I have been in many election in france with even *bigger* number of voters. And we had all vote counted in 30-40 minutes. Why ? Because they simply knew participation and numbers, and then simply asked for volunteer to stay longer and help the democratic process. Then they gave ~70-80 stapple of paper vote to a table of 4 volunteer. 2 to count, to to observe, then reverse. There were about 8 table at last election, then those who finish counting earlier get another staples. That is also why big circumscription also do get to vote in big meeting room or similar big room. It is not to give voter privacy, but because once the vote is finished by whatever hour/time they will put a lot of table for the volunteer to count. I have participated in a lot of such a count. It works well and is quick. By the way once they have enough volunteer additional persons are welcome to stay and look as long as they do not disturb the counter..
I have to wonder how it comes you could not come up with such a solution to ask for unpaid volunteer among voters, and would rather rely on a few persons counting.
I mean, look , torture was refined and intel gotten in the middle age, they even had a lot of forged instrument SPECIFICALLY for torture, and a whole book as "how to torture for dummy". And they found witch aplenty. That alone should tell you a LOT about torture. I assume you might be american and holding tightly onto the impression that torture is Ok in some case, otherwise you would have to admit that your country is indeed as bad as some of the less enlightened one.
1) the less experienced pilot was left on the stick while 1 pilot stayed there and the most experienced left for a pause.
2) once the indicator showed the wrong speed, the less experienced pilot started to climb up and regain altitude
3) this triggered stall warning to which the less experienced pilote answered by pulling the stick instead of pushing. THAT alone was the first terrible error. Most category of stall except rare one impossible with big airliner have you PUSH the stick to gain speed.
5) the other pilot tried small course correction unaware the less experienced on was still pulling the stick.
6) the "middle experienced" pilot to the less experienced one to leave the stick to him, but he apparently did not
7) when the most experienced came back in the cabine a few dozens of second before the crash it was already too late.
The whole story scream of pilot error on the side of the less experienced one. Sure the pitot failed, but pulling a stick to a stall warning ? No way.
Most of the replacement is in part of the cell going out and in, not a total cell replacement, occuring only after cell death which happens much more rarely in the brain than in the rest of the body. So whereas it is true that our "molecules/atoms" are getting shifted around while the cells live, it is a fallacy to generalize that and say our cell in our brain are so much getting replaced that we are only a patern.
You are not a self "propagating patern", what the heck is that anyway ? Made up definition day ? The brain as we understand it is a serie of cell , neurone , interconnected in a vast network. Each neurone has its own potential, triggering, connection to many other neighbor neurons. Learning change those connection and potentiel triggering. "you" are not only the set of potential each neuron has, you are a whole , the set of potential at any moment WITH the network connection. You may be changing from day to day, but that change is gradual and not certainly not in neuron replacement.
Now I can imagine giving the argument of replacing neuron by neuron with a silicon equivalent (which is not IMHO "uploading", as uploading would mean you jsut copy the neuron potential patern in a network having the same structure and behavior as the neuron). I think it would work since baring mythic things like "souls", we are just machines, complicated machines with massive parallel circuit and emergent associated property, but just machine. Now the technology to do that is as far away as you can imagine.
"In the field of education, medicine involving taking in over ten times the number of people you expect to graduate then expelling all but the top tenth in first year exams."
As opposed to what ? taking the right nubmer until the last spot is occupied, and refusing to take the rest ? If you do taht you will have a gaussian of "skills" over your year of people studying medicine. But if you take a whole lot more, but cream up the left side of the gaussian until 95% are thrown out you are left with people with a better results and skills. I will take over a system which search for the top one, over one which value fairness , for medicine, thank you.
"In the field of business, I was surprised at the number of government-owned or government-propped French businesses which have taken over following privatisation in other EU countries."
What's the problem ?
"In the field of justice, the lack of jury availability except in the most severe cases means some absurd rulings from a weak judiciary."
BFD. Weak judgement happens also with jury. It is an other philosophy of justice systems. Important is innocent until proven guilty (presomption d'innocence). The rest is fluff whether you want to better trust a jury or a judge.
Crysis 2 was not as well received on PC than PS3/360, word of mouth got out that it was linear consolised simplified. Consolised : the keyword of death for a FPS. So people did not buy it for PC, and those who downloaded it, may have played with it, but frankly I know of a few person which downloaded it and used it as a sort of "futuremark" benchmark. I know I avoided the game after trying it out from a renting shop.
Moral code and generic observation like the one the GP had or the code as in the bible are older than anything written. For any moral code you can trace in an old text 2000 year back, I can probably come up with an older one 2500, 3500 or even older like sumer / akadian civilization.
