"Primal warmongering mindset? Hostile and primitive societies? What kind of science fiction are you living?"
Its called "The New York Times". It is indeed full of science function stories about primitive warmongering socities. Some of these stories are about an imaginary country named "Rwanda" where two million people were, according to story, murdered in an outbreadk of ethinic cleansing. Limbs hacked off with machetes. I dont' know how the authors get their ideas, It's pretty sick if you ask me. Another story was about this guy named "Milosovic" who ruled over some make-belive country which at one point, accoring to the story, was named "Yugoslavia." (I suspect that the author made up the name based on a model of cheap car which was imported into the US in the 90's, called the "Yugo". I'm not sure where the Yugo was made, but I think maybe Japan). In the story this "Milosovic" character sends an army to invade "Kosovo" to murder the population because the were the "wrong" ethnic group. Even more outlanding is the fictional tale of "Hussein", who according to these science-fiction stories in the New York Times, used chemical weapons to exterminate "Kurds". Yet another "wrong" ethnic group. I think the author of that story should have made up a better name than "Kurd". What a silly name. Who's going to believe that ? It sounds like some kind of dairy product. It's like he called them the "Yogurts" or something.
Anway, I'm sorry about my earlier post. I should probably stay away from the science fiction of the New York times, because it confuses me about the real facts of the world. At times I get really confused and actually think that "Milosovic" and "Hussein" really exist and there really is such a thing as genocide. Thanks to your post, which brought me back to reality, I know that I was just living in fantasy world and that those thing don't really exist. Anyone who actually believes in the existance of hostile and primitive societies, genocide, and mass graves is just living in some kind of twisted fantasy world.
I'll stay away from The Times, but I think they have some sort of cross-lisensing deal going with CNN, CBS, NBC, ABC and even Fox News. The same science fiction stories about primitive warmongering socities are everywhere now. The keep repeating the same stuff about genocide and mas graves. And they just keep the stories goving from one year to the next. Like this season's episodes, they are trying "Milosovic" in the "Hague" for war crimes.
I'll try to stay away from such rediculous science fiction stories and only base my slashdot posts on actual facts, like what I read in "The Nation" , "Mother Jones", and those books by Noam Chomsky.
"First you say that having advanced robots makes a nation peaceful and then you invent a contradicting mindset which is somehow immune to that pacifying effect."
Violent, primitive societies are not subject to the pacifying effect of peaceful technology because they choose not to adopt it for peacful purposes. What they want from the civilized and technologically advanced nations is weapons technology. I did not state, and do not maintain, as you imply, that primitive society would adopt in large scale peaceful technology and yet remain primitive and warlike. The fundamental problem is that they do not adopt it, in accord with their own primitive and warlike mindset.
I'm not "inventing a contradictory mindset". I am describing one which is known to exist. I am asserting that civilized and uncivlized nations have different mindsets. Different societies make different choices about how to employ technology.
Western society is subject to the pacifying effect of technology because we adopt technology for both peaceful and military purposes. Primitive socieites are not subject the pacifying effect of technology becase they choose to adopt technology only for purposes warmaking.
It is the desire to develop and employ technology for peaceful purposes which distinquishes modern civilized societes from those primitive and violent. It enables us to advance and prosper without territorial expansion. To the violent and warlike who spurn peaceful technology, their only means of material gain is to take from others by making war.
You seem surprised to hear that different cultures could have different mindsets. You characterize that as my own "invention" and not actually a fact about the world.
I am asserting that different cultures choose to adopt and use technolgies for different purposes. That if in the future the primitive societies have both available to them, they will continue to choose only the weapons and to use them for malicious purposes against us. Western socities when confronted with the same choice choose differently. Our inclination to use technology for peaceful purposes affords us the luxery of using war as only tool for reform and not as a means of material gain.
"However, it really depends on his regular audience, if they are appropriate. Does his audience know what a methyl group is"
Is it really ok generally to put unfamiliar words in quotation marks ? I think not.
One particular category of unfamiliar words, slang, yes. Technical terms ? No. What does it communicate by adding the quotes ? Nothing. It's not like by using the quotes the author informs the reader of anything, the reader presumabley is aware of whether he knows the meaning of a word or not. Better so than the author.
With slang, quotes help. Its a warning to the reader that if he does not know the word, thats because its not really a proper word, its slang, so don't bother looking it up in the dictionary.
Am not. And you are an arrogant and self-righteous asswipe for putting that in caps.
"There is NO SUCH thing as CONSERVATION under capitalism."
It's called "balance of payments". But to geeks on slashdot familiar with conservation principles, "conservation" is a familiar and undstood term.
The balance of payments in and out of the country is conserved. Conserved at the level zero. Money going out - money coming in = 0. Look it up. The fact that there is growth over time does not change that fact. Why is it conserved at the level zero ? Because its trade. We give them stuff, they give us stuff. We pay for the stuff we get. They pay for the stuff they get. Hence payments are balanced. That the absolute level of goods and services increases over time does not change the fact their exchange remains balanced. Exchanges simultaneously remain balanced and increase because increases on one side are offset by increases on the other.
And capitalism has nothing to do with it. It's an economic principle. Its not like being Communist would help you to violate economic laws any more than it helps you violate the laws of physics.
"what Marxists would call capitalists"
You sound like the victim of third-world political indoctrination. Anyone who engages in an economic discusion and uses the terms "Marxist" and "Capitalist" is giving himself away as phony. Put down that Communist Manifesto you are holding and pick up an eco textbook.
