I Don't Understand the Conclusion
on
Terminator Sparrows?
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Awesome research but the last section puzzles me:
The living male birds were equally aggressive to Robosparrow whether its wing movements were activated or not, the researchers found.
"It confirmed our hypothesis that the wing-waving behaviour is functioning male aggressive communication," said Dr Anderson.
Wouldn't the first sentence imply that nothing can be determined? I mean, it sounds like they weren't beating the shit out of robosparrow because of his wing movements but more so because he was going around looking for Sparrow Connor.
But in all serious does anyone know how they came to that conclusion given the seemingly arbitrary constant aggression?
Okay you need to listen to me carefully and to be focused. Do you have access to a bathtub? Good, take your laptop into the bathroom and fill the bathtub full of water. I need you to log into your Facebook and open your Farmville tab. You need to do this quickly before they gain access. Take each of your animals from your farm and love them and nuzzle them and say goodbye to them. Then hold them under water in the bathtub until they stop struggling.
Are you done? Good, leave them in the tub, they're in a better place now.
Go back into your room and crawl under your bed so the satellites they have control of cannot see you. Open up your Apple account and start forwarding your e-mails to your Gmail account. Yes, I know it will take forever, no there is not an easier way to do this. Okay, once you have all of those out delete your Apple account -- you'll get a new one later. You never really owned that stuff you bought on iTunes so just forget about it now, it's gone. Now log into iCloud on your laptop and start the laptop on fire. It's better to destroy all of those photos, tax returns and documents then to let them have them.
Now listen carefully because this part is important. These men are going to access your accounts. They're going to send your friends messages and make you seem like a jerk -- just for fun. There's nothing you can do about that. Just make sure to leave the Slashdot chat box open when they take you...
Hello?
Hello? Anonymous Reader?
I don't know who you are. I don't know what you want. If you are looking for ransom, I can tell you I don't have money. But what I do have are a very large amount of Slashdot karma; karma I have acquired over a very long career. Karma that make me feel like I can stand up to people like you. If you let the anonymous reader's accounts go now, that'll be the end of it. I will not look for you, I will not pursue you. But if you don't, I will look for you, I will find you, and I will ask you politely to stop messing with people.
(6) A person or entity providing electronic communication services to the public shall not intentionally divulge the contents of any communication while in transmission of that service to any person or entity other than an addressee or intended recipient of such communication or an agent of such addressee or intended recipient except: (a) As otherwise authorized by federal or state law. (b) To a person employed or authorized, or whose facilities are used, to forward such communication to its destination. (c) Any electronic communication inadvertently obtained by the service provider and which appears to pertain to the commission of a crime, if such divulgence is made to a law enforcement agency.
After thinking about this last night, it occurred to me that my raspberry pi can connect to a passport hard drive (a small 500 GB drive that will run about a $100). The Pi is about to get a cheap CCD camera. You may be able to build a pendant out of the CCD and clip a small mic to it then run the wires along the pendant's chain to your backpack or purse where the Pi and passport reside. Powering the Pi is easy although powering the passport to be mobile might be much more problematic. I have 64 GB SD cards that work with my Pi but I'm not sure if the more expensive 128 GBs work nor do I know if that is enough for that particular CCD camera to take one day's worth of footage.
You'll find that many serious psychological disorders stem from not being able to forget.
Okay. List them. "Serious psychological disorders"? Go ahead and list them out of the DSMIV or whatever you can find. I'd be curious because GMail and GChat have made my life a thousand times better with their impeccable recording and recall abilities. "Remember when I suggested The Naked and Famous to you like three years ago? Oh, you don't? That's funny, this e-mail says otherwise."
As for your boy friend, and your future young goats, no one wanted to see your vacation slides last century. No one will want to watch your daily videos this century. It's that simple.
That's where you're wrong or it's impossible to prove that no one will ever want to see it. I would absolutely love to see the world through my grandfather's eyes.
One time I went to a thrift store and they had random family effects. One of them was this ancient black leather flip book with about 50 black and white plate photographs in it and as I flipped through them I saw settlers on the plains. Standing next to Native Americans. Standing next to mud huts that they had cut with sod. Standing next to oxen tied to a manual plow. On and on they went. The thrift store had priced it at $54. I said, "When is this from?" and the guy shrugged. "What were the names of these people?" and the guy shrugged. I offered him $20 for it and he said the photos were worth more than a dollar a piece. So I carefully inspected it and left it. I thought about it for a week and stopped back in to actually shell out $54 and it was gone. I was kind of glad it was gone, I don't need more crap in my room... but it was something unique and interesting to me.
I think that the History Channel would be a thousand times better if they just did a two hour special on what a laborer's life was like in Egypt or Babylon or Inca civilizations or any ancient world. They would have to edit it but I would find even the mundane things like how they prepared their meals to be interesting.
So, I think you're wrong. And I think that those handful of black and white photos have expanded to stacks of color photos and now long videos of family gatherings from VHS to CCD. Is it really that absurd to think that someday your offspring will wonder what life is like? Or 200 years from now any random person just curious about life was like in our time?
Yes, it is a bit narcissistic to select yourself and to think that your immediate friends and family want to sit through 24 hours of your boring life. Not necessarily true, however, if you consider it from a downstreamer's point of view. Ideally you would record your life and disallow access to it until you're dead.
Google's Glass might one day accomplish what you're asking. I saw a kickstarter about facebook glasses that recorded but I'm not going to link to that as I don't think it was very... well received?
If I were to record my entire life, that would mean also recording other people, when they are interacting with me on a daily basis. What sort of privacy laws pertain to this?
So personally, I would use this only on my property and public property. And then I would separate the data between data from the property I was on and public property and just be mindful if I was sharing that the people in the public property video did not give their consent to be recorded. I think this means different things in different states so if you would tell us your state/commonwealth you could probably get better information. Personally, people would act weird if they knew they were being recorded and since it was for my own personal records and on public property I wouldn't see how it would come to light that I own it let alone archive it.
If you wanted to be absolutely respectful of other people I would suggest only using it on your property and then bringing a stack of waivers with you for people to sign before you started recording. Good luck!
There is an environmental impact of wind turbines.
Of course, there is an environmental impact with anything you do. I'm sure there's an environmental impact from LENR in some form or fashion.
First, they are ferocious bird-killers.
"Ferocious"? Well, I can see this is going to be a rational quantitative discussion. They do surveys underneath windmills to try to estimate how many birds they kill. I hate to break it to you but the numbers are pretty darn small. Yes, it is a concern. No, it is not "ferocious."
Second, they are noisy 24/7, so much that it has been to stress animals who can't get away from the noise.
What? [citation needed] Modern windmills are not noisy and I've stood underneath the ones my dad erected and I couldn't hear a damn thing over the wind.
Instead, how about some R&D on something which actually will be useful in densely populated areas? LENR fusion looks promising. If we get that going, especially with carbon atoms as fuel, that would be more important to the world's economy than the Industrial Revolution or the invention of electricity combined.
Look, dude, I'm all for spreading our funding around. And I think we do. I'm really sad that ITER has had so many funding problems but the big difference between wind and LENR is that your if on LENR could turn up nothing. And then where did all your money go? At least wind has something returned as you scale. LENR is just a big output at the very end if it works. That's why their funding is always problematic. Nothing to show until the very end is a huge gamble.
Oh, you have to put words in other people's mouths and deride them as "naive hippies" before they can talk? I'm sure you win all your arguments.
