why, you wonder, are you wrong? in a system where market participants place performance, or more properly, are bound by law to place performance, above all other measures of success it is plain that the welfare of the consumer is not considered unless also mandated by law, and even then will be considered less important than the business's performance if there are not sufficiently dissuasive penalties.
although the wikipeda article actually refers to it as Biopunk.
Paul Di Filippo's book of that name includes a short story where there are drugs that would enable one to climb a skyscraper, but depending on the dosage, not enough to climb back down.
i'm sorry, i don't understand how the leafy sea dragon is any more seemingly unadapted than a peacock. female mating preferences are genetic, Nature, thus a mutation could itself be responsible for mating preference to play a role in sexual selection.
its memory thats being affected, silly, and its both boon and bane. i no longer have to remember everything, not if i can find it quickly enough - isn't that a common database issue;-) but now, the past can be rewritten with the push of a button - orwell must be turning in his grave.
i'm afraid its not that simple. your comment seems to have overlooked some of the other factors that contribute to health, such as; lead, asbestos, and other types of industrial pollution.
this system that you consider a 'win-win' is actually a more tightly controlled authoritarian system than the one in which you currently live. the only practical advantage here would be for the HMOs and insurance companies. they would be better able to price coverage.
i don't think it would require a great deal of imagination to imagine how that could evolve into outright eugenics. based on the purest of libertarian and capitalist principles, but nevertheless eugenics.
improve the interface, not combine the components
on
Kurzweil on the Future
·
· Score: 1
i'm very surprised no one has seen fit to link to this article.
i think that man-machine interface in general is vastly overlooked, and i'm going to get specific. a senior partner of an mid-sized architect firm keeps asking me why it takes so long to produce a drawing, given that the parts can be created quickly on the command line. what if you could just think of it, and it appeared? sure there would have to some scaling algorithms involved, and it would probably take some practice, but it would ultimately result in a higher level of productivity.
now apply that to everything, and when i say everything i mean chip design, finance, medicine,... well i think you get the picture.
is it the 'singularity'? no, it definitely isn't. is it a precursor state to some type of singularity? i'm taking bets. does this involve machine consciousness, at least at any point in the near (20 years) future? i don't think it does; thats a pipe dream.
no, in america corporations can't be incarcerated, nor can their officers. hold corporate officers accountable, and punishable, for the actions of the corporation and this would change.
birthrights have existed ever since tribal leaders were chosen by descent, and not by tribal elders. in most cases this was linked with divine authority, and is directly linked to the rise of the priesthood (as a class). as with any entrenched class, they're not very willing to give up power (see catholic chucrh for examples). needless to say there is a reason why the priesthood and the aristocracy stood together for so long.
it is competition for available resources, and the desire to control those resources, that leads to war, and in fact most forms of aggression (see behavioral ecology).
there are no inherent evils to communism, only to its implementation. nevertheless it is inherently flawed; it does not scale, and it rules out compensation for incentive (see heavens on earth: utopian societies in america for examples of successful egalitarian societies).
as for capitalism, its current implementation is inherently flawed as well. willful violation of laws regarding pollution, for example, are engendered by the fact that corporate officers are legally bound to create maximal returns for shareholders.
what is wrong with the UN is what is wrong with humanity (see above).
i disagree. people can hold however many digits in their head as they are accustomed to holding. to say that the number of digits just _happens_ to coincide with the number of digits in an american phone number is obviously ethnocentric.
not only that, but people become accustomed to structuring that memory in different manners. is it 2-2-3, or 3-2-2. or 3-4. people remember strings of digits in the patterns that they learned as a child.
i learned an 11-digit number on first go last weekend, its a swiss telephone number dialed from overseas; 414354#####. what is this bullshit about adding an *extra* digit to one's memory?
although many aspects of Brian Wilson's 'A Quick Critique of Java' are no longer particularly valid, and indeed i find myself programming more and more frequently in a language i too once scorned, the section on multi-threaded programming surely still has relevance. i certainly second his opinion that multi-threaded applications tend to crash more often, and have in fact turned down offers of employment with companies whose code failed to run on my workstation due to the fact that it wasn't exactly thread-safe, despite the requirement of a 'high-performance' machine for it to run on.
