The US Constitution gives the federal government the right to regulate interstate trade and to print money. This supports the right of the fg (federal government) to forbid interstate trade in marijuana (or anything else), sort of supports the central bank (I would say the constitution doesn't include the right to delegate the right to print money, so I think to be legal the Fed should have to have to get their decisions rubber stamped).
Of course, that doesn't explain why the fg can outlaw any drug (prescription, recreational or otherwise) within a state.
I agree regarding the bail-out, although in fact I think the argument would be that they're not making any laws with the bailout; they're handing out money to organizations that agree to follow a contract. The same BS lets the fed govt regulate any number of things (public schools, intrastate interstates, etc.).
I believe strongly in rule of law, and I think our system could have worked fine as a federation of states (in the old-school 'country' sense). However, I think the US is long past the point that it could turn back the clock and become a federation of states.
From a purists point of view, I think we need a number of amendments to the constitution, to expand the rights of the federal government from those listed in the constitution (in a limited way), and at the same time we need to commit ourselves to rule of law, eliminating all statutory law that is in contradiction with the constitution.
From a realist point of view, I think all that would happen from that is that federal power would expand and our rights contract.
Until there's a sea change in our cultural attitude about rule of law and the role of government, I think any wholesale change in our government would be for the worse.
In 20 years, high resolution cameras with always-on internet connections will cost $10 and will be everywhere, and software to identify people by gait/face/body structure/license plate recognition will be ubiquitous and open source. *Everyone* will know where you are all the time, not just the government.
My net *loss* for all this activity (compared to what I would have earned had I not taken a sabbatical from work, not considering all the time I worked in evenings/weekends while I had a full time job) is about $180,000.
My reasons for failure: For the first one, I really probably have to chalk it up to idiocy on two fronts: we didn't make it playable/fun early in development and have early releases, and when Sun showed us off at the 2001 Game Developer's Convention and *offered to have us on stage at Java One*, I decided I couldn't afford to pay to stay another week in San Jose. The other idiocy was not ours: a funder expressed some interest, then when I talked to them they decided there was no market for another fantasy game. (This was before Dark Ages of Camelot and long before World of Warcraft.)
The problem with the second and third one is that I don't know how to advertise, or they were just bad ideas. The advertising income barely pays for hosting.
The fourth one may still come to something. It has certainly earned more money than the others. I still have no idea how to market/publicize/advertise effectively.
Coming up with a good idea and implementing is hard, but it is nowhere near enough to be successful as an entrepeneur. You need to either make the commitment to become the kind of person who can do sales and marketing, or find someone who is to partner with, or get very lucky.
In short: take the money. Building something great is *not* enough to be successful in business.
Hmm, I tried to post a response yesterday, but apparently I screwed it up somehow...
Here's the short version:
The algorithm generates (choosing randomly) either a random hardware design and random software to run on that hardware, or just random software to be run on the same platform as the algorithm. I implement the hardware (if any) and software, then I go tell the algorithm if the result was not intelligent. In this case, the algorithm sends a message back in time to when the design was generated, telling it to generate a different result.
The only version of the generated data that "counts" is the one that I gave a pass as being intelligent.
My point was only that it's hard to be closer to time travel (to the past) than strong AI, since I'm pretty sure tt implies AI.
I agree that we don't know much about AI, however I'll be astounded if we're not successfully simulating brains in 30 years. We're pretty good at copying nature.
Actually, I'm pretty sure with time travel I could fairly trivially build about the strongest AI possible. When you can perform an infinite number of operations in an arbitrarily short amount of time, quite a stupid algorithm can produce some pretty smart results.
I'm seriously confused, ABM. How can the debt go up while we have a budget surplus? I think this is the occasion when Congress stole (sorry, borrowed) from Social Security to pay the regular budget. Then of course they never paid back SocSec.
I do think Clinton did a very good job in comparison with other presidents, but I am beginning to think the budget surplus is a mythrepresentation.
I guess the Wikipedia article is taking the difference between the ratio of debt to GDP from one year to the ratio of debt to GDP for the next year. That's just confusing.
I would much rather see the two figures: the % increase/decrease in debt and the % increase/decrease of GDP. Mixing the two together, and especially taking the difference between the ratios of two different years seems more suited to obfuscation than illumination.