"Dominant powers can and will use whatever they like. Things just haven't got to that point yet."
So your point is that we do use whatever weapons we like, though we have not in fact actually done that. Of course the fact that we do not actually do that in no way counters your assertion that we do. You're a retard.
My point was that the counries which invented those weapons do not use them to conquer the world. Last I checked we were not governing Vietnam or Japan. If you want to counter, then you'll need to provide an example of a country which invented one of those weapons using it to conqure and rule a foreign nation. You have not done that. Try again.
And in case you were not paying attention, the USSR lost the war in Afganistan. And the USSR did not invent weapons. Stole them all. Espionage. And check my earlier post. That's exactly what I said was the danger: Weapons technology develeped in advanced countries falling into the hands of primitive ones. Case in point: USSR.
Your suggestions show that you do not understand the purpose of the contest. That purpose is to compare different designs and methods of problem solving. To the degree that DARPA constrains those designs and methods with regulations, as you are proposing, it suppresses diversity and experimentation, destroying the value of the contest itself. To be specific:
1. You don't encourage people to think outside of the box by sponsoring free boxes. The same goes for providing humvees. If you limit everyone to start with the same platform then you won't get people experimenting with different platforms, which is desirable. We saw extreme variety in this matchup, from a motorcycle to that massive truck from OSU. This diversity is good because you learn from it which designs work and which do not.
2. The participants are not just developing robots, they are also developing methods for developing robots. If DARPA constrains participants to all use the same development track, then they are undermining a significant experimental aspect of the contest.
3. That different teams have different budgets is a good thing, not a bad thing. Part of what you want to learn from this is how much performance do you get per dollar. The only way to learn that in the real world is to let different teams spend different amounts and correlate performance with cost. The military has a huge problem with this tradeoff already, and I expect that's one of the questions that they want this contest to help answer. There is increased skepticism about the conventional military practice of purchasing the near-perfect weapon at near-infinite cost. NASA adopted the "faster, cheaper, smaller" agenda to get away from that kind of spending. But where is the sweet spot ? There is a legitimate question here about what is the optimal number of eggs to put in one basket. That's something you learn by letting different groups spend different amounts to solve the same problem.
I mean look, if it turns out or not that the only way to solve the navigation problem is indeed to have students map obstacles in advance, then DARPA has learned something by allowing that expensive strategy into the contest. CMU has more money so they can try that approach. Someone whith less money might experiment with something more innovative. These robots are both spending experiments and technology experiments. DARPA does not want every contestant to use CMU's expensive strategy, because that gives no comparison case. Uniformity bad. Diversity good.
4. The entire reason to encourage development in this area is that the military does not know how to develop these robots. If it did, it would not need to hold the contest. So why dictate to contestents a procedure for developing robots ? Different groups will use different methods. Some will fail and some will succeed. You learn from that what are the better methods.
5. The great thing about the absense of such regulations such as you propose is that people like yourself who are convinced that they have the best rules for how to develop a robot can try their ideas, or promote those ideas to actual contestants. You don't need DARPA rules to dictate your own strategy to yourself. If you think that your scheme for how to develop a robot would win the challenge, then why aren't you using it yourself, or trying to convince a particular team to take advantage of it to win the prize ? That instead you want DARPA to force your favorite development methodology on all contestants suggests that you have low faith in your own ideas. If your ideas are so good, why do the rule makers need to force them on people ? We should all be suspiciuous of arguments such as yours, those of the form "My plan is better for everyone, therefore you should all be forced to follow it". When someone says that, what they usually mean is that their plan is so bad that the only way anyone would follow it is if they were forced to.
6. Not just you, but a lot of other people are convince
" I suspect that the first industrialised nation that develops autonomous fighting machines will take over the world"
I predict the opposite. Any industrialised nation sufficinatly advanced to create an autonomous fighting machine would have little to gain from taking over the world. With adequate robot labor, you would have no need to exploit the world. At that point, added territory is no longer a source of useful resources but only an administrative burden. Primitive peoples are difficult to civilize and govern. Sure, we might use our robot warriors to down a particulalry bloodthirsty dictator from time to time and seed a self-governing democracy, just as we have used human soldiers to do with Milosovic in ex-Yugoslavia and Hussein in Iraq. But the goal in both places is to install a democracy and get the hell out ASAP. Fighting wars with robots will not change the underlying economic calculus of occupuation. It won't make ruling over the conquered any less of a pain in the ass, or any more profitable a proposition than today.
The more technologically advanced we become, the more we substitute common substances for exoctic mineral resource imported from abroad. Why conquer Brazil for copper mines when you get zillion times the bandwidth of copper from silicon glass fiber which is make from sand ? Power lines ? Use a superconductor strands. Conquer Africa for daimonds ? Bah !We can grow them more pure, large and cheaper in a vacuum deposition chamber in a New Jersey shopping mall. Once we find an adequate subsitite for fossil fuels, or choose to rely more heavily on those which we already have such as fission, that will be one less thing which we need from the outside.
The danger of autonomous fighting machines is not that the nations which develop them would use them to take over the world. The danger is that those weapons would fall into the hands of hostile and primitie societes which do have that goal, the same theat we face today. The technologically advanced nations which invented chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons could use them to to enslave the world, but we don't do that. The expense of occupation is too high and the payoffs for us are too low. The real danger of such technology is that is falls into the hands of primitive societies in which a primal warmongering mindset dominates.
