Really? I think of professionalism as being competent, prepared and... treating people with respect, but then I can see how that wouldn't appeal to an ass.
And of course there is another option. You can refuse to accept that things you don't like cannot change and choose to try to improve them while still contributing something worthwhile. I don't agree with Sarah Sharp's assessment, but I respect her for trying to make something she cares about better rather than abandoning it because she doesn't like some small part of the whole system.
I do think that we'd agree that professionalism is a good thing. I personally avoid cursing because it rarely improves communication and often gives people a reason to ignore what you have to say. Yet I highly respect someone saying what they mean in a way that makes it prefectly clear. For some people that means cursing or sounding harsh and I value that a lot more than sounding professional. If you can manage both, then it is what I think Linus and Sarah would both hope for, but if I have to choose between being professional and communicating successfully, I'll take the latter.
I appreciate people who can say "I disagree with you and don't like your decision" without also resorting to an ultimatium to "do it my way or I won't play."
Congratulations on your degree. I respect the work and effort, not to mention the investment that goes into getting one. I'm happy to hear when someone who has already proven they're able to put effort into something important and see it through is interested in contributing to something I care about. A degree doesn't actually always prove that, but your particular skillset is one I appreciate so it makes me hopeful that you'll be able to make the things I enjoy even better.
Please don't fear criticism. Even if it sounds harsh to be on the receiving end, I have no doubt that you can find a role where you can use your talents and criticism can help you improve yourself and your work.
I like this quote: "Nothing of value is free. Even the breath of life is purchased at birth only through gasping effort and pain... The best things in life are beyond money; their price is agony and sweat and devotion." I hope that you can find something you can do that is worth your devotion and trust that you'll value your accomplishments knowing that the judges of your work have high standards and won't hesitate to tell you if you can do better and that you've met those standards.
I'm glad you pound on that point in class. I suspect most instructors do much the same.
I was interested in this trial because I did wonder what laws were broken. That seems to be the most overlooked question in this whole thing. I've heard many people rant about what people did wrong and I absolutely agree with many of them. But that's not the point, living under a rule of law means that you shouldn't be punished by the legal system unless you actually break the law.
Your sig is also quite interesting in relation to the question of legality. Do we really want a country where you are legally required to do what the police tell you regardless of whether it is legal or not? People adamantly state that Zimmerman should go to jail because the police told him he should behave differently. When they say that, they're really saying that they want the police to have the legal authority to tell you what to do regardless of what the law says. I find the number of people who believe that just a little frightening.
My sig is intended to be humorous. We as a society have decided that being stupid is not in itself a crime. We believe that rule of law is critical to freedom. We believe that the law and not the opinions of people we grant authority should define our freedoms. Or at least we used to.
Even if the machine shop is getting electricity. This isn't detailed in TFA but is well documented elsewhere. Take this article where they explain:
The consequences of a transformer failure are catastrophic, as there is a lack of manufacturing capacity for extra high-voltage transformers in the U.S.A. and worldwide. According to a study by the Metatech Corporation, commissioned under Executive Order 13407 for assessment of vulnerability to geomagnetic storms, manufacturers presently have a backlog of nearly three years for all extra high-voltage transformers (230 kilovolts and above). Only one plant exists in the U.S.A. capable of manufacturing a transformer up to 345 kV. There is no manufacturing capability in the U.S.A. for 500 kV and 765 kV transformers, which represent the largest group of at-risk transformers in the U.S. power grid. The 500 and 765 kV transformers are the backbone of the grid that extends into regions that contain nearly 80 percent of the U.S. population, according to John Kappenman of Storm Analysis Consultants and Metatech Corp.
A further example to make it more obvious that khallow doesn't actually understand what the problem is.
It's a long article, I can understand why you might not have gone through it. Here's some snipsthat might be important to note and that caught my attention when I was reading up on it previously.
...if even 20 transformers in the Northeast were knocked out, the logistical challenges would be "extremely concerning."
In the worst case, it could leave 20 million to 40 million people in the Northeast without power - possibly for years - as utilities struggled to replace thousands of fried transformers stretching from Washington to Boston.
..."That's a key vulnerability," Smith says. "If you had a really big solar event, there just aren't enough replacement transformers available. It can take up to 12 months to build new ones."
...One problem, says Chris Beck of the Electric Infrastructure Security Council, is that many of these technologies are expensive and could make the current grid slightly less efficient in its day-to-day operations.
