... and how much of this money do you think goes to researching my theory that global warming is caused by an increase in the number of reality TV shows blowing hot air?
Or how about this? You buy a car. A few weeks later you read in the news paper that it turns out your car was stolen and the dealership payed the original owner for the car when they were informed.
But at what cost? You can bet your bottom dollar that the company contracted to write the tool has gotten flogged 10 ways and Sunday and that using Open Source anywhere in future products will be far less likely from Microsoft contractors.
Also note that it took several months to work through the necessary lawyers etc. Good luck proposing that under a tight deadline.
The problem is that it's also been morally defined now that it's the moral responsibility of executives to look after the best interests of the company and by extension shareholders. Turning down a lucrative weapons contract wouldn't well represent the interests of the shareholders.
If executives are supposed to be responsible for their share holders, shareholders don't vote on most individual actions and a company is ammoral then you've got a problem since it's nobody's responsibility.
You could say it's the shareholders then that have a responsibility to only buy stocks from ethical companies but most shareholders represent large brokerage firms who are responsible for acquiring the maximum possible returns for investment funds. So that leaves it to the consumer to determine which retirement plan is going to be the least evil when all of them include large portfolios of hundreds of companies. Good luck figuring out the ethical from the unethical ones. And if you find a company you like but have a grievance with good luck organizing and voicing your opposition when you're mixed in with several hundred thousand other shareholders who also all have grievances.
The journal, Science? (Nature?-- it's one of them) declared several years ago, after global warming was only a few years old and before many of the initial predictions failed, that the global warming debate was over and it was time for political action. Does that sound like the scientific method to you?
Let's define "several" as 5. Then let's define "few" as 3. By your estimation the Global Warming debate is about 8 years old? You need to add about 50 to that number. This debate and associated research is much older than you evidently think.
Even though some predictions failed the earth continued to warm. Let's separate the accuracy of short term predictions and long term predictions. I can make a safe scientific case that LA will eperience a major earthquake within X years. I can't predict when that earthquake will be exactly. That doesn't mean our models of tectonic action are completely backwards and faults don't actually cause earthquakes.
If the Pythagorean Theorem required an increase in taxes people would start to doubt it. There was an interesting research paper in which conservatives were given a news article which outlined a study with evidence for humans being responsible for global warming. At the end of the article they either appended a paragraph explaining possible regulation and taxation solutions or a paragraph suggesting that we needed increased Nuclear Power to solve the problem.
Those who read that the solution was taxes were more likely to doubt the validity of the science than those conservatives who read the article with no mention of increased taxes but instead read about Nuclear power.
The problem with climate change science at this point isn't the science it's that the solutions go against conservative values.
"Liberals are trying to take over the world through fascism. Global Warming increases taxes and gives the government increased control over our lives. Therefore Global Warming is an eco-fascist plot to take away freedom and control us." The science doesn't actually matter one way or the other.
The real lesson of Galileo wasn't that science will persecute those it feels are heretics. It's that you can't change the minds of those who base their scientific conclusions not on empiricism and research but on whether or not it threatens completely unrelated personal beliefs.
We might not have perfect models or understand every nuance of climate change but we have pretty good research on the larger points. Challenges to climate change are similar to those against Evolution. "There is no way to know what really happened 100k years ago, because we can't trust proxy data or radio-isotope testing.", "Scientists don't completely understand the underlying mechanisms or why it's happened in the past or when exactly it'll happen in the future.", "There isn't enough time to do real studies since the time frames are so large.", "This is just a liberal plot to destroy our country and fill our children's minds with pseudo science." "It's a modern day religion.", "The scientists are suppressing dissent and withholding their data." "The science isn't settled." "So-and-so admitted that they have huge gaps in their understanding and that it's frustrating to not know X one way or the other."
But it makes sense because most websites are the same size. If I want to switch Apps I use the taskbar. If I want to switch PAGES then I use tabs.
I can't see any reason why I would want Photoshop and Google Chrome to share tabs. I would just lose Photoshop and have to go through all my open windows to figure out where I "hid" Photoshop.
