Only make some sort of sense if the summary had described the net as being in _front_ of the spacecraft, so that collisions increase the spacecraft's speed (which is in higher orbit and thus moving slower).
Even so, the net is more likely to cause stuff to break into smaller and harder to track pieces. And definitely bad if the net breaks...
> yet it won't help much if most of your equivalently huge debt is owned by a foreign country.
Yes, the US Gov owes trillions to other countries BUT that debt is payable in US dollars.
There's a big difference between the US Gov owing somebody lots of US dollars, and you owing somebody lots of US dollars.
You can't legally create US dollars or have your left hand lend your right hand US dollars out of thin air.
The US Gov can. They can create US dolalrs, or lend themselves US dollars.
If the US dollars get devalued, it does not hurt the US Gov as much as it hurts China or other countries that are holding net positive amounts of US dollars, or are owed lots of US dollars. The USA is not like Zimbabwe. Hardly anyone outside of Zimbabwe holds Zimbabwe currency or is owed large amounts of Zimbabwe currency.
Imagine if somebody owes you lots of US dollars, and they are suddenly worth a lot less and can no longer even buy you a loaf of bread. Who does that hurt more? You or the person who owes you?
And the real scenario is that person who owes you money can actually print US dollars too.
So guess who is the one really in deeper shit. It should be obvious that China will want the "show" to go on.
But if it makes assholes less likely to behave like assholes and actually start giving out food to the poor (and do other good stuff) what's the big problem with that particular "delusion"?
Their lawyer(s) should have told them to change their names if they want a better chance to start "clean".
Sure it's a pain, but if you want to be treated by everyone as a different person from your old murderer self, maybe you too should treat yourself as a different person and change your name as part of the process.
> Enjoy your superstition. It has no effect on reality.
Really? That's a pretty delusional and irrational claim to make. Superstitions affect human behaviours, and human behaviours affect reality.
And haven't you even heard of the placebo effect? It is _scientifically_ proven to work well on a significant proportion of humans, for all sorts of problems. And most certainly better than nothing.
So it logically follows that groups of humans with the appropriate superstitions would be better able to take advantage of the placebo effect (no need for a physical "sugar pill", and someone _else_ to administer it), and thus have an advantage over groups of humans without such superstitions. For example, the placebo effect might allow a badly injured group member to perform tasks that benefit the group, that he would normally not be able to due to pain.
There are also other group advantages such as increasing the statistical likelihood of altruistic behaviour from individuals not normally prone to such behaviours. I'm not saying all atheists aren't altruistic OK? Or that all religious people are altruistic. I'm saying that certain religions would encourage their members to do "out of character" altruistic behaviors (while others might bias their members to be more prone to out of character suicide bombings;) ).
Thus, it would not surprise me if this results in some groups with "superstitions" having better "survival fitness" than groups totally without.
For some reason many people believe that atheists are somehow more rational, but I find most atheists are about as delusional and irrational too - for example they say stuff like "But for good people to do evil things, it takes religion.". Which is clearly incorrect[1].
Do their delusions bestow them many advantages?
[1] If you accept that Communism is not a religion, then many good people have followed it and done lots of evil. Leaders can take advantage of belief systems and make followers do all sorts of stuff (good or evil). The Communist Manifesto says "forcible overthrow" and other stupid stuff which allow leaders to more easily build their Dictatorships.
How do you turn off your iphone's cell connection and leave it still working in otherways? A phone doesn't have to be making calls or sending messages for the cellphone towers to know where it is - since the phone and towers are regularly working out which cell your phone should be with.
For most GSM phones the only way to not be traced is to switch the phone off, or remove the SIM.
But hey, the fewer crooks that know this the better.
No country would start a war with the USA. Not now or in twenty years. Just look at the USA's "defense" budget compared to the rest of the world _total_.
They're like "that survivalist guy with a whole basement full of guns, ammo, grenades and a rocket launcher or two". It'll be suicide to go up to his house with a BB gun and shoot at it.
