People do not always have timely access to real medical treatment.
So over many generations it is likely that a group of people who can more easily tap the placebo effect will do better than a group of people who can't.
> Well, sure. Newton was an alchemist, but his irrational thinking in that field didn't limit his other work. It didn't help, either, but hey, we all need our hobbies.
Yes and hence people with such issues may not actually negatively affect the long term survivability of the group. In contrast, people who are in critical situations might cope better and thus remain useful to the group if they are able to more easily tap into the placebo effect.
> Well, sure. It beat being burned at the stake
Show me evidence that that was Galileo's reason for being a Catholic.
> All of civilization suffers when we indulge superstition.
Really? 1) The placebo effect works very well (google if you don't believe me). 2) People who believe in some unseen thing/being who/that can help, even if that unseen thing/being doesn't exist can more easily tap into the placebo effect. 3) Taking into account #2, if a particular religion causes less net harm/loss, the adherents to that religion would have an advantage over "strict atheists" - who certainly aren't going to be asking for help from any "imaginary being". Even if that advantage is slight, over a long term it would cause the group to do better- e.g. be more evolutionarily fit.
Thus, yes some religions are rather harmful, but I'd like to see better scientific evidence and reasoning before I'd agree that ALL are significantly worse than Atheism.
I'd also need evidence before I'd believe claims that atheists are more rational and clear thinking. Atheists are just as prone to delusions, after all even Richard Dawkins incorrectly claims that "atheism is evidence of a healthy, independent mind" - you can go to a hospital to find atheist patients with unhealthy minds.
There have been many scientists who believed there's a God, and their life, science and work were not diminished by their belief. Even Galileo Galilei was a Catholic. Yes the Church was a hindrance to him, but his religious belief wasn't.
Re:Does it have a monitor and full-size keyboard?
on
Flight of the Desktops
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Heck a better future form factor would be a small portable computer whose display outputs feed directly to your brain's auxiliary inputs. And it's main input comes from some device that reads your brain patterns. No physical display, keyboard or mouse (but it may have the connectors for those if necessary).
That way you can just think (stuff between < > are your own personal thought macros/patterns that you've trained your auxbrain to recognize):
<start><recall><object's pattern><do it><recall><another object's pattern><do it><end> followed by normal thought stream that's ignored by the computer.
Of course if you only want to recall one object quickly you'd use:
<start><recall><object's pattern><do it and end>
The object could be a picture, audio, video, file, etc or even the computer's representation of a stream/group of thought patterns (based on what it reads from the sensor).
As a result we might still have desktop computers since they would still be way more powerful, but notebooks, laptops and PDAs could vanish:).
Of course the **AA would want DRM built in, so certain things might have limited recall;).
Re:Does it have a monitor and full-size keyboard?
on
Flight of the Desktops
·
· Score: 2, Funny
But those sort of laptops tend to lighten wallets significantly, so it somewhat balances out.
> A shotgun fires a bunch of individual pellets in a single shot. That doesn't make it fully-automatic.
Sure, never said it was. I was mentioning it because of _your_ "multiple shot" example.
You can stand in front of the a semiautomatic weapon (shotgun, handgun whatever) not long after the trigger is pulled, and not be hit.
In contrast a fully automatic machine gun, will still be damaging stuff as long as there's ammo and the trigger is still pulled. Same for this laser. Hence it behaves like an automatic weapon.
You can keep believing what you want, but my classification makes far more sense than yours.
It's way closer to a fully automatic weapon than a semi-auto. You can hold the trigger down, wave it around and blind/injure hundreds with your so-called "one shot".
Try doing that with a semi-automatic handgun.
Heck I could also say it's firing lots of photons repeatedly in that single shot. But I think my first point is far more important from the perspective of the targets and the wielder. For them it behaves like a fully automatic weapon, and it should be classified and treated similarly for regulatory purposes too.
Fake, duplicate or not, numeric IDs are still easier to key in;).
