While you have some good points, some of your points border on the idiotic.
3) "The cost of preventing it is negligable." An economy is every bit as much a chaotic system as climate, only with a huge wildcard thrown in. People. Air molecules follow the laws of physics in a ridgid and completely predictiable way. People do not. I do not have too much faith in the climate models, but they are gospel compared to any similar economic model I have seen. Most economists predictions are worse than a coin toss. "Replacing CRT's with LCD's will help and will cost the economy almost nothing.: 100 million LCD's at $250 each is $25 billion. Plus disposal.... Many third world countries could live on your 'nothing'.
"Nuclear might help."Might?? Coal and oil fired electrical power plants produce far more C02 than all SUV's put together, Probably more than all cars. (USA only) Might? Your biases are wearing a little thin here.
4)Growth and wealth created the computers and the internet that have allowed us to even try to figure out if there is a problem, and the wealth, and the growth that caused it, will give us our only hope of finding and excecuting any solution.
Hate to burst your bubble, but most of your science here is bad.
"There is evidence that in ages past, the earth was MUCH warmer"
Correct, but the reason we find fossils in siberia, and antartica for that matter, is because they have moved farther from the equator since then. Not because the world was warmer then.
The reason that areas now under water were dry then have alot to do with rising and lowering tectonic plates, similar to how we can find marine fossils on the tops of mountains. This also has little to do with past ocean levels.
If 200 feet of ocean evaporated, the increase in the amount of gas in the atmosphere would cause 'air' pressure to quadruple. I put air in quotes because at that point the 'air' would bo 80% water vapor. And about 4% oxygen. The oxygen levels alone would kill most animal life.
Violent weather is not caused by simple temprature gradients. It is caused when moist air rises. This causes the air to lose pressure, and this causes a loss in temprature. As you said temprature greatly affects how much water the air can hold. So the the extra water in the moist air condenses out. This releases a lot of heat, and keeps the air rising a lot longer than it would if it were dry. The violence comes because more air gets sucked in to replace the rising air. A hurricane is caused when this happens over warm water. The fresh air picks up a lot of water vapor from the warm water and keeps the whole thing going.
Yea, his science was a little bit off on several points, I especially liked the part about more volcanic activity - as if there is more activity at the equator than the poles.
On the other hand, 11k (~20F) increase here (hi! I'm in Ogden!) will cause a lot of trouble here. Most of our water for the year comes from snow that falls in the mountains. At very least a 20F temp. increase will drastically change when we get our water, and will likely greatly reduce how much we get. We (northern Utah) are close to our water resource limit as it is, any loss could be a big problem.
Other parts of the world would also have similar big problems. My guess is that around 10% of the world's population will have to move inside of the first 20 years of signifigant climate change, and at least another 15% or so over 50-100 years. The social and political implications of that are larger than just about any other event in human history.[1] That said, those who claim that this would wipe out humans, or even civilization seriously underestimate what humans are capable of under pressure. Like you said, with the bad comes new opportunities, like Siberia thawing out.
[1]One possible exception to this is whatever happened about 5000 years ago. We do not know enough to say what, but the evidence is clear that something big happened to us at that point. For all practical purposes, civilization started then.
"The market does always choose the best option. Always."
Debateable, but I'll give you that for the sake of argument. But there is a big complication that you did not take into account. The market only can choose between currently available options. Future considerations are poorly if at all represented because it can not be known which options will be avaiable to choose from in the future.
This in and of itself would not matter much - except that past choices directly influence future options.
Take the keyboard example. The first keyboard design is always the better choice - 'cause the choice is keyboard or no keyboard. But the second choice is affected by the first keyboard. People are used to the first one, so changing to another design involves another learning curve. This extra 'cost' makes the first design the 'better' choice at that time - even if there is no real difference between the two keyboards.
Net result is the first design wins - because it was first, not better. If the second design had been introduced first, it would have been the one chosen by the market, and this with no change in either design. The market is like evolution, it usually makes excellent decisions, but cannot be relied upon to make 'the best' ones possible.
