Hey, that's better than them trying to talk to *me*. This is just another reason to bring noise dampening headphones, and this way, you're not even being rude, the person next to you can talk to whoever they want no need to bother you.
Doctors are nothing but shills for the pharmaceutical industry! Through UseNET, I'm able to find safe and effective traditional remedies - like the leeches fattening themselves on the backs of my hands, as I type - that keep me happy, healthy and productive.
Also, quite frankly, there are too many drug interactions for any doctor to keep track of. But, through useNET, I learned that chewing cinnabar kills off leeches! So I've switched to an alternative treatment for my social anxiety disorder - electric shocks! They don't bother the leeches any, and after fifteen minutes of 30 volts I'm ready for a leech covered night on the town.
There was a clear, concerted effort to connect together a group of civilian computers into an international network - it was funded by Gore's bill. As far as I'm concerned, that *created* the internet - a tiny fraction of this work was done before Gore's bill, essentially a proof of principle. Gore didn't take the intitiative in developing the underlying technology to run the internet, but as far as creating the actual internet, the internetwork of non-military computers, Gore took the initiative.
Roosevelt Roosevelt Roosevelt!
Truman took the iniative in *dropping* the Bomb. The Manhattan project happened when he was vice president, and according to what I've read (possibly apocryphal) Truman didn't even know about the Manhanttan project when Roosevelt died! Truman did not build the Bomb.
No, but Roosevelt did "Take the Initiative in creating" the atomic bomb, on Einsteins advice.
Look, if a Senator drafts legislation that provides funding for road work in his precinct, he will (justifiably) say "I fixed the roads in the great State of Montana!"
Did the Senator get in a piece of earth moving equipment and do road work? Obviously not. But no one jumps on him and calls him a liar.
The thing which we call "the Internet", defined by its use by civilians, exists because of the legislation, introduced by Gore, that funded it. You can say it was already created at that point, and I ridicule that assertion - this happened in *1989* - it was in the process of being created, and DARPA had defunded it. Gore "took the initiative", and introduced legislation that allowed others to finish creating the Internet.
He didn't use the verb create - he used the present progressive "creating".
If Gates were to say "I took the initiative in adding XXX feature to Internet Explorer" - the fact that he does none of the work himself makes no difference. The *initiative* is still his.
Firstly, he didn't say "invent" so you meant to say: 1) "create" means "invent" in this context.
Which is also wrong; you are simply mistaken about the context. Did you even read the article that was linked to?
"During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet. I took the initiative in moving forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country's economic growth and environmental protection, improvements in our educational system."
Emphasis added. Explain to me how, in that context, Gore was refering to anything other than his legislative achievements.
http://www.issues2000.org/askme/internet.htm
In case you can't be bothered to read that either: "In the 1980s DARPA, which is part of the Pentagon and financed the first incarnation of the internet, defunded a number of projects, including civilian use of the internet, which weren't directly related to military applications. Gore played a major role* in seeing that the internet project was retained under the National Science Foundation, which created nsfnet. Nsfnet ultimately became the internet we know and love today."
* He introduced the legislation, more specifically.
Gore might more properly have said "I took the initiative in creating the *modern* Internet."
But at this point we are clearly beyond the pale; Gore was telling the truth, even if he wasn't going into tremendous detail.
In order to use my PC as a PVR I need to be able to bypass my cable box; right now I can't do that, the internal tuner has to stay on channel 3. Does anyone know of software for the Radeon that will descramble the signal? I suppose it would be illegal here in the States?
www.mythtv.org is slashdotted, if that's what it does.
The joke is in reference to the expanded pilot episode of the original Star Trek. Turn in your membership card, former nerd #774728.
There are always some wrinkles to be worked out of the first generation of any new technology.
Getting the latest generation of graphics card and finding that it somehow interferes with playback of my old.viv movies is a nuisance.
Getting the latest generation of cyberware and finding that it causes epileptic seizures in combination with the interference with my cordless phone? Rather more than a nuisance.
All things considered, I'll let the parapelegics handle the alpha testing for all this stuff, thank you very much.
It's easy to "predict" something that you cause yourself.
I predit that I will put my tinfoil hat on!/me puts on tinfoil hat.
Ooh, I must be psychic or something!
