I'm saying that there are many categories where one person will be 100% sure something should be labeled one way, and another person, also fairly rational, will be 100% sure it should be labeled otherwise. And these are frequently the criteria that would be most relevant to blocking.
[snip]
People will not have similar ideas about whether a page is "explicit", whether a given JPEG is art or pornography, or whether a page promotes drugs.
I do understand what you are saying. But there are ways to get around these things. Wannabee moderators could undergo a calibration test maybe to see where they are themselves in the spectrum of opinion. Just one idea.
Is Naked Lunch literature or pornography? How about Anne Rice's Exit to Eden with content as explicit as what you would find on the newsgroups, but also literary value as commentary on the impossibility of finding real gratification in debauchery (but much more so the former than the latter)?
But I've already addressed that. Literature and pornography are not mutually exclusive, they measure completely different dimensions. That's why I'm proposing (and it's nothing new, I know) that every site/page is rated on a range of different categories, and that the filtering software allows rules with nested exceptions, eg. "block all porn unless it's mild porn and literature rather than graphics".
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
Oh and BRW I wish people would stop flaming the movie; that's a sure fire way to piss the director off and get the movie buried. I still hope to see a "Director's Cut" on widescreen DVD some day.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
The movie was directed by David Lynch (Erasorhead, The Elephant Man, Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks, Wild at Heart). All of these were masterpieces of direction. Although Lynch's movie of Dune wasn't everyone's cup of tea, the theatrical release was at the very least, a competent piece of cinematography.
Most complaints about the film stem from the unavoidable fact that it isn't the book. Lynch did make a brave effort to capture the essence of the novel by allowing the characters' thoughts to be heard. But what so many fail to realise is that Dune contained very little dialogue and very little action; most of the text was introspection. Consequently it cannot be rendered into a film of less than 12 hours length without making substantial cuts.
Whether the "voice-over" method works or not is a matter of opinion. I was very familiar with the book before I saw the film and I *had* wondered how they were going to deal with that. Lynch chose to tackle it head-on. Not surprising really because there *is* no workable alternative. Either you let us hear the characters' thoughts or you leave it out completely turning it into an action flick, or you invent a whole lot of dialogue to discover their thoughts in connversation, turning all the major characters into garrulous clowns. Only the first of these has any chance of remaining faithful to the book. For me, at any rate, I thought the Director did the best that could be done with the material.
BTW, The direction credit for the TV release of this movie went to "Alan Smithee". What happened is, the studio drastically re-edited the film for TV release. Lynch was furious about this and demanded that his name be taken off it. When this happens, the "Alan Smithee" name is traditionally used.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
Here at UC Berkeley, I have been called "racist" because I am opposed to Affirmative Action. This system won't work because the standards are no defined. Even if they seem very clear to you, or to me, they also seem very clear to the people whose opinions differ widely from yours.
I don't see this as a problem. There would have to be more than one category of racism reflected in the label set. Even if there wasn't, articles arguing against affirmative action will either be clearly racist or they won't, depending upon the tone and the arguments employed. "Moderators" applying labels incorrectly would be caught sooner or later. And end users attempting to filter out racism will at least be spared the worst of it in the meantime. At the end of the day, I'm not trying to imagine a system that will render invisible all traces of a given idea - just one that will filter out chosen categories of content that are likely to offend certain people.
So, for example, I would agree with those moderators who moderate child porn as "obscene", but would not agree with those moderators who moderate Anais Nin as "obscene"
Of course, work needs to be done on selecting an appropriate set of labels. Labels which imply a value judgement must be completely avoided: the definition of "obscene" depends entirely on who you are. Definitions of Mild, Explicit etc. need to be commonly understood from an openly published and clearly precise set of guidelines. Probably a numeric rating system for each category would be more useful, as Kesh suggested in this thread.
I don't know what Anais Nin has to do with it (excuse my cultural ignorance!), but what most people understand by "child porn" might well be labelled as:
"Entertainment+ExplicitChildSexuality+Graphics"
And filtering out all kinds of genuine child porn, without blocking discussion of Nabokov's "Lolita" and other similar literary works could be done using my scheme like this:
"FILTER *ChildSexuality UNLESS Mild AND Literature AND NOT Graphics"
It seems to me that the system could be as flexible and precise as we make it to be.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
First off, I agree that keyword blocking will never work.
But I do believe it is possible to assemble a useful if not 100% definitive list of offensive sites. It requires human eyeballs, but if enough volunteers could be induced to use a modified browser with an embedded rating form, they could rate as they surf with fairly little inconvenience.
