Actually SaX is somewhat overrated. There are many cards it doesn't work with properly including ATI Mach64 and Nvidia Riva 128. But I get the same problems with XF86Setup.
ConfigXF86 rules anyway. Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
One aspect of the problem that you didn't identify is that the recruitment agent is alway really the employer's agent even when you are a contractor talking about 'your' agent. The worker effectively has no representation, no-one to protect his interests. The obvious solution is to eliminate these parasites.
IMO we geeks need to set up our own CV databases on the net, accessible to employers. These sites should be slick and user friendly and use a uniform style and interface.
All we need to do is get a team together to design and implement the site with the CV database and all the CGI stuff to sit on top of apache. When designed it can be released as a freeware package. CV database sites can then be set up by anyone who is interested.
Result: geek-friendly recruitment agencies run by geeks. It's up to the person/organisation running each site if they want to allow agencies to use the CV's they find on the site, and if they do, whether they want to demand half the agency finder's fee. Some sites may become fully-fledged agencies themselves. Some may even sell out. But the tools will remain available so hopefully some geek-run sites will persist.
What do you think? If there is enough interest maybe we should set up a mailing list to chew it over.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
Re:Resumes themselves will be obsolete
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Feature:Geek Jobs
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I wouldn't use any site whose online questionnaire required me to input my salary. That is something I do not divulge to agents or potential employers as a matter of principle. Especially when they ask. Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
You think it's going to get better all by itself? Don't you believe it. IT recruitment has been this way in the UK for at least the past ten years and if anything the dominance of the market by know-nothing IT recruitment agents is still increasing.
The only way this is going to improve is if the geeks take their business elsewhere. We need to set up our own CV databases and let them come looking for us.
How do I know this will work? First-hand experience.
There is already a web IT recruitment service in the UK at www.jobserve.co.uk. It works two ways: (a) they mail you a daily list of new jobs matching your chosem criteria; (2) you send in your CV and agencies, HR departments etc. who subscribe can search this big database of CV's. Don't forget to put in all those fashionable (buzz)keywords in acronym form and in full!
In the period of time for which I used the service I got more calls deriving from the CV I left on the database than I got from emailing my CV in response to particular jobserve ads.
Though if we some of us geeks were to set up something like this ourselves I strongly suggest that the home page says "NO AGENCIES" in large type.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
Yourself and a few others tool exception to my remark that "There is nowhere else for the company to go, with Microsoft owning most of the market, that is the lesson of almost two decades."
You all missed my point, perhaps because I didn't express it very well. Let me try harder.
In fact I agree there is little doubt that Apple can continue to hold its own for the foreseeable future, and maybe even make some small gains. But shareholders generally want more than that.
When I said there was nowhere for them to go I was talking about growth, which every business must seek if it is to continue to survive. There can be no standing still, yet Apple by themselves cannot increase their market share at the expense of Wintel as they just don't have the resources to fight that war.
But Disney and Time-Warner do have those resources, and a far better marketing line than Intel, Microsoft, IBM or even Apple. Most of the growth in consumer computing that is yet to take place will not be techno-driven. It is content that will make the difference, not lust for hardware or stylish operating system interfaces. Those of us for whom those things make a difference have already bought in. Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
You can't define intelligence in such glib terms. It is a wholly multidimensional phenomenon, in the sense that there are a lot of different components of intellectual competence contributing to an individual's overall intelligence.
If you are actually talking about consciousness rather than intelligence, well of course there is no agreement about how consciousness arises. But the phenomenon you mention can at best only be a small part of it, because simple neural network programs are quite capable of reconstructing memories from partial clues in the same way as you describe, and no-one is suggesting that (current) neural networks are conscious. Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
If you haven't advanced beyond Aristotelian physics yet then I think you are surely preaching to the wrong audience. We're generally a little better informed here. Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
Nobody has the time to investigate every single thing in so much detail. That is why we appoint political leaders, financial advisors, physicians and IT consultants to do the investigation on our behalf and to make decisions for us.
I certainly don't have the time to wade through reams of legalese every time I want to obtain a piece of software. I trust the OSI and the SPI to make that determination for me, and I will be thankful whenever they are able to do so. Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
You actually admitted that you didn't understand it all. Of course you didn't. Even the author doesn't truly understand the meaning in human terms. But that doesn't mean that we shouldn't try to explore that very difficult subject of what we really are.
Others on this list, instead of admitting that they didn't understand, would rather rubbish such ideas and indulge in self-important posturing about their own imagined cleverness, than accept that their own facilities of comprehension might be lacking.
