This Constitution... shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.
The argument from personal incredulity, also known as argument from personal belief or argument from personal conviction, refers to an assertion that because one personally finds a premise unlikely or unbelievable, the premise can be assumed not to be true, or alternately that another preferred but unproven premise is true instead.
A long time ago, I read about a helpful analogy: imagine drawing several dots on a balloon, then inflating it. The two-dimensional surface of the balloon represents the universe, with the dots representing galaxies (or other structures). Considering only distance along the two-dimensional surface of the balloon, which dot is closest to the center? How would you even define the center? Extend that to three dimensions, and you might have an idea why the question itself, regarding the "center", is meaningless.
Your blind amalgamation of religion and science is quite disturbing. Especialy when you consider that the basis of modern religion is found in the cloistered theologians, primarily monks and clergymen, who were seeking to better understand the mind of god, and the eventual date of judgment day. I mean, if one truly wishes to be wise, how can they close their eyes to what science has discovered, and force themselves not to try to understand it. Of course I also feel that science doesn't require faith, God requires having faith. Science doesn't require anything of us, except for us to be what we are. After all, that's how we found it.
Do you realize that smoke detectors contain americium-241, which is radioactive? I doubt the minute radioactivity in the kit would have been more dangerous than, say, a dental X-ray. While some other toys on the list were genuine death (or finger-)traps, I think the inclusion of the inclusion of kit on the list is merely a result of confused paranoia.
BSD has its quirks too. I think what the OP meant was that the configuration file locations weren't _familiar_. If he's used to Linux, then BSD will be just as alien.
All your points will apply to any modern operating system, not just Apples. Computers have a certain unavoidable complexity, and if you don't bother to learn how they work, they won't.
If you don't like OS X, why not install Linux on that machine? Then at least your configuration files will be where you expect them.
Without a clear line being drawn, I guarantee you that some parts of the world will do whatever is possible
I agree, but without the "without a clear line being drawn" tacked in front. Look at history; as soon as we have the knowledge of how to do something, someone, somewhere does it. The best our morals can do is delay a technology's introduction somewhat. We have to come to terms with what science allows happening somewhere. There's no stopping the rising tide of scientific progress, and to think that making something taboo will stop it from happening is folly.
You're absolutely right. I read Guns, Germs and Steel. The poster had a line of reasoning that was also based on geography, but not having remembered seeing that point in Diamond's book, I asked for additional sources. Thanks for letting me know that the GPP's idea has been long discredited.
This guy's views on the energy problem resonate strongly with my own. and I recommend that everyone take a look.
For convenience (and posterity) I've copied the article below. The emphasis is mine, but please read the whole thing.
Technological sustainability is one of the pressing issues of our time. Should we continue to use our natural resources with wild abandon, or should we try to be more careful with them so we don't lose them?
Since the answer to that question is basically a foregone conclusion when stated that way, how should we be more careful? What's the optimal strategy?
The two basic extremes are:
* Legislate sustainability, right now. The situation is so dire that we must deliberately bend as many resources as possible to the problem.
* Let the market take its course. As resources become rare, the price of that resource will rise, creating economic incentive to create alternatives. Eventually the Invisible Hand will sort things out.
My own thoughts on the subject are probably extreme enough in their own ways to guarantee that nearly everybody will find something to object to, but I think if you think about them they start to make more sense then most of what constitutes "debate" on this topic today.
First, there is much truth on both sides. Running out of resources is an issue, the more so because there are some resources for which a suitable replacement may never truly exist. (Petrochemicals come to mind as the big one here. Helium, oddly enough, is another, and it's even more fundamental then petrochemicals because it's actually an element and therefore can't be replenished with anything less then large-scale fusion (which may never happen) or cheap and easy space travel (ditto).)
