It depends on the size of the black hole. Small ones will have sharper gravitational gradients that will result in tidal forces that could inflict serious entropy on you, but a large enough black hole could have a surface gravity less than earth and much less significant tidal forces.
Considering that most people murdered in the 20th century were murdered by governments, I can say without hesitation that I would rather incite some mobs than empower a (potentially) violent state. There is also the fact that it is far easier for individuals to defend themselves from other violent individuals than from their own government.
I certainly wouldn't argue that all speech is equally benign.
I would point out that censorship and other curtailments of liberty are found far more often in the company of large scale acts of violence (like genocide) than freedom of speech is.
Honestly, I think conspiracy laws are often bullshit too.
But under some circumstances they make sense. Just like if a murder is foiled, the would be murderer can be charged with attempted murder; conspiracy charges may be warranted if the alleged conspirators are, beyond a doubt, committed to perpetrating a crime.
Obviously we should try to prevent people from murdering others (preferably we should encourage people to avoid letting themselves be murdered), but saying that we could prevent murder by restricting people's right to free speech is just ignorant.
You can't erase hatred, intolerance, and bigotry by forcing it into the shadows; you can only combat it with enlightenment.
What a moronic argument. By your logic the only difference between being mugged and giving some cash to a homeless guy is emotional. Theft is being deprived of you property without your consent. Rape is the sexual use of your body without your consent. Murder is the extinguishing of your life without your consent.
Emotional trauma is determined by your own reaction to things, it is by definition done with your consent. It can be controlled by no one else. I suppose if you deny the existence of free will you could argue otherwise, but I tend to ignore people that claim they don't have free will.
The problem is clearly NOT speech. The problem is "violence against vulnerable groups". Prosecute the people who initiate violence. Ignore the spiteful little morons that enjoy spouting of their hateful diatribes.
Prosecuting someone like Fred Phelps would only make him a martyr.
There were quite a few nazis tried for various war crimes and crimes against humanity. If Hitler hadn't punched his own ticket straight to hell, you can bet that the Nuremberg Trials would have done it for him.
Theft, rape, and murder are crimes that affect people beyond the criminal. The laws against these crimes don't involve any kind of prior restraint on the populace, intended to prevent the crimes from happening. You don't support the criminalization of hands, penises, or the infinite multitude of objects that could serve as murder weapons, do you?
If someone actually does you harm, by all means call them a criminal.
If the actions of someone hurt your feelings, gross you out, strike you as immoral, or irrationally frighten you: get over it, ignore them, and mind your own business.
Libel and slander, like yelling 'fire' in a crowded theater, are not crimes of speech. They are crimes because of the actual harm they cause (such as monetarily verifiable damage to a professional reputation or physical injuries caused by a panicked mob).
We already have laws for the things you are talking about, involving things like inciting violence.
How often have you heard about a case where someone caused actual harm to anyone, that went unprosecuted, that would have been a violation of your vision of a hate speech law?
Prohibition doesn't work for: Alcohol Drugs Guns Bad speech/thoughts
All attempts to enforce prohibition result in oppressive government, reduced civil liberties for all, and greater dissemination of the originally prohibited contraband.
Have you got some reason to think that such a thing would be more efficient than existing solar cells? Current organic semiconductor solar cells have pretty lousy efficiency (4-5%). Or are you thinking they would be so cheap to manufacture that it would more than compensate for the low efficiency?
Conventional helicopters counteract the torque of the main rotor and control their rotation (yaw) by varying the pitch of the tail rotor. The tail rotor is mechanically geared to the main rotor so that both rotors always maintain the same ratio of rotation speed.
There are a few radio-control helicopters that have a separate motor for the tail rotor and vary its speed for control, simply for the sake of mechanical simplicity.
If losing 1% of the data on a CD means the data is a total loss, doesn't that say to you that you should be using a file system and data formats with more redundancy and parity?
Of course for the ultimate in durable electronically readable storage you should be burning everything to PROMs.
i wouldn't say that we're running out of opportunities for innovation either. It's just that we've got most of the key innovation for dealing with the familiar issues and problems taken care of. We will be a while digesting what we've got before we figure out the next big problem to fix.
Ten years ago the internet was just coming into the public awareness, there was tons of infrastructure growth, and lots of issues that didn't have very clear cut solutions.
These days most of the growth has slowed, things have been tried and proven or cast aside, and we're transitioning to more of a steady state environment. Even where there is lots of growth we know how to handle it and growth has become routine too.
How do you figure you're getting windows for free? I guarantee that the vendor is paying Microsoft for the license (even if it's heavily discounted), and they're not going to just swallow that cost - it will get passed on to you.
The linked article at The Daily Californian barely touches on any of the stuff mentioned in the/. summary. Do we have to listen to the webcast to get any of the good stuff?
0 preignition and you can turn the boost way up on a tiny engine. It's actually more like 100% preignition in a diesel, but they're built to withstand it without grenading.
Slashdot Mirror
It depends on the size of the black hole. Small ones will have sharper gravitational gradients that will result in tidal forces that could inflict serious entropy on you, but a large enough black hole could have a surface gravity less than earth and much less significant tidal forces.
