You know that sounds well until you realise how it would apply to... shall we say "involuntary donation of organs", and a million other procedures. Once you realise that application you see your argument for what it is : another version of the Stalin's "the goal justifies the means", you know when he proceeded to massacre about 100 million people.
Please think twice about your position. This is not an acceptable position to take. If you really have this position, you should be treated like Josef Mengele, because that's who you are. In theory there would little point in waiting, since you will kill if it's convenient, it's just a matter when it'll become convenient. But of course such can't be proved and we have to wait for people to die.
So please : don't hold this position. It's not reasonable. At all.
So evolution is going to magically reverse on itself just when it serves our purpose ?
If any group chooses to limit it's birthrate artificially they will soon find themselves replaced by another group who chooses not to do so - unless external factors intervene (ie. discrimination between those groups, and since it's mostly ethnic differences between such groups, racism).
This happens at an astonishing rate. Suppose population is divided 90%-10%. Suppose also that the majority has a lower birthrate (1.5 per woman) than the minority (2.5 per woman) (and suppose parents die when they've had their kids, and these kids are all born at the same time, and that that time is 25 years after birth). It takes less than 5 generations for the minority to become the majority. A little over a century. The generation after that, said minority is 2/3rds of the population, next generation it is over 80%. And the 8th generation the minority has over 95% of all the population.
have you thought about the posibility that when robots do all the jobs that no one wants to do, productivity might increase by enough to allow all the people to live comfortably. Also I don't think that valuing people only by their economic worth is very nice.
Do tell, there is this theory that has a few things to say about what happens when the economy is larger than the needs of it's population. It's generally referred to as evolution. What exactly does it say will happen in that case ?
Hint : it has something to do with population growth...
Real life is a constant jumble of billions of interlocking factors. You cannot isolate one, and then expect this to be an explanation. It doesn't even work for the weather, and it sure as hell does not work on humans, of course no one expects a "liberal" to give common sense like that a second thought. That's the path to the dark side.
When the factor of a violent video games is studied as the sole differring influence on a group, through careful experiment design, the outcomes are uniform, more than significant, and work both short and medium term (both within hours and months later) : violent video games cause violent behavior (and yes cause : we know BOTH the correlation AND the temporal sequence. The game is the cause, the behavior is the consequence).
I thought liberals prided themselves on following science ? Anyone who follows science, and isn't conducting controlled experiments himself (ie. someone who does not have real controlled empirical data to dispute the existing research) should go along with science.
And what a hypocrite you are, surely someone who demands doctors work for free, without reward can be expected to make a few sacrifices himself "for the good of society". You expect docters to give up their lives to be your slaves, without even considering if that leads to better medical care... so surely you can be expected to drop video games without any consideration of whether the effects of doing that are indeed good. After all, you dropping video games is much less than you expect from others...
(for the record I'm dead against violent game legislation, but not because I'm a "liberal" totalitarianist idiot who expects to use the government's military and police power to force everyone to agree with me, but because I'm actually in favor of freedom. Everyone's freedom, that is. Both your freedom to play video games and a docter's freedom to work the way HE finds worthy... I'm only mad at you for your selective application of science : you only see science as valid when it agrees 100% with you, when it can be used to get "free" stuff (free having the new "liberal" meaning of the word : stuff stolen at arm's length from others))
Unfortunately such a mountain does exist. You just don't see it due to it's extreme unpopularity, even amongst the people who ran the experiments and saw it in action for themselves, it's mechanism laid bare : how the human mind works.
The human mind is an advanced copying machine, of a certain, rather complicated, type. There are a lot of side remarks, temporal constraints, reflexes (basic reactions nearly (but not entirely) outside of the control of the mind), uncertainties, and there is the fact that the ultimate proof of this still eludes us : we haven't yet succeeded in building an artificial human mind (but the same could be said for evolution : we have not yet traced all the steps of a useful mutation in any cell, not even in simulation. For all we know God might be spending his time debugging DNA, and we would be none the wiser. And we've never constructed any "real world" object that could evolve)
But the basic mechanism of the human mind is clear. It duplicates everything that comes in using it's outputs. Even though both you could split it up, you should know these both fases occur 100% in parallel, in identical neurons, and probably the very same circuit at the very same time. "First" the human mind observes, and specifically it observes the timing of events in relation to one another. This way it learns that certain events are correlated, like say, the image of a fist nearing a table and the bang coming in over the auditory nerve a few hundred msecs later. This happens in levels : first it tries to correlate things that happen in the same millisecond, then it correlates stuff on top of those correlations, resulting in connections on slightly longer timescales. How far does that stacking of correlations go ? Any decently complex thought is at the very least at the 10.000th level, some are a million or more levels deep, and circular correlations are probably the mechanism accounting for one type of memory, making almost unlimited depth possible (only limited by the fact that a human mind eventually dies).
Once it has "a few" correlations (in practice : immediately) it will start sending random pulses on whichever nerve endings it can reach, and will retransmit the information about which nerve endings were triggered in what way back into the brain, resulting in correlations between actions of the body and changes in the environment.
But humans imitate. They are not rational, they do not think economically, they are even, at a basic level, unable to tell the difference between truth and fiction. A person needs to learn the difference between truth an fiction, and to the learning process of the mind truth is no different from fiction, ever. Whether a person grows up to see his environment act racist, or reads through nazi and communist propaganda knowing it's a lie does not make a difference : that person will imitate the behavior he/she sees and, say hate Jews.
Seeing violence makes you violent. Yes, even mighty morphing power rangers. Participating in violence does so even more. Participating in the form of playing a violent video game is obviously less of a push towards violence than getting attacked on the street, but video games result in more violence than violent movies, for example.
