I believe that all you need to create a self-sustaining group of humans with no significant chance of inbreeding is something along the lines of a few hundred people (mostly unrelated through blood, mind you).
If the population is adequetely controlled, which would need to be done with such a small number of people, it would be quite possible to create a large, diverse genetic pool to draw from.
Of course, by the time such a trip would be possible, our study of genetic code might be good enough to allow, regardless of how disturbing it seems today, brothers and sisters to continually inbreed, while creating genetically diverse children through the 'magic' genetic manipulation. (...and no, I wouldn't and I hope that none of my off-spring or their off-spring, and so on, would be interested in mating with eachother.)
That's so far off that there is no telling what our species could be capable of. It is possible that we would be able to create our own stars using amazing technology that we can only dream about today. If that happens, then it simply wouldn't matter if Stars begin to wink out of existence, we would simply replace them with new stars or rejuvenate them.
Perhaps, by then, we will transcend the physical plane and exist in places that are simply impossible for us to comprehend at this point in our existence.
2000 Years ago humanity didn't even think that there was such a thing as the Sound Barrier or could even understand the idea of landing on the Moon, let alone the idea behind a modern day computer system.
Assuming that we are at or nearing the limits of what humanity can achieve or will ever achieve is simply a very limited way to look at what we are.
...start with this idea that the future matters and keep it growing. It might take a long time, but if we simply chalk it up as something that won't happen, then it won't happen.
BTW, never will I say this is an easy thing to do. However, it is something that must be done. Things that must be done are never easy to do.
The way to start is with us, people who can have the forsight and intellectual capacity to see and understand these facts. To continue this, we must instill these thoughts and beliefs into as many people as possible, if anything, with the children we have.
We need to do this, if we don't, we may as well line ourselves up and put eachother out of our collective misery.
The way a number of people publicly remark, it honestly seems as though much of our leadership and many people in positions of power simply do not care whether or not the human race continues to exist past the point of their departure from the living.
You are being extremely obtuse in supposing that the suggestion of colonizing other solars systems and planets would include the following:
Happening in the near future, meaning within the next 10 to 50 years. (Possible, but not entirely likely.)
Include the entire or the majority of the population of Earth. (Again, possible, but not entirely likely.)
Consist of One single colony ship being shipped to one single solar system/planet. (Incredibly silly to assume, why put all eggs in one basket, we are talking about the long-term survival of the species, not a one-shot, last ditch effort.)
A galactic colonizing effort would best be serverd by having hundreds of ships with at least dozens heading towards individual points. What this would provide is redundancy, the ability to assist one another in case of catastrophy as well as the opportunity to visit other places, similar to us currently being capable of visiting other countries in our existing one planet existence.
If a trip is going to take several hundred years or more to make, people need a change of scenery, we need different groups to interact with and we need a large diverse population to arrive at an 'end point'.
By that point, there should be enough humans, on enough planets that the loss of one planet, while tragic, wouldn't wipe out the species. That's an entirely different perspective to keep.
Except that we have enough time, before the death of the Sun, to travel the interstellar distances to any of a million? or billions? of stars that have planets we could support human life with...
The perspective of that much time is vastly different then looking at the prospect of starving to death within our lifetime for no other reason then the human race failing to at least attempt to control the change of our climate. The survival of the human race should be important to us.
We have the technology available to create large carbon dioxide scrubbers, they aren't cheap, but they are possible. We have the technology to decrease the absorbtion of heat in major cities which would decrease the impact major cities has on weather systems.
Almost everything we need to lessen our impact and the impact of Nature on the global climate is at our fingertips. There is no reason for humanity to be so apathetic and downright stupid about our own ongoing survival.
It's not about giving things up, it's about changing the means we reach our ways and fixing the problems we do cause. This is about owning our own existence and future survival. This is about owning up to our past mistakes, even though we knew not what we were doing. Now that we know what to do, we just need to do it and stop acting like the stupid s--ts we collectively act like.
The majority of Scientists believe that human behavior 'contributes' to the already naturally occuring phenomenon of Global Warming. Humans are not the root cause, humans simply assist the process in speeding up, even slightly.
One thing most all of those scientists agree on is that Global Warming is happening. That shouldn't be part of the argument anymore.