Considering that most people murdered in the 20th century were murdered by governments, I can say without hesitation that I would rather incite some mobs than empower a (potentially) violent state. There is also the fact that it is far easier for individuals to defend themselves from other violent individuals than from their own government.
I certainly wouldn't argue that all speech is equally benign.
I would point out that censorship and other curtailments of liberty are found far more often in the company of large scale acts of violence (like genocide) than freedom of speech is.
How about the colossal failure of the "war on drugs', and the crime rates in places like Washington D.C. that have near 100% bans on gun ownership?
Honestly, I think conspiracy laws are often bullshit too.
But under some circumstances they make sense. Just like if a murder is foiled, the would be murderer can be charged with attempted murder; conspiracy charges may be warranted if the alleged conspirators are, beyond a doubt, committed to perpetrating a crime.
Obviously we should try to prevent people from murdering others (preferably we should encourage people to avoid letting themselves be murdered), but saying that we could prevent murder by restricting people's right to free speech is just ignorant.
You can't erase hatred, intolerance, and bigotry by forcing it into the shadows; you can only combat it with enlightenment.
In reply to AC ^:
What a moronic argument. By your logic the only difference between being mugged and giving some cash to a homeless guy is emotional.
Theft is being deprived of you property without your consent. Rape is the sexual use of your body without your consent. Murder is the extinguishing of your life without your consent.
Emotional trauma is determined by your own reaction to things, it is by definition done with your consent. It can be controlled by no one else. I suppose if you deny the existence of free will you could argue otherwise, but I tend to ignore people that claim they don't have free will.
The problem is clearly NOT speech. The problem is "violence against vulnerable groups". Prosecute the people who initiate violence. Ignore the spiteful little morons that enjoy spouting of their hateful diatribes.
Prosecuting someone like Fred Phelps would only make him a martyr.
There were quite a few nazis tried for various war crimes and crimes against humanity. If Hitler hadn't punched his own ticket straight to hell, you can bet that the Nuremberg Trials would have done it for him.
Theft, rape, and murder are crimes that affect people beyond the criminal. The laws against these crimes don't involve any kind of prior restraint on the populace, intended to prevent the crimes from happening. You don't support the criminalization of hands, penises, or the infinite multitude of objects that could serve as murder weapons, do you?
If someone actually does you harm, by all means call them a criminal.
If the actions of someone hurt your feelings, gross you out, strike you as immoral, or irrationally frighten you: get over it, ignore them, and mind your own business.
Libel and slander, like yelling 'fire' in a crowded theater, are not crimes of speech. They are crimes because of the actual harm they cause (such as monetarily verifiable damage to a professional reputation or physical injuries caused by a panicked mob).
We already have laws for the things you are talking about, involving things like inciting violence.
How often have you heard about a case where someone caused actual harm to anyone, that went unprosecuted, that would have been a violation of your vision of a hate speech law?
Prohibition doesn't work for:
Alcohol
Drugs
Guns
Bad speech/thoughts
All attempts to enforce prohibition result in oppressive government, reduced civil liberties for all, and greater dissemination of the originally prohibited contraband.
Have you got some reason to think that such a thing would be more efficient than existing solar cells? Current organic semiconductor solar cells have pretty lousy efficiency (4-5%). Or are you thinking they would be so cheap to manufacture that it would more than compensate for the low efficiency?
Either way, I wouldn't hold my breath.
Conventional helicopters counteract the torque of the main rotor and control their rotation (yaw) by varying the pitch of the tail rotor. The tail rotor is mechanically geared to the main rotor so that both rotors always maintain the same ratio of rotation speed.
There are a few radio-control helicopters that have a separate motor for the tail rotor and vary its speed for control, simply for the sake of mechanical simplicity.
If losing 1% of the data on a CD means the data is a total loss, doesn't that say to you that you should be using a file system and data formats with more redundancy and parity?
Of course for the ultimate in durable electronically readable storage you should be burning everything to PROMs.
Would you care to show the math to back up that assertion?
i wouldn't say that we're running out of opportunities for innovation either. It's just that we've got most of the key innovation for dealing with the familiar issues and problems taken care of. We will be a while digesting what we've got before we figure out the next big problem to fix.
To summarize what I was trying to say above^
The frontier is becoming civilized.
Ten years ago the internet was just coming into the public awareness, there was tons of infrastructure growth, and lots of issues that didn't have very clear cut solutions.
These days most of the growth has slowed, things have been tried and proven or cast aside, and we're transitioning to more of a steady state environment. Even where there is lots of growth we know how to handle it and growth has become routine too.
The last few new Dells I've dealt with had a bare minimum of crap installed, Google Desktop was pretty much all there was.
How do you figure you're getting windows for free? I guarantee that the vendor is paying Microsoft for the license (even if it's heavily discounted), and they're not going to just swallow that cost - it will get passed on to you.
The linked article at The Daily Californian barely touches on any of the stuff mentioned in the /. summary. Do we have to listen to the webcast to get any of the good stuff?
I guess I'd have to stop reloading slashdot every 10 seconds.
Only if you're less than 6 inches tall.