It would never cover everything and it would never be 100% up to date but a rating sytem like this would be better than nothing, and with enough participants would be largely self-moderating. It's certainly the only kind of rating system I'd ever feel comfortable with.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
I thought about this for a couple of minutes and I think I can see a workable solution. Here's my idea, and my apologies go to anyone else who may have already thought of it.
The contributing volunteers shouldn't add sites to a blacklist or even a broad categorization. Instead they should apply a number of labels simultaneously to each page. Here are rough examples of what I mean, for three different sites:
Of course the filtering software would have to come with default rules which wouldn't truly suit anyone, just like current packages.
"FILTER *Racism ALL" "FILTER *Sexuality ALL"
But the end user could easily tweak the rule set to be as precise as they like. eg:
"FILTER *Racism UNLESS Educational OR Literature" "FILTER ExtremeRacism ALL" "FILTER *HomoSexuality ALL" "FILTER MildHeteroSexuality UNLESS Educational" "FILTER Explicit*Sexuality UNLESS Literature AND NOT Graphics"
The filter rule sets can be adapted by anybody. You don't need to be a programmer, just to be able to understand what UNLESS, AND, OR, NOT mean, and to be able to understand that the result of any given rule may be modified by what rules come after it. Like *any* series of filters applied sequentially.
No doubt people of like mindset would trade their carefully crafted filter rule sets between themselves.
This system is still slightly (though less) vulnerable to misclassification by volunteers with an evil agenda. But some sort of metamoderation scheme would soon identify those reprobates and flag up all the sites that needed rechecking.
Can anyone think of a reason why this wouldn't work?
PS. Just in case this sort of scheme should find its way into anyone's commercial implementation, I'm releasing the above idea to the world under the terms of the GPL - so there are should be no encrypted filter lists based on this idea, OK?;o)
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
Mergers always involve casualties, even at board level. And even among the survivors there will be those for whom things didn't go the way they wanted. I don't expect the market will read *too much* into this little spat as long as Robert Coates shuts up and goes away soon.
But the charges he is making are certainly interesting. And he appears to be some sort of management consultant, which doesn't fit well with the usual picture of a disgruntled and displaced director forced out and with nowhere else to go.
If Coates makes a rational case in his upcoming letter, the SEC may be compelled to investigate and that would not be too good for Corel (especially given the recent bad publicity surrounding Mike Cowpland's alleged insider dealing). However unjust it may be, mud sticks.
However it plays out, if the merger doesn't go through it'll mean yet another disastrous blow to Corel's share price. In that case Corel may find *themselves* ripe for takeover.
Personally I'd hate to see this happen to Corel but OTOH I can't exactly say I was overjoyed when I the merger was announced. Inprise are already pretty much in bed with the Open Source community and I can't really see how a merger would benefit us. I'd much rather see a diverse market of smaller companies co-operating with each other than a market dominated by a small handful of megacorporations. Megacorporations tend to stuff the customer every opportunity they get; ethics and morals get blown out the window in the name of responsibility to shareholders.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
Maybe for US people typing in "McDonalds" alone will find the fast food chain, but maybe in the UK it will prompt so you can choose the family group (clan?) instead
I'm off topic, but you must be kidding: McDonalds the hamburger chain has thoroughly colonised the UK (where I live) as well as every other country that I've been to.
And ironically, as a Scot I'm sad to say that there is probably more interest in Scottish family history on your side of the pond (among the numerous descendants of the victims of the Highland Clearances, and homesick expat Scottish engineers in S.V. too) than there is on mine. If homebound Scots these days gave a toss about their cultural identity they'd have seceded from the UK years ago.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
I, for one, would have absolutely NO objections to an arbitrary form of languange construct that defines a law, as long as the definition made sense and was itself rigidly defined.
Hell, yes. Then, when people needed a lawyer, they'd have to hire a programmer instead. (Ka-chinggg!!)
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
Ah, but the sad thing is that I'm not just talking about interviews for junior positions but those for contract programming roles earning £100K per year. Most programming roles are maintenance roles, but most maintenance doesn't just entail one-line changes, there's still a degree of design involved. And even a one-line change can be fscked up.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
What worries me is that this thing could seriously reduce the demand for a better surface-to-LEO RLV than the Shuttle, and that is something that we really really need much more than yet another giant booster.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
I certainly sympathize with that. Even when you have a lengthy resume behind you, and even when you're being interviewed by a manager with some technical ability, the criteria by which the final selection is made often seems to go more by chicken guts and the phases of the moon than anything *real*. That guy must simply have an interviewing style that was suited to the interviewer.
