Here's the basic primer on (DC) electric motors: - They produce maximum torque at 0 RPM. - They produce no torque at all at their top speed. (Think about it, they'd just go faster). - Maximum horsepower (torque * speed) comes somewhere near half speed. (i.e. the torque vs. speed graph isn't quite a straight line, it curves somewhat in the direction you'd like it to; the curve is a lot flatter than a gas engine though).
So assume some electric car has a top speed of 75, and isn't using a transmission to stay near that max horsepower (ridiculous, but for the sake of argument...): it's going to depart from a stop like a bat out of hell. but it's going to take forever getting from 65-75 (in a nice pure theoretical universe, it's going to approach 75 asymptotically, never actually getting there).
In a real car of course, if you want a 75 mph speed, you're going to use a transmission, so you can keep geting that lovely low-end torque at higher road speeds.
For the guy carrying a lot of band equiptment long distance all the time: sorry, but electric power is not yet for you; you need to store and carry with you a pretty large total amount of energy, and while things are coming along, batteries still pretty much suck.
For me, an electric car would be great. Almost all of my driving is trips that are just a little beyond a bicycle (it's a little too far; I have to carry something a little too big; the weathers a little too cold; I'm a little too lazy). And as long as I'm nice to my wife I have access to a bigger/longer range car for those fairly infrequent times when I need one. So I hope they actually make this thing; I might even want one. Then again, it is butt-ugly, maybe I'll get off my ass and bike more.
So you've seen through the Hollywood image of the "wild west" being crime-ridden, but you still accept the part about everyone carrying a revolver all the time?
I'll accept that the crime rate was probably lower (but probably similar to modern areas with comparable population density). But I find it hard to imagine that everyone carried a gun with them everywhere. Even in the higher crime rate environment I live in, I have no desire to cart a gun around.
Comparing crime rates in the early west, with its low density and lack of Drug War, to modern cities is just pointless. Concluding the difference is solely due to gun ownership rates is competely inane.
Finally, note that in the aforementioned modern cities, the rate of death by gunshot is much higher in one particular group: gun owners.
Call you a right-wing conspiracy theorist? You're not even trying. The previous CEO of Diebold is a Republican Senator, having won his seat in a surprising upset...
Well, I beleive that anything that doesn't hurt anyone else (like speeding but not getting in an accident) cannot possibly be immoral. But that doesn't mean it shouldn't be illegal.
To take the argument to a ridiculous extreme: Building a nuclear bomb in your basement, but not setting it off, doesn't hurt anyone. Yet I still don't think we should let people build them and just have draconian punsihments for setting them off.
Besides, isn't driving under the influence "victimless" if you get lucky and make it home safely?
How can you "know" the USPS has a government mandated monopoly on first-class mail if you don't know how that is defined? I'd guess you wouldn't be allowed to call your service "first-class mail", but you can't call it "FedEx Letter" either.
"Someone suggested no one else is allowed to send a letter for under 50 cents..."
That's ridiculous. Do you really beleive it would be illegal for me to take a letter from you, drive it across town and hand it to someone else for free if I felt like it?
Being protected by the law does not make something government property. I believe it would be illegal for you to put roadkill on my doorstep. In fact, it would be illegal for you to put a pizza coupon on my doorstep, since you'd have to walk past a "No Tresspassing" sign to get there. So my doorstep is in fact protected by law. It is not however, government property. For what it's worth, you can put all the pizza coupons that you like on your own mailbox. Because it's your property.
"The USPS has a government mandated monopoly on first-class mail."
FedEx and UPS will happily deliver anything you can send by first-class mail, and no one will be arrested. So in short, what are you talking about?
As for "owning" the mailboxes: they don't. They simply won't deliver to you unless you set up a box approved by them exclusively for their use. If you don't want to receive mail via USPS, go out there, rip the box out of the ground, and throw it away. No one will stop you, because it is your property.
Anyone who wants to can start up a delivery service to compete with USPS. They do not have a "government-mandated" monopoly. They do have a practical monopoly on first-class mail, because anyone stupid enough to start a businesss trying to compete with them directly - delivering as widely as them, but at a lower price, will fail fast. The capital investment would be huge, and the potential profit basically non-existant. But lots of people (FedEx, UPS, couriers) compete with them on other grounds, mostly service (i.e. speed).
