Not true - in fact, taxing these things is the only thing that has a distinct effect on consumption. There will always be some who can't control their drinking or smoking, but the majority of people aren't compulsive drinkers, eater, smokers etc. It is a strange thing that people ignore health warnings, but are strongly motivated when it comes to money - perhaps it is because "health problems" is something that may happen sometime in the future, whereas paying money costs you here and now.
I think one of the questions you should probably ask yourself is whether you are simply being used by these guys? This is perhaps not a comfortable thought, but why should you take the risk for somebody? There may be good reasons why, but unfortunately, in this world you have to watch out for people not always being quite what they appear.
The other side of it is of course that if what you have is genuine, you want it to be taken seriously. If you disseminate your information through a medium that is widely considered a source of gossip or other muck, you won't be taken serious. IMO if the cause is worth it, you should be able to get an investigative journalist interested.
Fun and entertainment aren't mutually exclusive, especially when it comes to entertainment based on real-world military conflicts
Eh? Could you run that one past me one more time? It would make sense if you said something like "Fun and education aren't mutually exclusive", but as it is stands it is a tautology.
When it comes to war, what is acceptable and in good taste depends on whether it allows people to come to terms with what has happened. WWII ended a while back, AFAIK, and people in Europe are still trying to come to terms with it - which is why in UK there is hardly one night when there is not at least one programme rehashing the events, or a comedy series or whatever. In UK we haven't even quite come to terms with WWI yet, and perhaps one shouldn't really expect to get to the state where it is just the subject of idle fun.
In my opinion, coming to terms with events of this magnitude means facing up to all aspects of what has happened, and for Falluja we aren't even close to that yet; this is not just a question of showing a bit of tact and respect for the tens of thousands innocents that were allegedly slaughered by Americans troops, but also a question of our integrity and moral standing. On a personal level I find it revolting and deeply disturbing that a bunch of soldiers - possibly henchmen in a horrifying crime - are now trying to milk the story for what it is worth. Talk about military honour.
And before anyone begins to spout nonsense about "the global anti-Americanism", let me point out that since you elected Obama, things have changed a lot in the world; not because we think he is going to do what we want him to do, but because we believe that he genuinely represents the American people, and we trust and respect the American people.
Well, you can with a fridge, which basically pumps the heat out of a confined space and heats the radiator grille on tha back, and you could in principle do the same for a satelite - in fact, I am pretty sure they do something similar to that in order to make the helium last for that long. But helium is pretty difficult to hold on to, it tends to leak out through any pressure seals, because it is comes as single atoms which are much smaller than even the two-atom molecules of hydrogen. And of course a cooling compressor, being a mechanical device, has parts that wear out and seals that get leakier over time.
Am I the only one that notices that 'sin' taxes designed, ostensibly, as a deterent are counter productive. For example:
1. Tax Cigaretts to pay for Medicare/Medcaid 2. People cut back on cigarette purchases 3. Revinue goes down from 'sin' taxes 4. Budget shortfalls lead to further increases in 'sin' taxes 5. Rinse and repeat until consuption rate drops to the point where 'sin' taxes are incapable of generating sufficent revenue to feed the Governments need for more spending. 6. Find new 'sin' (in this case obesity). 7. Rinse and repeat all over again.
A very seductive argument - except that it leaves out one of the most important points: the cost to society of chronically bad health. We've heard this argument in various guises many times in the past - the big polluters always used to whine about having to clean up after themselves, arguing that there was no benefit to it, only "unreasonable costs". And so on.
I don't know how much it costs society in total, exactly, but into the cost goes lost productivity due to illness as well as expenses to health care etc. Those of us who are of an older generation will remember from their childhood that the general expectation was, that when you got to around 50, you would be in decline, and at 60 you'd be almost as good as dead - now, of course, we aren't really surprised to find that many are still going strong when they are in there 60es. What has happened in the meantime is that there have been a number of public initiatives to improve people's lifestyle - anti-salt, anti-smoking and other campaings - and they have had an effect.
The reason governments do this is not to raise money, but to save money in the long term - have you any idea how much just one patient with long term health problem costs the taxpayers? It easily runs into millions, especially since you can now survive for decades with heart problems. So you should stop whining about the money this might cost you. Plus, of course, if you are not stuffing yourself every day of the week with junk food in front of the telly or computer, you are not going to be hit much by this at all. Junk food, DVDs and computer games are luxuries, despite their cheap prices, and luxuries are things you strictly speaking don't need any more than you need 3 dozen oysters or a plateful of Beluga caviar every day.
I am not so sure about the "controversies" - all I know is that I don't care about the so-called "adult entertaintment", because as far as I can see, that is just crap targeted at those in their late teens. What really does interest me is informational literature, like scientific articles, or in-depth analysis, like you often find in science fiction and, amazingly, some fantasy, like Terry Pratchett.
Anyway, what is needed her is not more legislation - the rules are already too complicated and unreasonable. I think what would be helpful would a thoughtful sort of moral leadership; not the fire-and-brimstone religious nonsense, but a respectful, well-reasoned morality that everybody can subscribe to. What we have now is a sort of moral vacuum, with the sometimes absurd prudishness of the churches on on side and the complete lack of moral of business on the other.
I don't think young people choose to entertain themselves with crappy adult games simply because they are attracted to them by nature; it is because 1) it is being pushed at them by amoral businesses, and 2) they haven't learned any better.
