no modern society doesn't do this to some degree. but you can't be intellectually honest and claim that the level to which the chinese government manipulates the media is anywhere near what happens in the west, by orders of magnitude
as a matter of scale, what the chinese do in terms of media manipulation makes what western governments do in comparison a joke
japanese propaganda was basically that the gaijin were horrible devils who would rape and pillage and torture just for the fun of it. as american victory dawned on them, women would take their babies in their arms and jump off banzai cliff to avoid that horrendous fate
you could not end the war with a blockade or a declining to invade the homeland. and if you invaded the homeland, the civilians would put up great resistance, or kill themselves. nuking hiroshima and nagasaki saved countless lives. of course nuking anything is a horrible evil, but you can't examine that horrible evil in a vacuum of context. all other choices were much worse horrible evils
to honestly sit here and put forth the idea that the level of censorship in the west is anything remotely near what china does, you've arrived at intellectual fail. the SCALE of the effort matters. if the west, for example, tries to find kiddie porn, it is entirely in your right to debate that effort and question its relevancy, effectiveness, and the direction of such laws
now, if you were to actually engage in such criticism in china, a nice young man or woman in one of the many banks of party loyalists who actually monitor signs of dissent on the web would make note of you, track you, and actually admonish you or outright punish you. simply for stating your political opinion
do you really think that's anywhere remotely the same thing as trying to control kiddie porn? again, i'm not saying you don't have a right to criticize to western internet controls, but you have no right, in the least, to compare it to the colossal amount of censorship and control in china. the SCALE of the effort over there is off the charts
as proof, if you were in china, you would never have written what you just wrote in terms of criticising the chinese government. you'd be too scared to. but here on western servers in a western political environment, you have no problem criticizing western politics. as you have every right to. but don't be an ludicrous about your criticism by trying to mention it in the same breath as the lockdown environment in china
for example: i can call obama a moron if i want to. i can rant until blue in the face about how he is the devil incarnate. no big deal in the west. most wouldn't even care. now if i attempted to do the same about wen jiabao in china, they would actually track me, perhaps even show up at my doorstep, perhaps even send me to some prison camp for "political reeducation". do you doubt this is a reality? then why do you think chinese internet controls is a parallel to anything in the west? be intellectually honest. consider the idea of "scale"
now, if i actually sat here and threatened obama's life, someone in the west might try to track me. a case could be made that that's a valid reason for internet monitoring. a case could also be made that that's not valid. but at least in the west, i can actually question my government and its policies, argue about it in an open environment, and not worry about goons showing up at my door. well, besides the paranoid schizophrenic amongst us
<knock, knock/>
sorry, be right back, someone's at the door for some reason
control freaks have at their psychological root a toxic amount of insecurity. the grumpy old men in beijing have to make sure society is "harmonious" even if that's nothing more than media shorthand for placid lies. the truth is often ugly, dissent is always ugly. but when you expose yourself to dissent and ugliness, you do nothing but strengthen your mind and your convictions and your bullshit detector. all china is doing with the massive amount of societal control is producing a generation of chinese minds that have nothing but cotton candy between the ears: unable to handle anything except the most stultifying of platitudes about the world and its nature, wilting at the slightest sign of trouble
china is supposed to be emerging world power? when chinese raised in the hermetically sealed climate controlled media environment of modern china interact with their compatriots from india, brazil, japan, usa, germany... what are these dunderheads going to be like? when they encounter the slightest bit of provocation or contrasting opinion to the almighty sense of "harmony" what are their social skills for that resistance? censor? ignore? run away?
