Or you can approach the problem in reverse; a time machine can go faster than light to an external observer.
Let's imagine you've got Doc Brown's Delorean or a TARDIS. You send a pulse of light. You then follow that light at below lightspeed (never overtaking it, obviously). At a predetermined point, you go backwards in time and arrive in the local reference frame before the pulse of light that you sent at the beginning of the experiment did. Ergo, from the point of view of an hypothetical observer in that reference frame, you've gone faster than light. In a relativistic universe, any time machine is also a superluminal device and any FTL drive can also travel backwards in time; both violate cause and effect.
An amusing phrase I once saw describing realistic FTl in sci-fi said, paraphrased, "Causality, FTL, relativity: pick any two."
No, macro- and micro- evolution are absolutely quantitatively distinct due to the probabilities involved regarding the number of mutually-reinforcing mutations that must occur for the necessary outcome, while maintaining survivability.
Well, that's a tangled statement, but let me see if I understand your stance.
You're arguing that macro-evolutionary changes go against probability, right? That the odds of a new genetic configuration being viable (survivable or reproductively fit) are low, if the changes arose from random mutation?
I agree. And now, let me qualify my agreement, by saying you've got the wrong idea. (If I just agree with you, I'll have angry ACs calling me a creationist. I am in fact firmly in the rationalist camp, and a student of biology).
Each change is essentially tested one at a time. Since most changes won't be viable, most changes won't be passed on.
Say that in a given breeding population two thousand new mutations arose. Half were dropped for very basic reasons, like the change wasn't viable and was spontaneously aborted by the mother. A majority of the rest didn't make it to reproductive age. Say there's two hundred mutations, a tenth of the original number, that weren't written out of the genome in one generation. And that won't be one organism with two hundred mutations, it'll be two hundred different organisms.
So those two hundred mutations get tested. Some make no difference and go nowhere. Some are advantageous, and propagate. Flash forward a few generations and a significant minority of the hypothetical population have the successful mutant genes. Further ahead, they won't be a minority anymore. The species will have changed.
Repeat this process often enough, and what you see is the emergence of a new species. Speciation in a nutshell. Find the fossils for before and after, and what you'll see is two different species in snapshots an epoch apart. There was no single macro-evolutionary event; just ten thousand minor ones and a hundred thousand false starts. I think it may be the false starts you're overlooking; most creationists don't get the idea that some mutations are selected for and others against, or the idea that most aren't viable.
But the GP was correct in saying there is no separate macro-evolution. He could have been more polite about it, but it is undeniably true that the terms micro-evolution and macro-evolution have fallen out of favour, due to creationism subverting their meaning to create a false dichotomy.
Yea, they did sell them a policy, and this shows you why you need to actually read your policies before signing them. Many policies, perhaps even ones you have signed, contain clauses that limit the insurers liability if certain conditions aren't met.
^What he said.^
If you put fire insurance on a building and then take no measures to prevent a fire from breaking out, you won't be able to collect. If you take theft insurance on a car and leave it with the keys in the ignition in a bad neighbourhood overnight, you won't be able to collect. Insurance covers accident or malicious action by a third party; it doesn't usually cover gross negligence on the part of the insured party.
It isn't that the insurance companies are arbitrarily refusing to pay out, it's that they're smart enough to have clauses in the contracts that they can invoke when the insured party is clearly at fault. Now, some insurance companies are utter bastards and will try to invoke these clauses at the drop of a hat. But everything I've read about Sony's data security leads me to conclude that their insurers are probably in the right here, always assuming the contract had a "here are the duties of the insured party" clause in it.
Well, no harm done. And yeah, we're in agreement about the problems in Africa - positive change there will take longer than the natural lifespan of anyone reading this. Which is not to say it'll never happen, because "never" is such a long time, but it'll happen slowly and it hasn't really gotten started yet (or at least the positive changes have been checked by negative ones, I suppose it could have gotten worse).
Evolution does not work that way, and no credible biologist teaches otherwise. You've been getting it from science fiction writers.
Actual human behaviour is not coded into single genes. A gene codes for proteins. The sum total of your genome affects your behaviour, but because single genes don't code for single behavioural functions, a single gene or group of genes "growing exponentially", as you put it, would invariably lead to other factors governed by those same genes.
To give you an example related to reproduction, a group of genes might govern mating and reproductive behaviour in a given species. They might also govern a few hundred other things, including embryonic development, non-reproductive behaviour or who knows what else.
Now, a simplified view of evolution tells you that if a mutation arose that favoured higher reproductive rates, it should "take over the entire population". Except that mutation is in a cluster of genes governing other stuff. Maybe that mutation affected embryonic development, leading to higher rates of birth defects, and lowering the incident of the mutated gene in later generations. Maybe that mutation caused more aggressive risk taking behaviour, removing the carriers from the gene pool before they can breed. Hell, maybe the mutation causes something seemingly unrelated to reproduction to change (genetics is best described as "jury rigged"; related functions often seem nonsensical).
The point is, if the mutation is reproductively beneficial in one respect, but carries with it a cost to the organism's long term reproductive success, it won't proliferate.
And since the current human genome dates back to our hunter gatherer days (anatomically modern human remains can be found dating from tens to hundreds of thousands of years ago), you can bet that any likely mutation has occurred before. Which should cause you to question why a given hypothetical change hasn't proliferated already. Usually there's a reason.
So, in short you can't expect real life human genetics to work like a simplified thought experiment, especially not ones that link complex behaviours to single genes, or that imagine one gene serves one purpose.
