Yep. Then we can use the vast power we generate from atomic vibrations to reheat the planet we've just cooled to 4 Kelvin. But the beauty of it is that when we cool the planet down like that, the gorillas simply freeze to death!
But randomness (á la quantum theory) doesn't actually get us closer to the classical concept of free will than pure determinism. In the latter case, you've got your behavior determined by particle interactions and precision mathematics.
In the former, you've got your behavior determined by particle interactions and dice rolls.
I doubt the necessity for individual variance. It may be a factor to consider as one of the rules of setup (each unit can vary X amount from the norm in dimension Y), but I don't think you need it. For example, the ant colony behavior (as described in TFA) doesn't require individual variance. Variance comes from the environment with which the ants interact.
Alternatively, you can replace individual variance with pure randomness - that is, individuals may react to the same stimulus differently, but only according to a probability distribution across the population. So each ant might have a 30% chance of reacting in a given way to a given stimulus - making them all invariant with respect to each other - but introduce the stimulus, and 30% of the population will react that way, while 70% will not (supposing an adequate population size).
I don't see an inherent advantage to actual individual variance as compared to probability distributions.
Then again, from a retrospective point of view, the two may be indistinguishable.
Of course, it may be the case that "intelligence" is the result of an optimization
At the risk of falling into the trap of excessive reductionism (rather, falling into it again, as a sibling post to yours pointed out), that's exactly what I was getting at. One point of view would be to look at human intelligence as an optimization from the point of view of DNA reproducing.
As far as not being able to demonstrate intelligence goes, I would be more amenable to the idea that we can't prove/disprove/adequately analyze the nature of our own intelligence as a result of trying to use the subject as the intrument to study the subject. It's possible that it's more fundamentally inscrutable than that, but my inclination is to think that we're limited in our self study by being ourselves.
Absolutely. I didn't mean to be diminutive of what intelligence clearly is - "nothing but" was (in retrospect, obviously) a bad choice of words. I couldn't agree more that intelligence, whatever its provenance, is real; in much the same fashion, regardless of whether we can identify what gives rise to swarm behavior, the fact remains that the swarm acts more intelligently than the sum of its parts.
I also apologize for falling prey to recognizing no difference between description and explanation - especially since it's a pet peeve of mine.
In any event, I wasn't trying to make broad claims about the value or lack thereof of intelligence, or denying its reality. Just pondering out loud about the underlying principles/causes/systems that give rise to it.
Well, I am the grandparent, so odds are good I'm talking about Wolfram.;)
In any event - I plead ignorance on the matter. I'm not familiar enough with what Wolfram believes (aside from the general idea of emergent behaviors from simple rules) to know if I'm agreeing with him or not.
OTOH, I've really given too much thought to what was originally a joke so...forgive me for being a humorless curmudgeon.
Re:I kinda doubt it
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Explosives Camp
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Google the "four-year war at gombe" (or variations thereof), it should give you information on the most famous example of this behavior.
To sum up, Jane Goodall observed what can most readily be described as a war between groups of chimpanzees at Gombe. IIRC, a particular group of chimps crossed the threshhold into "too large," and so broke up into two tribes, one of which went to a different area (this is normal chimpanzee behavior). The new area, however, was less fruitful than the old area. The new tribe returned to the old land, and attacked the original tribe. Over four years ('74-'77, I believe), the violence continued: notably, well past when the "objective" had been achieved. The tribe went ahead to try and exterminate their rivals, even after they posed no real threat.
Goodall's work has been criticized since the event by other researchers who haven't observed the same level of aggression. But the chief criticism has been that the environment she created (setting up feeding stations to attract chimpanzees) created a situation where the new territory was inferior to the original by a larger degree than would be found in nature. The argument goes that this caused an unnatural pressure on the new tribe, which then exhibited behavior that is not found in other studies.
From my (amateur, at best) point of view, however, that argument rings a bit hollow. It may well be the cause of this particular conflict, but regardless, it shows that the potential for the conflict is there. Were those conditions to arise in nature (say, because one group introduced farming or ranching), then we would expect to see the same result (war), which is borne out by human history (insofar, at least, as human history can be paralleled to other primate behaviors).
Regarding your point a couple posts back about the appearance of shaman-led armies with the introduction of ranged weapons, I might propose an alternative explanation. With hand weapons, war is a very individual affair, and much less amenable to central direction. With the introduction of ranged weapons, the ease of central control as well as the advantages of it (massed fire) may well have led to the rise of central leaders.
