Sorry, you're wrong. The U.S. Postal Service has not received any federal money for a good many years now. It is entirely self-funded.
Whether that will continue is in doubt, since the USPS's profits are steadily declining as the years go by, but at least for the time being...
Re:The aliens have left the phones off the hook
on
Explaining SETI
·
· Score: 2
Don't let's forget The Skeptic's Dictionary, which contains hundreds of entries on everything from the Bermuda Triangle to Amway, Zombies, Ghosts, UFOs, pyramid power, etc. One of the best skeptical sites on the web.
Re:The aliens have left the phones off the hook
on
Explaining SETI
·
· Score: 2
Firesign Theatre rules! My family has actually long been friends with the quartet, and I'm always glad to see references to them and their work:)
http://matt.waggoner.com/ (see how many Firesign references you can find)
I read somewhere that the real irony of that song is that none of the things mentioned in it are ironic. Maybe Alanis is more clever than we thought.:)
I looked around a little but couldn't find what I'm looking for -- some introductory text that describes the current Internet routing system and the state-of-the-art with respect to it? There's a lot of stuff being thrown around here that I have little to no knowledge of, even though I'm a fairly proficient geek. Can someone point me in the right direction?
Publishing a "hit list" (with, I assume, the implied or express intent or desire to cause the list members harm) is different from simply publishing a list of people you don't like, including information like their home address, phone numbers, etc.
Encouraging harassment or violence against these people should be illegal, but what's the difference between a simple list with no other information (but one posted by someone who hates the people on the list) and an identical list posted by someone who is simply trying to provide a directory of contacts? I *understand* what the difference is, but legally, unless you can prove that the person has intent to commit harm or harassment against the people on the list, there's no difference.
This is of course separate to the issue of, should it be legal to publish someone's private personal information (home address and telephone numbers, for example) without their permission? Yes, you have a right to free expression; don't I have a right to privacy? (Apparently not, in this country...)
This article, to me, falls into the same category as those holographic storage articles we see on Slashdot so often. While the technology does exist, it needs to appear in an actual consumer product before we give a crap about it! I first heard about OLEDs about five years ago, in Scientific American, talking about how they'd revolutionize yadda yadda.
Fer chrissakes, can someone PLEASE make a 19" flatscreen monitor that uses these? I know everyone would appreciate it:)
Actually the Roman Catholic Church more or less gave tacit approval to what Hitler was doing. They never complained until long after WW2 was over, and then went, "Oh, uh, yeah, that was bad, mmkay?" Hitler himself was a devout Catholic and several times referred to what he was doing (the Holocaust) as God's work. Don't try to paint religion as innocent here; it had a definite influence. I'd like you to find that quote that when the Jews were gone, the Christians were next...
Also, you seem to be saying that without God, Newton & Bach & Beethoven & Michaelangelo never would have any anything great. At least, it's what you're clearly implying. "Respect for human life" can be attributed to Jesus? What are you smoking? Respect for human life existed long before Jesus did. Hell, look at the Bible for proof: the ten commandments tell you not to murder (though God subsequently orders the Israelites to slaughter hundreds of little villages on their way to the promised land).
Some of WESTERN SOCIETY'S greatest literature/art/music (not much science, however) has been "inspired" by God, however it's utterly irrational to say that works equally as powerful/great would not have happened in the absence of Christianity. Why? Look at all the L/A/M/S that had nothing whatsoever to do with Christianity! The Arabs were leading the world in science up until the Renaissance. No Christianity there (except where the Crusades tries to bring it in, as a pretext for looting everything in sight). The Chinese -- again, no Christianity there -- were way ahead of the west in science, literature, art, and music, long before JC came around, and long after, too.
Religions have always been a source of cultural material, because they are usually so pervasive in the lives of people who believe. Claiming that Christianity is special among religions because it's done "so much good! Look!" is ludicrous.
What are you, dense? They're suing Palm for SELLING the products! UPS and FedEx don't sell those hand-held signature thingies, they just USE them. Jesus Christ.
