Not true. KE = 1/2 * M * V * V. Therefore, if an object was 1000 times heavier, it would have the same amount of energy if it was going sqrt(1000) times as fast.
Conversely, if an object is going 1000 times as fast, it has 1,000,000 times as much energy (== the amount of energy required to get it to go that fast). Hence the use of very light things in particle acceperators.
Your equation linking the resultant force is also wrong. The force applied depends on the mass times the acceleration. The acceleration (or deceleration in this case) depends on how quickly the object slows down (larger peak force if it hist concrete and stops instantly vs hits foam and stops over a longer time). If you're interested in the damage that the object will do when it hits something, you've also got to consider the suurface area of the object that will hit the target during impact. This will determine the pressure applied to the target by the impact, and will tell you whether the object will bounce or penetrate the target. This again depends somewhat on the mass of the object:)
I disagree with this. If you increase the chances of nuts encountering citizens with guns, then you get nuts who will hunt in packs under large amounts of stress, and who will probably adopt a shoot-first-and-ask-questions-later policy towards people who stand up to them. You also get a police force that knows that the nuts have guns and have this policy, so they then adopt a shoot-if-anything-gets-pointed-near-me policy. Hence, you get a lot of dead people, nuts and others.
Not having guns doesn't mean you don't have nuts, nor does it mean that you won't have nuts with guns. But it does lower the tension levels a lot, and will make you a lot less likely to get shot. Think about it, which would you rather, to be robbed, or to get into a gun fight with a gang of nuts and probably get shot?
No - not at all, as there would be no criticism in that article, merely a point of view. On the other hand, if the Christian magazine wrote an article claiming that "some pro-abortion group were a bunch of smelly weenies", or similar, then they have "criticised" the group, and the group is entitied to respond.
The law doesn't force any magazine to host a debate, merely that if they are critical of someone, then that person has the chance to defend themselves.
For the record, the BBC is not funded by the UK Government. It's funded by a licensing fee, which you are legally required to pay if you own a TV. That money is paid to, and collected by the BBC. The government are not involved at any stage (other than making the law in the first place).
It's not the total independence of a commercial station, but it does offer a safeguard against government control. As an example, there's always an outcry over here whenever anyone suggests fining the BBC, as that would be considered another tax by the government.
As someone who had never read any of Tolkien's works until about 6 weeks ago, and who is an adult (22) I feel qualified to reply to this.
I took "The Lord of the Rings" on holiday with me. I read it in 7 days. It was *so* gripping that I could not put it down - and I spent until 6am on many of those nights fighting back tiredness to read "just one more chapter"
I'm not much of a person for fiction - whilst I read avidly, you're more likely to catch me reading books on physics, programming, system administration, and similar. (The year before I took "Programming Perl" on holiday with me:) So this was the first work of fiction I'd read in about 18 months.
I had almost forgotten how much fun Science Fiction was. And the skill with which he conveyed the sense of Fear when Minas Timor (if I remember the name correctly - apologies if I don't) was being attacked was very effective.
A few months ago, I might almost have agreed with you - and would have dismissed fiction altogether. I'm very glad I didn't. Re-kindling my imagination, my desire to explore, and my love of an adventure is something I'm very glad I did. I'm now egerly waiting my next break:)
And I am very loathe to allow "The Lord of the Rings" to be dismissed as "Mediocre". A book that gave me so much pleasure will surely do so to many others - and I heartily recommend it to everyone
Re:Not only the net. THe article mentions CPRM als
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I couldn't agree with you more.
It totally saddens me that we have invented a utopia - a place where information is free - and we are so obsessed with money and power that we have to cripple it. And for what? So that the people who are "at the top" in monetary or political terms can remain there.
"Man is born free - and yet everywhere he is in chains." This is always because of scarcity (naural or artificial), greed, and desire for power. We have a chance to set ourselves free, and we're sitting back watching as laws like the DMCA get passed
Not wishing to sound too cynical, but they do have a big advantage over other companies when providing tech support
If you're calling CISCO tech support, there's a pretty good chance you know something about PCs and networking. You're not going to get Joe Average asking how to reboot a Cisco Router:)
I guess this means that the calls they do get are serious - and require someone with a good level of product knowledge to fix. It means that their support staff can speak in technical terms to their callers, which is always significantly faster than trying o exlpain in layman's terms. I would also imagine that the average time between calls for each customer, averaged out over all customers, is probably a *lot* higher than many companies
Although, all that having been considered, hats off to them for what sounds like an excellent job.
