so many Age of Exploration captains lost their shorts looking for...
I think that would be shirts, or you may be right, as Winston Churchill described the British navy as "Rum, sodomy, and the lash".
More seriously though, there is a lot of scientific doomsaying going on, and not much societal analysis here. The process is simple enough, as I see it, early man produces fire, cultures move on and up to more efficient methods of fire production, including coal and oil burning, and bases entire industries and cultural foundations on it (the industrial revolution). Now we have a global society that is entirely dependant on these advanced methods of fire burning, but we have only begun to grasp the consequences of our smoking in the sandbox very very recently. So its going to take time to reverse the trend of millenia. The question is, have we got that time?
There is a lot of debate about cause and effect and so on, but not a great deal about solutions. If say over the next twenty years we move to nuclear power exclusively, and get rid of all the vehicles that currently produce harmful emissions, how quickly can we repair the damage? Is it already too late for the next few generations? Is it possible that a runaway greenhouse effect is inevitable, and how far can it go? Are we looking at Venus here?
Ah cheer up, I was just trying to see how long it would take your head to asplode. Honestly, at the end of the day, I can't say I'm convinced by your arguments, and its a safe bet to say that I can't convince you likewise. So lets agree to disagree, and leave it at that.
Here, have some
strongbad, always puts me in a good mood.
How about I take pictures of your kids playing in a public playground and publish them in a forum known to be frequented by pedophiles along with your address? I could but I wouldn't.
You could but you'd go to prison for it. Lets see here, reckless endangerment of a minor, or putting said minor at risk of personal injury above and beyond the normal run of affairs due to your actions, incitment to a crime, again regarding a minor, and they'll probably get you on loitering too. But that's because you got a camera and took the photos.
What ZDNet is making clear here is that you shouldn't be afraid to eat a big ol' slice of what you are serving. If you are serving a vast amount of information all disorganised, you must assume its only a matter of time before someone organises it. Also, you had better be ready for that moment when it comes to bite you in the ass, and this is what the ZDNet stance underlines most eloquently.
People have expressed concerns about privacy and google before, but it was seen mostly as conspiracy theorists crying in the wilderness. Now the top guy of google has been personally targeted by his own creation, it's all out in the open. Superb journalism says I, and rough justice, further. If you open pandora's box, you had best be prepared for what comes out...
Podcasting is just another hip-to-be-cool term coined by some luminary metrosexual in the blogosphere. Somewhere out there right now there is a passive agressive latte sipping boob tapping "how I invented podcasting", his first book, into an imac. Its the new warhol, baby. I can't wait until the standard of coolness for these new age middle age wanna be a teen icon sorts is how long you can survive in a room with a starved pit bull.
I can only agree here. A couple of interesting points, yahoo will index your website whether or not any site in the world is pointing a link to it, and yahoo actually pays attention to the the meta tags at the top. Now while I'll be the first one to observe that meta tags have been abused horribly, in a lot of cases they do in fact represent the content of the site well. Its no more of a risk than any of the other criteria used to index websites, really. The quality of google's search and image search has declined quite a bit in the last few months, the question is whether or not they recognise that.
So you don't think I've added anything constructive to the debate?
Nope, not really. Besides doggedly sticking to one flawed perspective and belabouring it in approximately the same way post after tedious, tedious post, the only thing you have really brought to slashdot is exercise for my fingers.
In essence, the strawman attack is putting words in your opponent's mouth and then attacking the resulting position, while simultaenously [sic] evading the real argument.
Congratulations, you learned what the copy and paste process is for. And you have just perfectly described your position from the start. Thanks.
You represent a false argument, based on no scientific evidence what so ever, based on some fantasy that throwing a dust spec [sic] of alien matter into a bonfire is somehow going implode the bonfire and fry everyone nearby cooking their marshmallows.
Show me evidence to the contrary. As I have stated from the start, you sarcasm-proof individual you, its not a bonfire. If you stick your hand in a fire, as your mommy told you, you will get burned. If you stick your hand in a nuclear reactor, you may mess with that reactor's workings and cause bad things to happen. Now I am sure that there were no nuclear reactors near the farm you grew up in, but if there were, I am equally sure we wouldn't be having this conversation today.
