Only common sense. I can understand the CIA being involved in torture. I can see various military organizations involved in torture. But, the NSA does electronic stuff. They don't even have anybody to torture! They are a bunch of computer geek / mathematician / signals people. They spy on you in lots of electronic ways, but from a distance. They would leave all the wet work for a different organization. I don't know why you would even think that NSA is involved in torture since actually having physical interaction with people is exactly the opposite of what they do.
I don't understand this line of argument. If I want a job as a truck driver, does it make sense that I have to take a driving test? Is that test completely voluntary? Under your argument, since I'm required to take the driving test to get the job it's stretching the definition of voluntary to the breaking point. That makes no sense.
Getting a job with the NSA is something that you have to take a bunch of steps to do. You have to find out about the job, fill out lots of forms, then fill out lots more security forms, give them a long list of people, places, and dates for them to check out, and then you take a polygraph, which you really, really should have known was coming for months in advance. This is something that you must have actually been trying to accomplish! So, of course, its voluntary; that's not the same thing as being happy its happening, or looking forward to it. It's a prerequisite for the job, a known condition, and I can't believe that you could go through this long and annoying application process, knowing that there is a polygraph in your future, whithout thinking to yourself 'Gosh, should I, or should I not, apply for this job, knowing that I will need to take a polygraph?" If you answer, "no", then don't apply. If you answer, "yes", then you are voluntarily taking the frigging test.
As it turns out, I actually was looking forward to, and enjoyed, my polygraph. I thought that it was an interesting process. I know what I've done in the past, and told them all about it, and they said 'ok, don't do _THAT_ again, but I guess you can't be blackmailed about it', and it was fine. Yes, if you support the violent overthrow of the US government, then maybe you should not apply, but otherwise, don't get your knickers in a bunch.
Uh, no. 99% of the time that is true, but if you need to have cancer treatment or a heart valve replaced, then the costs would be huge even with the low negotiated rate. The best way to compare these is to look at health tourism. What is the lowest cost overseas comparable treatment you can get? Even going to Singapore or Brazil (where treatment is comparable or better), the costs are well into the 5 digits (US). They are way, way lower than the US, which shows how inflated our costs are, but still very large. The insurance in this case is doing what insurance is supposed to do, which is combine the small risks over many people.
That doesn't make sense. You have no idea how much money the dealership really made. You know what you paid and the 'cost' of the vehicle to the dealership may be on a piece of paper and may actually reflect the amount of money they paid to the maker. However, the dealership can get 'incentives' from the manufacturer, or some sort of bonus, or the cost of the next vehicle may be lower. You have no idea, and you don't really need to know. What you need is the ability to buy from different dealers and knowledge about what you are getting and for how much and the (mostly) free market works out the rest.
And from a frigging laptop. That's what's interesting to me. NASA would have a huge control center with 300 people, contractors, sub-contractors, and sub-sub-contractors. Instead, it's him and a couple of guys on walkie-talkies and laptops. Part of this is the technological change, but largely its a mindset, an understanding of what the technology can do, how to use it properly, and a corporate attitude of risk / reward.
Now, who's going to be the first person to put a person on one of these? I don't think that it will be approved by the authorities, and it's probably pretty stupid, but you know that someone is going to strap a lawn chair on their personal rockets, have a ballistic parachute (just in case) and go for a ride.
Frankly, I think it's hopeless. There will be lots of suffering and hardship, and then in the future when we find ourselves doing it afresh with some other resource, no one will remember or care how we walked to ruin down the same greedy path of short term profit the last time. And the story will repeat itself, yet again, like it has done so many times throughout history.
Humanity is depressingly predictable.
While I share some of your concerns, I am not as pessimistic as you. Primarily, this is because I think that it largely depends on the speed of the changes involved and the distance to the alternatives to oil-based economies.
First, the time frame for declining oil stocks, and hence higher prices, to destroy the economy is (I think) on the period of decades, not years. There is a lot of 'play' in the amount of oil that is economically viable to pull out as the price increases. A doubling in the price of oil will vastly increase the size of the available stocks, and provide another decade or two of oil.
