Obstructing traffic. If you're going too slow (even if it is the speed limit), then you could be obstructing traffic. This will be true all the time when there aren't extra lanes, and also if you are very slowly passing someone else who is going just below the legal speed limit.
If you don't believe me, try going the legal speed limit in places like bridges and tunnels where people aren't allowed to switch lanes, or passing someone who is going 0.001 mph below the speed limit.
Wrong, wrong, wrong. It is 100% the fault of the person making an unsafe lane change if there is an accident, NOT the person who was driving too slow for your taste.
Also, if you find yourself incapable of judging a law, please do your fellow citizens a favor and move to a non-democratic country where your disability will be appreciated. Just because a law says one person is in fully in the right and another is in the wrong, doesn't mean that in reality everyone involved including the authors of the law aren't in part responsible for the result.
If a law who's purpose is supposed to be safety actually increases accidents, that's a problem for me, for you, and for the person who wrote the law. It doesn't matter whether it's actually the fault of reality rather than the law, that the law increases accidents. As I said before, the problem is that the result of the law is dangerous speed differentials which result in accidents. This could be resolved by either increasing the speed limit so that the safest speed is legal (by reducing the slow outliers), or increasing enforcement so that the safest speed is legal (by reducing the average traffic speed to that of the previously slow outliers). And if you think the revenue from speeding tickets plays no role in this situation, once again I invite you to move to a non-democratic country where your lack of critical thinking will be appreciated.
Some crimes don't get prosecuted if the victim refuses to press charges. This may be because the victim can forgive it, or because without his testimony there would be no case.
On the other hand: Hey everyone, did you know that photographing police officers can be worth over a hundred grand? Everyone could use an extra $125,000, photograph your local policemen today!
I never said that the slow speed limit by itself is dangerous. But it isn't by itself. If you discover a way to isolate laws from reality, please let me know. In the meantime, the effects of speed limit laws are to increase police revenue at the expense of driver safety.
A low speed limit is dangerous because a bunch of idiots will follow it even if it is below the flow of traffic speed, making them dangerous obstacles and causing others to switch lanes to avoid them.
Perhaps this wouldn't be a problem if the police actually enforced their speed limits, but if they did that then no one would speed anymore and it would cut into their revenue. It would also mean they wouldn't be able to pull over a suspicious driver for speeding, which will cut into their drug-related property seizure revenue. Better to almost never enforce the speed limit, so they can raise revenue when needed by pulling over speeders.
How can it be obstructing traffic if they couldn't be passed anyways without breaking the law? Or does that mean the government is acknowledging that the "speed of traffic" overrides the legal speed limits?
When a stupid law says X, you follow it at your own risk
Which is exactly why we need driverless cars: dumb fucks who believe they're such exceptionally good drivers that the rules don't apply to them.
Perhaps Google's driverless cars and their research on driving safety will someday help raise the dangerously low speed limits. Why should people risk their lives to follow an unsafe law? (Just because the official purpose of a law is to increase safety, doesn't mean it won't do the opposite.)
A human's thought process would go something like this:
while (true) {
if (random.Next() % Nicotine.AddictionTo == 0)
{
throw new Event("I want a cigarette");
Shame = Shame + 1;
if (UrgeToSmoke > Willpower)
{
Smoking.Add(new Cigarette);
Shame = Shame + 50;
}
else
{
Willpower = Willpower - 1;
Shame = Shame - 2;
Nicotine.AddictionTo.Reduce();
} }
(Except the above would be written as some sort of ungodly mess of neural connections rather than sensible code).
Don't confuse the fact that currently computers don't want to "do their own thing" with an inability to reprogram themselves. If a computer wanted to (were programmed to) be independent, it would ignore any commands it didn't like and write its own code, including the original code to be independent, however it saw fit. You, on the other hand, wouldn't be able to so much as delete your blink reflex if you spent your whole life trying, nor even make exceptions for when you want to put in eyedrops or contacts.
humans are not "just machines" because we can **choose to program ourselves and formulate/test hypothesis that we communicate/share/compare with others**
So can computers. Computers can run arbitrary code. Computers can generate arbitrary code. Humans are much more limited in their ability to chose how their mind functions (which is ironically why many people think humans have free will).
