So, lemme boil that down for you. The plans so far, for "tackling the global misalignment of talent problem: -Push women into being geeks. -A backpack that helps turn aboriginals and people without grid power into geeks. Via videogames. Because people without electricity love videogames. -Push adults into being geeks. -Push women into being fashionable geeks. -Push kids into being geeks. -A job board. -And a standard that helps inform geeks about their products... ok that one sounds like a pretty good idea.
It's not that the rest aren't good things, it's just that they're not particularly innovative. Holy shit, the world could use more geeks, so tell people to go be geeks. It's not that hard. I guess connecting people with money to the basic idea is a good thing? I dunno though, it seems like our dreams have gotten so small.
Well, sure, there are parts of the constitution that certainly boil down to judgment calls. So here we go, let's lay it out:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Personal information like who you called and what you said is generally considered to be "your persons papers". Sure, it's being held by the telecom company, but that doesn't matter. The NSA wants my call history, Sprint (should) tell them to come with a warrant. That's not really opinion at this point.
A lot of time has been spend ruminating about what "unreasonable search and seizure" entails. They need probable cause and what that means is something they debate all the time. There's a lot of opinion here.
And there's the opinion about who this applies to, the wording being only "the people". While the courts generally agree that these laws don't apply to non-citizens, I'd be happier if did. That's totally my opinion though. Currently no one who isn't a raging idiot is suggesting the constitution doesn't apply to US citizens on US soil using communication that doesn't go out of the country.
And then there's the part about needing "Oath or affirmation", which I think means that only judges can issue warrants. Whether or not special FISA secret courts still qualify is a matter of opinion. But hey, close enough.
And warrants needs to be specific about what they're looking for. How specific the warrant has to be is another matter of opinion.
But this is wholesale spying, a dragnet, where they come into Verizon, Google, Facebook, and everywhere else, ask for ALL the information about ALL the people, and horde it away on their own servers. While it's a matter of opinion about how specific a warrant has to be, if warrant does not specify any person or any time period or any specific communication to or from individuals on any topic, then it is not a matter of opinion that the warrant does "particularly describe" the thing being seized. Unless they have probable cause on EVERYONE for EVERYTHING, they shouldn't be given a warrant for this operation.
as anyone who doesn't like a law nowadays claims the law is unconstitutional.
And likewise, any official who wants to break a law nowadays claims their actions are constitutional. You've got to be careful of that least we descend into some sort of police state.
No, it's cool, we've got technology and a digital infrastructure to overcome that. Just get a group of friends to storm a facsimile of the halls of government. You know, like your local city hall, or Verizon store, or something vaguely close to the NSA if you squint. I think torches and pitchforks would be nice and traditional but people have had better luck with posters and bullhorns. But make sure you get video of it and post it online. Try to get the press involved.
It's called a demonstration. Or even "protest" if you frown the whole time. The important factors are how many people you get to show up, how long you stay there, and the reaction from whatever facsimile you're targeting.
The atoms gets crushed under so much gravity that they break apart and turn into more basic materials which merges with the rest of the stuff in the black hole contributing even further to the mass. Likewise, the radiation (like light) get sucked in and joins the soup.
Doesn't matter what consciousness is. If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck... it's a duck.
Likewise, if it looks like my wife, talks like my wife, and is a close enough approximation that I feel it's a continuation of what made her special, then it's something that's a lot like my wife. And for some that'll be good enough that they will shell out a shit-ton of money to try and resurrect their dead wife.
that means you have to recreate every aspect of yourself,
To something that's close enough to perpetuate myself, my ideas, and my desires. It'd be nice if it was perfect. But it doesn't have to be. If my life's goal is to, say,
Listen, millionaires already exert their will past the grave through foundations with a shit-ton of money and a hand-written list of goals and acceptable way to spend said cash. They are going to develop something that let's billionaires exert their will past the grave using a digital simulacrum of themselves. I don't think it's going to be a perfect copy. And this specific attempt at doing so for Dmitry might be full of shit. But eventually we are going to have to deal with immortal CEO's running businesses forever. Even if they're not classified as human anymore.
