But how does the transmission of information or particles work exactly? Are we taking today's particles and pushing them back in time (and if so, where?), or are we taking particles from the future and making them appear to us now in our present? Both approaches technically meet the definition of "sending particles back in time", but any practical use of this technology will depend on how this process works.
That's the advantage of time-travel based communications. Now it's possible to actually take your words back after they are spoken. This new technology will be and was great for removing evidence on demand. You can read more about this service on my new website www.undiscovery.com. It's still under construction but will be finished yesterday. Please note that we always take payment in advance before you decide to purchase.
That's the problem - you tell them the party starts and 8pm tonight and they show up at 8pm yesterday. But it's not a total loss - you can now see pictures from your party on facebook.
I agree with this. Use public broadcasting as a model. They accept government funding, such as grants, but unlike municipal libraries, they cannot just be sold-off or closed-down for political reasons. Even if government funding were withheld entirely, the prevailing opinion is that there would be enough contributions from NGO's, corporate grants/sponsorships, and private citizens to keep most stations running. Not too mention all of the licensing fees they get from Elmo!
So maybe call it the "International Public Hackspaces Corporation", and come up with some sort of mascot that will appeal to a broad audience - then merchandise! Volunteer effort, public and private grants, fund raising campaigns, and donation of tangible assets could go a long way. Maybe they can even bail out the failing libraries by RENTING unused library space to inject enough cash flow to keep away the downsizing axe from City Hall.
Actually, you should share your medical history with your barber since barbers often perform surgery and practice dentistry as well. Oh, wait, that was BACK IN THE MIDDLE AGES.
The OP's analogy was extreme for simplicity's sake, but you wouldn't need to GIVE the oil away, just sell it cheaper than your competitors can sell profitably. If your competitors make no profit long enough they will chose to exit the market. And there is no problem constantly raising and lowering the price of oil to maintain the status quo. There are enough established players in the global oil market today that have no desire to see the world turn to alternatives such as renewable energy, or to build infrastructure, such as refineries and storage facilities, or to invest in more difficult oil exploration, such as deep-sea or oil sands.
To work you don't even need a monopoly, just an oligopoly, like OPEC, where you can expect the big players to wink and nod and understand what will work for each other's mutual benefit. Only the biggest players need to lead the price changes, because lesser players will have no choice but to march in tune to the market. If you can fluctuate prices from $1.50 a gallon to $3 or $4 a gallon (temporarily of course) you can reap huge profits, and by dropping the price sharply (call it a "market crash") you make sure that refineries, storage facilities, and alternative fuel suppliers won't commit to capital investments, because by the time that a new refinery was completed or oil sands were productive, the price would be far below the cost of production.
The leaders of such cartels can act as free-market "Vikings", plundering and looting the wealth of nations with quick and frequent raids, but not pose enough of a threat to warrant full scale war, as war itself would cost the nations more than what they lose during the raids.
Rather than sue redtube the plaintiff should have just worked with other big corporate porn suppliers to create a trade group to lobby congress to regulate porn they way congress regulates corn. Then it WOULD be illegal to over-produce, under-sell, or even produce porn for your own consumption. See SCOTUS case Wickard v. Filburn for comparison.
Abolutely! Every grocery store in poor communities sells half-rotten produce at inflated prices because they know the local poor don't have enough money to afford to drive to a more affordable store, assuming they even have a car (as most walk or maybe have a bicycle). Don't believe me? Go to a poor inner-city store and you will see what I mean. If you start giving food away you will destroy prosperous businesses and force middle class families to work in the suburbs in which they live!
But don't confuse "poor" with "ethnic". Some of the cheapest and freshest produce I buy comes from stores in which the staff cannot speak English. Serious, 8 LB of tomatoes for $1 - Walmart and Kroger can't come close to that!
And don't forget how pissed the U.S. State Department got when Hugo Chavez wanted to give heating oil to poor families in New England.