The First Amendment of the Bill of Rights to the U.S. Constitution guarantees four freedoms: freedom of religion, speech, press and assembly. The Bill of Rights was ratified on December 15, 1791. Since that time, those freedoms have been discussed, debated, fought and died for. Since that time, millions of immigrants have come to America to secure those freedoms. The Founding Fathers knew what they were doing. They believed in the power of ideas and debate, not censorship.
The above was taken from the RIAA website, under the "Freedom of Speach" section.
Are you trying to suggest that the algorithm could be distributed as a form of speach, but that the keys for the algorithm are protected in the same way as a password is?
Like PGP. Anyone can pass the code around. Giving someone the kPGP Key for a bank, on the other hand, would then be illegal.
I don't want this remedy, but it seems reasonably neat. Thoughts?
Isaac Newton once wrote "If I have seen further than others, it was only because I stood on the shoulders of Giants"
This is exactly the same situation as you find yourself in. By sheer luck, you happen to live in a wealthy country. But that is not to your credit - that is merely how things worked out. You were more likely to have been born into the 4/5ths of the world who have never made a phone call.
The first objection that I have to your statement is that GDP == production of resources. As a country grows more and more wealthy, it's economic base shifts from promary industries (farming, mining...) through secondary industries (manufacturing) through to tertiary industries (services). The majority of your GDP comes from service indistries - yoiu are not a great manufacturing nation. And, indeed, if you should look at the products you value so much, you will see that many of them were actually made abroad. Ever wonder why the USA is *really* so keen to defend Taiwan?????
I am hurt to learn that you can dismiss the majority of the world as worthless because they do not have as much money as you. Opressive regeimes, natural resources, chance, all of these things contribute to the ability of a country to get rich. But none of these are the fault of the people who live there, any more than the wealth of the USA is your personal triumph.
Your statement also shows your conviction that money is the only thing of value in this life. I find that position at best _repulsive_. I cannot accept a world where the only thing that matters is money - how about Science, Art, Love,......? Do none of these things matter? Can you compute a value on all of them? Have you ever sat down and thought about *why* you care about those little green bills?
Someone once said to me that "Only when the last fish has been caught, the last harvest gathered, the last tree cut down, and the last Well run dry will the Americans realise that they cannot eat money." If you wish to make money the ultimate end of your life, then feel free - I promise that it will make you very unhappy. But before you condemn me for not sharing your obsession, think first how hollow your hurt must ring in my ears.
I'm sure I'm not the only one here who buys CDs / T-Shirts / Mugs to support the products I use. The attraction to me isn't that it's free (as in beer), but that I am free to play with it and add more functionality as necessary. My Morality dictates that I should pay for things if I can, so Free (beer) is of minimal importance to me at the moment.
On the other hand, when I was a student I couldn't afford to support these products. And I'm sure that I'm not the only person who's been/is in that situation. Free as in beer is important to reach as many people as possible. It also means that I can find out if a product is any good / useful to me / does what is says on the tin without having to pay for it first. Being able to weed out junkware is another important part of free (beer).
There is a sustainable living to be made from writing Linux code. It just depends a lot more on the generosity of those around you. If that ever becomes a problem, then we really are screwed as a species
I don't know about that. I remember in a recent Information Theory course I did at Uni, we learnt that the information content of an ensemble with 26 different equally possible outcomes is 4.7 bits per symbol. If those symbols happened to be the 26 letters of the alphabet, and the language was English, then this dropped to 4.0 bits per symbol (due to the redundancy in the English Language). The implication seems to be that 8 bits for ASCII text is only about 50-60% efficient (forgetting entirely about capitilisation and punctuation for now)
Your statement would imply that 1 bit of information would be enough to tell you (in context of course) which letter out of the 26 possible ones follows any given letter. So for example, given the sentance: The cat _
you would only need 1 bit of information to tell me which character is going to go next.