On the other hand, the "Big Resource Crisis" that wacko environmentalists secretly (or not-so-secretly) hope will "teach us a lesson" is never going to happen because there are effectively no resources that have a big step function in them. There will never be a day where we wake up and the top news story of the day will be "There Is No More Oil". Instead, as the argument says, the price of resources will indeed increase over time, and we will seek out alternatives, possibly including simply going without (with all the attendant misery and death that statement euphemistically obscures).
How to harmonize these two points of view? The easiest way to think of it is with an overarching metaphor. (Yes, I've often spoken out against using metaphors, but this is the good kind: I use it to communicate an idea, not to reason with.)
Basically, we are in a race. In lane one, we have ever-increasing technological efficiency, and as we learn more we can more effectively place the upper bounds on how far that technology can go. The bad news is that a lot of science fiction is looking impossible: No teleportation, no faster-then-light travel, no magic propulsion. The good news is that the upper limits of nanotechnology are most likely higher then any 1960's science fiction author would have dared write about. I'd summarize it as "the ultimate limitation of technology's ability to manipulate matter will be limited solely by the minimum chemical energy required to do the manipulations". If our technology reaches its endgame, constructing petrochemicals will mostly be a matter of sticking in the right chemicals on one end, and applying the proper energy. (Of course, it's more likely that you will just go straight to the final product like plastic.)
In the other lane, we have ever-depleting supplies of resources that are currently unreplaceable, and without which we can not power the society we need to reach this technology level. If we run out of resources first, we lose.
Literally, the fate of the planet is at stake. Some people like to say that an entire other technological civilization like ours could have existed in the distan
Do you have any more academic sources for that point of view? That's a very Jared-Diamond-esque way of looking at how geography influences behavior, but neither JD nor anyone else I've read has explicitly tied democracy to a harsh climate (though it makes senes on the gut feeling level.)
Why would some of the world's first (sort-of) democratic societies, ancient Greece and the Roman Republic, have evolved in these "southern" countries?
Memory on a unix system is roughly divided into three types:
#1 comes from direct application memory allocation, basically. It consists of buffers programs use to store images, web pages, sound buffers, or whatever
#2 is what the kernel uses to cache information from disk so that if something asks for that same bit of information again, the kernel can get it from the #2 memory area instead of having to go to the (much slower) disk
#3 is memory that hasn't been used for either purpose
When a program needs more memory for its own needs, the kernel will discard the least recently used bit of #2 and give that to the application instead, automatically. But if the system can hang on to memory in #2 while still giving #1 everything it needs, it'll do that. Why discard perfectly good data already read from a slow disk?
From the kernel's point of view, Firefox does two things: It - Allocates application memory, type #1 - Reads from the disk. The kernel caches this information in #2 (unless it needs that memory to satisfy #1)
When you quit firefox, the kernel releases all the memory from #1, but it hangs on to the cached data in #2. Why would it get rid of it? If you restart firefox, it'll read from the buffers in #2 instead of from the disk again. And if you don't restart firefox and instead use a different program, the cached firefox data will eventually get discarded from #2 as the kernel needs memory for more recent cached files, and for allocation for memory #1.
The point is that the free memory your process viewer is reporting is #3. Generally, the more of that you have, the worse off you are, because that's memory sitting idle and not helping you do anything at all. If you're not using that memory anyway, it might as well be full of cached data from the disk.
So, if you have any memory in #3 before you start Firefox, and Firefox reads something from disk that's not already in #3, it'll end up in #2 when you quit, so you perceive a decrease in "free" memory. Of course, that's "recovered" when you reboot the system, since you start with a blank slate.
For a moment, ignore the WMDs, Bush and Iraq. The current leaders of this nation have recklessly ignored the long-term viability of this country for immediate political gain. The deficit? Katrina? The dysfunction of congress? Others have given more examples. The people in office are bad people. They deserve to lose their offices. Although they have usurped the GOP, and although they call themselves conservatives, these bad people do not subscribe to any political philosophy except greed. True conservatives are as appaled by the government's misdeeds as we liberals are, and should vote accordingly. Conservatives and liberals alike believe in a government for the people, which this government demonstratably is not.
