What's wrong with local anesthesia? No pain and I got to be awake to hear and feel those wonderful crunching noises when they had to break one of the teeth in order to remove it.
A counter-argument could be made that not all dangerous things are made equal.
Yes, knife can be useful but also dangerous.
Explosives can be useful but very dangerous too. In the wrong hands they're definitely more dangerous than knives.
Nuclear power can be useful but in general it's more dangerous (in the bomb form) than knives or explosives. It is, in fact, the first technology with which the human race could have committed a suicide.
To me it seems like that to Joy genetic engineering and nanotechnology are one more order of magnitude more dangerous than atomic power or any other existing human technology. Why? Because of the potential for self-replication. Atomic bombs certainly kill lots of people, but they cannot self-replicate and run out of our control.
In the end it boils down to the risk = probability * consequences. Even if the probability of us becoming victims to all-conquering grey nanogoo is vanishingly small, are the consequences so disasterous that the risk is eventually too high for us even experiment with the idea?
Incidentally, developers of the hydrogen bomb had to wrestle with the same equation. What if we lit up a hydrogen bomb in our atmosphere and, against all our calculations and predictions, nitrogen-nitrogen fusion would begin and our entire atmosphere would be consumed in one huge fusion burn.
You realize the first amendment specifically protects assembly too, right? Banning the technological means of assembling for discussion would get laughed out of court.
I don't think it's realistic to say that if you're "banned" from writing your own blog software you're deprived of the 1st Amendment right to assemble. First of all, you can still go outside and get together with your friends. Secondly, if the government got in constitutional trouble with this they'd just point out that there's plenty of properly licensed blog-software already available (if there weren't they'd just release such software). Problem solved.
The more we discuss, the weaker your case gets
You saying so doesn't make it so.
I challenge your claim that dynamic code is a pre-requisite for this discussion. Let's say I'd have my website with its index.html file. You'd read it and reply on your own page. I'd read it and reply on my page and so on. By the way, that's how science still works - via written journals.
you required a dynamic web programming language to tell me that you didn't require a dynamic web programming language. I do believe the appropriate response is, "Oops."
There's no "Oops".
1st Amendment deals with government censoring political speech. It doesn't say that you have the right to code an interactive blog. There's nothing stopping you from typing your political agenda in index.html file for all the world to see. Hence, you're not being censored.
I do not think that image manipulation software is the right place to put this code, specifically because it's too easy to write an image editor from scratch (what are you going to do, ban compilers?).
Yes.
Make programming tools like compilers controlled in the sense that certain substances are controlled these days: get caught owning, using or selling them and you're going to spend the next 5-10 years in prison.
Then bring in controlled black-box computer hardware that will only run software that has been produced with a properly licensed compiler.
It will happen. Media giants, software giants and certain DoJ attorney generals would love such control too much.
I'll bet that within a decade we're facing locked computer hardware and strictly controlled (as in "controlled substances") software development tools.
Free software and software facilitating "unauthorized access" to digital media (think decss) is beginning to pose such a threat to established software and media giants that they'll certainly fight back this way.
unlimited calls to all your friends in your area code
That may be the case over there, but over here local calls are charged per minute.
I like cell phones because they allow me to make/take calls anywhere anytime instead of being tied to a landline. If I don't want to be disturbed I can switch on the silent mode. If someone has something important to tell me while I'm in the movies, for instance, he/she can leave a message. With the caller ID (no extra charge) I can also screen my calls. Having a cell phone as definitely improved the quality of my life.
I don't know what you mean by hidden costs? I know perfectly well how much my calls and SMSs cost (incoming calls are free) and, if I like, I can check my bill any time by texting to a number.
If you don't trust yourself not to "go over" or you're worried about your kids' cellphone bills you can sign a deal where you set a hard limit ($50, for instance) for the service.
This means that when I upgrade my system from scratch
Ok. I've never done that.
Upgrading an existing installation sounds like asking for trouble. I'll rather take a backup of my files, format the drive and install everything against. In my experience doing a partial upgrade will only screw up the installation anyway.
Highlight then middle button (or shift-insert) and you're done is the best cut and paste I've seen so far.
Highlight something, left-click on emacs window, right-click on emacs and... nothing gets pasted because the stupid thing cleared the buffer when you left-clicked on the window in order to bring it into focus.
