I think the complaint was that Facebook was the ONLY option.
Facebook isn't the only option.
In your analogy... Why would you have a problem if you could ONLY vote at Walmart?
Personally, I wouldn't. My analogy was correct, however, by saying "one of the polling places", because facebook isn't the only way people have of communicating with their congressmen.
You've missed the point entirely. I'm not complaining about how hard it is to communicate with a congressman. I'm pointing out that every means of communicating with a congressman requires something from the constituent. Email, web form (and I didn't say "requires a specific web browser", so your IE rant is baseless, too), writing a letter. This particular form requires a facebook account. Big deal. It isn't the only way to communicate, and it costs nothing more than internet access already costs. If you don't want to use it, don't. Just stop whining that congress is using it. If you don't want to use that method, pick another. Just keep in mind that the excuse that "it requires a facebook account" is about the same level of complexity and cost as "it requires internet and a web browser".
So your solution is to violate facebooks terms of service?
I'm glad someone finally picked up on that. On slashdot, everyone laughs at unenforcable shrink wrap licenses. Most people have utter disdain for copyright and patent. And yet, a facebook TOS is sacrosanct? ROTFL.
So not only do you want me to deal with specific commercial entity I dislike,...
I don't give a rat's ass if you deal with facebook or not. I truly could not care less. It's your decision. Just don't complain about the congress using it as one means of communicating with their constituents.
I don't have a facebook account because I don't want to agree to their terms of services,
That's fine. Everyone picks which rules they'll play by. You respect unenforcable TOS. Don't deal with them, then.
So I guess the next elections should be held at Walmart?
Why would you have a problem if one of the polling places was at a Walmart? Go to the local Walmart, go to the local school, big difference NOT. More parking at the Walmart. Doesn't disrupt classes. Doesn't keep sex offenders who are restricted from being within 200 feet of any school from voting. Sounds like a good plan.
In Oregon, with vote by mail, and Walmarts tending to have mail drop boxes, we actually have polling places in every Walmart. And lots of other stores and malls.
People will get up and defend themselves so unless would-be attackers come heavily armed there won't be a repeat.
The last few attempts have been bombs. When a terrorist gets up and goes into the lavatory, there is nobody else around him to notice that he's assembling and detonating a bomb. Yes, for aircraft takeover attempts, the passengers will use what few defensive and offensive weapons they can make to stop the takeover, but bombs are a different story. Had the shoe bomber been smart enough to go to the bathroom before trying to light his shoes off, he might have been successful.
What I want to know is why the TSA isn't installing anti-aircraft guns around airports to take care of the bird menace!
Because birds aren't aircraft?
But I understand what you are trying to say. Airports with bird problems do. Like this, or this. The problem is talked about here, for just one example.
Even so, the conservationists are often opposed to such things, saying the birds have the right to be there and yada yada yada and if a plane runs into one it's the planes fault.
In that condescending tone you are using I see what you are saying. But you're missing the point.
Sarcasm often sounds condescending. I got the point. The point is specious.
The point is, Congress did not have to restrict this only to Facebook account holders.
They didn't. Where does it say, other than in the summary, that the only way of sending questions is via facebook? Answer: it doesn't. Fax your question. Email it. Nothing says only facebook will be accepted. It says members will accept questions via facebook -- which is a new thing and merits a specific comment so people know they CAN do it that way -- not that they will ONLY accept questions via facebook. They list the names of the members of the committee, you can use that information to contact them in any way you see fit.
You see, you sometimes on slashdot have to read the original material to get the true story. The summaries are sometimes wrong. Gasp. And sometimes they are wrong in a way intended to cause alarm and vast amounts of jumping up and down and moral outrage about something that isn't happening.
They want to restrict commentary to Facebook account holders, which is another way to say they only want to hear from people who jump on bandwagons.
They aren't restricting comments, so your entire bandwagon argument is flummery. And what does joining facebook so you can use facebook to send a comment to your congressman say about you? It means you joined facebook so you can send your comment to a congressman. It doesn't mean you "jump on bandwagons". You don't have to do any of the other stuff facebook is used for. It's a TOOL. How you use it is up to you. You can use it for all the social stuff like sharing pics with strangers or posting comments on other people's walls to make them look stupid or playing stupid games or joining corporate marketing campaigns, or whatever use it is that you feel merits deragatory remarks about people who use facebook. Or you can use it for the things you want to, like sending a comment to a congressman and nothing else.
It's a tool. If you use a hammer to drive in screws, you are a moron and a fool. If you use the hammer to drive nails, you aren't. Same tool. Different uses. Different users.
And agreeing to a 3rd party commercial entities terms of service to participate in democracy doesn't strike you as lunacy?
A. No. Going where the people are seems like a good thing, not lunacy at all. B. You aren't being prevented from participating in democracy. Write a letter if you feel strongly about something. You can't believe that the congress critters will ignore a letter just because they asked for comments via facebook.
Why -exactly- should I need to agree to facebook's terms of use as a prerequisite for any sort of participation or interaction with my elected government?
You don't. You are free to participate in ways other than via facebook.
It may well be convenient for many citizens, and even expedient and efficient for the government, but it is fundamentally wrong.
You do realize that every form of "participation" requires some action on the part of the citizen, don't you? "We should be allowed to send an email..." means you must have an email account. "We should be able to poke stuff into a web form..." means you must have Internet access AND a web browser. "We should be able to mail them a letter..." means you have to be able to afford a stamp and have the ability to write. Every means of participation inconveniences some citizens. Does that make all of those means of participation "fundamentally wrong"?
