I'm just wondering what makes that differentfrom any other company. In general who they sell your information to is a moving target. It might be one company today and another tomorrow so if you want to use Facebook you agree that anyone might be able to buy your information and use it however they can. What factors they use are also going to change depending on what they're trying to learn. I guess I don't understand why it matters who they sell it to or how they use it as long as you know they are going to sell it and they are going to use it. I know you're wanting more transparency but could you give me an example of a company that sells your information and tells you exactly who they are selling it to? I'm curious to see how they present it.
Actually, they don't. They don't tell anyone just what exactly will be done with their information, and just exactly who will get to see/copy it
They're selling it to advertisers and marketing firms. They're cross referencing it with everybody elses information to create 'may like/dislike' lists/ads and more complicated demographic sets. There could be other things but what exactly do you think they could be doing with it that would be different than any other company that gets your information?
While I applaud the effort to crack down on incompetent business like this... I have to ask... who got the money from the fine? The victims? Doubt it...
Generally they would get their money back through their credit card companies or banks. I don't have a problem with the money going into the government like most fines which are punitive in nature.
It's just more idealist bullshit to distract people from the very real problems the Western lifestyle is facing.
I don't see you offering any solutions. This problem is not just one of Western lifestyle. As the world becomes industrialized, mobile and modern it is more and more everyone's problem. It takes fuel to feed the world. It takes fuel to move goods. It takes fuel to everything everyone wants to do. It takes transportable fuel and there is very little alternatives to fossil right now so if you can think of something better you could be a very rich person. If you can only swear and berate the achievement of others then you are not offering anything.
If you're going to use the hydrogen just to convert it into electricity you might as well use a solar panel that generates current directly. You are going to loose a lot of energy when you move the hydrogen to a fuel cell and then to electricity.
From my understanding that's quite a bit. I don't think we're going to cover the planet in solar panels but still. As long as the energy required to make a panel/leaf/etc. is less than the energy produced over the lifetime of the panel/leaf there is a benefit. How much benefit and how it can be used may be a matter for debate but it shouldn't be dismissed out of hand.
But even if it were 100% efficient, it's not some magical free energy machine, and never can be.
Why? At 100% you would be getting nearly 100 watts out every square foot. A 150 square foot car port could capture 120kWh in 8 hours. An electric car can get get 100km for every 10-23kWh. Even with only 10% of that energy an efficient EV would get 100 km or 60 miles of 'free energy' each day. While this isn't a complete energy->transportation solution for everyone it would probably work for most of the earth's population. In a grid system those that drive less sell their extra watts and those that drive more buy them. Even if you drove 200 miles per day you'd get nearly 1/3 of those miles for 'free'.
While it's true that "nearly all the energy we use on this planet starts out as sunlight", a lot of that energy arrived at earth several millenia ago.
It's still arriving so why shouldn't we be able to use it. Now it may be that fossil fuels are accumulated over time but I doubt the process for turning solar energy into fossil fuels is/was very efficient.
In the long run, we're going to need to either use less energy (preferably by making things more efficient, not making do with fewer things)
Don't forget most of the planet is undeveloped so using less energy is a pretty tall order. No matter how efficient you make a refrigerator it will still use more energy than not having one. The same goes for the distribution of goods, resources and services that are required for societies to develop.
and/or get some near-unlimited fuel source, like fusion.
Like the sun? Not to be pedantic but it seems your dismissing solar as ever being a viable source of energy and at the same time proposing that one of the solutions is to create an energy supply like the sun. BTW I would like to see advances in fusion as well.
If this is cheaper and higher efficiency than existing solar cells, then great. Based on the article, it's only 5.5% efficient, so meh.
Except for the 'meh' I think this is the least 'biased' against solar as an energy source. I hesitate to say biased but I'll admit I'm biased towards all energy sources. I believe we as a species need more energy and we need a lot more. Efficiency is important but supply is more so.
