While I agree with most of your post, keep in mind Richard A. Clarke was the National Coordinator for Security and the chief counter-terrorism adviser on the National Security Council for something like 30 years. He may know a little bit about what he's talking about.
By the way, he wrote a really good book called Against All Enemies, a good look at his perspective during the rise of al Qaeda. A thoroughly interesting read.
'Ain't Nobody's Business If You Do' by Peter McWilliams covers the effects of legalizing drugs in great detail. It also covers the social ramifications of legislating victimless crimes.
http://www.mcwilliams.com/books/books/aint/303a.htm
"There are 10^11 stars in the galaxy. That used to be a huge number. But it's only a hundred billion. It's less than the national deficit! We used to call them astronomical numbers. Now we should call them economical numbers." -- Richard Feynman
Also: Economical Number
A number n is called an economical number if the number of digits in the prime factorization of n (including powers) uses fewer digits than the number of digits in n. The first few economical numbers are 125, 128, 243, 256, 343, 512, 625, 729,... (Sloane's A046759). Pinch shows that, under a plausible hypothesis related to the twin prime conjecture, there are arbitrarily long sequences of consecutive economical numbers, and exhibits such a sequence of length nine starting at 1034429177995381247. http://mathworld.wolfram.com/EconomicalNumber.html
This is exactly what happened when I timed my R&R vacation time from Iraq to watch Hitchhikers Guide to the Universe. I could have killed someone and no one would have ever convicted me. The girl couldn't figure out why I was so damn pissed. I was seriously livid. I'd seriously, no joke drop some huge coin to have that director never work again and die cold and alone..
Why should political aspirants have prejudicial tech inclinations? I look forward to a future of impartial leaders that give unfamiliar issues equal weight relying on subject matter experts from all sides. Sound, informed decisions without prejudice.
Unless they want to replace all government machines with Ubuntu- then they already got my vote.
By proxy- it may prove easier to stand on the shoulders of giants if you can quickly learn from all the mistakes and ideas everyone on Earth has ever had. If you have a huge, collective database of every grain of human advancement or epiphany, our worldwide progress may explode- not to mention the drastic smoothening of your everyday life.
"Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you." --Friedrich Nietzsche
3. Because there are lots of little things we do every day that break the rules. These include: j-walking, downloading MP3's, subletting without telling your landlord, recording sporting events without express written concent, undocumented domestic help, recreational drug use, stealing cable, logging on to other people's wireless networks, "leaking" company information to your girlfriend, anything besides the missionary position (in many states), cheating on your wife (in many states), rolling stops on empty streets, u-turns in the middle of empty streets, locking your bicycle to the handrailing, lying about your age to get into movies, lying about your age to get senior citizens discounts, lying about your age to avoid getting senior citizens discounts, telling your company that you're "sick" when you really mean you're "sick and tired of this crappy job," not reporting e-bay sales as taxable income, grabbing an extra newspaper when someone else buys one from the machine, putting chairs in the street to save your parking spot, stealing office supplies, stealing the towels, littering, loitering, the office NCAA pool, etc etc. All of these are necessary for the functioning of our society in some way or another, but are illegal. Yet we would go batshit insane without a few personal pet vices.
And the system has been built with this in mind: nobody wants to stop your weekly 5$ poker match, they wanted to stop the gambling houses where people lost their rent money. Enforce the letter of the law, and the intent of the law gets lost.
I read something here a long time ago, and I think I'll repost it in it's entirety because it's just that important:
"If you haven't done anything wrong, what do you have to hide?"
Ever heard that one? I work in information security, so I have heard it more than my fair share. I've always hated that reasoning, because I am a little bit paranoid by nature, something which serves me very well in my profession. So my standard response to people who have asked that question near me has been "because I'm paranoid." But that doesn't usually help, since most people who would ask that question see paranoia as a bad thing to begin with. So for a long time I've been trying to come up with a valid, reasoned, and intelligent answer which shoots the holes in the flawed logic that need to be there.
And someone unknowingly provided me with just that answer today. In a conversation about hunting, somebody posted this about prey animals and hunters:
"Yeah! Hunters don't kill the *innocent* animals - they look for the shifty-eyed ones that are probably the criminal element of their species!"
but in a brilliant (and very funny) retort, someone else said:
"If they're not guilty, why are they running?"
Suddenly it made sense, that nagging thing in the back of my head. The logical reason why a reasonable dose of paranoia is healthy. Because it's one thing to be afraid of the TRUTH. People who commit murder or otherwise deprive others of their Natural Rights are afraid of the TRUTH, because it is the light of TRUTH that will help bring them to justice.
