is incorrect to bring it up over a discussion about whether Iraq can be justified as a war for humanitarian purposes.
I never claimed that the Iraq war was waged for humanitarian purposes.
However, you were replying to a person who said our goals are "to modernize and democratize the mideast, to enable a free flow of information and a free exchange of ideas, and to empower the peoples of said nations to control their own personal and collective destinies in an environment that nurtures ideals of freedom".
That is a pretty good summary of the United States' current goals in Iraq.
Whether Osama is dead, incarcerated, or merely on the lam would make little difference to the effectiveness of al Qaeda's ongoing operations, so I would not support devoting a lot of additional resources toward hunting this one individual.
If we started with non-oil producers in greater need, people actually would believe that was what we were doing.
Um, we did. The invasion of Afghanistan came before the Iraq campaign. Afghanistan is a much poorer country than Iraq, and has no petroleum to speak of.
A long time, I hope. Serving in Congress is serious business (or at least it ought to be). Not the place for people who fantasize about fictional religions invented by second-rate movie directors.
"Lamb Chop's Play-Along" was children's programming at its finest -- engaging young minds with wit, instead of talking down to them like that GODDAMN EVIL PURPLE DINOSAUR.
I was in your shoes once. Graduated with my Aerospace Engineering degree just as the Cold War was coming to a close and defense spending was being slashed. Couldn't find professional employment to save my life. What did I do? Went to Air Force Officer Training School ( http://ots.afoats.af.mil/ ) and served four years.
I certainly didn't cry out for some make-work socialist jobs program.
the cost savings will be passed on to the shareholders in the form of profit rather than on to the consumer in the form of reduced charges.
Hey, at least the savings are getting passed on to somebody -- as opposed to never being realized at all.
I once worked for a private company that had a manager for every two useful people...
I don't doubt your anecdotal story, but it doesn't detract from the fact that in general, private enterprises tend to be run more efficiently than government enterprises.
Except for the last paragraph. Civilization could increase its energy usage 100-fold, and that would still be nothing compared to all the solar energy that's incident on the planet. The global warming hypothesis is that greenhouse gases trap marginally more of that solar energy in our atmosphere (after it's been converted to heat).
So anything that would allow us to reduce greenhouse gas concentrations would help. If we utilize (as in his scenario) 70% of 10% of the solar energy that's intercepted by the ring, that won't "nullify the original purpose of the ring."
In the 1980s the courts ruled that VCRs (that's video cassette recorders, for you young 'uns) were legal because they had "significant non-infringing uses."
Why not just apply that precedent, instead of rehashing the whole thing every time the technology changes a little?
In that case, Cable provision is a natural monopoly and there is nothing to be gained by having it run by a private company (the theory of capitalism being based on competition), so it should be taken under public ownership.
What about the argument that even natural monopolies will operate more efficiently if there is pressure from the shareholders to keep costs down (in order to increase the size of dividends paid to shareholders) ?
Take an arbitrarily large corpus of writings sampled from the world wide web. This corpus will establish the equivalent of an IQ test. Give the AIs the task of compressing this corpus into the smallest representation. This representation must be a program that, taking no outside inputs, produces the exact sample it compressed. The AIQ of an AI is simply the ratio of the size of the uncompressed writings to the size of the program that, when executed, produces the uncompressed writings. In other words, the AIQ is the compression ratio achieved by the AI on the AIQ test. The reason this works as an AI quality test is that compression requires predictive modeling. If you can predict what someone is going to say, you have modeled their mental processes and by inference have a superset of their mental faculties.
When a very intelligent human studies, understands, and internalizes the writings of others, he or she will indeed be able to model another person's mental process and roughly predict what they might say. But that's not the criteria in this proposed competition. For this competition, the AI is required to reproduce the exact sample that was compressed.
By this standard, I'm afraid that WinZip 9.0 will be judged the world's most intelligent AI.
the Volna first stage unexpectedly shut down 83 seconds after lift-off
Isn't the Volna a solid-fueled rocket? If so, it's not nearly as likely to "unexpectedly shut down" as a liquid-fueled rocket. Indeed, the main reservation NASA had about adding solid-fuel boosters to Shuttle was that they can't be shut down, or even throttled-back.
Had the victors of WWI had set up a "Just Peace" like the US wanted then maybe Hitler would have never come to power.
And when Hitler invaded the Sudetenland, if Neville Chanberlain had nipped Hitler's ambition in the bud instead of appeasing him and emboldening him to try to take over the world, WWII wouldn't have happened.
Scenario two. A guy overseeing 20 robots with 20 hammers. He directs all day, takes a same sized paycheck goes home to his new home which was built at a 10th the price of the first guy's house because it was built by robots.
Let's assume the guy is employed by a construction firm. The robots represent a decrease in that firm's costs.
Now, when a business realizes decreased costs, it tends to do three things with the money it saved:
1) Pass some, but not all, of its savings along to its customers in the form of lower prices (the better to compete in the market for customers) 2) Give some, but not all, of the money to its employees in the form of higher wages (the better to compete in the market for quality employees) 3) Give some, but not all, of the money to its owners / shareholders (the better to compete in the market for investors)
The main points are, * The guy probably wouldn't take home the same sized paycheck. He'd probably take home a somewhat larger paycheck. * Technology raises productivity, which is a win/win situation for everyone.
I also remember all I read about nuclear fusion and now I see it made available(ok, in actual testing and producing actual electricity) in a breadbox sized box...
Um, no. The breadbox-sized fusion device reported on a few weeks ago is nowhere near the break-even point.
Our solar system has enough energy/mineral resources to support trillions of humans, at a standard of living that current Americans could never dream of attaining.
Please don't fall for the argument of simplistic environmentalsts who insist that the "pristine" celestial bodies must be preserved at all costs. Eliminating poverty and overcrowding is much more important.
Yes, we should attempt to preserve any alien species we might encounter (and completely sequence their DNA, in case we screw up in that regard).
The alternative to the "final frontier manifest destiny" is for humans to stay earthbound until we blow each other up in a fight over increasingly scarce resources. For pete's sake, don't doom the human race to this fate out of concern that we might taint the environment of some alien microbe!
Slashdot Mirror
The upper end of your range is correct. U.S. GDP per capita is $40,100 -- 135% of the U.K. GDP per capita ($29,600).
linky
is incorrect to bring it up over a discussion about whether Iraq can be justified as a war for humanitarian purposes.
I never claimed that the Iraq war was waged for humanitarian purposes.
However, you were replying to a person who said our goals are "to modernize and democratize the mideast, to enable a free flow of information and a free exchange of ideas, and to empower the peoples of said nations to control their own personal and collective destinies in an environment that nurtures ideals of freedom".
That is a pretty good summary of the United States' current goals in Iraq.
Whether Osama is dead, incarcerated, or merely on the lam would make little difference to the effectiveness of al Qaeda's ongoing operations, so I would not support devoting a lot of additional resources toward hunting this one individual.
If we started with non-oil producers in greater need, people actually would believe that was what we were doing.
Um, we did. The invasion of Afghanistan came before the Iraq campaign. Afghanistan is a much poorer country than Iraq, and has no petroleum to speak of.
OK, so the consensus here among Slashdotters is that this guy who was charged with a felony, Benjamin Smith III, did nothing wrong.
What can we do to help him and get the charges dropped? Is the Electronic Freedom Foundation sending a lawyer to help him?
At the bottom of every Slashdot page, it says "© 1997-2005 OSTG."
Check out the photo on Sun's product page for the "Ultra 3 Mobile Workstation."
e x.xml
http://www.sun.com/desktop/workstation/ultra3/ind
A long time, I hope. Serving in Congress is serious business (or at least it ought to be). Not the place for people who fantasize about fictional religions invented by second-rate movie directors.
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=bartery
Probably not what you had in mind..
Here's a list of other fusion reactors that came before ITER: http://www.grandunification.com/hypertext/Fusion_
"Lamb Chop's Play-Along" was children's programming at its finest -- engaging young minds with wit, instead of talking down to them like that GODDAMN EVIL PURPLE DINOSAUR.
I was in your shoes once. Graduated with my Aerospace Engineering degree just as the Cold War was coming to a close and defense spending was being slashed. Couldn't find professional employment to save my life. What did I do? Went to Air Force Officer Training School ( http://ots.afoats.af.mil/ ) and served four years. I certainly didn't cry out for some make-work socialist jobs program.
the cost savings will be passed on to the shareholders in the form of profit rather than on to the consumer in the form of reduced charges.
Hey, at least the savings are getting passed on to somebody -- as opposed to never being realized at all.
I once worked for a private company that had a manager for every two useful people...
I don't doubt your anecdotal story, but it doesn't detract from the fact that in general, private enterprises tend to be run more efficiently than government enterprises.
It's actually a pretty good analysis.
Except for the last paragraph. Civilization could increase its energy usage 100-fold, and that would still be nothing compared to all the solar energy that's incident on the planet. The global warming hypothesis is that greenhouse gases trap marginally more of that solar energy in our atmosphere (after it's been converted to heat).
