Re:The most human side of scifi...
on
Ray Bradbury Has Died
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Very well put. He made a huge impact on me growing up. A lot of people think of him as only a Sci-Fi writer, but his works went way beyond that. My wife is anything buy a Scifi fan, but she was deeply influenced by Bradbury and his "Zen and the Art of Writing". He was a true master and will be deeply missed.
Lobbyists already made the case for them, that's why they're law. If you want to get rid of them, you have to quit voting in the same corrupt politicians who are more than willing to spend money we don't have to make the socialists happy.
unlike you, I'm pretty sure that parties exploit any opportunity they get to gain advantage.
What makes you think I don't believe parties will exploit any opportunity they get? I didn't say that. What I said was electronic voting has a great chance of fraud and the potential for abuse. It makes me wonder if you even read my comments. I'm all in favor of having a discussion on the topic, but please refrain from putting words in my mouth or jumping to conclusions.
Election fraud and vote fraud occur rather often around the world, with paper ballots. Electronic voting simply has a higher margin of fraud. As for being easier, that doesn't make it better, it just shows laziness and impatience.
Sure, they can be made "secure", I didn't mean to imply they couldn't be, I was just pointing out that security isn't the problem. I appreciate the link to the Three Ballot systems entry, but even that article mentions the usability problems and doesn't address how it would be used electronically. It's a great concept, but impractical given the fact that in 2004 we had a wide spread problem with people getting just one ballot right. I would also like to point out that I don't have any problem with the people operating the machines, I have a problem with the companies that own and maintain those machines. It would be a fairly trivial process for them to commit election fraud without the operators knowing anything about it. The people I trust, but the machines I don't. Why? Because I know how easy it would be to manipulate the electronic results, especially on a large scale. Again, I want to point out that I'm not convinced this has happened, my tin foil hat is still in the closet, but I believe it is plausible enough that I don't currently feel comfortable with it.
Security isn't the issue. The problem is that electronic records are easy to manipulate. Electronic voting has a wide potential for abuse. I believe laws should be passed to ban electronic voting and the electronic tallying of paper ballots. I realize this isn't convenient, but paper does make it much easier to prove election fraud and gives a better account of what really happened in an election. There are plenty of people who believe that the 2008 elections and the current 2012 Republican primaries show evidence of vote flipping. I believe this is possible, but I'm not convinced this has actually occurred. My concern isn't that this has happened, but that it potentially could.
I've seen a couple documents recently that make a compelling argument both for and against it having taken place in the Primaries. As I stated, I'm not convinced this has happened, but the plausibility of it is enough that I don't feel comfortable with an electronic voting system.
Here's the deal, the stock price was way over priced. If they had priced it lower then the underwriters wouldn't have had to step in repeatedly to prop it up in order to maintain the $38 share price. Without the intervention of the underwriters the stock would have plummeted.
What we're seeing is the beginning of a market correction that will adjust the price to a real world value. The underwriters can only support it's value in the market for so long before they are no longer able to keep the artificial value where it's at.
At $38, Facebook's price-to-earnings ratio was more than four times Google's. Google's posting revenue and profit than were 10 times higher than Facebook. Google also had a long term strategic plan for the money they raised from their IPO. As far as I know Facebook had no public plan for the use of the funds raised during the IPO, it seemed more like a get rich plan for the people (and banks) who held stock.
Long term I'm sure Facebook will rebound in the market, but it's going to be months before the actual price of the stock has been determined by the market and we know for sure.
No, they didn't. If they had nailed it then they wouldn't be stepping in continually to keep the price from plummeting below $38. http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/fb/real-time
Whether an IPO is successful or not should not be judged by whether a day 1 speculator may a killing. Where the price goes in the coming months will define whether or not the IPO was successful.
That's very true. We're only looking at one day. We need to remember that as we're all discussing this. The next 30-60 days are going to give us a much better picture of how well the stock was valued when it went live on the market.
it never went past $43. wouldn't say it raised quite fast either, it kind of burped and then plummeted, then the underwriters stepped in to stabilize the price (twice). it's actually doing very poorly; you can watch all the excitement at; http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/fb/real-time
It needs to close at around $43 or $44 for the IPO to not be considered a failure.
