If MobileMe is simply a (much-improved) replacement for.Mac, then iSync/iTunes will probably work just fine. Certainly for a Mac, Bluetooth syncing should be a breeze (since this phone is obviously supported).
What do you mean by "it doesn't matter"? As in: it effects no physical change? Or: it effects no metaphysical change?
It is interesting that you should bring up the concept of a metaphysical God (although this is certainly separate from the concept of free will and determinism), in that it has been argued that this metaphysical God is the first-mover, the one who is the final cause. So indeed, God is wrapped up in this causality business, but not necessarily "bound" by it.
In any case, my point is that if you subscribe to the belief of causality, then determinism is going to play a role. If you do not subscribe to the belief of causality (a decision that logic cannot prove or disprove), then the whole discussion of free will is going to be moot, as the term "cause" loses its meaning.
Free will is going to matter if an ordinary action has multiple actors and not a single actor (i.e. if there is a metaphysical God, then such a being does not guarantee the existence of free will). Certainly, if we attribute all actions to the actor of "randomness", we don't have free will. However, if we do not attribute all actions (merely some of the actions) to "randomness," then that leaves open a path for free will.
The point of my posts is simply to help dispel the notion that a reasoning human being is silly to believe in the concept of free will. On the contrary, I believe that at least considering free will is a completely rational action of said human being, as long as the concept is given a fair mental evaluation.
Your arguments hinge upon many concepts constructed by Hume and others (which are mostly good rational dissent of the prevailing metaphysical arguments) in epistimology. I find that people are not even aware of such large reliance that they indeed proclaim to "know" for "certain" that things such as free will are bunk and folks should move past them.
I do want you to know that I don't intend to personally attack with the above arguments, but I know that I fail sometimes in that respect. Hopefully my presentation at least helps you to consider what you may be relying upon as axiom, when it is merely hypothesis (in my own opinion).
"Then there would somehow be a reaction without an action, but it would NOT be random!"
This is a strawman. Of course, there cannot be a reaction without an action because of the definition of reaction. Perhaps what you are claiming is impossible is the lack of causality, which folks in the quantum world haven't had too many problems shedding. Why? Just as it is difficult to empirically define free will (and we are indeed assuming that empirical evidence == only reality worth talking about), it is empirically difficult to define causality. We can only observe the high degree of coincidence and at some point call it causal, but we CANNOT directly observe causality.
Furthermore, I think it's important to note that by the latter part of your argument, instinct, logic, cultural knowledge is just random anyway. If your choices are completely determined by "external factors" (which implies something "internal", but your definition does not seem to admit for such a possibility), then knowledge does not change anything at all, for there is still no responsibility inherent in it.
Perhaps the most important thing for you and any reader of this post to consider is how empirical evidence forms your understanding of "truth." Is it 1:1 (and therefore dependent on interpretation)? Or do you admit some metaphysics to be truthful (the most famous of which, in my own opinion, is mathematics)?
I know that you made this comment in jest, but a few years back when I was a hardware engineer at Apple, we literally only had 5 or 6 IT guys for the whole campus, which probably implied 5 or 6 guys for approximately 5000 computers. Sure, a lot of that was because you were more or less trusted to operate a computer (at least in engineering, but I think it applied in other buildings too), but that's still a massive accomplishment. The university lab I'm at now is dedicated to computational electromagnetics and they do fairly well with only two guys for the 200 or so computers here. But that's largely because we can't do much of anything without their say so. I think the Mac, when properly understood and matched up with the proper IT philosophy, can do wonders. And I bet you can't guess how many people ran the iTunes Music store hardware. It was pretty darn awesome.
If you scan over enough bandwidth, every piece of metal (and other types of objects) has some peculiar properties. But yeah, you'd have to have "active radar" (which is really just plain old radar... it's a misnomer to talk about passive radar unless you're talking about something specific to bistatic radar, as conventional radar uses both a transmitter and a receiver) to perform such sensing.
At least in the States, many of our cities have considerable sprawl as compared to compactish cities such as New York (just see Los Angeles). So while it is true that the city streets have ~35-40 mph speed limits, many people live in suburbs and commute into work using freeways/highways. Thus, such a car could still save considerable fuel for the average traveler. I spend about 18 minutes of my 25 minute commute on the freeway.
Re:Trust simulation and purpose-blindness
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Ethics In IT
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· Score: 1
I think that you've hit upon the great crux with any technology: it doesn't enforce a purpose (or ethical behavior), it just performs a certain function given certain input and initial conditions. In my view, technology merely allows the sphere of the user to extend. If that person wants to do bad, then the technology will be used for bad purposes. If that person wants to do good, then the technology will be used for good purposes. While this sounds like an undesirable trait, I claim it is a very desirable trait.
Technology should not try to replace our sense of ethics, for if it is possible to create something that only does good, then it is equally possible to create something that only does bad. And of course, there are cases where bad is just a few steps away from good, so many humans might fail at discerning their difference initially. A "bad" technology in these cases could be ruinous, since a good person would be *forced* to do bad without knowing it, initially. DRM, I believe, lives in the realm of authorization systems (Draconian ones, but still, authorization), while "moral" technology is hopefully without implementation.
