Part of the issue with this device if battery power. A cell phone that plays music for a few hours is going to be hard pressed to keep up with a plain cell phone or an iPod because it is trying to check for phone signals and play music (of course) -- so that may limit the number of songs due to size/power issues.
But if Apple is holding back from making the best music device that happens to be a phone that it can -- it has made a classic marketing mistake. You should always compete with yourself. IBM ceded the desktop market ages ago, because they wanted to sell businesses the expensive Million dollar main frame -- not the mid range machine and not the desktop. They wanted to sell what they wanted to sell. This left an opportunity for others to satisfy customers.
So, it a phone with more music can be made, then one of the manufacturers who is getting stomped by the iPod (any and all of them) has nothing to lose in trying to give customers the best they can.
However-- knowing a bit about the legal maneuvering, I'm thinking that there is more to the issues involved here. Motorola was about the only cell phone company willing to let Apple in. Executives at all the cell phone companies have stars in their eyes about selling $3 songs to customers and locking them in. They are going to have to go through a long, slow, painful and expensive education. Perhaps the 100 song limit is more because this is a proof of concept and cell phone companies don't want anything "too successful".
Personally, I'm guessing its due to all the electronics and battery limitations--otherwise, all things staying the same, a 4 gig + ipod with 8 hours play time and 3 days standby talking time and maybe 200 minutes talking time (which would stand as a decent phone and iPod -- though not stellar) would give you an unacceptable brick in your pocket. The size factor of something that would make this feasible would not be accepted by the market. This is for people who want to have geek chic -- then a year or two from now when the power and miniaturization get improved you will see a better Music Phone.
My own theory on what happened to Neanderthals has three points.
1) One big difference between humans and Neanderthals is that humans have an advanced voice box allowing them to speak and thus communicate information without the use of excessive hand gestures (i.e., "Hey, he's over behind the bush, throw a rock"). Though I don't think this "speech thing" has made one bit of difference other than to increase the penchant for humans to attack their own and it is perhaps "speechification" of human leaders that lead to the "great rock throwing" arms race of the early mesolithic period. As we can see from public discourse, communications are highly over-rated. So really, my whole theory rests on the next two items. I just wanted to prove my superior intelligence by pointing out that I know something unique and totally worthless--yet with just the right touch of obscurity. So, props to my Momma.
2) Humans are flabbier and weaker than Neanderthals. Why didn't we perish? Either humans are better at throwing rocks, or we didn't fight at all. In fact, if you look at the history of warfare -- it is rarely the strong that survive, but actually the most unkempt, disease ridden and nastiest that survive. Europeans never conqured America, for instance, it was a combination of Yellow Fever and BO. Addiction to alcohol did the rest. These remain good American values to this day.
But I digress,.. Neanderthals disappeared around the time of a great ice age. My theory; humans have less muscle and can survive on less food. We can eat anything and often prefer to eat things that would shorten the life of any lesser animal -- we seem to like to live on the edge of digestibility. Neanderthals with their boulder throwing ability were no match for the couch potato superious (aka Homo Erectus -- a word which is probably the main reason for church folk flocking to the Intelligent Design camp -- If we've learned nothing else from Carl Rove, it's make what you are saying sound more good with words like "Strategery" -- if we were to name humans today, we might call them something more catchy like just "erectus viagorus, cio baby"). Yes, our ability to be pound for pound, the weakest and most bloated animal on two or more legs allowed humans to be nearly the best animal and retaining weight gain. The winner has got to be the camel. Imagine the compelling junk mail for them; "reduce the hump and hump more in three easy payments." Neanderthals would never have developed an economic system that allowed for three easy payments-- our dominance of the earth was inevitable.
3) The final theory; Humans and Neanderthals interbred and sexual selection weeded out the hairy shoulders, stooped forehead and foreign looks--with some success here and there. Now here is another little factoid that plays into the "getting jiggy with it theory": One of the main reasons people developed farming communities was for the creation of Meade. You can "google" the terms 'Early Man Society Beer' and quickly find that I'm not making this up. I'd put the link here, but 90% of the time studies have shown just saying "google it" will make most people pass on any research that requires 5 seconds or more.
Again, I digress, but it was informative... Now this "Meade" is a pretty good way of creating protein from carbohydrates and turning wheat into something that doesn't taste like straw, and therefore is welcome but also serves the human preference for being "just this side of toxic". Meade left out longer in the sun forms a lighter, fluffier and tastier version -- known to many as beer, except it is darker and more bitter in Europe and still called Beer. Now this Beer substance gets Homo Erectus drunk (again, I didn't come up with such a Fabulous sounding Latin term), and Neanderthal's look good enough for it being 3 am and Batenderus Man is giving us a last call signal, so -- "what the hell?" Time to save the starving Neanderthal race, one drunken lady at a time. Thus the need for diversity and survival of the species would one
I just thought about a wrinkle to the VoIP plan for Microsoft. The issue is all the Baby Bells and their relative local monopolies. Right now there is a law that allows consumers to have local phone with one company and have DSL with another. BellSouth easily got an injunction because the argued that it couldn't be the same everywhere. So therefore, it was somehow a better idea to take more money out of consumers pockets. The problem is that DSL is all but dead because you get the choice of the Local Monopoly service, or "take your chance" service with everyone else. Since I could only get DSL through BellSouth--I have now after 6 months decided to Choose BellSouth instead of no DSL.
What is the whole point of VOIP then, it I have to get local access through BellSouth or, not get local access but pay extra for the DSL so that I might as well just get local access. If that doesn't make sense, then you are like me before I tried this route. The juggling the average consumer needs to do to get rid of long distance and local access with whatever DSL or Cable they get is going to be a tough and confusing battle.
It may be good that Microsoft has entered this market, so that they can do the heavy lifting in the courts and the market that VoIP is going to require. Skype may already have the "low hanging fruit" -- the geeks and businesses that can actually take advantage of VoIP. But the home user is going to have to be led to VoIP. For once, Microsoft will be in the position of trail blazing and spending mucho denero to fight all the local phone monopolies to make VoIP actually save money and seamless. Don't expect companies like BellSouth to lay there and not get anti-competitive laws in place. The only people who are going to make money with VoIP for the next two years are lawyers, lobbyists and politicians.
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Anyone who doesn't think BellSouth and other Baby Bells are not monopolies only needs to consider that BellSouth does not market DSL in New York. They get the SouthEast and they don't even try to do any business outside the SouthEast in the United States. The same goes for all the other Bells. They don't compete with eachother -- only in places where they own the infrastructure.
I used to work with a man who had tried to start a company (with some inner city government money for the project) to Make Eel burgers in the inner city. It failed immediately.
Technically, they could grow the eels in tanks right on the premises with scraps -- about the cheapest meat you can produce per pound. But yeah, the disgusting factor was obvious to me. If I were going to do this, I'd start upper class in the inner city -- hey, people buy Sushi for $4 and ounce -- so I think if you start up-scale with a High price and candles, you could get acceptance.
In 10 years, then you go for the fast food. But first you do the Eel at a nice joint. Not burgers, maybe Japanese barbecue -- something where people would say; "well it's foreign" before they'd say "eww, Eel!"
90% travel by train. 90% of meat from Eel, Soy, or Ostrich. 65% Energy by Nuclear (include low power and re-breeder tech) and you can make a huge dent in human impact and expenses. None of this requires any new technology -- just pollitical leadership.
I wasn't insulting you. My comment was standing on its own.
I think I'm in the same boat as you... grudgingly voted for Kerry. But I am rabidly anti-bush. I'd rather have a smart crook then a dumb jerk and with Bush you get dumb crook.
