Actually, I didn't mean for either of them to imply a preferred direction. I've chosen not to "make it big" each chance I got, specifically because I couldn't scrub hard enough when I got home from talking to the people I was forced to associate with. I'd far rather make $35,000 per year, quietly coding database front-ends while I tinker with my artwork at home, than spend the next ten years "buying and selling men like you for breakfast", as one of my almost-partners said to a friend of mine.
Yes, it's probably a waste of my coding talent, but I'd rather it be wasted than misused (read: used in any way *I* disagree with).
And to respond to the inevitable counters: that's how I want it. Some people choose to be paid for their talent in cash; I choose to be paid in leniency. I can afford to do what I want, and so I don't try to grab at more. Granted, it sucks sometimes when unforseen events push my finances into the red, but economics is a negative-sum game, and I'd rather soak that karma than pass it on.
I don't bitch because MY life sucks; I bitch because many of the people I choose to associate with, people just as insightful and charismatic as the multi-millionaires I've shaken hands with, are starving to death on street corners for no better reasons than an accident of birth.
And before you go off about left/right, I happen to be a die-hard capitalist, and I would LOVE to see true capitalism implemented in America. It's not going to happen in our lifetimes without a revolution, but if it did, we could ALL share in the propserity.
What we have is corporatist fascism, thinly disguised as consumerist capitalism. If you believe otherwise you're deluding yourself.
Now, I'm not implying something's wrong here--I think many people are poor because they make bad financial choices (like payday loans!) and not because the "system" is against them.
You think maybe they wouldn't HAVE to make those "choices" if maybe they weren't poor? And maybe they wouldn't BE poor if they didn't have to make those "choices"? Christ, man, can't you recognize a feedback loop when you see one?
I'd say about 50% of poor people are poor because they're stupid, and the other 50% are poor because they're oppressed. I've nearly slid into poverty twice now, and I assure you, the further down the slope you slide, the harder it is to find purchase and keep from sliding further.
I'd also say that about 20% of rich people are rich because they're shrewd, and the other 80% are rich because they're priveleged. I've nearly "made it big" three times now, and I assure you, it's not WHAT you know, it's WHO you know.
"To those that have, much shall be given. To those that have not, even that which they have shall be taken away." Why is one man's fundamental human will "worth" more just because his daddy can fund his entrepeneuralship and get him the right connections to land 50 million dollar deals, while another man - with just as much talent and integrity - is forced to work at McDonalds and get nickeled-and-dimed to death, paying rent on a house he'll never own, taking loans just to feed himself, until one day a computer glitch fucks up his credit rating and his only two choises are starve or steal?
Easy - assuming we haven't used up the necessary resources yet, we move on to the rest of the galaxy. That's what life does - spreads, infects, grows. If it doesn't, OTHER life will for it. The cost of reversing entropy is a neverending hunger.
Where's the "-1, Pretentious" moderator option when you need it?;)
(Kidding! Kidding! jeesh...)
Re:In that case -- Yay! I win a million dollars!
on
Riemann Hypothesis Proved?
·
· Score: 3, Informative
No, silly rabbit! They don't mean a straight line in the {z(s), s} coordinate plane, they mean a straight line in the {s.r, s.i} coordinate plane.
I.e., s, which is a complex number, has two parts - a 'real' part and an 'imaginary' part. Thus, z(s) for any complex s returns zero - according to this proof - if s.r (the 'real' part) and s.i (the 'imaginary' part) lie along a certain straight line.
Quantum mechanics unravels deterministically, while it is sampled stochastically. What this means is that the universe is computing the outcomes, and we're sampling random values within those outcomes.
In layman's terms, the idea is to tap into the biggest, fastest, most powerful physics computational engine ever created, and setting up bizzare interactions of objects, because the particular bizzare interactions will happen to result in a state that we can read to get an answer to a math problem - simply by the nature of the laws of physics, which are mathematical. If we know, for example, that EM is an inverse square law, then the simplest way to compute the inverse square of X is to convert X into the distance from a light source to a sensor, and just read the sensor.
Using the fundamental laws of physics to do math is the idea behind the abacus, in an extremely abstract sense. It's also the idea behind the Babbage computer, in a slightly less abstract sense, and behind the electronic computer, in an even less abstract sense. The quantum computer just continues the de-abstraction trend, and gets the computation as close to the bare-level of the actual physics engine as possible.