I see, and you can back this up with some kind of (any kind of) research or publication can you? Its put up or shut up time.
If the research existed, it would be shown to you, you anally retentive troll. The point, dear god in heaven, the point I have been making since the start is that it does not exist. Can you show me the research to prove (note I said prove here, its a far cry from the armchair analysis and wild extrapolations you seem to indulge in) that dumping into the sun would have no ill effects whatsoever? Whoops, no, didn't think so.
Hahahah, ahh this is great. Eh I haven't had this much fun in hours. Let the dissection begin!
Nice attempt at ad hominem though.
An ad hominem is an attack on an opponent's character based upon imagined flaws in said character. A troll is someone that says things designed to cause debate and inspire emotion, without adding anything constructive to the debate. I see your ad hominem and raise you a strawman.
In your warped world, tossing a stone into the sea would likely cause a tsunami off the coast of Australia.
I thought the relative size differences were between a grape and a man sized object? Now who has the warped perspective...
Ok, lets ignore mass for the minute, plus the fact you're moving the goal posts away from the space shuttle to the entire earth
You're the one who brought it up, not me, in staggered awe of the gigantinormous size of the sun. Heres a good one, Richard, and this is going to rock your boat. Actually I doubt it will, since I have been repeating it from the start with no impact on your ultra dense mass. Not all matter is created equal. Repeat that a thousand times and then come back to me. Exampli gratia, would you rather juggle plastic balls or lumps of uranium?
I can't ignore mass any longer.
I just bet you can't...
It won't actually "hit" the Sun, it'll be a wisp of dirty compounds and elements! It won't penetrate into the depths of the Sun, its just going to scatter and bounce around inside the photosphere where its totally removed from the nuclear goings on in the Sun's core.
This is great. More far future grasp of the sun's structure. John Titor, is that you? Your entire understanding of environmental interaction appears to extend to first grade ballistics. So the lump of pollution won't punch through the sun and out the far side, and send it whizzing about the solar system like a great balloon of superheated matter? Well I'm glad we settled that hotly debated issue. Pun intended. So instead of concentrating the nastiness we drop in, we sprinkle it lightly across the upper regions of the star. Well thats much better.
Man get your head around the fucking SIZE of the thing.
Get your head around something else. Yes its big. Well done. Pick up your nobel at the door. But its not comprised of hot hotness with flaming death to all molecules uniformly arrayed throughout its internal structure. Putting processed elements into it will have unpredictable results. You may feel just dandy about urinating on the source of all life in this world and the biggest reactor anywhere close, but I choose not to stick my head in the sand. Call me conservative.
Twit! You've obviously spent too long out in the Sun.
Ahahhahahah, ah stop, my sides are hurting. Listen, I don't think you are serious about this process, I don't think you really want to be helped, and since you refuse to take your medication, I just can't see any use in continuing the treatment.
I strongly suspect I am being trolled here, so I really shouldn't feed this one any more than I have already, but what the heck. Having lost the grape argument, you have degenerated into simple minded mass arguments. Heres a question that might get those sluggish neural channels stirring... was the comet formed of processed debris? Was the comet composed perhaps of the advanced technological cast offs of a spacegoing race? And this spacegoing race, once it blithely decided it was okay to hurl one lump of crap into the sun, did they then just dump every inconvenient piece of crap into the sun?
We know more about the Sun than you're obviously aware of, because we observe it, every day of every year.
Well thats a load off my mind. I'm glad, nay relieved beyond measure that in the half century or so we have been observing the sun with anything beyond rudimentary equipment and even more rudimentary scientific theories, we have learned all there is to know about it. Splendid. Especially in relation to processed products and chemicals, since we already know all there is to know about their effect on the earth's biosphere and makeup. I mean, if we didn't there might be raging debates about things like global warming and greenhouse effects. Can you imagine.
