Right; I did not mean to dispute you or assume any philosophical position on your part. Because your sig quotes Kant as opposed to, say, Borat, I professed beleif that you are "intellectually equipped" to argue the point, irrespective of which side you might take. Meaning I beleive you have read more philosophy than 99% of the population. As your latest post seems to confirm this theory of mine, I think it is logical for me to assume it is true until I aquire evidence for it's falsehood. Take that, Hume.
But my argument is not philosophical, but linguistic/semantic. If you say "Evolution is not a fact", you are speaking a slightly different language than most of your readers, who will misunderstand you. In the context of a slashdot post, we should assume the word "fact" includes things like "the sun will come up tommorow", as that is the common usage. If you want to make clear you're using "fact" in a more restrictive philosophical sense, you should give the reader reason to know this by saying "Evolution is not a fact, because a posteriori facts do not exist". Then 90% of the world will know they don't know what you're talking about and not assume you mean something you don't. At the same time, people who do know what you're talking about, like me, can skip wondering whether you're questioning Evolution on evidentiary or philosophical grounds, and skip along to more inteeresting discussions.
Like telling you your reading of Popper is completely off base if you come out of it thinking Evolution dosen't rate as science by his terms; or for matter if you speak of "adding" Popper's philosophy to Humes as opposed to "refuting", or more charitably, "answering".
To the extent non-mathematical facts exist, Evolution is one. In the common parlance, we assume facts do exist. We consider those theories, (such as "the sun will rise tommorow") whose evidence passes an extremely high level of confidence, to be facts. Evolution is amongst these. We have gathered the evidence that makes us so sure about Evolution by making observations; others who make all those same observations should also be sure. Hence I feel it is entirely reasonable, and even desirable, to describe Evolution as an "observable fact".
Given that your sig quotes Kant, you are probably itellectually equiped to argue the assertion that non-mathematical facts exist. But if we're going to operate on that level of pedantry, I'll point out that humans did not evolve from primates, as humans are primates.
I find your ideas interesting and wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
In the next issue, perhaps you could discuss how many asteroids you imagine have geosyncronous orbit distances outside their own surfaces.
You seem to have given a lot of thought to the details of the implementation, and not much to the basic theory. The total rotation enrgy of most bodies is not going to be enough to significantly effect their orbits until you've throw almost all of their mass back the other way, at which point, why not throw the little peice forward to begin with?
You're either joking or have not been to much of Europe.
In Naples I saw scooter riders ride up the sidewalk, cut across 3 lanes of traffic to go up the wrong side of the road for a bit, and kick dents in cars that cut them off while they (the scooters) were running red lights. Such behavior was common, and atracted no particular attention from bystanders, including policemen.
In the US I have certainly seen many BAD drivers; but for skilled, yet hyberbolicly-selfish, angry drivers, Mediterainean Europe beats anywhere in the US hands down.
Sure it is. Kinkos will happily copy or print things for you if you have the legal right to copy or print them. Your taking on the legal burden in case you don't have permission is just so they can avoid having to ask for or judge the validity of proof of that. If it were illegal for them to make the copies in any case, you wouldn't be able to take on the liability (and they would be out of business.)
"If the copyright holders (or their agent(s), etc) decide that you can only use that copy in one specific way.... it would be illegal for you to do it."
They can "decide" that the moon is made of green cheese if they like, but it doesn't make it so.
Kinkos is not irrelevant. They require evidence you have the right to make a copy of something before they will copy it for you. They do not require you to produce evidence that the copyright holder consents to Kinkos making a copy for you ; only that they consent to the customer making a copy. The person who winds up with the copy needs to have legal right to it. Weather I press the button on the copy machine (or DVD ripper) or pay someone to press it for me is legally irrelevant, as it obviously should be. The straight-up infringement claims in this case are, luckily for Kinkos, horseshit.
The DMCA claims may hold up, but notably apply equally well to the customer ripping their own copies for their own use. The RIAA really thinks it is (and should be) illegal to put your own DVD movied on your own iPod.
