The part you misread is where several posts describe a test for "any conceivable power" (which is a very high standard) and you misread that as "any being more powerful than you".
(BTW, to get a nit out of the way, you misspelled Clarke).
The human race does have some literature on relationships with super-potent creatures. If I were confronted with one of these creatures, I would keep this literature in mind. Especially if the super-potent being isn't interested in having a conversation between equals.
It's not a question of whether another entity is 'more powerful' than me. It's a question of whether another entity can perform every action that I can conceive and express.
Levitate. Produce a 100 kilogram block of gold. Factor this 1000 digit number. Give me a proof whether P=NP (or a proof that the problem is formally undecidible). Give me the formula for an AIDS vaccine. Give me blueprints for a safe "Mr. Fusion" reactor.
Heck, that's just off the top of my head. After the putative super-entity does that, I'd go away for a while and think of more tests. Probably post the results of the first batch to "Ask Slashdot" and ask for suggestions.
A bunch of really hot, lazy, horny, well fed people have a good time? Sounds like heaven...
Compared to the mass of people in, say, the 17th century, we already are all of those things!
Hot: regular bathing and clean clothes every day Lazy: I don't have to work 12 hours a day 6.5 days a week just wresting my food from the earth Horny: Not sure about that compared to 300 years ago, but it seems like people have a lot more resources for sex now that their food, clothing, and shelter are much easier to provide Well Fed: Pretty obvious Having a good time: This is more subtle, I'd say most people in developed countries have lots more opportunity to pursue a good time; whether they actually succeed or not is up to them
This technology doesn't affect (directly) how many kids you have, and has only a small effect on your chances of dying before having all the kids that you are going to have.
So it won't have much effect on population. There will be a one-time bump as the lifespan increase from, say, 70 to 100, but it's not like the 75-year-olds are having more kids.
Tell me, what do you think of immunizing children against common contagious diseases such as diptheria? Are you shuddering at the effects of that?
(And on the bright side, world population will peak out and level off about 2050).
The problem is that this story is not about "customers stop listening to RIAA music, start going to local clubs instead". It's more like this:
RIAA: Want some music? Only $15. Customer: No thanks, cram it up your arse! RIAA: Fine, be that way.:does goatsex imitation with CD: Customer: Hey, wait! Shiny! Cool! I want that! : lunges and grabs for RIAA orifice:
The math term for a "complete" mapping such as you describe is "onto".
Hey, I didn't say how I would react to God. I've seen as much Star Trek as you have.:) That's why I avoided the word in my last post -- the word "God" invokes a whole bundle of concepts, including a connotation of uniqueness which I didn't mean to imply.
On a tangent: a long time ago, I made up a passphrase for myself, in case I ever have access to time travel and need to identify myself to my younger self. Then I thought about all the other ways besides time travel that somebody else could learn the passphrase and display it to me. It could be time-travelling me; or it could be someone with telepathy; or I could have been drugged/brainwashed at some point; or I could just talk in my sleep.
However, if a super-being made itself known to me and demonstrated its super-potence to me in every way that I could think of, and then claimed to be the God of $HOLY_TEXT, and then asked me to worship it according to $HOLY_TEXT, I sure would!
No, "falsifiable" is the term from philosophy of science. It means just what you quoted, "capable of being falsified".
As far as agnosticism goes, technically, I'm agnostic about everything: the existence of God; the law of conservation of mass-energy; and whether the sun will rise in the East tomorrow.
How about you? Do you believe in the law of conservation of mass-energy? Would you call yourself an agnostic about it?
I call my belief "atheism" because it's very strong, akin to my belief in conservation of mass-energy. I find it useful to distinguish between an extremely strong belief which would take super-extraordinary evidence to dispute ("atheism") versus a genuine significant doubt ("agnosticism").
For example, I'm truly agnostic about the existence of telepathy. I don't believe in it, but I wouldn't be very surprised by real evidence for it.
And suppose we contact some alien civilizations; and some humans send them one of our Bibles; and the aliens say: "yeah! the same Savior came to our planet, too!"
Evidence works both ways, you know.
Personally, I'm an atheist, but I acknowledge that my atheism is falsifiable.
It's easy to point at other people's beliefs and say "look! they are gonna have such a crisis of belief when we expand our circle of knowledge!" But intellectual honesty and humility compels me to consider: what kind of evidence would make me change my mind about atheism?
The New York Times sells ads, including new and used car ads. They sell both print and electronic ads. The NYT doesn't mention this fact in their story.
