Sarius, I didn't say anything about the Republicans that they wouldn't happily acknowledge about themselves. "Wealth redistribution" is one of their primary complaints about Democratic policies, and they would certainly see the proposed tax as an egregious example of that.
As for whether Democrats are better or worse or different or whatever, I don't think I want to get into that discussion with you, it's old and tired.
This kind of Robin Hood-style violence does not belong in a civilized, developed society.
The society in question -- one that has decided that its lower classes should just lay down and die, because they are no longer economically productive -- is not a civilized, developed society.
we need robots doing everything for us but we need them to be in some way financed so that they can do the work without the bulk of the population dying of starvation. if that means rebellion against robocorp, or richman inc, then so be it:)
The above is probably accurate. The fix doesn't necessarily require a rebellion against RoboCorp, though; the problems could be addressed through legislation. E.g. imagine a robot tax, such that the owner of each robot is required to pay $x per year to operate that robot (the fee would probably vary depending on the type of robot, etc). The proceeds of that tax are then divided up equally and given to each citizen to use however they want.
This would drive the Republicans absolutely nuts, of course, but it would at least (probably) keep the public from starving and rioting in the streets. If the robots were productive enough, it might even improve the average standard of living, since people would then be free to do whatever avocation they enjoy, rather than being forced to do menial labor just to keep food on the table.
The only way those two concepts are compatible is if the people truly own the government.
I'm not sure the concept even makes sense. You can say "the people own the government" all you like, and it sounds nice, but sooner or later actual decisions have to be made, and (unless it somehow becomes practical for every person to vote on every issue every day), there will necessarily be certain individuals or groups who are chosen to make those decisions on behalf of everyone else. And that's where things start to go downhill, as those individuals or groups that get to make the decisions will be very tempted to use their position of influence to gain yet more power for themselves, until sooner or later they are effectively "the government" and you're right back at socialism (or worse, totalitarianism).
The problem with communism is it assumes that everyone (and in particular people who are given power) will usually act for the benefit of the community, rather than for personal gain. That assumption has been shown to be reliably false when tested on actual human beings.
Memory is measured in multiples of powers of two because that's how the addressing works
Having memory manufactured in quantities reflecting powers of two makes perfect sense.
Hijacking well-defined metric prefixes to express something that they do not actually represent, however, is a problem. Hence the recent introduction of alternate prefixes to describe powers-of-two based values. (Yes, they sound silly, because we're not used to them, but not nearly as silly as e.g. using "kilo" to mean something other than 10^3)
All the eco-friendly stuff is ignored by building codes, so while this toilet might exist and have potential, good luck getting it to pass local codes for permitting
All of slashdot should know the hard drive industry uses 1000, not 1024. It makes their drives seem bigger.
Also, it follows the standard. (and by standard, I don't mean the computer industry's informal, approximated, bastardized de-facto 'standard', I mean the actual standard that just about every other scientific and engineering enterprise on the planet conforms to)
In my experience this is bullshit. Is there any evidence whatsoever that disproves my anecdotal evidence and shows that professional developers don't learn from their mistakes and even make a bigger hash of it the second time around?
It's not that they'll make a hash of it, so much as that a complete rewrite will take much longer than they think it will, because they've forgotten (or weren't around to experience) the thousands of niggling little corner cases whose correct handling is what makes the current codebase so, um, interesting to work with. Then when they do finally get the ground-up rewrite done (years later than they thought they would), they'll find that it is now a complicated mess too, for most of the same reasons the first codebase was.
Slartibartfast: Perhaps I'm old and tired, but I think that the chances of finding out what's actually going on are so absurdly remote that the only thing to do is to say, "Hang the sense of it," and keep yourself busy. I'd much rather be happy than right any day. Arthur Dent: And are you? Slartibartfast: Ah, no. [laughs] That's where it all falls down, of course.
The only really key piece of information we're missing is the plane's location. Once we have that, we can retrieve the black box(es) and we'll have all the rest of the information that there is to be had, as well.
The plane (like all commercial planes) had a device installed that effectively "uploaded" that key piece of information at regular intervals: its transponder. For some reason, the transponder failed; is there any reason to think that this device would not have failed as well, given the same circumstances?
