Unfortunately, no. Killing stupid people is only a short-term solution; interface designs have to assume a baseline, and someone will inevitably be below it. The real trick is to find a way to boost everyone's intelligence reliably and in a socially acceptable way.
The first trick would be to get rid of the "it's not nice to be smarter than other people" reaction engrained into most people's minds.
net send %VICTIM% WARNING!!! Your computer may be vulnerable to attack from a virus! Please download the nearest patch at http://www.windowsupadte.com/viruspatch-wow.pif now!
Any benign behavior that can be mimicked by a malicious user is dangerous.
The REAL solution doesn't lie in the software or the hardware; it lies in the users. Find a way to increase mankind's collective intelligence and a lot of these sorts of problems will go away.
You know, if I were Microsoft, I would seriously consider figuring out a way to do just this. If the RIAA can start sending cease-and-desist letters to people who aren't infringing just because the filenames look similar, why can't the BSA just start impromptu raids on anyone running Linux, just to 'make sure' everything's kosher? And if someone happened to have a backup copy of Windows 2000 Professional that they forgot about when they upgraded - say, stuck behind a desk - and can't find the original CD or the liscense, there's a huge chunk of fine-based revenue for everyone, and a great scare for the rebellious.
Hell, take a few hints from the DEA and start PLANTING said backup CDs, just to make SURE the raid targets don't have the liscenses for that copy. Enforcing authority is profitable, but not NEARLY as profitable as abusing it.
If Microsoft listened to what people want instead of living by manipulating every market to suit what they think will capture it best, we'd have moved on from shitty second-class imitations of operating systems called "Windows-whatever" and onto something befitting the 21st century.
Unfortunately, no. If Microsoft listened to what people want instead of living by manipulating every market to suit what they think will capture it best, they'd still be a small company, and someone else would be the dominant monopolist in the industry - someone who lived by manipulating every market to suit what they thought would capture it best. Microsoft got there first, and did it so well that they closed the niche. Had thye not done so, someone else would have. Human evolution is at a stage where the megacorporate conglomerate is the ultimate 'best-fit'; if you aren't trying to become one, you will be relegated to the sidelines by the few members who ARE trying to become one, and who happen to be successful at it.
Here's some search terms to play with: 'power law', 'game theory', 'prisoners dilemna', 'nash equilibrium'.
And increased corporate regulation isn't the answer - corporations devote vast resources to ensuring that the regulations favor them, and to ensuring that they can adapt favorably to the regulations. Decreased corporate regulation is also not the answer - corporations devote vast resources to ensuring that they maximize capitalization of any exploitable resource, and they simply have too much power to be stopped by "the people" - especially when their primary power, at this point, is the ability to tell the people not to stop them.
Fighting it won't help; just sit back and watch the next phase of human evolution in progress.
Wow, you got modded down fast - and not even a decency of an explanation.
And while in the abstract you're correct, your facts are slightly off - Genghis Khan was in the 12th Century, well after Yeshua got nailed to a piece of wood for instigating rebellion.
Who would you consider having had more power, William Shakespeare or Marie Antoinette? Leonardo daVinci or Pope Pious VII? Ghengis Khan or Buddha? Or, to pick two then-contemporaries, Pontius Pilate or Jesus?
Just because you hold the reins of the world doesn't mean you have the power to DO anything with it. Creativity and innovation will always triumph over sheer will to power, given enough time - precisely because they change the whole ballgame. What you're calling "power" is transient - the power to shape the destiny of the world is infinitely subtler.
Diamonds without guilt
on
The Diamond Age
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
I've been waiting for this for years. I want to get my girlfriend a diamond ring (even if the concept of 'traditionalism' was manufactured, a diamond ring sends a cultural message that I wish to buy into), but I refuse to buy from anything that might have been touched by DeBeers. Now I can get a high-quality diamond, and be certain that no 14 year old Sierra Leone girls had their hands cut off to get it to me.
Arnie comes close, at 29.9%. Problem is, that picture of Arnie with the naked woman sitting on his shoulders seriously undermines his credibility, people who would have voted for him go for Larry instead.)... This is so ironic it's not even funny.