As most slashdotters will know, if your data records are in a digital computer, it's pretty hard to avoid being linked to at least one number.
Even if you don't have national ID numbers, someone could go around claiming to be you, or the "System" could still confuse you with someone else.
At least accidental/erroneous duplicate IDs are easier to detect.
Of course if some Big Bad Ruler/Government starts issuing citizens with Citizen Certificates that have to be renewed every year then that's a problem:).
I dunno, the guy just lists out reasons why you can't uniquely identify people by names. e.g. "some people don't have names".
Well that's why Governments start handing out people national ID numbers[1]. Then even if you aren't who you claim you are, at least the poor data entry person has something to key in and can actually type it in on his/her keyboard;).
[1] As for foreigners wihtout a passport number or national ID, please wait here for those friendly guys in uniforms...
Actually you don't have to block or drop them. If the genital recognition algorithm works, you could just link those users to a video/chatbot that laughs at them. Of course it won't work so well if they drop their pants right in the middle of a session with a real human, but you could still automatically switch quickly to the "chatbot" after that.
But I thought people that go to chatroulette should be expecting crap like this and worse? I haven't bothered since I don't have a webcam, nor do I want to risk seeing some yucky stuff.
FWIW, I doubt seeing some genitals would bother me. As long as they're not mangled/bloody or gross in some other way. Maybe they should have something that recognizes Goatse and worse stuff, that'll be more useful (though a lot more challenging:) ).
Nah it's just a new virtual instance copied and modified slightly yesterday and God just clicked on the "Start Virtual Universe" button only a few seconds ago.
So is it 3.5 billion years old or a day old or a few seconds old?:).
You don't need a license for this laser right? That's my point.
This is a fully automatic weapon, heck it even seems to have a constant on-off switch. At least an M16 requires you to do fancy stuff in order to keep it firing for a full minute.
It needs to be regulated to reduce the "fools to legitimate users ratio". Very few lives will be negatively impacted by such regulation, and I think it would reduce the amount of harm in the long run.
Take the example of one person who replied to my OP, who gave the "find broken glass on the floor" example of a legitimate use for personal lasers. It may be a legitimate for a 1mW laser pointer, but it is a totally STUPID suggestion in the context of this product.
"Oh yeah there's broken glass on that part of the floor, how can I tell? Because me and my friends now have permanent eye damage (or are now blind) from the reflected/scattered laser light."
That sort of thing is less likely to happen with a workshop 30W cutting tool laser, even though it is far more powerful. That product has a far smaller danger radius in its sold form, and hence poses a far lower risk to others.
I've no problem with the nonblinding lasers. You can use those for building your fences and finding broken glass on the floor.
Your suggested uses of "find broken glass", "building fences" seem to show that you really are clueless on what this laser can do and it would be very unsafe in your hands, or that you are using very ill-thought examples[1].
If you tried to use this laser to find broken glass on the floor you are likely to blind yourself or others within a significant range. The reflected/refracted light of this laser can still cause permanent eye damage and/or blindness in significant ranges - e.g. in "find broken glass on the floor" scenarios.
Even their lower powered products would be unsuitable for many of your suggested uses.
The usefulness vs danger ratio of this particular product in its particular form is rather low.
It's ridiculously unsafe that a random ignorant idiot with USD200 can just click "I agree to all that scary warnings" and legally buy one, instead of having to jump through the sort of hoops required in order to legally buy a fully automatic machine gun. The latter will at least take a very persistent and resourceful ignorant idiot who are far rarer.
In contrast it'll more likely be someone with more awareness who'd jump through those hoops to own a fully automatic machine gun, someone who is far less likely to fire it randomly into a crowd.
The entry-barrier is too low for such laser products.
[1] Your examples in the context of this product are like saying: "there are legitimate uses for personal machine guns, making doughnuts with them in the kitchen for instance".
Even if fully automatic rifles are not banned they appear to be rather regulated. In my opinion such laser products should be tightly regulated since: 1) They're not like industrial laser cutting tools, you're only going to destroy stuff that you bring to that tool - the danger radius is typically rather limited. They're in a different form and package. 2) They don't appear to serve much useful purpose compared to the danger they pose.
