Do you seriously have your head so far up your own ass that you're expecting me bother providing YOU with a page number and a literal citation when you're clearly too lazy to do so much as a single google search?
And on the basis of this extreme laziness on your part, you presume to claim superiority?
You're like a legless man claiming to be the world's fastest athlete because no one has yet beaten you in a race.
Tell you what, clown... do a search on the issue, read an article, and then come back with an opinion as to why I'm wrong.
If you again come back here suggesting that I am under any obligation to provide you with a page number, I'm going to laugh in your stupid face.
You still have to leave a portion of the dash blank apparently for a tach.
He had a big interview about it where he went through all the things the government said were wrong about his car and things he had to change. All of it was irrelevant crap.
A simple google search would have pulled up the information and yet you call me a liar? I take that back... Fuck yourself with a chainsaw sideways instead.
I can't stand willfully ignorant arrogant fuckwits like you that make zero effort to inform yourselves yet presume to pass judgement on anyone.
Who the fuck do you think you are? You're human fucking garbage. Why? Because you presume to judge without making any effort to understand or inform yourself.
In the future, speak when spoken to. People like you have nothing of value to contribute because you're so fucking ignorant that you don't even know how ignorant you are in the first place.
And these net neutrality laws do nothing to change that situation.
Rather then focus on the monopolies, this regulation accepts the monopolies as unavoidable. That is bullshit. Google is laying wire in cities already served by the existing monopolies and doing well by it. What is more, you find various ISPs TRY to lay wire in competing networks on occasion. Centurylink which is a Qwest Communications company tries to compete with Comcast but as you said they're not allowed to lay wire.
THAT is what should have been outlawed. Not this intrusive micromanaging of how the monopolies must operate. The monopolies themselves should have been undermined by making illegal to make it illegal to compete with them. If it is legal to compete with them then this behavior by them would create competitors.
1. The system has run under the assumption of net neutrality to a certain extent, however there has always been prioritized communications. What I'm talking about are mostly QoS issues. If a network gets congested, then I'm going to try and prioritize some communications. Lets say someone has a VoIP call going and you're trying to download emails. Who gets hurt more if I slow someone down? Obviously it makes sense to slow down email and websites before I slow down VoIP or video streaming.
2. You are correct that there have been some abuses, however those are caused by a lack of competition. Verizon etc are not able to play these games in environments where the customer can shift away from them in an instant to get superior service. Increasing the regulations merely makes their monopolies more secure by increasing the regulation that any ISP especially a new ISP must comply with to remain within the law. If I wanted to set up a small ISP for a small community... you're telling me on top of everything else that I have to read all this crap and comply with it. You're not helping anyone with that shit.
3. Your qualifications forget how the patriot act was used, how the civil forfeiture policy was used, and how the RICO act is used. Just because they use it one way doesn't mean they won't use it another later. By your own hair splitting you're showing how things will be in the future. They'll hair split too when that becomes convenient. When they want to do something, they'll find some connection in the law that lets them justify their actions and then do it. We're opening the door for that. You say they won't regulate the internet but you admit they're going to control the gate keeper to the internet. By regulating that they can control you. You don't think your gate keeper can't know everything about you? Every time you request a website or check an email... it goes through them. And you've just put them a bit farther under the thumb of the Federal government.
4. Clearly spelling out the rules today doesn't mean that they won't muddy the rules two minutes later or reinterpret clear rules to mean something else. Consider the US constitution... fairly clear and direct document and yet people are trying to misinterpret it all the time because they're too cowardly or dishonest to challenge it in a constitutional convention.
5. As to china and the EU, so your argument is that we might as well just go hog wild with fucking up the internet? Fine. Light it all on fire I guess. I just too stupid to realize that everything worth saving had already been destroyed I guess.
As to you correcting me... Literally every correction you had there was either a half truth or completely wrong... so... you can jam your corrections up your ass sideways... and twist it.:-)
Actually the current FCC regulations that are to be passed include sections forbidding T Mobile amongst others from streaming music to cell phones.
So they are not just considering the means by which things connect. They are regulating individual services within that.
This first round of regulations is over 300 pages long. That will serve as a foundation of regulation on the telecoms that will just be expanded upon.
To give a comparison from another industry, Musk was recently saying that he had a lot of trouble getting his Tesla cars approved by the US government because amongst other things they wanted a Tachometer on the dashboard even though such a meter isn't relevant for an electric car. Apparently he has to leave a portion of the dash board blank to make room for a tachometer. Apparently he doesn't have to put one in but he does have to leave that spot blank. Why? Regulations. Ever wonder why most cars look the same? Regulation. All the measurements are spelled out in a phone books worth of paper work. And once you've complied with it all there is very little room left for innovation.
