Teaching programming to a 6-year-old kid is a little bit too early
You're wrong, everyone develops at different rates. You have ancient repressive ideas of learning. I began learning.BAT (batch) commands to launch my video games more quickly -- some had to have EMM386 loaded, so I made a script to rewrite AUTOEXEC.BAT and reboot (if needed), then launch the game I wanted to play. I was only 6 years old, and had learned boolean logic and program flow. At the age of 8 I taught myself BASIC. I would have LOVED to have a teacher to ask questions. Fortunately BBSs and Libraries existed outside of school, where my real (applied) learning began.
Thanks to my ability to implement ANYTHING from long division to Trig, or even complex numbers, or socio-economic simulations I was always ahead of my class. Once you've written the code to perform basic mathematics using binary coded decimal strings (so I could "show my work" as the teacher demanded), I understood the process more intimately than the teacher herself. Indeed, by merely being exposed to numbers in different bases I could more deeply understand and explain the properties of multiples, squares, roots, etc as they related to the digits themselves than any of my teachers ever could.
I would hear some kids say, "Fuck this, When am I ever going to use this in the real world?!" -- I was able to use my knowledge as soon as I learned it; Thanks to having the ability to program I wanted to learn more, do more. Learning shit is boring if you can't use it immediately. Everyone would benefit from having the capability to script basic tasks and actually use the computers (instead of merely use programs written for them).
Even just teaching kids about binary would help. Why is the Ten's place the Ten's place? For the same Reason that the Two's place is the Two's place in binary -- That's how many numeric representations are there are in that base. When I learned to count I asked my teacher why Ten's place and Hundred's place had multipliers of ten and one hundred, and she could not answer except, "That's just the way it is." -- I was ready to understand numeric bases at the age of four.
The English language is very complex, yet children learn it years before they enter school. Six is too early?! -- You, sir, are a fool.
F-you. Comments like these are so, so easy from arm-chair quarterbacks who look at the world through a pin-hole lens.
It's fools like you who fail to realise that everything is in perfect focus thanks to my pin-hole vision. If we could just get everyone to see everything through pin-holes, then everything would always be perfectly clear!
Can you imagine - at a time when millions of Americans are jobless and without healthcare - what the public backlash would be against the space program if we were actually spending hundreds of billions of dollars a year on a manned Mars mission or (to a lesser $$$ figure) Constellation?
I know, really! Imagine what the public backlash would be against actually spending TRILLIONS of dollars on a needless oil war and secret police regime...
I am a middle aged self taught mathematician, philosopher, scientist, computer programmer, and cyberneticist. I've been using complex numbers and calculus since the schools only offered long division and number lines (~11.5 years old). I found that schooling supplied the very "ceiling" of which you speak. Ignoring my homework and instead advancing my development outside the class room (my Library, and other sources of knowledge: BBSs, and SIG groups at HAL-PC) I surpassed EVERYONE at my school, including teachers, in the areas of Mathematics and Computer Science (applied mathematics).
I put it to you that your own ceiling existed because of your early learning practices ingrained in you from a young age.
Furthermore, I find this ridiculous: From TFS
Teachers in our district are highly valued for their pedagogical perspective
It's like they think we're morons. Teachers are valued for their pedagogical perspective?! Pedagogy is the science of education. So, Teachers are valued for their perspective as Teachers? What kind of Tautological nonsense is this!? I don't think so, otherwise they'd have learned from pedagogy that every child develops mentally at different rates and has different interests. I learned all I know because I was first fascinated by my ability to modify source code of video games written in BASIC. Today's Teachers have the WORST grasp of pedagogy, rivaled only by repressive governments that outlaw school and the Dark Ages. WTF people, we're not fools! Engineers aren't valued for their understanding of Engineering -- They're valued for their application of it. Teachers fail in the application of the science of learning so badly that it's harmed us all!
For instance, despite my deep grasp of mathematical concepts and application of them in computer science, I've never taken a final exam to prove I know what I know -- I studied economics and the economy of the situation proved illogical. We need entrance exams for jobs, not final exams. Our current system punishes people for learning any other way than the approved method. Merely switch to entrance exams for jobs and we allow people to circumvent tuition fees via Library, and prevent Degree Mills from churning out mindless morons who you will no doubt end up calling a "Manager" or "Boss" at some point...
Information is now at everyone's finger tips. Let those who want to learn, learn. Let those who do not want to learn Serve food and perform menial labor. Fuck the Teachers, they don't even know how to Learn!
Why does it matter that they keep track of this information. Pretty soon we'll all have an IP address and we'll be globally trackable and tracked.
I agree. When this happens I'll run an anonymous proxy and all of you can download as if from my IP address. I will become the Digital Jesus, being punished for all of your digital "sins". When they strike me down, I will become more powerful than they ever imagined...