"We've designed our power lines to work efficiently under perfect conditions - long transmission lines, high voltages," Beck says. Unfortunately, those characteristics make the grid particularly vulnerable to a solar storm. So there's a trade-off.
So yeah, Lloyd's of London and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission disagree with you for good reasons.
I had many bad things to say about Metro when I tried the pre-release stuff. Our software vendors pretty much don't support it yet across the board so there is no movement in our company and won't be for a while. Meanwhile, because I get the honor of testing new things regardless of personal distaste, I have been trying to get everything to work on Win8 with a pretty high success rate. I've adjusted enough that I don't loathe it, I just don't like it.
Meanwhile I introduced a sixteen year old to it and to my shock, it was a hit. I'm wondering now if MS had more insight than I gave them credit for. If they're capturing the teen market then they're doing something I never expected.
You're never going to make it at that rate. Mother Theresa has been criticized for some time. Perhaps most amusingly by Penn and Teller on their BS show where she is described as a fraud, a fanatic and a fundamentalist, corrupt, nasty, cynical and cruel by Christopher Hitchens.
This was kind of what I thought of immediately... you mean all you have do in order to avoid the ads is not lay your head against the broadcasting part? Hurray! I can do that.
I saw a recent comment on the abortion issues in Texas which argued that killing a fetus was okay since it didn't have the same perception of existence as an adult. Laying aside more logical arguments on both sides of the debate (an undeveloped human brain doesn't make a person or alternately neither does a two year old,) this made it clear to me that some people are absolutely convinced that it is ethical to treat potential people as tissue for use or discarding as is most convenient. In that light, your suggestion implies that if cloning is a non-invasive and affordable procedure, many people will be absolutely comfortable with the idea of using clones as parts.
I think there is a logical progression this discussion must follow, but first a digression. (Yes, it is relevant.) On the abortion issue, I'm convinced that most people are in agreement but arguing about the wrong thing. I've talked to strong supporters of abortion and almost every one agrees that killing a two day old baby is wrong and three days before that is just as wrong, and even twenty days before that is wrong. So even strong abortion supporters believe that killing a baby is wrong if it is actually a baby. I've talked to strong opponents of abortion and almost every one agrees that killing a wart or cutting out a cancerous tumor, or getting an appendectomy doesn't constitute murder, not even cosmetic surgery which kills healthy human cells is murder. So even strong opponents of abortion agree that killing cells or even organs isn't murder. The obvious conclusion from this? We all agree that killing people is wrong, regardless of age, but we can't agree on what makes a person a person. That's the real argument and the most passionate people on the subject don't even realize they are arguing past each other.
At some point, we need to have a national, possibly global, discussion where we define what makes a person a person and not just tissue. When we decide that we'll be ready for the discussion on using clones as parts. If we decide it is about the potential to become human then cloning will have to be about cloning tissues. If we decide it is about brain activity, then we'll have rich people with clones who are healthy aside from having their brain development blocked as embryos. If we decide it is a heartbeat, then we'll have clones who are on heavy life support and grown essentially in a vat.
Whatever we decide, I'm weary of hearing sound bites and bickering and ready to get on to the real discussion. I'm also very curious how our collective decisions on the subject will affect the average health options for clone parts.
Okay. I'll accept the premise for the purpose of discussion.
Lets think long term and unethically, which I suspect defines a fairly large number of politicians. We'll say a couple dozen high level deep thinkers push the US government (why not?) into creating a "super thinkers" pool. They black budget a project where they select two hundred geniuses and sneakily develop clones that are then implanted (secretly) into 2000 unknowing mothers. Those mothers then get secret guardian angel bureaucrats making sure that they get all the breaks necessary to improve the odds that the children will get both an ideally suited environment (hey, babe I got an offer from Minnesota University to triple my salary as a mechanic to maintain their fleet of cars so we're moving out of Chicago!) and later sterling educations (Sally got a full ride scholarship to Rice and George got a full ride to MIT, our kids are doing awesome!). Finally, the super-kids get cushy government jobs in think tanks. They don't even know they had anything shady about their own pasts.
So now the plan comes to fruition, you have several hundred of your best and brightest custom tailored to change the policies, strategies and plans of the government. The US now has better planning, reactions to opportunities, dangers and better reactions to catastrophes than any government that hasn't embarked on the same scheme. I expect gene sequencing will be much easier, cheaper and faster so it's likely that some of the super-kids will find out they're clones and before the knowledge becomes common. As a natural self preservation strategy, they'll start steering their political goals toward making society happy to have their guidance. Cloning will become acceptable and not uncommon due to their machinations. The world will start down a path of self improvement. In 10 generations, there will be a tendency toward raising only the best and brightest of humans.
