Let's talk about being "real". Look at the state of the world around us. Poverty, crime, illiteracy, slave wages, drugs, gangs, etc, etc, etc... etc, etc... and you think a little bit of "happy talk" is going to fix that? We're going to "fix" crime? We're going to "fix" poverty? No, I'm sorry, that's simply NOT going to happen.
I agree with you on that. No amount of "happy talk" will fix anything. I'm talking about real action. Not just a few politicians making pretty speeches and everything stays the same. Change that can be felt by everyone. It can be done if enough people demand it. Not likely in the age of manufactured consent. Yet change starts with individuals. Individuals like you and me. Sharing ideas. Coming up with better ideas of how to do things.
Poverty and wage slavery can be fixed by creating an economy where all capable people have jobs that have decent salaries . Not likely going to happen in the current society where big business is better off with and relies on wage slaves and constant in-flux of people that are in a desperate need of a job. The "fix" involves strong labour unions. And generally an economic environment where ever increasing consumption is not the goal.
Illiteracy can be fixed with education. A free, good education for all. Welcome to Finland for an example. I didn't pay a dime for my education except for the books at university and high school level. My education is a Master of Science degree from Tampere University of Technology. Our standing in the international PISA studies is very near or at the top very consistently. I can be done and has been done.
Drugs, gangs etc. can be "fixed" by creating a constructive outlet for your people. Create a society where there is no need to escape the monotony or lousy surroundings into drug induced euphoria. Or where gangs are the only way to survive a little longer. Instead of dealing with the problem fix the reason for the problem. Drug-use and gangs are the symptom not the reason.
You think that just because you don't see any progress we haven't been trying. That is absolutely NOT true. These issues have been brought up again and again as excuses to avoid the REAL issues. These are BYPRODUCTS, of much more fundamental social issues.
I agree. So why not fix the fundamental issues and not deal with the byproducts as you call them.
Furthermore, you misunderstood what I was saying in my previous post about how AI can be used. Certainly AI will be working at McDonald's before they are capable of "solving our problems".
So what will happen to the person on minimum wage flipping those burgers? He/She will be unemployed with no chance of a job because all other fast food places are also using the same AIs.
No, that's not at all what will happen. Certainly before AIs are capable of completely replacing humans there will be a time where they merely assist humans. I don't see humans "replaced" by AI, I see humans assisted by AI. What you are claiming is the equivalent of saying the "hammer" will replace the human. Certainly not. Somebody must still "hold" the hammer. Besides the fact, that, at this point you are just getting in to wild speculation. Why are we even talking about AIs replacing humans? Probably because movies have so distorted people's perception reality. If we build the AIs, as a part of a capitalistic society, we WILL find a way to help them improve society. You are fearing "fire" even before any "fire" has been made. What would have happened if man had such an irrational "fear" of fire when it was fire discovered? You have been watching all kinds of movies, about how "fire" will burn you on a stake, alive, that you don't see all of the benefits that "fire" can bring. And you've never even seen REAL fire before. But you have seen sparks.
AIs will replace people just as production lines and rudimentary automation replaced scores of workers during industrialization. And now with automation becoming
It's a matter of intelligence. Humans are not intelligent enough to solve some of the problems we are now faced with. And, as our problems become increasingly complex, there will be an increasing number of unsolved problems.
Granted. This is a valid point. And I agree in that AI is a valid research goal. Just not at the expense of other more important research.
How about using our own brains for something more constructive?
It's a nice thought. However, as you have pointed out, it will require radical social changes, that won't occur until we solve some of our many unsolved problems.
Then why not make those radical changes? Why keep doing what we have been doing for who knows how long? Is the almighty AI, which is still not even close to reality, going to magically solve all our problems? How about simulating what changes need to be made in human society in order to make it work? Why not work on the unsolved problems themselves and not some pie in the sky problem that has been researched for about 40 years now with limited successes.
How about solving the social problems that we have? How about solving societal problems that we have?
People have been saying this for decades, and the situation has gotten worse, and not better. Social problems have very deep roots in our society. They go all the way back to the very structure of society itself, which was very carefully planned and exists in a very delicate balance. However, even with all of that careful planning that balance is bound to becomed unbalanced eventually, unless we are actively correcting the new problems that arise as population increases and new techonologies are developed.
Maybe the problem is that not enough resources have been allocated for this research. Or have you really seen any real research in to how social problems can be fixed? I have, but they are very few and far in between. And their practical applications are even fewer. Just look at the US budget for example. By some estimates 51% of it is used for war and its consequences. In essence creating more trouble. What if just 10% of that money was spent trying to fix social problems. Eliminating the need for young people to use drugs for example. I know that it will not happen soon because there are huge vested interests working against it.
