Like I said before someone decided one day that the universe *was natural*, that's an idealogical statement not a scientific one. You obviously do not want to understand what I'm talking about. And no it's not "too bad" that someone decided that everything within the universe should be defined as 'natural', don't confuse cause and effect with the nature of how those causes and effects exist.
"Anything constrained entirely within the universe (including the universe itself) is natural by definition. Supernatural refers to entities in whole or in part outside of the natural universe and exempt from at least some of the properties of the universe."
But once again "within the universe" explains nothing, it doesn't tell us anything about the nature of things within the universe (whatever "universe" means, since it is wholly dependent on our limited view of our environment), and that also doesn't tell us that whatever exists in the universe *is natural*. That's my point. Christians view natural laws as extensions of god, non-theists view natural laws as sufficient unto themselves, both ultimately non-scientific points of view, no one can get at the 'nature of nature', i.e. is nature natural, are things that exist natural, is natural sufficient in and of itself as an explanaton?
"Mind explaining for us "ignorant" folks how a supernatural supposition is compatable with a methodology that can only make meaningful statements and conclusions about the natural universe?"
Mind explaining the difference between what is 'natural' (i.e. an environment you happen to exist in) and what is 'supernatural'? We can call our environment 'nature' and assume it's 'natural' but this does nothing to prove that it is *natural*.
Natural and supernatural are very ill defined concepts when you try to determine the properties, causes and nature of things.
I'd like to know who decided the universe is natural, it certianly wasn't done scientifically, it was done idealogically.
I'm atheist, for science, and pro-evolution but please. The ID people at least have a point, the argument from design goes way beyond christianity, only some of the ignorant people at slashdot can't see past that.
As if finding out christianity was false somehow proves our (current) quasi-scientific measurement of past history true, i.e. can science actually tell the difference between what is natural and what isn't, and WHAT IS natural? what's the definition of what's natural? Something that just happens to exist in our environment? The world "natural" is just as slippery and ill defined as supernatural or 'intelligence'.
"Denying the existence of the soul is akin to denying the existence of the software in a computer."
No, the soul is a NON PHYSICAL entity, information *must* have a physical presence and a place to be stored, i.e. memories, etc. This is proven easily by trying to remember a long sequence of digits, of human souls can exist without physically storing their information (aka like god) they would be able to process all knowledge instantaneously and transcend any physical limitations of their bodies, in fact the fact that we and *need* bodies to experience self-awareness tells us that god *out of necessity* had to make conscious beings in physical form because there was simply no other way to make a self aware entity without storing the information physically.
"How many average computer users are currently running their CRT based monitors at a 60HZ refresh?"
A lot probably but it is very monitor dependent, on my monitor I can notice 60hz but on newer CRT's it became more difficult to recognize, also for any moving images (games, etc) the 60hz refresh is definitely unnoticable / not eyestraining at all. It's mostly to do with static work environments you see in windows where 60hz begins to become and eyesore. Also with the advent of Plug and Play monitors some *may* default to 75, 85hz, 100hz+ woul be much more rare I think, many people get by on old monitors for years.
Re:Defiance is a changing the system too
on
Modding and the Law
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· Score: 1
I just have to add that digital piracy saves resources and money on boxes, manuals, DVD's and CD's that do not take up physical energy or matter, beyond what is used to transmit the data to someones hard disk, what is lost in profit is made up for in less obvious ways (i.e. less physical resource use from the environment).
"In a perfect world wikipedia would work, but people aren't perfect, and people have agendas... that is why it will never be taken seriously with anyone outside the community."
Yeah but so do professionals, professionals are just as biased as amateurs over justifiably controversial issues.
"It's all about the community - what Bram did was to unify the community into donating bandwidth through BitTorrent, and that's what makes it so special"
Braham also shows the power of certain aspects of socialism, i.e. everyone doing their part to help everyone else, everyone does better when EVERYONE does better.
Try running your computer like a power user, you still have to reboot XP due to sluggishness and memory leaks if you use a LOT of programs. XP slows to a crawl and many genuine commercial programs have problems that slow XP down to a crawl, even though their reported memory usage is within normal ranges.
One is much longer. Even if people pirated audiobooks, the time it would take to read them all and listen to them all would be prohibitive. I dont think book publishers really have that much to fear since major/popular books have already been converted to ebooks for many books and magazines are already pirated worldwide.
