The other story "Carthaginian Rose" completely ignores the existence of an immortal soul. You can't transfer a soul into a machine (Tracy Kidder's tome notwithstanding). Sorry, patently absurd.
Hmmm... not, however, quite so absurd as the idea of an intangible, immortal soul.
Hmmm, maybe someone else mentioned this, but I wonder why web browsers don't perhaps cache the IP address as part of a saved bookmark. It would seem to help if they played nice by using a bit less load on the DNS system, and avoid problems like this if (perhaps) DNS went down. You could add a button to "refresh bookmark IPs from DNS", or just have the browser automatically do it if the cached IP address was not found...
And your point is what, exactly? Our biological "hardware" breaks down and suffers from down time on a regular basis, yet people's self-images don't seem to have suffered too badly as a result.
The point is not whether we have suffered or not -- the point is that the specific breakdowns are an integral part of our personalities. Change the breakdowns, change the personality.
No, I very much doubt these kinds of predictions (and it's got nothing to do with the issue of the transferrence step).
What counts as our "minds" are simply far too tied into the physical instantiation of our bodies. (Not that "mind" is too abstract, but that it's not abstract enough for separation from our bodies.) If I make a computer-based simulation of myself, will it get tired? Hungry? Thirsty? Itchy? Horny? Sick? If not, can it then get excited? Scared? Concerned? Bored? Will it have any emotional reactions at all, if all the standard physical stimuli are removed?
Even if all the "human" inputs are replaced or simulated -- you've still got an added problem of a new level of "hardware breakdowns" on whatever platform is running the simulation. Suddenly you've also got to deal with the various downtimes, pauses, glitches, etc., that will break the illusion of it being the same "mind" as in the original person.
People are simply too much a construct of their wetware to be able to remove their "minds" as a separate set of procedures.
You know, I had an unfortunate discussion with a close family member that went along exactly those lines. Distressingly, however, it ended with him saying:
"No, I don't -- but somebody must, or there wouldn't be so much spam email being sent."
...a public relations consultant who tried to pass herself off as someone who had switched from the Apple Mac to Windows XP...
As a former political activist (who's seen at least one scandal occur close-up), it was immediately obvious to me from the original story that this, too, is a total crock. There's no way that this PR consultant was at any point intending to use herself as an example. Here's what had to be the case:
(1) PR consultant is directed to write a series of fictional "counter-switch" case studies. (2) PR consultant's name gets recovered from the MS documents sloppily put on the web, (3) The name is tracked down to the PR firm itself, and questions are asked as to the possible fictition of counter-switch examples, (4) So the PR consultant in question is directed to take the hit for the company, and claim that the example is not fictional, it's her. Hogwash.
I'd challenge MS and/or the PR firm to prove that this writer/consultant in any way resembles the figure in the case study. I bet she doesn't look anything like that stock photo, nor would any of her personal information match up with the story, if forced out of them.
The case study is just total fiction and this chick wrote it, is all. Now she's jumped on the sword to mask that fact. I've seen practically the same thing happen at a place I worked before.
...a personal letter through the company mailroom. The contents of such a letter are protected by U.S. mail regulations.
Contrary to the large contingent of "company can do whatever it wants on its property" boosters, there in fact seem to be all kinds of legal protections and privacy expectations established for workers in corporate offices.
The fascist model that says otherwise is not only frightening, it's untrue.
The full quote from the lawyer in the article (in reference to the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act):
Spyware like that produced by SpectorSoft and competitor WinWhatWhere Corp. has not yet faced a definitive courtroom test. But David Sobel, general counsel of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, equated private Web-based e-mail account with an employee receiving a personal letter through the company mailroom. The contents of such a letter are protected by U.S. mail regulations.
"The question is: Is there a reasonable expectation of privacy? I would argue that if a company.com account is provided to me for company business, I can assume it might be subject to monitoring... but if I take additional step to set up a Hotmail account that I occasionally access from my desktop at work, I think that could be construed as an expression of an expectation of privacy."
My car does 140mph, legally I can only do half that...
... on public roads. You could, of course, also use the same car in sports-car-club events on rented tracks where you can legally go as fast as you want.
Boy, what's wrong with you guys sometimes? Yes, the court found differences between the pages... but the court extended its argument unnecessarily in this paragraph:
Taking it a step further, the court held that "a business cannot copyright a Frequently Asked Questions page" or the words or phrases that comprise such a page because "the format of a Frequently Asked Questions page is a common idea in our society." Indeed, "the elements of a Frequently Asked Questions page (a list of questions beginning with common words) are stereotypical."
