What is the probability of aliens conquering Earth? What is the probability of an all-out nuclear war, an incurable virus getting loose from some lab or other similar niceties happening? Why should then anyone in their right mind actually be concerned about the former?
Well, I didn't elect your government and I don't know if it's particularly qualified to do anything. I'm sure that it is the least qualified entity in the world to decide whether or not to release information which it would profit from covering up, though.
Yes, and Wikileaks is one way of adding a bit of balance.
Firstly, I'm not sure Wikileaks is bound by any US laws. Is it based in the US? Secondly, I don't believe these particular laws will ever be fixed but if that happens, it will happen because people will show again and again and again why they are bad. Which is what Wikileaks often does.
I think Wikileaks' judgement tends to be quite a bit better than that of most governments worldwide. So they get tons of sympathy on those arguments.
But is Wikileaks the entity that gets to decide what should and shouldn't be classified?
Which entity should decide this? Why would it be more qualified to do so than Wikileaks or anyone else?
Which is worse? Something not supposed to be classified NOT being leaked, or something SUPPOSED to be classified being leaked? I, and most people, would say the latter.
Well, tolerating the former leads directly to a system where people with the power to classify things are not accountable to anyone and where nobody knows what they do. Which, in turn, always leads to all sorts of utterly horrible things. The latter seems to happen quite often recently and what horrible things that have happened because of it? I don't know about most people but I quite definitely think the former is much much worse.
Here is a philosophical view of the whole thing. You can think of effectful computations as functions from a World to a World where a World contains everything that we consider mutable (including RAM, the disk, the internet and so on). For example, putStrLn takes a World and a string and produces a World which is exactly like the old one except that the string has been written to the standard output.
Of course, the two Worlds - the one in which the string hasn't been output yet and the one in which it has - can't coexist. That is, once you actually output the string you can't go back to the old World. This means that if you apply putStrLn (or any other "World transformer") to a World you can't reference that World any longer, only the one that putStrLn gives you as its result. The programming language has to ensure that Worlds are accessed linearly - if you have a World and apply a function to it, you get a new World and can't reference the old one. If this is guaranteed, then World transformers like putStrLn can be evaluated simply by modifying the one and only real world. This doesn't make the language impure because the program can't detect that the old World has changed - it can't reference it.
This kind of linearity can be implemented through linear types (which is what Clean does) or monads. In general, monads don't have anything to do with side effects. But there is one particular type of monad, called state transformer, which provides linear access to an encapsulated state. And there is one particular state transformer monad (called IO in Haskell) whose state is the World. The standard library defines primitive World functions (like putStrLn) based on this monad and programmers write their programs by composing these primitives in interesting ways. There is nothing deeply magic about it.
So, should we also protect teachers who simply ACKNOWLEDGE the fact that not everyone believes the Earth is round?
Of course. Do you think children shouldn't be told that there were and still are people who believe that the Earth isn't round? Is that somehow a secret which might spoil their poor little minds?
A teacher's job is not to tell the children what some people believe, his job is to teach what is known to be the most accurate theory in existence.
Oh, really. Just the one most accurate theory? No alternatives? No mention of widely-held beliefs and no explanation why they are incorrect? Ignorance is strength after all?
Of course ID should be taught in school. Children need to know what it is and why it's religion and not biology. Everything else is bad education.
That answer works fine for Mallory or for any other individual with too much time and money on his hands. If he decides to climb a mountain for no good reason, that decision basically affects only himself. It doesn't work for large groups of people, such as countries. If a country decides to climb a mountain for no good reason (metaphorically speaking) that decision affects a lot of people since huge resources are diverted from improving their lives to the pointless climbing. Yes, I realize that this attitude is quite boring. In my view, it's also the only responsible one. When you're talking about billions of dollars you just can't afford to be romantic.
And just to be an smartass: it's Browning, not Burns.
It's envelope-pushing for the sake of envelope-pushing, just like many other things in human history have been. What other things? Has there ever been a large-scale, government-sponsored effort with no short-term or even middle-term (compared to the lifetime of a country) benefits? Building stuff (e.g., the pyramids) comes to mind but then again, we can't really know what the perceived benefits of those were.
The reason bureaucrats hate space programs is because it's the one guaranteed area where you can dump as many billions as you want and you will get no measurable progress. Hmm, you'd think true bureaucrats would love something like that. Firstly, nobody is accountable if there really is no progress. Secondly, they can pocket some of it without anyone actually noticing.
This doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Firstly, doesn't the fact that those engineering challenges would have been overlooked if not for manned space travel mean that they aren't really that important for anything else? And secondly, doesn't the same logic apply to all sorts of other things like living on the bottom of the ocean, growing wheat in Antarctica and diving into volcanoes? Not that I'm advocating any of these, I just don't see what's so special about space travel in this respect.
I know this is going to be unpopular but... So what is the point of sending people to different planets? Is there one, if we leave aside the "new frontier" romantics (which I'm too old for) and the "save the mankind from an asteroid crash" stuff (which seems a bit silly, to be honest)? The US eventually stopped sending people to the moon because, among other things, they just didn't know what to do there. Would sending people really gain us much more over sending probes?
Slashdot Mirror
Don't worry, we'll get reality television with killer mutants soon enough.