I think my last section is more like saying "OK, we can't agree, but we can just move our seperate ways and work out an interface" - in this case the interface is not too difficult to work out, really. However, there are many good things to be had from cooperating, even in a relatively small matter as this one, and I think the US is taking an unreasonable stance on this. There are no technical or practical reasons why the US should not relinquish control of the ICANN - it is purely a matter of wanting to be seen as the top dog, which is an increasingly unrealistic proposition.
The reasoning in this article builds on the assumption that we can somehow rip out a region of space and move it along independently of the rest of space, which is of course nonsense. The geometry of space is basically equivalent with the gravitational field the permeates space, if you will. If we "move a region of space", we fundamentally change the geometry - just imagine a 2D coordinate system and move a region of that space around (0,0); you would either have to break the coordinate axes or bend them, both of which will have a huge impact on the geometry of the thing. If we were to move a piece of space along like that, we would see some really weird gravity distortions.
But apart from that, what Einstein's assumption was, was not that "it is impossible to do anything faster than light", but that it was impossible to transmit any signal that propagates through space faster than light. There are some unspoken assumption in this wording - like eg that a signal propagates through space in much the same way as through an elasic media; if one could find a way of not propagating through space in that fashion, perhaps things can move faster. Indeed, the famous "Ghostlike Action at a Distance" phenomenon must be of that category.
It is funny to see how the Americans on/. are always up in arms over this subject, as if it would somehow constitute a major loss for America and make your position in the world much more vulnerable. I think what America still hasn't learned is how much more valuable a position it is to be one of the team, rather than the heavily armed outsider.
Let's consider some of the arguments against:
1. The internet was invented by the Americans:
Well, was it really? Some elements of what is now the internet were admittedly worked out by DARPA, but the overwhelming majority has grown up in international cooperation - "Open Source", remember, that rather Communist thing we all praise? The ideas and methods of open source were what drove the whole machinery most of the way, even before the concept was formalised. Looking back, I think the biggest American contribution to computing and the internet has been in the area of monetarisation and commercialisation, not in the area of inventing things.
2. The UN is a complete fiasco and therefore ICANN should remain under US control:
There are two things wrong with this statement - first of all, how do you logically get from the first half to the second? This is just unthinking generalisation - international cooperation in UN "went wrong", therefore all international cooperation must always be a disaster? I kicked a ball and missed the goal, therefore it is impossible to kick any ball into any goal? That's just stupid, if you ask me.
And of course, the UN is not a fiasco, but arguably the first great success story in international cooperation. The purpose of the UN was never to be an efficient World Government, but to be a forum for all nations to meet and discuss things, because meeting up and shouting at each other is a hell of a lot better than going to bloody war over and over. And of course, things might have been running a bit smoother if certain member states were a bit keener on paying their contributions.
3. ICANN is ours, OURS, YOU HEAR!!!!
OK, how about this then: you keep it and we ignore it - instead the rest of the world get together and make our own version of ICANN and all the other stuff that goes into this. You Americans are welcome to go and ask information from our DNS servers and so on, no problem, but maybe we have some of the same hostnames as you use in America; it won't be a problem for us, we just attach a ".us" to all name lookups on the American system, and you can attach, say ".world" or ".reality" or whatever to names outside the US - we don't give a damn, to be honest. I can't see the problem with this.
The thing is that we are trying to establish an international cooperation, whether America wants to imagine that it is all theirs or not. America makes an important contribution to the project, but it is not the only significant contribution; that is indeed the fundamental thing about cooperation. And it is simply not acceptable for the rest of the interessents in the project, that America holds on the the exclusive control of ICANN - they want to have a fair share in the decision process, and they don't feel they have that yet.
It is in many ways a question of American influence. After WWII America dominated much of the world, culturally and economically, but that time is nearing its end, and America will have to get used to not dictating things any more; that is what this is really about. I think everybody can see that it will not make a huge difference to how things are run, if ICANN was not under American control - there is after all only a few ways it can sensibly be done. But the rest of the world, and especially countries like China, Russia and India are not satisfied with allowing the US to hold on to what increasingly feels like an unjustified top position; and the thing is - I can see their point.
How useful are cultured stem cells? In animal models, they routinely cure diabetes.
Don't get taken in by this sort of statement - there is a lot of things that are routinely done in animal models, which can't just be transferred to humans. One thing about mice with diabetes, that get cured, is that they don't live a normal life for 60 years after that; they are euthanised so you can study their tissues etc. Another thing is that an animal model is only a model - ie. something that is sufficiently similar to conduct your tests on. There is no guarantee that the form of diabetes or Alzheimers or whatever they have is actually very like what humans get.
Finally, diabetes - at least type 1, which is what they cure with stemcells, is the result of an autoimmune disorder. It is all very well to be able to reintroduce insulin producing cells, but if the autoimmune disorder is still there, those new cells will get killed in a matter of weeks or months; and it is not yet understood if that process in itself is damaging to the body, quite apart from the damage to the insulin producing cells. In a mouse model you don't have that problem, because you can selectively kill off its insulin producing cells, causing diabetes, which you then cure by reintroducing the cells.
Sometimes I just want to hang my head and cry, when I see this kind of crap. Really. I mean, just describing Falun Gong as "a spiritual movement that has been suppressed by the Chinese government since 1999" - do you know what they stand for? What they do and what consequences it has had? Just because they preach about peace and morality doesn't mean that they are guaranteed to be entirely kosher; words are cheap and you can buy that kind of things canned from any competent advertising agency. At least, check things out thoroughly before you begin to put your stamp of approval on them and use them in your propaganda - I think you will find Falun Gong are somewhat less idyllic than you imagine; like most modern "religions" it is simply a money-making scam, playing in their propaganda on the habitual American distrust of any government in general and the Chinese one in particular. In short, don't be a useful idiot.
