We do have several problems, as I see it: Science is being denigrated:
1. By the leftish 'safety for all' crowd. The day we let some shmuck say our kids can't play with model rockets because they count as fireworks was the day we lost the space race. Truthfully, we half lost that war the day they said we couldn't buy fireworks. Scientists do experiments. Sometimes they blow things up. That is why the DOD hires them. If we want adult scientists we have to let kids do the fun parts of science. That means blowing things up. Yes, the stupid ones will lose a finger or two. That is the price we pay to get the smart ones to pay attention.
2. By the far right's religious majority. The day we let some shmuck denigrate environmentalism and evolution, was the day scientists stopped doing science and started getting in a PR war.
3. By the media's "Everyone's opinion matters". The day let JENNY McCARTHY say that vaccines caused any thing was the day we lost science.
We still innovate - but the problem is we let morons innovate against science - with crackpot model rocket laws designed by morons to protect morons, crackpot policies on the environment and evolution designed to force other peoples' extreme religious views on moderates, and crackpot on TV because they get more viewers.
You seemed to have a great relationship with Mr. Spader - was that all fantastic acting, or did you become friends - as in you still see/speak with him even after the show ended?
1. Find a source of UV. Blacklights work well for UV. You can do the same trick with IR light using a standard remote control (TV, stereo, whatever).
2. Point it at any standard digital camera (in a phone is fine.) Take a picture of it while pressing activating the UV (press the button on a remote control for IR)
3. The picture should have a bright light on it. Remember that location
4. Point the UV source (or remote control for IR) at your eye and activate Do you see that same bright light?
If you can see it, you can see Ultraviolet (or Infrared.)
That seems fairly useless, unless you facebomb at least 10x as many photos as people tag of you.
Otherwise, a person searching for you, not sure if they got the right you, will see 30 pictures, half of whom has your face and will assume you are that person, ignoring the other half.
Unless of course you specifically select someone a specific person to claim is you.
is not dangerous. There is no danger from posting all of the intimate details of your life, with pictures, and pictures of other people (often taken without their permission) using real names.
Look, I am not a paranoid man. I am perfectly willing to give out private and personal information - for a reasonable fee.
I give out private information to my bank all the time. In exchange, I get financial services.
Facebook offers - a) a blog, b) email, c) games, d) convenient log in
The first 3 are available for free elsewhere, the last is not worth much.
I'm not paranoid, I'm just not cheap. And Facebook is asking way way too much for the minimal services it provides.
I do have a home and I do pay federal income taxes. I write off about $8,000 in deductions for it. Of course I live in New York City. It would not surprise me if your fairly large home costs less than mine. But wealthy people often spend a lot on their home and get large mortgage deductions. I don't disagree that you need more deductions to get rid of all your taxes, but the home owner one is the single largest - and according to my source below - is used by the large majority of people that make it to zero federal income tax.
Note, I do know about the payroll tax and sales tax. You also left out local taxes. I don't agree with the GOP when they imply that the people that don't pay federal income taxes are evil. In fact, my blog has a scheduled post for Oct 2 that deals with this fallacy.
But my point is that that we already charge people tax penalties for not doing things. Not buying a home is one of the biggest examples.
I have to agree with what the FBI does. Courts declare that there is no evidence beyond a reasonable doubt. That is, if you think someone is probably guilty, but you have a reasonable doubt, you let him go.
The FBI should keep people on the watch list if they think he/she is probably guilty, even if they have a reasonable doubt about his guilt.
That said, the watch list as is, is worthless. Too many names - particularly without pictures or at least age/gender/description - are worse than not enough.
The health care law does NOT mandate that we buy. It taxes us if we don't buy insurances. More importantly, the tax it charges is about half the cost to buy insurance. It is not a ridiculously high tax.
Just like the IRS taxes more us if we don't buy a home. You know that 50% of americans that don't pay taxes? Almost all of them that make more than 50k a year do it by having a home and taking the tax breaks related to owning a home.
The US government charges us for not doing a lot of things. Claiming that it can't do it for health care is an obvious lie.
Similarly, the US government charges us not to have children, not to give to charity and a lot of other things.
If you cancel a service, they have zero rights to any information about you.
On-star has no more rights to the location of ex-customers than Texaco does.
Citizens should not be required to rip out the electronics to prevent a previous business partner from illegally spying on them.
