Do clear headed rational atheists regularly resort to calling people who aren't named Skippy, "Skippy"?
From an evolutionary POV it is what that survives that counts. Whether various entities believe it's worth it or not, or think it's ridiculous or not.
1) So far the placebo effect is strong and even present in some nonhuman animals[1]. Why this is so, I don't know. Some of the medical community seem to claim that it's even getting stronger (thus making drug testing harder).
2) If you bothered to actually read my post, I didn't claim that the placebo effect is less pronounced in Atheists. I said that it's harder for them to access it. I didn't say that when they succeed it is less effective.
3) I was saying that people who believe in some invisible entity that occasionally hears and helps them can more easily experience the placebo effect than atheists who don't. Atheists would either need someone/something to administer the placebo to them or have to jump through a few more hoops to self administer.
I claim that an objective and rational view would be that this is true.
Whether you like it or not.
If you go on claiming that I said things I didn't say, it's your problem not mine. Feel free to keep your personal delusions.
> So in Java, you can expect that if you can't write generic code to adapt to your video camera/audio device yet, you will be able to soon.
Yes but the users will have to download the new JVM that includes the code (and the various other JSRs you mention).
Not such a big problem[1] given wider reach of broadband nowadays. Back in those low-bandwidth days it was a big problem - lots of users having to update their java software, IIRC there were even incompatibilities amongst the different releases.
[1] and as long as the JVM never gets bigger than say "vmplayer" appliances...;)
> The goal that I had in bringing a lot of the packaged goods folks into Activision about 10 years ago was to take all the fun out of making video games.
e.g. Firing lead developers of a rather successful game. Shutting down a fan-made game (even though allegedly the developers were given permission to make it).
If the placebo effect is so powerful (and it does appear to be - google for examples), being an atheist would make taking advantage of it less convenient and easy.
In contrast, groups of people who believe in some unseen being that helps them, won't need another person to actually give them the "sugar pill", they can more often self-administer it. This can help the survival of their group.
I suggest that this might affect the "natural selection" too.
If the costs (too many human sacrifices, too much killing etc) of the religion/culture outweigh the advantages then the religion/culture then that group is less fit than other groups and is more likely to vanish.
That said there may be advantages to Atheism. Some claim "clear thinking" (e.g. more rational), but there are still plenty of atheists who aren't that clear headed. Perhaps we'll see over a few generations if the alleged higher proportion in "clear thinkers" is such a significant advantage to the group.
> If you can't easily restrict a program to a small subset of your machine, you're forced to trust code you didn't write to get anything done. > Nobody should blame the users, if the OS sucks.
Agreed. And most OSes out there suck in this respect (OSX, Linux, Windows).
FWIW Windows Vista and Windows 7 kinda suck less - since they actually have some sandboxing with IE8.
Ubuntu has apparmor sandboxing of firefox as an option that's turned off by default, and even if you turn it on it's not sandboxed enough IMO (firefox can read and write almost anything in the user's home directory with the exclusion of just a few directories).
As it is, most users are either forced to:
1) Solve a version of the Halting Problem where they don't and can't know all the inputs and are unable to read the source code (or even know if that's really the source code of the executable they are about to run;) ).
2) Use only software from a Trusted Vendor's repository. Not a good strategy for Microsoft given their Monopoly Status, and this approach/philosophy doesn't actually help the OSS cause that much either.
You can say "download the source and compile it yourself", when even experts have difficulty finding flaws in the software, how would users find them (see also 1) ).
Users will just skip the pointless steps and go to "make install" (which often requires root permissions).
As it is I have proposed that applications request for the sandbox they want to be run in. Then the O/S enforces the sandbox.
It's easier to figure out the danger the application poses, if you require applications to state up front the limits of what they want. If they say "No Limits" you can assume you don't want to run it.
The sandboxes can be from a shortlist of template sandboxes, or custom sandboxes which are signed by trusted parties.
Organizations could have Trusted 3rd Parties audit the application's proposed sandbox and sign it if they believe it's OK.
It is much easier to audit a sandbox than audit thousands of lines of code.
Furthermore the code audit results will be invalidated if the program can update itself online, or can possibly fetch new instructions from the Internet. Whereas the sandbox audit would still be valid.
For example, without sandboxing, a code audited program might fetch new instructions and decide to turn on your webcam without your permission. In contrast if the sandbox doesn't allow the program to access the webcam, the program isn't going to be able to access the webcam even if it fetched new instructions.