They're just putting their earthquake machines through the paces before they use it to ensure W's re-election, and to make a tidy profit for Haliburton, which owns a lot of soon-to-be-coastal property along the California-Nevada border.
A search engine that finds pages containing the words you typed which are *least* likely to relate to your actual underlying question. A google of the absurd, as it were.
This could be very, very difficult. How would you implement such a thing, from a technical standpoint?
That's very nice for you, but the vast majority of scientists I know, in the relevant age range, have families - and this is a good thing if there is any genetic basis, or even a cultural basis (such as might be transfered through child rearing practices), to the ability to do good science.
The physical acts are not all that is required to perpetuate the species. Rearing and educating our children, so that they have the intellectual confidence to be good citizens and potential scientists, is the lions share of that work. To contemptuously dismiss the core experiences of the shared human condition as less important than research - even as a reflection of some evident bitterness on your part, I find that repulsive.
If you really don't like children you certainly shouldn't have kids - over the coming generations this will have the benefit of eliminating whatever child-rearing practices produce people who hate children.
Returning to topic, based purely on my personal experiences, while I agree that anyone who is willing to starve in order to do science is probably going to be a good scientist, I disagree that these people constitute a significant portion of the potential population of good scientists.
That is to say - if it is not possible to live an otherwise decent life while pursueing science, you lose a great many (the majority of) good scientists.
If you attract, proportionally, slightly more charlatans, well, that is acceptable. The costs to society are frankly miniscule.
That said, I disagree that you need to choose between science and a family in the current environment. My father is a scientist - respectable, if far from famous, and my brother and I are both fine. We had to scrimp a bit when I was growing up, but that's not a death sentence.
Factual Error: When real scientists cybernetically attach themselves to an artificial intelligence, we use two, seperate, completely redundant systems to prevent ourselves from being turned evil.
e.g. that genetic engineering is performed on adult organisms.
The course of action you propose - creating a set of genetically altered lungs and then inserting them into an already living person, is certainly ethical, in and of itself.
This assumes of course that you don't grow the genetically modified lungs in a seperate person that you then dispose of. The ethics of that are questionable to monstrous, depending on the details (how much of a person you actually grow, etc.)
However, that's not *really* how genetic engineering works ; nor in the case of something as drastic as adapting someone to live on another planet, is it likely to work that way in the foreseeable future.
Human gengineering is, for anything fairly drastic, is going to be performed on the fetus, which will then produce a child, with no input whatsoever on the genetic engineering.
A certain, probably high, percentage of monstrous birth defects are almost guaranteed. Even if nothing goes wrong with the genetic modification itself, the other effects of the changes you would make are not going to be forseeable.
Of course, you could argue that it's because they imagine something and then scientists see their ideas and say "Lets do that", but I think there's at least one other factor involved.
Or, you could argue that science fiction writers predict everything (cities on the moon, flying cars, hyperdrive), and SOME of it turns out to be possible.
Those writers who predict something possible are "prophetic", but it is largely a question of chance and selective memory.
However, I am a biologist - and I have the minimal ethical training required by my Institutions' NIH training grant.
Personally, I think it is ethical to terraform a planet which is not presently inhabited (by life of any kind.) Harm is, even in the most general sense, something you do to living things, so bringing life to a dead planet is harmless by definition.
Given the risk to the experimental subjects, I do not think it is ethical to "terraform" (or otherwise genetically engineer) human beings.
However, the more relevant question is not "should we do it?" because - we will. Ethical or not, sooner or later, some people will do it. This applies both to human genetic engineering and to planetary terraforming.
The pressing question, therefore, is how should those who choose to do these things (whatever you think about the ethics) go about doing it? Acknowledging that a thing should not be done at all, and then stepping back from that and considering how to minimize the negative imapct when it is inevitably done, can be a difficult feat of mental gynmastics, but in the coming centuries I think it it something peopole of conscience are absolutely going to have to do - in parallel with efforts to stop the more monstrous excesses from being perpetrated at all.
P.S. - Terraforming Mars will be fairly difficult. In a billion years or so, when the photodensity on Mars (and on Earth) has risen (because the Sun is getting bigger), Mars may look very attractive.
At that point, the big problem with Mars is the lack of a strong magnetic field, which makes it difficult to retain water vapor in the martian atmopshere. This is a problem now but it gets worse as the level of solar radiation striking Mars goes up.
