When I was younger (teenager, college), I my typical sleep pattern was awake 2-3 days, sleep 10-12 hours, awake 2-3 days, rinse, repeat. I lived like this for years. I simply didn't get tired until the second or third day.
Sometimes (like during finals), I would happily stay up for 5-6 days straight with no adverse affects. I don't know where you get the idea that someone will have permanent personality changes from 3 days without sleep, but you are not correct.
By contrast, IBM is one of the 3 remaining American companies that still makes general-purpose, complex, and powerful cores for crunching scientific applications. The other two companies are AMD and Intel.
Once you start searching for US chip design and manufacturing firms, you realize that there are tons of them that produce silicon that is general purpose. You only listed the three biggest.
The idea of converting 2D to 3D is not at all impossible, it is just very processor intensive. Here is a a basic outline of how it can be done:
(1) Using Computer Vision Systems, a software program represents the scene it is seeing with 3D polyogon/spline models. This is not an easy task, but it is doable - a combination of heuristics, neural nets, basic image processing and 3D rendering out of a database of common models, combined with a GA / hill-climbing algorithm that compares rendered models against the 2D images - with enough horsepower, such a system (assuming it has a large model database and the ability to adapt and learn organic shapes) should be able to do a reasonable job of extracting 3D scenes and animating them to choreograph a 2D video against it's internal 3D model/animation plot.
(2) Use the 2D video as, essentially, a set of texture maps against the 3D model and render the movie.
(3) Profit?
We are probably 10-20 years away from such sophisticated compuer vision systems - it is really computer "imagination" systems that try to imagine a scene that matches what it sees. It will happen. But today? This thing? No way... It's pure bologne.
Seriously, we should all donate to a defense fund (perhaps the EFF) to fight this battle bitterly. The MPAA needs to be given a clear, unambiguous message concerning fair use.
Assuming one could build a shading device (or cluster of devices) at the L1 point (with adjustments for solar pressure on the orbit of the device itself), how long would it take to spin up Venus if the shade provided was in the form of a semi-permanent partial eclipse? In other words, allowing Venus to receive sunlight on only one hemisphere semi-permanently (until the mission is accomplished). This would both cool the planet and provide rotational pressure.
My question is really "How much pressure?" Would such a scheme require thousands or millions of years to spin up the planet to a more reasonable rotation? Anyone willing to take up the math? How, exactly, do you calculate motive force from sunlight? What percentage of the imparted energy from solar winds and full-spectrum sun-light would contribute to motive, rotational force? Or would all of it simply spin the atmosphere, imparting little or no motive force to the planetary body itself?
According to this tin foil hat article, NASA is already planning on igniting Saturn to create a second star in the Sol system, potentially heating Titan up enough to make it inhabitable...
That comment was made of pure funny shite for real. But your point is clear and I think the *push* model behind media sharing on the Zune will fail for this and other reasons.
What are the usage scenarios for *squirting* content to another, besides the obvious practical jokes that you elude to? Is *squirting* content more or less intuitive and useful than content sharing ala iTunes and Airport Express (the model that iPods would clearly leverage if they were to attain WiFi connectivity).
I'm pretty sure that anyone who has used iTunes to broadcast to an AirportExpress or used iTunes to browse another iTunes library of someone else on the local network would attest to the general usefulness of the browse-and-pull or streaming broadcast models.
But squirting? Sending an entire media file (not streamed, presumably) to another user in a DRM wrapper that only lets them play it a couple of times? Pure ridiculousness.
In 25 years of Shuttle Operations, NASA has never had a real shuttle computer or simulator run over the transition to a New Year? Is this a Government beuracracy thing (e.g. Everyone on Holiday?).
Consider this: If Microsoft (or Apple) must pay the music studios a portion of the profits from each music player sold, then clearly that indicates that the users of those devices are implicitly expected and allowed to share music originating from the studos that have so been payed. In other words: Downloading and music sharing will be essentially legal. Universal can't exactly expect successful lawsuits against consumers who have already paid the studio tax, can they?
I agree that this looks like warfare from Redmond, they are trying to undermine Apple's business model. However, I actually think this may be an excellent idea - the end result would be to rid consumers of RIAA intimidation and allow people to share music.
Apple's new iTV gizmo coming out in January will be able to feed google and youtube video to your television in a nice handy way. I think the idea is to bring a new age of video to the masses via google and Apple.
