...you apparently can't even RTFS. I mean, seriously. Two sentences into the summary:
The man, identified only as Zhang, was an assembly line worker in the motorcycle factory and took Johnny Cash's advice by stealing the bike one piece at a time so he wouldn't get caught.
I thought it was bad enough that 99.8% of Slashdotters don't RTFA (myself included for some articles), but if we can't at least agree to read the summary, how can we possibly have any sort of discussion. To put it bluntly, Epic Fail.
I propose an addendum to Godwin's Law in which it is stated that as any online discussion about robots grows longer, the probability of comparisons involving Skynet approaches 1.
It seems that the writer of the article is a Star Wars fan poking a little bit of fun at something he holds dear to him. That being said, we all know that Star Wars is obscenely unrealistic, realism is not the point! Star Wars is not trying to be hard sci-fi ala 2001 or Blade Runner, it is an epic adventure/fantasy/spaghetti western that happens to take place in outer space. The point of Star Wars is to tell a great story with great characters and to have a lot of fun along the way, at which is succeeds marvelously (well, at least until 1999 or so). If you start trying to make sense of the science, you have already missed the point. If we are talking about Star Trek, please tear the science apart, it is presented to give the impression that at least certain parts of it are scientifically plausible (calm down fanboys, I love both equally but they cover very different ground). But knocking Star Wars for being unscientific is like berating the Flintstones for showing humans and people together.
At what point does the FTC have to become involved in something like this? Microsoft is knowingly selling a defective piece of equipment -- at what point does this become against the law? IANAL but I would be interested in hearing from someone more knowledgeable than I on this issue (which is not saying much as I know next to nothing of these sorts of laws).
For the most part, I agree. I can certainly see the benefit in using remote processing capabilities (I really hate buzzwords) for things like smartphones, as it enables the user to tap into a far greater amount of processing power than could be crammed into a little handheld. For the home, however, I have a hard time imagining that it is more feasible to do your computing through the network rather than doing it locally. What about things like audio editors and games, that require latencies in the low milliseconds to be usable? Maybe we can provide that sort of speed in the future, but common sense tells me that these sorts of things will always run better off of a local machine. The processing power and hard drive space needs to be payed for one way or another, and I for one would rather pay more up front and own my hardware, rather than rent access.
Of course popular music (including Slayer) is crap.
Growling into a microphone and thrashing a guitar is neither intricate nor demanding. Any monkey can do it.
Ok, fine. You do it. Please make a recording of yourself playing all the guitar and drum parts from Slayer's Reign in Blood, and then we talk. Until then you are a loudmouthed idiot.
I keep hearing people bemoan the loss of technology that has been overshadowed by computers... why? Why is writing by hand special? The whole point is to get information down in some way, and using a keyboard to type it into a computer is superior in every way. If you say that it makes it less human you are simply begging the question -- how do you define "human" and why is it necessarily a good thing? If you went back in time an asked an australopithecine how they felt about evolving into homo sapiens, they would be terrified and try to do everything they could to remain australopithecines. Why are we so afraid of change when it could be so beneficial to us and our ancestors?
I never said that there is any problem with generalization -- I was arguing in favor of several SPECIFIC examples, and I feel that generalization can be very useful. For example, not all grizzly bears are going to want to eat you, but it is highly useful to generalize all grizzly bears as wanting to eat you.
That being said, I have a hard time imagining that any reasonable argument could be made that the popular music that dominates the airwaves does not represent the absolute lowest common denominator in musicianship and composition. Surely there is some good music played on the radio, but I am equally certain that it is far outweighed by the watered down, simplified crap. I choose to listen to my iPod rather than the radio as the Good Music:Crap ratio is very much in favor of the former, whereas on the radio it is very much in favor of the latter.
Don't get me wrong - I've been a Slayer fan since the 80's, but to say that they have more musical ability than pretty much everything on the radio is just plain wrong. They have written some fantastic stuff and have the ability to play fast, but both Kerry and Jeff get sloppy when they play fast. Tom plays simple bass lines and doesn't get too complicated with the vocals. Dave is a fantastic drummer though.
If you want to compare musical ability of metal players with what you hear on the radio, there are thousands of better choices.
Oh - and to get back to the great grandparent, I don't think the article said that all of this generation listen to rap. Even the quote in the summary says, "Rap music has always been mainstream." You can't deny that for kids going into college this year.