More importantly it doesn't have to be a perfect simulator for every car. It's pretty similar to moving from one car to another or even how Michael Jordan can be a half decent baseball player. The application might not be perfect but the learning process is similar and the skillset is identical.
Or a good video game metaphor is that while Starcraft and Warcraft aren't really identical the skillets one develops in one game apply to another.
I used to play MS Flight simulator 3.0 every minute of every waking day. The first time I flew a plane I was able to take off fly a pattern and land without assistance except for tower communication. The simulator was nowhere near accurate enough to perfectly replicate real flight but I certainly knew where I needed to be on approach etc.
Driving is similar. The car physics might not be terribly accurate but most importantly you know where you need to be in the turn and the human brain is very good at accommodating the 'strange physics' of the real world.
The Himalays used to be under the ocean. Something tells me they might object to it happening in the course of a few decades.
I don't think anyone is worried about the fact that the globe is warming so much as the fact that rate at which it's changing.
Eventually my city will disappear below the ocean and into the earth's crust. If that were to happen in the next 100 years I would be concerned and see if anything could be done about it.
How about ask them to do what they're referring to: birth control.
You might find all these selfish bullshitters are perfectly happy to wear a condom even if they aren't willing to shoot themselves in the head--which isn't what people talk about when they refer to decreasing the population.
Considering a 1TB drive costs $70 and your time probably costs $70 an hour. Just buy a new HDD and copy the whole thing. Then tell them if they missed anything they can always get it off the old drive.
Seems like an easy solution. If there is a net economic gain, that gain isn't getting to enough people and will cause a long term decline in society then you just need a progressive tax code to try and keep a dynamic and diverse economy going.
That's always been my view. Don't try to make the market do back flips to accommodate a changing world landscape which will have a poor impact on society, don't cap wages etc... just put on a progressive tax code that fixes it on the backside. Conservatives will say it's stealing from them. I'll say we're just not putting policies in place to help the poor and middle classes as much as we could. The government looks out for the rich. And then instead of trickling, gets transfused back into society.
It's a problem we're all going to face as--let's face it-- manufacturing eventually completely disappears. We aren't terribly far away from a point where even a median intelligence won't be sufficient to outperform automation. What do we do when a segment of our population is simply unqualified and never will be qualified for work? Jobs will continue to disappear on the bottom and grow on the top. We're already seeing this in technology. A problem we're mitigating by importing everyone else's above average graduates. But eventually McDonalds will be automated, grocery checkers will be a gate, janitors will be roombas and minimum wage jobs all together will be replaced by machinery. It might not be the next 2 or 3 decades but it will eventually happen. We're either going to need to start improving intelligence augmentation or seriously looking at what we're going to do with people who no longer are very useful since the free market is going to declare them free-loaders and put them onto the street with nothing.
The tea party was instigated by bunch of wealthy tea brokers whose business was going to be steamrolled by a cut in prices by a new monopoly that would cut out the overhead from dealers. The tax hike wasn't actually a tax hike, it was a net price decrease but instead of shipping all tea through London and imposing the tariff on English soil the British thought it would be more efficient to drop ship the tea to the states and cut out the extra shipping.
All around a sensible plan and would have worked out great for everybody... except for the wealthy tea brokers. And the rest is history.
Corporate interests were undermining public policy long before there were founding fathers. Many of our founding fathers were lobbying on behalf of the cotton growers' right to keep slaves. Our constitution was has the ink of corporate lobbyists all over it. It's at the heart and soul of our nation. We even indirectly fought a civil war over the rights of landowners and businessmen over slaves.
What do you mean government as powerful as it is? I'm more concerned about unaccountable international corporations whose only goal is the accumulation of wealth regardless of public welfare.
