I notice this a lot. Journalists can't take the time to learn about technology, and it shows in their writing. I often wonder if doctors feel the same way when watching Dr. shows on TV.
Gattaca was supposed to show us a dark future. It was supposed to be a cautionary tale. The message was, "if your DNA isn't good enough, you'll have to make do banging Uma Thermon - poor you."
I don't think the producers thought their cunning plan all the way through.
if we listen to people like you with your unrealistic space solar power pipe dreams...
2000 - if we listen to people like you with your unrealistic "wikipedia" pipe dreams, we'll never have the resources to print enough encyclopedia britannicas for everyone!
1980 - if we listen to people like you with your unrealistic "internet" dreams, we'll never have the resources to put mainframe computers in every house.
1950 - if we listen to people like you, with your unrealistic "satellite" dreams, we'll never have the resources to implement global communications.
1930 - if we listen to people like you, with your unrealistic "offshore oil well" dreams, we'll never have the resources mine the coal we need for our steam engines. Just stop and think about how obviously dangerous, expensive, and stupid it is to try and get oil out of the north sea! You're crazy!
1850 - if we listen to people like you, with your unrealistic "fossil fuel oil well" dreams, we'll never have the resources to hunt the endless supply of sperm wales.
1800 - if we listen to people like you, with your unrealistic "transcontinental railroad" dreams...
1450 - if we listen to people like you, with your unrealistic "sea route to asia" dreams...
4000 bc - if we listen to people like you, with your unrealistic "riding a horse" dreams...
10,000 bc - if we listen to people like you, with your unrealistic "farming" dreams...
60,000 bc - if we listen to people like you, with your unrealistic "leaving africa" dreams...
1,000,000 bc - Ogg not listen stupid "fire" dreams. Rocks hard. Rocks not make fire. Ogg more important things think about, like get food/stay warm.
Why haven't you gone extinct yet? It must be that your ancestors learned to parasite themselves on people that actually do things. Plus, just stop and think about how silly this is:
then we'll never have the resources to implement practical earth-based solar power
Yes, because there's only one solar panel in the whole world, and if we shoot it into space that's it, it's gone, and we can't build a second one for use on Earth. Whoa, better not drop it, since it's the only one we've got.
It couldn't possibly be that investing in either earth-based or space-based power will end up benefiting the other field. No no, that makes too much sense.
This is a case where you have to get the infrastructure in place first, then it becomes useful/profitable. It's like the internet. Once it was in place, it turns out that (in addition to porn) there is all this wonderful, world-changing stuff that we do with it. People's lives really are better because of the internet.
But nobody could have envisioned any of this. And if people like you had poured cold water on the whole thing by saying, "whoa whoa, before you start running cables everywhere, I want to see a long-term plan showing that this is profitable" then we'd NEVER have the internet.
Now let me paint a picture for you of an alternate historical timeline. The most powerful rocket in history was designed 50 years ago. Had we continued development along those lines, then today we'd have the ability to loft complete solar power stations into orbit. And then, suddenly, space solar power might make sense. But because of people like you, we don't have that capability. And so, because of people like you, whenever someone talks about space solar power, they are talking about multiple launches to get a small array working - and because of people like you, it doesn't make economic sense.
And if we continue listening to people like you, our grandchildren will be having this same conversation in 50 years - only they'll be trying to decide if they should use the last few drops of fossil fuels on planet Earth to fund this, or to make a bit more fertilizer to stave off global starvation for a few more years.
So let me just say, on behalf of all the people who will die because of closed-minded, backwards-thinking people like you, thanks for nothing.
Torklingberg's point is that you shouldn't expect to find word one about threefish. It's just been published in this paper. Who could possibly be talking about it, psychics?
The taxation rate should be equal to the "risk free interest rate"
Wow. So my grandmother, who doesn't have any income except from interest, would find that she's paying every cent toward taxes? Suddenly, I don't like your plan.
I know, you'll modify it with a grandmother exception. Well, my opinion of laws is the same as a physicist's opinion of an equation: simple is beautiful - if your equation is that complex, you probably did something wrong. If your law has 120 exceptions and you have to be a lawyer, you probably need to rethink it. I prefer laws like, "everyone pays x% in taxes" and I don't like laws that say "everyone pays x% in taxes except people who have 1 child under 5 or two children 10-13 or have filled out a form and have an interest bearing account that constitutes y% of their living income unless they are excempt under section 30b1a paragraph 2 below."
See what I mean? Rethink your idea so that my grandmother isn't out on the street without adding a specific exception for my grandmother.
