Leave the rest of us out of your rabbit hole please. There is absolutely nothing wrong with sex or nakedness. Nothing. Not for teenagers (for whom it was mainly intended anyway), not for "adults", and it has never been shown to be harmful to preteens either. Mostly they don't particularly care about it.
By the "illegal side of things" and "lives get ruined" and "alters senses of right and wrong", I would be curious to know what the fk you are referring to.
Has slashdot been invaded by Christian Jesus-freaks or something. Go jack off to a Jesus painting if you want or go molest some young boys, but leave the rest of us alone with your insane laws. Thanks.
"Desensitized" to sex? What the hell is that supposed to mean? Some of you people have some serious issues.
People are at least supposed to have brains. And those with brains already are well aware that body parts come in various shapes and sizes. So what you are basically saying is that human beings should not be allowed to see other human beings naked lest they develop an inferiority complex by seeing other, bigger, parts (and naturally bigger is better).
As to the rest of what you are implying, I don't even want to think about it. Your world is certainly a scary one. Leave me out of it thank you very much.
The men are treated like meat too. Why not just say that a video of two people having sex is degrading to both of them? Because you've already been brainwashed by society into thinking that women are helpless victims by nature. They can't help what they do, and it's all the fault of the men.
Sex is just sex. Aside from the fact that many of us haven't had any since the Carter administration, it's no big deal. Certain western societies just have a problem with it and see it as "unnatural" or "bad".
100 billion USD to the first person to invent a workable interstellar propulsion system that could theoretically make it to alpha-centauri within 300 of our years (yes, you'd have to have sex in space). Any takers?
notice how the opposite is true in America, here everyone pretends to be happy all the time
Actually the Japanese are far more likely to act happy and cheerful even when they are not.
clearly shows us as being one of the most miserable nations on earth, and with the higest work hours
The average Japanese works far more hours than the average American. It seems like every Japanese person I have met works 12-16+ hours 5 days a week. And that is not even including the semi-mandatory after work socializing. At first it seemed like Japanese wages were very high. Then I noticed their working hours.
Just say no to drugs or at least don't post to slashdot while you are on them.
Wages are not that high when compared to the cost of living. I think rent is a lot cheaper, not only in India, but in most other countries as well. We even have the most expensive city in the world: NYC, with higher rents than Tokyo, London, and Hong Kong. That and the huge difference in the cost of a university degree are the only parts that aren't "fair".
Thanks for this list. I have never watched Anime because to me (a USian) animation == cartoons, which is only for children in my country. Every anime that I have heard about seems to be targeted at children or teenagers. I can't really relate to those child characters. It always seems like too much was sacrificed in order to give the main roles to kids. Any advice for starter anime that a 30something might like?
You have obviously never been to Korea. I don't know anything about Korean "key money", but your description is nothing at all like "key money" in Japan. In Japan key money does not pay the rent for you. It may as well be called landlord bribe money.
Can you name even one area that is more "advanced" about Korea? If anything it seemed a bit backward to me. Especially compared to Japan.
You will be severely penalized in Bittorrent swarms and moderately penalized in Emule/Edonkey in terms of a much slower download speed and/or longer queue waits (in ed2k)for not uploading.
Also, official versions of Shareaza do not allow zero uploads on the ED2K network because it's not allowed, and shareaza clients would be banned by other clients and probably by the servers as well.
Entropy is more than just a narrow definition in thermodynamics. It is a universal attribute of existence as such. Maybe you should try thinking for yourself for a change instead of just reading physics texts. And yes, I was an engineering major (EE) in university. I am not talking about building a heat engine here. I am talking about the nature of the (observable) universe. Heat engines are merely a subset of that.
I think you are actually a better example of The Star Trek Syndrome. You are absurdly optimistic about human abilities and technology, while ignoring all of the genuine hurdles. I think we will find that extending our lifetimes to any significant degree, let alone creating genuine "immortality" is far, far, more difficult than you seem to believe. Perhaps we will be able to achieve it in another 1000-5000 years. Perhaps we never will.
Many things look easy to the naive observer. It's all talk until you actually attempt to solve the problem. Death does not occur for only one reason and the fight against entropy will never end.