Sure they do! Certainly the American revolution was driven by the rich and well fed. More often when the non-desperate drive socail change it is by non-violent means, of course. Of the examples I can think of off the top of my head, it would seem social change movements intitated mostly by the not-entirely-desperate are the ones likely to produce lasting positive change. The desperate also drive revolutiuons, but their movements are more likely to get hijacked by strongmen who promise (and deliver) something differnet, but not necessarily better.
The starving do not fight for freedom, they fight for food. When people have some reasonable level of security, they can afford to be concerned about civil liberties and corruption.
So I predict increased prosperity will indeed be a problem for Chinas leaders. Whether they transition away from their repressive policies, or screw up the prosperity, or get messily overthrown remains to be seen.
"MSFT claims they wrote all of windows" is, yes, a blatant lie. The first windows copyright notice I could find gives credit to at least 6 other organizations.
MS sucks 500 ways, but they did not "steal" the TCP/IP stack, or anything, from BSD. Not because tyhey are nice guys in any way shape or form, but because it's impossible to steal what is freely given.
Find 50 people willing to pay a dollar for something whose only value is that it looks cool, but you can't show it to them. Find these people, talk them into it, and get their dollars in significantly less than $50 worth of time. Good luck with that.
Not so! It takes some amount of time and effort to find the customers who will pay $X for an item, to keep track of the fact that they are all still willing to pay when you create it, to track them down and get the money. This effort is increased by the need to sell them something without letting them see it first. Systems may be developed that make all this more or less efficient, but there will always be some marginal per-transaction cost. There will certainly be combinations of how expensive something is to make initially and how much people are willing to pay that will make funding the effort entirely on pre-orders impossible.
So your links lead to articles that say, yes, global warming is real; yes, it is human caused; and yes, it is bad. But you can't understand them, so we better ignore the problem until it gets "sorted out".
I mean come on, the article is all about how global warming could cause the ocean transfer currents to shut down and then glaciers would Europe. You seem conflicted between wondering whether that is bad, or whether the fact is is counter-intuitive means it must be wrong.
"Can we even theorectically counter the effects of the sun? The sun is huge and powerful. We cannot realistic predict let alone counter the effects of a warmer sun."
All hail mighty Ra! He shall strike down all who attempt understanding through puny "science". And apparently all those who learn to spell.
Gee, you're right, indirect knowledge is impossible, so much for 99% of science.
"As opposed to what? The 1500's? The 1700's?? The late Cretaceous???"
All of the above.
"Was anyone keeping record of the ACTUAL temperature back then? No. We have only been recording these kinds of things for the last 200 years at best."
Did you personally check the temperature 200 years ago? I mean, all we really have is some marks on a peice of parchment that appear to be temperature observations made by some human of unknown reliability.
Can we conduct experiments in plate tectonics? There may be lots of reasons the eath shakes. Nobody has ever seen a tectonic plate. Clearly geology is only based on scientific theory at best.
Love that phrase, by the way, "only based on scientific theory at best". As if there were anything better anything could ever possibly be based on. Your suggestion the sun will rise tommorow is only based on scientific theory at best.
Science attempts to construct explanations for observed data. Then it tests those explanations. No one is ever super-completely-definitely-sure, but they keep testing and trying to fit their explanations into the web of data and theory. Some things fit really well, and survive huge amounts of double checking.
There are several ways to estimate pre-instumental temperatures via proxy records, including ice cores. They all agree fairly well. Nobody with knowledge of the available evidence could reasonably suggest our best guess estimates of pre-instrumental temperatures are so incredibly, radically wrong as to make the last hundred years warming look unexceptional. It's not different by a little bit. It's different by a fricking huge amount.
Over the recent past, the warming has not been "gradual". It appears it has been several orders of magnitude faster than ever before.
Nobody says there is "proof" humans are causing it. They say a heck of a lot of smart people have tried very hard to come up with an explanation for it, and they've got exactly squat other than the industrial revolution.
If you've got a realistic explanation for warming rates over the recent past other than human action, I'd love to hear it. But "it's just natural cycles" doesn't cut it. Something radically different is going on in the last hundred years of the temperature record. It's hard to see why people insist we just don't know what it could be except willful avoidance of the big obvious candidate.