Agreed, but we shouldn't throw out the idea of tax breaks simply because a few people abuse them. Corrupt will always find a way to manifest itself; if not this way, then some other.
For those who want to make money their goal, the way is there for them to acheive it. And there is nothing wrong with that.
No, there is nothing wrong with that per se --- but there is a correlation between inequality of wealth and inequality of social justice. In history, societies with the greatest wealth disparities have always been the least healthy, least honest, least desirable. Wealth begets more wealth, which begets power, and with the rich being disconnected from the body politic as the rich, that wealth leads to misery for most.
The failing of the communist ideology was that it tried to enforce a strict, rigid equality. Of course, that strategy was doomed to failure. There must be a certain extent of inequality in society to motivate those on the lower end to apply themselves and move to the upper end. Absolute equality only teaches that effort and talent are worthless.
That does not imply, however, that absolute inequality is desirable. The purpose of wealth is to motivate. What motivation, besides greed, is there to earn more than a million dollars per year? How will that sum improve one's quality of life? Is the tiny incremental improvement worth the harm to society that wealth inequality brings?
Although, in retrospect, a 100% income tax beyond a certain point is unfair, extreme accumulation of wealth costs society a great deal in inefficiency, and so should be paid for with a high premium. Even with a high income tax, there will always be the fabulously wealthy --- but at least they will be paying for the harm that wealth has caused.
A high income tax does not lead to an increase in government spending; with the rich paying their share, taxes can be lowered or eliminated for the bottom rungs of society, and that, sir, is what will fuel economic growth in the long term.
What's wrong with using taxes to push an agenda? Tex breaks can be used to promote certain activities that we want people to perform without either passing laws to REQUIRE them to do so. Tax breaks provide flexible incentives, and we should retain the ability to provide them. Tax breaks can be given for fuel efficient cars, recycling, opening up business in a depressed area of city (we have these in Buffalo) and so on. What's so wrong with this setup?
Why the magic 30% mark? Would Bill Gates' quality of life be reduced any if he had to pay 75%, or even 90%, of his annual income in income tax? Progressive taxation should increase asymptotically all the way to 100%.
For a society, wealth equality is a GOOD thing. It promotes egalitarian behavior, discourages the kind of blatant anti-middle-class power grabbing we're seeing today, and decreases the creation of aristocratic social classes.
A progressive income tax equalizes income while still providing the incentive to work harder that capitalism requires to work. There are just diminishing returns in earning insane amounts of money, which helps distribute wealth more evenly. Is Joe CEO really worth 100 million times more, as a person, than Bob Programmer?
My software engineering professor uses the ipod as a prominent example of extremely bad design dominating the market. I'm not sure that I agree, but the ipod's success has a lot less to do with usability than with marketing.
The plural of 'virus' is 'viruses'. 'virus' is a neuter noun, so its plural is 'vira', not 'viri'. Besides, 'viri' is already taken. It's the plural of 'man', 'vir'.
That uses very high-voltage DC current with no intermediate taps in the line. A trunk that serviced many cities along the way would have higher loss. It's still impressive that they were able to reduce transmission loss to 3%, though.
Slashdot Mirror
"So" is not a synonym of "very".
With apologies to Charles Baggage, I can't rightly apprehend the confusion of ideas that could provoke such a thought.
From The Constitution itself:
A long time ago, I read about a helpful analogy: imagine drawing several dots on a balloon, then inflating it. The two-dimensional surface of the balloon represents the universe, with the dots representing galaxies (or other structures). Considering only distance along the two-dimensional surface of the balloon, which dot is closest to the center? How would you even define the center? Extend that to three dimensions, and you might have an idea why the question itself, regarding the "center", is meaningless.
Your blind amalgamation of religion and science is quite disturbing. Especialy when you consider that the basis of modern religion is found in the cloistered theologians, primarily monks and clergymen, who were seeking to better understand the mind of god, and the eventual date of judgment day. I mean, if one truly wishes to be wise, how can they close their eyes to what science has discovered, and force themselves not to try to understand it. Of course I also feel that science doesn't require faith, God requires having faith. Science doesn't require anything of us, except for us to be what we are. After all, that's how we found it.
Do you realize that smoke detectors contain americium-241, which is radioactive? I doubt the minute radioactivity in the kit would have been more dangerous than, say, a dental X-ray. While some other toys on the list were genuine death (or finger-)traps, I think the inclusion of the inclusion of kit on the list is merely a result of confused paranoia.
BSD has its quirks too. I think what the OP meant was that the configuration file locations weren't _familiar_. If he's used to Linux, then BSD will be just as alien.
All your points will apply to any modern operating system, not just Apples. Computers have a certain unavoidable complexity, and if you don't bother to learn how they work, they won't.
If you don't like OS X, why not install Linux on that machine? Then at least your configuration files will be where you expect them.
I agree, but without the "without a clear line being drawn" tacked in front. Look at history; as soon as we have the knowledge of how to do something, someone, somewhere does it. The best our morals can do is delay a technology's introduction somewhat. We have to come to terms with what science allows happening somewhere. There's no stopping the rising tide of scientific progress, and to think that making something taboo will stop it from happening is folly.
No, the fundamental purpose of copyright is to encourage people to create works by providing way to cover the financial cost of those works.
"post's"? It's "posts". Learn some damn English. What unholy purpose does randomly putting an apostrophe in a word serve?
My eyes! The plural of 'virus' is 'viruses'. I can't take anyone who thinks it's 'virii' seriously, sorry.
You're absolutely right. I read Guns, Germs and Steel. The poster had a line of reasoning that was also based on geography, but not having remembered seeing that point in Diamond's book, I asked for additional sources. Thanks for letting me know that the GPP's idea has been long discredited.
For convenience (and posterity) I've copied the article below. The emphasis is mine, but please read the whole thing.
Do you have any more academic sources for that point of view? That's a very Jared-Diamond-esque way of looking at how geography influences behavior, but neither JD nor anyone else I've read has explicitly tied democracy to a harsh climate (though it makes senes on the gut feeling level.)
Why would some of the world's first (sort-of) democratic societies, ancient Greece and the Roman Republic, have evolved in these "southern" countries?
Thanks.
Sorry, but you've got it wrong:
Memory on a unix system is roughly divided into three types:
#1 comes from direct application memory allocation, basically. It consists of buffers programs use to store images, web pages, sound buffers, or whatever
#2 is what the kernel uses to cache information from disk so that if something asks for that same bit of information again, the kernel can get it from the #2 memory area instead of having to go to the (much slower) disk
#3 is memory that hasn't been used for either purpose
When a program needs more memory for its own needs, the kernel will discard the least recently used bit of #2 and give that to the application instead, automatically. But if the system can hang on to memory in #2 while still giving #1 everything it needs, it'll do that. Why discard perfectly good data already read from a slow disk?
From the kernel's point of view, Firefox does two things: It
- Allocates application memory, type #1
- Reads from the disk. The kernel caches this information in #2 (unless it needs that memory to satisfy #1)
When you quit firefox, the kernel releases all the memory from #1, but it hangs on to the cached data in #2. Why would it get rid of it? If you restart firefox, it'll read from the buffers in #2 instead of from the disk again. And if you don't restart firefox and instead use a different program, the cached firefox data will eventually get discarded from #2 as the kernel needs memory for more recent cached files, and for allocation for memory #1.
The point is that the free memory your process viewer is reporting is #3. Generally, the more of that you have, the worse off you are, because that's memory sitting idle and not helping you do anything at all. If you're not using that memory anyway, it might as well be full of cached data from the disk.
