Somewhat tangential to the story, but how many people do make a living on checks from google adsense? I've looked around and not been able to find any good info on whether it's worth trying to make a website to make some money off adsense.
Actually there was no airport security breakdown on 911. Sure, they had boxcutters, but I don't think those were instrumental. I'd just as soon brawl using a fork. If there had been an airport security breakdown on 911, they would have had real weapons. I think most of the hijackers had entered the US legally, too.
But it seems to me that the democracy IS working, that is, the laws we have are the laws that people want. There is no "other" that is imposing anything upon us, collectively. The issues causing most of the strife are issues where the American public is genuinely divided. Some resent the restrictions of environmental law, while some resent having to live in others' filth. Some want to preserve the freedom to have an abortion, while others want to preserve the freedom of the unborn to live. Some want unfettered freedom to spend money influencing politics, while others say vote-buying reduces freedom for everybody else in the long run. The legislative process can never make everybody agree, but what it should do is ensure that the laws generally reflect the will of the people, and I think they do. Do you not think so?
Whether the majority is right in what they want is another question, so I'm not saying US policy is perfect. But making the laws so rigid they don't change even when most people disagree with them, seems like a form of benevolent dictatorship of the present upon the future.
I'm sure you're not saying the Constitution should be the only federal law - that all federal laws should be in the Constitution? Why should health care reform have to be a Constitutional amendment unless it conflicts with something already in the Constitution?
It would probably be better if we were more proactive in amending the constitution instead of just re-interpreting it to suit or will. On the other hand, the reason it has lasted so long in recognizable form is because it is so short and non-specific. But it's just not true that the 1776 federal government could still work. For white male landowners in a nation of almost unlimited natural resources 200 years ago, it was good. But there are also good reasons why it had to change, and almost nobody really wants to go back.
In what way is life not better now? We live longer, we're vastly richer, and none of us are slaves. Certainly there are changes we could make to be even better off than we are now, but reverting to the 1700s is not one of them.
I disagree; human intelligence seems to have reached a critical threshold when we learned to accumulate knowledge over time. Of all the species on earth, most continue in the same way (limited by the rate of genetic evolution) generation after generation. Not people. Our lifestyles have evolved radically in the last 5000 years. So much so, it is clear no species on earth ever reached the threshold before, because we are exploiting the planet like no species before. If highly advanced aliens from outer space came from earth today, I don't think they'd have any problem identifying humans as qualitatively different from the other species.
Also, I think it is fundamentally wrong to say something is "only" a matter of degree - degree is what matters most! Posessing 1 cent is a lot more like being completely broke than being a millionaire. Life itself is "merely" a matter of degree; people are the gold standard (as far as we know); dogs are "very" alive, worms and plants are "slightly" alive, and fires, tornadoes, and virii are "arguably slightly" alive. Looking for "fundamental" distinctions is a fool's errand, because the cases at the boundaries are the least distinguished and least important.
Conan had a skit on that. They did find one black guy at a tea party - but he was an on-duty cop. Then they spotted another, but it was an effigy of Obama with a Hitler moustache.
Yeap, and before rap music, rock and roll destroyed our moral framework. And sometime before rock and roll, swing destroyed our moral framework.
Well, the common moral framework has been destroyed and re-created over that period of time, more than once in some cases. Look at how we feel about "bastards" (born out of wedlock), or the "N-word" (which used to be part of childrens' rhymes). Look at the content of tv (now radio/internet) programming, it's totally different. Objectively, I do think it is fair to say that much of the old moral framework was destroyed (as new frameworks evolved), and that popular media, definitely including music, played a huge role in changing the norms. So, if you are a conservative, meaning "conserve," meaning you generally like to keep things the way they are in this place at this point in time, by that standard terms like "moral decay" or "decline" make perfect sense, and blaming the media for ushering change makes sense, too.
Yeah, I do kind of like the Volt, but it's still a hybrid. I have to wonder how much better the range and acceleration would be if the battery wasn't burdened by hauling around the gasoline powertrain as well? The engine must be the single heaviest thing in the car.
300 miles is needlessly far for a city car, and still not long enough for long trips.
If they can make such dense batteries, I'd rather have 50 mile range with 1/6 the battery weight / cost. No use dragging around excess batteries all the time.
The point is that multi-tasking operating systems already support server consolidation by protecting processes from each other so you can run multiple processes on a host safely. And they do it in a FAR more efficiently than VMs, which have an entire OS instance for every process, and memory partitioned statically between them.
However, the OS doesn't quite finish the job. The need for VMs arises from design shortcomings at the OS level and above. Here are a few:
You can't install an app and all its dependencies and configuration by simply copying from one host to another. On Linux especially, apps have an insane number of dependencies
Process migration
Using certain port numbers for certain services (most services don't portmap, and firewalling rely heavily on port number assumpions)
It would be nice to fix these at the OS level instead of just piling one protected memory mechanism atop another (java VM atop a virtual machine atop a protected memory CPU architecture and OS).