Nah. Thought is a function of me. Attempts to apply the term to figments of my imagination always result in nonsense.
There is a theory that it is impossible to objectively define sentience.
Seeing that might change the thoughts slightly on the pieces of video that were seen...
Lemme see ... nope, it doesn't. Also, screenshot or it didn't happen.
Do they have a rule that for every kid you don't fire at you get to kill two grown-up guys or something? Three if it was a baby?
What is the probability of aliens conquering Earth? What is the probability of an all-out nuclear war, an incurable virus getting loose from some lab or other similar niceties happening? Why should then anyone in their right mind actually be concerned about the former?
Imagine a society in which the rich lived twice as long.
You don't have to imagine it. The rich live significantly longer than the poor today. In fact, that has always been the case.
Well, I didn't elect your government and I don't know if it's particularly qualified to do anything. I'm sure that it is the least qualified entity in the world to decide whether or not to release information which it would profit from covering up, though.
One reason might be that it's quite interesting to see how the governments react to such an announcement.
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/List_of_misquotations
air strike on some iranian military base? air strike on the twin towers?
see?
See what?
But is Wikileaks the entity that gets to decide what should and shouldn't be classified?
Which entity should decide this? Why would it be more qualified to do so than Wikileaks or anyone else?
Which is worse? Something not supposed to be classified NOT being leaked, or something SUPPOSED to be classified being leaked? I, and most people, would say the latter.
Well, tolerating the former leads directly to a system where people with the power to classify things are not accountable to anyone and where nobody knows what they do. Which, in turn, always leads to all sorts of utterly horrible things. The latter seems to happen quite often recently and what horrible things that have happened because of it? I don't know about most people but I quite definitely think the former is much much worse.
Indeed. I'm constantly amazed at how people carrying Arab publications act all surprised when their laptops get shot.
I stopped playing.
Here is a philosophical view of the whole thing. You can think of effectful computations as functions from a World to a World where a World contains everything that we consider mutable (including RAM, the disk, the internet and so on). For example, putStrLn takes a World and a string and produces a World which is exactly like the old one except that the string has been written to the standard output.
Of course, the two Worlds - the one in which the string hasn't been output yet and the one in which it has - can't coexist. That is, once you actually output the string you can't go back to the old World. This means that if you apply putStrLn (or any other "World transformer") to a World you can't reference that World any longer, only the one that putStrLn gives you as its result. The programming language has to ensure that Worlds are accessed linearly - if you have a World and apply a function to it, you get a new World and can't reference the old one. If this is guaranteed, then World transformers like putStrLn can be evaluated simply by modifying the one and only real world. This doesn't make the language impure because the program can't detect that the old World has changed - it can't reference it.
This kind of linearity can be implemented through linear types (which is what Clean does) or monads. In general, monads don't have anything to do with side effects. But there is one particular type of monad, called state transformer, which provides linear access to an encapsulated state. And there is one particular state transformer monad (called IO in Haskell) whose state is the World. The standard library defines primitive World functions (like putStrLn) based on this monad and programmers write their programs by composing these primitives in interesting ways. There is nothing deeply magic about it.
OTOH, it contains about 40% of Europe.
And the bucks usually go to the ones the law sides with. Resistance is futile!
You're missing the point, ID is not science and shouldn't be taught in a science class.
So who should explain to the kids why ID is not science? The science teacher or the religion teacher?
So, should we also protect teachers who simply ACKNOWLEDGE the fact that not everyone believes the Earth is round?
Of course. Do you think children shouldn't be told that there were and still are people who believe that the Earth isn't round? Is that somehow a secret which might spoil their poor little minds?
A teacher's job is not to tell the children what some people believe, his job is to teach what is known to be the most accurate theory in existence.
Oh, really. Just the one most accurate theory? No alternatives? No mention of widely-held beliefs and no explanation why they are incorrect? Ignorance is strength after all?
Of course ID should be taught in school. Children need to know what it is and why it's religion and not biology. Everything else is bad education.
That answer works fine for Mallory or for any other individual with too much time and money on his hands. If he decides to climb a mountain for no good reason, that decision basically affects only himself. It doesn't work for large groups of people, such as countries. If a country decides to climb a mountain for no good reason (metaphorically speaking) that decision affects a lot of people since huge resources are diverted from improving their lives to the pointless climbing. Yes, I realize that this attitude is quite boring. In my view, it's also the only responsible one. When you're talking about billions of dollars you just can't afford to be romantic.
And just to be an smartass: it's Browning, not Burns.
This doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Firstly, doesn't the fact that those engineering challenges would have been overlooked if not for manned space travel mean that they aren't really that important for anything else? And secondly, doesn't the same logic apply to all sorts of other things like living on the bottom of the ocean, growing wheat in Antarctica and diving into volcanoes? Not that I'm advocating any of these, I just don't see what's so special about space travel in this respect.
I know this is going to be unpopular but... So what is the point of sending people to different planets? Is there one, if we leave aside the "new frontier" romantics (which I'm too old for) and the "save the mankind from an asteroid crash" stuff (which seems a bit silly, to be honest)? The US eventually stopped sending people to the moon because, among other things, they just didn't know what to do there. Would sending people really gain us much more over sending probes?