Think about it - if you have a itty bitty calculator that can do 3 calculations per second, any calculations you want, or a huge honkin' physics simulator that can do 3x10^30 calculations per second, so long as they're all four-dimensional tensor calculations, what's easier - punching in sixteen trillion equations by hand into the hand calculator, or finding a way to convert those equations into four-dimensional tensor calculations and throwing them at that enormous physics computational engine?
Now, what's the biggest physics computational engine we have access to? (hint: You're soaking in it.)
Do you really want a phase-entangled cockroach crawling across your foot at 3AM while you're on the computer? Think about it - how hard is it NOW to tell whether a bug just crawled over your foot, or whether you imagined it? Now, add a third case: the bug exists, Jim, but not as we know it.
Yes. This is a function of our biological evolution from primates. Our biochemistry and genetic neurology have programmed us to vie for position by abusing those less healthy than ourselves. This will continue unabated until humanity learns to control its hormones and think with our forebrains, not with our midbrains.
This is not possible for a normal, healthy, "sane" person without the use of serious psychotropics.
Hence, the only people capable of 'tuning in' to alternate forms of behavior and 'dropping out' of the abuse-cycle rat race are druggies and the psychologically abberant. 90% of these people are dangerous; the other 10% are visionaries. Society's only hope is for the "normal" to gravitate towards the behavior model represented by that 10%, which will not happen so long as they remain frightened by the behavior of negatively aberrant 90%.
Okay, given that some people who "flip out", grab a gun and kill somebody are "nice people", and end up in forensing mental hospitals, and others are "no-good shits", and end up in jail, what determines which way any one particular had-it-up-to-here victim-cum-perp will go? Which types of people TEND to wind up in prison, and which types TEND to wind up in a psych ward?
Yes. The circumstances that determine whether a baby is born with defects or not apply to all babies; if the circumstances warrant, a baby is born 'healthy'. Otherwise, it isn't.
That's really interesting. I wonder, what would have happened if their program had continued, and they had accidentally put together sufficient critical mass without realizing it?
A war ended by a nuclear mishap before the bomb was ever created would certainly have led to a radically different history.
Out of curiosity (and I humbly apologize for being off-topic here), are fan-lists replacing karma as/.'s sense of 'leetness'? I'm seeing less and less "karma-whoring" and karma-based metatalk, and more and more discussions about friends/fanlists. Are we looking at a second generation of Slashdot society?
If so, cool. Karma should be about how well your posts foster the community; friends/foes should be about whether people agree with/like what your posts are saying.
Yes, but now imagine that anyone can get paper from the minor suppliers for free, faster and easier than getting it from the major supplier, not to mention that the paper is higher quality. What kind of idiot would go and buy low-grade, expensive paper from the major supplier?
Ok, now imagine that the monopolists, who sell expensive, hard-to-use, cheap paper, ALSO happen to have cornered the market on pens, pencils and markers, and have repeatedly made certain that any pen you can buy will ONLY work on their paper. How many people do you think will go to the effort of making their own pens from scratch, just so they can use the better, cheaper paper?
Why is this moderated 'funny'? This is the most insightful comment ever posted to Slashdot. Everyone needs to pay attention to this one, because it's the most fundamentally important truth there is:
The rules of physics (meta- or otherwise) apply equally to all parties. Just because you don't like the outcome does not mean the contest was rigged. Life is a Darwinistic mixture of competition and cooperation, and whatever gets you there is the way you go.
Or, as another man once said, "Do as thou wilt is the whole of the law. There is no law above Do As Thou Wilt."
I think that any time you try objecting to the notion that "child pornography" MUST be considered wrong by EVERYONE, you'll quickly find yourself on the wrong end of the pedophile witchhunt.
(no need to troll about that they have the right to do so, irc is becoming fast the only place on net where you can really say what you want and not get modded down, for good and bad).
*** Hentai sets mode: +m <Hentai> What was that, again? <Hentai> Didn't think so. *** Hentai sets mode: -o+b gl4ss You have been kicked (who's your God?)
Nor is it measured in dollars. And I would argue we have yet to properly define it so that we CAN measure it consistently and accurately.
The bottom line is, anything which keeps prices down, keeps wages down too. And anything which keeps wages up, keeps prices up too. The only way to maintain a surplus is to exploit someone else - otherwise, you're forced to pay the 'real cost' of goods, and your so-called 'standard of living' goes down, as items become more and more expensive.
Let's step back and think about this for a minute.
Either: We keep prices low, by outsourcing all our jobs, in which case (to stay competitive) our average income gets cut by half, - or - We keep our income solid, by forcing companies to use US workers, in which case the cost of goods double.
So, if I have $200, which buys 2 pairs of Nikes at $100 each, how is that different from me having $100, which buys 2 pairs of Nikes at $50 each?
