Hard to say whether we should or shouldn't. But it's worth noting that there are at least two possible important differences between IBM's experiments and Monsanto's:
1) Monsanto's experiments are often self replicating.
This is true of many things in life. It reminds me of a line from a Wendell Berry work which stuck with me, albeit not verbatim. It was something along the lines of, 'Wisdom is knowing what to do in state of ignorance.' His point was the technical knowledge we've accumulated can sometimes blind us to the possible consequences of our overwhelming ignorance in a complex universe, even as the same knowledge gives us ever greater ability to make those consequences worse.
Even if such a thought doesn't stop someone from acting, if it gives them pause long enough to find a way to act more prudently, I think it good.
To what end do you think people criticize? I would suggest there are two reasons:
On the one hand, some offer criticism out of appreciation for a thing. If, for example, I appreciate my country I will criticize its policies when those may lead its harm. Perhaps another may do the same in appreciation for a given distro.
On the other hand, some criticize simply because they enjoy complaining about what others do. These may be detected from the following: first, if they offer any suggestions, it will be suggestions which would undermine rather than improve the thing appreciated; and second, they will be utterly impervious to irony.
Very well. But what if the primary methods of distribution people use to disseminate "speech" rely upon a revenue stream to run? (e.g. print, radio, broadcast television, cable, youtube) Given the infrastructure costs for "speech" in modern media, should all methods of distribution which aren't non-profit be regarded as engaging in commerce rather than speech and regulated accordingly? Is free speech and expression limited to what I can do using my voice in the town square?
It'd all be a matter of circumstances. Some of the first weapons carried by individual U.S. infantry on the battlefield were things like the Thompson SMG. It was marketed as a trench sweeper with an eye towards the kind of fighting that took place in WWI. Honestly, the larger.45 cartridge over such a short range would be more effective for these bastards, but yes, it would expend large amounts of ammunition. Contemporary weapons like the M1918 Browning automatic were used as light machine guns: i.e. they were placed on bipods in a location were the gunner could suppress enemy movement. Such a weapon would be unhelpful to the murderers. So, a full auto really has different practical applications when it's actually part weapons system. I should note, in any case, that the old M16 and M16A1 is no longer in service in the U.S. These were designed for fully auto. Turns out most rounds are wasted even on a battlefield with full auto. The M16A2 and M16A4 have 3-round burst or single shot selectors. Although there are M16 variants in use with full auto, it's largely been abandoned as not terribly helpful for infantry rifle.
Regardless, my point is that these terms "machine gun" and "assault rifle" is thrown around in such a way that it obscures rather than elucidates discussion. I heard a conversation on NPR the other day where the guest had noted that there are restrictions on machine guns, passed back in the 1930's. The host's response was to say, [quoting from memory] 'Surely a modern assault rifle is deadlier than some Tommy Gun made in the 1920's.' The ignorance here is staggering and as much as I like listening to NPR on some subjects, I've come to the conclusion gun issues is not one of those subjects. The use of the term "assault rifle" or "machine gun" in current journalist parlance does not evoke thought, but emotion. It's what Richard Weaver referred to as a "devil term" in The Ethics of Rhetoric. These are terms intended to provoke revulsion in their hearers rather than rational discourse. One of the keys to the devil term is its vagueness and therefore its ability to have an effect on many different imaginations. In his day, he spoke of "un-American" and "Communist" as being devil-terms--and we know to what effect such insinuations were used.
I would suggest that during the Bush years "terrorist" and "unpatriotic" were devil terms. They were not helpful to democratic discourse and I'm glad they're falling out of use. But I would also say that since the 90's the word "assault rifle" is used as a devil term. To understand how foolish the use of this term is, I would point to this assortment of rifle models. They are all the same gun, with slightly varied features. Only one of these guns, however, was counted an "assault rifle" under the former assault weapons ban. If people have a problem with semi-automatic weapons, they ought to say as much. If they think dislike pistol grips, they ought to go after them. But to throw around these words like "assault rifle" or "machine gun" is no way to conduct a public discussion, especially about something as important as how we shall best defend ourselves and our own against murderers.
I do not believe in taking away the right of the citizen for sporting, for hunting and so forth, or for home defense. But I do believe that an AK-47, a machine gun, is not a sporting weapon or needed for defense of a home.
Fully auto AK's, i.e. where the term machine guns actually applies, are inaccessible to most civilians. Special licensing and a great deal of money is required. For this reason fully automatic rifles cannot even be a real consideration but I continually here media sources speak of them as though they were. Much like the term assault rifle (a term which once referred to a fully automatic rifle) the spectre of these things is raised to make the conversation less rational and more motivated by fear.
As for the Reagan quote: the man wasn't a saint much less a pope. Quoting Reagan as an appeal to authority does not work, because anyone may simply say, 'Well, I don't agree with that.' Besides, people really are more interested in remembering the fantasy-Reagan than the real Reagan. If they knew the latter better, they'd idolize him less.
Like mass media generally, videos are uploaded on the internet with the hope of maximizing views. Thus, not only the unusual is encouraged, but also things that provoke an emotional response. Fear is one of the easiest responses to provoke, hence the 24 hour news coverage of events like mass shootings can discourage rational discourse about such things while at the same time increasing the amount they are present in our minds. Even though violent crime generally has been largely on the decline in the U.S. since the early nineties, the average person is made to feel as though there is a recent epidemic of violence. And now a word from our sponsors...
I didn't say it was either unusual or unexpected; I said it was entertaining. Regardless, the criticism you offer applies equally well to TFA as well. That doesn't make how they do it uninteresting.
Let me give an example to illustrate. I once looked up a certain Fortune 500 company on Wikipedia. I'll call it Jonesing for Capital Industries, or JCI for short, to protect its identity. (Full disclosure: I looked at their page quite some time ago, and it looks like much of it has been changed since then--who knows what has transpired since?) Back when I checked JCI's page, most of it clearly read as corporate propaganda, the kind of thing that isn't remotely unusual or unexpected. Frankly, I don't really find the encomia corporations write about themselves all that troubling. They're perfectly transparent and, as you say, what else would you expect? What was unexpected was the section that appeared on the page about controversies JCI had been involved in. Not that I didn't know the corporation had been involved in controversies--most have--but what impressed me was that this wasn't removed wholesale from their Wiki page.
As I looked more carefully, however, I noticed that anytime a claim was made against them an edit would be made by the same anon IP, or another IP from the same town. The edit, if I recall correctly, would come during regular working hours. Most often it wouldn't remove note of the controversy (many of these things are too public) but would change the wording around. Problems with activities the company engaged in became things people said the company did. Simple factual claims in the indicative were made into hearsay. An article cited against the company would be accompanied by another article cited in favor of the company as though both claims were equal. Of course, it's always good to give both sides of the story but that's not quite what was going on here. What was going on is a journalistic tactic/fallacy called false equivalence. It's often employed to great effect by climate change skeptics.
In my view, this is quite interesting because it makes us aware some broader risks with Wikipedia's model. Companies have full-time staff to edit their pages and control their image. But because of Wikipedia's neutrality standards, equivalence, even if it is false, will always be favored over journalistic discrimination. I'm not suggesting that Wikipedia should do otherwise--it isn't a newspaper editorial board after all and those who write for it aren't journalists. What I do suggest, however, is that we pay attention to these seemingly mundane facts, not merely dismissing them as expected, and use them to encourage ourselves to look critically even when we're presented with 'two sides' to a story.
If you have spare time, go to the Wikipedia page of your favorite (however defined) corporation. Click "View history". Find the top five contributors and do a WHOIS on their IPs. Now, compare this to the locations of offices owned by your favorite corporation. It can be rather entertaining.
No. Well, yes I am on/. but no, I do not think "exponentially" means a whole lot. Are you saying the time dilation a ship experiences as it nears the event horizon of black hole will not result in an increase in travel time* that can be described using an exponent? If so, I'm happy to hear your explanation. All I actually said, in response to someone who asked whether it would take exponentially more power and fuel as one traveled nearer a black hole**, was that it would take exponentially more time.*
Neither what I said or the question that was asked can be read such that "exponentially" means "a whole lot". In both cases it was meant to indicate a geometric growth in the need for energy or time* to get past the black hole. If I am mistaken in what I actually said, I have missed something, or you have a proper answer to znanue's question, please enlighten me--always happy to learn something new. If, on the other hand, the comment was merely passive aggressive banter, then please repeat to yourself, "It's just a show."