Artificial brains can be of enormous practicality to society. They can be designed to lend a hand to workers, at the lowest incomes which, if we are really honest with ourselves, have replaced what used to be the slaves of society. THAT is where your "social problems" are coming from. Every time humanity designs a new tool to help lowest income workers, everybody in society reaps the benefits. We're reaching the limit of how much a tool can help, without needing some kind of intelligence.
Lets be real here. If a corporation had an artificial brain to do the job of a researcher with negligible cost which would you they would choose? Then there would be even more unemployed people. We have reached a point where the question has changed from can we use technology to solve our problems to should we solve our problems with technology. I believe that some of our problems have non-technological solutions. To answer your slave issue: I agree with you completely in that low income workers have replaced slaves in modern society. Now lets take this scenario further. The wage slaves are replaced with automatic factories run by few General AIs and a slew of robots with Genetic Algorithms. What will happen to those people who have been replaced? They will be unemployed with no chance of ever getting a better life. Even without General AIs this is still happening in the first world because of outsourcing the manufacturing to third world countries. The greed that fuels capitalism is a great motivator but it is a very poor master.
How is simulating a brain, any brain, going to improve the chances of human survival?
How about using our own brains for something more constructive? How about solving the social problems that we have? How about solving societal problems that we have? How about recycling everything on a global scale? How about using energy sources that are non-polluting? How about stopping non-necessary traffic around the world? How about stopping the manufacture of weapons? How about using the knowledge that we already have in improving the quality of life for all? (Not just the people of industrialized nations)
We as human race have had the knowledge and means for at least 20 years to feed all people. Yet there are still children dying of hunger around the world. While at the same time there is a growing problem of obesity.
My opinion is that human race as an entity is long overdue some evolution. Human beings as individuals can be intelligent. I have yet to see that same intelligent behaviour in human race as a whole. Even as nations we are not intelligent often enough.
Maybe if climate change kicks us strong enough in our collective reproductive organs we get the hint.
I agree that this is a problem with current representative democracies. Even in countries that have more than two parties. Even though the problem not that great in those countries. Individual people can be unreliable. They can say one thing and do another. Especially before and after elections. If the decision making process involved a basic set of principles and possibly goals that would make government more inclusive of everyones opinion.
So I guess what I am proposing is a principled representative democracy:
There is a government of x ministers x being a small number. Let's say 21. There ministers govern according to principles and goals selected in general elections. General elections could be divided in two. In one we select the ministers. In a second election we vote on principles and goals. Selection of principles can be done by political parties or independent groups of enough people. Enough being proportioned to the size of the population of said nation. Then all decisions that government makes are based on the principles set out in the elections. It would against the law to make decision not in accordance of the principles. This being tested through the legal system. Or it could even be a principle being voted on in the next elections. Thus if enough people wanted they could in effect vote someone out of office. Especially if the general elections were held separately for ministers and principles. This would be more demanding on population at large. They would have to have a grasp of the issues involved. Voting would take a long time. That would cut down the number of people voting. That would ensure that the people who vote are interested in the issues and make the effort.
What do you think?
Would you like to live under a government like that? I would. Especially because it would be quite easy to pass many important principles sorely lacking current world politics. Principle of no offensive warfare. Principle of accountability. Financial and otherwise.
Find it on YouTube or somewhere else and try to spot the CIA agent in there.
Aside from that: Who gave Saddam the chemical weapons he used? Who put the new puppet government in place? Who is reaping the benefits from reconstruction?
Now, Who hung Saddam?
NASA shouldn't cut advanced concepts because it will only harm them in the long run.
That's because the US people are xenophobic to the point of insanity. Which is ironic since they all are illegal aliens one way or another.
I too have my fingerprints there. And even if my fingerprints were deleted from some databases I am sure that they still lurk in some massive US national security database somewhere in the US.
I wonder when we are going to see people wrongly convicted simply because they have the same fingerprints as another person. The number of configurations the lines on your fingers can take is not infinite, you know. Probably we have already passed that point.
I wonder if the people with diplomatic credentials are subjected to this as well.
This same trend is becoming more prevalent in societies around the world. I'm not against this _IF_ the "authorities" that subject people to this kind of scrutiny are in turn subjected to the same type of intense, public, invasive scrutiny of all their people, all their processes, all their decisions, all their finances, everything. This will never happen though if you are talking about national security of any nation, which is why this type of big brother society must be stopped. We have some pretty convincing examples of why this should not be done. Think DDR, USSR, PRNK.