This doesn't mean nothing can live on Mars - we can make micro-organisms that could live on Mars with a, frankly, fairly modest budget and present day technology. There are some things down in the Antarctic that might be able to survive as-is somewhere on Mars (although I doubt it.)
The atmosphere is also very thin, and the level of sunlight so small, that it is highly unlikely that we will be able to warm the place up enough for us to wander outside "naked" merely by changing the components of the atmosphere (which could be done with the afforementioned genetically engineered microbes).
Covering the large stretches of the planet in insulated greenhouses (built by self replicating solar powered robots) is probably the best solution if you want a vaguely earthlike environment. This can be done well in advance of the billion year timeframe, of course, and allows you to retain water vapor and a very high temperature.
John: So you're saying that the renewed strength of the technology sector is leading the new job growth?
Steve: Not exactly, John. Most of these 280,000 jobs are in the one type of internet business that actually makes money.
John: You mean so-called "portals", like Google.
Steve: You're thinking in the past John. Search engines are so 90s. The future is in net porn.
John: Net porn is driving the new jobs growth?
Steve: That's right, John. If present trends continue, by the year 2006, online adult entertainment will constitute 275% of the US economy, and 1,250% of our exports.
John: That's impossible, by definition it couldn't be more than 100% of-
Steve: Fine, John, we'll use your numbers.
Steve: By the year 2006, internet porn will constitute 100% of the US economy.
John: That still seems unlikely.
Steve: No manufacturing or services of any kind! Every man, woman and, yes, child, will be sucking and fucking in front of a digital camera 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 52 weeks a year.
John: Full Employment is good, but-
Steve: The only threat to continued job growth: Pets. Fido will have sex on camera for free. Oh... and, Allen Greenspan's Dominatrix might tell him to raise interest rates.
John: Wh-Wh-What about our culture generally, music, other forms of art?
Steven: Have you *seen* any music videos lately? Anyway, not to worry - sex crazed americans will still be able to get the news - from www.johnstewartreadsthenewswearingnippleclamps.com . That's some nasty stuff.
Steven: John.
John: Thank you steven.
--- I'm trying to see if I can get the cadence and word choice right so that it reads like it was written by the people who actually do the show. How'd I do?
The suit is between US corporations and in a US court; I hardly think such a court is going to agree that our national laws don't apply because this is happening "on the internet".
Corporations are "natural persons" under US precedent - meaning that they benefit from constitutional protections as if they were people.
That said, commercial speech is less protected than some other forms of speech, but it makes no difference wether you are a Corporation or a private citizen.
While I agree with you that the RIAA would've found out about this without the help of slashdot - the RIAA *are* morons.
The sleazebags providing anti-filesharing services to the RIAA aern't morons - and since they use a lot of grayware themselves, I'd be very surprised if they didn't know about programs like this already.
Nonetheless - news coverage is very likely to attract the RIAA's ire, because their grasp on real world events is tenuous, at best.
The Inquisition tortured him to death for refusing to recant - he speculated that, if there are alien civilizations, the Son of God must have visisted them, as well.
Don't believe all that anti-clerical rhetoric! Coming from an astronomer! Who is also a monk! Who speculates about extra-terrestrials!
By the year 2010, file-sharers could be swapping news rather than music, eliminating censorship of any kind.
This is the view of the man who helped kickstart the concept of peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing, Napster co-founder Sean Parker.
In his vision, people around the world would post the most outrageous slander via anonymous P2P services like those used to swap songs.
They would further the trend toward sensationalism already seen in the major news services, said Mr Parker.
"Currently, only news with some factual basis will be syndicated because otherwise the news outlet, especially those in Britain, could face ruinous legal expenses," he told the BBC World Service programme, Go Digital.
"But if some crank with an axe to grind says that [Recording Industry Association of America Presdient] Cary Sherman is a cannibal who eats babies, it won't get anything like the priority for syndication.
"If you can break the grip of the news syndication services and allow the news collector to talk to the radio station or local newspaper then you can have much more efficient communications."
'Impossible to censor'
To enable this, Mr Parker proposes a new and improved version of Usenet, the internet news service.
But what of fears that the infrastructure that allows such ad hoc news networks to grow might also be abused by criminals and terrorists?
