Ehh, I've bought the ebook when the paperback was cheaper before. It's more convenient. It takes up less space when packing, I can search for a minor character's name if I forget who they are, and if I'm ever stuck somewhere that I didn't prepare for, odds are I at least have my phone and can thus read my ebooks on that (not the best experience, but it works).
Do you also smash speed limit signs? Torch cop cars? Maybe you don't like TV, so you dig up and cut cables? To hell with all the anarchists who want society to be like the wild west. Believe it or not, we already have flying machines that can do all these things. Drones just make them cheaper and more accessible to everyone.
Go ahead. Shoot one down, if you want. If you're that violent a person, society will be better off with you in prison.
One of my favorite verses is "Don't try to do good through evil; overcome evil with good." (Somewhere in Romans, I don't memorize the numbers.) The Republicans respond to this by torturing people without so much as a trial, assuring us all that it's for the best. And this is the party that likes to present itself as defenders of the faith. And even worse, it seems like most self-proclaimed Christians supported the torture.
I wish they'd just drop the act and admit that they aren't religious, they just hate gays and sexually active women.
You're just defining the word "random" out of existence then. What's the point of having words in a language if people try to make it so that we can never, ever use them?
If a pick a truly random number from a set that includes 9, then there is a nonzero chance that it will be nine. If I then pick another number from that same set, there is an equal nonzero chance of it being 9. If I pick N numbers from that set, then the probability of them all being 9 is X^N, where X is my nonzero chance. Any nonzero number raised to any power will still be nonzero. Therefore there is a nonzero chance that you can generate a random list of numbers and have them all be 9.
I suppose you could get extremely pedantic and say that the question is the probability of a list of 9s being random (as opposed to the probability of a random list containing all 9s), and then make the claim that there is no way to get a completely random list of numbers, but otherwise I don't see how you can ever look at a list of numbers and say with certainty that it wasn't randomly generated.
The summary states "the sperms exposed to Wi-Fi were less capable of moving towards an egg to fertilize it and less capable of passing on the male's DNA if it does fertilize an egg."
If an egg is fertilized, how can the male's DNA *not* be passed on? If I remember middle school biology, eggs only have one chromosome. Same with sperm. You need two chromosomes to make a person. So if the male's DNA isn't getting passed on, what exactly is going on? Is it going to be a miscarriage or something?
Presumably, you have to pay someone to lay those bricks. If you can make a $2 brick that lays itself, you might start getting close to parity. Not that I think we're there yet, but it is cool to think about.
I'd say that an even better investment for that money -- better than textbooks and hardware, better than training and screening -- would be to pay teachers more. Honestly, teaching has got to be the most undervalued job in society today.
First of all, the ability to teach something (especially complex matters) is very rare. Not everyone who understands a topic has the ability and the patience required to communicate it clearly to the uninitiated. So already you have a small pool of potential good teachers.
Then they're required to get a masters degree. While that does have value, it is also expensive and time consuming. Many members of that already small pool (especially the technically skilled ones that might make good math or science teachers) will just stop at a bachelor's and pursue a career in industry.
Then, for the handful that remain, we pay them next to nothing. I've talked to starting teachers who, upon finishing their masters, get jobs paying $30k or $40k a year. Compare that with engineers who can earn double that right after getting their BS. Why would any technically minded person choose to teach?
Pay teachers more. Like, double what they currently make. Take the money being spent on classroom laptops and constant standardized tests and so on, and just give it to the teachers. Then, once teaching is seen as a highly desirable job, take only the cream of the crop and let the crappy teachers find jobs in other fields. I'm sure the unions would accept performance reviews if it came attached to a doubling of their salaries. A lot of people seem to understand the need to evaluate teacher's performance, but that's only half the solution. That gets rid of the bad ones, but unless you want eighty students to a classroom, you first need to attract good teachers. And the way to do that is to make it a job that actually pays off, rather than the labor of love (or fallback for the incompetent) it currently is.
Just double checked since I thought that would be a bit weird given the release data, but I don't see the Twin Towers anywhere on the cover. The Empire State Building and Chrysler Building are both burning though. So same effect, just without the coincidence.
