If we want people to stop blowing each other up, unfortunately we need something better than family ties.
I think nuclear weapons have worked surprisingly well. In the past 50 or so years, the nations with nuclear weapons have almost completely stopped blowing each others up.
So, logically, if we give a nuclear weapon to everybody, everybody will stop blowing up everybody else. Well, except the few nutcases, but nuclear weapons will solve this too: anybody crazy enough to use them will be removed by natural selection very quickly, together with people close to them, who are likely to share same crazy genes.
Hopefully, we'll be able to get our act together and stop blowing each other up (and also unite against a common enemy - government/power elites).
Indeed, because government/power elites are not people. Except biologically of course, but otherwise, they're clearly a different group, and once we get rid of them, the true, real people can unite!
So Amazon, the largest seller of vibrators and literary erotica goes into xxx?
If they wanted (read: had a business interest) to create a site with limited selection, or perhaps even separate their sex products from the rest completely, or just have a different front page and "theme", then amazon.xxx sounds like a pretty good idea.
Why wouldn't you want them to have that, if they'd happen to want it?
I'm a little skeptical of creating new resources solely for adult entertainment.
Adult entertainment is one of the largest, if not the largest legal use of Internet. So I'd say it's pretty high on the list for getting new resources. And since it's somewhat controversial, doing something to (perhaps, eventually, partly) separate it from less controversial stuff sounds like a good idea, too. And just because something else deserving didn't get it's own TLD, is no argument against this, because you have to start somewhere.
That's why people think it is plausible for mankind to colonize space. They don't appreciate the scale we're talking about.
Us thinking about travelling to other star systems is like a crippled caveman thinking about flying like a bird by jumping of a cliff.
Now, on Earth environment with our laws of physics, we overcame that with technology (like airplanes). Wether we can overcome that with space traver remains to be seen. It's way too early to make a guess one way or another, except that if it is physically possible, and if we don't kill ourselves first, "we" will do it, for whatever meaning of "we" that might apply in the future.
Why ? I'm pretty sure when fire and the wheel were invented there were no patents or copyrights, so they are not critical.
I think there may very well have been something to the effect, that is the inventors of fire burning infringers, and inventors of wheel mowing down infringers with chariots.
The scary thing is, modern software patents and lawyers hunting down infringers doesn't sound much nicer or any less arbitary than the above (pre-)historic methods...
I'm sure Darwin will take care of himself. But human race doesn't need to stay universally "fit" by cave-man criteria. If human race ever returns (temporarily I hope) to "cave man" environment, natural selection will quickly weed out those who become "unfit" then. Until then, anything which will increase human genetic diversity is a good thing, making it more likely that human race will survive whatever extinction-level event leading to return to stone-age.
Calling qubits 'memory' is a little misleading. The number of qubits that can be entangled at once is more analogous to the number of bits per register/operation in a classical computer. You could have 100 registers of 14 qubits and each register would individually have the same decay rate proportional to 14^2. That's not to say that this isn't a big hurdle, but it's not as big of a hurdle as you're making it out to be.
Are you sure? If those 100 registers aren't entangled with each other, how could you combine them in any useful way? Wouldn't it be just same as having 1 register, and using it 100 times in a row, so not really any help in solving a problem, which is too large to be solved with a single register?
That's the "beauty" of the imperial system. Not only do you always measure things in two units (feet and inches, pounds and ounces), and use fractions which vary by unit, but your choice of measurement unit varies by what you're measuring and where you're measuring it. It's amazing we got any science done at all.
Well, to be fair, that's also sort of a filter for allowing only sufficiently smart to enter the field of science or engineering (or even "digging ditches", but with "ditch digging", you're often going to have to take who you can get, so construction work rarely goes according to the plans). If you can't do unit conversions, you should probably do something else, such as management...
Nuclear power is perfectly safe, if done properly.
And only proper way to do it is to have a power plant, which will be perfectly fine without human intervention. A safe nuclear plant must survive not only power loss, but loss of humans trying to keep it cool. It must be impossible for a meltdown to occur by itself, and preferably impossible even with any practical human action (such as terrorists taking control of the plant and trying to get it to melt down).
If, for whatever reason, our ability to take care of *all* our nuclear plants goes down, then in that kind of global situation, having uncontrolled meltdown events all over the globe will be something we don't want to happen in top of whatever else it is that happened. Note that even Chernobyl wasn't uncontrolled meltdown, it was brought under relative control very quickly! Now imagine a hundred uncontrolled Chernobyl-level events all of the globe spewing dust and smoke to the atmosphere...
My view on nuclear power is, above is unacceptable. Any nuclear plant that would make that situation worse should not be built. Any current nuclear plant that would make that situation worse should have faster-than-planned shutdown. Any nuclear plant where above is impossible, good. But I don't know latest reactor designs well enough to know if it's an issue with them or not.
Even though Europe is quite far in the north, its climate is perfect for agriculture thanks to the Gulf Stream. It is actually one of the most agriculturally privileged regions in the world, which is one of the reasons for its important role in the development of civilization and culture (if you don't have to worry too much about having enough to eat you can spend your time on making life easier and more enjoyable in other ways).
Any place getting less than three harversts per year is far from "perfect for agriculture".
However, alternating seasons including a winter may very well be good, even critical, to development of culture and society, even if it's not that great for agriculture.
>>If Republicans ran on their real platform - making sure the rich get richer
To be fair, they want everyone to get richer.
If it bothers you that the rich get richer too, then I can't help you.
I thought the platform was to make rich richer, and if everybody gets richer in the process, hey, that's nice too, nothing against it, more power to the people! As long as it's not too rich on average, and not too much power to the wrong people.
Try it before a crisis hits. You will learn a lot.
I'd say I'm covered about hunting thanks to relatives. And anyway, where I live, fishing sounds like *far* more reliable and productive (calories gained per calories spent) way to get extra protein to the table.
But hint to anybody preparing for the worst: stock up on sturdy fishing line and hooks, and especially fishing nets. And store line and nets in air-tight bags and carefully protected for UV-radiation, so it won't start to deteriorate and will last for decades in storage. These are two things you can't easily make, and whatever you can make will be far far inferior to current regular industrial products.
A rocket scientist would probably say it's not, not since the launch in 2009. And the people who built and operate the satellite probably know very little about rockets...
A satellite does very little without rockets (and gyroscopes count as rockets for purpose of "rocket science", since they interact with rockets).
Corporations aren't evil. They're amoral. There's a subtle difference.
When acting in a human society and interacting with people, being amoral results in being evil on regular basis. And being evil on regular basis is being evil. So corporations indeed are evil, as a direct result of them being amoral in a human society.
It's fun to think being in some kind of an elite group... You fail to grasp the situation we're talking about here. I wouldn't need to know much about hunting to take part in organized hunting for food. Just being present, able to work as a part of a group, and able to walk in the nature would be enough. Factor current population density into the situation, and you'll have wild game getting really scarce really fast.
Hunting is not only about shooting. FYI they use the drive the deer method in a few eastern states. Deer will go to ground and you will walk by them 2 yards away, never knowing they are there.
Why don't they use dogs in those few eastern states? It doesn't take much of a dog to sniff out anything the size of a deer, and I wager it takes quite a deer to stay still with a dog barking 2 yards away.
They hide very well. Hunting is a skill. With no experience most people wouldn't even see one once the deer realize it's on and hide. You never see deer on the side of the road during hunting season as they are in the deep brush.
That's for people hunting alone or in small group. It would be rather different if a larger community of people be doing it for food and survival. A bunch of chasers, and a few decent shooters with rifles waiting for whatever gets chased out of hiding.
