I'd second this recommendation. Edinburgh is a wonderful city and the uni has one of the best AI programs in Europe. While you're there, try out Scottish country dancing, scotch (of course) and -why not- courses in another major.Edinburgh is the home of David Hume and has an excellent philosophy department.
what is this bullshit about adding an *extra* digit to one's memory? Wow, chill out. First of all, the statistic about working memory span being 7+/-2 is simply the average amount that people can recall when given an unstructured list of numbers. Nowhere is anybody saying that one can't remember more than this: a) it's an average and b) it is divorced of context so the subjects may have a harder time chunking the numbers in order to store them hierarchically.
Second of all, what does it mean to "add an extra digit"? It simply means that *on average* subjects were able to recall an extra digit than before. Guess what, when you're tired you probably recall a digit or two fewer, on average.
I'm very much against Real ID for all of the reasons discussed here on Slashdot: the possibility for ID theft, the possibility for inappropriate use of personal information, the possibility of tracking our movements, etc.
But here's what's particularly egregious about this plan: nobody over 50 will have to get a Real ID for nearly 10 years! If Real ID is so unbelievably necessary to our national security, how can we allow this segment to not have an ID? Should we stop scanning older individuals at the airport because they are "less likely to be a terrorist"?
The Bush administration has repeatedly refused to comment on waterboarding because they say they do not want the terrorists to know which interrogation techniques we use. Well, DHS is telegraphing to the world what sort of security techniques we use: Pssst! We only check people less than 50!
It seems really strange now to hear well-off Americans complain that learning languages is "too hard" and requires special talent, when one can plainly see that any poor and uneducated peasant does it succesfully and without complaint.
To be fair, most of the bilinguals you refer to learned their second language very early in age. There is an enormous amount of research that shows that it is much easier to acquire the syntax and phonology of a foreign language the earlier in life you begin learning it. The vast majority of Americans are not brought up in a bilingual environment and so begin learning their second language later in life, probably towards the end of the "critical period" for language, making it much more difficult to acquire. So it has nothing to do with economics and all to do with the age one begins learning another language.
The absolute majority of foreign students are not eligible for FAFSA, and hence do not even file the applications. Monitoring FAFSA hence targets the long neglected domestic trailor-trash/ghetto terror threat.
It seems perfectly reasonable to worry about homegrown terrorists. Three out of the four people involved in the July 7 bombings in London were born in the UK (1,2,3) as were many of the suspects in the transatlantic bombing plot.
I just took a look at the site again and on this page it says that the battery in the shoe sensor isn't replaceable. That might have something to do with it. It could also be because the shoe alone will cost you $90.
Indeed, if we see a trend of certain information being edited out of articles about Republicans, it could be quite safe to assume the information that was removed is completely valid, and is being removed because it is the unfortunate truth.
It's also equally possible that someone has systematically added untrue things to a group's pages, in which case it is correct to remove the material in question. I don't see how you can just assume that since there's a pattern it means that the removed material is true.
What we have been told is that this program only applies in scenarios where one end of the communication is foreign.
That's true about how an investigation starts. But apparently once a person makes or receives an overseas phone call, the NSA then followed every person that they called, including people within the country. They then investigated those people, etc.
As the NYTimes says: Officials who were briefed on the N.S.A. program said the agency collected much of the data passed on to the F.B.I. as tips by tracing phone numbers in the United States called by suspects overseas, and then by following the domestic numbers to other numbers called.
To me the biggest issue is not that they were doing it but that they were violating the law while doing it. The way this democracy works (as established by the founding fathers) is through transparency and balance between the executive and legislative branches. Here's a scenario: if the 72 hour retroactive warrants are too limiting, change the law to extend it to another 72 hours. The issue at stake here is not what the administration was seeking to accomplish, and the ends should not be used to justify the means. The ends are fine ends... and it would have been simple enough to change the laws to accomplish them.
Here is a very comprehensive FAQ that the WHO has published. To all those who posters who are questioning the severity of the threat: the FAQ indicates that 2 of the 3 necessary prerequisites for the flu becoming a pandemic have been met.