BTW, watch out for programming syntax tests. I've been to numerous interviews that could only be passed if were able to parse the most hideous abortions of C syntax in your head under pressure. The fact that no sane person would ever write such a statement or declaration is neither here nor there, it seems they just want walking talking K&R books. Programming style? Irrelevant. Readability? Who cares. Ability to map a problem to a solution? Not important.
And they wonder why so many software projects fail...
IMO if you're confronted with this sort of thing during an interview it's best just to politely decline and leave...unless you'd enjoy working for a clueless project manager alongside a horde of incompetent spaghetti coders.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
That's what I like to see. If the students aren't crying, they're not working hard enough! I'm mostly serious about this; between 1985-1995 there was a steady and continual deterioration in the quality of CS graduates (I've not done any recruiting since then so I can't speak for the last 5 years). And those graduates don't half get a shock when they enter the world of work and see just what level of effort and skill is expected of them. It benefits no-one to dumb down Computer Science courses.
<blockquote>Cram it in, jam it in The students heads are hollow. Cram it in, jam it in: There's plenty more to follow</blockquote>
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
I *did* already concede that we have a few more gadgets now. But I don't think they have made such a huge difference to the way we live our lives or the way we think and act. We've been watching far too much TV ever since the damn thing was invented.
the internet and computers
The internet certainly has the potential to revolutionize society and adically alter the way we live. But for the vast majority of people this just hasn't happened yet. We're still mostly stuck in 1960.
artificial hearts
To the best of my knowledge we *still* don't have artificial hearts outside of the laboratory (and even within the laboratory it's not really changing anyone's life - the recipients of these implants don't last very long and they have to stay in bed hooked up). Of course ordinary transplant surgery was still in its infancy back then but even now it only affects a very small number of people.
AIDS
In 1960 there was gonorrhea, syphilis and herpes. During the late 1980's and early-to-mid 1990's there was a paranoia about AIDS that has no 1960's parallel. But it seems to have mostly gone away by now perhaps because the most sexually active generation today is young enough to have grown up taking AIDS for granted. [increased] gasoline prices
This hasn't changed anybody's life. Increased earnings have offset this taxation and you don't see people giving up their cars as a result.
The trick is --- it doesn't _feel_ that different, to anyone who lived through it. But in reality, we're a completely different society;
I don't think there's any evidence to support that view.
...the world of 2040 won't feel that different from today, for those of us who live through it --- but, taken as snapshots, and then compared, they would be completely different.
I won't argue with you there as I've no idea what 2040 will be like. The pace of change does appear to be increasing though and - apart from widespread Internet use - there are a number of potentially life-changing technologies *possibly* just over the horizon (nanotechnology, longevity treatments, true AI, mind uploading, cheap fusion energy, cheap space travel etc).
In my opinion the only thing coming up that will make a really significant difference will be a vastly increased active lifespan. How will a society dominated by middle-aged centenarians work? I'm *dying* to find out;o)
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
I see what you men but you have to remember that a story isn't always "about" what it purports to be "about".
Moreover, whether it's intentional or not, the future economic system described by Sterling isn't capitalism.
Capitalism - by definition - is a system in which one needs capital in order to make serious money, and without it you can only sell your labour for much more modest returns.
But you may have noticed that even the presently nascent "New Economy" Sterling referred to is vastly different to the old one. It empowers people with ideas and the get-up-and-go to pursue them by (i) eliminating the requirement for significant capital in many cases, particularly where in the so-called "knowledge-based" economy; and (ii) making capital much easier to obtain when it's required (venture capitalists are ten-a-penny these days).
In the old days capitalism was a barrier to entry for most people - you needed to own a shitload of money just to get started. But nowadays any US college graduate with a bright idea and good presentation skills can have a go. All he needs is to save up about $5000 - enough to cover a deposit on a car, an apartment, a cell phone and a computer with an internet connection.
In Sterling's vision of the future everybody is in business for themselves. Yay! He paints it as a bit dystopian, but I don't think that's because everyone's self-employed, it's because he apparently thinks the cultural and environmental atrocities committed by old-style corporate capitalists will continue even after capitalism has been replaced by a truly free market.
