Well it is easy to argue that it is a natural cycle (There is vast amounts of data disprooving this however) but lets say you are right. The problem is that earth's "natural" system isn't all that friendly. When the earth does a re-adjustment pretty much everything on earth is killed anyways. I'm not sure how that helps us.
I totally agree though that it was mostly a human/governmental fuckup. And partially because there were poor people living there. It was a well/over reported disaster though so i felt it would make a good example. (Also it was the 3rd strongest hurricane to hit the U.S. in recorded history)
Now your start at home arguement is one of the big problems in the world, We are slowly becoming a global community, you need to help those in need. So every penny spent on the tsunami was worth it (It killed 230,000 people. That OBVIOUSLY was more important than katrina where under 2000 people died (Mostly from government stupidity).
As for Iraq, that isn't an attempt to help anyone. This isn't a crazy conspiracy theory. It was a concerted push by Rumsfeld and others to have the American way asserted on a non-Christian country. If it was to help people they would have setup programmes to stop aids or malaria.
Well the main difference is the source of the information, science vs a 4thousand year old cult...
I realize what you are saying, the betting man's religion. The problem is that religion could be so far off seeing its starting point, truthfully if original christianity was right all of us would goto hell. Ever see the southpark movie? "Welcome to hell, I'm sorry, the correct answer is Mormon". There have been thousands of religions, many of them have been changed and perverted, This is more like buying a lottery ticket than betting on a horse race.
Also, i totally agree that we will be hurt by the sceptics in the end. But there are many people that will plug their ears and only hear what they want to hear.
Except for the fact the global warming is proven. Even little things like the cost of road repairs going up thanks to heat shows that global warming is real. I mean, the severity of weather related damages has gone up... this is per asset damage not simply because we have more stuff to break. New Orleans should be a fairly big example. Also they are two different things, having faith is essentially closing your eyes and running full speed. Having faith that there are no problems with global warming is the same, take some time and learn the facts and you'll be quickly cured of that faith.
Global Warming = based in fact and science
Judgment Day = based in fairytales and closing your mind
No one wants China to wage war on taiwan but now that they are cracking down on spam taiwan is in trouble. Being the cause of 2/3rds of the spam in the world is just asking for trouble, maybe china will take out a page from the American books and call this "The War on Spam".
That's because fat people have no problem posting, but lazy people do. It is like poking a fat guy and then running away... He's fat so he prolly won't chase you, just like lazy people don't argue back:p
I agree, thats how it SHOULD be. The only problem is the overly emotional mob. Look at the last crash, though it is worth it to sacrafice a live for a year of improvements it won't work that way. Each life lost sets us back a year. Each life lost gets picked up by the news, played 1million times and convinces a few thousand people that we shouldn't be exploring space for another 30years. Sad but true, if the mob made rational desicions the world would be a much different place.
Who uses these things anyways. *IM* + send file.... or just e-mail a rar. I can't see the use of this stuff at all. Imageshack if you need to post stuff on a website and done (no signup and it always works...)
Many people fail to notice that while polution eats at the ozone and causes the earth to heat up, it causes it to cool at the same time. Leaving out this factor threw off many predictions which gave the upper hand to companies who would prefer to continue polluting. However it was been shown that smog, visible clouds of pollution provide the same sort of shielding effect as the ozone. Predictions regarding the warming have been true (unfortunately so) once you throw in this cooling effect. Now for the unpleasant part, we are reducing emmisions that add to the smog (because it is ugly and gross) while ignoring the pollution that is causing the heating. The problem of global warming can be reduced to 3 logical fallacies commonplace in the world:
1) If i can't see it it doesn't matter/isn't there.
2) Shorter winters, yay! I'd better buy seafront property before they spike with the tourists.
3) Even if something bad is going to happen it won't happen for a while... why worry?
and this isnt helped by:
4) Hey mr. government official, have a big pile of money and let us continue to destory the environment.
