We are hardwired to perform altrusim, but we mostly tend to prefer our groups. This is called ethnic nepotism. A study (I can't find the link; here's a summary) performed several years ago by the political scientist Frank Salter monitored beggars in Moscow and found that Russians preferred giving to beggars in this order: Russians, Moldavians (Eastern Europeans), and Roma (a.k.a. Gypsies).
That's probably more because a generation of Europeans have grown up to whom ideas like 'nationalism' are kind of old-fashioned - they're what got us to kill each other off by the millions in the last century, and to be honest such tribalist notions seem rather childish. 'My country, right or wrong'? Please. So, what's the hold-up in admitting Turkey? Surely the negotiations should not take that long. Also, why has there been so much hub-bub about immigration lately? Open Borders should be the future.
Not that I'm saying everyone's massively in favour of immediate establishment of a European federal republic, but that the boundaries of nationality have become blurred. So, why has there been so much hassle with the European Constitution?
But more importantly Russia and China require access to Iranian oil and so must in the final analysis back Iran come what may. Quick question: why does Russia require access to Iranian oil? Doesn't Russia have some of the largest reserves of oil in the world?
Nothing that is taking place in Iran is anywhere near as bad as what has been going on in North Korea where people die by the hundreds of thousand every few years in famines caused by the incompetence of the regime. I have read some things that suggest Ahmandinejad and the mullahs may be on the way out if Bush doesn't do anything stupid. Gary Brecher, the War Nerd, brought up an interesting point that the only thing that makes this War on Terror make sense is that Cheney is a mole for the Iranian mullahs.
I heard North Korea's 'nuke' was just a mass of conventional explosives. If that is true, then all they are doing is acting tough to get 'protection money' from the West. What a sleazy world this is! Sometimes I think that the world would shape up if the West would halt foreign aid, thereby stopping aid to corrupt and incompetent regimes. I guess you can really kill people with kindness afterall!
Sorry for the off-topic nature of the rant. I was just letting off a little steam.
Sanctions don't work unless the country targeted by the sanctions respects the party applying them. Sanctions worked in South Africa because the South African whites considered their country to be a part of the Western world. I think you overestimate the importance of opinion in favor of economic realities. I assume that South Africa, being a rich former colony, was relatively dependent on the West for certain items, and sanctions made it very difficult to remain self-sufficient for long. I highly doubt that sanctions would have had very much impact on the U.S.A. pre-1970s (that produced 96% of all products consumed).
Cuba might respond to sanctions from Latin America, but sanctions from the country that backed the corrupt Batista despotism are not going to work. Uh, what do you mean by backed? Here is a snippet from Wikipedia:
As armed conflict broke out in Cuba between rebels led by Fidel Castro and the Batista government, the U.S. was urged to end arms sales to Batista by Cuban president-in-waiting Manuel Urrutia. Washington made the critical move in March 1958 to prevent sales of rifles to Batista's forces, thus changing the course of the revolution irreversibly towards the rebels. The move was vehemently opposed by U.S. ambassador Earl T. Smith, and led U.S. state department advisor William Wieland to lament that "I know Batista is considered by many as a son of a bitch... but American interests come first... at least he was our son of a bitch."
U.S. president Dwight Eisenhower officially recognized the new Cuban government after the 1959 Cuban revolution which had overthrown the Batista government, but relations between the two governments deteriorated rapidly. Within days Earl T. Smith, U.S. Ambassador to Cuba, resigned his post to be replaced by Philip Bonsal. The US government became increasingly concerned by Cuba's agrarian reforms and the nationalization of US owned industries. Between April 15 and 26th, 1959, Castro and a delegation of representatives visited the U.S. as guests of the Press Club. This visit was perceived by many as a charm offensive on the part of Castro and his recently initiated government, and his visit included laying a wreath at the Lincoln memorial. After a meeting between Castro and Vice-President Richard Nixon, where Castro outlined his reform plans for Cuba, the US began to impose gradual trade restrictions on the island. On September 4 1959, Ambassador Bonsal met with Cuban Premier Fidel Castro to express "serious concern at the treatment being given to American private interests in Cuba both agriculture and utilities." As the reforms continued, trade restrictions on Cuba increased. The U.S. stopped buying Cuban sugar and refused to supply its former trading partner with much needed oil, creating a devastating effect on the island's economy. In March 1960, tensions increased when the freighter La Coubre exploded in Havana harbor, killing over 75 people. Fidel Castro blamed the United States and compared the incident to the sinking of the Maine, though admitting he could provide no evidence for his accusation. That same month, President Eisenhower quietly authorized the CIA to organize, train, and equip Cuban refugees as a guerrilla force to overthrow Castro.
