"Certainly, the eugenistic and racial ideologies that in the past humiliated man and provoked immense suffering are not being proposed again, but a new mentality is creeping in that tends to justify a different consideration of life and personal dignity . . . The tendency, therefore, is to give precedence to the active faculties, to proficiency, to physical perfection and beauty, to the detriment of other dimensions of existence that are not thought to matter. This weakens the respect that is due to every human being, even in the presence of a developmental defect or a genetic illness that could be manifested at some point in his life . . "
-- Pope Benedict XVI (cue kneejerk ad-hominem attack) on the systemic risks of genetic engineering.
and I personally speculate that eventually a "genetic illness" will include "you weren't bioengineered/genetically screened properly; why are you on our planet wasting our resources, scum?" (which is class warfare thinly veiled as environmentalism, too!)
I take it you're not even interested in trying to make an app like the barcode scanner on my Google phone... which not only scans barcodes and QR codes and such, but does so with a real-time video view (instead of making you take a snapshot with the camera when you have it exactly right). Obviously not having those capabilities, even as a possibility, is a good thing.
First, don't get me wrong. I think your idea has some merit.
However, I'd like to ask you where we draw the line between someone with "a problem between the ears" and "freedom of thought". On the one one extreme, you could be very relativist say that his mode of thought is just as meaningful and valid as anyone else's (and if you say otherwise you're a cultural imperialist trying to impose your will upon the rest of us). On the other hand, you could say that Europa has always been at war with Eastasia and if you don't love Big Brother than obviously you need treatment. (Optionally, s/Big Brother/Jesus/ as appropriate for your particular brand of paranoia).
Somewhere between these extremes, somebody needs to draw a line. And that Somebody is a politician. Or, worse, lots of them. Or a politician-appointed board of "experts". History has shown us some mixed results from similar endeavors. Take, for instance, the North Carolina Board of Eugenics. I dare say that their (nominal) targets were not too dissimilar, either: people with "a problem between the ears" who were marginalized by the more sophisticated segments of society.
The problem is that there's basically no way to prove that you have parental approval, so it's essentially barring the websites from doing anything to collect information from minors (in excess of COPPA regulations, and in excess of what it's legal to collect offline, I believe).
They have a light, which at first flickers randomly; they learn to turn the light off so that other robots can't tell where they are. To my mind that's not really sophisticated enough to qualify as "deceptive".
Yeah. It's more like the robots are hiding from each other. You could, in fact, describe them as "robots in disguise".
Probably you are trying to say that the computers will have to be proficient in this new discipline.
It's not that hard, either. Just math. We have the equations. They're well-understood. Some physics grad students could probably write the basic engine for such an endeavour. I'd worry more about $UNKNOWN_EXOTIC_EFFECT pushing something off-course.
Don't be stupid. I mean, the widening fuel/tax-vs-driving gulf is a legit issue, but if the state wants their road tax money, they're perfectly capable of asking for it. (Demanding, actually). In the meantime, they're giving you a tax break for fuel efficiency, which isn't that bad a thing to do, all told.
And in general, I reject the premise that people are morally obligated to voluntarily donate as great a portion to their income as is feasible to the government (like some of those people who say "you shouldn't take a tax break you don't need") - particularly not giving all sorts of money to the Department of Transportation. There are better ways to serve humanity, people.
There's "being called a bad name," and then there's "being called a bad name by POTUS in a highly public speech." The latter can have massive implications.
"Certainly, the eugenistic and racial ideologies that in the past humiliated man and provoked immense suffering are not being proposed again, but a new mentality is creeping in that tends to justify a different consideration of life and personal dignity . . . The tendency, therefore, is to give precedence to the active faculties, to proficiency, to physical perfection and beauty, to the detriment of other dimensions of existence that are not thought to matter. This weakens the respect that is due to every human being, even in the presence of a developmental defect or a genetic illness that could be manifested at some point in his life . . "
-- Pope Benedict XVI, with regards to human dignity in the face of genetic enhancement technology (cue the kneejerk ad-hominem anti-Catholic/papal tangent.... again...)