Yes, if facebook charged you money to participate, I'd agree that it was wrong to use facebook for this. Facebook is free. If you already have internet access, you can have facebook for nothing extra. Since the OP was talking about interacting in an internet environment to start with, then whether it is via facebook or email or web makes no significant difference. OTH, the phone company charges you money to call your Senator. Why is the phone company ok and facebook bad? Or do you think the fact that Senators have phones is "fundamentally wrong", too?
Get a free account under a dummy name. Use a throwaway email address. Don't be stupid and send friend requests to any real people who might out you. Don't post your real information. Don't use a real picture of yourself for your avatar. Do none of the things that would identify you. Do all of the things you would do for any other internet connection or app that would anonymize you. You get to participate, facebook gets nothing. What's your problem with that?
Indeed. It's aol all over again. For someone that doesn't have a facebook account it becomes more and more difficult to access parts of the internet.
Yes, how sad that someone who refuses to use facebook for any reason won't get to participate in anything that happens on facebook. Almost as sad as that AOL thing you refer to, where a commercial information vendor would only let customers access AOL's data via AOL.
This problem is much cheaper to solve: get a facebook account. The only tie back to you is an email address, and you can buffer that through a throwaway gmail account.
Let's see... you can't beat the house on poker, because they skim off the top.
You can't beat the house on poker because you aren't playing against the house.
This means that instead of being a numbers game, it's a psychology game --
Why yes, poker is primarily a game of reading people and messing with their heads. That's pretty well known. That's why online players often have a hard time transitioning to live play. Those avatars the online folks get to see rarely sweat or twitch or display any tells at all. And that's why I use the online/computer games I play to study things like odds and chances, but never how to read a hand.
... even though you may have a chance win and stop playing (giving the house a cut of your winnings).
I know of no casino operated poker room where winners are expected to hand over a "cut of the winnings" when they leave a game. Which casinos do you play at where this happens? I'd stay away from them.
Not a game - or entertainment or luck. Just calculation of reall odds and risk.
There are 3 such games: Craps, Blackjack and Baccarat. Poker is promoted so heavily, because it makes the Casinos so much lucre.
The first three games you mentioned are all played to the house advantage against the house. The best of the three for the player is blackjack where the house percentage can be low (and depends on the specific house rules). But it still favors the house. Blackjack is also the game where counting cards can help you win.
Poker is played not against the house, but against other people. The only money the poker rooms make is from the rake, or a percentage of each pot. The rake doesn't change the odds of winning a hand, only the amount you win by a small amount. It biases the expected return calculations and thus should have a small effect on how players bet.
The largest effects on player behaviour are the bonuses like "high hand" or "bad beat", where players who know they are likely to win $500 for getting four of a kind are going to underbet their hands to keep the other players in until the end (trading pot size for jackpot). Or, as I did once, a player who knows the other person has made their straight flush may stay in the pot hoping to complete quads so he'd win his half of the bad beat jackpot.
The other money poker brings in is from the players who play other games waiting for a seat, or visit the buffet. Getting people in the door is the first step to robbing them blind with Carribean Stud or Craps or Roulette.
Yes, and that's why I said "most people", not "nobody". Give me some credit for using the words I use, ok?
What's important to note is that YOU don't write the numbers down and there is no law or reason for you to. That won't be true when you buy something using your cashless plastic. The vendor will have every reason to write it down, because that's how he's going to get HIS money from YOU. That serial number on the paper bill that isn't important because the bill itself is the "cash" becomes critical information when the only thing being exchanged is the serial number.
The broker has no incentive to keep records of their customers.
Knock knock "police search warrant" smash "on the floor keep your hands in sight". "This card says it was sold by you and it was found in the posession of a drug dealer. Who did you sell it to?"
"I dunno..."
"Pack up every computer in the place, we're taking them in to extract the sales records. Sorry about shutting your business down for the next six months, pal."
"I sold it to Samantha Wright...", and he knows that because you had to pay him with tracable electronic cash in the first place. Remember, cashless!
Even if you could find a black market cash card dealer, you'd face the fact that simply being a black market cash card dealer would become a crime and buying one a criminal act in itself. If you get caught with a card from a black market dealer in your posession, you'd be processed the same way that people who have large amounts of cash in their posession and no reasonable excuse are today: confiscated cash and a maybe a criminal charge. Civil forfeiture at the least. Either way, you're out your money. And then every legitimate business you go to will be required to report your use of black market cash, so not only will the card dealer have an incentive to keep records, so will every business you use that card with.
Yes, in a cashless society there will always be people who want anonymity enough that they'll use something else to pay for things. They will run headlong into the problem of needing something that someone else has, and that someone has no interest in keeping your anonymity so your alternative cash has no value for him.
If the cards change hands frequently enough, then the tracability of the card becomes as difficult as the tracability of the unique IDs on cash bills.
The reason that the ids of cash bills are essentially untraceable is because almost nobody currently tracks them.
The card data will be tracked by everyone, since everyone who touches it will need to process it as data and the computer will record it automatically. Unless you think people will just accept your word that "this card contains $25" and not run it through their scanner to verify the amount and validity, at which point the record is made.
The various denominations of card would never go through a card swipe machine, except to permanently denude it of its assets prior to its physical destruction.
Wow. So you really do think people will just accept your word that the cash card you hand them contains $25 just because you say so.
That 200$ card can have changed hands physically hundreds of times before then. This is the same problem as cash bills.
