This is the same reason I don't put all my games on the same email address for Battle.net.
Lets say the arbitrarily ban you. They can ban you for all your games, game over!
I remain skeptical, but in fairness, it should be noted that in the answer you're dismissing, they do say they aspire to provide solutions for this and other use cases, they just aren't in place yet and don't misconstrue today's offering as the end product. We shall see...
If I recall correctly, OGG and MP3 use very different (lossy) compression techniques.
That is true.
As a result, converting from one to the other will drop audio quality substantially.
That is false. Converting to any lossy format causes a change from the original source, of course, but there's no reason why it becomes magically worse in these circumstances. You'll see about the same amount of change on average regardless of whether the starting waveform was direct from a ADC, from an MP3 decoder, from an OGG decoder, or whatever. Whether that constitutes a "drop in audio quality" is debatable -- sometimes its actually an improvement, but then "audio quality" is a bit subjective.
This false. If this were true, the formula "E = m*c^2" could be rewritten "E = E*c^2" (or "m = m*c^2" if you prefer), which is absurd and quickly lends itself to a reductio argument. The formula is true precisely because "E" and "m" are different things that can be converted back and forth in accordance to the formula. If mass were energy, the formula would be "E = m".
Just have to add... yes, I have, and they're still pretty cheap. I know they're pretty cheap because I have friends debating whether they should continue to live out in the boonies and commute to work every day or move closer to the city. If oil wasn't still cheap, there would be no debating this. It's not as cheap as it used to be, but it's still cheap. Arguably, too cheap, if you would like to see it phased out for something less destructive...
Humanity as a whole. If you consider subgroups only, you can find exceptions to what I said, but I was being all-inclusive. To the extent there are scarcities in any of these things mentioned, it's a distribution problem, because we have more than enough for everyone at the moment. That can't continue indefinitely, but it's certainly false that any of these things have been rare in general for decades.
You apparently don't live in Europe or North America, since what he's said is a fact in those places. Some European countries have already slipped into negative population growth. The US is heading that way but it's still a couple decades out.
... nor will it happen because we all become rational and realize that we can't afford these kids...
Then your explanation for the fact that this is already happening in places with high costs of living is... ?
It'll happen because of studies like this, and the discussions they spur, and the policies that are eventually created in response to them.
No more *FREE* medicine for him I think is what you mean. In which case you should stop charging him that portion of taxes. Which will be to his direct benefit, because he can then go get a cheaper rate for medical services by paying cash, and not have to pay for some bureaucrats salary in addition to the medicine he needs.
I think you meant "more expensive rate". Or are you living in that fantasy world where the nation that mostly runs this way doesn't have the most expensive medicine in the world (and by a huge margin at that)?
You always have to pay some bureaucrats' salaries. Whether these bureaucrats works for a government or a for-profit corporation does not alter that basic fact.
And every single thing you listed is fueled by oil.
Currently fueled by oil. None of them need to be, indeed most of them haven't been for most of their history. They're currently fueled by oil because it's currently the cheapest way to do it, but as you yourself point out, that won't last forever. For a completely unexplained reason, however, you assume "we'll be back where we started" afterwards, as if going back is the only option. We can't stay where we are now, but I think most people would rather we go forward instead of going back.
We are way past sustainable resource usage due to our population already. Of course we breed when resources are rare. We have been doing it for decades.
What resources are rare? We throw away more food than we eat. We have energy so cheaply we take joy rides for fun. Aside from a few very densely populated areas, the majority of the planet is largely uninhabited. People have been worrying about a scarcity of resources for decades, but none have actually become scarce yet, much less actually been rare for decades.
That's a good idea for its own reasons, but is in no way an answer to population issues. We don't have the amount of metal or energy resources to build and power a massive fleet of spaceships capable of removing people from the planet even a thousandth as fast as they're being born.
The thing that analysis leaves out is the fact that we don't need to do all those things. Like most of the things we do, we do it that way because it's the cheapest way to do it, not out of necessity. If we can't continue to do things stupidly, inefficiently, and destructively, then we won't. (But as long as we can, and there's economic incentive to do so, we will -- point being, you can't project future behavior under different conditions by simply projecting the present behavior under present conditions as if nothing will change other than scale.)
Indeed. Considering the lack of imagination and thinking skills required to only see one possibility, it's unsurprising that any fool sees it that way. Intelligent people, on the other hand, see many possibilities, because they keep thinking even after seeing the first one.