There are definitely better players than Kerry and Jeff, and I admittedly don't listen to the radio often, but what I do hear is mindless, watered down, simple crap. As for the most musically intense bands out there, I would point to the technical death metal, with bands like Cryptopsy, Anata, Necrophagist, Spawn of Possession and the like. All those bands display stunning musical virtuosity as well as absurd compositional skills. To all those that don't like it, that is fine, but the only excuse for disrespecting it is ignorance.
Thank you for showing your ignorance. Death and thrash metal (including Slayer) are both incredibly intricate and demanding styles of music. I am not sure what kind of music you listen to, but Slayer's compositions and playing ability are light years ahead of ANY popular music these days. You might not like it, this form of music may not be your cup of tea, but calling it mindless is just plain ignorant. Each member of that band (Araya excepted) has more musical ability than pretty much everything you hear on the radio. I would be very interested to hear... what do you listen to that you base your comparison off of? I listen to literally everything, and I put death metal in the same vaunted category as jazz and classical in terms of musicianship.
If it's a simple case of criminal assault why is the guy suing Comcast at all?
If I get beat up by some drunken idiot I don't sue his employer, I bring charges against him and claim criminal compensation for time off work (paid either by him or the state if he can't pay).
First of all, the company in question is Verizon, not Comcast, but to get more to the root of your issue, this man was acting as a representative to Verizon when he showed up in uniform. Verizon also has a degree of liability in making their best attempt to only hire people that will not punch customers in the face.
The story is ridiculously one sided, and like I said previously, the guy may have been being a total a-hole and may have TOTALLY deserved to be hit, but unless he struck first, there is no justification for a violent response. Even if Isakson struck first, it sounds that the response was above and beyond what was necessary for self defense. There are also many reasons that this one-sided response could be the whole story -- say this guy just caught his wife cheating on him and was right on the edge before he even got there. This guy could just be a violent sociopath with an assault record a mile long. There is not enough information here to really tell, but it does certainly seem at first glance that the tech was almost certainly in the wrong here, I can envision few scenarios in which is behavior would be acceptable.
Is the BSA really less reviled amongst people that know about them? Their random forced audits are far more odious than anything the RIAA does, I think that they are simply less well known.
It honestly really doesn't matter -- unless this Isakson character physically assaulted the tech first, it makes no difference how obnoxious or belligerent he was being -- the tech had no right to assault him (even if he totally deserved it). What seems to have happened here is that a somewhat hot-headed tech who was already having a bad day went out to a house, just trying to do his job, and had some smartass give him all sorts of attitude for no reason and get in the way of him trying to get his job done. I have been in many similar situations before and can certainly see how someone of a violent temperament could snap and hit someone, but it certainly does not make it defensible.
This is turn lends credence (but certainly not proof by any stretch of the imagination) to the hypothesis that life is abundant in the Universe and is bound to arise in physical systems in which moderately acceptable conditions are present, in the same manner that clouds of hydrogen tend to coalesce into stars and chunks of inorganic debris tend to form planets. This is unsurprising for anyone moderately versed in physics or chemistry, but it is still exciting to see us take another step toward finding life "out there".
...but why would we? The brain was assembled by natural selection -- a process that can only improve and work with what it already has, which is hardly ideal. The human brain is certainly amazing, but it is not perfect. There are certainly better, faster, and more efficient ways of designing the superhuman AIs of the future. Looking at the brain will give us a good road map, but is not the end-all be-all.
I see a strange arrogance and egocentricity in trying to design robots to be exactly like us, why not think outside the box? Why are upright, bipedal robots always portrayed as the ultimate? There are most certainly more efficient and better designs than the one we are saddled with, this is just how we happened to evolve, we are simply the current end of one branch of the evolutionary tree.
Yes, that is one of the many, many reasons you will not find me subscribing to a news site any time in the future -- I doubt that the ads will even get less intrusive. In fact, I could even imagine the ads getting worse as they see ad revenue plummeting when 98% of their users decide to go elsewhere upon running into a pay wall. When the money is not being made up by the 18 subscribers (read: idiots) who didn't realize they could get the same thing elsewhere for free, they will be forced to sell more and more ad space and make it more intrusive. Just my $0.02.
...the nation's IQ spontaneously rose 23 points this morning. Scientists are investigating this puzzling phenomenon but have yet to discover the cause.
A barcode or magnetic strip is safe in your wallet in your back pocket, RFID is not.
Safe? You've never heard of the "millionaire's march" down here in Central America. You are kidnapped at gunpoint, and forced to several ATMs where you insert your card and your PIN (or get your head blown off, choose). You keep hitting different ATMs until your account is empty or your maximum limit is reached (this usually happens late at night, so they can get two day's limits out of you). Then the criminals either kill you or dump you somewhere.