You should try reading the whole article next time. All the way down to the last sentence:
"Wind power is in a middle ground," he says. "It is still one of the most scalable renewables, but our research suggests that we will need to pay attention to its limits and climatic impacts if we try to scale it beyond a few terawatts."
Sounds like Keith is recommending we invest a few terawatts worth into wind and that it's still one of the best renewable options out there. But your knee jerk response didn't give you the time to read the article much less his actual research.
Dare to stand up an any environmental impact meeting and point out that the physics of many of these technologies just aren't there and that you have to factor in manufacturing costs and impacts, and pretty soon you've got some trust-fund asshole in dreadlocks screaming that you must be a plant from Big Oil.
[citation needed] Seriously, tell me where this happens. Your ad hominems and strawmen are really getting old around here, crazyjj.
'People have often thought there's no upper bound for wind power—that it's one of the most scalable power sources," he says.
What?! I've been lied to! My father poured foundations for windmills in my hometown and I've been going around saying that they're a great resource for us to have and boy do I feel like I've been duped! Let's read this whole news article and find out all the other lies I've been spouting!
"Wind power is in a middle ground," he says. "It is still one of the most scalable renewables, but our research suggests that we will need to pay attention to its limits and climatic impacts if we try to scale it beyond a few terawatts."
Okay so you write that as your last sentence in the entire article? Crawl in a hole and die. Please. Whoever wrote this news article and summary, please go die. I'm sure the professor's research is sound but the way this press release of it was laid out painted wind as a mythical source of energy so please just do us all a favor and die.
So a few terawatts is what, like 7% of our total energy needs? Okay, let's scale it up to there and then we'll have empirical evidence to support how far we should go.
I don't think anyone suggested we blanket the Earth in windmills or even that wind is the basket into which all of our apples should go but, looking at the high wind areas next to metropolises, you have to admit there's some low hanging fruit out there, yeah?
I'm sorry, which console maker hasn't and how do you determine who is "cruising" and who isn't? Playstation to Playstation 4? That's not cruising on their name? They've been in the game a lot longer than Microsoft or Sony... so what?
they've went with gimmicks
I know, right. It's like those tired rhythm music games were only available on the Wii. Oh, and Sony and Microsoft keep leveraging innovative titles like Call of Duty 18 and Battlefield 5 and Medal of Honor: Get On 'Er.
they've stubbornly stuck with being the kids console
Right and if they hadn't, everyone would be criticizing them for not sticking to their bread and butter. It's cool you don't like those games but that's a market share and equals $$$.
they've all-but-resigned themselves to staying in the last gen, etc.
By releasing the Wii U a year before the XBox 720 and PS4? I don't get it. I think they're trying to offset themselves by a year and give consumers some breathing room to enjoy all consoles instead of making a choice. Sure, something released a year later better have good specs but can you point out the publishers that claim Nintendo just lacks the hardcore power for their titles? I haven't heard a lot of complaints and frankly, I own a Wii, Xbox 360 and a PS3... graphics are rarely a factor for me in which title I play. I value game play and Nintendo pays more attention to this than the rehashed shit I find on the other two.
And, most woefully of all, they seem to have put little to no thought into WHERE THEY FIT IN NOW.
I get it, you like first person shooters. Enjoy. I like how you totally overlooked the obvious to me: Nintendo games are games that I play when my friends come over and want to drink and have fun. The wiimotes are fun in person and the Kinect is actually trying to break into this market. You are explaining this from one of the most narrow and convoluted false narratives I've come across.
You're attacking Nintendo for owning their market share while the other two consoles do exactly the same thing. Hell, it's arguable that Sony and Microsoft are gutting each other by fighting over the same user base while Nintendo chugs along owning one. How are those XBox 360 and PS3 sales? Through the roof right now?
No, I don't think it's even close to dead. I want one but I don't have to have one because titles are still coming out on the Wii. It is my opinion that Nintendo thrives on being the cheapest option. Yes, I know that sounds stupid. But I feel like in every console war the Nintendo option is always at least a little cheaper than the Sony or Microsoft options. Sure, a lot of console makers lose money on consoles and make it up on publishing licenses but Nintendo still comes out with a lower price.
But in order for that strategy to work, there has to be a comparison. The Wii U came out at a time when it seemed like the console wars were over -- or at least dormant. I think the market and the makers benefit from a three way tie because everyone wants a new console. But when it was just the Wii U the titles weren't that compelling and the hardware was, well, it was Nintendo hardware.
I predict the Wii U will have flagging sales just like their handheld consoles that come out with no competitor. And then next Christmas when the XBox 720 and PS4 launch, parents will walk into a big box store and little Tommy will want that new $500 PS4 bundle but their eye will catch the Wii U for $175 or $200 and they'll think... "F it, I'll get him this with a couple games and an extra controller." The kid will initially be unhappy but learn to love it.
Or they could just release an exclusive Zelda title on it... I guess I'd be forced to buy it then.
Anyone have any guesses as to what new feature the Sony or Microsoft offerings could come up with to lockout the Wii U? I mean, there's no new disc standard or input device idea that I'm missing, is there? That'd be the only case where the Wii U would be in trouble -- if there was some new feature X like VR goggles that a consumer just had to have at all costs.
We are feathering our environmental nest at home and stocking our shelves from unregulated hell holes.
Submitter here, this link was removed from my submission. To be fair it was a link heavy submission so it was probably smart. Obviously we're on the same planet as China and when this negatively affects the planet it also affects us.
So you already have an interest in not purchasing materials from heavily polluting companies. The problem is that the "free market" as it exists (yeah, I know it's not truly a free market) does not give a single fuck about the environment. We don't even have a way of rating products by their pollution and even if we did, China would just bribe that all away locally. Really all you can do is observe and report so more people become informed.
I don't understand why people think that anonymity is or should be an unquestionably protected given.
While I disagree with this politician's proposal, I feel like we should make it clear that not all speech should be behind an anonymous veil. It's difficult to explore and draw the line but, for instance, if you call in a bomb threat or threaten someone's life over the phone and they use the appropriate means to track you down, I don't think you should be able to say that your speech should be anonymous and by removing the anonymity you're a treasonous free speech hater. However, if I want to criticize my leaders you shouldn't be able to trace whatever communications I use to do so in order to identify me. And I think we have court systems and warrants and wiretapping laws in place (or rather we should) that make this a process that does not become abused. When your words have a large amount of weight, they shouldn't be anonymous -- I think that testifying against someone is a great example of this. Can I anonymously swear to tell the truth and call you a pedophile and will you demand that be entered into the record in a court of law?
Another recent example I can think of that annoys me is when your "anonymous free speech" is equated to hundreds of millions of dollars or campaign donations. At that point we're talking about sums that can positively or negatively affect many lives and when it hits a certain point it should simply be published. This would reduce some of the legalized bribery in this country that is parading around as "free speech."
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
It doesn't actually say anything about anonymity although I understand how forcing identification could amount to fear of response and future duress. So at that point you need to involve a judge in the process of determining whether identification is needed without violating the first amendment.
Your loss. I'm not a fan of "the free market fixes everything" but that's not what he said (the key word here is "often") and despite my usually mdoerate position he had a lot of thoughtful and intelligent things to say.
Yeah, if you read the whole sentence he says:
Often times the market can sort it out, but if, and only if, you ensure that externalities are built in, and you ensure that the government hasn’t already messed with the incentive structures.