I can't back that up, mind you, but it's an alternative theory I'd like to see explored before coming to a conclusion based on that piece of evidence.
Just because he's a bit of a kook doesn't mean that everything he says is wrong.
(That said, I haven't actually bothered to read ANKoS, so maybe I'd distance myself from the idea if I had)
But, really - if the search for a theory of everything isn't an expression of the belief that the universe can be distilled down to (comparatively, at least) simple rules, I don't know what would be.
It's not mentioned, but it seems an obvious sort of question to ask given the content they've got: is there anything to "real" (by which I mean, individual) intelligence other than swarm behavior at the neuron level? In fact, is the entire biology of any given animal (ourselves, obviously, included) anything more than swarm behavior at the cellular level? Or, if we accept the idea that cells are just a reproductive mechanism for DNA, is it just swarm behavior at the molecular level?
Which would have a fascination all its own, since I don't think anyone's ever argued that DNA has anything we'd call intelligence. If all of life arises out of swarm behavior at the molecular level, we've managed to take intelligence completely out of the equation.
Which, in turn, just makes this another facet of the belief that the entire universe is an emergent phenomenon of a vast set of simple items following simple rules.
The truly intriguing observation (from my point of view, anyway), though, is that this emergent phenomenon contains examples of exactly the same mechanism at so many levels of complexity. It wouldn't necessarily have to be true that simple interactions at the fundamental particle level would give rise to higher-order behaviors that can be macroscopically described as simple interactions at that higher level. It's the fractal nature of the mechanism that is most intriguing, I think.
and the time symmetry of the laws of physics -- that is, the fact that the laws of physics should be the same today as they will be tomorrow
Huh?
I could be way off on this, but...I always understood time symmetry to mean that laws of physics obedient to time symmetry are invariant relative to the direction of the arrow of time. Which, unless I'm missing a logical step (and I could be), is an entirely different proposition from them being unchanged across a given period of time.
Of course, the corollary to that is if the minimum set of laws that are provided aren't to your liking, there's proportionally less you can do about it. Which is the argument for the strongest governance being at the smallest level. If your city council screws you on whether you're allowed to put solar panels on your roof or a windmill in your back yard (because they're eyesores), you can directly agitate for rule change and represent an almost-significant number of votes. Failing that, you can move outside city limits, which will involve the turmoil of moving, but you can most likely keep the same job, the same social network, and the same pastimes.
If your county board screws you on whether you're allowed to put solar panels on your roof or a windmill in your back yard (because of zoning), you can try to run for office, or you can try to drum up a couple thousand other voters to lobby for change. Failing that, you can move outside the county. This will involve the turmoil of moving, it may be impractical to keep the same job, you can probably maintain largely the same social network and the same pastimes.
If your state legislature screws you on whether you're allowed to put solar panels on your roof or a windmill in your back yard (because the Dept. of Natural Resources is concerned it will ruin bird habitats), you can work to drum up a couple dozen thousand other voters to lobby for change. Failing that, you can move outside the state. Now you're moving, getting a new job, new friends, and a new pastime.
If the fed.gov screws you on whether you're allowed to put solar panels on your roof or a windmill in your back yard (because the National Coalition Of Power Companies lobbied to make it illegal), you can work to drum up a few million other voters to lobby for change. Failing that, you can move to Canada, where you won't have a job, your friends will speak French, and you'll have to take up hockey. (To Canadians: I kid, of course)
Besides, while it might be true that getting the asshat majority is easier with smaller voting populations, it's also true that it's much, much cheaper for lobbying groups to work at the federal level than it is for them to work at all the local levels. So you're far more likely to see a gross distortion of the "will of the people" in favor of the "will of the industry groups."
I suspect Wikipedia may not be the definitive source in this instance.;)
In any event, you may well be right about 5.5 hour tapes (though I don't recall them), but I still think Sony never recovered from the initial difference in (temporal) tape lengths. By the time you get to five hours or six, it's a fairly small set of television that will be supported by one but not the other.
Well, you're right in the broad strokes, but wrong in the details.
Even at the end of its life cycle, Beta tapes were 5 hours at slowest recording speed (Beta III). This is almost certainly less important to the eventual death of the format than the original tape length which was one hour, when RCA provided a four hour VHS tape. X2 recording got Beta up to two hours, but four hours vs. two hours is the difference between recording an American baseball/football game and not, or between recording a long movie and not.