Same thing happened to us, on one of our home boxes. Trouble is, it was the "public" box (the one any roommate/guest was allowed to use), so there was no way to tell how the trojan might have got on, or even if the trojan was responsible.
We called the FBI preemptively, because we figured we would rather WE come to THEM than THEM come to US.
They weren't interested. They bounced us around from regional office to regional office, hanging up on us twice. Finally we managed to get ahold of someone in the local field office, who informed us that they don't handle reports of kiddie porn - that we should call our local police. The local police said that they don't handle that, and to call the local FBI field office. We gave up.
In my more cyni^H^H^H^Hparanoid moments, I sometimes wonder if the FBI prefers keeping prosecutions low, so they can use the ones they DO want to prosecute for maximum political effect.
Besides which, what fun is it to break down someone's door, shove them to the ground and stick a knee in their back if they know you're coming?
On my more compassionate and trusting days, I just think the whole world is screwed and noone knows how to fix it.
Not at all; I'm saying that the number of people who like to look at kiddie porn has little to no relation to the number of people actually arrested for kiddie porn.
And pot is different in that the number of people who need to be inconvenienced must exceed the number of people who are convenienced by the status quo - and the War on Drugs has turned out to be perpetually convenient. Nevertheless, once enough high-profile conservatives are bitten for drug possession, you'll see a change.
And just like the Committee on Anti-Communist Activities, or the Salem witch trials, the answer will continue to be "yes" until a sufficient number of high-profile people have been inconvenienced by it. Right now, the witch-hunt is under control. But like all fires, it will quickly go wild, and the frenzy of the mob will take over - at which point, there will be a few nasty incidents until someone powerful and influential is damaged, at which point the tides will change and we'll all realize what a mess we've created.
Then we'll find a new name and a new face for it and start the whole process over again.
Well, IANAMB (I am not a molecular biologist), but I would assume that if the blood or tissue types were incompatable, the embryo would very quickly become non-viable, and the body would take care of it in the normal way (remember - only about 15% of all inception results in birth; the rest are spontaneously aborted.)
I would imagine that the number of viable chimeric embryos is much lower than the total number of chimeric embryos; in fact, you could probably graph something like an inverse logistic curve of surviving chimeric embryos vs. days of pregnancy.
If they DON'T enforce the patent, not only do they lose it, but it's possible for another company to file for one so similar as to be effectively the same. If you want to protect everyone's ability to do something, you have to patent it and vigorously enforce that patent EVEN IF YOU DON'T WANT TO, or you run the risk of having someone who's a REAL asshole do so in a far nastier manner.
Here's a depressing truism: You must often sacrifice your willingness to do good in order to gain enough power that your willingness to do good is even relevant. If you have morals, you will never be able to use them.
Obviously, no government is ever going to truly have your best interest at heart, no matter how much they try to convince you that they do.
The only person that can reliably protect you is YOU. The police will not protect you. The government will not protect you. Hell, often your parents won't even protect you. It's you against the world, baby.
Think about it this way: What's easier to get on prime-time television, a scene of a woman getting punched or a scene of a woman bearing her breasts? A scene of full-penetration sex or a scene where someone dies violently?
Which is our culture more afraid of - sex or violence? Feeling good or making others feel bad?
The problem with the law is that then you have to define what you mean by 'spam', legally. Then you're right back to the same statistical problems, and the "winners" figure out how to spam without actually violating the laws, just like they're currently figuring out how to spam without tripping off the filters.
Why are people allowed to refuse treatment for their deaf children because of 'cultural diversity', but they AREN'T allowed to refuse treatment for ADHD children for the same reason?
Is it just that deaf kids are less annoying to the teacher?
Slashdot Mirror
Unfortunately, no. Killing stupid people is only a short-term solution; interface designs have to assume a baseline, and someone will inevitably be below it. The real trick is to find a way to boost everyone's intelligence reliably and in a socially acceptable way.
The first trick would be to get rid of the "it's not nice to be smarter than other people" reaction engrained into most people's minds.
