From the way you write, with references to Mao and big-government, I think they assume you're a knee-jerk teabagger. Which you might be. "Big Government" has been such a trope since the Reagan years that it's a worn-out meme, and comes across as shrill.
In other words, despite being right, I think you may have deserved flamebait mods. After all, there is a reason why "flamebait" is different from "troll." Flamebait is 100% true, just extremely annoying. "Macintosh is garbage" is the ultimate flamebait example. 100% true 100% of the time:)
I think you're misusing the word capitalism. If you set up a lemonade stand, and you make money, that's capitalism. If you want to set up a lemonade stand, but someone else's lemonade stand already has all the tax breaks and building permits, because they have 5 congressmen and 30 lobbyists, that's communism.
Let's not forget that communism was enterprise run by government committee for purpose of maintaining the appearance of economic success.
There are so many ways to describe what's going on in our country without dragging the very basic idea of capitalism down with it. Because if capitalism is as corrupt as you say, what are you going to replace it with? Social democracy? That's a government, not an economy.
What is it about malpractice laws that needs reform?
There might be some big awards, but if there's a case of a doctor "unfairly" targeted by a malpractice suit, I'd like to hear it. If anything, these guys get away with murder before anyone gets around to suing them.
This sounds like a potential honeypot where you go and talk and nothing ever happens.
Generally you start a political party around and idea that everyone agrees with. Not hey, let's invite everyone and see what happens. First of all, you get massive cruft, second you get all the spies from the opposing party on day one.
Give them a couple weeks. If they can't come up with some position papers or an organizational chart, then it's a joke. A true political party has leadership.
IP is going to be the foundation of any future economy.
IP is just various monopoly rights. See the former Soviet union on how well monopolies work. Monopolies are antithetical to an effective economy and thus will not be a foundation, but a burden.
it'll be up to our inventions and our software and our innovation in exporting ideas
Please. IP is mainly good for extracting resources out of an economy, it has nothing to do with 'exporting'. Implementing IP laws is a net loss for any economy, and most of the time (certainly in the case of the US), the monopoly rights will be held by foreign corporations.
The only way forward is to make western economies competitive again. Repealing at the very least copyright and patents would be a good start towards reestablishing a highly competitive free market and lowering the burden on western labour (thus reducing their price).
I will not accept anything less than +4 Interesting for my contribution here.
I don't care where he copied it from, it's Insightful as all hell. Looking at the North Carolina primaries vs. Clinton, the lowest number I found for blacks was 87% for Obama (Blacks age 30-44). Overall it's 90-96% of blacks in favor of Obama.
The worst was where they asked if "race is important to you." Whether you said "yes" or "no" didn't affect the outcome, meaning the racial voting patterns were entirely subconscious.
Sure, blacks were perfectly entitled to vote for Obama in the general election. McCain+old+crazy+Palin+crazy = terrible campaign. But the OP is right, in the primary versus Clinton, only 40-70% of whites voted for Clinton. 95% of blacks voted for Obama.
Clinton ran an incredible campaign, too. She took the "Hope" that Obama talked about and made it real. But the blacks couldn't see past their crack pipes to do the right thing.
You're forgetting the Civil War. That happened less than 100 years in. Basically, a bunch of dumb rednecks didn't want to work for a living. They were willing to fight and die, but they didn't want to pick their own crops.
What we're seeing now is more of the same. There's a certain redneck percentage of the population that is willing to sign up and die in Afghanistan. What they won't do is to not sign up, and just simply get a fucking job.
Laziness and corruption ruins any endeavor. People get used to a free lunch, and they will die for it rather than find a simpler way to live.
In any case, one thing that the Founding Fathers did a poor job at was defining the Presidency. There's been some discussion that the Presidency was poorly thought-out and hastily tacked on to the Constitution.
Anyway, finding a way to keep the idiots out of the party is probably the ultimate conversation topic. I've never seen a good social project last more than a couple of years.
>The mere _finding_ of an ET would be _dramatic_ for our civilization. Think of all the things that would change (not all religious)....how many stupid squabbles would end?
