The aliens would be stuck with using our (extremely primitive) technology. We know pretty well how our computers work, and can figure out most ways to break/hack/crack them ourselves in a short timespan.
Umm... If I were an alien and I just wanted to get rid of all life on planet earth, I'd just use my technology to hurl an object the size of the moon straight at it.
Then I'd sit back and laught at the transmissions of all the arguments on CNN and Fox News about what programs to cut and if taxes can be raised to do something about it until it actually his and no one even bothered to shoot a nuke at it.
If I were in a rush I'd just create a mini-black hole with a reverse fusion device (you know if I had FTL travel I'd have to know how to do that) and collapse the sun killing earth and all the solar system instantaneously without any human ever knowing an alien was involved, but where is the fun in that.
This is in no way unique to computers. You can't apply the same current limits to a residential house and a factory.
Then the OS should be locked down by default and if you know you need more resources then by all by all means unlock it yourself or get someone who knows what they are doing to do it for you.
99% of home users don't need it so why should their boxes be exploited because a handful of people that use certain software might just happen to need it.
No, cancer is when the suicide/repair gene fails to kill the cell off and it keeps replicating uncontrolably. In humans the protein that does this is p53 and does various things like (from the wiki article):
* It can activate DNA repair proteins when it recognizes damaged DNA.
* It can also hold the cell cycle at the G1/S regulation point on DNA damage recognition.
* It can initiate apoptosis, the programmed cell death, if the DNA damage proves to be irrepairable.
Basically, cancer is uncontrolled production of cells with damaged DNA with no means of stoping it or killing it off. Regeneration, if they could pull it off, would hopefully produce cells with non-damaged or non-mutated DNA.
The key word in "settling down" is settle. If you're fine with that - great. Just don't delude yourself into thinking it's some grandious thing of another nature that you've concocted in your own mind to rationalize and justify the quality.
I raise you bull and call the shit.;)
No one... I mean no one has to settle for anyone. Unless you live in India, Pakistan, or some other nation where they have arranged your marriage at birth, no one forces you to marry anyone.
If you don't find that person, maybe you should occupy your time with doing other things more important. The main goal of life is not about finding someone else to make you happy. It is not right nor a privledge.
Frankly, if I didn't find people I didn't mind being with, then I'd just be single for the rest of my life and if you can't find happiness with yourself then you are just shit out of luck in the game of life.
Get a job, become an artist, be a priest, write a book, travel the world, play video games, go to clubs, join the army, sit on the street corner and yell at people or do something else to occupy your time with rather than saying "oh well this is the first person to come along and i think that i have sex with them i'll be happy so i'll give up everything else i enjoy on this gamble".
I have yet to hear explanations for why temperatures actually DROPPED from the 1940s to the 1970s despite an increase in our use of automobiles and other gases.
The kind where a man puts he thing in the womans thing one night and hopes she doesn't call him the next day?
Seriously, people need to learn sex and love are two different things.
Just because you have found someone that will have sex with you doesn't mean they make a good husband/wife.
True love is when you found someone who you emotionally bond with and make passionate love to, but if you never could have sex with each other for the rest of your life, you'd still want to hang with each other for the next 50 years.
If I want my child to have a TV to watch PBS and play educational games I've approved, who the hell are you to tell me, the parent, that I shouldn't?
I just told you that you have the choice and that it is your responsibility regulate what the child watches. What is the problem?
If he/she is so out of control in that he/she is playing or watching things you don't approve of then why aren't you taking the TV away from them?
I'm not asking people to beat their own kid or anything. Just take a bit more personal responsibility because government legislation won't solve bad parenting.
Just think if they heated the water using a critical-sized lump of plutonium --
Yeah, but slow down if you are a contractor beware when driving on the highway with one of these in the back of your truck. If you hit 88mph you will see some serious shit.
In many Asian circles, saving face is more important than life itself sometimes.
Most westerners would disagree, but face and honor has been an extreme facet of Japan, China, and Korea for centuries (if not thousand of years). Although I will have to point out that most Asians don't take it to that extreme, but suicide rates over failure (ie students failing classes, CEO failing a company, government official commited of wrong doing) than western society.