In fact a good case can be made to legally require all corporations you cease doing business with to destroy all OLD records about you, with exceptions for records of transactions you engaged in. (see my blog entree from June for more information
Step 2. Production sky rockets, prices drop, and demand sky rockets.
Step 3. New uses for old products increase.
If anyone ever creates a robot/computer that can do everything a human can - it will ask for a raise. The reason we automate is not to get rid of people, but to get ride of the dumb tasks we need to do.
Yes, some people buy ready made "TV diners", but that does not eliminate cooks. Right now, we have computers capable of creating art - but they don't. Why? Because no one wants to build them. No one wants to set them up and make art. Oh, we use them to help create art (Movies, TV, games etc), but we don't build them and have them make the art.
In every industry, at the top is a boss who does not want to build his own replacement. In addition, he does not want to build replacements for his mid level management. They want to replace the low level employees and the crappy parts of their own jobs and those are the machines that get built.
Yes, computer programs will someday diagnose most illnesses - they will take the crappy part of the job of the General Practitioner - the job that is already falling to the way side as doctors become specialists. Yes, low level lawyer jobs - the crappy form filling in stuff will go away as people, just as most people use a computer program to do their taxes.
But the higher end stuff? No, GM does not use a pc program to do their taxes. Instead they use a PC program to HELP the accountant do their taxes.
Of course, the reason a DVR negates this is that they draw a huge amount of electricity even when you are not watching the show. They are the biggest single draw of electricity most people have. Incredibly wasteful, but so addictive.
That is because current versions always need to be "on" if you want to record something when you are not around to turn it on.
Supposedly, new versions will be able to go into 'sleep' mode until their internal clock says it is time to wake up.
Correction. The author did not have a good idea. He was reporting on a speech given by someone else (author of Freakonomics.).
The author basically gave a review of that speech, and left out all the important stuff, just because he was obsessed with the stupid rat farming example.
I will have to go looking for the real speech, it might actually be interesting
1. It talks a lot about the illegal rat farm business.
2. It just says it is similar to the bug hunting business - with NO explanation. No real discussion of the bug hunting business, no explanation why they are similar. It just assumes you will believe they are similar, with no reason. I don't see any connection.
3. It concludes with "and that's a good thing" with no explanation of why it is a good thing. Bull.
If I saw this in a blog, I would call it a bad blog. As an article, it is at best half of an article. It needs to to be doubled, if not tripled in size, to make any sense.
It also is not in any way convincing. I came away thinking the author may have an idea, but appears to be too clueless to express it to us.
and demand an actual trial for perjury, with criminal penalties.
The law says it is perjury, and Warner bros. has committed it. More importantly, as per the article, only a single person at Warner was legally entitled to take issue take down orders, Michael Bentkover.
Charge him with the legal offense he has committed - perjury.
I bet this would stop the illegal requests a lot sooner than a request for cash.
Yes, it's more impressive than an "OR" gate (which could simply be two different mechanisms that trigger the same effect), but the word Logic circuit just doesn't do it for me.
You really want to impress me, show me an "XOR" - either of two indications, but not both.
1. To kill us all and steal our inorganic resources (they are common and easier to get in asteroid/comets - even water)
2. To kill us all and eat us (Creatures evolve to eat what's around - they won't be able to eat us)
3. To enslave us (purpose built slaves are cheaper and better - whether they be organic or silicon based)
4. To kill us before we kill them (if they can come here and we don't have FTL, we can't hurt them).
5. To teach us anything. Cheaper to send a book.
6. To learn about us. Cheaper to watch our TV.
Reasons why an Alien might come here.
1. To convert us all to the one true faith.
2. To escape the horrible problems of their own empire that are far worse than anything we can imagine. Oh and it's following them.
3. Spaceship broke down.
4. To get away from the kids, absorb some primitive culture, and get as far as possible away from their boss. Oh and let's see that famous Lunar Eclipse where your moon is just big enough to block the sun.
Wrong. You misunderstand the specifics of the case.
The problem is that all the original contracts assumed that the copyright would expire after a reasonable period of time. As such, when the authors sold the rights, they sold the rights until the end of the THEN EXISTING COPYRIGHT laws.
When congress sunk to evil and stupidly extended the copyright laws, some of the congressmen had enough morals to put in restrictions. That is, they refused to extend the copyrights to give the publishers additional rights, as the entire argument was to give the artists more rights. As such, the law did not just extend their contracts forever.
The whole point of this article is that congress specifically put in restrictions to help the original artists. Effectively, congress tried to write the law so that people that had previously sold the copyrights had in fact sold only rights until the original copyright had expired. It was in effect an attempt to stop exactly what you are talking about.
