Stalin as a child went to seminary school to become an orthodox priest. He never did finish due to personal problems, but it is something to keep in mind when you look at Stalin as a person.
And the obligatory reply is, who has been responsible for more mass murder? Christians or Atheists?
Good question. Technically Stalin and Mao are responsible for the most mass murders.
Now technically, Stalin wasn't a true atheist per say according to his contemporaries. He did sort of believe in some type of god and afterlife, but wasn't much on the organized religion thing and promoted forced state atheism. He relaxed some of the rules during World War 2 during the German invasion and focuses everyone's attention on the Great Patriotic War which had religious over tones.
Mao wasn't as much anti-religion as he was anti-intellectual. Most of his victims weren't really religious and the biggest religious victims ended up being Tibetan Buddhists. However, one could really blame the CIA for dropping the ball on that country.
Which leaves us with Hitler and the holocaust. Again, Hitler was not an atheist although not a Christian and his contemporaries noted his often mocking of organized religion in general and his involvment in Pagan type of groups.
His persecution against the Jews was not simply because he didn't like them, but rather a deep hatred of Jewry going back since medevial times. See... The German Crusade in which rather going to Muslim lands to liberate them, they stayed at home and focused on Jewish people.
Not to mention this lasted all the way up until Hitler's time and was actually one of the reasons for the Nazi's party success.
So yeah... Technically religion was responsible indirectly at least for the Holocaust.
I can't find it right now but there is also the instance in the 1800's about the civil war in China that was started by a guy who thought he was Jesus's brother. I can't seem to find it on Wiki right now since the names spelling evades me. But that costed several million lives as well.
I'm not defending either religion or atheism, but in general often times you can't black and white the issue since usually religion and politics are always intertwined.
I love my cable company. In fact I am considering switching *away* from Verizon telephone service and getting Charter's phone service.
It appears you haven't had to deal with Comcast.
To make a good Slashdot analogy.
Comparing Comcast with Verizon is akin to comparing Sauron with Saruman.
Sure they are both evil, but I'd rather deal with Saruman if I had to choose one or the other. Considering he is more human and would be satisfied with mortal acquisitions rather than Sauron's desire to destroy the world as we know it.
You generally can't just stick probes in the ocean and create industrial levels of hydrogen.
True, but if you have enough nuclear power to run the desalination plants to make fresh water and then also produce hydrogen.
Hydrogen is not an energy source and no one expects to use the oceans for a magic tap an oil field. The reason why hydrogen is so desirable is that it does not release greenhouse gases into the environment like fossil fuels, ethanol, and whatnot.
I don't think they will transport hydrogen to your house instead of regular electricity, but rather to put into your cars so they can run much like they do gasoline now.
Our only other choices are fossil fuels, which will run out eventually, or ethanol which tend to require more energy and land to grow those crops and promote more global warming than hydrogen would.
I guess if they figure out a way to pure electric cars working in such a manner it doesn't take a few hours to refuel then perhaps that might work as well.
Once reached, this feedback loop will continue until all the ice is melted during the summer, and there is NOTHING we can do about it with current technology.
Except use a few nuclear bombs to blow up a few volcanoes to put more sulfur into the atmosphere to bring on a little ice age.
Although, something tells me this might not be the best idea... But don't say we don't have the technology.
Oh yes... I almost forgot about that gem. I used to just waste time with that futzing around hours on end with spell combinations and creations and exploring. I never did really figure out the main quest or get to the ending...
I really want to play Oblivion 2, but my poor computer would never be able to run it properly.
Because you compared it and you actually found it REALLY superior to the other products in that market sector, or because someone told you it's cool and that you should have it?
It was a Christmas present and I didn't ask for it.
Yet, I found it quite superior than any other MP3 player I had owned previous by light years.
So its grown on me and I'll most likely get another Nano when the capacity reaches 16gb.
But yeah... I think it was bought for me because it was cool.
