Some people _have_ gone missing for periods of time and had odd changes in their behavior afterwards
That's not useful information, unless their activities make them more likely to go missing for periods of time and experience odd changes in behavior than normal. For example, one could say the same of Slashdot, there's probably a number of Slashdotters who have done the above at one time or another.
Well, it seems to me that a lot happened since 1980, including at least a couple of orders of magnitude increase of people who play this sort of game. The author can always publish sequels.
It's worth noting the effects of past games on the present. A game like WoW didn't magically spring up out of the void. It has a past in other computer games (Everquest and other graphics-intensive games, a number of text-based MUDs, and the various old pen and paper or board games that inspired all of these predecessors).
The Russians are making a land-grab north of Canada.
What "land" is left to be grabbed or to park "troops and equipment" on? All land (at least beyond the postage stamp size) is currently claimed in a way recognized by international law and treaty.
I hope you're referring to the Arctic Ocean instead. But there, no one has a real claim to it right now. That will probably end up being whoever occupies and exploits it first. Hence, it is the real "land-grab". Since Canada like everyone else has no claim to the ocean nor a way to exploit it at this time, what's the pretext for war going to be?
As part of the deal with Yahoo, there are incentives for Alibaba to list its shares by December 2015. The company has said there is no timetable for a listing. This year, Alibaba took its Alibaba.com unit private.
Alibaba is private as is its subsidiary, Alibaba.com. I don't know anything about the company, but it appears that they aren't in a situation where puffery would be punished. Maybe they are as big as they claim, but one needs to keep in mind that they don't have a lot of incentive to tell the truth.
It's very difficult to lie about how a company is doing.
And what makes you think that is the case? The whole point of these supposed penalties is because it is very easy to do so.
If the company's stock is publicly traded
Alibaba isn't publicly traded.
if it isn't they have no reason to inflate their numbers unless they really like paying taxes.
And why would they pay more taxes? Ultimately, puffery is just noise. No one pays more taxes just because they say they're the greatest internet retailer in the world.
And to the contrary, such puffery does keep them in the public mind.
Is it so hard to imagine that these things could have been formed on another planet, or even a non-planetary celestial object such as an asteroid, which then traveled near earth while carrying these critters,before breaking apart causing fragments to land on earth?
To the contrary. It's too easy to come up with such theories. It's a bit like getting pregnant. You can do it easily enough, but are you willing to take responsibility for the result?
Well, looking at the actual instruments, things like hydrophones, pressure sensors, broadband seismometers, and such, what instruments actual generate that bandwidth? I just don't see it. Seems to me that they're at least a couple of orders of magnitude off.
We should be worried, it could easily, since it obviously came from within Jupiter's orbit, have intersected with Earth.
And?
but we are overdue an ELE (Extinction Level Event) by about 15 million years
So ELE events are extremely uncommon?
So why should we be concerned merely because an object, which has roughly 90% of the mass of the Solar System outside of the Sun, happens to get hit a lot by asteroids and comets? That huge mass is one of the reasons it gets hit so much. The other is the greater number of objects around Jupiter's orbit.
If they were caught doing that in the US (say, outside Nellis AFB), I wonder what would have happened to them.
I gather it happens rather frequently around Area 51 which is near Nellis AFB. According to Wikipedia, typical punishments are a $600 fine and special attention from the FBI, but I imagine the punishment would be more severe, if you photographed Elvis and some Greys looking over the latest prototype aircraft.
It wasn't the other posters intent to provide a counterexample it was his intent to show fault in the logic you used.
Well, I suppose that might be what was tried, but not the outcome. He was claiming limited liability which as I stated "helps lots of people" was something like holding a gun to a rich person's head, and wait, no it's not.
That would be a credible argument, if those events were actually 1 in 100 events or even "unusually bad". And I see you bring in AGW, when such events can be explained by natural variation of weather or by poor human infrastructure (such as levee systems that don't leave places for flood water to go or the corn for fuel thing).
And of course, I see that you downplay the corn ethanol subsidies (and related policies, most which still are in place) even though they are obvious and huge distortions of the US agriculture market.
