I think part of that is also from a "morality hurdle" mentality. Many religious people don't want the alcohol market to be efficient in order to squelch consumption. It may not merely be old-fashioned protectionism of mom-and-pop stores.
I can imagine that explanation being plausible in a Jesus-belt state, but not Massachusetts.
T(not-so)FA attempts to equate science with Spock, and fails.
Sorry for self-replying. Hit enter too soon.
The article attempts to equate an atheistic view of science with Spock. And it still fails. I don't think atheists see science in the way the author describes.
Also, Bones was the canonical antagonist for Spock, not Kirk.
Indeed. McCoy is a scientist by trade. Kirk, is not.
Well, Spock and McCoy were both scientists. And as far as I recall, none of their conflicts were ever about science per se.
T(not-so)FA attempts to equate science with Spock, and fails.
Heck, even certain knowledge is illegal for the general public to own, let alone internalize, like plans to make nuclear bombs.
Designs for nuclear weapons are not too hard to find online. The hard part (thank God) is obtaining the materials to make one, such as enriched uranium, plutonium, deuterium and tritium.
That said, I agree it would be illegal for a member of the general public to possess classified documents of any kind, without authorization.
There's lots of cameras deployed without microphones. Also pretty sure sound doesn't make it to geosynchronous orbit strata of the atmosphere...
You're implying we could read lips from GEO. Good luck with that. Even if the Hubble Space Telescope (which is at low earth orbit, not geosynchronous) were pointed at the earth, the best resolution you could manage would be about 30 cm.
http://www.spacetelescope.org/...
https://what-if.xkcd.com/32/
In theory it might be possible to read lips at GEO, but you'd need a HUGE telescope, or smaller binocular-configured telescopes with a wide-enough baseline, to get the job done.
And nitpick: there's really no "strata of the atmosphere" at GEO. Contributions there from the Earth's atmosphere are miniscule. It's pretty much plasma and magnetosphere from a few hundred km altitude on upwards.
In the end, I suspect we'll decide that the advantages outweigh the disadvantages, and pass laws to protect people from the disadvantages. I'm not saying this will be ideal, but it will be the best we can do.
We have faced, or are facing the same issue with other technologies such as face recognition, profiling, genome sequencing, etc.
I think DirePickle was aiming his post at others besides gweihir.
BTW, somebody please mod DirePickle's post as Informative.
Typo. TFS meant Nobel goal.
You don't get to opt-out of being the subject of other people's freedom of speech.
But what if the "other people" are anonymous and unscrupulous competitors? Their freedom of speech is being exercised in bad faith.
Just sayin'.
Freedom of speech. I can say anything I want about anyone.
Within reasonable limits. There are laws that cover libel, slander, nuisance, needlessly yelling "fire" in a crowded theater, etc.
I'm allowed to have an opinion.
Absolutely 100% true. But nobody is obliged to help you express that opinion. And IANAL, but my understanding is that your ability to express an opinion can be affected by any contract you sign, including the click-through contracts these companies are foisting on their customers at the time of purchase.
BTW, I wholeheartedly support what California is doing here. What these companies are doing is unconscionable, but possibly tenable. This law closes the door on it.
Unfortunately cores this large, powerful and complex all stand excellent chances of spontaneously self-triggering SMEF (Spontaneous Massive Existence Failure).
That acronym is a fine example of Onomatopoeia.
But is that really true? GPUs have far more than 42 cores, and they don't SMEF very often, do they?
That would be almost, but not quite, entirely unlike a retro-gen GPU.
And highly improbable.
Do you really want this:
A = ones(10000, 10000, 'int8'); % 10000-by-10000 matrix each entry of which is 1, stored using the 8-bit signed integer type
B = 1; % double precision
C = A+B;
to blow C up into a 10000-by-10000 matrix of doubles, requiring eight times as much memory as A?
Obviously not. But it should be my choice as to whether precision is thrown away, not Matlab's.
What I'm saying is this (pardon my Matlab, it has been awhile):
a = int8(1);
b = 1; % double;
c = a + b; % c is type int8, not double
This was a stunner for me when I first encountered it. When you mix double and int types in Matlab, it demotes the double to an int! Same with float and int.
Of course, you must create the int explicitly as such (double is the default) but I mean, WTF Matlab??
"Protozoa are small, and bacteria are small, but viruses are smaller than the both put together."