Actually in pressurized salt water, and 3 inch steel before that, they'd be close enough to tell your location as probably directly behind that great big bump in their exterior hull.
Well you see it's really simple. Keeping a human alive is not free. This isn't a problem of capitalist economies, it's a problem of reality. Humans require food, clothing, heat (or cold, depending on the location), all sorts of infrastructure, clean water,... none of which is free.
In a communist system, the economy cannot grow (as proven in theoretical economics), due to (among other problems) the "broken windows fallacy".
If government spending is 100% efficient (and comprises 100% of the economy... which is the definition of communism), with zero government employees, zero bribery, no black markets, free police force, zero unofficial trade, etc... it will create a steady state economy : a constant GDP.
Obviously with less than 100% efficiency, as anyone in the real world must be, GDP will drop, and drop, and drop, and drop. Until the GDP is no longer enough to keep people alive. This could theoretically take 1000 years, but in practice it's never taken even 50 years.
Therefore, communism kills, even in pure theoretical implementations. And any practical implementations... kill faster due to being less perfect than the theory.
Communism slaughters anyone who tries to live by it's rules. Of course if this weren't true, if communism were better, making the world communist would be as simple as starting up a single communist community. Since communism is better it would outcompete capitalism, until it's economy encompassed 100% of the world economy. Obviously anyone can observe that, despite many desperate tries, no such thing has happened.
Communism slaughters anyone living under it. In practice those people are nearly always forced to live under it.
Euhm... reality is (and will always remain) a resource and infrastructure limited system. Obviously. That's a law of physics.
So your point is, communism is only evil in reality ? Isn't that the same as saying murder isn't evil ? after all it isn't in the afterlife, since you're already dead...
Say that's a nice iphone you have there. I need it, you know, for the "public good". Concretely, the crying sound levels near my congressman's ears will go down considerably, resulting in cheaper health care.
Okay, I thought you were referring to the ten commandments (you might like to cite a reference to be clearer).
Furthermore, even with literal interpretation, how is this equal to your statement ??? I'll repeat your statement about this verse :
I don't consider it consistent to demand you kill children who talk back to their parents
It doesn't seem to be talking about "talking back to parents" at all, unless I've suddenly forgotten the better part of the English language, it seems to be quite a bit softer than you exposed it, mentioning clearly an extended period of disobedience, neglect and substance abuse (none of which has anything but a casual association with "talking back"). I can't really understand why, I mean this is a harsh enough verse without you misrepresenting it.
The law specified here is basically a death penalty for extended drug abuse, and only after such abuse has resulted in serious consequences for the family and/or the society (note that, clearly, ABuse is specified, indicating that mild and/or social drug use was tolerated). Harsh, yes, certainly. Though not nearly as harsh as "killing children for talking back to their parents".
Of course, you might know that Christians don't actually use this book as a source of laws. This was the law as laid down by Moses (excluding the 10 commandments).
Your comment could probably serve as a criticism against Judaism, especially orthodox Judaism, which takes these laws to be a contemporary guide to living and enforcing law. No Christian agrees with them (since, you know, this little carpenter 2000 years ago made it quite clear exactly how to deal with these laws. All Christian application of the Bible is based on his actions, not on these laws directly).
You will find stonings of women, burning "enemies" alive in homes and so on in these books. They may be part of the bible, but Christians see this as a historical tale, featuring God. The part to be respected in the pentateuch are the ten commandments, and even then only insofar they match this little carpenter's representation of them, the rest is merely taken to be laws of the land of Caanaan. Those are certainly not taken to be divine revelation (again, except for the ten commandments).
Actually drug gangs HAVE already been caught with their "little own air force". I believe one unmanned drug delivery probe has already been found. I have little doubt they will soon multiply thousandfold.
And the only way you're going to stop a large fleet of (very cheap) UAV's for any reasonable price (whatever people say, economics, not militaries, win wars, so downing UAV's with ground-air munitions amounts to suicide) your only option is a large fleet of UAV's. If you expect anyone to try it, there is only one option : build them.
So let me guess, you have 5 computers at home, each on a 100 mbit connection, and you do not "oversell"... so you have (and pay for) a 500 mbit synchronous internet connection, right ?
After all, you're just an evil isp that wants to prevent it's customers of "actually using the available capacity".
Well, it simply means that the router is capable of very, very extensive QOS options with very fine-grained control.
Compare it with saying "assembly gives you total control over the computer, and you *can* write enterprise applications directly in assembly. It is however very very hard to write anything even slightly oversized in assembly".
The problem is the disconnect between pipe capacity and flow "capacity". This type of routers gives you total and complete control over flow bandwidth... which does not always help to avoid hitting the physical pipe bandwidth.
All older cisco equipment worked this way. This was nice, and worked very well for the first router(s) closest to the end customer. However for routers meant to route for large numbers of users this turned out to be a disaster.
There are a number of very problematic properties : -> trivial to ddos (just generate too many flows to fit in memory, or generally increase the per-packet lookup time) -> not p2p compatible (p2p will cause flow based routers to perform at a snail's pace, because they open so much connections) -> possible triple penalty for every new flow (first a failed flow lookup, followed by a failed route lookup, going to default route) -> very hard to have a good qos policy this way. A pipe has a fixed bandwidth, and you almost always oversubscribe. Therefore useful policies are very hard to formulate per-flow. -> if you divide bandwidth per-flow over tcp then a large overload will "synchronize" everything. So let's explain what happens if 3 users are happily surfing about and another user starts bittorrent. Bandwidth gets divided over all the flows, and *every* connection closes, due to timeouts.