I'm not saying solar is OMG Ponies! but it is an impressive source of energy and we tap such a tiny part of it. There is so much solar energy that if these are cheap then a 5.5% efficiency could be enough to make them useful. If anything I would argue that using solar to directly make hydrogen means you are probably going to take a 60-70% loss if you turn that hydrogen back into electricity or burn it. That's a pretty big hit on that 5.5% capture, so you probably won't want these on your car port:). However, if you specifically need hydrogen it may compare to taking a 'normal' solar panel and using electrolysis.
They learned that genius didn't require more neurons. They also learned that Einstein's brain had a lot of astrocytes and those could be involved in learning, memory and even genius. Not bad for a dead brain, imagine the difference in an fMRI.
So if someone is responsible, makes sacrifices, and saves, they are rewarded by having to subsidise those who didn't bother to plan ahead. If, on the other hand, they blow all their money on blackjack and hookers, their retirement is then subsidised by those who still have some money.
Sounds like a system that encourages you to take the trip to Vegas while you're young enough to appreciate it, as far as I can see...
A system that lets the elderly who have no money rot would certainly encourage people to save.
Also your math is wrong, because dialup maxes out at 53,300 bps (due to FCC restriction) which translates to 5.3
I think the actual math is right even if the initial number used did not represent your modem/conditions;). The FCC has power limits not data limits so it depends on the method used to achieve 56k. This power limit affects v.90 and x2 but not K56flex. Also, it goes to 5.3 (from 53.3kb/s) using 8-n-1(you have a start and a stop bit added to each byte) but the overhead for LAPM is more like 5% (variable ). Using LAPM would put the figure closer to 17.2 GB instead of 18.3 GB (OK my math wasn't complete).
I went with the most optimal theoretical case scenario, came up with 18.3 GB and assumed (I know I'm an ass but at least I didn't put you in Europe with 64k) ~15GB was a limit since theoretically you could get more and because in the context of comparing it to Verizon I read them both as artificial caps..
Of course none of this really matters since even when using a method that stays below the power threshold set by the FCC it's very difficult to get to 56k mainly due to line noise for various reasons. At one point the chip sets between the two modems mattered but I can't imagine that's as much of a problem anymore. Apparently I read your sig as 14GB instead of ~15 but either one as an ISP imposed limit obviously does not make sense . As a limit defined by your real use it makes much more sense to me.:).
When I worked in tech support (mid90s) I would hear other agents say 'I want you to take the modem out and try it in another slot. I'll wait... Hello, hello, are you there? I guess they hung up." When Windows 95 came out our wait times were no joke but no one ever complained about unplugging their own phone.
My post is more rambling nostalgia than anything else and of course YMMV
If that's regular 56k you can only download about 590 MB a day if you download at full speed 24 hours.
56,000 kb/s = 7 kB/s*3600*24=604,800 kB per day/1024=590.625 MB or 18.3 GB in a 31 day month. I'm not even sure what putting a limit of 14 GB/month is supposed to accomplish with dialup.
It sounds to me like they are trying to capture all of the direct sunlight but none of the ambient (ie diffuse and horizontal) light. Think of it this way, you can put an awning on a window and still see everything outside even though it completely blocks direct sunlight (during parts of the day). I wonder what the sun looks like through these windows.
To continue being off topic:) but certainly in the tradition of many/. threads I recently watched a Nova episode examining ape behavior.
One experiment with chimps involved two chimps in cages and bowls of treats. The subject chimp points to the bowl with the most treats and the experimenter gives that bowl to the second chimp and the bowl that was not pointed to (with less treats) to the subject. Repeatedly the subject chimp does not learn the 'game' and continues to point to the bowl with the most treats.
Next the researchers teach the chimp numbers and use bowls with numbers instead of treats. The chimp knows that the number represents the number of treats for that bowl. The subject chimp learns to point to the bowl with the smaller number thus giving that bowl to the secondary chimp and getting the bowl with more treats for themselves.
The researchers concluded that symbols allowed the chimp to separate instinct and emotion from decision making thus allowing the chimp to learn the 'game'.
