The reason I wonder is that there seem to be fewer Randroids, "you don't work... you don't eat" people, people who complain and whine that underemployed people complain and whine.
You know what? I paid over $20K in taxes last year. But have been told that because my income was above a certain level, despite paying into a system with a percentage of my income, I've exceeded the cap of what I can expect out of it. So my "unemployment" benefit for the four weeks I couldn't find work was capped at $496 per week. Less than 25% of what I was used to (and am earning again thanks to no government action/support/whatever).
And guess what! I was capped at 30 weeks of this substandard fare. Do the math. Oh yea, I get to pay taxes on it too.
So all us Randroids yelling about don't work, don't eat might have been talking about the unemployment line, but since it's capped in my state at 30 weeks, and you actually have to be employed for a while before you can tap into it again, I think we were talking about the hobos and welfare bums. And people who actually make money when they file their taxes through things like the "Child Tax Credit" and the "Earned Income Credits" and so on...
Technology is advancing so quickly that people would realize that any group that launched such a voyage would be passed by a faster group within a few years.
This is the same justification I use for sleeping in on a work day. If I go early, I'll just sit in traffic longer...
Re:complexity of supercomputers approaching brain
on
Arguing A.I.
·
· Score: 1
However, computers aren't programmed as well as a brain in many areas, so the software people have a long way to catch up.
No, they don't.
All we have to do is figure out the bootstrap for the learning algorithm and feedback loops. The AI supercomputers of tomorrow will teach/program themselves. Just like a brain.
For example: Neighbor Bob buys cable modem service and a wireless home network. Neighbors Carol, Ted and Alice don't buy cable modem service, but they go out and buy antennas compatible with Neighbor Bob's wireless network. Everybody agrees to share Neighbor Bob's connection.
Yea, I have a problem with an ISP trying to stop this sort of behavior. It's a matter of retroactively trying to solve a bad pricing model with more stupid, unenforceable rules.
If one shares one's phone line with the neighbors, one is restricted from use when others are using it. Presumably, someone is going to get sick of the inconvenience and buy their own line.
Same with bandwidth. There is a finite amount. If I share TOO MUCH, my pipe to the internet will suck. Not to mention the poor saps on a metered plan. However, when it comes to Cable service broadband there are interesting differences:
1. The cable tv model doesn't work this way, sharing doesn't hurt MY TELEVISION signal, but does hurt cable company revenue. Sounds unfair and thus illegal. Anyone wonder why cable broadband thinks they can enforce similar rules on their ISP customers?
2. But sharing cable broadband DOES impact the service... with a catch: Whether I share via NAT or the cable company signs up my neighbors direct doesn't matter, it still hurts my bandwidth.
So the instinct is to screw the company and share with your neighbors for a split of the fee. The fallout of which is that the cable company might not install a fatter pipe to your neighborhood (a questionable scenario even if everyone was honest).
The answer of course is to support the ISP/service with the plan you like. I hate big conglomerates and am fortunate enough to have a few choices, some of them pleasant.
The beauty of competition here in the states is that when one ISP sells bandwidth with a cap and a $/B rate beyond that, one can typically switch to another ISP that doesn't. So many options.
What if it could be shown that taking people's guns away wuld prevent deaths? In the U.S. in 1998, there were 30,708 deaths from firearms: Suicide 17,424; Homicide 12,102; Accident 866; Undetermined 316. And no rational person could possibly claim that self-defense uses of firearms saved anywhere near that many lives.
Well, I'm rational and would claim that self-defense probably does save this many or even more lives. There are supposedly 2 million incidents a year in the USA in which a firearm is used in self-defense (John Lott's study, look it up). However, that number seems inflated. It would require 1 in 100 people (not including kids) per year to defend themselfs with a gun. So let's assume it's an order of magnitude off.
Even at 200K incidents per year, we're heavily outweighing the 30K deaths. And seriously, suicides don't count, so it's only 13K deaths, some of which, no doubt, were justifiable homicides caused by innocent civilian killing guilty bad-guy with their gun.
Remember, not all homicides are crimes.
Even not counting the direct conflicts where someone got shot, there are the stand-down conflicts like when my friend pulled his gun and the gang of three muggers hit the dirt. He and his wife went home safely that night.
Finally, we have the preventative impact of firearms. This comes into play when the prospective neer-do-well needs cash and decides to get a job because mugging/robbing is just too dangerous since you never know who has a gun.
As for the post office's irradiation plan. Get a clue. It's not for the five people who died. It's for the millions of people who MIGHT die from mail order viruses if we do nothing.
Now if we could only be assured that the irradiation equipment will really be used on all civilian mail instead of just mail into D.C.