Second, the alternatives are considerably more expensive than oil right now, but if the doubling proposed above occurs, then the alternatives become viable. check out this Wired article about the alternatives and when they become viable. In the U.S., we have access to ridiculous amounts of coal, for example, which can be converted to liquid fuels. It's not as cheap as pumping it out of the ground, but as oil becomes more expensive, it will become economically feasible, and at costs that will not destroy the economy. Alternatives such as concentrating solar, wind, and geothermal are similarly much more expensive than oil, but as the price rises they become viable.
The time-frame involved in converting from oil-based to the alternatives is, again, on the order of decades. So, the whole thing works in terms of transitioning from one form of energy to another when it becomes necessary and will (I hope!) not cause serious shocks to the economy.
Frankly, I am far more concerned about the effect on the environment and climate change due to fossil fuel based economies, and the fact that we can transition from oil to coal / shale / tar sands means that we are still screwed. But, it won't be because of the price of energy. And the U.S. is screwed economically because we spend too much, don't save enough, and don't tax enough. But, again, it won't be because of the price of energy.
That is simply false, as 30 seconds with google will tell you. All placental mammals have navels. Human ones are more pronounced than most other species, but we also have other oddities (like a really big brain, and prolonged development before maturity). They are also much more noticeable because other mammals are much hairier than we are around there. Take a look here or here.
It's really the set theoriest they want. They are attempting to use the correctness of the Axiom of Choice and some of the implications to their advantage. The Banach-Tarski Paradox comes to mind. They think that this will work and free money will magically appear.
In this case, the regulation that should have been removed was the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund, which limits oil companies' total liability in case of an oil spill to $75 million.
I would agree with this.
Without that juicy legislation by Congress, they would have been damn sure their stuff was safe, because they would be on the hook for the entire damages otherwise. Now, they are basically going to decide for themselves which "legitimate" damages they feel like paying.
Good job Congress!
No, this is not correct. The problem is that the 'they' in your sentences changes over time. 'they' who run the company now want short term profit, so 'they' cut the corners and make lots of money in the years they run it. Later, some new guy takes over when the whole thing goes to crap, and 'they' would be on the hook. The company goes bankrupt. This does not solve the problem.
Like the financial disaster, when there is a disconnect between the people who profit in the short term and the people who pay the penalty in the long term, then the market does not work. In the finance industry, people could focus on making really high profits by taking enormous risks, and when the highly leveraged bets worked, they made tons of money. And if the risks didn't work out, the government is there to make it all better. Here, the oil company (BP) has a history of cutting corners to improve profits and crossing their fingers that nothing blows up. When it does, the insurance company or government or the people themselves cover the damage. In this case, they just screwed the pooch more than normal, and it might really hurt the company. But the executives that made lots of money by cutting the corners and improving profits are long gone.
And yet people (>40000) die each year in car accidents, and more die in airplane accidents, and boating accidents, etc. And those are still viable activities. Yes, this will be regulated (already is, actually), and people will die, and it will keep going on anyway.
Would it be better to find new and amazing ways to create energy from resources now, or would it be better for humanity to first learn to live within our means as oil runs out?
It is better to find new ways to harvest and manipulate energy (remember kids, energy can not be destroyed or created, only transformed) because:
a) Population growth is a clear trend in humanity (nobody wants to die!)
b) More resources(food, space and tools) are needed for bigger population.
c) More energy is needed to produce such resources.
and we designed new culture based on long term sustainability instead of constant growth.
You are going against the basic cycle of any living ogranism, born/reproduce/die. As I said, nobody wants to die; everybody wants to live more, therefore the population growth trend will likely continue.
Demographics disagrees with you. Multiple countries have made the 'fertility transition'. The fertility rate is now below replacement in Europe, Russia, China, and multiple others. In the long term, you can't fight demographics. See Sub-replacement fertility. There's no guarantee that fertility will remain the same, or go lower, in any particular country, but there is a trend, and it's down.