As to AGW, while I think there are valid points to the theory, I much rather wait for new evidence than act on the current. The reasons are a) research indicates we have time to do so, and b) AGW hysteria will likely have died down in a decade or two. By not acting now, we gain considerably both in economic and technological capability and provide some needed perspective to see whether the AGW concerns are valid or not.
Why? Midgley's unintended consequences weren't particularly notable. I just see, as what I assume are the primary intended examples, leaded gasoline and CFCs, neither which amounted to much environmentally.
If he had developed the first contraceptive pill, that would be a much better case for unintended consequences since that actually has modified human behavior and culture on a global scale.
The same tension exists in electrical wiring. But one can physically inspect the entire work. With data collection, it's pretty easy to hide what you are doing from the target of your collecting.
Russia has become precisely what the left expected Reagan+Thatcher wanted in toppling the USSR: a corrupt, undemocratic kleptocracy with few new freedoms but no social cohesion or state protections, where middlemen and government have their hands constantly down each other's pants, jacking each other off while they kick the common man. It is the neocon dream realised.
As others have noted, what we have now does beat what it was (most especially, I might add, for those outside of Russia!), no matter which decade of the USSR you cherry pick.
As I recall, the Citizens United case merely gave corporations the rights that individuals had in the same situation. In other words, money == speech already existed. Representing yourself fraudulently remains illegal whether you are an individual or acting on behalf of a corporation.
Corporate personhood is the root of a lot of evil in our country. I think if corporations want to be people, they need to be properly accountable to our justice system, including the death penalty. They should have to serve jury duty, they should not be allowed to be dual citizens, etc.
The easy rebuttal to this idiotic tripe is that corporations don't want anything since they aren't even remotely sentient. So the "if" that starts this mess is never satisfied. Corporate personhood is a legal fiction, it is not genuine personhood nor would a reasonable person confuse the two.
Is it really asking too much that you educate yourself in this matter?
You must be referring to the way that capitalism led to a cure for polio. Except that it did not, and Jonas Salk gave the cure away to improve the world. In fact, the improvements in standards of living around the world have more to do with the hard work of scientists and engineers than with capitalism.
As the AC replier noted, the money for researching polio didn't come out of thin air. It came from taxes on a capitalist system or from capitalist actions such as private endowments and gift money (keep in mind that the definition of capitalism is private ownership of capital and one consequence of that is the ability to gift that capital to causes of your own choosing).
And such was the case with the Salk vaccine for polio. The research was originally funded by the National Foundation for Infant Paralysis (which is now known as the March of Dimes). It was a capitalist creation.\
A lot of those effects from those who claim to be "fixing" capitalism.
No, those are the effects of unregulated capitalism. Unless you think that everyone is equally ruthless, intelligent, educated, and that they have equal amounts of capital, the "little guy" is going to be crushed by the "big guys" in an unregulated market. That is why, every so often, we break up monopolies (though lately we seem to be forgetting to do that): so that we can reset the market and start the competition again.
There's no such thing as unregulated capitalism in the world today.
If there is no regulation, the big company will crush the little company by selling its products/services at a loss until the little company has no customers left. The big company will also offer grossly inflated salaries to the most intelligent people at the little company. The big company will make deals with other big companies, to lock the little company out of the market.
And yet, the big company often loses that fight because they can run of money faster than the little, often more efficient company. All the above strategies lose money. The only reason they can work is if the big company manages to keep market share and higher profit in the long run. It's worth noting for example, that most big retail companies started as little fish. They overcame such tribulations as the above.
All that capital isn't useful, if all you're doing is losing it in failed strategies to keep market share.
Until you can make those "crumbs" yourself, you'll always be subservient to those who can
That's funny, because in capitalism, the people who bake the bread are usually subservient to the people who own the oven. The winners in capitalism are those with capital, not the scientists and engineers who solve societies problems and not the workers who put those solutions into action.
In other words, the people who bake the bread can't make the business happen. That's why they're picking up "crumbs" as you put it. There are too many workers and not enough employers. One doesn't fix such a problem by knee-capping the employers further.
Meanwhile, in the real world, the regulations we placed on businesses stopped child laborers from being killed and maimed, gave smaller, more innovative businesses an opportunity to compete, and raised our standard of living.