Yeah, that's either biofuel or synthetic fuel, depending on whether organisms were used. The problem is more that the sheer amount of energy needed in order to produce a few million litres of petroleum-equivalent fuel makes it prohibitive. It might come to that if we start to run low enough on oil, or if biofuels derived from non-agricultural sources take off, but I wouldn't bet my life on it.
You generalize the "developing world" while singling out Africa.
Ah, I think I see the problem.
Most of the population of the developing world is in the Indian subcontinent or Southeast Asia. I took it for granted that anyone reading my post would read "developing world" that way. You clearly thought I was singling out Africa as the major portion of the developing world, which it isn't, but a lot of people think it is. My bad for not specifying.
Africa, or more specifically the more violent bits of Sub-Saharan Africa, is the major exception to the rule that developing nations are making progress on their own. That was why I singled out the Congo, because I surmised that if I just said "the developing world is modernizing of it's own accord" someone would shoot back "yeah, tell that to the people in the Congo" (or words to that effect).
So, in summary, I generalized about the developing world and specifically singled out parts of Africa as being the exception. If that was unclear, then I'm prepared to admit the problem was poor wording on my part rather than poor comprehension on yours.
if you posit that the population problem, hinges on Africa, and bringing them out of poverty, then what makes you think that can happen. Has anything in the past lead us to believe that this is a possible solution, or even something that we can have any influence in
The population problem doesn't hinge on Africa.
India, Bangladesh, China and the entire Middle East are much more important to the discussion. And they're modernizing. South America, Eastern Europe, Russia and Africa also matter, but they aren't as densely populated. That's not to say that only the most densely populated regions matter, but rather that if those regions raise their standard of living, then a significant source of population growth stabilizes. My point is, most of the developing world raising their standard of living is "good enough" to prevent runaway growth; there will remain a few holdouts (like the Congo).
And I specifically said that we can't help the developing world, that they can and will help themselves.
No, I'm the same way. I never once mentioned ebooks in my post.
But brick and mortar sellers of real books have to compete with web based sellers of real books. It wasn't the kindle or anything like it that killed them, it was the ability to browse online, find the paperback you want and have it shipped to your doorstep. Hell, I've probably bought more books (real ones, dead trees and all) from Amazon than I would have from stores, simply for the convenience, or because the book I wanted wasn't available otherwise.
No, the problem with energy isn't finite nuclear fuel. Thorium will do for that, but so will breeder reactors. Or fusion, if we can make it work before peak uranium kicks in.
The nuclear problem is jointly one of cost and public acceptance. Cutting corners on cost raises a different problem - safety. But even if nuclear wasn't faced with a whole series of severe PR nightmares, it wouldn't be enough by itself.
Transportation fuel is a more finite resource than fuel for generating electricity. You could get rid of coal fired power plants by building nuclear ones, and frankly I think we ought to, but you can't replace gasoline with thorium, uranium, deuterium or anything else along the same lines.
And the problem isn't one of meeting current demand, which we can do, it's meeting twice that level of demand in forty years time.
(Note: Thorium is still a good idea as one part of the solution, but it isn't "the answer to energy" as you put it. I'm all for it, but I'm realistic about where our deficiencies are/will be.)
Is there something wrong with your reading comprehension? I don't mean that sarcastically - I think you may be speed reading or skimming fast enough to completely misread what's in front of you. For instance:
...it is not necessary for the first world to elevate the developing world in order to accomplish this. They're doing that by themselves. We tend to have a very nineteenth century attitude to the rest of the planet, believing that it is only through our guidance that they can rise above savagery, but the reality is that with the exception of countries held in poverty by war, corruption or constant disaster, most of the developing world is quite capable of elevating themselves
We just have to raise Africa out of poverty? That should be easy right?
^This here?^ This is what I wrote and what you replied. I trust you can see what's wrong with your post? What I'm saying and what you think I'm saying don't match up in the slightest; in fact they're almost total opposites.
I even went so far as to single out the Congo, possibly the least pleasant part of Sub-Saharan Africa, as an example of where the kind of development I was talking about doesn't happen, here:
...with the exception of countries held in poverty by war, corruption or constant disaster, most of the developing world is quite capable of elevating themselves, and are doing exactly that. Note the qualifier about "war, corruption or disaster" preventing this; the Congo remains a bloody mess as do many of it's neighbours, but they aren't the only type of developing nation.
Meaning you either didn't read that part, or read it and disregarded it.
I'd be perfectly happy to engage you in civil debate, but only if you actually read what you're replying to.
Actually, from an article on energy production I read a while back, the current projection is for the population to stabilize at 9 billion by midcentury.
(Source) It's mostly about energy sources, but it cites population projection figures in the third paragraph.
The reason given is rising standard of living. People living in abject poverty (and I don't mean first world slums, I mean abject poverty which is something most slashdotters have never seen firsthand) have lots of kids. Raise them out of poverty to a standard of living that includes such luxuries as medicine, clean water, adequate food and shelter and they have fewer kids. This is human nature, and it's as true for the western world as it is elsewhere. Our population growth didn't slow until our conditions improved, so why should we expect otherwise elsewhere?
Further to this, it is not necessary for the first world to elevate the developing world in order to accomplish this. They're doing that by themselves. We tend to have a very nineteenth century attitude to the rest of the planet, believing that it is only through our guidance that they can rise above savagery, but the reality is that with the exception of countries held in poverty by war, corruption or constant disaster, most of the developing world is quite capable of elevating themselves, and are doing exactly that. Note the qualifier about "war, corruption or disaster" preventing this; the Congo remains a bloody mess as do many of it's neighbours, but they aren't the only type of developing nation.
