"The problem isn't the senators. It's the industries that *own* them"
Cut the oppressed masses bullshit. I bet you aren't even trying. You want an insight? You are a defeatist baby.
Do you know what? There isn't a bill like this that has ever been passed that couldn't have been defeated by each member of congress getting maybe a hundred hand written letters. Not form letters or emails, fricken hand written notes a page and a half a page long. Thats it. Maybe less. People don't know, don't show it or don't care. That's why bills like this get passed.
Just remember, to your local member of the house or senate, 1 handwritten letter equals at least 3,000 votes. People are so apathetic that it's probably about right too. It's even more effective for technical stuff like this because it's off the radar screen. No polls, no nothing. Just public reaction. Most congresspeople would have their minds changed if they were forced to face up to the fact that something as esoteric as this was pissing off so many voters. Even if they aren't just clueless, and are actually in the pockets of their contributors, it has to slide in under the radar if it's something unpopular. YOU JUST DON'T SIT THERE AND LET IT HAPPEN. It doesn't take much to let them know everyone knows what's up. Sadly, not even this happens.
Remember kids, congresspeople want keep their jobs, and all that matters is votes- otherwise why worry about campaign contributions? They get too much static after dealing with taxes, Iraq, entitlement programs, Jack Abramhoff and everything else to loose thousands of votes over a silly DRM bill that only 127 people in the media industry actually want.
Think about it- why are campaign contributions so important? 30 second TV ads. But here's the secret: they aren't really that effective. Not because people are savvy and ultra-informed of course, but because the population that is actually on the fence enough isn't very big. Still, this can often swing a close election. But then again, in that situation a couple thousand mad music lovers can too.
So, in short, anyone who complains about everything being fixed is part of the problem. The same atmosphere of apathy that amplifies the influence of corporate america also amplifies the influence of those who care enough to actually make their voices heard.
So stop your pathetic whining, get out an envelope, a stamp and a piece of paper and write a fricken letter. Try to sound informed, i.e. actually find out the name and number of the bill and have some idea about what's in it. Finally, make it known that you vote and you aren't going to let innovation and creativity be stifled and killed by the rotting dinasour carcass that is the media industry.
Cray already makes systems based on many thousands of opteron processors. You can't beat them for scalar processing power. But what they also make,and still excel at, is specialized vector machines that can work with them. It's two good, but different tools for different jobs. The improvement is to make the two even more integrated and more flexible.
Yeah. Its like saying in the early 40's: we decided to build death camps in Germany, complete with gas chambers and crematoriums, not because we agree with these things but because we want to put the spotlight on this whole terrible death camp thing and make people come to terms with it. Bullshit.
It's a nice fantasy, but what will actually happen is that your kids will grow up to be nice secular europeans just like everyone else, because every day of the lives you force them to lead they will also see the way free people live. It will not be long before they realize which idealogy is really broken.
Debate with kaffirs is meaningless because their concept of a secular society with 'freedom of speech' and such claptrap is abhorrent to Allah. When we Muslims are a demographic majority in Europe (by 2030) we'll see who's boss. We'll whip your half-naked women and faggoty men into shape.
Whatever. If it's so abhorrent why doen't Allah do something about it? Seriously. Just want to throw that out there. I mean, he seems to have stopped doing any favors for you people about 500 years ago. Maybe our civilization is 'inferior', but understand we will always outpace you in terms of technological, cultural and economic growth because your values are not as compatible with these things. You can have your hocus pocus, thank you very much, because the day policies like yours take over the EU is the day it will fall off of the world stage- so if your mission is to give the USA a little less competition, go for it.
You want a clash of civilizations? The United States could wake up tomorrow and kill 800 million Muslims before breakfast, and there is not anything anyone not wanting the same fate could do about it. I therefore suggest you learn how to respect the beliefs of others, because that is one of the values that is keeping you alive right now, one of many that preclude us from wiping you out, even though you do not share them.
..and if you are looking for a day of judgement, just wait until the oil runs out or people stop needing it.
Yes, Virginia, our govenment tortures people. You don't suffocate, or die from blunt force trauma from a frat prank. Many of them are people guilty of nothing besides being in the wrong place.
The administration says it doesn't torture people, but whenever obvious stories of torture turn up it finds some way to make them not stick, either because other countries acually do the torturing (rendition), or the crime is committed by low-level 'problem children' (i.e. they accidentally kill someone while torturing them). Even if none of these apply, the White House thrives on the fuzzyness of the laws concerning torture. Just look how mad they got when John McCain (who got plenty of it in Viet Nam), and others tried to clear the law up. George threatened to veto it. It would have been his first veto EVER.
