hmm, rather tempted to edit the wikipedia entry to talk about the origins of the puma myth... Probably work the Incans into it somewhere. Now shall I make them protectors, or antagonistic creatures? *think think think*
There are only a few people more qualified to talk about Trek than Roddenberry... I suppose if you believe in God He might be.
As for protection, he live in a starship, not the jungle primeval. I think the durasteel and forcefields around him grant sufficient protection.
As for fashion reasons, I really don't see why the fashion of the 24th century needs to be equivalent to our own. Baldness could be acceptable for fashion reasons. Not encouraged such that everyone gets their hair zapped, but an accepted way of presenting yourself. Short cropped hair on women(ear length) isn't ubiquitous, but it's accepted(at least up here). Women with hair down to their butt isn't common either, but I know a couple women with hair like that and noone points and makes comments about how they should *really* trim a bit off. Why should Picard's choice to be bald be totally out of the question in the 24th century's views of fashion?
How many people do you see nowadays wearing those powdered wigs? They were very fashionable in the 18th century. That's about the same length of time as Trek is from now right?
From Patrick Stewart's wikipedia entry:
In an interview with Michael Parkinson, he expressed gratitude for Gene Roddenberry's riposte to a reporter who said, "Surely they would have cured baldness by the 24th century," to which Roddenberry replied, "In the 24th Century, they wouldn't care."
Can you cite some legal authority stating that judges are required to recuse themselves on the basis that they have no personal knowledge of some technical aspect of deliberations? Personally, what I find more dissapointing and relevant, is not that he didn't already know this stuff... it's that he apparently wasn't able to learn it well enough to feel comfortable.
Sure, I don't need to have intimate knowledge of the Krebs cycle to preside over a case, but I'd like to think that if I saw a case that was largely to do with biochemistry and I knew I was incapable of understanding basic concepts like what glucose is or the function of ATP, then I'd suggest they pick another judge.
I'm pretty sure I already read about the effect that a planet's core cooling would have on/in Abarrach, the world of stone.
That book kind of creeped me out back when it first came out. I was a bit younger then though, and the rather violent necromancy used in the story was scaryish to a fragile young lad like myself.
I'll give you a hint, this book ends badly for many involved.
Damned entertaining though, and I avidly waited for the next book in the series.
You can't win, briancnorton. If you strike the hurricane down by burning propane, the source of hurricanes(our increasingly screwed up environment) shall become more vindictive than you can possibly imagine!
Actually, I'd think that I'd be more likely to try to shoot someone when ambivalent than to try and knife 'em/smack them with a hammer. A gun makes it alot more likely that I'll put the enemy down with minimal immediate risk to myself. I can do it from more than arms length away, and even one bullet in the chest will slow them down enough usually.
The main advantage hammers/knives have over guns IMO is that it's alot harder to accidently hit the wrong person with a hammer than it is to have a bullet miss and hit a bystander.
Up here in Canada we kill alot of each other, but it's incredibly rare that I hear of bystanders getting knifed in a driveby. Now bystanders getting hit by stray bullets, that I hear more often. But still not too much oddly. We just don't seem to shoot each other often, despite the large number of guns here. Dunno why. Maybe we're too stupid as a country to realize the advantages a gun gives one in a fight?:P
Well, perhaps this researcher doesn't really have the expertise to contribute much in the search for dollars / km^2 solar power?
They need not be totally competitive areas of research. We can have the solar guys working on their projects and those ill-equipped to do solar research working on ways to make our consumption of conventional fuels less nasty.
They're both Good Things To Do as far as I'm concerned.
I assume there are a bunch of slashdotters who've spent time on IRC? There are plenty of people spouting stuff online that they (hopefully) wouldn't say in real life. The only time that computer logging is going to be inhibitory is when your statements can easily be linked back to your actual real life identity by either people you know or The Secret Police Of Scariness.
If everything we did online could easily be traced back to us by our neighbours then yeah, I'd expect we'd be visiting fewer naughty websites, and posting fewer inflammatory remarks. As long as the ability to post as yourself OR as "anonymous" exists then I think we're safe. Our online personas will be squeeky clean(or close enough to it anyway), while in 20 years "Anonymous" is exactly the sort of person you'd expect if you're familiar with 4chan... *cough*
"The day after the election, you best have a paper record saying you voted for my man Mr. McFakename.