How's that been working out? You even had to admit earlier that monopolies supposedly weren't been stopped as readily. That's one of the symptoms of overregulation. Namely, that existing regulation isn't enforced as intended either due to too few resources to cover the demands on the regulators, or because the regulated industries would cease, if they were regulated to the letter of the law.
Also, the US is creating a generation of young adults who have never had a job nor understand how to hold one. That's a direct result of child labor laws, a high minimum wage (in a recession), and the general infantizing of young adults as a whole.
Apparently, you live on a different Earth than I do, one where natural resources are not finite. Prosperity just burns those resources faster.
Apparently you live on a different Earth than the rest of us. I don't recall consuming any whale oil despite my culture being more prosperous than 19th century Europe.
Just make a Kittens & Puppies for Christ PAC, set up a web page, post a couple partisan screeds on it, add a DONATE button, and presto: money.
And that's something you would be able to do anyway. No need for your PAC to have the right to make campaign contributions in order to defraud the gullible.
I'm a bit surprised at what all people try to connect to this Supreme Court ruling. I guess someone will eventually reduce it all to claiming the root of all evil is corporate personhood.
And as I recall, if one could maintain launch frequency and passenger count comparable to the busiest few airports combined, then it would indeed be possible to depopulate the Earth.
The main problem with Moon is 1. lack of water and 2. you need a lot of energy to do anything on the Moon.
1) There are other things you can do that don't require water. Such as shipping oxygen and manufactured parts to Earth orbit and the Lagrange points.
2) You have a lot of energy to use: 1,300 W per square meter. It's halved on Mars.
To grow your food on the Moon you need at least water and artificial lighting and heating. Where to get the energy for lighting? Solar panels won't work, unless you're on the pole, due to long shadow period.
Most which you have just from solar power. Storing power for two weeks is a bit of a challenge, but not a great one.
What about heating?
Geothermal. Drill a deep hole anywhere on the Moon and you'll tap into the warmth of the interior.
Also to get from the Moon to the asteroid belt is difficult. Mars is much closer.
The Moon's market is Earth and Earth orbit. That is the main draw for the Moon, being right next door to the most valuable real estate in the Solar System.
Sure the Moon is great to send stuff to Earth orbit, but what do you plan on sending?
Finally, we have a good question. For volatiles, the Moon has plenty of oxygen. That's useful both as chemical rocket propellant (which would probably be its primary use) and human consumable (being the primary component by mass of water and the active ingredient in any sort of breathable air).
Then there's the metals. The Moon has a lot of aluminum, iron, titanium, and other metals in its crust. Even without an advanced technology base, one could make structural components for spacecraft and stations. As long as mass remains expensive to lift out of Earth's gravity well, that's going to mean that the Moon has a competitive edge.
The Moon also has no atmosphere and a relatively low gravity well compared to either Earth or Mars. That plus the relatively high energy environment means that launch systems such as magnetic rail or gas guns are quite feasible. In comparison, I think that Earth is going to be stuck with chemical propulsion for a while to lift payloads into orbit. That puts Earth at a substantial advantage compared to Mars, the Moon, or of course, any other small body.
Moon is harder to do than Mars. There's nothing in Moon which you can reuse easily, whereas in Mars there's plenty.
I'd suggest actually looking at proposed ISRU on the Moon. It has oxygen and various metals that can be obtained anywhere on the surface. That's in addition to the volatiles at its poles.
You could terraform Mars to have a thicker atmosphere. You cannot do this with the Moon.
So what? You have other things you can do with the Moon that are more productive than merely turning it into another Earth.
Mars has more gravity, too.
That's a drawback not a selling point. The primary value of the Moon will be what it can deliver to Earth orbit cheaper than can be delivered from Earth.
Check Zubrin's book, "The Case for Mars" which has plenty of arguments and points.
That's a good source, but keep in mind Zubrin was and is heavily biased against development of the Moon.
Slashdot Mirror
Is the Gulf now a giant cesspool of bacterial waste?
It's worth remembering that the Gulf, as well as most of the rest of the world, has always been a giant cesspool of bacterial waste.