But I am mostly LEFT, now -- Progressive. And I don't know anybody who is Knee-jerk about technology. I think if they got a guy saying "save the cute bunnies" in a pink tu-tu then that guy is going on the news. I think there is a hard-core of reactionary liberals of maybe 5% who treat environmental issues they way the hardcore bible thumpers treat religion (though that is a bigger group, maybe 10-15% on the right). But overall, this group can be really vocal. I think Gaia worhsip is just as valid as angels and demons. I feel the same way talking to the anti-abortion zealots who end up causing more abortions due to their abstinence-only fetish and little support for unwed mothers. There are instances where environmentalists have been distructive to the environment by not being pragmatic. But there is a lot of exageration of these instances. There is a lot more money to be made in strip mining than in hugging trees-- 'nuf said.
I don't think there is strong force in the "anti-nuke" lobby anymore. Progressive's are pro-nuclear and I thought I'd even heard an endorsement from Greenpeace. There is probably as much resistence on the Corporate side (and I differenciate from the Right -- mainly Oil) against nuclear just as the Corporate Oil group has resisted trains.
There is no getting away from mass transit. Cars are an expensive luxury. I'm am very pro light rail -- which has lower infrastructure costs and is actually more efficient energy wise than the heavy rails.
Or we could just re-enrich the stuff or through it into a breeder reactor (ban on those was put into place bay Pres. Carter) this was in the original plan back in the 50s/60s, and toss it back in to our current reactors. I wasn't going to get into detail on Nuclear... but yeah, re-enrichment great. The low-energy Nuclear is a relatively new concept--but you can generate energy for 100+ years from items that would normally be nuclear waste. We dispose of Nuclear materials that still have a lot of energy. There are even places in Canada near Nuclear plants heated with the "cooling water". There is a lot of energy wasted from reactor water that is no longer at boiling point.
Carter, I agree, went overboard. But if you remember at the time, there were quite a few close calls with power plants. I would rather err on the side of not blowing ourselves up. We need to have solution driven process over a money driven process in energy--that may mean more government ownership. Or better regulation that can find a new metric for safety that doesn't say how safety is to be achieved.
On an interesting aside, I'd read reports about the area around Cherynobyl -- it is teaming with healthy plants and animals now. Some of the ideas of ionizing radiation were a bit off. It seems the radiation kills a lot of bacteria and simple organisms that could otherwise cause disease. The distruction of these parasites more than offsets the genetic damage caused. Perhaps with longer-lived humans it may produce more cancer. But it was pretty interesting. I'd rather have irradiated food than preservatives for instance -- but everything needs a comprehensive cost benefit analysis. There are no "absolutes".
I don't think among the left that the belief that everything we do is bad is common.
It has been a destructive "straw man" argument for too long. We are doing a lot of dumb things right now. We may not find perfect solutions, but not having a perfect solution is no excuse to continue dumb things.
We need to start using more nuclear reactors. Look into low radiation nuclear power that can use the uranium we throw out from current reactors to produce energy. Nuclear waste regulation is kind of rediculous and treats anything radioactive as all bad. There is dangerous waste and benign waste -- just like everything else.
We need to enforce higher mileage vehicles. What we are doing now is wrong and stupid. I could go on, but I'd just like the hyperbole of attacks on the Left to stop. For every one person who says we shold life off candles and plows, there are 10,000 who say we need hybrid cars. The Left has been correct on this issue for some time. The jerks who have said; "let's burn everything and use everything we want because industry will fix it" is actually a widely held and representative belief of many on the Right--including the current administration.
The free-market laissez-faire approach is absolutely what got us into this mess. Liberals, for the most part, have admitted that Nuclear power has advantages over wind farms -- but there also has to be better safety protocols adhered to -- we can't keep doing things with the same old greed and shortcuts that could create nuclear melt downs.
We couldn't support ourselves on this planet WITHOUT using technology.
We can actually cause less damage if we use tech wisely, rather than early farming methods.
Like making hamburgers out of eel instead of beef. Get rid of Pig and Cow raising and you would make a big dent on our impact.
What we have to do is try all the approaches; scale back consumption, find alternatives for current wasteful practices, new technologies to reduce pollution and produce energy.
We have a lot more junk that sucks power. We have bigger homes that require more heating and cooling (even if these devices are more efficient).
Lets face it, other than a brief moment of inspiration during the Carter years, this country has been wasteful pigs about resources. We use a lot more energy and produce a lot more garbage than just 20 years ago per person.
How would I use this on a BSD system like the current Mac OS X. I say this because I installed an application that kept dialing out to the internet -- I think it was from a BullDog UPS. I used an application (I forget the name) that reports when an application tries to access the internet, but all it reported was the application that the OS uses to access the internet.
What would be the command line calls to say, trace which application calls "InternetConnect.app" for instance?
I think you could find a common vector and theme if we found life on Mars.
What life could survive a meteorite? Spores maybe or a protein -- a virus is unlikely as that isn't necessarily alive -- it requires higher organisms to replicate. My own theory is that viruses are protein signals that aren't correctly "turned off". That's another topic, however.
Life could have originated on Mars and spread to Earth. Earth life could have spread to Mars (note, that the Moon is considered part of a massive ejecta from Earth). Life could have evolved Independently on both Planets. Life could have come drifting in from outside the Galaxy and not originated on either planet (even if life evolved on Earth, it doesn't rule out some primitive, primordial precursor). There could be no life on Mars.
But I'm weary too. I'm worried that we have ignored doing GREAT THINGS for too long. Our Earth may be sick along with our culture. We have to solve some BIG, fundamental issues rather than try to be king of the hill in a zero sum game.
On the Macintosh, there was an application called "Gatekeeper" (not positive on the name) that was round at least 10 years ago. It basically looked at actions that a virus might take and alerted a user. You had to allow for actions like writing to another application or such.
I have been waiting for this to catch on. I've also been waiting for virus makers to become more sophisticated, but I'm amazed none have learned to use compression and randomize their own signature. My point is, that the clock has been ticking on virus patterns being useful for detecting viruses for years. It's pretty equivalent to blocking email with certain words because that was the title given to a previous email with a trojan horse in it.
I was kidding when I wrote the comment -- but your reply makes me think how, CYA is not necessarily unethical as long as you do your best.
As I mature, I realize there are impossible situations. You have to comply every day with Human Resource regulations that are not humanly possible -- nor even desirable if you are a healthy human being. The process of CYA can result in good or bad. The good route is to get more Qualified people to assist in the Impossible Task -- not to shirk the task, because then you can't assure Best Effort. The bad way is to get unqualified people and manipulate them to take the Accountability.
Maybe we need a discussion on the Philosophy and Morals of the CYA doctrine?
I think its important to note that a consistent Right to Life argument usually involves saying that once fertilization has occured and that a human will at some point in the future probably form, then its "life."
Good to see the basis. That is basically what I thought RTL was holding. But again, how is there any principle to uphold in this "Life" that is a group of cells. I don't see any ethics that makes it murder to kill human cells -- I give blood and I wash with soap.
This is a very bad way to argue, just because it makes it easier, doesn't mean one should accept it. That is very nearly the opposite of "principled." Which is usually a good thing to have in a particular ethic.
Easy and simple is not the opposite of Principled, it is the opposite of Difficult and complex. You must be thinking of Expedient, which isn't where I'm heading. You are assuming I've forgotten principles... but the first part of my argument mentions that we cannot come to any terms on any subject based on relative ethics or emotion. Principles are a set of rules based on morals and/or ethics. I know all about the Moral argument -- it has a history of about 70 years. But the church is pretty inconsistent and actually supports abortion before that--I've discussed the purpose and history of "Nunneries" but we don't need history to make values judgments. Religion hasn't done much to stop atrocities -- just keep things orderly.