So you're saying that we should define a single political philosophy for all the politicians to follow (theoretically, a one party system) and things will get better (by an economic measure, instead of a justice or some other kind of measure)? And it doesn't practically matter which philosophy governs government? Sounds like political relativism to me: white-washed and nice and completely unrealistic. There's a reason why Washington (not a good military man, but at least he saved us from being a monarchy post-revolution) thought that parties were a horrible idea to begin with. There's a reason why Jefferson thought that revolution was needed at least every few generations to keep things fresh and just. But maybe that's just because it was because they existed before the central banks ran the economy. The economy is bad because our elected government doesn't have direct control over it; it's just another bank client. Or did you think that it was just a happy coincidence that the government takes out loans (at interest) from banks in order to complete some projects instead of just printing more cash?
Just wait until globalization has completed its run, tying together all the economies so that we all may perish together without any regard for national sovereignty. Global society will be the new society and we shall cast our eyes at Africa and Asia and say the same thing: "Children born to parents who don't want them or can't support them are destined to lead a life of deep hardship, only to become a terrible burden, both to the parent, and to society as a whole." Thus, society has an obligation to terminate those people who would be "destined" (i.e. f**k free will and human ingenuity) for "hardship." In other words, "society" has the responsibility to eliminate the poor. In America, this same viewpoint is leading to the extermination of African Americans. This is NOT ACCEPTABLE BEHAVIOR FOR ANY CIVILIZATION (i.e. don't try to rebut with a naturalistic argument).
You might like to rebut with "slippery slope," (as would I) but I truly don't believe it's a fallacy.
As for your last comment, let me illuminate why it's wrong by rewriting it slightly:
"Meanwhile, the reality is that, in absence of a safe, legal avenue for execution, such people would still be terminated. The only difference is they'd be done in secret, with no government oversight to ensure the safety of the condemned, or the qualifications of those performing the execution."
Hopefully, it's abundantly clear to you (or at least the reader) that the LEGAL basis for execution, like abortion, is rooted in how society views we SHOULD behave. Stop sugarcoating the act. Bad stuff happens to people all the damn time and trying to create yet more bad stuff to affect yet more people doesn't make it better.
One very simple way to counteract jamming is to note that the jammer is not omnipresent. That is, the jamming source is often only present in a small radian-angle of the antenna's radiation sphere. Therefore, you can counteract jamming by configuring your antenna to place a null in the direction of the jammer (i.e. ignore the annoying little kid) and radiating elsewhere. Alternatively, if you know where you want to either transmit a signal or receive a signal, you can create a beam to point in that direction by reconfiguring your antenna. In both cases, it is usually standard practice to use an array of antennas.
This invention (and no, it's not really a new idea, but perhaps the engineering makes it more reliable or easier to manufacture than in the past) allows you to place a large antenna array on an aircraft without permanently increasing the RCS of said aircraft, since the antennas only exist when you charge up the plasma. A large antenna array can create a narrow beam and place several nulls using conventional technology. All of this stuff exists today, so these plasma antennas just need to replace metal antennas and away you go. The really interesting application of these antennas could actually be to create 3D reconfigurable antennas using DC-magnetic fields (kind of like a CRT, but with more magnets).
Macs used to have a special connector called ADC, which allowed the computer to directly power the monitor (i.e. the power was supplied inside of the video cable). It was tossed due to ever growing monitor sizes (more power required from the computer's PSU) and for better compatibility. It truly is better for the manufacturer to design its own power control circuitry rather than rely on some piece of software or hardware working in the computer it's connected to. Better than that, you can correct the power factor more easily with a "distributed" power system (computer has it's own PSU, monitor has it's own PSU, or at least power-conditioning unit).
I think the parent was merely stating that he doesn't need to release the source to modified GPL software if he does not distribute it (just my reading of his post; your reading may be the correct one). Certainly, it would be unreasonable for the GPL to compel a hacker modifying GPL software for his/her own personal use to release the modified source code to the public. Of course, it does seem odd that the hacker would be modifying it solely for his/her own use; many interesting apps these days involve a network connection somehow, which likely implies either server/client architecture or peer-to-peer (p2p would definitely require the hacker to release the source).
Perhaps Russia is taking a cue from North Korea - you can survive on relatively little if you only support your military and keep the rest of the population in stark poverty. Of course, Russia is likely banking on getting a lot of money for oil, especially if they can somehow tap reserves beneath the northern ice caps. Thus the military buildup and the Cold War rhetoric. Plus, I'd imagine that it's obvious that governments don't go into space for just exploration: there's definitely gotta be some profit in it (monetary, political, etc).