I feel somewhat doubtfull......
Although if you are correct, please reply to me because I do have an interest in this topic.
Of course, your assumption that these are genetic "mistakes" is a very dangerous one, and one that many Doctors I know disagree very strongly with
There'as a reason we have genetic variability. It's called Evolution. By not making everyone the same, you allow the species to adapt to change. It's not a good strategy for the individual, as it means that people have problems. But it allows the species as a whole to adapt to potential changes.
Supposing we now use Genetic Therapy to modify out the "redundancy" in the species. A new disease comes along, and we're screwed because we have no diversity. Once it knows how to infect one of us, it can infect us all.
Sickle Cell Anaemia is a good example that has been mentioned so far. It's caused by a recessive gene. Two recessive genes is fatal, but having just one recessive gene means that you are fine and gain some resistance to Malaria. What some people have touted out as a genetic disorder has turned out to be beneficial in some circumstances.
My view is that we should be very careful when messing around with the genome. We do not understand it's complexity, we do not know what much of the "junk" (genes with no aparent purpose) is there and we do not know why some of these "disorders" still exist and have not been eliminated by natural selection.
And make no mistake that we are messing with our ability to survive as a species here. To destroy our ability to survive in the interests of getting rich would be a fitting testament to our current society. I just hope that there is enough humanity left in us not to do this.
At last someone with some sense has contributed to this debate:)
In the UK we have a public Health System. This is certainly one way to address these issues - and originally it worked reasonably well. A similar thing happened to Brazil in recent years with it's free AIDS treatments to it's entire population - it saved the country money by improving the health of the nation.
The biggest problems over here stem from the Health Service being used as a political tool. Recently, Tony Blair et al have made it a matter of policy to reduce waiting lists. Since no extra cash was forthcoming for this, what has happened is thet people now go onto a waiting list before being allowed to join the "real" waiting list. It's outrageous and badly run.
On the other hand, we have organisations like BUPA over here that provide private Healthcare and do so very well.
My answer would be for the Government to act as a Health Insurer - and to pay for private groups like BUPA (who are incidentally a not-for-profit private group) to carry out operations on their behalf. This already takes place in some countries in Europe (Portugal and Spain come to mind).
But a group that is not willing to protect it's weakest members so that it's strongest members may grow fat is NOT a Civilisation. It's an evil, bigoted, ruthless tribe that deserve everything that they get when something goes wrong.
Re:You're right, but you're being a jackass.
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Is It OK To Sucks?
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I would not say that supporting the IRA is a good thing. Perhaps I should give you a bit of background on the whole thing:
At the start of the 1900s, Ireland was Governed by the UK. I know, it's out of order and wrong, but these were Colonial times and this was the Norm. Anyway the Government of the day held a referrendum on the granting of independance to Ireland. The entire of Ireland got to vote. If a majority of the people wanted independance, it would be granted in every individual County that voted for it.
I know that this sounds like a mess from the start, but the reason it was done was to reflect the sweeping differences in opinion of people from the North to the South of the country.
Most of the counties voted for independance - with the exception of a few of the northern ones which voted to remain a part of the UK. Therefore, by the will of the people Ireland was granted independance, except for the few Northern counties which remained a part of Britain.
Even today, 60% of people in what is known as Northern Ireland wish to remain a part of Britain. Thats right - read it again - 60%. So, we are left with a catch 22 situation. 40% of the population wish for independance, and this has sprouted several terrorist organisations devoted to driving people from their homes, indimidating them, and killing activists in order to achieve a state where the majority of people left wish for independance.
This is one huge mess. There is no way that the will of 40% of the people can override that of 60% of the people in a democracy. However, that 40% is such a large group that it's views must be respected and given a large weight in any decision. Neither party is willing to give up land, move homes, or anything else that might break the deadlock.
