What a brilliant fucking idea! Respect... women... Treat them like you would anyone you respected. Judge them by their actions, not the descended/undescended status of their gonads...
Naw, that will never work! We need a HOWTO that tells us not to use the word "bitch"! No, wait, we don't need that, because women suck at math and don't want to be programmers anyway, and it's not sexist to acknowledge this obvious fact!
Damn. Anyone who wants to study why women feel unwelcome in computer fields simply needs to parse this thread and see who is actually in the field themselves. I think they'll find the answer right there.
I'm not sure about her, but for me it's because I was brought up to fight against people who thought that way. Too many women, however, are told to not stand out, not be different, accept what the lead male says, etc.
It's not just that. It's this: who wants to participate in a field where you are constantly required to prove that you aren't innately inferior, that you even should be given a chance to prove your worth?
Some people will take a "I'll show you!" attitude, and others take a "it's not worth the hassle" attitude and get a job where people don't assume the presence of ovaries is a fatal flaw.
hello, men have to deal with being considered "nerds" for pursuing their interests in computers
Hello, nerds have to deal with this stigma from NON-NERDS. Do your peers look down on you for being a nerd? Do your coworkers? NO! The jocks and the marketers and the what-have-you may mock you, but then you go to work in your IT dept or visit your LUG and are among your peers who RESPECT your nerdly interests and abilities.
Now a woman walks into the same office/LUG, and she isn't welcomed the same way. She is treated as an outsider. She has to hear the men mumbling about her not belonging there, about her being "not wired for science".
Another more significant factor, in my opinion, is that men and women are simply wired differently. They are differently abled, with men, on average, having greater mental facilities for math and science due to thousands of years of genetic evolution imparted by the roles that men and women have naturally assumed.
Listen to yourself. You're say this in front of a women -- you, a member of her supposed peer group! -- and then say she shouldn't be put off? And of course the expression of this prejudice isn't limited to ignorant comments like this one -- it applies to promotions, job evaluation, every aspect of her job. Everything she does is going to be facing the extra burden of having to overcome the prejudice of people like you, and any failure will only confirm their suspicions and make it that much harder next time. Who the hell wants to work in that kind of position? No one, which is precisely why women avoid those situations -- they're smart, and quite good at logic, regardless of what you think. The occasional hard-headed woman who goes at it anyway shows that there is a strong unmet desire, not that most women wouldn't want to join even if these prejudices didn't exist.
As to your claim itself -- well, I'm interested in why you think that any difference in cognitive ability that directly applies to the field is more significant than the social issues. Do you think primitive woman had any less need to figure out how to start fires, cook food, make weapons, etc? Any less need to think, to reason? For thousands of years women may have been kept away from roles as scientists and inventors, but thousands of years -- the history of civilization -- is not even close to long enough to establish a significant difference in something as complex as higher-order congnitive ability. Men and women are wired differently, but your assumption that this combined with societal roles means they are less capable at math or science is simply unproven, and the differences in number and performance of women in these fields is much more easily and logically explained by the social bias that you claim caused the genetic difference!
This whole thread is annoying as hell. Says the male geek on the lack of female geeks in the workforce: "It's not that I'm prejudiced against women in the field, it's that women are in my opinion inherently inferior at the field!" Oh, I see. That clears that up.
Because you can't take the second fragment out of context. You're trying to treat them as two separate clauses, but that's not how they were written. It is written as one, big, long sentence. The "well regulated militia" part is a qualifier for the "right to bear arms" part.
I'm not treating them as separate clauses. I'm saying: Tell me how you think the phrase "well-regulated militia" could modify "right of the people" such that it doesn't mean "right of the people".
Why don't you consider "right of the people" to be a qualifier for "well-regulated militia"? Why don't you consider "necessary for a Free State" to be a qualifier for "well-regulated militia"? If the only question is what "well-regulated militia" means, I think it should be obvious that the rest of the Ammendment can provide clues as to that hidden meaning. Nevertheless, whatever militia means, the right to bear arms was given to the people.