If humanity is able to stabilize its population, then the Earth should not 'fill up'. In many places, birthrates are falling. Europe, Japan, South Korea, and (maybe) the U.S. and China have birthrates less than the replacement rate (~2.1 children per woman). One of the suggested explanations for this is the spread of women's rights in these countries. To combat overpopulation, the developed countries should offer incentives for reducing birthrates, such as offering billions of dollars in financial aid for every percentage decline in the growth rate of a third world country. The chief cause of environmental destruction is population growth, so if we can stabilize (or even reduce) the world population and switch to cleaner energy sources, a lot of our environmental worries should be solved. However, if the world population is reduced, one of the prime impetuses for outerspace colonization will be lost.
Armed and trained does not equal able to hit a target. Remember Pat Tillman? Friendly fire happens . . . . But you can still get shot when you have a gun. And you might hit someone else when you have a gun. Real life is not a video game; a bullet wound does not necessarily mean instant death. There is a good chance that shooting someone accidentally will not inflict a fatal injury. If you shoot the gunman, you may not kill him, but you may incapacitate him, and isn't that just as good? Even if you get shot in the ensuing firefight, there is a better chance of surviving than being gunned down without one.
Uh, there is more to those statistics than that. The US has gun control laws, and the areas with the strictest gun control laws usually have the most incidents of violent crime. Switzerland has very loose gun control laws but a low crime rate. Even Michael Moore noticed that Canada had a lot of guns but not much crime.
KwKSilver's answer seems more logical (based on what I know about Louisiana). If this were Microsoft, I would have said the same damn thing! I know Google only cares about itself; however, since I did not see any benefit for Google to use outdated maps, I thought something else must be going on.
Why exactly is this the government being so heavy-handed with Google? Do critical government/health/military services depend on Google Maps? I can't think of any decent conspiracy theory, so I am not sure about this. There are certainly better things Uncle Sam can do with his time than worry about one company's map-charting policies.
The question I have is if government intervention causes more harm than good. I know that abuses certainly happen, but I wonder if fewer abuses would take place without government intervention.
users will escape a OS that resembles the inconsistency caused by groups of splintered geeks. Even geeks do that on occasion. Why do the Ruby, Perl, and Python communities seem to be much more popular than the Lisp community?
It would probably not be TOO risky to transport it. A trailer with foot-thick lead walls should do the trick. The only risk would be if the waste was weapons-grade; then the truck should have an armed escort.
I know this is a crazy idea, but would it work to have very small (microscopic) organisms that would convert the CO2, Methane, whatever, and turn it into something with a lesser warming effect?
I was thinking about writing a scifi-story about a plan like that that was a bit too successful and caused another Ice Age.
Yes, but only if toymakers focus on the physical!
on
The Return of Toys
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Toys will be popular if toymakers focus on the advantages of physical toys: BEING PHYSICAL. I always loved playing make-believe adventure with action figures (either alone or with a friend). I liked coming up with a fun (to act out, anyway) story (it helped me flesh out my budding storytelling ability). I also liked playing 'imaginary games' (i.e. childhood LARP) in my backyard with friends. Those games were the most fun I have ever had!
