There are many different kinds of freedoms. What's most important to you -- freedom of privacy, sexual freedom, freedom of religion, freedom to do what you want with your body, freedom of speech? If you focus on each of these you'll find different contries that grant those freedoms. And just because a country allows one type of freedom, don't expect it to allow others.
For example, because of my sexuality sexual freedom is important to me. The US is in surprisingly good shape as far as sexual freedom goes (although Ashcroft may threaten that). Yes, about half the states in the union have seldomly enforced sodomy laws...but half do not, and you can choose to live in any state you like. Contrast that to Britain with its strict BDSM laws -- life in prison for whipping a consenting partner? Similarly draconian statues exist in Australia and Canada, countries who boast about how much freer they are than the US. Yeah, you may gain something, moving there, but you'll lose something else.
If you're interested in drugs there are western european countries that allow that...but you'll lose your freedom to arm yourself, among other things. Arabic countries actually give a lot of freedoms to men, although generally not freedom of religion...and women get almost no freedoms at all. If you want privacy you can't do much better than island nations like Singapore or Grand Cayman, but your freedom of speech goes away and in some cases your freedom to *leave*.
For me the US has the best mix of freedoms, not to mention that laws vary state to state so you can find one that matches your needs. More importantly, the US allows the freedom to fight the system -- you can work to *change* the laws if you wish, without ending in jail. That's something we take for granted, but if you ask a lot of people around the world they'll tell you that's the most important freedom of all.
Dumb article. They completely missed the fact that society has momentum...and thus, what affects people in everyday life always lags the current edge of technology. And as technology increases that lag gets worse.
In 1900 there was almost no infrastructure in America. No highways, few if any phone lines. In the last 100 years we've paved a million miles of road, laid phone lines everywhere and put satellites up for an orbital information infrastructure. And they're *good enough*. Although today's technological innovations could do marvelous things, what we have now is good enough for the average man, and there's no pressing need to spend the money to upgrade them.
The fiber optic lines in laboratories could give full video to everyone in america...but the existing twisted pair is good enough for most people. (Still, in some locales even that is being upgraded.) We could have supersonic low orbit transports to go from New York to LA in 30 minutes. But the upgrades to airports would be expensive, and the current system is good enough. LEDs are advanced enough now to replace all of our lights at 1/10th the power, but what we have now is good enough.
Society isn't ready to upgrade the old for the new. Only when something drastically new comes along, with it's own killer app, does society wake up and progress. The internet is the killer app that will upgrade our telecommunication infrastructure. More will come. But technological innovation (which is increasing exponentially) does not correllate with cultural progress...which so far appears almost glacially slow.:/
Whoa, that Deathwatch site is some scary stuff. I mean, I expected to see Etoys (death date Apr 1, 2001) and Priceline (death date Mar 18, 2001)...but PSINet (Feb 27, 2001)? MP3.com (May 6, 2001)? Salon (Jan 14, 2001)? Worldgate (Nov 27, 2001)?
You have hundreds of companies listed there. If your predictions are accurate, there really is a recession heading this way, at least in the information/internet sector.
The limit of resolution on a camera is the diffraction limit. That's the point where the wavelength of the light is larger than the angular distance of the object you're viewing. The formula is (angular resolution) = 1.22 * (wavelength)/(telescope diameter) in radians. To convert radians to length, multiply by the distance from your target (which is a good approximation at large distances.)
Most low orbit satellites are about 700 km up. Visible light is around 300-600 nanometers...call it 400 nm.
So the theoretical minimum telescope needed to have a one-centimeter resolution on the ground would be diameter = 1.22*400e-9*700e3/1e-2, or about 34 meters across. For reference, the Hubble's mirror is 2.4 meters diameter.
So it's possible. Just not bloody likely given current limits on what we can build in space.:)
I'm confused. I see that the new generation's familiarity with computers brings them some useful skills and points of view. But I don't see how their gaming experience makes them any different from, say, the previous generations who *also* had gaming experience.
Before computers it was D&D. Before D&D it was cowboys and indians, football and little league baseball. Before that, youths played word games in Victorian england. Card games throughout the 19th century. During feudal history it was play swordfighting. Hopscotch, mumbleypeg, caber tossing. Olympic contests in greco-roman times. Lacrosse was played by amerinds thousands of years ago. Even cavemen probably had contests of strength, coordination and wit.
Young people have always played games of one sort or another. That they're now doing it with a computer, and with a wider assortment of people throughout the world, will have an effect on their skills and worldview. But 90% of the things mentioned in the above article apply to the gamers of every generation for thousands of years into the past.
(Note to teenage flamethrowers: Yes, I know. You're smarter/more experienced/more mature/etc than everyone else. You don't need to remind us all. Thank you.)