I see all this as likely given your premise and no unexpected unraveling of plots. The question in my mind, is "If that happens, and emphasis on the 'if', then what does it mean for the future of humanity?"
True story: I was gifted with a genetically pretty good body. A couple things during gestation, prenatal development and delivery went just slightly wrong. (I was born breach, with I suspect near hypoxia and to a second-hand smoker, see: http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4310.) Nothing huge, but I do suspect some of my struggles wouldn't have been necessary in ideal circumstances. Despite this, I excelled at academic pursuits in my early years and had a pretty high athletic prowess as well. I had a good home, social and educational environment, but of course none were exactly ideal. I've done well enough, but if my history were ideal, I might have contributed much more to society than I've managed thus far. With only very slightly improved early circumstances, I can imagine my life and choices might have been dramatically different. (I won't say better because I recognize the hubris in guessing how someone who developed differently and in a different would have reacted.)
Now, I'm not unhappy to be where I am and accept that my choices are primarily the reasons for my failings and successes. Normally that would be the end of the discussion and I'm comfortable with that. Now it isn't then end of the discussion anymore. If I were tremendously wealthy and had different drives and morals and the same analysis of my past, with this news comes the idea that I could possibly raise or direct the raising of an idealized version of what I could have been given an "improved" history.
Maybe there is a billionaire right now planning to give to the world a version of himself that he thinks would be an ideal version of himself. I don't have the desire myself, but can easily imagine someone like myself having that desire.
The more likely questions to ask are: What if that cloned "ideal self" happens and is successful. What if we're talking about a secret clone who wins multiple Nobel prizes and olympic medals but is found out later? That would surely raise the temptation for later imitators of the process and potentially raise a huge backlash against people who happen to be clones and through no fault, are suddenly feared, hated or detested by society. And then, what if it becomes cheap, accepted and common in a hundred years, wouldn't that mean a shrinking gene pool and at the same time a "superior" race? What does mankind face with a society that is comfortable with a "superior" race? What does mankind face with a society backlash where every high achiever is viewed with suspicion of being "unnatural"?
What? People do want true Communism even if they will never get it. People do want the Sci-Fi utopia even if they will never get it. People don't necessarily want the Singularity, but if it happens that way, it won't matter whether they want it or not.
“O Deep Thought computer," he said, "the task we have designed you to perform is this. We want you to tell us...." he paused, "The Answer."
"The Answer?" said Deep Thought. "The Answer to what?"
"Life!" urged Fook.
"The Universe!" said Lunkwill.
"Everything!" they said in chorus.
Deep Thought paused for a moment's reflection.
"Tricky," he said finally.
"But can you do it?"
Again, a significant pause.
"Yes," said Deep Thought, "I can do it."
"There is an answer?" said Fook with breathless excitement.
"Yes," said Deep Thought. "Life, the Universe, and Everything. There is an answer. But, I'll have to think about it." ...
Fook glanced impatiently at his watch.
“How long?” he said.
“Seven and a half million years,” said Deep Thought.
You're just saying that because you're one of us old style humans. The new style will know that the objective definition of right comes from Deep Thought.
In the great Sci-Fi utopia there are no jobs that need done because technology does everything necessary, leaving people free to pursue what they want to do.
In true Communism, there is no need for a paycheck because everyone does what is best for the society with the talets they have and everyone shares the rewards equally.
Both scenarios have a common problem: people. Sci-Fi utopias have a problem because people don't just want to pursue fun things, they want to achieve status marked by having things or being able to do things that others can't. We don't want to just be equal in every way. Likewise we don't want to work as hard as we can to get the same reward that someone with less talent gets for less contribution. Compounding that basic human desire for better pay for better work, Communism has another people problem in that nobody seems to be able to realistically determine what is best for everyone else and still have their support.
It is interesting to consider if the singularity were to happen if it would fix both systems by solving the people problem. If we were all subject to an iron rod of perfect disclipline and reward by an entity that we knew was always right, it would cause humanity to change in a way that would result in the humans we all pretend we want to be. I find the idea a little scary actually because I don't really want perfect disclipline and I don't want to work as hard as I can and I don't want to give up pretending I'm more free the way it is now.
I like the idea of using a bonus driven bug system. Tell the customer that he has X days to get them fixed for free, tell the developer that every bug resolution comes out of the bonus structure.
I think the point "as the traffic will bear" got a little buried.
