You can't just slap more neurons on there, because there's no evidence that sheer number of neurons is directly related to intelligence.
Sure there is: the size of human brain. A human head is large enough to make childbirth dangerous, making it a clear evolutionary disadvantage; yet it has not been shrunk by evolution in the millions of years human-like species have existed. That strongly suggests that it can't be easiy shrunk while retaining intelligence.
That doesn't prove, of course, that simply slapping a few more neurons there would increase intelligence. On the other hand, brain is quite capable of repurposing existing neurons to new tasks, resulting in, say, a blind person getting more efficient processing of sound, so the possibility can't be discounted either.
However, there is good evidence that more hardware in general means more capability, as evidenced by how the power of our microprocessors have grown as a result of increasing transistor count.
I was about to say, Tor makes this all useless anyways, as well, makes anyone that has half a brain to realize they are fighting a loosing battle spending all the tax payers money doing it in the process.
Unless, of course, they make it illegal to use encryption, except when connecting to a website in a list of licensed businesses.
The simple, awful truth is that the Internet will go away eventually. It got this far because it caught the people in power - both businesses and politicians - by surprise; it will be killed as a communication medium eventually.
Freedom is anomaly in human history, it never lasts. It's just a little spark in the ocean of tyranny, soon to be extinguished whenever it appears. The people who make the rules will always be better served by making rules that crush everyone else under their heel.
If the video card's VRAM is faulty and is causing the system to crash is that MS's fault?
How could that possibly cause a system crash instead of just corrupted graphics? Does Windows kernel use compute shaders?
And, frankly, after the fight against Windows 7 to get my CRT display working on the modes I want, with the refresh rate I want, I admit that "Microsoft's fault" is the first thought that comes to my mind whenever there's a problem with any PC with any Microsoft software in it.
If you think that the whack-jobs are ballistic about vaccines, wait they go off the rails for something like this!
So? Then they'll end up dying from illnesses the rest of us are immunized to, which is unfortunate from a humanitarian point of view, but that's their own fault, and at least they'll get some herd protection since everyone around them is unable to pass the disease to them. A pity about their children suffering from their parent's stupidity, but maybe they'll wise up once they grow up.
Then again, with that ballistic tendency, they might find employment in private spaceflight industry as booster rockets;).
Well, it's been a while since your real immune system has had to work, so the next mutation of a virus comes along and 'oops'.
Your real immune system is working all the time, fighting more simultaneous and endless wars than the United States. Leave a piece of meat on the table and take note how long it takes before all the bacteria, fungi and insects notice it's there. Now remember that you are made of meat.
You only notice your immune system when something manages to get a foothold, but that doesn't mean that it isn't working at the other times.
Send him to Gitmo, then death penalty. No New York trials. He's a spy, stealing information that can be used against us.
If you allowed people to be executed without trial when accused of being spies, I'm sure you'd be amazed at how many spies suddenly turn up. And by an even more amazing coincidence, all of them would be people someone in power didn't like. A bit like every other time when someone's word has been enough to send people to gallows.
Learn to use your brains even when offended, please.
When are we going to acknowledge that we are at (cyber) war with China, have been for years, and start acting accordingly?
Does it make sense to execute spies? It's never stopped people from spying, so it's not an effective deterrent, and it's not like they deserve it any more or less than any other enemy troops do. Keep them imprisoned and exchange for your own spies.
Besides, I'm not sure that US can really afford any new wars, especially with China. They manufacture all your stuff nowadays, you know.
If you loaded the shuttle up with nukes it would be much more effective than a 'dumb' ICBM.
How much does it cost to launch a shuttle, vs. launching a bunch of ICBMs? And how many warheads can the shuttle carry and drop (remember, it takes some energy to launch them on targets)? I'm pretty sure that carpet-bombing with ICBMs would be more cost-effective on megatons delivered somewhere where it hurts per dollar, even if we assume that the shuttle would get back intact.
it helps a lot if you actually employ intelligent people who know what they're doing.
But if you hire such people, you have to pay them. If you fire and replace them with the cheapest ones you can find, you can get a big fat bonus, cash in your options, and then blame any lack of quality on incompetent employees.
"and no, hard work doesn't entitle you to get money"
Yes it does if you decide to sell your work instead of giving it away.
No it doesn't. No matter how hard you work, you might get nothing.
"even if you persist for years; and it most certainly doesn't entitle you to enforce rules designed to make you money on others."
What is this , Communism 101?
