Hillary's biggest problem is her creepy, wide-eyed, teethy stare-smile. Like she's an alien from Mars Attacks wearing a mask. I don't know who told her to look that way, but it's definitely not making her more likeable. And many voters go for such signs more than for what candidates say.
I'm so tired of hearing such nonsense. Read some Rawls or at least some Wikipedia articles about political theories and traditions, instead of inventing your own Humpty-Dumpty language.
Not at all, NK is not even communist, it's called Juche - military leadership with focus on self-reliance and the individual. In other words, another way of justifying a military dictatorship.
There are too many fallacies and hypothetical assessments in this line of argument.
1. Even if many civilizations existed before ours -- the time frame for this is small on a cosmic scale, because of too much activity in the early universe --, it does not follow from the assumption that they killed themselves somehow that we will suffer the same fate. If there are filters, then it seems more likely that they do not work 100% of all times.
2. Major civilizations could be cyclic, like they seem to have so far occurred on earth. So yes, our current culture might die some day, but mankind might continue to exist. The same might apply to many alien species.
3. The evolution of higher life, let alone intelligent life, might very well be quite rare. We really don't know. We could be the first or second or third, or there could be hundreds or thousands of intelligent civilizations similar to ours that are not yet easy to detect for us.
4. We have only searched a tiny tiny amount of solar systems for life, using extremely limited methods. People tend to forget how gigantic the universe is. With new space telescopes it might in the near future be possible to detect life similar to ours on extrasolar planets directly on the basis of atmospheric changes, so stay tuned. It's far to early to make claims like "We would have detected them so far." Give it another 20 years and we might have a number of good candidates of extrasolar planets that seem to support life. So far, both views are just speculation.
5. Advanced civilizations might master new sources of energy and protect their environments in a way that may make them extremely hard to detect. The better a civilization is at not polluting their home planet and solar system, the harder it may be detect it -- and the less likely there is a filter that destroys this civilization. Also don't forget that the time frame for radio emissions may be ridiculously small, because advanced coding techniques make them almost indistinguishable from noise (and we don't look for those but rather for the most primitive coding techniques). As an example, Earth has gone almost radio silent due to advances in technology (satellites, optical fibres) and this trend may continue.
6. Even if somehow FTL interstellar travel is feasible for advanced civilizations, there could be a vast number of reasons why they might not show up on earth: The solar system is in a relatively remote region, there are so many systems, protection of indigenous species, etc.
7. There is the robot theory that supposedly defuses many of the above points. Any sufficiently advanced civilization would send out machines that replicate themselves in order to map and conquer the whole universe. To me, this is just a silly conjecture. Not even we would do this if we could, and we almost could do it already at our current stage of technology. Uncalculable risks, ethical and environmental concerns speak against this, so why should aliens do it.
ResearchGate sucks, they are a German company of evil spammers and bombard you with unsolicited emails very much like LinkedIn. I'm sure they will let everyone and his grandmother join in order to augment their small user base. Academia.edu is okay, though.
I'm living in a small, comparatively poor country in Europe, and I'm a scientist, so let me explain the situation to you.
Via expensive subscriptions we have access to a constantly and seemingly randomly changing selection of journals at our institute. Sometimes I can just download what I need "for free" (free for me, it still costs the tax payer a lot of money, of course), another time I cannot access it. Anything that falls on the borderline to neighbouring disciplines I cannot access - which happens to be a lot in my field, because my work is very cross-disciplinary. The situation is way worse in even poorer countries, e.g. in developing nations, or in those where politicians in charge simply do not understand the nature of scientific work and cut money in the wrong places.
In a nutshell, rich universities in rich countries already have many advantages, and without sites like sci-hub many research institutions in the poorer parts of the world could just as well close down.
Of course I give away my papers for free. I'm a scientist. I get zero money for my publications, my review work, my editorial work and anything else related to publications. I've even edited typeset several books for free. All of this for commercial publishing companies who make an insane amount of money with it. The only thing that publishing companies like Springer do is to send the final version to India for the final typesetting in LaTeX and put out the printed versions about one and a half years later. That system is possible because as a scientist I'm paid by the government.
