Why is the viewing of non-anonymized financial transactions legal and ostensibly tolerable? Because politicians are easy to bribe (excuse me, educate via legal financial expenditures).
Ah, I'm sure the fact that Google is the biggest spender on lobbying in the USA is completely unrelated. Because that would be evil!
it should be clear that "do no evil" is only possible when the meaning of evil is re-engineered.
Communism isn't inherently evil, it's just that it has often come with totalitarianism.
Sorry, Bruce, but you're wrong.
Communism is inherently evil; it can't work without tyranny, because it relies on idealized people who selflessly put the interest of the society above their own. This is not how real people behave. Capitalism relies on people following their impulses (even supposedly negative ones, like greed). It channels those impulses them in directions that benefit others, for example by rewarding people who produce or create new stuff. Communism wants to completely repress those impulses, so it has to force people to behave contrary to their natural inclinations. It has to indoctrinate people to follow the ideology, so freedom of speech and the free flow of ideas are forbidden. Also, communist countries don't reward producers or creators - at best, they should be happy they contributed to the betterment of society. At worst, they are regarded as exploiters, and repressed.
I have first hand knowledge of both systems - I lived more than half my life in an Eastern European country that was theoretically "building a Communist society", and then moved to capitalist America. The difference is huge. And I know some people will come up with the "no true Communism" argument - but those are mostly folks who have never experienced life in a communist country, and can't really understand the realities there.
I believe the best balance is a Canadian or Western-Europe style of capitalism, with strong laws and strong social support. American-style capitalism has become, IMHO, too unregulated and too influenced by money. However, with all its warts, it's miles better than any communist country.
Google themselves aren't tracking it directly, but rather get their data from the likes of Neilson and IRI, the same as everyone else.
The problem is that Google collects all the disparate pieces of info from lots of individual third parties (each of them having only small and mostly separate chunklets of data), then centralizes and correlates them into a big data iceberg. This is something other parties can't do, even if they wanted.
Google has to be able to identify you personally, if they can match the ads they have shown you to the purchases you made, and extract the ad performance information they say they provide. Nobody else can do this at Google's scale and level of detail.
This isn't some new behavior for Google - just an expansion of an already existing program. Google has been collecting your off-line purchases for years now. They're boasting about it, too.
Here's a relevant quote:...even if your business doesn't have a large loyalty program, you can still measure store sales by taking advantage of Google's third-party partnerships, which capture approximately 70% of credit and debit card transactions in the United States. So, more than two thirds of your non on-line purchases are tracked by Google and sold to all and sundry.
Of course, as a simple citizen, you get no option or recourse. Even if you haven't ever signed on with Google, even if aren't using any of their properties, or if you tried to opt out of everything, you' still can't escape their stalking. Every breath you take, every move you make, they'll be watching you.
People who are compromised in any way (including simple driving incompetance) will hopefully be amongst the first to decide that self-driving vehicles are for them.
Let's use a frame of the reference set on the car on the left (before the collision). From this frame of reference, before the collision, the car on the left is stationary, and the car on the right is coming straight at it, at a speed of 100 mph. The total energy of the system before the collision is 0 (car on the left) + m * (100mph)^2/2 (car on the right).
After the collision, both cars get entangled and, from the point of view of the frame of reference, start moving left at 50 mph. The kinetic energy in the system is now m * (50mph)^2/2 (car on the left) + m * (50mph)^2/2 (car on the right), that is m* (50mph)^2.
The difference between the energies before and after the collision is m * (100mph)^2/2 - m* (50mph)^2, that is m*(50mph)^2. This difference has been absorbed by the crumple zones on both cars. Since the cars are identical, they both absorb half of it, so each car gets m*(50mph)^2/2 Joules.
This is exactly the same energy as a single car traveling at 50 mph has to absorb when hitting an immovable wall, so the two scenarios are equivalent. The car hitting a wall at 100 mph has to absorb four times more energy, so it comes out much worse.
If we choose the car as the reference frame then its velocity relative to itself (and thus also its kinetic energy relative to itself) will be zero - before, during and after the collision
Nope, that's where your misunderstanding is. It's an INERTIAL frame of reference, so the speed (of the frame of reference) doesn't change. If the frame of reference is on the car before the collision, after the collision the frame keeps moving at the same speed, but the car is left behind. From the frame of reference the car appears now to be moving at a constant negative speed of -50 mph.
