In general, the earlier the better on these things. A percisely flung screwdriver from the ISS right now would lessen the probablities significatly. (Though working out exactly what velocity and timing need to be imparted on that screwdriver would be a supercomputer-level job.)
Here's an idea: Send a scientific probe there, to study asteroid composition. Again, if you were to land it on the right vector, you could achive a noticible difference in the orbit. Deploy it with some long term thruster (ion, solar, that level) and we could make a major orbit change.
Breaking it apart doesn't help, if all the pieces still hit us. (All it does is mean more of the energy is dissipated in the atmosphere, which is actually worse...) A high powered laser could do something: Basically that's building a low-power thruster. Solar sails are the same. (See above.) Nueclear missiles is like trying to drive in a screw with a hammer: it can be done, but it's not really the right tool, and are likely to cause more problems then you solve. (You could break it up, but not change it's vector, for instance.) What is needed is thrust, applied correctly.
Of course, you have to determine if the cost is worth it...
I mean, surely when the Justice Department needs to take a look at Microsoft's paperwork, they send in in an elite squad of ATF agents to rappel down from above, crash through the roof, and storm the building with machineguns drawn.
Actually, from my reading of it, they are saying do make emotional decisions. That people tend to not consider all the variables (and not compare correctly the ones they do consider) when trying to think logically, so you should let your subconcious come to an emotional decision.
Of course, it should be a subconcious emotional decision: Your first impression is a concious emotional decision, which uses the same weights and variables as your logical decision.
The quality isn't bad, actually. Not enough difference to be noticeable, usually. Though I do admit that if I watch a video back-to-back iPod and DVD I'll notice less comression artifacts on the DVD version.
The resolution seems to be about what a TV normally works at. The limiting factor for the iPod is the bitrate (and the quality of the compressor). I usually go for average bitrate, just because my computer is a couple generations old and that lets it complete a movie while I'm at work. Note this means you can get great audio if you want - you just have to sacrifice video quality.
I don't have non-iPod versions of the little (video content) I've bought through the iTunes store: That's all stuff where I wanted one episode of something, or wanted to grab a favorite music video. Stuff I couldn't find individually for sale on a physical media. I don't know what Apple has tuned their compression to for that. Again, it's not so I'd notice while watching, though if I'm paying attention I can notice some compression artifacts.
Just wanted to say, as someone who's bought some content for his iPod (and converted most of the DVD's he owns to iPod format): I don't plan to watch them on the iPod. A standard cable, avalible at any electronics store (though the labels are wrong if you don't get it from Apple) will let you play it on just about any TV. That's where I watch videos.
A recent example: I was a chaperone for a church youth group overnight. By bringing my iPod, I had eight or so movies with me, in a form that fit in my pocket. We watched two. My fellow chaperone had brought three movies (which we didn't watch), which she then had to keep track of the whole video for. Mine were much easier to keep track of, and easier to play. (Since the DVD player at chuch is wierd, and not kept hooked up.)
To bring this back to topic: That's part of the problem with UMD's. All (as far as I'm aware) that I can watch them on are PSP's. The format doesn't truly gain me anything: The size means they are easier to carry, but also harder to keep track of, and I've lost the ablity to share the experience. What's the point? For about the same amount I can get a portable DVD player which is a little bigger, but plays a standard format, or an iPod which will take some conversion, but will play on a standard TV.
1) Good luck chums, worst case Google et al form shell companies to own the servers in china
No, worst case they move their corporate HQ out of the US, (and set up a shell company in the US, to handle that business) thereby not only no longer having to worry about the new laws, but also moving their taxable revenue outside the US. As well as a fair portion of their jobs.
No need to go that far. Just don't vote for him. If it becomes a trend, other politicians will notice that those techniques backfire and stop using them....Ok, that's not likely, but it would stop him from spamming, most likely. And burning out his fax machine is likely to cause him to buy another. Paid for by your taxes.
The warming of the globe as a whole will cause some locations to actually cool down, as air and water currents re-route.
This does not change the fact that the globe as a whole is warming.
(And frankly it is irrelevent whether humans are to blame or not. It is warming, which is going to cause climate change. Are we ready for it? If not, we may want to try to stop it (or at least slow it down).
All I'm saying in the closed system argument is that this is very obviously a special case: A volume of spacetime where the information contained is greater than a black hole of the same volume could contain. It may well be that there is no differece in what it would take to add enough matter to convert that volume into a black hole than in what it would take to convert any other section of equal volume.
However, we (as far as I know) can't descibe how to create such a volume or what it would act like once it was created either. It is an unusual case, and may have special properties (other than the one we are interested in: the amount of information it contains). For the orginial argument to hold it is worth at least trying to prove that any special properties that volume has do not invalidate the argument.