Cash bills are easily exchangable like that because there is some measure of trust that the bill is genuine and has not had its value stripped from it by an intermediate owner. There are also people with guns who deal with people who try to produce fake bills, and usually identifying a fake bill takes nothing more than really looking at it.
How do you deal with the person who "denudes" 100 cards that contain $1 and then transfers the contents of one $100 card to all 100 of the blanks? Or doesn't transfer anything to them. You've now got 101 cards that are valued at $100 because the guy who has them says they are $100 cards. He started with $200, he's now trading for $10,100. You can't tell just by looking, it's a piece of plastic with a magstripe on the back or a few gold contacts on the front.
Well, you deal with that by either "swiping" every card when it is used (which gives you tracability) or making cards that have strong visual authentication systems so no swiping, or even any electronic measure, is needed (and thus you have made a one-for-one replacement of "paper cash" with "plastic cash", copying all the problems of paper cash over into your "plastic" system.)
The only reason paper cash is untracable is because most people don't write the numbers down. If everyone has to write all the numbers down, and has to do it electronically because the numbers are only available via electronic means, then you've converted "paper cash" into just as tracable a system as this new "digital cash" will be.
It would require a professional code of conduct to protect clients' anonymity, but it's not inconceivable.
How many professional codes of conduct survive a US federal marshall knocking on the door, backed up by an extension to the Patriot Act? It won't even take something as radical as the Patriot Act to get laws that require "money sellers" to release records with a subpeona.
If enough people are concerned about privacy, there may very well be, realistically, too many clients for a given broker to remember.
They have these marvelous things today called "computers" that can keep track of stuff for billions of people to the exact penny. How many times can a "money seller" tell the marshalls "I forget" and get away with it? Especially when the transaction had to be remembered in order for it to happen in the first place?
Also, a lot of obfuscation can be accomplished through gifting people indirectly: if broker A gives out $150 to 10 people and broker B gives out $100 to 8 people, then the customers of broker A can repay broker B, and vice versa, and then B can pay A $50 to balance things out.
So the marshalls show up at broker B, who says "I gave that card to broker A", then they show up at broker A's door and broker A says "I sold that card and here is Samanatha Wright's name and address.".
Do you really think either broker A or broker B will go to jail to protect you? Or that they will simply "give out" cards to anyone who wants one, with the hope that the people they give them to will hand them over to someone else?
The interesting question is whether, if the US stops printing dollars, the existing physical dollars would become less valuable (no more state backing) or more valuable (no more state printing).
It would follow the pattern of every other country that stopped printing their own money and started using "something else". We have fine examples all over Europe from when all those countries changed to the Euro.
For a while, the dollars would not change in value. Then the backing country would stop honoring them so they'd drop drastically. After a (probably long) time, they would regain some value as rarities.
I don't know, how much can you sell a Dutch guilder for on the open market these days? Here, or here, or best answer here. Until 2032 a guilder in paper is still worth a guilder. Coins, not so much. Old siver and gold guilders are valuable, just like any old gold or silver coin. Run of the mill modern stuff? Less than the cost of the metal, probably. Just like the US penny currently.
The user could pay someone else to buy the card at a small premium.
So when the drug dealer's money is confiscated and traced back to someone, it will be someone who you paid to buy it for you, and since there is no physical money anymore, that person will be able to provide your info to the cops. Or he'll go to jail.
Care to debate which option your local prepaid VISA card reseller who doesn't want to go to jail and doesn't give a damn about you will pick?
It doesn't matter who you buy the card from, they'll have your information because you can't pay them untracably. Even if you could barter all the money you need with them, they'll have your info.
Evolution is about creating 'different' rather than 'objectively improved' organisms.
No. Mutation is about creating "different". Evolution is about the long-term changes that result from the short-term changes. Natural selection and mutation are not mutually exclusive concepts. The latter is the reason why natural selection can happen.
In fact genetic drift will fix even 'objectively' disadvantageous mutations as long as they are not under strong negative selection (high cholesterol at later stages of life anyone?).
This is an example of human modification to the normal process of natural selection. High cholesterol is a disadvantageous mutuation that has survived for two reasons. First, if it occurs late in life, then reproduction of that mutation has already taken place. If it occurs early in life, then medical treatment will prevent the death that would have precluded reproduction. If the gene survives in the early onset years, then it will be more likely to appear in the late onset version, so that also explains why late onset high cholesterol is becoming more common. We, as compassionate human beings, have worked to remove the "better" and "worse" from the process, thus distorting natural selection. That doesn't mean there is no better or worse, just that we're letting people reproduce who normally would not have.
That is, I fear, an unanticipated consequence of mitigating the fatal nature of many genetically-carried medical conditions of youth. We will see more and more cases as more and more of the victims produce offspring with the same genes.
Beside the separation of 'good' and 'bad' mutations is not clear cut, because it depends on the environment in which the organism lives.
That's called "natural selection". Of course the environment in which a mutation appears is included in determining "good" vs. "bad". But that means there is "better", which is what was denied by the OP. Not every bird on the planet developed the same beak adaptations that Darwin noticed in his travels, but his explanation of why it happened to the species it did is clearly based on it being a better style of beak, for those birds, on that island, in that environment. That shows clearly that "better" is heavily dependent upon environment.
If you live in a place with endemic malaria, having a mutated copy of the beta-globin gene may come handy.