And NYT rags on eBay for "not being consistent" by having a small warranty for cars sold through eBay ads, but I don't see any warranty for cars sold through NYT ads. Do you?
The New York Times is a publicly traded company which sells advertising and subscriptions. They actually get about twice as much revenue from advertising as they do from subscriptions.
Let's dig into the New York Times finances. I start at www.sec.gov, click on Edgar filings, search for "New York Times", and grab the 10-K, the most recent annual filing.
For the year ended 2003-12-28, their revenus was $3.2 billion. Here's a breakdown:
100% $3.2 billion total revenue 66% $2.1 billion advertising 27% $0.9 billion circulation 07% $0.2 billion other
Advertising revenue is up about 3.5% from 2002, but advertising volume, the number of inches of ads, dropped 3.8% from 2002 to 2003. The Times has been selling fewer ads but charging more for them.
Summary: the primary business line of the New York Times company is selling ads. Internet companies such as eBay are cutting into that ad business. And that's why the New York Times has been trash-talking Google and eBay lately.
The preferred shares have "$1000" printed on them but that doesn't mean that anybody guarantees they will pay $1000 for them.
RBC traded each preferred share for 74.074 common shares. There are lots of people who will pay, oh, $5.98 per common share, although that price might go up or down when the markets re-open. 74.074 shares of SCOX is worth about $430 right now.
It's not like RBC lost all that money today, because those shares of preferred stock can't be sold for $1000 anyways. No one will pay $1000 for them. RBC *recognized* the loss today, that's all.
2:01 PM SCO Group receives notice from Royal Bank of Canada of conversion of shares (SCOX): 6.00 -0.01: Co announces that it received on May 5 notice that Royal/Bank of Canada has elected to covert 10,000 shares of SCOX's Series A-1 Convertible Preferred Stock it currently holds...
Look at the time again: 2:01. Of course, that's New York time. That's an hour and fifty-nine minutes before the markets close.
As far as selling over the weekend goes: the news is out. Anybody who *buys* over the weekend has access to this news, so they know what they are buying and will adjust the price they are willing to pay accordingly. So your whole scenario is all wet. If the insiders sold stock on May 5 or May 6 or May 7, that would be dealing *before* the news. Also, insider stock sales must be executed in accordance with a plan filed with the SEC (not the FTC). The plan must have no flexibility or discretion in it.
Hey, if you want to learn more about SCO stock, start here: Yahoo! Finance for SCOX. Read the news, read the earnings numbers, check the number of employees, check the insider trades. There's a lot of information available in one spot, and it helps to know the enemy.
Have a look at the figures for October 2001 versus October 2002. In October 2002, SCO had $21 million in current assets and $27 million in current liabilities.
In the year ended October 2002, SCO had a net loss of $25 million.
SCO would have died some time in spring or summer 2003 without the massive cash infusion from Microsoft and Sun. All those employees would have been laid off a year ago. These employees kept their jobs for a year longer (and for 75% of them, they still are keeping their jobs) because of this evil, evil lawsuit. (And no, I don't think that makes the lawsuit a good thing).
(1) What was the price of SCOX the day Darl took office? (2) What is the price of SCOX now? (3) How much stock has Darl sold in the meantime?
Not to defend SCO, because I will be very happy to see them reduced to a smoking bankrupt shell. However, SCOX has gone up 500% since Darl took over less than two years ago; Darl gets paid mostly in stock; and he hasn't sold any of the stock yet.
Expecting to be moderated: -1, inconvenient facts that contravene the Slashdot worldview.
The stock was trading at $1 when Darl took over. The stock was trading at $1 when Darl announced the IBM lawsuit. It's trading at $6 now.
WTF are you talking about, "running the stock price into the ground"?
Meanwhile, SCO has already sold IP licenses to Microsoft and Sun for more money than the entire market cap of the company at the time they sold the licenses. That is, the company was worth about $18 million when Darl took over, and they sold IP for $20 million to $30 million (I stopped counting at $20 million). That's a lot of revenue for a tiny company like SCO.
Interesting perspective. However, look at SCO's cash flow from their quarterly reports in 2002 and 2003. SCO would have shut its doors sometime around summer 2003 if they had not found some way to raise money. The $20 million or so from Microsoft and Sun, and the $50 million from BayStar, have allowed SCO to keep paying their employees in the money-losing "products and services" division for much longer than they would have if SCO had stuck to their "products and services" business. All these people would have been layed off a year ago.