There we go, that fits better. I don't know who Zig Zigler is but he sounds like the sort that sells those bullshit motivational books to salesmen. Notice that in his version the successful guy works for the company rather than working for the money. Fuck that noise. Work for yourself. Improve yourself. Train your skills, extract as much money as you can out of your current employer, and if another company pays more, JUMP SHIP! Companies have no loyalty these days. Pensions are a thing of the past. They'll outsource you as fast as they can, and expect you to train your replacement. The concept of paying someone to learn on the job is foreign to them and tantamount to theft. Why should I have an unfounded sense of loyalty to them?
I mean, you know, typically. There's this one small codeshop in town I heard of that hires people with no experience and gets their one rock-star developer to train them up. Relaxed hours, no bullshit, and jeans every day. And honest to god real software problems that need fixing and you're allowed to fix them. I'd be working there now if they needed another developer with experience rather than only hiring entry level positions.
What? Dude, I can say I have 5 years experience with SDL and graphic libraries but that sure as shit ain't part of my job. I think you need to work on your resume. HR filters work on keywords and occasionally values they make you put in fields. Usually the HR filter doesn't differentiate between "I glanced at functional programming once" and "I developed enterprise level software in functional programming for 10 years". All they see is two hits for "functional programming". Or zero hits for "functional-programming" and/or "function programming" because they're gormless mouthbreathers that should not be involved in the hiring process.
Naw, there's no "world class" fishing in Nebraska. My guess is that he's up in Minnesota. Pretty much anywhere east of Omaha and you'll be no further than 3 hours away from an international airport of some sort. Of course, while it's 3 hours to Chicago, getting anywhere in Chicago will take another 3 hours.
And just a word of warning to people looking for "small to medium" sized corporations, of the ones that actually need to make software, they usually only have 1-3 guys with that job. Which means you REALLY suffer from a monoculture. And the boss has no idea how to put software together. You also get to be a jack of all trades since it's JUST YOU, but you'll develop bad habits, lack good code reviews, and the work is simply overall less technically challenging. There's a risk that you'll rot as a developer. And in small towns, there's often just the one or two places that would even think of hiring you, so if you develop roots in a city, there's not too many choices about where you work. And more importantly, not much choice about WHO you work with.
In some small part to understand the human experience and have it make sense to you and to be motivated under some circumstances the same way humans are, you have to be such a creature possessed of such a limitation.
Right, but it's such a small part as to be inconsequential. And you don't have to possess such a limitation to understand the human condition. I mean, blind people don't have to deal with that, and they're still human. Super-future cyborgs that have better optics won't cease to be human just because when the lights go out their eyes adjust faster.
But the argument is that if you sum up all these things then that's what "makes us human". Ok, I get that. And we have examples of people being subjegated to horrible conditions to the point that they no longer function as normal human beings. That whole "raised by wolves" thing. Or abused children. Or shell shock. Either "humanity" is never instilled, or it breaks within them. But the good news is that it can be taught, and it can be fixed. And there's really no difference teaching a wolf-child manners and teaching a chatbot how do deal with Internet etiquette. "It's just parroting us" is an argument that works equally well when applied to children.
[we are this way] because of our specific chemical, morphological, and evolutionary histories
And those chemicals and situations can be simulated. Want to feel high? Slip the brain-the-box a drop of acid. Or bend the circuits a little on the digital instantiation of you. We have happy pills and downer pills today. Feed them to a transhuman version of you if you really want to "get the human experience".
Any "mind" which is insensible to, unguided by, unconstrained by these things is not a human mind at all.
We no longer live short nasty and brutish lives so do the humans of today not qualify as humans compared to the barbarians of 1000BC? The chemical, physical, and social environment that they were subjected to is several technological-revolutions different than what we experience today. Adding one more isn't going to be that big of a change.
I think you're putting human consciousness up on a pedestal that it doesn't really deserve to be on. Yes, the brain is a complex thing, but it's not insurmountable. But yeah, rich people quite often burn a lot of money seeking immortality. If it helps science a bit, I'm all for the folly. And I imagine that, eventually, they will have something that's "good enough".
Uh, the brain cells that you have at birth persist while new ones are added during your lifetime. Brain sizes increase from birth, but that doesn't mean that the cells you had at birth must go away.
Wow, that's horrifying. I'm pretty open to the idea that an insta-clone of me is a good enough substitute that it might as well be me. And I'm pretty fine with the idea that once "souls" are copyable that the price of a human life is going to bottom out. I'm ok with people firing up an instance of me to run a survey only to shut it down afterwards.
But torturing an instance of a loved one? Whoa dude. Whoa. My mind = blown.
Yeah, and you define it based on what you really care about. What you want out of life. If you want to feel those endorphins from eating ice-cream, then a copy of you eating ice-cream isn't going do jack shit for your goal. If you want to leave the world a better place for your children, then it doesn't really matter if it's you or a copy of you doing the work to make the world a better place. If want a a 100' tall flaming flaming statue of yourself before you die, it doesn't matter if you or some contractors build it. If you want to make it yourself, then the fact that a series of copies of you did it doesn't really matter. At the end of the day you've got a bitchin statue that "you" built for close enough values of "you".
If you're greedy and self-centered, yeah dude, you die in that copy/teleporter. If you are working towards higher goals, it doesn't matter.
I don't actually know why Thorium reactors didn't catch on. At a glance, I'd say while the fuel is cheap, the process is not, and right now good ol' uranium is a cheaper way to make a megaWatt if you need to. But if uranium ever "runs dry" Thorium is there.
BTW, if anyone gives two shits about it, you should update the simple wikipedia entry on Thorium to help the poor anonymous cowards out there who have a hard time with reading comprehension.
Welllllll, sorta. The sort of uranium we care about is kinda rare. In nature, uranium is found as uranium-238 (99.2739–99.2752%), uranium-235 (0.7198–0.7202%). There's a lot of U-238, but less so of the fissionable U-235 which goes into reactors. AH! But in a breeder reactor you can turn U-238 into plutonium-239 which can be used as fission fuel. It's also handy for bombs.
Climate will, ultimately, become disrupted through some mechanism or another.... The current goal of keeping the planet in perpetual stasis is foolhardy and unrealistic.
Well, ultimately, yes, there's no real way to stop the heat-death of the universe, or the sun's eventual demise, or the tectonic plates from eventually taking all of our known landmarks and recycling them back into their molten depths. And the climates around earth will change. But it'd be a lot better if the climate slowly changed over the next eon rather the next decade. Water levels rising a foot in the next decade would have some very severe consequences. Like homes being lost and massive economic suffering. Some people would probably die during the widespread fear and terror. On the other hand, if the water levels rise by an inch over the next 50 years... that's... you know... not that bad. An inch might be a big deal to some islands somewhere, but they'll have a lifetime to deal with it.
This is based on a flawed assumption- that the only way to protect society is to prevent disruption of climate
Yeah, no. Instead it's more like, "one way to protect society is to minimize the disruption of climate." There we go, much better.
If you could somehow point out which citizens are criminals and which are not in some method that respected the rule of law, I believe there's a good chance you could simply convict them and take away their guns along with their right to freedom and wearing non-orange.
I mean, why not take away the cameras from the pedophiles? Surely you don't want to help put cameras in the hands of pedophiles, do you? So of course you're behind the bill that regulates who can and cannot buy, sell, make, possess, or operate a camera. Right?
Unless you were talking about felons. Yeah, it's already illegal for them to possess firearms.
How about when your business runs legacy software built a decade ago with incremental patches since then that are completely undocumented and turn the whole thing into a giant mess of spaghetti. And this is what's generating your company's money every day. It's like vender lock-in, but you're the vendor and you can't quit the habit. If that sounds ludicrous, welcome to business!
It doesn't matter if it "runs better" if it doesn't run what you need.
And the business I'm at right now has product, test stands, and downloaders that have been running for a decade and we're committed to maintaining them for another decade. It's great fun to tell the boss that while we managed to find the compiler for an older project, the 16-bit software won't run in 64-bit windows. (Partial success with dosbox, btw).
What? Don't be silly, windows 8 is their shitsucksdealwithit edition. Just like Vista before Win7 introduced a lot of unwanted changes that becomes the norm by the time the itdoesn'tsucksohard edition comes out. They did this with Windows ME, Windows Vista, and now Windows 8. I'm too young to know if a similar effect happened with windows 95, I remember the idea of a desktop as being cool, but I was awfully young.
Windows users that can spot a trend and have two wits about them leapfrog every other release.
You would sail a ship against the wind across a continent by putting a fire under her deck and going under the mountain... Sir, I do not have the time to listen to such nonsense.
Anyone who believes that the USA has a low standard of living needs to travel more.
Seriously, I've been to Egypt, Peru, Mexico, and the Caribbean. It makes you appreciate the government, services, culture, and general prosperity of home. It may have it's flaws, but it's certainly better than some of the alternatives.
It is far more dangerous to our country that the government is secretly watching all of our phone calls.
Yes, it is far more dangerous. If you question that let me ask you which was more dangerous to the German people, the jews, or their descent into the NAZI regime? Which was more dangerous to the American people in the 1950's, communist infiltrators or their own rampant warmongers? And in a directly comparable scenario, what was more dangerous to the Russian people, their costly wars and suppression or CIA spies? The Russians certainly traded the happiness of their citizens to route out spies, but how did they fare in the end? America, on the other hand, while going through a period of communist witch-hunts (not wholly unjustified) and expensive quagmire wars, gave up on those endeavors and the hippies won. And by and far we came out the better for it.
So yes, our government illegally spying on all of it's citizens is vastly more dangerous than any supposed terrorists they were trying to catch. Terrorism isn't that big of a threat. All we have to fear is fear itself. And while the absolute terror that was inflicted more than a decade ago caused a hit to the stock market, and a minor economic downturn, consider what had a much more massive blow to the economy: Rising gas prices, and banks being too loose with some house loans. Think about that. The boogeymen you're afraid of, the ones you're letting terrorize you, are less of a threat than greedy bankers. At least, that's how it's been for the past two decades.
Dude, have you even read the wiki page on them? There's a lot of fear-mongering from the people that fear anything to do with genetics, but Monsanto is your typical giant evil corporation. They're so big that regulatory capture is a problem. They've been caught red handed doing various nefarious stuff over the years. Honestly, any such corporation that large is bound to have bad eggs in them and the money is going to be too good. But hey, they really have brought some innovation and better living to the populace. There's a reason that they're profitable and it's not entirely because of who they're in bed with. Roundup ready crops are a lot easier to farm. My uncle loves the stuff.
But if there was EVER a corporation that deserved scrutiny, it's Monsanto.
Slashdot Mirror
So, lemme boil that down for you. The plans so far, for "tackling the global misalignment of talent problem:
-Push women into being geeks.
-A backpack that helps turn aboriginals and people without grid power into geeks. Via videogames. Because people without electricity love videogames.
-Push adults into being geeks.
-Push women into being fashionable geeks.
-Push kids into being geeks.
-A job board.
-And a standard that helps inform geeks about their products... ok that one sounds like a pretty good idea.
It's not that the rest aren't good things, it's just that they're not particularly innovative. Holy shit, the world could use more geeks, so tell people to go be geeks. It's not that hard. I guess connecting people with money to the basic idea is a good thing? I dunno though, it seems like our dreams have gotten so small.
Well, sure, there are parts of the constitution that certainly boil down to judgment calls. So here we go, let's lay it out:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Personal information like who you called and what you said is generally considered to be "your persons papers". Sure, it's being held by the telecom company, but that doesn't matter. The NSA wants my call history, Sprint (should) tell them to come with a warrant. That's not really opinion at this point.
A lot of time has been spend ruminating about what "unreasonable search and seizure" entails. They need probable cause and what that means is something they debate all the time. There's a lot of opinion here.
And there's the opinion about who this applies to, the wording being only "the people". While the courts generally agree that these laws don't apply to non-citizens, I'd be happier if did. That's totally my opinion though. Currently no one who isn't a raging idiot is suggesting the constitution doesn't apply to US citizens on US soil using communication that doesn't go out of the country.
And then there's the part about needing "Oath or affirmation", which I think means that only judges can issue warrants. Whether or not special FISA secret courts still qualify is a matter of opinion. But hey, close enough.
And warrants needs to be specific about what they're looking for. How specific the warrant has to be is another matter of opinion.
But this is wholesale spying, a dragnet, where they come into Verizon, Google, Facebook, and everywhere else, ask for ALL the information about ALL the people, and horde it away on their own servers. While it's a matter of opinion about how specific a warrant has to be, if warrant does not specify any person or any time period or any specific communication to or from individuals on any topic, then it is not a matter of opinion that the warrant does "particularly describe" the thing being seized. Unless they have probable cause on EVERYONE for EVERYTHING, they shouldn't be given a warrant for this operation.
as anyone who doesn't like a law nowadays claims the law is unconstitutional.
And likewise, any official who wants to break a law nowadays claims their actions are constitutional. You've got to be careful of that least we descend into some sort of police state.
It sounds like someone from the NSA had to use puppets to explain it to him and he's regurgitating that puppet show.
No, it's cool, we've got technology and a digital infrastructure to overcome that. Just get a group of friends to storm a facsimile of the halls of government. You know, like your local city hall, or Verizon store, or something vaguely close to the NSA if you squint. I think torches and pitchforks would be nice and traditional but people have had better luck with posters and bullhorns. But make sure you get video of it and post it online. Try to get the press involved.
It's called a demonstration. Or even "protest" if you frown the whole time. The important factors are how many people you get to show up, how long you stay there, and the reaction from whatever facsimile you're targeting.
The atoms gets crushed under so much gravity that they break apart and turn into more basic materials which merges with the rest of the stuff in the black hole contributing even further to the mass. Likewise, the radiation (like light) get sucked in and joins the soup.
Doesn't matter what consciousness is. If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck... it's a duck.
Likewise, if it looks like my wife, talks like my wife, and is a close enough approximation that I feel it's a continuation of what made her special, then it's something that's a lot like my wife. And for some that'll be good enough that they will shell out a shit-ton of money to try and resurrect their dead wife.
that means you have to recreate every aspect of yourself,
To something that's close enough to perpetuate myself, my ideas, and my desires. It'd be nice if it was perfect. But it doesn't have to be. If my life's goal is to, say,
Listen, millionaires already exert their will past the grave through foundations with a shit-ton of money and a hand-written list of goals and acceptable way to spend said cash. They are going to develop something that let's billionaires exert their will past the grave using a digital simulacrum of themselves. I don't think it's going to be a perfect copy. And this specific attempt at doing so for Dmitry might be full of shit. But eventually we are going to have to deal with immortal CEO's running businesses forever. Even if they're not classified as human anymore.
There we go, that fits better. I don't know who Zig Zigler is but he sounds like the sort that sells those bullshit motivational books to salesmen. Notice that in his version the successful guy works for the company rather than working for the money. Fuck that noise. Work for yourself. Improve yourself. Train your skills, extract as much money as you can out of your current employer, and if another company pays more, JUMP SHIP! Companies have no loyalty these days. Pensions are a thing of the past. They'll outsource you as fast as they can, and expect you to train your replacement. The concept of paying someone to learn on the job is foreign to them and tantamount to theft. Why should I have an unfounded sense of loyalty to them?
I mean, you know, typically. There's this one small codeshop in town I heard of that hires people with no experience and gets their one rock-star developer to train them up. Relaxed hours, no bullshit, and jeans every day. And honest to god real software problems that need fixing and you're allowed to fix them. I'd be working there now if they needed another developer with experience rather than only hiring entry level positions.
What? Dude, I can say I have 5 years experience with SDL and graphic libraries but that sure as shit ain't part of my job. I think you need to work on your resume.
HR filters work on keywords and occasionally values they make you put in fields. Usually the HR filter doesn't differentiate between "I glanced at functional programming once" and "I developed enterprise level software in functional programming for 10 years". All they see is two hits for "functional programming". Or zero hits for "functional-programming" and/or "function programming" because they're gormless mouthbreathers that should not be involved in the hiring process.
Naw, there's no "world class" fishing in Nebraska. My guess is that he's up in Minnesota. Pretty much anywhere east of Omaha and you'll be no further than 3 hours away from an international airport of some sort. Of course, while it's 3 hours to Chicago, getting anywhere in Chicago will take another 3 hours.
And just a word of warning to people looking for "small to medium" sized corporations, of the ones that actually need to make software, they usually only have 1-3 guys with that job. Which means you REALLY suffer from a monoculture. And the boss has no idea how to put software together. You also get to be a jack of all trades since it's JUST YOU, but you'll develop bad habits, lack good code reviews, and the work is simply overall less technically challenging. There's a risk that you'll rot as a developer. And in small towns, there's often just the one or two places that would even think of hiring you, so if you develop roots in a city, there's not too many choices about where you work. And more importantly, not much choice about WHO you work with.
In some small part to understand the human experience and have it make sense to you and to be motivated under some circumstances the same way humans are, you have to be such a creature possessed of such a limitation.
Right, but it's such a small part as to be inconsequential. And you don't have to possess such a limitation to understand the human condition. I mean, blind people don't have to deal with that, and they're still human. Super-future cyborgs that have better optics won't cease to be human just because when the lights go out their eyes adjust faster.
But the argument is that if you sum up all these things then that's what "makes us human". Ok, I get that. And we have examples of people being subjegated to horrible conditions to the point that they no longer function as normal human beings. That whole "raised by wolves" thing. Or abused children. Or shell shock.
Either "humanity" is never instilled, or it breaks within them. But the good news is that it can be taught, and it can be fixed. And there's really no difference teaching a wolf-child manners and teaching a chatbot how do deal with Internet etiquette. "It's just parroting us" is an argument that works equally well when applied to children.
[we are this way] because of our specific chemical, morphological, and evolutionary histories
And those chemicals and situations can be simulated. Want to feel high? Slip the brain-the-box a drop of acid. Or bend the circuits a little on the digital instantiation of you. We have happy pills and downer pills today. Feed them to a transhuman version of you if you really want to "get the human experience".
Any "mind" which is insensible to, unguided by, unconstrained by these things is not a human mind at all.
We no longer live short nasty and brutish lives so do the humans of today not qualify as humans compared to the barbarians of 1000BC? The chemical, physical, and social environment that they were subjected to is several technological-revolutions different than what we experience today. Adding one more isn't going to be that big of a change.
I think you're putting human consciousness up on a pedestal that it doesn't really deserve to be on. Yes, the brain is a complex thing, but it's not insurmountable. But yeah, rich people quite often burn a lot of money seeking immortality. If it helps science a bit, I'm all for the folly. And I imagine that, eventually, they will have something that's "good enough".
Uh, the brain cells that you have at birth persist while new ones are added during your lifetime.
Brain sizes increase from birth, but that doesn't mean that the cells you had at birth must go away.
Check it.
But yeah, SOME cells can be destroyed and new cells take over their role. But that's not what happens to most cells.
Wow, that's horrifying. I'm pretty open to the idea that an insta-clone of me is a good enough substitute that it might as well be me. And I'm pretty fine with the idea that once "souls" are copyable that the price of a human life is going to bottom out. I'm ok with people firing up an instance of me to run a survey only to shut it down afterwards.
But torturing an instance of a loved one? Whoa dude. Whoa. My mind = blown.
Yeah, and you define it based on what you really care about. What you want out of life. If you want to feel those endorphins from eating ice-cream, then a copy of you eating ice-cream isn't going do jack shit for your goal. If you want to leave the world a better place for your children, then it doesn't really matter if it's you or a copy of you doing the work to make the world a better place. If want a a 100' tall flaming flaming statue of yourself before you die, it doesn't matter if you or some contractors build it. If you want to make it yourself, then the fact that a series of copies of you did it doesn't really matter. At the end of the day you've got a bitchin statue that "you" built for close enough values of "you".
If you're greedy and self-centered, yeah dude, you die in that copy/teleporter. If you are working towards higher goals, it doesn't matter.
Thank goodness there's no US military in the US.
Nobody, as far as I can tell, has explained how that should work
Wikipedia is your friend. It can explain things, but it's not exactly simple.
The Thorium fuel cycle.
I don't actually know why Thorium reactors didn't catch on. At a glance, I'd say while the fuel is cheap, the process is not, and right now good ol' uranium is a cheaper way to make a megaWatt if you need to. But if uranium ever "runs dry" Thorium is there.
BTW, if anyone gives two shits about it, you should update the simple wikipedia entry on Thorium to help the poor anonymous cowards out there who have a hard time with reading comprehension.
Welllllll, sorta. The sort of uranium we care about is kinda rare. In nature, uranium is found as uranium-238 (99.2739–99.2752%), uranium-235 (0.7198–0.7202%). There's a lot of U-238, but less so of the fissionable U-235 which goes into reactors. AH! But in a breeder reactor you can turn U-238 into plutonium-239 which can be used as fission fuel. It's also handy for bombs.
So... Yes, but no, but really yes.
Climate will, ultimately, become disrupted through some mechanism or another. ... The current goal of keeping the planet in perpetual stasis is foolhardy and unrealistic.
Well, ultimately, yes, there's no real way to stop the heat-death of the universe, or the sun's eventual demise, or the tectonic plates from eventually taking all of our known landmarks and recycling them back into their molten depths. And the climates around earth will change. But it'd be a lot better if the climate slowly changed over the next eon rather the next decade. Water levels rising a foot in the next decade would have some very severe consequences. Like homes being lost and massive economic suffering. Some people would probably die during the widespread fear and terror. On the other hand, if the water levels rise by an inch over the next 50 years... that's... you know... not that bad. An inch might be a big deal to some islands somewhere, but they'll have a lifetime to deal with it.
This is based on a flawed assumption- that the only way to protect society is to prevent disruption of climate
Yeah, no. Instead it's more like, "one way to protect society is to minimize the disruption of climate." There we go, much better.
If you could somehow point out which citizens are criminals and which are not in some method that respected the rule of law, I believe there's a good chance you could simply convict them and take away their guns along with their right to freedom and wearing non-orange.
I mean, why not take away the cameras from the pedophiles? Surely you don't want to help put cameras in the hands of pedophiles, do you? So of course you're behind the bill that regulates who can and cannot buy, sell, make, possess, or operate a camera. Right?
Unless you were talking about felons. Yeah, it's already illegal for them to possess firearms.
How about when your business runs legacy software built a decade ago with incremental patches since then that are completely undocumented and turn the whole thing into a giant mess of spaghetti. And this is what's generating your company's money every day. It's like vender lock-in, but you're the vendor and you can't quit the habit. If that sounds ludicrous, welcome to business!
It doesn't matter if it "runs better" if it doesn't run what you need.
And the business I'm at right now has product, test stands, and downloaders that have been running for a decade and we're committed to maintaining them for another decade. It's great fun to tell the boss that while we managed to find the compiler for an older project, the 16-bit software won't run in 64-bit windows. (Partial success with dosbox, btw).
What? Don't be silly, windows 8 is their shitsucksdealwithit edition. Just like Vista before Win7 introduced a lot of unwanted changes that becomes the norm by the time the itdoesn'tsucksohard edition comes out. They did this with Windows ME, Windows Vista, and now Windows 8. I'm too young to know if a similar effect happened with windows 95, I remember the idea of a desktop as being cool, but I was awfully young.
Windows users that can spot a trend and have two wits about them leapfrog every other release.
You would sail a ship against the wind across a continent by putting a fire under her deck and going under the mountain... Sir, I do not have the time to listen to such nonsense.
Uh, the bill of rights is hardly a dictatorship, it's more like lauding the rule of law. Perhaps you should read that again.
Anyone who believes that the USA has a low standard of living needs to travel more.
Seriously, I've been to Egypt, Peru, Mexico, and the Caribbean. It makes you appreciate the government, services, culture, and general prosperity of home. It may have it's flaws, but it's certainly better than some of the alternatives.
It is far more dangerous to our country that the government is secretly watching all of our phone calls.
Yes, it is far more dangerous. If you question that let me ask you which was more dangerous to the German people, the jews, or their descent into the NAZI regime? Which was more dangerous to the American people in the 1950's, communist infiltrators or their own
rampant warmongers? And in a directly comparable scenario, what was more dangerous to the Russian people, their costly wars and suppression or CIA spies? The Russians certainly traded the happiness of their citizens to route out spies, but how did they fare in the end? America, on the other hand, while going through a period of communist witch-hunts (not wholly unjustified) and expensive quagmire wars, gave up on those endeavors and the hippies won. And by and far we came out the better for it.
So yes, our government illegally spying on all of it's citizens is vastly more dangerous than any supposed terrorists they were trying to catch. Terrorism isn't that big of a threat. All we have to fear is fear itself. And while the absolute terror that was inflicted more than a decade ago caused a hit to the stock market, and a minor economic downturn, consider what had a much more massive blow to the economy: Rising gas prices, and banks being too loose with some house loans. Think about that. The boogeymen you're afraid of, the ones you're letting terrorize you, are less of a threat than greedy bankers. At least, that's how it's been for the past two decades.
Dude, have you even read the wiki page on them? There's a lot of fear-mongering from the people that fear anything to do with genetics, but Monsanto is your typical giant evil corporation. They're so big that regulatory capture is a problem. They've been caught red handed doing various nefarious stuff over the years. Honestly, any such corporation that large is bound to have bad eggs in them and the money is going to be too good. But hey, they really have brought some innovation and better living to the populace. There's a reason that they're profitable and it's not entirely because of who they're in bed with. Roundup ready crops are a lot easier to farm. My uncle loves the stuff.
But if there was EVER a corporation that deserved scrutiny, it's Monsanto.
"Hate speech"? It's more like spotting the trend.