Actually, though, that won't work probabilistically. The actual functions should be:
#define NOT(x) (1-x)
#define AND(x, y) (x * y)
#define OR(x, y) NOT(AND(NOT(x), NOT(y)))
This is how statistics works, anyways.
Until you find an exploit in the auto-updater itself, and suddenly the internet starts looking like a giant game of Othello.
Any benign behavior that can be mimicked by a malicious user is dangerous.
The REAL solution doesn't lie in the software or the hardware; it lies in the users. Find a way to increase mankind's collective intelligence and a lot of these sorts of problems will go away.
You know, if I were Microsoft, I would seriously consider figuring out a way to do just this. If the RIAA can start sending cease-and-desist letters to people who aren't infringing just because the filenames look similar, why can't the BSA just start impromptu raids on anyone running Linux, just to 'make sure' everything's kosher? And if someone happened to have a backup copy of Windows 2000 Professional that they forgot about when they upgraded - say, stuck behind a desk - and can't find the original CD or the liscense, there's a huge chunk of fine-based revenue for everyone, and a great scare for the rebellious.
Hell, take a few hints from the DEA and start PLANTING said backup CDs, just to make SURE the raid targets don't have the liscenses for that copy. Enforcing authority is profitable, but not NEARLY as profitable as abusing it.
If Microsoft listened to what people want instead of living by manipulating every market to suit what they think will capture it best, we'd have moved on from shitty second-class imitations of operating systems called "Windows-whatever" and onto something befitting the 21st century.
Unfortunately, no. If Microsoft listened to what people want instead of living by manipulating every market to suit what they think will capture it best, they'd still be a small company, and someone else would be the dominant monopolist in the industry - someone who lived by manipulating every market to suit what they thought would capture it best. Microsoft got there first, and did it so well that they closed the niche. Had thye not done so, someone else would have. Human evolution is at a stage where the megacorporate conglomerate is the ultimate 'best-fit'; if you aren't trying to become one, you will be relegated to the sidelines by the few members who ARE trying to become one, and who happen to be successful at it.
Here's some search terms to play with: 'power law', 'game theory', 'prisoners dilemna', 'nash equilibrium'.
And increased corporate regulation isn't the answer - corporations devote vast resources to ensuring that the regulations favor them, and to ensuring that they can adapt favorably to the regulations. Decreased corporate regulation is also not the answer - corporations devote vast resources to ensuring that they maximize capitalization of any exploitable resource, and they simply have too much power to be stopped by "the people" - especially when their primary power, at this point, is the ability to tell the people not to stop them.
Fighting it won't help; just sit back and watch the next phase of human evolution in progress.
No, it's a photoshop of her head on a Sports Illustrated model's body.
I believe that when people are presented with intelligent and logical arguments, they will turn around.
Someone's lived in Northern California too long.
Unfortunately, "intelligent and logical" arguments don't sell, or we'd never be in this mess in the first place.
Good luck, though. I'm completely behind you anyways.
Sexually suggestive? How about downright lewd?
I see we have to run through this one more time.
Wow, you got modded down fast - and not even a decency of an explanation.
And while in the abstract you're correct, your facts are slightly off - Genghis Khan was in the 12th Century, well after Yeshua got nailed to a piece of wood for instigating rebellion.
Who would you consider having had more power, William Shakespeare or Marie Antoinette? Leonardo daVinci or Pope Pious VII? Ghengis Khan or Buddha? Or, to pick two then-contemporaries, Pontius Pilate or Jesus?
Just because you hold the reins of the world doesn't mean you have the power to DO anything with it. Creativity and innovation will always triumph over sheer will to power, given enough time - precisely because they change the whole ballgame. What you're calling "power" is transient - the power to shape the destiny of the world is infinitely subtler.
I've been waiting for this for years. I want to get my girlfriend a diamond ring (even if the concept of 'traditionalism' was manufactured, a diamond ring sends a cultural message that I wish to buy into), but I refuse to buy from anything that might have been touched by DeBeers. Now I can get a high-quality diamond, and be certain that no 14 year old Sierra Leone girls had their hands cut off to get it to me.
