Re:The aliens have left the phones off the hook
on
Explaining SETI
·
· Score: 1
The whole islands population!?!?!?!
Wrongo! In the 70's a group of twenty men escavated a nearly complete statue on Easter Island, moved it to a 4 foot high platform and lifted it onto that platform using nothing but rollers and levers. Lifting the multi-ton statue onto the platform only took a few hours.
ALL of the artifacts mentioned in the "Chariot's of the God's" have been easily explained using reasonable amounts of manpower, simple tools (ramps, levers, rollers, string, plumb-bobs, and rope), and a bit of common-sense.
People all over the world are fond of telling tall tales that make thier leaders, country, or whatever, more powerful and interesting.
The war on drugs is a failure, just as much a failure as prohibition was. Every hear of someone getting killed over their 'alcohol debt', doing an armed robbery to support their alcohol habit? Ever worried that your source of alcohol was going to rob you? Of course not!
Using many of the illegal drugs is STUPID, but it should not be against the law to be stupid. If someone wants to ruin their life doing crack - let them. The war on drugs has ruined more lives than the drugs they are 'fighting'. The war on drugs has made these drugs much more harmful, turned what should be a peaceful fiancial transaction into bloody war.
Society places limits on acolhol use, age limits etc... (up here in Canada you can't buy beer at the local corner store, all alcohol is bought at government controlled stores, or specially licensed 'beer and wine' stores that can't sell any hard stuff). Place the same restrictions on the other recreational drugs and you will get a number of benefits:
The price goes down. Thus the addicts need less money, and do less B&E's to support their habit. They might even be able to get a minimum wage job.
The quality is controlled, less OD's.
No one is getting shot.
The governement collects it cut without all that expensive law enforcement, they'll just tax it!
The war on drugs has not stopped ANYONE from getting and using drugs. Ending the war will not cause a huge increase in drug use. The people who are apt to use drugs have not been at all hindered by the war on drugs.
Rape is primarily a violent crime, not a crime of passion. Most rapists are trying to be prove how powerful they are and to demean women.
As for singling out "smart chicks", exactly that happened in Canada - a nut case machine gunned 14 women at a University. He wanted revenge on all the women he felt inferior to.
Re:Still too early to judge Pentium 4
on
Pentium IV study
·
· Score: 1
The P4 is slower running current apps, but if you re-compile and optimize for the P4 it runs much better. Too bad it'll be years before there is enough software optimized for the P4 to make it worth buying, and by that time there will be other CPUs.
It will be very tuff to get code to run fast on both a P4 and the P3/Athalon cpu.
And where in the article did the writer propose abolishing all property? He wrote that property rights are granted by society (true), that large coporations work very hard to influence society and government to get property rights changed in their favour (true). He then extolled the virtues of communities working to get property rights changed in their favour, instead of large corporations. Hardly a radical idea.
I would be grateful if you would quote the bit I missed where he proposed abolishing all property rights, and that bit about napster was about modifying copyright (a type of property rights), not abolishing all property rights.
A shop has three apples. Two are small and obviously sour. The third is large, red and ripe. Just as you walk into the store I buy the big red apple. I have denied you the oppourtunity to buy the big red apple - I have harmed you. But have I done anything wrong? No, I have not done anything wrong, as this harm is 'indirect'.
Fairly competing, even driving a competetor out of business is ok, as long as you do not 'directly' harm anyone. You can't firebomb your competitor's factory, you can't use restrictive contracts, you really shouldn't use too many of M$'s business practices. But you may deliberately build a better product, even if you know it will harm a competitor indirectly.
Re:Just because property rights aren't absolute
on
Why Community Matters
·
· Score: 1
Rights are just basic laws that a society has formulated. If property rights are as real as gravity, why was the USSR able to take property rights away from ten's of millions of people for more than 80 years? Rights are no more real than any other law. Saying rights are 'socially constructed' is more accurate than saying that they are'real'.