The only thing that should be argued, tested, made into theories is what we, as humans, can do to slow or otherwise alter the course of Global Warming. One thing many Scientists believe is that we need to radically change our behavior in order to decrease our contributions to Global Warming.
This includes, but is not limited to, discovering cleaner sources of energy production and changing the design of cities and metropolitan areas to have a lower retention of heat. Right now, there are many ideas about how to go about doing that.
The final soltution to the possibility of the Earth losing the ability to support human life is to work towards being able to leave our planet, terraform or design methods to survive on planets that are nowhere near 'Earth Normals'. Colonization of our Solar System and then Extrasolar planets is what will allow our species to continue and thrive.
...little itty-bitty nanobots would be cruising through your blood stream designed to look for and repair/fill in the bits that are beginning to wear down through long use.
Granted, even though those 'non-living' bits stay relatively static throughout your adult life, the human body is already able to repair/replace those bits, if they become broken or torn. If that wasn't the case then adult humans would have to be more careful about tearing or cutting their skin or ever obtaining a broken bone...
The suggested problem #8 you are providing isn't really all that much of a problem, considering that most skin sagging and other 'non-living' tissue issues are partially related to the aging of the living tissue components.
I have been playing SWG since launch and while the first day was terrible, the game became incredibly stable rather quickly. (Within two days of launch)
There simply is no comparison between the stability of SWG and the stability of WoW. From what I have been reading WoW is like a rickety bailing wire and spit Wright Brother's airplane that can't stay off the ground for very long and crashes continually. Whereas SWG was, at launch, more like a WWII Bomber that needed very regular maintenance with a few unforseen incidents here and there.
These days SWG has become a supercargo aircraft that can go and go and go for days and weeks without requiring any maintenance, even though it occasionally has some slow-downs due to heavy loads...
There simply is no comparison in regards to server stability.
A few years old? RedHat 6 was released late 98 early 99. That's about 6 years ago, which is practically the dark ages of computing, when compared to today.
What's your point? That back at the end of the 90's RedHat 6 was worse then Windows 98? How does that really have any bearing on the article this whole thread is about?
As an old UNIX Hacker, your annoyance should have meant that you were going to actually lock down that machine, instead of letting it get cracked everytime you turned around....or are you just being a troll?
...to tell if the nerds at the scifi convention are heterosexual or homosexual when all you hear is "...Starbuck is so Hot!" from a small collection of nerd-men...
...our current President of the United States, I made it a point to listen to the entirety of his speech that occurred at the onset of the war with Iraq.
In that speech, he outlined a number of solid reasons for the war with Iraq. One that stood out, for me, was the removal of Sadam in order to give freedom and safety to the Iraqi people. He continued by talking about the WMD's, region stability and even how all of this could have been avoided by Sadam Hussein's Regime, which would have been if they simply stood aside and gave up their power.
Even if the underlying unspoken reason is oil, quite frankly, I am happy with that reason. Like it or not, the reality of our modern world is that we rely on the availability of oil for every single good and service that is available. Unfortunately, there simply is no readily available replacement for oil that could be put into effective use on short notice.
Without oil, farm equipment cease to operate, there goes the food supply. Without oil, trains and semi-trucks cease to operate, there goes readily available goods, like clothes, food and power. Power I say? Yes, how else do you think that powerplants, even nuclear plants, receive the fuel they need to generate electricity? It just doesn't appear at the powerplant by will alone.
If we had a readily available, cheap and instantly ready to implement, as in we could pour it into our gasoline and diesel running engines, solution to the oil issue, I would be all over that in a heartbeat.
...if you have been interested in acquiring a modern Mac PC for a while and have been stopped due to the normally high price of Apple PCs, then this MacMini isn't so high priced a solution, especially if you already have a USB Keyboard/Mouse and Monitor handy.
Thanks, I am sticking with it. I never answered that question with any kind of convoluted answer.
I have said prior to starting my work that I didn't have one and now that I am working on one, I state that I am currently working on one. I only elaborate if pressed for elaboration.
...a large part of being a citizen of the United States these days. When I was younger, I was in the arrogant land of believing that College Degrees were over-rated and worth very little on paper.
However, in the years since, I have grown in wisdom and have discovered that book knowledge will only get you so far and that personal experience will also, only get you so far. Taken together, a person can go places that having only one alone would be near impossible.
Now, reaching my 30's, I am kicking myself in the rear working towards obtaining a college degree to build upon and further my career goals.