We have not even been able to improve significantly on the internal combustion engine in the past century and that system is not nearly as dynamic or complex as even a simple organism, let alone a human being. Making any machine as complex as a human body last forever is no trivial task.
What's a "sportsman"? The closest image I get is of a hunter stalking a deer in the woods. Did you mean professional athletes by some chance? I would be curious as to how you presume to know how they think or what attitudes they have.
They are individual human beings like everyone else. The only difference is that they have some unusual physical abilities. I would guess that many times they grow rather bored with it. Why am I willing to bet that you are quite young yourself?
Happiness is tremendously difficult to define. I wouldn't define athletes as being some kind of pinnacle of happiness. What makes us different from most animals is our mental abilities not our physical ones. While I would place physical attractiveness on the top of the list of traits most likely to lead to happiness, I would place intelligence as a close second. Athletic ability would be way down on the list. And the end of an athletic career (or modeling as another example) is not the end of life by any definition.
Entropy is a basic law of the universe. A living organism or a machine could almost be defined as a fight against it, against the tendency of the universe to proceed toward greater disorder. All matter, as a bunch of colliding particles, has a tendency to seek a state of less "order". Complex systems, whether "closed" or not, must constantly repair themselves or become more and more disorderly with the passage of time. There is a natural tendency for Humpty Dumpty to break. There is no corresponding tendency for Humpty Dumpties to be automatically re-assembled again. The idea of a living creature not being subject to entropy because it may not be "closed" by some narrow definition seems ludicrous to me.
Remember the 3 laws:
1. You can't win. 2. You can't break even. 3. You can't get out of the game.
Consider, too, that some species (such as turtles, I believe?)
Turtles as a species are not immune to aging. Why can't you do a little research before you post? I do remember there was an anti-aging issue with one particualar subspecies of turtle though (can anyone provide a link?). We seem to constantly have this war on slashdot between information and misinformation.
Unlike the rhinoviruses, the strains of Ebola dangerous to human beings have never been shown to be contagious via the aerosol route during any actual outbreak. It may have been demonstrated a couple of times in the lab, but those were isolated instances that have not been replicated.
If Ebola Zaire were in fact contagious via the air, neither of us would likely be breathing right now.
Also Ebola does not always have such a short incubation period nor does it necessarily kill all that quickly. Some people have it for weeks and then recover fully. Please check your facts before posting next time. That you were modded up to a 5 is pretty scary.
That's why it's necessary to tailgate these slow-driving arseholes clogging up the roads. If we tailgate them within inches of their bumper, they will no longer feel so safe driving 20mph under the speed limit. If they get into an accident as a result of being tailgated they may even reconsider their selfish, antisocial behavior and pull over every time someone gets behind them. IMO, if you're going to drive that slow, just do everyone a favor and WALK. It's also better for the environment.
Last I heard we have at least another 40 years or so (although no one really knows) before the price of oil rises to a level where alternative energy sources become truly competitive.
What are you worried about anyway? Electric and solar electric cars are viable now if you are willing to live with the limitations and costs. So it's not the end of the world when oil becomes sufficiently scarce. We won't just all of a sudden run out. It doesn't work that way. We'll still have oil for applications that really need it.
In my view economics will do our conservation for us. When gas reaches $20/gallon, there will be quite a few of us waiting in line for "alternative" or extremely fuel efficent small engines.
You can't download kiddie porn from the internet. How long do you think a web site hosting genuine k-porn would last? People get a little common sense please.
Are you actually criticizing the Chinese gov't for not creating enough equality? You must be kidding. If there is one thing that communism/socialism does well, that is it.
Also, high taxes just create a new aristocracy: the government elite. And, as many have said here (weren't you listening?), the US is not a democracy per se. It is a republic. The democracy aspect (majority rule) is just a minor feature and has little to do with what made the country different from others (libertarianism).
Because the treatments still have patent protection. Once the patents on the current treatments have ended they might have a quick board meeting before they decide to make public their "new" discovery that their previous treatments with generic competition were lacking in certain areas. The "improved" drug which, in an extreme coincidence, has been announced only 12 hours after their previous patent expired, is a 7% more effective treatment. Quick, let's get fast track FDA approval for this new miracle drug. We can all give thanks to drug patents for encouraging this kind of important research.