It wouldd be most... unfortunate if you were to fall down a flight of stairs repeatedly."
What I'm subtly alluding to is vote buying/intimidation being possible if you take an official record of your voting behaviours home with you.
Then I adjusted my thinking to Microsoft's point of view and tried to figure it out.
Now that IE7 is patched, it's much more secure than Firefox could ever be! Changing IE7 back to default is much like a firewall, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure eh? By trying to get us back using IE7 they're just trying to prevent all the malware from getting on our systems, much like most of the rest of the patches.
It's a bit screwy, but that's the best rationalization I could come up with, anyone got a better one?
While it's not something I've been able to do with many artists, I've enjoyed physically handing money to bands that I liked. Saw Lesbians on Ecstasy last year at a bar/club on my university campus. I hadn't heard of them before, so I grabbed a bunch of mp3s from their debut CD off of IRC or eMule or such. They had an interesting sound in some of their songs so I figured I'd go check 'em out live. I REALLY enjoyed them a lot that way, and have very fond memories of the night. Went up to one of them after the show(they were selling CDs and other merch) and gave 'em some cash in gratitude for a really fun night of dancing, and for their mp3s.
Some of the bands I've been exposed to via mp3s don't exactly tour on this side of the pond, but for cases where it's feasible just handing over cash to an artist, and saying thanks works. You know they got all $X.00 dollars of it, and they also get some positive feedback.
CDs force you to buy all 10/15/20 tracks though. I don't mind paying (CD price) / ( # of tracks) for an individual song assuming the other factors are constant or close to it. I like being able to pick these 6 songs and ignore the rest.
The physical medium is pretty worthless to me. Maybe even negative value since they create more waste and pollution than an additional file download does.
There are occasions where the packaging is nice, but not very often for me. Most of it's just sitting in the garbage or in a drawer where I'd tossed all my CD cases. How much more would you be willing to pay on every CD for the inserts and such? 50 cents? $1.50?
Do we even want to, wouldn't that take away some of the mystery behind humans.
We have a fairly good understanding of the way a rainbow is made, but I can still appreciate it's beauty. Same goes for a wide variety of phenomena. We understand the physiological make-up of boobs, but they're still pretty interesting and appreciated by a large % of the population. Just because we understand something, doesn't make them less wonderful and amazing. Besides, most people in the near future wont bother/be able to learn about the exact way a mouse brain works, let alone a human one. So those people can still have that ignorant bliss you promote.
While it's a bit of a tangent, regarding your free will comment... Psychology does allow us to make probabilistic predictions about how populations of people will behave in a given situation. That seems to rob us of free will? But at the same time, some sort of regular predictable nature has to exist in order for us to make choices. If I can't use some sort of rudimentary psychology to predict how a girlfriend will react to my gift of a pair of tickets to the superbowl, versus tickets to the theater, then how can I be said to be choosing anything? I need to be able to predict how people will behave, or else I can't make informed choices with my own "free will"
You mention candy makers moving to Canada, so I feel obligated to share the news that Hershey's is moving their Canadian plant to Mexico. It was the biggest employer(400 year-round jobs and 200 seasonal ones) in a small town of about 10,000... I don't see Smiths Falls doing very well in 10 years time unless something major happens to dump cash into it again.
You can read a CBC article on the subject here. Kind of sad, since the plant was apparently still profitable for Hershey's, just not *as profitable* as it could be in Mexico. Still, the workers at the plant had a hand in it, they've been collecting very healthy raises for years, eventually priced themselves out of a job. Sucks for the city and all the other poor bastards who are going to go out of work because of it though. With a huge jump in unemployment there'll be less money to spend at restaurants, etc... etc...
from TFA:
Federal authorities have said the incident did not pose a security risk, and there is no evidence the Iranian government was involved. The information contained on the software was not classified or top-secret, APS officials said.
Well, then I'm not too scared. They did a pretty crummy job of whipping me into a frenzied lust for Iranian blood if they're also telling me that it was just crap that he got ahold of. And that he wasn't neccessarily working for the Iranian government.
Actually, it's the *really* small ones(on the order of the mass of maybe half the moon, or smaller) that evaporate very quickly. The supermassive ones radiate at a very low rate and will last many, many, many billions of years. The temperature of the universe(eg: background radiation) will need to drop before they'll be "hotter" than their surroundings. Currently the big black holes are soaking up more radiation than they're emitting(hence, black)
Well, as nice as a cure for AIDS would be, there are other STDs out there I wouldn't really want to catch. Monogomy is still a good idea, even in a world without AIDS.