The existence of debate doesn't mean the issue isn't simple. Right now, at this very moment, there is a great deal of debate as to whether 14th Ammendment protection should extend to homosexuals. That problem word "people" shows up again, and there's a lot of "debate" about whether it applies to gays and if "equal protection under the law" means marriage laws as well. Is it a complicated, ambiguous issue? Or are there a lot of homophobes who are willing to abandon logic to make it an issue?
People can debate whether people means people. That doesn't mean the issue is ambiguous. It means they have a preference and want to shoe-horn reality into that preference.
As to child porn -- if a child saw a photoshopped picture of themselves having sex with a horse, would that cause the child harm? A purely cartoon representation of said child having sex with a horse? "Harm" isn't always cut and dry. I was just pointing that out.
I don't think it matters much. How do you know the counting machine correctly increments the vote for the same candidate printed on the card? If you're re-counting by hand, then the human-readable version is all that matters. If you are re-counting with a machine, there will always be the question of whether the machine does it correctly, and the best way to ensure that is to test it yourself.
Though I agree with you, machine-readable text would be ideal.
How is it ambiguous? What definition of "well-regulated militia" puts the definition of "the right of the people to keep and bear arms" in question? Everywhere else the Constitution the word "people" is meant to apply to individuals, not just the group. I've heard every possible explanation for what "militia" means, but none that make "right of the people" any less clear.
How is child pornography a clear-cut free speech issue? Free speech, like all of our rights, ends where it harms others: libel, shouting "ninja pirates!" in a theater, sexually exploiting children.
I'm not going to condemn the ACLU; they do good work. But that doesn't mean I think they can't be wrong, or that these views couldn't have been influenced by partisanship.
Bullshit. Is that the game we are playing? Prove it. Offer more information or hell, even a resource for your quote. Otherwise your allegation is outlandish and your reasoning false.
Okay, I'll save you the five seconds it would take to google for "Diebold deliver electoral votes", with an article from the ol' KZoo Gazette: Here ya go..
Come on. This is hardly new, nor is it a fact that is under dispute. The CEO of Diebold said he is committed to delivering Ohio's electoral votes to the president. Their machines have demonstrably failed in real elections. They have been caught violating regulations by installing uncertified software on deployed voting machines in California. Voters have been disenfranchised by them, a fact they do not dispute.
If you would like more information, my signature should provide one-click access to plenty of information.
The only reason you have to call "bullshit" is 1) ignorance and 2) a predisposition to believe that it couldn't be true, that a rich CEO of a powerful corporation couldn't possibly be trying to subvert democracy. Sadly the first is quite common, and the second unjustified by any analysis of history.
Were there ever any shows that really were based on "reality"?
Well, as much as it ever could be, I guess. The first season of "The Real World" on MTV, which kinda started the whole thing off, seemed pretty "real". Everyone in that show was a well-adjusted reasonable person with a job who pretty much just went about their life while being filmed, a formula that wouldn't be repeated again in the genre. Apparently the novelty of "reality" wore off quick. First they began picking people so as to create conflicts, and then pretty much gave up all pretense and turned the genre into another type of game show. The kind where the utter lack of challenge or content is filled with the contestats bickering. That's what makes it "reality".
Realize that the water in the rehydrated food will rehydrate you, assuming you then eat the food. Granted, you recycle and thus conserve water by drinking your own piss, but it's not like water used to rehydrate is wasted. If recycling waste water is really the goal, I'd think good portable filters would be a better idea.
Germany never attacked us- should we have waited to go to war with them? Oh, and Iraq did attack us almost every day between 1991 and 2002.
I assume you're referring to them firing on our airplanes in the no-fly zone (if not, please correct me, but I'm aware of no other attack by Iraq on us since the end of GWI). Certainly that's true, but I think the point is that he wasn't a threat to U.S. soil, particularly in comparison to the ones who actually did attack us, al Qaeda.
Everybody that pays taxes got a tax cut. The only reason the rich got a "massive" tax cut is because they pay a massive amount of taxes.
Mmm, well, that's true, but what matters is percentages. The tax cuts favor the rich in that they get more of the tax cuts than their proportion of the total taxed income. That, as you say, their share of the income is already so massive just makes the situation insulting.
The liberation of Iraq has been one of the most stunningly successful military compaigns ever. I was going to ask what possible motivations you could have to call it a quagmire, but I think we both know the answer to that...
