The deaths being clustered around a single event does not make them more important. It just makes it far easier for the people to be manipulated into THINKING that they are more important. Remember the panic around the Anthrax scare? You know, the one that killed FOUR people.
Terrorist have almost exactly the power we give them. Killing 3000 people is noise in a country where 7 times that many are killed intentionally (via murder) every year. The terrorists only have real power if we let them.
I am far more frightened of the Government than terrorists. The worst the terrorists can do is kill me...
Ironically, having the bank lose your account balance IS losing something not-real that only costs you the time wasted in fruitless endeavors. The 'money' is just bits and bytes, just like the fine epic staff you got in WoW. In both cases the primary thing that you spent to get that item was your time and effort. If you are employed doing something like programming, you aren't even dealing with anything substantially more real than the WoW world anyway...
Granted, one other difference is that your landlord has agreed to take the non-real 'money' in your account in exchange for rent, rather than the epic staff. When is the last time you paid your rent in cash?
Terrorism was the number one cause of death in America for a week. It was passed by Americans killing other Americans in about 3 months (which is #20 on the top 20 causes of death).
How many rights are you willing to give up to not be in constant terror of septicemia (#11 on the list, kills over 10 times as many people than terrorism)? How about the 10 times as many people that kill themselves (#10)? Terrorists have almost EXACTLY the power we give them. They can only kill you. The government can enslave you, toss you into a prison cell for the rest of your life without charge and then kill you. (If they really want to)
He didn't say ANYTHING about the idea being dangerous. All he said was the he didn't want the finished product being used in a way he didn't agree with. It's like a scientist refusing to work on a atomic bomb because he didn't want to blow people up. This isn't political correctness, this is foresight. He looked at the probable (or even just possible) results of his actions and decided that the outcome was not one he approved of, so he decided to not do the action.
If he had really thought that the idea was dangerous he wouldn't of mentioned in on a public website. Nothing is stopping you from writing that story, making the idea into a physical form, and showing it to whomever you want to. It's not the idea, it's the realization that he decided against.
I find it interesting that over half of the "crap" selections in your list are conservative writers. Out of curiousity are they crap because you disagree with them? I would have gone more with the Joan Collins angle myself.
That being said I go with the "90% of everything is crap" theory. Focus on the 10% that is not actively crap in most any area.
I think we are WAY overdue for massive instability and downright revolution. It is basically the refactoring of society, clearing out the cruft that has bloated everything into unreconizability.
It will suck to go through (assuming you survive) but it will be better for the long term. Of course the people on top will fight tooth and nail against it, providing crutches to the downtrodden so they forget how to walk. If they learn how to walk, breaking thier legs and saying, "Look at these nice crutches I made you."
Um... I'm thinking that the reason that we American's are fat is that for one of the first times in history, we can.
No other time is history has so much food been available so easily. Human's are still running the same program as the rest of nature. Namely if there is food we should eat it because there will not be food later. The main problem is that there is ALWAYS food, so we get fat.
In nature animals don't need to diet, they starve instead. Turning down food to watch your figure is unnatural, we are wired to fatten up for the lean times.
I've long had the theory that there is a percentage of the human race that is capable, by ignorance or malice, of destroying the world. As technology advances the number of people required to destroy the world has dropped from about 50% of the population to a couple of hundred (I would estimate). We are doomed as soon as all the positions in the "destroy the world puzzle set" get filled with those capable of destroying the world.
It's bound to happen eventually, especially as the number required to destroy the world keeps dropping.
(I'm using "destroy the world" to mean "kill every human being on earth")
You forget that the "powers that be" are trying their hardest to make sure that we actually are becoming criminals by outlawing what we are doing (legally) now.
