Oh, yeah. The guy who said "coherent light can't exist" just before someone lit the first ever laser in front of him.
The guy who disagreed with Einstein (who was right) and had gotten everything wrong, because he wanted so much his system to be right, without waiting for new(er) theories to refine what actually made sense.
I see where the idea that "free will doesn't exist" comes from, then : the same craphole that ultimately caused bullshit like String Theories to be spawned.
5. Write javascript webpage that can change the indent style of code (K&R, Allman, KNF, GNU, etc). (Paste code in textarea, select style, click 'Go', and the code changes to the selected style) 6. Place some adds on your webpage 7. ??? 8. Profit!
> On the battlefield, bullets may be replaced with "pharmacological land mines" that release drugs to incapacitate soldiers on contact
How likely is that? Someone will invent a drug to make you immune to incapacitating drugs, and we'll go back to bullets and explosions.
> "The concept of torture could also be altered by products in this market. It is possible that some day there could be a technique developed to extract information from a prisoner that does not have any lasting side effects," the report states.
I hope not. I imagine the police could give you the stuff and ask you if you ever commited any crimes. It'll be a routine thing, just like taking your fingerprint and DNA and firstborn, when you are arrested.
> "In the intelligence community, there is an extremely small number of people who understand the science and without that it's going to be impossible to predict surprises. This is a black hole that needs to be filled with light," Green told the Guardian.
There's a dumb analogy if I ever saw one. Let's shine light on the black hole!
> The technologies will one day have applications in counter-terrorism and crime-fighting. The report says brain imaging will not improve sufficiently in the next 20 years to read peoples' intentions from afar and spot criminals before they act, but it might be good enough to help identify people at a checkpoint or counter who are afraid or anxious.
Do we really need a brainscan for that, though? People who are afraid or anxious are easy to spot, and being afraid or anxious hardly makes you a criminal.
> "We're not going to be reading minds at a distance, but that doesn't mean we can't detect gross changes in anxiety or fear, and then subsequently talk to those individuals to see what's upsetting them," Green said.
Will that talk involve one of those lie-detector brainscan-things?
> The development of advanced surveillance techniques, such as cameras that can spot fearful expressions on people's faces, could lead to some inventive ways to fool them, the report adds, such as Botox injections to relax facial muscles.
Dude, enough about anxious people alright. People are afraid and nervous all the time about all sorts of things, and the thought that some asshole security guy is going to detect that with some sort of remote brainscan and invite them to have a chat will only make that worse. How many of these people will turn out to be innocent? Many.
Not at all. Microwave works by emitting electromagnatic waves that exite water molecules, thus making them and (indirectly) whatever they are a part of warmer.
Fine. Your brain consists of a finite number of neurons, each of which can make connections with a finite number of other neurons. The way each neuron works is defined by a finite set of rules in your DNA, and since each neuron is made out of a finite number of molecules, the number of states it can be in is finite.
Now all the above numbers will be extremely large, and will overestimate the complexity of the brain a LOT, since large parts of your neurons will be irrelevant to the workings of your brain, and so are many neurons and their connections (I lose tens of thousands of neurons each day without getting significantly more stupid than I already am). Still, they are all finite.
Please explain how the thing could be infinitely complex, and why it would be?
> And, judging by the computing resources required, it sounds like all they did here was brute-force it, so they really haven't "taught" the computer anything.
Do humans win at Go by calculating every possible move and picking the best one? Off course they don't, that would be impossible. It wouldn't suprise me if humans subconciously used an algorithm much like the one the computer used, but with superior heuristics. Does that mean humans can't really be "taught" Go, since all they do is brute-force the game?
Because today we actually know a lot more about how neurons work, compared to a hundred years ago? Just because a few clueless people made a wrong analogy a hundred years ago doesn't mean we should generalise that and say that all analogies involving the brain will be wrong (that makes no sense at all). Obviously the brain can't be infinitely complex, so if we keep refining our models of how the brain works we're bound to get it right at some point in the future.
Maybe that's more blood than a baby's heart can handle. Anyway, why combine a large dialysis machine with a blood transfusion when you can simply build a smaller dialysis machine like they did in the article?
Except that there is nothing compulsory about ff. You are free to trust any certificate you want, the browser merely warns you that it could be a bad idea to do so.
Actually, no. It would cost way too much to bring oil from another planet to ours. If Mars were made entirely out of oil (so once there you would spend $0 to obtain any amount of oil) it would probably still be several orders of magnitude more expensive than trying to manufacture oil on earth.
Anyone on slashdot who knows the cost of taking one kilo of stuff from Mars to Earth?
They could make it so that one would require a license to grow cannabis, that might work. I don't really care how they solve it as long as they come up with a system that does not require people to break to law to make it work.
