the idiotic declaration of war by Britain and France
Don't be silly. Hitler cannot possibly have been "surprised" by the declaration of war given that he was warned war would result from an invasion of Poland. Clearly he knew what the result of invading Poland would be. What the allies didn't know was the secret deal with the Soviets to split Poland in two, with the Russian invading from the East.
What a load of unmitigated nonsense. Plant your flag down on a tyrannical repressive genocidal Middle Eastern maniac and tell us the US is malign. Whine like a baby that the West is in league with the leaders who're repressing the Arab masses, all because of oil of course. Complain like a self-loathing liberal pansy that the US does NOTHING about these dictators, indeed, that it's in league with them. And when they try to do something about it, accuse them of war crimes and call for their prosecution in a way you never would have for someone like Saddam Hussein because, you know, he was a US puppet, wasn't he.
People like you want it both ways. You really get on my tits. All criticism and no solutions.
There are two levels of private here. There's keeping things private from potential employers, friends, family, associates and so on and there's keeping things private from the NSA, GCHQ, Chinese Government and so on. The average guy or girl has absolutely no hope of keeping their online dealings private from the latter. From the former, you don't so much keep them private as be a bit circumspect when making use of the internet, your mobile phone and so on.
So far over the last 10 years I've had 1 credit card attempted theft (tried to transfer £4,000 out of it, bank caught it as "suspect" so it didn't happen) and I've had 2 email accounts hacked and used to send spam. Of the latter, the problem was weak passwords. I now have a "system" for passwords and none are weak, but that doesn't mean the NSA and GCHQ can't still read them. I have no intention of fighting a room full of Mathematics PhDs for my data.
Even if you get the NSA to stop doing this through political action, the Chinese, Russians and so on will still be doing it.
Over the past two years, the solar industry has skyrocketed, with one new solar unit installed every four minutes in the US
Of course it bloody has. Government subsidies it. For gods-sake. This happened in Spain too. Everyone and their mother had a solar farm. The subsidy was so good that it was actually economically sensible to run your solar cells with diesel powered lighting systems during the night.
There is no folly a government will not involve itself in.
The "burning" of the fuel is what generates the outward pressure that prevents a star collapsing under gravity, apparently. When it runs out of fuel to burn that outward pressure no longer exists, so gravitational collapse resumes, this time generating enormous energies and pressures. It "rebounds" and throws off its outer layers at stupendously high energy.
That is at least my layman's understanding of approximately how it works.
Nobody is as cynical about scientists and scientific institutions and their desire to frighten government into giving them money than I am. But there are certain things I think we should be putting more funding into (1) The "Black Swan" of a large impact event (at least sky surveys of potential bolides) and (2) The inevitable evolution of microbes resistant to antibiotics.
In my view, some or all of the money government currently gives to scaremongering institutions trying to "fight climate change" should be handed to researchers in the two areas I have listed. Also, the pervasive use of anti-biotics in cattle and (I was shocked to read this) on fruit should be stopped immediately. It's insane.
Mugabe was forced to play in the end though, wasn't he. The West, Britain particularly, had no stomach for a potentially bloody fight there to get rid of him. In any case Zimbabwe was just a little rehearsal for what's going to happen in South Africa in 20 years time when people are sick of the ANC. I predict (quite confidently) that the exact same thing will happen, except on a much larger scale.
The stable social democracies around the world, at least those that don't have debts over 100% of GDP, are enlightened enough to know that they should get out of the way of business and try and make conditions as conducive to private profit and investment as possible. In those that fail, the temptation to manage private business "in the interests of the people" almost always fails. I would recommend a quick reading of Ludwig Von Mises for a good explanation of why.
The ignorant fools running Venezuela at the moment (including his predecessor and the morons in the West who hold Venezuela up as some kind of worker's paradise, like Britain's Owen Jones) are treading a familiar path that will almost certainly result in the collapse of their economy. But hey, they will finally get what they want: Equality. Everyone will be piss poor.
I wonder how many wars and international disputes have been prevented by one or both sides knowing what the other side is up to? Can you imagine if in 1914 we'd had SIGINT about Austrian and German intentions? Perhaps World War 1 could have been prevented.
Just so I understand, you're furious because your government and its allies are spying on people who are involved in one or more of their vital national interests. Your "fury" and "principles" are naive at best.
It's pretty easy to say it's just a natural oscillation. "hurricane frequency and intensity vary naturally over time". There.
