This is news... The terrorists have less of a life than we do! That explains why so many of them are so willing to blow themselves up.
I spent some time infiltrating the WoW. Now that this news has hit the streets, I think it's safe for me to reveal what I learned there... to reveal our strategy for victory. All we need to do is find their graveyard and camp in it -- their equipments will be damaged when they respawn, giving us that much more of an advantage.
This seems to be the linchpin of this form of checkers... and the computer's ability to win. That was never a rule in any game of checkers I've played before.
I just know that if there were a chess version of this with a forced capture rule, people would be screaming blood muder.
One of the most absurd part of this is that it is a restriction -- a neutering really -- of the Fifth Amendment for the sake of a threat to another country.
The preamble to the order:
"Protecting the Development Fund for Iraq and Certain Other Property in Which Iraq Has an Interest" By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, as amended (50 U.S.C. 1701 et seq.) (IEEPA), the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1601 et seq.), section 5 of the United Nations Participation Act, as amended (22 U.S.C. 287c) (UNPA), and section 301 of title 3, United States Code, I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, find that the threat of attachment or other judicial process against the Development Fund for Iraq, Iraqi petroleum and petroleum products, and interests therein, and proceeds, obligations, or any financial instruments of any nature whatsoever arising from or related to the sale or marketing thereof, and interests therein, obstructs the orderly reconstruction of Iraq, the restoration and maintenance of peace and security in the country, and the development of political, administrative, and economic institutions in Iraq. This situation constitutes an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States and I hereby declare a national emergency to deal with that threat. Hell, it looks more like this is an Executive Order in response to an emergency regarding the "Iraqi petroleum." I don't say that lightly... I think accusations about oil tend to be thrown out somewhat too liberally, but oil is objectively present in the reasoning of this root Executive Order.
There is no oversight for his application of the words "threat to [...] national security and foreign policy." The threat to national security that this would protect against is dubious. And why should this "threat to foreign policy" be infringing on our Constitutional Rgiths?
(3) Abraham Lincoln unilaterally suspended habeas corpus on United States soil as applied to United States citizens. US Constitution Article I Section 9: The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.
That speaks to its legality in that case. The question of whether its execution was justified, or whether the law itself is proper, is another argument. It was constitutional, and not just in an amendment contemporaneous to the act.
So far as Republicans go...
I think people are idiots -- most people anyway. Distracted by banners and colors, they latch on to parties, and drum their support. Or they point their blaming fingers, at one party, the other, or both. "J'accuse!"
It isn't so simple: the parties lack souls, but also minds and arms and legs. All they have are people -- individual people who work for good or for ill.
Lately, some Slashdotters have been posting about how they fear Google is going to know everything and abuse this knowledge. I noticed there has been a lot of this "Googlebashing" going on lately. I don't know whether it's just a few loudmouth posters, or a general feeling of unease among many posters, or just MS astroturfing. I got most of the "_____-bashing" out of my system with Microsoft a few years ago, so now I keep my feelings of unease somewhat quieter. And with me, it is a personal general feeling of unease towards Google. It is something only vaguely rooted for the most part, but nonetheless present.
Anyway, I do my best to bash them for wrongs they have actually committed, and not for my personal feelings of discomfiture alone.
If you mean within the Assembly, then how does that improve representation? The population per representative ratio does not improve, and you're just as likely, if not moreso, depending upon personal politics of the assemblyman, to find large numbers of people badly represented.
Otherwise... how do you intend to "let minority parties get in the picture?"
As you say, increasing the number of Assembly members carries its own problems. (If the US House of Representatives, for example, followed its original one-per-30,000 guideline today, there would be around 10,000 representatives) Still, at some point, I think there are going to have to be more assemblymen(and representatives). This might require the addition of further layers of government... but at some point, when the ratios of representation become so ridiculous, doesn't it become worth it?
I don't believe that the election of third parties perforce improves representation... and I don't believe in parties enough to vote by slate.