Personlly I do not think they have much to worry about, books are huge investments of time, smaller books or quick reads may get hit a bit more but, larger books, no one could possibly have the time to appreciably dent the book publishing biz that much, after all knowledge and new books are constantly released and people understand that if they don't support the authors, etc, no more books of that calibre will be released. IMHO publishers need a good kick in the ass anyway because they release so much CRAP to begin with that is worthless (i.e. check out some beginning game programming books, or such like, WASTE of dead tree there)
I really think credit should be given to the adult population, book piracy might seem like a money loser, but if todays kids take to electronic books, that will mean less dead tree's correct? Not to mention the cost to publish a book would be driven down enormously since the cost to produce the "physical" copy would be near zero, you'd still have to pay authors, and bandwidth costs fot distro, but things like bit-torrent would help alleviate costs, etc.
IMHO I think many if not most of the books released, people dont NEED the whole book, just the parts they NEED. It's like buying music cd for 1-3 favorite songs and not liking/needing the rest, books have this same problem.
"Because it is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. Similarly, the doctor."
Yes but this just shows us how unevolved we are, obviously we are defective in many ways. i.e. emotions get in the way, humans get tired, bored, emotionally frustrated/drained (doing hard work, school work, etc). Robots wouldn't neither would enhanced human beings who had control over their base instincts and inner bullshit.
Also profit is bad as well, do you want your doctor recommending surgery/whatever you dont need so he gets more money to spend on his call girl and coc habit? hah.
As much as I agree that it is ok for people to make a living doing something they dont really enjoy because of the $ they make for their own benefit, there are just as many cons as well. Hopefully human beings will trancend their animal natures one day with science and technology.
"You are wrong, as are the people you cite who are "not anti-science." Even if they dispute natural selection and genetics, they of course are pro-science when they are taking an ibuprofen or getting their children vaccinated or getting their yearly flu shot. And no one with a job or an investment portfolio wants to see America lose its technological edge."
No you are wrong, the fact that people dont want to go into science has virtually NOTHING to do with their religious beliefs, the only thing some religious people have a problem with is evolution, so they'd avoid biology. Any other science is fair game and harmless to 90% of the religious population. This doesn't prevent religious people from being good doctors. I know many doctors and biologists who are catholic/various other faiths and they are damn good doctors / biologists that would run rings around any slashdot hyperbole.
Evolution is different from cause and effect, please get this through your skull. People can believe in natural cause and effect and still believe intelligence had something to do with the origin of life and have it not effect their scientific work at all.
Engineering, technology, math, etc are wide open, and many scientists are liberal in their religion (i.e. they know their religion is just a mythogical/symbological work).
It's world capitalism, why would anyone want to become a scientist, engineer, or any other time demanding job if you're company is busy farming indians and the chinese for half or less of the price it costs to pay one one american wage. Get real, its totally about being rewarded appropriately versus the sacrifice of time and effort you make to become ready for one of the said jobs and being sure that you have a regular income so you can not live a tenuous existence.
I hate how people blame religion for everything, please get over yourselves, darwin flirted with religion until he was 40 years old for christ sakes, many religious people automatically accepted darwinism and the age of the earth, scientific findings, the universe, etc. You can't simply change a culture overnight that has a religious heritage, this goes with any country. Apparently some of the people who post at slashdot have no inkling of an understanding of historical processes and that the world peoples, cultures and countries mature at different rates and that this is a totally natural thing since no one was born with the memory of past history and had to guess/use ancient texts to help hold their society's together.
"people who are pirating movies wouldn't pay for them if they were a penny a piece."
I would pay for them if they were a penny a piece, 100 DVD's for 1 whole dollar, averaging about 1.5 hours per DVD (some more, some less), so thats roughly 150 hours of entertainment that would last you at least 2 months maybe less if you watched one or more every night instead of when you felt like it. Factor in internet, TV and other distractions and you got at least 3+ months of viewing for one whole dollars heh.
"That said--there is a core of information that people should learn well enough to not need to consult Google, lest one spend one's time looking things up rather than doing something worthwhile. The question is, what is that core?"
I think human intelligence is going to go obselete sooner or later once we know and understand how the human mind works computers, advanced measuring sensors and AI's will do the heavy lifting because lets face it, humans have horribly slow processing and memory systems compared to systems designed specifically for that.
Think about how much you can actually manage to memorize multiplied by the time it takes you to memorize it and then factor in decay, and human beings individually dont learn that much at all.
