We don't know until we have the technology in place. Giant mechas have many advantages. For example, the high-profile can be an advantage if you have automatic AI-assisted monitoring, FoF systems in place and 360 degree coverage by automatic guns. A 15 meter high mecha would keep every enemy several square kilometers around it in check. A mecha is also better than a tank for fighting in heavily reinforced urban setting. You can't use a tank to get over a 3 meter think/high wall with some smart mines and stuff. There is no reason to think that mechas' legs and joints would be constrained by our present technology, they are likely to be as mobile as monkeys and as sturdy as elefants.:) Needless to say that when you are in a giant mecha, you can dodge rockets, something a tank can't.:) So there are many potential advantages to that design and it might be practical in the future.
Segway sold all rights to medical use of self-balancing technology to P&G. P&G (supposedly) markets the IBOT wheelchair, but there is no mention of it on their site as well...
I share some of the concerns that others expressed here, but I believe there is nich for this new projects that most people overlook. Wikinews would be a perfect platform for covering ongoing complex and controversial events, such as the Ukrain election crisis. Such events usually involve so many factors, people, minor events, points of view, etc., that a major publication simply can't afford to cover it adequately in news, or even editorial format. Their tool for this is in-depth coverage where an entire issue or a significant part of it covers the event, with many articles, opposing views, etc.
But Wikinews format is better suited for this kind of coverage. You can integrate all facts in one article, you can dinamically branch some issues into substories when they gain enough importance, etc.
Wikinews is probably not very well suited for conventional stories like a bus fell into the river in Egypt or something, because there isn't much reediting that is needed. But complex topics can be covered really well (if the project takes off).
Another advantage, as some people noted, is that obscure news stories from remote corners of the world can be covered too.
Or may be it will right that Dow decided to pay 12 billion to the victims of Bhopal disaster and everyone will beleive it. A major media outlet is clearly incapable of such blunders.
You hit the nail on its head. The funny thing in America is that corruption is horribly inefficient. A congressman gets just thousands of dollars from a company, but is expected to provide it with millions or tens of millions in contracts. So it happens that at the going rate a few billions dollars should be enough to buy the whole congress and control it to do absolutely anything...
Should it be legal for people to climb mountains, to paraglide, to skate aggressively, to drink alcohol, etc? Should it be legal for them to tinker with high-power engines, dangerous chemicals and sharp knifes in their garages, as long as they don't violate local regulations and don't endanger their neighbours? And if yes, why it should be illegal to start a company that would send a human to Moon in a risky way, as long as they don't violate existing labour safety and other laws and everyone working there understands and accepts the risk?
There is nothing wrong with people risking their lives as long as they know what they are doing and do it voluntarily.
You obviously mean Pol Pot and Stalin. But they didn't kill millions because they were communist, but because they were power-tripping paranoid madmen.
You said it yourself. It's crap, because the consumers want cheap crap, not because Chinese can't make a quality product. The same will happen with Thinkpads - if Legend's marketing department thinks that there is demand for quality notebooks, it will make them, if not, it will make them of the same quality as everyone else.
BBC is doing it's readers a disservice by calling the second article "an alternative view". It's not an alternative, because it has almost no relevant informative content that would help answer the question in the title of this discussion.
Mr. Olshansky just gives a long history of people believing that immortality can be achieved using som quackery (since they lived in quacky times), then just claims as a fact that there is no reason to believe we can dramatically extend our lifespan. He doesn't give any evidence to that, doesn't provide any arguments or counter-arguments, his strongest "argument" is that gerontologists will not succeed, because a certain Ko Hung, a famous Chinese alchemist living in the 3rd century, didn't. And then, again without arguments he finishes his diatribe by saying the same boring lie that we should not work on extending life, but improve physical and mental health instead.
BBC should be doing analysis, not just striving for the false balance. Read this excellent article by Chris Mooney: Blinded By Science: How Balanced Coverage Lets the Scientific Fringe Hijack Reality. Even though an uninformed person may think that it's Aubrey de Grey (with his scary beard) is on the fringe, in fact the point applies to his opponent.
And if you don't have time to read another FA, this picture makes the point almost as well.
We would need birth control anyway. If we want to stabilize population, we need to ensure that births = deaths. The Earth population increased to 6 billion without immortality. Without birth control (all other things equal) it would still probably continue to grow. Of course, with immortality we might need to stop procreating alltogether. No big deal. You want to make a kid? Go ahead, but in 50 years you must kill yourself. Want to make two kids? You spouse must promise to do the same. Everyone will be able to choose between immortality and the "good old times".
The "problem" is that all Chinese companies are low cost, because cost of labour is lower there. It only makes sense to move production to or start it in China when you can manufacture products cheaper.:) Chinese companies can spend as much on R&D and QA as their Western counterparts as a percentage of sales and because of lower costs they would actually manage to do more with less.
On a related note, the last remaining large British car manufacturer (name?) is going to be sold to a Chinese company soon.:)
This is not entirely true. I don't think Vietnam deserves to be called either. Cuba and Venezuela have representative democracy (and usually fair elections, as confirmed by international observers) and many elements of direct democracy. Belarus can be said to have a benevolent dictator, who has immense popular support (and very vocal, but small, opposition).
The political systems in these countries are different from what is common in the US, Europe and South-East Asia. Certain freedoms are limited, most of all, the freedom to oppose the regime, but this doesn't make these countries dictatorships. And with the exception of Venezuela, there are usually no oligarchs (in Venezuela the oligarchs are actually capitalists opposed to the president Chavez).
Of course, I can still agree with your last statement to a very large extent. All these and other countries, including the Soviet Union, were not truly communistic. Two simple reasons are that 1) you can't build communism in a single country, only in the whole world and 2) you need advanced means of production to start the transition to communism. These reasons were ignored by well-meaning revolutionaries, who believed that it's worth trying, but as a result their attempts were mostly unsuccessful.:(
we are really in a phase in human history over the coming decades and centuries where humans can really wipe themselves out if radical changes are not made on the order of the changes of the feudalism to capitalism type during the Glorious, American and French revolutions. Our systems of production can not continue as they are, Keynesianism and liberalism has shown itself to be a band-aid, not a solution, and a band-aid that doesn't work very well. IMHO, of course.
The answer, however surprising, is communism. By switching to communism the society solves all problems related to corporate greed, astroturfing and stuff. It also becomes capable of correcting manufactured or irrational demand (demand for Big Macs, SUVs, etc.). It also works very well for increasing quality of life through improved healthcare, education, etc.
Sadly, the United States (most of all) was extremely effective in persuading almost everyone, whose opinion matters, that communism is somehow evil and liberal/democratic/free market societies are an answer to all problems. This (and the willingness of the USA to support pro-US coups with money, weapons and know-how) makes the possibility of communist revolutions very low.:( And the few countries that stay true (more or less) to communism, such as Vietnam or Cuba and (not Western European) socialist (or trying to be socialist) states such as Venezuela or Belarus, won't persuade anyone, unless they build paradise in their countries. And even that may not be enough...
You do not imply that for the next 500 years the summers will be cold again, do you? Global warming being real means that in 2005 or may be 2007 we have a chance to have the hottest summer in 1000 years. And then in 2015 the hottest summer in 10000. Average summer temperature in Europe is not the global warming - it's just one of the indicators. There are a lot of thing broken with the climate, the French killer heat wave is just the most obvious one.
Same for 27,000 people dead. This is just an illustration of the scale of possible global warming effects. It's not something which will just make the climate milder so that we can grow grapes, this is something which already kills a lot of people. As for they were weak and would have died anyway, this is bullshit logic. If not for the heat wave, those people would have lived - some for weeks, some for months, some for years. You too might eventually die - do you think that justifies someone going into your home and strangling you to death?
The only party guilty of pseudoscience are those, who ignore the facts and downplay their importance using logical fallacies.
This is no mere "low cost Chinese company". This is Legend, one of the largest manufacturers of PCs in the world. Do you seriously think that Chinese companies can't make products as good as those made by IBM in America?
Open your beloved Thinkpad. Check out where the components are made. Do you still think Chinese can't make quality products?
Seriously, enough with that "China = low quality" already.
The potential for abuse is not related to anti-spamming activities. I can distribute a screensaver that would DDoS www.cutepuppies.org and www.applepie.org. But the difference is that if I DDoS a good guy, I would get no popular support, I would be an easy target for a lawsuit and every slashdotter would be asking to tar and feather me.
It's not like anyone is arguing for a law to allow free-for-all DDoSing, it's just that you may do it, as long as you sure everyone will agree, or YOU will face the consequences.
This is actually like the 2nd amendment - everyone is allowed to carry a gun and is given the capability of killing anyone at will. The idea is that those who kill bad people will be thanked, while those, who kill good people will be punished afterwards.
KaZaA doesn't have facilities for basic file management. In eMule you can rename a file, while it downloads, you can also display all the names of the file (how different users call it). You can also add and view comments.
This makes it possible to see very early (after you start the download and acquire the soruces), whether the file is genuine.
Why, of course.:) It's from Eugeny Onegin by A. S. Pushkin (the famous novel in verse). Google didn't work because that translation was by a relatively unknown author Dennis Litoshick. More familiar to most English readers (and to Google) would probably be the translation by Charles H. Johnston:
My uncle -- high ideals inspire him;
but when past joking he fell sick, he really forced one to admire him -- and never played a shrewder trick. Let others learn from his example! But God, how deadly dull to sample sickroom attendance night and day and never stir a foot away! And the sly baseness, fit to throttle, of entertaining the half-dead: one smoothes the pillows down in bed, and glumly serves the medicine bottle, and sighs, and asks oneself all through: When will the devil come for you?
Both of them are available on Lib.Ru, the Russian online library. There are many English (and other) translations. Douglas Hofstader, who made one translation himself, wrote about this in the introduction to Russian edition of GEB. Here is an excerpt from his version:
My uncle, matchless moral model.
When deathly ill, learned how to make His friends respect him. bow and coddle Of all his ploys, that takes the cake. To others, this might teach a lesson:
But Lord above, I'd fed such stress in Having to sit there night and day. Daring not once to step away. Plus, I'd say. Its hypocritical To keep the half-dead's spirlts bright. To plump his plilows till they're right, Fetch his pills with tears veridical Yet in secret to wish and sigh. 'Hurry, dear Uncle, up and die!'
Here is another one by Yevgeny Bonver (incomplete):
My uncle, of the best traditions,
When being almost deceased, Forced men to treat him with distinction, Which was the best of his ideas. Yes, his example - to us for learning, But, Heavens, how it is boring To sit with him all day and night, Not having right to step aside! What a deplorable deception To entertain the man, half-dead, To fix a pillow in his bed, To give him drugs with sad attention, To sigh and think in deeps of heart: When will the deuce take you apart?
I am not giving the original Russian text here, but you can ask your nearest Russian friend and he/she will probably easily recite this particular verse (or more) from memory.:)
To those not smart or educated enough to recognize the reference, much less understand it, (including two moderators), the parent post was supposed to be an example showing that even two centuries ago some people were not exactly thrilled about taking care about elders for indefinite periods of time, even when these elders didn't routinely live to 100 years. And anyone, who implies that giving old people companion robots is heartless and a sign of terrible times we live in, is nothing more than a stupid luddite.
And then there was this, and this and the same joke is repeated in basically the same story about home robots. I never saw that crappy movie, TV series, a comic or whatever it is, but even I was already able to guess that there was some robot that pushed old people down the stairs. Get over that, please, will you? This is a tired old unfunny joke already. Enough is enough.
The rules (part 15, as you can see on ANY electronic device in your house) are that the device may not cause any harmful interference and must not accept any it receives. So while a TV might be in violation too, the DS clearly is, because it does cause harmful interference. This is clearly illegal, dangerous (imagine a DS in a hospital or a nuclear submarine, if you permit me some exaggeration) and should be banned, recalled and destroyed. The company should be fined and anally probed. This is really unacceptable.
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We don't know until we have the technology in place. Giant mechas have many advantages. For example, the high-profile can be an advantage if you have automatic AI-assisted monitoring, FoF systems in place and 360 degree coverage by automatic guns. A 15 meter high mecha would keep every enemy several square kilometers around it in check. A mecha is also better than a tank for fighting in heavily reinforced urban setting. You can't use a tank to get over a 3 meter think/high wall with some smart mines and stuff. There is no reason to think that mechas' legs and joints would be constrained by our present technology, they are likely to be as mobile as monkeys and as sturdy as elefants. :) Needless to say that when you are in a giant mecha, you can dodge rockets, something a tank can't. :) So there are many potential advantages to that design and it might be practical in the future.
Segway sold all rights to medical use of self-balancing technology to P&G. P&G (supposedly) markets the IBOT wheelchair, but there is no mention of it on their site as well...
I share some of the concerns that others expressed here, but I believe there is nich for this new projects that most people overlook. Wikinews would be a perfect platform for covering ongoing complex and controversial events, such as the Ukrain election crisis. Such events usually involve so many factors, people, minor events, points of view, etc., that a major publication simply can't afford to cover it adequately in news, or even editorial format. Their tool for this is in-depth coverage where an entire issue or a significant part of it covers the event, with many articles, opposing views, etc.
But Wikinews format is better suited for this kind of coverage. You can integrate all facts in one article, you can dinamically branch some issues into substories when they gain enough importance, etc.
