And don't give me the "following orders" argument; if you're expecting ME to commit suicide to avoid killing them, they should bloody well commit suicide first to avoid killing me.
How many homicides are you gonna charge us with for Iwo Jima? Normandy?
How many were there?
Like I said, it's at least arguable that killing people is sometimes justifiable. But it is still killing. Arguing that one should go ahead and kill tens of thousands of people because one possible alternative is a suicide mission for a few is totally specious.
Would I go on such a suicide mission? Dammed if I know. If I was reasonably certain that it had a good chance of making hundreds of thousands of further deaths on either/both sides less likely, I like to think that I'd be willing. But obviously no one can really know such a thing about themselves unless they're actually in the situation.
In a sensible world, you could revoke their corporate charter. Existence as a corporation is supposed to be contingent on the public interest. The law does provide for this, but it almost never happens.
The law provides for this in some places. In more and more places, the provisions for this sort of thing are being quietly changed, or gotten rid of entirely.
Welcome to the Brave New World, where capital punishment exists for real people -- including kids and the mentally handicapped, and often based on flimsy evidence -- but not for corporations.
I dunno. I think using blatantly faked evidence in a US District Court was at least as low.
Whatever. In any case, I think Minnesota Attorney General Mike Hatch was right. "This is not a company that appears to be bothered by ethical boundaries." And not very much bothered by legal ones, either.
Microsoft Corporation is a legal person. Who the hell would deal with a real person with such a fucked-up mindset, unless they couldn't avoid dealing with them?
The B-29 over Nagasaki was barely far enough away to avoid destruction as it was; if we'd done the "demonstration" so many Slashdotters occasionally complain about, it would have been a suicide mission.
Yup. That doesn't rule it out, of course -- it's not like suicide missions aren't sometimes worth the cost. But instead, it was a 60,000* homicides mission. And 90,000* homicides for Hiroshima. (Possibly justifiable homicides, depending on how one looks at it. But possibly not.)
War isn't pretty. War isn't supposed to be pretty. The day war becomes pretty, we've all got problems.
Read some of the US media descriptions of the Gulf War, or even better find some CNN footage from it. Not pretty, exactly, but most of them avoided as much of the ugly stuff as they could. They made it look like a video-game war. Granted, they were mostly just passing along the stuff spoon-fed to them by the Pentagon, but that's part of the problem, innit?
I've noticed something disturbing - that any time a story mentions Canada, everyone jumps in to make fun of it. I understand that most readers of/. are Americans, but does that mean we have to ignore the posted story and focus on unimportant details like nationality?
Well, not everyone disses it, but yeah, there does seem to be a lot of that.
I think it's partly the seemingly common misperception of an annoying number of Slashdotters that they're Really Smart, and that nobody else gives anything any real thought. So they assume that any possible little objection they can think of -- usually without even reading more than a paragraph or two of information -- is an idea-killer that the people who are actually doing something are too dumb to have thought of. Usually, of course, it's the sort of thing that the folks actually working on something easily worked out a long time ago.
(That part's not really relevant to this being worked on by Canadians. It's just really common here.)
I think it especially comes up with Canadians, 'cause a lot of folks in the US dislike being laughed at, despite how laughable many of us are. So when people in the US make fun of Canadians, it's often the sort of sad, fake, forced "yer rilly dum, ha, ha, ha" that some insecure kids do to other kids.
The people who run the world -- to whatever extent anyone runs it -- would no doubt be pleased that you think that the people that you've been led to believe run the world aren't smart.
(I mean, that's if they had any reason to really care about your (or my) opinion. Which they probably don't, except perhaps as just another tiny part of the masses.)
And the point isn't that supersmart machines would necessarily want to run the world, it's that it's hard to guess what they would want. Or why they should care if what they want happens to be at odds with what we might want. Why would what we want be at all relevant to them?
Imagine a world where you could, quite literally, make something out of nothing.
Nanotechnology would not make it possible to "quite literally, make something out of nothing". It may make it possible to make many things -- but not anything -- out of common material.
