Would you eat pigs, slaughtered industrially for meat?
Would you eat dogs/cats, slaughtered industrially for meat?
Would you eat dolphins, slaughtered industrially for meat?
Would you eat lemurs, slaughtered industrially for meat?
Would you eat organutangs, slaughtered industrially for meat?
Would you eat chimpanzees, slaughtered industrially for meat?
Would you eat genetically 50/50 human/chimpanzee crosses, slaughtered industrially for meat?
Would you eat 90/10 human/chimpanzee crosses, slaughtered industrially for meat?
Would you eat 100% humans, slaughtered industrially for meat?
I think you are missing the point. Messy people aren't more productive because they save time on not clearing things up. The theory is that our brains are not organized in the same orderly manner as books on a library shelf. Our minds are actually quite messy and random, which allows us to be flexible and creative by linking seemingly unrelated things together in an instance. A messy desk may just be a physical manifestation of our thought process which is why we are more comfortable with it than with an unnatural sorting system.
In most countries, you use any Nokia/SE/Sharp/Panasonic/Whatever phone with your preferred service provider. In Japan, you use a Vodafone/DoCoMo/KDDI phone that only happens to be made by Nokia/SE/Sharp/Panasonic/Whatever. For a particular model of phone, you can only get it from one of the major three providers in Japan because the model is probably designed specifically for that provider.
Even the latest phones with 3.2mp (or whatever they have now) cameras cost less than 200 USD in Japan because the consumers pay up to like 80 USD a month depending on the plan. In fact, it is next to impossible to buy a phone without a plan because ALL the phones are locked and almost everything about the phones is proprietary to the service providers. There is no such thing as an unlocking fee because unlocking is unheard of.
But because the system is so provider-centric, Japanese teenagers can afford to change phones every few weeks without paying significantly extra.
You do realize that WW2 was a very different situation. Only USA had nukes, of course it was going to use it! What could the other countries do? Complain to the UN? Pfft.
In the modern world, it is EXACTYL because of MAD that you do NOT need nukes. Do you think that Russia and China will keep their mouth shut if USA goes around nuking every other country?
In today's world, NO ONE can afford to be the first to fire nukes because the world opinion will turn against you. It's not 1946 anymore.:)
It depends on whether you think crimes should be judged by the intentions (which is often hard to gauge) or the effects (which can usually be factually shown).
While cyber criminals often do not have the intention of causing harm to other people the same way a terrorist wants to kill people, the actions of cyber criminals can have the same if not greater effects.
If someone released a computer virus that paralyzed a hospital's computer system and caused the deaths of numerous patients due to equipment failure or unnecessary delays even if you did not intent to, I personally feel that a harsh punishment is required for his lack of personal responsbility.
Basically, I don't feel that "I didn't know" or "I didn't think it would be so serious" is a valid excuse.
You assume that nuclear deterrence is effective, but it isn't. In the modern world, no one DARES to use the nukes because it will turn the world against that country.
The first country to use nukes LOSES. Plain and simple. You kill a few hundred thousand people but now you have to deal with 6 billion more.
Therefore nuclear weaponry is a joke unless you belong to a terrorist organization that does not care about what others think of you.
I guess you might need this if you spend your day in different rooms inside your luxurious mansion and you want your computer with you all the time to stay connected to WoW and check your various stock prices all the time.
But carrying this thing outside?
You would need to hire another butler just for that!
For those of you who are wondering why our government considers such remarks as "sedition", no it's NOT because our government is controlled by religious zealots or anything.
The reason is simple, racial riots broke out in Singapore in the 1960s. The government realized that being the muilti-racial country that we are, such conflicts between the communities cannot be allowed to happen again. We are a small country and if internal disputes between the races and religions breaks us up, there won't be anything left for anyone.
Thanks to 40 years of government policies, including the racial quotas in government housing such that racial groups will not be segregated into different areas/buidlings, Singapore has enjoyed racial and religious harmony, even after Islamic extremists were arrested post-911 for plotting to blow up American targets in Singapore (under the same Interal Security Act that Singapore is always receiving criticisms for).
So yes, maybe some of you prefer to chase after an abstract concept of "freedom", but to Singaporeans, it's a good thing that that idiot got arrested for his racist comments.
I noticed that the whole of Alice in Wonderland is compressed to just 20 clusters and each cluster is represented by the five-letter keys used by TinyURL.
So is it not possible, using the same method, to reduce the entire metafile (which is merely a textfile of less than 1kB) into a single-line URL? Then you can have the program retrieve the metafile from the URL and the actual file from the metafile. So instead of sending people a metafile, you can just copy and paste them one line of URL.
I believe that this is the same clock that was mentioned by Time a few weeks ago in an article on Danny Hillis, the co-founder of Applied Minds.
These guys are geniuses, the kind you see in movies. Danny Hillis himself thought up the idea of parallel processing for his doctaral thesis while he was a grad student. They don't specialize in any fields, they apply their creativity to R&Ds in almost any field, be it medical, defence or engineering.
They are the ones who created that voicebox which replies incomprehensible snippets of your voice to prevent eavesdropping, a human-size Dino robot walking around Hong Kong Disneyland that can mingle with the tourist without any danger because it is able to shift its weight such that if its foot encounters an eggshell, it can back off without breaking it. (that's in the middle of a step) and the company also created a tabletop display that can show a 3D view of any location on earth by using thousands of pins to replicate the actual reliefs.
Obviously, the government cannot possibly be maintaining a list of printer serial numbers to match their owners with, since printers change hands as easily as bank notes. This would only be useful in a criminal investigation where the Secret Service has already confiscated the printers of suspected counterfeiters and then compare the watermark on the counterfeits to the printers.
