Is it a parody? Comedy?
on
Iron Sky Trailer
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· Score: 5, Insightful
Looking at the trailer, I couldn't quite figure out if they are going for a dark, true sci-fi kind of work, or if it will be a spoof/comedy.
The bird scene at the end of the trailer may give a clue here...but otherwise...am I being dense? (Note to self, never ask this rhetorically on Slashdot...)
They have needed Macs on-board Enterprise for a long time. First there was that blue screen of death when they were head to head with a Romulan vessel. Then there was the malware that kept putting male enhancement spam on the viewscreen. Picard says "Make it so" and they're stuck waiting for Geordi's new "Vista" thing to boot up...
Wait, did that say Macs gaining a bigger role "on" the Enterprise, or "in" the enterprise...
This is one (among many) good reason to not tolerate the "surveillance society" that we are allowing to be built around us. Power is just too tempting to abuse.
I don't condone breaking the law, even WRT minor traffic violations. But for a long time I've believed that the increase in cameras and automated law enforcement was a Bad Thing(tm). People may argue that you can't put the genie back in the bottle. I would say, in this case, we'd better figure out how to cram that genie back where it came from. I don't want to be monitored 100% of the time, and bollocks to the argument that "if you're not doing anything wrong, you don't need to worry". The drivers were technically in violation of law, but gaming the light timings to get more automated tickets? That's abuse at its finest.
If they can do that, they can do more. In this case we have cities abusing the technology to get more money, but it's pretty obvious that there are things even more stinky that could (and will) be done with all this surveillance and "enforcement" power.
See the handwriting on the wall? It says "Speak now, or forever hold your peace."
Some of us - those whose jobs have not yet gone overseas - have benefitted from outsourcing in the short term. But in the long term, we annihilate our internal industries, bleed talent and capabilities, and become accustomed to an unsustainable lifestyle. It will all eventually tank, as it is beginning to do now. The dollar is headed from hero to zero, and once there, the currency and lifestyle disparities between us and our outsourcing vendors (that got us all of this near-free stuff) will be gone.
I'm sorry, but I respectfully disagree with you. Outsourcing is a very bad deal. While it has the allure of temporarily deflating the cost of goods and services, it is, in the end, a direct assault on the lower and middle class. Because companies can now outsource to other nations without such pesky problems as labor laws or a living wage, we are quickly seeing the working class gains of the last few decades evaporate.
Good grief. School is for learning, not money. There, I said it. The copyright implications of this are just a symptom of the wrong focus on all sides.
The over-the-top monetization of the university experience is apparent:
Students treat college as a necessary evil that will lead them to jobs (therefore, money). Universities are charging excessive, through-the-roof tuitions which will take students years to pay back. Students are buying notes instead of sitting in the classroom taking the notes. Other people are sitting there taking notes with the express purpose of selling them. A semester's textbooks can cost more than the starving student's automobile. Now we have professors filing lawsuits to protect the dollar value of their lecture IP.
After all this, universities have the gall to phone up alumni for donations. Many years later, my wife still can't shake the calls from her alma mater. They tracked us down in ANOTHER STATE.
At least here we're free to whine about it, with little fear of having our children's ears sent to us as a reminder of who runs the show.
For now. The government has already given itself the ability to "disappear" you, with no legal recourse at your disposal. While the spectre of your child's ears handed to you is unspeakably horrible, so is the prospect of your child growing up without a parent because Daddy spoke out and was "extraordinarily rendered".
Yes those evil evil corporations, how dare they do what people want.
Corporations don't do what people want. Heck, they usually don't even do what the people in the corporation want. They don't even necessarily do what the stockholders want. They do whatever will get the executives the best bonuses and make them look good by scoring a quick buck. Witness the recent reward for the boneheaded executives at Countrywide.
Evolution itself dictates we be greedy, it is greed personified.