I'd be happy if we at least got proportional representation. And the problem isn't intelligence, while 50% of people are below average intelligence (Duh). About 90% are too uninformed to make a proper desicion. But this doesn't begin to list the problem. Say you were absolute king of the country you could do anything right? Be 100% uncorrupt? WRONG. The way capitalism works the MNCBs means they can tell you what to do, because you need them. If you don't cave to their demands they don't donate and you can't force them to, being out of your jurisdiction and all. Now without these donations and support your country is limping and you will be squeezed until you do cave.;) Our form of government matters very little until we have a global government.
People have difficulty with existence all the time, look up the many many schools of thought regarding Metaphysics. Basically we don't know shit, spouting out the old arguement thet we are more simply because of a mystical understanding is crap. Humans are bio-bots with a 3lb multithreaded cpu made up of grey and white matter. Get over it, computers are going to pass us in 30years. http://www.transhumanist.com/volume1/moravec.htm
D: i found that useless... it's like learning the theory of fishing instead of doing it. If you think in a logical manner you can jump right into an easier language if you find a good tutorial, i really doubt the utility of learning the theory behind programming. It is a computer, it obeys your every comand perfectly, just don't screw up.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/05/05 01_020501_roborats.html
this tech has been recently been used on humans. Japanese nerds made a robotic hand that moved with your real hand like traditional movie techniques. However, no glove was needed, the only readings were taken from your brain, with the results decoded. Though the remote control tech hasnt come to humans, our desicion making structure is more complex.
With stem cell research we probably could cure it alot faster. We could force mutation until we found an organ immune to cancer and then duplicate that... wait we've already done that with mice D;
You obviously are confused, its essentially a money back gaurantee... Heck this juice has the same deal but amazingly they arent out of business. Actually most programs have money back gaurantees, ussualy offered by the retailer but the point is they still haven't gone out of business. Most OSS is free... oh noes, they'll have to pay them 0$ back.
The problem isn't you or me. It is the average, and the average voted for bush... twice. That says something, some red blooded americans will push this idea rather than fight it. And the VAST VAST magority won't know anything about it or won't put effort to fight it. Now you effectively become a minority. That minority will gradually shrink and be squashed. If you really try to fight you will be labeled as a fanatic/crazy/terrorist w/e and you will be dealt with. If Everyone in the world:
1) read Open newsources that have sited evidence
2) Read the parties platforms
3) Spent some time working out cause and effect of things being passed
The world would be a very different place, but they don't because it doesnt matter. Theyd prefer to watch american idol or 90210 or w/e the fuck people watch everyday.
If we didnt have DNS we would all use portals such as google... Oh, wait... Sites could just go for a hotword or w/e making DNS effectively useless, Don't get me wrong, it is great but if it wasn't there another system would pop up.
Alright, obviously this means ISPs get more money.... That is fine, they argue they need it to spread the net to other people. However why is this money coming from content providers rather than
a) the users of the internet... raise prices if you need money, kind of common practice for a long time
b) The government, net benefits everyone and extending networks is expensive, this also makes sense
Now their choice of charging content providers causes a variety of problems
1) The less money you have, the less of a voice you have (This will basically remove all of the low budget companies from the net).
- Quieting the voices of the poor has been shown to have reprecussions throughout history
- A perfect market would have all businesses with equal footing, this gives an unneeded advantage to the big boys
2) This causes a VERY large problem for smaller ISPs, note that it is the few giants that are pushing this. The smaller ISPs will get gouged by the big boys, maybe they can't afford to pay AT&T which holds lets say Google. Without google the ISPs will be left on masse. Effectively the ISPs are charging the content providers, turning around and charging the customers for acess to this content (twice or more).
3) Fragmentation of the internet. Currently the net is all in one big blob minus a few exceptions (Chinese not getting acess to some sites. Now, this would happen throught the net, ISPs would not be able to pay for ALL the content on the net (Imagine if each page was a penny). It would be much like TV... most of the time you get fox but only some people have MTV... and fewer still have Playboy or hustler. It would be the same idea... worsened still by things like search engines, they would be hella expensive so it's likely that an ISP would just pick one. I'm sure they could make a deal with say Yahoo for yahoo to pay them to host their search engine. This would kill choice on the internet.