Do YOU want a case of genital herpes? Human papillomavirus? They can already cure Chlamydia just fine(if it's detected, which it often isn't), but I still don't want it.:P
I thought websites required credit cards or something to verify ages before they showed you naughty stuff.
I, for one, am very skeptical that there is any threat of minors seeing naked people online. Even with free and anonymous internet access, they'd have to somehow prove they're older than 18. That's not something that one can fake easily(eg: just saying they are that old isn't going to cut it)...
Huh? That IS all that's needed for alot of sites? And there's this thing called "pea to pea" that lets you get all sorts of vile disgustingly wonderful porn? In news that's totally unrelated to that revelation, I'm going to go do something else besides read slashdot for a while. I'll read wikinews... Yes, that's right. Wikinews.
What would be more entertaining to me would be someone coming back from the dead to say:
Ouch, boy are alot of you guys going to be surprised when you see who decides your fate in the afterlife. Let me give you a hint, it's NOT who 95% of you think it is.
Neuroscience student here, and yes there do appear to be some growth of new neurons in the adult brain, but at vastly reduced numbers. While we have pretty good evidence for neurogenesis(birth of new neurons) in most parts of the primate brain, there's somewhat less good evidence for it in the neocortex of humans. silly ethics rules slow research down! >;(
There's also somewhat debateable data on what these new neurons do exactly. What the consequences of them are. The data on their being related to learning/memory and such is a bit muddy. They do get functionally integrated in other species anyway, and there seems to be a link to depression. Possibly lower neurogenesis is what mediates stress inducing depression. And the lag of a few weeks before alot of the SSRIs begin to work seems to fit with the few weeks needed for new neurons to be made and mature.
And just to clear one other thing up, these new neurons aren't being made from mature neurons undergoing mitosis and splitting in two. They're made from multipotent stem cells in the dentate gyrus and along the subventricular zone.
As for humans evolving to become smarter, I'm not really sure that being smarted conveys much evolutionary fitness. After all, don't most/.ers consider themselves to be a bit smarter than average? And the running joke for years has been that none of them get laid.:P Besides, the smart ones are the people who'll use birth control properly right? Instead of just accidently knocking someone up.
Slashdot Mirror
hmm, rather tempted to edit the wikipedia entry to talk about the origins of the puma myth... Probably work the Incans into it somewhere. Now shall I make them protectors, or antagonistic creatures? *think think think*
There are only a few people more qualified to talk about Trek than Roddenberry... I suppose if you believe in God He might be.
As for protection, he live in a starship, not the jungle primeval. I think the durasteel and forcefields around him grant sufficient protection.
As for fashion reasons, I really don't see why the fashion of the 24th century needs to be equivalent to our own. Baldness could be acceptable for fashion reasons. Not encouraged such that everyone gets their hair zapped, but an accepted way of presenting yourself. Short cropped hair on women(ear length) isn't ubiquitous, but it's accepted(at least up here). Women with hair down to their butt isn't common either, but I know a couple women with hair like that and noone points and makes comments about how they should *really* trim a bit off. Why should Picard's choice to be bald be totally out of the question in the 24th century's views of fashion?
How many people do you see nowadays wearing those powdered wigs? They were very fashionable in the 18th century. That's about the same length of time as Trek is from now right?
Sure, I don't need to have intimate knowledge of the Krebs cycle to preside over a case, but I'd like to think that if I saw a case that was largely to do with biochemistry and I knew I was incapable of understanding basic concepts like what glucose is or the function of ATP, then I'd suggest they pick another judge.
I'm pretty sure I already read about the effect that a planet's core cooling would have on/in Abarrach, the world of stone.
That book kind of creeped me out back when it first came out. I was a bit younger then though, and the rather violent necromancy used in the story was scaryish to a fragile young lad like myself.
I'll give you a hint, this book ends badly for many involved.
Damned entertaining though, and I avidly waited for the next book in the series.
You can't win, briancnorton. If you strike the hurricane down by burning propane, the source of hurricanes(our increasingly screwed up environment) shall become more vindictive than you can possibly imagine!