No, Capitalism 101. You might work hard, you might still fail to make any money. If you fail, you should think of some more efficient way of spending your effort, rather than insisting that the government should protect your business model from the realities (such as "information is easy to copy").
"Then you wouldn't have to try to control other people"
Nothing to do with controlling. If you want the work pay for it. Don't expect to get it for free if its not being given away free. And don't even start to bleat about your rights since you obviously have no idea what rights are.
Except that it is being given away for free, on Pirate Bay for example. That's why I can get it for free. You and the rest of copyright people are trying to prevent this by imposing control over those people's actions who are giving it away for free.
And which "government monopoly" would this be? Or are we heading off into conspiracy theory here?
Copyright.
Hardly. You're a cookie cutter lefty and sadly typical of the type. Mind you , you probably didn't even think your post up - you probably just copied it.
Do you even know what "left" and "right" mean in politics? Or did you just add them to your post to conjure up some McCarty-era boogeyman?
People are just now using HDMI. No one is moving anytime soon.
Maybe. Then again, adding an extra connector to a graphic card isn't exactly expensive. Mine has DVI, HDMI and Displayport.
Anyway, what I'd really like to see in a future standard would be variable refresh rate. That is, instead of updating the image 60 or 75 or 100 times per second, send the next image when it's ready. That way, when you're watching a PAL movie, your display shows 25 frames per second; when an NTSC one, 30; and when you're playing a 3D game, the rate keeps going up and down constantly.
This would mean lower latency ("vsync on demand", essentially) and smoother playback.
People control information for a number of reasons but copyright is there so the people who created the work - you know , the ones who spent months or years creating a piece of music or a book (surprise! They don't just magic themselves into existence!) - can earn some money from their efforts before ungrateful and clueless morons like you think you're entitled to it for free just because you can copy it easily.
Isn't insisting that other people behave in a certain way just so you can make money kinda implying a sense of entitlement on your part? And no, hard work doesn't entitle you to get money, even if you persist for years; and it most certainly doesn't entitle you to enforce rules designed to make you money on others.
Maybe you should consider getting a day job, and composing/writing on your free time? Then you wouldn't have to try to control other people to make profit, and the rest of us wouldn't have to subsidy you indulging your creative impulses through government monopoly.
It's been tried, doesn't work well for a large amount of people. Ever seen how "normal people" use their computer? Warning pops up "Do you want to install the RootKit ActiveX from l33th4x0rs.com?". Typical user doesn't even read it, clicks OK, keeps on browsing as if nothing happened.
I'm talking about making configuration changes, not browsing the web. A typical user isn't going to screw around with the config settings, so he isn't going to be harmed by being able to set things up the way he wants.
On general purpose machines such tactics are much less successful, because users actively fight such measures. At some point the user runs into a conflict between that they want to do something that the firewall/permissions/etc don't want to allow. And in such a case the security system is never seen as a good thing, and actively fought, disabled and worked around. Even if what the user wants to do is a seriously bad idea.
You know, I just one a several-day fight against Windows 7 insisting that 60 Hz is good enough for everyone on a CRT. It took extracting the EDID information on my display, manually tweaking it to hide the 60 Hz modes, turning the edited EDID to an INF, and finally installing said INF as a driver to prevent fullscreen applications (mainly games) from choosing modes that make my eyes bleed. Getting Ati Tray Tools working with Windows 7 - they aren't signed, and don't like UAC - is another fight I've decided to give up on.
What I'm saying is, automation and safeguards are nice, but they should always be bypassable just by responding "yes" to a warning prompt. If I want to disable some display modes (or add more), let me. If I want to load an unsigned kernel driver, let me. If you don't let me, it simply makes solving the problem even harder.
When automation makes your users reminisce about XFree86's modelines with longing, you've suffered epic failing.
For anyone interested, here is a link to the 17-step procedure to prevent Windows from lowering the refresh rate to eye-bleeding level when display modes are changed. In step 4, simply disable the "standard timing" modes that have low refresh rates, and change the minimum rate to your liking. User-friendly, eh ?-)
If it was so spiffy, it wouldn't float around in LEO.
It doesn't. That's just the decoy the real shuttle leaves behind as it leaves to engage in the war against the spiders from space.
The only manned craft that we've sent beyond LEO were to the moon.
Really, now? You don't actually believe that it takes that big rocket to get to the Moon, now do you? Haven't you ever thought about what really happened to Apollo 13?
If I were in the black ops division of the government, I'd be renegotiating that deal. "So you came from another galaxy, but you'll only tell us how to float just above (relatively) our rock?"