I am using allegory and metaphor here, I realise, so I'd better bring things down to your level.
Good lord its like arguing with a wall. Okay lets just deal with this whole thing in one sweep sparky. I'll put it in bold and and use short simple words just for you.
We don't know shit about the sun. If you think you know shit about the sun, you are a fool. Shit is what you know about the sun. Full stop.
Now, if you have in fact travelled from the future and are an infamous and well travelled sun-scientist as well as temporal voyager who knows all there is to know about the sun, well I humbly apologise. If not, you may need a towel for that dribble of fat rolling down your chin.
I was scaling things down to a size you could visualize to try and get the point across
And I was taking your point and making yet another point, which appears to have sailed merrily over your head, that when you introduce a grape sized body into a human sized body, you get a dead human sized body. Relatively simple system into complex system with unpredictable results, get it?
I'm not taking anything to extreme, I'm being very realistic
So throwing our trash into the sun isn't an extreme solution... I see...
You seem to have a problem visualizing just how small and insignificant we and our rubbish are in comparison to the Sun.
And you seem to have a problem visualising just how small and insignificant our knowledge of the sun actually is, compared to the sum of knowledge that could be known about the sun. The fact is if we start firing rubbish wholesale into our parent star, we cannot reliably predict the consequences. Anyone that says otherwise is labouring under some serious hubris.
Just because it's large, doesn't mean we can make assumptions about it. To repeat myself, it's not like a fire, only bigger.
then the Earth would be about 1.3 cm in diameter (the size of a grape) and the Sun would be 1.5 meters in diameter (about the height of a man).
Remind me, is a bullet larger or smaller than a grape?
would have the same affect as you walking to a spec of dust so small you couldn't even see it.
That depends on what the speck of dust was composed of. Since we're taking things to extremes here, lets assume its antimatter. I guarantee you you'd notice if you walked into a speck of that good stuff. I daresay plutonium would do you no favours either. So once again, lets not take chances with the largest nuclear reactor in the neighbourhood, just because we have an inconvenient rubbish problem. Better just to put it in a stable orbit away from anything solid, or better keep it in a relatively inert environment like the moon, where we can at least keep an eye on it and deal with it once technology matures to that level.
What does arrogance have to do with it? Oh I forgot, this is slashdot, its a faux pas to respond to anyone without insulting them. You tool. The fact remains that relative to the sum of knowledge that could be known about our parent star, we know almost nothing about its layout and probable life cycle. Assuming that we do is arrogance. Further, I'd rather take zero risks with something that could conceivably wipe out everything within a few light years, if its all the same to you.
It's actually pretty hard to hit the sun from here.
Not to mention that its the only one we have. Lets not be hurling random processed debris into what could be a very delicately balanced mass reaction chamber, when we have not got clue one as to what the short or long term effects might be.
What we need, in the face of this ongoing deluge of laws put forth by the distinguished lawyer-politicians of the world as they panic in the face of the ubiquitous spread of new technologies, is a data haven. Somewhere anyone can store any data they like, without fear of repercussion, with solidly encrypted and easy to use methods of data transfer.
Because they don't get it, these marketing types, these book trained spindoctors, these crowd pleasers and strutting demagogues. The ride is over, and no longer can they gouge their fellow man for anything and everything that they deem to have substantive value, with the strong arms of the lawmen to back up their regal decrees.
The nation or group that first successfully establishes a data haven will immediately become richer than Switzerland. Of course, they will face not inconsiderable difficulties in the process. They would probably need to have a nuclear deterrent, since the mere claim of sovereign statehood has proven to be less than sufficient to stop the forces of justice and freedom from violating that statehood by force of arms, lately. They will also need to account for the fact that other states might simply sever physically their data connections to the outside world, or mandate that they be stricken from the internet root servers. Further, they need to be able to account for the possibility that other nations may censure, fine, or dismantle any group that uses the data haven facility. And finally they need to have the strength of will to accept that not all of the data in their haven might be morally acceptable.