In all of those instances the "collective" cannot convey information faster than the speed of light. See, it's all about information propagation. And the top speed for that is c.
So unless you manipulate space-time with exotic matter or something similar you cannot travel faster than c. And even then it is dubious.
What is the right thing? There are various definitions of this.
There certainly are. You might take the hedonist way. Others will take the extremist route.
Eventually evolution will weed out the most extreme ends. Just think of how far we have come as humanity in 6000 years for example, which is a fleeting moment evolution-wise.
You still have your own moral code, which you defined through some means and try to follow it as good as you can. I don't think that this is the wrong thing to do, i just think that it is pointless.
For you maybe. But not for the rest of us.
Our lives here on earth serve no purposes. We just exist, some of us reproduce, and then we all die. That's it. No reason. No goal. No points.
I like to think of it this way:
Our lives only have the meaning that we create for ourselves. The goal in life is to create a goal and strive for it. Because without it, it really is pointless and you might as well die right now. But there is always something to do, to create, to nurture, to live for.
Even if you are not tallied by some mythical wisp at the of your life does not make your life pointless.
Have some children. I don't think so. That certainly is your right and maybe better for the rest of us. I do not know.
And then, these children might meet people like me on the internet. Thanks for reminding me to teach my children about the dangers of Internet.
This thinking can, of course, lead to amoral decisions, and that's why we have invented religion:) I would say it will lead to amoral decisions.
Because the core beliefs you have guide your decisions even if you are not aware of them or the fact that they influence your decisions.
I don't subscribe to any religious beliefs.
I believe that when I die I decompose slowly due to food preservatives in my body but decompose none the less.
But still I care about what kind of a world I leave for my children.
I care enough for the people around me that I try to do the right thing. So that when I die the world will be a better place for the almost infinitesimal part that I have influence over. We would still probably be hunter/gatherers if we were all egoists.
It's not about consequences to me I'm worried about after I die. I'm worried about the consequences to others. As a thanks to previous generations I pay it forward.
Have some children. They will really shift your world view. And everything else in the process.
World may be meaningless to you. You are dead. You, in effect, do not exist anymore. But the world does not stop existing simply because you expire. You are not the center of the universe. You are merely an almost infinitesimal part of the big, grand, large, larger than life universe.
Children are naturally egoist. You are 22. What is your excuse?:)
Small caps E is used to signify y×10^x; i.e. 7e8 is 7×10^8 or 700,000,000. (Source wikipedia)
E is 14 in hex as already pointed out.
It's math, you are allowed, heck, required, to be pedantic.
And this professor is full of it. You can define 0/0 to be nullity, NAN or whatever. It will still be intractable because any operation on nullity will have to result in nullity. Or else you would be able to define 2=1 as already pointed out.
And any limit comparisons will not change that. Limit != ==
Public opinion and real consequences are two very different things. Public opinion can and will be ignored until it causes things that really hurt. Like US products not being sold. Trade embargos. US credit rating being lowered. Forcing US to deal with its enormous budget deficit. That is unlikely to happen since all of the major credit rating agencies are based in the US.:(
I am hoping that in 2008 democracy will sort itself out in the US. I am not holding my breath however. US could have one good presidency and then again some special interest puppet. As long as US elections are determined by the amount of money a candidates organisation has there will be no real democracy is the US.
Ever since Soviet Union fell apart United States has been relatively free to assert its imperial agenda over the world and this is simply yet another example of US failing to exert control over the world. So they try harder and harder measures to ensure control. At the same time losing what little influence they have left with their allies.
United States is really going the way of the Roman Empire if it keeps this up.
Food and entertainment only go so far... If the entertainment is seen as a tool of oppression then it will loose its effectiveness as it did in Rome. One of the factors of Roman demise was the rise of Christianity. Christians in the circus served only to alienate the growing population of the converted. American entertainment industry is being used more and more for propaganda purposes. Just look at some of the recent Fox series. "24" for example has been used as a tool to help Americans and others to accept torture.
I am just appalled at the lack of backlash from the international community to United States measures.
I am afraid that the delayed backlash will be stronger than and thus more disruptive than if it had been delivered in a timely fashion. That disruption will also disrupt other nations. Exacerbating other problems like global warming, peak oil and the retirement of baby boomers.
There are some places where the notion of profiles is a valid concern. For example if you run firefox on a laptop and have several choices of webcache addresses depending on the firewall you are sitting behind.
But I agree that you should be able to have more than one instance running with the same config files. It cannot be that hard to code.
I also happen to agree wholeheartedly with the rest of your post.
