Well, this is an odd forum for this, but I think what I have to say needs saying. I am increasingly aware of the hypocracy of the general public when throwing around the argument you made. I mean this as a pointed, controversial statement, because it is, and we, as thinking people, should be able to have a civilized discourse on the matter. That said, I do get agitated about this nonsense, but I'll try to not fly too far off the handle.
Your faith is YOUR faith. Keep it to yourself and people won't get pissed. Your faith has no place in other people's lives. Stop trying to inject it into the conversation. Stop trying to inject it into the law. No one likes having someone else's beliefs pushed on them.
<tongue-in-cheek>
The opinion that my faith is my faith and I should keep it to myself is your opinion. It has no place in other people's lives. Stop trying to inject that into the conversation.</tongue-in-cheek>
Your statement is exactly the type of nonsense that gets society nowhere - because in saying that you're doing just what you claim to want to prevent. You cannot sensor one type of belief - and proclaiming it - without yourself proclaiming a belief system. Sure, it's nice to say that "I shouldn't inject my religious beliefs into the things I do" but that's the point - it is impossible for me to not act in accordance with my beliefs. My actions prove my beliefs, whatever those beliefs (religious or otherwise) may be. Sure, sometimes my actions show that my beliefs aren't what I want them to be - but that's for me to work out.
I'm just a little irritated with people who don't think that "kicking religion and morality out of the public arena (i.e., law)" in the name of "diversity" or some such is itself quite discriminatory.
I have to admit I'm a little flustered by your post, because it is illogical. I have yet to hear one comprehensive argument as to how keeping religion / morality out of the public arena is any less discriminating than leaving it in. How many people are alienated when they are told they are wrong and a bigot because they don't believe what the "public" beleives? Laws must do this - take the hot topic of homosexual marriage. Regardless of your opinion on rights and what not, you have to agree that a law that says a union between homosexuals should not be called "marriage" will alienate the homosexuals no less than saying that "marriage" can refer to homosexual unions will alienate those people who believe that is just horrendous.
To sum up; it is impossible to make a public policy which does not discriminate; that's the whole point of public policy anyway. (And I would argue that discrimination - making an informed decision between alternatives - in and of itself is not necessarily a bad thing. This is not to say that people often discriminate poorly or irrationaly, such as on race or sex or whatever.) Sure there are arguments about what the policy should be, based on "majority rule" in some instances and perhaps on "dicator rule" in others.
I'd feel much more comfortable if people would realize that they are themselves imposing a way of thought on others when they say "keep your way of thought out of my life".
Well, I could write more than the average/. reader's attention span can hold, but I would like to make a few comments.
I'm interested in your conclusion that "bad stuff happening" implies that, if God exists, that god doesn't care about us.
I agree with you that most of my observations are that "things happen to natural processes". It just so happens that these natural processes - mostly "how people behave" - lead me to believe in God.
However, you mentioned that "too much bad stuff happens to good people". I'd have to ask how you define "bad stuff" and "good people". That is, what makes something bad? What makes it good? Natural processes, for the most part, are outside the realm of good vs bad. For instance - is a volcano exploding bad? Well, it's definitely destructive, but is that bad? I don't know. When some person kills another one to get money / stuff / revenge / etc., is that bad? Most people will say "yes!" but the question is why?
To think about things in a different way, do parents allow "bad things" to happen to their children (when they could have prevented it) in order to help their children learn something? Does this mean they don't care about their children? Does it mean that these parents are Bad People?
I can't say I can answer any or all of these questions even to my own satisfaction, but hopefully they will encourage us to think that we need to be careful about the conclusions we make. I would posit that often time things we think of as "bad" aren't, just as often times people we think of as "good" aren't.
My overall observation about people, though, is that (myself included) humans are pretty despicable creatures, and it's a good thing that life isn't fair.
If I may be so bold, the problem with this belief, in my opinion, is that it is functionally no different than not believing in a deity at all. On one hand, this supports the argument that the "deity's" existence does not depend on ours, but ours depends on the "deity's". On the other hand, the general consensus is that the existence (or lack thereof) of a deity should have some impact on how we live our lives (what that impact might be, I think, is a conversation for another day).