Protip: if you're negotiating with a pangalactic species, and you're still stuck on a single planet... you won't be the one altering the deal (-8<=]. You will be the one praying they won't alter it.
A lot of the structure and function of cells are determined by electrical fields,
A two-watt battery is not going to cause significant electrical field. Pretty much everything from static electricity to power lines to the computer you wrote that message on are going to top it. In fact, your own neural system will likely cause stronger fields, at least in the immediate vicinity of neurons.
conformations of molecules,
Which are determined by chemical bonds...
and vibrations of molecules.
Also known as heat.
2GHz microwave radiation can certainly change those.
Terahertz visible light is far more effective at it. It's not only more energetic, but is also present in far greater quantities in your environment.
What clock are they going to check it against to verify its accuracy?
Another aliminum clock, I'd imagine. Fire up a bunch of them and see how much their readings deviate after some time (measured as the median of their readings).
I'd be very interested to hear some examples in which you believe libertarian theory would demand "fundamental freedoms" to "take a second seat" to property rights.
Any time a libertarian argues againt taxation is a fine example. Without taxes, and the social security they help fund, the poorer amongst us are little more than indentured servants - if they get lucky, that is; if not, they'll be starving beggars.
Libertarian theory concentrates entirely on liberty - the legal permission to act - and refuses to acknowledge that this is not synonymous with freedom, which requires the further condition that one also has the ability to act. At some point, the libertarian movement became obsessed with laissez-faire capitalism, and began to see it as an end in itself - and a silver bullet at that - rather than a means to an end.
And that's precisely why we rest of us don't want to be associated with libertarians.
Please don't pretend to represent everyone else; it doesn't bolster your case.
That was kinda my point when I protested using the word "libertarian" being used to describe people who value freedom of speech. I value it, I'm not a libertarian, and don't want to be associated with them.
I argue for personal liberty, not economical liberty - the latter is a subset, not superset, of the former.
As you offer no supporting arguments, I can only say "I disagree".
Since the difference between me and a typical libertarian is about core values - I value freedom, and derive property rights from that, and a libertarian values property and derives any freedoms from that - that's the most that we can say.
You understand that one's body is a form of property, and therefore property rights encompass freedom of speech, don't you?
There's a joke about taxes killing you somewhere here;).
On a more serious note, it's a good example of just how twisted libertarian viewpoint really is: it sees everything in the terms of property, and treats even fundamental freedoms as merely byproducts, which in turn implies that they might take a second seat when they come into conflict with someone else's (actual) property rights.
To say that libertarianism has "nothing to do with rights or freedoms, except property rights and the freedom from taxes" is meaningless because to a libertarian, property rights are the basis for all rights and freedoms.
And that's precisely why we rest of us don't want to be associated with libertarians. I argue for personal liberty, not economical liberty - the latter is a subset, not superset, of the former.
Of course the fact that removing regulation pretty much caused the current depression doesn't help either.
Mars has no magnetosphere, and plants are not going to add one. Radiation will still hit hard, and air will still be stripped away by the solar winds.
Drop a bunch of ice asteroids to build up the atmosphere, and then one every century or so - or perhaps a constant barrage of small chunks that are vaporized in the upper atmosphere would be preferable? Either way, that should keep the air pressure up, until we can develop the technology to reboot planetary cores.
Make the planet into a giant industrial factory where raw pollutants are just dumped out the window. Anything capable of living in that environment would have to thrive on said wastes.
That doesn't make sense. You'd need to lift the products out of Mars's gravity well to get them to Earth - I assume that you didn't mean people to live in the toxic dump planet. If you have that kind of technology, you'd be much better off building your industrial base on asteroids; not only do they have negligible gravity well, but several of them are actually composed of almost pure metals.
Planets are too valuable to waste as toxic dumps, and space-based industry can deliver anywhere with the speed of a shooting star;).
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Sure there is: the size of human brain. A human head is large enough to make childbirth dangerous, making it a clear evolutionary disadvantage; yet it has not been shrunk by evolution in the millions of years human-like species have existed. That strongly suggests that it can't be easiy shrunk while retaining intelligence.
That doesn't prove, of course, that simply slapping a few more neurons there would increase intelligence. On the other hand, brain is quite capable of repurposing existing neurons to new tasks, resulting in, say, a blind person getting more efficient processing of sound, so the possibility can't be discounted either.
However, there is good evidence that more hardware in general means more capability, as evidenced by how the power of our microprocessors have grown as a result of increasing transistor count.
