Actually, we've yet to prove our survival abilities compared to the dinosaurs. They survived many millions of years longer than humanity has (homo sapiens hasn't managed even a single megayear yet), and I suspect you know the prevailing theories on just what it took to wipe them out (and also that some actually survived - for example, the crocodilian lineage continues even today!).
Classically, four other major extinction events in Earth's history have been in that league (many more "minor" extinction events have also occurred). Feel free to provide a "peer reviewed Nature/Science journal article" supporting a claim that our current civilisation would be able to survive just one of those major events in any recognisable form.
I'm a Catholic who tries to follow the biblical example of Jesus (that is, the "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" part, not all the terrible atrocities that have been committed in his name for the past 2000 years), so I don't even have a moral framework whereby I'm allowed to hurt someone, even in defense of my own life or that of an innocent.
Matthew 7:12, "Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets." Luke 6:31, "And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise."
It's not what men do, it's what men should do. If you found yourself doing harm to another, you should want someone to stop you.
Okay, I looked at the 50:1 PDF in your link. Say we assume for now it's right. What's the _long-term_ cost of not stopping it? The temperature isn't going to magically cease rising at midnight on 2100AD. The oceanic acidity isn't going to magically neutralise. The methane clathrate traps aren't going to magically un-thaw. We can't halt physics like we can halt a stock market. How much extra CO2 can we continue releasing into the atmosphere and ocean before it dooms future generations to extinction instead of poverty?
Humanity can recover from poverty. Extinction, not so much. What's the date at which your ROI on not abating human pollution drops to a null value?
Star Citizen is a spiritual sequel to Freelancer, Chris Roberts is the lead dev, and in addition to the official persistent online universe it will allow private servers with modding for your own ships, worlds, etc.
"Basically" it's Freelancer the way the devs always wanted it to be. They've raised $19 million in player-raised funding so far, allowing stuff like player-owned capital ships and space stations. I'm looking forward to seeing what the post-$20M stretch goals are.
Is that gross income, net income, or net disposable income? And it's nice that you've provided the average (mean), but what about the median and mode? What's the minimum and maximum?
Say you've got ten people. One person makes $10k. Eight people make $25k. One person makes $150k. What's the average? $36k. If the base cost of living is $9k, what's the net disposable income? 1x$1k, 8x$16k, 1x$141k. What's the average? $27k. If the average home is $50k, the minimum home is $25k, and the maximum home is $1M, how many years will it take for the minimum income person to buy the minimum home versus the maximum income person to buy the average home?
People who survive being hit by lightning do so because slightly more than usual of the vast majority of the energy keeps going, not because they are Norse gods.:)
If all of the energy in a (somewhat bigger-than-average*) lightning bolt spontaneously converted to heat in an even distribution throughout your body, you would indeed be vaporised.
*The average negative cloud-to-ground bolt is about half a gigajoule, but much bigger bolts do happen. And then there are "superbolts". Wikipedia is a nice start: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning
GP said, "no reason other than the color of your skin". You said, "white male, mid-30s, approx. 6 ft tall, wearing jeans and red T-shirt". Do you notice a difference?
Sadly, far too often, your type of profiling isn't the type being carried out.
Mistake? Java is an island of Indonesia, with over a hundred million people (also making it the world's most populous island and one of the most densely-populated places in the world).
It's not just a programming language and a cup of coffee.:)
It does detect lying about 80-93% of the time, which is statistically interesting, but it is not a sufficiently strong correlation to have much confidence in any particular result. That's all.
Is it the government's policy to end/limit the career prospects of anyone who fails a polygraph? Is the 80-93% the overall rate? What's the rate for sociopaths vs the rate for non-sociopaths? If the rate for sociopaths is less, what additional tests does the government perform to compensate for the increased risk of hiring sociopaths over non-sociopaths, and are those tests adequate to the task?
It does detect lying about 80-93% of the time, which is statistically interesting, but it is not a sufficiently strong correlation to have much confidence in any particular result. That's all.
Is it the government's policy to end/limit the career prospects of anyone who fails a polygraph? Is the 80-93% the overall rate? What's the rate for sociopaths vs the rate for non-sociopaths? If the rate for sociopaths is less, what additional tests does the government perform to compensate for the increased risk of hiring sociopaths over non-sociopaths, and are those tests adequate to the task?
