Does Cheap Tech Undermine Legal Privacy Protections?
The correct heading would've been: "Does Cheap Tech Ease Police Work?" And the answer is, yes it does. The court didn't declare marijuana-growing legal — it just said, that when the cops need to go out of their way to get information, they need a warrant. Once the devices, that were rare in 2000, become common place enough for each cruiser to have one, the information could be considered "in plain view" and no warrant is needed.
Even more generally, the cheap tech makes things hitherto impossible or very hard, possible or even easy. If, indeed, the our concerns were really for privacy (rather than for obstructing justice, when it goes after crimes we feel shouldn't be crimes), we should worry about anyone using these and similar devices to, for example, "see through" walls, curtains, or bushes. If you can use them to take a picture of a rabbit in the night, your neighbor — or some "reality show" — can film you rolling in hay...
Indeed, some time ago Animal Planet was presenting wonderful movies of African fauna. They were shot at night in such darkness, that the cats themselves couldn't see the cameras or each other. But the cameras saw them, and the picture was quite good... Roll forward a few years, and sponsorship by a heavy-weight like Mutual of Omaha will no longer be necessary to obtain such equipment...
No I do not, but that is not the point. The point is not to completely evade determined surveillance, but rather to become too expensive [...]
I'm sorry, but no, that was the point. You made a rather snide remark about the privacy situation in the US. While I agree, that the changes in our country are worrying, singling the US out — as you did — is unfair.
I don't trust the guarantees of the US Federal Government anymore
You were a fool, if you ever trusted them... A government — having honest citizens' best interests (the way it perceives them, anyway) in mind — always looks for ways to skirts limits on its power. This is true about all governments, but the US, however, has more such limits, than most other countries do...
[...] the atrocious privacy situation in the US these days
Do you know a better place? Somewhere, where it is harder for the government to put your details together for reasons other than sheer incompetence or lack of computer equipment?
Do you think that we can actually make air travel (and any other kind of travel, for that matter) truly secure?"
Not only do we can, the past years show, we have... By abandoning the cowardly (if seemingly "sophisticated") paradigm of "obey their orders, do as they say, let SWAT handle it, when they land" we made it rather difficult for these a-holes to do their thing. Even the fourth plane on 9/11 didn't hit its target, because the terrorist — in a moment of weakness — allowed the passengers to learn, that some hijackers may not be interested in ever landing.
How truly secure now then? Well, nothing ever will be absolutely secure. But air-travel is more secure than (ever!) before now, that the fellow passengers readily engage the would-be terrorist preventing him from blowing up his shoes or underpants. I think, it is secure enough for them to switch to different targets (bridges, tunnels, ships?)...
We'll randomly select a number of universities to read the key points of the law, and submit one question each to the congress
I like your idea, but it only moves the problem elsewhere — I wouldn't necessarily trust the universities over the law-makers. The "correct" answer may depend strongly on the question being asked. For example, preparing the questionnaire for the recent Afghan "surge" legislation, a University could ask somethinglike (see? both.edu-links):
Do you support killing innocent Afghanis so that Haliburton gets to own a trans-Afghanistan oil pipeline?
Like it or not, legislating is the job of the elected legislators — we just have to pay more attention to their passing laws, we don't approve of...
if you vote for a bad law, you won't be able to say "golly, I didn't know"
Such "not knowing" ought to be a disqualification in itself... If it is not, then the electorate is stupid, not the politician. Relying on some Universities to rephrase the bills into multiple-choice questions is not going to solve the underlying problem... Unfortunately...
First of all, allow me to commend you for the perfect analogy — laws are programs, and law-making is programming... Now, to answer your questions...
Would you arbitrary limit the Linux kernel to 30,000 lines of code? Who gets to decide what kind of complexity is reasonable?
Linux kernel is reviewed by thousands of people back and forth all the time. There are automatic tools verifying syntactic and even (rudimentary) semantic correctness. Thousands of "tinderboxes" test any changes for hours every days and report any deviations. The history of changes (diffs) is publicly available at all times, studied and discussed by even more people.
The two thousands pages of the bill in question has never been read in full by a single person — and when such a feat was undertaken, by the time the hero finished, the bill was already amended to bribe another Senator, etc. No automatic verification tools exist, of course — even a spell-checker would break. The entire country will be the tinderbox — production testing the below alpha-quality software. Oh, and the earlier prototypes (State-wide programs) have been failures...
And you object to somebody rejecting that software because it is too complex? What happened to coding guidelines, with each function and non-trivial block being carefully commented?
You? Rush Limbaugh? Based on what metric?
