Lots of things appear to defy the basic laws of gravity- Hot-Air balloons float upward, feathers fall slower than rocks, wood floats on water. All of these things could be used to 'disprove' gravity. Even if you know about Air Pressure and can disprove the above discrepancies, it's not evident that Gravity is constant everywhere, or that planetary motion (and solar motion) can be explained by gravity.
As other people have pointed out, nothing stops you from cutting out or otherwise hiding/removing the ads. For instance, I could cut out an article from the newspaper and hang it up at work without showing any ads at all.
Replace 'microbes' with 'sustainable self-replicating chemical reaction'. I think you'll find that all of the same problems apply. Advanced microbes would actually be more resistant to many of these problems than the goo would be- but then we still get into the problem of where the microbes came from.
But those things had even less appeal to me. If I had stayed with Biology I probably would have gone towards the information theory and mathematical parts of Biology, which are also closest to the majors I actually did take. My point, though, is there are so many options that expecting a 17-year old to know which he'll be happiest in is silly. Most 17-year-olds aren't even going to be understand all the options out there. Many High Schools don't even have Calculus, Statistics, Computer Science, or Physics classes (All of which I took and enjoyed). If I didn't have Computer Science classes offered at my High School, I would have picked Physics or Math as my starting major instead of Computer Science. I would have liked it, but probably not as much as I like what I'm doing now.
I think what I'm trying to say is that there are plenty of mature 17-year olds who realize they don't know enough yet about what they want to do despite going out of their way to learn about their options. College is a chance for these people to explore their options and get a better understanding of what they really want.
Of course, they are outnumbered by the idiots going to college for partying (with a degree being an afterthought), but they still resent being classified in the same category.
The sensationalist headlines aren't because kdawson is stupid. What receives more comments- an article titled "Company Busted for Wide-Scale Copyright Infringement" or "Share a News Story With Coworkers, Pay a Fine"? More comments= more readers= means more ads viewed= more money. Only losers who care more about facts than emotional response want accurate titles.
I think the problem is that there's a certain amount of disconnect in most fields between what class is like and what a job in the real world is like. I thought I wanted to be a biologist of some sort when I was in High School, and worked at a local zoo to get a feel for what that was like. I found out it's not something I actually wanted to do. I loved reading about animals, teaching about them, and playing with them, but I didn't like dissecting them, experimenting on them, or spending time in the jungle collecting them. Even the teaching about animals and playing with them wasn't something I wanted to do every work day for the rest of my life- it was a fun way to spend weekends, but that's about it. So I spent most of High School figuring what I didn't want to do. I had take some CompSci courses in High school that I enjoyed- but I also enjoyed my Math, Physics, and Chemistry classes, so that didn't give me much in the way of direction. I decided to dual-major in Math/CompSci, but kept my options open in case those didn't work out for me. (As it turns out, they did.)
So, basically, I think you had it easy. You found something that you thought was cool, and you kept enjoying it the more you got into it. Most people aren't as lucky- they find they aren't really all that interested in the first thing they try. Even those that are often find something else they like better later on. I'm very glad that I kept my options open in High School instead of taking all Biology courses, (and even gladder I got some experience) otherwise I could have been a mediocre Biologist bored with his job.
The free market is an inherently wasteful system- instead, what we should do is create a pool of government funded money that goes towards manufacturing, and give everyone a vote for which manufacturing products they think are important. Just think of all the waste that goes into manufacturing- all the products made that no one wants, and all the waste that entails.
The problem with pure socialist ideas like yours is that they never work in the real world at any significant scale. This is what would happen in your system:
1. To get paid, software makers need to convince people to fund them. This means multi-million dollar ad campaigns designed to convice people to 'vote for allocating $1Billion to MS Vista Plus'.
2. There's little incentive to have working software, since you're not selling a product, you're selling the 'service' of making software. The longer it takes to make the software, the more money you'll make.
3. Big projects and special interests groups get all the money.
4. End result for me: I pay more in taxes and get less for my money than I do in the current system. Of course I'm going to oppose such a system.
Get out of your mother's basement, get a job, and read some history. Unless you're going to reward software writers based on the quality of their software and the number of people using it, your system will fail. And if you're going to do that, why not just keep the current system in place which does exactly that?
I'll believe in these Uranium-heated liquid comets when I see them. Anything that could keep a comet core liquid would have to be hot (radioactively), so then we're dealing with microbes that...
1. Can survive being frozen for indefinite periods of time,
2. Can survive excessive radiation and heavy metal contamination,
3. Can survive without sunlight (remember, it's in the center of the comet),
4. Lives off unknown chemical reactions (organic chemicals mean squat without an energy source)
5. Exists in near equilibrium with its environment over millions of years, with trivial gains in material,
6. Has to then survive on Earth after
a) melting off a comet
b) drifting unprotected in the vacuum of space
c) floating down through Earth's atmosphere
or
d) evaporating in an impact event
And this theory (he says) is more plausible than life developing on Earth. I guess we need to consider ourselves very, very lucky to be here.