That's very different from you playing as the Russian bombers, killing American civilians. While it might not be outright banned, it would get a de facto ban. The media would drum up controversy, stores would bow to the pressure, and next thing you know the makers would be modifying the game to meet our sensibilities, or canceling it entirely.
Roads have uses beyond protecting us against roads. The only proposed benefit from this research is to protect us against itself (lest nature develop it). While that is a valid use, it does not require release to the world at large. The information could be provided to the CDC and similar agencies so that they can look for countermeasures.
Let's say an exploit is found in a major banks computer system. This exploit makes it trivially easy for any person to withdrawn money from any other person's account at an ATM, untraceably, and without limit. Do you really think it's a good idea to release the exploit to the public? Or would it be better to provide the info only to the relevant authorities and IT staff so that they can fix the problem, while doing your best to prevent it from falling into the wrong hands?
Unless you're a total sociopath, you really ought to pick the latter.
If it's so simple to recreate, then it's a moot point and it doesn't matter if we release or not - people will recreate it soon regardless. But if it's not simple to recreate, and the paper contains rare insights, then we gain a lot by not releasing it.
So add a third dimension to my little game theory chart. The conclusion is the same. There's little to no benefit from releasing the data, and plenty of potential harm.
If you stop research because you are afraid that terrorists might use it, you would have to stop all research of any kind.
That's a nice soundbite, but somehow I find myself opposed to giving terrorists weaponized super-flus, while at the same time not being so worried about them getting access to the latest touch screen technology. I mean, we've already stopped research into human vivisection, and that didn't require us to stop "research of any kind".
Just a thought, but maybe we can take a step outside of the world of black and white you're painting, and allow all research except that which could destroy human civilization?
So just because some (likely stable) government has it, we should give it to all comers? That's absolutely insane. Distrust the US government all you want, but they are far less likely to release a superflu into the wild than some random nutjob with a biology degree and an axe to grind.
That's your assumption. I'd rather we operate under the assumption that the black-hats don't have it. First of all, that seems more likely (it's not as though the full recipe would be presented at a conference), and secondly the penalty for releasing it if they don't have it is much worse than the penalty for withholding it if they do have it.
Possibilities:
00) Black hats don't have it, we don't release it. Very Good! No one has to die. 01) Black hats don't have it, we do release it. Very Bad! We just gave the tools for murder on an unprecedented scale to everyone who wants them. 10) Black hats have it, we don't release it. Bad. When and if they use it, we will be somewhat delayed while we realize "Hey, there's this new superflu that seems a lot like the one that Dutch guy came up with." 11) Black hats have it, we do release it. Maybe good. We save some time researching cures, at the cost of making the recipe even more available than it already is (and thus saving the bad guys some time obtaining it).
Make your own little game theory chart. Unless there is a very high probability that they have it, we're better off not releasing it. And as I said before, they likely don't have the whole thing.
I know this is Slashdot and a lot of people think that information wants to be free, but trust me on this. The information doesn't give a shit. Some things really should be kept secret.
185F is reasonable for the temperature the coffee is prepared at, not the temperature at which it is served. It should be served closer to 160F. McDonald's was overheating it so that it would stay hot longer (allowing them to serve it for a longer period, and thus make fewer pots over the day).
Furthermore, the woman only asked for $20k, barely enough to cover her medical expenses and lost work hours. She wasn't being greedy at all. It was McDonald's choice to risk a jury trial, and they paid for it. Losing a jury trial should be more expensive than settling, otherwise corporations have no incentive to ever settle with us comparatively short-lived humans.
The problem was that those people were fighting for Hitler, and they were fighting for a Europe free of Jews. They may not have liked it, or agreed with it, or in some cases even known it. But that is what they were fighting for; that would have been the result had they won. That's one of the many terrible things about war. It drives people to fight for and participate in things that they'd never even consider during normal life. The Wehrmacht on the Eastern front in particular took an active hand in killing Jews and other undesirables (not in the death camps, but they would round up and shoot Jews in captured towns).
What does this flamebait have to do with the article? Do you even know what the phrase "opiate of the masses" means? Are you suggesting that The Man wants to keep these students under control, and does so by ensuring they fail their biology class?