"Certainly, the eugenistic and racial ideologies that in the past humiliated man and provoked immense suffering are not being proposed again, but a new mentality is creeping in that tends to justify a different consideration of life and personal dignity . . .
The tendency, therefore, is to give precedence to the active faculties, to proficiency, to physical perfection and beauty, to the detriment of other dimensions of existence that are not thought to matter. This weakens the respect that is due to every human being, even in the presence of a developmental defect or a genetic illness that could be manifested at some point in his life . . "
... or when they don't want to be infused with the "latest and greatest" trendy genetic therapy.
(Pope Benedict XVI, with regards to human dignity in the face of genetic enhancement technology)
More like "a big mean fish who found something tasty to eat, and chased someone other fish off" but possibly you could talk about this with single-celled organisms too. Territory is a basic trait of many, many animals. Ever owned dogs, or know someone who does? Ever have them, ah, mark their territory? Or get angry when someone tries to appropriate their favorite stick, bone, or squeaky toy? Cats, too. The only difference with humans is scale.
And some "ownership" concept is necessary for functioning societies in our world. Humans can invest significantly in the improvement of something (plowing a field, making a drainage system, digging up rocks to get metal to refine it and create useful tools) but some concept of ownership is nearly a prerequisite for there to be any meaningful incentive for someone to engage in these activities (lest your neighbor | friendly local barbarian raiding party | wolves come steal it all away leaving you bereft).
We've taken matters to new extremes with Capitalism when making billion-dollar factories for cars and iPods and such. Now, on the other hand, the non-exclusivity experienced by "virtual property" (or even "intellectual property")is a different matter, and calls for different paradigms of responsibility. Patents and copyright attempt (or at least attempted originally, insert your modern interpretation here) to create a hybrid best-of-both-worlds approach: you get to own and exploit some invention or creation for N years so you have an incentive to create it, and then it becomes a free-for-all and everyone benefits.
Some games try to simulate Reality, or a version of something not entirely dissimilar (wizards and such aside). Real life is characterized by objects that can only exist one place at a time. There is not an infinite supply of these objects. Insofar as a game attempts to simulate real life, then the notion of "virtual property" is not entirely devoid of meaning.
On the other hand, it's certainly overrated in some places. "Second Life" comes to mind. The objective of virtual property there, however, is not so much to simulate life as it is to aid in the enrichment of Linden Labs. The state of property there is pretty sad, and suffers from overcommercialization.
You: "No. I like the comforting feeling of knowing there's a pilot in
the cockpit."
TFA: "Because unmanned aircraft have never routinely operated in the national airspace system, the level of public acceptance is unknown. One researcher observed that as unmanned aircraft expand into the non-defense sector, there will inevitably be public debate over the need for and motives behind such proliferation."
Looks like your attitude is one of the things they'll be studying, hmm?
How can having a kangaroo crawl into a protective area (where prey cannot pick them off easily) be considered poor design?
That would be because of the "epic crawl" part. Have you never seen this on the Discovery Channel or something? The pupa is this tiny slug-like thing, maybe a centimeter long, and it needs to crawl halfway up its mothers' front side and then back down into the pocket. The mother kangaroo is there licking a trail into her own fur to make it a liittle bit easier for the poor thing. Not just really weird, kinda risky on the newborn.
I know an economist. He's noted, on a number of occasions, "Restrictions on trade are usually put in place by the rich and powerful, to benefit themselves at the expense of others." Restricting trade under the argument that the Chinese and Indians are willing to do it for a lower salary than people in your country? (Which is still, even today, extremely rich, and rather powerful...) Yeah, I'd say that's a "protectionist" move. If you want to make a case that "protectionism is good for the American economy" then that's one thing, but at least call a spade a spade, wouldya? Then, afterward, we can study the interaction of protectionism and the reality of the American and world economies, and see what the implications actually are, instead of spouting baseless partisan rhetoric at each other. How does that sound?