Although if it was a crappy gift, I'd doubt I would be considering another iPod in the future.
In fact, all this economic navel gazing is only possible in rich capitalist countries where we have more time for self-righteousness because we don't have to spend so much time just getting enough food to live.
For some reason I think you are being sarcastic, but at the same time I can't really see people in Somalia or Sudan having much ado about navel gazing either.
The thing is that they're paying less and getting less, and getting it faster. Nobody ever made the claim that there weren't any reasons to get CDs. There are tradeoffs to digital downloads.
True, but certain entrepreneurs *coughs* are working on better competition for digital downloads. Aka... No DRM and better formats.
Although, this trade off means that you aren't going to get RIAA artists, but you would be amazed at the quality of Indie artists these days.
Wow, a post from the future! What's it like in 2036?
Whoops! Sorry about that!
Either my typing is wrong, or I am a traveler from the future and forgot what year I am in and you won't live long enough to enjoy the benefits of future science.
For those of you over 30 ignore what I just said. For those of you under 30... Welcome to the world of tomorrow!
if only I could live to see through the revolution in medical science that's happening now. I'm probably too old though, being in my 30's, but one day I wouldn't be surprised if limbs and eyes could be regrown, cancer is understood and easily treated, a great number of ills to be cured... sigh, if only time were not an issue.
Well if you believe in Quantum Immortality then chances are you can only exist in a universe that such events happen in which scientific progress lets you exist forever.
As were all those versions of you in those universes which failed to acheive such scientific progress... Well... Died off.
Of course quantum immortality only works for the observer, so in theory since I am writing this post and I am the observer (vs you reading the post and then you are the observer) in my universe, you could die quite easily... And vice versa.
Besides if you are 30, by the time you are 70 it will be 2076 and if you consider all the progress made from 1906 to 1946 it will be at least interesting.
How can you structure a CEO's (or other CxO's) salary/bonus plan so that their incentive is to keep the company productive and viable instead of "shedding" all the "unprofitable" sections (such as IT) and outsourcing them to raise short term revenues, cash in the bonus and leave for another company?
Tie the CEO's yearly salary/bonus plan to a stock option plan they can't sell until 10 years from that date. Make it pretty lethal and impossible to sell or get any benefits until then.
Perhaps, make it worth their time by giving them a normal yearly salary, but the big bucks don't come until long term.
Hence, giving them a strong desire for long term growth rather than short term.
I'm sorry, but taking nature survival classes, knowing how to hunt, or experience on a farm will NOT save you in the situation that James Kim was in.
I hope I don't come across like a troll, but when I was a Boy Scout, I do remember them telling us if we ever find ourselves lost to stay put as long as possible unless in immediate danger.
As far as I remember this was due to the fact that if you travel, you risk being injured or suffer from hypothermia or dehydration.
Would I remember this if I were ever lost? Maybe if I didn't panic, but I would have no idea.
What would have happened if you told the people in 1800 that in 1876 bell would invent a telephone which would make it possible to talk with everyone in the world. Would they have believed you? No.
I forgot to reply to this part in my previous post...
Better yet, explain to someone in 1906 (you know like 2006) that in 40 years (1946) we will have bombs that can destroy cities in one swoop, self guided rockets that can travel thousands of miles, jets that can almost break the sound barrier, and airplanes than can cross the Atlantic.
Not to mention Autobahns, tanks, submarines, blood transfusions, TV, radar, and what else have you.
Not to mention the amazing cryptography in electronics they have those days during WWII...
So yeah, a lot of these technologies are far off, but keep in mind that we are about to see some amazing things in our life time.
Do you believe people now when they say in 100 years you won't sit in front of computers anymore because they're wired into your neural system and use wireless power?
Oh lets be a bit more imaginative.
We probably won't "sit" in a front of a computer per say, but we could emulate whatever computer we ever wanted to be projected into our visual cortex even though we may be sitting at an empty desk.