Split it in half, and you can get twins - this is how identical twins happen in the first place. It can be split several times and each blob of cells can form a person. (I do not know how many splits, less than 10 I would guess)
It gets worse - take two of them, squish them together and you get one person. And all of the cells lived. So, which (or how many!) people did you kill? People formed from embryos like this are called chimeras. Unless the two embryos are of different genders, they are healthy and normal.
I do not think that our current definition of human is precice enough to let us say when a new human starts. Most of the debates go like this one has, where someone says 'An embryo is not a person because it has no heart/brain etc yet', implying that 'has a (human) heart' is the definition of human, and someone replies 'but it has a complete set of human DNA' implying that 'complete human DNA' is the definition of a human. I have yet to see a convincing definition of human, and until we have one, the debate cannot be settled.
I thought that the 'new' stuff was that a neuron essentially does FFT like signal processing on its output to determine which genes to activate, not the input at the synapses. IANA neuroligist, so correct me if I am wrong here.
"What we don't know is where and how Long Term memories are stored."
Probably because it depends on the specific patterns and connections of neurons in the brain and not in the neurons themselves, (there is no one neuron that stores what I got on my 5th birthday) and we have no tools to follow the signals through the whole network on a neuron-by-neuron basis. Or in other words we cannot trace through the brain signals the way we can trace through a computer program - debugging style.
I am curious if it would be possible to set up some kind of simulation of simple neural nets using neurons that work like real ones do - so we could trace the signals! - and if anything is likely to be learned. Any thoughts?
P.S. This may be a rehash of basic theory, but a fair bit of it was theory that I did not know - and it helped me put together many of the pieces that I did know into something that made sense! Great article!
"What you're essentially proposing is moving from a preventive safety regime to a reactive safety regime."
Correct.
"We as a society should shutdown the unsafe chemical plant before an accident kills an injures the entire town, not after."
I don't disagree with this as far as it goes, the big problem is how and by whom it is determined to be unsafe, and more particularly, how the 'how and whom' is decided. More on this in a moment.
"The other argument you put forth is corruption of inspection officials. I just don't think there's evidence of widespread blackmail by inspectors, no more than there is widespread abuse by police officers or soldiers."
These people are the small potatoes of the corruption. If they were all that were involved I wouldn't worry about it. It is the CEO's, the special interest groups, the lawyers, the politicians and the lobbyists that are the big problem.
Hypothetical examples - Seafood restraunt chain lobbies for increased regulations on beef raising/slaughtering and for less on shrimp and lobster inspections - to 'help' them compete with the rival steakhouse. A Steel manufacturer, who has just done a plant upgrade to reduce XYZ polutant, lobbies for stricter controls on XYZ polutant - to hurt a rival small producer who is using an older plant, or simply to increase barriers to entry. Environmental group pushes for more safety controls on cars, or new roads, to make driving more expensive and further their own idealogical goals. Doctor/Lawyer/Plumber group argues for stricter controls on licences, or licences themselves, to limit new competition and keep prices high.
I think that you get the idea. This kind of corruption is rampant, and the costs are huge.
I don't think the costs of the inspectors would be less than the damage caused when someone screws up,[1] simply because everyone has to be inspected, and only those who cause harm jailed/fined etc. This of course also hinges on "The relatively small number of possible violators" I can't remodel my basement legally without getting numerous permits and inspections, not to mentioned licenced plumbers/electricians etc. What if I wanted to fix cars on the side? raise chickens? peas?[2] Hell, I can get fined for not shoveling my walk or letting the weeds exceed 6 inches high in my yard. Everyone is a possible 'violator', in many ways usually.
Inspectors are usually gov. officials and end up acting in a typical government fasion. They over-do it and lack common sense. Did you know that if the diamond on a wedding ring falls off in a meat packing plant that the entire days production must be X-rayed to find the diamond, or prove that it did not end up in the meat? It would be far cheaper to simply pay tripple for the dental work and let the diamond go. You could probably throw in replacing the diamond and still come out far ahead.
*Sigh* And here I go breaking my own rule - I argued this whole thing on a cost basis. I would be in favor of this kind of change even if the costs were not less, and yes, even if it were to reduce safety (and it just might at that) Liberty is more important than either prosperity or safety,[3] and a reactive safety regime preserves my liberty far better than a preventive one. If the corruption factor were preventable I could see people thinking that the trade was worth it. I don't see any other way to prevent the corruption - or even come close.