That's why sickle cell anemia, as a mutation, survived. It gave the recipient a better chance to survive in his environment. That means there is a "better" as a result of that mutation, even if is it not "better" in another environment.
My point was that there is, indeed, a concept of "better" and "worse" intimately involved with evolution. You would not say that an offspring that shows a mutation had "evolved", you'd say he had a mutation. You would say that there was evolution of the species when multiple generations down the line the mutation had propogated to the point that it was a major property of the species.
You'd be surprised how many people believe evolution is about making less complex organisms into more complex ones, or making the next generation "better" in some objective way than the current one.
Ummm, the latter is exactly what evolution is. Mutations occur, the resulting changes are either propogated because they provide some objective benefit, removed from the system because they are detrimental, or become part of the background noise of genetic variation if they are neither harmful nor beneficial.
Mutations are not, by themselves, evolution. There needs to be some reason for the mututation to reproduce. From the all-encompassing unimpeachable source of all human knowledge:
Charles Darwin was the first to formulate a scientific argument for the theory of evolution by means of natural selection. Evolution by natural selection is a process that is inferred from three facts about populations: 1) more offspring are produced than can possibly survive, 2) traits vary among individuals, leading to differential rates of survival and reproduction, and 3) trait differences are heritable.[3] Thus, when members of a population die they are replaced by the progeny of parents that were better adapted to survive and reproduce in the environment in which natural selection took place. This process creates and preserves traits that are seemingly fitted for the functional roles they perform.[4] Natural selection is the only known cause of adaptation, but not the only known cause of evolution. Other, nonadaptive causes of evolution include mutation and genetic drift.[5]
In the early 20th century, genetics was integrated with Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection through the discipline of population genetics. The importance of natural selection as a cause of evolution was accepted into other branches of biology. Moreover, previously held notions about evolution, such as orthogenesis and "progress" became obsolete.
If movie theaters enforced such notices strictly, they'd get lawsuits from some diabetes advocacy group.
Neither insulin nor the sugar candies some diabetics carry to counter hypoglycemia would count as "outside food or drink".
If a theater is worried that a diabetic would have to bring in a sugar-free drink to stay hydrated during the marathon exhibition of some blockbuster trilogy, then they ought to be selling diet and sugar free drinks to start with. Might I suggest, water? That's even free from the fountain.
But yes, in the modern "everyone is a victim of something" world, it is likely that some diabetic would sue under the ADA.
On the other hand, if the Myesthenia Gravis Foundation hasn't sued already, the theaters are probably safe. After all, having to lift your feet from the sticky floor to walk in and out is hard when you are that weak. And Narcoleptics Anonymous would have sued a long time ago for their members who have been convinced they were having a relapse when they fell asleep during the mind-numbing productions common on theaters today.
You never say person A beat person B by 6 cm/s you say person A beat person B by 6 seconds.
That's because the winners of races are based on time, not instantaneous or maximum speed. Drag races always spout speed data, but the winner is the one who crosses the finish line first, not necessarily fastest.
"60 ns faster than the speed of light" is meaningless. "The neutrinos arrived 60ns sooner than they would have if they were travelling at c" isn't, as long as somewhere you could find out how far they went and then back out the speed they were going.
I consider Babylon 5 (and Star Trek DS9) the best science dramas ever produced for television.
This is getting really off-topic, but I have to give half-hearted support. B5 was one of the best until the end of season 4, where there was a rush to complete the story arcs because the show wasn't being renewed, and then season 5 was picked up.
I consider the ending of the Shadow War to be on a par with Kirk "out-arguing the computer" as the solution to the problem dejure. "Hey, Daystrom Mark 7, scan the universe, see how you are causing death..." "Hey, you First Ones, you're acting like children with your petty squabbles. Y'all go away and let us take over because it is our turn now. And take them Shadows and Vorlons with you." "N'kay, bye!"
Don't get me wrong. I thought the characters were outstanding. G'Kar and Mollari, and especially Flounder (Stephen Furst/Vir). Mr. Garibaldi. Zack. Bester as the evil side of Chekov. Will Robinson! I was almost able to get past Boxlightner as Captain Scarecrow, and adding Melissa Gilbert (real-life wife of BB) as tele-wife of Sheridan was... creepy.
It would be interesting to know the full story behind Michael O'hare. The last time I saw him was at a Visions convention in Chicago. He hadn't been invited and wasn't on the official guest list, but he set up a table near the autograph sessions and was selling pictures and autographs free-lance. Who's ox did he gore that made him persona non grata?
As they say in It's a Wonderful Life, "Your money isn't here, it's in Joe's house".
You might realize that "It's A Wondeful Life" was about a time before the FDIC and FED put the rules about fractional reserves in place, and the runs on the banks (Potter's bank just closed their doors to solve their problem, remember) were why they were created.
In today's world, yes, your money is in "Joe's house", but if you demanded it back you could get it. The difference is that today selling a debt (the money Joe owes the bank for his house) is trivial and fast. Your bank can do it if they have to get you your money, or they'll have to borrow it from FDIC, but you'll get your money. If you demand cash, they may have to buy bills from the FED, but you'll get that, too.
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I thought ex-convicts weren't allowed to vote. And if a sex offender is a registered sex offender, they're an ex-con.
There are misdemeanor sex offences, and I assume people with misdemeanor records can still vote.
what if it were ONLY via walmart? that's what's being discussed.
Maybe it would be bad if it were "facebook only". I won't waste time arguing something that isn't happening. Why are you?
I think the complaint was that Facebook was the ONLY option.