Good point. How long is it going to be before the IRS busts me for failure to report the fair market value of the unpaid porn I have consumed? They have already put people in jail for burning un-taxed vegetable oil instead of pre-taxed diesel fuel, as well as those who barter for goods & services. Unlike third world countries, the US does not have a sub-population of subsistence farmers or peasants. The reason is that our tax laws make it virtually impossible unless you're homesteading in Alaska. Yet we have no shortage of freezing homeless families under bridges and on the streets of every metropolitan area. And no shortage of pious bastards to point out how "responsible" they are for their own predicament.
... arguably the safest thing to do is to preemptively present ourselves as a non-threat, just to avoid triggering a fear response...
I have the solution: When the aliens land we will visit them with baskets of food and fuel and even show them how to grow their own crops on our planet. We can call the event "Thanskgiving" or something like that. I heard it went over really well the last time a peaceful primitive people used this strategy.
We came really close once but the aliens wouldn't cough up the change to view the standards. Hey, standards cost money to develop and you can't just go around sharing information for free! I say $1,000.00 to view the PDF file should be reasonable.
I think the OP raises a serious concern, that having a Facebook account is becoming as ubiquitous as having a street address, telephone number, and email address. Try getting any business done with a financial, medical, government, or any other institution without a "valid street address" and phone number. Information that used to be given out by phoned, written, or faxed request is now often available only at some particular website.
Even more so, how often do you have to name someone as an emergency contact, or as a reference on some application. Sure, most people have friends and acquaintances, but are the friendless going to be excluded from conducting business in the world of tomorrow? Is not having a Facebook account going to be grounds for denying someone an account or a membership? While it may seem laughable now, I had a hard time getting my kids enrolled in the local school district because I didn't have any "proof of residency", because I don't pay electric bills, or own property, or have a written lease agreement. Yet neither one of these documents would really prove that I physically "reside" in the area.
No sheriff or police cheif is going to get serious publicity going after burglars and scam artists. If you want to win Chuck Norris style accolades then you have to bust the drug dealers, and most people associate the dealers with organized crime and street violence. People from affluent neighborhoods have good security systems and insurance policies, so if they are a victim of theft it's just a minor inconvenience, but they will do everything to protect little Johnny from the drug dealers.
Why not just require everyone to have a facebook account in order to access the internet? Zuckerberg seems more than willing to track, retain, and share your personal info with just about anybody. This would take the burden off from the ISPs.
Especially since you could use any phone line to dial a long distance number to an offshore ISP outside US Jurisdiction. Sure it would be slow and expensive, but if you're doing something illegal you would probably bite the bullet to keep the fuzz off your back.
I was really irritated by the "similar" word results, but I found that if your put your querry in quotes you actually get the exact spelling on the search returns.
As for spam sites, the more seemingly unrelated the search terms the more likely you are going to be lead to spam, especially as you add terms to be included within the search.
Who's to say this software couldn't be easily adapted to pick up on credit card numbers that are spoken out loud in any location. A hidden wireless microphone could be placed at a target location and monitored for weeks if necessary just waiting to pick up on those digits. Why not add a plug-in for dates-of-birth, drivers license numbers, and other personal identifying info? For identity theives such passive monitoring software could reap in millions from unsuspecting victims with little effort at all.
Possible applications for law enforcement - program it to pick up on conversations only about drugs or money laundering rather than waste countless man-hours listening to every call some mobster makes to his grandmother or ordering pizza.
Knives, trojans, and hacking...reminds me of my college days when I stuck a phone ringer in my roommates iron. Every time he was ironing his shirts I would remotely activate the ringer. He ended up burning both of his ears before he realized what was going on.
Except that we're not allowed to build these reactors with actual "plants". "Plants" cannot be patented due to some "prior art" BS. Everybody knows we can't make technological or economic progress without venture capital, patents, copyrights, licensing agreements, enforceable contracts, corporate lobbying, government regulations, outsourcing, offshoring, executive bonuses, business lunches, corporate gifts, executive perks, and high profit margins.
Slashdot Mirror
I think this is Google's attempt at satire - a spoof to show how ridiculous the patent system really is. Kind of like when they came out with TiSP.