The laws say, in effect, "it is the right of parents, and parents alone, to determine whether the child should have GTA."
Then why make a law? Why are they wasting legistlature time with this? If a parent can't keep their kid from having a PS2, Xbox, or computer and then even fail to prevent the child from obtaining a $50 or more purchase then why the hell are they giving them money!!!
Do kids go out and buy their own consoles with lunch money? I don't think so...
If the kid is earning enough money on his own with a job then perhaps you should be parenting them, because obviously if he has money it isn't that hard to pay an 18 old friend in highschool to go out and buy these games for him...
You can't really hide a console and games like you can hide a dirty magazine. If you don't want your kid playing these games then don't give them a friggin TV. If they bitch and moan and you give in you are probaly going to buy them GTA for them anyways because you fail at parenting.
These parents should be damn thankful their kids aren't spending money on booze and cigarettes because they obviously don't know what the hell their own kids are doing.
The first basically adheres that reality could possibly simulated and everything is mearly conjured in a simulation and the second is the same but more on the lines of reality is nothing more than information fed into your brain.
Based on what consciousness is we have to assume that everything that we perceive is physical and adheres to rules.
The laws of physics for all we really know are just assumptions based on observations of reality. Our observations in turn actually are not the laws of physics. If reality spontaneously changed then our observations and perceptions would be incorrect interpretations of reality, however we would most likely continue (or at least attempt) to grasp on to our previous notions of the laws of physics.
But as I said previously, our behavior is based on our perceptions and hence what we do because of our behavior affects physical reality. Nothing is independent.*
*But if you wanted to be Buddhist about it then neither reality or perception is truly dependant of each other because both could exist without the other (ie all living organism in the universe died but the universe continued with no one to observe it... Or the reverse, as a person that has become trapped in a vegetative dream like state unable to interact with physical reality. They could still perceive their dreams, thoughts, and mind but no more than that.) Whoa I just had a moment of enlightenment here... At work no less.
You cannot change reality by perceiving it a different way.
If that perceiving changes your (or other's) behavior and interaction with reality then yes it does.
If today everyone spontaneously believed in the Flying Spaghetti Monster and that eating spaghetti was blasphemy, then all companies that produced spaghetti would go out of business, hence changing reality (at least those who work at the spaghetti factory).
Reality is not independent of changes in perception.
Perception is not independent of changes in reality.*
*Unless you are blind, deaf, and are paralyzed and have no skin or external organs to interact with the outside world but that is usually defined as being dead.
Why is making fun of someone for their place of birth any different from making fun of someone for their race? Neither can be controlled by that person.
Because you can change the way you behave and what you know, but not the color of your skin.
If you can't overcome the shortcomings of your upbringing... Then that is quite your fault. Hell... I grew up in North Carolina... Hung out in mountain trailer parks most of my teen life with the worst rednecks you have seen. Yet 10 years later, I am working a tech job in the Philadelphia metro area.
People don't think I am ignorant when they find out where I am from, but I couldn't blame them if they thought that if I decided to not better myself and worked at a Wal Mart for the rest of my life.
If I wanted to raise 10 billion dollars for world peace, and no one gave me any money, does that mean that EVERYONE is against world peace?
No. It could mean following things:
A.) EVERYONE hasn't heard about your plan for world peace because you didn't advertise. B.) EVERYONE has no money to give. C.) EVERYONE is suspect that you are not really interested in world peace and think you intend to blow the money on something else. D.) EVERYONE is not interested in world peace. E.) All of the above.
This is exactly why I left the Episcopal Church. It's become a theology zoo with every crazy idea expressed and scripture becomes only an afterthought, which even when it is consulted, is reconstructed and made to mean exactly something other than what the inspired writers meant when they put quill to paper. Most churches today are so infested with liberal theology, or its evil cousin, neo-Orthodoxy, that debates like this even take place. God's word used to mean something once. In most churches, it doesn't anymore.
Well the problem is that it never did in a sense... One of my Jewish friends used to study Hebrew as a language and one day we were sitting around watching history channel and they had that episode about the Bible Code.