Adwords was started back in 2000, 4 years before the IPO. By 2003 they were making a significant amount of money from it. The also had a long term plan to improve the product and grow the company beyond basic search. Dollar for dollar Google was a much better investment when they went public than Facebook currently is.
You make some good points and I'm not sure anyone has the right answer, but I do know that having definite proof of life on another world will change our culture and reinvigorate our quest for knowledge. That alone might well reshape the political landscape by forever changing our perception of the Universe around us. It might also change our economic future by stimulating space exploration.
Some might say that money is wasted, but a great many technical advances were made in our quest to put a man on the moon.
Many people don't realize that we use those advances in everyday life. Tires, footwear and communication systems have all been drastically improved from what we learned on that quest. Those are just a few obvious changes, the first two are ones most people wouldn't even think about and there are hundreds of others. Will finding life on Mars change life here, yes. How? I don't know, but the big picture is so big that none of us are going to really see it until happens (if it happens?).
You make some valid points, if we outsourced work on a regular basis then I agree, we would wither and die, especially since a large part of our revenue comes from picking up outsourced work from other companies. But it's very seldom we have someone else jump in and help us out. When we have reached out it has been to people I've known for most of the last 10 years and have proven themselves to be reliable.
You're also making the assumption that when we have outsourced we've been totally ignorant of what work they've done to accomplish the goal. When in reality we've often worked side by side with them working on the same project, following the same road map. Hiring someone to help doesn't mean handing the entire project off and have them do it for you, it means hiring someone to work with you (or at least it should). The point is that you have to treat them just like someone on the team who is sitting in the office next to you (it also means having a wife who doesn't get upset because you have a middle of the night conference call).
That would be the client. Sometimes things get pushed up because the client decides they need something sooner rather than later. Personally I'm not going to tell the client "tough luck, we can't do it", especially if they're paying extra, we're going to rely on people we know and trust to make sure we have a customer who is happy. It doesn't happen often, maybe twice in the last three years, but it does happen.
Money. That's our excuse. Not because it's "cheap" to hire those guys, but because their work tends to be solid and reliable. We didn't pick them because they were inexpensive, we picked them because after years of chatting back and forth on several tech sites we gained a huge respect for their knowledge and skills. By choosing people who have serious talent we've grown, which has let us hire more people full-time, American People, who live right here and come to the office everyday. So occasionally tossing some projects out to people elsewhere has made us more effective and have helped us create American Jobs and have put more money in our pockets. So our lame ass excuse is capitalistic greed and it don't get more American than that.
Further south, we're true hay seeds. Kansas City Mo. I think he got bent out of shape because we've outsourced some of our work to a couple guys in India when the deadlines have changed and exceeded our internal capacity. Some of the greatest developers I know are from India and if someone thinks taking advantage of their skills is "Un-American" then that's their loss. We developed those relationships, those friendships, because they share the same passion for development that we do. As a general rule we only re-outsource when the dynamics of a deadline changes in mid-project and we need some quick help. Yes, we're Americans, but most importantly we're humans beings, just like those guys in Bangalore.
We do a lot of out sourced work for other companies and our customers tend to be very happy with us and many of them come back to us for follow up projects. We're also not cheap, in fact our fees are rather high, but so are our standards. We're located in the mid-west and the vast majority of our customers are within our region, but I've been known to hop on a plane and fly to the coast to finalize a deal or to reassure a customer that we're real people doing real work. Your first sentence says it all, you get what you pay for. As for the time zone statement I think it depends on who you're outsourcing. There have been times where we've outsourced some of our projects in order to meet deadlines and we've established solid contacts with several Individuals in Bangalore and I've found them to be an absolute treat to work with. If someone is going to outsource the most important deciding factor shouldn't be money or location, it should be skill. Any good development firm is going to have a list of previous satisfied customers that should provide a solid reference, if they don't then you shouldn't take the risk unless you're willing to accept sub-par work for sub-par pay. If someone is looking for "cheap" then that's exactly what they'll get.
Check your facts next time. Spouting disinformation because you are too lazy to check is not helping anyone.
