I really don't think so. I work with geoscientist and geologic engineers. We poke holes all over God's green earth. If there was any significant advanced civilization that caused any significant amount of changes to the environment, we would have seen it by now.
It's like SETI. Sorry, it's a fun thought but it's just not there.
If the stone working species never ascended past basic hand axes and only lasted for a few thousand years, I could see how it would have been possible to miss up to this point. There might be a few hundred thousand hand axes spread all over the world buried tens of feet below the surface.
Nevertheless. I'm not a "true believer" in Occam's razor, but the easiest explanation for the complete lack of evidence to the contrary is that we are the first -both on Earth and in the entire galaxy.
If there was a global industrialized civilization like ours 1,000,000 years ago, we would know. Even if all their foundations had long been covered by eons and crushed to dust, we would still see the impact of the civilization in our geology. Humans in the last 100 years have permanently changed millions of square miles of millions of centuries of geologic record. If a species before us had that kind of impact, we would know.
Now, if there was some species of dinosaur at some time that lived in small mud-hut villiages, I can't see that we would ever be lucky enough to find evidence of that.
Wave really was awesome. It was everything anyone needed or wanted it to be. AND it was opensource and cross platform. If it had been baked into the heart of Gmail from the start it would have taken over the world.
But sadly it was killed by pride and personal fiefdoms.
It's funny he chose protein and carbs as his example, because protein and sugar are the two things that food producers DON'T tell us how much we are eating. Go ahead, pick up the closest packaged food to you and look at the nutrition label. Protein and sugar are the only items that don't have a % daily value. Food producers don't put those numbers on there because they don't want their Snickers bars to have to say "3000%" recommended daily intake of sugar. Same with protein. Meat packers don't want to tell you that that steak you are eating has far more than the safe level of protein.
If they had to give consumers that information, consumers might make better choices.
"Lujan: I'll refer to them as shadow profiles for today's hearing. On average, how many data points does Facebook have on each Facebook user? Zuckerberg: I do not know off the top of my head."
This is actually an interesting question, and the answer is probably very complicated. The answer is probably a multi-dimensional vector that the congressman wouldn't understand if Zuckerberg tried to explain it.
I am incapable of comprehending this number. I really can't comprehend how they could spend that. Imagine, for a minute, $23 Billion would employ 115,000 people at an average salary and overhead of $200,000. Where the heck are these people? Seattle, I guess. What are they all doing? How many projects are there?
No. But that's a really, really, really low view of cops that I don't share. I'm cynical on a lot of things, and I understand that cops have a history of being a bit trigger happy, especially with minorities, but I'm not at a place where I think a typical cop would intentionally murder a person just to get evidence for a case.
That's a significant step further.
Tell you what. If I'm murdered and the cops think there might be something on my phone that would tell them who murdered me, I'm cool with them using my finger to unlock it.
Yes, he was politically motivated. The Dallas Morning News did an excellent report on the guy. There is no doubt he was a right with political extremist.
The system I like the best (that I'm not sure I've ever seen actually deployed anywhere) is the concept of charging $0.25 per comment. If the trolls are the ones ruining the industry, let them subsidize it.
It's gotten the entrenched providers to upgrade their systems across the country. In Dallas, I have no option for Google Fiber, but have 70 mb/s speeds from Spectrum.
Industrialization was supposed to kill all the good jobs, or at least that was Thomas Jefferson's fear. Then automation. Then outsourcing. Yet, after all that, we still have jobs. Something tells me that even with the advent of AI, people will find things to do.
See, that's the problem. You state "it just cannot be", but there simply isn't any objective empirical evidence to demonstrate that. It's no different than someone saying "I just can't believe that radio radiation doesn't cause cancer". Ok, you can believe or not believe what you like, but there isn't any science to back that up.
Cute. But yeah, actually I know of a Christian Church camp deep in the mountains of New Mexico where about a thousand teenagers go every year. No cell phone service or any kind. Not even wi-fi.
Believe it or not (I know, it's crazy) but kids still go every year. No one has withdraw symptoms.
I'm sure someone will provide me with evidence if I'm wrong, but to date I am unaware of any actual peer reviewed reports documenting that "cell phone addition" is harmful or even exists.
The worst I can find are a few reports that suggest that kids that watch ads for junk food on the internet tend to eat more junk food.
I'm really not seeing the threat concern here. I really don't care that google serves me up ads about products I shopped for 2 weeks ago. In fact, It's kinda preferable really being shown ads that I'm actually interested in rather than random stuff that I'm not. I mean, there probably aren't many other people reading this that want to get ads for gasoline fueling nozzles on Facebook, but I don't mind because I purchase and spec gasoline fueling nozzles fairly regularly for work. I actually appreciate being shown ads for products that I might not otherwise know about or have considered.
Now, SOME regulation is appropriate. For example, I don't think Google and Facebook should be targeting people ads for pain killers or other prescription drugs. But the other 95% of ads are perfectly ok.
If business people were in control your phone would last 8 hours, have a glass screen guaranteed to shatter in a week, and be slowed down by OS updates released 6 months after you buy it.
wait. That's exactly what we have now.
Slashdot Mirror
I really don't think so. I work with geoscientist and geologic engineers. We poke holes all over God's green earth. If there was any significant advanced civilization that caused any significant amount of changes to the environment, we would have seen it by now.
It's like SETI. Sorry, it's a fun thought but it's just not there.