Symbols play large part in what distinguishes human communication from the rest of the animal kingdom. Swearing comes from the same part of the brain as screaming. It may communicate an emotion but little else. Intelligence almost becomes defined by an ability to use symbols.
However, because swearing is rooted in our emotions and instincts I think it can have a place. Swearing is usually more acceptable around friends where emotions and instincts in general are more accepted. Literary works and art that appeal to our emotions and instincts might provide another place for it. Swearing may play a part in bonding. Could bonding play a part in the appearance that blue collar workers swear more than white collar workers?
With all of that said I agree that swearing has no place in the framework of a debate. In this context it is a burden on the mind for both the person that introduces it and the person that receives it.
Being rude doesn't matter from a standpoint of factual correctness, but a person can have the facts of their side and still come off looking like a raving lunatic when they write an entire paragraph where every third word is "cock".
Surely a limited data set but it seems to me that people who swear a lot when trying to present an argument often miss or lack a lot of information even though the information they do have may be correct. Swearing can be telling as to which part of the brain is being used and how frequently. It can also affect the person reading/hearing the word in the same region. From HowStuffWorks.
Language processing is a "higher" brain function and takes place in the cerebral cortex.
Emotion and instinct are "lower" brain functions and take place deep inside the brain.
Many studies suggest that the brain processes swearing in the lower regions, along with emotion and instinct. Scientists theorize that instead of processing a swearword as a series of phonemes, or units of sound that must be combined to form a word, the brain stores swear words as whole units [ref]. So, the brain doesn't need the left hemisphere's help to process them. Swearing specifically involves:
The limbic system, which also houses memory, emotion and basic behavior. The limbic system also seems to govern vocalizations in primates and other animals, and some researchers have interpreted some primate vocalizations as swearing.
The basal ganglia, which play a large role in impulse control and motor functions.
Just curious but since Windows XP was released to bridge the NT and Win/Dos lines and Windows 2k was marketed more towards business with Win ME being marketed towards consumers, why would he even upgrade through Win 2k. Shouldn't he have gone through 1.x, 2.x, 3.x, 9x/ME then XP. If he included Win 2k, why not NT 3.1, 3.5, 3.51, and 4.0? I understand that many people used Win 2k as a consumer OS but it wasn't really marketed that way and would explain why the NT based OS would have issues with a DOS game until MS improved it's DOS/VESA/SB/MEM emulation in CMD.exe for XP. If I am missing some simple fact forgive me I've killed a lot of brain cells since those days.
Both conservatives and progressives have good ideas. Both have bad ideas. Many times it's completely arbitrary and depends on what's important to you and what's important to society. I think politics are good or bad depending on the times, much like genes are good or bad depending on the environment. Spending as much on the military as the rest of the world combined seems extreme, but nobody every talks about cutting the military or addressing waste in defense. Social Security is a pyramid scheme that is unsustainable with a stabilizing/aging population. Neither side as any realistic solutions. The only decent solution I've heard to keep benefits steady and payment steady is to increase the population, but one side doesn't want anyone to have any more kids and the other doesn't want to allow immigration so we will just take it from younger generations by way of them paying in with little hope of ever getting anything back.
Anyone that thinks one side is 'better' than the other is less than objective. Both want to maintain wealth in the hands of the people that give to their campaigns. Whether it's those greedy rich people or those greedy unions. Both want to tell us the way we should live our lives. Whether it's one side telling me what I can eat, drink, and how much energy I can use or the other side telling me what I can smoke or who I can f**k, they are both for 'themselves' and against 'us'. I vote for people, not parties and to do otherwise is to drink the Kool-aid. It's just a choice between blueberry or cherry.
Amazingly enough, throughout history, regardless of the economic and social policies of any given society, humans as a whole have steadily progressed forward in technology, standards of living, health, rights and just about any other positive attribute you could name. It's as if the great minds that actually move society forward do so because of their great minds. Religion didn't stop mankind from figuring out the solar system or gravity or evolution and economics didn't stop the theory of relativity from being postulated.