Of course, this still means that either the country has done better on increasing GDP, or better in managing debt, or some combination of the two, under democrats rather than republicans. At least according to the debt & GDP figures Wikipedia is using, and assuming that they aren't lying in the chart. I haven't checked any of their figures myself.
In fact, it's interesting to note that per Wikipedia's data, if you sort by the change in the debt, almost all the democratic presidents come out on top (more reduction/less increase in debt), and almost all the republican presidents on bottom.
To some degree I see your point, although I'm not sure how much of my ISP's income you can claim comes from music, as opposed to movies, collaborative content, text (both from authors expecting to be paid and people spouting off e.g./.), pictures (with the same caveat as text), etc.
That said, I think properly implemented your solution would be far better than what we have in the US (and most of the first world) today.
I'm an ordinary person, who maybe plays on the internet for an hour a day but generally doesn't care about copyright issues. Explain to me why the duration of copyright, DMCA, etc. matter to me, without boring me to tears. I.e. explain it while entertaining me or making me see an immediate threat to my interests in two sentences or less.
Most people don't have the background to know why they should care about copyright.
What part of your solution would stop everyone from filesharing everything, and hence getting everything for free? 5% of $0 is $0.
I do think there are far better solutions than our current copyright. However, I don't see how what you propose would generate any income at all to creators, no matter how popular their material was. Or at least how it would generate any more income than a total lack of copyright law plus online tip jars.
But in practice I think when the casual reader sees "the FSF has a blatant bias against the recording industry", they think the FSF is against content producers, as well.
I love the FSF, but which of the quotes listed here is inaccurate? The FSF *does* want to get rid of copy restrictions, and does dislike the RIAA. Although, I would say the FSF hates on the RIAA, not the "recording industry", but I suspect the RIAA doesn't see the difference.
I totally agree with you that quantum mechanics is very well tested and extremely accurate in every domain we can test.
However, it is known to be wrong. Quantum mechanics (and even quantum field theory) is incompatible with general relativity. As far as I know, no one knows how to reconcile the two. It's the same situation as blackbody radiation prior to quantum theory - we have one model that works on one scale, and another model that works on another scale, but they are known to be incompatible.
The difference is that we don't have the technology to build experiments in the contested domain - experiments in which we measure quantum effects in an acceleration/gravity field strong enough to have measurable GR effects at a quantum scale.
That said, there's another issue with quantum mechanics. To my knowledge, there is no clear definition of what a "good observation" is, or what happens in a non-good observation. For example, in the classic two slit experiment, you are either observing (entangled with) the electron as it passes through the slit, or you are not. But in fact, it seems to me you are almost always varying degrees of "sort of" entangled with the electron. By which I mean there are particles that interact with you that give you statistical information about which slit the electron goes through, but not clear information.
By the way, regarding the "new method" of tunneling in the post... that doesn't sound new at all, to me. The standard Feynmann diagram model of quantum mechanics involves identifying all the ways a particle could get from here to there (including splitting into other particles and rejoining) and summing over them to find the likelihood a particle will be at the target location. Not having read the article, I'm guessing they just analyzed those "split into two particle" paths and discovered that they contribute more in some scenarios than people had believed before.
You're running Vista, and Linux is not faster? That's kind of hard to believe.
If your kids want the game everyone is talking about this month, then Linux is not going to satisfy them. If they want LOTS of fun games available for free (and Free), then Linux is the way to go. If they might want to play around with the idea of being a games programmer, Linux is the only way to go. They can take their favorite game and make small changes until they get comfortable making bigger ones.
Your tax software should work fine under Wine, which on Ubuntu "just works".
If giving more money to Redmond made you want to puke, you already have incentive. If making sure your kids can play the latest game is worth more to you than the money spent on Vista plus that pukey feeling, go with Vista. Otherwise, go with Linux.
First, try an Ubuntu Live CD to make sure all your devices "just work". They probably will, but with the Live CD it's so easy to check that there's no reason not to.
I don't know anything in particular about getting systems to run for a long time, but when I saw your request I thought of a couple of things that might be helpful:
1) underclock the CPU. Then it runs much cooler, and if the fan goes out, it may run just fine without it if you underclock enough. 2) low end, underclocked graphics card - see above 3) flash instead of hard drive. My biggest problem has always been the HD going out. It sounds as if your dad's needs are light enough that you could get enough flash memory cheap. No moving parts = much longer lifespan.