Whereever civilisation has sprung up, proverbs and morals code have sprung up.
Natural hybridasation is what we did up to now, mixing plant gene from the same genera, and try to get a betetr crop. In other word selecting plant. But adding a gene from a totally different plant genera, or heck, even a gene from mammals/insect/fish is something altogether else than you cannot get with our traditional plant farming.
So yeah I agree this will not assuage people's fear, but telling this is something natural, is stating that this could happen in nature. Even with virus cross-getting gene, I seriously doubt you would get the same results in natural as presented.
So to summarize : not to be feared -yes- is natural -no-. In addition most of us which look at such seed with warriness , do because of the sheenanigan of monsanto and the potential to have truly monopoly on food source, for the first and third world. No something I would welcome. Now if those GM food was "open", for example reuse seed allowed, that would be altogether remove all my doubt.
There might be minor details, but there is nothing too novel here. Any biologist could go for this with time and money. I think the reason it is not done is probably because there are so few biologist dumb enough to not recognize that it would bite back in the ass quickly.
Now doomsday cult, like those evangelist and their rapture, that is another story. I would not put past them to "force" the rapture a bit by releasing deadly virus.
But that is beside the fact that the info is available in advanced university biology library.
In 800 million year to 1 billion year the sun luminosity will have increased so much as to make existence of life and even water in liquid form a rarity on earth, baring complete extinction.
As for those purporting we should think about earth extinguishing and prepare the way for a futurama like civilisation : 1) we aren't able to even get agreement on something as simple as CO2 and GCC which is a threat *now* 2) we are still eating oil like tehre is no tomorow. And the way I see it : there won't be, because if we don't find an alternative source like fusion, our age of tech will *end* and there won't be another one *ever* (too much research depend on plentyful energy , so to regain back what we had, would be next to impossible)
For years I have said here on slashdot that the natural hate that most people shows for their governement is stupid. Governement can be elected. Governement can be toppled. Governement can be protested to with varying mixing result (US protest seems to peter out rapidely, try french Manif' that is a bit different). What can you do agaisnt a corporation ? You DO NOT elect them. You CANNOT toopple them. Protest agaisnt them CAN safely be ignored msot of the time.
Western governement aren't half as scarry , and half as restrictive than corportation do. AND more to the point the same corporation now more or less lead governements by the hand by lobbying.
Corporations ARE to me much much more scarrying and restriuctive on speech than all governement. They are doing voluntary with a zeal many in western governement does not have.
Big Brothers will not be a governement, but a serie of corporation linked into a netrworks protecting their itnerrest , and corrupting governements around, trampling the people on the way.
If Iran was killing scientist in israel, it would be called "assassination - state sponsored terrorism". Effectively Israel by killing scientist, no matter what they research *IS* doing state sponsored terrorism, is a rogue state as does the US if it supports this. What goes around....
No it is more like having a camera suspended OVER your neighbor house, then the enighbors downit with a stone throw, and then asking it back, while playing innocent and offering a lot of denial of anything wrong.
At least in my country , and I bet in yours too, the expert PROPOSE solutions which are then filtered through lobbyist and maybe voted on if it advantage local corportations.Proof ? If expert had any say in, the politcs would be devising solutions on global warming. but that is not what happens : the expert are quasi unanimous, and the politics/lobbyist break with all 4. None the less the method I proposed , could also take that into account by allowing expert to present their version of advantage / disadvantages of all methods.
Heck, I researched the IR spectrum of various polluant , absorbance, half life in atmosphere (CH4, CO2, SF6 , etc...) and a model on them. So.... your trolling fall flat on the face.
In our case the commons resource is the amount of oil extracted and spent to generate CO2 in the atmosphere. Since you can bet all you want no nation will back off until they feel bitten in the ass, we are like lemmings deciding that they will not break before jumping off the cliff, if the other don't break either. I am sad for the children born today and tomorrow which will inherit from our gluttony and be left with their eye to cry (in 50, 100, 200 years take your pick).
I think it was even done by ancient greek : democraty by lottery. Any adult at 20 is forced to pass a small test (nothing great, and certainly the test must not be allowed to filter out the population majority, only that you can count, basic litteracy stuff, and mental healthy, aka no life breaking psychose). Once the test is good, you are OK for the next 40 years to be in the lottery (forced in the lottery). Then each 4 or 5 years at election, a college of people is elected at random under hefty surveillance that no cheating happen with sheets of paper thrown at random and taken out for each seats of representative. Then those people are given a 2 or 3 hours refresher on constitutionality of law, the constitution , bill of rights etc... After that they are thrown in to vote for laws. For the next 30 years after their investiture they are looked at by tax, law representative, anti corruption team, whatnot to make sure there is no "gift" coming after their investiture.