But that split is not necessarily a wrong thing. To say that something is a mostly American construct usually is a scarecrow fallacy. Objective truth certainly should not be a function of geography/geometry. My point is that the usual interpretation of evolution (involving large timescales) seems to cross over the metaphysical line. Science's basic philosophical underpinnings reasonably restrict its domain to the empirically verifiable, to the physical. If it is used to prove or disprove some metaphysical argument, then any conclusions drawn from such a debate are questionable. For the same reasons why we (should) classify creationism as something other than scientific, some of the more popular conclusions of evolution should similarly be classified as non-scientific. The micro/macroevolution dichotomy may be an American construct, but it is (IMO) an important epistemological point. Certainly we should not fall into the trap of using science as a new faith. I feel that it is best achieved by understanding what science can and cannot prove, instead of drawing conclusions which can never technically (and therefore, scientifically) be supported by physical evidence.
I think that you are correct insofar as your criticisms of creationism/intelligent design are concerned; however, fact is something objective, in an epistimological sense. I think even science forgets about its own philosophy. My main problem with saying that evolution is a scientific fact/law is that it is so often construed to imply an objective fact, which is not provable in the least sense. Microevolution is absolutely fact, but never, ever confuse it with macroevolution, which is what laymen usually mean by "evolution." Macroevolution, as far as I know, has not yielded scientific proof, nor does it make any testable claims. There is no control, so I fail to see where the the science is. What people might confuse with the field of evolution (in the popular sense) is likely genetics. Science lives and breathes on healthy debate, even of such things as gravitation (a continuing problem).
Society is actually for the benefit of the "fragile" people. Its most fundamental purpose is to protect the young and the old, the defenseless and the weak. If we were all strong enough to survive without society, there would be no point to creating them, especially since we apparently have all these violent instincts to murder other people. The fact that the majority of people throughout the whole existence of humanity seemed to decide that societies were good or beneficial things should make some folks pause before saying that society is only for the evolutionarily-fit individuals of the world.
That said, however, I agree with your assertion that people should be held responsible for their own actions. Where I disagree with your post is your own version of morality. It seems like (and correct me as I don't actually know your positions fully) you claim the only bad actions are those with physical consequences. That is, the causal chain of events leading up to the actual physical action do not matter in the least, since responsibility only begins when there is material evidence of deviant behavior. A man standing apart from a park screaming at the children playing that he will disembowel them has no moral quality, since there are no physical consequences yet. Sticks and stones and all. An alcoholic is responsible for any actions he takes, even if he was tempted beyond his own ability to control himself knowingly by others (who share no part in the blame, since their actions were not physical). A pedophile is responsible for any actions he takes, even if he was tempted beyond his own limits knowingly by others (who again share no part in the blame). For many people in the world, all three of those examples have an incorrect moral judgement. The screaming man is guilty of harassment. The alcoholic and pedophile, while absolutely guilty, have mitigating circumstances which imply that the coercers share part of the responsibility. All three people are "fragile" and many feel they should be protected (from themselves) (though as I understand it, not you).
On the topic of games, certainly people should have a wide range of freedom to express themselves in both the game content that they consume and produce. Even if the games push a few fragile individuals past their limits of temptation. But if you have a particular situation in England where many people are scared of violent youth (arguably created by this terrified generation) then maybe there are a few more fragile individuals that might be influenced. So really, the question is how many fragile people does it take before society should protect them. Maybe for some people, the number is 1% of the population. Perhaps 5% or 10%. The point is that society should be determining where that number actually is and then holding content producers responsible for their actions for helping those fragile people enter a more violent state of mind. Certainly, even in England, the majority of the population is not going to go about murdering people simply after tens of hours in front of a violent game (otherwise, recent movies would have incited considerable violence). But then the majority of England isn't going to go buy this game (despite Rockstar's best attempts). Most consumers will be absolutely in control of their faculties and some may not be fully in control. Still, those few that are assisted in doing morally bad actions by the game might warrant closer analysis and not a wholesale rightoff as being unworthy of society. And it might be that certain content is inadvisable in a particular culture because it can cause people to do morally bad things, even by your standards. Freedom of speech, like all rights, is not without reasonable limits and those limits definitely depend on the societal context. In other words, don't simplify a right to a personal choice, even freedom of speech.
I'm an engineer studying EM. I've heard that the signal carriers are more likely polarization waves (random college biology course), in which case it's not so much an EM field as it is electric fields and shifting charges. I know that you can derive polarization current if the signal frequency is high enough, but in either case, it implies that the charges remain within their respective dielectrics. This is especially believable given water's polar nature (you can deflect a stream of pure water with a strong magnetic field). If constructed correctly, nerve cells would have no problem communicating polarization waves, even if standard EM waves don't propagate well. Additionally, a polarization wave may end up looking exactly the same as a sound wave, depending on the molecular structure of the dielectric and wave propagation velocity. Finally, if such a wave (either a sound wave or polarization wave) was a soliton, then you definitely don't have to worry so much about all that background radiation. Look up solitons if you don't already know what they are -- it's a pretty cool phenomenon.
Perhaps I'll get modded down for this, but I think you completely avoided the question. The United States is not some ideal place, but it does not mean that China is not bad. It is completely possible for you to rank the bad countries in the world and the U.S. and China (in my opinion) would be pretty high on the list. In my opinion, China is higher on that list. Why? Let's see... Tibet was destroyed (not just physical destruction, but cultural and religious destruction), unfavorable religions are suppressed heavily (look up what they do to their Falun Gong prisoners, or even just the underground Roman Catholic Church followers... not that official Chinese Catholic church), they attempt to control information in public and private matters, and their judicial system is a joke (their is an official system, but it is routinely ignored in even small cases). Pretty sure that you can't find much relating to their reeducation programs during Mao's reign (i.e. enslaving the intellectuals), or their financial and military support of North Korea (even if that country isn't a threat to outsiders, it remains a threat to every civilian stuck there) on their version of the internet. Why can't we sell stuff to them? Either we bought it from them in the first place, or they've already reverse-engineered the technology and sold it in their own markets. The Chinese Government is bad, in an old school sort of way.
You complain that Bush is bad, but I'm sure that if you and your wife were trying to have another child (say twenty years ago) and had it forcibly aborted by some government official, you might rethink your entire concept of bad. When my wife was there, she was very clearly followed by a police officer the whole time. Pump up all of the U.S. domestic spying programs and add in a nice xenophobic flair, and maybe you'll start to get why the parent poster and the DoD is a little bit alarmed. I'm sure that you don't wanna experience fundamentalist atheism, if you already have a problem with Christian or Islamic fundamentalism.
It might be a fairly common aspiration to earn more than your peers, but it is important to consider that it is plainly an impossibility to maintain, unless you live in a society where income inequality is tolerated. Just think: the rich guy may have had exactly the same aspiration, and clearly succeeded. If everyone wants to earn more than everyone else, then you necessarily obtain income inequality (some person must be the best at it for some amount of time). Besides, if one defines peers as all those people at approximately the same age around the world (I know, a very broad definition), then the very fact that you are writing or reading anything on the net implies that you are better off than most of your peers.
A few notes:
1. Glowing buttons were completed in Mac OS X long before WindowBlinds came up with it (August 2005).
2. As a former Apple employee, I know that we sure had Spotlight figured out to a large extent by the time that GDS came out.
3. The widget thing is pretty old, at least as old as the original Mac OS (sure, the technology and capabilities were not the same, but widgets really are supposed to be mini/assistant apps). Linux has quite naturally taken a liking to it and has a better "widget" system than either company, though (IMHO) not as easy to use.
4. Yup. Although, how could they not stay competitive and not include these apps?
5. I think that Expose likely corrupted their imaginations into what was possible with a 3D windowserver. I honestly believe that they didn't have anything better than Flip3D that wasn't already too similar to Expose.
I think it's still possible to criticize MacHeist in the conception stage of this deal. Certainly, it is right for them to consider what would happen if they made only a few sales and had to pay off the developers as well as the marketing costs. And their plan seemed to follow from this logic. However, it is important to note that they did not (at least according to Gruber) ignore the possibility that the sales could also be very high. Like $400K kind of high. And yet, they did nothing to change the terms of the contract. A more equitable contract would have stated a flat fee to the developers up to a certain threshold and then payment would be based on percentages.
True, MacHeist assumed all of the risk, so they do deserve a larger reward than any individual developer. But when you get 50% of the profits, it is not fair. MacHeist had the opportunity to realistically plan for the possibility that their scheme would succeed and implement an equitable payment system. But they didn't. So either they're stupid or greedy. Neither is a good thing, especially for subsequent bundled schemes. Personally, if this was supposed to be charity work anyway, MacHeist should have put a cap on how much the team could earn, and then, ya know, give back the rest to the community. The community that was supposedly the focus of this event, the beneficiary. The groups of independent developers. The actual charities.
But who knows, maybe they will still do something nice like that. All of this ethical reasoning is still only speculation at this point, including Gruber's report.
Time pressures and price are fundamentally incompatible with quality engineering. It's called a trade-off. It's nothing new. People always want to spend the least amount of money for the highest quality product developed in the shortest amount of time. Expecting anything else is naive.
While I do agree with the necessity of improving security around personal data, I think you're missing the whole point of some kind of identity verification system: you share data with some group in order to verify your identity. In other words, the whole act of verification implies an external, objective measurement of a person. There must be a database which stores this data. Humans must have access to this database for it to be useful in the act of verification. It's a necessary evil so long as societies continue to offer selective services or selective products. And I posit that a society must care to differentiate between individuals, by definition. The act of composing any group requires the group to uniquely define its members and its nonmembers.
What perhaps needs to change about the current situation in the Western world is that the social database needs to be restricted to only certain humans and certain machines; the identification information needs to be impossible to copy except for a subgroup of humans and machines. And by impossible, I mean a scheme bound up in the laws of the universe, not to software: the ephemeral, not the transient.
My point is that it can be argued that any system which pretends to be 100% secure is fraudulent, as it is known a priori that it cannot be completely secure. No amount of rethinking or technology will get around this basic law.