Yay for genetic engineering, or enhancements, but I think a time will come where human beings are superflous to their own creations who manage everything for them and can have absolute control over their time, humans if they 'exist' as we know them today will end up being being more akin to rational robots then animals, having transcendended their animalism (emotions, fatigue, etc) that gets in the way of their functioning.
"I don't know about you, but I'm sick of everything being a flipping copyright concern. Screw the media conglamorates and their infinite copyrights and fascist enforcement. "
I agree.
I wish someone would do a study on how much information a person could possibly read, listen to, watch or acquire in accordance with Games, TV shows, Magazines and music.
As much piracy and "copyright infringement" as there is, there is only a finite pool of time every individual human being has in their lifetimes and I really doubt that copyright infringement is as big of a deal as its made out to be by sheer virtue that 80% of those stealing dont have jobs / are in school and have some excess time on their hands.
Those with jobs I really doubt are going home every night and spending all that time (6 hours or so) watching. reading or listening to copyrighted material, you can only consume it so fast, and in modern society there is simply just way too much of everything in the quest profits, there is overproduction of goods in almost many heavy "copyright infringement" industries, i.e. movies games and music.
The problem is regardless, the military and intelligence agencies already do things like this anyway without public knowledge. The big thing is that technology is driving Orwellian wet dreams, the more we use technology the less control we have over a lot of our personal information (i.e. having a cell phone you can be tracked, same with bank card, visa, etc).
Also you dont even have to put the knowledge into one database, you can have organizations that have legal access to all databases and hire smart guys to make analyzing software that links disparate data together.
"Biological weapons scare the living shit out of me. They are difficult to develop, but can be easily mass produced and delivered. They kill indescriminately and can be made self sustaining. What is worse is that to defeat them, you have to devlopment them in the first place (this is the conundrum of any weapons research).
Let's all just try to get along, okay?"
Biological weapon development has been going on for millions of years already, its called evolution! Personally I'm not that scared about biological weapons based on organisms since life has suffered and exists constantly in a state antagonism. IMHO the thing that scares me the most about biological weapons is that they cannot be distinguished from natural viruses, if a government wanted to kill off a segment of its population or just reduce the number of people in a certain area, all it would have to do is create a moderately destructive biological agent no different from natural ones.
The scariest thing about bio-weapons is that you couldn't tell them apart from natural causes if someone wanted to use them against their own people.
"Oddly enough it reminds me of parents who want their precious little darling to have everything they didn't have when growing up so the kid never learns anything. "do not deny your children the experiences that made you who you are" - spoken by a very wise person."
Oddly enough, I don't think that is very correct. I understand the sentiment but there are plenty of bad parents out there and telling them to give them the experiences who "made them who they are" when they wasted half their life being brainwashes (religion) or not being parented (parental absenteeism due to work), are two experiences I would have rather done without as a kid.
Good parents try to teach their children to draw strength from themselves and not the world to weather lifes storms and let them make some mistakes but prevent them from making other others (i.e. lending significant amounts of money to deadbeat friends, etc). IMHO if you want better parents you have to take the lessions learned from other 'failed' parents and teach them in courses in school, because parenting goes away beyond a witty quote and a oneline "if you spoil your child this will happen" stereotype.
"Somebody who can actually think can pick up anything. Someone who just has job training is going to be in trouble unless they know how to adapt."
I don't exactly buy this, I've seen plenty of smart people not be able to pick up things I consider basic. Intelligence or smarts is definitely not globally distributed in a person.
It's not about "how to think" its about being taught how to teach yourself, thats the one thing they *don't* teach you in school, is how to school yourself, how to pick out what is important and what is not, and it is not at trivial task the harder the material. Also you need lots of time, and time is money, many people have bills to pay or dont have rich or well off parents while they are able to afford to fart around getting more educated, it is not a perfect world.
"Imagine if intelligent design was applied to math, we'd end up with Pi to the value of 3 because 3.14.... ad infinitum is messy and reveals a level of unsettling uncertainty in the universe. "
What the hell is this? What a fucked up example, why is it that Design cannot exist in the universe, we will be designing new beings soon and they will have a theory of intelligent design for their origins and not evolution so why rule it out for life origins? It's the most idiotic thing imaginable especially when most intellectually minded we will be 'intelligent designers' of future races and species. There is nothing unscientific about intelligent design, only when you try to marry religion with design do you get a bastardized version of it.
