But Fast Track still allows Congress to reject the treaty, doesn't it? Presumably, they can even say "we're rejecting it, but if you make these changes, we'll approve it." Then it needs to be renegotiated accordingly.
Without Fast Track, Congress can apparently accept the treaty but change the terms - which doesn't make sense, because if you change the terms it isn't the same treaty any more. It would still need to be renegotiated, and presumably taken back to Congress unless the resulting document happens to be exactly the same as the one Congress came up with, which is unlikely unless the changes were trivial.
So what's the difference? (Serious question. Apart from perhaps wasting less time in Congress - and it isn't as if they don't seem to have plenty of it to spare - I see neither a disadvantage nor a benefit to Fast Track.)
I think the religion lobby is more likely to cause trouble than feminism. The latter has better sense. But either way, the consequences of failing to enforce such a rule are so very clear and present that I don't think anyone will be willing to give in.
Of course, there's a reasonable chance the longevity treatment(s) will be banned instead.
The worst case scenario is a war that the religious lobby win. But if they don't ban the longevity treatment, and probably even if they do, it won't be long before there's another war, and sooner or later they'll lose, or humanity will be wiped out, or our level of technology will drop to the point where the issue is moot. But I don't think my cautious optimism on this point is entirely unjustified.
Right now, we should be telling people not to reproduce excessively.
Given immortality, we need to tell people not to reproduce at all. Not the same thing.
And it can be enforced, at least in principle - there might be some cheating, but if immortality is popular there would presumably be few enough children to allow the parents of each to be identified. (It doesn't really matter if we get the wrong parents occasionally, just so long as the numbers balance.)
It's a popular enough premise in science fiction - Boat of a Million Years springs to mind, but also a great deal of Heinlein's work, and Larry Niven, etc., etc.
At first glance, at least, that sounds absurd. Zen Energy is advertising prices starting at $5,750, and that's New Zealand dollars - about US$4500 at current rates.
It isn't surprising that there's a difference, labour costs if nothing else, but four to five times seems excessive.
Is it coercion for the boss to threaten to terminate your employment if you fail to travel on Election Day, ostensibly for essential business purposes, to a location that just happens to be between 100 and 200 miles away from the polling place?
Early voting would be another option for people in this situation.
Apple specialize in hardware. Microsoft specialize in software. Is it really surprising that when you combine Microsoft's software with Apple's hardware you get something that performs well?
(My own experience with Mac hardware - as an IT professional in an education environment - is that it was better than the bulk of PC manufacturers, but not as good as the best. But that was years ago, and even then may have been biased by budgetary constraints.)
They have no legal obligation to respond. They do, however, have an ethical obligation to do so. Nor are they automatically excused of responsibility for the foreseeable consequences of their failure to do so.
I suppose you could consider the researcher advising the company of his discovery, and of the planned release date, to be a "threat", although it seems a bit of a stretch. But that would leave researchers with no alternative but to release the information publicly *without* warning the affected company first. Personally I think that would be undesirable.
Unless the warning comes with a demand for money, it certainly isn't extortion. Even in the broader, casual sense, an offer to negotiate the release date cannot reasonably be considered extortionate.
There's no *inherent* problem - the EU could (and, IMO, should) simply forbid licensing on a per-nation basis. So either you deal with a distributor that can cover all of the EU, or you give each of the distributors the rights for all of the EU and let them compete.
Whether this is likely to happen is another question.
(Ideally, international law would prohibit per-nation licensing worldwide, but that's even less likely.)
You know, it's possible to disclose that a vulnerability exists without disclosing how to exploit it. The letter from the lawyer also states that the firm is interested in discussing this further but was rebuffed by the "researcher".
No, they weren't. If an engineer from the company had made contact, the researcher would have been happy to discuss the technical details. Instead they sent a lawyer.
What is the point of discussing technical details with a lawyer?
Anyway I dunno about the "threat" - I read that letter from them that he published; I don't get any impression of threats, implicit or otherwise.
The fact that they got their lawyer rather than an engineer to contact him is in itself an implicit threat.