Whenever there is any "security" checkpoint anywhere I tend to feel uneasy, more afraid, intimidated, bullied. I certainly don't feel more secure.
Any proactive security measures are ripe for exploitation.
I only hope US lives up to its own ideals. It is failing miserably right now. EU on the other hand is a hopeless ideologically void pile of byrocracy that needs a thorough overhaul. China has long since lost its ideals and needs a new revolution. One that is totally different from the last one. Middle East is a mess. Africa is a mess. South America is mostly a mess. Environment is a mess.
When will We, the world, stop manufacturing consent and start to fix the underlying problems instead of these quick fixes. UN, in spite of its Many faults, has been able to work towards some of its goals.
Nice sidestep. Completely ignore the post that I made. I'll answer to your post though.
How does this (Parties A and B trying to get voters on/off rolls) make the voting any more fair/accurate/correct/right ? This makes USA dismal when compared to other countries' voting systems.
One man (or woman), one vote. That's how it should be. Not: We changed the rules and you have to register to vote on this particular weight cardboard card that we are not going to even enter into our systems and even if we do we changed the voting stations so that you have to enter the right queue in the right building that we are not even bothered to tell you on our website and even if you are in the right queue for hours on end the voting machine that is totally unreliable is going to change your vote after you give it and even if it doesn't we can always change it afterwards because there is no paper trail.
Sounds more like a third world bs to me than the Pillar of Democracy US pretends to be.
I am sure that both major parties in the US are quilty of election fraud. The system is made so that it is quite easy to skew the results. It just so happens that most of the irregularities are stacked in favor of the Republican party in the 2004 election.
I can understand that there are historical reasons why your voting system is crap. UK is still using a similarily bad system.
This does affect people aroudn the world too. Ask the people in Iraq.
And if you want the nerd angle you can look at the voting machine part of the scandal.
If you do not want to repeat the same fiasco again in 2008, welcome to Finland. We've had democratic elections for a hundred years now. (One of the first country in the world to allow women to vote)
Every Finnish citizen gets his/her voting information by mail. No registration needed. You can vote before the election day in post offices and special pre-election sites. There are even election officers making tours in retirement homes, prisons, hospitals etc. for people who cannot come to the polling place. No voting clutter. You are voting for a president . period. No electoral college to cloud the issue. No re-shuffling of voting counties. No voting machines. No election scandals. You have several choices to choose from. Five major parties not just two.
Going off the other end is not a good thing either. You then have gazillion small pieces of code that do much of the same thing. Debugging and maintaining that is a nightmare.
What you need (as you implied) is a good, extensible, reusable spec and good, extensible, reusable code to match.
You can write C++ that looks like C. I do. Should'nt but do. Language selection is always tricky. It depends on so many variables. Not the least of which is what the developer is comfortable with.
The one thing that makes Murphy's law correct is the fact that it is most often misquoted. And if quoted properly it is quoted out of context. And if quoted properly in the proper context it is not understood correctly. Or at least causes volumes of misundertandings, corrections, flame wars, long discussions of what Murphy actually said, meant and in what context. Much like this threadlet. My comment included.
And here I was thinking that Foxnews is a comedy channel. If you like tragicomedy that is...
And yes, I am being sarcastic, to all humour impaired.
Seriously though, I think that the definition of a planet should be:
(a) is in orbit around a star or stellar remnants
(b) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape;
(c) is not massive enough to initiate thermonuclear fusion of deuterium in its core; and,
And then have several classes of planets. Dwarf/Minor planets
(1) only conditions a,b,c apply
Major planets
(1) conditions a,b,c apply
(2) are massive enough to clear the neighbourhood around its orbit.
Even though your math is a bit suspect as others have noted.
I expect that the US will undergo a dramatic shift in urban planning in the next 50 years. They will have to. And it will not be cheap. US economy is built on cheap fuel. Cheap fuel is no longer available. Or will not be available for long. Combine this with growing anti-US sentiment around the world. Not helped one bit by recent US actions. Hence I think that the US will drop from the economic number one spot during those same 50 years.
I don't think that it will be EU that's taking that spot but China. EU has been largely built on cheap fuel also. Russia will cash in on large fuel prices and become a strong contender also. If they manage it right. Which is doubtful at the moment. India will be a major contender also.
(Measure of economy is GDP according to the CIA World Factbook)
Slashdot Mirror
Let's talk about being "real". Look at the state of the world around us. Poverty, crime, illiteracy, slave wages, drugs, gangs, etc, etc, etc... etc, etc... and you think a little bit of "happy talk" is going to fix that? We're going to "fix" crime? We're going to "fix" poverty? No, I'm sorry, that's simply NOT going to happen.