Mr Parker believes those fears are misguided. He argued that acts of politically motivated violence, such as those perpetrated by Al Qaeda and other muslim extremist groups, fulfill necessary functions in the maintanence of a free and democratic society.
Violence of this kind produces a high level of international fear, which is why it is so effective.
"The effect of peer-to-peer networks will be to make censorship difficult, if not impossible," said Mr Parker.
"If there were material that everyone agreed was wicked, then it would be possible to track it down and close it down. But if there's material that only one government says is okay then, I'm sorry, but that's their tough luck".
Political obstacles
Commenting on Mr Parker's ideas, movie actor Billy Bob Thornton welcomed the idea of new publishing tools that will weaken the grip on cinema of major world governments.
Such P2P systems, he said, would give everybody a voice and allow personal testimonies to come out.
But the technology that makes those publishing tools accessible to everyone and sufficiently user-friendly will take longer to develop than Mr Parker thinks, added Mr Thornton.
Mr Parker's vision underestimates the political obstacles in the way of such developments, he said, and the question of censorship had not been clearly thought through.
"Once you build the technology to break censorship, you've broken censorship - even of the things almost everyone wants censored," said Mr Thornton.
"Saying you can then control some parts of it, like images of child abuse, is being wilfully pressimistic. And that's something that peer to peer advocates have to emphasize."
This announcement was supposed to come out simultaneously with the "verified" claim to have found Methane on Mars, and with Condoleeza Rice's hillarious admission of guilt before the 9/11 commission, all on Thursday. Now you've ruined it.
Of course, I'd like Spielberg too, if he worshipped me as a God.
Orson Welles did the voiceover for the trailer for Jaws - which he thought was great (I can't find the quote. Anyone?)
Spielberg often does really lousy movies - however - given his (avowed) great respect for the material, I think that he will, at least, make an effort to do a good movie. Certainly no studio exec can make him do anything he doesn't want to with this movie.
Of course, I liked Minority Report (except for the stupid spiders,) so I'm inclined to give imitative movies by Spielberg+Cruise a chance.
It isn't as though the number of manufacturing jobs in the US has shrunk, or real manufacturing wages have fallen, since the 1980s. No, that has not happened at-all.
I don't doubt that free trade will generate a great deal of wealth. The question is - who will get it? In the example of the Coca Cola-brand bottled water sold in the Indian corporate park - how much of that wealth ends up in the hands of white collar workers?
Obviously - those who have power will use it to secure for themselves a share of that wealth. Duh.
This is not even about workers in India and the United States "competing" with eachother.
Let's take an instructive look at the case of caterpillar. Caterpillar (they make tractors) maintains factories both in the United States, and in Germany, and in third world countries. They have, in fact, more factories than they need to build enough tractors to meet demand.
So, when American workers went on strike, they simply increased production in their German (and Mexican, IIRC) factories. The German workers make slightly more than their american counterparts would-have but that doesn't enter into it. With the additional power provided by their international organization, caterpillar was able to break the strike.
So, yes, free trade does generate wealth. But, as with other aspects of trade and commerce (slashdotters are most familiar with the effects of intellectual property law) it will also tend to concentrate existing wealth in the hands of those with the power to take advantage of it.
Pretending, in the case of so-called "free trade" for which ample data is now available, that this is a net benefit for the relatively powerless general population is utterly facetious.
To put it another way - there are all sorts of events, dependent on free trade, might generate wealth for the general population. However, that has no input into the process by which events are made to occur. Events are made to occur because they benefit a particular group of individuals, powerful enough to actualize them. This may or may not have some benefits (lower commodity prices, in this case) for the general population which may or may not outweigh the costs (lower wages, lower employment level) to the general population. Theory can take us this far and from here we should rely on the evidenciary record.
I think it is abundantly clear from the past ten years that the movement of jobs overseas harms the general population more that it benefits the general population.
Slashdot Mirror
Hey, that's better than them trying to talk to *me*. This is just another reason to bring noise dampening headphones, and this way, you're not even being rude, the person next to you can talk to whoever they want no need to bother you.
Doctors are nothing but shills for the pharmaceutical industry! Through UseNET, I'm able to find safe and effective traditional remedies - like the leeches fattening themselves on the backs of my hands, as I type - that keep me happy, healthy and productive.