And you still didn't blankly reject Blackmore's concept of selfhood as a memeplex, despite the apparent soullessness of that theory to a practising Christian, who must be at some risk of circumscribed thinking concerning such matters.
But I rather think you possess far more chance of understanding than those poseurs do. If it makes your head hurt than means your brain is doing work. No pain no gain!
If you were to read Daniel Dennett's Consciousness Explained I think you would find some though-provoking ideas there. Then you might read William Calvin's "How Brains Think" and come to the realisation that Dennett, and Dawkins and Blackmore might actually be right.
Of course nothing will provoke thought in the minds of those New Age freaks who roundly denounce anything that just doesn't happen to fit in with the anti-rational zeitgeist of their generation. Too bad, it seems there are an awful lot of them here on Slashdot. Sometimes it feels as if we are about to slide back into the Dark Ages.
If you don't know what I mean, get on the web and look up qmind or quantum mind. There are 'scientists' among them, who know how to do algebra but the formulae don't really mean anything (Note: I am not talking about Penrose, though I don't support his view either). And there are enough kooks saturating those mailing lists that you'll soon get the idea of what qmind is really all about.
Of couse you'll probably be appalled by my.signature:
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
I wonder if Eric will finally quail at speaking his mind when he finds himself surrounded by the 'enemy' on their own ground.
Methinks he will tailor the message for the audience. It would be impolitic not to. Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
Re:Linux IS mentioned...
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Digital VCRs
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· Score: 1
The only way it could be done - and remember the technology was developed by hard disk manufacturer Quantum - is inside the hard disk drive device.
They might use a humungous cache, but you'd have a hard job storing 30 minutes of video in any reasonably sized cache memory. just remember a 5 minute Quicktime medium resolution starwars trailer is about 24MB! My guess is that they have extra read heads on the same actuator arm which passively fishes in the tracks whizzing past for chunks of previously-written video, while the write heads are still busy with the primary job of writing the current input. Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
I know this rumour has been floating around for a long time but that is only because it is so credible. The real mystery is why it hasn't happened yet.
Ultimately this merger has to take place. There is nowhere else for the company to go, with Microsoft owning most of the market, that is the lesson of almost two decades. But think of the uniquely friendly, unthreatening public image of the Mac combined with the marketing power of one of the dominant media transnationals.
I guarantee that this would be the computer of choice in most family homes. My young kids can hardly switch on their Windows 95 computer without running into problems with the ATI video card driver or other typical Win95 lockups and crashes. They could have had a Mac but the perceived lack of software meant that was never really an option. It doesn't take a genius to see how an iMac plus "bugs'n'daffy" plus a shedload of first class marketing could put Microsoft out of the home computer business almost overnight.
If Jobs doesn't jump at this soon then I think there will inevitably be questions as to his fitness to guide the company forward beyond this point. But Jobs has shown that one thing he is not short of is business acumen. My guess is that he is just waiting for iMac revenues to put Apple back on a sound financial footing and see a couple of new technologies like the new streaming software out the door first. That way he will have the leverage to cut the best deal for the company and its shareholders.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
The minute Microsoft walks away from the DOJ case - regardless of the outcome - they are going to come down hard on the open source community.
I'm not only talking about FUD; they'll be vigorously protecting all their intellectual property. You can also expect to see a number of free software packages withdrawn as the copyright holders are sued for infringement of Microsoft patents etc.
This is going to be very bloody and if we don't at least keep up our end of propaganda war - and that means fighting dirty, just like they will - we will lose everything we have gained so far. Just remember they have billions of dollars to lose, and a legal obligation to protect their shareholders' investment with any means at their disposal.
Faced with an onslaught like that I don't think moral high ground is going to be a winning factor somehow. Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
I just visited linuxhq.com (between apparent spasms of slashdot effect) and there is a link "COPYING" at the bottom of the page (sorry I can't get the URL, the site has gone down again). This link leads to a page which says everything is GPL'd unless stated otherwise. So where's the beef? Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
The FAQ on their site promises rpms on metalab.unc.edu for the XF86_SVGA server and the appropriate libs...guess what, they're not there, even when you allow for the fact they garbled the pathname of the directory.
:o( Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
Just before Christmas I made a bet with a colleague that SAP would port their R3 system to Linux within a year. The bet was made in the heat of the moment and I worried a tiny bit about appearing foolish if I turned out to be wrong, but as we all know SAP made the announcement only three months later.
Shortly after that I was discussing the same thing with someone on the net. I was explaining how this type of bet - if it comes off - is the easiest and most effective way to silence people sceptical about open source when you are trying to get Linux deployed in your organization.