What Nolle refers to as "basic economic laws", it seems to me, is actually the sequestering of resources by a few based on their access to money and influence.
Amen, sibling. Even if there are such things as "basic economic laws" -- which is not at all clear -- it can't fail to comply with them, anymore than than Thomas Nolle can fail to comply with the law of gravity if he jumps off a cliff.
"Having money gives me the right to manipulate the system to make more money" isn't a basic economic law, it just works that way often enough that it might seem like a basic law. Especially to those relative few who benefit from it.
Yeah, most effective at making me leave that site and never come back.
[nod] And the bit about "statistics suggesting that Web ads boosted awareness"? Um, there are a lot of companies I've become so "aware of" that I can easily remember never to buy from them. Getting people to remember your brand name isn't so good if they associate your brand name with a feeling of annoyance.
We could conceivably be over-estimating the effect of human activity on the Earth's climate, but alternatively we could also be under-estimating it. -- IPCC Chair
What kind of ridiculous statement is that?
It's not any kind of ridiculous statement. It's a statement that acknowledges that while it's pretty damn clear that we're having an effect, trying to estimate the extent of that effect results in, duh, an estimate, which may be high or low.
This level-headed, matter-of-fact acknowledgement about the limits of knowledge that's a sign of good scientific thinking is, of course, vulnerable to the classic corporate PR spin that if scientists don't know everything then they don't know anything.
If I realize that I'm driving towards a cliff at "about 70mph", I'm going to put on the brakes rather than spend a whole lot of time trying to figure out whether I'm actually going a little slower or a little faster than that.
Let's face it. Would you ride on a rocket designed and implemented by committees of volunteers?
It would depend on their design and on their testing program. Call me crazy, but for some bizarre reason I'm much more interested in what the results would be than in whether or not they passed out pieces of colored paper to the participants.
How many people here would jump at the chance to work for NASA for free if it meant the possibility that they may, themselves, go into space?
Not me. I'd be more likely to volunteer with an organization that would work towards making it possible for lots more people to go. That's pretty obviously not on NASAs priority list.
Go ask any parent who has had boys and girls. I have, and they tell me they really are different.
[laugh] Right. As if parents are disinterested observers.
In any case, many parents I've talked to say that the differences between individual siblings significantly overshadow any theoretical gender-based differences. That's what it all boils down to -- treating people as individuals rather than as members of a group that may or may not be relevant.
I don't see any reason why we shouldn't expect to the brain, as a particularly intricate and environment-sensitive organ, to also differ between the genders.
The "environmentally-sensitive" bit is something that most people are oblivious about. Given that brains develop differently in response to differing stimulous, and given that men and women are treated so differently from birth (if not before), it's not exactly a big surprise that there are detectable differences.
The $64,000 question is how much of a difference there would be if men and women weren't treated so differently. The nature-vs-nurture question is still wide open.
"But Microsoft hasn't backed down on plans to charge a per-photo fee for images that are sent through Windows to Microsoft's partners, others in the industry say. One of those partners is likely to be Kodak rival Fuji, which already works with Microsoft in an alliance with its MSN Internet service. Microsoft says terms of its contracts with photo-finishers aren't final; it won't comment on how these companies will be charged."
As Mr. Gerskovitch said, "Together, we built a highway that everyone could travel, and Microsoft put up a tollbooth". This is not an isolated problem, this seems to be what MS wants -- they want a cut every time anyone running their software buys anything via the net. If you buy your wallet from me, is it reasonable for me to charge you a nickle everytime you take it out to buy anything? Especially if you didn't know that's what the deal would be?
Note that their "military saw Buran as vital to any missile defence system similar to America's Star Wars." Note that President "Smirky" Bush strongly backs ramping up US missle defense research, and in fact has recently been arguing with Russia (and lots of other countries) about it.
I'm surprised nobody else seems to have picked up on this.
Depression is, in general, not a bad thing. It is a defense and/or coping mechanism, and to develop as an individual, and be able to function properly in society, most people need to overcome depression without assistance.
I suspect you are thinking of "depression" as it's commonly used, as a synonym for "sadness". Clinical depression is a whole 'nother animal, and rarely can be "overcome without assistance".
