If all the humans were to disappear, it wouldn't be any different with the remaining species. They'd try to reproduce as much as possible, with no self-limitation...
Hobbits also live a bit longer than H. sapiens. They reach "maturity" in their early 30s and expect to live to 100 (source).
This is not much different from modern (rich world) humans... move out of mom and dads at late twenties (even later in southern Europe... look up the term "milieurista"), expected lifetime in the high 70s, good chance of 100 if you live sensibly.
I second this. Also, go to Wikipedia frontpage, follow links that you find interesting. The amount of stuff I've learned doing that is immense.
Then again, I'm way past school age, and back then I'd only look at stuff the teacher DIDN'T tell me to look at. Maybe you should instruct them to look at Fox News, tmz, Hello magazine, and a good dose of X-Factor and Big Brother reruns.
So, Kaku gets a lot of credit for popularizing science, even though he's not top of his field, and uses it to comment on other areas. I don't think it's the end of the world, given where science stands in society these days. People don't appreciate it much (not enough for my liking) and thus we need everyone out there who is able to excite the masses. I'm sure if there were more scientific authorities who spent time on popularizing their fields, we would have a bunch of different guys who could comment on their specific field.
OT, but I always wondered WTF the Jedis were thinking when they came across Anakin. Surely if he's the one meant to bring balance to the force, and the good guys are in total power (the Sith were hiding), that means he'll help the bad guys? (Not a big SW buff though, only saw the films.)
As nice this may or may not be for some people, I'm pretty sure that it's next-to-impossible to be "forgotten" online unless you never posted or shared any content anywhere (or never even went online). Data doesn't have a collective "off switch" that you can just flip to delete everything everywhere relating to a certain person. Computers don't work like that at all (and while it's technically possible, have fun forcing every other person in the world to comply with it).
People seem to have missed that you wouldn't be forgotten even if computers didn't exist. If you act like a dumbass people will remember, regardless of there being an electronic record. The only difference is it's easier to verify to third parties.
We all remember Hurricane Katrina. The mantras of free market solutions and small government have left most western nations with barebones disaster response capabilities.
I see what you did there. Katrina had zero to do with "free markets" and everything to do with corrupt local officials and just plain shitty citizens. I suppose "Schoolbus" Nagin didn't get a lot of press overseas. Look him up. A similar storm, Rita hit Texas a year or two later and the government responded adequately, and Texas is a poster boy of small government. I suppose that didn't make the news in Europe - inconvenient truths and all
Can't mod you up, so I'll just add something. Being small is actually useful for organising things. That's what the big government people don't get. I'm sure the government had enough people/equipment to do better than they did, but that's all made harder by having a big coordination job.
It's only a problem if you think within the box of wall street extrapolating technology at current levels only into the future. What Malthusians forget is that technology increases and resources become less scarce. If Japan had deficit spent more on earthquake research, they might have been able to avoid this disaster.
Most of the destruction was caused by the tsunami that followed the earthquake, not the earthquake itself. Interestingly, building against earthquakes (tough base) will weaken your structure against tsunamis (porous base).
Isn't first to file REALLY bad? It helps patent trolls doesn't it?
Yes. It's a disaster. In effect if you DON'T invent something you now have to patent it or possibly suffer the consequences from a patent troll. It's a money spinner for the patent office if nothing else.
I think the real question is whether the nominally democratic government is really democratic. For instance, can every vote who is meant to be able to? Are voters educated enough to make their own decisions? Is there a degree of protection for minorities? Etc, etc.
Actually, I think there IS something about sex that makes it different in a game. When you're playing GTA, you get a buzz from murdering people and jacking their cars. It's fun because you're getting away with something you're not really supposed to be doing, and which you probably don't actually want to do.
With sex, getting laid in WoW just reminds you that you're not doing it in real life, and that you want to do. Alternatively, if you ARE getting laid in real life, you aren't going to sit down and play VirtualShag, are you? (And if you really are jacking people and killing them, you're so cool there's no doubt you're getting laid. I digress...)
I wonder why religions even have made sex to look like a bad thing.
Control. Why else?
Property, to be more specific. Once you settle and start having more possessions than you can carry (ie inequality), you need to be able to assign inheritance and privilege to the next generation. Hard to do in a bukkake/swinger society.