The administration can use all the legal mumbo-jumbo in the world to dress it up, but the fact of the matter is that the torture would stop tomorrow if George said so. But yet it continues. Even if there is hard, concrete evidence that he broke the law, who's going to impeach him? The republican congress? He might as well be King.
We used to be the good guys. Now we give so much away for a little bit of security- only for the duration of the war, but the war will never end. I hope someday we don't look back and see that a tragedy like 9/11 turned into a Reichstag fire.
As i understand it, this is pretty overrated, since the computer can have only so many quantum bits. Sure, if you had 256 such bits you could try all the possible combinations for keys of that length at once, but you could just make the key longer, say 512, to cope with it. You end up right back where you started with a exponential-time process.
Of course, if someone doesn't KNOW such a computer exists, they might not plan for this. This is the only real advantage, unless maybe someday you have systems with very large numbers of quantum bits and the key lengths required become impractical for encoding/decoding, but all of this seems a long way off. It's hard enough to make ONE quantum bit, so it seems unlikely that there are secret systems already in place with hundreds working together (It's a little more complicated than a flip-flop, after all.)
So it seems that if you have your tinfoil hat and your 1024 bit key length you should still be fine for some time.
The gulibility and/or insincerity of Congress- and Mr. Conyers- on this is pretty alarming (hey kind of like iraq! Close the analog hole John! Your consituents will be greeting you with flowers, thanking you for saving their favorite programs!) At least George Bush is throwing my freedoms in the trash so he can fail to protect me from terrorists. Mr. Conyers & Co. are throwing them in the trash so that ABC can fail to prevent bittorrents of Deperate Housewives.
There is one simple reason why this is a bad idea: this legislation will not prevent a single act of piracy. This whole act is based upon a fantasy that only the media industry, blinded by self-interest, honestly believes. The fact is you won't close the analog hole until the day you DRM light. Any single act of 'astronomically' expensive piracy is not preventable. With millions and millions of people coming to own TVs and computers in the developing world and none of them able to afford a library of $13 cds and $18 dvds, the resources devoted to organized piracy will be enourmous. This legislation will stop 0% of this and these bootlegs will make their way onto the internet all the same.
Even if organized piracy stopped tomorrow, it only takes one person to defeat this silly protection scheme and make the whole thing moot. This will happen regardless of whether there are ludicrous laws that restrict what questions a person can ask or what they are allowed to learn about a product they bought and paid for.
Yes, the recording industry has a right to say how their content is used, and when they start making electronic devices they can make them however they fucking want to. But if the prospect of telling an entire industry how they can and can not design their products doesn't send a chill down Mr. Conyer's spine- products that until now where things that people actually wanted- well then Mr. Conyers you have no respect for free markets.
Mr Conyers needs to know that it isn't the goverment that isn't changing fast enough, it's the media industry. The world that industry grew up in is GONE and taking away American freedoms isn't going to change that. We might as well pass a law to make the earth rotate the other way because Jack Valenti doen't like the way the water swirls when he flushes the toilet.
Not enough people going to movies (for reasons other than them sucking)? Maybe update the technology used to show them- it hasn't changed much in DECADES, even though consumer electronics, which this bill would hobble, are making leaps every single year. Which side would you want making the rules?
The fact of the matter is that, while unstoppable, piracy is usually a little bit inconvenient. Instead of making it more of a hassle for legitimate users, try making it LESS of one. Charge a resonable price too, U2's latest album isn't a priceless work of art for gods sake. If you do this, people will give you their money, and if they don't they probably just don't have any, so stop pretending like it's some big loss. That's really what iTunes did: $.99 & no 2 hour wait on Kazaa => $$$$$.
Anyway, dream on- action like that would cost money- or worse yet, would require an admission that they aren't quite sure what to do in this new era. Better buy another law instead!
Congress is just feeding these people's delusions. They won't change until they absolutely have to. Why haven't they figured this out?
Well anyway, thanks John! I'll make sure I remember this when you've turned my TV into fucking HAL 9000- oh and on election day too.
Turing machines are, with one assumption, identical to computers in the sense of what they are able to solve. Anything solvable by a turning machine can be solved with a conventional computer given sufficient (but not infinite)memory or time. It is critical to note that no program requires truely unlimited memory or time unless it runs forever and therefore produces no result.