Which is one of the chestnuts I tire of when debating ultra Conservatives and Libertarians. Because "messed with the incentive structure" can mean a lot of things. For most Libertarians, any taxation at all is "messing with the incentive structure." One I'm fond of is when (anarcho?) Libertarians argue against police forces and propose that if we weren't taxed to pay for the budgetary mess that is the local police, we would all be swimming in so much cash we could have ten guns in each house and our own state of the art security systems and entire neighborhoods would be locked down so tight that criminals would all but disappear -- if there even were any criminals after they got all that tax money back!
So yeah, it sounded to me like his "if and only if" the government hasn't messed with "incentive structures" statement was to say that "well the government's charging you property tax so it's already not a free market and anything that goes wrong is clearly the fault of the government. Hell, you'd be knee deep in cash and that drinking water pollution problem would evaporate but instead the EPA is just wasting money."
I believe your paper would have been unpopular on both sides of the isle but did the Republican knee jerk reaction to it negatively affect your affinity with the Republican party and your efforts to further their cause? Setting aside your differences on Copyright Law with that party, are you still Republican?
Khanna: Absolutely still a Republican. In fact I actually quibble a bit with your premise. The conservative position is that our current system of copyright is not consistent with the Constitution and inhibits innovation by choosing winners and losers– and pretty much all conservative organizations have come out with that opinion. There is a difference between Republican and Conservative that I won’t get into here, but my opinions are conservative and the Republican Party reflects more of the conservative ideology.
Your response was very confusing to me. So if the Republican Party fired you for saying exactly what "all conservative organizations" opine on the topic of copyright... then the Republican Party is not a conservative organization? But your opinions are conservative... but you're still a Republican... which is a party that has "more of the conservative ideology" but they still fire you for saying what all conservative organizations believe? Do you see where I'm having a hard time grasping how your three sentence response logically adds up? I sorta wish you would have gotten into the difference between Republican and Conservative. I guess that's the key to understanding how they fired you? My assumption is that money trumps ideology in politics.
Why retain the label of Republican when you could just call yourself Conservative and identify the problems with the Republicans or side with Libertarians or Tea Party? I mean, you sell your idea as core Conservatism and publish it for Republicans yet you're fired for it. And then you still continue to call yourself Republican? Why?
Assuming that the particular terminator gene doesn't have unwanted side-effects, then I don't see a problem with it. This is the same standard I apply to other genetically modified living things.
Can you tell me how much testing is done to verify these things are safe? How long and how numerous are the human trials? I mean, I've seen the tobacco industry burn people on this exact same thing before by avoiding rigorous studies. Is this stuff treated just like the FDA treats any sort of medicine that we put into our bodies or does it just get rubber stamped through like a natural food? I would be suspicious that anything developed in the past ten years or less is completely guaranteed to be safe for the duration of a human life. Also, I am rather afraid if we get to a point where symptoms develop but we can't pin down which genetically modified food is doing it because everything's genetically modified and even growing things organically doesn't mean anything because of cross pollination. If you can convince me not to worry about that, I'm all ears! For instance, increases of lead in our body looked safe cosmetically and look at all the studies coming out about that.
Monsanto’s reaction is that Bowman’s use of the commodity seeds plainly violates its patent. From its vantage point, Bowman might have been free to use the seeds he bought from Monsanto (on the theory that Monsanto’s patent rights for those seeds were exhausted by its sale of them), but Monsanto has never sold the seeds that Bowman bought and planted; Monsanto does not, for example, sell seeds to grain elevators. Because Monsanto has never sold those particular seeds, Bowman’s use of them to create new seeds infringes its patent as clearly as if Bowman had made a new light bulb copying Edison’s light-bulb patent.
So it has come to this: they are equivocating planting seeds with reverse engineering a light bulb.
For another thing, Monsanto’s technology agreement (signed by all farmers who purchase Roundup Ready seeds) includes provisions that prohibit Bowman’s activities. Among other things, those agreements prohibit any planting of progeny seed; the only permitted use of soybean seeds grown from Roundup Ready seeds is sale for food and the like. If the Court rules against Monsanto on the basic exhaustion question, it then must confront the controversial question (crucial to, among others, the software industry) of the enforceability of license agreements that govern the rights of users of IP-infused products. On that question, the United States (which firmly supports Monsanto on the central exhaustion question) argues that the conceded sale makes any subsequent licensing restrictions invalid as to those seeds and their progeny; not surprisingly, amici like the Business Software Alliance contest that idea.
Great, you're free to have those agreements but Bowman didn't sign it. Chase down the guy(s) that put your grain into that elevator and sue the living shit out of them. Then make sure all your current customers know that they're legally culpable for what a grain elevator does with your intellectual property. I'll be sure to remind everyone that Monsanto seed can result in ruination if they find their way back into the soil. Then we'll see how your sales do, mmkay?
I don't know, guys, after watching this video from KCNA news I'm kind of concerned. I mean the United States' air force is being overrun with cost and we've only built 63 F-35 aircraft. How can that stand up to the DPRK's 40 Chengdu F-7s?! And defending Pyongyang they have 40 Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-29s! 40 + 40 = 70 and 70 > 63!!!
In the video, you can see the pilot explain that they will reduce me to ash! TO ASH! And they only need six minutes! Look at how hard he must have studied to learn how to fly a jet fighter, clearly he knows what he's talking about. Apparently I'm guilty of state sponsored terrorism against the North Koreans and I didn't even know it! Welp, I'm withdrawing all my savings and spending it on hookers and blow, for in six minutes we all might be ash. Catchy tune at the end too, that's a real earworm, I'll be whistling that one all the way to the firestorm they are going to unleash on me.
Oh great and powerful Korean People's Army Air Force, please have mercy on my electricity having soul! I knew not what I was terrorizing!
And now that the genetic element has been effectively abated, the controversy evaporates. You're welcome.
Thanks, but you offered absolutely zero proof or research nor did you even talk about how you verified that "genetic diversity and cultural diversity would be related." Armchair genetics is not progress.
I mean, I can pull explanations out of my ass too: the paper focuses on the distance from the cradle of humanity so while they may be correct in genetic diversity they are actually witnessing the exploitation of resources in new lands as humans traveled further and further. Their "just so" sweet spot of heterozygosity has nothing to do with economic productivity. The economic productivity comes from the untapped resources that the free new land provided the encroaching humans.
And that explanation is about as helpful as yours (hint: not at all).
Clearly, the African continent is home only to the most primitive peoples. It's not a place that would birth historically powerful, flourishing civilizations whose large-scale engineering feats would be regarded among the "wonders of the world" millennia later. Oh, wait...
Um, the article was confusing, it showed like a White Pride info graphic... yet if you read the paper, the genetic diversity is noted as being increasing over time the closer you are to the birthplace of humanity (as pictured here the heterozygosity is reduced the further away from Africa). The second part that the article woefully left out was that this article examined the year 1500 CE.
Wherever determinism appears, controversy attends, raising specters of days when colonialists, eugenicists, public health officials, and political idealists believed they could cure the human condition through manipulation and force.
Well that sounds pretty epic... also, very confusing. "Cure the human condition"? "Manipulation and force"? What does any of that have to do with this paper? Also, I find it counter-intellectual to take a paper that has been submitted for peer review and renounce it along with colonialists, eugenicists, public health officials and political idealists just because it contains correlated determinism. You're free to attack it based purely on what it says but to say that just because it suggests determinism in humanity's history doesn't mean that they are Nazi scientists and Ku Klux Klan members.
