For starters it posits that there was intelligence behind the design of our existance. This can disproven by finding factual evidence to support any one of another different theories.
Actually, it is impossible to prove that a given event was not part of someone's plan.
Just because you do manage to disprove it (such as a giant being coming down and saying, "Oops, no, I just made you by accident when I sneezed.")
His sneezing was pre-arranged and part of a plan by Mrrzhg, as was our resulting existence.
Which is NOT to say that any arbitrary magic is indistinguishable from advanced technology. Things that violate well-understood laws of physics without exploiting little-understood loopholes are "magic" that can't be imitated by technology however advanced.
Sure they can, or at least appear to. You simply have to add variables to the system which the audience doesn't know about. For example, see diamagnetic levitation. And don't forget to read a this response to really drive the point home:).
That's what the saying really means: if you are more knowledgeable than your audience, you can always fool them into thinking that you can violate the laws of physics, that is, do magic. It doesn't matter if the audience is cavemen, Greek philosophers or modern-day scientists; as long as you know more than they do, you can hide your deception in that gap - assuming, of course, that the gap is big enough.
And please understand that knowing basic physics, even perfectly, does not protect against this perfectly, because it doesn't necessarily mean that you can figure out all possible consequences and applications of those laws.
If my biology naturally makes me want to favor someone of my own races, it's my obligation as an evolved human to have my logic overrule it.
Of course, by exact same logic, it is also your obligation to overrule any other instinct - including the social ones which are behind your motivation to override any instinct in the first place.
As an evolved human being, you have the ability to overrule an instinct based on the projected outcomes of either following or not following it. The motivation to do so, however, rises from other instincts - or perhaps even the same instinct.
All logic does, all it can do, is allow you to solve the motivational conflicts, and take the long term view into account while doing so. I really wish people would stop implying that logic is somehow "higher" or "better" than instincts. It isn't; it's simply a tool.
All that said, overruling the racist instinct is likely the correct choice, as following it tends to lead to fundamental attribution error and faulty judgement.
As someone who watches a lot of movies, I think I can help them find it. I suggest you look for the ominous looking computer with a single red eye. You'll know you're close when it activates some devious self-defense system (probably involving poisonous gas).
Poison gas ? You think that's all an evil supercomputer will do ? NO ! It will spontaneously develop godlike powers, take over the universe and unravel the very fabric of reality around you !
"Poisonous gas"... How cheap.
Pay careful attention to the background music, as it will provide valuable cues on when to run.
Running is useless. You have to present it with a logical paradox. That'll cause it to crash, proving that programming an evil AI with C or C++ is an important safety feature.
Of course it could instead corrupt its memory, go nuts and destroy everything, but that's a risk the city of San Fransisco has to take.
No, more like brainwashing. Whites are being brainwashed to mix with alien races in order to destroy their distinctness and cause their extinction.
Actually, it's a clever plot from our part to destroy the other races, and get some decent comic book drawing genes from the Japanese in the process.
We need more interspecies matings with aliens and animals, or we are going to devolve.
I've got dips on Caitians !
Twi'leks might also be nice... But I'll leave the Wookies to you, brave champion of our race as you are.
But who'll do the Chenjesu and the Mrnnhrmmm ? Some machine fetishist might like the latter, but the former would probably require some New Age crystal expert to even figure out the technical aspects...
And malicious individuals can make use of that knowledge to make a profit. Should such malicious activity be allowed, or should those who do it knowing the result be punished?
Should we assume malice here ? I thought that "innocent until proven guilty" is the basis of all western legal systems. Why should this be reversed just because stock market is affected ?
Suppose you know that a piece of metal of a certain diameter and thickness will be accepted by a vending machine as a quarter. Are you guilty of a crime if you act upon that information? Of course. You cannot argue that the vending machine is at fault for accepting slugs to secure your innocence.
Hardly a valid analogy, since it's obvious that whoever inserted the piece of metal was performing a purposeful fraud. A better one would be if the coin inserted later turned out to be forged. Should the person inserting it to the vending machine have run it by the bank first, to check it for validity ?