But how does the transmission of information or particles work exactly? Are we taking today's particles and pushing them back in time (and if so, where?), or are we taking particles from the future and making them appear to us now in our present? Both approaches technically meet the definition of "sending particles back in time", but any practical use of this technology will depend on how this process works.
That's the advantage of time-travel based communications. Now it's possible to actually take your words back after they are spoken. This new technology will be and was great for removing evidence on demand. You can read more about this service on my new website www.undiscovery.com. It's still under construction but will be finished yesterday. Please note that we always take payment in advance before you decide to purchase.
That's the problem - you tell them the party starts and 8pm tonight and they show up at 8pm yesterday. But it's not a total loss - you can now see pictures from your party on facebook.
Yes, theoretical friends.
Communication and computational device for transmitting data faster than data is generated.
I agree with this. Use public broadcasting as a model. They accept government funding, such as grants, but unlike municipal libraries, they cannot just be sold-off or closed-down for political reasons. Even if government funding were withheld entirely, the prevailing opinion is that there would be enough contributions from NGO's, corporate grants/sponsorships, and private citizens to keep most stations running. Not too mention all of the licensing fees they get from Elmo!
So maybe call it the "International Public Hackspaces Corporation", and come up with some sort of mascot that will appeal to a broad audience - then merchandise! Volunteer effort, public and private grants, fund raising campaigns, and donation of tangible assets could go a long way. Maybe they can even bail out the failing libraries by RENTING unused library space to inject enough cash flow to keep away the downsizing axe from City Hall.
Gun control is a slippery slope. Once you let them take your guns away, next they will want to ban fully automatic reloading crossbows!
Actually, you should share your medical history with your barber since barbers often perform surgery and practice dentistry as well. Oh, wait, that was BACK IN THE MIDDLE AGES.
Someone mod this post +5 Hell Ya!
"Laser Guided" does not mean it has a laser on board.
The OP's analogy was extreme for simplicity's sake, but you wouldn't need to GIVE the oil away, just sell it cheaper than your competitors can sell profitably. If your competitors make no profit long enough they will chose to exit the market. And there is no problem constantly raising and lowering the price of oil to maintain the status quo. There are enough established players in the global oil market today that have no desire to see the world turn to alternatives such as renewable energy, or to build infrastructure, such as refineries and storage facilities, or to invest in more difficult oil exploration, such as deep-sea or oil sands.
To work you don't even need a monopoly, just an oligopoly, like OPEC, where you can expect the big players to wink and nod and understand what will work for each other's mutual benefit. Only the biggest players need to lead the price changes, because lesser players will have no choice but to march in tune to the market. If you can fluctuate prices from $1.50 a gallon to $3 or $4 a gallon (temporarily of course) you can reap huge profits, and by dropping the price sharply (call it a "market crash") you make sure that refineries, storage facilities, and alternative fuel suppliers won't commit to capital investments, because by the time that a new refinery was completed or oil sands were productive, the price would be far below the cost of production.
The leaders of such cartels can act as free-market "Vikings", plundering and looting the wealth of nations with quick and frequent raids, but not pose enough of a threat to warrant full scale war, as war itself would cost the nations more than what they lose during the raids.
Rather than sue redtube the plaintiff should have just worked with other big corporate porn suppliers to create a trade group to lobby congress to regulate porn they way congress regulates corn. Then it WOULD be illegal to over-produce, under-sell, or even produce porn for your own consumption. See SCOTUS case Wickard v. Filburn for comparison.
Abolutely! Every grocery store in poor communities sells half-rotten produce at inflated prices because they know the local poor don't have enough money to afford to drive to a more affordable store, assuming they even have a car (as most walk or maybe have a bicycle). Don't believe me? Go to a poor inner-city store and you will see what I mean. If you start giving food away you will destroy prosperous businesses and force middle class families to work in the suburbs in which they live!
But don't confuse "poor" with "ethnic". Some of the cheapest and freshest produce I buy comes from stores in which the staff cannot speak English. Serious, 8 LB of tomatoes for $1 - Walmart and Kroger can't come close to that!
And don't forget how pissed the U.S. State Department got when Hugo Chavez wanted to give heating oil to poor families in New England.
