The Fed? Inflation is high because your dollar went to shit because of your deficit. If Ron Paul could have stopped the Iraq war he damn well should have.
He tried that, too. IIRC he also voted against the PATRIOT act. The only problem with Ron Paul in these areas is that for whatever reason not enough of his fellow congress critters listened to him to stop some of these more insane measures.
No, this falls far short of justice. Justice would have been posting a bunch of copywritten songs and announcing to the world where to find them. Even better: * Record an original piece * Post it * Sue the RIAA for hosting it
Just blanking a site is lazy.
I would have thought true justice and victory would be achieved if someone had deleted the RIAA's database of targets^wfilesharers. Of course those who were already at a point where dead trees were involved would still get troubles, but it would still slow them down. Even better: get the information then wipe it and share the info.
More deadly things have been regarded as accidents. People run over kids in the street without speeding like maniacs. People accidentally shoot fellow hunters.
And when they do they get charged with manslaughter if not murder. That's why manslaughter is illegal.
"No no no. It completely depends on the statute. There are plenty of laws that only require knowledge and there are even strict liability laws that do not require any knowledge of the illegal activity taking place. Violating them can land you in jail. Gross negligence can also land you in jail."
I dunno, I'd think the average person wouldn't think that the 'sky' was a hazardous place to shine a light....you don't assume at any given time that it is FULL of aircraft.
Ignorance of the law is not a defense. Many many laws, maybe most laws, do not require intent as a factor and none require knowledge that the act is illegal. Only some require knowledge that the act is even being committed. About the only case I can think of off hand where intent even matters is murder, and even then murder without intent is second degree murder or potentially manslaughter, depending on the circumstances and the discretion of the prosecutor.
Besides, if the couple doesn't know that shining lasers at people is bad, they know now and at least no one was hurt. If they don't know that this is something they might get in trouble they haven't been watching the news or paying attention to terror alerts. As silly as it sounds at first, the law enforcement community has been warning for YEARS now that terrorists plan to bring down planes by shining lasers in the cockpit, and at least a few people have been caught ostensibly doing so (the case I remember off the top of my head had a guy at the end of a busy runway shining lasers at cockpits).
I really don't think that shining lasers is an effective way to bring down planes. It does sound laughable. But they should probably institute public floggings for assholes that shine lasers in people's eyes anyway. It's potentially damaging and very annoying. And yeah the slightest thing could potentially cause crashes, especially on takeoff and landing. Someone who is shining lasers in cockpits should be checked out just in case they really are trying to bring the thing down, even if they don't. Just feel lucky they aren't arresting people for flying kites, which are actually probably better for bringing down helicopters and are a favorite pastime in the regions where our enemies live (just as they were for the VC who apparently did use kites for that or at least tried).
The couple didn't get in trouble for shining a light in the sky. They got in trouble for aiming it into the cockpit of a police helicopter, which is just stupid. They could have aimed it anywhere else they wanted to without getting into trouble, in all likelihood. I'm tired of people getting arrested for possessing litebrites, too, but it seems reasonable enough that people be asked not to deliberately fuck with police officers.
While I've never flown a helicopter (or any aircraft), aren't they able to remain fairly stationary, or does it require a great deal of effort?
Yes, keeping a helicopter stationary requires a lot of effort. Hovering is one of the first things that someone has to learn how to do when they learn to fly helicopters, and it's very, very, hard. Except in videogames, where flying helicopters is easy.
I don't know about anyone else, but 'poking around for files' is pretty damn intrusive. Just burn a couple of files on the desktop to the CD rom.
I hate child porn as much as anyone else, but this stinks of people looking for personal details on their clients that are none of their business. This shady shit has to stop.
What's so shady? They just happened to notice he had kiddie porn on his computer and reported it. It wasn't a conspiracy; I'll bet my tinfoil hat on that one.
When you send something in for repair you are giving the tech the right to look at your things. You are in fact asking (in many cases paying) them to do that. The presence of illegal things in that context is your risk. The mechanic might not say anything about some roaches in the ashtray, but they will probably call the cops if they are fixing your tail lights and notice that your dead wife is in the trunk.
The techs weren't doing anything wrong or unusual here. They probably needed to find about 4GB of stuff to burn, and even if that wasn't what they needed as in this case they would probably have to poke around in the files to fix/troubleshoot the computer. That is what techs do. And who cares if you have 9 GB of porn on your system as long as its not kiddies? Everyone has that, and to be honest just having porn is probably an invitation for the techs to check out your stash even if you hadn't given them permission to go through the HD.