No, of course not. But you do know that in any article that even tangentially mentions religion, you can score free karma by taking a nonsensical swipe at it.
That's the sort of attitude that leads to news stations reporting meaningless scandals and outright fabrications, instead of real news. It's like offering a recovering alcoholic a beer. On some level they may want it, but it's bad for them and you'd be an ass to do so.
If you just want to rack up a bunch of comments, make Slashdot into a 24/7 "discussion" board for global warming and religion. That might rake in the advertising dollars in the short term, but the site would suck.
Actually, if you read the article, you'd see this:
Wiseman said the joke worked across many different countries and appealed to men and women and young and old alike. "Many of the jokes submitted received higher ratings from certain groups of people, but this one had real universal appeal," he said.
So it wasn't just "American men", but pretty much all people everywhere who liked that joke. Have you considered the possibility that you just have a poor sense of humor?
So you reject all science and go with your gut, because things are "obvious" to you, and scientists just can't see the obvious.
Really, there's no point in continuing this discussion. You've made a conscious choice not to understand the world, and nothing I say can ever get you to open your eyes against your own will.
Option 1) Ban the killing of endangered species. Some customers will still buy it on the black market. Option 2) Legalize false advertisement. Customers can no longer trust any place of business, and quickly learn to demand to see the whole animal so they can be sure. Only poachers can provide this proof, so customers end up going to the black market, same as before, only now you've destroyed the public trust as well.
Cite a study. There have been plenty, and dogs don't pass them. Do you think all scientists secretly hate dogs or something?
And the mirror test is not debunked due to infants failing it. Infants fail it because they're not yet self-aware. The development of the child's mind has been studied extensively, and we know they gain certain abilities around certain ages. For example, children don't develop object permanence until around 10 months old (which is why they get upset if you leave the room -- they think you've disappeared from the world), and they don't develop second order beliefs (e.g. understanding that their parents have their own minds with their own thoughts) until around 3 years old.
Slashdot Mirror
Ehh, I've bought the ebook when the paperback was cheaper before. It's more convenient. It takes up less space when packing, I can search for a minor character's name if I forget who they are, and if I'm ever stuck somewhere that I didn't prepare for, odds are I at least have my phone and can thus read my ebooks on that (not the best experience, but it works).
Do you also smash speed limit signs? Torch cop cars? Maybe you don't like TV, so you dig up and cut cables? To hell with all the anarchists who want society to be like the wild west. Believe it or not, we already have flying machines that can do all these things. Drones just make them cheaper and more accessible to everyone.
Go ahead. Shoot one down, if you want. If you're that violent a person, society will be better off with you in prison.
One of my favorite verses is "Don't try to do good through evil; overcome evil with good." (Somewhere in Romans, I don't memorize the numbers.) The Republicans respond to this by torturing people without so much as a trial, assuring us all that it's for the best. And this is the party that likes to present itself as defenders of the faith. And even worse, it seems like most self-proclaimed Christians supported the torture.
I wish they'd just drop the act and admit that they aren't religious, they just hate gays and sexually active women.
You're just defining the word "random" out of existence then. What's the point of having words in a language if people try to make it so that we can never, ever use them?
That's nonsense.
If a pick a truly random number from a set that includes 9, then there is a nonzero chance that it will be nine. If I then pick another number from that same set, there is an equal nonzero chance of it being 9. If I pick N numbers from that set, then the probability of them all being 9 is X^N, where X is my nonzero chance. Any nonzero number raised to any power will still be nonzero. Therefore there is a nonzero chance that you can generate a random list of numbers and have them all be 9.
I suppose you could get extremely pedantic and say that the question is the probability of a list of 9s being random (as opposed to the probability of a random list containing all 9s), and then make the claim that there is no way to get a completely random list of numbers, but otherwise I don't see how you can ever look at a list of numbers and say with certainty that it wasn't randomly generated.
Dilbert did it first, and better.
http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2001-10-25/
The summary states "the sperms exposed to Wi-Fi were less capable of moving towards an egg to fertilize it and less capable of passing on the male's DNA if it does fertilize an egg."