GP's error was that they compared the two situations using different reference frames, when the kinetic energy formula returns different values depending on the reference frame used.
No, there was no error, because the value calculated was the difference between energy before the collision, and energy after the collision. This difference is the same in all frames of reference.
Here: car-wall scenario, frame of reference of the wall: before the collision: car is moving at 100 mph, wall is stationary; energy in system m*(100 mph)^2/2. After the collision, the car is stationary, energy in the system is 0, and the delta (absorbed by car) is m*(100 mph)^2/2
Same scenario, frame of reference of the car (the frame of reference is therefore moving at 100 mph relative to earth). Before the collision: car appears stationary, wall approaches at 100 mph. Energy in the system: 0. After the collision: (the frame of reference is still moving at 100 mph relative to earth): car and wall are moving at 100 mph (from this frame of reference it looks like the wall whacked the car and is dragging it along). Energy in the system: mass of car times speed of car squared/2, that is, m*(100 mph)^2/2. The delta between the energies before and after collision is still the same: m* (100mph)^2)/2. This energy was used to accelerate the car, by deforming its crumple zones.
Each car will "feel" a crash of E = m * (50mph)^2 * 2, in other words the passengers will be decelerated accordingly.
I'm not familiar with the physical formula for "feel". But I can also explain in terms of deceleration, if you prefer it.
Consider an imaginary vertical line drawn exactly at the point of the car-car collision. Assuming identical cars running into each other at identical speeds (and ignoring random flying bits and pieces or possible right-to-left asymmetries in the build of the crumple zones), both cars will stop exactly at this imaginary line, on their side of it. Neither of the cars will make it even a millimeter to the other side of this imaginary line, because if one does then the two cars aren't identical. Either car decelerates from its speed before the collision to 0, over a distance equivalent to the deformation of the crumple zone.
Now, since the car stops exactly at the imaginary line, it's not relevant what stopped it there. Behind the line there may be the other identical car, there may be a wall, there may be Superman holding it in place. From the car's point of view, the deceleration is the same in all those cases.
This shows that the effect on a car running at 50 mph is the same whether it collides frontally with another travelling at 50 mph in the other direction, or whether it collides with a wall. Since car-car at 50 mph each has the same effect as car-wall at 50 mph, it's obvious car-wall at 100 mph is a different and more damaging scenario.
Can you please explain why you think I'm mistaken?
The calculation in my post was done in the frame of reference of the Earth (or wall, if you prefer), because it's easier (since the final speed is 0). You can instead use another frame of reference (for example, of the car), but keep in mind that in any other frame the speed of the car post-collision won't be zero, so you'll need to compute the kinetic energy at the end as well, and use the difference.
Two cars colliding frontal with 50 mph each, is equivalent to one car hitting a standing car (wall) with 100mph.
It seems intuitive, but it's not true, because kinetic energy is not proportional to the speed, but to the speed squared. For simplification let's assume the vast majority of the cars' kinetic energy before the collision ends up in the deformation of the crumple zones, and compare the energies in the two cases. In both cases, the kinetic energy after the collision is 0, so by computing the kinetic energy before the collision we can find out how much the crumple zones have absorbed.
In the car-car scenario, the total energy of the system before the collision is the sum of the kinetic energy of the two cars (each at 50 mph). Because they're identical, each car absorbs half of this, so each car has to absorb m * (50mph)^2/2.
In the car-wall scenario the total energy in the system is m* (100mph)^2/2; that's four times the energy of the single car at 50 mph - because the factor of two in the speed gets squared. Moreover, all this energy is absorbed by a single car (because the wall is immovable), not split between both cars. In the end, the car-wall collision pumps four times more energy in the car's crumple zones than the car-car scenario, which makes it much worse.
In my experience what "true conservatives" actually quote is what they imagine is law, as opposed to real law. Most of them are in reality pretty ignorant or selective in regards of said law. The phenomenon is widespread enough that it was even satirized by The Onion.
It's also one of the raisons d'être(*) of organizations like the ACLU, who often have to force conservative government officials or organizations to actually respect the law as it is written - not as they'd like it to be.
(*) Slashdot's handling of even basic accented characters is beyond pitiful
> until we actually understand how a biological brain produces the phenomena we call 'thinking', we will not be able to create 'machine intelligences' that match or exceed human beings.