Also, quite frankly, there are too many drug interactions for any doctor to keep track of. But, through useNET, I learned that chewing cinnabar kills off leeches! So I've switched to an alternative treatment for my social anxiety disorder - electric shocks! They don't bother the leeches any, and after fifteen minutes of 30 volts I'm ready for a leech covered night on the town.
There was a clear, concerted effort to connect together a group of civilian computers into an international network - it was funded by Gore's bill. As far as I'm concerned, that *created* the internet - a tiny fraction of this work was done before Gore's bill, essentially a proof of principle. Gore didn't take the intitiative in developing the underlying technology to run the internet, but as far as creating the actual internet, the internetwork of non-military computers, Gore took the initiative.
Roosevelt Roosevelt Roosevelt!
Truman took the iniative in *dropping* the Bomb. The Manhattan project happened when he was vice president, and according to what I've read (possibly apocryphal) Truman didn't even know about the Manhanttan project when Roosevelt died! Truman did not build the Bomb.
No, but Roosevelt did "Take the Initiative in creating" the atomic bomb, on Einsteins advice.
Look, if a Senator drafts legislation that provides funding for road work in his precinct, he will (justifiably) say "I fixed the roads in the great State of Montana!"
Did the Senator get in a piece of earth moving equipment and do road work? Obviously not. But no one jumps on him and calls him a liar.
The thing which we call "the Internet", defined by its use by civilians, exists because of the legislation, introduced by Gore, that funded it. You can say it was already created at that point, and I ridicule that assertion - this happened in *1989* - it was in the process of being created, and DARPA had defunded it. Gore "took the initiative", and introduced legislation that allowed others to finish creating the Internet.
He didn't use the verb create - he used the present progressive "creating".
If Gates were to say "I took the initiative in adding XXX feature to Internet Explorer" - the fact that he does none of the work himself makes no difference. The *initiative* is still his.
Firstly, he didn't say "invent" so you meant to say:
1) "create" means "invent" in this context.
Which is also wrong; you are simply mistaken about the context. Did you even read the article that was linked to?
"During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet. I took the initiative in moving forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country's economic growth and environmental protection, improvements in our educational system."
Emphasis added. Explain to me how, in that context, Gore was refering to anything other than his legislative achievements.
http://www.issues2000.org/askme/internet.htm
In case you can't be bothered to read that either:
"In the 1980s DARPA, which is part of the Pentagon and financed the first incarnation of the internet, defunded a number of projects, including civilian use of the internet, which weren't directly related to military applications. Gore played a major role* in seeing that the internet project was retained under the National Science Foundation, which created nsfnet. Nsfnet ultimately became the internet we know and love today."
* He introduced the legislation, more specifically.
Gore might more properly have said "I took the initiative in creating the *modern* Internet."
But at this point we are clearly beyond the pale; Gore was telling the truth, even if he wasn't going into tremendous detail.
It isn't bullshit, it's entirely factually correct. Gore was taking credit, as a legislator, for creating the internet. Credit which he deserved.
http://www.issues2000.org/askme/internet.htm
"I took the initiative in creating the Internet." (1)
!=
"I invented the internet." (2)
Statement 2 is entirely incorrect, and Gore did not say it!
Statement 1 is essentially correct - the internet was created by legislation, and Gore was instrumental in getting that legislation passed.
In order to use my PC as a PVR I need to be able to bypass my cable box; right now I can't do that, the internal tuner has to stay on channel 3. Does anyone know of software for the Radeon that will descramble the signal? I suppose it would be illegal here in the States?
www.mythtv.org is slashdotted, if that's what it does.
You can take it here. Free reg required.
I got a letter from the nice men about illegally sharing a few episodes of ER.
I'm not sharing episodes of ER - the files they identified were talks by american dissident and anarcho syndicalist Noam Chomsky.
Definitely in the public domain.
The joke is in reference to the expanded pilot episode of the original Star Trek. Turn in your membership card, former nerd #774728.
.viv movies is a nuisance.
There are always some wrinkles to be worked out of the first generation of any new technology.
Getting the latest generation of graphics card and finding that it somehow interferes with playback of my old
Getting the latest generation of cyberware and finding that it causes epileptic seizures in combination with the interference with my cordless phone? Rather more than a nuisance.