If anyone wants to hurt the USA they'd have to do it more sneakily - so there's no obvious target for their nukes, cruise missiles, bombers etc.
Same goes for this "cyberwarfare" thing. A massive concerted attack from your country against the USA will just get you bombed.
The US media likes to make noise about China/<bogeyman of the day> launching cyberattacks on US servers. The fact is, if the Chinese Gov was really involved, the US Gov will just call the Chinese ambassador in, and say: "Hey stop that now". But really which government is going to do that? If my government wanted to start a war with the USA - cyber or otherwise, a real act of patriotism would be to shoot the idiot leader(s) who came up with that idea.
The attacks are mainly from a bunch of script kiddies or criminals. If the US Gov is really serious about reducing the attacks they should just go follow the money/control channels, and jail the people responsible if they're in the USA (won't surprise me if many are actually from the USA- after all Sanford Wallace is in the USA, and the BlueHippo thing was in the USA ).
He wants his GUI to be simple and his apps bloated, rather than the UI to be bloated and the apps simple?
Most people have an OS to use their apps, rather than as an end to itself. They don't want to spend most of their time tinkering with the O/S - they want to spend their time getting stuff done.
Nowadays the O/S often gets in the way of doing stuff - with the animations and "cool cutscenes" (which impresses noobs, but just slows things down).
I've just proposed something to GNOME to make it more efficient (direct selection of active tasks with key combos), wonder if they'll actually implement it. There's some plans for some "Desktop Context/Activities" thing, but I think that won't be as fast as my suggestion.
Supermarkets where I am actually sell stuff like liver and gizzards just the way they sell chicken wings, fillets etc.
I think that's why in my country they often have to import stuff to make sausages, nuggets or patties. The fresh "misc" meat has enough value and actually gets sold in significant quantities.
Whereas in more "squeamish" countries, they have to disguise the stuff, or convert them to pet food.
If you eat more of an animal without having to disguise it, it means less wastage and better efficiency. A single animal can feed more people, and there's less spent on hiding the "unsightly" bits.
> What exactly is wrong with that? Some speculators lose their shirts, while others (who doubt the projections and short long term oil contracts) get new shirts.
Because the smart speculators don't bet their own shirts. They bet _your_ shirts and retirement funds (along with everyone else's). Why do people even hire them? Because they help those who hire them become rich too.
When stuff goes well, they all collect big bonuses. When stuff goes poof, they ask for a bailout from the Government, since "your retirement funds and insurance packages" are in danger.
It's like gambling at a casino with other people's money, taking a cut when you win, and when you lose, you move to another table to play with another bunch of people's money - if there's a "financial disaster" and lots of players lose, they take a "well-deserved" holiday, then come back and swap tables with each other (like musical chairs).
Great way to make lots of money if you don't have much of a conscience. All those fancy math and theories are just to bamboozle the stupid and ignorant.
> because the creators wanted to maintain artistic integrity.
Really? Then that must be the only integrity they're maintaining...
I see nothing ethically wrong with buying a legit DVD, editing it, then selling the edited version. Especially if you are buying a DVD for each modified DVD you resell.
It may be illegal, but I don't see it as unethical.
You have passed the demanded profits to whoever sold the DVDs, and you have added value for whoever is willingly buying them in full knowledge of what they are. In fact sales have increased.
So if the guy is making 10 bucks more, the DVD maker deserves none of it. They can make the 10 bucks themselves if they just do what those customers wanted.
"Rigid schema design" was one of the "problems" quoted in the story submission.
RDBMSs are slow compared to simple key-value stuff. But they do a lot more than just key-value. And even so, stuff like postgresql can do better than 10ms for key-value especially on modern servers.
Yes it is. However one of the biggest benefits of SQL and "rigid schema design" is it forces people to conform to a standard.
Those "whiny babies" might say that's a flaw, and it is a flaw when there's just one whiny baby to keep happy. But it's often a feature when you have 100 whiny babies that want different things from a _single_ database.