Women decide when/if sex happens. Us men have to figure out what conditions have to be met in order for that to occur.
Eh, not so sure about this one. I used to think so, back before I got to know women, but now I think it's just a con. Especially if you're in a relationship, as a guy you're offered more than you can do with (you think you can do it every 15 mins for the whole day when you're 18. You can't by the time you're 30).
And why would this be? Well, for one, once you've gotten with a girl, all the mentioned hormones and that kick in. You somehow become the only good supplier of a rather intoxicating drug.
Another reason is my own pseudo-scientific musing on evolution. Getting pregnant, back in the Savannah, was a pretty dangerous condition. (Actually, even now, in unfortunate places.) So why on earth would a woman want to do it? Well, even then the biological drive means you have to do it with someone, so there had to be a base level of horniness. Now, the environment is more conducive to safe birth/childrearing, so womens' hornometers are off the scale. Combine it recent inventions such as the pill, and living away from your family, and it means women get laid more. And guys as well.
One thing to bear in mind as a though is that people have more choice. We're not living in a place with 4 people/sq Km anymore. That leaves a lot of people wanking, and a group who are doing it like rabbits.
That grand a month, if used well, can translate into 10K/day! At least that is the magnitude of figures I've seen some guys quote. It's also very reliable, with much higher Sharpe ratios than ordinary trading activities. Same kinds of guys are quoting ratios of 5-10. Assuming it's true, this is what is making me wonder why we don't get every nerd on Slashdot phoning up Equinix and HP for the colo + equipment. My main problem is WTF to do with the box once I have it.
You can't seriously say it's only for the privileged when the cost is so low? Most people who are serious about starting a business can scrape together a few grand and give it a shot.
No, the real question is what to do when you have access. What the heck does the program do?
And the thing about the rich/poor spending/not spending, that's a whole other can of worms. It's really not so simple as "give it to the poor, the rich weren't gonna use it anyway".
But if you don't have the special contacts, property and cash to co-locate and server farms, you can't take advantage. The reality is special people get special privileged access.
Actually, a 12A supply in a colo facility will cost you about a grand a month. Half that if you are happy to share rack space. The relevant facilities are known to everyone, you can just ask the exchange if you want to know which warehouse you need to be in. You don't need special contacts; the exchange will tell you what you need to know to trade with it. You need to buy the servers yourself, but that's not exactly privileged knowledge.
You link actually says "the exchange has ended the practice" re flash orders. I wasn't a big fan of them either.
Sorry, I got a bit muddled up when referring to the "previous" question. I meant to address how one really knows what the market would have looked like without HFT.
Regarding spending/saving/tax, remember that saved money ends up back in the system somewhere. The question of growth is not as simple as deciding the tax rates.
The principle objection is that if I put in an order, there's some guy that can see my order, and then get his order in and processed ahead of mine based on the value of my order. That guy then turns around and sells stuff to me that I was trying to buy for an increased price BECAUSE he knew I was in the process of buying it. There's no risk in this process and no value is added. If a trader submits their order before mine and they make money on then selling it to me, that's just luck of the draw and that is what the market is about. But that's not what's happening in this case. The market is looked at as a FIFO system, first order in is first processed. Now we have a few specially privileged people able to see into the FIFO and based on that information stick their own orders into the FIFO to get priority processing. That last bit is where the ethical violation exists. That's what should be illegal.
This is a bit muddled. For a while, NASDAQ allowed flash orders, but this has been done away with, IIRC. Also, you are wrong that people can put in orders ahead of other people. That's simply not how it works. What people are doing is simply to predict where other people are about to put orders in, and when they think it opportune, to trade against those live orders in the market. Of course, anyone would be against someone being allowed to jump the queue, but this is just a strawman argument.
Also, you have not addressed the previous question. You weren't the one asked, but you did reply to it.
As if congress were thinking "oh, this isn't a war, we'll just pay for a massive operation in Korea/Vietnam/Iraq/Iraq again. This is merely an armed conflict, with guns, airplanes, bombs, carriers, etc..."
WADR, I think this form of reasoning is naive. How can you tell what the prices and amounts would have been? That is critical for determining whether there is any value.
Slashdot Mirror
If all the humans were to disappear, it wouldn't be any different with the remaining species. They'd try to reproduce as much as possible, with no self-limitation...
Same actors?