Sorry if I'm a bit upset but that was one of the dumbest posts I'd read in a long time.
I had a thought (don't jump to conclusions, it was an incorrect thought as I will shortly explain). What if you had NICs themselves do outgoing packet filtering? Of course it would be configurable using software or whatever, which is no good because a script kiddie hacks in, gets root, and sets your card to allow outgoing spoofed IPs. So obviously that wouldn't work.
Having the "big" routers do this filtering would cause a huge performance hit; however this might be acceptable in the long run. Everyone would bitch and moan to start, but then we'd get used to it (and Cisco and others would find ways to improve throughput without sacrificing IP filtering.
What about having local routers do it? If you're (say) AOL, you certainly have thousands of small clusters routing to your central big-ass router cluster. Why not have the routers on the ends all do the work? Have we learned nothing from distributed computing, especially something so tailored to it?
I know there are economic concerns (we have to get ISPs to modify thousands of routers), but... come on, there's got to be a better solution than adding Big Brother into the mix.
<RANT>
Seriously, who are the deranged fucks who get presented with ideas like, "Hey, let's add Big Brother-like sniffing to all sorts of nodes on the Internet, bringing the potential for huge abuses!" and go, "Hot damn! THAT will make the world a better place for everyone!"??!?
</RANT>
The problem with your argument is that power plants are much more efficient than automobiles. If 10,000 infernal combustion cars produce 1 Pollution Unit (P.U.) per day each (producing 10,000 P.U. daily), a factory that burns fossil fuels to supply energy for 10,000 electric cars is going to be producing far less than 10,000 P.U. per day (and we assume that the cars themselves produce 0 P.U. per day for simplicity).
Also, power plants can also run on non-polluting sources, like solar power, hydroelectric power, geothermal power. ICE (Infernal Combustion Engine) vehicles can't run on anything but polluting fossil fuels -- I doubt we'll ever see a hydroelectrically or geothermally-powered car.:)
As far as "battery packs" go, you're obviously thinking of the lead-acid batteries we commonly use these days. Fuel cells are becoming more efficient by the day; it's only a matter of time before they'll be good enough to provide the same amount of mileage for the same amount of volume as a gas tank does in a modern car. And fuel cells last a lot longer and are a lot more environmentally sound than a lead-acid battery.
Avoiding "noticeable" power-drain problems from turning on the extras (radio, windows, headlights, etc.) in an electric vehicle is a trivial problem: simply limit the power usable by the engine to something below the actual capacity. Then you always have breathing room for other stuff, so when you turn on your AC or headlights, you don't notice any difference in performance. (Incidentally, I don't notice any performance difference in my V6 Toyota Camry when I turn on the air conditioning, the headlights, and the radio at full blast all at once!)
Of course there's the problem of energy distribution. Instead of the gasoline distribution infrastructure we now have (tankers roaming the country, gas stations), you would presumably have the electricity for charging your car distributed over the in-place power network that we already have. Of course that requires a huge increase in capacity, but assuming it builds up over time, this is something that can easily be handled. (Sure, if we had to *ALL OF A SUDDEN* have the power grid handle all the extra electricity for charging 200 million vehicles, that might be a problem. But that seems a wee bit unlikely.)
Anti-Linux Jihad: "Every time something goes wrong with Microsoft software all you Linux wackos go nuts claiming that MS sucks and Linux r0x! It's totally unfair, Linux has problems too! And you can set up your MS software to fix the bugs and security holes! Yadda yadda! Fahrvergnugen!"
Pro-Linux Wacko: "This just proves that MS sucks! Their software sucks and causes problems to no end! Microsoft should go to Hell and DIE! And Bill Gates too! Free Software is the One True Way! All hail Richard M. Stallman!"