Yes RDBMSes might be slower. But thanks to Intel and friends, RDBMSes have been good enough for most organizations and the performance curve stays ahead of their growth. and the performance problems tend to not be due to the RDBMSes but due to other problems e.g. the DBA screwing up, or the app doing the wrong thing 1000 times:).
But doesn't help for confidentiality and other problems:
1) your private stuff can all be seen by the program running using your account. 2) there are many ways it can get your passwords too. 3) the private stuff can include your browser cookies and various credentials, so it could do stuff in your name, with your authority.
> By that logic, child porn should be legal, so long as you don't enjoy it?
I suspect the FBI have copies of child porn in their possession.
But I dunno, I don't understand all this "law stuff". It's too complicated for me.
They certainly don't punish people who watched kidnappers beheading people, or terrorists killing people. And they certainly don't punish people who watch rape scenes in the movies.
Those are all crimes. So what's the logic of _only_ going after those people who have child porn (and in some cases virtual child porn)?
I'm curious, what are the odds of someone being a victim of child rape, compared to being murdered, badly beaten up or raped as an adult? If the latter risks are higher, and watching/seeing something really makes people more likely to commit it, then maybe the priorities should be changed?
Based on these, it should not be a surprise that some people will actually find it hard to lose weight despite eating and exercising the same as skinny people. Of course, your diet also affects your gut bacteria populations. I bet consuming lots of "sugar water" isn't going to help breed gut bacteria that makes it easier for you to be skinny.
Ah but they probably also want to punish people who get pleasure ( especially sexual) from watching 9/11 videos.
Thought crime and all that.
FWIW, adultery is still a crime in some US states. Maybe they should also imprison people who get pleasure from looking at photos of other people's wives.
If people don't think adultery is damaging, I suggest they do a statistical survey of people whose spouses have cheated on them. While some people aren't the jealous sort, a significant number are. And from an evolutionary POV it's quite understandable why they feel that way. It can be significantly affect the survival of their genes.
The quota idea? Well the way I see it is there should be healthcare for all (I don't think most people want a society that kills off their poor and the weak).
BUT there's got to be a quota- a limit, otherwise the poor and the weak will kill the society;). The limit can go up as the country gets richer (or can get lots of credit;) ).
You cannot make everyone rich. You can't give the very best to everyone. As medical technology improves, the cutting edge treatments will likely become more and more expensive. For example lets say within the next few decades given a hundred million dollars or so they could grow a new limb for you if you need one (probably grow a batch from your own cells and scrap the ones that fail QC) and reattach it. But there isn't the money to do that for everyone who loses a limb, the billionaires can afford that. The rest will just have to do with much cheaper artificial limbs (which should be quite decent by then anyway - even if some are produced in China;) ).
I believe the most powerful nation in the world can actually afford a better healthcare system and maybe even implement one. It's just a matter of priorities. Just look at the actual spending (not just budgets).
As for the other stuff (e.g. smokers contributing more $$$ ), they're not ideas. In the UK smokers cost the NHS an extra 5 billion pounds per year. But the tobacco taxes bring in 10 billion a year. Note: I am not in the UK or a smoker.
Slashdot Mirror
> Guess you've never been in a rear-end collision?
Care to explain your assumptions?
It seemed extremely unlikely to me that the design would be such that the net pushes the rest of the spacecraft forward.
Only make some sort of sense if the summary had described the net as being in _front_ of the spacecraft, so that collisions increase the spacecraft's speed (which is in higher orbit and thus moving slower).
Even so, the net is more likely to cause stuff to break into smaller and harder to track pieces. And definitely bad if the net breaks...
> What the fuck is wrong with you?
Too much exposure to harmful environmental chemicals?
> yet it won't help much if most of your equivalently huge debt is owned by a foreign country.
Yes, the US Gov owes trillions to other countries BUT that debt is payable in US dollars.
There's a big difference between the US Gov owing somebody lots of US dollars, and you owing somebody lots of US dollars.
You can't legally create US dollars or have your left hand lend your right hand US dollars out of thin air.
The US Gov can. They can create US dolalrs, or lend themselves US dollars.
If the US dollars get devalued, it does not hurt the US Gov as much as it hurts China or other countries that are holding net positive amounts of US dollars, or are owed lots of US dollars. The USA is not like Zimbabwe. Hardly anyone outside of Zimbabwe holds Zimbabwe currency or is owed large amounts of Zimbabwe currency.
Imagine if somebody owes you lots of US dollars, and they are suddenly worth a lot less and can no longer even buy you a loaf of bread. Who does that hurt more? You or the person who owes you?
And the real scenario is that person who owes you money can actually print US dollars too.
So guess who is the one really in deeper shit. It should be obvious that China will want the "show" to go on.
But if it makes assholes less likely to behave like assholes and actually start giving out food to the poor (and do other good stuff) what's the big problem with that particular "delusion"?
Their lawyer(s) should have told them to change their names if they want a better chance to start "clean".
Sure it's a pain, but if you want to be treated by everyone as a different person from your old murderer self, maybe you too should treat yourself as a different person and change your name as part of the process.
> Enjoy your superstition. It has no effect on reality.
;) ).
Really? That's a pretty delusional and irrational claim to make. Superstitions affect human behaviours, and human behaviours affect reality.
And haven't you even heard of the placebo effect? It is _scientifically_ proven to work well on a significant proportion of humans, for all sorts of problems. And most certainly better than nothing.
So it logically follows that groups of humans with the appropriate superstitions would be better able to take advantage of the placebo effect (no need for a physical "sugar pill", and someone _else_ to administer it), and thus have an advantage over groups of humans without such superstitions. For example, the placebo effect might allow a badly injured group member to perform tasks that benefit the group, that he would normally not be able to due to pain.
There are also other group advantages such as increasing the statistical likelihood of altruistic behaviour from individuals not normally prone to such behaviours. I'm not saying all atheists aren't altruistic OK? Or that all religious people are altruistic. I'm saying that certain religions would encourage their members to do "out of character" altruistic behaviors (while others might bias their members to be more prone to out of character suicide bombings
Thus, it would not surprise me if this results in some groups with "superstitions" having better "survival fitness" than groups totally without.
For some reason many people believe that atheists are somehow more rational, but I find most atheists are about as delusional and irrational too - for example they say stuff like "But for good people to do evil things, it takes religion.". Which is clearly incorrect[1].
Do their delusions bestow them many advantages?
[1] If you accept that Communism is not a religion, then many good people have followed it and done lots of evil. Leaders can take advantage of belief systems and make followers do all sorts of stuff (good or evil). The Communist Manifesto says "forcible overthrow" and other stupid stuff which allow leaders to more easily build their Dictatorships.
How do you turn off your iphone's cell connection and leave it still working in otherways? A phone doesn't have to be making calls or sending messages for the cellphone towers to know where it is - since the phone and towers are regularly working out which cell your phone should be with.
For most GSM phones the only way to not be traced is to switch the phone off, or remove the SIM.
But hey, the fewer crooks that know this the better.
No country would start a war with the USA. Not now or in twenty years. Just look at the USA's "defense" budget compared to the rest of the world _total_.
They're like "that survivalist guy with a whole basement full of guns, ammo, grenades and a rocket launcher or two". It'll be suicide to go up to his house with a BB gun and shoot at it.
If anyone wants to hurt the USA they'd have to do it more sneakily - so there's no obvious target for their nukes, cruise missiles, bombers etc.
Same goes for this "cyberwarfare" thing. A massive concerted attack from your country against the USA will just get you bombed.