[1] Fines would not cost anything directly, only indirectly. - and I think I have shown that these indirect costs are far less. Jailtime would have direct costs...
[2] Assume for a moment that these food items are likely to be sold/given to others.
[3] These three are of course related. What good is liberty if I may starve or be murdered before I get up in the morning? Some prosperity and safety is necessary for liberty. - more on this if you ask.
'"voluntary self-regulation of industry"...doesn't work'
Not quite true. It is just not enough on its own.
But the solution is not inspectors, with their abusable powers. (precisely because they are abusable) The proper solution is to assume that each meat plant is operating safely until it is proven otherwise, And then make them pay for the damage that they caused. (courts) This is harder to abuse because you have to convince 12 random joes to go along with it. This can provide the actuall penalties you want - yes, they are probablly needed sometimes, too many greedy crooks out there.
Just to ward off the flames - I don't think that we could successfully go to this kind of system now without a lot of judicial reform, the courts are too screwed up, and I am not sure exactally what reforms are needed.
If people are touting VSR as just a tax reduction technique are missing the point. It's libertarian, not lesstaxarian. The goal is more liberty. Less taxes is just one way to keep liberty, and it is not enough by itself - far from it.
"Why is this scientific theory treated like pornography and obscenity?"
The answer is rather humorous. Because the same people - partly because of their religious beliefs - are offended by them.
This is nothing more than an emotional reaction by emotional people. (no offence, most reactions and people are) Not a logical reaction of logical people. I think that answers your subject heading too.;)
"It is a lack of belief in God, but with the acknowledgement that a lack of evidence does not conclusively prove that God does not exist."
There is almost no difference between this and the agnostic 'I don't know if god exists.' The only difference is that the 'lack of belief' part is specified. The agnostic does not believe either. For all practical purposes this is agnostic, not atheist.
However, 'do not believe' and 'believe he does not' are two very different things. For example, compare these statements
I do not believe erpsquiggles grunt.
I believe erpsquiggles do not grunt.
I can honestly say the first, but not the second. Why? What the heck is an erpsquiggle? I have never heard of them before, and neither have you. ('cause I just made the word up) Because I have no idea what erpsquiggles may or may not be, I have no beliefs about them, including whether or not they grunt. But if I say the second statement, I imply that I know, or at least believe enough about them to conclude that they do not grunt. Very different. Since these are different, you cannot use this to conclude "that belief or the lack thereof by itself is tantamount to religion." is incorrect.
Saying atheism is or is not a religion says a lot about what you mean when you say atheism or religion, and almost nothing about atheism or religion themselves. An inaccurate (or accurate!) definition of religion does not change the nature of religion, any more than calling a rose a skunk cabbage changes the nature of the rose.
(you can apply this fact to my own definitions of atheist and agnostic if you choose - in fact you should, the english definitions of words are often too vauge to convey meaning unambiguously.)
You meant "...more on defence than every other country..." Right? 'Cause that is much closer to the truth. (The U.S. might still be off by a couple of percent, but the recent drop in the dollar probably took care of that.)
First, you are seriously mixing scientific definitions and common english definitions of 'fact' and 'theory'. Scientific theories never become scientific facts. Scientific facts are 'I let go of the lead weight 26 times, and it fell down 26 times.' Scientific theories are 'lead weights always fall because their mass is attracted to the mass of the earth' Neither Newton's nor Einstein's theories have, or ever will become scientific facts. They may become common english 'facts', but from a scientific standpoint that is meaningless.
Second, Evolution is both a scientific fact and theory. It is a fact in that we have observed fruit flies, bacteria, and to a much more limited extent, plants and animals evolve. There are documented cases of new species arising.[1] These are observed facts. Evolution is a scientific theory in that scientists use the fact of evolution and say that that is how all species came about, and eventually life itself.
Whether or not the evolutionary theory is correct or not is not even a scientific fact. All scientific facts are 'observed'. No one was around to observe the beginning of life, or the origin of all species. Hence, where and how they started are not, and will never be, scientific facts.
"What else is a fact but the best possible conclusion based on the evidence?"