If I had an opportunity to peform a 'do-over' the only thing that I would change in my life is completing at least an Associate's Degree the first few years after completing High School.
I seem to recall that the Enron 401k program gave employees the option of only putting their money into Enron stock and perhaps even Enron Subsidiaries. From what I understand, those employees had little to no choice in the matter and they ended up being robbed blind by the upper management.
The whole Enron fiasco is a very complicated piece of work and set in motion a number of important rules for accounting and also rules for retirement accounts. It is terribly unfortunate that those people lost what they did and they should have some sort of 'bail out', but that should come out of the rear ends of those that bilked them out of their 401k account balances.
It would be great if Social Security would be able to take up the slack and bail out these people. Unfortunately, Social Security simply doesn't work that way.
For instance, the death benefit of Social Security hasn't increased beyond $300 for over 30 years. The last time a checked, the average funeral was reaching $7000. When you pass on your family will be stuck footing the rest of the bill.
Beyond that Social Security simply doesn't provide enough money to continue living the same life someone lived before 'retiring'. Speak to your grandparents or parents and find out what they made the last year of working and what they recieve from Social Security. Also understand that the benefit stays nearly the same from the first check to the last Social Security Check with minimal increases for 'standard of living' which often amounts to little more then a few percentage point increase over a few years.
I don't believe that Trickle-Down Economics is the best thing in the world. I never suggested so in my piece.
What I believe in is an Interlinked Distributed Economics model. If you take one significant section of people out of the economic model, other areas of the model begin to suffer and it could cause the entire model to collapse under its own weight.
My idea is a bit more complicated then the simplistic "Trickle-Down Economic Theory". It's difficult for many people to see and understand. Especially when most people automatically assume "Trickle-Down Economics" whenever anyone mentions anything about a greater economic impact.
The wider a view you take when looking at an Interlinked Distributed Economics model the more complicated it becomes. Groups of people that may never meet in the street or in social settings can greatly and deeply impact the economic wellbeing of one another.
13,000 titles stolen and warezed out to the world.
Do you know how many jobs that may have negtively impacted? Do you know that crime rates, including violent acts of rape, murder and assault steadily increase when an area loses a significant number of jobs?
How many truck drivers lost their jobs because there were no software packages to ship to the stores because this kid stole and gave away over 13,000 different software titles? How many stores closed their doors because they couldn't sell as much as they needed, due to the ex-truck drivers no longer buying anything? How many factory workers lost their jobs because people, both store clerks/salespeople and the ex-truckers could no longer afford to purchase durable goods, like automobiles, refrigerators and microwave ovens?
The economy is so intertwined that it is possible that the actions this 'poor kid' took may have assisted in increasing the crime rate and murder rate. Honestly, I don't believe it is possible to punish this 'poor kid' enough.
Go ahead, keep thinking that this is nothing more then the gubmint doing the police work of corporations.
...I agree that Andrew Fastow should be given 50 years to a life sentence for the crime he committed, his acts have destroyed or permantently negatively impacted the lives of so many people, even beyond Enron, that it isn't even funny.
By destroying the savings of those Enron Employees and the Investments of those investors, Andrew Fastow and his 'team' permanently decreased the amount of money those people can use in our economy. Those people won't be buying many of the things they were going to buy, this negatively impacts the jobs and livelihood of people that never worked for Enron, since they won't be selling or making the things that would end up being sold.
This 'Poor Kid' by his warez activities may have cost the jobs of hundreds of people or at least decreased the earnings of those people. Now, those people don't have the money they needed to run out and buy the things they wanted and needed, which decreases the sales that would have otherwise been made.
The ripple effect of this is that everyone from the store salespeople, the delivery men all the way back to the factory may now face layoffs or paycuts, whether in hours worked or smaller end of the year/month bonuses. These crimes affect so many people that it's not even funny.
Murder and rape are terrible crimes, and don't get me wrong, these crimes should always have heavy penalties attached to them. However, in the bigger picture of things, murder of one to several people has a lower economic impact on greater society then committing the crimes this 'poor kid' or Andrew Fastow have committed.
The problem isn't necesarily with our criminal justice system. The problem is that people need to see beyond the crime and look at the impact and or potential impact beyond the crime in question.
Honestly, this 'poor kid's' crime could lead to the loss of jobs, which invariably leads to an increase in crime or at least assault as people tend to become quite on edge when they have no method of keeping a roof over their heads or keeping food in their bellies.
...would be the effects of the one inch tilt of the Earth's axis...
What kind of global climate changes could be experienced due to the alteration of the Earth's axis by one inch?
Will that cause more or less light to strike particular areas heating/cooling the air, thusly altering the jet stream enough to manipulate the weather in a good/bad for us fasion?
BTW, the speed up of the Earth's spin is referring to the 24 hour cycle of days on Earth.
Having my brains blown out would be much better then being blinded, at least until medical science can completely replace damaged/non-functional eyeballs. At that point, I would rather be blinded everyday of the week then ever have my brains blown out.
If I had my choice between permanent blindness and instant death. (Permanent supposing that medical science will never come up with a replacement eye.) I would choose instant death.
I am sure if you were into photography and other visual arts, like I am, you would also equally value your sight over your own life. If you were into musical and sound art, you may value your hearing and then your sight, in order of importance. If you were into gourmet cooking, you might value your sense of taste and then your sight, in order of importance.
First, a laser beam is easier to aim then a rock or 'overly stale marshmellow'.
Secondly, I have seen semi-retarded bastards very willing to zap people in the face and eyes with lower powered laser pointers then they would be to throw a pebble or something else into someone's face. It was done to me once and the moron was fired the same day.
Lastly, the laser described in the main article could permanently blind you far quicker then a cheap tiny little laser pointer. It could cause blindness in a very short amount of time.
When you put a laser pointer or similar device into a moron's hands they don't conceive of the possibility that 'harmless light' could possibly hurt anyone. Regardless of whether or not they know that throwing a rock or something at someone could bring them harm.
You are putting to much faith in the brainpower of the vast majority of idiots out in this world.
What would you do if you were walking along and suddenly went blind because some heartless bastard pointed one of these into your eyes?
In an instant, your entire life would immediately change and not for the better, I might add.
This would bring new meaning to the term "Blind Rage" to you. Now, imagine this happening while you were driving an automobile or were walking across a dangerous area, like a mine field or nearby a cliff face...
This would be extremely dangerous as a weapon.
Do you know how much you rely upon your eyesight for just about everything that you do? (Bearing in mind that I am presuming that at this moment you have some use of your eyeballs...)
Just imagining what being on the receiving end of such an attack is extremely scary. Out of all of my senses, I value sight the most.
Slashdot Mirror
I believe that all you need to create a self-sustaining group of humans with no significant chance of inbreeding is something along the lines of a few hundred people (mostly unrelated through blood, mind you).
If the population is adequetely controlled, which would need to be done with such a small number of people, it would be quite possible to create a large, diverse genetic pool to draw from.
Of course, by the time such a trip would be possible, our study of genetic code might be good enough to allow, regardless of how disturbing it seems today, brothers and sisters to continually inbreed, while creating genetically diverse children through the 'magic' genetic manipulation. (...and no, I wouldn't and I hope that none of my off-spring or their off-spring, and so on, would be interested in mating with eachother.)
That's so far off that there is no telling what our species could be capable of. It is possible that we would be able to create our own stars using amazing technology that we can only dream about today. If that happens, then it simply wouldn't matter if Stars begin to wink out of existence, we would simply replace them with new stars or rejuvenate them.
Perhaps, by then, we will transcend the physical plane and exist in places that are simply impossible for us to comprehend at this point in our existence.
2000 Years ago humanity didn't even think that there was such a thing as the Sound Barrier or could even understand the idea of landing on the Moon, let alone the idea behind a modern day computer system.
Assuming that we are at or nearing the limits of what humanity can achieve or will ever achieve is simply a very limited way to look at what we are.
BTW, never will I say this is an easy thing to do. However, it is something that must be done. Things that must be done are never easy to do.
The way to start is with us, people who can have the forsight and intellectual capacity to see and understand these facts. To continue this, we must instill these thoughts and beliefs into as many people as possible, if anything, with the children we have.
We need to do this, if we don't, we may as well line ourselves up and put eachother out of our collective misery.
The way a number of people publicly remark, it honestly seems as though much of our leadership and many people in positions of power simply do not care whether or not the human race continues to exist past the point of their departure from the living.