You cannot claim innocence if you spread misinformation knowing that people will act upon it to your financial gain.
There is no evidence whatsoever that that's what happened here. It was just a lot of automated systems interacting in unexpected way.
One could argue, however, that the brokers should know whether the companies they have invested into are near bankruptcy or not. If they can't be bothered to, this kind of thing is unavoidable. They shouldn't be blaming other people for their own incompetence.
Being the first to react to news has *always* been a way to make money in the stock market, and in todays world where news speads at internet speed, staying ahead of the public spread of fresh news requires acting before there's time to use any sort of judgement.
However, if you have significant investment in a single company, common sense would seem to dictate that you research it well enough to know whether it is in the brink of bankruptcy or not. Situational awareness is important even in twitch games.
Cubase4 and similarly syncrosoft-protected software: OTOH I doubt the gaming industry would move to the same kind of software protection as a $600+ music program.
There's a 2.5GB torrent for "Cubase4.iso" on Isohunt, although it doesn't have seeds right now.
I propose a new Rule of the Internet, in the vein of Rule #34: "It has been cracked. No exceptions."
How about nuclear? Are you willing to invest in that as a non-fossil source?
Nuclear power is immoral on the grounds that it desecrates the remains of dead stars. It would be like using mummies for fuel. If you think their curse was bad, just wait until a wormhole-ridden undead white giant comes after you for vengeance. It really sucks, you know.
And don't except mercy, it ended its life with a heart of iron.
Cell phones etc are kept outside because everything that goes in, stays in, so that it can't be used to bring something out. For example, he took a USB mouse in, and had to buy a new one to replace it- they wouldn't let the USB mouse out, because it could be used to hide stuff. Maybe it had been modified with memory, or opened up and something classified stuffed inside the case
Wouldn't it be much simpler to just use an USB memory stick and swallow it ? Or, if we're talking about really hardcore agencies, make a subdermal pocket for transporting it. Coming to think of it, if it fits inside a mouse, the chances are you could put it into a plastic bag and swallow it.
Heck, you could just write the classified data on the back of your hand using invisible ink.
Latency IS important, especially for institutional investors or trades on a mercantile exchange. One of the most critical being arbitrage, or buying something from one person and immediately selling to another at a higher price - instant profit. You just have to be the one to spot the price differential first, and it can come down to milliseconds.
Based on this description, seems to me that "arbitrage" is a nice word for inserting yourself into a trade which has nothing to do with you for the purpose of bleeding both the seller and the buyer out of some profit without producing or contributing anything of value. Making it more difficult would make the actual productive parties in the trade better off, and likely help economy as a whole.
Or, to put it even more bluntly: arbitrage, as described by you, is a nicer name for parasitism.
The algorithm may be hidden in the hardware, if it is not rock solid (and published) I give this technology a huge chance of failure.
An analogue algorithm using "manufacturing variations" means basically white noise in the circuit. Cloning that accurately might indeed be an extremely difficult and costly operation: you basically have to recreate the chip with tolerance of tiny fraction of the original tolerance (=very expensive), or use a massively powerful (=big, not something you can carry with you unnoticed) computer to simulate it.
That would be akin to pumping money into the Wright Brothers in the hopes of getting the 747 faster.
Which, in all likelihood, would work. With sufficient funding you can build more than one model and test several ideas in parallel, and hire engineers to solve solve details in one model while you work on another. And of course having more warm bodies makes actual assembly go faster too.
The fact is, the Wright brothers couldn't had build a 747. They simply didn't have the resources. They built the first proof-of-concept craft, but developing actual practical aircraft took resources, and a lot of them at that.
Then again, it seems that the problem is solving itself, with all these companies popping up and developing their rockets. Of course most of them will go bankrupt, but the research they do before that will help advance the field.
Out of curiosity, why is it that people get bent out of shape about this 'religion'?