Maybe all we really need is a more robust transponder.
Who are the one keep electing those assholes into Washington D.C. ?
We, the people.
You're right, of course, but on the other hand any process that involves collective decision-making by 130 million people is bound to act more like a one-move-per-year version of Twitch Plays Pokemon than any kind of particularly rational decision-making.
Add to that the amount of money and effort that is regularly channeled towards manipulating the voting public towards the ends desired by those with resources to do so, and it's impressive that the system works even as well as it does.
But I wouldn't blame the system's deficiencies on individual voters -- the fact is that any individual or like-minded community of voters could in fact do a better job for their particular needs, but at the national level, at least, coherent communities of voters tend to largely cancel each other out, leading to unpredictable results. Which I suppose leads us to the argument that more power should be delegated to lower levels of government rather than the Federal level...
Someone going to a small colony on Mars would be no different from Polynesians crossing oceans or people packing up and moving across the continent in 1800s.
If Mars was like California, that would be true. But in fact Mars has no biosphere, little atmosphere, little water, and few accessible natural resources.
Fun fact #1: People living in Antarctica commonly suffer from severe depression due to the fact that they have to spend 6 months of the year indoors with little natural light and not much to do.
Fun fact #2: For humans, Antarctica is a veritable Garden of Eden compared to Mars.
Fun fact #3: People living in Antarctica have the option of returning home at end of the winter if they can't handle it. People living on Mars will have no such option, and therefore very little to look forward to other than more of the same until they die.
Prediction: The #1 cause of death on Mars will be suicide. The #2 cause of death on Mars will be homicide.
Monopolies cannot arise in a free market, because for any lucrative business, competition always springs up.
Utter nonsense. In an unregulated market, any sufficiently large company will be tempted to use its resources to exclude competition, e.g. by temporary selling its products at a loss where/whenever a competitor appears, until that competitor runs out of money and goes out of business, at which point prices can be jacked up again. No subversion of government is required to keep the competitors out, only a large-enough cash reserve.
Presumably whoever designed and wrote BitCoin must be really good at programming and distributed cryptography design -- otherwise BitCoin would have been exploited into uselessness a long time ago.
So, do we have any evidence that Dorian has the necessary skills to design/write/debug the original BitCoin codebase? I would expect that someone with that level of specialized talent would not go unnoticed/undocumented for 40+ years.
The only rational place you can draw a line is to say: if you don't want it seen, don't hang it out where it can be seen.
That line gets a lot fuzzier if/when people start using infrared/ultrawideband/whatever to see through clothing. I suppose the argument then will be "if you're not encased in lead shielding every time you leave the house, you're pretty much asking for nude photos of yourself to be posted to the Internet".
Granted, that's not a problem yet, but the technology exists. The problem in both cases is that the difference between "what can be seen" and "what people think can be seen" is growing as technology advances. Skirts make an assumption that nobody will have a line-of-sight view from directly beneath you -- an assumption that was never entirely valid, but is a whole lot less valid now that technology has given people access to discreet digital cameras that they can easily position at floor level.
I do agree, but the court there feels that their stuff is public and they are virtually inviting people to lay on the ground and stare at it
That wasn't the court's reasoning at all. All the court said was that the existing laws do not prohibit the defendant's behavior, therefore what he did wasn't illegal. Probably by this time tomorrow it will be, though.
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Sarius, I didn't say anything about the Republicans that they wouldn't happily acknowledge about themselves. "Wealth redistribution" is one of their primary complaints about Democratic policies, and they would certainly see the proposed tax as an egregious example of that.
As for whether Democrats are better or worse or different or whatever, I don't think I want to get into that discussion with you, it's old and tired.
and bringing the value of a dollar bill cheaper than paper toilet...
What is the current value of a paper toilet? (I can't imagine wanting to use one more than once)
This kind of Robin Hood-style violence does not belong in a civilized, developed society.