If some things cannot be solved before the heat death of the universe, or without rediculous amounts of storage, it has everything to do with the fact that no efficient algorithm exists and nothing to do with some difference between 'computers' and turing machines. You are unlikely to ever produce a machine that is fast enough or contains enough storage to compensate for the lack of a good method, even a quantum computer. An 4.77 mhz XT using a polynomial time algorithm will, given a large enough task, beat the worlds fastest supercomputer if it uses an exponential one. Badly.
That your system of goverment is one of the most corrupt in the world?
Did it ever occur to you how sad it is when an American laughs at you for how little you know about the world?
All governments suffer from corruption. The question is how much. If you just meant the western world, you might have at least been able to make an argument- but come on: South America, Africa, India, Mexico, the Middle East, China, the former Soviet Bloc, and we're STILL near the bottom?
America is light years ahead of the great majority of the planet. Is is perfect? No. Might your country be better? It is possible. But make no mistake, we are still pretty good. Companies or goverments living totally beyond the law is the norm, not the execption, for most people on this planet. Our goverment may seem corrupt when you see so many shenanigans going on in the press, but thats actually a good thing. It's called transparency. You don't see stories like that in undemocratic or deeply corrupted countries, period.
Don't mistake the fact that so many people don't care for them not having the ability to change things. If every member of congress woke up tomorrow to a couple thousand hand-written letters the broadcast flag would die immediately, media companies or not.
I think the PC is safe. It may seem simple to for a console to replace, in the near future, what PCs do today for most people. However I think people will still buy PCs because of their flexibility. Why is this important? Because some of the things that people will choose PCs over consoles for in the future haven't been invented yet.
The PC does not need to wait until Sony or even Microsoft decides what the next big thing is. Remember at the height of the internet boom when so many people were predicting that thin clients would kill the PC? The death of the PC has been predicted many times before- even hoped for by companies wanting to stomp competitors, but it's ability to do the newest stuff first has always been it's edge. The invisible hand of the marketplace can still smack even the biggest companies around given the slightest chance.
Even if consoles catch up in the graphics department, don't think for a second that the PC has run out of tricks. People are fixated on graphics because they have seen such dramatic improvements lately. Eventually these will be less so and something new will take it's place, as is always the case with technology. Physics processing maybe? If I knew for sure I'd be rich, but SOMETHING will be next. And when the next big thing comes out don't doubt where it will be first.
I forgot who exactly it was but there was a guy, I think a doctor, at the mayo clinic who raised his desk up and actually spends most of his day on a treadmill, walking like.6 miles an hour. At that slow speed he could still use his computer and mouse just fine, but that little bit of effort really added up troughout the day health-wise.
Just remember though, at the end of the day, this is just a sterotype. Back to psychology 101 for a moment: there is far more variability within the sexes than between them. Broad statements like this need to be qualified.
For any given male-biased task, you'll always or very nearly always be able to find a woman who's better at the task than any given man. People have to be very careful when they make these kinds of statements. Individuality should matter more than how the 'average' man and woman compare, because at the end of the day, expectations based on gender aren't right much more than they are wrong.
Take EVERYTHING like this with a grain of salt. Our understanding of human inteligence isn't really even in it's infancy. It's only just been conceived.
Just because you don't understand the theory, doesn't mean it isn't true. A nice into to biology class as your local college will answer all of there questions quite well for you. You just have to give it a chance. The fossil records are incomplete, and people are finding new stuff every day. We've probably found only a small part of what is out there so far.
Don't confuse evolution with becoming more human-like. It's all about survivability. Cochroaches, for example, are in some ways much more evolved than us. They preceeded us by millions of years, and if a meteor smacked the planet tomorrow, they might outlive us by millions more.
You don't see the problem in that? You don't see "The theory of gravity is a theory, not a fact" on physics textbooks, do you? Should there be a warning label on my number theory textbook? Why are people so worried if terrorists get a nuclear weapon- atomic theory is just a theory, right?
The labels are wrong because they abuse the word theory. Most non-scientists use the word theory to imply something that hasn't been proven. The word theory as it is used in the scientific community is actually very neutral as to the amount of supporting evidence. Think theory = explaination.
This label misleads people into thinking that there isn't a great deal of scientific evidence that supports evolution, which there is. There is so much in support, and so little against it that saying that evolution is not a fact, without qualification, is out and out deceitful.