Wikinews is probably not very well suited for conventional stories like a bus fell into the river in Egypt or something, because there isn't much reediting that is needed. But complex topics can be covered really well (if the project takes off).
Another advantage, as some people noted, is that obscure news stories from remote corners of the world can be covered too.
That's write, not right, of course. And tehre are some other minor spelling, grammar and style errors, sorry.
Or may be it will right that Dow decided to pay 12 billion to the victims of Bhopal disaster and everyone will beleive it. A major media outlet is clearly incapable of such blunders.
You hit the nail on its head. The funny thing in America is that corruption is horribly inefficient. A congressman gets just thousands of dollars from a company, but is expected to provide it with millions or tens of millions in contracts. So it happens that at the going rate a few billions dollars should be enough to buy the whole congress and control it to do absolutely anything...
Should it be legal for people to climb mountains, to paraglide, to skate aggressively, to drink alcohol, etc? Should it be legal for them to tinker with high-power engines, dangerous chemicals and sharp knifes in their garages, as long as they don't violate local regulations and don't endanger their neighbours? And if yes, why it should be illegal to start a company that would send a human to Moon in a risky way, as long as they don't violate existing labour safety and other laws and everyone working there understands and accepts the risk?
There is nothing wrong with people risking their lives as long as they know what they are doing and do it voluntarily.
You obviously mean Pol Pot and Stalin. But they didn't kill millions because they were communist, but because they were power-tripping paranoid madmen.
You said it yourself. It's crap, because the consumers want cheap crap, not because Chinese can't make a quality product. The same will happen with Thinkpads - if Legend's marketing department thinks that there is demand for quality notebooks, it will make them, if not, it will make them of the same quality as everyone else.
Here is a short summary: "CIA must monitor every Internet user or terrorist will terrorise us or something". Signed - former CIA director.
BBC is doing it's readers a disservice by calling the second article "an alternative view". It's not an alternative, because it has almost no relevant informative content that would help answer the question in the title of this discussion.
Mr. Olshansky just gives a long history of people believing that immortality can be achieved using som quackery (since they lived in quacky times), then just claims as a fact that there is no reason to believe we can dramatically extend our lifespan. He doesn't give any evidence to that, doesn't provide any arguments or counter-arguments, his strongest "argument" is that gerontologists will not succeed, because a certain Ko Hung, a famous Chinese alchemist living in the 3rd century, didn't. And then, again without arguments he finishes his diatribe by saying the same boring lie that we should not work on extending life, but improve physical and mental health instead.
BBC should be doing analysis, not just striving for the false balance. Read this excellent article by Chris Mooney: Blinded By Science: How Balanced Coverage Lets the Scientific Fringe Hijack Reality. Even though an uninformed person may think that it's Aubrey de Grey (with his scary beard) is on the fringe, in fact the point applies to his opponent.
And if you don't have time to read another FA, this picture makes the point almost as well.
We would need birth control anyway. If we want to stabilize population, we need to ensure that births = deaths. The Earth population increased to 6 billion without immortality. Without birth control (all other things equal) it would still probably continue to grow. Of course, with immortality we might need to stop procreating alltogether. No big deal. You want to make a kid? Go ahead, but in 50 years you must kill yourself. Want to make two kids? You spouse must promise to do the same. Everyone will be able to choose between immortality and the "good old times".
P.S. Of course, that's an oversimplification.
That's not true. Hopefully, other technologies would advance at a similar pace, so that there are things for us to do besides spending time in VR.
The "problem" is that all Chinese companies are low cost, because cost of labour is lower there. It only makes sense to move production to or start it in China when you can manufacture products cheaper. :) Chinese companies can spend as much on R&D and QA as their Western counterparts as a percentage of sales and because of lower costs they would actually manage to do more with less.
:)
On a related note, the last remaining large British car manufacturer (name?) is going to be sold to a Chinese company soon.
This is not entirely true. I don't think Vietnam deserves to be called either. Cuba and Venezuela have representative democracy (and usually fair elections, as confirmed by international observers) and many elements of direct democracy. Belarus can be said to have a benevolent dictator, who has immense popular support (and very vocal, but small, opposition).
:(
The political systems in these countries are different from what is common in the US, Europe and South-East Asia. Certain freedoms are limited, most of all, the freedom to oppose the regime, but this doesn't make these countries dictatorships. And with the exception of Venezuela, there are usually no oligarchs (in Venezuela the oligarchs are actually capitalists opposed to the president Chavez).