Heck... I could emulate everything from ENIAC, to Atari ST, Cray, or something more recent if I wanted to.
I suppose if I was a collector of sorts I could could have the actual hardware, but due to repair and degradations of such systems, it would be better to emulate the computer rather than keep actual magnetic storage devices around.
So yeah... In 100 years we won't need actual "computers" sitting on our desks. However, we could project whatever we feel like working with in our "Second Life" or whatever we are calling it then.
What I'd really like to know is why they're pushing this technology so hard and fast. Does it make sense to go straight to an urban environment when only four constestants even managed to finish the last challenge?
Because IEDs are the #1 killer of US troops in Iraq. Normal combat casualties (gunfire, rocket, and mortar attacks) are almost negligible compared to the number of troops that are killed are injured during convoys or patrols due to roadside bombs.
Getting the human soldier out of the equation would solve this problem fairly quickly.
Also, it benefits the military with not having to use manpower for mundane tasks and not worry about soldier's being fatigued for running convoy duty for over an 18 hour shift.
Slashdot Mirror
Stalin as a child went to seminary school to become an orthodox priest. He never did finish due to personal problems, but it is something to keep in mind when you look at Stalin as a person.
And the obligatory reply is, who has been responsible for more mass murder? Christians or Atheists?
Good question. Technically Stalin and Mao are responsible for the most mass murders.
Now technically, Stalin wasn't a true atheist per say according to his contemporaries. He did sort of believe in some type of god and afterlife, but wasn't much on the organized religion thing and promoted forced state atheism. He relaxed some of the rules during World War 2 during the German invasion and focuses everyone's attention on the Great Patriotic War which had religious over tones.
Mao wasn't as much anti-religion as he was anti-intellectual. Most of his victims weren't really religious and the biggest religious victims ended up being Tibetan Buddhists. However, one could really blame the CIA for dropping the ball on that country.
Which leaves us with Hitler and the holocaust. Again, Hitler was not an atheist although not a Christian and his contemporaries noted his often mocking of organized religion in general and his involvment in Pagan type of groups.
His persecution against the Jews was not simply because he didn't like them, but rather a deep hatred of Jewry going back since medevial times. See... The German Crusade in which rather going to Muslim lands to liberate them, they stayed at home and focused on Jewish people.
Not to mention this lasted all the way up until Hitler's time and was actually one of the reasons for the Nazi's party success.
So yeah... Technically religion was responsible indirectly at least for the Holocaust.
I can't find it right now but there is also the instance in the 1800's about the civil war in China that was started by a guy who thought he was Jesus's brother. I can't seem to find it on Wiki right now since the names spelling evades me. But that costed several million lives as well.
I'm not defending either religion or atheism, but in general often times you can't black and white the issue since usually religion and politics are always intertwined.
20 Million Years.
Well that was plenty of enough time to evolve into something that can develop an industrial civilization and subjugate all other sentient beings.
If they didn't want to go extinct they could have spent all that time developing their own space program and left.
Or nuclear weapons depending if they were not in a "good mood" kind of species.
I love my cable company. In fact I am considering switching *away* from Verizon telephone service and getting Charter's phone service.
It appears you haven't had to deal with Comcast.
To make a good Slashdot analogy.
Comparing Comcast with Verizon is akin to comparing Sauron with Saruman.
Sure they are both evil, but I'd rather deal with Saruman if I had to choose one or the other. Considering he is more human and would be satisfied with mortal acquisitions rather than Sauron's desire to destroy the world as we know it.
Hope that made sense.
The only way to see if this works is to break the fibre connection and see if it notices.
What happens if you splice the line and put a repeater in that also reads the data passing through it?
Fiber optics are tappable you know.
You may notice a short downtime...
You generally can't just stick probes in the ocean and create industrial levels of hydrogen.
True, but if you have enough nuclear power to run the desalination plants to make fresh water and then also produce hydrogen.
Hydrogen is not an energy source and no one expects to use the oceans for a magic tap an oil field. The reason why hydrogen is so desirable is that it does not release greenhouse gases into the environment like fossil fuels, ethanol, and whatnot.
I don't think they will transport hydrogen to your house instead of regular electricity, but rather to put into your cars so they can run much like they do gasoline now.
Our only other choices are fossil fuels, which will run out eventually, or ethanol which tend to require more energy and land to grow those crops and promote more global warming than hydrogen would.
I guess if they figure out a way to pure electric cars working in such a manner it doesn't take a few hours to refuel then perhaps that might work as well.
Or you could just use Neo Office which is just Open Office wrapped in a decent OS X interface (rather than messing around with X11).
Currently it only uses Open Office 2.0.3 code
Once reached, this feedback loop will continue until all the ice is melted during the summer, and there is NOTHING we can do about it with current technology.
Except use a few nuclear bombs to blow up a few volcanoes to put more sulfur into the atmosphere to bring on a little ice age.
Although, something tells me this might not be the best idea... But don't say we don't have the technology.
If the North Pole melts alone... Then no.
But Chances are that Greenland will almost melt in the process.
Therefore we will notice an increase in sea level if the Arctic ice melts but it will be due to Greenland ice melting.
It physically can't be different.
True, but it will be hanging out with that extra water from Greenland.
Oblivion.
Oh yes... I almost forgot about that gem. I used to just waste time with that futzing around hours on end with spell combinations and creations and exploring. I never did really figure out the main quest or get to the ending...
I really want to play Oblivion 2, but my poor computer would never be able to run it properly.
Because you compared it and you actually found it REALLY superior to the other products in that market sector, or because someone told you it's cool and that you should have it?
It was a Christmas present and I didn't ask for it.
Yet, I found it quite superior than any other MP3 player I had owned previous by light years.
So its grown on me and I'll most likely get another Nano when the capacity reaches 16gb.
But yeah... I think it was bought for me because it was cool.
Although if it was a crappy gift, I'd doubt I would be considering another iPod in the future.
In fact, all this economic navel gazing is only possible in rich capitalist countries where we have more time for self-righteousness because we don't have to spend so much time just getting enough food to live.
For some reason I think you are being sarcastic, but at the same time I can't really see people in Somalia or Sudan having much ado about navel gazing either.
I miss the days of long games.. i don't want something with 8-12 hours of game play..
The sad thing is that I consider Fallout 2 to be better than most games today even with its dated game engine.
The story was that good.
The thing is that they're paying less and getting less, and getting it faster. Nobody ever made the claim that there weren't any reasons to get CDs. There are tradeoffs to digital downloads.
True, but certain entrepreneurs *coughs* are working on better competition for digital downloads. Aka... No DRM and better formats.
Although, this trade off means that you aren't going to get RIAA artists, but you would be amazed at the quality of Indie artists these days.
Wow, a post from the future! What's it like in 2036?
Whoops! Sorry about that!
Either my typing is wrong, or I am a traveler from the future and forgot what year I am in and you won't live long enough to enjoy the benefits of future science.
For those of you over 30 ignore what I just said.
For those of you under 30... Welcome to the world of tomorrow!
if only I could live to see through the revolution in medical science that's happening now. I'm probably too old though, being in my 30's, but one day I wouldn't be surprised if limbs and eyes could be regrown, cancer is understood and easily treated, a great number of ills to be cured... sigh, if only time were not an issue.
Well if you believe in Quantum Immortality then chances are you can only exist in a universe that such events happen in which scientific progress lets you exist forever.
As were all those versions of you in those universes which failed to acheive such scientific progress... Well... Died off.
Of course quantum immortality only works for the observer, so in theory since I am writing this post and I am the observer (vs you reading the post and then you are the observer) in my universe, you could die quite easily... And vice versa.
Besides if you are 30, by the time you are 70 it will be 2076 and if you consider all the progress made from 1906 to 1946 it will be at least interesting.
If I haven't gotten a whiff of my cat's litter yet, it is in neither state of smelling fresh or stinky?
Or if it does smell stinky, I can be certain in another universe it smells like roses?
How can you structure a CEO's (or other CxO's) salary/bonus plan so that their incentive is to keep the company productive and viable instead of "shedding" all the "unprofitable" sections (such as IT) and outsourcing them to raise short term revenues, cash in the bonus and leave for another company?
Tie the CEO's yearly salary/bonus plan to a stock option plan they can't sell until 10 years from that date. Make it pretty lethal and impossible to sell or get any benefits until then.
Perhaps, make it worth their time by giving them a normal yearly salary, but the big bucks don't come until long term.
Hence, giving them a strong desire for long term growth rather than short term.
If they can put no more than 30G in a notebook drive, then I think it'll take a couple product generations for that to happen.
I'd be fine with 30gb with a laptop. Desktop no, but I'm looking for battery life and weight with laptop rather than storage.
I don't play games, do development, or even watch many movies on laptops so I could see this would be handy.
If you did need to do those things... Then not so handy.
I'm sorry, but taking nature survival classes, knowing how to hunt, or experience on a farm will NOT save you in the situation that James Kim was in.
I hope I don't come across like a troll, but when I was a Boy Scout, I do remember them telling us if we ever find ourselves lost to stay put as long as possible unless in immediate danger.
As far as I remember this was due to the fact that if you travel, you risk being injured or suffer from hypothermia or dehydration.
Would I remember this if I were ever lost? Maybe if I didn't panic, but I would have no idea.
What would have happened if you told the people in 1800 that in 1876 bell would invent a telephone which would make it possible to talk with everyone in the world. Would they have believed you? No.
I forgot to reply to this part in my previous post...
Better yet, explain to someone in 1906 (you know like 2006) that in 40 years (1946) we will have bombs that can destroy cities in one swoop, self guided rockets that can travel thousands of miles, jets that can almost break the sound barrier, and airplanes than can cross the Atlantic.
Not to mention Autobahns, tanks, submarines, blood transfusions, TV, radar, and what else have you.
Not to mention the amazing cryptography in electronics they have those days during WWII...
So yeah, a lot of these technologies are far off, but keep in mind that we are about to see some amazing things in our life time.
Do you believe people now when they say in 100 years you won't sit in front of computers anymore because they're wired into your neural system and use wireless power?
Oh lets be a bit more imaginative.
We probably won't "sit" in a front of a computer per say, but we could emulate whatever computer we ever wanted to be projected into our visual cortex even though we may be sitting at an empty desk.
Heck... I could emulate everything from ENIAC, to Atari ST, Cray, or something more recent if I wanted to.
I suppose if I was a collector of sorts I could could have the actual hardware, but due to repair and degradations of such systems, it would be better to emulate the computer rather than keep actual magnetic storage devices around.
So yeah... In 100 years we won't need actual "computers" sitting on our desks. However, we could project whatever we feel like working with in our "Second Life" or whatever we are calling it then.
Wherever they're going to hold this, I will be avoiding.
Personally, I was going avoid Iraq and Afghanistan too, but not because of robot drivers.
What I'd really like to know is why they're pushing this technology so hard and fast. Does it make sense to go straight to an urban environment when only four constestants even managed to finish the last challenge?
Because IEDs are the #1 killer of US troops in Iraq. Normal combat casualties (gunfire, rocket, and mortar attacks) are almost negligible compared to the number of troops that are killed are injured during convoys or patrols due to roadside bombs.
Getting the human soldier out of the equation would solve this problem fairly quickly.
Also, it benefits the military with not having to use manpower for mundane tasks and not worry about soldier's being fatigued for running convoy duty for over an 18 hour shift.