Well, we have a few hundred years to figure it out, we're not gonna lack uranium for quite a while.
Probably, it depends in part on how much our energy consumption increases (if it does not start decreasing or levelling out) and how unstable the sources of Uranium become (like oil)... so far it looks like we have several sources that are relatively safe (like Australia) but who knows what will happen in 100 years.
At any rate, we may need that time to solve our problem, assuming we spend it wisely. There are unfortunately too few people working on the many problems that threaten our world, and too few resources spent on that research by the Powers that Be. So regime change may be a prerequisite as well as better education.
I remember reading in Peter Green's book that Aristotle's laboratory was the best funded in all of human history. If that is correct it is IMHO a sad reflection since it basically means we have never valued research as much as that or given those who do such work as many tools; we should be surpassing ourselves, not degenerating. Even if it is not it seems to me that it is obvious there is not enough money and time spent on increasing human knowledge in general, much less working on problems like the energy crisis, war, famine, etc... Solving the problem in time would require changing that IMHO. It's not fair to keep expecting the eggheads to pull a rabbit out of their hat when they can't afford the hat. For some here that probably hits close to home...:D But the argument that "we'll figure something out..." only holds water if the necessary effort and resources are expended to achieve such goals.
It's a much better idea to build something like that in space, when that becomes economically viable in itself. I'm guessing that will be at least 30 years, but it could be possible within our lifetimes... With a little luck, our current energy reserves will last that long, and we won't kill ourselves waiting.
Which would require several things... first we would need to be able to get enough material into that area of space to build something... people answer asteroids on that one as well but you do have to smelt, refine, etc which again requires infrastructure. Maybe the moon would make more sense since at least you have a surface to work with (therefore you don't need to build that part) and some raw materials (rock) to build the parts that don't have to be some kind of metal. But then you have either to develop a relatively (laws of thermodynamics apply etc) lossless method to transmit this energy without causing more problems or produce enough energy that you don't have to care. All of this boils down to a lot of tech we do not have and resources and energy which must be expended to reach this goal; which basically means you had better start cracking on it now to beat the deadline, like many other known problems. Of course it may just be mathematically impossible to turn what you propose into a viable solution. I'm not a physicist. I'm still not over CERN's stern ruling that the Enterprise will not exist (matter/antimatter is not viable) although it is heartening that we overcame Mr Scott and developed ion engines first. We didn't use electric cars (according to Popular Mechanics circa 1900 IIRC) because they would require such extensive infrastructure (you'd have to string wire all over the country! Electricity in every city!) so some people have been proven wrong before, but certain things are provably impossible (or not viable) without violating the Laws of Physics and Mathematics...
Of course, there is always the desperation angle. Besides the fact Necessity is the Mother of Invention, when you get to the point where you have a choice between energy which is difficult to derive and none at all things that were too expensive before become viable economically, assuming you have a net gain of course. But solar power is way easier to deal with than this. so many processes on Earth are powered by the sun and moon that there is plenty of opportunity to reap the benefits of the "free" energy. Hopefully before we get to the point where that actually presents a problem (we use up more energy than was previously wasted or otherwise unduly interfere with natural processes necessary for our survival, or the Sun starts to grow... ) we will have colonized somewhere else.
To my mind you started off with the right idea. You mentioned other worlds as a source. Well if people move from the Earth they can presumably find energy in the places to which they travel. Unfortunately for us, so far we only know one "earthlike" planet, where life and the possibility of life as we know it exist, and terraforming is probably much more difficult than Star Trek would have you believe... (after all if we can make inhospitable planets hospitable we should be able first to fix this one.
I was glad to hear Stephen Hawking point out that it is insane that we aren't trying to build a Disaster Recovery Site for life (i.e. extraterrestrial colonies). I've been saying that for years, but more people will listen to him for good reason. There are any number of processes which basically guarantee that life on Earth will either be destroyed or at the very least very difficult to live on, and even if that were not the case (we have no plan for basically any of them) the unforseen and the fact we know no other place where humans or any other life exists should produce a biological (to say nothing of logical) imperative to do that.
But again this requires energy, infrastructure, and technology we do not have. More people should take Einstein's advice and learn physics so they can get cracking on this stuff or help those who already are.
Knowledge is knowing that the FooStor hard drives and pieces of shit and you shouldn't use them.
