Gee, well then by that analogy, sound waves are a form of light too, arn't they?
Dumbass. That wasn't an analogy. Light as we see it is simply specific frequencies of electromagnetic radiation. Radio waves are also just EM radiation at specific frequencies. Therefore, depending on how you look at it, radio waves are just a form of light... they just happen to be at a frequency too low for the human eye to perceive (much like infrared).
Contrast this with sound waves. Sound waves are physical waves traveling through matter... ie, they cause the matter itself to "oscillate". Typically this matter is air, but sound waves also travel through water, solid matter, etc. We hear sound waves because the movement of air is perceived by our ears and converted into signals which are sent to the brain. As I'm sure you realize, this is *drastically* different from EM radiation, which travels as a self-propagating waveform.
Did you not consider that? Removal of the offending post is an alternative that would be pushed. Its a serious chill on free speech: People posting would have to consider whether posting a strongly worded opinion is worth the legal hassles it could generate, and if challenged, posters would have to calculate whether they have enough money and reources to fight, or if they are willing to be silenced and remove their post.
My *gawd* you are paranoid. Okay, let's go with your example. I post a scathing commentary regarding SCO's actions. According to this law, SCO could post a rebuttal on their website and then I would be obliged to link that that rebuttal. That's ALL! Beyond that, the company has absolute no right to limit what I choose to publish. What's coercive about this? After all, what's the harm in linking to their rebuttal? It doesn't cost me anything, really (other than the bandwidth to transmit the link tag over the wire... a negligable cost). So tell me again how this law could cause people to retract statements?
Where did you hear that one? Ever read the Enquirer?
Umm, given the poster's reference to Germany, one can only assume he/she is located somewhere in Europe where the concept of "right to respond" is fairly common and exists as he/she described.
Funny, that sounds like the right to free censorship to me.:) After all, the paper can continue to say what they want... they're simply obliged to allow the offended party to respond.
Because it's not strictly true. Okay, suppose I choose to pirate some game that I most definitely would have purchased otherwise. In this case it can be argued that, yes, I've chosen to withhold value that the company would otherwise have (OTOH, I am not depriving them of something they already had, but let's forget that for the moment). Now, let's say I pirate some game that I wouldn't have purchased otherwise (due to, for example, the risk of laying down dollars for a game I'm not sure I'd like). In this case, am I "stealing" (to use your definition)? Since I wouldn't have purchased the game anyway, I'm not depriving the company of anything, right? So is this theft?
You see, calling copyright infringement "stealing" is just not accurate. Theft refers to the taking of something from someone else and depriving them of that item. Copyright infringement just doesn't work this way. Comparing the two is like comparing apples and oranges. Sure, they're both fruit (illegal), but they really are fundamentally different things.
Re:Way to make the case for Open Source, guys...
on
GameCube ISOs Released?
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Umm... explain to me again how these crackers represent the OSS population?
I have a feeling the article was posted on Slashdot because it demonstrates how even the strictest copy-control mechanisms can be defeated (in this case, very specialized media on a fairly closed piece of hardware), something which has been said (and demonstrated) time and again. This is obviously interesting to Slashdot, since this is just an example of the wider problem of copy controls and their effect on the public domain (see the myriad articles regarding CD protections, DeCSS, etc, etc). However, I personally don't get the impression that Hemos is somehow value-judging these people (either supporting or criticising them). It's simply a technically and philosophically interesting news piece.
So, please, quit overreacting. If people make the mistake of associating these law-breaking crackers (whose actions I neither respect nor condone) with members of the OSS population, that's a problem we'll have to deal with. But if that happens, it speaks more to the general misconceptions in society about the difference between crackers and hackers (a subject which has been beaten (and beaten (and beaten)) like the dead horse it is).
That's assuming you live in the US where big business can buy government. Constrast this to Canada where we are actually *passing* a law to limit campaign finance from corporations.
It takes MORE, I repeat MORE energy to manufacture the hydrogen than the hydrogen returns.
Err, that's called thermodynamics. It happens to apply to every energy storage mechanism which exists. Your plant biomass idea is really just a glorified solar-energy collector, which is why it appears to involve an energy surplus. But I could do the same thing by using some (albeit, highly efficient) solar cells to crack hydrogen into water. It's the SAME THING! The difference is in how you collect the energy and the form in which it's stored.