That sounds great in theory. In practice it won't happen. Telecoms would like you to believe that the monopolies are the government's idea and not theirs but in reality they won't compete over the same area. Call up Comcast and ask how much they charge to wire up a neighborhood with NO cable. It isn't free. The only reason they'll even offer service is if they're guaranteed a monopoly. If they aren't then you don't get competition you get nothing. If Comcast etc saw that someone already had wire in the neighborhood they wouldn't enter to compete. Too much work to win customers. Not to mention it is incredibly wasteful to lay redundant lines. There just might not be enough profit in a neighborhood for the cost of two installations. Even if Comcast were to enter into competition with another cable company over a free-market neighborhood and even if they managed to switch 50% of the existing cable customers to themselves that might not be enough warrant the investment.
The solution is obvious. Either lay community fiber and let the free market handle everything except for last-mile operations which is community owned or continue with the existing monopoly system but impose more stringent standards for the right like electricity or phone service.
You make it sound like we have 150 years of data. That's like the creationist argument that we have no evidence for evolution or geology beyond human observation. We have much more than 150 years of data and your statements are misleading because you cite "C02 increases in general are caused by warming" while simultaneously ignoring the mountain of evidence which we have collected on CO2 and Temperature beyond calibrated thermometers and satellites.
I've never touched Photoshop's CMYK tools once. But I still find GIMP lacking.
I'll let you in on a little secret. When GIMP evangelists come around and ask "what can Photoshop do that Gimp can't?" we just say "CMYK" instead of launching into a 20 minute explanation of everything GIMP can't do. It seems to satisfy you guys and shut you up.
Everything I hate about Photoshop GIMP does worse. GIMP is like the manifestation of everything about Photoshop that drives me crazy.
Why would we need any of those things? We want nice houses because we see nice houses and walk around in nice houses..... Matrix.
We want to buy nice foods because we enjoy the savory and delicious flavors that they let us experience... Matrix.
We want fast cars and sports equipment for excitement and thrills... Matrix.
We want nice clothes and fashionable cars for the way we appear... Matrix.
Augmented reality, or virtual reality will democratize property. You won't need a factory to build a Lamborghini it'll cost $45, the price of a video game. There is more than enough calories and nutrients to solve world hunger... we just view food as a taste not a supplement. Augmented reality can turn a bland flat wafer into anything you want it to be. All water can taste like coffee and be warm in your mouth and give you the effects of coffee if you want it to. But I'm sure there'll be easier ways with less side effects to keep you awake.
If you want your transit from one place to another to look and feel like it's in a flying car then feel free to choose that view from your seat in the supersonic maglev. Not sure what requires you to travel in the first place, but so be it if you must physically move from one place to another and can't use a proxy then I'm sure you have your reasons. Still a virtual meeting would be identical to your perception as a real one.
When you can augment reality and manipulate your own perception of the physical world--what's actually there becomes unimportant. Your clothes can be physically practical but as metadata be fashionable.
Life without meaning? A new world with a new culture and new politics and new sciences and new games to learn?! Are you kidding! That would be the greatest thing ever.
Make new friends. Form a new family. Only this time if they can resuscitate a head then I'm probably nearly immortal so I have at least 10k years before I'm statistically killed in an accident. That's more than enough time to learn a few hundred lifetimes of insights.
So what you're saying is that if your family and friends all died in an accident you would want to die with them and no live your life? If you were orphaned and adopted by a foreign family you think life wouldn't be worth living or have meaning?
It's a lot easier to test algorithms if it doesn't take 10,000 hours to simulate a fraction of one second. Even if you perfect replicated the algorithm for a human brain what would it learn in 1/100th of a second simulated? It's really really hard to adjust simulation algorithms when you can only make a change every year. And that is assuming we're just tweaking a model that is close. It's going to take a system fast enough to simulate weeks or months in a a few hours before we can start really tackling the problem.
At my highschool the kids did carry janitor duties. It was a private highschool so it would all go into tuition. But there needed to be someone who did more than just vacuuming and washing as well as management and planning. Which is how we got by with just one janitor.
Slashdot Mirror
... and how much of this money do you think goes to researching my theory that global warming is caused by an increase in the number of reality TV shows blowing hot air?
Conspiracy I say!
Or how about this? You buy a car. A few weeks later you read in the news paper that it turns out your car was stolen and the dealership payed the original owner for the car when they were informed.