Saying that it is possible that evolution is not correct, is a true statement, and if the sticker had said that it would have been at least factually correct, but it didn't. The way it was written was just shameful.
Well, it only takes one delivery car broadsiding someone because the driver was speeding to rack up some serious liability for any company. Great productivity can be erased pretty quick by even one accident. Lawsuits can be just as rediculous as CEO bonuses.
The Economist actually endorsed Kerry, albeit with "a heavy heart". This is not a liberal publication either, folks. It is a conservative publication of the non 'neo' variety, though it is not surprisingly more concerned with the economic, rather than social, side of things. The President got points for his good intentions but in the end they conceded he "has never seemed truely up to the job, let alone his own ambitions for it".
While it is published in England, the largest part of it's readership is American, and based on how they usually go, it was an endorsement Bush should have had in the bag. Most telling, they wrote that their confidence in him had been "shattered". The criticism was almost entirely foreign policy-based. The editors made it clear that a new approach abroad, as well as a greater distance between himself and the extremes of the religious right, were what they required from him to receive their blessing.
Kerry actually got praise for his voting record as a fiscal conservative and free trade advocate, though it wondered if his recent swing towards protectionism was for real or just politics. He is not without a few big spending projects, like health care, but they guess these probably wont get past a Republican congress anyway. No flying colors here but passing marks in the face of four more years of Bush foreign policy.
Well, truth be told, it has been done elsewhere. Putin in Russia seems unlikely to give up power, though he is not in danger of losing any elections. The opposition parties are finding it curiously hard to gain any ground against him. It helps to have all the TV stations on your side. He has a vast majority in their congress and he can legislate more terms for himself as he sees fit.
But we're not Russia. Truth be told, I really think it's just not worth it in a truely robust, though obviously imperfect, democracy like ours. Even if the election goes horribly for the Republicans they'll still hold nearly half the congress and in just four short years they'll get another shot at the White House.
What you are talking about isn't an impossible scenario, given extremly dire circumstances, but it's very difficult to imagine it now. We did have a civil war once upon a time, but we were a different country then, and people's allegences were much more local. I think that anything like that happening now would never work because people, despite their differnces, would rightly see it as an attack on democracy on a very fundamental level. In other places in the world were democracy is a relatively new thing this might not be as huge of a concern. Many peoples have known only periods of disorder and periods of tyrany. Look at Russia or Iraq, many people there still believe that however scary it may seem, one all powerful man may be the only force that can actually keep order. Saddam was a brutal tyrant, but he kept the many fractured, tribal elements in his country from endless bloodshed.
America, fortunately has no such history. We have seen democracy work. We have a peaceful country and we are not concerned about internal strife like this. The Republicans, or the Democrats for that matter, have lost many presidential elections but have always been able to get power back down the road. Our political warfare has so far served both sides relatively well. If Bush loses, a war will certainly begin to restore power, but it will, thankfully, be a peaceful one.
Yes, but it won't happen. After all, it would look very bad for President Bush. I'm sure with the election this close Al Qaida won't chance throwing the election to Kerry.
Re:Corps will continue to rule, people are sheep..
on
Amateur Revolution?
·
· Score: 1
More importantly the corporations find this unsettling and they have the backing to make it financially impossible for the "amateurs" to compete.
Uh yeah, they come down on them so hard they won't be able to... give their products away? These people do this stuff to challenge themselves and have fun and it's only because they sometimes do such a good job that they get paid anything. Jeez, you're such a defeatist. No wonder you people don't get anything done, you just whine about stuff.
Shut up about corporations being so powerful. No death squad is going to come after you. You aren't going to be sent off to a gulag. Shut up and do something about it if it's so bad. Boo-hoo- people don't listen to your goofy-ass views so they must be all sheep. Boo-hoo- someone might send a lawyer at you so they're no point in even trying. Wah wah.
People do care about politics and social entrepreneurship, the problem is too many people just complain and act helpless and cynical instead of doing something. Ever wonder if maybe sheep are secretly filled with feelings of resentment and outrage at the way they are treated. We'd never know it, of course, because they'd still act just like SHEEP. See a parallel?
Slashdot Mirror
"The problem isn't the senators. It's the industries that *own* them"
Cut the oppressed masses bullshit. I bet you aren't even trying. You want an insight? You are a defeatist baby.
Do you know what? There isn't a bill like this that has ever been passed that couldn't have been defeated by each member of congress getting maybe a hundred hand written letters. Not form letters or emails, fricken hand written notes a page and a half a page long. Thats it. Maybe less. People don't know, don't show it or don't care. That's why bills like this get passed.