But back to the topic: the use of "circumvention technology" - I think there are two concerns to address here. One is the question of who made it - can you trust them? Falun Gong are not necessarily the bright eyed idealists they'd like you to think - there is a lot of money involved, for one thing, which always rings my alarm bells. And the US government is involved too, we hear - the very people that I always hear are nothing but the lowest scum (funny, really, when you think about it, the the Americans always elect the lowest scum for office); people you wouldn't trust as far as you could throw them. I wonder if their "circumvention technology" might contain backdoors and other nice things that could make it easy for them to track you?
The other concern is how much it actually is worth, sneaking out in anonymity? Amongst the things that are glaringly obvious are that this kind of SW certainly help criminals avoid the law; and of course, you can more easily access things like crappy porn or anti-government propaganda. What it can't guarantee is that you get access to good, reliable information or that you are able to understand what you find, and it won't help you much in changing society. In fact, I think it may well wor in the opposite direction - if you are against the government, you sneak around in a fashion that makes it easy for the government to say "Look, he was a criminal", which will in the end harm the cause you say you are working for. Secret societies and subversive underground movements all play into the hands of a repressive government - the only way to really effect a change is by doing so in the open, by showing that you are better and more trustworthy than the government. And, yes, that is sometimes dangerous, that is the nature of the game, unfortunately.
Of course, the US government or their more or less secret state agencies have a long history of stirring up discontent in countries they can't control in a more direct way. It is a well-known secret that CIA agents were involved in whipping up the sentiments before the Tiananmen incident, something that strangely enough doesn't get much press in the West. This kind of things is what really keeps conflicts brewing for ages, long after they would normally have died out or found a peaceful solution. As I see it, it is idiotic - in the end it is bound to hurt American interests.
If the US pulled out of Iraq... who or what would be killing Iraqis? Other Iraqis? Sounds like an Iraqi problem, not a US problem.
Until the conflict spreads, that is. Even if you don't care about the lives of innocent civilians that have been caught up in a war created by the US, you will not be able to shrug that off. If the US just leaves, we will see the Kurds trying to form their own state - including a largish chunk of our ally, Turkey; so they will be involved in that war. Iran will of course get involved, soon most of the Middle East will join and that close US ally, Israel, will want to show off its unofficial nuclear weapons etc etc. Remember how WWI got started? If the whole Middle East goes up in flames, so does a major part of our oil supply. Now try to shrug that one off.
I personally am not adverse to taking recreational drugs; but it has to be strictly recreational. If you begin to base all or even part of your life or career on taking a performance ehnancing drug, you have to realise that you won't be able to do without it, or at least not as well. So, you are most likely setting yourself up for a life long dependency. I wouldn't. is all I'm saying - just compare with coffee: a very mild drug, with next to no withdrawal symptoms, and yet most people don't feel able to get through a demanding day without it. A drug with a stronger effect will make you a lot more dependent.
Our brain is the way it is, because it has evolved that way; its properties have been tested over millions of years. If it was an advantage for us to be able to sustain a narrower focus for a long time, we would already be that way - just like with mutations, most of the things we can do to change the way our brain works will be disadvantageous. So why do it? Our health is the only thing we really have.
A toy that is controlled directly by your brain? Has been around for thousands if not millions of years, and it should be particularly well-known to young, male readers of Slashdot, I suspect. The ultimate in wearable technology, with variable size and fits comfortably into either hand.
It is good to see the many responses here on/. that show people don't just swallow this kind of propaganda anymore.
A network of hackers, most based in China, have been making up to 70,000 attempts a day to break into the NYPD's computer system, the city's Commissioner, Raymond Kelly, revealed Wednesday.
This wording clearly states that "We know that we are dealing with Chinese Hackers" - but how do they know? One of the many features of the internet has traditionally been that there was no actual way of knowing with any certainty where an IP address is, geographically. Even today, AFAIK, there is still only a rather loose arrangement for which IP addresses are used in which country, and there is any number of way to appear to be from another region. My own son in Denmark routinely watches South Park, which I understand should only be watchable to users in the US. What, if anything, did these guys do to verify that the alleged hackers really were from China? Nothing, I'm sure, since 70,000 is quite a large number to go through per day. And what about the Great Firewall of China, that we hear is impenetrable to anything and everything, even to the extent that it catches people speaking about "democracy", that terribly dangerous word?
And of course, if they are clever enough to hack into a foreign nation's computer systems, why aren't they clever enough to employ the well known tricks of disguise that everybody, even on/. know all about?
The obvious question is, why are the Chinese so interested in the NYPD computer network?
No, the question is "Why should they be interested?" - and the answer is most likely: "They aren't". We don't need to even ask a Chinese official; the NYPD is a local police force, of little interest to the Chinese government or the Chinese people in general, except in cases where they cooperate on fighting international crime, or in connection with security operations, in which case they shouldn't have to resort to hacking anyway.
The REAL obvious question here is: "Who is it that has an interest in spreading this nonsense?" - and it is not difficult to come up with plausible answers. Under the previous administration it could easily have been "sources close to government (ie. Rumsfeld or Cheney)", but I give Obama more credit than that. America is infested with wild-eyed anal-retentives, who are all too willing to believe that everybody in other countries are communists or muslim terrorists out to take away their guns and money - they are more than likely both the source and the target audience for this kind of drivel.
Another good question is: How did it make its way onto Slashdot? I mean, OK, this is not a top-notch high-brow news-outlet, but still.