You are being extremely obtuse in supposing that the suggestion of colonizing other solars systems and planets would include the following:
Happening in the near future, meaning within the next 10 to 50 years. (Possible, but not entirely likely.)
Include the entire or the majority of the population of Earth. (Again, possible, but not entirely likely.)
Consist of One single colony ship being shipped to one single solar system/planet. (Incredibly silly to assume, why put all eggs in one basket, we are talking about the long-term survival of the species, not a one-shot, last ditch effort.)
A galactic colonizing effort would best be serverd by having hundreds of ships with at least dozens heading towards individual points. What this would provide is redundancy, the ability to assist one another in case of catastrophy as well as the opportunity to visit other places, similar to us currently being capable of visiting other countries in our existing one planet existence.
If a trip is going to take several hundred years or more to make, people need a change of scenery, we need different groups to interact with and we need a large diverse population to arrive at an 'end point'.
By that point, there should be enough humans, on enough planets that the loss of one planet, while tragic, wouldn't wipe out the species. That's an entirely different perspective to keep.
Except that we have enough time, before the death of the Sun, to travel the interstellar distances to any of a million? or billions? of stars that have planets we could support human life with...
The perspective of that much time is vastly different then looking at the prospect of starving to death within our lifetime for no other reason then the human race failing to at least attempt to control the change of our climate. The survival of the human race should be important to us.
We have the technology available to create large carbon dioxide scrubbers, they aren't cheap, but they are possible. We have the technology to decrease the absorbtion of heat in major cities which would decrease the impact major cities has on weather systems.
Almost everything we need to lessen our impact and the impact of Nature on the global climate is at our fingertips. There is no reason for humanity to be so apathetic and downright stupid about our own ongoing survival.
It's not about giving things up, it's about changing the means we reach our ways and fixing the problems we do cause. This is about owning our own existence and future survival. This is about owning up to our past mistakes, even though we knew not what we were doing. Now that we know what to do, we just need to do it and stop acting like the stupid s--ts we collectively act like.
I was there was a 'buzzer' tag.
The majority of Scientists believe that human behavior 'contributes' to the already naturally occuring phenomenon of Global Warming. Humans are not the root cause, humans simply assist the process in speeding up, even slightly.
One thing most all of those scientists agree on is that Global Warming is happening. That shouldn't be part of the argument anymore.
The only thing that should be argued, tested, made into theories is what we, as humans, can do to slow or otherwise alter the course of Global Warming. One thing many Scientists believe is that we need to radically change our behavior in order to decrease our contributions to Global Warming.
This includes, but is not limited to, discovering cleaner sources of energy production and changing the design of cities and metropolitan areas to have a lower retention of heat. Right now, there are many ideas about how to go about doing that.
The final soltution to the possibility of the Earth losing the ability to support human life is to work towards being able to leave our planet, terraform or design methods to survive on planets that are nowhere near 'Earth Normals'. Colonization of our Solar System and then Extrasolar planets is what will allow our species to continue and thrive.
Granted, even though those 'non-living' bits stay relatively static throughout your adult life, the human body is already able to repair/replace those bits, if they become broken or torn. If that wasn't the case then adult humans would have to be more careful about tearing or cutting their skin or ever obtaining a broken bone...
The suggested problem #8 you are providing isn't really all that much of a problem, considering that most skin sagging and other 'non-living' tissue issues are partially related to the aging of the living tissue components.
I have been playing SWG since launch and while the first day was terrible, the game became incredibly stable rather quickly. (Within two days of launch)
There simply is no comparison between the stability of SWG and the stability of WoW. From what I have been reading WoW is like a rickety bailing wire and spit Wright Brother's airplane that can't stay off the ground for very long and crashes continually. Whereas SWG was, at launch, more like a WWII Bomber that needed very regular maintenance with a few unforseen incidents here and there.
These days SWG has become a supercargo aircraft that can go and go and go for days and weeks without requiring any maintenance, even though it occasionally has some slow-downs due to heavy loads...
There simply is no comparison in regards to server stability.
A few years old? RedHat 6 was released late 98 early 99. That's about 6 years ago, which is practically the dark ages of computing, when compared to today.
...or are you just being a troll?
What's your point? That back at the end of the 90's RedHat 6 was worse then Windows 98? How does that really have any bearing on the article this whole thread is about?
As an old UNIX Hacker, your annoyance should have meant that you were going to actually lock down that machine, instead of letting it get cracked everytime you turned around.
