Since insects don't feel pain, I think the anesthesia is more about the convenience of having the bug hold still while its leg is amputated. And maybe to make people feel better. Judging by your response, It worked.
Not to debate the validity or usefulness of Occam's Razor, but simplicity is not a function of the ability to understand something. The idea of gravity is simple, for example, but we still can't explain more than its basic properties. In other words, just because the theist explanation has fewer words and is more intuitive doesn't make it simpler. It requires, among other things, an explanation of how a being can exist outside the laws of physics, something which believers simply take on faith, which is not an explanation at all.
playing video games and watching porn IS a much easier and more fulfilling way to spend your time than [trying to socialize].
Easier for some people, yes, but I wouldn't say more fulfilling. I think a large part of the problem is that there's no social education. Some people can watch a ballgame and learn the rules, and learn from other people's success and mistakes, but some people need an explanation before the game starts to make sense. It's no different for socializing. Having a school dance once or twice a year is like throwing kids in a swimming pool once a year and expecting them to learn how to swim.
1) It may well be more secure, but large collections of data are also a bigger target. Your data could conceivably be a victim of collateral damage even if you weren't the initial target, or ever a target at all.
2) Two people can keep a secret. If one of them is dead. From a purely statistical standpoint, all else being equal, the more people who have access, the bigger the risk.
Yes, but these aren't laptops aimed at teenage girls. It's IBM saying "our systems are perfect for your enterprise applications that we would never trust with our data. But have fun, everyone else."
Ironically, IBM is probably providing a lot of the hardware and software that run these farms. Of course, it still comes down to trusting another company with access to your vital information. This has been the obvious Achilles heel in "cloud computing" since day one. It's one thing to pass encrypted data through an untrusted party, but it's another thing entirely when the untrusted party is an endpoint with access to the plain text. Not only do you have to trust that the endpoint has properly implemented security, but also that every individual with access to the data has uncompromising integrity.
There's lots of "hot work" (welding, grinding) on a boat during overhaul. Starting a fire is easier than not. There's supposed to be a fire watch posted on station with fire extinguishers in hand during work, but with more nooks and crannies than an English muffin, it's not hard to imagine an ember falling behind some fixed-in-place furniture and starting some long-lost paper smoldering until eventually it flashed over long after the job was done. Just speculation, but fires are the number one enemy of boats and ships, so much so that the Navy spends more time training personnel for firefighting than anything else.
A) He didn't cause a suicide; he contributed to the difficulties of an already suicidal individual, probably without knowledge of his self destructive behavior.
B) Driving under the influence is as reckless as shooting a gun into a crowd. If you didn't know what could happen, you should have known, and just because nothing happened doesn't mean it didn't put lives at needless risk. Ninety days is light.
Right, because everything was just peachy before then. If you think this is bad, you're either ignorant of history, or willfully ignorant. And not just ancient history -- the past 150 years are rife with examples that were far worse than what we're living through today. The Torah was written by men with good ideas for their times, better than barbarism, but those men also happened to be bigots.
By that logic, it's not a hate crime to assault anyone who's too timid, or "runs like a girl," or wears the "wrong" clothes, because they can change those things. It's the same message: Anyone who doesn't fit in is at risk of suffering the same fate. But should someone have to change who they are to avoid physical injury? Is that not also a hate crime even though the differences can't be easily categorized? I'd wager that many of us, especially on Slashdot, have been bullied (or worse) just for being different, and felt just as intimidated, even if we weren't gay, black, or female, as did others in our circle of friends, even if they weren't the direct subject of a particular incident.
And yet, I still don't think treating an attack on [everyone in a protected group] should be treated differently. I understand that once upon a time, not so long ago, some states turned a blind eye toward violent acts, or threats of violence, against minorities. I understand that some localities may still, and I expect imperfections will linger in perpetuity. But if the problem is that a higher level of government hasn't codified a particular act as a crime, then codify it. Don't paint in broad strokes. Don't elevate one group (or groups) as more protected than another. Ted Kazinsky hated mainstream culture, certainly engaged in what could be defined as bias intimidation against mainstream society, and yet, no hate crime. It's an unjust law, and it's time for it to go.