That is a very weak cup of tea. For one thing, I can't see what is new in this; we have been able to do this sort of thing for decades. Also, I don't think we would be able to detect life on Earth using this method, let alone another planet lightyears away. The biomass on Earth is actually rather minute compared to the whole of the atmosphere or the oceans, so the signals would be weak, even for our own planet; and there are many things between us and our neighboring stars that could both polarise and depolarise the light on the way, thus scrambling the signal.
It may or may not be that there is such a thing a game addiction - I don't think it is so unlikely, personally, although the question remains, as always, whether obsessive behaviour is the result or the cause.
But I think there is another issue that is rarely touched in any depth: What is it actually that motivates this preoccupation with drug use and addiction? It is of course true that drug abuse incurs a huge cost on society as well as on the individual, but that is clearly not the motive for most of those who have strong opinions against these things; otherwise we would now have tobacco and alcohol placed under much stricter controls than cannabis and possibly ecstacy.
I think we can guess some of it from looking back over history - in Victorian times when there were few restrictions, there were, on one hand, immense problems with opium (and alcohol) in particular, which created a strong backlash against drug use, but there were also strong and growing puritanical trends, which I think were rooted in the Reformation and perhaps most notably Lutheranism - it is interesting to note how Protestant churches traditionally are much more austere than Catholic ones.
It seems to me that there are some, who simply find it hard to enjoy life and who are jealous of enjoyment in others.
What a peculiar idea; I have a hard time imgining this being well received by the public. My wife only uses Windows, bless her, and the way she uses a computer means that she opens loads of programs - to her they are all just "windows", and she doesn't really take in the fact that they represent different programs. This lack of understanding is of course something that Microsoft in particular have worked hard to produce, and I can see that coming back to haunt them now, if they go forward with this idea. People like my beloved spouse will e very upset when they find they can't keep opening new "windows" - not least because it will be very frustrating that you can open windows that are served by the same program, but not if they come from others. It will simply look like the system's behaviour is unpredictable and thus unreliable.
Anyone want to bet on how long it will take before this whole silly scam that is the current patent system will come tumbling down, due to this kind of possibly legal, but obviously unsound patents? As far as I can see, it will have to go one way or the other; it has long been simply a way for big companies to stifle competition and extort money from those who can ill afford it, and it is well on the way to become the next, big stumbling block for our economy.
make it illegal to "create or attempt to create a human-animal hybrid,...
I think what they are talking about here is not "hybrids", but chimaeras: individuals whose body is a mix of cells from more than one genetic background. In any case this is a load of emotionally charged claptrap on so many levels:
1: Humans are already animals, biologically. While I don't believe it is actually possible to produce offspring from a human/non-human mating, there is nothing inherently wrong in this. Where the "wrongness" comes in is in the consequences for the theoritical offspring - would they be able to live worthy lives? etc
2: Not only are we animals, but we are also a mixture of wildly different species of cells: there are several orders of magnitudes more bacterial cells than human cells in an average human, so it is not really as if we are "pure" in that sense. Where there may be cause for concern is when the cells that make up body and brain tissues are of different species or from different individuals. We know that there are human/human chimaeras, which can cause trouble (eg. there has been cases where a mother "can't be" the parent of her own child because the egg-producing tissue was gentically different). We don't know whether it is at all possible to make other types of chimaeras or how it would affect the offspring.
Personally I think it is possible, but we certainly need to think carefully before we let such a fetus progress to term; just to start with, we need to answer questions about whether it would be considered human or not, legally. My instinct is that the advantages of producing human interspecies chimaeras would be very modest, while the disadvantages would be heavy - IOW, not worth the investment, basically. Apart from all the other concerns, one may fear that it would allow many more viruses to jump from animals to humans because of the intimate contact between the cells of different species in such an individual.
A major political figure completely reversing his stance a subject and is able to provide straightforward and logical explanations for the change? Maybe I'm used to the previous administrations policy of "what we say goes, no matter what" but, yeah, this does kind of surprise me.
I would certainly hope that a political leader is able to change his or her opinion as a consequence of learning more about a subject; that is a sign of such things as intelligence, adaptability and maturity. Too often, I'll admit, we see politicians that are willing to say whatever people want to hear, simply because they don't have a genuine, insight-based opinion, but I don't think it is the case here. And equally often we see the opposite: politicians who are unable or unwilling to change their opinion about things in spite of new evidence or circumstances.
Well, before one passes judgment, it is worth thinking about the fact that eg. Wernher von Braun worked for Nazi Germany, producing missiles that were subsequently rained on London; he then went on to work for the US gov't and helped us reached the Moon. I dare say he was tainted by his association with the Nazi-regime, but I think helping us into space counts as good, none the less.
Also, it is probably not a bad thing that RIAA lose their best legal minds.
Certain people are always generating exasperated noises over anything governments or judges do; I wonder if it happens as a reflex, simply?
I think the basic reasoning behind this is easy to follow: if a person does something wrong, it may be because it was by mistake, but if they try to cover their tracks, that defense a whole lot harder. I can't see that using a proxy server as such is going to be an aggravating circumstance; only if it designed in such a way that it is obvious that it meant to make users anonymous and hard to track.
We don't have to reject one viewpoint in favour of the other - it is equally valid to consider a human, to take some random examples, a torus, a blob of slimy water designed to carry DNA around, or a highly organised colony of specialised eukariotes.
Slashdot Mirror
Taxing cigarettes hasn't stopped smoking!
Taxing alcohol hasn't stopped excessive drinking!