There would still be cheating and corruption, but it would be a tad bit more difficult than with the elected pigs aristocraty we have right now.
Another solution would be that laws are not anymore voted by representative, but open for the whole folk to vote for/against electronically.
On this board there are probably more agnostic-atheist or gnostic-atheist than in other board. Go to a family board, or similar NON-tech board, and you will likely see the proportion reversed with touting of christian stuff, condemning non christian to hell, general harranging , "no/yes" to proposal against gay mariage, generic references to leviticus, etc... etc... On slashdot the proportion of atheist is higher so you will see more intolerant atheist (assuming a similar proportion of intolerant people no matter the belief/non belief), but go on other board and the proportion alone will be reversed by the CHEER numbner of christian.
Intentionally isolating each civs so that they can't communicate and knows they are not alone : that would be a proof that if god exists, he is an asshole bastard.
For one some simple tool are difficult, bare impossible to get (fire, simple metal due to corrosion, also problem with vaccuuum techs, pressure problems etc...) so you have to make "jumps" in the technological ladder with respect to land civs, at least compared to our own ladder. Amphibian civs, part water part land : the same tech ladder would then be open during the land dwelling, but then one could argue they are simply land civs using a land tech tree.
kepler 22 is ~600 LY away. At the best case even if we were sending a message today , they would not receive is at roughly christmas 2611 and even at average 20% c speed their ship would not be there before many millennium, to find either a highly advanced civilization, or barbarian from a fallen society. How would they *divine* that it was sent by our military ? Would they even *CARE* that some folk military 600 LY away has their panty in a knot ? And we are not even sending a message, as far as I can read we are only checking.
Anyway the article make it clear that space command seems to be more interested into mundane stuff.
Slashdot Mirror
I have been in many election in france with even *bigger* number of voters. And we had all vote counted in 30-40 minutes. Why ? Because they simply knew participation and numbers, and then simply asked for volunteer to stay longer and help the democratic process. Then they gave ~70-80 stapple of paper vote to a table of 4 volunteer. 2 to count, to to observe, then reverse. There were about 8 table at last election, then those who finish counting earlier get another staples. That is also why big circumscription also do get to vote in big meeting room or similar big room. It is not to give voter privacy, but because once the vote is finished by whatever hour/time they will put a lot of table for the volunteer to count. I have participated in a lot of such a count. It works well and is quick. By the way once they have enough volunteer additional persons are welcome to stay and look as long as they do not disturb the counter..
I have to wonder how it comes you could not come up with such a solution to ask for unpaid volunteer among voters, and would rather rely on a few persons counting.
I mean, look , torture was refined and intel gotten in the middle age, they even had a lot of forged instrument SPECIFICALLY for torture, and a whole book as "how to torture for dummy". And they found witch aplenty. That alone should tell you a LOT about torture. I assume you might be american and holding tightly onto the impression that torture is Ok in some case, otherwise you would have to admit that your country is indeed as bad as some of the less enlightened one.
host file : facebook.com 127.0.0.1 etc...
1) the less experienced pilot was left on the stick while 1 pilot stayed there and the most experienced left for a pause.
2) once the indicator showed the wrong speed, the less experienced pilot started to climb up and regain altitude
3) this triggered stall warning to which the less experienced pilote answered by pulling the stick instead of pushing. THAT alone was the first terrible error. Most category of stall except rare one impossible with big airliner have you PUSH the stick to gain speed.
5) the other pilot tried small course correction unaware the less experienced on was still pulling the stick.
6) the "middle experienced" pilot to the less experienced one to leave the stick to him, but he apparently did not
7) when the most experienced came back in the cabine a few dozens of second before the crash it was already too late.
The whole story scream of pilot error on the side of the less experienced one. Sure the pitot failed, but pulling a stick to a stall warning ? No way.
Most of the replacement is in part of the cell going out and in, not a total cell replacement, occuring only after cell death which happens much more rarely in the brain than in the rest of the body. So whereas it is true that our "molecules/atoms" are getting shifted around while the cells live, it is a fallacy to generalize that and say our cell in our brain are so much getting replaced that we are only a patern.
