Why do you think consciousness has more reality than the soul ? You give a perfect scenario as to why the notion of consciousness is probably not more than an illusion.
The 'I', the 'YOU' is an illusion. This proposition is not falsifiable. If I make a digital copy of ME, it will pretend, and be convinced, to be ME and any test you will put it to cannot disprove this.
The idea that ME can branch is uncanny but we will have to get used to it. Once you are used to it, ask to yourself : "Why is ME afraid to die if ME survives ?". Are you afraid of going to sleep every evening ? The you that wakes up is different from the you that fell asleep. It can be considered like a discontinuity. You die every night, think about it. If you made a copy of yourself, dying is just like falling asleep. You have to be confident that you will wake up again and not lose your continuity of self.
It is an act of faith in both case, and does not take ground in reality. For an external observer, as long as one copy of me is alive, I am alive. For all intend and purpose, the fear of death of a copy fearing to disappear is no more meaningful than the fears of someone who think he will die if he feels asleep.
It was an honest question, I know close to nothing about nuclear physics...
The wikipedia picture is very incorrect then ? I see no tendency on it for odd numbers of protons to bring instability and no element in the 114-116 range is picture as having any sort of stability...
In Norway they have one of the best retirement fund in Europe that is financed, not through oil profits but only through interest of placements of oil money.
In Saudi Arabia they used to have negative taxes (yes, the state was giving away money to the citizens). In Alaska you have a few more millionaires and still no universal healthcare that most of the developed world consider a basic need.
What would be more politically acceptable about replacing a relatively stable material like depleted uranium by a highly radioactive material like Rt ? Island of stability or not, we are talking about an element that would have a shorter half-life than uranium, especially depleted, and that would emit mainly alpha-ray (the less penetrating but the most deadly).
The claim that it would be cheaper is a bit surprising too : there are mines of uranium...
This is related to the predicted "sea of stability" that exist inside the zone of highly unstable elements. Look at the last link of the summary for details. Rg 289 should be close to this peak of stability
Heh, I think Stallman would be happy in a world where no licence, proprietary or free, would be enforceable.
I surely would. Sure it would mean some companies would release binaries without giving the source. But it also means no restriction on copying, reverse-engineering and reusing these binaries. It would be ok for me.
Remember that free licenses began as a reaction to proprietary licenses. Because some works can not even be lawfully copied, and because law authorizes such madness, this madness has been used to force people to publish sources. The day people understand how crazy this whole thing is, it will be the victory of free software.
It is really astounding that government organizations in US can bait people by being accomplices of make-up crimes. How far do they go to convince the guy to cross the line ? "Hey man, this cheap shit is stolen anyway, you won't help giving it back by being stupid and saying no to it. I will find someone to buy them anyway. You know what ? You may even do a social act in the grand tradition of free market by selling cheap phones to the poor. I mean these were stolen in the rich part of town. Sell them back in the ghetto and you become a good man..." I have once seen on TV a documentary, can't tell how much it was fake, about US policewomen who tried to arrest prostitutes clients by posing as some. One even went as far as proposing free service to convince the "suspect", who got arrested.
Which is recognized widely as a missed opportunity. Countries like Norway or Saudi Arabia proved that when used correctly (ie. through state-controlled companies, yes), oil brings wealth to the citizens. IT doesn't do so automatically and it won't help solve human right issues, but when used correctly it is a great opportunity of development.
The problem is not having valuable resources, it is having corrupted leaders to negotiate them. A good leader would use that as an opportunity to bring knowledge and business opportunities to its country. A corrupt one will just give you a free pass as long as you put 50 millions in his pockets every year.
The providers are too busy fighting legal shallow fights revolving around imaginary properties and finding a way to monetize the end of net neutrality to waste precious time solving lesser technical problems.
The real news that should make it to/. was that in some country (like France) Google was forced by justice to doctor its result in order to not make suggestion like "John Doe" -> "is a crook"
As a European, I saw the Tea Party from only two points of views :
- Complete whackos like Sarah Palin, and the other woman, what was her name ? Said it was important to spend government money to fight agaisnt masturbation or something like that... Oh, also Glenn Beck. In short, people that are spokepersons of the tea party.