Arguably more important than both, of course, was the more-open nature of the VHS format - which you alluded to with your price/performance comment.
Your idea boils down to making the computer no longer a general-purpose device. This, obviously, defeats the purpose of having a computer in the first place.
An awful lot of modern malware doesn't comprise "viruses" in the classical sense, it comprises trojans. The only way to absolutely prevent a trojan from running is by preventing the user from running arbitrary software. This may fly in a corporate environment, but never for home use.
Basically, it comes down to either being vulnerable to malware, or not letting the computer do what the user tells it to.
(The latter, of course, being the driving force behind so-called "trusted computing"...which is pretty much exactly what you're advocating)
The difference between his post and yours that I responded to is that he provided explanation and backing for his claims - which weren't bold indictments of the entire banking industry to begin with.
You completely fail to acknowledge that are lower-cost alternatives. Which suggest you have no experience, much less given the topic any thought.
Irrelevant. Unless you can propose a no cost alternative, consumers will bear the cost. Which is what you started complaining about.
Poke fun at the joker who's talking about you know nothing about. It's easy right? Most of all it's fun.
More like poke fun at the joker who makes a bold claim with no explanation of what he means, much less a justification for why it's pertinent or applicable. Which he still hasn't done.
This is also an interesting high horse for the guy who was awaiting all the "ignorant" posts to make.
Please examine micro-payments and currency implementations and get back to me when you have some experience in the industry.
In light of your previous comment, I should point out you know nothing about what I do or don't know about currency. Even assuming you're right, and I either know nothing about it or know all the wrong things, making obscure statements that only those with an intimate knowledge of the industry can understand is inherently pointless: questioning your statement indicates the reader doesn't understand the industry. The corollary to which is that anyone who understands the industry agrees with your statement.
So, since it can't be understood by anyone who doesn't already agree, why bother?
The currency system costs less than letting private industry do it. There. No buzz words and totally accurate.
That's another fascinating, and completely unsubstantiated, assertion. Being the private industry fan that I am, it's even a statement I'm predilected towards agreeing with. But you still haven't provided any argument - much less evidence - for such an assertion. In the spirit of the thing, then, I counter your assertion:
The currency system guarantees wealth for all participants. There. No buzz words and totally accurate.
You need to define legal tender - if you mean, specifically, a medium of exchange that anyone who accepts cash is legally required to accept as cash*, then I agree with you (because the alternative is to make your legally-mandated medium of exchange completely valueless...and effectively to make counterfeiting not a crime). However, legal tender and taxation have little to do with each other. Regardless of whether or not your transactions are consummated with US dollars, you are legally obligated to pay taxes on the value of the transaction. This is not generally enforced and not generally obeyed, of course - but that's only because such a vast majority of transactions are performed with money as the medium of exchange.
But that doesn't mean it's legal for you to help someone move in return for a 12 pack without paying taxes on your earnings. Strictly speaking, you owe either income tax or sales tax on the transaction (this could be trivially gotten around by working in terms of gifts, rather than exchange of goods, of course, but the point remains).
My point, of course, is that it is the transaction that's being taxed, not the money. Stores that accept the liberty dollar still pay taxes on the transaction. Employees who get paid by direct deposit still pay income tax, despite the fact that there's no "legal tender" involved, just an amount measured in USD units.
In that sense of private entities printing legal tender - meaning a fungible medium of exchange - they already do. As evidenced by the MMORPGs that are currently under discussion, as well as all the (pretty much DOA) efforts at some kind of electronic web-cash (I think beenz was one of them), and the aforementioned liberty dollar.
*Which is the definition of legal tender as used on US bills
Consumers already assume all costs of payment card fraud and rewards programs. Most are stupid enough to let this go too.
Uh...yes, they do. And who else should assume those costs?
No, not even should, who else can assume those costs? The credit card company? If the CC company doesn't pass on the costs of fraud to the consumer, the CC company goes out of business (note: using their profits to cover the cost doesn't work - if they still have profits left over, they can be accused of building the cost of fraud into their interest rates and fee schedules, which is passing the costs on to the consumer. The only way to satisfy not passing the costs to the consumer is to operate at zero or negative net gain).
If the government absorbs the costs of fraud, it takes that money from the taxpayer. Taxpayers fall into pretty much two groups: consumers and businesses. If the government passes the cost of fraud onto consumers, we haven't gained anything. If the government passes the cost onto business, then we're back to the business has to operate at zero or negative net gain, otherwise they can be accused of passing the cost onto consumers.
