To add another aspect to this, I think it is horrible that women, or anyone else who does not care about the mechanics of computers or the internet include them as an important part of their life.
The average person wanders through a life full of black boxes. There is the black box that streams video into their house, so they can watch Friends, the black box that takes them from place to place when they manipulate it with a wheel and petals, the black box that adds and subtracts for them, the black box that heats up their food, the black box that allows them to send email to their friends, the list goes on.
I, and I assume slashdot readers in general, have very few black boxes (if any) in our lives. We can explain, at least in basic terms, how everything in our lives work. They mention using a 'TV' without knowing how it works, but I (and I assume again, most of you) can easly explain the basics of how a CRT works.
I can say from experence that if one tried to explain a CRT (even just the acronym) to the majority of end users of Television, they would completly ignore that person, or even get hostile. They shun explanations of their world. They want things to work, they don't want to think about them.
I remember from back when I knew little about computers, I had to rely on tech support from time to time to help me out of whatever mess I had explored myself into with my machine. After helping me, the teche began to launch into an explanation of the problem, then stopped and asked if I cared. I, of course, said I did and he eagerly explained the problem to me. I was most likely the only caller he had that day who gave a damn, and he was obviously grateful for a captive audience, as I was for the knowledge I gained.
I'm not a teche, but I do deal with end users and computers every day, such as my sister, who fits this bill quite nicely. She loves computers, er, she loves to use them to talk to her friends. She has learned how -- in Windows -- to get to hotmail with IE and load the closed standard AIM.
Disempowered users such as her are more than just a shame, they are dangerous. As the technology gets more engrained in their lives as well as getting more complex, the black boxes will encircle her world and control virtually every aspect of it. So while the 200,000 or so slashdot readers are scared stiff of AOL and the DMCA, and stage our pathetic marches against evil laws which are too complicated for anyone to care about, they will be buying encrypted DVDs by the truckload. We will be fighting heroically to defend the sacred open standards, while they will be chatting away on AOL/Time Warner's proprietory IM and viewing their restricted content.
They will be, in essence, defeating us as well as themselves in their blissful ignorance of the technology at work in their lives.
But will it allow us to fast foward through all of the advertisement shit?
No?
Well, um, then will it allow us to get rid of the subliminal messages?
No?!
Well, then I'm sure it will allow us to actually use DVDs we bought legally in different zones.
It won't? What, exactly, is it that we are fighting for? Is to be able to get force fed content through Linux rather than through Windows? If that is all it is, then I want my contrabution to the EFF back, because that is just plain stupid. Now, if we are, in fact, fighting for our rights to decide what goes into our head, our right to have some say over big copyright intrests about IP, and our right to actually own what we buy, then this is completly meaningless, and I think it would be a shame if anyone would patronize this pathetic attempt at appeasement.
Let's not take the bone they are throwing at us and keep on fighting for the meat.
You've raised a good point, one that I have pondered a great deal. Basically, three things could happen:
Most likely, the biological humans will die out in the next global catastrophy (which happens from time to time). I think this will happen regardless of whether or not AI becomes a reality, although AI will have many magnitudes better chance of surviving (perhaps by escaping to places away from the calamity, but too inhospitable for biological humans.)
Fairly likely, that biological humans will simply die out due to lack of intrest in mating. Scott Adams said in The Dilbert Future that holodecks would be the end of the human species because people would get so wrapped up in it that they wouldn't care about the Real World anymore. Granted, AI might like the electronic play grounds that will be created, but they'd have jobs (like designing the next generation AI) so they'd have to unplug themselves to do some real work. Of course, their work would be completly gedenken as dumber machines would do all of the manual stuff.
Least likely, but one that seems fairly intresting to me is that the human animal will leave civilization and return to it's natrual habitat. The AIs would do a much better job taking care of the planet ecologically, so there would be a great deal of foliage for it to return to. The civilization is freed from the animal, and the animal is freed from the civilization (poetic, isn't it?).