In any case, something different is going on in the last hundred years. If you've got a suggestion what it is other than human action, let's hear it, but dispense with the saying it's just the same natural cycles as before. Because it's nowhere close.
Yup, just a coincidence that the industrial revolution conincides with a perfectly natural warming at 1000 times the fastest rate ever. No reason to suspect any causation there.
The various hardware you seek to leave behind is basically trivial next to the weight of the fuel. Your solution carries the fuel with the spacecraft, just like a rocket.
The main theoretical advantage of space elevators is not having to lift mass with you just to throw it behind you in order to push forward. Unless you have something (an elevator cable) to grab onto, the only way to generate thrust is to throw mass backward. So to generate any thrust in the latter part of your launch, you've got to lift all that mass at the earlier part, etc. such that almost all of the mass of a modern rocket is fuel. No clever idea can remove this basic restriction from any non-elevator solution.
This is why people like the idea of space elevators so much. So much in fact that they sometimes forget space elevators don't exist, and depend on solutions to problems that don't exist, and that may not ever exist.
Of course it was an act. He doesn't have to "offer" anything; the president can fire him any time he pleases, and of course if he really wants to resign, no one can really make him stay on the job. An offered, but refused, resignation that is made public can only be politcal theater. There's no reason to tell anyone about it otherwise.
In the wake of a scandal, Rumsfeld in efect said "Don't blame the Prez, I take responsibility." to which Bush responded "No, no, we're in this together." Both get to act all big about accepting responsibility while implying it's not really their fault and not really having any consequences.
Now he resigns, and it is accepted, in response to what? The fact he'll soon be answering prickly questions in front of a House oversight committee, and it will be easier for the administration if he's not a current member.
A pardon would prevent him being charged with anything, but I've not heard any credible (e.g. elected) person suggest he's done anything illegal, just incompetent.
Regardless, Congress can supeona who they please, pardoned or not. I imagine Rumsfeld will still be answering quite a few pointed questions before congressional committees. But not as many as if he didn't resign, because if he's not a current member of the administration, the political impact of such questioning is lessened.
This is, IMO, why he's gone. He's going to get raked over the coals, but this lessens the value of doing so as a means to critisize the administration.
You're getting hit no matter what; I'm asking not to get hit with a bat. If you refrain from choosing, you choose to let the rest of us choose for you. This being America, both of us can say whatever we bloody well please. In a democracy, the candidates who have a realistic chance of winning may not include any you would pick if it were all up to you. But one is almost certainly better than the other. I've certainly never looked at the candidates for a statewide or higher office and had no opinion which I wanted. Doesn't mean I always liked either of them, but I certainly had a preference.
"I just voted and my district was using voting machines that did just what you said: let you choose, review, correct, and at the end printed out a 'receipt' for you to inspect."
Excellent. That's what they should do, and I don't really object to voting machines that do it that way. Though I do wish people wouldn't call it a 'receipt'; a receipt is an uniportant extra thing you take with you and eventually throw away. What that machine prints is not a 'receipt'; it's a 'ballot'.
"My county apparently saved a million USD in this election on printing costs alone."
Since the machine is printing the ballots needed on demand, you only save money on the extra unused ballots. At the prices I can get at my local Kinkos, that's about ten-million extra, un-used ballots; several for every voter in even the biggest counties. I think somone is misrepresenting that number. And of course, the machines aren't free.
Your ideas on having plenty of media available from the voting machine are interesting, but I think fraught with security, technical, and legal problems. Who picks the links?!? In any case, the voting machines under discussion don't and can't do any of that.
I don't really have any problem with vote printing machines (except questioning whether they're worth the money); nor do I have any problem with vote counting machines. The key is that the entire process can be, and is, human-audited. That's acheived if the voter looks at a physical mark on a ballot a monitor can later look at as well.
Slashdot Mirror
Right; I did not mean to dispute you or assume any philosophical position on your part. Because your sig quotes Kant as opposed to, say, Borat, I professed beleif that you are "intellectually equipped" to argue the point, irrespective of which side you might take. Meaning I beleive you have read more philosophy than 99% of the population. As your latest post seems to confirm this theory of mine, I think it is logical for me to assume it is true until I aquire evidence for it's falsehood. Take that, Hume.