Moderate Reasonable Guy: "Okay, okay, settle down children--*BLAM BLAM* (shot by Anti-Linux and Pro-Linux Wackos)
Okay, we've gotten that out of the way. Maybe now we can have a reasonable conversation instead of the usual prattle.:)
(That's the geek equivalent of "Jesus H. Christ!") Why in the hell would anyone writing an ecommerce web application ACCEPT DATA LIKE THIS FROM THE USER?! I mean, seriously, what the freaking hell could you be thinking? You get the damn price from your internal database, you don't accept data about that coming from the user's machine...
Once again, stupid people give everyone else in their easily classifiable sub-group (geeks) a bad name. For Stallman's sake...
Maybe I missed it, but how does duplicating information -- and leaving the original copy with the original possessor of that information -- equate to stealing? I've yet to hear a clear explanation on why this is, so perhaps you can explain.
Ignoring the page the ad links to is NOT THE SAME AS IGNORING THE AD. I don't object to outpost.com selling things, I object to big flashy popup windows that interrupt what I'm doing and TELLING ME HOW GREAT OUTPOST.COM IS!!!! (Or whatever website.)
Additionally, calling people dumbass trolls isn't likely to make them respect your position any more. Also, if blocking ads is stealing bandwidth... er... exactly whose bandwidth is being stolen? I'm paying for the bandwidth I used to download the ad just as much as they're paying for the bandwidth to send it. I simply choose to waste MY bandwidth by not ever viewing the content that came with it. If the ad appears on the web page I'm looking at, but I didn't want to see it, aren't they stealing my bandwidth by showing me crap I don't want to see?
What about interpolation? If I have a video card that can do 1600x1280x24 and a monitor that can only do 640x480, then it is possible for the hardware to interpolate differently on different frame cycles, making use of persistence of vision to increase overall detail. Obviously it's not as good as having a monitor that can support the full resolution, but there are ways around, so to speak, hardware limitations like this. Doing something clever with eyes seems equally feasible.
Also, your post sounds like the people who used to say, "There's no way we'll break the sound barrier -- hardware just can't take it!" You really think no one's gonna come up with a solution to your little problem?
I would be willing to bet that there are at least a small number of humans, who are not insane, and believe that it is perfectly morally acceptable to kill someone for any reason. Or maybe even less extreme versions of that, such as, it's okay to kill someone if they're doing something you don't like, but it's not okay to kill your family.
The reason, I think, that murder is so commonly considered immoral is because, in general, murder runs contrary to one's own interests, and most social systems recognize this.
Let's take an example. There is a person A who does not like person B. Person B steals person A's stuff, cuts person A off on the freeway, and generally makes life difficult for person A (however B has no violent intent toward person A; they will not assault them or kill them).
If A kills B, A's life has improved because B is no longer hassling A. Therefore, murder is okay for A!
Except... B has lots of friends who are upset that B is dead, so they *all* start making trouble for A, and possibly kill him in revenge (or at the very least beat him severely, and often).
So even though killing B was in A's interests in the short term, in the long term, it was against A's interests.
People generally know that if you kill someone, other people will come and make your life worse. Wanton killings also lead to more unstable societies; people like stability, and since murder helps prevent stability, people don't like murder, so it gets codified as social dogma.
Let's look at A and B again. If A's view is that his own death is a good thing, then it would be perfectly good, IN THE LONG RUN, to kill B, because then other people will kill A, which meets A's goals. The upshot is, any action can be considered good in the proper moral context; realistically, there are very few people who condone wanton killing (unfortunately, they have an annoying tendency to be politicians), which is why we end up with nearly everyone thinkings that murder is bad, mmmkay.
Polygamy, however, is much more commonly accepted than murder (which is not to say it's common on an absolute scale). It simply requires a different set of social constructs in order to contribute to the stability of a society. If I murder you, you can no longer take action to better society. If I sleep with two women regularly (and am "married" to both, though since marriage is often considered a "lifetime commitment to one person", one wonders what it means to be married to >1 person), both women may still act and affect society.