Curiously the article accompanying this paper leaves out a key detail. From the paper:
This study therefore employs cross-country historical data on population density as the dependent variable of interest in the historical analysis and examines the hypothesized eect of human genetic diversity within societies on their population densities in the year 1500 CE.
(emphasis mine) Okay, after reading the article I would have said this study is obviously overlooking the British Empire that came back and started to systematically colonize the world despite it being further from the cradle of civilization than the very people it was colonizing. So 1500 CE was prior to a lot of the counter examples I could think of but I also feel like China and Japan had to be fully operational at these points in time and I wish I could pull up GDP numbers for 1500 but, gosh darn it, they weren't very good at record keeping at this point in time.
I think that if these authors had placed their time frame in pre-Holy Roman Empire or pre-Zoroastrian times they would have met with less kick back from their academic community. Personally, I feel like we as humans by 1500 CE had already transcended the epoch period where our intelligence removed us from the uncaring hand of nature. Granted, that was a long struggle, but I think it's foolish to say that "At not time in humanity's history has our genetic diversity played a role in our survival." We are of the animal kingdom, the mistake this paper made was trying to bring that too close to the present. We had already had inventor-geniuses. History had already shown that technology like the Romans roads could be critical in enforcing dominance on other cultures.
The paper attacks everything from its sources of population data to its methods for measuring genetic diversity, but the economists are standing by their methods.
Welcome to academia. I mean, when it comes to publishing papers on historic events you can't exactly take their experiment and run it 50 times in your own lab to independently verify your results, can you? So I would imagine that economists, social sciences, historical studies and the like are filled with disagreeing camps that can't rectify their differences.
The quality of Ashraf and Galor's research notwithstanding, the debate illustrates just how tricky it's become to assert anything which says something about human development was in any way inevitable.
Or perhaps if you publish something about the past and you make flimsy assumptions, you can almost guarantee your "colleagues" will roast you alive.
Geographer and author Jared Diamond, for example, who wrote Guns, Germs, and Steel, has been branded an environmental determinist who cuts culture and colonialism too much slack with regard to the rise and fall of civilizations—criticism that has been renewed recently with the publication of his new book, The World Until Yesterday.
So you're saying an author is being attacked for his theories not being 10
No. Nor have I ever heard anyway claim that as being their primary function. Let's adjust that to say that patent laws are designed to promote innovation and invention by disproportionately reward the production of ideas compared to the actual work and creation being done. This, in theory, helps any size of inventor put in R&D monies to chase a high reward. And, yes, I do think they have been successful to some extent in doing this although there is plenty of evidence that they have gone too far as of late. They've also been applied to things that probably shouldn't be patentable like genes and software.
One such inventor faces selling his house, despite inventing a product that has sold tens of millions worldwide.
Pardon my anecdotal apathy but so what? Plenty of Americans squander money like it's nobody's business. I'd imagine there are tons of engineers out there that are brilliant inventors but either don't want to or fail to deal with money in a responsible manner. Hell, I've recently been collecting sketch card art and just totalled up my last six months spending. What the hell was I thinking?! American athletes can make millions in a single year and still end up penniless before the age of retirement!
From the article: 'Inventor Trevor Baylis says he faces having to sell his house after failing to make money from his wind up radio and is now calling for the government to step into to protect inventors. “I’ve got someone coming around in the next couple of weeks to do a valuation on my house,” says Trevor Baylis, as he walks into the sitting room of his home on Eel Pie Island, in Twickenham, south-west London. “I’m going to have to sell it or remortgage it – I’m totally broke. I’m living in poverty here.”'
Okay so this inventor is house broke -- he's got nice clothes, the article doesn't say he works three jobs. That leaves me a little curious so I inspected the article which had hilarious counter intuitive subtitles:
He built a home on Eel Pie Island in the 1970s for £20,000
Wow! That bit is interesting! So he lives on an island in the Thames in London?! Okay, I'm going to go ahead and gather that property taxes must be insane. Could he afford a house in the country? I mean, is he selling a house that he can no longer afford to buy a house in a cheaper neighborhood or is he genuinely poor? Which is it?
The property also has a pool (Paul Grover)
Uh, okay so add energy and water bills to the above.
The prolific inventor earns money as an after-dinner speaker (Paul Grover)
Okay so, has he tried getting a 9 to 5 job? I hate to be a dick but I don't think you can invent a particular modification of a radio in 1991 and a shoe that charges cell phones among "250 products" and expect to coast through life smoking a pipe and getting a bennie here or there for dinner speeches. I mean, those were the two most notable inventions?
Furthermore how do his business mistakes equate to a breakdown of the patent system:
Due to the quirks of patent law, the company he went into business with to manufacture his radios were able to tweak his original design, which used a spring to generate power, so that it charged a battery instead. This caused him to lose control over the product.
Man, I wish PJ would deconstruct this so I knew what was going on. So what that tells me is that the novel part of his invention was the spring that generated power directly to the radio? And when the company found a different way to do that, they cut him out? Yeah, companies are going to try to screw you anyway they can. The problem is that this screwing could go the opposite way too. I mean, a
The difference is this is something people post to voluntarily. They are not paying to receive a grade and credit for. The OP is referring to a course requirement.
The submitter didn't really explain the purpose of this exercise. If the purpose was to deploy and customize Wordpress to show something you had learned about PHP and MYSQL then maybe the teacher wasn't grading on grammar and most people didn't care. I myself am guilty of long sentences that, if I had more time to spend on them, I would probably trim down but I don't because that's not what I'm paid to spend time on at my job (unless it's user doc). Likewise if this was demonstration of technical skill over prose, these could have been last minute entries and afterthoughts to the assignment. Given little time, no proof reading and just put up to Lorem Ipsum up some text?
The big question: are these students docked for having poor grammar in their blog posts in a computer course? If not, then you probably shouldn't be critiquing them like they just tried to write a novel.
Don't be discouraged by the potential consequences. You work for the American people. It's your job, your obligation to be challenging existing paradigms and put forward novel solutions to existing problems.
So now what? What's your plan? I mean, you can tell them not to be discouraged but that's a pretty hefty weight to put on your own shoulders. Anyone who gets a check from the content industry (and I think that's everyone in DC) is going to blacklist you. Do you see yourself taking a Ralph Nader-like approach to politics? How do you even get your foot back in the door? You do realize that if you don't return or rise to another kind of constituent-focused power that your above encouragement will fall upon deaf ears as you will become the example of what happens to an outspoken staffer?
But the "level of backlash it received from the content industry" took him by surprise.
Really? This took you by surprise? If not exactly what occurred, what exactly did you expect to happen? The content industry was just supposed to take it in stride and think that maybe copyright law has moved too far in their favor? I'm not in politics (thank god) and I'm not in the copyright business (praise xenu) but it was as lucid to me as an unmuddied pond that your job was forfeit upon publishing this. I mean, what exactly do you think Hollywood and the RIAA are paying you for if not to keep these kinds of discussions off the table and pass some Mickey Mouse Act 2.0 through the next Sonny Bono puppet?
Slashdot Mirror
The living male birds were equally aggressive to Robosparrow whether its wing movements were activated or not, the researchers found.
"It confirmed our hypothesis that the wing-waving behaviour is functioning male aggressive communication," said Dr Anderson.