Unless, of course, they make it illegal to use encryption, except when connecting to a website in a list of licensed businesses.
The simple, awful truth is that the Internet will go away eventually. It got this far because it caught the people in power - both businesses and politicians - by surprise; it will be killed as a communication medium eventually.
Freedom is anomaly in human history, it never lasts. It's just a little spark in the ocean of tyranny, soon to be extinguished whenever it appears. The people who make the rules will always be better served by making rules that crush everyone else under their heel.
How could that possibly cause a system crash instead of just corrupted graphics? Does Windows kernel use compute shaders?
And, frankly, after the fight against Windows 7 to get my CRT display working on the modes I want, with the refresh rate I want, I admit that "Microsoft's fault" is the first thought that comes to my mind whenever there's a problem with any PC with any Microsoft software in it.
So? Then they'll end up dying from illnesses the rest of us are immunized to, which is unfortunate from a humanitarian point of view, but that's their own fault, and at least they'll get some herd protection since everyone around them is unable to pass the disease to them. A pity about their children suffering from their parent's stupidity, but maybe they'll wise up once they grow up.
Then again, with that ballistic tendency, they might find employment in private spaceflight industry as booster rockets ;).
Your real immune system is working all the time, fighting more simultaneous and endless wars than the United States. Leave a piece of meat on the table and take note how long it takes before all the bacteria, fungi and insects notice it's there. Now remember that you are made of meat.
You only notice your immune system when something manages to get a foothold, but that doesn't mean that it isn't working at the other times.
I'm sure they'll be thrilled to know that they'll be left to rot once they've outlived their usefulness.
This is the cancer that's killing our society.
If you allowed people to be executed without trial when accused of being spies, I'm sure you'd be amazed at how many spies suddenly turn up. And by an even more amazing coincidence, all of them would be people someone in power didn't like. A bit like every other time when someone's word has been enough to send people to gallows.
Learn to use your brains even when offended, please.
Does it make sense to execute spies? It's never stopped people from spying, so it's not an effective deterrent, and it's not like they deserve it any more or less than any other enemy troops do. Keep them imprisoned and exchange for your own spies.
Besides, I'm not sure that US can really afford any new wars, especially with China. They manufacture all your stuff nowadays, you know.
How much does it cost to launch a shuttle, vs. launching a bunch of ICBMs? And how many warheads can the shuttle carry and drop (remember, it takes some energy to launch them on targets)? I'm pretty sure that carpet-bombing with ICBMs would be more cost-effective on megatons delivered somewhere where it hurts per dollar, even if we assume that the shuttle would get back intact.
That's clearly nonsense. Which of these programs is named after the very concept of high velocity?
BTW: What does FAST do, anyway?
Or you could just use PostgreSQL instead.
But if you hire such people, you have to pay them. If you fire and replace them with the cheapest ones you can find, you can get a big fat bonus, cash in your options, and then blame any lack of quality on incompetent employees.
I should had been a CEO :).
No it doesn't. No matter how hard you work, you might get nothing.
No, Capitalism 101. You might work hard, you might still fail to make any money. If you fail, you should think of some more efficient way of spending your effort, rather than insisting that the government should protect your business model from the realities (such as "information is easy to copy").
Except that it is being given away for free, on Pirate Bay for example. That's why I can get it for free. You and the rest of copyright people are trying to prevent this by imposing control over those people's actions who are giving it away for free.
Copyright.
Do you even know what "left" and "right" mean in politics? Or did you just add them to your post to conjure up some McCarty-era boogeyman?
Maybe. Then again, adding an extra connector to a graphic card isn't exactly expensive. Mine has DVI, HDMI and Displayport.
Anyway, what I'd really like to see in a future standard would be variable refresh rate. That is, instead of updating the image 60 or 75 or 100 times per second, send the next image when it's ready. That way, when you're watching a PAL movie, your display shows 25 frames per second; when an NTSC one, 30; and when you're playing a 3D game, the rate keeps going up and down constantly.
This would mean lower latency ("vsync on demand", essentially) and smoother playback.
Isn't insisting that other people behave in a certain way just so you can make money kinda implying a sense of entitlement on your part? And no, hard work doesn't entitle you to get money, even if you persist for years; and it most certainly doesn't entitle you to enforce rules designed to make you money on others.
Maybe you should consider getting a day job, and composing/writing on your free time? Then you wouldn't have to try to control other people to make profit, and the rest of us wouldn't have to subsidy you indulging your creative impulses through government monopoly.
Oh the irony.
