Yes, but if the international consortium of Knife Sellers decided that they'd make an EULA that said you couldn't cut eggplant with your knife, this would be different than the Government saying that you couldn't cut eggplants (or cut humans).
Rightfully owning a piece of Hardware should be exactly *that*, not rightfully *licensing* a piece of hardware. Agreeing to an EULA seems to suggest that your purchase of an XboX is actually the purchase of a license to use an xbox. It isn't. You bought it, it's yours, you can take it apart and turn it into a toaster if you want to.
Kazaa's network may be proprietary, and the connection algorithms and things may be owned by Kazaa. Distributing a client to record companies (or even making one) for the purpose of uploading files to the network that aren't legit is violation of their EULA.
Also:
2.11 Monitor traffic or make search requests in order to accumulate information about individual users;
2.1 Transmit or communicate any data that is unlawful, harmful, threatening, abusive, harassing, defamatory, vulgar, obscene, invasive of another's privacy, hateful, or racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable;
2.13 Modify, delete or damage any information contained on the personal computer of any Kazaa Media Desktop user; or
2.14 Collect or store personal data about other users.
3.2 Except as expressly permitted in this Licence, you agree not to reverse engineer, de-compile, disassemble, alter, duplicate, modify, rent, lease, loan, sublicense, make copies, create derivative works from, distribute or provide others with the Software in whole or part, transmit or communicate the application over a network.
3.3 You may not sell, transfer or communicate the Software to any third party without our prior express written consent.
Working from that standpoint, any death by killing is wrong, because it shouldn't have happened. It doesn't suddenly justify the killing to be doing it in the name of something good, it simply makes it less subjectively bad than the alternative, which is presumably some other evil.
You seem to look at right and wrong as a contexual problem rather than an absolute, and therefore can define two-wrongs-make-a-right by justifying one wrong with another. This is a logical fallacy - one cannot justify a wrong action with another wrong action.
Killing. It's wrong. No matter who or what is doing the killing.
Just because you've "justified" the killing doesn't make it less "the act of killing".
Yes, it's still a *wrong* to kill someone who's going to kill your family, whether or not it's the lesser of two wrongs (your family dying) from your point of view.
While I certainly don't think you should let your family die, someone has still been killed, which is a wrong.
Just because you've put the killing in a different context doesn't make it less of a killing. Killing is killing, for reason X or reason Y, and is wrong.
Basically, your two arguments against robots in space are:
1) Robots can't move around as well as humans can. 2) Robots don't have human insight or ingenuity.
I think these are really bogus arguments.
The parent post, suggesting that Robots are better than humans at data-collection, is a very valid and worthwhile point. Computers were made for repetitive computation - if you were a human stuck on mars, would you want to collect soil samples from all thousand locations they wanted it from? While it might be fascinating, you have no way to analyze this data outside of a lab, and you have no instrumentation to provide instant readings of geologic or other phenomena. You might be carrying this stuff around, but at that point, it starts to be heavy and cumbersome, might as well be a robot, and you might as well be driving it from back home on Earth.
The geologist stuck on another planet collecting soil samples would be like a biologist manually diagramming thousands of possible protein configurations. It's better that the Geologist is at home, looking at the data in a systematic and organized fashion, than that the geologist is doing a job which requires no training we can't provide to a robot.
Yes, but since the music distributed over the internet should ignore area-cost-of-living because distribution isn't local, your counter-examples don't seem to hold weight.
While salary may differ from region of the world to region of the world, music distribution over the internet doesn't change mechanism. In other words, while gas in one area may be priced higher because of higher cost of distribution, different supply curve, lack of competition, etc, internet distribution shouldn't change because of these factors (with the noted omission of the one localized internet cash-cow: advertising).
You know what I always seem to remember doing? Conjuring up great reasons why my alarm clock ring is going off that have little to do with the fact that it's set to wake me up.
No, really. I've made up some ridiculous excuses in my mind, most of the relating to the snooze button. My brain tries to rationalize whatever it can so long as I can keep sleeping. If you go to bed with a heavy problem that's not letting you fall asleep, I wonder if this happens every once in a while.
I love it when Psychologists tout products / services with testimonials. As someone aspiring to be a real-life research psychologist some day, it seems particularly ironic that none of these guys have ever heard of the Availability Heuristic.(that, or they have, and they're just trying to exploit it, but it doesn't really look good to anyone who's taken Psych 101.)
Example: The Wigetmobile is the best selling car in america because it's super-cheap and super-reliable, according to statistics. Your uncle says he drove his into a tree and it nearly killed him, so you don't buy it, because his vivid description of his near-death incident (probably on account of his own stupidity) "outweighs" statistical evidence that the product is good. This is the same thing, only in *reverse* of the product advertising.
