Advice for my fellow geeks: before seeking out that threesome you dream of, you might see what a TWOsome is like first.
Bah. I'm going to skip that amateur penny-ante stuff and go straight for the two-hundred-and-fifty-some. Sex is much more exciting when you need an HR department just to schedule it.
Yes, if you give a very poor family a computer, they will probably sell it for food.
Not only that, they will be selling to someone who needs a computer more than food. So it's not as if the laptop is wasted, it just goes to where it is most useful. (of course, if the people distributing laptops target them correctly, they won't get sold and it's a non-issue)
a problem that even severely IQ handicapped humans handle routinely while balancing a McMeal on their knees and keeping up a cell phone conversation
Driving across 150 miles of roadless, obstacle-ridden desert is not something most humans do, or even attempt. Don't be so sure that "even severely IQ handicapped humans" could handle it routinely.
Will we need Cray-like computing power to handle the sensory input quickly enough to work a steering wheel, brake and gas pedal?
Yes, because being able to take two dimensional sensory input and use it to construct an acccurate three-dimensional representation of the local surroundings, and then plan a viable route through those surroundings, is not a trivial task. People do it pretty well (at least when on foot), but then they've had billions of years of development time put into their massively parallel computational hardware. Computers can do it too, and eventually that "Cray-like computing power" will be squeezed down into smaller boxes, but it isn't an easy problem.
That is the thin line which has crossed the slippery slope
I agree, this is the last straw that broke the camel's back. The dead horse is out of the barn and we must take the bull by the horns of the dilemna and run with it.
As for your example involving pharmas, you'll find that modern-day pharma industry is not interested in practical cures. They want to come up with drugs that patients have to take for a long time, if possible for ever, for obvious economic reasons. Hence the paucity of investment in new antibiotics or actual cancer cures, and the multiplicity of antidepressants on the market.
the idea that if you throw enough money at something you can solve anything is a typically stupid american idea.
Well, no. Actually that's a cynical straw-man caricature of a typically American idea. The actual idea you are thinking of goes like this: "many problems, even really big problems, are often solvable if you are clever and keep trying to solve them". The prevalence of that idea is one reason why America is a superpower today, and many other countries are not.
you don't think companies aren't already throwing billions into the first to have an aids cure and cancer treatments?
They sure are, but inventing cures/treatments is only part of the solution. The other part is getting those treatments to the people who need them. That step is currently largely unaddressed, mainly because the people who need them don't generally have the money to pay for treatment.
And you can bet on countless participants finding ways to not share at a 1:1 ratio, just like on most P2P networks..
Possibly, although probably it wouldn't be as much of a problem since most people have finite electricity needs (e.g. once your air conditioner is running, you don't get any additional benefit from turning on a second air conditioner, or a third. Contrast that with p2p, where doubling your bandwidth will always decrease your download time).
In any case, didn't BitTorrent largely solve the "freeloader problem" by having each client keep track of how much its peers were downloading from it, and adjusting its upload rates to reward sharers and punish freeloaders? Probably something similar could be done for electricity usage (with the added wrinkle that nodes could be allowed to buy electricity from other nodes, in addition to bartering)
Gee, I can drop this out of my backpack some day and instandly destroy my phone, my mp3 player, my camera... in other words Single Point Of Failure.
If that worries you then buy two identical phones; they're cheap. That way you have an automatic backup for your phone, your mp3 player, your camera, etc. Sure, you'd have to carry two devices around, but that's still fewer devices than you would have to carry if you had a separate device for each function.
As far as data loss goes, I agree with previous posters that it would be unacceptable if losing/breaking your phone meant losing all your data. The solution for that is to make sure that the phone's local storage is merely a local cache for a more reliable storage system located elsewhere, and that the off-site storage is transparently synchronized to the phone's storage whenever possible (e.g. whenever wireless connectivity is present and/or whenever the user "docks" his phone to its keyboard/monitor/hard-drive base-station). That way if you drop your phone into the ocean, you might lose a few hours of recently entered data, but not your entire life's work.
I think the only real challenge to this concept is political: current cell phone companies have much too much of the "lock in the consumer, make him do things our way, charge him up the ass" mindset. A more promising evolution would be to see a motherboard manufacturer come out with a radical new motherboard form factor which allows a phone handset to contain the CPU/memory/etc of the PC. The advantage of this would be that the resulting phone/PCs would be an open, standard platform and anyone could develop their own OS/software for them.
As I understand it, bees create honey as a convenient way to store sustenance for themselves, not as a waste product. So it's not so much the piss of bees as the cud of bees, or perhaps the canned food of bees.
