religion comment that has been posted before knowing the result will be (semi-calm) flaming is trolling.
I know, why single out religion as a controlled-discussion topic? If you honestly believe that the nth discussion of how religion is oh so silly is a uniquely insightful and worthwhile conversation, then maybe I'm wrong. Otherwise my question to you is why is religion discussion singled out as the one overly-treaded and never progressing discussion that never gets modded troll/off-topic/ignored? At least discussions of linux vs. windows or what have you can relate to the latest news to create new discussion, but religion is religion, and unless there is a widely confirmed miracle somewhere or someone manages to disprove the existance of God, there won't be new discussion.
I think you're entirely missing the point. He's saying Scientology doesn't take their internal problems to court because they don't trust the courts. You are talking about problems that haven't escalated to needing a court to settle. The double standard being they trust the courts when they see it in their favor. Entirely different from just having various breaking points on different issues like you are saying.
It's the same as protecting holocaust deniers- keep fringe people around and you'll never worry about stepping on the toes of legitimate people. Given opinions on religion here, "legitimate" simply means people are actually acting out of faith of some sort (be it faith in god or karma or what have you). Scientology steps far enough into the territory of "people simply taking advantage of other people" that you can safely remove it from the religion category.
Maybe we should stop referring to what party a politician is from and just name their largest 3 campaign contributors. It'd be a bit more accurate, especially with democrat and republican becoming closer to synonyms these days.
Put it in an elevator on the dark side of the moon. Almost worked for superman- just have to duct tape the doors together so the light doesn't get between the cracks.
Corrections or not, the Hubble telescope is still better than using a ground-based telescope AFAIK, so same idea should work with putting stuff outside the solar system. Yes, we can correct for error, but in the end it should be much more accurate to have something that never is affected by that error in the first place. Of course given cost, distance and time, error correction is sure to be the better practical solution.
Referencing the "Daily Herald" is only slightly more specific than saying "a newspaper". There are multiple newspapers going by the name Daily Herald (the Chicago area has one)- please specify the city the newspaper is from if it is not a national paper or the name doesn't give it away.
These scans replace the random full pat-downs. Not everyone goes through this. It is much faster and less intrusive than someone having to physically check you for hidden items. According to CNN most people, given the option, prefer the scans (http://www.cnn.com/2009/TRAVEL/05/18/airport.security.body.scans/index.html).
They violated the court order, your Honor- there is no way they could have known C:\music\Beatles\Sgt._Peppers_Lonely_Hearts_Club_Band\Lucy_in_the_Sky_With_Diamonds.ffm was a music file!
Humans are (generally) concerned about self-preservation. Wrongfully killing someone could get them in jail or executed. Robots, on the other hand, simply decide based on some algorithm and have no concern about the effects of their actions. While you could try to boil down the soldier's logic to an algorithm, the key difference you can't resolve is that the soldier has free will, while the robot has no real choice of its own.
Another thing that's nice about restricting the ability to kill to humans is that a rogue soldier, no matter how well-trained, can be killed easily enough with the right application of force. We have no idea how advanced lethal robots could be. We don't have any reasonable guarantee that a rogue robot could be stopped.
Perhaps it is still too close for comfort for you, but the military has no jurisdiction to enforce the law here. They are simply supplying evidence. As long as this communication is through mutual agreement (neither party has force over the other), I personally don't see a problem. Just as long as we have solid blocks in place to avoid the optical version of warrantless wiretapping. As implied in the OP, the only reason the military is involved is because they have the right (according to the US) to perform such operations outside the US. Their activity stops where US territory starts, and that is how it should be. As for spying on Mexican citizens, we have no jurisdiction over them, so as long as American law enforcement takes full responsibility, there shouldn't be a problem. Not that we shouldn't make sure Mexico is okay with it.
