I sort of wonder how much of the anti-elitism and anti-pretentiousness is based on anti-intellectualism and how much of it is actually based on attitudes that are increasingly egalitarian, in a reasonable meritish way(anybody can have a good idea), rather than a Marxist way(all ideas are equally good).
And 'Darwin' doesn't have a 'job'. (Natural) Selection does, however, make use of whatever environment it finds. People always site the differing reproductive rates at varying levels of intelligence, but the much more interesting aspect is the effect across many generations, which never get's any attention. If 'stupid people are breeding' more, but surviving in lower numbers over the long term, the observation that they experience greater immediate reproductive success isn't helpful, or even particularly meaningful.
What about all the games that pre-date Monkey Island and even the entire graphical adventure game genre? I'm talking about Pacman, Galaga, etc., games that were nearly entirely based on mechanic, rather than story. Games with a singular mechanic aren't anything new, so I'm not real sure that the 'emergence' of Halo does much to support your point(if just demonstrates that a great deal of people enjoy the FPS mechanic, and that Halo was extremely well executed). Portal is pretty popular, and even though it is pretty much a mechanic game, the basic mechanic is puzzle solving. I would assume that the availability of Mickey Mouse educational games is greater now than it has ever been.
To some extent, adventure games lose their allure, as many of the puzzles are based on 'tricks' that get reused over and over, making the first several adventure games a person encounters fun, but increasing boring after that(because it isn't a particularly good way to tell a story, and the 'solving' aspects become almost entirely redundant). So I'm not sure how surprising it is that they are giving way to games with a better multiplayer mechanisms, where you don't know what to expect from your ever changing opponents.
Did you read the article? What Google and Dell are doing is irritating, but the article goes from 'the program has an obscure, confusing name' directly to 'it is hard to uninstall'. If there is an uninstall entry, it isn't hard to uninstall, and if it uninstalls properly, then it isn't misbehaving.
It's certainly crapware, but I'm not real sure it is malware, and there is some sort of useful difference there(I guess, crapware is software that behaves reasonably and is installed with no consideration towards the end user, and malware is software that is actively hostile to the end user).
See, I have no idea what you mean. Extremism and rationality are not opposites. There really isn't much need to use anything other than cash(other than convenience) when obtaining things(the context seems to be the economy/finance), so I'm not sure what intricate, intrusive system your life depends on, and you never make this clear.
When you say "I just want to know what is going on and act consciously as I move through the world", to what extent do you want to know what is going on? What information that you can't get now do you think you need to satisfy this desire? You are speaking in such sweeping generalities that your statements hardly mean anything at all.
My positions on various controversial political issues are 'information'; do you think you have a right to pry them out of my head? Do you think that all votes should be a matter of public record? And so on.
You are quite the extremist. There isn't any reason you can't demand high levels of transparency from the CIA while simultaneously demanding that your grocer keep your purchases between you, him, and a wide range of marketing partners. What do you gain by being able to examine who bought what at a particular store? Is this even the kind of thing you are talking about?
Yeah, I've seen the cell ratio stuff before. Who is winning that battle though? Is it even a battle?
I don't really mind mosquitoes; I've been bitten enough(hundreds, thousands of times) that I don't scratch the bites anymore, so the irritation goes away quickly(I don't live in an area where I have to worry about them carrying disease).
Plants photosynthesize to store energy, taking in CO2 and releasing oxygen during the process.
Occasionally(not really, actually all the time), they use some of that stored energy, taking in oxygen and releasing CO2 during the process. The carbon dioxide that is involved in photosynthesis doesn't get directly added to the structure of the tree, it is stored and then later used to service the metabolic needs of the plant. The part where it is used releases CO2.
For something like a tree, the CO2 that ends up as actual wood is going to be fixed for quite a while, a couple of hundreds years of the tree's life, and then a while after that, until the tree has rotted. Even then, some fraction would probably remain in the soil.
I sort of hope that the paper is more about a demonstrated increase in biological success that is correlated with the possession of superior technology, and that the important point is the demonstration of the effect(rather than the elucidation). So it isn't so much "hey, obvious idea!" as it is "hey, decent statistical support for obvious idea!", and the canoe designs happen to change slowly enough to make the observation of the effect easier.
I would gladly take the resources of man-kind over the resources of ant-kind in a war(not that I actually want to, ants are mostly either beneficial or benign).
This is leaving aside the semantic question of what constitutes an individual for ants.