Consider that one's party affiliation is(or, at least, should be) the smallest part of their political identity. Saying that one is a Republican or Democrat isn't actually saying much: the people within those parties tend to be anything from extreme conservative to moderate, or extreme liberal to moderate, respectively. That isn't to say that I believe these parties to be ideal... they could be the Federalists or the Whigs, so long as they hold a wide enough part of the political spectrum within them.
But I don't trust parties, I trust people(... when I trust them). I trust people, and I don't think they are so interchangeable that you can select any two from within a party and switch them, one for the other, without there being noticeable consequences of that switch. And I like to know the specific politics of the people who are specifically representing me. John McCain does not vote the same way as Newt Gingrich, and by electing a party slate, I have no voice in deciding which one of them is speaking for me.
And in the end, I take offense at the notion that I am defined by my party of registration, and can only be properly represented by a member of same.
Actually, members of the State Assembly represent at least 420,000 people each. State Senators represent approximately 846,791 people each. And I don't think redundant is the word you're looking for... unless you have a misunderstanding of how the bicameral legislature is setup.
There are two houses to balance out the power of highly populated areas -- the Assembly granting more power based on population, and the Senate apportioning based more on geography(at least in theory). If it were just the Assembly, there would be nothing to prevent a "tyranny of the majority," wherein the interests of those in less-populated areas would go unanswered.
Then again, your aim seems to be to in getting parties elected, not improving representation.
You're talking about something like a mashup of the House and the Senate in the U.S.: representation based on state, without distinct district representation within the states.
Problem: what makes state lines any less arbitrary than any other lines? Ignoring that, there is another problem: most states are large, geographically. Many states have areas within with differing needs. The needs of a farmer in the country are not the same as those of a business owner in the city. Further, the needs of those along the coast are different from those who live inland. By throwing them all into the same district, you end up with worse representation, not better.
Theoretically, districts are supposed to be drawn so that they all include the same number of people. Thus, the representation is supposed to be proportional already: cities have more people in a smaller area, and thus have more districts than rural areas, where the population density is lower. More districts means more representatives. The problem that the game in this article is concerned with is how to draw the lines that make those districts. They may be gerrymandered, so as to limit one's opposing party to a few districts wherein they have an overwhelming majority, leaving one's own party with control of all other districts. But assuming they aren't -- assuming that the redrawing of district boundaries is done with good intentions, how do you redraw them? Which subset of needs is most important? Which set of commonalities is most important?
You mean "proportional representation without legislative body size limits," right?
Hell we don't even have to go that far. Proportional to whom? What criteria or boundries determine the population were being proportional about? What makes those any less arbitrary than anything else?
I agree - on a 1,000 year timescale who knows what will happen. But IMHO the main import of the article was to show just how infeasible colonization is in the short term - say, the next century. Policy decisions are being made right now about how to spend billions of dollars to establish a permanent moonbase settlement. Many of these efforts are grounded in traditional romanticized notions of spaceflight that are totally out of touch with the scales and distances involved.
You're defending the article in a way never explicitly -- nor, to my mind, implicitly -- rooted within that article. The bulk of the article is about interstellar concerns -- if the piece was really about the proposed moonbase, wouldn't the balance have tipped more towards our own solar system? If the piece were about the proposed moonbase, wouldn't he have mentioned the proposed moonbase?
The author's arguments draw on technologies imagined today, with no allowances for the invention of what is today unimagined. Truly, his scope of future technology is akin to that of the worse science fiction material produced in the 1950s -- a cobbling together of current ideas into something that looks "high tech." Some of what comes to be may well look akin to that which is theoretical today, but the resemblance will be strained, at best.
I might be overstating my case, though. I do not think that the ideas he put forth are totally outrageous. I'm not saying that he is a bad writer -- like the more outlandish faster-than-light modes of transportation, it bears enough verisimilitude to survive in science fiction. I am just saying that he is seeing boundaries upon our future development that are either transitory, or imaginary. Provided the time, mankind will create technologies that make the most generous assumptions in the article seem silly.