Otherwise we are trying to dispove a special case by saying this other special case exists, when we don't know if either work.
In particular, there are strong model-independent reasons for believing that spacetime must be discrete, not continuous, at the Planck scale.
The basis of that argument is that entropy can never decrease. I was always under the impression that entropy is a statistical law: In any given situation there will be some non-determanistic movement, which will randomly disperse some of the energy. Since there are several orders of magnitude more higher entropic states than lower entropic states in any situation, it can be assumed that the result of random dispersal will be to find a higher entropic state. That is: entropy could decrease in theory, but the chances are microscopic and so can be discounted.
Regardless, the argument you point to does not mantain a closed system: it says under certain circumstances, if spacetime is continuous, you can decrease entropy in a section of it by introducing matter. It may be that in order to introduce matter into a section of spacetime so prepared you would be required to increase the entropy of someplace else by more than it would decrease in that area of spacetime.
I'd throw in metabolic time at the least. We also have some sense of where all the different parts of us are, though that one may be a derived sense. (From touch, pressure, equilibrium, and memory of our muscle responses.)
Bad examples, for your point. Stage Coaches, horse drawn carriages, and Model T's can operate on current roads. They just have to follow current rules. You'll actually see horse drawn carriages fairly frequently in some areas. They'd get a ticket on the freeways, but so would a car that has their top speed.
Also: Television signals still are in a format black and white TV's accept. They can't read the whole signal, but they work just as well as they did before.
This is how the web's evolving. The current standards are built on past ones, and older browsers can usually use most of a newer site. Same as horse drawn carriages and black and white TV's.
No, but they can only claim the amount they lost because of your distribution. If you aimed to make a profit they can claim that as well, and then possibly claim punitive damages on top of everything else.
In the first case it may not even be worth going to trial (since they'll still have to pay the lawyer fees which may well be more than they could get), in the second it is much more likely to be worth it, on a 'normal' case.
(Standard disclaimer: IANAL, but I have studied this some. Got good grades too.)
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In general, the earlier the better on these things. A percisely flung screwdriver from the ISS right now would lessen the probablities significatly. (Though working out exactly what velocity and timing need to be imparted on that screwdriver would be a supercomputer-level job.)
Here's an idea: Send a scientific probe there, to study asteroid composition. Again, if you were to land it on the right vector, you could achive a noticible difference in the orbit. Deploy it with some long term thruster (ion, solar, that level) and we could make a major orbit change.
Breaking it apart doesn't help, if all the pieces still hit us. (All it does is mean more of the energy is dissipated in the atmosphere, which is actually worse...) A high powered laser could do something: Basically that's building a low-power thruster. Solar sails are the same. (See above.) Nueclear missiles is like trying to drive in a screw with a hammer: it can be done, but it's not really the right tool, and are likely to cause more problems then you solve. (You could break it up, but not change it's vector, for instance.) What is needed is thrust, applied correctly.
Of course, you have to determine if the cost is worth it...
Or one of the previous couple generations of PowerBooks...
It's much more fun that way.
I'm on an OS/2 machine right now, at work.
REXX is a poor replacement for Perl.
Actually, from my reading of it, they are saying do make emotional decisions. That people tend to not consider all the variables (and not compare correctly the ones they do consider) when trying to think logically, so you should let your subconcious come to an emotional decision.
Of course, it should be a subconcious emotional decision: Your first impression is a concious emotional decision, which uses the same weights and variables as your logical decision.
Jobs has said he wouldn't prevent it. Of course, he never said he'd make it easy either...
I wouldn't have wasted a mod point. Maybe a funny. If I was in a good mood.
Insightful? For that lame crack? No way...
Does he have any non ridiculous ones?
(As a side note, what's he on? It must be some good stuff for him to think this ever held sense.)
The quality isn't bad, actually. Not enough difference to be noticeable, usually. Though I do admit that if I watch a video back-to-back iPod and DVD I'll notice less comression artifacts on the DVD version.
The resolution seems to be about what a TV normally works at. The limiting factor for the iPod is the bitrate (and the quality of the compressor). I usually go for average bitrate, just because my computer is a couple generations old and that lets it complete a movie while I'm at work. Note this means you can get great audio if you want - you just have to sacrifice video quality.
I don't have non-iPod versions of the little (video content) I've bought through the iTunes store: That's all stuff where I wanted one episode of something, or wanted to grab a favorite music video. Stuff I couldn't find individually for sale on a physical media. I don't know what Apple has tuned their compression to for that. Again, it's not so I'd notice while watching, though if I'm paying attention I can notice some compression artifacts.