Isn't that data as well? It's certainly an extrapolation of previously recorded data:
out of 500 FooStor hard drives there were 300 failures
While there are many arguments about intelligence, it would seem that knowledge would be properly defined as the accumulation of data. Whether bad data (incorrect knowledge, e.g. witches made of wood like ducks) counts as knowledge is a topic all its own...
Webster's definition does seem to back you up at least on its face, since although it includes "knowing something with familiarity gained through experience or association" as well as an example of what you have above, "the circumstance or condition of apprehending truth or fact through reasoning," however, it also includes "the range of one's information or understanding" as well as "the sum of what is known : the body of truth, information, and principles acquired by humankind."
So according to some definitions of knowledge data would seem to be an equivalent, but others require the processing (understanding) of data (like in your example). Based on the article though Knols look like data to me...
You probably wouldn't be buying a movie and then streaming it over the net in your browser (or your phone).
Actually, people already are. Netflix had to start doing this because their competitors already did. It's only going to increase, and companies want to slop at the new trough.
1. fit engines to asteroid. 2. point towards earth. 3. wait a few months.
So your solution is to crash asteroids into Earth and create a nuclear winter?
Seriously, though how do you expect to efficiently move an asteroid large enough to be worth grabbing for its Uranium content to Earth *and* land it safely? That would require big expensive rockets; amd we can barely land toy cars with cameras on them on Mars without causing a disaster at this point.
I think that they COULD find out what they do by following them around. But the years of training of these pirates has turned them into a ninja/pirate combination, taking the best from both worlds, ending the age-old argument, and allowing them to stay concealed.
Well let's just hope that they don't put on spectacles and become wizards!
And watch out for those wizard spiders too.. they have four pairs of spectacles for extra power!
Actually I was quite frightened to hear that in DDO they have indeed added wizard spiders to the mix.
"They were all guilty! We know they were all guilty! How? We just know!"
Let's be fair here. Even though the FBI may not be able to prove it beyond reasonable doubt in court, they may have a pretty damn good idea that the person is guilty. They may well see it as their duty to subvert the courts. I'm not saying by any means that I condone it, I just also don't condone making strawmen out of your opponents. It tends to weaken your side of the argument
But that is exactly the point. If the evidence does not point to the defendant, how is your assertion that you know he is guilty valid at all? The whole point of forcing the police and prosecution to gather proper evidence goes back to the idea that they were supposed to use evidence to determine who committed a crime, not pick someone at random and make things up to railroad them into jail. It's a lot easier to do the latter, which is the lazy route, and unfortunately this seems to be the MO of police and prosecutors everywhere. It's worse when they invent crimes that never even happened, as in cases where the police plant drug evidence (and if you are in Dallas they don't even bother to use real drugs as sheetrock will do just fine if you call it crack cocaine).
You could throw a rock and find a great example, but for instance there was a case which IIRC was profiled on CourtTV in which a man was murdered in his apartment and the police could find no motive for the killing. So they found someone who fit the description of a person a witness said they saw that night (young black male) and tried to force a confession out of him. When that did not work, they tried to railroad him on evidence that did not actually prove anything at all. The only thing that saved this guy was the fact there turned out to be much more concrete evidence (which the police were ignoring) that proved he could never have committed the crime. Meanwhile the real killer, who was a wanted criminal, a violent drug dealer and burglar who had been desperately in need of money at the time, had left a full backpack with his name on it at the crime scene. The police did not even bother to type that name (which had been a mystery since none of the victim's friends seemed to know anyone by that name) into their computer and discover that he was a fugitive. On the night in question he had been run off by the landlord and had been trying to break into apartments in the complex where both he and the victim lived. In this case, the police eventually found what was probably the right guy. But they had not done even the most basic detective work in the beginning because they were so intent on railroading someone else that they already could easily lay hands on. Why look for the real killer when you can just make up things to get the case closed? If the original defendant had caved and pled out or had not been able to prove with concrete evidence that he was no where near the crime scene, he would be the one in jail and the case would never have been on CourtTV.
Finally, remember that although the documents that provided the most direct evidence were shown to be forgeries, the story was essentially correct:
Actually the documents were never shown to be forgeries. The accusation was made based on the claim that the fonts used on the documents were the same as those used on a computer, which is kind of a bogus argument in that some fonts must actually go back hundreds of years in usage. Once the accusation was made and Dan Rather got fired over it, the story died down and no one had to prove anything. And, yes, the story was correct, but just as in other cases the Republican side was able to shout down their accusers with their blustering and turn the whole case around so that their accusers became the accused.
And then you get into the gray area where things that make sense in certain pro audio situations, are totally ridiculous when applied to a consumer/home situation.