Not that I want to get into a discussion of polygamy right now.:) But these are just my thoughts on the topic; you did after all ask for, well, not my thoughts, but thoughts nonetheless.:)
Well let's look at it this way. Take the man by himself, forget about his wife. What did he do? He sought out a sexual companion for cybersex. Again, intent is the key here, not action -- if you go out looking for a hooker but fail to find one, you've betrayed your partner as much as if you actually did find one and did the deed. Regardless of who the sexual companion REALLY WAS, the man was seeking a sexual companion who was not his wife.
Similarly, the wife was seeking a sexual companion who was not her husband. Assuming that their relationship contains the idea that adultery is bad, mmmkay, then they are both equally guilty. In that sense it sort of cancels out, and hopefully they will try to communicate better so that they can work out their relationship problems (if they're looking for alternate sex partners, then something's clearly wrong... unless they have the kind of relationship where doing that is acceptable!).
As many others here have pointed out, adultery is most reasonably defined to be about intent, not action. If I'm married and, unbeknownst to my wife, go looking for a hooker for sex (but fail to find one) I'm just as adulterous as if I'd actually found one and done my Hugh Grant impression.
So, yes, it would be adultery to have cybersex with a bot. Look at it this way. Take two scenarios: man has cybersex with unknown partner online. In one case, the partner is a human female; in the other case, the partner is a bot. If the man never finds out whether the partner was a real human or not, does it make any difference to his wife when she finds the chat log that he stupidly forgot to delete? Of course not.
...launching hundreds or thousands of tiny cubes into orbit, as if we don't already have enough orbital debris to tear giant holes in the Space Shuttle and other orbiting satellites.
Now if you put explosives in the cubes, then we might be able to have something interesting...:)
...I did want to point out one line from the article:
Jered Floyd, a recent MIT graduate, says animal rights activists -- who have successfully pressured hosting services to ban bonsaikitten.com until rotten.com offered it server space -- don't have a sense of humor.
"The First Amendment protects all speech, no matter how offensive some people may find it," Floyd says. "The site is clearly a humorous endeavor. The fact that a number of people seem to have very little sense of humor isn't relevant."
This is of course not true. Certain forms of speech (or expression) are NOT protected, such as incitement to riot, slander, libel, yelling "FIRE!!" in a crowded theater (I'm not even sure if that's okay if there really *is* a fire, you're still supposed to try to get everyone out calmly, I think), and death threats via the mail. All of these (and a few more) have been determined by the various courts over the years to not be protected speech.
That said, bonsaikitten.com is clearly satire, and is (and should remain) protected speech.
I fear the grey goo, and I've been thinking about ways to combat it. It SEEMS inevitable that some sick psycho will eventually develop a grey goo nanobot (GGN), and release it into the environment.
Problems with this scenario:
1) A tiny little nanobot has to be able to break all common chemical bonds for this to become a disaster. If a nanobot normally cannot muster the energy to do so, then it's going to have a bitch of a time self-replicating, so the speed of a GGN colony would be slowed by the time it takes a single GGN to do something useful like break a chemical bond. So it's not like we have a rapid, speed-of-sound conversion of Earth into grey goo.
2) GGNs would in theory still be susceptible to things like heat, electrical charges, and physical shock. If you have a colony of grey goo eating away at a mountain, it wouldn't seem particularly difficult to blow it up, burn it, melt it, or maybe engineer counter-bots to tear the little bastards to shreds.
3) As far as I know, GGNs wouldn't be able to replicate very fast. Yes, I know it would be geometric growth in theory (each bot makes 2, which each make 2 more, etc.), but that's only allowing for infinite surface area of the growing mass. In theory a GGN colony would form into a sphere, growing outward, but it could only disassemble things along the surface of the colony, not the inside.
4) A GGN colony could not go very deep, lest it be crushed by the mass of the colony above it, or collapse thousands of tons of dirt upon it, which would no doubt slow its progress (even a tiny little nanobot can be rent to pieces, right?). Or, if they went WAY deep, the heat of the inner parts of Earth would melt them. Or maybe they'd dig a hole into a magma pocket, and the entire colony would collapse through it into the magma, being melted.