Businesses charge fees based on a lot more than how many they can get paid. The core of any business is to get paying customers and if they lose them due to fees or even a perception that they're greedy, then a wise business will avoid the fees that cause the problem.
People decide all the time to switch who they are doing business with due to a perception of unfairness. Businesses absolutely do have to raise the prices they charge due to regulation... sometimes.... because it is a choice between that or dying. And sometimes they die because their customers won't tolerate it regardless of the reasons.
Note that I'm not actually disagreeing with most of the statements you've made. I'm just trying to highlight the point you made that people are likely to miss due to the obvious irritation you feel toward the far right wing commentators.
I wouldn't disagree that more malware exists in web content, but then I'm not suggesting the ecosystem is perfectly safe. The security difference between installing an independant application for each thing and running them all through a single application is significant.
Is IE10 safe? Is FF safe? Is Opera safe? Is Safari safe? Is Chrome safe? Is Flash safe? Is Silverlight safe? Is Java safe?
You can have a discussion about the strengths and weaknesses of the security models of each. You can say "No" to every one or mix your answers but the point is that you can make the decision. If you were to have to do the same thing for all the applications you can run in them, you'd never be able to complete the process.
I understand why you'd want to avoid that, but a walled garden is really where you can't choose to install software outside the specific vendor and that's obviously not what I was talking about. Considering the positive and negative aspects of security for the system in TFA is relevant isn't it?
Good points, but another key attribute of applications executed in the browser is security. The browser has a consistant security footprint that I trust a lot more than I trust new applications. I may visit hundreds of pages in a day from vendors I have never heard of before, but I'd never be comfortable installing hundreds of applications even if they were more efficient for the same tasks. Most of the time, I trust my browser not to do something bad to my computer regardless of the content and am placing my trust in a single application. Doing the same thing with an equivilant number of applications would be terrifying.
This is the single thing that makes Linux better than any other system for me. I can get practically all the software I want by investigating and trusting a single entity rather than dealing with dozens of different relationships with different levels of investigation and unpredictable levels of trustworthiness. If a browser based system can offer the same wealth of applications at a reasonable speed without serious security issues, then I find the idea quite interesting.
I don't disagree with your point, but I think the analogy is flawed.
If you can stare at weather statistics with sufficient data to see what circumstances resulted in lightening strikes, then you can accurately predict where extra effort needs to be taken to avoid them. In fact that sounds really useful and much like what we do with tornados for example. The statistics don't tell you that there will be a tornado at a certain place at a certain time, but the do tell you when they are likely enough to sound the warnings.
This is the crux of the argument: Can statistics gathered in great detail as we do for weather be as useful in the case of terrorist acts as it is for predicting the danger of a tornado.
I think you or Schneier would say that people are not as predictable as weather and think that the personal freedoms lost in the search outweigh the gains. He says "Millions of people behave strangely enough to warrant the FBI's notice, and almost all of them are harmless. It is simply not possible to find every plot beforehand, especially when the perpetrators act alone and on impulse."
The unanswered question for me is whether analysis performed differently can be effective regardless of the level of data analyzed. If you can reliably prove that it cannot be effective, then you have created a compelling argument. If you can state that the level of data that is effective is unreasonable, then you have a compelling argument. I didn't see either successfully presented in the argument or discussion so far. Without a compelling argument, I'm left with a vague sense of dissatisfaction and disgruntled feeling that I've spent far too long considering an opinion piece.
Speaking of traditonal currency, it is not solely electronic at any point, every electronic dollar has to have a physical equivalent, at least in the U.S. Banks periodically move big stacks of cash, bank notes, securities, etc around. Whether it is physically in the possession of the owner or not, each digital dollar has a single specific owner, excepting only the Federal Reserve. When people (at banks or anywhere else) get caught trying to spend dollars they don't have a legitimate ownership of, people go to jail. It is an even bigger deal for banks because they can't even claim ownership falsely without incuring big trouble, where individuals have to make very big claims (Madoff style) to get similar trouble.
"Banks can actually create more money by simply changing a few rows in a database." is true only if you ignore that when caught by the Feds, people go to jail and made up money gets taken away along with hefty fines. The Feds are very, very touchy about that sort of thing. What banks can do is borrow money from the Fed, transfer through the Fed, or transfer to the Fed, but they have to send the money in some physical form to the Fed when they are settling up and can't claim to own money they owe to some other institution when they've allowed the other institution to claim the same ownership.
You said: Bitcoin production is exponential, not linear.