When pressed for another example prediction - to see if I could do it again - I chose Lotus Notes, again to happen by the end of this year, principally because Lotus had unequivocally said they had no interest in doing so. I must admit I did worry a bit more about that one. But here we are less than three months on from that point and Lotus have made the announcement.
Are there any bastions left yet to fall? I'm really stumped. I can't think of any other major ISV's or software products that ought to and haven't, short of Micros~1 themselves - and there are already rumours about that... Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
Re:Problems with the new setup
on
Slashdot Notes
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· Score: 1
I agree, there are , not enough categories. How, for example, would one moderate Vittal's modified alien funrniture animated gif? There needs to be a category for hilarious for example or the existing categories will be abused. Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
Your mother is a hamster, and your father smells of elderberries! I fart in your general direction! Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
The principal rule of negotiation is never accept someone's first offer. If the Linux community is going to co-operate with this venture then we need to come back with some counter-proposal. In any case, if this is an 'Open' benchmark specification, then it must be a version 0.01 alpha pre-release only. It needs refining and debugging before it can be used.
There is no doubt that the Mindcraft 4-way SMP SCSI RAID platform is designed to show NT in it's best light, at Linux's expense.
I strongly suggest to Linus, ESR and anyone else who is thinking of becoming involved that we insist on removing this last vestige of bias before agreeing to co-operate.
I would like to suggest that the tests be run on alternative platforms; instead of Mindcraft's chosen NT-enhancing platform, we should run the same or similar saturation tests on a more modest platform to show Linux's well-known performance advantage on cheaper hardware.
Another alternative platform would be a load-balanced 'cluster' of such cheap boxes all IP-spoofing the same server address.
I guess Linux would beat NT hands down in either of these alternative configurations.
Hopefully Mindcraft will see the advantage of doing what they are only pretending to do just now, and conduct a truly fair set of benchmarks, with all three configurations represented. Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
In the UK it's not nearly so bad, maybe because we're not so hung up on sports.
I'm not saying it doesn't happen to any degree, of course. There are Nerdish kids (like I was) who tend to be ostracised by the more extreme bullies. But that's just life. There will always be a minority of criminals preying on the weak. The actions of these bullies are rarely condoned or overlooked by the school authorities, even if the school's method of dealing with it may be less effective than desired.
Meanwhile the all-rounders who can manage their classes while doing well at sports are the most popular. But that's just life. Some people are more capable than others and to refuse to admire them is churlish. Better look up to them and try to emulate them, even compete with them (eh? Wait up - see below).
However in UK schools you can't substitute sports for a brain. 'Jocks' don't really exist here at all in the sense that Americans understand - there is no 'Jock' culture. Sporty kids with no brains are not particularly admired by anybody but themselves and slack-faced tarts with a strong urge to get pregnant before leaving school. They don't have any particular social power.
In that sense there is some kind of balance of power between 'Jocks' and 'Nerds'. Neither is really elevated at the expense of the other although in the final years of high school, clever students tend to get more respect from the teaching staff.
Of course if a student is bright but also rebellious and nonconformist to the point of being a disruptive influence then they won't win this respect and will probably get into trouble with the head. But under the circumstances prevailing here, it's difficult to see how such a student could be helped as they are not likely to be rebelling against anything reasonable (like Brando: "Whaddya got?").
The thing is, in the UK the pressures to conform to some sort of twisted ideal are somewhat less, so the Nerds don't generally flip out like we've seen reported here by US correspondents.
*So here's my theory regarding why US and UK high schools differ so much.
The US culture idolizes winners and scoffs at losers. The pressures in US schools to conform to that twisted ideal must therefore be immense. It explains why 'Jocks', dedicated to winning in competition, are so highly regarded, and unsporty 'Geeks' and 'Nerds' are ostracized for either doing badly at sports or just refusing to take part.
But In my school we were taught to compete against ourselves. "Winning isn't the point, it's taking part and doing your best that counts". This philosophy, promoted by the most enlightened teachers (in my opinion), allowed me to step outside of the stereotype I'd built for myself and become a more well-rounded person. It was OK for me not to win, so it was OK for me to play. As long as I was always pitted against sporting opponents who weren't ridiculously superior in ability, there was a point to it and I could have fun. Even maybe achieve something, by surpassing my own previous performance. If I lost: what the hell? I wasn't laughed at or if I was, it was me doing the laughing.
The sad thing is if this is what ails the American school system I don't think it is easily curable - this 'winning is everything' mentality is too deeply ingrained in the American culture of success.
