I recently read Vernor Vinge's Marooned in Realtime and my head is still abuzz with speculation over the coming technological singularity. Consequently, I can't help but see these attempts at predicting the tech of a century hence as the equivalent of ancient Romans speculating on how many could fly. Just as we now laugh at the beliefs of the ancients (or even folks in the 19th century) for their belief that flight would be accomplished by flapping wings, surely these conceptions of spaceflight will seem naive in a few decades or a century. Sure, maybe AI and limitless energy won't arrive so soon, so one feels a need to do such engineering now, but it may all prove superfluous.
This probably isn't the case. The best candidate I've come across is Esperanto.
Esperanto had its chance nearly a century ago and blew it. Even most of the Esperanto movement has given up on the fina venko ("final victory") and dabble in Esperanto because they enjoy building their own little subculture.
And that was designed as a Universal second language.
While Zamenhof proposed Esperanto in the short term as an auxiliary language, he hoped that in the long term Esperanto or something like it would replace all other languages. He was really keen on one language, one people and one religion. Since the 1960s, World Esperanto Association has tried to gain support for Esperanto by decrying English as a lingua franca and aligning itself with speakers of minority languages, but this appreciation of diversity is a recent phenomenon and quite foreign to Zamenhof and the first generations of Esperantists.
Never assume that people who obsess over a show are really "the biggest fans". Think, for example, of the recent show Lost where the fans that the network really depended on were fairly casual TV viewers (and thus the increasing emphasis on the love triangle over more substantial plot elements), not the comparatively smaller group of people who discussed the show's mythology on internet fora and spent every waking hour trying to solve its mysteries.
One can see Star Trek in the same light. True, those embarrassing nerds who play dress up might have kept the franchise on life support during the years between the first two series, but ultimately the success of Star Trek was due to masses of relatively normal people, not the overweight slobs with no social skills that Shatner was addressing.
Those fans could have "gotten a life" and continued watching the show. They just didn't have to continue their bizarre behaviour.
You pay directly for telecom services. What are you providing social networks to keep them in business? It is selling your activity on the network to advertisers. If you want to legislate a requirement for privacy on social networks, be prepared to start paying out of pocket for Facebook usage.
Not really. They have many more traits in common with their Arab neighbours, even if they have a very hard time accepting it. Hebrew is closely related to Arabic
Modern Hebrew (as opposed to Classical Hebrew) is typologically Standard Average European. Study both Arabic and Modern Hebrew at the same time, and you'll be amazed at how dissimilar they are. Plus, a large percentage of Israelis use Russian as their everyday language.
they eat similar foodstuff and have similar rules about what they can and can't eat and drink
Only a minority of Israelis keep kosher. Those "similar rules" don't apply to most Israelis. And the huge Russian population keeps eating what it used to eat back in Russia, including pork, so no, not "similar foodstuff".
similar genetic makeup
European Jews show a markedly different genetic makeup than Jews from the Arab world, so no, no "similar genetic makeup".
music
I find young Israelis very clued up about a wide variety of music. Certainly after one has been to Tel Aviv, the music tastes of Arab youth seem very limited.
Take a look at the level of comfort in the average sleeper cabin. Consider the idea of that being your home from home for 10 days with the wife and children.
Loads of Western tourists pay ridiculous tour-company prices to spend five days on the Trans-Siberian railway. Some pay even more exaggerated prices to go between countries by ship instead of flying. There's certainly a market for spending such time in a fairly enclosed space.
The purpose of government is regulation. Whether that be through legislation or enforcement, that is the job, and the only job, of government... Expecting government to tax people at a rate to distribute the wealth that other people have worked hard to obtain is obscene and exhibits a faulty understanding of the purpose of government.
There is no one "purpose of government" to understand. In some cultures, political authorities have distributed wealth etc. In other cultures, like the US libertarian ideal, it is desired that government would limit itself to very basic regulation and leave services to individuals. The purpose of government is subjective and reasonable men can disagree on it.
And the latter idea, that the purpose of government is to protect some natural rights and no more, is a pretty innovative idea that arose only during the Enlightenment and isn't accepted by the vast majority of human beings today. It's rather a bit much for libertarians to scold people on the subject of government, as through a historical lens and a glance at non-Western countries, it is strong government that is closer to the human experience.
Perhaps you can explain how requiring a hindu to pay taxes for the minting of a monotheistic motto is not legal favortisim that discriminates against his polytheistic beliefs?
Organizations representing Hindus in the United States claim that Hinduism is inherently monotheist and the proliferation of deities is only a colourful embellishment on that ultimate truth of divine unity. Look to the California textbook scandal, for example, where American Hindus insisted that the religion be presented as monotheist.
A better article would be don't buy Spotifiy because GrooveShark and youtube are free. And you can get firefox extensions that make turning a youtube video into an mp3 really easy.
The audio in YouTube videos is already compressed to hell, and turning it into an MP3 would mean subjecting it to lossy compression again. Relying on YouTube for music and then making the audio even worse is appalling, and I'm not even an audiophile snob.
It's funny how nowadays topical information (news for nerds) comes to Slashdot days after other internet news channels, while off-topic posts like this hit the front page only a couple of hours after the event.