I feel a lot better now:) But these are just my personal observations based on what little I know. Can anyone shed some light on these issues? Keep in mind that I do NOT care if you completely rip my ideas apart. I am trying to find the truth here, not prove any particular point of view. Let's brainstorm, people.:)
Slashdot Mirror
Sorry, you're wrong. The U.S. Postal Service has not received any federal money for a good many years now. It is entirely self-funded.
Whether that will continue is in doubt, since the USPS's profits are steadily declining as the years go by, but at least for the time being...
Don't let's forget The Skeptic's Dictionary, which contains hundreds of entries on everything from the Bermuda Triangle to Amway, Zombies, Ghosts, UFOs, pyramid power, etc. One of the best skeptical sites on the web.
Firesign Theatre rules! My family has actually long been friends with the quartet, and I'm always glad to see references to them and their work :)
http://matt.waggoner.com/ (see how many Firesign references you can find)
I read somewhere that the real irony of that song is that none of the things mentioned in it are ironic. Maybe Alanis is more clever than we thought. :)
How are you gentlemen.
All your small English town are belong to us.
Move all 'crumpet'.
For great justice.
This parody brought to by the SBAITGFGS - Society to Beat AYB Into the Ground (For Great Justice)
F-17 Stealth fighter jet: $30,000,000
Guided smart bomb: $1,000,000
2,000 pounds of high-grade jet fuel: $30,000
Accurate map of downtown Belgrade: Priceless
This joke was around right after the U.S. accidentally bombed the Chinese embassy in Yugoslavia. I thought it was an efficient use of humor.
I looked around a little but couldn't find what I'm looking for -- some introductory text that describes the current Internet routing system and the state-of-the-art with respect to it? There's a lot of stuff being thrown around here that I have little to no knowledge of, even though I'm a fairly proficient geek. Can someone point me in the right direction?
Publishing a "hit list" (with, I assume, the implied or express intent or desire to cause the list members harm) is different from simply publishing a list of people you don't like, including information like their home address, phone numbers, etc.
Encouraging harassment or violence against these people should be illegal, but what's the difference between a simple list with no other information (but one posted by someone who hates the people on the list) and an identical list posted by someone who is simply trying to provide a directory of contacts? I *understand* what the difference is, but legally, unless you can prove that the person has intent to commit harm or harassment against the people on the list, there's no difference.
This is of course separate to the issue of, should it be legal to publish someone's private personal information (home address and telephone numbers, for example) without their permission? Yes, you have a right to free expression; don't I have a right to privacy? (Apparently not, in this country...)
Fer chrissakes, can someone PLEASE make a 19" flatscreen monitor that uses these? I know everyone would appreciate it :)
Far be it from me to point out that since you're posting on /., this means you don't know anything about what you're criticizing. :)
Also, you seem to be saying that without God, Newton & Bach & Beethoven & Michaelangelo never would have any anything great. At least, it's what you're clearly implying. "Respect for human life" can be attributed to Jesus? What are you smoking? Respect for human life existed long before Jesus did. Hell, look at the Bible for proof: the ten commandments tell you not to murder (though God subsequently orders the Israelites to slaughter hundreds of little villages on their way to the promised land).
Some of WESTERN SOCIETY'S greatest literature/art/music (not much science, however) has been "inspired" by God, however it's utterly irrational to say that works equally as powerful/great would not have happened in the absence of Christianity. Why? Look at all the L/A/M/S that had nothing whatsoever to do with Christianity! The Arabs were leading the world in science up until the Renaissance. No Christianity there (except where the Crusades tries to bring it in, as a pretext for looting everything in sight). The Chinese -- again, no Christianity there -- were way ahead of the west in science, literature, art, and music, long before JC came around, and long after, too.
Religions have always been a source of cultural material, because they are usually so pervasive in the lives of people who believe. Claiming that Christianity is special among religions because it's done "so much good! Look!" is ludicrous.