Once this facility was in place and these obstacles overcome, however, all of the IP laws in the world are basically rendered invalid and unenforcable, in a single stroke, and no amount of grandiose speechifying will reverse what is, in my opinion, inevitable; that is a complete re-evaluation of what exactly constitutes property, and what a glorious day that will be.
A good location for such a facility would be North Korea, after it collapses.
You're either a fool or the queen bee of dozens of alternate IDs, some of which have mod points you've been saving up for this. I'm betting a healthy mix. I don't think I've ever seen a strawman argument wrenched out of a foetid anus with such fervour and passion before. I wish I could say élan too, but really, wow. You have just redefined the phrase "bumbling knock kneed run for the sun".
NOWHERE in that parent post was embryonic experimentation mentioned or even vaguely implied, you hapless astroturfer. Or is it possible you have a guilty conscience about something? Being in the medical profession as you apparently are, one does wonder... Not that I claim to speak for the GP, but in his reference to "the most awesome technologies created by man", did it occur to you that he might conceivably be referring to nuclear weapons? Which, I might add, the rest of the civilised world is terrified to see in the hands of a half brained fundamentalist ex-junkie like Gee Dubyaw.
Mod me up, mod me down, I couldn't give a rat's ass, nor have I ever, in spite of which I have karma to burn and had a story submitted a few days ago. But whatever you do, mod this clown of a parent post down.
Slashdot Mirror
so many Age of Exploration captains lost their shorts looking for...
I think that would be shirts, or you may be right, as Winston Churchill described the British navy as "Rum, sodomy, and the lash".
More seriously though, there is a lot of scientific doomsaying going on, and not much societal analysis here. The process is simple enough, as I see it, early man produces fire, cultures move on and up to more efficient methods of fire production, including coal and oil burning, and bases entire industries and cultural foundations on it (the industrial revolution). Now we have a global society that is entirely dependant on these advanced methods of fire burning, but we have only begun to grasp the consequences of our smoking in the sandbox very very recently. So its going to take time to reverse the trend of millenia. The question is, have we got that time?
There is a lot of debate about cause and effect and so on, but not a great deal about solutions. If say over the next twenty years we move to nuclear power exclusively, and get rid of all the vehicles that currently produce harmful emissions, how quickly can we repair the damage? Is it already too late for the next few generations? Is it possible that a runaway greenhouse effect is inevitable, and how far can it go? Are we looking at Venus here?
Ah cheer up, I was just trying to see how long it would take your head to asplode. Honestly, at the end of the day, I can't say I'm convinced by your arguments, and its a safe bet to say that I can't convince you likewise. So lets agree to disagree, and leave it at that.
:D
Here, have some strongbad, always puts me in a good mood.
Do you think they used the DMCA to close him down?
Well not to worry, if they can't get Warhol, they'll get his fans...
Oh the bitter irony...
Haaaaahahah ahahahahhhhh ahahahahh! ahhh.. sniff..
Haaaaaaaaaaahahhahahah... ahhh yes indeed... hahahahah....
Well, yes, my posting history certainly supports that, as well as the accepted stories. Oh by the way...
Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahahahahahahah!!
Yahoo buys a billion worth of a chinese internet company...
Or possibly this story about tourists being offered a chance to fly around the moon for 100 million.
Sigh. Maybe its in the mysterious future, but I just don't know what slashdot is coming to these days... It ain't what it used to be.
How about I take pictures of your kids playing in a public playground and publish them in a forum known to be frequented by pedophiles along with your address? I could but I wouldn't.
You could but you'd go to prison for it. Lets see here, reckless endangerment of a minor, or putting said minor at risk of personal injury above and beyond the normal run of affairs due to your actions, incitment to a crime, again regarding a minor, and they'll probably get you on loitering too. But that's because you got a camera and took the photos.
What ZDNet is making clear here is that you shouldn't be afraid to eat a big ol' slice of what you are serving. If you are serving a vast amount of information all disorganised, you must assume its only a matter of time before someone organises it. Also, you had better be ready for that moment when it comes to bite you in the ass, and this is what the ZDNet stance underlines most eloquently.
