Well, they tried it at the beginning of the universe. However, they found out that the large debt led to a hyperinflation. Newest observation show that the expansion of the universe accelerates again, so probably someone tries the scheme again.
Let's just hope the Earth wasn't bought on credit, or we might find ourself homeless soon.
Well, actually all a suicide will give you is an extended stay in a hospital because of a failed suicide attempt. Because if you were so unlucky up to now that you consider suicide the best option you have, what makes you think that you are suddenly lucky enough for your suicide attempt to succeed?
Quantum suicide is a better option. Just make a suicide mechanism which is triggered if all the information does not vanish. Since the probability of all that information vanishing e.g. due to some cosmic radiation particles flipping enough bits that none of it is accessible any more, while negligible for all normal purposes, is not exactly zero, if MWI is right, he will then experience the vanishing of the information immediately with certainty. If MWI is wrong, it's no worse than normal suicide.
If he wants to make sure that the information vanishes for everyone, he'll need to make a doomsday device triggered on the non-vanishing of the information. This would make sure that the information will vanish - either through the improbable erasure process, or by just being destroyed together with the earth by the doomsday device.
First[1], you need to invent a time machine. Then you travel back in time and either convince your former self not to do it or you kill all the witnesses and destroy all the evidence.
[1] You can actually do it last, if you like. Or in the middle. Whenever. It is a time machine, after[2] all. [2] Or before all. It is a time machine, after[3] all. [3] Or before all. It is stack overflow near line 5. Bailing
Well, actually your comment caused all his problems. He went beck and tried to kill the witnesses, as of your advice (he knew, knowing himself, that trying to convince his former self would not have been successful). He already failed with the first, but this attempted killing is what caught the attention of the feds. Also the second and third attempt at killing witnesses failed, which made it quite simple for the feds to track it down to his past self. Also, it made the publishers of the text magazine aware of the case, which led to the article he wants to get rid of.
Actually the problem isn't really the people who doubt scientific theories, but people who reject them on shady grounds. There's nothing wrong with saying "I doubt that evolution works that way, but you may convince me." The problem is people saying "Evolution is wrong, period." That's no doubt, because it is itself a definitive statements. Doubt is about not being definitive. Doubt means "I don't believe that it's true, give me evidence." Rejection means "It isn't true, period."
That is so completely wrong, it's mind boggling. Fatally so. Currently, for each calorie you eat, 9/10ths of it came from oil.
But how much of that oil is simply used for energy production, and could therefore replaced by any other suitable energy source (be it solar, nuclear, or whatever)?
But for everything humans do, the one who hires the human must have more money than the hired person gets, or he can't afford to hire that person. So the people who can hire ten nannies will always be in the minority, because from the money the nanny gets she cannot pay ten other nannies.
And of course the machines would just have had to send solar power stations into space to get as much solar energy as they want, even with a darkened sky. Not that whatever they used to darken the sky would have remained in the atmosphere for very long time. And even if there's no way to harness solar power any more, there's still geothermal energy.
Of course only very stupid humans would block all sunlight from Earth. Because unlike machines, our energy ultimately comes to 100% from the sun. Not to forget the oxygen we are breathing.
Let's transfer this to postal service. You know, it's quite possible to send illegal copies of copyrighted works by mail. So if someone is accused to receive illegal copies of copyrighted works by mail, should the postal service stop delivering mail to him?
There is indeed the interpretation of antiparticles as time-reversed particles, but that doesn't mean they are faster than light. Instead in time reversal the future light cone and the past light cone are exchanged. But either way, any physical interaction still happens inside the light cones.
But that symmetry shouldn't be misinterpreted anyway. For example, classical mechanics is symmetric under time reversal. But that doesn't mean that time can go backwards, but it just means that if any process is classically allowed, then the time-reversed process in principle is, too. In relativistic quantum mechanics, this symmetry is replaced by the CPT symmetry, where in addition to time reversal, you also have to mirror space and exchange matter by antimatter. So if a left-handed muon can decay into a left-handed electron by emitting a left-handed myon neutrino and a right-handed electron-antineutrino, this means that if a right-handed positron, a left-handed electron and a right-handed muon-antineutrino of the correct energies meet, they may form a right-handed antimuon. But that's unrelated to the question of causality. While a myon simply will decay at some time in the future (so you know if you have just a myon, you'll soon have an electron, a muon-neutrino and an electron-antineutrino), just because you have an antimuon you cannot conclude that at some time in the past it "reverse-will reverse-decay", i.e. it was formed, from a positron, an electron neutrino and a muon antineutrino. Indeed, it's very unlikely that it was formed that way; most likely it comes from a decay of some heavier particle (I think they can be generated in pion decay). Especially you cannot cause the existence of a positron in the past by generating an antimuon now (nor by "reverse-creating", i.e. destroying an antimuon), while you can cause the existence of an electron in the future by generating a muon now (because it will decay as described with almost certainty if you wait long enough).