Perhaps the CC companies could outsource the risk to insurers - but then you just shift the profit problem up to the insurers, and you haven't gained anything (the CC company will pass the cost of the premiums onto the consumer, and assuming the premiums are such that the insurer makes money, the consumer is paying for more than the cost of fraud).
You could make a case for rewards programs just being scams, insofar as any consumer who benefits (net) from one is costing another consumer who isn't. I don't know that I buy into this, but I accept that there's a rational point of view there.
Complaining that consumers bear the cost of fraud is just silly, though. Of course they do, and there isn't another way to do it.
This is a play by the banks to privatize the role of the Treasury as a no-cost micro-transactions service provider.
I don't even know what this means. I admit, my intial reaction is that you sound like you're about to bust out a conspiracy theory starting with fiat money and ending with Roswell by way of fringed flags in courtrooms, the Kennedy assassination, and the Time Cube Truth...but I'd be more than happy to entertain your idea if you'd care to explain further.
I think they've finally realized a simple truth: cashiers aren't handwriting analysts. Nor would they have sufficient sample (ie, 1, from the back of the card) to perform the analysis if one happened to be so trained
Beyond which, the security measures they put on the signature line on the back of the card conspire to mean the signature is virtually impossible to see (unless you sign with a Sharpie...in which case it doesn't fit), and even if you were able to read it, sliding the card in and out of readers (esp. gas pumps) smudges out whatever you wrote there.
I've been kind of surprised lately at the number of cashiers who have checked the back of my card against the paper slip, but I have no idea what they think they're looking at, since the signature on the card is barely visible - much less easily susceptible to accurate scrutiny.
It's not a confidence in government agencies, it's a confidence in MS' ability to know on which side its bread is buttered.
That is, the GPP was talking about Vista being decertified by the FDA (and, presumably, other fed.gov agencies) due to this information sharing. My point is simply that MS isn't going to do anything to get itself booted out of any federal agency, because it would represent a major loss of income. The same goes for foreign governments, as well - MS makes a lot of money off selling the Windows flavor-of-the-week to government around the world. Losing that income stream isn't something they're going to just do.
The GPP reminds of the hoopla surrounding XP and HIPAA - how XP wasn't going to be HIPAA compliant, and it was going to drive MS out of health care and government, and blah blah blah. We all know where that went. These kinds of sweeping predictions just don't turn out to come true. At the end of the day, it always turns out to be business as usual (over the short- and mid-term).
The iPod wasn't a failure. Firewire never eliminated USB. BSD isn't dead. Apple is still in business. Linux hasn't taken over the world. Etc Etc Etc
I admit to feeling a bit obtuse for not seeing that.
But why is it presented as an http URL? Since when do we want email links that are a) unfollowable because they're obfuscated, and b) unfollowable because they're set after http:/// as lead-ins to stories?
And this is my first-ever complaint (in almost 10 years of hanging out here) about the editing on slashdot: if they're not even following the links to check they're valid, what the hell is their job? I mean, catching dupes is hard, since it presupposes you know everything that's ever been posted before. Fixing grammar/spelling is hard (to do with 100% success), because everyone makes simple mistakes. Hell, even reading the whole linked article to make sure it agrees with the submission is hard, because they get a ton of submissions. But FFS, clicking on the link to make sure it actually, you know, goes somewhere?
That's got to take less time than coming up with the dept. for the story.
WTF is up with the first link - the one that points to "http://.moc.liamg..ta..remonortsadabeht./"??
Is this some kind of new URL hashing mechanism? Should I try and decrypt this with the 0x09 key? Does the link predate the universe (thereby making it inscrutable to those within the universe)?
Or is my connection/machine/browser just horribly, horribly FUBARed?
Having worked with forensic handwriting analysts, I suspect you would be surprised. It turns out to be non-trivial to intentionally alter your handwriting so completely they can't recognize it as yours with enough confidence to have probitive value (given, of course, an adequate sample of known origin). The odds of your natural handwriting being so obscure it's impossible to validate are really very low.
Slashdot Mirror
Yep. Then we can use the vast power we generate from atomic vibrations to reheat the planet we've just cooled to 4 Kelvin. But the beauty of it is that when we cool the planet down like that, the gorillas simply freeze to death!
