A quick wikipedia review leads me to believe that he is going for a wider view of the cosmos(outside of conconciousness) by not including the computation theorists that you mention. it. As far as my understanding goes all the mathematicians you listed advanced greatly the field of computation, but computation is quite limited in the quantum world.
But Mr. Macgillivray and Mr. Boni said prices would be kept in check, in part by the goal, spelled out in the agreement, to reach as many customers as possible.
Given google's bussiness model, this is eventually going to be free.
Not that I believe investing in education is bad, but passing it off as an economic stimulus is disingenuous.
I strongly disagree. What he is proposing is not only education, but access to information. Before you can make any sort of business you need an idea to develop into a product or service that will hopefully fulfill a need. Further more before you can solve any problem you need the knowledge on how to solve the problem. Even trivial tasks like walking have to be learned.
Humans are inherently social creatures. Drop one human in the middle of the amazon and he will be dead in a couple of days, drop a bunch of them together and the chance of survival increases tremendously.
Every time there is a breakthrough in communication(information sharing), like the alphabet, the printing press, the phone, cars and the highway system, radio and the internet, there is an improvement on the quality of life of the civilization that can take advantage of that discovery. That is because more knowledge is shared thus problems are solved, and new ideas created. This are the very same ideas that are needed to create new business that generate jobs and improve the economic standing of a country. Not to mention the efficiency gained at solving problems that might seem trivial but when they are all added up have a huge impact on our quality of life.
This US is a republic, not a popular democracy. The American founders were well deeply concerned with the possibility of mob government - hence (for example) the Senate, the Electoral College, and our system of checks and balances. (Yes, a gross simplification, but this is my lunch break.) The Founders were afraid of the mob for good reason. So should we.
The founding fathers were a bunch of intellectuals, aristocrats and businessmen in a world were education was reserved for the rich. The general population was generally poor an uneducated. So,yes the mob from the times of our founding fathers was probably not to be trusted with massive organized government. Thankfully times have change quite a bit since then. Today most people in the US are middle class, and a good portion of it is educated. This doesn't mean that most people can actually govern, but it does mean that they can bring new perspectives to issues close to them.
So instead of watching edit wars and being able to check out multiple opinions you now have to take the whole article as it is. There might even be small errors in there that would otherwise have been fixed by peers.
Maybe someone will gather all the information in the comments and create an article that ends up being better rated. That way, there is always a best article. The articles will take longer to correct than in a wiki model but then, it may be compensated by more reliable information, because more people are encouraged to write and the result is a more refined article.
If the model works like I think, there are going to be many articles on the same subject, but the highest rated, better reviewed articles should be on top. I would definitely would like to read more about their model. It should be opened, if they want it to work. I for one, would love to try to publish articles here.
I agree with your concerns. I just don't place them as high up the list as you might. It isn't becauase I don't care either. It is because I'm not convinced that not only is the government evil and working some grand conspiracy. No matter how you view Bush or his team, you have to realize they are only a very small amount of the people in government who would have to be in on this in order for it to be something as bad as most people claim it to be. Call me naive or whatever, I just don't see this president or people like him as being that controlling and smart to make all this happen. And even if it is true, voting someone else in wouldn't change anything at all. With this in mind, I like many other people still believe the government isn't out to get me and they have some integrity left.
Good points and I agree that for the time being and the "foreseeable" future your assessment about the powers and attitude of the people in power are very accurate. My concern is with the unforeseeable events. A couple of them come to mind that can really alter the outlook.
One of them and the one that really worries me is global warming. It matters not if it is because of human intervention or not, there is a pretty good consensus amongst scientist to suggest that there is an upward trend in global average temperature. If the trend continues to accelerate the way it is the changes might be much faster than the world economy and agriculture can handle. This might bring about poverty across the board. Poverty and hunger creates a social environment that is very susceptible to major changes in government, the types of changes that can actually utilize the infrastructure we have today to spy on its own people. The other thing is the national debt and the possible loss of superpower status of the united states to other countries like china. Again that could create a jerk reaction that could turn really ugly really fast. Having the infrastructure in place for a police state would make a turn for the worst much more likely.
Well, traditionally the courts and congress have defined what is reasonable and what is probable and judges have interpreted the request to meet those definitions. But what we have here is something a little mixed and a little different. As commander in chief, the president is the sole person overseeing battlefield intelligence, espionage and all. So his position gets mixed in there a little to muddy up the waters.