I'd like to see the fallacies of equivocation stop but of course this is slashdot, where herd mentality of the 'elite' view of the age in which we live is fellated to no end by the 'high minded' (yeah right). If you know anything about history every single age has been wrong about origins or causes and effects in the universe, EVERY SINGLE AGE has been grossly mistaken, so what makes this one so different? heh.
Again stupidity and intelligence are so vaguely defined when used in a conversation that they become meaningless, I know plenty of intelligent assholes that would make good providers but shitty parents, I know lots of poor people who'd make great parents but shitty providers. Just because you have "intelligence" (a degree, a job or whatever) doesn't mean you know yourself or know enough about how to use it to raise a family.
You make it sound so easy, many geeks seek their opposites. I know plenty of smart guys who simply do not want people as intelligent as themselves as their mates, many smart people are pessimistic, overanalyze things, and can be very annoying. I'll take the average chick with amazing caring motherly traits, over the geeky chick who's hardcore about her career any day of the week.
We have enough smart cold people in the world who think they are fucking gods gift to the world when they are the furthest thing from it.
... using the same digital file transfer technology over RF. I hate headphones out there right now that you have to tune in the old fashioned way like a radio, if they made one of crystal clear wireless digital headphones, I bet they'd sell like hotcakes.
As for the mice, jesus we already have enough nice heh. Logitechs been flooding the market with their MX brands, enough versions to sink a ship.
I dont think it necessarily makes kids 'more creative', the internet is just a tool that enhances what was already there. It just gives everyone and an outlet to express themselves and since kids of this age grew up with the technology it's in's and outs will be second nature.
Whenever I here someone attribute an ill defined attribute such as 'creativity' to a vague group of ill defined people I always cringe. Hard work, persistence, taking care of yourself and maximizing genetic potential nature gave you takes you most of the way there.
Commitment to a goal without persistence of action, is stillborn, the price of greatness is committed dedication to focus, refine, clarify and solve.
I think the only thing the internet does is allow people to make connections, link information and ideas, and make discoveries and realizations using already existing information to create new combinations of ideas from already existing information faster.
Slashdot Mirror
Like I said before someone decided one day that the universe *was natural*, that's an idealogical statement not a scientific one. You obviously do not want to understand what I'm talking about. And no it's not "too bad" that someone decided that everything within the universe should be defined as 'natural', don't confuse cause and effect with the nature of how those causes and effects exist.
"Anything constrained entirely within the universe (including the universe itself) is natural by definition. Supernatural refers to entities in whole or in part outside of the natural universe and exempt from at least some of the properties of the universe." But once again "within the universe" explains nothing, it doesn't tell us anything about the nature of things within the universe (whatever "universe" means, since it is wholly dependent on our limited view of our environment), and that also doesn't tell us that whatever exists in the universe *is natural*. That's my point. Christians view natural laws as extensions of god, non-theists view natural laws as sufficient unto themselves, both ultimately non-scientific points of view, no one can get at the 'nature of nature', i.e. is nature natural, are things that exist natural, is natural sufficient in and of itself as an explanaton?
"Mind explaining for us "ignorant" folks how a supernatural supposition is compatable with a methodology that can only make meaningful statements and conclusions about the natural universe?" Mind explaining the difference between what is 'natural' (i.e. an environment you happen to exist in) and what is 'supernatural'? We can call our environment 'nature' and assume it's 'natural' but this does nothing to prove that it is *natural*. Natural and supernatural are very ill defined concepts when you try to determine the properties, causes and nature of things. I'd like to know who decided the universe is natural, it certianly wasn't done scientifically, it was done idealogically. I'm atheist, for science, and pro-evolution but please. The ID people at least have a point, the argument from design goes way beyond christianity, only some of the ignorant people at slashdot can't see past that. As if finding out christianity was false somehow proves our (current) quasi-scientific measurement of past history true, i.e. can science actually tell the difference between what is natural and what isn't, and WHAT IS natural? what's the definition of what's natural? Something that just happens to exist in our environment? The world "natural" is just as slippery and ill defined as supernatural or 'intelligence'.
"Denying the existence of the soul is akin to denying the existence of the software in a computer."
