Mafio

Interesting. But I am not sure if I understand the implication correctly... Are you suggesting that the difference between your calculation and the measurement is caused by the Higgs field itself? Then, can you calculate this difference the other way around (I mean starting from the expectation)?

I don't think that you have to be gifted (IQ > 130) to get this, and this is what Einstein probably meant with the 2%. Solving the riddle can be done by a simple algorithm which means that basically everyone can do it. Just look what fits, write it down, repeat. In my solution, there was only one step where I had to think 3 steps further to get it, but even that can be done by simple try and error in less than 25 min. In addition to ydoaPs's solution:

And even if there is the smallest chance that something like that exists, I bet that it will be very hard to use it. I guess the area of application you mean is preventing inertia or similar, but that requires not only the control over the gravity but also an information transport which has to be faster that light. If you want to "activate" the anti-gravity before the real gravity effect takes place, to have to do that without a millisecond of delay, because otherwise you might end up as a fly at your rear window

Hello guys, I am looking for a console program or a Software Development Kit to do the following: I want to make a program (Java or C++) which fetches document scans from my scanner and then optimizes and crops them and runs a OCR (optical character recognition). The 1st thing I want is to get a searchable pdf file and a text file I can send to my database. The 2nd challenge is to analyze the file and categorize it in categories like invoice, receipt, letter... I can do that by barcode recognition or by interpreting the size (or anything similar). And then I want to run specified tasks like: If this is document type C look at the left bottom corner and find the [] [] [] and use handwriting recognition to output the 3 letters which were written in the []'s. I already solved the 1st task with "unpaper", "ImageMagick", "hocr2pdf" and tesseract for the OCR but the results were... lets say sophisticated... I tried the same operation with tools like Adobe Acrobat X Pro and the results where so much better! So I realized that tesseract would not do the trick and I searched for alternatives. I can't use Adobe from commandline but there are tools like ABBYY for Linux which seem appropriate for the problem. But unfortunately the Linux Version of ABBYY was not made for the 2nd thing, and when I have to pay like 140$ for a software, I want it do all I want and not only a part of it. So I searched and searched and I found these interesting SDK's like the OmniPage Capture SDK or also ABBYY's SDK... It seems like they are fitting my needs but there is one problem. I don't have 5,000$ for THAT! I am not planing to sell this software or to scan thousand of papers. I just want to have a little bit fun with my accounting and I want to simplify some regular tasks... Any ideas for a program or a sdk that could help me here? <h1></h1>

@Appolinaria, thanks for pointing out the facts. It helps a lot when you are questioned faster than you can type Nice try but not what I mean. Of course you can consider human babies differently than cows because they are obviously not the same when you look at their abilities, or at they human-likeliness. But you are suggesting that there is a key difference of a fundamental difference that makes killing the one right while not the other one, and that kind of difference I have never proposed. Yes, you can do whatever you want. But don't say that would be ethical! In the category sentient. That means you can see that there are sentient creatures which are more human-like than others. This has nothing to do with the comparison between humans and animals. Its not like "Ho, ho,... Humans are more human-like" -.- Maybe you get a better understanding of this concept when you make a differences between existential fundamental differences, and the "we are all animals" difference... Or maybe it is clearer when I say: Use that sentence with raising cows and then killing them as an template and then make a list from 1 to 10 where you put the word "human babies" instead of "cow" at 1, and "lettuce" at 10 (or better "plants" in general because we have learnd that there is no gradation in plants), and let 5 be cows. Than you will have a list which goes from unethical to ethical. And again: Now we are at the same point when I introduced you in the idea of making a cut at the point of ability of preventing. The maximum you can do is 9 and then there are only plants to eat left. You can not not eat them, so its okay to eat them. Everything I said is absolutely logical consistent. But I might have left some clarifications out... (What is maybe because I think that you know what I think when I write down what I think the way I am thinking it) Why should we do the work over and over again? I don't make a whole list of used assumptions starting with "1 is followed by 2" and "+ meas putting together" just to prove to you that 1+1 equals 2... A site that gives you at least one answer: http://www.soystache.com/plant.htm Some other random sites that might be also helpful... http://www.goveg.com http://www.veganoutreach.org http://www.vrg.org http://www.veg.org http://www.veggie123.com/ By the way: I am not one of these partially crazy peta nuts, but in some cases I can see their point

