Controlling what your kids have access to is not limiting free speech.
Controlling what my kids have access to is doing just that.
What part of "Congress shall make no law" are you having trouble with? Is there some hidden clause in the First Amendment that says "... unless it's for the chillllldrun"?
Look, we are never, never, ever going to "colonise" Mars. There's no reason to do it except SF fantasy wish fulfillment or too much time spent watching scientifically nonsensical films and books. IT'S NOT GOING TO HAPPEN. James van Allen was right. There's no reason to go there when we can do anything humans can do with robots for a thousandth of the cost and risk.
Don't neglect the power of capitalism. There are people who will pay good money, and lots of it, to live on an entirely different planet from people like yourself.
One of the major weaknesses of the capitalist model is that it is a reactive system, as opposed to pro-active.
Some of your points about the folly of confusing social problems with technological ones are spot-on, but this one is not. The proactive element in a capitalist system is the much-maligned futures market.
If indeed it's the Evil Speculators who are running up the price of oil to unreasonable levels, perhaps we should be thanking them for giving us advance warning of what's coming.
Except that he screwed over plenty of other people who weren't "ruthless capitalists", namely, 99% of those who's ever owned a computer during the past 20 years, thanks to their monopolistic practices towards hardware manufacturers who certainly didn't take the cost of Windows licenses from their profit margins.
And yet I somehow still ended up with a 3 GHz superscalar processor with two gigabytes of RAM, a half-terabyte of mass storage, and a 1600x1200 display for $1,000.
Can you honestly tell me that would've happened if the market had remained fractured into three dozen different *nix fiefdoms?
I think I'm missing something in your argument. Exactly what is eBay doing that your newspaper's classified-ads section hasn't been doing legally for the last 100 years?
Never buy anything with PayPal that you don't fund with your credit card. Then, when something like this happens, call your credit-card company and request a chargeback.
That will get PayPal's attention and your money refunded. PayPal doesn't understand any language that doesn't include the term "chargeback."
Holy geez. Look at their 10-year graph. How would you feel if you'd bought in at $669/share back in November of '00? That's the worst thing I've ever seen on Google Finance.
According to OCZ Technology Development Director Michael Schuette's article on the subject, the sensors are made of a plastic injected with highly conductive nanofibers, which the NIA hardware uses to read electrical potentials from the user's forehead.
BS factor = 0.79 (WTF is a "conductive nanofiber"? This is the sort of terminology you use when you're trying to pull the nonconductive wool fibers over someone's eyes.)
On the user's PC, the NIA control software converts electrical potentials from the headband into usable input. Schuette explains that the software separates the different frequencies in these potentials using proprietary algorithms not unlike fast Fourier transforms. Running these algorithms on a continuously streaming flow of data can apparently hog some "serious CPU cycles," although we didn't see the control application eat up much more than 10-15% of our test rig's Core 2 Duo E6400.
BS factor = 0.998 (FFT-like DSP algorithms taking 15% of a Core 2 duo... on signals with a bandwidth of maybe 20 Hz at most? That kind of CPU load is sufficient to decode an ATSC DTV stream in real time.)
Conclusion: this device is probably a load of quackery, relying on its other sensors to make the user think it's reading "brain waves."
And speaking of radio spectrum, anybody putting together a 100W or less VHF TV kit to roll out in Feb 2009?
That's an amusing idea. I could see the next wave of pirate TV taking the form of private "studio-to-transmitter links," where a simple, dirt-cheap transmitter is installed someplace in public where it can get electricity, like an office building roof or light pole. It would translate a lower-power 2.4 GHz signal down to the VHF or UHF TV band. When the FCC eventually tracks down the transmitter and puts it out of commission, they'll have no idea who owns it or controls it, and another one can be installed as soon as they leave.
Reverse "Win32" and "open source software" in your post, and it will get more accurate... You'll still need to throw things like.NET, and JDK, and POSIX in there to get an even more accurate picture, but it'll be an improvement.
Um, fail. I can still write code for 64-bit Vista that's binary compatible with NT 3.0.
All of the later acronymic bells and whistles were optional, and remain so.
Yes, definitely, but I don't have the background to address the implications of two beams steered to collide head-on with each other, vis-a-vis cosmic ray collisions with randomly-moving environmental particles.
The original "b...b...but they're not like cosmic ray collisions" point came from the Chicken Little crowd prior to RHIC's powerup. It may not even apply to LHC, for all I know.
I'm not defending the precautionary principle -- far from it, I'll hold your beer while you flip the switch. I'm just saying that the cosmic-ray model doesn't sound all that applicable at first blush.
Yeah, but those particles resulting from cosmic-ray collisions are travelling near c, and consequently won't linger near other particles. The probability of collisions seems much greater in a manmade particle accelerator with a fixed target.
I asked in an earlier thread, only half-joking, if the cosmic gamma-ray bursts we observe about once a day might not be instances of other civilizations building something like the LHC and turning it on. The question was promptly modded down to -1, Troll.
Seeing as how our last words as a species are either going to be "Hmm, that's weird..." or "Die, capitalist scum!", death by LHC mishap actually wouldn't be a bad end to things, IMHO. I would rather we all died trying to learn something, than trying to wipe each other out.
But apparently all further discourse on the subject is just so much trolling. Yay, Slashdot.
But you can explain them to a reasonably intelligent person in less than four pages. That's what the OP (and Richard Feynman, who first said it) meant.
Slashdot Mirror
Controlling what your kids have access to is not limiting free speech.
Controlling what my kids have access to is doing just that.
What part of "Congress shall make no law" are you having trouble with? Is there some hidden clause in the First Amendment that says "... unless it's for the chillllldrun"?
