I hear my fellow/.-ers happily denouncing alternative medicine practices because they lack FDA-sanctioned double-blind studies to support them. What is being overlooked is that the scientific method need be applied in the same way to denounce a principle as it would be to assert it.
No, what you here is skeptics asking for proof which alternative medicine whackos consistently fail to provide. If the 'alternative' was effective and reproducible it would move from the 'alternative' side of medicine to the 'mainstream' side.
Note the general lack of such movement.
And please note: the empirical method never requires anyone to disprove a point, but rather to prove it (within statistical reason). There are awfully good reasons for this, and if you sit down and think about it you'll see why this is the case. Failing that, you could always take physics 101 and have someone else explain it to you.
As is, we don't see a great number of 'alternative medicine' proponents jumping up and down, chomping at the bit to prove the efficacy of their pet treatment using the scientific method. Even when some of these proponents are companies which make tens and hundreds of millions of dollars off the ignorance and/or desperation of others.
don't forget that non-physical sicknesses such as depression and stress can be linked to physical ailments.
Bzzzt. Wrong. Pop psychology once again rears its ugly head.
Depression and stress are both physical ailments. Both have direct, measurable analogs in neural chemistry. Changes in neural chemistry for prolongued periods of time can result in damage to the system, with adverse physiological side effects.
All of these sicknesses are physical. No soul or mystical influences required. Crytal power, get thee hence!
But that's basically irrelevant. Regardless of the economic arguments, as long as there is an opportunity to go, there will be people who want to do it.
And so long as they do it on their own dime, without dipping into my tax dollars, more power to 'em.
But if you ever want to get all our eggs out of this one little basket then you'll have to send people out there sooner or later.
Perhaps when it's cost effective and there's a compelling reason to do so. In the interim I say we stick with the robots and keep improving on those.
I realize that many people want to go into space. I also realize that I don't want to subsidize their space operas with my tax dollars. Right now the cost of sending people to Mars is horrendous, and the payoff almost solely in PR. Certainly not worth all the robots we *might* have sent in place of the people.
I can't see spinning disk drives reachin the 120 tb capacity talked about in the article. Although I think the capacity will surely exist in 10 years, I'd place my money on either:
- some form of persistent RAM - holographic storage media
Both have come a long way. The holographic option had a usable storage time of close to a year the last time I checked; not good enough yet for sale, but given that it started on the order of *hours* this is a damned impressive advance.
Plus, the holographic model being talked about now is a cube which you could *actually pop out of the machine*, put into your pocket, and take with you. Imagine going to a friend's house and being able to snap in your entire hard drive as easy as you do a floppy....
I'd rather skip whatever trite holographic sequence MS would put in the OS and watch a 3-D porn flick instead. Maybe with a BillyG look-alike taking it like a dog from "Spaz" Ballmer....
Gods, will you give it a rest? That was how many years ago?
And it's still just as brain-dead today as it was then. Also a perfect example of the fate that awaits a person who underestimates technology and our voracious appetite for it.
And the software hoarders, those who make their collections open to the public, will become the precious new digital libraries of the future. Ranging from the relevant to the obscure (class pictures from the 1980 high school yearbook of Bunghole, Alabama) people will be linking to the better organized packrats running meta searches for damn near anything their hearts desire.
With much improved, AI-driven search tools, of course. The sheer magnitude of information would put this well beyond any human being.
Wonder what they'll want in return? Money? Or deposits of information to expand their store? And more importantly, will this mean that we can find all the porn ever produced in a single place - and then transfer the entire bloody thing to our hard drives?
Society has no business telling me I can't install a hidden camera security system on my own property. If 'society' thinks it can interfere with my property rights in this fashion, this indicates a problem with society, not with me.
Try staying on topic. The rest of your post is irrelevant.
This experiment meets the 'no harm' standard, and I doubt anyone could make a case against participation with knowledge (i.e., the kids would play with the thing whether they knew they were being watched or not).
You could do this experiment in the U.S. There is no need for approval beforehand, although it's certain that some small minority (probably those that disapprove of any child access to the internet) would throw a hissy fit after the fact. It would even be easier to do it if you *weren't* a psychologist because you wouldn't have to worry about professional censure.
Children do indeed learn faster. This is a function of brain development. It's interesting to note that this advantage tends to taper off during the late teen years, precisely at the same time that mandated, forced public education ends.
I wonder if public school ever was supposed to be actually educational.