Well, I have three kids, ages 4-13, so it's hard to find something that I like to do and can make time for. I don't think that's a good excuse to not exercise.
Unfortunately, until recently I didn't exercise at all regularly. Actually, though, now I have the Wii Fit, and I like it quite well.
I'm not an athletic person - in general, I don't enjoy exercise-y things. I do like hiking, but there is nowhere near to do it, and doing it hard enough to get any exercise is difficult with a 13 yr old, and impossible with a 4 yr old.
In fact, I got my BS in Physics & Mathematics, so I didn't study LISP at all in college. I've done a bit since then just to learn the basics. I've certainly never used it professionally.
Thanks for the info.
I have spoken to at least one professional LISP programmer who indicated that he did in fact try to build almost solely functional software. I don't know if he was really telling the truth.
I actually agree with you completely. It still does seem stupid to me to turn it down, but I shouldn't insult people who turn it down. If you understand the consequences and accept them, it's not stupid, it's just a choice.
I do think that most people make such decisions without really understanding that e.g. X hours of smoking takes Y years off your life, statistically speaking. And if it were put to them in a simpler context, they would make a different decision.
In fact, I think as the internet becomes ubiquitous and the price (and size) of cameras and image processing drops to 0, all the stuff we do will become known to everyone, with (hopefully) the exception of things done in a truly private setting with people you can trust.
But I agree with the other replier - the information should be treated as "papers and effects" (in the US) and be private from the government without a warrant. Hopefully in other countries similar privacy laws would apply.
I'm not sure I'd disagree with something that prevented drunks from driving, though;-)
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Agreed on all counts.
The US Constitution gives the federal government the right to regulate interstate trade and to print money. This supports the right of the fg (federal government) to forbid interstate trade in marijuana (or anything else), sort of supports the central bank (I would say the constitution doesn't include the right to delegate the right to print money, so I think to be legal the Fed should have to have to get their decisions rubber stamped).
Of course, that doesn't explain why the fg can outlaw any drug (prescription, recreational or otherwise) within a state.
I agree regarding the bail-out, although in fact I think the argument would be that they're not making any laws with the bailout; they're handing out money to organizations that agree to follow a contract. The same BS lets the fed govt regulate any number of things (public schools, intrastate interstates, etc.).
I believe strongly in rule of law, and I think our system could have worked fine as a federation of states (in the old-school 'country' sense). However, I think the US is long past the point that it could turn back the clock and become a federation of states.
From a purists point of view, I think we need a number of amendments to the constitution, to expand the rights of the federal government from those listed in the constitution (in a limited way), and at the same time we need to commit ourselves to rule of law, eliminating all statutory law that is in contradiction with the constitution.
From a realist point of view, I think all that would happen from that is that federal power would expand and our rights contract.
Until there's a sea change in our cultural attitude about rule of law and the role of government, I think any wholesale change in our government would be for the worse.
In 20 years, high resolution cameras with always-on internet connections will cost $10 and will be everywhere, and software to identify people by gait/face/body structure/license plate recognition will be ubiquitous and open source. *Everyone* will know where you are all the time, not just the government.
And here I was thinking his sig made a great combination with his last sentence!
Usually computer engineers have a very poor estimation on that part of the project.
Amen to that!
I worked on this about seven years ago: http://www.magicosm.net/
And wrote this five years ago: http://frimp.net/ (basically an easier to use version of Craigslist with better coverage)
And this about three years ago: http://www.moochmuch.com/
And this last year: http://www.itunes.com/apps/Pharce
My net *loss* for all this activity (compared to what I would have earned had I not taken a sabbatical from work, not considering all the time I worked in evenings/weekends while I had a full time job) is about $180,000.
My reasons for failure:
For the first one, I really probably have to chalk it up to idiocy on two fronts: we didn't make it playable/fun early in development and have early releases, and when Sun showed us off at the 2001 Game Developer's Convention and *offered to have us on stage at Java One*, I decided I couldn't afford to pay to stay another week in San Jose. The other idiocy was not ours: a funder expressed some interest, then when I talked to them they decided there was no market for another fantasy game. (This was before Dark Ages of Camelot and long before World of Warcraft.)
