Exactly. Star Wars Galaxies already has a space combat system. Complete with personal fighters, cooperative capital ship fighting, and dodging (and mining) asteroids. It doesn't change the fact that all MMO's are the same. Grindgrindgrindgrindgrind - get a trinket - grindgrindgrindgrindgrind - level up! so that it's easier to grindgrindgrindgrind - get jumped on by some lvl 90 jackass who likes picking on level 20's who wander into pvp areas, so you want revenge and so you grindgrindgrindgrindgrind.
Even the space part of SWG is like that. Grind 3 billion boring ships just to get the ability to stick a bigger gun on your ship so that you can grind 3 billion more powerful boring ships.
Someone needs to come up with an MMO that actually takes skill and ability rather than mindless clicking. Of course, someone already did, but then SWG was taken over by Sony and turned into Everquest in Space.
I said the moon, not an asteroid, but I think asteroids are problematic too.
14 trillion sounds like a lot, but I'm guessing you'd have to spend at least that just to get the hardware in place to get to the asteroid. And the mining crew you sent there is gonna demand a HELL of a big salary, because they're gonna have to be away from their family for years, in a dangerous environment, eating bad food and never getting a vacation until they get back home, at which point they'll have to recover from the effects of years spent in a 0g environment. I know if you wanted me to leave the earth on a multi-year mission involving hard labor mining platinum in a space suit, I'd demand a very generous 7 figure minimum salary.
And the length of time required to research, design, and build that equipment would mean that it wouldn't be a quick profit, either. And companies like quick profits. If your upstart space mining company is spending hundreds of millions per quarter for over a decade without realizing any profit at all, good luck getting VC to keep going.
The part that worries me about all commercial space flight endeavors, is what you pointed out - Profit motive.
I have absolutely no doubt that, possibly even while I'm still alive, we'll have a hotel in space. Hell, Carnival will probably have a "space liner" up there one of these days.
But the trouble with space travel is that we're not exactly talking about the Wright Brothers any more. Two guys dinking around in a bike shop can't spearhead space travel like they did air travel.
Let's say we want to get to the moon, but now that the government isn't working on manned spaceflight, we have to rely on private industry.
Well, there's no oil up there. No coal, no natural gas. . Nothing valuable that we know of as far as a natural resource. So the mining and energy companies have no incentive to go there. In fact, no industry is going to give a crap about going to the moon unless we find a reason for them to go get stuff that they can't get here.
The best hope we've got is that some company like Hilton will want to build a hotel there for exotic vacationers. Honeymoon on the moon suites!
But that's unlikely because the kind of money it takes to set up a moon-shot program is astronomical (no pun intended.) They'd have to charge millions per night just to get back their capital outlay, at which point they wouldn't have enough customers to realize a profit.
The moon is the first step to other planets, but if a government doesn't at least provide the groundwork, we'll never get back there.
The shuttle we have now was supposed to be a proof of concept vehicle. Once we proved that the idea of a reusable space-plane was viable, we were supposed to go ahead and build one that actually worked well. But we didn't. As with so many other NASA programs, the shuttle fell victim to ADD politicians.
"Well we've BEEN to the moon! So let's scrap the whole program and fire all the engineers that got us there!"
"Well we've GOT a space shuttle now! Why do we need to build a DIFFERENT one?"
The political cycle that matters is the presidential one. Every 4 to 8 years a new President takes office, and runs over to NASA to reshape it in his image. Trouble is, an 8 year development cycle for something as complex as a manned space vehicle is incredibly short. And so whatever the previous President had them working on gets canceled in favor of whatever the current President wants them to work on - -which will itself get canceled before completion by the next President.
We either need to restructure the President's ability to make changes to NASA's goals (i.e. "You can't just cancel a program that's 75% completed when you take office because you feel like it") or we need to let the commercial companies take over, and sit back and hope they build something useful.
For the last two builds I've done for myself, I've recycled my old SB Audigy Platinum into them because it's better than the crap that comes with the board. Onboard audio almost always is provided by Realtek. They suck. Their software sucks. Their interface sucks. Getting the microphone to work for VOIP, especially if you have front inputs, really sucks, especially if you're trying to help someone do it over the phone.
