I'm constantly amazed at the countless number of people that keep coming back to areas repeatedly hit by massive flooding.
You shouldn't be. The unfortunate fact is that humans aren't self-sufficient, so it's insufficient to simply avoid misfortune - you also have to earn a living. And areas that get hit by flooding tend to do so because they're next to large bodies of water, making them good for both agriculture and industry as well as capable of providing drinking water for lots of people.
Also, no area is safe. No matter where you live, you will always be subject to some disaster.
Farmers who just let the cross pollination go unchecked and never use roundup anyway are fine, monsanto would have to have probable cause (depending on who you ask) and test a LOT of seed to find the ones that are roundup-ready.
Actually, could such farmers potentially sue Monsanto for polluting their fields? After all, cross-pollination with Roundup Ready plants is making the field produce GMOs, which might negatively affect their market prospects.
This old canard incorrectly presumes that there is somewhere to go that resolves the issues you have with where you are; it also incorrectly presumes that such mobility is practical or even possible.
Your "issue" is that you presume other people have an obligation to be your unpaid servants. Or do you perhaps think that you owning the real estate you mentioned earlier means anything without the systems tracking and backing such ownership?
Taking money involves force or the threat of force.
Hacking your computer to get your online banking password and subsequently emptying your account doesn't involve force or the threat of force, so does that mean the hacker didn't take your money?
The government, however, tells me I owe them X, there's absolutely no choice or option about this for me, and in fact, if I don't hand it over, they will take it from me.
Of course you have an option for paying taxes: don't live in a society that demands rent from you for the privilege. Granted, you might not like a society run by profits from government-owned companies, nor one that simply gives up and collapses, but then again, it's not coercion for your landlord to demand rent just because you dislike living under the bridge, now is it?
Laws aren't made for the righteous, they're made so that *when a transgressor is caught* there's a system in place to apply punishment.
The righteous still need to know how much taxes to pay and which side of the road to drive on.
Anyway, I've been waiting for a while for the first attack against 3D printing - we can't have the peons not depend on large companies for everything, now can we? So is this it, or merely stupidity?
The fact that the IRS has permitted the LDS and Catholics to get away with using tax exempt resources to campaign does not mean that the IRS should be required to let everybody do it.
Actually, yes it does mean exactly that. Either apply the law to everyone or no one. Why on earth should a notorious criminal organization or a weird cult be more equal than a secular bunch of morons?
I however dont want to be involved. its not our war, let them settle it on their own.
Your previous post not only took sides, but also said that "they should be stopped". And now you're backpedaling and saying "we" shouldn't get involved. Are you perhaps an (underperforming) member of Syrian Electronic Army?
But corporations never, ever, ever behave ethical or altruistic, that is always individuals within the corporations and the example at hand just demonstrates what happens if these individuals are missing or do not have enough clout.
A corporation will never, ever, ever behave in any way or do anything whatsoever without it actually being some individual or a group of individuals within doing so in its name. A corporation is legal fiction and just as incapable of independent action as any other fictitious entity.
Actually, in Greece, they use the Euro, so... Their money has not lost value...
Which is one of the problems of euro, since it means that neither industry nor tourism get a boost from prices effectively falling. Euro will eventually collapse, of course, once enough countries have gone bankrupt that the rest can't carry it anymore, but it'll be too late for Greece.
Cargo cult is when you imitate the actions of someone for whom those actions have meaning, without understanding their meaning yourself (or totally misunderstanding their meaning).
No, cargo cult is when you lack a key piece of knowledge. In the case of the original cargo cults, that piece was that the delivery of cargo had been pre-arranged through other means. What do you propose is the missing piece that causes a neuron-by-neuron simulation of brain to not work?
If our models lead us to *understanding* of how brains work, we could get there a good deal faster and find that present day computers are plenty complex to handle cognition on a human-equivalent level.
That's possible, but unlikely. There's tremendous evolutionary pressure towards efficiency in brains, since they consume lots of energy, are soft and squishy and thus require support structure (skull), and in the case of humans, are physically large enough to make childbirth dangerous. Add in the relative slowness of neural signals and state changes, and it's pretty unlikely that there's much or any algorithmic inefficiency that could be removed without sacrificing something important.
Hell, we don't even know what subset of our brain is sufficient to drive a car.
The car-driving subsystem, of course. Which gets us to the second problem: the more you practice, the better you become, and the less you have to think what you're doing. Just working the clutch requires your full attention when you're just starting out, but soon becomes automatic. It has become another subsystem in its own right.