It already happened. It's called Climate Change.
You think there aren't people who want to kill ET? You should watch Avatar.
Terrible examples. Those programs burn cycles without outputting any data for the user. Worst programs ever. And I'm sure we would have invented distributed computing without seti.
You need to go at least 0.9c to get any appreciable time dilation (2x).
As objects speed up, they also get more massive. The equations appear to be the same, so at 0.9c, you would be twice as massive. Sure that won't slow you down, but you'll need some serious engines to keep up with the increase in mass. Eventually, the engines will stop working, and you'll reach the speed limit of your design.
I'm perfectly willing to believe that we're ahead of the curve. A lot of high-energy events had to subside for us to get the nice, stable planet we live on. Hell, it took 200m years of dinosaur nonsense before our species propagated out of it. 200m years on a galactic time scale isn't chump change, either.
The other thing to consider is whether any intelligent species made the jump to sustainability. Our 6000 years of culture is a mere blip. We're going to have to figure out how to survive for 100,000 years (as a culture) before we have a chance of making contact. And the earth will go through dramatic changes in that time. Even the Sahara was plentiful 6000 years ago. Oh yeah, and there was that ice age.
Short way of putting it, the deck is really stacked against anyone doing this. We're blessed for what we've accomplished so far. One comet could ruin everything.
Yeah I'm torn between "visionary" and "crackpot." Besides the beautiful scenery, what exactly is the purpose of living underwater? You can't go outside. You won't have any neighbors per se. The whole house has got to be completely self-sufficient, which means expensive and perfect, and you can't make improvements to it. So much for teaching your kids to play baseball or mowing the lawn. And the lack of sunshine is a psychological disaster waiting to happen.
In short, I think you're going to spend the entire time wanting to go to the surface, so you can go shopping, eat at a restaurant, hold down a job, or make friends. Forced exile is useful...how?
Are you sure about this? I briefly looked over the paper and found it unconvincing. The first half is mostly bold claims like:
With 8 movie ratings (of which 2 may be completely wrong) and dates that may have a 3-day error, 96% of Netflix subscribers whose records have been released can be uniquely identified in the dataset.
And then the second half is a tremendous amount of math. I didn't see any evidence that the authors actually de-anonymized a single person, let alone 96% of them.
Besides, how do you download imdb's data in order to perform this massive cross-reference?
I think what he's saying is that it would be sufficient to label a person as being from Copenhagen. Don't forget, the age and zip code are secondary classifications. The primary data is the list of movies they watch. So, you don't need the zip code to determine who enjoys the finest art and the most hardcore rave. They are already distinct.
You mean extremely communist. And American conservatives don't love personal freedom, unless it's theft, gay sex, and firing black people. The gun-toting rebels you're thinking of are "libertarian."
Liberal/conservative is bullshit and meaningless. Just semantics, yes, but it's starting to tick me off that "liberal" includes fighting global warming, and fat unemployment checks for laid-off union workers (General Motors). The two issues couldn't be more different.
Oh you mean like a few years ago when all parents were 1337 h4x0rs, and knew all about child predators and Rupert Murdoch?
Yeah, it's really sad that the huge Baby Boomer software development community has disbanded. Once, there were 100m people actively developing Linux, now it's just a few housewives browsing HuffingtonPost.
Slashdot Mirror
From the way you write, with references to Mao and big-government, I think they assume you're a knee-jerk teabagger. Which you might be. "Big Government" has been such a trope since the Reagan years that it's a worn-out meme, and comes across as shrill.
In other words, despite being right, I think you may have deserved flamebait mods. After all, there is a reason why "flamebait" is different from "troll." Flamebait is 100% true, just extremely annoying. "Macintosh is garbage" is the ultimate flamebait example. 100% true 100% of the time :)
I think you're misusing the word capitalism. If you set up a lemonade stand, and you make money, that's capitalism. If you want to set up a lemonade stand, but someone else's lemonade stand already has all the tax breaks and building permits, because they have 5 congressmen and 30 lobbyists, that's communism.
