That's one of the problems - your impression was wrong. The patriot act did very little in the way of expanding powers. All you have to do is look to those that want to exand those powers - they know it did nothing other than reduce the amount of paperwork by a little.
It's too late, for the most part, to complain. It's powers they have had for years as information was entered into computers - there is no reason to think that they can't do what you can. In fact, it is safe to assume they have easy access to information and systems you do not, even decades ahead.
Free information tends to be, well, free. It doesn't become suddenly secret if the FBI or CIA tries to access it. It's like free speech, if you want that then you have to put up with the KKK and other hate groups. You can try and legislate around it but it will not work, any more than other legislative only restrictions will.
Largescale wind will take large amounts of energy out of the atmosphere, enough so that we do not really know the consequences of that actions. Plus it's simply not practicle in large swatches of the country. Same with the tidal generators being put out now (both are using the energy from moving fluids and have very similar problems). As a suppliment great, enough to power the whole country and you will see some MAJOR issues.
Hydroelectric - probably one of the best as far as I know - still disrupts the rivers they are built on - again the energy removed for electricity has to come from someplace. Depending on the river it can hurt local wildlife (it can also help it). Not to mention needing a large enough river restricts it's usage.
With solar the by-products of creating the cells is pretty nasty, large scale production would be quite bad. And that is ignoring the costs of when the plates must be replaced - they are not easily disposed of safely. There are also times of the year in many places it can not supply enough power. We can see this in some places in california - the power grid there can take excess power from a house and pay you for it. Many people have *at the end of the year* a net surplus and the power company pays them. "at the end of the year" is important because a few months of the year the have to take from the grid - without the constant power source they would be without from a few months (and you can't simply have these power plants go on/off-line like that).
Geothermal, the holy grail of alternate fuel sources when I was young. It offered everything, didn't disrupt the environment by removel of energy and no green house gasses. Unfortunatly it produces radon gas, hydrogen sulfide, CO2, methane, and ammonia. Which, for the vast majority of people - are much worse. Still, even today, it takes finding a engineer or chemist that isn't focused on greenhouse gasses to talk about that, but that's why it was dropped in the 90's as the save all. In fact, as far as killing living things and the environment it is one of the absolute worst and is why it is typically used only as a last resort.
Though, by far, the best is atomic - which apparently doesn't make your list, though I guess the elipses may have contained it. While it creates some nasty stuff much of that is now used in other fields as useful materials (especially the highly radioactive stuff).
In the end - all of them take energy from someplace and turn it into energy we can use, you can not get around this. This process will always loss some, and will always have some pollutants, again something you can not get around. Some, like solar, work great in some situations and when used sparingly but do not scale well at all (both in terms of number of people supplied and year round power supply). That's not to say coal or oil is great by any means, or that the people in the solar example are doing bad - but they aren't really very clean either. We are not going to start living in pristine clean environment from switching to them and it doesn't do any good to ignore what those other will cause (it's what got us into a lot of the mess we are in today). It's good to do what you can, but do so realistically.
"You can't live without exploiting animals. A classic argument. "I can't be perfect, so I might as well not even try to be better." I've never been a fan of it, personally."
If something is impossible I would argue that trying to legislate and force people to do it is kinda, well, stupid since it can not be done. But I suppose to some that might be OK, though I can not see how. Nor did I ever say or imply "not try" - you are making a straw man argument at the last part. More "Since it can not be perfect do not try and force perfection".
"True - mostly. There are no plant sources of B12. Luckily, you can get it from fungi and bacteria. Beer is a pretty decent source."
So, if it's single celled you can kill and torture all you want, what about 10 cells, 15, 100 - where are you going to draw the line? And is it logical or just arbitrary? If arbitrary why do you want to force it on me (and, if so, do you complain about other people trying to enforce arbitrary ideas)?
"PETA runs kill animal shelters. True, yes. Sad, yes. I'm not aware of them lying about it."
They denied it for quite a while and thier shelters - especially the one in the recent lawsuit, commercialed themselfs as such. If I say "No-kill shelter" but, well, kill them in a few weeks time I would call that a lie.
"Fact of the matter is, the idea of a "no-kill" animal shelter is a bit of a myth."
Fact is, they exist all over the place. Several in where I live (and it is by no means a rich area) have had several for decades. A group that takes in the money PETA does can do much better than a local Podunct Tennessee shelter. But, again, you make excuses for when you (or in this case PETA - I do not know if you are a member) do things that you protest others doing.
"I don't have any access to veterinary research journals or journal indexes,"
Sure you do. Not only do you have the internet but I bet there is at least a junior college near you that has one. Plus it doesn't take a genious to figure out that a CARNIVORE doesn't do so well on a vegan diet. But you may even like PETA's "research" as it is "I asked my friends and they said "much more healthy than regular dogs and cats"".
"I've googled for this, too, and I'll keep googling, but I'm turning up a blank."
Well, I can be of help! At least one was easy to find, "peta" and "fraud" had it in the top 10 results. Since it only takes one to show they are willing and capable of doing it I'm stopping there.
here, here is the settlement. Of course, you can claim (as they do) that the settlement doesn't prove it and they would have won, they just didn't feel like it (even they realised that winning this in a court of law would have been great and they have plenty of donations to pay for it).
Lets see - where to begin? I'll keep this short, I;ve had this type of conversation many times and it doesn't really matter. You already have the facts and choose to ignore them.
First off, veganism in general. You can't live without exploiting animals. For instance, vitamin b-12 is from an animal product - it can not be synthesized and the amounts found in some vegatables are not abosrbable by your body.
PETA specific. PETA run kill animal shelters. If you don't like that source use google - it's simply the first link. Check out PETA's campaign to make Dogs and Cats into vegans, then look at any scientific study on the planet about it. In thier campaign against fisherman most of thier "facts" are grossly incorrect (such as catching them kills them from massive wounds in their mouths). They have been caught, prosecuted, and convicted several times being the people abusing the animals in the industry they are doing an "expose" on because they can't find people who are cruel.
I suppose in many cases they could be so stupid or so blinded by thier idealology that they are simply wrong, but some are simply total lies. It's arguable which is worse though.
Of course feel free to dismiss this as all right wing propaganda aimed at the loving people of PETA. Us Sheople will never notice things like that anyway (not to mention they may be fake, but they are pretty much accurate, it has to be so otherwise people wouldn't think that of them), we are just tools of the state who is soooo much worse.
My experience is with my relatives and a few people my parents have as friends, but:
"but calves born on dairy farms are taken from their mothers when they are just 1 day old and fed milk replacers (including cattle blood) so that humans can have the milk instead.(1,2)"
None I know do this, though I am sure you can find people that do anything. Cows are VERY expensive and the above is not a real good plan. The little bit of cows milk lost is MUCH more than made up in living, breathing, healthy, cows producing milk. Common sense would tell you that.
"Female cows are artificially inseminated shortly after their first birthdays.(3) After giving birth, they lactate for 10 months, then they are re-inseminated, and the cycle starts again. Some spend their entire lives standing on concrete floors; others are crammed into massive mud lots. Cows have a lifespan of about 25 years and can produce milk for eight or nine years, but the stress caused by factory-farm conditions leads to disease, lameness, and reproductive problems that render cows worthless to the dairy industry by the time they are 4 or 5 years old, at which time they are sent to the slaughterhouse.(4,5)"
Again - I know of maybe 15 fairly large dairy farms - none whatsoever does this. I'm sure there are some that do, I suspect you can even find some that do even worse (you can still find meat processing facilities that beat the cows to death), but that is an exception not the rule. Dairy cattle last until they quit producing milk, then they go for dog food and other low grade products (dairy cattle generally taste bad and are tough). They are generally farly old - if you want to get up in a bunch about cattle being killed young go to the beef industry. Hell, the guy who used to work for my parents (land surveyors) kept two or three cattle, never bred them, and milked them daily. They have been bred to do this and if they are not milked they devolop infections.
"Although these animals would naturally make only enough milk to meet the needs of their calves (around 16 pounds a day), genetic manipulation, antibiotics, and hormones are used to force each cow to produce more than 18,000 pounds of milk a year (an average of 50 pounds a day)."
Cows were bred to do this long ago - you can purchase organic milk that is made in nearly those quantities that do not use them. Though I do not like the use of the hormones and chemicals (I ingest them also), a little bit of education instead of propaganda would be useful.
"(8,9) Cows are also fed unnatural, high-protein diets, which include dead chickens, pigs, and other animals, because their natural diet of grass would not provide the nutrients necessary for them to produce the massive amounts of milk required by the industry.(10)"
Not any longer, illegal in most industrialised countries since tha mad cow disease was discovered in the early to mid 90's. Hopefully PETA is a little more up to date than that...
"Clearly if the cows natural breeding life is cut from 8-9 years to half that, then the cow is undergoing some very extraordinary stress and adverse conditions. "
Clearly so, if it were true. However, should you simply go tour a local diary farm (many will allow it, in fact encourage it) you will see that most of what you quoted is totally incorrect for the vast majority of dairy farms. It's like accusing the entire computer industry of stuff because SGI did some crappy stuff 15 years ago.