As for whether or not the "deity" cares for us or not, see my comments on the grandparent to this comment (coming soon if it's not posted yet).
I just have to say that I love how much (offtopic) commentary is generated by your sig. Here are my observations on the comments so far:
Some seem to think that you're jumping on a bandwagon of "smart" people.
Some think you're being presumptious by lumping yourself with "smart" people.
Some just get all mad when someone says they believe in God.
I think, though, that they are a little unnerved by the fact that all these great, objective, scientific minds arrived at the conclusion that a god exists. This either means they have to wonder what these "great minds" were smoking or what they themselves are smoking to not see it.
Disclaimer: I myself am in the "Everything I have seen leads me to believe in God" camp of thought. If you want to know more of how people can *gasp* actually arrive at this conclusion, I'm sure myself or Doesn't_Comment_Code will be happy to entertain any legitimate conversation.
per'aps, but $1 Trillion is the equivalent of 10 million man-years of salary - at an annual salary of $100,000! I use man-years of salary because, after all, even material costs end up becoming labor costs (well, raw materials are a weird combination of labor costs and market demand, but it boils down to how many people it takes to dig stuff out of the ground).
so, $1 Trillion over ~30 years means they're guessing it will take the world somewhere more than 300,000 people working on this project a year for 30 years. That's a lot of required manpower.
So? Market share doesn't really mean anything. Look at Nissan; they have a very small market share but were the second most profitable auto company (behind Toyota) in 2003.
It goes to show that it's not how much you have, but what you do with what you do have.
I can typically send myself executables, zips, and whatever else by making a copy, changing the extension to '.txt', then sending the renamed file . At the destination, just change the extension and run with it. I have always been amazed that Windows uses the extension to determine the content type.
If your provider filters even '.txt' files, just pick something like '.let-me-pass', and I bet that would get through. 'Course, this works because you *know* you have to change the extension and such. I've had to resort to this to get around my work's filters.
Well, it's not that hard to figure out. Assume the 100' diameter (30.48m) thing is a sphere made of solid steel (density ~8000 kg/m3). That sphere has a volume of 14,827 m3, so would have a mass of ~118.6e6 kg. At a distance of 26,500 miles from earth's center, it will exert a force of 2.6e7 newtons (about 3000 tons) on the earth. This would make the earth accelerate toward the asteroid at only 4.3e-18 m/s2 (the asteroid, though, accelerates toward earth at a whopping 0.2 m/s2).
If you were standing on the asteroid, and you weigh 150 lbs on earth, you'd weigh only 0.0005 lbs (assuming the asteroid was the only thing around).
If you were standing on earth and the asteroid were directly over your head (at 26,500 miles from your center) and you weighed 150 lbs, it would reduce your weight by 6.6e-17 pounds. Not exactly a weight-loss program.
Those numbers seem pretty hard to detect directly, but we might be able to use indirect means.
Check your exponents (meters to km): Potential energy to get to 200 km is only 1.9 MJ/kg. (slightly less than twice the 0.97 MJ/kg required to get to 100 km). (Quick rule of thumb: if gravity were constant, you need about 10 kJ/km/kg of altitude. 100 km = 1000 kJ/kg; 200 km = 2000 kJ/kg). Since 2 MJ << 32 MJ, I neglected it in my orbital calculation. In fact, since I overestimated orbital velocity to be 8000 m/s my original estimates are not that far off).
You're 60.7 MJ/kg is actually for an altitude of ~200,000 km, not 200 km (gotta love those exponents!)
Incidentally, 91 MJ/kg will get you well past escape (escape potential is only 62.5 MJ/kg).
The energy content of gasoline is about 42e6 J/kg.
Orbital velocity (at the surface of the earth) is about 8000 m/s. Kinetic energy of 1 kg at 8000 m/s is 32e6 J. (That is, you need about 32 MJ/kg)
However for those who want the whole story, the parent to this is correct: to get all that energy out of the kg of gasoline, you *also* need about 2.8 kg oxygen. Gasoline-oxygen gets you about 11 MJ/kg, which is about a third of what you need to hit orbital velocity.