People have expressed concerns about privacy and google before, but it was seen mostly as conspiracy theorists crying in the wilderness. Now the top guy of google has been personally targeted by his own creation, it's all out in the open. Superb journalism says I, and rough justice, further. If you open pandora's box, you had best be prepared for what comes out...
Hahahahahahahaaa...
Eh
Aaaahahahah
Ahhh yeah....
Ahahahhhaaaaaaaaahhahahahahah!!
Ahhh...
Podcasting is just another hip-to-be-cool term coined by some luminary metrosexual in the blogosphere. Somewhere out there right now there is a passive agressive latte sipping boob tapping "how I invented podcasting", his first book, into an imac. Its the new warhol, baby. I can't wait until the standard of coolness for these new age middle age wanna be a teen icon sorts is how long you can survive in a room with a starved pit bull.
Hahahahahahahaaa...
Eh
Aaaahahahah
Ahhh yeah....
I can only agree here. A couple of interesting points, yahoo will index your website whether or not any site in the world is pointing a link to it, and yahoo actually pays attention to the the meta tags at the top. Now while I'll be the first one to observe that meta tags have been abused horribly, in a lot of cases they do in fact represent the content of the site well. Its no more of a risk than any of the other criteria used to index websites, really. The quality of google's search and image search has declined quite a bit in the last few months, the question is whether or not they recognise that.
So you don't think I've added anything constructive to the debate?
Nope, not really. Besides doggedly sticking to one flawed perspective and belabouring it in approximately the same way post after tedious, tedious post, the only thing you have really brought to slashdot is exercise for my fingers.
In essence, the strawman attack is putting words in your opponent's mouth and then attacking the resulting position, while simultaenously [sic] evading the real argument.
Congratulations, you learned what the copy and paste process is for. And you have just perfectly described your position from the start. Thanks.
You represent a false argument, based on no scientific evidence what so ever, based on some fantasy that throwing a dust spec [sic] of alien matter into a bonfire is somehow going implode the bonfire and fry everyone nearby cooking their marshmallows.
Show me evidence to the contrary. As I have stated from the start, you sarcasm-proof individual you, its not a bonfire. If you stick your hand in a fire, as your mommy told you, you will get burned. If you stick your hand in a nuclear reactor, you may mess with that reactor's workings and cause bad things to happen. Now I am sure that there were no nuclear reactors near the farm you grew up in, but if there were, I am equally sure we wouldn't be having this conversation today.
I see, and you can back this up with some kind of (any kind of) research or publication can you? Its put up or shut up time.
If the research existed, it would be shown to you, you anally retentive troll. The point, dear god in heaven, the point I have been making since the start is that it does not exist. Can you show me the research to prove (note I said prove here, its a far cry from the armchair analysis and wild extrapolations you seem to indulge in) that dumping into the sun would have no ill effects whatsoever? Whoops, no, didn't think so.
Btw, "processed elements" is an oxymoron.
Moron, yeah. Look up elements.
I bounce that back at you.
Troll.
Hahahah, ahh this is great. Eh I haven't had this much fun in hours. Let the dissection begin!
Nice attempt at ad hominem though.
An ad hominem is an attack on an opponent's character based upon imagined flaws in said character. A troll is someone that says things designed to cause debate and inspire emotion, without adding anything constructive to the debate. I see your ad hominem and raise you a strawman.
In your warped world, tossing a stone into the sea would likely cause a tsunami off the coast of Australia.
I thought the relative size differences were between a grape and a man sized object? Now who has the warped perspective...
Ok, lets ignore mass for the minute, plus the fact you're moving the goal posts away from the space shuttle to the entire earth
You're the one who brought it up, not me, in staggered awe of the gigantinormous size of the sun. Heres a good one, Richard, and this is going to rock your boat. Actually I doubt it will, since I have been repeating it from the start with no impact on your ultra dense mass. Not all matter is created equal. Repeat that a thousand times and then come back to me. Exampli gratia, would you rather juggle plastic balls or lumps of uranium?