I think this is where we really disagree. You are looking at the "war" on terror as an actual war, which is the view of the Bush administration. I think the only reason is a "war" is because Bush decided to call it a war. I think it is much closer to law enforcement than actual warfare although I agree that the lines are blurry. The reason I think it is not a war is that there is no way to win it. There is no way you could stop terrorist. You could kill the top 1000 terrorist on your list and 1000 more would replace them. The threat can come as much from the outside as from the inside. You could have Islamic extremist, ecoterrorits, Macheteros, gangs, drug cartels, or any entity that you can imagine. It is a war without end. It is a reality of the modern world. As such, the responsible thing to do is to establish sound long term policy that deals with the problem maintaining our rights. If wiretapping is deemed as the most efficient way to deal with this threat, then a sound, longterm, constitutional system must be develop to implement it correctly. This system must have involvement from all three branches of government as to preserve checks and balances. Right now is completely on the executive branch.
I know I stepped over the line there. It isn't as cut and dry as that. But that is easily the perception people are seeing.
I agree, but I still contend that the potential fo
I don't know either. I'm glad you admitted your not an expert because I was going to ask you how they knew Bin Laden was a terrorist before he is arrested and convicted of 9/11.
They have their ways and means. Usually by working or being members of terrorist organizations and stuff like that. So far, the governments around the world have been more right then wrong when calling people terrorist. Or at least that is how it is represented to us.
I'm all for infiltrating terrorist groups and direct intelligence gathering. I'm sure that is one of the methods they use and is good. That is real police work. How do you know if the governments are right or wrong about calling people terrorists? Did the so called terrorists have trials and were found guilty by a jury? If you are talking about high profile terrorist, what is the problem with getting a court order? if it is so obvious then they should be able to get the order in no time. The problem is with the profiling. If you fit certain criteria, you are potentially a terrorist. That is very dangerous. Have you ever heard of the concept "6 degrees to Kevin Bacon"? If you just happened to have some of the characteristics that will make you a potential terrorist (we really don't know what they are), then you are connected to a real terrorist by less than 6 degrees. That and a couple more random life occurrences and you are a suspected terrorist. Thats might never affect your life, but what if it does? I don't want to take that chance.
Well, innocent until proven guilty really has nothing to do with this. You could be innocent or guilty and have the government or police listen to your conversations. This is because of words like reasonable and probable being used into justifications to restrict the government's behavior in this area.
And who gets to determine what is reasonable and what is probable?, the FBI agent who is working long hours, abandoning their family so they can do their important and patriotic duty of preventing terrorism? Listen, I know these people are working hard and most of them are working for what they perceive as the common good. I admire them for that. But that very same fervor and high sense of responsibility might lead them to a "ends justify the means" attitude, we can not afford that.Thats why they need a court order. I'm not against wiretapping if there is way to make sure that the system is fair. Thats what the court system is for. Besides, a system like this needs a check and balances so it is not abused.
Yea, he did his duty, But what if he thought his duty was to just undermine the president's actions or aid the enemy by using the controversial nature of the program as an excuse to exposing it? So if anything, We should at least find this guy and find his intent before letting him aid the enemy on other ways.
That is fair, we should find out if his intentions were good.
I think your over estimating the dangers of the times.
Ditto. I don't think you are taking into account the potential for abuse of these technologies. The world is changing, and it is changing fast, democracy must be preserved, sometimes at a high price. There needs to be a careful balance between security and the preservation of our rights, because our very way of life depends on it. I lean in favor of the preservation of our rights.
When I lean in favor of my rights it really helps to think that when there is a will there is a way. ID checks data mining and wiretapping can never cover all the gaps. impossible. If they really want to harm us, they will, we just have to be ready as a nation to take it and when is over begin a healing process, and look at the reasons why they attacked us. After 9/11 we are not a stronger nation, we are a weaker nation, because as a nation we have lost our moral ground, and as individuals we have lost our privacy
Actually, according to certain people in the current administration, if you aren't a US citizen, then you essentially have no rights within the US judicial system.
Yes, but Puertoricans are born with US citizenship, you can think of it as a bunch of americans living in a colony of the united states without representation in congress( altough many puertoricans do not share that point of view)
The vast majority of people I know of only know the official version of listening in on people talking to terrorist so they think it is fine.
So how do they determine who is a terrorist? We live in a country where you are innocent until proven guilty. Thats the way it was established by the founding fathers and what makes this country great. They can not say who is a terrorist, they can only say who is a potential terrorist. That is scary. I'm not an intelligence expert but I have to assume that the program they use to listen in a conversation or screen internet messages looks for keywords or phrases like, bomb, plan, airport securityto screen for potential threats. I'm sure they also look at the background of the person and match it up to certain established criteria on what makes you most likely a terrorist. So if I just typed in those words, and I'm ex-military with a security clearance, with experience in microbiology and Puerto Rican(there is a terrorist group in Puerto Rico called macheteros), is my name placed on a list of more likely to be a terrorist? Why do I have to be afraid to post this? If there is an attack, I could be listed as a possible terrorist based on my background even though I didn't choose to be puertorican, I served proudly in the army, and I volunteered to work on the anthrax incident out of cheer patriotism.