But is a website populated by people with racks of aging systems* in their basements really in a position to mock others for applying commercial hardware to consumer usage?
*(I should talk... I recently had to leave behind a roomful of ancient computers because there were only just so many I could take with me at the time:P.. I still have a lot of old stuff.)
Sadly, selling false hope to the terminally ill is one of the easiest frauds possible.
What I don't understand is why people seeking alternative therapies would cease using conventional ones. In one of the linked articles a mother whose child had cancer and a 1/5 chance of surviving with chemotherapy stopped the chemotherapy and started using one of the many electrical pulse treatments instead, which had a 0% chance of working. I understand that chemotherapy is painful and makes people sick while they are on it, but if it was me I would be doing everything to try to get better or help my loved ones.
There is another angle to all this which is not covered here. There are people who cannot afford to get the care they need. For them alternative medicine, herbs, etc, are all they have access to because they cannot afford the doctors and treatments which are proven to work. I'm not saying some of this (excluding these funky gadgets of course) cannot help, because for a lot of problems, especially minor, chronic ailments, supplements and such can definitely help, and some do have medicinal value. But it is far better to couple any alternative therapy with conventional therapy, not only because it is good to attack any problem from all possible angles, but because then you are engaging a true professional who will advise on proven therapies, and can probably shed better light on the value/danger/benefit of particular alternative therapies as well. (For instance, drug interactions that may mean that your herbal supplement is negating the benefit of your conventional medicine.
But the poor cannot afford the doctors' advice, and cannot afford their medicine. Which may be okay when they use licorice and other herbs to treat a cold but will be deadly when they have a serious problem like cancer or leukemia.
Critical thinking, skepticism and the scientific method can and should be taught to everyone, regardless of their perceived genetic worth.
Unfortunately the education system seems to have failed in this regard, but maybe this has something to do with the fact that some people in government benefit from having more people with deficiencies in this area. I'm sure cultural bias is a factor here as well (people who don't want to listen to teachers in general or shut their ears when they hear about evolution because their parents taught them so), but I would also blame the politicization of our school system as well, among other things, for which blame rests squarely on the shoulders of politicians. There are so many other concerns to address in class these days in order to satisfy various interest groups and government requirements that it is no wonder there is a lack of time for instruction in purely academic disciplines like reading, writing, arithmetic, and science.
Or, more to the point, the ones who have big boobies?
Just don't marry one. A stupid spouse could be a major liability. Marriage is a partnership and you definitely don't need a weak link in your primary team!
I feel all of these inventions to be good for the natural selection. I don't mind them being there. If you are so gullible and so stupid to think these artifacts work, then be my guest, and waste all your money. You had it coming. This way, with some luck, you will not be able to sustain a family, and/or die from starvation. Not my fault. Good for humankind.
But people rely on professional advice for a reason. You should be able to expect that clinics ad hospitals will use prove, safe methods to treat illness, and when they instead use dangerous and/or fraudulent treatments, they deserve to be blamed.
Nevertheless, caveat emptor! You need to be aware that even experts can be wrong and people you should be able to trust can lie. When you're researching something, probably especially when you are consulting experts, a little extra probing and a few alternate expert opinions might save you some major trouble. Especially when it comes to your health, you need to stay in the drivers' seat and be active in the search for a cause and treatment for what ails you.
"If his code allows something bad to happen, we can say with certainty that it's all his fault.
Manufacturers do not assume liability if their product is used to perform illegal activities."
I don't even have to point at an analogy, just at parallels - Napster. Kazaa. Both were very successfully litigated against for complicity in copyright infringement, no?/P
They were litigated because their servers were used to transfer the pirated items. That's not the case here. The bittorrent creators themselves do not involve themselves in any transfers of pirated material. Trackers got squashed because they were in effect telling people where to get the pirated materials. But the bittorrent people themselves do not provide trackers for anything but their own software.
A similar scenario exists with eMule. When eDonkey got in trouble eMule remained untouched.
That's not to say that the Media Mafiaa will not try...
Slashdot Mirror
The Fed? Inflation is high because your dollar went to shit because of your deficit. If Ron Paul could have stopped the Iraq war he damn well should have.
He tried that, too. IIRC he also voted against the PATRIOT act. The only problem with Ron Paul in these areas is that for whatever reason not enough of his fellow congress critters listened to him to stop some of these more insane measures.