I'm not a teenager. (Just turned 33, so I'm nearing 'old fart', actually.) But so far I have to agree with Jon. My generation may not be smarter or more experienced than the older ones, but we're a hell of a lot more flexible and capable. And the generation below me is just plain scary, as adept as they are.
Just this week at work I'm going to mandatory Lotus Notes training. That's right, they're forcing all employees to sit in a classroom for FOUR hours so they can teach us how to use an email client. Nevermind that I've used over a dozen different email clients, nevermind that I could WRITE Lotus Notes if I had to. Nevermind that for people my age and experience, an email client is about as interesting and as difficult to learn as a toaster. Nope...because some aging executive idiot thought it was difficult, we all have to waste our time training in it. (sigh)
As for games jumping in cultural importance...I'm reminded of that NASDAQ commercial, where some kid asks 'where is the center of the tech world?' He goes through an assembly line, a lecture by a scientist...and then is thrown into a first-person shooter game. That gaming is reaching the same status as high-tech industry and science is, I think, a very interesting observation. I don't know how gaming culture will affect society, but I think it's a good bet to say that it will, somehow.
And by the way -- the older I get, the dumber my father becomes. 'Filling my lungs with cigarette tar prevents me from catching colds!' Yeah, right, dad.
You're supposed to be concerned about those people because they outnumber us, and they are still smart enough to know how to use a gun.:) Remember, the first Luddite rebellion was a bloody affair.
Re:Can I just point out
on
Golden Rice
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· Score: 2
Oh, sure. Just get the P.O. Box of a hundred indigent rice farmers in Bangladesh, put rice seeds in a bag with a note for explanation, and send 'em on their way through the good old Bangladeshi Postal System ('...through typhoon, through dysentery, through malaligned chakrim, the mail must go through!')
Get real. You can't simply mail the truly poor regions of the world -- in general they have no address. And since their NY Time subscription tends to be a little late, they don't know about Golden Rice and what it can do for them. And why would they trust a letter from a foreigner that tells them to eat strange-colored food? This is assuming that the rice even gets into the country, with most 3rd world countries having a corrupt import system that snatches cargo for themselves more often than not. And the doctor only gets one chance, as he'll be put in jail by the European anti-GM Food sentiment soon after he tries to mail some of this stuff to anyone.
You are being really, really, really naive.
The only way to get this rice to where it will do some good is if it can get into the distribution mechanism of the humanitarian organizations of the world. And the only way to do that is legally, through whatever export/donation system he's now fighting with.
I wish Herr Doctor the best of luck, and I hope his creations become widespread -- legally -- as soon as possible.
Ignore the Luddites at your peril.
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The New Geography
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· Score: 3
Okay, the book is arguing that high tech culture is robbing the landscape of its traditional values and socialization as its workers migrate to join the high tech boom. And you, being a part of the high tech culture, say 'Duh', and make snide remarks about evolution.
Make no mistake -- there is a rising anti-technological sentiment out there, and you'd be ignoring it at your own peril. Traditional culture is sessile but still powerful, and if a backlash against high-tech occurs, it will at the least be inconvenient for you.
What does confuse me, though, is why Katz hates this book but applauded the WTO protests, which were another symptom of the same anti-high-tech phenomenon.
Well, we know why the anomaly exists. The earth's magnetic axis is not only tilted from the geographic axis, it's also separated from the center of the earth by about 700 km, in the direction of the sea of Japan. That's on the opposite side of the earth from the south atlantic. So effectively over the south atlantic anomaly the trapped radiation in the earth's magnetic field can fall 700 km lower than elsewhere...right into the orbital altitude of polar orbit satellites like the International Space Station.
Now, the real mystery is why the earth's magnetic axis is so far off-kilter.:) That I'm pretty sure hasn't been explained.
Yes, the solar arrays on the ISS are supposed to be around 160 volts, which is a lot higher than most satellites. They've designed around it, though. The ISS is connected to the solar array via a positive ground rather than a negative one, which should keep the station itself safe for astronauts. (They still should avoid the array if possible, though.) And the plasma contactor mentioned in the article is a pretty useful item that's worked on scientific satellites for years. With the PCU working, they shouldn't have many problems.
If the PCU goes out, though, plasma charging is a problem. You have the possibility of electrical arcs...which are equally dangerous to astronauts and to the electrical equipment on the station. The torques on the station change when the ground is disturbed, possibly changing its orbit or spin. Ion sputtering (erosion of the spacecraft hull) increases...although that's probably the least of your concerns. There may be periods in the orbit when the astronauts, if they work quickly, can get out and fix things safely. That'd be tough, though, as they hit the aurorae belts every orbit and the South Atlantic Anomaly at least once every seven. You don't want to be EVA over south america next to an ungrounded high voltage space station.