Oh, I already know I disagree with Kurzweil and his singularitistas. My contention is that, first, he sees the start of an s-curve and assumes it will grow forever; and second, while the number of patents, papers, or discoveries in an area grows with the field, they become less significant over time. Look at medicine. A few hundred years ago penicillin was discovered almost by accident and drastically increased lifespans worldwide. Now, we pour thousands of times the resources into drugs that often have a marginal effect on a relatively rare disease.
I think the parent was implying that he left it ON all day for weeks, but just wasn't talking on it.
Again, what is the point? My wristwatch gets more battery life than a cellphone too. So does a smoke detector. So what? A cellphone not functioning as a cellphone is not a valid basis for comparison. Transmitting a signal to a cell tower does take power, and that power comes from the battery. This whole article amounts to "gosh, wouldn't it be nice if batteries were better, or devices more efficient?" The article is also empirically wrong in stating that battery capacity is not keeping up with demand. If it were true, phones with bigger batteries would catch on. There's nothing stopping us from returning to the cellphone form factor of just a few years ago, if people wanted to trade off size for battery life. Evidently they don't.
My $15 Nokia lasts 2-3 weeks per recharge if I'm not using it for conversations.
We have a winner, folks... the secret to drastically improving battery life in mobile devices is to turn them off and leave them in a drawer. Problem solved.
The problem is battery tech simply hasn't kept up with the pace of technology in other sectors.
To you and the grandparent I ask, where are your expectations coming from, and how aware are you of the progress that has been made?
Battery technology absolutely has improved, and quite steadily, for years. Don't you remember cellphones from the 80s with NiCad batteries?
Second, which "other sectors" have grown at a rate anything like Moore's Law over that time period? Moore's Law does not hold for technology in general, just transistors, and even there its days are numbered. (Aerospace and medicine (life expectancy) also shot up astronomically rather early on, then progress slowed).
I don't believe the characterization of Iran as a mad dog straining at the leash to destroy itself and everybody else if only we let go. Based simply on track record, they haven't been involved in, much less started, a great number of wars in living memory. And until 1979, there were an ally. Evidently the balance of power did tip in a bad way, but that doesn't mean all the people there suddenly went crazy. In fact after the most recent election it is obvious a sizeable minority would like things to change (which is not to say all of those protesters want a Western-style democracy). A radical, sweeping conversion is not necessary; we just need to somehow tip the balance of sentiment back in our direction.
Cite? I'm not an expert but I hadn't noticed anybody claiming the incumbent party in Iran actually lost the election, however heavy-handed they were in silencing protest by the opposition afterwards.
You are projecting your envy of rich people, whom you consider superior to yourself, onto others. Some people think our system is flawed because reaching the top requires a callous disregard for others. Even if you don't seriously consider the idea of them being right, you should at least seriously consider the idea that people who say this genuinely believe it.
Because when you lose your health, you lose your productivity, and thus your job. And in the US, losing your job means losing your insurance, because it's a job benefit. At that point, you are too broke to buy insurance, and anyways could not buy it at almost any price because you're sick so the insurance companies don't want you.
But the story is still being written. See epigenetics. Differences in environment (e.g. parental behavior) affect gene expression which in turn affect behavior (e.g. parenting behavior).
On the other hand, fitness is a function of both the environment and behavior, so behavior can absolutely change genes over many generations. The people who chose to walk out of Africa into colder climes most certainly did change the genetic makeup of their distant descendants by doing so. Similarly, figuring out cooking may well have altered the course of human evolution.
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Somewhat tangential to the story, but how many people do make a living on checks from google adsense? I've looked around and not been able to find any good info on whether it's worth trying to make a website to make some money off adsense.
Actually there was no airport security breakdown on 911. Sure, they had boxcutters, but I don't think those were instrumental. I'd just as soon brawl using a fork. If there had been an airport security breakdown on 911, they would have had real weapons. I think most of the hijackers had entered the US legally, too.
Nah, nobody would consider such a thing.
Whether the majority is right in what they want is another question, so I'm not saying US policy is perfect. But making the laws so rigid they don't change even when most people disagree with them, seems like a form of benevolent dictatorship of the present upon the future.
I'm sure you're not saying the Constitution should be the only federal law - that all federal laws should be in the Constitution? Why should health care reform have to be a Constitutional amendment unless it conflicts with something already in the Constitution?
In what way is life not better now? We live longer, we're vastly richer, and none of us are slaves. Certainly there are changes we could make to be even better off than we are now, but reverting to the 1700s is not one of them.
When I read about progress along these lines I always think about this story about Iran, which resulted in mockery from all corners of the globe.
I disagree; human intelligence seems to have reached a critical threshold when we learned to accumulate knowledge over time. Of all the species on earth, most continue in the same way (limited by the rate of genetic evolution) generation after generation. Not people. Our lifestyles have evolved radically in the last 5000 years. So much so, it is clear no species on earth ever reached the threshold before, because we are exploiting the planet like no species before. If highly advanced aliens from outer space came from earth today, I don't think they'd have any problem identifying humans as qualitatively different from the other species.