To get to 100 km altitude, you need only 0.96 MJ/kg, which is no problem for gasoline-oxygen.
Ah, I would say that "writing a program" by putting together other people's building blocks is not programming but code assembly. I would actually say that most "programmers" out there really don't know how to program, and that's why we have lots of the issues present today. It does take a clarification on how literal you want to be with the verb "to program" because people who stack up components are programming in the strictest sense. However, I fear that few and far between are the folks who can code a full GUI in 32 K of RAM (GEOS for the Commodore64).
I would wager that most of the "true" programmers are those in imbedded systems and the like who actually have to generate the building blocks and frameworks of any language. The rest are something else - not to nock their contributions to the application world - but I think that some distinction ought to be made.
Yeah, well, I just realized that hydrogen hydroxide (also an ingredient in styrofoam and just about everything else) is also dangerous! Quick, write a website for that one too!
Wow. I could comment on all of this stuff to no end, but here's where I will jump in:
War: most wars are caused by social inequality. When people feel that their lot in life is desperately hopeless, they want to strike out; aggression is a natural reaction to being cornered - you want to take your enemy down with you. It is very easy to persuade desperate people that killing somebody else is the right way to go about things. Cure social inequality and most wars will never happen. Again, this doesn't profit the few extremely rich, which is why it doesn't happen.
How, exactly, do you intend to "stop social inequality"? Saying that "social inequality" (whatever that really is) is the problem is perhaps helpful, but useless. I think this is because, as we all know, there is no way to end "social inequality." You can't stop people from being selfish or greedy (without using force, at any rate) based on the entirety of recorded history. In this I agree with other posters in this thread: all the "social" problems we have are because humans, as a gross generalization, don't care about each other. It's an inevitable outcome of the "selfish gene" theory (for you evolutionists) or the inherent sinfulness of man (for Judeo-Christians).
Basically, war will never stop, persecution and oppression will never stop, because there is no way to stop people from being people. This, I think, is the point of the previous poster: there is no technical means by which we can address such issues as war, famine, and disease because we already have those technical means and they don't work. The problem is not technical for all "human" problems.
However, there is the issue of taking the defeatist view "if we can't solve it then let's not do anything"; such a view is not useful either. Basically the best solution we have to your "social inequality" issues is education, and, sadly enough, force when necessary (because that's the only thing that will consistently get people to change their behavior). (I have not the wisdom, however, to discern exactly what "when necessary" is though, so I have to leave this point somewhat unfinished.)
Pure technical issues, such as stopping asteroids, however, are much simpler for the vast majority of the population to support. After all, the laws of physics are not nearly as fickle as social behavior.
As I said, I could go on, but I think that might be enough to chew on for now, and this thread is getting a bit old anyway.
But, as far as priorities go, I find it odd that I generally guage importance by the following: "If an asteroid hit the planet, would this really matter?" This results in the strange statement for the current discussion:
"If an asteroid hit the planet, would discussing the relative priority of an asteroid hitting the planet and other social disasters matter?"
This is the same difficult issue as "Why should I pay taxes? Why should I pay insurance when I've never needed to use it? Why should I pay an 'activity fee' at my university when I don't use most of the activities for which it goes?"
It's kind of a collective effect thing, where some would argue that everyone paying a little bit benefits society as a whole even if there are some individuals who don't "get" anything for their expense. It's more an argument, I think, of selfish versus collective thinking. Granted, this is decidedly UnAmerican(TM).
That said, of course, the idea of ads in space (where I have no choice to not see them!) or "McDonald's on the moon" makes me want to vomit.
Hrm. I see you're using my nit-picky-ness against me. Kudos.
At any rate, I think you know what I mean - and I'd argue that it's silly to ask if a computer controls itself. Yes, a computer is a machine in some sense, but I'd argue that it is not in another sense. Perhaps I should have clarified by saying "only machines that move which are controlled by software" instead of "machines in general". Sometimes it is important to clarify things, though, which is the purpose of this post.
Actually, I was purposely super-general. I also have highly politically sensitive responses to your "things where you would rather have a computer":
On computer-controlled robots and toll-booth attendants: Having people do this instead of machines will give people jobs. People like and want jobs - if for no other reason than to have something to do. Just because a machine can do it "more efficiently" doesn't inherently make it better (I am aware of, and a proponent of, theories that say that in general we're better off with less variability in things, which mechanized manufacturing can give us, but that's a different discussion).
On autopilot: I'm not really versed on this one, but I would say that I'm more comfortable with autopilot than I am with "auto-car driver". Of course, I'd rather take an alert, well-trained human any day over a computer program. That's the caveat though (in both cases): the amount of risk associated with a computer / machine setup is more or less predictable over time, whereas a human's performance is not.
Definitely a lot of interesting discussion possible on this front.
That said, my preferred use of computers is not so much for control (although it does allow good things like better emissions, stealth fighters which would otherwise be flying bricks, etc) but for simulation and analysis - understanding the way things work should allow for direct mechanical solutions to most problems. Not to say those solutions will be trivial or simple to implement, but I rue the day when I don't have a cable brake on my car to stop me when the computer fills up its flash ram and goes into infinite boot mode. (In mechanical systems, you only need the mechanics to be robust. In controlled systems, you need the mechanics and the code to be robust; the overall system with more critical components is more difficult to make robust than one with fewer. This is simple reliability theory here).
Re:Software? no - humans, yes.
on
Can Software Kill?
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· Score: 2, Interesting
I'm going to pick nits here, but:
No, software cannot kill anyone. Only machines controlled by software can kill people.
Now, how to handle the legality or morality of said observation is beyond my level of interest at this time. However, I hope this clarifies things.
At the very least, these things confirm my general posit that "Computers should not be allowed to control things that move."
Actually, you can have more (or less) than half of a population below the average. Half are always below the *median* for any population, but half is only below the average for certain distributions of populations.
Example: a group of 9 '1's and one '10' has an average of 1.9 and 90% of the values are below that average. Or, take 9 '10's and one '1' and you have an average of 9.1 and 90% are above average.
...people will rebel with the inevitable horror stories that would follow.
Unfortunately, people won't rebel because they won't take it upon themselves to build cars without said devices, and that's even assuming that the Law allows cars to be manufactured without all that stuff anyway. What will happen is that people will just say, "That sucks! Oh, well, I want a car...."
the guy asked a person for a reason: he wants to 'cram more stuff into life'. It doesn't matter if you don't.
Two things:
1. I think the world would be better if people crammed more "life" into "stuff" rather than vice-versa. (That said, there needs to be an understanding of what constitutes "life" in this context.)
2. I would argue that it does matter how much non-edifying stuff you put in your life. Note I didn't say "non-productive", because productivity is not the issue here. The question is, how much do we put in our lives that can't improve the Condition of Man - and by that I don't mean better health care or "standard of living" (whatever the heck that's supposed to mean anyway). I mean things that don't give us a more hopeful outlook on our life and the lives of those around us. I don't mean "make people happy" either - I really do genuinely mean "give people hope."
That, I think, is the crux of the "does technology really improve people's lives" debate.
What does this mean, "work without pay"? I'm betting your legislature is salaried. Does this mean if they're late they don't get a paycheck for that month? I doubt it - it probably means they just won't get overtime, from which they should be exempt anyway.
Hehe - dude, I have to say I love your sig (I lived in SC for 12 years, and would move back there from MI in a heartbeat if I could get a job!). It's also quite telling, because I doubt many people realize that SC is mostly an agricultural state (although the auto industry is chaning that now) so it would be impetuous to say that your post has "no concern for farmers". Actually, if I recall from my economics classes, subsidies can actually *harm* agriculture.
But, I do have to say that I echo some other posted sentiments in this thread of "should getting broadband to every home in the country be our focus?" I know most people in SC (i.e. everyone not in Greenville, Spartanburg, Anderson, Columbia, Charleston, M.Beach, and Hilton Head) couldn't care less about having broadband.