But at what cost? You can bet your bottom dollar that the company contracted to write the tool has gotten flogged 10 ways and Sunday and that using Open Source anywhere in future products will be far less likely from Microsoft contractors.
Also note that it took several months to work through the necessary lawyers etc. Good luck proposing that under a tight deadline.
You would think that most people here would have grown out of the "M$" phase
And you would be wrong.
The problem is that it's also been morally defined now that it's the moral responsibility of executives to look after the best interests of the company and by extension shareholders. Turning down a lucrative weapons contract wouldn't well represent the interests of the shareholders.
If executives are supposed to be responsible for their share holders, shareholders don't vote on most individual actions and a company is ammoral then you've got a problem since it's nobody's responsibility.
You could say it's the shareholders then that have a responsibility to only buy stocks from ethical companies but most shareholders represent large brokerage firms who are responsible for acquiring the maximum possible returns for investment funds. So that leaves it to the consumer to determine which retirement plan is going to be the least evil when all of them include large portfolios of hundreds of companies. Good luck figuring out the ethical from the unethical ones. And if you find a company you like but have a grievance with good luck organizing and voicing your opposition when you're mixed in with several hundred thousand other shareholders who also all have grievances.
The journal, Science? (Nature?-- it's one of them) declared several years ago, after global warming was only a few years old and before many of the initial predictions failed, that the global warming debate was over and it was time for political action. Does that sound like the scientific method to you?
Let's define "several" as 5. Then let's define "few" as 3. By your estimation the Global Warming debate is about 8 years old? You need to add about 50 to that number. This debate and associated research is much older than you evidently think.
Even though some predictions failed the earth continued to warm. Let's separate the accuracy of short term predictions and long term predictions. I can make a safe scientific case that LA will eperience a major earthquake within X years. I can't predict when that earthquake will be exactly. That doesn't mean our models of tectonic action are completely backwards and faults don't actually cause earthquakes.
If the Pythagorean Theorem required an increase in taxes people would start to doubt it. There was an interesting research paper in which conservatives were given a news article which outlined a study with evidence for humans being responsible for global warming. At the end of the article they either appended a paragraph explaining possible regulation and taxation solutions or a paragraph suggesting that we needed increased Nuclear Power to solve the problem.
Those who read that the solution was taxes were more likely to doubt the validity of the science than those conservatives who read the article with no mention of increased taxes but instead read about Nuclear power.
The problem with climate change science at this point isn't the science it's that the solutions go against conservative values.
"Liberals are trying to take over the world through fascism. Global Warming increases taxes and gives the government increased control over our lives. Therefore Global Warming is an eco-fascist plot to take away freedom and control us." The science doesn't actually matter one way or the other.
The real lesson of Galileo wasn't that science will persecute those it feels are heretics. It's that you can't change the minds of those who base their scientific conclusions not on empiricism and research but on whether or not it threatens completely unrelated personal beliefs.
We might not have perfect models or understand every nuance of climate change but we have pretty good research on the larger points. Challenges to climate change are similar to those against Evolution. "There is no way to know what really happened 100k years ago, because we can't trust proxy data or radio-isotope testing.", "Scientists don't completely understand the underlying mechanisms or why it's happened in the past or when exactly it'll happen in the future.", "There isn't enough time to do real studies since the time frames are so large.", "This is just a liberal plot to destroy our country and fill our children's minds with pseudo science." "It's a modern day religion.", "The scientists are suppressing dissent and withholding their data." "The science isn't settled." "So-and-so admitted that they have huge gaps in their understanding and that it's frustrating to not know X one way or the other."
But it makes sense because most websites are the same size. If I want to switch Apps I use the taskbar. If I want to switch PAGES then I use tabs.
I can't see any reason why I would want Photoshop and Google Chrome to share tabs. I would just lose Photoshop and have to go through all my open windows to figure out where I "hid" Photoshop.
It would be interesting to see a lidar shadow. It would be like someone embossed the world with the shape of the cloaked object's shadow.