Everyone is innocent until proven guilty, thats a right that we just simply can not give up. That someone is a potential terrorist should be determined by a judge after careful examination of the evidence, not by a overzealous FBI agent whose most fervent desire is to trap a terrorist and even worse, by a computer program. I'm ok with wiretapping as long as there is sufficient evidence to show probable cause, and that has to be determined outside of the law enforcement arena, and definitely not by a computer program or a database.
The guy that leaked this information did his duty as a public servant, to reveal corruption and illegality and now he is being punished for it by the government. We are truly living in dangerous times, and it is our responsibility to talk to everyone we know about the illegality and the possible consequences of these "security measures". Only by educating others about the false sense of security and the importance of our freedom, we will be able to preserve our rights and the welfare of this country.
try to think of a color that you have never seen. Impossible huh? I believe that humans do not have infinite imagination. All inventions, theories and discoveries, have always existed, we don't have the capability to create something that doesn't exist, only to change what already exist. No one has really created anything, they simply were exposed to the right pieces of information and were able to put them together in a novel way. So following that logic, every invention is a refinement or restructure of prior ideas.
Following that logic the only limit of science is the size and complexity of the universe. It seems like a really big and complex universe, so I don't think we will run out of science anytime soon.
I think parent is right and this article seems to confirm it.
It also relates to this article that I read the other day. The article is called "Ten Politically Incorrect Truths About Human Nature", pretty good although some of the thing it says are very politically incorrect, it rings true.
How it relates to this topic is that this article states that Polygamy favors women while monogamy favors man, since men seem to have a larger "fitness margin". So while few will be fit enough to mantain many women, that will in turn take away from the rest of the guys that are less fit, thus less attractive to women.
Were are my mod points when I need them. I agree with you, but I guess most people much rather blame the man than take responsibility for their own acts. I can see how must people will use the "I have no choice" excuse, but in reality the only excuse is "I don't want to give up my standards of life. I prefer people die somewhere else. I want my HDTV".
Ok, so go ahead and make your voice heard, try and make your opinion count, and you will soon find out that your opinion will be muted by a thousand other opinions that have as much right as you do to be heard. Most people voices are muffled by the shear amount of people and some small amount of people(hubs) are heard. As unfair as this sounds is just the way it is, and until someone comes up with a different method of government thats the way is going to be.
See, I don't like it anymore than you do, but I recognize how the system works and decided I'm going to try to get my voice heard. There are several ways that it can be accomplished. The easiest one is probably just to start a blog, and get your ideas out there. If your ideas are good enough, just by natural selection they will be heard, if they are not, or you simply cannot convey them well enough for people to understand them, then they will die off. Another way to do it, is by going into politics and be successful at it. I don't like this way because you will eventually have to become dirty to get funding to get elected. To get funding you have to compromise your ideas, so if you get elected and finally have a voice, they won't be your ideas anymore, but at best a mix of your ideas and the ideas of the people that paid for you to be there. Which take us to the third way to make yourself heard. MONEY.
If you have money then you can definitely make your voice heard. I don't like this system because it just strikes me as immoral, but it is the way laws are made. whatever sector spends the most money will get the most favorable laws. This happens whether we want to or not. Is the ACLU evil because they spend money on lobbying? I dare to say they are not. The way I see it we have two options. Either we cross our arms and frown at the powerful and rich while they get more power, or we use their tools ( lobbying) to get what we think are good goals accomplished.
I think it is in the best interest of Google to keep information free and flowing. It is a big part of their business model, since they depend in enormous amounts of traffic and connections to make money. I like that. It benefits me that information is free, so in part I'm glad Google is going get more involved into government. The other side of the coin is that some of my information I wish to keep private. That goes against the Google business model. That do worries me.
IANAL, but, the contract applies both ways right? Are they not obligated to keep their part? I can understand technical issues or a large number of users may slow down the service, but to slow it down on purpose seems like a breach of contract on their part. If I had a business that was directly affected by this change, couldn't I sue for breach of contract. True that I could only depend on it for however long is my contract, but still...
I agree the sample size is ridiculous,I didn't mean to imply that the 40 million copy sold is not a valid number. It's just that I find it highly unlikely that mine was the only school in the world to receive a deal similar to mine . What I really meant to say was that although they have sold 40 million copies it doesn't mean they have 40 million users, which is the benchmark they are really after if they want widespread adoption. The example was bad.
I have a vista license. Microsoft together with my school were so infinitely gracious that they decided to give away 200 licenses for CS students( keep in mind that my school payed for those licenses, they were not gifts, they were just highly discounted). Not that I know all two hundred students but the buzz is that vista is crap, and I personally don't know anyone who installed it and didn't revert to XP.` SO of those 40 million copies, how many are real users? I can't help but to wonder.