And yes, Congress CAN simply do that. They can re-write any contract they want. They can pass a law right now saying all game copyrights are now invalid and people may copy them to there hearts' content. They won't, but they have the legal power to do that.
The question is not whether it was 'work for hire'. That is a moronic argument, that the companies will try to focus the courts about. Instead the question is did Congress write the law well, or did they do a poor job of it. If they did right, then the artist recover the copyrights, as Congress intended.
If they did it poorly, then the corporations will have pulled a quick one, stealing the extended copyrights from the people Congress tried to give it to.
You keep arguing about the SPECIFICS, but not the general factors, which is my point.
No one ever mistakes Coffee for Lemonade. No one ever mistakes Good for something else. We all know what the word means, the specific definition that you are trying to use is a problem with the LANGUAGE(s), not the concept. The fact that untrained people, who do not use the same technical terms, let alone the same language, is not a problem with the concept.
Yes, there are arguments about the edges, but the core concept is universal. Those examples that you gave prove my point.
The religious folk are using the same definition of good as the utilitarian - but they are using different words and means of figuring out what actions are good.
No one ever says "I thought good meant exhausting activities."
Moral relativism is founded on contradictory ideas.
Everyone in the world knows what the word "good" means - even if they argue about what qualifies as good.
The fact that people disagree over what which ACTIONS are 'good', does not mean they disagree about what 'good' is.
Some people are wrong, some theories are wrong.
The mere fact that we can argue about what actions are good and what actions are evil is proof that we agree about the definitions of good and evil - we just disagree about who is good and who is evil.
It's kind of like an argument about how to make the best lemonade - the fact that we argue about the proper ingredients means we both agree about what lemonade is supposed to be.
We know why one particular species of green goo hasn't overtaken the planet and it has nothing to do with cuteness.
The world is composed of multiple, radical different environments. Hot Deserts, Cold Ice Tundras, low pressure surface waters, high pressure deep waters.
Different species are better at surviving different environments.
No single gray goo could POSSIBLY beat the green goo in all it's varied environments. You are not talking about a slight superiority, you are talking about a huge superiority.
In effect, you are claiming that gray goo, which so far is so ineffective it can't beat a single life form, will become so powerful that it can beat ALL life forms - And it will do so BEFORE we learn how to make multiple different kinds of gray goo - each specialized to it's own environment.
No. Specialization is the key to success. It is a law of nature. To conquer even a third of the world that humans live in requires such specialization that said gray goo would fail in the other 2/3. This gives us time and space to build a gray goo killer, which by would have an inbuilt weakness - such as requiring to return to a power station to power up once a day. We turn off the power, it dies.
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We do have several problems, as I see it: Science is being denigrated:
1. By the leftish 'safety for all' crowd. The day we let some shmuck say our kids can't play with model rockets because they count as fireworks was the day we lost the space race. Truthfully, we half lost that war the day they said we couldn't buy fireworks. Scientists do experiments. Sometimes they blow things up. That is why the DOD hires them. If we want adult scientists we have to let kids do the fun parts of science. That means blowing things up. Yes, the stupid ones will lose a finger or two. That is the price we pay to get the smart ones to pay attention.
2. By the far right's religious majority. The day we let some shmuck denigrate environmentalism and evolution, was the day scientists stopped doing science and started getting in a PR war.
3. By the media's "Everyone's opinion matters". The day let JENNY McCARTHY say that vaccines caused any thing was the day we lost science.
We still innovate - but the problem is we let morons innovate against science - with crackpot model rocket laws designed by morons to protect morons, crackpot policies on the environment and evolution designed to force other peoples' extreme religious views on moderates, and crackpot on TV because they get more viewers.
You seemed to have a great relationship with Mr. Spader - was that all fantastic acting, or did you become friends - as in you still see/speak with him even after the show ended?
2. Point it at any standard digital camera (in a phone is fine.) Take a picture of it while pressing activating the UV (press the button on a remote control for IR)
3. The picture should have a bright light on it. Remember that location
4. Point the UV source (or remote control for IR) at your eye and activate Do you see that same bright light?
If you can see it, you can see Ultraviolet (or Infrared.)
Otherwise, a person searching for you, not sure if they got the right you, will see 30 pictures, half of whom has your face and will assume you are that person, ignoring the other half.
Unless of course you specifically select someone a specific person to claim is you.