Um, yeah, it gets exponentially more costly to produce a new one, but it doesn't get exponentially more difficult to trade them. Trading cost is linear, creation cost is exponentially more expensive. That's the built in scarcity that makes them valuable as a means of exchange. It doesn't give them inheirent value, it just gives the system value.
If there were no more possible bitcoins that could be produced today, it would take a couple minutes to conclude a trade now, or a year from now or ten years from now. If you're talking about the growth of the records, where each bitcoin fragment is traceable to its origin, that's linear and insignificant in cost, particularly compared to the cost of traditional currency.
Slashdot Mirror
Really? I think of professionalism as being competent, prepared and... treating people with respect, but then I can see how that wouldn't appeal to an ass.
And of course there is another option. You can refuse to accept that things you don't like cannot change and choose to try to improve them while still contributing something worthwhile. I don't agree with Sarah Sharp's assessment, but I respect her for trying to make something she cares about better rather than abandoning it because she doesn't like some small part of the whole system.
I do think that we'd agree that professionalism is a good thing. I personally avoid cursing because it rarely improves communication and often gives people a reason to ignore what you have to say. Yet I highly respect someone saying what they mean in a way that makes it prefectly clear. For some people that means cursing or sounding harsh and I value that a lot more than sounding professional. If you can manage both, then it is what I think Linus and Sarah would both hope for, but if I have to choose between being professional and communicating successfully, I'll take the latter.
I appreciate people who can say "I disagree with you and don't like your decision" without also resorting to an ultimatium to "do it my way or I won't play."
Congratulations on your degree. I respect the work and effort, not to mention the investment that goes into getting one. I'm happy to hear when someone who has already proven they're able to put effort into something important and see it through is interested in contributing to something I care about. A degree doesn't actually always prove that, but your particular skillset is one I appreciate so it makes me hopeful that you'll be able to make the things I enjoy even better.
Please don't fear criticism. Even if it sounds harsh to be on the receiving end, I have no doubt that you can find a role where you can use your talents and criticism can help you improve yourself and your work.
I like this quote: "Nothing of value is free. Even the breath of life is purchased at birth only through gasping effort and pain... The best things in life are beyond money; their price is agony and sweat and devotion." I hope that you can find something you can do that is worth your devotion and trust that you'll value your accomplishments knowing that the judges of your work have high standards and won't hesitate to tell you if you can do better and that you've met those standards.
I'm glad you pound on that point in class. I suspect most instructors do much the same.
I was interested in this trial because I did wonder what laws were broken. That seems to be the most overlooked question in this whole thing. I've heard many people rant about what people did wrong and I absolutely agree with many of them. But that's not the point, living under a rule of law means that you shouldn't be punished by the legal system unless you actually break the law.
Your sig is also quite interesting in relation to the question of legality. Do we really want a country where you are legally required to do what the police tell you regardless of whether it is legal or not? People adamantly state that Zimmerman should go to jail because the police told him he should behave differently. When they say that, they're really saying that they want the police to have the legal authority to tell you what to do regardless of what the law says. I find the number of people who believe that just a little frightening.
My sig is intended to be humorous. We as a society have decided that being stupid is not in itself a crime. We believe that rule of law is critical to freedom. We believe that the law and not the opinions of people we grant authority should define our freedoms. Or at least we used to.
Even if the machine shop is getting electricity. This isn't detailed in TFA but is well documented elsewhere. Take this article where they explain:
A further example to make it more obvious that khallow doesn't actually understand what the problem is.
It's a long article, I can understand why you might not have gone through it. Here's some snipsthat might be important to note and that caught my attention when I was reading up on it previously.
So yeah, Lloyd's of London and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission disagree with you for good reasons.
I had many bad things to say about Metro when I tried the pre-release stuff. Our software vendors pretty much don't support it yet across the board so there is no movement in our company and won't be for a while. Meanwhile, because I get the honor of testing new things regardless of personal distaste, I have been trying to get everything to work on Win8 with a pretty high success rate. I've adjusted enough that I don't loathe it, I just don't like it.
Meanwhile I introduced a sixteen year old to it and to my shock, it was a hit. I'm wondering now if MS had more insight than I gave them credit for. If they're capturing the teen market then they're doing something I never expected.
You're never going to make it at that rate. Mother Theresa has been criticized for some time. Perhaps most amusingly by Penn and Teller on their BS show where she is described as a fraud, a fanatic and a fundamentalist, corrupt, nasty, cynical and cruel by Christopher Hitchens.
