It's a far better staging point for interplanetary launches than Earth is. Not as good as high orbit, but a large moon base may be arguably more practical and economical than a large orbital base.
Try "Freenet", its exactly like the internet of the 90s. Porn, warez, crappy "personal webpages" with nonsensial rants about nothing and an attempt to hacker culture. Also naked babies.
You make it sound so tempting. Do you still need some sort of trusted invite to access freenet? That was kind of my sticking point; I don't know anybody as paranoid as myself, and I have no desire to go around the net trying to find somebody who's already on it. My other sticking point, of course, was that it was in Java. Is that still the case?
I haven't M2'd for a long time, not since one of the ajax makeovers completely fucked the interface
I metamod occasionally, but I sympathize with your complaints. The interface is terrible, although it's not as bad as the user settings. I have two computers on my desk, side by side, same version of firefox, and I can't get slashdot to behave the same on both of them. The settings seem to have random effects, and the bizarre attempt at javascript pop-up windows make me almost think it would be an improvement if they switched to Flash.
copyright doesn't protect against duplicating functionality - only copying the exact binaries/source code. If I want to write my own sudo replica, copyright doesn't stop me... but a patent would.
That is one of those statements where both sides shout "EXACTLY", and then stare at each other.
So you think people are soldering chips on their mainboard JUST to play pirated games? If you believe that then I have a bridge in Second Life that I want to sell to you.
I think that is by FAR the biggest reason they are. You really think otherwise? Homebrew software, emulation, media center... that stuff is being done, but software piracy is the main use.
Don't get me wrong; I think it should be completely legal to modify your hardware.
why are we still defining code chunks via brackets instead of the indentation that's already there?
Because enforcing strict rules about indenting and how it's interpreted is more oppressive and error-prone than using brackets? I agree with your FIRST paragraph...
This language may not be intended to replace C++. Still, though, I mostly agree with you. Pointers and other such tools need to be available; not ubiquitously, like they tend to be in C++, but not removed completely. They are powerful and useful in a limited set of circumstances... kind of like a GOTO. Have the compiler spit out warnings whenever they're used, and recommend against them in the style guides; but don't remove the functionality and expect to compete with C++.
If they could at least include a subset of OpenGL... or just an SDL wrapper, maybe with some high-level features for simple 2d-3d manipulation... this looks like it would be a great learning language. I see they have a DRAW library with a very limited number of features.
They also have a "spacewar" directory, currently empty...
Whenever Google announces something, you have to make the decision... jump on it immediately and get ahead of the curve, but risk wasting all that time if it doesn't take off? Or wait?
From what I understand, that is assuming we don't use reprocessing and breeder reactors to reclaim and reuse the spent fuel; in other words, if we keep doing it the ridiculous way we HAVE been doing it, the resources are far more limited than if we did it smartly.
Whistle Blowers have agendas too, sometimes. But it's a moot point, because the proper response is the same either way: fast track nuclear plants. There is no other reasonable solution to the inevitable energy problem. We will switch to nuclear at some point or our civilization will collapse.
They can sue if they've been damaged. There's less opportunity for an end-user to get damaged; they aren't damaged by the infractor's copyright violation. They could be damaged, for instance, if they needed to make modification to the source, but the vendor wouldn't release it.
It is? Hmmm. I can not lay my hand on any part of the People's Constitution that grants the United States the power to uphold business interests rather than obey the law.
The solicitor is arguing that the law DOES allow for business method patents. He may be wrong, but he's not trying to break the law. He's trying to get the Supreme Court to clarify that the law does indeed allow them. His opponent is doing the opposite. That's how it's supposed to work.
Some people legitimately and honestly disagree with slashdot; it doesn't mean they're fraudulent and evil... it just means they aren't quite as smart as us. Well, at least that's what I like to believe.
Free will means a force of will that is free from the constraints of physics, and is a supernatural concept.