I'm sympathetic with most of your analysis, but the part about how the existing people running the lawsuit are "jackasses" is wrong.
By "jackass" I assume you mean people that don't know how to win lawsuits against large software corporations. Well, the existing management of Canopy -- who are calling the shots at SCO -- has already settled civil suits against Microsoft ($150 million) and Computer Associates ($40 million).
It's one thing to call your opponent evil -- which I agree with -- and another to call them incompetent -- the $200 million in Canopy's pockets from two prior lawsuits says that they are experienced at this lawsuit business.
I was an undergraduate at Berkeley when someone started leaving backpacks with explosives in the hallways of the EECS department and mailing explosives to computer science professors. That was terrorism, and it happened at a university.
Running shoes are good for 300 to 500 miles. Even a slow runner, like me, easily does 5 miles in one hour. That means I get 60 to 100 hours out of a pair of shoes. A median-speed runner would pull 8 miles per hour (7:30 miles) so 100-hour battery life would be plenty.
A good pair of running shoes costs $80 to $100. $250 is pricey, but it's not so pricey considering on a $/hour basis.
As far as the physical benefit goes, I don't know enough about biomechanics to have an opinion.
As far as the psychological benefit goes, it's like a lot of exercise equipment: whatever floats your boat and makes you get off your butt and actually *enjoy* it, day after day, week after week, is cool.
Rob Enderle has obviously never heard of ChampionChips.
True, they are not an integral part of the shoe, but they are very definitely attached to the shoe, and they are electronic, and they are not lights.
(In a nutshell, a ChampionChip is like a little RFID tag for running racers. Every runner wears on, and the race course has detectors at fixed intervals, so that your friends can see when you've got half-way through the marathon, etc.)
Slashdot Mirror
The part you misread is where several posts describe a test for "any conceivable power" (which is a very high standard) and you misread that as "any being more powerful than you".
(BTW, to get a nit out of the way, you misspelled Clarke).
The human race does have some literature on relationships with super-potent creatures. If I were confronted with one of these creatures, I would keep this literature in mind. Especially if the super-potent being isn't interested in having a conversation between equals.
You have misread the scenario.
It's not a question of whether another entity is 'more powerful' than me. It's a question of whether another entity can perform every action that I can conceive and express.
Levitate. Produce a 100 kilogram block of gold. Factor this 1000 digit number. Give me a proof whether P=NP (or a proof that the problem is formally undecidible). Give me the formula for an AIDS vaccine. Give me blueprints for a safe "Mr. Fusion" reactor.
Heck, that's just off the top of my head. After the putative super-entity does that, I'd go away for a while and think of more tests. Probably post the results of the first batch to "Ask Slashdot" and ask for suggestions.
A bunch of really hot, lazy, horny, well fed people have a good time? Sounds like heaven...
Compared to the mass of people in, say, the 17th century, we already are all of those things!
Hot: regular bathing and clean clothes every day
Lazy: I don't have to work 12 hours a day 6.5 days a week just wresting my food from the earth
Horny: Not sure about that compared to 300 years ago, but it seems like people have a lot more resources for sex now that their food, clothing, and shelter are much easier to provide
Well Fed: Pretty obvious
Having a good time: This is more subtle, I'd say most people in developed countries have lots more opportunity to pursue a good time; whether they actually succeed or not is up to them
I predict that any nano techniques will work better on people who are in better shape to begin with.
This technology doesn't affect (directly) how many kids you have, and has only a small effect on your chances of dying before having all the kids that you are going to have.
So it won't have much effect on population. There will be a one-time bump as the lifespan increase from, say, 70 to 100, but it's not like the 75-year-olds are having more kids.
Tell me, what do you think of immunizing children against common contagious diseases such as diptheria? Are you shuddering at the effects of that?
(And on the bright side, world population will peak out and level off about 2050).
Errr, in the context of your analogy, that is!
:does goatsex imitation with CD:
The problem is that this story is not about "customers stop listening to RIAA music, start going to local clubs instead". It's more like this:
RIAA: Want some music? Only $15.
Customer: No thanks, cram it up your arse!
RIAA: Fine, be that way.
Customer: Hey, wait! Shiny! Cool! I want that! : lunges and grabs for RIAA orifice:
Also, I expect these sensors to read the RFID tags embedded in tires.
The math term for a "complete" mapping such as you describe is "onto".
:) That's why I avoided the word in my last post -- the word "God" invokes a whole bundle of concepts, including a connotation of uniqueness which I didn't mean to imply.