Regardless of what happens to the animal, I have my stock with the machines. They will be much more human than the biological humans, and human evolution will continue, only through the machines. When Mr. Armstrong jumped from the last rung of the ladder and made his now clich'ed speech, he was speaking of (at a deeper level than the hight of the step) the cosmically insignificant yet historically unparalleled step from Earth to another body. The step from biological to machine will be similar. The first 'small step' from biological to machine will yeald a 'great leap' in the drive to a pure and enlighned human spirit.
My point is that we (I believe that is the term you used) will be the machines, and our future will be bright. The future of the biological animals, where we came from, is limited and of little more than passing intrest.
I'll most likely be moderated into oblivion for this because what I am about to say usually makes people feel very uncomfortable.
Consider, for a second, what would be wrong with AI beings becoming our evolutionary successors? There are only two things that the human animal can do, it will ether die out, or it will evolve. We are not somehow at the end of evolution here.
Now, humans are in a very percerious position, We most likely will not survive a global catastrophy, so I don't think that the human strand of evolution has too much longer left, so I think it is safe to say that the human species, or its bilogical children, will not be the last thing to die on earth, in that we will die out significantly prior to the total destruction of the planet.
AI are much more robust, they can live long enough for interstellar voyages, they can be adapted better to other ecosystems, and they can use up less resources. Given that, AI could be expected to outlive any bilogical counterpart, so wouldn't they be much better successors?
I think that the fear of AI stems from the inherent biological fear of new and unusual things, which has been played up in the media (With movies like The Matrix and Terminator for example). These movies show AI out of control. They show them as hartless computers show cold disregard for all that we hold dear.
They pretend that compassion is a biological trait, not a trait that exists because of our communal nature, amplified by our civilization. They assume that we are capable of creating beings that have the ability to reason far better than us, yet we do not have the ability to give them morals.
I believe, rather, that we will have more control over them than we do our bilogical offspring, as we can write their code as well as control their environment. We will have a much better idea of how do control their environment too (as we will know more about which inputs affect their environment).
I envision a future in which our AI children will live much better lives than we do, they will have hopes and dreams, personal tragedies, perhaps loves, hates, and will be able to run things much better than we do, as they will not have millions of years of evolutionary baggage to drag around. We are, basically, animals forced by systems of our own creation, into civilization. We have ugly sides, we murder, cheat, steal, all because we are not very adapted to our envoronment. All of the uglyness of the human spirit is because it would be fundametially different were it not casted into what it is.
AI, OTOH, would be designed in civilization, for civilization. They will be civilization, not it's end. They will much better reflect the ideal human spirit than the human animal ever could.
First, it is more inconspicious, I mean, I would relize if my keyboard were switched. While a company may claim that they are upgrading, I would still examine my new board closly, so I would likely notice the manufacturer. Not to mention the fact that if I didn't like it, I would bring a new one in from home.
If the manegment protested me using my own keyboard too much, it would become suspicious. There simply arn't too many arguments that hold weight for not allowing me to pay for my own keyboard.
I'm not behind my computer very often, and if I were, I would most likely not notice a cable extention device, unless I was looking for it.
The picture of the inside of the keyboard shows it to be a device spliced into the wire inside the box. I wonder how practical it would be to clip it out of their keyboard and splice it to the person's old keyboard.
I would think that to be the best way to go about it as you would not have to replace the keyboard, nor would there be something external. The only way the person would notice is if they were so paranoid that they opened their keyboard regularly, or one does such a bad job with their keyboard that there are external signs of tampering.
The only problem with that is how long it takes to dump it's log. An hour and a half might be too long to wait for it to dump the entire log. In which case, an external unit looks like the best way to go. One could remove it from the target's computer and download it at their leasure in privacy.
Anyhow, it looks pretty cool, although I don't see to many non-clandestine uses for it, other than back up of recently written text documents.
