Well, it created Moriarty, a truely self-aware entity on par with Data. Throw in a portable holo-emitter like the Doctors from Voyager and some replicator magic and you could produce armies of highly intelligent, nearly invulunerably beings who are by their very nature, evil.
Q is simply the ultimate version of technobabble.
Trek is like an amusement park. Its much more fun if you don't keep trying to look behind the curtain. Damn engineers.
Well, the genetic clone of Kaless(sp?), an ancient figure from Klingon history, had the forehead ridges, so its reasonable to assume that the time of smooth foreheads was a temporary thing.
Presumably all Klingons know about the smooth forehead time (Worf does, and he was raised by humans), so when they created the clone, they would have taken that into account and produced a physical form that was as realistic as possible.
Its certainly possible that the skinny, smooth-headed Klingons we saw in TOS were some kind of experiment or something. The only canonical source I've seen that said anything about it was the DS9 tribbles episode where Worf just bristles and says "We don't like to talk about it." Perhaps there was some kind of weird experiment where they used these odd-looking members as the only contacts with other races so they could maintain some distance or anonymity. Kind of like the Vorta claiming to be the Founders in some early DS9 episodes.
It wasn't that long ago that "I am stronger than you and can kill you" was considered the good by humans
When, exactly, did that sentiment go away? If I'm not mistaken its alive and well here in the US, from the inner city to the playground, to the US military.
Its generally coupled with enough intelligence to realize that there are consequences to application of force, so we don't just go throwing around abuse indescrimanatly, but its there, and probably always will be.
Thats not true actually. Some species of large cats and non-human apes have been known to kill for 'sport'.
I think expect that there are probably plenty of animals that act the same way we humans do, its just that animals don't keep census of their populations and report missing members, nor do they punish and imprison homicidal members.
Child porn is like the war on pot. There will always be demand, so there will always be supply. What we need to do is control the offending substance.
Yes, thats right, children are evil and should not be permitted to exist. I propose a worldwide 20 year plan that will gradually raise the age of all existing children while preventing the creation of more. One completed this program will have completely eliminated all suffering of and abuse of children.
I know what you're thinking. Many people who can have children without abusing them. Well, the risk is just too great. You see, children are a gateway to abuse, first it's a few scoldings, which leads to spankings, 'for their own good', then before you know it, full-blown sexual abuse. Its unavoidable too, nearly every child ends up having sex with an adult, its just a matter of time. In extreme cases, as much as 20 years, but it happens, almost without fail.
Acutally they are free to have sex with their peers, the problem is that they are not mentally developed enough (in general) to avoid manipulation and abuse from older people.
It probably also has to something to do with the fact that they would most likely be taken advantage of by men in the 18-25ish range, where we tend to see high sex drive coupled wth minimal responsibilty and empathy. So those mostly likey to want to have sex with adolescents are also those most likely to hurt them, physically or mentally.
As a parent of 5 I understand what you are talking about, and I can also say that you really ought to train that bratty behaviour outta yer kid. No offense, but bad behaviour from a kid is usually not the kids fault.
It is amusing to me to see the different reactions people have to a bratty kid though. People at Wal-mart either just ignore you or are sympathetic. Now, try that at the local hippy foods store, Whole Foods or Wild Oats or whatever. People stare and roll their eyes like you have horns sprouting from your forehead.
I handle this by putting my order in on the internet (actually my wife does that part), then I swing by the store to pick up the order on the way home from work.
I get to pick out my produce and meat, and the rest of the stuff is already bagged, in a cart and rung up for me, I just pay the bill and go home.
Its definately worth the $7 fee they charge, since it would take me about an hour to pick all the stuff up. It probably would not be worth it to me to pay for delivery, which is more expensive.
Packaging pills isn't something you can do in your basement.
Actually it is, if you care to buy the equipment and pay a couple of high school kids to operate it (or do it yourself) you can churn out thousands of pills an hour, easily enough to cover costs and turn a good profit with the high markups these products have.
If these places are actually distributing pharmaceutical products from their basements then the FDA should be all over them
I agree that that would be high risk, but most of these products are herbal, so the FDA isn't involved.
Its difficult to pin down the exact way that spammers work, because there are nearly as many diffrent ways to do it as there are spammers. Some are small time and just deliver spam on contract from other businesses (people who advertise over spam aren't always spammers themselves), some a just scammers with no product who collect money from marks.
I was astounded to see the price of a gallon of milk jump from $3.20 to $4.59 in just three weeks time.
Damn, where do you get your milk, the local hippie store? Milk here in Nebraska goes for around $2.25 (sometimes as low as $2, sometimes as high as $2.70).
Soy milk goes for about twice that, which is still less than your price.
