The catch is that we don't live long enough for smartness to outpace beauty. If we all lived 200 year old lives, I am sure the cult of the "beautiful people" will simply disappear.
But you assertion that homeless people have less children than billionaires is a bit far from the truth. It is a known fact that as populations get wealthier, their birthrate goes down.
The "wiping out" of Americans by Somalis is simply the effect of numbers. The fraction of Americans, as well as Europeans, of the world population is a dwindling number. This has nothing to do with laziness, fatness or dumbness.
Re:Really, what's so "noble" about open-source eth
on
Antitrust
·
· Score: 2
Not having source mean one is more susceptible to fraud than having it.
As for code, other laws exist to deal with people copying your code. Patent law could be useful that way.
Re:Really, what's so "noble" about open-source eth
on
Antitrust
·
· Score: 2
I would not call selling people software without letting see the source very ethical. Remember: MS inserted code to detect when Win3.1 was not running on MSDOS. If so, it deliberately put up a message warning of "possible incompatibility", when in fact, there was no compatibility becuase of the excellent reverse engineering by DRDOS.
When I walk into a car dealership, I demand to see the engine. Sure I can't fix anything, but I think I can tell the difference between an 8 cyclinder and 2 cyclinder engine. Same thing - one should expect to see the source code to the software one buys, without having to sign an NDA. As an example, how can do you know that Quicken does not send a report for your finances to someone else. Without examining the code, how could you maintain it doesn't?
Because people can fall out of bicyles? Ever considered other factors like safety, comfort, speed, amongst others?
I guess we should all forget about making good planes and all ride flying bicycles. If it is good enough for you, it must be good enough for everyone else!
It is interesting for you to implicitly accept the point that the people living on internet time merely use what what they have on hand, and care not about the rest. Thus, you have already conceded the point that these people have narrow interests.
You have also conceded the point that they have the attitude of mere users. This is software, not a hammer. Software is changeable, configurable and malleable. It is not a hammer, which obviously is limited by its shape and weight. The people who are after document preparation can obviously do a world of good by proposing a standard which meets their goals. This gives Netscape and MS a target to code for. Thus they legitimize their goals, and make it so that existing standards aren't already as complicated as they are. And guess what -- Adobe already has a de-jure standard. All they need to do is to take it an additional step, research their needs and formalize it. Instead, these people whine and bitch about how HTML -- which is expressedly not made for such a task -- cannot meet their exacting standards.
I could agree with the statement that tools are for "people". But "People" is a plurality, not a singular group of people. I wonder if you are aware of that, and its implications.
Anyway, it is an interesting exercise to see someone attempt to argue selfishness away.
You would almost start making sense until you realize that the people who want to find new purposes for HTML do not care about compatibiilty with the rest. That is exactly the point - these arguments are narrow, short-sighted and selfish.
Saying "who has the time to wait..." is exactly the problem. These people working on internet time cannot expect the rest of the world to cater to their demands. Why should the W3C make up things to cater to them?
Do you not realize that HTML (whichever standard) is not perfect, and in developing a standard, the W3C is not striving for total perfection? The standard is already a compromise between the needs of pure markup, and the needs of presentation, the needs of the blind, the needs of graceful degradation etc. In arguing in the manner that you have, you are forgetting exactly about this compromise. Do you think the W3C only cares about perfection and not practicality? If you think so, why don't you become a memeber and try to influence their direction?
Coming out with a suitable document format is indeed better for a whole host of reasons. Ignoring it is just that - it produces a chaotic mess. This mess, which this slashdot article is exemplifies, is a result of people who ignore the standards, and are unwilling to see the compromises that the W3C made. If they are not happy, they should be aware that people like me who abhor flashy websites are also not happy.
Please think about what that statement means before you allege naivety. I fact, I find it naive for people to assume that plain old HTML is adequate for the task of document preparation, in general.
If HTML can be used for any purpose, why did HTML 2.0, 3.0 and 4.0 emerge? Why is MathML for? What is CSS for? Why, if the purpose of this HTML standard is so malleable, that people chose to define new standards?