I feel safe in these predictions, because they are so uncourageously non-specific.
But he and I are not the first to make bad predictions of the future. Borrowed from Wikiquote: "To place a man in a multi-stage rocket and project him into the controlling gravitational field of the moon where the passengers can make scientific observations, perhaps land alive, and then return to earth - all that constitutes a wild dream worthy of Jules Verne. I am bold enough to say that such a man-made voyage will never occur regardless of all future advances." - Lee DeForest, American radio pioneer and inventor of the vacuum tube, in 1926
Moreover, robots are proving themselves able to do just about everything that canned meat can do. They are resistant to radiation, vacuum, boredom, and they eat sunlight. They don't require massive pressurized capsules for living quarters I suspect, as the article hints, that machines will completely replace astronauts long before we have magic 1000-years-in-the-future human spaceflight technology.
"Canned meat." Cute.
Humans do not live based on the idea of "what is most efficient." Neither do we dream that way, and more often than not, neither do we work that way. Romantics and adventurers come in all shapes, sizes, and tax brackets. We won't move into space because it is cheap, and we won't move into space out of some biological imperative. We will move into space because we want to.
Interesting how in the comments about season four being the last, the tide was against the Sci-Fi Channel -- about how sorry people were to see it go -- and in the comments on this story, the tide is against the writers for "milking it" -- how sorry people are to see it stay. Different people I trust(and hope), but interesting none the less.
(So far as where I sit -- even with the rather agonizing romantic detour the show took this season, I'm enjoying it. I still trust that the show runners know more or less what they're doing, and that they will, as Ron Moore said, end it when it reaches its ending)
If this is a drm thing, though, doesn't this then also come back to the question of ownership over the media you pay for? This isn't just the key to someone's jewelcase. This seems more akin to those rinky-dink keys that come with those rinky-dink little locks on some backpacks and luggage. Yes, technically they are keys, and they are used for unlocking, but by the very definition of their ubiquity, they are not obscure. One of those keys can unlock any of those locks. This number seems to work the same way. So what we seem to have here is a case where suddenly everybody knows what that rinky-dink key looks like. Most people can't make one of their own. Most of the people who can, won't. The backpacks of the world aren't really in any more danger than they were yesterday.
(And off point a bit, doesn't the use of a single sixteen digit number rather than an algorithm or something seems to go contrary to the idea of obscurity?)
How many people actually know what the number does -- what it specifically does. How many people would know how to use it, if given the opportunity, or even do have the opportunity? Does this number allow any one individual to utterly undo the studios? Does this number allow a wide distribution of individuals to significantly impact the filmmakers' profits?
I suppose what's irking me here is the dire response of the few speaking ot against the posting of the key who have actually getting through the mob of people trying to look cool by posting the key. The response reminds me of the "don't pirate movies... or we'll fucking kill you" ads at the front of movies in the theatres. I'm not suicidal, but there has never been anything that made me want to pirate a movie more than those ads. The heavy-handedess and seeming disconnect from the reality of the issue neutered their argument there, and neuters most of the arguments here. One part of the reality being: by the time the key made it to digg, everyone who matters in this issue, or rather the original issue, had alredy seen it.(the original issue being the actual state of the encryption, rather than the merits and demerits of posting keys and other numbers to public fora) Does that make posting the key now any better? Perhaps not, but the cat's already out of the bag... and the bag caught fire afterwards.
Also, the credit card number analogy also doesn't sync up well. Ignoring the problems of scale, the implication you make, and that seems to be nearly universal in all accounts of this story I come across, is that there is nothing else anyone needs to use in conjunction with this number to undo the encryption. Simply posting a credit card number does nothing. It is only when that number is associated with other pieces of information, such as the name of the account holder, that the number becomes usable. Here:
1718 3876 9622 8624
What's the name attached? The expiration date? What's the world's address?
