I have thought about the possibility of a uptopian society for a while, and have come to the following conclusion:
There are two ways to eliminate poverty and allow all members of a society to function cooperatively as a whole. You can either drastically alter human nature to the point where no one desires personal gain through another's loss (unless the overall gain for the society is positive, in which case it is justified). The second option is to remove all possibility for any individual to harm another for personal gain. And the only way to achieve that is to remove all possibility for variance of status and wealth. And the only way to do that is to create infinite supply of all comodities or remove the need/desire for any coporeal comodity. So either stop being human, or make it so everyone has everything they could ever need or want.
While who lives and who dies may effect the strength of the society as a whole, don't pretend that life would be swell if all the weak dissappeard. The nature of things is that a weak group exists in any society, as there will always be some group which is inferior in some aspect (event simply the social caste they were born into, which may have nothing to do with their characteristics, they may just be getting screwed). Those people will always be put down and manipulated by the others. Poverty is not something that can be fixed, it is a reality of a society in which individuals work for their own self interest. Even in communist states, on and individual level everyone was just trying to get by. If there was a way to get everyone to really work as a whole for the good of society, and to always keep the good of the whole in mind, then the true Marxist ideal would be reached. But that cannot happen in this world with humans being what they are.
I would have to say that anything with such complex nature as homosexuality is likely the confluence of several genetic factors. Several different variants could all cause the same overall effect, so I doubt tbat it will be easy to determine homosexuality indicator genes in the near future. Hopefully (if/when) we find them, society won't be full of people who care. Perhaps that is being too optimistic? It is like racism: though it is generally accepted as bad, a surprising portion of the population is guilty on some level. In fact, let us make a new term: gayism. Or perhaps facism is sufficient:)
Back to the topic, though... A large part of a shift towards homosexuality may be environmentally based. I don't mean based on experiences and their effects on the mind, but rather hormonal and nutrient levels and their effects on a forming brain. If this is the case, then they won't be able to say whether a child will be homosexual, but will rather give a probability. This is likely to be true for many diseases (and no, I am not calling homosexuality a disease, calm down). If you are given a 75% chance that your child will have Lesch-Nyhan disease (a disease which causes children to bite off their own lips and fingers, among other self injurious behaviors, and is really quite horrific for both parent and child), what do you do? Granted, this particular disease has already been nailed down to a purely genetic defect, but what of the like? If you believe that an abortion would be a mercy to the child, which way do you gamble?
Thank you very much.
I was actually well aware that the hydrogen must be actively harvested somehow, as well as the misperception that there could be a "hydrogen generator" which produces free (as in beer, not as in thermo) energy.
What I was asking was what process was behind filling the "mystery canisters" which would drive these devices, and how is it different from the process already in use? The canister is irrelevant, but the poster (samzenpus) seems to make it sound like they are the reason the new technology is more environmentally friendly.
What is the parent molecule, I suppose, is my question rephrased, and what energy is being used to do it?
Long ago everyone was happy just breathing oxygen. Now everybody is breathing toxic biproducts like "Nitrogen" and "Argon" and "Carbon Dioxide"... Damned technology...
On a side note, I don't get to read TFA because of/. effect, but I am curious, where is the hydrogen coming from that fills the mystery containers? It is not just a middle step between generating free hydrogen putting hydrogen in the cell? I don't see why the process has anything to do with the cartridge. Many thanks for any answers:)
but people living in rural and undeveloped areas would surely benefit from it
Unless you are talking about automating your farm equipment with wifi, I doubt many rural areas will see this until far into the future.
Who is going to pay to set up a tower to give 20 people internet? The reason wimax is so attractive in cities is the user density. I suppose the point is that it is cheaper than laying new land lines in rural areas (where broadband capable lines may be absent)? It doesn't seem likely to happen any time soon, though. And there is still the matter of wiring the towers. Unless you wanted them to route signals wirelessly... I wouldn't want to risk my data travelling hundreds of miles over air. Fifteen is bad enough.
Yes, I agree. I realized in the this morning that the king can destroy an unlimited ammount of information with his k uses by calling prisoners the required number of times in such a way that the required ammount of information can never be transmitted to the leader. The approach assumes that the leader is called in such a way that he will encounter the information being generated. Because the leader is not an exception to the number of times called minimum, the solution does not work. (also I was using n for number of pawns, really n-1, my bad for choosing a redundant variable name)...