It is harder to get this same kind of experience with computers because you have both a higher expectation (since you have to visualize the entire environment) and it is harder to fulfill those expectations. With physical toys, all your materials are ready (all your objects are initialized) and you can use your imagination to fill in the rest. Computers are logical entities; hence, they don't have much room for imagination, and we are not at the point where a DWII (Do What I Imagine) interface is feasible.
Also, any toy that facilitates interaction with other children (toy swords, baseball gloves, etc.) is more fun than sitting at a computer all the time. (Remember, most eight-year-olds are bundles of energy and HATE staying still).
I thought the alternate universes were created when the hero of Ultima I destroyed the Gem of Immortality? At least that is the plot thread of Ultima Online. I know that several worlds/universes (I don't think it is ever made clear which) were formed when the four lands: Land of Lord British, Land of the Feudal Lords, Land of Danger & Despair, and the Land of the Dark Unknown split up from Sosaria.
Let it be noted that sabotage was more of a left-of-center fear at that time. Stalin had denounced "wreckers" at his show trials, and the international left had become obsessed by fascist "fifth columnists" during the Spanish Civil War. So evacuation of the Japanese from the West Coast was supported somewhat more by liberals than by conservatives. The most notable public spokesman against mass evacuations was Republican Senator Robert Taft--and the leading dissenter within the Roosevelt Administration was FBI supremo J. Edgar Hoover.
Are you sure about that?
Key features of the bipartisan legislation include increasing criminal penalties for identity theft involving electronic personal data and making it a crime to intentionally or willfully conceal a security breach involving personal data, giving individuals access to, and the opportunity to correct, any personal information held by commercial data brokers, requiring entities that maintain personal data to establish internal policies that protect the personal data of Americans, requiring entities that maintain personal data to give notice to individuals and law enforcement when they experience a breach involving sensitive personal data and requiring the government to establish rules protecting privacy and security when it uses information from commercial data brokers, to conduct audits of government contracts with data brokers and impose penalties on government contractors that fail to meet data privacy and security requirements. That sounds pretty strong to me.
I thought we had different numbers for different systems. My bank account number is not the same as my credit card number (regular or medical), and both my SSN and my School ID are different as well.
Slashdot Mirror
We are hardwired to perform altrusim, but we mostly tend to prefer our groups. This is called ethnic nepotism. A study (I can't find the link; here's a summary) performed several years ago by the political scientist Frank Salter monitored beggars in Moscow and found that Russians preferred giving to beggars in this order: Russians, Moldavians (Eastern Europeans), and Roma (a.k.a. Gypsies).
U.S. president Dwight Eisenhower officially recognized the new Cuban government after the 1959 Cuban revolution which had overthrown the Batista government, but relations between the two governments deteriorated rapidly. Within days Earl T. Smith, U.S. Ambassador to Cuba, resigned his post to be replaced by Philip Bonsal. The US government became increasingly concerned by Cuba's agrarian reforms and the nationalization of US owned industries. Between April 15 and 26th, 1959, Castro and a delegation of representatives visited the U.S. as guests of the Press Club. This visit was perceived by many as a charm offensive on the part of Castro and his recently initiated government, and his visit included laying a wreath at the Lincoln memorial. After a meeting between Castro and Vice-President Richard Nixon, where Castro outlined his reform plans for Cuba, the US began to impose gradual trade restrictions on the island. On September 4 1959, Ambassador Bonsal met with Cuban Premier Fidel Castro to express "serious concern at the treatment being given to American private interests in Cuba both agriculture and utilities."
As the reforms continued, trade restrictions on Cuba increased. The U.S. stopped buying Cuban sugar and refused to supply its former trading partner with much needed oil, creating a devastating effect on the island's economy. In March 1960, tensions increased when the freighter La Coubre exploded in Havana harbor, killing over 75 people. Fidel Castro blamed the United States and compared the incident to the sinking of the Maine, though admitting he could provide no evidence for his accusation. That same month, President Eisenhower quietly authorized the CIA to organize, train, and equip Cuban refugees as a guerrilla force to overthrow Castro.