But the folks who build the ISS know what they're doing, and I think they'll have the plasma environment under control. Some of the other problems mentioned in that article I did not know about and do look like a worry, but I'm sure things aren't as dire as the article writer is predicting.
(Full disclosure: I work (subcontract) for NASA on a satellite program unrelated to the ISS. Whether that makes me knowledgeable or just biased is your decision.:) )
Okay, if a product is free, then they want to tax it at the price of an equivalent product. I can follow that logic, even as twisted as it may be.
Here's the solution: Sell open source software. Charge a penny for it. Add 30% tax to the penny and round down -- it still costs one cent.
Governments need to learn that there are some things they cannot control. The public can find ways around nearly every regulation that isn't enforced with violence.
Very interesting information there -- thanks for digging it up! And along with all the other responses to my post; you've all definitely made the point that Opera is not 100% W3C compliant. I believe they *claim* it is...and it's always been good enough for me, in testing my own web pages. I'll dig into this myself; I want to know what bugs there are that I haven't noticed.
But I'm pretty baffled about the differences we're seeing in buggy web pages. Opera allows you to fiddle with the rendering of web sites, by changing zooms, toggling formatting or images, changing browser designation, etc. I've seen some bugged web pages that at first didn't render well in Opera...but after a few button clicks I have always been able to tweak them to readability. And unlike NS4.6/.7, it's never crashed on me on a bad web page.
If you abandoned Opera because it initially gave you garbled results on a bad web page, you might want to try it again. Press the Background 'load/off' button, which I've found solves 90% of the problems. (I've also found it works better in v3.6 than 4.0, unfortunately, but it's still helpful.) Fiddle with the page a bit and I think you'll find that Opera gives you the tools to make sense out of any piece of crap on the web.
All of course, just in my own humble experience.:)
The Opera browser is 100% W3C compliant and does a very good job in retaining compatibility with bugged web pages. It also gives you several options for 'fixing' a bugged web page -- a button toggles the formatting of the page on or off, and you can even set it to lie to the server about what browser it is. This really is a dynamite little browser that puts both IE and NS to shame.
Opera also has dozens of features that the other guys seem to have missed. I was so excited when I heard that Mozilla/NS 6.0 had a 'zoom' function...then I saw they only changed the text size. Opera can zoom into or out of a web page, changing text size, table sizes, and resampling any inline images. It also has a new 'fullscreen' mode that's amazing...I'm wondering if I can sneak Opera into work to replace Powerpoint for presentations. By comparison, NS 6.0's new features seem mostly limited to cookie control and changing skins.
I downloaded NS 6.0 for NT this morning. Some bugs in the user interface, but I haven't found any fatal bugs yet. It's nice and I might use it for work (where NS is allowed and Opera is not), but the NS/Mozilla tech is not good enough to replace the Opera browser I use at home.
Look, it's a lot simpler than Wertheim's convoluted forecasting. As Eliade wrote in his work 'The Sacred and the Profane', humans feel a need to connect to a higher power, a source of strength. Often their attachment is to a place because something historical happened there, or to a time of the year because something historical happened then.
Because we perceive things as happening 'on the net' -- and that perception will only grow stronger as virtual reality becomes more common -- it's fairly safe to predict that people will derive a sort of spirituality from cyberspace. Already there's a sort of sanctity attached to internet 'places' like Slashdot; people regard it as special, and they get very incensed when it does things they regard as 'out of canon'.
So yes, in time as groups and places evolve on the internet, I can see the sources of strength people find there becoming sacred, even spiritual to them.
But unlike Wertheim, I discount any involvement of Christianity in this evolution. Christianity is based around the sacredness of the teachings of one man. Whatever spirituality arises from the internet, Christians are most likely to see it as a threat and an aberration.
Internet Spirituality will arise, but it will be wholly non-traditional and likely highly individualistic. And as the internet is unique in human history, the spirituality that people find in it is also likely to be unforseeable and new.
I found a well-written article on the Zero Year curse affecting US presidents. It apparently stretches back to a Shawnee Indian chief named Tecumseh, who cursed president Harrison in 1840. Interesting stuff. And a reminder that we should keep in the back of our minds the possibility of President Cheney or President Lieberman.
The 'twenty year cycle' you refer to is also known as the Zero-year presidency cycle. Every president elected in a year ending with a zero has died in office...except the latest, Reagan (elected 1980). Not all these presidents were assassinated -- a few died of natural causes.
Therefore, if you believe in numerology or superstition, and if Reagan didn't break the curse forever, signs point to the death of the next president, no matter who he is.
I think it's a load of hooey, myself. But I am worried that psychos often feel the need to fufill their own prophecies...and thus it is conceivable that there will be an assassination attempt on the next president, by some insane moron who thinks it's his destiny.