I thought that that was a clever but simple and straight forward joke on Micheal's part. It is interesting that so many people appeared to be misled by it.
I was a bit upset when I looked over this thread and saw nothing but negetive posts about Geeks in Space.
Now, sure, GiS is a bit low-brow, and dosen't have much in the way of content (that's not rehashed), but I find it incredably funny. I've listened to every episode and have yet to find one that disapointed me (although I don't know about the next one, I'm not exactly emmitt's biggest fan).
I think the other posters don't understand the point of GiS: To be excellent humor.
I hope Malda, Bates, and the others don't get discoraged and quit doing these shows (I have noticed that they arn't quite 'weekly') as that would deprive me of one of the truly funny things in my life.
I agree that/. should make sure they are reporting accurately, however, in the intrest of time (ie. how long it takes from submission to posting) I think having the poster edit his submission would be prohibitive.
I think a better soulution would be to have the poster point out any inaccuraces in the submitter's message. It would be Bad and Wrong for a poster to change the submitter's spelling/grammer/ideas, but he could post the comment unedited and place corrections afterword as they do on occasion when they want to add their own commentary.
See, although that 750 Billion still equates to a great deal of money, stopping the building of weapons of war will not nessarly equate with a gain of 750 Billion for social aid.
Money has no real value. Generally, every dollar in the economy correlates to something produced. Now, suppose we stop building the aforementioned weapons. Would 750 Billion dollars worth of crops magically spring up out of the ground? Would the infertile land of impoverished nations begin producing bountiful harvests? Of course not!
If money only is representative of goods produced and labor, then a reduction in goods produced and labor (servicemen) would result in the same amount of money representing a smaller amount of 'actual wealth'. Inflation would rise and the any gains would be lost.
Of course, that inflation would be checked by a 750 Billion dollar slowdown in the economy. Estimates say that there are 2 Million servicemen in the United States military (I don't have any global statistics, but I'm sure it is astronomical). Then there are the companies surviving on defense contracts (Lockheed Martin would be closing its doors (that's allot of high paid engineers hitting the streets)).
Another thing to keep in mind is all of the technological advances that sprung out of military spending that have helped the world (Microwave ovens, rockets, GPS, interchangeable parts, aircraft, and. dare I say, computers). None of this would have existed were it not for military spending.
Stopping world hunger (which, I presume, is what you are referring to when you say the world's problems (anyhow, it is by far the most immediate and fundamental) is a much too complicated battle than could be won by 'brute force' economics. It must be won by a delicate balancing act between diversification of resources and economics.
Were it not for his radiation theory, there would be no quantom physics. The concept of energy being finitely divisible is by far the most clever hack in physics.
Your article started out great, I loved the zenning out on video games concept. Then, something changed, you went on a full fledged, and thoroughly unprovoked attack on emacs. I'm not quite sure how it all ends because I got too pissed off to finish reading it.
It baffles my mind how an outright attack on the most logical UI ever designed got on slashdot without being moderated.
I agree that keyboard designs suck. I especially hate when they dike off half of the backspace key to stash the \ | key so that they can make the enter key outlandishly large. Another misfeature is these strange keys that inhale space that should go to my ctrl and meta keys. All they have on them is a glyph that looks like a contorted four pane window. They don't do anything, except take up space.
(getting back on topic now)
I guess if some one was so bad at typing that they had to look at their keyboards to find their esc or ctrl keys, then emacs key binding would be a Bad Thing. But I don't feel very secure when I know that, depending on what condition vi's condition is in, the next keystroke I make could ether print a character to my buffer, or delete it.
It doesn't make me mad that you like vi (to all your own) nor does it make me mad that you are using slashdot for advocacy (god knows that there are plenty of emacs and vi advocacy groups on Usenet). What makes me mad is that you were deceptive about your intentions. Had you called your article "Emacs Sucks, I Like Vi!" I would have ignored it and not wasted the portion of my life that I did reading it. As is, not only did I waste that time, but I am now actively wasting my time posting a response to it (my fault? perhaps in part).
