"CompUSA had them listed previously for $350 with free shipping, but they were never ever in stock for either delivery or in-store pickup anywhere in the country. "
BS. Earlier this spring, the 770s were in stock in both CompUSA locations in Columbus OH, and the website said so. I played with the demo model. Very nice!
You said that "Ghandi and King prove my point that pacifists need non-pacifists to protect them, they were both murdered."
Non sequitor. Ghandi and King could have been protected by a bullet-proof vest, a non-violent body guard taking the bullet, an arrest of the perpetrator before the crime was committed -- any number of non-violent events could have prevented thier murders. Violent action against the murderers wasn't guaranteed to save their lives, either. They weren't *destined* to be murdered. You have made a basic error in logic.
"It really bothers me when people bring up Ghandi and assume that non-violent protest is applicable to all situations."
Why would you have an emotional reaction to a statement of historical fact?
My problem is this: someone says that pacifism could *never* work, because the pacifist are soon killled by the warring people. Then, someone points out that pacifism *has* worked in documented history, and we get a response like this: "Well, it really had nothing to do the actual civil disobedience and non-violent resistance, but it was really something else..." That's called 'moving the goalposts'. You know, the American colonists didn't really win the war for independence -- it was more a factor of waning British influence around that time...
The fact is that there are *always* economic pressures on the occupiers to relinquish control. It's a cost/benefit ratio, and there is always the reality of the cost of controlling people. The only way -- the *only* way -- you can rule a group of people despotically is with *their cooperation*. Once you lose their cooperation, it quickly becomes too expensive to rule them.
In fact, the freeing of the slaves in the American south had little to do with anti-slavery movements, and had everything to do with Lincoln wanting to shut down the south's warmaking ability by removing their source of labor. The war was stared because the south wanted to secede, not because they had slaves. So we don't know whether non-violent resistance would have worked. Actually, we have plenty of examples of violent slave rebellions that failed, and plenty of slaves who non-violently resisted by escaping to the north. So if you were a slave in the south, I would have advised you to non-violently resist your social duty to work your whole life for free, and sneak away, instead of waiting for the North to come rescue you, or take part in an ill-fated uprising.
So we have examples of success with violence, and we have example of success with nonviolent resistance. There are certainly failures with non-violent resistance, and there are certainly examples of attempts of war, coups, and violent rebellion that failed.
Regarding WWII, Ghandi himself said it would be extremely difficult do defeat Hitler no matter what technique was used. We defeated him militarily with *enormous* cost to human life. A non-violent attempt -- and I'm talking about a serious, organized attempt, not simply choosing not to fight and ignore the threat, would have also had an enormous cost to human life.
In fact, there are examples of non-violence working in Nazi-occupied territory. There was a mayor of a Polish town who, when orders came down to have Jews start wearing yellow Stars, had *everyone* in the town wear a yellow star. The Nazis were not able to identify Jews. And we have plenty of examples of people who hid Jews and helped them flee. Jews working on war equipment in labor camps deliberately sabotaged parts.
The way you would have to do a large scale non-violent resistance is to let Hitler invade, set up a new government, and then actively subvert it. Nobody likes illegitimate rulers. I'm not saying that there would be no violence, that nobody would die -- certainly people will be hurt and will die. But would less people have died if there was serious, organized, non-violent resistance to the Nazi government than from all-out war with the Nazi army?
So, I recommend you swallow your pride, work through your issues with the idea of non-violence, and have a look at actual history. Non-violence, and we are not talking about inaction here, can actually be successful when done right.
You're looking at this backwards. (I think it's because you know this destroys your argument.)
The fact that they were both murdered is irrelevant to the discussion. They accomplished great things *specifically because* of their non-violent resistance. If they had attempted any sort of violent resistance, they would have certainly been jailed for life or killed before they had accomplished anything at all.
Didn't Ghandi's non-violent resistance overthrow British rule of India? Didn't Martin Luther King's adoption of the same tactics get blacks their civil rights in Ameriac?
You're very good at setting up strawman arguments.
You're telling me that veganism is 'unworkable in reality'? What reality do you inhabit? You're ignoring the millions of vegans in the Indian subconinent, who have lived that way for thousands of years. Now don't start on about how they are all malnurished -- if you do, you are ignoring the fact that you were wrong in that veganism can't exist, and that there are plenty of meat eaters around the world who are starving.