Neither will it be helped by left-wing liberals who - even here in the UK - would rather destroy all incentive to win by eliminating all competitive sports from the curriculum entirely, Such extremism would likely alienate the US mainstream from this whole strand of thinking.
P.S. Get rid of the guns. An obsession with guns is not healthy; many people are just not suited to have guns; and tha availability of guns make unhappy people into dangerous people. I'm sorry if this sounds harsh but anyone who doesn't understand these simple truisms is obviously just too ignorant or stupid to be credible.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
He didn't mention NATO's "relief efforts" in Kosovo as one of those harmful influences
I don't see Nato's attempts to take away Milosevic's toys as a good example of violence. After all they've hardly gone in all guns blazing, have they? They've had to step up the assualt continually because the Serbs refused to take a hint.
A much better example of aggressive violence - and persecution of the different, the weak and the relatively defenceless - would be the Serbs' use of the army and paramilitary (read: dangerous ex-convicts) to exterminate the Kosovars in order to secure liebensraum from themselves.
Milosevic must be stopped. If we don't we send a signal to all the bullies of the world that this sort of behaviour is acceptable. And maybe you're next in line for 'ethnic cleansing'. Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
Where were their mothers, huh?
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Why Kids Kill
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· Score: 1
You're right about responsible parenting. And I'd lay money that neither of those two boys had a father at home to keep an eye on them. But you showed incredible naivete when you said:
You shouldn't be asking where these kids found out how to do all of this stuff, or what violent acts sparked their imaginations.
Bullshit! To ask such questions might be inconvenient for you, because you behaved like a shithead when you were a teen. But all avenues of investigation are legitimate in this inquiry.
Just because the know-how didn't lead to the act in your case doesn't mean it never does. Someone who has an unhealthy obsession with weapons and a grudge or no real interest in continuing their life is likely to put the two together in their imagination at some point. The probability of this fantasy being translated into action depends on the strength of these two drives, and their ease of access to weapons. The only factor in this that society has the means to control is access to weapons. You can't eliminate them completely since all the criminals aren't going to give them up. But you can make it much more difficult for lunatics to obtain them. To deny that would save lives is either disingenuous or plainly malicious.
I am thoroughly disgusted by the number of people who parrot ad hoc 'trick' arguments like 'it's not the gun that kills it's the man holding it'. This argument is designed to divert us from the truth, which is that for firearm killings, the combination of the man and the gun performs the killing.
It might be very difficult to understand why the majority of Americans are unable to see through these specious arguments. The most likely explanation is that the gun lobby is simply so powerful that most of American society has been indoctrinated into this mindset since childhood. I wouldn't call it a way of thinking because in fact it is a way of not thinking. Most people blindly repeat what they've been told again and again throughout their lives. When confronted with evidence that what they have been told is wrong they are simply unable to frame the obvious question as there's just no room for it in their brains. Well there's nothing new in this and it's not a problem confined to gun control issues.
America is being brainwashed by vested interests (the firearms industry), assisted by those they have already converted (gun nuts). Unfortunately the casualties are often innocent, often children, and almost always unarmed. Which puts a nice perspective on it, doesn't it? The official line is that Americans have the right to bear arms to defend themselves against aggressors but I wonder how often these weapons have been useful in this context compared to the number of times they have been used in aggression.
Some people have already suggested that if everyone carried a gun then that wouldn't be an issue. But many people don't want to carry a gun. Guns are dangerous; a large proportion of serious gunshot wounds are accidental. And of course if you do draw a gun there is a possibility that the other guy will draw his and he'll be quicker to fire. So this just won't work.
Sometimes I think if there were any real justice then everybody who promotes free access to firearms would be made to face a bullet from their own gun. He who lives by the sword...
In the UK where firearms are more tightly controlled we have a much lower incidence of murder than you do in America. Enough said.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
That's very interesting. But you're failing to take into account all the other deaths from gunshot wounds that have happened because somebody with a grudge or a bad temper had access to a gun. Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
Idiot! The US Constitution is a statement of position, not of proposed fact. You can't believe that a statement of position is "true" or "not true". So how can you make any comparison?
What you are saying is that, for you, no logical reasoning can ever provide a higher authority than the Constitution as it is today. Interesting. I do believe there were a number of amendments made to the Constitution over the last two hundred years, precisely because good men debated the merits of making these changes and it was in each case decided that the Constitution could be improved upon.
Thank heaven people like you don't run the world.
I guess you learned how to think at the same institution where they taught you how to spell, huh?
