Actually no, because in the case of those insolvable problems the real problem is the parameters of the problem which itself needs to be adjusted.
Now obviously if you're going to be an aspy asshat there are problems that cannot be solved. if you're in a cardboard box on the surface of the sun... you're probably dead... there isn't anything I can do for you.
That said, to the extent we can save species, bringing them into our lives and homes and businesses... incorporating them into the human ecosystem... it will give them a powerful chance at lasting survival.
The species that are endangered are either sensitive or needy. Those are species we could help directly. The species that aren't endangered are generally pretty hearty and adaptable. Those can live on nature preserves without having to be mothered. The fragile ones... we either help them or accept their extinction.
Let people do it... outright encourage the practice and see what happens. You'll get a larger breeding population of exotic pets.
Large animals will be kept in rural areas where they can afford to give such an animal that much space.
The smaller animals might just find their way into homes. Doubtless they'll have issues. But it isn't only the animals that need to be trained. You also have to train the owners to take care of the animals. Some animals like cats are very easy to take care of... give them food and leave them alone. Their natural instinct to bury their waste tends to auto potty train them so its an easy thing. Other species will have to accommodated differently.
What these species need is a lot of resources to replace what they've lost. They need a habitat and their old one is GONE.
So they need to find other accommodations or die.
Choose.
Adapt or die.
I offer an adaptation. Choose it... choose another... or they die.
Actually they're only hybrids in the sense that most bison have some cattle in their lineage... which is something made so common because they're effectively just different breeds of the same species. If you can interbreed with another creature and produce fertile offspring then you're basically the same species already.
The real thing you want to preserve in bison are their unique phenotypes. Hybrids are typically only detected via a dna analysis that looks as mitochondrial dna... which is something we do with humans when we want to trace races or find associations between various people. That is one of the ways we know humans originated in Africa.
Point being, the Bison is actually quite safe.
Its very difficult to qualify a conservation strategy if you don't find that acceptable. They cannot have their open ranges back. That is gone. So how do they survive in the human era? This is as good as it gets.
For other endangered species, this is also their best option. Adopting other strategies will not work, will waste time, will waste money... will do nothing to help.
Precisely. A book that theorized on the issue was the Phillip K Dick book "do androids dream of electronic sheep" in which most species were maintained by human beings as a kind of social obligation. It was a mark of social status to own and care for an animal. And through that they maintained many animals that otherwise would have gone extinct.
As to domestication changing the species, yes but the species would survive. Furthermore, if you were so interested in maintaining a legacy strain you could literally select for known original phenotypes thus maintaining the species more exactly as it was found then nature would itself.
No problem is insolvable.
As to the jenga tower, there are SOME species that act in that way however most do not.
For example, is the ferry shrimp found in muddy ditches in California essential to the california ecosystem? Obviously not. They could all go extinct tomorrow without so much as a ripple in our ecosystem.
Species go extinct all the time and always have and frequently there are little if any ecological consequence because there is enormous redundancy in our ecosystem.
There are exceptions but those exceptions are the exception.
An example of just such a species would be the American wolf which did serve a vital role in maintaining the populations of native herd animals.
The result of removing the wolf is that these herds do not maintain their scale naturally anymore.
The fix was to allow hunting permits thus human hunters replace the wolf's role in the ecosystem. Sadly, those hunters have a different sensibility then the wolves. The wolves selected the small, the weak, the sick... and thus helped to keep the herds stronger by selecting effectively for the large, the strong, and the healthy.
Human hunters tend to target animals that look impressive. Thus striking down many times the large, the strong, and the healthy contrary to what the wolves struck down. That is an issue and we should look into that. But it isn't insolvable.
Ethanol has a lower energy density then conventional gasoline. That's a scientific fact.
Thus direct miles per gallon calculations with entirely different fuels are not reasonable. You first must adjust for the energy density of each fuel and then do a comparison on that basis.
In my own calculations, I've found ethanol to be more expensive then regular gasoline AFTER accounting for the lower energy density. For this reason, I try to avoid it since it is not economical.
We've already done it to great success with the buffalo. They are commercially bred, butchered, and sold around the US. We have a few herds around the country that are each individually able to sustain the species indefinitely.
The cow, the chicken, the pig... these animals have no natural habitat anymore really... yet are in no danger of dying of. Neither for that matter is the domesticated dog or the house cat or the gold fish.
All small endangered animals can be bred as pets or food. By all means, protect their habitat in the wild but that is no guarantee that they will survive as a species. Maintain them as pets or food in our society though and they'll live as long as we continue to do that.
As for large animals... encourage farmers to take care of a couple. Seriously, a cattle rancher could take in a few rhinos. Have a special pen for them. Make the whole thing tax deductible until there's some way to recoup the cost. These people breed BILLIONS of animals in captivity. We could do the same with rhinos, elephants, etc.