Can anyone tell my just why our (i.e., the US) phone system is "almost maxed out"? The US system has 10 digits (including area code). Even with fax machines, mobiles, and computers, how are we anywhere close to maxing out the 10^10 numbers available? (that's 10 billion numbers, folks - about 1.5 for every person on the planet, or about 33 numbers for every man, woman, and child in the US (using 300 million as a population - which is a slight overestimate).
I know that some area codes are "reserved" but each area code is only 10 million numbers. Does anyone know why there is such a number crunch? I would wager that it is due to poor allocation of numbers rather than a shortage of unique identifiers. (For instance, I've heard rumors of making US phone numbers 11 digits - do we really need 100 billion domestic phone numbers?)
Do we have such poor resource management? (This is even worse than the IPv4 running out of space, which I know is due to allocation and because 2^32 is not even as large as the planet's population).
This would work, except that there are federal laws which state that rear-view visual devices must function even if there is no power available, or something like that. Basically, that's why we still have mirrors - you have to be able to see behind you even if you have a catastrophic power failure in your car. Gotta love FMVSS...
Slashdot Mirror
Your statement is exactly the type of nonsense that gets society nowhere - because in saying that you're doing just what you claim to want to prevent. You cannot sensor one type of belief - and proclaiming it - without yourself proclaiming a belief system. Sure, it's nice to say that "I shouldn't inject my religious beliefs into the things I do" but that's the point - it is impossible for me to not act in accordance with my beliefs. My actions prove my beliefs, whatever those beliefs (religious or otherwise) may be. Sure, sometimes my actions show that my beliefs aren't what I want them to be - but that's for me to work out.
I'm just a little irritated with people who don't think that "kicking religion and morality out of the public arena (i.e., law)" in the name of "diversity" or some such is itself quite discriminatory.
I have to admit I'm a little flustered by your post, because it is illogical. I have yet to hear one comprehensive argument as to how keeping religion / morality out of the public arena is any less discriminating than leaving it in. How many people are alienated when they are told they are wrong and a bigot because they don't believe what the "public" beleives? Laws must do this - take the hot topic of homosexual marriage. Regardless of your opinion on rights and what not, you have to agree that a law that says a union between homosexuals should not be called "marriage" will alienate the homosexuals no less than saying that "marriage" can refer to homosexual unions will alienate those people who believe that is just horrendous.
To sum up; it is impossible to make a public policy which does not discriminate; that's the whole point of public policy anyway. (And I would argue that discrimination - making an informed decision between alternatives - in and of itself is not necessarily a bad thing. This is not to say that people often discriminate poorly or irrationaly, such as on race or sex or whatever.) Sure there are arguments about what the policy should be, based on "majority rule" in some instances and perhaps on "dicator rule" in others.
I'd feel much more comfortable if people would realize that they are themselves imposing a way of thought on others when they say "keep your way of thought out of my life".
I'm interested in your conclusion that "bad stuff happening" implies that, if God exists, that god doesn't care about us.
I agree with you that most of my observations are that "things happen to natural processes". It just so happens that these natural processes - mostly "how people behave" - lead me to believe in God.
However, you mentioned that "too much bad stuff happens to good people". I'd have to ask how you define "bad stuff" and "good people". That is, what makes something bad? What makes it good? Natural processes, for the most part, are outside the realm of good vs bad. For instance - is a volcano exploding bad? Well, it's definitely destructive, but is that bad? I don't know. When some person kills another one to get money / stuff / revenge / etc., is that bad? Most people will say "yes!" but the question is why?
To think about things in a different way, do parents allow "bad things" to happen to their children (when they could have prevented it) in order to help their children learn something? Does this mean they don't care about their children? Does it mean that these parents are Bad People?
I can't say I can answer any or all of these questions even to my own satisfaction, but hopefully they will encourage us to think that we need to be careful about the conclusions we make. I would posit that often time things we think of as "bad" aren't, just as often times people we think of as "good" aren't.
My overall observation about people, though, is that (myself included) humans are pretty despicable creatures, and it's a good thing that life isn't fair.
As for whether or not the "deity" cares for us or not, see my comments on the grandparent to this comment (coming soon if it's not posted yet).
Basically, to make sure I'm understanding you, you're saying that having a great mind is independent of belief in a god. I would have to agree.