It is a common situation. And we've just invited it onto the internet.
A lot of people are gleeful about the FCC stepping in to shut down the nonsense from the likes of Comcast. However, those same people forget that this is the same government has demonstrated an indifference to due process, personal privacy, and basically just does whatever it wants whenever it wants... and if you complain you'll just get stonewalled until you die of old age.
The internet has been largely unregulated and that has been a really good thing. Most of the growth and innovation we've seen has happened there. With the FCC stepping in to regulate it, we should consider what happened to other industries they've regulated.
Look at radio and broadcast TV. Notice the innovation and dynamic response to changing circumstances? Me neither.
The issue is that it always starts out with good intentions. But ultimately they start spelling out what you're allowed to do and not do in extreme detail to such an extent that you can't do anything that they haven't thought of... and that means you can't change because it is literally illegal.
I hope I'm wrong. But this could be the beginning of the end of the internet as we've known it.
What is more... when the FCC starts regulating the hell out of it... we can expect the likes of China and the EU to be right behind the US... the whole network will clap down on itself.
Hopefully some measure of freedom can survive in the deep web but I imagine they'll make that illegal at some point if only because it tends to draw the drug dealers and pedophiles.
Everyone that signs the pandora contract gets pandora rates. And that is pretty much everyone. Those that are worth more are paid more. Those that are worth less are paid less.
It is unacceptable for people to sign a contract and then endlessly complain about the terms. Don't sign then. No one is forcing you to sign or not.
If the money on pandora is chump change then why sign the contract at all? if your music is worth more then that, then sell it somewhere else and you'll get your price.
If no one will pay the price you think your music is worth... then it isn't worth that much. Which I think is at the heart of a lot of this issue.
People work hard to make something and to THEM it means a lot. So they think other people should value it. But that's just them. The various venues that are going to sell your music can't care about that. They have to look at the numbers. And the numbers are often heartbreaking.
It sucks. But their music isn't worth the money they'd like it to be worth. Play more night clubs. Play more concerts. Play more live venues... your competition will be less stiff there and people will appreciate a personal touch.
The issue is that if you evaluate things in that manner then YOU haven't evaluated them scientifically. Rather, you've done it politically on the theory that whomever is in good standing with his peers must also be right. That could well be true however it is not scientifically conclusive.
The ends ARE the means. The cause is the result of the effect. One reaps what one sows.
If your input is political then your output is going to be political.
I am not an accredited scientist. However, I try to evaluate scientific papers scientifically. I go through the reasoning. I evaluate the logic. I ask questions about various things that don't seem to line up. I get further answers that tend to eliminate whatever I thought of as a problem. But I learn and I increasingly understand.
Who knows more about this issue? The fellow that just reflexively says "well if that group of scientists said X then I believe it."... or the fellow like myself that tries to understand himself?
And yet, the internet is full of people that presume to browbeat people like me because I have the audacity to try and understand on my own. While they just reflexively adopt anything they're fed. I find that offensive. I might be wrong in my conclusions but I still understand more of the matter then they a do. All they've done is obendiently accept. I actually try to think about it.
Recently for example I thought "gases expand when warmed, so has the earth's atmosphere expanded over time?"... and my answer there was "the earth's atmosphere has contracted but that is because the lower atmosphere has trapped more heat lower down while the upper atmosphere has cooled."... And that is interesting. And that is something I know because I asked questions and something that most people that just reflexively agree won't ever learn.
The issue is complicated. Yes, there are a lot of people that like to just accept and move on. That's fine. However, such people do not enjoy any superiority over people that want to try and figure it out on their own or understand it. I might not be qualified to make sweeping judgments on the issue but then I never claimed to be able to do that. I claim only to have my own mind. And I'm not going to be happy with the answers unless I can understand them.
I do actually understand the vast majority of science that most people take for granted. I understand chemistry, I understand biology, I understand physics, I understand a lot of things. As well as the expert scientists? Of course not... but well enough that I could explain them in some detail and accuracy if needed. That is all I want to understand from AGW.
And even the experts in the field of climate science admit that their field has problems. It isn't just plucky independent scientists against oil company shills. That's propaganda. The models have been predicting higher temperatures then what we've been experiencing for over a decade.
The facts are that a model is only as good as its ability to accurately predict outcomes. Current models are not doing a very good job. Everyone knows that especially the climate scientists. I don't care who says a thing. I care if it is accurate and if it makes sense. Focusing on the ad hominem is not how science works.
The means are the ends. If you strike this down with politics then politics will be what won... not science.
The encryption drive was caused by the NSA and others not obeying due process when they went after information. They used little legal loopholes or just broke the law outright as it suited them. And of course that being known people are going to take steps to protect themselves.