You are not a self "propagating patern", what the heck is that anyway ? Made up definition day ? The brain as we understand it is a serie of cell , neurone , interconnected in a vast network. Each neurone has its own potential, triggering, connection to many other neighbor neurons. Learning change those connection and potentiel triggering. "you" are not only the set of potential each neuron has, you are a whole , the set of potential at any moment WITH the network connection. You may be changing from day to day, but that change is gradual and not certainly not in neuron replacement.
Now I can imagine giving the argument of replacing neuron by neuron with a silicon equivalent (which is not IMHO "uploading", as uploading would mean you jsut copy the neuron potential patern in a network having the same structure and behavior as the neuron). I think it would work since baring mythic things like "souls", we are just machines, complicated machines with massive parallel circuit and emergent associated property, but just machine. Now the technology to do that is as far away as you can imagine.
"under the French Napoleonic code of justice you are guilty until proven innocent." there is a "presomption of innocence" in the french system, and has been so for a loooong time, maybe 2 century. See article 9-1 of the French penal code. See wiki "Le principe est affirmé par l'article 9 de la Déclaration des droits de l'homme et du citoyen du 26 aoÃt 1789 (auquel fait référence le préambule de la constitution actuelle) :" note the year please. Heck they went as far as in 2000 to change "accusation" to "instruction".
"In the field of education, medicine involving taking in over ten times the number of people you expect to graduate then expelling all but the top tenth in first year exams."
As opposed to what ? taking the right nubmer until the last spot is occupied, and refusing to take the rest ? If you do taht you will have a gaussian of "skills" over your year of people studying medicine. But if you take a whole lot more, but cream up the left side of the gaussian until 95% are thrown out you are left with people with a better results and skills. I will take over a system which search for the top one, over one which value fairness , for medicine, thank you.
"In the field of business, I was surprised at the number of government-owned or government-propped French businesses which have taken over following privatisation in other EU countries."
What's the problem ?
"In the field of justice, the lack of jury availability except in the most severe cases means some absurd rulings from a weak judiciary."
BFD. Weak judgement happens also with jury. It is an other philosophy of justice systems. Important is innocent until proven guilty (presomption d'innocence). The rest is fluff whether you want to better trust a jury or a judge.
Crysis 2 was not as well received on PC than PS3/360, word of mouth got out that it was linear consolised simplified. Consolised : the keyword of death for a FPS. So people did not buy it for PC, and those who downloaded it, may have played with it, but frankly I know of a few person which downloaded it and used it as a sort of "futuremark" benchmark. I know I avoided the game after trying it out from a renting shop.
Moral code and generic observation like the one the GP had or the code as in the bible are older than anything written. For any moral code you can trace in an old text 2000 year back, I can probably come up with an older one 2500, 3500 or even older like sumer / akadian civilization.
Whereever civilisation has sprung up, proverbs and morals code have sprung up.
Natural hybridasation is what we did up to now, mixing plant gene from the same genera, and try to get a betetr crop. In other word selecting plant. But adding a gene from a totally different plant genera, or heck, even a gene from mammals/insect/fish is something altogether else than you cannot get with our traditional plant farming.
So yeah I agree this will not assuage people's fear, but telling this is something natural, is stating that this could happen in nature. Even with virus cross-getting gene, I seriously doubt you would get the same results in natural as presented.
So to summarize : not to be feared -yes- is natural -no-. In addition most of us which look at such seed with warriness , do because of the sheenanigan of monsanto and the potential to have truly monopoly on food source, for the first and third world. No something I would welcome. Now if those GM food was "open", for example reuse seed allowed, that would be altogether remove all my doubt.
There might be minor details, but there is nothing too novel here. Any biologist could go for this with time and money. I think the reason it is not done is probably because there are so few biologist dumb enough to not recognize that it would bite back in the ass quickly.
Now doomsday cult, like those evangelist and their rapture, that is another story. I would not put past them to "force" the rapture a bit by releasing deadly virus.
But that is beside the fact that the info is available in advanced university biology library.
In 800 million year to 1 billion year the sun luminosity will have increased so much as to make existence of life and even water in liquid form a rarity on earth, baring complete extinction.
As for those purporting we should think about earth extinguishing and prepare the way for a futurama like civilisation :
1) we aren't able to even get agreement on something as simple as CO2 and GCC which is a threat *now*
2) we are still eating oil like tehre is no tomorow. And the way I see it : there won't be, because if we don't find an alternative source like fusion, our age of tech will *end* and there won't be another one *ever* (too much research depend on plentyful energy , so to regain back what we had, would be next to impossible)
For years I have said here on slashdot that the natural hate that most people shows for their governement is stupid. Governement can be elected. Governement can be toppled. Governement can be protested to with varying mixing result (US protest seems to peter out rapidely, try french Manif' that is a bit different). What can you do agaisnt a corporation ? You DO NOT elect them. You CANNOT toopple them. Protest agaisnt them CAN safely be ignored msot of the time.