All things considered, I'll let the parapelegics handle the alpha testing for all this stuff, thank you very much.
It's easy to "predict" something that you cause yourself.
/me puts on tinfoil hat.
I predit that I will put my tinfoil hat on!
Ooh, I must be psychic or something!
They're just putting their earthquake machines through the paces before they use it to ensure W's re-election, and to make a tidy profit for Haliburton, which owns a lot of soon-to-be-coastal property along the California-Nevada border.
A search engine that finds pages containing the words you typed which are *least* likely to relate to your actual underlying question. A google of the absurd, as it were.
This could be very, very difficult. How would you implement such a thing, from a technical standpoint?
That's very nice for you, but the vast majority of scientists I know, in the relevant age range, have families - and this is a good thing if there is any genetic basis, or even a cultural basis (such as might be transfered through child rearing practices), to the ability to do good science.
The physical acts are not all that is required to perpetuate the species. Rearing and educating our children, so that they have the intellectual confidence to be good citizens and potential scientists, is the lions share of that work. To contemptuously dismiss the core experiences of the shared human condition as less important than research - even as a reflection of some evident bitterness on your part, I find that repulsive.
If you really don't like children you certainly shouldn't have kids - over the coming generations this will have the benefit of eliminating whatever child-rearing practices produce people who hate children.
Returning to topic, based purely on my personal experiences, while I agree that anyone who is willing to starve in order to do science is probably going to be a good scientist, I disagree that these people constitute a significant portion of the potential population of good scientists.
That is to say - if it is not possible to live an otherwise decent life while pursueing science, you lose a great many (the majority of) good scientists.
If you attract, proportionally, slightly more charlatans, well, that is acceptable. The costs to society are frankly miniscule.
That said, I disagree that you need to choose between science and a family in the current environment. My father is a scientist - respectable, if far from famous, and my brother and I are both fine. We had to scrimp a bit when I was growing up, but that's not a death sentence.
Factual Error: When real scientists cybernetically attach themselves to an artificial intelligence, we use two, seperate, completely redundant systems to prevent ourselves from being turned evil.
e.g. that genetic engineering is performed on adult organisms.
The course of action you propose - creating a set of genetically altered lungs and then inserting them into an already living person, is certainly ethical, in and of itself.
This assumes of course that you don't grow the genetically modified lungs in a seperate person that you then dispose of. The ethics of that are questionable to monstrous, depending on the details (how much of a person you actually grow, etc.)
However, that's not *really* how genetic engineering works ; nor in the case of something as drastic as adapting someone to live on another planet, is it likely to work that way in the foreseeable future.
Human gengineering is, for anything fairly drastic, is going to be performed on the fetus, which will then produce a child, with no input whatsoever on the genetic engineering.
A certain, probably high, percentage of monstrous birth defects are almost guaranteed. Even if nothing goes wrong with the genetic modification itself, the other effects of the changes you would make are not going to be forseeable.
Of course, you could argue that it's because they imagine something and then scientists see their ideas and say "Lets do that", but I think there's at least one other factor involved.
Or, you could argue that science fiction writers predict everything (cities on the moon, flying cars, hyperdrive), and SOME of it turns out to be possible.
Those writers who predict something possible are "prophetic", but it is largely a question of chance and selective memory.
However, I am a biologist - and I have the minimal ethical training required by my Institutions' NIH training grant.
Personally, I think it is ethical to terraform a planet which is not presently inhabited (by life of any kind.) Harm is, even in the most general sense, something you do to living things, so bringing life to a dead planet is harmless by definition.
Given the risk to the experimental subjects, I do not think it is ethical to "terraform" (or otherwise genetically engineer) human beings.
However, the more relevant question is not "should we do it?" because - we will. Ethical or not, sooner or later, some people will do it. This applies both to human genetic engineering and to planetary terraforming.
The pressing question, therefore, is how should those who choose to do these things (whatever you think about the ethics) go about doing it? Acknowledging that a thing should not be done at all, and then stepping back from that and considering how to minimize the negative imapct when it is inevitably done, can be a difficult feat of mental gynmastics, but in the coming centuries I think it it something peopole of conscience are absolutely going to have to do - in parallel with efforts to stop the more monstrous excesses from being perpetrated at all.