Actually, I'd think that I'd be more likely to try to shoot someone when ambivalent than to try and knife 'em/smack them with a hammer. A gun makes it alot more likely that I'll put the enemy down with minimal immediate risk to myself. I can do it from more than arms length away, and even one bullet in the chest will slow them down enough usually.
:P
The main advantage hammers/knives have over guns IMO is that it's alot harder to accidently hit the wrong person with a hammer than it is to have a bullet miss and hit a bystander.
Up here in Canada we kill alot of each other, but it's incredibly rare that I hear of bystanders getting knifed in a driveby. Now bystanders getting hit by stray bullets, that I hear more often. But still not too much oddly. We just don't seem to shoot each other often, despite the large number of guns here. Dunno why. Maybe we're too stupid as a country to realize the advantages a gun gives one in a fight?
Well, perhaps this researcher doesn't really have the expertise to contribute much in the search for dollars / km^2 solar power?
They need not be totally competitive areas of research. We can have the solar guys working on their projects and those ill-equipped to do solar research working on ways to make our consumption of conventional fuels less nasty.
They're both Good Things To Do as far as I'm concerned.
I assume there are a bunch of slashdotters who've spent time on IRC? There are plenty of people spouting stuff online that they (hopefully) wouldn't say in real life. The only time that computer logging is going to be inhibitory is when your statements can easily be linked back to your actual real life identity by either people you know or The Secret Police Of Scariness.
If everything we did online could easily be traced back to us by our neighbours then yeah, I'd expect we'd be visiting fewer naughty websites, and posting fewer inflammatory remarks. As long as the ability to post as yourself OR as "anonymous" exists then I think we're safe. Our online personas will be squeeky clean(or close enough to it anyway), while in 20 years "Anonymous" is exactly the sort of person you'd expect if you're familiar with 4chan... *cough*
"The day after the election, you best have a paper record saying you voted for my man Mr. McFakename. ... unfortunate if you were to fall down a flight of stairs repeatedly."
It wouldd be most
What I'm subtly alluding to is vote buying/intimidation being possible if you take an official record of your voting behaviours home with you.
Happened to me as well, which was ... confusing.
Then I adjusted my thinking to Microsoft's point of view and tried to figure it out.
Now that IE7 is patched, it's much more secure than Firefox could ever be! Changing IE7 back to default is much like a firewall, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure eh? By trying to get us back using IE7 they're just trying to prevent all the malware from getting on our systems, much like most of the rest of the patches.
It's a bit screwy, but that's the best rationalization I could come up with, anyone got a better one?
While it's not something I've been able to do with many artists, I've enjoyed physically handing money to bands that I liked. Saw Lesbians on Ecstasy last year at a bar/club on my university campus. I hadn't heard of them before, so I grabbed a bunch of mp3s from their debut CD off of IRC or eMule or such. They had an interesting sound in some of their songs so I figured I'd go check 'em out live. I REALLY enjoyed them a lot that way, and have very fond memories of the night. Went up to one of them after the show(they were selling CDs and other merch) and gave 'em some cash in gratitude for a really fun night of dancing, and for their mp3s.
Some of the bands I've been exposed to via mp3s don't exactly tour on this side of the pond, but for cases where it's feasible just handing over cash to an artist, and saying thanks works. You know they got all $X.00 dollars of it, and they also get some positive feedback.
CDs force you to buy all 10/15/20 tracks though. I don't mind paying (CD price) / ( # of tracks) for an individual song assuming the other factors are constant or close to it. I like being able to pick these 6 songs and ignore the rest.
The physical medium is pretty worthless to me. Maybe even negative value since they create more waste and pollution than an additional file download does.
There are occasions where the packaging is nice, but not very often for me. Most of it's just sitting in the garbage or in a drawer where I'd tossed all my CD cases. How much more would you be willing to pay on every CD for the inserts and such? 50 cents? $1.50?
We have a fairly good understanding of the way a rainbow is made, but I can still appreciate it's beauty. Same goes for a wide variety of phenomena.
We understand the physiological make-up of boobs, but they're still pretty interesting and appreciated by a large % of the population. Just because we understand something, doesn't make them less wonderful and amazing. Besides, most people in the near future wont bother/be able to learn about the exact way a mouse brain works, let alone a human one. So those people can still have that ignorant bliss you promote.