No, magnetic strips are not "safe" either. But they're a lot "safer" than RFID.
Well that is pretty much exactly the point I was trying to make isn't it? I was pointing out the logical fallacy that just because one method of doing things still leaves an attack vector open it does not mean it's not worth it to close other attack vectors. In the case of someone taking you to an ATM at gunpoint -- I really can't see any way to prevent that. That argument is essentially, someone might kick in your front door so you may as well leave it open. It simply does not make sense -- it is far more likely that you will have the RFID on your credit card scanned (well, it will be once the tech gets a bit more ubiquitous) than it is that you will be kidnapped at gunpoint. Even if both were equally likely, from a tech standpoint, we only need be worried about the one we can prevent. The gun to your head is a law enforcement issue, not a tech one.
No. You are wrong. It is fairly easy to get a license to purchase a shotgun that you leave at home in most places in America, yes, but in many places it is almost impossible to get a license to actually have the weapon with you. My friend's dad works in and out of Boston in some pretty rough neighborhoods, and after witnessing a crime and calling the police he had several DOCUMENTED threats made against his life (ie coming out to see WE ARE GOING TO F*CKING KILL YOU HONKY spraypainted on the side of his truck). Even with this, he was not able to obtain a concealed carry permit. His criminal record is 100% clean, and he even knew some guys high up in the force that could pull some strings, but eventually the reason he got was that they didn't see that he needed to carry a gun. Thankfully, he never ended up getting murdered, but don't just stand there and proclaim that it's not true that only criminals have guns, you just make yourself look like a fool.
"RFID is a slightly-longer-range bar-code that doesn't require line-of-sight. But it would certainly be possible to use a digital camera or scanning lasers to do this same sort of thing to any visible bar-codes.
Doesn't this suggest that RFID is a much less secure tech? A barcode or magnetic strip is safe in your wallet in your back pocket, RFID is not. That is like saying that because your windows can still be broken, it is not a security risk to leave your front door open when you leave the house.
...the Feds try to ban the tech to read the RFIDs instead of urging credit card manufacturers/the state department to back off on putting RFID chips into everything?
Slashdot Mirror
The man, identified only as Zhang, was an assembly line worker in the motorcycle factory and took Johnny Cash's advice by stealing the bike one piece at a time so he wouldn't get caught.
I thought it was bad enough that 99.8% of Slashdotters don't RTFA (myself included for some articles), but if we can't at least agree to read the summary, how can we possibly have any sort of discussion. To put it bluntly, Epic Fail.
I propose an addendum to Godwin's Law in which it is stated that as any online discussion about robots grows longer, the probability of comparisons involving Skynet approaches 1.
It seems that the writer of the article is a Star Wars fan poking a little bit of fun at something he holds dear to him. That being said, we all know that Star Wars is obscenely unrealistic, realism is not the point! Star Wars is not trying to be hard sci-fi ala 2001 or Blade Runner, it is an epic adventure/fantasy/spaghetti western that happens to take place in outer space. The point of Star Wars is to tell a great story with great characters and to have a lot of fun along the way, at which is succeeds marvelously (well, at least until 1999 or so). If you start trying to make sense of the science, you have already missed the point. If we are talking about Star Trek, please tear the science apart, it is presented to give the impression that at least certain parts of it are scientifically plausible (calm down fanboys, I love both equally but they cover very different ground). But knocking Star Wars for being unscientific is like berating the Flintstones for showing humans and people together.
At what point does the FTC have to become involved in something like this? Microsoft is knowingly selling a defective piece of equipment -- at what point does this become against the law? IANAL but I would be interested in hearing from someone more knowledgeable than I on this issue (which is not saying much as I know next to nothing of these sorts of laws).
For the most part, I agree. I can certainly see the benefit in using remote processing capabilities (I really hate buzzwords) for things like smartphones, as it enables the user to tap into a far greater amount of processing power than could be crammed into a little handheld. For the home, however, I have a hard time imagining that it is more feasible to do your computing through the network rather than doing it locally. What about things like audio editors and games, that require latencies in the low milliseconds to be usable? Maybe we can provide that sort of speed in the future, but common sense tells me that these sorts of things will always run better off of a local machine. The processing power and hard drive space needs to be payed for one way or another, and I for one would rather pay more up front and own my hardware, rather than rent access.
Of course popular music (including Slayer) is crap.
Growling into a microphone and thrashing a guitar is neither intricate nor demanding. Any monkey can do it.
