That's probably what people said when Gates proclaimed IPTV in 1990, 1995, 2000 and 2007. That's the great thing about predictions, if you make them often enough they must come true...
Y'know, I still don't see flying cars anywhere near. On the other hand, it will be a cold day in Hell before I start paying attention to what Gates has to say about the Internet. His company almost missed it. MSN, hah.
Personal flying cars and jet packs were a stupid idea. We have small planes that you can go through the licensing process if you want to be a pilot. I wouldn't want random people with "flying cars" above my house while they might be drinking, smoking something, eating, putting on makeup, or yelling at the kids. Any one of those could cause them to crash into my house. IPTV or tons of personalized IP video content is an easy prediction. You know what's bad? Gate would have been right for that to be an 1990-1995 prediction if the Baby Bells actually rolled out real highspeed internet to the US rather than the babybells being tax free for a few years. 96 was really too early, but 2000 would have been reasonible for every major city and suburbs getting an IPTV through highspeed internet. Problem is IP TV requires high bandwidth. We've only been getting high bandwith throughout those major cities in the early to mid 2000s. We've not been ready for it until now. I don't pay attention to Gate's predictions either, but totally writting him or any billionaire off on their predictions is a mistake. You or I might not beable to fund and rollout IPTV, but Bill Gates could assist or push something like that if he wanted to. Billionaires have that money thing that makes things happen.
I guess I could just link to Baen Books here, or to any number of bands like the Barenaked Ladies who oppose DRM and have somehow managed to make an oodle of cash. If examples don't convince you, then you should think about the theoretical persepective that file sharing is nothing more than advertising for the work in question.
I've only bought 2-3 hardback books from them, but they've all been the ones with the CDs. (The CDS contain the text in txt, rtf, doc, html, and lit format.) If slashdot really wanted to collectively put our money where our mouth is we'd buy a copy of the 2-3 books or find other publishers that do the same thing and start making a list of books that have the text DRM free at no additional charge. I couldn't afford entire 10 book series from David Weber, but I can afford one book that has e-books of the rest of the series with it. I'm cheap and can support baen. If I've been able to do this, others should be able to do something similiar for the book genre that they like.
In fact, I think it happens to everyone to varying degrees. The problem with citing Wikipedia (or any Encyclopedia for that matter) is that it is a non-authoritive source. It becomes unclear whether the encyclopedia is at fault, or the person who believes it to be at fault. Citing authoritive sources clarifies who is correct.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Wikipedia is a great place to start your research. It can even be perfect for solving quick arguments on the Internets. But it should never show up as a citation in any professional or educational context....They're just an encyclopedia.:)
Um, I think that you are confusing what most people take as "authoritive" source. An encyclopedia is most absolutely an authoritive source to most of the general population. Apparently the only people who don't "trust" encyclopedias as "authoritive" sources are "researchers" and "university folks" doing leading edge research in a field. Apparently, they don't trust any encyclopedia and want you to cite researcher papers (Phdish papers) or books as "authoritive" sources. I can understand that view. The problem is that there is a lack of communication between professors and students about what an acceptable source is for paper. An encyclopedia is an acceptable source for sometypes of information (raw facts.) I worked on a research paper where I had to look through 10-20 years worth of encyclopedias to find one chart/table's information. That was a valid source for raw number of workers that the department labor stated were in a given field in a given year. I was following orders on that one, but really never thought about it before. Most of my "papers" were basically general ed. stuff and encyclopedia information was perfectly accept for those classes. I guess this needs to be part of Comp I or maybe a required library science class detailing where to find certain types of information and why those are the "authoritive" sources for that informative.
1. it's running Windows with IE and at least 3 extraneous toolbars 2. it hasn't been defragmented since the computer was first built 3. EVERY website HAS to install software to make it run properly 4. EVERY website the user has bookmarked has at least 5 megabytes of flash (and they're all advertisements)
Everybody in Korea signs up for everything, not knowing how useless the service is, how dangerous it is on their computer, and how much traffic it eats up. Just go to www.daum.net or www.naver.co.kr, the two most popular media portals in Korea. What's worse is that Koreans prefer that kind of interface over Google.
I'm not trying to bash Koreans, Windows, or Internet Explorer at all. It's just that when you put the three together, bad things are bound to happen.
I'd say the same thing would happen if they were running Linux. Why? Because they'd Linux as root or atleast all those website would ask for a root password which all of them would provide for that peice of software to install. They'd see it just like click "yes" 3-5 times trying to install something in Windows. Just something that you have to do to get any program to run. Of course, most people don't think about what programs they give permission to run, but they shouldn't want running in the first place. Korea is ahead in broadband access to all. This actually sounds somewhat like my mom's HP from Walmart computer that she installs flash games and toolbar on. If everyone in my neighboorhood had cheap high speed internet, they'd have the same problem. This is as much a social problem as a computer problem. The only positive thing is that such a user could claim that they don't know what's installed or running on their PC and P2P or child porn stuff could be running on all that how should they knwo? They click yes or ok or type in the root password to everything that asks for it. How do we (either Linux, MS, or anytone else) fix that?
2) Money is a reflection of wealth, and limiting the money supply limits wealth creation and distribution. There's a reason why there are more millionaires (and billionaires) in the US today than in the 19th century: there's more money available. With an effectively unlimited wealth base, it's easier for more people to become wealthy, not just the few misers who hoard all the gold.
How much of that "money" does it take to buy the same quantity of gold? I don't really think gold perse would be the best standard, but its a long agreed human standard. Land or natural resources make a bit more sense. Say 30K dollars equals 1 acre of US public land or whatever value we assign it. I'd say we could just as easily assign high speed computers as a backing for our currency, but that changes far too much to back anything. Wealth isn't magically created. Your dollars are losing value each time a new millionaire or billionaire makes money from a system that a few years ago such quantities wouldn't have existed. I blame the stock market and peoples accept to take everything on faith. Our dollar is a faith based currency and only works as long as we and the world have faith in it. I guess the same would apply reguardless of what backing (resources) were behind our dollar.
Um, actually, I'm more its a good thing that all things that we should be taxes on actually get taxed. You might not have felt anything morally wrong for avoiding income tax, and most of us do similiar things. Heck, what about kis allowances? In some respects, I think it would teach us better spending habits and that the government is always getting its cut. I'm still mixed on the tracking bit. I don't mind the government or maybe businesses knowing, but I wouldn't want my wife or mom knowing all my purchases.
You point 4 is the most interesting. Currency is a barter system. We use it as numbering how much our time/labor/resources are worth and tradable amongst others. Your point number 1 and 3 that we don't have an easy way of electronically transfering small amounts to around that we don't want the government or others knowing about. Let's be honest. Maybe we need to just change our morals where instead of hiding everything its all out in the open. Why should tipping a stripper or paying for porn have to be hidden from the wife, mom, or others? Oh, yeah because the women would get mad, and others might not like that activity themselves and would judge us that's why we like hiding our currency tranactions.
