"Suppose I hop into my car knowing full well that the brakes are in dangerously poor condition. And sure enough, they fail as I'm driving, and I slide into a schoolbus and kill the entire load of children."
A better example would be: I'm a first time car owner, aged 16. I bought a new car 1 year ago and have never had any problems and therefore no maintenance. the brakes "fail as I'm driving, and I slide into a schoolbus and kill the entire load of children." Would this be a better comparison, leading to different conclusions?
" How is hardware not currently open?" Trade secret protection?
I wonder if "open hardware" would tend to make existing technology better, because it is easy for an individual to conceive of improvements, but tend to limit true innovation. Why is it worth my effort to spend two years (or 2 days, or 2 decades) developing new ideas if the person who is able to design the most efficient manufacturing and marketing plans is the one to see all the profit?
Yes, I know that many innovations are the result of something other than greed, but it seems most are not....
my friend insisted that a liberal arts degree was just as good as a science degree - "maybe even better." The liberal arts degree required 2 years of a foreign language - "because knowing only one language limits your ability to integrate ideas." Doesn't C count? I know VB doesn't - it's a dead language, like greek, right? Oh, and she didn't know integration was mathematical. Liberal arts is better?!?! how about different.
If we want to understand each other, we need to know something about each others roots. I'll be better able to understand the liberal arts people if I know something about their fascination of whatever their art is. They will be better able to understand me if they have some clue about why I think the way I do. Everyone should have a well rounded education.
"I believe the current thinking [bagheera.com] is that mammoths were hunted to extinction by men."
Current thinking is not limited to the kill theory, which IMO seems unlikely. We must not overlook the reasons that human arrival coincides with the mammoth extinction. That reason was dramatic climatic change. Any animal with the size of a mammoth would, by default, be a bulk homeotherm - meaning that besides internal mechanisms to maintain body temperature, they body would remain at or about the same temperature as a function of mass. These mammoths were covered with insulating fur. The biggest problem an elephant has is temperature maintenance, which is evidenced by the very large, thin, thermo-regulating ears. Before we jump on the "Man is evil and kills everything" bandwagon, consider that some animals were facing severe pressures when "we" arrived. (called the "chill theory.")
Have you ever looked at some of the animations of people "killing" a mammoth? I doubt it would be anywhere close to as easy as the Discovery Channel makes it look. Have you ever seen that video of the elephant that went crazy in Hawaii? It took out lots of people, doors, fences and took many shots from police shotguns to subdue it. It was not even a "big" elephant. While I believe humans could have killed mammoths, I doubt they were populace enough to whipe them all out. We're not talking about plains Indians on horseback, but foot sore, starving travelers that entered a totally foreign land. In time they would have developed specific skills, but with the warming of the earth, the mammoths would have already been quite stressed.
If the sabre-toothed cat hunted mammoths (I doubt it) then that would nicely explain their demise.
In the end, all I am trying to impart is that I cannot believe the extinction of the mammoth is explained by an arguement as simplistic as "mammoths were hunted to extinction by men." There is no doubt that people have killed entire species, but we cannot say that for certain in this case.
"At the heart of the space elevator is a ribbon that stretches some 62,000 miles (100,000 kilometers) from Earth to space.
That seems like a lot more than "22,000 miles of cable tumbling out of space"
which makes your point more frightening. Though, I believe the centrifugal force will keep the string pointing out, not crashing down. So, if the wire breaks, does the climber just rocket out to space? If so, then, does it really need to be that high to accomplish the goals?
"Rather than see Universities taking grants from businesses in exchange for access to and control over the scientific process, I'd much rather see businesses pay a 'R&D' tax to the government which was in turn used to fund science programs at universities. [...] It would go a long way towards making the process less compromised and more trustworthy."
The problems with this that I see are
that governments and governmental funding move much too slowly,
to whom do those making grant allocations report, and
what is to keep business from influencing the government decisions in the same manner as they have influenced trade policy in steel or privacy policies in the case of the RIAA?
Don't get me wrong, I agree that there are problems with the science community as it is and your solution seems good, but is it really any better? I can think of several discoveries that were made a result of purely acedemic interest, but I can also think of discoveries that would have been made much much later were it not for financial interest. If you mean that companies could "donate" a R&D tax for a particular project to be funded by the government, then maybe we're headed into the planned society sphere, which is a little scarey, to me. very mixed bag....
not breeding - didn't they find some hair samples in a cave in southern argentina? I popped over to the discovery channel website and noted this small tidbit indicating that dna has been recovered -- but naturally, there are skeptics.
For more info on that tasmanian wolf, take a look at Thylacine info here.
To carry that one step further, I'd like to point out that Brontosaurus is an incorrect name, popularized in the 50s and 60 by television. The correct name for the dinosaur typically called brontosaurus is Apatasaurus. as for cloning smilodon, there is work in progress by a group, perhaps south american? that thinks they may be somewhat close.
If your son has $600 and wants a tricked out car with a $28,000 price tag, and cocaine has a street value of $100/gram and wholesale of 220 for an 8-ball, how many kilos will he have to turn to get his car by the time he turns 16?