Facebook isn't the only option.
In your analogy... Why would you have a problem if you could ONLY vote at Walmart?
Personally, I wouldn't. My analogy was correct, however, by saying "one of the polling places", because facebook isn't the only way people have of communicating with their congressmen.
...you really don't have much to complain about.
You've missed the point entirely. I'm not complaining about how hard it is to communicate with a congressman. I'm pointing out that every means of communicating with a congressman requires something from the constituent. Email, web form (and I didn't say "requires a specific web browser", so your IE rant is baseless, too), writing a letter. This particular form requires a facebook account. Big deal. It isn't the only way to communicate, and it costs nothing more than internet access already costs. If you don't want to use it, don't. Just stop whining that congress is using it. If you don't want to use that method, pick another. Just keep in mind that the excuse that "it requires a facebook account" is about the same level of complexity and cost as "it requires internet and a web browser".
So your solution is to violate facebooks terms of service?
I'm glad someone finally picked up on that. On slashdot, everyone laughs at unenforcable shrink wrap licenses. Most people have utter disdain for copyright and patent. And yet, a facebook TOS is sacrosanct? ROTFL.
So not only do you want me to deal with specific commercial entity I dislike, ...
I don't give a rat's ass if you deal with facebook or not. I truly could not care less. It's your decision. Just don't complain about the congress using it as one means of communicating with their constituents.
I don't have a facebook account because I don't want to agree to their terms of services,
That's fine. Everyone picks which rules they'll play by. You respect unenforcable TOS. Don't deal with them, then.
So I guess the next elections should be held at Walmart?
Why would you have a problem if one of the polling places was at a Walmart? Go to the local Walmart, go to the local school, big difference NOT. More parking at the Walmart. Doesn't disrupt classes. Doesn't keep sex offenders who are restricted from being within 200 feet of any school from voting. Sounds like a good plan.
In Oregon, with vote by mail, and Walmarts tending to have mail drop boxes, we actually have polling places in every Walmart. And lots of other stores and malls.
People will get up and defend themselves so unless would-be attackers come heavily armed there won't be a repeat.
The last few attempts have been bombs. When a terrorist gets up and goes into the lavatory, there is nobody else around him to notice that he's assembling and detonating a bomb. Yes, for aircraft takeover attempts, the passengers will use what few defensive and offensive weapons they can make to stop the takeover, but bombs are a different story. Had the shoe bomber been smart enough to go to the bathroom before trying to light his shoes off, he might have been successful.
What I want to know is why the TSA isn't installing anti-aircraft guns around airports to take care of the bird menace!
Because birds aren't aircraft?
But I understand what you are trying to say. Airports with bird problems do. Like this, or this. The problem is talked about here, for just one example.
Even so, the conservationists are often opposed to such things, saying the birds have the right to be there and yada yada yada and if a plane runs into one it's the planes fault.
In that condescending tone you are using I see what you are saying. But you're missing the point.
Sarcasm often sounds condescending. I got the point. The point is specious.
The point is, Congress did not have to restrict this only to Facebook account holders.
They didn't. Where does it say, other than in the summary, that the only way of sending questions is via facebook? Answer: it doesn't. Fax your question. Email it. Nothing says only facebook will be accepted. It says members will accept questions via facebook -- which is a new thing and merits a specific comment so people know they CAN do it that way -- not that they will ONLY accept questions via facebook. They list the names of the members of the committee, you can use that information to contact them in any way you see fit.
You see, you sometimes on slashdot have to read the original material to get the true story. The summaries are sometimes wrong. Gasp. And sometimes they are wrong in a way intended to cause alarm and vast amounts of jumping up and down and moral outrage about something that isn't happening.
They want to restrict commentary to Facebook account holders, which is another way to say they only want to hear from people who jump on bandwagons.
They aren't restricting comments, so your entire bandwagon argument is flummery. And what does joining facebook so you can use facebook to send a comment to your congressman say about you? It means you joined facebook so you can send your comment to a congressman. It doesn't mean you "jump on bandwagons". You don't have to do any of the other stuff facebook is used for. It's a TOOL. How you use it is up to you. You can use it for all the social stuff like sharing pics with strangers or posting comments on other people's walls to make them look stupid or playing stupid games or joining corporate marketing campaigns, or whatever use it is that you feel merits deragatory remarks about people who use facebook. Or you can use it for the things you want to, like sending a comment to a congressman and nothing else.
It's a tool. If you use a hammer to drive in screws, you are a moron and a fool. If you use the hammer to drive nails, you aren't. Same tool. Different uses. Different users.
Internet (or facebook) should not be the ONLY fucking option.
Where is it said that internet or facebook is the only option?
And the summary is wrong, Bruce is not scheduled to testify on Monday. He's been cancelled. Cue the conspiracy theories....
And agreeing to a 3rd party commercial entities terms of service to participate in democracy doesn't strike you as lunacy?
A. No. Going where the people are seems like a good thing, not lunacy at all. B. You aren't being prevented from participating in democracy. Write a letter if you feel strongly about something. You can't believe that the congress critters will ignore a letter just because they asked for comments via facebook.
Why -exactly- should I need to agree to facebook's terms of use as a prerequisite for any sort of participation or interaction with my elected government?
You don't. You are free to participate in ways other than via facebook.
It may well be convenient for many citizens, and even expedient and efficient for the government, but it is fundamentally wrong.
