Nah I think the "normal" people are often have something weird going on too.
Most people don't take time to notice the eccentricities of the "normal" people, when the crazy smart bunch are swinging from the chandeliers or worse.
But I guess it also does take some imagination to go off the rails;).
That's because practically all that GM stuff is just so corporations can patent stuff and make a monopoly profit.
Since the corporations or scientists regularly spout lies like they're doing it to "feed the starving", it just proves to me that either they are evil or stupid (or both).
If there's a powerful tool, and the people using it keep lying about why they are using it, it's a fair question to ask: "What could possibly go wrong?".
quote: "Do we really only perceive biologists as madmen who want to do evil experients for the heck of it?"
Of course not, they're doing it to: 1) Get more money 2) Get patents (see 1) ) 3) Get tenure (see 1) 4) Get a job in Corp X 5) Get a job as a regulator and then get a cushy job in Corp X. 6) Get a job in Corp X then get a job as a regulator to oversee stuff you did while in Corp X;). 7) Make the world a better place for everyone.
I see so many people who want their sites to be the number one result on Google.
But 99.999999% of these shouldn't even be in the first page.
I bet hardly any of them can give a good reason why their site should be on the first page. They will say stupid stuff like "I want to make more money".
I don't swear often, but guess what, if that's the sort of reason they give, _I_ don't want their FUCKING sites ever appearing in my search results.
These bunch are usually the same breed as spammers - they want to make more money even (especially?) if it makes life worse for a lot of people.
You want to sell stuff? Fine. Have pages listing your products (specs and manuals would be nice if applicable) and prices AND the type of currency the prices are in (e.g. USD, EUR, GBP, AUD etc). Please have a contacts page that actually has contact details, not some stupid webform (which just makes me think you're either incompetent and/or a spammer). Please also state other important information like whether you are US only, or Texas only, what sort of payment is accepted. And please make sure that the same url doesn't keep showing completely different information - it's really annoying to see search results that appear promising, then click and get a totally different page. For example: yoursite.com/products/1423/ shouldn't show a different product the next month. Different prices maybe. If it's discontinued, mark it so, or remove it totally - don't reuse the url.
If I want to buy stuff that you sell, I want to be able to search and find you. If I'm trying to look for stuff that you don't sell, I don't want to find you.
If everyone gets to spam the results, that just makes it harder to find stuff.
After all if lots of people list stuff they don't provide just for the sake of appearing higher on the search results, that's rather annoying isn't it? Maybe even fraudulent in some cases. Shouldn't they get smacked way down for doing that?
But yeah maybe your idea isn't such a bad one. People get to pay $500, and then Google tells them "We think your site really sucks and that's why we've now moved it way below";).
0) I don't see why ICANN should do anything about this.
1) If you don't like the TTLs Spirit Domains uses, you should take it up with them or switch to a registrar that uses TTLs you like.
2) Why should your customer be using you for "domain name stuff"?
After all, in this scenario what "value add" did you provide compared to if they had used a decent registrar?
Registrars send warning emails too (at least Gandi did when I last let a domain name expire).
I'm sure you can think of ways to do things better.
By the way, some evil registrars actually start squatting on the name once it "really expires", so if you want it back after your X month vacation (or coma or whatever) you have to pay a lot more.
You could be very bad (incompetent or evil) but if you have zero power, you're no danger. You could be very powerful, but if you aren't bad, you're no danger to most people either (you might be a danger to the bad people...).
The US Gov has far far more power to ruin your life (and the life of any random person somewhere in the world) than the terrorists.
Thus how deceitful the US Gov is (or how sucky they are), is very relevant to how safe you actually are today.
The US Gov has shown that it is willing AND able to deceive its citizens rather blatantly in serious matters.
What are the US citizens going to do about it? If they keep putting crappy governments in power (or allowing them to diebold themselves into power) then things are going to be pretty bad.
Nobody else is going to easily do it again even without all the "Patriot" bullshit. The 9/11 hijackers "ruined the market" for future hijackers.