This is the endgame that I think they are aiming for.
I think you might be being a bit naive here. The fact is, North Korea owes it's existence to China and China has the power to control them in pretty much any way they wish.
In this sense, North Korea is much like Israel. Israel is the United States' foaming-at-the-mouth laptog in the middle east in the same way that North Korea is China's foaming-at-the-mouth lapdog in Asia. Powerful countries that wish to present themselves as benign often have ferocious pet countries.
Hmm... I may need to re-think that... Maybe it's the other way around and the U.S. is Israel's foaming-at-the-mouth laptog these days? We are fighting their wars, after all.
And on tracking a laser to a climber? Sounds pretty doable actually, given that modern optical telescopes compensate optically for air movement, without the luxury of a close physical object which can tell you it's position and be designed for easy targetting.
Please remember, we aren't talking about a laser that makes pretty lights. A laser that imparts power for a climber would be downright dangerous if it misses the power collector on the elevator. combine that with the very considerable lateral movement of the elevator due to weather conditions and the (generally not talked about) problem of photo-reactivity that carbon nanotubes have and you have a recipe for disaster (imagine the elevator cable being disintigrated by the powering laser).
Anyhow, I think this problem is trickier than it looks at first glance.
I think this is entirely reasonable. Only bloody idiots drive to bars / pubs anyway. If someone knows they are going to engage in an activity which will make them a bad driver yet still driver their car then they ought to be pay more.
Hmmm.... Maybe I am not making myself clear, let me try to explain in a different way.
Pubs scan your fingerprint when you enter. This is obstensibly to be used in investigations if there is serious trouble in the area. If this were the end of the story, then perhaps it wouldn't be too big of a deal, other than you being called in the middle of the night every time you were in a pub the same night that some ruccus breaks out.
Time passes. Powerful interests, such as Insurance companies, put pressure on the government to allow them to use the pub data for actuarial purposes (obstensibly to protect the public). The government concedes... Other interests also gain access...
Time passes.
You break up with your girlfriend and spend an unusual amount of time at the pubs for a couple of months. You receive letters informing you that your automobile insurance and health insurance premiums are rising as a direct result of increased risk exposure related to your bar habbit. Your employer calls you in for review and denies your promotion on the basis of risk exposure related to your pub habbits.
Are you getting the picture yet? If not, i give up.
The machine is being entered in one of the two parts of the elevator competition, known as the Power Beam Challenge, in which competitors build a machine that can climb at a rate of at least one metre per second up a ribbon suspended nearly 61 metres (200 feet) from a crane. The climber must be powered by a light source.
"We developed a high-powered laser to power our climber," Ruszowski said.
Which is all good and well, I suppose, for a cable suspended from a crane. But what happens when the space-elevator ribbon has to cut through the entire atmosphere of the earth, weather and all? Tracking the lateral movement of the elevator precisely in unpredictable weather does not seem trivial to me.
Do any of you actually believe we are close to being able to produce one of these monsters? I am guessing we are still thirty years away from the appropriate tech.
If this tarrif existed in the states it would literally cost me about $200 / month. Between game consoles, clusters of mac minis, laptops, rack-mount machines, media machines, cell phones and whatnot... Yea, I am a little gadget crazy, but perhaps I am just an early adopter...
We are asymptotely approaching a time when everything is connected to the Internet. If my toaster is connected to the Internet and has audio capabilites (and therefore theoretically capable of receiving and playing audio streams), would I have to pay the license? What about my fridge (many people already have Internet connected fridges with displays)? My washing machine? My iPod?
This legislation is astonishing. People will stop buying gadgets in Germany if every gadget has a state imposed monthly tarrif associated with it. It makes much more sense to simply impose a household tarrif (or even an individual yearly tax).
This smells like an underhanded way to get the masses to come out in favor of DRM in Germany to me. DRM presents a solution to the gadget tax!!! Hurray for DRM!!!
Politicians and Corporate interests are evil when combined.
"Only the stupidest of criminals will expose themselves through these channels anyway"
Fortunately I think that's pretty much what we're dealing with here.:D. I don't think anyone is really going to figure out clever ways to commit drunken crime and get away with it.