Good point. How long is it going to be before the IRS busts me for failure to report the fair market value of the unpaid porn I have consumed? They have already put people in jail for burning un-taxed vegetable oil instead of pre-taxed diesel fuel, as well as those who barter for goods & services. Unlike third world countries, the US does not have a sub-population of subsistence farmers or peasants. The reason is that our tax laws make it virtually impossible unless you're homesteading in Alaska. Yet we have no shortage of freezing homeless families under bridges and on the streets of every metropolitan area. And no shortage of pious bastards to point out how "responsible" they are for their own predicament.
... arguably the safest thing to do is to preemptively present ourselves as a non-threat, just to avoid triggering a fear response...
I have the solution: When the aliens land we will visit them with baskets of food and fuel and even show them how to grow their own crops on our planet. We can call the event "Thanskgiving" or something like that. I heard it went over really well the last time a peaceful primitive people used this strategy.
We came really close once but the aliens wouldn't cough up the change to view the standards. Hey, standards cost money to develop and you can't just go around sharing information for free! I say $1,000.00 to view the PDF file should be reasonable.
I think the OP raises a serious concern, that having a Facebook account is becoming as ubiquitous as having a street address, telephone number, and email address. Try getting any business done with a financial, medical, government, or any other institution without a "valid street address" and phone number. Information that used to be given out by phoned, written, or faxed request is now often available only at some particular website.
Even more so, how often do you have to name someone as an emergency contact, or as a reference on some application. Sure, most people have friends and acquaintances, but are the friendless going to be excluded from conducting business in the world of tomorrow? Is not having a Facebook account going to be grounds for denying someone an account or a membership? While it may seem laughable now, I had a hard time getting my kids enrolled in the local school district because I didn't have any "proof of residency", because I don't pay electric bills, or own property, or have a written lease agreement. Yet neither one of these documents would really prove that I physically "reside" in the area.
No sheriff or police cheif is going to get serious publicity going after burglars and scam artists. If you want to win Chuck Norris style accolades then you have to bust the drug dealers, and most people associate the dealers with organized crime and street violence. People from affluent neighborhoods have good security systems and insurance policies, so if they are a victim of theft it's just a minor inconvenience, but they will do everything to protect little Johnny from the drug dealers.
Why not just require everyone to have a facebook account in order to access the internet? Zuckerberg seems more than willing to track, retain, and share your personal info with just about anybody. This would take the burden off from the ISPs.
Especially since you could use any phone line to dial a long distance number to an offshore ISP outside US Jurisdiction. Sure it would be slow and expensive, but if you're doing something illegal you would probably bite the bullet to keep the fuzz off your back.
I was really irritated by the "similar" word results, but I found that if your put your querry in quotes you actually get the exact spelling on the search returns.
As for spam sites, the more seemingly unrelated the search terms the more likely you are going to be lead to spam, especially as you add terms to be included within the search.
Who's to say this software couldn't be easily adapted to pick up on credit card numbers that are spoken out loud in any location. A hidden wireless microphone could be placed at a target location and monitored for weeks if necessary just waiting to pick up on those digits. Why not add a plug-in for dates-of-birth, drivers license numbers, and other personal identifying info? For identity theives such passive monitoring software could reap in millions from unsuspecting victims with little effort at all.
Possible applications for law enforcement - program it to pick up on conversations only about drugs or money laundering rather than waste countless man-hours listening to every call some mobster makes to his grandmother or ordering pizza.
Knives, trojans, and hacking...reminds me of my college days when I stuck a phone ringer in my roommates iron. Every time he was ironing his shirts I would remotely activate the ringer. He ended up burning both of his ears before he realized what was going on.
Except that we're not allowed to build these reactors with actual "plants". "Plants" cannot be patented due to some "prior art" BS. Everybody knows we can't make technological or economic progress without venture capital, patents, copyrights, licensing agreements, enforceable contracts, corporate lobbying, government regulations, outsourcing, offshoring, executive bonuses, business lunches, corporate gifts, executive perks, and high profit margins.
Duh!