If your people don't amend that 'right to bear arms' nonsense then innocent civilians - including children - will continue to die painfully and horribly. Is the right of aggressive lunatics to strut around like Rambo worth that cost? Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
Slashdot Mirror
Actually SaX is somewhat overrated. There are many cards it doesn't work with properly including ATI Mach64 and Nvidia Riva 128. But I get the same problems with XF86Setup.
ConfigXF86 rules anyway.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
One aspect of the problem that you didn't identify is that the recruitment agent is alway really the employer's agent even when you are a contractor talking about 'your' agent. The worker effectively has no representation, no-one to protect his interests. The obvious solution is to eliminate these parasites.
IMO we geeks need to set up our own CV databases on the net, accessible to employers. These sites should be slick and user friendly and use a uniform style and interface.
All we need to do is get a team together to design and implement the site with the CV database and all the CGI stuff to sit on top of apache. When designed it can be released as a freeware package. CV database sites can then be set up by anyone who is interested.
Result: geek-friendly recruitment agencies run by geeks. It's up to the person/organisation running each site if they want to allow agencies to use the CV's they find on the site, and if they do, whether they want to demand half the agency finder's fee. Some sites may become fully-fledged agencies themselves. Some may even sell out. But the tools will remain available so hopefully some geek-run sites will persist.
What do you think? If there is enough interest maybe we should set up a mailing list to chew it over.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
I wouldn't use any site whose online questionnaire required me to input my salary. That is something I do not divulge to agents or potential employers as a matter of principle. Especially when they ask.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
You think it's going to get better all by itself? Don't you believe it. IT recruitment has been this way in the UK for at least the past ten years and if anything the dominance of the market by know-nothing IT recruitment agents is still increasing.
The only way this is going to improve is if the geeks take their business elsewhere. We need to set up our own CV databases and let them come looking for us.
How do I know this will work? First-hand experience.
There is already a web IT recruitment service in the UK at www.jobserve.co.uk. It works two ways: (a) they mail you a daily list of new jobs matching your chosem criteria; (2) you send in your CV and agencies, HR departments etc. who subscribe can search this big database of CV's. Don't forget to put in all those fashionable (buzz)keywords in acronym form and in full!
In the period of time for which I used the service I got more calls deriving from the CV I left on the database than I got from emailing my CV in response to particular jobserve ads.
Though if we some of us geeks were to set up something like this ourselves I strongly suggest that the home page says "NO AGENCIES" in large type.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Yourself and a few others tool exception to my remark that "There is nowhere else for the company to go, with Microsoft owning most of the market, that is the lesson of almost two decades."
You all missed my point, perhaps because I didn't express it very well. Let me try harder.
In fact I agree there is little doubt that Apple can continue to hold its own for the foreseeable future, and maybe even make some small gains. But shareholders generally want more than that.
When I said there was nowhere for them to go I was talking about growth, which every business must seek if it is to continue to survive. There can be
no standing still, yet Apple by themselves cannot increase their market share at the expense of Wintel as they just don't have the resources to fight that war.
But Disney and Time-Warner do have those resources, and a far better marketing line than Intel, Microsoft, IBM or even Apple. Most of the growth in consumer computing that is yet to take place will not be techno-driven. It is content that will make the difference, not lust for hardware or stylish operating system interfaces. Those of us for whom those things make a difference have already bought in.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
You can't define intelligence in such glib terms. It is a wholly multidimensional phenomenon, in the sense that there are a lot of different components of intellectual competence contributing to an individual's overall intelligence.
If you are actually talking about consciousness rather than intelligence, well of course there is no agreement about how consciousness arises. But the phenomenon you mention can at best only be a small part of it, because simple neural network programs are quite capable of reconstructing memories from partial clues in the same way as you describe, and no-one is suggesting that (current) neural networks are conscious.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
If you haven't advanced beyond Aristotelian physics yet then I think you are surely preaching to the wrong audience. We're generally a little better informed here.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
You're not being very practical.
Nobody has the time to investigate every single thing in so much detail. That is why we appoint political leaders, financial advisors, physicians and IT consultants to do the investigation on our behalf and to make decisions for us.
I certainly don't have the time to wade through reams of legalese every time I want to obtain a piece of software. I trust the OSI and the SPI to make that determination for me, and I will be thankful whenever they are able to do so.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Good for you!
.signature:
You actually admitted that you didn't understand it all. Of course you didn't. Even the author doesn't truly understand the meaning in human terms. But that doesn't mean that we shouldn't try to explore that very difficult subject of what we really are.
Others on this list, instead of admitting that they didn't understand, would rather rubbish such ideas and indulge in self-important posturing about their own imagined cleverness, than accept that their own facilities of comprehension might be lacking.