But more seriously, this system seems like a good trade. Everyone giving up freedom for miniscule gain because 3000 people died... eh not so good (BTW I am aware that this article is UK). But lets be honest and admit that there's a lot of assholish behavior that goes on when people drink at bars... and furthermore a lot of people get killed when that irresponsible behavior extends itself to motor vehicles. Maybe alcohol causes enough trouble that oversight is overall a benefit to society.
How would you like your auto-insurance premiums to increase because you have an established pattern of happy-hour visits to the pub? You still think this is a good idea?
The real problem with any system that tracks behavior, especially vice-like behavior, is that it is only a matter of time before powerful interests secure access to that data. Fingerprint drinkers today, in the hands of insurance companies tomorrow. Fingerprint pub-crawlers today, in the hands of employment agencies tomorrow. Fingerprint drunks today, in the hands of law-enforcement and government interests tomorrow.
Abuse slowly unfolds, it does not spring into existance overnight. Almost everything that is seriously broken in America started off as an innocent (often temporary) stopgap measure to correct some issue of the day but then slowly grew, was hijacked by various interests and warped into an aberration.
I am personally against any tracking of human beings at all and I could give a god damned about the whinning of law enforcement. The simple fact is that once such data is available to law enforcement, it is also available to criminals and interests that are not working for my benefit and since I am a law abiding citizen, there is absolutely no upside for me - only increased scrutiny and loss of privacy. Only the stupidest of criminals will expose themselves through these channels anyway. The smart criminals belong to syndicates that fscking include law enforcement (and therefore have access to this *data* for nefarious purposes).
Reject tracking, profiling and surveillance in all it's guises. Demand court issued warrants for private data. Retain your rights and your personal security.
I agree with everything that you said and I found your insight regarding artificial beauty augmentation to be espeically interesting.
2. With the amount of progress being made in the fields of complexion altering makeup and cheap plastic surgery, we will soon be reaching a point where the traits you are marrying into will no longer be genetically transferable. Perhaps that will even lead to a situation (when people can look like anything they want) where looks REALLY don't count and beauty begins to be judged by personality, capability or some other non-physical yardstick.
It is more accurate to say that "soon be reaching a point where the traits you are marrying into will no longer be genetically transferable" unless you are marrying someone who is poor and couldn't afford such augmentation.
This one factor could actually flip this argument 180 degrees, essentially ensuring that the underclasses will perpetually genetically outperform the upperclasses. If we also assume less access to intelligence augmentation (let your mind wander about this), then true intelligence and true beauty may radically surpass the upperclass in the lower-classes without anyone even realizing it. This would be a result of the lower-classes having to compete in both intelligence and beauty with artificially augmented upper-classes, leading to a situation where the perception is that there is parity (or more likely that the upperclass is both more handsome and intelligent) where in actuallity, the genetic intelligence and beauty of the lower class is somewhat or even significantly greater (provided enough time for this to work itself out).
Two things you're ignoring: One, if everyone lives no matter what their traits are, then "genetically expensive" features like good vision will just go away. Evolution has been strongly selecting people with good vision, but your eyes cease to affect your chance to reproduce, but mutations still go on, it is incredibly probable that each generation's eyesight will be progressively worse. Ditto for other traits.
Genetically expensive features like good vision will just *go away*? And what is the principal of anti-selection that will accomplish this? Are people with worse vision less fertile or more sexually attractive? While I agree that excellent vision may no longer be of extreme consequence to the survivability of a modern human, it in no way is an anti-indicator of selection and frankly, I don't understand how you consider it genetically expensive.
Two, there is evolutionary pressure, caused by partner selection. This is the basis of TFA! Good looking people tend to find good looking partners and make good looking children, ditto for the not-good-looking. I would add to this the element of wealth, I think it's quite important: I grew up in a very rich suburb where my schoolmates were uncommonly pretty.
First point, agreed. Health and beauty attract health and beauty. No argument there.
Second point, wealth and beauty, mostly disagree. Generally, people born into wealth marry and bare children with others born into wealth and tend to scorn lower classes even at the expense of genetic advantages that might exist in the much vaster genepool of the lower classes. This is called *breeding* by the wealthy castes of the world, but the results are hardly impressive. You do not find many supermodels or extraordinary representations of beauty in the well *bread* old money society circles of the world. The reverse is generally true as they tend to share a smaller genepool and scorn new entrants to their *society*.
