Don't blame the Republicans for this kind of 'The State Rules All' attitude. Before the Republicans started bakig the Big Government pie, the Democrats had already perfected the recipe.
It's Nanny-Staters like Hillary Clinton and Tipper Gore who want to push censorship of video games and other media, despite the fact that a) the Constitution prohibits it, and b) the average video gamer is 30 fucking years old.
It's just out-of-touch millionaire legislators, regardless of party, who are screwing this country.
Re:Nanotech bounding forth with no safety concerns
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Nanotech Gone Awry?
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· Score: 1
This has long been considered to be an overly drastic and highly unlikely doomsday scenario, fit more for science fiction than scientific speculation.
Just like 'robots will take over the world,' as you have mentioned, the idea of 'grey goo' is just a form of Ludditism. Obviously you've gotten over the irrational fear that your computer will rise up and take over the world with AI, so it's time to do the same with such antiquated prejudices about newer technologies that you can't understand as easily.
As someone who uses both Britannica (the software version of 2006's encyclopedia) as well as Wikipedia almost daily, I have to say that Britannica is sadly out of its league most of the time.
Sure, every now and then I'll encounter something on Wikipedia that is blatantly biased or wrong, but 99% of the time it's updated on the talk pages.
An example comes from a plague I was researching that devastated ancient Athens just as they were gearing up against the Spartans. Britannica is suitably vague about this, but the Wikipedia article on the subject has a great section about how, in 2005, genetic testing proved that it was typhoid fever which devastated Athens at that period. As this was the 2006 Britannica, why didn't it have that information?
A more obvious example of Britannica being less up-to-date is in the country histories articles. They almost all stop at about 1999-2001, without addressing any of the more recent years. Again, in a 2006 publication, why should this be the case? Wikipedia trumps again.
And lastly, people hold Britannica and other encyclopedias up higher than Wikipedia and other open-source content, but they do so erroneously. The point is, encyclopedia articles don't go through enormous peer-review, and are more likely to have errors than a non-vandalized Wikipedia article, simply because there are far fewer contributing eyes scanning the text, and far fewer people reviewing it and keeping it up to date.
I'm thinking (and hoping) you might be wrong. From what I have been able to figure out about Roberts and Alito, they are more of the state-rights paleo-conservatives. While they are definitely the sort to overturn Roe vs Wade in favour of states being allowed to make their own decisions on abortion issues (and thus ushering in preclusions in many such states), I don't know if you are right about what they would decide here.
Could be that they would look critically upon the idea, as supposed small-government conservatives who loathe the idea of more regulation and enforcement done by officials in power.
Here's hoping, anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
It's painfully clear that you have a LOT of wind, but not a scrap of creativity.
Don't blame the Republicans for this kind of 'The State Rules All' attitude. Before the Republicans started bakig the Big Government pie, the Democrats had already perfected the recipe. It's Nanny-Staters like Hillary Clinton and Tipper Gore who want to push censorship of video games and other media, despite the fact that a) the Constitution prohibits it, and b) the average video gamer is 30 fucking years old. It's just out-of-touch millionaire legislators, regardless of party, who are screwing this country.
This has long been considered to be an overly drastic and highly unlikely doomsday scenario, fit more for science fiction than scientific speculation.
Just like 'robots will take over the world,' as you have mentioned, the idea of 'grey goo' is just a form of Ludditism. Obviously you've gotten over the irrational fear that your computer will rise up and take over the world with AI, so it's time to do the same with such antiquated prejudices about newer technologies that you can't understand as easily.
As someone who uses both Britannica (the software version of 2006's encyclopedia) as well as Wikipedia almost daily, I have to say that Britannica is sadly out of its league most of the time.
Sure, every now and then I'll encounter something on Wikipedia that is blatantly biased or wrong, but 99% of the time it's updated on the talk pages.
An example comes from a plague I was researching that devastated ancient Athens just as they were gearing up against the Spartans. Britannica is suitably vague about this, but the Wikipedia article on the subject has a great section about how, in 2005, genetic testing proved that it was typhoid fever which devastated Athens at that period. As this was the 2006 Britannica, why didn't it have that information?
A more obvious example of Britannica being less up-to-date is in the country histories articles. They almost all stop at about 1999-2001, without addressing any of the more recent years. Again, in a 2006 publication, why should this be the case? Wikipedia trumps again.
And lastly, people hold Britannica and other encyclopedias up higher than Wikipedia and other open-source content, but they do so erroneously. The point is, encyclopedia articles don't go through enormous peer-review, and are more likely to have errors than a non-vandalized Wikipedia article, simply because there are far fewer contributing eyes scanning the text, and far fewer people reviewing it and keeping it up to date.
I'm thinking (and hoping) you might be wrong. From what I have been able to figure out about Roberts and Alito, they are more of the state-rights paleo-conservatives. While they are definitely the sort to overturn Roe vs Wade in favour of states being allowed to make their own decisions on abortion issues (and thus ushering in preclusions in many such states), I don't know if you are right about what they would decide here. Could be that they would look critically upon the idea, as supposed small-government conservatives who loathe the idea of more regulation and enforcement done by officials in power. Here's hoping, anyway.