I agree with you on that. No amount of "happy talk" will fix anything. I'm talking about real action. Not just a few politicians making pretty speeches and everything stays the same. Change that can be felt by everyone. It can be done if enough people demand it. Not likely in the age of manufactured consent. Yet change starts with individuals. Individuals like you and me. Sharing ideas. Coming up with better ideas of how to do things.
Poverty and wage slavery can be fixed by creating an economy where all capable people have jobs that have decent salaries . Not likely going to happen in the current society where big business is better off with and relies on wage slaves and constant in-flux of people that are in a desperate need of a job.
The "fix" involves strong labour unions. And generally an economic environment where ever increasing consumption is not the goal.
Illiteracy can be fixed with education. A free, good education for all. Welcome to Finland for an example. I didn't pay a dime for my education except for the books at university and high school level. My education is a Master of Science degree from Tampere University of Technology. Our standing in the international PISA studies is very near or at the top very consistently. I can be done and has been done.
Drugs, gangs etc. can be "fixed" by creating a constructive outlet for your people. Create a society where there is no need to escape the monotony or lousy surroundings into drug induced euphoria. Or where gangs are the only way to survive a little longer. Instead of dealing with the problem fix the reason for the problem. Drug-use and gangs are the symptom not the reason.
You think that just because you don't see any progress we haven't been trying. That is absolutely NOT true. These issues have been brought up again and again as excuses to avoid the REAL issues. These are BYPRODUCTS, of much more fundamental social issues.
I agree. So why not fix the fundamental issues and not deal with the byproducts as you call them.
Furthermore, you misunderstood what I was saying in my previous post about how AI can be used. Certainly AI will be working at McDonald's before they are capable of "solving our problems".
So what will happen to the person on minimum wage flipping those burgers? He/She will be unemployed with no chance of a job because all other fast food places are also using the same AIs.
No, that's not at all what will happen. Certainly before AIs are capable of completely replacing humans there will be a time where they merely assist humans. I don't see humans "replaced" by AI, I see humans assisted by AI. What you are claiming is the equivalent of saying the "hammer" will replace the human. Certainly not. Somebody must still "hold" the hammer. Besides the fact, that, at this point you are just getting in to wild speculation. Why are we even talking about AIs replacing humans? Probably because movies have so distorted people's perception reality. If we build the AIs, as a part of a capitalistic society, we WILL find a way to help them improve society. You are fearing "fire" even before any "fire" has been made. What would have happened if man had such an irrational "fear" of fire when it was fire discovered? You have been watching all kinds of movies, about how "fire" will burn you on a stake, alive, that you don't see all of the benefits that "fire" can bring. And you've never even seen REAL fire before. But you have seen sparks.
AIs will replace people just as production lines and rudimentary automation replaced scores of workers during industrialization. And now with automation becoming
It's a matter of intelligence. Humans are not intelligent enough to solve some of the problems we are now faced with. And, as our problems become increasingly complex, there will be an increasing number of unsolved problems.
Granted. This is a valid point. And I agree in that AI is a valid research goal. Just not at the expense of other more important research.
How about using our own brains for something more constructive?
It's a nice thought. However, as you have pointed out, it will require radical social changes, that won't occur until we solve some of our many unsolved problems.
Then why not make those radical changes? Why keep doing what we have been doing for who knows how long? Is the almighty AI, which is still not even close to reality, going to magically solve all our problems? How about simulating what changes need to be made in human society in order to make it work? Why not work on the unsolved problems themselves and not some pie in the sky problem that has been researched for about 40 years now with limited successes.
How about solving the social problems that we have? How about solving societal problems that we have?
People have been saying this for decades, and the situation has gotten worse, and not better. Social problems have very deep roots in our society. They go all the way back to the very structure of society itself, which was very carefully planned and exists in a very delicate balance. However, even with all of that careful planning that balance is bound to becomed unbalanced eventually, unless we are actively correcting the new problems that arise as population increases and new techonologies are developed.
Maybe the problem is that not enough resources have been allocated for this research. Or have you really seen any real research in to how social problems can be fixed? I have, but they are very few and far in between. And their practical applications are even fewer.
Just look at the US budget for example. By some estimates 51% of it is used for war and its consequences. In essence creating more trouble.
What if just 10% of that money was spent trying to fix social problems. Eliminating the need for young people to use drugs for example.
I know that it will not happen soon because there are huge vested interests working against it.
Artificial brains can be of enormous practicality to society. They can be designed to lend a hand to workers, at the lowest incomes which, if we are really honest with ourselves, have replaced what used to be the slaves of society. THAT is where your "social problems" are coming from. Every time humanity designs a new tool to help lowest income workers, everybody in society reaps the benefits. We're reaching the limit of how much a tool can help, without needing some kind of intelligence.
Lets be real here. If a corporation had an artificial brain to do the job of a researcher with negligible cost which would you they would choose?
Then there would be even more unemployed people. We have reached a point where the question has changed from can we use technology to solve our problems to should we solve our problems with technology. I believe that some of our problems have non-technological solutions.
To answer your slave issue: I agree with you completely in that low income workers have replaced slaves in modern society.
Now lets take this scenario further. The wage slaves are replaced with automatic factories run by few General AIs and a slew of robots with Genetic Algorithms.
What will happen to those people who have been replaced? They will be unemployed with no chance of ever getting a better life. Even without General AIs this is still happening in the first world because of outsourcing the manufacturing to third world countries. The greed that fuels capitalism is a great motivator but it is a very poor master.
How about recycling e
No, it's just that the Mega-Maid has come to suck the atmosphere with a giant vacuum cleaner.
Good point.
The branches of government should indeed be separate.
Especially judicial branch. Biased justice is no justice at all.
How is simulating a brain, any brain, going to improve the chances of human survival?
How about using our own brains for something more constructive?
How about solving the social problems that we have?
How about solving societal problems that we have?
How about recycling everything on a global scale?
How about using energy sources that are non-polluting?
How about stopping non-necessary traffic around the world?
How about stopping the manufacture of weapons?
How about using the knowledge that we already have in improving the quality of life for all? (Not just the people of industrialized nations)
We as human race have had the knowledge and means for at least 20 years to feed all people. Yet there are still children dying of hunger around the world. While at the same time there is a growing problem of obesity.
My opinion is that human race as an entity is long overdue some evolution.
Human beings as individuals can be intelligent. I have yet to see that same intelligent behaviour in human race as a whole. Even as nations we are not intelligent often enough.
Maybe if climate change kicks us strong enough in our collective reproductive organs we get the hint.
I agree that this is a problem with current representative democracies. Even in countries that have more than two parties.
Even though the problem not that great in those countries.
Individual people can be unreliable. They can say one thing and do another. Especially before and after elections. If the decision making process involved a basic set of principles and possibly goals that would make government more inclusive of everyones opinion.
So I guess what I am proposing is a principled representative democracy:
There is a government of x ministers x being a small number. Let's say 21.
There ministers govern according to principles and goals selected in general elections.
General elections could be divided in two. In one we select the ministers. In a second election we vote on principles and goals.
Selection of principles can be done by political parties or independent groups of enough people. Enough being proportioned to the size of the population of said nation.
Then all decisions that government makes are based on the principles set out in the elections.
It would against the law to make decision not in accordance of the principles.
This being tested through the legal system. Or it could even be a principle being voted on in the next elections.
Thus if enough people wanted they could in effect vote someone out of office. Especially if the general elections were held separately for ministers and principles.
This would be more demanding on population at large. They would have to have a grasp of the issues involved. Voting would take a long time. That would cut down the number of people voting. That would ensure that the people who vote are interested in the issues and make the effort.
What do you think?
Would you like to live under a government like that?
I would.
Especially because it would be quite easy to pass many important principles sorely lacking current world politics.
Principle of no offensive warfare.
Principle of accountability. Financial and otherwise.
What if laws were principled too?
Have you looked at the hanging video?
I thought not.
Find it on YouTube or somewhere else and try to spot the CIA agent in there.
Aside from that:
Who gave Saddam the chemical weapons he used?
Who put the new puppet government in place?
Who is reaping the benefits from reconstruction?
Now, Who hung Saddam?
NASA shouldn't cut advanced concepts because it will only harm them in the long run.
That's because the US people are xenophobic to the point of insanity.
Which is ironic since they all are illegal aliens one way or another.
I too have my fingerprints there. And even if my fingerprints were deleted from some databases I am sure that they still lurk in some massive US national security database somewhere in the US.
I wonder when we are going to see people wrongly convicted simply because they have the same fingerprints as another person.
The number of configurations the lines on your fingers can take is not infinite, you know.
Probably we have already passed that point.
I wonder if the people with diplomatic credentials are subjected to this as well.
This same trend is becoming more prevalent in societies around the world. I'm not against this _IF_ the "authorities" that subject people to this kind of scrutiny are in turn subjected to the same type of intense, public, invasive scrutiny of all their people, all their processes, all their decisions, all their finances, everything. This will never happen though if you are talking about national security of any nation, which is why this type of big brother society must be stopped. We have some pretty convincing examples of why this should not be done. Think DDR, USSR, PRNK.