"So, either the government keeps its hands off industry entirely, or it should plays fair and impartially. " do we release this as open-source, or do we keep it strictly for internal (i.e., governmental) use only?"
It seems to me that virtually all problems with governments in general stem from either an inability or unwillingness to assume responsibility for what it does. Is this any different?
my Apex AD-1600 ($55.19 before tax at Ultimate Electronics on Friday August 16) will even play raw.wma files. Why I would ever be burning MS wma files to disc cannot be reasonably answered in a _public_ forum, but the Apex really plays anything you throw at it. I also have an old AD-1200 which I "upgraded" to turn off the macrovision - though I've never used it other than to test that it worked.:)
thank you. And, i would like to add, there is more than that: as with the union job, there is actually a disincentive to be too good and a likelyhood that the worker loses sight of the job for which they are hired in the chase for mediocrity and not causing waves. if you currently have a quota of 5 and you always meet your quota, then the quota may be raised to six. You can't argue that 5 is too many because then you appear inept, but don't want to say 5 is too few, because then you don't have time to be thorough. If you weed out the slow workers so that the quota is raised to 6 (which is what you are pressured to do), in that week that you get the toughie, you work through it, then blindly stamp 5 more to keep your job. If you get the quota lowered, everyone thinks they'll be targeted as rushing if they do more. If workers were hired to do a good job and paid based on their expertise and performance, rather than their tenure or ability to meet quotas, then good people would want the jobs and do good work!
A quota system means they report and are rewarded by a formula (quota system) so they no longer report to the people they serve. Ideally, patents reward invention by protecting inventors, but rubber stamp quota-chasing rewards patent filers and hurts inventors; making it wasteful to spend time innovating and inventing, which causes everyone to lose out on what might have been.
iI uspo a union shop? If so, it would explain quite a lot. Oh, I didn't mean union, I meant government job. Oh wait, government agencies work for us, not simply to fill quotas. I think I'm lost, but you get the point, don't you?
My question exactly. It's one thing for the mind to interpret what it expects, but an entirely different thing to experience for the very first time. I'd be very interested to see the output stream of the person who was born blind.
I'd mod you up if I could. This is the first and best intersting comment/question I've seen in the discussion.
Slashdot Mirror
A better example would be: I'm a first time car owner, aged 16. I bought a new car 1 year ago and have never had any problems and therefore no maintenance. the brakes "fail as I'm driving, and I slide into a schoolbus and kill the entire load of children." Would this be a better comparison, leading to different conclusions?
do not visit code.shatai.org
Why did it take 5 years to get the domain name back?
It seems that if he had pursued the return of the domain early, that there would not have been 5 years to run up $65million in lost revenues.
How is this verisign's problem? Forged documents - One letter, return of domain name. I just don't understand.
Did Verisign refuse to return the name registration??
perhaps so, but I notice you cannot refute any of the material points made....
Couldn't we also discover clues about the needs it had that led to its extinction? This might give insight into what our own weaknesses are.
" How is hardware not currently open?"
Trade secret protection?
I wonder if "open hardware" would tend to make existing technology better, because it is easy for an individual to conceive of improvements, but tend to limit true innovation. Why is it worth my effort to spend two years (or 2 days, or 2 decades) developing new ideas if the person who is able to design the most efficient manufacturing and marketing plans is the one to see all the profit?
Yes, I know that many innovations are the result of something other than greed, but it seems most are not....
my friend insisted that a liberal arts degree was just as good as a science degree - "maybe even better." The liberal arts degree required 2 years of a foreign language - "because knowing only one language limits your ability to integrate ideas." Doesn't C count? I know VB doesn't - it's a dead language, like greek, right? Oh, and she didn't know integration was mathematical. Liberal arts is better?!?! how about different.
If we want to understand each other, we need to know something about each others roots. I'll be better able to understand the liberal arts people if I know something about their fascination of whatever their art is. They will be better able to understand me if they have some clue about why I think the way I do. Everyone should have a well rounded education.
"I believe the current thinking [bagheera.com] is that mammoths were hunted to extinction by men."
Current thinking is not limited to the kill theory, which IMO seems unlikely. We must not overlook the reasons that human arrival coincides with the mammoth extinction. That reason was dramatic climatic change.
Any animal with the size of a mammoth would, by default, be a bulk homeotherm - meaning that besides internal mechanisms to maintain body temperature, they body would remain at or about the same temperature as a function of mass. These mammoths were covered with insulating fur. The biggest problem an elephant has is temperature maintenance, which is evidenced by the very large, thin, thermo-regulating ears. Before we jump on the "Man is evil and kills everything" bandwagon, consider that some animals were facing severe pressures when "we" arrived. (called the "chill theory.")