This is why I am so hopeful that the Northern Ireland Assembly will work. It's about making people stop fighting over their differences, and seeing what they have in common, and what they can do together to improve the place where they live. But, as far as I can see, the assembly is the only real hope for peace. It's not a solution to the deadlock, but it's a way for people to fight with politicians and not guns. And hopefully that'll make everyone's lives safer.
Or even, su.cx (assuming 2 letters are allowed, for which exceptions have been made in the past for.cx domains).
Re:I monitored High School surfing.
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Clever Girl Bess
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Problems "waiting to happen?" What about the right to innocence until proven guilty.
I agree with your point, I do not believe that a teacher should be viewing kiddie porn in school - that's just sick. But your argument does rest on a rather crucial and unproven point - that people who *view* this material are more lively to *act* according to the actions it portreys. This point has never been tested. By a similar argument, people who play Computer Games are more likely to commit mass shootings.
I know very well that my gut instinct would be to fire that teacher - Kiddie Porn is SO objectionable that it makes me sick. But once you start trying to prevent "potential troublemakers" then you're on a *REALLY* slippery slope. The kind of slope that leads directly to the "Orwellian Nightmare."
There *are* no easy answers here. Supposing that the teacher in question viewed this material at home. Would you then demand access to logs of home surfing in order to spot poential trouble. How about his video collection? Magazines? Books? Information about his sex life?
I don't know, I almost agree with your argument, but my paranoid streak kicks me *real hard* when I read the part about stopping "potential trouble" and I'm sure the same applies to a lot of the other paranoid slashdotters.
I can't be the only person who thinks that getting involved in the OpenBSD vs FreeBSD war is too much hassle:)
There's a place for all Operating Systems. The real reasons I use linux are because I am used to it, it's fast, stable, efficient, and does everything I need. The developer base for Linux is huge, all my company machines now use it, and it's what I'm used to.
For the time being, I see no reason to change. Perhaps when I get *some* free time, I'll play around with one of the BSDs, but for now, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. And Linux is far from being broke.
<SARCASM>Sure, I have no problem with them spying on me just in case I do anything wrong. After all, where would I be if Big Brother wasn't there to look after me?</SARCASM>
How DARE they spy on people, perform automatic face recognition on the entire crowd, just in case they think that someone may cause trouble
I'm sure it won't be long before every shop, restaurant, bar, and sports venue implements face recognition. After all, we wouldn't want to have people who might be criminals around, would we? If you've done nothing wrong, you've got nothing to hide, have you?
THIS MAKES ME SO DAMN ANGRY I WANT TO PUNCH SOMETHING. This whole philosophy of "if you've done nothing wrong, you've got nothing to hide" irritates the living s*it out ov me. Why? Becuase it assumes that what is illegal and what is morally wrong are one and the same thing and history shows that we are extremely priveleged to live in a time and a place where these are similar to within a bad approximation
It is my personal opinion that the only people who don't have a teenage criminal record are those lucky enough not to get caught. Everyone makes mistakes. That is why we have crime and punishment. You commit a crime, you are punished for it, and you move on. If you commit another one, you'll be punished again. If you don't, then welcome back to society. Or, at least, that's the way it should be. Sadly, we seem to be straying from this.
Once your every move is recorded, your every association known, your opinions on every matter meticulously recorded in case you exhibit traits that suggest you may cause criminal behaviour, you are no longer living in a free society. You are living in a jail. George Orwell wrote an excellent piece about this in his book "1984" in which he describes what happens when this philosophy is taken to extremes. A very chilling read, and one that I totally recommend.
Notice that the surveillance actually achieved nothing. No-one knew that they were being watched, and nothing bad happened. No arrests were made. In fact, the only thing that this achieved is to give the police a complete list of who attended the event.
When the US was founded, privacy was the norm. You could walk down the street and be anonymous, you could have a private conversation simply by walking around a corner. There was no way of scanning for criminals in the crowd. And you will notice that society survived.
Implementing this system on a wider scale will only put more power into the hands of the police. It will not create a safer, more free, happier, or more enjoyable society. It will merely enable more wide scale police harrassment, and make it more difficult for citizens to revolt if a time comes when this is necessary. And the way technology is being used by the powers hat be, a revolt may be necessary far sooner than you think.
