IMO, the surveillance state is inevitable, so it may be worth thinking clearly about exactly why privacy is important.
IMO, privacy is important because it makes it harder for the state to enforce stupid laws. Prominent examples include laws whose purpose is to extract revenue, restrain competition, appease envy, or score brownie points with invisible men in the sky.
In a world ruled by objectivists, universal state surveillance would not be particularly worrisome, except to thieves.
The PR war *is* the war. We will not kill all the enemy. We will not kill most of the enemy. The war will end when one side loses the will to fight. That side will be the loser.
If you want to understand why righties think it is treasonous to protest an ongoing war, imagine what would have happened if, during the Vietnam war, we had been treated to television pictures of massive protests in Hanoi, with huge crowds demanding that the North Vietnamese government end the war, and high government saying it was impossible to defeat the US. Do you think it might have bucked up our fighting spirit, just a tad, to think that our enemy was near surrender?
I applaud the author for using (not "utilizing") a word that is slightly shorter than the correct word.
"Alternative" would be a reasonable description of a universe that did not happen.
"Alternate" means something like "oscillating". Presumably the author did not mean to imply that we are hopping back and forth between two universes.
A pedantic quibble you say? Why yes, yes it is.
After due consideration, Yahoo's board members have decided that they prefer to keep their jobs, which they would lose in the event of takeover.
Somewhat more difficult was the task of determining that $39.99/share was the highest offer they could reject on behalf of shareholders without being sued for breach of their fiduciary duty.
In a properly functioning market (that is, without ethically dubious anti-takeover provisions in the corporate charter) nobody would really care what the board members thought about the offer.
Every election year, people get caught up in the candidates' "positions" as if they meant something. Face it: the Presidential election is the world series of lying, and you are not wise enough to detect it.
In a political debate, you may safely ignore any sentence that does not begin with "When I faced this problem before, I..."
Remember, under Jimmy Carter we got deregulation of trucking, airlines, and natural gas. Under Nixon we got actual wage and price controls (!), and the EPA.
Let us stipulate that Turing machines and universal computation are inherently interesting to CS geeks. Let us further stipulate that efficient computing machines are useful. However, in the 20+ Turing machine descriptions I have heard since my CS undergrad days, I have yet to hear a coherent account of a foreseeable practical implication. After 50-odd years of bright students investing their scarce time learning this stuff, I think it is reasonable to inquire seriously about the goal. For Christ's sake I even read Diamond Age, twice, and I still don't have a clue. Enlighten me please.
Any explanation that begins with "Helps us understand..." or "Has implications for..." is unlikely to contain a real idea.
Identifying an application for a computing machine does not show why universality is important, or why the Turing model is useful.
There may be an idea lurking in the "DNA computer" area, but it must surmount the (large) hump of the Turing-like machines' absurdly inefficient calculations.
Well over half the posts on this topic are variations on "Don't do it because something might go wrong", the modern version of "God did not intend man to meddle."
Pointing out something that might go wrong does not require wit, only a desire to obstruct or to appear wise. Even less is required to point out that something vague and unspecified might go wrong. Even less, to refuse to notice that something massively valuable is likely to go right.
Imagine the Slashdot posts on the "Man invents fire" story.
The real myth is that significant numbers of people believe Sadam planned 911. While that belief has no doubt been expressed somewhere in the wild web, nonetheless I have never met anyone who believes it, nor have I heard it expressed in any media outlet. I have, however, heard many individual and talking heads claim that *others* believe it. This seems designed to ridicule those who think the invasion was a good idea for other reasons.
The sample is 200,000 eliptical galaxies, and they showed a statistical tendency to point in a preferred direction.
They most certainly do *not* all point the same way.
I have also wondered whether detecting the timing of waveform collapse provides a loophole to the "No FTL communication" rule. Since quantum calculation relies on having an un-collapsed waveform, Bob could attempt a calculation, and if it fails then he knows that Alice alreadly collapsed his waveform. Ta-Daa! FTL communication.
Interestingly, google gives zero hits for "detect waveform collapse", "detect quantum waveform collapse", "detect whether waveform collapsed" and a few other variants.
Alice's measurement collapse's the wavefunction of Bob's electron. Can this collapse not be detected? My understanding is that some observable quantum processes, for example quantum computing, depend on the wavefunction not being collapsed. Why can't this be exploited to see if Alice has done the measurement? If Bob can't perform a spin-based quantum calculation, then he knows that Alice has collapsed his wavefunction.