Perhaps he's right about that and perhaps not, I don't know. But there are plenty of people around today who'll attest to the fact that perpetual rapid change does lead to distinctly dystopian feelings of alienation. The "Kids today! Pah! What's the world coming to!" viewpoint has been voiced since at least the ancient Greeks, but rapidly evolving technology certainly adds new fuel to the fire.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
There are indeed a few apps with poor UI design (many of those are commercial - look at the Quicktime4 player for Windows). But that isn't the source of the worst problem. The real difficulty with many of the desktop apps available for KDE is that they are untested, undocumented and unfinished.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
Impressive talk from yet another anonymous coward. I wonder what you're so angry about? I truly pity you. It wouldn't stop me from kicking your face in if you ever spoke to me like that in person though.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
What good does it do when TV/movie characters unleash a torrent of obscenity in front of children? Ask yourself that before you moderate me down. Thanks.
This poster was completely serious and it's simply disingenuous to moderate it as "funny". Those responsible seek to discredit his view by laughing at him.
Very well. It's clear from the responses to that post, that in this community at least the predominant view is the wishful thinking that small actions cannot lead to large consequences.
But no-one is claiming that allowing the use of a mild expletive on TV is going to directly cause someone to murder or adopt a homosexual lifestyle. What the poster does claim is that every tiny antisocial behaviour which is legitimized inevitably lowers the barrier to adoption of the next tiny antisocial behaviour. Those who really want to be rude or insulting then have to go a little bit further to achieve that. Soon, that in turn becomes the norm and any would-be reprobate has to go further still. The process is therefore self-sustaining.
Look at how over the course of the twentieth century, social rules have been progressively stripped away. Antisocial behaviours which were once unthnkable are hardly even frowned upon by most people nowadays. This increasing tolerance has had both positive and negative effects. With equality for women and racial minorities we no longer disenfranchise entire social groups, but as individuals we do treat each other with far less respect than we did a hundred years ago. Rules of social etiquette have almost completely disappeared.
I am ashamed to admit that I have used profanity habitually ever since my childhood. My parents would frequently use mild swearing at home when I was small and I picked up the habit there. It made me feel grown-up to use such special "grown-up" words in the school playground and when my cousin made the naive mistake of telling me about the f**k and c**t words, I could hardly restrain myself from proudly displaying my "maturity" to my peers.
As a direct result I was continually in trouble at school for swearing. Despite the negative consequences I have never been able to break the habit. Even now, at the age of 37 I still swear regularly and it must be inappropriate because sometimes I do offend people who were brought up under a stricter set of behavioural rules. It has even got me into trouble at work occasionally.
So it may or may not be true that increasing tolerance in one area of life transfers to inappropriate levels of tolerance in other areas. But it's certainly true that allowing any bad language at all can ultimately lead to further use of even worse bad language.
So perhaps what the poster should have said is: that to avoid a torrent of profanity we need to outlaw occasional use of mild expletives; to avoid murder we need to outlaw all selfish, disrespectful behavior; to avoid teenage pregnancy we need to outlaw unchaperoned contact; to avoid homosexual "families" raising children we need to outlaw all homosexual behaviour.
This won't suit free speech advocates, gun freaks, horny teenageers or the gay community of course. Everybody wants to pursue their own self-gratification regardless of its negatives effects on themselves or everybody else. But even so it should be obvious to anybody from numerous extant examples of gradual social change over the course of the last hundred years that concept of "the thin end of the wedge" is more than just a metaphor and needs to be counted as a potentially huge cost of any small increase in personal freedom.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
In the early 1900's there was the labor movement, in the 50's and 60's we had civil and social movements. In general these things lead to a better society, even if it wasn't revolutionary. The time may be coming again soon.
It seems fairly clear to me that the next revolution is brewing already, right here, right now. The people vs. the Intellectual Property Robber Barons of the media/software industries.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
who in 1960 would not have been surprised by the world of 2000? <br><br> Bad example. IMHO the world of 2000 is not that different from the world of 1960. If people of the 1960's could suddenly be transported here I think the only thing that would surprise them is that so little has changed. A few more gadgets in people's homes, a different economic policy in Russia. That's about it.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
Slashdot Mirror
I'm saying that there are many categories where one person will be 100% sure something should be labeled one way, and another person, also fairly rational, will be 100% sure it should be labeled otherwise. And these are frequently the criteria that would be most relevant to blocking.
[snip]
People will not have similar ideas about whether a page is "explicit", whether a given JPEG is art or pornography, or whether a page promotes drugs.