So we will eventually hit population stability. Now the catch is that the global demand for energy will more than double in the process. Given that many of our energy sources are either environmentally disastrous or finite, this is going to become a problem, as is competition for other natural resources. So we're not out of the woods, but Malthusian predictions about population growth are as wrong now as they were when they were new.
They're competing with Amazon. The one thing they could've relied upon, namely the fact that there are a lot of older people who like books and don't understand the internet or computers, is a lot less true now than it was even five years ago. Hell, my mom gets most of her new book purchases online, from Amazon or elsewhere.
Take note: businesses can die in this day and age even when piracy is removed from the equation. Legitimate online purchases will probably do more to kill bookstores, movie rental and music stores than bittorrent in the long run.
Something I think you've lost sight of or failed to notice; I'm not saying what Google did is wrong. I usually don't quote myself, but for the sake of clarity:
Now, I know that some hotheaded idiot or Google apologist is already typing a furious reply to this post, so I'm going to preempt the inevitable: I'm siding with Google on this one. Yes, I think they were being dicks, but frankly if I were in their shoes I would have done the exact same thing. There'll be an clarification of the original court order shortly relisting the papers, but the message to the papers in question - "You need us more than we need you" - was much deserved.
(Emphasis added.)
So, why am I arguing? Because people seem to have it in their heads that Google didn't have a choice, that this is a case of karma catching up to the idiots who brought the suit. And while it is karmic, it's also deliberate on Google's part; they did have a choice. A choice between malicious compliance and playing nice with the litigious bastards at the newspapers. I'd have probably chosen the same as they did, but I at least don't pretend that what they're doing is anything other than allowing literal minded obedience to a poorly worded court order give the morons at the newspapers what they deserve. I can smirk at Google's cleverness in dealing with assholes without casting them as the sympathetic victim of a legal compulsion.
People have some decidedly odd ideas as to how the legal system works. Blind obedience is usually safe, I will grant you that. That doesn't mean it's your only choice. The legal system is not software, nor should it be.
And the lawyer you know is telling the truth, but what he's saying doesn't contradict anything I've told you.
He's a troll. Probably not one with an agenda, beyond provoking nerd rage. Consider:
1. He posts alt-med stuff on slashdot, a "news for nerds" site. There are only a few things more likely to provoke a flamewar than peddling quackery to rationalists. Perhaps he felt creationism or microsoft trolls would be too obvious?
2. He only ever posts about the one issue. He'll shoehorn chiropractic crap into any discussion. Including a story about a new version of an old browser. This is not the behaviour of a regular poster; even the genuine alt-med believers and conspiracy theorists post about other topics.
3. He hasn't quit, despite negative karma. Every post he makes spawns flamewars. A genuine idiot would feel unwelcome, give up and leave. A troll on the other hand, revels in the flamewars.
So, he's a troll. One here purely to start trouble. He's probably laughing at every idiot who feeds him by screaming "QUACK!"
We're not talking here about the state versus the common man. We're not talking about the myriad criminal laws that an innocent man could fall afoul of accidentally. We're talking Google versus print media. In a civil suit.
Both sides had money to burn on a pissing contest over copyright. Both had lawyers. Probably pretty good ones; Google certainly would, and the other side won, meaning theirs can't exactly have been lowly shysters. The legal language that you argue would befuddle someone unfamiliar with it was being handled by professionals.
And yes. If a judge gives a simple order that raises alarm bells or makes you think "Wait, that can't be right", you ask for clarification. Hell, change the venue for a moment; if your boss told you to do something and there was a disconnect between what you thought he wanted and what he actually said, you'd ask. If you're a soldier and your CO issues an order that can't be right, you ask. It's no different in law.
Blind obedience to the letter of instruction without regard for intent is for software. Act that way in real life and you'll be viewed by others the exact same way you seem to view lawyers.
Ambiguity doesn't just mean unclear wording. Ambiguity can also refer to situations where intent doesn't match up with phrasing. I think you'd probably agree that the intent here and the way the court order was written are at odds with each other, yes?
Legal language can be utterly precise, to the point of being verbose and strange, but precision doesn't remove ambiguity if what's being written with such precision is different from what the writer wanted to convey. That's plain human error.
And since you can get screwed either way (from ignoring the intent or the phrasing) you ask for clarification. Bad lawyers do this to try and find loopholes; good ones do this to cover their asses (well, the asses of their clients).
If they'd delisted the newspapers from their search results at the start of the lawsuit, that would have reflected poorly on them in court and hurt their chances of winning. They wanted to win for the obvious reason of precedent. Ergo, they behaved themselves.
unless you expect Google to pull a Clinton and ask the judge to define the word "all".
Yes, that is in point of fact exactly what I am suggesting, though Clinton is a bad example of this concept.
When an instruction is too broad or inclusive it is perfectly okay, expected even, to ask the judge "Uh your honour, did you really mean that?" Then if they did really mean that, you follow the order to the letter. Not asking for clarification can be a very bad idea, especially when the intent and wording don't match, as is the case here.
Put another way; if the situation were reversed and Google stood to lose if they followed the court order to the letter, you can be damn sure their lawyers would be asking for clarification. As it stands, Google didn't stand to lose by being deliberately literal, but the newspapers did.
You are aware of the concept of malicious compliance, I hope?
The judge's order did not explicitly mention Google search, but did explicitly mention Google news and ambiguously mentioned "by any other name", which can be interpreted either way. So, there are a couple of other ways this could have gone.