The problem with the second and third one is that I don't know how to advertise, or they were just bad ideas. The advertising income barely pays for hosting.
The fourth one may still come to something. It has certainly earned more money than the others. I still have no idea how to market/publicize/advertise effectively.
Coming up with a good idea and implementing is hard, but it is nowhere near enough to be successful as an entrepeneur. You need to either make the commitment to become the kind of person who can do sales and marketing, or find someone who is to partner with, or get very lucky.
In short: take the money. Building something great is *not* enough to be successful in business.
Hmm, I tried to post a response yesterday, but apparently I screwed it up somehow...
Here's the short version:
The algorithm generates (choosing randomly) either a random hardware design and random software to run on that hardware, or just random software to be run on the same platform as the algorithm. I implement the hardware (if any) and software, then I go tell the algorithm if the result was not intelligent. In this case, the algorithm sends a message back in time to when the design was generated, telling it to generate a different result.
The only version of the generated data that "counts" is the one that I gave a pass as being intelligent.
My point was only that it's hard to be closer to time travel (to the past) than strong AI, since I'm pretty sure tt implies AI.
I agree that we don't know much about AI, however I'll be astounded if we're not successfully simulating brains in 30 years. We're pretty good at copying nature.
Actually, I'm pretty sure with time travel I could fairly trivially build about the strongest AI possible. When you can perform an infinite number of operations in an arbitrarily short amount of time, quite a stupid algorithm can produce some pretty smart results.
I'm seriously confused, ABM. How can the debt go up while we have a budget surplus? I think this is the occasion when Congress stole (sorry, borrowed) from Social Security to pay the regular budget. Then of course they never paid back SocSec.
I do think Clinton did a very good job in comparison with other presidents, but I am beginning to think the budget surplus is a mythrepresentation.
Great references, thanks!
I guess the Wikipedia article is taking the difference between the ratio of debt to GDP from one year to the ratio of debt to GDP for the next year. That's just confusing.
I would much rather see the two figures: the % increase/decrease in debt and the % increase/decrease of GDP. Mixing the two together, and especially taking the difference between the ratios of two different years seems more suited to obfuscation than illumination.
Of course, this still means that either the country has done better on increasing GDP, or better in managing debt, or some combination of the two, under democrats rather than republicans. At least according to the debt & GDP figures Wikipedia is using, and assuming that they aren't lying in the chart. I haven't checked any of their figures myself.
Please provide some references to back this up. And then have it out with the folks at Wikipedia, because http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_debt_by_U.S._presidential_terms says Clinton brought the debt down, by quite a bit.
In fact, it's interesting to note that per Wikipedia's data, if you sort by the change in the debt, almost all the democratic presidents come out on top (more reduction/less increase in debt), and almost all the republican presidents on bottom.
To some degree I see your point, although I'm not sure how much of my ISP's income you can claim comes from music, as opposed to movies, collaborative content, text (both from authors expecting to be paid and people spouting off e.g. /.), pictures (with the same caveat as text), etc.
That said, I think properly implemented your solution would be far better than what we have in the US (and most of the first world) today.
I've had this argument. I was stumped.
I'm an ordinary person, who maybe plays on the internet for an hour a day but generally doesn't care about copyright issues. Explain to me why the duration of copyright, DMCA, etc. matter to me, without boring me to tears. I.e. explain it while entertaining me or making me see an immediate threat to my interests in two sentences or less.
Most people don't have the background to know why they should care about copyright.
What part of your solution would stop everyone from filesharing everything, and hence getting everything for free? 5% of $0 is $0.
I do think there are far better solutions than our current copyright. However, I don't see how what you propose would generate any income at all to creators, no matter how popular their material was. Or at least how it would generate any more income than a total lack of copyright law plus online tip jars.
But in practice I think when the casual reader sees "the FSF has a blatant bias against the recording industry", they think the FSF is against content producers, as well.
To me, the artists are a significantly more important part of the recording industry than the studios or labels...
I love the FSF, but which of the quotes listed here is inaccurate? The FSF *does* want to get rid of copy restrictions, and does dislike the RIAA. Although, I would say the FSF hates on the RIAA, not the "recording industry", but I suspect the RIAA doesn't see the difference.
