"Except the nanobots would have no natural predators (assuming they aren't organic)"
sure they will, we call it rust. But they might call it "0110010101110110011010010110110000100000011100100 11001010110010000100000011100000110110001100001011 001110111010101100101"
"See http://www.arxiv.org/ for a good example on how it should be. All preprints and final versions of papers are freely available."
I think the "how it should be" part is a bit off, since this is the way it is and has been for over a decade now, but I'm glad you mentioned this resource.
"I think Plato mentioned that Atlantis was just beyond the Pillars of Hercules (straits of Gibraltar), so if several lost cities are found along the Mediterranean, all cities east of the Straits of Gibraltar are not Atlantis, but some other lost city."
I've seen that "straights of Gilbraltar=Pillars of Hercules" cited many times, but was this designation concurrent with Plato's writing or did it only become associated afterwards?
"broadband is easy to get. just live in an apartment where there are 3 or 4 unprotected wireless nodes."
So far that arrangement was the best internet access I've had at home. I wish more of my current neighbors had access points, I'd gladly share to have all that combined bandwidth and flexibility back again.
"it's just that the absurdly cheap gas in NA screws up the economics here."
Yeah, gotta hate that wealth generation do to the movement of goods and services and the increased geographic flexibility of the labor force. And, Man, I hate being able to go where I want to. I wish they would make it better like in Europe where only the rich can get anywhere fast and the poor and unknowingly poor are contented with drink.
"Question is, when will everyone be convenced there is a problem, and when they are convenced, how willing will they be to give up their SUV's?"
But first we need to shut down the public transportation system, with all those mostly empty public buses running around wasting diesel and polluting the environment. Those bastards.
"ust curious, but what should the USA do with the ~$16B it puts into NASA instead? People seem to believe that the NASA budget is bigger than the DoD budget, the way they talk about stripping it from NASA to "use here on Earth".
Fact of the matter is that NASA's budget is a pittance.... "
Fact is that NASA's budget is bigger than the tax revenues of 41 of the 50 states. Seems that the States manage to do quite a bit with that type of money. Broken up evenly amongst the states, I think that each State would find quite a lot to do with an extra 300 million dollars a year. Sure it only works out to about $50 for every man woman and child in the US, but to some people an extra $50 per year could mean the difference between being able to pay the bills or going further down that slippery slope.
I've heard enough stories of people buying these things and then not being able to play them, that it just seems obvious that they should be correctly labeled since they are incompatible with some CD players.
But regardless aren't cd sales declining? I mean the prerecorded kind. This bill only applies to an old technology medium, and copy protection schemes that have proven mostly ineffectual. Might as well throw in eight track and casette labeling, as long as we are concerned with correctly labeling old technologies.
So, I agree that this makes sense and in politics it is good to fight on consistent grounds. But it seems like congress, as usual, would be a few years late to the game on this one. Or maybe after the game.
"how would u apply your smarts to a job such as I dunno changing brake pads on a car"
Well, there is a right way and a wrong way to change a brake pad. Besides, I'm sure there are safer, more efficient ways of doing it than other ways. It is a skill that must be learned.
You claim to have respect for people, but then claim that they are doing work that requires no skill. Either you really respect people that you think have no skills and intelligence or else you are just playing lip service to them.
Either way, unlike you, I believe that almost all people have skills and intelligence and apply them to their lives. Regardless of whether people like you think that their job is mindless.
I have very little respect for people that waste their God given brains either in blue or white collars jobs and sincerely doubt that anyone that simply does the bidding of others without thought will be truly happy.
The question is can even well fed and cared for slaves be truly happy? And the answer is no.
"Yes working harder gives callouses, but I know more truly happy people that work "low end grunt" jobs then I do the "smarter" professionals."
It is not the job that is smarter, but the person who applies their intelligence towards the task they have chosen to perform. Every job can be better done when smarts are applied.
"The key is to work harder than everyone else and you will succeed."
The key is to work smarter than everyone else, not harder. That is the whole point of science and engineering, to discover ways of doing things that take less time and use fewer natural resources to produce comparable results, to move faster and to live longer so that we have more time to understand the world around us.