It wasn't a dreadfully threatening letter, no, but the mere fact that they called in their lawyer rather than getting one of their engineers to contact him is both bizarre and disturbing.
The lawyer claims to have wanted to discuss the technical details of the vulnerability. It doesn't seem likely that that would be a productive conversation.
The previous article claimed a figure of 700 *milli*newtons - from a Chinese experiment - and didn't bother to mention that the figures from the NASA experiments were many orders of magnitude lower.
I really think you're being overly optimistic in saying "it's clear [...] that the claims are correct".
It's still entirely possible that the results are due to systematic faults in the measurement apparatus. After all, we're talking about measuring something very small, under difficult conditions.
Yeah, that will have to happen eventually, if nobody manages to falsify the idea. But it's premature at present, IMO - the evidence isn't strong enough to justify the expenditure.
Same difference - particles and fields are the same thing in Quantum Field Theory. It isn't thought to be possible to use virtual particles that way - I'm not sure whether Dr. White is proposing a modification to QFT or is interpreting it differently, but either way, there are few if any professional physicists who believe his proposal is credible.
That doesn't prove that it's wrong, but it invites legitimate skepticism.
That doesn't make sense. Surely the government doesn't actually force them to offer prices to obscure destinations that are lower than the prices to common destinations? (Or, for that matter, to use airplanes that are four times larger than necessary?)
I can see why the final leg might be free of charge, but I don't see why they would have to charge less than nothing for it.
(If they really do need to do that, though, why not do it via rebates, so they can verify that you really did arrive at your nominal destination before giving you that part of the subsidy?)
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But Fast Track still allows Congress to reject the treaty, doesn't it? Presumably, they can even say "we're rejecting it, but if you make these changes, we'll approve it." Then it needs to be renegotiated accordingly.
Without Fast Track, Congress can apparently accept the treaty but change the terms - which doesn't make sense, because if you change the terms it isn't the same treaty any more. It would still need to be renegotiated, and presumably taken back to Congress unless the resulting document happens to be exactly the same as the one Congress came up with, which is unlikely unless the changes were trivial.
So what's the difference? (Serious question. Apart from perhaps wasting less time in Congress - and it isn't as if they don't seem to have plenty of it to spare - I see neither a disadvantage nor a benefit to Fast Track.)
I think the religion lobby is more likely to cause trouble than feminism. The latter has better sense. But either way, the consequences of failing to enforce such a rule are so very clear and present that I don't think anyone will be willing to give in.
Of course, there's a reasonable chance the longevity treatment(s) will be banned instead.
The worst case scenario is a war that the religious lobby win. But if they don't ban the longevity treatment, and probably even if they do, it won't be long before there's another war, and sooner or later they'll lose, or humanity will be wiped out, or our level of technology will drop to the point where the issue is moot. But I don't think my cautious optimism on this point is entirely unjustified.
Obviously. But that's a second-order effect, not something we'd need to take into consideration immediately.
Right now, we should be telling people not to reproduce excessively.
Given immortality, we need to tell people not to reproduce at all. Not the same thing.
And it can be enforced, at least in principle - there might be some cheating, but if immortality is popular there would presumably be few enough children to allow the parents of each to be identified. (It doesn't really matter if we get the wrong parents occasionally, just so long as the numbers balance.)
It's a popular enough premise in science fiction - Boat of a Million Years springs to mind, but also a great deal of Heinlein's work, and Larry Niven, etc., etc.
If it becomes necessary to tell people not to reproduce, the laws can be changed.
(More likely, though, it would be presented as a choice between being allowed to live indefinitely and being allowed to reproduce.)
At first glance, at least, that sounds absurd. Zen Energy is advertising prices starting at $5,750, and that's New Zealand dollars - about US$4500 at current rates.
It isn't surprising that there's a difference, labour costs if nothing else, but four to five times seems excessive.
Never mind, already answered further down the thread.
Is it coercion for the boss to threaten to terminate your employment if you fail to travel on Election Day, ostensibly for essential business purposes, to a location that just happens to be between 100 and 200 miles away from the polling place?
