Well, of course it's a matter of intensity. I'm guessing it's high, you're guessing it's low. If it's high, the earth could lose most of it's water. (Well, this require long-lasting rather than just rather high intensity, but that's to be expected from this kind of phenomenon.)
As to "no gamma ray telescopes", the "bubbles" have had their contents blown out of them, because everything opaque to gamma rays is pushed away. This would include such things as planetary atmospheres. But outgassing continues to happen, so after the earth left the area an atmosphere of sorts would build up again. Probably never to the current density, though. And the process might well kill tectonics, as the water that lubricates the plate movement would slowly move into the atmosphere to replace the low-vacuum that would remain.
N.B. Jupiter probably wouldn't be much affected. Because it's gravity is high enough to hold on to Hydrogen atoms, even when they are moving relatively quickly.
The earth passing through one of those bubbles would be more likely correlated with life having to start over. Perhaps some subducted radiodurans could survive, so we might not need to evolve DNA all over again. But one could expect all multicellular life to be killed, and most bacteria across all lines. That there would be surviving bacteria is not at all certain, but nothing else should be expected to survive.
OTOH, most of the action is taking place outside the plane of the galaxy, so at no point in it's orbit of the galaxy does the sun enter the danger area.
It sounds more like gas jets to me. And they say they think it might have been caused by a large mass being swallowed by the central black hole. (I wonder what they mean by large? A globular cluster?) That would be expected to produce gas & radiation jets. I suppose the radiation would hollow out the gas jet, and viewed from certain angles it could resemble a bubble.
If correct, what this means is that our central black hole has been active in "recent times". (How long ago?) This isn't surprising, though it seems to have currently cleared away all the matter that was near it.
OTOH: I am not an astrophysicist. I'm a programmer. And I didn't really understand the article. This is just what I gleaned from it run through my normal models of the universe.
Well... that *was* a comedy, and real life isn't quite so funny. OTOH, except for the compressed timeline genuine SNAFUs are frequent enough that *I* didn't find the basic plot unbelievable. And we were, at one point, only seconds away from WWIII.
I grew up in a military family. This did not cause me to have faith in the ability of the military to exercise good judgment, or to get rid of crazy people.
At the last auction, the Federal treasury bonds ended up with negative interest. This is only going to pay off if there is significant inflation. (I don't understand this, but I'm assured that's what it means.)
To me this means that you should purchase real property on a fixed interest loan. If you can. Or get something fairly cheap for cash, if you can. And hope a facilities management company can keep it rented in in decent condition. Others say this means you should buy precious metals. The key is, you don't want to end up holding fiat currency. I'd suggest in investing in foreign currencies, but it looks like the kind of thing that's going to hit all countries at about the same time.
OTOH, I'm not an economist. I'm not practicing what I preach. I'm trusting my investments to a stock management company. Is this a good choice? Don't know. I'm already retired, and that makes a difference. And I suspect that within 20 years money as we know it will be obsolete. So will jobs, as we know them. Doesn't mean that there won't be things that serve the same functions, but the functions may well divide differently. E.g., what does a job mean when 80% of the people don't have one? Currently it's well over 10%...we don't know how much higher, because the government lies about the unemployment figures, and has been doing so for at least the last 50 years. They also lie about the inflation rate. I wouldn't be surprised to find that the unemployment rate was currently 20%, or even higher. And when the economy recovers, what jobs do you thing will be created for the people that recently lost their jobs to fill? Any? Companies would prefer to invest in hardware than in personnel, so if it can be automated in anything approaching the same cost as hiring people to do it, it will be automated, or redesigned away. (Consider the recent evolution of "self-checkout" counters at supermarkets.)
That's the point of patents. It has always been the point of patents, it isn't something that has developed over the last 50 years. They are not there to tell you, specifically, how to do something new. They are there to tell anyone who has the required background knowledge how to do something new. If you don't have the required knowledge to understand it, then the patent was never intended for you to begin with./quote?
Well, they don't work for that. So apparently they are useless, and companies that depend upon them are parasites. I really shouldn't claim that no patents work for that, as I've read very few of them. But it's certainly not required that patents "make patent" the invention they are purportedly revealing to "those skilled in the art", and common reports indicate that it is actively discouraged. This is reinforced because judges generally are not "skilled in the art" and so don't require that the invention actually be revealed. And the patent office no longer requires that a sample of the item patented be deposited. (For software, this should be the source code.)
Personally, I'm not convinced that the whole idea of patents is a bad idea, but I do believe that it's a quite dangerous one, and that the current implementation is considerably worse than not having any patent system at all, and depending on copyrights, trademarks, and trade secrets.
Re:LISP a bad choice as a starter language.
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Land of Lisp
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Common Lisp is a language that I've often looked at, and always avoided. None of the books I examined have told me how to handle utf8 files. It's probably simple if you already know the language, but since I don't, it a killer. Ditto for linking to various C libraries. Databases, GUIs, etc. Lisp doesn't have a large number of libraries that are written to be used with it, the way C and C++ do, so there needs to be an obvious way to handle this. I get referred to ffi, which is documented somewhat sparsely and without examples of how to use it.