Slashdot Mirror
I heard that when they respawn they're surrounded by 72 virgins. You mean they're surrounded by 72 other players?
*rimshot*
*notices parent made roughly the same joke*
*slumps away and sulks*
I spent some time infiltrating the WoW. Now that this news has hit the streets, I think it's safe for me to reveal what I learned there... to reveal our strategy for victory. All we need to do is find their graveyard and camp in it -- their equipments will be damaged when they respawn, giving us that much more of an advantage.
This seems to be the linchpin of this form of checkers... and the computer's ability to win. That was never a rule in any game of checkers I've played before.
I just know that if there were a chess version of this with a forced capture rule, people would be screaming blood muder.
Poor checkers... so maligned... so misunderstood.
Wikipedia article on the first Executive Order cited:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_1330
The preamble to the order: "Protecting the Development Fund for Iraq and Certain Other Property in Which Iraq Has an Interest"
By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, as amended (50 U.S.C. 1701 et seq.) (IEEPA), the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1601 et seq.), section 5 of the United Nations Participation Act, as amended (22 U.S.C. 287c) (UNPA), and section 301 of title 3, United States Code,
I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, find that the threat of attachment or other judicial process against the Development Fund for Iraq, Iraqi petroleum and petroleum products, and interests therein, and proceeds, obligations, or any financial instruments of any nature whatsoever arising from or related to the sale or marketing thereof, and interests therein, obstructs the orderly reconstruction of Iraq, the restoration and maintenance of peace and security in the country, and the development of political, administrative, and economic institutions in Iraq. This situation constitutes an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States and I hereby declare a national emergency to deal with that threat. Hell, it looks more like this is an Executive Order in response to an emergency regarding the "Iraqi petroleum." I don't say that lightly... I think accusations about oil tend to be thrown out somewhat too liberally, but oil is objectively present in the reasoning of this root Executive Order.
There is no oversight for his application of the words "threat to [...] national security and foreign policy." The threat to national security that this would protect against is dubious. And why should this "threat to foreign policy" be infringing on our Constitutional Rgiths?
That speaks to its legality in that case. The question of whether its execution was justified, or whether the law itself is proper, is another argument. It was constitutional, and not just in an amendment contemporaneous to the act.
So far as Republicans go...
I think people are idiots -- most people anyway. Distracted by banners and colors, they latch on to parties, and drum their support. Or they point their blaming fingers, at one party, the other, or both. "J'accuse!"
It isn't so simple: the parties lack souls, but also minds and arms and legs. All they have are people -- individual people who work for good or for ill.
... well, I could, but the other posters in this thread already made all of them.
Anyway, I do my best to bash them for wrongs they have actually committed, and not for my personal feelings of discomfiture alone.
I'm sick of Parallel Cappy Red lording his cowboy hat over me. Let's move on to the DoD's next fantasy.
Whalers on the moon?
They carry a harpoon.
Let third parties into the picture how?
If you mean within the Assembly, then how does that improve representation? The population per representative ratio does not improve, and you're just as likely, if not moreso, depending upon personal politics of the assemblyman, to find large numbers of people badly represented.
Otherwise... how do you intend to "let minority parties get in the picture?"
As you say, increasing the number of Assembly members carries its own problems. (If the US House of Representatives, for example, followed its original one-per-30,000 guideline today, there would be around 10,000 representatives) Still, at some point, I think there are going to have to be more assemblymen(and representatives). This might require the addition of further layers of government... but at some point, when the ratios of representation become so ridiculous, doesn't it become worth it?
I don't believe that the election of third parties perforce improves representation... and I don't believe in parties enough to vote by slate.
Consider that one's party affiliation is(or, at least, should be) the smallest part of their political identity. Saying that one is a Republican or Democrat isn't actually saying much: the people within those parties tend to be anything from extreme conservative to moderate, or extreme liberal to moderate, respectively. That isn't to say that I believe these parties to be ideal... they could be the Federalists or the Whigs, so long as they hold a wide enough part of the political spectrum within them.