Google could have asked for clarification. Judges will do that if prompted. Contrary to what some of the armchair lawyers on slashdot will tell you, intent matters in law. If intent is unclear, it's universally understood that you ask first before proceeding. Clarification would have revealed no intent to delist the papers. Or Google could have used common sense to interpret the order narrowly to mean "delist the papers from Google news". It is obvious that they would not be fined for continuing to display search results. If the decision makers really felt the need to cover their asses, a simple phone call to their lawyers would tell them to ask the judge for clarification.
Hence, I think it's obvious this is a case of malicious compliance. They deliberately choose the interpretation of an ambiguous court order that snubbed the newspapers. They will, along with some of the slashdot crowd, get around this by pretending the ambiguity wasn't there.
Now, I know that some hotheaded idiot or Google apologist is already typing a furious reply to this post, so I'm going to preempt the inevitable: I'm siding with Google on this one. Yes, I think they were being dicks, but frankly if I were in their shoes I would have done the exact same thing. There'll be an clarification of the original court order shortly relisting the papers, but the message to the papers in question - "You need us more than we need you" - was much deserved.
Okay, this is partly a case of a poorly written summary. From reading the second article, here's the short version.
A number of newspapers in Belgium won a suit against Google for putting their papers in Google News. The judge in the case ordered Google to remove the sites. Rather than just removing the sites from their news aggregator, they also delisted them from their search engine.
Depending on how much slack you want to give Google, this is either a case of the judge's order being over broad or Google deliberately implementing it in an over broad fashion in order to make a point. I tend toward the latter interpretation; they are not so subtly reminding the papers that they need Google more than Google needs their content.
Now the newspapers are crying foul. They do want to get listed in search results when someone goes looking for them, but don't want to be "plagiarized" (their interpretation, not mine) by Google News.
I wonder if the reason we don't use them as fertilizer has to do with salt content. Residual salt buildup, wherein the salt content in agricultural soil gets fractionally higher each year, is a problem already; if jellyfish fertilizer exacerbates it, that might be why nobody's tried it.
Desalinating something before you use it adds quite a lot of energy to the requirements.
My wallet has cash, 2 debit cards, ID, discount and gift cards, business cards, and the occasional scrap of paper with something I need to remember on it. No credit cards; anything I want to buy with plastic, I pay debit. Perhaps half of that could be rolled into a smartphone, except I don't own one of those either (cell phone is a prepaid el cheapo model with as few features as I could get away with).
There are perhaps three places I buy stuff that only take cash, some of which may take cheques (never use them myself, but I think I've seen regular customers pay that way). Many other places I pay in cash anyway. It makes it much easier to control spending, and it removes any fear of fraud; I've encountered at least one case of debit fraud and forged cheques, and more than one case of credit card fraud, but cash is safe from all of the above. If a paper trail is absolutely needed, I'll remember to get a receipt, which oddly enough will go in my wallet. Cash has only one drawback; if I lose the wallet I lose the money. But if I lose the wallet, I'm in serious trouble no matter how much cash was in it.
And no, I'm not as old as you might picture from the above description. I'm still, just, under thirty.
If TFA were arguing that wallets won't see the twenty second century, I might buy it. I'd have a healthy dose of skepticism, mind you, but at least it's plausible. 2015? Pure, utter, marketroid bullshit. And, no surprise, it's paypal endorsing it. Yeah, they're an objective, sensible observer.
The summary and article weren't specific about what type of tracker it was; it may have stored data locally or broadcast it. If you're storing data on the bug itself for later physical retrieval, then if the person driving the bugged car finds it, they can destroy it and the data, whereas remote monitoring ensures they only destroy the bug. And if it's just broadcasting a cellular signal, you could probably find it.
Now, part of me wonders if a smart bug might only broadcast occasionally, say by sending the last 24 hours of data once a day, to avoid being detected. That could be a bitch to find... (And if it's occurred to me, it's occurred to people smarter than me, so I'll bet that kind of bug exists).
Of course, for either a jammer of detector to matter to the discussion, you'd need to first believe that you were being tracked. TFA mentions this bug was in the glove compartment, so if the person had searched their car, they'd have found and disposed of it, or maybe had some fun screwing around with it first.
The legality here, which the end of the summary alludes to, is that there's joint ownership involved with respect to the car. If a car is property of both parties, and spouse A puts a tracker on it (or more likely gets a PI to do it), but doesn't tell spouse B, then (s)he can't be charged under this precedent. It sucks, from a moral standpoint, that the being-spied-upon spouse doesn't have a recourse, but what's right and what's legal aren't always the same thing.
A GPS jammer OTOH could be illegal by simple dint of disrupting the GPS systems of people not involved in this marital spat. This is an annoyance if the person being disrupted is merely using their GPS to get to the grocery store; it could be a much bigger problem if they're on their way to the hospital. I'm not sure as to the legality of jammers by jurisdiction, but it would surprise me if there aren't laws or precedent in place, for more or less this reason.
A better solution would be a detector; sweep the car for bugs.
Volunteering is legal where I am, and I've never heard of any place where it isn't. I've done unpaid work in a kitchen, on a strictly voluntary basis. Thing is, they weren't a for-profit business, they were a charity.
I am pretty sure though that interns operating in a professional environment are required to be paid here. It's one thing to freely donate your time to a charity; quite another to provide useful labour to a place of business. And I've never seen a business that didn't get their money's worth from their interns; if it's useful enough for the intern to learn from it, it's useful enough to the company to pay them at the very least a burger flipper's pay. If the intern is so hopeless or useless that it isn't worth paying them minimum wage, what possible skills could they be learning?
(Of course, the pretext is still that internship is a learning experience used for a resume, or getting a real job at the same company you intern for. They just can't use this pretext as an excuse not to pay a legally mandating living wage).
Slashdot Mirror
Or you can approach the problem in reverse; a time machine can go faster than light to an external observer.
