... sometimes this kind of calculus is easy. Your example, for example, is easy. Just ask yourself this question, would you rather be raped twice or murdered once? My guess is that getting raped twice is the preference of pretty much everyone. Thus, 2 rapes are less than 1 murder.
Extending this method to cases of infringement of the right to copy is trivial. Would you rather have five people in infringing possession of a song you made or be raped? I know my answer.
... that he thought I wasn't paying attention, I don't much go for eye contact. But doing a cube doesn't take a third of my attention these days. Unless I do a wrong turn and end up with some subcubes where I didn't expect them. That grabs all my attention while I figure out what went wrong. Otherwise solving the cube is largely a mindless activity.
... I picked up one on the desk of a guy that was interviewing me for a job. While I worked it, it was mostly below his sightline because of all the other crap on his desk. Three minutes later I set it back where he can see it, solved. Impressed him, but didn't get the job.:(
Ok, so can you find all emails and IMs from "Bonnie" without using the email-client or IM-client? Is it convenient? Could non-technical users use it?
Sure I can find 'em.
prompttext user$ ls mail/*bonnie*.Gabber/*bonnie*.Gabber/*/*bonnie*
Pretty convenient. If the gabber logs aren't encrypted you can even grep that lot for whatever you are looking for. But you've got me on the non-technical users bit. They will need a widget to do it for them.
Seriously. I have been personallizing issue letters and emailing congress-critters for a couple of years (never more than a couple every few months). This past week I wanted to communicate something to them, but I didn't have the time to do all that work. So I looked up their office numbers, called, gave my opinion to the phone answering intern, and got back to my life quick. Hell, it has taken me as long to write and proof this post as it did to call.
Yeah the idea of slippery slopes is neat. First it gets used in appropriate discussions. Then it gets used when it might somewhat be related. Then it starts getting used when it only seems a little out of place. And pretty soon everyone and their mother is making up rediculous slippy slopes to use in every discussion, rendering impossible sane discussions on the pros and cons of anything.
My background: been using Linux for a good while now (current=gentoo), so I'm not a newbie from the config-it, use-it, script-it angle. However, I've never had anything but short, infrequent inclinations to dig down and learn about the mechanics of how the fundimentals of the OS work. So from that angle, I'm total newbie.
Now to the question. You say "...that's because Linux isn't ready for the high end (yet). By high end I'm talking about F15 and F12K servers." Which gives me a jolt of curiosity. What are some parts of the mechanics in Linux that prevent its move to high end systems? Are there any fundamental issues that will prevent Linux from 'growing up' and eventually running on those systems? Must some parts of the Linux mechanics be scrapped/overhauled? Or is it more a matter of time and will to add/extend pieces that will make the move possible?
A better analogy would be closing the doors to a movie theater to everyone except people who purchased a ticket, thus "artificially" creating scarcity to those people hoping to sneak in for free.
The machines are fairly reasonable throughout the movies (except for the dramatic scene about the "smell of humans" but thats Hollywood).
The worst display by the machines was Agent Smith, who had been infected with behavior patterns from humans. Living in the kind of reality that we need had driven him quite mad.
If I were Agent Smith I would have an archive of myself somewhere that is before the insanity got too far along. I'd hope that my friends start up a process of that version of me. A sane and rational Smith would be something that would throw us all off in some later movie.
Still, the machines were keeping humans from advancing, they are holding back our development intead of seeing if we can develop in some way that leads to nice, happy, non-destructive humans.
... So far my best idea for making a bagable (computer in bag wirelessly hooked to wearable I/O) is to repackage a cheap laptop into a bag and spend the bulk of my time/money/energy spiffing out the I/O part of the equation. So not getting a display is great for me and, incidentally, a good number of people on the wearable mailing lists I read, since they all seem to be headed in much the same direction (whether they know it or not).
...the basis of our cuture, that got us to the Moon.
"Us"? You're on the Moon? I doubt it. Our culture, or rather, the culture of "we must beat the Reds" got a handful of people to the Moon for short stays. Then it trashed the plans for fear of the Reds getting ahold of them.