My friend's father's HP48 was in a briefcase which was left behind during evacuation of the world trade center, somewhere around the 70th floor. 6 months after 9/11, FBI called him up (the evacuated father who made it out) and said "we need you to come down and identify a few items" briefcase made it through with lots of things trashed inside, mostly crushed... but the HP was still working just fine.
strong statement as to their durability.
I hate TI 82 and HP48 in highschool. I lost the HP48 because it couldn't handle being in a backpack. It's screen got cracked while I never had any screen issues with the TI 82. I got a TI 92 in college and rather ever had to use it, but for classes like Cal II or physics it was useful. It's in a draw at home and hasn't been used since. I've not seen the TI-89 that has been mentioned, but I'll most likely be getting the version or two after that for my kids when they need a graphing cal. I loved HPs RPN, but if it can't stand up to livig in a backpack through a 4 years of highschool and being thrown in around in the backseat as well, it isn't durable enoough compared to the TI offerring.
This law is instructing all states to comply with an arbitrary standard. They can't compel the states to do that. They must dangle money as a request.
I've read this, and most of it is uniforming the 50 states various DLs so if that guy form Maine takes a cross country trip and gets pulled over in Iowa, Texas, Flordia, or CA the police with DL card readers in those states could easily run the DL through the scanning hardware rather than manually type it in. They all pretty much require a picture, and a name, DOB, address, sex, race, height, and weight. Sigs are required in my state and a thumb print is optional. If 50 states are already collecting this info, why can't the feds ask for them to unify their DLs so that the cards are easily readable and in somewhat the same basic formate by all state governments and the federal government rather than just the issuing state gov? Not everything the government asks is evil and meant to be the end of the world 666 tracking everyone bit. This is a perfectly o.k. request to me.
It's bad enough getting the state to replace an ID... who do I complain to now? The FBI? Dept of Homeland Security? I don't even want to think about this anymore. Go Maine.
If they really wanted to do it "right," this is what they'd do and "why". The "government" local, state, and feds don't really have any idea who its citizens currently are. The feds issue out SSNs to new borns now, but that's just a name and number and won't be used until their around 16-18 and start working. The government doesn't know if that 16-18 year old fresh worker was that newborn. Let's go now to birth cert. What ID information is currently on one to id the new born with the citizen? The babies foot print. I don't know if that's optional or required. Do we currently use foot prints anywhere else to verify ID? Nope. What ID methods do we have and use? Picture IDs, finger prints, dental records, eye scanning, DNA, and giving you a number and saying that's an form of ID. Um, we'll never actually try to push large scale ID for religious reasons in this country. If the government was going to do it "right," they'd take fingerprints, an eye scan, some sort of dental record, and a DNA record an all of those would be used to form an ID number at birth and store them. The next time that you show up for a state drivers lic, you shouldn't need any form of ID. Your local office will use one of those methods to ID you and take a current photo and put in your current living address. (DLs typically have sex, race, height, weight, hair color, eye color, and DOB so all that current information would be recorded about you and stored. When is the next times that the government takes note of you? When you pay your taxes, during the census and when you leave and re-enter the country. The IRS likes to know alot about you. They know how much you make and mainly what you spend your big purchases on if its taxable or that you can take if off your taxes. The IRS could use your ID number to record all that other info about you, but they don't care about your actual id, unless you don't pay and then they have to send other government folks to get you. The census folks never really know. The census folks ask and ask every one that they can find all sorts of questions. All it would take additional to what the census currently does is for them to ask for the id numbers or finger prints. I could see all those finger prints being scaned and compared to registered citizens or immigrats. If you aren't in the government database, some government other fellow will be along. Currently we issue passports for those leaving and entering the country. In my locked down state, we'd be recording all that inital birth info for every vistor or immigrat from another country, to obtain a passport, you could just run into any gov. office and ask for one, and they could scan you to find out who you are, and take your current height, weight, hair color, eye color and print it out. Our government wouldn't really need those passports. They "know" who all the citizens are. If you aren't in the database, you aren't a citizen and either get deported to the country of your choice or jailed.
What's funny is that we've had the tech. for this ever since fingerprinting. We've not really been far enough along until police agencies could run a print and get results back within seconds though. The difference is now instead of police agencies all government agencies would ask for that or another form of ID so that they'd know who you are. Id theft/forgery would be a federal homeland sec. crime. We could do this and it would would work for the war on terror. The only problem is that we'd have a second civil war getting our exising citizens to have a through ID by the government.
Here is another idea that we could attempt at the same time. Let's have a federal currency card instead of all this cash. They could star tracking and finding out all sorts of things by doing that as well. If you are going to have a second civil war, you might as well go whole hog and become a complete government knows everything about you state.
I was going to lay down a thick bed of sarcasm here, but instead I'll just ask you to consider the surveillance, privacy, economic, and tax implications of replacing a fungible, untraceable medium of exchange (cash) with one that's inextricably linked to your identity, records every transaction as an inherent part of the transaction, and can be watched in real-time from anywhere on the planet.
Hey, I said that we weren't ready for it. I'd think that may be in two generations that we'd be ready though. Those are differences in the currency medium that aren't inhirently good or bad. I'd actually like it. I know it offends the slashdot but I'm being tracked crowd and Christians hey its the end of the world mark of the beast 666 crowd as well. Think of how many plastic cards that people carry around: gift cards, credit/debit cards, and DLs. It could be a good thing if all of that was tied into one currency card. I actually think those are "good things" about this form of currency medium. One thing that you didn't note was that taxes could be inherently linked with the transaction and proper local, state, and federal accounts seemlessly updated in real time instead of once a month, once a quarter or once a year. Of course, they could just part a 1-5% "transaction" tax in addition to a sales and other assorted taxes. This is actually fairly easy to envision. I'd bet that the UK would be more likely to pass it than the US though.
Your overall presentation is so awkward that it doesn't seem to support your claims about your test scores. However, I do know my own test scores are consistently quite high--and regard that metric as of little value. I strongly recommend The Mismeasure of Man as a concrete explanation of the bogosity of intelligence testing. However, to put it succinctly, no man is a number.
Yeah, I ramble and never really make myself clear. Sorry about that. The thing is if you can't or don't think that we can be measured by test scores or numbered per se than any study saying xx country's educational environment is currently doing better than yy country's educational environment is invalid. The tests show only that they can or can't take that single test and not how real roundedly intelligent an individual is.
It's actually a "good" thing that our pennies are worth 5 cents in metals. The "bad" part though is that we kicked the gold standard so our dollar isn't actually worth as squat compared to what it once was. If we really wanted an honest currency, all our currency would hold its face value in metal or other hard resources. We might have to redo our currency where one penny is equal to such and such grams of x metal. All our other coinage could change sizes and weights to match their relative worth. The problem comes with paper money. Let's be honest, our paper money is worthless except for whatever value we currently give it. At this time, it would be more practical just to eliminate paper or coinage as form of currency in the US. The US Treasury could issue every entity that currently holds US currency an ID/debit card with 0.00$ on it. The treasury, banks, or other places could credit/debit the amount from the card as needed. I see problems in that it would be possible to walk around with all your savings on this card instead of somewhat secured behind a bank and through fraud the entire amount gets drained away. I don't think that we are quite ready for that, but it would be the easiest tech thing within our reach to replace our paper and coinage with. One bonus as well is that they could define units of currency of less than a penny by just extending the decimal place and removing a smaller slice. This would help in the on-line world where there is the crowd that wants micropayments for things.