The damage the NSA has done will take a generation to repair and that would be a generation with the NSA not actively doing damage the entire time. Absent that, we're not going back to the way things were... possibly ever.
And that means the NSA should get used to running into encrypted brick walls. They had all the trust. Companies would openly brag that their security had been vetted by the NSA. Now, no one says that because there is always the fear that the NSA saw a flaw and intentionally kept it secret so they could exploit it or worse they might have even injected a backdoor in themselves.
The trust is gone and they have only themselves to blame.
Way to miss my point. If the system sits there and is useful for the top ten then it wins. If its useful for dead languages that no one really speaks anymore... then its useless. Do you need to translate your words into and out of Mayan?
No?
What was that? I didn't quite understand what you said...
Those were really pretty bad weapons though. Beyond their faulty IFF, the real problem with those is that they're not viable for stopping a large incursion. They're good at stopping some scouts perhaps but not an incursion. What is more, they're not very efficient. Because of their burrowing nature they don't have much range which requires a lot of them to secure an area. Ideally, you'd want something that would be almost analogous to a human defender. That is a robot that can both move and dig in to make use of local cover/camouflage. A viable unit should contain a minimum of three weapons platforms. First, you're going to need a sniper rifle analog. That is an efficient high accuracy long range anti personnel weapon. Next you're going to need some sort of close support anti infantry weapon in case they think they can just rush it. Mortars and machine guns might be fine. Then you're going to need some sort of anti armor weapon in case they think they can push across your lines with armor.
The size of the drone might be around the size of an ATV or a golf cart. They would deploy with a mesh sensor network so they were aware of each other and any threats detected anywhere in their network. They should ideally adopt overlapping fields of fire or spheres of responsibility so that given units can be destroyed, retreat, or malfunction without leaving a gap in the line.
The virtue of a system like this would be its mobility and versatility. You could move your perimeter forward every day with the press of a button and risk no allied human lives doing it.
And if you wanted to use the drones hostily... you'd just overlap the denial zone with wherever the enemy is...
Also, I think the screamers were von neumann machines that self replicated. That is also a bad idea. The correct way to do that is to have "doers" and "makers" and not to have a doer that is also a maker. The difference would be in the event that you had that kind of technology, that you'd have a mobile micro factory that would pump out attack drones but the factory itself would not be an attack drone. The factories and the drones would be in separate command nets with distinct command codes. What is more, while the drones might require a certain amount of intelligence and flexibility, the factories could be very simple from a programming perspective and incapable of complex independent action.
Suffice to say... people have thought about that problem and solutions have been found.
The US needs drones at this point. We can't sign it. And if we don't sign it then no one else is going to sign it.
There is no way that this ban is going to get ratified by congress. Zero chance. Nil. Nada.
Let me just lay out a few reasonable uses of such weapons.
1. An active area denial weapon. Rather then laying mines, you deploy some kill bots with very precise area of engagement information. Anything that enters that zone without squawking an IFF signal gets slagged. Lets say you have a mobile command base in contested territory. You deploy 20 or 100 of these things and tell them dig in and defend a territory roughly a mile or five outside your base. Anything gets that close without squawking an IFF and it gets pasted. This could be used in the air as well as the ground. Deploy some autonomous fighters that engage anything that rises above a certain elevation not squawking an IFF. Instant air superiority so long as your drones can out fight whatever the enemy sends up there.
2. You could use them as anti submarine drones. You seed your own waters with them and give them very specific engagement parameters. Have them attach themselves to any non-allied sub and then have them broadcast an ultimatum. Surface and wait for your military to show up and disarm the warhead... or it will detonate destroying the sub. They would work like leeches... passively waiting... and then when all the parameters line up they activate and speed to the enemy hull... magnetically or chemically bond to the hull... maybe even weld themselves to it. Then they can use an on board speaker to broadcast directly into the enemy sub... something along the lines of "surrender or die".
3. Another fun one is smart grenades. You throw a high speed camera robot with perhaps hundreds of tiny barrels sort of like that IronStorm system only smaller. The unit in mid air detects body heat and fires its payload specifically at warm bodies. Advantage? It doesn't shoot at things that aren't warm. Or if the sensors are good enough it can avoid firing on anything that isn't human or possibly if its really good it can avoid firing at allies. Imagine a grenade that can explode a crowded room full of a mix of enemies and allies... and it only kills the enemies. The unit might even be reloadable.
There are a lot of ideas. The worry about the fully autonomous killing robot is a bit overwrought. We don't need fully autonomous killers. What we need are force multipliers. One person overseeing 20 attack drones makes those drones not fully autonomous. They are updating mission parameters, identifying priorities, and they maintain the ability to kill the operation and recall the drones. They're not fully autonomous when that happens and there's no reason for them to ever become fully autonomous unless there are communication issues. I can't think of any issue on earth where we wouldn't be able to maintain contact with the drones on a fairly regular basis. And absent that they don't need to be fully autonomous.