In other words, brains are capable of modifying their own "programming". It is almost certain that any system seeking to be both efficient and flexible would have to do so as well, yet we don't really use self-modifying programs, thus we have relatively little experience with them, which isn't very conductive to making large systems.
This is why Zimmerman should be let off the hook. Treyvon Martin was a regular user of a DMT cough medicine based drink called "lean".
Whether Zimmerman should be let off the hook depends on whether you think it's acceptable for you to be subjected to random questioning backed by threat of lethal force just because someone thinks you look suspicious. It has nothing to do with whether Martin used cough medicine, either for treating cough or getting high.
I'm not sure why anyone would defend Z - you'd think that even fans of police state would want actual cops, rather than self-appointed vigilantes, to perform the Fourth Amendment violations. The only two reasons I can think of are pining for the good old days of lynchings, or wanting to perform them yourself, either due to racism or to be tough on (other) criminals.
All of which you know, of course, which is why you posted as an AC.
What should I do, o speaker for the "other people having a say in [my] choices"?
Well, first you should reflect on why you felt the need to take my argument to a ridiculous extreme and then attack that caricature. Are you simply unable to counter my actual words, yet feel the need to oppose them due to a vested interest or emotional attachments? Was it a semi-conscious reflexive action on your part, rather than considered one? Do you consider this a form of tribal conflict, where positions on various issues mean little besides serving as identifying banners?
After you've determined the reasons your resorted to a (very clumsy) strawman argument, you can decide how to deal with the matter - perhaps you need to stop deceiving yourself, or perhaps you need to study rethoric. I can't say which, since I don't know you, but I can say that right now you come across as a moron - either for thinking you're making a valid point (you're not) or thinking you're fooling anyone (you're not).
Your bad choices have a tendency to affect other people, giving them incentive to interfere. You can disagree or resent them for doing so, which won't stop them, or you can sit down and negotiate about where, exactly speaking, does the line between your business and other people's business go. And doing so is a form of regulation.
Furthermore, one person's bad choices often represent opportunity for other people, thus giving them an incentive to seduce those people into making them. This can take many forms, from tobacco companies advertising their cancer sticks to banks suggesting loans a prospective customer can't actually afford. This, again, requires regulation, least freedom becomes an excuse for the scum of the earth to prey on people.
You don't live in your private universe so you just have to get used to other people having a say in your choices. Sorry.
There's little that is as dangerous as "effective government". The more gridlock, the better, I always say.
What happens when other countries have effective government and yours doesn't? Or when no country has effective government and thus can't stop some enterprising wannabe dictator from taking over either through a coup or by amassing sufficient wealth to pull the shots?
Atmospheric science is interesting and is a field worthy of further study. But we are nowhere near using it to make any sort of useful predictions, let alone as the basis for economic policy.
And we never will. No amount of evidence can prove something you don't want to believe, especially if the cost of believing it comes right now while the cost of not believing it comes later. So as long as fossil fuels remain cost-effective, no amount of evidence can ever prove that they do harm - evidence only becomes sufficient after we've switched to something else.
Add the tendency of people to think of arguments in terms of victory or defeat, and it makes one wonder if humanity is really suited for a technological civilization where decisions have farther reaching consequences than the pecking order of the pack. Hunter-gatherers can afford this level of self-delusional bullshit since they can just pick up and leave if they screw up bad enough, but we can't.
With a properly 10-20 character password that's actually mostly random people are not going to guess that based upon seeing it one time. At least not without them having some sort of savant ability to memorize random strings of characters.
And because you are just as unlikely to have such abilities, your password is not going to be 10-20 random characters, now is it? Rather, it's going to be something that's easy for a human to memorize. Unless, of course, you write it down, in which case it's irrelevant whether the screen also displays it or not.
If you refuse to surrender information that doesn't incriminate you, then there's no conflict between obstruction of justice and the right to remain silent.
Of course there is: if you can only refuse to surrender information that incriminates you, then silence is as good as admitting guilt - and besides, how do you prove information would incriminate you without surrendering it?
storage can be done with hydro, pumped hydro or electric cars,
Storage can't be done with electric cars because range is already a problem and is made even worse if I can't trust the battery to be full after leaving the thing to recharge while I sleep or work. Also, the constant charging and uncharging is going to wear the battery down prematurely, costing me (lots of) money to replace it. Finally, since electric companies are businesses I'll probably end up losing money if I first buy electricity and then sell it back.