Unless of course there's a bug in the sandboxing. But at least this means you can concentrate more resources on getting the sandbox and O/S bugs fixed, rather than try to get the dozens or hundreds of programs security audited and reaudited everytime there's a new update.
> Honestly, the registry is an ABORTION and a very stupid idea, yet Microsoft wont let it go./etc settings that is system protected and./etc in each user's directory that they can save their changes to the core setting found in/etc
The registry has ACLs. That's why many badly written games/apps need users to run as administrator - they need the permissions to change parts of the registry that they shouldn't be changing.
And there's HKCU vs HKLM.
Windows also has %USERPROFILE%\Local Settings and %USERPROFILE%\Application Data
The registry approach has its disadvantages, but you're not stating them.
There are lots of species that have gone extinct not because we actively destroyed them.
Some happened to get in the way of the stuff we wanted, the others were just collateral damage or due to "oops" events (e.g. some other species tagged along and wiped out stuff).
The AIs might fight with each other, and we get wiped out in the process.
> making sure complicit, friendly robots do not change > by stemming any outbreak of unfriendly behaviour, and using human-controlled non-AI machines to compel them.
That might be another reason why.
It might be a while before we can get super-intelligent AIs that will also be happy with that arrangement.
If we go straight to conscious super-intelligent AIs we might be creating ethical and other problems. Hence it's probably better to just stick with human augmentation. At least we can still stick to the same old ethical problems of humans mistreating each other:).
Seriously though, my problem with the touchpad is by default they are set to also dual-task as buttons e.g. "tap to click". And often it's hard to turn that off (e.g. relevant driver/software not installed).
You could be moving the mouse pointer about then it clicks on something instead of moves. Or you could be dragging something about and then it drops in the wrong place.
Perl and python are quite portable too, though not as portable as Java.
But in practice many nontrivial programs end up with so many dependencies that they aren't that portable anymore.
For example, say you want to write a program to record video from a video camera and audio from a sound device. And you want to cater for the possibility of more than one selectable camera and sound device.
Even if you write it in java, you're going to have to do different things depending on whether it runs on Windows, OSX or Ubuntu.
Why? Little things like figuring out which is the user's default recording device, and using it might be different on different platforms.
Or in theory it's supposed to work, but currently the current Java release for the current OS release is buggy, so the workaround meantime is "...".
If you want a polished end product you have to take care of stuff like that.
What if eventually any job you can do can be done better and more cheaply by an AI? What should happen to you then?
I hope the AIs or "Posthumans" keep us around as well-cared-for pets because they are fond of us (or think we're cute). I doubt that enslaving and mistreating the first few AIs is going to help improve the odds of that scenario happening.
Or setting a precedent that just because some people are stupid/ignorant it's OK to mistreat them (see the electroshock proponents above).
I'm personally guilty of treating ignorant/stupid people badly every now and then. But I suggest that it's not something one should aspire to do, and it's something that you have to fight against.
Many people think they're very intelligent. But high intelligence is overrated.
That's irrelevant if you don't have a malaria/mosquito problem in the first place. In which case the use of DDT increases your risk (instead of reducing it).
It's not a choice between DDT and Malaria the submitter is facing here.
It's persistent microwave exposure vs not living in a kickass apartment (see the original title).
What would be relevant is how much his risk would increase by. I don't know what it is but I would say it's not zero.
> It's also the reason why menus and ads are put on left and right (and/or top/bottom) of pages/UIs - the eye easily tracks to them
I disagree. The real reason why menus and ads are put away from the center is because the center of the screen is normally reserved for the main content (e.g. the document, shell, or whatever the user is mainly working/playing with).
Yeah, and in various "green" stories, the masses are asked to live in high density cities rather than further away because it makes it cheaper to build public transport, uses less petroleum.
If you send just one small drone (which will cost more than USD500 if you include a payload that will actually cause significant damage) across an ocean to the USA, they may not figure out where its from. If you actually hit something of value with that tiny drone it's not going to do much really except maybe cause a few more oppressive/stupid laws to be passed.
If you send thousands or more you can do far more damage, but then the USA will more easily figure out where they are coming from and bomb your country to bits. If they feel like it (e.g. the drones aren't coming from Russia or China or their allies), they might even get permission from the UN first.
