Yeah, working class people will be out of a job if we've got nanobots building the cars, but the ones from which country? Already 75% of American jobs are classified as service. Working class/= factory worker any more.
All evidence currently points to corporations if anything being too short-sighted, too. If Biff the CEO can go to nano-production and pump out cheaper widgets, make a short-term bundle for the company, and cash out before all the other Biffs out there do the same and send the current economy stumbling, expect it to happen. Ten years from now money might be worth it? Well, all the more reason to get the deed to that nice Caribbean island now instead of later.
Yeah, unfortunately 80-130 of those hours are farming random encounters to learn a few abilities.:P I found DWVII to be a big disappointment, especially after all the fond memories I had of DWIV.
Let me get this straight, you download 2 gig files and you're bitching about P2P users hogging bandwidth? Man, talk about hypocrisy. I imagine your service provider sees you as a burden on the network as much as anyone. Why don't you take your own advice, buy a dial-up, and take a few days to download your files rather than hogging the line and slowing down Grandma when she innocently checks her email and browses the Web.
Eh? Check out the population figures for developed countries. In Japan and in areas of Western Europe, population growth is actually negative. In America, growth is slowing and most of it now comes from minorities. The exponential growth in the world's population actually comes from undeveloped countries, not developed ones. You know, the ones with little access to modern medicine.
Patents have nothing to do with a true free market economy. They're actually intended to stifle the free market by giving a government-protected monopoly to the patent holder. In that sense, public domain research would actually restore free market forces by allowing companies to freely compete on the best way to deliver the results of the basic research to the consumer.
Take a ball. Learn to throw it fairly well until you can throw it in a straight line 10 feet, 30 feet, and 100 feet (just for argument's sake). Realize that you will generally release the ball at different angles and different speeds depending on where you intend it to land, and notice that it peaks out at a different distance from the ground and distance from you depending on how far it travels. Realize that an observer with the proper instruments could determine exactly where the ball will land the moment it leaves your hand. Should that be too much trouble, pick up a physics book.
Actually, yes you do. I thought that was implied. Once you have the direction, trajectory, and velocity of the missile from satellite images or radar, it's a trivial matter to extrapolate where the missile is headed. The things are just a warhead with thrust; they don't dodge, weave, feint to one country then head for another, etc. Only a complete ninny would blindly launch all their own missiles without spending a few seconds figuring out where the one in question came from and where it's headed. And one would at least hope someone would jump in with "Hey, it's not headed for us!" at the same time there was even an awareness that there was a nuke in the air.
Ever hear of satellite imaging? If someone launches a missile, there will be absolutely no doubt who did it. Missiles are actually what the military types hope will be the delivery devices if it ever comes to it, as there will be no question about who to blame. In the trickier case of a hand-carried nuke, the victimized country would more than likely do at least a cursory investigation before responding in kind. You might want to pare back your scenario a bit.
Have you tried Planescape: Torment? Everything good you just mentioned, Torment has in spades. I personally think it's the best Infinity Engine (i.e. Baldur's Gate Engine) game there is.
Well, I remember drinking while underage, and I actually was very careful mostly out of fear of getting arrested. Of course you're not going to stop kids from drinking just by passing a few laws, but you will make them a bit more careful (read paranoid) if they know they'll get in big trouble parading around in public or driving while intoxicated. I had a few friends who were that stupid and got caught, and they weren't so quick to do it afterwards. If the laws just send minors out into secluded areas or each others' homes to drink and then let it wear off before they go out, that's at least better in my book. From my standpoint, I really couldn't care whether they're responsible through internal discipline or fear of punishment. I pretty much accept they're going to get their hands on booze if they want it, but anything that dissuades them from getting stupid in public or driving drunk is a good thing in my book.
Excuse me? I'd say a "paroxysm of destruction" ended WWII quite handily. On the other hand, mealy-mouthed diplomacy in the beginning resulted in millions of defenseless people being slaughtered. America is even on friendly terms with Germany and Japan, and there are still people living who fought on both sides of the conflict.