No, this falls far short of justice. Justice would have been posting a bunch of copywritten songs and announcing to the world where to find them. Even better:
* Record an original piece
* Post it
* Sue the RIAA for hosting it
Just blanking a site is lazy.
I would have thought true justice and victory would be achieved if someone had deleted the RIAA's database of targets^wfilesharers. Of course those who were already at a point where dead trees were involved would still get troubles, but it would still slow them down. Even better: get the information then wipe it and share the info.
More deadly things have been regarded as accidents. People run over kids in the street without speeding like maniacs. People accidentally shoot fellow hunters.
And when they do they get charged with manslaughter if not murder. That's why manslaughter is illegal.
"No no no. It completely depends on the statute. There are plenty of laws that only require knowledge and there are even strict liability laws that do not require any knowledge of the illegal activity taking place. Violating them can land you in jail. Gross negligence can also land you in jail."
I dunno, I'd think the average person wouldn't think that the 'sky' was a hazardous place to shine a light....you don't assume at any given time that it is FULL of aircraft.
Ignorance of the law is not a defense. Many many laws, maybe most laws, do not require intent as a factor and none require knowledge that the act is illegal. Only some require knowledge that the act is even being committed. About the only case I can think of off hand where intent even matters is murder, and even then murder without intent is second degree murder or potentially manslaughter, depending on the circumstances and the discretion of the prosecutor.
Besides, if the couple doesn't know that shining lasers at people is bad, they know now and at least no one was hurt. If they don't know that this is something they might get in trouble they haven't been watching the news or paying attention to terror alerts. As silly as it sounds at first, the law enforcement community has been warning for YEARS now that terrorists plan to bring down planes by shining lasers in the cockpit, and at least a few people have been caught ostensibly doing so (the case I remember off the top of my head had a guy at the end of a busy runway shining lasers at cockpits).
I really don't think that shining lasers is an effective way to bring down planes. It does sound laughable. But they should probably institute public floggings for assholes that shine lasers in people's eyes anyway. It's potentially damaging and very annoying. And yeah the slightest thing could potentially cause crashes, especially on takeoff and landing. Someone who is shining lasers in cockpits should be checked out just in case they really are trying to bring the thing down, even if they don't. Just feel lucky they aren't arresting people for flying kites, which are actually probably better for bringing down helicopters and are a favorite pastime in the regions where our enemies live (just as they were for the VC who apparently did use kites for that or at least tried).
The couple didn't get in trouble for shining a light in the sky. They got in trouble for aiming it into the cockpit of a police helicopter, which is just stupid. They could have aimed it anywhere else they wanted to without getting into trouble, in all likelihood. I'm tired of people getting arrested for possessing litebrites, too, but it seems reasonable enough that people be asked not to deliberately fuck with police officers.
While I've never flown a helicopter (or any aircraft), aren't they able to remain fairly stationary, or does it require a great deal of effort?
Yes, keeping a helicopter stationary requires a lot of effort. Hovering is one of the first things that someone has to learn how to do when they learn to fly helicopters, and it's very, very, hard. Except in videogames, where flying helicopters is easy.
Here is some more info regarding their super duper laser http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/05/09/0136233
Lasers with frickin' SHARKS on their heads!
I don't know about anyone else, but 'poking around for files' is pretty damn intrusive. Just burn a couple of files on the desktop to the CD rom.
I hate child porn as much as anyone else, but this stinks of people looking for personal details on their clients that are none of their business. This shady shit has to stop.
What's so shady? They just happened to notice he had kiddie porn on his computer and reported it. It wasn't a conspiracy; I'll bet my tinfoil hat on that one.
When you send something in for repair you are giving the tech the right to look at your things. You are in fact asking (in many cases paying) them to do that. The presence of illegal things in that context is your risk. The mechanic might not say anything about some roaches in the ashtray, but they will probably call the cops if they are fixing your tail lights and notice that your dead wife is in the trunk.
The techs weren't doing anything wrong or unusual here. They probably needed to find about 4GB of stuff to burn, and even if that wasn't what they needed as in this case they would probably have to poke around in the files to fix/troubleshoot the computer. That is what techs do. And who cares if you have 9 GB of porn on your system as long as its not kiddies? Everyone has that, and to be honest just having porn is probably an invitation for the techs to check out your stash even if you hadn't given them permission to go through the HD.
Well, we have a few hundred years to figure it out, we're not gonna lack uranium for quite a while.
Probably, it depends in part on how much our energy consumption increases (if it does not start decreasing or levelling out) and how unstable the sources of Uranium become (like oil) ... so far it looks like we have several sources that are relatively safe (like Australia) but who knows what will happen in 100 years.