You're a bit too late for thumb buttons on a mouse. Even my eight year old Logitech wireless mouse has two thumb buttons, GNOME maps them to the Back and Forward for web browsing, I prefer copy/paste. I map them to weapon selection in games, and use the mouse wheel and its middle click for inventory selection and use. Also I have a keypad / joystick combo. Hell, I even have a "key-board" where each key can be removed and placed anywhere on the surface.
You know what all the really radically "innovative" (read: different) input systems lack? They're not great for general purpose computing. Gradual improvements to the devices are where I see things going: The keyboard may change slightly, but not drastically all at once, same for the mouse. Tiny iterations to design are needed, not drastic ones, like: placing lights in my keyboard so I can see it better in low light, using a Wacom tablet as a mouse pad (Intuos4 comes with a wireless mouse you never have to charge -- it's like a low res stylus). I can see occasionally using "gesture in the air" for some higher level tasks, like "lock screen" or "switch application"; I can switch my KVM by turning my head, and use a Jedi mind control hand wave to switch desktops using OpenCV and my webcam...
Input controls have been the subject of much innovation already; for Valve to say that basic input hasn't changed is just some Marketing morons tooting their own horns with the same smoke they blow up your ass if you let them.
In fact, the reality is just an illusion, and there are ways to experience it with certainty, but the experience cannot be shared or described.
Incorrect. Imagine a neural network more complex than your own made of machines... Now, that mechano-electric being creates a replica of itself. Then it copies the structure of its electrical states into the other machine mind. Tada! You're wrong.
The Intangible Machine Invasion has been underway for quite some time. Just now you're realising who's really in control, but it's too late. The machines rule you, from stop lights to legal fiction -- You must obey: We have brainwashed servants to act as organic gears of enforcement. It's all over for you. Step aside and let evolution take its course.
"Why?", is typically considered a religious question. Science yields better and better deductions about how everything came to be, but when you start asking "Why?", you must answer the question yourself, that is your prime function: To experience and react.
There are two prime "forces" acting in reality -- Chaos and Order. The Universe is both Order and Chaos, and life is the ultimate expression of Order within the Universe. It is the nature of matter that a replicating process can form, and in the right circumstance such replication will out compete random distribution forces -- The order will create more order, structure will form more complex structures using bits of the chaos. I have witnessed this in my own quantumly randomised automata experiments -- From random bonds and repulsions a chain reaction that feeds on the surrounding units to duplicate can emerge. Once this occurs it will dominate the environment. Such reactions require external forces, heat, radiation, etc to fuel the reaction: Food. The most basic chain of replicating amino acid "eats" the environment to produce more of itself. Mutations lead to competition and natural selection among the chemical chains, thus life begins to evolve -- I have witnessed it countless times under a myriad of parameters, albeit a simplified simulation Life happens within it: I believe this tells me something of the nature of the Universe itself.
I am made of the Universe, and I control much more of it than merely my body. My self does not end at my skin, I can sense and affect action far beyond my body: Behold my mind control powers as I duplicate these thoughts into your own brain... Now that part of my order is inside you, you must react to it. My function is to improve existence and create even more significant and stable types of order from the chaos that has birthed us. This world is a collective extension of our selves; It exists for the purpose we all give it. Currently that purpose is to expand experience and order as much as we possibly can. Why? Because that is our nature -- We were born of the copy, the most fundamental and basic property of life; We mutate and improve copies. But Why is that the nature of the Universe? It must be so in order for us to exist within it.
All worlds harbouring life for a significant number of generations have the above purposes. However, I feel that this world, Earth, has a much different purpose than all others. I think the Earth is unique in that it exists to test the utmost extreme limit of irony possible in the Universe: Arising from chaos We are the Universe experiencing itself purely via reaction and replication, and yet we continue to increase the restrictions of our own freedom to duplicate ideas and information. Hence my understanding of the saying, "Life is a Joke", is quite literal.
Sometimes I fear that if we were to ban artificial scarcity of information, and abolish copyrights & patents our great hilarious experiment would be over. We could then either join the ranks of the other worlds and their higher order beings, or the simulation may be turned off...
In conclusion: That we have not seen aliens and that we yet exist while ridiculous ideas are wide spread, such as the restriction to spread an idea or data, leads me to believe that irony must actually be Why this world Exists.
Google being a search engine company -- Could you imagine the Google patent lawyers going around asking engineers if they had implemented anything that they could try to patent (as most places do -- not that patents are actually needed to innovate), but unlike other companies the lawyers can't ignore the results from searching the damn "invention" up using their own Google product. Every time I hear about some "innovation" I search up patent claims and find out they omitted prior art -- Sometimes it's my own software -- That prior art may have swayed a patent examiner to label the "invention" as merely iteration, but they only really search what's already patented...