I was digging in the dirt over the weekend and it is the "hardest" I've worked all year, but not nearly the smartest (I won't get into the details). But people that say you need to work harder to get ahead are usually either not very intelligent or are trying to convince others to do work that they themselves would not do.
Working harder will just give you callouses, working smarter will get you wealth and happiness.
"Whether it is legal is secondary to many enough people that it won't really matter whether it is."
As it should be, people first. Laws are merely tools, more like guns than shovels, although the use of the first often results in the use of the latter.
"But let's take the Bible, for example, supposedly true to every last word (though everyone knows it's not), written under direct guidance of God."
Einstein, as you say, had pantheistic beliefs. So to take your list:
"God created us as his image?" -If God encompasses the Universe certainly we are created in his image, since we are a part of him.
"God of old testament is vengeful, angry and jealous? Check. Humans feelings." -A God of which we are a part will certainly have human feelings, since we are part of creation not apart from it.
"God has a son, human son no less. Check." Ummm... yes. God also has puppies, kittens... pretty much everything.
"Getting his son murdered somehow transforms God into gentle loving and forgiving father. Check, human feelings again, though direct opposite of his old self. Hey, fickleness is pretty human too."
-Same as above, God is the universe and we are part of the universe, so the universe is fickle...
"You will have to depend on something that is out of your ultimate control (ie non-free) and to suggest that a perfect world according to Stallman wouldn't have this constraint anymore is just plain silly."
No, no no...Free as in freedom, not free as in no cost. There is nothing silly or extraordinary about avoiding dependence on propietary technologies, It is just common sense. 'All your eggs in one basket' ring a bell?
"Even if hardware became free, you still rely on non-free electricity to make your hardware run."
The patents on most types of electricity generation expired a long time ago, everyone has the freedom to make a generator and have their own supply of electricity. It just happens that the utility companies can provide it more economically.
Just print more money, keep interest rates low and the value of the US dollar will fall, the cost of imported goods, including outsourced labor will rise and more jobs will flow to the US. This is what we are accusing China of doing, but it is within their right ot do so. Sure inflation will erase some gains, but inflation usually trails economic activity, so there would be some short term benefit.
"Einstein did not believe on the stupid "man-on-steroids" god of most religions"
The man on steroids image is just one of many ways that artists within religions have related to God. To fixate on that image as the only image of God is ignorant of the richness of belief and theology within the various religions. Do you think that the last two thousand years of theology have focused on the size of God's bicept? To imply that calling Einstein a "devout believer" would equate him with the simple minded who would call themselves members of those religious groups is to fall prey to a stereotype of your own making and denies the thoughtful discussion that you seem to espouse.
"Zero-point energy systems are not considered feasible simply because in order for them to work they need to upset a good deal of what we know about how the universe works."
Come on now, all you need is a blackhole or something like it and just skim the energy off the top. It may not be practical, but it might be possible.
I'm sure you could come up with a very long list indeed, but nothing on your list would actually prevent someone from doing any of those things.
Liberty and freedom aren't about a lack of rules. These words require that the rules that we do impose on others are rational and respectful of a person's rights.
"Please don't say the Market Place will fix the problem. That is another of the Libertarian Myths. The real Market Place is filled with fraud and coercion (i.e Enron, Worldcom, Tyco, etc.)which would roadblock fixes."
Neither the marketplace nor regulations will prevent an airplane from falling out of the sky or a tire from falling off a car at high speed, those things are the domain of engineering and good maintainance. Regulations have their place, but they should be designed to protect those that give the most information to people to make their own decisions.
The market place is designed to let people decide for themselves what they value and what they are willing to give in return. Central to the idea of a free market is that no one is forced to buy or sell something, but dishonest information can't be tolerated since it undercuts the idea of free decision making. But the only alternative I know to the free marketplace is slavery or servitude.
- Is this comment "Organic"? Or maybe it is "All Natural"?
"Only the ignorant think regulation was imposed on AT it was their idea."