But sure, argue both sides. Have as many kids as you want. I couldn't guess their odds of living to 70, but I am willing to bet that this is that "magic" generation, and they will see suffering and mass death unprecedented in all of human history.
Welcome to the vast club of people who've made this same determination over the millennia.
We've got a Borders here in town... And I won't miss them when they close their doors.
It's been a long time since I was able to go there and buy a book that wasn't on some best-seller list. And they've got more movies, music, calendars, and bookmarks than they have actual books at our store. There's a reason they're going out of business.
They would have gone out of business sooner if they only had books. They added all those other things in an attempt to get people to come in and buy something at least...
Yes. Buy a car, and you're at the mercy of oil companies, government licensing agencies and public infrastructure. But you'll get further faster than you did on foot nonetheless...
This information (that non-African populations have some Neanderthal DNA) was in the textbook for the Anthropology class I took last semester.
Well, yes, but you've just summarized the paper in question sufficiently generally to exclude what's new in it.
That being said, there's nothing wrong with confirming existing scientific data with more studies...
This is new data, not confirmation of existing data, but it does indeed confirm an already existing theory that already had some other evidence for it.
In other news, it appears that The Doctor was right.. except not just in the centuries ahead... the human race will bonk anything.. anytime.. anywhere..
Of course. Puritanism was always just a passing fad. Neither the long past nor the long future should be expected to conform to its absurd values.
Hmmm, does this mean Neanderthals are a social construct too? Help me out guys, I need to fit these scientific findings into my egalitarian political views.
All classification systems are social constructs. There's no "fact of the matter" on where lines should be drawn between species than there is for where the lines should be drawn between which objects orbiting the Sun are planets. There's a physical fact that lumps of rock (or whatever material) orbit the Sun, but "planets" are social constructs, and if the astronomical society changes its mind, suddenly there are more or less of them, because "planet" was always just a social construct, not a fact of nature. Neanderthals are, likewise, a social construct.
It doesn't really matter anyway. Anyone who gets hung up on the question is fundamentally misunderstanding what it means. It's like arguing whether Pluto is a planet or not. There's no fact of the matter -- it's a question of what common convention all scientists ought to agree upon in their use of language. Any time you start labeling things like species or planets, you're inventing a means of classifying things, and it's ultimately arbitrary, although important that a consensus is reached on a common convention for usage so that people in the field can communicate on the subject unambiguously.
Regardless of what genetic, morphological, or other evidence that may come to light, whether Neanderthals are H. neanderthalensis or H. sapiens neanderthalensis is not a fact of nature but simply a convention for classification.
It's theoretically possible for any living organism to produce a new virus "spontaneously", regardless of whether any of its existing genetic coding came from viruses or not. After all, that's how they came into being to begin with...
So if humans and neanderthals could in fact interbreed, then wouldn't they be the same species?... I would think that if neanderthals had survived to this day, they would have all the same rights as the rest of humans, and probably be considered human.
Any member of the genus Homo is human, just not all the same species of human. As for neanderthals, whether they deserve their own species or are just a subspecies (H. neanderthalensis vs. H. sapiens neanderthalensis) is an open question, although when I studied anthropology in college, the professor was of the opinion they were a subspecies, and implied that the majority of anthropologists were in the latter camp.
So, all that it really says is that at least one Neanderthal engaged in bestiality.
Um, no. At least one non-human would need to be involved for that, so two members of the genus Homo would not qualify, and certainly not two members of the same species, even if they are different subspecies (H. sapiens neanderthalensis vs. H. sapiens sapiens -- there is not universal agreement on classification of neanderthals as a subspecies of H. sapiens, true, but evidence of successful, fertile interbreeding, as this is, seriously degrades the already weak argument that they shouldn't be).
Now, I have not interacted much with mormons in the past 10 years, so maybe this has all changed since then, but I doubt it.
That particular church, maybe not. But your response seems to indicate you believe every church is like the one you were familiar with. This has, as far as I know, never been true of any religion. Different congregations are different. Last one I knew had no problems with a single mother and her boyfriend, or her daughter being on birth control.
Slashdot Mirror
This is the same reason I don't put all my games on the same email address for Battle.net. Lets say the arbitrarily ban you. They can ban you for all your games, game over!
...and nothing of value will be lost. :p
people NEED the freedom to pick aliases.