As for the second part, the problem is pretty much solved, isn't it? Most of the developed world already runs in a rat-wheel, working to satisfy created needs (like a new car every five years). So no, they won't die of boredom, unless they already are. As for the few who gave up the idiot box and try to find interesing things to do - well there is still huge work to be done for at least a couple of hundred years. Just in programming - if I had a spare year or so I'd work on this [sourceforge.net] and for 5-10 years or more there is still a good open source Common Lisp distribution missing. And then the whole meeting girls in bars thing to work out... Come to think of it, life is actualy short, isn't it?
There is a few thousand years of things that I'd like to do. But for some eason, I still put have daily/weekly sex in there with learn every human language and Phds in every existing human field of knowledge. Actual reproduction, I don't want. I just want the sex. Maybe 50, 100, or 500 years of daily or weekly sex as ordered would be enough for me to get bored with it, but then there is all the science and tech things that I'd also be able to play with. I think having a society where we become immortal would chage us more than anything. I'd life with my current wife for 50-100 years, but after the house was paid for, the kids moved into lives of their own, and I'd still have hundreds of years to live in the future? We both might get bored with just each other after 200-300 years.
Even if natural selection would step in hard at that point and we'd be left with only with 1 billion people, all well-educated, what would THEY do all day? I mean, can you imagine 1 billion well-educated people working on innovations or being "artists"? Soon enough there would be little left to invent, or at least not enough to keep 1 billion people occupied, and then what? Spread out across the universe and colonize other planets? Sure, but seeing as everybody would ofcourse take all the knowledge with them there'd be nothing "real" to do on those planets as well, apart from just living..... So, we'd have 1 billion people, of which 99.99% have nothing to do, except to just try and enjoy themselves. My guess is most of them would get really bored really fast...
O.k. say an economic purge just leaves those not employed to starve to death as low level jobs are all done by robots and those jobs that are left are all very high skilled jobs. Um, I don't quiet buy that. I'd think that the human labor would be redirected. We'd use them as entertainment before just allowing them to die off. Think wars being refought and televisied for the fun factor to see who wins. The elite don't take part it just a common lower class thing, but say every major war in human history is refought with period weapons, just to see if that nation's team could now win. If you get bored or tired of life, you die off so you won't make it as an immortal. Immortals don't get bored easily. They might start building a ring world just to take up the time.
Evolution does not have any right or wrong directions. That's devolution fallacy. Humans set goals which evolution can work for or against. In the case of the goal "All humans become smarter and more peaceful, and achieve worldwide safety and comfort, and stop shooting each other over which hand the invisible man in the sky wants you to wipe your a** with", the goal is nearly universal, at least among men who have thought at all about the optimal future state of mankind.
It is implied, and obvious to everyone except for pedantics like yourself, that value judgments about evolution are using that goal as the standard of value. And therefore evolution can move in 'right' or 'wrong' directions, relative to that goal.
Um, you are confusing breeding and evolution. You'd like to breed humanity into some communal loving sheep species. God gave us free will to screw with our selves how ever we choose. That applies to our species as well. Your communal loving sheep will be slaughtered or enslaved or just governed by 1-5% of humanity that goes down the other route. They are actually both morally equal. To say one side is morally better than the other is just to apply our own standards on it. I'm not part of the ruling class, but I'd like to be. I'm not ruthless or crave it enough though. I'm quite happy being a bottom rung sheep. So as long as I don't get slaughtered in a war, I'll be happy.
For most people, a microwave is a black box contraption in their kitchen that makes food hot. Sure, they also know that you shouldn't put a fork or knife in, but have no idea why. This isn't because they're stupid, it's because they're ignorant about the inner workings of that particular machine in their kitchen. This isn't because they're stupid, it's because they're ignorant about the inner workings of that particular machine in their kitchen.... you still don't truly know why a microwave works.
I remember hearing some where that putting "metal" in a microwave "reflects" the microwaves and could start sparks or fires or heat things other than the inside of the microwave. I don't know this as true and I have no reason to personally "test" it. I don't eat metal and have plenty of paper, plastic, and glass containers to put inside of microwave ovens. I take it on faith that if I put a paper plate inside a conventional oven it might burst into flame. I've never actually tried this though so I don't really know. The "auto clean" cycle on my oven makes "everything" inside of the oven turn to ash. I have a pretty good idea that this involves heat and those electron thingies that I pay the electric company for. I couldn't explain to you why or how the oven works other than I set a temp and time and set on and then set the food in there. After the timer beeps, the food is generally warm. It doesn't mean the food is any good to eat. I'm still waiting for a Niven autochef. I just want to press my selection and have my selected meal pop out for me. The closest that I get to that is ordering Pizza or picking up food through a drive through. I give my order verbally, I pay a person, and then I recieve my food. The food might as well be made by enslaved magic elves for all I know.
Where's the list of the world's dumbest cities? I'd like to move to one of them and use my moderate intelligence to take over.
Doesn't work like that. You have to be dumber than everyone else and with a set of your own cohorts. With the right team behind you, you could even aim for global dictator if you want. You might miss and only get to be President of the US, but that's an ok. second place.
For the American system, my experience is much more complicated. At the low levels I was in extremely good public schools through high school--but in a district that was one of the richest in the country at the time. I think we were No.2 for the entire nation on a per/student basis. Just an accident that the entire large area had been zoned residential, and those residential property taxes were being collected, but it was mostly vacant lots. Over the years the houses got built, the students arrived, the per/student money dropped to an average level, and the public schools dropped too. It's not the case that money always makes a difference, but it certainly is a major influence, and many of my important school experiences would not have happened except that my schools had the money at that time. That point is reinforced by my experience at one of the richest public universities, which was an awful school. My other degree was from a smaller private university that I regard as vastly superior to the enormous state school. Money isn't enough to counteract a staunchly conservative educational philosophy dedicated to forcing the students into the smallest possible mental boxes.
Sounds like you were lucky in that your community had planned ahead for future development and subdivision and was supporting the school for the future needs instead of their current needs. You got extra perks that you most likely shouldn't have had if your funding was proper average. My US public school picture is vastly different than yours. I'm from AR the 50th or is it 49th this year state. I went to school "knowing" that statewide that we always scored lowest on standardized tests. I felt odd whenever I recieved the results from the standardized tests that we had to take at 3rd grade, 6th grade, and somewhere between 8-9th grade (I think it was 8th grade min. performance test to make sure you were "educated" enough to go to highschool) and then ACT/SATs and that military appitude test we took. I and my class mates seemed to always rank in the 99th percent in the entire nation and had "at a college reading level." This was way back in 6th grade. We kinda that it must be a joke. We knew that we were the 50th state and had the worst schools and how could we score better than those students in the top ten states? I only took the ACT 2-3 times. Once was in the 8th grade for some reason. I made a 15 on it and figured that I was a total idiot. (I had no idea what an eighth grader should have made on it, but I was told that was really good.) When I actually was taking the ACT for college scholarships I took it twice and made 24 and then 25. I figured 25 was good enough. If I knew then what I know now, I'd have taken that test two dozen times like some of my classmates and have shot for a 29 ro 30. 25 on the ACT got me a tution scholarship as long as I keep up a 3.25 each semester. I got a non grades based housing & books scholarship.