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If MobileMe is simply a (much-improved) replacement for .Mac, then iSync/iTunes will probably work just fine. Certainly for a Mac, Bluetooth syncing should be a breeze (since this phone is obviously supported).
From what I've seen In electrical engineering (that is, IEEE-APS and IEEE-MTT), 1-2 years from submission to acceptance is about the norm.
What do you mean by "it doesn't matter"? As in: it effects no physical change? Or: it effects no metaphysical change?
It is interesting that you should bring up the concept of a metaphysical God (although this is certainly separate from the concept of free will and determinism), in that it has been argued that this metaphysical God is the first-mover, the one who is the final cause. So indeed, God is wrapped up in this causality business, but not necessarily "bound" by it.
In any case, my point is that if you subscribe to the belief of causality, then determinism is going to play a role. If you do not subscribe to the belief of causality (a decision that logic cannot prove or disprove), then the whole discussion of free will is going to be moot, as the term "cause" loses its meaning.
Free will is going to matter if an ordinary action has multiple actors and not a single actor (i.e. if there is a metaphysical God, then such a being does not guarantee the existence of free will). Certainly, if we attribute all actions to the actor of "randomness", we don't have free will. However, if we do not attribute all actions (merely some of the actions) to "randomness," then that leaves open a path for free will.
The point of my posts is simply to help dispel the notion that a reasoning human being is silly to believe in the concept of free will. On the contrary, I believe that at least considering free will is a completely rational action of said human being, as long as the concept is given a fair mental evaluation.
Your arguments hinge upon many concepts constructed by Hume and others (which are mostly good rational dissent of the prevailing metaphysical arguments) in epistimology. I find that people are not even aware of such large reliance that they indeed proclaim to "know" for "certain" that things such as free will are bunk and folks should move past them.
I do want you to know that I don't intend to personally attack with the above arguments, but I know that I fail sometimes in that respect. Hopefully my presentation at least helps you to consider what you may be relying upon as axiom, when it is merely hypothesis (in my own opinion).
"Then there would somehow be a reaction without an action, but it would NOT be random!"
This is a strawman. Of course, there cannot be a reaction without an action because of the definition of reaction. Perhaps what you are claiming is impossible is the lack of causality, which folks in the quantum world haven't had too many problems shedding. Why? Just as it is difficult to empirically define free will (and we are indeed assuming that empirical evidence == only reality worth talking about), it is empirically difficult to define causality. We can only observe the high degree of coincidence and at some point call it causal, but we CANNOT directly observe causality.
Furthermore, I think it's important to note that by the latter part of your argument, instinct, logic, cultural knowledge is just random anyway. If your choices are completely determined by "external factors" (which implies something "internal", but your definition does not seem to admit for such a possibility), then knowledge does not change anything at all, for there is still no responsibility inherent in it.
Perhaps the most important thing for you and any reader of this post to consider is how empirical evidence forms your understanding of "truth." Is it 1:1 (and therefore dependent on interpretation)? Or do you admit some metaphysics to be truthful (the most famous of which, in my own opinion, is mathematics)?
I know that you made this comment in jest, but a few years back when I was a hardware engineer at Apple, we literally only had 5 or 6 IT guys for the whole campus, which probably implied 5 or 6 guys for approximately 5000 computers. Sure, a lot of that was because you were more or less trusted to operate a computer (at least in engineering, but I think it applied in other buildings too), but that's still a massive accomplishment. The university lab I'm at now is dedicated to computational electromagnetics and they do fairly well with only two guys for the 200 or so computers here. But that's largely because we can't do much of anything without their say so. I think the Mac, when properly understood and matched up with the proper IT philosophy, can do wonders. And I bet you can't guess how many people ran the iTunes Music store hardware. It was pretty darn awesome.
If you scan over enough bandwidth, every piece of metal (and other types of objects) has some peculiar properties. But yeah, you'd have to have "active radar" (which is really just plain old radar ... it's a misnomer to talk about passive radar unless you're talking about something specific to bistatic radar, as conventional radar uses both a transmitter and a receiver) to perform such sensing.
At least in the States, many of our cities have considerable sprawl as compared to compactish cities such as New York (just see Los Angeles). So while it is true that the city streets have ~35-40 mph speed limits, many people live in suburbs and commute into work using freeways/highways. Thus, such a car could still save considerable fuel for the average traveler. I spend about 18 minutes of my 25 minute commute on the freeway.
I think that you've hit upon the great crux with any technology: it doesn't enforce a purpose (or ethical behavior), it just performs a certain function given certain input and initial conditions. In my view, technology merely allows the sphere of the user to extend. If that person wants to do bad, then the technology will be used for bad purposes. If that person wants to do good, then the technology will be used for good purposes. While this sounds like an undesirable trait, I claim it is a very desirable trait.
Technology should not try to replace our sense of ethics, for if it is possible to create something that only does good, then it is equally possible to create something that only does bad. And of course, there are cases where bad is just a few steps away from good, so many humans might fail at discerning their difference initially. A "bad" technology in these cases could be ruinous, since a good person would be *forced* to do bad without knowing it, initially. DRM, I believe, lives in the realm of authorization systems (Draconian ones, but still, authorization), while "moral" technology is hopefully without implementation.