"You mean a bunch of volunteers didn't always think about the (l)users and created a bad UI? Wow, none of us knew that!"
So you're saying I shouldn't use software created by volunteers, because they'll think of me as a luser and create crappy UIs?
"This problem does exist, and is being worked on. C'mon, just look at the GNOME Project. They have a whole team of UI designers working to make it better for the common man."
Great! GNOME is going to magically fix the UI problems of all other open source projects. Let me know when that works out. In the mean time, I'll just stick with software that already has decent UI...
"I know ESR has been a big contributor to open source, but in this case: submit a patch or shut up. Identifying a problem we all know exists isn't that amazing."
When a luminary of the community makes a criticism and gets a response like that, it's clear to me that the needs of a common luser like myself will be addressed real soon now.
Uh, no. That statement wasn't said by any of the above. It was said by a Slashdot poster. What's scary is that you got an Insightful. At least the original poster got a Funny for his willful misinterpretations of the MS guys comments.
Since obviously no one is going to RTFA, a better summary of what was actually said is:
Most exploits occur when people reverse engineer patches and use that knowledge to attack unpatched machines. The implication being that Windows will become more secure when people actually patch their machines. Which is hardly earth shattering news.
The MS guy does engage in some hyperbole, saying "Never" when "Very rarely" is probably more accurate. So if you do go RTFA (which is pretty short in any case), you can quote that and bash MS to your hearts content without looking like an idiot. But frankly, I'd expect a bit of hyperbole: Regardless of title, while being interviewed by the BBC he's in Marketing.
"I'm forgetting my Liberal Lines, now do we like Saddam or not?"
Nice turn around, since it's Republican administrations that both aided Saddam and spent a lot of money and lives taking him down. Myself, I've never liked Saddam, and I'm not angry about taking him down. I am angry that we propped him up in the first place.
Can you show me any evidence that Kerry "spit on soldiers when they got home". Or are you arguing "Kerry opposed the war" + "Some people who opposed the war spit on vets" = "Kerry spit on vets"? That's about the level of logic I'd expect from a member of the faction that broke into the Watergate building...
I'm sure there are some vets who will dislike anyone who opposed the war. But while the vets I know might have some choice words about Jane Fonda, you don't want to be in the room if someone mentions Robert McNamara.
Do conservatives really want to make a big election issue of comparing the records of Kerry and Bush during the Vietnam era? I can only imagine the Kerry campaign would be thrilled by this posibility.
But note I say "rabid". By which I mean those that not only hate Fonda, but instinctively condemn anyone who appears in a photograph with her, or who ever agreed with her about a particular issue, even if for different reasons.
Personally, I'm slightly familiar with the story, and I consider myself at least vaugely patriotic. But I don't hate Fonda. If anything, I pity her for having been so stupidly naive. Mostly, as noted, I don't care.
Jane Fonda was also a prominent opponent of the Vietnam war. Some people think she went too far, to the point of actually supporting the North Vietnamese (I'll not go into whether this was actually the case, as I don't know or care). So by linking Kerry with Fonda as closely as possible, they try to say Kerry is a wacko like Fonda. All without going into the fact that Kerry made a principled stand against the war only after serving in that war with considerable distinction.
Frankly, I don't think this approach has much traction. The rabid Fonda-haters are all on the right-wing fringe anyway. I would hope that for most Americans, having opposed the Vietnam war in the considered way Kerry did makes you look smart. You'd have to be pretty out there to say that in retrospect the Vietnam war was still a good idea when Kerry came out against it. I think it just makes it obvious that his critics on this issue are fully in the "all independent thought is treason" camp.
Anyway, a lot of people opposed the Vietnam war, and at this point, most people probably think they were right to do so. The demographic that still thinks of Vietnam war protesters as hippie-commie-pinko-scum is pretty small now, and they're not voting for Kerry anyway, so I don't see this fake photo mattering much.
On the other hand, there are plenty of real pictures of current members of the Bush administration being all buddy-buddy with Saddam Hussein...