Evolution is why we're greedy, that's the best one yet. Evolution schmevolution. Greed is bad. That is why every major religion and the majority of secular philosophers (rightly) indict greed for the ills of society. Picking one religion - the Bible doesn't say that money is the root of all evil (misquote), but that The love of money is the root of all evil. This is correct.
Once we get done drowning in our cheap overseas-produced goods, choking on smog, foraging for water as climate change robs us of our freshwater sources, and lamenting a collapsed economy, perhaps we can see corporately and individually that greed is bad. Or, perhaps evolution will "select us out", showing that, after all, greed is bad from Darwin's perspective as well.
The only way for this problem to go away is to come up with technologies and approaches that reduce barriers to entry for being an ISP, or surrogate thereof. If competition was allowed to emerge, or if people figured out how to build their own peer/grid networks (in metro areas), then consumers could make another choice when they're fed up with the draconian practices of the Big Boys(tm). The ONLY reason that ISPs can pull this stuff now is that they have a captive audience.
The current method of getting bits over a pipe seems so archaic (although I'm probably jaded by too much Star Trek). If enough people get (a) fed up, and (b) innovative, solutions could emerge.
If enough people don't care and just want to be spoon-fed their Internets by "the man", well, then we've lost the battle anyhow. Sadly I suspect that is the case.
I agree that the current path of increasingly bloated OSes is just beating a dead horse. But, I hope the world of operating systems hasn't moved beyond revolutionary change. We are still early in the history of the OS. Could there not be some surprising improvements yet to come? The last major milestone was the introduction of the multi-tasking GUI-based OS on PCs, and that's a couple of decades old now. Surely the way that PCs work hasn't reached its zenith?
Keep in mind that radical change doesn't mean more complex - it could be something simple and elegant.
Microsoft is, after all, in business to make money; still, it's depressing to see that years of R&D couldn't make anything better than Vista. They've got serious research firepower and they still have loads of cash, but they failed. Who will pick up the mantle? Every time I look at a new Linux distro, it's just trying its best to be Windows. With all respect to what Linux is and what it represents (I personally love using it), it doesn't appear to be seeking new and radical improvements.
It's interesting to look back at the team that developed the "On-Line System" (precursor to the modern GUI) at SRI, and read about Doug Englebart, the visionary who put it together. He was looking for non-trivial change - he wanted computers to enhance our intellect. We've taken the tools they developed and used them, but many decades later, the essential dream remains unfulfilled. There's room left to grow. I know this may also sound cliche, but we need to think outside the box. If Linux found that killer paradigm shift first, it really could be "the year..." someday.
Let's see if I can paraphrase - the Mars rover budget is being cut because of an irrational fear that life will be discovered on other planets, hence causing a mass disruption of religious faith and undermining the power base of conservatives.
How did I do?
I'll grant you that politicians play on people's leverage points, with religion being one (fear, greed, and patriotism being others). But this gives you the justification to blame religion (or more arrogantly put, "superstition") for everything from hold music to entropy?
I'm seeing a new "my worldview is great, your worldview sucks" coming from the atheist ranks these days, and it looks and smells very much like the summary judgement that atheists often find so offensive about religion. Pot, meet kettle.
I got this message a day or two ago. Good thing I know what's going on. Darn it Apple, what the heck. Do I need to take iTunes and QuickTime off my computer?
It's unethical for any company to "sneak" software onto my computer. They can offer it to me, incessantly if they have to (read: QuickTime Pro) - but I object strongly to something just "arriving". Even if they succeed, you can bet that once I figure it out and remove the crap, I will feel worse about that company from then on. As a for-instance, I will never install the Google Toolbar. And I feel worse about Google for bundling it with completely unrelated products. It definitely walks the line of "do no evil".
It is just like inviting your friend over, and he brings two other friends unannounced and they all raid your fridge. Worse, he sneaks his other friends in the side window and you don't know they are there until all the pizza and beer is gone. Then those friends all live there until you find a way to kick them out. Your pizza and beer are history, and your relationship with your friend will never be quite the same.