Real things don't change when people change their opinion.
Ther may be some semantic problems, but the gist of the article is clear. LAWS (refered to as facts) can be altered by the community. When the community is heavily influenced by large corporations, you get LAWS that favour large corporations.
Any one who stops to think about it will realize that all 'rights' are indeed a fiction bestowed by the society you live in. Show me a right that can't taken from me by an armed mob, and I'll conceded its a 'natural right'.
There are two main camps of anarchists, the European anarchists who generally have a long history of being allied with socialism, and can't imagine a non-socialist anarchy. And two, the American anarchists with a long tradition of capitalism and can't imagine anarchy without some form of private property, which generally implies some kind of capitalism.
Both camps tend to yell and scream at each other. The socialists are generally less willing to even admit in a newsgroup that they would be willing to have capitalist neighbors. The capitalists are generally willing to have socialist neighbors, but assume they'll have to give up their socialism once they 'run out of soap'. Boths sides say they other 'isn't really anarchists'.
Many Libertarians do have strong views on property rights, but they also have strong views on contract law. For a Libertarian, governments exist to uphold contracts and protect property. Everything else is an infringement of an individuals rights.
Ah yes, the favorite argument of the left: 'you suck because you disagree with me'.
Under your anarchy, who is going to force me to give up my property?
Of course we must define a few terms before a rational argument can take place:
Anarchist: best government is no government.
government: organization with a monopoly on using force to enforce its decisions over a defined geographical area.
capitalist: believes in private property, may not believe in the current American model of private property.
Anarchist, capitalist, but quite happy to have socialist neighbors, if they don't try to collectivize my property.
Limited Liability was a huge break through in capitalism. It allows capitalists to attempt high risk ventures without exposing the capitalist to complete personal bankruptcy if the venture fails.
Without limited liability many worthwhile, but risky, ventures would never have been attempted.
The main problem I see with the American system is voter apathy which lets a comparatively rich 'minority' get the a government sympathetic to their wants. If all the eligible voters who didn't vote, voted for the same person - he'd be president.
A short sighted obsession with making a profit 'this quarter, screw the future' has also resulted in some odd policies, eg the DMCA(sp?), extended copyrights, software patents, pulling out of the Kyoto Protocols, and attempting to start drilling for oil in Alaska.
Technology will eliminate Privacy within 100 years
As cameras get smaller, smarter, and eventually mobile, privacy is
simply going to evaperate. Wireless swarms of cameras the size of flies
will be everywere (this technology is already being tested) recording your
every movement.
Small surveillance Plane Camera size of a quarter 6 inch flying camera
Even without trying, most people get on surveillance video a few times a day: the bank, the local
'quicky mart', the gas station.
The only way to preserve privacy is to make preserving privacy a top concern of your government.
Many people seem eager to trade their privay for security, but this only works when the security is
in the hands of someone you trust, who would never abuse that power. Of course, no western government would
ever abuse its power, right? Just ask Steve Jackson.
People who are willing to trade their privacy and freedom to the government for security
are abdicating their adulthood, and letting the government be their babysitter.
That article was useless. Doesn't mention any of the arguments explaining how consumers have been 'harmed'. All this mindless MS bashing coming from all you so called capitalist yanks seems very wierd to me.
I don't recall MS ever forcing me to buy their products, there are many alternatives around, so what's the problem? Sure, lots of things suck about MS software, but they haven't 'harmed' the average home user.
Re:Responsible Gun Ownership
on
Republic.Com
·
· Score: 1
Gun Control
Given the deep differences between America and some countries that have successfully implemented gun control, I doubt that strict gun control would help much
with the American's horrid record of violent crime. Gun control in the USA would likely reduce sucides and accidental death's, but I doubt it would reduce violent
crime much. Still, gun control would save many lives.
