Why can't the government be shut down all the time? I love it. I'm happy all the time now. It's as if I'm taking huge doses of oxycodone or something. Anarchy is awesome! I never thought anything could make me so happy. It's like being in love. Up on cloud 9 all the time.
The problem is that would have been morally wrong. You do at least understand that some people have principles even if you don't, right? If you promise privacy for your users you don't then violate that privacy no matter who it is that is asking you to do it or what any particular user was alleged to have done. When you make a promise you should keep it. This is aside from the fact that we all have a responsibility to protect a national hero from persecution.
Yup. This is why I claim that there is truly no such thing as private property in the U.S. The term "property tax" is just a euphemism for "rent". The only one who really owns property in the US is the government itself.
I know, right? I said the same thing when my friends acted all shocked and got up on their high horse when they found out about the 12 year old girl caged in my basement whom I raped several times a day and those ex-girlfriends I was forced to torture to death when they expressed a desire to break up with me when they caught me raping her.
People are such hypocrites! Everyone else is just the same. I mean who hasn't killed a few people and buried them in their backyards? Who hasn't raped and imprisoned a few tweens every now and then? It's just human nature. No one is any different. The only difference between me and most people is that I got caught and they didn't.
You've had this non-24 condition since birth? That's tough. I can't imagine having that problem as a kid while in school. Damn. It only started for me after a head injury, but now my normal cycle is also around 25-27 hours. It does make it extremely difficult to lead a normal life.
I assume you've tried everything, but have you tried Dark Therapy? No artificial lighting after dark? It's kind of tough for me because it means I can't use a computer or read. I've sometimes listened to audio books though and a really boring audio book can be helpful for putting you to sleep as well.
There are some theories that it is only necessary to eliminate the shorter wavelengths of light and that amber to red light is okay, but I think this is false based on my own experience and based on mouse studies where you have to get above 700nm for circadian rhythms to be unaffected and it's pretty hard to see that near infrared and only LED lighting could be that precise. One of these days I do plan to buy some 710-740 nm LEDs and test out whether I can read with them and whether it helps the non-24.
The next frontier in computing is parallel processing
If that really is the next frontier it's only because serial processing has stopped moving forward for a while. Not all problems are embarrassingly parallel.
In theory games will always be able to use your spare cycles so long as those cycles are added in series. Unfortunately not all problems are embarrassingly parallel. The only reason games don't already make use of the state of the art in PCs is because they are mostly being made for consoles with PCs as an afterthought and so can't move forward until the console makers decide to do an update and that doesn't happen very often.
Even for our own programs certain problems cannot move forward anymore because they cannot really be accelerated by a divide and conquer strategy.
I still run a C2D which I just overclock to 4.1 Ghz when I need performance. Normally I undervolt it to 0.9 volts and underclock it to 1.2 Ghz though because that's all I really need for day to day stuff and electricity is expensive where I live. I suppose in the end that is a problem as well. Eventually the cost of electricity becomes a limiting factor just as the cost of petrol does for horseless carriages at higher speeds.
A competing hypothesis tries to show a correlation between mass extinctions and the times when our solar system is farthest to the "north" of the galactic disk. I've always found that hypothesis tantalizing and somehow compelling even though it cannot explain the KT event. Presumably there can be more than one cause of mass extinctions.
No, the reason why this isn't being fixed is that a significant number of voters vote for politicians that run on a platform that includes deregulation and freeing the market of even modest restraints on bad behavior.
Exactly. This is why we all need to vote Libertarian. So that the entire corrupted patent system can be shut down. Then we can get started on reducing copyrights to no more than 5 years. That was what you intended, right? Because of course patents are a government interference in the free market, right? Preventing competition is what it's all about.
I'm merely assuming truly massive forces acting on the atoms to pull it apart into the standard subatomic particles and then perhaps even further. Maybe once the particles that used to be a recognizable object reached the surface they would clump together to form neutrons as in a neutron star, but maybe not.
A 4D object is just hard (not impossible) to visualize
Bullshit. It is impossible to visualize. If you can visualize it then describe it to me.
and pretty much by definition has a 3D surface
Which probably means that there is no such thing as a 4 dimensional object since it depends on an impossibility.
You're just not imagining hard enough. Don't just scoff and dismiss as ridiculous that which you don't care to comprehend.
That's what religious people say about their god. I do care to comprehend it if it is possible for human beings to do so. Help me out. How do you visualize an object which has length, width, height, and let's call the fourth measurement W. This measurement would have to be in a direction perpendicular to all 3 of the first ones. Sounds like nonsense to me. The concept of perpendicularity doesn't even seem to apply in the case of a 3 dimensional object.
There's no evidence for their physical (not least because, as you may have noticed, we live in a 3D universe so such objects are impossible here), but as mathematical constructs they are perfectly cromulent.
As mathematical constructs with no parallels in the real world maybe, but they are still impossible to visualize. They would in no sense represent any sort of object.
Just because you can't imagine a 3D surface of a 4D object, doesn't mean others can't.
I would certainly not claim that the reason no human currently alive is capable of imagining a 4 dimensional object is because I cannot. No. The reason they cannot imagine it is because it is utterly nonsensical. Like 1 dimensional or 2 dimensional objects, 4 dimensional objects are worse than unproven. The concepts themselves are impossible.
Nothing real, nothing that actually exists, can be measured with either more or less than 3 dimensions. Anything with only 2 dimensions doesn't exist by definition and more than 3 dimensions simply doesn't make any sense.
Mathematicians have been "studying" n-dimensional objects for years.
What is your point? Is that supposed to prove that such entities exist or are not nonsensical. Is it supposed to show that they can imagine such things?
No, it isn't. It's two-dimensional only by everyday common experience.
Would you say the same about a square circle and if not why not? Once a so called "surface" has a thickness it becomes indistinguishable from any other real life object. A 3D surface would not seem to be a particularly useful concept even if we could imagine such a thing. Needless to say, like square circles, there isn't a shred of evidence for the existence of 3 dimensional surfaces.
All of this would not be occurring if it "vanished out of existance", and thus violated the laws of thermodynamics.
I did not mean to imply that the mass that was once say an astronaut falling into a black hole would simply disappear magically. What I meant was that what was once an astronaut would consist of some kind of exotic subatomic particles and would no longer in any way be recognizable as a human being in a space suit or even as anything distinguishable from the mass of the black hole itself. That is what I meant. Not that the matter itself would be destroyed. Although I don't think anything that occurs within the event horizon of a black hole can be known. It is like a region of unknowability.
The information, that is the quantum state, of mass and energy that is eaten by a blackhole is later ejected as what could be termed high energy 'noise'; x-rays and gamma rays.
It has always seemed strange to me that black holes could emit any form of EM radiation. Wouldn't the escape velocity exceed the speed of light? How could they ever overcome such a strong gravitational field.?
What goes into a black hole does eventually come back out... but what comes out, to the best of our knowledge, is a smear of particles which are emitted along a gaussian distribution with regard to energy state.
How do these particles manage to escape from the immense force of gravity they are subject to?
If I were to toss some ordinary object into a black hole. Say a chair. Are you saying that the chair would still be recognizable as such if one could somehow make light immune to the force of gravity? You'd have what? A chair lying on the surface of some strange black sphere?
If instead the chair is converted into particles smaller even than electrons then I think it is safe to say that whatever the matter that was once the chair has become it is no longer a chair.
The behavior of a black hole mirrors the behavior you'd expect of a two-dimensional object.
'Two dimensional object' is a contradiction in terms. If it can be called an object at all then it must have at least 3 spatial dimensions. Even an object only 1 atom thick would have 3 spatial dimensions. One of those dimensions would just be very small.
Whether something can have more than 3 spatial dimensions is pure speculation. It could be argued that such an idea is non-falsifiable. The whole concept of perpendicularity seems to break down when applied to a 3 dimensional (aka real) object.
Maybe we're in 2D space.
If 3 spatial dimensions are not required to measure our bodies then we do not exist at all. Even one atom thick creatures would require 3 spatial dimensions to measure. Also a 2D universe would not be a universe at all. A universe, by definition, contains everything that exists. A 2D universe could not contain 3 dimensional objects.
a black hole in such a universe would have a 3-d "surface"
I'm trying to decide whether this makes any more sense than a square circle. 3D surface is a contradiction in terms. A surface is 2 dimensional by definition.
Once something has passed the edge of the visible universe it is effectively lost to us
Only until we build a bigger telescope.
a bit like when something passes the event horizon of a black hole.
It's not really the same because anything that collides with a black hole will cease to exist. There is no way for anyone with any sort of conceivable detector to observe what no longer exists. Even if the collapsed star's gravity did not stop the photons from exiting it would effectively vanish out of existence.
It sounds like you cannot have a serious discussion period. This kid made a little video game. That is not against the law no matter what the characters look like in it. The cop in this case is a dangerous thug and a threat to us all and our freedoms. He belongs in prison or at the very least he should lose his job. I don't think we want to rely on the judgement of some mentally retarded cop as to whether or not people get arrested for thoughtcrime.
At the very least, the posting of the video constitutes a death threat, which demands justice.