So anything that would allow us to reduce greenhouse gas concentrations would help. If we utilize (as in his scenario) 70% of 10% of the solar energy that's intercepted by the ring, that won't "nullify the original purpose of the ring."
Your sig is more correct than I suspect you realize.
When you add up all local, state, and federal taxes, it's not unusual to find that fully 60% of one's income is consumed by them.
Now, what is slavery, but the state where 100% of the fruits of one's labor is confiscated?
Hence, the average American is currently about 60% enslaved.
That's easy...
Free Shipping On All Orders Over $25 From Amazon.com
In the 1980s the courts ruled that VCRs (that's video cassette recorders, for you young 'uns) were legal because they had "significant non-infringing uses."
Why not just apply that precedent, instead of rehashing the whole thing every time the technology changes a little?
In that case, Cable provision is a natural monopoly and there is nothing to be gained by having it run by a private company (the theory of capitalism being based on competition), so it should be taken under public ownership.
What about the argument that even natural monopolies will operate more efficiently if there is pressure from the shareholders to keep costs down (in order to increase the size of dividends paid to shareholders) ?
Take an arbitrarily large corpus of writings sampled from the world wide web. This corpus will establish the equivalent of an IQ test. Give the AIs the task of compressing this corpus into the smallest representation. This representation must be a program that, taking no outside inputs, produces the exact sample it compressed. The AIQ of an AI is simply the ratio of the size of the uncompressed writings to the size of the program that, when executed, produces the uncompressed writings. In other words, the AIQ is the compression ratio achieved by the AI on the AIQ test. The reason this works as an AI quality test is that compression requires predictive modeling. If you can predict what someone is going to say, you have modeled their mental processes and by inference have a superset of their mental faculties.
When a very intelligent human studies, understands, and internalizes the writings of others, he or she will indeed be able to model another person's mental process and roughly predict what they might say. But that's not the criteria in this proposed competition. For this competition, the AI is required to reproduce the exact sample that was compressed.
By this standard, I'm afraid that WinZip 9.0 will be judged the world's most intelligent AI.
the Volna first stage unexpectedly shut down 83 seconds after lift-off
Isn't the Volna a solid-fueled rocket? If so, it's not nearly as likely to "unexpectedly shut down" as a liquid-fueled rocket. Indeed, the main reservation NASA had about adding solid-fuel boosters to Shuttle was that they can't be shut down, or even throttled-back.
Sucks. Now the cheapest Mac that has a PCI slot, or the option to drive dual monitors, is $2000.
A lot of people, like me, can't live without one or both of those features. This will drive them away from the platform.
Had the victors of WWI had set up a "Just Peace" like the US wanted then maybe Hitler would have never come to power.
And when Hitler invaded the Sudetenland, if Neville Chanberlain had nipped Hitler's ambition in the bud instead of appeasing him and emboldening him to try to take over the world, WWII wouldn't have happened.
Scenario two. A guy overseeing 20 robots with 20 hammers. He directs all day, takes a same sized paycheck goes home to his new home which was built at a 10th the price of the first guy's house because it was built by robots.
Let's assume the guy is employed by a construction firm. The robots represent a decrease in that firm's costs.
Now, when a business realizes decreased costs, it tends to do three things with the money it saved:
1) Pass some, but not all, of its savings along to its customers in the form of lower prices (the better to compete in the market for customers)
2) Give some, but not all, of the money to its employees in the form of higher wages (the better to compete in the market for quality employees)
3) Give some, but not all, of the money to its owners / shareholders (the better to compete in the market for investors)
The main points are,
* The guy probably wouldn't take home the same sized paycheck. He'd probably take home a somewhat larger paycheck.
* Technology raises productivity, which is a win/win situation for everyone.
I also remember all I read about nuclear fusion and now I see it made available(ok, in actual testing and producing actual electricity) in a breadbox sized box...
m l
Um, no. The breadbox-sized fusion device reported on a few weeks ago is nowhere near the break-even point.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0606/p25s01-stss.ht
Our solar system has enough energy/mineral resources to support trillions of humans, at a standard of living that current Americans could never dream of attaining.
Please don't fall for the argument of simplistic environmentalsts who insist that the "pristine" celestial bodies must be preserved at all costs. Eliminating poverty and overcrowding is much more important.
Yes, we should attempt to preserve any alien species we might encounter (and completely sequence their DNA, in case we screw up in that regard).
The alternative to the "final frontier manifest destiny" is for humans to stay earthbound until we blow each other up in a fight over increasingly scarce resources. For pete's sake, don't doom the human race to this fate out of concern that we might taint the environment of some alien microbe!