Just go to downtown London or any British city: cameras and microphones everywhere!! Do they prevent any terrorist attacks? OBVIOUSLY NOT!
How is that so obvious? Do you have a crystal ball that would inform you whenever a terrorist decides not to attack somewhere because it's too likely they would be caught on camera?
Perhaps you meant "Do they prevent ALL terrorist attacks?". In which case, obviously they don't. But what would?
Even assuming the above was true (which it isn't), so what? At one time, the Europeans were not like that either. The original poster's point was that through one thing and another, they became like that, and that the same process will (hopefully) happen to other peoples as well.
Of course, the original poster may be wrong, but your non sequiter doesn't demonstrate that.
The problem therein isn't necessarily a bad design, but rather the violation of sanctuary on the part of the enemy. By using civilians as cover.
The problem is civilians getting killed. The military behavior of one side or another may help explain the problem, but it doesn't solve it or excuse it.
Can I do the conservative thing instead, and immediately start constructing idiotic straw men in order to preclude any meaningful discussion of the facts?
I swear if it wasn't for the over-the-top caricatures that get constantly vomitted out by the right wing, I'd never know how evil liberals like myself are supposed to think. Why not just accuse us of eating babies while you're at it?
Has it never occurred to you that these constant ad-homeneim attacks are designed to do exactly what you criticize liberals of doing? i.e. if you can hijaak the debate into a discussion of how liberals are stupid/crazy/naive, you never have to worry about inconvenient facts or "understanding of processes". Every discussion becomes a childish mud fight, which is where the sneering Rush Limbaugh set feels most at home.
This is why intelligent debate is such a rare thing in the US media. Why solve problems when it's so much easier to call names?
Global warming as a result of human-introduced carbon dioxide has been predicted, accurately and repeatedly, by multiple different atmospheric computer models. These models have proved very accurate in the past, and there is no reason to doubt them now. There is also irrefutable evidence that global warming accelerating.
There are two different ways to rationalize your way into doing nothing about it: you can either pretend the problem doesn't exist, or you can pretend that we are powerless to do anything about it. I'm willing to bet the Easter Islanders used both techniques to make them feel better about their little deforestation problem. These days we look back at the Easter Islanders and say "how could they have been so stupid that they couldn't see what they were doing to their home?" It was all right in front of their eyes, they just chose to look away.
I'm not predicting doom and gloom. I'm only saying that global warming exists, it is a real problem, and denying it won't make it go away. Our actions have consequences. If your knew your house was infested by termites, would you ignore the problem until your roof fell in, or would you take steps to fix it?
Slashdot Mirror
Depends on whether you arm them with head-mounted poison dart guns or not.
That may be so, but God told Mr. Atta and his buddies otherwise. So either God made an exception in their case, or God lied to them.
So the September 11th hijackers really are in heaven now, enjoying their 72 virgins and whatnot?
Bah. I'm going to skip that amateur penny-ante stuff and go straight for the two-hundred-and-fifty-some. Sex is much more exciting when you need an HR department just to schedule it.
us, man, helped us. The Chinese are "them". (The ants, on the other hand, are "Them")
popular OS at the time, which I forget the name of right now.
That would be Gary Kildall and his company's version of CP/M.
Kind of answered your own question there, didn't you? A system that is too difficult to implement in practice deserves to die.
Not only that, they will be selling to someone who needs a computer more than food. So it's not as if the laptop is wasted, it just goes to where it is most useful. (of course, if the people distributing laptops target them correctly, they won't get sold and it's a non-issue)
Driving across 150 miles of roadless, obstacle-ridden desert is not something most humans do, or even attempt. Don't be so sure that "even severely IQ handicapped humans" could handle it routinely.
Will we need Cray-like computing power to handle the sensory input quickly enough to work a steering wheel, brake and gas pedal?
Yes, because being able to take two dimensional sensory input and use it to construct an acccurate three-dimensional representation of the local surroundings, and then plan a viable route through those surroundings, is not a trivial task. People do it pretty well (at least when on foot), but then they've had billions of years of development time put into their massively parallel computational hardware. Computers can do it too, and eventually that "Cray-like computing power" will be squeezed down into smaller boxes, but it isn't an easy problem.
Heh... "I don't have anything against heterosexuals, as long as they keep their relationships private and don't rub everybody's nose in it"
I agree, this is the last straw that broke the camel's back. The dead horse is out of the barn and we must take the bull by the horns of the dilemna and run with it.
(sorry, I couldn't resist)
Man, that's a really depressing thought...