The problem is that I'm not allowed to put the original, quotable paper on my web pages, only earlier drafts. The papers you need for quoting are behind expensive paywalls, and every time someone accesses one of those articles to do his work, somewhere some tax payers are paying for a very expensive subscription. Or, they can pay $39 for a single article themselves - their choice (hahaha). For the publishers, this is like an endless source of money with minimum amount of work. That's why Springer, DeGruyter and small number of other publishers have sucked up and monopolized nearly all of the previously independent journals. It doesn't matter which journal I choose, I always end up with one of the three or four companies - like with record labels.
Whether I agree with you depends on what you mean by "expensive headphones".
There is a gigantic quality difference between headphones below $100 and those in the $120-$200 range, and the latter are well worth the investment if you like music. I currently use a pair of KRK KNS-8400 and am fairly happy with them, but my girlfriend's Beyerdynamic DT-770s sound better. Both are nearly indestructible.
As for $1000 headphones, yeah, perhaps that's overkill.
You can get a $100 USB audio interface in any music instrument store that will sound better than any of Intel's integrated circuitry or the crap they put in graphics cards nowadays. And you can use it to record its own output. Or you can buy an audio interface that costs several thousands of dollars, just in case your not satisfied with the quality of the cheap one (which is still better than anything built in).
So it's not about control, but about selling more expensive bullshit to people who don't know anything about audio interfaces. Like those ridiculous USB-connected headphones for gamers with shitty built-in DSP processing...
That's a red herring, though, as anybody who has ever worked with pro audio equipment will confirm. Intel's audio (or that of your graphics card) hisses, because of their crappy drivers and circuitry, not because there is something wrong with the headphone jack. This stuff is so bad that you even need to disable it in the BIOS/EFI if you don't use it at all in order to get good audio performance.
You can easily test that for yourself by buying a high quality audio interface and plugging in a pair of high quality headphones.
However, I take it as a fact that capitalist societies have lead to more technical progress and freedom of choice than any other type of system. But if you're talking about the current US, I somewhat agree. IMHO, you've got a big problem. Lobbyism and the more or less fixed two party system have subverted your democracy and its proper division of power. I was thinking about capitalism in a slightly saner system, one that has a number of parties with changing coalitions, stricter laws against corruption, a fairer justice system, stronger anti-cartel laws, a better electoral system,...
Don't worry about the GP who is too obviously clueless. It's not worth discussing politics with such people. He writes communism/socialism like a Java fanboy would write C/C++...
In my opinion, capitalism is the only market form that works reasonably effective and ensures progress and freedom, but it absolutely needs to be combined with moderate egalitarianism and effective laws to prevent monopolies and cartels.
People discussing these topics often base their arguments on false dichotomies, although it's kind of obvious that a reasonable middle ground needs to be found.
Why? Well, regarding the first point, we can always discuss how much wealth should be transferred and in which way, but that there should be universal agreement that some transfer is necessary. You can show that to almost anyone by explaining the Gini index and asking that person at which point society becomes unjust - people will only disagree about where the point lies, but nobody will honestly and sincerely defend a country with index 1. Insane differences between highest and lowest incomes like we have them now in most industrialized countries (the gap has widened dramatically everywhere in the Western industrialized world, not just in the US) are not in the interest of anyone, and particularly not in the interest of people whose own microeconomic theory predicts that monetary transfers from the rich to the poor always increase overall value due to the diminishing marginal utility of money. Nobody who has reached a certain amount of wealth actually needs more money - the idea is patently absurd. But that doesn't mean you need to deny that differences in salaries can be an important incentive that needs to be kept. A reasonable middle ground is called for.
Regarding the second point about cartels, many so-called markets nowadays do not have enough participants to be free markets. If there are only two telecom companies or two major chip makers who magically have the same price structure, then this does not constitute a real market but rather a quasi-monopoly, for example, and something has to be done about such situations. If somebody claims that this is not necessary, this tends to be based on a lack of understanding of economics and how and under which conditions markets work (or it is based on hidden egoistic motives and ideology, and these two don't count in a general discussion of how society should look like). Again, too much regulation is obviously bad while not enough regulation will lead to cartels and hinders progress by blocking small, innovative companies from emerging. A reasonable middle ground is needed.
These things are not very complicated and far less controversial than they are often portrayed in the media and by politicians. Most of the fighting and arguing in fact results from the ideologization of these topics by political parties and interest groups.
There is no such hatred. You and others have made it up entirely. It's a US-only phenomenon, part of a delusion that was fostered by conservative US citizens when they realized that they cannot portray their country as the land of the good and free in light of overwhelming evidence to the contrary (Abu Ghraib, Iraq War, kidnapping, drone strikes, torture, etc.). It's a normal defensive reaction to find some cause and enemy in 'the others', no big deal and no need to bother as long as you keep your irrational feelings about 'liberals' halfway in check and remain reasonable.
I know that's not what you'd like to hear, but it's the truth.
There is no such hatred. You and others have made it up entirely. It's a US-only phenomenon, part of a delusion that was fostered by conservative US citizens when they realized that they cannot portray their country as the land of the good and free in light of overwhelming evidence to the contrary (Abu Ghraib, Iraq War, kidnapping, drone strikes, torture, etc.). It's a normal defensive reaction to find some cause and enemy in 'the others', no big deal and no need to bother as long as you keep your irrational feelings about 'liberals' halfway in check and remain reasonable.
Slashdot Mirror
maximize liberty for "me" (the Libertarian speaking).
That's pretty exactly what early individual anarchists like Max Stirner said, so there must be a bit more to current US "libertarianism" than that ...
Or, Cruz is just another sad pathetic religious fanatic.
I wouldn't dismiss this possibility...
Hillary's biggest problem is her creepy, wide-eyed, teethy stare-smile. Like she's an alien from Mars Attacks wearing a mask. I don't know who told her to look that way, but it's definitely not making her more likeable. And many voters go for such signs more than for what candidates say.
I'm so tired of hearing such nonsense. Read some Rawls or at least some Wikipedia articles about political theories and traditions, instead of inventing your own Humpty-Dumpty language.
Not at all, NK is not even communist, it's called Juche - military leadership with focus on self-reliance and the individual. In other words, another way of justifying a military dictatorship.
Aren't the launch codes 00000000 anyway?
Oh wait, they have probably been changed to 12345678 since then.
There are too many fallacies and hypothetical assessments in this line of argument.
1. Even if many civilizations existed before ours -- the time frame for this is small on a cosmic scale, because of too much activity in the early universe --, it does not follow from the assumption that they killed themselves somehow that we will suffer the same fate. If there are filters, then it seems more likely that they do not work 100% of all times.
2. Major civilizations could be cyclic, like they seem to have so far occurred on earth. So yes, our current culture might die some day, but mankind might continue to exist. The same might apply to many alien species.
3. The evolution of higher life, let alone intelligent life, might very well be quite rare. We really don't know. We could be the first or second or third, or there could be hundreds or thousands of intelligent civilizations similar to ours that are not yet easy to detect for us.
4. We have only searched a tiny tiny amount of solar systems for life, using extremely limited methods. People tend to forget how gigantic the universe is. With new space telescopes it might in the near future be possible to detect life similar to ours on extrasolar planets directly on the basis of atmospheric changes, so stay tuned. It's far to early to make claims like "We would have detected them so far." Give it another 20 years and we might have a number of good candidates of extrasolar planets that seem to support life. So far, both views are just speculation.
5. Advanced civilizations might master new sources of energy and protect their environments in a way that may make them extremely hard to detect. The better a civilization is at not polluting their home planet and solar system, the harder it may be detect it -- and the less likely there is a filter that destroys this civilization. Also don't forget that the time frame for radio emissions may be ridiculously small, because advanced coding techniques make them almost indistinguishable from noise (and we don't look for those but rather for the most primitive coding techniques). As an example, Earth has gone almost radio silent due to advances in technology (satellites, optical fibres) and this trend may continue.
6. Even if somehow FTL interstellar travel is feasible for advanced civilizations, there could be a vast number of reasons why they might not show up on earth: The solar system is in a relatively remote region, there are so many systems, protection of indigenous species, etc.
7. There is the robot theory that supposedly defuses many of the above points. Any sufficiently advanced civilization would send out machines that replicate themselves in order to map and conquer the whole universe. To me, this is just a silly conjecture. Not even we would do this if we could, and we almost could do it already at our current stage of technology. Uncalculable risks, ethical and environmental concerns speak against this, so why should aliens do it.
There were also no humans on earth...
ResearchGate sucks, they are a German company of evil spammers and bombard you with unsolicited emails very much like LinkedIn. I'm sure they will let everyone and his grandmother join in order to augment their small user base. Academia.edu is okay, though.
I'm living in a small, comparatively poor country in Europe, and I'm a scientist, so let me explain the situation to you.
Via expensive subscriptions we have access to a constantly and seemingly randomly changing selection of journals at our institute. Sometimes I can just download what I need "for free" (free for me, it still costs the tax payer a lot of money, of course), another time I cannot access it. Anything that falls on the borderline to neighbouring disciplines I cannot access - which happens to be a lot in my field, because my work is very cross-disciplinary. The situation is way worse in even poorer countries, e.g. in developing nations, or in those where politicians in charge simply do not understand the nature of scientific work and cut money in the wrong places.
In a nutshell, rich universities in rich countries already have many advantages, and without sites like sci-hub many research institutions in the poorer parts of the world could just as well close down.
Of course I give away my papers for free. I'm a scientist. I get zero money for my publications, my review work, my editorial work and anything else related to publications. I've even edited typeset several books for free. All of this for commercial publishing companies who make an insane amount of money with it. The only thing that publishing companies like Springer do is to send the final version to India for the final typesetting in LaTeX and put out the printed versions about one and a half years later. That system is possible because as a scientist I'm paid by the government.
The problem is that I'm not allowed to put the original, quotable paper on my web pages, only earlier drafts. The papers you need for quoting are behind expensive paywalls, and every time someone accesses one of those articles to do his work, somewhere some tax payers are paying for a very expensive subscription. Or, they can pay $39 for a single article themselves - their choice (hahaha). For the publishers, this is like an endless source of money with minimum amount of work. That's why Springer, DeGruyter and small number of other publishers have sucked up and monopolized nearly all of the previously independent journals. It doesn't matter which journal I choose, I always end up with one of the three or four companies - like with record labels.
See the problem now?
Whether I agree with you depends on what you mean by "expensive headphones".
There is a gigantic quality difference between headphones below $100 and those in the $120-$200 range, and the latter are well worth the investment if you like music. I currently use a pair of KRK KNS-8400 and am fairly happy with them, but my girlfriend's Beyerdynamic DT-770s sound better. Both are nearly indestructible.
As for $1000 headphones, yeah, perhaps that's overkill.
You could also just buy an external audio interface.
You can get a $100 USB audio interface in any music instrument store that will sound better than any of Intel's integrated circuitry or the crap they put in graphics cards nowadays. And you can use it to record its own output. Or you can buy an audio interface that costs several thousands of dollars, just in case your not satisfied with the quality of the cheap one (which is still better than anything built in).
So it's not about control, but about selling more expensive bullshit to people who don't know anything about audio interfaces. Like those ridiculous USB-connected headphones for gamers with shitty built-in DSP processing ...
That's a red herring, though, as anybody who has ever worked with pro audio equipment will confirm. Intel's audio (or that of your graphics card) hisses, because of their crappy drivers and circuitry, not because there is something wrong with the headphone jack. This stuff is so bad that you even need to disable it in the BIOS/EFI if you don't use it at all in order to get good audio performance.
You can easily test that for yourself by buying a high quality audio interface and plugging in a pair of high quality headphones.
Nothing ensures progress and freedom. ;-)
However, I take it as a fact that capitalist societies have lead to more technical progress and freedom of choice than any other type of system. But if you're talking about the current US, I somewhat agree. IMHO, you've got a big problem. Lobbyism and the more or less fixed two party system have subverted your democracy and its proper division of power. I was thinking about capitalism in a slightly saner system, one that has a number of parties with changing coalitions, stricter laws against corruption, a fairer justice system, stronger anti-cartel laws, a better electoral system, ...
Don't worry about the GP who is too obviously clueless. It's not worth discussing politics with such people. He writes communism/socialism like a Java fanboy would write C/C++...
Perhaps the problem is that a large quantity of them will not start making money, or will have to pay off their student loan debts with it...
In my opinion, capitalism is the only market form that works reasonably effective and ensures progress and freedom, but it absolutely needs to be combined with moderate egalitarianism and effective laws to prevent monopolies and cartels.
People discussing these topics often base their arguments on false dichotomies, although it's kind of obvious that a reasonable middle ground needs to be found.
Why? Well, regarding the first point, we can always discuss how much wealth should be transferred and in which way, but that there should be universal agreement that some transfer is necessary. You can show that to almost anyone by explaining the Gini index and asking that person at which point society becomes unjust - people will only disagree about where the point lies, but nobody will honestly and sincerely defend a country with index 1. Insane differences between highest and lowest incomes like we have them now in most industrialized countries (the gap has widened dramatically everywhere in the Western industrialized world, not just in the US) are not in the interest of anyone, and particularly not in the interest of people whose own microeconomic theory predicts that monetary transfers from the rich to the poor always increase overall value due to the diminishing marginal utility of money. Nobody who has reached a certain amount of wealth actually needs more money - the idea is patently absurd. But that doesn't mean you need to deny that differences in salaries can be an important incentive that needs to be kept. A reasonable middle ground is called for.
Regarding the second point about cartels, many so-called markets nowadays do not have enough participants to be free markets. If there are only two telecom companies or two major chip makers who magically have the same price structure, then this does not constitute a real market but rather a quasi-monopoly, for example, and something has to be done about such situations. If somebody claims that this is not necessary, this tends to be based on a lack of understanding of economics and how and under which conditions markets work (or it is based on hidden egoistic motives and ideology, and these two don't count in a general discussion of how society should look like). Again, too much regulation is obviously bad while not enough regulation will lead to cartels and hinders progress by blocking small, innovative companies from emerging. A reasonable middle ground is needed.
These things are not very complicated and far less controversial than they are often portrayed in the media and by politicians. Most of the fighting and arguing in fact results from the ideologization of these topics by political parties and interest groups.
My 2 cents.
What happens when you jam a drone's signal? Expensive flying bricks that eventually crash in enemy territory.
That or the drone will fire a hellfire missile on the signal jammer.
The annoying thing about the medical hearing aids is that you can even get in-ear monitors for audiophiles for less money.
There is no such hatred. You and others have made it up entirely. It's a US-only phenomenon, part of a delusion that was fostered by conservative US citizens when they realized that they cannot portray their country as the land of the good and free in light of overwhelming evidence to the contrary (Abu Ghraib, Iraq War, kidnapping, drone strikes, torture, etc.). It's a normal defensive reaction to find some cause and enemy in 'the others', no big deal and no need to bother as long as you keep your irrational feelings about 'liberals' halfway in check and remain reasonable.
I know that's not what you'd like to hear, but it's the truth.
There is no such hatred. You and others have made it up entirely. It's a US-only phenomenon, part of a delusion that was fostered by conservative US citizens when they realized that they cannot portray their country as the land of the good and free in light of overwhelming evidence to the contrary (Abu Ghraib, Iraq War, kidnapping, drone strikes, torture, etc.). It's a normal defensive reaction to find some cause and enemy in 'the others', no big deal and no need to bother as long as you keep your irrational feelings about 'liberals' halfway in check and remain reasonable.
There is no such hatred, you've made it up. The answer is as simple as that.
Guys & girls let's all calm down and be reasonable! We can agree on a reasonable and sane compromise, can't we:
Smoking weed in public is okay, as long as you don't mix it with tobacco!
Thanks you for your attention!