This idea comes up a lot, but it has several fatal flaws.
1) Who gets to have local daylight be their waking time? Under your system, some time zones would be perpetually condemned to life in the dark. People will not accept that. Most people like being up and about during daylight.
2) A lot of jobs would require lots of expensive electric lighting if they had to be done at night. When you work during the day, you get free light. Construction, farming, or anything that involves outdoor areas would be more expensive.
3) Humans evolved diurnally; a lot of our biology depends on being exposed to sunlight during our waking hours. Children who had the bad luck to be in time zones where they spent most of daylight asleep would have trouble producing sufficient melatonin, which is a hormone essential for proper physical growth and development.
4) Also, there's the problem that a lot of children would be walking to school in the middle of the night. This causes safety issues for people who are *already* less visible to automobiles.
5) The changeover costs would be titanic, and the actual gain would be tiny. Despite your complaints about math, most people who need to deal with time zones do not have significant difficulty doing so.
Ever have a conference call with people in 4 or more timezones?
No, and neither have 95% of the people on the planet. You think it's a good idea to change something this critical so that you can find life infinitesimally more convenient?
In retrospect, do you think it was a mistake to hire Raph Koster as lead designer for SWG? He has a lot of great ideas about virtual world design, but SWG at launch was much more of an economic simulator with a Star Wars skin than it was a game.
(For reference, I was in SWG starting in early Beta 1 -- Shuttle 3, specifically -- and played for about six months after launch.)
The only people who I see putting this argument forward are people who don't have children.
Then let me put a definitive end to that: I have a kid, and I agree that this is none of the government's business. Parents should be responsible for teaching morality to their children; not the government.
From a political point of view I can't see anyone supporting a robot probe mission to save the earth.
I'm sorry, but this sounds absurd. There's no reason why any significant number of people would insist that we send people along on what amounts to a suicide mission, when it can be handled just fine robotically.
I am also a scientist and see no conflict between religion and science
I do. Religion can provide comfort by explaining the unknown, even if the explanations aren't rational. As science progresses, it encroaches upon what religion used to explain. It's possible there are some things science will never explain, which means there will always be areas of thought that are beyond science's purview, but there is and has long been conflict between them.
I thought the idea of optical computing was that the switching speed is so high that it more than compensates for the larger feature sizes? Visible light has a wavelength on the order of 300-700nm (3e-7m to 7e-7m), which isn't all that much larger than current CPU features; and the switching speed optical transistors can attain is vastly higher than silicon. As far as I know.
Besides, electronic components don't have feature sizes anywhere near the "wavelength" of an electron. CPU feature sizes are under 100nm (10e-7m) right now, but an electron's wavelength is around 10e-15m. Your average wiring trace in a CPU is a hundred million electrons wide.
I was talking to a friend about Episode III. He pointed out, his words, "It was the best of Star Wars, it was the worst of Star Wars." You'd have an incredibly great moment followed immediately by something soul-crushingly stupid. The POV shot of Vader's mask coming down over his face; Vader's first breaths. Chilling.
Followed by Vader whining about where Padme is, and then, of course... "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"
Lucas is great at molding basic story material, but he can't write dialogue or characters to save his life. He should have stuck to producing, which is what he's really good at.
Does this mean that if I view a video with my eyeballs and write down a number based on what I see I'm subject to a lawsuit as an unapproved and unlicensed device?
Yes. And then you will be sent to jail and your "analog hole" will be plugged. Repeatedly.
Municipal Wi i is a huge waste due to ever increasing wired bandwidths and the costs and latencies of government changes would never keep up with free market changes.
Municipal Wifi isn't intended to compete with free-market alternatives. It's a social service; a way to make sure that everyone can get cheap Internet access. It may not be especially fast, but there's nothing preventing you from buying faster wired (or even wireless) access.
Yeah, but the real bitching will come when they move the holiday to the fourth Monday of October so that people can get a three-day weekend. How dare they! Have they no sense of history?!
You're saying that Satire is a free speech issue, but the only places it's codified is in Trademark or Copyright law.
Ah, I finally understand your core argument. It seems to be that satire is only codified as protected speech in trademark and copyright law, and therefore cannot apply in any other situation. Do I have that right? The rest of this post assumes so; let me know if that's not your core argument.
Alas, the words "satire" and "satirical" do not appear anywhere in the U.S. Code. The words "parody" and "parodied" each appear once, in the notes addendum to Title 17, but not in the code itself. This demonstrates that satire and parody are not codified as protected speech in any section of the U.S. Code.
But if satire and parody do not have codified protection, then how could they possibly ever be protected speech?
Because their protection stems entirely from case law, as we have both demonstrated. That protection does not only exist in cases of copyright or trademark. Parody and satire can be protected speech in the case of libel (Hustler v. Falwell, which had nothing to do with trademark or copyright), as well as in cases of determining whether something is considered "offensive" to the population. Even if every person in Jesusville, USA finds it offensive that I sell copies of a satirical version of the Bible, too bad for them -- that's protected speech. And it also has nothing to do with trademark or copyright.
