I am single, almost 30, and have no desire of any kind to reproduce in any fashion. I do not desire a sexual partner, and do not foresee that I ever will.
I feel my desire for other people to consider the long term effects of their procreation is not hypocritical, therefor.
Unless the AI is what makes and spends the money, our society would never accept that outcome.
In the event that the AIs ARE what make and spend the money, then humans would be obsolete as far as the status-quo financial system is concerned. Humans would be "unneeded"
Now, if we were to consider that the AIs are intellectual property of some corporation (Highly probable), and that private use is through an EULA type license (Highly probable), then you are in the position where humans have their AI constructs do their labor for them, but must pay a percentage to the parent company that developed the AI as part of the licensing agreement. In this way, the AI just becomes like paying taxes, and is the ultimate form of vendor lockin.
Naturally, I would dislike such a solution.
Population growthrate in industrial nations is at 1% because of abortion and contraception, but these are not 100% effective solutions at controlling the rate of population growth. Even at 1% growth, if the theoretical age of the individuals that make up that population is "Infinity years old", the probability of a population disaster happening without some form of culling being imposed STILL approaches 1, it just happens more slowly.
A similar phenomenon can be seen with hubble's constant, and the rate of universe expansion. The rate of expansion over a short distance is infinitesimally small. However, since space doesn't just "Disappear", the overall rate of expansion compounds over distance measured; After a critical threshold of approx 13billion light years, the rate of spacetime expansion exceeds the speed of light.
Likewise, the rate of human propagation in developed nations might be small, but when you eliminate mortality from age you end up with the undesirable situation where new people are made, and old ones are NOT removed; the result is geometrical expansion over time, with guaranteed overpopulation eventually, unless some other form of population control is instituted. This is especially true if the reproductive health of humans is conserved over that time frame (EG, no menopause, and women are having babies at 150 years old.)
Encryption might not be necessary, as long as some other form of authentication security is implemented. EG, filesystem (and on windows, registry) security ACLs.
Similarly to how you can't change/fstab without being root.
The format of fstab is well documented, but changing it without permission is still hard-- etc.
Since "Tolkien Elves" were brought up, there is always the problem that they experienced too:
They lived forever, but their forests/animal friends did not. As such, they were forced to endure watching everything else they cared about die around them, again and again. That is why their paradise was the "undying lands", where EVERYTHING was immortal.
As pointed out by another poster, that too would be very boring after awhile, because if nothing dies, nothing new takes its place.
Then there is the ever-present problem of increasing the reproductive lifespan of humans, while simultaneously increasing the total lifespan of humans, coupled with the natural sexdrive of humans.
Without SERIOUSLY reducing the fertility of humans to compensate, we would end up with an unsustainable population of unaging people in just a few centuries. Personally, I consider this a "very bad thing", unless we somehow manage to make a star-trek replicator, and master fusion energy and leave the planet sci-fi style in very short order. Given the difficulties of these problems, the lack of interest in the corporate world for free, and unlimited resources for everyone, and the insane costs to try to develop such things, occam's razor suggests that it wouldnt happen until AFTER the problem I mention rears its ugly head, Much like measures to curtail AGW have only recently started to get serious, now that there is an obvious problem.
Without serious population controls, natural scarcities for food and other vital resources would impose the limit the "bad" way. Means either you accept having a reduced sex-drive from the change in your biology, or you accept that you will eventually live in a dystopia that performs forced sterilizations as an emergency damage control measure.
Then, you also have the issues that others pointed out-- the longer you live, the less you really WANT to live, because you get more and more cynical. Look for suicide booths to become popular.
There are consequences for everything, and given these consequences based on how our societal systems are currently progressing, I would say that immortal humans would be a very very bad thing.
Living a little longer might be OK, if the reproductive age didnt change-- (EG, you still have female menopause at the same time-- the cougars just live longer, and stay perky.) but it too would cause issues like the baby boomers are now, when they finally DO get too old to cut the mustard anymore.
Really, the world would do better to have SHORTER human lifespans. Really.
This is a very dangerous kettle of fish that is being passed around here. I really don't want to reach my hand in, but here it goes anyway.
The previous poster about FDR (being a crook) is absolutely correct. Even a cursory examination of the impacts of his political policies during the depression reveals that unemployment skyrocketed after the formation of the new deal, and that living conditions took serious turns for the worse. Further, he enacted the atrocity that is the federal reserve bank, against the bitter pleas of more sensible men at the time, due to strong influences from foreign powers. (The run-away inflationary cycle of which is what is at least partially responsible for the banking failures of the past few years.) In addition, he created an executive order that seized all privately held gold, and transferred it to government coffers to back the new deal.
The multitudes of destitute people made for a very willing public, eager to be saved from the outcome of their own panic. (the 1930s bank crash resulted from panicked crowds making runs on banks. The natural way that banks make money is by lending more than they have in the vault, and depending upon interest payments for the returns on investment. If everyone makes a run on the bank, the bank will be caught with its britches down, and default on its extended credit. At the time there was no protecting agencies like the FDIC, since there was no national reserve bank. [yes, I called it an atrocity, I'll get to that later.] Because of this the banks of the era HAD to be more sensible in their loaning practices. Despite this, the bank scare caught them at a disadvantage, So, as a matter of consequence, the bank and loan industry crumbled under its own debts, resulting in a massive deflationary spiral, leaving millions unemployed, and many more homeless as people with mortgages got foreclosed on by banks desperate to pay off their debts to remain solvent. Essentially, a substantial amount of the currency that was PREVIOUSLY in circulation, was now stuffed into wealthy people's mattresses. As such, there was a dramatic currency shortage. (Deflation.)
These people were desperate, and would have eagerly accepted a deal from the devil himself. They got pretty much that with FDR and his new deal.
The federal reserve bank.
This new agency had been tried before. It was successfully eliminated by Andrew Jackson, under the incarnation of the "Central Bank". Andrew Jackson is the ONLY president in the history of the united states to pay off the national debt, by halting all deficit spending, paying off it's debts, and dissolving the bank's charter to make more loans. This prior president had some rather choice words to say about it in fact.
** "The bold effort the present (central) bank had made to control the government... are but premonitions of the fate that await the American people should they be deluded into a perpetuation of this institution or the establishment of another like it." ** "Gentlemen, I have had men watching you for a long time and I am convinced that you have used the funds of the bank to speculate in the breadstuffs of the country. When you won, you divided the profits amongst you, and when you lost, you charged it to the bank. You tell me that if I take the deposits from the bank and annul its charter, I shall ruin ten thousand families. That may be true, gentlemen, but that is your sin! Should I let you go on, you will ruin fifty thousand families, and that would be my sin! You are a den of vipers and thieves." ** "I am one of those who do not believe that a national debt is a national blessing, but rather a curse to a republic; inasmuch as it is calculated to raise around the administration a moneyed aristocracy dangerous to the liberties of the country."
-- amongst others.
So then-- What is the federal reserve bank, and what does it do?
The federal reserve bank codifies lending practices (in general a good thing), but by design creates exponential inflati
I personally approach it from the personal experience I have had with my sister-- She used to be a power lifter in highschool, and could squat 300lb. (no, she was NOT a fatchick.)
The major difference was that she was NOT raised to be a "Pretty in pink" type woman, but instead to be a practical one. We grew up in an agricultural community, and having some brawn was practical. You just cant throw hay-bails without it. I am her full brother, and she was ALWAYS stronger than me.
It is my contention that most of the "women are weaker" issues comes from the "use it or lose it" type atrophy that comes from being pampered females up on the pedestal. We need more female garbage men, factory workers, etc. Without the sociological indoctrination for "learned helplessness", and without being treated like they CANT do things, women quickly learn that they CAN, and that they are NOT helpless. Women that grow up in such conditions seem to be more approximate to the average male in strength than those that do not, some even surpass men in strength. (My sister scared people in highschool.)
In short, we need to kill Barbie(tm). Ironically, this is something REAL feminists have been hammering at for years.
I don't see why this is modded flamebait-- Offtopic would be more appropriate, since the main subject line really is true. Either both sexes are treated interchangeably in all circumstances, or they are not being treated equal. "Separate but equal" is nonsense in this respect. If there is a draft, it should apply to everyone, not just males-- etc.
Granted, it could have been put forward in a more polite fashion, but the basic gist of it is true. (And any arguments about women being physically weaker than men must come from people who have never met a determined woman before, nor seen what the average man looks like these days.) The really real problem is that women want to be (and be treated as) feminine. Standing up and "manning up" for equal treatment is seen as being "butch", rather than "practical", and as such they just don't do that. Instead, they whine and moan, but never actually do anything for it.
Hence the "I want my cake and eat it too-ism" snark.
The ORIGINAL feminists I have respect for- (The ones that dared to smoke cigars in public like men, wore trousers, cut off their hair, and all that jazz) But the "I can do anything a man can, but I dont want to!" crowd wearing miniskirts, prada, and are going for a boob job to play the hot-chick card, I don't have ANY respect for.
The hitting jab cuts straight through all the candy coating-- Men hit each other. Women hit each other. (It DOES happen.) But somehow, it is "unforgivably" wrong when a man hits a woman, but not when a woman hits a man. That's the problem the OP is getting at, and I agree. If we are going to treat the sexes as equals, then they should both be equally strikeable for strikeable offenses. (EG, did they hit you? If so, you should be justified to hit back, if for no other reason than to reinforce that you wont tolerate being hit. If you are weaker than them, hit them with a stick. If you are going to play the "Hitting is wrong period" card, then you should stick to those guns, and you should say that two men hitting each other, two women hitting each other, and a woman hitting a man are all EQUALLY as bad as a man hitting a woman is, and Not try to spin some yarn about how it is so much worse when a man hits a woman, because the woman is automatically some frail, flimsy thing. Something that may well not be true. Women are WAY more durable and stronger than western culture gives them credit for, and they should be proud of that.)
I find it MORE offensive when a person claims to do good, but is instead a total dick with a dashing smile-- than the person that is a total dick, but is openly public about such dickery.
Examples: A television evangelist, VS somebody like George Carlin (not necessarily him personally, but somebody like him personality wise). The former swears seven ways to sunday that they are good, wholesome, and beholden to a higher purpose/power, The latter openly admits to doing his shtick solely for the money, and openly says that they don't give a flying fuck about any such hogwash.
As such, the shenanigans of the first are more distasteful, disgusting, and reprehensible than those of the latter. At least the later isn't trying to lie to you.
Same thing with world governments. If the US wants to claim to be a defender of democracy, freedom, personal liberty, and all that "wholesome goodness", then they SHOULDNT engage in secret deals, military actions that destroy freedom, erect puppet dictatorships, etc-- like the television evangelist shouldn't swindle money out of little old women, then spend it on hookers and blow. Not if they want to be taken seriously, and not be seen as the dirty swindlers that they are.
That is to say, I personally am of the opinion that this is needed EXACTLY because they claim to be democratic governments. We as citizens are indeed ultimately responsible for the actions of our governments, BECAUSE they are democracies, and we NEED to know when our leaders are engaging in secret super-dickery like this.
Basically, it's no secret that these non-democratic countries you are railing against violate personal liberties. They make no claims to the contrary. Some even proudly proclaim their stances on such issues. It is the ones that claim otherwise that are in need of being exposed. Their's is the more reprehensible crime.
If it were within my power, I would nuke the DMCA from orbit and reinstitute the original copyright and patent rules from the first US congress. (the ones that have a 20 year max term, and require physical inventions for patents)
I agree. My country's insanity with intellectual property needs to be sharply corrected. (however, doing so would nuke our economy from orbit. Corporate greed has destroyed our industrial infrastructure, and now "IP" is the only major world export we make.)
In an environment where everyone is "looking for _their_ share", especially in modern america (if I had a nickel for every time I heard some slob demand "his" bailout when the fed bailed out the bank and loan sector, I'd be as rich as bill gates by now.), you end up with a situation where instead of just shaking hands and working together for a common future, you have all these players trying to screw each other and everyone else with exclusivity contracts, patents, copyrights, trademarks, and all that filth.
If it is even remotely valuable, there is an impetus to patent it, so you can hoard it like troll, then demand payment for its use.
For these people/this mindset, the idea of an open commons is an anathema; Cooperation is a sign of weakness in their eyes, and "giving away" something so obviously useful is something that only suckers do. They are used to "Dog eat dog" dealings, so the idea of "We dont mind if you fork our code, as long as you comply with the GPL" is uncomfortably alien to them. They operate on the model of exclusivity, and freedom is the exact opposite of that.
Naturally, if they can simply steal what you are making, and transform it into an exclusive (such as a patent), they WILL. They are more comfortable with exclusives that they own (legitimately or not, it doesn't matter) than they are with shared commodities that they do not. Why do you think there is such a push away from an open internet and toward a tiered one where everyone pays and charges tolls to route traffic by these people? Exclusivity. "Pay me or else."
For what it's worth, I agree with you-- Not everything should be patented, not everything should be lorded over by some troll with a sense of entitlement, and not everything should be divvied up and spoiled for profit. Sadly, as the saying goes, "Money talks, and bullshit walks". It would seem that the people stealing FOSS innovations like this feel the GPL is "bullshit", as evidenced by their actions. (Personally, I think the idea of the thing scares them. If FOSS groups started amassing patent portfolios, they would cry foul with every regulator you could think of.)
Well, I didn't state that this was deffinately so, only that it appeared that way to me. I do agree that there is a whole buch of "Don't want to learn" at play here, however, there are lots of psychologists that are concerned with the "information overload" of the current society.
As for the latter, you misinterpreted what I meant. (Or, I could just be bad at saying what I mean... Entirely possible.)
What I meant, is that the lobbyists and the like are like plumbers, doing brain surgery (Buying government), and that the porkbarrel politics that they ram through are evidence of such butchery of proper government process. The government specialists (Congress critters) are complicit in this, since they are becoming ever more detached from the societal impacts of their decisions because of their innate abstraction as specialists. (The relationship is fully reciprocal.) They continue to operate unchecked, because the average citizen does not/cannot interact with the government in an efficient manner, due to their own lack of knowledge of even HOW to do so. Further, the human hubris and power hunger innate to current humans exacerbates the problem.
As the Wikipedia article points out, the government is well aware of the information overload problem; It would not surprise me one bit to hear that the current batch of maverick specialists we have in government offices are actively engineering this crisis, but being such specialists, do not fully comprehend what the full ramifications of their actions will be, because they too are human, and can no longer understand the whole system.
Personally, I feel that this illusionment comes from the indoctrinated sense that being illegal == immoral. That it is NEVER justified to break the law. EG, that it is ALWAYS wrong to steal, or that it is ALWAYS wrong to refuse to 'help' a police officer with an investigation, etc. It is implied that by being so disobedient to the civil infrastructure, that you are an evil anarchist bent on destroying life as we know it, and that you are therefor "evil".
In reality, there ARE times when theft is the correct and appropriate action, or when refusing to assist police is the correct and proper thing to do. [due to risk of enacting Godwin's Law, I will avoid mentioning certain historical events, despite their obvious applicability.]
The reality of the situation is that the civil infrastructure is only useful and good up until a critical threshold, and after that it becomes officious and destructive to the quality of life of the civilians it is supposed to be servicing. Examples are things like the difference between a home owner's association, and a simple lawncare ordinance. The former is officious, the latter is to maintain property values of your neighbors.
Others would be things like enforcing sobriety while operating dangerous equipment (Including vehicles), VS enforcing "The war on drugs(tm)".
The subtle lie that the government\civil infrastructure is ALWAYS good is what allows the civil infrastructure to cross that critical threshold. It is motived to do so, because it is run by humans, and humans LIKE to enforce their wills upon others. (AKA, being addicted to/attracted to power and authority.)
This is further fascilitated by innate human laziness, and innate human weaknesses. Modern life would be impossible/highly impractical if there were no specialists; Doctors, Dentists, Lawyers, Politicians, Automotive mechanics, IT professionals, etc. This is imply because there are fundemental limits to what individual humans are capable of accomplishing themselves. The civil infrastructure provides the basic framework upon which specialists can employ their trades, and by which their customers can make reliable use of their services. In this respect, the social infrastructure of government is indeed absolutely vital to modern human existence, and pretty much everyone except sociopaths accepts this innately at some level. Part of the problem is that "Little people" have been so far abstracted from governance due to the increasing complexities of modern existence, that they realistically cannot engage in politics rationally, because that is becoming/has become a specialist discipline. As such, they are pressured naturally, more and more, to simply trust these specialists, since the natural demans of life make it more and more difficult to effectively engage in it. I strongly suspect that this is at least partially at fault for persons continually voting for an abstracted "Party line", VS actually researching issues, and engaging in government as intended.
Likewise, the specialists (Politicians) have their own agendas, and become more and more abstracted/estranged from other demographics in society, and so the government becomes wierder and wierder, and more and more authoritarian; As the ordinary citizen understands the minutae of modern government less and less, they become less and less willing to capitulate, requiring ever escallating levels of control to ensure the reliable function of government.
I personally consider this to be the euphamistically titled "Big Government" that Libertarians rail against. The government becomes bigger and bigger, as it takes on more and more responsibilities, as the average citizen delegates more and more duties to government, because they themselves become more and more specialized.
Without reducing the complexity of the social infrastructure, the requirements on specialist knowledge, or increasing the free time of the average citizen in some fundemental way so that they can cope with dealing with government appropriately, there is really
The problem is that the geometry "kinda" is needed by the bolt's geometry though inheritance.
The way Catia works, is you can generate a surface, then use that surface to do boolean subtractions/additions from other surfaces/volumes. They do this to make parts that interface perfectly with another skin.
The problem, is that the bolt is modeled in place, around a hole, modeled in a part that mates to a surface, which is derived from a split created from the skin of the main body, as well as surfaces from about a dozen other parts. This means that the hole's inside edges are included in the bolt's model, which gets geometry imported from the part it interfaces to, on and on up the heirarchy.
As such, the bolt has external dependencies that are all over the damn place.
Catia has measures to help you "Clean" your models, by isolating geometry and replacing this long chain of inheritance with a 'datum' object, which GREATLY reduces overhead, but Gulfstream simply chooses not to do this, because the people in their engineering departments are incompetent/morons. (Don't even get me started on their lack of understanding of basic GD&T concepts.)
The software is not really at fault. BOEING uses the same software, and their models are sane and useful, BECAUSE they have a sanitizing process they go through before releasing digital part models that cleans out all these down-stream dependencies. (both for optimization purposes, as well as security ones. Imagine the amount of harm that could be done if I were to "leak" a part model for a bolt, that also happens to contain the entire outer skin definition of a government aircraft. It's a NURBS surface that is the exact mathematically ideal condition for the skin, and thus could be used to derive its radar profile, among other not so good things.) It is part of their "Publication" process. Gulfstream? Not so much.
Personally, I prefer to avoid using whole sections of the outer skin to do splits, and create localized datum features of just the minimum contact areas in question, greatly reducing the overhead of using the models I create. I try to make use of isolated "datum" geometry whenever possible, since it reduces the number of things that can break down the line anyway, and I don't like making work for myself to deal with later.
When it comes to getting Gulfstream to stop being stupid though, I am merely an office jockey, and while I have raised issues with their engineering department, this particular issue ALWAYS falls on deaf ears, because it would require them to change their release policies in a non-trivial manner. In short, the MBAs up the tree would never go for it, despite the obvious benefits it has downstream. It's like herding cats; it's a futile effort to complain. They'll just find another manufacturing partner to do their outsourced work that wont complain, because that's cheaper than fixing the problem.
As such, I have to settle for the "severely sub-optimal" solution of "Dealing" with the shit they send me.
Aerospace mockup and simulation... (Imagine, a "down to the last bolt" NURBS model, with dynamic stress simulation... Can theoretically be done now, but I have never seen a workstation in any production engineering department get closer than perhaps a wing segment before crashing the workstation.)
I can bring a quad core Xeon system to its knees running Catia. (I mean, 100% saturation, all 4 cores, with IO contention.) I do it fairly regularly too.
Might have something to do with the NP-Hard problem of resolving tangencies on extremely complex nurbs surfaces. (aircraft skins).
Granted, that is not a "normal" workstation; But I would be VERY happy indeed to have a 1000 core workstation at my disposal. Maybe then I could actually work with Gulfstream's horrible part models where they include literally the whole god-damn aircraft's surface geometry in the digital part model for a fucking bolt. (Guess what happens when you load several such models, and digitally assemble them. I have seen a 64 bit workstation allocate over 8gb of swap because of them and their dumbassery.)
Now, if I could get one with over 1TB of RAM installed too, then I'd be in business.
Better yet, re-appropriate that Japanese malware that overwrites all files with manga images of squid and octopi, but replace the image resources with the infamous "Hello" image.
Be sure to place it in a "specially formed image" (like the infamous PDF exploit bug, the EMF bug, or any number of other "drive by infecter" vectors), so that when the TSA goon scans for kiddie porn on his forensic terminal, he gets more than he bargained for. Bonus if you use multiple infecters for full system agnosticism. (EG, some target linux, some target Mac, etc..)
Bonus if he uses a laptop that has had the hard drive removed "To extend battery life", that is running using something like a knoppix live-cd, or read-only USB stick.
All "Forensic" data would be instantly destroyed just by cycling the power button, or removing the battery if you are in a hurry. In fact, you could remove the battery to comply with the new TSA guidelines concerning LiON batteries, and claim it as defense if charged with destruction of evidence.
All his "Incriminating" data (like his porn collection) could be accessible via a secured VPN connection to his house--
True, you didnt say so directly, but it WAS implied by the logic you used:
Libertarians shoot down legislation that tries to encourage home ownership over renting, and somehow this means that only blacks, or at least a disporportionate percentage persons who are black, would be impacted.
It implies a direct causal relationship that blacks MUST rent, (because?) and that such legislation is the ONLY way they can own their own homes. (Because?)
It also directly infers that the reason for shooting down the legislation was to "Keep blacks renting", and that there is some kind of inference between renting VS ownership and being a servant to another. (Nevermind that more than 90% of residents in the New York area are renters, not owners. There are any number of reasons why somebody may choose rent over a mortgage. Economic solvency is only one of them.)
So, I ask the question again-- Why do you feel that there are causal relationships which imply a default disparity at work here, concerning this particular racial demographic.
Forgive me, but this implies that you feel Black people are somehow truly inferior to white people when it comes to potential earning power. Why do you feel this is true?
The disparity between earning power that I have seen stems from either endemic biggotry, or from statistical lack of education (which stems from a socially engineered condition, stemming from the first.)
I have seen no evidence that colored people are biologically inferior to non-colored people in any way. In fact, some of the smartest people I have ever known were black. A good friend of mine used to work at TI in the 70s, and helped design some of their early general purpose CPUs. Guess what-- He holds 2 degrees, AND is black. (he is also bad-ass awesome, and hates racism, especially the earlier mentioned self-induced spiral of dependence resulting from social biggotry.)
The question I have for you, is why are you so paranoid about colored people? Does it bother that the person in the cubicle next to you might be black? Does it bother that he or she might be paid more than you for competence reasons? (or even at all?) If so, why?
Perhaps you missed the whole "Socially Liberal" part, since you keep trying HARD to force libertarians into the tired grooves of either "neocon republican" or "limp wristed spend thrift liberal". Libertarians are not either.
The libertarian would be FOR government regulation for such things as equal rights. What they are against is regulations saying which kinds of house you can own, or what kind of shirt you can wear on the subway (or what kinds of games you can buy for your kids.)
It's simple-- Libertarian comes from "Liberty"-- for the most part, anything that increases the liberty of citizens is considered good; Biggotry is not a liberty that is good for the general citizen, because it de-facto implies obstructionism and lack of liberty to a portion of those citizens. Same with Gay marriage (concerning obstructionism being bad).
If anything, the Libertarian is more likely to suffer the bias AGAINST big business, BECAUSE big business tries to keep people down in general (to prevent competition). Your assertion that Libertarians would support racial biggotry is horribly unfounded, and serves only to highlight your own ignorance of that ideology.
Slashdot Mirror
I would recommend that you read this online novel.
http://www.kuro5hin.org/prime-intellect/
I am single, almost 30, and have no desire of any kind to reproduce in any fashion. I do not desire a sexual partner, and do not foresee that I ever will.
I feel my desire for other people to consider the long term effects of their procreation is not hypocritical, therefor.
Unless the AI is what makes and spends the money, our society would never accept that outcome.
In the event that the AIs ARE what make and spend the money, then humans would be obsolete as far as the status-quo financial system is concerned. Humans would be "unneeded"
Now, if we were to consider that the AIs are intellectual property of some corporation (Highly probable), and that private use is through an EULA type license (Highly probable), then you are in the position where humans have their AI constructs do their labor for them, but must pay a percentage to the parent company that developed the AI as part of the licensing agreement. In this way, the AI just becomes like paying taxes, and is the ultimate form of vendor lockin.
Naturally, I would dislike such a solution.
Population growthrate in industrial nations is at 1% because of abortion and contraception, but these are not 100% effective solutions at controlling the rate of population growth. Even at 1% growth, if the theoretical age of the individuals that make up that population is "Infinity years old", the probability of a population disaster happening without some form of culling being imposed STILL approaches 1, it just happens more slowly.
A similar phenomenon can be seen with hubble's constant, and the rate of universe expansion. The rate of expansion over a short distance is infinitesimally small. However, since space doesn't just "Disappear", the overall rate of expansion compounds over distance measured; After a critical threshold of approx 13billion light years, the rate of spacetime expansion exceeds the speed of light.
Likewise, the rate of human propagation in developed nations might be small, but when you eliminate mortality from age you end up with the undesirable situation where new people are made, and old ones are NOT removed; the result is geometrical expansion over time, with guaranteed overpopulation eventually, unless some other form of population control is instituted. This is especially true if the reproductive health of humans is conserved over that time frame (EG, no menopause, and women are having babies at 150 years old.)
Thus, forced sterilizations, and suicide booths.
Encryption might not be necessary, as long as some other form of authentication security is implemented. EG, filesystem (and on windows, registry) security ACLs.
Similarly to how you can't change /fstab without being root.
The format of fstab is well documented, but changing it without permission is still hard-- etc.
Since "Tolkien Elves" were brought up, there is always the problem that they experienced too:
They lived forever, but their forests/animal friends did not. As such, they were forced to endure watching everything else they cared about die around them, again and again. That is why their paradise was the "undying lands", where EVERYTHING was immortal.
As pointed out by another poster, that too would be very boring after awhile, because if nothing dies, nothing new takes its place.
Then there is the ever-present problem of increasing the reproductive lifespan of humans, while simultaneously increasing the total lifespan of humans, coupled with the natural sexdrive of humans.
Without SERIOUSLY reducing the fertility of humans to compensate, we would end up with an unsustainable population of unaging people in just a few centuries. Personally, I consider this a "very bad thing", unless we somehow manage to make a star-trek replicator, and master fusion energy and leave the planet sci-fi style in very short order. Given the difficulties of these problems, the lack of interest in the corporate world for free, and unlimited resources for everyone, and the insane costs to try to develop such things, occam's razor suggests that it wouldnt happen until AFTER the problem I mention rears its ugly head, Much like measures to curtail AGW have only recently started to get serious, now that there is an obvious problem.
Without serious population controls, natural scarcities for food and other vital resources would impose the limit the "bad" way. Means either you accept having a reduced sex-drive from the change in your biology, or you accept that you will eventually live in a dystopia that performs forced sterilizations as an emergency damage control measure.
Then, you also have the issues that others pointed out-- the longer you live, the less you really WANT to live, because you get more and more cynical. Look for suicide booths to become popular.
There are consequences for everything, and given these consequences based on how our societal systems are currently progressing, I would say that immortal humans would be a very very bad thing.
Living a little longer might be OK, if the reproductive age didnt change-- (EG, you still have female menopause at the same time-- the cougars just live longer, and stay perky.) but it too would cause issues like the baby boomers are now, when they finally DO get too old to cut the mustard anymore.
Really, the world would do better to have SHORTER human lifespans. Really.
True, but imagine what would happen when Jr. puts a fork in THAT power outlet...
This is a very dangerous kettle of fish that is being passed around here. I really don't want to reach my hand in, but here it goes anyway.
The previous poster about FDR (being a crook) is absolutely correct. Even a cursory examination of the impacts of his political policies during the depression reveals that unemployment skyrocketed after the formation of the new deal, and that living conditions took serious turns for the worse. Further, he enacted the atrocity that is the federal reserve bank, against the bitter pleas of more sensible men at the time, due to strong influences from foreign powers. (The run-away inflationary cycle of which is what is at least partially responsible for the banking failures of the past few years.) In addition, he created an executive order that seized all privately held gold, and transferred it to government coffers to back the new deal.
The multitudes of destitute people made for a very willing public, eager to be saved from the outcome of their own panic. (the 1930s bank crash resulted from panicked crowds making runs on banks. The natural way that banks make money is by lending more than they have in the vault, and depending upon interest payments for the returns on investment. If everyone makes a run on the bank, the bank will be caught with its britches down, and default on its extended credit. At the time there was no protecting agencies like the FDIC, since there was no national reserve bank. [yes, I called it an atrocity, I'll get to that later.] Because of this the banks of the era HAD to be more sensible in their loaning practices. Despite this, the bank scare caught them at a disadvantage, So, as a matter of consequence, the bank and loan industry crumbled under its own debts, resulting in a massive deflationary spiral, leaving millions unemployed, and many more homeless as people with mortgages got foreclosed on by banks desperate to pay off their debts to remain solvent. Essentially, a substantial amount of the currency that was PREVIOUSLY in circulation, was now stuffed into wealthy people's mattresses. As such, there was a dramatic currency shortage. (Deflation.)
These people were desperate, and would have eagerly accepted a deal from the devil himself. They got pretty much that with FDR and his new deal.
The federal reserve bank.
This new agency had been tried before. It was successfully eliminated by Andrew Jackson, under the incarnation of the "Central Bank". Andrew Jackson is the ONLY president in the history of the united states to pay off the national debt, by halting all deficit spending, paying off it's debts, and dissolving the bank's charter to make more loans. This prior president had some rather choice words to say about it in fact.
** ... are but premonitions of the fate that await the American people should they be deluded into a perpetuation of this institution or the establishment of another like it."
"The bold effort the present (central) bank had made to control the government
**
"Gentlemen, I have had men watching you for a long time and I am convinced that you have used the funds of the bank to speculate in the breadstuffs of the country. When you won, you divided the profits amongst you, and when you lost, you charged it to the bank. You tell me that if I take the deposits from the bank and annul its charter, I shall ruin ten thousand families. That may be true, gentlemen, but that is your sin! Should I let you go on, you will ruin fifty thousand families, and that would be my sin! You are a den of vipers and thieves."
**
"I am one of those who do not believe that a national debt is a national blessing, but rather a curse to a republic; inasmuch as it is calculated to raise around the administration a moneyed aristocracy dangerous to the liberties of the country."
-- amongst others.
So then-- What is the federal reserve bank, and what does it do?
The federal reserve bank codifies lending practices (in general a good thing), but by design creates exponential inflati
I personally approach it from the personal experience I have had with my sister-- She used to be a power lifter in highschool, and could squat 300lb. (no, she was NOT a fatchick.)
The major difference was that she was NOT raised to be a "Pretty in pink" type woman, but instead to be a practical one. We grew up in an agricultural community, and having some brawn was practical. You just cant throw hay-bails without it. I am her full brother, and she was ALWAYS stronger than me.
It is my contention that most of the "women are weaker" issues comes from the "use it or lose it" type atrophy that comes from being pampered females up on the pedestal. We need more female garbage men, factory workers, etc. Without the sociological indoctrination for "learned helplessness", and without being treated like they CANT do things, women quickly learn that they CAN, and that they are NOT helpless. Women that grow up in such conditions seem to be more approximate to the average male in strength than those that do not, some even surpass men in strength. (My sister scared people in highschool.)
In short, we need to kill Barbie(tm). Ironically, this is something REAL feminists have been hammering at for years.
I don't see why this is modded flamebait-- Offtopic would be more appropriate, since the main subject line really is true. Either both sexes are treated interchangeably in all circumstances, or they are not being treated equal. "Separate but equal" is nonsense in this respect. If there is a draft, it should apply to everyone, not just males-- etc.
Granted, it could have been put forward in a more polite fashion, but the basic gist of it is true. (And any arguments about women being physically weaker than men must come from people who have never met a determined woman before, nor seen what the average man looks like these days.) The really real problem is that women want to be (and be treated as) feminine. Standing up and "manning up" for equal treatment is seen as being "butch", rather than "practical", and as such they just don't do that. Instead, they whine and moan, but never actually do anything for it.
Hence the "I want my cake and eat it too-ism" snark.
The ORIGINAL feminists I have respect for- (The ones that dared to smoke cigars in public like men, wore trousers, cut off their hair, and all that jazz) But the "I can do anything a man can, but I dont want to!" crowd wearing miniskirts, prada, and are going for a boob job to play the hot-chick card, I don't have ANY respect for.
The hitting jab cuts straight through all the candy coating-- Men hit each other. Women hit each other. (It DOES happen.) But somehow, it is "unforgivably" wrong when a man hits a woman, but not when a woman hits a man. That's the problem the OP is getting at, and I agree. If we are going to treat the sexes as equals, then they should both be equally strikeable for strikeable offenses. (EG, did they hit you? If so, you should be justified to hit back, if for no other reason than to reinforce that you wont tolerate being hit. If you are weaker than them, hit them with a stick. If you are going to play the "Hitting is wrong period" card, then you should stick to those guns, and you should say that two men hitting each other, two women hitting each other, and a woman hitting a man are all EQUALLY as bad as a man hitting a woman is, and Not try to spin some yarn about how it is so much worse when a man hits a woman, because the woman is automatically some frail, flimsy thing. Something that may well not be true. Women are WAY more durable and stronger than western culture gives them credit for, and they should be proud of that.)
So, again, "off-topic", but not flamebait.
Funny...
I find it MORE offensive when a person claims to do good, but is instead a total dick with a dashing smile-- than the person that is a total dick, but is openly public about such dickery.
Examples: A television evangelist, VS somebody like George Carlin (not necessarily him personally, but somebody like him personality wise). The former swears seven ways to sunday that they are good, wholesome, and beholden to a higher purpose/power, The latter openly admits to doing his shtick solely for the money, and openly says that they don't give a flying fuck about any such hogwash.
As such, the shenanigans of the first are more distasteful, disgusting, and reprehensible than those of the latter. At least the later isn't trying to lie to you.
Same thing with world governments. If the US wants to claim to be a defender of democracy, freedom, personal liberty, and all that "wholesome goodness", then they SHOULDNT engage in secret deals, military actions that destroy freedom, erect puppet dictatorships, etc-- like the television evangelist shouldn't swindle money out of little old women, then spend it on hookers and blow. Not if they want to be taken seriously, and not be seen as the dirty swindlers that they are.
That is to say, I personally am of the opinion that this is needed EXACTLY because they claim to be democratic governments. We as citizens are indeed ultimately responsible for the actions of our governments, BECAUSE they are democracies, and we NEED to know when our leaders are engaging in secret super-dickery like this.
Basically, it's no secret that these non-democratic countries you are railing against violate personal liberties. They make no claims to the contrary. Some even proudly proclaim their stances on such issues. It is the ones that claim otherwise that are in need of being exposed. Their's is the more reprehensible crime.
If it were within my power, I would nuke the DMCA from orbit and reinstitute the original copyright and patent rules from the first US congress. (the ones that have a 20 year max term, and require physical inventions for patents)
I agree. My country's insanity with intellectual property needs to be sharply corrected. (however, doing so would nuke our economy from orbit. Corporate greed has destroyed our industrial infrastructure, and now "IP" is the only major world export we make.)
In an environment where everyone is "looking for _their_ share", especially in modern america (if I had a nickel for every time I heard some slob demand "his" bailout when the fed bailed out the bank and loan sector, I'd be as rich as bill gates by now.), you end up with a situation where instead of just shaking hands and working together for a common future, you have all these players trying to screw each other and everyone else with exclusivity contracts, patents, copyrights, trademarks, and all that filth.
If it is even remotely valuable, there is an impetus to patent it, so you can hoard it like troll, then demand payment for its use.
For these people/this mindset, the idea of an open commons is an anathema; Cooperation is a sign of weakness in their eyes, and "giving away" something so obviously useful is something that only suckers do. They are used to "Dog eat dog" dealings, so the idea of "We dont mind if you fork our code, as long as you comply with the GPL" is uncomfortably alien to them. They operate on the model of exclusivity, and freedom is the exact opposite of that.