Observant Hindu Brahmins and Jains are completely vegetarian. In India in general there's little meat (many restaurants don't serve even eggs) because of a combination of religious dietary laws and poverty.
The United States is the world's leading manufacturer of goods.
That doesn't necessarily mean that manufacturing is at a point high enough to employ a significant portion of the population in an age of automation.
United states unemployment rate is 9.2
The official figure is widely ridiculed and it fails to take into account certain demographics. Maybe you might want to check your facts before you post?
I was originally a fan of the chiropractic troll, but I don't think it's destined for classic status. When you see "Dr. Bob" at the top of a post, now you immediately know how it's going to end. Personally, I wish the ladyboy-hermaphrodite troll had been more active, because it was harder to remember the posters responsible for them, and you would get suckered into reading the whole post until the surprise troll ending.
More tax dollars tossed to the trash to protect the interests of a few companies.
"Intellectual property" is one of the few things that the US produces these days and it employs a large amount of people in a country rife with joblessness. While the RIAA and MPAA are disgusting organizations and there's certainly outright corruption with the industry buying politicians, I wonder if some in the government are pushing for these stringent measures because they think it will save the country.
The word "pussy" describes someone that acts like a scared cat and can be used as a word for female genitals. The "scared-y cat" connotation, however, does not derive from the reference to female genitals.
Argument from etymology is a fallacy (though you gave no citation for this etymology and I'm unconvinced of it). The meaning of a word is determined by a synchronic agreement among speakers, and if speakers believe that the word in the sense "coward" contains some allusion to female genitalia, it does. Read some Saussure, it does a man good.
"Artistic value" is subjective. As is "worthwhile" and what is considered "art.
That's true to a certain extent, but as very few of these high budget films enter the canon, it would make little difference in the long term if they ceased to be made.
We have entertainment that costs lots of money and time and takes many people to make (notably video games and movies, depending on which ones).
A great many classic 20th century films were achieved mainly through state subsidy. There was little fretting about their box office return because the bills are already paid. Indeed, many European countries continue to produce films through subsidy in order to compete against the American cultural juggernaut.
If the economy of the industry changed, perhaps we won't have any more Transformers films or similar films that are high on the special effects and low on artistic value. However, we'd still have worthwhile art.
In some places, public libraries must pay an annual fee to the copyright holder to compensate for potential lost sales, so what the industry is asking from Google isn't terribly unusual.
Which will be to his direct benefit, because he can then go get a cheaper rate for medical services by paying cash.
I wouldn't be so sure. Private insurance is even cheaper in Spain, where it coexists alongside a public system available to anyone, than in the US, which lacks has little public healthcare to speak of. When there is a public system and the private sector has to compete with it, that can push prices down.
It is. When you're a large, nationwide chain, you can negotiate with the publisher for lower prices and leave your unorganized competitors stuck with the MSRP. Amazon did with great success, but Borders didn't.
It is much easier to search through a topic or genre for a book that interests me when there is a huge shelf full of actual books then trying to do searches on the internet.
Some of the pirated books communities are making it as easy to browse through a subject as going through a bookshelf, and you can do it all from your home and for free. It's nice that you like the trip to the store and the physical artifact, but not everyone shares that love.
Slashdot Mirror
I recently read Vernor Vinge's Marooned in Realtime and my head is still abuzz with speculation over the coming technological singularity. Consequently, I can't help but see these attempts at predicting the tech of a century hence as the equivalent of ancient Romans speculating on how many could fly. Just as we now laugh at the beliefs of the ancients (or even folks in the 19th century) for their belief that flight would be accomplished by flapping wings, surely these conceptions of spaceflight will seem naive in a few decades or a century. Sure, maybe AI and limitless energy won't arrive so soon, so one feels a need to do such engineering now, but it may all prove superfluous.
Esperanto had its chance nearly a century ago and blew it. Even most of the Esperanto movement has given up on the fina venko ("final victory") and dabble in Esperanto because they enjoy building their own little subculture.
While Zamenhof proposed Esperanto in the short term as an auxiliary language, he hoped that in the long term Esperanto or something like it would replace all other languages. He was really keen on one language, one people and one religion. Since the 1960s, World Esperanto Association has tried to gain support for Esperanto by decrying English as a lingua franca and aligning itself with speakers of minority languages, but this appreciation of diversity is a recent phenomenon and quite foreign to Zamenhof and the first generations of Esperantists.
Never assume that people who obsess over a show are really "the biggest fans". Think, for example, of the recent show Lost where the fans that the network really depended on were fairly casual TV viewers (and thus the increasing emphasis on the love triangle over more substantial plot elements), not the comparatively smaller group of people who discussed the show's mythology on internet fora and spent every waking hour trying to solve its mysteries.
One can see Star Trek in the same light. True, those embarrassing nerds who play dress up might have kept the franchise on life support during the years between the first two series, but ultimately the success of Star Trek was due to masses of relatively normal people, not the overweight slobs with no social skills that Shatner was addressing.
Those fans could have "gotten a life" and continued watching the show. They just didn't have to continue their bizarre behaviour.
