Apparently it's called 'group marriage'. Wikipedia has a page on it here.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_marriage/. It seems that it has never become mainstream in any human society, happening mostly as either part of a cult or a communal society.
Better yet, don't invite people you don't know. It's that simple. If you don't know someone well enough to trust them not to walk off with your stuff, you shouldn't be inviting them into your house. I sopose you could hire a gaurd, or delegate security, or any number of any other things; the question is, do you really want to have to do that in your own house?
The problem with polygomy isn't really a problem with women. If you are raised in that society there is nothing about a polygomous relationship that is inherently negative or abusive. The real problem is the men.
Imagine if every family held to about the same ratio of 1 husband to 4 wives. You now have 3 men who will never be able to find a wife, never be able to start a family. Beleive it or not, evolution had kind of made men extremely averse to this situation. Men get desperate, they do stupid things, and not just hooking up with ugly women. They take inordinate risks to gain prestige, they debase themselve to gain acceptence of people higher on the social ladder, they gamble their life and their money in the hopes of 'earning' a wife.
There's even been talk of this being the cause of many suicide bombings. People to low in the heirarchy know they will never have children and life looses some of it's meaning; to the point where the promise of wives in the afterlife is strong enough that it drives you to kill yourself.
One of the major reasons that the IOC chose to allow China to host the games was in the hope that it would draw attention to China's human rights abuses. Ideally, China would address them before the game and everyone would be happy. Alternatively, for two weeks, the world will see a shadow of what China really is.
So far, we've seen one terrorist incident (before the games started and not widely reported), dozens of protesters arrested and deported, at least one Chineese citizen 'dissappeared' for his religious activities, as well as varying levels of cheating in the games themselves (TKD and womens gynastics being the most obvious).
The point is, that we are actually hearing about these abuses. There is a huge international media community in China right now, and we are still only hearing about a fraction of what is actually happening. Without the international media, we wouldn't be hearing any of it at all.
...is paved with the best of intentions. I believe that Bush believes everything he has done is for the right reasons, he just doesn't see that his 'solution' is worse than the problem. However, just because you take up the role of a tyrant by accident or to prevent some catastrophe doesn't make you any less of a tyrant.
Close, but there's a bit more to it than just being a 100% Oxygen environment. One of the things being tested was that the capsule would function properly experiencing the same outward pressure that it would experience in orbit. When the craft was in space, it would be pressurized at about 2-3 psi or pure Oxygen. To simulate that on the ground, the cabin was pressurized to 18 psi, 2 psi more than air pressure at see level.
In the aftermath, they realized just how stupid that was; at that pressure of pure O2, a bar of Aluminum would "burn like wood". Almost anything will burn, and many things will burn spontaneously. To make matters worse, almost every exposed surface of the module was covered in velcro for ease of use in zero-g. The problem is, the velcro was literally explosive at the Oxygen density used during the test.
Ok, lets just have a hypothetical here. Let's say that a police officer was driving by your home and looked in the window and say kiddy porn on the TV. He knocks on the door, you see him and quickly stash the kiddy porn in a nearly indestructible safe and hide the key.
If I'm not mistaken, the cop can call for backup, have the backup stay and watch you and the safe, go get a warrant, come back, and if you refuse to open the safe you are guilty of obstructing justice.
Why should an encrypted harddrive be any different? As far as I'm concerned, if the cops have a warrant, refusing to divulge the password is no different that refusing to let the cops into your house. The process of getting a warrant should be every bit as rigorous as any other warrant (well, at least any other warrant 7 years ago).
They should have to say what they are looking for, where they are looking, and why they have a reasonable suspicion that they will find it. If you don't trust the justice system that far, what difference does it make, they can already come search you, your car, and your house with this process, what makes a harddrive so significantly different?
Ok, how about confirming beyond any reasonable doubt that there are significant amounts of water ice just inches below the surface? Or the discovery that mars soil is very similar to some soils here on earth but also has some toxins that will need to be nutrilized if we ever decide to grow something there.
With the exception of major discoveries proven beyond any reasonable doubt, Scientists don't like to publish speculation, and until the papers are written and peer reviewed that's all they are.
I would be shocked if "within a generation" you couldn't do video games that are animated in real time to the live action level. You're forgetting that one generation ago (~1990), it was impossible to do even cartoon level animation (the first full length CG picture was Toy Story in 1996). Today, a dozen ametuers using free software can produce a short film with equal or better effects (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elephants_Dream/).
