I got his point, but it's still a rocket, and a damn impressive sight if you ever get a chance to see it "up close." Far more spectacular than a run-of-the-mill starburst mortar. If you ever do get the opportunity to watch one and you can't convince your congress critter to get you a VIP pass, make sure you check the wind before you pick the spot to watch from. If the wind is blowing away from you, it's barely audible from many of the possible locations, but if the wind is blowing toward you...
You don't seem to understand the concept of representetive democracy. We don't do it because you can only fit ~400 people in the voting room, we do it because no person could reasonably expect to be on top of every issue that needs voting on and have time for a real career. So we vote for a proxy who hopefully votes the way we would most of the time.
If the car drove itself, you wouldn't be rushing to get the task over with. you'd just do something else while the car was taking care of the mundane crap. Also, the car never gets fatigued. You don't need to "make good time" if you don't need to stop and rest.
It's not an experiment. It's a practical joke with results. The experimentor had no hypothesis, had done no research, and did not make any attempt to even classify the variables involved, let alone control or mitigate them.
All this guy did was deliberatly antagonize people, then made fun of their responses. Heck, he didn't even address the ethics of deliberately experimenting on people.
END DOES NOT JUSTIFY THE MEANS. you should've learned this when you but a boy. There's a lot of injustice in the world out there. Clearly LYING about invading a sovereign country is not justified by the fact that that country does bad stuff. It's a matter of principle, not to mention our (former) credibility to the rest of the world.
Now think about that compared to your first statement regarding stem cell lines. Many people, probably a majority of Americans in fact, believe that the act of harvesting embryonic stem cells involves the deliberate killing of a human being. For them, the (currently dubious) end of maybe solving certain disabilities and other things does not justify the act needed to get there. They would prefer that the act didn't take place at all, and it goes without saying that they definately don't want to pay to support it. So should we force the issue and force them to pay for it? especially considering the more tangeable and immediatly realizeable results from adult stem cells?
If you say yes, we should force them to, should we also provide, at taxpayer expense, a leather jacket or fur coat to everyone who doesn't have at least one of those? It would certainly improve their lives at the small cost of thousands of animals. But wait! There is a small but vocal minority shouting that "Fur is murder." should we ignore them just to improve the lives of the uncool?
Oh really. A social experiment. It wasn't just some jackass trying to ruffle a few feathers, but a bona fide experiment complete with research, a hypothesis, control groups, isolating variables, and meaningful results published in a peer-reviewed journal?
That is the stated reason that campaigns are government subsidized. But the effect is far from it. The effect of government subsidized campaigns has been to strengthen the two-party system by favoring incumbents. Since it so heavily stabilizes incumbent seats, one might surmise that that is the intended purpose.
If people contribute to legislators that support their position, the legislators aren't bound to the contributors: they will put pro-contributor positions forth as a consequence of their already existing motivations.
The best thing to do therefore, is not to deny contributions. That'd be like trying to outlaw the free-market or prohibit alcohol and drug sales. The best thing to do is to require full disclosure. Voters could then make their decision based on their knowledge of the candidate's stated intentions as well as their opinion about the intentions of the candidate's contributors.
A book called, "the culture of fear" inspired Moore to produce a movie which appears to have the sole intent of stirring the fear-pot without actually presenting a solution or suggestiong a moral of any kind? (except racism and smarmyness)
Well that depends.. it's a VAT tax, so there aren't any hidden-taxes folded into the final retail price as part of the cost of the process leading up to the final product. Does UK have income tax & property tax? If not, 17.5% would be much better than we've got on this side of the pond.
Actually the lottery for the most part represents a failure to understand statistics and the concept of risk:reward ratio. The lottery's a bad example, because despite the fact that both the odds AND the payoff are published and it should therefore be common knowledge to be a really, phenominally bad investment, people still buy the tickets.. regularly.
with SETI, we don't really know what the odds are OR the payoff.
We are already communicating over interstellar distances with radio. Why wouldn't ETs at some point in their lives do the same?
Of course, what IS stupid is that they used recievers that were way too small even for the signal they expected to find, but you have to do radioastronomy with the very large array of radio telescopes you have not the very large array of radio telescopes you'd like to have...
The only problem with that statement is that electricity WAS discovered at the begining of the industrial revolution, and didn't develop along the lines you suggest.
Technically streaming is a kind of dowloading, but with severe limitations on how, since the content is displayed as the data comes in, there must be a buffer, and the file must be downloaded somewhat linearly. at least until the buffer get obscenely huge, but if the download ever does get significantly ahead of the current position, it's fast enough that there's no real need to accelerate further.
The absolute cheapest thing that can be done is improve the infrastructure around the city to allow rapid evacuation in an emergency. (cheapest doesn't mean cheap though...)
In any event, every municipality should have some estimate of how long it will realistically take to evacuate and what resources are needed to do so. (for example, don't let the bus drivers leave town first, with an entire motor pool of school busses just sitting there because it's beneath your citizens to travel by school bus. Comfort should be the last priorty in a situation like that) And most importantly, bring those resources online before they are needed since when they are needed there will be too much panic to START a plan.
If you could seal the windows like you say, you'd have to start worrying about overpressure separating structural members. Better the windows break and the furnature gets pushed around than the whole house explodes.
You seem to have neglected the fact that in addition to their philantrophy, the thing that made them all that money also benefitted society. In fact, the people on that list (except vanderbilt maybe..which vanderbilt do you mean?) are all new-money, meaning that ALL of their fortune came from the thing they did which made them their money.
Slashdot Mirror
I got his point, but it's still a rocket, and a damn impressive sight if you ever get a chance to see it "up close." Far more spectacular than a run-of-the-mill starburst mortar. If you ever do get the opportunity to watch one and you can't convince your congress critter to get you a VIP pass, make sure you check the wind before you pick the spot to watch from. If the wind is blowing away from you, it's barely audible from many of the possible locations, but if the wind is blowing toward you...
You don't seem to understand the concept of representetive democracy. We don't do it because you can only fit ~400 people in the voting room, we do it because no person could reasonably expect to be on top of every issue that needs voting on and have time for a real career. So we vote for a proxy who hopefully votes the way we would most of the time.
Frankly, a successful launch is a far more impressive firework display than any of the traditional fare. Especially if you're watching from down wind.
Car 54? where are you?
If the car drove itself, you wouldn't be rushing to get the task over with. you'd just do something else while the car was taking care of the mundane crap. Also, the car never gets fatigued. You don't need to "make good time" if you don't need to stop and rest.
It's not an experiment. It's a practical joke with results. The experimentor had no hypothesis, had done no research, and did not make any attempt to even classify the variables involved, let alone control or mitigate them.
All this guy did was deliberatly antagonize people, then made fun of their responses. Heck, he didn't even address the ethics of deliberately experimenting on people.
Now think about that compared to your first statement regarding stem cell lines. Many people, probably a majority of Americans in fact, believe that the act of harvesting embryonic stem cells involves the deliberate killing of a human being. For them, the (currently dubious) end of maybe solving certain disabilities and other things does not justify the act needed to get there. They would prefer that the act didn't take place at all, and it goes without saying that they definately don't want to pay to support it. So should we force the issue and force them to pay for it? especially considering the more tangeable and immediatly realizeable results from adult stem cells?
If you say yes, we should force them to, should we also provide, at taxpayer expense, a leather jacket or fur coat to everyone who doesn't have at least one of those? It would certainly improve their lives at the small cost of thousands of animals. But wait! There is a small but vocal minority shouting that "Fur is murder." should we ignore them just to improve the lives of the uncool?
Oh really. A social experiment. It wasn't just some jackass trying to ruffle a few feathers, but a bona fide experiment complete with research, a hypothesis, control groups, isolating variables, and meaningful results published in a peer-reviewed journal?
That is the stated reason that campaigns are government subsidized. But the effect is far from it. The effect of government subsidized campaigns has been to strengthen the two-party system by favoring incumbents. Since it so heavily stabilizes incumbent seats, one might surmise that that is the intended purpose.
If people contribute to legislators that support their position, the legislators aren't bound to the contributors: they will put pro-contributor positions forth as a consequence of their already existing motivations.
The best thing to do therefore, is not to deny contributions. That'd be like trying to outlaw the free-market or prohibit alcohol and drug sales. The best thing to do is to require full disclosure. Voters could then make their decision based on their knowledge of the candidate's stated intentions as well as their opinion about the intentions of the candidate's contributors.
A book called, "the culture of fear" inspired Moore to produce a movie which appears to have the sole intent of stirring the fear-pot without actually presenting a solution or suggestiong a moral of any kind? (except racism and smarmyness)
Well that depends.. it's a VAT tax, so there aren't any hidden-taxes folded into the final retail price as part of the cost of the process leading up to the final product. Does UK have income tax & property tax? If not, 17.5% would be much better than we've got on this side of the pond.
But I'm not great fan of sony either. Damn their cleverly worded camera ads...
So, I'm stuck. I'm not sure what to do here.
No one still uses the phrase, "older than dirt." It's antique. Ancient. Your very way of claiming you're out of date is out of date.
Well there's that Linus Torvalds guy... you may have heard of him? he's a bit of a cult hero IIRC.
Actually the lottery for the most part represents a failure to understand statistics and the concept of risk:reward ratio. The lottery's a bad example, because despite the fact that both the odds AND the payoff are published and it should therefore be common knowledge to be a really, phenominally bad investment, people still buy the tickets.. regularly.
with SETI, we don't really know what the odds are OR the payoff.
We are already communicating over interstellar distances with radio. Why wouldn't ETs at some point in their lives do the same?
Of course, what IS stupid is that they used recievers that were way too small even for the signal they expected to find, but you have to do radioastronomy with the very large array of radio telescopes you have not the very large array of radio telescopes you'd like to have...
The only problem with that statement is that electricity WAS discovered at the begining of the industrial revolution, and didn't develop along the lines you suggest.
Technically streaming is a kind of dowloading, but with severe limitations on how, since the content is displayed as the data comes in, there must be a buffer, and the file must be downloaded somewhat linearly. at least until the buffer get obscenely huge, but if the download ever does get significantly ahead of the current position, it's fast enough that there's no real need to accelerate further.
Isn't your ammo box already made of steel?
How is being against patenting the obvious different from supporting the entity arguing for not patenting the obvious?
Clearly he wants to warn them that Anarke_Incarnate uses slashdot and therefore has a good chance of being a closet smelly hippie for gun control.
point (9) should be point (1).
The absolute cheapest thing that can be done is improve the infrastructure around the city to allow rapid
evacuation in an emergency. (cheapest doesn't mean cheap though...)
In any event, every municipality should have some estimate of how long it will realistically take to evacuate and what resources are needed to do so. (for example, don't let the bus drivers leave town first, with an entire motor pool of school busses just sitting there because it's beneath your citizens to travel by school bus. Comfort should be the last priorty in a situation like that) And most importantly, bring those resources online before they are needed since when they are needed there will be too much panic to START a plan.
If you could seal the windows like you say, you'd have to start worrying about overpressure separating structural members. Better the windows break and the furnature gets pushed around than the whole house explodes.
You seem to have neglected the fact that in addition to their philantrophy, the thing that made them all that money also benefitted society. In fact, the people on that list (except vanderbilt maybe..which vanderbilt do you mean?) are all new-money, meaning that ALL of their fortune came from the thing they did which made them their money.
You get your investment advice from a guy that screams a lot and has a soundboard full of afternoon radio-show sound effects?