The fundamental mechanism at work here is market equilibrium. The US has an artificially inflated labor market. Now that we're equalizing with the rest of the world, you're going to see wages come down. This will cause prices to come down, as items are less expensive to produce. The whole while, the CEOs get rich. Then, it balances out, and wages go up again, and items cost more to produce, raising prices. The whole while, the CEOs still get rich.
Heh. Except that, if there's anything the Enron/WorldCom/Anderson debacle taught us, it's that stock is worthless. The only way to truly take value from a company is to steal it, an action which is only possible from the inside. You want to succeed? Weasel your way into the upper management of a reasonably asset-heavy company, and 'appropriate' some excess corporate wealth from your white-collar lessers.
Let's say there's a street that a statistically high number of rapes occurs on.
Let's say that a study looks into this, and discovers that because of how the street is designed and maintained (the numerous potholes and road hazards causing cars to crash, the numerous hiding-places where rapists can hang out, the easy access to side-alleys that allows the rapists to escape unnoticed and unpunished after they finish their nefarious intent... etc. etc.), the place is a prime 'hunting ground' for rapists. The road is so poorly maintained that the police can't patrol it, but it's the main thoroughfare, so everyone has to risk driving down it - and whenever a young girl blows out a tire on a spike jutting out of a pothole, some juvie with a penchant for the old ultra-violence jumps out, jumps her, and flees to his humble domicile to relax to good ol' Ludwig Von's lovely 9th, leaving the poor girl bruised, bloodied and bereft of her dignity.
At what point do you stop telling people to avoid the road - which, unfortunately, is the ONLY road most of them really have a choice to use - and get down to demanding the owners of the road do something about it?
The key/lock system. The height of each notch on the key is an analog value, as is the depth of the pin on the associated tumbler. However, at the moment of (attempted) unlocking, the lock acts as a ADC (analog-to-digital converter), converting each notch on the key into either a '1' (match) or '0' (no match). Thus, it could be argued by a sufficiently expensive lawyer that the actual process of opening the lock is digital by nature, and thus falls under the DMCA.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, I didn't mean for either of them to imply a preferred direction. I've chosen not to "make it big" each chance I got, specifically because I couldn't scrub hard enough when I got home from talking to the people I was forced to associate with. I'd far rather make $35,000 per year, quietly coding database front-ends while I tinker with my artwork at home, than spend the next ten years "buying and selling men like you for breakfast", as one of my almost-partners said to a friend of mine.
Yes, it's probably a waste of my coding talent, but I'd rather it be wasted than misused (read: used in any way *I* disagree with).
And to respond to the inevitable counters: that's how I want it. Some people choose to be paid for their talent in cash; I choose to be paid in leniency. I can afford to do what I want, and so I don't try to grab at more. Granted, it sucks sometimes when unforseen events push my finances into the red, but economics is a negative-sum game, and I'd rather soak that karma than pass it on.
I don't bitch because MY life sucks; I bitch because many of the people I choose to associate with, people just as insightful and charismatic as the multi-millionaires I've shaken hands with, are starving to death on street corners for no better reasons than an accident of birth.
And before you go off about left/right, I happen to be a die-hard capitalist, and I would LOVE to see true capitalism implemented in America. It's not going to happen in our lifetimes without a revolution, but if it did, we could ALL share in the propserity.
What we have is corporatist fascism, thinly disguised as consumerist capitalism. If you believe otherwise you're deluding yourself.
Now, I'm not implying something's wrong here--I think many people are poor because they make bad financial choices (like payday loans!) and not because the "system" is against them.
You think maybe they wouldn't HAVE to make those "choices" if maybe they weren't poor? And maybe they wouldn't BE poor if they didn't have to make those "choices"? Christ, man, can't you recognize a feedback loop when you see one?
I'd say about 50% of poor people are poor because they're stupid, and the other 50% are poor because they're oppressed. I've nearly slid into poverty twice now, and I assure you, the further down the slope you slide, the harder it is to find purchase and keep from sliding further.
I'd also say that about 20% of rich people are rich because they're shrewd, and the other 80% are rich because they're priveleged. I've nearly "made it big" three times now, and I assure you, it's not WHAT you know, it's WHO you know.
"To those that have, much shall be given. To those that have not, even that which they have shall be taken away." Why is one man's fundamental human will "worth" more just because his daddy can fund his entrepeneuralship and get him the right connections to land 50 million dollar deals, while another man - with just as much talent and integrity - is forced to work at McDonalds and get nickeled-and-dimed to death, paying rent on a house he'll never own, taking loans just to feed himself, until one day a computer glitch fucks up his credit rating and his only two choises are starve or steal?
There's gotta be a better way.
And do what? We're NERDS.
Easy - assuming we haven't used up the necessary resources yet, we move on to the rest of the galaxy. That's what life does - spreads, infects, grows. If it doesn't, OTHER life will for it. The cost of reversing entropy is a neverending hunger.
Where's the "-1, Pretentious" moderator option when you need it? ;)
(Kidding! Kidding! jeesh...)
No, silly rabbit! They don't mean a straight line in the {z(s), s} coordinate plane, they mean a straight line in the {s.r, s.i} coordinate plane.
I.e., s, which is a complex number, has two parts - a 'real' part and an 'imaginary' part. Thus, z(s) for any complex s returns zero - according to this proof - if s.r (the 'real' part) and s.i (the 'imaginary' part) lie along a certain straight line.
Make more sense now?
No, we most certainly wouldn't.
It's more fundamental than that.
Quantum mechanics unravels deterministically, while it is sampled stochastically. What this means is that the universe is computing the outcomes, and we're sampling random values within those outcomes.
In layman's terms, the idea is to tap into the biggest, fastest, most powerful physics computational engine ever created, and setting up bizzare interactions of objects, because the particular bizzare interactions will happen to result in a state that we can read to get an answer to a math problem - simply by the nature of the laws of physics, which are mathematical. If we know, for example, that EM is an inverse square law, then the simplest way to compute the inverse square of X is to convert X into the distance from a light source to a sensor, and just read the sensor.
Using the fundamental laws of physics to do math is the idea behind the abacus, in an extremely abstract sense. It's also the idea behind the Babbage computer, in a slightly less abstract sense, and behind the electronic computer, in an even less abstract sense. The quantum computer just continues the de-abstraction trend, and gets the computation as close to the bare-level of the actual physics engine as possible.
Think about it - if you have a itty bitty calculator that can do 3 calculations per second, any calculations you want, or a huge honkin' physics simulator that can do 3x10^30 calculations per second, so long as they're all four-dimensional tensor calculations, what's easier - punching in sixteen trillion equations by hand into the hand calculator, or finding a way to convert those equations into four-dimensional tensor calculations and throwing them at that enormous physics computational engine?
Now, what's the biggest physics computational engine we have access to? (hint: You're soaking in it.)
Do you really want a phase-entangled cockroach crawling across your foot at 3AM while you're on the computer? Think about it - how hard is it NOW to tell whether a bug just crawled over your foot, or whether you imagined it? Now, add a third case: the bug exists, Jim, but not as we know it.
Yes. This is a function of our biological evolution from primates. Our biochemistry and genetic neurology have programmed us to vie for position by abusing those less healthy than ourselves. This will continue unabated until humanity learns to control its hormones and think with our forebrains, not with our midbrains.
This is not possible for a normal, healthy, "sane" person without the use of serious psychotropics.
Hence, the only people capable of 'tuning in' to alternate forms of behavior and 'dropping out' of the abuse-cycle rat race are druggies and the psychologically abberant. 90% of these people are dangerous; the other 10% are visionaries. Society's only hope is for the "normal" to gravitate towards the behavior model represented by that 10%, which will not happen so long as they remain frightened by the behavior of negatively aberrant 90%.
Okay, given that some people who "flip out", grab a gun and kill somebody are "nice people", and end up in forensing mental hospitals, and others are "no-good shits", and end up in jail, what determines which way any one particular had-it-up-to-here victim-cum-perp will go? Which types of people TEND to wind up in prison, and which types TEND to wind up in a psych ward?
Yes. The circumstances that determine whether a baby is born with defects or not apply to all babies; if the circumstances warrant, a baby is born 'healthy'. Otherwise, it isn't.
That's really interesting. I wonder, what would have happened if their program had continued, and they had accidentally put together sufficient critical mass without realizing it?
A war ended by a nuclear mishap before the bomb was ever created would certainly have led to a radically different history.
Out of curiosity (and I humbly apologize for being off-topic here), are fan-lists replacing karma as /.'s sense of 'leetness'? I'm seeing less and less "karma-whoring" and karma-based metatalk, and more and more discussions about friends/fanlists. Are we looking at a second generation of Slashdot society?
If so, cool. Karma should be about how well your posts foster the community; friends/foes should be about whether people agree with/like what your posts are saying.
*looks at his 'fans' list* gee. That's sobering.
Yes, but now imagine that anyone can get paper from the minor suppliers for free, faster and easier than getting it from the major supplier, not to mention that the paper is higher quality. What kind of idiot would go and buy low-grade, expensive paper from the major supplier?
Ok, now imagine that the monopolists, who sell expensive, hard-to-use, cheap paper, ALSO happen to have cornered the market on pens, pencils and markers, and have repeatedly made certain that any pen you can buy will ONLY work on their paper. How many people do you think will go to the effort of making their own pens from scratch, just so they can use the better, cheaper paper?
Why is this moderated 'funny'? This is the most insightful comment ever posted to Slashdot. Everyone needs to pay attention to this one, because it's the most fundamentally important truth there is:
The rules of physics (meta- or otherwise) apply equally to all parties. Just because you don't like the outcome does not mean the contest was rigged. Life is a Darwinistic mixture of competition and cooperation, and whatever gets you there is the way you go.
Or, as another man once said, "Do as thou wilt is the whole of the law. There is no law above Do As Thou Wilt."
I think that any time you try objecting to the notion that "child pornography" MUST be considered wrong by EVERYONE, you'll quickly find yourself on the wrong end of the pedophile witchhunt.
Be careful.
(no need to troll about that they have the right to do so, irc is becoming fast the only place on net where you can really say what you want and not get modded down, for good and bad).
*** Hentai sets mode: +m
<Hentai> What was that, again?
<Hentai> Didn't think so.
*** Hentai sets mode: -o+b gl4ss
You have been kicked (who's your God?)
Nor is it measured in dollars. And I would argue we have yet to properly define it so that we CAN measure it consistently and accurately.
The bottom line is, anything which keeps prices down, keeps wages down too. And anything which keeps wages up, keeps prices up too. The only way to maintain a surplus is to exploit someone else - otherwise, you're forced to pay the 'real cost' of goods, and your so-called 'standard of living' goes down, as items become more and more expensive.
Which, incidentally, would make an EXCELLENT name for a music group.
Let's step back and think about this for a minute.
Either:
We keep prices low, by outsourcing all our jobs, in which case (to stay competitive) our average income gets cut by half,
- or -
We keep our income solid, by forcing companies to use US workers, in which case the cost of goods double.
So, if I have $200, which buys 2 pairs of Nikes at $100 each, how is that different from me having $100, which buys 2 pairs of Nikes at $50 each?
The fundamental mechanism at work here is market equilibrium. The US has an artificially inflated labor market. Now that we're equalizing with the rest of the world, you're going to see wages come down. This will cause prices to come down, as items are less expensive to produce. The whole while, the CEOs get rich. Then, it balances out, and wages go up again, and items cost more to produce, raising prices. The whole while, the CEOs still get rich.
Nothing to see here, just a little social PV=nRT.
Heh. Except that, if there's anything the Enron/WorldCom/Anderson debacle taught us, it's that stock is worthless. The only way to truly take value from a company is to steal it, an action which is only possible from the inside. You want to succeed? Weasel your way into the upper management of a reasonably asset-heavy company, and 'appropriate' some excess corporate wealth from your white-collar lessers.
Noone ever got ahead by playing fair.
There's a trick to that:
Walk without rythm and you won't attract the worm.
Actually, let's go with that analogy for a bit.
Let's say there's a street that a statistically high number of rapes occurs on.
Let's say that a study looks into this, and discovers that because of how the street is designed and maintained (the numerous potholes and road hazards causing cars to crash, the numerous hiding-places where rapists can hang out, the easy access to side-alleys that allows the rapists to escape unnoticed and unpunished after they finish their nefarious intent... etc. etc.), the place is a prime 'hunting ground' for rapists. The road is so poorly maintained that the police can't patrol it, but it's the main thoroughfare, so everyone has to risk driving down it - and whenever a young girl blows out a tire on a spike jutting out of a pothole, some juvie with a penchant for the old ultra-violence jumps out, jumps her, and flees to his humble domicile to relax to good ol' Ludwig Von's lovely 9th, leaving the poor girl bruised, bloodied and bereft of her dignity.
At what point do you stop telling people to avoid the road - which, unfortunately, is the ONLY road most of them really have a choice to use - and get down to demanding the owners of the road do something about it?
The key/lock system. The height of each notch on the key is an analog value, as is the depth of the pin on the associated tumbler. However, at the moment of (attempted) unlocking, the lock acts as a ADC (analog-to-digital converter), converting each notch on the key into either a '1' (match) or '0' (no match). Thus, it could be argued by a sufficiently expensive lawyer that the actual process of opening the lock is digital by nature, and thus falls under the DMCA.