"the usual suspects will continue to profit excessively from their old and creaky infrastructure"
Shouldn't that be their old, creaky, and in this case entirely superior infrastructure? The point is that if VOIP providers want to compete with regular phone service, they are going to be subject to the same requirements as regular phone service. So they are going to have to work out the issues you mention.
If VOIP wants to be a novelty that people use alongside their regular phones to get cheap long distance, that's one thing. If VOIP wants to become actual infrastructure, it will need to act like it.
"The only way to guarantee my position would be with a GPS"
Not at all. Maybe there's no way to pinpoint where your phone is, but the wireless access point you're using is presumably stationary, and probably plenty good enough.
But look at his example. One is spam trying to drive traffic to a website. Another is an actual friend of his, telling him about a cool website he found. If it's selling something indirectly, it could well be entirely indistinguishable from legitimate mail, at least to a machine. Only the human knows that "MyBuddy" is someone he knows and "SpamKitty" is not. Now, if the filter program has some distributed-networking action going on and can detect that a few thousand "people" have recomended the same website to their friends at the same time, it might have a chance...
They could ask you. They could track down the source of the messages, and extensively interview the EFF about why they sent you the mail. Etc.
"How good are humans at such-and-such a task?" is a pretty common research question, and it's perfectly possible to asses it even though human researchers must be the ones who determine the correct answer. Basically, they just put a lot more time effort into determining the correct answer than you put into coming up with your answer.
If you took 5 seconds to decide a mail message was spam, and I put 5 hours into determining it was not, I can feel pretty confident in deciding you were wrong. Particularly if part of that was having you spend five minutes carefully reading the message over, after which you agree you were mistaken.
Isn't the rough defintion of SPAM "Anything I don't want in my mailbox"?
No. Spam is unsolicited bulk email. The dumb jokes I've seen a hundred times forwarded by my brother-in-law are not spam, even though I don't want them.
If that's the case, isn't the human score going to be 100% (at least for the intended recipient)?
No. The whole point is that a human faced with hundreds of emails a day, most of which they don't want, will almost certainly end up accidentally deleting some they actually do want. Humans are generally not 100% at anything.
I disagree - I think overly capitalist or overly socialist systems are unstable. Mixtures are essential. An overly capitalist system results in ever greater concentrations of wealth until those without any wealth form a vast majority that says "to hell with this" either at the ballot box or on the battlefield. An overly Socialist system will redistribute wealth so evenly that it will remove all incentives, nad then your economy eventually collapses.
The system that will keep going is one that balances these extremes: people can improve their lives by working hard/contributing to society, but they can't completely take over and just get steadily richer without doing anything.
You say one has to win, but I've seen politics in action: I think we can continue arguing over the proper balance of socialism and capitalism pretty much forever.
Hmmm... Organized Peaceful Anarchy sounds to me like "Government, butwe don't call it government" But it's still government, and government that can't impose a solution to the first conflict two citizens aren't willing to resolve on their own won't last a week. Much less chalenge democracy for longevity.
If a bunch of farmers get together and agree that some of them will grow grapes and some of them will grow hops, they are engaging in government. If the hop growers insist on growing grapes, the group can insist that someone grow hops (looking a lot like a government, and not at all like anarchy) or the society can crumble under a revolt of the beer drinkers.
"In the scale of human history" everything looks short. But try rating governing systems by years they've lasted times number of people governed, and democracy (in some form) looks like the winner to me.
Are you kidding? War is a great popularity booster, at least in the short term. It lets the Pres be portrayed as a bold leader, wrapped in the flag. It's only in the longer term that people start to wonder if the country has been boldly led into a costly morass that will be hell to ever get out of again.
Your experience surprises me. Telemarketing calls basically ceased at my house, down from 4-6 a day. I get maybe 1 a month from some charity. (Which gets added to my do-not-donate list)
I'm sure they're using the "do-not-call" list as a source for numbers.
I doubt this. The phone book is a much more complete list. Why would they want to specifically target people who have asked not to be called?
Anyway, note that even those who are still allowed to call you initialy are required to stop if you ask them to.
I must be having a hard day, I can't help coming back to this thread for a little fish-in-a-barrel action.
I have seen human footprints that date to be 150 million years old, they have been found in Utah, Kentucky, Missouri, and in the country of Tanzania
Give me more details and I can probably show you where these "footprints" have been carefully debunked.
Fossil shoe prints with a crushed Trilobite under the heal were found in Utah by William J. Meister.
Aha! that's enough detail:
Its a trilobite, but it's not a shoe print Frankly, your uh, "dedication" is impressive. Most creationists gave up on this one in the 80s. If you do a bit of searching you can find the pictures that made them do so; the ones that show a whole bunch of similar formations all over the area where someone carefully snapped the ones that looked most shoe-like. (And frankly, it's not all that shoe-like in the first place)
I always ask why these are disregarded.
It's disregarded because it's been carefully examined and found wanting.
The best thing I can come up with is a conspiracy
What would be the possible goal of such a conspiracy? Heck, I've looked at the evidence and concluded evolution makes sense, so I would have to be part of the conspiracy. But I have not received a secret decoder ring. You'll have to take my word for it: I won't participate in any conspiracy that can't spring for a secret decoder ring.
I must be having a hard day, I can't help coming back to this thread for a little fish-in-a-barrel action. <br> <br>
<i>I have seen human footprints that date to be 150 million years old, they have been found in Utah, Kentucky, Missouri, and in the country of Tanzania</i> <br> <br> Give me more details and I can probably show you where these "footprints" have been carefully debunked. <br> <br> <i>Fossil shoe prints with a crushed Trilobite under the heal were found in Utah by William J. Meister.</i> <br> <br> Aha! that's enough detail: <a href="http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CC/CC102. html">Its a trilobite, but it's not a shoe print</a> Frankly, your uh, "dedication" is impressive. Most creationists gave up on this one in the 80s. If you do a bit of searching you can find the pictures that made them do so; the ones that show a whole bunch of similar formations all over the area where someone carefully snapped the ones that looked most shoe-like. (And frankly, it's not all that shoe-like in the first place) <br> <br> <i>I always ask why these are disregarded.</i> <br> <br> It's disregarded because it's been carefully examined and found wanting. <br> <br> <i>The best thing I can come up with is a conspiracy</i> <br> <br> What would be the possible goal of such a conspiracy? Heck, I've looked at the evidence and concluded evolution makes sense, so I would have to be part of the conspiracy. But I have not received a secret decoder ring. You'll have to take my word for it: I won't participate in any conspiracy that can't spring for a secret decoder ring. <br> <br> <i>Please show me a living trans-species</i> <br> <br> Find a mirror.
1. Correct. Mutation is needed to produce new charachteristics. Luckily, mutation happens.
2. The bacteria Neisseria is a 2 celled form, but that's not particularly relevant except in pointing out you haven't bothered to check the facts. In evolving between single celled and many-celled organisms, the intermediate stage need not be 2-5 celled life forms; it could be colonies of cooperating single celled life forms. Frankly, it doesn't surprise me that there are no 3 celled organisms. The theory of natural selection would predict this, because 3 celled organisms will outcompete singe-celled ones only if the advantages of being multi-celled (e.g. different cells can specialize for different tasks) outweigh the advantages of being single celled (e.g. rapid reproduction). Less than hundreds of cells doesn't seem like enough to get the benefits, so my real question is "What's up with Neisseria?"
3. And this fossil evidence is rock solid, while the overwhelming majority of it that supports evolution is flawed?
4. Can life exist out side a cell? Virus.
What created the Cell? That's a very interesting question and difficult to answer since noone alive today was there. Perhaps you'd like to try to figure out a possible answer... or maybe you'd like to make a blind assumption and avoid thinking as much as possible.
Why are there no partial organs? What's a "partial organ"? I might call the appendix a partial organ, but evidence suggests it's on it's way out, while I assume you want something on it's way in. Of course, without any way to know what our descendants will need there's no way to know what seemingly minor bodily system today might become full-scale organs millions of years from now. I'll bet on "lymph nodes" (cause it sounds funny).
"The theory you cling to is a lie"
Maybe. Certainly could be. But it's the most convincing explanation I've heard. What's your alternative?
There is no such thing as a "leg changing into a wing". There is no intent; there is no target. There may be creatures who have legs that aren't quite as good for running, but are slightly better for jumping between branches.