No, the original mandated public school system in the U.S. was intended to provide interchangeable workers who could be hired and fired at will. This wasn't at all secret; the folks who pushed for the system used this as an argument in favor of public school, claiming this would benefit business and therefore society as well by preventing the rise of 'guild' systems with monopolies on certain areas of knowledge.
Of course, this may explain why the government actually had to *use the army* to force parents to send their children to public school in some communities. Objections to a mandated public school system were widespread and resistance was high.
My security system is my own, on my property, and it's existence is no one's business. I'd rather that people didn't know that it's there; it's less likely that someone intent on criminal activity will try to disable it if they don't know about it in the first place.
I feel no obligation to inform anyone, nor would I if such a law were passed. My property is my property, and if I want a hidden security system then I'll damn well have a hidden security system. Really, what is anyone going to do about it? They don't even know it's there in the first place.
My house, my property, my rules...if I have hidden security set up then that's my business. Visitors don't need to be informed, nor would I want them to know that a) a camera system is installed, and b) that it would have to be thwarted in order to commit an illegal act on my property without getting caught.
I could care less if Congress outlawed my system. There's not a chance in hell I'd rip it out, or advertise its existence to comply with some assinine law. And if there were a babysitter, and she was taped fucking her boyfriend when she should've been watching the kid, it'd serve her right if a copy of that tape made it's way to IRC and was distributed world-wide.
And after porn they'll add any site which has anything to do with homosexuality or bisexuality, even if all it does is provide facts for people who don't have them and want 'em.
Or sites which answer teen questions on sexuality. No doubt anything that deals with birth control or abortion will soon follow suit.
And, of course, soon they'll get into the area of 'soft porn', which will essentially be anything any tight-ass has a problem with. Like women in bathing suits.
I wouldn't have a problem with the domain so long as it's voluntary. Despite what people may think the porn industry has little interest in advertising to children - they don't buy, you see. In fact, it'd make it easier for all those horny adults with credit cards to find the really lewd stuff.
But this doesn't target the porn industry. It targets every site that rigid moralists have an objection to. Yet another fuckwit attempt to ban what they don't like to the boondocks.
No, it is *not*. Do your research before speaking out of turn. Bonobos typically have their first offspring at around 13 years of age, but begin genital play between themselves and other juveniles and occasionally adults as well, between the ages of 2 and 4.
Yes, bonobos typically do have their first offspring around the age of 13. However, if you'd actually bothered to do a bit of research, you'd realize that bonobos becomes sexually mature at the age of 7. The 'juveniles' here refers to bonobos between the ages of 7 and 13 - sexually mature but not considered to be adults within the troop.
As for the younger bonobos they often do participate in sexual play - with other bonobos of the same age. They mimic their elders. Just like children in human societies playing 'doctor'.
Do your research or stop polluting/. with your arrogant and quite frankly *wrong* misstatements.
I've done my research. You, apparently, have an agenda in promoting pedophilia by making baseless claims that such a thing is 'natural' and occurs with other primates. It's my suspicion that you have some serious sexual issues with respect to children.
But back to the original point: there is nothing whatsoever 'healthy' or 'good' about having sex with prepubescents. Nothing whatsoever. No sane adult would argue with me here. If you think there is, you're in need of some serious therapy, and soon before you put your hands on some unsuspecting kid.
Uggh... That kind of breeding just doesn't help anyone.
I've often said the same thing about zealots of any stripe - extreme liberals, extreme conservatives, religious whackos, people who claim that the poor are poor because they're too lazy to be rich, etc. If only these morons would just stop breeding the genetic pool wouldn't be so damned yellow all the time.
Enron was fraud, plain and simple. Fraud isn't commerce. The government had every right to step into the Enron/accounting mess, kick ass, and take names.
Fraud which the Bush administration was so very interested in supporting up until Enron screwed up so bad that the public noticed it. So much for government regulation.
Slashdot Mirror
I hear my fellow /.-ers happily denouncing alternative medicine practices because they lack FDA-sanctioned double-blind studies to support them. What is being overlooked is that the scientific method need be applied in the same way to denounce a principle as it would be to assert it.
No, what you here is skeptics asking for proof which alternative medicine whackos consistently fail to provide. If the 'alternative' was effective and reproducible it would move from the 'alternative' side of medicine to the 'mainstream' side.
Note the general lack of such movement.
And please note: the empirical method never requires anyone to disprove a point, but rather to prove it (within statistical reason). There are awfully good reasons for this, and if you sit down and think about it you'll see why this is the case. Failing that, you could always take physics 101 and have someone else explain it to you.
As is, we don't see a great number of 'alternative medicine' proponents jumping up and down, chomping at the bit to prove the efficacy of their pet treatment using the scientific method. Even when some of these proponents are companies which make tens and hundreds of millions of dollars off the ignorance and/or desperation of others.
Max
don't forget that non-physical sicknesses such as depression and stress can be linked to physical ailments.
Bzzzt. Wrong. Pop psychology once again rears its ugly head.
Depression and stress are both physical ailments. Both have direct, measurable analogs in neural chemistry. Changes in neural chemistry for prolongued periods of time can result in damage to the system, with adverse physiological side effects.
All of these sicknesses are physical. No soul or mystical influences required. Crytal power, get thee hence!
Max
But that's basically irrelevant. Regardless of the economic arguments, as long as there is an opportunity to go, there will be people who want to do it.
And so long as they do it on their own dime, without dipping into my tax dollars, more power to 'em.
Max
But if you ever want to get all our eggs out of this one little basket then you'll have to send people out there sooner or later.
Perhaps when it's cost effective and there's a compelling reason to do so. In the interim I say we stick with the robots and keep improving on those.
I realize that many people want to go into space. I also realize that I don't want to subsidize their space operas with my tax dollars. Right now the cost of sending people to Mars is horrendous, and the payoff almost solely in PR. Certainly not worth all the robots we *might* have sent in place of the people.
Max
I can't see spinning disk drives reachin the 120 tb capacity talked about in the article. Although I think the capacity will surely exist in 10 years, I'd place my money on either:
- some form of persistent RAM
- holographic storage media
Both have come a long way. The holographic option had a usable storage time of close to a year the last time I checked; not good enough yet for sale, but given that it started on the order of *hours* this is a damned impressive advance.
Plus, the holographic model being talked about now is a cube which you could *actually pop out of the machine*, put into your pocket, and take with you. Imagine going to a friend's house and being able to snap in your entire hard drive as easy as you do a floppy....
Max
I'd rather skip whatever trite holographic sequence MS would put in the OS and watch a 3-D porn flick instead. Maybe with a BillyG look-alike taking it like a dog from "Spaz" Ballmer....
Max
Gods, will you give it a rest? That was how many years ago?
And it's still just as brain-dead today as it was then. Also a perfect example of the fate that awaits a person who underestimates technology and our voracious appetite for it.
Max
And the software hoarders, those who make their collections open to the public, will become the precious new digital libraries of the future. Ranging from the relevant to the obscure (class pictures from the 1980 high school yearbook of Bunghole, Alabama) people will be linking to the better organized packrats running meta searches for damn near anything their hearts desire.
With much improved, AI-driven search tools, of course. The sheer magnitude of information would put this well beyond any human being.
Wonder what they'll want in return? Money? Or deposits of information to expand their store? And more importantly, will this mean that we can find all the porn ever produced in a single place - and then transfer the entire bloody thing to our hard drives?
Max
Society has no business telling me I can't install a hidden camera security system on my own property. If 'society' thinks it can interfere with my property rights in this fashion, this indicates a problem with society, not with me.
Try staying on topic. The rest of your post is irrelevant.
Max
This experiment meets the 'no harm' standard, and I doubt anyone could make a case against participation with knowledge (i.e., the kids would play with the thing whether they knew they were being watched or not).
You could do this experiment in the U.S. There is no need for approval beforehand, although it's certain that some small minority (probably those that disapprove of any child access to the internet) would throw a hissy fit after the fact. It would even be easier to do it if you *weren't* a psychologist because you wouldn't have to worry about professional censure.
Max
Children do indeed learn faster. This is a function of brain development. It's interesting to note that this advantage tends to taper off during the late teen years, precisely at the same time that mandated, forced public education ends.
Max
Sounds to me like they are concerned with the quality of the educational experience the children recieve at home. I know I sure am!
Then tend to your own children and don't presume you know what's best for ours.
Max
I wonder if public school ever was supposed to be actually educational.
No, the original mandated public school system in the U.S. was intended to provide interchangeable workers who could be hired and fired at will. This wasn't at all secret; the folks who pushed for the system used this as an argument in favor of public school, claiming this would benefit business and therefore society as well by preventing the rise of 'guild' systems with monopolies on certain areas of knowledge.
Of course, this may explain why the government actually had to *use the army* to force parents to send their children to public school in some communities. Objections to a mandated public school system were widespread and resistance was high.