Some seem to think that you're jumping on a bandwagon of "smart" people.
Some think you're being presumptious by lumping yourself with "smart" people.
Some just get all mad when someone says they believe in God.
I think, though, that they are a little unnerved by the fact that all these great, objective, scientific minds arrived at the conclusion that a god exists. This either means they have to wonder what these "great minds" were smoking or what they themselves are smoking to not see it.
Disclaimer: I myself am in the "Everything I have seen leads me to believe in God" camp of thought. If you want to know more of how people can *gasp* actually arrive at this conclusion, I'm sure myself or Doesn't_Comment_Code will be happy to entertain any legitimate conversation.
so, $1 Trillion over ~30 years means they're guessing it will take the world somewhere more than 300,000 people working on this project a year for 30 years. That's a lot of required manpower.
It goes to show that it's not how much you have, but what you do with what you do have.
If your provider filters even '.txt' files, just pick something like '.let-me-pass', and I bet that would get through. 'Course, this works because you *know* you have to change the extension and such. I've had to resort to this to get around my work's filters.
If you were standing on the asteroid, and you weigh 150 lbs on earth, you'd weigh only 0.0005 lbs (assuming the asteroid was the only thing around).
If you were standing on earth and the asteroid were directly over your head (at 26,500 miles from your center) and you weighed 150 lbs, it would reduce your weight by 6.6e-17 pounds. Not exactly a weight-loss program.
Those numbers seem pretty hard to detect directly, but we might be able to use indirect means.
You're 60.7 MJ/kg is actually for an altitude of ~200,000 km, not 200 km (gotta love those exponents!)
Incidentally, 91 MJ/kg will get you well past escape (escape potential is only 62.5 MJ/kg).
The energy content of gasoline is about 42e6 J/kg.
Orbital velocity (at the surface of the earth) is about 8000 m/s. Kinetic energy of 1 kg at 8000 m/s is 32e6 J. (That is, you need about 32 MJ/kg)
However for those who want the whole story, the parent to this is correct: to get all that energy out of the kg of gasoline, you *also* need about 2.8 kg oxygen. Gasoline-oxygen gets you about 11 MJ/kg, which is about a third of what you need to hit orbital velocity.
To get to 100 km altitude, you need only 0.96 MJ/kg, which is no problem for gasoline-oxygen.
I would wager that most of the "true" programmers are those in imbedded systems and the like who actually have to generate the building blocks and frameworks of any language. The rest are something else - not to nock their contributions to the application world - but I think that some distinction ought to be made.
Basically, war will never stop, persecution and oppression will never stop, because there is no way to stop people from being people. This, I think, is the point of the previous poster: there is no technical means by which we can address such issues as war, famine, and disease because we already have those technical means and they don't work. The problem is not technical for all "human" problems.
However, there is the issue of taking the defeatist view "if we can't solve it then let's not do anything"; such a view is not useful either. Basically the best solution we have to your "social inequality" issues is education, and, sadly enough, force when necessary (because that's the only thing that will consistently get people to change their behavior). (I have not the wisdom, however, to discern exactly what "when necessary" is though, so I have to leave this point somewhat unfinished.)
Pure technical issues, such as stopping asteroids, however, are much simpler for the vast majority of the population to support. After all, the laws of physics are not nearly as fickle as social behavior.
As I said, I could go on, but I think that might be enough to chew on for now, and this thread is getting a bit old anyway.
But, as far as priorities go, I find it odd that I generally guage importance by the following: "If an asteroid hit the planet, would this really matter?" This results in the strange statement for the current discussion:
"If an asteroid hit the planet, would discussing the relative priority of an asteroid hitting the planet and other social disasters matter?"
It's kind of a collective effect thing, where some would argue that everyone paying a little bit benefits society as a whole even if there are some individuals who don't "get" anything for their expense. It's more an argument, I think, of selfish versus collective thinking. Granted, this is decidedly UnAmerican(TM).
That said, of course, the idea of ads in space (where I have no choice to not see them!) or "McDonald's on the moon" makes me want to vomit.