American politics is a divide and conquer proposition. Aligning with either side of our black and white political spectrum just continues the decline of our country. Don't worry though, humans as a whole will continue to march forward it's only the name of the richest country that changes.
I think health care needed and will always need ways of being improved. However I agree with mangu that our choices are limited. We have hundreds of representatives but they are all two sides of the same coin. It's hard to vote for someone that is for all rights afforded in the first 10 Amendments. Do you vote for someone that protects the 4th and 5th Amendment or someone that protects the 2nd and 10th Amendments.? Finding any politician that talks about the 3rd Amendment is impossible!
In both of those cases the intent could be deemed criminal. Someone finding an old friend or family member would have a more benign intent and thus lawful action. The difference between manslaughter and homicide is intent. Intent plays a large role in our laws.
We do. Electricity brings us light. It brings us communication. It brings us clean water. It brings our crops water. It manufactures our goods. It feeds us. Cheaper and more are two huge factors when considering the pros and cons of energy production. No matter how efficiently we consume our power there is always a good reason to produce more. Demand for energy has no where to go but up. Supply is a daily struggle.
evil is technology moving at the pace of the maximum speed pockets can be filled
Technology, as it always has, increases exponentially. In linear terms you can pick pretty much any point in history and say at that point it was moving faster than it ever had. Maybe still evil in your view but nothing new. I think of it as human history/nature.
not held back by the time it takes for people to understand all impacts the technology will have, positive, negative, likely or unlikely
Humans just don't work that way. If we did, we would never have made any progress. This comment makes a great point about the consequences of our technology and those who have concerns about it. Technology is in our genes, it's what makes us human. Our demand for energy will only increase unless there is a drastic sudden drop in the earth's population. In the past resource shortages often led to war, famine and disease(nature's way of balancing things). Even then it was only temporary as human technology overcame and demand for resources quickly rebounded.
We need every source we can get. In 2007 Oil accounted for 35% of our energy needs using 31.5 billion barrels (1.3 trillion gallons about half of which is gasoline). 28% came from coal (7 billion short tons or 14 trillion pounds) 23% from natural gas or 108 trillion cubic feet. A little more than 6% for hydro-electric and a little less for nuclear. Geothermal, wind, solar and biomass together were less than 1%. In total producing around 500 quadrillion BTU.
I think as a species we are holding ourselves back when we limit our ability to produce the energy we need. We are also letting the billions on the fringe risk famine, war and disease when we do not produce energy as cheaply as we can. There is risk with everything and we should ensure we learn from our mistakes but we should not be afraid to make them. We should hold people accountable when there is negligence and when known precautions are not taken (I'm looking at you BP). Considering our options the risk to benefit ratio of nuclear makes it a necessary part of our energy resources.
We should not waste energy. We should build more insulated buildings. We should improve the efficiency of our transportation/distribution infrastructure. We should also be able to feed and shelter all of us. And personally I think we should go out into space. We need as much energy as we can get and we need to use it to advance ourselves.
Just because you have "freedom of speech" does not automatically imply that there will be consequences for saying such things
Right, and those consequences are meant to prevent such speech. If the consequences are not meant to prevent hate speech, breaches of national security, inciting a riot, etc. then what is the point of them.
If the judge had said the Twitter accounts were not protected by the First Amendment because the posts in question created a breach in national security or offered evidence related to a violation of national security interests, it would be valid. To say that the post are not protected by the First Amendment merely because they were already public is a completely different matter. One I find very dangerous to the meaning of the First Amendment. People in China can post anti-government material on the internet. That doesn't mean there aren't consequences and it doesn't mean they have free speech.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm just wondering what makes that differentfrom any other company. In general who they sell your information to is a moving target. It might be one company today and another tomorrow so if you want to use Facebook you agree that anyone might be able to buy your information and use it however they can. What factors they use are also going to change depending on what they're trying to learn. I guess I don't understand why it matters who they sell it to or how they use it as long as you know they are going to sell it and they are going to use it. I know you're wanting more transparency but could you give me an example of a company that sells your information and tells you exactly who they are selling it to? I'm curious to see how they present it.