I'm intrigued by this idea, but I have a question: how would you repeat the taxation each year? In other words, if I'm worth a million dollars and you tax me 100,000, what happens the next year? I'm worth 900,000. Do you tax me 90k, or do you stop taxing that money?
I actually give a damn about the people around me who didn't get lucky enough to land in a high paying profession with benefits.
some people got lucky, but I stayed up late at night studying. I have friends who partied and flunked out. Please explain to me why I should be forced to give my lazy friends anything. I'm not suggesting that I'm against universal healthcare, I'm simply asking you to moderate your opinion with the recognition that some people are poor because of choices that they made, and it's not fair for your to post as if everyone who worked hard and got a good job is simply lucky.
I'm not sure who you mean by, "those most able to pay" but if you mean the top 1% of income earners, they make a lot of money, no doubt about that, but they pay a larger percentage of taxes than the percentage of income they earn. They make 20% of income and pay 40% of taxes. You may not think that's enough. I'm willing to debate that, but it's certain not the way you described it.
the famous Fermi Paradox [wikipedia.org] tells us that we're alone in the galaxy.
I tend to agree with you that the Fermi Paradox is strong evidence that there are no space-faring civilizations out there. That doesn't mean that there are no civilizations like our own, it simply means that nobody like us survives.
Are you familiar with the concept of The Great Filter? Read this, I think you'll enjoy it. In summary, it makes the case that something prevents civilizations from becoming truly space-faring. That all species face this something, and they are all stopped by it. It could be that only very competitive species create technological civilizations (because those that aren't competitive are content to sit in trees and eat bannanas) and that competitiveness prohibits the kind of cooperation needed to build generation ships. It could be just that simple.
If it hurt, you would expect it to die out as most women would turn down a bald guy
Natural selection at the individual level works for as much of your life as you are able to have children (and before you say that 40 year old men can still have kids, think law of averages here - the guys between 20 and 30 have a lot of kids, then they turn 40, lose their hair, and have far fewer kids, even though theoretically they can still produce children).
Beyond your reproduction years, natural selection is at work at the species level. Having grandparents around helped our species, but those grandparents aren't being selected for their individual reproductive fitness.
Bottom line, baldness happens too late in life to be selected for or against.
or even easier, see if they can maintain context. Chat with any bot and ask it a question about (just to use an example) Alan Turing. Then ask a question containing the word "him" where him would be understood by any human to be Alan Turing.
I've never seen any bot that can figure out who "him" is. I'm sure it's possible to write one, but then I would simply ask a question with two possible contexts: "Oswald shot Kennedy. Do you think they should have arrested him?" Answering that question intelligently requires a real understanding of the context. A chat bot can say, "I'm not sure, what do you think?" but that's an obvious cop out and a give away that you're talking to a bot. If the bot says yes or no, then you ask why they think that. Typically, a bot will respond with another cop out like "why not?"
By this point, the bot has completely lost the context of the conversation.
Where's the open source version with all the features and convenience of Gmail
There is no open source version (that I'm aware of) that offers all the features and convenience of gmail. That hardly negates Stallman's points. You need to carefully consider what he's saying and decide if gmail's features are worth the risk. If you decide it's worth the risk, then you've made a conscientious, informed decision and I support you. The only people who are in trouble are the people who never thought about this issue.
But when you say, "what do I use that offers the same featureset as Gmail" it sounds like you're missing the point. It sounds like someone saying, "don't criticize Michael Jackson for molesting children unless you can point to a free theme park with a ferris wheel and a petting zoo like Jackson has!" That's awesome that there's a ferris wheel, and it's awesome that gmail has a feature set that you like, but that doesn't necessarily mean I *have* to risk to an ass raping. There is another option. I can decide that the feature set isn't work the risk.
Anyway, that's the issue. I just wanted to clarify. That said, I do use gmail - I'm just aware of the risk.
My suggestion would be to email your instructions to them. Then, when they reset the router some months later, you foward the same email back to them along with the message, "this is the same issue we dealt with below. please disabled your DHCP" and you might even CC someone higher up the chain this time.
They bought wireless routers and wanted to use them like access points
I can't believe any network admin would even consider allowing this.
I came here to say exactly this. If your hypothesis is correct, we should expect to see the cows turning slightly throughout the day (except possibly in early morning and late evening when the light level is low enough to not bother them).
However, because these researchers used google Earth, and the photos taken with google earth tend to be right around noonday, the researchers wouldn't have noticed the cows turning.
If I had no free will, I'd be a passenger in my body, observing but unable to control.
I would argue that you wouldn't even be observing. You wouldn't exist; there'd be no you in the body.