Is there a mathematical representation for the ammount of information contained within both of the contributors (the statement plus knowledge of the x-1 empty vessles)? I am supposing that the first n-2 empty vessles carry no new since it is given that there are at least x-1 blue eyed inviduals and therefore none will leave for the first x-2 nights.
Spoiler: I believe this is a valid answer... Stop reading if you don't want the puzzle ruined:)
First let us refer to the cup as the bit and its initial position as 0. The alternative position is 1. For the division (k+1)/n, round up. The prisoners agree to the following:
The number of times a prisoner is to be called out is at least k+(k+1)/n. The prisoners will select one individual to be the counter. The rest will be the pawns. The first k+(k+1)/n times a pawn enters the room to find a 0, he sets it to 1. Thus the eventual input from each pawn is exactly k+(k+1)/n. The counter will flip the bit from 1 to 0 every time he encounters a one. He will count how many times he does this. When the counter reaches n*k+1 he will answer "yes" to free all of the prisoners.
This works whether the king uses his influence to add or subtract 1s to the count. The king is incapable of generating a false positive because he cannot input as many times as any one pawn would. The king cannot prevent an eventual true positive because the minimum output of the system is: n*(k+(k+1)/n)-k = n*k+(k+1)-k = n*k+1 If ((k+1)%n != 0) then the minimum output is slightly greater than this, but this does not effect the minimum count of n*k+1.
While I will grant that there may be some ingredients in common food products which negatively affect the health of certain individuals to a reasonable extent, I must disagree with you on your claim that MSG is, in fact, a harmful substance (to anyone).
First, let us look at the structure of it. MSG stands for Monosodium Glutamate. It is a salt consisting of a single (mono) sodium ion (Na+) attached to a glutamate ion. Clearly you cannot be alergic to sodium, but what about glutamate?
Glutamate, the molecule produced when MSG is dissolved (along with the sodium ion), is required for proper functioning of any animal I've ever studied. It is a neurotransmitter (the principal one used in sight, actually, so if you lacked it you would be blind). It is naturally occuring in the body, and the body is designed to naturally convert glutamate outside of the central nervous system into L-glutamate, which the brain and muscles use for energy. The body produces large ammounts of free glutamate all the time. The point is, if you were alergic to glutamate you would be dead.
But perhaps the above was not convincing enough... Maybe the glutamate from MSG changes the body's glutamate concentration somehow (which it does not). It just so happens that many of the foods people eat on a regular basis are very MSG rich. Do you like parmesan cheese? It contains roughly 1.2 grams of MSG for every cubic centimeter. That is huge! MSG exists in almost any food you eat (brocolli.25g/cm^3, corn.13g/cm^3), and the average american eats roughly 20 grams of it a day. Of that 20 grams, only about 1.5 grams is artificially produced! Glutamate is actually responsible for an entire realm of taste.
Double blind study after double blind study has shown that those claiming alergies to MSG were, in fact, either placeboing or alergic to something else. In chinese cooking (notorius for MSG content), several vegetables and spices are used which people would rarely come in contact with in other settings. Several of these are known to be alergenic, and many individuals find themselves blaming MSG for their allergies to other substances.
To boot, MSG is actually healthier for you than the alternative. With MSG you can cut down the sodium content of food drastically. The negative health affects of large sodium intake are real, and MSG is one of the ways that food producers can limit sodium content without cutting back on flavor. The FDA lists MSG as "Generally Regocnized as Safe", the same category as sodium chloride (table salt) and sodium bicarbonate (baking powder).
I love looking at a can of spaghetti-Os... It happily advertises "NO MSG" above the nutrition information, but it contains a whopping 1.78 grams of sodium per 15oz can. It also happens to contain a cheese culture (read MSG rich). Hooray for destroying the elasticity of your arteries! Just avoid those evil artificial salts that are, in fact, naturally occuring in everything you eat anyway.
(please excuse the sole use of wiki, but I cannot link my text books)
Why wouldn't there just be a monitor and keyboard?
The article assumes that the processor/memory etc are bulky by definition. Movement towards miniturization and disposable computing mean that having an entire system may become nearly as cheap and small as the stick of memory you are booting off of.
The only way to be truly secure is to have full control over the system you are using, so bringing your own entire machine will be a necesity for the crowd for whom inovations in hotels are usually designed for: business people.
Also a USB key with an OS compiled for an alternative archetecture would be useless in a hotel box.
The only two things which a handheld device cannot offer are a full sized display and interface. Why not just make everyone's handheld device interface with a monitor/keyboard/mouse console? Leave architecture compatibility issues to the user. Leave security to the user. Just provide a pleasant work environment.
1)iTunes is the #1 online music store. The "obsolete business model" argument is, well, obsolete.
This statement meants absolutely nothing. Something has to be the "#1 online music store" unless they don't exist at all. The record companies are fighting against the iTunes store for the very reason it became popular: it is affordable.
2)Touring is expensive and is usually done to promote an album release.
Sorry to say that touring is where the money is. If you are an artist you tend to make next to nothing on your CD sales because of the crazy slice the labels take. When you tour you make money directly. To quote Forbes.com: "The top 10% of artists make money selling records. The rest go on tour," says Scott Welch, who manages singers Alanis Morissette and LeAnn Rimes. I think 10% is optimistic.
Come on! Hehe Old men in baby carraiges? The birth of "shazbot"? Travelling through space in a giant egg? You all know you watched it. And enjoyed it. And think fondly back upon it. Sure beats the hell out of Buffy. Glad to see Quantum Leap in the mix, though:)
Google's interfaces are so pleasing to the eye that I would sacrafice some functionality to remain in my zen-like web atmosphere. Yahoo seems just plain ugly, sporting angry tones of red and strangly prositioned letters in its trademark.
I can admit to knowing what your son is going through first-hand. Let me tell you that you know what's best for him. He'll realize that in the long run even if he is a bit upset at the moment.
I was always a great student, but when my friends introduced me to WarCraft II my study habits quickly went downhill. My grades never slipped into the realm of "terrible", but I did get a C in seventh grade geography, along with a plethora of Bs. I did the absolute minimum ammount of work required to get by. My Parents were angry because they knew I could do better, but they never took enough action. The worst they ever did was to ban me from computer use for a week. This did nothing.
Even at the time there were moments where I would think about the effects of games on my life, and I almost wished my parents would kick me off of them for good. I was certainly not mature enough to utilize my time efficiently.
Anyway, my point is this: go ahead and do what is best for your kid. Having been there I can say that I would have been very angry at the time, but when I was older I definitely would have understood. I am in college now, and my study skills still stink, although I no longer play games. I don't know if having not played the games would have prevented this, but it could not have hurt.
Slashdot Mirror
I have thought about the possibility of a uptopian society for a while, and have come to the following conclusion:
There are two ways to eliminate poverty and allow all members of a society to function cooperatively as a whole. You can either drastically alter human nature to the point where no one desires personal gain through another's loss (unless the overall gain for the society is positive, in which case it is justified). The second option is to remove all possibility for any individual to harm another for personal gain. And the only way to achieve that is to remove all possibility for variance of status and wealth. And the only way to do that is to create infinite supply of all comodities or remove the need/desire for any coporeal comodity. So either stop being human, or make it so everyone has everything they could ever need or want.
While who lives and who dies may effect the strength of the society as a whole, don't pretend that life would be swell if all the weak dissappeard. The nature of things is that a weak group exists in any society, as there will always be some group which is inferior in some aspect (event simply the social caste they were born into, which may have nothing to do with their characteristics, they may just be getting screwed). Those people will always be put down and manipulated by the others. Poverty is not something that can be fixed, it is a reality of a society in which individuals work for their own self interest. Even in communist states, on and individual level everyone was just trying to get by. If there was a way to get everyone to really work as a whole for the good of society, and to always keep the good of the whole in mind, then the true Marxist ideal would be reached. But that cannot happen in this world with humans being what they are.
I would have to say that anything with such complex nature as homosexuality is likely the confluence of several genetic factors. Several different variants could all cause the same overall effect, so I doubt tbat it will be easy to determine homosexuality indicator genes in the near future. Hopefully (if/when) we find them, society won't be full of people who care. Perhaps that is being too optimistic? It is like racism: though it is generally accepted as bad, a surprising portion of the population is guilty on some level. In fact, let us make a new term: gayism. Or perhaps facism is sufficient :)
Back to the topic, though... A large part of a shift towards homosexuality may be environmentally based. I don't mean based on experiences and their effects on the mind, but rather hormonal and nutrient levels and their effects on a forming brain. If this is the case, then they won't be able to say whether a child will be homosexual, but will rather give a probability. This is likely to be true for many diseases (and no, I am not calling homosexuality a disease, calm down). If you are given a 75% chance that your child will have Lesch-Nyhan disease (a disease which causes children to bite off their own lips and fingers, among other self injurious behaviors, and is really quite horrific for both parent and child), what do you do? Granted, this particular disease has already been nailed down to a purely genetic defect, but what of the like? If you believe that an abortion would be a mercy to the child, which way do you gamble?
Thank you very much. I was actually well aware that the hydrogen must be actively harvested somehow, as well as the misperception that there could be a "hydrogen generator" which produces free (as in beer, not as in thermo) energy. What I was asking was what process was behind filling the "mystery canisters" which would drive these devices, and how is it different from the process already in use? The canister is irrelevant, but the poster (samzenpus) seems to make it sound like they are the reason the new technology is more environmentally friendly. What is the parent molecule, I suppose, is my question rephrased, and what energy is being used to do it?
Long ago everyone was happy just breathing oxygen.
/. effect, but I am curious, where is the hydrogen coming from that fills the mystery containers? It is not just a middle step between generating free hydrogen putting hydrogen in the cell? I don't see why the process has anything to do with the cartridge. :)
Now everybody is breathing toxic biproducts like "Nitrogen" and "Argon" and "Carbon Dioxide"...
Damned technology...
On a side note, I don't get to read TFA because of
Many thanks for any answers
but people living in rural and undeveloped areas would surely benefit from it
Unless you are talking about automating your farm equipment with wifi, I doubt many rural areas will see this until far into the future.
Who is going to pay to set up a tower to give 20 people internet? The reason wimax is so attractive in cities is the user density. I suppose the point is that it is cheaper than laying new land lines in rural areas (where broadband capable lines may be absent)?
It doesn't seem likely to happen any time soon, though. And there is still the matter of wiring the towers. Unless you wanted them to route signals wirelessly... I wouldn't want to risk my data travelling hundreds of miles over air. Fifteen is bad enough.
Yes, I agree. I realized in the this morning that the king can destroy an unlimited ammount of information with his k uses by calling prisoners the required number of times in such a way that the required ammount of information can never be transmitted to the leader. The approach assumes that the leader is called in such a way that he will encounter the information being generated. Because the leader is not an exception to the number of times called minimum, the solution does not work. (also I was using n for number of pawns, really n-1, my bad for choosing a redundant variable name)...
Is there a mathematical representation for the ammount of information contained within both of the contributors (the statement plus knowledge of the x-1 empty vessles)? I am supposing that the first n-2 empty vessles carry no new since it is given that there are at least x-1 blue eyed inviduals and therefore none will leave for the first x-2 nights.
each pawn must likewise flip the cups k+(k+2)/2 times... Typo, sorry. I meant k+(k+2)/n
If the initial state was unknown then the counter must count to n*k+2 and each pawn must likewise flip the cups k+(k+2)/2 times...
Spoiler: I believe this is a valid answer... Stop reading if you don't want the puzzle ruined :)
First let us refer to the cup as the bit and its initial position as 0. The alternative position is 1.
For the division (k+1)/n, round up.
The prisoners agree to the following:
The number of times a prisoner is to be called out is at least k+(k+1)/n.
The prisoners will select one individual to be the counter. The rest will be the pawns.
The first k+(k+1)/n times a pawn enters the room to find a 0, he sets it to 1. Thus the eventual input from each pawn is exactly k+(k+1)/n.
The counter will flip the bit from 1 to 0 every time he encounters a one. He will count how many times he does this.
When the counter reaches n*k+1 he will answer "yes" to free all of the prisoners.
This works whether the king uses his influence to add or subtract 1s to the count.
The king is incapable of generating a false positive because he cannot input as many times as any one pawn would.
The king cannot prevent an eventual true positive because the minimum output of the system is:
n*(k+(k+1)/n)-k = n*k+(k+1)-k = n*k+1
If ((k+1)%n != 0) then the minimum output is slightly greater than this, but this does not effect the minimum count of n*k+1.
While I will grant that there may be some ingredients in common food products which negatively affect the health of certain individuals to a reasonable extent, I must disagree with you on your claim that MSG is, in fact, a harmful substance (to anyone).
.25g/cm^3, corn .13g/cm^3), and the average american eats roughly 20 grams of it a day. Of that 20 grams, only about 1.5 grams is artificially produced! Glutamate is actually responsible for an entire realm of taste.
First, let us look at the structure of it. MSG stands for Monosodium Glutamate. It is a salt consisting of a single (mono) sodium ion (Na+) attached to a glutamate ion. Clearly you cannot be alergic to sodium, but what about glutamate?
Glutamate, the molecule produced when MSG is dissolved (along with the sodium ion), is required for proper functioning of any animal I've ever studied. It is a neurotransmitter (the principal one used in sight, actually, so if you lacked it you would be blind). It is naturally occuring in the body, and the body is designed to naturally convert glutamate outside of the central nervous system into L-glutamate, which the brain and muscles use for energy. The body produces large ammounts of free glutamate all the time. The point is, if you were alergic to glutamate you would be dead.
But perhaps the above was not convincing enough... Maybe the glutamate from MSG changes the body's glutamate concentration somehow (which it does not). It just so happens that many of the foods people eat on a regular basis are very MSG rich. Do you like parmesan cheese? It contains roughly 1.2 grams of MSG for every cubic centimeter. That is huge! MSG exists in almost any food you eat (brocolli
Double blind study after double blind study has shown that those claiming alergies to MSG were, in fact, either placeboing or alergic to something else. In chinese cooking (notorius for MSG content), several vegetables and spices are used which people would rarely come in contact with in other settings. Several of these are known to be alergenic, and many individuals find themselves blaming MSG for their allergies to other substances.
To boot, MSG is actually healthier for you than the alternative. With MSG you can cut down the sodium content of food drastically. The negative health affects of large sodium intake are real, and MSG is one of the ways that food producers can limit sodium content without cutting back on flavor. The FDA lists MSG as "Generally Regocnized as Safe", the same category as sodium chloride (table salt) and sodium bicarbonate (baking powder).
I love looking at a can of spaghetti-Os... It happily advertises "NO MSG" above the nutrition information, but it contains a whopping 1.78 grams of sodium per 15oz can. It also happens to contain a cheese culture (read MSG rich). Hooray for destroying the elasticity of your arteries! Just avoid those evil artificial salts that are, in fact, naturally occuring in everything you eat anyway.
(please excuse the sole use of wiki, but I cannot link my text books)
Why wouldn't there just be a monitor and keyboard?
The article assumes that the processor/memory etc are bulky by definition. Movement towards miniturization and disposable computing mean that having an entire system may become nearly as cheap and small as the stick of memory you are booting off of.
The only way to be truly secure is to have full control over the system you are using, so bringing your own entire machine will be a necesity for the crowd for whom inovations in hotels are usually designed for: business people.
Also a USB key with an OS compiled for an alternative archetecture would be useless in a hotel box.
The only two things which a handheld device cannot offer are a full sized display and interface. Why not just make everyone's handheld device interface with a monitor/keyboard/mouse console? Leave architecture compatibility issues to the user. Leave security to the user. Just provide a pleasant work environment.
Just a few points:
1)iTunes is the #1 online music store. The "obsolete business model" argument is, well, obsolete.
This statement meants absolutely nothing. Something has to be the "#1 online music store" unless they don't exist at all. The record companies are fighting against the iTunes store for the very reason it became popular: it is affordable.
2)Touring is expensive and is usually done to promote an album release.
Sorry to say that touring is where the money is. If you are an artist you tend to make next to nothing on your CD sales because of the crazy slice the labels take. When you tour you make money directly.
To quote Forbes.com:
"The top 10% of artists make money selling records. The rest go on tour," says Scott Welch, who manages singers Alanis Morissette and LeAnn Rimes.
I think 10% is optimistic.
Come on! Hehe :)
Old men in baby carraiges? The birth of "shazbot"? Travelling through space in a giant egg?
You all know you watched it. And enjoyed it. And think fondly back upon it. Sure beats the hell out of Buffy.
Glad to see Quantum Leap in the mix, though
Google's interfaces are so pleasing to the eye that I would sacrafice some functionality to remain in my zen-like web atmosphere. Yahoo seems just plain ugly, sporting angry tones of red and strangly prositioned letters in its trademark.
I can admit to knowing what your son is going through first-hand. Let me tell you that you know what's best for him. He'll realize that in the long run even if he is a bit upset at the moment. I was always a great student, but when my friends introduced me to WarCraft II my study habits quickly went downhill. My grades never slipped into the realm of "terrible", but I did get a C in seventh grade geography, along with a plethora of Bs. I did the absolute minimum ammount of work required to get by. My Parents were angry because they knew I could do better, but they never took enough action. The worst they ever did was to ban me from computer use for a week. This did nothing. Even at the time there were moments where I would think about the effects of games on my life, and I almost wished my parents would kick me off of them for good. I was certainly not mature enough to utilize my time efficiently. Anyway, my point is this: go ahead and do what is best for your kid. Having been there I can say that I would have been very angry at the time, but when I was older I definitely would have understood. I am in college now, and my study skills still stink, although I no longer play games. I don't know if having not played the games would have prevented this, but it could not have hurt.