This started off a religious discussion where I pointed out that most modern day Bibles should probaly be retranslated to avoid transcription problems from Hebrew to Greek to Latin and then to English and she pointed out to me that ancient Hebrew has no vowels leaving a great deal open to interpetation. Hence, Jewish scholars have to often assume what the text meant by context and oral tradition.
If someone sat down and knew little of context or the oral traditions that you could often get a different message.
The new testament also has the problem of mostly being written years after the events in common language (often in Greek and then translated into Latin) and then later having the Council of Nacea determining which texts would go in the bible and those which do not.
It is also pointed out that many groups in the middle ages that believed in the fallacy of the Bible and that it was a man made object (like the Cathars of France) were brutally persecuted as heretics.
Frankly, the bible has no divine instructions from god and no regulations on this matter so we must assume that it is very well possible that it has had interference for people that do not have your faiths interest in mind.
If you need something hard coded and unchanging... Well... There is Islam. The Quaran specifically declares that it should not be translated and should always remain in its original Arabic and is the direct word from god (or at least an Archangel).
The bible does not proclaim this... Nor does any of Christianity's founders. Just church leaders who state this centuries after the fact.
Slashdot Mirror
You can't fit a 13cm disc drive into a standard enclosure! Who do they think they're going to sell these to!
SysAdmins with turntables?
The aliens would be stuck with using our (extremely primitive) technology. We know pretty well how our computers work, and can figure out most ways to break/hack/crack them ourselves in a short timespan.
Umm... If I were an alien and I just wanted to get rid of all life on planet earth, I'd just use my technology to hurl an object the size of the moon straight at it.
Then I'd sit back and laught at the transmissions of all the arguments on CNN and Fox News about what programs to cut and if taxes can be raised to do something about it until it actually his and no one even bothered to shoot a nuke at it.
If I were in a rush I'd just create a mini-black hole with a reverse fusion device (you know if I had FTL travel I'd have to know how to do that) and collapse the sun killing earth and all the solar system instantaneously without any human ever knowing an alien was involved, but where is the fun in that.
This is in no way unique to computers. You can't apply the same current limits to a residential house and a factory.
Then the OS should be locked down by default and if you know you need more resources then by all by all means unlock it yourself or get someone who knows what they are doing to do it for you.
99% of home users don't need it so why should their boxes be exploited because a handful of people that use certain software might just happen to need it.
You fail to see why? Maybe that's because you didn't read the manual, which says:
Manuals are for pansies! Now if you'll exscuse me while I repair a computer without one of those electrostatic wrist bands.
No, cancer is when the suicide/repair gene fails to kill the cell off and it keeps replicating uncontrolably. In humans the protein that does this is p53 and does various things like (from the wiki article):
* It can activate DNA repair proteins when it recognizes damaged DNA.
* It can also hold the cell cycle at the G1/S regulation point on DNA damage recognition.
* It can initiate apoptosis, the programmed cell death, if the DNA damage proves to be irrepairable.
Basically, cancer is uncontrolled production of cells with damaged DNA with no means of stoping it or killing it off. Regeneration, if they could pull it off, would hopefully produce cells with non-damaged or non-mutated DNA.
The key word in "settling down" is settle. If you're fine with that - great. Just don't delude yourself into thinking it's some grandious thing of another nature that you've concocted in your own mind to rationalize and justify the quality.
;)
I raise you bull and call the shit.
No one... I mean no one has to settle for anyone. Unless you live in India, Pakistan, or some other nation where they have arranged your marriage at birth, no one forces you to marry anyone.
If you don't find that person, maybe you should occupy your time with doing other things more important. The main goal of life is not about finding someone else to make you happy. It is not right nor a privledge.
Frankly, if I didn't find people I didn't mind being with, then I'd just be single for the rest of my life and if you can't find happiness with yourself then you are just shit out of luck in the game of life.
Get a job, become an artist, be a priest, write a book, travel the world, play video games, go to clubs, join the army, sit on the street corner and yell at people or do something else to occupy your time with rather than saying "oh well this is the first person to come along and i think that i have sex with them i'll be happy so i'll give up everything else i enjoy on this gamble".