I do understand what you are saying. But there are ways to get around these things. Wannabee moderators could undergo a calibration test maybe to see where they are themselves in the spectrum of opinion. Just one idea.
Is Naked Lunch literature or pornography? How about Anne Rice's Exit to Eden with content as explicit as what you would find on the newsgroups, but also literary value as commentary on the impossibility of finding real gratification in debauchery (but much more so the former than the latter)?
But I've already addressed that. Literature and pornography are not mutually exclusive, they measure completely different dimensions. That's why I'm proposing (and it's nothing new, I know) that every site/page is rated on a range of different categories, and that the filtering software allows rules with nested exceptions, eg. "block all porn unless it's mild porn and literature rather than graphics".
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Oh and BRW I wish people would stop flaming the movie; that's a sure fire way to piss the director off and get the movie buried. I still hope to see a "Director's Cut" on widescreen DVD some day.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
The movie was directed by David Lynch (Erasorhead, The Elephant Man, Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks, Wild at Heart). All of these were masterpieces of direction. Although Lynch's movie of Dune wasn't everyone's cup of tea, the theatrical release was at the very least, a competent piece of cinematography.
Most complaints about the film stem from the unavoidable fact that it isn't the book. Lynch did make a brave effort to capture the essence of the novel by allowing the characters' thoughts to be heard. But what so many fail to realise is that Dune contained very little dialogue and very little action; most of the text was introspection. Consequently it cannot be rendered into a film of less than 12 hours length without making substantial cuts.
Whether the "voice-over" method works or not is a matter of opinion. I was very familiar with the book before I saw the film and I *had* wondered how they were going to deal with that. Lynch chose to tackle it head-on. Not surprising really because there *is* no workable alternative. Either you let us hear the characters' thoughts or you leave it out completely turning it into an action flick, or you invent a whole lot of dialogue to discover their thoughts in connversation, turning all the major characters into garrulous clowns. Only the first of these has any chance of remaining faithful to the book. For me, at any rate, I thought the Director did the best that could be done with the material.
BTW, The direction credit for the TV release of this movie went to "Alan Smithee". What happened is, the studio drastically re-edited the film for TV release. Lynch was furious about this and demanded that his name be taken off it. When this happens, the "Alan Smithee" name is traditionally used.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Here at UC Berkeley, I have been called "racist" because I am opposed to Affirmative Action. This system won't work because the standards are no defined. Even if they seem very clear to you, or to me, they also seem very clear to the people whose opinions differ widely from yours.
I don't see this as a problem. There would have to be more than one category of racism reflected in the label set. Even if there wasn't, articles arguing against affirmative action will either be clearly racist or they won't, depending upon the tone and the arguments employed. "Moderators" applying labels incorrectly would be caught sooner or later. And end users attempting to filter out racism will at least be spared the worst of it in the meantime. At the end of the day, I'm not trying to imagine a system that will render invisible all traces of a given idea - just one that will filter out chosen categories of content that are likely to offend certain people.
So, for example, I would agree with those moderators who moderate child porn as "obscene", but would not agree with those moderators who moderate Anais Nin as "obscene"
Of course, work needs to be done on selecting an appropriate set of labels. Labels which imply a value judgement must be completely avoided: the definition of "obscene" depends entirely on who you are. Definitions of Mild, Explicit etc. need to be commonly understood from an openly published and clearly precise set of guidelines. Probably a numeric rating system for each category would be more useful, as Kesh suggested in this thread.
I don't know what Anais Nin has to do with it (excuse my cultural ignorance!), but what most people understand by "child porn" might well be labelled as:
"Entertainment+ExplicitChildSexuality+Graphics"
And filtering out all kinds of genuine child porn, without blocking discussion of Nabokov's "Lolita" and other similar literary works could be done using my scheme like this:
"FILTER *ChildSexuality UNLESS Mild AND Literature AND NOT Graphics"
It seems to me that the system could be as flexible and precise as we make it to be.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Read it again. Jeff is not claiming Tim invented such a thing; he's saying it was Tim's idea was that Jeff should help to pay for one. Duh.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
First off, I agree that keyword blocking will never work.
But I do believe it is possible to assemble a useful if not 100% definitive list of offensive sites. It requires human eyeballs, but if enough volunteers could be induced to use a modified browser with an embedded rating form, they could rate as they surf with fairly little inconvenience.
It would never cover everything and it would never be 100% up to date but a rating sytem like this would be better than nothing, and with enough participants would be largely self-moderating. It's certainly the only kind of rating system I'd ever feel comfortable with.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
I thought about this for a couple of minutes and I think I can see a workable solution. Here's my idea, and my apologies go to anyone else who may have already thought of it.
