Nah, the wars will come when resources get short and nations go to war to control what remains. When people get hungry and cold they become very dangerous.

Its not just a matter of trusting/not trusting cops. Cops deal with lying scumbags almost as often as I deal with PHBs. So when it comes to their word against the suspect's, I'd think cops would love to have an unbiased record of each encounter to back up their story.

Worse than that, there is nothing worse than having every twitch misrepresented by a bunch of political dirtbags in the press.

Shut up and take my money!

Or, well... it "could be considered" exactly what it is: retaining an existing theory and all of its basic assumptions, while tacking on modifications or qualifiers to make it better fit the data. That's not "disproving" anything. That's improving an existing theory, and that's what the vast majority of everyday science is about. Most active scientists are working within existing paradigms and working out the details of theories by starting with all the assumed knowledge of their fields.

No actual scientist is walking around questioning every scientific "fact" on a daily basis. "Oh, you know what, I really don't believe that whole 'water is made up of hydrogen and oxygen' thing. That whole 'atomic elements build compounds' thing sounds potentially bogus and 'unproven,' so let's have my lab spend the next six months retesting that and finding out what water really is made of!"

No sane scientist thinks like that, and scientific progress would be practically impossible if we went out actually worrying about potentially falsifying everything.

Instead -- we accept much of scientific knowledge as "proven" (not in a formal logical/mathematical sense, but the normal everyday sense of "well-tested"), and we go on with our lives filling out the "edge cases" as you put it. Only if some major discrepancies arise repeatedly do we begin to wonder whether underlying assumptions may be at fault... and even then it would take a heck of a lot to overturn the idea that water is composed of oxygen and hydrogen, for example.

That is a completely and utterly BS definition of "proof" that no one EVER uses except in discussions like this. Seriously. It's not what the math or formal logic people mean by "proof," because actual math and formal logic people generally recognize that their claims are not directly relatable to the real world, let alone "any conceivable universe." Math and formal logic are abstract symbolic systems. While they may at times be very good models for talking about the real world, they do NOT have any exact correspondence with the real world.

Find me an exact "triangle," for example, in the real world. Not something that looks vaguely like a triangle -- something that fits the mathematical definition of one, with three exact points, precisely straight line segments, etc. Even if you came close, to create something that on a microscopic level still seemed to be a triangle, on the individual atomic level there would be irregularities -- and even if that were somehow "perfect," we could keep moving down until we got to the "quantum foam" level... a real EXACT triangle in the mathematical sense doesn't exist in the real world.

Does that mean all of Euclid and geometry and all the formal "proofs" are wrong or irrelevant? Of course not. But they are working with certain kinds of abstract assumptions that have no exact correspondence with the real world. They are a MODEL. So, when you try to apply that standard of "proof" to "this or any conceivable universe," you're doing something completely illogical. No one ever actually does that -- and if they claim they are doing that, they are being disingenuous. The logic of abstract models is simply that -- the logic of abstract models. Standards of proof there are simply not applicable to the real world.

Sorry, but that's just NOT TRUE. In normal, everyday English, according to Merriam-Webster, "to prove" is "to test the truth, validity, or genuineness of" or "to test the worth or quality of." Note the emphasis on the word "to TEST." In normal language (i.e., >99% of the time "prove" is actually used in English), it means to TEST something to determine how good it is. If something passes a test, it has met some sort of standard -- that doesn't necessarily mean it can never be questioned again, or we should stop thinking about the subject forever, or that it's true in "any conceivable universe." Something that is "proved" has passed some standard test for quality, or, as another definition in Merriam-Webster puts it: "to establish the existence, truth, or validity of" or "to demonstrate as having a particular quality or worth." The normal way of doing these things in the real world (as opposed to some sort of abstract formal logic exercise) is through empirical testing.

Once again -- this is NOT what the word means in real life. Say Person A claims, "I claim water will flow uphill and gravity doesn't exist." Person B says: "Prove it." Person A: "Uh... I can't. But can you PROVE that it flows downhill?" Person B: "Sure, watch. [Pours water on a slope -- it flows downhill.] See!" Person A: "Yeah, I guess you're right."

That's what "proof" actually means in English when referring to the real world, including empirical science. You subject a claim to a test, and you take the results of the test as some sort of "proof." Depending on the quality of the test, you may draw various conclusions about the quality of "proof" obtained -- in cases where the truth is really important, you may insist on more tests or more rigorous ones, or, as we say in English, "a higher standard of proof." See -- proof has degrees depending on the kind of tests you use and the standards that are upheld by those tests. It's why in a courtroom we can have a standard that says "proof beyond a reasonable doubt." If "proof" only meant what you think it means, then such a definition would be redundant and misleading -- if "proof" means something is true in "any conceivable universe" for all time, then what would it possibly mean to be "proving beyond a reasonable doubt"? What would that qualifier add? Well, obviously it sets the standard for the test -- a "reasonable person" [legal term] would have no doubt of the guilt in that situation.

There's a difference between being "pedantic" and being WRONG. Let's subject your hypothesis about the use of the word "proof" to some empirical testing, shall we?

You claim that actual expert empirical scientists don't use the word "proof" in this loose way -- that they always mean this very abstract version of formal logic "proof" where something would be true in "any conceivable universe."

Well, let's look at the abstract of TFA, linked to in TFS. What do we see?