No thanks. I'd rather be alone.
I have yet to hear explanations for why temperatures actually DROPPED from the 1940s to the 1970s despite an increase in our use of automobiles and other gases.
Above ground nuclear testing.
The US government cant fight off a bunch of dude with AKs and home made bombs, and this guy from Canada thinks we are building a moon base?
Not if the moon's current residents have anything to say about it!
What kind of relationship is that?
The kind where a man puts he thing in the womans thing one night and hopes she doesn't call him the next day?
Seriously, people need to learn sex and love are two different things.
Just because you have found someone that will have sex with you doesn't mean they make a good husband/wife.
True love is when you found someone who you emotionally bond with and make passionate love to, but if you never could have sex with each other for the rest of your life, you'd still want to hang with each other for the next 50 years.
Or have consumers bought into the "I need my data everywhere" ideal promised by the wireless people
Personally, I won't be satisfied til I can surf Google from anywhere in the world direct from my brain.
Of course once they figure out how to do that... I might not leave the house very much.
everything will be wireless one day
As soon as they figure out how to transmit power over wireless...
If I want my child to have a TV to watch PBS and play educational games I've approved, who the hell are you to tell me, the parent, that I shouldn't?
I just told you that you have the choice and that it is your responsibility regulate what the child watches. What is the problem?
If he/she is so out of control in that he/she is playing or watching things you don't approve of then why aren't you taking the TV away from them?
I'm not asking people to beat their own kid or anything. Just take a bit more personal responsibility because government legislation won't solve bad parenting.
Just think if they heated the water using a critical-sized lump of plutonium --
Yeah, but slow down if you are a contractor beware when driving on the highway with one of these in the back of your truck. If you hit 88mph you will see some serious shit.
In many Asian circles, saving face is more important than life itself sometimes.
Most westerners would disagree, but face and honor has been an extreme facet of Japan, China, and Korea for centuries (if not thousand of years). Although I will have to point out that most Asians don't take it to that extreme, but suicide rates over failure (ie students failing classes, CEO failing a company, government official commited of wrong doing) than western society.
Oh sorry this comment wasn't directed at you... Just the situation and bad parenting around the USA.
The laws say, in effect, "it is the right of parents, and parents alone, to determine whether the child should have GTA."
Then why make a law? Why are they wasting legistlature time with this? If a parent can't keep their kid from having a PS2, Xbox, or computer and then even fail to prevent the child from obtaining a $50 or more purchase then why the hell are they giving them money!!!
Do kids go out and buy their own consoles with lunch money? I don't think so...
If the kid is earning enough money on his own with a job then perhaps you should be parenting them, because obviously if he has money it isn't that hard to pay an 18 old friend in highschool to go out and buy these games for him...
You can't really hide a console and games like you can hide a dirty magazine. If you don't want your kid playing these games then don't give them a friggin TV. If they bitch and moan and you give in you are probaly going to buy them GTA for them anyways because you fail at parenting.
These parents should be damn thankful their kids aren't spending money on booze and cigarettes because they obviously don't know what the hell their own kids are doing.
Heck, I consider David Grossman
Wasn't he they guy who said Doom could train marines to kill people?
that people who play games are but one step removed from pedophiles or suicide bombers in the social hierarchy of evil.
Stop me know if you heard this one.
So a priest, terrorist, and gamer all walk into a bar...
Well then... The Spaghetti factories works will get overtime and all will rejoice ;)
And reality will still be affected by perception.
And to add on to that...
y
As this subject rarely comes up I would like to also point out Simulated Reaity and Brain in a Vat theories:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulated_reality
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain-in-a-vat_theor
The first basically adheres that reality could possibly simulated and everything is mearly conjured in a simulation and the second is the same but more on the lines of reality is nothing more than information fed into your brain.
Based on what consciousness is we have to assume that everything that we perceive is physical and adheres to rules.
The laws of physics for all we really know are just assumptions based on observations of reality. Our observations in turn actually are not the laws of physics. If reality spontaneously changed then our observations and perceptions would be incorrect interpretations of reality, however we would most likely continue (or at least attempt) to grasp on to our previous notions of the laws of physics.