You're only seeing it from one side which is really a fatal problem.
You have to see it from the other side. Why should Pandora pay out more money for small unknown artists that aren't that popular?
Is pandora making a lot of money? Not from what I've seen. Their stock price is WAAAAY down. So where is this money coming from?
You get a similar discussion when you talk to union people unhappy about factory wages not being great. That ignores that the factory owners are competing with China and they just can't afford to pay you that much unless they either do something that the chinese factories can't or they automated heavily so that means most of the workers lose their jobs anyway, or they work the people like dogs. You can be angry at the factory owners all you like... the money doesn't come from nowhere. They have to compete.
Back on the subject of pandora, they are in a market where music piracy is very common. So those are people that are taking the album and not paying anything for it. Then you have Youtube etc where most artists just put their music up on youtube for nothing and anyone can listen to it or download it off youtube. And then there are a million different streaming services so you can't charge more for your music then the other services or you'll lose customers. And then the ad revenue on the internet is actually not that great unless you're fucking google.
So no... you sign the contract and you get paid what you're owed as per that contract. Bitching about the contract you just signed is the act of a child. If you don't like the contract you're being offered, then don't sign it or keep negotiating until you get a contract you like.
Once the contract is signed... Shut up and sing. You signed the contract. Do your job.
You can see they have a submission form to their system and everything that does independent authorization of every submission. And as you can see they say they say they choose to "buy" content when submitted. That means prices PER artist and PER release are individually negotiable.... I demand a mia culpa.
Riddle me this... if rates are not negociated on a service by service basis between that service and the publisher then why does Pandora pay a different rate then Spotify?
Answer... they are negociated on a service to service basis between service and publisher.
Which means either your publisher signed the contract with those rates on it, or your agent signed them, or you as the artist signed them... or some combination.
And if you signed them then you agreed. If you did not sign them then you didn't give Pandora authorization to play your music and they would be breaking the law.
What is more, not all songs or artists have the same rates in many venues. Sometimes they do but only because publishers decided to sign general contracts for all their licenses with that service. However, if they chose not to do that then you'd either need to pay a different rate or you'd be forbidden to play it at all.
It all boils down to the contracts.
If you don't like the contract then don't sign. People are getting pissing with iTunes, pissy with Amazon, and pissy with Pandora.... then don't sign. If they provide your content sans a contract then it is copyright infringement.
The people that claim that solar radiation isn't the cause of AGW are not saying that it can't be the cause but that when they did the math that answer didn't make sense.
I am in no position to judge one way or the other. I find statements from both sides frequently to be dubious.
I'd say I am an AGW agnostic. I don't believe for or against it. I know what I don't know and I don't know what is going on. Neither side makes a compelling argument and I find the notion that I should just believe one side or the other without a compelling argument to be laughable.
In any case, the issue is complex.
I thought for example I could simplify the whole thing by looking into the expansion of the earth's atmosphere as a whole. Gases expand when they heat. So my logic was that if we had records of the volume of the earth's atmosphere over time that would give a global change in temperature simply by showing a change in total volume.
That would simplify the thousands of temperature stations into a single variable taking everything into consideration.
In any case, apparently my logic was wrong for some reason. I don't fully understand it. According to the records, the earth's atmosphere has been contracting for years and that is something that is expected by AGW climate models. The models say that the heat will get trapped in the lower atmosphere which will cause the upper atmosphere to cool while the lower atmosphere heats. The upper atmosphere has a great volume due to lower gravity so over all the atmosphere is shrinking despite the warming.
The whole issue is annoying. We need a better way of measuring the system in a way that is so simple and direct that there's no chance for controversy. Possibly if we could measure the volume of the lower atmosphere... I don't know if that is possible. But perhaps that would. If the lower atmosphere isn't expanding then I'm just confused again.
On the topic, I am generally in favor of geo engineering options because I think they're a good compromise between the factions. They're cheap, can be effective on a global scale regardless of whether China cooperates, and they should be more then able to counteract whatever warming we're looking at here.
Slashdot Mirror
Do you seriously have your head so far up your own ass that you're expecting me bother providing YOU with a page number and a literal citation when you're clearly too lazy to do so much as a single google search?
And on the basis of this extreme laziness on your part, you presume to claim superiority?
You're like a legless man claiming to be the world's fastest athlete because no one has yet beaten you in a race.
Tell you what, clown... do a search on the issue, read an article, and then come back with an opinion as to why I'm wrong.
If you again come back here suggesting that I am under any obligation to provide you with a page number, I'm going to laugh in your stupid face.