There is no such thing as a trans-species. "Species" is a (somewhat) subjective construct imposed on what is actually a continuum over time (and ocasionaly space).
Slashdot Mirror
It is not 400 lbs of torque at all times.
Here's the basic primer on (DC) electric motors:
- They produce maximum torque at 0 RPM.
- They produce no torque at all at their top speed. (Think about it, they'd just go faster).
- Maximum horsepower (torque * speed) comes somewhere near half speed. (i.e. the torque vs. speed graph isn't quite a straight line, it curves somewhat in the direction you'd like it to; the curve is a lot flatter than a gas engine though).
So assume some electric car has a top speed of 75, and isn't using a transmission to stay near that max horsepower (ridiculous, but for the sake of argument...): it's going to depart from a stop like a bat out of hell. but it's going to take forever getting from 65-75 (in a nice pure theoretical universe, it's going to approach 75 asymptotically, never actually getting there).
In a real car of course, if you want a 75 mph speed, you're going to use a transmission, so you can keep geting that lovely low-end torque at higher road speeds.
For the guy carrying a lot of band equiptment long distance all the time: sorry, but electric power is not yet for you; you need to store and carry with you a pretty large total amount of energy, and while things are coming along, batteries still pretty much suck.
For me, an electric car would be great. Almost all of my driving is trips that are just a little beyond a bicycle (it's a little too far; I have to carry something a little too big; the weathers a little too cold; I'm a little too lazy). And as long as I'm nice to my wife I have access to a bigger/longer range car for those fairly infrequent times when I need one. So I hope they actually make this thing; I might even want one. Then again, it is butt-ugly, maybe I'll get off my ass and bike more.
So you've seen through the Hollywood image of the "wild west" being crime-ridden, but you still accept the part about everyone carrying a revolver all the time?
I'll accept that the crime rate was probably lower (but probably similar to modern areas with comparable population density). But I find it hard to imagine that everyone carried a gun with them everywhere. Even in the higher crime rate environment I live in, I have no desire to cart a gun around.
Comparing crime rates in the early west, with its low density and lack of Drug War, to modern cities is just pointless. Concluding the difference is solely due to gun ownership rates is competely inane.
Finally, note that in the aforementioned modern cities, the rate of death by gunshot is much higher in one particular group: gun owners.
Call you a right-wing conspiracy theorist? You're not even trying. The previous CEO of Diebold is a Republican Senator, having won his seat in a surprising upset...
Well, I beleive that anything that doesn't hurt anyone else (like speeding but not getting in an accident) cannot possibly be immoral. But that doesn't mean it shouldn't be illegal.
To take the argument to a ridiculous extreme: Building a nuclear bomb in your basement, but not setting it off, doesn't hurt anyone. Yet I still don't think we should let people build them and just have draconian punsihments for setting them off.
Besides, isn't driving under the influence "victimless" if you get lucky and make it home safely?
How can you "know" the USPS has a government mandated monopoly on first-class mail if you don't know how that is defined? I'd guess you wouldn't be allowed to call your service "first-class mail", but you can't call it "FedEx Letter" either.
"Someone suggested no one else is allowed to send a letter for under 50 cents..."
That's ridiculous. Do you really beleive it would be illegal for me to take a letter from you, drive it across town and hand it to someone else for free if I felt like it?
Being protected by the law does not make something government property. I believe it would be illegal for you to put roadkill on my doorstep. In fact, it would be illegal for you to put a pizza coupon on my doorstep, since you'd have to walk past a "No Tresspassing" sign to get there. So my doorstep is in fact protected by law. It is not however, government property. For what it's worth, you can put all the pizza coupons that you like on your own mailbox. Because it's your property.
"The USPS has a government mandated monopoly on first-class mail."
FedEx and UPS will happily deliver anything you can send by first-class mail, and no one will be arrested. So in short, what are you talking about?
As for "owning" the mailboxes: they don't. They simply won't deliver to you unless you set up a box approved by them exclusively for their use. If you don't want to receive mail via USPS, go out there, rip the box out of the ground, and throw it away. No one will stop you, because it is your property.