Are you on drugs, or have you simply been in a news blackout since "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED"? Even then, you'd have to be completely ignorant of how Rumsfeld's attempt to launch a Blitzkrieg failed when our supplies lines became too spread out and they were attacked from the sides, slowing the rush to Bagdad to a multi-week crawl. Then there was what was supposed to be the crux of the war, the Battle of Baghdad -- which never happened. Two Republican Guard divisions simply disappeared, or so Bush and everyone cheering for him figured. Any idiot except those we elected could have figured out what really happened -- they went home, put on their civie clothes, and started wiring up roadside bombs. Entire cities are out of our control, our troops are embattled with local militias. Targeted killings and roadside bombs are so common few will leave the "green zone" in Baghdad without a military escort. al Qaeda, our real enemies didn't have a foothold there before the war but are now there in force. Recently, the administration has been asking for more troops, floating the idea of the draft. Some of our allies have bailed on us. This is your idea of the most stunningly successful military campaign ever? How is this not a quagmire?
The Free Software Foundation are the maintainers of the GNU Project. They will only accept patches on GNU projects if you agree to sign over the copyright to them. The reason they do this is so that they can insure that all the code they put into their projects they can maintain control over, and maintain as GPL software without worrying about the author of the patch wanting to change the licensing of the code they wrote.
While I agree completely with the FSF's goals, I probably wouldn't contribute to GNU because of this requirement. I want to maintain control of the copyrights to my code for exactly the same reason that the FSF wants me to give them the copyright -- to make sure that my code never, ever becomes proprietary. Not that I think the FSF would decide to turn GNU into non-Free software, but then again you never know who might pick up the copyrights held in the name of that organization.
Personally I think the fact that you'd have to get the permission of 10,000 people in order to turn the Linux kernel into non-Free software (rather than Linus deciding one day that he'd rather make money off shrink-wrapped Linux kernels) is a strength.
Trading Spouses, a which is a FOX ripoff of Wife Swapping. The mind boggles that someone would want to do that, but then again the entire reality TV phenomenon (which, if you notice, is getting further and further away from "reality"). But that should count as your reality show.
Do they charge you per MHz of the processor core you run on? Per MB of RAM? Why not -- faster cores and more memory means you can do more with their software! Should the 64-bit version cost twice as much as 32-bit? Or perhaps 2^32 times as much?
The fact is that you're paying the software vendor for the -software-, which is identical regardless of the number of CPUs you put it on. You pay the hardware vendor for the -hardware- that you run the software on. Granted, these may be the same people, but frankly I don't see why Oracle or Microsoft should get more money because I decided to pay IBM more money for a bigger machine to run Oracle/Windows on. They are essentially trying to have tiered pricing based not on what they are selling you, but rather based on how you plan to use what they sold you after you've bought it. That is dodgy.
The only comparison with the Evil Media Associations of America is that both situations arise because corporations can use their IP in legal if not ethical ways to extract more money from their customers.
Frankly, I'm not worried about it. Free software will eventually take care of all this 'per-cpu/core/bit' nonsense.
P.S. I ignored support contracts, which are a different beast altogether.
Yes, the biggest hole with the Three Laws is the assumption on which they are based: Somehow, these laws are so fundamental to the functioning of the robot's positronic brain that the robot would essentially have to destroy itself in order to get around the laws. They were "fundamental equations" -- I think that is a quote; certainly I'm paraphrasing a number of passages from the book.
The book is great for the situations that these seemingly perfect laws end up creating. Even in the book, they aren't exactly perfect. The laws have "potentials", and a situation arises where a robot gets caught between the 2nd and 3rd laws to where it can't act at all, which unbeknownst to the robot is going to lead to a catastrophic violation of the 1st law.
Which is another thing the book explores -- if the robot doesn't know what it is about to do will hurt a human, then it can do it. This becomes especially relevent in a later story where robots working in hazardous environments have the 1st law relaxed somewhat -- which is clearly in conflict with the idea that the 1st Law is fundamental to the operation of robots.
But you're right -- in the real world, the "positronic brain" that depends on the three laws is a pipe dream. I almost wonder if Asimov intended for that to be the take away message: Showing how "perfect" laws can still make dangerous robots, and also showing just enough cracks in the assumption of perfect laws to make us realize that they aren't applicable to reality.