Let's imagine you've got Doc Brown's Delorean or a TARDIS. You send a pulse of light. You then follow that light at below lightspeed (never overtaking it, obviously). At a predetermined point, you go backwards in time and arrive in the local reference frame before the pulse of light that you sent at the beginning of the experiment did. Ergo, from the point of view of an hypothetical observer in that reference frame, you've gone faster than light. In a relativistic universe, any time machine is also a superluminal device and any FTL drive can also travel backwards in time; both violate cause and effect.
An amusing phrase I once saw describing realistic FTl in sci-fi said, paraphrased, "Causality, FTL, relativity: pick any two."
No, macro- and micro- evolution are absolutely quantitatively distinct due to the probabilities involved regarding the number of mutually-reinforcing mutations that must occur for the necessary outcome, while maintaining survivability.
Well, that's a tangled statement, but let me see if I understand your stance.
You're arguing that macro-evolutionary changes go against probability, right? That the odds of a new genetic configuration being viable (survivable or reproductively fit) are low, if the changes arose from random mutation?
I agree. And now, let me qualify my agreement, by saying you've got the wrong idea. (If I just agree with you, I'll have angry ACs calling me a creationist. I am in fact firmly in the rationalist camp, and a student of biology).
Each change is essentially tested one at a time. Since most changes won't be viable, most changes won't be passed on.
Say that in a given breeding population two thousand new mutations arose. Half were dropped for very basic reasons, like the change wasn't viable and was spontaneously aborted by the mother. A majority of the rest didn't make it to reproductive age. Say there's two hundred mutations, a tenth of the original number, that weren't written out of the genome in one generation. And that won't be one organism with two hundred mutations, it'll be two hundred different organisms.
So those two hundred mutations get tested. Some make no difference and go nowhere. Some are advantageous, and propagate. Flash forward a few generations and a significant minority of the hypothetical population have the successful mutant genes. Further ahead, they won't be a minority anymore. The species will have changed.
Repeat this process often enough, and what you see is the emergence of a new species. Speciation in a nutshell. Find the fossils for before and after, and what you'll see is two different species in snapshots an epoch apart. There was no single macro-evolutionary event; just ten thousand minor ones and a hundred thousand false starts. I think it may be the false starts you're overlooking; most creationists don't get the idea that some mutations are selected for and others against, or the idea that most aren't viable.
But the GP was correct in saying there is no separate macro-evolution. He could have been more polite about it, but it is undeniably true that the terms micro-evolution and macro-evolution have fallen out of favour, due to creationism subverting their meaning to create a false dichotomy.
Yea, they did sell them a policy, and this shows you why you need to actually read your policies before signing them. Many policies, perhaps even ones you have signed, contain clauses that limit the insurers liability if certain conditions aren't met.
^What he said.^
If you put fire insurance on a building and then take no measures to prevent a fire from breaking out, you won't be able to collect. If you take theft insurance on a car and leave it with the keys in the ignition in a bad neighbourhood overnight, you won't be able to collect. Insurance covers accident or malicious action by a third party; it doesn't usually cover gross negligence on the part of the insured party.
It isn't that the insurance companies are arbitrarily refusing to pay out, it's that they're smart enough to have clauses in the contracts that they can invoke when the insured party is clearly at fault. Now, some insurance companies are utter bastards and will try to invoke these clauses at the drop of a hat. But everything I've read about Sony's data security leads me to conclude that their insurers are probably in the right here, always assuming the contract had a "here are the duties of the insured party" clause in it.
Well, no harm done. And yeah, we're in agreement about the problems in Africa - positive change there will take longer than the natural lifespan of anyone reading this. Which is not to say it'll never happen, because "never" is such a long time, but it'll happen slowly and it hasn't really gotten started yet (or at least the positive changes have been checked by negative ones, I suppose it could have gotten worse).
Evolution does not work that way, and no credible biologist teaches otherwise. You've been getting it from science fiction writers.
Actual human behaviour is not coded into single genes. A gene codes for proteins. The sum total of your genome affects your behaviour, but because single genes don't code for single behavioural functions, a single gene or group of genes "growing exponentially", as you put it, would invariably lead to other factors governed by those same genes.
To give you an example related to reproduction, a group of genes might govern mating and reproductive behaviour in a given species. They might also govern a few hundred other things, including embryonic development, non-reproductive behaviour or who knows what else.
Now, a simplified view of evolution tells you that if a mutation arose that favoured higher reproductive rates, it should "take over the entire population". Except that mutation is in a cluster of genes governing other stuff. Maybe that mutation affected embryonic development, leading to higher rates of birth defects, and lowering the incident of the mutated gene in later generations. Maybe that mutation caused more aggressive risk taking behaviour, removing the carriers from the gene pool before they can breed. Hell, maybe the mutation causes something seemingly unrelated to reproduction to change (genetics is best described as "jury rigged"; related functions often seem nonsensical).
The point is, if the mutation is reproductively beneficial in one respect, but carries with it a cost to the organism's long term reproductive success, it won't proliferate.
And since the current human genome dates back to our hunter gatherer days (anatomically modern human remains can be found dating from tens to hundreds of thousands of years ago), you can bet that any likely mutation has occurred before. Which should cause you to question why a given hypothetical change hasn't proliferated already. Usually there's a reason.
So, in short you can't expect real life human genetics to work like a simplified thought experiment, especially not ones that link complex behaviours to single genes, or that imagine one gene serves one purpose.