Have you ever looked at some of the animations of people "killing" a mammoth? I doubt it would be anywhere close to as easy as the Discovery Channel makes it look. Have you ever seen that video of the elephant that went crazy in Hawaii? It took out lots of people, doors, fences and took many shots from police shotguns to subdue it. It was not even a "big" elephant. While I believe humans could have killed mammoths, I doubt they were populace enough to whipe them all out. We're not talking about plains Indians on horseback, but foot sore, starving travelers that entered a totally foreign land. In time they would have developed specific skills, but with the warming of the earth, the mammoths would have already been quite stressed.
If the sabre-toothed cat hunted mammoths (I doubt it) then that would nicely explain their demise.
In the end, all I am trying to impart is that I cannot believe the extinction of the mammoth is explained by an arguement as simplistic as "mammoths were hunted to extinction by men." There is no doubt that people have killed entire species, but we cannot say that for certain in this case.
"At the heart of the space elevator is a ribbon that stretches some 62,000 miles (100,000 kilometers) from Earth to space.
That seems like a lot more than "22,000 miles of cable tumbling out of space"
which makes your point more frightening. Though, I believe the centrifugal force will keep the string pointing out, not crashing down. So, if the wire breaks, does the climber just rocket out to space? If so, then, does it really need to be that high to accomplish the goals?
The problems with this that I see are
- that governments and governmental funding move much too slowly,
- to whom do those making grant allocations report, and
- what is to keep business from influencing the government decisions in the same manner as they have influenced trade policy in steel or privacy policies in the case of the RIAA?
Don't get me wrong, I agree that there are problems with the science community as it is and your solution seems good, but is it really any better? I can think of several discoveries that were made a result of purely acedemic interest, but I can also think of discoveries that would have been made much much later were it not for financial interest.If you mean that companies could "donate" a R&D tax for a particular project to be funded by the government, then maybe we're headed into the planned society sphere, which is a little scarey, to me.
very mixed bag....
"Perhaps we should save the animals we have?
While I think cloning is a cool idea, I ask myself this question all the time.
not breeding - didn't they find some hair samples in a cave in southern argentina? I popped over to the discovery channel website and noted this small tidbit indicating that dna has been recovered -- but naturally, there are skeptics.
For more info on that tasmanian wolf, take a look at Thylacine info here.
To carry that one step further, I'd like to point out that Brontosaurus is an incorrect name, popularized in the 50s and 60 by television. The correct name for the dinosaur typically called brontosaurus is Apatasaurus.
as for cloning smilodon, there is work in progress by a group, perhaps south american? that thinks they may be somewhat close.
If your son has $600 and wants a tricked out car with a $28,000 price tag, and cocaine has a street value of $100/gram and wholesale of 220 for an 8-ball, how many kilos will he have to turn to get his car by the time he turns 16?
"angry, upset, nervous or paranoid... [equals] ...the rent-a-cops!"
"So, either the government keeps its hands off industry entirely, or it should plays fair and impartially.
" do we release this as open-source, or do we keep it strictly for internal (i.e., governmental) use only?"
It seems to me that virtually all problems with governments in general stem from either an inability or unwillingness to assume responsibility for what it does. Is this any different?
agreead - they should also spend more on local government!
try vcdhelp.com
my Apex AD-1600 ($55.19 before tax at Ultimate Electronics on Friday August 16) will even play raw .wma files. Why I would ever be burning MS wma files to disc cannot be reasonably answered in a _public_ forum, but the Apex really plays anything you throw at it. I also have an old AD-1200 which I "upgraded" to turn off the macrovision - though I've never used it other than to test that it worked. :)
any landing from which you walk away on your own power is a successful landing!
what happened to supervisors who supervise?
thank you. And, i would like to add, there is more than that: as with the union job, there is actually a disincentive to be too good and a likelyhood that the worker loses sight of the job for which they are hired in the chase for mediocrity and not causing waves. if you currently have a quota of 5 and you always meet your quota, then the quota may be raised to six. You can't argue that 5 is too many because then you appear inept, but don't want to say 5 is too few, because then you don't have time to be thorough. If you weed out the slow workers so that the quota is raised to 6 (which is what you are pressured to do), in that week that you get the toughie, you work through it, then blindly stamp 5 more to keep your job. If you get the quota lowered, everyone thinks they'll be targeted as rushing if they do more. If workers were hired to do a good job and paid based on their expertise and performance, rather than their tenure or ability to meet quotas, then good people would want the jobs and do good work! A quota system means they report and are rewarded by a formula (quota system) so they no longer report to the people they serve. Ideally, patents reward invention by protecting inventors, but rubber stamp quota-chasing rewards patent filers and hurts inventors; making it wasteful to spend time innovating and inventing, which causes everyone to lose out on what might have been.
iI uspo a union shop? If so, it would explain quite a lot. Oh, I didn't mean union, I meant government job. Oh wait, government agencies work for us, not simply to fill quotas. I think I'm lost, but you get the point, don't you?
I'd certainly like to know European Patent Examiner John Savage's opinion on this US patent craziness!
My question exactly. It's one thing for the mind to interpret what it expects, but an entirely different thing to experience for the very first time. I'd be very interested to see the output stream of the person who was born blind.
I'd mod you up if I could. This is the first and best intersting comment/question I've seen in the discussion.