;o)
The contributing volunteers shouldn't add sites to a blacklist or even a broad categorization. Instead they should apply a number of labels simultaneously to each page. Here are rough examples of what I mean, for three different sites:
"Entertainment+ExplicitHomoSexuality+Graphics"
"Educational+Art+MildHeteroSexuality+Graphics"
"Political+Literature+ExtremeRacism+Text"
Of course the filtering software would have to come with default rules which wouldn't truly suit anyone, just like current packages.
"FILTER *Racism ALL"
"FILTER *Sexuality ALL"
But the end user could easily tweak the rule set to be as precise as they like. eg:
"FILTER *Racism UNLESS Educational OR Literature"
"FILTER ExtremeRacism ALL"
"FILTER *HomoSexuality ALL"
"FILTER MildHeteroSexuality UNLESS Educational"
"FILTER Explicit*Sexuality UNLESS Literature AND NOT Graphics"
The filter rule sets can be adapted by anybody. You don't need to be a programmer, just to be able to understand what UNLESS, AND, OR, NOT mean, and to be able to understand that the result of any given rule may be modified by what rules come after it. Like *any* series of filters applied sequentially.
No doubt people of like mindset would trade their carefully crafted filter rule sets between themselves.
This system is still slightly (though less) vulnerable to misclassification by volunteers with an evil agenda. But some sort of metamoderation scheme would soon identify those reprobates and flag up all the sites that needed rechecking.
Can anyone think of a reason why this wouldn't work?
PS. Just in case this sort of scheme should find its way into anyone's commercial implementation, I'm releasing the above idea to the world under the terms of the GPL - so there are should be no encrypted filter lists based on this idea, OK?
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
The cool thing is that the site says that they can use the systems for whatever they want.
Well, fitted with the latest i820 motherboards they'll make great (if somewhat bulky) doorstops I suppose...
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Mergers always involve casualties, even at board level. And even among the survivors there will be those for whom things didn't go the way they wanted. I don't expect the market will read *too much* into this little spat as long as Robert Coates shuts up and goes away soon.
But the charges he is making are certainly interesting. And he appears to be some sort of management consultant, which doesn't fit well with the usual picture of a disgruntled and displaced director forced out and with nowhere else to go.
If Coates makes a rational case in his upcoming letter, the SEC may be compelled to investigate and that would not be too good for Corel (especially given the recent bad publicity surrounding Mike Cowpland's alleged insider dealing). However unjust it may be, mud sticks.
However it plays out, if the merger doesn't go through it'll mean yet another disastrous blow to Corel's share price. In that case Corel may find *themselves* ripe for takeover.
Personally I'd hate to see this happen to Corel but OTOH I can't exactly say I was overjoyed when I the merger was announced. Inprise are already pretty much in bed with the Open Source community and I can't really see how a merger would benefit us. I'd much rather see a diverse market of smaller companies co-operating with each other than a market dominated by a small handful of megacorporations. Megacorporations tend to stuff the customer every opportunity they get; ethics and morals get blown out the window in the name of responsibility to shareholders.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Maybe for US people typing in "McDonalds" alone will find the fast food chain, but maybe in the UK it will prompt so you can choose the family group (clan?) instead
I'm off topic, but you must be kidding: McDonalds the hamburger chain has thoroughly colonised the UK (where I live) as well as every other country that I've been to.
And ironically, as a Scot I'm sad to say that there is probably more interest in Scottish family history on your side of the pond (among the numerous descendants of the victims of the Highland Clearances, and homesick expat Scottish engineers in S.V. too) than there is on mine. If homebound Scots these days gave a toss about their cultural identity they'd have seceded from the UK years ago.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
I, for one, would have absolutely NO objections to an arbitrary form of languange construct that defines a law, as long as the definition made sense and was itself rigidly defined.
Hell, yes. Then, when people needed a lawyer, they'd have to hire a programmer instead. (Ka-chinggg!!)
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
I'm not a troll, and I've already proved it. Now *you* try to prove it's not. Twit.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Ah, but the sad thing is that I'm not just talking about interviews for junior positions but those for contract programming roles earning £100K per year. Most programming roles are maintenance roles, but most maintenance doesn't just entail one-line changes, there's still a degree of design involved. And even a one-line change can be fscked up.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
What worries me is that this thing could seriously reduce the demand for a better surface-to-LEO RLV than the Shuttle, and that is something that we really really need much more than yet another giant booster.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
I certainly sympathize with that. Even when you have a lengthy resume behind you, and even when you're being interviewed by a manager with some technical ability, the criteria by which the final selection is made often seems to go more by chicken guts and the phases of the moon than anything *real*. That guy must simply have an interviewing style that was suited to the interviewer.