If this idea ever goes forward, except one-way filters that keep the grid from draining the battery to become the best-selling accessory.
The US is a constitutional republic, and "constitutional" is the important word - it means the rights guaranteed by the constitution overrule the will of the majority.
Sometimes. But ultimately, the Constitution is just a piece of paper, and depends entirely on the will of the people to enforce it. Which means that it's guarantee is only as strong as the unwillingness of people to apply insane troll logic to or outright ignore it. In other words, not very strong, unless you have enough people on your side nation-wide.
I bet that the turbines can be built better to last much longer.
Probably - but that makes them more expensive, making the ultimate cost per megawatthour even worse. Also, there are limits to engineering - now matter how well you build them, they will wear down.
Environmentalism is always a tradeoff- trading off riverbeds against global warming for example.
For a lot of people it's not - nothing that has any kind of negative effects whatsoever can be used. That is arguably the biggest problem with "green" power - it's never green enough.
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You shouldn't be. The unfortunate fact is that humans aren't self-sufficient, so it's insufficient to simply avoid misfortune - you also have to earn a living. And areas that get hit by flooding tend to do so because they're next to large bodies of water, making them good for both agriculture and industry as well as capable of providing drinking water for lots of people.
Also, no area is safe. No matter where you live, you will always be subject to some disaster.
Actually, could such farmers potentially sue Monsanto for polluting their fields? After all, cross-pollination with Roundup Ready plants is making the field produce GMOs, which might negatively affect their market prospects.
This old canard incorrectly presumes that there is somewhere to go that resolves the issues you have with where you are; it also incorrectly presumes that such mobility is practical or even possible.
Your "issue" is that you presume other people have an obligation to be your unpaid servants. Or do you perhaps think that you owning the real estate you mentioned earlier means anything without the systems tracking and backing such ownership?
Hacking your computer to get your online banking password and subsequently emptying your account doesn't involve force or the threat of force, so does that mean the hacker didn't take your money?
Of course you have an option for paying taxes: don't live in a society that demands rent from you for the privilege. Granted, you might not like a society run by profits from government-owned companies, nor one that simply gives up and collapses, but then again, it's not coercion for your landlord to demand rent just because you dislike living under the bridge, now is it?
The righteous still need to know how much taxes to pay and which side of the road to drive on.
Anyway, I've been waiting for a while for the first attack against 3D printing - we can't have the peons not depend on large companies for everything, now can we? So is this it, or merely stupidity?
Actually, yes it does mean exactly that. Either apply the law to everyone or no one. Why on earth should a notorious criminal organization or a weird cult be more equal than a secular bunch of morons?
Your previous post not only took sides, but also said that "they should be stopped". And now you're backpedaling and saying "we" shouldn't get involved. Are you perhaps an (underperforming) member of Syrian Electronic Army?
A corporation will never, ever, ever behave in any way or do anything whatsoever without it actually being some individual or a group of individuals within doing so in its name. A corporation is legal fiction and just as incapable of independent action as any other fictitious entity.
I dunno, it seems like they have good reasons to be pissed off.
Which is one of the problems of euro, since it means that neither industry nor tourism get a boost from prices effectively falling. Euro will eventually collapse, of course, once enough countries have gone bankrupt that the rest can't carry it anymore, but it'll be too late for Greece.
No, cargo cult is when you lack a key piece of knowledge. In the case of the original cargo cults, that piece was that the delivery of cargo had been pre-arranged through other means. What do you propose is the missing piece that causes a neuron-by-neuron simulation of brain to not work?
That's possible, but unlikely. There's tremendous evolutionary pressure towards efficiency in brains, since they consume lots of energy, are soft and squishy and thus require support structure (skull), and in the case of humans, are physically large enough to make childbirth dangerous. Add in the relative slowness of neural signals and state changes, and it's pretty unlikely that there's much or any algorithmic inefficiency that could be removed without sacrificing something important.
Hell, we don't even know what subset of our brain is sufficient to drive a car.
The car-driving subsystem, of course. Which gets us to the second problem: the more you practice, the better you become, and the less you have to think what you're doing. Just working the clutch requires your full attention when you're just starting out, but soon becomes automatic. It has become another subsystem in its own right.
In other words, brains are capable of modifying their own "programming". It is almost certain that any system seeking to be both efficient and flexible would have to do so as well, yet we don't really use self-modifying programs, thus we have relatively little experience with them, which isn't very conductive to making large systems.