Therefore, every kid at the age of 2 should be able to learn programming really easy:-)
As a physicist I've found that regexps to fall into the same category as chemistry. Useful but hard to learn because the only way you can learn it is to learn it by heart. You can't just learn a few basic rules and the extrapolate.
One drawback with SCSI is that you'll have to deal with a number of different cable/connector formats and terminators.
Dealing with terminators is easy: always install a separate active terminator block at the end of thew chain even if your device and/or cable claims to have one. Don't bother with passive ones.
As far as cable/connectors go, there are plenty of adaptors. Just learn the language.
On the commentary track someone, don't remember who, points out that while there are only two parallel universes there is actually an infinite number of perpendicular ones.
I have bought all four Futurama seasons on DVD and I've never regretted it. The commentary tracks alone are worth it. Absolutely hilarious!
I have also heard (can't find the link, but I'm pretty sure I'm right) that Futurama DVDs have sold so well that there has been talk about reviving the series on Comedy Central.
WHile scsi is expensive, runs extremely hot (meaning you need more fans), and is fickle at best
I'm curious. Why do you say that is SCSI fickle?
I remember a time when one had to be careful not to exceed the a certain cable length when daisy-chaining external devices, but other than that SCSI has been nothing but rock-solid on my systems.
As far as the performance goes, you're absolutely right. I've got a RAID5 array of four 10 krpm U320-SCSI drives on my dual Opteron. It was almost scary to watch how fast it compiled stuff during Gentoo stage 1 installation.;-)
Then if people want to change it to look pretty [litestep.net] they can, by sacrificing speed (in slower machines).
Unrealistic.
1) People who like bright-shiny-and-animated-GUIs like that of XP have hard time setting a desktop background image. Imagine asking them decide between various desktop enhancements and selectively switching them on.
2) If it doesn't look pretty, it doesn't sell to the masses.
the drug companies will pay you thousands of dollars to sit in a controlled environment for a few weeks to months while they test their new phase3 drugs out on you.
Yep. I know. I made good money as a student by being a human guinea pig.
We are never going to live on the Moon, or Mars. We are never going to leave the Solar System.
Ok. Let's just lie down and wait for the next extinction level event to wipe us out. No use in sending probes out there either because it's all futile.
The fact that we're still loitering around in the relativel safe LEO accounts for the boredom and scientifical uselessness. It's the same thing as if the Great Explorers hadn't had the courage to venture out to the deep sea and had kept sailing safely within the sight of the coast.
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What's wrong with local anesthesia? No pain and I got to be awake to hear and feel those wonderful crunching noises when they had to break one of the teeth in order to remove it.
So, no time travel for me I guess.
Yes, knife can be useful but also dangerous.
Explosives can be useful but very dangerous too. In the wrong hands they're definitely more dangerous than knives.
Nuclear power can be useful but in general it's more dangerous (in the bomb form) than knives or explosives. It is, in fact, the first technology with which the human race could have committed a suicide.
To me it seems like that to Joy genetic engineering and nanotechnology are one more order of magnitude more dangerous than atomic power or any other existing human technology. Why? Because of the potential for self-replication. Atomic bombs certainly kill lots of people, but they cannot self-replicate and run out of our control.
In the end it boils down to the risk = probability * consequences. Even if the probability of us becoming victims to all-conquering grey nanogoo is vanishingly small, are the consequences so disasterous that the risk is eventually too high for us even experiment with the idea?
Incidentally, developers of the hydrogen bomb had to wrestle with the same equation. What if we lit up a hydrogen bomb in our atmosphere and, against all our calculations and predictions, nitrogen-nitrogen fusion would begin and our entire atmosphere would be consumed in one huge fusion burn.
I don't think it's realistic to say that if you're "banned" from writing your own blog software you're deprived of the 1st Amendment right to assemble. First of all, you can still go outside and get together with your friends. Secondly, if the government got in constitutional trouble with this they'd just point out that there's plenty of properly licensed blog-software already available (if there weren't they'd just release such software). Problem solved.
The more we discuss, the weaker your case gets You saying so doesn't make it so.
I challenge your claim that dynamic code is a pre-requisite for this discussion. Let's say I'd have my website with its index.html file. You'd read it and reply on your own page. I'd read it and reply on my page and so on. By the way, that's how science still works - via written journals.
There's no "Oops".
1st Amendment deals with government censoring political speech. It doesn't say that you have the right to code an interactive blog. There's nothing stopping you from typing your political agenda in index.html file for all the world to see. Hence, you're not being censored.