Arnie comes close, at 29.9%. Problem is, that picture of Arnie with the naked woman sitting on his shoulders seriously undermines his credibility, people who would have voted for him go for Larry instead.) ... This is so ironic it's not even funny.
Same thing happened to us, on one of our home boxes. Trouble is, it was the "public" box (the one any roommate/guest was allowed to use), so there was no way to tell how the trojan might have got on, or even if the trojan was responsible.
We called the FBI preemptively, because we figured we would rather WE come to THEM than THEM come to US.
They weren't interested. They bounced us around from regional office to regional office, hanging up on us twice. Finally we managed to get ahold of someone in the local field office, who informed us that they don't handle reports of kiddie porn - that we should call our local police. The local police said that they don't handle that, and to call the local FBI field office. We gave up.
In my more cyni^H^H^H^Hparanoid moments, I sometimes wonder if the FBI prefers keeping prosecutions low, so they can use the ones they DO want to prosecute for maximum political effect.
Besides which, what fun is it to break down someone's door, shove them to the ground and stick a knee in their back if they know you're coming?
On my more compassionate and trusting days, I just think the whole world is screwed and noone knows how to fix it.
But if your steering wheel is on the other side, too, doesn't that just reinsert the whole problem?
Not at all; I'm saying that the number of people who like to look at kiddie porn has little to no relation to the number of people actually arrested for kiddie porn.
And pot is different in that the number of people who need to be inconvenienced must exceed the number of people who are convenienced by the status quo - and the War on Drugs has turned out to be perpetually convenient. Nevertheless, once enough high-profile conservatives are bitten for drug possession, you'll see a change.
Yes.
And just like the Committee on Anti-Communist Activities, or the Salem witch trials, the answer will continue to be "yes" until a sufficient number of high-profile people have been inconvenienced by it. Right now, the witch-hunt is under control. But like all fires, it will quickly go wild, and the frenzy of the mob will take over - at which point, there will be a few nasty incidents until someone powerful and influential is damaged, at which point the tides will change and we'll all realize what a mess we've created.
Then we'll find a new name and a new face for it and start the whole process over again.
Well, IANAMB (I am not a molecular biologist), but I would assume that if the blood or tissue types were incompatable, the embryo would very quickly become non-viable, and the body would take care of it in the normal way (remember - only about 15% of all inception results in birth; the rest are spontaneously aborted.)
I would imagine that the number of viable chimeric embryos is much lower than the total number of chimeric embryos; in fact, you could probably graph something like an inverse logistic curve of surviving chimeric embryos vs. days of pregnancy.
(Warning: NSFW)
Too... contextually... relevant.
If they DON'T enforce the patent, not only do they lose it, but it's possible for another company to file for one so similar as to be effectively the same. If you want to protect everyone's ability to do something, you have to patent it and vigorously enforce that patent EVEN IF YOU DON'T WANT TO, or you run the risk of having someone who's a REAL asshole do so in a far nastier manner.
Here's a depressing truism: You must often sacrifice your willingness to do good in order to gain enough power that your willingness to do good is even relevant. If you have morals, you will never be able to use them.
Obviously, no government is ever going to truly have your best interest at heart, no matter how much they try to convince you that they do.
The only person that can reliably protect you is YOU. The police will not protect you. The government will not protect you. Hell, often your parents won't even protect you. It's you against the world, baby.
It's ok to lie if it's about war.
As opposed to, say, getting a blowjob?
Think about it this way: What's easier to get on prime-time television, a scene of a woman getting punched or a scene of a woman bearing her breasts? A scene of full-penetration sex or a scene where someone dies violently?
Which is our culture more afraid of - sex or violence? Feeling good or making others feel bad?
The problem with the law is that then you have to define what you mean by 'spam', legally. Then you're right back to the same statistical problems, and the "winners" figure out how to spam without actually violating the laws, just like they're currently figuring out how to spam without tripping off the filters.
Why are people allowed to refuse treatment for their deaf children because of 'cultural diversity', but they AREN'T allowed to refuse treatment for ADHD children for the same reason?
Is it just that deaf kids are less annoying to the teacher?