Treatments are planned. Cures and vaccines are stumbled upon accidentally. That's the only way they can be sufficiently profitable. And they can never be profitable when the same company already has profitable treatments. They would just be competing with themselves, trying to put themselves out of business. As long as no one else develops a cure, they can keep getting new patents on incremental "improvements" or even just variations forever. Cures are economic suicide.
A small drug company, without any treatment drugs in production, is really the only chance since they have no vested interest in the treatment market. I wonder how much money could be earned by discovering a promising candidate and only disclosing the information to one of the big pharmeceutical corporations who might lose hundreds of millions every year if it were released.
Having said all this, viruses are tough. Look at how few antiviral drugs there are. Is there even one drug that can actually kill viruses (if they are even "alive" as such) without also killing the host? All we have are vaccines. So the most formidable virus the world has ever known is not a very promising candidate for a cure.
We do seem to have a pretty good Ebola vaccine though. Note that the only market for that was either in poor African countries or the DoD. I doubt much money was spent on Ebola research. Who's going to pay for it? And a treatment is useless since victims usually either die in a week or two or recover.
It would be hard to imagine a better virus from the POV of the drug companies than HIV. The victims are desperate enough to pay anything and can live for many years while having no choice but to pay as much as the companies demand in order to remain alive. If I had worked for a drug company and actually invented (or discovered) the thing, I would expect a large raise.
The scary part is that pharmeceutical companies often don't shy away from such questions. They openly admit that they are in business to make money and that treatments are more profitable than cures.
Actually, it amazes me that any drug company has ever created a cure for anything. Presumably they were merely accidents and not a result of planning.
Whether or not a cure is technically feasible is really irrelevant. The company will claim that developing one is too expensive. The scariest part is that in first world countries they might even be right. In any case, it is not logical to expect a for-profit company not to attempt to maximize its profits. Cures and vaccines are obviously not as profitable as treatments.
Actually, the bad news is for anyone who pays more than $100/month for rent or mortgage and property taxes. Do you think the folks in India or China pay so much for a place to live? The reason they will work for so little money is because they can afford to. The cost of living is not even close. The US will never be able to compete unless we can find a way to lower the cost of living here.
Also, the cost difference to attain a university degree is huge. In the US, you basically have to be born into a somewhat wealthy family in order to afford a degree. And with every passing year this will become more and more difficult.
At least with fission waste the poles don't melt and the climate doesn't change.
Oh god, not another "greenhouse effect" true believer. Show me some real evidence that the amount of extra CO2 we humans produce has any real effect on our atmosphere. What I find even more ludicrous about these near religious beliefs is that we all admit that fossil fuels are limited. Even if the CO2 we produce is enough to produce those kinds of global climatic changes, we will have consumed all of our fossil fuels (or at least enough to make alternative sources cheaper) long before our oceans start boiling or whatever scenario you envision
I thought that even nuclear fusion produced some radioactive waste--induced radioactivity or something like that. I don't happen to buy all the CO2 induced global warming hype, so I am not so concerned about emissions. Energy density is indeed the key when it comes to a practical vehicle without an internal combustion engine.
The energy density in a tank of gasoline is incredible. While it's still around, we may as well make use of it. It would be nice if we could find another chemical reaction that could produce greater power per pound of fuel, but I'm not holding my breath.
It took we humans long enough to invent the internal combustion engine. Who knows how long it will be before we can make another fundamental advance. I think our fossil fuels will have run out long before that. So we will have no choice but to use less efficient methods. Traveling by car will just become less practical. It will have to be more for local trips.
If necessity really is the "mother of invention", then maybe real innovations in areas like energy storage will only come about some time after we have really needed them and suffered without them.
The newer 7200 rpm Seagate drives sound like there are a bunch of buzzing bees inside. Admittedly it's very quiet compared to a Maxtor or Western Digital drive, but it's still not QUIET. The Samsung drives are quieter still than Seagate but they are nowhere near silent when they seek. I like the turbo-prop analogy. Maxtor and WD drives do sound like that.