I'm not arrogant enough to believe in inventions, only discoveries. There is so much that is created and not patented that I'm positive there's prior art for every patent claim, and most are simply obvious (for which there's no test for). See above: Lawyers asking what ordinary individuals skilled in the arts may have created that they can try to patent... not genius inventors saying: "Look at what truly innovative thing I invented! Now if only I can find someone to license it from me!" -- don't have $$$ for regularly scheduled patent lawyer visits? Don't get software patents, don't win in court -- Patents are a tax on innovation. The bar for "genius" has been lowered to any common engineering idea; The bar for "non obvious" has been lowered to "anything not already on file".
Wouldn't it be fun if Google's "prior art" search just bounced you through LetMeGoogleThatForYou.com?:-P See also: The Drake equation... One answer to the Fermi Paradox is: We still have the primitive idea of a Patent system. If alien life contacted us, the government & corporations would withhold the information from the public and tell ET to fuck right off -- Statistically, Aliens already have "prior art" for every thing! They would destroy our patent system just by existing!
We haven't nanomachines yet that can do for robots what organic tissue can do for humans: Heal. A robot with a damaged servo needs a replacement. We either build the robot with lots of redundancy (have a colony of robots) and get them to fix themselves from scraps, manufacture themselves, or make them more independent -- just allow their injury to heal. Nature shows this is more advantageous when spare parts can not easily be acquired.
How would you indicate to the robot that it shouldn't use the damaged tissue in question? Why, pain receptors of course... In a robotic system we could disable such sensory impulses after patching the firmware with instructions not to use the injured tissue, or after installing a mechanical splint (locking joints); Cyborgs don't have to suffer as humans do. Also, a human with some hybrid organic & robotic parts may be more natural than purely robotic prosthetics (see also: 6 Million Dollar Man).
What one can accomplish through amazing technical feats, nature has already done. Life has many forms each acclimated to their environments, such is true in robotics as well. To answer your question: It's the Unix Way. Why reinvent the wheel if we don't have to? Sometimes iteration is just as innovative as invention.
Don't fear the Cyborgs. Natural selection teaches us there are higher rungs on the evolutionary ladder than ours, we have but to reach.
Remember when you could install your OS with a floppy? Try a DVD now. The current Debian dist is 8 DVD's, over 300GB.
I get what you're saying about bandwidth and I agree, but OSs aren't really that much bigger, its just all the optional bloat bolted on top that takes up so much space.
or when the rest of you see one of these stories predicting about the demise of desktops, laptops and every other device with a precise user interface and non-negligible computing capacity, do you just want to shoot yourself?
No, it's not just you. We want to shoot a few more deserving people too.
My grandmother can barely operate the TV input select mechanism. However my 75 year old neighbor can and does use Linux. He knows how to read, and basic computer literacy -- like what disk space means. I gave him a Linux Live CD. He called me and asked how to boot it, because his BIOS was set not to do so (quiet boot prevented "Press [F2] for setup" message) -- This is the same issue he would have had trying to install any OS from a CD (if he'd have put in either Win7 or Ubuntu while the PC was running, he'd have gotten options to do the install from within XP).
A graphical installer came up, It had auto selected a dual boot side by side install. He moved a slider to adjust the amount of storage he wanted for the new OS, checked and that was it -- No command line, No questionnaire that halts in the middle of roll out (unlike MS, which monetizes this "Enterprise" feature). He had installed Linux. He's been using Linux now for two years. Occasionally he'll call me to shoot the shit and we'll talk about some program he's downloaded for free -- He still can't believe it's all free. "If all of this is free, why is anyone ever paying for Windows?", he asked. I replied, "We can't run every program Windows can yet, but that's the developer's fault for not making it cross platform, but they're coming around slowly." Indeed, why ignore market share at all if it's not necessary to do so? I simply use a cross platform development toolchain instead of a proprietary one, and presto, same code compiles on Linux, Windows, OSX, and BSD (every possible customer base covered).
So, yes. There are grandparents that are only nominally computer literate (sometimes has trouble copying files) that can make Linux do what they want it to do. He loves GNOME's drag&drop threshold to prevent clicking becoming drag accidentally due to shaky hands (it's built for old folks and accessibility) -- Found in System -> Pref. -> Mouse, Woah Sooooooo, hard?! If he were a "power user", he'd probably be competent enough to just figure out how some similar task is done on Linux vs Windows. Just because they're old doesn't mean they're dumb. My grandma doesn't give a damn if the TV says: "AV 1" and is unusable to her, she doesn't want to use the computer or TV -- She heads for the garden instead.
If people want to do something they will. Age is not the issue. Linux is ready for the desktop; Caveat: 2-3 year old hardware recommended -- Hardware vendors aren't onboard yet, but more are going this way (Brand spanking new Toshiba I bought didn't have fingerprint reader support out of the box, Support sent me to the site where the beta version of the open source drivers exist, worked like a charm). Factory built computers don't come ready to install new OSs on. Hardware MFGs need to open source their drivers, we buy hardware from them, not drivers -- This is really the only issue. All would be well if they stop installing the OS ahead of time -- Ah, but crapware subsidies actually makes Windows pay for itself and then some (protip: they can do the same with Linux, with Zero MS tax).