I don't know; depends on your definitions. To me, an intelligent machine is defined by its behavior, not by its internal design or building materials. We can probably build something that behaves very closely to a human, even though internally it's built of switching silicon, or ants running through tubes.
Historically, our machines very seldom copy nature's designs and materials. On the contrary, we have a lot of history building machines that perform a given function using different designs and materials than the natural models. We didn't understand how muscles work until very recently, but even thousands of years ago we could build 'lifting machines' that matched and exceeded human beings, using wheels, pulleys, gears and other things that don't exist in nature. Similarly, our flying machines fly faster and can carry more load than any bird, but, except for toy models, none of them use flapping wings, nature's almost universal design. So, I don't think a deep understanding of the brain function is a necessary item for designing intelligent machines either.
Or are you saying that intelligence can only exist on a biological substrate, or that the architecture of the human brain is the only possible design that supports intelligence?If you do, I think it's a very dubious and, as far as I know, unproven statement.
Would you walk into a police station with an NWA "Fuck the police" shit on and expect to be left alone? Of course you wouldn't.
Why not? This is exactly the kind of thing "freedom of speech" means. The police is the government, the police station is public space, and "fuck the police" is legitimate (though uncouth) political speech.
You could be stopped if you started throwing ink-pots around, or otherwise broke laws on behavior in public areas, but just wearing a message is not against the law, and neither is hurting the policemen's feelings - at least in their guise of government employees.
I live next door to someone on long term unemployment.
Well, it seems to me you're exactly the kind of person who should push for UBI; with UBI, you'll also receive those benefits - the same as your neighbor, but you'll have the extra income from your job on top!
The agencies responsible make money based on the number of people they are looking after - think about that.
That's another reason for you to support UBI. As others have pointed out, if UBI is implemented, most of those agencies will go away.
Paying people not to work destroys the ability to achieve.
Fortunately that's absolutely not what we're talking about. People get UBI whether they work or not; with the UBI as a safety net, they can be more choosy about their jobs, or they can try this new idea they thought about but couldn't risk before because their kids would starve if it failed. Look at J. K. Rowling; she wrote the first Harry Potter book while on unemployment, but being on the dole didn't destroy her ability to achieve.
Surely, if UBI were implemented there will be some that would just sit on the couch all day watching TV. But, once you take basic survival out of the equation, people do like to work, if the job is interesting or meaningful to them. Comparatively few people retire after they make their first million(s), even though they could spend the rest of their lives comfortably on their couches. But instead they keep working, putting in crazy hours, trying new ideas, starting new companies.
For an example of this, see Elon Musk: after selling his share of PayPal he could have lived the rest of his life in extreme comfort, on the best couch money can buy. Instead, he started trying any number of new things, and has changed the world. Obviously, not all salarymen are potential Elon Musks, but I think UBI will free quite a bit of human potential.
If UBI is too good it will turn into a lifetime subsidy for do-nothings.
This statement pretty clearly shows your philosophy. You define a person's worth by the work they do, and look down on people who don't satisfy your criteria. This puritanical mind set is slowly becoming incompatible with the modern world.
First, as productivity advances, more and more wealth is being created with less and less human effort. We're at the cusp of producing enough to provide basic living support to everybody with almost 0 human effort.
Second, as technology advances and things change more and more rapidly, the requirements for jobs are starting to grow beyond the average human's capabilities. New jobs need a lot of adaptability, enough intellectual capacity and a lot of study. There are quite a few people that simply won't be able to find meaningful jobs. What then? Would you have us revive the workhouses for the poor?
when was the last time you saw benefits decreased? Almost never. Increased? Almost always.
And this is exactly the way things should be. Not, as you seem to imply, because the "do nothings" are clawing more and more from the worthies (whichever way you define them), but because global productivity has been growing continuously, because more and more wealth is being created, and it makes perfect sense to use this extra wealth to increase programs that benefit the most people.
governments (at least our's here in the States) are too incompetent to ascribe this much evil to.
This is not intended to detract from your point re: corporations, which is very very good, but lots of folks from all over the world can tell you that government incompetence and government evil aren't at all mutually exclusive. The USA hasn't yet had a really evil government (though one can argue there are concerted efforts in this direction). If it happens, its incompetence won't be enough mitigation.