BTW, watch out for programming syntax tests. I've been to numerous interviews that could only be passed if were able to parse the most hideous abortions of C syntax in your head under pressure. The fact that no sane person would ever write such a statement or declaration is neither here nor there, it seems they just want walking talking K&R books. Programming style? Irrelevant. Readability? Who cares. Ability to map a problem to a solution? Not important.
And they wonder why so many software projects fail...
IMO if you're confronted with this sort of thing during an interview it's best just to politely decline and leave...unless you'd enjoy working for a clueless project manager alongside a horde of incompetent spaghetti coders.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
That's what I like to see. If the students aren't crying, they're not working hard enough! I'm mostly serious about this; between 1985-1995 there was a steady and continual deterioration in the quality of CS graduates (I've not done any recruiting since then so I can't speak for the last 5 years). And those graduates don't half get a shock when they enter the world of work and see just what level of effort and skill is expected of them. It benefits no-one to dumb down Computer Science courses.
<blockquote>Cram it in, jam it in
The students heads are hollow.
Cram it in, jam it in:
There's plenty more to follow</blockquote>
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Is 2000 that similar to 1960?
...the world of 2040 won't feel that different from today, for those of us who live through it --- but, taken as snapshots, and then compared, they would be completely different.
;o)
I still think so.
Microwave ovens...Cable TV...VCRS/CDs
I *did* already concede that we have a few more gadgets now. But I don't think they have made such a huge difference to the way we live our lives or the way we think and act. We've been watching far too much TV ever since the damn thing was invented.
the internet and computers
The internet certainly has the potential to revolutionize society and adically alter the way we live. But for the vast majority of people this just hasn't happened yet. We're still mostly stuck in 1960.
artificial hearts
To the best of my knowledge we *still* don't have artificial hearts outside of the laboratory (and even within the laboratory it's not really changing anyone's life - the recipients of these implants don't last very long and they have to stay in bed hooked up). Of course ordinary transplant surgery was still in its infancy back then but even now it only affects a very small number of people.
AIDS
In 1960 there was gonorrhea, syphilis and herpes. During the late 1980's and early-to-mid 1990's there was a paranoia about AIDS that has no 1960's parallel. But it seems to have mostly gone away by now perhaps because the most sexually active generation today is young enough to have grown up taking AIDS for granted.
[increased] gasoline prices
This hasn't changed anybody's life. Increased earnings have offset this taxation and you don't see people giving up their cars as a result.
The trick is --- it doesn't _feel_ that different, to anyone who lived through it. But in reality, we're a completely different society;
I don't think there's any evidence to support that view.
I won't argue with you there as I've no idea what 2040 will be like. The pace of change does appear to be increasing though and - apart from widespread Internet use - there are a number of potentially life-changing technologies *possibly* just over the horizon (nanotechnology, longevity treatments, true AI, mind uploading, cheap fusion energy, cheap space travel etc).
In my opinion the only thing coming up that will make a really significant difference will be a vastly increased active lifespan. How will a society dominated by middle-aged centenarians work? I'm *dying* to find out
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
I see what you men but you have to remember that a story isn't always "about" what it purports to be "about".
Moreover, whether it's intentional or not, the future economic system described by Sterling isn't capitalism.
Capitalism - by definition - is a system in which one needs capital in order to make serious money, and without it you can only sell your labour for much more modest returns.
But you may have noticed that even the presently nascent "New Economy" Sterling referred to is vastly different to the old one. It empowers people with ideas and the get-up-and-go to pursue them by (i) eliminating the requirement for significant capital in many cases, particularly where in the so-called "knowledge-based" economy; and (ii) making capital much easier to obtain when it's required (venture capitalists are ten-a-penny these days).
In the old days capitalism was a barrier to entry for most people - you needed to own a shitload of money just to get started. But nowadays any US college graduate with a bright idea and good presentation skills can have a go. All he needs is to save up about $5000 - enough to cover a deposit on a car, an apartment, a cell phone and a computer with an internet connection.