No, the soul is a NON PHYSICAL entity, information *must* have a physical presence and a place to be stored, i.e. memories, etc. This is proven easily by trying to remember a long sequence of digits, of human souls can exist without physically storing their information (aka like god) they would be able to process all knowledge instantaneously and transcend any physical limitations of their bodies, in fact the fact that we and *need* bodies to experience self-awareness tells us that god *out of necessity* had to make conscious beings in physical form because there was simply no other way to make a self aware entity without storing the information physically.
"How many average computer users are currently running their CRT based monitors at a 60HZ refresh?" A lot probably but it is very monitor dependent, on my monitor I can notice 60hz but on newer CRT's it became more difficult to recognize, also for any moving images (games, etc) the 60hz refresh is definitely unnoticable / not eyestraining at all. It's mostly to do with static work environments you see in windows where 60hz begins to become and eyesore. Also with the advent of Plug and Play monitors some *may* default to 75, 85hz, 100hz+ woul be much more rare I think, many people get by on old monitors for years.
I just have to add that digital piracy saves resources and money on boxes, manuals, DVD's and CD's that do not take up physical energy or matter, beyond what is used to transmit the data to someones hard disk, what is lost in profit is made up for in less obvious ways (i.e. less physical resource use from the environment).
"In a perfect world wikipedia would work, but people aren't perfect, and people have agendas... that is why it will never be taken seriously with anyone outside the community." Yeah but so do professionals, professionals are just as biased as amateurs over justifiably controversial issues.
It's McTendo! McTendo, it's a cerial now! McTendo...
"It's all about the community - what Bram did was to unify the community into donating bandwidth through BitTorrent, and that's what makes it so special"
Braham also shows the power of certain aspects of socialism, i.e. everyone doing their part to help everyone else, everyone does better when EVERYONE does better.
Try running your computer like a power user, you still have to reboot XP due to sluggishness and memory leaks if you use a LOT of programs. XP slows to a crawl and many genuine commercial programs have problems that slow XP down to a crawl, even though their reported memory usage is within normal ranges.
One is much longer. Even if people pirated audiobooks, the time it would take to read them all and listen to them all would be prohibitive. I dont think book publishers really have that much to fear since major/popular books have already been converted to ebooks for many books and magazines are already pirated worldwide. Personlly I do not think they have much to worry about, books are huge investments of time, smaller books or quick reads may get hit a bit more but, larger books, no one could possibly have the time to appreciably dent the book publishing biz that much, after all knowledge and new books are constantly released and people understand that if they don't support the authors, etc, no more books of that calibre will be released. IMHO publishers need a good kick in the ass anyway because they release so much CRAP to begin with that is worthless (i.e. check out some beginning game programming books, or such like, WASTE of dead tree there) I really think credit should be given to the adult population, book piracy might seem like a money loser, but if todays kids take to electronic books, that will mean less dead tree's correct? Not to mention the cost to publish a book would be driven down enormously since the cost to produce the "physical" copy would be near zero, you'd still have to pay authors, and bandwidth costs fot distro, but things like bit-torrent would help alleviate costs, etc. IMHO I think many if not most of the books released, people dont NEED the whole book, just the parts they NEED. It's like buying music cd for 1-3 favorite songs and not liking/needing the rest, books have this same problem.
I believe genetics, excercise and diet would have way more positive effect on brain performance then carbinoids in human beings.
"Because it is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. Similarly, the doctor."
Yes but this just shows us how unevolved we are, obviously we are defective in many ways. i.e. emotions get in the way, humans get tired, bored, emotionally frustrated/drained (doing hard work, school work, etc). Robots wouldn't neither would enhanced human beings who had control over their base instincts and inner bullshit.
Also profit is bad as well, do you want your doctor recommending surgery/whatever you dont need so he gets more money to spend on his call girl and coc habit? hah.
As much as I agree that it is ok for people to make a living doing something they dont really enjoy because of the $ they make for their own benefit, there are just as many cons as well. Hopefully human beings will trancend their animal natures one day with science and technology.
"You are wrong, as are the people you cite who are "not anti-science." Even if they dispute natural selection and genetics, they of course are pro-science when they are taking an ibuprofen or getting their children vaccinated or getting their yearly flu shot. And no one with a job or an investment portfolio wants to see America lose its technological edge."
No you are wrong, the fact that people dont want to go into science has virtually NOTHING to do with their religious beliefs, the only thing some religious people have a problem with is evolution, so they'd avoid biology. Any other science is fair game and harmless to 90% of the religious population. This doesn't prevent religious people from being good doctors. I know many doctors and biologists who are catholic/various other faiths and they are damn good doctors / biologists that would run rings around any slashdot hyperbole.