Let's not forget that communism was enterprise run by government committee for purpose of maintaining the appearance of economic success.
There are so many ways to describe what's going on in our country without dragging the very basic idea of capitalism down with it. Because if capitalism is as corrupt as you say, what are you going to replace it with? Social democracy? That's a government, not an economy.
What is it about malpractice laws that needs reform?
There might be some big awards, but if there's a case of a doctor "unfairly" targeted by a malpractice suit, I'd like to hear it. If anything, these guys get away with murder before anyone gets around to suing them.
>It always amazes me how people think they can influence the political climate by banding together and making their voices heard.
Of course they can. Have you ever noticed how $SOUND_BITE can instantly kill an issue?
Politicians might listen to lobbyists, but the one thing that overrides lobbyists is TELEVISION.
This sounds like a potential honeypot where you go and talk and nothing ever happens.
Generally you start a political party around and idea that everyone agrees with. Not hey, let's invite everyone and see what happens. First of all, you get massive cruft, second you get all the spies from the opposing party on day one.
Give them a couple weeks. If they can't come up with some position papers or an organizational chart, then it's a joke. A true political party has leadership.
Yep. Some kind of voting system that doesn't involve meta-voting (i.e. predicting the winner) would certainly be a big win.
I have an even better idea than Znork.
IP is going to be the foundation of any future economy.
IP is just various monopoly rights. See the former Soviet union on how well monopolies work. Monopolies are antithetical to an effective economy and thus will not be a foundation, but a burden.
it'll be up to our inventions and our software and our innovation in exporting ideas
Please. IP is mainly good for extracting resources out of an economy, it has nothing to do with 'exporting'. Implementing IP laws is a net loss for any economy, and most of the time (certainly in the case of the US), the monopoly rights will be held by foreign corporations.
The only way forward is to make western economies competitive again. Repealing at the very least copyright and patents would be a good start towards reestablishing a highly competitive free market and lowering the burden on western labour (thus reducing their price).
I will not accept anything less than +4 Interesting for my contribution here.
I don't care where he copied it from, it's Insightful as all hell. Looking at the North Carolina primaries vs. Clinton, the lowest number I found for blacks was 87% for Obama (Blacks age 30-44). Overall it's 90-96% of blacks in favor of Obama.
The worst was where they asked if "race is important to you." Whether you said "yes" or "no" didn't affect the outcome, meaning the racial voting patterns were entirely subconscious.
Sure, blacks were perfectly entitled to vote for Obama in the general election. McCain+old+crazy+Palin+crazy = terrible campaign. But the OP is right, in the primary versus Clinton, only 40-70% of whites voted for Clinton. 95% of blacks voted for Obama.
Clinton ran an incredible campaign, too. She took the "Hope" that Obama talked about and made it real. But the blacks couldn't see past their crack pipes to do the right thing.
You're forgetting the Civil War. That happened less than 100 years in. Basically, a bunch of dumb rednecks didn't want to work for a living. They were willing to fight and die, but they didn't want to pick their own crops.
What we're seeing now is more of the same. There's a certain redneck percentage of the population that is willing to sign up and die in Afghanistan. What they won't do is to not sign up, and just simply get a fucking job.
Laziness and corruption ruins any endeavor. People get used to a free lunch, and they will die for it rather than find a simpler way to live.
In any case, one thing that the Founding Fathers did a poor job at was defining the Presidency. There's been some discussion that the Presidency was poorly thought-out and hastily tacked on to the Constitution.
The Atlantic: Founding Fathers Great Mistake
Anyway, finding a way to keep the idiots out of the party is probably the ultimate conversation topic. I've never seen a good social project last more than a couple of years.
>The mere _finding_ of an ET would be _dramatic_ for our civilization. Think of all the things that would change (not all religious)....how many stupid squabbles would end?
It already happened. It's called Climate Change.
You think there aren't people who want to kill ET? You should watch Avatar.
