Noisless public: Outlaw music and blaring televisions in stores, restaurants, businesses, etc. Have bluetooth connectivity for anyone who wants to hear what you put on the TV or radio. Small headsets or dual bluetooth
Customizable interfaces: I want to be able to customize every interface I interact with: my PC, my cell phone, and my damned cable television guide screen. Move this, reshape that, change functionality like so, make a new button, etc. I also want to take these changes with me on a memory chip and be able to install them anywhere I go on whatever devices I use.
Automated home: This has been rehashed for decades, but I want it now. I want to have a home built that has the lights, doors, AC/heat, appliances, water, etc. able to be manipulated without walking over to a set of controls. Voice control is good, but better and listed below is my favorite idea.
Somatic interface: I want to be able to move my hand and change my AC temperature from the dinner table. Or to roll the windows down in my car without reaching for a button. A set of somatic controls activated through hand/body gestures would be like having an implanted mouse. Combine with "Customizable interfaces" from above and you really start to have some fun. Certain movements combined with certain areas of a home could trigger different things like turning on and off lights, opening and closing doors, setting the home on "power save mode", or even starting the coffee maker.
I think you underestimate the proponents in Christianity that believe in the doctrine of Free Grace, or something similar. Many evangelicals believe in this as opposed to the calvanist doctrine of perseverance of the saints.
You may have heard of "faith alone in Christ alone," or you may not have. However, the Biblical underpinnings are sound. Catholics, irrespective of their ascendancy in sheer numbers, do not have firm ground to stand on when arguing theology from a purely orthodox standpoint. Whether or not a church teaches a doctrine or not is irrelevant. Do the scriptures speak to its relevance, for me, is the only test.
Some will argue against "faith alone in christ alone" with the head/heart argument. NAmely, if you fall away you had only a "head" belief and not a "heart" belief. The silliness of this argument is revealed in the study of the Greek terms in the New Testament that refer to those parts of the body (nous, kardia) and the parts of the human they refer to explicitly. If you havent read up on this you really should. In fact, if you havent been studying hte Bible from the original languages and using scholarly textural criticism applied to the oldes and most accurate manuscripts you are probably missing out on some great kinowledge.
The subject of faith and works, as proposed in James, is an interesting one that many Christians misunderstand. Just remember the scriputes that state: for by grace are you saved through faith, and that faith is a gift from God. any work performed by a Christian without the indwelling of the holy Spirit is wood, hay, and stubble. the works come next, not first.
There is sound doctrinal evidence from reading the Bible to support at least 39 irrevocable attributes imputed to the believer at the moment of faith in Christ. Also, from other doctrines (election, omnipotence, etc.) we can surmise that if God saves you through His grace your puny human actions will not erase or undermine His faithfulness.
As for fundamentalist churches, you are correct that many are off the beaten path of orthodox fundamentalism. Better to find a church that will teach the Bible like a college class and not a rock band audition.
Your faith is not an act. If you read the scriptures (For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God) even grace dominates and controls the very first overtures from man to God in the salvation scenario. Literally, the faith that saves you is imputed to you by God and therefore not an act on your part but a reception of grace from God. The beautiful symetry of this initial imputation is revealed in all future interactions from God, for even the knowledge of God we acquire from the scriptures (worship) must be revealed to us through the indwelling Holy Spirit; again a gift from God.
Christianity punks all the ohter religions again! All you have to do to go to heaven in Christianity is to believe in Jesus. After that your ticket is punched and you are free to go off and do whatever you need with your other prospective gods. Happy Elysium hunting!
What if someone else created God but God doesn't remember or know that.
What if it is simulations all the way down.
What if "God" always existed, but exists in a state beyond the universe we live in where permanence and temporal position mean nothing because time has no relevance. Therefore the "when" of things (such as when God first existed) is not only self-evident, but also completely irrelevant.
I say this to pincushion your argument of the "simple" questions that lead to a simple binary answer.
Any human, knowing what we know about cosmology and the supposed inception of the universe, who says that the existence of God can be answered with "simple" questions needs to rethink the incredible forces involved in putting the universe together.
Also "he just exists, you may not question that" does not follow from the idea that God was not created by someone else. If that is the case, you can still question all you want. The only thing that will suffer is your inability to accept that as fact.
The belief in God based on logical arguments is as tenuous as the un-belief in God based on logical arguments. There does not exist enough information to conclude either way. Hopefully when this VR simulation terminates we will have awareness of who or what is behind the scenes, even if it is nothing at all.
Sadly he probably craves the attention of authority figures due to some lack of interaction with those authority figuires closer to home and heart than the police.
Sorry if I sound really really stupid after this, but isn't the gravitational system governing the movement of this asteroid deterministic unless a new variable is introduced?
I guess what I am asking is there some set of variables (comets coming in from the Oort, gravitational anomolies, changes in the solar wind) that are constantly changing the system or are we just not seeing the whole picture (unobserved asteroids, possible collisions we can't predict) or some combination of the two that result in these probability numbers?
Even better, why don't we put excessively restrictive requirements on flourescent bulbs and have the government subsidize them for awhile so they are slightly cheaper than incandescents. Just make sure the requirements will result in a bulb that has definite benefits for the consumer and that they will buy once the subsidies are no longer necessary due to the price dropping. Then the sales of the new bulbs can pay the subsidy back over time.
"Penalty tax" for old technology is a way to put money into the government's hands, unfortunately little if any of that money goes to transforming the technological landscape. It just makes what is slightly better artifically more economic, rather than pushing the envelope of what is coming over the horizon.
Remember, discouraging old tech is not anywhere near the same as encouraging new tech. New technology is all about replacing the old with something that is better in every way. With regard to something as intrinsic as energy consumption I think the government has a vested interest in subsidizing the new tech to get it out into the world faster.
I would postulate that assumption #2 "that 2 Carmen Electras is twice as hot as 1 Carmen Electra" is incorrect. 2 Carmen Electras are more than twice as hot under the very well researched (though not so well experimented) "Universal Threesome Axiom." The amount of hotness added for each CE can range from 2n to 10^n depending on how much you like brunettes.
Interestingly enough, at a certain threshold the individual CE hotness value begins to decline, eventually reaching n+1/n. The threshold where this decline begins is usually referred to the ROPPMMF limit (Ran Out of Places to Put My Mouth and Fingers). This is usually a constant though inexperience and/or amputations may affect the final number.
"An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind." -- Gandhi
Actually, the only people who go blind under this system of justice are those who go around poking others people's eyes out.
By the way, "an eye for an eye" also also limits punishment to equality with the offence. This protects against "overpunishment" where the sentence is worse than the crime.
As for the prison rape thing, I don't wish that on anyone. It goes against the "eye for an eye principle" because they should already be serving punishement equal to their crime. However, I wouldn't mind someone in prison learning to enjoy and engage in consensual homosexual sex with the other prisoners, just for the sake of irony.
The simple answer is that some lawyer will sue the state if a sex offender repeats their crime.
The victim and/or their family will say "How come you (the state) didn't tell us there was a sex offender living next to us?" and some jury will reply "20 million."
You could still argue we are flollowing the best genetic strategy possible. The more population the more diversity. Right now there is little competetion due to technology. Without competetion we are doing just fine. If we reintroduce competetion through famine, drought, civilization collapse, etc. we will be right where we want to be: lots of competetion and a huge diversity of genotypes to choose from. Therefore there is no problem with the current arangement. It conforms to a sound strategy for survival and the integrity of the genome will self correct if stringent competetion is reintroduced.
Just set up shop within a few hundred yards of the intersection with one of those ubiquitous Canadian high powered rifles with a nice scope. When you see some truck driver running the light shoot out one of his front tires. Repeat as necessary to allow the truck driver grapevine to work and you win.
My wife has never liked video games. Apart from the epilepsy problems (a big enough issue there alone) she just doesn't see the thrill. Until now.
We played Wii sports at a friend's house a few times and now my wife has demanded we get one "for the kids" for Christmas. Yeah, right...for the kids.
The only problem is I don't watch TV much so my monitor has always been about the same size at the TV. The Wii is going to cost me around $1750. $250 for the game and another $1500 for the TV to play it on. Le sigh.
And, to remain on topic, my wife picked up a Wii from Game Stop today. No bundling or price gouging either. Fry's by my work has been sold out for 2 weeks and says they expect a shipment "any day now." They are also bundling to the tune of about $350. Bastards.
You also havev to consider the ones who want to suffer. Some people have their head so twisted they enjoy being on the receiving end of sadistic manipulations (within certain limits, i'm sure.)
I personally do not enjoy this end of the sexual spectrum as more than a curiosity, but I have known a more than a few people who could not get off without submissively subjecting themselves to someone who would sadistically "abuse" them.
Oddly enough, in my experience most of the people who enjoy this sort of play have a strict adherence to sexual protocol. The rules take precedence over personal gratification so that even though pain is administered it is done at the behest of the receiver not the whim of the giver. To me it seems like there is a system of checks and balances that prevents the infliction of measured amounts of pain from becoming outright violence.
He will probably lose what is left of his mind if he gets disbarred. Since sensationalism is so much easier to pull off when you have gone totally batshit crazy and because nothing sells ad spacce on talk shows like ranting nutballs with controversial opinions, I expect he will make quite a good living going on talk shows.
I mean who wouldnt tune in to see him go all Balmer on some EA Games rep.
Your utter lack of concern for the safety the police officers is exactly what created the things you dispise about police authority.
Self-fufilling idiocy is what I call it. Enjoy the reactionary police state you are creating.
Oh and this statement "Many Americans have perfectly legitimate reasons to hate cops" is just downright moronic. I have been mugged 4 times in my life. Every time I was mugged it was by a black person. Does that mean I should hate every black person I meet from now on? Wait, dont answer that. Let me keep my innocnet hope and optimism.
"Alternative" and "replacement" mean two different things. You use the terms interchangably and that is improper. The idea of the taser is to allow a police officer the ability to control a situation without having to draw their firearm which, if used properly and within all applicable laws and regulations, is still going to kill someone.
Yes, I agree there are some seemingly absurd circumstances where they should not have been used. However, if strapping a Taser to each LEO out there allows one less person to get his head blown off by a trigger happy rookie or one less innocent bystander to be hurt by a suspect because the cops don't want to pull their sidearm, I think they are worth it. The middleground between inaction and lethal force is where this thing lives and breathes.
Seriously, just ask yourself: After a night of heavy drinking would you rather wake up in a detention cell with a couple of shockburns and a headache or, say, in the morgue with a Y shaped incision running from your clavicles to your pelvic bone listening to the morticians crack jokes about "nice groping?" Police are people too, and therefore subject to the same lapses in judgement you and I are. If an error is made by me or by a police officer that results in me getting shot, I'll take the voltage and not the lead.
In fact, the device is under quite a bit of sceptical scrutiny because it is marketed as a personal defence accessory. Oddly enough, though not for being too heavy handed for civilian use. Quite the opposite actually. Many critics are concerned the device is not as effective as it needs to be to provide security. If even personal security is questionable with this device why-oh-why the hell would you "replace" police firearms with this thing?
Which is it this week? Am I responsible for my children's activities and culpable as their parent if they do something wrong or am I supposed to release them into the world with a good "talking to" before hand?
Gosh, it's so hard to keep up with how everyone else has decided I should raise my children these days.
Slashdot Mirror
My wish list (somewhat easier to make):
Noisless public: Outlaw music and blaring televisions in stores, restaurants, businesses, etc. Have bluetooth connectivity for anyone who wants to hear what you put on the TV or radio. Small headsets or dual bluetooth
Customizable interfaces: I want to be able to customize every interface I interact with: my PC, my cell phone, and my damned cable television guide screen. Move this, reshape that, change functionality like so, make a new button, etc. I also want to take these changes with me on a memory chip and be able to install them anywhere I go on whatever devices I use.
Automated home: This has been rehashed for decades, but I want it now. I want to have a home built that has the lights, doors, AC/heat, appliances, water, etc. able to be manipulated without walking over to a set of controls. Voice control is good, but better and listed below is my favorite idea.
Somatic interface: I want to be able to move my hand and change my AC temperature from the dinner table. Or to roll the windows down in my car without reaching for a button. A set of somatic controls activated through hand/body gestures would be like having an implanted mouse. Combine with "Customizable interfaces" from above and you really start to have some fun. Certain movements combined with certain areas of a home could trigger different things like turning on and off lights, opening and closing doors, setting the home on "power save mode", or even starting the coffee maker.
I wish I could pop a tab key onto the numberlock instead.
I think you underestimate the proponents in Christianity that believe in the doctrine of Free Grace, or something similar. Many evangelicals believe in this as opposed to the calvanist doctrine of perseverance of the saints.
You may have heard of "faith alone in Christ alone," or you may not have. However, the Biblical underpinnings are sound. Catholics, irrespective of their ascendancy in sheer numbers, do not have firm ground to stand on when arguing theology from a purely orthodox standpoint. Whether or not a church teaches a doctrine or not is irrelevant. Do the scriptures speak to its relevance, for me, is the only test.
Some will argue against "faith alone in christ alone" with the head/heart argument. NAmely, if you fall away you had only a "head" belief and not a "heart" belief. The silliness of this argument is revealed in the study of the Greek terms in the New Testament that refer to those parts of the body (nous, kardia) and the parts of the human they refer to explicitly. If you havent read up on this you really should. In fact, if you havent been studying hte Bible from the original languages and using scholarly textural criticism applied to the oldes and most accurate manuscripts you are probably missing out on some great kinowledge.
The subject of faith and works, as proposed in James, is an interesting one that many Christians misunderstand. Just remember the scriputes that state: for by grace are you saved through faith, and that faith is a gift from God. any work performed by a Christian without the indwelling of the holy Spirit is wood, hay, and stubble. the works come next, not first.
There is sound doctrinal evidence from reading the Bible to support at least 39 irrevocable attributes imputed to the believer at the moment of faith in Christ. Also, from other doctrines (election, omnipotence, etc.) we can surmise that if God saves you through His grace your puny human actions will not erase or undermine His faithfulness.
As for fundamentalist churches, you are correct that many are off the beaten path of orthodox fundamentalism. Better to find a church that will teach the Bible like a college class and not a rock band audition.
Your faith is not an act. If you read the scriptures (For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God) even grace dominates and controls the very first overtures from man to God in the salvation scenario. Literally, the faith that saves you is imputed to you by God and therefore not an act on your part but a reception of grace from God. The beautiful symetry of this initial imputation is revealed in all future interactions from God, for even the knowledge of God we acquire from the scriptures (worship) must be revealed to us through the indwelling Holy Spirit; again a gift from God.
Christianity punks all the ohter religions again! All you have to do to go to heaven in Christianity is to believe in Jesus. After that your ticket is punched and you are free to go off and do whatever you need with your other prospective gods. Happy Elysium hunting!
What if someone else created God but God doesn't remember or know that.
What if it is simulations all the way down.
What if "God" always existed, but exists in a state beyond the universe we live in where permanence and temporal position mean nothing because time has no relevance. Therefore the "when" of things (such as when God first existed) is not only self-evident, but also completely irrelevant.
I say this to pincushion your argument of the "simple" questions that lead to a simple binary answer.
Any human, knowing what we know about cosmology and the supposed inception of the universe, who says that the existence of God can be answered with "simple" questions needs to rethink the incredible forces involved in putting the universe together.
Also "he just exists, you may not question that" does not follow from the idea that God was not created by someone else. If that is the case, you can still question all you want. The only thing that will suffer is your inability to accept that as fact.
The belief in God based on logical arguments is as tenuous as the un-belief in God based on logical arguments. There does not exist enough information to conclude either way. Hopefully when this VR simulation terminates we will have awareness of who or what is behind the scenes, even if it is nothing at all.
Read up on it and you will find that is not the reason for it at all. Not that I am defending it, just saying you are incorrect in your assumption.
Sadly he probably craves the attention of authority figures due to some lack of interaction with those authority figuires closer to home and heart than the police.
Sorry if I sound really really stupid after this, but isn't the gravitational system governing the movement of this asteroid deterministic unless a new variable is introduced?
I guess what I am asking is there some set of variables (comets coming in from the Oort, gravitational anomolies, changes in the solar wind) that are constantly changing the system or are we just not seeing the whole picture (unobserved asteroids, possible collisions we can't predict) or some combination of the two that result in these probability numbers?
Even better, why don't we put excessively restrictive requirements on flourescent bulbs and have the government subsidize them for awhile so they are slightly cheaper than incandescents. Just make sure the requirements will result in a bulb that has definite benefits for the consumer and that they will buy once the subsidies are no longer necessary due to the price dropping. Then the sales of the new bulbs can pay the subsidy back over time.
"Penalty tax" for old technology is a way to put money into the government's hands, unfortunately little if any of that money goes to transforming the technological landscape. It just makes what is slightly better artifically more economic, rather than pushing the envelope of what is coming over the horizon.
Remember, discouraging old tech is not anywhere near the same as encouraging new tech. New technology is all about replacing the old with something that is better in every way. With regard to something as intrinsic as energy consumption I think the government has a vested interest in subsidizing the new tech to get it out into the world faster.
I would postulate that assumption #2 "that 2 Carmen Electras is twice as hot as 1 Carmen Electra" is incorrect. 2 Carmen Electras are more than twice as hot under the very well researched (though not so well experimented) "Universal Threesome Axiom." The amount of hotness added for each CE can range from 2n to 10^n depending on how much you like brunettes.
Interestingly enough, at a certain threshold the individual CE hotness value begins to decline, eventually reaching n+1/n. The threshold where this decline begins is usually referred to the ROPPMMF limit (Ran Out of Places to Put My Mouth and Fingers). This is usually a constant though inexperience and/or amputations may affect the final number.
"An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind." -- Gandhi
Actually, the only people who go blind under this system of justice are those who go around poking others people's eyes out.
By the way, "an eye for an eye" also also limits punishment to equality with the offence. This protects against "overpunishment" where the sentence is worse than the crime.
As for the prison rape thing, I don't wish that on anyone. It goes against the "eye for an eye principle" because they should already be serving punishement equal to their crime. However, I wouldn't mind someone in prison learning to enjoy and engage in consensual homosexual sex with the other prisoners, just for the sake of irony.
"The guy who killed Dodele should be executed."
There, fixed that for you. An eye for an eye is good policy in cases like this. Kill the bastard.
The simple answer is that some lawyer will sue the state if a sex offender repeats their crime.
The victim and/or their family will say "How come you (the state) didn't tell us there was a sex offender living next to us?" and some jury will reply "20 million."
You could still argue we are flollowing the best genetic strategy possible. The more population the more diversity. Right now there is little competetion due to technology. Without competetion we are doing just fine. If we reintroduce competetion through famine, drought, civilization collapse, etc. we will be right where we want to be: lots of competetion and a huge diversity of genotypes to choose from. Therefore there is no problem with the current arangement. It conforms to a sound strategy for survival and the integrity of the genome will self correct if stringent competetion is reintroduced.
Just set up shop within a few hundred yards of the intersection with one of those ubiquitous Canadian high powered rifles with a nice scope. When you see some truck driver running the light shoot out one of his front tires. Repeat as necessary to allow the truck driver grapevine to work and you win.
How DARE you malign the sphincters of the world with your dastardly insinuations!
My wife has never liked video games. Apart from the epilepsy problems (a big enough issue there alone) she just doesn't see the thrill. Until now.
We played Wii sports at a friend's house a few times and now my wife has demanded we get one "for the kids" for Christmas. Yeah, right...for the kids.
The only problem is I don't watch TV much so my monitor has always been about the same size at the TV. The Wii is going to cost me around $1750. $250 for the game and another $1500 for the TV to play it on. Le sigh.
And, to remain on topic, my wife picked up a Wii from Game Stop today. No bundling or price gouging either. Fry's by my work has been sold out for 2 weeks and says they expect a shipment "any day now." They are also bundling to the tune of about $350. Bastards.
You also havev to consider the ones who want to suffer. Some people have their head so twisted they enjoy being on the receiving end of sadistic manipulations (within certain limits, i'm sure.)
I personally do not enjoy this end of the sexual spectrum as more than a curiosity, but I have known a more than a few people who could not get off without submissively subjecting themselves to someone who would sadistically "abuse" them.
Oddly enough, in my experience most of the people who enjoy this sort of play have a strict adherence to sexual protocol. The rules take precedence over personal gratification so that even though pain is administered it is done at the behest of the receiver not the whim of the giver. To me it seems like there is a system of checks and balances that prevents the infliction of measured amounts of pain from becoming outright violence.
I take the contrary viewpoint.
He will probably lose what is left of his mind if he gets disbarred. Since sensationalism is so much easier to pull off when you have gone totally batshit crazy and because nothing sells ad spacce on talk shows like ranting nutballs with controversial opinions, I expect he will make quite a good living going on talk shows.
I mean who wouldnt tune in to see him go all Balmer on some EA Games rep.
Decoding and privacy aside, this analysis of movie ratings might be a good way to find twins seperated at birth or to match people up for dates.
NetFlix.dating anyone?
Your utter lack of concern for the safety the police officers is exactly what created the things you dispise about police authority.
Self-fufilling idiocy is what I call it. Enjoy the reactionary police state you are creating.
Oh and this statement "Many Americans have perfectly legitimate reasons to hate cops" is just downright moronic. I have been mugged 4 times in my life. Every time I was mugged it was by a black person. Does that mean I should hate every black person I meet from now on? Wait, dont answer that. Let me keep my innocnet hope and optimism.
"Alternative" and "replacement" mean two different things. You use the terms interchangably and that is improper. The idea of the taser is to allow a police officer the ability to control a situation without having to draw their firearm which, if used properly and within all applicable laws and regulations, is still going to kill someone.
Yes, I agree there are some seemingly absurd circumstances where they should not have been used. However, if strapping a Taser to each LEO out there allows one less person to get his head blown off by a trigger happy rookie or one less innocent bystander to be hurt by a suspect because the cops don't want to pull their sidearm, I think they are worth it. The middleground between inaction and lethal force is where this thing lives and breathes.
Seriously, just ask yourself: After a night of heavy drinking would you rather wake up in a detention cell with a couple of shockburns and a headache or, say, in the morgue with a Y shaped incision running from your clavicles to your pelvic bone listening to the morticians crack jokes about "nice groping?" Police are people too, and therefore subject to the same lapses in judgement you and I are. If an error is made by me or by a police officer that results in me getting shot, I'll take the voltage and not the lead.
In fact, the device is under quite a bit of sceptical scrutiny because it is marketed as a personal defence accessory. Oddly enough, though not for being too heavy handed for civilian use. Quite the opposite actually. Many critics are concerned the device is not as effective as it needs to be to provide security. If even personal security is questionable with this device why-oh-why the hell would you "replace" police firearms with this thing?
"Pythagoras thought that BEANS were EVIL, and yet we don't bring that up every time we try to analyze a triangle, do we?"
No, but it does come up when we analyze beans.
(Eyes can of beans warily.)
DAMN!
Which is it this week? Am I responsible for my children's activities and culpable as their parent if they do something wrong or am I supposed to release them into the world with a good "talking to" before hand?
Gosh, it's so hard to keep up with how everyone else has decided I should raise my children these days.