Let the music industry find another online music store that's willing to sell the songs at variable prices. Then that store can compete with iTMS and the market will decide which pricing scheme is better. That's the way the market will decide, not by the suppliers forcing Apple to sell the music and different prices.
What you say is entirely true, with the subtle modification that recent research has suggested that it's not quite an on-off switch, rather a general decline in ability after the onset of puberty (e.g., ~12).
The situation with post-critical period language learning is a bit tricky. One possibility is that like you said, you don't have contact with any genetic predisposition and you have to learn languages via other (i.e., statistical) means. But this probably isn't what actually happens. If it were strictly a matter of performing statistical learning then individuals who have not learned a first language by puberty should be able to learn one subsequently. Evidence is clearly weak on this matter (very few people are placed in situations where they aren't exposed to a first langauge) but evidence from people who weren't exposed to language suggests that they can't do so after puberty. The case of Genie, a girl who was deprived of linguistic input until she was 14 is one of these cases. When she was rescued, intensive efforts were made to teach her to speak but she made relatively poor progress and ultimately failed to learn English to any substantial degree.
An alternative is that while you may not have contact with Universal Grammar after puberty, your language learning systems have been shaped by their earlier contact with it. This would explain why people learning their second language after puberty (and the supposed critical period) manage to learn the language while people like Genie (and deaf children born to hearing parents who aren't exposed to sign language) don't.
I would agree with Chomsky that post-critical period language learning is different. For one thing, it is massively more effortful. Infants learn language automatically, with no explicit teaching. Adults, however, require extensive training and then even don't fare so well. The variability in langauge ability is much more homogenous for children (everybody learns their language to an expert level) whereas adults have a wide range of abilities. Of course adult language learning is modulated by a billion different factors including motivation, exposure, practice, etc. but even the fact that that matters suggests the two processes are somehow different.
This won't disprove Chomsky's theories, at most it will serve as evidence that language can be learned through statistical means. The reason it won't disprove anything is because we're ultimately interested in the way that *humans* learn language. Whether or not it's possible to learn a language solely through statistical means doesn't change the fact of the matter for humans, which may or may not have a genetic endowment for learning language. It's entirely possible that it's possible in principle to learn language this way, but we do it with some priors (the universal grammar).
There have been basically two prongs of arguments in favor of the existence of a Universal Grammar in the debate. The first is that the task of learning an infinite grammar from a finite subset of sentences (and then only from positive evidence) appears to be too difficult to accomplish solely through statistical means. The second is an effort to show that language learning is biologically- rather than experience-based. This is the effort to show that there is a critical period in language development, which would suggest that there is a strong biological (i.e., genetic) component to langauge learning.
In my opinion, the first prong isn't very strong, since it relies on assumptions about statistical learning to make its claims. Their claims to me seem to stem more from a lack of imagination than from anything we can pin down as logically necessary. Shimon Edelman's work would work against this prong, showing that yes, it is possible to learn a language via statistcal means. (It would still have to be shown that the knowledge the computer possesses is qualitatively similar to that learned by humans... it may learn languages in a completely different way).
His findings wouldn't affect the second prong at all, though, which to my mind is the stronger of the two approaches. There have been lots of studies which suggest that there is a biological timecourse for language acquisition, suggesting that we do have an innate capacity for it.
So to sum up, while I find it a very exciting and important finding, I don't believe it by itself will disprove the theory of Universal Grammar.
This won't disprove Chomsky's theories, at most it will serve as evidence that language can be learned through statistical means. The reason it won't disprove anything is because we're ultimately interested in the way that *humans* learn language. Whether or not it's possible to learn a language solely through statistical means doesn't change the fact of the matter for humans, which may or may not have a genetic endowment for learning language. It's entirely possible that it's possible in principle to learn language this way, but we do it with some priors (the universal grammar).