And you still didn't blankly reject Blackmore's concept of selfhood as a memeplex, despite the apparent soullessness of that theory to a practising Christian, who must be at some risk of circumscribed thinking concerning such matters.
But I rather think you possess far more chance of understanding than those poseurs do. If it makes your head hurt than means your brain is doing work. No pain no gain!
If you were to read Daniel Dennett's Consciousness Explained I think you would find some though-provoking ideas there. Then you might read William Calvin's "How Brains Think" and come to the realisation that Dennett, and Dawkins and Blackmore might actually be right.
Of course nothing will provoke thought in the minds of those New Age freaks who roundly denounce anything that just doesn't happen to fit in with the anti-rational zeitgeist of their generation. Too bad, it seems there are an awful lot of them here on Slashdot. Sometimes it feels as if we are about to slide back into the Dark Ages.
If you don't know what I mean, get on the web and look up qmind or quantum mind. There are 'scientists' among them, who know how to do algebra but the formulae don't really mean anything (Note: I am not talking about Penrose, though I don't support his view either). And there are enough kooks saturating those mailing lists that you'll soon get the idea of what qmind is really all about.
Of couse you'll probably be appalled by my
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
So - it was YOU! No wonder my packet sniffer just died...
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
I wonder if Eric will finally quail at speaking his mind when he finds himself surrounded by the 'enemy' on their own ground.
Methinks he will tailor the message for the audience. It would be impolitic not to.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
The only way it could be done - and remember the technology was developed by hard disk manufacturer Quantum - is inside the hard disk drive device.
They might use a humungous cache, but you'd have a hard job storing 30 minutes of video in any reasonably sized cache memory. just remember a 5 minute Quicktime medium resolution starwars trailer is about 24MB! My guess is that they have extra read heads on the same actuator arm which passively fishes in the tracks whizzing past for chunks of previously-written video, while the write heads are still busy with the primary job of writing the current input.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
I know this rumour has been floating around for a long time but that is only because it is so credible. The real mystery is why it hasn't happened yet.
Ultimately this merger has to take place. There is nowhere else for the company to go, with Microsoft owning most of the market, that is the lesson of almost two decades. But think of the uniquely friendly, unthreatening public image of the Mac combined with the marketing power of one of the dominant media transnationals.
I guarantee that this would be the computer of choice in most family homes. My young kids can hardly switch on their Windows 95 computer without running into problems with the ATI video card driver or other typical Win95 lockups and crashes. They could have had a Mac but the perceived lack of software meant that was never really an option.
It doesn't take a genius to see how an iMac plus "bugs'n'daffy" plus a shedload of first class marketing could put Microsoft out of the home computer business almost overnight.
If Jobs doesn't jump at this soon then I think there will inevitably be questions as to his fitness to guide the company forward beyond this point. But Jobs has shown that one thing he is not short of is business acumen. My guess is that he is just waiting for iMac revenues to put Apple back on a sound financial footing and see a couple of new technologies like the new streaming software out the door first. That way he will have the leverage to cut the best deal for the company and its shareholders.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
That is just so naive.
The minute Microsoft walks away from the DOJ case - regardless of the outcome - they are going to come down hard on the open source community.
I'm not only talking about FUD; they'll be vigorously protecting all their intellectual property. You can also expect to see a number of free software packages withdrawn as the copyright holders are sued for infringement of Microsoft patents etc.
This is going to be very bloody and if we don't at least keep up our end of propaganda war - and that means fighting dirty, just like they will - we will lose everything we have gained so far. Just remember they have billions of dollars to lose, and a legal obligation to protect their shareholders' investment with any means at their disposal.
Faced with an onslaught like that I don't think moral high ground is going to be a winning factor somehow.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
I just visited linuxhq.com (between apparent spasms of slashdot effect) and there is a link "COPYING" at the bottom of the page (sorry I can't get the URL, the site has gone down again). This link leads to a page which says everything is GPL'd unless stated otherwise. So where's the beef?
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
The FAQ on their site promises rpms on metalab.unc.edu for the XF86_SVGA server and the appropriate libs...guess what, they're not there, even when you allow for the fact they garbled the pathname of the directory.
:o(
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Just before Christmas I made a bet with a colleague that SAP would port their R3 system to Linux within a year. The bet was made in the heat of the moment and I worried a tiny bit about appearing foolish if I turned out to be wrong, but as we all know SAP made the announcement only three months later.
Shortly after that I was discussing the same thing with someone on the net. I was explaining how this type of bet - if it comes off - is the easiest and most effective way to silence people sceptical about open source when you are trying to get Linux deployed in your organization.