Of course, I can still agree with your last statement to a very large extent. All these and other countries, including the Soviet Union, were not truly communistic. Two simple reasons are that 1) you can't build communism in a single country, only in the whole world and 2) you need advanced means of production to start the transition to communism. These reasons were ignored by well-meaning revolutionaries, who believed that it's worth trying, but as a result their attempts were mostly unsuccessful.
we are really in a phase in human history over the coming decades and centuries where humans can really wipe themselves out if radical changes are not made on the order of the changes of the feudalism to capitalism type during the Glorious, American and French revolutions. Our systems of production can not continue as they are, Keynesianism and liberalism has shown itself to be a band-aid, not a solution, and a band-aid that doesn't work very well. IMHO, of course.
:( And the few countries that stay true (more or less) to communism, such as Vietnam or Cuba and (not Western European) socialist (or trying to be socialist) states such as Venezuela or Belarus, won't persuade anyone, unless they build paradise in their countries. And even that may not be enough...
The answer, however surprising, is communism. By switching to communism the society solves all problems related to corporate greed, astroturfing and stuff. It also becomes capable of correcting manufactured or irrational demand (demand for Big Macs, SUVs, etc.). It also works very well for increasing quality of life through improved healthcare, education, etc.
Sadly, the United States (most of all) was extremely effective in persuading almost everyone, whose opinion matters, that communism is somehow evil and liberal/democratic/free market societies are an answer to all problems. This (and the willingness of the USA to support pro-US coups with money, weapons and know-how) makes the possibility of communist revolutions very low.
You do not imply that for the next 500 years the summers will be cold again, do you? Global warming being real means that in 2005 or may be 2007 we have a chance to have the hottest summer in 1000 years. And then in 2015 the hottest summer in 10000. Average summer temperature in Europe is not the global warming - it's just one of the indicators. There are a lot of thing broken with the climate, the French killer heat wave is just the most obvious one.
Same for 27,000 people dead. This is just an illustration of the scale of possible global warming effects. It's not something which will just make the climate milder so that we can grow grapes, this is something which already kills a lot of people. As for they were weak and would have died anyway, this is bullshit logic. If not for the heat wave, those people would have lived - some for weeks, some for months, some for years. You too might eventually die - do you think that justifies someone going into your home and strangling you to death?
The only party guilty of pseudoscience are those, who ignore the facts and downplay their importance using logical fallacies.
P.S. Learn to spell "ridiculous".
This is no mere "low cost Chinese company". This is Legend, one of the largest manufacturers of PCs in the world. Do you seriously think that Chinese companies can't make products as good as those made by IBM in America?
Open your beloved Thinkpad. Check out where the components are made. Do you still think Chinese can't make quality products?
Seriously, enough with that "China = low quality" already.
The potential for abuse is not related to anti-spamming activities. I can distribute a screensaver that would DDoS www.cutepuppies.org and www.applepie.org. But the difference is that if I DDoS a good guy, I would get no popular support, I would be an easy target for a lawsuit and every slashdotter would be asking to tar and feather me.
It's not like anyone is arguing for a law to allow free-for-all DDoSing, it's just that you may do it, as long as you sure everyone will agree, or YOU will face the consequences.
This is actually like the 2nd amendment - everyone is allowed to carry a gun and is given the capability of killing anyone at will. The idea is that those who kill bad people will be thanked, while those, who kill good people will be punished afterwards.
KaZaA doesn't have facilities for basic file management. In eMule you can rename a file, while it downloads, you can also display all the names of the file (how different users call it). You can also add and view comments.
This makes it possible to see very early (after you start the download and acquire the soruces), whether the file is genuine.
eMule doesn't do it, KaZaA doesn't do it.
To those not smart or educated enough to recognize the reference, much less understand it, (including two moderators), the parent post was supposed to be an example showing that even two centuries ago some people were not exactly thrilled about taking care about elders for indefinite periods of time, even when these elders didn't routinely live to 100 years. And anyone, who implies that giving old people companion robots is heartless and a sign of terrible times we live in, is nothing more than a stupid luddite.
And then there was this, and this and the same joke is repeated in basically the same story about home robots. I never saw that crappy movie, TV series, a comic or whatever it is, but even I was already able to guess that there was some robot that pushed old people down the stairs. Get over that, please, will you? This is a tired old unfunny joke already. Enough is enough.
The rules (part 15, as you can see on ANY electronic device in your house) are that the device may not cause any harmful interference and must not accept any it receives. So while a TV might be in violation too, the DS clearly is, because it does cause harmful interference. This is clearly illegal, dangerous (imagine a DS in a hospital or a nuclear submarine, if you permit me some exaggeration) and should be banned, recalled and destroyed. The company should be fined and anally probed. This is really unacceptable.