Not that I expect our current government ever to make such a move... they'd probably ban all drugs the moment they they think they can get away with it.
> Last fall, Georgetown University banned beer pong, specially made beer-pong tables and inordinate numbers of Ping-Pong balls and any other alcohol-related paraphernalia in its on-campus dorms â" even in the rooms of students of legal drinking age.
That's great. A ban on inordinate numbers of Ping-Pong balls 'and other alcohol-related paraphernalia'? How many balls do you need to play beer pong anyway? One? Are ping-pong balls alcohol-related paraphernalia? How about dice? I know drinking games that involve dice. And cards. Ban them! BAN THEM ALL!
Actually, the laws concerning pot in the Netherlands don't make a lot of sense. It is legal for coffeeshops to sell cannabis, but they are not allowed to grow or buy it. Everyone in this country KNOWS that these shops have to break the law to resupply (it is inevitable) but the police kind of ignores it. A more sane approach would be to legalize growing cannabis.
Your math is correct when we assume a sphere with a radius of 1.5 m (in that case V ~= 14.1 m^3), but that means we are talking about an orb with a 3 meter diameter, which is heigher than most ceilings (3 meters = 9.8 ft for the SI-impaired).
1) The hydrogen is used to generate power. 2) To electrolyze water you need power. 3) You suggest we use power that has already been stored *somewhere* to electrolyze water and then use the hydrogen to generate power. 4) Laws of thermodynamics. 5) ??? 6) Profit.
Since countries other than the UK and the US are irrelevant in this case, I assume you refer to prisons in the UK when you say 'foreign prisons'.
So tell me, how many Americans are in prison in the UK for having drugs, and how long are their sentences compared to what they would have gotten in the US?
Slashdot Mirror
> If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck and looks like a duck, it's a duck.
It's either a duck or that delicious mushroom you ate half an hour ago.
Oh, yeah. The guy who said "coherent light can't exist" just before someone lit the first ever laser in front of him.
The guy who disagreed with Einstein (who was right) and had gotten everything wrong, because he wanted so much his system to be right, without waiting for new(er) theories to refine what actually made sense.
I see where the idea that "free will doesn't exist" comes from, then : the same craphole that ultimately caused bullshit like String Theories to be spawned.
Enjoy!
-the algorithm cannot predict its own outcome
5. Write javascript webpage that can change the indent style of code (K&R, Allman, KNF, GNU, etc). (Paste code in textarea, select style, click 'Go', and the code changes to the selected style)
6. Place some adds on your webpage
7. ???
8. Profit!
From the article:
> On the battlefield, bullets may be replaced with "pharmacological land mines" that release drugs to incapacitate soldiers on contact
How likely is that? Someone will invent a drug to make you immune to incapacitating drugs, and we'll go back to bullets and explosions.
> "The concept of torture could also be altered by products in this market. It is possible that some day there could be a technique developed to extract information from a prisoner that does not have any lasting side effects," the report states.
I hope not. I imagine the police could give you the stuff and ask you if you ever commited any crimes. It'll be a routine thing, just like taking your fingerprint and DNA and firstborn, when you are arrested.
> "In the intelligence community, there is an extremely small number of people who understand the science and without that it's going to be impossible to predict surprises. This is a black hole that needs to be filled with light," Green told the Guardian.
There's a dumb analogy if I ever saw one. Let's shine light on the black hole!
> The technologies will one day have applications in counter-terrorism and crime-fighting. The report says brain imaging will not improve sufficiently in the next 20 years to read peoples' intentions from afar and spot criminals before they act, but it might be good enough to help identify people at a checkpoint or counter who are afraid or anxious.
Do we really need a brainscan for that, though? People who are afraid or anxious are easy to spot, and being afraid or anxious hardly makes you a criminal.
> "We're not going to be reading minds at a distance, but that doesn't mean we can't detect gross changes in anxiety or fear, and then subsequently talk to those individuals to see what's upsetting them," Green said.
Will that talk involve one of those lie-detector brainscan-things?
> The development of advanced surveillance techniques, such as cameras that can spot fearful expressions on people's faces, could lead to some inventive ways to fool them, the report adds, such as Botox injections to relax facial muscles.
Dude, enough about anxious people alright. People are afraid and nervous all the time about all sorts of things, and the thought that some asshole security guy is going to detect that with some sort of remote brainscan and invite them to have a chat will only make that worse. How many of these people will turn out to be innocent? Many.
Not at all. Microwave works by emitting electromagnatic waves that exite water molecules, thus making them and (indirectly) whatever they are a part of warmer.
Don't all people except for those in a coma have an agenda? Doesn't that make your 'fix' about as informative as saying that water is wet?
