Don't think like an audiophile, think like the average person.;)
I think you're underestimating the nostalgia factor. Haven't you ever come across an old album, listened to it for "old times's sake", and then find yourself listening over and over as you rediscover why you bought it in the first place? I don't have hard numbers but most of the people I know admit to having that experience, multiple times. People like their record collections. All of these download services undermine that tactile feel.
Plus, I don't think the average consumer is as dumb as everyone else thinks. Wait for the first Windows bug to crash the MS music server, causing subscriptions to terminate abruptly. Then watch everyone move to a different model.
it would be eternity before we were crushed or what not.
No, in our reference frame, it would take only the free fall time to reach the center. Unless of course something were "holding" us away from it -- in which case, light falling in from outside (and there would be some, even if only from thermal emissions or even quantum fluctuations -- would be infinitely blueshifted and fry us in a blaze of ultraviolet glory.
Objects get in its way and cast shadows, so on the shadowed side you get the impression you're being pulled towards the object casting the shadow, when in fact you're being pushed towards it by the 'background' gravity.
Why aren't you "pushed" by the shadowing object, too? And since it's closer, its effect (one would expect) would be stronger... so you should be repelled. And thus:
Anybody ever stop to consider that the other 90% must have some sort of structure?
There is no logical necessity for that. Although you can conceive of matter that exists subject to a host of strong interactions but which does not interact with us -- that there are two "classes" of matter that exist separately -- there is no evidence for that. Occam's Razor says, don't invent whole universes for the heck of it. The simplest explanation consistent with the facts is taken to be true.
Indeed, many of the "hot" dark matter theories presume exactly no structure to the dark matter... just streaming neutrinos flashing throughout the volume of the universe.
Not yet, anyway. But just wait until we finish off Syria and North Korea and a few other small countries. After all, if Iraq looked easy, imagine how trivial invading across an undefended border would be....
Sad to say, this scenario is no longer really beyond the imaginable. Sometimes my own government makes me ill. No, wait, let me say "the government of my own country" -- there is no way I'll lay claim to this cowboy administration.
Why go nuclear when you can use biochemical energy that produces virtually no waste?
Um, I'm pretty sure that 6 billions people sitting all day in wired pods produce a hell of a lot of waste... Probably doesn't smell too good, either.:)
Are you saying that movies shouldn't have anything to say and that people shouldn't look for what the movie says? Do we just sit a watch a movie mindlessly, without thinking about what it is doing?
In other words, we should be just like those people plugged into the Matrix... woa. Deep.:)
The word "unique" is an absolute, not a relative adjective. Something is either unique or it's not, you can't have "slightly, moderately, or very" unique!
Call me pedantic but I call it sloppy coding to misuse words like this;-)
If you think you're coding when you write, then you're going to miss 90% of what makes writing interesting. Human language is not machine language. "Very unique" is a way to stress how unusual the product is. Of course it can't be literally true... but then, human language is not about literality. That's why we don't do math in it, for example.
Nobody got "censored" here, nobody's free speech was infringed.
Not in the traditional sense, ie., through direct government action. Instead we have one party silencing another through the threat of government action. We've been seeing this emerge for some time now: actions by individuals and corporations who co-opt the court system to enforce their own agendas or vendettas, with almost none of the safeguards that have evolved to cope with state oppression.
Make no mistake: A corporation using the court system to stop speech it doesn't like, is censorship -- it's just the 21st century flavor.
Looking back at it, the military "victories" the South won were phiric. In no battle was there a clear winner in terms of causualties, and from the beginning it was clear that the North's greater population (why Lincoln won to begin with) and industrialization (the South couldn't even manufacture the bullets for many of the Northern guns they captured) was going to eventually lead to its victory.
Wars aren't about guns. Nor are they about casualties, or slogans, or tech, or logistics. Wars are contests of wills: Can I push the price of victory higher than the other side is willing to pay? Can I force a negotiated ending? Unlike RTS games, real war isn't about two sides slugging it out for all eternity, pouring men and materiel into a cauldron until one side is eliminated. Real war is about morale and popular spirit.
That's how little powers can sometimes (Vietname) force to retreat of great powers. It was the fundamental miscalculation of Japan in WWII -- that the US would fold rather than respond in wrath. It was the hope of the Confederacy -- that the Union would rather accept secession than spend the treasure and blood needed to end it. Of course in any "fair", drawn-out, blow-for-blow reckoning, the North (with its industries and its population) would win. The South simply didn't expect the North to have the stomach for it.
And despite the rumblings of preodination that you get from textbooks today, the South came very close to being proven right. The North was never entirely united behind the war until the very end.
Dormant bank accounts are eventually closed. You'd need to have activity in the account to keep it open.
So you just stop off every twenty years or so, spend a day in the "present" updating your account, and cruise your way into 2256.
I would expect a time traveler to figure out some material precious in 2256 but allegedly valueless in 2003, then buy up the mineral rights to the land under which the resource sits. Imagine buying all the uranium mine sites in 1890...:)
It cares quite a bit, as these tools help us get the basics of life, like food watter and sex.
But evolution doesn't care that we build rocket ships; it cares only about the food, water, and sex -- and really, not so much about the food and water. We get no special bonus points for achieving art, from an evolutionary standpoint; evolution has no use for art as art but only as reproductive-success enhancer.
Of course this is just one reason why it's silly to use evolution as a grounding for the values one holds.
Re:I thought so.
on
Genome Surprise
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Blockquoth the poster:
I don't see why they should. More genes == more superiority? Who made up that rule? How about "better genes == more superiority"?
What the heck does "better genes" mean? For that matter, what does "more superiority"? Despite what everyone seems to want, evolution is not a moralistic process! There is no "superior" or "inferior". At best, there is "more fit" and "less fit" -- and even that is strongly location-dependent and time-evolving. In terms of survival fitness, it can be argued that, say, bacteria -- or insects -- way outperform humans. Sure, they don't build cathedrals or rocket ships, but what the heck does evolution care?
as your employees struggle to get even rudimentary things like printing working,
Hmmm. About once a week, Windows 2000 Server randomly reassigns my default printer. About once every three weeks, Windows XP suddenly fails to see my USB printer unless I reboot -- no explanation, no change in configuration.
If Microsoft products -- which, as everyone likes to point out, run almost all machines -- is so wonderful, and if their software is so easy and useful for the ordinary joe, then why oh why after ten years of outright dominance do people still hate and fear computers?
The only "innovation" Microsoft has developed is its ability to convince regular users that (a) the complexities and difficulties of, say, Linux, result from the innate design (and a flawed one at that), but (b) any complications or errors encountered using Windows must be the fault of the user.
... that if a new word, or a new meaning, can go from pervasive to invisible in just 42 days, maybe it just didn't have staying power... The whole Google conspiracy thing has one flaw: Why would you go looking for "Second Superpower" at all, unless you hit upon it from some other context? Or do people really sit around and just type random assortments of words into Google?
Look, Google isn't the messiah. But it isn't Orwell redux. It's a tool, and it seems to be one that does what most people want when they use it.
W.D. Richter wrote a screenplay for a sequel to this film. The never produced "Buckaroo Banzai Against the World Crime League" was eventually re-tooled into _Big Trouble In Little China (1986)_.
There are already massive rumours (apparently unreported in American news) that Turkey has already started moving troops into the area "for humanitarian reasons".
Can we agree to drop the paranoid Orwellian musings about the press, at least when they're unjustified? CNN and MSNBC and the New York Times have all reported since Saturday on the rumored dispatch of Turkish troops into Kurdish-held territory. They've even dooted all the i's and memntioned the Kurdish concern that this is just a pretext for suprressing the autonomous region while the war rages.
I hate to tell you, but in a war, there's a lot of data -- not all of it can be kept up front at the top of the hour all the time. Since it's been five days and no one can yet can verify the presence of thse troops, it's understandable that the rumors have dropped below the top-level radar.
That's not true - the system worked about as well as you could expect given that the difference was well under its margin of error.
Nonetheless, there was something unseemly in the haste and unconcealed zest with which the usually rabid "states rights" conservative justices decide to reach in and pre-empt local control of elections -- which has historically been one of the clear-cut foundations of federalism. I found it odd to hear Scalia quote principles of judicial activism that he had, himself, scorned for a decade or more...
that so long as you admit to what you've done it didn't matter what were in the records.
And what if you didn't do what is listed in the records? No offense, but that's the beginning of a police state: You fear to challenge inaccuracies, because it weighs against you. Then those inaccuracies are used as leverage against you to do other things you would normally refuse, or to hold you in place. It seems like a bedrock principle that, if information is gathered under the police power of the State, the State is obligated to ensure its accuracy.
Disclaimer: I didn't read the article, so perhaps the Justice Dept is simply stating that 100%% accuracy is not really possible, and that they can't invest all their resources going after that final 0.000001%.
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I think you're underestimating the nostalgia factor. Haven't you ever come across an old album, listened to it for "old times's sake", and then find yourself listening over and over as you rediscover why you bought it in the first place? I don't have hard numbers but most of the people I know admit to having that experience, multiple times. People like their record collections. All of these download services undermine that tactile feel.
Plus, I don't think the average consumer is as dumb as everyone else thinks. Wait for the first Windows bug to crash the MS music server, causing subscriptions to terminate abruptly. Then watch everyone move to a different model.
The entire issue of "ownership" of intellectual output is much murkier than anyone -- especially the RIAA and MPAA -- wants to admit.
No, in our reference frame, it would take only the free fall time to reach the center. Unless of course something were "holding" us away from it -- in which case, light falling in from outside (and there would be some, even if only from thermal emissions or even quantum fluctuations -- would be infinitely blueshifted and fry us in a blaze of ultraviolet glory.
Why aren't you "pushed" by the shadowing object, too? And since it's closer, its effect (one would expect) would be stronger
No.
There is no logical necessity for that. Although you can conceive of matter that exists subject to a host of strong interactions but which does not interact with us -- that there are two "classes" of matter that exist separately -- there is no evidence for that. Occam's Razor says, don't invent whole universes for the heck of it. The simplest explanation consistent with the facts is taken to be true.
Indeed, many of the "hot" dark matter theories presume exactly no structure to the dark matter
Not yet, anyway. But just wait until we finish off Syria and North Korea and a few other small countries. After all, if Iraq looked easy, imagine how trivial invading across an undefended border would be....
Sad to say, this scenario is no longer really beyond the imaginable. Sometimes my own government makes me ill. No, wait, let me say "the government of my own country" -- there is no way I'll lay claim to this cowboy administration.
Um, I'm pretty sure that 6 billions people sitting all day in wired pods produce a hell of a lot of waste... Probably doesn't smell too good, either.
In other words, we should be just like those people plugged into the Matrix... woa. Deep.
Is it? Or do you have to shell out $200+ for an OS license?
If you think you're coding when you write, then you're going to miss 90% of what makes writing interesting. Human language is not machine language. "Very unique" is a way to stress how unusual the product is. Of course it can't be literally true... but then, human language is not about literality. That's why we don't do math in it, for example.
Not in the traditional sense, ie., through direct government action. Instead we have one party silencing another through the threat of government action. We've been seeing this emerge for some time now: actions by individuals and corporations who co-opt the court system to enforce their own agendas or vendettas, with almost none of the safeguards that have evolved to cope with state oppression.
Make no mistake: A corporation using the court system to stop speech it doesn't like, is censorship -- it's just the 21st century flavor.
Wars aren't about guns. Nor are they about casualties, or slogans, or tech, or logistics. Wars are contests of wills: Can I push the price of victory higher than the other side is willing to pay? Can I force a negotiated ending? Unlike RTS games, real war isn't about two sides slugging it out for all eternity, pouring men and materiel into a cauldron until one side is eliminated. Real war is about morale and popular spirit.
That's how little powers can sometimes (Vietname) force to retreat of great powers. It was the fundamental miscalculation of Japan in WWII -- that the US would fold rather than respond in wrath. It was the hope of the Confederacy -- that the Union would rather accept secession than spend the treasure and blood needed to end it. Of course in any "fair", drawn-out, blow-for-blow reckoning, the North (with its industries and its population) would win. The South simply didn't expect the North to have the stomach for it.
And despite the rumblings of preodination that you get from textbooks today, the South came very close to being proven right. The North was never entirely united behind the war until the very end.
So you just stop off every twenty years or so, spend a day in the "present" updating your account, and cruise your way into 2256.
I would expect a time traveler to figure out some material precious in 2256 but allegedly valueless in 2003, then buy up the mineral rights to the land under which the resource sits. Imagine buying all the uranium mine sites in 1890...
This would imply that the most superior form of life is bacteria, since bacteria genes vastly outnumber any other type.
But evolution doesn't care that we build rocket ships; it cares only about the food, water, and sex -- and really, not so much about the food and water. We get no special bonus points for achieving art, from an evolutionary standpoint; evolution has no use for art as art but only as reproductive-success enhancer.
Of course this is just one reason why it's silly to use evolution as a grounding for the values one holds.
What the heck does "better genes" mean? For that matter, what does "more superiority"? Despite what everyone seems to want, evolution is not a moralistic process! There is no "superior" or "inferior". At best, there is "more fit" and "less fit" -- and even that is strongly location-dependent and time-evolving. In terms of survival fitness, it can be argued that, say, bacteria -- or insects -- way outperform humans. Sure, they don't build cathedrals or rocket ships, but what the heck does evolution care?
Hmmm. About once a week, Windows 2000 Server randomly reassigns my default printer. About once every three weeks, Windows XP suddenly fails to see my USB printer unless I reboot -- no explanation, no change in configuration.
If Microsoft products -- which, as everyone likes to point out, run almost all machines -- is so wonderful, and if their software is so easy and useful for the ordinary joe, then why oh why after ten years of outright dominance do people still hate and fear computers?
The only "innovation" Microsoft has developed is its ability to convince regular users that (a) the complexities and difficulties of, say, Linux, result from the innate design (and a flawed one at that), but (b) any complications or errors encountered using Windows must be the fault of the user.
Um, wouldn't you just ship the genetic material? Ova and sperm take up a lot less mass than full-grown cattle...
Look, Google isn't the messiah. But it isn't Orwell redux. It's a tool, and it seems to be one that does what most people want when they use it.
Ah, but that's the April Fool's meta-joke....
The Internet Movie Database, specifically, the entry on The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension
They did. Sort of. It's called Big Trouble in Little China and stars Kurt Russell. It's also a blast.
Can we agree to drop the paranoid Orwellian musings about the press, at least when they're unjustified? CNN and MSNBC and the New York Times have all reported since Saturday on the rumored dispatch of Turkish troops into Kurdish-held territory. They've even dooted all the i's and memntioned the Kurdish concern that this is just a pretext for suprressing the autonomous region while the war rages.
I hate to tell you, but in a war, there's a lot of data -- not all of it can be kept up front at the top of the hour all the time. Since it's been five days and no one can yet can verify the presence of thse troops, it's understandable that the rumors have dropped below the top-level radar.
Nonetheless, there was something unseemly in the haste and unconcealed zest with which the usually rabid "states rights" conservative justices decide to reach in and pre-empt local control of elections -- which has historically been one of the clear-cut foundations of federalism. I found it odd to hear Scalia quote principles of judicial activism that he had, himself, scorned for a decade or more...
And what if you didn't do what is listed in the records? No offense, but that's the beginning of a police state: You fear to challenge inaccuracies, because it weighs against you. Then those inaccuracies are used as leverage against you to do other things you would normally refuse, or to hold you in place. It seems like a bedrock principle that, if information is gathered under the police power of the State, the State is obligated to ensure its accuracy.
Disclaimer: I didn't read the article, so perhaps the Justice Dept is simply stating that 100%% accuracy is not really possible, and that they can't invest all their resources going after that final 0.000001%.