"And look at what's happened. That same innovation, that same engineering, that same talent applied where we don't run up against the fact that Microsoft got this monopoly, and boom! We have 75% market share."
Indeed. That's one thing I've always maintained. Thank GOD for Microsoft. Say what you want about them, but they protected us from an Apple monopoly which would have been ten times worse than a Microsoft monopoly. At Microsoft was smart enough to embrace the idea of commodity hardware. If Apple had won, imagine the pain and suffering we would have gone through having only one supplier for both hardware and software. You can bet we would have lived with $10K computers for years in a stagnating market. It would have been an ugly battle until Apple was finally broken apart.
Microsoft arrogance is nothing compared to Apple arrogance.
The guy's writing is not exactly, uh, clear, but he does have one interesting point in there. When he says "it only happens once", he means one particular area is only devestated once, because it clears away all the old, cheap wood-frame buildings. When the city is rebuilt, it will be rebuilt to modern standards (i.e., hurricane standards) and better able to withstand things in the future.
I work in "the industry" (media/journalism/publishing) and I can tell you that it's nothing to do with wanting your name in print. The fact is that this is capitalism,
I think we're saying the same thing. I meant that they want their name in print because that's the measure of their success -- in other words, as you say, it's capitalism. The more their name is in print, the fatter their resume becomes, and the higher up they can climb. So ultimate they want their name out there as much as possible for their own career advancement.
You can apply this to any subject of journalism, not just science. There is no grand conspiracy, as the poster seems to think.
Journalists exist to be published. That is their function -- that's what they love, to see their name in print. They don't really care what they say exactly; they only care that their article pleases their editors, which in turn sells more newspapers or magazines.
I got a real education when I lived next door to a fairly high-up Sports Illustrated reporter. In watching him do his work, he would basically try and find an angle, and then shape the facts to fit his angle. Technically, he wouldn't "lie", but he would definitely flake and form things to give the impression that he'd decided to write ahead of time. That was generally for background pieces that he would write, but even for sporting events he followed that formula. He would write his article before the event had even finished, sometimes with multiple endings in case things went for one outcome or another (this is Standard Operating Procedure in the industry).
In realizing his "algorithm" to producing articles, I began to look at other journalist articles. And lo and behold -- I saw the same sort of pattern. When you realize this, you can see the "angle" they've decided to write, and the pattern shows up like a flashing red light. All the successful ones do this. They decide ahead of time what would make an exciting article to write.
This is why people get misquoted all the time. It's because when a journalist talks to someone, they aren't interested in what that person has to say, they want specific quotes that they can use to back up whatever they are writing.
That's why I'm pretty sure the aforementioned post was a rather good troll.
Hmmm. When I first read it, it was just stupid enough that I figured some Slashdot Open Source fanboy might've advocated it as a "Hyuck" solution, but reading it again, I think I might've been taken by a troll.:)
So how will people get all their mail rather than a twentieth of it? Easy, you set up a round robin DNS on mail.DOMAIN.com.
This is the best advice he'll get? Sheesh.
Think this through -- a lot of e-mail programs check every 20 minutes. Assuming I actually hit any without duplications, I could potentially need 400 minutes or over six hours to get all my mail. Since it's random, it could take days.
And that's just for starters with this lame scheme. If I want to check mail, say, from the field on a dial-up once a day... hopefully you can see how badly this would suck.
What the guy should do is buy an e-mail system that can handle 1,000,000 users and not screw around trying to chewing gum his own solution.
As I said, what do technical issues have to do with the discussion at hand? Oh yeah, nothing. If the subject was the feasability of a certain rocket technology, you might have a point. As it stands, you threw out a complete non-sequitur. I suppose it's too much to ask that you take responsibility for that.
I suspect that you aren't qualified to comment on political issues either. The fact that you have the right to vote doesn't give your opinions any weight.
Oh, I see. You're one of those. You may be interested to know that this is known as "argumentum ad verecundiam" or "appeal to authority", which is a logical fallacy. You may want to read up about it.
But since you ask, my qualifications are that I'm smarter than almost everyone. Not that I don't make mistakes -- I certainly do, and I'm up-front in admitting to them. Only a fool thinks they know everything, which brings us to you. I happily assert my opinions as opinions, which may be wrong, yet you seem unable to question your own beliefs.
You are completely clueless and yet you arrogantly assume that you can make confident statements on the state of things.
And yet you arrogantly assert that you know anything about it, when it's pretty damn obvious you don't know anything, particularly about historical trends in developing technology. Almost nothing goes from nonexistent to practical in twenty years, especially things that are unbelievably hard like nanomachines and artificial intelligence.
Sheesh, get a clue. I suspect you're rather young and idealistic, which is not a bad thing, but it can set yourself up for disappointment. I also suspect you're guilty of another flaw in thinking -- selective gathering of evidence (related to a concept known as "cognitive bias"). Chomsky, who is otherwise brilliant in his field, is grotesquely guilty of this in his politics.
You only accept facts and evidence for things that back up what you think you already know, and throw out anything else as "jack shit" that doesn't fit your world view. Look at your hostility to me. Not once have you actually refuted what I had in my original post. You've only been screaming and holding your hands over your ears.
And the utter arrogance in your posts! You worship at the altar of authority, yet offer none yourself. Maybe you should read a few books that you don't already agree with, and broaden your horizons a bit.
Look, Mr. Smartypants, do you know how the mass of the propellant decreases in a relativistic rocket in hyperbolic motion?
Um, why are you throwing technical details out at me? Where did I say it wasn't technically feasible to colonise the planets? And BTW, everything is "relativistic". What, is that versus a non-relativistic rocket?
If you can't answer such a trivial question, how the heck are you qualified to speak about planetary exploration in the infinite future? The answer is - you are not qualified to do so. So shut you mouth.
If you had bothered to read and understand what I posted, you would see I was making a political point about colonizing planets. And if you had read my other post, you would have seen where I think stations and cities floating in space are the future, not planet colonization.
your task is to find out how having some form of molecular manufacturing (not universal replicator/assembler, but close) and some form of advanced AI (not human-level, but intelligent) around 2020-2025 will affect the viability of the 4Frontiers's plans.
Not gonna happen in that time frame.
a) Molecular manufacturing is not even close, and might well be impossible ("sticky fingers" problems, etc). At least, impossible in the way people generally think of this. We have biological assembly certainly, but that's a different type of problem than what you're probably talking about. I'd say at least 50 years out, if not 100 years.
B) AI: We don't even have a clue how to do intelligent machines. AI researchers have been trying to change the definition of what AI really means, but when we talk about intelligent machines, we don't even have a theory of how to do it, much less the technology for an implementation. I'd say at least 100 years away, but I could be talked into 50 years.
Don't think it'll take that long? Then you need to look at some history.
I don't think they thought anyone was going to come up with a miracle solution, I think they were just trying to be cute and see what people would come up with. I don't think it had a specific number of cities; you had to come up with a general solution. That's what doomed me -- I assumed there had to be a "perfect" solution to the general problem that wasn't brute force. After all, they wouldn't give us a problem that couldn't be solved, would they?
When I was fifteen, I was in a programming team competition (about 25 years ago). I think we all had Pascal computers or some such. We knew going in that there was going to be one "primary" problem, along with several lesser problems. We would be scored based on the "correctness" of the algorithm, the speed of execution, that sort of thing. The team agreed that I would take the primary problem, and others would work on the other ones.
So I'm a hot shot junior programmer, ready to take on my assignment. Here was the problem: "You have a number of cities mapped on an x,y grid. A travelling salesman wants to find the shortest route between the cities. Calculate the shortest route." We had two hours or something.
I'd never heard of this problem before.
So I was like, "Hey, no problem. This is eeeeeasy." So I went off in my youthful exuberance with a blank piece of paper, figuring out how to solve it. Hmmm. That idea was good -- except it wouldn't work for this one case. How about this idea -- nope, that one will hang up on this other case.
Minutes ticked away as I sweated the problem. There HAD to be a solution to this. Half an hour, then an hour -- I'm growing desperate. What the hell? This problem is freaking hard. Finally I'm like, "screw it" and threw something together at the last minute. We ended up losing because I spent too much time thinking about it.
I still think it was goddamn unfair to give an UNSOLVED PROBLEM in a programming contest for high school students. I'm still pissed about it to this day. Grrr.:D
Absolutely! Why would anyone want to live in America, when 15th Century Europe is so nice? There's nothing to find there but sea monsters and Injuns. Living there would be a real PITA, dude!
Dude, are you seriously comparing a lush open country, brimming over with natural resources, water, animals -- to Mars? Mars has NOTHING. It is literally a lifeless, airless rock. Why do you think no one settles in Antarctica?
Why are you such a wet blanket?
"The Reality Master is dedicated to viewing the world objectively; without emotionalism, wishful thinking, cynicism or silly prejudices. The pursuit of simple Truth."
Seriously, I'm not. I just like to keep things in perspective. Very few things in this world live up to the hype. Progress is almost always very gradual.
And you really think that's it? We're done?
Where did I say we're done? We're absolutely not done. Will we have space travel someday? Absolutely. But colonies in space are way more likely to be fun to live in.
Let me guess -- you've never invented anything. Let me hazzard another crazy guess -- you've never even had a desire to invent anything. AI, medicine, space travel... It's all just too risky and we should all just be happy with the world exactly as it is.
Actually, I invented a medical information system that dominated its niche for about ten years before the company that bought it never improved it and ran it into the ground. Let's see, prior to that, I invented a windowing system for character-based terminals on an operating system you've never heard of. I also invented a charting package that did full-page color output printing in only 48K of memory. Ah, those were the days.
I suppose I could also mention that I invented the full-wave rectifier when I was twelve years old. I was really pissed off when my dad told me it'd already been invented.:)
There is to be NO trade off between freedom and security as it's completely unnecessary. Freedom is freedom! If you believe otherwise you are a "New Aged Unfree American" and unworthy of trust, liberty, or free speech.
That's simply naive and foolish, not to mention silly. Freedom is never unlimited (don't make me pull out the "yell fire in a crowded theatre" cliche). You're not allowed to own a personal nuclear bomb. Hell, ask Israel about whether trading freedom for security is worth it when you're surrounded by madmen wanting to blow themselves up.
Of course, the US isn't Israel, and would be too big to have those sort of policies. But my point is that these issues aren't as simple as you want them to be.
I'm a TRUE republican. One who believes in the original values of our country -- including real freedoms and not the ones that have been recently invented.
Actually, you sound like a Libertarian, who have their own brand of naive insanity. I remember one I had a debate with who argued that he should be allowed to fire guns at people -- as long as he didn't hit them. Freedom, you see? As long as he didn't hit anyone, he ought to be able to do it. Of course, if he hit someone, then he should get some Draconian punishment.
You really need to step back from your backwards and politically biased thinking and really listen to what others are telling you. Right now, you're so worthless that I'm not going to continue this discussion w/you.
What's funny is that you seem to think that you're the only one who's ever thought about these things. If people would only THINK (you say to yourself with exasperation), they would see how obvious it all is -- what's seems obvious to you, that is.
I'm glad that you're thinking about all this -- that's certainly a good first step. But the second step, which I don't think you've realized yet, is that the issues are way more complex than you think. You can quote Ben Franklin all you want, but that doesn't mean that other smart people aren't thinking about these things, too. Not everyone that doesn't see things the same way you do is blind. Some people might even see more of the picture than you do.
I'd prefer to be thought of as "arrogant" than meek, worthless, and your typical impressionable sheep.
So would I, but so what? Personally, I'd rather be thought of as thoughtful, balanced, rational and open-minded. I think you'd probably convince more of your friends and family with less "sky is falling" brimstone.
Oooh, you believe everything that the government tells you.
I don't believe everything they tell me, but on the other hand, I don't believe everything is a lie, either. The fact that you're so emotional about this should tell you that you're not thinking rationally about it. These issues are enormously complex, involving thousands of decision makers, each policy decisions having numerous positives and negatives. There isn't some mad genius behind the scenes pulling strings.
You seem to think in terms of "the Patriot act is evil", without any depth of understanding of the trade off between freedom and security, and the fact that historically these sort of ebbs and flows of freedom are temporary -- and necessary. That's why I finally gave up on debating this -- people don't want to hear that. They want to be angry and self righteous, and spew hatred toward Bush et al.
But that's really beside the point. I really don't want to debate this anymore. I was more pointing out that it sounds like in real life you talk a lot more than you listen to the people around you, and you sound awfully arrogant.
And having a large "space station" type setup only makes sense if we are using it to get somewhere else.
Actually, those make a hell of a lot more sense than trying to set up a colony on a planet. You can spin them for Earth-like gravity. You can expand them as much as you want. You don't have a gravity well for supplies. You can make the environment as green as you want. The view of the universe is unmatched.
Compare that to, say, Mars. Low-gravity health problems, and it's basically an ugly rock. I understand the attraction of wanting to set foot on another world, but once you get over that romantic notion, it's a pretty damn dull place that's a PITA to live on.
Mark my words, the minute anyone gets anywhere close to something like this happening, the governments of the world will shut it down. Mars is a completely unique environment, and the environmentalists will make sure Mars gets put off limits "temporarily" to colonization while they do "further studying before human contamination."
Of course, the temporary ban will eventually become permanent.
Can't happen? It already has -- See Antarctica. No one owns it. Most of the countries of the world have a treaty not to exploit it.
Think they'll just say, "Let them try and stop us? We're there, they aren't. We have guns." Please. Get over your frontier fantasies. That was possible when you had frontiers with fairly hospitable terrain (even if harsh). With Mars, there's no way you can set up a self-sufficient colony right away. They'll HAVE to have support from Earth. If Earth wants to shut them down, they'll just stop the supply rockets from going.
Planetary colonization will NEVER happen in this solar system. Look to asteroids and colonies in space for your space travel future.
They may not agree 100% with what I say but there is always a small chance that someone might rethink what they are doing and finally understand that what they are supporting is NOT the best for our country.
I wonder if you actually listen to what other people have to say, and are willing to rethink what YOU believe. And that maybe what you are supporting is not the best for the country. Somehow, I doubt it (though, I doubt you'll admit that).
To be honest, I've stopped arguing with people like you, because you/want/ to believe that freedom is getting squashed, despite all evidence to the contrary. Tou say you want to "educate" (how arrogant is that?) the people around you, but perhaps you should be willing to be educated first.
Re:And yet Europe seems to be doing fine
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He's talking about the fact that here, if you have sex before marriage, everyone frowns upon you and it's sort of a stigma.
I don't know where you live, but here in So Cal, the stigma has been dead for 30 years. Condemn? You won't even get a frown. In fact, people would think you're a little wacky for waiting for marriage.
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Yes, but on the flip side, you can't say that porn weakens relationships, if there is significant population for which it does not.
Of course I can. Just because there might be a "significant population" (whatever that means) that has had incestuous relationships without any psychological damage doesn't mean it's not harmful in a lot of cases.
It's simply foolish to say that porn is never harmful to anyone. The only question is how harmful and in what numbers.
Re:And yet Europe seems to be doing fine
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Europe has a very liberated sexuality. America does not.
Oh, please. Where does this myth come from? Europe has a very infantile view of sexuality, where it's shoved in people's faces to titter over. Seen any European "sex comedies" lately? The US generally treats it as a private subject that should keep some dignity.
I can't find the stats from a casual Google, but the US consistantly ranks at the top of the rate of sexual activity. In other words, we do it the most, but don't need to see it everywhere.
What the fuck is this garbage? I've been with the same woman for nearly five years and just married her this weekend. If anything, porn has STRENGTHENED our relationship through mutual viewing.
I don't know why we bother with science when we can just ask one random person for a subjective opinion, and then draw a conclusion based on that single piece of anecdotal evidence. Sheesh.
In other words, just because someone smokes cigarettes all their life and lives to be 90 doesn't mean that smoking doesn't dramatically shorten life on the average.
Where did I say anything about "sacrificing themselves for some random schmuck?" What I said was murdering someone to save yourself, say, shooting someone to steal their food.
That's total bullshit. If I had no water for 3 days, etc, I would welcome rescuers with open arms, not fire a freakin' gun at them. The people firing the guns DON'T WANT rescuers in there, because they are trying to pillage as much as possible.
And if you would murder someone to save yourself, you deserve to be shot on sight.
Slashdot Mirror
Not too silent -- they're moderating me down as expected. :)
Indeed. That's one thing I've always maintained. Thank GOD for Microsoft. Say what you want about them, but they protected us from an Apple monopoly which would have been ten times worse than a Microsoft monopoly. At Microsoft was smart enough to embrace the idea of commodity hardware. If Apple had won, imagine the pain and suffering we would have gone through having only one supplier for both hardware and software. You can bet we would have lived with $10K computers for years in a stagnating market. It would have been an ugly battle until Apple was finally broken apart.
Microsoft arrogance is nothing compared to Apple arrogance.
The guy's writing is not exactly, uh, clear, but he does have one interesting point in there. When he says "it only happens once", he means one particular area is only devestated once, because it clears away all the old, cheap wood-frame buildings. When the city is rebuilt, it will be rebuilt to modern standards (i.e., hurricane standards) and better able to withstand things in the future.
I think we're saying the same thing. I meant that they want their name in print because that's the measure of their success -- in other words, as you say, it's capitalism. The more their name is in print, the fatter their resume becomes, and the higher up they can climb. So ultimate they want their name out there as much as possible for their own career advancement.
Journalists exist to be published. That is their function -- that's what they love, to see their name in print. They don't really care what they say exactly; they only care that their article pleases their editors, which in turn sells more newspapers or magazines.
I got a real education when I lived next door to a fairly high-up Sports Illustrated reporter. In watching him do his work, he would basically try and find an angle, and then shape the facts to fit his angle. Technically, he wouldn't "lie", but he would definitely flake and form things to give the impression that he'd decided to write ahead of time. That was generally for background pieces that he would write, but even for sporting events he followed that formula. He would write his article before the event had even finished, sometimes with multiple endings in case things went for one outcome or another (this is Standard Operating Procedure in the industry).
In realizing his "algorithm" to producing articles, I began to look at other journalist articles. And lo and behold -- I saw the same sort of pattern. When you realize this, you can see the "angle" they've decided to write, and the pattern shows up like a flashing red light. All the successful ones do this. They decide ahead of time what would make an exciting article to write.
This is why people get misquoted all the time. It's because when a journalist talks to someone, they aren't interested in what that person has to say, they want specific quotes that they can use to back up whatever they are writing.
Well, except for the fact that nuclear testing killed John Wayne, Susan Hayward and Agnes Moorehead, along with many others. It's pretty amazing that so few people are aware of this.
That said, I'm still in favor of nuclear power. But don't kid yourself that we knew what we were doing in the 50s. We did a lot of insane things.
Hmmm. When I first read it, it was just stupid enough that I figured some Slashdot Open Source fanboy might've advocated it as a "Hyuck" solution, but reading it again, I think I might've been taken by a troll. :)
Ah well.
This is the best advice he'll get? Sheesh.
Think this through -- a lot of e-mail programs check every 20 minutes. Assuming I actually hit any without duplications, I could potentially need 400 minutes or over six hours to get all my mail. Since it's random, it could take days.
And that's just for starters with this lame scheme. If I want to check mail, say, from the field on a dial-up once a day... hopefully you can see how badly this would suck.
What the guy should do is buy an e-mail system that can handle 1,000,000 users and not screw around trying to chewing gum his own solution.
As I said, what do technical issues have to do with the discussion at hand? Oh yeah, nothing. If the subject was the feasability of a certain rocket technology, you might have a point. As it stands, you threw out a complete non-sequitur. I suppose it's too much to ask that you take responsibility for that.
I suspect that you aren't qualified to comment on political issues either. The fact that you have the right to vote doesn't give your opinions any weight.
Oh, I see. You're one of those. You may be interested to know that this is known as "argumentum ad verecundiam" or "appeal to authority", which is a logical fallacy. You may want to read up about it.
But since you ask, my qualifications are that I'm smarter than almost everyone. Not that I don't make mistakes -- I certainly do, and I'm up-front in admitting to them. Only a fool thinks they know everything, which brings us to you. I happily assert my opinions as opinions, which may be wrong, yet you seem unable to question your own beliefs.
You are completely clueless and yet you arrogantly assume that you can make confident statements on the state of things.
And yet you arrogantly assert that you know anything about it, when it's pretty damn obvious you don't know anything, particularly about historical trends in developing technology. Almost nothing goes from nonexistent to practical in twenty years, especially things that are unbelievably hard like nanomachines and artificial intelligence.
Sheesh, get a clue. I suspect you're rather young and idealistic, which is not a bad thing, but it can set yourself up for disappointment. I also suspect you're guilty of another flaw in thinking -- selective gathering of evidence (related to a concept known as "cognitive bias"). Chomsky, who is otherwise brilliant in his field, is grotesquely guilty of this in his politics.
You only accept facts and evidence for things that back up what you think you already know, and throw out anything else as "jack shit" that doesn't fit your world view. Look at your hostility to me. Not once have you actually refuted what I had in my original post. You've only been screaming and holding your hands over your ears.
And the utter arrogance in your posts! You worship at the altar of authority, yet offer none yourself. Maybe you should read a few books that you don't already agree with, and broaden your horizons a bit.
Um, why are you throwing technical details out at me? Where did I say it wasn't technically feasible to colonise the planets? And BTW, everything is "relativistic". What, is that versus a non-relativistic rocket?
If you can't answer such a trivial question, how the heck are you qualified to speak about planetary exploration in the infinite future? The answer is - you are not qualified to do so. So shut you mouth.
If you had bothered to read and understand what I posted, you would see I was making a political point about colonizing planets. And if you had read my other post, you would have seen where I think stations and cities floating in space are the future, not planet colonization.
your task is to find out how having some form of molecular manufacturing (not universal replicator/assembler, but close) and some form of advanced AI (not human-level, but intelligent) around 2020-2025 will affect the viability of the 4Frontiers's plans.
Not gonna happen in that time frame.
a) Molecular manufacturing is not even close, and might well be impossible ("sticky fingers" problems, etc). At least, impossible in the way people generally think of this. We have biological assembly certainly, but that's a different type of problem than what you're probably talking about. I'd say at least 50 years out, if not 100 years.
B) AI: We don't even have a clue how to do intelligent machines. AI researchers have been trying to change the definition of what AI really means, but when we talk about intelligent machines, we don't even have a theory of how to do it, much less the technology for an implementation. I'd say at least 100 years away, but I could be talked into 50 years.
Don't think it'll take that long? Then you need to look at some history.
Bastards. :)
Sheesh, of course I meant that an efficient solution is unsolved.
So I'm a hot shot junior programmer, ready to take on my assignment. Here was the problem: "You have a number of cities mapped on an x,y grid. A travelling salesman wants to find the shortest route between the cities. Calculate the shortest route." We had two hours or something.
I'd never heard of this problem before.
So I was like, "Hey, no problem. This is eeeeeasy." So I went off in my youthful exuberance with a blank piece of paper, figuring out how to solve it. Hmmm. That idea was good -- except it wouldn't work for this one case. How about this idea -- nope, that one will hang up on this other case.
Minutes ticked away as I sweated the problem. There HAD to be a solution to this. Half an hour, then an hour -- I'm growing desperate. What the hell? This problem is freaking hard. Finally I'm like, "screw it" and threw something together at the last minute. We ended up losing because I spent too much time thinking about it.
I still think it was goddamn unfair to give an UNSOLVED PROBLEM in a programming contest for high school students. I'm still pissed about it to this day. Grrr. :D
Dude, are you seriously comparing a lush open country, brimming over with natural resources, water, animals -- to Mars? Mars has NOTHING. It is literally a lifeless, airless rock. Why do you think no one settles in Antarctica?
Why are you such a wet blanket?
"The Reality Master is dedicated to viewing the world objectively; without emotionalism, wishful thinking, cynicism or silly prejudices. The pursuit of simple Truth."
Seriously, I'm not. I just like to keep things in perspective. Very few things in this world live up to the hype. Progress is almost always very gradual.
And you really think that's it? We're done?
Where did I say we're done? We're absolutely not done. Will we have space travel someday? Absolutely. But colonies in space are way more likely to be fun to live in.
Let me guess -- you've never invented anything. Let me hazzard another crazy guess -- you've never even had a desire to invent anything. AI, medicine, space travel... It's all just too risky and we should all just be happy with the world exactly as it is.
Actually, I invented a medical information system that dominated its niche for about ten years before the company that bought it never improved it and ran it into the ground. Let's see, prior to that, I invented a windowing system for character-based terminals on an operating system you've never heard of. I also invented a charting package that did full-page color output printing in only 48K of memory. Ah, those were the days.
I suppose I could also mention that I invented the full-wave rectifier when I was twelve years old. I was really pissed off when my dad told me it'd already been invented. :)
That's simply naive and foolish, not to mention silly. Freedom is never unlimited (don't make me pull out the "yell fire in a crowded theatre" cliche). You're not allowed to own a personal nuclear bomb. Hell, ask Israel about whether trading freedom for security is worth it when you're surrounded by madmen wanting to blow themselves up.
Of course, the US isn't Israel, and would be too big to have those sort of policies. But my point is that these issues aren't as simple as you want them to be.
I'm a TRUE republican. One who believes in the original values of our country -- including real freedoms and not the ones that have been recently invented.
Actually, you sound like a Libertarian, who have their own brand of naive insanity. I remember one I had a debate with who argued that he should be allowed to fire guns at people -- as long as he didn't hit them. Freedom, you see? As long as he didn't hit anyone, he ought to be able to do it. Of course, if he hit someone, then he should get some Draconian punishment.
You really need to step back from your backwards and politically biased thinking and really listen to what others are telling you. Right now, you're so worthless that I'm not going to continue this discussion w/you.
What's funny is that you seem to think that you're the only one who's ever thought about these things. If people would only THINK (you say to yourself with exasperation), they would see how obvious it all is -- what's seems obvious to you, that is.
I'm glad that you're thinking about all this -- that's certainly a good first step. But the second step, which I don't think you've realized yet, is that the issues are way more complex than you think. You can quote Ben Franklin all you want, but that doesn't mean that other smart people aren't thinking about these things, too. Not everyone that doesn't see things the same way you do is blind. Some people might even see more of the picture than you do.
I'd prefer to be thought of as "arrogant" than meek, worthless, and your typical impressionable sheep.
So would I, but so what? Personally, I'd rather be thought of as thoughtful, balanced, rational and open-minded. I think you'd probably convince more of your friends and family with less "sky is falling" brimstone.
I don't believe everything they tell me, but on the other hand, I don't believe everything is a lie, either. The fact that you're so emotional about this should tell you that you're not thinking rationally about it. These issues are enormously complex, involving thousands of decision makers, each policy decisions having numerous positives and negatives. There isn't some mad genius behind the scenes pulling strings.
You seem to think in terms of "the Patriot act is evil", without any depth of understanding of the trade off between freedom and security, and the fact that historically these sort of ebbs and flows of freedom are temporary -- and necessary. That's why I finally gave up on debating this -- people don't want to hear that. They want to be angry and self righteous, and spew hatred toward Bush et al.
But that's really beside the point. I really don't want to debate this anymore. I was more pointing out that it sounds like in real life you talk a lot more than you listen to the people around you, and you sound awfully arrogant.
Actually, those make a hell of a lot more sense than trying to set up a colony on a planet. You can spin them for Earth-like gravity. You can expand them as much as you want. You don't have a gravity well for supplies. You can make the environment as green as you want. The view of the universe is unmatched.
Compare that to, say, Mars. Low-gravity health problems, and it's basically an ugly rock. I understand the attraction of wanting to set foot on another world, but once you get over that romantic notion, it's a pretty damn dull place that's a PITA to live on.
Of course, the temporary ban will eventually become permanent.
Can't happen? It already has -- See Antarctica. No one owns it. Most of the countries of the world have a treaty not to exploit it.
Think they'll just say, "Let them try and stop us? We're there, they aren't. We have guns." Please. Get over your frontier fantasies. That was possible when you had frontiers with fairly hospitable terrain (even if harsh). With Mars, there's no way you can set up a self-sufficient colony right away. They'll HAVE to have support from Earth. If Earth wants to shut them down, they'll just stop the supply rockets from going.
Planetary colonization will NEVER happen in this solar system. Look to asteroids and colonies in space for your space travel future.
I wonder if you actually listen to what other people have to say, and are willing to rethink what YOU believe. And that maybe what you are supporting is not the best for the country. Somehow, I doubt it (though, I doubt you'll admit that).
To be honest, I've stopped arguing with people like you, because you /want/ to believe that freedom is getting squashed, despite all evidence to the contrary. Tou say you want to "educate" (how arrogant is that?) the people around you, but perhaps you should be willing to be educated first.
I don't know where you live, but here in So Cal, the stigma has been dead for 30 years. Condemn? You won't even get a frown. In fact, people would think you're a little wacky for waiting for marriage.
Of course I can. Just because there might be a "significant population" (whatever that means) that has had incestuous relationships without any psychological damage doesn't mean it's not harmful in a lot of cases.
It's simply foolish to say that porn is never harmful to anyone. The only question is how harmful and in what numbers.
Oh, please. Where does this myth come from? Europe has a very infantile view of sexuality, where it's shoved in people's faces to titter over. Seen any European "sex comedies" lately? The US generally treats it as a private subject that should keep some dignity.
I can't find the stats from a casual Google, but the US consistantly ranks at the top of the rate of sexual activity. In other words, we do it the most, but don't need to see it everywhere.
I don't know why we bother with science when we can just ask one random person for a subjective opinion, and then draw a conclusion based on that single piece of anecdotal evidence. Sheesh.
In other words, just because someone smokes cigarettes all their life and lives to be 90 doesn't mean that smoking doesn't dramatically shorten life on the average.
Where did I say anything about "sacrificing themselves for some random schmuck?" What I said was murdering someone to save yourself, say, shooting someone to steal their food.
And if you would murder someone to save yourself, you deserve to be shot on sight.