A Disney spokeswoman accused SonicBlue of a ``deliberate and completely misleading'' characterization of the court's order. The studios and networks are merely seeking access to the same kind of anonymous data that SonicBlue's privacy policy says it is entitled to collect about its users, she said.
This may be the first, excellent counterexample to the the standard policy of writing a company's EULA or privacy agreement such that, by default, it reserves every theoretical (even if currently unused) right the lawyers can think of to the company -- just to be safe.
As this case shows, you may actually be forced through a court action to mandatorily perform all of those reserved rights; apparently it can serve as evidence that you've asserted you can technologically accomplish something, even if you never expected to. Watch out, legal staff...
It really sounds like Gates, in this trial, is trying to argue to contradictory assertions.
One, interoperability of software is so critical to the economy that you can't possibly allow the Windows program to be chopped up or modularized.
But two, the need for interoperability isn't actually so great as to warrant revealing Windows full APIs, code, or MS file formats to developers at large -- because that's MS intellectual property you're talking about!
It's no wonder the antitrust lawyers were able to push him into a corner like this during his testimony.
This is big news, because it may lead to finding some simple forms of life on the planet. For more info, check out: (story #1) and (story #2).
Why do you people have to turn every astronomy story into a "chance for life in outer space" story? NEITHER of the two linked stories has a SINGLE WORD in it about relating or reflecting life in outer space.
Frankly, you're never going to find any other life in outer space, so you should just start dealing with it. Even if you disagree with that, at least stop warping every astronomy story that comes down the pike to fit your sci-fi fantasies.
We live in a capitalist society, and in a capitalist society money controls everything. That's good, because money doesn't discriminate, and if we want to make a change, all we have to do is with-hold our money... Will my change help anything? Maybe not, but it's a start. And 20 years from now, when we're all presenting our national ID's for minimal access to _our_ national cisco firewall, I'll look back and think " I tried".
If you truly think that your only perceived option is useless, won't change anything, and will only allow you a sense of moral deniablity after a police state is instituted, then you should seriously consider all the other options for resistance that people have successfully used throughout history.
Don't let capitalism convince you that you're helpless, because you're not.
That price point seems really high, especially since I'm getting advertising from RCN for the same services (cable/phone/internet) for about half that price. As of 12/01: $123. Back in 3/01: $109. I'm pretty sure in the last year I've gotten offers for AT&T at about the same price level.
The examples where self-ratings have previously worked are basically the fairly centralized entertainment media of movies, music, comic books and to an extent, TV (suddenly I can't remember seeing those ratings for TV shows in a while).
I can see very large differences which distinguish these projects from something like an internet website, namely, (1) they're all done by a limited set of corporations, (2) they're all done expressly for profit, (3) they're basically all done in some class of retail outlets that can apply pressure on the manufacturers to comply or be ostracized.
Publishing on the web doesn't resemble these kinds of things, I think, even in the majority of cases to date. Anyone can publish a web site nowadays, and desire for as huge a customer base as possible is not a compelling motivation in a lot of cases.
I may be reaching, but I tend to think that the act of publishing on the web is more akin to sending a piece of postal mail, or using a photocopier to make some cheap posters or pamphlets. It's just too widespread, accessible, and low-impact for a lot of the practicioners to be concerned about being compliant with some categorization system for their website. There's no "website industry" as such to reach an agreement and take universal action in this regard, as there has been for the other self-rating programs which have to date succeeded.
Wouldn't you do everything in your power to keep an evil doer from raping your wife after they have so completely infiltrated your everyday life that there's no stopping their evil actions?
No, I do not think I would. I wouldn't set off a nuke to destroy the city we're all in. I wouldn't kill thousands of innocent people to stop it. I definitely wouldn't rape the wife of the "evil doer" so as to distract him.
Your argument is inflamatory and not very valuable. The fact that you pose this question even though "there's no stopping their evil actions" shows that this only arises out of a sense of bloodthirstiness -- not out of justice, a love of freedom, or even a sense of looking for realistic answers to the horror of terrorism.
There's no need to estimate, if you read the article he claims a 1:1000 compression ratio. They explicitly mention the ability to put 1.3 gigabytes of video onto a 1.4 megabyte floppy disk.
I was already sick years ago of companies/management that thinks that "ask the punk hackers to hack our system!" is a clever of determining system security. But, I suppose it's a heck of a lot cheaper than hiring professional security experts to architecture and code reviews, and also have the expertise to fix problems. Maybe some PR person somewhere also thinks this is good publicity, as well. (sigh)
Err... you do realize that there's doubt that Patriots shot doubt down any SCUDs at all, don't you? The report from the U.S. House of Representatives is here.