You could make the stronger statement, "hurricane frequency and intensity are strongly influenced by a trace gas in the atmosphere that it is hypothesised strongly influences the Earth's radiative balance", but that would be extremely silly. Please also note that this is almost certainly more related to the PDO than it is to the SUV you almost certainly drive.
I completely agree. Two weeks ago I was looking for a paper and had to pay $35 to read it (actually the company paid, but that's not the point). I felt like I'd been hustled. It definitely does not cost $35 to serve a.PDF on the internet.
What is WRONG with you people? Every country is spying on every other (with some exceptions). It's part of Statecraft. The British are spying on the Americans, who are spying on the Germans, who are spying on the French, who are spying on the British, the Americans and the Germans, etc. etc.
Seriously funny that you people are all so pig ignorant about it and that this is somehow a surprise. Grow up.
We don't disregard it but I think before we do it, we need to come up with a test to determine whether or not it is actually a mind in the sense that it has conscious experiences like we do. That is an extremely hard thing to do. Coming up with an ethical system for how to treat it isn't hard once you've established it is conscious. For example, we don't allow open season on people who are asleep, do we?
Yes. I'm not against reductionism or determinism in the sense that it's the only way of establishing regularities. Without it science wouldn't exist and we'd still be ignorant trolls scratching around in the mud. Although I do read a lot of utter rubbish about artificial intelligence (my college major). For the example you give, I don't believe it would be possible to do with silicon. Whatever physical mechanism (we'll call it "potentially tractable mystery X") is involved in instantiating conscious experience would have to be replicated in the target "machine". I don't believe it's enough to simply simulate it with some system. I'm definitely not a functionalist in that sense.
This reminds me somewhat of Laurence Krauss running around television studios plugging his new book, "A Universe from Nothing". The premise is clearly nonsense, depending on your definition of nothing. Likewise, the idea that conscious experience does not supervene on the physical is also clearly nonsense, but only if your mental model of consciousness only allows the kinds of regularities (like photon energies) that you can measure and write a short-hand for, to exist. I like to think some things, like consciousness, transcend Human understanding. Neural correlates of consciousness probably don't though.
Slashdot Mirror
+1 excellent summary of the situation.
Don't be silly. Hitler cannot possibly have been "surprised" by the declaration of war given that he was warned war would result from an invasion of Poland. Clearly he knew what the result of invading Poland would be. What the allies didn't know was the secret deal with the Soviets to split Poland in two, with the Russian invading from the East.
What a load of unmitigated nonsense. Plant your flag down on a tyrannical repressive genocidal Middle Eastern maniac and tell us the US is malign. Whine like a baby that the West is in league with the leaders who're repressing the Arab masses, all because of oil of course. Complain like a self-loathing liberal pansy that the US does NOTHING about these dictators, indeed, that it's in league with them. And when they try to do something about it, accuse them of war crimes and call for their prosecution in a way you never would have for someone like Saddam Hussein because, you know, he was a US puppet, wasn't he.
People like you want it both ways. You really get on my tits. All criticism and no solutions.
Yes but then again, the more you lie, the more you have to remember. It's better to say nothing than tangle yourself up in all of that.
Here's the thing:
There are two levels of private here. There's keeping things private from potential employers, friends, family, associates and so on and there's keeping things private from the NSA, GCHQ, Chinese Government and so on. The average guy or girl has absolutely no hope of keeping their online dealings private from the latter. From the former, you don't so much keep them private as be a bit circumspect when making use of the internet, your mobile phone and so on.
So far over the last 10 years I've had 1 credit card attempted theft (tried to transfer £4,000 out of it, bank caught it as "suspect" so it didn't happen) and I've had 2 email accounts hacked and used to send spam. Of the latter, the problem was weak passwords. I now have a "system" for passwords and none are weak, but that doesn't mean the NSA and GCHQ can't still read them. I have no intention of fighting a room full of Mathematics PhDs for my data.
Even if you get the NSA to stop doing this through political action, the Chinese, Russians and so on will still be doing it.
Just out of interest, what, precisely, would it lose? As far as I know, the last decent game ID released was Quake I.
Of course it bloody has. Government subsidies it. For gods-sake. This happened in Spain too. Everyone and their mother had a solar farm. The subsidy was so good that it was actually economically sensible to run your solar cells with diesel powered lighting systems during the night.
There is no folly a government will not involve itself in.
The "burning" of the fuel is what generates the outward pressure that prevents a star collapsing under gravity, apparently. When it runs out of fuel to burn that outward pressure no longer exists, so gravitational collapse resumes, this time generating enormous energies and pressures. It "rebounds" and throws off its outer layers at stupendously high energy.