No it doesn't. You and I both know there is nothing supernatural in this universe, but that doesn't mean free will doesn't exist. It simply means it's a concept that obeys natural law. If you DEFINE free will as innately supernatural, as you have done, then certainly it is impossible; but I don't think there's a reason to make that part of its definition. I'll grant you that many definitions of free will are so fuzzy that they might as well be meaningless.
Also, you don't need to calculate all digits of pi
Thanks, I didn't realize that. It invalidates the specific example, but not the point. There are a large class of iterative functions that exhibit the behavior I was speaking about. Cellular automatons such as Conway's LIFE is an example; you have to repeat every step of the process and replicate input exactly to find the outcome... there's no reliable way to predict with absolute accuracy what the state will be at a given point.
Belief in free will is belief in a soul which is capable of making decisions that the brain presents before it using some non-physical and unpredictable process.
No, belief in free will doesn't require belief in a mystical soul... it only does if you believe free will can't be adequately explained as a complex physical phenomena. Also something can follow a chain of causality while still being unpredictable. What's the ten trillionth digit of Pi? It's an iterative function, and you can't get the answer without doing all the necessary steps. You can't predict what Joe will do without being a mind that has experienced Joe's history EXACTLY, which is impossible; at that point, you would BE Joe.
First off, even though I disagree with you, I feel your current modding of 'troll' is unfair.
You say systems must be regulated. That's obviously untrue; take the climate, take the biosphere, evolution, and so forth. Many systems work fine, and optimally, without regulation, because of negative feedback loops. The idea that the free market will necessarily 'explode' seems like something you believe as a matter of faith. In our current economy, the health of each sector seems to be inversely proportional to how closely the sector has been regulated.
Unless you are willing to watch sick people die outside of hospitals or shoot people in the head who cost society more to keep alive than to kill, you aren't going to have a libertarian market.
Or, perhaps you think that a free market is the key to making sure that more people have more access to better health care... or, perhaps you think that freedom is more important than medical care. Note that the level of charitable giving seems to be highly related to the wealth of the society, and that individual americans give more in charity than the federal government, and more than the EU. A concern with the free market does NOT imply lack of caring about others... it may mean you simply are more realistic about how to show that care.
All of the things those scaaaarrrry governments provide is called regulation. Regulation leads to standards. Standards are what allow infrastructure, market competitiveness, and a little thing I like to call civilization.
Again, ideals are just that. Goal posts for reality. Communist China is on your left. Somalia is on your right (no government to "ruin" their markets). I'd rather be leaning to the left if I can't shoot straight down the middle.
These two tie together. Yes, regulation and standards are important. No thoughtful libertarian calls for anarchy. Crimes should be punished, fraudster jailed, and so forth. Those are regulations and standards that protect rights, just as laws against theft protect the right to own property, and laws permitting firearms protect the right to life. Those promote a free market, and are distinct from attempts to control the market for the benefit of a certain party.
The conditions in Somolia aren't a 'free market' taken to an extreme; that's like saying a fistfight is a debate taken to the extreme. If anybody in Somalia is subject to theft, or not permitted to trade as they see fit, it isn't a free market... and since those are the conditions, it's not one.
Re:That Quote Really Hit Home
on
The Big Questions
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
There's some sort of decision-making mechanism in the human brain, but I think that our observations about it are distorted by an extreme perspective problem. It's difficult to study anybody else's consciousness, and we're right in the MIDDLE of our own consciousness. The way 'choice' feels is important, and probably reveals much, but it's hard to tell what. Feelings aren't proof of anything, but when we're studying our own consciousness, feelings ARE part of what we're studying.
The choice we make doesn't feel predetermined; it feels like we could have done something different. Neither does it feel random; it feels like it was chosen for a reason. So, of the two possible options, we feel like free will is neither. That can't be true.