As quoted in the next section, the main problem with guns is that they make it much too easy to kill. It lets one excalate violence much faster than other weapons - often causing uncessessary death. A rational person does not arm themself with lethal weapons for everyday life. A drunk armed with a knife isn't likely to kill a friend in a drunken rage, while this happens all to often when the drunk has a gun. I have never heard of anyone knifing a son or daughter to death by accident, but guns bought for 'home defense' kill more family and friends than intruders.
The problem with guns is fairly straightforward: they make it easy to kill or injure a person. In Jeffrey A. Roth's Firearms and Violence (NIJ Research in Brief, February 1994, found at http://sun.soci.niu.edu/~critcrim/guns/gun.viol), he points out the obvious dangers:
Approximately 60 percent of all murder victims in the United States in 1989 (about 12,000 people) were killed with firearms. According to estimates, firearm attacks injured another 70,000 victims, some of whom were left permanently disabled. In 1985 (the latest year for which data are available), the cost of shootings--either by others, through self-inflicted wounds, or in accidents--was estimated to be more than $14 billion nationwide for medical care, long-term disability, and premature death. (Editor's note: the number of gun victims has increased since 1989 to 15,456 gun homicides in 1994. Source: FBI UCR report.)
In robberies and assaults, victims are far more likely to die when the perpetrator is armed with a gun than when he or she has another weapon or is unarmed.
Suicides
Residents of homes where a gun is present are 5 times more likely to experience a suicide than residents of homes without guns
Self-defense
But research has shown that a gun kept in the home is 43 times more likely to kill a member of the household, or friend, than an intruder.
Research by Dr. Arthur Kellerman has shown that keeping a gun in the home carries a murder risk 2.7 times greater than not keeping one.
Other weapons
"People kill with knifes, too. Do you want to ban knifes?" From Dr. Roth's study: The overall fatality rate in gun robberies is an estimated 4 per 1,000--about 3 times the rate for knife robberies, 10 times the rate for robberies with other weapons, and 20 times the rate for robberies by unarmed offenders.
The movie 2001 was inspired by Clarke's short story "The Sentinal". Astronouts find a monolith on the moon, but that is about as far as the short story went. Kubrick and Clarke collaborated on the 2001 story, with Clarke writing the novell as the movie was being made.
"The Sentinal" is in the anthology "The Nine Billion Names of God"
Two best Clarke books:
Childhood's End
The City and the Stars
You own something because of 2 reasons:
You worked to create it.
You bought it
Just because something is easy to steal, doesn't mean it is OK to steal it.
You guys on/. HOWL if the sacred GPL is violated, which protects "information that just wants to be free", but anyone else tries to protect their work it is evil.Can't have it both ways.
I do agree that because it is so easy to steal digital works that copyright laws will have to be modified. A shorter term of protection would be a good start for reforming it.
Software Patents are evil, copyright is strong enough to protect any code worth protecting. Generally the underlying idea expressed by the code is obvious, only the expression of the idea should be protected.
1] The seeds did not just 'blow onto the fields'. The seeds did not 'just fall off a truck'.
2] The farmer had tested the plants, and knew they were round up resistant.
3] He planted 1000 acres with seeds from the one field that he knew was resistant.
4] If you let Monosaturats know your field is contaminated they will clean it up at THEIR expense.
5] The judge stated that he would not have been awarding in favour of Monosaturates if it was just some wind blown seed.
The only way to fix this is to change the patent laws. The judge's hands are tied, he has to rule on the existing law, he can't just change it.
It is common knowledge that the evil Monosaturates will come clean up your fields at their cost if you let them know your crop is contaminated. All he had to do was call.
He was found guilty because he knew the seeds were round up resistant, and he went and planted 1000 acres with it anyways. 1000 acres isn't just a little bit that blew over.
He has to pay because the judge DOESN'T believe the seeds 'just blew over onto his fields'. The judge believes he knew it was round up resitant before he planted a bit over 1000 acres.