Incidentally, I suspect your idea doesn't actually generate an energy surplus. Or did you think you could harvest the plant material and convert it into ethanol without expending any energy?
Every I know is having children. I want to have children myself someday. Gay and Lesbian couples are having children. (which may have been nature's built-in method of population control since left to their own devices they can't procreate) Obviously
You're assuming, based on your limited view of the world, that everyone behaves like you. Here's a counter example (from my limited view). I'm not having children. A number of my friends aren't having children. The others who want kids often only plan to have one or two (at or below the population replacement rate). So who's view is correct, yours or mine?
they're not having children at the rate of the poor third world countries but the population IS growing exponentially.
No, its not. Read the WHO world population growth projections to get some idea. The average family size is shrinking in most developed countries. Heck, Italy has a negative population growth. The minute average family size reaches or dips below two, population growth ceases or even declines. And this is becoming more and more the case in many nations (to the point where it's becoming a real problem as the existing population ages with no replacements to drive the economy. In Canada, for example, they are compensating for this via immigration).
What nearly everyone seems to forget (including the NPR report last night) is that hydrogen is not an energy source any more than the wall socket your computer is plugged into is.
Ugh, that applies to almost every energy medium you will ever find on this planet. Fossil fuels themselves are stored up energy... they just happen to store solar energy from millions of years ago and are thus, from our point of view, free.
Hydrogen has to be produced. Currently, most of it comes from fossil fuels in a process that releases CO2. Some if it comes from electrolosis, which requires energy which comes from sources like burning fossil fuels.
The only thing hydrogen would do in our current situation would be to move pollution from your car to a power plant.
So? This is a great thing! This means that the pollution is localized, meaning it's easier to control, and you only have on the order of thousands (guess) of facilities to upgrade when new pollution-control technologies appear (unlike having to fix, say, a hundred million cars). Moreover, by having centralized energy production, we can role out new production technologies easier AND we can use technologies which operate better at larger scales (eg, nuclear or fusion power, hydroelectric, solar, wind, etc).
First, he ain't my saviour.:) I just like playing Devil's Advocate (if you'll pardon the pun;). Second, sure, why not?
Jesus: You should all be nice to one another, 'cuz we're all human beings and thus we are brothers.
Some Guy: Yeah, you're totally right, Jesus. Great idea!
Jesus: Yeah, and then you have to be saved through me, because you are a sinner in the eyes of almight God. Otherwise you will burn in the depths of hell for eternity!
Yes, but as I said, the size isn't what matters. It's how the brain is organized and utilized which does. eg, one possible theory is that the neanderthal brain might have been highly specialized and compartmentalized. When they were making tools, that's all they thought about. When they were hunting, that's all they thought about. They had great concentration, but the complete inability to bring thsoe skills together. In other words, their brain wasn't all that malleable or flexible. The human brain, OTOH, is highly flexible... we are capable of combining various modes of thought in a way which the neanderthals couldn't. And in this way, we had an advantage. It wasn't due to brain size... it was brain structure.
The facts are still correct, though. I've read those sames stats in a number of publications, including Scientific American, amongst others (they had a rather interesting article on the possible differences between human and neanderthal brains which led to human success and neanderthal extinction, despite the larger neanderthal brain. Basically, it ain't the size that matters, but how you use it:).
A cult which teaches that those who leave will be destroyed at some unspecified future time. I would disagree with the statement that you can't get more modern than that.
Yes, but that's just a form of though-control (as is used by MANY religions... the idea of hell in Christianity being the most obvious example. The JW's just use other methods, like overt peer pressure (eg, discommunication), to manipulate their members). What it is not is an overt rejection of technology as exemplified by the Amish and other luddite-esque religious groups, which was the grandparent poster's point.
Basically, comparing the JW's to the Amish is like comparing Christianity to Buddhism... they're completely different.:)
Uhhh... do you have any idea how ridiculous that sounds? Vorbis *decoding* requires a large number of cycles. Decoding happens where? On the client side. The job of the web server is to stream the data out to the client... that's all. Now, encoding complexity could be an issue if they're encoding to their various media formats on the fly (which would require a ton of cycles no matter the format, BTW), but decoding complexity is completely irrelevant to a streaming media server.
In fact, the only reason a streaming media server might decode the media would be to transcode to another format. Again, if you're doing this, you better have a lot of horsepower to begin with. Although, interestingly, one of the primary purposes of doing this is to degrade the bitrate of a stream for low-bandwidth purposes. If Vorbis bitrate peeling works as promised, streaming Vorbis will require LESS cycles for this type of application, since there would be no decoding phase involved.
Hmm... not quite. It looks like they just implemented the MDCT in hardware (albeit the most computationally intensive part). Although, now that I think about it, this is probably a good approach... it allows for firmware upgrades of the actual decoder (since it runs in software), yet still optimizes the most difficult bits in hardware.
Not great if you want to use on a portable device, where battery life is a concern.
Meh, this is becoming less and less of a concern. Your average PDA has a pretty damn powerful processor in it these days, while still having decent battery life. Heck, even cell-phones these days are pretty powerful. Enough so that decoding Vorbis shouldn't be a huge issue. And this ignores the possibility of hardware decoders, which make this whole point moot. Of course, a good question here is, how suitable is Vorbis for implementation in hardware?
Simple: MPEG-1 provides poor compressions ratios and VP3.2 has poor(er) quality. I think what people are really meaning when they say "we need a free video codec" is "we need a video codec that reaches the size and quality levels of MPEG-4, but isn't patent encumbered".
Okay, normally I don't do this, but this is getting freakin' annoying.
Ogg = Container Format, like QuickTime Vorbis = Audio Codec, like AAC
You can, theoretically, store a Vorbis bitstream inside a QuickTime container, if you wanted to. Or an AAC stream inside an Ogg container. Why do people keep making this mistake?
Wow, someone is completely blinded by the American Dream...
Can you explain when keep more of the money they earn is 'giving the money to the massively rich'? 'The rich don't need more money. They're rich!' That is great you feel entitled to make decision on their possessions. Give me your checkbook and I will make some for you. That is just about as 'fair'.
Okay, when some rich guy comes out and says "I don't need more money, I don't know what I'd do with it" that seems like a decent sign that the rich don't need a tax cut. At least not as much as the lower and middle class people do.
The only money that is being shovelled is to the lower class. Such as the people who will be getting the child credits that don't pay any taxes.
You do realize that one of the major cuts that DIDN'T make it was a child tax credit for single parent families, right? You know, the ones who probably need it the most.
Your ideas are what screws up the economy in the long run. Look how we have helped the African American communities in urban centers. With the handouts you seem so eager to dole out, over 75% of the children born are to single mothers. The male has lost his place as provider and with that his sense of purpose within a family structure. The results of this have been devastating.
This is silly and simplistic. I grew up in a single parent family and I turned out fine. The same goes for one of my best friends. The fact is, the problems in black communities in the US are far more complicated than you'd like to believe. The projects that you talk about were a massive failure, but that has more to do with lack of government will than anything else.
The fact is, your average black youth (or anyone who is destitute and trapped in a poor community) is caught in a nasty feedback loop. Basically, if you grow up in a bad neighbourhood with no decent role models, you'll end up staying in that bad neighbourhood and becoming the type of person who won't be a decent rolemodel. Lather, rinse, repeat. There are many other factors, but the fact is, it's far FAR more complicated than you appear willing to believe.
In effect, the social experiment that the democrats have engaged in has removed the ambition for upward mobility. Sure they want better, but not enough to earn it, to work for it.
Bullshit. Canada is what you'd call a "wellfare state", and we have far less poverty, unemployment, violent crime, and drug use than the US. The same goes for a large part of Europe. Sorry, things are not as simple as you'd like to believe.
We, as a society, should make sure they have enough to eat by providing food only. I want they to be dissatisified with their current lot in life. I want them so dissatisified they work their shitty job and either take night classes or learn a trade that pays better to improve themselves and earn what they want.
Yeah, take night classes which costs money they don't have. Or learn a trade which costs money they don't have. Sorry, education, especially in the United States is a luxury of the rich. Well, at least richer. The poor have very little access to it.
So, yeah, lets leave the poor wallow in their own misery. Then, they'll get depressed and convinced they have nowhere to turn, because they have no money and they have a shitty job, and thus no way to improve their lot in life. Try to get a different job? Lack of skills. Try to educate to get those skills? Lack of money. Ad nauseum.
Geez, man, have you ever actually BEEN poor?
If we cut off the welfare system, the message will sink in not to breed them if you can't feed them.
We are getting more dead weight than should be taken. What is not need is to kill the ambition so that people who are willing to strive don't achieve more than someone who isn't and is provided for.
Well, I suppose that says it all, doesn't it. See, I'd rather try to help my fellow man. You'd rather cut 'em loose. Cut out the dead weight, as it were. Well, I happen to think that's sick and wrong... we'll have to agree to disagree here.
The fact is that there are people who can hear the removal of minute (and meaningless) sound detail.
Erm, you're missing the parent posters point. The removal of so-called "minute detail" makes no difference if the human ear is physically incapable of perceiving it. Take sounds frequency as an example... on average, the human ear can hear up to the 22khz-ish (25khz or so for gifted people) range. Anything above that and the average person cannot physically perceive the sound. Period! No ifs, ands, or buts. This means that a 48khz sampling rate is pretty damned good.
Think of it this way, if I put a UV filter in front of the sun without you knowing, you'd never be able to tell the difference. Why? Because the human eye is simply unable to perceive UV. Period. There's no subjectivity about it. The same goes for sound beyond the range of human hearing.
I'm tending to believe that handwriting recognition as the "next big thing" is a red herring. Having just had to do a lot of handwriting over the last couple of weeks, the feel was frustrating and slow, like writing with a huge, heavy stick. Given that many people can now type several times faster than they can write, where is the demand for handwriting recognition going to come from?
Portable devices. Writing will always be more portable than a keyboard. All you need is a stylus and a writing surface, which typically doubles as a display. This means the device is that much more compact. Any attempt to shrink down a keyboad to match these form factors is, IMHO, fundamentally limited. After all, which do you think is faster, trying to type on one of those tiny thumb-keypads, or writing using a stylus?
No, a unique scribble which represents a given individual is standard for a signature. Seriously, how many signatures have you seen which are actual, recognizable cursive? Very few, in my experience...
Slashdot Mirror
Gee, well then by that analogy, sound waves are a form of light too, arn't they?
Dumbass. That wasn't an analogy. Light as we see it is simply specific frequencies of electromagnetic radiation. Radio waves are also just EM radiation at specific frequencies. Therefore, depending on how you look at it, radio waves are just a form of light... they just happen to be at a frequency too low for the human eye to perceive (much like infrared).
Contrast this with sound waves. Sound waves are physical waves traveling through matter... ie, they cause the matter itself to "oscillate". Typically this matter is air, but sound waves also travel through water, solid matter, etc. We hear sound waves because the movement of air is perceived by our ears and converted into signals which are sent to the brain. As I'm sure you realize, this is *drastically* different from EM radiation, which travels as a self-propagating waveform.
Did I miss anything?
Hmm, I can't tell from the manual page: will tcpkill shutdown TCP sessions which are being routed through (as opposed to originated)?
Did you not consider that? Removal of the offending post is an alternative that would be pushed. Its a serious chill on free speech: People posting would have to consider whether posting a strongly worded opinion is worth the legal hassles it could generate, and if challenged, posters would have to calculate whether they have enough money and reources to fight, or if they are willing to be silenced and remove their post.
My *gawd* you are paranoid. Okay, let's go with your example. I post a scathing commentary regarding SCO's actions. According to this law, SCO could post a rebuttal on their website and then I would be obliged to link that that rebuttal. That's ALL! Beyond that, the company has absolute no right to limit what I choose to publish. What's coercive about this? After all, what's the harm in linking to their rebuttal? It doesn't cost me anything, really (other than the bandwidth to transmit the link tag over the wire... a negligable cost). So tell me again how this law could cause people to retract statements?
Where did you hear that one? Ever read the Enquirer?
Umm, given the poster's reference to Germany, one can only assume he/she is located somewhere in Europe where the concept of "right to respond" is fairly common and exists as he/she described.
Funny, that sounds like the right to free censorship to me. :) After all, the paper can continue to say what they want... they're simply obliged to allow the offended party to respond.
Why is this so hard to understand?
Because it's not strictly true. Okay, suppose I choose to pirate some game that I most definitely would have purchased otherwise. In this case it can be argued that, yes, I've chosen to withhold value that the company would otherwise have (OTOH, I am not depriving them of something they already had, but let's forget that for the moment). Now, let's say I pirate some game that I wouldn't have purchased otherwise (due to, for example, the risk of laying down dollars for a game I'm not sure I'd like). In this case, am I "stealing" (to use your definition)? Since I wouldn't have purchased the game anyway, I'm not depriving the company of anything, right? So is this theft?
You see, calling copyright infringement "stealing" is just not accurate. Theft refers to the taking of something from someone else and depriving them of that item. Copyright infringement just doesn't work this way. Comparing the two is like comparing apples and oranges. Sure, they're both fruit (illegal), but they really are fundamentally different things.
Umm... explain to me again how these crackers represent the OSS population?
I have a feeling the article was posted on Slashdot because it demonstrates how even the strictest copy-control mechanisms can be defeated (in this case, very specialized media on a fairly closed piece of hardware), something which has been said (and demonstrated) time and again. This is obviously interesting to Slashdot, since this is just an example of the wider problem of copy controls and their effect on the public domain (see the myriad articles regarding CD protections, DeCSS, etc, etc). However, I personally don't get the impression that Hemos is somehow value-judging these people (either supporting or criticising them). It's simply a technically and philosophically interesting news piece.
So, please, quit overreacting. If people make the mistake of associating these law-breaking crackers (whose actions I neither respect nor condone) with members of the OSS population, that's a problem we'll have to deal with. But if that happens, it speaks more to the general misconceptions in society about the difference between crackers and hackers (a subject which has been beaten (and beaten (and beaten)) like the dead horse it is).
That's assuming you live in the US where big business can buy government. Constrast this to Canada where we are actually *passing* a law to limit campaign finance from corporations.
It takes MORE, I repeat MORE energy to manufacture the hydrogen than the hydrogen returns.
Err, that's called thermodynamics. It happens to apply to every energy storage mechanism which exists. Your plant biomass idea is really just a glorified solar-energy collector, which is why it appears to involve an energy surplus. But I could do the same thing by using some (albeit, highly efficient) solar cells to crack hydrogen into water. It's the SAME THING! The difference is in how you collect the energy and the form in which it's stored.
Incidentally, I suspect your idea doesn't actually generate an energy surplus. Or did you think you could harvest the plant material and convert it into ethanol without expending any energy?
Every I know is having children. I want to have children myself someday. Gay and Lesbian couples are having children. (which may have been nature's built-in method of population control since left to their own devices they can't procreate) Obviously
You're assuming, based on your limited view of the world, that everyone behaves like you. Here's a counter example (from my limited view). I'm not having children. A number of my friends aren't having children. The others who want kids often only plan to have one or two (at or below the population replacement rate). So who's view is correct, yours or mine?
they're not having children at the rate of the poor third world countries but the population IS growing exponentially.
No, its not. Read the WHO world population growth projections to get some idea. The average family size is shrinking in most developed countries. Heck, Italy has a negative population growth. The minute average family size reaches or dips below two, population growth ceases or even declines. And this is becoming more and more the case in many nations (to the point where it's becoming a real problem as the existing population ages with no replacements to drive the economy. In Canada, for example, they are compensating for this via immigration).
What nearly everyone seems to forget (including the NPR report last night) is that hydrogen is not an energy source any more than the wall socket your computer is plugged into is.
Ugh, that applies to almost every energy medium you will ever find on this planet. Fossil fuels themselves are stored up energy... they just happen to store solar energy from millions of years ago and are thus, from our point of view, free.
Hydrogen has to be produced. Currently, most of it comes from fossil fuels in a process that releases CO2. Some if it comes from electrolosis, which requires energy which comes from sources like burning fossil fuels.
The only thing hydrogen would do in our current situation would be to move pollution from your car to a power plant.
So? This is a great thing! This means that the pollution is localized, meaning it's easier to control, and you only have on the order of thousands (guess) of facilities to upgrade when new pollution-control technologies appear (unlike having to fix, say, a hundred million cars). Moreover, by having centralized energy production, we can role out new production technologies easier AND we can use technologies which operate better at larger scales (eg, nuclear or fusion power, hydroelectric, solar, wind, etc).
First, he ain't my saviour. :) I just like playing Devil's Advocate (if you'll pardon the pun ;). Second, sure, why not?
:)
Jesus: You should all be nice to one another, 'cuz we're all human beings and thus we are brothers.
Some Guy: Yeah, you're totally right, Jesus. Great idea!
Jesus: Yeah, and then you have to be saved through me, because you are a sinner in the eyes of almight God. Otherwise you will burn in the depths of hell for eternity!
Some Guy: Err... okay... *backs away slowly*
See, insightful, but a nut all the same.
Yes, but as I said, the size isn't what matters. It's how the brain is organized and utilized which does. eg, one possible theory is that the neanderthal brain might have been highly specialized and compartmentalized. When they were making tools, that's all they thought about. When they were hunting, that's all they thought about. They had great concentration, but the complete inability to bring thsoe skills together. In other words, their brain wasn't all that malleable or flexible. The human brain, OTOH, is highly flexible... we are capable of combining various modes of thought in a way which the neanderthals couldn't. And in this way, we had an advantage. It wasn't due to brain size... it was brain structure.
Your claim that he was just a really insightful good teacher is, well, just plain wrong.
:)
Why can't you be an insightful, yet insane, good teacher? A good teacher with a god complex, if you will?
The facts are still correct, though. I've read those sames stats in a number of publications, including Scientific American, amongst others (they had a rather interesting article on the possible differences between human and neanderthal brains which led to human success and neanderthal extinction, despite the larger neanderthal brain. Basically, it ain't the size that matters, but how you use it :).
A cult which teaches that those who leave will be destroyed at some unspecified future time. I would disagree with the statement that you can't get more modern than that.
:)
Yes, but that's just a form of though-control (as is used by MANY religions... the idea of hell in Christianity being the most obvious example. The JW's just use other methods, like overt peer pressure (eg, discommunication), to manipulate their members). What it is not is an overt rejection of technology as exemplified by the Amish and other luddite-esque religious groups, which was the grandparent poster's point.
Basically, comparing the JW's to the Amish is like comparing Christianity to Buddhism... they're completely different.
Uhhh... do you have any idea how ridiculous that sounds? Vorbis *decoding* requires a large number of cycles. Decoding happens where? On the client side. The job of the web server is to stream the data out to the client... that's all. Now, encoding complexity could be an issue if they're encoding to their various media formats on the fly (which would require a ton of cycles no matter the format, BTW), but decoding complexity is completely irrelevant to a streaming media server.
In fact, the only reason a streaming media server might decode the media would be to transcode to another format. Again, if you're doing this, you better have a lot of horsepower to begin with. Although, interestingly, one of the primary purposes of doing this is to degrade the bitrate of a stream for low-bandwidth purposes. If Vorbis bitrate peeling works as promised, streaming Vorbis will require LESS cycles for this type of application, since there would be no decoding phase involved.
Hmm... not quite. It looks like they just implemented the MDCT in hardware (albeit the most computationally intensive part). Although, now that I think about it, this is probably a good approach... it allows for firmware upgrades of the actual decoder (since it runs in software), yet still optimizes the most difficult bits in hardware.
Not great if you want to use on a portable device, where battery life is a concern.
Meh, this is becoming less and less of a concern. Your average PDA has a pretty damn powerful processor in it these days, while still having decent battery life. Heck, even cell-phones these days are pretty powerful. Enough so that decoding Vorbis shouldn't be a huge issue. And this ignores the possibility of hardware decoders, which make this whole point moot. Of course, a good question here is, how suitable is Vorbis for implementation in hardware?
Simple: MPEG-1 provides poor compressions ratios and VP3.2 has poor(er) quality. I think what people are really meaning when they say "we need a free video codec" is "we need a video codec that reaches the size and quality levels of MPEG-4, but isn't patent encumbered".
Okay, normally I don't do this, but this is getting freakin' annoying.
Ogg = Container Format, like QuickTime
Vorbis = Audio Codec, like AAC
You can, theoretically, store a Vorbis bitstream inside a QuickTime container, if you wanted to. Or an AAC stream inside an Ogg container. Why do people keep making this mistake?
Wow, someone is completely blinded by the American Dream...
Can you explain when keep more of the money they earn is 'giving the money to the massively rich'? 'The rich don't need more money. They're rich!' That is great you feel entitled to make decision on their possessions. Give me your checkbook and I will make some for you. That is just about as 'fair'.
Okay, when some rich guy comes out and says "I don't need more money, I don't know what I'd do with it" that seems like a decent sign that the rich don't need a tax cut. At least not as much as the lower and middle class people do.
The only money that is being shovelled is to the lower class. Such as the people who will be getting the child credits that don't pay any taxes.
You do realize that one of the major cuts that DIDN'T make it was a child tax credit for single parent families, right? You know, the ones who probably need it the most.
Your ideas are what screws up the economy in the long run. Look how we have helped the African American communities in urban centers. With the handouts you seem so eager to dole out, over 75% of the children born are to single mothers. The male has lost his place as provider and with that his sense of purpose within a family structure. The results of this have been devastating.
This is silly and simplistic. I grew up in a single parent family and I turned out fine. The same goes for one of my best friends. The fact is, the problems in black communities in the US are far more complicated than you'd like to believe. The projects that you talk about were a massive failure, but that has more to do with lack of government will than anything else.
The fact is, your average black youth (or anyone who is destitute and trapped in a poor community) is caught in a nasty feedback loop. Basically, if you grow up in a bad neighbourhood with no decent role models, you'll end up staying in that bad neighbourhood and becoming the type of person who won't be a decent rolemodel. Lather, rinse, repeat. There are many other factors, but the fact is, it's far FAR more complicated than you appear willing to believe.
In effect, the social experiment that the democrats have engaged in has removed the ambition for upward mobility. Sure they want better, but not enough to earn it, to work for it.
Bullshit. Canada is what you'd call a "wellfare state", and we have far less poverty, unemployment, violent crime, and drug use than the US. The same goes for a large part of Europe. Sorry, things are not as simple as you'd like to believe.
We, as a society, should make sure they have enough to eat by providing food only. I want they to be dissatisified with their current lot in life. I want them so dissatisified they work their shitty job and either take night classes or learn a trade that pays better to improve themselves and earn what they want.
Yeah, take night classes which costs money they don't have. Or learn a trade which costs money they don't have. Sorry, education, especially in the United States is a luxury of the rich. Well, at least richer. The poor have very little access to it.
So, yeah, lets leave the poor wallow in their own misery. Then, they'll get depressed and convinced they have nowhere to turn, because they have no money and they have a shitty job, and thus no way to improve their lot in life. Try to get a different job? Lack of skills. Try to educate to get those skills? Lack of money. Ad nauseum.
Geez, man, have you ever actually BEEN poor?
If we cut off the welfare system, the message will sink in not to breed them if you can't feed them.
We are getting more dead weight than should be taken. What is not need is to kill the ambition so that people who are willing to strive don't achieve more than someone who isn't and is provided for.
Well, I suppose that says it all, doesn't it. See, I'd rather try to help my fellow man. You'd rather cut 'em loose. Cut out the dead weight, as it were. Well, I happen to think that's sick and wrong... we'll have to agree to disagree here.
The fact is that there are people who can hear the removal of minute (and meaningless) sound detail.
Erm, you're missing the parent posters point. The removal of so-called "minute detail" makes no difference if the human ear is physically incapable of perceiving it. Take sounds frequency as an example... on average, the human ear can hear up to the 22khz-ish (25khz or so for gifted people) range. Anything above that and the average person cannot physically perceive the sound. Period! No ifs, ands, or buts. This means that a 48khz sampling rate is pretty damned good.
Think of it this way, if I put a UV filter in front of the sun without you knowing, you'd never be able to tell the difference. Why? Because the human eye is simply unable to perceive UV. Period. There's no subjectivity about it. The same goes for sound beyond the range of human hearing.
I'm tending to believe that handwriting recognition as the "next big thing" is a red herring. Having just had to do a lot of handwriting over the last couple of weeks, the feel was frustrating and slow, like writing with a huge, heavy stick. Given that many people can now type several times faster than they can write, where is the demand for handwriting recognition going to come from?
Portable devices. Writing will always be more portable than a keyboard. All you need is a stylus and a writing surface, which typically doubles as a display. This means the device is that much more compact. Any attempt to shrink down a keyboad to match these form factors is, IMHO, fundamentally limited. After all, which do you think is faster, trying to type on one of those tiny thumb-keypads, or writing using a stylus?
No, a unique scribble which represents a given individual is standard for a signature. Seriously, how many signatures have you seen which are actual, recognizable cursive? Very few, in my experience...