Before 9/11 the "unwritten protocol" was - hijack announced, everyone meekly stays in their seats, nobody (mostly) gets hurt, negotiations start, hijackers get something, passengers get to go. Unless of course the hijackers were crazy enough to do El Al;).
After 9/11 hijackers WILL have a more difficult time with passengers and air crew, the cockpit doors are reinforced. Enough passengers will think "If I'm going to die anyway, I'm going to make sure that hijacker suffers first". If everyone just threw their shoes and stuff at the hijackers at the same time it will really hurt:). I can tell you for sure that many passengers will look at each other and have a go at the hijackers.
In fact even _DURING_ 9/11, passengers on board one of those planes figured out what was happening, and one of the planes didn't hit the target.
You think most hijackers haven't figured that out? Only a few stupid ones (or mentally ill) have tried since 9/11. They have to move on to other methods if they want to crash into towers - charter/steal private planes etc.
The bulk of the new procedures like banning liquids and checking shoes is just to make the stupid sheeple feel safe.
The fact that the US Gov lies to its citizens regularly, and puts in laws that don't actually address the problem shows to me that the US Gov is a greater danger to US citizens than the "evil terrorists" are.
The 9/11 killed like 3K? And cost the USA how much?
In comparison the US Gov started a war in Iraq (based on _deceit_ ) and got how many killed? And cost the USA how much?
Not to mention the US Gov has been trampling over the "precious" US constitution which so many US citizens _allegedly_ value so much. They don't even bother to amend the constitution, they just ignore it or twist the interpretation so much.
The US people should serious consider who really is their biggest enemy.
Maybe we should have labels encouraging stupid people to kill themselves in ways that aren't dangerous to other people:).
Chainsaws would have signs saying: "Please chop off your head first before attempting to chop anything else". Microwaves would have signs saying: "To kill yourself, please set to high, insert your head, and jam something in the safety".
Seriously though - stupid people don't read warning labels or signs. I find it annoying that most manufacturers dumb down the manuals for the stupid people, when the stupid people never read them anyway. I liked the old school manuals with schematics and technical stuff (see the Apple II manuals).
The guy from your college was unlucky (given he had some reason to assume it'll be ok). Stuff happens. You go through life taking estimated risks - since life is too short to check everything ( some people would get into the pond without diving first though).
But the kid? Probably just helping to improve the gene pool. Sad that he had to give his life to do so, but might be better in the long run. I'm sure the smarter kids learnt something (learn from other peoples mistakes - life is too short to only learn from your own mistakes).
I know Michael Schumacher could chat with the pit crew while winning F1 races:).
So at least some people can drive and talk at the same time. Maybe it's a matter of practice (but some people can't even walk safely while talking;) ).
I can't do both very well- I can drive ok, but if things get complicated I just stop talking till the cognitive load goes down. I can't be bothered to practice talking while driving since I don't think it's that important to be able to keep talking:).
"If it takes one person 8 hours to do job A, and it takes one person 8 hours to do job B, and you have one person work on them both, he will finish the job in 16 hours if he does them sequentially, or in probably 20 hours"
If he does them sequentially say A first then B, then he will finish A after 8 hours. So you at least get one completed task first.
Whereas if he keeps switching _neither_ will be completed till 16+X hours later.
Now if the tasks involve waiting for other stuff then sure there are some efficiency gains, but if they involve waiting on outputs that are delayed because of other people multitasking then one starts to wonder whether it's such a great idea:).
If you drive reasonably well, try observing yourself as you "automatically" keep to a lane while travelling fairly fast. Your hands subconsciously make the necessary small corrections the steering wheel.
There's a lot of processing going on, as the DARPA challenge people would know.
I believe most people have had the experience of thinking about something else while driving automatically to their destinations (sometimes the wrong destination if the autopilot selected the default path when the "allegedly thinking" brain forgot to make a decision at that point;) ).
When something unusual happens (truck brakes etc), if your brain is working properly a lot of stuff suddenly rises to "foreground".