In closing, please try to avoid deceptive advertisement in the future. After all, isn't that one of the things the Open Source community is against?
After that, what next? putting stupid little glyphs on superfluous keys?
Slashdot Mirror
The same happened with me. I got the "At Large Membership Status Report" then nothing else.
To add another aspect to this, I think it is horrible that women, or anyone else who does not care about the mechanics of computers or the internet include them as an important part of their life.
The average person wanders through a life full of black boxes. There is the black box that streams video into their house, so they can watch Friends, the black box that takes them from place to place when they manipulate it with a wheel and petals, the black box that adds and subtracts for them, the black box that heats up their food, the black box that allows them to send email to their friends, the list goes on.
I, and I assume slashdot readers in general, have very few black boxes (if any) in our lives. We can explain, at least in basic terms, how everything in our lives work. They mention using a 'TV' without knowing how it works, but I (and I assume again, most of you) can easly explain the basics of how a CRT works.
I can say from experence that if one tried to explain a CRT (even just the acronym) to the majority of end users of Television, they would completly ignore that person, or even get hostile. They shun explanations of their world. They want things to work, they don't want to think about them.
I remember from back when I knew little about computers, I had to rely on tech support from time to time to help me out of whatever mess I had explored myself into with my machine. After helping me, the teche began to launch into an explanation of the problem, then stopped and asked if I cared. I, of course, said I did and he eagerly explained the problem to me. I was most likely the only caller he had that day who gave a damn, and he was obviously grateful for a captive audience, as I was for the knowledge I gained.
I'm not a teche, but I do deal with end users and computers every day, such as my sister, who fits this bill quite nicely. She loves computers, er, she loves to use them to talk to her friends. She has learned how -- in Windows -- to get to hotmail with IE and load the closed standard AIM.
Disempowered users such as her are more than just a shame, they are dangerous. As the technology gets more engrained in their lives as well as getting more complex, the black boxes will encircle her world and control virtually every aspect of it. So while the 200,000 or so slashdot readers are scared stiff of AOL and the DMCA, and stage our pathetic marches against evil laws which are too complicated for anyone to care about, they will be buying encrypted DVDs by the truckload. We will be fighting heroically to defend the sacred open standards, while they will be chatting away on AOL/Time Warner's proprietory IM and viewing their restricted content.
They will be, in essence, defeating us as well as themselves in their blissful ignorance of the technology at work in their lives.
But will it allow us to fast foward through all of the advertisement shit?
No?
Well, um, then will it allow us to get rid of the subliminal messages?
No?!
Well, then I'm sure it will allow us to actually use DVDs we bought legally in different zones.
It won't? What, exactly, is it that we are fighting for? Is to be able to get force fed content through Linux rather than through Windows? If that is all it is, then I want my contrabution to the EFF back, because that is just plain stupid. Now, if we are, in fact, fighting for our rights to decide what goes into our head, our right to have some say over big copyright intrests about IP, and our right to actually own what we buy, then this is completly meaningless, and I think it would be a shame if anyone would patronize this pathetic attempt at appeasement.
Let's not take the bone they are throwing at us and keep on fighting for the meat.
Now, All we have to do is get this posted on the AOL startup screen. The internet will be free of idiots for a day!
You've raised a good point, one that I have pondered a great deal. Basically, three things could happen:
Regardless of what happens to the animal, I have my stock with the machines. They will be much more human than the biological humans, and human evolution will continue, only through the machines. When Mr. Armstrong jumped from the last rung of the ladder and made his now clich'ed speech, he was speaking of (at a deeper level than the hight of the step) the cosmically insignificant yet historically unparalleled step from Earth to another body. The step from biological to machine will be similar. The first 'small step' from biological to machine will yeald a 'great leap' in the drive to a pure and enlighned human spirit.