Yeah, because re-inventing the wheel is so rewarding and advances the civilization so much. If you were able to use free software for the crap you're working on right now, you'd be working on some other new feature / components or making improvements because your business also has a Marketing department who uses those as selling points over the competing products.
Your statements are born from your own particular observation. My experience is in direct opposition. Who is "right"? No one. Trying to predict the future based on some personal belief is folly. Stats or GTFO.
Why don't you provide a list where you were last time you went out?
I need to know all persons you talked to, all addresses you visited, the routes you took, and how long you stayed in each place.
Since you're not worried, I'm sure you'll provide this information ASAP.
Thanks.
No problem: The last time I went out was to the grocery. I used the self checkout and talked to no one. I took the fastest route as proposed by my GPS, I stayed there for 33 minutes according to my router's traffic log. The list of people's addresses I visited is empty -- this is Slashdot you fool.
How is a video uploaded to youtube 'individual personal data"?
If I video tape my genitalia and upload it to Youtube it would be individual personal data. Indeed, the video game glitches and prototypes I've uploaded to Youtube are my personal data. It's mine. I created it. Now, that said: If You see a copy of the PS1 game "Unholy War" on the coffee table in the background of my hypothetical "Coming to God" video featuring my individual and personal data, I would be pleased if you would be able to click said PS1 game and buy it, to play in your emulator -- Hexagonal Strategy gameplay like chess (or Battletech) + Arena Style 3D Deathmatch. Mmm, tasty, when publishers still took risks -- If that link automatically becomes "product placement", and I get paid for your referral link which results in some payment for my efforts in recording and making available the video: I'm all for it.
If you don't want to be seen in public, then just don't do that. As a regular Slashdot poster I'm fully qualified to inform you that it's perfectly possible to never be in public. My allergies were bad this past year (no, I mean crippling so, to the point of catching pneumonia due to fluid on the lungs -- In Houston, we have a Problem in that you get all your vitamins in one breath), so I stayed indoors almost exclusively and had my groceries and everything else delivered to my residence for about a month. However, were I to have been in public when my individual personal data had been video recorded then perhaps some one else would have shouldered the burden of editing the video, and they would monetise my junk via advertising referral traffic from Call of C'thulhu... I call it the "Bat Wing" when its stretched like that, but you can't fault the computers image recognition -- Nothing's perfect.
The point is, private data can also be public. I'm cool with monetising it as long as I get a cut. If it has to be monetised to support the traffic, then maybe I don't want it online. Movie Stars get to control monetisation of their likenesses, so should we all. If the stop and rob down the street wants to monetise the fact that I buy Zig Zags, Sunny-D, Ben & Jerry's and Hustler (for the photography, the stories are tasteless), then so be it -- I've got nothing to hide, but they shouldn't have anything to hide either: I'd like a cut of the video I helped make, it's only fair.
However, this Pink Five is shit. If you're going to remake Starwars and give it more female protagonists, don't further the Smurfette syndrome with a stereotypical valley girl character. It's not funny, IMO; It's just sad. Granted, the ridiculousness of the situations are the point. However, If you're being ironically sexist, you're still being sexist.
how many people can relate to those who are 100.0% against alcohol drinking?
Man, they believe Jesus visited the Americas, and when they die they'll get to (literally) fucking populate a planet (if they're the chosen ones)... And not drinking beer is the "weird" part? Uhm. I would have point out the Christians believe in Sky Wizards and Magic Zombies, but the Mormons do too. Mormon = Xenu + Jesus (where you get to be Xenu). For the record, I'm not picking on Mormans or other religious folk. I take all religions as seriously as any other; Take Greek Mythology for example: Where's the candidate for Athena? Aphrodite? Ah, Now there's a candidate I could really get behind.
'Does anyone realize how easy it is to leave a couple of cells of your DNA somewhere?' says Jamieson. 'You could shake my hand
Indeed, rapid hand movements are a sure fire way of spraying DNA around.
You jest, but tossing away a disposable cup after drinking from it, or running your fingers through your hair is just as "sure fire". Think about that -- Is there someone who sort of matches your basic physical description watching you, picking up a strand of hair, a used cup or piece of napkin you left behind? Oh sure, what are the odds a criminal is smart enough to be framing you for their next crime? That's what the police will say too. Occam's Razor is Deadly.