I submitted this as a story, but it probably wasn't interesting enough. But about a week ago I received spam from someone who purported to be funded by the Republican party.
I thought, 'Naah, this can't really be the Republicans. They wouldn't do something as stupid as spamming people for support.' But then I did some research...and apparently they really are this stupid.
If I needed a reason not to vote Republican, this gave me one. Bastards. But I suspect that the next election will be far worse, with candidates spamming from all sides.
For a start I'd dispute his claims that there are six numbers that constitute the makeup of everything. There's no mention of things
like the masses of the fundamental particles, the interaction strengths of the four forces, Planck's constant etc. etc. His numbers,
apart from D (although that is also looking more likely to not be fundamental), are secondary characteristics arising from the
effects of the underlying forces.
I'm pretty sure that his 'six numbers' can be used to derive those other constants. The strong force constant is in there as his epsilon, there's a ratio with gravity as his N, etc.
My guess is that he chose those six numbers rather than the fundamental constants to better describe them to laypersons. Planck's constant is tough to describe as a single quanta-frequency of light, but wrapping it into Q -- the size of the ripples of the expanding universe -- gets the point across. Physicists today, and cosmologists especially, have to in some part be showmen.
"How does a person who can't afford to feed his children, let alone send them to college, have an equal opportunity to a person who sends their kid to Harvard with his pocket change?"
The answer is mind-bogglingly simple. You work like hell, and that makes opportunities happen for you.
I asked how a poor man has an equal opportunity to a rich man. I'm not questioning that hard work can elevate you; that's how I got to where I am today. What I'm saying is that the poor man has fewer opportunities, because he *has* to slave like a dog to attain a comfortable life. Nobody rational can argue that the two men do not start at equivalent positions in life.
I search my copy of the Constitution in vain for a clause granting Congress any authority whatsoever to supply charity to the masses.
Oh, come on. If not the preamble ("...insure domestic tranquility...promote the general welfare...") then you only have to look as far as Article I, section 8 to find "The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, [...] to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States." That's just the first example I found...I'm sure if I kept looking there'd be more.
In any event, this comes down to a central disagreement about the role of government. Which after all, is why we're structured as a democracy; you vote your way, I'll vote mine.
The role of government is to protect the rights of its citizens. We are to be given equal OPPORTUNITY, not all forced to be
equal (for that Eutopian dream can never happen).
QuickSilver_999 had an excellent response. But tell me, how does a person who can't afford to feed his children, let alone send them to college, have an equal opportunity to a person who sends their kid to Harvard with his pocket change?
Nor do I, actually.:) I'm taking this all way too personally, and I think it's time I stepped back and took a break for a while. Forgive me if my tone got a little strident there.
We're not passing them by so that Mr. Goldshorts (who's he? I've never met him...) can by his daughter another Lear jet. We're
saying that Mr. Goldshorts deserves respect, credit, and happiness for the work he's put in to EARN his money. And in the
process for all the money he's put into the economy hiring workers and buying products.
This hypothetical rich man already has all the happiness money can buy. Repect and credit for his accomplishments are something he can only get from his peers, not the government. Once you have no debt, sound investments, a car/house/wife/dog/and toybox then you're as happy as you can get financially. He's earned this comfortable lifestyle. What more does he need that money can buy?
The cruelty is that people consistantly harm one another either financially or emotionally by making the ability to earn money a sin.
No. The ability to earn money, like all other exceptional abilities, creates an obligation to use a small part of your abilities to improve the world. There is no great power that does not carry a great responsibility. It only becomes a sin when a person denies this responsibility and is selfish with their excesses.
There is no responsibility for a government to help it's citizens financially. It is the government's responsibility to protect them
from enemies, foriegn and domestic. It's their responsibility to make the laws fair so that all citizens are EQUAL before the law.
Under no circumstances is it the government's responsibility to make sure they eat right, or have heat in their homes. That's
charity. For that sort of thing, turn to churchs, foundations, and community help.
I disagree, and I think this is the essential Republican/Democratic divide (not that I'm a democrat; I'm registered independant, but obviously somewhere in that cloud left of center.) The varying worlds of thought on this subject is also why the Libertarians scare the hell out of me.
It is the government's responsibility to safeguard the populace. Yes, that means policing the food they eat. Without the FDA, we'd all be eating food laden with sawdust. Even with food aid programs there are still children in the south ill from malnutrition. And it means protecting those who cannot find adequate shelter. We're talking about people dying, here. A government exists in part to prevent that from happening.
And it's not a tax break, it's a tax reduction.
Semantics. The rich don't need it, other people do. And I believe it is the government's role to make that distinction.