Ok, fine. You do it. Please make a recording of yourself playing all the guitar and drum parts from Slayer's Reign in Blood, and then we talk. Until then you are a loudmouthed idiot.
I keep hearing people bemoan the loss of technology that has been overshadowed by computers... why? Why is writing by hand special? The whole point is to get information down in some way, and using a keyboard to type it into a computer is superior in every way. If you say that it makes it less human you are simply begging the question -- how do you define "human" and why is it necessarily a good thing? If you went back in time an asked an australopithecine how they felt about evolving into homo sapiens, they would be terrified and try to do everything they could to remain australopithecines. Why are we so afraid of change when it could be so beneficial to us and our ancestors?
I never said that there is any problem with generalization -- I was arguing in favor of several SPECIFIC examples, and I feel that generalization can be very useful. For example, not all grizzly bears are going to want to eat you, but it is highly useful to generalize all grizzly bears as wanting to eat you.
That being said, I have a hard time imagining that any reasonable argument could be made that the popular music that dominates the airwaves does not represent the absolute lowest common denominator in musicianship and composition. Surely there is some good music played on the radio, but I am equally certain that it is far outweighed by the watered down, simplified crap. I choose to listen to my iPod rather than the radio as the Good Music:Crap ratio is very much in favor of the former, whereas on the radio it is very much in favor of the latter.
Don't get me wrong - I've been a Slayer fan since the 80's, but to say that they have more musical ability than pretty much everything on the radio is just plain wrong. They have written some fantastic stuff and have the ability to play fast, but both Kerry and Jeff get sloppy when they play fast. Tom plays simple bass lines and doesn't get too complicated with the vocals. Dave is a fantastic drummer though.
If you want to compare musical ability of metal players with what you hear on the radio, there are thousands of better choices.
Oh - and to get back to the great grandparent, I don't think the article said that all of this generation listen to rap. Even the quote in the summary says, "Rap music has always been mainstream." You can't deny that for kids going into college this year.
There are definitely better players than Kerry and Jeff, and I admittedly don't listen to the radio often, but what I do hear is mindless, watered down, simple crap. As for the most musically intense bands out there, I would point to the technical death metal, with bands like Cryptopsy, Anata, Necrophagist, Spawn of Possession and the like. All those bands display stunning musical virtuosity as well as absurd compositional skills. To all those that don't like it, that is fine, but the only excuse for disrespecting it is ignorance.
It's just a different genre of mindless grunting.
Thank you for showing your ignorance. Death and thrash metal (including Slayer) are both incredibly intricate and demanding styles of music. I am not sure what kind of music you listen to, but Slayer's compositions and playing ability are light years ahead of ANY popular music these days. You might not like it, this form of music may not be your cup of tea, but calling it mindless is just plain ignorant. Each member of that band (Araya excepted) has more musical ability than pretty much everything you hear on the radio. I would be very interested to hear... what do you listen to that you base your comparison off of? I listen to literally everything, and I put death metal in the same vaunted category as jazz and classical in terms of musicianship.
We have always been at war with Eastasia
If it's a simple case of criminal assault why is the guy suing Comcast at all?
If I get beat up by some drunken idiot I don't sue his employer, I bring charges against him and claim criminal compensation for time off work (paid either by him or the state if he can't pay).
First of all, the company in question is Verizon, not Comcast, but to get more to the root of your issue, this man was acting as a representative to Verizon when he showed up in uniform. Verizon also has a degree of liability in making their best attempt to only hire people that will not punch customers in the face.
The story is ridiculously one sided, and like I said previously, the guy may have been being a total a-hole and may have TOTALLY deserved to be hit, but unless he struck first, there is no justification for a violent response. Even if Isakson struck first, it sounds that the response was above and beyond what was necessary for self defense. There are also many reasons that this one-sided response could be the whole story -- say this guy just caught his wife cheating on him and was right on the edge before he even got there. This guy could just be a violent sociopath with an assault record a mile long. There is not enough information here to really tell, but it does certainly seem at first glance that the tech was almost certainly in the wrong here, I can envision few scenarios in which is behavior would be acceptable.
Is the BSA really less reviled amongst people that know about them? Their random forced audits are far more odious than anything the RIAA does, I think that they are simply less well known.
It honestly really doesn't matter -- unless this Isakson character physically assaulted the tech first, it makes no difference how obnoxious or belligerent he was being -- the tech had no right to assault him (even if he totally deserved it). What seems to have happened here is that a somewhat hot-headed tech who was already having a bad day went out to a house, just trying to do his job, and had some smartass give him all sorts of attitude for no reason and get in the way of him trying to get his job done. I have been in many similar situations before and can certainly see how someone of a violent temperament could snap and hit someone, but it certainly does not make it defensible.