Just remember, to your local member of the house or senate, 1 handwritten letter equals at least 3,000 votes. People are so apathetic that it's probably about right too. It's even more effective for technical stuff like this because it's off the radar screen. No polls, no nothing. Just public reaction. Most congresspeople would have their minds changed if they were forced to face up to the fact that something as esoteric as this was pissing off so many voters. Even if they aren't just clueless, and are actually in the pockets of their contributors, it has to slide in under the radar if it's something unpopular. YOU JUST DON'T SIT THERE AND LET IT HAPPEN. It doesn't take much to let them know everyone knows what's up. Sadly, not even this happens.
Remember kids, congresspeople want keep their jobs, and all that matters is votes- otherwise why worry about campaign contributions? They get too much static after dealing with taxes, Iraq, entitlement programs, Jack Abramhoff and everything else to loose thousands of votes over a silly DRM bill that only 127 people in the media industry actually want.
Think about it- why are campaign contributions so important? 30 second TV ads. But here's the secret: they aren't really that effective. Not because people are savvy and ultra-informed of course, but because the population that is actually on the fence enough isn't very big. Still, this can often swing a close election. But then again, in that situation a couple thousand mad music lovers can too.
So, in short, anyone who complains about everything being fixed is part of the problem. The same atmosphere of apathy that amplifies the influence of corporate america also amplifies the influence of those who care enough to actually make their voices heard.
So stop your pathetic whining, get out an envelope, a stamp and a piece of paper and write a fricken letter. Try to sound informed, i.e. actually find out the name and number of the bill and have some idea about what's in it. Finally, make it known that you vote and you aren't going to let innovation and creativity be stifled and killed by the rotting dinasour carcass that is the media industry.
Cray already makes systems based on many thousands of opteron processors. You can't beat them for scalar processing power. But what they also make,and still excel at, is specialized vector machines that can work with them. It's two good, but different tools for different jobs. The improvement is to make the two even more integrated and more flexible.
Other people need to take more responsibility for their actions.
Thanks,
-The Republican Party
his "friend" pimped a gay sex ring right out of the Senator's apartment...
Maybe he was just trying to get a White House press pass.
Yeah. Its like saying in the early 40's: we decided to build death camps in Germany, complete with gas chambers and crematoriums, not because we agree with these things but because we want to put the spotlight on this whole terrible death camp thing and make people come to terms with it. Bullshit.
It's a nice fantasy, but what will actually happen is that your kids will grow up to be nice secular europeans just like everyone else, because every day of the lives you force them to lead they will also see the way free people live. It will not be long before they realize which idealogy is really broken.
Debate with kaffirs is meaningless because their concept of a secular society with 'freedom of speech' and such claptrap is abhorrent to Allah. When we Muslims are a demographic majority in Europe (by 2030) we'll see who's boss. We'll whip your half-naked women and faggoty men into shape.
Whatever. If it's so abhorrent why doen't Allah do something about it? Seriously. Just want to throw that out there. I mean, he seems to have stopped doing any favors for you people about 500 years ago. Maybe our civilization is 'inferior', but understand we will always outpace you in terms of technological, cultural and economic growth because your values are not as compatible with these things. You can have your hocus pocus, thank you very much, because the day policies like yours take over the EU is the day it will fall off of the world stage- so if your mission is to give the USA a little less competition, go for it.
You want a clash of civilizations? The United States could wake up tomorrow and kill 800 million Muslims before breakfast, and there is not anything anyone not wanting the same fate could do about it. I therefore suggest you learn how to respect the beliefs of others, because that is one of the values that is keeping you alive right now, one of many that preclude us from wiping you out, even though you do not share them.
..and if you are looking for a day of judgement, just wait until the oil runs out or people stop needing it.
Yes, Virginia, our govenment tortures people. You don't suffocate, or die from blunt force trauma from a frat prank. Many of them are people guilty of nothing besides being in the wrong place.
The administration says it doesn't torture people, but whenever obvious stories of torture turn up it finds some way to make them not stick, either because other countries acually do the torturing (rendition), or the crime is committed by low-level 'problem children' (i.e. they accidentally kill someone while torturing them). Even if none of these apply, the White House thrives on the fuzzyness of the laws concerning torture. Just look how mad they got when John McCain (who got plenty of it in Viet Nam), and others tried to clear the law up. George threatened to veto it. It would have been his first veto EVER.