Shouldn't that already be taken into account with the 13000 TW number? The surface of the moon has the exact same incidence angle as the solar panels should. (More or less)
Actually there will not be "a bunch of cops sitting around fishing for dumbass" there will be cops doing real work until a dumbass steals the car and it calls them to let them know. It allows far better multitasking than a stakeout to catch a car thief. In fact the cops can spend that time investigating the existing car robberies. They are not exclusive activities.
Actually you could suddenly fly off the face of the earth according to certain ideas of quantum physics. Quantum tunnelling (iirc) is the name. You would just have to have all of your particles do it at the same time and go to the same place. It is unlikely to the point of being functionally impossible, but it is theoretically possible.
Heh, I remember trying to figure out the odds of suddenly teleporting one foot to the left in college.
I think the costs he had in mind were more of the "can you spend the afternoon sitting in a field looking at the clouds when the field has been paved and the clouds are obscured by smog?" types. There are non-monetary costs to everything. In some cases the longer life, better health care, higher standard of living, less physical labor aren't worth the loss of being able to sit on your front steps without having to worry about drive-bys. It's an issue of where your priorities lie.
The problem with the 150% theory is that commonly the bad coder doen't have a 50% efficiency, but rather a -25% efficiency. I have spent quite a bit of time redoing the code that someone who was in desperate need of mentoring did.
If I could have mentored them to begin with we could have together written a good piece of code and I wouldn't need to fix his crap anymore. Thus the efficiency of the pair starts at about the same and rises to more than twice once the student becomes that master.
As far as replacing the 'trainee' with a person that doesn't need mentoring, that is impossible on an existing project. The ramp-up period for even an experienced coder with an existing project is enough to make the benefit to replacement about the same as for mentoring, but it is MUCH more expensive. Experienced coders are not cheap.
Slashdot Mirror
The damn whale gets BOTH the armor AND the +5 harpoon! Poor Ahab, no wonder he is pissed off. All he got was the -2 peg leg of obsessiveness...
And they would be wrong.
The deaths being clustered around a single event does not make them more important. It just makes it far easier for the people to be manipulated into THINKING that they are more important. Remember the panic around the Anthrax scare? You know, the one that killed FOUR people.
Terrorist have almost exactly the power we give them. Killing 3000 people is noise in a country where 7 times that many are killed intentionally (via murder) every year. The terrorists only have real power if we let them.
I am far more frightened of the Government than terrorists. The worst the terrorists can do is kill me...
Actually he doesn't think much at all. The quote only contains one "think", but three "don't thinks"...
Ironically, having the bank lose your account balance IS losing something not-real that only costs you the time wasted in fruitless endeavors. The 'money' is just bits and bytes, just like the fine epic staff you got in WoW. In both cases the primary thing that you spent to get that item was your time and effort. If you are employed doing something like programming, you aren't even dealing with anything substantially more real than the WoW world anyway...
Granted, one other difference is that your landlord has agreed to take the non-real 'money' in your account in exchange for rent, rather than the epic staff. When is the last time you paid your rent in cash?
Terrorism was the number one cause of death in America for a week. It was passed by Americans killing other Americans in about 3 months (which is #20 on the top 20 causes of death).
How many rights are you willing to give up to not be in constant terror of septicemia (#11 on the list, kills over 10 times as many people than terrorism)? How about the 10 times as many people that kill themselves (#10)? Terrorists have almost EXACTLY the power we give them. They can only kill you. The government can enslave you, toss you into a prison cell for the rest of your life without charge and then kill you. (If they really want to)
Actually reading statistics is fun!
He didn't say ANYTHING about the idea being dangerous. All he said was the he didn't want the finished product being used in a way he didn't agree with. It's like a scientist refusing to work on a atomic bomb because he didn't want to blow people up. This isn't political correctness, this is foresight. He looked at the probable (or even just possible) results of his actions and decided that the outcome was not one he approved of, so he decided to not do the action.
If he had really thought that the idea was dangerous he wouldn't of mentioned in on a public website. Nothing is stopping you from writing that story, making the idea into a physical form, and showing it to whomever you want to. It's not the idea, it's the realization that he decided against.