Which why it is important to actually teach your kids that commercials are designed to sell them stuff that they do not need. That those cool toys NEVER work as well at home as they do on TV. That it took 300 'tries' to get the toy 'current movie tie in toy' to do whatever cool thing it did.
It is especially important to teach your kids to base their self worth on their selves, not thier clothes.
Censorware is not a replacement for parental supervision, but when I can't be looking over my children's shoulder I'm not too worried. Why not? I'm not worried because I have taken the time to explain that there many things they shouldn't be looking at, that if they run across it, the back button is to be pressed, and if that doesn't work, home, then just kill off explorer. Because I actually DO spend a lot of time with my children I know I can trust them to follow these rules. Of course one day they will get curious, but I'm confident it won't warp their minds as I have helped them to become independant, thinking, individuals, who will have had practise making many decisions for themselves.
If you think you need censorware, you need to work on teaching your children that there things they shouldn't be looking at until they are older, and you need to work on building up TRUST between yourself and your children.
Just another example of how the good ol' USA is already more facist than many of the countries they so piously complain about.
Unless you want to buy a gun, the US governemnt is quite happy to tell you what to say and think.
The US has more people in jail, per capita, than China! US high schools often demand more conformity from their students than many dictatorships.
The real problem is too many people think the government should try to cure everything, they WANT to be treated like children and abdicate the personal responsability for their own actions to the government.
Did you know that those warning labels on poisonous and explosives (eg an aerosol spray can) were orginally developed to protect children? It used to be assumed that adults would know these things, and if they didn't tuff luck.
Slashdot Mirror
Wrongo! In the 70's a group of twenty men escavated a nearly complete statue on Easter Island, moved it to a 4 foot high platform and lifted it onto that platform using nothing but rollers and levers. Lifting the multi-ton statue onto the platform only took a few hours.
ALL of the artifacts mentioned in the "Chariot's of the God's" have been easily explained using reasonable amounts of manpower, simple tools (ramps, levers, rollers, string, plumb-bobs, and rope), and a bit of common-sense.
People all over the world are fond of telling tall tales that make thier leaders, country, or whatever, more powerful and interesting.
Using many of the illegal drugs is STUPID, but it should not be against the law to be stupid. If someone wants to ruin their life doing crack - let them. The war on drugs has ruined more lives than the drugs they are 'fighting'. The war on drugs has made these drugs much more harmful, turned what should be a peaceful fiancial transaction into bloody war.
Society places limits on acolhol use, age limits etc... (up here in Canada you can't buy beer at the local corner store, all alcohol is bought at government controlled stores, or specially licensed 'beer and wine' stores that can't sell any hard stuff). Place the same restrictions on the other recreational drugs and you will get a number of benefits:
The price goes down. Thus the addicts need less money, and do less B&E's to support their habit. They might even be able to get a minimum wage job.
The quality is controlled, less OD's.
No one is getting shot.
The governement collects it cut without all that expensive law enforcement, they'll just tax it!
The war on drugs has not stopped ANYONE from getting and using drugs. Ending the war will not cause a huge increase in drug use. The people who are apt to use drugs have not been at all hindered by the war on drugs.
As for singling out "smart chicks", exactly that happened in Canada - a nut case machine gunned 14 women at a University. He wanted revenge on all the women he felt inferior to.
It will be very tuff to get code to run fast on both a P4 and the P3/Athalon cpu.
I would be grateful if you would quote the bit I missed where he proposed abolishing all property rights, and that bit about napster was about modifying copyright (a type of property rights), not abolishing all property rights.
Fairly competing, even driving a competetor out of business is ok, as long as you do not 'directly' harm anyone. You can't firebomb your competitor's factory, you can't use restrictive contracts, you really shouldn't use too many of M$'s business practices. But you may deliberately build a better product, even if you know it will harm a competitor indirectly.
Real things don't change when people change their opinion.