Not only does this scientific abstract include the word "proving" regarding previous research, but they characterize their own research in TFA as "demonstrating" that something "IS generated" -- that's language of formal logic or math proofs (e.g., "quod erat demonstratum"). They didn't say they were "theorizing" what something "might be" or that something merely "provided some evidence" of what "could be." They said that previous scientists had evidence "proving" something, now they had "demonstrated" what something truly "is."

So, let's see, I could either believe some random guy's definition of "proof" on Slashdot that never seems to apply to the real world. OR, I could look at the actual empirical usage of the term "proof" by actual leading scientists, which has been published in one of the top journals of the entire scientific field, with language that has been peer-reviewed and checked by editors of the highest scientific caliber.

Well, my empirical evidence suggests your definition of "proof" is wrong. QED. :)

Editors can't spell (or read), that gross poop eating guy, Time Cube guy, Cowboy Neil, dupes.

I'm sure there's plenty more.

I, for one, welcome our new meme-studying overlords.

I started on RedHat, because it was the major distro at the time. Then because of the controversial RHEL/Fedora split, I switched to Slackware. The RHEL/Fedora split was a non-issue, but once I tried Slackware, I realized it was so much better, I never went back to Redhat.

My friend went to Gentoo around the same time. He never wanted to go back to Redhat either, for similar reasons.

Smoke signals.

SCART was more common in other parts of the world

What other parts? Where are you from? If you include a relative reference, at least mention what it's relative TO. You know, the internet is worldwide, FFS.

THIS. By GP's standard, >99% of the uses of the word "proof" in the English language are invalid. Almost all uses of the word "proof" in thousands of legal statutes around the world are bogus and meaningless.

And, empirically, from looking at actual scientific methods as practiced, it's clear that scientists clearly do NOT treat all scientific theories as equally "falsifiable." Some are treated as "proven," if not in a strict mathematical-philosophical sense. It would take a LOT more to overturn a basic established law of physics than some off-the-cuff guess ("hypothesis") in a new experiment. So what exactly is it that we are doing when we verify and reverify and reverify a basic well-established tenet of basic science over centuries if not, in essence, proving "proof" of it (in any reasonable sense of the English word outside of the strange world of pure math and logic puzzles).

Meh. This is one of those language battles that is probably lost. We still refer to "films" too even when most are no longer watched on actual film stock (and many are increasingly shot and produced without film either).

There are lots of words like this. When's the last time you "dialed" a phone with an actual dial? For me, I'd say almost 20 years ago. When's the last time you "hung up" a phone, i.e., literally hung it up on the wall (not "put it down" on a tabletop phone), with the force of gravity pulling the little cradle down to cut the line? I'd say maybe 25 years or more for me, and that was only on my grandmother's old dial wall phone that was probably at least 20 years old.

So, I think we may be stuck with "tape" as a synonym for "record," probably for decades to come.

Wow. Such idocy rules the neo-cons/tea* today.
The reason for the COMMUNICATION is to have a single standard in which all cars talk and can tell each other that they are slowing down/speeding up. It does not mean that all will have sensors, etc. It will simply mean that they have the ability to talk.

This has NOTHING to do with Obama. This has to do with a bit of intelligence in the DOT. As to the back-up cameras, they really do NOT offer up much value. VERY FEW accidents involve a driver backing up and hitting cars/kids. So, I understand why the DOT is hedging on that, but wanting a common interface for all cars to communicate. If nothing else, look at what issues have shown up with electrical cars and simply getting a charge.

Do yourself a favor and quit sitting at the kock brothers zipper. .

I know you're an AC, but it's really shocking to see something this ignorant. NOT A SINGLE REPUBLICAN voted for the ACA, not in the House, not in the Senate. I'm willing to blame Republicans for a lot of things, but this bill was the way it was solely to get support from Dems, and that's ALL it got. How and bill designed by Dems and only voted for by Dems (including the guy who signed it into law) somehow has problems that are solely the fault of Republicans is very confusing... even by AC logic.

Probably not, because when people riot they aren't looking for or likely to believe evidence.
Cops would have to release the entire video to the media, and the lawyers wouldn't let that happen.
The lawyers would still fuck this up.

he camera itself might be a tiny, tiny fraction of the salary of a cop, but it would still require a massive database and supporting infrastructure to run/maintain the entire implementation. Nor would it change the fact that people would still bring (founded and unfounded) lawsuits against the police.

Don't be ridiculous
We already bear massive costs of litigation and document storage.
This saves money two ways, Cops know they are being watched, and criminals can't make bogus claims.
The cost for several years of operation would be offset by the absence of ONE riot or bogus lawsuit.

The whole thing can be automated.
You come in from your shift, put your cam in bin, it gets copied to bulk storage.
Key in your badge number, (maybe RFID) and machine dispenses an empty camera every morning.

(Hint: storage is dirt cheap the backup/storage/indexing etc deletion can be entirely automated. )

If all you did was patrol and never had a single arrest or confrontation it gets purged in 90 days.
Every day, there better be video on the camera, or Internal Affairs is going to want to know why.

By the way: for every ridiculous example you cite there are 33,000 arrests every day that are not convoluted contrived cases. And even in the situation you describe the police video would not be enough to convict anyone. Saying you should not have evidence because you can contrive a situation where it might not be the whole store is tantamount to shutting down all scientific research world wide. You, sir, are an idiot.