But randomness (á la quantum theory) doesn't actually get us closer to the classical concept of free will than pure determinism. In the latter case, you've got your behavior determined by particle interactions and precision mathematics.
In the former, you've got your behavior determined by particle interactions and dice rolls.
Neither is "free will."
I doubt the necessity for individual variance. It may be a factor to consider as one of the rules of setup (each unit can vary X amount from the norm in dimension Y), but I don't think you need it. For example, the ant colony behavior (as described in TFA) doesn't require individual variance. Variance comes from the environment with which the ants interact.
Alternatively, you can replace individual variance with pure randomness - that is, individuals may react to the same stimulus differently, but only according to a probability distribution across the population. So each ant might have a 30% chance of reacting in a given way to a given stimulus - making them all invariant with respect to each other - but introduce the stimulus, and 30% of the population will react that way, while 70% will not (supposing an adequate population size).
I don't see an inherent advantage to actual individual variance as compared to probability distributions.
Then again, from a retrospective point of view, the two may be indistinguishable.
Of course, it may be the case that "intelligence" is the result of an optimization
At the risk of falling into the trap of excessive reductionism (rather, falling into it again, as a sibling post to yours pointed out), that's exactly what I was getting at. One point of view would be to look at human intelligence as an optimization from the point of view of DNA reproducing.
As far as not being able to demonstrate intelligence goes, I would be more amenable to the idea that we can't prove/disprove/adequately analyze the nature of our own intelligence as a result of trying to use the subject as the intrument to study the subject. It's possible that it's more fundamentally inscrutable than that, but my inclination is to think that we're limited in our self study by being ourselves.
Absolutely. I didn't mean to be diminutive of what intelligence clearly is - "nothing but" was (in retrospect, obviously) a bad choice of words. I couldn't agree more that intelligence, whatever its provenance, is real; in much the same fashion, regardless of whether we can identify what gives rise to swarm behavior, the fact remains that the swarm acts more intelligently than the sum of its parts.
I also apologize for falling prey to recognizing no difference between description and explanation - especially since it's a pet peeve of mine.
In any event, I wasn't trying to make broad claims about the value or lack thereof of intelligence, or denying its reality. Just pondering out loud about the underlying principles/causes/systems that give rise to it.
Well, I am the grandparent, so odds are good I'm talking about Wolfram. ;)
In any event - I plead ignorance on the matter. I'm not familiar enough with what Wolfram believes (aside from the general idea of emergent behaviors from simple rules) to know if I'm agreeing with him or not.
OTOH, I've really given too much thought to what was originally a joke so...forgive me for being a humorless curmudgeon.
Google the "four-year war at gombe" (or variations thereof), it should give you information on the most famous example of this behavior.
To sum up, Jane Goodall observed what can most readily be described as a war between groups of chimpanzees at Gombe. IIRC, a particular group of chimps crossed the threshhold into "too large," and so broke up into two tribes, one of which went to a different area (this is normal chimpanzee behavior). The new area, however, was less fruitful than the old area. The new tribe returned to the old land, and attacked the original tribe. Over four years ('74-'77, I believe), the violence continued: notably, well past when the "objective" had been achieved. The tribe went ahead to try and exterminate their rivals, even after they posed no real threat.
Goodall's work has been criticized since the event by other researchers who haven't observed the same level of aggression. But the chief criticism has been that the environment she created (setting up feeding stations to attract chimpanzees) created a situation where the new territory was inferior to the original by a larger degree than would be found in nature. The argument goes that this caused an unnatural pressure on the new tribe, which then exhibited behavior that is not found in other studies.
From my (amateur, at best) point of view, however, that argument rings a bit hollow. It may well be the cause of this particular conflict, but regardless, it shows that the potential for the conflict is there. Were those conditions to arise in nature (say, because one group introduced farming or ranching), then we would expect to see the same result (war), which is borne out by human history (insofar, at least, as human history can be paralleled to other primate behaviors).
Regarding your point a couple posts back about the appearance of shaman-led armies with the introduction of ranged weapons, I might propose an alternative explanation. With hand weapons, war is a very individual affair, and much less amenable to central direction. With the introduction of ranged weapons, the ease of central control as well as the advantages of it (massed fire) may well have led to the rise of central leaders.
I can't back that up, mind you, but it's an alternative theory I'd like to see explored before coming to a conclusion based on that piece of evidence.