Slashdot Mirror
Apparently blocking outbound port 69 (==tftp) will also prevent the worm from being downloaded.
NTBugtraq has the details
Not true. KE = 1/2 * M * V * V. Therefore, if an object was 1000 times heavier, it would have the same amount of energy if it was going sqrt(1000) times as fast.
:)
Conversely, if an object is going 1000 times as fast, it has 1,000,000 times as much energy (== the amount of energy required to get it to go that fast). Hence the use of very light things in particle acceperators.
Your equation linking the resultant force is also wrong. The force applied depends on the mass times the acceleration. The acceleration (or deceleration in this case) depends on how quickly the object slows down (larger peak force if it hist concrete and stops instantly vs hits foam and stops over a longer time). If you're interested in the damage that the object will do when it hits something, you've also got to consider the suurface area of the object that will hit the target during impact. This will determine the pressure applied to the target by the impact, and will tell you whether the object will bounce or penetrate the target. This again depends somewhat on the mass of the object
I disagree with this. If you increase the chances of nuts encountering citizens with guns, then you get nuts who will hunt in packs under large amounts of stress, and who will probably adopt a shoot-first-and-ask-questions-later policy towards people who stand up to them. You also get a police force that knows that the nuts have guns and have this policy, so they then adopt a shoot-if-anything-gets-pointed-near-me policy. Hence, you get a lot of dead people, nuts and others.
Not having guns doesn't mean you don't have nuts, nor does it mean that you won't have nuts with guns. But it does lower the tension levels a lot, and will make you a lot less likely to get shot. Think about it, which would you rather, to be robbed, or to get into a gun fight with a gang of nuts and probably get shot?
No - not at all, as there would be no criticism in that article, merely a point of view. On the other hand, if the Christian magazine wrote an article claiming that "some pro-abortion group were a bunch of smelly weenies", or similar, then they have "criticised" the group, and the group is entitied to respond.
The law doesn't force any magazine to host a debate, merely that if they are critical of someone, then that person has the chance to defend themselves.
For the record, the BBC is not funded by the UK Government. It's funded by a licensing fee, which you are legally required to pay if you own a TV. That money is paid to, and collected by the BBC. The government are not involved at any stage (other than making the law in the first place).
It's not the total independence of a commercial station, but it does offer a safeguard against government control. As an example, there's always an outcry over here whenever anyone suggests fining the BBC, as that would be considered another tax by the government.
As someone who had never read any of Tolkien's works until about 6 weeks ago, and who is an adult (22) I feel qualified to reply to this.
I took "The Lord of the Rings" on holiday with me. I read it in 7 days. It was *so* gripping that I could not put it down - and I spent until 6am on many of those nights fighting back tiredness to read "just one more chapter"
I'm not much of a person for fiction - whilst I read avidly, you're more likely to catch me reading books on physics, programming, system administration, and similar. (The year before I took "Programming Perl" on holiday with me :) So this was the first work of fiction I'd read in about 18 months.
I had almost forgotten how much fun Science Fiction was. And the skill with which he conveyed the sense of Fear when Minas Timor (if I remember the name correctly - apologies if I don't) was being attacked was very effective.
A few months ago, I might almost have agreed with you - and would have dismissed fiction altogether. I'm very glad I didn't. Re-kindling my imagination, my desire to explore, and my love of an adventure is something I'm very glad I did. I'm now egerly waiting my next break :)
And I am very loathe to allow "The Lord of the Rings" to be dismissed as "Mediocre". A book that gave me so much pleasure will surely do so to many others - and I heartily recommend it to everyone
I couldn't agree with you more.
It totally saddens me that we have invented a utopia - a place where information is free - and we are so obsessed with money and power that we have to cripple it. And for what? So that the people who are "at the top" in monetary or political terms can remain there.
"Man is born free - and yet everywhere he is in chains." This is always because of scarcity (naural or artificial), greed, and desire for power. We have a chance to set ourselves free, and we're sitting back watching as laws like the DMCA get passed
It makes me ashamed to be human.