However I believe most applications for cloaking involve aircraft so LIDAR probably wouldn't be terribly applicable in that regard.
More importantly it doesn't have to be a perfect simulator for every car. It's pretty similar to moving from one car to another or even how Michael Jordan can be a half decent baseball player. The application might not be perfect but the learning process is similar and the skillset is identical.
Or a good video game metaphor is that while Starcraft and Warcraft aren't really identical the skillets one develops in one game apply to another.
I used to play MS Flight simulator 3.0 every minute of every waking day. The first time I flew a plane I was able to take off fly a pattern and land without assistance except for tower communication. The simulator was nowhere near accurate enough to perfectly replicate real flight but I certainly knew where I needed to be on approach etc.
Driving is similar. The car physics might not be terribly accurate but most importantly you know where you need to be in the turn and the human brain is very good at accommodating the 'strange physics' of the real world.
The Himalays used to be under the ocean. Something tells me they might object to it happening in the course of a few decades.
I don't think anyone is worried about the fact that the globe is warming so much as the fact that rate at which it's changing.
Eventually my city will disappear below the ocean and into the earth's crust. If that were to happen in the next 100 years I would be concerned and see if anything could be done about it.
How about ask them to do what they're referring to: birth control.
You might find all these selfish bullshitters are perfectly happy to wear a condom even if they aren't willing to shoot themselves in the head--which isn't what people talk about when they refer to decreasing the population.
Considering a 1TB drive costs $70 and your time probably costs $70 an hour. Just buy a new HDD and copy the whole thing. Then tell them if they missed anything they can always get it off the old drive.
Seems like an easy solution. If there is a net economic gain, that gain isn't getting to enough people and will cause a long term decline in society then you just need a progressive tax code to try and keep a dynamic and diverse economy going.
That's always been my view. Don't try to make the market do back flips to accommodate a changing world landscape which will have a poor impact on society, don't cap wages etc... just put on a progressive tax code that fixes it on the backside. Conservatives will say it's stealing from them. I'll say we're just not putting policies in place to help the poor and middle classes as much as we could. The government looks out for the rich. And then instead of trickling, gets transfused back into society.
It's a problem we're all going to face as--let's face it-- manufacturing eventually completely disappears. We aren't terribly far away from a point where even a median intelligence won't be sufficient to outperform automation. What do we do when a segment of our population is simply unqualified and never will be qualified for work? Jobs will continue to disappear on the bottom and grow on the top. We're already seeing this in technology. A problem we're mitigating by importing everyone else's above average graduates. But eventually McDonalds will be automated, grocery checkers will be a gate, janitors will be roombas and minimum wage jobs all together will be replaced by machinery. It might not be the next 2 or 3 decades but it will eventually happen. We're either going to need to start improving intelligence augmentation or seriously looking at what we're going to do with people who no longer are very useful since the free market is going to declare them free-loaders and put them onto the street with nothing.
The tea party was instigated by bunch of wealthy tea brokers whose business was going to be steamrolled by a cut in prices by a new monopoly that would cut out the overhead from dealers. The tax hike wasn't actually a tax hike, it was a net price decrease but instead of shipping all tea through London and imposing the tariff on English soil the British thought it would be more efficient to drop ship the tea to the states and cut out the extra shipping.
All around a sensible plan and would have worked out great for everybody... except for the wealthy tea brokers. And the rest is history.
Corporate interests were undermining public policy long before there were founding fathers. Many of our founding fathers were lobbying on behalf of the cotton growers' right to keep slaves. Our constitution was has the ink of corporate lobbyists all over it. It's at the heart and soul of our nation. We even indirectly fought a civil war over the rights of landowners and businessmen over slaves.
What do you mean government as powerful as it is? I'm more concerned about unaccountable international corporations whose only goal is the accumulation of wealth regardless of public welfare.