My point is that we (I believe that is the term you used) will be the machines, and our future will be bright. The future of the biological animals, where we came from, is limited and of little more than passing intrest.
I'll most likely be moderated into oblivion for this because what I am about to say usually makes people feel very uncomfortable.
Consider, for a second, what would be wrong with AI beings becoming our evolutionary successors? There are only two things that the human animal can do, it will ether die out, or it will evolve. We are not somehow at the end of evolution here.
Now, humans are in a very percerious position, We most likely will not survive a global catastrophy, so I don't think that the human strand of evolution has too much longer left, so I think it is safe to say that the human species, or its bilogical children, will not be the last thing to die on earth, in that we will die out significantly prior to the total destruction of the planet.
AI are much more robust, they can live long enough for interstellar voyages, they can be adapted better to other ecosystems, and they can use up less resources. Given that, AI could be expected to outlive any bilogical counterpart, so wouldn't they be much better successors?
I think that the fear of AI stems from the inherent biological fear of new and unusual things, which has been played up in the media (With movies like The Matrix and Terminator for example). These movies show AI out of control. They show them as hartless computers show cold disregard for all that we hold dear.
They pretend that compassion is a biological trait, not a trait that exists because of our communal nature, amplified by our civilization. They assume that we are capable of creating beings that have the ability to reason far better than us, yet we do not have the ability to give them morals.
I believe, rather, that we will have more control over them than we do our bilogical offspring, as we can write their code as well as control their environment. We will have a much better idea of how do control their environment too (as we will know more about which inputs affect their environment).
I envision a future in which our AI children will live much better lives than we do, they will have hopes and dreams, personal tragedies, perhaps loves, hates, and will be able to run things much better than we do, as they will not have millions of years of evolutionary baggage to drag around. We are, basically, animals forced by systems of our own creation, into civilization. We have ugly sides, we murder, cheat, steal, all because we are not very adapted to our envoronment. All of the uglyness of the human spirit is because it would be fundametially different were it not casted into what it is.
AI, OTOH, would be designed in civilization, for civilization. They will be civilization, not it's end. They will much better reflect the ideal human spirit than the human animal ever could.
First, it is more inconspicious, I mean, I would relize if my keyboard were switched. While a company may claim that they are upgrading, I would still examine my new board closly, so I would likely notice the manufacturer. Not to mention the fact that if I didn't like it, I would bring a new one in from home.
If the manegment protested me using my own keyboard too much, it would become suspicious. There simply arn't too many arguments that hold weight for not allowing me to pay for my own keyboard.
I'm not behind my computer very often, and if I were, I would most likely not notice a cable extention device, unless I was looking for it.
The picture of the inside of the keyboard shows it to be a device spliced into the wire inside the box. I wonder how practical it would be to clip it out of their keyboard and splice it to the person's old keyboard.
I would think that to be the best way to go about it as you would not have to replace the keyboard, nor would there be something external. The only way the person would notice is if they were so paranoid that they opened their keyboard regularly, or one does such a bad job with their keyboard that there are external signs of tampering.
The only problem with that is how long it takes to dump it's log. An hour and a half might be too long to wait for it to dump the entire log. In which case, an external unit looks like the best way to go. One could remove it from the target's computer and download it at their leasure in privacy.
Anyhow, it looks pretty cool, although I don't see to many non-clandestine uses for it, other than back up of recently written text documents.
That was the whole point of the article.
The MPAA had a net Profit of $1,400,000,000.
I thought that that was a clever but simple and straight forward joke on Micheal's part. It is interesting that so many people appeared to be misled by it.
I was a bit upset when I looked over this thread and saw nothing but negetive posts about Geeks in Space.
Now, sure, GiS is a bit low-brow, and dosen't have much in the way of content (that's not rehashed), but I find it incredably funny. I've listened to every episode and have yet to find one that disapointed me (although I don't know about the next one, I'm not exactly emmitt's biggest fan).
I think the other posters don't understand the point of GiS: To be excellent humor.