Some people _have_ gone missing for periods of time and had odd changes in their behavior afterwards
That's not useful information, unless their activities make them more likely to go missing for periods of time and experience odd changes in behavior than normal. For example, one could say the same of Slashdot, there's probably a number of Slashdotters who have done the above at one time or another.
Well, it seems to me that a lot happened since 1980, including at least a couple of orders of magnitude increase of people who play this sort of game. The author can always publish sequels.
It's worth noting the effects of past games on the present. A game like WoW didn't magically spring up out of the void. It has a past in other computer games (Everquest and other graphics-intensive games, a number of text-based MUDs, and the various old pen and paper or board games that inspired all of these predecessors).
Why on Earth do we need yet another banking centre?
Yea, we only need one banking center, and I need to be the one owning it.
The Russians are making a land-grab north of Canada.
What "land" is left to be grabbed or to park "troops and equipment" on? All land (at least beyond the postage stamp size) is currently claimed in a way recognized by international law and treaty.
I hope you're referring to the Arctic Ocean instead. But there, no one has a real claim to it right now. That will probably end up being whoever occupies and exploits it first. Hence, it is the real "land-grab". Since Canada like everyone else has no claim to the ocean nor a way to exploit it at this time, what's the pretext for war going to be?
As part of the deal with Yahoo, there are incentives for Alibaba to list its shares by December 2015. The company has said there is no timetable for a listing. This year, Alibaba took its Alibaba.com unit private.
Alibaba is private as is its subsidiary, Alibaba.com. I don't know anything about the company, but it appears that they aren't in a situation where puffery would be punished. Maybe they are as big as they claim, but one needs to keep in mind that they don't have a lot of incentive to tell the truth.
It's very difficult to lie about how a company is doing.
And what makes you think that is the case? The whole point of these supposed penalties is because it is very easy to do so.
If the company's stock is publicly traded
Alibaba isn't publicly traded.
if it isn't they have no reason to inflate their numbers unless they really like paying taxes.
And why would they pay more taxes? Ultimately, puffery is just noise. No one pays more taxes just because they say they're the greatest internet retailer in the world.
And to the contrary, such puffery does keep them in the public mind.
Is it so hard to imagine that these things could have been formed on another planet, or even a non-planetary celestial object such as an asteroid, which then traveled near earth while carrying these critters,before breaking apart causing fragments to land on earth?
To the contrary. It's too easy to come up with such theories. It's a bit like getting pregnant. You can do it easily enough, but are you willing to take responsibility for the result?
Well, looking at the actual instruments, things like hydrophones, pressure sensors, broadband seismometers, and such, what instruments actual generate that bandwidth? I just don't see it. Seems to me that they're at least a couple of orders of magnitude off.
We should be worried, it could easily, since it obviously came from within Jupiter's orbit, have intersected with Earth.
And?
but we are overdue an ELE (Extinction Level Event) by about 15 million years
So ELE events are extremely uncommon?
So why should we be concerned merely because an object, which has roughly 90% of the mass of the Solar System outside of the Sun, happens to get hit a lot by asteroids and comets? That huge mass is one of the reasons it gets hit so much. The other is the greater number of objects around Jupiter's orbit.
If they were caught doing that in the US (say, outside Nellis AFB), I wonder what would have happened to them.
I gather it happens rather frequently around Area 51 which is near Nellis AFB. According to Wikipedia, typical punishments are a $600 fine and special attention from the FBI, but I imagine the punishment would be more severe, if you photographed Elvis and some Greys looking over the latest prototype aircraft.
It wasn't the other posters intent to provide a counterexample it was his intent to show fault in the logic you used.
Well, I suppose that might be what was tried, but not the outcome. He was claiming limited liability which as I stated "helps lots of people" was something like holding a gun to a rich person's head, and wait, no it's not.
That would be a credible argument, if those events were actually 1 in 100 events or even "unusually bad". And I see you bring in AGW, when such events can be explained by natural variation of weather or by poor human infrastructure (such as levee systems that don't leave places for flood water to go or the corn for fuel thing).
And of course, I see that you downplay the corn ethanol subsidies (and related policies, most which still are in place) even though they are obvious and huge distortions of the US agriculture market.