You do realize that every form of "participation" requires some action on the part of the citizen, don't you? "We should be allowed to send an email..." means you must have an email account. "We should be able to poke stuff into a web form..." means you must have Internet access AND a web browser. "We should be able to mail them a letter..." means you have to be able to afford a stamp and have the ability to write. Every means of participation inconveniences some citizens. Does that make all of those means of participation "fundamentally wrong"?
Yes, if facebook charged you money to participate, I'd agree that it was wrong to use facebook for this. Facebook is free. If you already have internet access, you can have facebook for nothing extra. Since the OP was talking about interacting in an internet environment to start with, then whether it is via facebook or email or web makes no significant difference. OTH, the phone company charges you money to call your Senator. Why is the phone company ok and facebook bad? Or do you think the fact that Senators have phones is "fundamentally wrong", too?
Get a free account under a dummy name. Use a throwaway email address. Don't be stupid and send friend requests to any real people who might out you. Don't post your real information. Don't use a real picture of yourself for your avatar. Do none of the things that would identify you. Do all of the things you would do for any other internet connection or app that would anonymize you. You get to participate, facebook gets nothing. What's your problem with that?
Indeed. It's aol all over again. For someone that doesn't have a facebook account it becomes more and more difficult to access parts of the internet.
Yes, how sad that someone who refuses to use facebook for any reason won't get to participate in anything that happens on facebook. Almost as sad as that AOL thing you refer to, where a commercial information vendor would only let customers access AOL's data via AOL.
This problem is much cheaper to solve: get a facebook account. The only tie back to you is an email address, and you can buffer that through a throwaway gmail account.
Let's see... you can't beat the house on poker, because they skim off the top.
You can't beat the house on poker because you aren't playing against the house.
This means that instead of being a numbers game, it's a psychology game --
Why yes, poker is primarily a game of reading people and messing with their heads. That's pretty well known. That's why online players often have a hard time transitioning to live play. Those avatars the online folks get to see rarely sweat or twitch or display any tells at all. And that's why I use the online/computer games I play to study things like odds and chances, but never how to read a hand.
... even though you may have a chance win and stop playing (giving the house a cut of your winnings).
I know of no casino operated poker room where winners are expected to hand over a "cut of the winnings" when they leave a game. Which casinos do you play at where this happens? I'd stay away from them.
Not a game - or entertainment or luck. Just calculation of reall odds and risk. There are 3 such games: Craps, Blackjack and Baccarat. Poker is promoted so heavily, because it makes the Casinos so much lucre.
The first three games you mentioned are all played to the house advantage against the house. The best of the three for the player is blackjack where the house percentage can be low (and depends on the specific house rules). But it still favors the house. Blackjack is also the game where counting cards can help you win.
Poker is played not against the house, but against other people. The only money the poker rooms make is from the rake, or a percentage of each pot. The rake doesn't change the odds of winning a hand, only the amount you win by a small amount. It biases the expected return calculations and thus should have a small effect on how players bet.
The largest effects on player behaviour are the bonuses like "high hand" or "bad beat", where players who know they are likely to win $500 for getting four of a kind are going to underbet their hands to keep the other players in until the end (trading pot size for jackpot). Or, as I did once, a player who knows the other person has made their straight flush may stay in the pot hoping to complete quads so he'd win his half of the bad beat jackpot.
The other money poker brings in is from the players who play other games waiting for a seat, or visit the buffet. Getting people in the door is the first step to robbing them blind with Carribean Stud or Craps or Roulette.
Banks write the numbers down today.
Yes, and that's why I said "most people", not "nobody". Give me some credit for using the words I use, ok?
What's important to note is that YOU don't write the numbers down and there is no law or reason for you to. That won't be true when you buy something using your cashless plastic. The vendor will have every reason to write it down, because that's how he's going to get HIS money from YOU. That serial number on the paper bill that isn't important because the bill itself is the "cash" becomes critical information when the only thing being exchanged is the serial number.
The broker has no incentive to keep records of their customers.
Knock knock "police search warrant" smash "on the floor keep your hands in sight". "This card says it was sold by you and it was found in the posession of a drug dealer. Who did you sell it to?"
"I dunno..."
"Pack up every computer in the place, we're taking them in to extract the sales records. Sorry about shutting your business down for the next six months, pal."
"I sold it to Samantha Wright...", and he knows that because you had to pay him with tracable electronic cash in the first place. Remember, cashless!
Even if you could find a black market cash card dealer, you'd face the fact that simply being a black market cash card dealer would become a crime and buying one a criminal act in itself. If you get caught with a card from a black market dealer in your posession, you'd be processed the same way that people who have large amounts of cash in their posession and no reasonable excuse are today: confiscated cash and a maybe a criminal charge. Civil forfeiture at the least. Either way, you're out your money. And then every legitimate business you go to will be required to report your use of black market cash, so not only will the card dealer have an incentive to keep records, so will every business you use that card with.
Yes, in a cashless society there will always be people who want anonymity enough that they'll use something else to pay for things. They will run headlong into the problem of needing something that someone else has, and that someone has no interest in keeping your anonymity so your alternative cash has no value for him.
If the cards change hands frequently enough, then the tracability of the card becomes as difficult as the tracability of the unique IDs on cash bills.
The reason that the ids of cash bills are essentially untraceable is because almost nobody currently tracks them.
The card data will be tracked by everyone, since everyone who touches it will need to process it as data and the computer will record it automatically. Unless you think people will just accept your word that "this card contains $25" and not run it through their scanner to verify the amount and validity, at which point the record is made.