If an egg is fertilized, how can the male's DNA *not* be passed on? If I remember middle school biology, eggs only have one chromosome. Same with sperm. You need two chromosomes to make a person. So if the male's DNA isn't getting passed on, what exactly is going on? Is it going to be a miscarriage or something?
Presumably, you have to pay someone to lay those bricks. If you can make a $2 brick that lays itself, you might start getting close to parity. Not that I think we're there yet, but it is cool to think about.
I'd say that an even better investment for that money -- better than textbooks and hardware, better than training and screening -- would be to pay teachers more. Honestly, teaching has got to be the most undervalued job in society today.
First of all, the ability to teach something (especially complex matters) is very rare. Not everyone who understands a topic has the ability and the patience required to communicate it clearly to the uninitiated. So already you have a small pool of potential good teachers.
Then they're required to get a masters degree. While that does have value, it is also expensive and time consuming. Many members of that already small pool (especially the technically skilled ones that might make good math or science teachers) will just stop at a bachelor's and pursue a career in industry.
Then, for the handful that remain, we pay them next to nothing. I've talked to starting teachers who, upon finishing their masters, get jobs paying $30k or $40k a year. Compare that with engineers who can earn double that right after getting their BS. Why would any technically minded person choose to teach?
Pay teachers more. Like, double what they currently make. Take the money being spent on classroom laptops and constant standardized tests and so on, and just give it to the teachers. Then, once teaching is seen as a highly desirable job, take only the cream of the crop and let the crappy teachers find jobs in other fields. I'm sure the unions would accept performance reviews if it came attached to a doubling of their salaries. A lot of people seem to understand the need to evaluate teacher's performance, but that's only half the solution. That gets rid of the bad ones, but unless you want eighty students to a classroom, you first need to attract good teachers. And the way to do that is to make it a job that actually pays off, rather than the labor of love (or fallback for the incompetent) it currently is.
Just double checked since I thought that would be a bit weird given the release data, but I don't see the Twin Towers anywhere on the cover. The Empire State Building and Chrysler Building are both burning though. So same effect, just without the coincidence.
That's very different from you playing as the Russian bombers, killing American civilians. While it might not be outright banned, it would get a de facto ban. The media would drum up controversy, stores would bow to the pressure, and next thing you know the makers would be modifying the game to meet our sensibilities, or canceling it entirely.
Roads have uses beyond protecting us against roads. The only proposed benefit from this research is to protect us against itself (lest nature develop it). While that is a valid use, it does not require release to the world at large. The information could be provided to the CDC and similar agencies so that they can look for countermeasures.
Let's say an exploit is found in a major banks computer system. This exploit makes it trivially easy for any person to withdrawn money from any other person's account at an ATM, untraceably, and without limit. Do you really think it's a good idea to release the exploit to the public? Or would it be better to provide the info only to the relevant authorities and IT staff so that they can fix the problem, while doing your best to prevent it from falling into the wrong hands?
Unless you're a total sociopath, you really ought to pick the latter.
If it's so simple to recreate, then it's a moot point and it doesn't matter if we release or not - people will recreate it soon regardless. But if it's not simple to recreate, and the paper contains rare insights, then we gain a lot by not releasing it.
So add a third dimension to my little game theory chart. The conclusion is the same. There's little to no benefit from releasing the data, and plenty of potential harm.
If you stop research because you are afraid that terrorists might use it, you would have to stop all research of any kind.
That's a nice soundbite, but somehow I find myself opposed to giving terrorists weaponized super-flus, while at the same time not being so worried about them getting access to the latest touch screen technology. I mean, we've already stopped research into human vivisection, and that didn't require us to stop "research of any kind".
Just a thought, but maybe we can take a step outside of the world of black and white you're painting, and allow all research except that which could destroy human civilization?
So just because some (likely stable) government has it, we should give it to all comers? That's absolutely insane. Distrust the US government all you want, but they are far less likely to release a superflu into the wild than some random nutjob with a biology degree and an axe to grind.
That's your assumption. I'd rather we operate under the assumption that the black-hats don't have it. First of all, that seems more likely (it's not as though the full recipe would be presented at a conference), and secondly the penalty for releasing it if they don't have it is much worse than the penalty for withholding it if they do have it.