Humans are really complex, and the decision making process about how many children to have varies widely. It can be influenced by economics, survival rates, culture, religion (and not always the way you might think), contraception availability, government and media campaigns, education, women's rights, and lots of other issues. Your 'a)' is simply too simplistic to be the basis of any argument.
It turns out that China is already doing this. Take a look at this Pew Report on renewable energy research and investment. China is now ahead of the US.
I think that China is broken in a number of very important ways, in terms of human rights, freedom of expression, and representative government. But, they seem to think in terms of decades and centuries. I'm sure that the British thought that it was a good deal to have 100 years of control of Hong Kong, but look who's controlling it now. I have no doubt that the leaders of China have no qualms about doing whatever is necessary to make sure that they become energy independent and win in whatever area of research they think is important in the long term.
Why is everyone so willfully ignorant to theft? By downloading media without paying for it, there is no tangible product that costs anyone any money except for bandwidth, but that is not what pisses off record companies. What pisses them off is that they release a product for sale with a value attached to it. This value factors in attempts at profits and attempts at covering the cost of production/paying the artist/etc. When music is illegally downloaded, the company loses money because someone now owns the song without paying for it. Now maybe that person wouldn't have paid in the first place and unlike shoplifting, there was no physical loss or diminishing of goods. However, the fact is that the person downloading the song is still taking something of value without purchasing it. This is theft. And media can have intrinsic value..it costs money to make good music and songs, money spent with the expectation of high returns in sales. If everyone downloads music, then the free market will indeed win as many Slashdotters smugly wish for, hoping to prove the things people make for them that they like aren't actually worth anything. However this free market win will be a ceasing of production for movies and songs..no one can profit so no need to fill the void.
No, it is not theft. Theft is depriving the owner of the use of something. Downloading songs is not theft because you have not deprived the owner of the use of it. It is copyright infringement. It's also illegal.
And in response to a likely response, no, it is not the same thing. You might as well call it rape or murder, if you are going to abuse terms. You are not entitled to redefine words.
"That student was raping the music company!" sounds even better, right?
All this seems silly to me at this point. If I have a big computation job (and I do, often), I spin up a bunch of 8core machines on Amazon EC2. It's frigging $0.68 per computer hour. That's $0.085 per core hour. Why, oh why, would I want to actually buy my own computer when so much computational power is just sitting there for me to rent?
I'm not sure what the problem is with VNC that you are having. If you need something pretty simple on the client end (i.e. at home, logging into the work computer), you can try Guacamole which uses HTML5 canvas to view it in a browser.
Well, of course, it all depends on what you consider 'porn', doesn't it? For example, on the People page for Quality images, it has this picture (NSFW?). Is that porn? I don't think so. However, it shows (gasp!) breasts. Therefore, some people will consider it porn and/or offensive. They might even call it child porn, since I have no idea of the woman's age. They are morons IMHO, but still, what can you do?
The point here is that 'normal' people understand speech reasonably well, most of the time. Computers can't. You simply cannot expect significant numbers of people to adapt to the computer that much (some, which is why we have the UI's and input devices we have, but not that much).
Speech is outrageously difficult. Try having a computer tell the difference between "gray day" and "grade A" without context. There are very subtle differences in them, but I don't think a computer is going to be able to determine the differences.
Dude, have you never heard of a park? Visit a library? Take a walk along a river? Volunteer someplace? Build something? Try doing a local biodiversity survey. Collect stamps, or leaves, or something!
There are so many opportunities for people to do things that don't cost money (or at least in amounts that are far less than $20). I think that you've been over-consumerized.
I have been trying to understand the orbit. I think I understand Lagrange points in broad terms, and why in theory L2 is a good place for it. But, have we ever had objects at L2? How sure are we that L2 will actually work, and will be a safe place for it? And how many objects can we have at L2? If it is really a 'point', there can only be one.