Interesting. Assuming they're right, it just goes to show you IQ isn't everything, though. Nixon and Clinton were both corrupt as hell, Clinton just had a nicer smile. History is starting to show Kennedy wasn't really and truly that great. Carter was pretty ineffective. Bush I wasn't anything special either. Reagan was pretty effective (at actually getting things accomplished, not all talk and fundraising junkets like Billy Bob) and only average intelligence. Hell, with those odds, I think I'd rather have a dimwit. Kinda scary.
Cute. And if you died by scratching your head, you might have a point. Look at it another way. Is the number of cells in your body the determinant of how alive you are? Does a 400 pound man have 8 times the humanness of a 50 pound child? Would giving the 400 pound liposuction and incinerating 50 pounds of the fat be the same as incinerating all of the 50 pound child?
Yeah, I agree with you. The government also had every right to inject radioactive elements into vets without their knowledge or consent to see the effects. And it had every right to pretend to treat black men with syphilis while letting the disease run unchecked to observe its effects over a span of 30 years. These experiments had the potential to save lives, dammit. What are little ethical quandaries next to that.
Yes, I agree, too. I don't understand why this part of it seems to get totally overlooked. I don't believe in harvesting the embryos for research. In fact, I don't believe the embryos should be there in the first place. Making them in the first place with the understanding that most of them will be destroyed is just as bad as actually destroying them. People just say "Oh, the embryos are going to be killed anyway", but no one asks if they should be there in the first place. There's certainly no shortage of children who exist right now looking for homes. I don't see how anyone on either side of the fence would think it would be a bad thing if IVF customers adopted instead. Well, unless they decided to make a political point about it.
Yeah, and that strategy worked oh so well for the borg. I always wondered why such an advanced group never had the common sense to know that letting people with scanning instruments and weapons run free in your most sensitive areas wasn't a good idea. Especially after the twentieth time the humans destroyed a ship like that. I mean, geez, all you have to do is get a drone to pause for 2 seconds to snap a neck or two. Who knows, maybe our own creations will be that stupid, but I doubt it.
Yes, no doubt a lot of the people who are pushing for infertility treatments are infertile. That doesn't invalidate other fertile people's opinions, though. That would be like saying a person who supports themselves without stealing from others can't have an opinion on stealing, or a person who's never killed anyone can't have an opinion on murder. Granted, a thief has a unique perspective on stealing and a murderer has a unique perspective on murdering, but that doesn't make them right, or the people whose opinions I'd base my judgments on.
Desperation never made something wrong something right, it just makes it easier to justify doing the wrong thing to yourself and others. In fact, desperate people are about the last ones I'd go to for their objective opinion on an issue, and the ones clamoring for clones and fertility treatments so they can have a "better" baby with their genetic makeup (rather than an "inferior" adopted child) the ones that seem the most desperate to me. Nobody says they can't have kids, they just say there's a right way and a wrong way to go about it, just like there's a right way and a wrong way to get most things in life.
Eh? Reinforce what current views, exactly? I guess you're saying pro-life people tend to oppose stem cell research, but that seems to me to be a basic belief that life begins at conception. That's pretty consistent. No one (at least that I know of) sits around saying, "Muahahaha! We will oppose stem cell research to rob women of their free will and force women unsuspecting to suffer through childbirth and shame! Ah yes, how delighfully evil, long live the patriarchy!" Or, "Oh, yes, this Alzheimer's is a lovely disease, let's oppose abortion to prolong people's suffering by impeding stem cell research."
And it's hardly arbitrary to think that a human life at any stage of development has intrinsic value. It's more arbitrary to say at some specific point along the way (past conception, since I don't think anyone out there believes sperm and eggs are human beings), life truly begins. If anything, I think lots of the laws concerning abortion are much more arbitrary. Human life has value, umm, unless it's in the first trimester and the mother doesn't want the baby. Oh, but you can stretch out a little longer if conception came through bad means like rape or incest. Oh, and what the heck, as long as you leave the fetus partway in, go ahead and suck its brains out in the third trimester, just make sure to leave it partway in the womb, otherwise you're a murderer. Saying something is alive because it has the potential to grow into a human being is in fact about the least arbitrary way can think about it, and the one that will make it the hardest to abuse later on that sci-fi writers enjoy thinking about so much.