Right now one of the things hurting these species is that its very hard to legally own them.
An animal that belongs to no one will not be protected. We've seen this in Africa where the wild animals are prey for poachers. However, if you give the animals to the local villages and make the animal's survival the villager's responsibility they suddenly stop getting eaten or killed for their ivory.
This is the solution.
Anything else will likely harm these species more, waste time, waste money, and accomplish very little.
I recently shelled out a 1200 dollars for a custom gaming laptop.
I've got a GPU so fast that I've yet to find any game that I can't run at max settings with frames under 100. I has a solid state mSata system drive and big regular harddrive for storage.
its a beautiful laptop... I even had them put a crocodile skin on it for a hundred bucks. Plastic obviously... its not real croc skin. But its COOL. And I love it.
Its all about what you're selling. For me anyway... I suppose to many it matters HOW something is sold and all sorts of other intangibles. The cult of Apple I think embodies much of that business model in that its very hard to justify the brand on anything empirical.
In any case... HP machines don't strike me as being "nice"... I don't see an HP machine feel envy for it. I look down my nose at them usually. They're usually shitty.
My main issue with bundling is that one of the two always breaks and that means the other is broken as well now. Where as if you keep them separate then they can be replaced separately.
Why would I buy HP stuff in the enterprise space when there are dozen companies that do it better, offer better support, and generally give their customers less grief?
What does HP actually do well anymore?
You say their laser printers are good? Are they great though? Because honestly, there is a lot of competition there and I'd avoid HP on principle at this point.
HP is screwed up. Who actually likes their products anymore that has a clue? Even their printers are nothing special anymore. That company has no market. The only time I see HP stuff as at big box stores where they're competing for the least informed computer purchases.
Does the smart money buy HP? When was the last time it did?... Exactly. HP is a dying company.
Current management needs to get the axe and the company needs to be restructured there after.
I can build a PC from components that can be purchased. If I could the same with a tablet then microsoft might be able to get somewhere with recreating the PC.
Let me buy a tablet motherboard, a tablet CPU, a tablet memory chip, a tablet enclosure... and then push a tablet OS onto it... and yeah... the tablet might become very much like the PC.
But if I can't buy the components to build one then it never will be the PC.
I didn't say we don't have a problem. I didn't say we don't need to improve. I didn't say we the statistics are wrong.
What I did say is that its more complicated and that the problems are not systemic but localized in specific areas where there is a very bad problem. My point was that some parts of the US need to be given a crash course in how to add 2+2.
My point has always been that statistical analysis is impossible if you don't understand how to read statistics.
The people analyzing these statistics yourself included sadly do not understand the numbers or what they mean. This leads you to make erroneous conclusions again and again and again because you've over simplified the information.
You cannot do that and retain accuracy.
You must retain the complexity. The complexity is data. If you throw the complexity out you throw the data out.
And furthermore, you're missing the significance of the statement.
We are not one people. You might as well look at the math standards for the whole northern hemisphere.
The United States is a polyglot society. If you can't grasp that then you have no business doing a statistical analysis of the united states.
The point is that parts of the US are doing just fine. Parts of the US are doing terribly.
If you want to improve the situation, focus your efforts on the portions that are doing badly and leave the rest of the country alone... you're as likely to retard those areas as help them.
Savvy?
Stop trying to generalize. Focus on the areas with an issue... do not waste resources on areas that are performing to standard or above.
But that exact same segment of the population is only semi literate, has a grasp of history supplied almost entirely by cartoons on television, and quite a few them don't actually speak english.
So yeah... statistics are fun. But if you're going to be fair, please limit the population you're talking about to a segment that is both fluent in the standard language and ideally not from a subculture that is actively hostile to education in the first place.
In my school, we learned calculus in high school... this is a US public high school. So it really has a lot to do with what part of the country you're talking about and who in that part of the country you are addressing. From my segment?... we have nothing to prove.
Wow, the lack of reading comprehension on the internet.
I just pointed out that YOU made that argument. I was myself not saying that an extreme was inevitable.
About a dozen times in this discussion when I've said we should have looser regulations, people have accused me of advocating anarchy. That is a fallacy. I have done no such thing.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually no, because in the case of those insolvable problems the real problem is the parameters of the problem which itself needs to be adjusted.
Now obviously if you're going to be an aspy asshat there are problems that cannot be solved. if you're in a cardboard box on the surface of the sun... you're probably dead... there isn't anything I can do for you.
That said, to the extent we can save species, bringing them into our lives and homes and businesses... incorporating them into the human ecosystem... it will give them a powerful chance at lasting survival.