There is no doubt that there is a great deal of room to further develop such technologies, but nuclear is far from a panacea. Its still probably better than coal, at least until there isn't any usable nuclear fuel left.
You also seem surprisingly certain that there is only one guy after you nickel. Greed knows no bounds. Not even global energy conspiracies.
Sure. Of course, the Hummer is the degenerate case, and when you do lifecycle comparisons of the Prius and a decent mid-size sedan, the overall energy benefits aren't nearly as huge as the experience at the pump would indicate. It's generally a net win when someone chooses to drive a more economical vehicle, but they need to think of it as a part of reducing their consumption, not pat themselves on the back for saving the world.
As much as anything, I would rather people spent their time talking about how they insulated their house, or decided that the up front costs for a ground-source heat pump were justifiable, even though they weren't sure that they were going to stay in the house for a long time. I know I use more energy heating than I do driving around, but I don't have the capital to do anything about it(latitude means that I need to heat but can get by without AC).
The biggest issue I have is the level of certainty that many people place on the long term consequences. There basically isn't any certainty, but as far as Al Gore is concerned, real estate near any ocean is a sell. I still try to adopt a conservationist outlook on things, and avoid doing things that simply waste energy.
I also have a problem with all the popular attention directed at the difference between a Hummer and Prius when there are uncontrollable underground coal fires in China producing just as much CO2:
Or plastic grocery bags -- if they are disposed of properly, (for most people) they represent much less consumption than the fuel used to drive to the store(burning 1 gallon of gasoline consumes about 8 pounds of hydrocarbons, that's 100's of bags). It doesn't bother me that people are trying to do the right thing, but the seemingly self re-enforcing combination of inanity and volume that comes from a lot of people is really tiresome.
Regarding politicians and education curricula, who exactly do you think is setting them right now?
You would create a world where most people responded to the honor of being elected to office by resigning.
The system we have, which is largely based on good faith between elected officials and their constituents, doesn't always work all that well. You want to place all the blame on the elected officials. If you don't want to blame the constituents, why bother with democracy?
We have a government that is publicly walking a line that is much finer than I am comfortable with. I do not find water-boarding remotely justifiable. I see the high ground as a weapon, and things like water-boarding give up that ground in spades.
The way I see it, if you want to make an ethical claim that torture is not justifiable, then you can't torture, ever. I wonder how much damage just the allegations of the United States torturing people have done, the stories of Gitmo and the stories of torture by proxy have done. Avoiding even the smell of such activities may well have done more to protect innocent civilians than any and all torture that was done in their name.
If you are going to attempt to use torture 'to gain information otherwise unavailable', which is hopefully the only reason anyone would use to justify it(torture for retribution is purely evil), I hope you would agree that you have to judge your actions based on your mistakes(or at least include the mistakes in your judgment), and that those mistakes are nearly unforgivable. And there is my problem -- there have been mistakes.
To claim that the torture of an innocent man was done in the pursuit of justice is nothing less than insanity.
I'm not buying one until I have a TV with a higher resolution than DVD. To be fair this will likely be be fairly soon. How many movies I am watching at that point will also be a factor, if it isn't many and DVDs are still easily available(I expect this to be the case for at least 5 more years), I would probably put off Bluray even longer.
It isn't that I think any of this is special, it is just that I am struck by visions of people buying Grandpa a shiny new player for his old black and white tv.
Why so much confidence in their perceptions? In legal cases, the standard isn't whether a person believed they acted correctly, it is whether they had good reason to act the way they did.
Frankly, I would rather be dead than know that I am alive because I live in a society that actively engages in torture. Freedom and ethics aren't things I want tested on averages, they are things I want tested at the bottom. My freedom extends only as far as freedom extends to others, and the ethics of my government should be judged based on its worst actions, not its common ones.
I thought it was Techies and Trekies have longs necks, and are good at blowing themselves(having long since moved past patting themselves on the back).
Slashdot Mirror
Pacman and Atari were plenty mass market.
I sort of wonder how much of the anti-elitism and anti-pretentiousness is based on anti-intellectualism and how much of it is actually based on attitudes that are increasingly egalitarian, in a reasonable meritish way(anybody can have a good idea), rather than a Marxist way(all ideas are equally good).
And 'Darwin' doesn't have a 'job'. (Natural) Selection does, however, make use of whatever environment it finds. People always site the differing reproductive rates at varying levels of intelligence, but the much more interesting aspect is the effect across many generations, which never get's any attention. If 'stupid people are breeding' more, but surviving in lower numbers over the long term, the observation that they experience greater immediate reproductive success isn't helpful, or even particularly meaningful.