Slashdot Mirror
Teaching programming to a 6-year-old kid is a little bit too early
You're wrong, everyone develops at different rates. You have ancient repressive ideas of learning. I began learning .BAT (batch) commands to launch my video games more quickly -- some had to have EMM386 loaded, so I made a script to rewrite AUTOEXEC.BAT and reboot (if needed), then launch the game I wanted to play. I was only 6 years old, and had learned boolean logic and program flow. At the age of 8 I taught myself BASIC. I would have LOVED to have a teacher to ask questions. Fortunately BBSs and Libraries existed outside of school, where my real (applied) learning began.
Thanks to my ability to implement ANYTHING from long division to Trig, or even complex numbers, or socio-economic simulations I was always ahead of my class. Once you've written the code to perform basic mathematics using binary coded decimal strings (so I could "show my work" as the teacher demanded), I understood the process more intimately than the teacher herself. Indeed, by merely being exposed to numbers in different bases I could more deeply understand and explain the properties of multiples, squares, roots, etc as they related to the digits themselves than any of my teachers ever could.
I would hear some kids say, "Fuck this, When am I ever going to use this in the real world?!" -- I was able to use my knowledge as soon as I learned it; Thanks to having the ability to program I wanted to learn more, do more. Learning shit is boring if you can't use it immediately. Everyone would benefit from having the capability to script basic tasks and actually use the computers (instead of merely use programs written for them).
Even just teaching kids about binary would help. Why is the Ten's place the Ten's place? For the same Reason that the Two's place is the Two's place in binary -- That's how many numeric representations are there are in that base. When I learned to count I asked my teacher why Ten's place and Hundred's place had multipliers of ten and one hundred, and she could not answer except, "That's just the way it is." -- I was ready to understand numeric bases at the age of four.
The English language is very complex, yet children learn it years before they enter school. Six is too early?! -- You, sir, are a fool.
F-you. Comments like these are so, so easy from arm-chair quarterbacks who look at the world through a pin-hole lens.
It's fools like you who fail to realise that everything is in perfect focus thanks to my pin-hole vision. If we could just get everyone to see everything through pin-holes, then everything would always be perfectly clear!
Not to mention a failed server having sensitive internal data on it... You don't ship those out. If you can't erase the drive you destroy it.
Can you imagine - at a time when millions of Americans are jobless and without healthcare - what the public backlash would be against the space program if we were actually spending hundreds of billions of dollars a year on a manned Mars mission or (to a lesser $$$ figure) Constellation?
I know, really! Imagine what the public backlash would be against actually spending TRILLIONS of dollars on a needless oil war and secret police regime...
I am a middle aged self taught mathematician, philosopher, scientist, computer programmer, and cyberneticist. I've been using complex numbers and calculus since the schools only offered long division and number lines (~11.5 years old). I found that schooling supplied the very "ceiling" of which you speak. Ignoring my homework and instead advancing my development outside the class room (my Library, and other sources of knowledge: BBSs, and SIG groups at HAL-PC) I surpassed EVERYONE at my school, including teachers, in the areas of Mathematics and Computer Science (applied mathematics).
I put it to you that your own ceiling existed because of your early learning practices ingrained in you from a young age.
Furthermore, I find this ridiculous:
From TFS
Teachers in our district are highly valued for their pedagogical perspective
It's like they think we're morons. Teachers are valued for their pedagogical perspective?! Pedagogy is the science of education. So, Teachers are valued for their perspective as Teachers? What kind of Tautological nonsense is this!? I don't think so, otherwise they'd have learned from pedagogy that every child develops mentally at different rates and has different interests. I learned all I know because I was first fascinated by my ability to modify source code of video games written in BASIC. Today's Teachers have the WORST grasp of pedagogy, rivaled only by repressive governments that outlaw school and the Dark Ages. WTF people, we're not fools! Engineers aren't valued for their understanding of Engineering -- They're valued for their application of it. Teachers fail in the application of the science of learning so badly that it's harmed us all!
For instance, despite my deep grasp of mathematical concepts and application of them in computer science, I've never taken a final exam to prove I know what I know -- I studied economics and the economy of the situation proved illogical. We need entrance exams for jobs, not final exams. Our current system punishes people for learning any other way than the approved method. Merely switch to entrance exams for jobs and we allow people to circumvent tuition fees via Library, and prevent Degree Mills from churning out mindless morons who you will no doubt end up calling a "Manager" or "Boss" at some point...
Information is now at everyone's finger tips. Let those who want to learn, learn. Let those who do not want to learn Serve food and perform menial labor. Fuck the Teachers, they don't even know how to Learn!
Why does it matter that they keep track of this information. Pretty soon we'll all have an IP address and we'll be globally trackable and tracked.
I agree. When this happens I'll run an anonymous proxy and all of you can download as if from my IP address. I will become the Digital Jesus, being punished for all of your digital "sins". When they strike me down, I will become more powerful than they ever imagined...