My view is that it's irrelevant whether chance works into it or not; it doesn't solve the problem. The problem is that we feel that there is something in ourselves, our identity, our self, that makes the choices, and that it isn't totally contingent on external forces. Feelings aren't proof, but neither are feelings random and causeless. I think chaos theory explains this, without resorting to nutjob mysticism. Each person's brain is unique; the mind emerges from the functioning of the brain. It's chaotic; its state is dependent on everything the brain has experienced, and its current inputs. It makes no sense to separate the mind from the brain, nor the person from the mind; the processed output from Joe's brain is the same as the choices that Joe makes. Since this involves nothing mystical, is still unpredictable, and is unique to the individual, this pretty much satisfies me as 'free will'.
Of course, this is hard to experimentally disprove, so I'm not married to this explanation.
Once you get used to a keyboard and mouse you can't go back to a console.
Works both ways. Once you get used to using sitting on a couch using a controller, it's hard to go back to playing with a keyboard/mouse in front of your monitor. Ideally, you do both, I suppose. Neither platform is 'superior', they're just different niches.
Quantum uncertainty doesn't really solve the problem of free will. Replacing 'determinism' with 'chance' isn't a particular improvement. I think it's a problem with our definition of free will; it's so OBVIOUS what we mean by it, that it's hard to put into words.
Free will exists, in my opinion, but due to a different kind of 'uncertainty principle'... chaos theory. The brain is a very chaotic system, and there is no way to predict its future behavior short of making an exact copy of the brain and feeding it the exact same input... which I think is simply impossible, and if it is, all it proves is that the same person makes the same decision in the same circumstance. The decisions a mind makes are not free from cause and effect, but they are unpredictable, and unique to that individual; that seems to fit the definition of free will to me.
Slashdot Mirror
It's a far better staging point for interplanetary launches than Earth is. Not as good as high orbit, but a large moon base may be arguably more practical and economical than a large orbital base.
Oh boy your one of those fathers who always goes in to check the "collaborative shindig" for liquor, aren't you?
You mean "a good father?"
Swatch tried to fix this confusion with "Internet Time", but they were just too visionary for their own good.
But this might be a little irritating to any blu-ray player manufacturers NOT named Sony.
Try "Freenet", its exactly like the internet of the 90s. Porn, warez, crappy "personal webpages" with nonsensial rants about nothing and an attempt to hacker culture. Also naked babies.
You make it sound so tempting. Do you still need some sort of trusted invite to access freenet? That was kind of my sticking point; I don't know anybody as paranoid as myself, and I have no desire to go around the net trying to find somebody who's already on it. My other sticking point, of course, was that it was in Java. Is that still the case?
I haven't M2'd for a long time, not since one of the ajax makeovers completely fucked the interface
I metamod occasionally, but I sympathize with your complaints. The interface is terrible, although it's not as bad as the user settings. I have two computers on my desk, side by side, same version of firefox, and I can't get slashdot to behave the same on both of them. The settings seem to have random effects, and the bizarre attempt at javascript pop-up windows make me almost think it would be an improvement if they switched to Flash.
copyright doesn't protect against duplicating functionality - only copying the exact binaries/source code. If I want to write my own sudo replica, copyright doesn't stop me... but a patent would.
That is one of those statements where both sides shout "EXACTLY", and then stare at each other.
So you think people are soldering chips on their mainboard JUST to play pirated games? If you believe that then I have a bridge in Second Life that I want to sell to you.
I think that is by FAR the biggest reason they are. You really think otherwise? Homebrew software, emulation, media center... that stuff is being done, but software piracy is the main use.
Don't get me wrong; I think it should be completely legal to modify your hardware.
You've already got more laughs out of me than anything in 'idle' ever did. Keep on posting; I browse at -1, so I'll see them.
why are we still defining code chunks via brackets instead of the indentation that's already there?
Because enforcing strict rules about indenting and how it's interpreted is more oppressive and error-prone than using brackets? I agree with your FIRST paragraph...