In my "Ethics", I see conscious life as valuable. If I'm brain dead then pull the plug and don't try to keep a bunch of tissue "alive". And if consciousness hasn't formed, then there is No One there to murder. We can all argue about various aspects of the soul -- but there is no "Ethics" there, only morality.
I'll agree that you can "what if" things to death. But this "what if" I'm making is very pertinent. It is within the next 10 years a reality. It also puts a cross-hair on the whole issue; "what is sacred, human DNA, living cells, or reproductive cells?" The answer I get back "reproductive cells fertilized with human DNA" is very specific. But it also doesn't address the morality of someone who is born in a non-tradiitional manner. This is just Intelligent Design --which is we throw in the "Unknowable Power" wherever something exists that we don't understand. The soul used to be seen as drawn in by the first breathe and expelled with a persons last. Once we figured out breathing and air -- well the soul became electricity. After a few experiments making the muscles of frogs jump and the Frankenstein novel, the soul moved into some energy thingy. I'm not dismissing the idea that people have a soul -- I just think that my argument about Consciousness explains what harbors a soul (or what has moral value) better than the "human fertilized reproductive cells".
Just as the Universe does not revolve around the earth, the Soul does not revolve around human reproduction. All these moral assumptions are based upon some "soul spark" that zaps into the cell once sperm meets ovum. The bible mentions none of this. And when I meet a "person" who has been created without the method of genes delivered in this manner to a reproductive cell I will treat them as I would anyone else.
But I'm not too worried about this issue. Abortion has tripled during the Bush years, after declining to 50% under Clinton. With Republicans around, it will never be illegal nor infrequent. I personally want abortions reduced, but that would require things like sex education, availability of contraceptives and generally less ignorant teenagers -- all of these things are getting rarer and rarer. The Anti Abortion issue is just a political tool to get a base excited and to get people arguing while we get our pockets picked. If there were anything Moral about the Anti-Abortion movement, they would volunteer to financially help these unwed mothers who go to clinics to get their lives back. Personally, I'm more concerned about energy and global warming right now.
The real problem here is trying to get "all gain with no pain". The recession has been buried with paper-printing and off balance sheet spending. While growing the government to huge proportions has propped up some of the unemployment -- the rest is covered by simply changing how we compute the data.
The way we compute unemployment now and inflation is different from the 1970s. Plus, the new phenomenon of both parents working and people working more than one job have skewed everything. If I am employed for two jobs, does our current unemployment figure account for that? I don't know. But you aren't counted as unemployed after about 5 months -- which means anyone can be jobless but not unemployed. That is called a discouraged worker. Anyhow, the real growth has been in disability. If you really want to not work, you go on disability -- this figure is a huge revenue drain and is not counted in the CPI data that everyone nods sagely to on the Financial News Network.
Just from common sense; with all the changes we've seen in the economy from 1990 to 2005, the unemployment figure has (as far as I remember) never fluctuated more than 1 % from 5.5 %. So, from booming economy to massive off shoring and we still get pretty much the same number. Putting it that simply, doesn't that tickle your Bull Shit detector?
OK. Still not convinced? Now I blow your mind. When GM massively lays off people, the Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics can actually compute job creation. How? Well, only 40 % of large businesses are used to compute actual employment. Since a lot of jobs are based on small companies and self-employment and none of those are actually sampled -- the government can assume that those 12,000 workers in the auto assembly plant at GM have now become profitable entrepreneurs selling doilies on e-Bay. What the F@%#, you ask? This is called the CES Net Birth/Death Model.. A name that is so weird and obscure that you wouldn't stumble upon it accidentally and worry your pretty little head about economic matters that might be inconvenient. Yes, it is 1984 every year where we come up with meaningless names. Since wall street likes unemployment because this lowers wages because more people are trying to compete with illegal workers that we let in for construction and sweat shops, but doesn't like them too low because that scares consumers into not rotating debt between 3 credit cards and a second mortgage... well, they want to tell us that we got about 200,000 new jobs each month. So, this past year we've had 35,000 actual new jobs reported and 180,000 estimated with B/D Model in one particular month and another month we actually had about 320,000 (which might have scared wall street) and 120,000 were subtracted (because whatever). But on average, we've had about 80k jobs added each month this year to "fluff up" the figure. OK -- these are from a vague memory. I get all this info and then check it out with actual www.bls.gov figures at this web site -- good source of rumors and Angst.
Inflation. Well, basically, the government now has a huge incentive to keep this reported figure as low as possible. Union Wages and government programs and a whole host of other expenses have built-in inflation increases. The 3% inflation that we keep getting reported doesn't include volatiles like the price of Gas, Food, or Day - Care. Volatiles aren't included because they change a lot and it is reasoned that those prices are going to effect the durables eventually. But let's look at what we actually spend money on in my house; the House payment is just near the top of expenses. Since I refinanced with a low interest loan (and these rates are a danger to our countries debt finance) and a lot of people have re-fied to 30 and 40 year low interest loans -- so that reduces a major expense that reduces apparent inflation -- even though the price of the houses is going up at about a 20%
You are working for the government now so Cover Your Ass. Don't do anything that doesn't have somebody assigned to be blamed. Then, find out what your higher-ups want you to say, and always echo that. If it is impossible, get some flunky who needs the cash to sign off that they guarantee it will be done to spec.
You'll be on your way to a promising career. Remember, its not about doing good, but looking good.
Not being in the realm of a spy or anything but I just thought I'd point out some obvious things;
Get rid of floppies, CDs, USB or anything else that allows I/O. The only I/O you'd want is something you create that has an encrypted format that can only be read on the machines designated. So maybe 1 Gig flash drives with a special format -- I'm sure someone has to make these.
Get an electromagnetic detector (they sell them form monitoring emissions from CRT screens. I would think you'd want an LCD for a classified display (lower emissions). But you still need to detect for any signals leaking out of a room. I was reading that the KGB used to have big detectors on their embassy right near US government offices. They'd pick up the signal from keyboards--then after recording these over time, they could find the keys people were actually pressing by finding microsecond delays in the typing pattern (and I suppose some keys may give a slightly different signal). After detecting the most common letters like "e"s, they could then build the alphabet for a person using the keyboard. Now, I'm sure they can take the weak signal given off by a CRT and deconstruct the actual image. If you can set up metal shielding around a sensitive area, that would be ideal.
Your weakest point is going to be people. What they carry in and out of the office. But when you look at human nature, if you try to secure things by too many passwords and annoyances, people tend to make the whole system much less secure by writing down the passwords. So that is why biometrics and simple passwords coupled with no hard external connections for sensitive devices -- that should get you there. Biometrics of a sort should be in combination with something else for security -- biometrics are just good because they are easy for people to keep with them and are not prone to "dumpster diving".
Then, keep people happy and make them feel like they are doing something valuable with team meetings. Pissed off workers are the biggest security risk (hey, I have no CIA experience, but look at what Karl Rove did).
One other thing; no windows to the outside where people are discussing sensitive information. Laser-accoustic devices have been around for about 20 years that can measure the motion on the glass or any object in a room -- turning any common object into a microphone. This isn't James Bond stuff, this is Radio Shack now. I'd had a Doctor friend of mine describe a recruitment visit by an Unofficial group working for the government (about 20 years ago now). He mentioned that they had radios that changed to random stations aimed at the windows and only talked into their hands -- pretty paranoid. But seeing as how they were asking him to do things that aren't Kosher it wasn't surprising.
I don't know if these are part of DoD procedure but they should be. Hey, I had an active imagination in the 6th grade -- what can I say?
A Dolphin (or Porpoise) has a large head filled with fat and nerves. The dimensional space receives echoes. I believe the Dolphin keeps all the sound in 3 dimensions -- never detecting it in two. The nerves within the fat model the wave form shapes directly to the brain.
I've always felt that we should be using ultrasound devices to communicate with dolphins, rather than trying to send them recordings. We think it is the same sound, but our sound comes out of a speaker which is two-dimensional, while the dolphin is sending and receiving sound in 3D.
The point I'm making is, that our 2D receptors for sonar need a lot of processing power to remove extraneous ripples and sound-bouncing. If you were to detect the effect and actual motion of sound passing through a sensitive gelatinous medium (say an aero-gel), any and all origins of sound would be easily apparent. The arc of each wave would be different as well as the direction -- it is many orders of magnitude simpler to find the shape and location of an object making the sound in 3D space then to look at one plane and try to compute anything. You have to separate the sounds by sampling over time and determining the various wave forms making up the resulting jumble.
Anyway, if someone wants to build this--email me and let me get credit on the patent;-)
Talking to Dolphins would finally be possible. For instance, I hypothesis that the word for fish is a sound picture of a fish -- and of a specific fish -- meaning that any Dolphin would know exactly which fish you were talking about -- like sending a picture that included how healthy a person was. Close as you can get to telepathy and a lot more detailed than language. Humans in this regard, must seem very crude the a Dolphin -- they must wonder how we could have accomplished so many things being as poor in language as we are.
I think they were using some of this "back trace" with gang violence in test areas -- I believe it was even used on that famous sniper (name escapes me, Michael Jackson and TDK maniac have numbed the brain -- I've quit the news, I suppose that was the goal).
There are three components available; infra-red satellite detection (muzzle flash), detecting the bang (I suppose you record all the time, and a sufficient bang says to "mark and keep data"), and location. I was reading that they'd put multiple Mics in a location (at least 3) and triangulate. A model of buildings would help because sound gets bounced, but the ultrasonic frequencies don't. So you detect the lower tone bang, but track the ultrasonic to remove the issue of obstacles (I guess).
I would think it could be done now if say 12 troops in a platoon all had mics and processors. The mic that detects the sound first would get range, and the rest would be used to find the angle and elevation-- this wouldn't need to be too exact; just "it came from over there!" They really need this for an urban setting. But it also makes sense in large cities. There isn't any reason why we couldn't detect and trace any and all explosions or fire arm shots in any city in America.
A quality mic that only stores the last 5 minutes of sound and has a wireless transmitter with say a 1000 yrd range -- maybe 40 to cover a city coupled with aggregators to send blast sounds and data to a central processor could be done fairly cheaply. A satellite could blanket a huge area and look for muzzle flash as well.
This is good. But I'm not clear on what is the benefit when you are starting with a stem cell and ending with a stem cell. How is the new cell different.
Also, I think the fundamental issue about stem cells and anti-abortion in general is that both sides are not talking about the same thing.
Pro-Life looks at human life as precious. Without looking at what life is being lived.
Pro-Choice is looking at when human consciousness and a valuable like begin AND end. Often, they are proponents of the "Right to Die". Brain dead is looked at as not a useful life, nor is extreme pain looked at as something people should endure.
The difference between a human cluster of embryonic cells and those of a monkey or a rat are only in the genes that eventually will be expressed. Personally, I don't see the difference morally between Embryonic stem cells and somebody taking a bath. Both entail killing human cells that carry a human genetic code. The idea that we are killing human life by using the Embryonic Stem Cells will be stood on its ear as soon as we can make a human from a skin cell, or any number of cells not currently involved in reproduction. So is it that the gene is sacred? Or the fact that a cell is involved in reproduction? Is a person created from a skin cell going to be just as valid/human as a "natural born" person.
I think, when you look at life and humanity from a consciousness/value perspective --then it is a lot easier to deal with new advances in science and leads to rights and ethical treatment for new type of life we have not yet considered.
The ethics of "Right to Life" don't seem to be based on value of life at all, but in preserving either a sacred DNA or a sacred reproductive cell. Note, that there is no issue with non-reproductive cells, nor is their any issue with DNA. It seems, that because it is human DNA involved in reproduction it automatically becomes sacred. The ethical quagmire this will put us in will only get worse as science continues. There hasn't been enough discussion of what we actually value when we say the word "life".
I think the bigger issue comes when we can tinker with genes to "improve people". Many would say that increasing intelligence, or reducing disease would be OK. But it is much harder to really define what makes people smarter or more useful. And any improvement ends up becoming mixed with Social Engineering. But we cannot ignore that. We are going to Engineer Society just as much by ignoring differences as we are by creating them. If the wealthy can enhance (and they will--maybe overseas) then aren't you going to end up with a lower tier of humanity by NOT making it affordable/acceptable for the lower classes to enhance?
But then, what do we want to improve--and what are the results? Some may want to tweak people to become "more religious" or "less likely to prefer same sex" -- these are probably going to actually end up being the "easier" of things to change. This will probably be the hardest and most difficult ethical debate humanity has ever faced (until robots think, that is). I don't think present society is up to the debate, because we still don't seem to have caught on to really understanding WHY we hold certain beliefs. We also seem to have become addicted to self-righteousness on both sides that will hamper our ability to find common ground.
I personally think, a lot of this issue is clouded by positions people have taken and personal identity and positions are more polarized by political opportunism. Until that changes, I don't feel very hopeful.
Intelligent Design and the argument of Evolution is a straw man. The Faithful need to have an enemy to fight and must be whipped into a frenzy every other year to make sure that they still have a cause.
Look at the investigation into Abrimoff... he had gotten Reed to get people protesting Gambling Casinos on Indian lands. So that he could do more lobbying for the Indians and make bigger commissions. These church folk are often used as a tool. Right now, ID is just a distraction made whole cloth by Tom Delay to keep the media occupied rather than look at Video from Abu Ghraib or current ethics scandals.
I am sure that there are people who honestly believe these things. But kids are failing in schools and we sit here and argue if Evolution is good enough science. We are arguing over religion so somebody can pick our pocket--it is an old story.
I think Quantum Physics maybe correct in the math of observed behaviour but most likely totally wrong in what is going on. I think Hisenberg's (sp?) uncertainty principle has more to do with not knowing the actual factors involved. Some of the earlier people you mention will stand the test of time, and at least most of Einstein. But I think we are in for physics to be stood on its ear with more modern theories.
Yes, but they will be rofl about things like intelligent design, the inability of the masses to see through propaganda and the hate-relation most people have with knowledge and common sense.
Who doesn't see through it?
I think anyone who thinks GWB has character is willfully ignorant. Like it was a test of faith to believe in a man who is at best the leader of the most successful crime family in US history. I'm just sickened that such lame, transparent and wastefully greedy war profiteering actually works. I can imagine the lot with hookers and booze at a party passing "you won't believe the sh@t I pulled yesterday" stories. I think they try bigger and bigger public rip-offs just to impress each other--more than any need for money.
Well, with an infinite universe and a lot of time, I predict every one of the predictions will come true.
Let's see if the current corruption and retrograde society that has enveloped America will take hold. If the only survivors of a collapsed ecosystem on earth are the same greedy bastards who profited from the destruction, then maybe its better we go extinct.
The Victorian period, for all of its overt prudishness, saw the largest use of prostitution perhaps in the history of England. I remember reading some history book (I think it was the "History of Sex" --almost as interesting as the "History of Banking" --really) that reported the average Englishman visited a prostitute 2.6 times a week.
Repressive societies just seem to breed hypocrits. I'm sure the most lucrative business in the Victorian era was blackmail.
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Part of the issue with this device if battery power. A cell phone that plays music for a few hours is going to be hard pressed to keep up with a plain cell phone or an iPod because it is trying to check for phone signals and play music (of course) -- so that may limit the number of songs due to size/power issues.
But if Apple is holding back from making the best music device that happens to be a phone that it can -- it has made a classic marketing mistake. You should always compete with yourself. IBM ceded the desktop market ages ago, because they wanted to sell businesses the expensive Million dollar main frame -- not the mid range machine and not the desktop. They wanted to sell what they wanted to sell. This left an opportunity for others to satisfy customers.
So, it a phone with more music can be made, then one of the manufacturers who is getting stomped by the iPod (any and all of them) has nothing to lose in trying to give customers the best they can.
However-- knowing a bit about the legal maneuvering, I'm thinking that there is more to the issues involved here. Motorola was about the only cell phone company willing to let Apple in. Executives at all the cell phone companies have stars in their eyes about selling $3 songs to customers and locking them in. They are going to have to go through a long, slow, painful and expensive education. Perhaps the 100 song limit is more because this is a proof of concept and cell phone companies don't want anything "too successful".
Personally, I'm guessing its due to all the electronics and battery limitations--otherwise, all things staying the same, a 4 gig + ipod with 8 hours play time and 3 days standby talking time and maybe 200 minutes talking time (which would stand as a decent phone and iPod -- though not stellar) would give you an unacceptable brick in your pocket. The size factor of something that would make this feasible would not be accepted by the market. This is for people who want to have geek chic -- then a year or two from now when the power and miniaturization get improved you will see a better Music Phone.
The question is what was the trigger that resulted in the presence of modern humans midst neanderthals?
The "trigger" was beer. I have an earlier post that explains everything.
I think both races merged their genes -- but it is harder to notice this, since we are so into grooming and shaving and drinking.
My own theory on what happened to Neanderthals has three points.
1) One big difference between humans and Neanderthals is that humans have an advanced voice box allowing them to speak and thus communicate information without the use of excessive hand gestures (i.e., "Hey, he's over behind the bush, throw a rock"). Though I don't think this "speech thing" has made one bit of difference other than to increase the penchant for humans to attack their own and it is perhaps "speechification" of human leaders that lead to the "great rock throwing" arms race of the early mesolithic period. As we can see from public discourse, communications are highly over-rated. So really, my whole theory rests on the next two items. I just wanted to prove my superior intelligence by pointing out that I know something unique and totally worthless--yet with just the right touch of obscurity. So, props to my Momma.
2) Humans are flabbier and weaker than Neanderthals. Why didn't we perish? Either humans are better at throwing rocks, or we didn't fight at all. In fact, if you look at the history of warfare -- it is rarely the strong that survive, but actually the most unkempt, disease ridden and nastiest that survive. Europeans never conqured America, for instance, it was a combination of Yellow Fever and BO. Addiction to alcohol did the rest. These remain good American values to this day.
But I digress,.. Neanderthals disappeared around the time of a great ice age. My theory; humans have less muscle and can survive on less food. We can eat anything and often prefer to eat things that would shorten the life of any lesser animal -- we seem to like to live on the edge of digestibility. Neanderthals with their boulder throwing ability were no match for the couch potato superious (aka Homo Erectus -- a word which is probably the main reason for church folk flocking to the Intelligent Design camp -- If we've learned nothing else from Carl Rove, it's make what you are saying sound more good with words like "Strategery" -- if we were to name humans today, we might call them something more catchy like just "erectus viagorus, cio baby"). Yes, our ability to be pound for pound, the weakest and most bloated animal on two or more legs allowed humans to be nearly the best animal and retaining weight gain. The winner has got to be the camel. Imagine the compelling junk mail for them; "reduce the hump and hump more in three easy payments." Neanderthals would never have developed an economic system that allowed for three easy payments-- our dominance of the earth was inevitable.
3) The final theory; Humans and Neanderthals interbred and sexual selection weeded out the hairy shoulders, stooped forehead and foreign looks--with some success here and there. Now here is another little factoid that plays into the "getting jiggy with it theory": One of the main reasons people developed farming communities was for the creation of Meade. You can "google" the terms 'Early Man Society Beer' and quickly find that I'm not making this up. I'd put the link here, but 90% of the time studies have shown just saying "google it" will make most people pass on any research that requires 5 seconds or more.
Again, I digress, but it was informative... Now this "Meade" is a pretty good way of creating protein from carbohydrates and turning wheat into something that doesn't taste like straw, and therefore is welcome but also serves the human preference for being "just this side of toxic". Meade left out longer in the sun forms a lighter, fluffier and tastier version -- known to many as beer, except it is darker and more bitter in Europe and still called Beer. Now this Beer substance gets Homo Erectus drunk (again, I didn't come up with such a Fabulous sounding Latin term), and Neanderthal's look good enough for it being 3 am and Batenderus Man is giving us a last call signal, so -- "what the hell?" Time to save the starving Neanderthal race, one drunken lady at a time. Thus the need for diversity and survival of the species would one
I just thought about a wrinkle to the VoIP plan for Microsoft. The issue is all the Baby Bells and their relative local monopolies. Right now there is a law that allows consumers to have local phone with one company and have DSL with another. BellSouth easily got an injunction because the argued that it couldn't be the same everywhere. So therefore, it was somehow a better idea to take more money out of consumers pockets. The problem is that DSL is all but dead because you get the choice of the Local Monopoly service, or "take your chance" service with everyone else. Since I could only get DSL through BellSouth--I have now after 6 months decided to Choose BellSouth instead of no DSL.
What is the whole point of VOIP then, it I have to get local access through BellSouth or, not get local access but pay extra for the DSL so that I might as well just get local access. If that doesn't make sense, then you are like me before I tried this route. The juggling the average consumer needs to do to get rid of long distance and local access with whatever DSL or Cable they get is going to be a tough and confusing battle.
It may be good that Microsoft has entered this market, so that they can do the heavy lifting in the courts and the market that VoIP is going to require. Skype may already have the "low hanging fruit" -- the geeks and businesses that can actually take advantage of VoIP. But the home user is going to have to be led to VoIP. For once, Microsoft will be in the position of trail blazing and spending mucho denero to fight all the local phone monopolies to make VoIP actually save money and seamless. Don't expect companies like BellSouth to lay there and not get anti-competitive laws in place. The only people who are going to make money with VoIP for the next two years are lawyers, lobbyists and politicians.
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Anyone who doesn't think BellSouth and other Baby Bells are not monopolies only needs to consider that BellSouth does not market DSL in New York. They get the SouthEast and they don't even try to do any business outside the SouthEast in the United States. The same goes for all the other Bells. They don't compete with eachother -- only in places where they own the infrastructure.
I used to work with a man who had tried to start a company (with some inner city government money for the project) to Make Eel burgers in the inner city. It failed immediately.
Technically, they could grow the eels in tanks right on the premises with scraps -- about the cheapest meat you can produce per pound. But yeah, the disgusting factor was obvious to me. If I were going to do this, I'd start upper class in the inner city -- hey, people buy Sushi for $4 and ounce -- so I think if you start up-scale with a High price and candles, you could get acceptance.
In 10 years, then you go for the fast food. But first you do the Eel at a nice joint. Not burgers, maybe Japanese barbecue -- something where people would say; "well it's foreign" before they'd say "eww, Eel!"
90% travel by train. 90% of meat from Eel, Soy, or Ostrich. 65% Energy by Nuclear (include low power and re-breeder tech) and you can make a huge dent in human impact and expenses. None of this requires any new technology -- just pollitical leadership.
I wasn't insulting you. My comment was standing on its own.