At any rate, we may need that time to solve our problem, assuming we spend it wisely. There are unfortunately too few people working on the many problems that threaten our world, and too few resources spent on that research by the Powers that Be. So regime change may be a prerequisite as well as better education.
I remember reading in Peter Green's book that Aristotle's laboratory was the best funded in all of human history. If that is correct it is IMHO a sad reflection since it basically means we have never valued research as much as that or given those who do such work as many tools; we should be surpassing ourselves, not degenerating. Even if it is not it seems to me that it is obvious there is not enough money and time spent on increasing human knowledge in general, much less working on problems like the energy crisis, war, famine, etc... Solving the problem in time would require changing that IMHO. It's not fair to keep expecting the eggheads to pull a rabbit out of their hat when they can't afford the hat. For some here that probably hits close to home... :D But the argument that "we'll figure something out ..." only holds water if the necessary effort and resources are expended to achieve such goals.
It's a much better idea to build something like that in space, when that becomes economically viable in itself. I'm guessing that will be at least 30 years, but it could be possible within our lifetimes... With a little luck, our current energy reserves will last that long, and we won't kill ourselves waiting.
Which would require several things ... first we would need to be able to get enough material into that area of space to build something ... people answer asteroids on that one as well but you do have to smelt, refine, etc which again requires infrastructure. Maybe the moon would make more sense since at least you have a surface to work with (therefore you don't need to build that part) and some raw materials (rock) to build the parts that don't have to be some kind of metal. But then you have either to develop a relatively (laws of thermodynamics apply etc) lossless method to transmit this energy without causing more problems or produce enough energy that you don't have to care. ...
All of this boils down to a lot of tech we do not have and resources and energy which must be expended to reach this goal; which basically means you had better start cracking on it now to beat the deadline, like many other known problems. Of course it may just be mathematically impossible to turn what you propose into a viable solution. I'm not a physicist. I'm still not over CERN's stern ruling that the Enterprise will not exist (matter/antimatter is not viable) although it is heartening that we overcame Mr Scott and developed ion engines first. We didn't use electric cars (according to Popular Mechanics circa 1900 IIRC) because they would require such extensive infrastructure (you'd have to string wire all over the country! Electricity in every city!) so some people have been proven wrong before, but certain things are provably impossible (or not viable) without violating the Laws of Physics and Mathematics
Of course, there is always the desperation angle. Besides the fact Necessity is the Mother of Invention, when you get to the point where you have a choice between energy which is difficult to derive and none at all things that were too expensive before become viable economically, assuming you have a net gain of course. But solar power is way easier to deal with than this. so many processes on Earth are powered by the sun and moon that there is plenty of opportunity to reap the benefits of the "free" energy. Hopefully before we get to the point where that actually presents a problem (we use up more energy than was previously wasted or otherwise unduly interfere with natural processes necessary for our survival, or the Sun starts to grow ... ) we will have colonized somewhere else.
To my mind you started off with the right idea. You mentioned other worlds as a source. Well if people move from the Earth they can presumably find energy in the places to which they travel. Unfortunately for us, so far we only know one "earthlike" planet, where life and the possibility of life as we know it exist, and terraforming is probably much more difficult than Star Trek would have you believe... (after all if we can make inhospitable planets hospitable we should be able first to fix this one.
I was glad to hear Stephen Hawking point out that it is insane that we aren't trying to build a Disaster Recovery Site for life (i.e. extraterrestrial colonies). I've been saying that for years, but more people will listen to him for good reason. There are any number of processes which basically guarantee that life on Earth will either be destroyed or at the very least very difficult to live on, and even if that were not the case (we have no plan for basically any of them) the unforseen and the fact we know no other place where humans or any other life exists should produce a biological (to say nothing of logical) imperative to do that.
But again this requires energy, infrastructure, and technology we do not have. More people should take Einstein's advice and learn physics so they can get cracking on this stuff or help those who already are.
Knowledge is knowing that the FooStor hard drives and pieces of shit and you shouldn't use them.
Isn't that data as well? It's certainly an extrapolation of previously recorded data:
out of 500 FooStor hard drives there were 300 failures
While there are many arguments about intelligence, it would seem that knowledge would be properly defined as the accumulation of data. Whether bad data (incorrect knowledge, e.g. witches made of wood like ducks) counts as knowledge is a topic all its own ...
