Most countries (EU) do not have the right to jury trial because a jury trial isn't a guarantee that you get a fair trial...
Imagine someone very unpopular being trialed, soemeone with nazi or other tattoos al over his face, wearing "strange" clothes, etc... Do you really think the man on the street (the kind of guys who likes windows because everyone likes it) is gonna give him a fair trial?
Or imgagine the opposite: someone very popular being brought to justice. Do you really think all those nice randomly picked juries are intelligent enough to have a fair opinion about him. (Remember the OJ case someone?) Are you willing to be judged by ten persons picked more or less at random?
I'm not, thank you...
And what about judges?
Well, at least a judge is a trained, intelligent person with some serious knowledge of the law, and not just from what (s)he's seen on TV.
Well I gues that shows how close to the truth that guy from www.xenu.net actually was... Scientologist do have brains the size of dried grapes. (that's a free interpretation)
To the XENU-guy: You scared the hell out of those nutcakes, keep up the good work.
P.S. Hey Scientology-guys, I called a few of my scientist-friends, and as soon as the university lawyer can be reached we'll sue you for abusing the term "science"
that nothing is "simply" "programmed" into your genes. The media (aspecially movies) have made it popular belief that your genes are like a bunch of variables which, once we've decoded them all, can be simply read or changed. Hence the many "scientific articles" claiming that "the intelligence (or any other) gene" was discovered. There is no IQ-gene that when tampered will change your IQ. Humans are NOT computers and genes are not programs that we run. DNA is more like a chemical computer and program in one. While the program "runs", the computer changes, changing the program... This is a chaotic system, changes in genes result in bigger changes then just one specific feature. Due to chaotic nature of this system the results are hard to predict (due to the enormous amounts of parameters and interactions), much like the weather really. "Simulating" results or "reverse engineering" a superhuman would probably require HEXA-bytes of memory, and more computing power than anyone can dream of... Genetic engeneering an ethical issue? Not in the first 150 years...
I completely agree with you. The computer-industry has been dragging this backward-compatibility thing way to far... I mean who the hell is happy he can still run 80286 software on his brand-new pentium?
Look at computers these days, their entire architecture is a series of hardware "patches" on an archaic architecture. I mean, just try and count how many different bus-protocols run on your machine (PCI, AGP, ISA, IDE,...). How much memory is on every device and how efficiently is this used when the device isn't using it completely? It seems that each time we are looking for a way to enhance the speed of our machine, - in stead of redesigning - we take whatever we already have and add stuff (Yes, another extra level of cache)... This may be the best way for some upgrade but the Pc industry is what 15 years old?
When will some people finally sit down at a table and say: "What is a computer? What does it have to do? What is the most efficient way to achieve this?"
I assume (sorry, havn't had time to check this) that the distance to those probes is measured with a radiosignal these critters emit. Now imagine for a second that the speed of light is NOT a constant (don't forget that Einstein postulated that it was, and he, nor someone else, has ever proven it is). The distance measured based on the assumption Time_to_reach_us * speed_of_light = distance_to_probe would be wrong. I have assumed that the distance to a probe is measured in the same manner the distance to GPS-sattelite is measured (basically the sattelite emits time based on his on board nuclear clock and that emitted time is compared to the reception time). If this assumption is wrong just smile and neglect this comment (Oh, and send me how it's done too)
Not being a US-citizen myself I find I quit amusing to see how the governement of the land of "the free" and "the entrepreneurs" is buying firms, turning them into "governement companys". This is especially amusing if you know that under communist regime ALL the firms are owned and controlled by "the people" (read: the authorities). This is indeed a dangerous evolution. I hope for you (the inhabitants of the US) that this doesn't go to far (even just economically speaking, we all now how good fed's are at management)
This dust theory is just the first thing that crossed my mind. I assumed that there were very few particules, maybe orbiting on very distant orbits. On the other hand if dust outside our solar system IS dimming starlight, we don't have much of reference to compare it with have we. (We can see stars on earth although our atmosphere is quite dense) Another thing is that after all the time in deep-space the on board instruments might be decalibrated (this would produce a constant error like the perceived one). (Of course the guys at NASA probably ruled out this possibility before putting anything in the open) Maybe the very small effect lays within the normal error range of the instruments.
We don't have precise estimates yet on how many dust and small debris is floating out there. Maybe the impacts of big amounts of small objects slows probes down. (The debris in itself would be moving towards the sun, due to it's gravitation)
Slashdot Mirror
maybe their very cool laptops 'll come with
linux preinstalled soon.
Make it so. (works in Star Trek!)