Wouldn't the first sentence imply that nothing can be determined? I mean, it sounds like they weren't beating the shit out of robosparrow because of his wing movements but more so because he was going around looking for Sparrow Connor.
But in all serious does anyone know how they came to that conclusion given the seemingly arbitrary constant aggression?
Okay you need to listen to me carefully and to be focused. Do you have access to a bathtub? Good, take your laptop into the bathroom and fill the bathtub full of water. I need you to log into your Facebook and open your Farmville tab. You need to do this quickly before they gain access. Take each of your animals from your farm and love them and nuzzle them and say goodbye to them. Then hold them under water in the bathtub until they stop struggling.
...
Are you done? Good, leave them in the tub, they're in a better place now.
Go back into your room and crawl under your bed so the satellites they have control of cannot see you. Open up your Apple account and start forwarding your e-mails to your Gmail account. Yes, I know it will take forever, no there is not an easier way to do this. Okay, once you have all of those out delete your Apple account -- you'll get a new one later. You never really owned that stuff you bought on iTunes so just forget about it now, it's gone. Now log into iCloud on your laptop and start the laptop on fire. It's better to destroy all of those photos, tax returns and documents then to let them have them.
Now listen carefully because this part is important. These men are going to access your accounts. They're going to send your friends messages and make you seem like a jerk -- just for fun. There's nothing you can do about that. Just make sure to leave the Slashdot chat box open when they take you
Hello?
Hello? Anonymous Reader?
I don't know who you are. I don't know what you want. If you are looking for ransom, I can tell you I don't have money. But what I do have are a very large amount of Slashdot karma; karma I have acquired over a very long career. Karma that make me feel like I can stand up to people like you. If you let the anonymous reader's accounts go now, that'll be the end of it. I will not look for you, I will not pursue you. But if you don't, I will look for you, I will find you, and I will ask you politely to stop messing with people.
That is a good place to start, thanks! I find myself in the states LA and TX most of the time.
Looks like you're good to go with no need for waivers as long as you yourself consent to recording the video (they're both single-party consent states). I should caution you, however, that what you do with that data could get you into huge trouble. For instance uploading it somewhere for all the world to see without permission or consent (the last column in that PDF I linked) could result in trouble in both states. Here's what Louisiana law says:
(6) A person or entity providing electronic communication services to the public shall not intentionally divulge the contents of any communication while in transmission of that service to any person or entity other than an addressee or intended recipient of such communication or an agent of such addressee or intended recipient except: (a) As otherwise authorized by federal or state law. (b) To a person employed or authorized, or whose facilities are used, to forward such communication to its destination. (c) Any electronic communication inadvertently obtained by the service provider and which appears to pertain to the commission of a crime, if such divulgence is made to a law enforcement agency.
After thinking about this last night, it occurred to me that my raspberry pi can connect to a passport hard drive (a small 500 GB drive that will run about a $100). The Pi is about to get a cheap CCD camera. You may be able to build a pendant out of the CCD and clip a small mic to it then run the wires along the pendant's chain to your backpack or purse where the Pi and passport reside. Powering the Pi is easy although powering the passport to be mobile might be much more problematic. I have 64 GB SD cards that work with my Pi but I'm not sure if the more expensive 128 GBs work nor do I know if that is enough for that particular CCD camera to take one day's worth of footage.
Again, good luck!
You'll find that many serious psychological disorders stem from not being able to forget.
Okay. List them. "Serious psychological disorders"? Go ahead and list them out of the DSMIV or whatever you can find. I'd be curious because GMail and GChat have made my life a thousand times better with their impeccable recording and recall abilities. "Remember when I suggested The Naked and Famous to you like three years ago? Oh, you don't? That's funny, this e-mail says otherwise."
As for your boy friend, and your future young goats, no one wanted to see your vacation slides last century. No one will want to watch your daily videos this century. It's that simple.
That's where you're wrong or it's impossible to prove that no one will ever want to see it. I would absolutely love to see the world through my grandfather's eyes.
... but it was something unique and interesting to me.
One time I went to a thrift store and they had random family effects. One of them was this ancient black leather flip book with about 50 black and white plate photographs in it and as I flipped through them I saw settlers on the plains. Standing next to Native Americans. Standing next to mud huts that they had cut with sod. Standing next to oxen tied to a manual plow. On and on they went. The thrift store had priced it at $54. I said, "When is this from?" and the guy shrugged. "What were the names of these people?" and the guy shrugged. I offered him $20 for it and he said the photos were worth more than a dollar a piece. So I carefully inspected it and left it. I thought about it for a week and stopped back in to actually shell out $54 and it was gone. I was kind of glad it was gone, I don't need more crap in my room
I think that the History Channel would be a thousand times better if they just did a two hour special on what a laborer's life was like in Egypt or Babylon or Inca civilizations or any ancient world. They would have to edit it but I would find even the mundane things like how they prepared their meals to be interesting.
So, I think you're wrong. And I think that those handful of black and white photos have expanded to stacks of color photos and now long videos of family gatherings from VHS to CCD. Is it really that absurd to think that someday your offspring will wonder what life is like? Or 200 years from now any random person just curious about life was like in our time?
Yes, it is a bit narcissistic to select yourself and to think that your immediate friends and family want to sit through 24 hours of your boring life. Not necessarily true, however, if you consider it from a downstreamer's point of view. Ideally you would record your life and disallow access to it until you're dead.
Google's Glass might one day accomplish what you're asking. I saw a kickstarter about facebook glasses that recorded but I'm not going to link to that as I don't think it was very
If I were to record my entire life, that would mean also recording other people, when they are interacting with me on a daily basis. What sort of privacy laws pertain to this?
So personally, I would use this only on my property and public property. And then I would separate the data between data from the property I was on and public property and just be mindful if I was sharing that the people in the public property video did not give their consent to be recorded. I think this means different things in different states so if you would tell us your state/commonwealth you could probably get better information. Personally, people would act weird if they knew they were being recorded and since it was for my own personal records and on public property I wouldn't see how it would come to light that I own it let alone archive it.
If you wanted to be absolutely respectful of other people I would suggest only using it on your property and then bringing a stack of waivers with you for people to sign before you started recording. Good luck!
There is an environmental impact of wind turbines.
Of course, there is an environmental impact with anything you do. I'm sure there's an environmental impact from LENR in some form or fashion.
First, they are ferocious bird-killers.
"Ferocious"? Well, I can see this is going to be a rational quantitative discussion. They do surveys underneath windmills to try to estimate how many birds they kill. I hate to break it to you but the numbers are pretty darn small. Yes, it is a concern. No, it is not "ferocious."
Second, they are noisy 24/7, so much that it has been to stress animals who can't get away from the noise.
What? [citation needed] Modern windmills are not noisy and I've stood underneath the ones my dad erected and I couldn't hear a damn thing over the wind.
Instead, how about some R&D on something which actually will be useful in densely populated areas? LENR fusion looks promising. If we get that going, especially with carbon atoms as fuel, that would be more important to the world's economy than the Industrial Revolution or the invention of electricity combined.
Look, dude, I'm all for spreading our funding around. And I think we do. I'm really sad that ITER has had so many funding problems but the big difference between wind and LENR is that your if on LENR could turn up nothing. And then where did all your money go? At least wind has something returned as you scale. LENR is just a big output at the very end if it works. That's why their funding is always problematic. Nothing to show until the very end is a huge gamble.