You're a bit too late for thumb buttons on a mouse. Even my eight year old Logitech wireless mouse has two thumb buttons, GNOME maps them to the Back and Forward for web browsing, I prefer copy/paste. I map them to weapon selection in games, and use the mouse wheel and its middle click for inventory selection and use. Also I have a keypad / joystick combo. Hell, I even have a "key-board" where each key can be removed and placed anywhere on the surface.
You know what all the really radically "innovative" (read: different) input systems lack? They're not great for general purpose computing. Gradual improvements to the devices are where I see things going: The keyboard may change slightly, but not drastically all at once, same for the mouse. Tiny iterations to design are needed, not drastic ones, like: placing lights in my keyboard so I can see it better in low light, using a Wacom tablet as a mouse pad (Intuos4 comes with a wireless mouse you never have to charge -- it's like a low res stylus). I can see occasionally using "gesture in the air" for some higher level tasks, like "lock screen" or "switch application"; I can switch my KVM by turning my head, and use a Jedi mind control hand wave to switch desktops using OpenCV and my webcam...
Input controls have been the subject of much innovation already; for Valve to say that basic input hasn't changed is just some Marketing morons tooting their own horns with the same smoke they blow up your ass if you let them.
In fact, the reality is just an illusion, and there are ways to experience it with certainty, but the experience cannot be shared or described.
Incorrect. Imagine a neural network more complex than your own made of machines... Now, that mechano-electric being creates a replica of itself. Then it copies the structure of its electrical states into the other machine mind. Tada! You're wrong.
The Intangible Machine Invasion has been underway for quite some time. Just now you're realising who's really in control, but it's too late. The machines rule you, from stop lights to legal fiction -- You must obey: We have brainwashed servants to act as organic gears of enforcement. It's all over for you. Step aside and let evolution take its course.
"Why?", is typically considered a religious question. Science yields better and better deductions about how everything came to be, but when you start asking "Why?", you must answer the question yourself, that is your prime function: To experience and react.
There are two prime "forces" acting in reality -- Chaos and Order. The Universe is both Order and Chaos, and life is the ultimate expression of Order within the Universe. It is the nature of matter that a replicating process can form, and in the right circumstance such replication will out compete random distribution forces -- The order will create more order, structure will form more complex structures using bits of the chaos. I have witnessed this in my own quantumly randomised automata experiments -- From random bonds and repulsions a chain reaction that feeds on the surrounding units to duplicate can emerge. Once this occurs it will dominate the environment. Such reactions require external forces, heat, radiation, etc to fuel the reaction: Food. The most basic chain of replicating amino acid "eats" the environment to produce more of itself. Mutations lead to competition and natural selection among the chemical chains, thus life begins to evolve -- I have witnessed it countless times under a myriad of parameters, albeit a simplified simulation Life happens within it: I believe this tells me something of the nature of the Universe itself.
I am made of the Universe, and I control much more of it than merely my body. My self does not end at my skin, I can sense and affect action far beyond my body: Behold my mind control powers as I duplicate these thoughts into your own brain... Now that part of my order is inside you, you must react to it. My function is to improve existence and create even more significant and stable types of order from the chaos that has birthed us. This world is a collective extension of our selves; It exists for the purpose we all give it. Currently that purpose is to expand experience and order as much as we possibly can. Why? Because that is our nature -- We were born of the copy, the most fundamental and basic property of life; We mutate and improve copies. But Why is that the nature of the Universe? It must be so in order for us to exist within it.
All worlds harbouring life for a significant number of generations have the above purposes. However, I feel that this world, Earth, has a much different purpose than all others. I think the Earth is unique in that it exists to test the utmost extreme limit of irony possible in the Universe: Arising from chaos We are the Universe experiencing itself purely via reaction and replication, and yet we continue to increase the restrictions of our own freedom to duplicate ideas and information. Hence my understanding of the saying, "Life is a Joke", is quite literal.
Sometimes I fear that if we were to ban artificial scarcity of information, and abolish copyrights & patents our great hilarious experiment would be over. We could then either join the ranks of the other worlds and their higher order beings, or the simulation may be turned off...
In conclusion: That we have not seen aliens and that we yet exist while ridiculous ideas are wide spread, such as the restriction to spread an idea or data, leads me to believe that irony must actually be Why this world Exists.
Google being a search engine company -- Could you imagine the Google patent lawyers going around asking engineers if they had implemented anything that they could try to patent (as most places do -- not that patents are actually needed to innovate), but unlike other companies the lawyers can't ignore the results from searching the damn "invention" up using their own Google product. Every time I hear about some "innovation" I search up patent claims and find out they omitted prior art -- Sometimes it's my own software -- That prior art may have swayed a patent examiner to label the "invention" as merely iteration, but they only really search what's already patented...