The various denominations of card would never go through a card swipe machine, except to permanently denude it of its assets prior to its physical destruction.
Wow. So you really do think people will just accept your word that the cash card you hand them contains $25 just because you say so.
That 200$ card can have changed hands physically hundreds of times before then. This is the same problem as cash bills.
Cash bills are easily exchangable like that because there is some measure of trust that the bill is genuine and has not had its value stripped from it by an intermediate owner. There are also people with guns who deal with people who try to produce fake bills, and usually identifying a fake bill takes nothing more than really looking at it.
How do you deal with the person who "denudes" 100 cards that contain $1 and then transfers the contents of one $100 card to all 100 of the blanks? Or doesn't transfer anything to them. You've now got 101 cards that are valued at $100 because the guy who has them says they are $100 cards. He started with $200, he's now trading for $10,100. You can't tell just by looking, it's a piece of plastic with a magstripe on the back or a few gold contacts on the front.
Well, you deal with that by either "swiping" every card when it is used (which gives you tracability) or making cards that have strong visual authentication systems so no swiping, or even any electronic measure, is needed (and thus you have made a one-for-one replacement of "paper cash" with "plastic cash", copying all the problems of paper cash over into your "plastic" system.)
The only reason paper cash is untracable is because most people don't write the numbers down. If everyone has to write all the numbers down, and has to do it electronically because the numbers are only available via electronic means, then you've converted "paper cash" into just as tracable a system as this new "digital cash" will be.
It would require a professional code of conduct to protect clients' anonymity, but it's not inconceivable.
How many professional codes of conduct survive a US federal marshall knocking on the door, backed up by an extension to the Patriot Act? It won't even take something as radical as the Patriot Act to get laws that require "money sellers" to release records with a subpeona.
If enough people are concerned about privacy, there may very well be, realistically, too many clients for a given broker to remember.
They have these marvelous things today called "computers" that can keep track of stuff for billions of people to the exact penny. How many times can a "money seller" tell the marshalls "I forget" and get away with it? Especially when the transaction had to be remembered in order for it to happen in the first place?
Also, a lot of obfuscation can be accomplished through gifting people indirectly: if broker A gives out $150 to 10 people and broker B gives out $100 to 8 people, then the customers of broker A can repay broker B, and vice versa, and then B can pay A $50 to balance things out.
So the marshalls show up at broker B, who says "I gave that card to broker A", then they show up at broker A's door and broker A says "I sold that card and here is Samanatha Wright's name and address.".
Do you really think either broker A or broker B will go to jail to protect you? Or that they will simply "give out" cards to anyone who wants one, with the hope that the people they give them to will hand them over to someone else?
The interesting question is whether, if the US stops printing dollars, the existing physical dollars would become less valuable (no more state backing) or more valuable (no more state printing).
It would follow the pattern of every other country that stopped printing their own money and started using "something else". We have fine examples all over Europe from when all those countries changed to the Euro.
For a while, the dollars would not change in value. Then the backing country would stop honoring them so they'd drop drastically. After a (probably long) time, they would regain some value as rarities.
I don't know, how much can you sell a Dutch guilder for on the open market these days? Here, or here, or best answer here. Until 2032 a guilder in paper is still worth a guilder. Coins, not so much. Old siver and gold guilders are valuable, just like any old gold or silver coin. Run of the mill modern stuff? Less than the cost of the metal, probably. Just like the US penny currently.
The user could pay someone else to buy the card at a small premium.
So when the drug dealer's money is confiscated and traced back to someone, it will be someone who you paid to buy it for you, and since there is no physical money anymore, that person will be able to provide your info to the cops. Or he'll go to jail.
Care to debate which option your local prepaid VISA card reseller who doesn't want to go to jail and doesn't give a damn about you will pick?
It doesn't matter who you buy the card from, they'll have your information because you can't pay them untracably. Even if you could barter all the money you need with them, they'll have your info.
Evolution is about creating 'different' rather than 'objectively improved' organisms.
No. Mutation is about creating "different". Evolution is about the long-term changes that result from the short-term changes. Natural selection and mutation are not mutually exclusive concepts. The latter is the reason why natural selection can happen.
In fact genetic drift will fix even 'objectively' disadvantageous mutations as long as they are not under strong negative selection (high cholesterol at later stages of life anyone?).
This is an example of human modification to the normal process of natural selection. High cholesterol is a disadvantageous mutuation that has survived for two reasons. First, if it occurs late in life, then reproduction of that mutation has already taken place. If it occurs early in life, then medical treatment will prevent the death that would have precluded reproduction. If the gene survives in the early onset years, then it will be more likely to appear in the late onset version, so that also explains why late onset high cholesterol is becoming more common. We, as compassionate human beings, have worked to remove the "better" and "worse" from the process, thus distorting natural selection. That doesn't mean there is no better or worse, just that we're letting people reproduce who normally would not have.
That is, I fear, an unanticipated consequence of mitigating the fatal nature of many genetically-carried medical conditions of youth. We will see more and more cases as more and more of the victims produce offspring with the same genes.
Beside the separation of 'good' and 'bad' mutations is not clear cut, because it depends on the environment in which the organism lives.
That's called "natural selection". Of course the environment in which a mutation appears is included in determining "good" vs. "bad". But that means there is "better", which is what was denied by the OP. Not every bird on the planet developed the same beak adaptations that Darwin noticed in his travels, but his explanation of why it happened to the species it did is clearly based on it being a better style of beak, for those birds, on that island, in that environment. That shows clearly that "better" is heavily dependent upon environment.