Anyway, multitasking makes you slow if you are trying to do two tasks at once and they are not independent tasks (require same sort of resources). This is because if you keep switching from one task to the other both tasks will now take about twice as long to complete. Longer if there are inefficiencies.
Seems to be a "layer mismatch". Analogy is the OSI model.
I'll stick to using voice for "higher layer" communication with actual intelligences like humans and other animals. For "lower layer" comms you don't use your voice.
If you ride a horse while you do talk to the horse sometimes, the talking is for the "higher layer", you use reins and body for "lower layer".
The last I checked all these gadgets and devices are pretty stupid, definitely no real AI. So it'll be more gimmicky than actually useful.
For such things that are to work as extensions or augmentations of your self it is silly and impractical to try to control them using your voice.
You won't want to have to control artificial limbs with your voice.
How about we skip this and move on to controlling such stuff with thoughts instead? If necessary for first gen devices I'm sure we can come up with our own thought macros- if they're unique enough there won't be a "collision/clash" with normal thinking.
Isn't being put on a sex offender list thing a "cruel and unusual punishment"? In a way it's like "precrime".
The assumption appears to be that sex offenders WILL offend again no matter what.
In which case why don't you just lock them up permanently or execute them?
Are rapists so much more likely to rape again once you let them out of jail, compared to say a violent person being likely to bash someone else up again?
I was never paranoid about online CC transactions, and I see no reason why cardholders should care so much. Sure check your card statements.
With online CC fraud, the loser is either Bank or the Merchant, and most usually the Merchant.
Direct debit fraud is a bigger problem. Given the "right circumstances" someone could transfer money from your bank account without your authorisation.
Yeah good for Florida, protecting the children from evil adults by prosecuting them, (and I bet having their photos spread amongst the police force and probably elsewhere ).
You didn't miss much if you didn't watch "I Am Legend".
It wasn't a terrible movie. But it's basically a very dumbed down version of Omega Man which I guess was a dumbed down version of "The Last Man on Earth". The plot got pared down to near nothing.
Cinematography was not bad. And it definitely had a lot better special effects (of course). But nothing you probably haven't seen before.
"If we just eliminate all the mosquitoes, we probably can't tell how we'll affect the rest of the ecosystem."
The US sure didn't care when they eliminated disease bearing mosquitoes from the Southern states. The last I checked it sure didn't hurt the USA. The gains were definitely higher than the losses.
The rest of the ecosystem can go live on something else or die trying.
My objection to this approach is it's not even going to wipe them out, so the mosquitoes will just shrug it off after a few generations.
Decades ago, many countries almost succeeded in ridding themselves of malaria, yellow fever etc with DDT, too bad they stopped before they were done because some people got their priorities wrong.
There have been anecdotal (yeah I know) accounts of people receiving transplants and then having personality changes - food preferences or even sexual orientation.
Whether it's true or not or just self selection bias I don't know. But I won't be surprised if the rest of our organs actually had some influence over what we'd like to put in our stomachs or other "gut feel stuff";).
Plus those stem cells do roam about. After all there's been reports of mothers having cells of their sons in various parts of their bodies - brains etc.
Slashdot Mirror
Nah I think the "normal" people are often have something weird going on too.
;).
Most people don't take time to notice the eccentricities of the "normal" people, when the crazy smart bunch are swinging from the chandeliers or worse.
But I guess it also does take some imagination to go off the rails
That's because practically all that GM stuff is just so corporations can patent stuff and make a monopoly profit.
;).
Since the corporations or scientists regularly spout lies like they're doing it to "feed the starving", it just proves to me that either they are evil or stupid (or both).
If there's a powerful tool, and the people using it keep lying about why they are using it, it's a fair question to ask: "What could possibly go wrong?".
quote: "Do we really only perceive biologists as madmen who want to do evil experients for the heck of it?"
Of course not, they're doing it to:
1) Get more money
2) Get patents (see 1) )
3) Get tenure (see 1)
4) Get a job in Corp X
5) Get a job as a regulator and then get a cushy job in Corp X.
