Well, we try to question reason, but it's difficult. The main problem is how do you question it without using it? You can't use reason to disprove reason, because then, by definition, you've disproved your own argument.
So you need to find an alternative to reason. Faith is one, but I consider it to be a predecessor to reason. We need to find the successor to reason. Unfortunately, I believe our puny human brains are most likely incapable of conceiving of such a thing.
You won't need supercomputers to do this, it will likely be done on massively parallel processors, probably using CUDA. At least that's how I would do it.
Are you against all progress, or just in this particular instance? Because you sound like you'd be arguing against developing tractors because they'd take away jobs from farmers.
Or developing steam ships because you wouldn't need as many sailors.
Or wheels because they'd take away the jobs of litter-bearers.
Or fire because you wouldn't need lots of people to snuggle with at night to keep you warm.
If people like you got their way, we'd still be hunter-gatherers on the plains of Africa. But guess what, even then, there'd still be people like you bitching about the people trying to do something useful, like make a spear to hunt with.
Religion is the belief in and worship of a god or gods, or a set of beliefs concerning the origin and purpose of the universe.
[dictionary.com, wikipedia.com]
Not that "religion" is necessarily the best way to describe communism, but religion doesn't require a deity. Besides, their point was that they made it a religion in that they accepted its ultimate goodness and truth on faith, which in turn allowed them to commit terrible acts in its name.
Now, if I post this information anonymously and his employer (and future employers) find it, his life is pretty messed up and there is nothing that can be done at all
Well, you could start by not believing things posted without references or substantial proof by anonymous sources on the internet.
But I'm not really sure what you're trying to say. Are you saying that freedom of speech and of the press don't extend to the internet because once it's online, it's online forever? How is that any different than something published in a newspaper? You can retract something you've published until you're blue in the face, it won't change the fact that there are already a million copies of the newspaper you published already in circulation.
Honestly though, the issue is that people accept the random ramblings of anonymous lunatics as "facts", not that those lunatics have the ability to say whatever idiotic thought pops into their head.
we'd be warming (albeit at a slower rate) even without any pollution..
That's quite the hypothesis to be slinging around without any proof. But I suppose when you're making "scientific" arguments that there's no possible way to disprove, facts don't really concern you.
That's my problem with religion. There's no possible way to prove or disprove any of its core tenets, so people can use it to make any argument, and to justify any action.
And while we're on this digression, I don't really understand where people get the idea that the French can't fight wars. Yes, they were steamrolled by the German Blitzkrieg, but so did every other country in Europe. England would have fallen if they weren't lucky enough to have the Channel protecting them. Hell, even the U.S. would have been steamrolled in 1940... our military was badly outdated and seriously outmanned compared to the massive German war machine.
The French conquered all of Europe under Napoleon, fought the Germans to a standstill in WWI, and had the most powerful land army in Europe for several centuries, starting with Louis the XIV and lasting until Waterloo. Not to mention that if the young confederation of Colonial States which became the US had "gone to war without the French", they would have had a much harder time beating the Brits.
Yeah, I don't see how they can do it though without specifically naming Wikileaks. All Wikileaks would have to do is begin publishing some sort of "news-like-content" and bam, they'd become shielded.
That's like saying BMW is foreign, why do they need to obey American safety regulations?
Or even more to the point, I don't think it matters HOW foreign you are, when you publish U.S. state secrets, you better bet American laws apply to you.
I can't believe that journalists and newspapers, the supposed guardians of democracy and open society, could somehow believe that it is okay to sacrifice someone else to gain protection for themselves.
I give up... I'm leaving the country. Europe, here I come. Freedom of speech and the press was really all America had going for it anymore... now we're eroding that as well.
Why can't we make it illegal for companies to prioritize traffic unless we ask them too?
I mean, sure, I want my VOIP to have priority over my torrents. Who would argue with that? But does that really mean AT&T should be able to slow my traffic from Google to get a kickback from Bing?
Propagation is not by electrons. Sorry. Signals don't travel "inside" a wire, they travel outside of it.
If you were calling New York from San Fran and had to wait for the electrons to arrive you'd be having a very slow conversation indeed.
The fact that they referred to electricity as "traveling" is enough to not even bother worrying about their opinion on the subject.
If you think signals propagating down a wire are just electrons being pumped through a tube, you'll probably have more fun talking to Ted Stevens than actual Electrical Engineers. He may be dead, but who knows, maybe EM waves can make it to him. I don't know the skin depth of Hell.
Don't forget education... The government shouldn't be providing that either, it's just a waste of money. I think the University of Phoenix can fill in nicely.
I just can't wait until curriculum's become sponsored. I can't wait to have my kids tell me the glorious part big oil played in the development of the United States, or how Walmart embodies the American ideal.
I doubt the issue was cost, but rather access to hardware.
Seems to me like they're erring on the side of caution though, since I think you'd be hard-pressed to find a student attending a private (or public for that matter) university who didn't have a computer capable of running Portal at minimal settings.
I can call California cheaper than the town next door because of it
If you're still paying based on where you're calling (inside the US) you need to stop wasting your time posting on/. and change your friggin phone service.
Also, I don't really see how regulation goes against the free market. That's like saying having cops and laws goes against a free society. It doesn't. It goes against an anarchist society. I wish people would stop claiming they want a "free" market, when really they're just asking for anarchy, where corporations can do whatever they please to extort money out of you. Can you imagine if we didn't have the SEC, the FDA, price gouging laws, consumer protection laws... etc...
In spite of what you may believe, the people out there looking to make money off of you aren't trying to be your friend. If there's no oversight, well, there's anarchy
For starters, your power is not limited to your own input. You're using a nonlinear process (in this case, parametric amplification) to modulate power obtained from other sources (the solar bombardment of the Earth with charged particles).
Well, yes. I've studied amplification effects, and while they are non-linear, the most we've ever recorded is about 30dB. This was using the Siple transmitter in Antarctica, which was a 21x21km dipole antenna (it was built in Antarctica to increase transmission efficiency by using the ice sheet as an insulator from the Earth). Once we got to a certain amplification level, the signals would always break down, possibly because the cyclotron resonance breaks down above a certain power level. But nobody really knows, triggered emissions and amplification are some of the least well understood natural phenomena out there.
I'll admit that it might be possible to alter the weather provided you have sufficient energy. But the amount of energy required would be absolutely phenomenal. And from my experience with HAARP, I don't believe that there's any practical way of doing so with that facility. Not only would you need a MUCH more powerful transmitter (the VLF waves generated by HAARP's interaction with the electrojet are actually fairly weak), but you would need to figure out a way to control the coupling of your amplified waves back into the earth-ionosphere waveguide.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that the HAARP theories are like any good conspiracy theory; they start out with a modicum of truth, and then expand it with unproven, unscientific conjecture. So you start with something possible (heating the electrojet with microwaves, or demolishing a building with explosives) and reach something completely impractical, and essentially impossible (Control of weather, gigantic perfectly executed government plan to destroy the WTC).
Such low frequencies penetrate the Earth's surface to considerable depth.
Not if you're talking about EM waves. If we go by the standard model which treats the Earth-Ionosphere cavity as a waveguide, the Earth is essentially an excellent conductor. And the skin depth of a good conductor is essentially zero in terms of geological scales. Earthquakes travel a long way through the earth because they're physical, compressional waves.
Slashdot Mirror
So you need to find an alternative to reason. Faith is one, but I consider it to be a predecessor to reason. We need to find the successor to reason. Unfortunately, I believe our puny human brains are most likely incapable of conceiving of such a thing.
Are you against all progress, or just in this particular instance? Because you sound like you'd be arguing against developing tractors because they'd take away jobs from farmers.
Or developing steam ships because you wouldn't need as many sailors.
Or wheels because they'd take away the jobs of litter-bearers.
Or fire because you wouldn't need lots of people to snuggle with at night to keep you warm.
If people like you got their way, we'd still be hunter-gatherers on the plains of Africa. But guess what, even then, there'd still be people like you bitching about the people trying to do something useful, like make a spear to hunt with.
Seems to me like they'd rather watch meatheads argue about how to build a crappy motorcycle.
I'd say that probably constitutes proof that they don't have the ability to solve complex global problems.
Religion is the belief in and worship of a god or gods, or a set of beliefs concerning the origin and purpose of the universe.
[dictionary.com, wikipedia.com] Not that "religion" is necessarily the best way to describe communism, but religion doesn't require a deity. Besides, their point was that they made it a religion in that they accepted its ultimate goodness and truth on faith, which in turn allowed them to commit terrible acts in its name.
Now, if I post this information anonymously and his employer (and future employers) find it, his life is pretty messed up and there is nothing that can be done at all
Well, you could start by not believing things posted without references or substantial proof by anonymous sources on the internet.
But I'm not really sure what you're trying to say. Are you saying that freedom of speech and of the press don't extend to the internet because once it's online, it's online forever? How is that any different than something published in a newspaper? You can retract something you've published until you're blue in the face, it won't change the fact that there are already a million copies of the newspaper you published already in circulation.
Honestly though, the issue is that people accept the random ramblings of anonymous lunatics as "facts", not that those lunatics have the ability to say whatever idiotic thought pops into their head.
we'd be warming (albeit at a slower rate) even without any pollution..
That's quite the hypothesis to be slinging around without any proof. But I suppose when you're making "scientific" arguments that there's no possible way to disprove, facts don't really concern you.
That's my problem with religion. There's no possible way to prove or disprove any of its core tenets, so people can use it to make any argument, and to justify any action.
and a new laptop pimped out with Norton Internet Security 2011
Which, if you have any sense, you will promptly uninstall.
Not only that, but he DEMANDED that the Discovery Channel
Find solutions for Global Warming, Automotive pollution, International Trade, factory pollution, and the whole blasted human economy.
Not to be nitpicky, but I think if the Discovery channel could solve those problems, they would.
I can understand. An Inconvenient Truth made me want to kill myself too.
Don't forget Chairman Mao. Pretty sure he wasn't too keen on religion either.
The French conquered all of Europe under Napoleon, fought the Germans to a standstill in WWI, and had the most powerful land army in Europe for several centuries, starting with Louis the XIV and lasting until Waterloo. Not to mention that if the young confederation of Colonial States which became the US had "gone to war without the French", they would have had a much harder time beating the Brits.
Yeah, I don't see how they can do it though without specifically naming Wikileaks. All Wikileaks would have to do is begin publishing some sort of "news-like-content" and bam, they'd become shielded.
Or even more to the point, I don't think it matters HOW foreign you are, when you publish U.S. state secrets, you better bet American laws apply to you.
I give up... I'm leaving the country. Europe, here I come. Freedom of speech and the press was really all America had going for it anymore... now we're eroding that as well.
Why can't we make it illegal for companies to prioritize traffic unless we ask them too? I mean, sure, I want my VOIP to have priority over my torrents. Who would argue with that? But does that really mean AT&T should be able to slow my traffic from Google to get a kickback from Bing?
If you've ever done business in a city where you have to fly through Cleveland, say, Akron, you know that when you fly there you get fleeced.
I think you're burying the lead here. There's business to be done near Cleveland? What are they selling, crippling depression?
anecdote(s) != data
Go on...
To top it, they have always had superior image quality compared to Nvidia, regardless of the back-and-forth of performance lead.
Ah. So anecdotes aren't evidence, but your subjective evaluation of "image quality" is not only valid, but relevant? Kudos to you, sir.
So what you're saying is if I get too fat, my computer slows down?
Propagation is not by electrons. Sorry. Signals don't travel "inside" a wire, they travel outside of it. If you were calling New York from San Fran and had to wait for the electrons to arrive you'd be having a very slow conversation indeed.
The fact that they referred to electricity as "traveling" is enough to not even bother worrying about their opinion on the subject. If you think signals propagating down a wire are just electrons being pumped through a tube, you'll probably have more fun talking to Ted Stevens than actual Electrical Engineers. He may be dead, but who knows, maybe EM waves can make it to him. I don't know the skin depth of Hell.
I just can't wait until curriculum's become sponsored. I can't wait to have my kids tell me the glorious part big oil played in the development of the United States, or how Walmart embodies the American ideal.
I doubt the issue was cost, but rather access to hardware.
Seems to me like they're erring on the side of caution though, since I think you'd be hard-pressed to find a student attending a private (or public for that matter) university who didn't have a computer capable of running Portal at minimal settings.
I can call California cheaper than the town next door because of it
If you're still paying based on where you're calling (inside the US) you need to stop wasting your time posting on /. and change your friggin phone service.
Also, I don't really see how regulation goes against the free market. That's like saying having cops and laws goes against a free society. It doesn't. It goes against an anarchist society. I wish people would stop claiming they want a "free" market, when really they're just asking for anarchy, where corporations can do whatever they please to extort money out of you. Can you imagine if we didn't have the SEC, the FDA, price gouging laws, consumer protection laws... etc...
In spite of what you may believe, the people out there looking to make money off of you aren't trying to be your friend. If there's no oversight, well, there's anarchy
I'll believe they've created mobile supercomputing when someone puts a powerful GPU that is CUDA-ready in a smartphone.
Of course, you better get some big batteries for your phone, because Teraflops ain't free
For starters, your power is not limited to your own input. You're using a nonlinear process (in this case, parametric amplification) to modulate power obtained from other sources (the solar bombardment of the Earth with charged particles).
Well, yes. I've studied amplification effects, and while they are non-linear, the most we've ever recorded is about 30dB. This was using the Siple transmitter in Antarctica, which was a 21x21km dipole antenna (it was built in Antarctica to increase transmission efficiency by using the ice sheet as an insulator from the Earth). Once we got to a certain amplification level, the signals would always break down, possibly because the cyclotron resonance breaks down above a certain power level. But nobody really knows, triggered emissions and amplification are some of the least well understood natural phenomena out there.
I'll admit that it might be possible to alter the weather provided you have sufficient energy. But the amount of energy required would be absolutely phenomenal. And from my experience with HAARP, I don't believe that there's any practical way of doing so with that facility. Not only would you need a MUCH more powerful transmitter (the VLF waves generated by HAARP's interaction with the electrojet are actually fairly weak), but you would need to figure out a way to control the coupling of your amplified waves back into the earth-ionosphere waveguide.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that the HAARP theories are like any good conspiracy theory; they start out with a modicum of truth, and then expand it with unproven, unscientific conjecture. So you start with something possible (heating the electrojet with microwaves, or demolishing a building with explosives) and reach something completely impractical, and essentially impossible (Control of weather, gigantic perfectly executed government plan to destroy the WTC).
Such low frequencies penetrate the Earth's surface to considerable depth.
Not if you're talking about EM waves. If we go by the standard model which treats the Earth-Ionosphere cavity as a waveguide, the Earth is essentially an excellent conductor. And the skin depth of a good conductor is essentially zero in terms of geological scales. Earthquakes travel a long way through the earth because they're physical, compressional waves.