There are a number of advantages -> easy, very extensive QOS is trivial to implement -> stateful firewalling is almost laughably easy to implement, and very advanced firewalling can be done (e.g. easy to block ssh but not https, just filter on the string "openssh" anywhere in the connection. Added bonus : hilarity ensues if you email someone the text "openssh", and his pop3 connection keeps getting closed)
Here's the deal : a router has to lookup in a table of about 300.000 entries in per-packet switching (excepting MPLS P routers). My PC is, at this moment, opening 331 flows to various destinations, each sending an average of 5 packets (probably a lot of DNS requests are dragging this number down), but you have to keep in mind that a flow-based router has to look up first in the "flow table" AND in the route table (which still has 300.000 entries).
As soon as a flow-based router services more than 1000 machines (in either direction, ie. 100 clients communicating with 900 internet hosts = 1000 machines serviced), it's performance will fail to keep up with a packet-based router. That's not a lot. If a single client torrents or p2p's you will hit this limit easily, resulting in slower performance. 2000 machines and packet-based switching is double as efficient.
So : flow-based routing... for your wireless access point... perhaps. For anything more serious than that ? No way in hell.
That's exactly why the research was moved away from bigger explosions and towards multi-warhead devices. It might take a 100 Megaton bomb to destroy a small city, but ten much smaller, much simpler one megaton bombs deployed in a circle around the city will create a firestorm that will destroy it just as thoroughly. Modern deployment schemes take full advantage of the interactions between multiple warheads being detonated simultaneously. With relatively modern MIRV missiles, 20 launches can put 200 nuclear bombs into an area, all detonating within seconds of each other.
Interesting, but you can see by your numbers that the entire nuclear arsenal of the US is -maybe- enough to destroy one decent-sized city, and we're talking an average state capital. It is not enough to destroy a "real" metropolis like London or New York.
The arsenals of neither Russia nor the US are certainly not enough to reduce a country, even a really tiny one to wasteland. (excepting city states of course, but a tiny country like Holland is WAY to big to be blasted out of existence with current nuclear arsenals).
Actually the problem with nuclear warheads is that they're supposed to destroy an enemy's capability of war - they're not meant to simply destroy lives. Putin, after all, prefers to use proxy countries for that.
The problem is that a nuclear weapon is actually quite limited. A 10 megaton nuclear warhead will only destroy all infrastructure within a circle of 200-300 meters. Especially things like roads and rails are very, very hard to destroy, yet they are the backbone of a country's military efforts, since they represent the supply lines. If you cut supply lines to an army, you have won the war. That's what nuclear weapons would in reality be used for : creating a (tiny) zone of inaccessible land between an army and it's supporting country or bases.
Btw: The effects of a nuclear warhead decrease with the square of the distance (at best), or with the third power of the distance. A 100 megaton nuclear warhead only increases the destruction distance by a factor of 2. A 250 megaton warhead (the largest in existence) will only destroy a bunker when exploded less than 500 meters from it's walls. A 250 megaton warhead, will only destroy a modern office building at less than a kilometer.
Therefore, to transform a tiny, rural city with some 2000 inhabitants into permanent wasteland you'd need a 100 megaton bomb. A hiroshima bomb would simply not do the job (completely). To destroy a city like New York, you need more than a few thousand 250 megaton devices.
And another salient detail : fallout may be deadly, or at least a carcinogen to humans, it really helps plants and animals grow. Some plants are capable of directly harnessing radiation from radioactive decay. Another observation : It will not lead to three-eyed fish, or even slight mutations in all but the largest possible animals. Sensitivity to fallout is directly proportional to the size of the animal (and the way of contamination : ingesting radioactive material is worse than sleeping on it). Humans are simply too large and too sensitive a system to take much fallout, but cats will take amazing amounts without breaking a sweat. Mouse, rats and others are all but unkillable by radiation.
Nuclear weapons aren't the world-ending devices their reputations claim them to be. Nor do they totally destroy the environment. They are certainly not capable of changing the world into barren wasteland, no matter how many are fired.
Actually I think you're on to something there. Here in Brussels, the unions would have screamed bloody murder over this and staged protests until it became illegal. The guy would be lucky not to end up strung up.
You're obviously right, plants are eukaryotic. Sorry.
Why would it have genes for producing an eye if it was regarded as an infection?
How exactly would you call a lifeform that changes the operation of a target cell for it's own benefit ?
Evolution theory is more and more saying that genes spread by viruses, and we have little trouble calling those infections, no matter how useful they are in any particular case. So why feel inhibited calling this an infection ?
Here's what happens. You have a virus... any virus. It contains a series of advanced genes. Probably copied from it's previous victims, or whatever. This virus becomes successfull. So successfull in fact, that there isn't a single human that isn't infected after a while.
So what happens next ? The evolution of the virus and the evolution of the human species are now locked together. The only way the virus can improve it's fate is by making humans more successfull, and the only way humans can become more successfull is by making the virus more successfull. So the disease generating genes are deactivated one by one, for they stand in the way of the success of the "new" human lifeform, and the interesting genes are used more and more.
AIDS could become an example of this, if we're not careful. It contains several very advanced genes. I haven't the faintest clue what this might be useful for, but AIDS contains code "runnable" by human cells to convert RNA into DNA, something our cells can't do, and it contains code that allows for the creation of a special kind of membranes. One thing AIDS is doing is making this code available to a large part of human evolution.