P.S. - Terraforming Mars will be fairly difficult. In a billion years or so, when the photodensity on Mars (and on Earth) has risen (because the Sun is getting bigger), Mars may look very attractive.
At that point, the big problem with Mars is the lack of a strong magnetic field, which makes it difficult to retain water vapor in the martian atmopshere. This is a problem now but it gets worse as the level of solar radiation striking Mars goes up.
This doesn't mean nothing can live on Mars - we can make micro-organisms that could live on Mars with a, frankly, fairly modest budget and present day technology. There are some things down in the Antarctic that might be able to survive as-is somewhere on Mars (although I doubt it.)
The atmosphere is also very thin, and the level of sunlight so small, that it is highly unlikely that we will be able to warm the place up enough for us to wander outside "naked" merely by changing the components of the atmosphere (which could be done with the afforementioned genetically engineered microbes).
Covering the large stretches of the planet in insulated greenhouses (built by self replicating solar powered robots) is probably the best solution if you want a vaguely earthlike environment. This can be done well in advance of the billion year timeframe, of course, and allows you to retain water vapor and a very high temperature.
John: So you're saying that the renewed strength of the technology sector is leading the new job growth?
m . That's some nasty stuff.
Steve: Not exactly, John. Most of these 280,000 jobs are in the one type of internet business that actually makes money.
John: You mean so-called "portals", like Google.
Steve: You're thinking in the past John. Search engines are so 90s. The future is in net porn.
John: Net porn is driving the new jobs growth?
Steve: That's right, John. If present trends continue, by the year 2006, online adult entertainment will constitute 275% of the US economy, and 1,250% of our exports.
John: That's impossible, by definition it couldn't be more than 100% of-
Steve: Fine, John, we'll use your numbers.
Steve: By the year 2006, internet porn will constitute 100% of the US economy.
John: That still seems unlikely.
Steve: No manufacturing or services of any kind! Every man, woman and, yes, child, will be sucking and fucking in front of a digital camera 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 52 weeks a year.
John: Full Employment is good, but-
Steve: The only threat to continued job growth: Pets. Fido will have sex on camera for free. Oh... and, Allen Greenspan's Dominatrix might tell him to raise interest rates.
John: Wh-Wh-What about our culture generally, music, other forms of art?
Steven: Have you *seen* any music videos lately? Anyway, not to worry - sex crazed americans will still be able to get the news - from www.johnstewartreadsthenewswearingnippleclamps.co
Steven: John.
John: Thank you steven.
---
I'm trying to see if I can get the cadence and word choice right so that it reads like it was written by the people who actually do the show. How'd I do?
The suit is between US corporations and in a US court; I hardly think such a court is going to agree that our national laws don't apply because this is happening "on the internet".
Corporations are "natural persons" under US precedent - meaning that they benefit from constitutional protections as if they were people.
That said, commercial speech is less protected than some other forms of speech, but it makes no difference wether you are a Corporation or a private citizen.
It's not as if the RIAA are morons.
While I agree with you that the RIAA would've found out about this without the help of slashdot - the RIAA *are* morons.
The sleazebags providing anti-filesharing services to the RIAA aern't morons - and since they use a lot of grayware themselves, I'd be very surprised if they didn't know about programs like this already.
Nonetheless - news coverage is very likely to attract the RIAA's ire, because their grasp on real world events is tenuous, at best.
The Inquisition tortured him to death for refusing to recant - he speculated that, if there are alien civilizations, the Son of God must have visisted them, as well.
Don't believe all that anti-clerical rhetoric! Coming from an astronomer! Who is also a monk! Who speculates about extra-terrestrials!
Oh, the irony.
By the year 2010, file-sharers could be swapping news rather than music, eliminating censorship of any kind.
This is the view of the man who helped kickstart the concept of peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing, Napster co-founder Sean Parker.
In his vision, people around the world would post the most outrageous slander via anonymous P2P services like those used to swap songs.
They would further the trend toward sensationalism already seen in the major news services, said Mr Parker.
"Currently, only news with some factual basis will be syndicated because otherwise the news outlet, especially those in Britain, could face ruinous legal expenses," he told the BBC World Service programme, Go Digital.
"But if some crank with an axe to grind says that [Recording Industry Association of America Presdient] Cary Sherman is a cannibal who eats babies, it won't get anything like the priority for syndication.
