The Patriot Act is the exception. Most papers written by desk jockeys never go anywhere.
The best thing the public can do is express as much outrage as early as possible so that if anyone ever tries to bring crap like this up again, they'll remember the furor it caused the first time around.
No, the best thing the public can do is actually be smart about who you vote for, instead of being a single issue voter, or voting for party over person. If you elect a fascist bastard, it won't matter if you later express outrage at his actions. Ask the folks in Wisconsin. (Yes, that law got cancelled, but only on a technicality.)
Combined with the active hostility Sony treats its customers to since it came out, you'd think the PS4 would come with hookers and blackjack just to get people to bite.
Don't worry, I'm sure the new Grand Theft Auto will be a launch title.
Making two different consoles for different markets would require more R&D effort, with little real benefit. The Xbox-Kinect model is almost certainly better -- a console that appeals to one market, with an addon that appeals to the other.
If Sony splits their development team, with one half competing head-on with Nintendo, and the other going up against MS, both will lose, and Sony will go the way of Sega.
No, you and I might wish he hadn't signed it at all, but the "whiny republicans" definitely do not share our wishes. They voted for the extension by a six-to-one margin. The democrats were two-to-one against the extension. If the masses hadn't been deceived into giving the GOP control of the House, the Patriot Act would have expired this morning.
He's one of only 31 Republicans to have voted against it. And since this is his first term in federal government, he has never voted on it in the past. So I guess he deserves credit for the vote. Of course, he also voted to end Medicare, prevent the FCC from enforcing Net Neutrality, shut down Planned Parenthood, and keep troops in Afghanistan for longer.
We should take this paper just as seriously as if, say, a CIA analyst had written it.
I wouldn't take a paper by a single CIA analyst seriously either. Hell, even a proposal by a single congresscritter shouldn't be taken as the stance of the government. The only individuals important enough that their word should be taken as official policy are the President, the heads of various departments (Sec'y of State, Defense, etc., CIA Chief, Joint Chiefs of Staff, and so on) and maybe the Senate/House majority leaders.
If Leon Panetta comes out tomorrow and endorses this paper, then we can grab the pitchforks.
A single analyst at a private company writes a paper, and now everyone pretends that it is the official policy of the US Government, 'cause by golly, we haven't had our two minutes hate yet today, and we need something to be outraged over!
Given enough computational power there is no reason why some kind of entity couldn't emerge (or be created) within this environment that was capable of pondering it's own existence and studying it's own environment scientifically.
Uhh, care to back that up? I've yet to see my computer contemplate anything, and it can play Crysis.
That's pretty poor reasoning. In the case of the planets, our current models are able to predict their movement with tremendous accuracy, so we can be fairly sure that our current models are right. In the case of the brain, we can't even know whether or not our models explain things, because the system is far too complex to make predictions about. Also, the copied text ends by saying that in order to persuade someone that the brain might not be fully accounted for by the classical model of physics, we would need to point to something the brain does that falls outside of that model.
Well, I can look at my computer screen right now, and experience seeing it. QED.
(not saying that proves the brain is magic, just saying that nothing in the classical model can explain it)
This place is full of Quantum; it's everywhere you look It's in the halls of Physicists, and pages of a book. "There has to be a fallacy!" the comment summarised, And if we care to challenge that, we aren't very wise?
But 'consciousness is quantum' is facile, don't you think? One hell of a non sequitur; he's right to raise a stink. Without supporting data, the statement is absurd, I'm with OP, this is dopey - at best the logic's blurred!
Uhh.... did I forget International Poetry Day or something?
40% of Democrats voted against, compared to only 10% of Republicans. If you want to effect change, vote Democrat, straight ticket, every time. From President down to the local dogcatcher. When the GOP is dead and buried, then we can make a new party to the left of the Dems. If you try to go for third parties right now, then the right-wing fascists will use their short term benefit to pass laws that improve their electoral odds in the future. That is, after all, what they are doing right now. They've eliminated all semblance of campaign finance law, made it more difficult for traditionally liberal groups to vote under the guise of attacking non-existent voter fraud, and are working on dismantling unions -- the one remaining well-funded left-leaning demographic.
If the Republicans regain the White House in the next ten years, while also controlling Congress, you better be prepared to live under a right-wing hegemony for the rest of your life, because their grip will become unbreakable.
See how your senators voted here. I'm happy to see that both my senators (Cantwell and Murray) voted against.
The Patriot Act isn't as invulnerable as it once was. It got only 72 votes in favor -- twelve above the necessary threshold. Maybe we can get rid of it in ten years or so.