The difference is the cases are under police jurisdiction, not military. The military is simply supplying evidence, not enforcing the law. Sure, there are concerns about where to draw the line on use in law enforcement, but drawing the line at the border sounds reasonable enough. We have no jurisdiction over their citizens, so there is less reason to fear abuse than if they use the satellites within US territory. It would be cleaner to both get some form of a warrant within the US and with Mexico, but corruption is fairly widespread in Mexico, with many cops and officials in the pocket of the drug dealers, so such steps could be hard to take without them being counterproductive. Not that we shouldn't make every effort to come clean on this.
As long as American law enforcement takes responsibility for everything that happens using this technology, I don't expect major problems.
I doubt the military uses all of their satellites 24/7. When not in use for other things, why not use them to help fight crime? We spent ungodly amounts of money for those things I bet so we might as well get all the use from them we can. When the satellite can take pictures of the border it can only take pictures of what is in its line of sight, so using it to find people in Afghanistan isn't an exclusive task (may depend on how/whether the satellite can adjust its orbit).
Slashdot Mirror
At work on Friday I mistyped a URL and it brought me to Bing. I didn't know what it was and assumed it was a re-routed parked domain or something - I didn't bother looking at it since I didn't recognize it. So my first impression of the site, thanks to the redirect, was that it was an annoying ad site.
The article calls it the 'firefly event'. It wasn't a black hole. It was the reavers.
They'll make no money off Microsoft Office... which is similar to the outrageously priced OpenOffice.org.
I never thought this may qualify as informative: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZlBUglE6Hc
We've got a homeless man downtown with a laptop and and he ran for mayor. Can't say he's not trying to get a job.
Just put a .txt on them with the URL to this story.
seriously who didn't know this was the case?
(insert name of media corporation here)
(I'm just picking one of many possible comments to reply to)
We've been over this mainstream religion vs. Scientology thing at least a dozen times, and we all know it never gets far, so by this point posts like this are trollish given the lack of new input they can provide. Can people please move on and stay on point- the only reason most of these posts are not marked troll is because the idea is too popular here. As much as I appreciate that logical discussion of religion vs. atheism or vs. whatever is an interesting and worthwhile topic, I think it would much improve the quality of discussions if we had some stickied thread on this sort of stuff and made a rule that all criticism of religion is relegated to the one thread (criticism used in the general sense- positive or negative).
I think we've all seen this post 5 or more times before (no exaggeration) and yet it is modded interesting. Same goes with 80% of the anti-religion comments. I'm Catholic and I understand ignoring criticism doesn't make it go away or make it wrong, but religion-hating has kind of become its own cult here and this is getting silly. Knowingly starting a meaningless flame war is trolling. Posting an anti-religion comment that has been posted before knowing the result will be (semi-calm) flaming is trolling.
I know, why single out religion as a controlled-discussion topic? If you honestly believe that the nth discussion of how religion is oh so silly is a uniquely insightful and worthwhile conversation, then maybe I'm wrong. Otherwise my question to you is why is religion discussion singled out as the one overly-treaded and never progressing discussion that never gets modded troll/off-topic/ignored? At least discussions of linux vs. windows or what have you can relate to the latest news to create new discussion, but religion is religion, and unless there is a widely confirmed miracle somewhere or someone manages to disprove the existance of God, there won't be new discussion.
I think you're entirely missing the point. He's saying Scientology doesn't take their internal problems to court because they don't trust the courts. You are talking about problems that haven't escalated to needing a court to settle. The double standard being they trust the courts when they see it in their favor. Entirely different from just having various breaking points on different issues like you are saying.
Since when did Tom Sawyer have a doctorate degree- or any college education for that matter?
You can say they both target vulnerable people. The difference most established religions feed them, while Scientology feeds off of them.
It's the same as protecting holocaust deniers- keep fringe people around and you'll never worry about stepping on the toes of legitimate people. Given opinions on religion here, "legitimate" simply means people are actually acting out of faith of some sort (be it faith in god or karma or what have you). Scientology steps far enough into the territory of "people simply taking advantage of other people" that you can safely remove it from the religion category.