What are you, dense? They're suing Palm for SELLING the products! UPS and FedEx don't sell those hand-held signature thingies, they just USE them. Jesus Christ.
Sorry if I'm a bit upset but that was one of the dumbest posts I'd read in a long time.
I had a thought (don't jump to conclusions, it was an incorrect thought as I will shortly explain). What if you had NICs themselves do outgoing packet filtering? Of course it would be configurable using software or whatever, which is no good because a script kiddie hacks in, gets root, and sets your card to allow outgoing spoofed IPs. So obviously that wouldn't work.
Having the "big" routers do this filtering would cause a huge performance hit; however this might be acceptable in the long run. Everyone would bitch and moan to start, but then we'd get used to it (and Cisco and others would find ways to improve throughput without sacrificing IP filtering.
What about having local routers do it? If you're (say) AOL, you certainly have thousands of small clusters routing to your central big-ass router cluster. Why not have the routers on the ends all do the work? Have we learned nothing from distributed computing, especially something so tailored to it?
I know there are economic concerns (we have to get ISPs to modify thousands of routers), but... come on, there's got to be a better solution than adding Big Brother into the mix.
<RANT>
Seriously, who are the deranged fucks who get presented with ideas like, "Hey, let's add Big Brother-like sniffing to all sorts of nodes on the Internet, bringing the potential for huge abuses!" and go, "Hot damn! THAT will make the world a better place for everyone!"??!?
</RANT>
The problem with your argument is that power plants are much more efficient than automobiles. If 10,000 infernal combustion cars produce 1 Pollution Unit (P.U.) per day each (producing 10,000 P.U. daily), a factory that burns fossil fuels to supply energy for 10,000 electric cars is going to be producing far less than 10,000 P.U. per day (and we assume that the cars themselves produce 0 P.U. per day for simplicity).
:)
Also, power plants can also run on non-polluting sources, like solar power, hydroelectric power, geothermal power. ICE (Infernal Combustion Engine) vehicles can't run on anything but polluting fossil fuels -- I doubt we'll ever see a hydroelectrically or geothermally-powered car.
As far as "battery packs" go, you're obviously thinking of the lead-acid batteries we commonly use these days. Fuel cells are becoming more efficient by the day; it's only a matter of time before they'll be good enough to provide the same amount of mileage for the same amount of volume as a gas tank does in a modern car. And fuel cells last a lot longer and are a lot more environmentally sound than a lead-acid battery.
Avoiding "noticeable" power-drain problems from turning on the extras (radio, windows, headlights, etc.) in an electric vehicle is a trivial problem: simply limit the power usable by the engine to something below the actual capacity. Then you always have breathing room for other stuff, so when you turn on your AC or headlights, you don't notice any difference in performance. (Incidentally, I don't notice any performance difference in my V6 Toyota Camry when I turn on the air conditioning, the headlights, and the radio at full blast all at once!)
Of course there's the problem of energy distribution. Instead of the gasoline distribution infrastructure we now have (tankers roaming the country, gas stations), you would presumably have the electricity for charging your car distributed over the in-place power network that we already have. Of course that requires a huge increase in capacity, but assuming it builds up over time, this is something that can easily be handled. (Sure, if we had to *ALL OF A SUDDEN* have the power grid handle all the extra electricity for charging 200 million vehicles, that might be a problem. But that seems a wee bit unlikely.)
Anti-Linux Jihad: "Every time something goes wrong with Microsoft software all you Linux wackos go nuts claiming that MS sucks and Linux r0x! It's totally unfair, Linux has problems too! And you can set up your MS software to fix the bugs and security holes! Yadda yadda! Fahrvergnugen!"
:)
Pro-Linux Wacko: "This just proves that MS sucks! Their software sucks and causes problems to no end! Microsoft should go to Hell and DIE! And Bill Gates too! Free Software is the One True Way! All hail Richard M. Stallman!"
Moderate Reasonable Guy: "Okay, okay, settle down children--*BLAM BLAM* (shot by Anti-Linux and Pro-Linux Wackos)
Okay, we've gotten that out of the way. Maybe now we can have a reasonable conversation instead of the usual prattle.