Also, the funny thing about guns is, just about anybody will learn in a matter of hours to shoot a rifle well enough to hit even a small animal often enough...
All it takes is a person with authority and a person with relevant knowledge, and they don't even have to be the same person.
Katrina = massive natural disaster -> looting & roving gangs -> murder, assault -> need for way to protect self and family
LA riots = civil disorder ~ man made disaster -> looting & roving gangs -> murder, assault -> need for way to protect self and family
Mumbai style terrorist attack (same planed for Europe) ~ man made disaster -> roving terrorists -> murder, assault -> need for way to protect self and family
Is it just me, or does it sound like the correct way to protect self and family would be to get the hell out before something bad happens? In a situation like that, it's bad enough without gun-toting looters... And even though people in this thread boasting about guns probably don't think of themselves as thugs, they sure sound like they'd include forcibly sharing food of others (also known as robbery) in "self defence" or "hunting".
I know the US has done a lot of bad things and made some pretty bad mistakes but I just wanted to celebrate one of its (many) good achievements. Only the US has sent (or is sending) a probe to every major object in the solar system (yes that includes you Pluto). Only the US has launched four "Great Observatories" (Hubble, Chandra, Compton, Spitzer). Only the US has... well the list goes on and on even in just the field of unmanned space exploration.
It's worth noticing, that many (most?) of those projects have been international, especially as far as science instruments are concerned. Also the infrastructure to stay in touch with many probes in international. Still, I think US has done a disproportionately large portion of solar system exploration, but not quite as much as you seem to think above.
Slashdot Mirror
A Soviet design or a US design?
I don't know, but you could check existing designs of 100+ tons to LEO rockets, and probably guess which they'll be copying...
If we want people to stop blowing each other up, unfortunately we need something better than family ties.
I think nuclear weapons have worked surprisingly well. In the past 50 or so years, the nations with nuclear weapons have almost completely stopped blowing each others up.
So, logically, if we give a nuclear weapon to everybody, everybody will stop blowing up everybody else. Well, except the few nutcases, but nuclear weapons will solve this too: anybody crazy enough to use them will be removed by natural selection very quickly, together with people close to them, who are likely to share same crazy genes.
Hopefully, we'll be able to get our act together and stop blowing each other up (and also unite against a common enemy - government/power elites).
Indeed, because government/power elites are not people. Except biologically of course, but otherwise, they're clearly a different group, and once we get rid of them, the true, real people can unite!
the concept remains the same, sexual stimulation
So Amazon, the largest seller of vibrators and literary erotica goes into xxx?
If they wanted (read: had a business interest) to create a site with limited selection, or perhaps even separate their sex products from the rest completely, or just have a different front page and "theme", then amazon.xxx sounds like a pretty good idea.
Why wouldn't you want them to have that, if they'd happen to want it?
I'm a little skeptical of creating new resources solely for adult entertainment.
Adult entertainment is one of the largest, if not the largest legal use of Internet. So I'd say it's pretty high on the list for getting new resources. And since it's somewhat controversial, doing something to (perhaps, eventually, partly) separate it from less controversial stuff sounds like a good idea, too. And just because something else deserving didn't get it's own TLD, is no argument against this, because you have to start somewhere.
they might aswell be requiring you to sacrifice your firstborn at the altar of bioware
You'll get some really nice armor by doing that though... And get this, you'll have it in every future game Bioware too! Pretty sweet, isn't it?
That's why people think it is plausible for mankind to colonize space. They don't appreciate the scale we're talking about.
Us thinking about travelling to other star systems is like a crippled caveman thinking about flying like a bird by jumping of a cliff.
Now, on Earth environment with our laws of physics, we overcame that with technology (like airplanes). Wether we can overcome that with space traver remains to be seen. It's way too early to make a guess one way or another, except that if it is physically possible, and if we don't kill ourselves first, "we" will do it, for whatever meaning of "we" that might apply in the future.
Exactly, there is pretty much no such thing as bullet-proof anything. You can always find a fancy new bullet.
Also, if at first you don't succeed (at breaking the glass), just keep shooting (at about the same spot).
... Why would I buy one?
If you need to ask... You won't.
Why ? I'm pretty sure when fire and the wheel were invented there were no patents or copyrights, so they are not critical.
I think there may very well have been something to the effect, that is the inventors of fire burning infringers, and inventors of wheel mowing down infringers with chariots.
The scary thing is, modern software patents and lawyers hunting down infringers doesn't sound much nicer or any less arbitary than the above (pre-)historic methods...
Yeah, to hell with Darwin.
I'm sure Darwin will take care of himself. But human race doesn't need to stay universally "fit" by cave-man criteria. If human race ever returns (temporarily I hope) to "cave man" environment, natural selection will quickly weed out those who become "unfit" then. Until then, anything which will increase human genetic diversity is a good thing, making it more likely that human race will survive whatever extinction-level event leading to return to stone-age.
Calling qubits 'memory' is a little misleading. The number of qubits that can be entangled at once is more analogous to the number of bits per register/operation in a classical computer. You could have 100 registers of 14 qubits and each register would individually have the same decay rate proportional to 14^2. That's not to say that this isn't a big hurdle, but it's not as big of a hurdle as you're making it out to be.
Are you sure? If those 100 registers aren't entangled with each other, how could you combine them in any useful way? Wouldn't it be just same as having 1 register, and using it 100 times in a row, so not really any help in solving a problem, which is too large to be solved with a single register?
That's the "beauty" of the imperial system. Not only do you always measure things in two units (feet and inches, pounds and ounces), and use fractions which vary by unit, but your choice of measurement unit varies by what you're measuring and where you're measuring it. It's amazing we got any science done at all.
Well, to be fair, that's also sort of a filter for allowing only sufficiently smart to enter the field of science or engineering (or even "digging ditches", but with "ditch digging", you're often going to have to take who you can get, so construction work rarely goes according to the plans). If you can't do unit conversions, you should probably do something else, such as management...
Nuclear power is perfectly safe, if done properly.
And only proper way to do it is to have a power plant, which will be perfectly fine without human intervention. A safe nuclear plant must survive not only power loss, but loss of humans trying to keep it cool. It must be impossible for a meltdown to occur by itself, and preferably impossible even with any practical human action (such as terrorists taking control of the plant and trying to get it to melt down).
If, for whatever reason, our ability to take care of *all* our nuclear plants goes down, then in that kind of global situation, having uncontrolled meltdown events all over the globe will be something we don't want to happen in top of whatever else it is that happened. Note that even Chernobyl wasn't uncontrolled meltdown, it was brought under relative control very quickly! Now imagine a hundred uncontrolled Chernobyl-level events all of the globe spewing dust and smoke to the atmosphere...
My view on nuclear power is, above is unacceptable. Any nuclear plant that would make that situation worse should not be built. Any current nuclear plant that would make that situation worse should have faster-than-planned shutdown. Any nuclear plant where above is impossible, good. But I don't know latest reactor designs well enough to know if it's an issue with them or not.
...and this is why you should never RTFA before reading the comments. Thank you.
Even though Europe is quite far in the north, its climate is perfect for agriculture thanks to the Gulf Stream.
It is actually one of the most agriculturally privileged regions in the world, which is one of the reasons for its important role in the development of civilization and culture (if you don't have to worry too much about having enough to eat you can spend your time on making life easier and more enjoyable in other ways).
Any place getting less than three harversts per year is far from "perfect for agriculture".
However, alternating seasons including a winter may very well be good, even critical, to development of culture and society, even if it's not that great for agriculture.
>>If Republicans ran on their real platform - making sure the rich get richer
To be fair, they want everyone to get richer.
If it bothers you that the rich get richer too, then I can't help you.
I thought the platform was to make rich richer, and if everybody gets richer in the process, hey, that's nice too, nothing against it, more power to the people! As long as it's not too rich on average, and not too much power to the wrong people.
Try it before a crisis hits. You will learn a lot.
I'd say I'm covered about hunting thanks to relatives. And anyway, where I live, fishing sounds like *far* more reliable and productive (calories gained per calories spent) way to get extra protein to the table.
But hint to anybody preparing for the worst: stock up on sturdy fishing line and hooks, and especially fishing nets. And store line and nets in air-tight bags and carefully protected for UV-radiation, so it won't start to deteriorate and will last for decades in storage. These are two things you can't easily make, and whatever you can make will be far far inferior to current regular industrial products.
Did they try turning it off and then on again?
They didn't need to, I'm sure it's got a hardware watchdog which does that automatically.
A rocket scientist would probably say it's not, not since the launch in 2009. And the people who built and operate the satellite probably know very little about rockets...
A satellite does very little without rockets (and gyroscopes count as rockets for purpose of "rocket science", since they interact with rockets).
Corporations aren't evil. They're amoral. There's a subtle difference.
When acting in a human society and interacting with people, being amoral results in being evil on regular basis. And being evil on regular basis is being evil. So corporations indeed are evil, as a direct result of them being amoral in a human society.
So the answer is no you have never been hunting.
It's fun to think being in some kind of an elite group... You fail to grasp the situation we're talking about here. I wouldn't need to know much about hunting to take part in organized hunting for food. Just being present, able to work as a part of a group, and able to walk in the nature would be enough. Factor current population density into the situation, and you'll have wild game getting really scarce really fast.
Hunting is not only about shooting. FYI they use the drive the deer method in a few eastern states. Deer will go to ground and you will walk by them 2 yards away, never knowing they are there.
Why don't they use dogs in those few eastern states? It doesn't take much of a dog to sniff out anything the size of a deer, and I wager it takes quite a deer to stay still with a dog barking 2 yards away.
Have you ever been deer hunting?
They hide very well. Hunting is a skill. With no experience most people wouldn't even see one once the deer realize it's on and hide. You never see deer on the side of the road during hunting season as they are in the deep brush.
That's for people hunting alone or in small group. It would be rather different if a larger community of people be doing it for food and survival. A bunch of chasers, and a few decent shooters with rifles waiting for whatever gets chased out of hiding.
Also, the funny thing about guns is, just about anybody will learn in a matter of hours to shoot a rifle well enough to hit even a small animal often enough...
All it takes is a person with authority and a person with relevant knowledge, and they don't even have to be the same person.
Katrina = massive natural disaster -> looting & roving gangs -> murder, assault -> need for way to protect self and family
LA riots = civil disorder ~ man made disaster -> looting & roving gangs -> murder, assault -> need for way to protect self and family
Mumbai style terrorist attack (same planed for Europe) ~ man made disaster -> roving terrorists -> murder, assault -> need for way to protect self and family
Is it just me, or does it sound like the correct way to protect self and family would be to get the hell out before something bad happens? In a situation like that, it's bad enough without gun-toting looters... And even though people in this thread boasting about guns probably don't think of themselves as thugs, they sure sound like they'd include forcibly sharing food of others (also known as robbery) in "self defence" or "hunting".
I know the US has done a lot of bad things and made some pretty bad mistakes but I just wanted to celebrate one of its (many) good achievements. Only the US has sent (or is sending) a probe to every major object in the solar system (yes that includes you Pluto). Only the US has launched four "Great Observatories" (Hubble, Chandra, Compton, Spitzer). Only the US has... well the list goes on and on even in just the field of unmanned space exploration.
It's worth noticing, that many (most?) of those projects have been international, especially as far as science instruments are concerned. Also the infrastructure to stay in touch with many probes in international. Still, I think US has done a disproportionately large portion of solar system exploration, but not quite as much as you seem to think above.