As to AGW, while I think there are valid points to the theory, I much rather wait for new evidence than act on the current. The reasons are a) research indicates we have time to do so, and b) AGW hysteria will likely have died down in a decade or two. By not acting now, we gain considerably both in economic and technological capability and provide some needed perspective to see whether the AGW concerns are valid or not.
Why? Midgley's unintended consequences weren't particularly notable. I just see, as what I assume are the primary intended examples, leaded gasoline and CFCs, neither which amounted to much environmentally.
If he had developed the first contraceptive pill, that would be a much better case for unintended consequences since that actually has modified human behavior and culture on a global scale.
The same tension exists in electrical wiring. But one can physically inspect the entire work. With data collection, it's pretty easy to hide what you are doing from the target of your collecting.
Russia has become precisely what the left expected Reagan+Thatcher wanted in toppling the USSR: a corrupt, undemocratic kleptocracy with few new freedoms but no social cohesion or state protections, where middlemen and government have their hands constantly down each other's pants, jacking each other off while they kick the common man. It is the neocon dream realised.
As others have noted, what we have now does beat what it was (most especially, I might add, for those outside of Russia!), no matter which decade of the USSR you cherry pick.
As I recall, the Citizens United case merely gave corporations the rights that individuals had in the same situation. In other words, money == speech already existed. Representing yourself fraudulently remains illegal whether you are an individual or acting on behalf of a corporation.
I agree with exploder. Wikipedia math articles are surprisingly useful.
Corporate personhood is the root of a lot of evil in our country. I think if corporations want to be people, they need to be properly accountable to our justice system, including the death penalty. They should have to serve jury duty, they should not be allowed to be dual citizens, etc.
The easy rebuttal to this idiotic tripe is that corporations don't want anything since they aren't even remotely sentient. So the "if" that starts this mess is never satisfied. Corporate personhood is a legal fiction, it is not genuine personhood nor would a reasonable person confuse the two.
Is it really asking too much that you educate yourself in this matter?
You must be referring to the way that capitalism led to a cure for polio. Except that it did not, and Jonas Salk gave the cure away to improve the world. In fact, the improvements in standards of living around the world have more to do with the hard work of scientists and engineers than with capitalism.
As the AC replier noted, the money for researching polio didn't come out of thin air. It came from taxes on a capitalist system or from capitalist actions such as private endowments and gift money (keep in mind that the definition of capitalism is private ownership of capital and one consequence of that is the ability to gift that capital to causes of your own choosing).
And such was the case with the Salk vaccine for polio. The research was originally funded by the National Foundation for Infant Paralysis (which is now known as the March of Dimes). It was a capitalist creation.\
A lot of those effects from those who claim to be "fixing" capitalism.
No, those are the effects of unregulated capitalism. Unless you think that everyone is equally ruthless, intelligent, educated, and that they have equal amounts of capital, the "little guy" is going to be crushed by the "big guys" in an unregulated market. That is why, every so often, we break up monopolies (though lately we seem to be forgetting to do that): so that we can reset the market and start the competition again.
There's no such thing as unregulated capitalism in the world today.
If there is no regulation, the big company will crush the little company by selling its products/services at a loss until the little company has no customers left. The big company will also offer grossly inflated salaries to the most intelligent people at the little company. The big company will make deals with other big companies, to lock the little company out of the market.
And yet, the big company often loses that fight because they can run of money faster than the little, often more efficient company. All the above strategies lose money. The only reason they can work is if the big company manages to keep market share and higher profit in the long run. It's worth noting for example, that most big retail companies started as little fish. They overcame such tribulations as the above.
All that capital isn't useful, if all you're doing is losing it in failed strategies to keep market share.
Until you can make those "crumbs" yourself, you'll always be subservient to those who can
That's funny, because in capitalism, the people who bake the bread are usually subservient to the people who own the oven. The winners in capitalism are those with capital, not the scientists and engineers who solve societies problems and not the workers who put those solutions into action.
In other words, the people who bake the bread can't make the business happen. That's why they're picking up "crumbs" as you put it. There are too many workers and not enough employers. One doesn't fix such a problem by knee-capping the employers further.