Confusing these two things is way too common, and understandably annoying to people suffering clinical depression. It's sorta like thinking script-kiddies and hackers are the same thing.
I wouldn't be caught dead in all kinds of cars, simply because some models have a very un-manly perception.
Real men don't care what other people think is "un-manly".
the VW Bug, or anything from VW - forgive me, but I'm not a big fan of post-Nazi automakers
Are you aware that Henry Ford -- you know, of Ford Motor Company -- was a big support of Adolf Hitler, et al? (Not that I'm convinced it's still relevant in that case, either.)
Are you aware of the oppressive policies currently supported by some US-based corporations in various parts of the world?
Slashdot Mirror
[shrug] I'm not expecting YOU to do anything.
How many were there?
Like I said, it's at least arguable that killing people is sometimes justifiable. But it is still killing. Arguing that one should go ahead and kill tens of thousands of people because one possible alternative is a suicide mission for a few is totally specious.
Would I go on such a suicide mission? Dammed if I know. If I was reasonably certain that it had a good chance of making hundreds of thousands of further deaths on either/both sides less likely, I like to think that I'd be willing. But obviously no one can really know such a thing about themselves unless they're actually in the situation.
The law provides for this in some places. In more and more places, the provisions for this sort of thing are being quietly changed, or gotten rid of entirely.
Welcome to the Brave New World, where capital punishment exists for real people -- including kids and the mentally handicapped, and often based on flimsy evidence -- but not for corporations.
Whatever. In any case, I think Minnesota Attorney General Mike Hatch was right. "This is not a company that appears to be bothered by ethical boundaries." And not very much bothered by legal ones, either.
Microsoft Corporation is a legal person. Who the hell would deal with a real person with such a fucked-up mindset, unless they couldn't avoid dealing with them?
Yup. That doesn't rule it out, of course -- it's not like suicide missions aren't sometimes worth the cost. But instead, it was a 60,000* homicides mission. And 90,000* homicides for Hiroshima. (Possibly justifiable homicides, depending on how one looks at it. But possibly not.)
*Conservative estimates.
Read some of the US media descriptions of the Gulf War, or even better find some CNN footage from it. Not pretty, exactly, but most of them avoided as much of the ugly stuff as they could. They made it look like a video-game war. Granted, they were mostly just passing along the stuff spoon-fed to them by the Pentagon, but that's part of the problem, innit?
Yup, we've all got problems.
See New Scientist.
Well, not everyone disses it, but yeah, there does seem to be a lot of that.
I think it's partly the seemingly common misperception of an annoying number of Slashdotters that they're Really Smart, and that nobody else gives anything any real thought. So they assume that any possible little objection they can think of -- usually without even reading more than a paragraph or two of information -- is an idea-killer that the people who are actually doing something are too dumb to have thought of. Usually, of course, it's the sort of thing that the folks actually working on something easily worked out a long time ago.
(That part's not really relevant to this being worked on by Canadians. It's just really common here.)
I think it especially comes up with Canadians, 'cause a lot of folks in the US dislike being laughed at, despite how laughable many of us are. So when people in the US make fun of Canadians, it's often the sort of sad, fake, forced "yer rilly dum, ha, ha, ha" that some insecure kids do to other kids.
(I mean, that's if they had any reason to really care about your (or my) opinion. Which they probably don't, except perhaps as just another tiny part of the masses.)
And the point isn't that supersmart machines would necessarily want to run the world, it's that it's hard to guess what they would want. Or why they should care if what they want happens to be at odds with what we might want. Why would what we want be at all relevant to them?
What "massive amounts of energy"?
and the fact that no-one has developed a self-replicating machine outside of theory.
That said, it's not clear how likely accidental "grey goo" would be. I'd be more concerned about intentional grey goo.
Neal Stephenson did a good book on nanotechnology called The Diamond Age.
That was not a book on nanotechnology, that was a novel that had a particular version of nanotechnology as part of the context.
Some people have written good books on nanotechnology, Here's a list.