So, if you have any memory in #3 before you start Firefox, and Firefox reads something from disk that's not already in #3, it'll end up in #2 when you quit, so you perceive a decrease in "free" memory. Of course, that's "recovered" when you reboot the system, since you start with a blank slate.
For a moment, ignore the WMDs, Bush and Iraq. The current leaders of this nation have recklessly ignored the long-term viability of this country for immediate political gain. The deficit? Katrina? The dysfunction of congress? Others have given more examples. The people in office are bad people. They deserve to lose their offices. Although they have usurped the GOP, and although they call themselves conservatives, these bad people do not subscribe to any political philosophy except greed. True conservatives are as appaled by the government's misdeeds as we liberals are, and should vote accordingly. Conservatives and liberals alike believe in a government for the people, which this government demonstratably is not.
Rousseau said "Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains."
Agreed, but we shouldn't throw out the idea of tax breaks simply because a few people abuse them. Corrupt will always find a way to manifest itself; if not this way, then some other.
No, there is nothing wrong with that per se --- but there is a correlation between inequality of wealth and inequality of social justice. In history, societies with the greatest wealth disparities have always been the least healthy, least honest, least desirable. Wealth begets more wealth, which begets power, and with the rich being disconnected from the body politic as the rich, that wealth leads to misery for most.
The failing of the communist ideology was that it tried to enforce a strict, rigid equality. Of course, that strategy was doomed to failure. There must be a certain extent of inequality in society to motivate those on the lower end to apply themselves and move to the upper end. Absolute equality only teaches that effort and talent are worthless.
That does not imply, however, that absolute inequality is desirable. The purpose of wealth is to motivate. What motivation, besides greed, is there to earn more than a million dollars per year? How will that sum improve one's quality of life? Is the tiny incremental improvement worth the harm to society that wealth inequality brings?
Although, in retrospect, a 100% income tax beyond a certain point is unfair, extreme accumulation of wealth costs society a great deal in inefficiency, and so should be paid for with a high premium. Even with a high income tax, there will always be the fabulously wealthy --- but at least they will be paying for the harm that wealth has caused.
A high income tax does not lead to an increase in government spending; with the rich paying their share, taxes can be lowered or eliminated for the bottom rungs of society, and that, sir, is what will fuel economic growth in the long term.
What's wrong with using taxes to push an agenda? Tex breaks can be used to promote certain activities that we want people to perform without either passing laws to REQUIRE them to do so. Tax breaks provide flexible incentives, and we should retain the ability to provide them. Tax breaks can be given for fuel efficient cars, recycling, opening up business in a depressed area of city (we have these in Buffalo) and so on. What's so wrong with this setup?
Why the magic 30% mark? Would Bill Gates' quality of life be reduced any if he had to pay 75%, or even 90%, of his annual income in income tax? Progressive taxation should increase asymptotically all the way to 100%.
For a society, wealth equality is a GOOD thing. It promotes egalitarian behavior, discourages the kind of blatant anti-middle-class power grabbing we're seeing today, and decreases the creation of aristocratic social classes.
A progressive income tax equalizes income while still providing the incentive to work harder that capitalism requires to work. There are just diminishing returns in earning insane amounts of money, which helps distribute wealth more evenly. Is Joe CEO really worth 100 million times more, as a person, than Bob Programmer?
My software engineering professor uses the ipod as a prominent example of extremely bad design dominating the market. I'm not sure that I agree, but the ipod's success has a lot less to do with usability than with marketing.
The plural of 'virus' is 'viruses'. 'virus' is a neuter noun, so its plural is 'vira', not 'viri'. Besides, 'viri' is already taken. It's the plural of 'man', 'vir'.
That uses very high-voltage DC current with no intermediate taps in the line. A trunk that serviced many cities along the way would have higher loss. It's still impressive that they were able to reduce transmission loss to 3%, though.