Sure, when it comes down to it, almost everyone will kill Bambi and the family will have a feast. However, especially in this day and age, it never comes down to it. You can go through your whole life and raise a whole family on nothing but veggies. It's been happening for thousands of years. And if you were lost in the woods and starving, you will definately have more success gathering edible plants than you will tracking down, killing, butchering, and safely cooking an animal.
It is also true that conflict is a fact of existence. People will get mad at each other, and respond in a number of ways, from ignoring each other, acting passive-aggressive, sitting down and talking, arguing, yelling, fighting, perhaps murder and gang/tribal fueds, but warfare as an absolute necessity? You're telling me that Ghandi's non-violent resistance didn't successfully overthrow the British Empire in India?
We've had wiretapping for a long time, and most people are comfortable with it. Here in the US, you can get a warrant from a judge for wiretapping a US citizen, and we have a special court called FISA specifically for issuing warrants for international type wiretaps. It's routine and it happens *all the time*.
However, as I understand, wiretapping is *not* what tipped off British officials to the group who were going to carry out this plot. It was a friend/relative of one of the plotters who tipped of the police. Then, I'm guessing, the police went and got a warrant to tap this guy's phone, and worked thier way through the group, getting more warrants and taps, until they understood the group structure and their goals.
However, what I am extremely uncomfortable with is the unaccountable and warrantless comprehensive wiretapping of all phone calls in the US. If it is not illegal in the specific wording of the law, it certainly goes against the spirit of the right to privacy and the presumption of innocence. This is very scary. Totalitarian governments love keeping records and tabs on everyone so they can harrass and dissapear them whenever some person starts speaking up.
I'm not saying that Bush is a facist, but think about it -- would you trust Hillary Clinton;) or whoever the next president is with such a massive, ongoing surveillance database?
"The truth is that there is a group of people out there who only want to kill."
The very basic problem that you are overlooking is that, because of human nature, 'The Man' can easily become those same evil people who only want to kill. Wasn't Stalin just trying to help the poor to get out of being exploited by the wealthy? Would you argue that Hitler was just protecting the German people from the threat of communists and Jews? Wasn't he "The Man," yet still out to get people? And no, this is not an example of Godwin's law. The tyrannical abuse of power and the eventual enslavement of a citizenry in the name of protecting them is the very subject we are discussing.
Yes, Al Qaida exists and is actively trying to destroy America, along with other Islamic terrorist groups. We also have Aryan groups here in the US who are trying to do the same thing, so we also need to racially profile young white males. And most importantly, we the people need to oversee the goverment so that they don't turn the nation into a police state in order to protect us. Be careful when wrestling with monsters that you don't become one yourself. Al Qaida cannot take away our civil liberties, only our government can.
"You maybe never had to deal with drug users but I have."
Are you some kind of counselor or therapist? This is the problem with basing policy on worst case scenarios. You've only seen messed up people with horrible, abusive childhoods and hopeless lives, and pin it all on whatever substance or activity they do to escape from their miserable reality. However, you never stop and ask that regular, decent person who you see on the street or interact with daily how much they drink or what recreational drugs they use.
OTOH, there are plenty of people who have 2-3 drinks a day and live well into their nineties (look at my grandparents, or most of Europe for God's sake). There are people who regularly toke marijuana or do some coke or herion to get going in the morning or to relax.
You have the Native American church with almost 7 million members eating multiple peyote buttons in weekly ceremonies, and they don't freak out and ruin their lives -- in fact a lot of members credit the church with helping them to deal with alcholism and emotional issues. Same goes with the Santo Daime and the União do Vegetal churches of Brazil, where they use ayahuasca instead of peyote.
The decent, upstanding citizen who uses drugs and alcohol regularly keep very quiet about it.The only reason you don't hear about them is because they keep their illegal habit quiet, since if anyone found out, they would lose thier jobs, family, and reputation and be forced into rehab where the only way you can get out is to admit that you are are powerless against alcohol, mj, video games, etc. and your life is completely controlled by that.
I had a roommate who was convinced that LSD makes you crazy because her mom worked at a psych ward and all of the paranoid schizophrenics had done LSD. The problem with that reasoning is that a lot of baby boomers had done LSD in the sixties, and then they went on to lead regular, happy, productive lives. In fact a lot of people credit LSD with opening their minds and giving them the interest to pursue some religious affiliation or intellectual activity. However, the individuals who were abused and come from a family history of mental illness went on to go crazy, and and then because they did LSD a few times, that must have done it. You know what? All of those people in the psych ward were smokers too. So then does nicotine make you go crazy? In fact, some people argue that LSD, marijuana, and nicotine are used as self-medication by people with mental illness to reduce their symptoms.