I'm talking about making configuration changes, not browsing the web. A typical user isn't going to screw around with the config settings, so he isn't going to be harmed by being able to set things up the way he wants.
You know, I just one a several-day fight against Windows 7 insisting that 60 Hz is good enough for everyone on a CRT. It took extracting the EDID information on my display, manually tweaking it to hide the 60 Hz modes, turning the edited EDID to an INF, and finally installing said INF as a driver to prevent fullscreen applications (mainly games) from choosing modes that make my eyes bleed. Getting Ati Tray Tools working with Windows 7 - they aren't signed, and don't like UAC - is another fight I've decided to give up on.
What I'm saying is, automation and safeguards are nice, but they should always be bypassable just by responding "yes" to a warning prompt. If I want to disable some display modes (or add more), let me. If I want to load an unsigned kernel driver, let me. If you don't let me, it simply makes solving the problem even harder.
When automation makes your users reminisce about XFree86's modelines with longing, you've suffered epic failing.
For anyone interested, here is a link to the 17-step procedure to prevent Windows from lowering the refresh rate to eye-bleeding level when display modes are changed. In step 4, simply disable the "standard timing" modes that have low refresh rates, and change the minimum rate to your liking. User-friendly, eh ?-)
It doesn't. That's just the decoy the real shuttle leaves behind as it leaves to engage in the war against the spiders from space.
Really, now? You don't actually believe that it takes that big rocket to get to the Moon, now do you? Haven't you ever thought about what really happened to Apollo 13?
Protip: if you're negotiating with a pangalactic species, and you're still stuck on a single planet... you won't be the one altering the deal (-8<=]. You will be the one praying they won't alter it.
A two-watt battery is not going to cause significant electrical field. Pretty much everything from static electricity to power lines to the computer you wrote that message on are going to top it. In fact, your own neural system will likely cause stronger fields, at least in the immediate vicinity of neurons.
Which are determined by chemical bonds...
Also known as heat.
Terahertz visible light is far more effective at it. It's not only more energetic, but is also present in far greater quantities in your environment.
You'd need 100,000-photon absorption to get from 0.00001 eV to 1 eV.
And be exposed to what the scientists call "sunlight", a flux of actual ionizing radiation? I don't think so.
Another aliminum clock, I'd imagine. Fire up a bunch of them and see how much their readings deviate after some time (measured as the median of their readings).
Any time a libertarian argues againt taxation is a fine example. Without taxes, and the social security they help fund, the poorer amongst us are little more than indentured servants - if they get lucky, that is; if not, they'll be starving beggars.
Libertarian theory concentrates entirely on liberty - the legal permission to act - and refuses to acknowledge that this is not synonymous with freedom, which requires the further condition that one also has the ability to act. At some point, the libertarian movement became obsessed with laissez-faire capitalism, and began to see it as an end in itself - and a silver bullet at that - rather than a means to an end.
That was kinda my point when I protested using the word "libertarian" being used to describe people who value freedom of speech. I value it, I'm not a libertarian, and don't want to be associated with them.
Since the difference between me and a typical libertarian is about core values - I value freedom, and derive property rights from that, and a libertarian values property and derives any freedoms from that - that's the most that we can say.
There's a joke about taxes killing you somewhere here ;).
On a more serious note, it's a good example of just how twisted libertarian viewpoint really is: it sees everything in the terms of property, and treats even fundamental freedoms as merely byproducts, which in turn implies that they might take a second seat when they come into conflict with someone else's (actual) property rights.
And that's precisely why we rest of us don't want to be associated with libertarians. I argue for personal liberty, not economical liberty - the latter is a subset, not superset, of the former.
Of course the fact that removing regulation pretty much caused the current depression doesn't help either.
Mars has no magnetosphere, and plants are not going to add one. Radiation will still hit hard, and air will still be stripped away by the solar winds.
Drop a bunch of ice asteroids to build up the atmosphere, and then one every century or so - or perhaps a constant barrage of small chunks that are vaporized in the upper atmosphere would be preferable? Either way, that should keep the air pressure up, until we can develop the technology to reboot planetary cores.
That doesn't make sense. You'd need to lift the products out of Mars's gravity well to get them to Earth - I assume that you didn't mean people to live in the toxic dump planet. If you have that kind of technology, you'd be much better off building your industrial base on asteroids; not only do they have negligible gravity well, but several of them are actually composed of almost pure metals.
Planets are too valuable to waste as toxic dumps, and space-based industry can deliver anywhere with the speed of a shooting star ;).