There have been basically two prongs of the arguments in favor of the Universal Grammar debate. The first is that the task of learning an infinite grammar from a finite subset of sentences (and then only from positive evidence) appears to be too difficult to accomplish solely through statistical means. The second is an effort to show that language learning is biologically- rather than experience-based. This is the effort to show that there is a critical period in language development, which would suggest that there is a strong biological (i.e., genetic) component to langauge learning.
In my opinion, the first prong isn't very strong, since it relies on assumptions about statistical learning to make its claims. Their claims to me seem to stem more from a lack of imagination than from anything we can pin down as logically necessary. Shimon Edelman's work would work against this prong, showing that yes, it is possible to learn a language via statistcal means. (It would still have to be shown that the knowledge the computer possesses is qualitatively similar to that learned by humans... it may learn languages in a completely different way).
His findings wouldn't affect the second prong at all, though, which to my mind is the stronger of the two approaches. There have been lots of studies which suggest that there is a biological timecourse for language acquisition, suggesting that we do have an innate capacity for it.
So to sum up, while I find it a very exciting and important finding, I don't believe it will disprove the theory of Universal Grammar.
It's a good question, and I know it sounds strange, but you can't actually tell what a person is "looking" at simply by tracking their eye gaze. The reason for this is that although you can be looking at one thing, you can be attending to a completely different thing and it's this second thing that you'll actuall be processing. The phenomenon is called 'visual attention'. Normally you attend to what you're looking at but you can "covertly" shift your attention to another location/object. It's called a covert shift of attention because there are no outward manifestations such as an eyhe movement. Try looking at something, but without moving your eyes, look at another object. It's the second object that you'll really be "looking" at... you'll be much better reporting facts about the attended object than the one you actually have in the center of your visual field.
So it's because of this that it's important to understand which object people are attending to. I personally don't find this article particuarly important, but that's just me.
As a concerned American citizen who is fast losing faith in the honor of his government, I think this is a ploy, to direct the attention of world citizens, and especially US citizens away from our own flaws and toward the flaws of other countries.
And who's behind this ploy to poison the world's opinion of Iran to deflect the world's attention away from the US? Who's behind the OpenNet initiaive? Must be the US government, right? Oh wait, no, it's the University of Toronto, Harvard University, and Cambridge University (more info here). These are hardly conservative organizations and they are certainly not beholden to their governments. Sorry, there goes that conspiracy theory.
Anybody who read the article a few days ago about the new use of eminent domain can see that the US government has major problems with the way it functions.
Bzzzzt. Wrong. I don't agree with the decision either, but this hardly is evidence that the US is having problems with the way it functions. In fact this is exactly how it's supposed to function... individuals challenged a law in court, and it made its way in an orderly fashion through the hierarchy of courts until it made its way to the Supreme Court. The SCOTUS is granted the authority to interpret laws, and that's exactly what they did. This is *exactly* how the system is supposed to function. Don't like the law? Write your lawmaker, but don't complain that the system isn't working right.
Instead of anybody pointing out the US censors information also, we all hurry to jump on the band wagon to single out and bash Iran.
Are you new around here? Ever hear of YRO? Government attempts to limit freedom of speech are reported every other day here. Seems more like that as soon as someone points out how foreign governments are limiting their citizens' speech, somebody has got to deflect it back towards the US. As you say, censorship anywhere is bad. So in an article about Iran, let's discuss Iran. In an article about the US, let's discuss the US. We should discuss censorship wherever it arises.
According to the SBL: All SBL entries are backed up with evidence which has fully satisfied the Spamhaus Project team that the IP is under the control of a spammer, spam operation or a spam support service and that the IP or netblock represents an unwanted nuisance or threat to mail systems using the SBL.
Yes, they're checked, but it takes *time* to check them. If you hate blacklists, slowing them down/hindering their work is probably in your best interest.
Don't like blacklists? Start spamming them. Report spam as having come from every ISP you can imagine. Soon the RBLs won't be able to know legitimate sites from sites that actually have sent spam (moreso than at the present moment) and thus will become useless. They'll either start blocking too large a percentage of the net to be useful (people won't subscribe) or they'll have to start thoroughly investigating the claims.
What you are promoting is the tactic known in the real world as "Collective Punishment". This is the situation where retribution is meted out to anyone in the vicinity of the concerned party (innocent or not) in order to pressure that party to change. In this case, you find it acceptable that innocent users could get hurt (innocent, probably non-tech savvy users who don't know much about other ISPs or SPAM, or anything) just so that you can put pressure on ISPs to change their ways.
Now here's the fascinating part: you link to the site antiwar.com which has not 1, not 2, but 423 pages decrying the use of collective punishment.
If that's not hypocrisy, I don't know what is. Sure email's not a life and death situation, but the principle is the same in both cases. Don't like it when innocent people get their homes destroyed? You should hate it when innocent people get their IPs blacklisted.
Not that this will affect many people but for some reason in the past when I would surf to my school's WebCT page Safari would beachball right after I logged in. This seems to be fixed with the new update. Good job!
actually, it's not true that the world fades away.
An experiment was conducted where a subject's saccades (the constant eye movements) were stopped temporarily via the injection of a muscle paralyzer.
Contrary to what you said, the subject's vision became extremely jittery. This is because the brain knows where the eyes are going to move to and compensates by performing some sort of computation which "subtracts" out that movement, leaving a stable image. The impulses for the saccades were still being sent to the eyes so the brain was anticipating the movement but since none of the movements were carried out, the world became jerky because of the compensation.
Time magazine had an article in January claiming the exact opposite situation, that US laboratories and departments were the destination for thousands of European scientists. Here are two quotes:
"Some 400,000 European science and technology graduates now live in the U.S. and thousands more leave each year. A survey released in November by the European Commission found that only 13% of European science professionals working abroad currently intend to return home."
""In soccer, if you're great, another team can buy you." Science is the same, and the big buyer is the U.S.: in 2000, the U.S. spent 287 billion [euro] on research and development, 121 billion [euro] more than the E.U."
Slashdot Mirror
I'd second this recommendation. Edinburgh is a wonderful city and the uni has one of the best AI programs in Europe. While you're there, try out Scottish country dancing, scotch (of course) and -why not- courses in another major.Edinburgh is the home of David Hume and has an excellent philosophy department.
Second of all, what does it mean to "add an extra digit"? It simply means that *on average* subjects were able to recall an extra digit than before. Guess what, when you're tired you probably recall a digit or two fewer, on average.
I'm very much against Real ID for all of the reasons discussed here on Slashdot: the possibility for ID theft, the possibility for inappropriate use of personal information, the possibility of tracking our movements, etc.
But here's what's particularly egregious about this plan: nobody over 50 will have to get a Real ID for nearly 10 years! If Real ID is so unbelievably necessary to our national security, how can we allow this segment to not have an ID? Should we stop scanning older individuals at the airport because they are "less likely to be a terrorist"?
The Bush administration has repeatedly refused to comment on waterboarding because they say they do not want the terrorists to know which interrogation techniques we use. Well, DHS is telegraphing to the world what sort of security techniques we use: Pssst! We only check people less than 50!
Stupid stupid stupid! Hypocritical, hypocritical, hypocritical!
It seems really strange now to hear well-off Americans complain that learning languages is "too hard" and requires special talent, when one can plainly see that any poor and uneducated peasant does it succesfully and without complaint.
To be fair, most of the bilinguals you refer to learned their second language very early in age. There is an enormous amount of research that shows that it is much easier to acquire the syntax and phonology of a foreign language the earlier in life you begin learning it. The vast majority of Americans are not brought up in a bilingual environment and so begin learning their second language later in life, probably towards the end of the "critical period" for language, making it much more difficult to acquire. So it has nothing to do with economics and all to do with the age one begins learning another language.
I don't think CmdrTaco should talk.
The absolute majority of foreign students are not eligible for FAFSA, and hence do not even file the applications. Monitoring FAFSA hence targets the long neglected domestic trailor-trash/ghetto terror threat.
It seems perfectly reasonable to worry about homegrown terrorists. Three out of the four people involved in the July 7 bombings in London were born in the UK (1,2,3) as were many of the suspects in the transatlantic bombing plot.
Terrorists can most certainly be citizens.
OMG Google!!!
I just took a look at the site again and on this page it says that the battery in the shoe sensor isn't replaceable. That might have something to do with it. It could also be because the shoe alone will cost you $90.
Indeed, if we see a trend of certain information being edited out of articles about Republicans, it could be quite safe to assume the information that was removed is completely valid, and is being removed because it is the unfortunate truth.
It's also equally possible that someone has systematically added untrue things to a group's pages, in which case it is correct to remove the material in question. I don't see how you can just assume that since there's a pattern it means that the removed material is true.
What we have been told is that this program only applies in scenarios where one end of the communication is foreign.
That's true about how an investigation starts. But apparently once a person makes or receives an overseas phone call, the NSA then followed every person that they called, including people within the country. They then investigated those people, etc.
As the NYTimes says:
Officials who were briefed on the N.S.A. program said the agency collected much of the data passed on to the F.B.I. as tips by tracing phone numbers in the United States called by suspects overseas, and then by following the domestic numbers to other numbers called.
To me the biggest issue is not that they were doing it but that they were violating the law while doing it. The way this democracy works (as established by the founding fathers) is through transparency and balance between the executive and legislative branches. Here's a scenario: if the 72 hour retroactive warrants are too limiting, change the law to extend it to another 72 hours. The issue at stake here is not what the administration was seeking to accomplish, and the ends should not be used to justify the means. The ends are fine ends... and it would have been simple enough to change the laws to accomplish them.
Here is a very comprehensive FAQ that the WHO has published. To all those who posters who are questioning the severity of the threat: the FAQ indicates that 2 of the 3 necessary prerequisites for the flu becoming a pandemic have been met.
e nza/avian_faqs/en/index.html
http://www.who.int/entity/csr/disease/avian_influ
Let the music industry find another online music store that's willing to sell the songs at variable prices. Then that store can compete with iTMS and the market will decide which pricing scheme is better. That's the way the market will decide, not by the suppliers forcing Apple to sell the music and different prices.
What you say is entirely true, with the subtle modification that recent research has suggested that it's not quite an on-off switch, rather a general decline in ability after the onset of puberty (e.g., ~12).
The situation with post-critical period language learning is a bit tricky. One possibility is that like you said, you don't have contact with any genetic predisposition and you have to learn languages via other (i.e., statistical) means. But this probably isn't what actually happens. If it were strictly a matter of performing statistical learning then individuals who have not learned a first language by puberty should be able to learn one subsequently. Evidence is clearly weak on this matter (very few people are placed in situations where they aren't exposed to a first langauge) but evidence from people who weren't exposed to language suggests that they can't do so after puberty. The case of Genie, a girl who was deprived of linguistic input until she was 14 is one of these cases. When she was rescued, intensive efforts were made to teach her to speak but she made relatively poor progress and ultimately failed to learn English to any substantial degree.
An alternative is that while you may not have contact with Universal Grammar after puberty, your language learning systems have been shaped by their earlier contact with it. This would explain why people learning their second language after puberty (and the supposed critical period) manage to learn the language while people like Genie (and deaf children born to hearing parents who aren't exposed to sign language) don't.
I would agree with Chomsky that post-critical period language learning is different. For one thing, it is massively more effortful. Infants learn language automatically, with no explicit teaching. Adults, however, require extensive training and then even don't fare so well. The variability in langauge ability is much more homogenous for children (everybody learns their language to an expert level) whereas adults have a wide range of abilities. Of course adult language learning is modulated by a billion different factors including motivation, exposure, practice, etc. but even the fact that that matters suggests the two processes are somehow different.
good point, though.
This won't disprove Chomsky's theories, at most it will serve as evidence that language can be learned through statistical means. The reason it won't disprove anything is because we're ultimately interested in the way that *humans* learn language. Whether or not it's possible to learn a language solely through statistical means doesn't change the fact of the matter for humans, which may or may not have a genetic endowment for learning language. It's entirely possible that it's possible in principle to learn language this way, but we do it with some priors (the universal grammar).
There have been basically two prongs of arguments in favor of the existence of a Universal Grammar in the debate. The first is that the task of learning an infinite grammar from a finite subset of sentences (and then only from positive evidence) appears to be too difficult to accomplish solely through statistical means. The second is an effort to show that language learning is biologically- rather than experience-based. This is the effort to show that there is a critical period in language development, which would suggest that there is a strong biological (i.e., genetic) component to langauge learning.
In my opinion, the first prong isn't very strong, since it relies on assumptions about statistical learning to make its claims. Their claims to me seem to stem more from a lack of imagination than from anything we can pin down as logically necessary. Shimon Edelman's work would work against this prong, showing that yes, it is possible to learn a language via statistcal means. (It would still have to be shown that the knowledge the computer possesses is qualitatively similar to that learned by humans... it may learn languages in a completely different way).
His findings wouldn't affect the second prong at all, though, which to my mind is the stronger of the two approaches. There have been lots of studies which suggest that there is a biological timecourse for language acquisition, suggesting that we do have an innate capacity for it.
So to sum up, while I find it a very exciting and important finding, I don't believe it by itself will disprove the theory of Universal Grammar.
This won't disprove Chomsky's theories, at most it will serve as evidence that language can be learned through statistical means. The reason it won't disprove anything is because we're ultimately interested in the way that *humans* learn language. Whether or not it's possible to learn a language solely through statistical means doesn't change the fact of the matter for humans, which may or may not have a genetic endowment for learning language. It's entirely possible that it's possible in principle to learn language this way, but we do it with some priors (the universal grammar).
There have been basically two prongs of the arguments in favor of the Universal Grammar debate. The first is that the task of learning an infinite grammar from a finite subset of sentences (and then only from positive evidence) appears to be too difficult to accomplish solely through statistical means. The second is an effort to show that language learning is biologically- rather than experience-based. This is the effort to show that there is a critical period in language development, which would suggest that there is a strong biological (i.e., genetic) component to langauge learning.
In my opinion, the first prong isn't very strong, since it relies on assumptions about statistical learning to make its claims. Their claims to me seem to stem more from a lack of imagination than from anything we can pin down as logically necessary. Shimon Edelman's work would work against this prong, showing that yes, it is possible to learn a language via statistcal means. (It would still have to be shown that the knowledge the computer possesses is qualitatively similar to that learned by humans... it may learn languages in a completely different way).
His findings wouldn't affect the second prong at all, though, which to my mind is the stronger of the two approaches. There have been lots of studies which suggest that there is a biological timecourse for language acquisition, suggesting that we do have an innate capacity for it.
So to sum up, while I find it a very exciting and important finding, I don't believe it will disprove the theory of Universal Grammar.
It's a good question, and I know it sounds strange, but you can't actually tell what a person is "looking" at simply by tracking their eye gaze. The reason for this is that although you can be looking at one thing, you can be attending to a completely different thing and it's this second thing that you'll actuall be processing. The phenomenon is called 'visual attention'. Normally you attend to what you're looking at but you can "covertly" shift your attention to another location/object. It's called a covert shift of attention because there are no outward manifestations such as an eyhe movement. Try looking at something, but without moving your eyes, look at another object. It's the second object that you'll really be "looking" at... you'll be much better reporting facts about the attended object than the one you actually have in the center of your visual field.
So it's because of this that it's important to understand which object people are attending to. I personally don't find this article particuarly important, but that's just me.
The parent's got a great link to an actual journal article detailing the specifics of the procedure.
As a concerned American citizen who is fast losing faith in the honor of his government, I think this is a ploy, to direct the attention of world citizens, and especially US citizens away from our own flaws and toward the flaws of other countries.
And who's behind this ploy to poison the world's opinion of Iran to deflect the world's attention away from the US? Who's behind the OpenNet initiaive? Must be the US government, right? Oh wait, no, it's the University of Toronto, Harvard University, and Cambridge University (more info here). These are hardly conservative organizations and they are certainly not beholden to their governments. Sorry, there goes that conspiracy theory.
Anybody who read the article a few days ago about the new use of eminent domain can see that the US government has major problems with the way it functions.
Bzzzzt. Wrong. I don't agree with the decision either, but this hardly is evidence that the US is having problems with the way it functions. In fact this is exactly how it's supposed to function... individuals challenged a law in court, and it made its way in an orderly fashion through the hierarchy of courts until it made its way to the Supreme Court. The SCOTUS is granted the authority to interpret laws, and that's exactly what they did. This is *exactly* how the system is supposed to function. Don't like the law? Write your lawmaker, but don't complain that the system isn't working right.
Instead of anybody pointing out the US censors information also, we all hurry to jump on the band wagon to single out and bash Iran.
Are you new around here? Ever hear of YRO? Government attempts to limit freedom of speech are reported every other day here. Seems more like that as soon as someone points out how foreign governments are limiting their citizens' speech, somebody has got to deflect it back towards the US. As you say, censorship anywhere is bad. So in an article about Iran, let's discuss Iran. In an article about the US, let's discuss the US. We should discuss censorship wherever it arises.
According to the SBL:
All SBL entries are backed up with evidence which has fully satisfied the Spamhaus Project team that the IP is under the control of a spammer, spam operation or a spam support service and that the IP or netblock represents an unwanted nuisance or threat to mail systems using the SBL.
Yes, they're checked, but it takes *time* to check them. If you hate blacklists, slowing them down/hindering their work is probably in your best interest.
Don't like blacklists? Start spamming them. Report spam as having come from every ISP you can imagine. Soon the RBLs won't be able to know legitimate sites from sites that actually have sent spam (moreso than at the present moment) and thus will become useless. They'll either start blocking too large a percentage of the net to be useful (people won't subscribe) or they'll have to start thoroughly investigating the claims.
What you are promoting is the tactic known in the real world as "Collective Punishment". This is the situation where retribution is meted out to anyone in the vicinity of the concerned party (innocent or not) in order to pressure that party to change. In this case, you find it acceptable that innocent users could get hurt (innocent, probably non-tech savvy users who don't know much about other ISPs or SPAM, or anything) just so that you can put pressure on ISPs to change their ways.
Now here's the fascinating part: you link to the site antiwar.com which has not 1, not 2, but 423 pages decrying the use of collective punishment.
If that's not hypocrisy, I don't know what is. Sure email's not a life and death situation, but the principle is the same in both cases. Don't like it when innocent people get their homes destroyed? You should hate it when innocent people get their IPs blacklisted.
Not that this will affect many people but for some reason in the past when I would surf to my school's WebCT page Safari would beachball right after I logged in. This seems to be fixed with the new update. Good job!
Who's Your Daddy? ... is a colloquial phrase that gained popularity in the first years of the 21st Century.
Property:
actually, it's not true that the world fades away.
An experiment was conducted where a subject's saccades (the constant eye movements) were stopped temporarily via the injection of a muscle paralyzer.
Contrary to what you said, the subject's vision became extremely jittery. This is because the brain knows where the eyes are going to move to and compensates by performing some sort of computation which "subtracts" out that movement, leaving a stable image. The impulses for the saccades were still being sent to the eyes so the brain was anticipating the movement but since none of the movements were carried out, the world became jerky because of the compensation.
Time magazine had an article in January claiming the exact opposite situation, that US laboratories and departments were the destination for thousands of European scientists. Here are two quotes:
"Some 400,000 European science and technology graduates now live in the U.S. and thousands more leave each year. A survey released in November by the European Commission found that only 13% of European science professionals working abroad currently intend to return home."
""In soccer, if you're great, another team can buy you." Science is the same, and the big buyer is the U.S.: in 2000, the U.S. spent 287 billion [euro] on research and development, 121 billion [euro] more than the E.U."
The full article is here