Now, please read and understand what I am saying. I am not saying that drugs are completely harmless. But people become addicted to them because of other factors in their lives, not because these drugs are like steel chains of addiction. Yes, meth, crack and paint thinner are very dangerous and destructive, but perhaps people wouldn't be interested in that if the less dangerous alternatives like LSD and peyote were more readily available. Or if we actually funded decent mental health care in this country.
"The U.S.A. buys oil, and thus transfers massive wealth to the Arab lands. If this does not benefit enough Arab people to suit you, clean your house."
The terrorists are saying, "We could clean our house if the USA would stop propping up tyrannical monarchies and overthrowing democratically elected governments, so we are taking the first step in overthrowing them, which is to remove their military support from the USA."
I think one place where Cyc or similar types of knowledge engines could really shine is in business. A business model is vastly simpler then the model of reality that people carry around in their heads; and one benefit that Cyc has is that it understands *everything* -- it is integrated by default.
So once it gets basic understanding of accounting, inventory, retailing, management, logistics, etc., you could easily build a natural language interface to it: "Three boxes arrived today from supplier X and we paid $90 for them". If there is ambiguity in the sentence, Cyc would ask natural language clarifying questions: "Was each box a line item on the invoice, or were there many line items?"
I think this would be much improved over the current data-interfaces we have today, which are basically graphical recapitulations of paper-based forms in the format of "field: [value]".
Another problem with modern apps is that they all contain their own internal, add-hoc ontologies. These ontologies are hard-coded, and usually aren't designed to intergrate with ontologies in apps from different domains -- e.g. logistics and accounting (unless they are from the same vendor). Cyc has a standardized, presumably well-thought-out and near comprehensive ontology. It can also grow its ontologies based on user input. So you have this automatic integration feature that's sorely lacking in the end-user computer world.
Keep in mind that knowledge is power. Note that all dictators and fascist, authoritarian governments all over the world have kept detailed files and records on everybody. Why? Again, knowledge is power. If you know more than your adversary, you have an edge over them.
Say you are a dictator-to-be and your well-laid plans are encountering some roadblocks. It would be very handy to have a record of your most influential opponents -- politicians, journalists, businesspeople, union leaders -- and record of their whereabouts so you can 'dissapear' them in the middle of the night. Or, you can sieze their bank accounts, cancel their government contracts, blackmail them with photos of their mistress, etc.
Knowledge is power. Ergo, consolidation of knowledge is consolidation of power. This isn't to protect you from identity theft -- in fact, identity theft would be even *easier* with consolidated identity -- you have one-stop shoplifting, so to speak. There is no reason that a government who claims to have free citizens needs to monitor and record every step of those citizens.
You don't worry that rather than having a perfect database of all actual activity to keep us safe from terrorism, we won't instead get a haphazard database that can be exploited to round up innocent people to win an election, or to track down personal enemies on trumped up charges? That incompetence is a *feature* of a tyrranical government, not a bug of a good government?
A percentage of the population is already immune to the HIV virus because of a mutation that changes the structure of T-cells. I would bet that gene therapy will allow us to create resistant T-cells in the bodies of HIV+ persons long before we get any kind of nano-bot, much less one that can do anything worthwhile in a human body.
I think that gene therapy will advance to the point where we can build or rebuild a person's immune system before we can make any kind of machine small enough and with enough intelligence that it can tell good cells apart from bad.
"I always thought these bots could be programmed to roam our body and kill off viruses, bad bacteria, and cancer cells... "
Do you think they could out-perform white blood cells?
"as well as repairing failing organs..."Given that modern day robots millions of times larger have problems with simple tasks like picking up a glass, I think organ repair in the near future will be solved with genetic engineering over robots.
It is true that we do find life in some rather inhospitable places, like highly radioactive nuclear reactor cores, inside solid rock, in boiling steam vents, metabolizing sulfur -- but does that mean life can arise in such places, or does it require particular conditions to arise, and then it is capable of evolving to adapt to such harsh environments? The basic amino acids that constitute life do not survive in such environments. The living organisms which live in such environments have special mechanisms to protect and repair their delicate parts.