And, lastly, one of the points I was thinking is that the system being hawked in the post *precludes* nearly all of this type of treatment. Thus, how do they cope with it - apparently put on blinders and keep on keeping on is the answer.
My immediate thoughts were fairly politial, I wondered how this would fit in with the PETA crowd who thinks that cows hate what is happeneing while being milked.
My next question was what you asked. I googled a bit, the system seemed kinda interesting.
From looking around the web (google search on "Voluntary Milking System") it seems that overall milk production is increased, though it is not clear in the texts if that is per cow or over all because of increased effenciency and less spoilage, nor was the average increase given as a number. These systems also automatically check the milk for problems (certain bacteria and blood) and automatically divert the spoiled milk - something that is apparently a Big Thing to the farmers.
The other large savings is that the farmer no longer has to manually set the milking devices on the cows. According to several articles the time spent can be as much as half a day of labor to milk cows but with these systems pretty much nothing unless the machines need repair.
Not really being much of a farmer I can't seperate hype from reality too good on this, but several of the articles were from agriculture departments from universities and seemed fairly balanced. Usually the big down side was in that the systems are fairly complicated to set up and maintain and do not detect/recover from errors in the placement of the teat cups (apparently the will rarely catch one off center - but the articles claim that it isn't a problem unless it's consistently wrong, such as due to a deformation on the cow).
Though I always thought that Linux seemed a perfect match for farmers - at least the ones I know it fits thier idealology fairly well.
We had rats move in a quite a few years back under our porch. They borrowed into the subfloor of our house, they were eating the seed we feed the wild birds. My mother, not wanting to stop feeding them (she had some notion that they would die without her feeding them -uhh) we had to find another solution. Being hunters and avid target shooter we decided to simply kill them. We set up the bird feeders such that we had a good shooting area at the rats and scouted thier habits to get them when they were feeding (much the same thing we do with deer and such).
We killed well over 30 of the things. At first they simply waltz out to the feeder and we pegged them with the pellet gun. After a while they knew what the noise of the window opening meant so we had to round the animals up 30-45 minutes before feeding time and open the window. They then figured out the lighting so we learned to shoot in our noral lighting (none in that room). They then figured out where the killing lanes were - itwas kinda funny. You could see them walk right up to the line - almost to the inch - and prepare for the run. In one go get one seed. Unfortunatly for them we are good shots and small running targets are fun - still killed them. Changing food sources was not an option - nothing else around here to eat and they didn't seem to take the hint to move.
But, even with a high death rate - after the first month nearly all we killed were small young ones - we still could not remove them. They figured out our traps and avoided them and made it as hard as possible to kill them. We had to learn thier habits, restrict thier food sources to only a certain ones, practice shooting to be accurate enough, and specifically develope hunting strategies for them - in short everything we do for game animals. The thing that finally got them was nature - a 6 foot long black snake decided under our porch (same place as the rats) was a good place to live. Unfortunatly the neigbors killed the snake as a "nasty evil thing" a few months later and kill every snake they find - and they still have rats that refuse to leave thier house - which I say serves them right.
Not to mention that even if they are rural that doesn't necessarily mean uneducated. Maybe not "worldly" or familiar with pop culture and current slang, but that isn't raelly education.
I have a very small hadful of relatives that have no electricity and no running water. They live in the mountains of East Tennessee (Appalachia). But, they are far from uneducated. While they are not too up on modern stuff - theater, pop culture, music, and generally "new" stuff I would bet on them for reading, math, and history over the average "educated" person in any western world (not the top, but the average). It may not be hard to beat me (see my sig), but they are quite good at the basics and thier idea of basics are higher than the vast majority of high schools.
All of them have homemade generators, water purification systems, a good personal library (no TV means lots of reading), and working vehicles (including farming stuff) that they totally maintain themselves. They have a pretty good understanding of biology and botany - better than quite a few "educated" people I've known. In short, they are humans - just as smart as anyone else just not educated in the same way we are. In fact, given that they do not have access to alot of our non-brain usage past times they seem to be beter adaptable. They understand advanced Comp Sci algorithms MUCH faster than my other non-CS friends, they find uses for them that would never occur to me, and many other things. They interact with the "modern" world quite a bit - a few of them electricity is just a few hunderd yards away (the terrain precludes them from getting it though), they are not backwards. If you ever met them you wouldn't know, other than they don't really know much about survivor, Microsoft, or other popular culture bits. However they are very knowledgable about things that are covered in periodicals, newspapers, and other written material - much more than the standard American.
I have little to no experience with rural Africans, in high school I had a friend from Ghana and in college a person from Nigeria - both were amongst the most intelligent and educated I've ever known. But, given that humans tend to be, well, humans, I would expect that the vast majority are fairly intelligent and not far from my relatives. Maybe not educated from a perspective of a city person, but then in many ways better than those from the city (just as a country person wouldn't get along in a city, the city person doesn't really get along in the country either - they are just different).
One of the great things about this type of progress is that it always leads to removal of repressive govts (the bad news is that it has pretty much always been bloody and long).
Essentially they require an uneducated, uninformed populace for control. They need an educated informed populace to move forward. They are trying the impossible right now - to have them educated and informed about 85% of the world and totally ingorant of the rest. It doesn't work - you notice when you aren't allowed to talk about things and an educated populace can very accuratly guess what they are being censored from.
China, as is, is something of a threat to the free world. It has the man power to be a real bitch if they wanted too - enough that if they felt like WWIII they could do so (and if the govt sees it as that with a chance to win or definatly die they could even try it).
A fairly free china will be great for the world - lots of manpower and resources coming to market. Just imagine a free prosperous China, US, britain, and EU working together (really together, not just lip service) in space exploration or heck, pretty much anything. There are basically four great regions - the US, Europe, Old russia, and china (to be a "great region" you need both population and resources - places like South America lack the manpower and Africa lacks much of the resources - though that could change over time) - between them you have the vast majority of manpower and resources. If they could ever all be free, educated, and pretty much on the same page it's hard to imagine what we could do. I don't know if that is possible in my lifetime, but the current chinese govt falling and them and old russia rebuilding is pretty much what is needed.
"esus christ, plenty of the world has equal or better free speech laws than the US - New Zealand, Australia, most of Europe.
Here in NZ, we didn't require the Black Eyed Peas to rename their song "Don't Phunk With my Heart", we don't have a corronary when a breast is exposed on TV (I mean, for fuck's sake!). We have adverts using sware words and lewd humour that wouldn't be played in the US. Actually, the Black Eyed Peas were complaining how conservative the US is in comparison to places like NZ when they were here recently."
Actually most of that is social pressure - very different from legal freedom of speech. Each of those countries can be shown to have, at least a few, more legal limits to speech (say Nazi propagande in most of the EU) even if they have less socail pressure. Some is the FCC and really should not happen (social pressure is enough), but then it's no more erstrictive than the places you mentioned - just restriction in different places.
Social pressure is as much free speech as not applying social pressure. You can't tell me I *have* to listen or watch something and call it free speech. that is protected just as much as you right to express it. Frredom of speech isn't the idea that you will be heard without any consequences - it's that the govt will not restrict what you say.
Myself, I would be more worried about handing regulatory authority over to places that have no problem legally restricting speech than places that nearly all speech is legal but has social pressure to limit thierselfs. Lets face it, ICANN is about hands off as one can get - the arguments have so far not been that they are too restrictive (how can they be - they have almost no restrictions) so you can assume that the powers that be are either jealous of the power or wish to regulate it. Given the rhetoric I suspect that regulation is the area - especially given their threats and complaints.
In my experience it depends greatly on the type of article - the less "concrete" the worse it is (in the sense of mathematics being very concrete and "is this author good" being not very concrete). Politically charged - not even remotely useful - not even as a starting point.
But then, I would say that is to be expected. In a lot of areas the "pro" people care enough to police it and pretty much control it. The "anti" people don't really think about it much but may from time to time edit on it (and sometimes in a destructive way), but it's not common. Especially given some subjects are very soft, or subjective, and the people feel VERY strongly about thier subject this can lead to a HUGE skew that peer reviewed papers are usually weed out. Technical stuff tends to be correct or wrong - whether I'm a gun nut, don't care one way or another, or think all guns are evil it doesn't change when a quicksort is better than a bubble sort - yet that would really color my views on firearms.
Take the some of the vegan entries, some of the stuff said in there has been, well, idiotic. It may stay for a while, be edited out and back in many times, but rarely is some of the more idiotic things left out for long. Essentially those that care enough to look at it much are mostly vegan, usually not just "vegan" but politically so also (I mean to differentiate between people who are simply vegan and ones who wish to push it on others regardles of any facts). I read it from time to time just for laughs - things like vegans never get sick, cures asthma, diabetes, heart disease, live for well over a hundred years, make you dog/cat a vegan, etc etc. But then, if you read it over time it's obvious which ones because they change quite frequently - one day it may be full of nutso and a few hours later actually a good take on veganism.