There are lots of historical occurances of this. Some virus infects the entire human population, and it's DNA code is reproduced verbatim in each of us, despite the virus itself no longer appearing in nature. At least 50% of our DNA code is the result of our ancestors getting sick with virii. 3 "full" such viruses have been found in the human genome. One can only imagine how many partial viruses are in there, whose code is slowly evolving out of the human genome.
The difference between prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells comes down to 2 internal membranes. It may look very different under a microscope, it isn't all that different. One way to make this happen through evolution is by having an endosymbiotic relationship with another bacterium, which has a membrane. Then, gradually, since the 2 species evolution is locked together, the endosymbiotic lifeform degenerates into a single function device. This has been the accepted explanation for a few years now, ever since eukaryotic cells have been found with dual-membrane mitochondria, within that first membrane a kind of polar body was found, indicating that the mitochondria was once part of a proper cell that lived separately from it's host. Since then bacteria that look a lot like mitochondria have been found, further confirming the hypothesis. We have exactly the same mitochondria, but with only a single membrane.
So it seems that cells "evolve" from prokaryots to eukaryots by "eating" the difference. The only step to prove this that's really left to do is demonstrate this specific evolution in a lab.
Actually once this cell totally integrates this endosymbiotic lifeform (the next step) it might very well become eukaryotic. Ironically that would make it an eukaryotic plant, which would presumably very easily evolve back into a predator.
when Hatena reproduces, one offspring is a peaceful photosynthesizer with the sun-seeking eye, while the other is yet again a predator with a voracious mouth."
The explanation is simple : cell division in the parent organism does not trigger cell division in the endosymbiotic lifeform. That endosymbiotic lifeform might very well be thought of as an infection.
Still it's quite impressive what they have today. "Withstand 2.5 m/s wind gusts" does not mean their ornithopter explodes if the wind exceeds that. It just means that above 2.5 m/s it will have to "go with the flow", and thus will lose a part of it's mobility. It can still control it's speed in 3 other directions though.
I have the impression that birds regularly hit this limit. They try to go against the wind, and it proves too much for them. They simply land and try again 5 seconds later, which usually succeeds.
So the 2.5 m/s wind limit could be quite acceptable, even for outdoor flight. Assuming it can land like a bird (ie. everywhere).
I do see one big problem these devices will have to contend with : Cats (perhaps not the lolcat variant, the regular one). So if you want to secure your house from these spying devices... buy a cat. Birds, after 3 million years of evolution still haven't quite figured out how to protect themselves against cats, so it seems unlikely these guys will find it in the next month.
Allow me to explain (b). The government made those loans interesting for tax reasons for large banks. (read the CRA)
So there we have it. Lots of loans, who are, in the long term, extremely unprofitable BUT having them in your possession on Jan. 1 of any year is unbelievably profitable.
So you've created a game of "hot potato". You have a package that blows up & you pass it around.
That's because I disagree with your premises. If you they were correct, we would not have seen government policy working with other emissions as it has. You didn't answer my questions about CFCs and sulfur dioxide
Sulphur dioxide emissions have reduced by a little under 50% in the US. World-wide, however, they have risen. The net result was, obviously, a large rise in these emissions. Especially China has emissions that can only really be described as "off the scale", though India is certainly no saint in this department either. Perhaps that is why, even though US production went down significantly, there is only a tiny little bit better air in the US today versus 1970. Unless the rest of the world stops using electricity forthwith, the air is about to get more polluted every year with SO2. The reason for the localized and temporary drop is the near-total immobility of electricity creation. However, the policy only bought some time, it did not solve the problem.
I can't find any CFC numbers. However, CFC's cause the expansion of the gap in the ozone layer. I wonder if it has shrunk ? Since if your claims are right, then we'd see a massive shrinking of the hole in the ozone layer... I'm sure you've checked that beforehand... heh... I forgot... democrat...
You might as well say, "Ice is not cold. Why the hell would you put it in your drink to cool it off? It is because you're a STATIST COMMUNIST??"
You're right. I suppose the better explanation is that you're delusional. But you are most defineately willfully delusional.
Why accuse me of not being realistic after making 2 factually wrong claims ? Do you think you're convincing anyone ? Otoh, if you are indeed delusional, you probably think you're convincing me. I hate to break the news, but you're doing the exact opposite.
Given the clear observation that established, empirical facts do not seem to affect your "truth", one might wonder what your idea of truth is based upon. Because, clearly, it is not based on empirical facts. And frankly, yes, my answer to that question would be that you're a socialist (that's what communists like to call themselves). Does that mean that you're going to start wars and famines and kill people ? Obviously not, you'll do what the soviets did : push your illusions on the economy "for more fairness", ignoring the real world, until the "fair/shackled" economy just can't support keeping all people alive anymore. Instead of recalling the illusion-based rules and laws you'll turn to rationing, to avoid having to admit you're wrong. And then you'll demand the right to decide how food rationing is to be done "to protect the poor" (not that you actually will protect the poor, obviously, you'll protect yourself from starvation, as anyone would do), but those actions which will be equivalent to massacring at that point.
I wonder though, given that the CFC emission reduction laws, and the price associated with those is still being paid, and it's obviously not helping... what should we do ? I doubt that dropping those laws would result in a big increase of emissions, but I'm sure it would give many companies new options and materials for research.
Slashdot Mirror
You know that sounds well until you realise how it would apply to ... shall we say "involuntary donation of organs", and a million other procedures. Once you realise that application you see your argument for what it is : another version of the Stalin's "the goal justifies the means", you know when he proceeded to massacre about 100 million people.
Please think twice about your position. This is not an acceptable position to take. If you really have this position, you should be treated like Josef Mengele, because that's who you are. In theory there would little point in waiting, since you will kill if it's convenient, it's just a matter when it'll become convenient. But of course such can't be proved and we have to wait for people to die.