Look, we are never, never, ever going to "colonise" Mars. There's no reason to do it except SF fantasy wish fulfillment or too much time spent watching scientifically nonsensical films and books. IT'S NOT GOING TO HAPPEN. James van Allen was right. There's no reason to go there when we can do anything humans can do with robots for a thousandth of the cost and risk.
Don't neglect the power of capitalism. There are people who will pay good money, and lots of it, to live on an entirely different planet from people like yourself.
It makes me sooooo mad when people make claims of things they believe as true and don't even do research.
Yeah, doesn't it? I know what you mean.
In other news, apple.com.edgesuite.net is not a direct link to Apple.
He wanted to end the war on science.
Yeah, by defunding NASA. Pull the other finger, it's got bells on it.
Correct; the economics of the situation are what says it will be done.
Um, personality cults are not atheistic.
Try going to Pyongyang and telling people that Kim Jong Il isn't a living God. You'll come home in a box.
I dunno, man. Pretty much every point you covered is Wiki-able.
You have a source for those figures in your sig? They seem insanely high. I know damn well that one in twenty US workers isn't pulling down $189K.
One of the major weaknesses of the capitalist model is that it is a reactive system, as opposed to pro-active.
Some of your points about the folly of confusing social problems with technological ones are spot-on, but this one is not. The proactive element in a capitalist system is the much-maligned futures market.
If indeed it's the Evil Speculators who are running up the price of oil to unreasonable levels, perhaps we should be thanking them for giving us advance warning of what's coming.
Except that he screwed over plenty of other people who weren't "ruthless capitalists", namely, 99% of those who's ever owned a computer during the past 20 years, thanks to their monopolistic practices towards hardware manufacturers who certainly didn't take the cost of Windows licenses from their profit margins.
And yet I somehow still ended up with a 3 GHz superscalar processor with two gigabytes of RAM, a half-terabyte of mass storage, and a 1600x1200 display for $1,000.
Can you honestly tell me that would've happened if the market had remained fractured into three dozen different *nix fiefdoms?
No, because computers are much more likely to be involved in crimes, and hold evidence of said crimes.
I'm sorry, that reasoning is just... psychotic.
Who are you, exactly, and what are your qualifications and vested interests in this area?
I think I'm missing something in your argument. Exactly what is eBay doing that your newspaper's classified-ads section hasn't been doing legally for the last 100 years?
Never buy anything with PayPal that you don't fund with your credit card. Then, when something like this happens, call your credit-card company and request a chargeback.
That will get PayPal's attention and your money refunded. PayPal doesn't understand any language that doesn't include the term "chargeback."
This is true. But back in Ma Bell's day, if you wanted to get someone's goat, you called them a Communist. I was just kicking it old-school.
The breakup was wrong and politically motivated.
Translation: I'm a Communist who likes paying $2/minute for long distance
... and it is, roughly speaking, illegal as hell in many jurisdictions.
Holy geez. Look at their 10-year graph. How would you feel if you'd bought in at $669/share back in November of '00? That's the worst thing I've ever seen on Google Finance.
BS factor = 0.79 (WTF is a "conductive nanofiber"? This is the sort of terminology you use when you're trying to pull the nonconductive wool fibers over someone's eyes.)
BS factor = 0.998 (FFT-like DSP algorithms taking 15% of a Core 2 duo... on signals with a bandwidth of maybe 20 Hz at most? That kind of CPU load is sufficient to decode an ATSC DTV stream in real time.)
Conclusion: this device is probably a load of quackery, relying on its other sensors to make the user think it's reading "brain waves."
And speaking of radio spectrum, anybody putting together a 100W or less VHF TV kit to roll out in Feb 2009?
That's an amusing idea. I could see the next wave of pirate TV taking the form of private "studio-to-transmitter links," where a simple, dirt-cheap transmitter is installed someplace in public where it can get electricity, like an office building roof or light pole. It would translate a lower-power 2.4 GHz signal down to the VHF or UHF TV band. When the FCC eventually tracks down the transmitter and puts it out of commission, they'll have no idea who owns it or controls it, and another one can be installed as soon as they leave.
Paging ladyada.net...
You know who else existed? L. Ron Hubbard.
Reverse "Win32" and "open source software" in your post, and it will get more accurate... You'll still need to throw things like .NET, and JDK, and POSIX in there to get an even more accurate picture, but it'll be an improvement.
Um, fail. I can still write code for 64-bit Vista that's binary compatible with NT 3.0.
All of the later acronymic bells and whistles were optional, and remain so.
Yes, definitely, but I don't have the background to address the implications of two beams steered to collide head-on with each other, vis-a-vis cosmic ray collisions with randomly-moving environmental particles.
The original "b...b...but they're not like cosmic ray collisions" point came from the Chicken Little crowd prior to RHIC's powerup. It may not even apply to LHC, for all I know.
I'm not defending the precautionary principle -- far from it, I'll hold your beer while you flip the switch. I'm just saying that the cosmic-ray model doesn't sound all that applicable at first blush.
Yeah, but those particles resulting from cosmic-ray collisions are travelling near c, and consequently won't linger near other particles. The probability of collisions seems much greater in a manmade particle accelerator with a fixed target.
I asked in an earlier thread, only half-joking, if the cosmic gamma-ray bursts we observe about once a day might not be instances of other civilizations building something like the LHC and turning it on. The question was promptly modded down to -1, Troll.
Seeing as how our last words as a species are either going to be "Hmm, that's weird..." or "Die, capitalist scum!", death by LHC mishap actually wouldn't be a bad end to things, IMHO. I would rather we all died trying to learn something, than trying to wipe each other out.
But apparently all further discourse on the subject is just so much trolling. Yay, Slashdot.
But you can explain them to a reasonably intelligent person in less than four pages. That's what the OP (and Richard Feynman, who first said it) meant.