a "harmonious society" seems nothing more to me than a way to ensure chinese minds in the generations to come are weak brittle minds incapable of understanding or processing criticism of any kind, because it's not "harmonious". "harmony": what a fucking bullshit codeword for "i'm insecure at the top, don't think anything that might make me feel threatened". this isn't about cultural differences, this is is about a colossal social weakness of modern china completely of chinese making, a society-wide achilles heel: "we can't handle criticism, cover your ears"
enjoy your cottonheaded future china, so sorry for my dissent. you can just ignore, dismiss, and censor me. that's obviously the best way to handle these words. pffffffft
mersenne prime discoveries have a direct, practical use in cryptography. cryptography is very important for secure communication on teh intarwebs. secure communication outside the prying eyes of intrusive governments is very important for the eff and its goals
You might wonder whether the search for large primes is of any value. Apart from the adventurous spirit of exploration, there actually are uses for large prime numbers. One of the most important applications is to the field of cryptography -- the encoding and decoding of messages. National security often relies on having a secure method of encoding and deciphering messages; yet the existence of high-speed computers have rendered all but the most sophisticated coding schemes insecure. One commonly used method of message coding is the RSA scheme, named for its creators, Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir, and Len Adleman. The RSA scheme relies on the fact that it is easy to multiply two prime numbers, yet hard to factor their product -- especially if the prime numbers are large. Consequently, knowledge of large prime numbers can lead to coding schemes that are difficult to break.
when i point out that monopoles are an impossibility?
it's like saying you want to feel the wind in your face, to turn around, and then feel no wind at all on your back. as if a magnetic field flows out, but not in, or in, but not out. you understand why you can't have a coin with one side, right? if you understand that you understand conceptually why monopoles don't exist: there is no such thing as a magnetic field that goes out, but never returns. logically, belief in a monopole is the same as belief in a perpetual motion machine
and, interestingly enough, monopoles are frequently featured in perpetual motion machine schemes. perhaps because that, indeed, if monopoles existed, you really could have a perpetual motion machine. a monopole, under the influence of a magnetic field, would begin moving and never stop. you understand that right? doesn't that tell you something about what a monopole really is in terms of reality/ not reality?
but for the sake of argument, let's say i'm wrong. ok, show me a monopole. i'm waiting
it's not like i'm a flat earth advocate arguing against the existence of the globe, or a creationist arguing against the existence of evolution. i'm simply pointing out that a monopole is a conceptual impossibility, and i get treated like i'm the electric universe troll
whatever
i just don't understand where this weird fervent certainty of monopoles comes in to the point where i have to be modbombed every time i point out that they don't exist and can't exist. its like i'm questioning the existence of god to a bunch of religious fundamentalists. this site is apparently overwhelmed with excitable physics freshman
i don't understand this bizarre certainty of belief in monopoles
no one's talking about using a laptop in the theatre. please lose the off-topic hysteria
a guy goes to work/ coffee shop, has his laptop in his sling/ backpack/ coat pocket, and goes with friends to the movie. entirely normal common urban situation
when you say "this should not be much of an issue for most people" you are really saying "i don't give much thought to anyone who doesn't have the same lifestyle as me".
You say that as if the two are mutually exclusive.
many small laptops can fit inside large coat pockets. anyone with a backpack may have a laptop. no one walks on the sidewalk with their shiny laptop cradled in their hands unprotected. so of course you don't see anyone carrying a laptop to any theater: they're securely under covers 99% of the time
but if they really want to get to the source of the problem, the Federation Against Copyright Theft will tell cinemas to only allow mute people. that really nips the problem in the bud
see, even if they don't have laptops or other recording devices, some people go see movies and then, get this, verbally review the movies to their friends. some of these verbal narrative reviews are obviously derivative copyright works that represents lost revenue and are legally actionable, since hearing about a movie that sucks replaces the need to go see the movie that sucks yourself
this is clearly the same thing as recording the movie and showing it for free on your computer: it represents lost revenue. people should have to go to the cinema and pay to experience the burning depression and/ or hatred of a terrible movie themselves, not hear from their friends how soul destroying an awful movie is
so voiceboxes must be banned along with laptops. but i understand that some mute people know how to write... hmmm
only illiterate mutes then should be allowed in the cinema
i frequently bring my laptop around with me to do a little bit of work or relaxation
i also frequently go see movies. plenty of times i'll get a request from a fellow cinemaphile to go see a certain movie later in the day, when i'm away from work or home. so do i go to work or home, drop off the laptop, then take a second walk or subway ride to the cinema?
the uk has a higher population density that the united states. the uk also has better public transport options. meaning many more people living in the uk are living the urban walk/ train/ bus lifestyle like mine than the typical car-centric suburban american lifestyle
when you say "this should not be much of an issue for most people" you are really saying "i don't give much thought to anyone who doesn't have the same lifestyle as me". you really need to be less self-centered in your thinking
there's this crazy new thing they just built called the laser. it pumps out spatially coherent light
so what?
"I keep hearing stuff like this, but seriously... what sort of implications are people talking about? What difference would it make to the average person, for instance?"
room temperature superconducting has at LEAST as many far reaching implications as the laser does. as for what they'll do with it? i don't think they imagined CD players in 1960, so i'm not going to hazard a guess what they'll do with superconducting room temperature. but its obvious room temperature superconducting puts all sorts of fundamental new electrical properties in easy reach
that's pretty much the conceptualization of cyberspace, versus "meatspace", the real world, where if you own a car, and someone takes it, you've been deprived of a car: genuine stealing, as opposed to "stealing" digital content, which isn't stealing at all
we talk about how you can effortlessly copy a file and move it anywhere in any quantity at no difference in cost, and you would think this instantaneous sharing of digital content is some newfangled philosophical challenge brought about by the latest technological innovation. a concept that wasn't dramatic enough in societal impact before the internet to have much bearing on anyone's thinking
and here's this guy from the 200 years ago, when morse code was decades off far off science fiction, pretty much nailing the issue on the head. man those founding fathers were smart
i guess al gore has to step aside: thomas jefferson conceptualized the internet!;-P
it's only "newsworthy" because it involves a new technology. examine the underlying issues: a woman is prevented legally from contacting another woman. she does so. so she faces jail time. beginning and end of story
what does it matter HOW she contacted the other person? knock on door? pen and paper? ham radio? smoke signals? would the communication channel change any of the issues here? not in the least. and yet its all over the press, front page slashdot. why? because it involves facebook. huh?
let me make my point another way: "videogames make people violent." complete bullshit, right?
in fact, overall societal violence has gone DOWN in the years since videogames have grown in use. and its not like the ancient romans were peaceful pastoral sheep farmers who knew nothing of this fancy modern invention called "violence". there simply is no causative connection between videogame use (the new scary unknown technology) and violence. if anything, violent videogames are cathartic and substitute for real world violence. and yet, the fact that the columbine shooters played doom is supposed to be instructive to us
its not instructive about anything. millions played doom and didn't start walking around the world like it was a fps. 99.99% of us have a pretty strong ability to tell the difference between fantasy and reality. the 0.01% who can't tell the difference between reality and violence might be set off by doom, but if doom never existed, something else would set them off: their psychology is the causative agent, not the videogame. mankind has been been clubbing each other over the head since before we could even talk, never mind invented writing or media of any kind
people have a tendency to look at new technology and see in it the origins of ancient sins. its a strange bias, and i don't understand it, but its a very real phenomenon. and its not a "media" created phenomenon (at the risk of getting recursive in my argument). the idea sells: people really believe this causative connection between new media and ancient sins, for some reason i don't understand why
change the fabrication and assembly process like this and that, add layers of this material and that material:
ductile materials rather than ceramics
seriously, it will take a lot of hard (nobel prize winning) effort, but there isn't a shred of doubt in my mind that by my old age at least, materials scientists will give us cheap, high temperature superconducting wires
which changes everything, and has implications everywhere, in avenues of possibilities none of us have fully thought out, but plenty of us are excited to try
Slashdot Mirror
no modern society doesn't do this to some degree. but you can't be intellectually honest and claim that the level to which the chinese government manipulates the media is anywhere near what happens in the west, by orders of magnitude
as a matter of scale, what the chinese do in terms of media manipulation makes what western governments do in comparison a joke
read about saipan and banzai cliff:
http://xmb.stuffucanuse.com/xmb/viewthread.php?tid=1111
japanese propaganda was basically that the gaijin were horrible devils who would rape and pillage and torture just for the fun of it. as american victory dawned on them, women would take their babies in their arms and jump off banzai cliff to avoid that horrendous fate
you could not end the war with a blockade or a declining to invade the homeland. and if you invaded the homeland, the civilians would put up great resistance, or kill themselves. nuking hiroshima and nagasaki saved countless lives. of course nuking anything is a horrible evil, but you can't examine that horrible evil in a vacuum of context. all other choices were much worse horrible evils
to honestly sit here and put forth the idea that the level of censorship in the west is anything remotely near what china does, you've arrived at intellectual fail. the SCALE of the effort matters. if the west, for example, tries to find kiddie porn, it is entirely in your right to debate that effort and question its relevancy, effectiveness, and the direction of such laws
now, if you were to actually engage in such criticism in china, a nice young man or woman in one of the many banks of party loyalists who actually monitor signs of dissent on the web would make note of you, track you, and actually admonish you or outright punish you. simply for stating your political opinion
do you really think that's anywhere remotely the same thing as trying to control kiddie porn? again, i'm not saying you don't have a right to criticize to western internet controls, but you have no right, in the least, to compare it to the colossal amount of censorship and control in china. the SCALE of the effort over there is off the charts
as proof, if you were in china, you would never have written what you just wrote in terms of criticising the chinese government. you'd be too scared to. but here on western servers in a western political environment, you have no problem criticizing western politics. as you have every right to. but don't be an ludicrous about your criticism by trying to mention it in the same breath as the lockdown environment in china
for example: i can call obama a moron if i want to. i can rant until blue in the face about how he is the devil incarnate. no big deal in the west. most wouldn't even care. now if i attempted to do the same about wen jiabao in china, they would actually track me, perhaps even show up at my doorstep, perhaps even send me to some prison camp for "political reeducation". do you doubt this is a reality? then why do you think chinese internet controls is a parallel to anything in the west? be intellectually honest. consider the idea of "scale"
now, if i actually sat here and threatened obama's life, someone in the west might try to track me. a case could be made that that's a valid reason for internet monitoring. a case could also be made that that's not valid. but at least in the west, i can actually question my government and its policies, argue about it in an open environment, and not worry about goons showing up at my door. well, besides the paranoid schizophrenic amongst us
<knock, knock/>
sorry, be right back, someone's at the door for some reason
pfffft
joust at that hydra
control freaks have at their psychological root a toxic amount of insecurity. the grumpy old men in beijing have to make sure society is "harmonious" even if that's nothing more than media shorthand for placid lies. the truth is often ugly, dissent is always ugly. but when you expose yourself to dissent and ugliness, you do nothing but strengthen your mind and your convictions and your bullshit detector. all china is doing with the massive amount of societal control is producing a generation of chinese minds that have nothing but cotton candy between the ears: unable to handle anything except the most stultifying of platitudes about the world and its nature, wilting at the slightest sign of trouble
china is supposed to be emerging world power? when chinese raised in the hermetically sealed climate controlled media environment of modern china interact with their compatriots from india, brazil, japan, usa, germany... what are these dunderheads going to be like? when they encounter the slightest bit of provocation or contrasting opinion to the almighty sense of "harmony" what are their social skills for that resistance? censor? ignore? run away?
a "harmonious society" seems nothing more to me than a way to ensure chinese minds in the generations to come are weak brittle minds incapable of understanding or processing criticism of any kind, because it's not "harmonious". "harmony": what a fucking bullshit codeword for "i'm insecure at the top, don't think anything that might make me feel threatened". this isn't about cultural differences, this is is about a colossal social weakness of modern china completely of chinese making, a society-wide achilles heel: "we can't handle criticism, cover your ears"
enjoy your cottonheaded future china, so sorry for my dissent. you can just ignore, dismiss, and censor me. that's obviously the best way to handle these words. pffffffft
i was just trying to riff on his joke. i failed i guess if you felt the need to correct me more than just laugh, ah well
mersenne prime discoveries have a direct, practical use in cryptography. cryptography is very important for secure communication on teh intarwebs. secure communication outside the prying eyes of intrusive governments is very important for the eff and its goals
http://www.jcu.edu/math/vignettes/mersenne.htm
when i point out that monopoles are an impossibility?
it's like saying you want to feel the wind in your face, to turn around, and then feel no wind at all on your back. as if a magnetic field flows out, but not in, or in, but not out. you understand why you can't have a coin with one side, right? if you understand that you understand conceptually why monopoles don't exist: there is no such thing as a magnetic field that goes out, but never returns. logically, belief in a monopole is the same as belief in a perpetual motion machine
and, interestingly enough, monopoles are frequently featured in perpetual motion machine schemes. perhaps because that, indeed, if monopoles existed, you really could have a perpetual motion machine. a monopole, under the influence of a magnetic field, would begin moving and never stop. you understand that right? doesn't that tell you something about what a monopole really is in terms of reality/ not reality?
but for the sake of argument, let's say i'm wrong. ok, show me a monopole. i'm waiting
it's not like i'm a flat earth advocate arguing against the existence of the globe, or a creationist arguing against the existence of evolution. i'm simply pointing out that a monopole is a conceptual impossibility, and i get treated like i'm the electric universe troll
whatever
i just don't understand where this weird fervent certainty of monopoles comes in to the point where i have to be modbombed every time i point out that they don't exist and can't exist. its like i'm questioning the existence of god to a bunch of religious fundamentalists. this site is apparently overwhelmed with excitable physics freshman
i don't understand this bizarre certainty of belief in monopoles
there AREN'T ANY folks. pfffffft
no one's talking about using a laptop in the theatre. please lose the off-topic hysteria
a guy goes to work/ coffee shop, has his laptop in his sling/ backpack/ coat pocket, and goes with friends to the movie. entirely normal common urban situation
<wtf?/>
come on troll, try harder please
many small laptops can fit inside large coat pockets. anyone with a backpack may have a laptop. no one walks on the sidewalk with their shiny laptop cradled in their hands unprotected. so of course you don't see anyone carrying a laptop to any theater: they're securely under covers 99% of the time
but if they really want to get to the source of the problem, the Federation Against Copyright Theft will tell cinemas to only allow mute people. that really nips the problem in the bud
see, even if they don't have laptops or other recording devices, some people go see movies and then, get this, verbally review the movies to their friends. some of these verbal narrative reviews are obviously derivative copyright works that represents lost revenue and are legally actionable, since hearing about a movie that sucks replaces the need to go see the movie that sucks yourself
this is clearly the same thing as recording the movie and showing it for free on your computer: it represents lost revenue. people should have to go to the cinema and pay to experience the burning depression and/ or hatred of a terrible movie themselves, not hear from their friends how soul destroying an awful movie is
so voiceboxes must be banned along with laptops. but i understand that some mute people know how to write... hmmm
only illiterate mutes then should be allowed in the cinema
i have no car, and i have no need for a car
i frequently bring my laptop around with me to do a little bit of work or relaxation
i also frequently go see movies. plenty of times i'll get a request from a fellow cinemaphile to go see a certain movie later in the day, when i'm away from work or home. so do i go to work or home, drop off the laptop, then take a second walk or subway ride to the cinema?
the uk has a higher population density that the united states. the uk also has better public transport options. meaning many more people living in the uk are living the urban walk/ train/ bus lifestyle like mine than the typical car-centric suburban american lifestyle
when you say "this should not be much of an issue for most people" you are really saying "i don't give much thought to anyone who doesn't have the same lifestyle as me". you really need to be less self-centered in your thinking
as long as the humpback whales are still here, we're safe
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek_IV:_The_Voyage_Home
let's just hope no all powerful easily angered cetacean loving aliens notice these missing, oops:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baiji#Current_status
is the only thing that will make me "love" pcs
just as soon as you can make coins with one side
and settled down as a benign vegetarian
give that spider the nobel peace prize
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thule
we all know that thule is the ends of the earth
so none of us should be surprised. it should have been anticipated that sweden would drop off the earth at some point. today's that day apparently
i don't think you have a right to call this no big deal
the internet is becoming more and more vital to our lives
its "no big deal" until you need to know something off the internet right now, high stakes
there's this crazy new thing they just built called the laser. it pumps out spatially coherent light
so what?