There is no "post-PC." Tablets are an expansion of consumer tech, not a replacement. The functional sacrifices of a tablet design will never be acceptable for some segment of the population. I suspect one day there will be wearable/implantable devices that might replace the phone and the tablet, but I'd be surprised if the PC ever goes away. It's just too useful to (be able to) have that much computing power in your home, and thanks to the laws of physics, a desktop will always be more powerful than some portable device.
Nice spin, but they're poised to close even, or maybe 1c above offering. The only reason it hasn't gone through the floor yet is likely because there is a large volume of limit buys and sells at $38.00 -- people who want to get out if the price hits offering, and people who will only buy at the offering price.
for the 5000th fucking time NO they don't want to play Farmville or meet singletons in their area now.
Tell me about it. I tried to meet singletons in my area, but they kept giving me the same one over and over again no matter how many times I asked for a new one.
Convincing someone that it's more likely than not that you're leaving for stated reasons rather than for tax purposes means you'd better have a very plausible story; in other words, a valid reason. At least, that's what this law is proposing.
Except he's not dodging taxes -- he paid what was owed and then he left. (And if he didn't/doesn't pay, you can be sure he'll be extradited.) He's *potentially* avoiding future taxes, but the value of Facebook could crash too. Also, by not living here, he's not enjoying (from a legal sense) the privileges and protections that go along with citizenship, so why should he subsidize those things?
Capital gains are already due when you renounce your citizenship. Placing the burden of proof on someone to prove they aren't renouncing for tax purposes is ridiculous, and possibly unconstitutional. Why would I need a "valid" reason to renounce my citizenship? And adding a clause to bar the person from reentry for life is just petty. Blaming people for leaving when we have laws and policies they disagree with is pointing the finger in the wrong direction. Either we don't want those people here anyway, or else we're the problem.
Availability means nothing without appetite. We have access to virtually unlimited quantities of water, yet we don't over-consume water (through drinking anyway). Why not? I actually came up with a hypothesis yesterday, which is that overeating and and depression both have the same root cause, which I posit to be low serotonin, and that low serotonin is itself a consequence of our society.
Serotonin's role in both appetite and depression are well established. The majority of our serotonin is in the gut (90%, according to Wikipedia), and higher levels decrease appetite. Given that depression and obesity are both at epidemic levels in the US, it's not unreasonable to conclude that we are, as a whole, suffering from low serotonin. Interestingly, countries with lower levels of depression also suffer from lower levels of obesity. Official statistics put depression at around 17% in the US, and as we know, we lead the world in rates of obesity at 30%. Japan, on the other hand, has levels of both depression and obesity at around 3%. Again, I think it's plausible that this is not so much causal (depression -> overeating -> obesity) as it is correlated (low serotonin -> depression && overeating).
So why would people in the US have lower levels of serotonin than elsewhere? Beyond appetite and depression, serotonin is also linked with dominance in animals. Lower levels of serotonin are consistent with subordinate behavior, while higher levels are found in more dominant animals. Dominant animals sometimes have control over other animals, but I believe the more important issue is that they have control over their own lives. And rather than being predetermined, where high serotonin induces dominance and low serotonin subordination (though this may be true to a limited extent), the causality may well be the other way around. It would, after all, be a huge liability if there were no so-called "natural leaders" around -- packs lions would just wander around aimlessly like "WTF should we do?!? We have no leader." And this happens sometimes when leaders are lost, but eventually someone steps up to the plate. We already know that depression is self-reinforcing, and so it stands to reason that dominance and subordination are also self-reinforcing.