The administration can use all the legal mumbo-jumbo in the world to dress it up, but the fact of the matter is that the torture would stop tomorrow if George said so. But yet it continues. Even if there is hard, concrete evidence that he broke the law, who's going to impeach him? The republican congress? He might as well be King.
We used to be the good guys. Now we give so much away for a little bit of security- only for the duration of the war, but the war will never end. I hope someday we don't look back and see that a tragedy like 9/11 turned into a Reichstag fire.
As i understand it, this is pretty overrated, since the computer can have only so many quantum bits. Sure, if you had 256 such bits you could try all the possible combinations for keys of that length at once, but you could just make the key longer, say 512, to cope with it. You end up right back where you started with a exponential-time process.
Of course, if someone doesn't KNOW such a computer exists, they might not plan for this. This is the only real advantage, unless maybe someday you have systems with very large numbers of quantum bits and the key lengths required become impractical for encoding/decoding, but all of this seems a long way off. It's hard enough to make ONE quantum bit, so it seems unlikely that there are secret systems already in place with hundreds working together (It's a little more complicated than a flip-flop, after all.)
So it seems that if you have your tinfoil hat and your 1024 bit key length you should still be fine for some time.
The gulibility and/or insincerity of Congress- and Mr. Conyers- on this is pretty alarming (hey kind of like iraq! Close the analog hole John! Your consituents will be greeting you with flowers, thanking you for saving their favorite programs!) At least George Bush is throwing my freedoms in the trash so he can fail to protect me from terrorists. Mr. Conyers & Co. are throwing them in the trash so that ABC can fail to prevent bittorrents of Deperate Housewives.
There is one simple reason why this is a bad idea: this legislation will not prevent a single act of piracy. This whole act is based upon a fantasy that only the media industry, blinded by self-interest, honestly believes. The fact is you won't close the analog hole until the day you DRM light. Any single act of 'astronomically' expensive piracy is not preventable. With millions and millions of people coming to own TVs and computers in the developing world and none of them able to afford a library of $13 cds and $18 dvds, the resources devoted to organized piracy will be enourmous. This legislation will stop 0% of this and these bootlegs will make their way onto the internet all the same.
Even if organized piracy stopped tomorrow, it only takes one person to defeat this silly protection scheme and make the whole thing moot. This will happen regardless of whether there are ludicrous laws that restrict what questions a person can ask or what they are allowed to learn about a product they bought and paid for.
Yes, the recording industry has a right to say how their content is used, and when they start making electronic devices they can make them however they fucking want to. But if the prospect of telling an entire industry how they can and can not design their products doesn't send a chill down Mr. Conyer's spine- products that until now where things that people actually wanted- well then Mr. Conyers you have no respect for free markets.
Mr Conyers needs to know that it isn't the goverment that isn't changing fast enough, it's the media industry. The world that industry grew up in is GONE and taking away American freedoms isn't going to change that. We might as well pass a law to make the earth rotate the other way because Jack Valenti doen't like the way the water swirls when he flushes the toilet.
Not enough people going to movies (for reasons other than them sucking)? Maybe update the technology used to show them- it hasn't changed much in DECADES, even though consumer electronics, which this bill would hobble, are making leaps every single year. Which side would you want making the rules?
The fact of the matter is that, while unstoppable, piracy is usually a little bit inconvenient. Instead of making it more of a hassle for legitimate users, try making it LESS of one. Charge a resonable price too, U2's latest album isn't a priceless work of art for gods sake. If you do this, people will give you their money, and if they don't they probably just don't have any, so stop pretending like it's some big loss. That's really what iTunes did: $.99 & no 2 hour wait on Kazaa => $$$$$.
Anyway, dream on- action like that would cost money- or worse yet, would require an admission that they aren't quite sure what to do in this new era. Better buy another law instead!
Congress is just feeding these people's delusions. They won't change until they absolutely have to. Why haven't they figured this out?
Well anyway, thanks John! I'll make sure I remember this when you've turned my TV into fucking HAL 9000- oh and on election day too.
Yeah, Sun has been predicting the death of the PC since their stock price had an extra two digits on it.
Nowadays though, most people are just predicting the death of Sun.
Turing machines are, with one assumption, identical to computers in the sense of what they are able to solve. Anything solvable by a turning machine can be solved with a conventional computer given sufficient (but not infinite)memory or time. It is critical to note that no program requires truely unlimited memory or time unless it runs forever and therefore produces no result.