At any rate, I think you know what I mean - and I'd argue that it's silly to ask if a computer controls itself. Yes, a computer is a machine in some sense, but I'd argue that it is not in another sense. Perhaps I should have clarified by saying "only machines that move which are controlled by software" instead of "machines in general". Sometimes it is important to clarify things, though, which is the purpose of this post.
On computer-controlled robots and toll-booth attendants: Having people do this instead of machines will give people jobs. People like and want jobs - if for no other reason than to have something to do. Just because a machine can do it "more efficiently" doesn't inherently make it better (I am aware of, and a proponent of, theories that say that in general we're better off with less variability in things, which mechanized manufacturing can give us, but that's a different discussion).
On autopilot: I'm not really versed on this one, but I would say that I'm more comfortable with autopilot than I am with "auto-car driver". Of course, I'd rather take an alert, well-trained human any day over a computer program. That's the caveat though (in both cases): the amount of risk associated with a computer / machine setup is more or less predictable over time, whereas a human's performance is not.
Definitely a lot of interesting discussion possible on this front.
That said, my preferred use of computers is not so much for control (although it does allow good things like better emissions, stealth fighters which would otherwise be flying bricks, etc) but for simulation and analysis - understanding the way things work should allow for direct mechanical solutions to most problems. Not to say those solutions will be trivial or simple to implement, but I rue the day when I don't have a cable brake on my car to stop me when the computer fills up its flash ram and goes into infinite boot mode. (In mechanical systems, you only need the mechanics to be robust. In controlled systems, you need the mechanics and the code to be robust; the overall system with more critical components is more difficult to make robust than one with fewer. This is simple reliability theory here).
No, software cannot kill anyone. Only machines controlled by software can kill people.
Now, how to handle the legality or morality of said observation is beyond my level of interest at this time. However, I hope this clarifies things.
At the very least, these things confirm my general posit that "Computers should not be allowed to control things that move."
Example: a group of 9 '1's and one '10' has an average of 1.9 and 90% of the values are below that average. Or, take 9 '10's and one '1' and you have an average of 9.1 and 90% are above average.
Unfortunately, people won't rebel because they won't take it upon themselves to build cars without said devices, and that's even assuming that the Law allows cars to be manufactured without all that stuff anyway. What will happen is that people will just say, "That sucks! Oh, well, I want a car...."
1. I think the world would be better if people crammed more "life" into "stuff" rather than vice-versa. (That said, there needs to be an understanding of what constitutes "life" in this context.)
2. I would argue that it does matter how much non-edifying stuff you put in your life. Note I didn't say "non-productive", because productivity is not the issue here. The question is, how much do we put in our lives that can't improve the Condition of Man - and by that I don't mean better health care or "standard of living" (whatever the heck that's supposed to mean anyway). I mean things that don't give us a more hopeful outlook on our life and the lives of those around us. I don't mean "make people happy" either - I really do genuinely mean "give people hope."
That, I think, is the crux of the "does technology really improve people's lives" debate.
What does this mean, "work without pay"? I'm betting your legislature is salaried. Does this mean if they're late they don't get a paycheck for that month? I doubt it - it probably means they just won't get overtime, from which they should be exempt anyway.
But, I do have to say that I echo some other posted sentiments in this thread of "should getting broadband to every home in the country be our focus?" I know most people in SC (i.e. everyone not in Greenville, Spartanburg, Anderson, Columbia, Charleston, M.Beach, and Hilton Head) couldn't care less about having broadband.
I know that some area codes are "reserved" but each area code is only 10 million numbers. Does anyone know why there is such a number crunch? I would wager that it is due to poor allocation of numbers rather than a shortage of unique identifiers. (For instance, I've heard rumors of making US phone numbers 11 digits - do we really need 100 billion domestic phone numbers?)
Do we have such poor resource management? (This is even worse than the IPv4 running out of space, which I know is due to allocation and because 2^32 is not even as large as the planet's population).
Comments? Questions?
This would work, except that there are federal laws which state that rear-view visual devices must function even if there is no power available, or something like that. Basically, that's why we still have mirrors - you have to be able to see behind you even if you have a catastrophic power failure in your car. Gotta love FMVSS...