You can buy choline in almost any of those stores which sell vitamins and nutritional supplements. I live in New York and there is one on every corner.
I read something similar about over a year ago in Science News magazine. Curious and willing to experiment on myself, I bought a jar of choline and started taking one a day.
Here's what I noticed:
First, its it's an intestinal irritant. Its sold in gelatine capusules and if you just swallow one a day, you'll be sorry after a while. I recommend opening the capsules and disolving the choline in something buffered, like milk.
You don't notice anything for a few weeks. And after you stop taking it, the effects persist for weeks.
The stuff is defintely psychoactive. I was constantly locked in deep thought. I finally stopped taking it because I got tired of thinking all the time.
"It's about american companies saving a buck by sending jobs overseas"
"I have a problem with America shipping all of it's work overseas."
Don't worry about it.
Trade is an exchange of goods. We trade with India. They send us stuff, we send them stuff. That's what trade is.
In order to trade with India the US must produce something to trade. We must produce goods or services which we can provide in exchange for those which we receive from India. A job which produces goods for American consumers can not move to India without a compenstating increase in production within the U.S. to pay for that good now imported from India.
You can point to an individual employer who has layed off employees in the U.S. and say that those jobs have been exported. But there is certain to be a comepensating increase in production elsewhere within the US to pay for the import of that good now made in India. That's not so say it would be possible to find where that increase occurs, but because trade is an exchange of goods we know that it must exist.
Are all of the jobs going to be exported to India, and Indians will make things for us and send them back here to the U.S., but we won't have to pay for these goods by providing anything in exchange ? Your worries about exporting all of the jobs are needless and absurd. There is conservation principle at work here which those who worry about the net export of jobs from the U.S. do not grasp.
So in Britain, the BBC does not explain what "Super Tuesday" means, therefore British know what it means. In the USA, American broadcasters do explain what "Super Tuesday" means, therefore Americans do not know what it means. Riiighhht....
I think yours is the the most ass-backwards remark I've ever heard. If the British are not told what "Super Tuesday" means, then they won't know what it means. If Americans are told what "Super Tuesday" means, then they will know what it means.
Are the British more ignorant about the American politcial system than are Americans because the BBC fails to explain it ?
"If you care about Hubble then vote for someone who will raise your taxes."
If you care about Hubble then vote for someone who will save Hubble.
The tax rate is irrelevent to the choice of Hubble as a spending priority. The government could double the tax rate and choose to not save Hubble. The government could halve the tax rate and save Hubble. Your discussion of tax rates is an off-topic rant.
"no one who supports tax cuts really understand that service cuts must follow."
Government can simultaneously cut tax rates, increase services, and balance the budget. That government tax cuts must result in service cuts is FALSE. Here are some reasons:
1- Reductions in the tax rate can result in either a decrease or an increase in tax revenues. If this seems surprising, go read about the laffer curve.
2- As a result of Moore's law we should be seeing an increase the level of goverment service without a corresponding increase in the cost of providing that service. Much of the work of government is record keeping. What if three years ago a terabyte of storage cost the government $4000.00 and this year it costs $400.00 ? A constant tax rate should result in a service increase. There is a decision to be made about how to divide the savings from efficicency gains between service increases and tax cuts. One choice would be to both cut tax cuts and increase services.
3- Government spends a lot of money on stuff which is not a "service", such as corporate welfare. So if it cuts out the non-service spending it could both cut taxes and maintain services. If I say to cut corporate wellfare and redirect the funds to Hubble, and you say to raise taxes to pay for Hubble, then you are implictly endorsing corporate welfare. Maybe you want to reconsider your position.
"I have actually had the privilege of talking to the Indian that got my last job. They pay him 'just' enough to survive within his own economy, no more. He can afford an apartment for himself and his girlfriend and food."
Many people in India do not have enough to survive. This guy AND his girlfriend now have enough to survive. Sounds like your ex-employer did a good thing. You seem like the typical complacent American, so accustomed to luxury that you believe a TiVo and wide-screen TV are the god-given right of every human being. So ignorant that you are unaware that most of the world faces starvation on a daily basis. Two more people can afford to live now.
"That is it, he cant afford to purchase American goods, geez what planet are you living on, American goods are the domain of the ultra wealthy in the rest of the world."
For the dollars which he is paid to be used in the purchase U.S. goods, it is not necessary that he buy U.S. goods, but only that the dollars which he recieves eventually be traded to someone who does purchase U.S goods.
How do you suppose those currency exchange booths in airports work ? When, say, you go to Europe, you hand them dollars and they hand you Euros. Now what do they do with the dollars ? They just throw them in the trash, right ? No. they wait until someone traveling to the U.S. from Europe wants to exchange their Euros for U.S. dollars. If they just threw out the dollars and did not exchange them, they would be out the value of the dollars. Therefore the dollars eventually must return and be spent in the U.S. Otherwise someone along the chain of exchange is out the value of the dollars. Well Turns out the same thing works in India and Europe. And what's more, you don't actually physically have to be in an airport, the same rule applies outside the airport.
All the jobs can't go to India, because India wants stuff back from us when they give us stuff. So long as we import goods and services from India, jobs must remain in the U.S. to produce the goods and services which we offer in exchange.
It's trade. They send is stuff, we send them stuff. They won't send us stuff unless we send them stuff. We won't send them stuff unless they send us stuff. That's what trade is, when you trade stuff.