So you're saying that we should define a single political philosophy for all the politicians to follow (theoretically, a one party system) and things will get better (by an economic measure, instead of a justice or some other kind of measure)? And it doesn't practically matter which philosophy governs government? Sounds like political relativism to me: white-washed and nice and completely unrealistic. There's a reason why Washington (not a good military man, but at least he saved us from being a monarchy post-revolution) thought that parties were a horrible idea to begin with. There's a reason why Jefferson thought that revolution was needed at least every few generations to keep things fresh and just. But maybe that's just because it was because they existed before the central banks ran the economy. The economy is bad because our elected government doesn't have direct control over it; it's just another bank client. Or did you think that it was just a happy coincidence that the government takes out loans (at interest) from banks in order to complete some projects instead of just printing more cash?
Just wait until globalization has completed its run, tying together all the economies so that we all may perish together without any regard for national sovereignty. Global society will be the new society and we shall cast our eyes at Africa and Asia and say the same thing: "Children born to parents who don't want them or can't support them are destined to lead a life of deep hardship, only to become a terrible burden, both to the parent, and to society as a whole." Thus, society has an obligation to terminate those people who would be "destined" (i.e. f**k free will and human ingenuity) for "hardship." In other words, "society" has the responsibility to eliminate the poor. In America, this same viewpoint is leading to the extermination of African Americans. This is NOT ACCEPTABLE BEHAVIOR FOR ANY CIVILIZATION (i.e. don't try to rebut with a naturalistic argument). You might like to rebut with "slippery slope," (as would I) but I truly don't believe it's a fallacy. As for your last comment, let me illuminate why it's wrong by rewriting it slightly: "Meanwhile, the reality is that, in absence of a safe, legal avenue for execution, such people would still be terminated. The only difference is they'd be done in secret, with no government oversight to ensure the safety of the condemned, or the qualifications of those performing the execution." Hopefully, it's abundantly clear to you (or at least the reader) that the LEGAL basis for execution, like abortion, is rooted in how society views we SHOULD behave. Stop sugarcoating the act. Bad stuff happens to people all the damn time and trying to create yet more bad stuff to affect yet more people doesn't make it better.
One very simple way to counteract jamming is to note that the jammer is not omnipresent. That is, the jamming source is often only present in a small radian-angle of the antenna's radiation sphere. Therefore, you can counteract jamming by configuring your antenna to place a null in the direction of the jammer (i.e. ignore the annoying little kid) and radiating elsewhere. Alternatively, if you know where you want to either transmit a signal or receive a signal, you can create a beam to point in that direction by reconfiguring your antenna. In both cases, it is usually standard practice to use an array of antennas. This invention (and no, it's not really a new idea, but perhaps the engineering makes it more reliable or easier to manufacture than in the past) allows you to place a large antenna array on an aircraft without permanently increasing the RCS of said aircraft, since the antennas only exist when you charge up the plasma. A large antenna array can create a narrow beam and place several nulls using conventional technology. All of this stuff exists today, so these plasma antennas just need to replace metal antennas and away you go. The really interesting application of these antennas could actually be to create 3D reconfigurable antennas using DC-magnetic fields (kind of like a CRT, but with more magnets).
Macs used to have a special connector called ADC, which allowed the computer to directly power the monitor (i.e. the power was supplied inside of the video cable). It was tossed due to ever growing monitor sizes (more power required from the computer's PSU) and for better compatibility. It truly is better for the manufacturer to design its own power control circuitry rather than rely on some piece of software or hardware working in the computer it's connected to. Better than that, you can correct the power factor more easily with a "distributed" power system (computer has it's own PSU, monitor has it's own PSU, or at least power-conditioning unit).
I think the parent was merely stating that he doesn't need to release the source to modified GPL software if he does not distribute it (just my reading of his post; your reading may be the correct one). Certainly, it would be unreasonable for the GPL to compel a hacker modifying GPL software for his/her own personal use to release the modified source code to the public. Of course, it does seem odd that the hacker would be modifying it solely for his/her own use; many interesting apps these days involve a network connection somehow, which likely implies either server/client architecture or peer-to-peer (p2p would definitely require the hacker to release the source).
Perhaps Russia is taking a cue from North Korea - you can survive on relatively little if you only support your military and keep the rest of the population in stark poverty. Of course, Russia is likely banking on getting a lot of money for oil, especially if they can somehow tap reserves beneath the northern ice caps. Thus the military buildup and the Cold War rhetoric. Plus, I'd imagine that it's obvious that governments don't go into space for just exploration: there's definitely gotta be some profit in it (monetary, political, etc).
