The only serious problem with this is when the marketing execs find that people start shooting up the ads that they don't like, they'll try and force the game companies to make thier ads invulnerable to enemy fire. That's cheating!
Before anyone takes the creationist ideas too seriously (I personally believe them to be nothing but pseudo-science) you should read up on some background.
Nothing disproves evolution more than the fact that creationists' arguments have not evolved with the times are are so weak they could not possibly have survived in a Darwinian world.
Our own medicine - which we like to think makes us strong - is making us weak. The process of natural selection can no longer take place.
By your logic, you could say that the teeth and claws of tigers whch we think makes them strong actually makes them weak. Our medicine is our strength and it will not suddenly vanish some day. Our medicine is the very thing that will help us control our own evolution.
My problem with the movie was that there was the *name* Final Fantasy, but had none of the elements of a typical Final Fantasy game. Where were the swords? Where were the airships, the "Guardian Forces" or "Aeons" (or whatever they are called), where was the magic? The Chocobos?
But only for inventions that can't be described by means of digital media (say, text, pictures, sounds, movies)?
You missed his point. He wasn't refering to inventions that can be described digitally, instead he was talking about "invertions" that consist of digital information.
The more I think about it, the more I realize that a real "dirty bomb" is actually fantastically easy to make.
Of course, we all know about the Radioactive Boy Scout who had built by the age of 15 a system capable to radiating a town using home-made parts. Now we find caches of radioactive waste popping up or being dumped in the most unlikely of places, and I'm sure that the reports that make it to the news wires are only a fraction of what is really out there.
If a determined group decided that they really wanted to kill a city, they could do it easily and probably in complete secrecy. Just think about the logistics for a second, and you'll be quite shocked. Really it only requires one thing: commitment. Do a few google and Usenet searches for things like home-built x-ray machines, rail-guns, even the correct way to mine Uranium from pitchblende and you'll find pages and pages of information. Even a full-blown nuclear weapon is not impossible to create with the right funding and determination. It is truly a testament to either human nature or really smart detective work on the part of the CIA and friends that we don't already have suitcase nukes taking out our Super Bowl parties every year.
A "dirty bomb" need not even be nuclear, per se. A truck full of chlorine gas bursting open at the top of Nob Hill in the middle of any one of the countless San Francisco conventions would cause horrific deaths by the thousands, and would not be very easy to clean up before sickening tens of thousands. There are an infinite number of very deadly chemicals that could be sprayed randomly around a city (attached to unsuspecting taxi bumpers as they drive randomly about the city, for example) that may not kill millions of people, but would certainly cause a lot of sickness and seriously scare the population.
In Japan a few years ago, soda cans were being poisoned in a strange spree of nonsensical killings. How often to you check and see that "safety" cap on your Jolt was fully attached before opening it? How hard is it to remove those caps without damaging the "safety seal" when you think about it? Not that hard really. It only takes 2-3 deaths and an anonymous email from posioncokeguy@hotmail.com to the news media to start a pandemonium.
Of course, this particular event took place in Georgia the country and not Georgia the state, but that doesn't mean that we should just laugh it off as something those kooky old communists did. I'm sure we have radioactive and chemical poison floating around all over the place, but do we know where that all is? Especially considering all the illegal dumping that corporations have been doing over the years...
I have spent some time watching a lot of those "true crime" shows over the last few months, and one aspect that seems to be constantly ignored is that most of the crimes are not solved though "investigation" but through dumb luck. Often the key to solving the case comes from a criminal calling home or accidentally bumping into the wrong person in a city a thousand miles away. Just look at how the anthrax investigation has petered out. They have basically stopped looking and now are just waiting for the bad guys to slip up and tell their story to a stranger in Pensacola in a drunken lapse in judgment. A really well honed group could easily pull off a incredible terrorist attack even today. With the right amount of encryption and non-localization, and a healthy dose of disinformation, a group could easily pull off a stunt that dwarfs 9/11 with ease. But the we seem to be complacent with the belief that the materials to create mass destruction are safely locked away. Stories like the above tell us that this belief is flawed, and we should really start to question just how safe we really are...
How does this happen? You are out in the woods and find a strange glowing object that is magially melting ice. How do you ever contemplate taking this thing home?
I am beginning to wonder if the "red" in Russia wasn't referring to the communists but to ther rednecks...
NASA should really consider this. There is nothing, NOTHING that can motivate a nation and a world to tackle the endeavors of space than a 22,000 mile glittering testament to our power and ingenuity rising into the heavens.
I'm part of the "public", right? Or I used to think so, but now the more I hear about what *they* want and don't want, I'm lead to believe that they are all nitwits who couldn't tie thier own shoelaces and feed themselves if thier lives depended on it (which, since this "public" won't ever seem to just go ahead and die, I have to assume it does not).
I believe the number one threat against America is NOT terrorism, it's the stupid and foolish.
Eep, then what's to stop Elcomsoft from suing Adobe's Russian presence? Adobe does break russian laws, no? (I have heard quoted many times that it is illegal to create non-copyable media in Russia)
The courts are playing with fire and I don't think they ever realize it. Right now, it's *illegal* to create media in Russia that cannot be copied (for personal use, of course). If ElcomSoft, a very small company that can't possibly offer anything of monetary value to the US, is convicted for violating US law, then I guarantee you there will be trials held in Russia with our very own software companies as the defendants. Adobe (and others) may not make a huge chunck of it's profit from Russian sales, but it can't be insignifigant either. Furthermore, allowing the trial to continue opens the doors for every banana republic and grudge bearing backwater country to start suing our companies for violating thier newly enacted laws.
You're assuming that the human population will stay at relatively the same amount. If the earth and every planet we colonize colonizes another planet every 50 years or so, we'll run out of planets a lot sooner than you think.
Well, you are assuming that the Earth is not dangerously underpopulated (which I believe it is. By my count 7 trillion could live easily on Earth, 100 trillion if we find new ways of creating food).
Besides, at some point we will learn how to reverse the matter/energy conversion and distil energy into matter. At that point all we need is the energy of a few stars (I doubt we'll be running out of THOSE) and we'll be making our own planets...
Great! So we find another planet, travel to it and fuck it up just like we have already done to earth.
I know, I know, I shouldn't feed the trolls, but this irks me a lot. Do you have any concept of just how vast "outer space" is? We could go on using and destroying world after world for literally billions and billions and billions of years and we will NEVER RUN OUT. There are vastly more resources in space than there are here on earth. We *can't* abuse space, no matter how hard we try, becuase, for human purposes, there is a virtually limitless amount of energy (and thus matter) out there...
There's more, like how his favorite city was Qeynos (definetly not a place anyone sticks around to enjoy, Qeynos is at the butt end of Norrath), but you get the point.
Does that make Halas the dingleberries of norrath?
(As a barbarian shaman who spent much of his early years in that hellish, snowy wasteland, I would have to agee)
People, I can't emphasize this enough: The radio stations are there to make money for Clear Channel stockholders, not as some charity to provide the best possible experience for Rush's listeners.
Any other medium, I would agree, but those airwaves belong to the people, friend. If they are going to take them away from us, they had better provide a little quality...
But please note that 1 is the MOST important and 10 is the LEAST important. I rated them all incorrectly and luckily just caught it one second before I hit send. I'm so used to K5 style (5=good, 1=bad) that I didn't stop and read the tiny tiny directions.
Interesting point, though I don't think there is enough diferentiation between the "races" for this to really be viable.
But as long as we are working in the fantasy world, think about nanobots that alter DNA (instead of destroying) on those same "raical" lines. Imagine waking up one day and finding that you are no longer genetically the race you were when you went to bed. Talk about solving the whole discrimination issue overnight!
The fool part about things like this is that no one ever tries to think logically about it. Every user that gets slapped by this is going to be one less client (if DSL is available) for them. The fewer clients they have, the less money they make to make up for badwidth costs. The less money they have, the more draconian they become. They should really think about tacking on an extra five dollars a month and start advertising that they ALLOW people to set up servers. As long as they have honest pricing and limit bandwidth accordingly, they won't eventually go under.
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The only serious problem with this is when the marketing execs find that people start shooting up the ads that they don't like, they'll try and force the game companies to make thier ads invulnerable to enemy fire. That's cheating!
Before anyone takes the creationist ideas too seriously (I personally believe them to be nothing but pseudo-science) you should read up on some background.
Nothing disproves evolution more than the fact that creationists' arguments have not evolved with the times are are so weak they could not possibly have survived in a Darwinian world.
Our own medicine - which we like to think makes us strong - is making us weak. The process of natural selection can no longer take place.
By your logic, you could say that the teeth and claws of tigers whch we think makes them strong actually makes them weak. Our medicine is our strength and it will not suddenly vanish some day. Our medicine is the very thing that will help us control our own evolution.
My problem with the movie was that there was the *name* Final Fantasy, but had none of the elements of a typical Final Fantasy game. Where were the swords? Where were the airships, the "Guardian Forces" or "Aeons" (or whatever they are called), where was the magic? The Chocobos?
But only for inventions that can't be described by means of digital media (say, text, pictures, sounds, movies)?
You missed his point. He wasn't refering to inventions that can be described digitally, instead he was talking about "invertions" that consist of digital information.
The more I think about it, the more I realize that a real "dirty bomb" is actually fantastically easy to make.
Of course, we all know about the Radioactive Boy Scout who had built by the age of 15 a system capable to radiating a town using home-made parts. Now we find caches of radioactive waste popping up or being dumped in the most unlikely of places, and I'm sure that the reports that make it to the news wires are only a fraction of what is really out there.
If a determined group decided that they really wanted to kill a city, they could do it easily and probably in complete secrecy. Just think about the logistics for a second, and you'll be quite shocked. Really it only requires one thing: commitment. Do a few google and Usenet searches for things like home-built x-ray machines, rail-guns, even the correct way to mine Uranium from pitchblende and you'll find pages and pages of information. Even a full-blown nuclear weapon is not impossible to create with the right funding and determination. It is truly a testament to either human nature or really smart detective work on the part of the CIA and friends that we don't already have suitcase nukes taking out our Super Bowl parties every year.
A "dirty bomb" need not even be nuclear, per se. A truck full of chlorine gas bursting open at the top of Nob Hill in the middle of any one of the countless San Francisco conventions would cause horrific deaths by the thousands, and would not be very easy to clean up before sickening tens of thousands. There are an infinite number of very deadly chemicals that could be sprayed randomly around a city (attached to unsuspecting taxi bumpers as they drive randomly about the city, for example) that may not kill millions of people, but would certainly cause a lot of sickness and seriously scare the population.
In Japan a few years ago, soda cans were being poisoned in a strange spree of nonsensical killings. How often to you check and see that "safety" cap on your Jolt was fully attached before opening it? How hard is it to remove those caps without damaging the "safety seal" when you think about it? Not that hard really. It only takes 2-3 deaths and an anonymous email from posioncokeguy@hotmail.com to the news media to start a pandemonium.
Of course, this particular event took place in Georgia the country and not Georgia the state, but that doesn't mean that we should just laugh it off as something those kooky old communists did. I'm sure we have radioactive and chemical poison floating around all over the place, but do we know where that all is? Especially considering all the illegal dumping that corporations have been doing over the years...
I have spent some time watching a lot of those "true crime" shows over the last few months, and one aspect that seems to be constantly ignored is that most of the crimes are not solved though "investigation" but through dumb luck. Often the key to solving the case comes from a criminal calling home or accidentally bumping into the wrong person in a city a thousand miles away. Just look at how the anthrax investigation has petered out. They have basically stopped looking and now are just waiting for the bad guys to slip up and tell their story to a stranger in Pensacola in a drunken lapse in judgment. A really well honed group could easily pull off a incredible terrorist attack even today. With the right amount of encryption and non-localization, and a healthy dose of disinformation, a group could easily pull off a stunt that dwarfs 9/11 with ease. But the we seem to be complacent with the belief that the materials to create mass destruction are safely locked away. Stories like the above tell us that this belief is flawed, and we should really start to question just how safe we really are...
How does this happen? You are out in the woods and find a strange glowing object that is magially melting ice. How do you ever contemplate taking this thing home?
I am beginning to wonder if the "red" in Russia wasn't referring to the communists but to ther rednecks...
:)
NASA should really consider this. There is nothing, NOTHING that can motivate a nation and a world to tackle the endeavors of space than a 22,000 mile glittering testament to our power and ingenuity rising into the heavens.
So they are going to close off thier half of the space station from the Russians? I'm almost positive on the Russian side, drinking is required.
The public won't have it, though.
Who ARE these public? I hate them so much.
I'm part of the "public", right? Or I used to think so, but now the more I hear about what *they* want and don't want, I'm lead to believe that they are all nitwits who couldn't tie thier own shoelaces and feed themselves if thier lives depended on it (which, since this "public" won't ever seem to just go ahead and die, I have to assume it does not).
I believe the number one threat against America is NOT terrorism, it's the stupid and foolish.
Nice picture of the galaxy... but was anyone else disappointed to find that the little red arrow with the words "You are here" was absent?
Eep, then what's to stop Elcomsoft from suing Adobe's Russian presence? Adobe does break russian laws, no? (I have heard quoted many times that it is illegal to create non-copyable media in Russia)
200 trillion if we learn to eat poo and love it!
What do you think wheat is? It's just refined poo.
The courts are playing with fire and I don't think they ever realize it. Right now, it's *illegal* to create media in Russia that cannot be copied (for personal use, of course). If ElcomSoft, a very small company that can't possibly offer anything of monetary value to the US, is convicted for violating US law, then I guarantee you there will be trials held in Russia with our very own software companies as the defendants. Adobe (and others) may not make a huge chunck of it's profit from Russian sales, but it can't be insignifigant either. Furthermore, allowing the trial to continue opens the doors for every banana republic and grudge bearing backwater country to start suing our companies for violating thier newly enacted laws.
If you haven't heard much about this case, there's several sites about it here [dmoz.org].
Excellent karma whoring... Here, let me try:
If you don't understand any of the more difficult words in the backgroud articles, you can find the definitions here
Let's say for a second that they LOST the case. Seing as they are in RUSSIA, what possible punishment could be handed to them by the courts?
"Come over here so we can arrest you!" ???
I wish Common Sense was still in common practice in the judicial system.
You're assuming that the human population will stay at relatively the same amount. If the earth and every planet we colonize colonizes another planet every 50 years or so, we'll run out of planets a lot sooner than you think.
Well, you are assuming that the Earth is not dangerously underpopulated (which I believe it is. By my count 7 trillion could live easily on Earth, 100 trillion if we find new ways of creating food).
Besides, at some point we will learn how to reverse the matter/energy conversion and distil energy into matter. At that point all we need is the energy of a few stars (I doubt we'll be running out of THOSE) and we'll be making our own planets...
Great! So we find another planet, travel to it and fuck it up just like we have already done to earth.
I know, I know, I shouldn't feed the trolls, but this irks me a lot. Do you have any concept of just how vast "outer space" is? We could go on using and destroying world after world for literally billions and billions and billions of years and we will NEVER RUN OUT. There are vastly more resources in space than there are here on earth. We *can't* abuse space, no matter how hard we try, becuase, for human purposes, there is a virtually limitless amount of energy (and thus matter) out there...
There's more, like how his favorite city was Qeynos (definetly not a place anyone sticks around to enjoy, Qeynos is at the butt end of Norrath), but you get the point.
Does that make Halas the dingleberries of norrath?
(As a barbarian shaman who spent much of his early years in that hellish, snowy wasteland, I would have to agee)
And after they have given us all of that television for free, you think they would be more understanding.
I'll tell you what, how about I just say "no thank you" to that "free" TV and get my airwaves back... Oh, wait, I can't, can I? TV is NOT free....
People, I can't emphasize this enough: The radio stations are there to make money for Clear Channel stockholders, not as some charity to provide the best possible experience for Rush's listeners.
Any other medium, I would agree, but those airwaves belong to the people, friend. If they are going to take them away from us, they had better provide a little quality...
But please note that 1 is the MOST important and 10 is the LEAST important. I rated them all incorrectly and luckily just caught it one second before I hit send. I'm so used to K5 style (5=good, 1=bad) that I didn't stop and read the tiny tiny directions.
So if somone has a few virutal machines on one box, does this count as more than one machine connected to the network?
Interesting point, though I don't think there is enough diferentiation between the "races" for this to really be viable.
But as long as we are working in the fantasy world, think about nanobots that alter DNA (instead of destroying) on those same "raical" lines. Imagine waking up one day and finding that you are no longer genetically the race you were when you went to bed. Talk about solving the whole discrimination issue overnight!
The fool part about things like this is that no one ever tries to think logically about it. Every user that gets slapped by this is going to be one less client (if DSL is available) for them. The fewer clients they have, the less money they make to make up for badwidth costs. The less money they have, the more draconian they become. They should really think about tacking on an extra five dollars a month and start advertising that they ALLOW people to set up servers. As long as they have honest pricing and limit bandwidth accordingly, they won't eventually go under.