its late, i have a cold, and i'm tired. so i'm going to say this quickly and cleanly; its all about onus. and in order to explain why its all about onus i'm going to tell you a story about an ISP (i think quickly and cleanly were used in haste, but then again i really hate C#V#D).
i entered into a contractual obligation for DSL services with a provider. one of the terms of that agreement was that i purchase a router from the provider (i already had a far superior router). at the time i entered into the agreement with provider they were offering a rebate equal to the cost of the router. they deliberately, or so i believe, did not detail all the steps needed to be followed in order to claim said rebate. after having finally completed and documented all necessary materials i waited, and waited, and waited. i finally got my rebate, but not before contacting the AG. and in a most telling moment of synchronicity, the day i received my rebate was the day the AG's office contacted me to enquire whether i wished to pursue the matter (and tellingly, despite the fact that the rebate was indicated as being fulfilled by http://web-rebates.com/ the check was drawn on C#V#D's bank account). but i digress...
i requested a check three times. one of those times was not registered! at each request i was told i would have to wait 6-8 weeks before i could make another request, so that the misguided check would be returned by the USPS. HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE FOR A LETTER IN THE USA? WHAT ARE YOU, THE 3RD WORLD?
now we get to the meat of the entree; during one conversation i asked why they couldn't just send me another check, better still, as they were debiting my CC on a monthly basis, why couldn't they just credit it? (this is the proof of the pudding - we want to bog ourselves in paperwork). they replied that they had to make sure that the check was returned (at this point, does anyone have any faith in the fact that the check was mailed in the first place?). and besides, if they did that it would "place the onus" on them.
and that, my friends, is the rub. its all about onus. the RIAA does not want to have to sue for copyright infringement every time someone shares a file. they would go broke. which is why they are so gung-ho about equating it with thievery. but its not just the RIAA anymore, now its a business model. maybe you people should go to the polls and vote, not just for some media-enhanced candidate, but for someone you think will do the job they're supposed to do; represent their constituency.
why is it a corporation has the rights of an individual, but can not be subjected to the same punishments as an individual.
i spent most of the last ten years overseas. after 9/11 my attitude was that if my family wanted to see me they would have to fly to canada. legislation like this just reinforces this attitude. my current belief is that i should go back overseas as soon as possible and _never_ come back. go to toronto, or london or berlin sometime and see what living in a nice sane place would be like. if thats over your head, well, go back to the midwest and play gi joe.
all modern humans (homo sapiens sapiens, as they're known) can be traced back to a single maternal ancestor via mitochondrial RNA. is that what you meant? do some research on 'Lucy'.
1) it was supposedly inadvertent destruction 2) millions? do you work for the RIAA? 3) it could also be viewed as a necessary wake-up call 4) the NSA, as well as all other federal agencies, are supposed to work for the 'Office of the President' 5) of course there's a back-door, caveat emptor 6) you do realize that the day will come when possesion of unregistered encryption will be a crime, don't you?
believe it or not, i agree with most of what you wrote.
Archangel Michael - see Sol Speieglman. the point that i think you're having a problem with is, 'what is life?'.
Anonymous Coward - i have read it, in fact i own a copy. species don't change, they adapt as a result of natural selection. as far as not discussing the origins of life, adaptation quite rightly depends on reproduction. if you can give me an example of biochemistry (for the sake of argument why don't we start with the one example we have) where reproduction takes place, and selective pressure can be proven to exert adaptation, i'd say you had a pretty good candidate for the origin of life. and that is precisely the point.
well, i personally don't have a lot of faith in the ability of creationists to comprehend the RNA world hypothesis. having said that, i'm not certain i have faith in the ability of slashdot readers to understand it, either. nevertheless i'd rather debate specific points of a theory than have to explain why life doesn't require a creator.
Slashdot Mirror
you realize that your generational generalizations are absurd, don't you?
sex on TV is linked to teenage pregnancy
wrong.
wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.
repeat after me; wrong.
why, you wonder, are you wrong? in a system where market participants place performance, or more properly, are bound by law to place performance, above all other measures of success it is plain that the welfare of the consumer is not considered unless also mandated by law, and even then will be considered less important than the business's performance if there are not sufficiently dissuasive penalties.
for further reference see RailTrack.
although the wikipeda article actually refers to it as Biopunk.