Look, I am not a paranoid man. I am perfectly willing to give out private and personal information - for a reasonable fee.
I give out private information to my bank all the time. In exchange, I get financial services.
Facebook offers - a) a blog, b) email, c) games, d) convenient log in
The first 3 are available for free elsewhere, the last is not worth much.
I'm not paranoid, I'm just not cheap. And Facebook is asking way way too much for the minimal services it provides.
My source is here.
Note, I do know about the payroll tax and sales tax. You also left out local taxes. I don't agree with the GOP when they imply that the people that don't pay federal income taxes are evil. In fact, my blog has a scheduled post for Oct 2 that deals with this fallacy.
But my point is that that we already charge people tax penalties for not doing things. Not buying a home is one of the biggest examples.
The FBI should keep people on the watch list if they think he/she is probably guilty, even if they have a reasonable doubt about his guilt.
That said, the watch list as is, is worthless. Too many names - particularly without pictures or at least age/gender/description - are worse than not enough.
The health care law does NOT mandate that we buy. It taxes us if we don't buy insurances. More importantly, the tax it charges is about half the cost to buy insurance. It is not a ridiculously high tax. Just like the IRS taxes more us if we don't buy a home. You know that 50% of americans that don't pay taxes? Almost all of them that make more than 50k a year do it by having a home and taking the tax breaks related to owning a home. The US government charges us for not doing a lot of things. Claiming that it can't do it for health care is an obvious lie. Similarly, the US government charges us not to have children, not to give to charity and a lot of other things.
On-star has no more rights to the location of ex-customers than Texaco does.
Citizens should not be required to rip out the electronics to prevent a previous business partner from illegally spying on them.
In fact a good case can be made to legally require all corporations you cease doing business with to destroy all OLD records about you, with exceptions for records of transactions you engaged in. (see my blog entree from June for more information
Step 1. Automation cheapens production
Step 2. Production sky rockets, prices drop, and demand sky rockets.
Step 3. New uses for old products increase.
If anyone ever creates a robot/computer that can do everything a human can - it will ask for a raise. The reason we automate is not to get rid of people, but to get ride of the dumb tasks we need to do.
Yes, some people buy ready made "TV diners", but that does not eliminate cooks. Right now, we have computers capable of creating art - but they don't. Why? Because no one wants to build them. No one wants to set them up and make art. Oh, we use them to help create art (Movies, TV, games etc), but we don't build them and have them make the art.
In every industry, at the top is a boss who does not want to build his own replacement. In addition, he does not want to build replacements for his mid level management. They want to replace the low level employees and the crappy parts of their own jobs and those are the machines that get built.
Yes, computer programs will someday diagnose most illnesses - they will take the crappy part of the job of the General Practitioner - the job that is already falling to the way side as doctors become specialists. Yes, low level lawyer jobs - the crappy form filling in stuff will go away as people, just as most people use a computer program to do their taxes.
But the higher end stuff? No, GM does not use a pc program to do their taxes. Instead they use a PC program to HELP the accountant do their taxes.
Same thing for doctors and lawyers etc. etc.
I want to die in my sleep, like my grandfather. Not screaming in terror like the people in the back seat of his car.
Of course, the reason a DVR negates this is that they draw a huge amount of electricity even when you are not watching the show. They are the biggest single draw of electricity most people have. Incredibly wasteful, but so addictive.
That is because current versions always need to be "on" if you want to record something when you are not around to turn it on.
Supposedly, new versions will be able to go into 'sleep' mode until their internal clock says it is time to wake up.
The author basically gave a review of that speech, and left out all the important stuff, just because he was obsessed with the stupid rat farming example.
I will have to go looking for the real speech, it might actually be interesting
2. It just says it is similar to the bug hunting business - with NO explanation. No real discussion of the bug hunting business, no explanation why they are similar. It just assumes you will believe they are similar, with no reason. I don't see any connection.
3. It concludes with "and that's a good thing" with no explanation of why it is a good thing. Bull.
If I saw this in a blog, I would call it a bad blog. As an article, it is at best half of an article. It needs to to be doubled, if not tripled in size, to make any sense.
It also is not in any way convincing. I came away thinking the author may have an idea, but appears to be too clueless to express it to us.
You are missing the prior art requirement. If someone else publishes, then no one can legally file to patent.
I bet this would stop the illegal requests a lot sooner than a request for cash.
2. It lets them do the "50%" bit. If you shop around and make it clear you are not using insurance, you can get these special deals.
3.None of them are really good enough. So when the technology improves, they keep the price the same and upgrade the quality.
You really want to impress me, show me an "XOR" - either of two indications, but not both.
You left out the fact that terrorism is so rare that even if they worked as described, the machines would kill more people than they save.
If we get multiple areas, are they next to each other?
Does it make a difference if you learn the second language when you are young, or later in life?
Finally, what about computer languages such as Perl/C++/Java etc. Are they treated the same as English/Spanish/etc. or more like Math?
Sorry, no answers here, just more questions.
2. To kill us all and eat us (Creatures evolve to eat what's around - they won't be able to eat us)
3. To enslave us (purpose built slaves are cheaper and better - whether they be organic or silicon based)
4. To kill us before we kill them (if they can come here and we don't have FTL, we can't hurt them).
5. To teach us anything. Cheaper to send a book.
6. To learn about us. Cheaper to watch our TV.
Reasons why an Alien might come here.
1. To convert us all to the one true faith.
2. To escape the horrible problems of their own empire that are far worse than anything we can imagine. Oh and it's following them.
3. Spaceship broke down.
4. To get away from the kids, absorb some primitive culture, and get as far as possible away from their boss. Oh and let's see that famous Lunar Eclipse where your moon is just big enough to block the sun.
The problem is that all the original contracts assumed that the copyright would expire after a reasonable period of time. As such, when the authors sold the rights, they sold the rights until the end of the THEN EXISTING COPYRIGHT laws.
When congress sunk to evil and stupidly extended the copyright laws, some of the congressmen had enough morals to put in restrictions. That is, they refused to extend the copyrights to give the publishers additional rights, as the entire argument was to give the artists more rights. As such, the law did not just extend their contracts forever.
The whole point of this article is that congress specifically put in restrictions to help the original artists. Effectively, congress tried to write the law so that people that had previously sold the copyrights had in fact sold only rights until the original copyright had expired. It was in effect an attempt to stop exactly what you are talking about.
And yes, Congress CAN simply do that. They can re-write any contract they want. They can pass a law right now saying all game copyrights are now invalid and people may copy them to there hearts' content. They won't, but they have the legal power to do that.
The question is not whether it was 'work for hire'. That is a moronic argument, that the companies will try to focus the courts about. Instead the question is did Congress write the law well, or did they do a poor job of it. If they did right, then the artist recover the copyrights, as Congress intended.
If they did it poorly, then the corporations will have pulled a quick one, stealing the extended copyrights from the people Congress tried to give it to.
No one ever mistakes Coffee for Lemonade. No one ever mistakes Good for something else. We all know what the word means, the specific definition that you are trying to use is a problem with the LANGUAGE(s), not the concept. The fact that untrained people, who do not use the same technical terms, let alone the same language, is not a problem with the concept.
Yes, there are arguments about the edges, but the core concept is universal. Those examples that you gave prove my point.
The religious folk are using the same definition of good as the utilitarian - but they are using different words and means of figuring out what actions are good.
No one ever says "I thought good meant exhausting activities."
Moral relativism is founded on contradictory ideas.
Everyone in the world knows what the word "good" means - even if they argue about what qualifies as good.
The fact that people disagree over what which ACTIONS are 'good', does not mean they disagree about what 'good' is.
Some people are wrong, some theories are wrong.
The mere fact that we can argue about what actions are good and what actions are evil is proof that we agree about the definitions of good and evil - we just disagree about who is good and who is evil.
It's kind of like an argument about how to make the best lemonade - the fact that we argue about the proper ingredients means we both agree about what lemonade is supposed to be.
The world is composed of multiple, radical different environments. Hot Deserts, Cold Ice Tundras, low pressure surface waters, high pressure deep waters.
Different species are better at surviving different environments.
No single gray goo could POSSIBLY beat the green goo in all it's varied environments. You are not talking about a slight superiority, you are talking about a huge superiority.
In effect, you are claiming that gray goo, which so far is so ineffective it can't beat a single life form, will become so powerful that it can beat ALL life forms - And it will do so BEFORE we learn how to make multiple different kinds of gray goo - each specialized to it's own environment.
No. Specialization is the key to success. It is a law of nature. To conquer even a third of the world that humans live in requires such specialization that said gray goo would fail in the other 2/3. This gives us time and space to build a gray goo killer, which by would have an inbuilt weakness - such as requiring to return to a power station to power up once a day. We turn off the power, it dies.