When pressed for another example prediction - to see if I could do it again - I chose Lotus Notes, again to happen by the end of this year, principally because Lotus had unequivocally said they had no interest in doing so. I must admit I did worry a bit more about that one. But here we are less than three months on from that point and Lotus have made the announcement.
Are there any bastions left yet to fall? I'm really stumped. I can't think of any other major ISV's or software products that ought to and haven't, short of Micros~1 themselves - and there are already rumours about that...
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
I agree, there are , not enough categories. How, for example, would one moderate Vittal's modified alien funrniture animated gif? There needs to be a category for hilarious for example or the existing categories will be abused.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Hey! I was going to do that!
Your mother is a hamster, and your father smells of elderberries! I fart in your general direction!
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
The principal rule of negotiation is never accept someone's first offer. If the Linux community is going to co-operate with this venture then we need to come back with some counter-proposal. In any case, if this is an 'Open' benchmark specification, then it must be a version 0.01 alpha pre-release only. It needs refining and debugging before it can be used.
There is no doubt that the Mindcraft 4-way SMP SCSI RAID platform is designed to show NT in it's best light, at Linux's expense.
I strongly suggest to Linus, ESR and anyone else who is thinking of becoming involved that we insist on removing this last vestige of bias before agreeing to co-operate.
I would like to suggest that the tests be run on alternative platforms; instead of Mindcraft's chosen NT-enhancing platform, we should run the same or similar saturation tests on a more modest platform to show Linux's well-known performance advantage on cheaper hardware.
Another alternative platform would be a load-balanced 'cluster' of such cheap boxes all IP-spoofing the same server address.
I guess Linux would beat NT hands down in either of these alternative configurations.
Hopefully Mindcraft will see the advantage of doing what they are only pretending to do just now, and conduct a truly fair set of benchmarks, with all three configurations represented.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
In the UK it's not nearly so bad, maybe because we're not so hung up on sports.
I'm not saying it doesn't happen to any degree, of course. There are Nerdish kids (like I was) who tend to be ostracised by the more extreme bullies. But that's just life. There will always be a minority of criminals preying on the weak. The actions of these bullies are rarely condoned or overlooked by the school authorities, even if the school's method of dealing with it may be less effective than desired.
Meanwhile the all-rounders who can manage their classes while doing well at sports are the most popular. But that's just life. Some people are more capable than others and to refuse to admire them is churlish. Better look up to them and try to emulate them, even compete with them (eh? Wait up - see below).
However in UK schools you can't substitute sports for a brain. 'Jocks' don't really exist here at all in the sense that Americans understand - there is no 'Jock' culture. Sporty kids with no brains are not particularly admired by anybody but themselves and slack-faced tarts with a strong urge to get pregnant before leaving school. They don't have any particular social power.
In that sense there is some kind of balance of power between 'Jocks' and 'Nerds'. Neither is really elevated at the expense of the other although in the final years of high school, clever students tend to get more respect from the teaching staff.
Of course if a student is bright but also rebellious and nonconformist to the point of being a disruptive influence then they won't win this respect and will probably get into trouble with the head. But under the circumstances prevailing here, it's difficult to see how such a student could be helped as they are not likely to be rebelling against anything reasonable (like Brando: "Whaddya got?").
The thing is, in the UK the pressures to conform to some sort of twisted ideal are somewhat less, so the Nerds don't generally flip out like we've seen reported here by US correspondents.
*So here's my theory regarding why US and UK high schools differ so much.
The US culture idolizes winners and scoffs at losers. The pressures in US schools to conform to that twisted ideal must therefore be immense. It explains why 'Jocks', dedicated to winning in competition, are so highly regarded, and unsporty 'Geeks' and 'Nerds' are ostracized for either doing badly at sports or just refusing to take part.
But In my school we were taught to compete against ourselves. "Winning isn't the point, it's taking part and doing your best that counts". This philosophy, promoted by the most enlightened teachers (in my opinion), allowed me to step outside of the stereotype I'd built for myself and become a more well-rounded person. It was OK for me not to win, so it was OK for me to play. As long as I was always pitted against sporting opponents who weren't ridiculously superior in ability, there was a point to it and I could have fun. Even maybe achieve something, by surpassing my own previous performance. If I lost: what the hell? I wasn't laughed at or if I was, it was me doing the laughing.
The sad thing is if this is what ails the American school system I don't think it is easily curable - this 'winning is everything' mentality is too deeply ingrained in the American culture of success.