Actually, they don't. They don't tell anyone just what exactly will be done with their information, and just exactly who will get to see/copy it
They're selling it to advertisers and marketing firms. They're cross referencing it with everybody elses information to create 'may like/dislike' lists/ads and more complicated demographic sets. There could be other things but what exactly do you think they could be doing with it that would be different than any other company that gets your information?
Google is barred from misrepresenting privacy or confidentiality of the user information it collects,
So does that mean it's normally ok for companies to misrepresent privacy or confidentiality of the user information they collects.
While I applaud the effort to crack down on incompetent business like this... I have to ask... who got the money from the fine? The victims? Doubt it...
Generally they would get their money back through their credit card companies or banks. I don't have a problem with the money going into the government like most fines which are punitive in nature.
It's just more idealist bullshit to distract people from the very real problems the Western lifestyle is facing.
I don't see you offering any solutions. This problem is not just one of Western lifestyle. As the world becomes industrialized, mobile and modern it is more and more everyone's problem. It takes fuel to feed the world. It takes fuel to move goods. It takes fuel to everything everyone wants to do. It takes transportable fuel and there is very little alternatives to fossil right now so if you can think of something better you could be a very rich person. If you can only swear and berate the achievement of others then you are not offering anything.
If you're going to use the hydrogen just to convert it into electricity you might as well use a solar panel that generates current directly. You are going to loose a lot of energy when you move the hydrogen to a fuel cell and then to electricity.
There's only so much insolation to harvest.
From my understanding that's quite a bit. I don't think we're going to cover the planet in solar panels but still. As long as the energy required to make a panel/leaf/etc. is less than the energy produced over the lifetime of the panel/leaf there is a benefit. How much benefit and how it can be used may be a matter for debate but it shouldn't be dismissed out of hand.
But even if it were 100% efficient, it's not some magical free energy machine, and never can be.
Why? At 100% you would be getting nearly 100 watts out every square foot. A 150 square foot car port could capture 120kWh in 8 hours. An electric car can get get 100km for every 10-23kWh. Even with only 10% of that energy an efficient EV would get 100 km or 60 miles of 'free energy' each day. While this isn't a complete energy->transportation solution for everyone it would probably work for most of the earth's population. In a grid system those that drive less sell their extra watts and those that drive more buy them. Even if you drove 200 miles per day you'd get nearly 1/3 of those miles for 'free'.
While it's true that "nearly all the energy we use on this planet starts out as sunlight", a lot of that energy arrived at earth several millenia ago.
It's still arriving so why shouldn't we be able to use it. Now it may be that fossil fuels are accumulated over time but I doubt the process for turning solar energy into fossil fuels is/was very efficient.
In the long run, we're going to need to either use less energy (preferably by making things more efficient, not making do with fewer things)
Don't forget most of the planet is undeveloped so using less energy is a pretty tall order. No matter how efficient you make a refrigerator it will still use more energy than not having one. The same goes for the distribution of goods, resources and services that are required for societies to develop.
and/or get some near-unlimited fuel source, like fusion.
Like the sun? Not to be pedantic but it seems your dismissing solar as ever being a viable source of energy and at the same time proposing that one of the solutions is to create an energy supply like the sun. BTW I would like to see advances in fusion as well.
If this is cheaper and higher efficiency than existing solar cells, then great. Based on the article, it's only 5.5% efficient, so meh.
Except for the 'meh' I think this is the least 'biased' against solar as an energy source. I hesitate to say biased but I'll admit I'm biased towards all energy sources. I believe we as a species need more energy and we need a lot more. Efficiency is important but supply is more so.
:). However, if you specifically need hydrogen it may compare to taking a 'normal' solar panel and using electrolysis.