As crazy and " un-scientific" as that sounds, I think I tend to agree with you, at least I want to agree.
Tabula rasa. When we are born we know nothing about the world, our mind is "empty", but a human baby is an amazing machine. As soon as we are born we start absorbing knowledge and developing a set of rules that dictate the actions we will take. Who do we learn from? Our environment and everything in it, of course. In most cases the biggest influence in the environment around us are our parents. For the rest of our lives we are a mix of mostly mom and dad, brothers family and friends. But it doesn't stop there. We keep growing and changing throughout our whole life and what provokes that change? our environment still! As we keep growing whether we want it or not, our personality and way of thinking changes depending on who we meet and what environment we are in. Sure the change could be so subtle that we don't notice it, but is there. Every time we encounter someone we may exchange ideas, and weather we agree or not with the other person idea, we have been exposed to that idea, we have changed.
Before the internet, our world was limited to very few connections. 500 year ago a native American didn't even have a connection to a Chinese. So the native American and the Chinese cultures were only connected by the natural world, earth, trees, wind and the sky. Now a days there is a connection between almost any two people in the world and the distance between these connections is shrinking constantly and greatly. So going back to learning from our environment, Before we were only connected to our family friends and whoever we had contact with in life, but with the advent of the internet we can have contact with ideas from very far away. I believe that eventually the best ideas, philosophies and thoughts would be naturally selected and would give an evolutionary advantage to anyone following these ideas, thus uniting mankind under a single purpose. You could still say that I'm mixing up consciousness and intelligence, but to an outside observer we would be working as a hive even if we think of ourselves as individuals. To an outside observer we are a hive.
Screw creativity, students are over worked enough as it is. They want to live their life and have free time, not be slaves of corporate capital like many of their parents. It's all about 1) money and 2) having more free time.
I agree that most students want to live their life and have more free time, but that would not make them any less slaves of the system. Reality is that throughout history, the youth of mankind has always worked and worked hard. Before modern times the work was quite different, usually you worked at whatever your father did, in many cases hard farm work. IMHO the system has improved with the advent of accessible education. Now a young man has the choice to work in preparing themselves for the future. If he chooses not to then he must submit himself to the will of the more powerful. The less prepared you are, the worst are the chances for financial security, independence and a voice that can truly be heard. With the voice that can be heard by the system, comes a better path to freedom.
Being lazy is a VIRTUE, look at all the work-a-holic related problems with modern society, I'd proudly proclaim on a T-Shirt in my off ours that "I'm a lazy bastard", lazy meaning - I want to spend my time how I wish and not how society thinks I should spend it.
Being lazy a virtue? How so? That being a work-a-holic have obvious negative consequences does not make laziness a virtue. What are the downsides of laziness? better yet...What are the upsides?
If you want to spend your whole time as you wish and not how society thinks, then just do it. You might have a problem when it comes the time to eat. Food takes energy to produce whether you have your own farm and do the intensive physical work or whether you transform any other work into money and buy it. If you want to "live" you have to eat, and if you want to eat, you or someone that loves you has to work. Now you might say that I took it to a extreme, and would be right, But considering that people tend to want to have children some time in the future, you have to consider feeding them too, more work.
I believe is a more efficient way to work with your mind, than to do physical work, all the useless and irrelevant work that you do at school, may not be directly related to the subjects that you want to learn, but I assure you will develop skills that will make you better professional thus maximizing your potential to have a great job. A great job usually comes with enough money that you don't have to worry on how to feed your children, and can then spend more time doing what you want to do.
The problem here is often lazy professors who set the same paper topics every year. Then again, universities are currently set up to pass as many students as possible, rather than work them hard so that their future employers benefit.
I agree that in many cases it's true that the professors are lazy, but sometimes the problem is much worse than that. The problem sometimes is that the professors or teachers simply don't have the internet searching skills that the students have. Also most undergraduate level knowledge is already widely available on the web. So what can a professor assign you that it is within the scope of the course and is not available a click away? I think that many schools and colleges are simply not challenging the creativity of the students.
Why is the service provider the only place that I'm allowed to by phones?
Because nobody's passed a law yet forcing them to allow you to use whatever phone you might have laying around...
Or maybe they dont have a competitor that offers that option. Competition would solve this problem better than legislation, and remember that in the not so distant future they not only have to compete with other cellphone companies, they will have mobile internet everywhere, with free VOIP. Who knows where this technology will lead, but I'm liking it.
Re:White dolphins discovered in Hellas Basin!
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yep, because the best way to bring down the cost of space exploration is by keeping the corporations out. Corporate greed, together with competition, is the only way to bring down the costs of space exploration, like it or not. Today the corporations run the show, although not directly, but by getting polititians to do their bidding. Competition is non existent in todays government spending.
