As for evidence that would convince me, and most other people: say the aliens visited us thousands of years ago and (let's even say by accident) left behind a bolt or tool. Now imagine the archaeologists sifting through an ancient Roman village and finding an obviously non-naturally-occurring object made out of an advanced alloy in a layer suggesting that it is thousands of years old.
I think you have to explain why you think aliens may have visited, and cleaned up after themselves absolutely perfectly.
It is remarkably speculative to believe that aliens may have visited us in the past, and cleaned up after themselves perfectly: no dropped parts, tools, or lunch wrappers; no crash landings. It is far easier to believe that they never came.
Thanks for the physics lesson. I would conservatively estimate that the RF energy being continuously radiated into space is on the order of a gigawatt. Of course it's isotropic, and will be very weak at long range, but in order to be worried about an alien invasion we have to first assume that they have much better technology than our own.
We have been "listening" for millennia of recorded history. No landings yet.
We've also examined eons before that via archaeology and palaeontology. No alien artifacts. As far as we know they have never been here as long as the Earth has existed.
Now we have been actively listening to radio for decades. Still nothing.
At some point one has to agree that efforts to search for extraterrestrial intelligence are no longer worthwhile.
Is that a serious argument? A hypothetical ET would wipe us out utterly. Using your analogy, it's as though one abandoned warehouse is booby-trapped with a thermonuclear warhead. There's no point in stopping at just radio and TV.
As far as we know, aliens have not visited the Earth or any other solar system body in its 4.6 billion year existence: archaeology and solar system exploration have turned up nothing. Further, we have absolutely no contacts with any other civilization after millennia of recorded history, and after several decades of active searching. For practical purposes, extraterrestrial intelligence is nonexistent. I'm wondering what would make you agree?
As far as I'm aware it only relies on the conflict between two assumptions: first, that intelligent life is common in the universe; and second, that intelligent life would be interested in exploration and communication, as we are. Neither of these assumptions is controversial.
Also, I would suggest that if we found an alien species that wasn't interested in exploration or communication, we might have trouble recognizing them as intelligent, and furthermore, what's the point of contacting them?
So are you proposing that we should confiscate all private radio transmitters? This whole argument is kind of like the worries that particle accelerators will destroy the Earth, when high-energy cosmic rays bombard the Earth daily.
There is not one iota of evidence that there exists one other intelligent form of life in the universe. Go google for Fermi's paradox, I won't even give you the obligatory wikipedia link.
You apparently didn't grasp my question. Puzzling through a poorly written manual takes time away from revenue-generating activities. Tech support owes its employment in part to the fact that it is much faster to ask an expert, even to ask question that the expert may find stupid, than it is to consult a poorly written document. If time had no value, there would be no need for tech support. So again I ask, isn't this your job?
all of the millions of people that don't RTFM or help screens before lifting the phone and calling tech support; yes, the manuals and help screens suck, so did your chemistry book.
But isn't it your job to be on the other end of the phone to answer a question in ten minutes that would take me an hour to figure out by reading the poorly-written book? If not then why am I paying for support?
Well then, those specialist surgeons can peel off maybe ten of the thousands of dollars they're making per hour in that operating room to hire a semi-literate guy to watch the operation on closed-circuit TV and count sponges going in and out of the patient.
Or, I don't know, maybe instead of relying on unskilled labor they could come up with an automated solution to an apparently simple yet safety-critical task? Which is the sort of thing that machines are better at anyway? I mean would you rather trust your sponge count to a machine or to a dude who is doing the job to get booze money? Which is the whole point of the fucking article.
I'm a former navy officer (Canada, not US). Surely you realize that the military doesn't give a rat's ass about you personally getting killed. What they want to prevent is the long string of flag-draped coffins streaming home that is sure to undermine public support for the broader mission.
Can you include a GPL code snippet in a Creative Commons document (e.g., to illustrate a concept)?
It's not a simple question. For instance, it is ironic to note that you cannot legally include GPL code in a document licensed under the GNU Free[sic] Documentation License.
"The Market" would pay you nothing and charge you a fortune to breathe.... if it could get away with it...
I think you need to stop reading Naomi Klein, or stop trolling. The "market" is not the Monopoly dude, twirling his mustache while sitting on bags with dollar signs on them. The market is a mathematical mechanism for distributively assigning costs to goods, and has no anthropomorphic intentions or feelings. Furthermore, the market is remarkably successful at finding an efficient cost for each good. As a result, as long as you can get a lungful of air everywhere in the world for free, the "market" will never successfully charge you a cost for breathing.