Lisp is an important language of the past, but it doesn't seem to be taking the steps to make it an important language of the future.
P.S.: This comment isn't only applicable to LISP. Many of the minor languages are susceptible to the same criticism. (OTOH, C & C++ need to deal with garbage collection, even if it means breaking compatibility with old code. A compiler switch could handle this, or a PRAGMA statement. And they DRASTICALLY need to improve their support for utf8 strings and files. (Glib is doing its part, but it needs to enter the language.) )
I might believe that stupidity was the answer, but there have been public statements made which clearly indicate that stupidity isn't a sufficient answer. (I'm principally, but not only, referring to the statement of the head of Diebold before the first election where his machines were used. About delivering the vote to the Republicans. [Sorry, don't remember the statement more precisely any longer. You could look it up.])
Then there are the numerous places where there have been viscious fights against audit trails being included.
Sorry, you might be able to come up with a different explanation that malice, but stupidity doesn't suffice.
This doesn't mean that the statement is incorrect. I suspect that BOTH sides are guilty of this. Why else do they purchase machines which are so easily hacked?
You also don't understand history. Britain, with her Parliament, invented modern democracy. The US was merely an attempt at an improved model. I'm not at all certain that it was an improvement. Britain's Parliament's done pretty well, albeit they govern a considerably smaller area.
A large part of the problem in the US lies in the diverse mixture of ethnic groups. Recent research has shown that when there are mixtures of ethnic groups, not only do the members of each group trust the other less, they also show less trust within their own group. Societies where people don't trust each other have severe weaknesses, especially if there's no place for the people to go when they feel the stress. Previously this was solved by the presence of a frontier, but that has been eliminated by increased population and easy travel.
I'm sure there are other factors, also. (I could even list some, but they diverge from the point.)
They would shit their pants if they thought libertarians were going to start running the country.
This, of course, has nothing to do with the candidates of the Libertarian party. By and large they only want to remove restrictions on large companies doing things they want to do. (Pollute the environment, etc.) and don't want to remove government created monopolies. (I'm sure there are exceptions.)
Personally, I consider myself a libertarian, but I also believe that companies should bear the cost of ALL external costs they create. ALL. Social, environmental, whatever. If they cause the breakup of families, then they need to bear the cost. If they only contribute, then they only need to pay a just proportion of the cost. Etc. No "Libertarian" candidate that I've ever encountered espouses anything even approximating this stance.
I also believe that the state should not engage in creating monopolies. A natural monopoly does not need to be defended by the state, but while it exists it needs to be strictly regulated by the state. As such, the supply of water needs strict regulation. So does the transmission of electric power to homes. (As opposed to the generation of electric power.) Etc. (Those are two examples out of many.)
I consider a state to be an entity that claims the monopoly on the use of force to settle disputes within it's territory. This right can be franchised to other entities within it's territory (cities, etc.) and that does not reduce it's claim of monopoly, since they are "licensed" by the monopoly to use it's claimed monopoly in the ways that it permits.
Not this time. Occasionally I *do* investigate several of the minor party candidates. They have always proven to be unacceptable, even when I agreed with the official party planks (or at least considered them more acceptable than either the Democratic or Republican party platforms).
OTOH, it does seem that this time we are being inundated by an unusually large number of wackos. (And, yes, Christine O'Do... is just as crazy as portrayed. That one's for real.)
Personally I dither between blaming it on the economy or on the singularity approaching. Of course, it's probably a combination of both. Large numbers of people are reeling under economic shock, and while they're looking for work they find that the country's job outlook has been changing while they weren't looking, and they don't understand what the rules are anymore. So they grasp for simplistic answers. Toffler predicted this kind of reaction. (Well, actually "Future Shock" was reporting on an early phase and making simple extrapolations...and this reaction is stronger than he predicted. But it's the kind of reaction he predicted. And if change really *is* accelerating faster as it goes on, then that's the kind of change that should be expected.)
P.S.: Make a guess. What kinds of jobs will be created by an economic recovery over the next five years? Warehouses are already becoming largely automated. Supermarkets are increasingly "automating" checkout. (Self-service checkout.) Etc. One can predict that other stores will follow the trend...say, WalMart. Which is (was?) requiring it's suppliers to chip each product it buys. So where will people who lost clerical jobs during the economic crisis get replacement jobs? And how much will those jobs pay?
Hoover weakened the Republican party for decades. Will Obama do the same for the Democratic party? (Not asking it this a justified criticism. It clearly isn't. Just will he get the blame, and will it spread to the rest of the party.)
Vote for you wife's old dog. Vote for Victor Frankenstein. Vote for Robert Anton Wilson. (That would make him turn in his grave...dedicated old anarchist that he was. And I quote him quoting "Burn the polls, ye sons of Freedom!") Vote for Joe Hill.