The only issue that remains is whether The Onion's satirical use of the Presidential seal would be protected speech under the First Amendment (since Fair Use can't apply, as this isn't a copyright or trademark issue). You have to weigh The Onion's satirical use of the seal against the necessity of maintaining the seal's integrity. To me, it seems fairly obvious that any harm caused by The Onion's use of the seal is not outweighed by the need to maintain the seal's integrity.
Slashdot Mirror
1) Who gets to have local daylight be their waking time? Under your system, some time zones would be perpetually condemned to life in the dark. People will not accept that. Most people like being up and about during daylight.
2) A lot of jobs would require lots of expensive electric lighting if they had to be done at night. When you work during the day, you get free light. Construction, farming, or anything that involves outdoor areas would be more expensive.
3) Humans evolved diurnally; a lot of our biology depends on being exposed to sunlight during our waking hours. Children who had the bad luck to be in time zones where they spent most of daylight asleep would have trouble producing sufficient melatonin, which is a hormone essential for proper physical growth and development.
4) Also, there's the problem that a lot of children would be walking to school in the middle of the night. This causes safety issues for people who are *already* less visible to automobiles.
5) The changeover costs would be titanic, and the actual gain would be tiny. Despite your complaints about math, most people who need to deal with time zones do not have significant difficulty doing so.
No, and neither have 95% of the people on the planet. You think it's a good idea to change something this critical so that you can find life infinitesimally more convenient?In retrospect, do you think it was a mistake to hire Raph Koster as lead designer for SWG? He has a lot of great ideas about virtual world design, but SWG at launch was much more of an economic simulator with a Star Wars skin than it was a game.
(For reference, I was in SWG starting in early Beta 1 -- Shuttle 3, specifically -- and played for about six months after launch.)
Here's why we do basic research:
http://www.math.mun.ca/~edgar/moody.html
Even more concise:
Shivering Timbres Shiver Timbers
Shouldn't it be AJAX, not Ajax? Ajax is the Greek warrior.
Now I'll have to wait longer before I refuse to buy the Xbox 360.
I thought the idea of optical computing was that the switching speed is so high that it more than compensates for the larger feature sizes? Visible light has a wavelength on the order of 300-700nm (3e-7m to 7e-7m), which isn't all that much larger than current CPU features; and the switching speed optical transistors can attain is vastly higher than silicon. As far as I know.
Besides, electronic components don't have feature sizes anywhere near the "wavelength" of an electron. CPU feature sizes are under 100nm (10e-7m) right now, but an electron's wavelength is around 10e-15m. Your average wiring trace in a CPU is a hundred million electrons wide.
Heh. The title of your post refers to the old joke about what you call a hundred lawyers at the bottom of the ocean, doesn't it? :)
I was talking to a friend about Episode III. He pointed out, his words, "It was the best of Star Wars, it was the worst of Star Wars." You'd have an incredibly great moment followed immediately by something soul-crushingly stupid. The POV shot of Vader's mask coming down over his face; Vader's first breaths. Chilling.
Followed by Vader whining about where Padme is, and then, of course... "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"
Lucas is great at molding basic story material, but he can't write dialogue or characters to save his life. He should have stuck to producing, which is what he's really good at.
I've been wondering for years what Cthulu and the other Old Ones have been up to.
Wait... Hastert the Speaker? Not Hastur the Unspeakable? Oh.
Yeah, but the real bitching will come when they move the holiday to the fourth Monday of October so that people can get a three-day weekend. How dare they! Have they no sense of history?!
Alas, the words "satire" and "satirical" do not appear anywhere in the U.S. Code. The words "parody" and "parodied" each appear once, in the notes addendum to Title 17, but not in the code itself. This demonstrates that satire and parody are not codified as protected speech in any section of the U.S. Code.
But if satire and parody do not have codified protection, then how could they possibly ever be protected speech?
Because their protection stems entirely from case law, as we have both demonstrated. That protection does not only exist in cases of copyright or trademark. Parody and satire can be protected speech in the case of libel (Hustler v. Falwell, which had nothing to do with trademark or copyright), as well as in cases of determining whether something is considered "offensive" to the population. Even if every person in Jesusville, USA finds it offensive that I sell copies of a satirical version of the Bible, too bad for them -- that's protected speech. And it also has nothing to do with trademark or copyright.
The only issue that remains is whether The Onion's satirical use of the Presidential seal would be protected speech under the First Amendment (since Fair Use can't apply, as this isn't a copyright or trademark issue). You have to weigh The Onion's satirical use of the seal against the necessity of maintaining the seal's integrity. To me, it seems fairly obvious that any harm caused by The Onion's use of the seal is not outweighed by the need to maintain the seal's integrity.