I can't ignore mass any longer.
I just bet you can't...
It won't actually "hit" the Sun, it'll be a wisp of dirty compounds and elements! It won't penetrate into the depths of the Sun, its just going to scatter and bounce around inside the photosphere where its totally removed from the nuclear goings on in the Sun's core.
This is great. More far future grasp of the sun's structure. John Titor, is that you? Your entire understanding of environmental interaction appears to extend to first grade ballistics. So the lump of pollution won't punch through the sun and out the far side, and send it whizzing about the solar system like a great balloon of superheated matter? Well I'm glad we settled that hotly debated issue. Pun intended. So instead of concentrating the nastiness we drop in, we sprinkle it lightly across the upper regions of the star. Well thats much better.
Man get your head around the fucking SIZE of the thing.
Get your head around something else. Yes its big. Well done. Pick up your nobel at the door. But its not comprised of hot hotness with flaming death to all molecules uniformly arrayed throughout its internal structure. Putting processed elements into it will have unpredictable results. You may feel just dandy about urinating on the source of all life in this world and the biggest reactor anywhere close, but I choose not to stick my head in the sand. Call me conservative.
Twit! You've obviously spent too long out in the Sun.
Ahahhahahah, ah stop, my sides are hurting. Listen, I don't think you are serious about this process, I don't think you really want to be helped, and since you refuse to take your medication, I just can't see any use in continuing the treatment.
Troll.
I strongly suspect I am being trolled here, so I really shouldn't feed this one any more than I have already, but what the heck. Having lost the grape argument, you have degenerated into simple minded mass arguments. Heres a question that might get those sluggish neural channels stirring... was the comet formed of processed debris? Was the comet composed perhaps of the advanced technological cast offs of a spacegoing race? And this spacegoing race, once it blithely decided it was okay to hurl one lump of crap into the sun, did they then just dump every inconvenient piece of crap into the sun?
We know more about the Sun than you're obviously aware of, because we observe it, every day of every year.
Well thats a load off my mind. I'm glad, nay relieved beyond measure that in the half century or so we have been observing the sun with anything beyond rudimentary equipment and even more rudimentary scientific theories, we have learned all there is to know about it. Splendid. Especially in relation to processed products and chemicals, since we already know all there is to know about their effect on the earth's biosphere and makeup. I mean, if we didn't there might be raging debates about things like global warming and greenhouse effects. Can you imagine.
I am using allegory and metaphor here, I realise, so I'd better bring things down to your level.
Durr.
Troll.
Good lord its like arguing with a wall. Okay lets just deal with this whole thing in one sweep sparky. I'll put it in bold and and use short simple words just for you.
We don't know shit about the sun. If you think you know shit about the sun, you are a fool. Shit is what you know about the sun. Full stop.
Now, if you have in fact travelled from the future and are an infamous and well travelled sun-scientist as well as temporal voyager who knows all there is to know about the sun, well I humbly apologise. If not, you may need a towel for that dribble of fat rolling down your chin.
I was scaling things down to a size you could visualize to try and get the point across
And I was taking your point and making yet another point, which appears to have sailed merrily over your head, that when you introduce a grape sized body into a human sized body, you get a dead human sized body. Relatively simple system into complex system with unpredictable results, get it?
I'm not taking anything to extreme, I'm being very realistic
So throwing our trash into the sun isn't an extreme solution... I see...
You seem to have a problem visualizing just how small and insignificant we and our rubbish are in comparison to the Sun.
And you seem to have a problem visualising just how small and insignificant our knowledge of the sun actually is, compared to the sum of knowledge that could be known about the sun. The fact is if we start firing rubbish wholesale into our parent star, we cannot reliably predict the consequences. Anyone that says otherwise is labouring under some serious hubris.
Just because it's large, doesn't mean we can make assumptions about it. To repeat myself, it's not like a fire, only bigger.
then the Earth would be about 1.3 cm in diameter (the size of a grape) and the Sun would be 1.5 meters in diameter (about the height of a man).