If you live in a place with endemic malaria, having a mutated copy of the beta-globin gene may come handy.
That's why sickle cell anemia, as a mutation, survived. It gave the recipient a better chance to survive in his environment. That means there is a "better" as a result of that mutation, even if is it not "better" in another environment.
My point was that there is, indeed, a concept of "better" and "worse" intimately involved with evolution. You would not say that an offspring that shows a mutation had "evolved", you'd say he had a mutation. You would say that there was evolution of the species when multiple generations down the line the mutation had propogated to the point that it was a major property of the species.
You'd be surprised how many people believe evolution is about making less complex organisms into more complex ones, or making the next generation "better" in some objective way than the current one.
Ummm, the latter is exactly what evolution is. Mutations occur, the resulting changes are either propogated because they provide some objective benefit, removed from the system because they are detrimental, or become part of the background noise of genetic variation if they are neither harmful nor beneficial.
Mutations are not, by themselves, evolution. There needs to be some reason for the mututation to reproduce. From the all-encompassing unimpeachable source of all human knowledge:
Charles Darwin was the first to formulate a scientific argument for the theory of evolution by means of natural selection. Evolution by natural selection is a process that is inferred from three facts about populations: 1) more offspring are produced than can possibly survive, 2) traits vary among individuals, leading to differential rates of survival and reproduction, and 3) trait differences are heritable.[3] Thus, when members of a population die they are replaced by the progeny of parents that were better adapted to survive and reproduce in the environment in which natural selection took place. This process creates and preserves traits that are seemingly fitted for the functional roles they perform.[4] Natural selection is the only known cause of adaptation, but not the only known cause of evolution. Other, nonadaptive causes of evolution include mutation and genetic drift.[5]
In the early 20th century, genetics was integrated with Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection through the discipline of population genetics. The importance of natural selection as a cause of evolution was accepted into other branches of biology. Moreover, previously held notions about evolution, such as orthogenesis and "progress" became obsolete.
If movie theaters enforced such notices strictly, they'd get lawsuits from some diabetes advocacy group.
Neither insulin nor the sugar candies some diabetics carry to counter hypoglycemia would count as "outside food or drink".
If a theater is worried that a diabetic would have to bring in a sugar-free drink to stay hydrated during the marathon exhibition of some blockbuster trilogy, then they ought to be selling diet and sugar free drinks to start with. Might I suggest, water? That's even free from the fountain.
But yes, in the modern "everyone is a victim of something" world, it is likely that some diabetic would sue under the ADA.
On the other hand, if the Myesthenia Gravis Foundation hasn't sued already, the theaters are probably safe. After all, having to lift your feet from the sticky floor to walk in and out is hard when you are that weak. And Narcoleptics Anonymous would have sued a long time ago for their members who have been convinced they were having a relapse when they fell asleep during the mind-numbing productions common on theaters today.
Planck's constant cannot be measured with only a GPS or atomic clock, so this is at best some comparative result.
Yeah, that's kinda the point of calling it positional independence. They're reporting how constant the constant is, not what its value is.
You never say person A beat person B by 6 cm/s you say person A beat person B by 6 seconds.
That's because the winners of races are based on time, not instantaneous or maximum speed. Drag races always spout speed data, but the winner is the one who crosses the finish line first, not necessarily fastest.
"60 ns faster than the speed of light" is meaningless. "The neutrinos arrived 60ns sooner than they would have if they were travelling at c" isn't, as long as somewhere you could find out how far they went and then back out the speed they were going.
I consider Babylon 5 (and Star Trek DS9) the best science dramas ever produced for television.
This is getting really off-topic, but I have to give half-hearted support. B5 was one of the best until the end of season 4, where there was a rush to complete the story arcs because the show wasn't being renewed, and then season 5 was picked up.
I consider the ending of the Shadow War to be on a par with Kirk "out-arguing the computer" as the solution to the problem dejure. "Hey, Daystrom Mark 7, scan the universe, see how you are causing death..." "Hey, you First Ones, you're acting like children with your petty squabbles. Y'all go away and let us take over because it is our turn now. And take them Shadows and Vorlons with you." "N'kay, bye!"
Don't get me wrong. I thought the characters were outstanding. G'Kar and Mollari, and especially Flounder (Stephen Furst/Vir). Mr. Garibaldi. Zack. Bester as the evil side of Chekov. Will Robinson! I was almost able to get past Boxlightner as Captain Scarecrow, and adding Melissa Gilbert (real-life wife of BB) as tele-wife of Sheridan was ... creepy.
It would be interesting to know the full story behind Michael O'hare. The last time I saw him was at a Visions convention in Chicago. He hadn't been invited and wasn't on the official guest list, but he set up a table near the autograph sessions and was selling pictures and autographs free-lance. Who's ox did he gore that made him persona non grata?
As they say in It's a Wonderful Life, "Your money isn't here, it's in Joe's house".
You might realize that "It's A Wondeful Life" was about a time before the FDIC and FED put the rules about fractional reserves in place, and the runs on the banks (Potter's bank just closed their doors to solve their problem, remember) were why they were created.
In today's world, yes, your money is in "Joe's house", but if you demanded it back you could get it. The difference is that today selling a debt (the money Joe owes the bank for his house) is trivial and fast. Your bank can do it if they have to get you your money, or they'll have to borrow it from FDIC, but you'll get your money. If you demand cash, they may have to buy bills from the FED, but you'll get that, too.