If you're a terrorist that has already got into the USA, such drones aren't really necessary if you want to cause a lot of damage, especially if you can already somehow get quantities of high explosives that a drone can use (if you can't, your drones aren't going to do much damage - just kill a few people). Might as well just put the bomb in a shopping mall, or cinema, or bus, or subway. Not too difficult to walk into such places and get out (you might even be able to disguise yourself or plant it on another person/vehicle).
What small cheap drones might be good for is trying to harass the USA out of your country. e.g. they are already in your country and possibly have already bombed it. In these scenarios it's not so simple to just walk in to a US military site, plant the bomb and leave to do it again another day. So that's where a drone might be useful.
Then the US Military will need to defend itself against such drones.
Yeah, those USD500 drones aren't gonna fly across the pacific, atlantic or artic oceans anytime soon.
Still cheap drones might be useful for attackers already in the USA. I wonder how many patriot (or similar) banks are deployed in the USA.
But if people are willing to die, it's going to be hard to stop them if they're not too stupid. The drone then is the human+payload+vehicle.
Maybe they should just spend a few millions getting those young angry guys laid... That should de-drone a few of them. A "bird" in each arm might be worth 72 houris in wherever-land.:).
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Do clear headed rational atheists regularly resort to calling people who aren't named Skippy, "Skippy"?
From an evolutionary POV it is what that survives that counts. Whether various entities believe it's worth it or not, or think it's ridiculous or not.
1) So far the placebo effect is strong and even present in some nonhuman animals[1]. Why this is so, I don't know. Some of the medical community seem to claim that it's even getting stronger (thus making drug testing harder).
2) If you bothered to actually read my post, I didn't claim that the placebo effect is less pronounced in Atheists. I said that it's harder for them to access it. I didn't say that when they succeed it is less effective.
3) I was saying that people who believe in some invisible entity that occasionally hears and helps them can more easily experience the placebo effect than atheists who don't. Atheists would either need someone/something to administer the placebo to them or have to jump through a few more hoops to self administer.
I claim that an objective and rational view would be that this is true.
Whether you like it or not.
If you go on claiming that I said things I didn't say, it's your problem not mine. Feel free to keep your personal delusions.
[1] http://www.thebark.com/content/dogs-and-placebo
> So in Java, you can expect that if you can't write generic code to adapt to your video camera/audio device yet, you will be able to soon.
;)
Yes but the users will have to download the new JVM that includes the code (and the various other JSRs you mention).
Not such a big problem[1] given wider reach of broadband nowadays. Back in those low-bandwidth days it was a big problem - lots of users having to update their java software, IIRC there were even incompatibilities amongst the different releases.
[1] and as long as the JVM never gets bigger than say "vmplayer" appliances...
So far it seems the joke is that it's true.
> The goal that I had in bringing a lot of the packaged goods folks into Activision about 10 years ago was to take all the fun out of making video games.
e.g.
Firing lead developers of a rather successful game.
Shutting down a fan-made game (even though allegedly the developers were given permission to make it).
If the placebo effect is so powerful (and it does appear to be - google for examples), being an atheist would make taking advantage of it less convenient and easy.
In contrast, groups of people who believe in some unseen being that helps them, won't need another person to actually give them the "sugar pill", they can more often self-administer it. This can help the survival of their group.
I suggest that this might affect the "natural selection" too.
If the costs (too many human sacrifices, too much killing etc) of the religion/culture outweigh the advantages then the religion/culture then that group is less fit than other groups and is more likely to vanish.
That said there may be advantages to Atheism. Some claim "clear thinking" (e.g. more rational), but there are still plenty of atheists who aren't that clear headed. Perhaps we'll see over a few generations if the alleged higher proportion in "clear thinkers" is such a significant advantage to the group.
> If you can't easily restrict a program to a small subset of your machine, you're forced to trust code you didn't write to get anything done.
;) ).
> Nobody should blame the users, if the OS sucks.
Agreed. And most OSes out there suck in this respect (OSX, Linux, Windows).
FWIW Windows Vista and Windows 7 kinda suck less - since they actually have some sandboxing with IE8.
Ubuntu has apparmor sandboxing of firefox as an option that's turned off by default, and even if you turn it on it's not sandboxed enough IMO (firefox can read and write almost anything in the user's home directory with the exclusion of just a few directories).