Getting back to people, Japan prides itself on behavior that western society considers subordinate, and this discrepancy seems somewhat puzzling at first glance. How could subordination lead to feelings of dominance? Consider, though, that the well defined structure and general meritocracy of Japanese society may actually lead to a greater sense of control over one's life than our markedly less structured (and less consistent) society in the US. Not only is Japanese society more of a meritocracy, but they place value on and instill pride in every role, not merely those at the top. And it's not the lip service we have in the US, putting up some Successories posters and pretending to care about employees. Japanese society genuinely values the work that *everyone* does because it values collective action and shuns individualism.
So, by virtue of our individualism, our plutocracy where the most powerful, most popular, or most beautiful wins in fact, despite our ideals in theory, many people feel they have little control over their lives, and justifiably so. This lack of control is the definition of subordination, and if subordination leads to low serotonin, then we are probably witnessing its effects: higher appetite which leads to obesity given our ready access to food, and depression.
Of course, this could all just be a coincidence. Maybe Americans feel more in control of their lives than ever. Maybe our epidemic of depression is a consequence of overeating. Maybe, as the article asserts, we just have too much food and feel obliged to consume it for no reason. I'm not attached to my hypothesis, but it would be interesting to see it tested. Designing an ethical experiment on people might be difficult though, given that deliberately inducing health problems is generally frowned upon.
what if the constitution of the U.S. was amended so that no idea (with exceptions only for government use, like currency)
Copying currency doesn't violate copyright laws; it violates counterfeit laws. IP laws have nothing to do with it. Further, the government shouldn't have an exception on IP. In fact, anything the government develops with should be in the public domain by definition.
Good God, man, so is a Mac. This is a counterfeit Mac, and while the article states they come with (surely pirated) Windows, there's no indication that they're not also sold with OS X.
Slashdot Mirror
Since insects don't feel pain, I think the anesthesia is more about the convenience of having the bug hold still while its leg is amputated. And maybe to make people feel better. Judging by your response, It worked.
Not to debate the validity or usefulness of Occam's Razor, but simplicity is not a function of the ability to understand something. The idea of gravity is simple, for example, but we still can't explain more than its basic properties. In other words, just because the theist explanation has fewer words and is more intuitive doesn't make it simpler. It requires, among other things, an explanation of how a being can exist outside the laws of physics, something which believers simply take on faith, which is not an explanation at all.
playing video games and watching porn IS a much easier and more fulfilling way to spend your time than [trying to socialize].
Easier for some people, yes, but I wouldn't say more fulfilling. I think a large part of the problem is that there's no social education. Some people can watch a ballgame and learn the rules, and learn from other people's success and mistakes, but some people need an explanation before the game starts to make sense. It's no different for socializing. Having a school dance once or twice a year is like throwing kids in a swimming pool once a year and expecting them to learn how to swim.
1) It may well be more secure, but large collections of data are also a bigger target. Your data could conceivably be a victim of collateral damage even if you weren't the initial target, or ever a target at all.
2) Two people can keep a secret. If one of them is dead. From a purely statistical standpoint, all else being equal, the more people who have access, the bigger the risk.
Yes, but these aren't laptops aimed at teenage girls. It's IBM saying "our systems are perfect for your enterprise applications that we would never trust with our data. But have fun, everyone else."
Ironically, IBM is probably providing a lot of the hardware and software that run these farms. Of course, it still comes down to trusting another company with access to your vital information. This has been the obvious Achilles heel in "cloud computing" since day one. It's one thing to pass encrypted data through an untrusted party, but it's another thing entirely when the untrusted party is an endpoint with access to the plain text. Not only do you have to trust that the endpoint has properly implemented security, but also that every individual with access to the data has uncompromising integrity.
There's lots of "hot work" (welding, grinding) on a boat during overhaul. Starting a fire is easier than not. There's supposed to be a fire watch posted on station with fire extinguishers in hand during work, but with more nooks and crannies than an English muffin, it's not hard to imagine an ember falling behind some fixed-in-place furniture and starting some long-lost paper smoldering until eventually it flashed over long after the job was done. Just speculation, but fires are the number one enemy of boats and ships, so much so that the Navy spends more time training personnel for firefighting than anything else.
my favorite line is I would rather chew on broken glass and razor blades than do sales.