Anyone who wants to can start up a delivery service to compete with USPS. They do not have a "government-mandated" monopoly. They do have a practical monopoly on first-class mail, because anyone stupid enough to start a businesss trying to compete with them directly - delivering as widely as them, but at a lower price, will fail fast. The capital investment would be huge, and the potential profit basically non-existant. But lots of people (FedEx, UPS, couriers) compete with them on other grounds, mostly service (i.e. speed).
"You mean a bunch of volunteers didn't always think about the (l)users and created a bad UI? Wow, none of us knew that!"
So you're saying I shouldn't use software created by volunteers, because they'll think of me as a luser and create crappy UIs?
"This problem does exist, and is being worked on. C'mon, just look at the GNOME Project. They have a whole team of UI designers working to make it better for the common man."
Great! GNOME is going to magically fix the UI problems of all other open source projects. Let me know when that works out. In the mean time, I'll just stick with software that already has decent UI...
"I know ESR has been a big contributor to open source, but in this case: submit a patch or shut up. Identifying a problem we all know exists isn't that amazing."
When a luminary of the community makes a criticism and gets a response like that, it's clear to me that the needs of a common luser like myself will be addressed real soon now.
Uh, no. That statement wasn't said by any of the above. It was said by a Slashdot poster. What's scary is that you got an Insightful. At least the original poster got a Funny for his willful misinterpretations of the MS guys comments.
Since obviously no one is going to RTFA, a better summary of what was actually said is:
Most exploits occur when people reverse engineer patches and use that knowledge to attack unpatched machines. The implication being that Windows will become more secure when people actually patch their machines. Which is hardly earth shattering news.
The MS guy does engage in some hyperbole, saying "Never" when "Very rarely" is probably more accurate. So if you do go RTFA (which is pretty short in any case), you can quote that and bash MS to your hearts content without looking like an idiot. But frankly, I'd expect a bit of hyperbole: Regardless of title, while being interviewed by the BBC he's in Marketing.
"I'm forgetting my Liberal Lines, now do we like Saddam or not?"
Nice turn around, since it's Republican administrations that both aided Saddam and spent a lot of money and lives taking him down. Myself, I've never liked Saddam, and I'm not angry about taking him down. I am angry that we propped him up in the first place.
Can you show me any evidence that Kerry "spit on soldiers when they got home". Or are you arguing "Kerry opposed the war" + "Some people who opposed the war spit on vets" = "Kerry spit on vets"? That's about the level of logic I'd expect from a member of the faction that broke into the Watergate building...
I'm sure there are some vets who will dislike anyone who opposed the war. But while the vets I know might have some choice words about Jane Fonda, you don't want to be in the room if someone mentions Robert McNamara.
Do conservatives really want to make a big election issue of comparing the records of Kerry and Bush during the Vietnam era? I can only imagine the Kerry campaign would be thrilled by this posibility.
But note I say "rabid". By which I mean those that not only hate Fonda, but instinctively condemn anyone who appears in a photograph with her, or who ever agreed with her about a particular issue, even if for different reasons.
Personally, I'm slightly familiar with the story, and I consider myself at least vaugely patriotic. But I don't hate Fonda. If anything, I pity her for having been so stupidly naive. Mostly, as noted, I don't care.
I'll take a crack at it...
Jane Fonda was also a prominent opponent of the Vietnam war. Some people think she went too far, to the point of actually supporting the North Vietnamese (I'll not go into whether this was actually the case, as I don't know or care). So by linking Kerry with Fonda as closely as possible, they try to say Kerry is a wacko like Fonda. All without going into the fact that Kerry made a principled stand against the war only after serving in that war with considerable distinction.
Frankly, I don't think this approach has much traction. The rabid Fonda-haters are all on the right-wing fringe anyway. I would hope that for most Americans, having opposed the Vietnam war in the considered way Kerry did makes you look smart. You'd have to be pretty out there to say that in retrospect the Vietnam war was still a good idea when Kerry came out against it. I think it just makes it obvious that his critics on this issue are fully in the "all independent thought is treason" camp.
Anyway, a lot of people opposed the Vietnam war, and at this point, most people probably think they were right to do so. The demographic that still thinks of Vietnam war protesters as hippie-commie-pinko-scum is pretty small now, and they're not voting for Kerry anyway, so I don't see this fake photo mattering much.