Hobbits also live a bit longer than H. sapiens. They reach "maturity" in their early 30s and expect to live to 100 (source).
This is not much different from modern (rich world) humans... move out of mom and dads at late twenties (even later in southern Europe... look up the term "milieurista"), expected lifetime in the high 70s, good chance of 100 if you live sensibly.
I second this. Also, go to Wikipedia frontpage, follow links that you find interesting. The amount of stuff I've learned doing that is immense.
Then again, I'm way past school age, and back then I'd only look at stuff the teacher DIDN'T tell me to look at. Maybe you should instruct them to look at Fox News, tmz, Hello magazine, and a good dose of X-Factor and Big Brother reruns.
Also, similar tables for developing countries like China will show a higher standard of living for them. Not such a bad thing, globalization?
So, Kaku gets a lot of credit for popularizing science, even though he's not top of his field, and uses it to comment on other areas. I don't think it's the end of the world, given where science stands in society these days. People don't appreciate it much (not enough for my liking) and thus we need everyone out there who is able to excite the masses. I'm sure if there were more scientific authorities who spent time on popularizing their fields, we would have a bunch of different guys who could comment on their specific field.
OT, but I always wondered WTF the Jedis were thinking when they came across Anakin. Surely if he's the one meant to bring balance to the force, and the good guys are in total power (the Sith were hiding), that means he'll help the bad guys? (Not a big SW buff though, only saw the films.)
As nice this may or may not be for some people, I'm pretty sure that it's next-to-impossible to be "forgotten" online unless you never posted or shared any content anywhere (or never even went online). Data doesn't have a collective "off switch" that you can just flip to delete everything everywhere relating to a certain person. Computers don't work like that at all (and while it's technically possible, have fun forcing every other person in the world to comply with it).
People seem to have missed that you wouldn't be forgotten even if computers didn't exist. If you act like a dumbass people will remember, regardless of there being an electronic record. The only difference is it's easier to verify to third parties.
We all remember Hurricane Katrina. The mantras of free market solutions and small government have left most western nations with barebones disaster response capabilities.
I see what you did there. Katrina had zero to do with "free markets" and everything to do with corrupt local officials and just plain shitty citizens. I suppose "Schoolbus" Nagin didn't get a lot of press overseas. Look him up. A similar storm, Rita hit Texas a year or two later and the government responded adequately, and Texas is a poster boy of small government. I suppose that didn't make the news in Europe - inconvenient truths and all
Can't mod you up, so I'll just add something. Being small is actually useful for organising things. That's what the big government people don't get. I'm sure the government had enough people/equipment to do better than they did, but that's all made harder by having a big coordination job.
It's only a problem if you think within the box of wall street extrapolating technology at current levels only into the future. What Malthusians forget is that technology increases and resources become less scarce. If Japan had deficit spent more on earthquake research, they might have been able to avoid this disaster.
Most of the destruction was caused by the tsunami that followed the earthquake, not the earthquake itself. Interestingly, building against earthquakes (tough base) will weaken your structure against tsunamis (porous base).
Not to mention, it seems wrong to submit to authority when s/he does something like this...
Yes. It's a disaster. In effect if you DON'T invent something you now have to patent it or possibly suffer the consequences from a patent troll. It's a money spinner for the patent office if nothing else.
Fixed that for ya...
I think the real question is whether the nominally democratic government is really democratic. For instance, can every vote who is meant to be able to? Are voters educated enough to make their own decisions? Is there a degree of protection for minorities? Etc, etc.
Popcorn time.
I am married, actually. No kids yet.
Actually, I think there IS something about sex that makes it different in a game. When you're playing GTA, you get a buzz from murdering people and jacking their cars. It's fun because you're getting away with something you're not really supposed to be doing, and which you probably don't actually want to do.
With sex, getting laid in WoW just reminds you that you're not doing it in real life, and that you want to do. Alternatively, if you ARE getting laid in real life, you aren't going to sit down and play VirtualShag, are you? (And if you really are jacking people and killing them, you're so cool there's no doubt you're getting laid. I digress...)
That's interesting. I wonder what new religions think about sex. Any Scientologists out there?
I wonder why religions even have made sex to look like a bad thing.
Control. Why else?
Property, to be more specific. Once you settle and start having more possessions than you can carry (ie inequality), you need to be able to assign inheritance and privilege to the next generation. Hard to do in a bukkake/swinger society.