You must pick up some real freaks.
A) He didn't cause a suicide; he contributed to the difficulties of an already suicidal individual, probably without knowledge of his self destructive behavior.
B) Driving under the influence is as reckless as shooting a gun into a crowd. If you didn't know what could happen, you should have known, and just because nothing happened doesn't mean it didn't put lives at needless risk. Ninety days is light.
Off-handedly, are you a Cardassian?
I hope it's Cloe or Cortney, but it's probably Cim. She's such a ditz.
Right, because everything was just peachy before then. If you think this is bad, you're either ignorant of history, or willfully ignorant. And not just ancient history -- the past 150 years are rife with examples that were far worse than what we're living through today. The Torah was written by men with good ideas for their times, better than barbarism, but those men also happened to be bigots.
By that logic, it's not a hate crime to assault anyone who's too timid, or "runs like a girl," or wears the "wrong" clothes, because they can change those things. It's the same message: Anyone who doesn't fit in is at risk of suffering the same fate. But should someone have to change who they are to avoid physical injury? Is that not also a hate crime even though the differences can't be easily categorized? I'd wager that many of us, especially on Slashdot, have been bullied (or worse) just for being different, and felt just as intimidated, even if we weren't gay, black, or female, as did others in our circle of friends, even if they weren't the direct subject of a particular incident.
And yet, I still don't think treating an attack on [everyone in a protected group] should be treated differently. I understand that once upon a time, not so long ago, some states turned a blind eye toward violent acts, or threats of violence, against minorities. I understand that some localities may still, and I expect imperfections will linger in perpetuity. But if the problem is that a higher level of government hasn't codified a particular act as a crime, then codify it. Don't paint in broad strokes. Don't elevate one group (or groups) as more protected than another. Ted Kazinsky hated mainstream culture, certainly engaged in what could be defined as bias intimidation against mainstream society, and yet, no hate crime. It's an unjust law, and it's time for it to go.
There is no "post-PC." Tablets are an expansion of consumer tech, not a replacement. The functional sacrifices of a tablet design will never be acceptable for some segment of the population. I suspect one day there will be wearable/implantable devices that might replace the phone and the tablet, but I'd be surprised if the PC ever goes away. It's just too useful to (be able to) have that much computing power in your home, and thanks to the laws of physics, a desktop will always be more powerful than some portable device.
I have Sattelite TV (foxtel) for $70 a month (because my wife and kids like it), and don't have access to watch...Fringe
I wish I had that "problem."
Nice spin, but they're poised to close even, or maybe 1c above offering. The only reason it hasn't gone through the floor yet is likely because there is a large volume of limit buys and sells at $38.00 -- people who want to get out if the price hits offering, and people who will only buy at the offering price.
for the 5000th fucking time NO they don't want to play Farmville or meet singletons in their area now.
Tell me about it. I tried to meet singletons in my area, but they kept giving me the same one over and over again no matter how many times I asked for a new one.
Casings crack and leak ALL THE FRACKING TIME.
FTFY.
And now I will add words to reduce the ratio of uppercase to lowercase.
Convincing someone that it's more likely than not that you're leaving for stated reasons rather than for tax purposes means you'd better have a very plausible story; in other words, a valid reason. At least, that's what this law is proposing.
Except he's not dodging taxes -- he paid what was owed and then he left. (And if he didn't/doesn't pay, you can be sure he'll be extradited.) He's *potentially* avoiding future taxes, but the value of Facebook could crash too. Also, by not living here, he's not enjoying (from a legal sense) the privileges and protections that go along with citizenship, so why should he subsidize those things?