The reason earth asteroid collision defense is not a huge priority is, as far as I can tell, there aren't any viable solutions.
That's a very short-sighted point of view. Sure, if we spent a trillion bucks detecting every NEO and finally found the big one only days before impact, what a waste.
But if we detect a significant NEO that WILL strike the Earth in say, forty years, ending all human life on the planet at that time... do you really think we wouldn't be able to do something about it with that kind of warning?
The point of the detection system is to aid planning. Yes, it might be too late. Hide your head if it will make you feel better. But the greater tragedy would be to wait until we feel we might be able to do something about it, THEN kick in the NEO search only to get hit by one we hadn't had sufficient time to detect.
I would NOT let a 10 year-old play Quake 3 or Half-Life. Just like I wouldn't let the same kid watch a porno movie or a gory horror film.
I don't agree.
People are amazed at the number of poor drivers aged 16 or whatever the lower legal limit is in your locale. This is not a good argument to raise the driving age to 18 or 21 or 25, it's just reflective of the learning curve.
The same goes for violence in video games or movies. When first exposed, children might attempt to emulate said violence when playing with their friends. But after getting punched in the face a few times, they begin to understand the difference between GAME damage and MEAT damage. Thus the learning begins.
Our oldest is 10 and has no trouble discerning reality from fantasy. All our kids play violent RPGs and watch R rated movies, but they're still nice to each other and the neighbor kids. It's called parenting or growing up or something. Some have the advantage of starting earlier than others. Go figure.
Anyhow, I think he speaks horrible advice from a computer science standpoint. "It dosen't matter how bad, buggy, cludgy, and crufty a code base is, never ever rewrite it".
That's not quite it. He's merely against people saying, "ugh, what a pile of crap! Let's start from scratch, shall we? Now, what did this thing do anyway?"
At the new job, they have a legacy accounting system that has grown organically over the last few years. It sucks. It's a heap of Access, SQL and ASP. It has two heads! But I would far rather optimize, patch and improve it vs. rewriting it from scratch. You know why? Because it will take a month to patch or introduce some other feature and test it. But it would take a year to build something from scratch that had every single little undocumented feature that they've all grown to know and love.
So you can rewrite it, just don't try it from scratch if you ever want to finish.
We went the Xbox route this year for the kids. Halo, PGR, Madden 2002, Tony Hawk and Oddworld. Four controllers because all but Oddworld are multiplayer (Oddworld might be...) and we've got lotsa kids: Four including me.
The Nintendo game lineup just didn't look good enough for the xmas morning unveiling. And looking back at our N64 library, there really wasn't anything stellar there that isn't replicated on every other system under a different name. I mean, we've got FPSs, RPGs, sports, street-fighters, and some racing games. Big whoop.
So unless the PS3 is hella-cool, we're set for the next five years. Oh yea, and Civ III for my wife. Maybe she'll finally stop bugging me about the time I spend on my computer.
A good ID card would contain a very small memory chip on it which contained a cryptographically signed message including the person who issued the ID, expiry time, issue time, distinguishing characteristics and possibly a photograph that was directly linked to a read-only id number embedded on every card to prevent the transfer of the information and signature to another card.
You assume that I'm going to use my fake ID to run for president! Guess what? I'm not! I only need it to work long enough to execute my suicide terrorist act without being detected by you first.
So whether I lie to the corrupt official or shoot them in the head and use their still warm thumbprint to activate the ID Generation machine is irrelevant. I still have an ID that's going to be valid for the next 12 hours or more. Plenty of time to board a plane or train or get into some secure building.
So again, how would a more complicated lock thwart a criminal intent on getting through the door at ANY AND ALL COST? Oh wait, an alarm system! No, there's a response time. Armed guards! No, they can be identified and taken out. Complicated, super cool technology! Sorry, if you can use it, so can a well informed or financed hacker. It's all a matter of motivation.
You're assuming that we can *prevent* criminal acts in the absence of telepathy machines and AI overlords. We have neither. We also have a judicial system founded on a quaint idea called due process. And while _that_ gets overlooked more and more every day, it guarantees that dealing with the tragedy in the wake of criminal action is a part of our way of life.
I should be able to build a single machine this fast for about $1,000 in 10 years. Do you think they'll be done by then?
Re:The only thing that helps is taxes
on
Eco-Terrorism
·
· Score: 1
The kicker here is a crappy gas mpg tax already exists - for cars - SUV's are exempt. Adding insult to injury, they are exempt from lux tax as well...
Unless you count the $0.184 federal gas tax and the $0.23 state gas tax (WA) we pay on every gallon of gas at ~14.5 mpg in our Durango. Easily consuming twice the fuel and paying twice the taxes of your typical sub-compact.