But that split is not necessarily a wrong thing. To say that something is a mostly American construct usually is a scarecrow fallacy. Objective truth certainly should not be a function of geography/geometry. My point is that the usual interpretation of evolution (involving large timescales) seems to cross over the metaphysical line. Science's basic philosophical underpinnings reasonably restrict its domain to the empirically verifiable, to the physical. If it is used to prove or disprove some metaphysical argument, then any conclusions drawn from such a debate are questionable. For the same reasons why we (should) classify creationism as something other than scientific, some of the more popular conclusions of evolution should similarly be classified as non-scientific. The micro/macroevolution dichotomy may be an American construct, but it is (IMO) an important epistemological point. Certainly we should not fall into the trap of using science as a new faith. I feel that it is best achieved by understanding what science can and cannot prove, instead of drawing conclusions which can never technically (and therefore, scientifically) be supported by physical evidence.
I think that you are correct insofar as your criticisms of creationism/intelligent design are concerned; however, fact is something objective, in an epistimological sense. I think even science forgets about its own philosophy. My main problem with saying that evolution is a scientific fact/law is that it is so often construed to imply an objective fact, which is not provable in the least sense. Microevolution is absolutely fact, but never, ever confuse it with macroevolution, which is what laymen usually mean by "evolution." Macroevolution, as far as I know, has not yielded scientific proof, nor does it make any testable claims. There is no control, so I fail to see where the the science is. What people might confuse with the field of evolution (in the popular sense) is likely genetics. Science lives and breathes on healthy debate, even of such things as gravitation (a continuing problem).
Society is actually for the benefit of the "fragile" people. Its most fundamental purpose is to protect the young and the old, the defenseless and the weak. If we were all strong enough to survive without society, there would be no point to creating them, especially since we apparently have all these violent instincts to murder other people. The fact that the majority of people throughout the whole existence of humanity seemed to decide that societies were good or beneficial things should make some folks pause before saying that society is only for the evolutionarily-fit individuals of the world.
That said, however, I agree with your assertion that people should be held responsible for their own actions. Where I disagree with your post is your own version of morality. It seems like (and correct me as I don't actually know your positions fully) you claim the only bad actions are those with physical consequences. That is, the causal chain of events leading up to the actual physical action do not matter in the least, since responsibility only begins when there is material evidence of deviant behavior. A man standing apart from a park screaming at the children playing that he will disembowel them has no moral quality, since there are no physical consequences yet. Sticks and stones and all. An alcoholic is responsible for any actions he takes, even if he was tempted beyond his own ability to control himself knowingly by others (who share no part in the blame, since their actions were not physical). A pedophile is responsible for any actions he takes, even if he was tempted beyond his own limits knowingly by others (who again share no part in the blame). For many people in the world, all three of those examples have an incorrect moral judgement. The screaming man is guilty of harassment. The alcoholic and pedophile, while absolutely guilty, have mitigating circumstances which imply that the coercers share part of the responsibility. All three people are "fragile" and many feel they should be protected (from themselves) (though as I understand it, not you).
On the topic of games, certainly people should have a wide range of freedom to express themselves in both the game content that they consume and produce. Even if the games push a few fragile individuals past their limits of temptation. But if you have a particular situation in England where many people are scared of violent youth (arguably created by this terrified generation) then maybe there are a few more fragile individuals that might be influenced. So really, the question is how many fragile people does it take before society should protect them. Maybe for some people, the number is 1% of the population. Perhaps 5% or 10%. The point is that society should be determining where that number actually is and then holding content producers responsible for their actions for helping those fragile people enter a more violent state of mind. Certainly, even in England, the majority of the population is not going to go about murdering people simply after tens of hours in front of a violent game (otherwise, recent movies would have incited considerable violence). But then the majority of England isn't going to go buy this game (despite Rockstar's best attempts). Most consumers will be absolutely in control of their faculties and some may not be fully in control. Still, those few that are assisted in doing morally bad actions by the game might warrant closer analysis and not a wholesale rightoff as being unworthy of society. And it might be that certain content is inadvisable in a particular culture because it can cause people to do morally bad things, even by your standards. Freedom of speech, like all rights, is not without reasonable limits and those limits definitely depend on the societal context. In other words, don't simplify a right to a personal choice, even freedom of speech.
I'm an engineer studying EM. I've heard that the signal carriers are more likely polarization waves (random college biology course), in which case it's not so much an EM field as it is electric fields and shifting charges. I know that you can derive polarization current if the signal frequency is high enough, but in either case, it implies that the charges remain within their respective dielectrics. This is especially believable given water's polar nature (you can deflect a stream of pure water with a strong magnetic field). If constructed correctly, nerve cells would have no problem communicating polarization waves, even if standard EM waves don't propagate well. Additionally, a polarization wave may end up looking exactly the same as a sound wave, depending on the molecular structure of the dielectric and wave propagation velocity. Finally, if such a wave (either a sound wave or polarization wave) was a soliton, then you definitely don't have to worry so much about all that background radiation. Look up solitons if you don't already know what they are -- it's a pretty cool phenomenon.
