And yet, all we to show that mass surveillance of phones helps is your a hypothetical example that reads more like a CSI plot than anything that could actually work.
Everyone thinks the NSA is run by people with no morals and even less brains... but that's an absurd statement.
But it isn't an absurd statement that they could be so sheltered that their morals, while internally consistent, is far removed from what the rest of us would consider good. That they have spent so much time telling each other how important stopping terrorists are that they are convinced it trumps any privacy consideration. The semantic games they play point in that direction. Lying to Congress points in that direction.
The NSA and other law enforcement agencies around the world are using these technologies to good effect.
How do we know that? All we have is the words of people who have been found to lie about, well, everything that we can check. The reasonable assumption is that they lie about everything that we can't check, too. They could easily tell us something that can be checked, such as pointing to a foiled terrorist attack, and explaining how mass surveillance helped foil it.
We shouldn't throw that away because the early incarnations of the administration and use of these technologies is flawed.
Part of what keeps the system in check will always be rules. Rules are pointless if they are not followed. If people believe they will never be punished for breaking the rules, it will be much harder to make them follow the rules. If we don't punish people who have broken the rules we have now, how are you going to convince people that they will be punished for breaking rules in the future?
(Failing that, then it's as I stated earlier: You argue just to argue.)
But these are not like normal speakers. They actually have an expanding and contracting part (the air that warms and cools), in contrast to normal speakers. When the air expands, there is nowhere where the pressure decreases, only places where the pressure increases, isn't there?
Now, judging from the rest of the thread, they have other problems, particularly dissipation of thermal energy (who would have thought that a device that works by heating air could have such a problem), so it doesn't seem like they will have much utility as headphones, at least.
acting like a dipole radiator so you have to spend a lot of time positioning them to get them to sound right,
Wouldn't they be monopole radiators nearly by definition? If they work by making the air expand and contract, I fail to see what part would be the other pole. And wouldn't a monopole be better in the low frequencies than a dipole?
That's a horrible analogy. There is a clear distinction between actively preventing people from doing something and not helping them. It is generally the case you that you are not allowed to do the first, but are perfectly within your right to do the second.
There are, of course, exceptions where you are allowed to prevent people from doing certain things. However, these exceptions tend to be where them doing those things would directly affect you, unlike the case with copyright infringement.
In most democratic states, there are two forms of decisions: the ones made by elected officials, and the ones made by corporate leaders. Ideally, democratic elections should ensure that the first kind of decision is in line with what the people want; while the second kind of decision is usually dominated by a rich and powerful individuals.
That's a bit of a double standard, isn't it? The reasonable way to put it would either be "ideally, democratic elections should ensure that the first kind of decision is in line with what the majority wants, while market forces should ensure that the second kind is in line with what the individual wants" or "usually, the first kind of decision is dominated by powerful individuals, while the second kind is dominated by rich individuals". The first example also highlights how communism becomes authoritarian: While it is fine for the majority to decide that murder it not OK, it becomes authoritarian for the majority to decide whether people are allowed to eat cereal for breakfast.
he would have blown his six francs on hookers [...], drug or drink
Which would have given him some enjoyment.
lottery tickets, [...]lost it gambling
In which case he would have gotten some enjoyment and had the possibility to gain more money.
or being scammed by a con-artist,
That would have been as bad as the broken window, assuming the con artist spent as much time coning him as the glazier would have spent replacing the window.
or buried it away purportedly for a rainy day but will never touch
That would in effect be donating it to everybody, in proportion to how much cash they had, through deflation.
Out of your long list if "irrational" ways to spend money, you managed to find one that is potentially as bad as meaningless public projects.
Please note that I am not claiming that building solar panels in Germany is meaningless, I don't know enough about thee economics involved to make such a claim.
The theory falls down into being the broken window fallacy, it to be more specific, the people who are employed due to solar power being installed and run could instead be doing something that would lead to bigger advantages. This is, of course, except if building solar power plants is a good thing in the long run in Germany.
Which reminds me that Doctorow recently recommended that web companies use "dead-man switches" to respond to NSA spying. By putting up a single sentence, "We have not been contacted by the NSA to turn over data" and leaving it up as long as it's true, they could fight against the despicable practice that the NSA, DEA, even the CFPB has, of demanding companies play ball and then forbid them from telling customers about it.
A similar idea was suggested by some librarians some years ago (back when national security letters were new, I think). IIRC, the best legal advice said that removing the sign was a punishable non-compliance with a gag order, so I don't think that would work here, either.
Things that truly Cannot be Determined does not exist (for some definitions of "exist"). It Cannot be Determined whether an invisible dragon that breathes heatless fire lives in my garage as it makes no difference to anything whether it is there or not, so it makes no sense to claim that it exists. It is the category of Not Even Wrong, and anything that falls into it is not worth the time to discuss, as it literally doesn't make any difference one way or the other.
That depends on your definition of god. There is no evidence that e.g. a deistic god does not exist. There is evidence that an omnipotent, omnibenevolent god does not exist.
The robot is not limited to using the visible spectrum, so rain and snow will be less of a visibility problem for it than it is for humans.
Once the robot have been taught how to handle itself in snow, it will always remember it, in contrast to humans that takes some time remembering how to compensate for skidding if they are not used to it.
Humans generally suck at updating their model of the world if they don't believe it is necessary. Robots will thus be better equipped to handle changes in entrances, exits and lanes.
All in all, it seems you have listed another set of conditions where people should in no way be responsible for handling a car if a robot is available to do it in stead.
You'd think that after 4.5 billion years of cosmic rays hitting things like this planet, the sun, the other planets, etc. that a black hole would be here by now.
What about speed relative to the earth? A black hole produced from a cosmic particle will be produced from a stationary particle being hit, and will thus have a high momentum, easily enough to escape the earths gravity well before interacting with anything. A black hole produced at CERN will be produced from two particles travelling at nearly the same speed in opposite directions, so it will be travelling much slower. Or will it still have a high enough speed that it doesn't matter?
Plus, vitamin A in excess is toxic and causes liver damage. Maybe we fix childhood blindness but instead give teenage cirrhosis.
Given that it was originally was (and potentially still is) a problem that it did not contain enough vitamin A, I don't think vitamin A toxicity is a potential problem. Furthermore, testing whether this is a problem and what can be done if it is is what we have research for, not what we have blind, Luddite panic for.
Just because we can genetically modify plants doesn't mean we should go around looking for problems to solve with it, especially that can have large possibly unknown consequences.
Yes, god forbid that we try to solve problems with technology. Where would THAT leave us? Especially with technology that can have unspecified "large possibly unknown consequences". I prefer my solutions without any potential problems. I haven't found any such solutions yet, but I am confident that I will strike gold any day now.
Vulnerabilities in RSA can only be introduced by changing the universe.
Isn't it enough to find a quick way to factor large numbers? Or even to find a quick way to calculate Euler's totient function? And aren't the NSA advocating for government agencies to move towards elliptic curve based cryptography, which wouldn't be vulnerable to this?
Anyway, I still think your conclusion is correct, so it really is just a technicality.
The GGPP did have scare quotes around "enemies", which I suppose is what coldfjord referred to. That being said, the GGPP had so many scare quotes I don't know how to interpret them.
Slashdot Mirror
This technology does work. It is helping.
And yet, all we to show that mass surveillance of phones helps is your a hypothetical example that reads more like a CSI plot than anything that could actually work.
Everyone thinks the NSA is run by people with no morals and even less brains... but that's an absurd statement.
But it isn't an absurd statement that they could be so sheltered that their morals, while internally consistent, is far removed from what the rest of us would consider good. That they have spent so much time telling each other how important stopping terrorists are that they are convinced it trumps any privacy consideration. The semantic games they play point in that direction. Lying to Congress points in that direction.
The NSA and other law enforcement agencies around the world are using these technologies to good effect.
How do we know that? All we have is the words of people who have been found to lie about, well, everything that we can check. The reasonable assumption is that they lie about everything that we can't check, too. They could easily tell us something that can be checked, such as pointing to a foiled terrorist attack, and explaining how mass surveillance helped foil it.
We shouldn't throw that away because the early incarnations of the administration and use of these technologies is flawed.
Part of what keeps the system in check will always be rules. Rules are pointless if they are not followed. If people believe they will never be punished for breaking the rules, it will be much harder to make them follow the rules. If we don't punish people who have broken the rules we have now, how are you going to convince people that they will be punished for breaking rules in the future?
(Failing that, then it's as I stated earlier: You argue just to argue.)
Ad hominid.
Wouldn't that be a commentary on the species as a whole?
But these are not like normal speakers. They actually have an expanding and contracting part (the air that warms and cools), in contrast to normal speakers. When the air expands, there is nowhere where the pressure decreases, only places where the pressure increases, isn't there?
Now, judging from the rest of the thread, they have other problems, particularly dissipation of thermal energy (who would have thought that a device that works by heating air could have such a problem), so it doesn't seem like they will have much utility as headphones, at least.
acting like a dipole radiator so you have to spend a lot of time positioning them to get them to sound right,
Wouldn't they be monopole radiators nearly by definition? If they work by making the air expand and contract, I fail to see what part would be the other pole. And wouldn't a monopole be better in the low frequencies than a dipole?
That's a horrible analogy. There is a clear distinction between actively preventing people from doing something and not helping them. It is generally the case you that you are not allowed to do the first, but are perfectly within your right to do the second.
There are, of course, exceptions where you are allowed to prevent people from doing certain things. However, these exceptions tend to be where them doing those things would directly affect you, unlike the case with copyright infringement.
When you ask it that way, it is far too easy to answer it with "And why do you feel that other people are entitled to limit what I do on my computer?"
But how many are killed because people are texting while their vehicle is stationary?
In most democratic states, there are two forms of decisions: the ones made by elected officials, and the ones made by corporate leaders. Ideally, democratic elections should ensure that the first kind of decision is in line with what the people want; while the second kind of decision is usually dominated by a rich and powerful individuals.
That's a bit of a double standard, isn't it? The reasonable way to put it would either be "ideally, democratic elections should ensure that the first kind of decision is in line with what the majority wants, while market forces should ensure that the second kind is in line with what the individual wants" or "usually, the first kind of decision is dominated by powerful individuals, while the second kind is dominated by rich individuals". The first example also highlights how communism becomes authoritarian: While it is fine for the majority to decide that murder it not OK, it becomes authoritarian for the majority to decide whether people are allowed to eat cereal for breakfast.
You might be thinking about tritium, which is radioactive.
he would have blown his six francs on hookers [...], drug or drink
Which would have given him some enjoyment.
lottery tickets, [...]lost it gambling
In which case he would have gotten some enjoyment and had the possibility to gain more money.
or being scammed by a con-artist,
That would have been as bad as the broken window, assuming the con artist spent as much time coning him as the glazier would have spent replacing the window.
or buried it away purportedly for a rainy day but will never touch
That would in effect be donating it to everybody, in proportion to how much cash they had, through deflation.
Out of your long list if "irrational" ways to spend money, you managed to find one that is potentially as bad as meaningless public projects.
Please note that I am not claiming that building solar panels in Germany is meaningless, I don't know enough about thee economics involved to make such a claim.
The theory falls down into being the broken window fallacy, it to be more specific, the people who are employed due to solar power being installed and run could instead be doing something that would lead to bigger advantages. This is, of course, except if building solar power plants is a good thing in the long run in Germany.
Which reminds me that Doctorow recently recommended that web companies use "dead-man switches" to respond to NSA spying. By putting up a single sentence, "We have not been contacted by the NSA to turn over data" and leaving it up as long as it's true, they could fight against the despicable practice that the NSA, DEA, even the CFPB has, of demanding companies play ball and then forbid them from telling customers about it.
A similar idea was suggested by some librarians some years ago (back when national security letters were new, I think). IIRC, the best legal advice said that removing the sign was a punishable non-compliance with a gag order, so I don't think that would work here, either.
There's quite a lot of things happening that such a god would not allow, but let's start with babies with cancer and tsunamis.
Things that truly Cannot be Determined does not exist (for some definitions of "exist"). It Cannot be Determined whether an invisible dragon that breathes heatless fire lives in my garage as it makes no difference to anything whether it is there or not, so it makes no sense to claim that it exists. It is the category of Not Even Wrong, and anything that falls into it is not worth the time to discuss, as it literally doesn't make any difference one way or the other.
That depends on your definition of god. There is no evidence that e.g. a deistic god does not exist. There is evidence that an omnipotent, omnibenevolent god does not exist.
Obama really won the inaugural "not being GW Bush prize", but that turned out to have been a little premature.
To be fair, he did turn out not to be GW Bush. Whether he was a step forward is another story.
I think you can become rich while proving to the world that it works, assuming that it works.
Realistically, though, it is probably a case of confirmation bias.
The robot is not limited to using the visible spectrum, so rain and snow will be less of a visibility problem for it than it is for humans.
Once the robot have been taught how to handle itself in snow, it will always remember it, in contrast to humans that takes some time remembering how to compensate for skidding if they are not used to it.
Humans generally suck at updating their model of the world if they don't believe it is necessary. Robots will thus be better equipped to handle changes in entrances, exits and lanes.
All in all, it seems you have listed another set of conditions where people should in no way be responsible for handling a car if a robot is available to do it in stead.
The LHC is basically working at the same energies equal to cosmic rays striking the earth's atmosphere.
Within a factor of a few tens of millions, you are right.
You'd think that after 4.5 billion years of cosmic rays hitting things like this planet, the sun, the other planets, etc. that a black hole would be here by now.
What about speed relative to the earth? A black hole produced from a cosmic particle will be produced from a stationary particle being hit, and will thus have a high momentum, easily enough to escape the earths gravity well before interacting with anything. A black hole produced at CERN will be produced from two particles travelling at nearly the same speed in opposite directions, so it will be travelling much slower. Or will it still have a high enough speed that it doesn't matter?
There is a difference between solving problems with technology and going looking for problems to solve with the technology we have.
As long as it is a problem and it gets solved, I don't see the big difference.
I guess you prefer your solutions which produce larger problems than the initial problem it solved.
Yes, I sure do. But I don't see what that have to do with golden rice.
Plus, vitamin A in excess is toxic and causes liver damage. Maybe we fix childhood blindness but instead give teenage cirrhosis.
Given that it was originally was (and potentially still is) a problem that it did not contain enough vitamin A, I don't think vitamin A toxicity is a potential problem. Furthermore, testing whether this is a problem and what can be done if it is is what we have research for, not what we have blind, Luddite panic for.
Just because we can genetically modify plants doesn't mean we should go around looking for problems to solve with it, especially that can have large possibly unknown consequences.
Yes, god forbid that we try to solve problems with technology. Where would THAT leave us? Especially with technology that can have unspecified "large possibly unknown consequences". I prefer my solutions without any potential problems. I haven't found any such solutions yet, but I am confident that I will strike gold any day now.
Previously, it was thought to be a composite of many smaller volcanoes. Now, it is thought to be one volcano.
There is, but this is not a case of that: The massif was known, the new part is that it is not multiple volcanoes, but one.
Vulnerabilities in RSA can only be introduced by changing the universe.
Isn't it enough to find a quick way to factor large numbers? Or even to find a quick way to calculate Euler's totient function? And aren't the NSA advocating for government agencies to move towards elliptic curve based cryptography, which wouldn't be vulnerable to this?
Anyway, I still think your conclusion is correct, so it really is just a technicality.
The GGPP did have scare quotes around "enemies", which I suppose is what coldfjord referred to. That being said, the GGPP had so many scare quotes I don't know how to interpret them.