The metric is very simple — if I can't finish reading (and understanding!) it without somebody "committing" a significant change somewhere, it is too long... The "Senate version" was moved to vote after an all-nigher in the Speaker's office, for crying out loud. All those fancy promises (by the most technically advanced Administration, like, ever, dude) of legislation being posted online for days prior to vote have turned into lies. Unreadable, spaghetti-like code, no testing, and not even code review. Who could possibly object?
So no, there is no guarantee that a stim would 'work till you died'. It's quite possible and even likely that the receptors being targeted by the stim would give out well before any 'neglect' related damage occurred.
I'd like to believe that, but I'm skeptical. Our bodies have developed (some) defenses against overexposure to things, encounterable in nature. Our hearing can, indeed, tune down, and even our sensitivity to certain chemicals (such as coffeine — or cocaine) lowers with time.
However, the devices in TFA, it seems, would bypass (most of) the defenses — they aren't acting on one of our sense-organs (such as ears), and they aren't acting through chemicals. They go directly to the brain's electrical "circuitry" and I am not at all confident, that circuitry has any protection against that, for it never needed such protection during the body's millions of years of evolution... For a computer analogy, whatever self-corrections you may put into your program, it will all be to nicht, if I can stop it in a debugger and assign outrageous values to a few variables...
But the book makes a good point — even if these current devices lose their effect after a short enough while. What if a long-acting device is invented later? How will the society react to it, who would use it, etc. are all interesting questions to pander...
The brain is just a giant chemical machine in and of itself.
Uhm, the nerves carry electrical impulses. Even if hormones are often released for various things, the sense of pleasure is, probably, a result of the electrical signals aligning just right (even if, in turn, caused by the right mixture of hormones and other chemicals).
Granted, this possibly could/would happen far later than the equivalent reaction to a drug induced version
The points were: a) there is no drug, that can currently do this to a human without them continuing to make a decision to get more; b) the effect of the machine in TFA, even if finite, could well not wear out until the body's death...
So you admit the whole 'earned/unearned' thing is crap?
Not at all. (And I would rather you used decent language, while debating.) Requiring for the pleasure to be earned is a safeguard against people indulging in things to the point, where they become oblivious to their responsibilities.
The whole 'sex feels good because it rewards you for the pains of childbirth and the hardships of childrearing' thing gives the impression that you think humans are 'intelligently designed'.
Oh, boy, let's not bring that controversy in here. Whether the joys of sex are given to us by God or Nature (and whether those two are even distinct!), indulging in it is fine, as long as it leads to children. And even when it does not, there is not much harm, because you can not really "overdo" it to the point, where you stop caring for yourself or your family. Nothing naturally achievable, in fact, would lead to that — sex was just an illustration, an example of the most intense pleasure, that I am personally familiar with.
The cocaine — according to some reports, at least — exceeds that. The devices in TFA go even further — easier to use than cocaine (no need to run out for a new dose even) — they (promise to) deliver even more intense pleasure... Nobody would willingly stop, until the body starves/dries out... Should it be illegal to use them? Depends on one's views on suicide. Do I want anyone I like to use them? A definitive no.
a self-righteous jerk for looking down upon anyone who, in your opinion, didn't earn something that they got.
Strange... I'm quite confident, that you strongly disapprove of, for example, the Wall Street bankers, who got something they didn't — in your opinion — earn. But you don't call yourself a "self-righteous" jerk for that disapproval, no, such strong words are reserved for people, who happen to disapprove of something you don't object to yourself...
Because, as you say, a man who masturbates may some day just suddenly decide to stop caring for your daughter
A straw-man... There are only so many orgasms a human can (without technical and chemical aids) experience per day, and they aren't, therefore a serious threat to anybody's sense of responsibilities to themselves and their family, etc.
Right... just like everyone who enjoys alcohol, gambling, tobacco, etc. also invariably stops being a helpful member of society.
First of all, I'm glad, you agree with me in disapproving of people, who willingly stop being helpful members of society. We just have to hash-out, whether excessive drugs, gambling, or anything else ought to be frowned upon, because it leads a non-trivial number of people to that. And, of course, they do — once your rage against me (the "self-righteous jerk") settles down, you'll realize, that you don't like the people, who take drugs or gamble too much.
What exactly is "excessive" or "too much" is up to everyone's opinion. (Despite your rhetorical questions "Who am I to decide?!" — I reserve the right to continue to choose, whom I dislike, to myself, thank you.)
But whatever one's threshold, the device(s) described in TFA are very likely to cause the users to exceed it — their use will not be limited by the supply of a drug, or (unlike orgasm) the body's capacity. As long as there is electricity (a very cheap commodity in most of the world), they'll work, and very few users would willingly stop using them...