If some things cannot be solved before the heat death of the universe, or without rediculous amounts of storage, it has everything to do with the fact that no efficient algorithm exists and nothing to do with some difference between 'computers' and turing machines. You are unlikely to ever produce a machine that is fast enough or contains enough storage to compensate for the lack of a good method, even a quantum computer. An 4.77 mhz XT using a polynomial time algorithm will, given a large enough task, beat the worlds fastest supercomputer if it uses an exponential one. Badly.
That your system of goverment is one of the most corrupt in the world?
Did it ever occur to you how sad it is when an American laughs at you for how little you know about the world?
All governments suffer from corruption. The question is how much. If you just meant the western world, you might have at least been able to make an argument- but come on: South America, Africa, India, Mexico, the Middle East, China, the former Soviet Bloc, and we're STILL near the bottom?
America is light years ahead of the great majority of the planet. Is is perfect? No. Might your country be better? It is possible. But make no mistake, we are still pretty good. Companies or goverments living totally beyond the law is the norm, not the execption, for most people on this planet. Our goverment may seem corrupt when you see so many shenanigans going on in the press, but thats actually a good thing. It's called transparency. You don't see stories like that in undemocratic or deeply corrupted countries, period.
Don't mistake the fact that so many people don't care for them not having the ability to change things. If every member of congress woke up tomorrow to a couple thousand hand-written letters the broadcast flag would die immediately, media companies or not.
I think the PC is safe. It may seem simple to for a console to replace, in the near future, what PCs do today for most people. However I think people will still buy PCs because of their flexibility. Why is this important? Because some of the things that people will choose PCs over consoles for in the future haven't been invented yet.
The PC does not need to wait until Sony or even Microsoft decides what the next big thing is. Remember at the height of the internet boom when so many people were predicting that thin clients would kill the PC? The death of the PC has been predicted many times before- even hoped for by companies wanting to stomp competitors, but it's ability to do the newest stuff first has always been it's edge. The invisible hand of the marketplace can still smack even the biggest companies around given the slightest chance.
Even if consoles catch up in the graphics department, don't think for a second that the PC has run out of tricks. People are fixated on graphics because they have seen such dramatic improvements lately. Eventually these will be less so and something new will take it's place, as is always the case with technology. Physics processing maybe? If I knew for sure I'd be rich, but SOMETHING will be next. And when the next big thing comes out don't doubt where it will be first.
I forgot who exactly it was but there was a guy, I think a doctor, at the mayo clinic who raised his desk up and actually spends most of his day on a treadmill, walking like .6 miles an hour. At that slow speed he could still use his computer and mouse just fine, but that little bit of effort really added up troughout the day health-wise.
Just remember though, at the end of the day, this is just a sterotype. Back to psychology 101 for a moment: there is far more variability within the sexes than between them. Broad statements like this need to be qualified.
For any given male-biased task, you'll always or very nearly always be able to find a woman who's better at the task than any given man. People have to be very careful when they make these kinds of statements. Individuality should matter more than how the 'average' man and woman compare, because at the end of the day, expectations based on gender aren't right much more than they are wrong.
Take EVERYTHING like this with a grain of salt. Our understanding of human inteligence isn't really even in it's infancy. It's only just been conceived.
Just because you don't understand the theory, doesn't mean it isn't true. A nice into to biology class as your local college will answer all of there questions quite well for you. You just have to give it a chance. The fossil records are incomplete, and people are finding new stuff every day. We've probably found only a small part of what is out there so far.
Don't confuse evolution with becoming more human-like. It's all about survivability. Cochroaches, for example, are in some ways much more evolved than us. They preceeded us by millions of years, and if a meteor smacked the planet tomorrow, they might outlive us by millions more.
You don't see the problem in that? You don't see "The theory of gravity is a theory, not a fact" on physics textbooks, do you? Should there be a warning label on my number theory textbook? Why are people so worried if terrorists get a nuclear weapon- atomic theory is just a theory, right?
The labels are wrong because they abuse the word theory. Most non-scientists use the word theory to imply something that hasn't been proven. The word theory as it is used in the scientific community is actually very neutral as to the amount of supporting evidence. Think theory = explaination.
This label misleads people into thinking that there isn't a great deal of scientific evidence that supports evolution, which there is. There is so much in support, and so little against it that saying that evolution is not a fact, without qualification, is out and out deceitful.