A fly is a creature that we can all probably agree has no free will. Ever seen a fly slamming itself against a window over and over again? Stupid fly, right? Well, that's what life is like without free will. Evolution has given the fly a program that causes it to head toward light and blue sky. Since glass windows weren't part of the fly's environment, it has no program for dealing with them.
Humans have similar programs. In another post, you mention a hand on a hot stove. Our reproductive instincts are another example of a program that we can follow mindlessly, as if we have no free will (maybe some humans don't). But there's a me in here that can choose to follow the program or not.
you know, I'm starting to really think you're right. Which is worse for the civilian population, 100 years of occupation and animosity where civilians look the other way about that house down the street that everybody knows is being used by insurgents, after all, it's none of my business...or nuking hiroshima and nagasaki, causing every civilian to say, "FUCK THIS" and absolutely, unequivocally give up and **cooperate** with rebuilding, stop tolerating insurgents in their midst, and resulting in them becoming one of the strongest and most populous countries in the world.
What's the difference between germany/japan and iraq? The behavior of civilians.
LOL! You're exactly right! I haven't seen someone owned like this on slashdot in quite a while.
The natural state of the Earth's atmosphere is hydrogen sulfide, methane, ammonia, and lots and lots of carbon dioxide. The natural state of our oceans is green with iron oxide.
This was the natural state of the Earth for the majority of its history, until those damn cyanobacteria came along and started giving off oxygen. Free O2 is the real pollutant here, it doesn't exist anywhere in nature anywhere in the universe except here (and presumably, on other planets polluted by life).
Slashdot Mirror
I notice this a lot. Journalists can't take the time to learn about technology, and it shows in their writing. I often wonder if doctors feel the same way when watching Dr. shows on TV.
Gattaca was supposed to show us a dark future. It was supposed to be a cautionary tale. The message was, "if your DNA isn't good enough, you'll have to make do banging Uma Thermon - poor you."
I don't think the producers thought their cunning plan all the way through.
Your logic is impeccable. There are some new ideas that didn't work, therefore we shouldn't try any idea that looks hard.
2008 -
if we listen to people like you with your unrealistic space solar power pipe dreams...
2000 - if we listen to people like you with your unrealistic "wikipedia" pipe dreams, we'll never have the resources to print enough encyclopedia britannicas for everyone!
1980 - if we listen to people like you with your unrealistic "internet" dreams, we'll never have the resources to put mainframe computers in every house.
1950 - if we listen to people like you, with your unrealistic "satellite" dreams, we'll never have the resources to implement global communications.
1930 - if we listen to people like you, with your unrealistic "offshore oil well" dreams, we'll never have the resources mine the coal we need for our steam engines. Just stop and think about how obviously dangerous, expensive, and stupid it is to try and get oil out of the north sea! You're crazy!
1850 - if we listen to people like you, with your unrealistic "fossil fuel oil well" dreams, we'll never have the resources to hunt the endless supply of sperm wales.
1800 - if we listen to people like you, with your unrealistic "transcontinental railroad" dreams...
1450 - if we listen to people like you, with your unrealistic "sea route to asia" dreams...
4000 bc - if we listen to people like you, with your unrealistic "riding a horse" dreams...
10,000 bc - if we listen to people like you, with your unrealistic "farming" dreams...
60,000 bc - if we listen to people like you, with your unrealistic "leaving africa" dreams...
1,000,000 bc - Ogg not listen stupid "fire" dreams. Rocks hard. Rocks not make fire. Ogg more important things think about, like get food/stay warm.
Why haven't you gone extinct yet? It must be that your ancestors learned to parasite themselves on people that actually do things. Plus, just stop and think about how silly this is:
then we'll never have the resources to implement practical earth-based solar power
Yes, because there's only one solar panel in the whole world, and if we shoot it into space that's it, it's gone, and we can't build a second one for use on Earth. Whoa, better not drop it, since it's the only one we've got.
It couldn't possibly be that investing in either earth-based or space-based power will end up benefiting the other field. No no, that makes too much sense.
This is a case where you have to get the infrastructure in place first, then it becomes useful/profitable. It's like the internet. Once it was in place, it turns out that (in addition to porn) there is all this wonderful, world-changing stuff that we do with it. People's lives really are better because of the internet.
But nobody could have envisioned any of this. And if people like you had poured cold water on the whole thing by saying, "whoa whoa, before you start running cables everywhere, I want to see a long-term plan showing that this is profitable" then we'd NEVER have the internet.
Now let me paint a picture for you of an alternate historical timeline. The most powerful rocket in history was designed 50 years ago. Had we continued development along those lines, then today we'd have the ability to loft complete solar power stations into orbit. And then, suddenly, space solar power might make sense. But because of people like you, we don't have that capability. And so, because of people like you, whenever someone talks about space solar power, they are talking about multiple launches to get a small array working - and because of people like you, it doesn't make economic sense.