Terminal velocity for cats is thought to be about 60mph. That's less than half that of a human. So, the energy of a falling cat is one fourth that of a human, before accounting for the difference in mass. The rest of the survivability comes from having good position, a flexible (and thus shock-absorbing) skeleton, and a relaxation reflex that lets them absorb the impact.
Cat's ability to survive falls isn't as mythic as some think, but it is quite impressive.
You're missing the subtlety. You see, the white folk terrorists had a reason for doing what they did, which is to say the abuses of the U.S. government. Whereas of course the brown folk terrorists are simply crazy, and hate us because we're free. We all know our government has never done anything that would piss off Arabs!
Yeah, a seventeen floor drop will probably kill a cat. However, skyscraper vs high rise doesn't really matter, as the cat is already at terminal velocity. The observation that dead cats don't get taken to the vet to be counted obviously holds true. Nevertheless, a lot of cats -do- survive such falls, which is still remarkable.
Are you saying children should get some scope on the universe by being exposed to sexuality before they engage in it? Or are you saying children will get some scope on the universe by being denied access to this information?
Are you saying we should be censoring boobs For the Children(tm), or the opposite?
Whatever. The bottled water industry is a crock, in many ways I think one of the more disgusting things capitalism has managed to create.
1. Pollute public water supplies with industrial runoff, making it unpalatable. 2. Buy land containing remaining clean water supplies, sell water to public. 3. You guessed it: Profit!
I swear to God, ignorance and apathy in America is what is dooming us. You don't watch the news because "it doesn't affect you", and then use that position of ignorance to claim that nothing bad has happened, and thus it doesn't affect you. WAKE UP.
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What a brilliant fucking idea! Respect... women... Treat them like you would anyone you respected. Judge them by their actions, not the descended/undescended status of their gonads...
Naw, that will never work! We need a HOWTO that tells us not to use the word "bitch"! No, wait, we don't need that, because women suck at math and don't want to be programmers anyway, and it's not sexist to acknowledge this obvious fact!
Damn. Anyone who wants to study why women feel unwelcome in computer fields simply needs to parse this thread and see who is actually in the field themselves. I think they'll find the answer right there.
I'm not sure about her, but for me it's because I was brought up to fight against people who thought that way. Too many women, however, are told to not stand out, not be different, accept what the lead male says, etc.
It's not just that. It's this: who wants to participate in a field where you are constantly required to prove that you aren't innately inferior, that you even should be given a chance to prove your worth?
Some people will take a "I'll show you!" attitude, and others take a "it's not worth the hassle" attitude and get a job where people don't assume the presence of ovaries is a fatal flaw.
hello, men have to deal with being considered "nerds" for pursuing their interests in computers
Hello, nerds have to deal with this stigma from NON-NERDS. Do your peers look down on you for being a nerd? Do your coworkers? NO! The jocks and the marketers and the what-have-you may mock you, but then you go to work in your IT dept or visit your LUG and are among your peers who RESPECT your nerdly interests and abilities.
Now a woman walks into the same office/LUG, and she isn't welcomed the same way. She is treated as an outsider. She has to hear the men mumbling about her not belonging there, about her being "not wired for science".
Another more significant factor, in my opinion, is that men and women are simply wired differently. They are differently abled, with men, on average, having greater mental facilities for math and science due to thousands of years of genetic evolution imparted by the roles that men and women have naturally assumed.
Listen to yourself. You're say this in front of a women -- you, a member of her supposed peer group! -- and then say she shouldn't be put off? And of course the expression of this prejudice isn't limited to ignorant comments like this one -- it applies to promotions, job evaluation, every aspect of her job. Everything she does is going to be facing the extra burden of having to overcome the prejudice of people like you, and any failure will only confirm their suspicions and make it that much harder next time. Who the hell wants to work in that kind of position? No one, which is precisely why women avoid those situations -- they're smart, and quite good at logic, regardless of what you think. The occasional hard-headed woman who goes at it anyway shows that there is a strong unmet desire, not that most women wouldn't want to join even if these prejudices didn't exist.