What did I learn about AR education after going to an AR State University? I learned that either I'm either genius or Texarkana, AR public school was near the best in the state in math and science or that as long as your somewhat applied yourself through highschool than you could aquire a "college level" general ed requirements by going through US high school honors program. I'm talking history: world history I & II, American History I & II, even world lit, Cal I, the first month of stat, almost the entire linear algbrea class we covered in high school. Biology and chemistry where only slighty different with a bit more lab required than highschool biology or chemistry. Physics was torture through both hs and college, but I made it through. I made it through a BS in CS degree and other than major field topics most of the general education required course work we had covered in highschool. The big magic difference in college is that you have to learn to BS how each given professor wants their essay questions to sound like. I do mean B.S. since most of it was just the B.S. slant/spin any given pro
... but watching youtube makes you intelligent. Yup, broadband as an intelligence measure beats all those dumb ink blot tests.
Hey, youtube can give you both. I'm sure their are sciency thing hidden in youtube. I've not come across them myself. I've come across more humor or home entertainment aired to all through links to youtube. I tend to think youtube lets more stupid/idiot moments be seen by all. Um, is this a good thing? We will find out in a generation after we actually somewhat adjust to it. How will videos kids or pre-teens or blogs or myspace pages be treated when those kids decide to run for office, get famous, or get rich and what to tidy up their respectable public image? We will find out if google/youtube is still around in 20-30 years with all its current videos still in the archives.
I just can't see biological systems ever achieving the kind of consistency we expect from computers. Do we really want to go to the good old days of running a computation several times and taking the average result as the answer?
Well if you can do that 100 or a 1000 times faster than any other method using that scale, then yes we would. If we could figure out a better way less error prone way of computing at that scale, then we'd do that. Why are we researching DNA based processing? Because it is a "cheap" shortcut for working at that scale. If our other tools get better, we wouldn't bother with DNA processing.
how many Libraries of Congress you can fit into an elephant with this technology.
They haven't found a way of making the elephant large enough to house the library of congress yet. If you want only the data of the library of congress (what file size is that anyway?) just copy it to a flashdrive, DVD disc, or harddrive and feed it to the elephant. I'm not sure which tech would allow you to store your information recoverably inside of an elephant though. I'd go with a flashdrive and a zip lock baggy if I were you.
A familiar pattern should emerge, eventually, as you read through the CONSTITUTION OF THE PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF CHINA. First it talks about the rights of the people and then it gives the state broad authority to take away those rights to pursue some government interest such as "security" or "public order". In some cases taking away that right must be merely "lawful", so as long as they use some standard form or procedure then just about every so called right is subject to the whims of lawmakers, with no real grounds for judicial review.
Actually, it sounds better for them than it would for us. As I understand most Asian cultures, they are heavy on the community "correcting" the behavior of those "odd" ones how every "odd" is defined. Most of it all sounds actually o.k. to me. You are told that you can do something and then given a "bounds" not to cross. Our Bill of Rights is really vague and doesn't have any bounds on the individuals. You hear a big up roar whenever the "state" or "government" tries to make some rules defining those bounds a bit better. Take U.S. flag burning. I don't remember if it was currently legal or illegal. I think last time that I checked, the only time a U.S. flag could be legally "burned" was as at politically meeting as a freedom of speech thing. The concept got patriots mad so they illegalized a whole lot of U.S. flag disposal methods that could be viewed as negative. I think its more of difference on East and West and how we come to view things. I'd actually like to read the Chinese view point on such matters. Note: I don't mean the Chinese-American viewpoint as that isn't the same at all. That Chinese-American or Chinese+other nationality has left their homeland so doesn't agree with how they run things. I'd like to hear from those in China if it is bad as slashdot always makes it out to be? Slashdot makes the US to be near a police state sometimes that's not very truthful either. I guess that I just need a source of information better than tradional US public opinion. Public opinion doesn't mean that it is the "right" opinion or that what they have the opinion about is based on any truth.
For all the bitching about the United States you see on Slashdot, at least our government actually has to try to subvert the Constitution, and we have ways of fighting back. The US Constitution doesn't have an "Oh, and everything we promised you you have, you don't have." escape hatch built in. Technically, we have the exact opposite, whatever our dear Attorney General may think.
That just means that your contitution is inferior to the Chinese one from the government point of view. I'm surprised that they haven't slipped an escape all admendment in there at the end.
There are these things called real life, fresh air, exercise, well-being, and real-world experience. Some people equate the value of life to how much experience one has gained throughout its course. Here, in case you're new to these concepts:
* real life (aka meatspace)
* fresh air
* exercise
* well-being
* experience (no, not experience)
I had that life style choice forced on me growing up. I didn't like it. That's why I've adjusted to a life style that I like. My only problem is that I don't like to control others or their actions, which includes my kids. My wife has no problem telling my kids to go to church or scouts. Her social mindset is being passed on. I tend to think that the example that I'm setting to my kids is that you aren't allowed to do anything fun after school except on the weekend unless you are an adult. Being an adult magically allows you the ability to do what you want once you get home as long as you are "working." I do my chores and then play. O.k. I tell my kids that I had to do alot of things like going to church when I was their age, but its a choice that I don't now. They like church or atleast the church social set more than I ever did. Fun wasn't associated with church or that peer group. Church was just a waste of time for me and trying to force a fear of death or unkown mindset on me. I live perfectly well by minimizing my church contacts as much as possible.
spend nearly all my time outside of work on my PC. Then I got a job in the PC world, and then I quit being on it outside of my normal job. Then I met a girl, and got married. Since she turned out to be a complete psycho bitch (I should have known...should have known) and now spend all my free time *back* on the PC, and away from her as much as possible.
Hey, I spend most of my after work time either playing video games or sitting infront of the computer. My wife and parents complain that I'm anti-social because I don't get out to go to church, or take the kids to boy scouts and/or girl scouts or attend all the PTA meetings. What's freaking ironic is that I'd be considered "social" by just freaking showing up standing around and not saying anything for 30 min - 1 hour half. How is that social? That I meet five strangers and might have picked up their names? Am I odd that the only humans that I care about or my existing family and friends? I don't want to run out and form a vast social network. Being social is being in a setting with a few others and discussing a few topics. I can do that through many mediums why is it socially accepted to be social to be physical lurker but when you are a non lurker on the on-line world you are seen as anti-social?
Slashdot Mirror
That's probably what people said when Gates proclaimed IPTV in 1990, 1995, 2000 and 2007. That's the great thing about predictions, if you make them often enough they must come true...