On the other hand, there are plenty of real pictures of current members of the Bush administration being all buddy-buddy with Saddam Hussein...
"the usual suspects will continue to profit excessively from their old and creaky infrastructure"
Shouldn't that be their old, creaky, and in this case entirely superior infrastructure? The point is that if VOIP providers want to compete with regular phone service, they are going to be subject to the same requirements as regular phone service. So they are going to have to work out the issues you mention.
If VOIP wants to be a novelty that people use alongside their regular phones to get cheap long distance, that's one thing. If VOIP wants to become actual infrastructure, it will need to act like it.
"The only way to guarantee my position would be with a GPS"
Not at all. Maybe there's no way to pinpoint where your phone is, but the wireless access point you're using is presumably stationary, and probably plenty good enough.
But look at his example. One is spam trying to drive traffic to a website. Another is an actual friend of his, telling him about a cool website he found.
If it's selling something indirectly, it could well be entirely indistinguishable from legitimate mail, at least to a machine. Only the human knows that "MyBuddy" is someone he knows and "SpamKitty" is not.
Now, if the filter program has some distributed-networking action going on and can detect that a few thousand "people" have recomended the same website to their friends at the same time, it might have a chance...
They could ask you. They could track down the source of the messages, and extensively interview the EFF about why they sent you the mail. Etc.
"How good are humans at such-and-such a task?" is a pretty common research question, and it's perfectly possible to asses it even though human researchers must be the ones who determine the correct answer. Basically, they just put a lot more time effort into determining the correct answer than you put into coming up with your answer.
If you took 5 seconds to decide a mail message was spam, and I put 5 hours into determining it was not, I can feel pretty confident in deciding you were wrong. Particularly if part of that was having you spend five minutes carefully reading the message over, after which you agree you were mistaken.
Isn't the rough defintion of SPAM "Anything I don't want in my mailbox"?
No. Spam is unsolicited bulk email. The dumb jokes I've seen a hundred times forwarded by my brother-in-law are not spam, even though I don't want them.
If that's the case, isn't the human score going to be 100% (at least for the intended recipient)?
No. The whole point is that a human faced with hundreds of emails a day, most of which they don't want, will almost certainly end up accidentally deleting some they actually do want. Humans are generally not 100% at anything.
I disagree - I think overly capitalist or overly socialist systems are unstable. Mixtures are essential. An overly capitalist system results in ever greater concentrations of wealth until those without any wealth form a vast majority that says "to hell with this" either at the ballot box or on the battlefield. An overly Socialist system will redistribute wealth so evenly that it will remove all incentives, nad then your economy eventually collapses.
The system that will keep going is one that balances these extremes: people can improve their lives by working hard/contributing to society, but they can't completely take over and just get steadily richer without doing anything.
You say one has to win, but I've seen politics in action: I think we can continue arguing over the proper balance of socialism and capitalism pretty much forever.
Hmmm... Organized Peaceful Anarchy sounds to me like "Government, butwe don't call it government" But it's still government, and government that can't impose a solution to the first conflict two citizens aren't willing to resolve on their own won't last a week. Much less chalenge democracy for longevity.
If a bunch of farmers get together and agree that some of them will grow grapes and some of them will grow hops, they are engaging in government. If the hop growers insist on growing grapes, the group can insist that someone grow hops (looking a lot like a government, and not at all like anarchy) or the society can crumble under a revolt of the beer drinkers.
"In the scale of human history" everything looks short. But try rating governing systems by years they've lasted times number of people governed, and democracy (in some form) looks like the winner to me.
Are you kidding? War is a great popularity booster, at least in the short term. It lets the Pres be portrayed as a bold leader, wrapped in the flag. It's only in the longer term that people start to wonder if the country has been boldly led into a costly morass that will be hell to ever get out of again.
You don't own a dictionary, do you? Copyright violation has been onew meaning of the word "piracy" for a few hundred years now.
Your experience surprises me. Telemarketing calls basically ceased at my house, down from 4-6 a day. I get maybe 1 a month from some charity. (Which gets added to my do-not-donate list)
I'm sure they're using the "do-not-call" list as a source for numbers.
I doubt this. The phone book is a much more complete list. Why would they want to specifically target people who have asked not to be called?