I think you're confusing "liberal" with "politician". The Republicans have been quite big on telling us how to live. You can't have abortions, you can't marry someone of the same sex, you can't join collectively bargain with your employer, you can't sue companies that have a contract with you, you can't vote if you're an out-of-state student or poor city dweller.
Oh, and all those times we as a nation have come together to create a safety for those in need, through Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security and Food Stamps and Unemployment Benefits? Fuck those people! More tax cuts to the super-rich! Doesn't matter that the majority of the country disagrees with them. They'll hold our national credit rating hostage, and burn the country to the ground if they don't get what they want.
Ah yes, the "Boots" theory of socioeconomic unfairness. To quote:
"A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet."
Emphasis his. See also: payday loans, rent-a-center, reasons why the so-called "fair tax" is anything but.
No, it's because he's a highly successful troll who knows most slashdotters are too dense to read the entire post they're responding to.
Also, gender and sex are the same. This modern idea that they're different is just psychobabble intended to make crazy people feel better about themselves. You might as well say that race and species don't have to match, and if I think I'm an antlion, then by golly I am!
The problem is that Wikipedia is contemporary. We shouldn't declare things wonders when they've only been around for a few short years. Mankind has created countless works that were undoubtedly considered amazing at the time, and were promptly forgotten. There was a time when MySpace was an important part of the web. Aren't we glad it wasn't declared a wonder?
No, they weren't. If they had collapsed, then they would have long been forgotten, along with all the other ancient monuments that did collapse and were forgotten.
If Wikipedia is still up and running in a hundred years, then we can talk about calling it a wonder.
If you read the paper (which is presently slashdotted) you'll see that they compare their results to existing pixel-smoothers, and theirs definitely look better in pretty much every case.
So it's not "Hey, we invented this new thing no one ever thought of!" so much as it's "Hey, we invented this better way of doing something that already exists."
I, for one, look forward to having better graphics in emulators.
Slashdot Mirror
Yup, cause all libertarians love infinite war and the government having final say over women's bodies.
When did the fascists in the country start calling themselves libertarians?
FYI, a real libertarian is someone like Rand Paul, whose voting record is markedly different.
The Patriot Act is the exception. Most papers written by desk jockeys never go anywhere.
The best thing the public can do is express as much outrage as early as possible so that if anyone ever tries to bring crap like this up again, they'll remember the furor it caused the first time around.
No, the best thing the public can do is actually be smart about who you vote for, instead of being a single issue voter, or voting for party over person. If you elect a fascist bastard, it won't matter if you later express outrage at his actions. Ask the folks in Wisconsin. (Yes, that law got cancelled, but only on a technicality.)
Combined with the active hostility Sony treats its customers to since it came out, you'd think the PS4 would come with hookers and blackjack just to get people to bite.
Don't worry, I'm sure the new Grand Theft Auto will be a launch title.
Making two different consoles for different markets would require more R&D effort, with little real benefit. The Xbox-Kinect model is almost certainly better -- a console that appeals to one market, with an addon that appeals to the other.
If Sony splits their development team, with one half competing head-on with Nintendo, and the other going up against MS, both will lose, and Sony will go the way of Sega.
House Dems votes against by more than a 2-1 margin. If Republicans didn't control the House, the Patriot Act would have expired this morning.
Source: http://politics.nytimes.com/congress/votes/112/house/1/376
I wonder which poor desk jockey has extension 4324...
For the teabaggers, "Mr. Obama" is amazingly respectful.
No, you and I might wish he hadn't signed it at all, but the "whiny republicans" definitely do not share our wishes. They voted for the extension by a six-to-one margin. The democrats were two-to-one against the extension. If the masses hadn't been deceived into giving the GOP control of the House, the Patriot Act would have expired this morning.
Thanks, assholes.
He's one of only 31 Republicans to have voted against it. And since this is his first term in federal government, he has never voted on it in the past. So I guess he deserves credit for the vote. Of course, he also voted to end Medicare, prevent the FCC from enforcing Net Neutrality, shut down Planned Parenthood, and keep troops in Afghanistan for longer.
So fuck him.
We should take this paper just as seriously as if, say, a CIA analyst had written it.
I wouldn't take a paper by a single CIA analyst seriously either. Hell, even a proposal by a single congresscritter shouldn't be taken as the stance of the government. The only individuals important enough that their word should be taken as official policy are the President, the heads of various departments (Sec'y of State, Defense, etc., CIA Chief, Joint Chiefs of Staff, and so on) and maybe the Senate/House majority leaders.
If Leon Panetta comes out tomorrow and endorses this paper, then we can grab the pitchforks.