I'm not saying solar is OMG Ponies! but it is an impressive source of energy and we tap such a tiny part of it. There is so much solar energy that if these are cheap then a 5.5% efficiency could be enough to make them useful. If anything I would argue that using solar to directly make hydrogen means you are probably going to take a 60-70% loss if you turn that hydrogen back into electricity or burn it. That's a pretty big hit on that 5.5% capture, so you probably won't want these on your car port
They learned that genius didn't require more neurons. They also learned that Einstein's brain had a lot of astrocytes and those could be involved in learning, memory and even genius. Not bad for a dead brain, imagine the difference in an fMRI.
So if someone is responsible, makes sacrifices, and saves, they are rewarded by having to subsidise those who didn't bother to plan ahead. If, on the other hand, they blow all their money on blackjack and hookers, their retirement is then subsidised by those who still have some money.
Sounds like a system that encourages you to take the trip to Vegas while you're young enough to appreciate it, as far as I can see...
A system that lets the elderly who have no money rot would certainly encourage people to save.
My grandfather complains about everything.
It's like your car died but you are in denial and still behind the wheel pretending you are driving.
Also your math is wrong, because dialup maxes out at 53,300 bps (due to FCC restriction) which translates to 5.3
I think the actual math is right even if the initial number used did not represent your modem/conditions ;). The FCC has power limits not data limits so it depends on the method used to achieve 56k. This power limit affects v.90 and x2 but not K56flex. Also, it goes to 5.3 (from 53.3kb/s) using 8-n-1(you have a start and a stop bit added to each byte) but the overhead for LAPM is more like 5% (variable ). Using LAPM would put the figure closer to 17.2 GB instead of 18.3 GB (OK my math wasn't complete).
.
:).
I went with the most optimal theoretical case scenario, came up with 18.3 GB and assumed (I know I'm an ass but at least I didn't put you in Europe with 64k) ~15GB was a limit since theoretically you could get more and because in the context of comparing it to Verizon I read them both as artificial caps.
Of course none of this really matters since even when using a method that stays below the power threshold set by the FCC it's very difficult to get to 56k mainly due to line noise for various reasons. At one point the chip sets between the two modems mattered but I can't imagine that's as much of a problem anymore. Apparently I read your sig as 14GB instead of ~15 but either one as an ISP imposed limit obviously does not make sense . As a limit defined by your real use it makes much more sense to me.
When I worked in tech support (mid90s) I would hear other agents say 'I want you to take the modem out and try it in another slot. I'll wait... Hello, hello, are you there? I guess they hung up." When Windows 95 came out our wait times were no joke but no one ever complained about unplugging their own phone.
My post is more rambling nostalgia than anything else and of course YMMV
$7 dialup provides 14GB/month
If that's regular 56k you can only download about 590 MB a day if you download at full speed 24 hours.
56,000 kb/s = 7 kB/s*3600*24=604,800 kB per day/1024=590.625 MB or 18.3 GB in a 31 day month. I'm not even sure what putting a limit of 14 GB/month is supposed to accomplish with dialup.
I'm eternally optimistic that our fine congressfolk know better.
There's only one question they have to consider. Will my constituents pay more for electricity if I shutdown there power plant? Fiss, baby. fiss.
Was that just a 9-11 joke?
If it was It was the worst one I've heard.
It sounds to me like they are trying to capture all of the direct sunlight but none of the ambient (ie diffuse and horizontal) light. Think of it this way, you can put an awning on a window and still see everything outside even though it completely blocks direct sunlight (during parts of the day). I wonder what the sun looks like through these windows.
To continue being off topic :) but certainly in the tradition of many /. threads I recently watched a Nova episode examining ape behavior.
One experiment with chimps involved two chimps in cages and bowls of treats. The subject chimp points to the bowl with the most treats and the experimenter gives that bowl to the second chimp and the bowl that was not pointed to (with less treats) to the subject. Repeatedly the subject chimp does not learn the 'game' and continues to point to the bowl with the most treats.
Next the researchers teach the chimp numbers and use bowls with numbers instead of treats. The chimp knows that the number represents the number of treats for that bowl. The subject chimp learns to point to the bowl with the smaller number thus giving that bowl to the secondary chimp and getting the bowl with more treats for themselves.