Not true - in fact, taxing these things is the only thing that has a distinct effect on consumption. There will always be some who can't control their drinking or smoking, but the majority of people aren't compulsive drinkers, eater, smokers etc. It is a strange thing that people ignore health warnings, but are strongly motivated when it comes to money - perhaps it is because "health problems" is something that may happen sometime in the future, whereas paying money costs you here and now.
I think one of the questions you should probably ask yourself is whether you are simply being used by these guys? This is perhaps not a comfortable thought, but why should you take the risk for somebody? There may be good reasons why, but unfortunately, in this world you have to watch out for people not always being quite what they appear.
The other side of it is of course that if what you have is genuine, you want it to be taken seriously. If you disseminate your information through a medium that is widely considered a source of gossip or other muck, you won't be taken serious. IMO if the cause is worth it, you should be able to get an investigative journalist interested.
Fun and entertainment aren't mutually exclusive, especially when it comes to entertainment based on real-world military conflicts
Eh? Could you run that one past me one more time? It would make sense if you said something like "Fun and education aren't mutually exclusive", but as it is stands it is a tautology.
When it comes to war, what is acceptable and in good taste depends on whether it allows people to come to terms with what has happened. WWII ended a while back, AFAIK, and people in Europe are still trying to come to terms with it - which is why in UK there is hardly one night when there is not at least one programme rehashing the events, or a comedy series or whatever. In UK we haven't even quite come to terms with WWI yet, and perhaps one shouldn't really expect to get to the state where it is just the subject of idle fun.
In my opinion, coming to terms with events of this magnitude means facing up to all aspects of what has happened, and for Falluja we aren't even close to that yet; this is not just a question of showing a bit of tact and respect for the tens of thousands innocents that were allegedly slaughered by Americans troops, but also a question of our integrity and moral standing. On a personal level I find it revolting and deeply disturbing that a bunch of soldiers - possibly henchmen in a horrifying crime - are now trying to milk the story for what it is worth. Talk about military honour.
And before anyone begins to spout nonsense about "the global anti-Americanism", let me point out that since you elected Obama, things have changed a lot in the world; not because we think he is going to do what we want him to do, but because we believe that he genuinely represents the American people, and we trust and respect the American people.
Well, you can with a fridge, which basically pumps the heat out of a confined space and heats the radiator grille on tha back, and you could in principle do the same for a satelite - in fact, I am pretty sure they do something similar to that in order to make the helium last for that long. But helium is pretty difficult to hold on to, it tends to leak out through any pressure seals, because it is comes as single atoms which are much smaller than even the two-atom molecules of hydrogen. And of course a cooling compressor, being a mechanical device, has parts that wear out and seals that get leakier over time.
Am I the only one that notices that 'sin' taxes designed, ostensibly, as a deterent are counter productive. For example:
1. Tax Cigaretts to pay for Medicare/Medcaid
2. People cut back on cigarette purchases
3. Revinue goes down from 'sin' taxes
4. Budget shortfalls lead to further increases in 'sin' taxes
5. Rinse and repeat until consuption rate drops to the point where 'sin' taxes are incapable of generating sufficent revenue to feed the Governments need for more spending.
6. Find new 'sin' (in this case obesity).
7. Rinse and repeat all over again.
A very seductive argument - except that it leaves out one of the most important points: the cost to society of chronically bad health. We've heard this argument in various guises many times in the past - the big polluters always used to whine about having to clean up after themselves, arguing that there was no benefit to it, only "unreasonable costs". And so on.
I don't know how much it costs society in total, exactly, but into the cost goes lost productivity due to illness as well as expenses to health care etc. Those of us who are of an older generation will remember from their childhood that the general expectation was, that when you got to around 50, you would be in decline, and at 60 you'd be almost as good as dead - now, of course, we aren't really surprised to find that many are still going strong when they are in there 60es. What has happened in the meantime is that there have been a number of public initiatives to improve people's lifestyle - anti-salt, anti-smoking and other campaings - and they have had an effect.
The reason governments do this is not to raise money, but to save money in the long term - have you any idea how much just one patient with long term health problem costs the taxpayers? It easily runs into millions, especially since you can now survive for decades with heart problems. So you should stop whining about the money this might cost you. Plus, of course, if you are not stuffing yourself every day of the week with junk food in front of the telly or computer, you are not going to be hit much by this at all. Junk food, DVDs and computer games are luxuries, despite their cheap prices, and luxuries are things you strictly speaking don't need any more than you need 3 dozen oysters or a plateful of Beluga caviar every day.
I am not so sure about the "controversies" - all I know is that I don't care about the so-called "adult entertaintment", because as far as I can see, that is just crap targeted at those in their late teens. What really does interest me is informational literature, like scientific articles, or in-depth analysis, like you often find in science fiction and, amazingly, some fantasy, like Terry Pratchett.
Anyway, what is needed her is not more legislation - the rules are already too complicated and unreasonable. I think what would be helpful would a thoughtful sort of moral leadership; not the fire-and-brimstone religious nonsense, but a respectful, well-reasoned morality that everybody can subscribe to. What we have now is a sort of moral vacuum, with the sometimes absurd prudishness of the churches on on side and the complete lack of moral of business on the other.
I don't think young people choose to entertain themselves with crappy adult games simply because they are attracted to them by nature; it is because 1) it is being pushed at them by amoral businesses, and 2) they haven't learned any better.
I'm not which point you were trying to make, but it was well said :-)
[ My car's odometer reads in pentaparsecs. My speedometer in parsecs/hour. ]
So you've got a fast far, but why do you measure distance in a unit of five parsecs? Is this the "Imperial Units" for the Federation of Planets?
I think my last section is more like saying "OK, we can't agree, but we can just move our seperate ways and work out an interface" - in this case the interface is not too difficult to work out, really. However, there are many good things to be had from cooperating, even in a relatively small matter as this one, and I think the US is taking an unreasonable stance on this. There are no technical or practical reasons why the US should not relinquish control of the ICANN - it is purely a matter of wanting to be seen as the top dog, which is an increasingly unrealistic proposition.
The reasoning in this article builds on the assumption that we can somehow rip out a region of space and move it along independently of the rest of space, which is of course nonsense. The geometry of space is basically equivalent with the gravitational field the permeates space, if you will. If we "move a region of space", we fundamentally change the geometry - just imagine a 2D coordinate system and move a region of that space around (0,0); you would either have to break the coordinate axes or bend them, both of which will have a huge impact on the geometry of the thing. If we were to move a piece of space along like that, we would see some really weird gravity distortions.
But apart from that, what Einstein's assumption was, was not that "it is impossible to do anything faster than light", but that it was impossible to transmit any signal that propagates through space faster than light. There are some unspoken assumption in this wording - like eg that a signal propagates through space in much the same way as through an elasic media; if one could find a way of not propagating through space in that fashion, perhaps things can move faster. Indeed, the famous "Ghostlike Action at a Distance" phenomenon must be of that category.
It is funny to see how the Americans on /. are always up in arms over this subject, as if it would somehow constitute a major loss for America and make your position in the world much more vulnerable. I think what America still hasn't learned is how much more valuable a position it is to be one of the team, rather than the heavily armed outsider.
Let's consider some of the arguments against:
1. The internet was invented by the Americans:
Well, was it really? Some elements of what is now the internet were admittedly worked out by DARPA, but the overwhelming majority has grown up in international cooperation - "Open Source", remember, that rather Communist thing we all praise? The ideas and methods of open source were what drove the whole machinery most of the way, even before the concept was formalised. Looking back, I think the biggest American contribution to computing and the internet has been in the area of monetarisation and commercialisation, not in the area of inventing things.
2. The UN is a complete fiasco and therefore ICANN should remain under US control:
There are two things wrong with this statement - first of all, how do you logically get from the first half to the second? This is just unthinking generalisation - international cooperation in UN "went wrong", therefore all international cooperation must always be a disaster? I kicked a ball and missed the goal, therefore it is impossible to kick any ball into any goal? That's just stupid, if you ask me.
And of course, the UN is not a fiasco, but arguably the first great success story in international cooperation. The purpose of the UN was never to be an efficient World Government, but to be a forum for all nations to meet and discuss things, because meeting up and shouting at each other is a hell of a lot better than going to bloody war over and over. And of course, things might have been running a bit smoother if certain member states were a bit keener on paying their contributions.
3. ICANN is ours, OURS, YOU HEAR!!!!
OK, how about this then: you keep it and we ignore it - instead the rest of the world get together and make our own version of ICANN and all the other stuff that goes into this. You Americans are welcome to go and ask information from our DNS servers and so on, no problem, but maybe we have some of the same hostnames as you use in America; it won't be a problem for us, we just attach a ".us" to all name lookups on the American system, and you can attach, say ".world" or ".reality" or whatever to names outside the US - we don't give a damn, to be honest. I can't see the problem with this.
The thing is that we are trying to establish an international cooperation, whether America wants to imagine that it is all theirs or not. America makes an important contribution to the project, but it is not the only significant contribution; that is indeed the fundamental thing about cooperation. And it is simply not acceptable for the rest of the interessents in the project, that America holds on the the exclusive control of ICANN - they want to have a fair share in the decision process, and they don't feel they have that yet.
It is in many ways a question of American influence. After WWII America dominated much of the world, culturally and economically, but that time is nearing its end, and America will have to get used to not dictating things any more; that is what this is really about. I think everybody can see that it will not make a huge difference to how things are run, if ICANN was not under American control - there is after all only a few ways it can sensibly be done. But the rest of the world, and especially countries like China, Russia and India are not satisfied with allowing the US to hold on to what increasingly feels like an unjustified top position; and the thing is - I can see their point.
How useful are cultured stem cells? In animal models, they routinely cure diabetes.
Don't get taken in by this sort of statement - there is a lot of things that are routinely done in animal models, which can't just be transferred to humans. One thing about mice with diabetes, that get cured, is that they don't live a normal life for 60 years after that; they are euthanised so you can study their tissues etc. Another thing is that an animal model is only a model - ie. something that is sufficiently similar to conduct your tests on. There is no guarantee that the form of diabetes or Alzheimers or whatever they have is actually very like what humans get.
Finally, diabetes - at least type 1, which is what they cure with stemcells, is the result of an autoimmune disorder. It is all very well to be able to reintroduce insulin producing cells, but if the autoimmune disorder is still there, those new cells will get killed in a matter of weeks or months; and it is not yet understood if that process in itself is damaging to the body, quite apart from the damage to the insulin producing cells. In a mouse model you don't have that problem, because you can selectively kill off its insulin producing cells, causing diabetes, which you then cure by reintroducing the cells.
Sometimes I just want to hang my head and cry, when I see this kind of crap. Really. I mean, just describing Falun Gong as "a spiritual movement that has been suppressed by the Chinese government since 1999" - do you know what they stand for? What they do and what consequences it has had? Just because they preach about peace and morality doesn't mean that they are guaranteed to be entirely kosher; words are cheap and you can buy that kind of things canned from any competent advertising agency. At least, check things out thoroughly before you begin to put your stamp of approval on them and use them in your propaganda - I think you will find Falun Gong are somewhat less idyllic than you imagine; like most modern "religions" it is simply a money-making scam, playing in their propaganda on the habitual American distrust of any government in general and the Chinese one in particular. In short, don't be a useful idiot.