Why does anyone write applications that are tied to one operating system?
Because "runs on multiple operating systems" is a requirement only for specific areas or cases. In most real world situations, it's not - it's actually unnecessary and harmful.
Even if geeks fantasize about those ideal universal applications, and vocally complain on forums, in reality it takes a lot of effort and expense to write applications that run seamlessly on different operating systems. They will be more difficult to write and maintain, require more knowledgeable (and therefore expensive) programmers, and provide lower performance than a native application. They will perforce have inconsistency in the UI - the app can either adopt the operating system paradigm and therefore behave differently on different machines, or else provide an unified UI, and therefore be inconsistent with native applications running on the same computer.
If you're not a software company, your users are your organization's employees. Most organizations tend to standardize on a certain environment, with very good reasons. Why then go to the effort and expense to make their apps compatible with some other operating system they'll won't ever be expected to run under?
No; indeed there were Muslim invasions and occupations in Europe (mostly eastern Europe, and mostly the Turks)... but these were after the crusades, not before.
Would you consider Spain part of Europe? The Umayyad invasion forces landed in Gibraltar in 711; the first crusade started in 1095. You're wrong by more than 3 centuries.
But then Reliant visits the fifth planet, in the mistaken belief that it's the sixth?
Titius-Bode law. Using it, one can predict where a planet should orbit from it's ordinal number. So the Reliant expected the sixth planet there, based on the orbit's radius.
This is what happened in our solar system, for example: Jupiter's orbit corresponds to the sixth planet, based on Titius-Bode. However, Jupiter is only the fifth planet because its gravitational perturbation blocked what should have been the fifth planet from accreting - but you can still find the components on the fifth Titius-Bode orbit, in the form of the asteroid belt.
Slashdot Mirror
Why is the viewing of non-anonymized financial transactions legal and ostensibly tolerable? Because politicians are easy to bribe (excuse me, educate via legal financial expenditures).
Ah, I'm sure the fact that Google is the biggest spender on lobbying in the USA is completely unrelated. Because that would be evil!
it should be clear that "do no evil" is only possible when the meaning of evil is re-engineered.
Oh...
Communism isn't inherently evil, it's just that it has often come with totalitarianism.
Sorry, Bruce, but you're wrong.
Communism is inherently evil; it can't work without tyranny, because it relies on idealized people who selflessly put the interest of the society above their own. This is not how real people behave. Capitalism relies on people following their impulses (even supposedly negative ones, like greed). It channels those impulses them in directions that benefit others, for example by rewarding people who produce or create new stuff. Communism wants to completely repress those impulses, so it has to force people to behave contrary to their natural inclinations. It has to indoctrinate people to follow the ideology, so freedom of speech and the free flow of ideas are forbidden. Also, communist countries don't reward producers or creators - at best, they should be happy they contributed to the betterment of society. At worst, they are regarded as exploiters, and repressed.
I have first hand knowledge of both systems - I lived more than half my life in an Eastern European country that was theoretically "building a Communist society", and then moved to capitalist America. The difference is huge. And I know some people will come up with the "no true Communism" argument - but those are mostly folks who have never experienced life in a communist country, and can't really understand the realities there.
I believe the best balance is a Canadian or Western-Europe style of capitalism, with strong laws and strong social support. American-style capitalism has become, IMHO, too unregulated and too influenced by money. However, with all its warts, it's miles better than any communist country.
Google themselves aren't tracking it directly, but rather get their data from the likes of Neilson and IRI, the same as everyone else.
The problem is that Google collects all the disparate pieces of info from lots of individual third parties (each of them having only small and mostly separate chunklets of data), then centralizes and correlates them into a big data iceberg. This is something other parties can't do, even if they wanted.
Google has to be able to identify you personally, if they can match the ads they have shown you to the purchases you made, and extract the ad performance information they say they provide. Nobody else can do this at Google's scale and level of detail.
This isn't some new behavior for Google - just an expansion of an already existing program. Google has been collecting your off-line purchases for years now. They're
boasting about it, too.
Here's a relevant quote: ...even if your business doesn't have a large loyalty program, you can still measure store sales by taking advantage of Google's third-party partnerships, which capture approximately 70% of credit and debit card transactions in the United States. So, more than two thirds of your non on-line purchases are tracked by Google and sold to all and sundry.