Yes, it seems that a great many people are ignorant to the true effects of government regulation. Government regulation usually works to enshrine monopoly power by increasing the barriers to entry to competition. It is often sold politically as us against the big corporations, but fundamentally government regulation is designed to give people less choice. Established and wealthy companies can better handle regulations therefore and often they have the most voice in legislative committees, so although most regulations do not originate in the boardrooms of corporations, regulations are quickly used to the best advantage. There is no conspiracy here, just a natural bias of the system.
Some people believe that less choice is better, after all having choice gives people oportunity to make the wrong choice with sometimes very real and bad consequences. So, to some people less choice for others means greater safety for themselves. Of course, it is often the case that in the longer term less choice just lets risk build up and eventually the risk will be unavoidable.
Regardless of how strongly the basket is made, it still makes sense not to put all your eggs in it.
"That's what pisses me off so much about the linux community, most of the time when asking a question one will be derided for one's choice and then told that another distro is much better."
Derision and name calling is uncalled for and wrong, but telling a person to use another piece of software because it has the features that they are asking for is the simplest way to get to point B from point A. Sure you might have expectations about how a piece of software should work, but making an installation or piece of software work the way you want it to work rather than the way it does work is usually a very complicated endeavor. One which is not easily explained in a post on a messageboard, even if the person knew the answer. So, to reject all advice that "you should use distro z as it does this so much better" is not to see the forest for the trees. Yes, when giving advice one should not deride the lack of knowledge of the other person, but that does not mean the advice is unsound.
"Despite the hatred of windows software that most slashdotters seem to have none can show a piece of software that is easier to setup than it's windows equivilent."
Well, having made fresh installs of Windows NT and Redhat 6.2 around the same time several years ago. I can tell you that Windows was much harder to install and Redhat 8 and 9 made installation a breeze. I have not tried to install Windows on a system since NT, based upon my horrible experience. Most of the time people buy computers with Windows preinstalled, which of course is much easier than having to do it yourself.
Slashdot Mirror
"Except the nanobots would have no natural predators (assuming they aren't organic)"
0 11001010110010000100000011100000110110001100001011 001110111010101100101"
sure they will, we call it rust. But they might call it "011001010111011001101001011011000010000001110010
"See http://www.arxiv.org/ for a good example on how it should be. All preprints and final versions of papers are freely available."
I think the "how it should be" part is a bit off, since this is the way it is and has been for over a decade now, but I'm glad you mentioned this resource.
"I think Plato mentioned that Atlantis was just beyond the Pillars of Hercules (straits of Gibraltar), so if several lost cities are found along the Mediterranean, all cities east of the Straits of Gibraltar are not Atlantis, but some other lost city."
I've seen that "straights of Gilbraltar=Pillars of Hercules" cited many times, but was this designation concurrent with Plato's writing or did it only become associated afterwards?
"broadband is easy to get. just live in an apartment where there are 3 or 4 unprotected wireless nodes."
So far that arrangement was the best internet access I've had at home. I wish more of my current neighbors had access points, I'd gladly share to have all that combined bandwidth and flexibility back again.
"it's just that the absurdly cheap gas in NA screws up the economics here."
Yeah, gotta hate that wealth generation do to the movement of goods and services and the increased geographic flexibility of the labor force. And, Man, I hate being able to go where I want to. I wish they would make it better like in Europe where only the rich can get anywhere fast and the poor and unknowingly poor are contented with drink.
"Question is, when will everyone be convenced there is a problem, and when they are convenced, how willing will they be to give up their SUV's?"
But first we need to shut down the public transportation system, with all those mostly empty public buses running around wasting diesel and polluting the environment. Those bastards.
"ust curious, but what should the USA do with the ~$16B it puts into NASA instead? People seem to believe that the NASA budget is bigger than the DoD budget, the way they talk about stripping it from NASA to "use here on Earth".
... "
Fact of the matter is that NASA's budget is a pittance.
Fact is that NASA's budget is bigger than the tax revenues of 41 of the 50 states. Seems that the States manage to do quite a bit with that type of money. Broken up evenly amongst the states, I think that each State would find quite a lot to do with an extra 300 million dollars a year. Sure it only works out to about $50 for every man woman and child in the US, but to some people an extra $50 per year could mean the difference between being able to pay the bills or going further down that slippery slope.
Sure, everything is relative.