Onboard stuff is great if you're building a business machine or you need a new box but don't have the money to get everything you want. But especially audio-wise it'll take a distant back seat to even relatively old sound cards.
Well, I don't think you and I are going to agree on this.
But I will point out that your bicycle example is crap. You're trying to make the bike do something it wasn't designed to do. If it breaks, fine, it's your fault.
But if Schwinn somehow put a motor-detection circuit in the bicycle that sets off a shaped charge that cracks the frame when it detects a motor, that's something entirely different.
If I try to make the phone do something it's not designed to do, like fly, I won't be mad if it breaks *purely due to my actions.*
If I try to make the phone do something it wasn't specifically designed to do, like run a different OS, I won't be mad if it breaks *purely because of my actions*
But if I try to make the phone do something it wasn't specifically designed to do, like run a different OS, and even though the phone could do it, it breaks because someone put a little self-destruct device in it to specifically prevent me from doing it, I'm gonna be mad.
I don't expect Motorola to honor the warranty if I futz with the kernel and break something. But I do expect them not to actively destroy my phone on purpose if I futz with the kernel.
If you can't see the difference there, then we really have nothing to talk about here.
Number one, this isn't a "special screw head." This is intentional sabotage if I try to do something they don't like with my equipment. As someone else said elsewhere, it's like putting new wheels on my car, only to have it explode because the manufacturer wants me to only use factory wheels.
I bought that phone. I didn't rent it. I didn't license the hardware. I bought it. It's mine. I should be able to modify it how I please without having to deal with intentional sabotage. It doesn't matter if I want to install CP/M on it. If the device manufacturer intentionally puts a self-destruct into the phone that activates when I try to do it, then we have a problem. Hardware should not ever be sold with self-destruct devices.
And that's not even addressing the most glaringly obvious point in this particular case, which is that Google and Verizon and all the phone manufacturers have been jumping up and down yelling "It's ANDROID! It's based on LINUX! It's open source! Customize your phone how YOU want it! No more being chained to Steve Jobs' vision!"
Fine. If you want to advertise that, then I expect you to deliver it, and I certainly expect you not to intentionally sabotage those of us who might want to take you up on your claims.
Otherwise the ads should read "Customize your phone how YOU want it. . As long as what you want is exactly what we want."
I don't think they'd need to recognize the microchip as a microchip. They'd just need to recognize it as "hey, this thing could not have formed naturally - it had to have been made."
Just like the Baghdad Battery - for years after we found it, no one knew what the hell it was. Oh sure, it LOOKED like some sort of capacitor-like-thing, but they didn't have electricity back then so there's no way that's what it really is (a great example of preconceived notions screwing up interpretation of historical evidence). But we knew it was something that was made by an intelligent being. That's the basic criteria I'm going after for future civilizations to figure out that we were here. As long as something we made survives, then no matter what it is, it'll be evidence that something intelligent was on this planet at some time.
Of course, there are problems with this - - How does the FutureGuy know that whatever he found was made by something living on earth? Maybe it was dropped off by an alien. How does he know that it wasn't made by a member of his own species? It'd be an easy assumption to make. He'd find it, date it, and then figure "oh, well that's proof we were around 800,000 years ago."
These are the same problems we would face if we ever unearthed ancient technology.
BTW, regarding the wood example - Yeah, I agree that if wood was the best they had to work with they'd make better use of it than we ever did. But wood is still wood, and if civilization were to collapse in a global fireball, it would still burn. And even if the catastrophe was not directly harmful to wood, the wood widget would eventually rot away and leave us no evidence.
I agree with you that building stuff satisfies the definition of technological society - my point was that unless you're making your technology out of very hardy materials, it's unlikely that evidence of your technology will survive your extinction long enough for the next intelligent civilization to find it.
Yes and no. I think some technologies are going to be universal across societies. If we want electricity, we're gonna need some metal to conduct it. If we happened to evolve on a planet that didn't have metal, then we wouldn't have electricity. Simple as that. Doesn't mean we're stupid - we just don't have the resources we need to make "technology."