But back to the topic: the use of "circumvention technology" - I think there are two concerns to address here. One is the question of who made it - can you trust them? Falun Gong are not necessarily the bright eyed idealists they'd like you to think - there is a lot of money involved, for one thing, which always rings my alarm bells. And the US government is involved too, we hear - the very people that I always hear are nothing but the lowest scum (funny, really, when you think about it, the the Americans always elect the lowest scum for office); people you wouldn't trust as far as you could throw them. I wonder if their "circumvention technology" might contain backdoors and other nice things that could make it easy for them to track you?
The other concern is how much it actually is worth, sneaking out in anonymity? Amongst the things that are glaringly obvious are that this kind of SW certainly help criminals avoid the law; and of course, you can more easily access things like crappy porn or anti-government propaganda. What it can't guarantee is that you get access to good, reliable information or that you are able to understand what you find, and it won't help you much in changing society. In fact, I think it may well wor in the opposite direction - if you are against the government, you sneak around in a fashion that makes it easy for the government to say "Look, he was a criminal", which will in the end harm the cause you say you are working for. Secret societies and subversive underground movements all play into the hands of a repressive government - the only way to really effect a change is by doing so in the open, by showing that you are better and more trustworthy than the government. And, yes, that is sometimes dangerous, that is the nature of the game, unfortunately.
Of course, the US government or their more or less secret state agencies have a long history of stirring up discontent in countries they can't control in a more direct way. It is a well-known secret that CIA agents were involved in whipping up the sentiments before the Tiananmen incident, something that strangely enough doesn't get much press in the West. This kind of things is what really keeps conflicts brewing for ages, long after they would normally have died out or found a peaceful solution. As I see it, it is idiotic - in the end it is bound to hurt American interests.
If the US pulled out of Iraq... who or what would be killing Iraqis? Other Iraqis? Sounds like an Iraqi problem, not a US problem.
Until the conflict spreads, that is. Even if you don't care about the lives of innocent civilians that have been caught up in a war created by the US, you will not be able to shrug that off. If the US just leaves, we will see the Kurds trying to form their own state - including a largish chunk of our ally, Turkey; so they will be involved in that war. Iran will of course get involved, soon most of the Middle East will join and that close US ally, Israel, will want to show off its unofficial nuclear weapons etc etc. Remember how WWI got started? If the whole Middle East goes up in flames, so does a major part of our oil supply. Now try to shrug that one off.
I personally am not adverse to taking recreational drugs; but it has to be strictly recreational. If you begin to base all or even part of your life or career on taking a performance ehnancing drug, you have to realise that you won't be able to do without it, or at least not as well. So, you are most likely setting yourself up for a life long dependency. I wouldn't. is all I'm saying - just compare with coffee: a very mild drug, with next to no withdrawal symptoms, and yet most people don't feel able to get through a demanding day without it. A drug with a stronger effect will make you a lot more dependent.
Our brain is the way it is, because it has evolved that way; its properties have been tested over millions of years. If it was an advantage for us to be able to sustain a narrower focus for a long time, we would already be that way - just like with mutations, most of the things we can do to change the way our brain works will be disadvantageous. So why do it? Our health is the only thing we really have.
A toy that is controlled directly by your brain? Has been around for thousands if not millions of years, and it should be particularly well-known to young, male readers of Slashdot, I suspect. The ultimate in wearable technology, with variable size and fits comfortably into either hand.
It is good to see the many responses here on /. that show people don't just swallow this kind of propaganda anymore.
A network of hackers, most based in China, have been making up to 70,000 attempts a day to break into the NYPD's computer system, the city's Commissioner, Raymond Kelly, revealed Wednesday.
This wording clearly states that "We know that we are dealing with Chinese Hackers" - but how do they know? One of the many features of the internet has traditionally been that there was no actual way of knowing with any certainty where an IP address is, geographically. Even today, AFAIK, there is still only a rather loose arrangement for which IP addresses are used in which country, and there is any number of way to appear to be from another region. My own son in Denmark routinely watches South Park, which I understand should only be watchable to users in the US. What, if anything, did these guys do to verify that the alleged hackers really were from China? Nothing, I'm sure, since 70,000 is quite a large number to go through per day. And what about the Great Firewall of China, that we hear is impenetrable to anything and everything, even to the extent that it catches people speaking about "democracy", that terribly dangerous word?
And of course, if they are clever enough to hack into a foreign nation's computer systems, why aren't they clever enough to employ the well known tricks of disguise that everybody, even on /. know all about?
The obvious question is, why are the Chinese so interested in the NYPD computer network?
No, the question is "Why should they be interested?" - and the answer is most likely: "They aren't". We don't need to even ask a Chinese official; the NYPD is a local police force, of little interest to the Chinese government or the Chinese people in general, except in cases where they cooperate on fighting international crime, or in connection with security operations, in which case they shouldn't have to resort to hacking anyway.
The REAL obvious question here is: "Who is it that has an interest in spreading this nonsense?" - and it is not difficult to come up with plausible answers. Under the previous administration it could easily have been "sources close to government (ie. Rumsfeld or Cheney)", but I give Obama more credit than that. America is infested with wild-eyed anal-retentives, who are all too willing to believe that everybody in other countries are communists or muslim terrorists out to take away their guns and money - they are more than likely both the source and the target audience for this kind of drivel.