In Sterling's vision of the future everybody is in business for themselves. Yay! He paints it as a bit dystopian, but I don't think that's because everyone's self-employed, it's because he apparently thinks the cultural and environmental atrocities committed by old-style corporate capitalists will continue even after capitalism has been replaced by a truly free market.
Perhaps he's right about that and perhaps not, I don't know. But there are plenty of people around today who'll attest to the fact that perpetual rapid change does lead to distinctly dystopian feelings of alienation. The "Kids today! Pah! What's the world coming to!" viewpoint has been voiced since at least the ancient Greeks, but rapidly evolving technology certainly adds new fuel to the fire.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
There are indeed a few apps with poor UI design (many of those are commercial - look at the Quicktime4 player for Windows). But that isn't the source of the worst problem. The real difficulty with many of the desktop apps available for KDE is that they are untested, undocumented and unfinished.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Impressive talk from yet another anonymous coward. I wonder what you're so angry about? I truly pity you. It wouldn't stop me from kicking your face in if you ever spoke to me like that in person though.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
What good does it do when TV/movie characters unleash a torrent of obscenity in front of children? Ask yourself that before you moderate me down. Thanks.
This poster was completely serious and it's simply disingenuous to moderate it as "funny". Those responsible seek to discredit his view by laughing at him.
Very well. It's clear from the responses to that post, that in this community at least the predominant view is the wishful thinking that small actions cannot lead to large consequences.
But no-one is claiming that allowing the use of a mild expletive on TV is going to directly cause someone to murder or adopt a homosexual lifestyle. What the poster does claim is that every tiny antisocial behaviour which is legitimized inevitably lowers the barrier to adoption of the next tiny antisocial behaviour. Those who really want to be rude or insulting then have to go a little bit further to achieve that. Soon, that in turn becomes the norm and any would-be reprobate has to go further still. The process is therefore self-sustaining.
Look at how over the course of the twentieth century, social rules have been progressively stripped away. Antisocial behaviours which were once unthnkable are hardly even frowned upon by most people nowadays. This increasing tolerance has had both positive and negative effects. With equality for women and racial minorities we no longer disenfranchise entire social groups, but as individuals we do treat each other with far less respect than we did a hundred years ago. Rules of social etiquette have almost completely disappeared.
I am ashamed to admit that I have used profanity habitually ever since my childhood. My parents would frequently use mild swearing at home when I was small and I picked up the habit there. It made me feel grown-up to use such special "grown-up" words in the school playground and when my cousin made the naive mistake of telling me about the f**k and c**t words, I could hardly restrain myself from proudly displaying my "maturity" to my peers.
As a direct result I was continually in trouble at school for swearing. Despite the negative consequences I have never been able to break the habit. Even now, at the age of 37 I still swear regularly and it must be inappropriate because sometimes I do offend people who were brought up under a stricter set of behavioural rules. It has even got me into trouble at work occasionally.
So it may or may not be true that increasing tolerance in one area of life transfers to inappropriate levels of tolerance in other areas. But it's certainly true that allowing any bad language at all can ultimately lead to further use of even worse bad language.
So perhaps what the poster should have said is: that to avoid a torrent of profanity we need to outlaw occasional use of mild expletives; to avoid murder we need to outlaw all selfish, disrespectful behavior; to avoid teenage pregnancy we need to outlaw unchaperoned contact; to avoid homosexual "families" raising children we need to outlaw all homosexual behaviour.
This won't suit free speech advocates, gun freaks, horny teenageers or the gay community of course. Everybody wants to pursue their own self-gratification regardless of its negatives effects on themselves or everybody else. But even so it should be obvious to anybody from numerous extant examples of gradual social change over the course of the last hundred years that concept of "the thin end of the wedge" is more than just a metaphor and needs to be counted as a potentially huge cost of any small increase in personal freedom.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Just out of curiosity: which words are included in the seven?
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
In the early 1900's there was the labor movement, in the 50's and 60's we had civil and social movements. In general these things lead to a better society, even if it wasn't revolutionary. The time may be coming again soon.
It seems fairly clear to me that the next revolution is brewing already, right here, right now. The people vs. the Intellectual Property Robber Barons of the media/software industries.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Of course, Extrans support might have worked better in 1960 than it apparently does now...:o/
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
who in 1960 would not have been surprised by the world of 2000?
<br><br>
Bad example. IMHO the world of 2000 is not that different from the world of 1960. If people of the 1960's could suddenly be transported here I think the only thing that would surprise them is that so little has changed. A few more gadgets in people's homes, a different economic policy in Russia. That's about it.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction