Your morals are what you make them. Murder is illegal because it is beneficial to society for it to be so. It's also categorized as "immoral" by almost everyone for the same reason.
Other issues don't line up so well. Believing that it's immoral to wear hats isn't likely to spread to others, since there's probably no benfit to such a belief. It's also unlikely to become a law in the US, since the law does nothing to benefit society, and in fact only takes away the rights of non-believers.
This is why murder is illegal, swearing is legal, stealing is illegal, praying is legal, abortions are legal, and the uprising against "gay marriage" will fail. Our laws are based on what is fair to everyone - or at least that's what we're trying to aim for. Laws sometimes align with the majority's idea of "morality," but I like to think that this is the result of common goals (fairness) rather than drawing on arbitrary rules about what's right and wrong.
The real question is whether the number of possible distances between two physical objects can be counted. Can space be sliced into infinitely thin partitions? Much of our model of the universe assumes that it can, but these are the same pieces that keep causing us problems.
There was an interesting SciAm article a few issues back titled "Atoms of Space and Time" that was pretty interesting, if you get a chance to read it. There are some interesting models of the universe that describe space and time as discrete. One giant quantum computer, in a way.
I don't consider EULAs to be contracts. If I did, I probably wouldn't accept them. As it is, I don't bother to read them at all.
I buy software. If a piece of software could only be "licensed" under a real contract, then it would really have to be worth my while. If the publisher wants me to sign away some of my rights to the software before I can use it, then I won't buy it unless there is no other alternative.
Yes, I realize that the publisher already considers the EULA to take away some of my rights, but if they want them they'll have to be more forceful than that. Valve is applying some technological firepower to that end, and as a result I won't ever buy their product.:(
I don't license software, I buy it. Maybe the publisher thinks I'm licensing it, but that's their own delusion.
Valve thinks that they can sell me a book will a homing beacon and a self destruct device in it. Sorry, I'll just skip the game. I would have bought it, too - I've actually been anticipating HL2 for years. Oh well, maybe they'll fix it.
You're assuming that space and time are not quantized, which is a big assumption. The Church-Turing thesis does not say that you can simulate any physical machine, but if you assume a discrete universe then you can deduce that it is possible.
The point is that nobody "tacked on a bunch of zeros." The 600m number was calculated based on scientific theories. Nobody just pulled it out of their ass. The number may be wrong, but without a better theory it's what we've got. Think the number is wrong? Maybe you can make a sensible argument instead of just mocking that which separates us from the other animals.
Oh, and the universe is full of really big numbers. Do you think it's somehow beyond our capacity to deal with 'em?
No kidding. I used to be a big Star Wars fan (I still enjoy the original trilogy) but I have 0 excitement about ep3, which will probably be the worst animated movie of whatever year it comes out.
The incredibles, on the other hand, looks pretty promising. What kind of hand does Bird have in it? The Iron Giant was an excellent movie, which I would highly recommend to anybody.
Don't misquote me. I never said that I hate it here. I'm disgusted with the direction we're going, but that's just more incentive to stay and fight. I respect and appreciate my country, and I won't desert it just because it's going through a hard time.
Corporations and zealots may have our country in a choke hold at the moment, and they may have brainwashed most of the population, but I belive that those challenges can be overcome. The sad thing is that now it looks like it will take a major traumatic event to rile our populace up enough to do something about it.
This was our big chance to tell 'em where to stick it, and we didn't. How many of our rights and freedoms will we have to lose before we grow our balls back? How long will we let those in power manipulate our policies for personal gain?
In short: I love my country, I hate George Bush. Not him as an individual, but the selfish, evil attitude that he and his cronies embody. I don't hate my fellow citizens, but I'm frustrated by the ignorance and cowardice displayed by most of them.
Yeah, I was pretty sure that Kerry would win because of the high voter turnout. Guess not.
Yes this election is still close but I doubt that a large portion of the population despises him
I think you underestimate how many people hate GWB. He's fucking over our country pretty royally, and showcasing just how ignorant and gullible half of our population really is.
Before the election I was disgusted by Bush, but now I'm disgusted by our entire country. I can only hope that he'll break things so badly that people out in the midwest/south will be forced to start thinking.
Hopefully I'm way off, but I think I detect some sort of disdain for science in your post. You may be making a funny, but there are a lot of idiots out there who take science for granted. They deny scientific knowledge that they don't like while taking advantage of the knowledge that brings them their cars and computers.
There are actually people in this country who won't believe that these fossils are 600m years old, without so much as an alternate explanation. That's scary, not funny.