Just wanted to say, as someone who's bought some content for his iPod (and converted most of the DVD's he owns to iPod format): I don't plan to watch them on the iPod. A standard cable, avalible at any electronics store (though the labels are wrong if you don't get it from Apple) will let you play it on just about any TV. That's where I watch videos.
A recent example: I was a chaperone for a church youth group overnight. By bringing my iPod, I had eight or so movies with me, in a form that fit in my pocket. We watched two. My fellow chaperone had brought three movies (which we didn't watch), which she then had to keep track of the whole video for. Mine were much easier to keep track of, and easier to play. (Since the DVD player at chuch is wierd, and not kept hooked up.)
To bring this back to topic: That's part of the problem with UMD's. All (as far as I'm aware) that I can watch them on are PSP's. The format doesn't truly gain me anything: The size means they are easier to carry, but also harder to keep track of, and I've lost the ablity to share the experience. What's the point? For about the same amount I can get a portable DVD player which is a little bigger, but plays a standard format, or an iPod which will take some conversion, but will play on a standard TV.
I'd say by any definition. No matter how you slice it, there will be half-man, half-machines in the next 100 years.
We're fairly close to that already on a couple different slices.
I didn't say it would happen. Just that it could, if the laws got sufficiantly onorus. A worst-case scenerio.
No, worst case they move their corporate HQ out of the US, (and set up a shell company in the US, to handle that business) thereby not only no longer having to worry about the new laws, but also moving their taxable revenue outside the US. As well as a fair portion of their jobs.
No need to go that far. Just don't vote for him. If it becomes a trend, other politicians will notice that those techniques backfire and stop using them. ...Ok, that's not likely, but it would stop him from spamming, most likely. And burning out his fax machine is likely to cause him to buy another. Paid for by your taxes.
The warming of the globe as a whole will cause some locations to actually cool down, as air and water currents re-route.
This does not change the fact that the globe as a whole is warming.
(And frankly it is irrelevent whether humans are to blame or not. It is warming, which is going to cause climate change. Are we ready for it? If not, we may want to try to stop it (or at least slow it down).
I doubt we are.)
Broadcasting is whatever they get the law written to say it is.
Hey, it worked for Quicken.
All I'm saying in the closed system argument is that this is very obviously a special case: A volume of spacetime where the information contained is greater than a black hole of the same volume could contain. It may well be that there is no differece in what it would take to add enough matter to convert that volume into a black hole than in what it would take to convert any other section of equal volume.
However, we (as far as I know) can't descibe how to create such a volume or what it would act like once it was created either. It is an unusual case, and may have special properties (other than the one we are interested in: the amount of information it contains). For the orginial argument to hold it is worth at least trying to prove that any special properties that volume has do not invalidate the argument.
Otherwise we are trying to dispove a special case by saying this other special case exists, when we don't know if either work.
The basis of that argument is that entropy can never decrease. I was always under the impression that entropy is a statistical law: In any given situation there will be some non-determanistic movement, which will randomly disperse some of the energy. Since there are several orders of magnitude more higher entropic states than lower entropic states in any situation, it can be assumed that the result of random dispersal will be to find a higher entropic state. That is: entropy could decrease in theory, but the chances are microscopic and so can be discounted.
Regardless, the argument you point to does not mantain a closed system: it says under certain circumstances, if spacetime is continuous, you can decrease entropy in a section of it by introducing matter. It may be that in order to introduce matter into a section of spacetime so prepared you would be required to increase the entropy of someplace else by more than it would decrease in that area of spacetime.
I'd throw in metabolic time at the least. We also have some sense of where all the different parts of us are, though that one may be a derived sense. (From touch, pressure, equilibrium, and memory of our muscle responses.)
Spyware - and software of all forms - does not evolve. It is unintelligently designed.
Nope. Follow-up.
Bad examples, for your point. Stage Coaches, horse drawn carriages, and Model T's can operate on current roads. They just have to follow current rules. You'll actually see horse drawn carriages fairly frequently in some areas. They'd get a ticket on the freeways, but so would a car that has their top speed.
Also: Television signals still are in a format black and white TV's accept. They can't read the whole signal, but they work just as well as they did before.
This is how the web's evolving. The current standards are built on past ones, and older browsers can usually use most of a newer site. Same as horse drawn carriages and black and white TV's.
Maybe I can see the ending of a game!
No, but they can only claim the amount they lost because of your distribution. If you aimed to make a profit they can claim that as well, and then possibly claim punitive damages on top of everything else.
In the first case it may not even be worth going to trial (since they'll still have to pay the lawyer fees which may well be more than they could get), in the second it is much more likely to be worth it, on a 'normal' case.
(Standard disclaimer: IANAL, but I have studied this some. Got good grades too.)