Meanwhile, the churning mass of genetic variation in the lower classes continually produces incredible specimens of atheticism, beauty, intelligence and other prodigeous characteristics mostly by virtue of the statistical variations that occur in those genepools. However, extraordinary ability does tend to provide extraordinary opportunity and is therefore a good indicator of probable financial success in life. But this is upper-middle class success and that success is not neccessarily passed on from one generation to the next. The truly upper class (read: big inheritence) is generally untouchable.
It may be, in an analysis of socio-economic natural selection, that the more accurate hypothesis is that prodigeous characteristics tend to recombine and be passed on from generation to generation maximally in the middle and upper-middle class, but often orginate from the much larger genepool of the lower class.
As a counter-point, truly anti-selective genetic traits fall out of the genepool even in the lower class. The lower class has no lack of high fitness in any category and because of the larger numbers, a much faster rate of mate attraction and reproduction. Those who are truly ugly or have severe abnormalities are shunned as much by the other poor as they are by higher classes. And another important point is that it generally takes higher intelligence and higher fitness to survive as a poor individual than it does to survive with money. The lower class would tend to be somewhat more robust than the higher classes in terms of basic survival skills.
We can take this even further by exploring aggression and morality. Instead of doing that now, I will just throw out the assertion that disdain for human life is a trait that will naturally result in escalation of class (as killing and stealing will quickly produce large amounts of money if done without getting caught). This ultimately leads to the upper class being much less moral than the lower class (given enough time for t
I would argue that the poor in those countries are better off than 100 years ago... not all of them, I'll give you that, but there are a lot more with running water and some basic access to medicine than there were back then. Relative to the Rich in those countries, they haven't progressed much, but they still progress.
Today, the overpopulated poor regions of the world live in their own industrial waste dumps filled with plastics, foil and other packaging materials combined with toxic chemicals and other hazardous waste. A hundred years ago, the poor were likely living off basic sustenance as farm workers and everything they consumed was naturally recycled. But today, with consumable packaging and big industry combined with the lack of basic services (such as waste disposal) in poor regions results in a death spiral of living conditions. Industrialized polution combined with plastic and metallic containers for consumables have created living conditions that are completely foreign and not at all friendly to biologicals (such as people). Have you been to any of these very poor regions and seen the problem first hand? I have and I can tell you that it is unequivocally true.
Also, the previously clean rivers and streams that provided water in the past are now completely polluted. The fact that those water sources have not been 100% replaced by running water is a considerable step down for the poor. And medicine? Are you kidding me? How can the poor afford modern medicine? Don't kid yourself, the poor are much worse off today than they were at any time in human history -- and there are many more of them. More poor people living today than not just a hundred years ago, but than all humans born in the entire history of our planet before one hundred years ago. It is disgraceful and could be corrected if we diverted some of the money used to kill each other and protect corporate profits to education and social services for our fellow man.
Static Iris Scanning is useless, not dynamic
on
DIY Iris Scanning?
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· Score: 4, Informative
While it is true that one could hold up a photo of your iris to a camera and spoof a static iris scanner, doing the same to a dynamic scanner is not practical.
What is a dynamic iris scanner? One that looks not only for the unique patterns of the eye, but also simultaneously measures retinal response to stimuli such as dimming and brightening of the display. This is much more difficult to spoof (you would essentially need to build a model of the target's eye that could respond to external stimuli and then hold that up to the scanner).
Combined with facial recognition, dynamic iris scanning is very potent. First it recognizes your face and then your eye and then the retinal response with stimuli that is timed to be somewhat random. Just don't try to log on after a night of pubbing.
But 2000 years later, when Jews are living all around the world, and they have to decide whether or not new animals, such as ostriches or penguins, are Kosher, the Douglas' structural theory correctly predicts that they aren't Kosher. In fact, when you look at whether or not new animals are Kosher, Douglas' theory generally makes correct predictions, whereas the germ theory is kind of mum.
Umm, your going to have to help me follow your logic here. You say that the Douglas' structural theory correctly predicts Kosherness of animals that were not originaly specified by divine revelation. So does that mean that God is somehow still involved in Kosher classification?
What I was really eluding to was a theory that there was in fact some sort of radioactive incident in the distant past (such as the nuclear wars written about in ancient Hindu writings and whatnot). The idea is that the jewish Kosher laws were inhereted from a much more ancient time when such laws were neccessary for survival in a post nuclear apocalyptic world.
Slashdot Mirror
When I was younger (teenager, college), I my typical sleep pattern was awake 2-3 days, sleep 10-12 hours, awake 2-3 days, rinse, repeat. I lived like this for years. I simply didn't get tired until the second or third day.
Sometimes (like during finals), I would happily stay up for 5-6 days straight with no adverse affects. I don't know where you get the idea that someone will have permanent personality changes from 3 days without sleep, but you are not correct.
Once you start searching for US chip design and manufacturing firms, you realize that there are tons of them that produce silicon that is general purpose. You only listed the three biggest.
It can't be a coincidence... These guys are totally playing off of the idea that porn will sell their product.
The idea of converting 2D to 3D is not at all impossible, it is just very processor intensive. Here is a a basic outline of how it can be done:
(1) Using Computer Vision Systems, a software program represents the scene it is seeing with 3D polyogon/spline models. This is not an easy task, but it is doable - a combination of heuristics, neural nets, basic image processing and 3D rendering out of a database of common models, combined with a GA / hill-climbing algorithm that compares rendered models against the 2D images - with enough horsepower, such a system (assuming it has a large model database and the ability to adapt and learn organic shapes) should be able to do a reasonable job of extracting 3D scenes and animating them to choreograph a 2D video against it's internal 3D model/animation plot.
(2) Use the 2D video as, essentially, a set of texture maps against the 3D model and render the movie.
(3) Profit?
We are probably 10-20 years away from such sophisticated compuer vision systems - it is really computer "imagination" systems that try to imagine a scene that matches what it sees. It will happen. But today? This thing? No way... It's pure bologne.
Seriously, we should all donate to a defense fund (perhaps the EFF) to fight this battle bitterly. The MPAA needs to be given a clear, unambiguous message concerning fair use.
Well, that sounds like a long time... hehe... thanks for the math.
Assuming one could build a shading device (or cluster of devices) at the L1 point (with adjustments for solar pressure on the orbit of the device itself), how long would it take to spin up Venus if the shade provided was in the form of a semi-permanent partial eclipse? In other words, allowing Venus to receive sunlight on only one hemisphere semi-permanently (until the mission is accomplished). This would both cool the planet and provide rotational pressure.
My question is really "How much pressure?" Would such a scheme require thousands or millions of years to spin up the planet to a more reasonable rotation? Anyone willing to take up the math? How, exactly, do you calculate motive force from sunlight? What percentage of the imparted energy from solar winds and full-spectrum sun-light would contribute to motive, rotational force? Or would all of it simply spin the atmosphere, imparting little or no motive force to the planetary body itself?
According to this tin foil hat article, NASA is already planning on igniting Saturn to create a second star in the Sol system, potentially heating Titan up enough to make it inhabitable...
Brilliant stuff...
That comment was made of pure funny shite for real. But your point is clear and I think the *push* model behind media sharing on the Zune will fail for this and other reasons.
What are the usage scenarios for *squirting* content to another, besides the obvious practical jokes that you elude to? Is *squirting* content more or less intuitive and useful than content sharing ala iTunes and Airport Express (the model that iPods would clearly leverage if they were to attain WiFi connectivity).
I'm pretty sure that anyone who has used iTunes to broadcast to an AirportExpress or used iTunes to browse another iTunes library of someone else on the local network would attest to the general usefulness of the browse-and-pull or streaming broadcast models.
But squirting? Sending an entire media file (not streamed, presumably) to another user in a DRM wrapper that only lets them play it a couple of times? Pure ridiculousness.
Get a clue, Redmond...
In 25 years of Shuttle Operations, NASA has never had a real shuttle computer or simulator run over the transition to a New Year? Is this a Government beuracracy thing (e.g. Everyone on Holiday?).
I find this particularly difficult to believe.
Consider this: If Microsoft (or Apple) must pay the music studios a portion of the profits from each music player sold, then clearly that indicates that the users of those devices are implicitly expected and allowed to share music originating from the studos that have so been payed. In other words: Downloading and music sharing will be essentially legal. Universal can't exactly expect successful lawsuits against consumers who have already paid the studio tax, can they?
I agree that this looks like warfare from Redmond, they are trying to undermine Apple's business model. However, I actually think this may be an excellent idea - the end result would be to rid consumers of RIAA intimidation and allow people to share music.