Whether Zimmerman should be let off the hook depends on whether you think it's acceptable for you to be subjected to random questioning backed by threat of lethal force just because someone thinks you look suspicious. It has nothing to do with whether Martin used cough medicine, either for treating cough or getting high.
I'm not sure why anyone would defend Z - you'd think that even fans of police state would want actual cops, rather than self-appointed vigilantes, to perform the Fourth Amendment violations. The only two reasons I can think of are pining for the good old days of lynchings, or wanting to perform them yourself, either due to racism or to be tough on (other) criminals.
All of which you know, of course, which is why you posted as an AC.
Well, first you should reflect on why you felt the need to take my argument to a ridiculous extreme and then attack that caricature. Are you simply unable to counter my actual words, yet feel the need to oppose them due to a vested interest or emotional attachments? Was it a semi-conscious reflexive action on your part, rather than considered one? Do you consider this a form of tribal conflict, where positions on various issues mean little besides serving as identifying banners?
After you've determined the reasons your resorted to a (very clumsy) strawman argument, you can decide how to deal with the matter - perhaps you need to stop deceiving yourself, or perhaps you need to study rethoric. I can't say which, since I don't know you, but I can say that right now you come across as a moron - either for thinking you're making a valid point (you're not) or thinking you're fooling anyone (you're not).
Literally, since there wouldn't be anything stopping any warlord wannabe from simply taking power.
If a community hands over its own for outside judgement it's not regulating itself, now is it?
Your bad choices have a tendency to affect other people, giving them incentive to interfere. You can disagree or resent them for doing so, which won't stop them, or you can sit down and negotiate about where, exactly speaking, does the line between your business and other people's business go. And doing so is a form of regulation.
Furthermore, one person's bad choices often represent opportunity for other people, thus giving them an incentive to seduce those people into making them. This can take many forms, from tobacco companies advertising their cancer sticks to banks suggesting loans a prospective customer can't actually afford. This, again, requires regulation, least freedom becomes an excuse for the scum of the earth to prey on people.
You don't live in your private universe so you just have to get used to other people having a say in your choices. Sorry.
What happens when other countries have effective government and yours doesn't? Or when no country has effective government and thus can't stop some enterprising wannabe dictator from taking over either through a coup or by amassing sufficient wealth to pull the shots?
And we never will. No amount of evidence can prove something you don't want to believe, especially if the cost of believing it comes right now while the cost of not believing it comes later. So as long as fossil fuels remain cost-effective, no amount of evidence can ever prove that they do harm - evidence only becomes sufficient after we've switched to something else.
Add the tendency of people to think of arguments in terms of victory or defeat, and it makes one wonder if humanity is really suited for a technological civilization where decisions have farther reaching consequences than the pecking order of the pack. Hunter-gatherers can afford this level of self-delusional bullshit since they can just pick up and leave if they screw up bad enough, but we can't.
And because you are just as unlikely to have such abilities, your password is not going to be 10-20 random characters, now is it? Rather, it's going to be something that's easy for a human to memorize. Unless, of course, you write it down, in which case it's irrelevant whether the screen also displays it or not.
Of course there is: if you can only refuse to surrender information that incriminates you, then silence is as good as admitting guilt - and besides, how do you prove information would incriminate you without surrendering it?
Storage can't be done with electric cars because range is already a problem and is made even worse if I can't trust the battery to be full after leaving the thing to recharge while I sleep or work. Also, the constant charging and uncharging is going to wear the battery down prematurely, costing me (lots of) money to replace it. Finally, since electric companies are businesses I'll probably end up losing money if I first buy electricity and then sell it back.
If this idea ever goes forward, except one-way filters that keep the grid from draining the battery to become the best-selling accessory.
Sometimes. But ultimately, the Constitution is just a piece of paper, and depends entirely on the will of the people to enforce it. Which means that it's guarantee is only as strong as the unwillingness of people to apply insane troll logic to or outright ignore it. In other words, not very strong, unless you have enough people on your side nation-wide.
Probably - but that makes them more expensive, making the ultimate cost per megawatthour even worse. Also, there are limits to engineering - now matter how well you build them, they will wear down.
For a lot of people it's not - nothing that has any kind of negative effects whatsoever can be used. That is arguably the biggest problem with "green" power - it's never green enough.
Of course it does, but it sucks. So people usually just scream to drown it out.