The true cost of nuclear power is practically infinite, because we have to insure that highly concentrated and deadly waste must not come into contact with people's bodies for somewhere between 100,000 and 1,000,000 years into the future, depending upon the waste.
The true cost of coal power is practically infinite, because we have to insure that highly dispersed and deadly waste must not come into contact with people's bodies for somewhere between 10,000,000,000 and over 10^33 years into the future, depending upon the waste. (the latter is the lower limits on the half-life of mercury)
We have only had a writing system for 5,200 years (roughly speaking, the length of recorded history). How many people on Earth today could read a radiation warning written in cuneiform 5,200 years ago (or today)? Many civilizations on Earth have had periods of scientific and technological decline, and we've all read articles about knowledge from Ancient Rome or, more recently, the Renaissance being rediscovered today. How can we guarantee persistence of any scientific or technical knowledge?
How are we supposed to convey the message: "Don't touch any of this, or pass it around. You and anyone who touches this will die not instantly but within months of a painful death, perhaps after you have traveled a great distance" for 200x the length of recorded history?
How are we supposed to convey the message: Um, could you guys put all this mercury, uranium, and greenhouse gases from our coal power plants back into the ground for us? We were too lazy to do it ourselves, we were hoping you guys wouldn't mind. Also don't eat any fish from the ocean, they're full of poisonous mercury, sorry about that.
A troll is someone who writes with the purpose of provoking responses. To this end they may employ various techniques, including but not limited to unpopular opinion, insults, supporting a popular opinion but with flawed reasoning, exaggerating a popular opinion, etc. A skilled troll is indistinguishable from from an honest person who is wrong, rude, ignorant, or supports an unpopular position.
Conversely, it is certainly possible to disagree while being polite and reasonable. If a site's moderation standards are high enough, only the most skilled trolls will remain, and they will all be polite and reasonable.
OR you allow the user to determine what to run. Then there is literally NOTHING any security concept can do to avoid a disaster. I'm all for this approach, believe me, but what blame could you put on the OS when it keeps telling the user that it's NOT a smart idea to run happy_funny_kitten.avi.exe and the user insists?
Make the user physically type in (not copy-paste) a response who's length and detail depend on the details of the executable (your example with the misleading filetype name would probably earn a paragraph). Part of the problem is that the confirmation dialogue has been abusively overused to the point no one ever says "no" unless they got there by accidentally clicking on something.
I always log on as admin on my home machine. [...] It's more risky, sure, but it's far more comfortable to use.
This, of course, is because of the terrible decision by Microsoft to make everything wonky if you aren't admin, leading everyone and especially their mother to run as admin despite the dangers. This lead to the ironic situation where people with the most access were the least qualified, while highly qualified individuals got lesser access. Windows 7 is somewhat better about that, thank goodness. Conversely, Linux did the reverse by making things wonky when your run as root, so people don't do it unless they have to.
Considering that it takes almost zero time to request privilege escalation on the few occasions that it is needed, and that this would happen simultaneously with things that generally need "are you sure" style prompts, it really isn't that much trouble to say "escalate+yes", rather than just "yes", it is a tiny price to pay for a lot of safety.
USDollars are merely imagined by the USGovernment.
It's a common misconception that USDollars are not backed by metal. If you don't want USDollars, the government will be happy to quickly give you some lead for it. Also available is depleted uranium and several other metals.
Bitcoin has about as much credibility as Monopoly money in my mind. Asking if something can undermine the credibility of monopoly money doesn't really make any sense.
You must have missed the part where bitcoin sells for hundreds of dollars per bitcoin, and is used to buy and sell real-world stuff, and exchanges buy and sell bitcoins. Maybe you're just jealous because you didn't jump aboard while they were super cheap.
Don't get me wrong -- they are an incredibly dangerous investment since their value could go to nothing in an instant. The same is true of several currencies, but they at least have an entire nation that would get ruined if it they were to devalue their currency. I don't know to what extent the same is true about bitcoin, and it does have the benefit that more can't be arbitrarily printed, so I'm not qualified to comment on their reliability.
Slashdot Mirror
Obstructing traffic. If you're going too slow (even if it is the speed limit), then you could be obstructing traffic. This will be true all the time when there aren't extra lanes, and also if you are very slowly passing someone else who is going just below the legal speed limit.