Just because he's a bit of a kook doesn't mean that everything he says is wrong.
(That said, I haven't actually bothered to read ANKoS, so maybe I'd distance myself from the idea if I had)
But, really - if the search for a theory of everything isn't an expression of the belief that the universe can be distilled down to (comparatively, at least) simple rules, I don't know what would be.
It's not mentioned, but it seems an obvious sort of question to ask given the content they've got: is there anything to "real" (by which I mean, individual) intelligence other than swarm behavior at the neuron level? In fact, is the entire biology of any given animal (ourselves, obviously, included) anything more than swarm behavior at the cellular level? Or, if we accept the idea that cells are just a reproductive mechanism for DNA, is it just swarm behavior at the molecular level?
Which would have a fascination all its own, since I don't think anyone's ever argued that DNA has anything we'd call intelligence. If all of life arises out of swarm behavior at the molecular level, we've managed to take intelligence completely out of the equation.
Which, in turn, just makes this another facet of the belief that the entire universe is an emergent phenomenon of a vast set of simple items following simple rules.
The truly intriguing observation (from my point of view, anyway), though, is that this emergent phenomenon contains examples of exactly the same mechanism at so many levels of complexity. It wouldn't necessarily have to be true that simple interactions at the fundamental particle level would give rise to higher-order behaviors that can be macroscopically described as simple interactions at that higher level. It's the fractal nature of the mechanism that is most intriguing, I think.
and the time symmetry of the laws of physics -- that is, the fact that the laws of physics should be the same today as they will be tomorrow
Huh?
I could be way off on this, but...I always understood time symmetry to mean that laws of physics obedient to time symmetry are invariant relative to the direction of the arrow of time. Which, unless I'm missing a logical step (and I could be), is an entirely different proposition from them being unchanged across a given period of time.
Of course, the corollary to that is if the minimum set of laws that are provided aren't to your liking, there's proportionally less you can do about it. Which is the argument for the strongest governance being at the smallest level. If your city council screws you on whether you're allowed to put solar panels on your roof or a windmill in your back yard (because they're eyesores), you can directly agitate for rule change and represent an almost-significant number of votes. Failing that, you can move outside city limits, which will involve the turmoil of moving, but you can most likely keep the same job, the same social network, and the same pastimes.
If your county board screws you on whether you're allowed to put solar panels on your roof or a windmill in your back yard (because of zoning), you can try to run for office, or you can try to drum up a couple thousand other voters to lobby for change. Failing that, you can move outside the county. This will involve the turmoil of moving, it may be impractical to keep the same job, you can probably maintain largely the same social network and the same pastimes.
If your state legislature screws you on whether you're allowed to put solar panels on your roof or a windmill in your back yard (because the Dept. of Natural Resources is concerned it will ruin bird habitats), you can work to drum up a couple dozen thousand other voters to lobby for change. Failing that, you can move outside the state. Now you're moving, getting a new job, new friends, and a new pastime.
If the fed.gov screws you on whether you're allowed to put solar panels on your roof or a windmill in your back yard (because the National Coalition Of Power Companies lobbied to make it illegal), you can work to drum up a few million other voters to lobby for change. Failing that, you can move to Canada, where you won't have a job, your friends will speak French, and you'll have to take up hockey. (To Canadians: I kid, of course)
Besides, while it might be true that getting the asshat majority is easier with smaller voting populations, it's also true that it's much, much cheaper for lobbying groups to work at the federal level than it is for them to work at all the local levels. So you're far more likely to see a gross distortion of the "will of the people" in favor of the "will of the industry groups."
Interesting. Wikipedia also my assertion.
;)
I suspect Wikipedia may not be the definitive source in this instance.
In any event, you may well be right about 5.5 hour tapes (though I don't recall them), but I still think Sony never recovered from the initial difference in (temporal) tape lengths. By the time you get to five hours or six, it's a fairly small set of television that will be supported by one but not the other.
But then she'll make you a sandwich.
[It's only been 18 seconds since I hit reply, and, in order to give everyone a chance to post, slashdot requires me to slow down, cowboy!]
Well, you're right in the broad strokes, but wrong in the details.
Even at the end of its life cycle, Beta tapes were 5 hours at slowest recording speed (Beta III). This is almost certainly less important to the eventual death of the format than the original tape length which was one hour, when RCA provided a four hour VHS tape. X2 recording got Beta up to two hours, but four hours vs. two hours is the difference between recording an American baseball/football game and not, or between recording a long movie and not.