No it does not constitute a death threat. A death threat is, "I'm going to kill you now, AC". A video game is just a video game now matter what the pixels may or may not look like.
Let me say that again. AC, I am going to murder you sometime very soon. I own a gun. An assault rifle. I am going to kill you with it. This IS going to happen. So you might want to prepare a will or something. Perhaps flee whatever country you live in as well. Just to be safe.
The only problem is that I have no idea who you are and no way to find out and I don't actually own a gun. Do you see why threats are required to be credible and why the person making the threat is expected to have some realistic means of carrying it out?
He isn't being charged with threatening anyone. Legally threatening someone would be considered assault in most states so long as the threat is both credible and it is possible for it to be immediately carried out.
The reason for this is simple. Talk is just talk and even we cannot build enough jails to hold something like the 80% of the population that makes some kind of vague threat to someone at some point in their lives.
If the kid has a gun in his hand and says, "I'm going to kill every last one of you" that would be simple assault in most states. But if he says the same thing without any immediate means to carry it out and it doesn't seem credible then it is not asssault in most states.
I think they really need the new terrorism laws to go after someone for making non-credible threats that anyone can see is just talk. Lucky for people like you they do have such laws now. Just be careful what you say...oops did I just threaten you? I guess it could be seen that way, right? Someone is pounding on the door. I'm just going t
if he lets it go and the kid DOES shoot up the place
This is where your reasoning fails. This kid is no more likely to end up shooting someone than anyone else. You may as well arrest everyone who owns a squirt gun or who plays violent video games or who has ever used the word "gun" in a sentence. If the cop's reasoning is as you describe then he is a fucking moron.
Outlaw all firearms. That worked well for illegal drugs and alcohol. So it will definitely work for firearms too.
Since firearms have vanished from existence due to above law there will be no more school shootings. Angry kids will have to make due with bladed weapons.
And when a school kid dies from knife wounds and it makes the national news everyone will behave 100% rationally and not overreact about it like they do now. Someone weilding an imaginary knife will not go to prison because that would just be silly, right?
Slashdot Mirror
Why can't the government be shut down all the time? I love it. I'm happy all the time now. It's as if I'm taking huge doses of oxycodone or something. Anarchy is awesome! I never thought anything could make me so happy. It's like being in love. Up on cloud 9 all the time.
The problem is that would have been morally wrong. You do at least understand that some people have principles even if you don't, right? If you promise privacy for your users you don't then violate that privacy no matter who it is that is asking you to do it or what any particular user was alleged to have done. When you make a promise you should keep it. This is aside from the fact that we all have a responsibility to protect a national hero from persecution.
Yup. This is why I claim that there is truly no such thing as private property in the U.S. The term "property tax" is just a euphemism for "rent". The only one who really owns property in the US is the government itself.
I know, right? I said the same thing when my friends acted all shocked and got up on their high horse when they found out about the 12 year old girl caged in my basement whom I raped several times a day and those ex-girlfriends I was forced to torture to death when they expressed a desire to break up with me when they caught me raping her.
People are such hypocrites! Everyone else is just the same. I mean who hasn't killed a few people and buried them in their backyards? Who hasn't raped and imprisoned a few tweens every now and then? It's just human nature. No one is any different. The only difference between me and most people is that I got caught and they didn't.
You've had this non-24 condition since birth? That's tough. I can't imagine having that problem as a kid while in school. Damn. It only started for me after a head injury, but now my normal cycle is also around 25-27 hours. It does make it extremely difficult to lead a normal life.
I assume you've tried everything, but have you tried Dark Therapy? No artificial lighting after dark? It's kind of tough for me because it means I can't use a computer or read. I've sometimes listened to audio books though and a really boring audio book can be helpful for putting you to sleep as well.
There are some theories that it is only necessary to eliminate the shorter wavelengths of light and that amber to red light is okay, but I think this is false based on my own experience and based on mouse studies where you have to get above 700nm for circadian rhythms to be unaffected and it's pretty hard to see that near infrared and only LED lighting could be that precise. One of these days I do plan to buy some 710-740 nm LEDs and test out whether I can read with them and whether it helps the non-24.
The next frontier in computing is parallel processing
If that really is the next frontier it's only because serial processing has stopped moving forward for a while. Not all problems are embarrassingly parallel.
In theory games will always be able to use your spare cycles so long as those cycles are added in series. Unfortunately not all problems are embarrassingly parallel. The only reason games don't already make use of the state of the art in PCs is because they are mostly being made for consoles with PCs as an afterthought and so can't move forward until the console makers decide to do an update and that doesn't happen very often.