It's not like all the jobs will move to India and Indians will keep working for us and sending us stuff, and we never have to send anything back in exchange. We do have to give stuff back in exchange, hence we have to work. Hence we will have jobs.
"You claim that every dollar we send to India is used to buy from the US. I call BS on that."
I disagree also, but I think "BS" is too harsh. To the degree that foreigners hoard U.S. dollars, you are correct that every dollar which leaves the country does not return.
People in countries with high inflation rates hoard U.S dollars because the dollar is relatively stable. By holindg savings in U.S dollars they avoid the risk of waking up to find that their life savings have depreciated to the value of a tic-tac. Dollars are not a good investement, but they are the best available in some third-world countries.
To the extent that foreigners hoard U.S. currency, you are correct that every dollar which leaves the U.S. does not return. However, this works to the benefit of the United States. Foreigners supply Americans with cars, cheap labor, programs, textiles. We supply them with green pieces of paper.
The Democrats do not want to promote this issue. In claiming that Republicans did someththing wrong by leaking the memos to the press, Democrats are working to divert attention from the actual contents of the documents which were leaked. They will continue to counter by saying that the leak was unfair, but they will not work to promote the issue beyond that.
For the benefit of foreign readers who might not be familiar with United States government (and also US citizens who don't know shit about their own government): According to the United States Constitution, federal judges must be appointed by the president and approved by the Senate. Approval by the Senate requires a vote by the Senate. For the first time in US history judges are not receiving a Senate vote; The US Senate is no longer fulfulling its constitutional duty to either aprove or reject judical candidates appointed by the president. That is because Democrats now fillibuster when the Republicans bring the confirmation for a vote. Because the senate confirmation pipline is backed up by fillibustering there are now so many vacancies in the federal judiciary that appeals are being denied becauase there are no judges to hear them. So: You might be innocent, but because there is no judge to hear your case we will go ahead an execute you.
The Democrats claim they they are fillibustering because the Bush nominees are ultra extremists and therefore should be denied their constituation right to recieve a Senate vote. But to an outsider, the common charactersitic of the appointees which the Democrats choose to fillibuster appears to be their mintority status.
Though it never seemed fair to accuse the Democrats of racism and sexism based on appearnaces. Just because Democrats selectively denied women and mintorites appointed to the federal bench their constitutional right to a Sente confirmation vote does not imply that they are racist. Maybe it really was true that most of the appointees who were unqualified were also women and minoroties.
Well now we have the answer: Senate Democrats are racists. Their "talking points" memo reveals why the Democrats denied Miguel Estrada his constitutional right to a confirmation vote, "because he is Latino."
That's the big story here folks, and the Democrats are claiming that public knowlege of thier own racist motives is illegitimate knowledge. If Democrats are going to deny someone his rights "because he is Latino" I have right to know know that, and fuck them for saying I don't . I think the person who leaked this deservers a medal.
" and give Rob a good way to tell us why he doesn't read his own website."
I would like to see Slashdot do more to prevent dupes but the cut about not reading the website is a bit unfair. The thing to realize is that spotting duplicates as a story reader and as a story poster are cognitively different tasks. That does not excuse the duplicates, but it does provide some insight on to what might be the solution.
As a slashdot reader it is easy to spot duplicate; If you have seen it before and you only read slashdot, then you know that the story is a dupe. But for someone who posts stories the work of spotting dupes must be much harder. The "I remember it therefore it has been on slashdot" inference does not work, because posters read many story submissions which are not posted. They not only have to recall whether they have seen it before (easy) but also whether it has been posted before (hard).
Complaints about dupes are as endless as the duplicates themselvles. Somewhere along the way there was a suggestion that Slashdot hire someone to preview posts and report duplicates. I think this would work especially well if a bounty were offered for catching dupes. Of course you would need a small trusted pool of "licensed" bounty hunters to prevent leaks and permature slashdot effects. Also, some way of bypassing the the dupe spotting period for urgent news, or more generally assigning a dupe-spotting preview period from 0 to limit minutes. Some stories, such as the capture of Saddam, the poster could assume would not be a dupe, so assigning a 0 minute spot-the-dupe hunting season would be appropriate. Less timely stories could undergo a 30-minute spot-the-dupe preview period before release.
Anyway, in summary, I suspect that there is a misunderstaing here. The story posters think "spotting duplicates is a hard problem, these winers don't realize that. They could not do any better than us." The story readers think "Spotting duplicates is easy, we could do a better job than the posters." They are both right, but they are both dealing with different problems. The trick is to not let the people who are working to spot duplicates be the same people who see the story submissions.
Oh and finally, yes, it is a problem but I am really sick of hearing just complaints and criticisms around here instead of constructive advice. Suggest an idea for how to solve the problem or better yet, since slashcode is open, hack up a demo and see if you can "sell" your idea. But its already well established and agreed that dupes are a problem, and just further bitching is not progress.
Slashdot Mirror
"Primal warmongering mindset? Hostile and primitive societies?
What kind of science fiction are you living?"