You should try reading the whole article next time. All the way down to the last sentence:
"Wind power is in a middle ground," he says. "It is still one of the most scalable renewables, but our research suggests that we will need to pay attention to its limits and climatic impacts if we try to scale it beyond a few terawatts."
Sounds like Keith is recommending we invest a few terawatts worth into wind and that it's still one of the best renewable options out there. But your knee jerk response didn't give you the time to read the article much less his actual research.
Dare to stand up an any environmental impact meeting and point out that the physics of many of these technologies just aren't there and that you have to factor in manufacturing costs and impacts, and pretty soon you've got some trust-fund asshole in dreadlocks screaming that you must be a plant from Big Oil.
[citation needed] Seriously, tell me where this happens. Your ad hominems and strawmen are really getting old around here, crazyjj.
'People have often thought there's no upper bound for wind power—that it's one of the most scalable power sources," he says.
What?! I've been lied to! My father poured foundations for windmills in my hometown and I've been going around saying that they're a great resource for us to have and boy do I feel like I've been duped! Let's read this whole news article and find out all the other lies I've been spouting!
"Wind power is in a middle ground," he says. "It is still one of the most scalable renewables, but our research suggests that we will need to pay attention to its limits and climatic impacts if we try to scale it beyond a few terawatts."
Okay so you write that as your last sentence in the entire article? Crawl in a hole and die. Please. Whoever wrote this news article and summary, please go die. I'm sure the professor's research is sound but the way this press release of it was laid out painted wind as a mythical source of energy so please just do us all a favor and die.
So a few terawatts is what, like 7% of our total energy needs? Okay, let's scale it up to there and then we'll have empirical evidence to support how far we should go.
I don't think anyone suggested we blanket the Earth in windmills or even that wind is the basket into which all of our apples should go but, looking at the high wind areas next to metropolises, you have to admit there's some low hanging fruit out there, yeah?
They've cruised on their name
I'm sorry, which console maker hasn't and how do you determine who is "cruising" and who isn't? Playstation to Playstation 4? That's not cruising on their name? They've been in the game a lot longer than Microsoft or Sony ... so what?
they've went with gimmicks
I know, right. It's like those tired rhythm music games were only available on the Wii. Oh, and Sony and Microsoft keep leveraging innovative titles like Call of Duty 18 and Battlefield 5 and Medal of Honor: Get On 'Er.
they've stubbornly stuck with being the kids console
Right and if they hadn't, everyone would be criticizing them for not sticking to their bread and butter. It's cool you don't like those games but that's a market share and equals $$$.
they've all-but-resigned themselves to staying in the last gen, etc.
By releasing the Wii U a year before the XBox 720 and PS4? I don't get it. I think they're trying to offset themselves by a year and give consumers some breathing room to enjoy all consoles instead of making a choice. Sure, something released a year later better have good specs but can you point out the publishers that claim Nintendo just lacks the hardcore power for their titles? I haven't heard a lot of complaints and frankly, I own a Wii, Xbox 360 and a PS3 ... graphics are rarely a factor for me in which title I play. I value game play and Nintendo pays more attention to this than the rehashed shit I find on the other two.
And, most woefully of all, they seem to have put little to no thought into WHERE THEY FIT IN NOW.
I get it, you like first person shooters. Enjoy. I like how you totally overlooked the obvious to me: Nintendo games are games that I play when my friends come over and want to drink and have fun. The wiimotes are fun in person and the Kinect is actually trying to break into this market. You are explaining this from one of the most narrow and convoluted false narratives I've come across.
You're attacking Nintendo for owning their market share while the other two consoles do exactly the same thing. Hell, it's arguable that Sony and Microsoft are gutting each other by fighting over the same user base while Nintendo chugs along owning one. How are those XBox 360 and PS3 sales? Through the roof right now?
No, I don't think it's even close to dead. I want one but I don't have to have one because titles are still coming out on the Wii. It is my opinion that Nintendo thrives on being the cheapest option. Yes, I know that sounds stupid. But I feel like in every console war the Nintendo option is always at least a little cheaper than the Sony or Microsoft options. Sure, a lot of console makers lose money on consoles and make it up on publishing licenses but Nintendo still comes out with a lower price.
... "F it, I'll get him this with a couple games and an extra controller." The kid will initially be unhappy but learn to love it.
... I guess I'd be forced to buy it then.
But in order for that strategy to work, there has to be a comparison. The Wii U came out at a time when it seemed like the console wars were over -- or at least dormant. I think the market and the makers benefit from a three way tie because everyone wants a new console. But when it was just the Wii U the titles weren't that compelling and the hardware was, well, it was Nintendo hardware.
I predict the Wii U will have flagging sales just like their handheld consoles that come out with no competitor. And then next Christmas when the XBox 720 and PS4 launch, parents will walk into a big box store and little Tommy will want that new $500 PS4 bundle but their eye will catch the Wii U for $175 or $200 and they'll think
Or they could just release an exclusive Zelda title on it
Anyone have any guesses as to what new feature the Sony or Microsoft offerings could come up with to lockout the Wii U? I mean, there's no new disc standard or input device idea that I'm missing, is there? That'd be the only case where the Wii U would be in trouble -- if there was some new feature X like VR goggles that a consumer just had to have at all costs.
We are feathering our environmental nest at home and stocking our shelves from unregulated hell holes.
Submitter here, this link was removed from my submission. To be fair it was a link heavy submission so it was probably smart. Obviously we're on the same planet as China and when this negatively affects the planet it also affects us.
So you already have an interest in not purchasing materials from heavily polluting companies. The problem is that the "free market" as it exists (yeah, I know it's not truly a free market) does not give a single fuck about the environment. We don't even have a way of rating products by their pollution and even if we did, China would just bribe that all away locally. Really all you can do is observe and report so more people become informed.
Two months ago, Hugh Pickens writes: "Just Say No to College" and today he's relaying to us 'your chances of being unemployed increase dramatically without a college degree.'
... Hugh Pickens wants everyone to be unemployed?
*head explodes*
So
doesn't mean freedom of anonymity...
I don't understand why people think that anonymity is or should be an unquestionably protected given.
While I disagree with this politician's proposal, I feel like we should make it clear that not all speech should be behind an anonymous veil. It's difficult to explore and draw the line but, for instance, if you call in a bomb threat or threaten someone's life over the phone and they use the appropriate means to track you down, I don't think you should be able to say that your speech should be anonymous and by removing the anonymity you're a treasonous free speech hater. However, if I want to criticize my leaders you shouldn't be able to trace whatever communications I use to do so in order to identify me. And I think we have court systems and warrants and wiretapping laws in place (or rather we should) that make this a process that does not become abused. When your words have a large amount of weight, they shouldn't be anonymous -- I think that testifying against someone is a great example of this. Can I anonymously swear to tell the truth and call you a pedophile and will you demand that be entered into the record in a court of law?
Another recent example I can think of that annoys me is when your "anonymous free speech" is equated to hundreds of millions of dollars or campaign donations. At that point we're talking about sums that can positively or negatively affect many lives and when it hits a certain point it should simply be published. This would reduce some of the legalized bribery in this country that is parading around as "free speech."
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
It doesn't actually say anything about anonymity although I understand how forcing identification could amount to fear of response and future duress. So at that point you need to involve a judge in the process of determining whether identification is needed without violating the first amendment.
Your loss. I'm not a fan of "the free market fixes everything" but that's not what he said (the key word here is "often") and despite my usually mdoerate position he had a lot of thoughtful and intelligent things to say.