The researchers concluded that symbols allowed the chimp to separate instinct and emotion from decision making thus allowing the chimp to learn the 'game'.
Symbols play large part in what distinguishes human communication from the rest of the animal kingdom. Swearing comes from the same part of the brain as screaming. It may communicate an emotion but little else. Intelligence almost becomes defined by an ability to use symbols.
However, because swearing is rooted in our emotions and instincts I think it can have a place. Swearing is usually more acceptable around friends where emotions and instincts in general are more accepted. Literary works and art that appeal to our emotions and instincts might provide another place for it. Swearing may play a part in bonding. Could bonding play a part in the appearance that blue collar workers swear more than white collar workers?
With all of that said I agree that swearing has no place in the framework of a debate. In this context it is a burden on the mind for both the person that introduces it and the person that receives it.
Being rude doesn't matter from a standpoint of factual correctness, but a person can have the facts of their side and still come off looking like a raving lunatic when they write an entire paragraph where every third word is "cock".
Surely a limited data set but it seems to me that people who swear a lot when trying to present an argument often miss or lack a lot of information even though the information they do have may be correct. Swearing can be telling as to which part of the brain is being used and how frequently. It can also affect the person reading/hearing the word in the same region. From HowStuffWorks.
Language processing is a "higher" brain function and takes place in the cerebral cortex.
Emotion and instinct are "lower" brain functions and take place deep inside the brain.
Many studies suggest that the brain processes swearing in the lower regions, along with emotion and instinct. Scientists theorize that instead of processing a swearword as a series of phonemes, or units of sound that must be combined to form a word, the brain stores swear words as whole units [ref]. So, the brain doesn't need the left hemisphere's help to process them. Swearing specifically involves:
The limbic system, which also houses memory, emotion and basic behavior. The limbic system also seems to govern vocalizations in primates and other animals, and some researchers have interpreted some primate vocalizations as swearing.
The basal ganglia, which play a large role in impulse control and motor functions.
Just curious but since Windows XP was released to bridge the NT and Win/Dos lines and Windows 2k was marketed more towards business with Win ME being marketed towards consumers, why would he even upgrade through Win 2k. Shouldn't he have gone through 1.x, 2.x, 3.x, 9x/ME then XP. If he included Win 2k, why not NT 3.1, 3.5, 3.51, and 4.0? I understand that many people used Win 2k as a consumer OS but it wasn't really marketed that way and would explain why the NT based OS would have issues with a DOS game until MS improved it's DOS/VESA/SB/MEM emulation in CMD.exe for XP. If I am missing some simple fact forgive me I've killed a lot of brain cells since those days.
Both conservatives and progressives have good ideas. Both have bad ideas. Many times it's completely arbitrary and depends on what's important to you and what's important to society. I think politics are good or bad depending on the times, much like genes are good or bad depending on the environment. Spending as much on the military as the rest of the world combined seems extreme, but nobody every talks about cutting the military or addressing waste in defense. Social Security is a pyramid scheme that is unsustainable with a stabilizing/aging population. Neither side as any realistic solutions. The only decent solution I've heard to keep benefits steady and payment steady is to increase the population, but one side doesn't want anyone to have any more kids and the other doesn't want to allow immigration so we will just take it from younger generations by way of them paying in with little hope of ever getting anything back.
Anyone that thinks one side is 'better' than the other is less than objective. Both want to maintain wealth in the hands of the people that give to their campaigns. Whether it's those greedy rich people or those greedy unions. Both want to tell us the way we should live our lives. Whether it's one side telling me what I can eat, drink, and how much energy I can use or the other side telling me what I can smoke or who I can f**k, they are both for 'themselves' and against 'us'. I vote for people, not parties and to do otherwise is to drink the Kool-aid. It's just a choice between blueberry or cherry.