Without factoring in any social obligation, from a purely economical standpoint, you want to maximize the total output of the economy, and strong top-heavy taxation is an impediment to that, especially when it comes to investing.
Ah, how to refute this? Let me count the ways:
One of the functions of government is to factor in social obligations to its people, especially the ones who need the most help.
A purely economical standpoint leads to a corporate strategy, not a national one. Or in other words, a fascist state.
You do *not* want to maximize the total output of a national economy. That's why the Fed has been trying to slow us down. The best national economy is a stable one, not one racing out of control towards a crash.
As Brin explained, top-heavy taxation leads to redistribution of wealth through charitable giving.
You strike me as someone with a strong grip on corporate marketing strategies. I suggest you avoid trying to translate those strategies to a national economy.
Slashdot Mirror
There are many different kinds of freedoms. What's most important to you -- freedom of privacy, sexual freedom, freedom of religion, freedom to do what you want with your body, freedom of speech? If you focus on each of these you'll find different contries that grant those freedoms. And just because a country allows one type of freedom, don't expect it to allow others.
For example, because of my sexuality sexual freedom is important to me. The US is in surprisingly good shape as far as sexual freedom goes (although Ashcroft may threaten that). Yes, about half the states in the union have seldomly enforced sodomy laws...but half do not, and you can choose to live in any state you like. Contrast that to Britain with its strict BDSM laws -- life in prison for whipping a consenting partner? Similarly draconian statues exist in Australia and Canada, countries who boast about how much freer they are than the US. Yeah, you may gain something, moving there, but you'll lose something else.
If you're interested in drugs there are western european countries that allow that...but you'll lose your freedom to arm yourself, among other things. Arabic countries actually give a lot of freedoms to men, although generally not freedom of religion...and women get almost no freedoms at all. If you want privacy you can't do much better than island nations like Singapore or Grand Cayman, but your freedom of speech goes away and in some cases your freedom to *leave*.
For me the US has the best mix of freedoms, not to mention that laws vary state to state so you can find one that matches your needs. More importantly, the US allows the freedom to fight the system -- you can work to *change* the laws if you wish, without ending in jail. That's something we take for granted, but if you ask a lot of people around the world they'll tell you that's the most important freedom of all.
Dumb article. They completely missed the fact that society has momentum...and thus, what affects people in everyday life always lags the current edge of technology. And as technology increases that lag gets worse. In 1900 there was almost no infrastructure in America. No highways, few if any phone lines. In the last 100 years we've paved a million miles of road, laid phone lines everywhere and put satellites up for an orbital information infrastructure. And they're *good enough*. Although today's technological innovations could do marvelous things, what we have now is good enough for the average man, and there's no pressing need to spend the money to upgrade them. The fiber optic lines in laboratories could give full video to everyone in america...but the existing twisted pair is good enough for most people. (Still, in some locales even that is being upgraded.) We could have supersonic low orbit transports to go from New York to LA in 30 minutes. But the upgrades to airports would be expensive, and the current system is good enough. LEDs are advanced enough now to replace all of our lights at 1/10th the power, but what we have now is good enough. Society isn't ready to upgrade the old for the new. Only when something drastically new comes along, with it's own killer app, does society wake up and progress. The internet is the killer app that will upgrade our telecommunication infrastructure. More will come. But technological innovation (which is increasing exponentially) does not correllate with cultural progress...which so far appears almost glacially slow. :/
Whoa, that Deathwatch site is some scary stuff. I mean, I expected to see Etoys (death date Apr 1, 2001) and Priceline (death date Mar 18, 2001)...but PSINet (Feb 27, 2001)? MP3.com (May 6, 2001)? Salon (Jan 14, 2001)? Worldgate (Nov 27, 2001)?
You have hundreds of companies listed there. If your predictions are accurate, there really is a recession heading this way, at least in the information/internet sector.
The limit of resolution on a camera is the diffraction limit. That's the point where the wavelength of the light is larger than the angular distance of the object you're viewing. The formula is (angular resolution) = 1.22 * (wavelength)/(telescope diameter) in radians. To convert radians to length, multiply by the distance from your target (which is a good approximation at large distances.)
:)
Most low orbit satellites are about 700 km up. Visible light is around 300-600 nanometers...call it 400 nm.
So the theoretical minimum telescope needed to have a one-centimeter resolution on the ground would be diameter = 1.22*400e-9*700e3/1e-2, or about 34 meters across. For reference, the Hubble's mirror is 2.4 meters diameter.
So it's possible. Just not bloody likely given current limits on what we can build in space.
I'm confused. I see that the new generation's familiarity with computers brings them some useful skills and points of view. But I don't see how their gaming experience makes them any different from, say, the previous generations who *also* had gaming experience.