Paul Di Filippo's book of that name includes a short story where there are drugs that would enable one to climb a skyscraper, but depending on the dosage, not enough to climb back down.
i'm sorry, i don't understand how the leafy sea dragon is any more seemingly unadapted than a peacock. female mating preferences are genetic, Nature, thus a mutation could itself be responsible for mating preference to play a role in sexual selection.
its memory thats being affected, silly, and its both boon and bane. i no longer have to remember everything, not if i can find it quickly enough - isn't that a common database issue ;-) but now, the past can be rewritten with the push of a button - orwell must be turning in his grave.
i'm afraid its not that simple. your comment seems to have overlooked some of the other factors that contribute to health, such as; lead, asbestos, and other types of industrial pollution.
this system that you consider a 'win-win' is actually a more tightly controlled authoritarian system than the one in which you currently live. the only practical advantage here would be for the HMOs and insurance companies. they would be better able to price coverage.
i don't think it would require a great deal of imagination to imagine how that could evolve into outright eugenics. based on the purest of libertarian and capitalist principles, but nevertheless eugenics.
i'm very surprised no one has seen fit to link to this article.
... well i think you get the picture.
i think that man-machine interface in general is vastly overlooked, and i'm going to get specific. a senior partner of an mid-sized architect firm keeps asking me why it takes so long to produce a drawing, given that the parts can be created quickly on the command line. what if you could just think of it, and it appeared? sure there would have to some scaling algorithms involved, and it would probably take some practice, but it would ultimately result in a higher level of productivity.
now apply that to everything, and when i say everything i mean chip design, finance, medicine,
is it the 'singularity'? no, it definitely isn't. is it a precursor state to some type of singularity? i'm taking bets. does this involve machine consciousness, at least at any point in the near (20 years) future? i don't think it does; thats a pipe dream.
no, in america corporations can't be incarcerated, nor can their officers. hold corporate officers accountable, and punishable, for the actions of the corporation and this would change.
birthrights have existed ever since tribal leaders were chosen by descent, and not by tribal elders. in most cases this was linked with divine authority, and is directly linked to the rise of the priesthood (as a class). as with any entrenched class, they're not very willing to give up power (see catholic chucrh for examples). needless to say there is a reason why the priesthood and the aristocracy stood together for so long.
it is competition for available resources, and the desire to control those resources, that leads to war, and in fact most forms of aggression (see behavioral ecology).
there are no inherent evils to communism, only to its implementation. nevertheless it is inherently flawed; it does not scale, and it rules out compensation for incentive (see heavens on earth: utopian societies in america for examples of successful egalitarian societies).
as for capitalism, its current implementation is inherently flawed as well. willful violation of laws regarding pollution, for example, are engendered by the fact that corporate officers are legally bound to create maximal returns for shareholders.
what is wrong with the UN is what is wrong with humanity (see above).
i disagree. people can hold however many digits in their head as they are accustomed to holding. to say that the number of digits just _happens_ to coincide with the number of digits in an american phone number is obviously ethnocentric.
not only that, but people become accustomed to structuring that memory in different manners. is it 2-2-3, or 3-2-2. or 3-4. people remember strings of digits in the patterns that they learned as a child.
i learned an 11-digit number on first go last weekend, its a swiss telephone number dialed from overseas; 414354#####. what is this bullshit about adding an *extra* digit to one's memory?
although many aspects of Brian Wilson's 'A Quick Critique of Java' are no longer particularly valid, and indeed i find myself programming more and more frequently in a language i too once scorned, the section on multi-threaded programming surely still has relevance. i certainly second his opinion that multi-threaded applications tend to crash more often, and have in fact turned down offers of employment with companies whose code failed to run on my workstation due to the fact that it wasn't exactly thread-safe, despite the requirement of a 'high-performance' machine for it to run on.
you're close. its more like, "clean environment campaigns are ruining the market for bottled water."