This was kind of what I thought of immediately... you mean all you have do in order to avoid the ads is not lay your head against the broadcasting part? Hurray! I can do that.
I saw a recent comment on the abortion issues in Texas which argued that killing a fetus was okay since it didn't have the same perception of existence as an adult. Laying aside more logical arguments on both sides of the debate (an undeveloped human brain doesn't make a person or alternately neither does a two year old,) this made it clear to me that some people are absolutely convinced that it is ethical to treat potential people as tissue for use or discarding as is most convenient. In that light, your suggestion implies that if cloning is a non-invasive and affordable procedure, many people will be absolutely comfortable with the idea of using clones as parts.
I think there is a logical progression this discussion must follow, but first a digression. (Yes, it is relevant.) On the abortion issue, I'm convinced that most people are in agreement but arguing about the wrong thing. I've talked to strong supporters of abortion and almost every one agrees that killing a two day old baby is wrong and three days before that is just as wrong, and even twenty days before that is wrong. So even strong abortion supporters believe that killing a baby is wrong if it is actually a baby. I've talked to strong opponents of abortion and almost every one agrees that killing a wart or cutting out a cancerous tumor, or getting an appendectomy doesn't constitute murder, not even cosmetic surgery which kills healthy human cells is murder. So even strong opponents of abortion agree that killing cells or even organs isn't murder. The obvious conclusion from this? We all agree that killing people is wrong, regardless of age, but we can't agree on what makes a person a person. That's the real argument and the most passionate people on the subject don't even realize they are arguing past each other.
At some point, we need to have a national, possibly global, discussion where we define what makes a person a person and not just tissue. When we decide that we'll be ready for the discussion on using clones as parts. If we decide it is about the potential to become human then cloning will have to be about cloning tissues. If we decide it is about brain activity, then we'll have rich people with clones who are healthy aside from having their brain development blocked as embryos. If we decide it is a heartbeat, then we'll have clones who are on heavy life support and grown essentially in a vat.
Whatever we decide, I'm weary of hearing sound bites and bickering and ready to get on to the real discussion. I'm also very curious how our collective decisions on the subject will affect the average health options for clone parts.
Okay. I'll accept the premise for the purpose of discussion.
Lets think long term and unethically, which I suspect defines a fairly large number of politicians. We'll say a couple dozen high level deep thinkers push the US government (why not?) into creating a "super thinkers" pool. They black budget a project where they select two hundred geniuses and sneakily develop clones that are then implanted (secretly) into 2000 unknowing mothers. Those mothers then get secret guardian angel bureaucrats making sure that they get all the breaks necessary to improve the odds that the children will get both an ideally suited environment (hey, babe I got an offer from Minnesota University to triple my salary as a mechanic to maintain their fleet of cars so we're moving out of Chicago!) and later sterling educations (Sally got a full ride scholarship to Rice and George got a full ride to MIT, our kids are doing awesome!). Finally, the super-kids get cushy government jobs in think tanks. They don't even know they had anything shady about their own pasts.
So now the plan comes to fruition, you have several hundred of your best and brightest custom tailored to change the policies, strategies and plans of the government. The US now has better planning, reactions to opportunities, dangers and better reactions to catastrophes than any government that hasn't embarked on the same scheme. I expect gene sequencing will be much easier, cheaper and faster so it's likely that some of the super-kids will find out they're clones and before the knowledge becomes common. As a natural self preservation strategy, they'll start steering their political goals toward making society happy to have their guidance. Cloning will become acceptable and not uncommon due to their machinations. The world will start down a path of self improvement. In 10 generations, there will be a tendency toward raising only the best and brightest of humans.
I see all this as likely given your premise and no unexpected unraveling of plots. The question in my mind, is "If that happens, and emphasis on the 'if', then what does it mean for the future of humanity?"
True story: I was gifted with a genetically pretty good body. A couple things during gestation, prenatal development and delivery went just slightly wrong. (I was born breach, with I suspect near hypoxia and to a second-hand smoker, see: http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4310.) Nothing huge, but I do suspect some of my struggles wouldn't have been necessary in ideal circumstances. Despite this, I excelled at academic pursuits in my early years and had a pretty high athletic prowess as well. I had a good home, social and educational environment, but of course none were exactly ideal. I've done well enough, but if my history were ideal, I might have contributed much more to society than I've managed thus far. With only very slightly improved early circumstances, I can imagine my life and choices might have been dramatically different. (I won't say better because I recognize the hubris in guessing how someone who developed differently and in a different would have reacted.)