But the places where we find the most diversity of life is in the oceans and the tropical rain forests. That tells me there are a few elements that life really wants -- a relatively small temperature window, light, and most importantly water. The oceans are water, and the tropical rain forests are almost always at 100% humidity. I would even say that the temperature range that life wants is the range of liquid water. Taking this a step further, I would say that anywhere we find liquid water, we will find life.
I'm amazed at how much Microsoft gets away with. You'll be happy as long as Vista isn't totally broken? ME should never have seen the light of day. Why should anyone settle for this non-upgrade 'upgrade', when we have a perfectly functional version of Windows called XP?
I'ts like we're living in Soviet Russia. "What can we do? Microsoft is on every computer... just eat your gruel and be happy that it wasn't posioned like the last batch..."
"Tell me, is it right that said high ranking officials et al should need to worry about their identities being secret if what they are saying is truly something that the citizens need to know, and we as a country need to be aware of?"
No, it isn't right, and that's exactly the danger. If there is something evil and corrupt going on, and you bring it to light, are you so naive to believe that the evil and corrupt people will not do everything in their power to cover up their deeds, assassinate your character, and make your life miserable in every way they can?
"And if they are truly revelations, there is no way their identities won't eventually be revealed."
Sure, their identities will be revealed, but need not be until they are well out of danger. We didn't know who 'Deep Throat was until 2005, well after he was out of danger.
"How else are we going to eventually believe what the reporter says?"
Deep Throat led Woodward and Bernstein to discover facts that they would have never found on their own. When the reporters report facts, instead of anonymous relevations, we can check up on them.
You should read some history. Up until very recently, humankind was ruled by paranoid, bloodthirsty, tyrant kings who could do whatever they wanted, and felt that they literally had 'Divine Right' to rule. Those types of people are still around and it is in their nature to try to amass more power. The freedom of the press is one of the few checks on power that we have.
Slashdot Mirror
Are you serious?! That is *hil* arious!
"CompUSA had them listed previously for $350 with free shipping, but they were never ever in stock for either delivery or in-store pickup anywhere in the country. "
BS. Earlier this spring, the 770s were in stock in both CompUSA locations in Columbus OH, and the website said so. I played with the demo model. Very nice!
You said that "Ghandi and King prove my point that pacifists need non-pacifists to protect them, they were both murdered."
Non sequitor. Ghandi and King could have been protected by a bullet-proof vest, a non-violent body guard taking the bullet, an arrest of the perpetrator before the crime was committed -- any number of non-violent events could have prevented thier murders. Violent action against the murderers wasn't guaranteed to save their lives, either. They weren't *destined* to be murdered. You have made a basic error in logic.
"It really bothers me when people bring up Ghandi and assume that non-violent protest is applicable to all situations."
Why would you have an emotional reaction to a statement of historical fact?
My problem is this: someone says that pacifism could *never* work, because the pacifist are soon killled by the warring people. Then, someone points out that pacifism *has* worked in documented history, and we get a response like this: "Well, it really had nothing to do the actual civil disobedience and non-violent resistance, but it was really something else..." That's called 'moving the goalposts'. You know, the American colonists didn't really win the war for independence -- it was more a factor of waning British influence around that time...
The fact is that there are *always* economic pressures on the occupiers to relinquish control. It's a cost/benefit ratio, and there is always the reality of the cost of controlling people. The only way -- the *only* way -- you can rule a group of people despotically is with *their cooperation*. Once you lose their cooperation, it quickly becomes too expensive to rule them.
In fact, the freeing of the slaves in the American south had little to do with anti-slavery movements, and had everything to do with Lincoln wanting to shut down the south's warmaking ability by removing their source of labor. The war was stared because the south wanted to secede, not because they had slaves. So we don't know whether non-violent resistance would have worked. Actually, we have plenty of examples of violent slave rebellions that failed, and plenty of slaves who non-violently resisted by escaping to the north. So if you were a slave in the south, I would have advised you to non-violently resist your social duty to work your whole life for free, and sneak away, instead of waiting for the North to come rescue you, or take part in an ill-fated uprising.
So we have examples of success with violence, and we have example of success with nonviolent resistance. There are certainly failures with non-violent resistance, and there are certainly examples of attempts of war, coups, and violent rebellion that failed.