This language may not be intended to replace C++. Still, though, I mostly agree with you. Pointers and other such tools need to be available; not ubiquitously, like they tend to be in C++, but not removed completely. They are powerful and useful in a limited set of circumstances... kind of like a GOTO. Have the compiler spit out warnings whenever they're used, and recommend against them in the style guides; but don't remove the functionality and expect to compete with C++.
"Open Source" for the geeks, "Google Branded" for the techies, and "Apple" for the wanna bees?
If they could at least include a subset of OpenGL... or just an SDL wrapper, maybe with some high-level features for simple 2d-3d manipulation... this looks like it would be a great learning language. I see they have a DRAW library with a very limited number of features.
They also have a "spacewar" directory, currently empty...
Whenever Google announces something, you have to make the decision... jump on it immediately and get ahead of the curve, but risk wasting all that time if it doesn't take off? Or wait?
From what I understand, that is assuming we don't use reprocessing and breeder reactors to reclaim and reuse the spent fuel; in other words, if we keep doing it the ridiculous way we HAVE been doing it, the resources are far more limited than if we did it smartly.
im sorry how painful it must be to go thru life so stupid
Keep fighting the green fight. I encourage you to post comments supporting the movement on as many forums as you can.
Whistle Blowers have agendas too, sometimes. But it's a moot point, because the proper response is the same either way: fast track nuclear plants. There is no other reasonable solution to the inevitable energy problem. We will switch to nuclear at some point or our civilization will collapse.
They can sue if they've been damaged. There's less opportunity for an end-user to get damaged; they aren't damaged by the infractor's copyright violation. They could be damaged, for instance, if they needed to make modification to the source, but the vendor wouldn't release it.
It is? Hmmm. I can not lay my hand on any part of the People's Constitution that grants the United States the power to uphold business interests rather than obey the law.
The solicitor is arguing that the law DOES allow for business method patents. He may be wrong, but he's not trying to break the law. He's trying to get the Supreme Court to clarify that the law does indeed allow them. His opponent is doing the opposite. That's how it's supposed to work.
Some people legitimately and honestly disagree with slashdot; it doesn't mean they're fraudulent and evil... it just means they aren't quite as smart as us. Well, at least that's what I like to believe.
Free will means a force of will that is free from the constraints of physics, and is a supernatural concept.
No it doesn't. You and I both know there is nothing supernatural in this universe, but that doesn't mean free will doesn't exist. It simply means it's a concept that obeys natural law. If you DEFINE free will as innately supernatural, as you have done, then certainly it is impossible; but I don't think there's a reason to make that part of its definition. I'll grant you that many definitions of free will are so fuzzy that they might as well be meaningless.
Also, you don't need to calculate all digits of pi
Thanks, I didn't realize that. It invalidates the specific example, but not the point. There are a large class of iterative functions that exhibit the behavior I was speaking about. Cellular automatons such as Conway's LIFE is an example; you have to repeat every step of the process and replicate input exactly to find the outcome... there's no reliable way to predict with absolute accuracy what the state will be at a given point.
Belief in free will is belief in a soul which is capable of making decisions that the brain presents before it using some non-physical and unpredictable process.
No, belief in free will doesn't require belief in a mystical soul... it only does if you believe free will can't be adequately explained as a complex physical phenomena. Also something can follow a chain of causality while still being unpredictable. What's the ten trillionth digit of Pi? It's an iterative function, and you can't get the answer without doing all the necessary steps. You can't predict what Joe will do without being a mind that has experienced Joe's history EXACTLY, which is impossible; at that point, you would BE Joe.
First off, even though I disagree with you, I feel your current modding of 'troll' is unfair.
You say systems must be regulated. That's obviously untrue; take the climate, take the biosphere, evolution, and so forth. Many systems work fine, and optimally, without regulation, because of negative feedback loops. The idea that the free market will necessarily 'explode' seems like something you believe as a matter of faith. In our current economy, the health of each sector seems to be inversely proportional to how closely the sector has been regulated.