Yeah, that's either biofuel or synthetic fuel, depending on whether organisms were used. The problem is more that the sheer amount of energy needed in order to produce a few million litres of petroleum-equivalent fuel makes it prohibitive. It might come to that if we start to run low enough on oil, or if biofuels derived from non-agricultural sources take off, but I wouldn't bet my life on it.
You generalize the "developing world" while singling out Africa.
Ah, I think I see the problem.
Most of the population of the developing world is in the Indian subcontinent or Southeast Asia. I took it for granted that anyone reading my post would read "developing world" that way. You clearly thought I was singling out Africa as the major portion of the developing world, which it isn't, but a lot of people think it is. My bad for not specifying.
Africa, or more specifically the more violent bits of Sub-Saharan Africa, is the major exception to the rule that developing nations are making progress on their own. That was why I singled out the Congo, because I surmised that if I just said "the developing world is modernizing of it's own accord" someone would shoot back "yeah, tell that to the people in the Congo" (or words to that effect).
So, in summary, I generalized about the developing world and specifically singled out parts of Africa as being the exception. If that was unclear, then I'm prepared to admit the problem was poor wording on my part rather than poor comprehension on yours.
if you posit that the population problem, hinges on Africa, and bringing them out of poverty, then what makes you think that can happen. Has anything in the past lead us to believe that this is a possible solution, or even something that we can have any influence in
The population problem doesn't hinge on Africa.
India, Bangladesh, China and the entire Middle East are much more important to the discussion. And they're modernizing. South America, Eastern Europe, Russia and Africa also matter, but they aren't as densely populated. That's not to say that only the most densely populated regions matter, but rather that if those regions raise their standard of living, then a significant source of population growth stabilizes. My point is, most of the developing world raising their standard of living is "good enough" to prevent runaway growth; there will remain a few holdouts (like the Congo).
And I specifically said that we can't help the developing world, that they can and will help themselves.
No, I'm the same way. I never once mentioned ebooks in my post.
But brick and mortar sellers of real books have to compete with web based sellers of real books. It wasn't the kindle or anything like it that killed them, it was the ability to browse online, find the paperback you want and have it shipped to your doorstep. Hell, I've probably bought more books (real ones, dead trees and all) from Amazon than I would have from stores, simply for the convenience, or because the book I wanted wasn't available otherwise.
No, the problem with energy isn't finite nuclear fuel. Thorium will do for that, but so will breeder reactors. Or fusion, if we can make it work before peak uranium kicks in.
The nuclear problem is jointly one of cost and public acceptance. Cutting corners on cost raises a different problem - safety. But even if nuclear wasn't faced with a whole series of severe PR nightmares, it wouldn't be enough by itself.
Transportation fuel is a more finite resource than fuel for generating electricity. You could get rid of coal fired power plants by building nuclear ones, and frankly I think we ought to, but you can't replace gasoline with thorium, uranium, deuterium or anything else along the same lines.
And the problem isn't one of meeting current demand, which we can do, it's meeting twice that level of demand in forty years time.
(Note: Thorium is still a good idea as one part of the solution, but it isn't "the answer to energy" as you put it. I'm all for it, but I'm realistic about where our deficiencies are/will be.)
Is there something wrong with your reading comprehension? I don't mean that sarcastically - I think you may be speed reading or skimming fast enough to completely misread what's in front of you. For instance:
...it is not necessary for the first world to elevate the developing world in order to accomplish this. They're doing that by themselves. We tend to have a very nineteenth century attitude to the rest of the planet, believing that it is only through our guidance that they can rise above savagery, but the reality is that with the exception of countries held in poverty by war, corruption or constant disaster, most of the developing world is quite capable of elevating themselves
We just have to raise Africa out of poverty? That should be easy right?
^This here?^ This is what I wrote and what you replied. I trust you can see what's wrong with your post? What I'm saying and what you think I'm saying don't match up in the slightest; in fact they're almost total opposites.
I even went so far as to single out the Congo, possibly the least pleasant part of Sub-Saharan Africa, as an example of where the kind of development I was talking about doesn't happen, here:
...with the exception of countries held in poverty by war, corruption or constant disaster, most of the developing world is quite capable of elevating themselves, and are doing exactly that. Note the qualifier about "war, corruption or disaster" preventing this; the Congo remains a bloody mess as do many of it's neighbours, but they aren't the only type of developing nation.
Meaning you either didn't read that part, or read it and disregarded it.
I'd be perfectly happy to engage you in civil debate, but only if you actually read what you're replying to.
Actually, from an article on energy production I read a while back, the current projection is for the population to stabilize at 9 billion by midcentury.
(Source) It's mostly about energy sources, but it cites population projection figures in the third paragraph.
The reason given is rising standard of living. People living in abject poverty (and I don't mean first world slums, I mean abject poverty which is something most slashdotters have never seen firsthand) have lots of kids. Raise them out of poverty to a standard of living that includes such luxuries as medicine, clean water, adequate food and shelter and they have fewer kids. This is human nature, and it's as true for the western world as it is elsewhere. Our population growth didn't slow until our conditions improved, so why should we expect otherwise elsewhere?
Further to this, it is not necessary for the first world to elevate the developing world in order to accomplish this. They're doing that by themselves. We tend to have a very nineteenth century attitude to the rest of the planet, believing that it is only through our guidance that they can rise above savagery, but the reality is that with the exception of countries held in poverty by war, corruption or constant disaster, most of the developing world is quite capable of elevating themselves, and are doing exactly that. Note the qualifier about "war, corruption or disaster" preventing this; the Congo remains a bloody mess as do many of it's neighbours, but they aren't the only type of developing nation.