Y'know, I still don't see flying cars anywhere near. On the other hand, it will be a cold day in Hell before I start paying attention to what Gates has to say about the Internet. His company almost missed it. MSN, hah.
Personal flying cars and jet packs were a stupid idea. We have small planes that you can go through the licensing process if you want to be a pilot. I wouldn't want random people with "flying cars" above my house while they might be drinking, smoking something, eating, putting on makeup, or yelling at the kids. Any one of those could cause them to crash into my house. IPTV or tons of personalized IP video content is an easy prediction. You know what's bad? Gate would have been right for that to be an 1990-1995 prediction if the Baby Bells actually rolled out real highspeed internet to the US rather than the babybells being tax free for a few years. 96 was really too early, but 2000 would have been reasonible for every major city and suburbs getting an IPTV through highspeed internet. Problem is IP TV requires high bandwidth. We've only been getting high bandwith throughout those major cities in the early to mid 2000s. We've not been ready for it until now. I don't pay attention to Gate's predictions either, but totally writting him or any billionaire off on their predictions is a mistake. You or I might not beable to fund and rollout IPTV, but Bill Gates could assist or push something like that if he wanted to. Billionaires have that money thing that makes things happen.
I guess I could just link to Baen Books here, or to any number of bands like the Barenaked Ladies who oppose DRM and have somehow managed to make an oodle of cash. If examples don't convince you, then you should think about the theoretical persepective that file sharing is nothing more than advertising for the work in question.
Baen has been including promotional CDs with selected hard-cover novels. You can get a copies of the cds here: http://oberon.zlynx.org/
Baen has a free library from many of their aurthors you can read them here: http://www.baen.com/library/defaultTitles.htm
I've only bought 2-3 hardback books from them, but they've all been the ones with the CDs. (The CDS contain the text in txt, rtf, doc, html, and lit format.) If slashdot really wanted to collectively put our money where our mouth is we'd buy a copy of the 2-3 books or find other publishers that do the same thing and start making a list of books that have the text DRM free at no additional charge. I couldn't afford entire 10 book series from David Weber, but I can afford one book that has e-books of the rest of the series with it. I'm cheap and can support baen. If I've been able to do this, others should be able to do something similiar for the book genre that they like.
In fact, I think it happens to everyone to varying degrees. The problem with citing Wikipedia (or any Encyclopedia for that matter) is that it is a non-authoritive source. It becomes unclear whether the encyclopedia is at fault, or the person who believes it to be at fault. Citing authoritive sources clarifies who is correct.
...They're just an encyclopedia. :)
I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Wikipedia is a great place to start your research. It can even be perfect for solving quick arguments on the Internets. But it should never show up as a citation in any professional or educational context.
Um, I think that you are confusing what most people take as "authoritive" source. An encyclopedia is most absolutely an authoritive source to most of the general population. Apparently the only people who don't "trust" encyclopedias as "authoritive" sources are "researchers" and "university folks" doing leading edge research in a field. Apparently, they don't trust any encyclopedia and want you to cite researcher papers (Phdish papers) or books as "authoritive" sources. I can understand that view. The problem is that there is a lack of communication between professors and students about what an acceptable source is for paper. An encyclopedia is an acceptable source for sometypes of information (raw facts.) I worked on a research paper where I had to look through 10-20 years worth of encyclopedias to find one chart/table's information. That was a valid source for raw number of workers that the department labor stated were in a given field in a given year. I was following orders on that one, but really never thought about it before. Most of my "papers" were basically general ed. stuff and encyclopedia information was perfectly accept for those classes. I guess this needs to be part of Comp I or maybe a required library science class detailing where to find certain types of information and why those are the "authoritive" sources for that informative.
1. it's running Windows with IE and at least 3 extraneous toolbars
2. it hasn't been defragmented since the computer was first built
3. EVERY website HAS to install software to make it run properly
4. EVERY website the user has bookmarked has at least 5 megabytes of flash (and they're all advertisements)
Everybody in Korea signs up for everything, not knowing how useless the service is, how dangerous it is on their computer, and how much traffic it eats up. Just go to www.daum.net or www.naver.co.kr, the two most popular media portals in Korea. What's worse is that Koreans prefer that kind of interface over Google.
I'm not trying to bash Koreans, Windows, or Internet Explorer at all. It's just that when you put the three together, bad things are bound to happen.
I'd say the same thing would happen if they were running Linux. Why? Because they'd Linux as root or atleast all those website would ask for a root password which all of them would provide for that peice of software to install. They'd see it just like click "yes" 3-5 times trying to install something in Windows. Just something that you have to do to get any program to run. Of course, most people don't think about what programs they give permission to run, but they shouldn't want running in the first place. Korea is ahead in broadband access to all. This actually sounds somewhat like my mom's HP from Walmart computer that she installs flash games and toolbar on. If everyone in my neighboorhood had cheap high speed internet, they'd have the same problem. This is as much a social problem as a computer problem. The only positive thing is that such a user could claim that they don't know what's installed or running on their PC and P2P or child porn stuff could be running on all that how should they knwo? They click yes or ok or type in the root password to everything that asks for it. How do we (either Linux, MS, or anytone else) fix that?
2) Money is a reflection of wealth, and limiting the money supply limits wealth creation and distribution. There's a reason why there are more millionaires (and billionaires) in the US today than in the 19th century: there's more money available. With an effectively unlimited wealth base, it's easier for more people to become wealthy, not just the few misers who hoard all the gold.
How much of that "money" does it take to buy the same quantity of gold? I don't really think gold perse would be the best standard, but its a long agreed human standard. Land or natural resources make a bit more sense. Say 30K dollars equals 1 acre of US public land or whatever value we assign it. I'd say we could just as easily assign high speed computers as a backing for our currency, but that changes far too much to back anything. Wealth isn't magically created. Your dollars are losing value each time a new millionaire or billionaire makes money from a system that a few years ago such quantities wouldn't have existed. I blame the stock market and peoples accept to take everything on faith. Our dollar is a faith based currency and only works as long as we and the world have faith in it. I guess the same would apply reguardless of what backing (resources) were behind our dollar.
Um, actually, I'm more its a good thing that all things that we should be taxes on actually get taxed. You might not have felt anything morally wrong for avoiding income tax, and most of us do similiar things. Heck, what about kis allowances? In some respects, I think it would teach us better spending habits and that the government is always getting its cut. I'm still mixed on the tracking bit. I don't mind the government or maybe businesses knowing, but I wouldn't want my wife or mom knowing all my purchases.
You point 4 is the most interesting. Currency is a barter system. We use it as numbering how much our time/labor/resources are worth and tradable amongst others. Your point number 1 and 3 that we don't have an easy way of electronically transfering small amounts to around that we don't want the government or others knowing about. Let's be honest. Maybe we need to just change our morals where instead of hiding everything its all out in the open. Why should tipping a stripper or paying for porn have to be hidden from the wife, mom, or others? Oh, yeah because the women would get mad, and others might not like that activity themselves and would judge us that's why we like hiding our currency tranactions.