Yes, sell and regulate it as a fully automatic weapon.
Don't they ban fully automatic rifles for civilian use in the USA?
This laser product is fully automatic weapon in the sense that: 1) It can continuously cause permanent blindness to people 2) It can do it at a 200 metre effective range 3) It does not need a reload after 9 or even 30 shots.
If you empty a handgun wildly into a crowd, you'd probably hit less than 20 people (and current medical tech might restore a significant number of them near completely). In contrast this laser when used on a crowd can permanently blind far more than 20 people. There are many places where you can find a crowd of hundreds looking at one spot.
The product in its current form does not appear to have a good utility to danger ratio.
Yes the laser itself has use in projectors and other stuff, but what good purpose does this product in this form have?
It's not very good as a defensive weapon: it doesn't really have very good stopping power - even if blinded, a gunman could still kill you (and he might have even higher motivation to do so). It has a very high chance of collateral damage.
To me if you can justify the banning of fully automatic assault rifles for general civilian use, you should also ban this weapon.
For normal Oracle users or for those who pay for premier support?
Many vendors hide their knowledgebase behind a paywall (e.g. CheckPoint Software, and Oracle it seems). That's not true for stuff like Postgresql.
I don't regard being able to pay to access a knowledgebase, as a positive feature. Or being able to pay to get support from people who have access to that paywalled knowledgebase. It really isn't better support to be able to talk to someone who is "more experienced" just because mountains of info has been locked up by the Vendor.
With Postgresql I wouldn't have to call support for many things in the first place - I would already know the answer, just from a few search queries!
The problems I'd need help for would be problems that aren't listed already. And often the Vendor is not able to provide an answer till the developers figure it out. And I doubt most developers do 24/7 support - whether they are Oracle, Postgresql or Microsoft developers. It's just bad for the developer's productivity .
FWIW, I'm the sort of guy who has hexedited 3rd party products to provide features that the 3rd party says are only available in a different product, or to fix bugs that the 3rd party is "going to fix soon" (which is often different from soon enough;) ).
I'm sure many of us on Slashdot have done stuff like this.
So there's no _technical_ reason (but CYA is useful) for us paying to get a "menu based monkey" or even someone who knows how to use Google. I'm sure we know how to use Google, Bing etc.
With the postgresql mailing list support, I can get real "down to the bits and bytes" sort of answers from the developers. And they actually know a lot more about the DB (and often other stuff) than I do.
Would a normal Oracle customer really get better technical support from Oracle than from the postgresql mailing list? So far you often get useful answers directly from the Postgresql development team[1]. For that level of Oracle support I bet you'd have to pay higher than the normal already high prices, or be a big customer.
Some guy to rushing to my door to quickly not be able to fix the problem, is often useful for keeping the bosses at bay, but not so useful from a technical POV. It is an often critically important feature though - being able to spend the company's money to help keep your job;).
[1] I doubt this scales though e.g. if Postgresql's popularity skyrockets...
I think the OP is talking about import tariffs. If the import tariffs are in the USA, moving from France to Germany wouldn't help Foxconn sell to the USA.
Slashdot Mirror
The power doesn't really come from the potatoes, but from the copper and zinc electrodes. Copper and zinc don't grow as easily as potatoes.
People do not always have timely access to real medical treatment.
So over many generations it is likely that a group of people who can more easily tap the placebo effect will do better than a group of people who can't.
> Well, sure. Newton was an alchemist, but his irrational thinking in that field didn't limit his other work. It didn't help, either, but hey, we all need our hobbies.
Yes and hence people with such issues may not actually negatively affect the long term survivability of the group. In contrast, people who are in critical situations might cope better and thus remain useful to the group if they are able to more easily tap into the placebo effect.
> Well, sure. It beat being burned at the stake
Show me evidence that that was Galileo's reason for being a Catholic.