As it is, most users are either forced to:
1) Solve a version of the Halting Problem where they don't and can't know all the inputs and are unable to read the source code (or even know if that's really the source code of the executable they are about to run
2) Use only software from a Trusted Vendor's repository. Not a good strategy for Microsoft given their Monopoly Status, and this approach/philosophy doesn't actually help the OSS cause that much either.
You can say "download the source and compile it yourself", when even experts have difficulty finding flaws in the software, how would users find them (see also 1) ).
Users will just skip the pointless steps and go to "make install" (which often requires root permissions).
As it is I have proposed that applications request for the sandbox they want to be run in. Then the O/S enforces the sandbox.
It's easier to figure out the danger the application poses, if you require applications to state up front the limits of what they want. If they say "No Limits" you can assume you don't want to run it.
The sandboxes can be from a shortlist of template sandboxes, or custom sandboxes which are signed by trusted parties.
Organizations could have Trusted 3rd Parties audit the application's proposed sandbox and sign it if they believe it's OK.
It is much easier to audit a sandbox than audit thousands of lines of code.
Furthermore the code audit results will be invalidated if the program can update itself online, or can possibly fetch new instructions from the Internet. Whereas the sandbox audit would still be valid.
For example, without sandboxing, a code audited program might fetch new instructions and decide to turn on your webcam without your permission. In contrast if the sandbox doesn't allow the program to access the webcam, the program isn't going to be able to access the webcam even if it fetched new instructions.
Unless of course there's a bug in the sandboxing. But at least this means you can concentrate more resources on getting the sandbox and O/S bugs fixed, rather than try to get the dozens or hundreds of programs security audited and reaudited everytime there's a new update.
> Honestly, the registry is an ABORTION and a very stupid idea, yet Microsoft wont let it go. /etc settings that is system protected and ./etc in each user's directory that they can save their changes to the core setting found in /etc
The registry has ACLs. That's why many badly written games/apps need users to run as administrator - they need the permissions to change parts of the registry that they shouldn't be changing.
And there's HKCU vs HKLM.
Windows also has %USERPROFILE%\Local Settings and %USERPROFILE%\Application Data
The registry approach has its disadvantages, but you're not stating them.
> Why would AI discard us?
:).
There are lots of species that have gone extinct not because we actively destroyed them.
Some happened to get in the way of the stuff we wanted, the others were just collateral damage or due to "oops" events (e.g. some other species tagged along and wiped out stuff).
The AIs might fight with each other, and we get wiped out in the process.
> making sure complicit, friendly robots do not change
> by stemming any outbreak of unfriendly behaviour, and using human-controlled non-AI machines to compel them.
That might be another reason why.
It might be a while before we can get super-intelligent AIs that will also be happy with that arrangement.
If we go straight to conscious super-intelligent AIs we might be creating ethical and other problems. Hence it's probably better to just stick with human augmentation. At least we can still stick to the same old ethical problems of humans mistreating each other
Maybe they're now running in C64 emulators.
But when you take over a company, aren't you still bound by some of those obligations?
Couldn't the permission given by the previous bunch be taken as a verbal contract?
If archive.org has copies of evidence and Activision censored it, then that seems like bad faith to me.
The only intuitive interface is the nipple. :)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pointing_stick#Informal_names
Seriously though, my problem with the touchpad is by default they are set to also dual-task as buttons e.g. "tap to click". And often it's hard to turn that off (e.g. relevant driver/software not installed).
You could be moving the mouse pointer about then it clicks on something instead of moves. Or you could be dragging something about and then it drops in the wrong place.
Obligatory:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=36099539665548298#
Perl and python are quite portable too, though not as portable as Java.
But in practice many nontrivial programs end up with so many dependencies that they aren't that portable anymore.
For example, say you want to write a program to record video from a video camera and audio from a sound device. And you want to cater for the possibility of more than one selectable camera and sound device.
Even if you write it in java, you're going to have to do different things depending on whether it runs on Windows, OSX or Ubuntu.
Why? Little things like figuring out which is the user's default recording device, and using it might be different on different platforms.
Or in theory it's supposed to work, but currently the current Java release for the current OS release is buggy, so the workaround meantime is "...".
If you want a polished end product you have to take care of stuff like that.
Me too. I'll wait for those captured developer(s) to develop more libraries for it first.
:).
A programming language that's "powerful" for the code you write is good for those uber-programmers.
A programming language that's "powerful" for the code you no longer have to write is for those crappy programmers like me
Many promising programming languages make it to the first category but never make it to the second.