Neither will it be helped by left-wing liberals who - even here in the UK - would rather destroy all incentive to win by eliminating all competitive sports from the curriculum entirely,
Such extremism would likely alienate the US mainstream from this whole strand of thinking.
P.S. Get rid of the guns. An obsession with guns is not healthy; many people are just not suited to have guns; and tha availability of guns make unhappy people into dangerous people. I'm sorry if this sounds harsh but anyone who doesn't understand these simple truisms is obviously just too ignorant or stupid to be credible.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
He didn't mention NATO's "relief efforts" in Kosovo as one of those harmful influences
I don't see Nato's attempts to take away Milosevic's toys as a good example of violence. After all they've hardly gone in all guns blazing, have they? They've had to step up the assualt continually because the Serbs refused to take a hint.
A much better example of aggressive violence - and persecution of the different, the weak and the relatively defenceless - would be the Serbs' use of the army and paramilitary (read: dangerous ex-convicts) to exterminate the Kosovars in order to secure liebensraum from themselves.
Milosevic must be stopped. If we don't we send a signal to all the bullies of the world that this sort of behaviour is acceptable. And maybe you're next in line for 'ethnic cleansing'.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
You're right about responsible parenting. And I'd lay money that neither of those two boys had a father at home to keep an eye on them. But you showed incredible naivete when you said:
You shouldn't be asking where these kids found out how to do all of this stuff, or what violent acts sparked their imaginations.
Bullshit! To ask such questions might be inconvenient for you, because you behaved like a shithead when you were a teen. But all avenues of investigation are legitimate in this inquiry.
Just because the know-how didn't lead to the act in your case doesn't mean it never does. Someone who has an unhealthy obsession with weapons and a grudge or no real interest in continuing their life is likely to put the two together in their imagination at some point. The probability of this fantasy being translated into action depends on the strength of these two drives, and their ease of access to weapons. The only factor in this that society has the means to control is access to weapons. You can't eliminate them completely since all the criminals aren't going to give them up. But you can make it much more difficult for lunatics to obtain them. To deny that would save lives is either disingenuous or plainly malicious.
I am thoroughly disgusted by the number of people who parrot ad hoc 'trick' arguments like 'it's not the gun that kills it's the man holding it'. This argument is designed to divert us from the truth, which is that for firearm killings, the combination of the man and the gun performs the killing.
It might be very difficult to understand why the majority of Americans are unable to see through these specious arguments. The most likely explanation is that the gun lobby is simply so powerful that most of American society has been indoctrinated into this mindset since childhood. I wouldn't call it a way of thinking because in fact it is a way of not thinking. Most people blindly repeat what they've been told again and again throughout their lives. When confronted with evidence that what they have been told is wrong they are simply unable to frame the obvious question as there's just no room for it in their brains. Well there's nothing new in this and it's not a problem confined to gun control issues.
America is being brainwashed by vested interests (the firearms industry), assisted by those they have already converted (gun nuts). Unfortunately the casualties are often innocent, often children, and almost always unarmed. Which puts a nice perspective on it, doesn't it? The official line is that Americans have the right to bear arms to defend themselves against aggressors but I wonder how often these weapons have been useful in this context compared to the number of times they have been used in aggression.
Some people have already suggested that if everyone carried a gun then that wouldn't be an issue. But many people don't want to carry a gun. Guns are dangerous; a large proportion of serious gunshot wounds are accidental. And of course if you do draw a gun there is a possibility that the other guy will draw his and he'll be quicker to fire. So this just won't work.
Sometimes I think if there were any real justice then everybody who promotes free access to firearms would be made to face a bullet from their own gun. He who lives by the sword...
In the UK where firearms are more tightly controlled we have a much lower incidence of murder than you do in America. Enough said.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
That's very interesting. But you're failing to take into account all the other deaths from gunshot wounds that have happened because somebody with a grudge or a bad temper had access to a gun.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Idiot! The US Constitution is a statement of position, not of proposed fact. You can't believe that a statement of position is "true" or "not true". So how can you make any comparison?
What you are saying is that, for you, no logical reasoning can ever provide a higher authority than the Constitution as it is today. Interesting. I do believe there were a number of amendments made to the Constitution over the last two hundred years, precisely because good men debated the merits of making these changes and it was in each case decided that the Constitution could be improved upon.
Thank heaven people like you don't run the world.
I guess you learned how to think at the same institution where they taught you how to spell, huh?
If your people don't amend that 'right to bear arms' nonsense then innocent civilians - including children - will continue to die painfully and horribly. Is the right of aggressive lunatics to strut around like Rambo worth that cost?
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction