I think the idea is more that it would be unfair to the academics who don't use the drugs. These drugs were developed, as far as I am aware, to help those who otherwise couldn't perform at their normal level. If I live in the "publish or perish" world of academics, must I now take these drugs to be competitive?
As I keep repeating, I don't think these drugs make people as "smart" as you might think. And even if they did, if there were no terrible side effects, why would that be bad? You say you don't want to take drugs in order to compete. But what about staying up all night? Are you being unfairly treated because you refuse to stay up 48 hours in a block, like some other researchers do?
You work within your means and what you are willing to do. Others have a different set of criteria. I don't see how this implies unfairness.
It's a problem for the exact same reason it's a problem in sports. Drug abusers are setting the standards for achievement artificially high, so that we may get to the point where one has no choice but to abuse the same drugs in order to get a job.
All we know is that a decent number of scientists are using these substances. There is nothing suggesting that these people are actually performing better than their peers, that they get more grants, etc. You are worried about something that hasn't even been demonstrated.
Those of us who are trying to compete with these people are being harmed. Now you put us in a bad position--take them too, or fall behind. Is that fair to us?
Who knows if it's fair. Who cares. Is your only purpose in doing science to compete with other scientists? I thought the point was advancing the base of human knowledge. I don't think these drugs are having as big an effect as you think, anyway. My personal experience was that they enhance focus, not intelligence. You aren't going to come to any sudden insight you would not otherwise have reached, but it might help you get there faster, by preventing the "scatter brain."
If you are so concerned about fairness, you ought to be downright outraged at the fact that millions of children in the United States are taking these drugs -- surely these students are unfairly outcompeting their peers in school. Right?
Even your faith in the effectiveness of social engineering doesn't make sense. Taking over the desktop computers in the business operation is a far cry from gaining access to the actual control systems or gaining access to the information you would need to override the intense training and long experience of the people who actually do the operations.
Overriding the training and experience of the people involved is easy -- threaten to kill them or their families. I doubt some technician is going to risk death just to prevent a power outage.
What the fuck does that have to do with anything? Are you trying to suggest that attention-enhancing drugs actually make people DUMBER? I tried using them once. It was probably the most productive night of academia I've ever had. I wouldn't do it again, but what business is it of yours?
Suppose the fellow goes home at night and has a few too many glasses of scotch. Suppose he has threesomes with sluts. Suppose he does any number of things you don't personally like. Are you gonna take away his funding for that, too?
You can use it off-label if the doctor ordered you to. Basically, you have to use it in the manner the doctor prescribed it. The prescription might be for an off-label use, but you still must obey the prescription, whatever it is.
We prescribe these drugs to millions of kids who most likely have nothing "wrong" with them, and people have a problem when some adults do the same thing?
This isn't athletics. The point isn't fairness. The point is advancing the science. I have serious doubts that these drugs are actually helping anybody do research who didn't already have some kind of problem, but it's none of our damn business, either.
Even my 4 year old has no difficulty understanding that weaseling like this is a form of lying.:)
A bunch of moralizers saying it doesn't make it so. I'm not responsible for making sure you're aware of the state of the universe. That's your job. The error occurs when somebody assumes that if X was not said, then X is not the case. That's a ridiculous assumption to make.
You're missing the important point here, which is that the security breach was a combination of computer breaches and human breaches. You can have a completely secure computer system, not connected to any network at all, but if you can convince somebody to walk over to the secure console and push the big red button, then all your fancy security policies are for nothing.
I've heard it said that the only completely secure computer system is one which is locked in a vault and not plugged in. Even that isn't true, if you can convince somebody to open the vault and give you the computer.
Why do you say "trying to sound legit?" These people were being paid to do this, by the power company.
Anyway, it seems your objection to the term "social engineering" is that is doesn't sound "evil enough." Well, that's in the ear of the beholder, isn't it? I don't see how calling it "social engineering" is an attempt to sound more legitimate. It's just a description of what it is, and a fairly accurate on at that.
Petawatt Lasers use, wait for this, petawatts of power. How you think that power is generated? Nice clean nuclear?
Power is "change in energy divided by time." So there are two reasons why power could be an enormous number -- 1, the change in energy could be huge, or 2, the time is incredibly short. In this case, it's the latter. Yes, the number comes out to be "petawatts." Yes, it's correct. No, that doesn't mean they need a nuclear reactor to produce the energy, as the actual amount of energy is really very small.
Using opposing colors is good for chromatic contrast but ultimately leads to eye strain. Light refracts to different degrees depending on its frequency. When the lens of your eye focuses, it focuses mostly the green light. Red is underfocused, and blue is overfocused. To see this, whip up an image in Paint (or whatever) which has black text on a red background. Now do the same with a green background. Now, put both images on the screen, right next to each other, and try to consider both of them at once. You will notice that the black-on-green is more in focus.
You WILL NOT notice this effect if you look at the images one at a time. The presence of green on the screen will cause your eye to involuntarily focus to make the green in focus. If the screen was only red, your eye would just pick red and try to bring that mostly into focus.
Of course, the best way to relieve eyestrain is not by picking colors and fonts, but by getting up from the computer and looking at something far away.
Although it does make sense that we would evolve pigments which would be most efficient for the color of which the most light arrives, to maximize the available information.
You may be right, but to me, it seems it should be the opposite. Since there is already so much green light, we can afford to have crummier receptors for that part of the spectrum, while investing energy into improving the receptors for other colors of light. Seems like it would be an advantage to be able to see low light color in regions of the spectrum were other livings things aren't as good at it.
It might be evolutionarily driven or it might be a complete fluke that the G cone is so receptive.
I'm simply questioning how a country can be "independent," in an energy respect or otherwise, when the world literally can't be lived upon. Finding a mass reserve will do nothing but encourage Americans to burn oil even more wantonly -- this would seem to be a form of independence, up until the very last second, when what is left of humanity murder each other in a primal, animalistic rage for scarce remaining resources.
Really? I thought it did. I don't think the term really applies to anything ecological at all.
So you're saying, it's an economic term. Okay, riddle me this. What is the economic impact of complete destruction of the liveable ecosystem? I'd put it at about $100 trillion, personally, perhaps even $1 quadrillion. Just a pittance, really.
Green is right in the middle of our visible spectrum which makes it the easiest for our eyes to pick up.
Green being "in the middle" is only a coincidence. It just so happens that out of the R, G, and B cones we have in our eyes, the G is most reactive. Meaning, it responds more at lower light levels than the other cone types. This means the green is more easily "seen" by our eyes, but it's not because it falls in the middle of the visible spectrum -- that's just a coincidence. It's purely a biological thing.
I'm sorry, I must have missed the part that explained how having a huge excess of oil was going to stop global warming... "Energy independence" doesn't mean having as much oil to burn as you would ever like.
Why would you pay the salaries of people you don't currently need, just so you don't have to hire them later? I fail to see how that would be more cost effective.
My point is, make it so you DO need them. If you have employees you don't need, it doesn't mean you have too many employees, it means you aren't doing enough "stuff."
Your examples are good, other than the Google doubleclick one. Google is not laying off these people because they are doing poorly, they're just not needed any more. It's fairly typical of acquisitions, you end up with a bunch of redundant employees and someone has to go.
And that's a great example of typical StupidThink. You have employees who, although intelligent, are redundant. Do you, A) Fire these schmucks, or B) See this as an opportunity to expand into new business areas so that you can put those people back to work?
Invariably, the company will end up needing that headcount back again, and the next round of employees are probably going to cost more, as well as the obvious costs of the interview and hiring process itself. If you have employees which seem redundant, that's your fault as management, not the employee's fault. Just eliminating the employees is a sign of small thinking.
Sure, why not? Do you have some alternative story of the genesis of life which is LESS fantastic?
Personally, and don't laugh, I think the organic molecules were created by intelligent beings. Where did those beings come from? Created by other beings. Etc. There is nothing inherently wrong with this idea if you suppose that the universe is infinitely old.
We see evidence of a "big bang" and tend to think that the universe must have been created at that instant, but there are plenty of theories which suppose that it wasn't, that it's actually been around forever, and that the big bang was a "local" event. In a universe without a beginning, there is no longer a need to wonder about where the life "came from" in the first place -- or at least, the question is no more interesting than asking where the universe itself came from.
Microsoft wants yahoo for it's user base and technology. Which is moot. The moment such a take over is completed, yahoo user base crumbles as people leave.
Why, exactly, do you think that would happen? Do you think the millions of users have some kind of ideological vendetta against Microsoft? Wake up. If MS has half a brain cell, they will keep the services and web sites exactly the same, at least for several months as they figure out a plan to ease into things. YOU might leave, but Microsoft doesn't care, and neither do I for that matter.
If you think Microsoft would spend billions on a vast userbase only to fuck it up in the first 30 days by pissing everyone off, then I wonder how you think Microsoft made those billions in the first place. Hint: It wasn't by being fuckin' stupid.
The problem is, retaining 51% means that you can only raise an additional 49% in capital. If you need millions and you need them now, there's no way you're walking away with a majority stake in "your" company.
Those poor intro CS students, they might be forced to learn how... a computer works. Sure, we can throw around all the famous quotes about how "All you need to do computer science is a brain and something to write on" but at the end of the day we're graduating people now who don't understand what the hell a byte of memory is. That scares me.
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Your point might be relevant, if the drug Vicodin was even remotely related to the drugs we're talking about.
As for how you can somehow extract my opinion on Rush Limbaugh based on what I've said here, I'm completely stumped.
I think the idea is more that it would be unfair to the academics who don't use the drugs. These drugs were developed, as far as I am aware, to help those who otherwise couldn't perform at their normal level. If I live in the "publish or perish" world of academics, must I now take these drugs to be competitive?
As I keep repeating, I don't think these drugs make people as "smart" as you might think. And even if they did, if there were no terrible side effects, why would that be bad? You say you don't want to take drugs in order to compete. But what about staying up all night? Are you being unfairly treated because you refuse to stay up 48 hours in a block, like some other researchers do?
You work within your means and what you are willing to do. Others have a different set of criteria. I don't see how this implies unfairness.
It's a problem for the exact same reason it's a problem in sports. Drug abusers are setting the standards for achievement artificially high, so that we may get to the point where one has no choice but to abuse the same drugs in order to get a job.
All we know is that a decent number of scientists are using these substances. There is nothing suggesting that these people are actually performing better than their peers, that they get more grants, etc. You are worried about something that hasn't even been demonstrated.
Those of us who are trying to compete with these people are being harmed. Now you put us in a bad position--take them too, or fall behind. Is that fair to us?
Who knows if it's fair. Who cares. Is your only purpose in doing science to compete with other scientists? I thought the point was advancing the base of human knowledge. I don't think these drugs are having as big an effect as you think, anyway. My personal experience was that they enhance focus, not intelligence. You aren't going to come to any sudden insight you would not otherwise have reached, but it might help you get there faster, by preventing the "scatter brain."
If you are so concerned about fairness, you ought to be downright outraged at the fact that millions of children in the United States are taking these drugs -- surely these students are unfairly outcompeting their peers in school. Right?
Even your faith in the effectiveness of social engineering doesn't make sense. Taking over the desktop computers in the business operation is a far cry from gaining access to the actual control systems or gaining access to the information you would need to override the intense training and long experience of the people who actually do the operations.
Overriding the training and experience of the people involved is easy -- threaten to kill them or their families. I doubt some technician is going to risk death just to prevent a power outage.
What the fuck does that have to do with anything? Are you trying to suggest that attention-enhancing drugs actually make people DUMBER? I tried using them once. It was probably the most productive night of academia I've ever had. I wouldn't do it again, but what business is it of yours?
Suppose the fellow goes home at night and has a few too many glasses of scotch. Suppose he has threesomes with sluts. Suppose he does any number of things you don't personally like. Are you gonna take away his funding for that, too?
You can use it off-label if the doctor ordered you to. Basically, you have to use it in the manner the doctor prescribed it. The prescription might be for an off-label use, but you still must obey the prescription, whatever it is.
We prescribe these drugs to millions of kids who most likely have nothing "wrong" with them, and people have a problem when some adults do the same thing?
This isn't athletics. The point isn't fairness. The point is advancing the science. I have serious doubts that these drugs are actually helping anybody do research who didn't already have some kind of problem, but it's none of our damn business, either.
Even my 4 year old has no difficulty understanding that weaseling like this is a form of lying. :)
A bunch of moralizers saying it doesn't make it so. I'm not responsible for making sure you're aware of the state of the universe. That's your job. The error occurs when somebody assumes that if X was not said, then X is not the case. That's a ridiculous assumption to make.
You're missing the important point here, which is that the security breach was a combination of computer breaches and human breaches. You can have a completely secure computer system, not connected to any network at all, but if you can convince somebody to walk over to the secure console and push the big red button, then all your fancy security policies are for nothing.
I've heard it said that the only completely secure computer system is one which is locked in a vault and not plugged in. Even that isn't true, if you can convince somebody to open the vault and give you the computer.
Why do you say "trying to sound legit?" These people were being paid to do this, by the power company.
Anyway, it seems your objection to the term "social engineering" is that is doesn't sound "evil enough." Well, that's in the ear of the beholder, isn't it? I don't see how calling it "social engineering" is an attempt to sound more legitimate. It's just a description of what it is, and a fairly accurate on at that.
Petawatt Lasers use, wait for this, petawatts of power. How you think that power is generated? Nice clean nuclear?
Power is "change in energy divided by time." So there are two reasons why power could be an enormous number -- 1, the change in energy could be huge, or 2, the time is incredibly short. In this case, it's the latter. Yes, the number comes out to be "petawatts." Yes, it's correct. No, that doesn't mean they need a nuclear reactor to produce the energy, as the actual amount of energy is really very small.
Using opposing colors is good for chromatic contrast but ultimately leads to eye strain. Light refracts to different degrees depending on its frequency. When the lens of your eye focuses, it focuses mostly the green light. Red is underfocused, and blue is overfocused. To see this, whip up an image in Paint (or whatever) which has black text on a red background. Now do the same with a green background. Now, put both images on the screen, right next to each other, and try to consider both of them at once. You will notice that the black-on-green is more in focus.
You WILL NOT notice this effect if you look at the images one at a time. The presence of green on the screen will cause your eye to involuntarily focus to make the green in focus. If the screen was only red, your eye would just pick red and try to bring that mostly into focus.
Of course, the best way to relieve eyestrain is not by picking colors and fonts, but by getting up from the computer and looking at something far away.
Although it does make sense that we would evolve pigments which would be most efficient for the color of which the most light arrives, to maximize the available information.
You may be right, but to me, it seems it should be the opposite. Since there is already so much green light, we can afford to have crummier receptors for that part of the spectrum, while investing energy into improving the receptors for other colors of light. Seems like it would be an advantage to be able to see low light color in regions of the spectrum were other livings things aren't as good at it.
It might be evolutionarily driven or it might be a complete fluke that the G cone is so receptive.
I'm simply questioning how a country can be "independent," in an energy respect or otherwise, when the world literally can't be lived upon. Finding a mass reserve will do nothing but encourage Americans to burn oil even more wantonly -- this would seem to be a form of independence, up until the very last second, when what is left of humanity murder each other in a primal, animalistic rage for scarce remaining resources.
Really? I thought it did. I don't think the term really applies to anything ecological at all.
So you're saying, it's an economic term. Okay, riddle me this. What is the economic impact of complete destruction of the liveable ecosystem? I'd put it at about $100 trillion, personally, perhaps even $1 quadrillion. Just a pittance, really.
Green is right in the middle of our visible spectrum which makes it the easiest for our eyes to pick up.
Green being "in the middle" is only a coincidence. It just so happens that out of the R, G, and B cones we have in our eyes, the G is most reactive. Meaning, it responds more at lower light levels than the other cone types. This means the green is more easily "seen" by our eyes, but it's not because it falls in the middle of the visible spectrum -- that's just a coincidence. It's purely a biological thing.
I'm sorry, I must have missed the part that explained how having a huge excess of oil was going to stop global warming... "Energy independence" doesn't mean having as much oil to burn as you would ever like.
Why would you pay the salaries of people you don't currently need, just so you don't have to hire them later? I fail to see how that would be more cost effective.
My point is, make it so you DO need them. If you have employees you don't need, it doesn't mean you have too many employees, it means you aren't doing enough "stuff."
Your examples are good, other than the Google doubleclick one. Google is not laying off these people because they are doing poorly, they're just not needed any more. It's fairly typical of acquisitions, you end up with a bunch of redundant employees and someone has to go.
And that's a great example of typical StupidThink. You have employees who, although intelligent, are redundant. Do you, A) Fire these schmucks, or B) See this as an opportunity to expand into new business areas so that you can put those people back to work?
Invariably, the company will end up needing that headcount back again, and the next round of employees are probably going to cost more, as well as the obvious costs of the interview and hiring process itself. If you have employees which seem redundant, that's your fault as management, not the employee's fault. Just eliminating the employees is a sign of small thinking.
but Microsoft doesn't have a half a brain cell...
Yeah okay -- that explains their hundreds of billions as well as total monopoly status throughout the world. Only dumb people can be so successful.
Being evil doesn't equate to being stupid, you know.
Sure, why not? Do you have some alternative story of the genesis of life which is LESS fantastic?
Personally, and don't laugh, I think the organic molecules were created by intelligent beings. Where did those beings come from? Created by other beings. Etc. There is nothing inherently wrong with this idea if you suppose that the universe is infinitely old.
We see evidence of a "big bang" and tend to think that the universe must have been created at that instant, but there are plenty of theories which suppose that it wasn't, that it's actually been around forever, and that the big bang was a "local" event. In a universe without a beginning, there is no longer a need to wonder about where the life "came from" in the first place -- or at least, the question is no more interesting than asking where the universe itself came from.
Microsoft wants yahoo for it's user base and technology. Which is moot. The moment such a take over is completed, yahoo user base crumbles as people leave.
Why, exactly, do you think that would happen? Do you think the millions of users have some kind of ideological vendetta against Microsoft? Wake up. If MS has half a brain cell, they will keep the services and web sites exactly the same, at least for several months as they figure out a plan to ease into things. YOU might leave, but Microsoft doesn't care, and neither do I for that matter.
If you think Microsoft would spend billions on a vast userbase only to fuck it up in the first 30 days by pissing everyone off, then I wonder how you think Microsoft made those billions in the first place. Hint: It wasn't by being fuckin' stupid.
The problem is, retaining 51% means that you can only raise an additional 49% in capital. If you need millions and you need them now, there's no way you're walking away with a majority stake in "your" company.
Those poor intro CS students, they might be forced to learn how... a computer works. Sure, we can throw around all the famous quotes about how "All you need to do computer science is a brain and something to write on" but at the end of the day we're graduating people now who don't understand what the hell a byte of memory is. That scares me.