That quantum mechanics can deal quite well with special relativity, which is the theory which disallows FTL, and therefore your claims that "no FTL" is a dogma that should not hold because relativity must be wrong because it doesn't fit well with quantum mechanics is wrong.
And the point that QM and SR work very well together is exemplified by the fact that the combination allowed a completely unexpected, but later confirmed, prediction, namely the existence of antimatter, as well as by the fact that the best-tested theory we currently have adheres to both QM and SR.
But if the input is not checked, there's no point in making it look like English text. That only makes sense if it first has to pass a filter which filters out non-text. And that filter would do the conversion to UTF8 or, if the input is already expected to be UTF8, would filter out the invalid UTF8.
as for stopping ads... you might as well stop the internet... this drives the place.
Well, they could do the equivalent to what print media and TV do: Put the ads on the server which also serves the content. Yes, that means the advertisers won't see who sees their ad, and they cannot make targeted ads beyond the content of the web sites, but then, they can't do that on print media or TV either, and it seems to work quite fine there. As an added bonus to the advertiser, you couldn't block their ads automatically, because they would come from the same source as the real content.
Keeping server logs for an extended times is illegal. If they made serving ads from third-party servers illegal, I wouldn't object:-) Cookies: It depends on what they are used for. Cookies which only go to the primary site and are not set without the user's consent are clearly OK. Tracking cookies aren't. Preferences are usually not stored without the user explicitly requesting it. Therefore: Clearly OK. Facebook: If I don't explicitly go to facebook, do they get any data on me? linkedin: I don't know that. Online games: It's certainly your own decision to play them. You don't play them without noticing. google/yahoo/bing keeping websites: What do you mean with "keeping websites"?
Slashdot Mirror
Well, they tried it at the beginning of the universe. However, they found out that the large debt led to a hyperinflation. Newest observation show that the expansion of the universe accelerates again, so probably someone tries the scheme again.
Let's just hope the Earth wasn't bought on credit, or we might find ourself homeless soon.
Well, maybe his eigenvalue is zero ... (if you don't get this, look at his user name)
Well, if the companies don't find enough angels, maybe they'll reconsider their policies ...
Are you sure? Maybe he just has to press ^Z often enough ...
Well, actually all a suicide will give you is an extended stay in a hospital because of a failed suicide attempt. Because if you were so unlucky up to now that you consider suicide the best option you have, what makes you think that you are suddenly lucky enough for your suicide attempt to succeed?
Quantum suicide is a better option. Just make a suicide mechanism which is triggered if all the information does not vanish. Since the probability of all that information vanishing e.g. due to some cosmic radiation particles flipping enough bits that none of it is accessible any more, while negligible for all normal purposes, is not exactly zero, if MWI is right, he will then experience the vanishing of the information immediately with certainty. If MWI is wrong, it's no worse than normal suicide.
If he wants to make sure that the information vanishes for everyone, he'll need to make a doomsday device triggered on the non-vanishing of the information. This would make sure that the information will vanish - either through the improbable erasure process, or by just being destroyed together with the earth by the doomsday device.
First[1], you need to invent a time machine. Then you travel back in time and either convince your former self not to do it or you kill all the witnesses and destroy all the evidence.
[1] You can actually do it last, if you like. Or in the middle. Whenever. It is a time machine, after[2] all.
[2] Or before all. It is a time machine, after[3] all.
[3] Or before all. It is stack overflow near line 5. Bailing
Well, actually your comment caused all his problems. He went beck and tried to kill the witnesses, as of your advice (he knew, knowing himself, that trying to convince his former self would not have been successful). He already failed with the first, but this attempted killing is what caught the attention of the feds. Also the second and third attempt at killing witnesses failed, which made it quite simple for the feds to track it down to his past self. Also, it made the publishers of the text magazine aware of the case, which led to the article he wants to get rid of.
Must work very well with witness protection ... :-)
There is no global warming: The effect is well localized to the earth, the rest of the universe is not affected.
Dammit, I knew NASA was just a political ploy . . .
They're made to do whatever evils their funding overlords tell them to do. Which is to . . . uh . . . let me get back to you on that one.
... fake moon landings? :-)
Actually the problem isn't really the people who doubt scientific theories, but people who reject them on shady grounds. There's nothing wrong with saying "I doubt that evolution works that way, but you may convince me." The problem is people saying "Evolution is wrong, period." That's no doubt, because it is itself a definitive statements. Doubt is about not being definitive. Doubt means "I don't believe that it's true, give me evidence." Rejection means "It isn't true, period."