So if you lack that ability, you should be replaced by an AI. I've no problem with that.
But what should happen to you after that?
Should you still get provided for by some "socialist welfare" sort of system?
Or should you be discarded like some part that can't meet the specs?
I really hope humans get that option. Most of the other possibilities are rather crap.
The other not so crap option is of course most humans become the "posthumans".
What if eventually any job you can do can be done better and more cheaply by an AI? What should happen to you then?
I hope the AIs or "Posthumans" keep us around as well-cared-for pets because they are fond of us (or think we're cute). I doubt that enslaving and mistreating the first few AIs is going to help improve the odds of that scenario happening.
Or setting a precedent that just because some people are stupid/ignorant it's OK to mistreat them (see the electroshock proponents above).
I'm personally guilty of treating ignorant/stupid people badly every now and then. But I suggest that it's not something one should aspire to do, and it's something that you have to fight against.
Many people think they're very intelligent. But high intelligence is overrated.
That's irrelevant if you don't have a malaria/mosquito problem in the first place. In which case the use of DDT increases your risk (instead of reducing it).
It's not a choice between DDT and Malaria the submitter is facing here.
It's persistent microwave exposure vs not living in a kickass apartment (see the original title).
What would be relevant is how much his risk would increase by. I don't know what it is but I would say it's not zero.
> It's also the reason why menus and ads are put on left and right (and/or top/bottom) of pages/UIs - the eye easily tracks to them
I disagree. The real reason why menus and ads are put away from the center is because the center of the screen is normally reserved for the main content (e.g. the document, shell, or whatever the user is mainly working/playing with).
> It's even more important in this particular scenario as the eye is generally drawn to the left or right most entry.
Citation for "this scenario" please.
Why wouldn't smack in the center of the screen be just as good or even better?
My problem with the page is that on a slow connection/render, IE always shows up on the leftmost spot first, before the browsers being shuffled about.
That to me is worse than how "unrandom" the algorithm is.
Do note that if you are using a nonIE browser to fetch that page, that page is pretty much irrelevant.
Yeah, and in various "green" stories, the masses are asked to live in high density cities rather than further away because it makes it cheaper to build public transport, uses less petroleum.
> Maybe the Lib Dems might be the best option but it seems very unlikely that they will win.
So what? The alternatives don't have to win. They just have to start gaining enough share.
Then other voters might go "hey they might have a chance the next round", and if they agree, actually vote for them the next round.
And the winning party might also go "uh oh, they might actually have a chance the next round, maybe we should be slightly more like them".
Otherwise the option is for the stupid sheep to just keep voting for either of the same two wolves to eat them.
Don't always have to ship them so far: http://www.freecycle.org/
If you send just one small drone (which will cost more than USD500 if you include a payload that will actually cause significant damage) across an ocean to the USA, they may not figure out where its from. If you actually hit something of value with that tiny drone it's not going to do much really except maybe cause a few more oppressive/stupid laws to be passed.
If you send thousands or more you can do far more damage, but then the USA will more easily figure out where they are coming from and bomb your country to bits. If they feel like it (e.g. the drones aren't coming from Russia or China or their allies), they might even get permission from the UN first.
If you're a terrorist that has already got into the USA, such drones aren't really necessary if you want to cause a lot of damage, especially if you can already somehow get quantities of high explosives that a drone can use (if you can't, your drones aren't going to do much damage - just kill a few people). Might as well just put the bomb in a shopping mall, or cinema, or bus, or subway. Not too difficult to walk into such places and get out (you might even be able to disguise yourself or plant it on another person/vehicle).
What small cheap drones might be good for is trying to harass the USA out of your country. e.g. they are already in your country and possibly have already bombed it. In these scenarios it's not so simple to just walk in to a US military site, plant the bomb and leave to do it again another day. So that's where a drone might be useful.
Then the US Military will need to defend itself against such drones.
Yeah, those USD500 drones aren't gonna fly across the pacific, atlantic or artic oceans anytime soon.
:).
Still cheap drones might be useful for attackers already in the USA. I wonder how many patriot (or similar) banks are deployed in the USA.
But if people are willing to die, it's going to be hard to stop them if they're not too stupid. The drone then is the human+payload+vehicle.
Maybe they should just spend a few millions getting those young angry guys laid... That should de-drone a few of them. A "bird" in each arm might be worth 72 houris in wherever-land.