Its called "The New York Times". It is indeed full of science function stories about primitive warmongering socities. Some of these stories are about an imaginary country named "Rwanda" where two million people were, according to story, murdered in an outbreadk of ethinic cleansing. Limbs hacked off with machetes. I dont' know how the authors get their ideas, It's pretty sick if you ask me. Another story was about this guy named "Milosovic" who ruled over some make-belive country which at one point, accoring to the story, was named "Yugoslavia." (I suspect that the author made up the name based on a model of cheap car which was imported into the US in the 90's, called the "Yugo". I'm not sure where the Yugo was made, but I think maybe Japan). In the story this "Milosovic" character sends an army to invade "Kosovo" to murder the population because the were the "wrong" ethnic group. Even more outlanding is the fictional tale of "Hussein", who according to these science-fiction stories in the New York Times, used chemical weapons to exterminate "Kurds". Yet another "wrong" ethnic group. I think the author of that story should have made up a better name than "Kurd". What a silly name. Who's going to believe that ? It sounds like some kind of dairy product. It's like he called them the "Yogurts" or something.
Anway, I'm sorry about my earlier post. I should probably stay away from the science fiction of the New York times, because it confuses me about the real facts of the world. At times I get really confused and actually think that "Milosovic" and "Hussein" really exist and there really is such a thing as genocide. Thanks to your post, which brought me back to reality, I know that I was just living in fantasy world and that those thing don't really exist. Anyone who actually believes in the existance of hostile and primitive societies, genocide, and mass graves is just living in some kind of twisted fantasy world.
I'll stay away from The Times, but I think they have some sort of cross-lisensing deal going with CNN, CBS, NBC, ABC and even Fox News. The same science fiction stories about primitive warmongering socities are everywhere now. The keep repeating the same stuff about genocide and mas graves. And they just keep the stories goving from one year to the next. Like this season's episodes, they are trying "Milosovic" in the "Hague" for war crimes.
I'll try to stay away from such rediculous science fiction stories and only base my slashdot posts on actual facts, like what I read in "The Nation" , "Mother Jones", and those books by Noam Chomsky.
"First you say that having advanced robots makes a nation peaceful and then you invent a contradicting mindset which is somehow immune to that pacifying effect."
Violent, primitive societies are not subject to the pacifying effect of peaceful technology because they choose not to adopt it for peacful purposes. What they want from the civilized and technologically advanced nations is weapons technology. I did not state, and do not maintain, as you imply, that primitive society would adopt in large scale peaceful technology and yet remain primitive and warlike. The fundamental problem is that they do not adopt it, in accord with their own primitive and warlike mindset.
I'm not "inventing a contradictory mindset". I am describing one which is known to exist. I am asserting that civilized and uncivlized nations have different mindsets. Different societies make different choices about how to employ technology.
Western society is subject to the pacifying effect of technology because we adopt technology for both peaceful and military purposes. Primitive socieites are not subject the pacifying effect of technology becase they choose to adopt technology only for purposes warmaking.
It is the desire to develop and employ technology for peaceful purposes which distinquishes modern civilized societes from those primitive and violent. It enables us to advance and prosper without territorial expansion. To the violent and warlike who spurn peaceful technology, their only means of material gain is to take from others by making war.
You seem surprised to hear that different cultures could have different mindsets. You characterize that as my own "invention" and not actually a fact about the world.
I am asserting that different cultures choose to adopt and use technolgies for different purposes. That if in the future the primitive societies have both available to them, they will continue to choose only the weapons and to use them for malicious purposes against us. Western socities when confronted with the same choice choose differently. Our inclination to use technology for peaceful purposes affords us the luxery of using war as only tool for reform and not as a means of material gain.
"However, it really depends on his regular audience, if they are appropriate. Does his audience know what a methyl group is"
Is it really ok generally to put unfamiliar words in quotation marks ? I think not.
One particular category of unfamiliar words, slang, yes. Technical terms ? No. What does it communicate by adding the quotes ? Nothing. It's not like by using the quotes the author informs the reader of anything, the reader presumabley is aware of whether he knows the meaning of a word or not. Better so than the author.
With slang, quotes help. Its a warning to the reader that if he does not know the word, thats because its not really a proper word, its slang, so don't bother looking it up in the dictionary.
"You are wrong"
Am not. And you are an arrogant and self-righteous asswipe for putting that in caps.
"There is NO SUCH thing as CONSERVATION under capitalism."
It's called "balance of payments". But to geeks on slashdot familiar with conservation principles, "conservation" is a familiar and undstood term.
The balance of payments in and out of the country is conserved. Conserved at the level zero. Money going out - money coming in = 0. Look it up. The fact that there is growth over time does not change that fact. Why is it conserved at the level zero ? Because its trade. We give them stuff, they give us stuff. We pay for the stuff we get. They pay for the stuff they get. Hence payments are balanced. That the absolute level of goods and services increases over time does not change the fact their exchange remains balanced. Exchanges simultaneously remain balanced and increase because increases on one side are offset by increases on the other.
And capitalism has nothing to do with it. It's an economic principle. Its not like being Communist would help you to violate economic laws any more than it helps you violate the laws of physics.
"what Marxists would call capitalists"
You sound like the victim of third-world political indoctrination. Anyone who engages in an economic discusion and uses the terms "Marxist" and "Capitalist" is giving himself away as phony. Put down that Communist Manifesto you are holding and pick up an eco textbook.
"Autonomous fighting machines offer a means to rid a location of its population without any problems with international law."
Really ? There is no international law against using an army of robot warriors to exterminate the entire popuation of a foreign nation ? Why not ?
Well there's my legal loophole. World domination, here I come.
"Dominant powers can and will use whatever they like. Things just haven't got to that point yet."
So your point is that we do use whatever weapons we like, though we have not in fact actually done that. Of course the fact that we do not actually do that in no way counters your assertion that we do. You're a retard.