Unless you are willing to watch sick people die outside of hospitals or shoot people in the head who cost society more to keep alive than to kill, you aren't going to have a libertarian market.
Or, perhaps you think that a free market is the key to making sure that more people have more access to better health care... or, perhaps you think that freedom is more important than medical care. Note that the level of charitable giving seems to be highly related to the wealth of the society, and that individual americans give more in charity than the federal government, and more than the EU. A concern with the free market does NOT imply lack of caring about others... it may mean you simply are more realistic about how to show that care.
All of the things those scaaaarrrry governments provide is called regulation. Regulation leads to standards. Standards are what allow infrastructure, market competitiveness, and a little thing I like to call civilization. Again, ideals are just that. Goal posts for reality. Communist China is on your left. Somalia is on your right (no government to "ruin" their markets). I'd rather be leaning to the left if I can't shoot straight down the middle.
These two tie together. Yes, regulation and standards are important. No thoughtful libertarian calls for anarchy. Crimes should be punished, fraudster jailed, and so forth. Those are regulations and standards that protect rights, just as laws against theft protect the right to own property, and laws permitting firearms protect the right to life. Those promote a free market, and are distinct from attempts to control the market for the benefit of a certain party.
The conditions in Somolia aren't a 'free market' taken to an extreme; that's like saying a fistfight is a debate taken to the extreme. If anybody in Somalia is subject to theft, or not permitted to trade as they see fit, it isn't a free market... and since those are the conditions, it's not one.
There's some sort of decision-making mechanism in the human brain, but I think that our observations about it are distorted by an extreme perspective problem. It's difficult to study anybody else's consciousness, and we're right in the MIDDLE of our own consciousness. The way 'choice' feels is important, and probably reveals much, but it's hard to tell what. Feelings aren't proof of anything, but when we're studying our own consciousness, feelings ARE part of what we're studying.
The choice we make doesn't feel predetermined; it feels like we could have done something different. Neither does it feel random; it feels like it was chosen for a reason. So, of the two possible options, we feel like free will is neither. That can't be true.
My view is that it's irrelevant whether chance works into it or not; it doesn't solve the problem. The problem is that we feel that there is something in ourselves, our identity, our self, that makes the choices, and that it isn't totally contingent on external forces. Feelings aren't proof, but neither are feelings random and causeless. I think chaos theory explains this, without resorting to nutjob mysticism. Each person's brain is unique; the mind emerges from the functioning of the brain. It's chaotic; its state is dependent on everything the brain has experienced, and its current inputs. It makes no sense to separate the mind from the brain, nor the person from the mind; the processed output from Joe's brain is the same as the choices that Joe makes. Since this involves nothing mystical, is still unpredictable, and is unique to the individual, this pretty much satisfies me as 'free will'.
Of course, this is hard to experimentally disprove, so I'm not married to this explanation.
Once you get used to a keyboard and mouse you can't go back to a console.
Works both ways. Once you get used to using sitting on a couch using a controller, it's hard to go back to playing with a keyboard/mouse in front of your monitor. Ideally, you do both, I suppose. Neither platform is 'superior', they're just different niches.
Quantum uncertainty doesn't really solve the problem of free will. Replacing 'determinism' with 'chance' isn't a particular improvement. I think it's a problem with our definition of free will; it's so OBVIOUS what we mean by it, that it's hard to put into words.
Free will exists, in my opinion, but due to a different kind of 'uncertainty principle'... chaos theory. The brain is a very chaotic system, and there is no way to predict its future behavior short of making an exact copy of the brain and feeding it the exact same input... which I think is simply impossible, and if it is, all it proves is that the same person makes the same decision in the same circumstance. The decisions a mind makes are not free from cause and effect, but they are unpredictable, and unique to that individual; that seems to fit the definition of free will to me.
"Does the new ### make me look fat?"
"Wide, maybe, but flat" doesn't really make the wife feel any better...