While it's a bit of a tangent, regarding your free will comment... Psychology does allow us to make probabilistic predictions about how populations of people will behave in a given situation. That seems to rob us of free will? But at the same time, some sort of regular predictable nature has to exist in order for us to make choices. If I can't use some sort of rudimentary psychology to predict how a girlfriend will react to my gift of a pair of tickets to the superbowl, versus tickets to the theater, then how can I be said to be choosing anything? I need to be able to predict how people will behave, or else I can't make informed choices with my own "free will"
You mention candy makers moving to Canada, so I feel obligated to share the news that Hershey's is moving their Canadian plant to Mexico. It was the biggest employer(400 year-round jobs and 200 seasonal ones) in a small town of about 10,000... I don't see Smiths Falls doing very well in 10 years time unless something major happens to dump cash into it again.
You can read a CBC article on the subject here. Kind of sad, since the plant was apparently still profitable for Hershey's, just not *as profitable* as it could be in Mexico. Still, the workers at the plant had a hand in it, they've been collecting very healthy raises for years, eventually priced themselves out of a job. Sucks for the city and all the other poor bastards who are going to go out of work because of it though. With a huge jump in unemployment there'll be less money to spend at restaurants, etc... etc...
Well, then I'm not too scared. They did a pretty crummy job of whipping me into a frenzied lust for Iranian blood if they're also telling me that it was just crap that he got ahold of. And that he wasn't neccessarily working for the Iranian government.
If you're going to do that, I'd suggest considering the way some languages deal with modified versions of words like warm and hot.
"warm warm" = "hot"
"walk walk" = "walk fast/run"
It could greatly reduce the number of adjectives and verbs(and other stuff) you need in the language.
Actually, it's the *really* small ones(on the order of the mass of maybe half the moon, or smaller) that evaporate very quickly. The supermassive ones radiate at a very low rate and will last many, many, many billions of years. The temperature of the universe(eg: background radiation) will need to drop before they'll be "hotter" than their surroundings. Currently the big black holes are soaking up more radiation than they're emitting(hence, black)
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=MIL F
"Mother I'd Like (to) Fuck"
Well, as nice as a cure for AIDS would be, there are other STDs out there I wouldn't really want to catch. Monogomy is still a good idea, even in a world without AIDS.
:P
Do YOU want a case of genital herpes? Human papillomavirus? They can already cure Chlamydia just fine(if it's detected, which it often isn't), but I still don't want it.
huh? You got my hopes up, but that looks like a normal Debian/Ubuntu tips page to me.
I was hoping for boobies =(
Perhaps you made a typo of your own? Or have some sort of naughty malware on your computer?
Well, they already ARE controlled, aren't they?
...
I thought websites required credit cards or something to verify ages before they showed you naughty stuff.
I, for one, am very skeptical that there is any threat of minors seeing naked people online. Even with free and anonymous internet access, they'd have to somehow prove they're older than 18. That's not something that one can fake easily(eg: just saying they are that old isn't going to cut it)
Huh? That IS all that's needed for alot of sites? And there's this thing called "pea to pea" that lets you get all sorts of vile disgustingly wonderful porn?
In news that's totally unrelated to that revelation, I'm going to go do something else besides read slashdot for a while.
I'll read wikinews... Yes, that's right. Wikinews.
Neuroscience student here, and yes there do appear to be some growth of new neurons in the adult brain, but at vastly reduced numbers. While we have pretty good evidence for neurogenesis(birth of new neurons) in most parts of the primate brain, there's somewhat less good evidence for it in the neocortex of humans. silly ethics rules slow research down! >;(
/.ers consider themselves to be a bit smarter than average? And the running joke for years has been that none of them get laid. :P Besides, the smart ones are the people who'll use birth control properly right? Instead of just accidently knocking someone up.
There's also somewhat debateable data on what these new neurons do exactly. What the consequences of them are. The data on their being related to learning/memory and such is a bit muddy. They do get functionally integrated in other species anyway, and there seems to be a link to depression. Possibly lower neurogenesis is what mediates stress inducing depression. And the lag of a few weeks before alot of the SSRIs begin to work seems to fit with the few weeks needed for new neurons to be made and mature.
And just to clear one other thing up, these new neurons aren't being made from mature neurons undergoing mitosis and splitting in two. They're made from multipotent stem cells in the dentate gyrus and along the subventricular zone.
As for humans evolving to become smarter, I'm not really sure that being smarted conveys much evolutionary fitness. After all, don't most