It's also really cute how you call anyone who will do the work for a low salary a "slave". Then when you tell them "you can't have this work!" you can imply that they're better off without it, back home in India working at the family fish farm. (... yes, I know this guy.) But Free the Slaves! Never mind that these people might conceivably be better off with these arrangements than the alternative, and that's why they're doing it, instead of whatever the alternative is. It's a great little accounting system: any material benefit experienced by these people just doesn't count! Also, any savings on salary experienced by people who use information technology doesn't count for anything either, because everyone in IT is paid by Evil Corporations and Evil Corporations face perfectly inelastic demand curves so they'll never lower their prices to the consumer at all, it'll all go to their profits, oh and by the way their profits are 110% owned by evil rich people and not by anyone investing for retirement at all ever; in fact, if one of these companies go bankrupt, everyone's 401k gets a free bonus deposit! Morally, all big companies are obligated to hire as many IT people as they can at as high a wage as possible!! Because it helps the economy!!1
</rant>
I also like how you indicate that countries like India and China are "too nationalistic to fall for [this kind of crap]" -- I find this amusing since when America recently had a bout of strong nationalism during the early George W Bush presidency, they ended up taking a whole lot of flak for it. Oh, the irony of being America.
Your anti-free-trade/globalization argument, that of pollution, is ironically one of the least applicable to the information technology industry. Information Technology does not "poison us and fill our air, water, and land with toxins". Shoddy manufacturing processes might, but whether the computer is built in the US or in China doesn't affect it much once it's installed and people are operating it. With regards to environmental issues, I can only propose to you that the sooner the Chinese and the Indians reach a level of wealth comparable to that available to the United States, they will find themselves with people who care about as much about the United States.
All that aside, though, you are right - it's still not that bad of advice to advise people to stay out of IT - at least if they have to pay for a $100,000 for their degree. Not that an inferior degree will land you a position in IT either. After all, as long as American idiots are overhyped on IT, companies might as well hire the guy who has the $100,000 nice degree instead of the El Cheapo Certification. But I think the real solution is for people to stop thinking an IT degree is worth paying $100k for, rather than just saying "omg free trade is horrible". Even if there's not competition in the job market, I am busy writing software to make IT administration easier (which means fewer of you needed to work on it).
And this is a good thing. IT is humble infrastructure work, like plumbing and roads. It's not an end in and of itself - it's there to help other people do meaningful things. Ideally, you don't want to be spending a lot of money on these things: you want them to be as cheap as possible while still helping people Get Things Done (California labor unions notwithstanding). Otherwise, it's a drag on society.
You might check it with a classical-computing algorithm. For NP problems, verification of the answer is often substantially faster than computing the answer itself.
Slashdot Mirror
-- Pope Benedict XVI (cue kneejerk ad-hominem attack) on the systemic risks of genetic engineering.
and I personally speculate that eventually a "genetic illness" will include "you weren't bioengineered/genetically screened properly; why are you on our planet wasting our resources, scum?" (which is class warfare thinly veiled as environmentalism, too!)
I'm fairly sure that the Internet Archive is a nonprofit.
I take it you're not even interested in trying to make an app like the barcode scanner on my Google phone... which not only scans barcodes and QR codes and such, but does so with a real-time video view (instead of making you take a snapshot with the camera when you have it exactly right). Obviously not having those capabilities, even as a possibility, is a good thing.
However, I'd like to ask you where we draw the line between someone with "a problem between the ears" and "freedom of thought". On the one one extreme, you could be very relativist say that his mode of thought is just as meaningful and valid as anyone else's (and if you say otherwise you're a cultural imperialist trying to impose your will upon the rest of us). On the other hand, you could say that Europa has always been at war with Eastasia and if you don't love Big Brother than obviously you need treatment. (Optionally, s/Big Brother/Jesus/ as appropriate for your particular brand of paranoia).