Also, I think it is fundamentally wrong to say something is "only" a matter of degree - degree is what matters most! Posessing 1 cent is a lot more like being completely broke than being a millionaire. Life itself is "merely" a matter of degree; people are the gold standard (as far as we know); dogs are "very" alive, worms and plants are "slightly" alive, and fires, tornadoes, and virii are "arguably slightly" alive. Looking for "fundamental" distinctions is a fool's errand, because the cases at the boundaries are the least distinguished and least important.
Conan had a skit on that. They did find one black guy at a tea party - but he was an on-duty cop. Then they spotted another, but it was an effigy of Obama with a Hitler moustache.
The reincarnation of Hitler and the antichrist. (Where does he find the time?)
Well, the common moral framework has been destroyed and re-created over that period of time, more than once in some cases. Look at how we feel about "bastards" (born out of wedlock), or the "N-word" (which used to be part of childrens' rhymes). Look at the content of tv (now radio/internet) programming, it's totally different. Objectively, I do think it is fair to say that much of the old moral framework was destroyed (as new frameworks evolved), and that popular media, definitely including music, played a huge role in changing the norms. So, if you are a conservative, meaning "conserve," meaning you generally like to keep things the way they are in this place at this point in time, by that standard terms like "moral decay" or "decline" make perfect sense, and blaming the media for ushering change makes sense, too.
Yeah, I do kind of like the Volt, but it's still a hybrid. I have to wonder how much better the range and acceleration would be if the battery wasn't burdened by hauling around the gasoline powertrain as well? The engine must be the single heaviest thing in the car.
If they can make such dense batteries, I'd rather have 50 mile range with 1/6 the battery weight / cost. No use dragging around excess batteries all the time.
However, the OS doesn't quite finish the job. The need for VMs arises from design shortcomings at the OS level and above. Here are a few:
It would be nice to fix these at the OS level instead of just piling one protected memory mechanism atop another (java VM atop a virtual machine atop a protected memory CPU architecture and OS).
Oh, I already know I disagree with Kurzweil and his singularitistas. My contention is that, first, he sees the start of an s-curve and assumes it will grow forever; and second, while the number of patents, papers, or discoveries in an area grows with the field, they become less significant over time. Look at medicine. A few hundred years ago penicillin was discovered almost by accident and drastically increased lifespans worldwide. Now, we pour thousands of times the resources into drugs that often have a marginal effect on a relatively rare disease.
Again, what is the point? My wristwatch gets more battery life than a cellphone too. So does a smoke detector. So what? A cellphone not functioning as a cellphone is not a valid basis for comparison. Transmitting a signal to a cell tower does take power, and that power comes from the battery. This whole article amounts to "gosh, wouldn't it be nice if batteries were better, or devices more efficient?" The article is also empirically wrong in stating that battery capacity is not keeping up with demand. If it were true, phones with bigger batteries would catch on. There's nothing stopping us from returning to the cellphone form factor of just a few years ago, if people wanted to trade off size for battery life. Evidently they don't.
We have a winner, folks... the secret to drastically improving battery life in mobile devices is to turn them off and leave them in a drawer. Problem solved.
To you and the grandparent I ask, where are your expectations coming from, and how aware are you of the progress that has been made?
Battery technology absolutely has improved, and quite steadily, for years. Don't you remember cellphones from the 80s with NiCad batteries?
Second, which "other sectors" have grown at a rate anything like Moore's Law over that time period? Moore's Law does not hold for technology in general, just transistors, and even there its days are numbered. (Aerospace and medicine (life expectancy) also shot up astronomically rather early on, then progress slowed).
I don't believe the characterization of Iran as a mad dog straining at the leash to destroy itself and everybody else if only we let go. Based simply on track record, they haven't been involved in, much less started, a great number of wars in living memory. And until 1979, there were an ally. Evidently the balance of power did tip in a bad way, but that doesn't mean all the people there suddenly went crazy. In fact after the most recent election it is obvious a sizeable minority would like things to change (which is not to say all of those protesters want a Western-style democracy). A radical, sweeping conversion is not necessary; we just need to somehow tip the balance of sentiment back in our direction.
That is exactly the strategy we have followed with "Red China." Some would say it has worked out pretty well.
Cite? I'm not an expert but I hadn't noticed anybody claiming the incumbent party in Iran actually lost the election, however heavy-handed they were in silencing protest by the opposition afterwards.
You are projecting your envy of rich people, whom you consider superior to yourself, onto others. Some people think our system is flawed because reaching the top requires a callous disregard for others. Even if you don't seriously consider the idea of them being right, you should at least seriously consider the idea that people who say this genuinely believe it.
Because when you lose your health, you lose your productivity, and thus your job. And in the US, losing your job means losing your insurance, because it's a job benefit. At that point, you are too broke to buy insurance, and anyways could not buy it at almost any price because you're sick so the insurance companies don't want you.
But the story is still being written. See epigenetics. Differences in environment (e.g. parental behavior) affect gene expression which in turn affect behavior (e.g. parenting behavior).
On the other hand, fitness is a function of both the environment and behavior, so behavior can absolutely change genes over many generations. The people who chose to walk out of Africa into colder climes most certainly did change the genetic makeup of their distant descendants by doing so. Similarly, figuring out cooking may well have altered the course of human evolution.