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Yeah, working class people will be out of a job if we've got nanobots building the cars, but the ones from which country? Already 75% of American jobs are classified as service. Working class /= factory worker any more.
All evidence currently points to corporations if anything being too short-sighted, too. If Biff the CEO can go to nano-production and pump out cheaper widgets, make a short-term bundle for the company, and cash out before all the other Biffs out there do the same and send the current economy stumbling, expect it to happen. Ten years from now money might be worth it? Well, all the more reason to get the deed to that nice Caribbean island now instead of later.
Yeah, unfortunately 80-130 of those hours are farming random encounters to learn a few abilities. :P I found DWVII to be a big disappointment, especially after all the fond memories I had of DWIV.
Let me get this straight, you download 2 gig files and you're bitching about P2P users hogging bandwidth? Man, talk about hypocrisy. I imagine your service provider sees you as a burden on the network as much as anyone. Why don't you take your own advice, buy a dial-up, and take a few days to download your files rather than hogging the line and slowing down Grandma when she innocently checks her email and browses the Web.
Eh? Check out the population figures for developed countries. In Japan and in areas of Western Europe, population growth is actually negative. In America, growth is slowing and most of it now comes from minorities. The exponential growth in the world's population actually comes from undeveloped countries, not developed ones. You know, the ones with little access to modern medicine.
Patents have nothing to do with a true free market economy. They're actually intended to stifle the free market by giving a government-protected monopoly to the patent holder. In that sense, public domain research would actually restore free market forces by allowing companies to freely compete on the best way to deliver the results of the basic research to the consumer.
*Sigh*
Take a ball. Learn to throw it fairly well until you can throw it in a straight line 10 feet, 30 feet, and 100 feet (just for argument's sake). Realize that you will generally release the ball at different angles and different speeds depending on where you intend it to land, and notice that it peaks out at a different distance from the ground and distance from you depending on how far it travels. Realize that an observer with the proper instruments could determine exactly where the ball will land the moment it leaves your hand. Should that be too much trouble, pick up a physics book.
Actually, yes you do. I thought that was implied. Once you have the direction, trajectory, and velocity of the missile from satellite images or radar, it's a trivial matter to extrapolate where the missile is headed. The things are just a warhead with thrust; they don't dodge, weave, feint to one country then head for another, etc. Only a complete ninny would blindly launch all their own missiles without spending a few seconds figuring out where the one in question came from and where it's headed. And one would at least hope someone would jump in with "Hey, it's not headed for us!" at the same time there was even an awareness that there was a nuke in the air.
Ever hear of satellite imaging? If someone launches a missile, there will be absolutely no doubt who did it. Missiles are actually what the military types hope will be the delivery devices if it ever comes to it, as there will be no question about who to blame. In the trickier case of a hand-carried nuke, the victimized country would more than likely do at least a cursory investigation before responding in kind. You might want to pare back your scenario a bit.
What, you never recruited Saduj in Ultima V?
Have you tried Planescape: Torment? Everything good you just mentioned, Torment has in spades. I personally think it's the best Infinity Engine (i.e. Baldur's Gate Engine) game there is.
Well, I remember drinking while underage, and I actually was very careful mostly out of fear of getting arrested. Of course you're not going to stop kids from drinking just by passing a few laws, but you will make them a bit more careful (read paranoid) if they know they'll get in big trouble parading around in public or driving while intoxicated. I had a few friends who were that stupid and got caught, and they weren't so quick to do it afterwards. If the laws just send minors out into secluded areas or each others' homes to drink and then let it wear off before they go out, that's at least better in my book. From my standpoint, I really couldn't care whether they're responsible through internal discipline or fear of punishment. I pretty much accept they're going to get their hands on booze if they want it, but anything that dissuades them from getting stupid in public or driving drunk is a good thing in my book.
Excuse me? I'd say a "paroxysm of destruction" ended WWII quite handily. On the other hand, mealy-mouthed diplomacy in the beginning resulted in millions of defenseless people being slaughtered. America is even on friendly terms with Germany and Japan, and there are still people living who fought on both sides of the conflict.