Before computers it was D&D. Before D&D it was cowboys and indians, football and little league baseball. Before that, youths played word games in Victorian england. Card games throughout the 19th century. During feudal history it was play swordfighting. Hopscotch, mumbleypeg, caber tossing. Olympic contests in greco-roman times. Lacrosse was played by amerinds thousands of years ago. Even cavemen probably had contests of strength, coordination and wit.
Young people have always played games of one sort or another. That they're now doing it with a computer, and with a wider assortment of people throughout the world, will have an effect on their skills and worldview. But 90% of the things mentioned in the above article apply to the gamers of every generation for thousands of years into the past.
We are not that different.
I'm not a teenager. (Just turned 33, so I'm nearing 'old fart', actually.) But so far I have to agree with Jon. My generation may not be smarter or more experienced than the older ones, but we're a hell of a lot more flexible and capable. And the generation below me is just plain scary, as adept as they are.
Just this week at work I'm going to mandatory Lotus Notes training. That's right, they're forcing all employees to sit in a classroom for FOUR hours so they can teach us how to use an email client. Nevermind that I've used over a dozen different email clients, nevermind that I could WRITE Lotus Notes if I had to. Nevermind that for people my age and experience, an email client is about as interesting and as difficult to learn as a toaster. Nope...because some aging executive idiot thought it was difficult, we all have to waste our time training in it. (sigh)
As for games jumping in cultural importance...I'm reminded of that NASDAQ commercial, where some kid asks 'where is the center of the tech world?' He goes through an assembly line, a lecture by a scientist...and then is thrown into a first-person shooter game. That gaming is reaching the same status as high-tech industry and science is, I think, a very interesting observation. I don't know how gaming culture will affect society, but I think it's a good bet to say that it will, somehow.
And by the way -- the older I get, the dumber my father becomes. 'Filling my lungs with cigarette tar prevents me from catching colds!' Yeah, right, dad.
You're supposed to be concerned about those people because they outnumber us, and they are still smart enough to know how to use a gun. :) Remember, the first Luddite rebellion was a bloody affair.
Oh, sure. Just get the P.O. Box of a hundred indigent rice farmers in Bangladesh, put rice seeds in a bag with a note for explanation, and send 'em on their way through the good old Bangladeshi Postal System ('...through typhoon, through dysentery, through malaligned chakrim, the mail must go through!')
Get real. You can't simply mail the truly poor regions of the world -- in general they have no address. And since their NY Time subscription tends to be a little late, they don't know about Golden Rice and what it can do for them. And why would they trust a letter from a foreigner that tells them to eat strange-colored food? This is assuming that the rice even gets into the country, with most 3rd world countries having a corrupt import system that snatches cargo for themselves more often than not. And the doctor only gets one chance, as he'll be put in jail by the European anti-GM Food sentiment soon after he tries to mail some of this stuff to anyone.
You are being really, really, really naive.
The only way to get this rice to where it will do some good is if it can get into the distribution mechanism of the humanitarian organizations of the world. And the only way to do that is legally, through whatever export/donation system he's now fighting with.
I wish Herr Doctor the best of luck, and I hope his creations become widespread -- legally -- as soon as possible.
Okay, the book is arguing that high tech culture is robbing the landscape of its traditional values and socialization as its workers migrate to join the high tech boom. And you, being a part of the high tech culture, say 'Duh', and make snide remarks about evolution.
Make no mistake -- there is a rising anti-technological sentiment out there, and you'd be ignoring it at your own peril. Traditional culture is sessile but still powerful, and if a backlash against high-tech occurs, it will at the least be inconvenient for you.
What does confuse me, though, is why Katz hates this book but applauded the WTO protests, which were another symptom of the same anti-high-tech phenomenon.
Well, we know why the anomaly exists. The earth's magnetic axis is not only tilted from the geographic axis, it's also separated from the center of the earth by about 700 km, in the direction of the sea of Japan. That's on the opposite side of the earth from the south atlantic. So effectively over the south atlantic anomaly the trapped radiation in the earth's magnetic field can fall 700 km lower than elsewhere...right into the orbital altitude of polar orbit satellites like the International Space Station.
:) That I'm pretty sure hasn't been explained.
Now, the real mystery is why the earth's magnetic axis is so far off-kilter.
Yes, the solar arrays on the ISS are supposed to be around 160 volts, which is a lot higher than most satellites. They've designed around it, though. The ISS is connected to the solar array via a positive ground rather than a negative one, which should keep the station itself safe for astronauts. (They still should avoid the array if possible, though.) And the plasma contactor mentioned in the article is a pretty useful item that's worked on scientific satellites for years. With the PCU working, they shouldn't have many problems.