There's a very simple and accepted way to adjust quotes to accurately reflect what a person was saying. you simply put the adjusted/added words within brackets or an elipses within brackets if you are removing something. This is done by... well by basically every major news organization in the english speaking world. So now, I don't "prefer Slashdot editors mangle quotes", I prefer that they adjust them to make their meaning clear.
As an aside, 0 F being very very cold and 100 F being very very hot might work for some places. But I have walked to school when the wind chill was in the -50s F and the true temp was in the -20s F. I've also had the pleasure of experiencing 114 F (same location). So when the actual temperature range is 64% larger than the range the system was designed for, that makes things a little more difficult. Of course, Celsius has the same problem on the negative end, but I'm just saying.
I agree with you on everything but the smoking issue. Your right to smoke does not over rule my right to not breath in your smoke. And before you say "then you can leave", no, that's not the way the world works. I don't have to quit my job because you want to smoke.
All I can say is thank you, because of your comment I went to check out the New Rome, Ohio page on wikipedia and it is hilarious. This was a village so currupt that the state of Ohio actually disolved it's government against the will of the residents. The Ohio legislature even passed a law specifically so that they could do so. Truly epic levels of douch-baggery.
How would it be a just in case spot on the way to the moon? Any mission to the moon would have to perform a large burn to stop at that point, not to mention another burn to send the ship back to earth. Unless if there's a problem only with the life support systems and they know for a fact that the engines are in perfect working order they would probably be better off pulling an Apollo 13 and slingshotting around the moon which would require only one or two small burns.
Ok, here goes. Most of the international community thinks that Russia is either over reacting or taking advantage of Goergia's internal conflict with a Goergian province that declared independence. This may lead to repercussions, possibly including not renewing the exemption to the non-proliferation treaty. If the internation community chooses not to renew that exemption, based on what the summary says it sounds like Russia will not be able to launch Soyuz vehicles after the exemption expires.
Keep in mind that this is based on the summary and a quick look at what Wikipedia has to say about the conflict and it's repercussions. Therefore, I might be completely wrong so this should be taken with a big grain of salt.
"It doesn't matter if global warming is true or not. We all want cleaner air."
By that logic, "It doesn't matter if Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, Saddam was a cruel and ruthless dictator who oppressed and murdered his people." Something I hear right wingers say everytime someone brings up the WMD discussion.
Honestly, I agree with the sentiment. I think the recent improvements in alternative energy are a direct result of the global warming scare and will greatly benifit the entire world. At the same time, global warming being true or false is very important. We are making decisions that will affect the world in many different ways, both positive and negative. We have the right to be informed when making these decisions, and changing the reasons why the decisions were made after the fact is wrong.
I'm not saying global warming is wrong, but this kind of logic (revisionist rationalizing) destroys accountability. Quite frankly, if global warming turns out to be incorrect, I hope that it's advocates will have the decency to stand up and say "we were wrong, and we understand that our mistake has impacted countless lives" rather than "but... but... but... the air is cleaner people!".
Following the same idea, and borrowing your definition, a robot that could create another copy of itself would be considered alive in the 'environment' of the factory where it was built.
What about a robot that can break into a factory , reprogram all the machinery, eleminate/coerce the workforce and produce copies of itself? Oh, and the copies will be slightly different so that it's next to impossible to come up with effective counter measures.
In any event, as many people have said, there is no one single definition of 'alive'. Most definitions fail in one way or another. Many of them are so vague that fire meets all the criteria. Others place unreasonable constraints on life simply so that it agrees with preconcieved notions.
A no fuel mass vehicle is impossible for all practical purposes. Newton's third law: "Every action has an equal and opposite reaction". You can't accelerate a spaceship in one direction without accellerating something else in the other.
The only possible "exceptions" are an earth based laser propulsion (in which case you are infentesimably accelerating the earth in the opposite direction) or a ram scoop which could pick up fuel as it goes and accelerate that.
Ok, lets say the state adds a new department, maybe 100 people. How do they go about adding them "in the middle of the year" as you put it. Payroll software that doesn't let you add or edit salary entries isn't payroll software, you could do better with an Access Database and Word perfoming a mail merge to print the checks.