Amazingly enough, throughout history, regardless of the economic and social policies of any given society, humans as a whole have steadily progressed forward in technology, standards of living, health, rights and just about any other positive attribute you could name. It's as if the great minds that actually move society forward do so because of their great minds. Religion didn't stop mankind from figuring out the solar system or gravity or evolution and economics didn't stop the theory of relativity from being postulated.
American politics is a divide and conquer proposition. Aligning with either side of our black and white political spectrum just continues the decline of our country. Don't worry though, humans as a whole will continue to march forward it's only the name of the richest country that changes.
I think health care needed and will always need ways of being improved. However I agree with mangu that our choices are limited. We have hundreds of representatives but they are all two sides of the same coin. It's hard to vote for someone that is for all rights afforded in the first 10 Amendments. Do you vote for someone that protects the 4th and 5th Amendment or someone that protects the 2nd and 10th Amendments.? Finding any politician that talks about the 3rd Amendment is impossible!
In both of those cases the intent could be deemed criminal. Someone finding an old friend or family member would have a more benign intent and thus lawful action. The difference between manslaughter and homicide is intent. Intent plays a large role in our laws.
we want cheap electricity now
We do. Electricity brings us light. It brings us communication. It brings us clean water. It brings our crops water. It manufactures our goods. It feeds us. Cheaper and more are two huge factors when considering the pros and cons of energy production. No matter how efficiently we consume our power there is always a good reason to produce more. Demand for energy has no where to go but up. Supply is a daily struggle.
evil is technology moving at the pace of the maximum speed pockets can be filled
Technology, as it always has, increases exponentially. In linear terms you can pick pretty much any point in history and say at that point it was moving faster than it ever had. Maybe still evil in your view but nothing new. I think of it as human history/nature.
not held back by the time it takes for people to understand all impacts the technology will have, positive, negative, likely or unlikely
Humans just don't work that way. If we did, we would never have made any progress. This comment makes a great point about the consequences of our technology and those who have concerns about it. Technology is in our genes, it's what makes us human. Our demand for energy will only increase unless there is a drastic sudden drop in the earth's population. In the past resource shortages often led to war, famine and disease(nature's way of balancing things). Even then it was only temporary as human technology overcame and demand for resources quickly rebounded.
We need every source we can get. In 2007 Oil accounted for 35% of our energy needs using 31.5 billion barrels (1.3 trillion gallons about half of which is gasoline). 28% came from coal (7 billion short tons or 14 trillion pounds) 23% from natural gas or 108 trillion cubic feet. A little more than 6% for hydro-electric and a little less for nuclear. Geothermal, wind, solar and biomass together were less than 1%. In total producing around 500 quadrillion BTU.
I think as a species we are holding ourselves back when we limit our ability to produce the energy we need. We are also letting the billions on the fringe risk famine, war and disease when we do not produce energy as cheaply as we can. There is risk with everything and we should ensure we learn from our mistakes but we should not be afraid to make them. We should hold people accountable when there is negligence and when known precautions are not taken (I'm looking at you BP). Considering our options the risk to benefit ratio of nuclear makes it a necessary part of our energy resources.
We should not waste energy. We should build more insulated buildings. We should improve the efficiency of our transportation/distribution infrastructure. We should also be able to feed and shelter all of us. And personally I think we should go out into space. We need as much energy as we can get and we need to use it to advance ourselves.
Just because you have "freedom of speech" does not automatically imply that there will be consequences for saying such things
Right, and those consequences are meant to prevent such speech. If the consequences are not meant to prevent hate speech, breaches of national security, inciting a riot, etc. then what is the point of them.
If the judge had said the Twitter accounts were not protected by the First Amendment because the posts in question created a breach in national security or offered evidence related to a violation of national security interests, it would be valid. To say that the post are not protected by the First Amendment merely because they were already public is a completely different matter. One I find very dangerous to the meaning of the First Amendment. People in China can post anti-government material on the internet. That doesn't mean there aren't consequences and it doesn't mean they have free speech.
I hope you were just being sarcastic but don't consequences for speech act to prevent it. Is there any other reason for consequences?