Where are the sources? Try here.
Apple's new iTV gizmo coming out in January will be able to feed google and youtube video to your television in a nice handy way. I think the idea is to bring a new age of video to the masses via google and Apple.
This is the endgame that I think they are aiming for.
I think you might be being a bit naive here. The fact is, North Korea owes it's existence to China and China has the power to control them in pretty much any way they wish.
In this sense, North Korea is much like Israel. Israel is the United States' foaming-at-the-mouth laptog in the middle east in the same way that North Korea is China's foaming-at-the-mouth lapdog in Asia. Powerful countries that wish to present themselves as benign often have ferocious pet countries.
Hmm... I may need to re-think that... Maybe it's the other way around and the U.S. is Israel's foaming-at-the-mouth laptog these days? We are fighting their wars, after all.
Funny how that works...
Anyhow, I think this problem is trickier than it looks at first glance.
Pubs scan your fingerprint when you enter. This is obstensibly to be used in investigations if there is serious trouble in the area. If this were the end of the story, then perhaps it wouldn't be too big of a deal, other than you being called in the middle of the night every time you were in a pub the same night that some ruccus breaks out.
Time passes. Powerful interests, such as Insurance companies, put pressure on the government to allow them to use the pub data for actuarial purposes (obstensibly to protect the public). The government concedes... Other interests also gain access...
Time passes.
You break up with your girlfriend and spend an unusual amount of time at the pubs for a couple of months. You receive letters informing you that your automobile insurance and health insurance premiums are rising as a direct result of increased risk exposure related to your bar habbit. Your employer calls you in for review and denies your promotion on the basis of risk exposure related to your pub habbits.
Are you getting the picture yet? If not, i give up.
Do any of you actually believe we are close to being able to produce one of these monsters? I am guessing we are still thirty years away from the appropriate tech.
If this tarrif existed in the states it would literally cost me about $200 / month. Between game consoles, clusters of mac minis, laptops, rack-mount machines, media machines, cell phones and whatnot... Yea, I am a little gadget crazy, but perhaps I am just an early adopter...
We are asymptotely approaching a time when everything is connected to the Internet. If my toaster is connected to the Internet and has audio capabilites (and therefore theoretically capable of receiving and playing audio streams), would I have to pay the license? What about my fridge (many people already have Internet connected fridges with displays)? My washing machine? My iPod?
This legislation is astonishing. People will stop buying gadgets in Germany if every gadget has a state imposed monthly tarrif associated with it. It makes much more sense to simply impose a household tarrif (or even an individual yearly tax).
This smells like an underhanded way to get the masses to come out in favor of DRM in Germany to me. DRM presents a solution to the gadget tax!!! Hurray for DRM!!!
Politicians and Corporate interests are evil when combined.
The real problem with any system that tracks behavior, especially vice-like behavior, is that it is only a matter of time before powerful interests secure access to that data. Fingerprint drinkers today, in the hands of insurance companies tomorrow. Fingerprint pub-crawlers today, in the hands of employment agencies tomorrow. Fingerprint drunks today, in the hands of law-enforcement and government interests tomorrow.
Abuse slowly unfolds, it does not spring into existance overnight. Almost everything that is seriously broken in America started off as an innocent (often temporary) stopgap measure to correct some issue of the day but then slowly grew, was hijacked by various interests and warped into an aberration.
I am personally against any tracking of human beings at all and I could give a god damned about the whinning of law enforcement. The simple fact is that once such data is available to law enforcement, it is also available to criminals and interests that are not working for my benefit and since I am a law abiding citizen, there is absolutely no upside for me - only increased scrutiny and loss of privacy. Only the stupidest of criminals will expose themselves through these channels anyway. The smart criminals belong to syndicates that fscking include law enforcement (and therefore have access to this *data* for nefarious purposes).
Reject tracking, profiling and surveillance in all it's guises. Demand court issued warrants for private data. Retain your rights and your personal security.
It is more accurate to say that "soon be reaching a point where the traits you are marrying into will no longer be genetically transferable" unless you are marrying someone who is poor and couldn't afford such augmentation.