Yeah, if you read the whole sentence he says:
Often times the market can sort it out, but if, and only if, you ensure that externalities are built in, and you ensure that the government hasn’t already messed with the incentive structures.
Which is one of the chestnuts I tire of when debating ultra Conservatives and Libertarians. Because "messed with the incentive structure" can mean a lot of things. For most Libertarians, any taxation at all is "messing with the incentive structure." One I'm fond of is when (anarcho?) Libertarians argue against police forces and propose that if we weren't taxed to pay for the budgetary mess that is the local police, we would all be swimming in so much cash we could have ten guns in each house and our own state of the art security systems and entire neighborhoods would be locked down so tight that criminals would all but disappear -- if there even were any criminals after they got all that tax money back!
So yeah, it sounded to me like his "if and only if" the government hasn't messed with "incentive structures" statement was to say that "well the government's charging you property tax so it's already not a free market and anything that goes wrong is clearly the fault of the government. Hell, you'd be knee deep in cash and that drinking water pollution problem would evaporate but instead the EPA is just wasting money."
I believe your paper would have been unpopular on both sides of the isle but did the Republican knee jerk reaction to it negatively affect your affinity with the Republican party and your efforts to further their cause? Setting aside your differences on Copyright Law with that party, are you still Republican?
Khanna: Absolutely still a Republican. In fact I actually quibble a bit with your premise. The conservative position is that our current system of copyright is not consistent with the Constitution and inhibits innovation by choosing winners and losers– and pretty much all conservative organizations have come out with that opinion. There is a difference between Republican and Conservative that I won’t get into here, but my opinions are conservative and the Republican Party reflects more of the conservative ideology.
Your response was very confusing to me. So if the Republican Party fired you for saying exactly what "all conservative organizations" opine on the topic of copyright ... then the Republican Party is not a conservative organization? But your opinions are conservative ... but you're still a Republican ... which is a party that has "more of the conservative ideology" but they still fire you for saying what all conservative organizations believe? Do you see where I'm having a hard time grasping how your three sentence response logically adds up? I sorta wish you would have gotten into the difference between Republican and Conservative. I guess that's the key to understanding how they fired you? My assumption is that money trumps ideology in politics.
Why retain the label of Republican when you could just call yourself Conservative and identify the problems with the Republicans or side with Libertarians or Tea Party? I mean, you sell your idea as core Conservatism and publish it for Republicans yet you're fired for it. And then you still continue to call yourself Republican? Why?
Assuming that the particular terminator gene doesn't have unwanted side-effects, then I don't see a problem with it. This is the same standard I apply to other genetically modified living things.
Can you tell me how much testing is done to verify these things are safe? How long and how numerous are the human trials? I mean, I've seen the tobacco industry burn people on this exact same thing before by avoiding rigorous studies. Is this stuff treated just like the FDA treats any sort of medicine that we put into our bodies or does it just get rubber stamped through like a natural food? I would be suspicious that anything developed in the past ten years or less is completely guaranteed to be safe for the duration of a human life. Also, I am rather afraid if we get to a point where symptoms develop but we can't pin down which genetically modified food is doing it because everything's genetically modified and even growing things organically doesn't mean anything because of cross pollination. If you can convince me not to worry about that, I'm all ears! For instance, increases of lead in our body looked safe cosmetically and look at all the studies coming out about that.
Monsanto’s reaction is that Bowman’s use of the commodity seeds plainly violates its patent. From its vantage point, Bowman might have been free to use the seeds he bought from Monsanto (on the theory that Monsanto’s patent rights for those seeds were exhausted by its sale of them), but Monsanto has never sold the seeds that Bowman bought and planted; Monsanto does not, for example, sell seeds to grain elevators. Because Monsanto has never sold those particular seeds, Bowman’s use of them to create new seeds infringes its patent as clearly as if Bowman had made a new light bulb copying Edison’s light-bulb patent.
So it has come to this: they are equivocating planting seeds with reverse engineering a light bulb.
For another thing, Monsanto’s technology agreement (signed by all farmers who purchase Roundup Ready seeds) includes provisions that prohibit Bowman’s activities. Among other things, those agreements prohibit any planting of progeny seed; the only permitted use of soybean seeds grown from Roundup Ready seeds is sale for food and the like. If the Court rules against Monsanto on the basic exhaustion question, it then must confront the controversial question (crucial to, among others, the software industry) of the enforceability of license agreements that govern the rights of users of IP-infused products. On that question, the United States (which firmly supports Monsanto on the central exhaustion question) argues that the conceded sale makes any subsequent licensing restrictions invalid as to those seeds and their progeny; not surprisingly, amici like the Business Software Alliance contest that idea.
Great, you're free to have those agreements but Bowman didn't sign it. Chase down the guy(s) that put your grain into that elevator and sue the living shit out of them. Then make sure all your current customers know that they're legally culpable for what a grain elevator does with your intellectual property. I'll be sure to remind everyone that Monsanto seed can result in ruination if they find their way back into the soil. Then we'll see how your sales do, mmkay?
I don't know, guys, after watching this video from KCNA news I'm kind of concerned. I mean the United States' air force is being overrun with cost and we've only built 63 F-35 aircraft. How can that stand up to the DPRK's 40 Chengdu F-7s?! And defending Pyongyang they have 40 Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-29s! 40 + 40 = 70 and 70 > 63!!!
In the video, you can see the pilot explain that they will reduce me to ash! TO ASH! And they only need six minutes! Look at how hard he must have studied to learn how to fly a jet fighter, clearly he knows what he's talking about. Apparently I'm guilty of state sponsored terrorism against the North Koreans and I didn't even know it! Welp, I'm withdrawing all my savings and spending it on hookers and blow, for in six minutes we all might be ash. Catchy tune at the end too, that's a real earworm, I'll be whistling that one all the way to the firestorm they are going to unleash on me.
Oh great and powerful Korean People's Army Air Force, please have mercy on my electricity having soul! I knew not what I was terrorizing!
And now that the genetic element has been effectively abated, the controversy evaporates. You're welcome.
Thanks, but you offered absolutely zero proof or research nor did you even talk about how you verified that "genetic diversity and cultural diversity would be related." Armchair genetics is not progress.
I mean, I can pull explanations out of my ass too: the paper focuses on the distance from the cradle of humanity so while they may be correct in genetic diversity they are actually witnessing the exploitation of resources in new lands as humans traveled further and further. Their "just so" sweet spot of heterozygosity has nothing to do with economic productivity. The economic productivity comes from the untapped resources that the free new land provided the encroaching humans.
And that explanation is about as helpful as yours (hint: not at all).
Clearly, the African continent is home only to the most primitive peoples. It's not a place that would birth historically powerful, flourishing civilizations whose large-scale engineering feats would be regarded among the "wonders of the world" millennia later. Oh, wait...
Um, the article was confusing, it showed like a White Pride info graphic ... yet if you read the paper, the genetic diversity is noted as being increasing over time the closer you are to the birthplace of humanity (as pictured here the heterozygosity is reduced the further away from Africa). The second part that the article woefully left out was that this article examined the year 1500 CE.
Wherever determinism appears, controversy attends, raising specters of days when colonialists, eugenicists, public health officials, and political idealists believed they could cure the human condition through manipulation and force.