Once. He ran as a Libertarian Candidate one time. You make it sound like he ran as the Libertarian candidate half a dozen times. It was 1 time. I'm not sure 1 can be considered "many", but to someone who has lived through only a couple of elections as an adult it might seem like he's "always" running for President and it might give them the perception that it's been a great many times, but in reality he has only run for President in two previous Elections (Once as a Libertarian in 1988 and once as a Republican in 2008). This would be his third run. Just for your information the following men also ran for president 3 times; Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Henry Clay, Grover Cleveland, William Jennings Bryan, and Richard Nixon.
Getting a little bent out of shape aren't you? You seem a little angry that you can't grasp the concept. It's alright to not understand something, but to display blatant anger and disrespect at someone over your own lack of understanding is rather childish and certainly doesn't progress the conversation.
I realize you want some kind of lab experiment proving or disproving my belief, but as I stated in a previous comment I do not have any idea how to test the theory, it's kind of like asking me to prove you're sentient. So let's start there. Being sentient essentially means being aware of your own existence (that's kind of a dumbed down explanation, but I figured it was as complex as we need to be in this discussion). So I assume you're aware that you exist, but can you provide an experiment that proves it? Can you prove that you are aware?
Provide me with a scientific experiment that proves you're sentient and we'll see if we can scale it up. If you can't prove you're sentient then I suspect proving the Universe is sentient won't be any easier. Oh, and do try to keep your anger in check, if you want to have a meaningful discussion I'm game, but please leave the blatant disrespect out of it.
Did you have some experiment in mind to test your "universe is sentient" hypothesis? Here's something else to consider: some things are just the sum of their parts.
Interesting question. I wish I had an equally interesting answer. Sadly I still haven't come up with an experiment that proves people are sentient, much less the Universe. In fact most of what I've seen would say at least a majority are not. Of course I'm waxing philosophically and your question deserves an honest answer. I would be interested in any experimental ideas that could prove or disprove the theory. If I come up with something I'll be sure to post it.
One of my closest friends is a high functioning Autistic. He's a wonderful human being and I cherish our friendship. He does have a high degree of social interaction problems and he was in his mid thirties before we could go out in public without him having an episode or creating a scene (he doesn't like people touching him or making eye contact).
I met him when we were in middle school and he was often a target of bullying. As we moved into high school the bullying started to become worse, but there were several of us who befriended him and it soon became known that to mess with him was to mess with us.
Today he lives on his own and has married a woman very similar to himself, he still can't manage his own finances and he does require some watching but he holds down a very nice job as a data analyst (his mind was made for abstract numbers) and lives a mostly normal life. The older he gets the better his social skills become, although he is definitely different.
Ironically I don't think there's a darn thing wrong with him, he's perfect just the way he is. Yes, he's different, but in so many wonderful ways.
You're right, your son is not disabled and you're doing the right thing by not treating him like he is. He might be different, but that doesn't mean he's disabled, it just means he's different.
No, I didn't redefine God to mean Universe. God is considered to be all knowing, he is considered to be everywhere and is consider the beginning and the end. The only thing I propose is that the Universe is sentient in a way that far exceeds our ability to understand. That sentience, that living spirit of the Universe, the part that connects all of us is what we call God. It would be like a single brain cell trying to comprehend that it is part of a larger life form. Theoretically I can grasp what my belief means, but there is no way I can comprehend any more than a tiny abstract view.
If you want to believe Jack Link's Beef Jerky is all knowing then go right ahead, but I've never seen any scientific evidence that Jack Link's Beef Jerky was here at the beginning of time, nor do I think there's reason to believe it will be here at the end of time. However, since your Jack Link's Beef Jerky is part of the Universe then yes, it is a part of God. But it is no more God than a hair on my arm is me.
Very interesting reply, probably the most intelligent reply I received. I think the problem is with labels or putting people in boxes. The problem is that we so seldom fit within the box we've been assigned. The universe is far more complex than any human mind will ever be able to conceive, of course we will always continue trying to make sense of it all, it's part of what makes us human.
On a side note my beliefs are a little closer to Panentheism than Pantheism, but after reading my comments above I can see why you picked the later. Boxes... one size really doesn't fit all.
Slashdot Mirror
Very well put. He made a huge impact on me growing up. A lot of people think of him as only a Sci-Fi writer, but his works went way beyond that. My wife is anything buy a Scifi fan, but she was deeply influenced by Bradbury and his "Zen and the Art of Writing". He was a true master and will be deeply missed.
Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.
The egg.
Lobbyists already made the case for them, that's why they're law. If you want to get rid of them, you have to quit voting in the same corrupt politicians who are more than willing to spend money we don't have to make the socialists happy.
FTFY
unlike you, I'm pretty sure that parties exploit any opportunity they get to gain advantage.
What makes you think I don't believe parties will exploit any opportunity they get? I didn't say that. What I said was electronic voting has a great chance of fraud and the potential for abuse. It makes me wonder if you even read my comments. I'm all in favor of having a discussion on the topic, but please refrain from putting words in my mouth or jumping to conclusions.
Election fraud and vote fraud occur rather often around the world, with paper ballots. Electronic voting simply has a higher margin of fraud. As for being easier, that doesn't make it better, it just shows laziness and impatience.
Sure, they can be made "secure", I didn't mean to imply they couldn't be, I was just pointing out that security isn't the problem. I appreciate the link to the Three Ballot systems entry, but even that article mentions the usability problems and doesn't address how it would be used electronically. It's a great concept, but impractical given the fact that in 2004 we had a wide spread problem with people getting just one ballot right. I would also like to point out that I don't have any problem with the people operating the machines, I have a problem with the companies that own and maintain those machines. It would be a fairly trivial process for them to commit election fraud without the operators knowing anything about it. The people I trust, but the machines I don't. Why? Because I know how easy it would be to manipulate the electronic results, especially on a large scale. Again, I want to point out that I'm not convinced this has happened, my tin foil hat is still in the closet, but I believe it is plausible enough that I don't currently feel comfortable with it.
Security isn't the issue. The problem is that electronic records are easy to manipulate. Electronic voting has a wide potential for abuse. I believe laws should be passed to ban electronic voting and the electronic tallying of paper ballots. I realize this isn't convenient, but paper does make it much easier to prove election fraud and gives a better account of what really happened in an election. There are plenty of people who believe that the 2008 elections and the current 2012 Republican primaries show evidence of vote flipping. I believe this is possible, but I'm not convinced this has actually occurred. My concern isn't that this has happened, but that it potentially could.
I've seen a couple documents recently that make a compelling argument both for and against it having taken place in the Primaries. As I stated, I'm not convinced this has happened, but the plausibility of it is enough that I don't feel comfortable with an electronic voting system.
Short Version
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0ByJAC-sfXwumZzI2bVlON2VTMnFyYVZZSnpDYnNyQQ/edit?pli=1
Long Version
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0ByJAC-sfXwumdkE4d0Y2eWtURTZ2eDM5RmlLc3ZhQQ/edit?pli=1
Here's the deal, the stock price was way over priced. If they had priced it lower then the underwriters wouldn't have had to step in repeatedly to prop it up in order to maintain the $38 share price. Without the intervention of the underwriters the stock would have plummeted.
What we're seeing is the beginning of a market correction that will adjust the price to a real world value. The underwriters can only support it's value in the market for so long before they are no longer able to keep the artificial value where it's at.
At $38, Facebook's price-to-earnings ratio was more than four times Google's. Google's posting revenue and profit than were 10 times higher than Facebook. Google also had a long term strategic plan for the money they raised from their IPO. As far as I know Facebook had no public plan for the use of the funds raised during the IPO, it seemed more like a get rich plan for the people (and banks) who held stock.
Long term I'm sure Facebook will rebound in the market, but it's going to be months before the actual price of the stock has been determined by the market and we know for sure.
No, they didn't. If they had nailed it then they wouldn't be stepping in continually to keep the price from plummeting below $38. http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/fb/real-time
Check out the NASDAQ chart; http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/fb/real-time
You can see time they've stepped in. During that flat line you can see they've stepped in 5 or 6 times in just 20 minutes.
Whether an IPO is successful or not should not be judged by whether a day 1 speculator may a killing. Where the price goes in the coming months will define whether or not the IPO was successful.
That's very true. We're only looking at one day. We need to remember that as we're all discussing this. The next 30-60 days are going to give us a much better picture of how well the stock was valued when it went live on the market.
it never went past $43. wouldn't say it raised quite fast either, it kind of burped and then plummeted, then the underwriters stepped in to stabilize the price (twice). it's actually doing very poorly; you can watch all the excitement at; http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/fb/real-time
It needs to close at around $43 or $44 for the IPO to not be considered a failure.