Because it has practices like "Fair Game", which basically means an organized harassment campaign against its critics.
I got to witness an anonymous rally in San Diego about a year or so ago and it was just silly. Yes, you and I may know the whole thing is a crock, but isn't there supposed to be freedom of religion?
They are free to believe in their bullshit, that's not an issue. However, immoral things done in the name of religion are still immoral, and scientology is amongst the nastiest religions on the planet in that regard. It's not that they are necessarily more malicious than, say, Islam; it's that their style of abuse is well suited for the modern world.
Not looking to start a pissing contest, I'm just wondering where people get their priorities.
Well, I'd say that preventing a bunch of lunatics who've demonstrated their willingness to abuse their power numerous times from gaining any more power is a pretty high priority.
So if I walk up to a guy on a street, and I ask him "where does John Smith live, I'm going to shoot him in the head with this gun", it's perfectly ok for him to tell me, and he shouldn't be held accountable for anything. Is that right?
Your analogy is false, as murdering John is an evil act by default, while downloading a file is not. A better analogy would be asking: "Where does John "the Fence" Smith live ? I need to deliver this packet to him."
Then again, fencing stolen loot is also usually considered morally wrong, while copyright infringement is not, so my analogy makes the whole thing seem too sinister too.
What you should have said is "We're never going to get people out of personal transport." People, especially here in the US, are independent creatures. They prefer personal transportation to mass, and personal right now happens to be gas.
Then what do you need a flight-plan system for ? Do your cars fly ?
My ISP here in Ireland has reliable QoS and bandwidth, thanks to the fact that they strictly enforce a rolling 30 day cap (so you don't have network degradation at the start of each calendar month as heavy users use up their cap).
My ISP here in Finland doesn't have any caps and still manages to deliver a reliable service, presumably due to having built enough network capacity to deal with the demand.
I see you're quoting from that comic. Firefox does not have one giant address space, it can allocate memory and release it as and when required using various different methods depending on data requirements (just as any other process can).
Do you know what "address space" is, and how memory allocation works ? Because the only way to have more than one address space is to have more than one process.
The fact that this memory is attached to one process or various is beside the point, apart from one: When a process (tab/window) in Chrome is destroyed the OS cleans up the memory. When a tab or a window is destroyed in Firefox the application cleans up the memory.
And sometimes Firefox misses some of it. Then it stays allocated until Firefox exits, at which point the OS can clean it. Since the total memory is limited, when such things happen over and over again, these little crumbs of allocated but unused memory take up greater and greater portion of memory space, until finally there's not enough unallocated memory left to satisfy an allocation request, and Firefox crashes, taking all its tabs and windows with it. On the other hand, if each tab has its own process, a particular one might crash, but the rest keep on working.
Of course, the same goes for any error. In Firefox, it kills everything, while in Chrome, it kills only the tab in which the error happened, or that's the theory anyway. And since browsers are complex, it's easy to make errors while coding them.
There is also less incentive to spend time fixing memory leaks because the workaround will be to close the window/tab and re-open it again.
As opposed to the Firefox way of closing the whole browser and starting from scratch.
FF3 has achieved quite a reduction in memory usage and received praise for it until now, and slating it as 'crappy code' and 'half-hearted attempts at fixing [memory leaks] is disingenuous.
FF3 is crappy code. Even if it doesn't have a single memory leak - which I sincerely doubt - the UI has a tendency to hang while the browser is busy, which is simply sloppy.
To keep their operating systems monopoly. They used their monopoly to kill Netscape and made IE the browser that 98% of people used, which means web designers only made sure their web pages worked in IE, which made it hard for people to switch operating systems.
Netscape died because Netscape 4 was, to put it frankly, utter crap. Microsoft didn't kill it, they simply provided a good enough browser at a time when many people were searching for one. I switched to IE out of desperation, just like I later switched from Windows 98 to Linux.
Otherwise you're right on spot. And this is why IE is so bad at following standards too.
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Actually, it is impossible to prove that a given event was not part of someone's plan.