Well that sounds pretty epic ... also, very confusing. "Cure the human condition"? "Manipulation and force"? What does any of that have to do with this paper? Also, I find it counter-intellectual to take a paper that has been submitted for peer review and renounce it along with colonialists, eugenicists, public health officials and political idealists just because it contains correlated determinism. You're free to attack it based purely on what it says but to say that just because it suggests determinism in humanity's history doesn't mean that they are Nazi scientists and Ku Klux Klan members.
Curiously the article accompanying this paper leaves out a key detail. From the paper:
This study therefore employs cross-country historical data on population density as the dependent variable of interest in the historical analysis and examines the hypothesized eect of human genetic diversity within societies on their population densities in the year 1500 CE.
(emphasis mine) Okay, after reading the article I would have said this study is obviously overlooking the British Empire that came back and started to systematically colonize the world despite it being further from the cradle of civilization than the very people it was colonizing. So 1500 CE was prior to a lot of the counter examples I could think of but I also feel like China and Japan had to be fully operational at these points in time and I wish I could pull up GDP numbers for 1500 but, gosh darn it, they weren't very good at record keeping at this point in time.
I think that if these authors had placed their time frame in pre-Holy Roman Empire or pre-Zoroastrian times they would have met with less kick back from their academic community. Personally, I feel like we as humans by 1500 CE had already transcended the epoch period where our intelligence removed us from the uncaring hand of nature. Granted, that was a long struggle, but I think it's foolish to say that "At not time in humanity's history has our genetic diversity played a role in our survival." We are of the animal kingdom, the mistake this paper made was trying to bring that too close to the present. We had already had inventor-geniuses. History had already shown that technology like the Romans roads could be critical in enforcing dominance on other cultures.
The paper attacks everything from its sources of population data to its methods for measuring genetic diversity, but the economists are standing by their methods.
Welcome to academia. I mean, when it comes to publishing papers on historic events you can't exactly take their experiment and run it 50 times in your own lab to independently verify your results, can you? So I would imagine that economists, social sciences, historical studies and the like are filled with disagreeing camps that can't rectify their differences.
The quality of Ashraf and Galor's research notwithstanding, the debate illustrates just how tricky it's become to assert anything which says something about human development was in any way inevitable.
Or perhaps if you publish something about the past and you make flimsy assumptions, you can almost guarantee your "colleagues" will roast you alive.
Geographer and author Jared Diamond, for example, who wrote Guns, Germs, and Steel, has been branded an environmental determinist who cuts culture and colonialism too much slack with regard to the rise and fall of civilizations—criticism that has been renewed recently with the publication of his new book, The World Until Yesterday.
So you're saying an author is being attacked for his theories not being 10
Do Patent Laws Really Protect Small Inventors?
No. Nor have I ever heard anyway claim that as being their primary function. Let's adjust that to say that patent laws are designed to promote innovation and invention by disproportionately reward the production of ideas compared to the actual work and creation being done. This, in theory, helps any size of inventor put in R&D monies to chase a high reward. And, yes, I do think they have been successful to some extent in doing this although there is plenty of evidence that they have gone too far as of late. They've also been applied to things that probably shouldn't be patentable like genes and software.
One such inventor faces selling his house, despite inventing a product that has sold tens of millions worldwide.
Pardon my anecdotal apathy but so what? Plenty of Americans squander money like it's nobody's business. I'd imagine there are tons of engineers out there that are brilliant inventors but either don't want to or fail to deal with money in a responsible manner. Hell, I've recently been collecting sketch card art and just totalled up my last six months spending. What the hell was I thinking?! American athletes can make millions in a single year and still end up penniless before the age of retirement!
From the article: 'Inventor Trevor Baylis says he faces having to sell his house after failing to make money from his wind up radio and is now calling for the government to step into to protect inventors. “I’ve got someone coming around in the next couple of weeks to do a valuation on my house,” says Trevor Baylis, as he walks into the sitting room of his home on Eel Pie Island, in Twickenham, south-west London. “I’m going to have to sell it or remortgage it – I’m totally broke. I’m living in poverty here.”'
Okay so this inventor is house broke -- he's got nice clothes, the article doesn't say he works three jobs. That leaves me a little curious so I inspected the article which had hilarious counter intuitive subtitles:
He built a home on Eel Pie Island in the 1970s for £20,000
Wow! That bit is interesting! So he lives on an island in the Thames in London?! Okay, I'm going to go ahead and gather that property taxes must be insane. Could he afford a house in the country? I mean, is he selling a house that he can no longer afford to buy a house in a cheaper neighborhood or is he genuinely poor? Which is it?
The property also has a pool (Paul Grover)
Uh, okay so add energy and water bills to the above.
The prolific inventor earns money as an after-dinner speaker (Paul Grover)
Okay so, has he tried getting a 9 to 5 job? I hate to be a dick but I don't think you can invent a particular modification of a radio in 1991 and a shoe that charges cell phones among "250 products" and expect to coast through life smoking a pipe and getting a bennie here or there for dinner speeches. I mean, those were the two most notable inventions?
Furthermore how do his business mistakes equate to a breakdown of the patent system:
Due to the quirks of patent law, the company he went into business with to manufacture his radios were able to tweak his original design, which used a spring to generate power, so that it charged a battery instead. This caused him to lose control over the product.
Man, I wish PJ would deconstruct this so I knew what was going on. So what that tells me is that the novel part of his invention was the spring that generated power directly to the radio? And when the company found a different way to do that, they cut him out? Yeah, companies are going to try to screw you anyway they can. The problem is that this screwing could go the opposite way too. I mean, a
The difference is this is something people post to voluntarily. They are not paying to receive a grade and credit for. The OP is referring to a course requirement.
The submitter didn't really explain the purpose of this exercise. If the purpose was to deploy and customize Wordpress to show something you had learned about PHP and MYSQL then maybe the teacher wasn't grading on grammar and most people didn't care. I myself am guilty of long sentences that, if I had more time to spend on them, I would probably trim down but I don't because that's not what I'm paid to spend time on at my job (unless it's user doc). Likewise if this was demonstration of technical skill over prose, these could have been last minute entries and afterthoughts to the assignment. Given little time, no proof reading and just put up to Lorem Ipsum up some text?
The big question: are these students docked for having poor grammar in their blog posts in a computer course? If not, then you probably shouldn't be critiquing them like they just tried to write a novel.
Don't be discouraged by the potential consequences. You work for the American people. It's your job, your obligation to be challenging existing paradigms and put forward novel solutions to existing problems.
So now what? What's your plan? I mean, you can tell them not to be discouraged but that's a pretty hefty weight to put on your own shoulders. Anyone who gets a check from the content industry (and I think that's everyone in DC) is going to blacklist you. Do you see yourself taking a Ralph Nader-like approach to politics? How do you even get your foot back in the door? You do realize that if you don't return or rise to another kind of constituent-focused power that your above encouragement will fall upon deaf ears as you will become the example of what happens to an outspoken staffer?
But the "level of backlash it received from the content industry" took him by surprise.
Really? This took you by surprise? If not exactly what occurred, what exactly did you expect to happen? The content industry was just supposed to take it in stride and think that maybe copyright law has moved too far in their favor? I'm not in politics (thank god) and I'm not in the copyright business (praise xenu) but it was as lucid to me as an unmuddied pond that your job was forfeit upon publishing this. I mean, what exactly do you think Hollywood and the RIAA are paying you for if not to keep these kinds of discussions off the table and pass some Mickey Mouse Act 2.0 through the next Sonny Bono puppet?