But then, you need to do that filtering on any source too - just that you are more likely to be burned on the wikipedia than a full peer reviewd academic article.
"Hmm..Just CURIOUS, but why is it then the majority of US editorials, writers and commentators take tooo much care to be 'politically correct'?"
Thier choice.
"Freedom must mean freedom from every kind of oppression right?"
No, where did you ever come up with that idea?
"One sentence like say, "ISLAM is NOT a religion of Peace, rather it is a Hatemongering, terrorist breeding religion bent upon bringing the whole world under its tyranny""
Move down here to Jesusland, I assure you that the above will not only *not* be looked at and shunned but wonder why you are stating the "obvious". That is the consequences of "free speech".
There has always been, and always will be, social pressure. Humans are social creatures. That is VERY different from official govt regulations. It isn't illegal to run down the street yelling "All women are cunts who deserve to be beaten everyday of thier lives and thier faces mutilated" - you will not go to jail at all. That will pretty much always have a very severe social stigma attached to it (and if you find someplace that says "Yea - so? Got something we don't know" please tell me so we can go blow it off the face of this planet).
It is as much my "free speech" to not purchase, or to not listen, to your stuff because you think is a load of rubbish as it is free speech for you to say that. Free speech means that if we begin to legally regulate it then it's wrong. It has never, and will never, mean that you can say/do anything and have no consequences for your actions. In fact, that idea intrudes on *my* freedom to think said person is an ass and not listen to them.
You can have "freedom of speech" but you will never have "freedom from speech" - everything you say and do is used by your peers (society) to make judgements on you. No law, no movement, no nothing is ever going to change that. I'm sure that there are things that other people can say that your opinion of them drops quite a few notches. Not only that but you would have to force people to not think or act in certain ways in order to be free (and is thus, not possible).
The great thing is that in places that have freedoms you can move around and find someplace that pretty much believes as you do. Like guns, Jesus, killing animals, chewing tobacco, and think the president is great? There are many places in the US like that. Like state run healthcare, community oneness, nature/science worship, socially relativist, and think the president ought to be at the bottom of the ocean - you can live there also. Great thing about legal freedom - as long as you don't try and impose much on everyone else we can all find places that we fit in socially, though it may not be in the geographical region you want. Try that in North Korea.
You are making the mistake many do in looking at bias - there doesn't *have* to be a coordinated effort for what the original article wrote to be true. In fact it's very very rare and usually not productive/widespread for it to be coordinated. It's too transparent.
You need look no further than slashdot - it's moderation tends to be heavily biased in many topics. I can assure you (and a little looking around will confirm it if you do not already know) that there is no controlling entity that seeks to impliment this bias. Yet there is still a VERY strong bias for pretty much similar reasons through many of slashdots readers.
It's like an ant colony where there is no "hive mind" to control things. Each participant does it's thing and the whole ends up being something specific.
It can be that a very few want this and hire people who are like minded (that is usually self sustaining - you usually only hire people you think are correct). It may be that the nature of the job pushes people who think that way into the field. It may be just random chance that one day went over the saturation point - it could have went anyway and just chose that one. There are many other explaination than "Grand conspiracy" - group think happens all the time with no controlling authority or grand conspiracy.
Personally I think the original authors are correct. At least in my experiance (in real life and when I was in the university) 3/4 (and note the 3/4 - there were some very nice very broadly educated people there also) of the humanties distrusted science and journalist students were mostly humanaties people (rare person who is really interested in science but chooses to do non-science for a living - nature of the job chooses people who think that way). If they believe that to be reality, thier editors believe that to be reality, then it's just the nature of the beast.
Just as there is no grand conspiracy to make science minded people think and write that the "Earth is 4000 years old people" are crazy (and our writings are VERY biased against them because we think they are, at best, wrong), so too does the average journalist do that. That's why if you want news about science you need to look to specialised journalist - not the times, cnn, fox, abc, nbc, or whatever general news rag (and don't look at a science journal for general news - they are usually pretty poor at it).
I agree, that's how it is done. Lots of times that produces pretty good results, sometimes less than stellar.
One of the things they had us do in college, and it is interesting IMO, is to take a sport you know nothing about and observe it. Try to formulate the rules of game based on observation (that is, create the model). Then look the actual rules up and compare them.
It's not a perfect experiment - there are things common amongst nearly all games that we simply just know, but it was interesting how correct you would normally get some things and how wrong others (this is even more true because we *do* have correct preconcieved notions, it gets worse when going blind into something). It's also interesting how you can be correct and wrong at the same time - accuratly predict the outcome but for totally incorrect reasons. And, in some sense, it raises the question of if it really matters if the path to get to the correct point is wrong. If you are correct 100% of the time that it is "pass interference" (in American Football) does it matter that you definition of "pass interference" is wrong?
In really really complicated scenarios I always wonder which side is thier model on (though, of course, it's a sliding scale not just an absolute two sides). Especially given the magnitude that some of the models will evnetually have in our lifes.
Of course, this is what makes these fields so interesting to me, the combination of "right or wrong" with the amount of "feel" and "intuition" in the system.
"I think nobody expected they'd actually do that. And now they are, and so the rallying cry has changed."
Stuff like that is a good test to see if what people say they want are really what they want. Obviously what they said they wanted wasn't really what they wanted (in my defense, I said the same thing back then, and am quite happy with going after the downloaders - though I still think the whole thing is a waste of money and hurting them, that's thier right to make legal/ethical bad business decisions. And, of course, some of thier tactics still are not legal/ethical).
To note, most conservatives that are screaming "states rights" on abortion and euthenasia don't want states rights, they want them abolished. See the Schiavo case - that's what happens when it moves back into the states (while I didn't like the outcome, I want states rights and support the decision, happy to live in an area that doesn't allow it and if you are happy in one that does - great). Most gay marriage activists don't care about equal rights - abolishing marriage and creating "civil unions" does just that, yet is unacceptable. They want not only acceptance but approval (nothing wrong with that, be upfront about it. Personally could care less about the issue. Also, there are gay couples who just want the civil rights and are happy if they were to get them - they could care less if others approve or like thier lifestyle).
It's a good internal test - think about what you say you want and start making suggestions that meet it and see if they are all good. If not, then why not? I found when I started doing that that there were many areas that what I thought/said I wanted was not really what I wanted. Sometimes a buzzword (in my case, states rights) moved into ban outright, in others I really supported states rights. It was personally interesting where I shifted (it's like free speech - gotta support the KKK, Nazis, pacifist, warmongers, etc and others right to spew thier crap if you really want free speech). I suppose there are still places I do it, but I try my best not too.
Actually, drop the XML and SMS and do a cell phone instead and you have pretty good idea. Don't know if it has been done or even if it could be legal, I hate my cell phone and try to know as little about them as possible (about the only technology I could say that about - I hate the expectation that I'm available 24/7) so maybe it's been done.
Hey, make it iTunes compatable and share with an iPod and you really have a winner.
Better get a patent quick though....
Re:algae carrying crap for a few centimeters...
on
Algae Can Carry Cargo
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I see you ignored the electricity stuff - too hard to make fun of huh? It was a discussion I had with the researchers, you can believe it or not, that is why I gave two examples - the second one being well known enough I assume that a geek wouldn't need a link to know about it.
Lets see:
"SLASHDOT HEADLINE: People pick up two strand of straw with rock!" (look, it even includes a spelling/grammer mistake".
One should of held the presses for that one, it was big. Bu then, slashdot isn't the presses either.
"Wow, in science, a proof-based arena, you are coming at me with "maybe", "who knows", "what if", and asking me to turn in my geek card? "
No, I asked you to turn your geek card in because you have no vision or ability to think outside the obvious headline. Learn to read. If you don't think that type of thinking has a place in science you *really* are not involved with research at all, nor should you be.
"And you point to your "extrapolation" of going from centimeters to...whoa "KILOMETERS!!" as being a "better thinker"?"
Yes, I can envision where something like this can make an inpact, considering such "worthless" stuff has before. I highly suspect that, at this moment, those researchers are trying to figure out if they can do such a thing at this moment. That's why vision and forward thinking are important and this is news.
"Besides the fact that in denouncing my geekdom you did not present an idea related to this that point to you being a "better thinker", you base it off of nothing."
I pointed out that people who think like you do (ar at least the way you said) are not geeks, you seem to lack the ability to think beyond the obvious. I then pointed out that it is entirely reasonable to that "worthless" discoveries can be very worthwhile, I sued two examples one that you ignored. I suppose because it didn't fit with what you wanted to argue. Again, you seem to fail at simple logic and reading, unable to overcome your own prejudices.
Plus,you can't have been reading slashdot all that long,, or even know what it is about, if you think that only major ground breaking stories get posted. ones the editors find "neat" have always been here, and for many many people algae carrying a load is pretty neat.
Too bad the geek card you took back was fake, I guess the little foil sticky star on it fits though, that's what they gave the special ed students back when I was in school.
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" Although, it would have been nice to see some explanation of how he got from showers to aircraft."