What we need is polititians that represent the people, not puppets of the corporations. But the only way way to get elected is by spending millions of dollars on a political campaign, a considerable amount of that money comes form the people that run the corporations. Because the polititians owe their elections, ( and future reelections) they are obligated to favor those few companies. So the way it is now, if you want to keep the government in charge of space exploration, You are keeping the few corrupt companies that will drain the public treasure, and elevate the cost of space exploration.
Competition is good for space exploration, good for many new companies, that have many new employess, but is bad for the few companies that run the show nowdays. For space exploration to take off, we need to lower the cost. If lowering the costs means having bioengineered dolphins with corporate logos, well, at least you are watching dolphins in mars! That is a price I'm willing to pay.
As shown by the shock and awe campaign in Iraq, the US armY has a clear advantage in conventional combat. I bet the US can win a war against any naval, air and and armored enemy army. The problem is that the enemy has evolved. Any one with half a brain will not go in a frontal war against the US, but there is an achilles heel, morale
Any nation wishing to carry out a succesful defense against a US invasion has to fight a guerrilla war. Forget about the tanks, forget about the planes, forget about the uniforms. Send your soldiers home with a very lose chain of command and a clear mission. Wage a war of oportunity. Attack only from crowded places, dress as a civilian. Attack the countrymen that colaborate with the US. The goal of your attacks is to make them as shocking and news worthy as possible. The can't do anythinga bout that. They cannot fight against the people without giant political fallout. Wait long enough and you will drive them out.
I think the US Army doctrine is obsolete. These are new times in warfare, where aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines mean nothing.
You are right, mankind have a very good chance to survive. But what will be the body count? How many people will starve to death? How do you know you won't be one of them? What gurantees you that america will be the granary of the world, if there is a major climate change? See although mankind has a great chance for survival, you and me dont.
Slashdot Mirror
A quick wikipedia review leads me to believe that he is going for a wider view of the cosmos(outside of conconciousness) by not including the computation theorists that you mention. it. As far as my understanding goes all the mathematicians you listed advanced greatly the field of computation, but computation is quite limited in the quantum world.
Given google's bussiness model, this is eventually going to be free.
Not that I believe investing in education is bad, but passing it off as an economic stimulus is disingenuous.
I strongly disagree. What he is proposing is not only education, but access to information. Before you can make any sort of business you need an idea to develop into a product or service that will hopefully fulfill a need. Further more before you can solve any problem you need the knowledge on how to solve the problem. Even trivial tasks like walking have to be learned.
Humans are inherently social creatures. Drop one human in the middle of the amazon and he will be dead in a couple of days, drop a bunch of them together and the chance of survival increases tremendously. Every time there is a breakthrough in communication(information sharing), like the alphabet, the printing press, the phone, cars and the highway system, radio and the internet, there is an improvement on the quality of life of the civilization that can take advantage of that discovery. That is because more knowledge is shared thus problems are solved, and new ideas created. This are the very same ideas that are needed to create new business that generate jobs and improve the economic standing of a country. Not to mention the efficiency gained at solving problems that might seem trivial but when they are all added up have a huge impact on our quality of life.
Maybe someone will gather all the information in the comments and create an article that ends up being better rated. That way, there is always a best article. The articles will take longer to correct than in a wiki model but then, it may be compensated by more reliable information, because more people are encouraged to write and the result is a more refined article.
If the model works like I think, there are going to be many articles on the same subject, but the highest rated, better reviewed articles should be on top. I would definitely would like to read more about their model. It should be opened, if they want it to work. I for one, would love to try to publish articles here.
Good points and I agree that for the time being and the "foreseeable" future your assessment about the powers and attitude of the people in power are very accurate. My concern is with the unforeseeable events. A couple of them come to mind that can really alter the outlook.
One of them and the one that really worries me is global warming. It matters not if it is because of human intervention or not, there is a pretty good consensus amongst scientist to suggest that there is an upward trend in global average temperature. If the trend continues to accelerate the way it is the changes might be much faster than the world economy and agriculture can handle. This might bring about poverty across the board. Poverty and hunger creates a social environment that is very susceptible to major changes in government, the types of changes that can actually utilize the infrastructure we have today to spy on its own people. The other thing is the national debt and the possible loss of superpower status of the united states to other countries like china. Again that could create a jerk reaction that could turn really ugly really fast. Having the infrastructure in place for a police state would make a turn for the worst much more likely.