Hmm. All of those actions involved the inferior forces being aided/supplied by foreign powers: in 1775, it was Europe, in 1979, it was the United States, in 2001, it was various countries in the Middle East.
My scenario always did suppose that you'd already been flagged for extra attention. Hmm. Take this guy http://varnull.adityamukerjee.net/post/59021412512/dont-fly-during-ramadan - since you're asserting expertise here, if there'd been a hard drive in his suitcase when he was detained, what odds would you give of it ending up being subjected to cryptographic analysis?
Oh, I dunno, by suit #2 imaging and analysing the drive they found in your luggage while suit #1 is giving you the aforementioned 8h59m interrogation and, oh, hey, what are the odds that the NSA has had a lot of experience in discovering encrypted data, including hidden volumes?
Or they just confiscate it, hand you a receipt and tell you to take your complaint to somebody who cares. Better hope it takes a long time to reach whatever TLA data cruncher it's destined for that can detect your second hidden partition.
If we're indulging in fantasy, but wanting something milder, perhaps "unreasonable search", so that when they blink at you, you can add, "that's the password, and also what I love to sue people for. Denny Krane!" as you hand them your law firm's card. The one that says "Denny Krane" on it.:p
Um, the GP knows about hidden partitions and plausible deniability. Here, I'll quote: "never mind that they cannot prove you have one and that you may actually not have one in the first place". The GP also knows that, yeah, usually some bored border agent will take one glance at your booting laptop and wave you through with a yawn.
The GP also knows that if, for whatever reason, you do get flagged for extra attention, and they then realise you've got encryption capable of plausible deniability, that they will not give one iota of a shit about your protestations that you don't use it.
It's not about how technology works, it's about how people work, and people tend to react badly when they think you're hiding something - regardless of whether you're actually doing so.
So, yeah, you may eventually leave the interrogation room after the maximum legally-allowed eight hours and fifty nine minutes later (depending on jurisdiction and assuming they haven't found some pretext to "indefinitely detain" you), having missed your flight, your luggage thoroughly ransacked, your every last piece of electronics down to and including the xbox controller confiscated, your name permanently engraved on their hassle lists, your house searched, your neighbours and employers queried and your every phone call tapped for the next two years, but hey, you sure showed them, right?
Slashdot Mirror
What are the odds that VR gear like the Occulus Rift will keep multi-monitor gaming from becoming more than a niche market?
(and with VR, you can render additional informational displays _within_ the game)
Actually, we've yet to prove our survival abilities compared to the dinosaurs. They survived many millions of years longer than humanity has (homo sapiens hasn't managed even a single megayear yet), and I suspect you know the prevailing theories on just what it took to wipe them out (and also that some actually survived - for example, the crocodilian lineage continues even today!).
Classically, four other major extinction events in Earth's history have been in that league (many more "minor" extinction events have also occurred). Feel free to provide a "peer reviewed Nature/Science journal article" supporting a claim that our current civilisation would be able to survive just one of those major events in any recognisable form.
The most humane solution, massive education.
FTFY.
Matthew 7:12, "Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets."
Luke 6:31, "And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise."
It's not what men do, it's what men should do. If you found yourself doing harm to another, you should want someone to stop you.
Okay, I looked at the 50:1 PDF in your link. Say we assume for now it's right. What's the _long-term_ cost of not stopping it? The temperature isn't going to magically cease rising at midnight on 2100AD. The oceanic acidity isn't going to magically neutralise. The methane clathrate traps aren't going to magically un-thaw. We can't halt physics like we can halt a stock market. How much extra CO2 can we continue releasing into the atmosphere and ocean before it dooms future generations to extinction instead of poverty?
Humanity can recover from poverty. Extinction, not so much. What's the date at which your ROI on not abating human pollution drops to a null value?
Maybe Star Citizen? It's super-Freelancer, and the $20M stretch goal is ground combat.
Star Citizen is a spiritual sequel to Freelancer, Chris Roberts is the lead dev, and in addition to the official persistent online universe it will allow private servers with modding for your own ships, worlds, etc.
"Basically" it's Freelancer the way the devs always wanted it to be. They've raised $19 million in player-raised funding so far, allowing stuff like player-owned capital ships and space stations. I'm looking forward to seeing what the post-$20M stretch goals are.
Did you notice in that link you quoted that the US and Australia define "violent crime" differently?