its late, i have a cold, and i'm tired. so i'm going to say this quickly and cleanly; its all about onus. and in order to explain why its all about onus i'm going to tell you a story about an ISP (i think quickly and cleanly were used in haste, but then again i really hate C#V#D).
i entered into a contractual obligation for DSL services with a provider. one of the terms of that agreement was that i purchase a router from the provider (i already had a far superior router). at the time i entered into the agreement with provider they were offering a rebate equal to the cost of the router. they deliberately, or so i believe, did not detail all the steps needed to be followed in order to claim said rebate. after having finally completed and documented all necessary materials i waited, and waited, and waited. i finally got my rebate, but not before contacting the AG. and in a most telling moment of synchronicity, the day i received my rebate was the day the AG's office contacted me to enquire whether i wished to pursue the matter (and tellingly, despite the fact that the rebate was indicated as being fulfilled by http://web-rebates.com/ the check was drawn on C#V#D's bank account). but i digress...
i requested a check three times. one of those times was not registered! at each request i was told i would have to wait 6-8 weeks before i could make another request, so that the misguided check would be returned by the USPS. HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE FOR A LETTER IN THE USA? WHAT ARE YOU, THE 3RD WORLD?
now we get to the meat of the entree; during one conversation i asked why they couldn't just send me another check, better still, as they were debiting my CC on a monthly basis, why couldn't they just credit it? (this is the proof of the pudding - we want to bog ourselves in paperwork). they replied that they had to make sure that the check was returned (at this point, does anyone have any faith in the fact that the check was mailed in the first place?). and besides, if they did that it would "place the onus" on them.
and that, my friends, is the rub. its all about onus. the RIAA does not want to have to sue for copyright infringement every time someone shares a file. they would go broke. which is why they are so gung-ho about equating it with thievery. but its not just the RIAA anymore, now its a business model. maybe you people should go to the polls and vote, not just for some media-enhanced candidate, but for someone you think will do the job they're supposed to do; represent their constituency.
why is it a corporation has the rights of an individual, but can not be subjected to the same punishments as an individual.
why can a corporation can not be incarcerated?
thanks for the link
i spent most of the last ten years overseas. after 9/11 my attitude was that if my family wanted to see me they would have to fly to canada. legislation like this just reinforces this attitude. my current belief is that i should go back overseas as soon as possible and _never_ come back. go to toronto, or london or berlin sometime and see what living in a nice sane place would be like. if thats over your head, well, go back to the midwest and play gi joe.
all modern humans (homo sapiens sapiens, as they're known) can be traced back to a single maternal ancestor via mitochondrial RNA. is that what you meant? do some research on 'Lucy'.
a number of points:
1) it was supposedly inadvertent destruction
2) millions? do you work for the RIAA?
3) it could also be viewed as a necessary wake-up call
4) the NSA, as well as all other federal agencies, are supposed to work for the 'Office of the President'
5) of course there's a back-door, caveat emptor
6) you do realize that the day will come when possesion of unregistered encryption will be a crime, don't you?
believe it or not, i agree with most of what you wrote.
for 'Shaping 101'?
perhaps you've heard of Robert Morris?
and whatever it is that might be stopping you will you away faster than you can say Firefox 3.0
that is the best comment on this subject i have seen.
thanks -- i was making a leap and you rightly recognized it.
something tells me someone has never heard of Ilya Prigogine...
Archangel Michael - see Sol Speieglman. the point that i think you're having a problem with is, 'what is life?'.
Anonymous Coward - i have read it, in fact i own a copy. species don't change, they adapt as a result of natural selection. as far as not discussing the origins of life, adaptation quite rightly depends on reproduction. if you can give me an example of biochemistry (for the sake of argument why don't we start with the one example we have) where reproduction takes place, and selective pressure can be proven to exert adaptation, i'd say you had a pretty good candidate for the origin of life. and that is precisely the point.
well, i personally don't have a lot of faith in the ability of creationists to comprehend the RNA world hypothesis. having said that, i'm not certain i have faith in the ability of slashdot readers to understand it, either. nevertheless i'd rather debate specific points of a theory than have to explain why life doesn't require a creator.