The US media likes to make noise about China/<bogeyman of the day> launching cyberattacks on US servers. The fact is, if the Chinese Gov was really involved, the US Gov will just call the Chinese ambassador in, and say: "Hey stop that now". But really which government is going to do that? If my government wanted to start a war with the USA - cyber or otherwise, a real act of patriotism would be to shoot the idiot leader(s) who came up with that idea.
The attacks are mainly from a bunch of script kiddies or criminals. If the US Gov is really serious about reducing the attacks they should just go follow the money/control channels, and jail the people responsible if they're in the USA (won't surprise me if many are actually from the USA- after all Sanford Wallace is in the USA, and the BlueHippo thing was in the USA ).
He wants his GUI to be simple and his apps bloated, rather than the UI to be bloated and the apps simple?
Most people have an OS to use their apps, rather than as an end to itself. They don't want to spend most of their time tinkering with the O/S - they want to spend their time getting stuff done.
Nowadays the O/S often gets in the way of doing stuff - with the animations and "cool cutscenes" (which impresses noobs, but just slows things down).
I've just proposed something to GNOME to make it more efficient (direct selection of active tasks with key combos), wonder if they'll actually implement it. There's some plans for some "Desktop Context/Activities" thing, but I think that won't be as fast as my suggestion.
Supermarkets where I am actually sell stuff like liver and gizzards just the way they sell chicken wings, fillets etc.
I think that's why in my country they often have to import stuff to make sausages, nuggets or patties. The fresh "misc" meat has enough value and actually gets sold in significant quantities.
Whereas in more "squeamish" countries, they have to disguise the stuff, or convert them to pet food.
If you eat more of an animal without having to disguise it, it means less wastage and better efficiency. A single animal can feed more people, and there's less spent on hiding the "unsightly" bits.
Yeah that's probably a good idea - have a bunch of Mafia/etc friends just to play games.
:).
Trouble is some bright spark from the FBI might get confused, kick your door down and confiscate your stuff
Itaipu? Damn that's huge.
> What exactly is wrong with that? Some speculators lose their shirts, while others (who doubt the projections and short long term oil contracts) get new shirts.
Because the smart speculators don't bet their own shirts. They bet _your_ shirts and retirement funds (along with everyone else's). Why do people even hire them? Because they help those who hire them become rich too.
When stuff goes well, they all collect big bonuses. When stuff goes poof, they ask for a bailout from the Government, since "your retirement funds and insurance packages" are in danger.
It's like gambling at a casino with other people's money, taking a cut when you win, and when you lose, you move to another table to play with another bunch of people's money - if there's a "financial disaster" and lots of players lose, they take a "well-deserved" holiday, then come back and swap tables with each other (like musical chairs).
Great way to make lots of money if you don't have much of a conscience. All those fancy math and theories are just to bamboozle the stupid and ignorant.
Someone should write an app to do "computer assisted sonar" for blind people :).
So that they can more easily do what this kid does: http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=089A83C0200FE020
> because the creators wanted to maintain artistic integrity.
Really? Then that must be the only integrity they're maintaining...
I see nothing ethically wrong with buying a legit DVD, editing it, then selling the edited version. Especially if you are buying a DVD for each modified DVD you resell.
It may be illegal, but I don't see it as unethical.
You have passed the demanded profits to whoever sold the DVDs, and you have added value for whoever is willingly buying them in full knowledge of what they are. In fact sales have increased.
So if the guy is making 10 bucks more, the DVD maker deserves none of it. They can make the 10 bucks themselves if they just do what those customers wanted.
"Rigid schema design" was one of the "problems" quoted in the story submission.
RDBMSs are slow compared to simple key-value stuff. But they do a lot more than just key-value. And even so, stuff like postgresql can do better than 10ms for key-value especially on modern servers.
See: http://www.kaltenbrunner.cc/blog/index.php?/archives/26-Benchmarking-8.4-Chapter-1Read-Only-workloads.html
Why? Going there to pick up your server?
> SQL is is a terrible language
:).
Yes it is. However one of the biggest benefits of SQL and "rigid schema design" is it forces people to conform to a standard.