Your logic is that it is okay to raise cows to eat them because of reasons that are not connected to cows. And when you argue like that, I can replace the cow with a baby and the logic still works as good as yours (which does not work). As I said, tell me the key point what completely separates human from animal without doing it like I described above. THERE we have the POINT! This is just provable wrong. Please read my last posts and look it up, get some information and ask any world-economist or biologist you want. The human body dose not require animal protein. It is a fact that we can run at 100 % of health, ability and anything else WITHOUT meat consuming. That is nothing which is uncertain or not doubted, this is fact. And we could solve all starving problems just by not panting for animals but plating for humans.

Apart from the fact that we could use the pasture to plant rye, animals don't consume all the stuff we couldn't. Just the first quotation I've found while searching: "According to a recent report by Compassion in World Framing, "[c]rops that could be used to feed the hungry are instead being used to fatten animals raised for food." It takes up to 10 pounds of grain to produce just 1 pound of edible animal flesh.". Feel free to inform yourself

Okay, absolutely the second one. But lets expand your view. Is it more ethical to eat wild animals, or self-made animals, OR not to eat animals and instead make food that could supply everyone? As I said, if we would stop feeding animals (to make food out of them) with feed that we could consume, we would have enough to erase all starvation. We are not herbivores, we are omnivores, but that does not mean we have to eat everything, that means we can decide what we eat. The allegation we could not eat meal is as false as the allegation we could not not eat meal.

Since we are all reasonable critical thinking individuals I am sure that no one is going to quote from the bible to explain why humans are not cows. That is the base for this discussion So, I say that humans are just animals. Animals with some very developed abilities and with some abilities which are not the top of the evolution. Humans are just some a bit advanced animals, and that is way I am equating them at least a little. Or can you give me a provable or falsifiable argument why humans differ in a key aspect from animals? Provable means no statements like "because animals have no awareness", falsifiable means no statements like "God wants us to rule over animals" (as said above). I would be happy to get that kind of argument and I would like it very much if I could justify killing with it, because it would make my life simpler, but I don't think that there is such an argument.

No, no, no. I am not suggestion that this could lead to other things, because that is an stupid argument which I am facing very often in other discussions... No, I want to say, that there is ethically no difference and I wanted to show that by giving a situation in which the exact same ethic would lead to something which we both consider wrong. And thats the case here. When you say that it is okay to "kill [cows] humanely when [You] need them for food" BECAUSE you "raised them, treated them well and feed and watered them" it is a logic which dose not differ from the killing babies when you feed them and want them to eat. That might be not your intention but that is the logical conclusion, so if you want to give a valid argument, you have to say it in another way, but then (I guess) you can't say it anymore because it is just not right. You make the same mistake here: By this logic it would be possible (((would be possible !!! I am not saying that would be your intense))) to reestablish slavery because we can make the black men more docile and when we water him he could work for us. This is obviously just wrong and stupid, but it is in fact based on the same logic. Sorry.

Your idea is simple utilitarianism. You give the being-alive of a cow a value, the being-alive of a human a value, the eating-a-cow a value and then you calculate and propose that an alive cow and an alive human but without the fun of eating-a-cow are at an higher value than human-living + eating-a-cow-fun. I am not a fan of utilitarianism but its quite useful in some cases. But as zapatos allready pointed out: The value of "survival, calories, nutrition, value, ease, social/family, evolution, economic, gratification, and taste" is in his eyes higher than the value of a cow being alive... (If I got that right.)