Hey, I didn't say how I would react to God. I've seen as much Star Trek as you have.
On a tangent: a long time ago, I made up a passphrase for myself, in case I ever have access to time travel and need to identify myself to my younger self. Then I thought about all the other ways besides time travel that somebody else could learn the passphrase and display it to me. It could be time-travelling me; or it could be someone with telepathy; or I could have been drugged/brainwashed at some point; or I could just talk in my sleep.
However, if a super-being made itself known to me and demonstrated its super-potence to me in every way that I could think of, and then claimed to be the God of $HOLY_TEXT, and then asked me to worship it according to $HOLY_TEXT, I sure would!
This is an interesting thought experiment that I haven't encountered before. Thanks!
Suppose a super-entity appears and performs that demonstration. My view is that these hypotheses are indistinguishable:
(1) The super-entity is omnipotent.
(2) The super-entity has limited power, but its limited power is larger than anything *I* can conceive.
I think I have to agree with your conclusion: that at some level of (2), *I* cannot distinguish between (1) and (2).
However, I am comfortable accepting an entity that satisfies (2) as God.
No, "falsifiable" is the term from philosophy of science. It means just what you quoted, "capable of being falsified".
As far as agnosticism goes, technically, I'm agnostic about everything: the existence of God; the law of conservation of mass-energy; and whether the sun will rise in the East tomorrow.
How about you? Do you believe in the law of conservation of mass-energy? Would you call yourself an agnostic about it?
I call my belief "atheism" because it's very strong, akin to my belief in conservation of mass-energy. I find it useful to distinguish between an extremely strong belief which would take super-extraordinary evidence to dispute ("atheism") versus a genuine significant doubt ("agnosticism").
For example, I'm truly agnostic about the existence of telepathy. I don't believe in it, but I wouldn't be very surprised by real evidence for it.
And suppose we contact some alien civilizations; and some humans send them one of our Bibles; and the aliens say: "yeah! the same Savior came to our planet, too!"
Evidence works both ways, you know.
Personally, I'm an atheist, but I acknowledge that my atheism is falsifiable.
It's easy to point at other people's beliefs and say "look! they are gonna have such a crisis of belief when we expand our circle of knowledge!" But intellectual honesty and humility compels me to consider: what kind of evidence would make me change my mind about atheism?
In this way, exactly.
The New York Times sells ads, including new and used car ads. They sell both print and electronic ads. The NYT doesn't mention this fact in their story.
And NYT rags on eBay for "not being consistent" by having a small warranty for cars sold through eBay ads, but I don't see any warranty for cars sold through NYT ads. Do you?
The New York Times is a publicly traded company which sells advertising and subscriptions. They actually get about twice as much revenue from advertising as they do from subscriptions.
Let's dig into the New York Times finances. I start at www.sec.gov, click on Edgar filings, search for "New York Times", and grab the 10-K, the most recent annual filing.
New York Times 10-K
For the year ended 2003-12-28, their revenus was $3.2 billion. Here's a breakdown:
100% $3.2 billion total revenue
66% $2.1 billion advertising
27% $0.9 billion circulation
07% $0.2 billion other
Advertising revenue is up about 3.5% from 2002, but advertising volume, the number of inches of ads, dropped 3.8% from 2002 to 2003. The Times has been selling fewer ads but charging more for them.
Summary: the primary business line of the New York Times company is selling ads. Internet companies such as eBay are cutting into that ad business. And that's why the New York Times has been trash-talking Google and eBay lately.
British troops ordered: hand over all Iraq photos
The preferred shares have "$1000" printed on them but that doesn't mean that anybody guarantees they will pay $1000 for them.
RBC traded each preferred share for 74.074 common shares. There are lots of people who will pay, oh, $5.98 per common share, although that price might go up or down when the markets re-open. 74.074 shares of SCOX is worth about $430 right now.
It's not like RBC lost all that money today, because those shares of preferred stock can't be sold for $1000 anyways. No one will pay $1000 for them. RBC *recognized* the loss today, that's all.
Briefing.com announcment
/Bank of Canada has elected to covert 10,000 shares of SCOX's Series A-1 Convertible Preferred Stock it currently holds ...
2:01 PM SCO Group receives notice from Royal Bank of Canada of conversion of shares (SCOX): 6.00 -0.01: Co announces that it received on May 5 notice that Royal
Look at the time again: 2:01. Of course, that's New York time. That's an hour and fifty-nine minutes before the markets close.
As far as selling over the weekend goes: the news is out. Anybody who *buys* over the weekend has access to this news, so they know what they are buying and will adjust the price they are willing to pay accordingly. So your whole scenario is all wet. If the insiders sold stock on May 5 or May 6 or May 7, that would be dealing *before* the news.
Also, insider stock sales must be executed in accordance with a plan filed with the SEC (not the FTC). The plan must have no flexibility or discretion in it.
Hey, if you want to learn more about SCO stock, start here: Yahoo! Finance for SCOX. Read the news, read the earnings numbers, check the number of employees, check the insider trades. There's a lot of information available in one spot, and it helps to know the enemy.
SCO balance sheet
Have a look at the figures for October 2001 versus October 2002. In October 2002, SCO had $21 million in current assets and $27 million in current liabilities.
SCO income statement
In the year ended October 2002, SCO had a net loss of $25 million.
SCO would have died some time in spring or summer 2003 without the massive cash infusion from Microsoft and Sun. All those employees would have been laid off a year ago. These employees kept their jobs for a year longer (and for 75% of them, they still are keeping their jobs) because of this evil, evil lawsuit. (And no, I don't think that makes the lawsuit a good thing).
Have you looked at Darl's compensation package?
(1) What was the price of SCOX the day Darl took office?
(2) What is the price of SCOX now?
(3) How much stock has Darl sold in the meantime?
Not to defend SCO, because I will be very happy to see them reduced to a smoking bankrupt shell. However, SCOX has gone up 500% since Darl took over less than two years ago; Darl gets paid mostly in stock; and he hasn't sold any of the stock yet.
Expecting to be moderated: -1, inconvenient facts that contravene the Slashdot worldview.
The stock was trading at $1 when Darl took over.
The stock was trading at $1 when Darl announced the IBM lawsuit.
It's trading at $6 now.
WTF are you talking about, "running the stock price into the ground"?
Meanwhile, SCO has already sold IP licenses to Microsoft and Sun for more money than the entire market cap of the company at the time they sold the licenses. That is, the company was worth about $18 million when Darl took over, and they sold IP for $20 million to $30 million (I stopped counting at $20 million). That's a lot of revenue for a tiny company like SCO.
Interesting perspective. However, look at SCO's cash flow from their quarterly reports in 2002 and 2003. SCO would have shut its doors sometime around summer 2003 if they had not found some way to raise money.
The $20 million or so from Microsoft and Sun, and the $50 million from BayStar, have allowed SCO to keep paying their employees in the money-losing "products and services" division for much longer than they would have if SCO had stuck to their "products and services" business. All these people would have been layed off a year ago.
I'm sympathetic with most of your analysis, but the part about how the existing people running the lawsuit are "jackasses" is wrong.
By "jackass" I assume you mean people that don't know how to win lawsuits against large software corporations. Well, the existing management of Canopy -- who are calling the shots at SCO -- has already settled civil suits against Microsoft ($150 million) and Computer Associates ($40 million).
It's one thing to call your opponent evil -- which I agree with -- and another to call them incompetent -- the $200 million in Canopy's pockets from two prior lawsuits says that they are experienced at this lawsuit business.
Ever hear of Theodore Kaczynski? The first two letters of "Unabomer" stand for "University"!
FBI's UNABOM chronology
I was an undergraduate at Berkeley when someone started leaving backpacks with explosives in the hallways of the EECS department and mailing explosives to computer science professors. That was terrorism, and it happened at a university.
Running shoes are good for 300 to 500 miles.
Even a slow runner, like me, easily does 5 miles in one hour.
That means I get 60 to 100 hours out of a pair of shoes.
A median-speed runner would pull 8 miles per hour (7:30 miles) so 100-hour battery life would be plenty.
A good pair of running shoes costs $80 to $100. $250 is pricey, but it's not so pricey considering on a $/hour basis.
As far as the physical benefit goes, I don't know enough about biomechanics to have an opinion.
As far as the psychological benefit goes, it's like a lot of exercise equipment: whatever floats your boat and makes you get off your butt and actually *enjoy* it, day after day, week after week, is cool.
Rob Enderle has obviously never heard of ChampionChips.
True, they are not an integral part of the shoe, but they are very definitely attached to the shoe, and they are electronic, and they are not lights.
(In a nutshell, a ChampionChip is like a little RFID tag for running racers. Every runner wears on, and the race course has detectors at fixed intervals, so that your friends can see when you've got half-way through the marathon, etc.)
Runners, and anybody who exercises aerobically, enjoy better health than people who don't.