You use a hammer to hammer nails and a screwdriver to screw screws. You would laugh at any person trying to do one with the other. It is not "naive". It is classic case of people not understanding the tool.
To the original poster who complained about not having control over document layout, I say again:
Go ahead and push for some new standard that defines document layout. Perhaps a ready one like PDF would be nice. Then go get netscape, MS and others to write browsers for them. Complaining about how browsers don't render things similarly simply means that you have not read the RFCs. It says very clearly that browsers are allowed to render layouts with differences. But that is not a law from high. By all means change it formally if you want to.
BTW, why are the high numbered posters in slashdot getting so asinine?
What do you call someone who complains that their bicycle can't get them from London to New York fast enough?
If a bicycle sprouted wings and tail does it become an airplane? Or did people sit down an reinvent a plane based upon the principles of flight that the Wright brothers thought up? At some point, do we keep grafting on complex things onto an ancient procotol, or do we rethink our technologies and come out with something perhaps not totally fresh, but better engineered?
And guess what? I am not even denigrating the fields of WYSIWYG publishing. It is a respectable goal in its own right. It is arrogant pricks like you who can't see an engineering argument when it hits you in the face. According to this attitude: There is no such thing as good design and engineering -- it is all arrogant posturing!
Oh gee. If that is what you want, go and propose your own RFC, go and write your own browser and distribute it!!
Why should we keep shoehorning a bunch of UNIX socket calls, HTTP and HTML to suit web designers tastes? Go read the RFCs and tell me it is adequate for these purposes! Go and read the f*cking RFC for a URL, and ask the question: why aren't the shockwave coders not proposing their own swave://blah.net/ protocol and instead making http: do everything?
Not just that, but for a robust DB, the commit and rollback operations are atomic. It either happens or it doesn't. No half-way measures. So if your disk crashes during a commit operation, you are guaranteed that either the operation went through or not. No mangling of the data.
MS is stupid if it thinks it can use copyright law this way.
Consider a novel like Dune. I may not reproduce the book online, but I can summarize the plot by telling you what that it is about how the Harkkonnen's destroyed Atreides, claiming back the planet of Dune for themselves. And how the surviving heir, Paul Atreides leads the Fremen of the desert to take back Dune.
If MS thinks this can prevent prevent people from talking about a bugs in MS software - it can't. If I was a hacker, I ould simply say: "There is a bug in the SSL module of IE. This is the program for the exploit." The program is copyrighted by me. If anything, they are infringing upon my copyright by telling me where and whom I can distribute it to.
I just downloaded Mozilla M18-3 and it really works great. It only seems to have problems with SSL encrypted websites. So stop your moaning and pissing at Mozilla. It is free, it is open-source and a very high quality browser, if a little slow. Nothing that could not be fixed, if someone around had some free time.
Opera's great too if you like that kind of thing. For the first time we have a free, viable browser. Why should anyone have to maon about that? Nobody is forcing you to use it.
I am sorry, but I am in no way imply that metaphysics is unimportant. It is a very important question what intelligence means, and the original post said so succintly, pointing out the importance of having an operational definition. Then streetlawyer came and insisted that the question is purely metaphysical. I pointed out that measuring and observing a creature's responses and adaptability were all part and parcel of developing an operational definition of intelligence and sentiency.
It is this offhand dismissal of this large body of work that deserves to criticized. Go ask streetlawyer about that. He appears to know lots, having spoken to so many researchers.
That's exactly the problem. The status of intelligence as a metaphysical question is being challenged, and the way you respond to it is to assume that it is.
Can't you see the contradiction in this stand? If it can always be faked, then it could be faked successfully, and you would not have any grounds (other than by sheer stubborness) not to believe in the intelligence of a machine engaging in sufficently clever fakery.
Therefore, it is not my position that machines can always fake intelligence. But I can accept the operational definition, becuase I know that sometimes we don't make judgements based on the full data. If I can make a quick judgement that someone is intelligent based upon meagre evidence, then a machine could satisfy it.