Anyway, note that even those who are still allowed to call you initialy are required to stop if you ask them to.
I must be having a hard day, I can't help coming back to this thread for a little fish-in-a-barrel action.
I have seen human footprints that date to be 150 million years old, they have been found in Utah, Kentucky, Missouri, and in the country of Tanzania
Give me more details and I can probably show you where these "footprints" have been carefully debunked.
Fossil shoe prints with a crushed Trilobite under the heal were found in Utah by William J. Meister.
Aha! that's enough detail: Its a trilobite, but it's not a shoe print Frankly, your uh, "dedication" is impressive. Most creationists gave up on this one in the 80s. If you do a bit of searching you can find the pictures that made them do so; the ones that show a whole bunch of similar formations all over the area where someone carefully snapped the ones that looked most shoe-like. (And frankly, it's not all that shoe-like in the first place)
I always ask why these are disregarded.
It's disregarded because it's been carefully examined and found wanting.
The best thing I can come up with is a conspiracy
What would be the possible goal of such a conspiracy? Heck, I've looked at the evidence and concluded evolution makes sense, so I would have to be part of the conspiracy. But I have not received a secret decoder ring. You'll have to take my word for it: I won't participate in any conspiracy that can't spring for a secret decoder ring.
Please show me a living trans-species
Find a mirror.
I must be having a hard day, I can't help coming back to this thread for a little fish-in-a-barrel action.
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<i>I have seen human footprints that date to be 150 million years old, they have been found in Utah, Kentucky, Missouri, and in the country of Tanzania</i>
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Give me more details and I can probably show you where these "footprints" have been carefully debunked.
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<i>Fossil shoe prints with a crushed Trilobite under the heal were found in Utah by William J. Meister.</i>
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Aha! that's enough detail:
<a href="http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CC/CC102
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<i>I always ask why these are disregarded.</i>
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It's disregarded because it's been carefully examined and found wanting.
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<i>The best thing I can come up with is a conspiracy</i>
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What would be the possible goal of such a conspiracy? Heck, I've looked at the evidence and concluded evolution makes sense, so I would have to be part of the conspiracy. But I have not received a secret decoder ring. You'll have to take my word for it: I won't participate in any conspiracy that can't spring for a secret decoder ring.
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<i>Please show me a living trans-species</i>
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Find a mirror.
1. Correct. Mutation is needed to produce new charachteristics. Luckily, mutation happens.
2. The bacteria Neisseria is a 2 celled form, but that's not particularly relevant except in pointing out you haven't bothered to check the facts. In evolving between single celled and many-celled organisms, the intermediate stage need not be 2-5 celled life forms; it could be colonies of cooperating single celled life forms. Frankly, it doesn't surprise me that there are no 3 celled organisms. The theory of natural selection would predict this, because 3 celled organisms will outcompete singe-celled ones only if the advantages of being multi-celled (e.g. different cells can specialize for different tasks) outweigh the advantages of being single celled (e.g. rapid reproduction). Less than hundreds of cells doesn't seem like enough to get the benefits, so my real question is "What's up with Neisseria?"
3. And this fossil evidence is rock solid, while the overwhelming majority of it that supports evolution is flawed?
4. Can life exist out side a cell? Virus.
What created the Cell? That's a very interesting question and difficult to answer since noone alive today was there. Perhaps you'd like to try to figure out a possible answer... or maybe you'd like to make a blind assumption and avoid thinking as much as possible.
Why are there no partial organs? What's a "partial organ"? I might call the appendix a partial organ, but evidence suggests it's on it's way out, while I assume you want something on it's way in. Of course, without any way to know what our descendants will need there's no way to know what seemingly minor bodily system today might become full-scale organs millions of years from now. I'll bet on "lymph nodes" (cause it sounds funny).
"The theory you cling to is a lie"
Maybe. Certainly could be. But it's the most convincing explanation I've heard. What's your alternative?
Flying Squirrels.
There is no such thing as a "leg changing into a wing". There is no intent; there is no target. There may be creatures who have legs that aren't quite as good for running, but are slightly better for jumping between branches.
There is no such thing as a trans-species. "Species" is a (somewhat) subjective construct imposed on what is actually a continuum over time (and ocasionaly space).