Interesting. Assuming they're right, it just goes to show you IQ isn't everything, though. Nixon and Clinton were both corrupt as hell, Clinton just had a nicer smile. History is starting to show Kennedy wasn't really and truly that great. Carter was pretty ineffective. Bush I wasn't anything special either. Reagan was pretty effective (at actually getting things accomplished, not all talk and fundraising junkets like Billy Bob) and only average intelligence. Hell, with those odds, I think I'd rather have a dimwit. Kinda scary.
Uh, yeah. I really wish Oppenheimer were here to tell you what he thought of your statement.
Cute. And if you died by scratching your head, you might have a point. Look at it another way. Is the number of cells in your body the determinant of how alive you are? Does a 400 pound man have 8 times the humanness of a 50 pound child? Would giving the 400 pound liposuction and incinerating 50 pounds of the fat be the same as incinerating all of the 50 pound child?
Yeah, I agree with you. The government also had every right to inject radioactive elements into vets without their knowledge or consent to see the effects. And it had every right to pretend to treat black men with syphilis while letting the disease run unchecked to observe its effects over a span of 30 years. These experiments had the potential to save lives, dammit. What are little ethical quandaries next to that.
Yes, I agree, too. I don't understand why this part of it seems to get totally overlooked. I don't believe in harvesting the embryos for research. In fact, I don't believe the embryos should be there in the first place. Making them in the first place with the understanding that most of them will be destroyed is just as bad as actually destroying them. People just say "Oh, the embryos are going to be killed anyway", but no one asks if they should be there in the first place. There's certainly no shortage of children who exist right now looking for homes. I don't see how anyone on either side of the fence would think it would be a bad thing if IVF customers adopted instead. Well, unless they decided to make a political point about it.
Yeah, and that strategy worked oh so well for the borg. I always wondered why such an advanced group never had the common sense to know that letting people with scanning instruments and weapons run free in your most sensitive areas wasn't a good idea. Especially after the twentieth time the humans destroyed a ship like that. I mean, geez, all you have to do is get a drone to pause for 2 seconds to snap a neck or two. Who knows, maybe our own creations will be that stupid, but I doubt it.
Yes, no doubt a lot of the people who are pushing for infertility treatments are infertile. That doesn't invalidate other fertile people's opinions, though. That would be like saying a person who supports themselves without stealing from others can't have an opinion on stealing, or a person who's never killed anyone can't have an opinion on murder. Granted, a thief has a unique perspective on stealing and a murderer has a unique perspective on murdering, but that doesn't make them right, or the people whose opinions I'd base my judgments on.
Desperation never made something wrong something right, it just makes it easier to justify doing the wrong thing to yourself and others. In fact, desperate people are about the last ones I'd go to for their objective opinion on an issue, and the ones clamoring for clones and fertility treatments so they can have a "better" baby with their genetic makeup (rather than an "inferior" adopted child) the ones that seem the most desperate to me. Nobody says they can't have kids, they just say there's a right way and a wrong way to go about it, just like there's a right way and a wrong way to get most things in life.
Eh? Reinforce what current views, exactly? I guess you're saying pro-life people tend to oppose stem cell research, but that seems to me to be a basic belief that life begins at conception. That's pretty consistent. No one (at least that I know of) sits around saying, "Muahahaha! We will oppose stem cell research to rob women of their free will and force women unsuspecting to suffer through childbirth and shame! Ah yes, how delighfully evil, long live the patriarchy!" Or, "Oh, yes, this Alzheimer's is a lovely disease, let's oppose abortion to prolong people's suffering by impeding stem cell research." And it's hardly arbitrary to think that a human life at any stage of development has intrinsic value. It's more arbitrary to say at some specific point along the way (past conception, since I don't think anyone out there believes sperm and eggs are human beings), life truly begins. If anything, I think lots of the laws concerning abortion are much more arbitrary. Human life has value, umm, unless it's in the first trimester and the mother doesn't want the baby. Oh, but you can stretch out a little longer if conception came through bad means like rape or incest. Oh, and what the heck, as long as you leave the fetus partway in, go ahead and suck its brains out in the third trimester, just make sure to leave it partway in the womb, otherwise you're a murderer. Saying something is alive because it has the potential to grow into a human being is in fact about the least arbitrary way can think about it, and the one that will make it the hardest to abuse later on that sci-fi writers enjoy thinking about so much.