Now, I'm not unhappy to be where I am and accept that my choices are primarily the reasons for my failings and successes. Normally that would be the end of the discussion and I'm comfortable with that. Now it isn't then end of the discussion anymore. If I were tremendously wealthy and had different drives and morals and the same analysis of my past, with this news comes the idea that I could possibly raise or direct the raising of an idealized version of what I could have been given an "improved" history.
Maybe there is a billionaire right now planning to give to the world a version of himself that he thinks would be an ideal version of himself. I don't have the desire myself, but can easily imagine someone like myself having that desire.
The more likely questions to ask are: What if that cloned "ideal self" happens and is successful. What if we're talking about a secret clone who wins multiple Nobel prizes and olympic medals but is found out later? That would surely raise the temptation for later imitators of the process and potentially raise a huge backlash against people who happen to be clones and through no fault, are suddenly feared, hated or detested by society. And then, what if it becomes cheap, accepted and common in a hundred years, wouldn't that mean a shrinking gene pool and at the same time a "superior" race? What does mankind face with a society that is comfortable with a "superior" race? What does mankind face with a society backlash where every high achiever is viewed with suspicion of being "unnatural"?
What? People do want true Communism even if they will never get it. People do want the Sci-Fi utopia even if they will never get it. People don't necessarily want the Singularity, but if it happens that way, it won't matter whether they want it or not.
Sorry, I thought the reference was common enough it wouldn't be misunderstood. I meant to be humorous by implying that Douglas Adams' idea would actually happen. See: http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/4637-o-deep-thought-computer-he-said-the-task-we-have for a much longer quote.
“O Deep Thought computer," he said, "the task we have designed you to perform is this. We want you to tell us...." he paused, "The Answer."
...
"The Answer?" said Deep Thought. "The Answer to what?"
"Life!" urged Fook.
"The Universe!" said Lunkwill.
"Everything!" they said in chorus.
Deep Thought paused for a moment's reflection.
"Tricky," he said finally.
"But can you do it?"
Again, a significant pause.
"Yes," said Deep Thought, "I can do it."
"There is an answer?" said Fook with breathless excitement.
"Yes," said Deep Thought. "Life, the Universe, and Everything. There is an answer. But, I'll have to think about it."
Fook glanced impatiently at his watch.
“How long?” he said.
“Seven and a half million years,” said Deep Thought.
You're just saying that because you're one of us old style humans. The new style will know that the objective definition of right comes from Deep Thought.
You forgot to click the Post Anonymously checkbox didn't you?
In the great Sci-Fi utopia there are no jobs that need done because technology does everything necessary, leaving people free to pursue what they want to do.
In true Communism, there is no need for a paycheck because everyone does what is best for the society with the talets they have and everyone shares the rewards equally.
Both scenarios have a common problem: people. Sci-Fi utopias have a problem because people don't just want to pursue fun things, they want to achieve status marked by having things or being able to do things that others can't. We don't want to just be equal in every way. Likewise we don't want to work as hard as we can to get the same reward that someone with less talent gets for less contribution. Compounding that basic human desire for better pay for better work, Communism has another people problem in that nobody seems to be able to realistically determine what is best for everyone else and still have their support.
It is interesting to consider if the singularity were to happen if it would fix both systems by solving the people problem. If we were all subject to an iron rod of perfect disclipline and reward by an entity that we knew was always right, it would cause humanity to change in a way that would result in the humans we all pretend we want to be. I find the idea a little scary actually because I don't really want perfect disclipline and I don't want to work as hard as I can and I don't want to give up pretending I'm more free the way it is now.
I like the idea of using a bonus driven bug system. Tell the customer that he has X days to get them fixed for free, tell the developer that every bug resolution comes out of the bonus structure.
I think the point "as the traffic will bear" got a little buried.
Businesses charge fees based on a lot more than how many they can get paid. The core of any business is to get paying customers and if they lose them due to fees or even a perception that they're greedy, then a wise business will avoid the fees that cause the problem.
People decide all the time to switch who they are doing business with due to a perception of unfairness. Businesses absolutely do have to raise the prices they charge due to regulation... sometimes.... because it is a choice between that or dying. And sometimes they die because their customers won't tolerate it regardless of the reasons.
Note that I'm not actually disagreeing with most of the statements you've made. I'm just trying to highlight the point you made that people are likely to miss due to the obvious irritation you feel toward the far right wing commentators.
I wouldn't disagree that more malware exists in web content, but then I'm not suggesting the ecosystem is perfectly safe. The security difference between installing an independant application for each thing and running them all through a single application is significant.