"I keep hearing stuff like this, but seriously... what sort of implications are people talking about? What difference would it make to the average person, for instance?"
room temperature superconducting has at LEAST as many far reaching implications as the laser does. as for what they'll do with it? i don't think they imagined CD players in 1960, so i'm not going to hazard a guess what they'll do with superconducting room temperature. but its obvious room temperature superconducting puts all sorts of fundamental new electrical properties in easy reach
speech: the original idea sharing engine
so the internet didn't kill copyright. copyright as an enforceable, philosophically sound concept was destroyed sometime in the pleistocene ;-)
that's pretty much the conceptualization of cyberspace, versus "meatspace", the real world, where if you own a car, and someone takes it, you've been deprived of a car: genuine stealing, as opposed to "stealing" digital content, which isn't stealing at all
we talk about how you can effortlessly copy a file and move it anywhere in any quantity at no difference in cost, and you would think this instantaneous sharing of digital content is some newfangled philosophical challenge brought about by the latest technological innovation. a concept that wasn't dramatic enough in societal impact before the internet to have much bearing on anyone's thinking
and here's this guy from the 200 years ago, when morse code was decades off far off science fiction, pretty much nailing the issue on the head. man those founding fathers were smart
i guess al gore has to step aside: thomas jefferson conceptualized the internet! ;-P
I don't think you understand how many here understand mechanics way more than they understand sex.
it's only "newsworthy" because it involves a new technology. examine the underlying issues: a woman is prevented legally from contacting another woman. she does so. so she faces jail time. beginning and end of story
what does it matter HOW she contacted the other person? knock on door? pen and paper? ham radio? smoke signals? would the communication channel change any of the issues here? not in the least. and yet its all over the press, front page slashdot. why? because it involves facebook. huh?
let me make my point another way: "videogames make people violent." complete bullshit, right?
in fact, overall societal violence has gone DOWN in the years since videogames have grown in use. and its not like the ancient romans were peaceful pastoral sheep farmers who knew nothing of this fancy modern invention called "violence". there simply is no causative connection between videogame use (the new scary unknown technology) and violence. if anything, violent videogames are cathartic and substitute for real world violence. and yet, the fact that the columbine shooters played doom is supposed to be instructive to us
its not instructive about anything. millions played doom and didn't start walking around the world like it was a fps. 99.99% of us have a pretty strong ability to tell the difference between fantasy and reality. the 0.01% who can't tell the difference between reality and violence might be set off by doom, but if doom never existed, something else would set them off: their psychology is the causative agent, not the videogame. mankind has been been clubbing each other over the head since before we could even talk, never mind invented writing or media of any kind
people have a tendency to look at new technology and see in it the origins of ancient sins. its a strange bias, and i don't understand it, but its a very real phenomenon. and its not a "media" created phenomenon (at the risk of getting recursive in my argument). the idea sells: people really believe this causative connection between new media and ancient sins, for some reason i don't understand why
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Gore_and_information_technology#1999_CNN_interview_controversy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_awards_received_by_Al_Gore#2007_awards_and_honors
we're talking room temperature
a few more simple crystallization process tweaks
we're talking desert weather
change the fabrication and assembly process like this and that, add layers of this material and that material:
ductile materials rather than ceramics
seriously, it will take a lot of hard (nobel prize winning) effort, but there isn't a shred of doubt in my mind that by my old age at least, materials scientists will give us cheap, high temperature superconducting wires
which changes everything, and has implications everywhere, in avenues of possibilities none of us have fully thought out, but plenty of us are excited to try