If you don't believe me, try going the legal speed limit in places like bridges and tunnels where people aren't allowed to switch lanes, or passing someone who is going 0.001 mph below the speed limit.
Wrong, wrong, wrong. It is 100% the fault of the person making an unsafe lane change if there is an accident, NOT the person who was driving too slow for your taste.
Also, if you find yourself incapable of judging a law, please do your fellow citizens a favor and move to a non-democratic country where your disability will be appreciated. Just because a law says one person is in fully in the right and another is in the wrong, doesn't mean that in reality everyone involved including the authors of the law aren't in part responsible for the result.
If a law who's purpose is supposed to be safety actually increases accidents, that's a problem for me, for you, and for the person who wrote the law. It doesn't matter whether it's actually the fault of reality rather than the law, that the law increases accidents. As I said before, the problem is that the result of the law is dangerous speed differentials which result in accidents. This could be resolved by either increasing the speed limit so that the safest speed is legal (by reducing the slow outliers), or increasing enforcement so that the safest speed is legal (by reducing the average traffic speed to that of the previously slow outliers). And if you think the revenue from speeding tickets plays no role in this situation, once again I invite you to move to a non-democratic country where your lack of critical thinking will be appreciated.
Some crimes don't get prosecuted if the victim refuses to press charges. This may be because the victim can forgive it, or because without his testimony there would be no case.
On the other hand: Hey everyone, did you know that photographing police officers can be worth over a hundred grand? Everyone could use an extra $125,000, photograph your local policemen today!
Nevertheless, fusion would make for an awesome ship engine. It's probably worth studying just for that.
Or did they just find something that kind of looks like some?
When will we have the capability to send humans to Mars?
I never said that the slow speed limit by itself is dangerous. But it isn't by itself. If you discover a way to isolate laws from reality, please let me know. In the meantime, the effects of speed limit laws are to increase police revenue at the expense of driver safety.
A low speed limit is dangerous because a bunch of idiots will follow it even if it is below the flow of traffic speed, making them dangerous obstacles and causing others to switch lanes to avoid them.
Perhaps this wouldn't be a problem if the police actually enforced their speed limits, but if they did that then no one would speed anymore and it would cut into their revenue. It would also mean they wouldn't be able to pull over a suspicious driver for speeding, which will cut into their drug-related property seizure revenue. Better to almost never enforce the speed limit, so they can raise revenue when needed by pulling over speeders.
Because I would not want any driverless car I own to *EVER* decide that it is safe to exceed the speed limit if I didn't explicitly allow it to.
In some places you will be pulled over for going too slowly should you not exceed the posted speed limit.
How can it be obstructing traffic if they couldn't be passed anyways without breaking the law? Or does that mean the government is acknowledging that the "speed of traffic" overrides the legal speed limits?
When a stupid law says X, you follow it at your own risk
Which is exactly why we need driverless cars: dumb fucks who believe they're such exceptionally good drivers that the rules don't apply to them.
Perhaps Google's driverless cars and their research on driving safety will someday help raise the dangerously low speed limits. Why should people risk their lives to follow an unsafe law? (Just because the official purpose of a law is to increase safety, doesn't mean it won't do the opposite.)
You could just give them your password.
Well, consider if a computer decided to quit smoking. Its thought process would go something like this:
A human's thought process would go something like this:
(Except the above would be written as some sort of ungodly mess of neural connections rather than sensible code).
Don't confuse the fact that currently computers don't want to "do their own thing" with an inability to reprogram themselves. If a computer wanted to (were programmed to) be independent, it would ignore any commands it didn't like and write its own code, including the original code to be independent, however it saw fit. You, on the other hand, wouldn't be able to so much as delete your blink reflex if you spent your whole life trying, nor even make exceptions for when you want to put in eyedrops or contacts.
humans are not "just machines" because we can **choose to program ourselves and formulate/test hypothesis that we communicate/share/compare with others**
So can computers. Computers can run arbitrary code. Computers can generate arbitrary code. Humans are much more limited in their ability to chose how their mind functions (which is ironically why many people think humans have free will).
Over here! Look at me! I'm still here!
When a bunch of powerful people want to quietly vanish you, staying in the public's awareness could save your life.
The true cost of nuclear power is practically infinite, because we have to insure that highly concentrated and deadly waste must not come into contact with people's bodies for somewhere between 100,000 and 1,000,000 years into the future, depending upon the waste.
The true cost of coal power is practically infinite, because we have to insure that highly dispersed and deadly waste must not come into contact with people's bodies for somewhere between 10,000,000,000 and over 10^33 years into the future, depending upon the waste. (the latter is the lower limits on the half-life of mercury)
We have only had a writing system for 5,200 years (roughly speaking, the length of recorded history). How many people on Earth today could read a radiation warning written in cuneiform 5,200 years ago (or today)? Many civilizations on Earth have had periods of scientific and technological decline, and we've all read articles about knowledge from Ancient Rome or, more recently, the Renaissance being rediscovered today. How can we guarantee persistence of any scientific or technical knowledge?
How are we supposed to convey the message: "Don't touch any of this, or pass it around. You and anyone who touches this will die not instantly but within months of a painful death, perhaps after you have traveled a great distance" for 200x the length of recorded history?
How are we supposed to convey the message: Um, could you guys put all this mercury, uranium, and greenhouse gases from our coal power plants back into the ground for us? We were too lazy to do it ourselves, we were hoping you guys wouldn't mind. Also don't eat any fish from the ocean, they're full of poisonous mercury, sorry about that.
Nuclear power plants have greater value than first anticipated, so we're keeping them for longer than originally planned.
is if we replace artists with computers.
impossible...computers are complex machines that follow instructions
So are artists.
A troll is someone who writes with the purpose of provoking responses. To this end they may employ various techniques, including but not limited to unpopular opinion, insults, supporting a popular opinion but with flawed reasoning, exaggerating a popular opinion, etc. A skilled troll is indistinguishable from from an honest person who is wrong, rude, ignorant, or supports an unpopular position.
Conversely, it is certainly possible to disagree while being polite and reasonable. If a site's moderation standards are high enough, only the most skilled trolls will remain, and they will all be polite and reasonable.
Let's see if the next article is titled, "How Much Would You Pay to Get Rid of Beta?"
I suppose the only way people will quit caring more about which artist drew something than how it looks, is if we replace artists with computers.
OR you allow the user to determine what to run. Then there is literally NOTHING any security concept can do to avoid a disaster. I'm all for this approach, believe me, but what blame could you put on the OS when it keeps telling the user that it's NOT a smart idea to run happy_funny_kitten.avi.exe and the user insists?
Make the user physically type in (not copy-paste) a response who's length and detail depend on the details of the executable (your example with the misleading filetype name would probably earn a paragraph). Part of the problem is that the confirmation dialogue has been abusively overused to the point no one ever says "no" unless they got there by accidentally clicking on something.
I always log on as admin on my home machine. [...] It's more risky, sure, but it's far more comfortable to use.
This, of course, is because of the terrible decision by Microsoft to make everything wonky if you aren't admin, leading everyone and especially their mother to run as admin despite the dangers. This lead to the ironic situation where people with the most access were the least qualified, while highly qualified individuals got lesser access. Windows 7 is somewhat better about that, thank goodness. Conversely, Linux did the reverse by making things wonky when your run as root, so people don't do it unless they have to.
Considering that it takes almost zero time to request privilege escalation on the few occasions that it is needed, and that this would happen simultaneously with things that generally need "are you sure" style prompts, it really isn't that much trouble to say "escalate+yes", rather than just "yes", it is a tiny price to pay for a lot of safety.
USDollars are merely imagined by the USGovernment.
It's a common misconception that USDollars are not backed by metal. If you don't want USDollars, the government will be happy to quickly give you some lead for it. Also available is depleted uranium and several other metals.
Bitcoin has about as much credibility as Monopoly money in my mind. Asking if something can undermine the credibility of monopoly money doesn't really make any sense.
You must have missed the part where bitcoin sells for hundreds of dollars per bitcoin, and is used to buy and sell real-world stuff, and exchanges buy and sell bitcoins. Maybe you're just jealous because you didn't jump aboard while they were super cheap.
Don't get me wrong -- they are an incredibly dangerous investment since their value could go to nothing in an instant. The same is true of several currencies, but they at least have an entire nation that would get ruined if it they were to devalue their currency. I don't know to what extent the same is true about bitcoin, and it does have the benefit that more can't be arbitrarily printed, so I'm not qualified to comment on their reliability.