That sounds great in theory. In practice it won't happen. Telecoms would like you to believe that the monopolies are the government's idea and not theirs but in reality they won't compete over the same area. Call up Comcast and ask how much they charge to wire up a neighborhood with NO cable. It isn't free. The only reason they'll even offer service is if they're guaranteed a monopoly. If they aren't then you don't get competition you get nothing. If Comcast etc saw that someone already had wire in the neighborhood they wouldn't enter to compete. Too much work to win customers. Not to mention it is incredibly wasteful to lay redundant lines. There just might not be enough profit in a neighborhood for the cost of two installations. Even if Comcast were to enter into competition with another cable company over a free-market neighborhood and even if they managed to switch 50% of the existing cable customers to themselves that might not be enough warrant the investment.
The solution is obvious. Either lay community fiber and let the free market handle everything except for last-mile operations which is community owned or continue with the existing monopoly system but impose more stringent standards for the right like electricity or phone service.
"Hatsukami said NicVax would probably be most helpful for smokers who already quit smoking and are trying to avoid a relapse."
I believe there is an important difference:
XBox: Hack xbox, get banned from server (offline only).
iPhone: Hack iphone, phone no longer boots at all.
You make it sound like we have 150 years of data. That's like the creationist argument that we have no evidence for evolution or geology beyond human observation. We have much more than 150 years of data and your statements are misleading because you cite "C02 increases in general are caused by warming" while simultaneously ignoring the mountain of evidence which we have collected on CO2 and Temperature beyond calibrated thermometers and satellites.
I've never touched Photoshop's CMYK tools once. But I still find GIMP lacking.
I'll let you in on a little secret. When GIMP evangelists come around and ask "what can Photoshop do that Gimp can't?" we just say "CMYK" instead of launching into a 20 minute explanation of everything GIMP can't do. It seems to satisfy you guys and shut you up.
Everything I hate about Photoshop GIMP does worse. GIMP is like the manifestation of everything about Photoshop that drives me crazy.
Why would we need any of those things? We want nice houses because we see nice houses and walk around in nice houses..... Matrix.
We want to buy nice foods because we enjoy the savory and delicious flavors that they let us experience... Matrix.
We want fast cars and sports equipment for excitement and thrills... Matrix.
We want nice clothes and fashionable cars for the way we appear... Matrix.
Augmented reality, or virtual reality will democratize property. You won't need a factory to build a Lamborghini it'll cost $45, the price of a video game. There is more than enough calories and nutrients to solve world hunger... we just view food as a taste not a supplement. Augmented reality can turn a bland flat wafer into anything you want it to be. All water can taste like coffee and be warm in your mouth and give you the effects of coffee if you want it to. But I'm sure there'll be easier ways with less side effects to keep you awake.
If you want your transit from one place to another to look and feel like it's in a flying car then feel free to choose that view from your seat in the supersonic maglev. Not sure what requires you to travel in the first place, but so be it if you must physically move from one place to another and can't use a proxy then I'm sure you have your reasons. Still a virtual meeting would be identical to your perception as a real one.
When you can augment reality and manipulate your own perception of the physical world--what's actually there becomes unimportant. Your clothes can be physically practical but as metadata be fashionable.
Life without meaning? A new world with a new culture and new politics and new sciences and new games to learn?! Are you kidding! That would be the greatest thing ever.
Make new friends. Form a new family. Only this time if they can resuscitate a head then I'm probably nearly immortal so I have at least 10k years before I'm statistically killed in an accident. That's more than enough time to learn a few hundred lifetimes of insights.
So what you're saying is that if your family and friends all died in an accident you would want to die with them and no live your life? If you were orphaned and adopted by a foreign family you think life wouldn't be worth living or have meaning?
It's a lot easier to test algorithms if it doesn't take 10,000 hours to simulate a fraction of one second. Even if you perfect replicated the algorithm for a human brain what would it learn in 1/100th of a second simulated? It's really really hard to adjust simulation algorithms when you can only make a change every year. And that is assuming we're just tweaking a model that is close. It's going to take a system fast enough to simulate weeks or months in a a few hours before we can start really tackling the problem.
At my highschool the kids did carry janitor duties. It was a private highschool so it would all go into tuition. But there needed to be someone who did more than just vacuuming and washing as well as management and planning. Which is how we got by with just one janitor.