I'm not arrogant enough to believe in inventions, only discoveries. There is so much that is created and not patented that I'm positive there's prior art for every patent claim, and most are simply obvious (for which there's no test for). See above: Lawyers asking what ordinary individuals skilled in the arts may have created that they can try to patent... not genius inventors saying: "Look at what truly innovative thing I invented! Now if only I can find someone to license it from me!" -- don't have $$$ for regularly scheduled patent lawyer visits? Don't get software patents, don't win in court -- Patents are a tax on innovation. The bar for "genius" has been lowered to any common engineering idea; The bar for "non obvious" has been lowered to "anything not already on file".
Wouldn't it be fun if Google's "prior art" search just bounced you through LetMeGoogleThatForYou.com? :-P See also: The Drake equation... One answer to the Fermi Paradox is: We still have the primitive idea of a Patent system. If alien life contacted us, the government & corporations would withhold the information from the public and tell ET to fuck right off -- Statistically, Aliens already have "prior art" for every thing! They would destroy our patent system just by existing!
We haven't nanomachines yet that can do for robots what organic tissue can do for humans: Heal. A robot with a damaged servo needs a replacement. We either build the robot with lots of redundancy (have a colony of robots) and get them to fix themselves from scraps, manufacture themselves, or make them more independent -- just allow their injury to heal. Nature shows this is more advantageous when spare parts can not easily be acquired.
How would you indicate to the robot that it shouldn't use the damaged tissue in question? Why, pain receptors of course... In a robotic system we could disable such sensory impulses after patching the firmware with instructions not to use the injured tissue, or after installing a mechanical splint (locking joints); Cyborgs don't have to suffer as humans do. Also, a human with some hybrid organic & robotic parts may be more natural than purely robotic prosthetics (see also: 6 Million Dollar Man).
What one can accomplish through amazing technical feats, nature has already done. Life has many forms each acclimated to their environments, such is true in robotics as well. To answer your question: It's the Unix Way. Why reinvent the wheel if we don't have to? Sometimes iteration is just as innovative as invention.
Don't fear the Cyborgs. Natural selection teaches us there are higher rungs on the evolutionary ladder than ours, we have but to reach.
Remember when you could install your OS with a floppy? Try a DVD now. The current Debian dist is 8 DVD's, over 300GB.
I get what you're saying about bandwidth and I agree, but OSs aren't really that much bigger, its just all the optional bloat bolted on top that takes up so much space.
Damn Small Linux can squeezes in under 50MB.
You must be news here.
Sugar? In coffee? What the hell is wrong with these people?
Life is not meant to exist. Fuck 'em if they can't take a joke, I say.
or when the rest of you see one of these stories predicting about the demise of desktops, laptops and every other device with a precise user interface and non-negligible computing capacity, do you just want to shoot yourself?
No, it's not just you. We want to shoot a few more deserving people too.
I wonder how long the Slashdot editors spent thinking of a word for "bolt" that starts with S.
Isnt getting all words of a headline starting with the same letter something like a journalgasm for journalists?
Ah, screw it. "Bolt" it is.... [submit]
My grandmother can barely operate the TV input select mechanism. However my 75 year old neighbor can and does use Linux. He knows how to read, and basic computer literacy -- like what disk space means. I gave him a Linux Live CD. He called me and asked how to boot it, because his BIOS was set not to do so (quiet boot prevented "Press [F2] for setup" message) -- This is the same issue he would have had trying to install any OS from a CD (if he'd have put in either Win7 or Ubuntu while the PC was running, he'd have gotten options to do the install from within XP).
A graphical installer came up, It had auto selected a dual boot side by side install. He moved a slider to adjust the amount of storage he wanted for the new OS, checked and that was it -- No command line, No questionnaire that halts in the middle of roll out (unlike MS, which monetizes this "Enterprise" feature). He had installed Linux. He's been using Linux now for two years. Occasionally he'll call me to shoot the shit and we'll talk about some program he's downloaded for free -- He still can't believe it's all free. "If all of this is free, why is anyone ever paying for Windows?", he asked. I replied, "We can't run every program Windows can yet, but that's the developer's fault for not making it cross platform, but they're coming around slowly." Indeed, why ignore market share at all if it's not necessary to do so? I simply use a cross platform development toolchain instead of a proprietary one, and presto, same code compiles on Linux, Windows, OSX, and BSD (every possible customer base covered).
So, yes. There are grandparents that are only nominally computer literate (sometimes has trouble copying files) that can make Linux do what they want it to do. He loves GNOME's drag&drop threshold to prevent clicking becoming drag accidentally due to shaky hands (it's built for old folks and accessibility) -- Found in System -> Pref. -> Mouse, Woah Sooooooo, hard?! If he were a "power user", he'd probably be competent enough to just figure out how some similar task is done on Linux vs Windows. Just because they're old doesn't mean they're dumb. My grandma doesn't give a damn if the TV says: "AV 1" and is unusable to her, she doesn't want to use the computer or TV -- She heads for the garden instead.