Adwords was started back in 2000, 4 years before the IPO. By 2003 they were making a significant amount of money from it. The also had a long term plan to improve the product and grow the company beyond basic search. Dollar for dollar Google was a much better investment when they went public than Facebook currently is.
You make some good points and I'm not sure anyone has the right answer, but I do know that having definite proof of life on another world will change our culture and reinvigorate our quest for knowledge. That alone might well reshape the political landscape by forever changing our perception of the Universe around us. It might also change our economic future by stimulating space exploration.
Some might say that money is wasted, but a great many technical advances were made in our quest to put a man on the moon.
Many people don't realize that we use those advances in everyday life. Tires, footwear and communication systems have all been drastically improved from what we learned on that quest. Those are just a few obvious changes, the first two are ones most people wouldn't even think about and there are hundreds of others. Will finding life on Mars change life here, yes. How? I don't know, but the big picture is so big that none of us are going to really see it until happens (if it happens?).
You make some valid points, if we outsourced work on a regular basis then I agree, we would wither and die, especially since a large part of our revenue comes from picking up outsourced work from other companies. But it's very seldom we have someone else jump in and help us out. When we have reached out it has been to people I've known for most of the last 10 years and have proven themselves to be reliable.
You're also making the assumption that when we have outsourced we've been totally ignorant of what work they've done to accomplish the goal. When in reality we've often worked side by side with them working on the same project, following the same road map. Hiring someone to help doesn't mean handing the entire project off and have them do it for you, it means hiring someone to work with you (or at least it should). The point is that you have to treat them just like someone on the team who is sitting in the office next to you (it also means having a wife who doesn't get upset because you have a middle of the night conference call).
That would be the client. Sometimes things get pushed up because the client decides they need something sooner rather than later. Personally I'm not going to tell the client "tough luck, we can't do it", especially if they're paying extra, we're going to rely on people we know and trust to make sure we have a customer who is happy. It doesn't happen often, maybe twice in the last three years, but it does happen.
Money. That's our excuse. Not because it's "cheap" to hire those guys, but because their work tends to be solid and reliable. We didn't pick them because they were inexpensive, we picked them because after years of chatting back and forth on several tech sites we gained a huge respect for their knowledge and skills. By choosing people who have serious talent we've grown, which has let us hire more people full-time, American People, who live right here and come to the office everyday. So occasionally tossing some projects out to people elsewhere has made us more effective and have helped us create American Jobs and have put more money in our pockets. So our lame ass excuse is capitalistic greed and it don't get more American than that.
Further south, we're true hay seeds. Kansas City Mo. I think he got bent out of shape because we've outsourced some of our work to a couple guys in India when the deadlines have changed and exceeded our internal capacity. Some of the greatest developers I know are from India and if someone thinks taking advantage of their skills is "Un-American" then that's their loss. We developed those relationships, those friendships, because they share the same passion for development that we do. As a general rule we only re-outsource when the dynamics of a deadline changes in mid-project and we need some quick help. Yes, we're Americans, but most importantly we're humans beings, just like those guys in Bangalore.
We do a lot of out sourced work for other companies and our customers tend to be very happy with us and many of them come back to us for follow up projects. We're also not cheap, in fact our fees are rather high, but so are our standards. We're located in the mid-west and the vast majority of our customers are within our region, but I've been known to hop on a plane and fly to the coast to finalize a deal or to reassure a customer that we're real people doing real work. Your first sentence says it all, you get what you pay for. As for the time zone statement I think it depends on who you're outsourcing. There have been times where we've outsourced some of our projects in order to meet deadlines and we've established solid contacts with several Individuals in Bangalore and I've found them to be an absolute treat to work with. If someone is going to outsource the most important deciding factor shouldn't be money or location, it should be skill. Any good development firm is going to have a list of previous satisfied customers that should provide a solid reference, if they don't then you shouldn't take the risk unless you're willing to accept sub-par work for sub-par pay. If someone is looking for "cheap" then that's exactly what they'll get.