Not wishing to sound too cynical, but they do have a big advantage over other companies when providing tech support
If you're calling CISCO tech support, there's a pretty good chance you know something about PCs and networking. You're not going to get Joe Average asking how to reboot a Cisco Router :)
I guess this means that the calls they do get are serious - and require someone with a good level of product knowledge to fix. It means that their support staff can speak in technical terms to their callers, which is always significantly faster than trying o exlpain in layman's terms. I would also imagine that the average time between calls for each customer, averaged out over all customers, is probably a *lot* higher than many companies
Although, all that having been considered, hats off to them for what sounds like an excellent job.
The above was taken from the RIAA website, under the "Freedom of Speach" section.
Kind of ironic...... :)
Not wishing to be picky - but you could make 361 degree, 720 degree images or similar, and we souldn't notice
You probably would, however, notice a nice neat line down your image :)
Interesting.......
Are you trying to suggest that the algorithm could be distributed as a form of speach, but that the keys for the algorithm are protected in the same way as a password is?
Like PGP. Anyone can pass the code around. Giving someone the kPGP Key for a bank, on the other hand, would then be illegal.
I don't want this remedy, but it seems reasonably neat. Thoughts?
Warning: Header is a goatse.cx link (shudder)
Isaac Newton once wrote "If I have seen further than others, it was only because I stood on the shoulders of Giants"
This is exactly the same situation as you find yourself in. By sheer luck, you happen to live in a wealthy country. But that is not to your credit - that is merely how things worked out. You were more likely to have been born into the 4/5ths of the world who have never made a phone call.
The first objection that I have to your statement is that GDP == production of resources. As a country grows more and more wealthy, it's economic base shifts from promary industries (farming, mining...) through secondary industries (manufacturing) through to tertiary industries (services). The majority of your GDP comes from service indistries - yoiu are not a great manufacturing nation. And, indeed, if you should look at the products you value so much, you will see that many of them were actually made abroad. Ever wonder why the USA is *really* so keen to defend Taiwan?????
I am hurt to learn that you can dismiss the majority of the world as worthless because they do not have as much money as you. Opressive regeimes, natural resources, chance, all of these things contribute to the ability of a country to get rich. But none of these are the fault of the people who live there, any more than the wealth of the USA is your personal triumph.
Your statement also shows your conviction that money is the only thing of value in this life. I find that position at best _repulsive_. I cannot accept a world where the only thing that matters is money - how about Science, Art, Love, ......? Do none of these things matter? Can you compute a value on all of them? Have you ever sat down and thought about *why* you care about those little green bills?
Someone once said to me that "Only when the last fish has been caught, the last harvest gathered, the last tree cut down, and the last Well run dry will the Americans realise that they cannot eat money." If you wish to make money the ultimate end of your life, then feel free - I promise that it will make you very unhappy. But before you condemn me for not sharing your obsession, think first how hollow your hurt must ring in my ears.
And congrats on the upcoming wedding :)
You make a very valid point.
I'm sure I'm not the only one here who buys CDs / T-Shirts / Mugs to support the products I use. The attraction to me isn't that it's free (as in beer), but that I am free to play with it and add more functionality as necessary. My Morality dictates that I should pay for things if I can, so Free (beer) is of minimal importance to me at the moment.
On the other hand, when I was a student I couldn't afford to support these products. And I'm sure that I'm not the only person who's been/is in that situation. Free as in beer is important to reach as many people as possible. It also means that I can find out if a product is any good / useful to me / does what is says on the tin without having to pay for it first. Being able to weed out junkware is another important part of free (beer).
There is a sustainable living to be made from writing Linux code. It just depends a lot more on the generosity of those around you. If that ever becomes a problem, then we really are screwed as a species
I don't know about that. I remember in a recent Information Theory course I did at Uni, we learnt that the information content of an ensemble with 26 different equally possible outcomes is 4.7 bits per symbol. If those symbols happened to be the 26 letters of the alphabet, and the language was English, then this dropped to 4.0 bits per symbol (due to the redundancy in the English Language). The implication seems to be that 8 bits for ASCII text is only about 50-60% efficient (forgetting entirely about capitilisation and punctuation for now)
Your statement would imply that 1 bit of information would be enough to tell you (in context of course) which letter out of the 26 possible ones follows any given letter. So for example, given the sentance:
The cat _
you would only need 1 bit of information to tell me which character is going to go next.
