i was trying to make a point, and i kept a simple view. i do know that teachers teach the "workers", and that scientists help them get more efficient (on the other hand, listening to a nice song relaxes, and a relaxed worker is a better worker, and so on). anyway, the problem is too complex to fit into a few paragraphs... so i did what i could.
You are right: legally, there is no justification for discarding copyright. But morally, any individual is required to contribute to general well-being; nothing more, nothing less. You have to realize that there are two actual classes of people who "really work": the ones who "make food", and the ones who "keep us healthy" (as a simplistic view). Teachers, scientists, artists, lawyers and politicians are all "parasites". Society should decide how important each parasite is, and reward them accordingly.
I find it strange that Britney Spears sang for a few years, and made enough money so that she'd never need to work again. I think someone who teaches thirty kids to read every year deserves more. And so on. Morally, I think that as long as the average human works a few decades just to be able to raise their kids, there is no problem with copying movies, music and books for free.
If the "creators" are good enough, people will make donations so that "creators" can keep creating.
You have to realize that experimental physics needed lasers. for a lot of things (measurements suddenly got more precise). CDs are just an application of precise measurements. High speed internet is here because instead of radio waves we can use visible light (but the basic idea is still to send information through a wave).
It is however true that it takes time to bring various pieces of information together, and mankind can probably still progress a lot just by being able to properly connect the dots that are already visible.
I think so. The truth is, I was very excited about wolframalpha when it became available. And then I realized I don't really need it. In the instances where I truly need to ask a question, it's usually too complicated, and I have to search for articles discussing a specific topic instead.
I don't know. He might be a smart man, but starting any discussion by "be careful of population X" is always a bad idea. And if he sincerely believes this, he's not smart at all.
Any civilization that is sufficiently advanced to travel between two stars (as an entire civilization), and does so, will implicitly be able to use energy from the star very efficiently (think of a Dyson sphere). If you have a ship large enough to keep all your people, with a stable ecosystem that can get you from one star to another, what the hell do you need a planet for?! And if you can use the star directly, how hard is it to find a star that doesn't have any inhabited planets? Furthermore, what would be the problem with leaving the teeny Earth in orbit while you use the rest of the energy emitted by the Sun? Earth can barely cast a shadow on the Moon, and the Moon is close, and in the orbital plane. Why would you even think of using the orbital plane, which is full of asteroids and stuff? (I would go between Mercury and Venus, with an orbit perpendicular to the orbital plane)
The second case is the case of a civilization that sends out colonies. The same arguments as before apply. These colonists would have a ship that carried them for a long time between stars. They can obviously eat very little, or sleep for long times, so they would have no reasonable motive for staying and killing humans, when they can easily set off for another star. It's pretty obvious to me they wouldn't really need a terraformed planet.
It's true that I don't see the need for world peace before sending explorers to other stars. What I see is that most likely the societies that get tired of war will get off their planet, and go to the satelites of a nearby gas giant to live in peace. From there, they can silently grow enough to start visiting other stars, while the idiots back home are busy choosing between Muhammed and Christ.
I sincerely don't see a reason for us to fear aliens. Intelligent machines would be dangerous, in the sense that they could reasonably argue that their energy requirements are less than ours, and it wouldn't make sense to give resources to the race that is less efficient. But they would have no reason to let us live in constant numbers (what, isn't it enough to have two kids per family?), or even grow a little as they grow, because if we do create intelligent machines, they will most likely have moral values that are close to ours (otherwise we pull the plug before linking them to a robot body. It's called survival, and any animal life would do it).
if you're gonna go with a conspiracy, you might as well suppose that they found out the reason X for which the polish plane fell. they didn't want to let people know about X, but they grounded all planes until they could get rid of X.
the problem is that you're talking about hundreds of millions of people looking at the sky more than usual especially because they were trying to see the ash. so X must be invisible. I've heard nothing about cars having problems with GPS systems, so it couldn't have been something that could disrupt communications with ground or satellites.
Already, X is getting weird. And be serious... political leaders being disgusted to stand next to a murderer?!
I am sometimes sorry that I don't have the time to investigate strange events. But I don't know people living in Britain or Iceland, I don't have direct access to satelites, so I can't prove or disprove anything. In this particular case, I choose to believe that it was a coincidence, and that they just wanted to be blamed for delaying flights instead of being blamed for allowing people to die; I know I would make the same choice.
on a more serious note, i would buy a pedal generator for my laptop if i could find it at a reasonable price (my cousin said he could build one for me with 100-200 euros, so I would pay 70-100 euros for one). why spend money on the gym when I can work out while working?
if i had a sufficiently advanced technology available, i would put all kids through virtual reality programs instead of school. it would probably be a lot easier to control. the many ways of the flying spaghetti monster are unknown.
i like you. what we can do is deny consumerism. only buy what you need, and only work for as much money as you actually need.
as our numbers grow, we can hope that we'll be able to organize to actually do something to protect ourselves from the rest of mankind. and that's about it.
and so on. what, just because you're *more* smarter than the rest of us, you think you can get us to pay for your investigation of the nature of reality? look, they tell me enough about math and philosophy in school, i just want a place where i can shoot/dismember people, drive really fast, and not have society tell me it's wrong. is that ok?/end sarcasm.
I agree that computer games could be much more. But the truth is that the people who could enjoy smarter games are already doing it. By the way, if any of you has some time on their hands, please make a labyrinth in curved spaces (i know nothing of opengl, here's a link i found http://www.geometrygames.org/CurvedSpaces/ ). Pretty please...
seriously, guys. mod parent up. it's important to ask the right questions from time to time, even if you have no idea how to begin to answer. What is the difference between a virus and a selfassembling chip? dump their seed in the right environment, and they start eating. or something like that.
Our only true solution is to ignore them. You want me to pay for your music? ok, a few geeks will waste a few months at some point writing a open source code that can generate music of a few given styles. You want me to pay for your movies? We have blender and python, and a few geeks can waste a few months to make it simple to generate a video if you have a script. THESE TOOLS ONLY NEED TO BE CREATED ONCE AND WE NO LONGER NEED TO PAY.
Researchers the world over will move to open content journals because they need the money for other things. so we geeks will live on, ignoring the rich and cool as always. And if we really want to, we can pay for something that is worth the cost, and in time learn how to do that too.
on a related note, we should be less worried about this stuff. really. these are the same people who burned other people at the stake because they said the earth is round. our purpose should be to improve our quality of life, and any interaction with them should be guided by this principle.
I assume that's what they're trying to film. It could work, but it doesn't really make sense. They're only purpose is to make money. Also Foundation's Edge and Foundation and the Earth might work. But I sincerely doubt that the people who get the books would need a movie to spoil the way they imagined them, and I doubt that they really need to spoil these books just to make more money. By the way, I liked the way they made "I, robot". It was probably one of the good ways to combine all the stories into a movie that made sense as a movie.
But the Foundation series...? Why not film "Yoda: the beginnings" or just plain old follow up to "Avatar: Body snatchers from the planet Earth". They'd still make money, without all the hard thinking.
This would be the best use for such a technology. Now we just have to wait to see if it gets done... Having large solar panels on a space station transmitting energy to the ground would be very clean and somehow reasonable (everybody should realise that most of the energy emitted by the sun is wasted outside the orbital plane).
(not trying to rain on your parade or anything) Back on topic. Humans nearly went extinct during the nuclear missile crysis... In terms of survival requirements, we should have already sent a few groups to the moon and mars. People enjoy watching disaster movies like 2012 (I saw it as a comedy myself), but they should realise that focusing all your resources (as a species) on "I want a TV in every room" is a losing strategy. If I had the money, I would be long gone. "Yes, 21st century society is very advanced and we have everything we need, but if they have a power outage or similar in a hidden bunker in Russia, we all die".
like it or not. you can choose between keeping the human population to a constant (and already there are a lot of starving people), or change something to the food we eat. I didn't do any research on the issue, but if a biologist says he wants funding to make food that grows faster and easier, I think he should get that funding. I would gladly have society give up on "new clothes every season, or you're a caveman/woman/person/thingie" and put more money into this kind of research. but i'm just a geeky hippie, so i don't get a say in this. on the other hand, if there are alternatives to gmo foods, let me know.
I sincerely believe that they should tax mp3 players more, because we all know people use them to listen to stolen music. And they should tax headphones more. And they should tax trains and buses and the subway, because that's where people use mp3 players. And I think the best way to handle it would be to tax all people who are not deaf, because they can hear music. Also, deaf people who can read, because some books talk about music, and you never know.
the problem with comunism is that if you trust everybody to take just what they need, you will be eaten alive. Nature gives the same opportunities to all species, and we as humans have a choice to take what we need, or to take what we can. So now we proudly wear our mp3 players, cellphones and so on, claiming we need them. I believe the priest is right, but naive. What we need is real education so that people to stop being selfish idiots, not to make it ok for the poor to steal from the rich.
I mean... if someone were to destroy this hand for some reason, would they be sued for damaging his personal property, or for bodily harm? Seriously. And what then of the destruction of a "personal" computer, cell phone and/or other gadget (which some can argue are more useful than 1 hand or 1 foot)?
I get it. the brain is big enough for me, my alternate personalities, my paranoid delusions, my subconscious and the useful part dealing with the heartlungsstomach thingies. I thought various experiences just put information in my memory. But if experiences can actually rewire the brain, where does that lead me? is "I" rewirable too? Thanks for nothing. now my day will be spent on purposeless pondering of the nature of me.
It makes sense that the economy is directly related to energy use. It doesn't make sense to maintain ridiculous standards of living ("But I NEED a car! How can I get a girlfriend if I don't have a car?!"). On monday I plan to read the actual article, not just the sciencedaily report, because I'm curious about the "1 nuclear plant" per day conclusion...
Slashdot Mirror
i was trying to make a point, and i kept a simple view. i do know that teachers teach the "workers", and that scientists help them get more efficient (on the other hand, listening to a nice song relaxes, and a relaxed worker is a better worker, and so on).
anyway, the problem is too complex to fit into a few paragraphs... so i did what i could.
You are right: legally, there is no justification for discarding copyright.
But morally, any individual is required to contribute to general well-being; nothing more, nothing less.
You have to realize that there are two actual classes of people who "really work": the ones who "make food", and the ones who "keep us healthy" (as a simplistic view). Teachers, scientists, artists, lawyers and politicians are all "parasites". Society should decide how important each parasite is, and reward them accordingly.
I find it strange that Britney Spears sang for a few years, and made enough money so that she'd never need to work again. I think someone who teaches thirty kids to read every year deserves more. And so on. Morally, I think that as long as the average human works a few decades just to be able to raise their kids, there is no problem with copying movies, music and books for free.
If the "creators" are good enough, people will make donations so that "creators" can keep creating.
You have to realize that experimental physics needed lasers. for a lot of things (measurements suddenly got more precise).
CDs are just an application of precise measurements.
High speed internet is here because instead of radio waves we can use visible light (but the basic idea is still to send information through a wave).
It is however true that it takes time to bring various pieces of information together, and mankind can probably still progress a lot just by being able to properly connect the dots that are already visible.
I think so. The truth is, I was very excited about wolframalpha when it became available. And then I realized I don't really need it.
In the instances where I truly need to ask a question, it's usually too complicated, and I have to search for articles discussing a specific topic instead.
Actually, they should sue the builder as well. Then sue God for making the builder.
I don't know. He might be a smart man, but starting any discussion by "be careful of population X" is always a bad idea. And if he sincerely believes this, he's not smart at all.
Any civilization that is sufficiently advanced to travel between two stars (as an entire civilization), and does so, will implicitly be able to use energy from the star very efficiently (think of a Dyson sphere). If you have a ship large enough to keep all your people, with a stable ecosystem that can get you from one star to another, what the hell do you need a planet for?! And if you can use the star directly, how hard is it to find a star that doesn't have any inhabited planets? Furthermore, what would be the problem with leaving the teeny Earth in orbit while you use the rest of the energy emitted by the Sun? Earth can barely cast a shadow on the Moon, and the Moon is close, and in the orbital plane. Why would you even think of using the orbital plane, which is full of asteroids and stuff? (I would go between Mercury and Venus, with an orbit perpendicular to the orbital plane)
The second case is the case of a civilization that sends out colonies. The same arguments as before apply. These colonists would have a ship that carried them for a long time between stars. They can obviously eat very little, or sleep for long times, so they would have no reasonable motive for staying and killing humans, when they can easily set off for another star. It's pretty obvious to me they wouldn't really need a terraformed planet.
It's true that I don't see the need for world peace before sending explorers to other stars. What I see is that most likely the societies that get tired of war will get off their planet, and go to the satelites of a nearby gas giant to live in peace. From there, they can silently grow enough to start visiting other stars, while the idiots back home are busy choosing between Muhammed and Christ.
I sincerely don't see a reason for us to fear aliens. Intelligent machines would be dangerous, in the sense that they could reasonably argue that their energy requirements are less than ours, and it wouldn't make sense to give resources to the race that is less efficient. But they would have no reason to let us live in constant numbers (what, isn't it enough to have two kids per family?), or even grow a little as they grow, because if we do create intelligent machines, they will most likely have moral values that are close to ours (otherwise we pull the plug before linking them to a robot body. It's called survival, and any animal life would do it).
if you're gonna go with a conspiracy, you might as well suppose that they found out the reason X for which the polish plane fell. they didn't want to let people know about X, but they grounded all planes until they could get rid of X.
the problem is that you're talking about hundreds of millions of people looking at the sky more than usual especially because they were trying to see the ash. so X must be invisible. I've heard nothing about cars having problems with GPS systems, so it couldn't have been something that could disrupt communications with ground or satellites.
Already, X is getting weird. And be serious... political leaders being disgusted to stand next to a murderer?!
I am sometimes sorry that I don't have the time to investigate strange events. But I don't know people living in Britain or Iceland, I don't have direct access to satelites, so I can't prove or disprove anything. In this particular case, I choose to believe that it was a coincidence, and that they just wanted to be blamed for delaying flights instead of being blamed for allowing people to die; I know I would make the same choice.
they already have: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8621038.stm
on a more serious note, i would buy a pedal generator for my laptop if i could find it at a reasonable price (my cousin said he could build one for me with 100-200 euros, so I would pay 70-100 euros for one).
why spend money on the gym when I can work out while working?
if i had a sufficiently advanced technology available, i would put all kids through virtual reality programs instead of school. it would probably be a lot easier to control. the many ways of the flying spaghetti monster are unknown.
i like you. what we can do is deny consumerism. only buy what you need, and only work for as much money as you actually need.
as our numbers grow, we can hope that we'll be able to organize to actually do something to protect ourselves from the rest of mankind. and that's about it.
and so on. /end sarcasm.
what, just because you're *more* smarter than the rest of us, you think you can get us to pay for your investigation of the nature of reality?
look, they tell me enough about math and philosophy in school, i just want a place where i can shoot/dismember people, drive really fast, and not have society tell me it's wrong. is that ok?
I agree that computer games could be much more. But the truth is that the people who could enjoy smarter games are already doing it.
By the way, if any of you has some time on their hands, please make a labyrinth in curved spaces (i know nothing of opengl, here's a link i found http://www.geometrygames.org/CurvedSpaces/ ). Pretty please...
seriously, guys. mod parent up. it's important to ask the right questions from time to time, even if you have no idea how to begin to answer. What is the difference between a virus and a selfassembling chip? dump their seed in the right environment, and they start eating. or something like that.
mod parent up
Our only true solution is to ignore them.
You want me to pay for your music? ok, a few geeks will waste a few months at some point writing a open source code that can generate music of a few given styles. You want me to pay for your movies? We have blender and python, and a few geeks can waste a few months to make it simple to generate a video if you have a script.
THESE TOOLS ONLY NEED TO BE CREATED ONCE AND WE NO LONGER NEED TO PAY.
Researchers the world over will move to open content journals because they need the money for other things. so we geeks will live on, ignoring the rich and cool as always. And if we really want to, we can pay for something that is worth the cost, and in time learn how to do that too.
on a related note, we should be less worried about this stuff. really. these are the same people who burned other people at the stake because they said the earth is round. our purpose should be to improve our quality of life, and any interaction with them should be guided by this principle.
(yes, i consider them to be "them").
I assume that's what they're trying to film. It could work, but it doesn't really make sense. They're only purpose is to make money.
Also Foundation's Edge and Foundation and the Earth might work. But I sincerely doubt that the people who get the books would need a movie to spoil the way they imagined them, and I doubt that they really need to spoil these books just to make more money.
By the way, I liked the way they made "I, robot". It was probably one of the good ways to combine all the stories into a movie that made sense as a movie.
But the Foundation series...? Why not film "Yoda: the beginnings" or just plain old follow up to "Avatar: Body snatchers from the planet Earth". They'd still make money, without all the hard thinking.
This would be the best use for such a technology. Now we just have to wait to see if it gets done...
Having large solar panels on a space station transmitting energy to the ground would be very clean and somehow reasonable (everybody should realise that most of the energy emitted by the sun is wasted outside the orbital plane).
(not trying to rain on your parade or anything)
Back on topic. Humans nearly went extinct during the nuclear missile crysis... In terms of survival requirements, we should have already sent a few groups to the moon and mars.
People enjoy watching disaster movies like 2012 (I saw it as a comedy myself), but they should realise that focusing all your resources (as a species) on "I want a TV in every room" is a losing strategy.
If I had the money, I would be long gone. "Yes, 21st century society is very advanced and we have everything we need, but if they have a power outage or similar in a hidden bunker in Russia, we all die".
like it or not.
you can choose between keeping the human population to a constant (and already there are a lot of starving people), or change something to the food we eat.
I didn't do any research on the issue, but if a biologist says he wants funding to make food that grows faster and easier, I think he should get that funding. I would gladly have society give up on "new clothes every season, or you're a caveman/woman/person/thingie" and put more money into this kind of research.
but i'm just a geeky hippie, so i don't get a say in this.
on the other hand, if there are alternatives to gmo foods, let me know.
I sincerely believe that they should tax mp3 players more, because we all know people use them to listen to stolen music. And they should tax headphones more. And they should tax trains and buses and the subway, because that's where people use mp3 players. And I think the best way to handle it would be to tax all people who are not deaf, because they can hear music. Also, deaf people who can read, because some books talk about music, and you never know.
the problem with comunism is that if you trust everybody to take just what they need, you will be eaten alive. Nature gives the same opportunities to all species, and we as humans have a choice to take what we need, or to take what we can. So now we proudly wear our mp3 players, cellphones and so on, claiming we need them.
I believe the priest is right, but naive. What we need is real education so that people to stop being selfish idiots, not to make it ok for the poor to steal from the rich.
I mean... if someone were to destroy this hand for some reason, would they be sued for damaging his personal property, or for bodily harm?
Seriously.
And what then of the destruction of a "personal" computer, cell phone and/or other gadget (which some can argue are more useful than 1 hand or 1 foot)?
I read your reply so I "experienced" it.
Thus "I" just died inside. And you're saying it's a good thing.
(my wife keeps telling me to stop making bad jokes, but she doesn't see me here)
I get it. the brain is big enough for me, my alternate personalities, my paranoid delusions, my subconscious and the useful part dealing with the heartlungsstomach thingies.
I thought various experiences just put information in my memory. But if experiences can actually rewire the brain, where does that lead me? is "I" rewirable too?
Thanks for nothing. now my day will be spent on purposeless pondering of the nature of me.
It makes sense that the economy is directly related to energy use.
It doesn't make sense to maintain ridiculous standards of living ("But I NEED a car! How can I get a girlfriend if I don't have a car?!").
On monday I plan to read the actual article, not just the sciencedaily report, because I'm curious about the "1 nuclear plant" per day conclusion...