Capital gains are already due when you renounce your citizenship. Placing the burden of proof on someone to prove they aren't renouncing for tax purposes is ridiculous, and possibly unconstitutional. Why would I need a "valid" reason to renounce my citizenship? And adding a clause to bar the person from reentry for life is just petty. Blaming people for leaving when we have laws and policies they disagree with is pointing the finger in the wrong direction. Either we don't want those people here anyway, or else we're the problem.
Assuming you want a useful result, you probably want something closer to this: ( (min <= value) && (value <= max) ).
Availability means nothing without appetite. We have access to virtually unlimited quantities of water, yet we don't over-consume water (through drinking anyway). Why not? I actually came up with a hypothesis yesterday, which is that overeating and and depression both have the same root cause, which I posit to be low serotonin, and that low serotonin is itself a consequence of our society.
Serotonin's role in both appetite and depression are well established. The majority of our serotonin is in the gut (90%, according to Wikipedia), and higher levels decrease appetite. Given that depression and obesity are both at epidemic levels in the US, it's not unreasonable to conclude that we are, as a whole, suffering from low serotonin. Interestingly, countries with lower levels of depression also suffer from lower levels of obesity. Official statistics put depression at around 17% in the US, and as we know, we lead the world in rates of obesity at 30%. Japan, on the other hand, has levels of both depression and obesity at around 3%. Again, I think it's plausible that this is not so much causal (depression -> overeating -> obesity) as it is correlated (low serotonin -> depression && overeating).
So why would people in the US have lower levels of serotonin than elsewhere? Beyond appetite and depression, serotonin is also linked with dominance in animals. Lower levels of serotonin are consistent with subordinate behavior, while higher levels are found in more dominant animals. Dominant animals sometimes have control over other animals, but I believe the more important issue is that they have control over their own lives. And rather than being predetermined, where high serotonin induces dominance and low serotonin subordination (though this may be true to a limited extent), the causality may well be the other way around. It would, after all, be a huge liability if there were no so-called "natural leaders" around -- packs lions would just wander around aimlessly like "WTF should we do?!? We have no leader." And this happens sometimes when leaders are lost, but eventually someone steps up to the plate. We already know that depression is self-reinforcing, and so it stands to reason that dominance and subordination are also self-reinforcing.
Getting back to people, Japan prides itself on behavior that western society considers subordinate, and this discrepancy seems somewhat puzzling at first glance. How could subordination lead to feelings of dominance? Consider, though, that the well defined structure and general meritocracy of Japanese society may actually lead to a greater sense of control over one's life than our markedly less structured (and less consistent) society in the US. Not only is Japanese society more of a meritocracy, but they place value on and instill pride in every role, not merely those at the top. And it's not the lip service we have in the US, putting up some Successories posters and pretending to care about employees. Japanese society genuinely values the work that *everyone* does because it values collective action and shuns individualism.
So, by virtue of our individualism, our plutocracy where the most powerful, most popular, or most beautiful wins in fact, despite our ideals in theory, many people feel they have little control over their lives, and justifiably so. This lack of control is the definition of subordination, and if subordination leads to low serotonin, then we are probably witnessing its effects: higher appetite which leads to obesity given our ready access to food, and depression.
Of course, this could all just be a coincidence. Maybe Americans feel more in control of their lives than ever. Maybe our epidemic of depression is a consequence of overeating. Maybe, as the article asserts, we just have too much food and feel obliged to consume it for no reason. I'm not attached to my hypothesis, but it would be interesting to see it tested. Designing an ethical experiment on people might be difficult though, given that deliberately inducing health problems is generally frowned upon.
what if the constitution of the U.S. was amended so that no idea (with exceptions only for government use, like currency)
Copying currency doesn't violate copyright laws; it violates counterfeit laws. IP laws have nothing to do with it. Further, the government shouldn't have an exception on IP. In fact, anything the government develops with should be in the public domain by definition.
underneath it is pure pc.
Good God, man, so is a Mac. This is a counterfeit Mac, and while the article states they come with (surely pirated) Windows, there's no indication that they're not also sold with OS X.
With an Apple logo on the lid? Macs run Windows you know.