Once again, stupid people give everyone else in their easily classifiable sub-group (geeks) a bad name. For Stallman's sake...
Maybe I missed it, but how does duplicating information -- and leaving the original copy with the original possessor of that information -- equate to stealing? I've yet to hear a clear explanation on why this is, so perhaps you can explain.
Ignoring the page the ad links to is NOT THE SAME AS IGNORING THE AD. I don't object to outpost.com selling things, I object to big flashy popup windows that interrupt what I'm doing and TELLING ME HOW GREAT OUTPOST.COM IS!!!! (Or whatever website.)
Additionally, calling people dumbass trolls isn't likely to make them respect your position any more. Also, if blocking ads is stealing bandwidth... er... exactly whose bandwidth is being stolen? I'm paying for the bandwidth I used to download the ad just as much as they're paying for the bandwidth to send it. I simply choose to waste MY bandwidth by not ever viewing the content that came with it. If the ad appears on the web page I'm looking at, but I didn't want to see it, aren't they stealing my bandwidth by showing me crap I don't want to see?
What about interpolation? If I have a video card that can do 1600x1280x24 and a monitor that can only do 640x480, then it is possible for the hardware to interpolate differently on different frame cycles, making use of persistence of vision to increase overall detail. Obviously it's not as good as having a monitor that can support the full resolution, but there are ways around, so to speak, hardware limitations like this. Doing something clever with eyes seems equally feasible.
Also, your post sounds like the people who used to say, "There's no way we'll break the sound barrier -- hardware just can't take it!" You really think no one's gonna come up with a solution to your little problem?
I would be willing to bet that there are at least a small number of humans, who are not insane, and believe that it is perfectly morally acceptable to kill someone for any reason. Or maybe even less extreme versions of that, such as, it's okay to kill someone if they're doing something you don't like, but it's not okay to kill your family.
:) But these are just my thoughts on the topic; you did after all ask for, well, not my thoughts, but thoughts nonetheless. :)
The reason, I think, that murder is so commonly considered immoral is because, in general, murder runs contrary to one's own interests, and most social systems recognize this.
Let's take an example. There is a person A who does not like person B. Person B steals person A's stuff, cuts person A off on the freeway, and generally makes life difficult for person A (however B has no violent intent toward person A; they will not assault them or kill them).
If A kills B, A's life has improved because B is no longer hassling A. Therefore, murder is okay for A!
Except... B has lots of friends who are upset that B is dead, so they *all* start making trouble for A, and possibly kill him in revenge (or at the very least beat him severely, and often).
So even though killing B was in A's interests in the short term, in the long term, it was against A's interests.
People generally know that if you kill someone, other people will come and make your life worse. Wanton killings also lead to more unstable societies; people like stability, and since murder helps prevent stability, people don't like murder, so it gets codified as social dogma.
Let's look at A and B again. If A's view is that his own death is a good thing, then it would be perfectly good, IN THE LONG RUN, to kill B, because then other people will kill A, which meets A's goals. The upshot is, any action can be considered good in the proper moral context; realistically, there are very few people who condone wanton killing (unfortunately, they have an annoying tendency to be politicians), which is why we end up with nearly everyone thinkings that murder is bad, mmmkay.
Polygamy, however, is much more commonly accepted than murder (which is not to say it's common on an absolute scale). It simply requires a different set of social constructs in order to contribute to the stability of a society. If I murder you, you can no longer take action to better society. If I sleep with two women regularly (and am "married" to both, though since marriage is often considered a "lifetime commitment to one person", one wonders what it means to be married to >1 person), both women may still act and affect society.
Not that I want to get into a discussion of polygamy right now.
Well let's look at it this way. Take the man by himself, forget about his wife. What did he do? He sought out a sexual companion for cybersex. Again, intent is the key here, not action -- if you go out looking for a hooker but fail to find one, you've betrayed your partner as much as if you actually did find one and did the deed. Regardless of who the sexual companion REALLY WAS, the man was seeking a sexual companion who was not his wife.