You may say I am not looking hard enough and you will be correct. Then my question is, which you you contend: that we can always look hard enough past fakery, or fakery will always win?
In fact, I don't see the necesity of believing either statement at all.
I don't see how you, being human, is not a necessary condition for there being a spinal cord. And having qualified by statement, restricting attention to those with functional spinal cords and functional knees and legs. Then it is necessarily true that such knees would jerk. It is not "just happens" to be true. The chain of causation is very strong in such a case.
You mean I have no recourse to answering this question apart from metaphysics? Gimme a break! I can give it food to see how it responds, shine light on it, etc. And you think these things don't mean a thing? That is possible for a sea slug to be unresponsive, but yet capable of abstract mathematical thought?
No serious researcher gets bothers to defend metaphysics anymore. You are fighting a battle lost a hundred years ago.
Slashdot Mirror
They should have known better than to trademark such a word.
The catch is that we don't live long enough for smartness to outpace beauty. If we all lived 200 year old lives, I am sure the cult of the "beautiful people" will simply disappear.
But you assertion that homeless people have less children than billionaires is a bit far from the truth. It is a known fact that as populations get wealthier, their birthrate goes down.
The "wiping out" of Americans by Somalis is simply the effect of numbers. The fraction of Americans, as well as Europeans, of the world population is a dwindling number. This has nothing to do with laziness, fatness or dumbness.
As for code, other laws exist to deal with people copying your code. Patent law could be useful that way.
When I walk into a car dealership, I demand to see the engine. Sure I can't fix anything, but I think I can tell the difference between an 8 cyclinder and 2 cyclinder engine. Same thing - one should expect to see the source code to the software one buys, without having to sign an NDA. As an example, how can do you know that Quicken does not send a report for your finances to someone else. Without examining the code, how could you maintain it doesn't?
I guess we should all forget about making good planes and all ride flying bicycles. If it is good enough for you, it must be good enough for everyone else!
It is patently clear who the retard is.
You have also conceded the point that they have the attitude of mere users. This is software, not a hammer. Software is changeable, configurable and malleable. It is not a hammer, which obviously is limited by its shape and weight. The people who are after document preparation can obviously do a world of good by proposing a standard which meets their goals. This gives Netscape and MS a target to code for. Thus they legitimize their goals, and make it so that existing standards aren't already as complicated as they are. And guess what -- Adobe already has a de-jure standard. All they need to do is to take it an additional step, research their needs and formalize it. Instead, these people whine and bitch about how HTML -- which is expressedly not made for such a task -- cannot meet their exacting standards.
I could agree with the statement that tools are for "people". But "People" is a plurality, not a singular group of people. I wonder if you are aware of that, and its implications.
Anyway, it is an interesting exercise to see someone attempt to argue selfishness away.
Saying "who has the time to wait ..." is exactly the problem. These people working on internet time cannot expect the rest of the world to cater to their demands. Why should the W3C make up things to cater to them?
Do you not realize that HTML (whichever standard) is not perfect, and in developing a standard, the W3C is not striving for total perfection? The standard is already a compromise between the needs of pure markup, and the needs of presentation, the needs of the blind, the needs of graceful degradation etc. In arguing in the manner that you have, you are forgetting exactly about this compromise. Do you think the W3C only cares about perfection and not practicality? If you think so, why don't you become a memeber and try to influence their direction?
Coming out with a suitable document format is indeed better for a whole host of reasons. Ignoring it is just that - it produces a chaotic mess. This mess, which this slashdot article is exemplifies, is a result of people who ignore the standards, and are unwilling to see the compromises that the W3C made. If they are not happy, they should be aware that people like me who abhor flashy websites are also not happy.
Please think about what that statement means before you allege naivety. I fact, I find it naive for people to assume that plain old HTML is adequate for the task of document preparation, in general.
If HTML can be used for any purpose, why did HTML 2.0, 3.0 and 4.0 emerge? Why is MathML for? What is CSS for? Why, if the purpose of this HTML standard is so malleable, that people chose to define new standards?