But my argument is not philosophical, but linguistic/semantic. If you say "Evolution is not a fact", you are speaking a slightly different language than most of your readers, who will misunderstand you. In the context of a slashdot post, we should assume the word "fact" includes things like "the sun will come up tommorow", as that is the common usage. If you want to make clear you're using "fact" in a more restrictive philosophical sense, you should give the reader reason to know this by saying "Evolution is not a fact, because a posteriori facts do not exist". Then 90% of the world will know they don't know what you're talking about and not assume you mean something you don't. At the same time, people who do know what you're talking about, like me, can skip wondering whether you're questioning Evolution on evidentiary or philosophical grounds, and skip along to more inteeresting discussions.
Like telling you your reading of Popper is completely off base if you come out of it thinking Evolution dosen't rate as science by his terms; or for matter if you speak of "adding" Popper's philosophy to Humes as opposed to "refuting", or more charitably, "answering".
To the extent non-mathematical facts exist, Evolution is one. In the common parlance, we assume facts do exist. We consider those theories, (such as "the sun will rise tommorow") whose evidence passes an extremely high level of confidence, to be facts. Evolution is amongst these. We have gathered the evidence that makes us so sure about Evolution by making observations; others who make all those same observations should also be sure. Hence I feel it is entirely reasonable, and even desirable, to describe Evolution as an "observable fact".
Given that your sig quotes Kant, you are probably itellectually equiped to argue the assertion that non-mathematical facts exist. But if we're going to operate on that level of pedantry, I'll point out that humans did not evolve from primates, as humans are primates.
People who say "Works in India" think they have evidence, and they don't.
OK, I did that. Why didn't you?
That article says one guy thinks it's a good idea. That is not evidence.
And really, he thinks it's a good idea to design roads differently such that they don't need as many signs and roads; which is probably true.
The assertion of the parent poster and others that it "Works in India" or Italy, ignores the actual acident rates in those places.
I find your ideas interesting and wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
In the next issue, perhaps you could discuss how many asteroids you imagine have geosyncronous orbit distances outside their own surfaces.
You seem to have given a lot of thought to the details of the implementation, and not much to the basic theory. The total rotation enrgy of most bodies is not going to be enough to significantly effect their orbits until you've throw almost all of their mass back the other way, at which point, why not throw the little peice forward to begin with?
You're either joking or have not been to much of Europe.
In Naples I saw scooter riders ride up the sidewalk, cut across 3 lanes of traffic to go up the wrong side of the road for a bit, and kick dents in cars that cut them off while they (the scooters) were running red lights. Such behavior was common, and atracted no particular attention from bystanders, including policemen.
In the US I have certainly seen many BAD drivers; but for skilled, yet hyberbolicly-selfish, angry drivers, Mediterainean Europe beats anywhere in the US hands down.
"Works in India."
Not so much. It's done that way sure, and India has a stupidly high rate of traffic fatalities.
The assertion of the proponents of this, that less traffic rules means more safety, is not supported by the evidence.
"Not sure if this is really relevant though "
Sure it is. Kinkos will happily copy or print things for you if you have the legal right to copy or print them. Your taking on the legal burden in case you don't have permission is just so they can avoid having to ask for or judge the validity of proof of that. If it were illegal for them to make the copies in any case, you wouldn't be able to take on the liability (and they would be out of business.)
"If the copyright holders (or their agent(s), etc) decide that you can only use that copy in one specific way .... it would be illegal for you to do it."
They can "decide" that the moon is made of green cheese if they like, but it doesn't make it so.
Kinkos is not irrelevant. They require evidence you have the right to make a copy of something before they will copy it for you. They do not require you to produce evidence that the copyright holder consents to Kinkos making a copy for you ; only that they consent to the customer making a copy. The person who winds up with the copy needs to have legal right to it. Weather I press the button on the copy machine (or DVD ripper) or pay someone to press it for me is legally irrelevant, as it obviously should be. The straight-up infringement claims in this case are, luckily for Kinkos, horseshit.