If the stone working species never ascended past basic hand axes and only lasted for a few thousand years, I could see how it would have been possible to miss up to this point. There might be a few hundred thousand hand axes spread all over the world buried tens of feet below the surface.
Nevertheless. I'm not a "true believer" in Occam's razor, but the easiest explanation for the complete lack of evidence to the contrary is that we are the first -both on Earth and in the entire galaxy.
If there was a global industrialized civilization like ours 1,000,000 years ago, we would know. Even if all their foundations had long been covered by eons and crushed to dust, we would still see the impact of the civilization in our geology. Humans in the last 100 years have permanently changed millions of square miles of millions of centuries of geologic record. If a species before us had that kind of impact, we would know.
Now, if there was some species of dinosaur at some time that lived in small mud-hut villiages, I can't see that we would ever be lucky enough to find evidence of that.
Wave really was awesome. It was everything anyone needed or wanted it to be. AND it was opensource and cross platform. If it had been baked into the heart of Gmail from the start it would have taken over the world.
But sadly it was killed by pride and personal fiefdoms.
It's funny he chose protein and carbs as his example, because protein and sugar are the two things that food producers DON'T tell us how much we are eating. Go ahead, pick up the closest packaged food to you and look at the nutrition label. Protein and sugar are the only items that don't have a % daily value. Food producers don't put those numbers on there because they don't want their Snickers bars to have to say "3000%" recommended daily intake of sugar. Same with protein. Meat packers don't want to tell you that that steak you are eating has far more than the safe level of protein.
If they had to give consumers that information, consumers might make better choices.
"Lujan: I'll refer to them as shadow profiles for today's hearing. On average, how many data points does Facebook have on each Facebook user?
Zuckerberg: I do not know off the top of my head."
This is actually an interesting question, and the answer is probably very complicated. The answer is probably a multi-dimensional vector that the congressman wouldn't understand if Zuckerberg tried to explain it.
I am incapable of comprehending this number. I really can't comprehend how they could spend that. Imagine, for a minute, $23 Billion would employ 115,000 people at an average salary and overhead of $200,000. Where the heck are these people? Seattle, I guess. What are they all doing? How many projects are there?
Sounds like you aren't actually ready for marriage anyway. ...Or maybe you are not the kind of person someone ought to marry.
Not that either of those things are bad things.
Give it to your wife or husband.
They actually can do that already.
No. But that's a really, really, really low view of cops that I don't share. I'm cynical on a lot of things, and I understand that cops have a history of being a bit trigger happy, especially with minorities, but I'm not at a place where I think a typical cop would intentionally murder a person just to get evidence for a case. That's a significant step further.
Tell you what. If I'm murdered and the cops think there might be something on my phone that would tell them who murdered me, I'm cool with them using my finger to unlock it.
Yes, he was politically motivated. The Dallas Morning News did an excellent report on the guy. There is no doubt he was a right with political extremist.
The guy mailed his package FedEx. The package blew up and FedEx was able to provide miles of paper trails of evidence for the police.
The system I like the best (that I'm not sure I've ever seen actually deployed anywhere) is the concept of charging $0.25 per comment. If the trolls are the ones ruining the industry, let them subsidize it.
It's gotten the entrenched providers to upgrade their systems across the country. In Dallas, I have no option for Google Fiber, but have 70 mb/s speeds from Spectrum.
Industrialization was supposed to kill all the good jobs, or at least that was Thomas Jefferson's fear. Then automation. Then outsourcing. Yet, after all that, we still have jobs. Something tells me that even with the advent of AI, people will find things to do.
See, that's the problem. You state "it just cannot be", but there simply isn't any objective empirical evidence to demonstrate that. It's no different than someone saying "I just can't believe that radio radiation doesn't cause cancer". Ok, you can believe or not believe what you like, but there isn't any science to back that up.
That's distracted driving not cell phone addiction. Try again.
Cute. But yeah, actually I know of a Christian Church camp deep in the mountains of New Mexico where about a thousand teenagers go every year. No cell phone service or any kind. Not even wi-fi. Believe it or not (I know, it's crazy) but kids still go every year. No one has withdraw symptoms.
I'm sure someone will provide me with evidence if I'm wrong, but to date I am unaware of any actual peer reviewed reports documenting that "cell phone addition" is harmful or even exists. The worst I can find are a few reports that suggest that kids that watch ads for junk food on the internet tend to eat more junk food.
I'm really not seeing the threat concern here. I really don't care that google serves me up ads about products I shopped for 2 weeks ago. In fact, It's kinda preferable really being shown ads that I'm actually interested in rather than random stuff that I'm not. I mean, there probably aren't many other people reading this that want to get ads for gasoline fueling nozzles on Facebook, but I don't mind because I purchase and spec gasoline fueling nozzles fairly regularly for work. I actually appreciate being shown ads for products that I might not otherwise know about or have considered. Now, SOME regulation is appropriate. For example, I don't think Google and Facebook should be targeting people ads for pain killers or other prescription drugs. But the other 95% of ads are perfectly ok.
I don't see the difference. You buy a product, you should be able to service and repair that product. What's the difference?
Right. And that's more and more of them these days.
If business people were in control your phone would last 8 hours, have a glass screen guaranteed to shatter in a week, and be slowed down by OS updates released 6 months after you buy it. wait. That's exactly what we have now.