A single analyst at a private company writes a paper, and now everyone pretends that it is the official policy of the US Government, 'cause by golly, we haven't had our two minutes hate yet today, and we need something to be outraged over!
Here you go: http://politics.nytimes.com/congress/votes/112/house/1/376
Given enough computational power there is no reason why some kind of entity couldn't emerge (or be created) within this environment that was capable of pondering it's own existence and studying it's own environment scientifically.
Uhh, care to back that up? I've yet to see my computer contemplate anything, and it can play Crysis.
You're begging the question.
That's pretty poor reasoning. In the case of the planets, our current models are able to predict their movement with tremendous accuracy, so we can be fairly sure that our current models are right. In the case of the brain, we can't even know whether or not our models explain things, because the system is far too complex to make predictions about. Also, the copied text ends by saying that in order to persuade someone that the brain might not be fully accounted for by the classical model of physics, we would need to point to something the brain does that falls outside of that model.
Well, I can look at my computer screen right now, and experience seeing it. QED.
(not saying that proves the brain is magic, just saying that nothing in the classical model can explain it)
This place is full of Quantum; it's everywhere you look
It's in the halls of Physicists, and pages of a book.
"There has to be a fallacy!" the comment summarised,
And if we care to challenge that, we aren't very wise?
But 'consciousness is quantum' is facile, don't you think?
One hell of a non sequitur; he's right to raise a stink.
Without supporting data, the statement is absurd,
I'm with OP, this is dopey - at best the logic's blurred!
Uhh.... did I forget International Poetry Day or something?
Seriously, what gives?
40% of Democrats voted against, compared to only 10% of Republicans. If you want to effect change, vote Democrat, straight ticket, every time. From President down to the local dogcatcher. When the GOP is dead and buried, then we can make a new party to the left of the Dems. If you try to go for third parties right now, then the right-wing fascists will use their short term benefit to pass laws that improve their electoral odds in the future. That is, after all, what they are doing right now. They've eliminated all semblance of campaign finance law, made it more difficult for traditionally liberal groups to vote under the guise of attacking non-existent voter fraud, and are working on dismantling unions -- the one remaining well-funded left-leaning demographic.
If the Republicans regain the White House in the next ten years, while also controlling Congress, you better be prepared to live under a right-wing hegemony for the rest of your life, because their grip will become unbreakable.
The NY Times vote coverage is a pretty handy resource for this sort of thing:
http://politics.nytimes.com/congress/votes/112/senate/1/84
See how your senators voted here. I'm happy to see that both my senators (Cantwell and Murray) voted against.
The Patriot Act isn't as invulnerable as it once was. It got only 72 votes in favor -- twelve above the necessary threshold. Maybe we can get rid of it in ten years or so.
I think you're confusing "liberal" with "politician". The Republicans have been quite big on telling us how to live. You can't have abortions, you can't marry someone of the same sex, you can't join collectively bargain with your employer, you can't sue companies that have a contract with you, you can't vote if you're an out-of-state student or poor city dweller.
Oh, and all those times we as a nation have come together to create a safety for those in need, through Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security and Food Stamps and Unemployment Benefits? Fuck those people! More tax cuts to the super-rich! Doesn't matter that the majority of the country disagrees with them. They'll hold our national credit rating hostage, and burn the country to the ground if they don't get what they want.
Ah yes, the "Boots" theory of socioeconomic unfairness. To quote:
"A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet."
Emphasis his. See also: payday loans, rent-a-center, reasons why the so-called "fair tax" is anything but.
No, it's because he's a highly successful troll who knows most slashdotters are too dense to read the entire post they're responding to.
Also, gender and sex are the same. This modern idea that they're different is just psychobabble intended to make crazy people feel better about themselves. You might as well say that race and species don't have to match, and if I think I'm an antlion, then by golly I am!
Seek help.
The problem is that Wikipedia is contemporary. We shouldn't declare things wonders when they've only been around for a few short years. Mankind has created countless works that were undoubtedly considered amazing at the time, and were promptly forgotten. There was a time when MySpace was an important part of the web. Aren't we glad it wasn't declared a wonder?
No, they weren't. If they had collapsed, then they would have long been forgotten, along with all the other ancient monuments that did collapse and were forgotten.
If Wikipedia is still up and running in a hundred years, then we can talk about calling it a wonder.
If you read the paper (which is presently slashdotted) you'll see that they compare their results to existing pixel-smoothers, and theirs definitely look better in pretty much every case.
So it's not "Hey, we invented this new thing no one ever thought of!" so much as it's "Hey, we invented this better way of doing something that already exists."
I, for one, look forward to having better graphics in emulators.