Arguably more important than both, of course, was the more-open nature of the VHS format - which you alluded to with your price/performance comment.
Your idea boils down to making the computer no longer a general-purpose device. This, obviously, defeats the purpose of having a computer in the first place.
An awful lot of modern malware doesn't comprise "viruses" in the classical sense, it comprises trojans. The only way to absolutely prevent a trojan from running is by preventing the user from running arbitrary software. This may fly in a corporate environment, but never for home use.
Basically, it comes down to either being vulnerable to malware, or not letting the computer do what the user tells it to.
(The latter, of course, being the driving force behind so-called "trusted computing"...which is pretty much exactly what you're advocating)
The difference between his post and yours that I responded to is that he provided explanation and backing for his claims - which weren't bold indictments of the entire banking industry to begin with.
You completely fail to acknowledge that are lower-cost alternatives. Which suggest you have no experience, much less given the topic any thought.
Irrelevant. Unless you can propose a no cost alternative, consumers will bear the cost. Which is what you started complaining about.
Poke fun at the joker who's talking about you know nothing about. It's easy right? Most of all it's fun.
More like poke fun at the joker who makes a bold claim with no explanation of what he means, much less a justification for why it's pertinent or applicable. Which he still hasn't done.
This is also an interesting high horse for the guy who was awaiting all the "ignorant" posts to make.
Please examine micro-payments and currency implementations and get back to me when you have some experience in the industry.
In light of your previous comment, I should point out you know nothing about what I do or don't know about currency. Even assuming you're right, and I either know nothing about it or know all the wrong things, making obscure statements that only those with an intimate knowledge of the industry can understand is inherently pointless: questioning your statement indicates the reader doesn't understand the industry. The corollary to which is that anyone who understands the industry agrees with your statement.
So, since it can't be understood by anyone who doesn't already agree, why bother?
The currency system costs less than letting private industry do it. There. No buzz words and totally accurate.
That's another fascinating, and completely unsubstantiated, assertion. Being the private industry fan that I am, it's even a statement I'm predilected towards agreeing with. But you still haven't provided any argument - much less evidence - for such an assertion. In the spirit of the thing, then, I counter your assertion:
The currency system guarantees wealth for all participants. There. No buzz words and totally accurate.
Or, alternatively, I counter it thus:
Nuh-uh .
Though that might be a buzzword.
You need to define legal tender - if you mean, specifically, a medium of exchange that anyone who accepts cash is legally required to accept as cash*, then I agree with you (because the alternative is to make your legally-mandated medium of exchange completely valueless...and effectively to make counterfeiting not a crime). However, legal tender and taxation have little to do with each other. Regardless of whether or not your transactions are consummated with US dollars, you are legally obligated to pay taxes on the value of the transaction. This is not generally enforced and not generally obeyed, of course - but that's only because such a vast majority of transactions are performed with money as the medium of exchange.
But that doesn't mean it's legal for you to help someone move in return for a 12 pack without paying taxes on your earnings. Strictly speaking, you owe either income tax or sales tax on the transaction (this could be trivially gotten around by working in terms of gifts, rather than exchange of goods, of course, but the point remains).
My point, of course, is that it is the transaction that's being taxed, not the money. Stores that accept the liberty dollar still pay taxes on the transaction. Employees who get paid by direct deposit still pay income tax, despite the fact that there's no "legal tender" involved, just an amount measured in USD units.
In that sense of private entities printing legal tender - meaning a fungible medium of exchange - they already do. As evidenced by the MMORPGs that are currently under discussion, as well as all the (pretty much DOA) efforts at some kind of electronic web-cash (I think beenz was one of them), and the aforementioned liberty dollar.
*Which is the definition of legal tender as used on US bills
Consumers already assume all costs of payment card fraud and rewards programs. Most are stupid enough to let this go too.
Uh...yes, they do. And who else should assume those costs?
No, not even should, who else can assume those costs? The credit card company? If the CC company doesn't pass on the costs of fraud to the consumer, the CC company goes out of business (note: using their profits to cover the cost doesn't work - if they still have profits left over, they can be accused of building the cost of fraud into their interest rates and fee schedules, which is passing the costs on to the consumer. The only way to satisfy not passing the costs to the consumer is to operate at zero or negative net gain).