My friend's father's HP48 was in a briefcase which was left behind during evacuation of the world trade center, somewhere around the 70th floor. 6 months after 9/11, FBI called him up (the evacuated father who made it out) and said "we need you to come down and identify a few items" briefcase made it through with lots of things trashed inside, mostly crushed... but the HP was still working just fine.
strong statement as to their durability.
I hate TI 82 and HP48 in highschool. I lost the HP48 because it couldn't handle being in a backpack. It's screen got cracked while I never had any screen issues with the TI 82. I got a TI 92 in college and rather ever had to use it, but for classes like Cal II or physics it was useful. It's in a draw at home and hasn't been used since. I've not seen the TI-89 that has been mentioned, but I'll most likely be getting the version or two after that for my kids when they need a graphing cal. I loved HPs RPN, but if it can't stand up to livig in a backpack through a 4 years of highschool and being thrown in around in the backseat as well, it isn't durable enoough compared to the TI offerring.
This law is instructing all states to comply with an arbitrary standard. They can't compel the states to do that. They must dangle money as a request.
I've read this, and most of it is uniforming the 50 states various DLs so if that guy form Maine takes a cross country trip and gets pulled over in Iowa, Texas, Flordia, or CA the police with DL card readers in those states could easily run the DL through the scanning hardware rather than manually type it in. They all pretty much require a picture, and a name, DOB, address, sex, race, height, and weight. Sigs are required in my state and a thumb print is optional. If 50 states are already collecting this info, why can't the feds ask for them to unify their DLs so that the cards are easily readable and in somewhat the same basic formate by all state governments and the federal government rather than just the issuing state gov? Not everything the government asks is evil and meant to be the end of the world 666 tracking everyone bit. This is a perfectly o.k. request to me.
It's bad enough getting the state to replace an ID... who do I complain to now? The FBI? Dept of Homeland Security?
I don't even want to think about this anymore. Go Maine.
If they really wanted to do it "right," this is what they'd do and "why". The "government" local, state, and feds don't really have any idea who its citizens currently are. The feds issue out SSNs to new borns now, but that's just a name and number and won't be used until their around 16-18 and start working. The government doesn't know if that 16-18 year old fresh worker was that newborn. Let's go now to birth cert. What ID information is currently on one to id the new born with the citizen? The babies foot print. I don't know if that's optional or required. Do we currently use foot prints anywhere else to verify ID? Nope. What ID methods do we have and use? Picture IDs, finger prints, dental records, eye scanning, DNA, and giving you a number and saying that's an form of ID. Um, we'll never actually try to push large scale ID for religious reasons in this country. If the government was going to do it "right," they'd take fingerprints, an eye scan, some sort of dental record, and a DNA record an all of those would be used to form an ID number at birth and store them. The next time that you show up for a state drivers lic, you shouldn't need any form of ID. Your local office will use one of those methods to ID you and take a current photo and put in your current living address. (DLs typically have sex, race, height, weight, hair color, eye color, and DOB so all that current information would be recorded about you and stored. When is the next times that the government takes note of you? When you pay your taxes, during the census and when you leave and re-enter the country. The IRS likes to know alot about you. They know how much you make and mainly what you spend your big purchases on if its taxable or that you can take if off your taxes. The IRS could use your ID number to record all that other info about you, but they don't care about your actual id, unless you don't pay and then they have to send other government folks to get you. The census folks never really know. The census folks ask and ask every one that they can find all sorts of questions. All it would take additional to what the census currently does is for them to ask for the id numbers or finger prints. I could see all those finger prints being scaned and compared to registered citizens or immigrats. If you aren't in the government database, some government other fellow will be along. Currently we issue passports for those leaving and entering the country. In my locked down state, we'd be recording all that inital birth info for every vistor or immigrat from another country, to obtain a passport, you could just run into any gov. office and ask for one, and they could scan you to find out who you are, and take your current height, weight, hair color, eye color and print it out. Our government wouldn't really need those passports. They "know" who all the citizens are. If you aren't in the database, you aren't a citizen and either get deported to the country of your choice or jailed.
What's funny is that we've had the tech. for this ever since fingerprinting. We've not really been far enough along until police agencies could run a print and get results back within seconds though. The difference is now instead of police agencies all government agencies would ask for that or another form of ID so that they'd know who you are. Id theft/forgery would be a federal homeland sec. crime. We could do this and it would would work for the war on terror. The only problem is that we'd have a second civil war getting our exising citizens to have a through ID by the government.
Here is another idea that we could attempt at the same time. Let's have a federal currency card instead of all this cash. They could star tracking and finding out all sorts of things by doing that as well. If you are going to have a second civil war, you might as well go whole hog and become a complete government knows everything about you state.
I was going to lay down a thick bed of sarcasm here, but instead I'll just ask you to consider the surveillance, privacy, economic, and tax implications of replacing a fungible, untraceable medium of exchange (cash) with one that's inextricably linked to your identity, records every transaction as an inherent part of the transaction, and can be watched in real-time from anywhere on the planet.
Hey, I said that we weren't ready for it. I'd think that may be in two generations that we'd be ready though. Those are differences in the currency medium that aren't inhirently good or bad. I'd actually like it. I know it offends the slashdot but I'm being tracked crowd and Christians hey its the end of the world mark of the beast 666 crowd as well. Think of how many plastic cards that people carry around: gift cards, credit/debit cards, and DLs. It could be a good thing if all of that was tied into one currency card. I actually think those are "good things" about this form of currency medium. One thing that you didn't note was that taxes could be inherently linked with the transaction and proper local, state, and federal accounts seemlessly updated in real time instead of once a month, once a quarter or once a year. Of course, they could just part a 1-5% "transaction" tax in addition to a sales and other assorted taxes. This is actually fairly easy to envision. I'd bet that the UK would be more likely to pass it than the US though.
Your overall presentation is so awkward that it doesn't seem to support your claims about your test scores. However, I do know my own test scores are consistently quite high--and regard that metric as of little value. I strongly recommend The Mismeasure of Man as a concrete explanation of the bogosity of intelligence testing. However, to put it succinctly, no man is a number.
Yeah, I ramble and never really make myself clear. Sorry about that. The thing is if you can't or don't think that we can be measured by test scores or numbered per se than any study saying xx country's educational environment is currently doing better than yy country's educational environment is invalid. The tests show only that they can or can't take that single test and not how real roundedly intelligent an individual is.
It's actually a "good" thing that our pennies are worth 5 cents in metals. The "bad" part though is that we kicked the gold standard so our dollar isn't actually worth as squat compared to what it once was. If we really wanted an honest currency, all our currency would hold its face value in metal or other hard resources. We might have to redo our currency where one penny is equal to such and such grams of x metal. All our other coinage could change sizes and weights to match their relative worth. The problem comes with paper money. Let's be honest, our paper money is worthless except for whatever value we currently give it. At this time, it would be more practical just to eliminate paper or coinage as form of currency in the US. The US Treasury could issue every entity that currently holds US currency an ID/debit card with 0.00$ on it. The treasury, banks, or other places could credit/debit the amount from the card as needed. I see problems in that it would be possible to walk around with all your savings on this card instead of somewhat secured behind a bank and through fraud the entire amount gets drained away. I don't think that we are quite ready for that, but it would be the easiest tech thing within our reach to replace our paper and coinage with. One bonus as well is that they could define units of currency of less than a penny by just extending the decimal place and removing a smaller slice. This would help in the on-line world where there is the crowd that wants micropayments for things.