Why read a book, walk your dog, read to your child, call your mother, make love to your partner, post to Slashdot, when pushing a button can instantly bring pleasure, that exceeds anything naturally achievable?
Do you think we should frown upon infertile people having orgasms?
No, because the body can only experience so many orgasms per day and a person — fertile or not — will not stop being productive due to the pursuit of such gratification.
The device in TFA, on the other hand (and cocaine — even if to a smaller extent) does have this ability to completely take a member out of society. I will frown on people seeking pleasure this way... And you will too, once your rage against me, whom you suspect of wanting to "ban sex" or something, settles down:-)
How does that qualify as "earning" it, as you are so concerned with?
I don't think, it matters to my point in the least, whether the "payment" is given after ("award") or before ("enticement"). That's why I call your follow-up "hair-splitting".
And who are you to say what does and what doesn't constitute legitimately "earning" a form of pleasure that someone chooses to experience?
Had you finished reading my post before replying to its beginning, you wouldn't have asked this question... In short, I'm not advocating legal ban on such undeserved pleasures, but express my disapproval of people indulging in them, for they will — and quickly — stop being helpful members of society or even family.
So it's just a substitute for those few illicit drugs that do the exact same thing?
Admittedly far from expert, I still don't believe, there currently exist drugs giving "exact same" effect as the device described in the book. Nor can they exist even in theory, I think, because all chemicals have to be delivered indirectly (through blood) and thus will always a) have side-effects; and b) wear out. Their wearing out means, the user would have to "wake up" to replenish, thus giving him a chance to come to his senses.
The device in the book works on the brain directly and can work forever — as long as electricity (and hot water) are available in the house...
Make it pleasurable in a controlled manner, jeesh.
"Controlled" by whom? Very few of the users currently experiencing the effects would willingly stop. That's the whole point of the book, actually...
Even if cocaine and other drugs were completely harmless, their ability to give serious but unearned pleasure would seriously warrant their banning. I admit, that this sounds religion-motivated, but that's hardly a drawback of an argument...
Consider sex (yes, I said it) — the intense pleasure most participants derive from it is the reward for the excruciating pains of childbirth and hardships of the childrearing. Contrary to the wide-spread misunderstanding, the mainstream religions want us to have sex — as much as possible. They just want it all to be for the purpose of reproduction, rather than simple self-indulgence.
Now, what is the justification for a cocaine-user's pleasure? What did he do to deserve, what a Trainspotting's character describes as "thousand times the most intense orgasm you've ever experienced"?
Of course, one needn't necessarily have earned all the pleasures of life — as long as one's habits don't interfere with others, one ought to be able to enjoy them. This is an individualist view, and I don't fully disagree. I would, however, be rather wary of such people: I wouldn't want one of them to marry my daughter, for example, as he may decide one day to stop caring for her. I wouldn't want my daughter to become such a person either, because I not only want my own grandchildren, I also want the Humanity to continue to exist (preferably — my brand of it, the Western Civilization).
So, even if cocaine did absolutely no harm to the body by itself — and the devices in TFA promise the cocaine-like effects without the chemical additiction — I wouldn't want to be near a user. Not saying, it should be illegal, but certainly frowned upon.
I'd suggest, we use these methods on the people either condemned to death for their crimes (capital punishment), or desiring to end their life on their own (suicide)...
The name of the science fiction book in Russian would translate as something like "Predating things of the times". I don't think, an English translation is available (yet?), although plenty of their other books have already been translated.
(Benevolent) secret police investigate strange goings-on in a leisurely resort town. They discover a very simple to make device is capable of giving a very strong pleasure — endlessly (until the user is interrupted, or the body starves and dies, or — on very rare occasions — the user's own will prevails). The town's attitudes toward the device and its users, as well as similar (but not as all-encompassing) devices are examined...
Panasonic has announced plans to create 'home batteries.' They are lithium-ion batteries large enough to power a house for a week, making energy sources such as solar and wind power more feasible. Also, you can buy energy when it is cheapest, and don't need to worry about power outages anymore.
Sorry, but if they have only just "announced plans", then, for the foreseeable future, I still can not power a house for a week, and I still need to worry about power outages.
Wake me up, when I can pick these up at Lowe's... Or, at least, order them online somewhere...
Indeed, TFA itself uses the proper tenses and gives the ETA for what currently can only be called "vaporware":
Panasonic is going to create one of the hottest batteries available to date. The new lithium-ion storage cell should power up a whole house in 2011 when it could be available to the general public. [...] No specific details about the future home battery from Panasonic have been given yet. In two years time we should know more about the device and Panasonic will definitely want to periodically show everyone its progress.