So we will eventually hit population stability. Now the catch is that the global demand for energy will more than double in the process. Given that many of our energy sources are either environmentally disastrous or finite, this is going to become a problem, as is competition for other natural resources. So we're not out of the woods, but Malthusian predictions about population growth are as wrong now as they were when they were new.
They're competing with Amazon. The one thing they could've relied upon, namely the fact that there are a lot of older people who like books and don't understand the internet or computers, is a lot less true now than it was even five years ago. Hell, my mom gets most of her new book purchases online, from Amazon or elsewhere.
Take note: businesses can die in this day and age even when piracy is removed from the equation. Legitimate online purchases will probably do more to kill bookstores, movie rental and music stores than bittorrent in the long run.
And you want to defend it????
Something I think you've lost sight of or failed to notice; I'm not saying what Google did is wrong. I usually don't quote myself, but for the sake of clarity:
Now, I know that some hotheaded idiot or Google apologist is already typing a furious reply to this post, so I'm going to preempt the inevitable: I'm siding with Google on this one. Yes, I think they were being dicks, but frankly if I were in their shoes I would have done the exact same thing. There'll be an clarification of the original court order shortly relisting the papers, but the message to the papers in question - "You need us more than we need you" - was much deserved.
(Emphasis added.)
So, why am I arguing? Because people seem to have it in their heads that Google didn't have a choice, that this is a case of karma catching up to the idiots who brought the suit. And while it is karmic, it's also deliberate on Google's part; they did have a choice. A choice between malicious compliance and playing nice with the litigious bastards at the newspapers. I'd have probably chosen the same as they did, but I at least don't pretend that what they're doing is anything other than allowing literal minded obedience to a poorly worded court order give the morons at the newspapers what they deserve. I can smirk at Google's cleverness in dealing with assholes without casting them as the sympathetic victim of a legal compulsion.
People have some decidedly odd ideas as to how the legal system works. Blind obedience is usually safe, I will grant you that. That doesn't mean it's your only choice. The legal system is not software, nor should it be.
And the lawyer you know is telling the truth, but what he's saying doesn't contradict anything I've told you.
He's a troll. Probably not one with an agenda, beyond provoking nerd rage. Consider:
1. He posts alt-med stuff on slashdot, a "news for nerds" site. There are only a few things more likely to provoke a flamewar than peddling quackery to rationalists. Perhaps he felt creationism or microsoft trolls would be too obvious?
2. He only ever posts about the one issue. He'll shoehorn chiropractic crap into any discussion. Including a story about a new version of an old browser. This is not the behaviour of a regular poster; even the genuine alt-med believers and conspiracy theorists post about other topics.
3. He hasn't quit, despite negative karma. Every post he makes spawns flamewars. A genuine idiot would feel unwelcome, give up and leave. A troll on the other hand, revels in the flamewars.
So, he's a troll. One here purely to start trouble. He's probably laughing at every idiot who feeds him by screaming "QUACK!"
Man, you wandered off topic.
We're not talking here about the state versus the common man. We're not talking about the myriad criminal laws that an innocent man could fall afoul of accidentally. We're talking Google versus print media. In a civil suit.
Both sides had money to burn on a pissing contest over copyright. Both had lawyers. Probably pretty good ones; Google certainly would, and the other side won, meaning theirs can't exactly have been lowly shysters. The legal language that you argue would befuddle someone unfamiliar with it was being handled by professionals.
And yes. If a judge gives a simple order that raises alarm bells or makes you think "Wait, that can't be right", you ask for clarification. Hell, change the venue for a moment; if your boss told you to do something and there was a disconnect between what you thought he wanted and what he actually said, you'd ask. If you're a soldier and your CO issues an order that can't be right, you ask. It's no different in law.
Blind obedience to the letter of instruction without regard for intent is for software. Act that way in real life and you'll be viewed by others the exact same way you seem to view lawyers.
Ambiguity doesn't just mean unclear wording. Ambiguity can also refer to situations where intent doesn't match up with phrasing. I think you'd probably agree that the intent here and the way the court order was written are at odds with each other, yes?
Legal language can be utterly precise, to the point of being verbose and strange, but precision doesn't remove ambiguity if what's being written with such precision is different from what the writer wanted to convey. That's plain human error.
And since you can get screwed either way (from ignoring the intent or the phrasing) you ask for clarification. Bad lawyers do this to try and find loopholes; good ones do this to cover their asses (well, the asses of their clients).
If they'd delisted the newspapers from their search results at the start of the lawsuit, that would have reflected poorly on them in court and hurt their chances of winning. They wanted to win for the obvious reason of precedent. Ergo, they behaved themselves.
unless you expect Google to pull a Clinton and ask the judge to define the word "all".
Yes, that is in point of fact exactly what I am suggesting, though Clinton is a bad example of this concept.
When an instruction is too broad or inclusive it is perfectly okay, expected even, to ask the judge "Uh your honour, did you really mean that?" Then if they did really mean that, you follow the order to the letter. Not asking for clarification can be a very bad idea, especially when the intent and wording don't match, as is the case here.
Put another way; if the situation were reversed and Google stood to lose if they followed the court order to the letter, you can be damn sure their lawyers would be asking for clarification. As it stands, Google didn't stand to lose by being deliberately literal, but the newspapers did.
You are aware of the concept of malicious compliance, I hope?
The judge's order did not explicitly mention Google search, but did explicitly mention Google news and ambiguously mentioned "by any other name", which can be interpreted either way. So, there are a couple of other ways this could have gone.