Regarding WWII, Ghandi himself said it would be extremely difficult do defeat Hitler no matter what technique was used. We defeated him militarily with *enormous* cost to human life. A non-violent attempt -- and I'm talking about a serious, organized attempt, not simply choosing not to fight and ignore the threat, would have also had an enormous cost to human life.
In fact, there are examples of non-violence working in Nazi-occupied territory. There was a mayor of a Polish town who, when orders came down to have Jews start wearing yellow Stars, had *everyone* in the town wear a yellow star. The Nazis were not able to identify Jews. And we have plenty of examples of people who hid Jews and helped them flee. Jews working on war equipment in labor camps deliberately sabotaged parts. The way you would have to do a large scale non-violent resistance is to let Hitler invade, set up a new government, and then actively subvert it. Nobody likes illegitimate rulers. I'm not saying that there would be no violence, that nobody would die -- certainly people will be hurt and will die. But would less people have died if there was serious, organized, non-violent resistance to the Nazi government than from all-out war with the Nazi army?
So, I recommend you swallow your pride, work through your issues with the idea of non-violence, and have a look at actual history. Non-violence, and we are not talking about inaction here, can actually be successful when done right.
You're looking at this backwards. (I think it's because you know this destroys your argument.)
The fact that they were both murdered is irrelevant to the discussion. They accomplished great things *specifically because* of their non-violent resistance. If they had attempted any sort of violent resistance, they would have certainly been jailed for life or killed before they had accomplished anything at all.
Didn't Ghandi's non-violent resistance overthrow British rule of India? Didn't Martin Luther King's adoption of the same tactics get blacks their civil rights in Ameriac?
You're very good at setting up strawman arguments.
You're telling me that veganism is 'unworkable in reality'? What reality do you inhabit? You're ignoring the millions of vegans in the Indian subconinent, who have lived that way for thousands of years. Now don't start on about how they are all malnurished -- if you do, you are ignoring the fact that you were wrong in that veganism can't exist, and that there are plenty of meat eaters around the world who are starving.
Sure, when it comes down to it, almost everyone will kill Bambi and the family will have a feast. However, especially in this day and age, it never comes down to it. You can go through your whole life and raise a whole family on nothing but veggies. It's been happening for thousands of years. And if you were lost in the woods and starving, you will definately have more success gathering edible plants than you will tracking down, killing, butchering, and safely cooking an animal.
It is also true that conflict is a fact of existence. People will get mad at each other, and respond in a number of ways, from ignoring each other, acting passive-aggressive, sitting down and talking, arguing, yelling, fighting, perhaps murder and gang/tribal fueds, but warfare as an absolute necessity? You're telling me that Ghandi's non-violent resistance didn't successfully overthrow the British Empire in India?
Certainly, no civilization in the *Americas* ever projected force in the middle east before oil was discovered there.
We've had wiretapping for a long time, and most people are comfortable with it. Here in the US, you can get a warrant from a judge for wiretapping a US citizen, and we have a special court called FISA specifically for issuing warrants for international type wiretaps. It's routine and it happens *all the time*.
;) or whoever the next president is with such a massive, ongoing surveillance database?
However, as I understand, wiretapping is *not* what tipped off British officials to the group who were going to carry out this plot. It was a friend/relative of one of the plotters who tipped of the police. Then, I'm guessing, the police went and got a warrant to tap this guy's phone, and worked thier way through the group, getting more warrants and taps, until they understood the group structure and their goals.
However, what I am extremely uncomfortable with is the unaccountable and warrantless comprehensive wiretapping of all phone calls in the US. If it is not illegal in the specific wording of the law, it certainly goes against the spirit of the right to privacy and the presumption of innocence. This is very scary. Totalitarian governments love keeping records and tabs on everyone so they can harrass and dissapear them whenever some person starts speaking up.
I'm not saying that Bush is a facist, but think about it -- would you trust Hillary Clinton
"The truth is that there is a group of people out there who only want to kill."
The very basic problem that you are overlooking is that, because of human nature, 'The Man' can easily become those same evil people who only want to kill. Wasn't Stalin just trying to help the poor to get out of being exploited by the wealthy? Would you argue that Hitler was just protecting the German people from the threat of communists and Jews? Wasn't he "The Man," yet still out to get people? And no, this is not an example of Godwin's law. The tyrannical abuse of power and the eventual enslavement of a citizenry in the name of protecting them is the very subject we are discussing.