"If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever." -George Orwell
That's probably what you are referring to.
That's because you don't understand the problem.
on
The Fermi Paradox is Back
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
You assume aliens would be no more advanced than we are. However, even a thousand years (trivial on the cosmic scale) makes a huge difference in the technological scale. Consider that 1,000 years ago the deadliest fighting force was a man in armor on horseback. A single infantryman today, armed only with basic gear, could take out a hundred knights. A well-equipped squad of 10 could take out a hundred thousand or more- certainly more than enough to break any 10th-century army they fought against. And that's without giving them tanks, ships, or aircraft. That is the difference 1,000 years makes. Our world appears to be billions of years old, and our star one of trillions. Even if there are only 10 other civilizations in our ~10-billion year old galaxy, we would expect at least one of them to be at least a billion years more advanced than us. Saying that we are the most advanced civilization out there is saying we are probably the only civilization out there.
In base 3 the longer gaps are just repeated smaller gaps, in base 2 the dahs are repeated dits with no gaps between. Since it's just an on/off signal, though, base 2 probably makes more sense than base 3.
You're absolutely correct. The GPL prevents them from distributing the DOSBox program without the GPL license but all they need to do is start distributing it with the GPL license to be compliant again. Technically they could still be sued for their brief license violation, but I imagine no one smart enough to work on DOSBox is that stupid.
The title says 'In Australian an eBay sale is a Sale', one of many delightful typos we can expect from our 'editors'. He is pointing out this typo in a subtle, yet humorous manner, apparently too subtle for you.
It seems the spammer did everything in his power to maximize his jail sentence. Not only did he defy the judge at every opportunity, but he also threatened to kill a witness's children if she testified. He probably could have gotten away with serious fines if he had only cooperated, but instead he's probably going to lose not just his 10+ Automobiles, but also as many of his millions of dollars as the government can find.
Perpetual motion machines break the laws of physics as we know them. All processes increase entropy, and energy is never created out of nothing. In your example, LEDs use minimal electricity, so the light they produce is also low energy. You can't get more power from any light source than it takes to produce the light. Because some energy is lost as heat, you can't even break even. Read the Laws of Thermodynamics and come back.
It sounds like the iTunes service is better anyway. $7.49/month for 5 songs? Even the article says that the service is pathetic compared to what eMusic already offers on your computer (30 songs/month for $10).
To summarize: an overpriced service that few people will use isn't compatible with the iPhone (probably because it's harder to run third-party apps on it), but no one cares because Apple already offers a superior service on its phone. Next you'll have people complaining that Microsoft doesn't offer Internet Explorer for Linux.
The point others have made is that stealing 1 Twinkie results in a fine of $500, and stealing 50 twinkies in a box results in a fine of about $600. However, the RIAA argues that pirating 1 song is a $750 fine, and pirating 50 songs is a $37,500 fine. When there is less liability in stealing CDs from a store than sharing them, it hardly encourages proper behavior.
Then you still have legal rights to the music, but you don't support the RIAA. If you want to support the artist, buy their merchandise or attend their concerts.
I never said that the PM was subject to U.S. policy, but he's certainly affected by U.S. policy. For instance, gambling operations in the U.K. catering to U.S. customers have been driven out of business by U.S. law, just like the gambling in Second Life has been driven out of business by the very same law. Countries are interconnected through trade, diplomacy and tourism, so policy in one country can have serious effects on another.
Protesting in Second Life about stupid laws passed by Congress is as useful as protesting in Australia about stupid laws passed by Congress. It's possible (if unlikely) that other people will notice you and report it to someone whose opinion matters, but you can't blame Linden Labs for following the law any more than you could blame Australia's Prime Minister for being unable to change U.S. policy.
The first thing they will do is set the target audience to be the entire world. Then, they expose 49.9% of the world to their music. Then, until over 3 Billion people have bought copies of the album/movie, claim that they haven't reached 50% market penetration yet.
The people who opposed the Big Bang theory saw the people promoting it as fanatic nutjobs. (This was pretty much everyone at first, as evidence accumulated, though, more and more people went to the Big Bang camp). Now we consider them to be the fanatic nutjobs! It's all on where you're standing.
The machine was buggy, the people knew it, they need to return the money when asked. There was no fraud (which usually involves jail time). It's as if there was an ATM that displayed 'press here to get $9'. Naturally people would press it... a few thousand times. Those people should be forced to return the money, but jail time for something like that is ridiculous. It's not as if the casino operators go to jail if a 'bug' makes them more money than they expected, so why should their customers?
Slashdot Mirror
Lots of things appear to defy the basic laws of gravity- Hot-Air balloons float upward, feathers fall slower than rocks, wood floats on water. All of these things could be used to 'disprove' gravity. Even if you know about Air Pressure and can disprove the above discrepancies, it's not evident that Gravity is constant everywhere, or that planetary motion (and solar motion) can be explained by gravity.
As other people have pointed out, nothing stops you from cutting out or otherwise hiding/removing the ads. For instance, I could cut out an article from the newspaper and hang it up at work without showing any ads at all.
Replace 'microbes' with 'sustainable self-replicating chemical reaction'. I think you'll find that all of the same problems apply. Advanced microbes would actually be more resistant to many of these problems than the goo would be- but then we still get into the problem of where the microbes came from.
But those things had even less appeal to me. If I had stayed with Biology I probably would have gone towards the information theory and mathematical parts of Biology, which are also closest to the majors I actually did take. My point, though, is there are so many options that expecting a 17-year old to know which he'll be happiest in is silly. Most 17-year-olds aren't even going to be understand all the options out there. Many High Schools don't even have Calculus, Statistics, Computer Science, or Physics classes (All of which I took and enjoyed). If I didn't have Computer Science classes offered at my High School, I would have picked Physics or Math as my starting major instead of Computer Science. I would have liked it, but probably not as much as I like what I'm doing now.
I think what I'm trying to say is that there are plenty of mature 17-year olds who realize they don't know enough yet about what they want to do despite going out of their way to learn about their options. College is a chance for these people to explore their options and get a better understanding of what they really want.
Of course, they are outnumbered by the idiots going to college for partying (with a degree being an afterthought), but they still resent being classified in the same category.
The sensationalist headlines aren't because kdawson is stupid. What receives more comments- an article titled "Company Busted for Wide-Scale Copyright Infringement" or "Share a News Story With Coworkers, Pay a Fine"? More comments= more readers= means more ads viewed= more money. Only losers who care more about facts than emotional response want accurate titles.
I think the problem is that there's a certain amount of disconnect in most fields between what class is like and what a job in the real world is like. I thought I wanted to be a biologist of some sort when I was in High School, and worked at a local zoo to get a feel for what that was like. I found out it's not something I actually wanted to do. I loved reading about animals, teaching about them, and playing with them, but I didn't like dissecting them, experimenting on them, or spending time in the jungle collecting them. Even the teaching about animals and playing with them wasn't something I wanted to do every work day for the rest of my life- it was a fun way to spend weekends, but that's about it. So I spent most of High School figuring what I didn't want to do. I had take some CompSci courses in High school that I enjoyed- but I also enjoyed my Math, Physics, and Chemistry classes, so that didn't give me much in the way of direction. I decided to dual-major in Math/CompSci, but kept my options open in case those didn't work out for me. (As it turns out, they did.)
So, basically, I think you had it easy. You found something that you thought was cool, and you kept enjoying it the more you got into it. Most people aren't as lucky- they find they aren't really all that interested in the first thing they try. Even those that are often find something else they like better later on. I'm very glad that I kept my options open in High School instead of taking all Biology courses, (and even gladder I got some experience) otherwise I could have been a mediocre Biologist bored with his job.
The free market is an inherently wasteful system- instead, what we should do is create a pool of government funded money that goes towards manufacturing, and give everyone a vote for which manufacturing products they think are important. Just think of all the waste that goes into manufacturing- all the products made that no one wants, and all the waste that entails.
The problem with pure socialist ideas like yours is that they never work in the real world at any significant scale. This is what would happen in your system:
1. To get paid, software makers need to convince people to fund them. This means multi-million dollar ad campaigns designed to convice people to 'vote for allocating $1Billion to MS Vista Plus'.
2. There's little incentive to have working software, since you're not selling a product, you're selling the 'service' of making software. The longer it takes to make the software, the more money you'll make.
3. Big projects and special interests groups get all the money.
4. End result for me: I pay more in taxes and get less for my money than I do in the current system. Of course I'm going to oppose such a system.
Get out of your mother's basement, get a job, and read some history. Unless you're going to reward software writers based on the quality of their software and the number of people using it, your system will fail. And if you're going to do that, why not just keep the current system in place which does exactly that?
I'll believe in these Uranium-heated liquid comets when I see them. Anything that could keep a comet core liquid would have to be hot (radioactively), so then we're dealing with microbes that...
1. Can survive being frozen for indefinite periods of time,
2. Can survive excessive radiation and heavy metal contamination,
3. Can survive without sunlight (remember, it's in the center of the comet),
4. Lives off unknown chemical reactions (organic chemicals mean squat without an energy source)
5. Exists in near equilibrium with its environment over millions of years, with trivial gains in material,
6. Has to then survive on Earth after
a) melting off a comet
b) drifting unprotected in the vacuum of space
c) floating down through Earth's atmosphere
or
d) evaporating in an impact event
And this theory (he says) is more plausible than life developing on Earth. I guess we need to consider ourselves very, very lucky to be here.
"If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever." -George Orwell
That's probably what you are referring to.
You assume aliens would be no more advanced than we are. However, even a thousand years (trivial on the cosmic scale) makes a huge difference in the technological scale. Consider that 1,000 years ago the deadliest fighting force was a man in armor on horseback. A single infantryman today, armed only with basic gear, could take out a hundred knights. A well-equipped squad of 10 could take out a hundred thousand or more- certainly more than enough to break any 10th-century army they fought against. And that's without giving them tanks, ships, or aircraft. That is the difference 1,000 years makes. Our world appears to be billions of years old, and our star one of trillions. Even if there are only 10 other civilizations in our ~10-billion year old galaxy, we would expect at least one of them to be at least a billion years more advanced than us. Saying that we are the most advanced civilization out there is saying we are probably the only civilization out there.
In base 3 the longer gaps are just repeated smaller gaps, in base 2 the dahs are repeated dits with no gaps between. Since it's just an on/off signal, though, base 2 probably makes more sense than base 3.
You're absolutely correct. The GPL prevents them from distributing the DOSBox program without the GPL license but all they need to do is start distributing it with the GPL license to be compliant again. Technically they could still be sued for their brief license violation, but I imagine no one smart enough to work on DOSBox is that stupid.
The title says 'In Australian an eBay sale is a Sale', one of many delightful typos we can expect from our 'editors'. He is pointing out this typo in a subtle, yet humorous manner, apparently too subtle for you.
Try to get a job destroying the worthless patents of trolls. I'm sure you can find business willing to hire you for defense...
It seems the spammer did everything in his power to maximize his jail sentence. Not only did he defy the judge at every opportunity, but he also threatened to kill a witness's children if she testified. He probably could have gotten away with serious fines if he had only cooperated, but instead he's probably going to lose not just his 10+ Automobiles, but also as many of his millions of dollars as the government can find.
He invested all his savings in tulip bulbs.
Perpetual motion machines break the laws of physics as we know them. All processes increase entropy, and energy is never created out of nothing. In your example, LEDs use minimal electricity, so the light they produce is also low energy. You can't get more power from any light source than it takes to produce the light. Because some energy is lost as heat, you can't even break even. Read the Laws of Thermodynamics and come back.
It sounds like the iTunes service is better anyway. $7.49/month for 5 songs? Even the article says that the service is pathetic compared to what eMusic already offers on your computer (30 songs/month for $10).
To summarize: an overpriced service that few people will use isn't compatible with the iPhone (probably because it's harder to run third-party apps on it), but no one cares because Apple already offers a superior service on its phone. Next you'll have people complaining that Microsoft doesn't offer Internet Explorer for Linux.
The point others have made is that stealing 1 Twinkie results in a fine of $500, and stealing 50 twinkies in a box results in a fine of about $600. However, the RIAA argues that pirating 1 song is a $750 fine, and pirating 50 songs is a $37,500 fine. When there is less liability in stealing CDs from a store than sharing them, it hardly encourages proper behavior.
Then you still have legal rights to the music, but you don't support the RIAA. If you want to support the artist, buy their merchandise or attend their concerts.
I never said that the PM was subject to U.S. policy, but he's certainly affected by U.S. policy. For instance, gambling operations in the U.K. catering to U.S. customers have been driven out of business by U.S. law, just like the gambling in Second Life has been driven out of business by the very same law. Countries are interconnected through trade, diplomacy and tourism, so policy in one country can have serious effects on another.
Protesting in Second Life about stupid laws passed by Congress is as useful as protesting in Australia about stupid laws passed by Congress. It's possible (if unlikely) that other people will notice you and report it to someone whose opinion matters, but you can't blame Linden Labs for following the law any more than you could blame Australia's Prime Minister for being unable to change U.S. policy.
The first thing they will do is set the target audience to be the entire world. Then, they expose 49.9% of the world to their music. Then, until over 3 Billion people have bought copies of the album/movie, claim that they haven't reached 50% market penetration yet.
The people who opposed the Big Bang theory saw the people promoting it as fanatic nutjobs. (This was pretty much everyone at first, as evidence accumulated, though, more and more people went to the Big Bang camp). Now we consider them to be the fanatic nutjobs! It's all on where you're standing.
The machine was buggy, the people knew it, they need to return the money when asked. There was no fraud (which usually involves jail time). It's as if there was an ATM that displayed 'press here to get $9'. Naturally people would press it... a few thousand times. Those people should be forced to return the money, but jail time for something like that is ridiculous. It's not as if the casino operators go to jail if a 'bug' makes them more money than they expected, so why should their customers?