As to your claim itself -- well, I'm interested in why you think that any difference in cognitive ability that directly applies to the field is more significant than the social issues. Do you think primitive woman had any less need to figure out how to start fires, cook food, make weapons, etc? Any less need to think, to reason? For thousands of years women may have been kept away from roles as scientists and inventors, but thousands of years -- the history of civilization -- is not even close to long enough to establish a significant difference in something as complex as higher-order congnitive ability. Men and women are wired differently, but your assumption that this combined with societal roles means they are less capable at math or science is simply unproven, and the differences in number and performance of women in these fields is much more easily and logically explained by the social bias that you claim caused the genetic difference!
This whole thread is annoying as hell. Says the male geek on the lack of female geeks in the workforce: "It's not that I'm prejudiced against women in the field, it's that women are in my opinion inherently inferior at the field!" Oh, I see. That clears that up.
Oh... It's just a line to blackboxvoting.
Because you can't take the second fragment out of context. You're trying to treat them as two separate clauses, but that's not how they were written. It is written as one, big, long sentence. The "well regulated militia" part is a qualifier for the "right to bear arms" part.
I'm not treating them as separate clauses. I'm saying: Tell me how you think the phrase "well-regulated militia" could modify "right of the people" such that it doesn't mean "right of the people".
Why don't you consider "right of the people" to be a qualifier for "well-regulated militia"? Why don't you consider "necessary for a Free State" to be a qualifier for "well-regulated militia"? If the only question is what "well-regulated militia" means, I think it should be obvious that the rest of the Ammendment can provide clues as to that hidden meaning. Nevertheless, whatever militia means, the right to bear arms was given to the people.
The existence of debate doesn't mean the issue isn't simple. Right now, at this very moment, there is a great deal of debate as to whether 14th Ammendment protection should extend to homosexuals. That problem word "people" shows up again, and there's a lot of "debate" about whether it applies to gays and if "equal protection under the law" means marriage laws as well. Is it a complicated, ambiguous issue? Or are there a lot of homophobes who are willing to abandon logic to make it an issue?
People can debate whether people means people. That doesn't mean the issue is ambiguous. It means they have a preference and want to shoe-horn reality into that preference.
As to child porn -- if a child saw a photoshopped picture of themselves having sex with a horse, would that cause the child harm? A purely cartoon representation of said child having sex with a horse? "Harm" isn't always cut and dry. I was just pointing that out.
I don't think it matters much. How do you know the counting machine correctly increments the vote for the same candidate printed on the card? If you're re-counting by hand, then the human-readable version is all that matters. If you are re-counting with a machine, there will always be the question of whether the machine does it correctly, and the best way to ensure that is to test it yourself.
Though I agree with you, machine-readable text would be ideal.
How is it ambiguous? What definition of "well-regulated militia" puts the definition of "the right of the people to keep and bear arms" in question? Everywhere else the Constitution the word "people" is meant to apply to individuals, not just the group. I've heard every possible explanation for what "militia" means, but none that make "right of the people" any less clear.
How is child pornography a clear-cut free speech issue? Free speech, like all of our rights, ends where it harms others: libel, shouting "ninja pirates!" in a theater, sexually exploiting children.
I'm not going to condemn the ACLU; they do good work. But that doesn't mean I think they can't be wrong, or that these views couldn't have been influenced by partisanship.
Hello... they weren't felons. That's the whole point -- the list of felons was pure and utter shit.
Bullshit. Is that the game we are playing? Prove it. Offer more information or hell, even a resource for your quote. Otherwise your allegation is outlandish and your reasoning false.
Okay, I'll save you the five seconds it would take to google for "Diebold deliver electoral votes", with an article from the ol' KZoo Gazette: Here ya go..
Come on. This is hardly new, nor is it a fact that is under dispute. The CEO of Diebold said he is committed to delivering Ohio's electoral votes to the president. Their machines have demonstrably failed in real elections. They have been caught violating regulations by installing uncertified software on deployed voting machines in California. Voters have been disenfranchised by them, a fact they do not dispute.
If you would like more information, my signature should provide one-click access to plenty of information.
The only reason you have to call "bullshit" is 1) ignorance and 2) a predisposition to believe that it couldn't be true, that a rich CEO of a powerful corporation couldn't possibly be trying to subvert democracy. Sadly the first is quite common, and the second unjustified by any analysis of history.
anyway, how do I contact Dana?