What about all the games that pre-date Monkey Island and even the entire graphical adventure game genre? I'm talking about Pacman, Galaga, etc., games that were nearly entirely based on mechanic, rather than story. Games with a singular mechanic aren't anything new, so I'm not real sure that the 'emergence' of Halo does much to support your point(if just demonstrates that a great deal of people enjoy the FPS mechanic, and that Halo was extremely well executed). Portal is pretty popular, and even though it is pretty much a mechanic game, the basic mechanic is puzzle solving. I would assume that the availability of Mickey Mouse educational games is greater now than it has ever been.
To some extent, adventure games lose their allure, as many of the puzzles are based on 'tricks' that get reused over and over, making the first several adventure games a person encounters fun, but increasing boring after that(because it isn't a particularly good way to tell a story, and the 'solving' aspects become almost entirely redundant). So I'm not sure how surprising it is that they are giving way to games with a better multiplayer mechanisms, where you don't know what to expect from your ever changing opponents.
They don't have a way to burn plutonium.
Did you read the article? What Google and Dell are doing is irritating, but the article goes from 'the program has an obscure, confusing name' directly to 'it is hard to uninstall'. If there is an uninstall entry, it isn't hard to uninstall, and if it uninstalls properly, then it isn't misbehaving.
It's certainly crapware, but I'm not real sure it is malware, and there is some sort of useful difference there(I guess, crapware is software that behaves reasonably and is installed with no consideration towards the end user, and malware is software that is actively hostile to the end user).
See, I have no idea what you mean. Extremism and rationality are not opposites. There really isn't much need to use anything other than cash(other than convenience) when obtaining things(the context seems to be the economy/finance), so I'm not sure what intricate, intrusive system your life depends on, and you never make this clear.
When you say "I just want to know what is going on and act consciously as I move through the world", to what extent do you want to know what is going on? What information that you can't get now do you think you need to satisfy this desire? You are speaking in such sweeping generalities that your statements hardly mean anything at all.
My positions on various controversial political issues are 'information'; do you think you have a right to pry them out of my head? Do you think that all votes should be a matter of public record? And so on.
Sorry about that, I misremembered and didn't check. The FAQ does mention eventually opening the source:
http://www.btinternet.com/~ndesprez/faq.htm
http://www.chaoscope.org/
via:
http://nedbatchelder.com/blog/200705/chaoscope.html
he also mentioned Jenn:
http://nedbatchelder.com/blog/200802/jenn_visualizing_polytopes.html
You are quite the extremist. There isn't any reason you can't demand high levels of transparency from the CIA while simultaneously demanding that your grocer keep your purchases between you, him, and a wide range of marketing partners. What do you gain by being able to examine who bought what at a particular store? Is this even the kind of thing you are talking about?
Yeah, I've seen the cell ratio stuff before. Who is winning that battle though? Is it even a battle?
I don't really mind mosquitoes; I've been bitten enough(hundreds, thousands of times) that I don't scratch the bites anymore, so the irritation goes away quickly(I don't live in an area where I have to worry about them carrying disease).
His entire point was that people don't particularly value privacy and anonymity.
Pointing out that we would probably have them if people did value them is nicely tautological, but it isn't really a counterargument.
It depends a great deal upon what the rules are. I probably would have better expressed what I was thinking had I said battle instead of war.
In terms of long term survival, perhaps the ants and germs do have the advantage. Thinking about it sure is fun though.
Plants photosynthesize to store energy, taking in CO2 and releasing oxygen during the process.
Occasionally(not really, actually all the time), they use some of that stored energy, taking in oxygen and releasing CO2 during the process. The carbon dioxide that is involved in photosynthesis doesn't get directly added to the structure of the tree, it is stored and then later used to service the metabolic needs of the plant. The part where it is used releases CO2.
For something like a tree, the CO2 that ends up as actual wood is going to be fixed for quite a while, a couple of hundreds years of the tree's life, and then a while after that, until the tree has rotted. Even then, some fraction would probably remain in the soil.
I sort of hope that the paper is more about a demonstrated increase in biological success that is correlated with the possession of superior technology, and that the important point is the demonstration of the effect(rather than the elucidation). So it isn't so much "hey, obvious idea!" as it is "hey, decent statistical support for obvious idea!", and the canoe designs happen to change slowly enough to make the observation of the effect easier.