- Lawrence Lessig, admittedly a liberal, that said the tea party was a great political initiative. Despite disagreement on almost every point, he agreed on the two most central points in his view : the fight against corruption and lobbying and the need for grassroots politics.
I mean, there may be something, but why, oh why in heaven's sake do you let people like Palin speak out for you ? Why don't you criticize the complete nutjobs that speak in your name ? Do you realize that it takes a person you probably consider like an enemy to explain the good things that are in this party ?
That's my point : information is usually inside the comments. So when such a discussion occurs in the most moderated comment, it is a really annoying interference.
If BP's public image becomes lower, if it makes clients flee instead of bringing them there, the franchise won't sell well, the price will have to go down and so will the revenues. How can a boycott not cause damages to BP ?
Genetically, on average, men are stronger than women. Therefore a man hitting a woman will likely, and on average, have more serious consequences than a woman hitting a man.
Also, as SF-fed geeks, we tend to live in an idealistic world where men and women just have a chromosomic and trivial biological differences. The reality is different with income/education differences, and social roles that still are very far from implementing equality.
The first thing a baby hears is "It is a girl !" or "It is a boy !". The first decision of its parents is to name it according to its gender and to begin raising it according to its social gender role. The situation is getting better, but think about how far we are from equality. As a man I often feel really insulted by some feminist extremists (I can't stand silliness, whatever the gender of the person spouting it) but I agree that there is a transitional period where women will need more protections and rights than men. Let's remember this is a transition period, that its reason is not in a superiority of women, and let's abandon them as soon as they are not necessary.
Slashdot Mirror
Why do you think consciousness has more reality than the soul ? You give a perfect scenario as to why the notion of consciousness is probably not more than an illusion.
The 'I', the 'YOU' is an illusion. This proposition is not falsifiable. If I make a digital copy of ME, it will pretend, and be convinced, to be ME and any test you will put it to cannot disprove this.
The idea that ME can branch is uncanny but we will have to get used to it. Once you are used to it, ask to yourself : "Why is ME afraid to die if ME survives ?". Are you afraid of going to sleep every evening ? The you that wakes up is different from the you that fell asleep. It can be considered like a discontinuity. You die every night, think about it. If you made a copy of yourself, dying is just like falling asleep. You have to be confident that you will wake up again and not lose your continuity of self.
It is an act of faith in both case, and does not take ground in reality. For an external observer, as long as one copy of me is alive, I am alive. For all intend and purpose, the fear of death of a copy fearing to disappear is no more meaningful than the fears of someone who think he will die if he feels asleep.
I tried to be funny and I am insightful...
Now if this present observation gets labeled funny it will be depressing...
It was an honest question, I know close to nothing about nuclear physics...
The wikipedia picture is very incorrect then ? I see no tendency on it for odd numbers of protons to bring instability and no element in the 114-116 range is picture as having any sort of stability...
Also, according to this graph ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Table_isotopes_en.svg ) alpha decay and fission seem to be the only decays happening in these regions, no ?
In Norway they have one of the best retirement fund in Europe that is financed, not through oil profits but only through interest of placements of oil money.
In Saudi Arabia they used to have negative taxes (yes, the state was giving away money to the citizens). In Alaska you have a few more millionaires and still no universal healthcare that most of the developed world consider a basic need.
Mod me troll, but think about it...
What would be more politically acceptable about replacing a relatively stable material like depleted uranium by a highly radioactive material like Rt ? Island of stability or not, we are talking about an element that would have a shorter half-life than uranium, especially depleted, and that would emit mainly alpha-ray (the less penetrating but the most deadly).
The claim that it would be cheaper is a bit surprising too : there are mines of uranium...
How so ?
On the contrary it is almost exactly on the peak :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Island-of-Stability.png
This is related to the predicted "sea of stability" that exist inside the zone of highly unstable elements. Look at the last link of the summary for details. Rg 289 should be close to this peak of stability
Heh, I think Stallman would be happy in a world where no licence, proprietary or free, would be enforceable.
I surely would. Sure it would mean some companies would release binaries without giving the source. But it also means no restriction on copying, reverse-engineering and reusing these binaries. It would be ok for me.
Remember that free licenses began as a reaction to proprietary licenses. Because some works can not even be lawfully copied, and because law authorizes such madness, this madness has been used to force people to publish sources. The day people understand how crazy this whole thing is, it will be the victory of free software.