Alex Chiu is a big fan of this kind of marketing exploitation. He's also a complete idiot.
Whoever first picked them (the culture) might have originally picked those patterns based on many different things they saw in their environment or heard around them. It isn't simply arbitrary that "plop" and "tweet" and "crash" sound so much like the things they try to represent(ONOMATOPOEIA). It wasn't a random or arbitrary process.
Here's an example of a perfectly "arbitrary" word that's not arbitrary at all: Snow
Snow is the word for that white fluffy stuff that falls from the sky. Snow, linguistically, is traced back to indo-european (that weird, abstract language that it was), and is related to Nix (latin) and Niphes (greek). It's also related to lots of other IE language words for the same thing.
Could you just make up words with no meaning and assign them to any old thing? Sure. But if you compose words from existing bases, prefixes, and suffixes in the language, you convey a sense of meaning without people even knowing what the word really means.
Want a great example? Read "The Jabberwocky". Here's the text. Without being able to readily define many of these words, I bet you can tell me what happened:
`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe: All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrabe.
"Beware the Jabberwock, my son! The jaws that bite, the claws that catch! Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun The frumious Bandersnatch!"
He took his vocal sword in hand: Long time the manxome foe he sought -- So rested he by the Tumtum tree, And stood awhile in thought.
And, as in uffish thought he stood, The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame, Came whiffling through the tulgey wood, And burbled as it came!
One, two! One, two! And through and through The vocal blade went snicker-snack! He left it dead, and with its head He went galumphing back.
"And, has thou slain the Jabberwock? Come to my arms, my beamish boy! O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!' He chortled in his joy.
He (or she) asked for a source for your claims, giving her an article citation that proved or even claimed linkage between the two wouldn't have been out of the question. Ranting about his (or her) scientific shortcomings was completely unneccessary. In all areas of science background reading or citations are provided with all claims of proof or fact.
If you look at the graphs associated with the original paper, which is published in Archives of Neurology if you've got a way to access it (I've got a Tufts University account that I can use) - they don't show that patients regain cognitive functioning. In fact, all patients throughout the study lose cognitive functioning as measured on their ADAS cognitive sub-scale.
Their most interesting finding, imho, is the 3 month period where patients on their drug hold relatively steady, and other patients have a slight decline (the difference is really only about 2 points on a 1-70 point rating scale, while the ADAS is 1-120).
Is this statistically significant? Yes, I think so. And practically, I think any improvement in patients is significant. But I don't think it's significant enough to claim that the disease has been eradicated.
Original Article Info, for anyone who wants to look it up:
Metal-Protein Attenuation With Iodochlorhydroxyquin (Clioquinol) Targeting A[beta] Amyloid Deposition and Toxicity in Alzheimer Disease: A Pilot Phase 2 Clinical Trial Ritchie, Craig W. MBChB, MRCPsych; Bush, Ashley I. MBBS, PhD, FRANZCP; Mackinnon, Andrew PhD; Macfarlane, Steve MBBS; Mastwyk, Maree BN; MacGregor, Lachlan MBBS; Kiers, Lyn MBBS, FRACP; Cherny, Robert PhD; Li, Qiao-Xin PhD; Tammer, Amanda PhD; Carrington, Darryl BSc; Mavros, Christine BSc; Volitakis, Irene BSc; Xilinas, Michel MD, DSc; Ames, David MD; Davis, Stephen MD, FRACP; Beyreuther, Konrad PhD; Tanzi, Rudolph E. PhD; Masters, Colin L. MD Volume 60(12) December 2003 p 1685-1691 Archives of Neurology
Yeah, if you look real hard, you can think up stupid uses for any technology.
Spoons can be assault weapons if thrown fast enough, eyeglasses can be fighterstarters, and scissors can be advanced carving tools if ever you're in a cave with no paper and pencil.
EB's profit structure is based around selling pre-owned games.
The selection for new releases hardly makes them $$, and the console sales actually break nearly even. They make a killing on people trading in a random game for 5 bucks and then later selling that same game for 30.
People still haven't figured out that EB does nothing to the games, they just put them back in cases. You get a much better deal going on eBay than you do at EB.
Slashdot Mirror
It's a dupe! It's legit!
It's a slashdot first!
Yes, but if the international consortium of Knife Sellers decided that they'd make an EULA that said you couldn't cut eggplant with your knife, this would be different than the Government saying that you couldn't cut eggplants (or cut humans).
Rightfully owning a piece of Hardware should be exactly *that*, not rightfully *licensing* a piece of hardware. Agreeing to an EULA seems to suggest that your purchase of an XboX is actually the purchase of a license to use an xbox. It isn't. You bought it, it's yours, you can take it apart and turn it into a toaster if you want to.