I would gladly take the resources of man-kind over the resources of ant-kind in a war(not that I actually want to, ants are mostly either beneficial or benign).
This is leaving aside the semantic question of what constitutes an individual for ants.
France has embraced nuclear as much as anybody. They have not solved the issues with reprocessing:
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/print/4891
There is no doubt that there is a great deal of room to further develop such technologies, but nuclear is far from a panacea. Its still probably better than coal, at least until there isn't any usable nuclear fuel left.
You also seem surprisingly certain that there is only one guy after you nickel. Greed knows no bounds. Not even global energy conspiracies.
Sure. Of course, the Hummer is the degenerate case, and when you do lifecycle comparisons of the Prius and a decent mid-size sedan, the overall energy benefits aren't nearly as huge as the experience at the pump would indicate. It's generally a net win when someone chooses to drive a more economical vehicle, but they need to think of it as a part of reducing their consumption, not pat themselves on the back for saving the world.
As much as anything, I would rather people spent their time talking about how they insulated their house, or decided that the up front costs for a ground-source heat pump were justifiable, even though they weren't sure that they were going to stay in the house for a long time. I know I use more energy heating than I do driving around, but I don't have the capital to do anything about it(latitude means that I need to heat but can get by without AC).
The biggest issue I have is the level of certainty that many people place on the long term consequences. There basically isn't any certainty, but as far as Al Gore is concerned, real estate near any ocean is a sell. I still try to adopt a conservationist outlook on things, and avoid doing things that simply waste energy.
I also have a problem with all the popular attention directed at the difference between a Hummer and Prius when there are uncontrollable underground coal fires in China producing just as much CO2:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal#Coal_fires
Or plastic grocery bags -- if they are disposed of properly, (for most people) they represent much less consumption than the fuel used to drive to the store(burning 1 gallon of gasoline consumes about 8 pounds of hydrocarbons, that's 100's of bags). It doesn't bother me that people are trying to do the right thing, but the seemingly self re-enforcing combination of inanity and volume that comes from a lot of people is really tiresome.
Regarding politicians and education curricula, who exactly do you think is setting them right now?
You would create a world where most people responded to the honor of being elected to office by resigning.
The system we have, which is largely based on good faith between elected officials and their constituents, doesn't always work all that well. You want to place all the blame on the elected officials. If you don't want to blame the constituents, why bother with democracy?
Hi Grandma!
We have a government that is publicly walking a line that is much finer than I am comfortable with. I do not find water-boarding remotely justifiable. I see the high ground as a weapon, and things like water-boarding give up that ground in spades.
The way I see it, if you want to make an ethical claim that torture is not justifiable, then you can't torture, ever. I wonder how much damage just the allegations of the United States torturing people have done, the stories of Gitmo and the stories of torture by proxy have done. Avoiding even the smell of such activities may well have done more to protect innocent civilians than any and all torture that was done in their name.
If you are going to attempt to use torture 'to gain information otherwise unavailable', which is hopefully the only reason anyone would use to justify it(torture for retribution is purely evil), I hope you would agree that you have to judge your actions based on your mistakes(or at least include the mistakes in your judgment), and that those mistakes are nearly unforgivable. And there is my problem -- there have been mistakes.
To claim that the torture of an innocent man was done in the pursuit of justice is nothing less than insanity.
How much value do you think Comcast will place upon your opinion?
I'm not buying one until I have a TV with a higher resolution than DVD. To be fair this will likely be be fairly soon. How many movies I am watching at that point will also be a factor, if it isn't many and DVDs are still easily available(I expect this to be the case for at least 5 more years), I would probably put off Bluray even longer.
It isn't that I think any of this is special, it is just that I am struck by visions of people buying Grandpa a shiny new player for his old black and white tv.
Ah, but remember, Congress doesn't care about you.
Why so much confidence in their perceptions? In legal cases, the standard isn't whether a person believed they acted correctly, it is whether they had good reason to act the way they did.
Frankly, I would rather be dead than know that I am alive because I live in a society that actively engages in torture. Freedom and ethics aren't things I want tested on averages, they are things I want tested at the bottom. My freedom extends only as far as freedom extends to others, and the ethics of my government should be judged based on its worst actions, not its common ones.
I thought it was Techies and Trekies have longs necks, and are good at blowing themselves(having long since moved past patting themselves on the back).