Another good question is: How did it make its way onto Slashdot? I mean, OK, this is not a top-notch high-brow news-outlet, but still.
That is a very weak cup of tea. For one thing, I can't see what is new in this; we have been able to do this sort of thing for decades. Also, I don't think we would be able to detect life on Earth using this method, let alone another planet lightyears away. The biomass on Earth is actually rather minute compared to the whole of the atmosphere or the oceans, so the signals would be weak, even for our own planet; and there are many things between us and our neighboring stars that could both polarise and depolarise the light on the way, thus scrambling the signal.
To me this sounds like cartoon science.
It may or may not be that there is such a thing a game addiction - I don't think it is so unlikely, personally, although the question remains, as always, whether obsessive behaviour is the result or the cause.
But I think there is another issue that is rarely touched in any depth: What is it actually that motivates this preoccupation with drug use and addiction? It is of course true that drug abuse incurs a huge cost on society as well as on the individual, but that is clearly not the motive for most of those who have strong opinions against these things; otherwise we would now have tobacco and alcohol placed under much stricter controls than cannabis and possibly ecstacy.
I think we can guess some of it from looking back over history - in Victorian times when there were few restrictions, there were, on one hand, immense problems with opium (and alcohol) in particular, which created a strong backlash against drug use, but there were also strong and growing puritanical trends, which I think were rooted in the Reformation and perhaps most notably Lutheranism - it is interesting to note how Protestant churches traditionally are much more austere than Catholic ones.
It seems to me that there are some, who simply find it hard to enjoy life and who are jealous of enjoyment in others.
What a peculiar idea; I have a hard time imgining this being well received by the public. My wife only uses Windows, bless her, and the way she uses a computer means that she opens loads of programs - to her they are all just "windows", and she doesn't really take in the fact that they represent different programs. This lack of understanding is of course something that Microsoft in particular have worked hard to produce, and I can see that coming back to haunt them now, if they go forward with this idea. People like my beloved spouse will e very upset when they find they can't keep opening new "windows" - not least because it will be very frustrating that you can open windows that are served by the same program, but not if they come from others. It will simply look like the system's behaviour is unpredictable and thus unreliable.
Anyone want to bet on how long it will take before this whole silly scam that is the current patent system will come tumbling down, due to this kind of possibly legal, but obviously unsound patents? As far as I can see, it will have to go one way or the other; it has long been simply a way for big companies to stifle competition and extort money from those who can ill afford it, and it is well on the way to become the next, big stumbling block for our economy.
make it illegal to "create or attempt to create a human-animal hybrid, ...
I think what they are talking about here is not "hybrids", but chimaeras: individuals whose body is a mix of cells from more than one genetic background. In any case this is a load of emotionally charged claptrap on so many levels:
1: Humans are already animals, biologically. While I don't believe it is actually possible to produce offspring from a human/non-human mating, there is nothing inherently wrong in this. Where the "wrongness" comes in is in the consequences for the theoritical offspring - would they be able to live worthy lives? etc
2: Not only are we animals, but we are also a mixture of wildly different species of cells: there are several orders of magnitudes more bacterial cells than human cells in an average human, so it is not really as if we are "pure" in that sense. Where there may be cause for concern is when the cells that make up body and brain tissues are of different species or from different individuals. We know that there are human/human chimaeras, which can cause trouble (eg. there has been cases where a mother "can't be" the parent of her own child because the egg-producing tissue was gentically different). We don't know whether it is at all possible to make other types of chimaeras or how it would affect the offspring.
Personally I think it is possible, but we certainly need to think carefully before we let such a fetus progress to term; just to start with, we need to answer questions about whether it would be considered human or not, legally. My instinct is that the advantages of producing human interspecies chimaeras would be very modest, while the disadvantages would be heavy - IOW, not worth the investment, basically. Apart from all the other concerns, one may fear that it would allow many more viruses to jump from animals to humans because of the intimate contact between the cells of different species in such an individual.
A major political figure completely reversing his stance a subject and is able to provide straightforward and logical explanations for the change? Maybe I'm used to the previous administrations policy of "what we say goes, no matter what" but, yeah, this does kind of surprise me.
I would certainly hope that a political leader is able to change his or her opinion as a consequence of learning more about a subject; that is a sign of such things as intelligence, adaptability and maturity. Too often, I'll admit, we see politicians that are willing to say whatever people want to hear, simply because they don't have a genuine, insight-based opinion, but I don't think it is the case here. And equally often we see the opposite: politicians who are unable or unwilling to change their opinion about things in spite of new evidence or circumstances.
Well, before one passes judgment, it is worth thinking about the fact that eg. Wernher von Braun worked for Nazi Germany, producing missiles that were subsequently rained on London; he then went on to work for the US gov't and helped us reached the Moon. I dare say he was tainted by his association with the Nazi-regime, but I think helping us into space counts as good, none the less.
Also, it is probably not a bad thing that RIAA lose their best legal minds.
Certain people are always generating exasperated noises over anything governments or judges do; I wonder if it happens as a reflex, simply?
I think the basic reasoning behind this is easy to follow: if a person does something wrong, it may be because it was by mistake, but if they try to cover their tracks, that defense a whole lot harder. I can't see that using a proxy server as such is going to be an aggravating circumstance; only if it designed in such a way that it is obvious that it meant to make users anonymous and hard to track.
We don't have to reject one viewpoint in favour of the other - it is equally valid to consider a human, to take some random examples, a torus, a blob of slimy water designed to carry DNA around, or a highly organised colony of specialised eukariotes.