The species that are endangered are either sensitive or needy. Those are species we could help directly. The species that aren't endangered are generally pretty hearty and adaptable. Those can live on nature preserves without having to be mothered. The fragile ones... we either help them or accept their extinction.
Pick one.
Let people do it... outright encourage the practice and see what happens. You'll get a larger breeding population of exotic pets.
Large animals will be kept in rural areas where they can afford to give such an animal that much space.
The smaller animals might just find their way into homes. Doubtless they'll have issues. But it isn't only the animals that need to be trained. You also have to train the owners to take care of the animals. Some animals like cats are very easy to take care of... give them food and leave them alone. Their natural instinct to bury their waste tends to auto potty train them so its an easy thing. Other species will have to accommodated differently.
What these species need is a lot of resources to replace what they've lost. They need a habitat and their old one is GONE.
So they need to find other accommodations or die.
Choose.
Adapt or die.
I offer an adaptation. Choose it... choose another... or they die.
Actually they're only hybrids in the sense that most bison have some cattle in their lineage... which is something made so common because they're effectively just different breeds of the same species. If you can interbreed with another creature and produce fertile offspring then you're basically the same species already.
The real thing you want to preserve in bison are their unique phenotypes. Hybrids are typically only detected via a dna analysis that looks as mitochondrial dna... which is something we do with humans when we want to trace races or find associations between various people. That is one of the ways we know humans originated in Africa.
Point being, the Bison is actually quite safe.
Its very difficult to qualify a conservation strategy if you don't find that acceptable. They cannot have their open ranges back. That is gone. So how do they survive in the human era? This is as good as it gets.
For other endangered species, this is also their best option. Adopting other strategies will not work, will waste time, will waste money... will do nothing to help.
Precisely. A book that theorized on the issue was the Phillip K Dick book "do androids dream of electronic sheep" in which most species were maintained by human beings as a kind of social obligation. It was a mark of social status to own and care for an animal. And through that they maintained many animals that otherwise would have gone extinct.
As to domestication changing the species, yes but the species would survive. Furthermore, if you were so interested in maintaining a legacy strain you could literally select for known original phenotypes thus maintaining the species more exactly as it was found then nature would itself.
No problem is insolvable.
As to the jenga tower, there are SOME species that act in that way however most do not.
For example, is the ferry shrimp found in muddy ditches in California essential to the california ecosystem? Obviously not. They could all go extinct tomorrow without so much as a ripple in our ecosystem.
Species go extinct all the time and always have and frequently there are little if any ecological consequence because there is enormous redundancy in our ecosystem.
There are exceptions but those exceptions are the exception.
An example of just such a species would be the American wolf which did serve a vital role in maintaining the populations of native herd animals.
The result of removing the wolf is that these herds do not maintain their scale naturally anymore.
The fix was to allow hunting permits thus human hunters replace the wolf's role in the ecosystem. Sadly, those hunters have a different sensibility then the wolves. The wolves selected the small, the weak, the sick... and thus helped to keep the herds stronger by selecting effectively for the large, the strong, and the healthy.
Human hunters tend to target animals that look impressive. Thus striking down many times the large, the strong, and the healthy contrary to what the wolves struck down. That is an issue and we should look into that. But it isn't insolvable.
Ethanol has a lower energy density then conventional gasoline. That's a scientific fact.
Thus direct miles per gallon calculations with entirely different fuels are not reasonable. You first must adjust for the energy density of each fuel and then do a comparison on that basis.
In my own calculations, I've found ethanol to be more expensive then regular gasoline AFTER accounting for the lower energy density. For this reason, I try to avoid it since it is not economical.
We've already done it to great success with the buffalo. They are commercially bred, butchered, and sold around the US. We have a few herds around the country that are each individually able to sustain the species indefinitely.
Not in the wild but cultivated.
The cow, the chicken, the pig... these animals have no natural habitat anymore really... yet are in no danger of dying of. Neither for that matter is the domesticated dog or the house cat or the gold fish.
All small endangered animals can be bred as pets or food. By all means, protect their habitat in the wild but that is no guarantee that they will survive as a species. Maintain them as pets or food in our society though and they'll live as long as we continue to do that.
As for large animals... encourage farmers to take care of a couple. Seriously, a cattle rancher could take in a few rhinos. Have a special pen for them. Make the whole thing tax deductible until there's some way to recoup the cost. These people breed BILLIONS of animals in captivity. We could do the same with rhinos, elephants, etc.
Right now one of the things hurting these species is that its very hard to legally own them.
An animal that belongs to no one will not be protected. We've seen this in Africa where the wild animals are prey for poachers. However, if you give the animals to the local villages and make the animal's survival the villager's responsibility they suddenly stop getting eaten or killed for their ivory.
This is the solution.
Anything else will likely harm these species more, waste time, waste money, and accomplish very little.