I totally agree with you that quantum mechanics is very well tested and extremely accurate in every domain we can test.
However, it is known to be wrong. Quantum mechanics (and even quantum field theory) is incompatible with general relativity. As far as I know, no one knows how to reconcile the two. It's the same situation as blackbody radiation prior to quantum theory - we have one model that works on one scale, and another model that works on another scale, but they are known to be incompatible.
The difference is that we don't have the technology to build experiments in the contested domain - experiments in which we measure quantum effects in an acceleration/gravity field strong enough to have measurable GR effects at a quantum scale.
That said, there's another issue with quantum mechanics. To my knowledge, there is no clear definition of what a "good observation" is, or what happens in a non-good observation. For example, in the classic two slit experiment, you are either observing (entangled with) the electron as it passes through the slit, or you are not. But in fact, it seems to me you are almost always varying degrees of "sort of" entangled with the electron. By which I mean there are particles that interact with you that give you statistical information about which slit the electron goes through, but not clear information.
By the way, regarding the "new method" of tunneling in the post... that doesn't sound new at all, to me. The standard Feynmann diagram model of quantum mechanics involves identifying all the ways a particle could get from here to there (including splitting into other particles and rejoining) and summing over them to find the likelihood a particle will be at the target location. Not having read the article, I'm guessing they just analyzed those "split into two particle" paths and discovered that they contribute more in some scenarios than people had believed before.
You're running Vista, and Linux is not faster? That's kind of hard to believe.
If your kids want the game everyone is talking about this month, then Linux is not going to satisfy them. If they want LOTS of fun games available for free (and Free), then Linux is the way to go. If they might want to play around with the idea of being a games programmer, Linux is the only way to go. They can take their favorite game and make small changes until they get comfortable making bigger ones.
Your tax software should work fine under Wine, which on Ubuntu "just works".
If giving more money to Redmond made you want to puke, you already have incentive. If making sure your kids can play the latest game is worth more to you than the money spent on Vista plus that pukey feeling, go with Vista. Otherwise, go with Linux.
First, try an Ubuntu Live CD to make sure all your devices "just work". They probably will, but with the Live CD it's so easy to check that there's no reason not to.
I don't know anything in particular about getting systems to run for a long time, but when I saw your request I thought of a couple of things that might be helpful:
1) underclock the CPU. Then it runs much cooler, and if the fan goes out, it may run just fine without it if you underclock enough.
2) low end, underclocked graphics card - see above
3) flash instead of hard drive. My biggest problem has always been the HD going out. It sounds as if your dad's needs are light enough that you could get enough flash memory cheap. No moving parts = much longer lifespan.
Same here. Feb was my first month, selling for $1.99, one return. I was debited $1.40, the same that I am credited for a sale.
Well, I have three kids, ages 4-13, so it's hard to find something that I like to do and can make time for. I don't think that's a good excuse to not exercise.
Unfortunately, until recently I didn't exercise at all regularly. Actually, though, now I have the Wii Fit, and I like it quite well.
I'm not an athletic person - in general, I don't enjoy exercise-y things. I do like hiking, but there is nowhere near to do it, and doing it hard enough to get any exercise is difficult with a 13 yr old, and impossible with a 4 yr old.
In fact, I got my BS in Physics & Mathematics, so I didn't study LISP at all in college. I've done a bit since then just to learn the basics. I've certainly never used it professionally.
Thanks for the info.
I have spoken to at least one professional LISP programmer who indicated that he did in fact try to build almost solely functional software. I don't know if he was really telling the truth.
I actually agree with you completely. It still does seem stupid to me to turn it down, but I shouldn't insult people who turn it down. If you understand the consequences and accept them, it's not stupid, it's just a choice.
I do think that most people make such decisions without really understanding that e.g. X hours of smoking takes Y years off your life, statistically speaking. And if it were put to them in a simpler context, they would make a different decision.
In fact, I think as the internet becomes ubiquitous and the price (and size) of cameras and image processing drops to 0, all the stuff we do will become known to everyone, with (hopefully) the exception of things done in a truly private setting with people you can trust.
But I agree with the other replier - the information should be treated as "papers and effects" (in the US) and be private from the government without a warrant. Hopefully in other countries similar privacy laws would apply.
I'm not sure I'd disagree with something that prevented drunks from driving, though ;-)