Yeah, just like there is no spaghetti sauce that appeals to everyone:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIiAAhUeR6Y
But see also:
http://www.gladwell.com/2004/2004_09_06_a_ketchup.html
You can already spend your whole life watching all the porn out there without wearable/implanted computers.
:).
In contrast wearable/implanted computers might actually help enhance sex with others
The stuff I'm talking about would also allow virtual telepathy and telekinesis.
> All of civilization suffers when we indulge superstition.
Really?
1) The placebo effect works very well (google if you don't believe me).
2) People who believe in some unseen thing/being who/that can help, even if that unseen thing/being doesn't exist can more easily tap into the placebo effect.
3) Taking into account #2, if a particular religion causes less net harm/loss, the adherents to that religion would have an advantage over "strict atheists" - who certainly aren't going to be asking for help from any "imaginary being". Even if that advantage is slight, over a long term it would cause the group to do better- e.g. be more evolutionarily fit.
Thus, yes some religions are rather harmful, but I'd like to see better scientific evidence and reasoning before I'd agree that ALL are significantly worse than Atheism.
I'd also need evidence before I'd believe claims that atheists are more rational and clear thinking. Atheists are just as prone to delusions, after all even Richard Dawkins incorrectly claims that "atheism is evidence of a healthy, independent mind" - you can go to a hospital to find atheist patients with unhealthy minds.
There have been many scientists who believed there's a God, and their life, science and work were not diminished by their belief. Even Galileo Galilei was a Catholic. Yes the Church was a hindrance to him, but his religious belief wasn't.
Heck a better future form factor would be a small portable computer whose display outputs feed directly to your brain's auxiliary inputs. And it's main input comes from some device that reads your brain patterns. No physical display, keyboard or mouse (but it may have the connectors for those if necessary).
:).
;).
That way you can just think (stuff between < > are your own personal thought macros/patterns that you've trained your auxbrain to recognize):
<start><recall><object's pattern><do it><recall><another object's pattern><do it><end> followed by normal thought stream that's ignored by the computer.
Of course if you only want to recall one object quickly you'd use:
<start><recall><object's pattern><do it and end>
The object could be a picture, audio, video, file, etc or even the computer's representation of a stream/group of thought patterns (based on what it reads from the sensor).
As a result we might still have desktop computers since they would still be way more powerful, but notebooks, laptops and PDAs could vanish
Of course the **AA would want DRM built in, so certain things might have limited recall
But those sort of laptops tend to lighten wallets significantly, so it somewhat balances out.
> A shotgun fires a bunch of individual pellets in a single shot. That doesn't make it fully-automatic.
Sure, never said it was. I was mentioning it because of _your_ "multiple shot" example.
You can stand in front of the a semiautomatic weapon (shotgun, handgun whatever) not long after the trigger is pulled, and not be hit.
In contrast a fully automatic machine gun, will still be damaging stuff as long as there's ammo and the trigger is still pulled. Same for this laser. Hence it behaves like an automatic weapon.
You can keep believing what you want, but my classification makes far more sense than yours.
It's way closer to a fully automatic weapon than a semi-auto. You can hold the trigger down, wave it around and blind/injure hundreds with your so-called "one shot".
Try doing that with a semi-automatic handgun.
Heck I could also say it's firing lots of photons repeatedly in that single shot. But I think my first point is far more important from the perspective of the targets and the wielder. For them it behaves like a fully automatic weapon, and it should be classified and treated similarly for regulatory purposes too.
Fake, duplicate or not, numeric IDs are still easier to key in ;).
:).
As most slashdotters will know, if your data records are in a digital computer, it's pretty hard to avoid being linked to at least one number.
Even if you don't have national ID numbers, someone could go around claiming to be you, or the "System" could still confuse you with someone else.
At least accidental/erroneous duplicate IDs are easier to detect.