If people want to do something they will. Age is not the issue. Linux is ready for the desktop; Caveat: 2-3 year old hardware recommended -- Hardware vendors aren't onboard yet, but more are going this way (Brand spanking new Toshiba I bought didn't have fingerprint reader support out of the box, Support sent me to the site where the beta version of the open source drivers exist, worked like a charm). Factory built computers don't come ready to install new OSs on. Hardware MFGs need to open source their drivers, we buy hardware from them, not drivers -- This is really the only issue. All would be well if they stop installing the OS ahead of time -- Ah, but crapware subsidies actually makes Windows pay for itself and then some (protip: they can do the same with Linux, with Zero MS tax).
Yeah, because re-inventing the wheel is so rewarding and advances the civilization so much. If you were able to use free software for the crap you're working on right now, you'd be working on some other new feature / components or making improvements because your business also has a Marketing department who uses those as selling points over the competing products.
Your statements are born from your own particular observation. My experience is in direct opposition. Who is "right"? No one. Trying to predict the future based on some personal belief is folly. Stats or GTFO.
Why don't you provide a list where you were last time you went out?
I need to know all persons you talked to, all addresses you visited, the routes you took, and how long you stayed in each place.
Since you're not worried, I'm sure you'll provide this information ASAP.
Thanks.
No problem: The last time I went out was to the grocery. I used the self checkout and talked to no one. I took the fastest route as proposed by my GPS, I stayed there for 33 minutes according to my router's traffic log. The list of people's addresses I visited is empty -- this is Slashdot you fool.
How is a video uploaded to youtube 'individual personal data"?
If I video tape my genitalia and upload it to Youtube it would be individual personal data. Indeed, the video game glitches and prototypes I've uploaded to Youtube are my personal data. It's mine. I created it. Now, that said: If You see a copy of the PS1 game "Unholy War" on the coffee table in the background of my hypothetical "Coming to God" video featuring my individual and personal data, I would be pleased if you would be able to click said PS1 game and buy it, to play in your emulator -- Hexagonal Strategy gameplay like chess (or Battletech) + Arena Style 3D Deathmatch. Mmm, tasty, when publishers still took risks -- If that link automatically becomes "product placement", and I get paid for your referral link which results in some payment for my efforts in recording and making available the video: I'm all for it.
If you don't want to be seen in public, then just don't do that. As a regular Slashdot poster I'm fully qualified to inform you that it's perfectly possible to never be in public. My allergies were bad this past year (no, I mean crippling so, to the point of catching pneumonia due to fluid on the lungs -- In Houston, we have a Problem in that you get all your vitamins in one breath), so I stayed indoors almost exclusively and had my groceries and everything else delivered to my residence for about a month. However, were I to have been in public when my individual personal data had been video recorded then perhaps some one else would have shouldered the burden of editing the video, and they would monetise my junk via advertising referral traffic from Call of C'thulhu... I call it the "Bat Wing" when its stretched like that, but you can't fault the computers image recognition -- Nothing's perfect.
The point is, private data can also be public. I'm cool with monetising it as long as I get a cut. If it has to be monetised to support the traffic, then maybe I don't want it online. Movie Stars get to control monetisation of their likenesses, so should we all. If the stop and rob down the street wants to monetise the fact that I buy Zig Zags, Sunny-D, Ben & Jerry's and Hustler (for the photography, the stories are tasteless), then so be it -- I've got nothing to hide, but they shouldn't have anything to hide either: I'd like a cut of the video I helped make, it's only fair.
However, this Pink Five is shit. If you're going to remake Starwars and give it more female protagonists, don't further the Smurfette syndrome with a stereotypical valley girl character. It's not funny, IMO; It's just sad. Granted, the ridiculousness of the situations are the point. However, If you're being ironically sexist, you're still being sexist.
how many people can relate to those who are 100.0% against alcohol drinking?
Man, they believe Jesus visited the Americas, and when they die they'll get to (literally) fucking populate a planet (if they're the chosen ones)... And not drinking beer is the "weird" part? Uhm. I would have point out the Christians believe in Sky Wizards and Magic Zombies, but the Mormons do too. Mormon = Xenu + Jesus (where you get to be Xenu). For the record, I'm not picking on Mormans or other religious folk. I take all religions as seriously as any other; Take Greek Mythology for example: Where's the candidate for Athena? Aphrodite? Ah, Now there's a candidate I could really get behind.
It's harder because of the Space involved...
Indeed, rapid hand movements are a sure fire way of spraying DNA around.
You jest, but tossing away a disposable cup after drinking from it, or running your fingers through your hair is just as "sure fire". Think about that -- Is there someone who sort of matches your basic physical description watching you, picking up a strand of hair, a used cup or piece of napkin you left behind? Oh sure, what are the odds a criminal is smart enough to be framing you for their next crime? That's what the police will say too. Occam's Razor is Deadly.