Yes, Al Qaida exists and is actively trying to destroy America, along with other Islamic terrorist groups. We also have Aryan groups here in the US who are trying to do the same thing, so we also need to racially profile young white males. And most importantly, we the people need to oversee the goverment so that they don't turn the nation into a police state in order to protect us. Be careful when wrestling with monsters that you don't become one yourself. Al Qaida cannot take away our civil liberties, only our government can.
"You maybe never had to deal with drug users but I have."
Are you some kind of counselor or therapist? This is the problem with basing policy on worst case scenarios. You've only seen messed up people with horrible, abusive childhoods and hopeless lives, and pin it all on whatever substance or activity they do to escape from their miserable reality. However, you never stop and ask that regular, decent person who you see on the street or interact with daily how much they drink or what recreational drugs they use.
OTOH, there are plenty of people who have 2-3 drinks a day and live well into their nineties (look at my grandparents, or most of Europe for God's sake). There are people who regularly toke marijuana or do some coke or herion to get going in the morning or to relax. You have the Native American church with almost 7 million members eating multiple peyote buttons in weekly ceremonies, and they don't freak out and ruin their lives -- in fact a lot of members credit the church with helping them to deal with alcholism and emotional issues. Same goes with the Santo Daime and the União do Vegetal churches of Brazil, where they use ayahuasca instead of peyote.
The decent, upstanding citizen who uses drugs and alcohol regularly keep very quiet about it.The only reason you don't hear about them is because they keep their illegal habit quiet, since if anyone found out, they would lose thier jobs, family, and reputation and be forced into rehab where the only way you can get out is to admit that you are are powerless against alcohol, mj, video games, etc. and your life is completely controlled by that.
I had a roommate who was convinced that LSD makes you crazy because her mom worked at a psych ward and all of the paranoid schizophrenics had done LSD. The problem with that reasoning is that a lot of baby boomers had done LSD in the sixties, and then they went on to lead regular, happy, productive lives. In fact a lot of people credit LSD with opening their minds and giving them the interest to pursue some religious affiliation or intellectual activity. However, the individuals who were abused and come from a family history of mental illness went on to go crazy, and and then because they did LSD a few times, that must have done it. You know what? All of those people in the psych ward were smokers too. So then does nicotine make you go crazy? In fact, some people argue that LSD, marijuana, and nicotine are used as self-medication by people with mental illness to reduce their symptoms.
Now, please read and understand what I am saying. I am not saying that drugs are completely harmless. But people become addicted to them because of other factors in their lives, not because these drugs are like steel chains of addiction. Yes, meth, crack and paint thinner are very dangerous and destructive, but perhaps people wouldn't be interested in that if the less dangerous alternatives like LSD and peyote were more readily available. Or if we actually funded decent mental health care in this country.
"The U.S.A. buys oil, and thus transfers massive wealth to the Arab lands. If this does not benefit enough Arab people to suit you, clean your house."
The terrorists are saying, "We could clean our house if the USA would stop propping up tyrannical monarchies and overthrowing democratically elected governments, so we are taking the first step in overthrowing them, which is to remove their military support from the USA."
I think one place where Cyc or similar types of knowledge engines could really shine is in business. A business model is vastly simpler then the model of reality that people carry around in their heads; and one benefit that Cyc has is that it understands *everything* -- it is integrated by default.
So once it gets basic understanding of accounting, inventory, retailing, management, logistics, etc., you could easily build a natural language interface to it: "Three boxes arrived today from supplier X and we paid $90 for them". If there is ambiguity in the sentence, Cyc would ask natural language clarifying questions: "Was each box a line item on the invoice, or were there many line items?"
I think this would be much improved over the current data-interfaces we have today, which are basically graphical recapitulations of paper-based forms in the format of "field: [value]".
Another problem with modern apps is that they all contain their own internal, add-hoc ontologies. These ontologies are hard-coded, and usually aren't designed to intergrate with ontologies in apps from different domains -- e.g. logistics and accounting (unless they are from the same vendor). Cyc has a standardized, presumably well-thought-out and near comprehensive ontology. It can also grow its ontologies based on user input. So you have this automatic integration feature that's sorely lacking in the end-user computer world.
Keep in mind that knowledge is power. Note that all dictators and fascist, authoritarian governments all over the world have kept detailed files and records on everybody. Why? Again, knowledge is power. If you know more than your adversary, you have an edge over them.
Say you are a dictator-to-be and your well-laid plans are encountering some roadblocks. It would be very handy to have a record of your most influential opponents -- politicians, journalists, businesspeople, union leaders -- and record of their whereabouts so you can 'dissapear' them in the middle of the night. Or, you can sieze their bank accounts, cancel their government contracts, blackmail them with photos of their mistress, etc.
Knowledge is power. Ergo, consolidation of knowledge is consolidation of power. This isn't to protect you from identity theft -- in fact, identity theft would be even *easier* with consolidated identity -- you have one-stop shoplifting, so to speak. There is no reason that a government who claims to have free citizens needs to monitor and record every step of those citizens.
You don't worry that rather than having a perfect database of all actual activity to keep us safe from terrorism, we won't instead get a haphazard database that can be exploited to round up innocent people to win an election, or to track down personal enemies on trumped up charges? That incompetence is a *feature* of a tyrranical government, not a bug of a good government?
Are you suggesting a 'nanobot' that is more an organic cell then a small mechanical robot?
A percentage of the population is already immune to the HIV virus because of a mutation that changes the structure of T-cells. I would bet that gene therapy will allow us to create resistant T-cells in the bodies of HIV+ persons long before we get any kind of nano-bot, much less one that can do anything worthwhile in a human body.
Yeah, that is a logical corrolary... of course the trick is, how long of a time?
I think that gene therapy will advance to the point where we can build or rebuild a person's immune system before we can make any kind of machine small enough and with enough intelligence that it can tell good cells apart from bad.
"I always thought these bots could be programmed to roam our body and kill off viruses, bad bacteria, and cancer cells... "
Do you think they could out-perform white blood cells?
"as well as repairing failing organs..."Given that modern day robots millions of times larger have problems with simple tasks like picking up a glass, I think organ repair in the near future will be solved with genetic engineering over robots.
I take a somewhat different tack.
It is true that we do find life in some rather inhospitable places, like highly radioactive nuclear reactor cores, inside solid rock, in boiling steam vents, metabolizing sulfur -- but does that mean life can arise in such places, or does it require particular conditions to arise, and then it is capable of evolving to adapt to such harsh environments? The basic amino acids that constitute life do not survive in such environments. The living organisms which live in such environments have special mechanisms to protect and repair their delicate parts.
But the places where we find the most diversity of life is in the oceans and the tropical rain forests. That tells me there are a few elements that life really wants -- a relatively small temperature window, light, and most importantly water. The oceans are water, and the tropical rain forests are almost always at 100% humidity. I would even say that the temperature range that life wants is the range of liquid water. Taking this a step further, I would say that anywhere we find liquid water, we will find life.
"(tho sometimes US orgs tend to go a bit too far - eg Americas Army)"
Oh, c'mon. You think Syria and Iran are too far?
I'm amazed at how much Microsoft gets away with. You'll be happy as long as Vista isn't totally broken? ME should never have seen the light of day. Why should anyone settle for this non-upgrade 'upgrade', when we have a perfectly functional version of Windows called XP?
I'ts like we're living in Soviet Russia. "What can we do? Microsoft is on every computer... just eat your gruel and be happy that it wasn't posioned like the last batch..."
against Norton or the clergy?
"Tell me, is it right that said high ranking officials et al should need to worry about their identities being secret if what they are saying is truly something that the citizens need to know, and we as a country need to be aware of?"
No, it isn't right, and that's exactly the danger. If there is something evil and corrupt going on, and you bring it to light, are you so naive to believe that the evil and corrupt people will not do everything in their power to cover up their deeds, assassinate your character, and make your life miserable in every way they can?
"And if they are truly revelations, there is no way their identities won't eventually be revealed."
Sure, their identities will be revealed, but need not be until they are well out of danger. We didn't know who 'Deep Throat was until 2005, well after he was out of danger.
"How else are we going to eventually believe what the reporter says?"
Deep Throat led Woodward and Bernstein to discover facts that they would have never found on their own. When the reporters report facts, instead of anonymous relevations, we can check up on them.
You should read some history. Up until very recently, humankind was ruled by paranoid, bloodthirsty, tyrant kings who could do whatever they wanted, and felt that they literally had 'Divine Right' to rule. Those types of people are still around and it is in their nature to try to amass more power. The freedom of the press is one of the few checks on power that we have.