Well, no. Actually that's a cynical straw-man caricature of a typically American idea. The actual idea you are thinking of goes like this: "many problems, even really big problems, are often solvable if you are clever and keep trying to solve them". The prevalence of that idea is one reason why America is a superpower today, and many other countries are not.
you don't think companies aren't already throwing billions into the first to have an aids cure and cancer treatments?
They sure are, but inventing cures/treatments is only part of the solution. The other part is getting those treatments to the people who need them. That step is currently largely unaddressed, mainly because the people who need them don't generally have the money to pay for treatment.
Tetherball, anyone?
Dolphins being mammals, that should be possible... but just where are the breasts on a dolphin? They must be very well hidden...
Given that the future entails the inevitable burning of the last gallon of gas, that should be pretty easy to do. Your SUV won't be going anywhere...
Possibly, although probably it wouldn't be as much of a problem since most people have finite electricity needs (e.g. once your air conditioner is running, you don't get any additional benefit from turning on a second air conditioner, or a third. Contrast that with p2p, where doubling your bandwidth will always decrease your download time).
In any case, didn't BitTorrent largely solve the "freeloader problem" by having each client keep track of how much its peers were downloading from it, and adjusting its upload rates to reward sharers and punish freeloaders? Probably something similar could be done for electricity usage (with the added wrinkle that nodes could be allowed to buy electricity from other nodes, in addition to bartering)
If that worries you then buy two identical phones; they're cheap. That way you have an automatic backup for your phone, your mp3 player, your camera, etc. Sure, you'd have to carry two devices around, but that's still fewer devices than you would have to carry if you had a separate device for each function.
As far as data loss goes, I agree with previous posters that it would be unacceptable if losing/breaking your phone meant losing all your data. The solution for that is to make sure that the phone's local storage is merely a local cache for a more reliable storage system located elsewhere, and that the off-site storage is transparently synchronized to the phone's storage whenever possible (e.g. whenever wireless connectivity is present and/or whenever the user "docks" his phone to its keyboard/monitor/hard-drive base-station). That way if you drop your phone into the ocean, you might lose a few hours of recently entered data, but not your entire life's work.
I think the only real challenge to this concept is political: current cell phone companies have much too much of the "lock in the consumer, make him do things our way, charge him up the ass" mindset. A more promising evolution would be to see a motherboard manufacturer come out with a radical new motherboard form factor which allows a phone handset to contain the CPU/memory/etc of the PC. The advantage of this would be that the resulting phone/PCs would be an open, standard platform and anyone could develop their own OS/software for them.
As I understand it, bees create honey as a convenient way to store sustenance for themselves, not as a waste product. So it's not so much the piss of bees as the cud of bees, or perhaps the canned food of bees.
How is that so obvious? Do you have a crystal ball that would inform you whenever a terrorist decides not to attack somewhere because it's too likely they would be caught on camera?
Perhaps you meant "Do they prevent ALL terrorist attacks?". In which case, obviously they don't. But what would?
Even assuming the above was true (which it isn't), so what? At one time, the Europeans were not like that either. The original poster's point was that through one thing and another, they became like that, and that the same process will (hopefully) happen to other peoples as well.
Of course, the original poster may be wrong, but your non sequiter doesn't demonstrate that.
The problem is civilians getting killed. The military behavior of one side or another may help explain the problem, but it doesn't solve it or excuse it.
I swear if it wasn't for the over-the-top caricatures that get constantly vomitted out by the right wing, I'd never know how evil liberals like myself are supposed to think. Why not just accuse us of eating babies while you're at it?
Has it never occurred to you that these constant ad-homeneim attacks are designed to do exactly what you criticize liberals of doing? i.e. if you can hijaak the debate into a discussion of how liberals are stupid/crazy/naive, you never have to worry about inconvenient facts or "understanding of processes". Every discussion becomes a childish mud fight, which is where the sneering Rush Limbaugh set feels most at home.
This is why intelligent debate is such a rare thing in the US media. Why solve problems when it's so much easier to call names?
There are two different ways to rationalize your way into doing nothing about it: you can either pretend the problem doesn't exist, or you can pretend that we are powerless to do anything about it. I'm willing to bet the Easter Islanders used both techniques to make them feel better about their little deforestation problem. These days we look back at the Easter Islanders and say "how could they have been so stupid that they couldn't see what they were doing to their home?" It was all right in front of their eyes, they just chose to look away.
I'm not predicting doom and gloom. I'm only saying that global warming exists, it is a real problem, and denying it won't make it go away. Our actions have consequences. If your knew your house was infested by termites, would you ignore the problem until your roof fell in, or would you take steps to fix it?
As far as you know. Not all malware announces its presence.