You don't, unless you want to be arrested for violating the restraining order. Again. *grin*
Were there ever any shows that really were based on "reality"?
Well, as much as it ever could be, I guess. The first season of "The Real World" on MTV, which kinda started the whole thing off, seemed pretty "real". Everyone in that show was a well-adjusted reasonable person with a job who pretty much just went about their life while being filmed, a formula that wouldn't be repeated again in the genre. Apparently the novelty of "reality" wore off quick. First they began picking people so as to create conflicts, and then pretty much gave up all pretense and turned the genre into another type of game show. The kind where the utter lack of challenge or content is filled with the contestats bickering. That's what makes it "reality".
Realize that the water in the rehydrated food will rehydrate you, assuming you then eat the food. Granted, you recycle and thus conserve water by drinking your own piss, but it's not like water used to rehydrate is wasted. If recycling waste water is really the goal, I'd think good portable filters would be a better idea.
Germany never attacked us- should we have waited to go to war with them? Oh, and Iraq did attack us almost every day between 1991 and 2002.
I assume you're referring to them firing on our airplanes in the no-fly zone (if not, please correct me, but I'm aware of no other attack by Iraq on us since the end of GWI). Certainly that's true, but I think the point is that he wasn't a threat to U.S. soil, particularly in comparison to the ones who actually did attack us, al Qaeda.
Everybody that pays taxes got a tax cut. The only reason the rich got a "massive" tax cut is because they pay a massive amount of taxes.
Mmm, well, that's true, but what matters is percentages. The tax cuts favor the rich in that they get more of the tax cuts than their proportion of the total taxed income. That, as you say, their share of the income is already so massive just makes the situation insulting.
The liberation of Iraq has been one of the most stunningly successful military compaigns ever. I was going to ask what possible motivations you could have to call it a quagmire, but I think we both know the answer to that...
Are you on drugs, or have you simply been in a news blackout since "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED"? Even then, you'd have to be completely ignorant of how Rumsfeld's attempt to launch a Blitzkrieg failed when our supplies lines became too spread out and they were attacked from the sides, slowing the rush to Bagdad to a multi-week crawl. Then there was what was supposed to be the crux of the war, the Battle of Baghdad -- which never happened. Two Republican Guard divisions simply disappeared, or so Bush and everyone cheering for him figured. Any idiot except those we elected could have figured out what really happened -- they went home, put on their civie clothes, and started wiring up roadside bombs. Entire cities are out of our control, our troops are embattled with local militias. Targeted killings and roadside bombs are so common few will leave the "green zone" in Baghdad without a military escort. al Qaeda, our real enemies didn't have a foothold there before the war but are now there in force. Recently, the administration has been asking for more troops, floating the idea of the draft. Some of our allies have bailed on us. This is your idea of the most stunningly successful military campaign ever? How is this not a quagmire?
The Free Software Foundation are the maintainers of the GNU Project. They will only accept patches on GNU projects if you agree to sign over the copyright to them. The reason they do this is so that they can insure that all the code they put into their projects they can maintain control over, and maintain as GPL software without worrying about the author of the patch wanting to change the licensing of the code they wrote.
While I agree completely with the FSF's goals, I probably wouldn't contribute to GNU because of this requirement. I want to maintain control of the copyrights to my code for exactly the same reason that the FSF wants me to give them the copyright -- to make sure that my code never, ever becomes proprietary. Not that I think the FSF would decide to turn GNU into non-Free software, but then again you never know who might pick up the copyrights held in the name of that organization.
Personally I think the fact that you'd have to get the permission of 10,000 people in order to turn the Linux kernel into non-Free software (rather than Linus deciding one day that he'd rather make money off shrink-wrapped Linux kernels) is a strength.
Trading Spouses, a which is a FOX ripoff of Wife Swapping. The mind boggles that someone would want to do that, but then again the entire reality TV phenomenon (which, if you notice, is getting further and further away from "reality"). But that should count as your reality show.
Um, yes, it is rather dodgy.