Meanwhile, in the real world, the regulations we placed on businesses stopped child laborers from being killed and maimed, gave smaller, more innovative businesses an opportunity to compete, and raised our standard of living.
How's that been working out? You even had to admit earlier that monopolies supposedly weren't been stopped as readily. That's one of the symptoms of overregulation. Namely, that existing regulation isn't enforced as intended either due to too few resources to cover the demands on the regulators, or because the regulated industries would cease, if they were regulated to the letter of the law.
Also, the US is creating a generation of young adults who have never had a job nor understand how to hold one. That's a direct result of child labor laws, a high minimum wage (in a recession), and the general infantizing of young adults as a whole.
Apparently, you live on a different Earth than I do, one where natural resources are not finite. Prosperity just burns those resources faster.
Apparently you live on a different Earth than the rest of us. I don't recall consuming any whale oil despite my culture being more prosperous than 19th century Europe.
But it did make it a lot easier to perpetuate.
No, it didn't as I'll show below.
Just make a Kittens & Puppies for Christ PAC, set up a web page, post a couple partisan screeds on it, add a DONATE button, and presto: money.
And that's something you would be able to do anyway. No need for your PAC to have the right to make campaign contributions in order to defraud the gullible.
I'm a bit surprised at what all people try to connect to this Supreme Court ruling. I guess someone will eventually reduce it all to claiming the root of all evil is corporate personhood.
And as I recall, if one could maintain launch frequency and passenger count comparable to the busiest few airports combined, then it would indeed be possible to depopulate the Earth.
The main problem with Moon is 1. lack of water and 2. you need a lot of energy to do anything on the Moon.
1) There are other things you can do that don't require water. Such as shipping oxygen and manufactured parts to Earth orbit and the Lagrange points.
2) You have a lot of energy to use: 1,300 W per square meter. It's halved on Mars.
To grow your food on the Moon you need at least water and artificial lighting and heating. Where to get the energy for lighting? Solar panels won't work, unless you're on the pole, due to long shadow period.
Most which you have just from solar power. Storing power for two weeks is a bit of a challenge, but not a great one.
What about heating?
Geothermal. Drill a deep hole anywhere on the Moon and you'll tap into the warmth of the interior.
Also to get from the Moon to the asteroid belt is difficult. Mars is much closer.
The Moon's market is Earth and Earth orbit. That is the main draw for the Moon, being right next door to the most valuable real estate in the Solar System.
Sure the Moon is great to send stuff to Earth orbit, but what do you plan on sending?
Finally, we have a good question. For volatiles, the Moon has plenty of oxygen. That's useful both as chemical rocket propellant (which would probably be its primary use) and human consumable (being the primary component by mass of water and the active ingredient in any sort of breathable air).
Then there's the metals. The Moon has a lot of aluminum, iron, titanium, and other metals in its crust. Even without an advanced technology base, one could make structural components for spacecraft and stations. As long as mass remains expensive to lift out of Earth's gravity well, that's going to mean that the Moon has a competitive edge.
The Moon also has no atmosphere and a relatively low gravity well compared to either Earth or Mars. That plus the relatively high energy environment means that launch systems such as magnetic rail or gas guns are quite feasible. In comparison, I think that Earth is going to be stuck with chemical propulsion for a while to lift payloads into orbit. That puts Earth at a substantial advantage compared to Mars, the Moon, or of course, any other small body.
Moon is harder to do than Mars. There's nothing in Moon which you can reuse easily, whereas in Mars there's plenty.
I'd suggest actually looking at proposed ISRU on the Moon. It has oxygen and various metals that can be obtained anywhere on the surface. That's in addition to the volatiles at its poles.
You could terraform Mars to have a thicker atmosphere. You cannot do this with the Moon.
So what? You have other things you can do with the Moon that are more productive than merely turning it into another Earth.
Mars has more gravity, too.
That's a drawback not a selling point. The primary value of the Moon will be what it can deliver to Earth orbit cheaper than can be delivered from Earth.
Check Zubrin's book, "The Case for Mars" which has plenty of arguments and points.
That's a good source, but keep in mind Zubrin was and is heavily biased against development of the Moon.