I'm a computer scientist, I didn't understand it then, nor do I now. I havn't the foggiest how a jet engine works. I knew the research group, so that's kinda hard to link to a discussion I had with them during lunch. But I can understand "fluid dynamics" and "Very different from what we thought".
That's why I also included the thing on electricity - I assumed that people could at least understand them, alas the original poster decided to ignore that one also.
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That's a terrible attitude. You claim to be a geek but can't see anything other than a direct simple application? Please turn in your geek card, geeks need ot be better thinkers than that.
Many, if not most, "worthless" discoveries are very worth while. Say, for instance one that happened around me a few years back, why does your shower curtain billow inward in a shower? Models at the time, all of them, showed it should go the other way (one would think that the steam would expand pushing it out, and air isn't flowing creating a low pressure area to push it inward). They spent millions and figured out why - a waste? Who cares? Well, this little tidbit of understanding saved *billions* in jet fuel cost and will continue to accrue for many years - is that "worthless". Not to mention that quite a few mysteries, some fairly major, were solved in fluid dynamics from this. This study was blasted on the news and some govt watchdog places on waste.
The article presented even mentions that the understanding of thier "motors" will most likely revolutionalise thier field. What if this results in us learning how to go further than centimeters, say meters or kilomoters?
Would you say to the people who rubbed amber against fur and use it to pick up a few peices of straw (and those that decided to study that) "So, I can pick up more than that with my hands" - yet that *directly* lead to how to produce electricity - which I am sure you consider fairly important today.
Ok, old post I'm replying too so I don't expect it to be read.
At one time in the past I was partially interested in handwriting reconition software (OCR) stuff. I assume that speech recognition is similar - at least it would seem it should be that way to me. And, keep in mind, I'm not anywhere near an expert, take this as a "typical" slashdot post - I read a book on something similar 10 years ago.
I think that there has to be some foreknowledge in there. Typically having a truly expansive application is not only difficult, but may be impossible. Take a well known example, the halting problem. I can create a program that takes most programs and thier inputs and figures out if it terminates, however it is *impssible* to make one that takes an arbitrary program and does so. My limited knowledge of this type of recognition leads me to believe this is the case.
Further, we just get to difficulty. Take the halting problem again - it's not *that* hard to figure out if any one single program can halt, it gets more difficult to take a class of programs, it gets even more difficult to do so with several classes - in fact it's not linear but exponensially harder.
Then, they just can't get to so many accents to test. Maybe it does a Kentucky accent perfect but fails on some minor inflection my East Tennessee accent has and was never tested. I don't know. Maybe they have solved this - I tried it out and even once I was able to change my speech patterns enough for it to mostly work I still found it no usefull. Thus I haven't checked it for a number of years.
The way the graphs stabilised in OCR stuff was really neat and the "unknowns" were very interesting problems and made perfect sense why they did (basically some patterns never would resolve to a single hash, they would flip between several states and one just had to be picked). I suspect that it has advanced, at least more patterns should have been tested and implemented.
I replied to you once already, but I also thought of another good example after I hit submit.
I'm from East Tennessee. My family has been here for a few hundred years (my family cemetary is traceable to the late 1700's, before that it is just moss covered rocks for headstones). For all but the last 50 years we were dirt poor (my grandfather on my mothers side literally lived in a cave for a few years after he ran away from his farm. Don't get me wrong, my parent's generation is relativly educated and my generation almost all has a Bachelors in something, a few even higher. Almost no parts of Tennessee are that way anymore, at least no more than any other state). As such I generally have a VERY strong southern accent. I have yet to find a voice recognition software package that handles this. I have to attempt to talk in the clipped north-eastern US accent - which is *really* hard to do for me. Ultimately I've given up on all of them - they just aren't that adaptable.
I wonder how well this handles different accents, or even languages. Would the slower drawl southerners use be seen as not interested? It wouldn't be the first time such a thing has happened.
Or, heaven forbid, you either have a name it autocorrects or send e-mail to someone it does.
In my last job the secretary that handled my HR section of stuff was named "Dorsey", it constantly changed her name to "Horsey" - and considering she was hands down the best secretary I've ever dealt with this was not a good thing. On my personal machines this was no big deal, I had the feature turned off, but if I ever used someone else's it tended to do so. I don't know how many of mine got through with "Horsey" on it but I suppose it happened quite often and not just with me. To top it off her last name was "Bottoms" so it happily changed her name to "Horsey Bottoms".
Also, being dyslexic, I depend on a spell checker to find where I screwed up for formal papers (e-mail, newsgroups, etc I just re-read and let the spelling/grammer stuff I can't catch go). While not ideal it's not something I can help - it's like asking an armless person to catch or a legless person to run a mile. Many times I screw up spelling WAY off from what I am thinking. With autocorrect I "wrote" some really funny and odd statements that would not have occured with it turned off. Seeing that in my last job I actually had some papers published in an ACM and an IEEE journal it was *extremely* embarassing to find one in the print version that made it past all of us. In a small or informal circulation it is amusing - I've had many a good laugh over mine and others mispellings and autocorrects, in a professional publication it is VERY embarrasing.
"IBM keyboards. Oh give it a rest. I have an old IBM keyboard and it's annoying. Takes a lot of pressure to hit a key and makes an excess amount of noise. Give me my nice modern keyboard any day."
And that one I partially agree.
There are people - like myself - who tend to hit the keys pretty hard. Right or wrong, it's the way I type and while I've tried to change I can't seem to (and yes, I've been doing this for many years, and no an repetitive stress injury has not happened, I type wierd anyway and it's not really that repetative - I'm known to actually cross my hands. I learned to type by long hours on a keyboard and type quite fast. See my sig for reasons why my spelling is terrible).
I've only had one keyboard stand up to it for more than a year. Amusingly enough it's an IBM, though not one of the older style of boards. For people who type similar to me (at least as far as hitting the keys) there are no keyboards that feel anywhere near as comfortable as the old IBM keyboards. Just as you find todays to be great, I find the older ones to be better. Taking the extra pressure is a *plus* for me.
Is it *that* much of a stretch to think that people who spend most of thier life at a keyboard know which one they prefer and if it is easily available? I'll buy that you prefer the newer ones so will you please understand that I greatly prefer the older ones (and also understand they are almost impossible to find)?
Old post, FWIW I finally got around to looking at my posts.
"forgive me if i misinterpreted what you meant."
I *think* you did. From a scientific point of view saying "There is no God" is as bad as "There is a God" - they are both strong positive statements based on, well, pretty much nothing (I would argue the there is a little flimsy evidence of God, though not necessarily a christian God, but then is part of why I consider myself to be religious also). What you wrote: "i do not believe in a god due to the paucity of evidence" seems to be the weak version. That is you will not believe there is a God until you have plenty of evidence. One case you know the answer, the other you don't. One has no place in science - the other is not only perfectly reasonable but is the correct scientific answer.
As I said, I don't really see religion and science as being in opposition. I see Athiesm as being as much faith based as Christianity. What you seem to describe is Agnostic (which I would declare not a religion or based on faith). As far as being a scientist you should never believe anything unless it is proven, too many people have believed negatives (that is, you can't do something or something doesn't exist) that are impossible to prove only to find it to be possible or to exist. Hell, we still even test perpetual motion machines - never know one may happen someday and that is about as close to a 100% accurate law as we can get. Nor should one get so attached to a theory that it become "correct", that is also faith based.
Now, don't take this too far either. I'm not proposing a system of non-beliefes or ideas. Just that, even with laws, if you want to base your whole world on the scientific principles you should use pretty much no absoultes and strive for truth - not dogma (religious or scientific). But obviously we have some theories and laws that seem to do a bang up job of explaining what is going on. Unless you can prove there is no God you should be open - even if highly skeptical - to the existence of one. Nor should you need any more proof for that than you would for, say, evolution.
Also, even should we be able to conclusivly prove that God exist, created the universe, and is all powerful all know then science should *still* be agnostic.
While this is a joke, I would have given it an "insightful" mod.
My experience, on both sides of the isle (both as a manager and as a "grunt" - though as a different profession in each instance), has been that employees always feel underrated and what they want is overrated. Employers have always underrated thier employees and felt they over rated them.
Never really understood that - never understood why both sides can't seem to see the other. You find the ocassional person that does, even the occasional entire company that does see it right (and they are a great pleasure to work for or manage), but it very very rarely seems to happen.
I've always wondered if it isn't some type of "chicken vs egg" argument - do companies do it because employees want to much? Do employees do it because employers want to give to little? I would say "yes" to both and wonder which happened first?
And, of course, both sides *always* feel they are justified and take the above as being good on them. Chances are that if you think your employer is screwing you - you aren't worth what you think. Chances are if you think you are great to your employees and they are ungrateful you are screwing them. My personal experience places both of these at a 90+ percentile point - there are people being screwed and there are employers who bend over backwards but they are few and far between. To note, you will not make what you did during the dot-com bubble (and hence the bubble) and a software engineer is more valuable than a ditch digger (try and get the ditch digger to write software).