So please : don't hold this position. It's not reasonable. At all.
So evolution is going to magically reverse on itself just when it serves our purpose ?
If any group chooses to limit it's birthrate artificially they will soon find themselves replaced by another group who chooses not to do so - unless external factors intervene (ie. discrimination between those groups, and since it's mostly ethnic differences between such groups, racism).
This happens at an astonishing rate. Suppose population is divided 90%-10%. Suppose also that the majority has a lower birthrate (1.5 per woman) than the minority (2.5 per woman) (and suppose parents die when they've had their kids, and these kids are all born at the same time, and that that time is 25 years after birth). It takes less than 5 generations for the minority to become the majority. A little over a century. The generation after that, said minority is 2/3rds of the population, next generation it is over 80%. And the 8th generation the minority has over 95% of all the population.
have you thought about the posibility that when robots do all the jobs that no one wants to do, productivity might increase by enough to allow all the people to live comfortably. Also I don't think that valuing people only by their economic worth is very nice.
Do tell, there is this theory that has a few things to say about what happens when the economy is larger than the needs of it's population. It's generally referred to as evolution. What exactly does it say will happen in that case ?
Hint : it has something to do with population growth ...
Real life is a constant jumble of billions of interlocking factors. You cannot isolate one, and then expect this to be an explanation. It doesn't even work for the weather, and it sure as hell does not work on humans, of course no one expects a "liberal" to give common sense like that a second thought. That's the path to the dark side.
When the factor of a violent video games is studied as the sole differring influence on a group, through careful experiment design, the outcomes are uniform, more than significant, and work both short and medium term (both within hours and months later) : violent video games cause violent behavior (and yes cause : we know BOTH the correlation AND the temporal sequence. The game is the cause, the behavior is the consequence).
I thought liberals prided themselves on following science ? Anyone who follows science, and isn't conducting controlled experiments himself (ie. someone who does not have real controlled empirical data to dispute the existing research) should go along with science.
And what a hypocrite you are, surely someone who demands doctors work for free, without reward can be expected to make a few sacrifices himself "for the good of society". You expect docters to give up their lives to be your slaves, without even considering if that leads to better medical care ... so surely you can be expected to drop video games without any consideration of whether the effects of doing that are indeed good. After all, you dropping video games is much less than you expect from others ...
(for the record I'm dead against violent game legislation, but not because I'm a "liberal" totalitarianist idiot who expects to use the government's military and police power to force everyone to agree with me, but because I'm actually in favor of freedom. Everyone's freedom, that is. Both your freedom to play video games and a docter's freedom to work the way HE finds worthy ... I'm only mad at you for your selective application of science : you only see science as valid when it agrees 100% with you, when it can be used to get "free" stuff (free having the new "liberal" meaning of the word : stuff stolen at arm's length from others))
Loss of productivity ? Have you read the article about today's technology graduates ?
Unfortunately such a mountain does exist. You just don't see it due to it's extreme unpopularity, even amongst the people who ran the experiments and saw it in action for themselves, it's mechanism laid bare : how the human mind works.
The human mind is an advanced copying machine, of a certain, rather complicated, type. There are a lot of side remarks, temporal constraints, reflexes (basic reactions nearly (but not entirely) outside of the control of the mind), uncertainties, and there is the fact that the ultimate proof of this still eludes us : we haven't yet succeeded in building an artificial human mind (but the same could be said for evolution : we have not yet traced all the steps of a useful mutation in any cell, not even in simulation. For all we know God might be spending his time debugging DNA, and we would be none the wiser. And we've never constructed any "real world" object that could evolve)
But the basic mechanism of the human mind is clear. It duplicates everything that comes in using it's outputs. Even though both you could split it up, you should know these both fases occur 100% in parallel, in identical neurons, and probably the very same circuit at the very same time. "First" the human mind observes, and specifically it observes the timing of events in relation to one another. This way it learns that certain events are correlated, like say, the image of a fist nearing a table and the bang coming in over the auditory nerve a few hundred msecs later. This happens in levels : first it tries to correlate things that happen in the same millisecond, then it correlates stuff on top of those correlations, resulting in connections on slightly longer timescales. How far does that stacking of correlations go ? Any decently complex thought is at the very least at the 10.000th level, some are a million or more levels deep, and circular correlations are probably the mechanism accounting for one type of memory, making almost unlimited depth possible (only limited by the fact that a human mind eventually dies).
Once it has "a few" correlations (in practice : immediately) it will start sending random pulses on whichever nerve endings it can reach, and will retransmit the information about which nerve endings were triggered in what way back into the brain, resulting in correlations between actions of the body and changes in the environment.
But humans imitate. They are not rational, they do not think economically, they are even, at a basic level, unable to tell the difference between truth and fiction. A person needs to learn the difference between truth an fiction, and to the learning process of the mind truth is no different from fiction, ever. Whether a person grows up to see his environment act racist, or reads through nazi and communist propaganda knowing it's a lie does not make a difference : that person will imitate the behavior he/she sees and, say hate Jews.
Seeing violence makes you violent. Yes, even mighty morphing power rangers. Participating in violence does so even more. Participating in the form of playing a violent video game is obviously less of a push towards violence than getting attacked on the street, but video games result in more violence than violent movies, for example.
Huh ? This is about violent video games ... which is a "genre" in the medium too. Isn't this a point where both legislations resemble ?
This law is not about preventing kids from buying video games ... but from them buying certain videogames.
Actually in pressurized salt water, and 3 inch steel before that, they'd be close enough to tell your location as probably directly behind that great big bump in their exterior hull.
Well you see it's really simple. Keeping a human alive is not free. This isn't a problem of capitalist economies, it's a problem of reality. Humans require food, clothing, heat (or cold, depending on the location), all sorts of infrastructure, clean water, ... none of which is free.
In a communist system, the economy cannot grow (as proven in theoretical economics), due to (among other problems) the "broken windows fallacy".
If government spending is 100% efficient (and comprises 100% of the economy ... which is the definition of communism), with zero government employees, zero bribery, no black markets, free police force, zero unofficial trade, etc ... it will create a steady state economy : a constant GDP.
Obviously with less than 100% efficiency, as anyone in the real world must be, GDP will drop, and drop, and drop, and drop. Until the GDP is no longer enough to keep people alive. This could theoretically take 1000 years, but in practice it's never taken even 50 years.
Therefore, communism kills, even in pure theoretical implementations. And any practical implementations ... kill faster due to being less perfect than the theory.
Communism slaughters anyone who tries to live by it's rules. Of course if this weren't true, if communism were better, making the world communist would be as simple as starting up a single communist community. Since communism is better it would outcompete capitalism, until it's economy encompassed 100% of the world economy. Obviously anyone can observe that, despite many desperate tries, no such thing has happened.
Communism slaughters anyone living under it. In practice those people are nearly always forced to live under it.
Euhm ... reality is (and will always remain) a resource and infrastructure limited system. Obviously. That's a law of physics.
So your point is, communism is only evil in reality ? Isn't that the same as saying murder isn't evil ? after all it isn't in the afterlife, since you're already dead ...
Say that's a nice iphone you have there. I need it, you know, for the "public good". Concretely, the crying sound levels near my congressman's ears will go down considerably, resulting in cheaper health care.
Chavez did exactly the same thing ... the only difference is that he succeeded.
And some people are behaving in ... predictable ... ways.
Okay, I thought you were referring to the ten commandments (you might like to cite a reference to be clearer).
Furthermore, even with literal interpretation, how is this equal to your statement ??? I'll repeat your statement about this verse :
I don't consider it consistent to demand you kill children who talk back to their parents
It doesn't seem to be talking about "talking back to parents" at all, unless I've suddenly forgotten the better part of the English language, it seems to be quite a bit softer than you exposed it, mentioning clearly an extended period of disobedience, neglect and substance abuse (none of which has anything but a casual association with "talking back"). I can't really understand why, I mean this is a harsh enough verse without you misrepresenting it.
The law specified here is basically a death penalty for extended drug abuse, and only after such abuse has resulted in serious consequences for the family and/or the society (note that, clearly, ABuse is specified, indicating that mild and/or social drug use was tolerated). Harsh, yes, certainly. Though not nearly as harsh as "killing children for talking back to their parents".
Of course, you might know that Christians don't actually use this book as a source of laws. This was the law as laid down by Moses (excluding the 10 commandments).
Your comment could probably serve as a criticism against Judaism, especially orthodox Judaism, which takes these laws to be a contemporary guide to living and enforcing law. No Christian agrees with them (since, you know, this little carpenter 2000 years ago made it quite clear exactly how to deal with these laws. All Christian application of the Bible is based on his actions, not on these laws directly).
You will find stonings of women, burning "enemies" alive in homes and so on in these books. They may be part of the bible, but Christians see this as a historical tale, featuring God. The part to be respected in the pentateuch are the ten commandments, and even then only insofar they match this little carpenter's representation of them, the rest is merely taken to be laws of the land of Caanaan. Those are certainly not taken to be divine revelation (again, except for the ten commandments).
Actually drug gangs HAVE already been caught with their "little own air force". I believe one unmanned drug delivery probe has already been found. I have little doubt they will soon multiply thousandfold.
Some very worrying comments from someone who builds these things. You really think none of the people capable of doing this took the offer ?
And the only way you're going to stop a large fleet of (very cheap) UAV's for any reasonable price (whatever people say, economics, not militaries, win wars, so downing UAV's with ground-air munitions amounts to suicide) your only option is a large fleet of UAV's. If you expect anyone to try it, there is only one option : build them.
So let me guess, you have 5 computers at home, each on a 100 mbit connection, and you do not "oversell" ... so you have (and pay for) a 500 mbit synchronous internet connection, right ?
After all, you're just an evil isp that wants to prevent it's customers of "actually using the available capacity".
Well, it simply means that the router is capable of very, very extensive QOS options with very fine-grained control.
Compare it with saying "assembly gives you total control over the computer, and you *can* write enterprise applications directly in assembly. It is however very very hard to write anything even slightly oversized in assembly".
The problem is the disconnect between pipe capacity and flow "capacity". This type of routers gives you total and complete control over flow bandwidth ... which does not always help to avoid hitting the physical pipe bandwidth.
All older cisco equipment worked this way. This was nice, and worked very well for the first router(s) closest to the end customer. However for routers meant to route for large numbers of users this turned out to be a disaster.
Just to give you an idea, this was EOS (end of support) before I turned 10 (look for "netflow routing")
There are a number of very problematic properties :
-> trivial to ddos (just generate too many flows to fit in memory, or generally increase the per-packet lookup time)
-> not p2p compatible (p2p will cause flow based routers to perform at a snail's pace, because they open so much connections)
-> possible triple penalty for every new flow (first a failed flow lookup, followed by a failed route lookup, going to default route)
-> very hard to have a good qos policy this way. A pipe has a fixed bandwidth, and you almost always oversubscribe. Therefore useful policies are very hard to formulate per-flow.