Is IE10 safe? Is FF safe? Is Opera safe? Is Safari safe? Is Chrome safe? Is Flash safe? Is Silverlight safe? Is Java safe?
You can have a discussion about the strengths and weaknesses of the security models of each. You can say "No" to every one or mix your answers but the point is that you can make the decision. If you were to have to do the same thing for all the applications you can run in them, you'd never be able to complete the process.
I understand why you'd want to avoid that, but a walled garden is really where you can't choose to install software outside the specific vendor and that's obviously not what I was talking about. Considering the positive and negative aspects of security for the system in TFA is relevant isn't it?
Good points, but another key attribute of applications executed in the browser is security. The browser has a consistant security footprint that I trust a lot more than I trust new applications. I may visit hundreds of pages in a day from vendors I have never heard of before, but I'd never be comfortable installing hundreds of applications even if they were more efficient for the same tasks. Most of the time, I trust my browser not to do something bad to my computer regardless of the content and am placing my trust in a single application. Doing the same thing with an equivilant number of applications would be terrifying.
This is the single thing that makes Linux better than any other system for me. I can get practically all the software I want by investigating and trusting a single entity rather than dealing with dozens of different relationships with different levels of investigation and unpredictable levels of trustworthiness. If a browser based system can offer the same wealth of applications at a reasonable speed without serious security issues, then I find the idea quite interesting.
I don't disagree with your point, but I think the analogy is flawed.
If you can stare at weather statistics with sufficient data to see what circumstances resulted in lightening strikes, then you can accurately predict where extra effort needs to be taken to avoid them. In fact that sounds really useful and much like what we do with tornados for example. The statistics don't tell you that there will be a tornado at a certain place at a certain time, but the do tell you when they are likely enough to sound the warnings.
This is the crux of the argument: Can statistics gathered in great detail as we do for weather be as useful in the case of terrorist acts as it is for predicting the danger of a tornado.
I think you or Schneier would say that people are not as predictable as weather and think that the personal freedoms lost in the search outweigh the gains. He says "Millions of people behave strangely enough to warrant the FBI's notice, and almost all of them are harmless. It is simply not possible to find every plot beforehand, especially when the perpetrators act alone and on impulse."
The unanswered question for me is whether analysis performed differently can be effective regardless of the level of data analyzed. If you can reliably prove that it cannot be effective, then you have created a compelling argument. If you can state that the level of data that is effective is unreasonable, then you have a compelling argument. I didn't see either successfully presented in the argument or discussion so far. Without a compelling argument, I'm left with a vague sense of dissatisfaction and disgruntled feeling that I've spent far too long considering an opinion piece.
Speaking of traditonal currency, it is not solely electronic at any point, every electronic dollar has to have a physical equivalent, at least in the U.S. Banks periodically move big stacks of cash, bank notes, securities, etc around. Whether it is physically in the possession of the owner or not, each digital dollar has a single specific owner, excepting only the Federal Reserve. When people (at banks or anywhere else) get caught trying to spend dollars they don't have a legitimate ownership of, people go to jail. It is an even bigger deal for banks because they can't even claim ownership falsely without incuring big trouble, where individuals have to make very big claims (Madoff style) to get similar trouble.
"Banks can actually create more money by simply changing a few rows in a database." is true only if you ignore that when caught by the Feds, people go to jail and made up money gets taken away along with hefty fines. The Feds are very, very touchy about that sort of thing. What banks can do is borrow money from the Fed, transfer through the Fed, or transfer to the Fed, but they have to send the money in some physical form to the Fed when they are settling up and can't claim to own money they owe to some other institution when they've allowed the other institution to claim the same ownership.
That may be changing though. Canada is working on it: http://www.thestar.com/business/personal_finance/spending_saving/2013/04/30/digital_cash_replacement_from_royal_canadian_mint_in_the_works.html
You said: Bitcoin production is exponential, not linear.
Um, yeah, it gets exponentially more costly to produce a new one, but it doesn't get exponentially more difficult to trade them. Trading cost is linear, creation cost is exponentially more expensive. That's the built in scarcity that makes them valuable as a means of exchange. It doesn't give them inheirent value, it just gives the system value.
If there were no more possible bitcoins that could be produced today, it would take a couple minutes to conclude a trade now, or a year from now or ten years from now. If you're talking about the growth of the records, where each bitcoin fragment is traceable to its origin, that's linear and insignificant in cost, particularly compared to the cost of traditional currency.