You're right, I thought I understood your point but you are starting to contradict yourself.
Small corporations love innovation because it threatens the status quo and therefore opens up possibilities of advancement. When you're at the bottom, disruptions are good because you have little to lose and lots to gain.
Yet in reality, big corporations regularly "innovate" by buying these small innovators, the value of which is mostly in their IP portfolio. So why would a big corporation demand stronger IP rights when they could just use their leverage to steal whatever innovative ideas they needed and squeeze these innovators out of the marketplace (deterring others in the process)? Wouldn't they be working against their own interests? Shouldn't we want IP laws to defend the little companies (where most of the innovation happens, as you admit)?
Well, we don't seem to be able to manage that. If we don't have copyright at all, we know from historical example that some creation and publication will still occur (producing a modest benefit), and the public will be totally unrestricted (producing a great benefit).
I will certainly agree that you can prove any point you wish by changing the metric. Also, do you have any evidence for this claim that there is a "great benefit" to eliminating copyright laws (however you wish to quantify it)? All laws restrict the public to some degree; I'm sure you can think of some laws for which the public would not benefit by repealing them.
There was not a huge increase in creation and publication between 1977, when we had the 1909 Act which only protected works where the author sought protection, and for a far shorter period of time, and 1978, when the current Copyright Act took effect. You don't really have the data points you think you do.
So you're saying that the economic impact has to be felt in one year? I would also point out that the growth of Silicon Valley as a software, technology, and innovation center took place mostly after 1978.
Slashdot Mirror
Your post is remarkably theological.
As for evidence that would convince me, and most other people: say the aliens visited us thousands of years ago and (let's even say by accident) left behind a bolt or tool. Now imagine the archaeologists sifting through an ancient Roman village and finding an obviously non-naturally-occurring object made out of an advanced alloy in a layer suggesting that it is thousands of years old.
I think you have to explain why you think aliens may have visited, and cleaned up after themselves absolutely perfectly.
It is remarkably speculative to believe that aliens may have visited us in the past, and cleaned up after themselves perfectly: no dropped parts, tools, or lunch wrappers; no crash landings. It is far easier to believe that they never came.
That says nothing about the lack of radio evidence. Also, I don't think Fermi said "lol".
Thanks for the physics lesson. I would conservatively estimate that the RF energy being continuously radiated into space is on the order of a gigawatt. Of course it's isotropic, and will be very weak at long range, but in order to be worried about an alien invasion we have to first assume that they have much better technology than our own.
We have been "listening" for millennia of recorded history. No landings yet.
We've also examined eons before that via archaeology and palaeontology. No alien artifacts. As far as we know they have never been here as long as the Earth has existed.
Now we have been actively listening to radio for decades. Still nothing.
At some point one has to agree that efforts to search for extraterrestrial intelligence are no longer worthwhile.
Is that a serious argument? A hypothetical ET would wipe us out utterly. Using your analogy, it's as though one abandoned warehouse is booby-trapped with a thermonuclear warhead. There's no point in stopping at just radio and TV.
As far as we know, aliens have not visited the Earth or any other solar system body in its 4.6 billion year existence: archaeology and solar system exploration have turned up nothing. Further, we have absolutely no contacts with any other civilization after millennia of recorded history, and after several decades of active searching. For practical purposes, extraterrestrial intelligence is nonexistent. I'm wondering what would make you agree?
As far as I'm aware it only relies on the conflict between two assumptions: first, that intelligent life is common in the universe; and second, that intelligent life would be interested in exploration and communication, as we are. Neither of these assumptions is controversial.
Also, I would suggest that if we found an alien species that wasn't interested in exploration or communication, we might have trouble recognizing them as intelligent, and furthermore, what's the point of contacting them?
So are you proposing that we should confiscate all private radio transmitters? This whole argument is kind of like the worries that particle accelerators will destroy the Earth, when high-energy cosmic rays bombard the Earth daily.
There is not one iota of evidence that there exists one other intelligent form of life in the universe. Go google for Fermi's paradox, I won't even give you the obligatory wikipedia link.
You apparently didn't grasp my question. Puzzling through a poorly written manual takes time away from revenue-generating activities. Tech support owes its employment in part to the fact that it is much faster to ask an expert, even to ask question that the expert may find stupid, than it is to consult a poorly written document. If time had no value, there would be no need for tech support. So again I ask, isn't this your job?
all of the millions of people that don't RTFM or help screens before lifting the phone and calling tech support; yes, the manuals and help screens suck, so did your chemistry book.