If humanity is able to stabilize its population, then the Earth should not 'fill up'. In many places, birthrates are falling. Europe, Japan, South Korea, and (maybe) the U.S. and China have birthrates less than the replacement rate (~2.1 children per woman). One of the suggested explanations for this is the spread of women's rights in these countries. To combat overpopulation, the developed countries should offer incentives for reducing birthrates, such as offering billions of dollars in financial aid for every percentage decline in the growth rate of a third world country. The chief cause of environmental destruction is population growth, so if we can stabilize (or even reduce) the world population and switch to cleaner energy sources, a lot of our environmental worries should be solved. However, if the world population is reduced, one of the prime impetuses for outerspace colonization will be lost.
Uh, there is more to those statistics than that. The US has gun control laws, and the areas with the strictest gun control laws usually have the most incidents of violent crime. Switzerland has very loose gun control laws but a low crime rate. Even Michael Moore noticed that Canada had a lot of guns but not much crime.
KwKSilver's answer seems more logical (based on what I know about Louisiana). If this were Microsoft, I would have said the same damn thing! I know Google only cares about itself; however, since I did not see any benefit for Google to use outdated maps, I thought something else must be going on.
Why exactly is this the government being so heavy-handed with Google? Do critical government/health/military services depend on Google Maps? I can't think of any decent conspiracy theory, so I am not sure about this. There are certainly better things Uncle Sam can do with his time than worry about one company's map-charting policies.
Can't you just use Alt+Tab?
The question I have is if government intervention causes more harm than good. I know that abuses certainly happen, but I wonder if fewer abuses would take place without government intervention.
Does it come with a coomplementary Kraft Dinner? What about Treasure? Does he have to search for it?
Who in the hell puts a graphics card into a car? Does OnStar really need to be that pretty?
Bullshit! If The U.S. had seriously wanted to colonize other countries, we would have supported William Walker.
It would probably not be TOO risky to transport it. A trailer with foot-thick lead walls should do the trick. The only risk would be if the waste was weapons-grade; then the truck should have an armed escort.
I know this is a crazy idea, but would it work to have very small (microscopic) organisms that would convert the CO2, Methane, whatever, and turn it into something with a lesser warming effect? I was thinking about writing a scifi-story about a plan like that that was a bit too successful and caused another Ice Age.
Toys will be popular if toymakers focus on the advantages of physical toys: BEING PHYSICAL. I always loved playing make-believe adventure with action figures (either alone or with a friend). I liked coming up with a fun (to act out, anyway) story (it helped me flesh out my budding storytelling ability). I also liked playing 'imaginary games' (i.e. childhood LARP) in my backyard with friends. Those games were the most fun I have ever had!
It is harder to get this same kind of experience with computers because you have both a higher expectation (since you have to visualize the entire environment) and it is harder to fulfill those expectations. With physical toys, all your materials are ready (all your objects are initialized) and you can use your imagination to fill in the rest. Computers are logical entities; hence, they don't have much room for imagination, and we are not at the point where a DWII (Do What I Imagine) interface is feasible.
Also, any toy that facilitates interaction with other children (toy swords, baseball gloves, etc.) is more fun than sitting at a computer all the time. (Remember, most eight-year-olds are bundles of energy and HATE staying still).
I thought the alternate universes were created when the hero of Ultima I destroyed the Gem of Immortality? At least that is the plot thread of Ultima Online. I know that several worlds/universes (I don't think it is ever made clear which) were formed when the four lands: Land of Lord British, Land of the Feudal Lords, Land of Danger & Despair, and the Land of the Dark Unknown split up from Sosaria.
Alternative Source: this week's news.
I thought we had different numbers for different systems. My bank account number is not the same as my credit card number (regular or medical), and both my SSN and my School ID are different as well.
Look at what they have also introduced! Beware H.R. 393!!
Nothing other than lost sales revenue that is! :)