Fine. Your brain consists of a finite number of neurons, each of which can make connections with a finite number of other neurons. The way each neuron works is defined by a finite set of rules in your DNA, and since each neuron is made out of a finite number of molecules, the number of states it can be in is finite.
Now all the above numbers will be extremely large, and will overestimate the complexity of the brain a LOT, since large parts of your neurons will be irrelevant to the workings of your brain, and so are many neurons and their connections (I lose tens of thousands of neurons each day without getting significantly more stupid than I already am). Still, they are all finite.
Please explain how the thing could be infinitely complex, and why it would be?
> And, judging by the computing resources required, it sounds like all they did here was brute-force it, so they really haven't "taught" the computer anything.
Do humans win at Go by calculating every possible move and picking the best one? Off course they don't, that would be impossible. It wouldn't suprise me if humans subconciously used an algorithm much like the one the computer used, but with superior heuristics. Does that mean humans can't really be "taught" Go, since all they do is brute-force the game?
Because today we actually know a lot more about how neurons work, compared to a hundred years ago? Just because a few clueless people made a wrong analogy a hundred years ago doesn't mean we should generalise that and say that all analogies involving the brain will be wrong (that makes no sense at all). Obviously the brain can't be infinitely complex, so if we keep refining our models of how the brain works we're bound to get it right at some point in the future.
I call bullshit. I flip coins all the time but I never get head.
Maybe that's more blood than a baby's heart can handle. Anyway, why combine a large dialysis machine with a blood transfusion when you can simply build a smaller dialysis machine like they did in the article?
> Instead we live in fear of 4 oz of toothpaste.
Don't worry, you're not the only one who freaks out when confronted with Imperial units.
Except that there is nothing compulsory about ff. You are free to trust any certificate you want, the browser merely warns you that it could be a bad idea to do so.
Actually, no. It would cost way too much to bring oil from another planet to ours. If Mars were made entirely out of oil (so once there you would spend $0 to obtain any amount of oil) it would probably still be several orders of magnitude more expensive than trying to manufacture oil on earth.
Anyone on slashdot who knows the cost of taking one kilo of stuff from Mars to Earth?
Take the pill, and then beat up a nerd who bought the new iPhone and steal it.
Or don't get the new iPhone at all. Who needs that thing?
They could make it so that one would require a license to grow cannabis, that might work. I don't really care how they solve it as long as they come up with a system that does not require people to break to law to make it work.
Not that I expect our current government ever to make such a move... they'd probably ban all drugs the moment they they think they can get away with it.
> Last fall, Georgetown University banned beer pong, specially made beer-pong tables and inordinate numbers of Ping-Pong balls and any other alcohol-related paraphernalia in its on-campus dorms â" even in the rooms of students of legal drinking age.
That's great. A ban on inordinate numbers of Ping-Pong balls 'and other alcohol-related paraphernalia'? How many balls do you need to play beer pong anyway? One? Are ping-pong balls alcohol-related paraphernalia? How about dice? I know drinking games that involve dice. And cards. Ban them! BAN THEM ALL!
Actually, the laws concerning pot in the Netherlands don't make a lot of sense. It is legal for coffeeshops to sell cannabis, but they are not allowed to grow or buy it. Everyone in this country KNOWS that these shops have to break the law to resupply (it is inevitable) but the police kind of ignores it. A more sane approach would be to legalize growing cannabis.
Huh?
Volume of a sphere: 4/3 * pi * r^3
d = 1.5.
-> r = 0.75
V = 4/3 * pi * 0.75^3 ~= 1,8 m^3
Your math is correct when we assume a sphere with a radius of 1.5 m (in that case V ~= 14.1 m^3), but that means we are talking about an orb with a 3 meter diameter, which is heigher than most ceilings (3 meters = 9.8 ft for the SI-impaired).
Dude.
1) The hydrogen is used to generate power.
2) To electrolyze water you need power.
3) You suggest we use power that has already been stored *somewhere* to electrolyze water and then use the hydrogen to generate power.
4) Laws of thermodynamics.
5) ???
6) Profit.
"Wie een kuil graaft voor een ander is een arbeider" :)
Since countries other than the UK and the US are irrelevant in this case, I assume you refer to prisons in the UK when you say 'foreign prisons'.
So tell me, how many Americans are in prison in the UK for having drugs, and how long are their sentences compared to what they would have gotten in the US?
> Is it not at least an equally huge, if not ridiculous, stretch to claim that it is "absolutely legal?"
How about 'barely legal'?
http://slashdot.org/users.pl?op=editcomm
Scroll about half-way down, Reason Modifier -> Funny -> Change to -6