People 3,000 years ago weren't any less intelligent overall than we are, even though they were mainly building stuff out of wood. That wood is not going to survive the next global mass-disaster, and any fossil remains or ceramic evidence is likely to get obliterated.. Or buried under a mile of dirt.
And our technology isn't much better long-term. The buildings will rust and crumble, the concrete will be overgrown. Probably our longest-lived evidence would be nuclear waste, since it's designed to be stored for an unfathomably long time. But even the biggest anti-nuclear pessimist sets the hazard duration at 300,000 years.
If we went extinct tomorrow, the next species would have, at most, 300,000 years to gain sufficient intelligence to recognize nuclear waste as a sign of a (then) ancient civilization. And considering that anything that makes us go extinct is likely to leave only cockroaches behind, that's a lot of evolution that has to happen very quickly. I think it's entirely possible that if another Earth civilization rises up a few million years after we're gone, they'll find little to no trace of us at all.
Everything's correct except that class actions don't shield a company from individual lawsuits. Anyone who is eligible for the class (in this case, anyone with an iPhone 4) can choose to remove themselves from the class. If they do, they won't get the settlement (which in this case will probably be 5 bucks, an Apple bumper sticker, and a rubber band to fix the phone) but they can then pursue individual action against the company. And they have a fairly good chance of succeeding if the class action succeeds, since a court has already found Apple to be liable.
I'm guessing they're going to take a 1st gen Droid, gut it, install a monster battery in the case, then attach that to the back of the new phone just to power it for more than 3 hours.
Compelling arguments, but your facts are entirely wrong.
Cows have reasonable thoughts too. They just aren't as intricate or intelligent as ours. When it's cold and the wind is blowing into the cow's face, sometimes it will turn around to keep its face warm, and sometimes it will decide to keep eating its hay. Point being, if non-human animals behavior was based purely on instinct, then they would do exactly the same thing, every time, in a given set of conditions. And they don't.
Just because a life form is not as smart as you does not mean that it does not have thoughts.
And we'd run into the same problem with highly advanced species. If we were as dumb to them as cows are to us, then the same intelligence gap would exist. And it's extremely likely that, unless the aliens were non-aggressive and prone to study everything in-depth, they'd treat us similarly to the way we treat cattle - -namely, we're dumb animals unless someone's hungry, in which case we taste pretty good.
BTW, chimpanzees act violently for "no reason" as well. As do cats, dogs, and many other species. And I put "no reason" in quotes because there's always a reason for the violence. We may not understand it, but there is a reason.
I'm really not sure where you got the idea that animals only ever act instinctively except in cases of sickness. Why would they suddenly acquire the capacity for rational thought just because they get a virus?
All animals act instinctively, including humans. Many animals also add a rationality component to their actions. Not to the degree that humans do, but it is there. You can see it all over. Even squirrels are capable of problem solving:
There is. In fact, it's the first one. Freedom of the Press. If you point a camera at something and then put it on youtube, congratulations. You're the press. The founding fathers were very careful not to set limitations on what is and is not a journalist, because those limitations are ripe for abuse. If the government suddenly decides that only Glenn Beck is a journalist, and no one else is, then you can see where government influence of media coverage would alter government itself, and not in favor of the people. So! Everyone who records something and then shows it to an audience, or who observes an event and then writes about it for an audience, whether it be a TV photojournalist, a newspaper reporter, a blogger, or some guy with a camcorder uploading videos to the internet, they're all press. And they all have the right to act in journalistic ways, which means that cops do not have the right to limit recording.
Wanna talk activist judges? It's the bastards in these states who think they can unilaterally rewrite the constitution.
Yeah, I suspected you were talking about the pyramids when you mentioned comparable human feats "almost by hand," but figured I'd give you the benefit of the doubt. Thanks for confirming that you don't know what you're talking about.
Humans did not build the pyramids almost by hand, unless you consider using rock saws, block&tackle setups, shovels, pick axes, primitive cranes, blueprints, engineering studies, barges, and building an entire city to support the pyramid construction workers to be "almost by hand."