Evolution is different from cause and effect, please get this through your skull. People can believe in natural cause and effect and still believe intelligence had something to do with the origin of life and have it not effect their scientific work at all.
Engineering, technology, math, etc are wide open, and many scientists are liberal in their religion (i.e. they know their religion is just a mythogical/symbological work).
It's world capitalism, why would anyone want to become a scientist, engineer, or any other time demanding job if you're company is busy farming indians and the chinese for half or less of the price it costs to pay one one american wage. Get real, its totally about being rewarded appropriately versus the sacrifice of time and effort you make to become ready for one of the said jobs and being sure that you have a regular income so you can not live a tenuous existence.
I hate how people blame religion for everything, please get over yourselves, darwin flirted with religion until he was 40 years old for christ sakes, many religious people automatically accepted darwinism and the age of the earth, scientific findings, the universe, etc. You can't simply change a culture overnight that has a religious heritage, this goes with any country. Apparently some of the people who post at slashdot have no inkling of an understanding of historical processes and that the world peoples, cultures and countries mature at different rates and that this is a totally natural thing since no one was born with the memory of past history and had to guess/use ancient texts to help hold their society's together.
"people who are pirating movies wouldn't pay for them if they were a penny a piece."
I would pay for them if they were a penny a piece, 100 DVD's for 1 whole dollar, averaging about 1.5 hours per DVD (some more, some less), so thats roughly 150 hours of entertainment that would last you at least 2 months maybe less if you watched one or more every night instead of when you felt like it. Factor in internet, TV and other distractions and you got at least 3+ months of viewing for one whole dollars heh.
"That said--there is a core of information that people should learn well enough to not need to consult Google, lest one spend one's time looking things up rather than doing something worthwhile. The question is, what is that core?"
I think human intelligence is going to go obselete sooner or later once we know and understand how the human mind works computers, advanced measuring sensors and AI's will do the heavy lifting because lets face it, humans have horribly slow processing and memory systems compared to systems designed specifically for that.
Think about how much you can actually manage to memorize multiplied by the time it takes you to memorize it and then factor in decay, and human beings individually dont learn that much at all.
Yay for genetic engineering, or enhancements, but I think a time will come where human beings are superflous to their own creations who manage everything for them and can have absolute control over their time, humans if they 'exist' as we know them today will end up being being more akin to rational robots then animals, having transcendended their animalism (emotions, fatigue, etc) that gets in the way of their functioning.
"I don't know about you, but I'm sick of everything being a flipping copyright concern. Screw the media conglamorates and their infinite copyrights and fascist enforcement. "
I agree.
I wish someone would do a study on how much information a person could possibly read, listen to, watch or acquire in accordance with Games, TV shows, Magazines and music.
As much piracy and "copyright infringement" as there is, there is only a finite pool of time every individual human being has in their lifetimes and I really doubt that copyright infringement is as big of a deal as its made out to be by sheer virtue that 80% of those stealing dont have jobs / are in school and have some excess time on their hands.
Those with jobs I really doubt are going home every night and spending all that time (6 hours or so) watching. reading or listening to copyrighted material, you can only consume it so fast, and in modern society there is simply just way too much of everything in the quest profits, there is overproduction of goods in almost many heavy "copyright infringement" industries, i.e. movies games and music.
The problem is regardless, the military and intelligence agencies already do things like this anyway without public knowledge. The big thing is that technology is driving Orwellian wet dreams, the more we use technology the less control we have over a lot of our personal information (i.e. having a cell phone you can be tracked, same with bank card, visa, etc).
Also you dont even have to put the knowledge into one database, you can have organizations that have legal access to all databases and hire smart guys to make analyzing software that links disparate data together.
"Biological weapons scare the living shit out of me. They are difficult to develop, but can be easily mass produced and delivered. They kill indescriminately and can be made self sustaining. What is worse is that to defeat them, you have to devlopment them in the first place (this is the conundrum of any weapons research).
Let's all just try to get along, okay?"
Biological weapon development has been going on for millions of years already, its called evolution! Personally I'm not that scared about biological weapons based on organisms since life has suffered and exists constantly in a state antagonism. IMHO the thing that scares me the most about biological weapons is that they cannot be distinguished from natural viruses, if a government wanted to kill off a segment of its population or just reduce the number of people in a certain area, all it would have to do is create a moderately destructive biological agent no different from natural ones.
The scariest thing about bio-weapons is that you couldn't tell them apart from natural causes if someone wanted to use them against their own people.
"Oddly enough it reminds me of parents who want their precious little darling to have everything they didn't have when growing up so the kid never learns anything. "do not deny your children the experiences that made you who you are" - spoken by a very wise person."
Oddly enough, I don't think that is very correct. I understand the sentiment but there are plenty of bad parents out there and telling them to give them the experiences who "made them who they are" when they wasted half their life being brainwashes (religion) or not being parented (parental absenteeism due to work), are two experiences I would have rather done without as a kid.
Good parents try to teach their children to draw strength from themselves and not the world to weather lifes storms and let them make some mistakes but prevent them from making other others (i.e. lending significant amounts of money to deadbeat friends, etc). IMHO if you want better parents you have to take the lessions learned from other 'failed' parents and teach them in courses in school, because parenting goes away beyond a witty quote and a oneline "if you spoil your child this will happen" stereotype.
"Somebody who can actually think can pick up anything. Someone who just has job training is going to be in trouble unless they know how to adapt."
I don't exactly buy this, I've seen plenty of smart people not be able to pick up things I consider basic. Intelligence or smarts is definitely not globally distributed in a person.
It's not about "how to think" its about being taught how to teach yourself, thats the one thing they *don't* teach you in school, is how to school yourself, how to pick out what is important and what is not, and it is not at trivial task the harder the material. Also you need lots of time, and time is money, many people have bills to pay or dont have rich or well off parents while they are able to afford to fart around getting more educated, it is not a perfect world.
"Imagine if intelligent design was applied to math, we'd end up with Pi to the value of 3 because 3.14.... ad infinitum is messy and reveals a level of unsettling uncertainty in the universe. "
What the hell is this? What a fucked up example, why is it that Design cannot exist in the universe, we will be designing new beings soon and they will have a theory of intelligent design for their origins and not evolution so why rule it out for life origins? It's the most idiotic thing imaginable especially when most intellectually minded we will be 'intelligent designers' of future races and species. There is nothing unscientific about intelligent design, only when you try to marry religion with design do you get a bastardized version of it.
I'd like to see the fallacies of equivocation stop but of course this is slashdot, where herd mentality of the 'elite' view of the age in which we live is fellated to no end by the 'high minded' (yeah right). If you know anything about history every single age has been wrong about origins or causes and effects in the universe, EVERY SINGLE AGE has been grossly mistaken, so what makes this one so different? heh.
"In the meantime - geeks unite and breed!"
Again stupidity and intelligence are so vaguely defined when used in a conversation that they become meaningless, I know plenty of intelligent assholes that would make good providers but shitty parents, I know lots of poor people who'd make great parents but shitty providers. Just because you have "intelligence" (a degree, a job or whatever) doesn't mean you know yourself or know enough about how to use it to raise a family.
You make it sound so easy, many geeks seek their opposites. I know plenty of smart guys who simply do not want people as intelligent as themselves as their mates, many smart people are pessimistic, overanalyze things, and can be very annoying. I'll take the average chick with amazing caring motherly traits, over the geeky chick who's hardcore about her career any day of the week.
We have enough smart cold people in the world who think they are fucking gods gift to the world when they are the furthest thing from it.
... using the same digital file transfer technology over RF. I hate headphones out there right now that you have to tune in the old fashioned way like a radio, if they made one of crystal clear wireless digital headphones, I bet they'd sell like hotcakes.
As for the mice, jesus we already have enough nice heh. Logitechs been flooding the market with their MX brands, enough versions to sink a ship.
I dont think it necessarily makes kids 'more creative', the internet is just a tool that enhances what was already there. It just gives everyone and an outlet to express themselves and since kids of this age grew up with the technology it's in's and outs will be second nature.
Whenever I here someone attribute an ill defined attribute such as 'creativity' to a vague group of ill defined people I always cringe. Hard work, persistence, taking care of yourself and maximizing genetic potential nature gave you takes you most of the way there.
Commitment to a goal without persistence of action, is stillborn, the price of greatness is committed dedication to focus, refine, clarify and solve.
I think the only thing the internet does is allow people to make connections, link information and ideas, and make discoveries and realizations using already existing information to create new combinations of ideas from already existing information faster.