I'll give $3 to the first person who can explain to me why on Earth you need to edit the software to change people's salary (Ok, I probably won't give anyone money even if you do come up with a decent reason). Even if they had to individually change each entry, it just doesn't make sense; if you put 100 people (seems like a reasonable number to me) working full time on the project in 6 months you have about 100,000 work hours. So they're trying to say it takes a half hour to change one person's salary? I don't care how antequated the system is, that is unnacceptable.
Somewhere, the current program is storing the salary data in some kind of file. Hire a high school CS student to parse the file, edit it, and save it back. I'm willing to bet a competent programmer could find some solution to this problem within a week. This is just the state controller trying to stick up for his employees; unfortunatly, he's too much of a wuss to do it the legal way and has instead turned to blattant lies that most people are too uninformed to see through.
My local family video will resurface the disks with their professional grade JFJ for a few dollars. If you only have a dozen or so that need to be done that might be the cheapest, safest, and easiest way to get your disks back.
I think you've misunderstood what the hack is doing here. It isn't someone posting a picture which, when downloaded, infects your computer. This is you uploading a picture which infects the server the next time it is viewed. Basically, it looks like a gif when you upload it, but when the server goes to display the image next time it sees java code instead and runs it; theoretically allowing you to craft a java applet that can pull information off of their servers.
I say theoretically because there's still a quite a few barriers to get this to work, or at least there should be if they've set up their server environment at all correctly.
Does this organism have a soul? Is it subject to original sin?
More importantly, does this organism have the same rights as other human beings?
The sane amongst us would probably say "of course it does, it is a living, breathing, thinking human". Unfortunatly the sane aren't always in control. Living, breathing humans have been enslaved, tortured, and murdured throughout our history, often without consequences when one can simply claim "they aren't really human, they're black or jewish or a terrorist...".
Same here, updated with no problems and all the new features work as advertised. I also have Linux on a separate partition, so that at least is not causing the problem.
Slashdot Mirror
Apparently it's called 'group marriage'. Wikipedia has a page on it here.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_marriage/. It seems that it has never become mainstream in any human society, happening mostly as either part of a cult or a communal society.
Better yet, don't invite people you don't know. It's that simple. If you don't know someone well enough to trust them not to walk off with your stuff, you shouldn't be inviting them into your house. I sopose you could hire a gaurd, or delegate security, or any number of any other things; the question is, do you really want to have to do that in your own house?
The problem with polygomy isn't really a problem with women. If you are raised in that society there is nothing about a polygomous relationship that is inherently negative or abusive. The real problem is the men.
Imagine if every family held to about the same ratio of 1 husband to 4 wives. You now have 3 men who will never be able to find a wife, never be able to start a family. Beleive it or not, evolution had kind of made men extremely averse to this situation. Men get desperate, they do stupid things, and not just hooking up with ugly women. They take inordinate risks to gain prestige, they debase themselve to gain acceptence of people higher on the social ladder, they gamble their life and their money in the hopes of 'earning' a wife.
There's even been talk of this being the cause of many suicide bombings. People to low in the heirarchy know they will never have children and life looses some of it's meaning; to the point where the promise of wives in the afterlife is strong enough that it drives you to kill yourself.
One of the major reasons that the IOC chose to allow China to host the games was in the hope that it would draw attention to China's human rights abuses. Ideally, China would address them before the game and everyone would be happy. Alternatively, for two weeks, the world will see a shadow of what China really is.
So far, we've seen one terrorist incident (before the games started and not widely reported), dozens of protesters arrested and deported, at least one Chineese citizen 'dissappeared' for his religious activities, as well as varying levels of cheating in the games themselves (TKD and womens gynastics being the most obvious).
The point is, that we are actually hearing about these abuses. There is a huge international media community in China right now, and we are still only hearing about a fraction of what is actually happening. Without the international media, we wouldn't be hearing any of it at all.
...is paved with the best of intentions. I believe that Bush believes everything he has done is for the right reasons, he just doesn't see that his 'solution' is worse than the problem. However, just because you take up the role of a tyrant by accident or to prevent some catastrophe doesn't make you any less of a tyrant.
Ever read 'God Emporor of Dune'?