-> if you divide bandwidth per-flow over tcp then a large overload will "synchronize" everything. So let's explain what happens if 3 users are happily surfing about and another user starts bittorrent. Bandwidth gets divided over all the flows, and *every* connection closes, due to timeouts.
There are a number of advantages
-> easy, very extensive QOS is trivial to implement
-> stateful firewalling is almost laughably easy to implement, and very advanced firewalling can be done (e.g. easy to block ssh but not https, just filter on the string "openssh" anywhere in the connection. Added bonus : hilarity ensues if you email someone the text "openssh", and his pop3 connection keeps getting closed)
Here's the deal : a router has to lookup in a table of about 300.000 entries in per-packet switching (excepting MPLS P routers). My PC is, at this moment, opening 331 flows to various destinations, each sending an average of 5 packets (probably a lot of DNS requests are dragging this number down), but you have to keep in mind that a flow-based router has to look up first in the "flow table" AND in the route table (which still has 300.000 entries).
As soon as a flow-based router services more than 1000 machines (in either direction, ie. 100 clients communicating with 900 internet hosts = 1000 machines serviced), it's performance will fail to keep up with a packet-based router. That's not a lot. If a single client torrents or p2p's you will hit this limit easily, resulting in slower performance. 2000 machines and packet-based switching is double as efficient.
So : flow-based routing ... for your wireless access point ... perhaps. For anything more serious than that ? No way in hell.
That's exactly why the research was moved away from bigger explosions and towards multi-warhead devices. It might take a 100 Megaton bomb to destroy a small city, but ten much smaller, much simpler one megaton bombs deployed in a circle around the city will create a firestorm that will destroy it just as thoroughly. Modern deployment schemes take full advantage of the interactions between multiple warheads being detonated simultaneously. With relatively modern MIRV missiles, 20 launches can put 200 nuclear bombs into an area, all detonating within seconds of each other.
Interesting, but you can see by your numbers that the entire nuclear arsenal of the US is -maybe- enough to destroy one decent-sized city, and we're talking an average state capital. It is not enough to destroy a "real" metropolis like London or New York.
The arsenals of neither Russia nor the US are certainly not enough to reduce a country, even a really tiny one to wasteland. (excepting city states of course, but a tiny country like Holland is WAY to big to be blasted out of existence with current nuclear arsenals).
Actually the problem with nuclear warheads is that they're supposed to destroy an enemy's capability of war - they're not meant to simply destroy lives. Putin, after all, prefers to use proxy countries for that.
The problem is that a nuclear weapon is actually quite limited. A 10 megaton nuclear warhead will only destroy all infrastructure within a circle of 200-300 meters. Especially things like roads and rails are very, very hard to destroy, yet they are the backbone of a country's military efforts, since they represent the supply lines. If you cut supply lines to an army, you have won the war. That's what nuclear weapons would in reality be used for : creating a (tiny) zone of inaccessible land between an army and it's supporting country or bases.
Btw: The effects of a nuclear warhead decrease with the square of the distance (at best), or with the third power of the distance. A 100 megaton nuclear warhead only increases the destruction distance by a factor of 2. A 250 megaton warhead (the largest in existence) will only destroy a bunker when exploded less than 500 meters from it's walls. A 250 megaton warhead, will only destroy a modern office building at less than a kilometer.
Therefore, to transform a tiny, rural city with some 2000 inhabitants into permanent wasteland you'd need a 100 megaton bomb. A hiroshima bomb would simply not do the job (completely). To destroy a city like New York, you need more than a few thousand 250 megaton devices.
And another salient detail : fallout may be deadly, or at least a carcinogen to humans, it really helps plants and animals grow. Some plants are capable of directly harnessing radiation from radioactive decay. Another observation : It will not lead to three-eyed fish, or even slight mutations in all but the largest possible animals. Sensitivity to fallout is directly proportional to the size of the animal (and the way of contamination : ingesting radioactive material is worse than sleeping on it). Humans are simply too large and too sensitive a system to take much fallout, but cats will take amazing amounts without breaking a sweat. Mouse, rats and others are all but unkillable by radiation.
Nuclear weapons aren't the world-ending devices their reputations claim them to be. Nor do they totally destroy the environment. They are certainly not capable of changing the world into barren wasteland, no matter how many are fired.
Actually I think you're on to something there. Here in Brussels, the unions would have screamed bloody murder over this and staged protests until it became illegal. The guy would be lucky not to end up strung up.
You're obviously right, plants are eukaryotic. Sorry.
Why would it have genes for producing an eye if it was regarded as an infection?
How exactly would you call a lifeform that changes the operation of a target cell for it's own benefit ?
Evolution theory is more and more saying that genes spread by viruses, and we have little trouble calling those infections, no matter how useful they are in any particular case. So why feel inhibited calling this an infection ?
Here's what happens. You have a virus ... any virus. It contains a series of advanced genes. Probably copied from it's previous victims, or whatever. This virus becomes successfull. So successfull in fact, that there isn't a single human that isn't infected after a while.
So what happens next ? The evolution of the virus and the evolution of the human species are now locked together. The only way the virus can improve it's fate is by making humans more successfull, and the only way humans can become more successfull is by making the virus more successfull. So the disease generating genes are deactivated one by one, for they stand in the way of the success of the "new" human lifeform, and the interesting genes are used more and more.
AIDS could become an example of this, if we're not careful. It contains several very advanced genes. I haven't the faintest clue what this might be useful for, but AIDS contains code "runnable" by human cells to convert RNA into DNA, something our cells can't do, and it contains code that allows for the creation of a special kind of membranes. One thing AIDS is doing is making this code available to a large part of human evolution.