If the government absorbs the costs of fraud, it takes that money from the taxpayer. Taxpayers fall into pretty much two groups: consumers and businesses. If the government passes the cost of fraud onto consumers, we haven't gained anything. If the government passes the cost onto business, then we're back to the business has to operate at zero or negative net gain, otherwise they can be accused of passing the cost onto consumers.
Perhaps the CC companies could outsource the risk to insurers - but then you just shift the profit problem up to the insurers, and you haven't gained anything (the CC company will pass the cost of the premiums onto the consumer, and assuming the premiums are such that the insurer makes money, the consumer is paying for more than the cost of fraud).
You could make a case for rewards programs just being scams, insofar as any consumer who benefits (net) from one is costing another consumer who isn't. I don't know that I buy into this, but I accept that there's a rational point of view there.
Complaining that consumers bear the cost of fraud is just silly, though. Of course they do, and there isn't another way to do it.
This is a play by the banks to privatize the role of the Treasury as a no-cost micro-transactions service provider.
I don't even know what this means. I admit, my intial reaction is that you sound like you're about to bust out a conspiracy theory starting with fiat money and ending with Roswell by way of fringed flags in courtrooms, the Kennedy assassination, and the Time Cube Truth...but I'd be more than happy to entertain your idea if you'd care to explain further.
I think they've finally realized a simple truth: cashiers aren't handwriting analysts. Nor would they have sufficient sample (ie, 1, from the back of the card) to perform the analysis if one happened to be so trained
Beyond which, the security measures they put on the signature line on the back of the card conspire to mean the signature is virtually impossible to see (unless you sign with a Sharpie...in which case it doesn't fit), and even if you were able to read it, sliding the card in and out of readers (esp. gas pumps) smudges out whatever you wrote there.
I've been kind of surprised lately at the number of cashiers who have checked the back of my card against the paper slip, but I have no idea what they think they're looking at, since the signature on the card is barely visible - much less easily susceptible to accurate scrutiny.
It's not a confidence in government agencies, it's a confidence in MS' ability to know on which side its bread is buttered.
That is, the GPP was talking about Vista being decertified by the FDA (and, presumably, other fed.gov agencies) due to this information sharing. My point is simply that MS isn't going to do anything to get itself booted out of any federal agency, because it would represent a major loss of income. The same goes for foreign governments, as well - MS makes a lot of money off selling the Windows flavor-of-the-week to government around the world. Losing that income stream isn't something they're going to just do.
The GPP reminds of the hoopla surrounding XP and HIPAA - how XP wasn't going to be HIPAA compliant, and it was going to drive MS out of health care and government, and blah blah blah. We all know where that went. These kinds of sweeping predictions just don't turn out to come true. At the end of the day, it always turns out to be business as usual (over the short- and mid-term).
The iPod wasn't a failure.
Firewire never eliminated USB.
BSD isn't dead.
Apple is still in business.
Linux hasn't taken over the world.
Etc
Etc
Etc
I admit to feeling a bit obtuse for not seeing that.
But why is it presented as an http URL? Since when do we want email links that are a) unfollowable because they're obfuscated, and b) unfollowable because they're set after http:/// as lead-ins to stories?
And this is my first-ever complaint (in almost 10 years of hanging out here) about the editing on slashdot: if they're not even following the links to check they're valid, what the hell is their job? I mean, catching dupes is hard, since it presupposes you know everything that's ever been posted before. Fixing grammar/spelling is hard (to do with 100% success), because everyone makes simple mistakes. Hell, even reading the whole linked article to make sure it agrees with the submission is hard, because they get a ton of submissions. But FFS, clicking on the link to make sure it actually, you know, goes somewhere?
That's got to take less time than coming up with the dept. for the story.
WTF is up with the first link - the one that points to "http://.moc.liamg..ta..remonortsadabeht./"??
Is this some kind of new URL hashing mechanism? Should I try and decrypt this with the 0x09 key? Does the link predate the universe (thereby making it inscrutable to those within the universe)?
Or is my connection/machine/browser just horribly, horribly FUBARed?
I could recognize my parents' handwriting easily.
I really thought you were going to say "genitalia" instead of "handwriting."
It would certainly have been funnier.
Having worked with forensic handwriting analysts, I suspect you would be surprised. It turns out to be non-trivial to intentionally alter your handwriting so completely they can't recognize it as yours with enough confidence to have probitive value (given, of course, an adequate sample of known origin). The odds of your natural handwriting being so obscure it's impossible to validate are really very low.