I'm all for
"if the US military seriously wanted to take it, there'd be little to stop them"
Did you not notice that we now "own" Iraq?
I agree that that would be a good thing, but this bit, "violation of this title", makes me think that it only applies narrowly.
I've heard enough stories of people buying these things and then not being able to play them, that it just seems obvious that they should be correctly labeled since they are incompatible with some CD players.
But regardless aren't cd sales declining? I mean the prerecorded kind. This bill only applies to an old technology medium, and copy protection schemes that have proven mostly ineffectual. Might as well throw in eight track and casette labeling, as long as we are concerned with correctly labeling old technologies.
So, I agree that this makes sense and in politics it is good to fight on consistent grounds. But it seems like congress, as usual, would be a few years late to the game on this one. Or maybe after the game.
"how would u apply your smarts to a job such as I dunno changing brake pads on a car"
Well, there is a right way and a wrong way to change a brake pad. Besides, I'm sure there are safer, more efficient ways of doing it than other ways. It is a skill that must be learned.
You claim to have respect for people, but then claim that they are doing work that requires no skill. Either you really respect people that you think have no skills and intelligence or else you are just playing lip service to them.
Either way, unlike you, I believe that almost all people have skills and intelligence and apply them to their lives. Regardless of whether people like you think that their job is mindless.
I have very little respect for people that waste their God given brains either in blue or white collars jobs and sincerely doubt that anyone that simply does the bidding of others without thought will be truly happy.
The question is can even well fed and cared for slaves be truly happy? And the answer is no.
"Yes working harder gives callouses, but I know more truly happy people that work "low end grunt" jobs then I do the "smarter" professionals."
It is not the job that is smarter, but the person who applies their intelligence towards the task they have chosen to perform. Every job can be better done when smarts are applied.
"The key is to work harder than everyone else and you will succeed."
The key is to work smarter than everyone else, not harder. That is the whole point of science and engineering, to discover ways of doing things that take less time and use fewer natural resources to produce comparable results, to move faster and to live longer so that we have more time to understand the world around us.
I was digging in the dirt over the weekend and it is the "hardest" I've worked all year, but not nearly the smartest (I won't get into the details). But people that say you need to work harder to get ahead are usually either not very intelligent or are trying to convince others to do work that they themselves would not do.
Working harder will just give you callouses, working smarter will get you wealth and happiness.
"Whether it is legal is secondary to many enough people that it won't really matter whether it is."
As it should be, people first. Laws are merely tools, more like guns than shovels, although the use of the first often results in the use of the latter.
"These days, the limiting factor isn't actually technology - it's money."
It always was, just now people seem to realize it.
"But let's take the Bible, for example, supposedly true to every last word (though everyone knows it's not), written under direct guidance of God."
Einstein, as you say, had pantheistic beliefs. So to take your list:
"God created us as his image?"
-If God encompasses the Universe certainly we are created in his image, since we are a part of him.
"God of old testament is vengeful, angry and jealous? Check. Humans feelings."
-A God of which we are a part will certainly have human feelings, since we are part of creation not apart from it.
"God has a son, human son no less. Check."
Ummm... yes. God also has puppies, kittens... pretty much everything.
"Getting his son murdered somehow transforms God into gentle loving and forgiving father. Check, human feelings again, though direct opposite of his old self. Hey, fickleness is pretty human too."
-Same as above, God is the universe and we are part of the universe, so the universe is fickle...
and plays dice.
"You will have to depend on something that is out of your ultimate control (ie non-free) and to suggest that a perfect world according to Stallman wouldn't have this constraint anymore is just plain silly."
No, no no...Free as in freedom, not free as in no cost. There is nothing silly or extraordinary about avoiding dependence on propietary technologies, It is just common sense. 'All your eggs in one basket' ring a bell?
"Even if hardware became free, you still rely on non-free electricity to make your hardware run."
The patents on most types of electricity generation expired a long time ago, everyone has the freedom to make a generator and have their own supply of electricity. It just happens that the utility companies can provide it more economically.
Just print more money, keep interest rates low and the value of the US dollar will fall, the cost of imported goods, including outsourced labor will rise and more jobs will flow to the US. This is what we are accusing China of doing, but it is within their right ot do so. Sure inflation will erase some gains, but inflation usually trails economic activity, so there would be some short term benefit.
"Einstein did not believe on the stupid "man-on-steroids" god of most religions"
The man on steroids image is just one of many ways that artists within religions have related to God. To fixate on that image as the only image of God is ignorant of the richness of belief and theology within the various religions. Do you think that the last two thousand years of theology have focused on the size of God's bicept? To imply that calling Einstein a "devout believer" would equate him with the simple minded who would call themselves members of those religious groups is to fall prey to a stereotype of your own making and denies the thoughtful discussion that you seem to espouse.
"Zero-point energy systems are not considered feasible simply because in order for them to work they need to upset a good deal of what we know about how the universe works."
Come on now, all you need is a blackhole or something like it and just skim the energy off the top. It may not be practical, but it might be possible.
Perhaps a more accurate statement would be "as long as there are men, there will be war".
I blame the chicks. if women didn't select mates based upon relative strength, influence and wealth, there would be less war.
"Another Libertarian or Anarchist comment"
Not anarchist. Libertarian yes.
I'm sure you could come up with a very long list indeed, but nothing on your list would actually prevent someone from doing any of those things.
Liberty and freedom aren't about a lack of rules. These words require that the rules that we do impose on others are rational and respectful of a person's rights.
"Please don't say the Market Place will fix the problem. That is another of the Libertarian Myths. The real Market Place is filled with fraud and coercion (i.e Enron, Worldcom, Tyco, etc.)which would roadblock fixes."
Neither the marketplace nor regulations will prevent an airplane from falling out of the sky or a tire from falling off a car at high speed, those things are the domain of engineering and good maintainance. Regulations have their place, but they should be designed to protect those that give the most information to people to make their own decisions.
The market place is designed to let people decide for themselves what they value and what they are willing to give in return. Central to the idea of a free market is that no one is forced to buy or sell something, but dishonest information can't be tolerated since it undercuts the idea of free decision making. But the only alternative I know to the free marketplace is slavery or servitude.
- Is this comment "Organic"? Or maybe it is "All Natural"?
"Only the ignorant think regulation was imposed on AT it was their idea."
Yes, it seems that a great many people are ignorant to the true effects of government regulation. Government regulation usually works to enshrine monopoly power by increasing the barriers to entry to competition. It is often sold politically as us against the big corporations, but fundamentally government regulation is designed to give people less choice. Established and wealthy companies can better handle regulations therefore and often they have the most voice in legislative committees, so although most regulations do not originate in the boardrooms of corporations, regulations are quickly used to the best advantage. There is no conspiracy here, just a natural bias of the system.
Some people believe that less choice is better, after all having choice gives people oportunity to make the wrong choice with sometimes very real and bad consequences. So, to some people less choice for others means greater safety for themselves. Of course, it is often the case that in the longer term less choice just lets risk build up and eventually the risk will be unavoidable.
Regardless of how strongly the basket is made, it still makes sense not to put all your eggs in it.
"That's what pisses me off so much about the linux community, most of the time when asking a question one will be derided for one's choice and then told that another distro is much better."
Derision and name calling is uncalled for and wrong, but telling a person to use another piece of software because it has the features that they are asking for is the simplest way to get to point B from point A. Sure you might have expectations about how a piece of software should work, but making an installation or piece of software work the way you want it to work rather than the way it does work is usually a very complicated endeavor. One which is not easily explained in a post on a messageboard, even if the person knew the answer. So, to reject all advice that "you should use distro z as it does this so much better" is not to see the forest for the trees. Yes, when giving advice one should not deride the lack of knowledge of the other person, but that does not mean the advice is unsound.
"Despite the hatred of windows software that most slashdotters seem to have none can show a piece of software that is easier to setup than it's windows equivilent."
Well, having made fresh installs of Windows NT and Redhat 6.2 around the same time several years ago. I can tell you that Windows was much harder to install and Redhat 8 and 9 made installation a breeze. I have not tried to install Windows on a system since NT, based upon my horrible experience. Most of the time people buy computers with Windows preinstalled, which of course is much easier than having to do it yourself.