Kazaa's network may be proprietary, and the connection algorithms and things may be owned by Kazaa. Distributing a client to record companies (or even making one) for the purpose of uploading files to the network that aren't legit is violation of their EULA.
Also:
2.11 Monitor traffic or make search requests in order to accumulate information about individual users;
2.1 Transmit or communicate any data that is unlawful, harmful, threatening, abusive, harassing, defamatory, vulgar, obscene, invasive of another's privacy, hateful, or racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable;
2.13 Modify, delete or damage any information contained on the personal computer of any Kazaa Media Desktop user; or
2.14 Collect or store personal data about other users.
3.2 Except as expressly permitted in this Licence, you agree not to reverse engineer, de-compile, disassemble, alter, duplicate, modify, rent, lease, loan, sublicense, make copies, create derivative works from, distribute or provide others with the Software in whole or part, transmit or communicate the application over a network.
3.3 You may not sell, transfer or communicate the Software to any third party without our prior express written consent.
Where'd you get this info?
Wrong. Killing is wrong.
Working from that standpoint, any death by killing is wrong, because it shouldn't have happened. It doesn't suddenly justify the killing to be doing it in the name of something good, it simply makes it less subjectively bad than the alternative, which is presumably some other evil.
You seem to look at right and wrong as a contexual problem rather than an absolute, and therefore can define two-wrongs-make-a-right by justifying one wrong with another. This is a logical fallacy - one cannot justify a wrong action with another wrong action.
No! Jesus christ! Read my post!
KILLING IS WRONG! That doesn't mean I wouldn't choose it as the lesser of two evils (being killed myself).
That doesn't change the fact that killing is wrong.
Read it this time?
Killing. It's wrong. No matter who or what is doing the killing.
Just because you've "justified" the killing doesn't make it less "the act of killing".
Yes, it's still a *wrong* to kill someone who's going to kill your family, whether or not it's the lesser of two wrongs (your family dying) from your point of view.
Actions are right and wrong, not contexts.
Complete bullshit.
While I certainly don't think you should let your family die, someone has still been killed, which is a wrong.
Just because you've put the killing in a different context doesn't make it less of a killing. Killing is killing, for reason X or reason Y, and is wrong.
People, who will be driving the robot, will still notice that odd rock. I don't see your point.
Basically, your two arguments against robots in space are:
1) Robots can't move around as well as humans can.
2) Robots don't have human insight or ingenuity.
I think these are really bogus arguments.
The parent post, suggesting that Robots are better than humans at data-collection, is a very valid and worthwhile point. Computers were made for repetitive computation - if you were a human stuck on mars, would you want to collect soil samples from all thousand locations they wanted it from? While it might be fascinating, you have no way to analyze this data outside of a lab, and you have no instrumentation to provide instant readings of geologic or other phenomena. You might be carrying this stuff around, but at that point, it starts to be heavy and cumbersome, might as well be a robot, and you might as well be driving it from back home on Earth.
The geologist stuck on another planet collecting soil samples would be like a biologist manually diagramming thousands of possible protein configurations. It's better that the Geologist is at home, looking at the data in a systematic and organized fashion, than that the geologist is doing a job which requires no training we can't provide to a robot.
Yes, but since the music distributed over the internet should ignore area-cost-of-living because distribution isn't local, your counter-examples don't seem to hold weight.
While salary may differ from region of the world to region of the world, music distribution over the internet doesn't change mechanism. In other words, while gas in one area may be priced higher because of higher cost of distribution, different supply curve, lack of competition, etc, internet distribution shouldn't change because of these factors (with the noted omission of the one localized internet cash-cow: advertising).
Yeah, but at least you don't have to worry about Mad Cow Disease.
And, after Flame Strike, most Zombies are perfectly cooked; tender and moist, but not too rare.
If you like your meat straight off the bone, I recommend Burning Hands.
You know what I always seem to remember doing? Conjuring up great reasons why my alarm clock ring is going off that have little to do with the fact that it's set to wake me up.
No, really. I've made up some ridiculous excuses in my mind, most of the relating to the snooze button. My brain tries to rationalize whatever it can so long as I can keep sleeping. If you go to bed with a heavy problem that's not letting you fall asleep, I wonder if this happens every once in a while.
I love it when Psychologists tout products / services with testimonials. As someone aspiring to be a real-life research psychologist some day, it seems particularly ironic that none of these guys have ever heard of the Availability Heuristic.(that, or they have, and they're just trying to exploit it, but it doesn't really look good to anyone who's taken Psych 101.)
Example: The Wigetmobile is the best selling car in america because it's super-cheap and super-reliable, according to statistics. Your uncle says he drove his into a tree and it nearly killed him, so you don't buy it, because his vivid description of his near-death incident (probably on account of his own stupidity) "outweighs" statistical evidence that the product is good. This is the same thing, only in *reverse* of the product advertising.