I think this is where we really disagree. You are looking at the "war" on terror as an actual war, which is the view of the Bush administration. I think the only reason is a "war" is because Bush decided to call it a war. I think it is much closer to law enforcement than actual warfare although I agree that the lines are blurry. The reason I think it is not a war is that there is no way to win it. There is no way you could stop terrorist. You could kill the top 1000 terrorist on your list and 1000 more would replace them. The threat can come as much from the outside as from the inside. You could have Islamic extremist, ecoterrorits, Macheteros, gangs, drug cartels, or any entity that you can imagine. It is a war without end. It is a reality of the modern world. As such, the responsible thing to do is to establish sound long term policy that deals with the problem maintaining our rights. If wiretapping is deemed as the most efficient way to deal with this threat, then a sound, longterm, constitutional system must be develop to implement it correctly. This system must have involvement from all three branches of government as to preserve checks and balances. Right now is completely on the executive branch.
I agree, but I still contend that the potential fo
I'm all for infiltrating terrorist groups and direct intelligence gathering. I'm sure that is one of the methods they use and is good. That is real police work. How do you know if the governments are right or wrong about calling people terrorists? Did the so called terrorists have trials and were found guilty by a jury? If you are talking about high profile terrorist, what is the problem with getting a court order? if it is so obvious then they should be able to get the order in no time. The problem is with the profiling. If you fit certain criteria, you are potentially a terrorist. That is very dangerous. Have you ever heard of the concept "6 degrees to Kevin Bacon"? If you just happened to have some of the characteristics that will make you a potential terrorist (we really don't know what they are), then you are connected to a real terrorist by less than 6 degrees. That and a couple more random life occurrences and you are a suspected terrorist. Thats might never affect your life, but what if it does? I don't want to take that chance.
And who gets to determine what is reasonable and what is probable?, the FBI agent who is working long hours, abandoning their family so they can do their important and patriotic duty of preventing terrorism? Listen, I know these people are working hard and most of them are working for what they perceive as the common good. I admire them for that. But that very same fervor and high sense of responsibility might lead them to a "ends justify the means" attitude, we can not afford that.Thats why they need a court order. I'm not against wiretapping if there is way to make sure that the system is fair. Thats what the court system is for. Besides, a system like this needs a check and balances so it is not abused.
That is fair, we should find out if his intentions were good.
Ditto. I don't think you are taking into account the potential for abuse of these technologies. The world is changing, and it is changing fast, democracy must be preserved, sometimes at a high price. There needs to be a careful balance between security and the preservation of our rights, because our very way of life depends on it. I lean in favor of the preservation of our rights.
When I lean in favor of my rights it really helps to think that when there is a will there is a way. ID checks data mining and wiretapping can never cover all the gaps. impossible. If they really want to harm us, they will, we just have to be ready as a nation to take it and when is over begin a healing process, and look at the reasons why they attacked us. After 9/11 we are not a stronger nation, we are a weaker nation, because as a nation we have lost our moral ground, and as individuals we have lost our privacy
Yes, but Puertoricans are born with US citizenship, you can think of it as a bunch of americans living in a colony of the united states without representation in congress( altough many puertoricans do not share that point of view)
So how do they determine who is a terrorist? We live in a country where you are innocent until proven guilty. Thats the way it was established by the founding fathers and what makes this country great. They can not say who is a terrorist, they can only say who is a potential terrorist. That is scary. I'm not an intelligence expert but I have to assume that the program they use to listen in a conversation or screen internet messages looks for keywords or phrases like, bomb, plan, airport securityto screen for potential threats. I'm sure they also look at the background of the person and match it up to certain established criteria on what makes you most likely a terrorist. So if I just typed in those words, and I'm ex-military with a security clearance, with experience in microbiology and Puerto Rican(there is a terrorist group in Puerto Rico called macheteros), is my name placed on a list of more likely to be a terrorist? Why do I have to be afraid to post this? If there is an attack, I could be listed as a possible terrorist based on my background even though I didn't choose to be puertorican, I served proudly in the army, and I volunteered to work on the anthrax incident out of cheer patriotism.
Everyone is innocent until proven guilty, thats a right that we just simply can not give up. That someone is a potential terrorist should be determined by a judge after careful examination of the evidence, not by a overzealous FBI agent whose most fervent desire is to trap a terrorist and even worse, by a computer program. I'm ok with wiretapping as long as there is sufficient evidence to show probable cause, and that has to be determined outside of the law enforcement arena, and definitely not by a computer program or a database.
The guy that leaked this information did his duty as a public servant, to reveal corruption and illegality and now he is being punished for it by the government. We are truly living in dangerous times, and it is our responsibility to talk to everyone we know about the illegality and the possible consequences of these "security measures". Only by educating others about the false sense of security and the importance of our freedom, we will be able to preserve our rights and the welfare of this country.
try to think of a color that you have never seen. Impossible huh? I believe that humans do not have infinite imagination. All inventions, theories and discoveries, have always existed, we don't have the capability to create something that doesn't exist, only to change what already exist. No one has really created anything, they simply were exposed to the right pieces of information and were able to put them together in a novel way. So following that logic, every invention is a refinement or restructure of prior ideas.