Slashdot Mirror
Leave the rest of us out of your rabbit hole please. There is absolutely nothing wrong with sex or nakedness. Nothing. Not for teenagers (for whom it was mainly intended anyway), not for "adults", and it has never been shown to be harmful to preteens either. Mostly they don't particularly care about it.
By the "illegal side of things" and "lives get ruined" and "alters senses of right and wrong", I would be curious to know what the fk you are referring to.
Has slashdot been invaded by Christian Jesus-freaks or something. Go jack off to a Jesus painting if you want or go molest some young boys, but leave the rest of us alone with your insane laws. Thanks.
"Desensitized" to sex? What the hell is that supposed to mean? Some of you people have some serious issues.
People are at least supposed to have brains. And those with brains already are well aware that body parts come in various shapes and sizes. So what you are basically saying is that human beings should not be allowed to see other human beings naked lest they develop an inferiority complex by seeing other, bigger, parts (and naturally bigger is better).
As to the rest of what you are implying, I don't even want to think about it. Your world is certainly a scary one. Leave me out of it thank you very much.
The men are treated like meat too. Why not just say that a video of two people having sex is degrading to both of them? Because you've already been brainwashed by society into thinking that women are helpless victims by nature. They can't help what they do, and it's all the fault of the men.
Sex is just sex. Aside from the fact that many of us haven't had any since the Carter administration, it's no big deal. Certain western societies just have a problem with it and see it as "unnatural" or "bad".
100 billion USD to the first person to invent a workable interstellar propulsion system that could theoretically make it to alpha-centauri within 300 of our years (yes, you'd have to have sex in space). Any takers?
notice how the opposite is true in America, here everyone pretends to be happy all the time
Actually the Japanese are far more likely to act happy and cheerful even when they are not.
clearly shows us as being one of the most miserable nations on earth, and with the higest work hours
The average Japanese works far more hours than the average American. It seems like every Japanese person I have met works 12-16+ hours 5 days a week. And that is not even including the semi-mandatory after work socializing. At first it seemed like Japanese wages were very high. Then I noticed their working hours.
Just say no to drugs or at least don't post to slashdot while you are on them.
Wages are not that high when compared to the cost of living. I think rent is a lot cheaper, not only in India, but in most other countries as well. We even have the most expensive city in the world: NYC, with higher rents than Tokyo, London, and Hong Kong. That and the huge difference in the cost of a university degree are the only parts that aren't "fair".
Thanks for this list. I have never watched Anime because to me (a USian) animation == cartoons, which is only for children in my country. Every anime that I have heard about seems to be targeted at children or teenagers. I can't really relate to those child characters. It always seems like too much was sacrificed in order to give the main roles to kids. Any advice for starter anime that a 30something might like?
You have obviously never been to Korea. I don't know anything about Korean "key money", but your description is nothing at all like "key money" in Japan. In Japan key money does not pay the rent for you. It may as well be called landlord bribe money.
Can you name even one area that is more "advanced" about Korea? If anything it seemed a bit backward to me. Especially compared to Japan.
You will be severely penalized in Bittorrent swarms and moderately penalized in Emule/Edonkey in terms of a much slower download speed and/or longer queue waits (in ed2k)for not uploading.
Also, official versions of Shareaza do not allow zero uploads on the ED2K network because it's not allowed, and shareaza clients would be banned by other clients and probably by the servers as well.
Entropy is more than just a narrow definition in thermodynamics. It is a universal attribute of existence as such. Maybe you should try thinking for yourself for a change instead of just reading physics texts. And yes, I was an engineering major (EE) in university. I am not talking about building a heat engine here. I am talking about the nature of the (observable) universe. Heat engines are merely a subset of that.
I think you are actually a better example of The Star Trek Syndrome. You are absurdly optimistic about human abilities and technology, while ignoring all of the genuine hurdles. I think we will find that extending our lifetimes to any significant degree, let alone creating genuine "immortality" is far, far, more difficult than you seem to believe. Perhaps we will be able to achieve it in another 1000-5000 years. Perhaps we never will.
Many things look easy to the naive observer. It's all talk until you actually attempt to solve the problem. Death does not occur for only one reason and the fight against entropy will never end.