I think I'm in the same boat as you... grudgingly voted for Kerry. But I am rabidly anti-bush. I'd rather have a smart crook then a dumb jerk and with Bush you get dumb crook.
But I am mostly LEFT, now -- Progressive. And I don't know anybody who is Knee-jerk about technology. I think if they got a guy saying "save the cute bunnies" in a pink tu-tu then that guy is going on the news. I think there is a hard-core of reactionary liberals of maybe 5% who treat environmental issues they way the hardcore bible thumpers treat religion (though that is a bigger group, maybe 10-15% on the right). But overall, this group can be really vocal. I think Gaia worhsip is just as valid as angels and demons. I feel the same way talking to the anti-abortion zealots who end up causing more abortions due to their abstinence-only fetish and little support for unwed mothers. There are instances where environmentalists have been distructive to the environment by not being pragmatic. But there is a lot of exageration of these instances. There is a lot more money to be made in strip mining than in hugging trees-- 'nuf said.
I don't think there is strong force in the "anti-nuke" lobby anymore. Progressive's are pro-nuclear and I thought I'd even heard an endorsement from Greenpeace. There is probably as much resistence on the Corporate side (and I differenciate from the Right -- mainly Oil) against nuclear just as the Corporate Oil group has resisted trains.
There is no getting away from mass transit. Cars are an expensive luxury. I'm am very pro light rail -- which has lower infrastructure costs and is actually more efficient energy wise than the heavy rails.
Or we could just re-enrich the stuff or through it into a breeder reactor (ban on those was put into place bay Pres. Carter) this was in the original plan back in the 50s/60s, and toss it back in to our current reactors.
I wasn't going to get into detail on Nuclear... but yeah, re-enrichment great. The low-energy Nuclear is a relatively new concept--but you can generate energy for 100+ years from items that would normally be nuclear waste. We dispose of Nuclear materials that still have a lot of energy. There are even places in Canada near Nuclear plants heated with the "cooling water". There is a lot of energy wasted from reactor water that is no longer at boiling point.
Carter, I agree, went overboard. But if you remember at the time, there were quite a few close calls with power plants. I would rather err on the side of not blowing ourselves up. We need to have solution driven process over a money driven process in energy--that may mean more government ownership. Or better regulation that can find a new metric for safety that doesn't say how safety is to be achieved.
On an interesting aside, I'd read reports about the area around Cherynobyl -- it is teaming with healthy plants and animals now. Some of the ideas of ionizing radiation were a bit off. It seems the radiation kills a lot of bacteria and simple organisms that could otherwise cause disease. The distruction of these parasites more than offsets the genetic damage caused. Perhaps with longer-lived humans it may produce more cancer. But it was pretty interesting. I'd rather have irradiated food than preservatives for instance -- but everything needs a comprehensive cost benefit analysis. There are no "absolutes".
I don't think among the left that the belief that everything we do is bad is common.
It has been a destructive "straw man" argument for too long. We are doing a lot of dumb things right now. We may not find perfect solutions, but not having a perfect solution is no excuse to continue dumb things.
We need to start using more nuclear reactors. Look into low radiation nuclear power that can use the uranium we throw out from current reactors to produce energy. Nuclear waste regulation is kind of rediculous and treats anything radioactive as all bad. There is dangerous waste and benign waste -- just like everything else.
We need to enforce higher mileage vehicles. What we are doing now is wrong and stupid. I could go on, but I'd just like the hyperbole of attacks on the Left to stop. For every one person who says we shold life off candles and plows, there are 10,000 who say we need hybrid cars. The Left has been correct on this issue for some time. The jerks who have said; "let's burn everything and use everything we want because industry will fix it" is actually a widely held and representative belief of many on the Right--including the current administration.
The free-market laissez-faire approach is absolutely what got us into this mess. Liberals, for the most part, have admitted that Nuclear power has advantages over wind farms -- but there also has to be better safety protocols adhered to -- we can't keep doing things with the same old greed and shortcuts that could create nuclear melt downs.
We couldn't support ourselves on this planet WITHOUT using technology.
We can actually cause less damage if we use tech wisely, rather than early farming methods.
Like making hamburgers out of eel instead of beef. Get rid of Pig and Cow raising and you would make a big dent on our impact.
What we have to do is try all the approaches; scale back consumption, find alternatives for current wasteful practices, new technologies to reduce pollution and produce energy.
We have a lot more junk that sucks power.
We have bigger homes that require more heating and cooling (even if these devices are more efficient).
Lets face it, other than a brief moment of inspiration during the Carter years, this country has been wasteful pigs about resources. We use a lot more energy and produce a lot more garbage than just 20 years ago per person.
How would I use this on a BSD system like the current Mac OS X. I say this because I installed an application that kept dialing out to the internet -- I think it was from a BullDog UPS. I used an application (I forget the name) that reports when an application tries to access the internet, but all it reported was the application that the OS uses to access the internet.
What would be the command line calls to say, trace which application calls "InternetConnect.app" for instance?
I think you could find a common vector and theme if we found life on Mars.
What life could survive a meteorite? Spores maybe or a protein -- a virus is unlikely as that isn't necessarily alive -- it requires higher organisms to replicate. My own theory is that viruses are protein signals that aren't correctly "turned off". That's another topic, however.
Life could have originated on Mars and spread to Earth.
Earth life could have spread to Mars (note, that the Moon is considered part of a massive ejecta from Earth).
Life could have evolved Independently on both Planets.
Life could have come drifting in from outside the Galaxy and not originated on either planet (even if life evolved on Earth, it doesn't rule out some primitive, primordial precursor).
There could be no life on Mars.
But I'm weary too. I'm worried that we have ignored doing GREAT THINGS for too long. Our Earth may be sick along with our culture. We have to solve some BIG, fundamental issues rather than try to be king of the hill in a zero sum game.
On the Macintosh, there was an application called "Gatekeeper" (not positive on the name) that was round at least 10 years ago. It basically looked at actions that a virus might take and alerted a user. You had to allow for actions like writing to another application or such.
I have been waiting for this to catch on. I've also been waiting for virus makers to become more sophisticated, but I'm amazed none have learned to use compression and randomize their own signature. My point is, that the clock has been ticking on virus patterns being useful for detecting viruses for years. It's pretty equivalent to blocking email with certain words because that was the title given to a previous email with a trojan horse in it.
I was kidding when I wrote the comment -- but your reply makes me think how, CYA is not necessarily unethical as long as you do your best.
As I mature, I realize there are impossible situations. You have to comply every day with Human Resource regulations that are not humanly possible -- nor even desirable if you are a healthy human being. The process of CYA can result in good or bad. The good route is to get more Qualified people to assist in the Impossible Task -- not to shirk the task, because then you can't assure Best Effort. The bad way is to get unqualified people and manipulate them to take the Accountability.
Maybe we need a discussion on the Philosophy and Morals of the CYA doctrine?
I think its important to note that a consistent Right to Life argument usually involves saying that once fertilization has occured and that a human will at some point in the future probably form, then its "life."
Good to see the basis. That is basically what I thought RTL was holding. But again, how is there any principle to uphold in this "Life" that is a group of cells. I don't see any ethics that makes it murder to kill human cells -- I give blood and I wash with soap.
This is a very bad way to argue, just because it makes it easier, doesn't mean one should accept it. That is very nearly the opposite of "principled." Which is usually a good thing to have in a particular ethic.
Easy and simple is not the opposite of Principled, it is the opposite of Difficult and complex. You must be thinking of Expedient, which isn't where I'm heading. You are assuming I've forgotten principles... but the first part of my argument mentions that we cannot come to any terms on any subject based on relative ethics or emotion. Principles are a set of rules based on morals and/or ethics. I know all about the Moral argument -- it has a history of about 70 years. But the church is pretty inconsistent and actually supports abortion before that--I've discussed the purpose and history of "Nunneries" but we don't need history to make values judgments. Religion hasn't done much to stop atrocities -- just keep things orderly.