Remind me, is a bullet larger or smaller than a grape?
would have the same affect as you walking to a spec of dust so small you couldn't even see it.
That depends on what the speck of dust was composed of. Since we're taking things to extremes here, lets assume its antimatter. I guarantee you you'd notice if you walked into a speck of that good stuff. I daresay plutonium would do you no favours either. So once again, lets not take chances with the largest nuclear reactor in the neighbourhood, just because we have an inconvenient rubbish problem. Better just to put it in a stable orbit away from anything solid, or better keep it in a relatively inert environment like the moon, where we can at least keep an eye on it and deal with it once technology matures to that level.
What does arrogance have to do with it? Oh I forgot, this is slashdot, its a faux pas to respond to anyone without insulting them. You tool. The fact remains that relative to the sum of knowledge that could be known about our parent star, we know almost nothing about its layout and probable life cycle. Assuming that we do is arrogance. Further, I'd rather take zero risks with something that could conceivably wipe out everything within a few light years, if its all the same to you.
That would be the "processed" part of my comment, then...
It's actually pretty hard to hit the sun from here.
Not to mention that its the only one we have. Lets not be hurling random processed debris into what could be a very delicately balanced mass reaction chamber, when we have not got clue one as to what the short or long term effects might be.
It ain't like a fire, only bigger.
That being the point of the nuclear deterrent part of my soap box theatrics...
What we need, in the face of this ongoing deluge of laws put forth by the distinguished lawyer-politicians of the world as they panic in the face of the ubiquitous spread of new technologies, is a data haven. Somewhere anyone can store any data they like, without fear of repercussion, with solidly encrypted and easy to use methods of data transfer.
Because they don't get it, these marketing types, these book trained spindoctors, these crowd pleasers and strutting demagogues. The ride is over, and no longer can they gouge their fellow man for anything and everything that they deem to have substantive value, with the strong arms of the lawmen to back up their regal decrees.
The nation or group that first successfully establishes a data haven will immediately become richer than Switzerland. Of course, they will face not inconsiderable difficulties in the process. They would probably need to have a nuclear deterrent, since the mere claim of sovereign statehood has proven to be less than sufficient to stop the forces of justice and freedom from violating that statehood by force of arms, lately. They will also need to account for the fact that other states might simply sever physically their data connections to the outside world, or mandate that they be stricken from the internet root servers. Further, they need to be able to account for the possibility that other nations may censure, fine, or dismantle any group that uses the data haven facility. And finally they need to have the strength of will to accept that not all of the data in their haven might be morally acceptable.
Once this facility was in place and these obstacles overcome, however, all of the IP laws in the world are basically rendered invalid and unenforcable, in a single stroke, and no amount of grandiose speechifying will reverse what is, in my opinion, inevitable; that is a complete re-evaluation of what exactly constitutes property, and what a glorious day that will be.
A good location for such a facility would be North Korea, after it collapses.
wut
You're either a fool or the queen bee of dozens of alternate IDs, some of which have mod points you've been saving up for this. I'm betting a healthy mix. I don't think I've ever seen a strawman argument wrenched out of a foetid anus with such fervour and passion before. I wish I could say élan too, but really, wow. You have just redefined the phrase "bumbling knock kneed run for the sun".
NOWHERE in that parent post was embryonic experimentation mentioned or even vaguely implied, you hapless astroturfer. Or is it possible you have a guilty conscience about something? Being in the medical profession as you apparently are, one does wonder... Not that I claim to speak for the GP, but in his reference to "the most awesome technologies created by man", did it occur to you that he might conceivably be referring to nuclear weapons? Which, I might add, the rest of the civilised world is terrified to see in the hands of a half brained fundamentalist ex-junkie like Gee Dubyaw.
Mod me up, mod me down, I couldn't give a rat's ass, nor have I ever, in spite of which I have karma to burn and had a story submitted a few days ago. But whatever you do, mod this clown of a parent post down.
What a joke.