Most countries (EU) do not have the right to
jury trial because a jury trial isn't a guarantee
that you get a fair trial...
Imagine someone very unpopular being trialed,
soemeone with nazi or other tattoos al over his
face, wearing "strange" clothes, etc...
Do you really think the man on the street
(the kind of guys who likes windows because
everyone likes it) is gonna give him a fair trial?
Or imgagine the opposite: someone very popular
being brought to justice. Do you really think all
those nice randomly picked juries are intelligent
enough to have a fair opinion about
him. (Remember the OJ case someone?) Are you
willing to be judged by ten persons picked more or
less at random?
I'm not, thank you...
And what about judges?
Well, at least a judge is a trained, intelligent
person with some serious knowledge of the law, and
not just from what (s)he's seen on TV.
Well I gues that shows how close to the truth
that guy from www.xenu.net actually was...
Scientologist do have brains the size of dried
grapes. (that's a free interpretation)
To the XENU-guy:
You scared the hell out of those nutcakes, keep
up the good work.
P.S. Hey Scientology-guys,
I called a few of my scientist-friends, and
as soon as the university lawyer can be reached
we'll sue you for abusing the term "science"
Mooohahhhahhaha
P.P.S. stupidity is no excuse, screw 'em I say...
that nothing is "simply" "programmed" into your genes. The media (aspecially movies) have made it popular belief that your genes are like a bunch of variables which, once we've decoded them all, can be simply read or changed. Hence the many "scientific articles" claiming that "the intelligence (or any other) gene" was discovered. There is no IQ-gene that when tampered will change your IQ. Humans are NOT computers and genes are not programs that we run. DNA is more like a chemical computer and program in one. While the program "runs", the computer changes, changing the program... This is a chaotic system, changes in genes result in bigger changes then just one specific feature. Due to chaotic nature of this system the results are hard to predict (due to the enormous amounts of parameters and interactions), much like the weather really. "Simulating" results or "reverse engineering" a superhuman would probably require HEXA-bytes of memory, and more computing power than anyone can dream of ...
Genetic engeneering an ethical issue? Not in the first 150 years...
I completely agree with you. The computer-industry has been dragging this backward-compatibility thing way to far... I mean who the hell is happy he can still run 80286 software on his brand-new pentium?
Look at computers these days, their entire architecture is a series of hardware "patches" on an archaic architecture. I mean, just try and count how many different bus-protocols run on your machine (PCI, AGP, ISA, IDE,...). How much memory is on every device and how efficiently is this used when the device isn't using it completely? It seems that each time we are looking for a way to enhance the speed of our machine, - in stead of redesigning - we take whatever we already have and add stuff (Yes, another extra level of cache)... This may be the best way for some upgrade but the Pc industry is what 15 years old?
When will some people finally sit down at a table and say: "What is a computer? What does it have to do? What is the most efficient way to achieve this?"
I assume (sorry, havn't had time to check this) that the distance to those probes is measured with a radiosignal these critters emit. Now imagine for a second that the speed of light is NOT a constant (don't forget that Einstein postulated that it was, and he, nor someone else, has ever proven it is). The distance measured based on the assumption Time_to_reach_us * speed_of_light = distance_to_probe would be wrong. I have assumed that the distance to a probe is measured in the same manner the distance to GPS-sattelite is measured (basically the sattelite emits time based on his on board nuclear clock and that emitted time is compared to the reception time). If this assumption is wrong just smile and neglect this comment (Oh, and send me how it's done too)
Not being a US-citizen myself I find I quit amusing to see how the governement of the land of "the free" and "the entrepreneurs" is buying firms, turning them into "governement companys". This is especially amusing if you know that under communist regime ALL the firms are owned and controlled by "the people" (read: the authorities). This is indeed a dangerous evolution. I hope for you (the inhabitants of the US) that this doesn't go to far (even just economically speaking, we all now how good fed's are at management)
This dust theory is just the first thing that crossed my mind. I assumed that there were very few particules, maybe orbiting on very distant orbits. On the other hand if dust outside our solar system IS dimming starlight, we don't have much of reference to compare it with have we. (We can see stars on earth although our atmosphere is quite dense) Another thing is that after all the time in deep-space the on board instruments might be decalibrated (this would produce a constant error like the perceived one). (Of course the guys at NASA probably ruled out this possibility before putting anything in the open) Maybe the very small effect lays within the normal error range of the instruments.
We don't have precise estimates yet on how many dust and small debris is floating out there. Maybe the impacts of big amounts of small objects slows probes down. (The debris in itself would be moving towards the sun, due to it's gravitation)