Somewhere between these extremes, somebody needs to draw a line. And that Somebody is a politician. Or, worse, lots of them. Or a politician-appointed board of "experts". History has shown us some mixed results from similar endeavors. Take, for instance, the North Carolina Board of Eugenics. I dare say that their (nominal) targets were not too dissimilar, either: people with "a problem between the ears" who were marginalized by the more sophisticated segments of society.
Anyway, Star Wars can still trounce Star Trek any day of the week. And Luke ain't no Commie stooge, like Picard is.
No, I'm not going there to check. It's probably a generic domain name squatter, but I don't want to risk it if I end up being wrong.
The problem is that there's basically no way to prove that you have parental approval, so it's essentially barring the websites from doing anything to collect information from minors (in excess of COPPA regulations, and in excess of what it's legal to collect offline, I believe).
Yeah. It's more like the robots are hiding from each other. You could, in fact, describe them as "robots in disguise".
It's not that hard, either. Just math. We have the equations. They're well-understood. Some physics grad students could probably write the basic engine for such an endeavour. I'd worry more about $UNKNOWN_EXOTIC_EFFECT pushing something off-course.
And in general, I reject the premise that people are morally obligated to voluntarily donate as great a portion to their income as is feasible to the government (like some of those people who say "you shouldn't take a tax break you don't need") - particularly not giving all sorts of money to the Department of Transportation. There are better ways to serve humanity, people.
There's "being called a bad name," and then there's "being called a bad name by POTUS in a highly public speech." The latter can have massive implications.
"Fovea"? That sounds dirty. Gene therapy is the Devil's work, I tell you!!!
Or even if you're just not genetically "perfect," you misshapen worthless drags on society's productivity.
-- Pope Benedict XVI, with regards to human dignity in the face of genetic enhancement technology
(cue the kneejerk ad-hominem anti-Catholic/papal tangent.... again...)
(Pope Benedict XVI, with regards to human dignity in the face of genetic enhancement technology)
No. Here's the ASCII art.
<--O--<
^
-
O
-
^
^
-
O
-
^
^
-
O
-
^
>--O-->
And some "ownership" concept is necessary for functioning societies in our world. Humans can invest significantly in the improvement of something (plowing a field, making a drainage system, digging up rocks to get metal to refine it and create useful tools) but some concept of ownership is nearly a prerequisite for there to be any meaningful incentive for someone to engage in these activities (lest your neighbor | friendly local barbarian raiding party | wolves come steal it all away leaving you bereft).
We've taken matters to new extremes with Capitalism when making billion-dollar factories for cars and iPods and such. Now, on the other hand, the non-exclusivity experienced by "virtual property" (or even "intellectual property")is a different matter, and calls for different paradigms of responsibility. Patents and copyright attempt (or at least attempted originally, insert your modern interpretation here) to create a hybrid best-of-both-worlds approach: you get to own and exploit some invention or creation for N years so you have an incentive to create it, and then it becomes a free-for-all and everyone benefits.
On the other hand, it's certainly overrated in some places. "Second Life" comes to mind. The objective of virtual property there, however, is not so much to simulate life as it is to aid in the enrichment of Linden Labs. The state of property there is pretty sad, and suffers from overcommercialization.
The answer to "rainbow" and "sky blue" is "refraction", so I'm guessing that's probably where babies come from as well.
You: "No. I like the comforting feeling of knowing there's a pilot in the cockpit."
TFA: "Because unmanned aircraft have never routinely operated in the national airspace system, the level of public acceptance is unknown. One researcher observed that as unmanned aircraft expand into the non-defense sector, there will inevitably be public debate over the need for and motives behind such proliferation."
Looks like your attitude is one of the things they'll be studying, hmm?