I promise you, things do move faster than light. take your laser pointer and shine it from one side of the sky to the other. that dot moved faster than light when it travelled across the sky,
"That dot" is not a physical thing. You are making a category error. "That dot" is an abstract entity from a category different than physics.
...a rating system 'pur sang' is not a bad thing...
What does "pur sang" mean here? Google leads me to believe that it is french, and then The fish tells me that, in french, it means "thoroughbred". That doesn't make sense in your sentence. You probably meant "per se".
The day is not so far away when these laws, which we make to satisfy piss-ant small-minded corporate drones who imagine that they have a right to profit by punishing others, will affect how many children in the world die of hunger and exposure, or how many people live in squalor and die of malaria.
That day has come and gone already. Think countries with high rates of HIV and patented treatments.
I'm out in the "boondocks" (compared to in The City) of super-dense New Jersey, and I've been having dropped calls like mad on sprintpcs for the past two months.
"Director, we've determined six key events to go back and change with the time-door."
"Yes, good, what are they?"
"Well, according to the latest simulations using Baztansian statistics on all of the financial information we found from the late 20th century, if we make sure that a particular set of four people pay the full balance on their credit cards in April of 1986 and then stop two certain people from joining one of the primitive web boards named Slashdot, then the stability/growth index for the global utopia that could have emerged at the time, but didn't, will be positive."
"Excellent work. Get the boys to work on those changes right away."
Right, o.k. it was a quibble. I didn't understand the whole of your position. I would add that if civilization rose again after a fall, one never knows what data about us they will like to have. Perhaps by looking through our credit histories, with their new math and understanding, they could avoid some peril that was a root cause of the fall. Other than making that tiny point, I think we agree and you've earned a spot on the friend list.
If society collapses, will you give a damn about your data, while you're subsistence farming?
You would if the information would tell you how to triple the output of food per acre, or how to decrease the infant mortality rate, or any number of other things. Sometimes there were centuries between rather small innovations in farming. We had to wait until the right kind of person was in the kind of situation to think of the new idea. Having that kind of information would help our decendants on their way through the low part of the civilization cycle.
Slashdot Mirror
Extending this method to cases of infringement of the right to copy is trivial. Would you rather have five people in infringing possession of a song you made or be raped? I know my answer.
prompttext user$ ls mail/*bonnie* .Gabber/*bonnie* .Gabber/*/*bonnie*
Pretty convenient. If the gabber logs aren't encrypted you can even grep that lot for whatever you are looking for. But you've got me on the non-technical users bit. They will need a widget to do it for them.
Now to the question. You say "...that's because Linux isn't ready for the high end (yet). By high end I'm talking about F15 and F12K servers." Which gives me a jolt of curiosity. What are some parts of the mechanics in Linux that prevent its move to high end systems? Are there any fundamental issues that will prevent Linux from 'growing up' and eventually running on those systems? Must some parts of the Linux mechanics be scrapped/overhauled? Or is it more a matter of time and will to add/extend pieces that will make the move possible?
If I were Agent Smith I would have an archive of myself somewhere that is before the insanity got too far along. I'd hope that my friends start up a process of that version of me. A sane and rational Smith would be something that would throw us all off in some later movie.
Still, the machines were keeping humans from advancing, they are holding back our development intead of seeing if we can develop in some way that leads to nice, happy, non-destructive humans.
"Director, we've determined six key events to go back and change with the time-door."
"Yes, good, what are they?"
"Well, according to the latest simulations using Baztansian statistics on all of the financial information we found from the late 20th century, if we make sure that a particular set of four people pay the full balance on their credit cards in April of 1986 and then stop two certain people from joining one of the primitive web boards named Slashdot, then the stability/growth index for the global utopia that could have emerged at the time, but didn't, will be positive."
"Excellent work. Get the boys to work on those changes right away."
Later.
The way I see it, having a legislator pass an unconstitutional law is probably the best possible indicator that they are incompetent.