Besides, you don't need PHP, Java or any other programming language to publish your ideas on the web.
Yes.
Make programming tools like compilers controlled in the sense that certain substances are controlled these days: get caught owning, using or selling them and you're going to spend the next 5-10 years in prison.
Then bring in controlled black-box computer hardware that will only run software that has been produced with a properly licensed compiler.
It will happen. Media giants, software giants and certain DoJ attorney generals would love such control too much.
Free software and software facilitating "unauthorized access" to digital media (think decss) is beginning to pose such a threat to established software and media giants that they'll certainly fight back this way.
That may be the case over there, but over here local calls are charged per minute.
I like cell phones because they allow me to make/take calls anywhere anytime instead of being tied to a landline. If I don't want to be disturbed I can switch on the silent mode. If someone has something important to tell me while I'm in the movies, for instance, he/she can leave a message. With the caller ID (no extra charge) I can also screen my calls. Having a cell phone as definitely improved the quality of my life.
I don't know what you mean by hidden costs? I know perfectly well how much my calls and SMSs cost (incoming calls are free) and, if I like, I can check my bill any time by texting to a number.
If you don't trust yourself not to "go over" or you're worried about your kids' cellphone bills you can sign a deal where you set a hard limit ($50, for instance) for the service.
Ok. I've never done that.
Upgrading an existing installation sounds like asking for trouble. I'll rather take a backup of my files, format the drive and install everything against. In my experience doing a partial upgrade will only screw up the installation anyway.
Fair enough, but what's the advantage?
complaining that you haven't set PATH properly in your .profile is a poor reason to rag on a directory layout.
Highlight something, left-click on emacs window, right-click on emacs and... nothing gets pasted because the stupid thing cleared the buffer when you left-clicked on the window in order to bring it into focus.
That drives me nuts.
The path is never set for /usr/local/bin by default.
It's like /opt in Sun environment.
Why not just install everything in /usr/bin?
As a physicist I've found that regexps to fall into the same category as chemistry. Useful but hard to learn because the only way you can learn it is to learn it by heart. You can't just learn a few basic rules and the extrapolate.
Which would be great if there would be some way for us humans to actually learn regexps...
How long until the pop-up/under/in-your-face ad assholes are going to resort to this rhetoric?
I guess that's why they've got subtitles on DVDs.
One drawback with SCSI is that you'll have to deal with a number of different cable/connector formats and terminators.
Dealing with terminators is easy: always install a separate active terminator block at the end of thew chain even if your device and/or cable claims to have one. Don't bother with passive ones.
As far as cable/connectors go, there are plenty of adaptors. Just learn the language.
On the commentary track someone, don't remember who, points out that while there are only two parallel universes there is actually an infinite number of perpendicular ones.
Oops. My bad. That should be Cartoon Network.
"You can't shut us down! The Internet is about the free exchange and sale of other people's ideas!" - Nappster nerd in I dated a Robot-episode.
I have bought all four Futurama seasons on DVD and I've never regretted it. The commentary tracks alone are worth it. Absolutely hilarious!
I have also heard (can't find the link, but I'm pretty sure I'm right) that Futurama DVDs have sold so well that there has been talk about reviving the series on Comedy Central.
I'm curious. Why do you say that is SCSI fickle?
I remember a time when one had to be careful not to exceed the a certain cable length when daisy-chaining external devices, but other than that SCSI has been nothing but rock-solid on my systems.
As far as the performance goes, you're absolutely right. I've got a RAID5 array of four 10 krpm U320-SCSI drives on my dual Opteron. It was almost scary to watch how fast it compiled stuff during Gentoo stage 1 installation. ;-)
Unrealistic.
1) People who like bright-shiny-and-animated-GUIs like that of XP have hard time setting a desktop background image. Imagine asking them decide between various desktop enhancements and selectively switching them on.
2) If it doesn't look pretty, it doesn't sell to the masses.
Yep. I know. I made good money as a student by being a human guinea pig.
Ok. Let's just lie down and wait for the next extinction level event to wipe us out. No use in sending probes out there either because it's all futile.
The fact that we're still loitering around in the relativel safe LEO accounts for the boredom and scientifical uselessness. It's the same thing as if the Great Explorers hadn't had the courage to venture out to the deep sea and had kept sailing safely within the sight of the coast.