Terrible examples. Those programs burn cycles without outputting any data for the user. Worst programs ever. And I'm sure we would have invented distributed computing without seti.
Better examples, please.
The purpose of internecine war is to exterminate internecine people. In other words, war justifies itself.
>What if we come in contact with aliens, only to find out they're even worse?
This was the point of the TV show Roswell.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0201391/
Also Battlestar Galactica, if I'm following it properly (never easy).
You want to be modded for missing a joke?
You need to go at least 0.9c to get any appreciable time dilation (2x).
As objects speed up, they also get more massive. The equations appear to be the same, so at 0.9c, you would be twice as massive. Sure that won't slow you down, but you'll need some serious engines to keep up with the increase in mass. Eventually, the engines will stop working, and you'll reach the speed limit of your design.
http://www.phy.olemiss.edu/HEP/QuarkNet/time.html
I'm sure somebody has worked this out for various mass of spaceships and continuous engine thrust. It would be interesting to read.
I'm perfectly willing to believe that we're ahead of the curve. A lot of high-energy events had to subside for us to get the nice, stable planet we live on. Hell, it took 200m years of dinosaur nonsense before our species propagated out of it. 200m years on a galactic time scale isn't chump change, either.
The other thing to consider is whether any intelligent species made the jump to sustainability. Our 6000 years of culture is a mere blip. We're going to have to figure out how to survive for 100,000 years (as a culture) before we have a chance of making contact. And the earth will go through dramatic changes in that time. Even the Sahara was plentiful 6000 years ago. Oh yeah, and there was that ice age.
Short way of putting it, the deck is really stacked against anyone doing this. We're blessed for what we've accomplished so far. One comet could ruin everything.
Yeah, but have you looked at your clothing lately? Cambodia, Vietnam, etc. Outsourcing works quite well for things besides software.
And you're assuming contract work, too. What about building your own factory in said third-world nation?
It's not my fault the quote was manipulated. I was quoting the poorly-worded Slashdot article.
And it should have been modded "funny."
>perfect selection process for future astronauts
Well yeah, exactly. It's when he mentions having kids underwater that I got creeped out.
TFA:
>terrorist handbooks and child pornography are freely distributed. Interested? You're not alone.
No, actually, speak for yourself!
Yeah I'm torn between "visionary" and "crackpot." Besides the beautiful scenery, what exactly is the purpose of living underwater? You can't go outside. You won't have any neighbors per se. The whole house has got to be completely self-sufficient, which means expensive and perfect, and you can't make improvements to it. So much for teaching your kids to play baseball or mowing the lawn. And the lack of sunshine is a psychological disaster waiting to happen.
In short, I think you're going to spend the entire time wanting to go to the surface, so you can go shopping, eat at a restaurant, hold down a job, or make friends. Forced exile is useful...how?
Are you sure about this? I briefly looked over the paper and found it unconvincing. The first half is mostly bold claims like:
And then the second half is a tremendous amount of math. I didn't see any evidence that the authors actually de-anonymized a single person, let alone 96% of them.
Besides, how do you download imdb's data in order to perform this massive cross-reference?
I think what he's saying is that it would be sufficient to label a person as being from Copenhagen. Don't forget, the age and zip code are secondary classifications. The primary data is the list of movies they watch. So, you don't need the zip code to determine who enjoys the finest art and the most hardcore rave. They are already distinct.
You mean extremely communist. And American conservatives don't love personal freedom, unless it's theft, gay sex, and firing black people. The gun-toting rebels you're thinking of are "libertarian."
Liberal/conservative is bullshit and meaningless. Just semantics, yes, but it's starting to tick me off that "liberal" includes fighting global warming, and fat unemployment checks for laid-off union workers (General Motors). The two issues couldn't be more different.
Oh you mean like a few years ago when all parents were 1337 h4x0rs, and knew all about child predators and Rupert Murdoch?
Yeah, it's really sad that the huge Baby Boomer software development community has disbanded. Once, there were 100m people actively developing Linux, now it's just a few housewives browsing HuffingtonPost.