Slashdot Mirror
Only common sense. I can understand the CIA being involved in torture. I can see various military organizations involved in torture. But, the NSA does electronic stuff. They don't even have anybody to torture! They are a bunch of computer geek / mathematician / signals people. They spy on you in lots of electronic ways, but from a distance. They would leave all the wet work for a different organization. I don't know why you would even think that NSA is involved in torture since actually having physical interaction with people is exactly the opposite of what they do.
Getting a job with the NSA is something that you have to take a bunch of steps to do. You have to find out about the job, fill out lots of forms, then fill out lots more security forms, give them a long list of people, places, and dates for them to check out, and then you take a polygraph, which you really, really should have known was coming for months in advance. This is something that you must have actually been trying to accomplish! So, of course, its voluntary; that's not the same thing as being happy its happening, or looking forward to it. It's a prerequisite for the job, a known condition, and I can't believe that you could go through this long and annoying application process, knowing that there is a polygraph in your future, whithout thinking to yourself 'Gosh, should I, or should I not, apply for this job, knowing that I will need to take a polygraph?" If you answer, "no", then don't apply. If you answer, "yes", then you are voluntarily taking the frigging test.
As it turns out, I actually was looking forward to, and enjoyed, my polygraph. I thought that it was an interesting process. I know what I've done in the past, and told them all about it, and they said 'ok, don't do _THAT_ again, but I guess you can't be blackmailed about it', and it was fine. Yes, if you support the violent overthrow of the US government, then maybe you should not apply, but otherwise, don't get your knickers in a bunch.
Uh, no. 99% of the time that is true, but if you need to have cancer treatment or a heart valve replaced, then the costs would be huge even with the low negotiated rate. The best way to compare these is to look at health tourism. What is the lowest cost overseas comparable treatment you can get? Even going to Singapore or Brazil (where treatment is comparable or better), the costs are well into the 5 digits (US). They are way, way lower than the US, which shows how inflated our costs are, but still very large. The insurance in this case is doing what insurance is supposed to do, which is combine the small risks over many people.
That doesn't make sense. You have no idea how much money the dealership really made. You know what you paid and the 'cost' of the vehicle to the dealership may be on a piece of paper and may actually reflect the amount of money they paid to the maker. However, the dealership can get 'incentives' from the manufacturer, or some sort of bonus, or the cost of the next vehicle may be lower. You have no idea, and you don't really need to know. What you need is the ability to buy from different dealers and knowledge about what you are getting and for how much and the (mostly) free market works out the rest.
That's because gold is heavy and relatively easy to get here on earth.
The same cannot be said for helium-3. It makes sense to get it from the moon (maybe).
Now, who's going to be the first person to put a person on one of these? I don't think that it will be approved by the authorities, and it's probably pretty stupid, but you know that someone is going to strap a lawn chair on their personal rockets, have a ballistic parachute (just in case) and go for a ride.
Frankly, I think it's hopeless. There will be lots of suffering and hardship, and then in the future when we find ourselves doing it afresh with some other resource, no one will remember or care how we walked to ruin down the same greedy path of short term profit the last time. And the story will repeat itself, yet again, like it has done so many times throughout history.
Humanity is depressingly predictable.
While I share some of your concerns, I am not as pessimistic as you. Primarily, this is because I think that it largely depends on the speed of the changes involved and the distance to the alternatives to oil-based economies.
First, the time frame for declining oil stocks, and hence higher prices, to destroy the economy is (I think) on the period of decades, not years. There is a lot of 'play' in the amount of oil that is economically viable to pull out as the price increases. A doubling in the price of oil will vastly increase the size of the available stocks, and provide another decade or two of oil.
Second, the alternatives are considerably more expensive than oil right now, but if the doubling proposed above occurs, then the alternatives become viable. check out this Wired article about the alternatives and when they become viable. In the U.S., we have access to ridiculous amounts of coal, for example, which can be converted to liquid fuels. It's not as cheap as pumping it out of the ground, but as oil becomes more expensive, it will become economically feasible, and at costs that will not destroy the economy. Alternatives such as concentrating solar, wind, and geothermal are similarly much more expensive than oil, but as the price rises they become viable.