That is at least my layman's understanding of approximately how it works.
Nobody is as cynical about scientists and scientific institutions and their desire to frighten government into giving them money than I am. But there are certain things I think we should be putting more funding into (1) The "Black Swan" of a large impact event (at least sky surveys of potential bolides) and (2) The inevitable evolution of microbes resistant to antibiotics.
In my view, some or all of the money government currently gives to scaremongering institutions trying to "fight climate change" should be handed to researchers in the two areas I have listed. Also, the pervasive use of anti-biotics in cattle and (I was shocked to read this) on fruit should be stopped immediately. It's insane.
Mugabe was forced to play in the end though, wasn't he. The West, Britain particularly, had no stomach for a potentially bloody fight there to get rid of him. In any case Zimbabwe was just a little rehearsal for what's going to happen in South Africa in 20 years time when people are sick of the ANC. I predict (quite confidently) that the exact same thing will happen, except on a much larger scale.
The stable social democracies around the world, at least those that don't have debts over 100% of GDP, are enlightened enough to know that they should get out of the way of business and try and make conditions as conducive to private profit and investment as possible. In those that fail, the temptation to manage private business "in the interests of the people" almost always fails. I would recommend a quick reading of Ludwig Von Mises for a good explanation of why.
The ignorant fools running Venezuela at the moment (including his predecessor and the morons in the West who hold Venezuela up as some kind of worker's paradise, like Britain's Owen Jones) are treading a familiar path that will almost certainly result in the collapse of their economy. But hey, they will finally get what they want: Equality. Everyone will be piss poor.
I wonder how many wars and international disputes have been prevented by one or both sides knowing what the other side is up to? Can you imagine if in 1914 we'd had SIGINT about Austrian and German intentions? Perhaps World War 1 could have been prevented.
Just so I understand, you're furious because your government and its allies are spying on people who are involved in one or more of their vital national interests. Your "fury" and "principles" are naive at best.
Like a lot of revolutionaries, Stalin was willing to sacrifice millions of lives to make his dream happen.
Are you serious? The average American weighs 450lb.
It's pretty easy to say it's just a natural oscillation. "hurricane frequency and intensity vary naturally over time". There.
You could make the stronger statement, "hurricane frequency and intensity are strongly influenced by a trace gas in the atmosphere that it is hypothesised strongly influences the Earth's radiative balance", but that would be extremely silly. Please also note that this is almost certainly more related to the PDO than it is to the SUV you almost certainly drive.
Someone with a brain please mod this guy up ^.
That's nice dear!
Precisely. Every single attribute we have is, one way or another, the product of one or more selection pressures on our genes.
I completely agree. Two weeks ago I was looking for a paper and had to pay $35 to read it (actually the company paid, but that's not the point). I felt like I'd been hustled. It definitely does not cost $35 to serve a .PDF on the internet.
Ah, the "it's not fair" argument. Yawn.
What is WRONG with you people? Every country is spying on every other (with some exceptions). It's part of Statecraft. The British are spying on the Americans, who are spying on the Germans, who are spying on the French, who are spying on the British, the Americans and the Germans, etc. etc.
Seriously funny that you people are all so pig ignorant about it and that this is somehow a surprise. Grow up.
We don't disregard it but I think before we do it, we need to come up with a test to determine whether or not it is actually a mind in the sense that it has conscious experiences like we do. That is an extremely hard thing to do. Coming up with an ethical system for how to treat it isn't hard once you've established it is conscious. For example, we don't allow open season on people who are asleep, do we?
Yes. I'm not against reductionism or determinism in the sense that it's the only way of establishing regularities. Without it science wouldn't exist and we'd still be ignorant trolls scratching around in the mud. Although I do read a lot of utter rubbish about artificial intelligence (my college major). For the example you give, I don't believe it would be possible to do with silicon. Whatever physical mechanism (we'll call it "potentially tractable mystery X") is involved in instantiating conscious experience would have to be replicated in the target "machine". I don't believe it's enough to simply simulate it with some system. I'm definitely not a functionalist in that sense.
This reminds me somewhat of Laurence Krauss running around television studios plugging his new book, "A Universe from Nothing". The premise is clearly nonsense, depending on your definition of nothing. Likewise, the idea that conscious experience does not supervene on the physical is also clearly nonsense, but only if your mental model of consciousness only allows the kinds of regularities (like photon energies) that you can measure and write a short-hand for, to exist. I like to think some things, like consciousness, transcend Human understanding. Neural correlates of consciousness probably don't though.