My point was that the counries which invented those weapons do not use them to conquer the world. Last I checked we were not governing Vietnam or Japan. If you want to counter, then you'll need to provide an example of a country which invented one of those weapons using it to conqure and rule a foreign nation. You have not done that. Try again.
And in case you were not paying attention, the USSR lost the war in Afganistan. And the USSR did not invent weapons. Stole them all. Espionage. And check my earlier post. That's exactly what I said was the danger: Weapons technology develeped in advanced countries falling into the hands of primitive ones. Case in point: USSR.
Your suggestions show that you do not understand the purpose of the contest. That purpose is to compare different designs and methods of problem solving. To the degree that DARPA constrains those designs and methods with regulations, as you are proposing, it suppresses diversity and experimentation, destroying the value of the contest itself. To be specific:
1. You don't encourage people to think outside of the box by sponsoring free boxes. The same goes for providing humvees. If you limit everyone to start with the same platform then you won't get people experimenting with different platforms, which is desirable. We saw extreme variety in this matchup, from a motorcycle to that massive truck from OSU. This diversity is good because you learn from it which designs work and which do not.
2. The participants are not just developing robots, they are also developing methods for developing robots. If DARPA constrains participants to all use the same development track, then they are undermining a significant experimental aspect of the contest.
3. That different teams have different budgets is a good thing, not a bad thing. Part of what you want to learn from this is how much performance do you get per dollar. The only way to learn that in the real world is to let different teams spend different amounts and correlate performance with cost. The military has a huge problem with this tradeoff already, and I expect that's one of the questions that they want this contest to help answer. There is increased skepticism about the conventional military practice of purchasing the near-perfect weapon at near-infinite cost. NASA adopted the "faster, cheaper, smaller" agenda to get away from that kind of spending. But where is the sweet spot ? There is a legitimate question here about what is the optimal number of eggs to put in one basket. That's something you learn by letting different groups spend different amounts to solve the same problem.
I mean look, if it turns out or not that the only way to solve the navigation problem is indeed to have students map obstacles in advance, then DARPA has learned something by allowing that expensive strategy into the contest. CMU has more money so they can try that approach. Someone whith less money might experiment with something more innovative. These robots are both spending experiments and technology experiments. DARPA does not want every contestant to use CMU's expensive strategy, because that gives no comparison case. Uniformity bad. Diversity good.
4. The entire reason to encourage development in this area is that the military does not know how to develop these robots. If it did, it would not need to hold the contest. So why dictate to contestents a procedure for developing robots ? Different groups will use different methods. Some will fail and some will succeed. You learn from that what are the better methods.
5. The great thing about the absense of such regulations such as you propose is that people like yourself who are convinced that they have the best rules for how to develop a robot can try their ideas, or promote those ideas to actual contestants. You don't need DARPA rules to dictate your own strategy to yourself. If you think that your scheme for how to develop a robot would win the challenge, then why aren't you using it yourself, or trying to convince a particular team to take advantage of it to win the prize ? That instead you want DARPA to force your favorite development methodology on all contestants suggests that you have low faith in your own ideas. If your ideas are so good, why do the rule makers need to force them on people ? We should all be suspiciuous of arguments such as yours, those of the form "My plan is better for everyone, therefore you should all be forced to follow it". When someone says that, what they usually mean is that their plan is so bad that the only way anyone would follow it is if they were forced to.
6. Not just you, but a lot of other people are convince
" I suspect that the first industrialised nation that develops autonomous fighting machines will take over the world"
I predict the opposite. Any industrialised nation sufficinatly advanced to create an autonomous fighting machine would have little to gain from taking over the world. With adequate robot labor, you would have no need to exploit the world. At that point, added territory is no longer a source of useful resources but only an administrative burden. Primitive peoples are difficult to civilize and govern. Sure, we might use our robot warriors to down a particulalry bloodthirsty dictator from time to time and seed a self-governing democracy, just as we have used human soldiers to do with Milosovic in ex-Yugoslavia and Hussein in Iraq. But the goal in both places is to install a democracy and get the hell out ASAP. Fighting wars with robots will not change the underlying economic calculus of occupuation. It won't make ruling over the conquered any less of a pain in the ass, or any more profitable a proposition than today.
The more technologically advanced we become, the more we substitute common substances for exoctic mineral resource imported from abroad. Why conquer Brazil for copper mines when you get zillion times the bandwidth of copper from silicon glass fiber which is make from sand ? Power lines ? Use a superconductor strands. Conquer Africa for daimonds ? Bah !We can grow them more pure, large and cheaper in a vacuum deposition chamber in a New Jersey shopping mall. Once we find an adequate subsitite for fossil fuels, or choose to rely more heavily on those which we already have such as fission, that will be one less thing which we need from the outside.
The danger of autonomous fighting machines is not that the nations which develop them would use them to take over the world. The danger is that those weapons would fall into the hands of hostile and primitie societes which do have that goal, the same theat we face today. The technologically advanced nations which invented chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons could use them to to enslave the world, but we don't do that. The expense of occupation is too high and the payoffs for us are too low. The real danger of such technology is that is falls into the hands of primitive societies in which a primal warmongering mindset dominates.
Was "anyone" besides me "annoyed" by the superfluos "quotation" markes in this "article".
You can buy choline in almost any of those stores which sell vitamins and nutritional supplements. I live in New York and there is one on every corner.
I read something similar about over a year ago in Science News magazine. Curious and willing to experiment on myself, I bought a jar of choline and started taking one a day.