The time-frame involved in converting from oil-based to the alternatives is, again, on the order of decades. So, the whole thing works in terms of transitioning from one form of energy to another when it becomes necessary and will (I hope!) not cause serious shocks to the economy.
Frankly, I am far more concerned about the effect on the environment and climate change due to fossil fuel based economies, and the fact that we can transition from oil to coal / shale / tar sands means that we are still screwed. But, it won't be because of the price of energy. And the U.S. is screwed economically because we spend too much, don't save enough, and don't tax enough. But, again, it won't be because of the price of energy.
That is simply false, as 30 seconds with google will tell you. All placental mammals have navels. Human ones are more pronounced than most other species, but we also have other oddities (like a really big brain, and prolonged development before maturity). They are also much more noticeable because other mammals are much hairier than we are around there. Take a look here or here.
It's really the set theoriest they want. They are attempting to use the correctness of the Axiom of Choice and some of the implications to their advantage. The Banach-Tarski Paradox comes to mind. They think that this will work and free money will magically appear.
Well, I think in his case we should be considering him compared to Philo T. Farnsworth, creator of the Fusor, along with a bunch of other cool stuff.
In this case, the regulation that should have been removed was the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund, which limits oil companies' total liability in case of an oil spill to $75 million.
I would agree with this.
Without that juicy legislation by Congress, they would have been damn sure their stuff was safe, because they would be on the hook for the entire damages otherwise. Now, they are basically going to decide for themselves which "legitimate" damages they feel like paying.
Good job Congress!
No, this is not correct. The problem is that the 'they' in your sentences changes over time. 'they' who run the company now want short term profit, so 'they' cut the corners and make lots of money in the years they run it. Later, some new guy takes over when the whole thing goes to crap, and 'they' would be on the hook. The company goes bankrupt. This does not solve the problem.
So....the solution is to regulate them less?
Color me skeptical.
Like the financial disaster, when there is a disconnect between the people who profit in the short term and the people who pay the penalty in the long term, then the market does not work. In the finance industry, people could focus on making really high profits by taking enormous risks, and when the highly leveraged bets worked, they made tons of money. And if the risks didn't work out, the government is there to make it all better. Here, the oil company (BP) has a history of cutting corners to improve profits and crossing their fingers that nothing blows up. When it does, the insurance company or government or the people themselves cover the damage. In this case, they just screwed the pooch more than normal, and it might really hurt the company. But the executives that made lots of money by cutting the corners and improving profits are long gone.
And yet people (>40000) die each year in car accidents, and more die in airplane accidents, and boating accidents, etc. And those are still viable activities. Yes, this will be regulated (already is, actually), and people will die, and it will keep going on anyway.
Would it be better to find new and amazing ways to create energy from resources now, or would it be better for humanity to first learn to live within our means as oil runs out?
It is better to find new ways to harvest and manipulate energy (remember kids, energy can not be destroyed or created, only transformed) because:
a) Population growth is a clear trend in humanity (nobody wants to die!) b) More resources(food, space and tools) are needed for bigger population. c) More energy is needed to produce such resources.
and we designed new culture based on long term sustainability instead of constant growth.
You are going against the basic cycle of any living ogranism, born/reproduce/die. As I said, nobody wants to die; everybody wants to live more, therefore the population growth trend will likely continue.
Demographics disagrees with you. Multiple countries have made the 'fertility transition'. The fertility rate is now below replacement in Europe, Russia, China, and multiple others. In the long term, you can't fight demographics. See Sub-replacement fertility. There's no guarantee that fertility will remain the same, or go lower, in any particular country, but there is a trend, and it's down.
Humans are really complex, and the decision making process about how many children to have varies widely. It can be influenced by economics, survival rates, culture, religion (and not always the way you might think), contraception availability, government and media campaigns, education, women's rights, and lots of other issues. Your 'a)' is simply too simplistic to be the basis of any argument.