Nanotechnology would not make it possible to "quite literally, make something out of nothing". It may make it possible to make many things -- but not anything -- out of common material.
1. Why did the military apparently try to hide it?
Sorry, that's classified.
2. What is the production model going to use to get an initial trajectory?
Sorry, that's classified.
What? You say it isn't classified? Ok, now it is.
Probably part of the hype is also because it [gasp!] targeted the White House (servers). If the White House is involved, it must be important.
Not true. Most people on TV are boobs.
Amen, sibling. Even if there are such things as "basic economic laws" -- which is not at all clear -- it can't fail to comply with them, anymore than than Thomas Nolle can fail to comply with the law of gravity if he jumps off a cliff.
"Having money gives me the right to manipulate the system to make more money" isn't a basic economic law, it just works that way often enough that it might seem like a basic law. Especially to those relative few who benefit from it.
[nod] And the bit about "statistics suggesting that Web ads boosted awareness"? Um, there are a lot of companies I've become so "aware of" that I can easily remember never to buy from them. Getting people to remember your brand name isn't so good if they associate your brand name with a feeling of annoyance.
What kind of ridiculous statement is that?
It's not any kind of ridiculous statement. It's a statement that acknowledges that while it's pretty damn clear that we're having an effect, trying to estimate the extent of that effect results in, duh, an estimate, which may be high or low.
This level-headed, matter-of-fact acknowledgement about the limits of knowledge that's a sign of good scientific thinking is, of course, vulnerable to the classic corporate PR spin that if scientists don't know everything then they don't know anything.
If I realize that I'm driving towards a cliff at "about 70mph", I'm going to put on the brakes rather than spend a whole lot of time trying to figure out whether I'm actually going a little slower or a little faster than that.
It would depend on their design and on their testing program. Call me crazy, but for some bizarre reason I'm much more interested in what the results would be than in whether or not they passed out pieces of colored paper to the participants.
Not me. I'd be more likely to volunteer with an organization that would work towards making it possible for lots more people to go. That's pretty obviously not on NASAs priority list.
[laugh] Right. As if parents are disinterested observers.
In any case, many parents I've talked to say that the differences between individual siblings significantly overshadow any theoretical gender-based differences. That's what it all boils down to -- treating people as individuals rather than as members of a group that may or may not be relevant.
The "environmentally-sensitive" bit is something that most people are oblivious about. Given that brains develop differently in response to differing stimulous, and given that men and women are treated so differently from birth (if not before), it's not exactly a big surprise that there are detectable differences.
The $64,000 question is how much of a difference there would be if men and women weren't treated so differently. The nature-vs-nurture question is still wide open.
"But Microsoft hasn't backed down on plans to charge a per-photo fee for images that are sent through Windows to Microsoft's partners, others in the industry say. One of those partners is likely to be Kodak rival Fuji, which already works with Microsoft in an alliance with its MSN Internet service. Microsoft says terms of its contracts with photo-finishers aren't final; it won't comment on how these companies will be charged."
As Mr. Gerskovitch said, "Together, we built a highway that everyone could travel, and Microsoft put up a tollbooth". This is not an isolated problem, this seems to be what MS wants -- they want a cut every time anyone running their software buys anything via the net. If you buy your wallet from me, is it reasonable for me to charge you a nickle everytime you take it out to buy anything? Especially if you didn't know that's what the deal would be?
I'm surprised nobody else seems to have picked up on this.
I suspect you are thinking of "depression" as it's commonly used, as a synonym for "sadness". Clinical depression is a whole 'nother animal, and rarely can be "overcome without assistance".
Confusing these two things is way too common, and understandably annoying to people suffering clinical depression. It's sorta like thinking script-kiddies and hackers are the same thing.
Real men don't care what other people think is "un-manly".
the VW Bug, or anything from VW - forgive me, but I'm not a big fan of post-Nazi automakers
Are you aware that Henry Ford -- you know, of Ford Motor Company -- was a big support of Adolf Hitler, et al? (Not that I'm convinced it's still relevant in that case, either.)
Are you aware of the oppressive policies currently supported by some US-based corporations in various parts of the world?