We have not even been able to improve significantly on the internal combustion engine in the past century and that system is not nearly as dynamic or complex as even a simple organism, let alone a human being. Making any machine as complex as a human body last forever is no trivial task.
What's a "sportsman"? The closest image I get is of a hunter stalking a deer in the woods. Did you mean professional athletes by some chance? I would be curious as to how you presume to know how they think or what attitudes they have.
They are individual human beings like everyone else. The only difference is that they have some unusual physical abilities. I would guess that many times they grow rather bored with it. Why am I willing to bet that you are quite young yourself?
Happiness is tremendously difficult to define. I wouldn't define athletes as being some kind of pinnacle of happiness. What makes us different from most animals is our mental abilities not our physical ones. While I would place physical attractiveness on the top of the list of traits most likely to lead to happiness, I would place intelligence as a close second. Athletic ability would be way down on the list. And the end of an athletic career (or modeling as another example) is not the end of life by any definition.
Entropy is a basic law of the universe. A living organism or a machine could almost be defined as a fight against it, against the tendency of the universe to proceed toward greater disorder. All matter, as a bunch of colliding particles, has a tendency to seek a state of less "order". Complex systems, whether "closed" or not, must constantly repair themselves or become more and more disorderly with the passage of time. There is a natural tendency for Humpty Dumpty to break. There is no corresponding tendency for Humpty Dumpties to be automatically re-assembled again. The idea of a living creature not being subject to entropy because it may not be "closed" by some narrow definition seems ludicrous to me.
Remember the 3 laws:
1. You can't win.
2. You can't break even.
3. You can't get out of the game.
Consider, too, that some species (such as turtles, I believe?)
Turtles as a species are not immune to aging. Why can't you do a little research before you post? I do remember there was an anti-aging issue with one particualar subspecies of turtle though (can anyone provide a link?). We seem to constantly have this war on slashdot between information and misinformation.
Unlike the rhinoviruses, the strains of Ebola dangerous to human beings have never been shown to be contagious via the aerosol route during any actual outbreak. It may have been demonstrated a couple of times in the lab, but those were isolated instances that have not been replicated.
If Ebola Zaire were in fact contagious via the air, neither of us would likely be breathing right now.
Also Ebola does not always have such a short incubation period nor does it necessarily kill all that quickly. Some people have it for weeks and then recover fully. Please check your facts before posting next time. That you were modded up to a 5 is pretty scary.
That's why it's necessary to tailgate these slow-driving arseholes clogging up the roads. If we tailgate them within inches of their bumper, they will no longer feel so safe driving 20mph under the speed limit. If they get into an accident as a result of being tailgated they may even reconsider their selfish, antisocial behavior and pull over every time someone gets behind them. IMO, if you're going to drive that slow, just do everyone a favor and WALK. It's also better for the environment.
Last I heard we have at least another 40 years or so (although no one really knows) before the price of oil rises to a level where alternative energy sources become truly competitive.
What are you worried about anyway? Electric and solar electric cars are viable now if you are willing to live with the limitations and costs. So it's not the end of the world when oil becomes sufficiently scarce. We won't just all of a sudden run out. It doesn't work that way. We'll still have oil for applications that really need it.
In my view economics will do our conservation for us. When gas reaches $20/gallon, there will be quite a few of us waiting in line for "alternative" or extremely fuel efficent small engines.
You can't download kiddie porn from the internet. How long do you think a web site hosting genuine k-porn would last? People get a little common sense please.
Are you actually criticizing the Chinese gov't for not creating enough equality? You must be kidding. If there is one thing that communism/socialism does well, that is it.
Also, high taxes just create a new aristocracy: the government elite. And, as many have said here (weren't you listening?), the US is not a democracy per se. It is a republic. The democracy aspect (majority rule) is just a minor feature and has little to do with what made the country different from others (libertarianism).
Why are there no drugs that cure AIDS?
Because the treatments still have patent protection. Once the patents on the current treatments have ended they might have a quick board meeting before they decide to make public their "new" discovery that their previous treatments with generic competition were lacking in certain areas. The "improved" drug which, in an extreme coincidence, has been announced only 12 hours after their previous patent expired, is a 7% more effective treatment. Quick, let's get fast track FDA approval for this new miracle drug. We can all give thanks to drug patents for encouraging this kind of important research.