Check your facts next time. Spouting disinformation because you are too lazy to check is not helping anyone.
Once. He ran as a Libertarian Candidate one time. You make it sound like he ran as the Libertarian candidate half a dozen times. It was 1 time. I'm not sure 1 can be considered "many", but to someone who has lived through only a couple of elections as an adult it might seem like he's "always" running for President and it might give them the perception that it's been a great many times, but in reality he has only run for President in two previous Elections (Once as a Libertarian in 1988 and once as a Republican in 2008). This would be his third run. Just for your information the following men also ran for president 3 times; Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Henry Clay, Grover Cleveland, William Jennings Bryan, and Richard Nixon.
Getting a little bent out of shape aren't you? You seem a little angry that you can't grasp the concept. It's alright to not understand something, but to display blatant anger and disrespect at someone over your own lack of understanding is rather childish and certainly doesn't progress the conversation.
I realize you want some kind of lab experiment proving or disproving my belief, but as I stated in a previous comment I do not have any idea how to test the theory, it's kind of like asking me to prove you're sentient. So let's start there. Being sentient essentially means being aware of your own existence (that's kind of a dumbed down explanation, but I figured it was as complex as we need to be in this discussion). So I assume you're aware that you exist, but can you provide an experiment that proves it? Can you prove that you are aware?
Provide me with a scientific experiment that proves you're sentient and we'll see if we can scale it up. If you can't prove you're sentient then I suspect proving the Universe is sentient won't be any easier. Oh, and do try to keep your anger in check, if you want to have a meaningful discussion I'm game, but please leave the blatant disrespect out of it.
Did you have some experiment in mind to test your "universe is sentient" hypothesis? Here's something else to consider: some things are just the sum of their parts.
Interesting question. I wish I had an equally interesting answer. Sadly I still haven't come up with an experiment that proves people are sentient, much less the Universe. In fact most of what I've seen would say at least a majority are not. Of course I'm waxing philosophically and your question deserves an honest answer. I would be interested in any experimental ideas that could prove or disprove the theory. If I come up with something I'll be sure to post it.
One of my closest friends is a high functioning Autistic. He's a wonderful human being and I cherish our friendship. He does have a high degree of social interaction problems and he was in his mid thirties before we could go out in public without him having an episode or creating a scene (he doesn't like people touching him or making eye contact).
I met him when we were in middle school and he was often a target of bullying. As we moved into high school the bullying started to become worse, but there were several of us who befriended him and it soon became known that to mess with him was to mess with us.
Today he lives on his own and has married a woman very similar to himself, he still can't manage his own finances and he does require some watching but he holds down a very nice job as a data analyst (his mind was made for abstract numbers) and lives a mostly normal life. The older he gets the better his social skills become, although he is definitely different.
Ironically I don't think there's a darn thing wrong with him, he's perfect just the way he is. Yes, he's different, but in so many wonderful ways.
You're right, your son is not disabled and you're doing the right thing by not treating him like he is. He might be different, but that doesn't mean he's disabled, it just means he's different.
No, I didn't redefine God to mean Universe. God is considered to be all knowing, he is considered to be everywhere and is consider the beginning and the end. The only thing I propose is that the Universe is sentient in a way that far exceeds our ability to understand. That sentience, that living spirit of the Universe, the part that connects all of us is what we call God. It would be like a single brain cell trying to comprehend that it is part of a larger life form. Theoretically I can grasp what my belief means, but there is no way I can comprehend any more than a tiny abstract view.
If you want to believe Jack Link's Beef Jerky is all knowing then go right ahead, but I've never seen any scientific evidence that Jack Link's Beef Jerky was here at the beginning of time, nor do I think there's reason to believe it will be here at the end of time. However, since your Jack Link's Beef Jerky is part of the Universe then yes, it is a part of God. But it is no more God than a hair on my arm is me.
Very interesting reply, probably the most intelligent reply I received. I think the problem is with labels or putting people in boxes. The problem is that we so seldom fit within the box we've been assigned. The universe is far more complex than any human mind will ever be able to conceive, of course we will always continue trying to make sense of it all, it's part of what makes us human.
On a side note my beliefs are a little closer to Panentheism than Pantheism, but after reading my comments above I can see why you picked the later. Boxes... one size really doesn't fit all.