Similarly, many people of an athiestic bent are also morons, blindly believing whatever the elder athiest thinkers tell them to believe.
Ah yes, the "elder athiest thinkers" such as...
hmmm... well, I suppose there must be a slew of huge athiest institutions with weekly TV programs and multimillion dollar donations around somewhere, why can't I think of any of the elder thinkers at the moment?
Slashdot Mirror
The other story "Carthaginian Rose" completely ignores the existence of an immortal soul. You can't transfer a soul into a machine (Tracy Kidder's tome notwithstanding). Sorry, patently absurd.
Hmmm... not, however, quite so absurd as the idea of an intangible, immortal soul.
I do hope you're talking about an "antenna", because I've got no idea what an "atena" might be.
Hmmm, maybe someone else mentioned this, but I wonder why web browsers don't perhaps cache the IP address as part of a saved bookmark. It would seem to help if they played nice by using a bit less load on the DNS system, and avoid problems like this if (perhaps) DNS went down. You could add a button to "refresh bookmark IPs from DNS", or just have the browser automatically do it if the cached IP address was not found...
And your point is what, exactly? Our biological "hardware" breaks down and suffers from down time on a regular basis, yet people's self-images don't seem to have suffered too badly as a result.
The point is not whether we have suffered or not -- the point is that the specific breakdowns are an integral part of our personalities. Change the breakdowns, change the personality.
No, I very much doubt these kinds of predictions (and it's got nothing to do with the issue of the transferrence step).
What counts as our "minds" are simply far too tied into the physical instantiation of our bodies. (Not that "mind" is too abstract, but that it's not abstract enough for separation from our bodies.) If I make a computer-based simulation of myself, will it get tired? Hungry? Thirsty? Itchy? Horny? Sick? If not, can it then get excited? Scared? Concerned? Bored? Will it have any emotional reactions at all, if all the standard physical stimuli are removed?
Even if all the "human" inputs are replaced or simulated -- you've still got an added problem of a new level of "hardware breakdowns" on whatever platform is running the simulation. Suddenly you've also got to deal with the various downtimes, pauses, glitches, etc., that will break the illusion of it being the same "mind" as in the original person.
People are simply too much a construct of their wetware to be able to remove their "minds" as a separate set of procedures.
You know, I had an unfortunate discussion with a close family member that went along exactly those lines. Distressingly, however, it ended with him saying:
"No, I don't -- but somebody must, or there wouldn't be so much spam email being sent."
(sigh)
As a former political activist (who's seen at least one scandal occur close-up), it was immediately obvious to me from the original story that this, too, is a total crock. There's no way that this PR consultant was at any point intending to use herself as an example. Here's what had to be the case:
(1) PR consultant is directed to write a series of fictional "counter-switch" case studies.
(2) PR consultant's name gets recovered from the MS documents sloppily put on the web,
(3) The name is tracked down to the PR firm itself, and questions are asked as to the possible fictition of counter-switch examples,
(4) So the PR consultant in question is directed to take the hit for the company, and claim that the example is not fictional, it's her. Hogwash.
I'd challenge MS and/or the PR firm to prove that this writer/consultant in any way resembles the figure in the case study. I bet she doesn't look anything like that stock photo, nor would any of her personal information match up with the story, if forced out of them.
The case study is just total fiction and this chick wrote it, is all. Now she's jumped on the sword to mask that fact. I've seen practically the same thing happen at a place I worked before.
There are other games in the world, you know.
Contrary to the large contingent of "company can do whatever it wants on its property" boosters, there in fact seem to be all kinds of legal protections and privacy expectations established for workers in corporate offices.
The fascist model that says otherwise is not only frightening, it's untrue.
The full quote from the lawyer in the article (in reference to the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act):
Spyware like that produced by SpectorSoft and competitor WinWhatWhere Corp. has not yet faced a definitive courtroom test. But David Sobel, general counsel of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, equated private Web-based e-mail account with an employee receiving a personal letter through the company mailroom. The contents of such a letter are protected by U.S. mail regulations.
"The question is: Is there a reasonable expectation of privacy? I would argue that if a company.com account is provided to me for company business, I can assume it might be subject to monitoring
Ah, the market will take care of it.
Why did we ever waste time with civil rights legislation or constitutional protections, I wonder?
you want to cough up the $0.75?
I can do that for the first copy.