Treatments are planned. Cures and vaccines are stumbled upon accidentally. That's the only way they can be sufficiently profitable. And they can never be profitable when the same company already has profitable treatments. They would just be competing with themselves, trying to put themselves out of business. As long as no one else develops a cure, they can keep getting new patents on incremental "improvements" or even just variations forever. Cures are economic suicide.
A small drug company, without any treatment drugs in production, is really the only chance since they have no vested interest in the treatment market. I wonder how much money could be earned by discovering a promising candidate and only disclosing the information to one of the big pharmeceutical corporations who might lose hundreds of millions every year if it were released.
Having said all this, viruses are tough. Look at how few antiviral drugs there are. Is there even one drug that can actually kill viruses (if they are even "alive" as such) without also killing the host? All we have are vaccines. So the most formidable virus the world has ever known is not a very promising candidate for a cure.
We do seem to have a pretty good Ebola vaccine though. Note that the only market for that was either in poor African countries or the DoD. I doubt much money was spent on Ebola research. Who's going to pay for it? And a treatment is useless since victims usually either die in a week or two or recover.
It would be hard to imagine a better virus from the POV of the drug companies than HIV. The victims are desperate enough to pay anything and can live for many years while having no choice but to pay as much as the companies demand in order to remain alive. If I had worked for a drug company and actually invented (or discovered) the thing, I would expect a large raise.
The scary part is that pharmeceutical companies often don't shy away from such questions. They openly admit that they are in business to make money and that treatments are more profitable than cures.
Actually, it amazes me that any drug company has ever created a cure for anything. Presumably they were merely accidents and not a result of planning.
Whether or not a cure is technically feasible is really irrelevant. The company will claim that developing one is too expensive. The scariest part is that in first world countries they might even be right. In any case, it is not logical to expect a for-profit company not to attempt to maximize its profits. Cures and vaccines are obviously not as profitable as treatments.
Actually, the bad news is for anyone who pays more than $100/month for rent or mortgage and property taxes. Do you think the folks in India or China pay so much for a place to live? The reason they will work for so little money is because they can afford to. The cost of living is not even close. The US will never be able to compete unless we can find a way to lower the cost of living here.
Also, the cost difference to attain a university degree is huge. In the US, you basically have to be born into a somewhat wealthy family in order to afford a degree. And with every passing year this will become more and more difficult.
At least with fission waste the poles don't melt and the climate doesn't change.
Oh god, not another "greenhouse effect" true believer. Show me some real evidence that the amount of extra CO2 we humans produce has any real effect on our atmosphere. What I find even more ludicrous about these near religious beliefs is that we all admit that fossil fuels are limited. Even if the CO2 we produce is enough to produce those kinds of global climatic changes, we will have consumed all of our fossil fuels (or at least enough to make alternative sources cheaper) long before our oceans start boiling or whatever scenario you envision
I thought that even nuclear fusion produced some radioactive waste--induced radioactivity or something like that. I don't happen to buy all the CO2 induced global warming hype, so I am not so concerned about emissions. Energy density is indeed the key when it comes to a practical vehicle without an internal combustion engine.
The energy density in a tank of gasoline is incredible. While it's still around, we may as well make use of it. It would be nice if we could find another chemical reaction that could produce greater power per pound of fuel, but I'm not holding my breath.
It took we humans long enough to invent the internal combustion engine. Who knows how long it will be before we can make another fundamental advance. I think our fossil fuels will have run out long before that. So we will have no choice but to use less efficient methods. Traveling by car will just become less practical. It will have to be more for local trips.
If necessity really is the "mother of invention", then maybe real innovations in areas like energy storage will only come about some time after we have really needed them and suffered without them.
The newer 7200 rpm Seagate drives sound like there are a bunch of buzzing bees inside. Admittedly it's very quiet compared to a Maxtor or Western Digital drive, but it's still not QUIET. The Samsung drives are quieter still than Seagate but they are nowhere near silent when they seek. I like the turbo-prop analogy. Maxtor and WD drives do sound like that.