You use a hammer to hammer nails and a screwdriver to screw screws. You would laugh at any person trying to do one with the other. It is not "naive". It is classic case of people not understanding the tool.
To the original poster who complained about not having control over document layout, I say again: Go ahead and push for some new standard that defines document layout. Perhaps a ready one like PDF would be nice. Then go get netscape, MS and others to write browsers for them. Complaining about how browsers don't render things similarly simply means that you have not read the RFCs. It says very clearly that browsers are allowed to render layouts with differences. But that is not a law from high. By all means change it formally if you want to.
BTW, why are the high numbered posters in slashdot getting so asinine?
If a bicycle sprouted wings and tail does it become an airplane? Or did people sit down an reinvent a plane based upon the principles of flight that the Wright brothers thought up? At some point, do we keep grafting on complex things onto an ancient procotol, or do we rethink our technologies and come out with something perhaps not totally fresh, but better engineered?
And guess what? I am not even denigrating the fields of WYSIWYG publishing. It is a respectable goal in its own right. It is arrogant pricks like you who can't see an engineering argument when it hits you in the face. According to this attitude: There is no such thing as good design and engineering -- it is all arrogant posturing!
Why should we keep shoehorning a bunch of UNIX socket calls, HTTP and HTML to suit web designers tastes? Go read the RFCs and tell me it is adequate for these purposes! Go and read the f*cking RFC for a URL, and ask the question: why aren't the shockwave coders not proposing their own swave://blah.net/ protocol and instead making http: do everything?
Other technologies exists for that purpose. HTML's purpose is not WYSIWYG publishing. Get over it.
Not just that, but for a robust DB, the commit and rollback operations are atomic. It either happens or it doesn't. No half-way measures. So if your disk crashes during a commit operation, you are guaranteed that either the operation went through or not. No mangling of the data.
Ever heard of spectroscopy?
Really. Are you aware that Ogg Vorbis uses wavelet compression methods while MP3 still uses the fourier transforms only?
Consider a novel like Dune. I may not reproduce the book online, but I can summarize the plot by telling you what that it is about how the Harkkonnen's destroyed Atreides, claiming back the planet of Dune for themselves. And how the surviving heir, Paul Atreides leads the Fremen of the desert to take back Dune.
If MS thinks this can prevent prevent people from talking about a bugs in MS software - it can't. If I was a hacker, I ould simply say: "There is a bug in the SSL module of IE. This is the program for the exploit." The program is copyrighted by me. If anything, they are infringing upon my copyright by telling me where and whom I can distribute it to.
Opera's great too if you like that kind of thing. For the first time we have a free, viable browser. Why should anyone have to maon about that? Nobody is forcing you to use it.
It is this offhand dismissal of this large body of work that deserves to criticized. Go ask streetlawyer about that. He appears to know lots, having spoken to so many researchers.
Therefore, it is not my position that machines can always fake intelligence. But I can accept the operational definition, becuase I know that sometimes we don't make judgements based on the full data. If I can make a quick judgement that someone is intelligent based upon meagre evidence, then a machine could satisfy it.
You may say I am not looking hard enough and you will be correct. Then my question is, which you you contend: that we can always look hard enough past fakery, or fakery will always win?
In fact, I don't see the necesity of believing either statement at all.
I don't see how you, being human, is not a necessary condition for there being a spinal cord. And having qualified by statement, restricting attention to those with functional spinal cords and functional knees and legs. Then it is necessarily true that such knees would jerk. It is not "just happens" to be true. The chain of causation is very strong in such a case.
You mean I have no recourse to answering this question apart from metaphysics? Gimme a break! I can give it food to see how it responds, shine light on it, etc. And you think these things don't mean a thing? That is possible for a sea slug to be unresponsive, but yet capable of abstract mathematical thought?
No serious researcher gets bothers to defend metaphysics anymore. You are fighting a battle lost a hundred years ago.