Women decide when/if sex happens. Us men have to figure out what conditions have to be met in order for that to occur.
Eh, not so sure about this one. I used to think so, back before I got to know women, but now I think it's just a con. Especially if you're in a relationship, as a guy you're offered more than you can do with (you think you can do it every 15 mins for the whole day when you're 18. You can't by the time you're 30).
And why would this be? Well, for one, once you've gotten with a girl, all the mentioned hormones and that kick in. You somehow become the only good supplier of a rather intoxicating drug.
Another reason is my own pseudo-scientific musing on evolution. Getting pregnant, back in the Savannah, was a pretty dangerous condition. (Actually, even now, in unfortunate places.) So why on earth would a woman want to do it? Well, even then the biological drive means you have to do it with someone, so there had to be a base level of horniness. Now, the environment is more conducive to safe birth/childrearing, so womens' hornometers are off the scale. Combine it recent inventions such as the pill, and living away from your family, and it means women get laid more. And guys as well.
One thing to bear in mind as a though is that people have more choice. We're not living in a place with 4 people/sq Km anymore. That leaves a lot of people wanking, and a group who are doing it like rabbits.
That grand a month, if used well, can translate into 10K/day! At least that is the magnitude of figures I've seen some guys quote. It's also very reliable, with much higher Sharpe ratios than ordinary trading activities. Same kinds of guys are quoting ratios of 5-10. Assuming it's true, this is what is making me wonder why we don't get every nerd on Slashdot phoning up Equinix and HP for the colo + equipment. My main problem is WTF to do with the box once I have it.
You can't seriously say it's only for the privileged when the cost is so low? Most people who are serious about starting a business can scrape together a few grand and give it a shot.
No, the real question is what to do when you have access. What the heck does the program do?
And the thing about the rich/poor spending/not spending, that's a whole other can of worms. It's really not so simple as "give it to the poor, the rich weren't gonna use it anyway".
But if you don't have the special contacts, property and cash to co-locate and server farms, you can't take advantage. The reality is special people get special privileged access.
Actually, a 12A supply in a colo facility will cost you about a grand a month. Half that if you are happy to share rack space. The relevant facilities are known to everyone, you can just ask the exchange if you want to know which warehouse you need to be in. You don't need special contacts; the exchange will tell you what you need to know to trade with it. You need to buy the servers yourself, but that's not exactly privileged knowledge.
You link actually says "the exchange has ended the practice" re flash orders. I wasn't a big fan of them either.
Sorry, I got a bit muddled up when referring to the "previous" question. I meant to address how one really knows what the market would have looked like without HFT.
Regarding spending/saving/tax, remember that saved money ends up back in the system somewhere. The question of growth is not as simple as deciding the tax rates.
The principle objection is that if I put in an order, there's some guy that can see my order, and then get his order in and processed ahead of mine based on the value of my order. That guy then turns around and sells stuff to me that I was trying to buy for an increased price BECAUSE he knew I was in the process of buying it. There's no risk in this process and no value is added. If a trader submits their order before mine and they make money on then selling it to me, that's just luck of the draw and that is what the market is about. But that's not what's happening in this case. The market is looked at as a FIFO system, first order in is first processed. Now we have a few specially privileged people able to see into the FIFO and based on that information stick their own orders into the FIFO to get priority processing. That last bit is where the ethical violation exists. That's what should be illegal.
This is a bit muddled. For a while, NASDAQ allowed flash orders, but this has been done away with, IIRC. Also, you are wrong that people can put in orders ahead of other people. That's simply not how it works. What people are doing is simply to predict where other people are about to put orders in, and when they think it opportune, to trade against those live orders in the market. Of course, anyone would be against someone being allowed to jump the queue, but this is just a strawman argument.
Also, you have not addressed the previous question. You weren't the one asked, but you did reply to it.
And the assumption behind is that every benefit is gained from government existing.
As if congress were thinking "oh, this isn't a war, we'll just pay for a massive operation in Korea/Vietnam/Iraq/Iraq again. This is merely an armed conflict, with guns, airplanes, bombs, carriers, etc..."
Nice trolling though :)
WADR, I think this form of reasoning is naive. How can you tell what the prices and amounts would have been? That is critical for determining whether there is any value.