Slashdot Mirror
That's one of the problems - your impression was wrong. The patriot act did very little in the way of expanding powers. All you have to do is look to those that want to exand those powers - they know it did nothing other than reduce the amount of paperwork by a little.
It's too late, for the most part, to complain. It's powers they have had for years as information was entered into computers - there is no reason to think that they can't do what you can. In fact, it is safe to assume they have easy access to information and systems you do not, even decades ahead.
Free information tends to be, well, free. It doesn't become suddenly secret if the FBI or CIA tries to access it. It's like free speech, if you want that then you have to put up with the KKK and other hate groups. You can try and legislate around it but it will not work, any more than other legislative only restrictions will.
None of those are free lunches either.
Largescale wind will take large amounts of energy out of the atmosphere, enough so that we do not really know the consequences of that actions. Plus it's simply not practicle in large swatches of the country. Same with the tidal generators being put out now (both are using the energy from moving fluids and have very similar problems). As a suppliment great, enough to power the whole country and you will see some MAJOR issues.
Hydroelectric - probably one of the best as far as I know - still disrupts the rivers they are built on - again the energy removed for electricity has to come from someplace. Depending on the river it can hurt local wildlife (it can also help it). Not to mention needing a large enough river restricts it's usage.
With solar the by-products of creating the cells is pretty nasty, large scale production would be quite bad. And that is ignoring the costs of when the plates must be replaced - they are not easily disposed of safely. There are also times of the year in many places it can not supply enough power. We can see this in some places in california - the power grid there can take excess power from a house and pay you for it. Many people have *at the end of the year* a net surplus and the power company pays them. "at the end of the year" is important because a few months of the year the have to take from the grid - without the constant power source they would be without from a few months (and you can't simply have these power plants go on/off-line like that).
Geothermal, the holy grail of alternate fuel sources when I was young. It offered everything, didn't disrupt the environment by removel of energy and no green house gasses. Unfortunatly it produces radon gas, hydrogen sulfide, CO2, methane, and ammonia. Which, for the vast majority of people - are much worse. Still, even today, it takes finding a engineer or chemist that isn't focused on greenhouse gasses to talk about that, but that's why it was dropped in the 90's as the save all. In fact, as far as killing living things and the environment it is one of the absolute worst and is why it is typically used only as a last resort.
Though, by far, the best is atomic - which apparently doesn't make your list, though I guess the elipses may have contained it. While it creates some nasty stuff much of that is now used in other fields as useful materials (especially the highly radioactive stuff).
In the end - all of them take energy from someplace and turn it into energy we can use, you can not get around this. This process will always loss some, and will always have some pollutants, again something you can not get around. Some, like solar, work great in some situations and when used sparingly but do not scale well at all (both in terms of number of people supplied and year round power supply). That's not to say coal or oil is great by any means, or that the people in the solar example are doing bad - but they aren't really very clean either. We are not going to start living in pristine clean environment from switching to them and it doesn't do any good to ignore what those other will cause (it's what got us into a lot of the mess we are in today). It's good to do what you can, but do so realistically.
"You can't live without exploiting animals.
A classic argument. "I can't be perfect, so I might as well not even try to be better." I've never been a fan of it, personally."
If something is impossible I would argue that trying to legislate and force people to do it is kinda, well, stupid since it can not be done. But I suppose to some that might be OK, though I can not see how. Nor did I ever say or imply "not try" - you are making a straw man argument at the last part. More "Since it can not be perfect do not try and force perfection".
"True - mostly. There are no plant sources of B12. Luckily, you can get it from fungi and bacteria. Beer is a pretty decent source."
So, if it's single celled you can kill and torture all you want, what about 10 cells, 15, 100 - where are you going to draw the line? And is it logical or just arbitrary? If arbitrary why do you want to force it on me (and, if so, do you complain about other people trying to enforce arbitrary ideas)?
"PETA runs kill animal shelters.
True, yes. Sad, yes. I'm not aware of them lying about it."
They denied it for quite a while and thier shelters - especially the one in the recent lawsuit, commercialed themselfs as such. If I say "No-kill shelter" but, well, kill them in a few weeks time I would call that a lie.
"Fact of the matter is, the idea of a "no-kill" animal shelter is a bit of a myth."
Fact is, they exist all over the place. Several in where I live (and it is by no means a rich area) have had several for decades. A group that takes in the money PETA does can do much better than a local Podunct Tennessee shelter. But, again, you make excuses for when you (or in this case PETA - I do not know if you are a member) do things that you protest others doing.
"I don't have any access to veterinary research journals or journal indexes,"
Sure you do. Not only do you have the internet but I bet there is at least a junior college near you that has one. Plus it doesn't take a genious to figure out that a CARNIVORE doesn't do so well on a vegan diet. But you may even like PETA's "research" as it is "I asked my friends and they said "much more healthy than regular dogs and cats"".
"I've googled for this, too, and I'll keep googling, but I'm turning up a blank."
Well, I can be of help! At least one was easy to find, "peta" and "fraud" had it in the top 10 results. Since it only takes one to show they are willing and capable of doing it I'm stopping there.
here, here is the settlement. Of course, you can claim (as they do) that the settlement doesn't prove it and they would have won, they just didn't feel like it (even they realised that winning this in a court of law would have been great and they have plenty of donations to pay for it).
Lets see - where to begin? I'll keep this short, I;ve had this type of conversation many times and it doesn't really matter. You already have the facts and choose to ignore them.
First off, veganism in general. You can't live without exploiting animals. For instance, vitamin b-12 is from an animal product - it can not be synthesized and the amounts found in some vegatables are not abosrbable by your body.
PETA specific. PETA run kill animal shelters. If you don't like that source use google - it's simply the first link. Check out PETA's campaign to make Dogs and Cats into vegans, then look at any scientific study on the planet about it. In thier campaign against fisherman most of thier "facts" are grossly incorrect (such as catching them kills them from massive wounds in their mouths). They have been caught, prosecuted, and convicted several times being the people abusing the animals in the industry they are doing an "expose" on because they can't find people who are cruel.
I suppose in many cases they could be so stupid or so blinded by thier idealology that they are simply wrong, but some are simply total lies. It's arguable which is worse though.
Of course feel free to dismiss this as all right wing propaganda aimed at the loving people of PETA. Us Sheople will never notice things like that anyway (not to mention they may be fake, but they are pretty much accurate, it has to be so otherwise people wouldn't think that of them), we are just tools of the state who is soooo much worse.
My experience is with my relatives and a few people my parents have as friends, but:
"but calves born on dairy farms are taken from their mothers when they are just 1 day old and fed milk replacers (including cattle blood) so that humans can have the milk instead.(1,2)"
None I know do this, though I am sure you can find people that do anything. Cows are VERY expensive and the above is not a real good plan. The little bit of cows milk lost is MUCH more than made up in living, breathing, healthy, cows producing milk. Common sense would tell you that.
"Female cows are artificially inseminated shortly after their first birthdays.(3) After giving birth, they lactate for 10 months, then they are re-inseminated, and the cycle starts again. Some spend their entire lives standing on concrete floors; others are crammed into massive mud lots. Cows have a lifespan of about 25 years and can produce milk for eight or nine years, but the stress caused by factory-farm conditions leads to disease, lameness, and reproductive problems that render cows worthless to the dairy industry by the time they are 4 or 5 years old, at which time they are sent to the slaughterhouse.(4,5)"
Again - I know of maybe 15 fairly large dairy farms - none whatsoever does this. I'm sure there are some that do, I suspect you can even find some that do even worse (you can still find meat processing facilities that beat the cows to death), but that is an exception not the rule. Dairy cattle last until they quit producing milk, then they go for dog food and other low grade products (dairy cattle generally taste bad and are tough). They are generally farly old - if you want to get up in a bunch about cattle being killed young go to the beef industry. Hell, the guy who used to work for my parents (land surveyors) kept two or three cattle, never bred them, and milked them daily. They have been bred to do this and if they are not milked they devolop infections.
"Although these animals would naturally make only enough milk to meet the needs of their calves (around 16 pounds a day), genetic manipulation, antibiotics, and hormones are used to force each cow to produce more than 18,000 pounds of milk a year (an average of 50 pounds a day)."
Cows were bred to do this long ago - you can purchase organic milk that is made in nearly those quantities that do not use them. Though I do not like the use of the hormones and chemicals (I ingest them also), a little bit of education instead of propaganda would be useful.
"(8,9) Cows are also fed unnatural, high-protein diets, which include dead chickens, pigs, and other animals, because their natural diet of grass would not provide the nutrients necessary for them to produce the massive amounts of milk required by the industry.(10)"
Not any longer, illegal in most industrialised countries since tha mad cow disease was discovered in the early to mid 90's. Hopefully PETA is a little more up to date than that...
"Clearly if the cows natural breeding life is cut from 8-9 years to half that, then the cow is undergoing some very extraordinary stress and adverse conditions. "
Clearly so, if it were true. However, should you simply go tour a local diary farm (many will allow it, in fact encourage it) you will see that most of what you quoted is totally incorrect for the vast majority of dairy farms. It's like accusing the entire computer industry of stuff because SGI did some crappy stuff 15 years ago.
And, lastly, one of the points I was thinking is that the system being hawked in the post *precludes* nearly all of this type of treatment. Thus, how do they cope with it - apparently put on blinders and keep on keeping on is the answer.
My immediate thoughts were fairly politial, I wondered how this would fit in with the PETA crowd who thinks that cows hate what is happeneing while being milked.
My next question was what you asked. I googled a bit, the system seemed kinda interesting.
From looking around the web (google search on "Voluntary Milking System") it seems that overall milk production is increased, though it is not clear in the texts if that is per cow or over all because of increased effenciency and less spoilage, nor was the average increase given as a number. These systems also automatically check the milk for problems (certain bacteria and blood) and automatically divert the spoiled milk - something that is apparently a Big Thing to the farmers.
The other large savings is that the farmer no longer has to manually set the milking devices on the cows. According to several articles the time spent can be as much as half a day of labor to milk cows but with these systems pretty much nothing unless the machines need repair.
Not really being much of a farmer I can't seperate hype from reality too good on this, but several of the articles were from agriculture departments from universities and seemed fairly balanced. Usually the big down side was in that the systems are fairly complicated to set up and maintain and do not detect/recover from errors in the placement of the teat cups (apparently the will rarely catch one off center - but the articles claim that it isn't a problem unless it's consistently wrong, such as due to a deformation on the cow).
Though I always thought that Linux seemed a perfect match for farmers - at least the ones I know it fits thier idealology fairly well.
We had rats move in a quite a few years back under our porch. They borrowed into the subfloor of our house, they were eating the seed we feed the wild birds. My mother, not wanting to stop feeding them (she had some notion that they would die without her feeding them -uhh) we had to find another solution. Being hunters and avid target shooter we decided to simply kill them. We set up the bird feeders such that we had a good shooting area at the rats and scouted thier habits to get them when they were feeding (much the same thing we do with deer and such).
We killed well over 30 of the things. At first they simply waltz out to the feeder and we pegged them with the pellet gun. After a while they knew what the noise of the window opening meant so we had to round the animals up 30-45 minutes before feeding time and open the window. They then figured out the lighting so we learned to shoot in our noral lighting (none in that room). They then figured out where the killing lanes were - itwas kinda funny. You could see them walk right up to the line - almost to the inch - and prepare for the run. In one go get one seed. Unfortunatly for them we are good shots and small running targets are fun - still killed them. Changing food sources was not an option - nothing else around here to eat and they didn't seem to take the hint to move.
But, even with a high death rate - after the first month nearly all we killed were small young ones - we still could not remove them. They figured out our traps and avoided them and made it as hard as possible to kill them. We had to learn thier habits, restrict thier food sources to only a certain ones, practice shooting to be accurate enough, and specifically develope hunting strategies for them - in short everything we do for game animals. The thing that finally got them was nature - a 6 foot long black snake decided under our porch (same place as the rats) was a good place to live. Unfortunatly the neigbors killed the snake as a "nasty evil thing" a few months later and kill every snake they find - and they still have rats that refuse to leave thier house - which I say serves them right.
Not to mention that even if they are rural that doesn't necessarily mean uneducated. Maybe not "worldly" or familiar with pop culture and current slang, but that isn't raelly education.
I have a very small hadful of relatives that have no electricity and no running water. They live in the mountains of East Tennessee (Appalachia). But, they are far from uneducated. While they are not too up on modern stuff - theater, pop culture, music, and generally "new" stuff I would bet on them for reading, math, and history over the average "educated" person in any western world (not the top, but the average). It may not be hard to beat me (see my sig), but they are quite good at the basics and thier idea of basics are higher than the vast majority of high schools.
All of them have homemade generators, water purification systems, a good personal library (no TV means lots of reading), and working vehicles (including farming stuff) that they totally maintain themselves. They have a pretty good understanding of biology and botany - better than quite a few "educated" people I've known. In short, they are humans - just as smart as anyone else just not educated in the same way we are. In fact, given that they do not have access to alot of our non-brain usage past times they seem to be beter adaptable. They understand advanced Comp Sci algorithms MUCH faster than my other non-CS friends, they find uses for them that would never occur to me, and many other things. They interact with the "modern" world quite a bit - a few of them electricity is just a few hunderd yards away (the terrain precludes them from getting it though), they are not backwards. If you ever met them you wouldn't know, other than they don't really know much about survivor, Microsoft, or other popular culture bits. However they are very knowledgable about things that are covered in periodicals, newspapers, and other written material - much more than the standard American.
I have little to no experience with rural Africans, in high school I had a friend from Ghana and in college a person from Nigeria - both were amongst the most intelligent and educated I've ever known. But, given that humans tend to be, well, humans, I would expect that the vast majority are fairly intelligent and not far from my relatives. Maybe not educated from a perspective of a city person, but then in many ways better than those from the city (just as a country person wouldn't get along in a city, the city person doesn't really get along in the country either - they are just different).
One of the great things about this type of progress is that it always leads to removal of repressive govts (the bad news is that it has pretty much always been bloody and long).
Essentially they require an uneducated, uninformed populace for control. They need an educated informed populace to move forward. They are trying the impossible right now - to have them educated and informed about 85% of the world and totally ingorant of the rest. It doesn't work - you notice when you aren't allowed to talk about things and an educated populace can very accuratly guess what they are being censored from.
China, as is, is something of a threat to the free world. It has the man power to be a real bitch if they wanted too - enough that if they felt like WWIII they could do so (and if the govt sees it as that with a chance to win or definatly die they could even try it).
A fairly free china will be great for the world - lots of manpower and resources coming to market. Just imagine a free prosperous China, US, britain, and EU working together (really together, not just lip service) in space exploration or heck, pretty much anything. There are basically four great regions - the US, Europe, Old russia, and china (to be a "great region" you need both population and resources - places like South America lack the manpower and Africa lacks much of the resources - though that could change over time) - between them you have the vast majority of manpower and resources. If they could ever all be free, educated, and pretty much on the same page it's hard to imagine what we could do. I don't know if that is possible in my lifetime, but the current chinese govt falling and them and old russia rebuilding is pretty much what is needed.
"esus christ, plenty of the world has equal or better free speech laws than the US - New Zealand, Australia, most of Europe.
Here in NZ, we didn't require the Black Eyed Peas to rename their song "Don't Phunk With my Heart", we don't have a corronary when a breast is exposed on TV (I mean, for fuck's sake!). We have adverts using sware words and lewd humour that wouldn't be played in the US. Actually, the Black Eyed Peas were complaining how conservative the US is in comparison to places like NZ when they were here recently."
Actually most of that is social pressure - very different from legal freedom of speech. Each of those countries can be shown to have, at least a few, more legal limits to speech (say Nazi propagande in most of the EU) even if they have less socail pressure. Some is the FCC and really should not happen (social pressure is enough), but then it's no more erstrictive than the places you mentioned - just restriction in different places.
Social pressure is as much free speech as not applying social pressure. You can't tell me I *have* to listen or watch something and call it free speech. that is protected just as much as you right to express it. Frredom of speech isn't the idea that you will be heard without any consequences - it's that the govt will not restrict what you say.
Myself, I would be more worried about handing regulatory authority over to places that have no problem legally restricting speech than places that nearly all speech is legal but has social pressure to limit thierselfs. Lets face it, ICANN is about hands off as one can get - the arguments have so far not been that they are too restrictive (how can they be - they have almost no restrictions) so you can assume that the powers that be are either jealous of the power or wish to regulate it. Given the rhetoric I suspect that regulation is the area - especially given their threats and complaints.
In my experience it depends greatly on the type of article - the less "concrete" the worse it is (in the sense of mathematics being very concrete and "is this author good" being not very concrete). Politically charged - not even remotely useful - not even as a starting point.
But then, I would say that is to be expected. In a lot of areas the "pro" people care enough to police it and pretty much control it. The "anti" people don't really think about it much but may from time to time edit on it (and sometimes in a destructive way), but it's not common. Especially given some subjects are very soft, or subjective, and the people feel VERY strongly about thier subject this can lead to a HUGE skew that peer reviewed papers are usually weed out. Technical stuff tends to be correct or wrong - whether I'm a gun nut, don't care one way or another, or think all guns are evil it doesn't change when a quicksort is better than a bubble sort - yet that would really color my views on firearms.
Take the some of the vegan entries, some of the stuff said in there has been, well, idiotic. It may stay for a while, be edited out and back in many times, but rarely is some of the more idiotic things left out for long. Essentially those that care enough to look at it much are mostly vegan, usually not just "vegan" but politically so also (I mean to differentiate between people who are simply vegan and ones who wish to push it on others regardles of any facts). I read it from time to time just for laughs - things like vegans never get sick, cures asthma, diabetes, heart disease, live for well over a hundred years, make you dog/cat a vegan, etc etc. But then, if you read it over time it's obvious which ones because they change quite frequently - one day it may be full of nutso and a few hours later actually a good take on veganism.
But then, you need to do that filtering on any source too - just that you are more likely to be burned on the wikipedia than a full peer reviewd academic article.
"Hmm..Just CURIOUS, but why is it then the majority of US editorials, writers and commentators take tooo much care to be 'politically correct'?"
Thier choice.
"Freedom must mean freedom from every kind of oppression right?"
No, where did you ever come up with that idea?
"One sentence like say, "ISLAM is NOT a religion of Peace, rather it is a Hatemongering, terrorist breeding religion bent upon bringing the whole world under its tyranny""
Move down here to Jesusland, I assure you that the above will not only *not* be looked at and shunned but wonder why you are stating the "obvious". That is the consequences of "free speech".
There has always been, and always will be, social pressure. Humans are social creatures. That is VERY different from official govt regulations. It isn't illegal to run down the street yelling "All women are cunts who deserve to be beaten everyday of thier lives and thier faces mutilated" - you will not go to jail at all. That will pretty much always have a very severe social stigma attached to it (and if you find someplace that says "Yea - so? Got something we don't know" please tell me so we can go blow it off the face of this planet).
It is as much my "free speech" to not purchase, or to not listen, to your stuff because you think is a load of rubbish as it is free speech for you to say that. Free speech means that if we begin to legally regulate it then it's wrong. It has never, and will never, mean that you can say/do anything and have no consequences for your actions. In fact, that idea intrudes on *my* freedom to think said person is an ass and not listen to them.
You can have "freedom of speech" but you will never have "freedom from speech" - everything you say and do is used by your peers (society) to make judgements on you. No law, no movement, no nothing is ever going to change that. I'm sure that there are things that other people can say that your opinion of them drops quite a few notches. Not only that but you would have to force people to not think or act in certain ways in order to be free (and is thus, not possible).
The great thing is that in places that have freedoms you can move around and find someplace that pretty much believes as you do. Like guns, Jesus, killing animals, chewing tobacco, and think the president is great? There are many places in the US like that. Like state run healthcare, community oneness, nature/science worship, socially relativist, and think the president ought to be at the bottom of the ocean - you can live there also. Great thing about legal freedom - as long as you don't try and impose much on everyone else we can all find places that we fit in socially, though it may not be in the geographical region you want. Try that in North Korea.
You are making the mistake many do in looking at bias - there doesn't *have* to be a coordinated effort for what the original article wrote to be true. In fact it's very very rare and usually not productive/widespread for it to be coordinated. It's too transparent.
You need look no further than slashdot - it's moderation tends to be heavily biased in many topics. I can assure you (and a little looking around will confirm it if you do not already know) that there is no controlling entity that seeks to impliment this bias. Yet there is still a VERY strong bias for pretty much similar reasons through many of slashdots readers.
It's like an ant colony where there is no "hive mind" to control things. Each participant does it's thing and the whole ends up being something specific.
It can be that a very few want this and hire people who are like minded (that is usually self sustaining - you usually only hire people you think are correct). It may be that the nature of the job pushes people who think that way into the field. It may be just random chance that one day went over the saturation point - it could have went anyway and just chose that one. There are many other explaination than "Grand conspiracy" - group think happens all the time with no controlling authority or grand conspiracy.
Personally I think the original authors are correct. At least in my experiance (in real life and when I was in the university) 3/4 (and note the 3/4 - there were some very nice very broadly educated people there also) of the humanties distrusted science and journalist students were mostly humanaties people (rare person who is really interested in science but chooses to do non-science for a living - nature of the job chooses people who think that way). If they believe that to be reality, thier editors believe that to be reality, then it's just the nature of the beast.
Just as there is no grand conspiracy to make science minded people think and write that the "Earth is 4000 years old people" are crazy (and our writings are VERY biased against them because we think they are, at best, wrong), so too does the average journalist do that. That's why if you want news about science you need to look to specialised journalist - not the times, cnn, fox, abc, nbc, or whatever general news rag (and don't look at a science journal for general news - they are usually pretty poor at it).
I agree, that's how it is done. Lots of times that produces pretty good results, sometimes less than stellar.
One of the things they had us do in college, and it is interesting IMO, is to take a sport you know nothing about and observe it. Try to formulate the rules of game based on observation (that is, create the model). Then look the actual rules up and compare them.
It's not a perfect experiment - there are things common amongst nearly all games that we simply just know, but it was interesting how correct you would normally get some things and how wrong others (this is even more true because we *do* have correct preconcieved notions, it gets worse when going blind into something). It's also interesting how you can be correct and wrong at the same time - accuratly predict the outcome but for totally incorrect reasons. And, in some sense, it raises the question of if it really matters if the path to get to the correct point is wrong. If you are correct 100% of the time that it is "pass interference" (in American Football) does it matter that you definition of "pass interference" is wrong?
In really really complicated scenarios I always wonder which side is thier model on (though, of course, it's a sliding scale not just an absolute two sides). Especially given the magnitude that some of the models will evnetually have in our lifes.
Of course, this is what makes these fields so interesting to me, the combination of "right or wrong" with the amount of "feel" and "intuition" in the system.
"I think nobody expected they'd actually do that. And now they are, and so the rallying cry has changed."
Stuff like that is a good test to see if what people say they want are really what they want. Obviously what they said they wanted wasn't really what they wanted (in my defense, I said the same thing back then, and am quite happy with going after the downloaders - though I still think the whole thing is a waste of money and hurting them, that's thier right to make legal/ethical bad business decisions. And, of course, some of thier tactics still are not legal/ethical).
To note, most conservatives that are screaming "states rights" on abortion and euthenasia don't want states rights, they want them abolished. See the Schiavo case - that's what happens when it moves back into the states (while I didn't like the outcome, I want states rights and support the decision, happy to live in an area that doesn't allow it and if you are happy in one that does - great). Most gay marriage activists don't care about equal rights - abolishing marriage and creating "civil unions" does just that, yet is unacceptable. They want not only acceptance but approval (nothing wrong with that, be upfront about it. Personally could care less about the issue. Also, there are gay couples who just want the civil rights and are happy if they were to get them - they could care less if others approve or like thier lifestyle).
It's a good internal test - think about what you say you want and start making suggestions that meet it and see if they are all good. If not, then why not? I found when I started doing that that there were many areas that what I thought/said I wanted was not really what I wanted. Sometimes a buzzword (in my case, states rights) moved into ban outright, in others I really supported states rights. It was personally interesting where I shifted (it's like free speech - gotta support the KKK, Nazis, pacifist, warmongers, etc and others right to spew thier crap if you really want free speech). I suppose there are still places I do it, but I try my best not too.
Actually, drop the XML and SMS and do a cell phone instead and you have pretty good idea. Don't know if it has been done or even if it could be legal, I hate my cell phone and try to know as little about them as possible (about the only technology I could say that about - I hate the expectation that I'm available 24/7) so maybe it's been done.
Hey, make it iTunes compatable and share with an iPod and you really have a winner.
Better get a patent quick though....
I see you ignored the electricity stuff - too hard to make fun of huh? It was a discussion I had with the researchers, you can believe it or not, that is why I gave two examples - the second one being well known enough I assume that a geek wouldn't need a link to know about it.
Lets see:
"SLASHDOT HEADLINE: People pick up two strand of straw with rock!" (look, it even includes a spelling/grammer mistake".
One should of held the presses for that one, it was big. Bu then, slashdot isn't the presses either.
"Wow, in science, a proof-based arena, you are coming at me with "maybe", "who knows", "what if", and asking me to turn in my geek card? "
No, I asked you to turn your geek card in because you have no vision or ability to think outside the obvious headline. Learn to read. If you don't think that type of thinking has a place in science you *really* are not involved with research at all, nor should you be.
"And you point to your "extrapolation" of going from centimeters to...whoa "KILOMETERS!!" as being a "better thinker"?"
Yes, I can envision where something like this can make an inpact, considering such "worthless" stuff has before. I highly suspect that, at this moment, those researchers are trying to figure out if they can do such a thing at this moment. That's why vision and forward thinking are important and this is news.
"Besides the fact that in denouncing my geekdom you did not present an idea related to this that point to you being a "better thinker", you base it off of nothing."
I pointed out that people who think like you do (ar at least the way you said) are not geeks, you seem to lack the ability to think beyond the obvious. I then pointed out that it is entirely reasonable to that "worthless" discoveries can be very worthwhile, I sued two examples one that you ignored. I suppose because it didn't fit with what you wanted to argue. Again, you seem to fail at simple logic and reading, unable to overcome your own prejudices.
Plus,you can't have been reading slashdot all that long,, or even know what it is about, if you think that only major ground breaking stories get posted. ones the editors find "neat" have always been here, and for many many people algae carrying a load is pretty neat.
Too bad the geek card you took back was fake, I guess the little foil sticky star on it fits though, that's what they gave the special ed students back when I was in school.
" Although, it would have been nice to see some explanation of how he got from showers to aircraft."
I'm a computer scientist, I didn't understand it then, nor do I now. I havn't the foggiest how a jet engine works. I knew the research group, so that's kinda hard to link to a discussion I had with them during lunch. But I can understand "fluid dynamics" and "Very different from what we thought".
That's why I also included the thing on electricity - I assumed that people could at least understand them, alas the original poster decided to ignore that one also.
That's a terrible attitude. You claim to be a geek but can't see anything other than a direct simple application? Please turn in your geek card, geeks need ot be better thinkers than that.
Many, if not most, "worthless" discoveries are very worth while. Say, for instance one that happened around me a few years back, why does your shower curtain billow inward in a shower? Models at the time, all of them, showed it should go the other way (one would think that the steam would expand pushing it out, and air isn't flowing creating a low pressure area to push it inward). They spent millions and figured out why - a waste? Who cares? Well, this little tidbit of understanding saved *billions* in jet fuel cost and will continue to accrue for many years - is that "worthless". Not to mention that quite a few mysteries, some fairly major, were solved in fluid dynamics from this. This study was blasted on the news and some govt watchdog places on waste.
The article presented even mentions that the understanding of thier "motors" will most likely revolutionalise thier field. What if this results in us learning how to go further than centimeters, say meters or kilomoters?
Would you say to the people who rubbed amber against fur and use it to pick up a few peices of straw (and those that decided to study that) "So, I can pick up more than that with my hands" - yet that *directly* lead to how to produce electricity - which I am sure you consider fairly important today.
Ok, old post I'm replying too so I don't expect it to be read.
At one time in the past I was partially interested in handwriting reconition software (OCR) stuff. I assume that speech recognition is similar - at least it would seem it should be that way to me. And, keep in mind, I'm not anywhere near an expert, take this as a "typical" slashdot post - I read a book on something similar 10 years ago.
I think that there has to be some foreknowledge in there. Typically having a truly expansive application is not only difficult, but may be impossible. Take a well known example, the halting problem. I can create a program that takes most programs and thier inputs and figures out if it terminates, however it is *impssible* to make one that takes an arbitrary program and does so. My limited knowledge of this type of recognition leads me to believe this is the case.
Further, we just get to difficulty. Take the halting problem again - it's not *that* hard to figure out if any one single program can halt, it gets more difficult to take a class of programs, it gets even more difficult to do so with several classes - in fact it's not linear but exponensially harder.
Then, they just can't get to so many accents to test. Maybe it does a Kentucky accent perfect but fails on some minor inflection my East Tennessee accent has and was never tested. I don't know. Maybe they have solved this - I tried it out and even once I was able to change my speech patterns enough for it to mostly work I still found it no usefull. Thus I haven't checked it for a number of years.
The way the graphs stabilised in OCR stuff was really neat and the "unknowns" were very interesting problems and made perfect sense why they did (basically some patterns never would resolve to a single hash, they would flip between several states and one just had to be picked). I suspect that it has advanced, at least more patterns should have been tested and implemented.
I replied to you once already, but I also thought of another good example after I hit submit.
I'm from East Tennessee. My family has been here for a few hundred years (my family cemetary is traceable to the late 1700's, before that it is just moss covered rocks for headstones). For all but the last 50 years we were dirt poor (my grandfather on my mothers side literally lived in a cave for a few years after he ran away from his farm. Don't get me wrong, my parent's generation is relativly educated and my generation almost all has a Bachelors in something, a few even higher. Almost no parts of Tennessee are that way anymore, at least no more than any other state). As such I generally have a VERY strong southern accent. I have yet to find a voice recognition software package that handles this. I have to attempt to talk in the clipped north-eastern US accent - which is *really* hard to do for me. Ultimately I've given up on all of them - they just aren't that adaptable.
I wonder how well this handles different accents, or even languages. Would the slower drawl southerners use be seen as not interested? It wouldn't be the first time such a thing has happened.
Or, heaven forbid, you either have a name it autocorrects or send e-mail to someone it does.
In my last job the secretary that handled my HR section of stuff was named "Dorsey", it constantly changed her name to "Horsey" - and considering she was hands down the best secretary I've ever dealt with this was not a good thing. On my personal machines this was no big deal, I had the feature turned off, but if I ever used someone else's it tended to do so. I don't know how many of mine got through with "Horsey" on it but I suppose it happened quite often and not just with me. To top it off her last name was "Bottoms" so it happily changed her name to "Horsey Bottoms".
Also, being dyslexic, I depend on a spell checker to find where I screwed up for formal papers (e-mail, newsgroups, etc I just re-read and let the spelling/grammer stuff I can't catch go). While not ideal it's not something I can help - it's like asking an armless person to catch or a legless person to run a mile. Many times I screw up spelling WAY off from what I am thinking. With autocorrect I "wrote" some really funny and odd statements that would not have occured with it turned off. Seeing that in my last job I actually had some papers published in an ACM and an IEEE journal it was *extremely* embarassing to find one in the print version that made it past all of us. In a small or informal circulation it is amusing - I've had many a good laugh over mine and others mispellings and autocorrects, in a professional publication it is VERY embarrasing.
I agree with every point but one:
"IBM keyboards. Oh give it a rest. I have an old IBM keyboard and it's annoying. Takes a lot of pressure to hit a key and makes an excess amount of noise. Give me my nice modern keyboard any day."
And that one I partially agree.
There are people - like myself - who tend to hit the keys pretty hard. Right or wrong, it's the way I type and while I've tried to change I can't seem to (and yes, I've been doing this for many years, and no an repetitive stress injury has not happened, I type wierd anyway and it's not really that repetative - I'm known to actually cross my hands. I learned to type by long hours on a keyboard and type quite fast. See my sig for reasons why my spelling is terrible).
I've only had one keyboard stand up to it for more than a year. Amusingly enough it's an IBM, though not one of the older style of boards. For people who type similar to me (at least as far as hitting the keys) there are no keyboards that feel anywhere near as comfortable as the old IBM keyboards. Just as you find todays to be great, I find the older ones to be better. Taking the extra pressure is a *plus* for me.
Is it *that* much of a stretch to think that people who spend most of thier life at a keyboard know which one they prefer and if it is easily available? I'll buy that you prefer the newer ones so will you please understand that I greatly prefer the older ones (and also understand they are almost impossible to find)?
Old post, FWIW I finally got around to looking at my posts.
"forgive me if i misinterpreted what you meant."
I *think* you did. From a scientific point of view saying "There is no God" is as bad as "There is a God" - they are both strong positive statements based on, well, pretty much nothing (I would argue the there is a little flimsy evidence of God, though not necessarily a christian God, but then is part of why I consider myself to be religious also). What you wrote: "i do not believe in a god due to the paucity of evidence" seems to be the weak version. That is you will not believe there is a God until you have plenty of evidence. One case you know the answer, the other you don't. One has no place in science - the other is not only perfectly reasonable but is the correct scientific answer.
As I said, I don't really see religion and science as being in opposition. I see Athiesm as being as much faith based as Christianity. What you seem to describe is Agnostic (which I would declare not a religion or based on faith). As far as being a scientist you should never believe anything unless it is proven, too many people have believed negatives (that is, you can't do something or something doesn't exist) that are impossible to prove only to find it to be possible or to exist. Hell, we still even test perpetual motion machines - never know one may happen someday and that is about as close to a 100% accurate law as we can get. Nor should one get so attached to a theory that it become "correct", that is also faith based.
Now, don't take this too far either. I'm not proposing a system of non-beliefes or ideas. Just that, even with laws, if you want to base your whole world on the scientific principles you should use pretty much no absoultes and strive for truth - not dogma (religious or scientific). But obviously we have some theories and laws that seem to do a bang up job of explaining what is going on. Unless you can prove there is no God you should be open - even if highly skeptical - to the existence of one. Nor should you need any more proof for that than you would for, say, evolution.
Also, even should we be able to conclusivly prove that God exist, created the universe, and is all powerful all know then science should *still* be agnostic.
While this is a joke, I would have given it an "insightful" mod.
My experience, on both sides of the isle (both as a manager and as a "grunt" - though as a different profession in each instance), has been that employees always feel underrated and what they want is overrated. Employers have always underrated thier employees and felt they over rated them.
Never really understood that - never understood why both sides can't seem to see the other. You find the ocassional person that does, even the occasional entire company that does see it right (and they are a great pleasure to work for or manage), but it very very rarely seems to happen.
I've always wondered if it isn't some type of "chicken vs egg" argument - do companies do it because employees want to much? Do employees do it because employers want to give to little? I would say "yes" to both and wonder which happened first?
And, of course, both sides *always* feel they are justified and take the above as being good on them. Chances are that if you think your employer is screwing you - you aren't worth what you think. Chances are if you think you are great to your employees and they are ungrateful you are screwing them. My personal experience places both of these at a 90+ percentile point - there are people being screwed and there are employers who bend over backwards but they are few and far between. To note, you will not make what you did during the dot-com bubble (and hence the bubble) and a software engineer is more valuable than a ditch digger (try and get the ditch digger to write software).