Maybe we should stop referring to what party a politician is from and just name their largest 3 campaign contributors. It'd be a bit more accurate, especially with democrat and republican becoming closer to synonyms these days.
They show that in the Superman scene I'm referring to (nothing wrong with your reply- I just don't think you're in it for the reference).
Put it in an elevator on the dark side of the moon. Almost worked for superman- just have to duct tape the doors together so the light doesn't get between the cracks.
It's not their fault- they used the device before they had a chance to read anything.
Corrections or not, the Hubble telescope is still better than using a ground-based telescope AFAIK, so same idea should work with putting stuff outside the solar system. Yes, we can correct for error, but in the end it should be much more accurate to have something that never is affected by that error in the first place. Of course given cost, distance and time, error correction is sure to be the better practical solution.
Referencing the "Daily Herald" is only slightly more specific than saying "a newspaper". There are multiple newspapers going by the name Daily Herald (the Chicago area has one)- please specify the city the newspaper is from if it is not a national paper or the name doesn't give it away.
And how is this faster?
These scans replace the random full pat-downs. Not everyone goes through this. It is much faster and less intrusive than someone having to physically check you for hidden items. According to CNN most people, given the option, prefer the scans (http://www.cnn.com/2009/TRAVEL/05/18/airport.security.body.scans/index.html).
renamed all your mp3's to .ffm
They violated the court order, your Honor- there is no way they could have known C:\music\Beatles\Sgt._Peppers_Lonely_Hearts_Club_Band\Lucy_in_the_Sky_With_Diamonds.ffm was a music file!
Humans are (generally) concerned about self-preservation. Wrongfully killing someone could get them in jail or executed. Robots, on the other hand, simply decide based on some algorithm and have no concern about the effects of their actions. While you could try to boil down the soldier's logic to an algorithm, the key difference you can't resolve is that the soldier has free will, while the robot has no real choice of its own.
Another thing that's nice about restricting the ability to kill to humans is that a rogue soldier, no matter how well-trained, can be killed easily enough with the right application of force. We have no idea how advanced lethal robots could be. We don't have any reasonable guarantee that a rogue robot could be stopped.
I think we should build giant ethical bear robots. That would scare the SHIT out of our enemies.
...I fail to see how robots saying "Only YOU can stop forest fires" would be terrifying.
Perhaps it is still too close for comfort for you, but the military has no jurisdiction to enforce the law here. They are simply supplying evidence. As long as this communication is through mutual agreement (neither party has force over the other), I personally don't see a problem. Just as long as we have solid blocks in place to avoid the optical version of warrantless wiretapping. As implied in the OP, the only reason the military is involved is because they have the right (according to the US) to perform such operations outside the US. Their activity stops where US territory starts, and that is how it should be. As for spying on Mexican citizens, we have no jurisdiction over them, so as long as American law enforcement takes full responsibility, there shouldn't be a problem. Not that we shouldn't make sure Mexico is okay with it.
The difference is the cases are under police jurisdiction, not military. The military is simply supplying evidence, not enforcing the law. Sure, there are concerns about where to draw the line on use in law enforcement, but drawing the line at the border sounds reasonable enough. We have no jurisdiction over their citizens, so there is less reason to fear abuse than if they use the satellites within US territory. It would be cleaner to both get some form of a warrant within the US and with Mexico, but corruption is fairly widespread in Mexico, with many cops and officials in the pocket of the drug dealers, so such steps could be hard to take without them being counterproductive. Not that we shouldn't make every effort to come clean on this.
As long as American law enforcement takes responsibility for everything that happens using this technology, I don't expect major problems.
I doubt the military uses all of their satellites 24/7. When not in use for other things, why not use them to help fight crime? We spent ungodly amounts of money for those things I bet so we might as well get all the use from them we can. When the satellite can take pictures of the border it can only take pictures of what is in its line of sight, so using it to find people in Afghanistan isn't an exclusive task (may depend on how/whether the satellite can adjust its orbit).