Early voting would be another option for people in this situation.
Why would you need to use a postal ballot just because you're out of town? You are talking about national elections, right?
Apple specialize in hardware. Microsoft specialize in software. Is it really surprising that when you combine Microsoft's software with Apple's hardware you get something that performs well?
(My own experience with Mac hardware - as an IT professional in an education environment - is that it was better than the bulk of PC manufacturers, but not as good as the best. But that was years ago, and even then may have been biased by budgetary constraints.)
It might be useful sometimes. I just hope it's optional.
They have no legal obligation to respond. They do, however, have an ethical obligation to do so. Nor are they automatically excused of responsibility for the foreseeable consequences of their failure to do so.
I suppose you could consider the researcher advising the company of his discovery, and of the planned release date, to be a "threat", although it seems a bit of a stretch. But that would leave researchers with no alternative but to release the information publicly *without* warning the affected company first. Personally I think that would be undesirable.
Unless the warning comes with a demand for money, it certainly isn't extortion. Even in the broader, casual sense, an offer to negotiate the release date cannot reasonably be considered extortionate.
Are there different region codes within the EU? At first glance, at least, it looks like code 2 covers all of Europe, including the UK.
There's no *inherent* problem - the EU could (and, IMO, should) simply forbid licensing on a per-nation basis. So either you deal with a distributor that can cover all of the EU, or you give each of the distributors the rights for all of the EU and let them compete.
Whether this is likely to happen is another question.
(Ideally, international law would prohibit per-nation licensing worldwide, but that's even less likely.)
If the lock depends on software, and does not provide any mechanism to update said software, that in itself is a serious design fault.
You know, it's possible to disclose that a vulnerability exists without disclosing how to exploit it. The letter from the lawyer also states that the firm is interested in discussing this further but was rebuffed by the "researcher".
No, they weren't. If an engineer from the company had made contact, the researcher would have been happy to discuss the technical details. Instead they sent a lawyer.
What is the point of discussing technical details with a lawyer?
Anyway I dunno about the "threat" - I read that letter from them that he published; I don't get any impression of threats, implicit or otherwise.
The fact that they got their lawyer rather than an engineer to contact him is in itself an implicit threat.
Getting one of their engineers to contact him would have been bizarre.
It's what most companies do. All the vaguely reputable ones, at any rate, even Microsoft and Apple.
It wasn't a dreadfully threatening letter, no, but the mere fact that they called in their lawyer rather than getting one of their engineers to contact him is both bizarre and disturbing.
The lawyer claims to have wanted to discuss the technical details of the vulnerability. It doesn't seem likely that that would be a productive conversation.
The previous article claimed a figure of 700 *milli*newtons - from a Chinese experiment - and didn't bother to mention that the figures from the NASA experiments were many orders of magnitude lower.
Not a good sign.
I really think you're being overly optimistic in saying "it's clear [...] that the claims are correct".
It's still entirely possible that the results are due to systematic faults in the measurement apparatus. After all, we're talking about measuring something very small, under difficult conditions.
"it is premature to declare that this device does anything" != "this is definitely false"
Yeah, that will have to happen eventually, if nobody manages to falsify the idea. But it's premature at present, IMO - the evidence isn't strong enough to justify the expenditure.
Same difference - particles and fields are the same thing in Quantum Field Theory. It isn't thought to be possible to use virtual particles that way - I'm not sure whether Dr. White is proposing a modification to QFT or is interpreting it differently, but either way, there are few if any professional physicists who believe his proposal is credible.
That doesn't prove that it's wrong, but it invites legitimate skepticism.
That doesn't make sense. Surely the government doesn't actually force them to offer prices to obscure destinations that are lower than the prices to common destinations? (Or, for that matter, to use airplanes that are four times larger than necessary?)
I can see why the final leg might be free of charge, but I don't see why they would have to charge less than nothing for it.
(If they really do need to do that, though, why not do it via rebates, so they can verify that you really did arrive at your nominal destination before giving you that part of the subsidy?)