Any one who stops to think about it will realize that all 'rights' are indeed a fiction bestowed by the society you live in. Show me a right that can't taken from me by an armed mob, and I'll conceded its a 'natural right'.
Both camps tend to yell and scream at each other. The socialists are generally less willing to even admit in a newsgroup that they would be willing to have capitalist neighbors. The capitalists are generally willing to have socialist neighbors, but assume they'll have to give up their socialism once they 'run out of soap'. Boths sides say they other 'isn't really anarchists'.
Many Libertarians do have strong views on property rights, but they also have strong views on contract law. For a Libertarian, governments exist to uphold contracts and protect property. Everything else is an infringement of an individuals rights.
Under your anarchy, who is going to force me to give up my property?
Of course we must define a few terms before a rational argument can take place:
Anarchist: best government is no government.
government: organization with a monopoly on using force to enforce its decisions over a defined geographical area.
capitalist: believes in private property, may not believe in the current American model of private property.
Anarchist, capitalist, but quite happy to have socialist neighbors, if they don't try to collectivize my property.
Without limited liability many worthwhile, but risky, ventures would never have been attempted.
The main problem I see with the American system is voter apathy which lets a comparatively rich 'minority' get the a government sympathetic to their wants. If all the eligible voters who didn't vote, voted for the same person - he'd be president.
A short sighted obsession with making a profit 'this quarter, screw the future' has also resulted in some odd policies, eg the DMCA(sp?), extended copyrights, software patents, pulling out of the Kyoto Protocols, and attempting to start drilling for oil in Alaska.
As cameras get smaller, smarter, and eventually mobile, privacy is simply going to evaperate. Wireless swarms of cameras the size of flies will be everywere (this technology is already being tested) recording your every movement.
Small surveillance Plane
Camera size of a quarter
6 inch flying camera
Even without trying, most people get on surveillance video a few times a day: the bank, the local 'quicky mart', the gas station.
The only way to preserve privacy is to make preserving privacy a top concern of your government. Many people seem eager to trade their privay for security, but this only works when the security is in the hands of someone you trust, who would never abuse that power. Of course, no western government would ever abuse its power, right? Just ask Steve Jackson.
People who are willing to trade their privacy and freedom to the government for security are abdicating their adulthood, and letting the government be their babysitter.
I don't recall MS ever forcing me to buy their products, there are many alternatives around, so what's the problem? Sure, lots of things suck about MS software, but they haven't 'harmed' the average home user.
Given the deep differences between America and some countries that have successfully implemented gun control, I doubt that strict gun control would help much with the American's horrid record of violent crime. Gun control in the USA would likely reduce sucides and accidental death's, but I doubt it would reduce violent crime much. Still, gun control would save many lives.
As quoted in the next section, the main problem with guns is that they make it much too easy to kill. It lets one excalate violence much faster than other weapons - often causing uncessessary death. A rational person does not arm themself with lethal weapons for everyday life. A drunk armed with a knife isn't likely to kill a friend in a drunken rage, while this happens all to often when the drunk has a gun. I have never heard of anyone knifing a son or daughter to death by accident, but guns bought for 'home defense' kill more family and friends than intruders.
A Lucid Gun control Sight and Some quotes from it: http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~zj5j-gttl/guns.htm
The problem with guns
The problem with guns is fairly straightforward: they make it easy to kill or injure a person. In Jeffrey A. Roth's Firearms and Violence (NIJ Research in Brief, February 1994, found at http://sun.soci.niu.edu/~critcrim/guns/gun.viol), he points out the obvious dangers:
Approximately 60 percent of all murder victims in the United States in 1989 (about 12,000 people) were killed with firearms. According to estimates, firearm attacks injured another 70,000 victims, some of whom were left permanently disabled. In 1985 (the latest year for which data are available), the cost of shootings--either by others, through self-inflicted wounds, or in accidents--was estimated to be more than $14 billion nationwide for medical care, long-term disability, and premature death. (Editor's note: the number of gun victims has increased since 1989 to 15,456 gun homicides in 1994. Source: FBI UCR report.) In robberies and assaults, victims are far more likely to die when the perpetrator is armed with a gun than when he or she has another weapon or is unarmed.