How can this work? It is hard to imagine that an RFID antenna could receive a microwave signal inside a solid metal coin, and anything sticking to the outside of a coin would be pretty obvious. Maybe the coin is just two metal faces on a plastic wafer, with the joints hidden in the ridges around the edge.
(examines pocket change)
Slashdot Mirror
Sigh. No. Objectivists do not imprison people for foolishness. This is, in fact, one of their distinguishing characteristics.
IMO, the surveillance state is inevitable, so it may be worth thinking clearly about exactly why privacy is important. IMO, privacy is important because it makes it harder for the state to enforce stupid laws. Prominent examples include laws whose purpose is to extract revenue, restrain competition, appease envy, or score brownie points with invisible men in the sky. In a world ruled by objectivists, universal state surveillance would not be particularly worrisome, except to thieves.
If you want to understand why righties think it is treasonous to protest an ongoing war, imagine what would have happened if, during the Vietnam war, we had been treated to television pictures of massive protests in Hanoi, with huge crowds demanding that the North Vietnamese government end the war, and high government saying it was impossible to defeat the US. Do you think it might have bucked up our fighting spirit, just a tad, to think that our enemy was near surrender?
I applaud the author for using (not "utilizing") a word that is slightly shorter than the correct word. "Alternative" would be a reasonable description of a universe that did not happen. "Alternate" means something like "oscillating". Presumably the author did not mean to imply that we are hopping back and forth between two universes. A pedantic quibble you say? Why yes, yes it is.
After due consideration, Yahoo's board members have decided that they prefer to keep their jobs, which they would lose in the event of takeover. Somewhat more difficult was the task of determining that $39.99/share was the highest offer they could reject on behalf of shareholders without being sued for breach of their fiduciary duty. In a properly functioning market (that is, without ethically dubious anti-takeover provisions in the corporate charter) nobody would really care what the board members thought about the offer.
Believers say "Religion and science are compatible" with the same earnestness that fat people say "Big is beautiful", and for the same reason.
Every election year, people get caught up in the candidates' "positions" as if they meant something. Face it: the Presidential election is the world series of lying, and you are not wise enough to detect it. In a political debate, you may safely ignore any sentence that does not begin with "When I faced this problem before, I ..."
Remember, under Jimmy Carter we got deregulation of trucking, airlines, and natural gas. Under Nixon we got actual wage and price controls (!), and the EPA.
Any explanation that begins with "Helps us understand..." or "Has implications for..." is unlikely to contain a real idea.
Identifying an application for a computing machine does not show why universality is important, or why the Turing model is useful.
There may be an idea lurking in the "DNA computer" area, but it must surmount the (large) hump of the Turing-like machines' absurdly inefficient calculations.
Pointing out something that might go wrong does not require wit, only a desire to obstruct or to appear wise. Even less is required to point out that something vague and unspecified might go wrong. Even less, to refuse to notice that something massively valuable is likely to go right.
Imagine the Slashdot posts on the "Man invents fire" story.
The real myth is that significant numbers of people believe Sadam planned 911. While that belief has no doubt been expressed somewhere in the wild web, nonetheless I have never met anyone who believes it, nor have I heard it expressed in any media outlet. I have, however, heard many individual and talking heads claim that *others* believe it. This seems designed to ridicule those who think the invasion was a good idea for other reasons.
The sample is 200,000 eliptical galaxies, and they showed a statistical tendency to point in a preferred direction. They most certainly do *not* all point the same way.
there is no free lunch. Spam is the latest iteration of the Tragedy of the Commons, and will persist as long as email is "free".
I have also wondered whether detecting the timing of waveform collapse provides a loophole to the "No FTL communication" rule. Since quantum calculation relies on having an un-collapsed waveform, Bob could attempt a calculation, and if it fails then he knows that Alice alreadly collapsed his waveform. Ta-Daa! FTL communication. Interestingly, google gives zero hits for "detect waveform collapse", "detect quantum waveform collapse", "detect whether waveform collapsed" and a few other variants.
Alice's measurement collapse's the wavefunction of Bob's electron. Can this collapse not be detected? My understanding is that some observable quantum processes, for example quantum computing, depend on the wavefunction not being collapsed. Why can't this be exploited to see if Alice has done the measurement? If Bob can't perform a spin-based quantum calculation, then he knows that Alice has collapsed his wavefunction.
How can this work? It is hard to imagine that an RFID antenna could receive a microwave signal inside a solid metal coin, and anything sticking to the outside of a coin would be pretty obvious. Maybe the coin is just two metal faces on a plastic wafer, with the joints hidden in the ridges around the edge. (examines pocket change)