Max
The MOST profound effect of our school system is to very effectivly prevent almost all people under the age of 18 from being a part of the force
No doubt a plot by the Dark Side!
Max
they don't care how little we pay starving undergrads, for example...
...in an article talking about ghetto kids in India. The irony is thick enough to cut with a knife.
Max
Forcing a bit of odd westernization-evolution on the kids...
Funny, I didn't see any mention of kids being held at gunpoint and commanded to use the computer.
Max
I see very little maturity in someone who panders after their banal instincts.
I can see your shorts are a bit tight. Might try removing that rod from your sphincter, too.
Max
My security system is my own, on my property, and it's existence is no one's business. I'd rather that people didn't know that it's there; it's less likely that someone intent on criminal activity will try to disable it if they don't know about it in the first place.
I feel no obligation to inform anyone, nor would I if such a law were passed. My property is my property, and if I want a hidden security system then I'll damn well have a hidden security system. Really, what is anyone going to do about it? They don't even know it's there in the first place.
Max
My house, my property, my rules...if I have hidden security set up then that's my business. Visitors don't need to be informed, nor would I want them to know that a) a camera system is installed, and b) that it would have to be thwarted in order to commit an illegal act on my property without getting caught.
I could care less if Congress outlawed my system. There's not a chance in hell I'd rip it out, or advertise its existence to comply with some assinine law. And if there were a babysitter, and she was taped fucking her boyfriend when she should've been watching the kid, it'd serve her right if a copy of that tape made it's way to IRC and was distributed world-wide.
Max
And after porn they'll add any site which has anything to do with homosexuality or bisexuality, even if all it does is provide facts for people who don't have them and want 'em.
Or sites which answer teen questions on sexuality. No doubt anything that deals with birth control or abortion will soon follow suit.
And, of course, soon they'll get into the area of 'soft porn', which will essentially be anything any tight-ass has a problem with. Like women in bathing suits.
I wouldn't have a problem with the domain so long as it's voluntary. Despite what people may think the porn industry has little interest in advertising to children - they don't buy, you see. In fact, it'd make it easier for all those horny adults with credit cards to find the really lewd stuff.
But this doesn't target the porn industry. It targets every site that rigid moralists have an objection to. Yet another fuckwit attempt to ban what they don't like to the boondocks.
Max
No, it is *not*. Do your research before speaking out of turn. Bonobos typically have their first offspring at around 13 years of age, but begin genital play between themselves and other juveniles and occasionally adults as well, between the ages of 2 and 4.
/. with your arrogant and quite frankly *wrong* misstatements.
Yes, bonobos typically do have their first offspring around the age of 13. However, if you'd actually bothered to do a bit of research, you'd realize that bonobos becomes sexually mature at the age of 7. The 'juveniles' here refers to bonobos between the ages of 7 and 13 - sexually mature but not considered to be adults within the troop.
As for the younger bonobos they often do participate in sexual play - with other bonobos of the same age. They mimic their elders. Just like children in human societies playing 'doctor'.
Do your research or stop polluting
I've done my research. You, apparently, have an agenda in promoting pedophilia by making baseless claims that such a thing is 'natural' and occurs with other primates. It's my suspicion that you have some serious sexual issues with respect to children.
But back to the original point: there is nothing whatsoever 'healthy' or 'good' about having sex with prepubescents. Nothing whatsoever. No sane adult would argue with me here. If you think there is, you're in need of some serious therapy, and soon before you put your hands on some unsuspecting kid.
Max
Those vacant-stared people at K-Mart at 2 PM don't help anyone.
Neither do assholes who think that the vast majority of the poor are simply too lazy to be rich. Time to break out the clue-bat.
Max
Ok, So bombing obviously solves your financial problems, but I think you should shut the fuck up
I say we nuke this son of a bitch.
Max
Uggh... That kind of breeding just doesn't help anyone.
I've often said the same thing about zealots of any stripe - extreme liberals, extreme conservatives, religious whackos, people who claim that the poor are poor because they're too lazy to be rich, etc. If only these morons would just stop breeding the genetic pool wouldn't be so damned yellow all the time.
Max
Enron was fraud, plain and simple. Fraud isn't commerce. The government had every right to step into the Enron/accounting mess, kick ass, and take names.
Fraud which the Bush administration was so very interested in supporting up until Enron screwed up so bad that the public noticed it. So much for government regulation.
Max