Wow.... I'm sure the nerds at the pirate bay can pwn the hell out of people in CS... But in reality i don't think they have the weaponry or fitness. Seriously, There was probably one person in the building. He must have shit his pants, reading a slashdot article and then *poof* 50cops. I sincerely hope it was like a swat team and they broke in through windows. Where they could have you know... sent an e-mail to have the place shut down.
It doesn't need to care, computers do what they are told. They don't pause they don't think they just do it. They can run 1000s more scenarios per second then a human and won't freeze up if something bad is happening. Better yet if there were no ATCs or pilots there would be no close calls. The whole system could be easily automated. The plane knows where it is, where every other plane is, the geography of the area, it's starting and finishing point, howmuch fuel it has.. yaddayadda. I could design an automated system for planes in a few months and it would stop crashes due to pilot error completely. However it wouldn't be implemented because people don't want to trust their lives to a computer even if it is hundreds of times more qualified. It is unfortunate because of the many lives it could save. Maybe we could push it in stating that terrorists couldnt steal the planes:p. However i'm sure someone would say that the terrorists could drill through the metal plate, fake signals coming from the ground, fake the failsafes and direct the plane without setting off an alarm... but that would be essentially breaking into a high security bank... while in the air after being searched and your luggage checked for metal objects... and running a high level hack, breaking into a system that is encrypted and one that you do not know the specs for.... but hey, i'm sure that is more likely than some guy with a knife.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, my 1st thought was duhhh too. This isn't exactly new information, more like: "If you bathe regularly, you are more likely to get laid"
Well it is easy to argue that it is a natural cycle (There is vast amounts of data disprooving this however) but lets say you are right. The problem is that earth's "natural" system isn't all that friendly. When the earth does a re-adjustment pretty much everything on earth is killed anyways. I'm not sure how that helps us.
I totally agree though that it was mostly a human/governmental fuckup. And partially because there were poor people living there. It was a well/over reported disaster though so i felt it would make a good example. (Also it was the 3rd strongest hurricane to hit the U.S. in recorded history)
Now your start at home arguement is one of the big problems in the world, We are slowly becoming a global community, you need to help those in need. So every penny spent on the tsunami was worth it (It killed 230,000 people. That OBVIOUSLY was more important than katrina where under 2000 people died (Mostly from government stupidity).
As for Iraq, that isn't an attempt to help anyone. This isn't a crazy conspiracy theory. It was a concerted push by Rumsfeld and others to have the American way asserted on a non-Christian country. If it was to help people they would have setup programmes to stop aids or malaria.
Well the main difference is the source of the information, science vs a 4thousand year old cult...
I realize what you are saying, the betting man's religion. The problem is that religion could be so far off seeing its starting point, truthfully if original christianity was right all of us would goto hell. Ever see the southpark movie? "Welcome to hell, I'm sorry, the correct answer is Mormon". There have been thousands of religions, many of them have been changed and perverted, This is more like buying a lottery ticket than betting on a horse race.
Also, i totally agree that we will be hurt by the sceptics in the end. But there are many people that will plug their ears and only hear what they want to hear.
Except for the fact the global warming is proven. Even little things like the cost of road repairs going up thanks to heat shows that global warming is real. I mean, the severity of weather related damages has gone up ... this is per asset damage not simply because we have more stuff to break. New Orleans should be a fairly big example. Also they are two different things, having faith is essentially closing your eyes and running full speed. Having faith that there are no problems with global warming is the same, take some time and learn the facts and you'll be quickly cured of that faith.
Global Warming = based in fact and science
Judgment Day = based in fairytales and closing your mind
No one wants China to wage war on taiwan but now that they are cracking down on spam taiwan is in trouble. Being the cause of 2/3rds of the spam in the world is just asking for trouble, maybe china will take out a page from the American books and call this "The War on Spam".
Wow.... you brought up a really good point about Net neutrality that i haven't heard before ... *mods parent up.... if you werent already at 5*.
That's because fat people have no problem posting, but lazy people do. It is like poking a fat guy and then running away ... He's fat so he prolly won't chase you, just like lazy people don't argue back :p
I agree, thats how it SHOULD be. The only problem is the overly emotional mob. Look at the last crash, though it is worth it to sacrafice a live for a year of improvements it won't work that way. Each life lost sets us back a year. Each life lost gets picked up by the news, played 1million times and convinces a few thousand people that we shouldn't be exploring space for another 30years. Sad but true, if the mob made rational desicions the world would be a much different place.
Who uses these things anyways. *IM* + send file .... or just e-mail a rar. I can't see the use of this stuff at all. Imageshack if you need to post stuff on a website and done (no signup and it always works...)
Many people fail to notice that while polution eats at the ozone and causes the earth to heat up, it causes it to cool at the same time. Leaving out this factor threw off many predictions which gave the upper hand to companies who would prefer to continue polluting. However it was been shown that smog, visible clouds of pollution provide the same sort of shielding effect as the ozone. Predictions regarding the warming have been true (unfortunately so) once you throw in this cooling effect. Now for the unpleasant part, we are reducing emmisions that add to the smog (because it is ugly and gross) while ignoring the pollution that is causing the heating. The problem of global warming can be reduced to 3 logical fallacies commonplace in the world: 1) If i can't see it it doesn't matter/isn't there. 2) Shorter winters, yay! I'd better buy seafront property before they spike with the tourists. 3) Even if something bad is going to happen it won't happen for a while ... why worry?
and this isnt helped by:
4) Hey mr. government official, have a big pile of money and let us continue to destory the environment.
I'd be happy if we at least got proportional representation. And the problem isn't intelligence, while 50% of people are below average intelligence (Duh). About 90% are too uninformed to make a proper desicion. But this doesn't begin to list the problem. Say you were absolute king of the country you could do anything right? Be 100% uncorrupt? WRONG. The way capitalism works the MNCBs means they can tell you what to do, because you need them. If you don't cave to their demands they don't donate and you can't force them to, being out of your jurisdiction and all. Now without these donations and support your country is limping and you will be squeezed until you do cave. ;) Our form of government matters very little until we have a global government.
People have difficulty with existence all the time, look up the many many schools of thought regarding Metaphysics. Basically we don't know shit, spouting out the old arguement thet we are more simply because of a mystical understanding is crap. Humans are bio-bots with a 3lb multithreaded cpu made up of grey and white matter. Get over it, computers are going to pass us in 30years. http://www.transhumanist.com/volume1/moravec.htm
But i think someone should re-read the "stuff that matters" part of the slogan. I don't want to see /. slip into YTMND
D: i found that useless ... it's like learning the theory of fishing instead of doing it. If you think in a logical manner you can jump right into an easier language if you find a good tutorial, i really doubt the utility of learning the theory behind programming. It is a computer, it obeys your every comand perfectly, just don't screw up.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/05/05 01_020501_roborats.html
this tech has been recently been used on humans. Japanese nerds made a robotic hand that moved with your real hand like traditional movie techniques. However, no glove was needed, the only readings were taken from your brain, with the results decoded. Though the remote control tech hasnt come to humans, our desicion making structure is more complex.
With stem cell research we probably could cure it alot faster. We could force mutation until we found an organ immune to cancer and then duplicate that... wait we've already done that with mice D;
You obviously are confused, its essentially a money back gaurantee... Heck this juice has the same deal but amazingly they arent out of business. Actually most programs have money back gaurantees, ussualy offered by the retailer but the point is they still haven't gone out of business. Most OSS is free ... oh noes, they'll have to pay them 0$ back.
The problem isn't you or me. It is the average, and the average voted for bush ... twice. That says something, some red blooded americans will push this idea rather than fight it. And the VAST VAST magority won't know anything about it or won't put effort to fight it. Now you effectively become a minority. That minority will gradually shrink and be squashed. If you really try to fight you will be labeled as a fanatic/crazy/terrorist w/e and you will be dealt with. If Everyone in the world:
1) read Open newsources that have sited evidence
2) Read the parties platforms
3) Spent some time working out cause and effect of things being passed
The world would be a very different place, but they don't because it doesnt matter. Theyd prefer to watch american idol or 90210 or w/e the fuck people watch everyday.
smashing it more fun ... plus if the drive was supposedly broken it would seem silly to hook it up and run software the mess with the data....
Lol i just noticed something leaving the site, It's not offtopic. Apparently Toms testsing the new windows goes under the linux section in /.
I agree, that was a pretty shameless plug. Where is the option to rate the article? -1 offtopic
If we didnt have DNS we would all use portals such as google ... Oh, wait... Sites could just go for a hotword or w/e making DNS effectively useless, Don't get me wrong, it is great but if it wasn't there another system would pop up.
http://img329.imageshack.us/img329/5699/tieredinte rnet9sm.png
... raise prices if you need money, kind of common practice for a long time
b) The government, net benefits everyone and extending networks is expensive, this also makes sense
Alright, obviously this means ISPs get more money.... That is fine, they argue they need it to spread the net to other people. However why is this money coming from content providers rather than
a) the users of the internet
Now their choice of charging content providers causes a variety of problems
1) The less money you have, the less of a voice you have (This will basically remove all of the low budget companies from the net). - Quieting the voices of the poor has been shown to have reprecussions throughout history - A perfect market would have all businesses with equal footing, this gives an unneeded advantage to the big boys
2) This causes a VERY large problem for smaller ISPs, note that it is the few giants that are pushing this. The smaller ISPs will get gouged by the big boys, maybe they can't afford to pay AT&T which holds lets say Google. Without google the ISPs will be left on masse. Effectively the ISPs are charging the content providers, turning around and charging the customers for acess to this content (twice or more).
3) Fragmentation of the internet. Currently the net is all in one big blob minus a few exceptions (Chinese not getting acess to some sites. Now, this would happen throught the net, ISPs would not be able to pay for ALL the content on the net (Imagine if each page was a penny). It would be much like TV... most of the time you get fox but only some people have MTV... and fewer still have Playboy or hustler. It would be the same idea... worsened still by things like search engines, they would be hella expensive so it's likely that an ISP would just pick one. I'm sure they could make a deal with say Yahoo for yahoo to pay them to host their search engine. This would kill choice on the internet.
Wow.... I'm sure the nerds at the pirate bay can pwn the hell out of people in CS... But in reality i don't think they have the weaponry or fitness. Seriously, There was probably one person in the building. He must have shit his pants, reading a slashdot article and then *poof* 50cops. I sincerely hope it was like a swat team and they broke in through windows. Where they could have you know ... sent an e-mail to have the place shut down.
It doesn't need to care, computers do what they are told. They don't pause they don't think they just do it. They can run 1000s more scenarios per second then a human and won't freeze up if something bad is happening. Better yet if there were no ATCs or pilots there would be no close calls. The whole system could be easily automated. The plane knows where it is, where every other plane is, the geography of the area, it's starting and finishing point, howmuch fuel it has.. yaddayadda. I could design an automated system for planes in a few months and it would stop crashes due to pilot error completely. However it wouldn't be implemented because people don't want to trust their lives to a computer even if it is hundreds of times more qualified. It is unfortunate because of the many lives it could save. Maybe we could push it in stating that terrorists couldnt steal the planes :p. However i'm sure someone would say that the terrorists could drill through the metal plate, fake signals coming from the ground, fake the failsafes and direct the plane without setting off an alarm ... but that would be essentially breaking into a high security bank ... while in the air after being searched and your luggage checked for metal objects ... and running a high level hack, breaking into a system that is encrypted and one that you do not know the specs for .... but hey, i'm sure that is more likely than some guy with a knife.