Even for our own programs certain problems cannot move forward anymore because they cannot really be accelerated by a divide and conquer strategy.
I still run a C2D which I just overclock to 4.1 Ghz when I need performance. Normally I undervolt it to 0.9 volts and underclock it to 1.2 Ghz though because that's all I really need for day to day stuff and electricity is expensive where I live. I suppose in the end that is a problem as well. Eventually the cost of electricity becomes a limiting factor just as the cost of petrol does for horseless carriages at higher speeds.
A competing hypothesis tries to show a correlation between mass extinctions and the times when our solar system is farthest to the "north" of the galactic disk. I've always found that hypothesis tantalizing and somehow compelling even though it cannot explain the KT event. Presumably there can be more than one cause of mass extinctions.
No, the reason why this isn't being fixed is that a significant number of voters vote for politicians that run on a platform that includes deregulation and freeing the market of even modest restraints on bad behavior.
Exactly. This is why we all need to vote Libertarian. So that the entire corrupted patent system can be shut down. Then we can get started on reducing copyrights to no more than 5 years. That was what you intended, right? Because of course patents are a government interference in the free market, right? Preventing competition is what it's all about.
I'm merely assuming truly massive forces acting on the atoms to pull it apart into the standard subatomic particles and then perhaps even further. Maybe once the particles that used to be a recognizable object reached the surface they would clump together to form neutrons as in a neutron star, but maybe not.
A 4D object is just hard (not impossible) to visualize
Bullshit. It is impossible to visualize. If you can visualize it then describe it to me.
and pretty much by definition has a 3D surface
Which probably means that there is no such thing as a 4 dimensional object since it depends on an impossibility.
You're just not imagining hard enough. Don't just scoff and dismiss as ridiculous that which you don't care to comprehend.
That's what religious people say about their god. I do care to comprehend it if it is possible for human beings to do so. Help me out. How do you visualize an object which has length, width, height, and let's call the fourth measurement W. This measurement would have to be in a direction perpendicular to all 3 of the first ones. Sounds like nonsense to me. The concept of perpendicularity doesn't even seem to apply in the case of a 3 dimensional object.
There's no evidence for their physical (not least because, as you may have noticed, we live in a 3D universe so such objects are impossible here), but as mathematical constructs they are perfectly cromulent.
As mathematical constructs with no parallels in the real world maybe, but they are still impossible to visualize. They would in no sense represent any sort of object.
Just because you can't imagine a 3D surface of a 4D object, doesn't mean others can't.
I would certainly not claim that the reason no human currently alive is capable of imagining a 4 dimensional object is because I cannot. No. The reason they cannot imagine it is because it is utterly nonsensical. Like 1 dimensional or 2 dimensional objects, 4 dimensional objects are worse than unproven. The concepts themselves are impossible.
Nothing real, nothing that actually exists, can be measured with either more or less than 3 dimensions. Anything with only 2 dimensions doesn't exist by definition and more than 3 dimensions simply doesn't make any sense.
Mathematicians have been "studying" n-dimensional objects for years.
What is your point? Is that supposed to prove that such entities exist or are not nonsensical. Is it supposed to show that they can imagine such things?
No, it isn't. It's two-dimensional only by everyday common experience.
Would you say the same about a square circle and if not why not? Once a so called "surface" has a thickness it becomes indistinguishable from any other real life object. A 3D surface would not seem to be a particularly useful concept even if we could imagine such a thing. Needless to say, like square circles, there isn't a shred of evidence for the existence of 3 dimensional surfaces.
All of this would not be occurring if it "vanished out of existance", and thus violated the laws of thermodynamics.
I did not mean to imply that the mass that was once say an astronaut falling into a black hole would simply disappear magically. What I meant was that what was once an astronaut would consist of some kind of exotic subatomic particles and would no longer in any way be recognizable as a human being in a space suit or even as anything distinguishable from the mass of the black hole itself. That is what I meant. Not that the matter itself would be destroyed. Although I don't think anything that occurs within the event horizon of a black hole can be known. It is like a region of unknowability.
The information, that is the quantum state, of mass and energy that is eaten by a blackhole is later ejected as what could be termed high energy 'noise'; x-rays and gamma rays.
It has always seemed strange to me that black holes could emit any form of EM radiation. Wouldn't the escape velocity exceed the speed of light? How could they ever overcome such a strong gravitational field.?
What goes into a black hole does eventually come back out... but what comes out, to the best of our knowledge, is a smear of particles which are emitted along a gaussian distribution with regard to energy state.
How do these particles manage to escape from the immense force of gravity they are subject to?
No, it won't.
Care to elaborate?