*Relative to frames of reference further away from a black hole's event horizon, i.e. where the ship started its journey, with apologies to tmosley who quite rightly noted that I neglected to mention this condition explicitly earlier.
Shouldn't be too hard. So long as we can fund about three people, only two of whom actually need to be soldiers. If they can convince one of Apophis' guys to join our side, that should be enough to defeat the lot.
If you have a decent camera and actually know what you're doing with it you can print some outstanding photos to hang on your walls or stand on shelves and such. It makes the house a whole lot warmer and more personal than buying those generic shit pictures at Hobby Lobby and hanging them all around your house.
Helpful hint: I don't think the items you've been buying are for what you think they're for. Those generic shit pictures are just placeholders. To hang up your own warm and personal pictures, you're supposed to take the generic pictures out and use the frames.
Fuel efficient vehicles are also lighter and therefore do less damage. Unless they want to create a perverse incentive for 55 mpg cars, and thus environmental damage they'll have to pay for in other ways, they'd better think this over.
This is exactly how to approach people who think much of themselves and are causing problems thereby. I would add, if you've not yet built the rapport with him necessary to ask him actually to make changes, one step can come before this: ask him for advice on a project. When people give advice, they feel important and good about themselves (see, e.g. everyone who's posting comments here). Sometimes they can associate that good feeling with the one to whom they gave advice. This might open them up for suggestions later on. The important thing is to be patient and play the long game if you want to win.
This would be helpful. Statistics may show that movies are getting longer, but my experience shows also that minute-for-minute they feel longer. At least they do when they're something like Michael Bay movies with their interminably long CGI-gasms (I mention Michael Bay, but most directors seem to be doing action sequences in his style; as much as I like the Hobbit, the best comment I saw about it was [paraphrased] 'I kept waiting for Peter Jackson to put down his X-Box controller and get on with the movie). An intermission would give me just enough time to think seriously about the horrible decision I've made and how hours of my life would be better spent by going home for a beer and a book.
Without the latter, one may as well be trying to control Excel from a Nintendo game pad.
Easy. For example, to do SUM(A:B), at the Excel splash screen enter: Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, A, B, Start. The rest is no less intuitive than Win8 Metro.
Looking at their approach here something occurs to me: the ui is almost self-consciously different from iOS. The layout of Android's ui has many parallels with iOS and partly for this reason Android phone makers are haunted by the ghost of Steve Jobs' lawyers. Of course, many of those elements are perfectly obvious to any ui designer working when smart phones were taking off (e.g. let's put icons in a grid pattern). Looking at this Ubuntu phone ui, especially some of the stranger elements of it, I can't help but wonder whether the design is different for the sake of being different, i.e. different for the sake of being competitive in a world where superficial resemblance can have a product banned from import. Were I a smartphone manufacturer, knowing all Samsung et al. have gone through with Android, an OS which had a very different ui (with, et al., no slide to unlock, a different approach to gestures, and no home button requirement) might be worth careful consideration for those reasons alone.
Incidentally, something like this was tried. And, of course, it was rejected. There were some technical problems with it, but there's a bigger problem with it: most people don't want to trade a seven day week for a ten day week if that entails no increase in the weekend. Most employers, on the other hand, would be fine with this arrangement. Besides, in spite of all the Culte de la Raison business, there's nothing more inherently rational about a ten day week than a seven day week.
I had a brake line go bad on my Ford pickup. Unfortunately, as I discovered when I went the part store, they don't make brake lines as absurdly as they did twenty years ago. I had to buy and hack together two different lines, because one end was sized metric and the other SAE. I normally do not mind SAE at all--the measurements come more naturally because I use them in everyday life (whether that's 3 ounces at a time or in pints!). But it gets a bit absurd when a single car part has different standards.
Slashdot Mirror
Hard to say whether we should or shouldn't. But it's worth noting that there are at least two possible important differences between IBM's experiments and Monsanto's:
1) Monsanto's experiments are often self replicating.
2) IBM isn't trying to sell us MP3 files as food.
But how will the alliterative critters be named then?
This is true of many things in life. It reminds me of a line from a Wendell Berry work which stuck with me, albeit not verbatim. It was something along the lines of, 'Wisdom is knowing what to do in state of ignorance.' His point was the technical knowledge we've accumulated can sometimes blind us to the possible consequences of our overwhelming ignorance in a complex universe, even as the same knowledge gives us ever greater ability to make those consequences worse.
Even if such a thought doesn't stop someone from acting, if it gives them pause long enough to find a way to act more prudently, I think it good.
To what end do you think people criticize? I would suggest there are two reasons:
On the one hand, some offer criticism out of appreciation for a thing. If, for example, I appreciate my country I will criticize its policies when those may lead its harm. Perhaps another may do the same in appreciation for a given distro.
On the other hand, some criticize simply because they enjoy complaining about what others do. These may be detected from the following: first, if they offer any suggestions, it will be suggestions which would undermine rather than improve the thing appreciated; and second, they will be utterly impervious to irony.
Very well. But what if the primary methods of distribution people use to disseminate "speech" rely upon a revenue stream to run? (e.g. print, radio, broadcast television, cable, youtube) Given the infrastructure costs for "speech" in modern media, should all methods of distribution which aren't non-profit be regarded as engaging in commerce rather than speech and regulated accordingly? Is free speech and expression limited to what I can do using my voice in the town square?
It'd all be a matter of circumstances. Some of the first weapons carried by individual U.S. infantry on the battlefield were things like the Thompson SMG. It was marketed as a trench sweeper with an eye towards the kind of fighting that took place in WWI. Honestly, the larger .45 cartridge over such a short range would be more effective for these bastards, but yes, it would expend large amounts of ammunition. Contemporary weapons like the M1918 Browning automatic were used as light machine guns: i.e. they were placed on bipods in a location were the gunner could suppress enemy movement. Such a weapon would be unhelpful to the murderers. So, a full auto really has different practical applications when it's actually part weapons system. I should note, in any case, that the old M16 and M16A1 is no longer in service in the U.S. These were designed for fully auto. Turns out most rounds are wasted even on a battlefield with full auto. The M16A2 and M16A4 have 3-round burst or single shot selectors. Although there are M16 variants in use with full auto, it's largely been abandoned as not terribly helpful for infantry rifle.
Regardless, my point is that these terms "machine gun" and "assault rifle" is thrown around in such a way that it obscures rather than elucidates discussion. I heard a conversation on NPR the other day where the guest had noted that there are restrictions on machine guns, passed back in the 1930's. The host's response was to say, [quoting from memory] 'Surely a modern assault rifle is deadlier than some Tommy Gun made in the 1920's.' The ignorance here is staggering and as much as I like listening to NPR on some subjects, I've come to the conclusion gun issues is not one of those subjects. The use of the term "assault rifle" or "machine gun" in current journalist parlance does not evoke thought, but emotion. It's what Richard Weaver referred to as a "devil term" in The Ethics of Rhetoric. These are terms intended to provoke revulsion in their hearers rather than rational discourse. One of the keys to the devil term is its vagueness and therefore its ability to have an effect on many different imaginations. In his day, he spoke of "un-American" and "Communist" as being devil-terms--and we know to what effect such insinuations were used.
I would suggest that during the Bush years "terrorist" and "unpatriotic" were devil terms. They were not helpful to democratic discourse and I'm glad they're falling out of use. But I would also say that since the 90's the word "assault rifle" is used as a devil term. To understand how foolish the use of this term is, I would point to this assortment of rifle models. They are all the same gun, with slightly varied features. Only one of these guns, however, was counted an "assault rifle" under the former assault weapons ban. If people have a problem with semi-automatic weapons, they ought to say as much. If they think dislike pistol grips, they ought to go after them. But to throw around these words like "assault rifle" or "machine gun" is no way to conduct a public discussion, especially about something as important as how we shall best defend ourselves and our own against murderers.
Fully auto AK's, i.e. where the term machine guns actually applies, are inaccessible to most civilians. Special licensing and a great deal of money is required. For this reason fully automatic rifles cannot even be a real consideration but I continually here media sources speak of them as though they were. Much like the term assault rifle (a term which once referred to a fully automatic rifle) the spectre of these things is raised to make the conversation less rational and more motivated by fear.
As for the Reagan quote: the man wasn't a saint much less a pope. Quoting Reagan as an appeal to authority does not work, because anyone may simply say, 'Well, I don't agree with that.' Besides, people really are more interested in remembering the fantasy-Reagan than the real Reagan. If they knew the latter better, they'd idolize him less.
Until artificial scarcity is created by outlawing the new manufacture of those parts.
Like mass media generally, videos are uploaded on the internet with the hope of maximizing views. Thus, not only the unusual is encouraged, but also things that provoke an emotional response. Fear is one of the easiest responses to provoke, hence the 24 hour news coverage of events like mass shootings can discourage rational discourse about such things while at the same time increasing the amount they are present in our minds. Even though violent crime generally has been largely on the decline in the U.S. since the early nineties, the average person is made to feel as though there is a recent epidemic of violence. And now a word from our sponsors...
I've already sent a message by not having an account.
NP. We all have our pet peeves.
I didn't say it was either unusual or unexpected; I said it was entertaining. Regardless, the criticism you offer applies equally well to TFA as well. That doesn't make how they do it uninteresting.
Let me give an example to illustrate. I once looked up a certain Fortune 500 company on Wikipedia. I'll call it Jonesing for Capital Industries, or JCI for short, to protect its identity. (Full disclosure: I looked at their page quite some time ago, and it looks like much of it has been changed since then--who knows what has transpired since?) Back when I checked JCI's page, most of it clearly read as corporate propaganda, the kind of thing that isn't remotely unusual or unexpected. Frankly, I don't really find the encomia corporations write about themselves all that troubling. They're perfectly transparent and, as you say, what else would you expect? What was unexpected was the section that appeared on the page about controversies JCI had been involved in. Not that I didn't know the corporation had been involved in controversies--most have--but what impressed me was that this wasn't removed wholesale from their Wiki page.
As I looked more carefully, however, I noticed that anytime a claim was made against them an edit would be made by the same anon IP, or another IP from the same town. The edit, if I recall correctly, would come during regular working hours. Most often it wouldn't remove note of the controversy (many of these things are too public) but would change the wording around. Problems with activities the company engaged in became things people said the company did. Simple factual claims in the indicative were made into hearsay. An article cited against the company would be accompanied by another article cited in favor of the company as though both claims were equal. Of course, it's always good to give both sides of the story but that's not quite what was going on here. What was going on is a journalistic tactic/fallacy called false equivalence. It's often employed to great effect by climate change skeptics.
In my view, this is quite interesting because it makes us aware some broader risks with Wikipedia's model. Companies have full-time staff to edit their pages and control their image. But because of Wikipedia's neutrality standards, equivalence, even if it is false, will always be favored over journalistic discrimination. I'm not suggesting that Wikipedia should do otherwise--it isn't a newspaper editorial board after all and those who write for it aren't journalists. What I do suggest, however, is that we pay attention to these seemingly mundane facts, not merely dismissing them as expected, and use them to encourage ourselves to look critically even when we're presented with 'two sides' to a story.
If you have spare time, go to the Wikipedia page of your favorite (however defined) corporation. Click "View history". Find the top five contributors and do a WHOIS on their IPs. Now, compare this to the locations of offices owned by your favorite corporation. It can be rather entertaining.
No. Well, yes I am on /. but no, I do not think "exponentially" means a whole lot. Are you saying the time dilation a ship experiences as it nears the event horizon of black hole will not result in an increase in travel time* that can be described using an exponent? If so, I'm happy to hear your explanation. All I actually said, in response to someone who asked whether it would take exponentially more power and fuel as one traveled nearer a black hole**, was that it would take exponentially more time.*
Neither what I said or the question that was asked can be read such that "exponentially" means "a whole lot". In both cases it was meant to indicate a geometric growth in the need for energy or time* to get past the black hole. If I am mistaken in what I actually said, I have missed something, or you have a proper answer to znanue's question, please enlighten me--always happy to learn something new. If, on the other hand, the comment was merely passive aggressive banter, then please repeat to yourself, "It's just a show."
*Relative to frames of reference further away from a black hole's event horizon, i.e. where the ship started its journey, with apologies to tmosley who quite rightly noted that I neglected to mention this condition explicitly earlier.
**Here is a variable you might have missed.
So, what you're saying is, "you're going to find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view." Einstein was a jedi!
It would take exponentially more time.
Shouldn't be too hard. So long as we can fund about three people, only two of whom actually need to be soldiers. If they can convince one of Apophis' guys to join our side, that should be enough to defeat the lot.
Helpful hint: I don't think the items you've been buying are for what you think they're for. Those generic shit pictures are just placeholders. To hang up your own warm and personal pictures, you're supposed to take the generic pictures out and use the frames.
Fuel efficient vehicles are also lighter and therefore do less damage. Unless they want to create a perverse incentive for 55 mpg cars, and thus environmental damage they'll have to pay for in other ways, they'd better think this over.
This is exactly how to approach people who think much of themselves and are causing problems thereby. I would add, if you've not yet built the rapport with him necessary to ask him actually to make changes, one step can come before this: ask him for advice on a project. When people give advice, they feel important and good about themselves (see, e.g. everyone who's posting comments here). Sometimes they can associate that good feeling with the one to whom they gave advice. This might open them up for suggestions later on. The important thing is to be patient and play the long game if you want to win.
This would be helpful. Statistics may show that movies are getting longer, but my experience shows also that minute-for-minute they feel longer. At least they do when they're something like Michael Bay movies with their interminably long CGI-gasms (I mention Michael Bay, but most directors seem to be doing action sequences in his style; as much as I like the Hobbit, the best comment I saw about it was [paraphrased] 'I kept waiting for Peter Jackson to put down his X-Box controller and get on with the movie). An intermission would give me just enough time to think seriously about the horrible decision I've made and how hours of my life would be better spent by going home for a beer and a book.
Easy. For example, to do SUM(A:B), at the Excel splash screen enter: Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, A, B, Start. The rest is no less intuitive than Win8 Metro.
Looking at their approach here something occurs to me: the ui is almost self-consciously different from iOS. The layout of Android's ui has many parallels with iOS and partly for this reason Android phone makers are haunted by the ghost of Steve Jobs' lawyers. Of course, many of those elements are perfectly obvious to any ui designer working when smart phones were taking off (e.g. let's put icons in a grid pattern). Looking at this Ubuntu phone ui, especially some of the stranger elements of it, I can't help but wonder whether the design is different for the sake of being different, i.e. different for the sake of being competitive in a world where superficial resemblance can have a product banned from import. Were I a smartphone manufacturer, knowing all Samsung et al. have gone through with Android, an OS which had a very different ui (with, et al., no slide to unlock, a different approach to gestures, and no home button requirement) might be worth careful consideration for those reasons alone.
Incidentally, something like this was tried. And, of course, it was rejected. There were some technical problems with it, but there's a bigger problem with it: most people don't want to trade a seven day week for a ten day week if that entails no increase in the weekend. Most employers, on the other hand, would be fine with this arrangement. Besides, in spite of all the Culte de la Raison business, there's nothing more inherently rational about a ten day week than a seven day week.
I had a brake line go bad on my Ford pickup. Unfortunately, as I discovered when I went the part store, they don't make brake lines as absurdly as they did twenty years ago. I had to buy and hack together two different lines, because one end was sized metric and the other SAE. I normally do not mind SAE at all--the measurements come more naturally because I use them in everyday life (whether that's 3 ounces at a time or in pints!). But it gets a bit absurd when a single car part has different standards.