In other words, it's no big deal. I doubt that it will do the average citizen any harm and it does help with criminal investigations.
Slashdot Mirror
I think you are missing the point. Messy people aren't more productive because they save time on not clearing things up. The theory is that our brains are not organized in the same orderly manner as books on a library shelf. Our minds are actually quite messy and random, which allows us to be flexible and creative by linking seemingly unrelated things together in an instance. A messy desk may just be a physical manifestation of our thought process which is why we are more comfortable with it than with an unnatural sorting system.
As opposed to Japan?
In most countries, you use any Nokia/SE/Sharp/Panasonic/Whatever phone with your preferred service provider. In Japan, you use a Vodafone/DoCoMo/KDDI phone that only happens to be made by Nokia/SE/Sharp/Panasonic/Whatever. For a particular model of phone, you can only get it from one of the major three providers in Japan because the model is probably designed specifically for that provider.
Even the latest phones with 3.2mp (or whatever they have now) cameras cost less than 200 USD in Japan because the consumers pay up to like 80 USD a month depending on the plan. In fact, it is next to impossible to buy a phone without a plan because ALL the phones are locked and almost everything about the phones is proprietary to the service providers. There is no such thing as an unlocking fee because unlocking is unheard of.
But because the system is so provider-centric, Japanese teenagers can afford to change phones every few weeks without paying significantly extra.
In the modern world, it is EXACTYL because of MAD that you do NOT need nukes. Do you think that Russia and China will keep their mouth shut if USA goes around nuking every other country?
In today's world, NO ONE can afford to be the first to fire nukes because the world opinion will turn against you. It's not 1946 anymore. :)
It depends on whether you think crimes should be judged by the intentions (which is often hard to gauge) or the effects (which can usually be factually shown). While cyber criminals often do not have the intention of causing harm to other people the same way a terrorist wants to kill people, the actions of cyber criminals can have the same if not greater effects. If someone released a computer virus that paralyzed a hospital's computer system and caused the deaths of numerous patients due to equipment failure or unnecessary delays even if you did not intent to, I personally feel that a harsh punishment is required for his lack of personal responsbility. Basically, I don't feel that "I didn't know" or "I didn't think it would be so serious" is a valid excuse.
You don't want to know.
You assume that nuclear deterrence is effective, but it isn't. In the modern world, no one DARES to use the nukes because it will turn the world against that country.
The first country to use nukes LOSES. Plain and simple. You kill a few hundred thousand people but now you have to deal with 6 billion more.
Therefore nuclear weaponry is a joke unless you belong to a terrorist organization that does not care about what others think of you.
I guess you might need this if you spend your day in different rooms inside your luxurious mansion and you want your computer with you all the time to stay connected to WoW and check your various stock prices all the time.
But carrying this thing outside?
You would need to hire another butler just for that!
NSA caught with cookies?
On a seperate note, two i's or not, the plural of "virus" is "viruses" and nothing else.
Or is it $1.9 x 10^12?
There are two Halo games.
And a few hours that before you can rip 360 discs to your Xbox HD and play off the ISO file directly.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0218817/ It sucked.
For those of you who are wondering why our government considers such remarks as "sedition", no it's NOT because our government is controlled by religious zealots or anything.
The reason is simple, racial riots broke out in Singapore in the 1960s. The government realized that being the muilti-racial country that we are, such conflicts between the communities cannot be allowed to happen again. We are a small country and if internal disputes between the races and religions breaks us up, there won't be anything left for anyone.
Thanks to 40 years of government policies, including the racial quotas in government housing such that racial groups will not be segregated into different areas/buidlings, Singapore has enjoyed racial and religious harmony, even after Islamic extremists were arrested post-911 for plotting to blow up American targets in Singapore (under the same Interal Security Act that Singapore is always receiving criticisms for).
So yes, maybe some of you prefer to chase after an abstract concept of "freedom", but to Singaporeans, it's a good thing that that idiot got arrested for his racist comments.
I just don't see the point of going beyond 17" for laptops. Heck, my personal ideal screen size is 14.1" to 15.4".
Personally I would rather see screens that continue to maintain their portable size but with increased resolutions than 20" behemoths.
I noticed that the whole of Alice in Wonderland is compressed to just 20 clusters and each cluster is represented by the five-letter keys used by TinyURL. So is it not possible, using the same method, to reduce the entire metafile (which is merely a textfile of less than 1kB) into a single-line URL? Then you can have the program retrieve the metafile from the URL and the actual file from the metafile. So instead of sending people a metafile, you can just copy and paste them one line of URL.
These guys are geniuses, the kind you see in movies. Danny Hillis himself thought up the idea of parallel processing for his doctaral thesis while he was a grad student. They don't specialize in any fields, they apply their creativity to R&Ds in almost any field, be it medical, defence or engineering.
They are the ones who created that voicebox which replies incomprehensible snippets of your voice to prevent eavesdropping, a human-size Dino robot walking around Hong Kong Disneyland that can mingle with the tourist without any danger because it is able to shift its weight such that if its foot encounters an eggshell, it can back off without breaking it. (that's in the middle of a step) and the company also created a tabletop display that can show a 3D view of any location on earth by using thousands of pins to replicate the actual reliefs.
Obviously, the government cannot possibly be maintaining a list of printer serial numbers to match their owners with, since printers change hands as easily as bank notes. This would only be useful in a criminal investigation where the Secret Service has already confiscated the printers of suspected counterfeiters and then compare the watermark on the counterfeits to the printers. In other words, it's no big deal. I doubt that it will do the average citizen any harm and it does help with criminal investigations.
I once thought like this. That is until I saw the video quality of a UMD movie being played on the PSP screen.