Do they charge you per MHz of the processor core you run on? Per MB of RAM? Why not -- faster cores and more memory means you can do more with their software! Should the 64-bit version cost twice as much as 32-bit? Or perhaps 2^32 times as much?
The fact is that you're paying the software vendor for the -software-, which is identical regardless of the number of CPUs you put it on. You pay the hardware vendor for the -hardware- that you run the software on. Granted, these may be the same people, but frankly I don't see why Oracle or Microsoft should get more money because I decided to pay IBM more money for a bigger machine to run Oracle/Windows on. They are essentially trying to have tiered pricing based not on what they are selling you, but rather based on how you plan to use what they sold you after you've bought it. That is dodgy.
The only comparison with the Evil Media Associations of America is that both situations arise because corporations can use their IP in legal if not ethical ways to extract more money from their customers.
Frankly, I'm not worried about it. Free software will eventually take care of all this 'per-cpu/core/bit' nonsense.
P.S. I ignored support contracts, which are a different beast altogether.
Yes, the biggest hole with the Three Laws is the assumption on which they are based: Somehow, these laws are so fundamental to the functioning of the robot's positronic brain that the robot would essentially have to destroy itself in order to get around the laws. They were "fundamental equations" -- I think that is a quote; certainly I'm paraphrasing a number of passages from the book.
The book is great for the situations that these seemingly perfect laws end up creating. Even in the book, they aren't exactly perfect. The laws have "potentials", and a situation arises where a robot gets caught between the 2nd and 3rd laws to where it can't act at all, which unbeknownst to the robot is going to lead to a catastrophic violation of the 1st law.
Which is another thing the book explores -- if the robot doesn't know what it is about to do will hurt a human, then it can do it. This becomes especially relevent in a later story where robots working in hazardous environments have the 1st law relaxed somewhat -- which is clearly in conflict with the idea that the 1st Law is fundamental to the operation of robots.
But you're right -- in the real world, the "positronic brain" that depends on the three laws is a pipe dream. I almost wonder if Asimov intended for that to be the take away message: Showing how "perfect" laws can still make dangerous robots, and also showing just enough cracks in the assumption of perfect laws to make us realize that they aren't applicable to reality.
Terminal velocity for cats is thought to be about 60mph. That's less than half that of a human. So, the energy of a falling cat is one fourth that of a human, before accounting for the difference in mass. The rest of the survivability comes from having good position, a flexible (and thus shock-absorbing) skeleton, and a relaxation reflex that lets them absorb the impact.
Cat's ability to survive falls isn't as mythic as some think, but it is quite impressive.
You're missing the subtlety. You see, the white folk terrorists had a reason for doing what they did, which is to say the abuses of the U.S. government. Whereas of course the brown folk terrorists are simply crazy, and hate us because we're free. We all know our government has never done anything that would piss off Arabs!
Grown-ups did that. Never forget that.
Don't listen to the idiot. That was hilarious.
Yeah, a seventeen floor drop will probably kill a cat. However, skyscraper vs high rise doesn't really matter, as the cat is already at terminal velocity. The observation that dead cats don't get taken to the vet to be counted obviously holds true. Nevertheless, a lot of cats -do- survive such falls, which is still remarkable.
I'm honestly confused...
Are you saying children should get some scope on the universe by being exposed to sexuality before they engage in it? Or are you saying children will get some scope on the universe by being denied access to this information?
Are you saying we should be censoring boobs For the Children(tm), or the opposite?
Whatever. The bottled water industry is a crock, in many ways I think one of the more disgusting things capitalism has managed to create.
1. Pollute public water supplies with industrial runoff, making it unpalatable.
2. Buy land containing remaining clean water supplies, sell water to public.
3. You guessed it: Profit!
FUCKING PAY ATTENTION, AMERICA!
I swear to God, ignorance and apathy in America is what is dooming us. You don't watch the news because "it doesn't affect you", and then use that position of ignorance to claim that nothing bad has happened, and thus it doesn't affect you. WAKE UP.
Innocent man targeted with PATRIOT powers.
Immigrants detained without charges, abused.
PATRIOT used in non-terrorism investigations.
I don't have time to do any more googling. You should have already known about this. Mayfield was only a month ago. The report of abuses is new.
PAY ATTENTION, or you're going to get fucked while you're not looking.