Of course if some Big Bad Ruler/Government starts issuing citizens with Citizen Certificates that have to be renewed every year then that's a problem
I dunno, the guy just lists out reasons why you can't uniquely identify people by names. e.g. "some people don't have names".
;).
Well that's why Governments start handing out people national ID numbers[1]. Then even if you aren't who you claim you are, at least the poor data entry person has something to key in and can actually type it in on his/her keyboard
[1] As for foreigners wihtout a passport number or national ID, please wait here for those friendly guys in uniforms...
> What is your full name? .
Whenever sites/organizations ask me for such info that really isn't technically necessary, I think of stuff like this: http://xkcd.com/327/ :).
That's why I wrote:
> Yes the laser itself has use in projectors and other stuff, but what good purpose does this product in this form have?
I am well aware that the actual laser itself is already in use in projectors.
The final form does matter. While slashdotters do disassemble and modify/rebuild stuff, the general public tend to use products "as is".
Actually you don't have to block or drop them. If the genital recognition algorithm works, you could just link those users to a video/chatbot that laughs at them. Of course it won't work so well if they drop their pants right in the middle of a session with a real human, but you could still automatically switch quickly to the "chatbot" after that.
:) ).
But I thought people that go to chatroulette should be expecting crap like this and worse? I haven't bothered since I don't have a webcam, nor do I want to risk seeing some yucky stuff.
FWIW, I doubt seeing some genitals would bother me. As long as they're not mangled/bloody or gross in some other way. Maybe they should have something that recognizes Goatse and worse stuff, that'll be more useful (though a lot more challenging
Nah it's just a new virtual instance copied and modified slightly yesterday and God just clicked on the "Start Virtual Universe" button only a few seconds ago.
:).
So is it 3.5 billion years old or a day old or a few seconds old?
You don't need a license for this laser right? That's my point.
This is a fully automatic weapon, heck it even seems to have a constant on-off switch. At least an M16 requires you to do fancy stuff in order to keep it firing for a full minute.
It needs to be regulated to reduce the "fools to legitimate users ratio". Very few lives will be negatively impacted by such regulation, and I think it would reduce the amount of harm in the long run.
Take the example of one person who replied to my OP, who gave the "find broken glass on the floor" example of a legitimate use for personal lasers. It may be a legitimate for a 1mW laser pointer, but it is a totally STUPID suggestion in the context of this product.
"Oh yeah there's broken glass on that part of the floor, how can I tell? Because me and my friends now have permanent eye damage (or are now blind) from the reflected/scattered laser light."
That sort of thing is less likely to happen with a workshop 30W cutting tool laser, even though it is far more powerful. That product has a far smaller danger radius in its sold form, and hence poses a far lower risk to others.
I've no problem with the nonblinding lasers. You can use those for building your fences and finding broken glass on the floor.
Your suggested uses of "find broken glass", "building fences" seem to show that you really are clueless on what this laser can do and it would be very unsafe in your hands, or that you are using very ill-thought examples[1].
If you tried to use this laser to find broken glass on the floor you are likely to blind yourself or others within a significant range. The reflected/refracted light of this laser can still cause permanent eye damage and/or blindness in significant ranges - e.g. in "find broken glass on the floor" scenarios.
Even their lower powered products would be unsuitable for many of your suggested uses.
The usefulness vs danger ratio of this particular product in its particular form is rather low.
It's ridiculously unsafe that a random ignorant idiot with USD200 can just click "I agree to all that scary warnings" and legally buy one, instead of having to jump through the sort of hoops required in order to legally buy a fully automatic machine gun. The latter will at least take a very persistent and resourceful ignorant idiot who are far rarer.
In contrast it'll more likely be someone with more awareness who'd jump through those hoops to own a fully automatic machine gun, someone who is far less likely to fire it randomly into a crowd.
The entry-barrier is too low for such laser products.
[1] Your examples in the context of this product are like saying: "there are legitimate uses for personal machine guns, making doughnuts with them in the kitchen for instance".
> Even if it were classified as a firearm, it would be semi-automatic as it only fires once when you press the button.