Western governement aren't half as scarry , and half as restrictive than corportation do. AND more to the point the same corporation now more or less lead governements by the hand by lobbying.
Corporations ARE to me much much more scarrying and restriuctive on speech than all governement. They are doing voluntary with a zeal many in western governement does not have.
Big Brothers will not be a governement, but a serie of corporation linked into a netrworks protecting their itnerrest , and corrupting governements around, trampling the people on the way.
If Iran was killing scientist in israel, it would be called "assassination - state sponsored terrorism". Effectively Israel by killing scientist, no matter what they research *IS* doing state sponsored terrorism, is a rogue state as does the US if it supports this. What goes around....
No it is more like having a camera suspended OVER your neighbor house, then the enighbors downit with a stone throw, and then asking it back, while playing innocent and offering a lot of denial of anything wrong.
At least in my country , and I bet in yours too, the expert PROPOSE solutions which are then filtered through lobbyist and maybe voted on if it advantage local corportations.Proof ? If expert had any say in, the politcs would be devising solutions on global warming. but that is not what happens : the expert are quasi unanimous, and the politics/lobbyist break with all 4. None the less the method I proposed , could also take that into account by allowing expert to present their version of advantage / disadvantages of all methods.
Heck, I researched the IR spectrum of various polluant , absorbance, half life in atmosphere (CH4, CO2, SF6 , etc...) and a model on them. So.... your trolling fall flat on the face.
Might be due to the lack of street though...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons
In our case the commons resource is the amount of oil extracted and spent to generate CO2 in the atmosphere. Since you can bet all you want no nation will back off until they feel bitten in the ass, we are like lemmings deciding that they will not break before jumping off the cliff, if the other don't break either. I am sad for the children born today and tomorrow which will inherit from our gluttony and be left with their eye to cry (in 50, 100, 200 years take your pick).
I think it was even done by ancient greek : democraty by lottery. Any adult at 20 is forced to pass a small test (nothing great, and certainly the test must not be allowed to filter out the population majority, only that you can count, basic litteracy stuff, and mental healthy, aka no life breaking psychose). Once the test is good, you are OK for the next 40 years to be in the lottery (forced in the lottery). Then each 4 or 5 years at election, a college of people is elected at random under hefty surveillance that no cheating happen with sheets of paper thrown at random and taken out for each seats of representative. Then those people are given a 2 or 3 hours refresher on constitutionality of law, the constitution , bill of rights etc... After that they are thrown in to vote for laws. For the next 30 years after their investiture they are looked at by tax, law representative, anti corruption team, whatnot to make sure there is no "gift" coming after their investiture.
There would still be cheating and corruption, but it would be a tad bit more difficult than with the elected pigs aristocraty we have right now.
Another solution would be that laws are not anymore voted by representative, but open for the whole folk to vote for/against electronically.
On this board there are probably more agnostic-atheist or gnostic-atheist than in other board. Go to a family board, or similar NON-tech board, and you will likely see the proportion reversed with touting of christian stuff, condemning non christian to hell, general harranging , "no/yes" to proposal against gay mariage, generic references to leviticus, etc... etc... On slashdot the proportion of atheist is higher so you will see more intolerant atheist (assuming a similar proportion of intolerant people no matter the belief/non belief), but go on other board and the proportion alone will be reversed by the CHEER numbner of christian.
Or even call it saturnalia.
Intentionally isolating each civs so that they can't communicate and knows they are not alone : that would be a proof that if god exists, he is an asshole bastard.
For one some simple tool are difficult, bare impossible to get (fire, simple metal due to corrosion, also problem with vaccuuum techs, pressure problems etc...) so you have to make "jumps" in the technological ladder with respect to land civs, at least compared to our own ladder. Amphibian civs, part water part land : the same tech ladder would then be open during the land dwelling, but then one could argue they are simply land civs using a land tech tree.
kepler 22 is ~600 LY away. At the best case even if we were sending a message today , they would not receive is at roughly christmas 2611 and even at average 20% c speed their ship would not be there before many millennium, to find either a highly advanced civilization, or barbarian from a fallen society. How would they *divine* that it was sent by our military ? Would they even *CARE* that some folk military 600 LY away has their panty in a knot ? And we are not even sending a message, as far as I can read we are only checking.
Anyway the article make it clear that space command seems to be more interested into mundane stuff.