6) Get a job in Corp X then get a job as a regulator to oversee stuff you did while in Corp X
7) Make the world a better place for everyone.
Spot the odd one out.
Perhaps people gave up writing fiction like 1984 since the scary stuff they write is no longer fiction when it gets published ;).
I see so many people who want their sites to be the number one result on Google.
;).
But 99.999999% of these shouldn't even be in the first page.
I bet hardly any of them can give a good reason why their site should be on the first page. They will say stupid stuff like "I want to make more money".
I don't swear often, but guess what, if that's the sort of reason they give, _I_ don't want their FUCKING sites ever appearing in my search results.
These bunch are usually the same breed as spammers - they want to make more money even (especially?) if it makes life worse for a lot of people.
You want to sell stuff? Fine. Have pages listing your products (specs and manuals would be nice if applicable) and prices AND the type of currency the prices are in (e.g. USD, EUR, GBP, AUD etc). Please have a contacts page that actually has contact details, not some stupid webform (which just makes me think you're either incompetent and/or a spammer). Please also state other important information like whether you are US only, or Texas only, what sort of payment is accepted. And please make sure that the same url doesn't keep showing completely different information - it's really annoying to see search results that appear promising, then click and get a totally different page. For example: yoursite.com/products/1423/ shouldn't show a different product the next month. Different prices maybe. If it's discontinued, mark it so, or remove it totally - don't reuse the url.
If I want to buy stuff that you sell, I want to be able to search and find you. If I'm trying to look for stuff that you don't sell, I don't want to find you.
If everyone gets to spam the results, that just makes it harder to find stuff.
After all if lots of people list stuff they don't provide just for the sake of appearing higher on the search results, that's rather annoying isn't it? Maybe even fraudulent in some cases. Shouldn't they get smacked way down for doing that?
But yeah maybe your idea isn't such a bad one. People get to pay $500, and then Google tells them "We think your site really sucks and that's why we've now moved it way below"
0) I don't see why ICANN should do anything about this.
1) If you don't like the TTLs Spirit Domains uses, you should take it up with them or switch to a registrar that uses TTLs you like.
2) Why should your customer be using you for "domain name stuff"?
After all, in this scenario what "value add" did you provide compared to if they had used a decent registrar?
Registrars send warning emails too (at least Gandi did when I last let a domain name expire).
I'm sure you can think of ways to do things better.
By the way, some evil registrars actually start squatting on the name once it "really expires", so if you want it back after your X month vacation (or coma or whatever) you have to pay a lot more.
It is very relevant. Go read my post again. One of my arguments was people are in greater danger from the US Gov than the "evil terrorists".
Crude formula:
risk = impact * probability.
danger = badness * power.
You could be very bad (incompetent or evil) but if you have zero power, you're no danger.
You could be very powerful, but if you aren't bad, you're no danger to most people either (you might be a danger to the bad people...).
The US Gov has far far more power to ruin your life (and the life of any random person somewhere in the world) than the terrorists.
Thus how deceitful the US Gov is (or how sucky they are), is very relevant to how safe you actually are today.
The US Gov has shown that it is willing AND able to deceive its citizens rather blatantly in serious matters.
What are the US citizens going to do about it? If they keep putting crappy governments in power (or allowing them to diebold themselves into power) then things are going to be pretty bad.
9/11 wasn't a good thing. But face it: Big deal.
;).
:). I can tell you for sure that many passengers will look at each other and have a go at the hijackers.
Nobody else is going to easily do it again even without all the "Patriot" bullshit. The 9/11 hijackers "ruined the market" for future hijackers.
Before 9/11 the "unwritten protocol" was - hijack announced, everyone meekly stays in their seats, nobody (mostly) gets hurt, negotiations start, hijackers get something, passengers get to go. Unless of course the hijackers were crazy enough to do El Al
After 9/11 hijackers WILL have a more difficult time with passengers and air crew, the cockpit doors are reinforced. Enough passengers will think "If I'm going to die anyway, I'm going to make sure that hijacker suffers first". If everyone just threw their shoes and stuff at the hijackers at the same time it will really hurt
In fact even _DURING_ 9/11, passengers on board one of those planes figured out what was happening, and one of the planes didn't hit the target.
You think most hijackers haven't figured that out? Only a few stupid ones (or mentally ill) have tried since 9/11. They have to move on to other methods if they want to crash into towers - charter/steal private planes etc.
The bulk of the new procedures like banning liquids and checking shoes is just to make the stupid sheeple feel safe.
The fact that the US Gov lies to its citizens regularly, and puts in laws that don't actually address the problem shows to me that the US Gov is a greater danger to US citizens than the "evil terrorists" are.
The 9/11 killed like 3K? And cost the USA how much?
In comparison the US Gov started a war in Iraq (based on _deceit_ ) and got how many killed? And cost the USA how much?
Not to mention the US Gov has been trampling over the "precious" US constitution which so many US citizens _allegedly_ value so much. They don't even bother to amend the constitution, they just ignore it or twist the interpretation so much.
The US people should serious consider who really is their biggest enemy.
Yeah but the problem is with the P2P stuff like bittorrent, you upload music while you are downloading.
I don't see this proposal making uploading legal.
So users end up paying $5 more for internet, and they still get sued.
I'm not sure if this is the intention of the proposal...
"Surely $5 sounds like a trivial matter, hardly worth even debating"
I'm curious is high speed broadband in Canada more expensive than in the USA for similar packages?
If it's cheaper, add the $5 and does it become more expensive?
Maybe we should have labels encouraging stupid people to kill themselves in ways that aren't dangerous to other people :).
Chainsaws would have signs saying: "Please chop off your head first before attempting to chop anything else".
Microwaves would have signs saying: "To kill yourself, please set to high, insert your head, and jam something in the safety".
Seriously though - stupid people don't read warning labels or signs. I find it annoying that most manufacturers dumb down the manuals for the stupid people, when the stupid people never read them anyway. I liked the old school manuals with schematics and technical stuff (see the Apple II manuals).
The guy from your college was unlucky (given he had some reason to assume it'll be ok). Stuff happens. You go through life taking estimated risks - since life is too short to check everything ( some people would get into the pond without diving first though).
But the kid? Probably just helping to improve the gene pool. Sad that he had to give his life to do so, but might be better in the long run. I'm sure the smarter kids learnt something (learn from other peoples mistakes - life is too short to only learn from your own mistakes).
"displays all possible pictures at the same time?"
Goatse, hot tub girl and "Can I haz cheeseburger" at the same time? No thanks.
I know Michael Schumacher could chat with the pit crew while winning F1 races :).
;) ).
:).
So at least some people can drive and talk at the same time. Maybe it's a matter of practice (but some people can't even walk safely while talking
I can't do both very well- I can drive ok, but if things get complicated I just stop talking till the cognitive load goes down. I can't be bothered to practice talking while driving since I don't think it's that important to be able to keep talking
"If it takes one person 8 hours to do job A, and it takes one person 8 hours to do job B, and you have one person work on them both, he will finish the job in 16 hours if he does them sequentially, or in probably 20 hours"
:).
If he does them sequentially say A first then B, then he will finish A after 8 hours. So you at least get one completed task first.
Whereas if he keeps switching _neither_ will be completed till 16+X hours later.
Now if the tasks involve waiting for other stuff then sure there are some efficiency gains, but if they involve waiting on outputs that are delayed because of other people multitasking then one starts to wonder whether it's such a great idea
If you drive reasonably well, try observing yourself as you "automatically" keep to a lane while travelling fairly fast. Your hands subconsciously make the necessary small corrections the steering wheel.
;) ).
There's a lot of processing going on, as the DARPA challenge people would know.
I believe most people have had the experience of thinking about something else while driving automatically to their destinations (sometimes the wrong destination if the autopilot selected the default path when the "allegedly thinking" brain forgot to make a decision at that point
When something unusual happens (truck brakes etc), if your brain is working properly a lot of stuff suddenly rises to "foreground".