This is turn lends credence (but certainly not proof by any stretch of the imagination) to the hypothesis that life is abundant in the Universe and is bound to arise in physical systems in which moderately acceptable conditions are present, in the same manner that clouds of hydrogen tend to coalesce into stars and chunks of inorganic debris tend to form planets. This is unsurprising for anyone moderately versed in physics or chemistry, but it is still exciting to see us take another step toward finding life "out there".
Yes -- things like this have me working on perfecting the technology to deliver a punch to the face via TCP/IP.
...but why would we? The brain was assembled by natural selection -- a process that can only improve and work with what it already has, which is hardly ideal. The human brain is certainly amazing, but it is not perfect. There are certainly better, faster, and more efficient ways of designing the superhuman AIs of the future. Looking at the brain will give us a good road map, but is not the end-all be-all.
I see a strange arrogance and egocentricity in trying to design robots to be exactly like us, why not think outside the box? Why are upright, bipedal robots always portrayed as the ultimate? There are most certainly more efficient and better designs than the one we are saddled with, this is just how we happened to evolve, we are simply the current end of one branch of the evolutionary tree.
Yes, that is one of the many, many reasons you will not find me subscribing to a news site any time in the future -- I doubt that the ads will even get less intrusive. In fact, I could even imagine the ads getting worse as they see ad revenue plummeting when 98% of their users decide to go elsewhere upon running into a pay wall. When the money is not being made up by the 18 subscribers (read: idiots) who didn't realize they could get the same thing elsewhere for free, they will be forced to sell more and more ad space and make it more intrusive. Just my $0.02.
...the nation's IQ spontaneously rose 23 points this morning. Scientists are investigating this puzzling phenomenon but have yet to discover the cause.
A barcode or magnetic strip is safe in your wallet in your back pocket, RFID is not.
Safe? You've never heard of the "millionaire's march" down here in Central America. You are kidnapped at gunpoint, and forced to several ATMs where you insert your card and your PIN (or get your head blown off, choose). You keep hitting different ATMs until your account is empty or your maximum limit is reached (this usually happens late at night, so they can get two day's limits out of you). Then the criminals either kill you or dump you somewhere.
No, magnetic strips are not "safe" either. But they're a lot "safer" than RFID.
Well that is pretty much exactly the point I was trying to make isn't it? I was pointing out the logical fallacy that just because one method of doing things still leaves an attack vector open it does not mean it's not worth it to close other attack vectors. In the case of someone taking you to an ATM at gunpoint -- I really can't see any way to prevent that. That argument is essentially, someone might kick in your front door so you may as well leave it open. It simply does not make sense -- it is far more likely that you will have the RFID on your credit card scanned (well, it will be once the tech gets a bit more ubiquitous) than it is that you will be kidnapped at gunpoint. Even if both were equally likely, from a tech standpoint, we only need be worried about the one we can prevent. The gun to your head is a law enforcement issue, not a tech one.
No. You are wrong. It is fairly easy to get a license to purchase a shotgun that you leave at home in most places in America, yes, but in many places it is almost impossible to get a license to actually have the weapon with you. My friend's dad works in and out of Boston in some pretty rough neighborhoods, and after witnessing a crime and calling the police he had several DOCUMENTED threats made against his life (ie coming out to see WE ARE GOING TO F*CKING KILL YOU HONKY spraypainted on the side of his truck). Even with this, he was not able to obtain a concealed carry permit. His criminal record is 100% clean, and he even knew some guys high up in the force that could pull some strings, but eventually the reason he got was that they didn't see that he needed to carry a gun. Thankfully, he never ended up getting murdered, but don't just stand there and proclaim that it's not true that only criminals have guns, you just make yourself look like a fool.
Mod parent "Funny"
"RFID is a slightly-longer-range bar-code that doesn't require line-of-sight. But it would certainly be possible to use a digital camera or scanning lasers to do this same sort of thing to any visible bar-codes.
Doesn't this suggest that RFID is a much less secure tech? A barcode or magnetic strip is safe in your wallet in your back pocket, RFID is not. That is like saying that because your windows can still be broken, it is not a security risk to leave your front door open when you leave the house.
...the Feds try to ban the tech to read the RFIDs instead of urging credit card manufacturers/the state department to back off on putting RFID chips into everything?