Close, but there's a bit more to it than just being a 100% Oxygen environment. One of the things being tested was that the capsule would function properly experiencing the same outward pressure that it would experience in orbit. When the craft was in space, it would be pressurized at about 2-3 psi or pure Oxygen. To simulate that on the ground, the cabin was pressurized to 18 psi, 2 psi more than air pressure at see level.
In the aftermath, they realized just how stupid that was; at that pressure of pure O2, a bar of Aluminum would "burn like wood". Almost anything will burn, and many things will burn spontaneously. To make matters worse, almost every exposed surface of the module was covered in velcro for ease of use in zero-g. The problem is, the velcro was literally explosive at the Oxygen density used during the test.
Ok, lets just have a hypothetical here. Let's say that a police officer was driving by your home and looked in the window and say kiddy porn on the TV. He knocks on the door, you see him and quickly stash the kiddy porn in a nearly indestructible safe and hide the key.
If I'm not mistaken, the cop can call for backup, have the backup stay and watch you and the safe, go get a warrant, come back, and if you refuse to open the safe you are guilty of obstructing justice.
Why should an encrypted harddrive be any different? As far as I'm concerned, if the cops have a warrant, refusing to divulge the password is no different that refusing to let the cops into your house. The process of getting a warrant should be every bit as rigorous as any other warrant (well, at least any other warrant 7 years ago).
They should have to say what they are looking for, where they are looking, and why they have a reasonable suspicion that they will find it. If you don't trust the justice system that far, what difference does it make, they can already come search you, your car, and your house with this process, what makes a harddrive so significantly different?
Seriously?
Ok, how about confirming beyond any reasonable doubt that there are significant amounts of water ice just inches below the surface? Or the discovery that mars soil is very similar to some soils here on earth but also has some toxins that will need to be nutrilized if we ever decide to grow something there.
With the exception of major discoveries proven beyond any reasonable doubt, Scientists don't like to publish speculation, and until the papers are written and peer reviewed that's all they are.
I would be shocked if "within a generation" you couldn't do video games that are animated in real time to the live action level. You're forgetting that one generation ago (~1990), it was impossible to do even cartoon level animation (the first full length CG picture was Toy Story in 1996). Today, a dozen ametuers using free software can produce a short film with equal or better effects (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elephants_Dream/).
There's a very simple and accepted way to adjust quotes to accurately reflect what a person was saying. you simply put the adjusted/added words within brackets or an elipses within brackets if you are removing something. This is done by... well by basically every major news organization in the english speaking world. So now, I don't "prefer Slashdot editors mangle quotes", I prefer that they adjust them to make their meaning clear.
As an aside, 0 F being very very cold and 100 F being very very hot might work for some places. But I have walked to school when the wind chill was in the -50s F and the true temp was in the -20s F. I've also had the pleasure of experiencing 114 F (same location). So when the actual temperature range is 64% larger than the range the system was designed for, that makes things a little more difficult. Of course, Celsius has the same problem on the negative end, but I'm just saying.
I agree with you on everything but the smoking issue. Your right to smoke does not over rule my right to not breath in your smoke. And before you say "then you can leave", no, that's not the way the world works. I don't have to quit my job because you want to smoke.
All I can say is thank you, because of your comment I went to check out the New Rome, Ohio page on wikipedia and it is hilarious. This was a village so currupt that the state of Ohio actually disolved it's government against the will of the residents. The Ohio legislature even passed a law specifically so that they could do so. Truly epic levels of douch-baggery.
Piece of cake, just come up with some science that needs to be done on the ISS that could theoretically be used to fight terror.
For instance, I hypothesize that bomb sniffing dogs can be more effectively trained is microgravity... I'll take my grant mony now, thank you.
How would it be a just in case spot on the way to the moon? Any mission to the moon would have to perform a large burn to stop at that point, not to mention another burn to send the ship back to earth. Unless if there's a problem only with the life support systems and they know for a fact that the engines are in perfect working order they would probably be better off pulling an Apollo 13 and slingshotting around the moon which would require only one or two small burns.
Ok, here goes. Most of the international community thinks that Russia is either over reacting or taking advantage of Goergia's internal conflict with a Goergian province that declared independence. This may lead to repercussions, possibly including not renewing the exemption to the non-proliferation treaty. If the internation community chooses not to renew that exemption, based on what the summary says it sounds like Russia will not be able to launch Soyuz vehicles after the exemption expires.
Keep in mind that this is based on the summary and a quick look at what Wikipedia has to say about the conflict and it's repercussions. Therefore, I might be completely wrong so this should be taken with a big grain of salt.
"It doesn't matter if global warming is true or not. We all want cleaner air."
By that logic, "It doesn't matter if Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, Saddam was a cruel and ruthless dictator who oppressed and murdered his people." Something I hear right wingers say everytime someone brings up the WMD discussion.
Honestly, I agree with the sentiment. I think the recent improvements in alternative energy are a direct result of the global warming scare and will greatly benifit the entire world. At the same time, global warming being true or false is very important. We are making decisions that will affect the world in many different ways, both positive and negative. We have the right to be informed when making these decisions, and changing the reasons why the decisions were made after the fact is wrong.
I'm not saying global warming is wrong, but this kind of logic (revisionist rationalizing) destroys accountability. Quite frankly, if global warming turns out to be incorrect, I hope that it's advocates will have the decency to stand up and say "we were wrong, and we understand that our mistake has impacted countless lives" rather than "but... but... but... the air is cleaner people!".
Following the same idea, and borrowing your definition, a robot that could create another copy of itself would be considered alive in the 'environment' of the factory where it was built.
What about a robot that can break into a factory , reprogram all the machinery, eleminate/coerce the workforce and produce copies of itself? Oh, and the copies will be slightly different so that it's next to impossible to come up with effective counter measures.
In any event, as many people have said, there is no one single definition of 'alive'. Most definitions fail in one way or another. Many of them are so vague that fire meets all the criteria. Others place unreasonable constraints on life simply so that it agrees with preconcieved notions.
A no fuel mass vehicle is impossible for all practical purposes. Newton's third law: "Every action has an equal and opposite reaction". You can't accelerate a spaceship in one direction without accellerating something else in the other.
The only possible "exceptions" are an earth based laser propulsion (in which case you are infentesimably accelerating the earth in the opposite direction) or a ram scoop which could pick up fuel as it goes and accelerate that.
Ok, lets say the state adds a new department, maybe 100 people. How do they go about adding them "in the middle of the year" as you put it. Payroll software that doesn't let you add or edit salary entries isn't payroll software, you could do better with an Access Database and Word perfoming a mail merge to print the checks.
I'll give $3 to the first person who can explain to me why on Earth you need to edit the software to change people's salary (Ok, I probably won't give anyone money even if you do come up with a decent reason). Even if they had to individually change each entry, it just doesn't make sense; if you put 100 people (seems like a reasonable number to me) working full time on the project in 6 months you have about 100,000 work hours. So they're trying to say it takes a half hour to change one person's salary? I don't care how antequated the system is, that is unnacceptable.
Somewhere, the current program is storing the salary data in some kind of file. Hire a high school CS student to parse the file, edit it, and save it back. I'm willing to bet a competent programmer could find some solution to this problem within a week. This is just the state controller trying to stick up for his employees; unfortunatly, he's too much of a wuss to do it the legal way and has instead turned to blattant lies that most people are too uninformed to see through.
My local family video will resurface the disks with their professional grade JFJ for a few dollars. If you only have a dozen or so that need to be done that might be the cheapest, safest, and easiest way to get your disks back.
I think you've misunderstood what the hack is doing here. It isn't someone posting a picture which, when downloaded, infects your computer. This is you uploading a picture which infects the server the next time it is viewed. Basically, it looks like a gif when you upload it, but when the server goes to display the image next time it sees java code instead and runs it; theoretically allowing you to craft a java applet that can pull information off of their servers.
I say theoretically because there's still a quite a few barriers to get this to work, or at least there should be if they've set up their server environment at all correctly.
Why exactly would the powers that be use NASA to launch orbital weapons when the Air Force already has a larger total launch capacity than NASA?
Does this organism have a soul? Is it subject to original sin?
More importantly, does this organism have the same rights as other human beings?
The sane amongst us would probably say "of course it does, it is a living, breathing, thinking human". Unfortunatly the sane aren't always in control. Living, breathing humans have been enslaved, tortured, and murdured throughout our history, often without consequences when one can simply claim "they aren't really human, they're black or jewish or a terrorist...".
Same here, updated with no problems and all the new features work as advertised. I also have Linux on a separate partition, so that at least is not causing the problem.