Perhaps I'll get modded down for this, but I think you completely avoided the question. The United States is not some ideal place, but it does not mean that China is not bad. It is completely possible for you to rank the bad countries in the world and the U.S. and China (in my opinion) would be pretty high on the list. In my opinion, China is higher on that list. Why? Let's see ... Tibet was destroyed (not just physical destruction, but cultural and religious destruction), unfavorable religions are suppressed heavily (look up what they do to their Falun Gong prisoners, or even just the underground Roman Catholic Church followers ... not that official Chinese Catholic church), they attempt to control information in public and private matters, and their judicial system is a joke (their is an official system, but it is routinely ignored in even small cases). Pretty sure that you can't find much relating to their reeducation programs during Mao's reign (i.e. enslaving the intellectuals), or their financial and military support of North Korea (even if that country isn't a threat to outsiders, it remains a threat to every civilian stuck there) on their version of the internet. Why can't we sell stuff to them? Either we bought it from them in the first place, or they've already reverse-engineered the technology and sold it in their own markets. The Chinese Government is bad, in an old school sort of way.
You complain that Bush is bad, but I'm sure that if you and your wife were trying to have another child (say twenty years ago) and had it forcibly aborted by some government official, you might rethink your entire concept of bad. When my wife was there, she was very clearly followed by a police officer the whole time. Pump up all of the U.S. domestic spying programs and add in a nice xenophobic flair, and maybe you'll start to get why the parent poster and the DoD is a little bit alarmed. I'm sure that you don't wanna experience fundamentalist atheism, if you already have a problem with Christian or Islamic fundamentalism.
It might be a fairly common aspiration to earn more than your peers, but it is important to consider that it is plainly an impossibility to maintain, unless you live in a society where income inequality is tolerated. Just think: the rich guy may have had exactly the same aspiration, and clearly succeeded. If everyone wants to earn more than everyone else, then you necessarily obtain income inequality (some person must be the best at it for some amount of time).
Besides, if one defines peers as all those people at approximately the same age around the world (I know, a very broad definition), then the very fact that you are writing or reading anything on the net implies that you are better off than most of your peers.
Think of using Safari, especially if you can upload (and link to) files on the iPhone.
A few notes: 1. Glowing buttons were completed in Mac OS X long before WindowBlinds came up with it (August 2005). 2. As a former Apple employee, I know that we sure had Spotlight figured out to a large extent by the time that GDS came out. 3. The widget thing is pretty old, at least as old as the original Mac OS (sure, the technology and capabilities were not the same, but widgets really are supposed to be mini/assistant apps). Linux has quite naturally taken a liking to it and has a better "widget" system than either company, though (IMHO) not as easy to use. 4. Yup. Although, how could they not stay competitive and not include these apps? 5. I think that Expose likely corrupted their imaginations into what was possible with a 3D windowserver. I honestly believe that they didn't have anything better than Flip3D that wasn't already too similar to Expose.
I think it's still possible to criticize MacHeist in the conception stage of this deal. Certainly, it is right for them to consider what would happen if they made only a few sales and had to pay off the developers as well as the marketing costs. And their plan seemed to follow from this logic. However, it is important to note that they did not (at least according to Gruber) ignore the possibility that the sales could also be very high. Like $400K kind of high. And yet, they did nothing to change the terms of the contract. A more equitable contract would have stated a flat fee to the developers up to a certain threshold and then payment would be based on percentages.
True, MacHeist assumed all of the risk, so they do deserve a larger reward than any individual developer. But when you get 50% of the profits, it is not fair. MacHeist had the opportunity to realistically plan for the possibility that their scheme would succeed and implement an equitable payment system. But they didn't. So either they're stupid or greedy. Neither is a good thing, especially for subsequent bundled schemes. Personally, if this was supposed to be charity work anyway, MacHeist should have put a cap on how much the team could earn, and then, ya know, give back the rest to the community. The community that was supposedly the focus of this event, the beneficiary. The groups of independent developers. The actual charities.
But who knows, maybe they will still do something nice like that. All of this ethical reasoning is still only speculation at this point, including Gruber's report.
Time pressures and price are fundamentally incompatible with quality engineering. It's called a trade-off. It's nothing new. People always want to spend the least amount of money for the highest quality product developed in the shortest amount of time. Expecting anything else is naive.
While I do agree with the necessity of improving security around personal data, I think you're missing the whole point of some kind of identity verification system: you share data with some group in order to verify your identity. In other words, the whole act of verification implies an external, objective measurement of a person. There must be a database which stores this data. Humans must have access to this database for it to be useful in the act of verification. It's a necessary evil so long as societies continue to offer selective services or selective products. And I posit that a society must care to differentiate between individuals, by definition. The act of composing any group requires the group to uniquely define its members and its nonmembers.
What perhaps needs to change about the current situation in the Western world is that the social database needs to be restricted to only certain humans and certain machines; the identification information needs to be impossible to copy except for a subgroup of humans and machines. And by impossible, I mean a scheme bound up in the laws of the universe, not to software: the ephemeral, not the transient.
My point is that it can be argued that any system which pretends to be 100% secure is fraudulent, as it is known a priori that it cannot be completely secure. No amount of rethinking or technology will get around this basic law.