Wrong. It is not a one shot pulse laser. It fires continuously and keeps firing as long as you press the button.
Quote specs: "Switch: Push Button Constant On / Off, Lock-Out Tail Cap"
Even if fully automatic rifles are not banned they appear to be rather regulated. In my opinion such laser products should be tightly regulated since:
1) They're not like industrial laser cutting tools, you're only going to destroy stuff that you bring to that tool - the danger radius is typically rather limited. They're in a different form and package.
2) They don't appear to serve much useful purpose compared to the danger they pose.
Depending on how those lasers are packaged they could be regarded as automatic weapons too.
Yes, sell and regulate it as a fully automatic weapon.
Don't they ban fully automatic rifles for civilian use in the USA?
This laser product is fully automatic weapon in the sense that:
1) It can continuously cause permanent blindness to people
2) It can do it at a 200 metre effective range
3) It does not need a reload after 9 or even 30 shots.
If you empty a handgun wildly into a crowd, you'd probably hit less than 20 people (and current medical tech might restore a significant number of them near completely). In contrast this laser when used on a crowd can permanently blind far more than 20 people. There are many places where you can find a crowd of hundreds looking at one spot.
The product in its current form does not appear to have a good utility to danger ratio.
Yes the laser itself has use in projectors and other stuff, but what good purpose does this product in this form have?
It's not very good as a defensive weapon: it doesn't really have very good stopping power - even if blinded, a gunman could still kill you (and he might have even higher motivation to do so). It has a very high chance of collateral damage.
To me if you can justify the banning of fully automatic assault rifles for general civilian use, you should also ban this weapon.
For normal Oracle users or for those who pay for premier support?
;) ).
Many vendors hide their knowledgebase behind a paywall (e.g. CheckPoint Software, and Oracle it seems). That's not true for stuff like Postgresql.
I don't regard being able to pay to access a knowledgebase, as a positive feature. Or being able to pay to get support from people who have access to that paywalled knowledgebase. It really isn't better support to be able to talk to someone who is "more experienced" just because mountains of info has been locked up by the Vendor.
With Postgresql I wouldn't have to call support for many things in the first place - I would already know the answer, just from a few search queries!
The problems I'd need help for would be problems that aren't listed already. And often the Vendor is not able to provide an answer till the developers figure it out. And I doubt most developers do 24/7 support - whether they are Oracle, Postgresql or Microsoft developers. It's just bad for the developer's productivity .
FWIW, I'm the sort of guy who has hexedited 3rd party products to provide features that the 3rd party says are only available in a different product, or to fix bugs that the 3rd party is "going to fix soon" (which is often different from soon enough
I'm sure many of us on Slashdot have done stuff like this.
So there's no _technical_ reason (but CYA is useful) for us paying to get a "menu based monkey" or even someone who knows how to use Google. I'm sure we know how to use Google, Bing etc.
With the postgresql mailing list support, I can get real "down to the bits and bytes" sort of answers from the developers. And they actually know a lot more about the DB (and often other stuff) than I do.
Would a normal Oracle customer really get better technical support from Oracle than from the postgresql mailing list? So far you often get useful answers directly from the Postgresql development team[1]. For that level of Oracle support I bet you'd have to pay higher than the normal already high prices, or be a big customer.
;).
Some guy to rushing to my door to quickly not be able to fix the problem, is often useful for keeping the bosses at bay, but not so useful from a technical POV. It is an often critically important feature though - being able to spend the company's money to help keep your job
[1] I doubt this scales though e.g. if Postgresql's popularity skyrockets...
I think the OP is talking about import tariffs. If the import tariffs are in the USA, moving from France to Germany wouldn't help Foxconn sell to the USA.
I think they even cancelled some transactions in that event. http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/2978400/updates_on_dow_jones_drop_includes.html?cat=3
I suspect if certain people win, they keep their winnings, if they lose too much, the transactions are cancelled.
Gay rockets?
Just like straight Ethernet cables and gay ones.