The term 'agnosticism' was coined by Professor T.H. Huxley at a meeting of the Metaphysical Society in 1876. He defined an agnostic as someone who disclaimed both ("strong") atheism and theism, and who believed that the question of whether a higher power existed was unsolved and insoluble. Another way of putting it is that an agnostic is someone who believes that we do not know for sure whether God exists. Some agnostics believe that we can never know.
In recent years, however, the term agnostic has also been used to describe those who simply believe that the evidence for or against God is inconclusive, and therefore are undecided about the issue.
To reduce the amount of confusion over the use of term agnosticism, it is recommended that usage based on a belief that we cannot know whether God exists be qualified as "strict agnosticism" and usage based on the belief that we merely do not know yet be qualified as "empirical agnosticism".
A similar division exists in atheism, the lack of a belief in gods is called "weak atheism" and is different from the belief that gods cannot exist, which is called "strong atheism".
I am a weak atheist. I don't have a belief that gods exist (I've never seen anything that I think requires god-like beings to explain), and I don't think that it is impossible for god-like beings to exist (sufficently advanced technololgy and intelligence could make a being god-like).
Scientologists would rather that you didn't know what they believe, but want you to join anyway
This is necessary because you must pay them for various activities in order to progress up through the ranks. If they gave you all the information for free, there would be less incentive to pay.
Interesting idea, although as someone pointed out, its basicly the same principle as a steam engine. Might be a good system to use with a stirling engine running the compressor. Very high efficency compressor with high latency (starts slow, stops slow), and a high effiency energy storage system. I wonder the the added complexity of using a working fluid that changes phase during the cycle would help. I suppose thats probably a solved problem though.
heck, lets go for all fringe technology! We'll use a Stirling motor to compress the air, and a Tesla bladeless turbine to convert the compressed air into mechanical power!
Well, if you loose the heat from the compression, you'd also be loosing energy. See, you can get the same effect if you just close up the air tank and build a fire under it.
Here's an idea, instead of putting the fire ouside the tank, we can put the gas inside and burn it there, then use the hot gas to push down a cylinder.. Wait.. darn, nevermind.
Ya'll make me jealous. I drive a 1971 Impala with a 350cid, 4bbl gas hog of an engine. I get 11 mpg when I baby it (55mph top speed, slow starts at lights). It costs me about $60 a month for gasoline.
The only other costs to running this car are the insurance (about $25 a month), and repairs (averaged over the year, about $10 a month (I do all my own work, no computers in it, easy to fix)).
Total yearly operating cost is around $1300 if I include a few tanks of gas for a vacation or other misc trips.
I've looked around at getting somthing that gets decent mileage, but I'd end up spending at least $4000 or so to get something that gets over 30 mpg and that I would consider as reliable (since I can't fix everything on it with my existing tools, I'd either have to buy more tools or pay someone to fix stuff).
I sometimes feel bad about spewing probably at least 5x my share of CO2/CO into the atmosphere, and dripping oil all over, but I don't have the... buying power to go green. I try to make up for it by bicycling whenever possible and keeping my electric usage at home to a minimum (motion detector lightswitches rock!).
Hard to believe you found a new car for under 15 kilobucks, thats pretty impressive. Perhaps I should investigate used prices on those.
I wonder if we'll ever see some enclosed single-passenger vehicles? I'd love to buy an ultra-cheap vehicle for my 20 mile round-trip commute, but motorcycles are expensive, exposed to the weather, and while I support organ donation, I don't plan on hurring the process along any more than necessary.
when I also know they spend more than 50% of their day online surfing sites completely unrelated to their job and get less done in the 50% they actually do work
Sometimes I have that problem. just can't stay off the net some days.
I tried doing my work with paper and pen once, but the HammerMill platform just wouldn't compile my code properly.
the end result of computer-editing tends to be rather scattershot
IME this seems to be more related to poor editing skills than an inability to form coherent arguments.
People seem to think that the ability to write the stuff and edit it immediately means they don't have to save it, come back later and read it start-to-finish to see if it still makes sense.
Working on paper does largely solve this problem, but its also slow and a pain in the ass. I think that you'll find simply reading the finished work as if you had never seen it before (as opposed to just scanning it to check the ideas and hitting it with a spell/grammer checker) will almost completely fix the problem.
Slashdot Mirror
Ony if its a god that interacts with the universe in a way that can be demonstrated.
Seriously though, I think someone is forgetting that its all made up anyway.
When could the Holodeck make the "BORG" appear?/
Well, it created Moriarty, a truely self-aware entity on par with Data. Throw in a portable holo-emitter like the Doctors from Voyager and some replicator magic and you could produce armies of highly intelligent, nearly invulunerably beings who are by their very nature, evil.
Q is simply the ultimate version of technobabble.
Trek is like an amusement park. Its much more fun if you don't keep trying to look behind the curtain. Damn engineers.