Possibilities:
00) Black hats don't have it, we don't release it. Very Good! No one has to die.
01) Black hats don't have it, we do release it. Very Bad! We just gave the tools for murder on an unprecedented scale to everyone who wants them.
10) Black hats have it, we don't release it. Bad. When and if they use it, we will be somewhat delayed while we realize "Hey, there's this new superflu that seems a lot like the one that Dutch guy came up with."
11) Black hats have it, we do release it. Maybe good. We save some time researching cures, at the cost of making the recipe even more available than it already is (and thus saving the bad guys some time obtaining it).
Make your own little game theory chart. Unless there is a very high probability that they have it, we're better off not releasing it. And as I said before, they likely don't have the whole thing.
I know this is Slashdot and a lot of people think that information wants to be free, but trust me on this. The information doesn't give a shit. Some things really should be kept secret.
185F is reasonable for the temperature the coffee is prepared at, not the temperature at which it is served. It should be served closer to 160F. McDonald's was overheating it so that it would stay hot longer (allowing them to serve it for a longer period, and thus make fewer pots over the day).
Furthermore, the woman only asked for $20k, barely enough to cover her medical expenses and lost work hours. She wasn't being greedy at all. It was McDonald's choice to risk a jury trial, and they paid for it. Losing a jury trial should be more expensive than settling, otherwise corporations have no incentive to ever settle with us comparatively short-lived humans.
The problem was that those people were fighting for Hitler, and they were fighting for a Europe free of Jews. They may not have liked it, or agreed with it, or in some cases even known it. But that is what they were fighting for; that would have been the result had they won. That's one of the many terrible things about war. It drives people to fight for and participate in things that they'd never even consider during normal life. The Wehrmacht on the Eastern front in particular took an active hand in killing Jews and other undesirables (not in the death camps, but they would round up and shoot Jews in captured towns).
What does this flamebait have to do with the article? Do you even know what the phrase "opiate of the masses" means? Are you suggesting that The Man wants to keep these students under control, and does so by ensuring they fail their biology class?
No, of course not. But you do know that in any article that even tangentially mentions religion, you can score free karma by taking a nonsensical swipe at it.
That's the sort of attitude that leads to news stations reporting meaningless scandals and outright fabrications, instead of real news. It's like offering a recovering alcoholic a beer. On some level they may want it, but it's bad for them and you'd be an ass to do so.
If you just want to rack up a bunch of comments, make Slashdot into a 24/7 "discussion" board for global warming and religion. That might rake in the advertising dollars in the short term, but the site would suck.
Actually, if you read the article, you'd see this:
Wiseman said the joke worked across many different countries and appealed to men and women and young and old alike. "Many of the jokes submitted received higher ratings from certain groups of people, but this one had real universal appeal," he said.
So it wasn't just "American men", but pretty much all people everywhere who liked that joke. Have you considered the possibility that you just have a poor sense of humor?
So you reject all science and go with your gut, because things are "obvious" to you, and scientists just can't see the obvious.
Really, there's no point in continuing this discussion. You've made a conscious choice not to understand the world, and nothing I say can ever get you to open your eyes against your own will.
Says who?
Option 1) Ban the killing of endangered species. Some customers will still buy it on the black market.
Option 2) Legalize false advertisement. Customers can no longer trust any place of business, and quickly learn to demand to see the whole animal so they can be sure. Only poachers can provide this proof, so customers end up going to the black market, same as before, only now you've destroyed the public trust as well.
In what world is option 2 superior?
Cite a study. There have been plenty, and dogs don't pass them. Do you think all scientists secretly hate dogs or something?
And the mirror test is not debunked due to infants failing it. Infants fail it because they're not yet self-aware. The development of the child's mind has been studied extensively, and we know they gain certain abilities around certain ages. For example, children don't develop object permanence until around 10 months old (which is why they get upset if you leave the room -- they think you've disappeared from the world), and they don't develop second order beliefs (e.g. understanding that their parents have their own minds with their own thoughts) until around 3 years old.
People deserve to know what they're paying for. You open the door to all sorts of abuses otherwise.