If each one has to be individually subverted, then it is actually a great deal harder to compromise them.
A thousand companies with okay security are harder to breach then one company with great security.
In any case, you're just embracing the 'too big to fail' model which I would think at this point everyone should know is idiotic.
I'm not saying you're an idiot... but the idea you're standing behind is in fact idiotic. No offense.
You still have to leave a portion of the dash blank apparently for a tach.
He had a big interview about it where he went through all the things the government said were wrong about his car and things he had to change. All of it was irrelevant crap.
Kill yourself.
http://www.bidnessetc.com/3522...
A simple google search would have pulled up the information and yet you call me a liar? I take that back... Fuck yourself with a chainsaw sideways instead.
I can't stand willfully ignorant arrogant fuckwits like you that make zero effort to inform yourselves yet presume to pass judgement on anyone.
Who the fuck do you think you are? You're human fucking garbage. Why? Because you presume to judge without making any effort to understand or inform yourself.
In the future, speak when spoken to. People like you have nothing of value to contribute because you're so fucking ignorant that you don't even know how ignorant you are in the first place.
Don't even respond. Just leave.
And these net neutrality laws do nothing to change that situation.
Rather then focus on the monopolies, this regulation accepts the monopolies as unavoidable. That is bullshit. Google is laying wire in cities already served by the existing monopolies and doing well by it. What is more, you find various ISPs TRY to lay wire in competing networks on occasion. Centurylink which is a Qwest Communications company tries to compete with Comcast but as you said they're not allowed to lay wire.
THAT is what should have been outlawed. Not this intrusive micromanaging of how the monopolies must operate. The monopolies themselves should have been undermined by making illegal to make it illegal to compete with them. If it is legal to compete with them then this behavior by them would create competitors.
Indeed, actions like this should go through congress rather then through some unelected government body.
1. The system has run under the assumption of net neutrality to a certain extent, however there has always been prioritized communications. What I'm talking about are mostly QoS issues. If a network gets congested, then I'm going to try and prioritize some communications. Lets say someone has a VoIP call going and you're trying to download emails. Who gets hurt more if I slow someone down? Obviously it makes sense to slow down email and websites before I slow down VoIP or video streaming.
2. You are correct that there have been some abuses, however those are caused by a lack of competition. Verizon etc are not able to play these games in environments where the customer can shift away from them in an instant to get superior service. Increasing the regulations merely makes their monopolies more secure by increasing the regulation that any ISP especially a new ISP must comply with to remain within the law. If I wanted to set up a small ISP for a small community... you're telling me on top of everything else that I have to read all this crap and comply with it. You're not helping anyone with that shit.
3. Your qualifications forget how the patriot act was used, how the civil forfeiture policy was used, and how the RICO act is used. Just because they use it one way doesn't mean they won't use it another later. By your own hair splitting you're showing how things will be in the future. They'll hair split too when that becomes convenient. When they want to do something, they'll find some connection in the law that lets them justify their actions and then do it. We're opening the door for that. You say they won't regulate the internet but you admit they're going to control the gate keeper to the internet. By regulating that they can control you. You don't think your gate keeper can't know everything about you? Every time you request a website or check an email... it goes through them. And you've just put them a bit farther under the thumb of the Federal government.
4. Clearly spelling out the rules today doesn't mean that they won't muddy the rules two minutes later or reinterpret clear rules to mean something else. Consider the US constitution... fairly clear and direct document and yet people are trying to misinterpret it all the time because they're too cowardly or dishonest to challenge it in a constitutional convention.
5. As to china and the EU, so your argument is that we might as well just go hog wild with fucking up the internet? Fine. Light it all on fire I guess. I just too stupid to realize that everything worth saving had already been destroyed I guess.
As to you correcting me... Literally every correction you had there was either a half truth or completely wrong... so... you can jam your corrections up your ass sideways... and twist it. :-)
I'll wait.
Actually the current FCC regulations that are to be passed include sections forbidding T Mobile amongst others from streaming music to cell phones.
So they are not just considering the means by which things connect. They are regulating individual services within that.
This first round of regulations is over 300 pages long. That will serve as a foundation of regulation on the telecoms that will just be expanded upon.
To give a comparison from another industry, Musk was recently saying that he had a lot of trouble getting his Tesla cars approved by the US government because amongst other things they wanted a Tachometer on the dashboard even though such a meter isn't relevant for an electric car. Apparently he has to leave a portion of the dash board blank to make room for a tachometer. Apparently he doesn't have to put one in but he does have to leave that spot blank. Why? Regulations. Ever wonder why most cars look the same? Regulation. All the measurements are spelled out in a phone books worth of paper work. And once you've complied with it all there is very little room left for innovation.
It is a common situation. And we've just invited it onto the internet.