And if we continue listening to people like you, our grandchildren will be having this same conversation in 50 years - only they'll be trying to decide if they should use the last few drops of fossil fuels on planet Earth to fund this, or to make a bit more fertilizer to stave off global starvation for a few more years.
So let me just say, on behalf of all the people who will die because of closed-minded, backwards-thinking people like you, thanks for nothing.
old wise tale
Old wive's tale.
old wives' tale.
old wives' tail.
(it's possible we're no longer talking about the same thing)
Are you really THAT important?
Yes, I am that important. Because I'm the one to whom the Zetas reveal the truth about Planet X. That's why the government wants to stop me.
(point being, you can't refute a delusion with a fact, for the delusion is supported by other delusions)
Torklingberg's point is that you shouldn't expect to find word one about threefish. It's just been published in this paper. Who could possibly be talking about it, psychics?
The taxation rate should be equal to the "risk free interest rate"
Wow. So my grandmother, who doesn't have any income except from interest, would find that she's paying every cent toward taxes? Suddenly, I don't like your plan.
I know, you'll modify it with a grandmother exception. Well, my opinion of laws is the same as a physicist's opinion of an equation: simple is beautiful - if your equation is that complex, you probably did something wrong. If your law has 120 exceptions and you have to be a lawyer, you probably need to rethink it. I prefer laws like, "everyone pays x% in taxes" and I don't like laws that say "everyone pays x% in taxes except people who have 1 child under 5 or two children 10-13 or have filled out a form and have an interest bearing account that constitutes y% of their living income unless they are excempt under section 30b1a paragraph 2 below."
See what I mean? Rethink your idea so that my grandmother isn't out on the street without adding a specific exception for my grandmother.
I'm intrigued by this idea, but I have a question: how would you repeat the taxation each year? In other words, if I'm worth a million dollars and you tax me 100,000, what happens the next year? I'm worth 900,000. Do you tax me 90k, or do you stop taxing that money?
we're in a financial crisis created by the rich, for the rich.
far be it from me to defend Bush, but his administration offered up legislation 12 times to reform/regulate fannie mae source (and be brave, don't stop reading just because it shatters your preconceived notions)
Shouldn't the rich - those making over $250,000 per year - cough up a little?
I don't know, why don't you provide a source showing how much they're paying now? How can you possibly have an informed answer to that decision if you don't even know how much they're paying now? Surely your opinions aren't based on ignorance... right? Here's a source to get you started in your self-education (and be brave, don't stop reading because it shatters your preconceived notions)
I actually give a damn about the people around me who didn't get lucky enough to land in a high paying profession with benefits.
some people got lucky, but I stayed up late at night studying. I have friends who partied and flunked out. Please explain to me why I should be forced to give my lazy friends anything. I'm not suggesting that I'm against universal healthcare, I'm simply asking you to moderate your opinion with the recognition that some people are poor because of choices that they made, and it's not fair for your to post as if everyone who worked hard and got a good job is simply lucky.
those who are most able to pay handover less than a family of four living off of 40k
Do you really believe that's true? You should take a look at this:
http://www.american.com/archive/2007/november-december-magazine-contents/guess-who-really-pays-the-taxes
I'm not sure who you mean by, "those most able to pay" but if you mean the top 1% of income earners, they make a lot of money, no doubt about that, but they pay a larger percentage of taxes than the percentage of income they earn. They make 20% of income and pay 40% of taxes. You may not think that's enough. I'm willing to debate that, but it's certain not the way you described it.
the famous Fermi Paradox [wikipedia.org] tells us that we're alone in the galaxy.
I tend to agree with you that the Fermi Paradox is strong evidence that there are no space-faring civilizations out there. That doesn't mean that there are no civilizations like our own, it simply means that nobody like us survives.
Are you familiar with the concept of The Great Filter? Read this, I think you'll enjoy it. In summary, it makes the case that something prevents civilizations from becoming truly space-faring. That all species face this something, and they are all stopped by it. It could be that only very competitive species create technological civilizations (because those that aren't competitive are content to sit in trees and eat bannanas) and that competitiveness prohibits the kind of cooperation needed to build generation ships. It could be just that simple.
Obviously, Wikipedia is not sentient
[citation needed]
If it hurt, you would expect it to die out as most women would turn down a bald guy
Natural selection at the individual level works for as much of your life as you are able to have children (and before you say that 40 year old men can still have kids, think law of averages here - the guys between 20 and 30 have a lot of kids, then they turn 40, lose their hair, and have far fewer kids, even though theoretically they can still produce children).