Following that logic the only limit of science is the size and complexity of the universe. It seems like a really big and complex universe, so I don't think we will run out of science anytime soon.
Do you think that may have something to do with women choosing to have children and diverting their attention from their careers towards their family?
I think parent is right and this article seems to confirm it. It also relates to this article that I read the other day. The article is called "Ten Politically Incorrect Truths About Human Nature", pretty good although some of the thing it says are very politically incorrect, it rings true. How it relates to this topic is that this article states that Polygamy favors women while monogamy favors man, since men seem to have a larger "fitness margin". So while few will be fit enough to mantain many women, that will in turn take away from the rest of the guys that are less fit, thus less attractive to women.
Were are my mod points when I need them. I agree with you, but I guess most people much rather blame the man than take responsibility for their own acts. I can see how must people will use the "I have no choice" excuse, but in reality the only excuse is "I don't want to give up my standards of life. I prefer people die somewhere else. I want my HDTV".
Ok, so go ahead and make your voice heard, try and make your opinion count, and you will soon find out that your opinion will be muted by a thousand other opinions that have as much right as you do to be heard. Most people voices are muffled by the shear amount of people and some small amount of people(hubs) are heard. As unfair as this sounds is just the way it is, and until someone comes up with a different method of government thats the way is going to be.
See, I don't like it anymore than you do, but I recognize how the system works and decided I'm going to try to get my voice heard. There are several ways that it can be accomplished. The easiest one is probably just to start a blog, and get your ideas out there. If your ideas are good enough, just by natural selection they will be heard, if they are not, or you simply cannot convey them well enough for people to understand them, then they will die off. Another way to do it, is by going into politics and be successful at it. I don't like this way because you will eventually have to become dirty to get funding to get elected. To get funding you have to compromise your ideas, so if you get elected and finally have a voice, they won't be your ideas anymore, but at best a mix of your ideas and the ideas of the people that paid for you to be there. Which take us to the third way to make yourself heard. MONEY .
If you have money then you can definitely make your voice heard. I don't like this system because it just strikes me as immoral, but it is the way laws are made. whatever sector spends the most money will get the most favorable laws. This happens whether we want to or not. Is the ACLU evil because they spend money on lobbying? I dare to say they are not. The way I see it we have two options. Either we cross our arms and frown at the powerful and rich while they get more power, or we use their tools ( lobbying) to get what we think are good goals accomplished.
I think it is in the best interest of Google to keep information free and flowing. It is a big part of their business model, since they depend in enormous amounts of traffic and connections to make money. I like that. It benefits me that information is free, so in part I'm glad Google is going get more involved into government. The other side of the coin is that some of my information I wish to keep private. That goes against the Google business model. That do worries me.
IANAL, but, the contract applies both ways right? Are they not obligated to keep their part? I can understand technical issues or a large number of users may slow down the service, but to slow it down on purpose seems like a breach of contract on their part. If I had a business that was directly affected by this change, couldn't I sue for breach of contract. True that I could only depend on it for however long is my contract, but still...
I agree the sample size is ridiculous,I didn't mean to imply that the 40 million copy sold is not a valid number. It's just that I find it highly unlikely that mine was the only school in the world to receive a deal similar to mine . What I really meant to say was that although they have sold 40 million copies it doesn't mean they have 40 million users, which is the benchmark they are really after if they want widespread adoption. The example was bad.
I have a vista license. Microsoft together with my school were so infinitely gracious that they decided to give away 200 licenses for CS students( keep in mind that my school payed for those licenses, they were not gifts, they were just highly discounted). Not that I know all two hundred students but the buzz is that vista is crap, and I personally don't know anyone who installed it and didn't revert to XP.` SO of those 40 million copies, how many are real users? I can't help but to wonder.
As crazy and " un-scientific" as that sounds, I think I tend to agree with you, at least I want to agree.
Tabula rasa. When we are born we know nothing about the world, our mind is "empty", but a human baby is an amazing machine. As soon as we are born we start absorbing knowledge and developing a set of rules that dictate the actions we will take. Who do we learn from? Our environment and everything in it, of course. In most cases the biggest influence in the environment around us are our parents. For the rest of our lives we are a mix of mostly mom and dad, brothers family and friends. But it doesn't stop there. We keep growing and changing throughout our whole life and what provokes that change? our environment still! As we keep growing whether we want it or not, our personality and way of thinking changes depending on who we meet and what environment we are in. Sure the change could be so subtle that we don't notice it, but is there. Every time we encounter someone we may exchange ideas, and weather we agree or not with the other person idea, we have been exposed to that idea, we have changed.