Naturally, if they can simply steal what you are making, and transform it into an exclusive (such as a patent), they WILL. They are more comfortable with exclusives that they own (legitimately or not, it doesn't matter) than they are with shared commodities that they do not. Why do you think there is such a push away from an open internet and toward a tiered one where everyone pays and charges tolls to route traffic by these people? Exclusivity. "Pay me or else."
For what it's worth, I agree with you-- Not everything should be patented, not everything should be lorded over by some troll with a sense of entitlement, and not everything should be divvied up and spoiled for profit. Sadly, as the saying goes, "Money talks, and bullshit walks". It would seem that the people stealing FOSS innovations like this feel the GPL is "bullshit", as evidenced by their actions. (Personally, I think the idea of the thing scares them. If FOSS groups started amassing patent portfolios, they would cry foul with every regulator you could think of.)
Well, I didn't state that this was deffinately so, only that it appeared that way to me. I do agree that there is a whole buch of "Don't want to learn" at play here, however, there are lots of psychologists that are concerned with the "information overload" of the current society.
(see for instance, the Wikipedia page on the subject, and it's cited sources.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_overload
As for the latter, you misinterpreted what I meant. (Or, I could just be bad at saying what I mean... Entirely possible.)
What I meant, is that the lobbyists and the like are like plumbers, doing brain surgery (Buying government), and that the porkbarrel politics that they ram through are evidence of such butchery of proper government process. The government specialists (Congress critters) are complicit in this, since they are becoming ever more detached from the societal impacts of their decisions because of their innate abstraction as specialists. (The relationship is fully reciprocal.) They continue to operate unchecked, because the average citizen does not/cannot interact with the government in an efficient manner, due to their own lack of knowledge of even HOW to do so. Further, the human hubris and power hunger innate to current humans exacerbates the problem.
As the Wikipedia article points out, the government is well aware of the information overload problem; It would not surprise me one bit to hear that the current batch of maverick specialists we have in government offices are actively engineering this crisis, but being such specialists, do not fully comprehend what the full ramifications of their actions will be, because they too are human, and can no longer understand the whole system.
Personally, I feel that this illusionment comes from the indoctrinated sense that being illegal == immoral. That it is NEVER justified to break the law. EG, that it is ALWAYS wrong to steal, or that it is ALWAYS wrong to refuse to 'help' a police officer with an investigation, etc. It is implied that by being so disobedient to the civil infrastructure, that you are an evil anarchist bent on destroying life as we know it, and that you are therefor "evil".
In reality, there ARE times when theft is the correct and appropriate action, or when refusing to assist police is the correct and proper thing to do. [due to risk of enacting Godwin's Law, I will avoid mentioning certain historical events, despite their obvious applicability.]
The reality of the situation is that the civil infrastructure is only useful and good up until a critical threshold, and after that it becomes officious and destructive to the quality of life of the civilians it is supposed to be servicing. Examples are things like the difference between a home owner's association, and a simple lawncare ordinance. The former is officious, the latter is to maintain property values of your neighbors.
Others would be things like enforcing sobriety while operating dangerous equipment (Including vehicles), VS enforcing "The war on drugs(tm)".
The subtle lie that the government\civil infrastructure is ALWAYS good is what allows the civil infrastructure to cross that critical threshold. It is motived to do so, because it is run by humans, and humans LIKE to enforce their wills upon others. (AKA, being addicted to/attracted to power and authority.)
This is further fascilitated by innate human laziness, and innate human weaknesses. Modern life would be impossible/highly impractical if there were no specialists; Doctors, Dentists, Lawyers, Politicians, Automotive mechanics, IT professionals, etc. This is imply because there are fundemental limits to what individual humans are capable of accomplishing themselves. The civil infrastructure provides the basic framework upon which specialists can employ their trades, and by which their customers can make reliable use of their services. In this respect, the social infrastructure of government is indeed absolutely vital to modern human existence, and pretty much everyone except sociopaths accepts this innately at some level. Part of the problem is that "Little people" have been so far abstracted from governance due to the increasing complexities of modern existence, that they realistically cannot engage in politics rationally, because that is becoming/has become a specialist discipline. As such, they are pressured naturally, more and more, to simply trust these specialists, since the natural demans of life make it more and more difficult to effectively engage in it. I strongly suspect that this is at least partially at fault for persons continually voting for an abstracted "Party line", VS actually researching issues, and engaging in government as intended.
Likewise, the specialists (Politicians) have their own agendas, and become more and more abstracted/estranged from other demographics in society, and so the government becomes wierder and wierder, and more and more authoritarian; As the ordinary citizen understands the minutae of modern government less and less, they become less and less willing to capitulate, requiring ever escallating levels of control to ensure the reliable function of government.
I personally consider this to be the euphamistically titled "Big Government" that Libertarians rail against. The government becomes bigger and bigger, as it takes on more and more responsibilities, as the average citizen delegates more and more duties to government, because they themselves become more and more specialized.
Without reducing the complexity of the social infrastructure, the requirements on specialist knowledge, or increasing the free time of the average citizen in some fundemental way so that they can cope with dealing with government appropriately, there is really
The problem is that the geometry "kinda" is needed by the bolt's geometry though inheritance.
The way Catia works, is you can generate a surface, then use that surface to do boolean subtractions/additions from other surfaces/volumes. They do this to make parts that interface perfectly with another skin.
The problem, is that the bolt is modeled in place, around a hole, modeled in a part that mates to a surface, which is derived from a split created from the skin of the main body, as well as surfaces from about a dozen other parts. This means that the hole's inside edges are included in the bolt's model, which gets geometry imported from the part it interfaces to, on and on up the heirarchy.
As such, the bolt has external dependencies that are all over the damn place.
Catia has measures to help you "Clean" your models, by isolating geometry and replacing this long chain of inheritance with a 'datum' object, which GREATLY reduces overhead, but Gulfstream simply chooses not to do this, because the people in their engineering departments are incompetent/morons. (Don't even get me started on their lack of understanding of basic GD&T concepts.)
The software is not really at fault. BOEING uses the same software, and their models are sane and useful, BECAUSE they have a sanitizing process they go through before releasing digital part models that cleans out all these down-stream dependencies. (both for optimization purposes, as well as security ones. Imagine the amount of harm that could be done if I were to "leak" a part model for a bolt, that also happens to contain the entire outer skin definition of a government aircraft. It's a NURBS surface that is the exact mathematically ideal condition for the skin, and thus could be used to derive its radar profile, among other not so good things.) It is part of their "Publication" process. Gulfstream? Not so much.