This one factor could actually flip this argument 180 degrees, essentially ensuring that the underclasses will perpetually genetically outperform the upperclasses. If we also assume less access to intelligence augmentation (let your mind wander about this), then true intelligence and true beauty may radically surpass the upperclass in the lower-classes without anyone even realizing it. This would be a result of the lower-classes having to compete in both intelligence and beauty with artificially augmented upper-classes, leading to a situation where the perception is that there is parity (or more likely that the upperclass is both more handsome and intelligent) where in actuallity, the genetic intelligence and beauty of the lower class is somewhat or even significantly greater (provided enough time for this to work itself out).
Interesting food for thought indeed.
Genetically expensive features like good vision will just *go away*? And what is the principal of anti-selection that will accomplish this? Are people with worse vision less fertile or more sexually attractive? While I agree that excellent vision may no longer be of extreme consequence to the survivability of a modern human, it in no way is an anti-indicator of selection and frankly, I don't understand how you consider it genetically expensive.
First point, agreed. Health and beauty attract health and beauty. No argument there.
Second point, wealth and beauty, mostly disagree. Generally, people born into wealth marry and bare children with others born into wealth and tend to scorn lower classes even at the expense of genetic advantages that might exist in the much vaster genepool of the lower classes. This is called *breeding* by the wealthy castes of the world, but the results are hardly impressive. You do not find many supermodels or extraordinary representations of beauty in the well *bread* old money society circles of the world. The reverse is generally true as they tend to share a smaller genepool and scorn new entrants to their *society*.
Meanwhile, the churning mass of genetic variation in the lower classes continually produces incredible specimens of atheticism, beauty, intelligence and other prodigeous characteristics mostly by virtue of the statistical variations that occur in those genepools. However, extraordinary ability does tend to provide extraordinary opportunity and is therefore a good indicator of probable financial success in life. But this is upper-middle class success and that success is not neccessarily passed on from one generation to the next. The truly upper class (read: big inheritence) is generally untouchable.
It may be, in an analysis of socio-economic natural selection, that the more accurate hypothesis is that prodigeous characteristics tend to recombine and be passed on from generation to generation maximally in the middle and upper-middle class, but often orginate from the much larger genepool of the lower class.
As a counter-point, truly anti-selective genetic traits fall out of the genepool even in the lower class. The lower class has no lack of high fitness in any category and because of the larger numbers, a much faster rate of mate attraction and reproduction. Those who are truly ugly or have severe abnormalities are shunned as much by the other poor as they are by higher classes. And another important point is that it generally takes higher intelligence and higher fitness to survive as a poor individual than it does to survive with money. The lower class would tend to be somewhat more robust than the higher classes in terms of basic survival skills.
We can take this even further by exploring aggression and morality. Instead of doing that now, I will just throw out the assertion that disdain for human life is a trait that will naturally result in escalation of class (as killing and stealing will quickly produce large amounts of money if done without getting caught). This ultimately leads to the upper class being much less moral than the lower class (given enough time for t
Also, the previously clean rivers and streams that provided water in the past are now completely polluted. The fact that those water sources have not been 100% replaced by running water is a considerable step down for the poor. And medicine? Are you kidding me? How can the poor afford modern medicine? Don't kid yourself, the poor are much worse off today than they were at any time in human history -- and there are many more of them. More poor people living today than not just a hundred years ago, but than all humans born in the entire history of our planet before one hundred years ago. It is disgraceful and could be corrected if we diverted some of the money used to kill each other and protect corporate profits to education and social services for our fellow man.
While it is true that one could hold up a photo of your iris to a camera and spoof a static iris scanner, doing the same to a dynamic scanner is not practical.
What is a dynamic iris scanner? One that looks not only for the unique patterns of the eye, but also simultaneously measures retinal response to stimuli such as dimming and brightening of the display. This is much more difficult to spoof (you would essentially need to build a model of the target's eye that could respond to external stimuli and then hold that up to the scanner).
Combined with facial recognition, dynamic iris scanning is very potent. First it recognizes your face and then your eye and then the retinal response with stimuli that is timed to be somewhat random. Just don't try to log on after a night of pubbing.
What I was really eluding to was a theory that there was in fact some sort of radioactive incident in the distant past (such as the nuclear wars written about in ancient Hindu writings and whatnot). The idea is that the jewish Kosher laws were inhereted from a much more ancient time when such laws were neccessary for survival in a post nuclear apocalyptic world.