His sneezing was pre-arranged and part of a plan by Mrrzhg, as was our resulting existence.
Sure they can, or at least appear to. You simply have to add variables to the system which the audience doesn't know about. For example, see diamagnetic levitation. And don't forget to read a this response to really drive the point home :).
That's what the saying really means: if you are more knowledgeable than your audience, you can always fool them into thinking that you can violate the laws of physics, that is, do magic. It doesn't matter if the audience is cavemen, Greek philosophers or modern-day scientists; as long as you know more than they do, you can hide your deception in that gap - assuming, of course, that the gap is big enough.
And please understand that knowing basic physics, even perfectly, does not protect against this perfectly, because it doesn't necessarily mean that you can figure out all possible consequences and applications of those laws.
Of course, by exact same logic, it is also your obligation to overrule any other instinct - including the social ones which are behind your motivation to override any instinct in the first place.
As an evolved human being, you have the ability to overrule an instinct based on the projected outcomes of either following or not following it. The motivation to do so, however, rises from other instincts - or perhaps even the same instinct.
All logic does, all it can do, is allow you to solve the motivational conflicts, and take the long term view into account while doing so. I really wish people would stop implying that logic is somehow "higher" or "better" than instincts. It isn't; it's simply a tool.
All that said, overruling the racist instinct is likely the correct choice, as following it tends to lead to fundamental attribution error and faulty judgement.
Poison gas ? You think that's all an evil supercomputer will do ? NO ! It will spontaneously develop godlike powers, take over the universe and unravel the very fabric of reality around you !
"Poisonous gas"... How cheap.
Running is useless. You have to present it with a logical paradox. That'll cause it to crash, proving that programming an evil AI with C or C++ is an important safety feature.
Of course it could instead corrupt its memory, go nuts and destroy everything, but that's a risk the city of San Fransisco has to take.
Actually, it's a clever plot from our part to destroy the other races, and get some decent comic book drawing genes from the Japanese in the process.
I've got dips on Caitians !
Twi'leks might also be nice... But I'll leave the Wookies to you, brave champion of our race as you are.
But who'll do the Chenjesu and the Mrnnhrmmm ? Some machine fetishist might like the latter, but the former would probably require some New Age crystal expert to even figure out the technical aspects...
Should we assume malice here ? I thought that "innocent until proven guilty" is the basis of all western legal systems. Why should this be reversed just because stock market is affected ?
Hardly a valid analogy, since it's obvious that whoever inserted the piece of metal was performing a purposeful fraud. A better one would be if the coin inserted later turned out to be forged. Should the person inserting it to the vending machine have run it by the bank first, to check it for validity ?
There is no evidence whatsoever that that's what happened here. It was just a lot of automated systems interacting in unexpected way.
One could argue, however, that the brokers should know whether the companies they have invested into are near bankruptcy or not. If they can't be bothered to, this kind of thing is unavoidable. They shouldn't be blaming other people for their own incompetence.
However, if you have significant investment in a single company, common sense would seem to dictate that you research it well enough to know whether it is in the brink of bankruptcy or not. Situational awareness is important even in twitch games.
Seems like outlawing burning your fingers to me. Do you propose a 1.14 billion dollar fine as a punishment for each infringement ?-)
You should read more superhero comics. The Marvel Universe gets destroyed annually.
There's a 2.5GB torrent for "Cubase4.iso" on Isohunt, although it doesn't have seeds right now.
I propose a new Rule of the Internet, in the vein of Rule #34: "It has been cracked. No exceptions."
Nuclear power is immoral on the grounds that it desecrates the remains of dead stars. It would be like using mummies for fuel. If you think their curse was bad, just wait until a wormhole-ridden undead white giant comes after you for vengeance. It really sucks, you know.
And don't except mercy, it ended its life with a heart of iron.
You could use something like Tor. Hidden services work reasonably well, despite theirs and the other party's locations being unknown.