Why, oh why couldn't ShowTime have produced this series...
Well, the genetic clone of Kaless(sp?), an ancient figure from Klingon history, had the forehead ridges, so its reasonable to assume that the time of smooth foreheads was a temporary thing.
Presumably all Klingons know about the smooth forehead time (Worf does, and he was raised by humans), so when they created the clone, they would have taken that into account and produced a physical form that was as realistic as possible.
Its certainly possible that the skinny, smooth-headed Klingons we saw in TOS were some kind of experiment or something. The only canonical source I've seen that said anything about it was the DS9 tribbles episode where Worf just bristles and says "We don't like to talk about it." Perhaps there was some kind of weird experiment where they used these odd-looking members as the only contacts with other races so they could maintain some distance or anonymity. Kind of like the Vorta claiming to be the Founders in some early DS9 episodes.
It wasn't that long ago that "I am stronger than you and can kill you" was considered the good by humans
When, exactly, did that sentiment go away? If I'm not mistaken its alive and well here in the US, from the inner city to the playground, to the US military.
Its generally coupled with enough intelligence to realize that there are consequences to application of force, so we don't just go throwing around abuse indescrimanatly, but its there, and probably always will be.
Thats not true actually. Some species of large cats and non-human apes have been known to kill for 'sport'.
I think expect that there are probably plenty of animals that act the same way we humans do, its just that animals don't keep census of their populations and report missing members, nor do they punish and imprison homicidal members.
Child porn is like the war on pot. There will always be demand, so there will always be supply. What we need to do is control the offending substance.
Yes, thats right, children are evil and should not be permitted to exist. I propose a worldwide 20 year plan that will gradually raise the age of all existing children while preventing the creation of more. One completed this program will have completely eliminated all suffering of and abuse of children.
I know what you're thinking. Many people who can have children without abusing them. Well, the risk is just too great. You see, children are a gateway to abuse, first it's a few scoldings, which leads to spankings, 'for their own good', then before you know it, full-blown sexual abuse. Its unavoidable too, nearly every child ends up having sex with an adult, its just a matter of time. In extreme cases, as much as 20 years, but it happens, almost without fail.
Acutally they are free to have sex with their peers, the problem is that they are not mentally developed enough (in general) to avoid manipulation and abuse from older people.
It probably also has to something to do with the fact that they would most likely be taken advantage of by men in the 18-25ish range, where we tend to see high sex drive coupled wth minimal responsibilty and empathy. So those mostly likey to want to have sex with adolescents are also those most likely to hurt them, physically or mentally.
As a parent of 5 I understand what you are talking about, and I can also say that you really ought to train that bratty behaviour outta yer kid. No offense, but bad behaviour from a kid is usually not the kids fault.
It is amusing to me to see the different reactions people have to a bratty kid though. People at Wal-mart either just ignore you or are sympathetic. Now, try that at the local hippy foods store, Whole Foods or Wild Oats or whatever. People stare and roll their eyes like you have horns sprouting from your forehead.
I agree regarding produce.
I handle this by putting my order in on the internet (actually my wife does that part), then I swing by the store to pick up the order on the way home from work.
I get to pick out my produce and meat, and the rest of the stuff is already bagged, in a cart and rung up for me, I just pay the bill and go home.
Its definately worth the $7 fee they charge, since it would take me about an hour to pick all the stuff up. It probably would not be worth it to me to pay for delivery, which is more expensive.
Please also consider that not everyone who doesn't have a 2 cars and a 30" TV wants those things.
Provide medical care and education for those who want it, and control population growth, otherwise, leave them to themselves.
Packaging pills isn't something you can do in your basement.
Actually it is, if you care to buy the equipment and pay a couple of high school kids to operate it (or do it yourself) you can churn out thousands of pills an hour, easily enough to cover costs and turn a good profit with the high markups these products have.
If these places are actually distributing pharmaceutical products from their basements then the FDA should be all over them
I agree that that would be high risk, but most of these products are herbal, so the FDA isn't involved.
Its difficult to pin down the exact way that spammers work, because there are nearly as many diffrent ways to do it as there are spammers. Some are small time and just deliver spam on contract from other businesses (people who advertise over spam aren't always spammers themselves), some a just scammers with no product who collect money from marks.
Except many companies (including mine) have phone systems based on frame relay systems, which might be effected.
I was astounded to see the price of a gallon of milk jump from $3.20 to $4.59 in just three weeks time.
Damn, where do you get your milk, the local hippie store? Milk here in Nebraska goes for around $2.25 (sometimes as low as $2, sometimes as high as $2.70).
Soy milk goes for about twice that, which is still less than your price.
How does one choose the correct width?
Agnostics doubt the existence of a god but are willing to change their minds
Nope.
From The Atheism Web:
The term 'agnosticism' was coined by Professor T.H. Huxley at a meeting of the Metaphysical Society in 1876. He defined an agnostic as someone who disclaimed both ("strong") atheism and theism, and who believed that the question of whether a higher power existed was unsolved and insoluble. Another way of putting it is that an agnostic is someone who believes that we do not know for sure whether God exists. Some agnostics believe that we can never know.
In recent years, however, the term agnostic has also been used to describe those who simply believe that the evidence for or against God is inconclusive, and therefore are undecided about the issue.
To reduce the amount of confusion over the use of term agnosticism, it is recommended that usage based on a belief that we cannot know whether God exists be qualified as "strict agnosticism" and usage based on the belief that we merely do not know yet be qualified as "empirical agnosticism".
A similar division exists in atheism, the lack of a belief in gods is called "weak atheism" and is different from the belief that gods cannot exist, which is called "strong atheism".
I am a weak atheist. I don't have a belief that gods exist (I've never seen anything that I think requires god-like beings to explain), and I don't think that it is impossible for god-like beings to exist (sufficently advanced technololgy and intelligence could make a being god-like).
Didn't the new testament obsolete the directives of the old testiment? So christians don't have to do the burn offerings and such anymore either.
Scientologists would rather that you didn't know what they believe, but want you to join anyway
This is necessary because you must pay them for various activities in order to progress up through the ranks. If they gave you all the information for free, there would be less incentive to pay.
Interesting idea, although as someone pointed out, its basicly the same principle as a steam engine. Might be a good system to use with a stirling engine running the compressor. Very high efficency compressor with high latency (starts slow, stops slow), and a high effiency energy storage system. I wonder the the added complexity of using a working fluid that changes phase during the cycle would help. I suppose thats probably a solved problem though.
heck, lets go for all fringe technology! We'll use a Stirling motor to compress the air, and a Tesla bladeless turbine to convert the compressed air into mechanical power!
(compressors get HOT).
Well, if you loose the heat from the compression, you'd also be loosing energy. See, you can get the same effect if you just close up the air tank and build a fire under it.
Here's an idea, instead of putting the fire ouside the tank, we can put the gas inside and burn it there, then use the hot gas to push down a cylinder.. Wait.. darn, nevermind.
Actually, for that matter, why not just ride a motorcycle instead?
Well, because efficency savings are realized over long timespans.
They don't call motorcyclists 'doners' for nothing.
(Yes, I'm mostly kidding, but I've crashed two motorcycles already, so I think I'll stick with something more familure controls).
Ya'll make me jealous. I drive a 1971 Impala with a 350cid, 4bbl gas hog of an engine. I get 11 mpg when I baby it (55mph top speed, slow starts at lights). It costs me about $60 a month for gasoline.
The only other costs to running this car are the insurance (about $25 a month), and repairs (averaged over the year, about $10 a month (I do all my own work, no computers in it, easy to fix)).
Total yearly operating cost is around $1300 if I include a few tanks of gas for a vacation or other misc trips.
I've looked around at getting somthing that gets decent mileage, but I'd end up spending at least $4000 or so to get something that gets over 30 mpg and that I would consider as reliable (since I can't fix everything on it with my existing tools, I'd either have to buy more tools or pay someone to fix stuff).
I sometimes feel bad about spewing probably at least 5x my share of CO2/CO into the atmosphere, and dripping oil all over, but I don't have the... buying power to go green. I try to make up for it by bicycling whenever possible and keeping my electric usage at home to a minimum (motion detector lightswitches rock!).
Hard to believe you found a new car for under 15 kilobucks, thats pretty impressive. Perhaps I should investigate used prices on those.
I wonder if we'll ever see some enclosed single-passenger vehicles? I'd love to buy an ultra-cheap vehicle for my 20 mile round-trip commute, but motorcycles are expensive, exposed to the weather, and while I support organ donation, I don't plan on hurring the process along any more than necessary.
when I also know they spend more than 50% of their day online surfing sites completely unrelated to their job and get less done in the 50% they actually do work
Sometimes I have that problem. just can't stay off the net some days.
I tried doing my work with paper and pen once, but the HammerMill platform just wouldn't compile my code properly.
the end result of computer-editing tends to be rather scattershot
IME this seems to be more related to poor editing skills than an inability to form coherent arguments.
People seem to think that the ability to write the stuff and edit it immediately means they don't have to save it, come back later and read it start-to-finish to see if it still makes sense.
Working on paper does largely solve this problem, but its also slow and a pain in the ass. I think that you'll find simply reading the finished work as if you had never seen it before (as opposed to just scanning it to check the ideas and hitting it with a spell/grammer checker) will almost completely fix the problem.
Can I get a PDF of this book?