There are lots of historical occurances of this. Some virus infects the entire human population, and it's DNA code is reproduced verbatim in each of us, despite the virus itself no longer appearing in nature. At least 50% of our DNA code is the result of our ancestors getting sick with virii. 3 "full" such viruses have been found in the human genome. One can only imagine how many partial viruses are in there, whose code is slowly evolving out of the human genome.
The difference between prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells comes down to 2 internal membranes. It may look very different under a microscope, it isn't all that different. One way to make this happen through evolution is by having an endosymbiotic relationship with another bacterium, which has a membrane. Then, gradually, since the 2 species evolution is locked together, the endosymbiotic lifeform degenerates into a single function device. This has been the accepted explanation for a few years now, ever since eukaryotic cells have been found with dual-membrane mitochondria, within that first membrane a kind of polar body was found, indicating that the mitochondria was once part of a proper cell that lived separately from it's host. Since then bacteria that look a lot like mitochondria have been found, further confirming the hypothesis. We have exactly the same mitochondria, but with only a single membrane.
So it seems that cells "evolve" from prokaryots to eukaryots by "eating" the difference. The only step to prove this that's really left to do is demonstrate this specific evolution in a lab.
Actually once this cell totally integrates this endosymbiotic lifeform (the next step) it might very well become eukaryotic. Ironically that would make it an eukaryotic plant, which would presumably very easily evolve back into a predator.
when Hatena reproduces, one offspring is a peaceful photosynthesizer with the sun-seeking eye, while the other is yet again a predator with a voracious mouth."
The explanation is simple : cell division in the parent organism does not trigger cell division in the endosymbiotic lifeform. That endosymbiotic lifeform might very well be thought of as an infection.
This is the same concept as an n800, but much larger screen :
the smartq7.
It's not very readable in direct sunlight though.
Mobileread.com is a site that only deals with problems like this. Very interesting read if you're into reading books.
Still it's quite impressive what they have today. "Withstand 2.5 m/s wind gusts" does not mean their ornithopter explodes if the wind exceeds that. It just means that above 2.5 m/s it will have to "go with the flow", and thus will lose a part of it's mobility. It can still control it's speed in 3 other directions though.
I have the impression that birds regularly hit this limit. They try to go against the wind, and it proves too much for them. They simply land and try again 5 seconds later, which usually succeeds.
So the 2.5 m/s wind limit could be quite acceptable, even for outdoor flight. Assuming it can land like a bird (ie. everywhere).
I do see one big problem these devices will have to contend with : Cats (perhaps not the lolcat variant, the regular one). So if you want to secure your house from these spying devices ... buy a cat. Birds, after 3 million years of evolution still haven't quite figured out how to protect themselves against cats, so it seems unlikely these guys will find it in the next month.
Allow me to explain (b). The government made those loans interesting for tax reasons for large banks. (read the CRA)
So there we have it. Lots of loans, who are, in the long term, extremely unprofitable BUT having them in your possession on Jan. 1 of any year is unbelievably profitable.
So you've created a game of "hot potato". You have a package that blows up & you pass it around.
That's because I disagree with your premises. If you they were correct, we would not have seen government policy working with other emissions as it has. You didn't answer my questions about CFCs and sulfur dioxide
Sulphur dioxide emissions have reduced by a little under 50% in the US. World-wide, however, they have risen. The net result was, obviously, a large rise in these emissions. Especially China has emissions that can only really be described as "off the scale", though India is certainly no saint in this department either. Perhaps that is why, even though US production went down significantly, there is only a tiny little bit better air in the US today versus 1970. Unless the rest of the world stops using electricity forthwith, the air is about to get more polluted every year with SO2. The reason for the localized and temporary drop is the near-total immobility of electricity creation. However, the policy only bought some time, it did not solve the problem.
I can't find any CFC numbers. However, CFC's cause the expansion of the gap in the ozone layer. I wonder if it has shrunk ? Since if your claims are right, then we'd see a massive shrinking of the hole in the ozone layer ... I'm sure you've checked that beforehand ... heh ... I forgot ... democrat ...
Let's see you add comments to this one
You might as well say, "Ice is not cold. Why the hell would you put it in your drink to cool it off? It is because you're a STATIST COMMUNIST??"
You're right. I suppose the better explanation is that you're delusional. But you are most defineately willfully delusional.
Why accuse me of not being realistic after making 2 factually wrong claims ? Do you think you're convincing anyone ? Otoh, if you are indeed delusional, you probably think you're convincing me. I hate to break the news, but you're doing the exact opposite.
Given the clear observation that established, empirical facts do not seem to affect your "truth", one might wonder what your idea of truth is based upon. Because, clearly, it is not based on empirical facts. And frankly, yes, my answer to that question would be that you're a socialist (that's what communists like to call themselves). Does that mean that you're going to start wars and famines and kill people ? Obviously not, you'll do what the soviets did : push your illusions on the economy "for more fairness", ignoring the real world, until the "fair/shackled" economy just can't support keeping all people alive anymore. Instead of recalling the illusion-based rules and laws you'll turn to rationing, to avoid having to admit you're wrong. And then you'll demand the right to decide how food rationing is to be done "to protect the poor" (not that you actually will protect the poor, obviously, you'll protect yourself from starvation, as anyone would do), but those actions which will be equivalent to massacring at that point.
I wonder though, given that the CFC emission reduction laws, and the price associated with those is still being paid, and it's obviously not helping ... what should we do ? I doubt that dropping those laws would result in a big increase of emissions, but I'm sure it would give many companies new options and materials for research.