I hope I'm wrong. But I suspect I am right.
if the security of the cell network really falls on the security of a single company then that is unacceptable.
A lot of people are gleeful about the FCC stepping in to shut down the nonsense from the likes of Comcast. However, those same people forget that this is the same government has demonstrated an indifference to due process, personal privacy, and basically just does whatever it wants whenever it wants... and if you complain you'll just get stonewalled until you die of old age.
The internet has been largely unregulated and that has been a really good thing. Most of the growth and innovation we've seen has happened there. With the FCC stepping in to regulate it, we should consider what happened to other industries they've regulated.
Look at radio and broadcast TV. Notice the innovation and dynamic response to changing circumstances? Me neither.
The issue is that it always starts out with good intentions. But ultimately they start spelling out what you're allowed to do and not do in extreme detail to such an extent that you can't do anything that they haven't thought of... and that means you can't change because it is literally illegal.
I hope I'm wrong. But this could be the beginning of the end of the internet as we've known it.
What is more... when the FCC starts regulating the hell out of it... we can expect the likes of China and the EU to be right behind the US... the whole network will clap down on itself.
Hopefully some measure of freedom can survive in the deep web but I imagine they'll make that illegal at some point if only because it tends to draw the drug dealers and pedophiles.
Everyone that signs the pandora contract gets pandora rates. And that is pretty much everyone. Those that are worth more are paid more. Those that are worth less are paid less.
It is unacceptable for people to sign a contract and then endlessly complain about the terms. Don't sign then. No one is forcing you to sign or not.
If the money on pandora is chump change then why sign the contract at all? if your music is worth more then that, then sell it somewhere else and you'll get your price.
If no one will pay the price you think your music is worth... then it isn't worth that much. Which I think is at the heart of a lot of this issue.
People work hard to make something and to THEM it means a lot. So they think other people should value it. But that's just them. The various venues that are going to sell your music can't care about that. They have to look at the numbers. And the numbers are often heartbreaking.
It sucks. But their music isn't worth the money they'd like it to be worth. Play more night clubs. Play more concerts. Play more live venues... your competition will be less stiff there and people will appreciate a personal touch.
... to do the exact same thing.
The issue is that if you evaluate things in that manner then YOU haven't evaluated them scientifically. Rather, you've done it politically on the theory that whomever is in good standing with his peers must also be right. That could well be true however it is not scientifically conclusive.
The ends ARE the means. The cause is the result of the effect. One reaps what one sows.
If your input is political then your output is going to be political.
I am not an accredited scientist. However, I try to evaluate scientific papers scientifically. I go through the reasoning. I evaluate the logic. I ask questions about various things that don't seem to line up. I get further answers that tend to eliminate whatever I thought of as a problem. But I learn and I increasingly understand.
Who knows more about this issue? The fellow that just reflexively says "well if that group of scientists said X then I believe it."... or the fellow like myself that tries to understand himself?
And yet, the internet is full of people that presume to browbeat people like me because I have the audacity to try and understand on my own. While they just reflexively adopt anything they're fed. I find that offensive. I might be wrong in my conclusions but I still understand more of the matter then they a do. All they've done is obendiently accept. I actually try to think about it.
Recently for example I thought "gases expand when warmed, so has the earth's atmosphere expanded over time?"... and my answer there was "the earth's atmosphere has contracted but that is because the lower atmosphere has trapped more heat lower down while the upper atmosphere has cooled."... And that is interesting. And that is something I know because I asked questions and something that most people that just reflexively agree won't ever learn.
The issue is complicated. Yes, there are a lot of people that like to just accept and move on. That's fine. However, such people do not enjoy any superiority over people that want to try and figure it out on their own or understand it. I might not be qualified to make sweeping judgments on the issue but then I never claimed to be able to do that. I claim only to have my own mind. And I'm not going to be happy with the answers unless I can understand them.
I do actually understand the vast majority of science that most people take for granted. I understand chemistry, I understand biology, I understand physics, I understand a lot of things. As well as the expert scientists? Of course not... but well enough that I could explain them in some detail and accuracy if needed. That is all I want to understand from AGW.
And even the experts in the field of climate science admit that their field has problems. It isn't just plucky independent scientists against oil company shills. That's propaganda. The models have been predicting higher temperatures then what we've been experiencing for over a decade.
The facts are that a model is only as good as its ability to accurately predict outcomes. Current models are not doing a very good job. Everyone knows that especially the climate scientists. I don't care who says a thing. I care if it is accurate and if it makes sense. Focusing on the ad hominem is not how science works.
The means are the ends. If you strike this down with politics then politics will be what won... not science.
The encryption drive was caused by the NSA and others not obeying due process when they went after information. They used little legal loopholes or just broke the law outright as it suited them. And of course that being known people are going to take steps to protect themselves.