In all of those instances the "collective" cannot convey information faster than the speed of light.
See, it's all about information propagation. And the top speed for that is c.
So unless you manipulate space-time with exotic matter or something similar you cannot travel faster than c.
And even then it is dubious.
There certainly are. You might take the hedonist way. Others will take the extremist route. Eventually evolution will weed out the most extreme ends. Just think of how far we have come as humanity in 6000 years for example, which is a fleeting moment evolution-wise.
You still have your own moral code, which you defined through some means and try to follow it as good as you can. I don't think that this is the wrong thing to do, i just think that it is pointless.For you maybe. But not for the rest of us.
Our lives here on earth serve no purposes. We just exist, some of us reproduce, and then we all die. That's it. No reason. No goal. No points.I like to think of it this way:
Our lives only have the meaning that we create for ourselves. The goal in life is to create a goal and strive for it. Because without it, it really is pointless and you might as well die right now. But there is always something to do, to create, to nurture, to live for.
Even if you are not tallied by some mythical wisp at the of your life does not make your life pointless.
Have some children. I don't think so. That certainly is your right and maybe better for the rest of us. I do not know. And then, these children might meet people like me on the internet. Thanks for reminding me to teach my children about the dangers of Internet.I don't subscribe to any religious beliefs. I believe that when I die I decompose slowly due to food preservatives in my body but decompose none the less. But still I care about what kind of a world I leave for my children.
I care enough for the people around me that I try to do the right thing. So that when I die the world will be a better place for the almost infinitesimal part that I have influence over. We would still probably be hunter/gatherers if we were all egoists.
It's not about consequences to me I'm worried about after I die. I'm worried about the consequences to others. As a thanks to previous generations I pay it forward.
Have some children. They will really shift your world view. And everything else in the process.
What a sadly egoist world view you have.
:)
World may be meaningless to you. You are dead. You, in effect, do not exist anymore. But the world does not stop existing simply because you expire.
You are not the center of the universe. You are merely an almost infinitesimal part of the big, grand, large, larger than life universe.
Children are naturally egoist. You are 22. What is your excuse?
Everyone here really should see it.
Even if only for the printer bashing scene.
That was one of the best scenes in geek movie history.
Actually....
e =~ 2.781
Small caps E is used to signify y×10^x; i.e. 7e8 is 7×10^8 or 700,000,000. (Source wikipedia)
E is 14 in hex as already pointed out.
It's math, you are allowed, heck, required, to be pedantic.
And this professor is full of it.
You can define 0/0 to be nullity, NAN or whatever. It will still be intractable because any operation on nullity will have to result in nullity. Or else you would be able to define 2=1 as already pointed out.
And any limit comparisons will not change that. Limit != ==
Public opinion and real consequences are two very different things. :(
Public opinion can and will be ignored until it causes things that really hurt.
Like US products not being sold. Trade embargos. US credit rating being lowered.
Forcing US to deal with its enormous budget deficit. That is unlikely to happen since all of the major
credit rating agencies are based in the US.
I am hoping that in 2008 democracy will sort itself out in the US. I am not holding my breath however.
US could have one good presidency and then again some special interest puppet. As long as US elections are determined by the amount of money a candidates organisation has there will be no real democracy is the US.
Ever since Soviet Union fell apart United States has been relatively free to assert its imperial agenda over the world and this is simply yet another example of US failing to exert control over the world. So they try harder and harder measures to ensure control. At the same time losing what little influence they have left with their allies.
United States is really going the way of the Roman Empire if it keeps this up.
Food and entertainment only go so far...
If the entertainment is seen as a tool of oppression then it will loose its effectiveness as it did in Rome.
One of the factors of Roman demise was the rise of Christianity. Christians in the circus served only to alienate the growing population of the converted.
American entertainment industry is being used more and more for propaganda purposes. Just look at some of the recent Fox series.
"24" for example has been used as a tool to help Americans and others to accept torture.
I am just appalled at the lack of backlash from the international community to United States measures.
I am afraid that the delayed backlash will be stronger than and thus more disruptive than if it had been delivered in a timely fashion.
That disruption will also disrupt other nations. Exacerbating other problems like global warming, peak oil and the retirement of baby boomers.
There are some places where the notion of profiles is a valid concern.
For example if you run firefox on a laptop and have several choices of webcache addresses depending on the firewall you are sitting behind.
But I agree that you should be able to have more than one instance running with the same config files.
It cannot be that hard to code.