I remain skeptical, but in fairness, it should be noted that in the answer you're dismissing, they do say they aspire to provide solutions for this and other use cases, they just aren't in place yet and don't misconstrue today's offering as the end product. We shall see...
...seeing as how most people are treating it as Facebook without the privacy issues.
Which is pretty bizarre when you think about it.
If I recall correctly, OGG and MP3 use very different (lossy) compression techniques.
That is true.
As a result, converting from one to the other will drop audio quality substantially.
That is false. Converting to any lossy format causes a change from the original source, of course, but there's no reason why it becomes magically worse in these circumstances. You'll see about the same amount of change on average regardless of whether the starting waveform was direct from a ADC, from an MP3 decoder, from an OGG decoder, or whatever. Whether that constitutes a "drop in audio quality" is debatable -- sometimes its actually an improvement, but then "audio quality" is a bit subjective.
Matter (and antimatter) are forms of energy.
This false. If this were true, the formula "E = m*c^2" could be rewritten "E = E*c^2" (or "m = m*c^2" if you prefer), which is absurd and quickly lends itself to a reductio argument. The formula is true precisely because "E" and "m" are different things that can be converted back and forth in accordance to the formula. If mass were energy, the formula would be "E = m".
Seen the oil prices lately?
Just have to add... yes, I have, and they're still pretty cheap. I know they're pretty cheap because I have friends debating whether they should continue to live out in the boonies and commute to work every day or move closer to the city. If oil wasn't still cheap, there would be no debating this. It's not as cheap as it used to be, but it's still cheap. Arguably, too cheap, if you would like to see it phased out for something less destructive...
Who is "we"?
Humanity as a whole. If you consider subgroups only, you can find exceptions to what I said, but I was being all-inclusive. To the extent there are scarcities in any of these things mentioned, it's a distribution problem, because we have more than enough for everyone at the moment. That can't continue indefinitely, but it's certainly false that any of these things have been rare in general for decades.
I must not live in an advanced nation then...
You apparently don't live in Europe or North America, since what he's said is a fact in those places. Some European countries have already slipped into negative population growth. The US is heading that way but it's still a couple decades out.
... nor will it happen because we all become rational and realize that we can't afford these kids...
Then your explanation for the fact that this is already happening in places with high costs of living is... ?
It'll happen because of studies like this, and the discussions they spur, and the policies that are eventually created in response to them.
See, now that is naive...
No more *FREE* medicine for him I think is what you mean. In which case you should stop charging him that portion of taxes. Which will be to his direct benefit, because he can then go get a cheaper rate for medical services by paying cash, and not have to pay for some bureaucrats salary in addition to the medicine he needs.
I think you meant "more expensive rate". Or are you living in that fantasy world where the nation that mostly runs this way doesn't have the most expensive medicine in the world (and by a huge margin at that)?
You always have to pay some bureaucrats' salaries. Whether these bureaucrats works for a government or a for-profit corporation does not alter that basic fact.
And every single thing you listed is fueled by oil.
Currently fueled by oil. None of them need to be, indeed most of them haven't been for most of their history. They're currently fueled by oil because it's currently the cheapest way to do it, but as you yourself point out, that won't last forever. For a completely unexplained reason, however, you assume "we'll be back where we started" afterwards, as if going back is the only option. We can't stay where we are now, but I think most people would rather we go forward instead of going back.
We are way past sustainable resource usage due to our population already. Of course we breed when resources are rare. We have been doing it for decades.
What resources are rare? We throw away more food than we eat. We have energy so cheaply we take joy rides for fun. Aside from a few very densely populated areas, the majority of the planet is largely uninhabited. People have been worrying about a scarcity of resources for decades, but none have actually become scarce yet, much less actually been rare for decades.
That's a good idea for its own reasons, but is in no way an answer to population issues. We don't have the amount of metal or energy resources to build and power a massive fleet of spaceships capable of removing people from the planet even a thousandth as fast as they're being born.
The thing that analysis leaves out is the fact that we don't need to do all those things. Like most of the things we do, we do it that way because it's the cheapest way to do it, not out of necessity. If we can't continue to do things stupidly, inefficiently, and destructively, then we won't. (But as long as we can, and there's economic incentive to do so, we will -- point being, you can't project future behavior under different conditions by simply projecting the present behavior under present conditions as if nothing will change other than scale.)
This only ends one way, and any fool can see it.