I don't think that word means what you think it means. "Hardly" means "almost not", but I'm quite sure you wanted to say "very much" ...
But how much of that oil is simply used for energy production, and could therefore replaced by any other suitable energy source (be it solar, nuclear, or whatever)?
But for everything humans do, the one who hires the human must have more money than the hired person gets, or he can't afford to hire that person. So the people who can hire ten nannies will always be in the minority, because from the money the nanny gets she cannot pay ten other nannies.
And of course the machines would just have had to send solar power stations into space to get as much solar energy as they want, even with a darkened sky. Not that whatever they used to darken the sky would have remained in the atmosphere for very long time. And even if there's no way to harness solar power any more, there's still geothermal energy.
Of course only very stupid humans would block all sunlight from Earth. Because unlike machines, our energy ultimately comes to 100% from the sun. Not to forget the oxygen we are breathing.
Yeah, so? It’s not the military-entertainment-industrial complex that makes the laws, but parliaments.
They can huff and puff all they want, but that does not make it force of law in any case.
Indeed. If they want a law, they'll have to buy it.
Let's transfer this to postal service. You know, it's quite possible to send illegal copies of copyrighted works by mail. So if someone is accused to receive illegal copies of copyrighted works by mail, should the postal service stop delivering mail to him?
No.
There is indeed the interpretation of antiparticles as time-reversed particles, but that doesn't mean they are faster than light. Instead in time reversal the future light cone and the past light cone are exchanged. But either way, any physical interaction still happens inside the light cones.
But that symmetry shouldn't be misinterpreted anyway. For example, classical mechanics is symmetric under time reversal. But that doesn't mean that time can go backwards, but it just means that if any process is classically allowed, then the time-reversed process in principle is, too. In relativistic quantum mechanics, this symmetry is replaced by the CPT symmetry, where in addition to time reversal, you also have to mirror space and exchange matter by antimatter. So if a left-handed muon can decay into a left-handed electron by emitting a left-handed myon neutrino and a right-handed electron-antineutrino, this means that if a right-handed positron, a left-handed electron and a right-handed muon-antineutrino of the correct energies meet, they may form a right-handed antimuon. But that's unrelated to the question of causality. While a myon simply will decay at some time in the future (so you know if you have just a myon, you'll soon have an electron, a muon-neutrino and an electron-antineutrino), just because you have an antimuon you cannot conclude that at some time in the past it "reverse-will reverse-decay", i.e. it was formed, from a positron, an electron neutrino and a muon antineutrino. Indeed, it's very unlikely that it was formed that way; most likely it comes from a decay of some heavier particle (I think they can be generated in pion decay). Especially you cannot cause the existence of a positron in the past by generating an antimuon now (nor by "reverse-creating", i.e. destroying an antimuon), while you can cause the existence of an electron in the future by generating a muon now (because it will decay as described with almost certainty if you wait long enough).
That quantum mechanics can deal quite well with special relativity, which is the theory which disallows FTL, and therefore your claims that "no FTL" is a dogma that should not hold because relativity must be wrong because it doesn't fit well with quantum mechanics is wrong.
And the point that QM and SR work very well together is exemplified by the fact that the combination allowed a completely unexpected, but later confirmed, prediction, namely the existence of antimatter, as well as by the fact that the best-tested theory we currently have adheres to both QM and SR.
But if the input is not checked, there's no point in making it look like English text. That only makes sense if it first has to pass a filter which filters out non-text. And that filter would do the conversion to UTF8 or, if the input is already expected to be UTF8, would filter out the invalid UTF8.
Well, they could do the equivalent to what print media and TV do: Put the ads on the server which also serves the content. Yes, that means the advertisers won't see who sees their ad, and they cannot make targeted ads beyond the content of the web sites, but then, they can't do that on print media or TV either, and it seems to work quite fine there. As an added bonus to the advertiser, you couldn't block their ads automatically, because they would come from the same source as the real content.
You're not as far off the 51 Euro Cents as you think.
There, fixed that for you.
There, fixed that for you.
There, fixed that for you.
Keeping server logs for an extended times is illegal. If they made serving ads from third-party servers illegal, I wouldn't object :-)
Cookies: It depends on what they are used for. Cookies which only go to the primary site and are not set without the user's consent are clearly OK. Tracking cookies aren't.
Preferences are usually not stored without the user explicitly requesting it. Therefore: Clearly OK.
Facebook: If I don't explicitly go to facebook, do they get any data on me?
linkedin: I don't know that.
Online games: It's certainly your own decision to play them. You don't play them without noticing.
google/yahoo/bing keeping websites: What do you mean with "keeping websites"?
I now did so, but I got no google-analytics or similar. Only fsdn.com. I don't know if it's due to NoScript or Adblock Plus, though.
They are all real numbers, but they are not the real numbers.