"If you can break the grip of the news syndication services and allow the news collector to talk to the radio station or local newspaper then you can have much more efficient communications."
'Impossible to censor'
To enable this, Mr Parker proposes a new and improved version of Usenet, the internet news service.
But what of fears that the infrastructure that allows such ad hoc news networks to grow might also be abused by criminals and terrorists?
Mr Parker believes those fears are misguided. He argued that acts of politically motivated violence, such as those perpetrated by Al Qaeda and other muslim extremist groups, fulfill necessary functions in the maintanence of a free and democratic society.
Violence of this kind produces a high level of international fear, which is why it is so effective.
"The effect of peer-to-peer networks will be to make censorship difficult, if not impossible," said Mr Parker.
"If there were material that everyone agreed was wicked, then it would be possible to track it down and close it down. But if there's material that only one government says is okay then, I'm sorry, but that's their tough luck".
Political obstacles
Commenting on Mr Parker's ideas, movie actor Billy Bob Thornton welcomed the idea of new publishing tools that will weaken the grip on cinema of major world governments.
Such P2P systems, he said, would give everybody a voice and allow personal testimonies to come out.
But the technology that makes those publishing tools accessible to everyone and sufficiently user-friendly will take longer to develop than Mr Parker thinks, added Mr Thornton.
Mr Parker's vision underestimates the political obstacles in the way of such developments, he said, and the question of censorship had not been clearly thought through.
"Once you build the technology to break censorship, you've broken censorship - even of the things almost everyone wants censored," said Mr Thornton.
"Saying you can then control some parts of it, like images of child abuse, is being wilfully pressimistic. And that's something that peer to peer advocates have to emphasize."
April 1st isn't until Thursday.
This announcement was supposed to come out simultaneously with the "verified" claim to have found Methane on Mars, and with Condoleeza Rice's hillarious admission of guilt before the 9/11 commission, all on Thursday. Now you've ruined it.
Of course, I'd like Spielberg too, if he worshipped me as a God.
Orson Welles did the voiceover for the trailer for Jaws - which he thought was great (I can't find the quote. Anyone?)
Spielberg often does really lousy movies - however - given his (avowed) great respect for the material, I think that he will, at least, make an effort to do a good movie. Certainly no studio exec can make him do anything he doesn't want to with this movie.
Of course, I liked Minority Report (except for the stupid spiders,) so I'm inclined to give imitative movies by Spielberg+Cruise a chance.
It isn't as though the number of manufacturing jobs in the US has shrunk, or real manufacturing wages have fallen, since the 1980s. No, that has not happened at-all.
I don't doubt that free trade will generate a great deal of wealth. The question is - who will get it? In the example of the Coca Cola-brand bottled water sold in the Indian corporate park - how much of that wealth ends up in the hands of white collar workers?
Obviously - those who have power will use it to secure for themselves a share of that wealth. Duh.
This is not even about workers in India and the United States "competing" with eachother.
Let's take an instructive look at the case of caterpillar. Caterpillar (they make tractors) maintains factories both in the United States, and in Germany, and in third world countries. They have, in fact, more factories than they need to build enough tractors to meet demand.
So, when American workers went on strike, they simply increased production in their German (and Mexican, IIRC) factories. The German workers make slightly more than their american counterparts would-have but that doesn't enter into it. With the additional power provided by their international organization, caterpillar was able to break the strike.
So, yes, free trade does generate wealth. But, as with other aspects of trade and commerce (slashdotters are most familiar with the effects of intellectual property law) it will also tend to concentrate existing wealth in the hands of those with the power to take advantage of it.
Pretending, in the case of so-called "free trade" for which ample data is now available, that this is a net benefit for the relatively powerless general population is utterly facetious.
To put it another way - there are all sorts of events, dependent on free trade, might generate wealth for the general population. However, that has no input into the process by which events are made to occur. Events are made to occur because they benefit a particular group of individuals, powerful enough to actualize them. This may or may not have some benefits (lower commodity prices, in this case) for the general population which may or may not outweigh the costs (lower wages, lower employment level) to the general population. Theory can take us this far and from here we should rely on the evidenciary record.
I think it is abundantly clear from the past ten years that the movement of jobs overseas harms the general population more that it benefits the general population.