Indeed. Considering the lack of imagination and thinking skills required to only see one possibility, it's unsurprising that any fool sees it that way. Intelligent people, on the other hand, see many possibilities, because they keep thinking even after seeing the first one.
But sure, argue both sides. Have as many kids as you want. I couldn't guess their odds of living to 70, but I am willing to bet that this is that "magic" generation, and they will see suffering and mass death unprecedented in all of human history.
Welcome to the vast club of people who've made this same determination over the millennia.
We've got a Borders here in town... And I won't miss them when they close their doors.
It's been a long time since I was able to go there and buy a book that wasn't on some best-seller list. And they've got more movies, music, calendars, and bookmarks than they have actual books at our store. There's a reason they're going out of business.
They would have gone out of business sooner if they only had books. They added all those other things in an attempt to get people to come in and buy something at least...
Yes. Buy a car, and you're at the mercy of oil companies, government licensing agencies and public infrastructure. But you'll get further faster than you did on foot nonetheless...
This information (that non-African populations have some Neanderthal DNA) was in the textbook for the Anthropology class I took last semester.
Well, yes, but you've just summarized the paper in question sufficiently generally to exclude what's new in it.
That being said, there's nothing wrong with confirming existing scientific data with more studies...
This is new data, not confirmation of existing data, but it does indeed confirm an already existing theory that already had some other evidence for it.
I feel so much less alone now..
In other news, it appears that The Doctor was right.. except not just in the centuries ahead... the human race will bonk anything.. anytime.. anywhere..
Of course. Puritanism was always just a passing fad. Neither the long past nor the long future should be expected to conform to its absurd values.
Hmmm, does this mean Neanderthals are a social construct too? Help me out guys, I need to fit these scientific findings into my egalitarian political views.
All classification systems are social constructs. There's no "fact of the matter" on where lines should be drawn between species than there is for where the lines should be drawn between which objects orbiting the Sun are planets. There's a physical fact that lumps of rock (or whatever material) orbit the Sun, but "planets" are social constructs, and if the astronomical society changes its mind, suddenly there are more or less of them, because "planet" was always just a social construct, not a fact of nature. Neanderthals are, likewise, a social construct.
It doesn't really matter anyway. Anyone who gets hung up on the question is fundamentally misunderstanding what it means. It's like arguing whether Pluto is a planet or not. There's no fact of the matter -- it's a question of what common convention all scientists ought to agree upon in their use of language. Any time you start labeling things like species or planets, you're inventing a means of classifying things, and it's ultimately arbitrary, although important that a consensus is reached on a common convention for usage so that people in the field can communicate on the subject unambiguously.
Regardless of what genetic, morphological, or other evidence that may come to light, whether Neanderthals are H. neanderthalensis or H. sapiens neanderthalensis is not a fact of nature but simply a convention for classification.
There are significant physiological differences between Neanderthal and Homo sapiens.
Not nearly as significant as the differences between bulldogs and chihuahuas.
It's theoretically possible for any living organism to produce a new virus "spontaneously", regardless of whether any of its existing genetic coding came from viruses or not. After all, that's how they came into being to begin with...
So if humans and neanderthals could in fact interbreed, then wouldn't they be the same species? ... I would think that if neanderthals had survived to this day, they would have all the same rights as the rest of humans, and probably be considered human.
Any member of the genus Homo is human, just not all the same species of human. As for neanderthals, whether they deserve their own species or are just a subspecies (H. neanderthalensis vs. H. sapiens neanderthalensis) is an open question, although when I studied anthropology in college, the professor was of the opinion they were a subspecies, and implied that the majority of anthropologists were in the latter camp.
So, all that it really says is that at least one Neanderthal engaged in bestiality.
Um, no. At least one non-human would need to be involved for that, so two members of the genus Homo would not qualify, and certainly not two members of the same species, even if they are different subspecies (H. sapiens neanderthalensis vs. H. sapiens sapiens -- there is not universal agreement on classification of neanderthals as a subspecies of H. sapiens, true, but evidence of successful, fertile interbreeding, as this is, seriously degrades the already weak argument that they shouldn't be).
Now, I have not interacted much with mormons in the past 10 years, so maybe this has all changed since then, but I doubt it.
That particular church, maybe not. But your response seems to indicate you believe every church is like the one you were familiar with. This has, as far as I know, never been true of any religion. Different congregations are different. Last one I knew had no problems with a single mother and her boyfriend, or her daughter being on birth control.