It is not about eating, it is about importance and therefor value. You are sad when a friend dies, but you are not when some stranger dies. You are not happy about that sack rice that falls from your shelf but you are not even interested in th sack that falls over somewhere in china. I strongly disagree with the argument because that would mean that a human baby you create is in your control because it exist just because of you. You can not make a living thing for a reason. Personally I am not eating beef... but that is not important to this conversation. More important is the definition of action-space. By this I did not intend to mean the area in which you do stuff, but the area in which you can do stuff, or more likely the imaginary area of similarity... I know what is right and wrong, but that dose not necessarily mean I do always the right thing. I might be a just villain... But thats not the point. I (like any other human) have the ability to act on the idea of a law (as Kant would say it). This means we can have principles... I try to do what I consider as right. In an ideal world that would be absolutely that what I consider as ethical right. But in this world I can not always _want_ to act like this. Sometimes my wish to go to place B is stronger than my wish to act like I want. In that ideal world, every car would have this thing so I could act like I want and also get what I want. But until then, it might be better to kill bugs if I see no chances of getting to B without killing them... Survival does not require killing animals which would not kill you. Calories can be consumed much better when we would use all the food directly instead of feeding pigs with it and then eating them. By the way, the ration would be 1 to 7 (one meet calorie for seven corn calories). Same argument applies to nutrition. Value is not an argument, and ease is just an argument for the society as it is right now. But this is like saying okay to the nazi regime because it is more easy while discussing with a nazi. That is not an ethical consideration What do you mean with evolution? It is evolutionary better to have the ability to eat everything. That is right, but you would not lose the ability be not doing it. That means until it is proven for many generations that you don't need it. Economic is a real bad argument, because - as I pointed out - you can more economically provide food for humanity when you do it with corn and not with "revised" corn. And economy is supposed to economize, isn't it? And if you mean gratification as in having fun killing, you probably mean it like it tastes good... and this is just the same as the taste So... I am still sure that there is NO ethical argument for eating meet, and I am sure, that an ethical discussion requires ethical arguments and nothing else... You can say that it might be good for the society to keep eating meet (which is wrong because of the starvation which is caused by the food which is given to animals and not humans), but you can not say that it is ethical correct... Nope, I am not saying that sentience is the key. I am saying that human-similarity is the key and our goal should be to kill as less as possible and in that order of human-similarity. And this order goes like this: Human, Ape, Monkey, Pig... Plants. You can order the category sensitive but please don't tell me that a banana is more human-like than an apple. So there are very many + 1 category. And following the aim to kill as less as possible I make the only logical cute right between ant (or somethings like that) and Plants in general.

And, your questions which were not explained by correcting b and c: 1 That is in fact an ethical problem, because you could have a life without driving but bug can not live at your windshield. The ethics I concluded would dictate that it is not correct to drive. But as I explained I am not always acting fully ethical because I am also an egoist human. I would like to see car constructors building some kind of air layer hovering over the windshield (even if you think thats ) but until they do it, I keep killing bugs because I can not reach my goals (for example going from A to B) by respecting their life. This is cruel and I don't really want it, but as I said, as an egoistic human I value some of my goals higher than the life of some bugs, and I can share the guild of killing them with the constructor and the society who supports them... 2 Lettuce because i have to, and mosquitos only if it is not optional. Otherwise I normally let them alive. ... 3 I think I can kill for survive (never tested it ) but normally I would not kill for life quality. Because what quality dose life have if you don't respect the life's quality of others? 4 The justification is just having a choice. Can you not kill bacteria or plants? No. Can you not kill animals and people... indeed. 5 Its okay to "kill" non-sentient beings, but that is just because it fits so nicely in my grey line ^^ When you list beings up in a row from human-like to non-human-like you can make some differences in the category sentient but it is quite hard to make differences in the category non-sentient. So... I have my line just there between the two categories

