From the article: "We are determined to find people who illegally distribute music, whichever peer-to-peer network they use, and to make them compensate the... heh, the ar... hah ha ha ha ha, he hee hee, ha ha.. whew, excusee me. Ahem. Let me try again. Hee hee. Compensate the art HA HA HA ha ha, no no, let me finish, the artists, HA HA HA ha ha ha, ha ha hee hee hee, COMPENSATE THE ARTISTS HA HA HA, ha ha ha ha, artists, ha ha, compensation!,HA ha ha, hee hee, ha ha, ha ha, haha, ha... whew. ahhhh. heh. Ok, Compensate the artists and labels they are stealing from."
I don't agree that the government should be using their disposition (and probably deep municipal bandwidth discounts) to remove potential income from private industry.
Air is free... But boy could some company make a killing on it. Just think of all the "potential income" that's being lost by allowing people to breathe for free.
Secondly, the argument is not only that there are many causes more worthy of their several million dollars, but that this particular cause has no worthy or socially redeeming value at all!
That's the point, these doners DO think there is a worthwhile cause here. They believe that people who watch Enterprise are more likely to be interested in ubiquitous space travel NOW as opposed to "some day in the future". In the short term this means money for the doner's companies...
But in the long term, these are the kinds of people who will help us actually get off this rock in a cost-effective way, so that we can utilize the limitless resources of the universe... and once we are utilizing resources from space, guess what, poverty as you know it, (and economics in general, as you know it) fades away.
magine if we ever taught students to actually think about history, literature, or economics rather than making sure that they memorized the answers for the test?
Why not define it in terms of gravity? i.e. 1kg of mass is equal to the mass of a perfect sphere of platinum that can accelerate from rest another equally sized perfect sphere of platinium placed 1 metere away by X m/s?
The chances of dying in a terrorist attack are about 10,000 times smaller than dying in a car accident.
And, indeed, in America lone we have 10x the number of deaths from car accidents than we did during the WTC attack. That's 10 WTC size attacks a year that we don't give a flying fuck about.
Interestingly, this is one of the many reasons why natural selection sometimes seems to be "intelligent". i.e. sometimes it seems as if evolution is trying to reach some goal, or to quickly make jumps in a few generations that would intutivly take millions of years to develop, even though that "intelligence" looks impossible considering the random nature of evolution.
Organisms evolved a system of intelligent or pseudo-intelligent (instinctual) desires in thier mate selection and this is used to reenforce the evolutionary cycle and cause benificial mutations to quickly be integrated and detrimental mutations ot quickly be removed from the gene pool, much quicker than the typical forces people think of as "natural selection".
More importantly, Sexual reproduction offers something that's fairly lacking in asexual reproduction: Significant genetic exchange
Actually it offers something else: Increased selection speed.
With asexual reproduction, you basically have to wait until nature kills it. A minroly disabiling problem may allow 50 generations of the organism to survive, just barely, before eventually going kaput. Huge waste of resources, no? Sexual reproduction allows the mate to "screen" the organism. With any degree of intelligence at all, the mate can decide that it's not worth mating after all, in advance, because he/she can see the writing on the wall.
Their data purport, and indeed seem, to show that during times when many people are focused on the same thing, this random data is suddenly "less random".
It's there is one thing I have learned from slashdot it's this: When the data becomes "less random" it's more likely that the *machine* is causing people to focus on the same thing than the other way around.
Punishments aren't meted out to fit crimes, they are created to compensate for enforceability. It is MUCH easier to enforce shoplifting at a retail store than it is to enforce filesharing copyrights.
The idea behind this is that while punishments are low for shoplifting, the chance of getting caught is high. In the filesharing situation, the chance of getting caught is low, so they try and jack up the punishment to make it that more serious if you do get caught.
There no real logic in that. Why not make ALL punishments equally horrible. Death penalty for any crime by the most painful and excruciating means available. Now it's serious to commit any crime and we live in a better world, right?
Slashdot Mirror
I just read that as 'British Pornographic Industry'.
It's an easy mistake to make, what with all the anal rape of artists' bank accounts and rights...
It should have read:
From the article: "We are determined to find people who illegally distribute music, whichever peer-to-peer network they use, and to make them compensate the... heh, the ar... hah ha ha ha ha, he hee hee, ha ha.. whew, excusee me. Ahem. Let me try again. Hee hee. Compensate the art HA HA HA ha ha, no no, let me finish, the artists, HA HA HA ha ha ha, ha ha hee hee hee, COMPENSATE THE ARTISTS HA HA HA, ha ha ha ha, artists, ha ha, compensation!,HA ha ha, hee hee, ha ha, ha ha, haha, ha... whew. ahhhh. heh. Ok, Compensate the artists and labels they are stealing from."
