I know it was the Bahamas but isn't that technically part of the US?
Yeah, but only in the same sense that Cuba and Panama are technically part of the US. Something about being independant nations makes them pissy about our law enforcement mucking around inside their borders for some reason.
Hell, Cuba and Panama have been know to shoot at mainland cops. What's with that?
I didn't mean to suggest that would be the way the technology would be used. There are all sorts of ways to combine the elements to get intereting results. I just hoped to give you a simple idea of the technology.
One of the most obvious ways to use it is to send each pixel a number between 0 and 16.8 million and instantly triple the resolution, since you no longer need three pixels per color.
Want 256 times 16.8 million colors? Add 8 bits of memory for each pixel (which means you'll need four times the video memory, because each pixel is now addressed by all 32 bits, instead of 8 apiece).
Your digital computer is, well, digital. It doesn't actually know about decimals. Deep down it's just beads layed out on a board. Beads are integer. If you want numbers with more places you have to add more beads to represent that number. And that's the way it is.
256; 2.56; 25.6; All three place numbers. All eight bits.
poverty, n.: An unfortunate state that persists as long as anyone lacks anything he would like to have.
I'm getting the feeling that your primary objection is that by the proposed definition you would be classified as wealthy and you're not happy about that, because even though you have enough to eat you don't own an island.
If such is the case, well, tough.
Wealth is not what you have, it is what you can afford to live without.
You cannot afford to live without food. If you have sufficient, well, as my granny used to say, "Shut up, eat it and be greatful."
Hence my definition of wealth being having more people working for you than you have to work for, but it all comes down to food, clothing and shelter. That's what those people working for you are working for; so you can have those things without working for them. If you have a lot of people working for you, you might not have to work at all. You're then "loaded."
If you had enough of a "little lump" set aside so that you never had to worry about food, clothing or shelter again, would you be working as a greeter at Wal-Mart?
Doesn't seem likely, you're too wealthy for that sort of shit. You might well be the really greedy sort who wants a surplus surplus; even more wealth. Yeah, some wealthy people are wealthier than other wealthy people.
I think people have an understanding that there's a spectrum all the way from "Just Starved to Death" to "Greedy Fucking Bastard." The question is where the critical nodes on the line are.
I guess I'm just being dubious about these, and perhaps a bit "teechy" about any old arrangement of molecules being labeled "nanotechnology." We used to just call this "chemistry." Now it seems as if every bloody enzyme is being called a "nano machine."
Hey, I've got a "nanotechnology" shirt. It's made out of something they call "polyester."
Back in the day nanotechnology meant the reduction to the nano scale of macro technology.
If nano technology is ever to bootstrap its self its going to be from building blocks like these. Simple systems with simeple rules developing complicated results.
No, not really.
A net tied from single fibers is not as complex at one level than a net tied from twisted fibers, but on another level they share identity in complexity, which is to say they both lack it.
They're both just regular, ordered hexes.
Yes, it's very useful to be able to make an oqaque shirt that blocks wind and a net the admits light and wind, but blocks mosquitos and we will no doubt find analogous uses on the nanoscale.
But being able to make a shirt and a net doesn't bring you one whit closer to being able to make a car. That requires irregular complexity.
On that level this new arrangement of molecules is no more complex than a bezene ring.
Tibet was a theocracy with an upper class who did no work, but lived on the backs of others, although many of the upper class were themselves slaves of the theocracy in their own way.
It wasn't necessarily a very nice place, but the Chinese have certainly worked no improvement on it.
For bias purposes I'll point out that I am a lifelong Buddhist.
Oddly enough, I was explaining that to someone IRL just yesterday. In many agricultural socieities only the poor used money. Rich people had food stores.
Now, your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to wander off into the forest and aquire more food than you need. Those above rich people had food stores because they had serfs.
Your whole argument is based on the idea that the people who work for us for a pitance making expensive consumer products should expect to live in the same way as hunter gatherers or early farmers.
No it isn't. My whole argument is that you should expect to live in the same way as hunter gatherers or early farmers.
. ..you are trying to rationalise what is basically slavery. ..
No, I am asserting that you are a slave and should oppose it. I don't have an iPod, nor do I want one. I have a flute I made myself from found materials and taught myself to play. Free the Chinese laborers by making your own shit so they're free to make their own shit instead of yours.
. ..while people (like you) who run the sweatshops profit from their misery.
What the fuck are you talking about? The closest I come to running a sweatshop is knitting my own sweaters.
Unions did not start the fight for labour laws because they were soft but because they knew what exploitation was when they saw it, which is more than you can.
There once was a Union maid, who never was afraid Of the goon and the ginks and the company finks And the deputy sheriffs who made the raids. . .
Got my little red songbook from Utah. The World Turned Upsidedown (The Digger's Song) is my favorite "union" number though. It's honest to God communist, not "union." Union is a product of fuedal industrialism, which I oppose.
Now fuck off, and take your iPod with you, you moronic jerk.
Ahhhhh, now only at the end I find you weren't really worth responding to in the first place. I'm afraid that's the sort of phrase I consider self identifying.
Not to get to picky but lets try to to keep sticking the word legal in front of right. I have the right to copy anything I so choose at any time. ..
I have elsewhere/when avered that I accept Jefferson's assertion that copyright has no place in American Constitutional government. Monroe's arguments also have some merit; and of course prevailed, but his defense of his arguements (that The People would not allow unjust expansion of artificial monopolies) have proven falacious.
. ..petty greed will not continue to be the sole motivator for the creation of new ideas. ..
However, I have no idea where you get the idea that this is the case. Most of the "creative types" I know never expect to make a dime from their creations. Creation is its own motivation and reward. Don't confuse the trees with the forest.
But as has been pointed out earlier in this discussion, and as I've heard elsewhere, the hunter-gatherers "worked" something around 20 hours per week.
You've never lived as a hunter-gatherer. I have. Yes, it's true that they actually have much more leisure time than people in industrial nations. What you may not realize is that their leisure time is typically spent productively. Idle hands are the devil's plaything.
We spin and weave for a hobby. They spin and weave because if they don't they go naked. It is not uncommon to see women spinning while walking over to a neighbor's house.
The best living I've ever had though was in a semihunter gatherer society, but with just enough independent money that I didn't have to go out in the fishing boats. Wealth is having more people working for you than you have to work for; and that's the way it is. "Western" wealth is built entirely on large groups of people working for it while providing comparitively little back.
Of course the fishermen, while going out and laboring, not to mention risking their lives, thought about what they were doing as mainly a social event, getting together with the guys and doing "guy things." Not "work."
But if you wish to lift them up to you, I'm afraid you'll have to lower yourself to reachability.
It seems to me that we may only really be "wired" to work, say, 20 hours per week on a sustained basis.
Sounds like a bit of an overworked hell to me really, if by "work" you mean "job." If by "work" you mean something like "directed activity" I'd go out of my fucking skull with bordom. I "work" more than that for entertainment.
Slashdot Mirror
. . .sucking taxpayer's money . . .
Not just a bit kinky, but extremely unhygenic.
KFG
Why the name Go3? Why Go? Why 3?
Because Gomoku and Pente were both taken, so three shall be the number thou shalt count. Five is right out.
KFG
. . .it's not the accepted uses of the term.
.able to afford conspicuous displays of consumption. . .
I am aware of that, but I cannot challange the accepted uses of the term by accepting them.
. .
Zero calorie "food."
KFG
And his argument ( 'everybody else was doing it' ) was something that most of us learned was an insuficient excuse back in kindergarten.
And so I quit school.
KFG
I know it was the Bahamas but isn't that technically part of the US?
Yeah, but only in the same sense that Cuba and Panama are technically part of the US. Something about being independant nations makes them pissy about our law enforcement mucking around inside their borders for some reason.
Hell, Cuba and Panama have been know to shoot at mainland cops. What's with that?
KFG
I didn't mean to suggest that would be the way the technology would be used. There are all sorts of ways to combine the elements to get intereting results. I just hoped to give you a simple idea of the technology.
One of the most obvious ways to use it is to send each pixel a number between 0 and 16.8 million and instantly triple the resolution, since you no longer need three pixels per color.
Want 256 times 16.8 million colors? Add 8 bits of memory for each pixel (which means you'll need four times the video memory, because each pixel is now addressed by all 32 bits, instead of 8 apiece).
Your digital computer is, well, digital. It doesn't actually know about decimals. Deep down it's just beads layed out on a board. Beads are integer. If you want numbers with more places you have to add more beads to represent that number. And that's the way it is.
256; 2.56; 25.6; All three place numbers. All eight bits.
KFG
The current Slashdot FOTD seems terribly apropos:
poverty, n.: An unfortunate state that persists as long as anyone lacks anything he would like to have.
I'm getting the feeling that your primary objection is that by the proposed definition you would be classified as wealthy and you're not happy about that, because even though you have enough to eat you don't own an island.
If such is the case, well, tough.
Wealth is not what you have, it is what you can afford to live without.
You cannot afford to live without food. If you have sufficient, well, as my granny used to say, "Shut up, eat it and be greatful."
KFG
Hence my definition of wealth being having more people working for you than you have to work for, but it all comes down to food, clothing and shelter. That's what those people working for you are working for; so you can have those things without working for them. If you have a lot of people working for you, you might not have to work at all. You're then "loaded."
If you had enough of a "little lump" set aside so that you never had to worry about food, clothing or shelter again, would you be working as a greeter at Wal-Mart?
Doesn't seem likely, you're too wealthy for that sort of shit. You might well be the really greedy sort who wants a surplus surplus; even more wealth. Yeah, some wealthy people are wealthier than other wealthy people.
I think people have an understanding that there's a spectrum all the way from "Just Starved to Death" to "Greedy Fucking Bastard." The question is where the critical nodes on the line are.
KFG
Google has a copy of your frickin' DNA.
When their clone army comes to get you, they're going to look just like you.
KFG
How about people who never have to do anything productive ever again?
That is defined by having more food than you need. In the words of the song; if I didn't eat I'd have money to burn.
KFG
Well, to be honest, not in a really long time. I only gather now. Roadside dandelions and day lilies quake in fear at the sight of me.
Good thing they have no eyes.
KFG
. . .there's a lot of what ifs there. . .
I guess I'm just being dubious about these, and perhaps a bit "teechy" about any old arrangement of molecules being labeled "nanotechnology." We used to just call this "chemistry." Now it seems as if every bloody enzyme is being called a "nano machine."
Hey, I've got a "nanotechnology" shirt. It's made out of something they call "polyester."
Back in the day nanotechnology meant the reduction to the nano scale of macro technology.
KFG
Instead of transmitting just RGB values from 0-255 (24 bits) per pixel, instead you have to somehow convey the entire spectrum.
.red, blue or green.
It's just a tunable filter with a default value. That default value could be. .
The filter is "tweaked" by sending it another value, say, one between 1 and 255.
KFG
If nano technology is ever to bootstrap its self its going to be from building blocks like these. Simple systems with simeple rules developing complicated results.
No, not really.
A net tied from single fibers is not as complex at one level than a net tied from twisted fibers, but on another level they share identity in complexity, which is to say they both lack it.
They're both just regular, ordered hexes.
Yes, it's very useful to be able to make an oqaque shirt that blocks wind and a net the admits light and wind, but blocks mosquitos and we will no doubt find analogous uses on the nanoscale.
But being able to make a shirt and a net doesn't bring you one whit closer to being able to make a car. That requires irregular complexity.
On that level this new arrangement of molecules is no more complex than a bezene ring.
KFG
I wonder if I'm signed and numbered.
I am! I am! And with a complex arrangement of particles on the nanoscale to boot.
KFG
Oh wow, I'm an expensive lithograph? Cool!
I wonder if I'm signed and numbered.
KFG
Glad to hear self employment is working for you. . .
It's a starving. I have always relied on the kindness of strangers.
That accounts for most of my scars, now that I think of it.
KFG
The federal government classified them as vegetables along with ketchup.
Which is totally ridiculous. Everyone knows that ketchup is a fruit.
KFG
. . .the legal language is supposed to be to codifying; law flows from morality. . .
God fucking help us when everything "immoral" is a crime.
KFG
Were you slapped with the moron-bat when you were born. . .
.
.
Me, Jefferson, Beethoven and nearly every traditional musician ever born. I'm not unhappy with the intellectual company.
Normal people understand that crime and theft have a broader, real-world, meaning. . .
Yes, the taking away of something that is theirs, including life and liberty.
Denying a person payment by copying their work without permission is immoral, criminal, and theft . .
What have you paid Maxwell, Tesla and Von Nuemann so far?
In any case, where in my post did you find an endorsement of speeding? I can't find it.
KFG
I know what you're paraphrasing. . .
The Ford Pinto case, which proved the equation actually works.
KFG
Possible exception may have been Tibet. . .
Tibet was a theocracy with an upper class who did no work, but lived on the backs of others, although many of the upper class were themselves slaves of the theocracy in their own way.
It wasn't necessarily a very nice place, but the Chinese have certainly worked no improvement on it.
For bias purposes I'll point out that I am a lifelong Buddhist.
KFG
No. Wealth is having more food than you need.
.you are trying to rationalise what is basically slavery. . .
.while people (like you) who run the sweatshops profit from their misery.
Oddly enough, I was explaining that to someone IRL just yesterday. In many agricultural socieities only the poor used money. Rich people had food stores.
Now, your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to wander off into the forest and aquire more food than you need. Those above rich people had food stores because they had serfs.
Your whole argument is based on the idea that the people who work for us for a pitance making expensive consumer products should expect to live in the same way as hunter gatherers or early farmers.
No it isn't. My whole argument is that you should expect to live in the same way as hunter gatherers or early farmers.
. .
No, I am asserting that you are a slave and should oppose it. I don't have an iPod, nor do I want one. I have a flute I made myself from found materials and taught myself to play. Free the Chinese laborers by making your own shit so they're free to make their own shit instead of yours.
. .
What the fuck are you talking about? The closest I come to running a sweatshop is knitting my own sweaters.
Unions did not start the fight for labour laws because they were soft but because they knew what exploitation was when they saw it, which is more than you can.
There once was a Union maid, who never was afraid
Of the goon and the ginks and the company finks
And the deputy sheriffs who made the raids. . .
Got my little red songbook from Utah. The World Turned Upsidedown (The Digger's Song) is my favorite "union" number though. It's honest to God communist, not "union." Union is a product of fuedal industrialism, which I oppose.
Now fuck off, and take your iPod with you, you moronic jerk.
Ahhhhh, now only at the end I find you weren't really worth responding to in the first place. I'm afraid that's the sort of phrase I consider self identifying.
KFG
Not to get to picky but lets try to to keep sticking the word legal in front of right. I have the right to copy anything I so choose at any time. . .
.petty greed will not continue to be the sole motivator for the creation of new ideas. . .
I have elsewhere/when avered that I accept Jefferson's assertion that copyright has no place in American Constitutional government. Monroe's arguments also have some merit; and of course prevailed, but his defense of his arguements (that The People would not allow unjust expansion of artificial monopolies) have proven falacious.
. .
However, I have no idea where you get the idea that this is the case. Most of the "creative types" I know never expect to make a dime from their creations. Creation is its own motivation and reward. Don't confuse the trees with the forest.
KFG
But as has been pointed out earlier in this discussion, and as I've heard elsewhere, the hunter-gatherers "worked" something around 20 hours per week.
You've never lived as a hunter-gatherer. I have. Yes, it's true that they actually have much more leisure time than people in industrial nations. What you may not realize is that their leisure time is typically spent productively. Idle hands are the devil's plaything.
We spin and weave for a hobby. They spin and weave because if they don't they go naked. It is not uncommon to see women spinning while walking over to a neighbor's house.
The best living I've ever had though was in a semihunter gatherer society, but with just enough independent money that I didn't have to go out in the fishing boats. Wealth is having more people working for you than you have to work for; and that's the way it is. "Western" wealth is built entirely on large groups of people working for it while providing comparitively little back.
Of course the fishermen, while going out and laboring, not to mention risking their lives, thought about what they were doing as mainly a social event, getting together with the guys and doing "guy things." Not "work."
But if you wish to lift them up to you, I'm afraid you'll have to lower yourself to reachability.
It seems to me that we may only really be "wired" to work, say, 20 hours per week on a sustained basis.
Sounds like a bit of an overworked hell to me really, if by "work" you mean "job." If by "work" you mean something like "directed activity" I'd go out of my fucking skull with bordom. I "work" more than that for entertainment.
KFG