Depends entirely on what is under the hood.
I recently shelled out a 1200 dollars for a custom gaming laptop.
I've got a GPU so fast that I've yet to find any game that I can't run at max settings with frames under 100. I has a solid state mSata system drive and big regular harddrive for storage.
its a beautiful laptop... I even had them put a crocodile skin on it for a hundred bucks. Plastic obviously... its not real croc skin. But its COOL. And I love it.
Its all about what you're selling. For me anyway... I suppose to many it matters HOW something is sold and all sorts of other intangibles. The cult of Apple I think embodies much of that business model in that its very hard to justify the brand on anything empirical.
In any case... HP machines don't strike me as being "nice"... I don't see an HP machine feel envy for it. I look down my nose at them usually. They're usually shitty.
My main issue with bundling is that one of the two always breaks and that means the other is broken as well now. Where as if you keep them separate then they can be replaced separately.
I'd rather get a 100 dollar portable projector... there are dozens of them on amazon... and then hook that up to my laptop.
Why would I buy HP stuff in the enterprise space when there are dozen companies that do it better, offer better support, and generally give their customers less grief?
What does HP actually do well anymore?
You say their laser printers are good? Are they great though? Because honestly, there is a lot of competition there and I'd avoid HP on principle at this point.
Do we link emo children to the sad music they listen to or stoners to the bad tv they watch?... Come on.
Enough with trying to demonnize video games to a generation that never experienced them and so only has their own ignorance to base anything upon.
Shocking.
HP is screwed up. Who actually likes their products anymore that has a clue? Even their printers are nothing special anymore. That company has no market. The only time I see HP stuff as at big box stores where they're competing for the least informed computer purchases.
Does the smart money buy HP? When was the last time it did?... Exactly. HP is a dying company.
Current management needs to get the axe and the company needs to be restructured there after.
Easy... launch five rats into space in an automated lab.
Seriously... why are people so thick? Use your brains.
a sub can afford a meter long shoebox if it provides precise positioning information... a smartphone can't obviously... but a sub can.
I can build a PC from components that can be purchased. If I could the same with a tablet then microsoft might be able to get somewhere with recreating the PC.
Let me buy a tablet motherboard, a tablet CPU, a tablet memory chip, a tablet enclosure... and then push a tablet OS onto it... and yeah... the tablet might become very much like the PC.
But if I can't buy the components to build one then it never will be the PC.
I didn't say we don't have a problem. I didn't say we don't need to improve. I didn't say we the statistics are wrong.
What I did say is that its more complicated and that the problems are not systemic but localized in specific areas where there is a very bad problem. My point was that some parts of the US need to be given a crash course in how to add 2+2.
My point has always been that statistical analysis is impossible if you don't understand how to read statistics.
The people analyzing these statistics yourself included sadly do not understand the numbers or what they mean. This leads you to make erroneous conclusions again and again and again because you've over simplified the information.
You cannot do that and retain accuracy.
You must retain the complexity. The complexity is data. If you throw the complexity out you throw the data out.
It doesn't mean it isn't true.
And furthermore, you're missing the significance of the statement.
We are not one people. You might as well look at the math standards for the whole northern hemisphere.
The United States is a polyglot society. If you can't grasp that then you have no business doing a statistical analysis of the united states.
The point is that parts of the US are doing just fine. Parts of the US are doing terribly.
If you want to improve the situation, focus your efforts on the portions that are doing badly and leave the rest of the country alone... you're as likely to retard those areas as help them.
Savvy?
Stop trying to generalize. Focus on the areas with an issue... do not waste resources on areas that are performing to standard or above.
But that exact same segment of the population is only semi literate, has a grasp of history supplied almost entirely by cartoons on television, and quite a few them don't actually speak english.
So yeah... statistics are fun. But if you're going to be fair, please limit the population you're talking about to a segment that is both fluent in the standard language and ideally not from a subculture that is actively hostile to education in the first place.
In my school, we learned calculus in high school... this is a US public high school. So it really has a lot to do with what part of the country you're talking about and who in that part of the country you are addressing. From my segment?... we have nothing to prove.
The government handles our justice system because it involves the use of legal violence.
Comparing that to an ISP is moronic.
You'd do just as we defending the government growing all your food and feeding you. And at that point... communism.
The government handles our justice system because it involves the use of legal violence.
Comparing that to an ISP is moronic.
Wow, the lack of reading comprehension on the internet.
I just pointed out that YOU made that argument. I was myself not saying that an extreme was inevitable.
About a dozen times in this discussion when I've said we should have looser regulations, people have accused me of advocating anarchy. That is a fallacy. I have done no such thing.
I don't so much feel a need as feel it is deserved.
You've done nothing to refute my position. Therefore my position remains.