As for the second part, the problem is pretty much solved, isn't it? Most of the developed world already runs in a rat-wheel, working to satisfy created needs (like a new car every five years). So no, they won't die of boredom, unless they already are.
As for the few who gave up the idiot box and try to find interesing things to do - well there is still huge work to be done for at least a couple of hundred years. Just in programming - if I had a spare year or so I'd work on this [sourceforge.net] and for 5-10 years or more there is still a good open source Common Lisp distribution missing. And then the whole meeting girls in bars thing to work out... Come to think of it, life is actualy short, isn't it?
There is a few thousand years of things that I'd like to do. But for some eason, I still put have daily/weekly sex in there with learn every human language and Phds in every existing human field of knowledge. Actual reproduction, I don't want. I just want the sex. Maybe 50, 100, or 500 years of daily or weekly sex as ordered would be enough for me to get bored with it, but then there is all the science and tech things that I'd also be able to play with. I think having a society where we become immortal would chage us more than anything. I'd life with my current wife for 50-100 years, but after the house was paid for, the kids moved into lives of their own, and I'd still have hundreds of years to live in the future? We both might get bored with just each other after 200-300 years.
Even if natural selection would step in hard at that point and we'd be left with only with 1 billion people, all well-educated, what would THEY do all day? I mean, can you imagine 1 billion well-educated people working on innovations or being "artists"? Soon enough there would be little left to invent, or at least not enough to keep 1 billion people occupied, and then what? Spread out across the universe and colonize other planets? Sure, but seeing as everybody would ofcourse take all the knowledge with them there'd be nothing "real" to do on those planets as well, apart from just living. .... So, we'd have 1 billion people, of which 99.99% have nothing to do, except to just try and enjoy themselves. My guess is most of them would get really bored really fast...
O.k. say an economic purge just leaves those not employed to starve to death as low level jobs are all done by robots and those jobs that are left are all very high skilled jobs. Um, I don't quiet buy that. I'd think that the human labor would be redirected. We'd use them as entertainment before just allowing them to die off. Think wars being refought and televisied for the fun factor to see who wins. The elite don't take part it just a common lower class thing, but say every major war in human history is refought with period weapons, just to see if that nation's team could now win. If you get bored or tired of life, you die off so you won't make it as an immortal. Immortals don't get bored easily. They might start building a ring world just to take up the time.
Evolution does not have any right or wrong directions. That's devolution fallacy.
Humans set goals which evolution can work for or against. In the case of the goal "All humans become smarter and more peaceful, and achieve worldwide safety and comfort, and stop shooting each other over which hand the invisible man in the sky wants you to wipe your a** with", the goal is nearly universal, at least among men who have thought at all about the optimal future state of mankind.
It is implied, and obvious to everyone except for pedantics like yourself, that value judgments about evolution are using that goal as the standard of value. And therefore evolution can move in 'right' or 'wrong' directions, relative to that goal.
Um, you are confusing breeding and evolution. You'd like to breed humanity into some communal loving sheep species. God gave us free will to screw with our selves how ever we choose. That applies to our species as well. Your communal loving sheep will be slaughtered or enslaved or just governed by 1-5% of humanity that goes down the other route. They are actually both morally equal. To say one side is morally better than the other is just to apply our own standards on it. I'm not part of the ruling class, but I'd like to be. I'm not ruthless or crave it enough though. I'm quite happy being a bottom rung sheep. So as long as I don't get slaughtered in a war, I'll be happy.
For most people, a microwave is a black box contraption in their kitchen that makes food hot. Sure, they also know that you shouldn't put a fork or knife in, but have no idea why. This isn't because they're stupid, it's because they're ignorant about the inner workings of that particular machine in their kitchen. This isn't because they're stupid, it's because they're ignorant about the inner workings of that particular machine in their kitchen. ... you still don't truly know why a microwave works.
I remember hearing some where that putting "metal" in a microwave "reflects" the microwaves and could start sparks or fires or heat things other than the inside of the microwave. I don't know this as true and I have no reason to personally "test" it. I don't eat metal and have plenty of paper, plastic, and glass containers to put inside of microwave ovens. I take it on faith that if I put a paper plate inside a conventional oven it might burst into flame. I've never actually tried this though so I don't really know. The "auto clean" cycle on my oven makes "everything" inside of the oven turn to ash. I have a pretty good idea that this involves heat and those electron thingies that I pay the electric company for. I couldn't explain to you why or how the oven works other than I set a temp and time and set on and then set the food in there. After the timer beeps, the food is generally warm. It doesn't mean the food is any good to eat. I'm still waiting for a Niven autochef. I just want to press my selection and have my selected meal pop out for me. The closest that I get to that is ordering Pizza or picking up food through a drive through. I give my order verbally, I pay a person, and then I recieve my food. The food might as well be made by enslaved magic elves for all I know.
Where's the list of the world's dumbest cities? I'd like to move to one of them and use my moderate intelligence to take over.
Doesn't work like that. You have to be dumber than everyone else and with a set of your own cohorts. With the right team behind you, you could even aim for global dictator if you want. You might miss and only get to be President of the US, but that's an ok. second place.
For the American system, my experience is much more complicated. At the low levels I was in extremely good public schools through high school--but in a district that was one of the richest in the country at the time. I think we were No.2 for the entire nation on a per/student basis. Just an accident that the entire large area had been zoned residential, and those residential property taxes were being collected, but it was mostly vacant lots. Over the years the houses got built, the students arrived, the per/student money dropped to an average level, and the public schools dropped too. It's not the case that money always makes a difference, but it certainly is a major influence, and many of my important school experiences would not have happened except that my schools had the money at that time. That point is reinforced by my experience at one of the richest public universities, which was an awful school. My other degree was from a smaller private university that I regard as vastly superior to the enormous state school. Money isn't enough to counteract a staunchly conservative educational philosophy dedicated to forcing the students into the smallest possible mental boxes.