Beyond your reproduction years, natural selection is at work at the species level. Having grandparents around helped our species, but those grandparents aren't being selected for their individual reproductive fitness.
Bottom line, baldness happens too late in life to be selected for or against.
or even easier, see if they can maintain context. Chat with any bot and ask it a question about (just to use an example) Alan Turing. Then ask a question containing the word "him" where him would be understood by any human to be Alan Turing.
I've never seen any bot that can figure out who "him" is. I'm sure it's possible to write one, but then I would simply ask a question with two possible contexts: "Oswald shot Kennedy. Do you think they should have arrested him?" Answering that question intelligently requires a real understanding of the context. A chat bot can say, "I'm not sure, what do you think?" but that's an obvious cop out and a give away that you're talking to a bot. If the bot says yes or no, then you ask why they think that. Typically, a bot will respond with another cop out like "why not?"
By this point, the bot has completely lost the context of the conversation.
Where's the open source version with all the features and convenience of Gmail
There is no open source version (that I'm aware of) that offers all the features and convenience of gmail. That hardly negates Stallman's points. You need to carefully consider what he's saying and decide if gmail's features are worth the risk. If you decide it's worth the risk, then you've made a conscientious, informed decision and I support you. The only people who are in trouble are the people who never thought about this issue.
But when you say, "what do I use that offers the same featureset as Gmail" it sounds like you're missing the point. It sounds like someone saying, "don't criticize Michael Jackson for molesting children unless you can point to a free theme park with a ferris wheel and a petting zoo like Jackson has!" That's awesome that there's a ferris wheel, and it's awesome that gmail has a feature set that you like, but that doesn't necessarily mean I *have* to risk to an ass raping. There is another option. I can decide that the feature set isn't work the risk.
Anyway, that's the issue. I just wanted to clarify. That said, I do use gmail - I'm just aware of the risk.
My suggestion would be to email your instructions to them. Then, when they reset the router some months later, you foward the same email back to them along with the message, "this is the same issue we dealt with below. please disabled your DHCP" and you might even CC someone higher up the chain this time.
They bought wireless routers and wanted to use them like access points
I can't believe any network admin would even consider allowing this.
Problem was he left DHCP running on the thing
The DHCP was running on the WAN interface? That doesn't sound normal.
Wouldn't that conduct the heat from the CPU over to the other components?
I came here to say exactly this. If your hypothesis is correct, we should expect to see the cows turning slightly throughout the day (except possibly in early morning and late evening when the light level is low enough to not bother them).
However, because these researchers used google Earth, and the photos taken with google earth tend to be right around noonday, the researchers wouldn't have noticed the cows turning.
If I had no free will, I'd be a passenger in my body, observing but unable to control.
I would argue that you wouldn't even be observing. You wouldn't exist; there'd be no you in the body.
A fly is a creature that we can all probably agree has no free will. Ever seen a fly slamming itself against a window over and over again? Stupid fly, right? Well, that's what life is like without free will. Evolution has given the fly a program that causes it to head toward light and blue sky. Since glass windows weren't part of the fly's environment, it has no program for dealing with them.
Humans have similar programs. In another post, you mention a hand on a hot stove. Our reproductive instincts are another example of a program that we can follow mindlessly, as if we have no free will (maybe some humans don't). But there's a me in here that can choose to follow the program or not.
you know, I'm starting to really think you're right. Which is worse for the civilian population, 100 years of occupation and animosity where civilians look the other way about that house down the street that everybody knows is being used by insurgents, after all, it's none of my business ...or nuking hiroshima and nagasaki, causing every civilian to say, "FUCK THIS" and absolutely, unequivocally give up and **cooperate** with rebuilding, stop tolerating insurgents in their midst, and resulting in them becoming one of the strongest and most populous countries in the world.
What's the difference between germany/japan and iraq? The behavior of civilians.
LOL! You're exactly right! I haven't seen someone owned like this on slashdot in quite a while.
The natural state of the Earth's atmosphere is hydrogen sulfide, methane, ammonia, and lots and lots of carbon dioxide. The natural state of our oceans is green with iron oxide.
This was the natural state of the Earth for the majority of its history, until those damn cyanobacteria came along and started giving off oxygen. Free O2 is the real pollutant here, it doesn't exist anywhere in nature anywhere in the universe except here (and presumably, on other planets polluted by life).
LOL.
If some vegetarians suddenly develop some extra stomachs, maybe they can start eating grass.
And then we could eat the vegetarians instead of eating the cows. I like the way you think!