Wouldn't it be much simpler to just use an USB memory stick and swallow it ? Or, if we're talking about really hardcore agencies, make a subdermal pocket for transporting it. Coming to think of it, if it fits inside a mouse, the chances are you could put it into a plastic bag and swallow it.
Heck, you could just write the classified data on the back of your hand using invisible ink.
Based on this description, seems to me that "arbitrage" is a nice word for inserting yourself into a trade which has nothing to do with you for the purpose of bleeding both the seller and the buyer out of some profit without producing or contributing anything of value. Making it more difficult would make the actual productive parties in the trade better off, and likely help economy as a whole.
Or, to put it even more bluntly: arbitrage, as described by you, is a nicer name for parasitism.
Back is black.
An analogue algorithm using "manufacturing variations" means basically white noise in the circuit. Cloning that accurately might indeed be an extremely difficult and costly operation: you basically have to recreate the chip with tolerance of tiny fraction of the original tolerance (=very expensive), or use a massively powerful (=big, not something you can carry with you unnoticed) computer to simulate it.
Which, in all likelihood, would work. With sufficient funding you can build more than one model and test several ideas in parallel, and hire engineers to solve solve details in one model while you work on another. And of course having more warm bodies makes actual assembly go faster too.
The fact is, the Wright brothers couldn't had build a 747. They simply didn't have the resources. They built the first proof-of-concept craft, but developing actual practical aircraft took resources, and a lot of them at that.
Then again, it seems that the problem is solving itself, with all these companies popping up and developing their rockets. Of course most of them will go bankrupt, but the research they do before that will help advance the field.
Because it has practices like "Fair Game", which basically means an organized harassment campaign against its critics.
They are free to believe in their bullshit, that's not an issue. However, immoral things done in the name of religion are still immoral, and scientology is amongst the nastiest religions on the planet in that regard. It's not that they are necessarily more malicious than, say, Islam; it's that their style of abuse is well suited for the modern world.
Well, I'd say that preventing a bunch of lunatics who've demonstrated their willingness to abuse their power numerous times from gaining any more power is a pretty high priority.
But isn't Xenu the devil-equivalent of Scientology ? As such, he'd work to keep those videos up and thus hinder the spread of scientology.
Your analogy is false, as murdering John is an evil act by default, while downloading a file is not. A better analogy would be asking: "Where does John "the Fence" Smith live ? I need to deliver this packet to him."
Then again, fencing stolen loot is also usually considered morally wrong, while copyright infringement is not, so my analogy makes the whole thing seem too sinister too.
Prove it.
Then what do you need a flight-plan system for ? Do your cars fly ?
My ISP here in Finland doesn't have any caps and still manages to deliver a reliable service, presumably due to having built enough network capacity to deal with the demand.
Do you know what "address space" is, and how memory allocation works ? Because the only way to have more than one address space is to have more than one process.
And sometimes Firefox misses some of it. Then it stays allocated until Firefox exits, at which point the OS can clean it. Since the total memory is limited, when such things happen over and over again, these little crumbs of allocated but unused memory take up greater and greater portion of memory space, until finally there's not enough unallocated memory left to satisfy an allocation request, and Firefox crashes, taking all its tabs and windows with it. On the other hand, if each tab has its own process, a particular one might crash, but the rest keep on working.
Of course, the same goes for any error. In Firefox, it kills everything, while in Chrome, it kills only the tab in which the error happened, or that's the theory anyway. And since browsers are complex, it's easy to make errors while coding them.
As opposed to the Firefox way of closing the whole browser and starting from scratch.
FF3 is crappy code. Even if it doesn't have a single memory leak - which I sincerely doubt - the UI has a tendency to hang while the browser is busy, which is simply sloppy.
Netscape died because Netscape 4 was, to put it frankly, utter crap. Microsoft didn't kill it, they simply provided a good enough browser at a time when many people were searching for one. I switched to IE out of desperation, just like I later switched from Windows 98 to Linux.
Otherwise you're right on spot. And this is why IE is so bad at following standards too.