I feel somewhat doubtfull......
Although if you are correct, please reply to me because I do have an interest in this topic.
Of course, your assumption that these are genetic "mistakes" is a very dangerous one, and one that many Doctors I know disagree very strongly with
There'as a reason we have genetic variability. It's called Evolution. By not making everyone the same, you allow the species to adapt to change. It's not a good strategy for the individual, as it means that people have problems. But it allows the species as a whole to adapt to potential changes.
Supposing we now use Genetic Therapy to modify out the "redundancy" in the species. A new disease comes along, and we're screwed because we have no diversity. Once it knows how to infect one of us, it can infect us all.
Sickle Cell Anaemia is a good example that has been mentioned so far. It's caused by a recessive gene. Two recessive genes is fatal, but having just one recessive gene means that you are fine and gain some resistance to Malaria. What some people have touted out as a genetic disorder has turned out to be beneficial in some circumstances.
My view is that we should be very careful when messing around with the genome. We do not understand it's complexity, we do not know what much of the "junk" (genes with no aparent purpose) is there and we do not know why some of these "disorders" still exist and have not been eliminated by natural selection.
And make no mistake that we are messing with our ability to survive as a species here. To destroy our ability to survive in the interests of getting rich would be a fitting testament to our current society. I just hope that there is enough humanity left in us not to do this.
At last someone with some sense has contributed to this debate :)
In the UK we have a public Health System. This is certainly one way to address these issues - and originally it worked reasonably well. A similar thing happened to Brazil in recent years with it's free AIDS treatments to it's entire population - it saved the country money by improving the health of the nation.
The biggest problems over here stem from the Health Service being used as a political tool. Recently, Tony Blair et al have made it a matter of policy to reduce waiting lists. Since no extra cash was forthcoming for this, what has happened is thet people now go onto a waiting list before being allowed to join the "real" waiting list. It's outrageous and badly run.
On the other hand, we have organisations like BUPA over here that provide private Healthcare and do so very well.
My answer would be for the Government to act as a Health Insurer - and to pay for private groups like BUPA (who are incidentally a not-for-profit private group) to carry out operations on their behalf. This already takes place in some countries in Europe (Portugal and Spain come to mind).
But a group that is not willing to protect it's weakest members so that it's strongest members may grow fat is NOT a Civilisation. It's an evil, bigoted, ruthless tribe that deserve everything that they get when something goes wrong.
I would not say that supporting the IRA is a good thing. Perhaps I should give you a bit of background on the whole thing:
At the start of the 1900s, Ireland was Governed by the UK. I know, it's out of order and wrong, but these were Colonial times and this was the Norm. Anyway the Government of the day held a referrendum on the granting of independance to Ireland. The entire of Ireland got to vote. If a majority of the people wanted independance, it would be granted in every individual County that voted for it.
I know that this sounds like a mess from the start, but the reason it was done was to reflect the sweeping differences in opinion of people from the North to the South of the country.
Most of the counties voted for independance - with the exception of a few of the northern ones which voted to remain a part of the UK. Therefore, by the will of the people Ireland was granted independance, except for the few Northern counties which remained a part of Britain.
Even today, 60% of people in what is known as Northern Ireland wish to remain a part of Britain. Thats right - read it again - 60%. So, we are left with a catch 22 situation. 40% of the population wish for independance, and this has sprouted several terrorist organisations devoted to driving people from their homes, indimidating them, and killing activists in order to achieve a state where the majority of people left wish for independance.
This is one huge mess. There is no way that the will of 40% of the people can override that of 60% of the people in a democracy. However, that 40% is such a large group that it's views must be respected and given a large weight in any decision. Neither party is willing to give up land, move homes, or anything else that might break the deadlock.
This is why I am so hopeful that the Northern Ireland Assembly will work. It's about making people stop fighting over their differences, and seeing what they have in common, and what they can do together to improve the place where they live. But, as far as I can see, the assembly is the only real hope for peace. It's not a solution to the deadlock, but it's a way for people to fight with politicians and not guns. And hopefully that'll make everyone's lives safer.
Or even, su.cx (assuming 2 letters are allowed, for which exceptions have been made in the past for .cx domains).
Problems "waiting to happen?" What about the right to innocence until proven guilty.
I agree with your point, I do not believe that a teacher should be viewing kiddie porn in school - that's just sick. But your argument does rest on a rather crucial and unproven point - that people who *view* this material are more lively to *act* according to the actions it portreys. This point has never been tested. By a similar argument, people who play Computer Games are more likely to commit mass shootings.
I know very well that my gut instinct would be to fire that teacher - Kiddie Porn is SO objectionable that it makes me sick. But once you start trying to prevent "potential troublemakers" then you're on a *REALLY* slippery slope. The kind of slope that leads directly to the "Orwellian Nightmare."
There *are* no easy answers here. Supposing that the teacher in question viewed this material at home. Would you then demand access to logs of home surfing in order to spot poential trouble. How about his video collection? Magazines? Books? Information about his sex life?
I don't know, I almost agree with your argument, but my paranoid streak kicks me *real hard* when I read the part about stopping "potential trouble" and I'm sure the same applies to a lot of the other paranoid slashdotters.
I can't be the only person who thinks that getting involved in the OpenBSD vs FreeBSD war is too much hassle :)
There's a place for all Operating Systems. The real reasons I use linux are because I am used to it, it's fast, stable, efficient, and does everything I need. The developer base for Linux is huge, all my company machines now use it, and it's what I'm used to.
For the time being, I see no reason to change. Perhaps when I get *some* free time, I'll play around with one of the BSDs, but for now, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. And Linux is far from being broke.
<SARCASM>Sure, I have no problem with them spying on me just in case I do anything wrong. After all, where would I be if Big Brother wasn't there to look after me?</SARCASM>
How DARE they spy on people, perform automatic face recognition on the entire crowd, just in case they think that someone may cause trouble
I'm sure it won't be long before every shop, restaurant, bar, and sports venue implements face recognition. After all, we wouldn't want to have people who might be criminals around, would we? If you've done nothing wrong, you've got nothing to hide, have you?
THIS MAKES ME SO DAMN ANGRY I WANT TO PUNCH SOMETHING. This whole philosophy of "if you've done nothing wrong, you've got nothing to hide" irritates the living s*it out ov me. Why? Becuase it assumes that what is illegal and what is morally wrong are one and the same thing and history shows that we are extremely priveleged to live in a time and a place where these are similar to within a bad approximation
It is my personal opinion that the only people who don't have a teenage criminal record are those lucky enough not to get caught. Everyone makes mistakes. That is why we have crime and punishment. You commit a crime, you are punished for it, and you move on. If you commit another one, you'll be punished again. If you don't, then welcome back to society. Or, at least, that's the way it should be. Sadly, we seem to be straying from this.
Once your every move is recorded, your every association known, your opinions on every matter meticulously recorded in case you exhibit traits that suggest you may cause criminal behaviour, you are no longer living in a free society. You are living in a jail. George Orwell wrote an excellent piece about this in his book "1984" in which he describes what happens when this philosophy is taken to extremes. A very chilling read, and one that I totally recommend.
Notice that the surveillance actually achieved nothing. No-one knew that they were being watched, and nothing bad happened. No arrests were made. In fact, the only thing that this achieved is to give the police a complete list of who attended the event.
When the US was founded, privacy was the norm. You could walk down the street and be anonymous, you could have a private conversation simply by walking around a corner. There was no way of scanning for criminals in the crowd. And you will notice that society survived.
Implementing this system on a wider scale will only put more power into the hands of the police. It will not create a safer, more free, happier, or more enjoyable society. It will merely enable more wide scale police harrassment, and make it more difficult for citizens to revolt if a time comes when this is necessary. And the way technology is being used by the powers hat be, a revolt may be necessary far sooner than you think.
My firewall is here. And I bet it's at lease as hard to hack as yours :)