Okay, that is not exactly my logic because it is not logical. a. Yes, absolutely. You can do only things you have the power to do, and by definition you have the ability to behave ethically, therefor the right thing to do is the best thing you can do... b. Nope, that would be crazy. I say objective ethics means accepting that own wishes are not more important than other wishes because the owner wishes the own wishes. That is a theoretically assumption which is necessary to call the ethics objective. A wish by itself has a certain value, and it is not surprising that I might value my wishes higher than the wish of the cow. But this is not because it is my wish, it is because I consider it as more valuable. That might be a bit difficult to understand (which is not simplified by my English-skills), but let me try it this way: I am a human and therefor I am an egoist. This is reality. Ethic is an ideal, but it is made by humans which normally don't act perfectly. I would not set my believes at the same value as the believes of the cow, but objectively I should do that. Only by this I can objectively evaluate which interest is the most valuable. And the interest of providing the humanity with knowledge might be a better one than running down that hill and making many little cows... c. It is not always okay, but I would do it mostly. Killing for survival is just natural and when my life would be in danger I would do everything to get it out there. The one thing that could make it not okay would be a reaction of your defense which would lead to more dying. For example the Mafia wants to kill you, but you kill the ones that try to kill you, and you know that they are going to kill your whole family now. ... But in this situation many persons would still defend themselves just because of there survival instinct... d. Yes... And when you combine this with a. you got most of the idea. Why? I am not sure I get it... I ask why you eat meat. And I guessed or to be honest presumed that the answer would be because it tastes (which is the usual answer). So the conclusion is that value(life) equals value(taste) which is untrue by default. To argue in any other way I guess I need another answer from you. So, ... why do you eat meat? Okay, than it was what I first thought and what I now think I have done. Not exactly: You can say it, which means you can draw the line by this statement where you want. But I'd like to remind you on this important scentance which is the key to the whole argumentation: This draws the line pretty well, because you can stop eating meat, but you can not stop eating everything else at the same time!

That is a good point of course, and I have to admit that the usage of the exact word "lettuce" was not as useful as rhetorically intended. I obviously mean non-human-like things (to not say not-living things...). But nevertheless where to make the line is a good question. To make a line we have to accept some facts: 1. There must be a line. 2. Animals must be rather inside than plants. Okay... maybe that are not facts, but hypothesis I want to prove now: 1: There must be a line because saying there is no line means you can kill everything (including humans which definitely would not be useful), or you must not kill anything (which would lead to starvation). So there must be a line drawn in the gray area, yes, but in science it is quite hard to do such thing because it is not 1 or 0... So I say 2. 2: Including animals because they are more human-like than pants seems random, but is in fact natural. We are more concerned about our family than some stranger. We are more interested in the wellbeing of our local comrades than the comrades of the comrades of the comrade. By this logic it means things that are more like us and more in our action-space are more important than others. We have a well defined ranking by this, which might be not perfect, but useful for this. And of course a dog has measurable more in common with us than a banana. So... We should (theoretically) do as much as we can to kill as little as possible to do the best ethical possible. Doing the ethically best thing that is possible means doing the absolute right thing, because something I can not do can not be a lack of ethical behavior just because I can not behave otherwise. This is abstracting our problem to one simple question: What can we do? Stopping factory farming is a good answer, but stopping eating meat at all is a bit better. Stopping eating at all is however stupid and not any kind of answer, because on long time, you can not do it. Sorry, is there any way to just work with the source? Because this wysiwyg editor which accepts BB-Code and on-screen-formations is making me crazy

Of curse the hawk is not acting unethically, but that is because he has no choice. The biological system of the hawk is not able to function without killing, but that is just another state of development. Evolution treads a group in which the members are not killing each other better then a grope in which they are. I use this consideration to determine, that this kind of group is at a higher point of evolution, because it is just logical. This is of course only applying to group-selection and not for individuals. In fact, individuals or particular one specie is in general advanced by the ability to eat others, and since it is very unlikely that we get threaten by any other specie in the near future, it is obviously not affecting us how we tread other creatures. But that dose not make it ethically correct. I am not saying that the ability to not do something and the ability to question something should automatically lead not doing the questioned, but in this case I think I dose. Objectively my wishes, hopes, interests are not more important and anyone else's just because they are mine. Maybe they are in reality because I am fighting for them and I am giving a damn about other people; but in the ethic theory they can not be considered as more important. Obviously you can connect the importance to the ability of the wisher, so you could say a human who wants to live is more important than an animal because the human can do more things, is a greater support for the society or anything else. But I don't want to discuss that, because the difference between human and animal has become so small since Darwin and therefor we should use this assessment only in individual situations and not in general. You are right when you say, that killing is not inherently unethical, but killing animals for eating them when it would be much easier not to do (1) means that you say, that the life of an animal is just as valuable as the taste sensation you are getting from it which lasts just minutes. And this equation is, as far as I concluded correctly, indefensible. That is just the point. Which of them you have a choice? You can't stop killing bacteria. You can't stop killing lettuce while you want to survive. You probably could stop killing mosquitoes although you might consider your life without scratching as more important that the life of a mosquito. But you can absolutely stop killing cows by just eating something else. Which leads me to "You'll have to prove that point."... When you (also) mean that I have to prove that we don't need meat to be absolutely functionally I want to encourage you to check out google for more information on this topic. I am not a biologist nor a medic, but you will find many of these who say that the human does not require it to be absolute healthy. I would say 'Challenge accepted.' but since I have absolutely no intention to convert anyone to be a vegetarian or anything else, I think that might be inappropriate. But of course I will give you as many arguments as you want to hear