You pay directly for telecom services. What are you providing social networks to keep them in business? It is selling your activity on the network to advertisers. If you want to legislate a requirement for privacy on social networks, be prepared to start paying out of pocket for Facebook usage.
Modern Hebrew (as opposed to Classical Hebrew) is typologically Standard Average European. Study both Arabic and Modern Hebrew at the same time, and you'll be amazed at how dissimilar they are. Plus, a large percentage of Israelis use Russian as their everyday language.
Only a minority of Israelis keep kosher. Those "similar rules" don't apply to most Israelis. And the huge Russian population keeps eating what it used to eat back in Russia, including pork, so no, not "similar foodstuff".
European Jews show a markedly different genetic makeup than Jews from the Arab world, so no, no "similar genetic makeup".
I find young Israelis very clued up about a wide variety of music. Certainly after one has been to Tel Aviv, the music tastes of Arab youth seem very limited.
Obligatory Onion link.
Awesome. This is the sort of creative trolling that I still visit Slashdot to see.
Loads of Western tourists pay ridiculous tour-company prices to spend five days on the Trans-Siberian railway. Some pay even more exaggerated prices to go between countries by ship instead of flying. There's certainly a market for spending such time in a fairly enclosed space.
There is no one "purpose of government" to understand. In some cultures, political authorities have distributed wealth etc. In other cultures, like the US libertarian ideal, it is desired that government would limit itself to very basic regulation and leave services to individuals. The purpose of government is subjective and reasonable men can disagree on it.
And the latter idea, that the purpose of government is to protect some natural rights and no more, is a pretty innovative idea that arose only during the Enlightenment and isn't accepted by the vast majority of human beings today. It's rather a bit much for libertarians to scold people on the subject of government, as through a historical lens and a glance at non-Western countries, it is strong government that is closer to the human experience.
If he is a member of a homeowner's association, it's most likely stipulated that he must frequently mow his lawn.
Organizations representing Hindus in the United States claim that Hinduism is inherently monotheist and the proliferation of deities is only a colourful embellishment on that ultimate truth of divine unity. Look to the California textbook scandal, for example, where American Hindus insisted that the religion be presented as monotheist.
Cite?
The audio in YouTube videos is already compressed to hell, and turning it into an MP3 would mean subjecting it to lossy compression again. Relying on YouTube for music and then making the audio even worse is appalling, and I'm not even an audiophile snob.
It's funny how nowadays topical information (news for nerds) comes to Slashdot days after other internet news channels, while off-topic posts like this hit the front page only a couple of hours after the event.
Observant Hindu Brahmins and Jains are completely vegetarian. In India in general there's little meat (many restaurants don't serve even eggs) because of a combination of religious dietary laws and poverty.
That doesn't necessarily mean that manufacturing is at a point high enough to employ a significant portion of the population in an age of automation.
The official figure is widely ridiculed and it fails to take into account certain demographics. Maybe you might want to check your facts before you post?
I was originally a fan of the chiropractic troll, but I don't think it's destined for classic status. When you see "Dr. Bob" at the top of a post, now you immediately know how it's going to end. Personally, I wish the ladyboy-hermaphrodite troll had been more active, because it was harder to remember the posters responsible for them, and you would get suckered into reading the whole post until the surprise troll ending.
"Intellectual property" is one of the few things that the US produces these days and it employs a large amount of people in a country rife with joblessness. While the RIAA and MPAA are disgusting organizations and there's certainly outright corruption with the industry buying politicians, I wonder if some in the government are pushing for these stringent measures because they think it will save the country.
Argument from etymology is a fallacy (though you gave no citation for this etymology and I'm unconvinced of it). The meaning of a word is determined by a synchronic agreement among speakers, and if speakers believe that the word in the sense "coward" contains some allusion to female genitalia, it does. Read some Saussure, it does a man good.
That's true to a certain extent, but as very few of these high budget films enter the canon, it would make little difference in the long term if they ceased to be made.
A great many classic 20th century films were achieved mainly through state subsidy. There was little fretting about their box office return because the bills are already paid. Indeed, many European countries continue to produce films through subsidy in order to compete against the American cultural juggernaut.
If the economy of the industry changed, perhaps we won't have any more Transformers films or similar films that are high on the special effects and low on artistic value. However, we'd still have worthwhile art.
In some places, public libraries must pay an annual fee to the copyright holder to compensate for potential lost sales, so what the industry is asking from Google isn't terribly unusual.
Well, from other posts here, it seems that even those who don't pirate, who only buy, believe that Amazon is a better option than Borders.
I wouldn't be so sure. Private insurance is even cheaper in Spain, where it coexists alongside a public system available to anyone, than in the US, which lacks has little public healthcare to speak of. When there is a public system and the private sector has to compete with it, that can push prices down.
It is. When you're a large, nationwide chain, you can negotiate with the publisher for lower prices and leave your unorganized competitors stuck with the MSRP. Amazon did with great success, but Borders didn't.
Some of the pirated books communities are making it as easy to browse through a subject as going through a bookshelf, and you can do it all from your home and for free. It's nice that you like the trip to the store and the physical artifact, but not everyone shares that love.