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The reason I wonder is that there seem to be fewer Randroids, "you don't work... you don't eat" people, people who complain and whine that underemployed people complain and whine.
You know what? I paid over $20K in taxes last year. But have been told that because my income was above a certain level, despite paying into a system with a percentage of my income, I've exceeded the cap of what I can expect out of it. So my "unemployment" benefit for the four weeks I couldn't find work was capped at $496 per week. Less than 25% of what I was used to (and am earning again thanks to no government action/support/whatever).
And guess what! I was capped at 30 weeks of this substandard fare. Do the math. Oh yea, I get to pay taxes on it too.
So all us Randroids yelling about don't work, don't eat might have been talking about the unemployment line, but since it's capped in my state at 30 weeks, and you actually have to be employed for a while before you can tap into it again, I think we were talking about the hobos and welfare bums. And people who actually make money when they file their taxes through things like the "Child Tax Credit" and the "Earned Income Credits" and so on...
Technology is advancing so quickly that people would realize that any group that launched such a voyage would be passed by a faster group within a few years.
This is the same justification I use for sleeping in on a work day. If I go early, I'll just sit in traffic longer...
Cranial Window Mods. Who's first?
However, computers aren't programmed as well as a brain in many areas, so the software people have a long way to catch up.
No, they don't.
All we have to do is figure out the bootstrap for the learning algorithm and feedback loops. The AI supercomputers of tomorrow will teach/program themselves. Just like a brain.
Yea, I have a problem with an ISP trying to stop this sort of behavior. It's a matter of retroactively trying to solve a bad pricing model with more stupid, unenforceable rules.
If one shares one's phone line with the neighbors, one is restricted from use when others are using it. Presumably, someone is going to get sick of the inconvenience and buy their own line.
Same with bandwidth. There is a finite amount. If I share TOO MUCH, my pipe to the internet will suck. Not to mention the poor saps on a metered plan. However, when it comes to Cable service broadband there are interesting differences:
1. The cable tv model doesn't work this way, sharing doesn't hurt MY TELEVISION signal, but does hurt cable company revenue. Sounds unfair and thus illegal. Anyone wonder why cable broadband thinks they can enforce similar rules on their ISP customers?
2. But sharing cable broadband DOES impact the service... with a catch: Whether I share via NAT or the cable company signs up my neighbors direct doesn't matter, it still hurts my bandwidth.
So the instinct is to screw the company and share with your neighbors for a split of the fee. The fallout of which is that the cable company might not install a fatter pipe to your neighborhood (a questionable scenario even if everyone was honest).
The answer of course is to support the ISP/service with the plan you like. I hate big conglomerates and am fortunate enough to have a few choices, some of them pleasant.
The beauty of competition here in the states is that when one ISP sells bandwidth with a cap and a $/B rate beyond that, one can typically switch to another ISP that doesn't. So many options.
Regardless, we're still throwing mass away to get somewhere. Until we find a way to either:
a. not do this, or
b. replenish that mass, a-la-ram-scoop
we're not going far or fast.
What if it could be shown that taking people's guns away wuld prevent deaths? In the U.S. in 1998, there were 30,708 deaths from firearms: Suicide 17,424; Homicide 12,102; Accident 866; Undetermined 316. And no rational person could possibly claim that self-defense uses of firearms saved anywhere near that many lives.
Well, I'm rational and would claim that self-defense probably does save this many or even more lives. There are supposedly 2 million incidents a year in the USA in which a firearm is used in self-defense (John Lott's study, look it up). However, that number seems inflated. It would require 1 in 100 people (not including kids) per year to defend themselfs with a gun. So let's assume it's an order of magnitude off.
Even at 200K incidents per year, we're heavily outweighing the 30K deaths. And seriously, suicides don't count, so it's only 13K deaths, some of which, no doubt, were justifiable homicides caused by innocent civilian killing guilty bad-guy with their gun.
Remember, not all homicides are crimes.
Even not counting the direct conflicts where someone got shot, there are the stand-down conflicts like when my friend pulled his gun and the gang of three muggers hit the dirt. He and his wife went home safely that night.
Finally, we have the preventative impact of firearms. This comes into play when the prospective neer-do-well needs cash and decides to get a job because mugging/robbing is just too dangerous since you never know who has a gun.
As for the post office's irradiation plan. Get a clue. It's not for the five people who died. It's for the millions of people who MIGHT die from mail order viruses if we do nothing.
Now if we could only be assured that the irradiation equipment will really be used on all civilian mail instead of just mail into D.C.
The reason earth asteroid collision defense is not a huge priority is, as far as I can tell, there aren't any viable solutions.
That's a very short-sighted point of view. Sure, if we spent a trillion bucks detecting every NEO and finally found the big one only days before impact, what a waste.
But if we detect a significant NEO that WILL strike the Earth in say, forty years, ending all human life on the planet at that time... do you really think we wouldn't be able to do something about it with that kind of warning?
The point of the detection system is to aid planning. Yes, it might be too late. Hide your head if it will make you feel better. But the greater tragedy would be to wait until we feel we might be able to do something about it, THEN kick in the NEO search only to get hit by one we hadn't had sufficient time to detect.
What do you call a tool that is owned by nobody, is constructed and maintained by many, and freely availible to all?
Answer: A Language.
No, I don't have a fake e-mail, because what idiot would try to spider e-mails from Slashdot?
Some idiot with the word, "Marketing" in their title for starters...
I would NOT let a 10 year-old play Quake 3 or Half-Life. Just like I wouldn't let the same kid watch a porno movie or a gory horror film.
I don't agree.
People are amazed at the number of poor drivers aged 16 or whatever the lower legal limit is in your locale. This is not a good argument to raise the driving age to 18 or 21 or 25, it's just reflective of the learning curve.
The same goes for violence in video games or movies. When first exposed, children might attempt to emulate said violence when playing with their friends. But after getting punched in the face a few times, they begin to understand the difference between GAME damage and MEAT damage. Thus the learning begins.
Our oldest is 10 and has no trouble discerning reality from fantasy. All our kids play violent RPGs and watch R rated movies, but they're still nice to each other and the neighbor kids. It's called parenting or growing up or something. Some have the advantage of starting earlier than others. Go figure.
Anyhow, I think he speaks horrible advice from a computer science standpoint. "It dosen't matter how bad, buggy, cludgy, and crufty a code base is, never ever rewrite it".
That's not quite it. He's merely against people saying, "ugh, what a pile of crap! Let's start from scratch, shall we? Now, what did this thing do anyway?"
At the new job, they have a legacy accounting system that has grown organically over the last few years. It sucks. It's a heap of Access, SQL and ASP. It has two heads! But I would far rather optimize, patch and improve it vs. rewriting it from scratch. You know why? Because it will take a month to patch or introduce some other feature and test it. But it would take a year to build something from scratch that had every single little undocumented feature that they've all grown to know and love.
So you can rewrite it, just don't try it from scratch if you ever want to finish.
We went the Xbox route this year for the kids. Halo, PGR, Madden 2002, Tony Hawk and Oddworld. Four controllers because all but Oddworld are multiplayer (Oddworld might be...) and we've got lotsa kids: Four including me.
The Nintendo game lineup just didn't look good enough for the xmas morning unveiling. And looking back at our N64 library, there really wasn't anything stellar there that isn't replicated on every other system under a different name. I mean, we've got FPSs, RPGs, sports, street-fighters, and some racing games. Big whoop.
So unless the PS3 is hella-cool, we're set for the next five years. Oh yea, and Civ III for my wife. Maybe she'll finally stop bugging me about the time I spend on my computer.
A good ID card would contain a very small memory chip on it which contained a cryptographically signed message including the person who issued the ID, expiry time, issue time, distinguishing characteristics and possibly a photograph that was directly linked to a read-only id number embedded on every card to prevent the transfer of the information and signature to another card.
You assume that I'm going to use my fake ID to run for president! Guess what? I'm not! I only need it to work long enough to execute my suicide terrorist act without being detected by you first.
So whether I lie to the corrupt official or shoot them in the head and use their still warm thumbprint to activate the ID Generation machine is irrelevant. I still have an ID that's going to be valid for the next 12 hours or more. Plenty of time to board a plane or train or get into some secure building.
So again, how would a more complicated lock thwart a criminal intent on getting through the door at ANY AND ALL COST? Oh wait, an alarm system! No, there's a response time. Armed guards! No, they can be identified and taken out. Complicated, super cool technology! Sorry, if you can use it, so can a well informed or financed hacker. It's all a matter of motivation.
You're assuming that we can *prevent* criminal acts in the absence of telepathy machines and AI overlords. We have neither. We also have a judicial system founded on a quaint idea called due process. And while _that_ gets overlooked more and more every day, it guarantees that dealing with the tragedy in the wake of criminal action is a part of our way of life.
I should be able to build a single machine this fast for about $1,000 in 10 years. Do you think they'll be done by then?
The kicker here is a crappy gas mpg tax already exists - for cars - SUV's are exempt. Adding insult to injury, they are exempt from lux tax as well...
Unless you count the $0.184 federal gas tax and the $0.23 state gas tax (WA) we pay on every gallon of gas at ~14.5 mpg in our Durango. Easily consuming twice the fuel and paying twice the taxes of your typical sub-compact.