You can pony up the Annual Minimum Royalties of "US $15,000.00 per calendar year".
http://www.mp3licensing.com/royalty/software.html
Ever run into a site that runs fine without Javascript, but won't let you in if you turn it off?
How would I know if I had?
... on public roads. You could, of course, also use the same car in sports-car-club events on rented tracks where you can legally go as fast as you want.
This may be the first, excellent counterexample to the the standard policy of writing a company's EULA or privacy agreement such that, by default, it reserves every theoretical (even if currently unused) right the lawyers can think of to the company -- just to be safe.
As this case shows, you may actually be forced through a court action to mandatorily perform all of those reserved rights; apparently it can serve as evidence that you've asserted you can technologically accomplish something, even if you never expected to. Watch out, legal staff...
It really sounds like Gates, in this trial, is trying to argue to contradictory assertions.
One, interoperability of software is so critical to the economy that you can't possibly allow the Windows program to be chopped up or modularized.
But two, the need for interoperability isn't actually so great as to warrant revealing Windows full APIs, code, or MS file formats to developers at large -- because that's MS intellectual property you're talking about!
It's no wonder the antitrust lawyers were able to push him into a corner like this during his testimony.
Why do you people have to turn every astronomy story into a "chance for life in outer space" story? NEITHER of the two linked stories has a SINGLE WORD in it about relating or reflecting life in outer space.
Frankly, you're never going to find any other life in outer space, so you should just start dealing with it. Even if you disagree with that, at least stop warping every astronomy story that comes down the pike to fit your sci-fi fantasies.
If you truly think that your only perceived option is useless, won't change anything, and will only allow you a sense of moral deniablity after a police state is instituted, then you should seriously consider all the other options for resistance that people have successfully used throughout history.
Don't let capitalism convince you that you're helpless, because you're not.
That price point seems really high, especially since I'm getting advertising from RCN for the same services (cable/phone/internet) for about half that price. As of 12/01: $123. Back in 3/01: $109. I'm pretty sure in the last year I've gotten offers for AT&T at about the same price level.
The examples where self-ratings have previously worked are basically the fairly centralized entertainment media of movies, music, comic books and to an extent, TV (suddenly I can't remember seeing those ratings for TV shows in a while).
I can see very large differences which distinguish these projects from something like an internet website, namely, (1) they're all done by a limited set of corporations, (2) they're all done expressly for profit, (3) they're basically all done in some class of retail outlets that can apply pressure on the manufacturers to comply or be ostracized.
Publishing on the web doesn't resemble these kinds of things, I think, even in the majority of cases to date. Anyone can publish a web site nowadays, and desire for as huge a customer base as possible is not a compelling motivation in a lot of cases.
I may be reaching, but I tend to think that the act of publishing on the web is more akin to sending a piece of postal mail, or using a photocopier to make some cheap posters or pamphlets. It's just too widespread, accessible, and low-impact for a lot of the practicioners to be concerned about being compliant with some categorization system for their website. There's no "website industry" as such to reach an agreement and take universal action in this regard, as there has been for the other self-rating programs which have to date succeeded.
Wouldn't you do everything in your power to keep an evil doer from raping your wife after they have so completely infiltrated your everyday life that there's no stopping their evil actions?
No, I do not think I would. I wouldn't set off a nuke to destroy the city we're all in. I wouldn't kill thousands of innocent people to stop it. I definitely wouldn't rape the wife of the "evil doer" so as to distract him.
Your argument is inflamatory and not very valuable. The fact that you pose this question even though "there's no stopping their evil actions" shows that this only arises out of a sense of bloodthirstiness -- not out of justice, a love of freedom, or even a sense of looking for realistic answers to the horror of terrorism.
There's no need to estimate, if you read the article he claims a 1:1000 compression ratio. They explicitly mention the ability to put 1.3 gigabytes of video onto a 1.4 megabyte floppy disk.
I was already sick years ago of companies/management that thinks that "ask the punk hackers to hack our system!" is a clever of determining system security. But, I suppose it's a heck of a lot cheaper than hiring professional security experts to architecture and code reviews, and also have the expertise to fix problems. Maybe some PR person somewhere also thinks this is good publicity, as well. (sigh)
Err... you do realize that there's doubt that Patriots shot doubt down any SCUDs at all, don't you? The report from the U.S. House of Representatives is here.
Ah yes, the "elder athiest thinkers" such as... hmmm... well, I suppose there must be a slew of huge athiest institutions with weekly TV programs and multimillion dollar donations around somewhere, why can't I think of any of the elder thinkers at the moment?