I thought the trial of Gaius Baltar, especially Lee Adama's monologue at the end, was riveting and brilliant. Although I think there were some slow episodes this past season, on balance I agree that BSG just beats the heck out of most things on TV these days.
Hey Blu-Ray - wake up. HD-DVD may be bidding farewell, but you've still got existing and upcoming competition...
They'd better shake out the tech specs, lower the prices, and settle down on the whole get rich quick scheme, or this HD media format may just be supplanted by alternate distribution methods. Having physical media feels anachronistic to me anyhow, and the excruciating prices don't help.
I'm getting my HDTV fix from satellite - HD-capable DVR, lots of fun content, and no buyer's remorse. Sure, I don't own the movies, but honestly, once I've seen something 7+ times, am I really going to see it again? I won't say never, but rarely. I've also got FIOS, and I could see super high speed broadband eating Blu-Ray's lunch with inevitable enhancements of existing download services (e.g., NetFlix' download service).
The disc is dead, long live the disc. People still love having the media, unless the price stays too high too long - then buh-bye?
I am confident that neither the tax monies directed towards higher education, nor the tuition paid by students, was ever intended to be used to create a RIAA/MPAA surrogate police force. As if suing Grandma isn't bad enough, now these freaks want money and energy diverted from educational purposes to this BS. And to make it happen, their bought-and-paid-for minions in legislatures will threaten the funding of schools that don't do it. Wow. Just, wow.
You know, one day we're going to wake up, as if coming out of a weird dream, and realize that it's time to take back the proper priorities in our society. I hope that day is soon! If this was in my state, I'd be on the phone with my representatives tomorrow. It just staggers me that people let this kind of crap go on. I'm glad to hear there is going to be a protest - if I lived anywhere near Nashville, I'd darned well be there.
In the meantime, here are some easy suggestions that you might choose to adopt. This is a group participation exercise:
If you're a local, state or federal representative of the people in bed with these lobbyists, grow up and stop selling your soul. Instead, sell off your Lexus and your yacht, and start upholding the oaths you swore. Just do it, trust me, you'll feel better. And so will we.
If you're a university administrator, don't cave in to this garbage. Take it to the people. Tell them what programs will have to be cut to make way for this **AA-imposed police state. Tell them that state funding, and hence, the student body's education, is at risk.
If you're a student, don't violate copyright using the school's network. No, honestly, that wasn't a joke. If you have to break the law, do it on your own Internet connection, and don't make the school pay for your music or movie habit. This kind of stuff just feeds into the agenda of the wackos. Yes, the level to which this infringement goes on has been grossly overstated, but hey, we all know it goes on. Give it a rest.
If you are a member of the group "Everyone" (pretty safe assumption if you're reading this), then write letters, e-mails, call representatives, whenever you see stuff like this in your nation, or especially in your back yard. Organize with groups of like-minded people to collectively help restore sanity to our society. And, best of all, learn to live without the products of the entities that perpetuate this crap (in this case, RIAA/MPAA). Instead, go for a walk, play a game, or talk with your kids. Deprive the wackos of the money it takes to buy our legislators.
If you're a lawyer or lobbyist working for the RIAA/MPAA, there are better ways to make a living.
Somebody took the "denial" firewall off-line again. Baseless comments from the fringe are leaking in.
Please, do share with us your extensive scientific insight about how mankind (6+ billion of us with massive industrial capacity) couldn't be doing anything to the planet. Sure, the vast majority of scientists say we are, but they all have an axe to grind, right? Maybe they are hungry for a grant, or want to consolidate political power around fearmongering, or, wait, did I miss any of the conspiracy theories?
It's all volcanoes, and Earth cycles. See, I keep thinking that the observations of CO2 concentration from tens of thousands of years of ice tell a different story, but then, I didn't see the ice samples myself, did I? It's volcanoes and Earth cycles - I keep forgetting. Thanks for keeping me in line.
You're not going to get any "good riddance" comments from me. Most days, I hope to follow you out as soon as I can. This is one of those most days.