If I were to toss some ordinary object into a black hole. Say a chair. Are you saying that the chair would still be recognizable as such if one could somehow make light immune to the force of gravity? You'd have what? A chair lying on the surface of some strange black sphere?
If instead the chair is converted into particles smaller even than electrons then I think it is safe to say that whatever the matter that was once the chair has become it is no longer a chair.
The behavior of a black hole mirrors the behavior you'd expect of a two-dimensional object.
'Two dimensional object' is a contradiction in terms. If it can be called an object at all then it must have at least 3 spatial dimensions. Even an object only 1 atom thick would have 3 spatial dimensions. One of those dimensions would just be very small.
Whether something can have more than 3 spatial dimensions is pure speculation. It could be argued that such an idea is non-falsifiable. The whole concept of perpendicularity seems to break down when applied to a 3 dimensional (aka real) object.
Maybe we're in 2D space.
If 3 spatial dimensions are not required to measure our bodies then we do not exist at all. Even one atom thick creatures would require 3 spatial dimensions to measure. Also a 2D universe would not be a universe at all. A universe, by definition, contains everything that exists. A 2D universe could not contain 3 dimensional objects.
a black hole in such a universe would have a 3-d "surface"
I'm trying to decide whether this makes any more sense than a square circle. 3D surface is a contradiction in terms. A surface is 2 dimensional by definition.
Once something has passed the edge of the visible universe it is effectively lost to us
Only until we build a bigger telescope.
a bit like when something passes the event horizon of a black hole.
It's not really the same because anything that collides with a black hole will cease to exist. There is no way for anyone with any sort of conceivable detector to observe what no longer exists. Even if the collapsed star's gravity did not stop the photons from exiting it would effectively vanish out of existence.
Compare a cube and a tesseract
After you.
It is unfortunate that we live in a society where posting a game video on youtube is seen as "unwise".
It sounds like you cannot have a serious discussion period. This kid made a little video game. That is not against the law no matter what the characters look like in it. The cop in this case is a dangerous thug and a threat to us all and our freedoms. He belongs in prison or at the very least he should lose his job. I don't think we want to rely on the judgement of some mentally retarded cop as to whether or not people get arrested for thoughtcrime.
At the very least, the posting of the video constitutes a death threat, which demands justice.
No it does not constitute a death threat. A death threat is, "I'm going to kill you now, AC". A video game is just a video game now matter what the pixels may or may not look like.
Let me say that again. AC, I am going to murder you sometime very soon. I own a gun. An assault rifle. I am going to kill you with it. This IS going to happen. So you might want to prepare a will or something. Perhaps flee whatever country you live in as well. Just to be safe.
The only problem is that I have no idea who you are and no way to find out and I don't actually own a gun. Do you see why threats are required to be credible and why the person making the threat is expected to have some realistic means of carrying it out?
Posting videos of you "shooting" your classmates calls for some sort of action. That is messed up
No it isn't. It's just kids being kids. It's 100% harmless. Let me get something through your head. A VIDEO GAME IS NOT REAL. Did that help?
He isn't being charged with threatening anyone. Legally threatening someone would be considered assault in most states so long as the threat is both credible and it is possible for it to be immediately carried out.
The reason for this is simple. Talk is just talk and even we cannot build enough jails to hold something like the 80% of the population that makes some kind of vague threat to someone at some point in their lives.
If the kid has a gun in his hand and says, "I'm going to kill every last one of you" that would be simple assault in most states. But if he says the same thing without any immediate means to carry it out and it doesn't seem credible then it is not asssault in most states.
I think they really need the new terrorism laws to go after someone for making non-credible threats that anyone can see is just talk. Lucky for people like you they do have such laws now. Just be careful what you say...oops did I just threaten you? I guess it could be seen that way, right? Someone is pounding on the door. I'm just going t
if he lets it go and the kid DOES shoot up the place
This is where your reasoning fails. This kid is no more likely to end up shooting someone than anyone else. You may as well arrest everyone who owns a squirt gun or who plays violent video games or who has ever used the word "gun" in a sentence. If the cop's reasoning is as you describe then he is a fucking moron.
Let me see if I am following your logic.
Outlaw all firearms. That worked well for illegal drugs and alcohol. So it will definitely work for firearms too.
Since firearms have vanished from existence due to above law there will be no more school shootings. Angry kids will have to make due with bladed weapons.
And when a school kid dies from knife wounds and it makes the national news everyone will behave 100% rationally and not overreact about it like they do now. Someone weilding an imaginary knife will not go to prison because that would just be silly, right?
By that same reasoning I guess they had better arrest everyone who plays violent video games. It's the only way to be sure.