Not a bad common english definition of fact. However, in science, this kind of 'fact' is called 'the best theory so far'. The scientific 'facts' are the evidence you talked about, not the conclusion.
[1]The one in particular that I remember is a plant that was a weird genetic screwup hybrid of two related species. The result has more chromasomes than it's parents, cannot polinate them or be polinated by them, and is successfully propogating on its own. Lab expieriments comfirmed that this new species was the result of crossbreeding.
" No, you need bandwidth. You need to have stuff go from disk to memory, moved around in memory, and back to disk as fast as possible with as little CPU involved."
Could you please explain how my brother can get an almost linear relationship between CPU clock and divx encoding rates when overclocking?
640*480 32 bit 30fps video is around 35MB/s raw (he uses huffyuv - cuts this in half) That is enough to stress out a slow harddrive (don't use a 5400 rpm one!) but the CPU-RAM speed is close to 1GB/s. Whether video precessing is CPU or disk bound is very dependant on just what you are doing to the video. If he is doing a lot to it, it is easy to need a faster CPU, not disk. CPU to RAM speed is not an issue, that could handle 1080p in and out real-time no problem.
"In a world where no one can charge above the market rate for research, the cost of research will decrease. Demand isn't going to change"
You missed something here. The reason that no one can charge above the market rate in this case is because demand did change. Not supply. Assuming that all research that would be profitable without IP laws would still be profitable with them, demand with IP laws would increase since there is now more profitable research that can be done. (with our current over the top IP laws, I am not sure this holds, but for some IP laws I am sure this holds)
Your last comment though implies that you think that our current IP laws end up restricting more research than they encourage, and I would not be surprised if this was the case. However, this is not an argument against all IP law, just our current ones. At some level of IP law, more IP laws will result in more research done. Just not for all levels of IP law.
The only way that this could be seen as wrong is if you have a right to a profit. No such right exists, and that is the way that things should be. A right to profit destroys a free-market system.
While this is not wrong, it is unprofitable. And I will not claim that has no effect. It will. Unprofitable buisness decisions will not be made (at least not as often!) and this means that this research will likely not be done as soon as it would have been. This is the whole rational behind patents. An artificial incentive to research, to enhance progress. But a right to profit has a far greater negative effect than the lack of patents does.
A patent is a priviledge. One that can help better society, but one that is accomplished by taking away others rights.[1] Governments need to treat them with care, not as political dog-bones to throw around for votes. (assumption - the government is supposed to maintain the freedoms of the people - like the US used to.)
You are right in saying that the constitution does not protect your right to claim other peoples works for yourself. That is called theft. What you do not seem to understand is that this statement does not apply here. There is no way that I can take your idea away from you. But using my idea, (once I have legally obtained my own copy of your idea, it is my idea too!) even if doing so deprives you of the profit that you had anticipated, is not claiming your works for myself.
[1] In this case, you are restricting the rights of others to use their property as they see fit, namely, making sweaters out of thier own materials with their own tools.
Why don't you take a tethered blimp, and add an ordinary wind turbine? Somewhat less tension, It won't fall on your head, and you can put the generator up there too! (the cables only have to hold the thing in place, not transmit mechanical power)
So hit it in two years or so. (about the fastest NASA could move I guess) Use a big nuke, if it is only 1/4 mile or so in diameter, that should completely shatter it[1]. And in 22 years or so the debris cloud should be about the size of the sun, and so little of it would hit the earth that it would hardly qualify as a good meteor shower. Much of the worst radation should be gone by then too.
[1]If it is solid iron it won't shatter, just get thrown off course. But then it won't hit us at all - problem solved there too.
Not gratis hammers, libre hammers. So I can hit any kind of nail I feel like, whether or not the manufacturer likes it. Or modify the hammer if it does not suit me. Yes, Stallman likes free hammers. it is just that (almost?) all hammers are free, so there is no need for a free hand-tools foundation just yet.
In the short term it is more free to use the non-free software. Especially where there is no free software that works. Unlike you however, rms actually thought about the future. In the long term, using the non-free software results in less freedom than not using anything at all. Pick your poison.
And what would happen if there were no gun? If I tried to sell the stuff without the source?
The answer is simple, with no enforcement, the law means nothing. It does not exist as a law at all, just a 'we think that this would be good' suggestion.
Hmmm... Maby I should have said 'was used in the class' He taught verilog. I couldn't even recognise VHDL code as such. I have only his (and others, mostly on/.) word that it is hard.
"How do you print out checks with magnetic ink through a web interface?"
Yes, there is a way, I have seen it. And they printed thousands of checks, sometimes in a day, so I know that the readers worked. How they did it though I can't say. (mostly 'cause I don't know) They (used to?) have quickbooks too. I wonder if they do it all throught the web interface now or still use quickbooks some....
Weeks of effort? Sure, a couple of hundred weeks. But quickbooks can't do all this company does with their web interface. Nothing short of a custom solution could.
What is needed to make this work is a system where it is hard/impossible to connect a person (IP address) to a shared file, or to a download. What is usually not needed is to encrypt the data itself.
So the *AA can see that <file_name> is being transmitted. Big deal. If they can't figure out where the data is coming from or where it is going, who can they sue? (Hmmm... is that possible without encrypting the data at all?)
Slashdot Mirror
3) "The cost of preventing it is negligable." An economy is every bit as much a chaotic system as climate, only with a huge wildcard thrown in. People. Air molecules follow the laws of physics in a ridgid and completely predictiable way. People do not. I do not have too much faith in the climate models, but they are gospel compared to any similar economic model I have seen. Most economists predictions are worse than a coin toss. "Replacing CRT's with LCD's will help and will cost the economy almost nothing.: 100 million LCD's at $250 each is $25 billion. Plus disposal.... Many third world countries could live on your 'nothing'.
"Nuclear might help." Might?? Coal and oil fired electrical power plants produce far more C02 than all SUV's put together, Probably more than all cars. (USA only) Might? Your biases are wearing a little thin here.
4)Growth and wealth created the computers and the internet that have allowed us to even try to figure out if there is a problem, and the wealth, and the growth that caused it, will give us our only hope of finding and excecuting any solution.
"There is evidence that in ages past, the earth was MUCH warmer"
Correct, but the reason we find fossils in siberia, and antartica for that matter, is because they have moved farther from the equator since then. Not because the world was warmer then.
The reason that areas now under water were dry then have alot to do with rising and lowering tectonic plates, similar to how we can find marine fossils on the tops of mountains. This also has little to do with past ocean levels.
If 200 feet of ocean evaporated, the increase in the amount of gas in the atmosphere would cause 'air' pressure to quadruple. I put air in quotes because at that point the 'air' would bo 80% water vapor. And about 4% oxygen. The oxygen levels alone would kill most animal life.
Violent weather is not caused by simple temprature gradients. It is caused when moist air rises. This causes the air to lose pressure, and this causes a loss in temprature. As you said temprature greatly affects how much water the air can hold. So the the extra water in the moist air condenses out. This releases a lot of heat, and keeps the air rising a lot longer than it would if it were dry. The violence comes because more air gets sucked in to replace the rising air. A hurricane is caused when this happens over warm water. The fresh air picks up a lot of water vapor from the warm water and keeps the whole thing going.
On the other hand, 11k (~20F) increase here (hi! I'm in Ogden!) will cause a lot of trouble here. Most of our water for the year comes from snow that falls in the mountains. At very least a 20F temp. increase will drastically change when we get our water, and will likely greatly reduce how much we get. We (northern Utah) are close to our water resource limit as it is, any loss could be a big problem.
Other parts of the world would also have similar big problems. My guess is that around 10% of the world's population will have to move inside of the first 20 years of signifigant climate change, and at least another 15% or so over 50-100 years. The social and political implications of that are larger than just about any other event in human history.[1] That said, those who claim that this would wipe out humans, or even civilization seriously underestimate what humans are capable of under pressure. Like you said, with the bad comes new opportunities, like Siberia thawing out.
[1]One possible exception to this is whatever happened about 5000 years ago. We do not know enough to say what, but the evidence is clear that something big happened to us at that point. For all practical purposes, civilization started then.
Debateable, but I'll give you that for the sake of argument. But there is a big complication that you did not take into account. The market only can choose between currently available options. Future considerations are poorly if at all represented because it can not be known which options will be avaiable to choose from in the future.
This in and of itself would not matter much - except that past choices directly influence future options.
Take the keyboard example. The first keyboard design is always the better choice - 'cause the choice is keyboard or no keyboard. But the second choice is affected by the first keyboard. People are used to the first one, so changing to another design involves another learning curve. This extra 'cost' makes the first design the 'better' choice at that time - even if there is no real difference between the two keyboards.
Net result is the first design wins - because it was first, not better. If the second design had been introduced first, it would have been the one chosen by the market, and this with no change in either design. The market is like evolution, it usually makes excellent decisions, but cannot be relied upon to make 'the best' ones possible.
Split it in half, and you can get twins - this is how identical twins happen in the first place. It can be split several times and each blob of cells can form a person. (I do not know how many splits, less than 10 I would guess)
It gets worse - take two of them, squish them together and you get one person. And all of the cells lived. So, which (or how many!) people did you kill? People formed from embryos like this are called chimeras. Unless the two embryos are of different genders, they are healthy and normal.
I do not think that our current definition of human is precice enough to let us say when a new human starts. Most of the debates go like this one has, where someone says 'An embryo is not a person because it has no heart/brain etc yet', implying that 'has a (human) heart' is the definition of human, and someone replies 'but it has a complete set of human DNA' implying that 'complete human DNA' is the definition of a human. I have yet to see a convincing definition of human, and until we have one, the debate cannot be settled.
"What we don't know is where and how Long Term memories are stored."
Probably because it depends on the specific patterns and connections of neurons in the brain and not in the neurons themselves, (there is no one neuron that stores what I got on my 5th birthday) and we have no tools to follow the signals through the whole network on a neuron-by-neuron basis. Or in other words we cannot trace through the brain signals the way we can trace through a computer program - debugging style.
I am curious if it would be possible to set up some kind of simulation of simple neural nets using neurons that work like real ones do - so we could trace the signals! - and if anything is likely to be learned. Any thoughts?
P.S. This may be a rehash of basic theory, but a fair bit of it was theory that I did not know - and it helped me put together many of the pieces that I did know into something that made sense! Great article!
Correct.
"We as a society should shutdown the unsafe chemical plant before an accident kills an injures the entire town, not after."
I don't disagree with this as far as it goes, the big problem is how and by whom it is determined to be unsafe, and more particularly, how the 'how and whom' is decided. More on this in a moment.
"The other argument you put forth is corruption of inspection officials. I just don't think there's evidence of widespread blackmail by inspectors, no more than there is widespread abuse by police officers or soldiers."
These people are the small potatoes of the corruption. If they were all that were involved I wouldn't worry about it. It is the CEO's, the special interest groups, the lawyers, the politicians and the lobbyists that are the big problem.
Hypothetical examples - Seafood restraunt chain lobbies for increased regulations on beef raising/slaughtering and for less on shrimp and lobster inspections - to 'help' them compete with the rival steakhouse. A Steel manufacturer, who has just done a plant upgrade to reduce XYZ polutant, lobbies for stricter controls on XYZ polutant - to hurt a rival small producer who is using an older plant, or simply to increase barriers to entry. Environmental group pushes for more safety controls on cars, or new roads, to make driving more expensive and further their own idealogical goals. Doctor/Lawyer/Plumber group argues for stricter controls on licences, or licences themselves, to limit new competition and keep prices high.
I think that you get the idea. This kind of corruption is rampant, and the costs are huge.
I don't think the costs of the inspectors would be less than the damage caused when someone screws up,[1] simply because everyone has to be inspected, and only those who cause harm jailed/fined etc. This of course also hinges on "The relatively small number of possible violators" I can't remodel my basement legally without getting numerous permits and inspections, not to mentioned licenced plumbers/electricians etc. What if I wanted to fix cars on the side? raise chickens? peas?[2] Hell, I can get fined for not shoveling my walk or letting the weeds exceed 6 inches high in my yard. Everyone is a possible 'violator', in many ways usually.
Inspectors are usually gov. officials and end up acting in a typical government fasion. They over-do it and lack common sense. Did you know that if the diamond on a wedding ring falls off in a meat packing plant that the entire days production must be X-rayed to find the diamond, or prove that it did not end up in the meat? It would be far cheaper to simply pay tripple for the dental work and let the diamond go. You could probably throw in replacing the diamond and still come out far ahead.
*Sigh* And here I go breaking my own rule - I argued this whole thing on a cost basis. I would be in favor of this kind of change even if the costs were not less, and yes, even if it were to reduce safety (and it just might at that) Liberty is more important than either prosperity or safety,[3] and a reactive safety regime preserves my liberty far better than a preventive one. If the corruption factor were preventable I could see people thinking that the trade was worth it. I don't see any other way to prevent the corruption - or even come close.
[1] Fines would not cost anything directly, only indirectly. - and I think I have shown that these indirect costs are far less. Jailtime would have direct costs...
[2] Assume for a moment that these food items are likely to be sold/given to others.
[3] These three are of course related. What good is liberty if I may starve or be murdered before I get up in the morning? Some prosperity and safety is necessary for liberty. - more on this if you ask.
Not quite true. It is just not enough on its own.
But the solution is not inspectors, with their abusable powers. (precisely because they are abusable) The proper solution is to assume that each meat plant is operating safely until it is proven otherwise, And then make them pay for the damage that they caused. (courts) This is harder to abuse because you have to convince 12 random joes to go along with it. This can provide the actuall penalties you want - yes, they are probablly needed sometimes, too many greedy crooks out there.
Just to ward off the flames - I don't think that we could successfully go to this kind of system now without a lot of judicial reform, the courts are too screwed up, and I am not sure exactally what reforms are needed.
If people are touting VSR as just a tax reduction technique are missing the point. It's libertarian, not lesstaxarian. The goal is more liberty. Less taxes is just one way to keep liberty, and it is not enough by itself - far from it.
The answer is rather humorous. Because the same people - partly because of their religious beliefs - are offended by them.
This is nothing more than an emotional reaction by emotional people. (no offence, most reactions and people are) Not a logical reaction of logical people. I think that answers your subject heading too. ;)
There is almost no difference between this and the agnostic 'I don't know if god exists.' The only difference is that the 'lack of belief' part is specified. The agnostic does not believe either. For all practical purposes this is agnostic, not atheist.
However, 'do not believe' and 'believe he does not' are two very different things. For example, compare these statements
- I do not believe erpsquiggles grunt.
- I believe erpsquiggles do not grunt.
I can honestly say the first, but not the second. Why? What the heck is an erpsquiggle? I have never heard of them before, and neither have you. ('cause I just made the word up) Because I have no idea what erpsquiggles may or may not be, I have no beliefs about them, including whether or not they grunt. But if I say the second statement, I imply that I know, or at least believe enough about them to conclude that they do not grunt. Very different. Since these are different, you cannot use this to conclude "that belief or the lack thereof by itself is tantamount to religion." is incorrect.Saying atheism is or is not a religion says a lot about what you mean when you say atheism or religion, and almost nothing about atheism or religion themselves. An inaccurate (or accurate!) definition of religion does not change the nature of religion, any more than calling a rose a skunk cabbage changes the nature of the rose.
(you can apply this fact to my own definitions of atheist and agnostic if you choose - in fact you should, the english definitions of words are often too vauge to convey meaning unambiguously.)
You meant "...more on defence than every other country..." Right? 'Cause that is much closer to the truth. (The U.S. might still be off by a couple of percent, but the recent drop in the dollar probably took care of that.)
Second, Evolution is both a scientific fact and theory. It is a fact in that we have observed fruit flies, bacteria, and to a much more limited extent, plants and animals evolve. There are documented cases of new species arising.[1] These are observed facts. Evolution is a scientific theory in that scientists use the fact of evolution and say that that is how all species came about, and eventually life itself.
Whether or not the evolutionary theory is correct or not is not even a scientific fact. All scientific facts are 'observed'. No one was around to observe the beginning of life, or the origin of all species. Hence, where and how they started are not, and will never be, scientific facts.
"What else is a fact but the best possible conclusion based on the evidence?"
Not a bad common english definition of fact. However, in science, this kind of 'fact' is called 'the best theory so far'. The scientific 'facts' are the evidence you talked about, not the conclusion.
[1]The one in particular that I remember is a plant that was a weird genetic screwup hybrid of two related species. The result has more chromasomes than it's parents, cannot polinate them or be polinated by them, and is successfully propogating on its own. Lab expieriments comfirmed that this new species was the result of crossbreeding.
Here on /. there seem to be many definitions, they are:
- The golden rule (those who have the gold make the rules) or
- A completely free-market system, or
- somewhere in-between.
What is your definition?Could you please explain how my brother can get an almost linear relationship between CPU clock and divx encoding rates when overclocking?
640*480 32 bit 30fps video is around 35MB/s raw (he uses huffyuv - cuts this in half) That is enough to stress out a slow harddrive (don't use a 5400 rpm one!) but the CPU-RAM speed is close to 1GB/s. Whether video precessing is CPU or disk bound is very dependant on just what you are doing to the video. If he is doing a lot to it, it is easy to need a faster CPU, not disk. CPU to RAM speed is not an issue, that could handle 1080p in and out real-time no problem.
You missed something here. The reason that no one can charge above the market rate in this case is because demand did change. Not supply. Assuming that all research that would be profitable without IP laws would still be profitable with them, demand with IP laws would increase since there is now more profitable research that can be done. (with our current over the top IP laws, I am not sure this holds, but for some IP laws I am sure this holds)
Your last comment though implies that you think that our current IP laws end up restricting more research than they encourage, and I would not be surprised if this was the case. However, this is not an argument against all IP law, just our current ones. At some level of IP law, more IP laws will result in more research done. Just not for all levels of IP law.
While this is not wrong, it is unprofitable. And I will not claim that has no effect. It will. Unprofitable buisness decisions will not be made (at least not as often!) and this means that this research will likely not be done as soon as it would have been. This is the whole rational behind patents. An artificial incentive to research, to enhance progress. But a right to profit has a far greater negative effect than the lack of patents does.
A patent is a priviledge. One that can help better society, but one that is accomplished by taking away others rights.[1] Governments need to treat them with care, not as political dog-bones to throw around for votes. (assumption - the government is supposed to maintain the freedoms of the people - like the US used to.)
You are right in saying that the constitution does not protect your right to claim other peoples works for yourself. That is called theft. What you do not seem to understand is that this statement does not apply here. There is no way that I can take your idea away from you. But using my idea, (once I have legally obtained my own copy of your idea, it is my idea too!) even if doing so deprives you of the profit that you had anticipated, is not claiming your works for myself.
[1] In this case, you are restricting the rights of others to use their property as they see fit, namely, making sweaters out of thier own materials with their own tools.
-Daemon
(from another /. post)
Why don't you take a tethered blimp, and add an ordinary wind turbine? Somewhat less tension, It won't fall on your head, and you can put the generator up there too! (the cables only have to hold the thing in place, not transmit mechanical power)
[1]If it is solid iron it won't shatter, just get thrown off course. But then it won't hit us at all - problem solved there too.
In the short term it is more free to use the non-free software. Especially where there is no free software that works. Unlike you however, rms actually thought about the future. In the long term, using the non-free software results in less freedom than not using anything at all. Pick your poison.
The answer is simple, with no enforcement, the law means nothing. It does not exist as a law at all, just a 'we think that this would be good' suggestion.
Hmmm... Maby I should have said 'was used in the class' He taught verilog. I couldn't even recognise VHDL code as such. I have only his (and others, mostly on /.) word that it is hard.
Yes, there is a way, I have seen it. And they printed thousands of checks, sometimes in a day, so I know that the readers worked. How they did it though I can't say. (mostly 'cause I don't know) They (used to?) have quickbooks too. I wonder if they do it all throught the web interface now or still use quickbooks some....
Weeks of effort? Sure, a couple of hundred weeks. But quickbooks can't do all this company does with their web interface. Nothing short of a custom solution could.
It is IE based though, M$ all the way still...
My guess is that is why verilog is used instead.
So the *AA can see that <file_name> is being transmitted. Big deal. If they can't figure out where the data is coming from or where it is going, who can they sue? (Hmmm... is that possible without encrypting the data at all?)