Webster's definition does seem to back you up at least on its face, since although it includes "knowing something with familiarity gained through experience or association" as well as an example of what you have above, "the circumstance or condition of apprehending truth or fact through reasoning," however, it also includes "the range of one's information or understanding" as well as "the sum of what is known : the body of truth, information, and principles acquired by humankind."
So according to some definitions of knowledge data would seem to be an equivalent, but others require the processing (understanding) of data (like in your example). Based on the article though Knols look like data to me...
You probably wouldn't be buying a movie and then streaming it over the net in your browser (or your phone).
Actually, people already are. Netflix had to start doing this because their competitors already did. It's only going to increase, and companies want to slop at the new trough.
"5. But not too good."
why not? it could spare us another messy invasion. (just kidding guys)
Oh and...
6. Profit!
I hear Iran needs some Uranium; maybe we could test our aim there!
1. fit engines to asteroid. 2. point towards earth. 3. wait a few months.
So your solution is to crash asteroids into Earth and create a nuclear winter?
Seriously, though how do you expect to efficiently move an asteroid large enough to be worth grabbing for its Uranium content to Earth *and* land it safely? That would require big expensive rockets; amd we can barely land toy cars with cameras on them on Mars without causing a disaster at this point.
Hmm I messed up the link ... should have hit preview.. There's supposed to be a link here: http://urealms.wittywizard.com/ (re wizard spiders)
Here also is a better link to the ddo wizard spiders: http://forums.ddo.com/archive/index.php/t-97649.html
I think that they COULD find out what they do by following them around. But the years of training of these pirates has turned them into a ninja/pirate combination, taking the best from both worlds, ending the age-old argument, and allowing them to stay concealed.
Well let's just hope that they don't put on spectacles and become wizards!
And watch out for those wizard spiders too.. they have four pairs of spectacles for extra power!
Actually I was quite frightened to hear that in DDO they have indeed added wizard spiders to the mix.
"They were all guilty! We know they were all guilty! How? We just know!"
Let's be fair here. Even though the FBI may not be able to prove it beyond reasonable doubt in court, they may have a pretty damn good idea that the person is guilty. They may well see it as their duty to subvert the courts. I'm not saying by any means that I condone it, I just also don't condone making strawmen out of your opponents. It tends to weaken your side of the argument
But that is exactly the point. If the evidence does not point to the defendant, how is your assertion that you know he is guilty valid at all? The whole point of forcing the police and prosecution to gather proper evidence goes back to the idea that they were supposed to use evidence to determine who committed a crime, not pick someone at random and make things up to railroad them into jail. It's a lot easier to do the latter, which is the lazy route, and unfortunately this seems to be the MO of police and prosecutors everywhere. It's worse when they invent crimes that never even happened, as in cases where the police plant drug evidence (and if you are in Dallas they don't even bother to use real drugs as sheetrock will do just fine if you call it crack cocaine).
You could throw a rock and find a great example, but for instance there was a case which IIRC was profiled on CourtTV in which a man was murdered in his apartment and the police could find no motive for the killing. So they found someone who fit the description of a person a witness said they saw that night (young black male) and tried to force a confession out of him. When that did not work, they tried to railroad him on evidence that did not actually prove anything at all. The only thing that saved this guy was the fact there turned out to be much more concrete evidence (which the police were ignoring) that proved he could never have committed the crime. Meanwhile the real killer, who was a wanted criminal, a violent drug dealer and burglar who had been desperately in need of money at the time, had left a full backpack with his name on it at the crime scene. The police did not even bother to type that name (which had been a mystery since none of the victim's friends seemed to know anyone by that name) into their computer and discover that he was a fugitive. On the night in question he had been run off by the landlord and had been trying to break into apartments in the complex where both he and the victim lived. In this case, the police eventually found what was probably the right guy. But they had not done even the most basic detective work in the beginning because they were so intent on railroading someone else that they already could easily lay hands on. Why look for the real killer when you can just make up things to get the case closed? If the original defendant had caved and pled out or had not been able to prove with concrete evidence that he was no where near the crime scene, he would be the one in jail and the case would never have been on CourtTV.
Finally, remember that although the documents that provided the most direct evidence were shown to be forgeries, the story was essentially correct:
Actually the documents were never shown to be forgeries. The accusation was made based on the claim that the fonts used on the documents were the same as those used on a computer, which is kind of a bogus argument in that some fonts must actually go back hundreds of years in usage. Once the accusation was made and Dan Rather got fired over it, the story died down and no one had to prove anything. And, yes, the story was correct, but just as in other cases the Republican side was able to shout down their accusers with their blustering and turn the whole case around so that their accusers became the accused.