Is that gross income, net income, or net disposable income? And it's nice that you've provided the average (mean), but what about the median and mode? What's the minimum and maximum?
Say you've got ten people. One person makes $10k. Eight people make $25k. One person makes $150k. What's the average? $36k. If the base cost of living is $9k, what's the net disposable income? 1x$1k, 8x$16k, 1x$141k. What's the average? $27k. If the average home is $50k, the minimum home is $25k, and the maximum home is $1M, how many years will it take for the minimum income person to buy the minimum home versus the maximum income person to buy the average home?
People who survive being hit by lightning do so because slightly more than usual of the vast majority of the energy keeps going, not because they are Norse gods. :)
If all of the energy in a (somewhat bigger-than-average*) lightning bolt spontaneously converted to heat in an even distribution throughout your body, you would indeed be vaporised.
*The average negative cloud-to-ground bolt is about half a gigajoule, but much bigger bolts do happen. And then there are "superbolts". Wikipedia is a nice start: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning
GP said, "no reason other than the color of your skin". You said, "white male, mid-30s, approx. 6 ft tall, wearing jeans and red T-shirt". Do you notice a difference?
Sadly, far too often, your type of profiling isn't the type being carried out.
Mistake? Java is an island of Indonesia, with over a hundred million people (also making it the world's most populous island and one of the most densely-populated places in the world).
It's not just a programming language and a cup of coffee. :)
Sorry, mangled the html, let's try that again.
Is it the government's policy to end/limit the career prospects of anyone who fails a polygraph? Is the 80-93% the overall rate? What's the rate for sociopaths vs the rate for non-sociopaths? If the rate for sociopaths is less, what additional tests does the government perform to compensate for the increased risk of hiring sociopaths over non-sociopaths, and are those tests adequate to the task?
Sadly, 19 only makes one an adult by laws to which biology does not adhere.
"attract a magnet"?
Hmm. All of those actions involved the inferior forces being aided/supplied by foreign powers: in 1775, it was Europe, in 1979, it was the United States, in 2001, it was various countries in the Middle East.
s/guns/cars.
Cool, thanks.
My scenario always did suppose that you'd already been flagged for extra attention. Hmm. Take this guy http://varnull.adityamukerjee.net/post/59021412512/dont-fly-during-ramadan - since you're asserting expertise here, if there'd been a hard drive in his suitcase when he was detained, what odds would you give of it ending up being subjected to cryptographic analysis?
http://16s.us/TCHunt/faq/ - a program that could identify TrueCrypt volumes back in 2007.
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/08/07/17/2043248/schneier-uw-team-show-flaw-in-truecrypt-deniability
What makes you think the NSA can't do better?
Oh, I dunno, by suit #2 imaging and analysing the drive they found in your luggage while suit #1 is giving you the aforementioned 8h59m interrogation and, oh, hey, what are the odds that the NSA has had a lot of experience in discovering encrypted data, including hidden volumes?
Or they just confiscate it, hand you a receipt and tell you to take your complaint to somebody who cares. Better hope it takes a long time to reach whatever TLA data cruncher it's destined for that can detect your second hidden partition.
If we're indulging in fantasy, but wanting something milder, perhaps "unreasonable search", so that when they blink at you, you can add, "that's the password, and also what I love to sue people for. Denny Krane!" as you hand them your law firm's card. The one that says "Denny Krane" on it. :p
Um, the GP knows about hidden partitions and plausible deniability. Here, I'll quote: "never mind that they cannot prove you have one and that you may actually not have one in the first place". The GP also knows that, yeah, usually some bored border agent will take one glance at your booting laptop and wave you through with a yawn.
The GP also knows that if, for whatever reason, you do get flagged for extra attention, and they then realise you've got encryption capable of plausible deniability, that they will not give one iota of a shit about your protestations that you don't use it.
It's not about how technology works, it's about how people work, and people tend to react badly when they think you're hiding something - regardless of whether you're actually doing so.
So, yeah, you may eventually leave the interrogation room after the maximum legally-allowed eight hours and fifty nine minutes later (depending on jurisdiction and assuming they haven't found some pretext to "indefinitely detain" you), having missed your flight, your luggage thoroughly ransacked, your every last piece of electronics down to and including the xbox controller confiscated, your name permanently engraved on their hassle lists, your house searched, your neighbours and employers queried and your every phone call tapped for the next two years, but hey, you sure showed them, right?