Before the internet, our world was limited to very few connections. 500 year ago a native American didn't even have a connection to a Chinese. So the native American and the Chinese cultures were only connected by the natural world, earth, trees, wind and the sky. Now a days there is a connection between almost any two people in the world and the distance between these connections is shrinking constantly and greatly. So going back to learning from our environment, Before we were only connected to our family friends and whoever we had contact with in life, but with the advent of the internet we can have contact with ideas from very far away. I believe that eventually the best ideas, philosophies and thoughts would be naturally selected and would give an evolutionary advantage to anyone following these ideas, thus uniting mankind under a single purpose. You could still say that I'm mixing up consciousness and intelligence, but to an outside observer we would be working as a hive even if we think of ourselves as individuals. To an outside observer we are a hive.
I agree that most students want to live their life and have more free time, but that would not make them any less slaves of the system. Reality is that throughout history, the youth of mankind has always worked and worked hard. Before modern times the work was quite different, usually you worked at whatever your father did, in many cases hard farm work. IMHO the system has improved with the advent of accessible education. Now a young man has the choice to work in preparing themselves for the future. If he chooses not to then he must submit himself to the will of the more powerful. The less prepared you are, the worst are the chances for financial security, independence and a voice that can truly be heard. With the voice that can be heard by the system, comes a better path to freedom.
Being lazy a virtue? How so? That being a work-a-holic have obvious negative consequences does not make laziness a virtue. What are the downsides of laziness? better yet...What are the upsides?
If you want to spend your whole time as you wish and not how society thinks, then just do it. You might have a problem when it comes the time to eat. Food takes energy to produce whether you have your own farm and do the intensive physical work or whether you transform any other work into money and buy it. If you want to "live" you have to eat, and if you want to eat, you or someone that loves you has to work. Now you might say that I took it to a extreme, and would be right, But considering that people tend to want to have children some time in the future, you have to consider feeding them too, more work.
I believe is a more efficient way to work with your mind, than to do physical work, all the useless and irrelevant work that you do at school, may not be directly related to the subjects that you want to learn, but I assure you will develop skills that will make you better professional thus maximizing your potential to have a great job. A great job usually comes with enough money that you don't have to worry on how to feed your children, and can then spend more time doing what you want to do.
that's the way I see it
I agree that in many cases it's true that the professors are lazy, but sometimes the problem is much worse than that. The problem sometimes is that the professors or teachers simply don't have the internet searching skills that the students have. Also most undergraduate level knowledge is already widely available on the web. So what can a professor assign you that it is within the scope of the course and is not available a click away? I think that many schools and colleges are simply not challenging the creativity of the students.
Or maybe they dont have a competitor that offers that option. Competition would solve this problem better than legislation, and remember that in the not so distant future they not only have to compete with other cellphone companies, they will have mobile internet everywhere, with free VOIP. Who knows where this technology will lead, but I'm liking it.
yep, because the best way to bring down the cost of space exploration is by keeping the corporations out. Corporate greed, together with competition, is the only way to bring down the costs of space exploration, like it or not. Today the corporations run the show, although not directly, but by getting polititians to do their bidding. Competition is non existent in todays government spending.
What we need is polititians that represent the people, not puppets of the corporations. But the only way way to get elected is by spending millions of dollars on a political campaign, a considerable amount of that money comes form the people that run the corporations. Because the polititians owe their elections, ( and future reelections) they are obligated to favor those few companies. So the way it is now, if you want to keep the government in charge of space exploration, You are keeping the few corrupt companies that will drain the public treasure, and elevate the cost of space exploration.
Competition is good for space exploration, good for many new companies, that have many new employess, but is bad for the few companies that run the show nowdays. For space exploration to take off, we need to lower the cost. If lowering the costs means having bioengineered dolphins with corporate logos, well, at least you are watching dolphins in mars! That is a price I'm willing to pay.
And even that is not that big a deal. They can always buy the start up company when it proves successful, saving google tons of R&D money.
As shown by the shock and awe campaign in Iraq, the US armY has a clear advantage in conventional combat. I bet the US can win a war against any naval, air and and armored enemy army. The problem is that the enemy has evolved. Any one with half a brain will not go in a frontal war against the US, but there is an achilles heel, morale
Any nation wishing to carry out a succesful defense against a US invasion has to fight a guerrilla war. Forget about the tanks, forget about the planes, forget about the uniforms. Send your soldiers home with a very lose chain of command and a clear mission. Wage a war of oportunity. Attack only from crowded places, dress as a civilian. Attack the countrymen that colaborate with the US. The goal of your attacks is to make them as shocking and news worthy as possible. The can't do anythinga bout that. They cannot fight against the people without giant political fallout. Wait long enough and you will drive them out.
I think the US Army doctrine is obsolete. These are new times in warfare, where aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines mean nothing.
You are right, mankind have a very good chance to survive. But what will be the body count? How many people will starve to death? How do you know you won't be one of them? What gurantees you that america will be the granary of the world, if there is a major climate change? See although mankind has a great chance for survival, you and me dont.