It turns out that China is already doing this. Take a look at this Pew Report on renewable energy research and investment. China is now ahead of the US.
I think that China is broken in a number of very important ways, in terms of human rights, freedom of expression, and representative government. But, they seem to think in terms of decades and centuries. I'm sure that the British thought that it was a good deal to have 100 years of control of Hong Kong, but look who's controlling it now. I have no doubt that the leaders of China have no qualms about doing whatever is necessary to make sure that they become energy independent and win in whatever area of research they think is important in the long term.
Why is everyone so willfully ignorant to theft? By downloading media without paying for it, there is no tangible product that costs anyone any money except for bandwidth, but that is not what pisses off record companies. What pisses them off is that they release a product for sale with a value attached to it. This value factors in attempts at profits and attempts at covering the cost of production/paying the artist/etc. When music is illegally downloaded, the company loses money because someone now owns the song without paying for it. Now maybe that person wouldn't have paid in the first place and unlike shoplifting, there was no physical loss or diminishing of goods. However, the fact is that the person downloading the song is still taking something of value without purchasing it. This is theft. And media can have intrinsic value..it costs money to make good music and songs, money spent with the expectation of high returns in sales. If everyone downloads music, then the free market will indeed win as many Slashdotters smugly wish for, hoping to prove the things people make for them that they like aren't actually worth anything. However this free market win will be a ceasing of production for movies and songs..no one can profit so no need to fill the void.
No, it is not theft. Theft is depriving the owner of the use of something. Downloading songs is not theft because you have not deprived the owner of the use of it. It is copyright infringement. It's also illegal.
And in response to a likely response, no, it is not the same thing. You might as well call it rape or murder, if you are going to abuse terms. You are not entitled to redefine words.
"That student was raping the music company!" sounds even better, right?
and they do what we need 95+% of the time.
All this seems silly to me at this point. If I have a big computation job (and I do, often), I spin up a bunch of 8core machines on Amazon EC2. It's frigging $0.68 per computer hour. That's $0.085 per core hour. Why, oh why, would I want to actually buy my own computer when so much computational power is just sitting there for me to rent?
I'm not sure what the problem is with VNC that you are having. If you need something pretty simple on the client end (i.e. at home, logging into the work computer), you can try Guacamole which uses HTML5 canvas to view it in a browser.
This is one of the most famous mistakes in the technology industry. Learn about the Osborne effect.
Well, of course, it all depends on what you consider 'porn', doesn't it? For example, on the People page for Quality images, it has this picture (NSFW?). Is that porn? I don't think so. However, it shows (gasp!) breasts. Therefore, some people will consider it porn and/or offensive. They might even call it child porn, since I have no idea of the woman's age. They are morons IMHO, but still, what can you do?
My Differential Equations teacher grew up in Lithuania. And then learned English at Edinburgh.
I defy any speech recognition program to understand whatever the hell he was saying. I know I never new.
Obligatory XKCD
The point here is that 'normal' people understand speech reasonably well, most of the time. Computers can't. You simply cannot expect significant numbers of people to adapt to the computer that much (some, which is why we have the UI's and input devices we have, but not that much).
Speech is outrageously difficult. Try having a computer tell the difference between "gray day" and "grade A" without context. There are very subtle differences in them, but I don't think a computer is going to be able to determine the differences.
Poisson, please! (and in a post labeled PEDANTIC!?)
Dude, have you never heard of a park? Visit a library? Take a walk along a river? Volunteer someplace? Build something? Try doing a local biodiversity survey. Collect stamps, or leaves, or something!
There are so many opportunities for people to do things that don't cost money (or at least in amounts that are far less than $20). I think that you've been over-consumerized.
I have been trying to understand the orbit. I think I understand Lagrange points in broad terms, and why in theory L2 is a good place for it. But, have we ever had objects at L2? How sure are we that L2 will actually work, and will be a safe place for it? And how many objects can we have at L2? If it is really a 'point', there can only be one.