I'm glad that you're willing to accept criticism of your ideas. A lot of people have a fear of having to reevaluate their beliefs.
From reading your paper, I would have to say that I have a very different perspective from yours. Maybe you will find some of my observations useful.
#1 - OK, to start off with you're wandering way outside the bounds of evolution as it applies to living organisms. If we truly had an all encompassing "theory of everything" then we might be able to describe the development of the universe in terms of evolutionary processes, but right now all we can do is speculate.
#2 - Regarding your observation that we don't have an explanation for the "origination of the origination", I think that there are two ways of looking at it. First off, just because science does not yet have an explanation of what caused the big bang does not mean that it cannot be explained. The goal of science is not to provide absolute truth, but to provide the *best* explanation that we can come up with. Secondly, even if you explained what was "beyond" the big bang, you would have to explain what's beyond that, right? And then what's beyond that? In other words, no matter how good your description of the universe is, someone can always ask, "well what's beyond the boundary?" The answer is that whatever is beyond the boundary has no scientific explanation. If something is so intangible that we can't describe it in any way, then it's not something that we can think about in a logical way.
#3 - Yes. I'm not sure why you bring this up. Not only are our measuring devices not perfectly accurate, but our best theories (relativity and quantum mechanics) are not complete. Nobody claims that we have a perfect description of the universe.
#5 - Sexual reproduction is actually very useful. By combining the genes of two fit individuals, you are more likely to get an even fitter offspring that if you simply mutated the genes of the two parents independently. This is a technique that has proved useful when using evolutionary processes to solve problems. this was a really interesting article about using evolution to "invent" new hardware circuits. Unfortunately you have to have a subscription to read it, but I read the print version when it came out. Combining "genes" from fit "genomes" was one of the techniques that they used. Very interesting article. As far as the usefulness of the "pleasure" aspect, this is a pretty good way to encourage individuals to produce offspring. It works differently with different species, as different species have evolved different strategies for promoting their genes and thereby continuing to exist.
#6 I'm afraid you don't understand the big bang. Matter didn't "explode" outward from a central point. Space *itself* expanded out from a central point. The common analogy is to take a balloon and draw a bunch of dots on it. The balloon is spacetime and the dots are matter. Now blow up the balloon. The dots get farther apart not because they're moving through spacetime, but because spacetime itself is expanding. I can't give a thorough explanation here, but you might want to read up on it.
#8 - The fact that we were wrong about the amount of dust on the moon does not "prove" anything except the fact that one or more of our assumptions were wrong. Imagine an analagous scenario. I have an equation that predicts your age based on your height. I know your height, and so I use it to predict your age. Turns out, you're actually older than what I predicted. Does this mean that I was wrong about your height? Possibly, but it's just as likely that my equation was wrong. Science is wrong about things all the time. Constantly. In fact, science is a way of studying the universe tha
Not likely that Bush's web site is going to change people's minds internationally, because they actually know what's going on in the world. Unfortunately, it looks like about 50% of Americans get all of their information from Fox News or from Bob next door.
Interesting that you mention Bush's lack of international support, because that's a fact that seems to elude Bush supporters, who it turns out are the least informed people in the country. Surprised? I didn't think so.
"Similarly, 57% of Bush supporters assume that the majority of people in the world would favor Bush's reelection; 33% assumed that views are evenly divided and only 9% assumed that Kerry would be preferred."
I'm not saying that it's easier to steal it, or even that I would. I'm saying that I won't support this kind of a precedent by buying the game.
My point is that it *would* be easy for me to install the game, allow it to connect once, and then disallow it in the future. I'm not concerned about Steam containing spyware or adware. I *am* concerned about all future software expecting to authenticate with a server either at install time, system startup, or every time the software is run. When I buy software, I expect it to work within my own sandbox, without any external dependencies (unless of course network communication is fundamental to the software, as in an online game).
It's not bad because it makes my life difficult. It's bad on principle. I won't buy it.
I care. I was pretty excited about HL2. I would have happily forked over the 50 bucks to buy it.
You think the problem is that people don't have a net connection? I already have a cable modem, so connectivity is not a problem. The problem is that Valve wants to sell me software that will not work unless it talks to their server. This is BAD. I will not encourage it by buying the game. My options now are to either steal the game or to not play it at all. Why Valve would want me to have such a dilemma is beyond me.
No, you're missing the point. The point, as I see it, is that Valve could be starting a very ugly trend here. I've been waiting for HL2 for years now, and I fully intended to build a new PC specifically for this game.
Now? I don't think I'll buy it. As much as I'll miss the game, I'm not going to send the message that it's OK for a game to require communication with the outside world in order to operate. Don't think that's a big deal? How about if NONE of your software would operate without connecting to various servers in order to authenticate? Even in the best case scenario, in which the software only has to authenticate at install time (like HL2) you're going to be screwed when the company goes out of business and you need to reinstall. Worse cases involve compulsory authentication every time you use the software, in which case you're *really* screwed when the software is no longer "supported" for whatever reason.
In other words, authentication to server=bad, therefore I won't be buying the game. It has nothing to do with whether the game is "good" or not.
So, you're saying that this stupid decision by valve is justified by someone else's stupid design? That doesn't make any sense.
My opinion? If I buy a game and it won't work without talking to somebody else's server, then I don't own the game. I want to buy Half life 2, but I WILL NOT buy it if this is a requirement. Sure, I could probably find a crack on the day the game is released, but that's not the point. I'm not going to give them my money if they're going to go in such a stupid direction. The only option left is to pirate the game, which I would really prefer not to have to do.
End result? They're encouraging piracy - by encouraging cracks to proliferate, if nothing else.
Of course I'm exaggerating the level of annoyance that I have toward TVs in public places, but you have to admit that you're exaggerating the alternative view. My god! The TV is off! I'm dying, dying!
I'll concede that I don't have any inherent right to turn off someone else's TV, but it's pretty clear that it's not really hurting anyone. People are going to get pissed if they're actually watching the TV, but nobody's going to be whipping out this gadget in that sort of a situation unless they're looking for an argument. I think in most situations it's pretty obvious whether turning off the TV would be acceptable. If all else fails, you can stand up and say, "Hey, is anybody watching this?"
As much as I would like it to be so, I suppose you don't have the right to turn off someone else's TV.
Nevertheless, I'm happy to see such an invention. Right or not, if I can turn off tvs in my vicinity I'll do it. Think that's obnoxious? Not as obnoxious as a TV flashing in my face.
One of these, a portable cell phone jammer, and a can of minivan repellent and I'm set.
Maybe these numbers are wrong, if so perhaps someone can find a better reference.
In other words, I'd like to see Bush's publicists rescue him from the whole 'killing tens of thousands of civilians to gain control of Iraq for dubious reasons' debacle.
Most members of the "ignorant masses" probably have a friend or relative that is a Slashdot reader. Not only that, but when it comes to technology issues they'll probably value the slashdotter's opinions, 'cause "you understand this computer stuff."
Perhaps we need to start making a concerted effort to inform the uninformed about technology issues? Next time you're talking to the technologically clueless you might bring up the subject of DRM/SCO/OSS/IP/etc. No, I'm not suggesting that we try to make people understand the issues, because they're obviously not that interested. People are willing to carry around opinions that come from reliable sources, though. Who will your relatives believe - you, or MSN?
I don't think you get the point. In a two party, winner-take-all system, I can't conscionably vote for Nader even if he *is* on the ballot.
We should have a system that encourages us to vote for the candidate that we think would do the best job, not for the lesser of two evils because nobody else has a chance of winning.
Do you agree, or do you think we should let the Democratic and Republican parties choose our leaders?
You mean you don't agree with him, or that he can't win, or both? Nader is the only one who was consistently correct, IMO. Too bad we have a screwed up system where I can't vote for him. Maybe you don't agree that he would make a good President, but this entrenched two party system needs to be revamped.
Yeah, we obviously have some problems in that department. You should keep in mind that they're quickly becoming the entire world's problems, so help would be more appreciated than pity.
For my fellow US citizens, this is exactly why we need elecoral reform, which both of the "real" candidates neglected to respond to. Of course they ignored it - it's contrary to their best interests! What this means to us, the American people, is that we're going to have to hammer the issue hard, starting at a local level where we can actually have an effect. Get some independent candidates in office at the ground floor, and then work our way up.
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Other issues don't line up so well. Believing that it's immoral to wear hats isn't likely to spread to others, since there's probably no benfit to such a belief. It's also unlikely to become a law in the US, since the law does nothing to benefit society, and in fact only takes away the rights of non-believers.
This is why murder is illegal, swearing is legal, stealing is illegal, praying is legal, abortions are legal, and the uprising against "gay marriage" will fail. Our laws are based on what is fair to everyone - or at least that's what we're trying to aim for. Laws sometimes align with the majority's idea of "morality," but I like to think that this is the result of common goals (fairness) rather than drawing on arbitrary rules about what's right and wrong.
There was an interesting SciAm article a few issues back titled "Atoms of Space and Time" that was pretty interesting, if you get a chance to read it. There are some interesting models of the universe that describe space and time as discrete. One giant quantum computer, in a way.
I buy software. If a piece of software could only be "licensed" under a real contract, then it would really have to be worth my while. If the publisher wants me to sign away some of my rights to the software before I can use it, then I won't buy it unless there is no other alternative.
Yes, I realize that the publisher already considers the EULA to take away some of my rights, but if they want them they'll have to be more forceful than that. Valve is applying some technological firepower to that end, and as a result I won't ever buy their product. :(
I don't license software, I buy it. Maybe the publisher thinks I'm licensing it, but that's their own delusion.
Valve thinks that they can sell me a book will a homing beacon and a self destruct device in it. Sorry, I'll just skip the game. I would have bought it, too - I've actually been anticipating HL2 for years. Oh well, maybe they'll fix it.
Oh, and the universe is full of really big numbers. Do you think it's somehow beyond our capacity to deal with 'em?
The incredibles, on the other hand, looks pretty promising. What kind of hand does Bird have in it? The Iron Giant was an excellent movie, which I would highly recommend to anybody.
Corporations and zealots may have our country in a choke hold at the moment, and they may have brainwashed most of the population, but I belive that those challenges can be overcome. The sad thing is that now it looks like it will take a major traumatic event to rile our populace up enough to do something about it.
This was our big chance to tell 'em where to stick it, and we didn't. How many of our rights and freedoms will we have to lose before we grow our balls back? How long will we let those in power manipulate our policies for personal gain?
In short: I love my country, I hate George Bush. Not him as an individual, but the selfish, evil attitude that he and his cronies embody. I don't hate my fellow citizens, but I'm frustrated by the ignorance and cowardice displayed by most of them.
Before the election I was disgusted by Bush, but now I'm disgusted by our entire country. I can only hope that he'll break things so badly that people out in the midwest/south will be forced to start thinking.
Hopefully I'm way off, but I think I detect some sort of disdain for science in your post. You may be making a funny, but there are a lot of idiots out there who take science for granted. They deny scientific knowledge that they don't like while taking advantage of the knowledge that brings them their cars and computers.
There are actually people in this country who won't believe that these fossils are 600m years old, without so much as an alternate explanation. That's scary, not funny.
From reading your paper, I would have to say that I have a very different perspective from yours. Maybe you will find some of my observations useful.
#1 - OK, to start off with you're wandering way outside the bounds of evolution as it applies to living organisms. If we truly had an all encompassing "theory of everything" then we might be able to describe the development of the universe in terms of evolutionary processes, but right now all we can do is speculate.
#2 - Regarding your observation that we don't have an explanation for the "origination of the origination", I think that there are two ways of looking at it. First off, just because science does not yet have an explanation of what caused the big bang does not mean that it cannot be explained. The goal of science is not to provide absolute truth, but to provide the *best* explanation that we can come up with. Secondly, even if you explained what was "beyond" the big bang, you would have to explain what's beyond that, right? And then what's beyond that? In other words, no matter how good your description of the universe is, someone can always ask, "well what's beyond the boundary?" The answer is that whatever is beyond the boundary has no scientific explanation. If something is so intangible that we can't describe it in any way, then it's not something that we can think about in a logical way.
#3 - Yes. I'm not sure why you bring this up. Not only are our measuring devices not perfectly accurate, but our best theories (relativity and quantum mechanics) are not complete. Nobody claims that we have a perfect description of the universe.
#5 - Sexual reproduction is actually very useful. By combining the genes of two fit individuals, you are more likely to get an even fitter offspring that if you simply mutated the genes of the two parents independently. This is a technique that has proved useful when using evolutionary processes to solve problems. this was a really interesting article about using evolution to "invent" new hardware circuits. Unfortunately you have to have a subscription to read it, but I read the print version when it came out. Combining "genes" from fit "genomes" was one of the techniques that they used. Very interesting article. As far as the usefulness of the "pleasure" aspect, this is a pretty good way to encourage individuals to produce offspring. It works differently with different species, as different species have evolved different strategies for promoting their genes and thereby continuing to exist.
#6 I'm afraid you don't understand the big bang. Matter didn't "explode" outward from a central point. Space *itself* expanded out from a central point. The common analogy is to take a balloon and draw a bunch of dots on it. The balloon is spacetime and the dots are matter. Now blow up the balloon. The dots get farther apart not because they're moving through spacetime, but because spacetime itself is expanding. I can't give a thorough explanation here, but you might want to read up on it.
#8 - The fact that we were wrong about the amount of dust on the moon does not "prove" anything except the fact that one or more of our assumptions were wrong. Imagine an analagous scenario. I have an equation that predicts your age based on your height. I know your height, and so I use it to predict your age. Turns out, you're actually older than what I predicted. Does this mean that I was wrong about your height? Possibly, but it's just as likely that my equation was wrong. Science is wrong about things all the time. Constantly. In fact, science is a way of studying the universe tha
Interesting that you mention Bush's lack of international support, because that's a fact that seems to elude Bush supporters, who it turns out are the least informed people in the country. Surprised? I didn't think so.
My point is that it *would* be easy for me to install the game, allow it to connect once, and then disallow it in the future. I'm not concerned about Steam containing spyware or adware. I *am* concerned about all future software expecting to authenticate with a server either at install time, system startup, or every time the software is run. When I buy software, I expect it to work within my own sandbox, without any external dependencies (unless of course network communication is fundamental to the software, as in an online game).
It's not bad because it makes my life difficult. It's bad on principle. I won't buy it.
You think the problem is that people don't have a net connection? I already have a cable modem, so connectivity is not a problem. The problem is that Valve wants to sell me software that will not work unless it talks to their server. This is BAD. I will not encourage it by buying the game. My options now are to either steal the game or to not play it at all. Why Valve would want me to have such a dilemma is beyond me.
Now? I don't think I'll buy it. As much as I'll miss the game, I'm not going to send the message that it's OK for a game to require communication with the outside world in order to operate. Don't think that's a big deal? How about if NONE of your software would operate without connecting to various servers in order to authenticate? Even in the best case scenario, in which the software only has to authenticate at install time (like HL2) you're going to be screwed when the company goes out of business and you need to reinstall. Worse cases involve compulsory authentication every time you use the software, in which case you're *really* screwed when the software is no longer "supported" for whatever reason.
In other words, authentication to server=bad, therefore I won't be buying the game. It has nothing to do with whether the game is "good" or not.
My opinion? If I buy a game and it won't work without talking to somebody else's server, then I don't own the game. I want to buy Half life 2, but I WILL NOT buy it if this is a requirement. Sure, I could probably find a crack on the day the game is released, but that's not the point. I'm not going to give them my money if they're going to go in such a stupid direction. The only option left is to pirate the game, which I would really prefer not to have to do.
End result? They're encouraging piracy - by encouraging cracks to proliferate, if nothing else.
I'll concede that I don't have any inherent right to turn off someone else's TV, but it's pretty clear that it's not really hurting anyone. People are going to get pissed if they're actually watching the TV, but nobody's going to be whipping out this gadget in that sort of a situation unless they're looking for an argument. I think in most situations it's pretty obvious whether turning off the TV would be acceptable. If all else fails, you can stand up and say, "Hey, is anybody watching this?"
Nevertheless, I'm happy to see such an invention. Right or not, if I can turn off tvs in my vicinity I'll do it. Think that's obnoxious? Not as obnoxious as a TV flashing in my face.
One of these, a portable cell phone jammer, and a can of minivan repellent and I'm set.
# of Americans killed on 9/11: 2,819
# of Iraqi civilians killed in Iraq: ~10k
Maybe these numbers are wrong, if so perhaps someone can find a better reference.
In other words, I'd like to see Bush's publicists rescue him from the whole 'killing tens of thousands of civilians to gain control of Iraq for dubious reasons' debacle.
Most members of the "ignorant masses" probably have a friend or relative that is a Slashdot reader. Not only that, but when it comes to technology issues they'll probably value the slashdotter's opinions, 'cause "you understand this computer stuff."
Perhaps we need to start making a concerted effort to inform the uninformed about technology issues? Next time you're talking to the technologically clueless you might bring up the subject of DRM/SCO/OSS/IP/etc. No, I'm not suggesting that we try to make people understand the issues, because they're obviously not that interested. People are willing to carry around opinions that come from reliable sources, though. Who will your relatives believe - you, or MSN?
We should have a system that encourages us to vote for the candidate that we think would do the best job, not for the lesser of two evils because nobody else has a chance of winning.
Do you agree, or do you think we should let the Democratic and Republican parties choose our leaders?
For my fellow US citizens, this is exactly why we need elecoral reform, which both of the "real" candidates neglected to respond to. Of course they ignored it - it's contrary to their best interests! What this means to us, the American people, is that we're going to have to hammer the issue hard, starting at a local level where we can actually have an effect. Get some independent candidates in office at the ground floor, and then work our way up.