The DMCA claims may hold up, but notably apply equally well to the customer ripping their own copies for their own use. The RIAA really thinks it is (and should be) illegal to put your own DVD movied on your own iPod.
"Rich, well-fed people do not drive revolutions"
Sure they do! Certainly the American revolution was driven by the rich and well fed. More often when the non-desperate drive socail change it is by non-violent means, of course. Of the examples I can think of off the top of my head, it would seem social change movements intitated mostly by the not-entirely-desperate are the ones likely to produce lasting positive change. The desperate also drive revolutiuons, but their movements are more likely to get hijacked by strongmen who promise (and deliver) something differnet, but not necessarily better.
The starving do not fight for freedom, they fight for food. When people have some reasonable level of security, they can afford to be concerned about civil liberties and corruption.
So I predict increased prosperity will indeed be a problem for Chinas leaders. Whether they transition away from their repressive policies, or screw up the prosperity, or get messily overthrown remains to be seen.
They do give credit.
"MSFT claims they wrote all of windows" is, yes, a blatant lie. The first windows copyright notice I could find gives credit to at least 6 other organizations.
MS sucks 500 ways, but they did not "steal" the TCP/IP stack, or anything, from BSD. Not because tyhey are nice guys in any way shape or form, but because it's impossible to steal what is freely given.
Sincerely, a pedantic fan of the BSD license.
Find 50 people willing to pay a dollar for something whose only value is that it looks cool, but you can't show it to them. Find these people, talk them into it, and get their dollars in significantly less than $50 worth of time. Good luck with that.
"It can be applied to any scale."
Not so! It takes some amount of time and effort to find the customers who will pay $X for an item, to keep track of the fact that they are all still willing to pay when you create it, to track them down and get the money. This effort is increased by the need to sell them something without letting them see it first. Systems may be developed that make all this more or less efficient, but there will always be some marginal per-transaction cost. There will certainly be combinations of how expensive something is to make initially and how much people are willing to pay that will make funding the effort entirely on pre-orders impossible.
So your links lead to articles that say, yes, global warming is real; yes, it is human caused; and yes, it is bad. But you can't understand them, so we better ignore the problem until it gets "sorted out".
I mean come on, the article is all about how global warming could cause the ocean transfer currents to shut down and then glaciers would Europe. You seem conflicted between wondering whether that is bad, or whether the fact is is counter-intuitive means it must be wrong.
"Can we even theorectically counter the effects of the sun? The sun is huge and powerful. We cannot realistic predict let alone counter the effects of a warmer sun."
All hail mighty Ra! He shall strike down all who attempt understanding through puny "science". And apparently all those who learn to spell.
Gee, you're right, indirect knowledge is impossible, so much for 99% of science.
"As opposed to what? The 1500's? The 1700's?? The late Cretaceous???"
All of the above.
"Was anyone keeping record of the ACTUAL temperature back then? No. We have only been recording these kinds of things for the last 200 years at best."
Did you personally check the temperature 200 years ago? I mean, all we really have is some marks on a peice of parchment that appear to be temperature observations made by some human of unknown reliability.
Can we conduct experiments in plate tectonics? There may be lots of reasons the eath shakes. Nobody has ever seen a tectonic plate. Clearly geology is only based on scientific theory at best.
Love that phrase, by the way, "only based on scientific theory at best". As if there were anything better anything could ever possibly be based on. Your suggestion the sun will rise tommorow is only based on scientific theory at best.
Science attempts to construct explanations for observed data. Then it tests those explanations. No one is ever super-completely-definitely-sure, but they keep testing and trying to fit their explanations into the web of data and theory. Some things fit really well, and survive huge amounts of double checking.
There are several ways to estimate pre-instumental temperatures via proxy records, including ice cores. They all agree fairly well. Nobody with knowledge of the available evidence could reasonably suggest our best guess estimates of pre-instrumental temperatures are so incredibly, radically wrong as to make the last hundred years warming look unexceptional. It's not different by a little bit. It's different by a fricking huge amount.
Over the recent past, the warming has not been "gradual". It appears it has been several orders of magnitude faster than ever before.
Nobody says there is "proof" humans are causing it. They say a heck of a lot of smart people have tried very hard to come up with an explanation for it, and they've got exactly squat other than the industrial revolution.