I find it interesting that over half of the "crap" selections in your list are conservative writers. Out of curiousity are they crap because you disagree with them? I would have gone more with the Joan Collins angle myself.
That being said I go with the "90% of everything is crap" theory. Focus on the 10% that is not actively crap in most any area.
I think we are WAY overdue for massive instability and downright revolution. It is basically the refactoring of society, clearing out the cruft that has bloated everything into unreconizability.
It will suck to go through (assuming you survive) but it will be better for the long term. Of course the people on top will fight tooth and nail against it, providing crutches to the downtrodden so they forget how to walk. If they learn how to walk, breaking thier legs and saying, "Look at these nice crutches I made you."
Um... I'm thinking that the reason that we American's are fat is that for one of the first times in history, we can.
No other time is history has so much food been available so easily. Human's are still running the same program as the rest of nature. Namely if there is food we should eat it because there will not be food later. The main problem is that there is ALWAYS food, so we get fat.
In nature animals don't need to diet, they starve instead. Turning down food to watch your figure is unnatural, we are wired to fatten up for the lean times.
I've long had the theory that there is a percentage of the human race that is capable, by ignorance or malice, of destroying the world. As technology advances the number of people required to destroy the world has dropped from about 50% of the population to a couple of hundred (I would estimate). We are doomed as soon as all the positions in the "destroy the world puzzle set" get filled with those capable of destroying the world.
It's bound to happen eventually, especially as the number required to destroy the world keeps dropping.
(I'm using "destroy the world" to mean "kill every human being on earth")
You forget that the "powers that be" are trying their hardest to make sure that we actually are becoming criminals by outlawing what we are doing (legally) now.
Heh, it's not like we've been having any real winters. Once in the last four years....
I'm bitter. I'm going to have to move to Alaska.
Shouldn't that already be taken into account with the 13000 TW number? The surface of the moon has the exact same incidence angle as the solar panels should. (More or less)
THANK YOU. People have been making that same mistake in every thread I've seen so far. It's really annoying.
If I could only moderate....
Actually there will not be "a bunch of cops sitting around fishing for dumbass" there will be cops doing real work until a dumbass steals the car and it calls them to let them know. It allows far better multitasking than a stakeout to catch a car thief. In fact the cops can spend that time investigating the existing car robberies. They are not exclusive activities.
Not bad for $6000.
That would make it cruel and unusual punishment, not entrapment. Well, except on Vogon... It's usual there.
Actually you could suddenly fly off the face of the earth according to certain ideas of quantum physics. Quantum tunnelling (iirc) is the name. You would just have to have all of your particles do it at the same time and go to the same place. It is unlikely to the point of being functionally impossible, but it is theoretically possible.
Heh, I remember trying to figure out the odds of suddenly teleporting one foot to the left in college.
I think the costs he had in mind were more of the "can you spend the afternoon sitting in a field looking at the clouds when the field has been paved and the clouds are obscured by smog?" types. There are non-monetary costs to everything. In some cases the longer life, better health care, higher standard of living, less physical labor aren't worth the loss of being able to sit on your front steps without having to worry about drive-bys. It's an issue of where your priorities lie.
The problem with the 150% theory is that commonly the bad coder doen't have a 50% efficiency, but rather a -25% efficiency. I have spent quite a bit of time redoing the code that someone who was in desperate need of mentoring did.
If I could have mentored them to begin with we could have together written a good piece of code and I wouldn't need to fix his crap anymore. Thus the efficiency of the pair starts at about the same and rises to more than twice once the student becomes that master.
As far as replacing the 'trainee' with a person that doesn't need mentoring, that is impossible on an existing project. The ramp-up period for even an experienced coder with an existing project is enough to make the benefit to replacement about the same as for mentoring, but it is MUCH more expensive. Experienced coders are not cheap.