Those "whiny babies" might say that's a flaw, and it is a flaw when there's just one whiny baby to keep happy. But it's often a feature when you have 100 whiny babies that want different things from a _single_ database.
Yes RDBMSes might be slower. But thanks to Intel and friends, RDBMSes have been good enough for most organizations and the performance curve stays ahead of their growth. and the performance problems tend to not be due to the RDBMSes but due to other problems e.g. the DBA screwing up, or the app doing the wrong thing 1000 times
That's fine for the destruction problem.
But doesn't help for confidentiality and other problems:
1) your private stuff can all be seen by the program running using your account.
2) there are many ways it can get your passwords too.
3) the private stuff can include your browser cookies and various credentials, so it could do stuff in your name, with your authority.
Your mail is already in your room, and he can read it, see all your passwords as you type them, since he's in the same room as you are.
> By that logic, child porn should be legal, so long as you don't enjoy it?
I suspect the FBI have copies of child porn in their possession.
But I dunno, I don't understand all this "law stuff". It's too complicated for me.
They certainly don't punish people who watched kidnappers beheading people, or terrorists killing people. And they certainly don't punish people who watch rape scenes in the movies.
Those are all crimes. So what's the logic of _only_ going after those people who have child porn (and in some cases virtual child porn)?
I'm curious, what are the odds of someone being a victim of child rape, compared to being murdered, badly beaten up or raped as an adult? If the latter risks are higher, and watching/seeing something really makes people more likely to commit it, then maybe the priorities should be changed?
Even more people (including researchers) don't seem to think about the energy excreted in the feces (or other ways).
I hardly ever see any mention of it in studies related to weight loss, diet etc.
Go check out how many researchers actually take samples and work out how much a subject is excreting.
Then there's was also a study which showed that mice in a bacteria free environment could eat a lot and not put on weight.
See: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=95900616
And another which had the bacteria free mice getting gut bacteria from obese mice and ending up fatter than if they got gut bacteria from skinny mice.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6654607
Based on these, it should not be a surprise that some people will actually find it hard to lose weight despite eating and exercising the same as skinny people. Of course, your diet also affects your gut bacteria populations. I bet consuming lots of "sugar water" isn't going to help breed gut bacteria that makes it easier for you to be skinny.
Ah but they probably also want to punish people who get pleasure ( especially sexual) from watching 9/11 videos.
Thought crime and all that.
FWIW, adultery is still a crime in some US states. Maybe they should also imprison people who get pleasure from looking at photos of other people's wives.
If people don't think adultery is damaging, I suggest they do a statistical survey of people whose spouses have cheated on them. While some people aren't the jealous sort, a significant number are. And from an evolutionary POV it's quite understandable why they feel that way. It can be significantly affect the survival of their genes.
The quota idea? Well the way I see it is there should be healthcare for all (I don't think most people want a society that kills off their poor and the weak).
;). The limit can go up as the country gets richer (or can get lots of credit ;) ).
;) ).
BUT there's got to be a quota- a limit, otherwise the poor and the weak will kill the society
You cannot make everyone rich. You can't give the very best to everyone. As medical technology improves, the cutting edge treatments will likely become more and more expensive. For example lets say within the next few decades given a hundred million dollars or so they could grow a new limb for you if you need one (probably grow a batch from your own cells and scrap the ones that fail QC) and reattach it. But there isn't the money to do that for everyone who loses a limb, the billionaires can afford that. The rest will just have to do with much cheaper artificial limbs (which should be quite decent by then anyway - even if some are produced in China
I believe the most powerful nation in the world can actually afford a better healthcare system and maybe even implement one. It's just a matter of priorities. Just look at the actual spending (not just budgets).
As for the other stuff (e.g. smokers contributing more $$$ ), they're not ideas. In the UK smokers cost the NHS an extra 5 billion pounds per year. But the tobacco taxes bring in 10 billion a year. Note: I am not in the UK or a smoker.