Saying that it is possible that evolution is not correct, is a true statement, and if the sticker had said that it would have been at least factually correct, but it didn't. The way it was written was just shameful.
Well, it only takes one delivery car broadsiding someone because the driver was speeding to rack up some serious liability for any company. Great productivity can be erased pretty quick by even one accident. Lawsuits can be just as rediculous as CEO bonuses.
Step 1: Work slavishly hard at large game company for a few years, learning everything you can about the right and wrong way to make games
Step 2: Get fired and start own game company, easily coax utterly miserable ex-coworkers to join you
Step 3: Profit!
(Yes, they might send lawyers after you, but 90% of this will be so scare you. The other 10 you can handle. Promise.)
It was pretty successful inspiring George Orwell to write 1984.
The Economist actually endorsed Kerry, albeit with "a heavy heart". This is not a liberal publication either, folks. It is a conservative publication of the non 'neo' variety, though it is not surprisingly more concerned with the economic, rather than social, side of things. The President got points for his good intentions but in the end they conceded he "has never seemed truely up to the job, let alone his own ambitions for it".
r y_id=3329802
While it is published in England, the largest part of it's readership is American, and based on how they usually go, it was an endorsement Bush should have had in the bag. Most telling, they wrote that their confidence in him had been "shattered". The criticism was almost entirely foreign policy-based. The editors made it clear that a new approach abroad, as well as a greater distance between himself and the extremes of the religious right, were what they required from him to receive their blessing.
Kerry actually got praise for his voting record as a fiscal conservative and free trade advocate, though it wondered if his recent swing towards protectionism was for real or just politics. He is not without a few big spending projects, like health care, but they guess these probably wont get past a Republican congress anyway. No flying colors here but passing marks in the face of four more years of Bush foreign policy.
Interesting stuff.
http://economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?sto
Well, truth be told, it has been done elsewhere. Putin in Russia seems unlikely to give up power, though he is not in danger of losing any elections. The opposition parties are finding it curiously hard to gain any ground against him. It helps to have all the TV stations on your side. He has a vast majority in their congress and he can legislate more terms for himself as he sees fit.
But we're not Russia. Truth be told, I really think it's just not worth it in a truely robust, though obviously imperfect, democracy like ours. Even if the election goes horribly for the Republicans they'll still hold nearly half the congress and in just four short years they'll get another shot at the White House.
What you are talking about isn't an impossible scenario, given extremly dire circumstances, but it's very difficult to imagine it now. We did have a civil war once upon a time, but we were a different country then, and people's allegences were much more local. I think that anything like that happening now would never work because people, despite their differnces, would rightly see it as an attack on democracy on a very fundamental level. In other places in the world were democracy is a relatively new thing this might not be as huge of a concern. Many peoples have known only periods of disorder and periods of tyrany. Look at Russia or Iraq, many people there still believe that however scary it may seem, one all powerful man may be the only force that can actually keep order. Saddam was a brutal tyrant, but he kept the many fractured, tribal elements in his country from endless bloodshed.
America, fortunately has no such history. We have seen democracy work. We have a peaceful country and we are not concerned about internal strife like this. The Republicans, or the Democrats for that matter, have lost many presidential elections but have always been able to get power back down the road. Our political warfare has so far served both sides relatively well. If Bush loses, a war will certainly begin to restore power, but it will, thankfully, be a peaceful one.
Yes, but it won't happen. After all, it would look very bad for President Bush. I'm sure with the election this close Al Qaida won't chance throwing the election to Kerry.
More importantly the corporations find this unsettling and they have the backing to make it financially impossible for the "amateurs" to compete.
Uh yeah, they come down on them so hard they won't be able to... give their products away? These people do this stuff to challenge themselves and have fun and it's only because they sometimes do such a good job that they get paid anything. Jeez, you're such a defeatist. No wonder you people don't get anything done, you just whine about stuff.
Shut up about corporations being so powerful. No death squad is going to come after you. You aren't going to be sent off to a gulag. Shut up and do something about it if it's so bad. Boo-hoo- people don't listen to your goofy-ass views so they must be all sheep. Boo-hoo- someone might send a lawyer at you so they're no point in even trying. Wah wah.
People do care about politics and social entrepreneurship, the problem is too many people just complain and act helpless and cynical instead of doing something. Ever wonder if maybe sheep are secretly filled with feelings of resentment and outrage at the way they are treated. We'd never know it, of course, because they'd still act just like SHEEP. See a parallel?