But it's another thing entirely to be afraid of hunters. And all too often, the hunters are the ones proclaiming to be looking for TRUTH. But they are more concerned with removing any obstactles to finding the TRUTH, even when that means bulldozing over people's rights (the right to privacy, the right to anonymity) in their quest for it. And sadly, these people often cannot tell the difference between the appearance of TRUTH and TRUTH itself. And these, the ones who are so convinced they have found the TRUTH that they stop looking for it, are some of the worst oppressors of Natural Rights the world has ever known.
They are the hunters, and it is right and good for the prey to be afraid of the hunters, and to run away from them. Do not be fooled when a hunter says "why are you running from me if you have nothing to hide?" Because having something to hide is not the only reason to be hiding something.
User-created content is at the center of YouTube's web-2.0 pedigree: the idea that the "new" fluid Internet model will be based on user interaction and contribution.
It seems that this is presicely what is meant by how the internet is a World of Ends. As upload capability becomes more and more prevalent, it will become more representative of the global population. The question then becomes- Is this a good thing?
about:mozilla
"And so at last the beast fell and the unbelievers rejoiced. But all was not lost, for from the ash rose a great bird. The bird gazed down upon the unbelievers and cast fire and thunder upon them. For the beast had been reborn with its strength renewed, and the followers of Mammon cowered in horror." --Mozilla, 7:15
Slashdot Mirror
Wow.. the last time you looked was a *really* *really* long time ago...
While I agree with most of your post, keep in mind Richard A. Clarke was the National Coordinator for Security and the chief counter-terrorism adviser on the National Security Council for something like 30 years. He may know a little bit about what he's talking about.
By the way, he wrote a really good book called Against All Enemies, a good look at his perspective during the rise of al Qaeda. A thoroughly interesting read.
"Accidents were few but far from nonexistent, though I suspect the greater stress was from the fact that these vans had to charge 8 hours for every 3 hours of driving."
http://www.crunchgear.com/2010/10/28/driverless-vehicles-complete-trek-from-italy-to-china/
http://edition.cnn.com/2010/TECH/innovation/10/27/driverless.car/index.html
"We weren't worried about not making it," though, Broggi said. "This big trip was an intermediary step in a longer process. We have something new planned for 2012."
Uh oh..
The only way to get into space in my lifetime is Vendetta Online..
Avant Window Navigator - Standard in a new install on my system
'Ain't Nobody's Business If You Do' by Peter McWilliams covers the effects of legalizing drugs in great detail. It also covers the social ramifications of legislating victimless crimes. http://www.mcwilliams.com/books/books/aint/303a.htm
Oh, come on, mods! This is funny! ...Made me laugh, anyway.
How do you get every other country to agree to help?
He's quoting Feynman:
... (Sloane's A046759). Pinch shows that, under a plausible hypothesis related to the twin prime conjecture, there are arbitrarily long sequences of consecutive economical numbers, and exhibits such a sequence of length nine starting at 1034429177995381247.
"There are 10^11 stars in the galaxy. That used to be a huge number. But it's only a hundred billion. It's less than the national deficit! We used to call them astronomical numbers. Now we should call them economical numbers." -- Richard Feynman
Also: Economical Number
A number n is called an economical number if the number of digits in the prime factorization of n (including powers) uses fewer digits than the number of digits in n. The first few economical numbers are 125, 128, 243, 256, 343, 512, 625, 729,
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/EconomicalNumber.html
This is exactly what happened when I timed my R&R vacation time from Iraq to watch Hitchhikers Guide to the Universe. I could have killed someone and no one would have ever convicted me. The girl couldn't figure out why I was so damn pissed. I was seriously livid. I'd seriously, no joke drop some huge coin to have that director never work again and die cold and alone..
I for one welcome our undergrad Inflatable Ball-Moving Robot Overlords!
You can be right or you can be happy. Pick one.
Why should political aspirants have prejudicial tech inclinations? I look forward to a future of impartial leaders that give unfamiliar issues equal weight relying on subject matter experts from all sides. Sound, informed decisions without prejudice.
Unless they want to replace all government machines with Ubuntu- then they already got my vote.
I for one.. *want* to be welcomed as a time-wielding overlord!
Just when I got tired of my drives getting hosed...
50% more buggy software- Free!
By proxy- it may prove easier to stand on the shoulders of giants if you can quickly learn from all the mistakes and ideas everyone on Earth has ever had. If you have a huge, collective database of every grain of human advancement or epiphany, our worldwide progress may explode- not to mention the drastic smoothening of your everyday life.
"Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you."
--Friedrich Nietzsche
I forgot to add this from here
3. Because there are lots of little things we do every day that break the rules. These include: j-walking, downloading MP3's, subletting without telling your landlord, recording sporting events without express written concent, undocumented domestic help, recreational drug use, stealing cable, logging on to other people's wireless networks, "leaking" company information to your girlfriend, anything besides the missionary position (in many states), cheating on your wife (in many states), rolling stops on empty streets, u-turns in the middle of empty streets, locking your bicycle to the handrailing, lying about your age to get into movies, lying about your age to get senior citizens discounts, lying about your age to avoid getting senior citizens discounts, telling your company that you're "sick" when you really mean you're "sick and tired of this crappy job," not reporting e-bay sales as taxable income, grabbing an extra newspaper when someone else buys one from the machine, putting chairs in the street to save your parking spot, stealing office supplies, stealing the towels, littering, loitering, the office NCAA pool, etc etc. All of these are necessary for the functioning of our society in some way or another, but are illegal. Yet we would go batshit insane without a few personal pet vices.
And the system has been built with this in mind: nobody wants to stop your weekly 5$ poker match, they wanted to stop the gambling houses where people lost their rent money. Enforce the letter of the law, and the intent of the law gets lost.
I read something here a long time ago, and I think I'll repost it in it's entirety because it's just that important:
"If you haven't done anything wrong, what do you have to hide?"
Ever heard that one? I work in information security, so I have heard it more than my fair share. I've always hated that reasoning, because I am a little bit paranoid by nature, something which serves me very well in my profession. So my standard response to people who have asked that question near me has been "because I'm paranoid." But that doesn't usually help, since most people who would ask that question see paranoia as a bad thing to begin with. So for a long time I've been trying to come up with a valid, reasoned, and intelligent answer which shoots the holes in the flawed logic that need to be there.
And someone unknowingly provided me with just that answer today. In a conversation about hunting, somebody posted this about prey animals and hunters:
"Yeah! Hunters don't kill the *innocent* animals - they look for the shifty-eyed ones that are probably the criminal element of their species!"
but in a brilliant (and very funny) retort, someone else said:
"If they're not guilty, why are they running?"
Suddenly it made sense, that nagging thing in the back of my head. The logical reason why a reasonable dose of paranoia is healthy. Because it's one thing to be afraid of the TRUTH. People who commit murder or otherwise deprive others of their Natural Rights are afraid of the TRUTH, because it is the light of TRUTH that will help bring them to justice.
But it's another thing entirely to be afraid of hunters. And all too often, the hunters are the ones proclaiming to be looking for TRUTH. But they are more concerned with removing any obstactles to finding the TRUTH, even when that means bulldozing over people's rights (the right to privacy, the right to anonymity) in their quest for it. And sadly, these people often cannot tell the difference between the appearance of TRUTH and TRUTH itself. And these, the ones who are so convinced they have found the TRUTH that they stop looking for it, are some of the worst oppressors of Natural Rights the world has ever known.
They are the hunters, and it is right and good for the prey to be afraid of the hunters, and to run away from them. Do not be fooled when a hunter says "why are you running from me if you have nothing to hide?" Because having something to hide is not the only reason to be hiding something.
Now dark and normal matter will be one big family again, obviously with court supervision.
http://www.hiphopmusic.com/best_of_youtube/2006/02 /how_to_download_and_save_youtu.html o s-from-youtube.html
.FLV file into something else.
l ahblahblah
http://www.tian.cc/2005/11/how-to-save-flash-vide
These are two of the sites I turned to when I wanted to learn how to download YouTube videos.
Basically, the premise is that you have to change the url to get it to download as a file and then convert it from an
Example:
open "View Page Source" and do a text search for "player2.swf?video_id="
change this:
player2.swf?video_id=b4Knsablahblahblah
to this:
http://www.youtube.com/get_video?video_id=b4Knsab
Then save the file and convert it to, say, AVI. I use CinemaForge for this.
User-created content is at the center of YouTube's web-2.0 pedigree: the idea that the "new" fluid Internet model will be based on user interaction and contribution.
It seems that this is presicely what is meant by how the internet is a World of Ends. As upload capability becomes more and more prevalent, it will become more representative of the global population. The question then becomes- Is this a good thing?
Shallow content, rumormonging, and misinformation will lead to a populace that is more popular, but will it be more true?
about:mozilla "And so at last the beast fell and the unbelievers rejoiced. But all was not lost, for from the ash rose a great bird. The bird gazed down upon the unbelievers and cast fire and thunder upon them. For the beast had been reborn with its strength renewed, and the followers of Mammon cowered in horror." --Mozilla, 7:15
...and that sentences end in periods.