:) )
If the PCU goes out, though, plasma charging is a problem. You have the possibility of electrical arcs...which are equally dangerous to astronauts and to the electrical equipment on the station. The torques on the station change when the ground is disturbed, possibly changing its orbit or spin. Ion sputtering (erosion of the spacecraft hull) increases...although that's probably the least of your concerns. There may be periods in the orbit when the astronauts, if they work quickly, can get out and fix things safely. That'd be tough, though, as they hit the aurorae belts every orbit and the South Atlantic Anomaly at least once every seven. You don't want to be EVA over south america next to an ungrounded high voltage space station.
But the folks who build the ISS know what they're doing, and I think they'll have the plasma environment under control. Some of the other problems mentioned in that article I did not know about and do look like a worry, but I'm sure things aren't as dire as the article writer is predicting.
(Full disclosure: I work (subcontract) for NASA on a satellite program unrelated to the ISS. Whether that makes me knowledgeable or just biased is your decision.
Okay, if a product is free, then they want to tax it at the price of an equivalent product. I can follow that logic, even as twisted as it may be.
Here's the solution: Sell open source software. Charge a penny for it. Add 30% tax to the penny and round down -- it still costs one cent.
Governments need to learn that there are some things they cannot control. The public can find ways around nearly every regulation that isn't enforced with violence.
Very interesting information there -- thanks for digging it up! And along with all the other responses to my post; you've all definitely made the point that Opera is not 100% W3C compliant. I believe they *claim* it is...and it's always been good enough for me, in testing my own web pages. I'll dig into this myself; I want to know what bugs there are that I haven't noticed.
:)
But I'm pretty baffled about the differences we're seeing in buggy web pages. Opera allows you to fiddle with the rendering of web sites, by changing zooms, toggling formatting or images, changing browser designation, etc. I've seen some bugged web pages that at first didn't render well in Opera...but after a few button clicks I have always been able to tweak them to readability. And unlike NS4.6/.7, it's never crashed on me on a bad web page.
If you abandoned Opera because it initially gave you garbled results on a bad web page, you might want to try it again. Press the Background 'load/off' button, which I've found solves 90% of the problems. (I've also found it works better in v3.6 than 4.0, unfortunately, but it's still helpful.) Fiddle with the page a bit and I think you'll find that Opera gives you the tools to make sense out of any piece of crap on the web.
All of course, just in my own humble experience.
Opera also has dozens of features that the other guys seem to have missed. I was so excited when I heard that Mozilla/NS 6.0 had a 'zoom' function...then I saw they only changed the text size. Opera can zoom into or out of a web page, changing text size, table sizes, and resampling any inline images. It also has a new 'fullscreen' mode that's amazing...I'm wondering if I can sneak Opera into work to replace Powerpoint for presentations. By comparison, NS 6.0's new features seem mostly limited to cookie control and changing skins.
I downloaded NS 6.0 for NT this morning. Some bugs in the user interface, but I haven't found any fatal bugs yet. It's nice and I might use it for work (where NS is allowed and Opera is not), but the NS/Mozilla tech is not good enough to replace the Opera browser I use at home.
Look, it's a lot simpler than Wertheim's convoluted forecasting. As Eliade wrote in his work 'The Sacred and the Profane', humans feel a need to connect to a higher power, a source of strength. Often their attachment is to a place because something historical happened there, or to a time of the year because something historical happened then.
Because we perceive things as happening 'on the net' -- and that perception will only grow stronger as virtual reality becomes more common -- it's fairly safe to predict that people will derive a sort of spirituality from cyberspace. Already there's a sort of sanctity attached to internet 'places' like Slashdot; people regard it as special, and they get very incensed when it does things they regard as 'out of canon'.
So yes, in time as groups and places evolve on the internet, I can see the sources of strength people find there becoming sacred, even spiritual to them.
But unlike Wertheim, I discount any involvement of Christianity in this evolution. Christianity is based around the sacredness of the teachings of one man. Whatever spirituality arises from the internet, Christians are most likely to see it as a threat and an aberration.
Internet Spirituality will arise, but it will be wholly non-traditional and likely highly individualistic. And as the internet is unique in human history, the spirituality that people find in it is also likely to be unforseeable and new.
I found a well-written article on the Zero Year curse affecting US presidents. It apparently stretches back to a Shawnee Indian chief named Tecumseh, who cursed president Harrison in 1840. Interesting stuff. And a reminder that we should keep in the back of our minds the possibility of President Cheney or President Lieberman.
Death Cycle of Presidents elected in Zero Years
The 'twenty year cycle' you refer to is also known as the Zero-year presidency cycle. Every president elected in a year ending with a zero has died in office...except the latest, Reagan (elected 1980). Not all these presidents were assassinated -- a few died of natural causes.
Therefore, if you believe in numerology or superstition, and if Reagan didn't break the curse forever, signs point to the death of the next president, no matter who he is.