...to tell if the nerds at the scifi convention are heterosexual or homosexual when all you hear is "...Starbuck is so Hot!" from a small collection of nerd-men...
...our current President of the United States, I made it a point to listen to the entirety of his speech that occurred at the onset of the war with Iraq.
In that speech, he outlined a number of solid reasons for the war with Iraq. One that stood out, for me, was the removal of Sadam in order to give freedom and safety to the Iraqi people. He continued by talking about the WMD's, region stability and even how all of this could have been avoided by Sadam Hussein's Regime, which would have been if they simply stood aside and gave up their power.
Even if the underlying unspoken reason is oil, quite frankly, I am happy with that reason. Like it or not, the reality of our modern world is that we rely on the availability of oil for every single good and service that is available. Unfortunately, there simply is no readily available replacement for oil that could be put into effective use on short notice.
Without oil, farm equipment cease to operate, there goes the food supply. Without oil, trains and semi-trucks cease to operate, there goes readily available goods, like clothes, food and power. Power I say? Yes, how else do you think that powerplants, even nuclear plants, receive the fuel they need to generate electricity? It just doesn't appear at the powerplant by will alone.
If we had a readily available, cheap and instantly ready to implement, as in we could pour it into our gasoline and diesel running engines, solution to the oil issue, I would be all over that in a heartbeat.
Thanks, I am sticking with it. I never answered that question with any kind of convoluted answer.
I have said prior to starting my work that I didn't have one and now that I am working on one, I state that I am currently working on one. I only elaborate if pressed for elaboration.
However, in the years since, I have grown in wisdom and have discovered that book knowledge will only get you so far and that personal experience will also, only get you so far. Taken together, a person can go places that having only one alone would be near impossible.
Now, reaching my 30's, I am kicking myself in the rear working towards obtaining a college degree to build upon and further my career goals.
If I had an opportunity to peform a 'do-over' the only thing that I would change in my life is completing at least an Associate's Degree the first few years after completing High School.
I seem to recall that the Enron 401k program gave employees the option of only putting their money into Enron stock and perhaps even Enron Subsidiaries. From what I understand, those employees had little to no choice in the matter and they ended up being robbed blind by the upper management.
The whole Enron fiasco is a very complicated piece of work and set in motion a number of important rules for accounting and also rules for retirement accounts. It is terribly unfortunate that those people lost what they did and they should have some sort of 'bail out', but that should come out of the rear ends of those that bilked them out of their 401k account balances.
It would be great if Social Security would be able to take up the slack and bail out these people. Unfortunately, Social Security simply doesn't work that way.
For instance, the death benefit of Social Security hasn't increased beyond $300 for over 30 years. The last time a checked, the average funeral was reaching $7000. When you pass on your family will be stuck footing the rest of the bill.
Beyond that Social Security simply doesn't provide enough money to continue living the same life someone lived before 'retiring'. Speak to your grandparents or parents and find out what they made the last year of working and what they recieve from Social Security. Also understand that the benefit stays nearly the same from the first check to the last Social Security Check with minimal increases for 'standard of living' which often amounts to little more then a few percentage point increase over a few years.
I don't believe that Trickle-Down Economics is the best thing in the world. I never suggested so in my piece.
What I believe in is an Interlinked Distributed Economics model. If you take one significant section of people out of the economic model, other areas of the model begin to suffer and it could cause the entire model to collapse under its own weight.
My idea is a bit more complicated then the simplistic "Trickle-Down Economic Theory". It's difficult for many people to see and understand. Especially when most people automatically assume "Trickle-Down Economics" whenever anyone mentions anything about a greater economic impact.
The wider a view you take when looking at an Interlinked Distributed Economics model the more complicated it becomes. Groups of people that may never meet in the street or in social settings can greatly and deeply impact the economic wellbeing of one another.
You aren't looking at the bigger picture here.
13,000 titles stolen and warezed out to the world.
Do you know how many jobs that may have negtively impacted? Do you know that crime rates, including violent acts of rape, murder and assault steadily increase when an area loses a significant number of jobs?
How many truck drivers lost their jobs because there were no software packages to ship to the stores because this kid stole and gave away over 13,000 different software titles? How many stores closed their doors because they couldn't sell as much as they needed, due to the ex-truck drivers no longer buying anything? How many factory workers lost their jobs because people, both store clerks/salespeople and the ex-truckers could no longer afford to purchase durable goods, like automobiles, refrigerators and microwave ovens?
The economy is so intertwined that it is possible that the actions this 'poor kid' took may have assisted in increasing the crime rate and murder rate. Honestly, I don't believe it is possible to punish this 'poor kid' enough.
Go ahead, keep thinking that this is nothing more then the gubmint doing the police work of corporations.
By destroying the savings of those Enron Employees and the Investments of those investors, Andrew Fastow and his 'team' permanently decreased the amount of money those people can use in our economy. Those people won't be buying many of the things they were going to buy, this negatively impacts the jobs and livelihood of people that never worked for Enron, since they won't be selling or making the things that would end up being sold.
This 'Poor Kid' by his warez activities may have cost the jobs of hundreds of people or at least decreased the earnings of those people. Now, those people don't have the money they needed to run out and buy the things they wanted and needed, which decreases the sales that would have otherwise been made.
The ripple effect of this is that everyone from the store salespeople, the delivery men all the way back to the factory may now face layoffs or paycuts, whether in hours worked or smaller end of the year/month bonuses. These crimes affect so many people that it's not even funny.
Murder and rape are terrible crimes, and don't get me wrong, these crimes should always have heavy penalties attached to them. However, in the bigger picture of things, murder of one to several people has a lower economic impact on greater society then committing the crimes this 'poor kid' or Andrew Fastow have committed.
The problem isn't necesarily with our criminal justice system. The problem is that people need to see beyond the crime and look at the impact and or potential impact beyond the crime in question.
Honestly, this 'poor kid's' crime could lead to the loss of jobs, which invariably leads to an increase in crime or at least assault as people tend to become quite on edge when they have no method of keeping a roof over their heads or keeping food in their bellies.
Pure comic genius! You must have stayed up incredibly late working on that!
Here's a hint though, what I stated actually did add to the conversation as it provided useful information to the parent poster.
What great irony, all you added to the conversation was what you had in fact accused me of doing in the first place! That is what is so funny here.
What kind of global climate changes could be experienced due to the alteration of the Earth's axis by one inch?
Will that cause more or less light to strike particular areas heating/cooling the air, thusly altering the jet stream enough to manipulate the weather in a good/bad for us fasion?
BTW, the speed up of the Earth's spin is referring to the 24 hour cycle of days on Earth.
Having my brains blown out would be much better then being blinded, at least until medical science can completely replace damaged/non-functional eyeballs. At that point, I would rather be blinded everyday of the week then ever have my brains blown out.
If I had my choice between permanent blindness and instant death. (Permanent supposing that medical science will never come up with a replacement eye.) I would choose instant death.
I am sure if you were into photography and other visual arts, like I am, you would also equally value your sight over your own life. If you were into musical and sound art, you may value your hearing and then your sight, in order of importance. If you were into gourmet cooking, you might value your sense of taste and then your sight, in order of importance.
First, a laser beam is easier to aim then a rock or 'overly stale marshmellow'.
Secondly, I have seen semi-retarded bastards very willing to zap people in the face and eyes with lower powered laser pointers then they would be to throw a pebble or something else into someone's face. It was done to me once and the moron was fired the same day.
Lastly, the laser described in the main article could permanently blind you far quicker then a cheap tiny little laser pointer. It could cause blindness in a very short amount of time.
When you put a laser pointer or similar device into a moron's hands they don't conceive of the possibility that 'harmless light' could possibly hurt anyone. Regardless of whether or not they know that throwing a rock or something at someone could bring them harm.
You are putting to much faith in the brainpower of the vast majority of idiots out in this world.
What would you do if you were walking along and suddenly went blind because some heartless bastard pointed one of these into your eyes?
In an instant, your entire life would immediately change and not for the better, I might add.
This would bring new meaning to the term "Blind Rage" to you. Now, imagine this happening while you were driving an automobile or were walking across a dangerous area, like a mine field or nearby a cliff face...
This would be extremely dangerous as a weapon.
Do you know how much you rely upon your eyesight for just about everything that you do? (Bearing in mind that I am presuming that at this moment you have some use of your eyeballs...)
Just imagining what being on the receiving end of such an attack is extremely scary. Out of all of my senses, I value sight the most.