The society in question -- one that has decided that its lower classes should just lay down and die, because they are no longer economically productive -- is not a civilized, developed society.
we need robots doing everything for us but we need them to be in some way financed so that they can do the work without the bulk of the population dying of starvation. if that means rebellion against robocorp, or richman inc, then so be it :)
The above is probably accurate. The fix doesn't necessarily require a rebellion against RoboCorp, though; the problems could be addressed through legislation. E.g. imagine a robot tax, such that the owner of each robot is required to pay $x per year to operate that robot (the fee would probably vary depending on the type of robot, etc). The proceeds of that tax are then divided up equally and given to each citizen to use however they want.
This would drive the Republicans absolutely nuts, of course, but it would at least (probably) keep the public from starving and rioting in the streets. If the robots were productive enough, it might even improve the average standard of living, since people would then be free to do whatever avocation they enjoy, rather than being forced to do menial labor just to keep food on the table.
No one in the United States has problems with food, clothing, or shelter.
Is this like Ahmadinejad saying there are no homosexuals in Iran?
Because the 600,000+ homeless people in the United States certainly have a problem with shelter.
The only way those two concepts are compatible is if the people truly own the government.
I'm not sure the concept even makes sense. You can say "the people own the government" all you like, and it sounds nice, but sooner or later actual decisions have to be made, and (unless it somehow becomes practical for every person to vote on every issue every day), there will necessarily be certain individuals or groups who are chosen to make those decisions on behalf of everyone else. And that's where things start to go downhill, as those individuals or groups that get to make the decisions will be very tempted to use their position of influence to gain yet more power for themselves, until sooner or later they are effectively "the government" and you're right back at socialism (or worse, totalitarianism).
The problem with communism is it assumes that everyone (and in particular people who are given power) will usually act for the benefit of the community, rather than for personal gain. That assumption has been shown to be reliably false when tested on actual human beings.
Memory is measured in multiples of powers of two because that's how the addressing works
Having memory manufactured in quantities reflecting powers of two makes perfect sense.
Hijacking well-defined metric prefixes to express something that they do not actually represent, however, is a problem. Hence the recent introduction of alternate prefixes to describe powers-of-two based values. (Yes, they sound silly, because we're not used to them, but not nearly as silly as e.g. using "kilo" to mean something other than 10^3)
All the eco-friendly stuff is ignored by building codes, so while this toilet might exist and have potential, good luck getting it to pass local codes for permitting
The places where a toilet like this would be most useful are not known for their strict observance of building codes.
All of slashdot should know the hard drive industry uses 1000, not 1024. It makes their drives seem bigger.
Also, it follows the standard. (and by standard, I don't mean the computer industry's informal, approximated, bastardized de-facto 'standard', I mean the actual standard that just about every other scientific and engineering enterprise on the planet conforms to)
In my experience this is bullshit. Is there any evidence whatsoever that disproves my anecdotal evidence and shows that professional developers don't learn from their mistakes and even make a bigger hash of it the second time around?
It's not that they'll make a hash of it, so much as that a complete rewrite will take much longer than they think it will, because they've forgotten (or weren't around to experience) the thousands of niggling little corner cases whose correct handling is what makes the current codebase so, um, interesting to work with. Then when they do finally get the ground-up rewrite done (years later than they thought they would), they'll find that it is now a complicated mess too, for most of the same reasons the first codebase was.
Slartibartfast: Perhaps I'm old and tired, but I think that the chances of finding out what's actually going on are so absurdly remote that the only thing to do is to say, "Hang the sense of it," and keep yourself busy. I'd much rather be happy than right any day.
Arthur Dent: And are you?
Slartibartfast: Ah, no. [laughs] That's where it all falls down, of course.
The only really key piece of information we're missing is the plane's location. Once we have that, we can retrieve the black box(es) and we'll have all the rest of the information that there is to be had, as well.
The plane (like all commercial planes) had a device installed that effectively "uploaded" that key piece of information at regular intervals: its transponder. For some reason, the transponder failed; is there any reason to think that this device would not have failed as well, given the same circumstances?
Maybe all we really need is a more robust transponder.
I prefer to think that it has slipped through a wormhole and is out of temporal phase with the rest of the Earth.
Who are the one keep electing those assholes into Washington D.C. ?
We, the people.
You're right, of course, but on the other hand any process that involves collective decision-making by 130 million people is bound to act more like a one-move-per-year version of Twitch Plays Pokemon than any kind of particularly rational decision-making.
Add to that the amount of money and effort that is regularly channeled towards manipulating the voting public towards the ends desired by those with resources to do so, and it's impressive that the system works even as well as it does.
But I wouldn't blame the system's deficiencies on individual voters -- the fact is that any individual or like-minded community of voters could in fact do a better job for their particular needs, but at the national level, at least, coherent communities of voters tend to largely cancel each other out, leading to unpredictable results. Which I suppose leads us to the argument that more power should be delegated to lower levels of government rather than the Federal level...
The only way California is able to sustain its current population is strictly because it can import a large amount of its food from elsewhere
If that is true of California, won't it be even more true for Mars? California has lots of farmland -- Mars, not so much.
Someone going to a small colony on Mars would be no different from Polynesians crossing oceans or people packing up and moving across the continent in 1800s.
If Mars was like California, that would be true. But in fact Mars has no biosphere, little atmosphere, little water, and few accessible natural resources.
Fun fact #1: People living in Antarctica commonly suffer from severe depression due to the fact that they have to spend 6 months of the year indoors with little natural light and not much to do.
Fun fact #2: For humans, Antarctica is a veritable Garden of Eden compared to Mars.
Fun fact #3: People living in Antarctica have the option of returning home at end of the winter if they can't handle it. People living on Mars will have no such option, and therefore very little to look forward to other than more of the same until they die.
Prediction: The #1 cause of death on Mars will be suicide. The #2 cause of death on Mars will be homicide.
Monopolies cannot arise in a free market, because for any lucrative business, competition always springs up.
Utter nonsense. In an unregulated market, any sufficiently large company will be tempted to use its resources to exclude competition, e.g. by temporary selling its products at a loss where/whenever a competitor appears, until that competitor runs out of money and goes out of business, at which point prices can be jacked up again. No subversion of government is required to keep the competitors out, only a large-enough cash reserve.
Did you also include the large mixing pump system necessary for binary explosives?
Either a large mixing pump is not actually necessary, or the TSA has been banning the wrong things from all passenger flights for the last ten years.
Either or both of those things is quite plausible, actually.
If you can have a conversation with a rock then it is intelligent no matter what the government says.
Great, I can do that, no problem. But can I claim it as a dependent for tax purposes?
If it can't get up and move away, (no matter how awkwardly), it's not a robot.
These guys would like to have a word with you.
Presumably whoever designed and wrote BitCoin must be really good at programming and distributed cryptography design -- otherwise BitCoin would have been exploited into uselessness a long time ago.
So, do we have any evidence that Dorian has the necessary skills to design/write/debug the original BitCoin codebase? I would expect that someone with that level of specialized talent would not go unnoticed/undocumented for 40+ years.
The only rational place you can draw a line is to say: if you don't want it seen, don't hang it out where it can be seen.
That line gets a lot fuzzier if/when people start using infrared/ultrawideband/whatever to see through clothing. I suppose the argument then will be "if you're not encased in lead shielding every time you leave the house, you're pretty much asking for nude photos of yourself to be posted to the Internet".
Granted, that's not a problem yet, but the technology exists. The problem in both cases is that the difference between "what can be seen" and "what people think can be seen" is growing as technology advances. Skirts make an assumption that nobody will have a line-of-sight view from directly beneath you -- an assumption that was never entirely valid, but is a whole lot less valid now that technology has given people access to discreet digital cameras that they can easily position at floor level.
I do agree, but the court there feels that their stuff is public and they are virtually inviting people to lay on the ground and stare at it
That wasn't the court's reasoning at all. All the court said was that the existing laws do not prohibit the defendant's behavior, therefore what he did wasn't illegal. Probably by this time tomorrow it will be, though.
The last thing the people in charge of the world would like is cheap or free, limitless energy.
RIght, all it would do is make them incredibly rich and powerful. God knows they wouldn't want that.
Solar is infinite dollars per watt at night
Batteries are expensive, but they're not that expensive.