It is really astounding that government organizations in US can bait people by being accomplices of make-up crimes. How far do they go to convince the guy to cross the line ? "Hey man, this cheap shit is stolen anyway, you won't help giving it back by being stupid and saying no to it. I will find someone to buy them anyway. You know what ? You may even do a social act in the grand tradition of free market by selling cheap phones to the poor. I mean these were stolen in the rich part of town. Sell them back in the ghetto and you become a good man..." I have once seen on TV a documentary, can't tell how much it was fake, about US policewomen who tried to arrest prostitutes clients by posing as some. One even went as far as proposing free service to convince the "suspect", who got arrested.
Which is recognized widely as a missed opportunity. Countries like Norway or Saudi Arabia proved that when used correctly (ie. through state-controlled companies, yes), oil brings wealth to the citizens. IT doesn't do so automatically and it won't help solve human right issues, but when used correctly it is a great opportunity of development.
The problem is not having valuable resources, it is having corrupted leaders to negotiate them. A good leader would use that as an opportunity to bring knowledge and business opportunities to its country. A corrupt one will just give you a free pass as long as you put 50 millions in his pockets every year.
It's a weird kind of PR, but it works, because now you've heard of Super Meat Boy. Thanks to trolling, PETA and Slashdot.
I am feeling I am becoming too old for this century...
And I am not even 30...
That is why making such algorithm is not only doing prediction but also deciding on when you want traffic jams to occur...
A poster for the French Pirate Party. "Sharing" is "Partage" in French, very close to "piratage" (piracy) :
http://yvanhoe.free.fr/PP/affichePP.png
Hell, my 64 bits processor can have 10^19 bytes of memory (would that be 10 exabytes ?) call me when SD-cards reach THAT level...
The providers are too busy fighting legal shallow fights revolving around imaginary properties and finding a way to monetize the end of net neutrality to waste precious time solving lesser technical problems.
The real news that should make it to /. was that in some country (like France) Google was forced by justice to doctor its result in order to not make suggestion like "John Doe" -> "is a crook"
In a society where you are convinced that boycott can't work, how can one argue that free market works ?
As a European, I saw the Tea Party from only two points of views :
- Complete whackos like Sarah Palin, and the other woman, what was her name ? Said it was important to spend government money to fight agaisnt masturbation or something like that... Oh, also Glenn Beck. In short, people that are spokepersons of the tea party.
- Lawrence Lessig, admittedly a liberal, that said the tea party was a great political initiative. Despite disagreement on almost every point, he agreed on the two most central points in his view : the fight against corruption and lobbying and the need for grassroots politics.
I mean, there may be something, but why, oh why in heaven's sake do you let people like Palin speak out for you ? Why don't you criticize the complete nutjobs that speak in your name ? Do you realize that it takes a person you probably consider like an enemy to explain the good things that are in this party ?
Yes. "Killing" is more accurate.
The fact that it is a total and not a per capita makes the "prisonners" part a lot more shocking.
The boycott of BP station will only affect the revenue of BP on franchises fees, that's right. Isn't that something to start with ?
That's my point : information is usually inside the comments. So when such a discussion occurs in the most moderated comment, it is a really annoying interference.
If BP's public image becomes lower, if it makes clients flee instead of bringing them there, the franchise won't sell well, the price will have to go down and so will the revenues. How can a boycott not cause damages to BP ?
Genetically, on average, men are stronger than women. Therefore a man hitting a woman will likely, and on average, have more serious consequences than a woman hitting a man.
Also, as SF-fed geeks, we tend to live in an idealistic world where men and women just have a chromosomic and trivial biological differences. The reality is different with income/education differences, and social roles that still are very far from implementing equality.
The first thing a baby hears is "It is a girl !" or "It is a boy !". The first decision of its parents is to name it according to its gender and to begin raising it according to its social gender role. The situation is getting better, but think about how far we are from equality. As a man I often feel really insulted by some feminist extremists (I can't stand silliness, whatever the gender of the person spouting it) but I agree that there is a transitional period where women will need more protections and rights than men. Let's remember this is a transition period, that its reason is not in a superiority of women, and let's abandon them as soon as they are not necessary.