I think it's a load of hooey, myself. But I am worried that psychos often feel the need to fufill their own prophecies...and thus it is conceivable that there will be an assassination attempt on the next president, by some insane moron who thinks it's his destiny.
I could be wrong, but I would think the analogous Corporate Buyers in the music industry would be:
Radio stations
Stores who pipe-in music to their customers
Karaoke companies
Music clubs (Columbia House)
Retailers
I don't know how often these buyers pirate the music they use. I do remember some news reports of pirate retailers, in the US and asia.
I thought, 'Naah, this can't really be the Republicans. They wouldn't do something as stupid as spamming people for support.' But then I did some research...and apparently they really are this stupid.
Here is a Salon article from 1999 about a Republican senate candidate's spam. And there's an anti-spam spite with an article about the Californian Republican party spamming people. A mention in the Seatt le Times. And then of course there's EChampions, the RNC-funded group who sent the spam that hit my mailbox.
If I needed a reason not to vote Republican, this gave me one. Bastards. But I suspect that the next election will be far worse, with candidates spamming from all sides.
I'm pretty sure that his 'six numbers' can be used to derive those other constants. The strong force constant is in there as his epsilon, there's a ratio with gravity as his N, etc.
My guess is that he chose those six numbers rather than the fundamental constants to better describe them to laypersons. Planck's constant is tough to describe as a single quanta-frequency of light, but wrapping it into Q -- the size of the ripples of the expanding universe -- gets the point across. Physicists today, and cosmologists especially, have to in some part be showmen.
The answer is mind-bogglingly simple. You work like hell, and that makes opportunities happen for you.
I asked how a poor man has an equal opportunity to a rich man. I'm not questioning that hard work can elevate you; that's how I got to where I am today. What I'm saying is that the poor man has fewer opportunities, because he *has* to slave like a dog to attain a comfortable life. Nobody rational can argue that the two men do not start at equivalent positions in life.
Oh, come on. If not the preamble ("...insure domestic tranquility...promote the general welfare...") then you only have to look as far as Article I, section 8 to find "The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, [...] to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States." That's just the first example I found...I'm sure if I kept looking there'd be more.
In any event, this comes down to a central disagreement about the role of government. Which after all, is why we're structured as a democracy; you vote your way, I'll vote mine.
QuickSilver_999 had an excellent response. But tell me, how does a person who can't afford to feed his children, let alone send them to college, have an equal opportunity to a person who sends their kid to Harvard with his pocket change?
Nor do I, actually. :) I'm taking this all way too personally, and I think it's time I stepped back and took a break for a while. Forgive me if my tone got a little strident there.
We're not passing them by so that Mr. Goldshorts (who's he? I've never met him...) can by his daughter another Lear jet. We're saying that Mr. Goldshorts deserves respect, credit, and happiness for the work he's put in to EARN his money. And in the process for all the money he's put into the economy hiring workers and buying products.
This hypothetical rich man already has all the happiness money can buy. Repect and credit for his accomplishments are something he can only get from his peers, not the government. Once you have no debt, sound investments, a car/house/wife/dog/and toybox then you're as happy as you can get financially. He's earned this comfortable lifestyle. What more does he need that money can buy?
The cruelty is that people consistantly harm one another either financially or emotionally by making the ability to earn money a sin.
No. The ability to earn money, like all other exceptional abilities, creates an obligation to use a small part of your abilities to improve the world. There is no great power that does not carry a great responsibility. It only becomes a sin when a person denies this responsibility and is selfish with their excesses.
There is no responsibility for a government to help it's citizens financially. It is the government's responsibility to protect them from enemies, foriegn and domestic. It's their responsibility to make the laws fair so that all citizens are EQUAL before the law. Under no circumstances is it the government's responsibility to make sure they eat right, or have heat in their homes. That's charity. For that sort of thing, turn to churchs, foundations, and community help.
I disagree, and I think this is the essential Republican/Democratic divide (not that I'm a democrat; I'm registered independant, but obviously somewhere in that cloud left of center.) The varying worlds of thought on this subject is also why the Libertarians scare the hell out of me.
It is the government's responsibility to safeguard the populace. Yes, that means policing the food they eat. Without the FDA, we'd all be eating food laden with sawdust. Even with food aid programs there are still children in the south ill from malnutrition. And it means protecting those who cannot find adequate shelter. We're talking about people dying, here. A government exists in part to prevent that from happening.
And it's not a tax break, it's a tax reduction.
Semantics. The rich don't need it, other people do. And I believe it is the government's role to make that distinction.
Ah, how to refute this? Let me count the ways:
You strike me as someone with a strong grip on corporate marketing strategies. I suggest you avoid trying to translate those strategies to a national economy.