The point is, you don't need to vote for an unacceptable choice to vote. Pick your favorite hero and vote for them. Wouldn't Benjamin Grim make a dandy legislator?
Also, if you have any doubts, you should vote NO on any "Yes/No" choices.
Voting isn't perfect. Not even marginally so. But the alternatives aren't that great, either.
I tried that a few years ago, working for a local candidate, because I figured that would be most effective. The day after the election there was redistricting and I was switched into the district of a councilman that I despised, and composed largely of a mix of ethnic groups that I have no affinity with. So I couldn't even start over with a different candidate.
Perhaps you will have more success. I just became more disgusted.
I do believe that one of the purposes of government is to "promote the general welfare", but what that is is notoriously open to interpretation. I don't believe in allowing excessive regulation, preservation of monopolies, etc.
OTOH I'm quite against complex laws. And I don't trust anyone who runs for office, because that requires altogether too much lust for personal power. Perhaps people should be drafted for legialative or executive office. "Your friends and neighbors..."
I'm against extensive foreign entanglements. This while recognizing that treaties regarding boundary protocols are essential. (In this I include imports, exports, and travel..both personal and commercial.) But I tend to feel that these should be designed rather like handshaking protocols in communications, and not involve or allow internal intrusions. (The differences between messages and physical objects makes this less a good mapping, but protocols that handle agents are good mappings, even though they currently need lots of work.)
At various times I've suggested selecting candidates by random choice among the population of high school graduates, and requiring that each bill approved by the legislature be understood in the same way by three different classes of high school seniors. (The second has obvious problems with implementation, and there first would require other governmental modifications, but those aren't important unless the idea comes close to being implemented.)
I've also suggested that the income tax be based on y = mx + b, with no exceptions, modifications, etc. And all income counted as income, whether from rental property, interest, inheritance, stocks, or a normal job. This would even allow one to implement a negative income tax without changing the basic tax law, merely adjusting the value of b. (m is tax rate and x in income. y, of course, is the amount of tax due.)
Additionally, I feel that ignorance of the law SHOULD be an excuse, unless it can be shown that the ignorance was willful. Under the current system it's quite likely that everyone who reads this has broken at least one law today without even knowing it. (I'd just say "everyone in the country", but I'm not sure that we're yet to the point where most people break the law while they're asleep.) If they want people to obey a law, they should ensure that people know about it. (That would mean that a lot fewer laws apply to most people, but that's a good thing.)
Merely outlining 4 rather conventional positions doesn't cover the range of political opinions. Rather, to me, it seems like a "magician's choice" where you rig the results by pretending that there are only a few options.
Voting for someone who doesn't stand a chance of winning is equivalent to not voting in every practical measure.
The design of the political system means that nobody's vote means very much. All candidates who have any chance of winning were purchased prior to the election. And if they ever go back on their word to their financial backers, they are through in politics. Popularity isn't sufficient. It wasn't even sufficient when Teddy Roosevelt got disgusted and founded the Bull Moose party. (And lost.)
What a marginally acceptable candidate running means is merely that the person elected will have views even less acceptable to the majority of the populace. This is something that either Instant Runnoff Voting or Condorcet voting would fix. I think that Condorcet voting is the superior choice, but Instant Runnoff (IRV) is easier to explain.
If all elections went to either of those choices, then over time politics would become cleaner. You couldn't buy a candidate, because there would be too many of them. You'd need to buy a Legislator. That's still cheap, but it's less guaranteed to be successful, and it's more expensive. And it's more public. (Note that this wouldn't be a quick process, and things might get corrupted on a different front while the one front was being cleaned up. So don't believe promises of paradise from ANYONE.)
As it is, however, politics is an auction. And corporations have made things more corrupt than the political parties ever did in the days of "smoke filled rooms".
OTOH, because all candidates are bought ahead of time, the big money isn't interested in fixing the vote. Thus the electronic voting systems are trivially easy to corrupt BECAUSE those who want to do the corruption are low stakes players. If it became important which candidate was selected (to the large financial interests) then things would change, so that only those with lots of backing could corrupt the vote.
Am I too cynical? I don't think so, but then I wouldn't, would I. So I'll acknowledge the possibility that I'm wrong. The only way to tell would be to try the experiment. Even then it would take decades before the results were in.
Practical for what purpose? I have occasionally reformatted devices that came with an particular file format for another. I found it quite practical.
As long as the storage media themselves don't really care what the file format is, its no problem. (Though ext2 works better then ext3 on thumbdrives. I hear ext4 is even better.)
So if your device can connect to most smart-phones, that makes it a perfectly reasonable choice for many purposes. Especially since then you don't need a licensing cost.
The dead people on highway 2 weren't using sonar and radar to detect obstacles. Different things present problems at different wavelengths.
"Driving Skills" can, indeed, be interpreted at widely as you say. I though it was fairly clear that I was talking about things like "recognizing crests and troughs, impenetrable obstacles, places where one doesn't get sufficient traction, etc." and "given the current terrain, at what speed can one stop before encountering an obstacle". (This should be understood as including "how fast is it safe to take that corner?", "What's my stopping distance, including the time it takes to recognize a problem?", etc.)
OTOH, I'm not an expert in the field. However, I expect that you are not either. And there are existence proofs that things approaching marginally acceptable are currently possible (though not yet economic). Automated vehicles now operate in many controlled environments, like warehouses, hospital corridors, etc. These are not even approaching state of the art. They were nearly state of the art two decades ago.
State of the art now is controlled tests in the open, as, e.g., driving from Milan to China. That test was well controlled, and can't be considered "free driving", but it demonstrates many of the features that are necessary. And also where some development work is necessary. The recent DARPA test involving driving in an Potemkin Village with pedestrians (who were all adults) was also quite impressive. And that's last year's state of the art. (Note that a flawless state of the art performance demonstrating capabilities superior to the average holder of a class D license wouldn't suffice to cause wide distribution of automated vehicles. That requires that it also make economic sense.)
P.S.: If sonar + radar couldn't detect "black ice", then that would just mean that some other sensor would need to be added to the mix. I guarantee that something can detect it. Perhaps infra-red Lidar. Or radar at a mix of wave-lengths...including infra-red. Or, if nothing else, spectral analysis. People are built with the sensors that were most useful out of those available when apes were evolving. Black ice detection at high speed wan't one of the selection criteria, so it's no surprise that we don't handle it properly. The surprise should be that some much of what we sense is so generally useful. (And even that is understandable, when properly considered.)
It is, indeed, incomplete, and it's not the complete definition they used. But it's contained within the definition they used. And it's recursive, not circular. Meaning if one of your friend likes someone, you're more willing to understand liking that someone. Which may make you more likely to like that someone. Etc. Recursive.
(OTOH, I *haven't* read the original paper, and don't intend to. I did read the linked summary. I'm operating off the summary. I'm merely responding to your rather cavalier misunderstanding of what I posted, which seems, to me, shallow.)
P.S.: You *did* notice that the linked summary was not the original paper, didn't you? If you'd responded differently, I would have just assumed that you had, but as it is...
There are real problems, but you didn't list them. The problems you listed are refinements of the current system. Real problems are what do you do if an animal runs in front of the car? A child? A child in a Halloween costume? How much damage should you take to avoid each? And how do you distinguish cases 1 and three?
Things like that. Complex object recognition, particularly when in disguised form, is an unsolved problem, and *does* require a breakthrough. Driving skills, terrain recognition, standard obstacle recognition are refinements. (And "black ice" isn't necessarily hard to see. If you're combining radar with sonar other things will be difficult, but probably not that.)
Ruby? Python? D? An adaptation of Python with (optional) static typing (to allow compilation into more efficient code)? (Note, btw, the existence of Pyrex and Cython which allow the compilation of python into native code. Sometimes much more efficient native code. This isn't what I'm talking about.)
Why bother to come up with an entirely new language? If you must, why not Go?
As for Ada... they'd need to make some basic changes. It could be done, but they've refused to even *look* in that direction. E.g., even in the early days Ada had the specifications for an optional extension for garbage collection. It was never made standard, or even recommended. And the new Ada standard still doesn't recommend it. And literals are by default of type fixed length char array. They need to default to type "unbounded string" (which needs a better name, say "string"). Etc. Most of the changes aren't basic, but they are very important for usability. The one exception is making it easier to allocate things on the heap. That does require a more basic change. But it isn't going to happen. Neither are the other, lesser, upgrades.
The particular definition of "liberal" used by the article was "being able to consider the viewpoints of lots of different friends".
This doesn't match ANY political party. But it's reflected in all of them.
In particular this particular theory held that if you have this genetic variation, then you are more willing to sympathize with the viewpoints of friends that you have during adolescence. To presume that this will make one "Liberal" is presuming something about the range of views of your friends.
I thought that primates arising in Asia was standard. I don't remember the time-line, but I thought they arose in Asia where the Gibbons and then Orangutangs split off, and then some migrated to Africa where the rest of the primates developed.
40 million years is a rather long span of time, so I don't see any problems. The only catch is that Libya is in Africa, so this means that primates need to have been widely distributed by then. Either that or done an awful lot of migrating and dying out in the home range. Wider distribution seems more likely.
P.S.: Primates don't generally fossilize well. When they die their bones are usually moved by predators and cracked for marrow. And most of them don't live in terrain that facilitates fossilization. (People are exceptional in this regard.) This is one of the reasons why fossils of primates are often causes for rejoicing. (Egotism is, of course, the other reason.)
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Well, of course it's a matter of intensity. I'm guessing it's high, you're guessing it's low. If it's high, the earth could lose most of it's water. (Well, this require long-lasting rather than just rather high intensity, but that's to be expected from this kind of phenomenon.)
As to "no gamma ray telescopes", the "bubbles" have had their contents blown out of them, because everything opaque to gamma rays is pushed away. This would include such things as planetary atmospheres. But outgassing continues to happen, so after the earth left the area an atmosphere of sorts would build up again. Probably never to the current density, though. And the process might well kill tectonics, as the water that lubricates the plate movement would slowly move into the atmosphere to replace the low-vacuum that would remain.
N.B. Jupiter probably wouldn't be much affected. Because it's gravity is high enough to hold on to Hydrogen atoms, even when they are moving relatively quickly.
As I understand it:
The earth passing through one of those bubbles would be more likely correlated with life having to start over. Perhaps some subducted radiodurans could survive, so we might not need to evolve DNA all over again. But one could expect all multicellular life to be killed, and most bacteria across all lines. That there would be surviving bacteria is not at all certain, but nothing else should be expected to survive.
OTOH, most of the action is taking place outside the plane of the galaxy, so at no point in it's orbit of the galaxy does the sun enter the danger area.
It sounds more like gas jets to me. And they say they think it might have been caused by a large mass being swallowed by the central black hole. (I wonder what they mean by large? A globular cluster?) That would be expected to produce gas & radiation jets. I suppose the radiation would hollow out the gas jet, and viewed from certain angles it could resemble a bubble.
If correct, what this means is that our central black hole has been active in "recent times". (How long ago?) This isn't surprising, though it seems to have currently cleared away all the matter that was near it.
OTOH: I am not an astrophysicist. I'm a programmer. And I didn't really understand the article. This is just what I gleaned from it run through my normal models of the universe.
Well... that *was* a comedy, and real life isn't quite so funny. OTOH, except for the compressed timeline genuine SNAFUs are frequent enough that *I* didn't find the basic plot unbelievable. And we were, at one point, only seconds away from WWIII.
I grew up in a military family. This did not cause me to have faith in the ability of the military to exercise good judgment, or to get rid of crazy people.
At the last auction, the Federal treasury bonds ended up with negative interest. This is only going to pay off if there is significant inflation. (I don't understand this, but I'm assured that's what it means.)
To me this means that you should purchase real property on a fixed interest loan. If you can. Or get something fairly cheap for cash, if you can. And hope a facilities management company can keep it rented in in decent condition. Others say this means you should buy precious metals. The key is, you don't want to end up holding fiat currency. I'd suggest in investing in foreign currencies, but it looks like the kind of thing that's going to hit all countries at about the same time.
OTOH, I'm not an economist. I'm not practicing what I preach. I'm trusting my investments to a stock management company. Is this a good choice? Don't know. I'm already retired, and that makes a difference. And I suspect that within 20 years money as we know it will be obsolete. So will jobs, as we know them. Doesn't mean that there won't be things that serve the same functions, but the functions may well divide differently. E.g., what does a job mean when 80% of the people don't have one? Currently it's well over 10%...we don't know how much higher, because the government lies about the unemployment figures, and has been doing so for at least the last 50 years. They also lie about the inflation rate. I wouldn't be surprised to find that the unemployment rate was currently 20%, or even higher. And when the economy recovers, what jobs do you thing will be created for the people that recently lost their jobs to fill? Any? Companies would prefer to invest in hardware than in personnel, so if it can be automated in anything approaching the same cost as hiring people to do it, it will be automated, or redesigned away. (Consider the recent evolution of "self-checkout" counters at supermarkets.)
That's the point of patents. It has always been the point of patents, it isn't something that has developed over the last 50 years. They are not there to tell you, specifically, how to do something new. They are there to tell anyone who has the required background knowledge how to do something new. If you don't have the required knowledge to understand it, then the patent was never intended for you to begin with./quote?
Well, they don't work for that. So apparently they are useless, and companies that depend upon them are parasites. I really shouldn't claim that no patents work for that, as I've read very few of them. But it's certainly not required that patents "make patent" the invention they are purportedly revealing to "those skilled in the art", and common reports indicate that it is actively discouraged. This is reinforced because judges generally are not "skilled in the art" and so don't require that the invention actually be revealed. And the patent office no longer requires that a sample of the item patented be deposited. (For software, this should be the source code.)
Personally, I'm not convinced that the whole idea of patents is a bad idea, but I do believe that it's a quite dangerous one, and that the current implementation is considerably worse than not having any patent system at all, and depending on copyrights, trademarks, and trade secrets.
Common Lisp is a language that I've often looked at, and always avoided. None of the books I examined have told me how to handle utf8 files. It's probably simple if you already know the language, but since I don't, it a killer. Ditto for linking to various C libraries. Databases, GUIs, etc. Lisp doesn't have a large number of libraries that are written to be used with it, the way C and C++ do, so there needs to be an obvious way to handle this. I get referred to ffi, which is documented somewhat sparsely and without examples of how to use it.
Lisp is an important language of the past, but it doesn't seem to be taking the steps to make it an important language of the future.
P.S.: This comment isn't only applicable to LISP. Many of the minor languages are susceptible to the same criticism. (OTOH, C & C++ need to deal with garbage collection, even if it means breaking compatibility with old code. A compiler switch could handle this, or a PRAGMA statement. And they DRASTICALLY need to improve their support for utf8 strings and files. (Glib is doing its part, but it needs to enter the language.) )
I might believe that stupidity was the answer, but there have been public statements made which clearly indicate that stupidity isn't a sufficient answer. (I'm principally, but not only, referring to the statement of the head of Diebold before the first election where his machines were used. About delivering the vote to the Republicans. [Sorry, don't remember the statement more precisely any longer. You could look it up.])
Then there are the numerous places where there have been viscious fights against audit trails being included.
Sorry, you might be able to come up with a different explanation that malice, but stupidity doesn't suffice.
Are you claiming to have solved "The Tragedy of the Commons?". If not, then your argument is invalid. If you have, I want to hear the solution.
This doesn't mean that the statement is incorrect. I suspect that BOTH sides are guilty of this. Why else do they purchase machines which are so easily hacked?
You also don't understand history. Britain, with her Parliament, invented modern democracy. The US was merely an attempt at an improved model. I'm not at all certain that it was an improvement. Britain's Parliament's done pretty well, albeit they govern a considerably smaller area.
A large part of the problem in the US lies in the diverse mixture of ethnic groups. Recent research has shown that when there are mixtures of ethnic groups, not only do the members of each group trust the other less, they also show less trust within their own group. Societies where people don't trust each other have severe weaknesses, especially if there's no place for the people to go when they feel the stress. Previously this was solved by the presence of a frontier, but that has been eliminated by increased population and easy travel.
I'm sure there are other factors, also. (I could even list some, but they diverge from the point.)
They would shit their pants if they thought libertarians were going to start running the country.
This, of course, has nothing to do with the candidates of the Libertarian party. By and large they only want to remove restrictions on large companies doing things they want to do. (Pollute the environment, etc.) and don't want to remove government created monopolies. (I'm sure there are exceptions.)
Personally, I consider myself a libertarian, but I also believe that companies should bear the cost of ALL external costs they create. ALL. Social, environmental, whatever. If they cause the breakup of families, then they need to bear the cost. If they only contribute, then they only need to pay a just proportion of the cost. Etc. No "Libertarian" candidate that I've ever encountered espouses anything even approximating this stance.
I also believe that the state should not engage in creating monopolies. A natural monopoly does not need to be defended by the state, but while it exists it needs to be strictly regulated by the state. As such, the supply of water needs strict regulation. So does the transmission of electric power to homes. (As opposed to the generation of electric power.) Etc. (Those are two examples out of many.)
I consider a state to be an entity that claims the monopoly on the use of force to settle disputes within it's territory. This right can be franchised to other entities within it's territory (cities, etc.) and that does not reduce it's claim of monopoly, since they are "licensed" by the monopoly to use it's claimed monopoly in the ways that it permits.
Not this time. Occasionally I *do* investigate several of the minor party candidates. They have always proven to be unacceptable, even when I agreed with the official party planks (or at least considered them more acceptable than either the Democratic or Republican party platforms).
OTOH, it does seem that this time we are being inundated by an unusually large number of wackos. (And, yes, Christine O'Do... is just as crazy as portrayed. That one's for real.)
Personally I dither between blaming it on the economy or on the singularity approaching. Of course, it's probably a combination of both. Large numbers of people are reeling under economic shock, and while they're looking for work they find that the country's job outlook has been changing while they weren't looking, and they don't understand what the rules are anymore. So they grasp for simplistic answers. Toffler predicted this kind of reaction. (Well, actually "Future Shock" was reporting on an early phase and making simple extrapolations...and this reaction is stronger than he predicted. But it's the kind of reaction he predicted. And if change really *is* accelerating faster as it goes on, then that's the kind of change that should be expected.)
P.S.: Make a guess. What kinds of jobs will be created by an economic recovery over the next five years? Warehouses are already becoming largely automated. Supermarkets are increasingly "automating" checkout. (Self-service checkout.) Etc. One can predict that other stores will follow the trend...say, WalMart. Which is (was?) requiring it's suppliers to chip each product it buys. So where will people who lost clerical jobs during the economic crisis get replacement jobs? And how much will those jobs pay?
Hoover weakened the Republican party for decades. Will Obama do the same for the Democratic party? (Not asking it this a justified criticism. It clearly isn't. Just will he get the blame, and will it spread to the rest of the party.)
Vote for you wife's old dog. Vote for Victor Frankenstein. Vote for Robert Anton Wilson. (That would make him turn in his grave...dedicated old anarchist that he was. And I quote him quoting "Burn the polls, ye sons of Freedom!") Vote for Joe Hill.
The point is, you don't need to vote for an unacceptable choice to vote. Pick your favorite hero and vote for them. Wouldn't Benjamin Grim make a dandy legislator?
Also, if you have any doubts, you should vote NO on any "Yes/No" choices.
Voting isn't perfect. Not even marginally so. But the alternatives aren't that great, either.
I tried that a few years ago, working for a local candidate, because I figured that would be most effective. The day after the election there was redistricting and I was switched into the district of a councilman that I despised, and composed largely of a mix of ethnic groups that I have no affinity with. So I couldn't even start over with a different candidate.
Perhaps you will have more success. I just became more disgusted.
None of the above.
I do believe that one of the purposes of government is to "promote the general welfare", but what that is is notoriously open to interpretation. I don't believe in allowing excessive regulation, preservation of monopolies, etc.
OTOH I'm quite against complex laws. And I don't trust anyone who runs for office, because that requires altogether too much lust for personal power. Perhaps people should be drafted for legialative or executive office. "Your friends and neighbors..."
I'm against extensive foreign entanglements. This while recognizing that treaties regarding boundary protocols are essential. (In this I include imports, exports, and travel..both personal and commercial.) But I tend to feel that these should be designed rather like handshaking protocols in communications, and not involve or allow internal intrusions. (The differences between messages and physical objects makes this less a good mapping, but protocols that handle agents are good mappings, even though they currently need lots of work.)
At various times I've suggested selecting candidates by random choice among the population of high school graduates, and requiring that each bill approved by the legislature be understood in the same way by three different classes of high school seniors. (The second has obvious problems with implementation, and there first would require other governmental modifications, but those aren't important unless the idea comes close to being implemented.)
I've also suggested that the income tax be based on y = mx + b, with no exceptions, modifications, etc. And all income counted as income, whether from rental property, interest, inheritance, stocks, or a normal job. This would even allow one to implement a negative income tax without changing the basic tax law, merely adjusting the value of b. (m is tax rate and x in income. y, of course, is the amount of tax due.)
Additionally, I feel that ignorance of the law SHOULD be an excuse, unless it can be shown that the ignorance was willful. Under the current system it's quite likely that everyone who reads this has broken at least one law today without even knowing it. (I'd just say "everyone in the country", but I'm not sure that we're yet to the point where most people break the law while they're asleep.) If they want people to obey a law, they should ensure that people know about it. (That would mean that a lot fewer laws apply to most people, but that's a good thing.)
Merely outlining 4 rather conventional positions doesn't cover the range of political opinions. Rather, to me, it seems like a "magician's choice" where you rig the results by pretending that there are only a few options.
Voting for someone who doesn't stand a chance of winning is equivalent to not voting in every practical measure.
The design of the political system means that nobody's vote means very much. All candidates who have any chance of winning were purchased prior to the election. And if they ever go back on their word to their financial backers, they are through in politics. Popularity isn't sufficient. It wasn't even sufficient when Teddy Roosevelt got disgusted and founded the Bull Moose party. (And lost.)
What a marginally acceptable candidate running means is merely that the person elected will have views even less acceptable to the majority of the populace. This is something that either Instant Runnoff Voting or Condorcet voting would fix. I think that Condorcet voting is the superior choice, but Instant Runnoff (IRV) is easier to explain.
If all elections went to either of those choices, then over time politics would become cleaner. You couldn't buy a candidate, because there would be too many of them. You'd need to buy a Legislator. That's still cheap, but it's less guaranteed to be successful, and it's more expensive. And it's more public. (Note that this wouldn't be a quick process, and things might get corrupted on a different front while the one front was being cleaned up. So don't believe promises of paradise from ANYONE.)
As it is, however, politics is an auction. And corporations have made things more corrupt than the political parties ever did in the days of "smoke filled rooms".
OTOH, because all candidates are bought ahead of time, the big money isn't interested in fixing the vote. Thus the electronic voting systems are trivially easy to corrupt BECAUSE those who want to do the corruption are low stakes players. If it became important which candidate was selected (to the large financial interests) then things would change, so that only those with lots of backing could corrupt the vote.
Am I too cynical? I don't think so, but then I wouldn't, would I. So I'll acknowledge the possibility that I'm wrong. The only way to tell would be to try the experiment. Even then it would take decades before the results were in.
Practical for what purpose? I have occasionally reformatted devices that came with an particular file format for another. I found it quite practical.
As long as the storage media themselves don't really care what the file format is, its no problem. (Though ext2 works better then ext3 on thumbdrives. I hear ext4 is even better.)
So if your device can connect to most smart-phones, that makes it a perfectly reasonable choice for many purposes. Especially since then you don't need a licensing cost.
I think you mean Hydrogen. Silicon is after, at least, both Hydrogen and Helium.
Or perhaps you meant "most abundant element on the surface of the Earth"?
The dead people on highway 2 weren't using sonar and radar to detect obstacles. Different things present problems at different wavelengths.
"Driving Skills" can, indeed, be interpreted at widely as you say. I though it was fairly clear that I was talking about things like "recognizing crests and troughs, impenetrable obstacles, places where one doesn't get sufficient traction, etc." and "given the current terrain, at what speed can one stop before encountering an obstacle". (This should be understood as including "how fast is it safe to take that corner?", "What's my stopping distance, including the time it takes to recognize a problem?", etc.)
OTOH, I'm not an expert in the field. However, I expect that you are not either. And there are existence proofs that things approaching marginally acceptable are currently possible (though not yet economic). Automated vehicles now operate in many controlled environments, like warehouses, hospital corridors, etc. These are not even approaching state of the art. They were nearly state of the art two decades ago.
State of the art now is controlled tests in the open, as, e.g., driving from Milan to China. That test was well controlled, and can't be considered "free driving", but it demonstrates many of the features that are necessary. And also where some development work is necessary. The recent DARPA test involving driving in an Potemkin Village with pedestrians (who were all adults) was also quite impressive. And that's last year's state of the art. (Note that a flawless state of the art performance demonstrating capabilities superior to the average holder of a class D license wouldn't suffice to cause wide distribution of automated vehicles. That requires that it also make economic sense.)
P.S.: If sonar + radar couldn't detect "black ice", then that would just mean that some other sensor would need to be added to the mix. I guarantee that something can detect it. Perhaps infra-red Lidar. Or radar at a mix of wave-lengths...including infra-red. Or, if nothing else, spectral analysis. People are built with the sensors that were most useful out of those available when apes were evolving. Black ice detection at high speed wan't one of the selection criteria, so it's no surprise that we don't handle it properly. The surprise should be that some much of what we sense is so generally useful. (And even that is understandable, when properly considered.)
It is, indeed, incomplete, and it's not the complete definition they used. But it's contained within the definition they used. And it's recursive, not circular. Meaning if one of your friend likes someone, you're more willing to understand liking that someone. Which may make you more likely to like that someone. Etc. Recursive.
(OTOH, I *haven't* read the original paper, and don't intend to. I did read the linked summary. I'm operating off the summary. I'm merely responding to your rather cavalier misunderstanding of what I posted, which seems, to me, shallow.)
P.S.: You *did* notice that the linked summary was not the original paper, didn't you? If you'd responded differently, I would have just assumed that you had, but as it is ...
There are real problems, but you didn't list them. The problems you listed are refinements of the current system. Real problems are what do you do if an animal runs in front of the car? A child? A child in a Halloween costume? How much damage should you take to avoid each? And how do you distinguish cases 1 and three?
Things like that. Complex object recognition, particularly when in disguised form, is an unsolved problem, and *does* require a breakthrough. Driving skills, terrain recognition, standard obstacle recognition are refinements. (And "black ice" isn't necessarily hard to see. If you're combining radar with sonar other things will be difficult, but probably not that.)
Ruby? Python? D? An adaptation of Python with (optional) static typing (to allow compilation into more efficient code)? (Note, btw, the existence of Pyrex and Cython which allow the compilation of python into native code. Sometimes much more efficient native code. This isn't what I'm talking about.)
Why bother to come up with an entirely new language? If you must, why not Go?
As for Ada... they'd need to make some basic changes. It could be done, but they've refused to even *look* in that direction. E.g., even in the early days Ada had the specifications for an optional extension for garbage collection. It was never made standard, or even recommended. And the new Ada standard still doesn't recommend it. And literals are by default of type fixed length char array. They need to default to type "unbounded string" (which needs a better name, say "string"). Etc. Most of the changes aren't basic, but they are very important for usability. The one exception is making it easier to allocate things on the heap. That does require a more basic change. But it isn't going to happen. Neither are the other, lesser, upgrades.
The particular definition of "liberal" used by the article was "being able to consider the viewpoints of lots of different friends".
This doesn't match ANY political party. But it's reflected in all of them.
In particular this particular theory held that if you have this genetic variation, then you are more willing to sympathize with the viewpoints of friends that you have during adolescence. To presume that this will make one "Liberal" is presuming something about the range of views of your friends.
I thought that primates arising in Asia was standard. I don't remember the time-line, but I thought they arose in Asia where the Gibbons and then Orangutangs split off, and then some migrated to Africa where the rest of the primates developed.
40 million years is a rather long span of time, so I don't see any problems. The only catch is that Libya is in Africa, so this means that primates need to have been widely distributed by then. Either that or done an awful lot of migrating and dying out in the home range. Wider distribution seems more likely.
P.S.: Primates don't generally fossilize well. When they die their bones are usually moved by predators and cracked for marrow. And most of them don't live in terrain that facilitates fossilization. (People are exceptional in this regard.) This is one of the reasons why fossils of primates are often causes for rejoicing. (Egotism is, of course, the other reason.)