I thought the purpose of judges was to toss you in jail for 6 months without a trial for contempt of court for a little disruptive yawning.
sudo make me a sandwich!
That would be because of the "epic crawl" part. Have you never seen this on the Discovery Channel or something? The pupa is this tiny slug-like thing, maybe a centimeter long, and it needs to crawl halfway up its mothers' front side and then back down into the pocket. The mother kangaroo is there licking a trail into her own fur to make it a liittle bit easier for the poor thing. Not just really weird, kinda risky on the newborn.
I know an economist. He's noted, on a number of occasions, "Restrictions on trade are usually put in place by the rich and powerful, to benefit themselves at the expense of others." Restricting trade under the argument that the Chinese and Indians are willing to do it for a lower salary than people in your country? (Which is still, even today, extremely rich, and rather powerful...) Yeah, I'd say that's a "protectionist" move. If you want to make a case that "protectionism is good for the American economy" then that's one thing, but at least call a spade a spade, wouldya? Then, afterward, we can study the interaction of protectionism and the reality of the American and world economies, and see what the implications actually are, instead of spouting baseless partisan rhetoric at each other. How does that sound?
It's also really cute how you call anyone who will do the work for a low salary a "slave". Then when you tell them "you can't have this work!" you can imply that they're better off without it, back home in India working at the family fish farm. (... yes, I know this guy.) But Free the Slaves! Never mind that these people might conceivably be better off with these arrangements than the alternative, and that's why they're doing it, instead of whatever the alternative is. It's a great little accounting system: any material benefit experienced by these people just doesn't count! Also, any savings on salary experienced by people who use information technology doesn't count for anything either, because everyone in IT is paid by Evil Corporations and Evil Corporations face perfectly inelastic demand curves so they'll never lower their prices to the consumer at all, it'll all go to their profits, oh and by the way their profits are 110% owned by evil rich people and not by anyone investing for retirement at all ever; in fact, if one of these companies go bankrupt, everyone's 401k gets a free bonus deposit! Morally, all big companies are obligated to hire as many IT people as they can at as high a wage as possible!! Because it helps the economy!!1 </rant>
I also like how you indicate that countries like India and China are "too nationalistic to fall for [this kind of crap]" -- I find this amusing since when America recently had a bout of strong nationalism during the early George W Bush presidency, they ended up taking a whole lot of flak for it. Oh, the irony of being America.
Your anti-free-trade/globalization argument, that of pollution, is ironically one of the least applicable to the information technology industry. Information Technology does not "poison us and fill our air, water, and land with toxins". Shoddy manufacturing processes might, but whether the computer is built in the US or in China doesn't affect it much once it's installed and people are operating it. With regards to environmental issues, I can only propose to you that the sooner the Chinese and the Indians reach a level of wealth comparable to that available to the United States, they will find themselves with people who care about as much about the United States.
All that aside, though, you are right - it's still not that bad of advice to advise people to stay out of IT - at least if they have to pay for a $100,000 for their degree. Not that an inferior degree will land you a position in IT either. After all, as long as American idiots are overhyped on IT, companies might as well hire the guy who has the $100,000 nice degree instead of the El Cheapo Certification. But I think the real solution is for people to stop thinking an IT degree is worth paying $100k for, rather than just saying "omg free trade is horrible". Even if there's not competition in the job market, I am busy writing software to make IT administration easier (which means fewer of you needed to work on it).
And this is a good thing. IT is humble infrastructure work, like plumbing and roads. It's not an end in and of itself - it's there to help other people do meaningful things. Ideally, you don't want to be spending a lot of money on these things: you want them to be as cheap as possible while still helping people Get Things Done (California labor unions notwithstanding). Otherwise, it's a drag on society.
You might check it with a classical-computing algorithm. For NP problems, verification of the answer is often substantially faster than computing the answer itself.
If you look it up, that's actually a shovel-ready infrastructure project that's part of the stimulus package!!