But I don't trust parties, I trust people(... when I trust them). I trust people, and I don't think they are so interchangeable that you can select any two from within a party and switch them, one for the other, without there being noticeable consequences of that switch. And I like to know the specific politics of the people who are specifically representing me. John McCain does not vote the same way as Newt Gingrich, and by electing a party slate, I have no voice in deciding which one of them is speaking for me.
And in the end, I take offense at the notion that I am defined by my party of registration, and can only be properly represented by a member of same.
Why does my clone smell like burning rhesus monkey?
Actually, members of the State Assembly represent at least 420,000 people each. State Senators represent approximately 846,791 people each. And I don't think redundant is the word you're looking for... unless you have a misunderstanding of how the bicameral legislature is setup.
There are two houses to balance out the power of highly populated areas -- the Assembly granting more power based on population, and the Senate apportioning based more on geography(at least in theory). If it were just the Assembly, there would be nothing to prevent a "tyranny of the majority," wherein the interests of those in less-populated areas would go unanswered.
Then again, your aim seems to be to in getting parties elected, not improving representation.
You're talking about something like a mashup of the House and the Senate in the U.S.: representation based on state, without distinct district representation within the states.
Problem: what makes state lines any less arbitrary than any other lines? Ignoring that, there is another problem: most states are large, geographically. Many states have areas within with differing needs. The needs of a farmer in the country are not the same as those of a business owner in the city. Further, the needs of those along the coast are different from those who live inland. By throwing them all into the same district, you end up with worse representation, not better.
Theoretically, districts are supposed to be drawn so that they all include the same number of people. Thus, the representation is supposed to be proportional already: cities have more people in a smaller area, and thus have more districts than rural areas, where the population density is lower. More districts means more representatives. The problem that the game in this article is concerned with is how to draw the lines that make those districts. They may be gerrymandered, so as to limit one's opposing party to a few districts wherein they have an overwhelming majority, leaving one's own party with control of all other districts. But assuming they aren't -- assuming that the redrawing of district boundaries is done with good intentions, how do you redraw them? Which subset of needs is most important? Which set of commonalities is most important?
Proportional Representation is micromanagement.
You mean "proportional representation without legislative body size limits," right?
Hell we don't even have to go that far. Proportional to whom? What criteria or boundries determine the population were being proportional about? What makes those any less arbitrary than anything else?
Didn't Marvel already say they were going to do this? I could've sworn they did...
As for Edward Norton as Bruce Banner: I am Jack's trepidation.
You're defending the article in a way never explicitly -- nor, to my mind, implicitly -- rooted within that article. The bulk of the article is about interstellar concerns -- if the piece was really about the proposed moonbase, wouldn't the balance have tipped more towards our own solar system? If the piece were about the proposed moonbase, wouldn't he have mentioned the proposed moonbase?
The author's arguments draw on technologies imagined today, with no allowances for the invention of what is today unimagined. Truly, his scope of future technology is akin to that of the worse science fiction material produced in the 1950s -- a cobbling together of current ideas into something that looks "high tech." Some of what comes to be may well look akin to that which is theoretical today, but the resemblance will be strained, at best.
I might be overstating my case, though. I do not think that the ideas he put forth are totally outrageous. I'm not saying that he is a bad writer -- like the more outlandish faster-than-light modes of transportation, it bears enough verisimilitude to survive in science fiction. I am just saying that he is seeing boundaries upon our future development that are either transitory, or imaginary. Provided the time, mankind will create technologies that make the most generous assumptions in the article seem silly.
I feel safe in these predictions, because they are so uncourageously non-specific.