Google could have asked for clarification. Judges will do that if prompted. Contrary to what some of the armchair lawyers on slashdot will tell you, intent matters in law. If intent is unclear, it's universally understood that you ask first before proceeding. Clarification would have revealed no intent to delist the papers. Or Google could have used common sense to interpret the order narrowly to mean "delist the papers from Google news". It is obvious that they would not be fined for continuing to display search results. If the decision makers really felt the need to cover their asses, a simple phone call to their lawyers would tell them to ask the judge for clarification.
Hence, I think it's obvious this is a case of malicious compliance. They deliberately choose the interpretation of an ambiguous court order that snubbed the newspapers. They will, along with some of the slashdot crowd, get around this by pretending the ambiguity wasn't there.
Now, I know that some hotheaded idiot or Google apologist is already typing a furious reply to this post, so I'm going to preempt the inevitable: I'm siding with Google on this one. Yes, I think they were being dicks, but frankly if I were in their shoes I would have done the exact same thing. There'll be an clarification of the original court order shortly relisting the papers, but the message to the papers in question - "You need us more than we need you" - was much deserved.
Okay, this is partly a case of a poorly written summary. From reading the second article, here's the short version.
A number of newspapers in Belgium won a suit against Google for putting their papers in Google News. The judge in the case ordered Google to remove the sites. Rather than just removing the sites from their news aggregator, they also delisted them from their search engine.
Depending on how much slack you want to give Google, this is either a case of the judge's order being over broad or Google deliberately implementing it in an over broad fashion in order to make a point. I tend toward the latter interpretation; they are not so subtly reminding the papers that they need Google more than Google needs their content.
Now the newspapers are crying foul. They do want to get listed in search results when someone goes looking for them, but don't want to be "plagiarized" (their interpretation, not mine) by Google News.
I wonder if the reason we don't use them as fertilizer has to do with salt content. Residual salt buildup, wherein the salt content in agricultural soil gets fractionally higher each year, is a problem already; if jellyfish fertilizer exacerbates it, that might be why nobody's tried it.
Desalinating something before you use it adds quite a lot of energy to the requirements.
Since we're doing anecdotes...
My wallet has cash, 2 debit cards, ID, discount and gift cards, business cards, and the occasional scrap of paper with something I need to remember on it. No credit cards; anything I want to buy with plastic, I pay debit. Perhaps half of that could be rolled into a smartphone, except I don't own one of those either (cell phone is a prepaid el cheapo model with as few features as I could get away with).
There are perhaps three places I buy stuff that only take cash, some of which may take cheques (never use them myself, but I think I've seen regular customers pay that way). Many other places I pay in cash anyway. It makes it much easier to control spending, and it removes any fear of fraud; I've encountered at least one case of debit fraud and forged cheques, and more than one case of credit card fraud, but cash is safe from all of the above. If a paper trail is absolutely needed, I'll remember to get a receipt, which oddly enough will go in my wallet. Cash has only one drawback; if I lose the wallet I lose the money. But if I lose the wallet, I'm in serious trouble no matter how much cash was in it.
And no, I'm not as old as you might picture from the above description. I'm still, just, under thirty.
If TFA were arguing that wallets won't see the twenty second century, I might buy it. I'd have a healthy dose of skepticism, mind you, but at least it's plausible. 2015? Pure, utter, marketroid bullshit. And, no surprise, it's paypal endorsing it. Yeah, they're an objective, sensible observer.
The summary and article weren't specific about what type of tracker it was; it may have stored data locally or broadcast it. If you're storing data on the bug itself for later physical retrieval, then if the person driving the bugged car finds it, they can destroy it and the data, whereas remote monitoring ensures they only destroy the bug. And if it's just broadcasting a cellular signal, you could probably find it.
Now, part of me wonders if a smart bug might only broadcast occasionally, say by sending the last 24 hours of data once a day, to avoid being detected. That could be a bitch to find... (And if it's occurred to me, it's occurred to people smarter than me, so I'll bet that kind of bug exists).
Of course, for either a jammer of detector to matter to the discussion, you'd need to first believe that you were being tracked. TFA mentions this bug was in the glove compartment, so if the person had searched their car, they'd have found and disposed of it, or maybe had some fun screwing around with it first.
That could be a problem.
The legality here, which the end of the summary alludes to, is that there's joint ownership involved with respect to the car. If a car is property of both parties, and spouse A puts a tracker on it (or more likely gets a PI to do it), but doesn't tell spouse B, then (s)he can't be charged under this precedent. It sucks, from a moral standpoint, that the being-spied-upon spouse doesn't have a recourse, but what's right and what's legal aren't always the same thing.
A GPS jammer OTOH could be illegal by simple dint of disrupting the GPS systems of people not involved in this marital spat. This is an annoyance if the person being disrupted is merely using their GPS to get to the grocery store; it could be a much bigger problem if they're on their way to the hospital. I'm not sure as to the legality of jammers by jurisdiction, but it would surprise me if there aren't laws or precedent in place, for more or less this reason.
A better solution would be a detector; sweep the car for bugs.
Volunteering is legal where I am, and I've never heard of any place where it isn't. I've done unpaid work in a kitchen, on a strictly voluntary basis. Thing is, they weren't a for-profit business, they were a charity.
I am pretty sure though that interns operating in a professional environment are required to be paid here. It's one thing to freely donate your time to a charity; quite another to provide useful labour to a place of business. And I've never seen a business that didn't get their money's worth from their interns; if it's useful enough for the intern to learn from it, it's useful enough to the company to pay them at the very least a burger flipper's pay. If the intern is so hopeless or useless that it isn't worth paying them minimum wage, what possible skills could they be learning?
(Of course, the pretext is still that internship is a learning experience used for a resume, or getting a real job at the same company you intern for. They just can't use this pretext as an excuse not to pay a legally mandating living wage).