Sounds like you were lucky in that your community had planned ahead for future development and subdivision and was supporting the school for the future needs instead of their current needs. You got extra perks that you most likely shouldn't have had if your funding was proper average. My US public school picture is vastly different than yours. I'm from AR the 50th or is it 49th this year state. I went to school "knowing" that statewide that we always scored lowest on standardized tests. I felt odd whenever I recieved the results from the standardized tests that we had to take at 3rd grade, 6th grade, and somewhere between 8-9th grade (I think it was 8th grade min. performance test to make sure you were "educated" enough to go to highschool) and then ACT/SATs and that military appitude test we took. I and my class mates seemed to always rank in the 99th percent in the entire nation and had "at a college reading level." This was way back in 6th grade. We kinda that it must be a joke. We knew that we were the 50th state and had the worst schools and how could we score better than those students in the top ten states? I only took the ACT 2-3 times. Once was in the 8th grade for some reason. I made a 15 on it and figured that I was a total idiot. (I had no idea what an eighth grader should have made on it, but I was told that was really good.) When I actually was taking the ACT for college scholarships I took it twice and made 24 and then 25. I figured 25 was good enough. If I knew then what I know now, I'd have taken that test two dozen times like some of my classmates and have shot for a 29 ro 30. 25 on the ACT got me a tution scholarship as long as I keep up a 3.25 each semester. I got a non grades based housing & books scholarship.
What did I learn about AR education after going to an AR State University? I learned that either I'm either genius or Texarkana, AR public school was near the best in the state in math and science or that as long as your somewhat applied yourself through highschool than you could aquire a "college level" general ed requirements by going through US high school honors program. I'm talking history: world history I & II, American History I & II, even world lit, Cal I, the first month of stat, almost the entire linear algbrea class we covered in high school. Biology and chemistry where only slighty different with a bit more lab required than highschool biology or chemistry. Physics was torture through both hs and college, but I made it through. I made it through a BS in CS degree and other than major field topics most of the general education required course work we had covered in highschool. The big magic difference in college is that you have to learn to BS how each given professor wants their essay questions to sound like. I do mean B.S. since most of it was just the B.S. slant/spin any given pro
... but watching youtube makes you intelligent. Yup, broadband as an intelligence measure beats all those dumb ink blot tests.
Hey, youtube can give you both. I'm sure their are sciency thing hidden in youtube. I've not come across them myself. I've come across more humor or home entertainment aired to all through links to youtube. I tend to think youtube lets more stupid/idiot moments be seen by all. Um, is this a good thing? We will find out in a generation after we actually somewhat adjust to it. How will videos kids or pre-teens or blogs or myspace pages be treated when those kids decide to run for office, get famous, or get rich and what to tidy up their respectable public image? We will find out if google/youtube is still around in 20-30 years with all its current videos still in the archives.
I just can't see biological systems ever achieving the kind of consistency we expect from computers. Do we really want to go to the good old days of running a computation several times and taking the average result as the answer?
Well if you can do that 100 or a 1000 times faster than any other method using that scale, then yes we would. If we could figure out a better way less error prone way of computing at that scale, then we'd do that. Why are we researching DNA based processing? Because it is a "cheap" shortcut for working at that scale. If our other tools get better, we wouldn't bother with DNA processing.
how many Libraries of Congress you can fit into an elephant with this technology.
They haven't found a way of making the elephant large enough to house the library of congress yet. If you want only the data of the library of congress (what file size is that anyway?) just copy it to a flashdrive, DVD disc, or harddrive and feed it to the elephant. I'm not sure which tech would allow you to store your information recoverably inside of an elephant though. I'd go with a flashdrive and a zip lock baggy if I were you.
A familiar pattern should emerge, eventually, as you read through the CONSTITUTION OF THE PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF CHINA. First it talks about the rights of the people and then it gives the state broad authority to take away those rights to pursue some government interest such as "security" or "public order". In some cases taking away that right must be merely "lawful", so as long as they use some standard form or procedure then just about every so called right is subject to the whims of lawmakers, with no real grounds for judicial review.
Actually, it sounds better for them than it would for us. As I understand most Asian cultures, they are heavy on the community "correcting" the behavior of those "odd" ones how every "odd" is defined. Most of it all sounds actually o.k. to me. You are told that you can do something and then given a "bounds" not to cross. Our Bill of Rights is really vague and doesn't have any bounds on the individuals. You hear a big up roar whenever the "state" or "government" tries to make some rules defining those bounds a bit better. Take U.S. flag burning. I don't remember if it was currently legal or illegal. I think last time that I checked, the only time a U.S. flag could be legally "burned" was as at politically meeting as a freedom of speech thing. The concept got patriots mad so they illegalized a whole lot of U.S. flag disposal methods that could be viewed as negative. I think its more of difference on East and West and how we come to view things. I'd actually like to read the Chinese view point on such matters. Note: I don't mean the Chinese-American viewpoint as that isn't the same at all. That Chinese-American or Chinese+other nationality has left their homeland so doesn't agree with how they run things. I'd like to hear from those in China if it is bad as slashdot always makes it out to be? Slashdot makes the US to be near a police state sometimes that's not very truthful either. I guess that I just need a source of information better than tradional US public opinion. Public opinion doesn't mean that it is the "right" opinion or that what they have the opinion about is based on any truth.
For all the bitching about the United States you see on Slashdot, at least our government actually has to try to subvert the Constitution, and we have ways of fighting back. The US Constitution doesn't have an "Oh, and everything we promised you you have, you don't have." escape hatch built in. Technically, we have the exact opposite, whatever our dear Attorney General may think.
That just means that your contitution is inferior to the Chinese one from the government point of view. I'm surprised that they haven't slipped an escape all admendment in there at the end.
There are these things called real life, fresh air, exercise, well-being, and real-world experience. Some people equate the value of life to how much experience one has gained throughout its course. Here, in case you're new to these concepts:
* real life (aka meatspace)
* fresh air
* exercise
* well-being
* experience (no, not experience)
I had that life style choice forced on me growing up. I didn't like it. That's why I've adjusted to a life style that I like. My only problem is that I don't like to control others or their actions, which includes my kids. My wife has no problem telling my kids to go to church or scouts. Her social mindset is being passed on. I tend to think that the example that I'm setting to my kids is that you aren't allowed to do anything fun after school except on the weekend unless you are an adult. Being an adult magically allows you the ability to do what you want once you get home as long as you are "working." I do my chores and then play. O.k. I tell my kids that I had to do alot of things like going to church when I was their age, but its a choice that I don't now. They like church or atleast the church social set more than I ever did. Fun wasn't associated with church or that peer group. Church was just a waste of time for me and trying to force a fear of death or unkown mindset on me. I live perfectly well by minimizing my church contacts as much as possible.
spend nearly all my time outside of work on my PC. Then I got a job in the PC world, and then I quit being on it outside of my normal job.
Then I met a girl, and got married. Since she turned out to be a complete psycho bitch (I should have known...should have known) and now spend all my free time *back* on the PC, and away from her as much as possible.
Hey, I spend most of my after work time either playing video games or sitting infront of the computer. My wife and parents complain that I'm anti-social because I don't get out to go to church, or take the kids to boy scouts and/or girl scouts or attend all the PTA meetings. What's freaking ironic is that I'd be considered "social" by just freaking showing up standing around and not saying anything for 30 min - 1 hour half. How is that social? That I meet five strangers and might have picked up their names? Am I odd that the only humans that I care about or my existing family and friends? I don't want to run out and form a vast social network. Being social is being in a setting with a few others and discussing a few topics. I can do that through many mediums why is it socially accepted to be social to be physical lurker but when you are a non lurker on the on-line world you are seen as anti-social?