I also happen to agree wholeheartedly with the rest of your post.
Whenever there is any "security" checkpoint anywhere I tend to feel uneasy, more afraid, intimidated, bullied.
I certainly don't feel more secure.
Any proactive security measures are ripe for exploitation.
I only hope US lives up to its own ideals. It is failing miserably right now.
EU on the other hand is a hopeless ideologically void pile of byrocracy that needs a thorough overhaul.
China has long since lost its ideals and needs a new revolution. One that is totally different from the last one.
Middle East is a mess.
Africa is a mess.
South America is mostly a mess.
Environment is a mess.
When will We, the world, stop manufacturing consent and start to fix the underlying problems instead of these quick fixes.
UN, in spite of its Many faults, has been able to work towards some of its goals.
Nice sidestep. Completely ignore the post that I made.
I'll answer to your post though.
How does this (Parties A and B trying to get voters on/off rolls) make the voting any more fair/accurate/correct/right ?
This makes USA dismal when compared to other countries' voting systems.
One man (or woman), one vote. That's how it should be. Not: We changed the rules and you have to register to vote on this particular weight cardboard card that we are not going to even enter into our systems and even if we do we changed the voting stations so that you have to enter the right queue in the right building that we are not even bothered to tell you on our website and even if you are in the right queue for hours on end the voting machine that is totally unreliable is going to change your vote after you give it and even if it doesn't we can always change it afterwards because there is no paper trail.
Sounds more like a third world bs to me than the Pillar of Democracy US pretends to be.
I am sure that both major parties in the US are quilty of election fraud. The system is made so that it is quite easy to skew the results.
It just so happens that most of the irregularities are stacked in favor of the Republican party in the 2004 election.
I can understand that there are historical reasons why your voting system is crap. UK is still using a similarily bad system.
This does affect people aroudn the world too.
Ask the people in Iraq.
And if you want the nerd angle you can look at the voting machine part of the scandal.
If you do not want to repeat the same fiasco again in 2008, welcome to Finland.
We've had democratic elections for a hundred years now. (One of the first country in the world to allow women to vote)
Every Finnish citizen gets his/her voting information by mail. No registration needed.
You can vote before the election day in post offices and special pre-election sites.
There are even election officers making tours in retirement homes, prisons, hospitals etc. for people who cannot come to the polling place.
No voting clutter. You are voting for a president . period.
No electoral college to cloud the issue.
No re-shuffling of voting counties.
No voting machines.
No election scandals.
You have several choices to choose from. Five major parties not just two.
Going off the other end is not a good thing either.
You then have gazillion small pieces of code that do much of the same thing.
Debugging and maintaining that is a nightmare.
What you need (as you implied) is a good, extensible, reusable spec and good, extensible, reusable code to match.
You can write C++ that looks like C. I do. Should'nt but do.
Language selection is always tricky. It depends on so many variables.
Not the least of which is what the developer is comfortable with.
The one thing that makes Murphy's law correct is the fact that it is most often misquoted.
And if quoted properly it is quoted out of context.
And if quoted properly in the proper context it is not understood correctly.
Or at least causes volumes of misundertandings, corrections, flame wars, long discussions of what Murphy actually said, meant and in what context.
Much like this threadlet. My comment included.
And here I was thinking that Foxnews is a comedy channel. If you like tragicomedy that is...
And yes, I am being sarcastic, to all humour impaired.
Seriously though,
I think that the definition of a planet should be:
(a) is in orbit around a star or stellar remnants
(b) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape;
(c) is not massive enough to initiate thermonuclear fusion of deuterium in its core; and,
And then have several classes of planets.
Dwarf/Minor planets
(1) only conditions a,b,c apply
Major planets
(1) conditions a,b,c apply
(2) are massive enough to clear the neighbourhood around its orbit.
Maybe he meant that Challenger's Orbit Vehicle desgination was 099.
Maybe he is just confused.
Thank you for a good comment.
Even though your math is a bit suspect as others have noted.
I expect that the US will undergo a dramatic shift in urban planning in the next 50 years.
They will have to.
And it will not be cheap.
US economy is built on cheap fuel. Cheap fuel is no longer available. Or will not be available for long.
Combine this with growing anti-US sentiment around the world. Not helped one bit by recent US actions.
Hence I think that the US will drop from the economic number one spot during those same 50 years.
I don't think that it will be EU that's taking that spot but China.
EU has been largely built on cheap fuel also.
Russia will cash in on large fuel prices and become a strong contender also.
If they manage it right. Which is doubtful at the moment.
India will be a major contender also.
(Measure of economy is GDP according to the CIA World Factbook)