Anyway, multitasking makes you slow if you are trying to do two tasks at once and they are not independent tasks (require same sort of resources). This is because if you keep switching from one task to the other both tasks will now take about twice as long to complete. Longer if there are inefficiencies.
Seems to be a "layer mismatch". Analogy is the OSI model.
I'll stick to using voice for "higher layer" communication with actual intelligences like humans and other animals. For "lower layer" comms you don't use your voice.
If you ride a horse while you do talk to the horse sometimes, the talking is for the "higher layer", you use reins and body for "lower layer".
The last I checked all these gadgets and devices are pretty stupid, definitely no real AI. So it'll be more gimmicky than actually useful.
For such things that are to work as extensions or augmentations of your self it is silly and impractical to try to control them using your voice.
You won't want to have to control artificial limbs with your voice.
How about we skip this and move on to controlling such stuff with thoughts instead? If necessary for first gen devices I'm sure we can come up with our own thought macros- if they're unique enough there won't be a "collision/clash" with normal thinking.
Isn't being put on a sex offender list thing a "cruel and unusual punishment"? In a way it's like "precrime".
The assumption appears to be that sex offenders WILL offend again no matter what.
In which case why don't you just lock them up permanently or execute them?
Are rapists so much more likely to rape again once you let them out of jail, compared to say a violent person being likely to bash someone else up again?
I was never paranoid about online CC transactions, and I see no reason why cardholders should care so much. Sure check your card statements.
With online CC fraud, the loser is either Bank or the Merchant, and most usually the Merchant.
Direct debit fraud is a bigger problem. Given the "right circumstances" someone could transfer money from your bank account without your authorisation.
Hey like was said - "it's little known", so the Cops and Courts probably don't know about it either ;).
Yeah good for Florida, protecting the children from evil adults by prosecuting them, (and I bet having their photos spread amongst the police force and probably elsewhere ).
Oh wait...
You didn't miss much if you didn't watch "I Am Legend".
It wasn't a terrible movie. But it's basically a very dumbed down version of Omega Man which I guess was a dumbed down version of "The Last Man on Earth". The plot got pared down to near nothing.
Cinematography was not bad. And it definitely had a lot better special effects (of course). But nothing you probably haven't seen before.
"If we just eliminate all the mosquitoes, we probably can't tell how we'll affect the rest of the ecosystem."
The US sure didn't care when they eliminated disease bearing mosquitoes from the Southern states. The last I checked it sure didn't hurt the USA. The gains were definitely higher than the losses.
The rest of the ecosystem can go live on something else or die trying.
My objection to this approach is it's not even going to wipe them out, so the mosquitoes will just shrug it off after a few generations.
Decades ago, many countries almost succeeded in ridding themselves of malaria, yellow fever etc with DDT, too bad they stopped before they were done because some people got their priorities wrong.
Actually that might happen.
;).
There have been anecdotal (yeah I know) accounts of people receiving transplants and then having personality changes - food preferences or even sexual orientation.
http://www.nexusmagazine.com/articles/CellularMemories.html
Whether it's true or not or just self selection bias I don't know. But I won't be surprised if the rest of our organs actually had some influence over what we'd like to put in our stomachs or other "gut feel stuff"
Plus those stem cells do roam about. After all there's been reports of mothers having cells of their sons in various parts of their bodies - brains etc.
I don't think Bush is stupid. Just go look for video/audio clips of him when he thinks he's not being recorded.
If Bush is a drooling idiot what makes the people who either voted him in or let him diebold his way in and get away with it?
A cynical politician will behave in whatever manner it takes.
In theory there could be politicians who'd try to educate the voters etc, but "thinking is hard and painful, let's go vote for the other guy instead".
"While a new species of carnivorous plant is always welcome"
:).
Maybe by you.
I only welcome the mosquito eating ones
Well the rat could have been trying to get a drink from the pitcher.
:).
Maybe it got unlucky and drowned or maybe that pitcher plant secretes a fast acting poison into the water.
Or it's a hoax