Here's what I noticed:
First, its it's an intestinal irritant. Its sold in gelatine capusules and if you just swallow one a day, you'll be sorry after a while. I recommend opening the capsules and disolving the choline in something buffered, like milk.
You don't notice anything for a few weeks. And after you stop taking it, the effects persist for weeks.
The stuff is defintely psychoactive. I was constantly locked in deep thought. I finally stopped taking it because I got tired of thinking all the time.
"It's about american companies saving a buck by sending jobs overseas"
"I have a problem with America shipping all of it's work overseas."
Don't worry about it.
Trade is an exchange of goods. We trade with India. They send us stuff, we send them stuff. That's what trade is.
In order to trade with India the US must produce something to trade. We must produce goods or services which we can provide in exchange for those which we receive from India. A job which produces goods for American consumers can not move to India without a compenstating increase in production within the U.S. to pay for that good now imported from India.
You can point to an individual employer who has layed off employees in the U.S. and say that those jobs have been exported. But there is certain to be a comepensating increase in production elsewhere within the US to pay for the import of that good now made in India. That's not so say it would be possible to find where that increase occurs, but because trade is an exchange of goods we know that it must exist.
Are all of the jobs going to be exported to India, and Indians will make things for us and send them back here to the U.S., but we won't have to pay for these goods by providing anything in exchange ? Your worries about exporting all of the jobs are needless and absurd. There is conservation principle at work here which those who worry about the net export of jobs from the U.S. do not grasp.
Think about it; You've never seen them both together in the same place at the same time, have you ?
So in Britain, the BBC does not explain what "Super Tuesday" means, therefore British know what it means. In the USA, American broadcasters do explain what "Super Tuesday" means, therefore Americans do not know what it means. Riiighhht....
I think yours is the the most ass-backwards remark I've ever heard. If the British are not told what "Super Tuesday" means, then they won't know what it means. If Americans are told what "Super Tuesday" means, then they will know what it means.
Are the British more ignorant about the American politcial system than are Americans because the BBC fails to explain it ?
Prisoner-of-enigma, excellent post! Bravo!
(Wishing I had mod points today...)
"If you care about Hubble then vote for someone who will raise your taxes."
If you care about Hubble then vote for someone who will save Hubble.
The tax rate is irrelevent to the choice of Hubble as a spending priority. The government could double the tax rate and choose to not save Hubble. The government could halve the tax rate and save Hubble. Your discussion of tax rates is an off-topic rant.
"no one who supports tax cuts really understand that service cuts must follow."
Government can simultaneously cut tax rates, increase services, and balance the budget. That government tax cuts must result in service cuts is FALSE. Here are some reasons:
1- Reductions in the tax rate can result in either a decrease or an increase in tax revenues. If this seems surprising, go read about the laffer curve.
2- As a result of Moore's law we should be seeing an increase the level of goverment service without a corresponding increase in the cost of providing that service. Much of the work of government is record keeping. What if three years ago a terabyte of storage cost the government $4000.00 and this year it costs $400.00 ? A constant tax rate should result in a service increase. There is a decision to be made about how to divide the savings from efficicency gains between service increases and tax cuts. One choice would be to both cut tax cuts and increase services.
3- Government spends a lot of money on stuff which is not a "service", such as corporate welfare. So if it cuts out the non-service spending it could both cut taxes and maintain services. If I say to cut corporate wellfare and redirect the funds to Hubble, and you say to raise taxes to pay for Hubble, then you are implictly endorsing corporate welfare. Maybe you want to reconsider your position.
"I have actually had the privilege of talking to the Indian that got my last job. They pay him 'just' enough to survive within his own economy, no more. He can afford an apartment for himself and his girlfriend and food."
Many people in India do not have enough to survive. This guy AND his girlfriend now have enough to survive. Sounds like your ex-employer did a good thing. You seem like the typical complacent American, so accustomed to luxury that you believe a TiVo and wide-screen TV are the god-given right of every human being. So ignorant that you are unaware that most of the world faces starvation on a daily basis. Two more people can afford to live now.
"That is it, he cant afford to purchase American goods, geez what planet are you living on, American goods are the domain of the ultra wealthy in the rest of the world."
For the dollars which he is paid to be used in the purchase U.S. goods, it is not necessary that he buy U.S. goods, but only that the dollars which he recieves eventually be traded to someone who does purchase U.S goods.
How do you suppose those currency exchange booths in airports work ? When, say, you go to Europe, you hand them dollars and they hand you Euros. Now what do they do with the dollars ? They just throw them in the trash, right ? No. they wait until someone traveling to the U.S. from Europe wants to exchange their Euros for U.S. dollars. If they just threw out the dollars and did not exchange them, they would be out the value of the dollars. Therefore the dollars eventually must return and be spent in the U.S. Otherwise someone along the chain of exchange is out the value of the dollars. Well Turns out the same thing works in India and Europe. And what's more, you don't actually physically have to be in an airport, the same rule applies outside the airport.
All the jobs can't go to India, because India wants stuff back from us when they give us stuff. So long as we import goods and services from India, jobs must remain in the U.S. to produce the goods and services which we offer in exchange.
It's trade. They send is stuff, we send them stuff. They won't send us stuff unless we send them stuff. We won't send them stuff unless they send us stuff. That's what trade is, when you trade stuff.