But isn't it your job to be on the other end of the phone to answer a question in ten minutes that would take me an hour to figure out by reading the poorly-written book? If not then why am I paying for support?
Well then, those specialist surgeons can peel off maybe ten of the thousands of dollars they're making per hour in that operating room to hire a semi-literate guy to watch the operation on closed-circuit TV and count sponges going in and out of the patient.
Or, I don't know, maybe instead of relying on unskilled labor they could come up with an automated solution to an apparently simple yet safety-critical task? Which is the sort of thing that machines are better at anyway? I mean would you rather trust your sponge count to a machine or to a dude who is doing the job to get booze money? Which is the whole point of the fucking article.
So you believe something mission critical should rely on single redundancy, since only stupid people make mistakes?
I hope you are being sarcastic. If you weren't, and if your job in any way impacts public safety, please resign immediately.
Heaven forbid someone in American politics play dirty and hire a company to "promote" another candidate... just saying..
Gee, I hope they clear up this nasty business! I would hate to see it affect Ron Paul's chances of being elected President.
And it doesn't make me violet and well beat the crap out of the anyone that says different.
This is kind of like arguing that you smoked a cigarette once and didn't get cancer, so they must be safe.
That is a bug/feature of LaTeX. However, you can use epstopdf to convert your eps files to pdf, prior to using pdflatex.
I'm a former navy officer (Canada, not US). Surely you realize that the military doesn't give a rat's ass about you personally getting killed. What they want to prevent is the long string of flag-draped coffins streaming home that is sure to undermine public support for the broader mission.
Can you include a GPL code snippet in a Creative Commons document (e.g., to illustrate a concept)?
It's not a simple question. For instance, it is ironic to note that you cannot legally include GPL code in a document licensed under the GNU Free[sic] Documentation License.
You remember when Bill Gates said spam would be over by 2006? Boy was he right -- I haven't had spam in my inbox in weeks. Thanks, Google.
Like the millions murdered under Stalin ... ... ...
The >.5 million in Darfur
The >.5 million in Rwanda
1 million Armenians under the Turks
Oh wait, they didn't have video games...
What the fuck does that have to do with anything? Most of the victims of those genocides weren't helped by front and side airbags, either.
Ah, that would explain why nobody buys bottled water at $1.50/bottle.
If you're actually willing to pay an unnecessarily high price for water (or air for that matter), the market will certainly oblige you.
"The Market" would pay you nothing and charge you a fortune to breathe .... if it could get away with it ...
I think you need to stop reading Naomi Klein, or stop trolling. The "market" is not the Monopoly dude, twirling his mustache while sitting on bags with dollar signs on them. The market is a mathematical mechanism for distributively assigning costs to goods, and has no anthropomorphic intentions or feelings. Furthermore, the market is remarkably successful at finding an efficient cost for each good. As a result, as long as you can get a lungful of air everywhere in the world for free, the "market" will never successfully charge you a cost for breathing.
You're right, I thought I understood your point but you are starting to contradict yourself.
Small corporations love innovation because it threatens the status quo and therefore opens up possibilities of advancement. When you're at the bottom, disruptions are good because you have little to lose and lots to gain.
Yet in reality, big corporations regularly "innovate" by buying these small innovators, the value of which is mostly in their IP portfolio. So why would a big corporation demand stronger IP rights when they could just use their leverage to steal whatever innovative ideas they needed and squeeze these innovators out of the marketplace (deterring others in the process)? Wouldn't they be working against their own interests? Shouldn't we want IP laws to defend the little companies (where most of the innovation happens, as you admit)?
Well, we don't seem to be able to manage that. If we don't have copyright at all, we know from historical example that some creation and publication will still occur (producing a modest benefit), and the public will be totally unrestricted (producing a great benefit).
I will certainly agree that you can prove any point you wish by changing the metric. Also, do you have any evidence for this claim that there is a "great benefit" to eliminating copyright laws (however you wish to quantify it)? All laws restrict the public to some degree; I'm sure you can think of some laws for which the public would not benefit by repealing them.
There was not a huge increase in creation and publication between 1977, when we had the 1909 Act which only protected works where the author sought protection, and for a far shorter period of time, and 1978, when the current Copyright Act took effect. You don't really have the data points you think you do.
So you're saying that the economic impact has to be felt in one year? I would also point out that the growth of Silicon Valley as a software, technology, and innovation center took place mostly after 1978.