But he and I are not the first to make bad predictions of the future. Borrowed from Wikiquote: "To place a man in a multi-stage rocket and project him into the controlling gravitational field of the moon where the passengers can make scientific observations, perhaps land alive, and then return to earth - all that constitutes a wild dream worthy of Jules Verne. I am bold enough to say that such a man-made voyage will never occur regardless of all future advances." - Lee DeForest, American radio pioneer and inventor of the vacuum tube, in 1926
Moreover, robots are proving themselves able to do just about everything that canned meat can do. They are resistant to radiation, vacuum, boredom, and they eat sunlight. They don't require massive pressurized capsules for living quarters I suspect, as the article hints, that machines will completely replace astronauts long before we have magic 1000-years-in-the-future human spaceflight technology.
"Canned meat." Cute.
Humans do not live based on the idea of "what is most efficient." Neither do we dream that way, and more often than not, neither do we work that way. Romantics and adventurers come in all shapes, sizes, and tax brackets. We won't move into space because it is cheap, and we won't move into space out of some biological imperative. We will move into space because we want to.
Don't you mean "attempt no landings 2.0 there?"
Truly, he has a dizzying intellect.
Interesting how in the comments about season four being the last, the tide was against the Sci-Fi Channel -- about how sorry people were to see it go -- and in the comments on this story, the tide is against the writers for "milking it" -- how sorry people are to see it stay. Different people I trust(and hope), but interesting none the less.
(So far as where I sit -- even with the rather agonizing romantic detour the show took this season, I'm enjoying it. I still trust that the show runners know more or less what they're doing, and that they will, as Ron Moore said, end it when it reaches its ending)
"Actually, I need the horsepower of a large car to drag along my jaw-droppingly huge penis. That, or a powerful motorcycle with a sidecar."
So you ride side-saddle? I don't care how big your wang is, riding that way makes you look girly.
And how the hell do you drive a motorcycle that way anyway?
If this is a drm thing, though, doesn't this then also come back to the question of ownership over the media you pay for? This isn't just the key to someone's jewelcase. This seems more akin to those rinky-dink keys that come with those rinky-dink little locks on some backpacks and luggage. Yes, technically they are keys, and they are used for unlocking, but by the very definition of their ubiquity, they are not obscure. One of those keys can unlock any of those locks. This number seems to work the same way. So what we seem to have here is a case where suddenly everybody knows what that rinky-dink key looks like. Most people can't make one of their own. Most of the people who can, won't. The backpacks of the world aren't really in any more danger than they were yesterday.
(And off point a bit, doesn't the use of a single sixteen digit number rather than an algorithm or something seems to go contrary to the idea of obscurity?)
How many people actually know what the number does -- what it specifically does. How many people would know how to use it, if given the opportunity, or even do have the opportunity? Does this number allow any one individual to utterly undo the studios? Does this number allow a wide distribution of individuals to significantly impact the filmmakers' profits?
I suppose what's irking me here is the dire response of the few speaking ot against the posting of the key who have actually getting through the mob of people trying to look cool by posting the key. The response reminds me of the "don't pirate movies... or we'll fucking kill you" ads at the front of movies in the theatres. I'm not suicidal, but there has never been anything that made me want to pirate a movie more than those ads. The heavy-handedess and seeming disconnect from the reality of the issue neutered their argument there, and neuters most of the arguments here. One part of the reality being: by the time the key made it to digg, everyone who matters in this issue, or rather the original issue, had alredy seen it.(the original issue being the actual state of the encryption, rather than the merits and demerits of posting keys and other numbers to public fora) Does that make posting the key now any better? Perhaps not, but the cat's already out of the bag... and the bag caught fire afterwards.
Also, the credit card number analogy also doesn't sync up well. Ignoring the problems of scale, the implication you make, and that seems to be nearly universal in all accounts of this story I come across, is that there is nothing else anyone needs to use in conjunction with this number to undo the encryption. Simply posting a credit card number does nothing. It is only when that number is associated with other pieces of information, such as the name of the account holder, that the number becomes usable. Here:
1718 3876 9622 8624
What's the name attached? The expiration date? What's the world's address?
Isn't that the place where people go to discuss the swedish chef?
My Killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available.