Second, I did not say "dam the Colorado River." I don't know what you're talking about there. I said that you can't construct a dam out of sticks and mud that will hold back the amount and depth of water that the Hoover does. And I'm right.
Third, while termites do build a material comparable to concrete in some ways (those ways being "made out of stuff you get from the ground and a mixing agent," mud and spit is not concrete, is not anywhere close to concrete, and I personally wouldn't be so daft as to claim that a substance which an anteater can easily punch through *with its mouth* is anything at all remotely like concrete.
Oh, and regarding your objection to me "showing off" in my first sentence - had you bothered to read the rest, you'd have seen that I qualified the giant termite comment with "assuming you found a way to deal with the problems of exoskeletal biology in large sizes." I thought that spelled out for you why your comment about termite engineering being on par with human construction feats was, not to put too fine a point on it, abominably stupid, but apparently it didn't. From now on I'll be sure to come straight out and say very clearly and distinctly when your arguments are moronic.
You're really stretching there. If an insect were human sized it could throw cars around. Sure, a giant termite could build a structure the size of Hoover Dam without tools (assuming you found a way to deal with the problems of exoskeletal biology in large sizes). What's your point? We aren't giant termites. Humans (or giant termites) could not have built the Hoover Dam without using tools. For one thing, it's made out of concrete. Termites don't make concrete, and neither do humans, unless they use tools to mix the materials together, and build the molds to pour the concrete into.
And while the beaver dam is impressive (I actually find it more interesting that different families apparently worked together to build it) it doesn't endure anywhere close to the forces that the Hoover is holding back. You simply could not build the Hoover out of sticks and mud. You must have concrete (or something equally strong and water resistant and pourable - such a substance is not found in nature).
I'm not sure what "comparable feats" you're referring to that humans supposedly built, but I can't think of a single massive engineering project in human history that didn't use (and require) tools.
Not really. I think you'd be surprised at how these planes race. The exhibition runs they did at EAA's oshkosh flyins the last two years were somewhat less exciting than regular prop-plane pylon races. They use the rocket to gain altitude, and then glide. Rinse, repeat. It's all about fuel management, not top speed.
I think my point stands. You're going into a somewhat deep philosophical ground with your arguments, especially with your car example. Rather like the philosophers sitting around arguing about what makes a brick a brick, and whether it's still a brick if you break it in half. Not that such discussion is invalid, but in the context of everyday life, it's not overly germane.
In base-10, 11+5 is always 16. There's nothing subjective about that. No way to look at it and say "well, I think it's 42" without being flat out wrong. Art, however, is, to usurp a phrase, in the eye of the beholder.
And, you're eliminating a possibility with your argument that I don't think should be eliminated. You say that the people in my examples are trying to create art. In the case of the fecal-can "artist," I personally disagree. I think he's trying to make money, and somehow he discovered that people will actually buy poo if you can convince them that it's art. And to the people who bought the Can-O-Crap, it is indeed art.
Since he painted the soup cans, people in the art community have been arguing over whether or not Warhol's work was art. Yes, he drew it. Yes, it represents something. But it's an exact copy of something someone else drew and slapped on a can of soup. The very existence of that debate, and the length of time it's gone on, strengthens the subjectivity view of art.
Serrano's "Piss Christ" was similar. Some people thought it was art. I thought it was just some idiot dropping a crucifix into a glass of urine, and lots of people agreed with me. If you think that's art, then to you, that's art. If I think it's a moron with nothing interesting to say trying to convince us that he's got something interesting to say, then to me, it's not art. Subjective.
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I had Doom on a graphing calculator. Doom running on an Amiga isn't that astonishing. Remember, it wasn't real 3d.
Exactly. Star Wars Galaxies already has a space combat system. Complete with personal fighters, cooperative capital ship fighting, and dodging (and mining) asteroids. It doesn't change the fact that all MMO's are the same. Grindgrindgrindgrindgrind - get a trinket - grindgrindgrindgrindgrind - level up! so that it's easier to grindgrindgrindgrind - get jumped on by some lvl 90 jackass who likes picking on level 20's who wander into pvp areas, so you want revenge and so you grindgrindgrindgrindgrind.
Even the space part of SWG is like that. Grind 3 billion boring ships just to get the ability to stick a bigger gun on your ship so that you can grind 3 billion more powerful boring ships.
Someone needs to come up with an MMO that actually takes skill and ability rather than mindless clicking. Of course, someone already did, but then SWG was taken over by Sony and turned into Everquest in Space.
If this were 30 years ago, it would be a Python sketch.
It's chewier usually - I'm not sure if that's because Florida lobsters are chewy, or because Floridians don't know how to cook lobster.
But it's also a different flavor. Maine lobster is far superior.
I said the moon, not an asteroid, but I think asteroids are problematic too.
14 trillion sounds like a lot, but I'm guessing you'd have to spend at least that just to get the hardware in place to get to the asteroid. And the mining crew you sent there is gonna demand a HELL of a big salary, because they're gonna have to be away from their family for years, in a dangerous environment, eating bad food and never getting a vacation until they get back home, at which point they'll have to recover from the effects of years spent in a 0g environment. I know if you wanted me to leave the earth on a multi-year mission involving hard labor mining platinum in a space suit, I'd demand a very generous 7 figure minimum salary.
And the length of time required to research, design, and build that equipment would mean that it wouldn't be a quick profit, either. And companies like quick profits. If your upstart space mining company is spending hundreds of millions per quarter for over a decade without realizing any profit at all, good luck getting VC to keep going.
The part that worries me about all commercial space flight endeavors, is what you pointed out - Profit motive.
I have absolutely no doubt that, possibly even while I'm still alive, we'll have a hotel in space. Hell, Carnival will probably have a "space liner" up there one of these days.
But the trouble with space travel is that we're not exactly talking about the Wright Brothers any more. Two guys dinking around in a bike shop can't spearhead space travel like they did air travel.
Let's say we want to get to the moon, but now that the government isn't working on manned spaceflight, we have to rely on private industry.
Well, there's no oil up there. No coal, no natural gas. . Nothing valuable that we know of as far as a natural resource. So the mining and energy companies have no incentive to go there. In fact, no industry is going to give a crap about going to the moon unless we find a reason for them to go get stuff that they can't get here.
The best hope we've got is that some company like Hilton will want to build a hotel there for exotic vacationers. Honeymoon on the moon suites!
But that's unlikely because the kind of money it takes to set up a moon-shot program is astronomical (no pun intended.) They'd have to charge millions per night just to get back their capital outlay, at which point they wouldn't have enough customers to realize a profit.
The moon is the first step to other planets, but if a government doesn't at least provide the groundwork, we'll never get back there.
The shuttle we have now was supposed to be a proof of concept vehicle. Once we proved that the idea of a reusable space-plane was viable, we were supposed to go ahead and build one that actually worked well. But we didn't. As with so many other NASA programs, the shuttle fell victim to ADD politicians.
"Well we've BEEN to the moon! So let's scrap the whole program and fire all the engineers that got us there!"
"Well we've GOT a space shuttle now! Why do we need to build a DIFFERENT one?"
"Let's go to Mars!"
"Screw Mars! Let's dismantle our entire manned spaceflight capability!"
"Well, maybe a little capability .. "
The political cycle that matters is the presidential one. Every 4 to 8 years a new President takes office, and runs over to NASA to reshape it in his image. Trouble is, an 8 year development cycle for something as complex as a manned space vehicle is incredibly short. And so whatever the previous President had them working on gets canceled in favor of whatever the current President wants them to work on - -which will itself get canceled before completion by the next President.
We either need to restructure the President's ability to make changes to NASA's goals (i.e. "You can't just cancel a program that's 75% completed when you take office because you feel like it") or we need to let the commercial companies take over, and sit back and hope they build something useful.
Either way, I think we're screwed.
For the last two builds I've done for myself, I've recycled my old SB Audigy Platinum into them because it's better than the crap that comes with the board. Onboard audio almost always is provided by Realtek. They suck. Their software sucks. Their interface sucks. Getting the microphone to work for VOIP, especially if you have front inputs, really sucks, especially if you're trying to help someone do it over the phone.
Onboard stuff is great if you're building a business machine or you need a new box but don't have the money to get everything you want. But especially audio-wise it'll take a distant back seat to even relatively old sound cards.
Anyone with that attitude is almost guaranteed to not be running Linux.
And almost guaranteed To be running Mac.
At which point, you have however many cores Steve Jobs tells you to want.
Well, I don't think you and I are going to agree on this.
But I will point out that your bicycle example is crap. You're trying to make the bike do something it wasn't designed to do. If it breaks, fine, it's your fault.
But if Schwinn somehow put a motor-detection circuit in the bicycle that sets off a shaped charge that cracks the frame when it detects a motor, that's something entirely different.
If I try to make the phone do something it's not designed to do, like fly, I won't be mad if it breaks *purely due to my actions.*
If I try to make the phone do something it wasn't specifically designed to do, like run a different OS, I won't be mad if it breaks *purely because of my actions*
But if I try to make the phone do something it wasn't specifically designed to do, like run a different OS, and even though the phone could do it, it breaks because someone put a little self-destruct device in it to specifically prevent me from doing it, I'm gonna be mad.
I don't expect Motorola to honor the warranty if I futz with the kernel and break something. But I do expect them not to actively destroy my phone on purpose if I futz with the kernel.
If you can't see the difference there, then we really have nothing to talk about here.
Number one, this isn't a "special screw head." This is intentional sabotage if I try to do something they don't like with my equipment. As someone else said elsewhere, it's like putting new wheels on my car, only to have it explode because the manufacturer wants me to only use factory wheels.
I bought that phone. I didn't rent it. I didn't license the hardware. I bought it. It's mine. I should be able to modify it how I please without having to deal with intentional sabotage. It doesn't matter if I want to install CP/M on it. If the device manufacturer intentionally puts a self-destruct into the phone that activates when I try to do it, then we have a problem. Hardware should not ever be sold with self-destruct devices.
And that's not even addressing the most glaringly obvious point in this particular case, which is that Google and Verizon and all the phone manufacturers have been jumping up and down yelling "It's ANDROID! It's based on LINUX! It's open source! Customize your phone how YOU want it! No more being chained to Steve Jobs' vision!"
Fine. If you want to advertise that, then I expect you to deliver it, and I certainly expect you not to intentionally sabotage those of us who might want to take you up on your claims.
Otherwise the ads should read "Customize your phone how YOU want it. . As long as what you want is exactly what we want."
When the hardware prevents open software from being used, then open software != open software either. . .
I don't think they'd need to recognize the microchip as a microchip. They'd just need to recognize it as "hey, this thing could not have formed naturally - it had to have been made."
Just like the Baghdad Battery - for years after we found it, no one knew what the hell it was. Oh sure, it LOOKED like some sort of capacitor-like-thing, but they didn't have electricity back then so there's no way that's what it really is (a great example of preconceived notions screwing up interpretation of historical evidence). But we knew it was something that was made by an intelligent being. That's the basic criteria I'm going after for future civilizations to figure out that we were here. As long as something we made survives, then no matter what it is, it'll be evidence that something intelligent was on this planet at some time.
Of course, there are problems with this - - How does the FutureGuy know that whatever he found was made by something living on earth? Maybe it was dropped off by an alien. How does he know that it wasn't made by a member of his own species? It'd be an easy assumption to make. He'd find it, date it, and then figure "oh, well that's proof we were around 800,000 years ago."
These are the same problems we would face if we ever unearthed ancient technology.
BTW, regarding the wood example - Yeah, I agree that if wood was the best they had to work with they'd make better use of it than we ever did. But wood is still wood, and if civilization were to collapse in a global fireball, it would still burn. And even if the catastrophe was not directly harmful to wood, the wood widget would eventually rot away and leave us no evidence.
I agree with you that building stuff satisfies the definition of technological society - my point was that unless you're making your technology out of very hardy materials, it's unlikely that evidence of your technology will survive your extinction long enough for the next intelligent civilization to find it.
Yes and no. I think some technologies are going to be universal across societies. If we want electricity, we're gonna need some metal to conduct it. If we happened to evolve on a planet that didn't have metal, then we wouldn't have electricity. Simple as that. Doesn't mean we're stupid - we just don't have the resources we need to make "technology."
People 3,000 years ago weren't any less intelligent overall than we are, even though they were mainly building stuff out of wood. That wood is not going to survive the next global mass-disaster, and any fossil remains or ceramic evidence is likely to get obliterated .. Or buried under a mile of dirt.
And our technology isn't much better long-term. The buildings will rust and crumble, the concrete will be overgrown. Probably our longest-lived evidence would be nuclear waste, since it's designed to be stored for an unfathomably long time. But even the biggest anti-nuclear pessimist sets the hazard duration at 300,000 years.
If we went extinct tomorrow, the next species would have, at most, 300,000 years to gain sufficient intelligence to recognize nuclear waste as a sign of a (then) ancient civilization. And considering that anything that makes us go extinct is likely to leave only cockroaches behind, that's a lot of evolution that has to happen very quickly. I think it's entirely possible that if another Earth civilization rises up a few million years after we're gone, they'll find little to no trace of us at all.
That's 10^27 stupid. . .
Everything's correct except that class actions don't shield a company from individual lawsuits. Anyone who is eligible for the class (in this case, anyone with an iPhone 4) can choose to remove themselves from the class. If they do, they won't get the settlement (which in this case will probably be 5 bucks, an Apple bumper sticker, and a rubber band to fix the phone) but they can then pursue individual action against the company. And they have a fairly good chance of succeeding if the class action succeeds, since a court has already found Apple to be liable.
I'm guessing they're going to take a 1st gen Droid, gut it, install a monster battery in the case, then attach that to the back of the new phone just to power it for more than 3 hours.
Yes we were. Because when you clicked "remove google background," Google dutifully removed the background.
And then replaced it with another photo.
The only way to go back to white was to select the white background from the editor's choice menu.
But that turned your text white. White text on a white background isn't much fun.
Compelling arguments, but your facts are entirely wrong.
Cows have reasonable thoughts too. They just aren't as intricate or intelligent as ours. When it's cold and the wind is blowing into the cow's face, sometimes it will turn around to keep its face warm, and sometimes it will decide to keep eating its hay. Point being, if non-human animals behavior was based purely on instinct, then they would do exactly the same thing, every time, in a given set of conditions. And they don't.
Just because a life form is not as smart as you does not mean that it does not have thoughts.
And we'd run into the same problem with highly advanced species. If we were as dumb to them as cows are to us, then the same intelligence gap would exist. And it's extremely likely that, unless the aliens were non-aggressive and prone to study everything in-depth, they'd treat us similarly to the way we treat cattle - -namely, we're dumb animals unless someone's hungry, in which case we taste pretty good.
BTW, chimpanzees act violently for "no reason" as well. As do cats, dogs, and many other species. And I put "no reason" in quotes because there's always a reason for the violence. We may not understand it, but there is a reason.
I'm really not sure where you got the idea that animals only ever act instinctively except in cases of sickness. Why would they suddenly acquire the capacity for rational thought just because they get a virus?
All animals act instinctively, including humans. Many animals also add a rationality component to their actions. Not to the degree that humans do, but it is there. You can see it all over. Even squirrels are capable of problem solving:
http://www.ebaumsworld.com/video/watch/80644294/
There is. In fact, it's the first one. Freedom of the Press. If you point a camera at something and then put it on youtube, congratulations. You're the press. The founding fathers were very careful not to set limitations on what is and is not a journalist, because those limitations are ripe for abuse. If the government suddenly decides that only Glenn Beck is a journalist, and no one else is, then you can see where government influence of media coverage would alter government itself, and not in favor of the people. So! Everyone who records something and then shows it to an audience, or who observes an event and then writes about it for an audience, whether it be a TV photojournalist, a newspaper reporter, a blogger, or some guy with a camcorder uploading videos to the internet, they're all press. And they all have the right to act in journalistic ways, which means that cops do not have the right to limit recording.
Wanna talk activist judges? It's the bastards in these states who think they can unilaterally rewrite the constitution.
This brilliant plan will be foiled when the enemy buys a $99 add-on virtual wall and erects it in front of the minefield.
Yeah, I suspected you were talking about the pyramids when you mentioned comparable human feats "almost by hand," but figured I'd give you the benefit of the doubt. Thanks for confirming that you don't know what you're talking about.
Humans did not build the pyramids almost by hand, unless you consider using rock saws, block&tackle setups, shovels, pick axes, primitive cranes, blueprints, engineering studies, barges, and building an entire city to support the pyramid construction workers to be "almost by hand."
Second, I did not say "dam the Colorado River." I don't know what you're talking about there. I said that you can't construct a dam out of sticks and mud that will hold back the amount and depth of water that the Hoover does. And I'm right.
Third, while termites do build a material comparable to concrete in some ways (those ways being "made out of stuff you get from the ground and a mixing agent," mud and spit is not concrete, is not anywhere close to concrete, and I personally wouldn't be so daft as to claim that a substance which an anteater can easily punch through *with its mouth* is anything at all remotely like concrete.
Oh, and regarding your objection to me "showing off" in my first sentence - had you bothered to read the rest, you'd have seen that I qualified the giant termite comment with "assuming you found a way to deal with the problems of exoskeletal biology in large sizes." I thought that spelled out for you why your comment about termite engineering being on par with human construction feats was, not to put too fine a point on it, abominably stupid, but apparently it didn't. From now on I'll be sure to come straight out and say very clearly and distinctly when your arguments are moronic.
You're really stretching there. If an insect were human sized it could throw cars around. Sure, a giant termite could build a structure the size of Hoover Dam without tools (assuming you found a way to deal with the problems of exoskeletal biology in large sizes). What's your point? We aren't giant termites. Humans (or giant termites) could not have built the Hoover Dam without using tools. For one thing, it's made out of concrete. Termites don't make concrete, and neither do humans, unless they use tools to mix the materials together, and build the molds to pour the concrete into.
And while the beaver dam is impressive (I actually find it more interesting that different families apparently worked together to build it) it doesn't endure anywhere close to the forces that the Hoover is holding back. You simply could not build the Hoover out of sticks and mud. You must have concrete (or something equally strong and water resistant and pourable - such a substance is not found in nature).
I'm not sure what "comparable feats" you're referring to that humans supposedly built, but I can't think of a single massive engineering project in human history that didn't use (and require) tools.
Not really. I think you'd be surprised at how these planes race. The exhibition runs they did at EAA's oshkosh flyins the last two years were somewhat less exciting than regular prop-plane pylon races. They use the rocket to gain altitude, and then glide. Rinse, repeat. It's all about fuel management, not top speed.
I think my point stands. You're going into a somewhat deep philosophical ground with your arguments, especially with your car example. Rather like the philosophers sitting around arguing about what makes a brick a brick, and whether it's still a brick if you break it in half. Not that such discussion is invalid, but in the context of everyday life, it's not overly germane.
In base-10, 11+5 is always 16. There's nothing subjective about that. No way to look at it and say "well, I think it's 42" without being flat out wrong. Art, however, is, to usurp a phrase, in the eye of the beholder.
And, you're eliminating a possibility with your argument that I don't think should be eliminated. You say that the people in my examples are trying to create art. In the case of the fecal-can "artist," I personally disagree. I think he's trying to make money, and somehow he discovered that people will actually buy poo if you can convince them that it's art. And to the people who bought the Can-O-Crap, it is indeed art.
Since he painted the soup cans, people in the art community have been arguing over whether or not Warhol's work was art. Yes, he drew it. Yes, it represents something. But it's an exact copy of something someone else drew and slapped on a can of soup. The very existence of that debate, and the length of time it's gone on, strengthens the subjectivity view of art.
Serrano's "Piss Christ" was similar. Some people thought it was art. I thought it was just some idiot dropping a crucifix into a glass of urine, and lots of people agreed with me. If you think that's art, then to you, that's art. If I think it's a moron with nothing interesting to say trying to convince us that he's got something interesting to say, then to me, it's not art. Subjective.