Similarly, the wife was seeking a sexual companion who was not her husband. Assuming that their relationship contains the idea that adultery is bad, mmmkay, then they are both equally guilty. In that sense it sort of cancels out, and hopefully they will try to communicate better so that they can work out their relationship problems (if they're looking for alternate sex partners, then something's clearly wrong... unless they have the kind of relationship where doing that is acceptable!).
As many others here have pointed out, adultery is most reasonably defined to be about intent, not action. If I'm married and, unbeknownst to my wife, go looking for a hooker for sex (but fail to find one) I'm just as adulterous as if I'd actually found one and done my Hugh Grant impression.
So, yes, it would be adultery to have cybersex with a bot. Look at it this way. Take two scenarios: man has cybersex with unknown partner online. In one case, the partner is a human female; in the other case, the partner is a bot. If the man never finds out whether the partner was a real human or not, does it make any difference to his wife when she finds the chat log that he stupidly forgot to delete? Of course not.
...launching hundreds or thousands of tiny cubes into orbit, as if we don't already have enough orbital debris to tear giant holes in the Space Shuttle and other orbiting satellites.
:)
Now if you put explosives in the cubes, then we might be able to have something interesting...
Jered Floyd, a recent MIT graduate, says animal rights activists -- who have successfully pressured hosting services to ban bonsaikitten.com until rotten.com offered it server space -- don't have a sense of humor.
"The First Amendment protects all speech, no matter how offensive some people may find it," Floyd says. "The site is clearly a humorous endeavor. The fact that a number of people seem to have very little sense of humor isn't relevant."
This is of course not true. Certain forms of speech (or expression) are NOT protected, such as incitement to riot, slander, libel, yelling "FIRE!!" in a crowded theater (I'm not even sure if that's okay if there really *is* a fire, you're still supposed to try to get everyone out calmly, I think), and death threats via the mail. All of these (and a few more) have been determined by the various courts over the years to not be protected speech.
That said, bonsaikitten.com is clearly satire, and is (and should remain) protected speech.
I fear the grey goo, and I've been thinking about ways to combat it. It SEEMS inevitable that some sick psycho will eventually develop a grey goo nanobot (GGN), and release it into the environment.
:) But these are just my personal observations based on what little I know. Can anyone shed some light on these issues? Keep in mind that I do NOT care if you completely rip my ideas apart. I am trying to find the truth here, not prove any particular point of view. Let's brainstorm, people. :)
Problems with this scenario:
1) A tiny little nanobot has to be able to break all common chemical bonds for this to become a disaster. If a nanobot normally cannot muster the energy to do so, then it's going to have a bitch of a time self-replicating, so the speed of a GGN colony would be slowed by the time it takes a single GGN to do something useful like break a chemical bond. So it's not like we have a rapid, speed-of-sound conversion of Earth into grey goo.
2) GGNs would in theory still be susceptible to things like heat, electrical charges, and physical shock. If you have a colony of grey goo eating away at a mountain, it wouldn't seem particularly difficult to blow it up, burn it, melt it, or maybe engineer counter-bots to tear the little bastards to shreds.
3) As far as I know, GGNs wouldn't be able to replicate very fast. Yes, I know it would be geometric growth in theory (each bot makes 2, which each make 2 more, etc.), but that's only allowing for infinite surface area of the growing mass. In theory a GGN colony would form into a sphere, growing outward, but it could only disassemble things along the surface of the colony, not the inside.
4) A GGN colony could not go very deep, lest it be crushed by the mass of the colony above it, or collapse thousands of tons of dirt upon it, which would no doubt slow its progress (even a tiny little nanobot can be rent to pieces, right?). Or, if they went WAY deep, the heat of the inner parts of Earth would melt them. Or maybe they'd dig a hole into a magma pocket, and the entire colony would collapse through it into the magma, being melted.
I feel a lot better now