But as I said previously, our behavior is based on our perceptions and hence what we do because of our behavior affects physical reality. Nothing is independent.*
*But if you wanted to be Buddhist about it then neither reality or perception is truly dependant of each other because both could exist without the other (ie all living organism in the universe died but the universe continued with no one to observe it... Or the reverse, as a person that has become trapped in a vegetative dream like state unable to interact with physical reality. They could still perceive their dreams, thoughts, and mind but no more than that.) Whoa I just had a moment of enlightenment here... At work no less.
Who cares about what words mean? The meaning of things is defined by interpretation - it's not reality in the slightest.
Because certain words can make people go do things... Like kill other people and blow up things.
Hence words change reality.
You cannot change reality by perceiving it a different way.
If that perceiving changes your (or other's) behavior and interaction with reality then yes it does.
If today everyone spontaneously believed in the Flying Spaghetti Monster and that eating spaghetti was blasphemy, then all companies that produced spaghetti would go out of business, hence changing reality (at least those who work at the spaghetti factory).
Reality is not independent of changes in perception.
Perception is not independent of changes in reality.*
*Unless you are blind, deaf, and are paralyzed and have no skin or external organs to interact with the outside world but that is usually defined as being dead.
Why is making fun of someone for their place of birth any different from making fun of someone for their race? Neither can be controlled by that person.
Because you can change the way you behave and what you know, but not the color of your skin.
If you can't overcome the shortcomings of your upbringing... Then that is quite your fault. Hell... I grew up in North Carolina... Hung out in mountain trailer parks most of my teen life with the worst rednecks you have seen. Yet 10 years later, I am working a tech job in the Philadelphia metro area.
People don't think I am ignorant when they find out where I am from, but I couldn't blame them if they thought that if I decided to not better myself and worked at a Wal Mart for the rest of my life.
If I wanted to raise 10 billion dollars for world peace, and no one gave me any money, does that mean that EVERYONE is against world peace?
No. It could mean following things:
A.) EVERYONE hasn't heard about your plan for world peace because you didn't advertise.
B.) EVERYONE has no money to give.
C.) EVERYONE is suspect that you are not really interested in world peace and think you intend to blow the money on something else.
D.) EVERYONE is not interested in world peace.
E.) All of the above.
This is exactly why I left the Episcopal Church. It's become a theology zoo with every crazy idea expressed and scripture becomes only an afterthought, which even when it is consulted, is reconstructed and made to mean exactly something other than what the inspired writers meant when they put quill to paper. Most churches today are so infested with liberal theology, or its evil cousin, neo-Orthodoxy, that debates like this even take place. God's word used to mean something once. In most churches, it doesn't anymore.
Well the problem is that it never did in a sense... One of my Jewish friends used to study Hebrew as a language and one day we were sitting around watching history channel and they had that episode about the Bible Code.
This started off a religious discussion where I pointed out that most modern day Bibles should probaly be retranslated to avoid transcription problems from Hebrew to Greek to Latin and then to English and she pointed out to me that ancient Hebrew has no vowels leaving a great deal open to interpetation. Hence, Jewish scholars have to often assume what the text meant by context and oral tradition.
If someone sat down and knew little of context or the oral traditions that you could often get a different message.
The new testament also has the problem of mostly being written years after the events in common language (often in Greek and then translated into Latin) and then later having the Council of Nacea determining which texts would go in the bible and those which do not.
It is also pointed out that many groups in the middle ages that believed in the fallacy of the Bible and that it was a man made object (like the Cathars of France) were brutally persecuted as heretics.
Frankly, the bible has no divine instructions from god and no regulations on this matter so we must assume that it is very well possible that it has had interference for people that do not have your faiths interest in mind.
If you need something hard coded and unchanging... Well... There is Islam. The Quaran specifically declares that it should not be translated and should always remain in its original Arabic and is the direct word from god (or at least an Archangel).
The bible does not proclaim this... Nor does any of Christianity's founders. Just church leaders who state this centuries after the fact.