If you've got a realistic explanation for warming rates over the recent past other than human action, I'd love to hear it. But "it's just natural cycles" doesn't cut it. Something radically different is going on in the last hundred years of the temperature record. It's hard to see why people insist we just don't know what it could be except willful avoidance of the big obvious candidate.
In any case, something different is going on in the last hundred years. If you've got a suggestion what it is other than human action, let's hear it, but dispense with the saying it's just the same natural cycles as before. Because it's nowhere close.
Yup, just a coincidence that the industrial revolution conincides with a perfectly natural warming at 1000 times the fastest rate ever. No reason to suspect any causation there.
The various hardware you seek to leave behind is basically trivial next to the weight of the fuel. Your solution carries the fuel with the spacecraft, just like a rocket.
The main theoretical advantage of space elevators is not having to lift mass with you just to throw it behind you in order to push forward. Unless you have something (an elevator cable) to grab onto, the only way to generate thrust is to throw mass backward. So to generate any thrust in the latter part of your launch, you've got to lift all that mass at the earlier part, etc. such that almost all of the mass of a modern rocket is fuel. No clever idea can remove this basic restriction from any non-elevator solution.
This is why people like the idea of space elevators so much. So much in fact that they sometimes forget space elevators don't exist, and depend on solutions to problems that don't exist, and that may not ever exist.
Of course it was an act. He doesn't have to "offer" anything; the president can fire him any time he pleases, and of course if he really wants to resign, no one can really make him stay on the job. An offered, but refused, resignation that is made public can only be politcal theater. There's no reason to tell anyone about it otherwise.
In the wake of a scandal, Rumsfeld in efect said "Don't blame the Prez, I take responsibility." to which Bush responded "No, no, we're in this together." Both get to act all big about accepting responsibility while implying it's not really their fault and not really having any consequences.
Now he resigns, and it is accepted, in response to what? The fact he'll soon be answering prickly questions in front of a House oversight committee, and it will be easier for the administration if he's not a current member.
A pardon would prevent him being charged with anything, but I've not heard any credible (e.g. elected) person suggest he's done anything illegal, just incompetent.
Regardless, Congress can supeona who they please, pardoned or not. I imagine Rumsfeld will still be answering quite a few pointed questions before congressional committees. But not as many as if he didn't resign, because if he's not a current member of the administration, the political impact of such questioning is lessened.
This is, IMO, why he's gone. He's going to get raked over the coals, but this lessens the value of doing so as a means to critisize the administration.
You're getting hit no matter what; I'm asking not to get hit with a bat. If you refrain from choosing, you choose to let the rest of us choose for you. This being America, both of us can say whatever we bloody well please. In a democracy, the candidates who have a realistic chance of winning may not include any you would pick if it were all up to you. But one is almost certainly better than the other. I've certainly never looked at the candidates for a statewide or higher office and had no opinion which I wanted. Doesn't mean I always liked either of them, but I certainly had a preference.
"I just voted and my district was using voting machines that did just what you said: let you choose, review, correct, and at the end printed out a 'receipt' for you to inspect."
Excellent. That's what they should do, and I don't really object to voting machines that do it that way. Though I do wish people wouldn't call it a 'receipt'; a receipt is an uniportant extra thing you take with you and eventually throw away. What that machine prints is not a 'receipt'; it's a 'ballot'.
"My county apparently saved a million USD in this election on printing costs alone."
Since the machine is printing the ballots needed on demand, you only save money on the extra unused ballots. At the prices I can get at my local Kinkos, that's about ten-million extra, un-used ballots; several for every voter in even the biggest counties. I think somone is misrepresenting that number. And of course, the machines aren't free.
Your ideas on having plenty of media available from the voting machine are interesting, but I think fraught with security, technical, and legal problems. Who picks the links?!? In any case, the voting machines under discussion don't and can't do any of that.
I don't really have any problem with vote printing machines (except questioning whether they're worth the money); nor do I have any problem with vote counting machines. The key is that the entire process can be, and is, human-audited. That's acheived if the voter looks at a physical mark on a ballot a monitor can later look at as well.