Suicides
Residents of homes where a gun is present are 5 times more likely to experience a suicide than residents of homes without guns
Self-defense
But research has shown that a gun kept in the home is 43 times more likely to kill a member of the household, or friend, than an intruder.
Research by Dr. Arthur Kellerman has shown that keeping a gun in the home carries a murder risk 2.7 times greater than not keeping one.
Other weapons
"People kill with knifes, too. Do you want to ban knifes?" From Dr. Roth's study: The overall fatality rate in gun robberies is an estimated 4 per 1,000--about 3 times the rate for knife robberies, 10 times the rate for robberies with other weapons, and 20 times the rate for robberies by unarmed offenders.
Gun Control, a History of Candian Gun control http://i2i.org/SuptDocs/Crime/Canadian_Gun_Control .htm
Bif has two CD's out, the first one, titled "Bif Naked" is even better than "I Bifucus".
"The Sentinal" is in the anthology "The Nine Billion Names of God"
Two best Clarke books:
Childhood's End
The City and the Stars
You worked to create it.
You bought it
Just because something is easy to steal, doesn't mean it is OK to steal it.
You guys on /. HOWL if the sacred GPL is violated, which protects "information that just wants to be free", but anyone else tries to protect their work it is evil.Can't have it both ways.
I do agree that because it is so easy to steal digital works that copyright laws will have to be modified. A shorter term of protection would be a good start for reforming it.
Software Patents are evil, copyright is strong enough to protect any code worth protecting. Generally the underlying idea expressed by the code is obvious, only the expression of the idea should be protected.
2] The farmer had tested the plants, and knew they were round up resistant.
3] He planted 1000 acres with seeds from the one field that he knew was resistant.
4] If you let Monosaturats know your field is contaminated they will clean it up at THEIR expense.
5] The judge stated that he would not have been awarding in favour of Monosaturates if it was just some wind blown seed.
The only way to fix this is to change the patent laws. The judge's hands are tied, he has to rule on the existing law, he can't just change it.
He was found guilty because he knew the seeds were round up resistant, and he went and planted 1000 acres with it anyways. 1000 acres isn't just a little bit that blew over.
He has to pay because the judge DOESN'T believe the seeds 'just blew over onto his fields'. The judge believes he knew it was round up resitant before he planted a bit over 1000 acres.
It is especially important to teach your kids to base their self worth on their selves, not thier clothes.
Censorware is not a replacement for parental supervision, but when I can't be looking over my children's shoulder I'm not too worried. Why not? I'm not worried because I have taken the time to explain that there many things they shouldn't be looking at, that if they run across it, the back button is to be pressed, and if that doesn't work, home, then just kill off explorer. Because I actually DO spend a lot of time with my children I know I can trust them to follow these rules. Of course one day they will get curious, but I'm confident it won't warp their minds as I have helped them to become independant, thinking, individuals, who will have had practise making many decisions for themselves.
If you think you need censorware, you need to work on teaching your children that there things they shouldn't be looking at until they are older, and you need to work on building up TRUST between yourself and your children.
Just another example of how the good ol' USA is already more facist than many of the countries they so piously complain about.
Unless you want to buy a gun, the US governemnt is quite happy to tell you what to say and think.
The US has more people in jail, per capita, than China! US high schools often demand more conformity from their students than many dictatorships.
The real problem is too many people think the government should try to cure everything, they WANT to be treated like children and abdicate the personal responsability for their own actions to the government.
Did you know that those warning labels on poisonous and explosives (eg an aerosol spray can) were orginally developed to protect children? It used to be assumed that adults would know these things, and if they didn't tuff luck.