I hope Malda, Bates, and the others don't get discoraged and quit doing these shows (I have noticed that they arn't quite 'weekly') as that would deprive me of one of the truly funny things in my life.
I agree that /. should make sure they are reporting accurately, however, in the intrest of time (ie. how long it takes from submission to posting) I think having the poster edit his submission would be prohibitive.
I think a better soulution would be to have the poster point out any inaccuraces in the submitter's message. It would be Bad and Wrong for a poster to change the submitter's spelling/grammer/ideas, but he could post the comment unedited and place corrections afterword as they do on occasion when they want to add their own commentary.
See, although that 750 Billion still equates to a great deal of money, stopping the building of weapons of war will not nessarly equate with a gain of 750 Billion for social aid.
Money has no real value. Generally, every dollar in the economy correlates to something produced. Now, suppose we stop building the aforementioned weapons. Would 750 Billion dollars worth of crops magically spring up out of the ground? Would the infertile land of impoverished nations begin producing bountiful harvests? Of course not!
If money only is representative of goods produced and labor, then a reduction in goods produced and labor (servicemen) would result in the same amount of money representing a smaller amount of 'actual wealth'. Inflation would rise and the any gains would be lost.
Of course, that inflation would be checked by a 750 Billion dollar slowdown in the economy. Estimates say that there are 2 Million servicemen in the United States military (I don't have any global statistics, but I'm sure it is astronomical). Then there are the companies surviving on defense contracts (Lockheed Martin would be closing its doors (that's allot of high paid engineers hitting the streets)).
Another thing to keep in mind is all of the technological advances that sprung out of military spending that have helped the world (Microwave ovens, rockets, GPS, interchangeable parts, aircraft, and. dare I say, computers). None of this would have existed were it not for military spending.
Stopping world hunger (which, I presume, is what you are referring to when you say the world's problems (anyhow, it is by far the most immediate and fundamental) is a much too complicated battle than could be won by 'brute force' economics. It must be won by a delicate balancing act between diversification of resources and economics.
Sadly, there is no 'magic bullet'.
I confess all of my sins in emacs:
I lust for Natalie Portman.What makes you feel I lust for Natalie Portman?
I can't believe no one has already nominated him.
Were it not for his radiation theory, there would be no quantom physics. The concept of energy being finitely divisible is by far the most clever hack in physics.
VB - If you're to stupid to use a computer
Your article started out great, I loved the zenning out on video games concept. Then, something changed, you went on a full fledged, and thoroughly unprovoked attack on emacs. I'm not quite sure how it all ends because I got too pissed off to finish reading it.
It baffles my mind how an outright attack on the most logical UI ever designed got on slashdot without being moderated.
I agree that keyboard designs suck. I especially hate when they dike off half of the backspace key to stash the \ | key so that they can make the enter key outlandishly large. Another misfeature is these strange keys that inhale space that should go to my ctrl and meta keys. All they have on them is a glyph that looks like a contorted four pane window. They don't do anything, except take up space.
(getting back on topic now)
I guess if some one was so bad at typing that they had to look at their keyboards to find their esc or ctrl keys, then emacs key binding would be a Bad Thing. But I don't feel very secure when I know that, depending on what condition vi's condition is in, the next keystroke I make could ether print a character to my buffer, or delete it.
It doesn't make me mad that you like vi (to all your own) nor does it make me mad that you are using slashdot for advocacy (god knows that there are plenty of emacs and vi advocacy groups on Usenet). What makes me mad is that you were deceptive about your intentions. Had you called your article "Emacs Sucks, I Like Vi!" I would have ignored it and not wasted the portion of my life that I did reading it. As is, not only did I waste that time, but I am now actively wasting my time posting a response to it (my fault? perhaps in part).
In closing, please try to avoid deceptive advertisement in the future. After all, isn't that one of the things the Open Source community is against?
After that, what next? putting stupid little glyphs on superfluous keys?