The only question is, will America's potential demise into a police state goof up the rest of the world as well? I can't imagine that Canada, for instance, will be immune to the problems this will cause.
I have to say that I am both creeped out and intrigued by your idea.
It would be better if the nanobots took one more step: (1) analyze and record, (2) transmit info with cryptographic checksums, (3) disassemble, and (4) reassemble at remote site. Note that the info gained in step (1) would essentially be a complete backup, like dd for humans.
However, if there really is important information going on at the quantum and not atomic level, your garden-variety nanobots wouldn't be able to analyze and record that. Therefore, you'd get a really awesome organic clone at the other end that might have a variety of faults (including not being alive, or not being the original subject).
Honestly the thought of being hallowed out by nanoscopic machines is horrendous. I'm gonna have pizza dreams tonight, I'm afraid.
A robot? The monkeys are supposed to control typewriters. Once an infinite number of them are thusly connected, and only then, can we finally determine if they will produce all the great books.
1. Clone infinite number of monkeys 2. Use new monkey-brain interface to connect to typewriters 3. Wait for all great books to be written 4. ??? 5. Profit!!!
It looks like your heart rate has dropped below 200 bpm.
Would you like some more coffee?
Finally, some intrusive technology that works for me for a change! OK, I was skeptical, but now I'm sold. Put me down for 3 - home, office, and the car.
Might be an invasion of privacy, or the beginnings of total corporate domination, but hey! Coffee!
Exactly! We already lament the stranglehold that the oil-producing nations have on us. How much worse would the leverage be if we had to import all our food from elsewhere? We've probably already paved over too much farmland as it is. Also, there is the matter that food shipped from far away takes more fuel to get it to the destination, and it's not as fresh when it arrives.
Yikes, outsource food? I hope not.
In the last several large enterprises that I've worked for, there were literally 100s of applications running on all manner of hardware/software combinations. We're talking everything from small embedded devices to the mainframe. Go ahead, outsource that to the cloud. I'll sit here and enjoy a mocha or two while you get on that.
Oh, you're back? Impossible to outsource anything but 5-10 of those applications? Well, that's not going to help me - now I'll have to add connectivity (and the resulting security) issues to my list of problems to solve. Because yes, all those 100s of apps all talk to each other in strange and wonderful ways.
Trust me, I'm not saying this is a good situation - complexity is a killer. However, this IS the way it is in companies of any significant size. Wouldn't it be a wonderful world if we could push a button and migrate to "the cloud"?
In the SMB world, Exchange is now something of a commodity. But in outsourcing this to "the cloud", I personally observed one small business have to make some compromises. We lost a lot of fine-grained control over settings, it hasn't been a smooth ride on availability, and the Exchange account database doesn't integrate with our local AD domain. Overall it was still worth it, but it hasn't been seamless. This is ONE application, in a small business.
Good luck, cloud people. I've watched industry trends for nearly 30 years now, and I'm not losing any sleep over this one. Not yet.
And this kind of rhetoric is exactly why the debates between those of faith and those of not will continue to be harsh, unrelenting, and emotional. Basically, what you just said is that you are more "evolved" than I am. That seems - I don't know - rude, arrogant, and presumptuous? This is, ironically, the type of "holier than thou" attitude that I've come to expect from atheists.
To be callous to this extent surely demonstrates the need to believe in something, if only perhaps good manners.
Getting back on topic, I agree with a previous poster that acknowledging the diversity of belief regarding creation at the beginning of a science class could avoid many arguments and hard feelings. Just agree to disagree, then stick to the observable facts and scientific theories. It's true that the science classroom is an inappropriate (and inadequate) place to discuss matters of faith.
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Looking at the trailer, I couldn't quite figure out if they are going for a dark, true sci-fi kind of work, or if it will be a spoof/comedy.
The bird scene at the end of the trailer may give a clue here...but otherwise...am I being dense? (Note to self, never ask this rhetorically on Slashdot...)
They have needed Macs on-board Enterprise for a long time. First there was that blue screen of death when they were head to head with a Romulan vessel. Then there was the malware that kept putting male enhancement spam on the viewscreen. Picard says "Make it so" and they're stuck waiting for Geordi's new "Vista" thing to boot up...
Wait, did that say Macs gaining a bigger role "on" the Enterprise, or "in" the enterprise...
Oh well, never mind.
This is one (among many) good reason to not tolerate the "surveillance society" that we are allowing to be built around us. Power is just too tempting to abuse.
I don't condone breaking the law, even WRT minor traffic violations. But for a long time I've believed that the increase in cameras and automated law enforcement was a Bad Thing(tm). People may argue that you can't put the genie back in the bottle. I would say, in this case, we'd better figure out how to cram that genie back where it came from. I don't want to be monitored 100% of the time, and bollocks to the argument that "if you're not doing anything wrong, you don't need to worry". The drivers were technically in violation of law, but gaming the light timings to get more automated tickets? That's abuse at its finest.
If they can do that, they can do more. In this case we have cities abusing the technology to get more money, but it's pretty obvious that there are things even more stinky that could (and will) be done with all this surveillance and "enforcement" power.
See the handwriting on the wall? It says "Speak now, or forever hold your peace."
Some of us - those whose jobs have not yet gone overseas - have benefitted from outsourcing in the short term. But in the long term, we annihilate our internal industries, bleed talent and capabilities, and become accustomed to an unsustainable lifestyle. It will all eventually tank, as it is beginning to do now. The dollar is headed from hero to zero, and once there, the currency and lifestyle disparities between us and our outsourcing vendors (that got us all of this near-free stuff) will be gone.
I'm sorry, but I respectfully disagree with you. Outsourcing is a very bad deal. While it has the allure of temporarily deflating the cost of goods and services, it is, in the end, a direct assault on the lower and middle class. Because companies can now outsource to other nations without such pesky problems as labor laws or a living wage, we are quickly seeing the working class gains of the last few decades evaporate.
Good grief. School is for learning, not money. There, I said it. The copyright implications of this are just a symptom of the wrong focus on all sides.
The over-the-top monetization of the university experience is apparent:
Students treat college as a necessary evil that will lead them to jobs (therefore, money).
Universities are charging excessive, through-the-roof tuitions which will take students years to pay back.
Students are buying notes instead of sitting in the classroom taking the notes.
Other people are sitting there taking notes with the express purpose of selling them.
A semester's textbooks can cost more than the starving student's automobile.
Now we have professors filing lawsuits to protect the dollar value of their lecture IP.
After all this, universities have the gall to phone up alumni for donations. Many years later, my wife still can't shake the calls from her alma mater. They tracked us down in ANOTHER STATE.
Disappointing.
For now. The government has already given itself the ability to "disappear" you, with no legal recourse at your disposal. While the spectre of your child's ears handed to you is unspeakably horrible, so is the prospect of your child growing up without a parent because Daddy spoke out and was "extraordinarily rendered".
Corporations don't do what people want. Heck, they usually don't even do what the people in the corporation want. They don't even necessarily do what the stockholders want. They do whatever will get the executives the best bonuses and make them look good by scoring a quick buck. Witness the recent reward for the boneheaded executives at Countrywide.
Evolution itself dictates we be greedy, it is greed personified.
Evolution is why we're greedy, that's the best one yet. Evolution schmevolution. Greed is bad. That is why every major religion and the majority of secular philosophers (rightly) indict greed for the ills of society. Picking one religion - the Bible doesn't say that money is the root of all evil (misquote), but that The love of money is the root of all evil. This is correct.
Once we get done drowning in our cheap overseas-produced goods, choking on smog, foraging for water as climate change robs us of our freshwater sources, and lamenting a collapsed economy, perhaps we can see corporately and individually that greed is bad. Or, perhaps evolution will "select us out", showing that, after all, greed is bad from Darwin's perspective as well.
The only way for this problem to go away is to come up with technologies and approaches that reduce barriers to entry for being an ISP, or surrogate thereof. If competition was allowed to emerge, or if people figured out how to build their own peer/grid networks (in metro areas), then consumers could make another choice when they're fed up with the draconian practices of the Big Boys(tm). The ONLY reason that ISPs can pull this stuff now is that they have a captive audience.
The current method of getting bits over a pipe seems so archaic (although I'm probably jaded by too much Star Trek). If enough people get (a) fed up, and (b) innovative, solutions could emerge.
If enough people don't care and just want to be spoon-fed their Internets by "the man", well, then we've lost the battle anyhow. Sadly I suspect that is the case.
...an Air gap.
I agree that the current path of increasingly bloated OSes is just beating a dead horse. But, I hope the world of operating systems hasn't moved beyond revolutionary change. We are still early in the history of the OS. Could there not be some surprising improvements yet to come? The last major milestone was the introduction of the multi-tasking GUI-based OS on PCs, and that's a couple of decades old now. Surely the way that PCs work hasn't reached its zenith?
Keep in mind that radical change doesn't mean more complex - it could be something simple and elegant.
Microsoft is, after all, in business to make money; still, it's depressing to see that years of R&D couldn't make anything better than Vista. They've got serious research firepower and they still have loads of cash, but they failed. Who will pick up the mantle? Every time I look at a new Linux distro, it's just trying its best to be Windows. With all respect to what Linux is and what it represents (I personally love using it), it doesn't appear to be seeking new and radical improvements.
It's interesting to look back at the team that developed the "On-Line System" (precursor to the modern GUI) at SRI, and read about Doug Englebart, the visionary who put it together. He was looking for non-trivial change - he wanted computers to enhance our intellect. We've taken the tools they developed and used them, but many decades later, the essential dream remains unfulfilled. There's room left to grow. I know this may also sound cliche, but we need to think outside the box. If Linux found that killer paradigm shift first, it really could be "the year..." someday.
Let's see if I can paraphrase - the Mars rover budget is being cut because of an irrational fear that life will be discovered on other planets, hence causing a mass disruption of religious faith and undermining the power base of conservatives.
How did I do?
I'll grant you that politicians play on people's leverage points, with religion being one (fear, greed, and patriotism being others). But this gives you the justification to blame religion (or more arrogantly put, "superstition") for everything from hold music to entropy?
I'm seeing a new "my worldview is great, your worldview sucks" coming from the atheist ranks these days, and it looks and smells very much like the summary judgement that atheists often find so offensive about religion. Pot, meet kettle.
Oh, and...
SAVE THE ROVERS!
I'm a person of faith, and science is no threat to me, thank you very much. I like science just fine.
However, people with nothing better to do than peddle their anti-religious rhetoric is definitely a threat to my good humor.
The topic had nothing to do with faith or religion as I recall.
I got this message a day or two ago. Good thing I know what's going on. Darn it Apple, what the heck. Do I need to take iTunes and QuickTime off my computer?
It's unethical for any company to "sneak" software onto my computer. They can offer it to me, incessantly if they have to (read: QuickTime Pro) - but I object strongly to something just "arriving". Even if they succeed, you can bet that once I figure it out and remove the crap, I will feel worse about that company from then on. As a for-instance, I will never install the Google Toolbar. And I feel worse about Google for bundling it with completely unrelated products. It definitely walks the line of "do no evil".
It is just like inviting your friend over, and he brings two other friends unannounced and they all raid your fridge. Worse, he sneaks his other friends in the side window and you don't know they are there until all the pizza and beer is gone. Then those friends all live there until you find a way to kick them out. Your pizza and beer are history, and your relationship with your friend will never be quite the same.
(and yes, I take my pizza and beer seriously...)
I thought the trial of Gaius Baltar, especially Lee Adama's monologue at the end, was riveting and brilliant. Although I think there were some slow episodes this past season, on balance I agree that BSG just beats the heck out of most things on TV these days.
HelLLLOOOO? I mean, it was funny - kudos and all that - but was modded Score 4, Insightful? Weird mods tonight on the Internets.
You guys didn't get it. Torchwood is not real, it's a TV SHOW BWA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA.
Unless...
Planning on watching two epis tonight. Heads up, don't watch the episode "Meat" if you're having a late-night snack. Just saying.
So, here's a reference some of you may get: Wasn't Dr. Evil in outer space? He was British! HA HA HA +5 Informative!
OK, stepping off my off-topic box now.
Hey Blu-Ray - wake up. HD-DVD may be bidding farewell, but you've still got existing and upcoming competition...
They'd better shake out the tech specs, lower the prices, and settle down on the whole get rich quick scheme, or this HD media format may just be supplanted by alternate distribution methods. Having physical media feels anachronistic to me anyhow, and the excruciating prices don't help.
I'm getting my HDTV fix from satellite - HD-capable DVR, lots of fun content, and no buyer's remorse. Sure, I don't own the movies, but honestly, once I've seen something 7+ times, am I really going to see it again? I won't say never, but rarely. I've also got FIOS, and I could see super high speed broadband eating Blu-Ray's lunch with inevitable enhancements of existing download services (e.g., NetFlix' download service).
The disc is dead, long live the disc. People still love having the media, unless the price stays too high too long - then buh-bye?
I am confident that neither the tax monies directed towards higher education, nor the tuition paid by students, was ever intended to be used to create a RIAA/MPAA surrogate police force. As if suing Grandma isn't bad enough, now these freaks want money and energy diverted from educational purposes to this BS. And to make it happen, their bought-and-paid-for minions in legislatures will threaten the funding of schools that don't do it. Wow. Just, wow.
You know, one day we're going to wake up, as if coming out of a weird dream, and realize that it's time to take back the proper priorities in our society. I hope that day is soon! If this was in my state, I'd be on the phone with my representatives tomorrow. It just staggers me that people let this kind of crap go on. I'm glad to hear there is going to be a protest - if I lived anywhere near Nashville, I'd darned well be there.
In the meantime, here are some easy suggestions that you might choose to adopt. This is a group participation exercise:
If you're a local, state or federal representative of the people in bed with these lobbyists, grow up and stop selling your soul. Instead, sell off your Lexus and your yacht, and start upholding the oaths you swore. Just do it, trust me, you'll feel better. And so will we.
If you're a university administrator, don't cave in to this garbage. Take it to the people. Tell them what programs will have to be cut to make way for this **AA-imposed police state. Tell them that state funding, and hence, the student body's education, is at risk.
If you're a student, don't violate copyright using the school's network. No, honestly, that wasn't a joke. If you have to break the law, do it on your own Internet connection, and don't make the school pay for your music or movie habit. This kind of stuff just feeds into the agenda of the wackos. Yes, the level to which this infringement goes on has been grossly overstated, but hey, we all know it goes on. Give it a rest.
If you are a member of the group "Everyone" (pretty safe assumption if you're reading this), then write letters, e-mails, call representatives, whenever you see stuff like this in your nation, or especially in your back yard. Organize with groups of like-minded people to collectively help restore sanity to our society. And, best of all, learn to live without the products of the entities that perpetuate this crap (in this case, RIAA/MPAA). Instead, go for a walk, play a game, or talk with your kids. Deprive the wackos of the money it takes to buy our legislators.
If you're a lawyer or lobbyist working for the RIAA/MPAA, there are better ways to make a living.
OK, phew, sorry, I'm done. Peace...
Somebody took the "denial" firewall off-line again. Baseless comments from the fringe are leaking in.
Please, do share with us your extensive scientific insight about how mankind (6+ billion of us with massive industrial capacity) couldn't be doing anything to the planet. Sure, the vast majority of scientists say we are, but they all have an axe to grind, right? Maybe they are hungry for a grant, or want to consolidate political power around fearmongering, or, wait, did I miss any of the conspiracy theories?
It's all volcanoes, and Earth cycles. See, I keep thinking that the observations of CO2 concentration from tens of thousands of years of ice tell a different story, but then, I didn't see the ice samples myself, did I? It's volcanoes and Earth cycles - I keep forgetting. Thanks for keeping me in line.
You're not going to get any "good riddance" comments from me. Most days, I hope to follow you out as soon as I can. This is one of those most days.
The only question is, will America's potential demise into a police state goof up the rest of the world as well? I can't imagine that Canada, for instance, will be immune to the problems this will cause.
I have to say that I am both creeped out and intrigued by your idea.
It would be better if the nanobots took one more step: (1) analyze and record, (2) transmit info with cryptographic checksums, (3) disassemble, and (4) reassemble at remote site. Note that the info gained in step (1) would essentially be a complete backup, like dd for humans.
However, if there really is important information going on at the quantum and not atomic level, your garden-variety nanobots wouldn't be able to analyze and record that. Therefore, you'd get a really awesome organic clone at the other end that might have a variety of faults (including not being alive, or not being the original subject).
Honestly the thought of being hallowed out by nanoscopic machines is horrendous. I'm gonna have pizza dreams tonight, I'm afraid.
A robot? The monkeys are supposed to control typewriters. Once an infinite number of them are thusly connected, and only then, can we finally determine if they will produce all the great books.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_monkey_theorem
1. Clone infinite number of monkeys
2. Use new monkey-brain interface to connect to typewriters
3. Wait for all great books to be written
4. ???
5. Profit!!!
It looks like your heart rate has dropped below 200 bpm. Would you like some more coffee?
Finally, some intrusive technology that works for me for a change! OK, I was skeptical, but now I'm sold. Put me down for 3 - home, office, and the car.
Might be an invasion of privacy, or the beginnings of total corporate domination, but hey! Coffee!
Exactly! We already lament the stranglehold that the oil-producing nations have on us. How much worse would the leverage be if we had to import all our food from elsewhere? We've probably already paved over too much farmland as it is. Also, there is the matter that food shipped from far away takes more fuel to get it to the destination, and it's not as fresh when it arrives. Yikes, outsource food? I hope not.
In the last several large enterprises that I've worked for, there were literally 100s of applications running on all manner of hardware/software combinations. We're talking everything from small embedded devices to the mainframe. Go ahead, outsource that to the cloud. I'll sit here and enjoy a mocha or two while you get on that.
Oh, you're back? Impossible to outsource anything but 5-10 of those applications? Well, that's not going to help me - now I'll have to add connectivity (and the resulting security) issues to my list of problems to solve. Because yes, all those 100s of apps all talk to each other in strange and wonderful ways.
Trust me, I'm not saying this is a good situation - complexity is a killer. However, this IS the way it is in companies of any significant size. Wouldn't it be a wonderful world if we could push a button and migrate to "the cloud"?
In the SMB world, Exchange is now something of a commodity. But in outsourcing this to "the cloud", I personally observed one small business have to make some compromises. We lost a lot of fine-grained control over settings, it hasn't been a smooth ride on availability, and the Exchange account database doesn't integrate with our local AD domain. Overall it was still worth it, but it hasn't been seamless. This is ONE application, in a small business.
Good luck, cloud people. I've watched industry trends for nearly 30 years now, and I'm not losing any sleep over this one. Not yet.
And this kind of rhetoric is exactly why the debates between those of faith and those of not will continue to be harsh, unrelenting, and emotional. Basically, what you just said is that you are more "evolved" than I am. That seems - I don't know - rude, arrogant, and presumptuous? This is, ironically, the type of "holier than thou" attitude that I've come to expect from atheists.
To be callous to this extent surely demonstrates the need to believe in something, if only perhaps good manners.
Getting back on topic, I agree with a previous poster that acknowledging the diversity of belief regarding creation at the beginning of a science class could avoid many arguments and hard feelings. Just agree to disagree, then stick to the observable facts and scientific theories. It's true that the science classroom is an inappropriate (and inadequate) place to discuss matters of faith.