I don't agree that the government should be using their disposition (and probably deep municipal bandwidth discounts) to remove potential income from private industry.
Air is free... But boy could some company make a killing on it. Just think of all the "potential income" that's being lost by allowing people to breathe for free.
If you hate the place so much, move. What's keeping you here?
So trying to change it isn't an option then? Running away from your problems isn't a good way to live...
Secondly, the argument is not only that there are many causes more worthy of their several million dollars, but that this particular cause has no worthy or socially redeeming value at all!
That's the point, these doners DO think there is a worthwhile cause here. They believe that people who watch Enterprise are more likely to be interested in ubiquitous space travel NOW as opposed to "some day in the future". In the short term this means money for the doner's companies...
But in the long term, these are the kinds of people who will help us actually get off this rock in a cost-effective way, so that we can utilize the limitless resources of the universe... and once we are utilizing resources from space, guess what, poverty as you know it, (and economics in general, as you know it) fades away.
magine if we ever taught students to actually think about history, literature, or economics rather than making sure that they memorized the answers for the test?
I tried it, they get lousy grades...
You want to make air travel safer? Making passengers show papers does jack. Instead, re-enforce the flight cabin doors
That costs money though. Try again, how can we be SAFER but without spending MORE MONEY? That money is earmarked for nation building.
Why not define it in terms of gravity? i.e. 1kg of mass is equal to the mass of a perfect sphere of platinum that can accelerate from rest another equally sized perfect sphere of platinium placed 1 metere away by X m/s?
So, If you get all possible answers simultaneously, how do you tell which one is the right answer to the problem you're working on?
Shhh! You'll screw with thier grant applications.
a process requiring billions of years to occur and such exquisitely balanced conditions that life has never been created from raw materials in the lab
FALSE! It HAS been created in a lab... Or I should say, WILL BE in a few billion years.
This is exactl what one may expect to see with a type III civilization... Funny how nobody thinks o investigate on these lines...
That's childish to post his personal webite.. Trademarking davidrfoley.com, however...
The chances of dying in a terrorist attack are about 10,000 times smaller than dying in a car accident.
And, indeed, in America lone we have 10x the number of deaths from car accidents than we did during the WTC attack. That's 10 WTC size attacks a year that we don't give a flying fuck about.
There are two cheat codes that simulate this now:
T
OURGODGIVENRIGHTTOBEARARMS
and
FIGHTFIGHTFIGH
I think I will name it Colin.
Interestingly, this is one of the many reasons why natural selection sometimes seems to be "intelligent". i.e. sometimes it seems as if evolution is trying to reach some goal, or to quickly make jumps in a few generations that would intutivly take millions of years to develop, even though that "intelligence" looks impossible considering the random nature of evolution.
Organisms evolved a system of intelligent or pseudo-intelligent (instinctual) desires in thier mate selection and this is used to reenforce the evolutionary cycle and cause benificial mutations to quickly be integrated and detrimental mutations ot quickly be removed from the gene pool, much quicker than the typical forces people think of as "natural selection".
More importantly, Sexual reproduction offers something that's fairly lacking in asexual reproduction: Significant genetic exchange
Actually it offers something else: Increased selection speed.
With asexual reproduction, you basically have to wait until nature kills it. A minroly disabiling problem may allow 50 generations of the organism to survive, just barely, before eventually going kaput. Huge waste of resources, no? Sexual reproduction allows the mate to "screen" the organism. With any degree of intelligence at all, the mate can decide that it's not worth mating after all, in advance, because he/she can see the writing on the wall.
it would appear more likely that the machine could somehow cause major events
Stop the machine NOW! And give me back my damn anti-tiger rock.
Their data purport, and indeed seem, to show that during times when many people are focused on the same thing, this random data is suddenly "less random".
It's there is one thing I have learned from slashdot it's this: When the data becomes "less random" it's more likely that the *machine* is causing people to focus on the same thing than the other way around.
CEO of Nabisco says that Oeros are awesome!
Punishments aren't meted out to fit crimes, they are created to compensate for enforceability. It is MUCH easier to enforce shoplifting at a retail store than it is to enforce filesharing copyrights.
The idea behind this is that while punishments are low for shoplifting, the chance of getting caught is high. In the filesharing situation, the chance of getting caught is low, so they try and jack up the punishment to make it that more serious if you do get caught.
There no real logic in that. Why not make ALL punishments equally horrible. Death penalty for any crime by the most painful and excruciating means available. Now it's serious to commit any crime and we live in a better world, right?
When monsanto crops breed with your GPL crops, they have to release the genetic code or they are in violation of the liscense?
Seriously? No, no, i mean.. Seriously?
cant wiat for the IE virus that install firefox as default...
Next you are going to say she likes watching Anime and playing on the PS2. :-P
Yes, and her tits are fantastically huge too...