Alex Chiu is a big fan of this kind of marketing exploitation. He's also a complete idiot.
Why not just sell these pre-programmed with Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera modules?
Maybe Thinkgeek could sell a "Natalie Portman in Hot Grits" version?
Test for Witch-hood:
Throw suspected-witch in boiling oil.
If suspected-witch dies, problem solved. Witch or not, she's dead.
If suspected-witch lives, she must be a witch, because only magic could have saved her. Remove carefully from boiling oil. Behead.
Gotta love justice!
But even that language had patterns.
Whoever first picked them (the culture) might have originally picked those patterns based on many different things they saw in their environment or heard around them. It isn't simply arbitrary that "plop" and "tweet" and "crash" sound so much like the things they try to represent(ONOMATOPOEIA). It wasn't a random or arbitrary process.
taepoe. :-\
that, and not realizing it had no article. =P
Good idea, but english didn't evolve like that.
Here's an example of a perfectly "arbitrary" word that's not arbitrary at all: Snow
Snow is the word for that white fluffy stuff that falls from the sky. Snow, linguistically, is traced back to indo-european (that weird, abstract language that it was), and is related to Nix (latin) and Niphes (greek). It's also related to lots of other IE language words for the same thing.
Could you just make up words with no meaning and assign them to any old thing? Sure. But if you compose words from existing bases, prefixes, and suffixes in the language, you convey a sense of meaning without people even knowing what the word really means.
Want a great example? Read "The Jabberwocky". Here's the text. Without being able to readily define many of these words, I bet you can tell me what happened:
`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"
He took his vocal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought --
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.
And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!
One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vocal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.
"And, has thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!'
He chortled in his joy.
I still don't understand why you don't link an article. It's not that complicated.
;)
The *point* of the post was that you had no scientific evidence in the post. Posting some wouldn't be that hard.
Trolling at it's worst.
He (or she) asked for a source for your claims, giving her an article citation that proved or even claimed linkage between the two wouldn't have been out of the question. Ranting about his (or her) scientific shortcomings was completely unneccessary. In all areas of science background reading or citations are provided with all claims of proof or fact.
Just so you know:
They aren't really that close.
If you look at the graphs associated with the original paper, which is published in Archives of Neurology if you've got a way to access it (I've got a Tufts University account that I can use) - they don't show that patients regain cognitive functioning. In fact, all patients throughout the study lose cognitive functioning as measured on their ADAS cognitive sub-scale.
Their most interesting finding, imho, is the 3 month period where patients on their drug hold relatively steady, and other patients have a slight decline (the difference is really only about 2 points on a 1-70 point rating scale, while the ADAS is 1-120).
Is this statistically significant? Yes, I think so. And practically, I think any improvement in patients is significant. But I don't think it's significant enough to claim that the disease has been eradicated.
Original Article Info, for anyone who wants to look it up:
Metal-Protein Attenuation With Iodochlorhydroxyquin (Clioquinol) Targeting A[beta] Amyloid Deposition and Toxicity in Alzheimer Disease: A Pilot Phase 2 Clinical Trial
Ritchie, Craig W. MBChB, MRCPsych; Bush, Ashley I. MBBS, PhD, FRANZCP; Mackinnon, Andrew PhD; Macfarlane, Steve MBBS; Mastwyk, Maree BN; MacGregor, Lachlan MBBS; Kiers, Lyn MBBS, FRACP; Cherny, Robert PhD; Li, Qiao-Xin PhD; Tammer, Amanda PhD; Carrington, Darryl BSc; Mavros, Christine BSc; Volitakis, Irene BSc; Xilinas, Michel MD, DSc; Ames, David MD; Davis, Stephen MD, FRACP; Beyreuther, Konrad PhD; Tanzi, Rudolph E. PhD; Masters, Colin L. MD
Volume 60(12) December 2003 p 1685-1691
Archives of Neurology
Yeah, if you look real hard, you can think up stupid uses for any technology.
Spoons can be assault weapons if thrown fast enough, eyeglasses can be fighterstarters, and scissors can be advanced carving tools if ever you're in a cave with no paper and pencil.
EB's profit structure is based around selling pre-owned games.
The selection for new releases hardly makes them $$, and the console sales actually break nearly even. They make a killing on people trading in a random game for 5 bucks and then later selling that same game for 30.
People still haven't figured out that EB does nothing to the games, they just put them back in cases. You get a much better deal going on eBay than you do at EB.
Well... not the french server. The french server talks went like this:
SCO: You owe us money for linux licenses.
Google: Fuck off.
French Government: WE SURRENDER! RUN FOR THE HILLS!