It's not like all the jobs will move to India and Indians will keep working for us and sending us stuff, and we never have to send anything back in exchange. We do have to give stuff back in exchange, hence we have to work. Hence we will have jobs.
"You claim that every dollar we send to India is used to buy from the US. I call BS on that."
I disagree also, but I think "BS" is too harsh. To the degree that foreigners hoard U.S. dollars, you are correct that every dollar which leaves the country does not return.
People in countries with high inflation rates hoard U.S dollars because the dollar is relatively stable. By holindg savings in U.S dollars they avoid the risk of waking up to find that their life savings have depreciated to the value of a tic-tac. Dollars are not a good investement, but they are the best available in some third-world countries.
To the extent that foreigners hoard U.S. currency, you are correct that every dollar which leaves the U.S. does not return. However, this works to the benefit of the United States. Foreigners supply Americans with cars, cheap labor, programs, textiles. We supply them with green pieces of paper.
So if service jobs, creative jobs, research jobs, and development jobs all get outsourced... What's left and why, exactly, will the economy survive?
That's a good question. It was answered about two centuries ago by David Ricardo. You can find a complete explanation here.
It seems like this should be a major scandal.
The Democrats do not want to promote this issue. In claiming that Republicans did someththing wrong by leaking the memos to the press, Democrats are working to divert attention from the actual contents of the documents which were leaked. They will continue to counter by saying that the leak was unfair, but they will not work to promote the issue beyond that.
For the benefit of foreign readers who might not be familiar with United States government (and also US citizens who don't know shit about their own government): According to the United States Constitution, federal judges must be appointed by the president and approved by the Senate. Approval by the Senate requires a vote by the Senate. For the first time in US history judges are not receiving a Senate vote; The US Senate is no longer fulfulling its constitutional duty to either aprove or reject judical candidates appointed by the president. That is because Democrats now fillibuster when the Republicans bring the confirmation for a vote. Because the senate confirmation pipline is backed up by fillibustering there are now so many vacancies in the federal judiciary that appeals are being denied becauase there are no judges to hear them. So: You might be innocent, but because there is no judge to hear your case we will go ahead an execute you.
The Democrats claim they they are fillibustering because the Bush nominees are ultra extremists and therefore should be denied their constituation right to recieve a Senate vote. But to an outsider, the common charactersitic of the appointees which the Democrats choose to fillibuster appears to be their mintority status.
Though it never seemed fair to accuse the Democrats of racism and sexism based on appearnaces. Just because Democrats selectively denied women and mintorites appointed to the federal bench their constitutional right to a Sente confirmation vote does not imply that they are racist. Maybe it really was true that most of the appointees who were unqualified were also women and minoroties.
Well now we have the answer: Senate Democrats are racists. Their "talking points" memo reveals why the Democrats denied Miguel Estrada his constitutional right to a confirmation vote, "because he is Latino."
That's the big story here folks, and the Democrats are claiming that public knowlege of thier own racist motives is illegitimate knowledge. If Democrats are going to deny someone his rights "because he is Latino" I have right to know know that, and fuck them for saying I don't . I think the person who leaked this deservers a medal.
"Sorta like google became a standardized verb."
Don't you mean "Sorta like how google was verbed" ?The way he pays for everything else ... by cutting taxes, of course!
Why is that so funny ?" and give Rob a good way to tell us why he doesn't read his own website."
I would like to see Slashdot do more to prevent dupes but the cut about not reading the website is a bit unfair. The thing to realize is that spotting duplicates as a story reader and as a story poster are cognitively different tasks. That does not excuse the duplicates, but it does provide some insight on to what might be the solution.
As a slashdot reader it is easy to spot duplicate; If you have seen it before and you only read slashdot, then you know that the story is a dupe. But for someone who posts stories the work of spotting dupes must be much harder. The "I remember it therefore it has been on slashdot" inference does not work, because posters read many story submissions which are not posted. They not only have to recall whether they have seen it before (easy) but also whether it has been posted before (hard).
Complaints about dupes are as endless as the duplicates themselvles. Somewhere along the way there was a suggestion that Slashdot hire someone to preview posts and report duplicates. I think this would work especially well if a bounty were offered for catching dupes. Of course you would need a small trusted pool of "licensed" bounty hunters to prevent leaks and permature slashdot effects. Also, some way of bypassing the the dupe spotting period for urgent news, or more generally assigning a dupe-spotting preview period from 0 to limit minutes. Some stories, such as the capture of Saddam, the poster could assume would not be a dupe, so assigning a 0 minute spot-the-dupe hunting season would be appropriate. Less timely stories could undergo a 30-minute spot-the-dupe preview period before release.
Anyway, in summary, I suspect that there is a misunderstaing here. The story posters think "spotting duplicates is a hard problem, these winers don't realize that. They could not do any better than us." The story readers think "Spotting duplicates is easy, we could do a better job than the posters." They are both right, but they are both dealing with different problems. The trick is to not let the people who are working to spot duplicates be the same people who see the story submissions.
Oh and finally, yes, it is a problem but I am really sick of hearing just complaints and criticisms around here instead of constructive advice. Suggest an idea for how to solve the problem or better yet, since slashcode is open, hack up a demo and see if you can "sell" your idea. But its already well established and agreed that dupes are a problem, and just further bitching is not progress.
"this bill is in keeping with the general tenor of the Bush administration"
Right, except that you need to replace "Bush administration" with "government."
I only have 4.5 GB and don't have the extra cash to buy larger.
Dude, that's pathetic. What's your mailing address ?