And then you get into the gray area where things that make sense in certain pro audio situations, are totally ridiculous when applied to a consumer/home situation.
But is a website populated by people with racks of aging systems* in their basements really in a position to mock others for applying commercial hardware to consumer usage?
*(I should talk ... I recently had to leave behind a roomful of ancient computers because there were only just so many I could take with me at the time :P .. I still have a lot of old stuff.)
Sadly, selling false hope to the terminally ill is one of the easiest frauds possible.
What I don't understand is why people seeking alternative therapies would cease using conventional ones. In one of the linked articles a mother whose child had cancer and a 1/5 chance of surviving with chemotherapy stopped the chemotherapy and started using one of the many electrical pulse treatments instead, which had a 0% chance of working. I understand that chemotherapy is painful and makes people sick while they are on it, but if it was me I would be doing everything to try to get better or help my loved ones.
There is another angle to all this which is not covered here. There are people who cannot afford to get the care they need. For them alternative medicine, herbs, etc, are all they have access to because they cannot afford the doctors and treatments which are proven to work. I'm not saying some of this (excluding these funky gadgets of course) cannot help, because for a lot of problems, especially minor, chronic ailments, supplements and such can definitely help, and some do have medicinal value. But it is far better to couple any alternative therapy with conventional therapy, not only because it is good to attack any problem from all possible angles, but because then you are engaging a true professional who will advise on proven therapies, and can probably shed better light on the value/danger/benefit of particular alternative therapies as well. (For instance, drug interactions that may mean that your herbal supplement is negating the benefit of your conventional medicine.
But the poor cannot afford the doctors' advice, and cannot afford their medicine. Which may be okay when they use licorice and other herbs to treat a cold but will be deadly when they have a serious problem like cancer or leukemia.
Critical thinking, skepticism and the scientific method can and should be taught to everyone, regardless of their perceived genetic worth.
Unfortunately the education system seems to have failed in this regard, but maybe this has something to do with the fact that some people in government benefit from having more people with deficiencies in this area. I'm sure cultural bias is a factor here as well (people who don't want to listen to teachers in general or shut their ears when they hear about evolution because their parents taught them so), but I would also blame the politicization of our school system as well, among other things, for which blame rests squarely on the shoulders of politicians. There are so many other concerns to address in class these days in order to satisfy various interest groups and government requirements that it is no wonder there is a lack of time for instruction in purely academic disciplines like reading, writing, arithmetic, and science.
I messed up the last line, which was missing and should have read:
Instead, pick the PhD with big boobies rather than being stuck with a boob! You'll be much happier.
Or, more to the point, the ones who have big boobies?
Just don't marry one. A stupid spouse could be a major liability. Marriage is a partnership and you definitely don't need a weak link in your primary team!
I feel all of these inventions to be good for the natural selection. I don't mind them being there. If you are so gullible and so stupid to think these artifacts work, then be my guest, and waste all your money. You had it coming. This way, with some luck, you will not be able to sustain a family, and/or die from starvation. Not my fault. Good for humankind.
But people rely on professional advice for a reason. You should be able to expect that clinics ad hospitals will use prove, safe methods to treat illness, and when they instead use dangerous and/or fraudulent treatments, they deserve to be blamed.
Nevertheless, caveat emptor! You need to be aware that even experts can be wrong and people you should be able to trust can lie. When you're researching something, probably especially when you are consulting experts, a little extra probing and a few alternate expert opinions might save you some major trouble. Especially when it comes to your health, you need to stay in the drivers' seat and be active in the search for a cause and treatment for what ails you.
"If his code allows something bad to happen, we can say with certainty that it's all his fault.
Manufacturers do not assume liability if their product is used to perform illegal activities."
I don't even have to point at an analogy, just at parallels - Napster. Kazaa. Both were very successfully litigated against for complicity in copyright infringement, no? /P
They were litigated because their servers were used to transfer the pirated items. That's not the case here. The bittorrent creators themselves do not involve themselves in any transfers of pirated material. Trackers got squashed because they were in effect telling people where to get the pirated materials. But the bittorrent people themselves do not provide trackers for anything but their own software.
A similar scenario exists with eMule. When eDonkey got in trouble eMule remained untouched.
That's not to say that the Media Mafiaa will not try...
"Security Through Obscurity FTW!"
Fuck The What?
For Teh Win
Yeah, Fuck The World came first, as a slogan, but this seems to have supplanted it.