Of course, as a simple citizen, you get no option or recourse. Even if you haven't ever signed on with Google, even if aren't using any of their properties, or if you tried to opt out of everything, you' still can't escape their stalking. Every breath you take, every move you make, they'll be watching you.
People who are compromised in any way (including simple driving incompetance) will hopefully be amongst the first to decide that self-driving vehicles are for them.
Mr. Dunning and Mr. Kruger say no.
Sure, here it is:
Let's use a frame of the reference set on the car on the left (before the collision). From this frame of reference, before the collision, the car on the left is stationary, and the car on the right is coming straight at it, at a speed of 100 mph. The total energy of the system before the collision is 0 (car on the left) + m * (100mph)^2/2 (car on the right).
After the collision, both cars get entangled and, from the point of view of the frame of reference, start moving left at 50 mph. The kinetic energy in the system is now m * (50mph)^2/2 (car on the left) + m * (50mph)^2/2 (car on the right), that is m* (50mph)^2.
The difference between the energies before and after the collision is m * (100mph)^2/2 - m* (50mph)^2, that is m*(50mph)^2. This difference has been absorbed by the crumple zones on both cars. Since the cars are identical, they both absorb half of it, so each car gets m*(50mph)^2/2 Joules.
This is exactly the same energy as a single car traveling at 50 mph has to absorb when hitting an immovable wall, so the two scenarios are equivalent. The car hitting a wall at 100 mph has to absorb four times more energy, so it comes out much worse.
If we choose the car as the reference frame then its velocity relative to itself (and thus also its kinetic energy relative to itself) will be zero - before, during and after the collision
Nope, that's where your misunderstanding is. It's an INERTIAL frame of reference, so the speed (of the frame of reference) doesn't change. If the frame of reference is on the car before the collision, after the collision the frame keeps moving at the same speed, but the car is left behind. From the frame of reference the car appears now to be moving at a constant negative speed of -50 mph.
GP's error was that they compared the two situations using different reference frames, when the kinetic energy formula returns different values depending on the reference frame used.
No, there was no error, because the value calculated was the difference between energy before the collision, and energy after the collision. This difference is the same in all frames of reference.
Here: car-wall scenario, frame of reference of the wall: before the collision: car is moving at 100 mph, wall is stationary; energy in system m*(100 mph)^2/2. After the collision, the car is stationary, energy in the system is 0, and the delta (absorbed by car) is m*(100 mph)^2/2
Same scenario, frame of reference of the car (the frame of reference is therefore moving at 100 mph relative to earth). Before the collision: car appears stationary, wall approaches at 100 mph. Energy in the system: 0. After the collision: (the frame of reference is still moving at 100 mph relative to earth): car and wall are moving at 100 mph (from this frame of reference it looks like the wall whacked the car and is dragging it along). Energy in the system: mass of car times speed of car squared/2, that is, m*(100 mph)^2/2. The delta between the energies before and after collision is still the same: m* (100mph)^2)/2. This energy was used to accelerate the car, by deforming its crumple zones.
Each car will "feel" a crash of E = m * (50mph)^2 * 2, in other words the passengers will be decelerated accordingly.
I'm not familiar with the physical formula for "feel". But I can also explain in terms of deceleration, if you prefer it.
Consider an imaginary vertical line drawn exactly at the point of the car-car collision. Assuming identical cars running into each other at identical speeds (and ignoring random flying bits and pieces or possible right-to-left asymmetries in the build of the crumple zones), both cars will stop exactly at this imaginary line, on their side of it. Neither of the cars will make it even a millimeter to the other side of this imaginary line, because if one does then the two cars aren't identical. Either car decelerates from its speed before the collision to 0, over a distance equivalent to the deformation of the crumple zone.
Now, since the car stops exactly at the imaginary line, it's not relevant what stopped it there. Behind the line there may be the other identical car, there may be a wall, there may be Superman holding it in place. From the car's point of view, the deceleration is the same in all those cases.
This shows that the effect on a car running at 50 mph is the same whether it collides frontally with another travelling at 50 mph in the other direction, or whether it collides with a wall. Since car-car at 50 mph each has the same effect as car-wall at 50 mph, it's obvious car-wall at 100 mph is a different and more damaging scenario.
Can you please explain why you think I'm mistaken?
The calculation in my post was done in the frame of reference of the Earth (or wall, if you prefer), because it's easier (since the final speed is 0). You can instead use another frame of reference (for example, of the car), but keep in mind that in any other frame the speed of the car post-collision won't be zero, so you'll need to compute the kinetic energy at the end as well, and use the difference.
Hugh Jackman? Hugh Laurie? Hugh Grant?
Obviously, Hugh Mungus...
Two cars colliding frontal with 50 mph each, is equivalent to one car hitting a standing car (wall) with 100mph.
It seems intuitive, but it's not true, because kinetic energy is not proportional to the speed, but to the speed squared. For simplification let's assume the vast majority of the cars' kinetic energy before the collision ends up in the deformation of the crumple zones, and compare the energies in the two cases. In both cases, the kinetic energy after the collision is 0, so by computing the kinetic energy before the collision we can find out how much the crumple zones have absorbed.
In the car-car scenario, the total energy of the system before the collision is the sum of the kinetic energy of the two cars (each at 50 mph). Because they're identical, each car absorbs half of this, so each car has to absorb m * (50mph)^2 /2.
In the car-wall scenario the total energy in the system is m* (100mph)^2/2; that's four times the energy of the single car at 50 mph - because the factor of two in the speed gets squared. Moreover, all this energy is absorbed by a single car (because the wall is immovable), not split between both cars. In the end, the car-wall collision pumps four times more energy in the car's crumple zones than the car-car scenario, which makes it much worse.
'True conservatives' quote law.
In my experience what "true conservatives" actually quote is what they imagine is law, as opposed to real law. Most of them are in reality pretty ignorant or selective in regards of said law. The phenomenon is widespread enough that it was even satirized by The Onion.
It's also one of the raisons d'être(*) of organizations like the ACLU, who often have to force conservative government officials or organizations to actually respect the law as it is written - not as they'd like it to be.
(*) Slashdot's handling of even basic accented characters is beyond pitiful
> until we actually understand how a biological brain produces the phenomena we call 'thinking', we will not be able to create 'machine intelligences' that match or exceed human beings.
I don't know; depends on your definitions. To me, an intelligent machine is defined by its behavior, not by its internal design or building materials. We can probably build something that behaves very closely to a human, even though internally it's built of switching silicon, or ants running through tubes.
Historically, our machines very seldom copy nature's designs and materials. On the contrary, we have a lot of history building machines that perform a given function using different designs and materials than the natural models. We didn't understand how muscles work until very recently, but even thousands of years ago we could build 'lifting machines' that matched and exceeded human beings, using wheels, pulleys, gears and other things that don't exist in nature. Similarly, our flying machines fly faster and can carry more load than any bird, but, except for toy models, none of them use flapping wings, nature's almost universal design. So, I don't think a deep understanding of the brain function is a necessary item for designing intelligent machines either.
Or are you saying that intelligence can only exist on a biological substrate, or that the architecture of the human brain is the only possible design that supports intelligence?If you do, I think it's a very dubious and, as far as I know, unproven statement.
Musk did have something concrete ? Shocking!
Yeah, I stopped believing anything Musk says anymore, ever since he came up with this ludicrous fantasy about sending his car in space.
Would you walk into a police station with an NWA "Fuck the police" shit on and expect to be left alone? Of course you wouldn't.
Why not? This is exactly the kind of thing "freedom of speech" means. The police is the government, the police station is public space, and "fuck the police" is legitimate (though uncouth) political speech.
You could be stopped if you started throwing ink-pots around, or otherwise broke laws on behavior in public areas, but just wearing a message is not against the law, and neither is hurting the policemen's feelings - at least in their guise of government employees.
Your mum told you long ago watching blue movies will make you blind. Well, now you know why.
I live next door to someone on long term unemployment.
Well, it seems to me you're exactly the kind of person who should push for UBI; with UBI, you'll also receive those benefits - the same as your neighbor, but you'll have the extra income from your job on top!
The agencies responsible make money based on the number of people they are looking after - think about that.
That's another reason for you to support UBI. As others have pointed out, if UBI is implemented, most of those agencies will go away.
Paying people not to work destroys the ability to achieve.
Fortunately that's absolutely not what we're talking about. People get UBI whether they work or not; with the UBI as a safety net, they can be more choosy about their jobs, or they can try this new idea they thought about but couldn't risk before because their kids would starve if it failed. Look at J. K. Rowling; she wrote the first Harry Potter book while on unemployment, but being on the dole didn't destroy her ability to achieve.
Surely, if UBI were implemented there will be some that would just sit on the couch all day watching TV. But, once you take basic survival out of the equation, people do like to work, if the job is interesting or meaningful to them. Comparatively few people retire after they make their first million(s), even though they could spend the rest of their lives comfortably on their couches. But instead they keep working, putting in crazy hours, trying new ideas, starting new companies.
For an example of this, see Elon Musk: after selling his share of PayPal he could have lived the rest of his life in extreme comfort, on the best couch money can buy. Instead, he started trying any number of new things, and has changed the world. Obviously, not all salarymen are potential Elon Musks, but I think UBI will free quite a bit of human potential.
If UBI is too good it will turn into a lifetime subsidy for do-nothings.
This statement pretty clearly shows your philosophy. You define a person's worth by the work they do, and look down on people who don't satisfy your criteria. This puritanical mind set is slowly becoming incompatible with the modern world.
First, as productivity advances, more and more wealth is being created with less and less human effort. We're at the cusp of producing enough to provide basic living support to everybody with almost 0 human effort.
Second, as technology advances and things change more and more rapidly, the requirements for jobs are starting to grow beyond the average human's capabilities. New jobs need a lot of adaptability, enough intellectual capacity and a lot of study. There are quite a few people that simply won't be able to find meaningful jobs. What then? Would you have us revive the workhouses for the poor?
when was the last time you saw benefits decreased? Almost never. Increased? Almost always.
And this is exactly the way things should be. Not, as you seem to imply, because the "do nothings" are clawing more and more from the worthies (whichever way you define them), but because global productivity has been growing continuously, because more and more wealth is being created, and it makes perfect sense to use this extra wealth to increase programs that benefit the most people.
governments (at least our's here in the States) are too incompetent to ascribe this much evil to.
This is not intended to detract from your point re: corporations, which is very very good, but lots of folks from all over the world can tell you that government incompetence and government evil aren't at all mutually exclusive. The USA hasn't yet had a really evil government (though one can argue there are concerted efforts in this direction). If it happens, its incompetence won't be enough mitigation.
Basing something on the melting and boiling points of water is a moving target as the atmospheric pressure changes. So yes.
Which is why the Celsius scale is based on melting(*) and boiling points at a pressure of 1 atm. So no.
(*) Yeah, I know that was redefined to use the triple point of water
Why does anyone write applications that are tied to one operating system?
Because "runs on multiple operating systems" is a requirement only for specific areas or cases. In most real world situations, it's not - it's actually unnecessary and harmful.
Even if geeks fantasize about those ideal universal applications, and vocally complain on forums, in reality it takes a lot of effort and expense to write applications that run seamlessly on different operating systems. They will be more difficult to write and maintain, require more knowledgeable (and therefore expensive) programmers, and provide lower performance than a native application. They will perforce have inconsistency in the UI - the app can either adopt the operating system paradigm and therefore behave differently on different machines, or else provide an unified UI, and therefore be inconsistent with native applications running on the same computer.
If you're not a software company, your users are your organization's employees. Most organizations tend to standardize on a certain environment, with very good reasons. Why then go to the effort and expense to make their apps compatible with some other operating system they'll won't ever be expected to run under?
No; indeed there were Muslim invasions and occupations in Europe (mostly eastern Europe, and mostly the Turks)... but these were after the crusades, not before.
Would you consider Spain part of Europe? The Umayyad invasion forces landed in Gibraltar in 711; the first crusade started in 1095. You're wrong by more than 3 centuries.
Go read some history books
I would say the same to you.
Which is ironic given your post.
But then Reliant visits the fifth planet, in the mistaken belief that it's the sixth?
Titius-Bode law. Using it, one can predict where a planet should orbit from it's ordinal number. So the Reliant expected the sixth planet there, based on the orbit's radius.
This is what happened in our solar system, for example: Jupiter's orbit corresponds to the sixth planet, based on Titius-Bode. However, Jupiter is only the fifth planet because its gravitational perturbation blocked what should have been the fifth planet from accreting - but you can still find the components on the fifth Titius-Bode orbit, in the form of the asteroid belt.