CmdrTaco, WTF?..
Re:numb driving experience
on
A Requiem For Saab
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
But what is it with Americans preferring numb cars that totally insulate them from what the car is doing? They all seem to like very mushy suspensions where the car tips around corners, and automatic transmissions.
The simple answer is, Americans drive. A lot more, than anyone else in the world. Whereas most Europeans can comfortably live without a car at all — relying on government-run public transportation (and when those are on strike — stay home) — most Americans need a car to get anywhere. So, in Europe a much higher share of drivers are enthusiasts — people, who like to drive. In the US everybody is a driver, even if they'd rather not be — and so there is a much bigger bias towards comfort over excitement.
Even for enthusiasts, if you spend 90 minutes in your car every day (45 minutes each way to work and home), for example, you'll value certain features, that you wouldn't care for, if you drove for 90 minutes a week.
I set it up and regret it. First, it broke things for one of my correspondents (at least this one — who bothered to tell me about it), who forwards all e-mails to his cell-phone. Because the messages are forwarded by his e-mail provider, but appear as if from me, his cell-phone service rejects them — because his e-mail provider is not listed in my SPF-record. So, he finds my messages in his mailbox, but is not alerted about them (as he is used to) by his phone...
Then, it turned out, my SPF-record is set slightly incorrectly, which — bizarrely enough — causes outright rejection by many servers. In this respect, people with buggy SPF-records are treated worse, than people without it... This is partially my fault, so this second item is just here for general interest.
And lastly, I am still a victim of "Joe jobs" every once in a while, as spammers send spam with the "From" set to my domain — my having an SPF record is not much of a deterrent, evidently.
Overall, the broken forwarding is, probably, responsible for slow adoption, which, in turn, makes it ineffective for the adopters...
Who are these pro-warming scientists who won't release their data?
I don't know, who they are, but I do know, that no full, raw, unedited and "uncalibrated" series are nowhere to be found. The recent "leak" of the materials from East Anglia's CRU contained e-mails and programs (some showing obvious attempts to apply bogus corrections), but not the data files.
Worse — whatever raw data this particular CRU had before, was dumped "to make room", and only the result of their "calibration" is preserved. Whether they sincerely believed, the original data will never be needed, or maliciously thought to hide imperfections in their calibration algorithm is a hot topic. But what's clear, is that it is not available — to anyone.
But, again, even if the calibration were perfect (or, at least, sincere) — we can't get it. And so, there is no way to reproduce the results — for example, a highly-moderated poster (mrsquid0) claimed to have discerned from the leaked IDL-programs, that the correct, rather than bogus version of the script was used to produce a chart published in Nature. However, when asked, where he got the data to run the program for himself, he posted no response... Because he never has... Have you?
Socialism, first and foremost, is about the government's control over the means of production.
No, that's communism, which is the extreme end of socialism and will very likely be made completely obsolete by personal nanomanufacturing.
Bzzz, someone didn't study hard enough... The noun socialism has 2 senses (first 1 from tagged texts)
(11) socialism -- (a political theory advocating state ownership of industry)
socialism, socialist economy -- (an economic system based on state ownership of capital)
Getting 700 billion dollars as a reward for incompetence isn't enough to make someone a robber baron for you?
Canada doesn't have the same geography as the United States. As you yourself said, it's as far North as a nation can get - there's nothing but the polar icecap further north.
Canada's geography — as I myself said — is better than ours. They have ample natural resources, but they only have one neighbor to worry about, instead of two. Unlike us, who got invaded from both South and North, Canada has never been invaded... And they aren't doing too bad, but their much higher levels of Socialism impede their progress — they should be doing better than us, but don't.
Praise be to Capitalism!
"Robbing" means violence... Though some of the recipients are, indeed, union members, the bulk of the money went to financial and industrial companies, who threatened to simply go bankrupt otherwise — non-violently. So, no, yet again, you were using a charged term without knowing, what it means.
I'm all for putting the nation's wealth into the hands of all of its citizens, rather than just a tiny elite.
The "nation's wealth" is imaginary — it consists of the wealth of citizens only. The wealth redistribution you advocate implies actual robbing the richer citizens at gunpoint (via IRS or worse) even more than already done, making you an actual "robber baron" (or a cheerleader of same)...
Canada doesn't have the same geography as the United States. As you yourself said, it's as far North as a nation can get - there's nothing but the polar icecap further north.
Canada's geography — as I myself said — is better than America's. They also have ample resources, but only one neighbor to worry about. And the worry is less — unlike the US, who got, at different times, invaded from both South and North, Canada has never been invaded. They should be doing better than us, but don't — arguably, because of higher levels of Socialism.
Brazil is a local superpower, and will likely increase its global influence in the future.
Yes, but why are they so weak relative to us as of today?.. Because of Socialism... For even more obvious comparisons, consider:
Socialism is about minimum guaranteed quality of life (the point of welfare)
Socialism, first and foremost, is about the government's control over the means of production. This is justified by the supposed need for equality. Your "minimum guaranteed quality of life" is a lie: once you make the electorate accept the need for a "certain minimum quality of life" for the "unfortunate", you will begin to continuously raise that minimum, until the "safety net" becomes a perfectly comfortable place for perpetual occupation. Still, the sheer power of the redistribution will keep giving you and yours such a kick, you'll never give it up voluntarily.
Unfortunately, the current system benefits robber barons instead.
Another lie — intended for the already mentioned establishing and maintaining the power to redistribute ever bigger share of the nation's wealth.
Vast natural resources, large inhabitable surface area, and protection of two major oceans from other world powers are the major sources of US success. The rest of the world being ravaged by two World Wars helped too.
Canada has the same geography — even better, for they don't have a northern neighbor (hint: the only time, the residence of the US President was captured by an enemy, the enemy was Canadian.) Santa Ana's Mexico was not a friendly neighbor either.
Brazil is even more wonderfully endowed — Amazon alone is a treasure trove. Unfortunately, they've dabbled with Socialism too much — some say, it is due to their being dominated by Catholicism. Either way, US is not unique in its geography. The GP is right about American exceptionalism.
And I suggest getting over your hubris, otherwise China will overtake and pass you
Slashdot Mirror
The correct heading would've been: "Does Cheap Tech Ease Police Work?" And the answer is, yes it does. The court didn't declare marijuana-growing legal — it just said, that when the cops need to go out of their way to get information, they need a warrant. Once the devices, that were rare in 2000, become common place enough for each cruiser to have one, the information could be considered "in plain view" and no warrant is needed.
Even more generally, the cheap tech makes things hitherto impossible or very hard, possible or even easy. If, indeed, the our concerns were really for privacy (rather than for obstructing justice, when it goes after crimes we feel shouldn't be crimes), we should worry about anyone using these and similar devices to, for example, "see through" walls, curtains, or bushes. If you can use them to take a picture of a rabbit in the night, your neighbor — or some "reality show" — can film you rolling in hay...
Indeed, some time ago Animal Planet was presenting wonderful movies of African fauna. They were shot at night in such darkness, that the cats themselves couldn't see the cameras or each other. But the cameras saw them, and the picture was quite good... Roll forward a few years, and sponsorship by a heavy-weight like Mutual of Omaha will no longer be necessary to obtain such equipment...
I'm sorry, but no, that was the point. You made a rather snide remark about the privacy situation in the US. While I agree, that the changes in our country are worrying, singling the US out — as you did — is unfair.
You were a fool, if you ever trusted them... A government — having honest citizens' best interests (the way it perceives them, anyway) in mind — always looks for ways to skirts limits on its power. This is true about all governments, but the US, however, has more such limits, than most other countries do...
Do you know a better place? Somewhere, where it is harder for the government to put your details together for reasons other than sheer incompetence or lack of computer equipment?
Not only do we can, the past years show, we have... By abandoning the cowardly (if seemingly "sophisticated") paradigm of "obey their orders, do as they say, let SWAT handle it, when they land" we made it rather difficult for these a-holes to do their thing. Even the fourth plane on 9/11 didn't hit its target, because the terrorist — in a moment of weakness — allowed the passengers to learn, that some hijackers may not be interested in ever landing.
How truly secure now then? Well, nothing ever will be absolutely secure. But air-travel is more secure than (ever!) before now, that the fellow passengers readily engage the would-be terrorist preventing him from blowing up his shoes or underpants. I think, it is secure enough for them to switch to different targets (bridges, tunnels, ships?)...
I like your idea, but it only moves the problem elsewhere — I wouldn't necessarily trust the universities over the law-makers. The "correct" answer may depend strongly on the question being asked. For example, preparing the questionnaire for the recent Afghan "surge" legislation, a University could ask something like (see? both .edu-links):
Like it or not, legislating is the job of the elected legislators — we just have to pay more attention to their passing laws, we don't approve of...
Such "not knowing" ought to be a disqualification in itself... If it is not, then the electorate is stupid, not the politician. Relying on some Universities to rephrase the bills into multiple-choice questions is not going to solve the underlying problem... Unfortunately...
First of all, allow me to commend you for the perfect analogy — laws are programs, and law-making is programming... Now, to answer your questions...
Linux kernel is reviewed by thousands of people back and forth all the time. There are automatic tools verifying syntactic and even (rudimentary) semantic correctness. Thousands of "tinderboxes" test any changes for hours every days and report any deviations. The history of changes (diffs) is publicly available at all times, studied and discussed by even more people.
The two thousands pages of the bill in question has never been read in full by a single person — and when such a feat was undertaken, by the time the hero finished, the bill was already amended to bribe another Senator, etc. No automatic verification tools exist, of course — even a spell-checker would break. The entire country will be the tinderbox — production testing the below alpha-quality software. Oh, and the earlier prototypes (State-wide programs) have been failures...
And you object to somebody rejecting that software because it is too complex? What happened to coding guidelines, with each function and non-trivial block being carefully commented?
The metric is very simple — if I can't finish reading (and understanding!) it without somebody "committing" a significant change somewhere, it is too long... The "Senate version" was moved to vote after an all-nigher in the Speaker's office, for crying out loud. All those fancy promises (by the most technically advanced Administration, like, ever, dude) of legislation being posted online for days prior to vote have turned into lies. Unreadable, spaghetti-like code, no testing, and not even code review. Who could possibly object?
I'd like to believe that, but I'm skeptical. Our bodies have developed (some) defenses against overexposure to things, encounterable in nature. Our hearing can, indeed, tune down, and even our sensitivity to certain chemicals (such as coffeine — or cocaine) lowers with time.
However, the devices in TFA, it seems, would bypass (most of) the defenses — they aren't acting on one of our sense-organs (such as ears), and they aren't acting through chemicals. They go directly to the brain's electrical "circuitry" and I am not at all confident, that circuitry has any protection against that, for it never needed such protection during the body's millions of years of evolution... For a computer analogy, whatever self-corrections you may put into your program, it will all be to nicht, if I can stop it in a debugger and assign outrageous values to a few variables...
But the book makes a good point — even if these current devices lose their effect after a short enough while. What if a long-acting device is invented later? How will the society react to it, who would use it, etc. are all interesting questions to pander...
Uhm, the nerves carry electrical impulses. Even if hormones are often released for various things, the sense of pleasure is, probably, a result of the electrical signals aligning just right (even if, in turn, caused by the right mixture of hormones and other chemicals).
The points were: a) there is no drug, that can currently do this to a human without them continuing to make a decision to get more; b) the effect of the machine in TFA, even if finite, could well not wear out until the body's death...
Not at all. (And I would rather you used decent language, while debating.) Requiring for the pleasure to be earned is a safeguard against people indulging in things to the point, where they become oblivious to their responsibilities.
Oh, boy, let's not bring that controversy in here. Whether the joys of sex are given to us by God or Nature (and whether those two are even distinct!), indulging in it is fine, as long as it leads to children. And even when it does not, there is not much harm, because you can not really "overdo" it to the point, where you stop caring for yourself or your family. Nothing naturally achievable, in fact, would lead to that — sex was just an illustration, an example of the most intense pleasure, that I am personally familiar with.
The cocaine — according to some reports, at least — exceeds that. The devices in TFA go even further — easier to use than cocaine (no need to run out for a new dose even) — they (promise to) deliver even more intense pleasure... Nobody would willingly stop, until the body starves/dries out... Should it be illegal to use them? Depends on one's views on suicide. Do I want anyone I like to use them? A definitive no.
Strange... I'm quite confident, that you strongly disapprove of, for example, the Wall Street bankers, who got something they didn't — in your opinion — earn. But you don't call yourself a "self-righteous" jerk for that disapproval, no, such strong words are reserved for people, who happen to disapprove of something you don't object to yourself...
A straw-man... There are only so many orgasms a human can (without technical and chemical aids) experience per day, and they aren't, therefore a serious threat to anybody's sense of responsibilities to themselves and their family, etc.
First of all, I'm glad, you agree with me in disapproving of people, who willingly stop being helpful members of society. We just have to hash-out, whether excessive drugs, gambling, or anything else ought to be frowned upon, because it leads a non-trivial number of people to that. And, of course, they do — once your rage against me (the "self-righteous jerk") settles down, you'll realize, that you don't like the people, who take drugs or gamble too much.
What exactly is "excessive" or "too much" is up to everyone's opinion. (Despite your rhetorical questions "Who am I to decide?!" — I reserve the right to continue to choose, whom I dislike, to myself, thank you.)
But whatever one's threshold, the device(s) described in TFA are very likely to cause the users to exceed it — their use will not be limited by the supply of a drug, or (unlike orgasm) the body's capacity. As long as there is electricity (a very cheap commodity in most of the world), they'll work, and very few users would willingly stop using them...
Why read a book, walk your dog, read to your child, call your mother, make love to your partner, post to Slashdot, when pushing a button can instantly bring pleasure, that exceeds anything naturally achievable?
No, because the body can only experience so many orgasms per day and a person — fertile or not — will not stop being productive due to the pursuit of such gratification.
The device in TFA, on the other hand (and cocaine — even if to a smaller extent) does have this ability to completely take a member out of society. I will frown on people seeking pleasure this way... And you will too, once your rage against me, whom you suspect of wanting to "ban sex" or something, settles down :-)
I don't think, it matters to my point in the least, whether the "payment" is given after ("award") or before ("enticement"). That's why I call your follow-up "hair-splitting".
The hair-splitting (in this case) difference was hardly worth posting, was it?..
Had you finished reading my post before replying to its beginning, you wouldn't have asked this question... In short, I'm not advocating legal ban on such undeserved pleasures, but express my disapproval of people indulging in them, for they will — and quickly — stop being helpful members of society or even family.
Admittedly far from expert, I still don't believe, there currently exist drugs giving "exact same" effect as the device described in the book. Nor can they exist even in theory, I think, because all chemicals have to be delivered indirectly (through blood) and thus will always a) have side-effects; and b) wear out. Their wearing out means, the user would have to "wake up" to replenish, thus giving him a chance to come to his senses.
The device in the book works on the brain directly and can work forever — as long as electricity (and hot water) are available in the house...
"Controlled" by whom? Very few of the users currently experiencing the effects would willingly stop. That's the whole point of the book, actually...
Even if cocaine and other drugs were completely harmless, their ability to give serious but unearned pleasure would seriously warrant their banning. I admit, that this sounds religion-motivated, but that's hardly a drawback of an argument...
Consider sex (yes, I said it) — the intense pleasure most participants derive from it is the reward for the excruciating pains of childbirth and hardships of the childrearing. Contrary to the wide-spread misunderstanding, the mainstream religions want us to have sex — as much as possible. They just want it all to be for the purpose of reproduction, rather than simple self-indulgence.
Now, what is the justification for a cocaine-user's pleasure? What did he do to deserve, what a Trainspotting's character describes as "thousand times the most intense orgasm you've ever experienced"?
Of course, one needn't necessarily have earned all the pleasures of life — as long as one's habits don't interfere with others, one ought to be able to enjoy them. This is an individualist view, and I don't fully disagree. I would, however, be rather wary of such people: I wouldn't want one of them to marry my daughter, for example, as he may decide one day to stop caring for her. I wouldn't want my daughter to become such a person either, because I not only want my own grandchildren, I also want the Humanity to continue to exist (preferably — my brand of it, the Western Civilization).
So, even if cocaine did absolutely no harm to the body by itself — and the devices in TFA promise the cocaine-like effects without the chemical additiction — I wouldn't want to be near a user. Not saying, it should be illegal, but certainly frowned upon.
I'd suggest, we use these methods on the people either condemned to death for their crimes (capital punishment), or desiring to end their life on their own (suicide)...
The name of the science fiction book in Russian would translate as something like "Predating things of the times". I don't think, an English translation is available (yet?), although plenty of their other books have already been translated.
(Benevolent) secret police investigate strange goings-on in a leisurely resort town. They discover a very simple to make device is capable of giving a very strong pleasure — endlessly (until the user is interrupted, or the body starves and dies, or — on very rare occasions — the user's own will prevails). The town's attitudes toward the device and its users, as well as similar (but not as all-encompassing) devices are examined...
Sorry, but if they have only just "announced plans", then, for the foreseeable future, I still can not power a house for a week, and I still need to worry about power outages.
Wake me up, when I can pick these up at Lowe's... Or, at least, order them online somewhere...
Indeed, TFA itself uses the proper tenses and gives the ETA for what currently can only be called "vaporware":
CmdrTaco, WTF?..
The simple answer is, Americans drive. A lot more, than anyone else in the world. Whereas most Europeans can comfortably live without a car at all — relying on government-run public transportation (and when those are on strike — stay home) — most Americans need a car to get anywhere. So, in Europe a much higher share of drivers are enthusiasts — people, who like to drive. In the US everybody is a driver, even if they'd rather not be — and so there is a much bigger bias towards comfort over excitement.
Even for enthusiasts, if you spend 90 minutes in your car every day (45 minutes each way to work and home), for example, you'll value certain features, that you wouldn't care for, if you drove for 90 minutes a week.
I set it up and regret it. First, it broke things for one of my correspondents (at least this one — who bothered to tell me about it), who forwards all e-mails to his cell-phone. Because the messages are forwarded by his e-mail provider, but appear as if from me, his cell-phone service rejects them — because his e-mail provider is not listed in my SPF-record. So, he finds my messages in his mailbox, but is not alerted about them (as he is used to) by his phone...
Then, it turned out, my SPF-record is set slightly incorrectly, which — bizarrely enough — causes outright rejection by many servers. In this respect, people with buggy SPF-records are treated worse, than people without it... This is partially my fault, so this second item is just here for general interest.
And lastly, I am still a victim of "Joe jobs" every once in a while, as spammers send spam with the "From" set to my domain — my having an SPF record is not much of a deterrent, evidently.
Overall, the broken forwarding is, probably, responsible for slow adoption, which, in turn, makes it ineffective for the adopters...
Need more than this? How about this?
I don't know, who they are, but I do know, that no full, raw, unedited and "uncalibrated" series are nowhere to be found. The recent "leak" of the materials from East Anglia's CRU contained e-mails and programs (some showing obvious attempts to apply bogus corrections), but not the data files.
Worse — whatever raw data this particular CRU had before, was dumped "to make room", and only the result of their "calibration" is preserved. Whether they sincerely believed, the original data will never be needed, or maliciously thought to hide imperfections in their calibration algorithm is a hot topic. But what's clear, is that it is not available — to anyone.
But, again, even if the calibration were perfect (or, at least, sincere) — we can't get it. And so, there is no way to reproduce the results — for example, a highly-moderated poster (mrsquid0) claimed to have discerned from the leaked IDL-programs, that the correct, rather than bogus version of the script was used to produce a chart published in Nature. However, when asked, where he got the data to run the program for himself, he posted no response... Because he never has... Have you?
Bzzz, someone didn't study hard enough... The noun socialism has 2 senses (first 1 from tagged texts)
Canada's geography — as I myself said — is better than ours. They have ample natural resources, but they only have one neighbor to worry about, instead of two. Unlike us, who got invaded from both South and North, Canada has never been invaded... And they aren't doing too bad, but their much higher levels of Socialism impede their progress — they should be doing better than us, but don't.
Praise be to Capitalism!
"Robbing" means violence... Though some of the recipients are, indeed, union members, the bulk of the money went to financial and industrial companies, who threatened to simply go bankrupt otherwise — non-violently. So, no, yet again, you were using a charged term without knowing, what it means.
The "nation's wealth" is imaginary — it consists of the wealth of citizens only. The wealth redistribution you advocate implies actual robbing the richer citizens at gunpoint (via IRS or worse) even more than already done, making you an actual "robber baron" (or a cheerleader of same)...
Canada's geography — as I myself said — is better than America's. They also have ample resources, but only one neighbor to worry about. And the worry is less — unlike the US, who got, at different times, invaded from both South and North, Canada has never been invaded. They should be doing better than us, but don't — arguably, because of higher levels of Socialism.
Yes, but why are they so weak relative to us as of today?.. Because of Socialism... For even more obvious comparisons, consider:
Praise Capitalism.
It is available in theory. In practice, multiple reports suggest, the availability is shoddy... And not just for maternity...
That's National Health Service (a.k.a. "single-payer")...
Socialism, first and foremost, is about the government's control over the means of production. This is justified by the supposed need for equality. Your "minimum guaranteed quality of life" is a lie: once you make the electorate accept the need for a "certain minimum quality of life" for the "unfortunate", you will begin to continuously raise that minimum, until the "safety net" becomes a perfectly comfortable place for perpetual occupation. Still, the sheer power of the redistribution will keep giving you and yours such a kick, you'll never give it up voluntarily.
Another lie — intended for the already mentioned establishing and maintaining the power to redistribute ever bigger share of the nation's wealth.
Canada has the same geography — even better, for they don't have a northern neighbor (hint: the only time, the residence of the US President was captured by an enemy, the enemy was Canadian.) Santa Ana's Mexico was not a friendly neighbor either.
Brazil is even more wonderfully endowed — Amazon alone is a treasure trove. Unfortunately, they've dabbled with Socialism too much — some say, it is due to their being dominated by Catholicism. Either way, US is not unique in its geography. The GP is right about American exceptionalism.
Do start holding your breath now. Thank you.