In my "Ethics", I see conscious life as valuable. If I'm brain dead then pull the plug and don't try to keep a bunch of tissue "alive". And if consciousness hasn't formed, then there is No One there to murder. We can all argue about various aspects of the soul -- but there is no "Ethics" there, only morality.
I'll agree that you can "what if" things to death. But this "what if" I'm making is very pertinent. It is within the next 10 years a reality. It also puts a cross-hair on the whole issue; "what is sacred, human DNA, living cells, or reproductive cells?" The answer I get back "reproductive cells fertilized with human DNA" is very specific. But it also doesn't address the morality of someone who is born in a non-tradiitional manner. This is just Intelligent Design --which is we throw in the "Unknowable Power" wherever something exists that we don't understand. The soul used to be seen as drawn in by the first breathe and expelled with a persons last. Once we figured out breathing and air -- well the soul became electricity. After a few experiments making the muscles of frogs jump and the Frankenstein novel, the soul moved into some energy thingy. I'm not dismissing the idea that people have a soul -- I just think that my argument about Consciousness explains what harbors a soul (or what has moral value) better than the "human fertilized reproductive cells".
Just as the Universe does not revolve around the earth, the Soul does not revolve around human reproduction. All these moral assumptions are based upon some "soul spark" that zaps into the cell once sperm meets ovum. The bible mentions none of this. And when I meet a "person" who has been created without the method of genes delivered in this manner to a reproductive cell I will treat them as I would anyone else.
But I'm not too worried about this issue. Abortion has tripled during the Bush years, after declining to 50% under Clinton. With Republicans around, it will never be illegal nor infrequent. I personally want abortions reduced, but that would require things like sex education, availability of contraceptives and generally less ignorant teenagers -- all of these things are getting rarer and rarer. The Anti Abortion issue is just a political tool to get a base excited and to get people arguing while we get our pockets picked. If there were anything Moral about the Anti-Abortion movement, they would volunteer to financially help these unwed mothers who go to clinics to get their lives back. Personally, I'm more concerned about energy and global warming right now.
Brilliant points, parent.
The real problem here is trying to get "all gain with no pain". The recession has been buried with paper-printing and off balance sheet spending. While growing the government to huge proportions has propped up some of the unemployment -- the rest is covered by simply changing how we compute the data.
The way we compute unemployment now and inflation is different from the 1970s. Plus, the new phenomenon of both parents working and people working more than one job have skewed everything. If I am employed for two jobs, does our current unemployment figure account for that? I don't know. But you aren't counted as unemployed after about 5 months -- which means anyone can be jobless but not unemployed. That is called a discouraged worker. Anyhow, the real growth has been in disability. If you really want to not work, you go on disability -- this figure is a huge revenue drain and is not counted in the CPI data that everyone nods sagely to on the Financial News Network.
Just from common sense; with all the changes we've seen in the economy from 1990 to 2005, the unemployment figure has (as far as I remember) never fluctuated more than 1 % from 5.5 %. So, from booming economy to massive off shoring and we still get pretty much the same number. Putting it that simply, doesn't that tickle your Bull Shit detector?
OK. Still not convinced? Now I blow your mind. When GM massively lays off people, the Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics can actually compute job creation. How? Well, only 40 % of large businesses are used to compute actual employment. Since a lot of jobs are based on small companies and self-employment and none of those are actually sampled -- the government can assume that those 12,000 workers in the auto assembly plant at GM have now become profitable entrepreneurs selling doilies on e-Bay. What the F@%#, you ask? This is called the CES Net Birth/Death Model.. A name that is so weird and obscure that you wouldn't stumble upon it accidentally and worry your pretty little head about economic matters that might be inconvenient. Yes, it is 1984 every year where we come up with meaningless names. Since wall street likes unemployment because this lowers wages because more people are trying to compete with illegal workers that we let in for construction and sweat shops, but doesn't like them too low because that scares consumers into not rotating debt between 3 credit cards and a second mortgage... well, they want to tell us that we got about 200,000 new jobs each month. So, this past year we've had 35,000 actual new jobs reported and 180,000 estimated with B/D Model in one particular month and another month we actually had about 320,000 (which might have scared wall street) and 120,000 were subtracted (because whatever). But on average, we've had about 80k jobs added each month this year to "fluff up" the figure. OK -- these are from a vague memory. I get all this info and then check it out with actual www.bls.gov figures at this web site -- good source of rumors and Angst.
Inflation. Well, basically, the government now has a huge incentive to keep this reported figure as low as possible. Union Wages and government programs and a whole host of other expenses have built-in inflation increases. The 3% inflation that we keep getting reported doesn't include volatiles like the price of Gas, Food, or Day - Care. Volatiles aren't included because they change a lot and it is reasoned that those prices are going to effect the durables eventually. But let's look at what we actually spend money on in my house; the House payment is just near the top of expenses. Since I refinanced with a low interest loan (and these rates are a danger to our countries debt finance) and a lot of people have re-fied to 30 and 40 year low interest loans -- so that reduces a major expense that reduces apparent inflation -- even though the price of the houses is going up at about a 20%
Hey, previous post has good advice...
You are working for the government now so Cover Your Ass. Don't do anything that doesn't have somebody assigned to be blamed. Then, find out what your higher-ups want you to say, and always echo that. If it is impossible, get some flunky who needs the cash to sign off that they guarantee it will be done to spec.
You'll be on your way to a promising career. Remember, its not about doing good, but looking good.
Not being in the realm of a spy or anything but I just thought I'd point out some obvious things;
Get rid of floppies, CDs, USB or anything else that allows I/O. The only I/O you'd want is something you create that has an encrypted format that can only be read on the machines designated. So maybe 1 Gig flash drives with a special format -- I'm sure someone has to make these.
Get an electromagnetic detector (they sell them form monitoring emissions from CRT screens. I would think you'd want an LCD for a classified display (lower emissions). But you still need to detect for any signals leaking out of a room. I was reading that the KGB used to have big detectors on their embassy right near US government offices. They'd pick up the signal from keyboards--then after recording these over time, they could find the keys people were actually pressing by finding microsecond delays in the typing pattern (and I suppose some keys may give a slightly different signal). After detecting the most common letters like "e"s, they could then build the alphabet for a person using the keyboard. Now, I'm sure they can take the weak signal given off by a CRT and deconstruct the actual image. If you can set up metal shielding around a sensitive area, that would be ideal.
Your weakest point is going to be people. What they carry in and out of the office. But when you look at human nature, if you try to secure things by too many passwords and annoyances, people tend to make the whole system much less secure by writing down the passwords. So that is why biometrics and simple passwords coupled with no hard external connections for sensitive devices -- that should get you there. Biometrics of a sort should be in combination with something else for security -- biometrics are just good because they are easy for people to keep with them and are not prone to "dumpster diving".
Then, keep people happy and make them feel like they are doing something valuable with team meetings. Pissed off workers are the biggest security risk (hey, I have no CIA experience, but look at what Karl Rove did).
One other thing; no windows to the outside where people are discussing sensitive information. Laser-accoustic devices have been around for about 20 years that can measure the motion on the glass or any object in a room -- turning any common object into a microphone. This isn't James Bond stuff, this is Radio Shack now. I'd had a Doctor friend of mine describe a recruitment visit by an Unofficial group working for the government (about 20 years ago now). He mentioned that they had radios that changed to random stations aimed at the windows and only talked into their hands -- pretty paranoid. But seeing as how they were asking him to do things that aren't Kosher it wasn't surprising.
I don't know if these are part of DoD procedure but they should be. Hey, I had an active imagination in the 6th grade -- what can I say?
A Dolphin (or Porpoise) has a large head filled with fat and nerves. The dimensional space receives echoes. I believe the Dolphin keeps all the sound in 3 dimensions -- never detecting it in two. The nerves within the fat model the wave form shapes directly to the brain.
;-)
I've always felt that we should be using ultrasound devices to communicate with dolphins, rather than trying to send them recordings. We think it is the same sound, but our sound comes out of a speaker which is two-dimensional, while the dolphin is sending and receiving sound in 3D.
The point I'm making is, that our 2D receptors for sonar need a lot of processing power to remove extraneous ripples and sound-bouncing. If you were to detect the effect and actual motion of sound passing through a sensitive gelatinous medium (say an aero-gel), any and all origins of sound would be easily apparent. The arc of each wave would be different as well as the direction -- it is many orders of magnitude simpler to find the shape and location of an object making the sound in 3D space then to look at one plane and try to compute anything. You have to separate the sounds by sampling over time and determining the various wave forms making up the resulting jumble.
Anyway, if someone wants to build this--email me and let me get credit on the patent
Talking to Dolphins would finally be possible. For instance, I hypothesis that the word for fish is a sound picture of a fish -- and of a specific fish -- meaning that any Dolphin would know exactly which fish you were talking about -- like sending a picture that included how healthy a person was. Close as you can get to telepathy and a lot more detailed than language. Humans in this regard, must seem very crude the a Dolphin -- they must wonder how we could have accomplished so many things being as poor in language as we are.
I think they were using some of this "back trace" with gang violence in test areas -- I believe it was even used on that famous sniper (name escapes me, Michael Jackson and TDK maniac have numbed the brain -- I've quit the news, I suppose that was the goal).
There are three components available; infra-red satellite detection (muzzle flash), detecting the bang (I suppose you record all the time, and a sufficient bang says to "mark and keep data"), and location. I was reading that they'd put multiple Mics in a location (at least 3) and triangulate. A model of buildings would help because sound gets bounced, but the ultrasonic frequencies don't. So you detect the lower tone bang, but track the ultrasonic to remove the issue of obstacles (I guess).
I would think it could be done now if say 12 troops in a platoon all had mics and processors. The mic that detects the sound first would get range, and the rest would be used to find the angle and elevation-- this wouldn't need to be too exact; just "it came from over there!" They really need this for an urban setting. But it also makes sense in large cities. There isn't any reason why we couldn't detect and trace any and all explosions or fire arm shots in any city in America.
A quality mic that only stores the last 5 minutes of sound and has a wireless transmitter with say a 1000 yrd range -- maybe 40 to cover a city coupled with aggregators to send blast sounds and data to a central processor could be done fairly cheaply. A satellite could blanket a huge area and look for muzzle flash as well.
This is good. But I'm not clear on what is the benefit when you are starting with a stem cell and ending with a stem cell. How is the new cell different.
Also, I think the fundamental issue about stem cells and anti-abortion in general is that both sides are not talking about the same thing.
Pro-Life looks at human life as precious. Without looking at what life is being lived.
Pro-Choice is looking at when human consciousness and a valuable like begin AND end. Often, they are proponents of the "Right to Die". Brain dead is looked at as not a useful life, nor is extreme pain looked at as something people should endure.
The difference between a human cluster of embryonic cells and those of a monkey or a rat are only in the genes that eventually will be expressed. Personally, I don't see the difference morally between Embryonic stem cells and somebody taking a bath. Both entail killing human cells that carry a human genetic code. The idea that we are killing human life by using the Embryonic Stem Cells will be stood on its ear as soon as we can make a human from a skin cell, or any number of cells not currently involved in reproduction. So is it that the gene is sacred? Or the fact that a cell is involved in reproduction? Is a person created from a skin cell going to be just as valid/human as a "natural born" person.
I think, when you look at life and humanity from a consciousness/value perspective --then it is a lot easier to deal with new advances in science and leads to rights and ethical treatment for new type of life we have not yet considered.
The ethics of "Right to Life" don't seem to be based on value of life at all, but in preserving either a sacred DNA or a sacred reproductive cell. Note, that there is no issue with non-reproductive cells, nor is their any issue with DNA. It seems, that because it is human DNA involved in reproduction it automatically becomes sacred. The ethical quagmire this will put us in will only get worse as science continues. There hasn't been enough discussion of what we actually value when we say the word "life".
I think the bigger issue comes when we can tinker with genes to "improve people". Many would say that increasing intelligence, or reducing disease would be OK. But it is much harder to really define what makes people smarter or more useful. And any improvement ends up becoming mixed with Social Engineering. But we cannot ignore that. We are going to Engineer Society just as much by ignoring differences as we are by creating them. If the wealthy can enhance (and they will--maybe overseas) then aren't you going to end up with a lower tier of humanity by NOT making it affordable/acceptable for the lower classes to enhance?
But then, what do we want to improve--and what are the results? Some may want to tweak people to become "more religious" or "less likely to prefer same sex" -- these are probably going to actually end up being the "easier" of things to change. This will probably be the hardest and most difficult ethical debate humanity has ever faced (until robots think, that is). I don't think present society is up to the debate, because we still don't seem to have caught on to really understanding WHY we hold certain beliefs. We also seem to have become addicted to self-righteousness on both sides that will hamper our ability to find common ground.
I personally think, a lot of this issue is clouded by positions people have taken and personal identity and positions are more polarized by political opportunism. Until that changes, I don't feel very hopeful.
Intelligent Design and the argument of Evolution is a straw man. The Faithful need to have an enemy to fight and must be whipped into a frenzy every other year to make sure that they still have a cause.
Look at the investigation into Abrimoff... he had gotten Reed to get people protesting Gambling Casinos on Indian lands. So that he could do more lobbying for the Indians and make bigger commissions. These church folk are often used as a tool. Right now, ID is just a distraction made whole cloth by Tom Delay to keep the media occupied rather than look at Video from Abu Ghraib or current ethics scandals.
I am sure that there are people who honestly believe these things. But kids are failing in schools and we sit here and argue if Evolution is good enough science. We are arguing over religion so somebody can pick our pocket--it is an old story.
I think Quantum Physics maybe correct in the math of observed behaviour but most likely totally wrong in what is going on. I think Hisenberg's (sp?) uncertainty principle has more to do with not knowing the actual factors involved. Some of the earlier people you mention will stand the test of time, and at least most of Einstein. But I think we are in for physics to be stood on its ear with more modern theories.
Who doesn't see through it?
I think anyone who thinks GWB has character is willfully ignorant. Like it was a test of faith to believe in a man who is at best the leader of the most successful crime family in US history. I'm just sickened that such lame, transparent and wastefully greedy war profiteering actually works. I can imagine the lot with hookers and booze at a party passing "you won't believe the sh@t I pulled yesterday" stories. I think they try bigger and bigger public rip-offs just to impress each other--more than any need for money.
Well, with an infinite universe and a lot of time, I predict every one of the predictions will come true.
Let's see if the current corruption and retrograde society that has enveloped America will take hold. If the only survivors of a collapsed ecosystem on earth are the same greedy bastards who profited from the destruction, then maybe its better we go extinct.
The Victorian period, for all of its overt prudishness, saw the largest use of prostitution perhaps in the history of England. I remember reading some history book (I think it was the "History of Sex" --almost as interesting as the "History of Banking" --really) that reported the average Englishman visited a prostitute 2.6 times a week.
Repressive societies just seem to breed hypocrits. I'm sure the most lucrative business in the Victorian era was blackmail.