I want to join this discussion by proposing the hypothesis that there is no ethical argument for eating a animal at all. I like to see it this way: An alien species occupies the world and slaves mankind. They let us work and kill us to eat us. We scream and try to resist and fight back, but there are so overpowered that we don't have any chances. So we ask them completely outraged "How can you do that to us? Don't you see that we are sentient beings? Why are you slaving us and killing our children?" And then the aliens relay that it is just logical for them to do that because there are so much smarter, and better, and valuable. They claim that they are not killing the children because they are evil but young humans just taste so well! Of curse, from this perspective we can say, that the extraterrestrials don't behave ethically. But that is just the same perspective like a chicken could have about our behavior. zapatos would probably argue, that our perspective it the one which counts, because we can make it count: I would like to answer this by the reference to the philosopher Peter Singer who said that it is an important step of development to accept that an interest is objectively not more important just because it is my interest. In practice I guess I would not agree with him, because I am so extremely more important than some random stranger (at least for myself ), but in this case we are talking about ethics. And when we talk about ethics, our goal must be to identify what is right and what is wrong in general. The problem is just that we are now so developed that we have the ability to chose not to eat meat. We don't need biological and we don't need it logistically because we get everything we want. With this ability comes at least the responsibility to reconsider our doing! PMzapatos, you have made the step to say that we have the ability to tread animals better and we can sympathize with them, so we should use that ability. But can you think one step further? From not being cruel to not being deadly? At the end, I have to thank Phi for All for his comment "I think anyone who loves to eat beef thinks cows are worth something." which is still making me laugh. P.S.: Please don't be offended if I used some words that might be offend you I am not a native speaker and I tend to combine words unintentionally that might be considered as aggressive even if I didn't mean it this way.

I don't know if this technology is already so developed that you get these colored and smooth objects from it like in the video, but if you are interested in real 3D printer I would suggest you to google for RepRap. Its a 3D printer which can be build for the most part by another RepRap. It is almost a self-replicating machine

The problem of "cult religions" like you call them or sects as I would call them is, that they are not just stupid believers who could not harm anyone, but they can be really dangerous. The Jehovah's Witnesses, so far I've heard, are a real dangerous problem because they are looking so peaceful and innocent that you would never guess that they are systematically abusing children, brainwashing people and making money from it. I don't want to offend anyone here, and my point of view is very tied to the the the Jehovah's Witnesses at my country and the ones I've made, so I can't say it in general; but, I would take Mikes problem very serious and I would suggest you, that you get in contact with some kind of sect commissioner in your region and he/she will hopefully guide you to some special psychologists who know how to handle that. Because this is nothing you can handle alone, and this is also nothing which goes under freedom of religion or anything else.

I was wondering how long mankind could survive if we would establish a rule like "You are not allowed to give your child a name that is already been taken". To calculate this I need the number of births each day and the names which are already assigned (or rather the number of words that exist). This is quite easy to get, but the real problem is the measurement of the existing letter combinations which are pronounceable and therefore usable as names. So I need to write a little program that checks all combinations of letters from 2 to "supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" of their pronounceability... But this pronounceability-check depends on rules I don't know. And thats were you come in, dear reader. Are there any kinds of rules that determine weather I (or any other human) can pronounce a word? Let's start with English and then we might find rules for other languages...