Personally, I prefer to avoid using whole sections of the outer skin to do splits, and create localized datum features of just the minimum contact areas in question, greatly reducing the overhead of using the models I create. I try to make use of isolated "datum" geometry whenever possible, since it reduces the number of things that can break down the line anyway, and I don't like making work for myself to deal with later.
When it comes to getting Gulfstream to stop being stupid though, I am merely an office jockey, and while I have raised issues with their engineering department, this particular issue ALWAYS falls on deaf ears, because it would require them to change their release policies in a non-trivial manner. In short, the MBAs up the tree would never go for it, despite the obvious benefits it has downstream. It's like herding cats; it's a futile effort to complain. They'll just find another manufacturing partner to do their outsourced work that wont complain, because that's cheaper than fixing the problem.
As such, I have to settle for the "severely sub-optimal" solution of "Dealing" with the shit they send me.
Aerospace mockup and simulation... (Imagine, a "down to the last bolt" NURBS model, with dynamic stress simulation... Can theoretically be done now, but I have never seen a workstation in any production engineering department get closer than perhaps a wing segment before crashing the workstation.)
I greedily await such a future.
You've obviously never worked in Aerospace.
I can bring a quad core Xeon system to its knees running Catia. (I mean, 100% saturation, all 4 cores, with IO contention.) I do it fairly regularly too.
Might have something to do with the NP-Hard problem of resolving tangencies on extremely complex nurbs surfaces. (aircraft skins).
Granted, that is not a "normal" workstation; But I would be VERY happy indeed to have a 1000 core workstation at my disposal. Maybe then I could actually work with Gulfstream's horrible part models where they include literally the whole god-damn aircraft's surface geometry in the digital part model for a fucking bolt. (Guess what happens when you load several such models, and digitally assemble them. I have seen a 64 bit workstation allocate over 8gb of swap because of them and their dumbassery.)
Now, if I could get one with over 1TB of RAM installed too, then I'd be in business.
no, but In soviet america, Jobs has Hipsters!
So some are more equal than others.. How very Animal Farm of them.
Must be nice to have inner-circle chocolate, instead of the dry, bitter stuff they give everyone else. But remember, Steve Jobs loves you.
(Blach. I'll never buy an apple product willingly.)
Better yet, re-appropriate that Japanese malware that overwrites all files with manga images of squid and octopi, but replace the image resources with the infamous "Hello" image.
Be sure to place it in a "specially formed image" (like the infamous PDF exploit bug, the EMF bug, or any number of other "drive by infecter" vectors), so that when the TSA goon scans for kiddie porn on his forensic terminal, he gets more than he bargained for. Bonus if you use multiple infecters for full system agnosticism. (EG, some target linux, some target Mac, etc..)
More fun: Encrypted data on a remote volume (through the internet via VPN), accessed with vanilla knoppix livecd, in a completely HDD-less laptop.
If asked why there is no HDD, reply that you intended to work on the beach, and needed all the battery life you could get.
It should be interesting to see them mirror an empty drive bay.
Bonus if he uses a laptop that has had the hard drive removed "To extend battery life", that is running using something like a knoppix live-cd, or read-only USB stick.
All "Forensic" data would be instantly destroyed just by cycling the power button, or removing the battery if you are in a hurry. In fact, you could remove the battery to comply with the new TSA guidelines concerning LiON batteries, and claim it as defense if charged with destruction of evidence.
All his "Incriminating" data (like his porn collection) could be accessible via a secured VPN connection to his house--
True, you didnt say so directly, but it WAS implied by the logic you used:
Libertarians shoot down legislation that tries to encourage home ownership over renting, and somehow this means that only blacks, or at least a disporportionate percentage persons who are black, would be impacted.
It implies a direct causal relationship that blacks MUST rent, (because?) and that such legislation is the ONLY way they can own their own homes. (Because?)
It also directly infers that the reason for shooting down the legislation was to "Keep blacks renting", and that there is some kind of inference between renting VS ownership and being a servant to another. (Nevermind that more than 90% of residents in the New York area are renters, not owners. There are any number of reasons why somebody may choose rent over a mortgage. Economic solvency is only one of them.)
So, I ask the question again-- Why do you feel that there are causal relationships which imply a default disparity at work here, concerning this particular racial demographic.
Forgive me, but this implies that you feel Black people are somehow truly inferior to white people when it comes to potential earning power. Why do you feel this is true?
The disparity between earning power that I have seen stems from either endemic biggotry, or from statistical lack of education (which stems from a socially engineered condition, stemming from the first.)
I have seen no evidence that colored people are biologically inferior to non-colored people in any way. In fact, some of the smartest people I have ever known were black. A good friend of mine used to work at TI in the 70s, and helped design some of their early general purpose CPUs. Guess what-- He holds 2 degrees, AND is black. (he is also bad-ass awesome, and hates racism, especially the earlier mentioned self-induced spiral of dependence resulting from social biggotry.)
The question I have for you, is why are you so paranoid about colored people? Does it bother that the person in the cubicle next to you might be black? Does it bother that he or she might be paid more than you for competence reasons? (or even at all?) If so, why?
Perhaps you missed the whole "Socially Liberal" part, since you keep trying HARD to force libertarians into the tired grooves of either "neocon republican" or "limp wristed spend thrift liberal". Libertarians are not either.
The libertarian would be FOR government regulation for such things as equal rights. What they are against is regulations saying which kinds of house you can own, or what kind of shirt you can wear on the subway (or what kinds of games you can buy for your kids.)
It's simple-- Libertarian comes from "Liberty"-- for the most part, anything that increases the liberty of citizens is considered good; Biggotry is not a liberty that is good for the general citizen, because it de-facto implies obstructionism and lack of liberty to a portion of those citizens. Same with Gay marriage (concerning obstructionism being bad).
If anything, the Libertarian is more likely to suffer the bias AGAINST big business, BECAUSE big business tries to keep people down in general (to prevent competition). Your assertion that Libertarians would support racial biggotry is horribly unfounded, and serves only to highlight your own ignorance of that ideology.