The damage the NSA has done will take a generation to repair and that would be a generation with the NSA not actively doing damage the entire time. Absent that, we're not going back to the way things were... possibly ever.
And that means the NSA should get used to running into encrypted brick walls. They had all the trust. Companies would openly brag that their security had been vetted by the NSA. Now, no one says that because there is always the fear that the NSA saw a flaw and intentionally kept it secret so they could exploit it or worse they might have even injected a backdoor in themselves.
The trust is gone and they have only themselves to blame.
Yes because with mass market products its all about minority appeal... oh wait, no it isn't.
Way to miss my point. If the system sits there and is useful for the top ten then it wins. If its useful for dead languages that no one really speaks anymore... then its useless. Do you need to translate your words into and out of Mayan?
No?
What was that? I didn't quite understand what you said...
Those were really pretty bad weapons though. Beyond their faulty IFF, the real problem with those is that they're not viable for stopping a large incursion. They're good at stopping some scouts perhaps but not an incursion. What is more, they're not very efficient. Because of their burrowing nature they don't have much range which requires a lot of them to secure an area. Ideally, you'd want something that would be almost analogous to a human defender. That is a robot that can both move and dig in to make use of local cover/camouflage. A viable unit should contain a minimum of three weapons platforms. First, you're going to need a sniper rifle analog. That is an efficient high accuracy long range anti personnel weapon. Next you're going to need some sort of close support anti infantry weapon in case they think they can just rush it. Mortars and machine guns might be fine. Then you're going to need some sort of anti armor weapon in case they think they can push across your lines with armor.
The size of the drone might be around the size of an ATV or a golf cart. They would deploy with a mesh sensor network so they were aware of each other and any threats detected anywhere in their network. They should ideally adopt overlapping fields of fire or spheres of responsibility so that given units can be destroyed, retreat, or malfunction without leaving a gap in the line.
The virtue of a system like this would be its mobility and versatility. You could move your perimeter forward every day with the press of a button and risk no allied human lives doing it.
And if you wanted to use the drones hostily... you'd just overlap the denial zone with wherever the enemy is...
Also, I think the screamers were von neumann machines that self replicated. That is also a bad idea. The correct way to do that is to have "doers" and "makers" and not to have a doer that is also a maker. The difference would be in the event that you had that kind of technology, that you'd have a mobile micro factory that would pump out attack drones but the factory itself would not be an attack drone. The factories and the drones would be in separate command nets with distinct command codes. What is more, while the drones might require a certain amount of intelligence and flexibility, the factories could be very simple from a programming perspective and incapable of complex independent action.
Suffice to say... people have thought about that problem and solutions have been found.
The US needs drones at this point. We can't sign it. And if we don't sign it then no one else is going to sign it.
There is no way that this ban is going to get ratified by congress. Zero chance. Nil. Nada.
Let me just lay out a few reasonable uses of such weapons.
1. An active area denial weapon. Rather then laying mines, you deploy some kill bots with very precise area of engagement information. Anything that enters that zone without squawking an IFF signal gets slagged. Lets say you have a mobile command base in contested territory. You deploy 20 or 100 of these things and tell them dig in and defend a territory roughly a mile or five outside your base. Anything gets that close without squawking an IFF and it gets pasted. This could be used in the air as well as the ground. Deploy some autonomous fighters that engage anything that rises above a certain elevation not squawking an IFF. Instant air superiority so long as your drones can out fight whatever the enemy sends up there.
2. You could use them as anti submarine drones. You seed your own waters with them and give them very specific engagement parameters. Have them attach themselves to any non-allied sub and then have them broadcast an ultimatum. Surface and wait for your military to show up and disarm the warhead... or it will detonate destroying the sub. They would work like leeches... passively waiting... and then when all the parameters line up they activate and speed to the enemy hull... magnetically or chemically bond to the hull... maybe even weld themselves to it. Then they can use an on board speaker to broadcast directly into the enemy sub... something along the lines of "surrender or die".
3. Another fun one is smart grenades. You throw a high speed camera robot with perhaps hundreds of tiny barrels sort of like that IronStorm system only smaller. The unit in mid air detects body heat and fires its payload specifically at warm bodies. Advantage? It doesn't shoot at things that aren't warm. Or if the sensors are good enough it can avoid firing on anything that isn't human or possibly if its really good it can avoid firing at allies. Imagine a grenade that can explode a crowded room full of a mix of enemies and allies... and it only kills the enemies. The unit might even be reloadable.
There are a lot of ideas. The worry about the fully autonomous killing robot is a bit overwrought. We don't need fully autonomous killers. What we need are force multipliers. One person overseeing 20 attack drones makes those drones not fully autonomous. They are updating mission parameters, identifying priorities, and they maintain the ability to kill the operation and recall the drones. They're not fully autonomous when that happens and there's no reason for them to ever become fully autonomous unless there are communication issues. I can't think of any issue on earth where we wouldn't be able to maintain contact with the drones on a fairly regular basis. And absent that they don't need to be fully autonomous.
You're only seeing it from one side which is really a fatal problem.
You have to see it from the other side. Why should Pandora pay out more money for small unknown artists that aren't that popular?
Is pandora making a lot of money? Not from what I've seen. Their stock price is WAAAAY down. So where is this money coming from?
You get a similar discussion when you talk to union people unhappy about factory wages not being great. That ignores that the factory owners are competing with China and they just can't afford to pay you that much unless they either do something that the chinese factories can't or they automated heavily so that means most of the workers lose their jobs anyway, or they work the people like dogs. You can be angry at the factory owners all you like... the money doesn't come from nowhere. They have to compete.
Back on the subject of pandora, they are in a market where music piracy is very common. So those are people that are taking the album and not paying anything for it. Then you have Youtube etc where most artists just put their music up on youtube for nothing and anyone can listen to it or download it off youtube. And then there are a million different streaming services so you can't charge more for your music then the other services or you'll lose customers. And then the ad revenue on the internet is actually not that great unless you're fucking google.
So no... you sign the contract and you get paid what you're owed as per that contract. Bitching about the contract you just signed is the act of a child. If you don't like the contract you're being offered, then don't sign it or keep negotiating until you get a contract you like.
Once the contract is signed... Shut up and sing. You signed the contract. Do your job.
END OF STORY. END OF ARGUMENT. END OF ISSUE.
Over. Done. Finished.
Translating the top 10 most common languages between each other is the most useful. Anything beyond that is window dressing.
http://help.pandora.com/custom...
You can see they have a submission form to their system and everything that does independent authorization of every submission. And as you can see they say they say they choose to "buy" content when submitted. That means prices PER artist and PER release are individually negotiable. ... I demand a mia culpa.
Riddle me this... if rates are not negociated on a service by service basis between that service and the publisher then why does Pandora pay a different rate then Spotify?
Answer... they are negociated on a service to service basis between service and publisher.
Which means either your publisher signed the contract with those rates on it, or your agent signed them, or you as the artist signed them... or some combination.
And if you signed them then you agreed. If you did not sign them then you didn't give Pandora authorization to play your music and they would be breaking the law.
What is more, not all songs or artists have the same rates in many venues. Sometimes they do but only because publishers decided to sign general contracts for all their licenses with that service. However, if they chose not to do that then you'd either need to pay a different rate or you'd be forbidden to play it at all.
It all boils down to the contracts.
If you don't like the contract then don't sign. People are getting pissing with iTunes, pissy with Amazon, and pissy with Pandora.... then don't sign. If they provide your content sans a contract then it is copyright infringement.
No nerd rage at all. Business rage. Economic rage. Possibly contract law rage.
But no nerd rage.
I've seen some of his presentations. They're a bit more high brow then anything Bill Nye ever put together.
The people that claim that solar radiation isn't the cause of AGW are not saying that it can't be the cause but that when they did the math that answer didn't make sense.
I am in no position to judge one way or the other. I find statements from both sides frequently to be dubious.
I'd say I am an AGW agnostic. I don't believe for or against it. I know what I don't know and I don't know what is going on. Neither side makes a compelling argument and I find the notion that I should just believe one side or the other without a compelling argument to be laughable.
In any case, the issue is complex.
I thought for example I could simplify the whole thing by looking into the expansion of the earth's atmosphere as a whole. Gases expand when they heat. So my logic was that if we had records of the volume of the earth's atmosphere over time that would give a global change in temperature simply by showing a change in total volume.
That would simplify the thousands of temperature stations into a single variable taking everything into consideration.
In any case, apparently my logic was wrong for some reason. I don't fully understand it. According to the records, the earth's atmosphere has been contracting for years and that is something that is expected by AGW climate models. The models say that the heat will get trapped in the lower atmosphere which will cause the upper atmosphere to cool while the lower atmosphere heats. The upper atmosphere has a great volume due to lower gravity so over all the atmosphere is shrinking despite the warming.
The whole issue is annoying. We need a better way of measuring the system in a way that is so simple and direct that there's no chance for controversy. Possibly if we could measure the volume of the lower atmosphere... I don't know if that is possible. But perhaps that would. If the lower atmosphere isn't expanding then I'm just confused again.
On the topic, I am generally in favor of geo engineering options because I think they're a good compromise between the factions. They're cheap, can be effective on a global scale regardless of whether China cooperates, and they should be more then able to counteract whatever warming we're looking at here.