Yeah, like the very uncontrary troll with 5: Interesting few comments up the thread?
Really, as someone who reads mostly at threshold=3 or threshold=4 (right, hit me with a spoon, but I don't have time to read 200-500 comments every fscking time I see an interesting article)...
in these so-called "controversial" issues I generally do see opinions you would call 'contrary' at reasonably high ratings. Of course, since I basically never read at threshold=-1, I can't know if there's a sea of reasonable, well-thought and intelligent posts that prove the slashdot/GNU/linux/free software/whatever -conspiracy, but somehow I find that unlikely. If I'm dreadfully incorrect, flame me and moderate my every comment to -1, but until then, I'm happy to read comments of *both* sides (and in some cases, the third side) in controversial issue, even with very high thresholds.
Isn't Planetarion just earth 2060 in steroids? I heard similar hype about the named earth 2060 (or whatever), but I _really_ wasn't impressed. Without any sort of spatial dimension, they are essentially just number crunching. I know I shouldn't say the same about Planetarion, not having played it, but I've saw someone else play it a couple of times, asked him a few questions and it sounds just the same.
VGA planets, on the other hand... technically, it's total bullshit, but man! just try it out one day. And don't think that planets-style PBEM-in-space sucks simply because Stars! sucks.
OK, so I'm a bit opinionated here, so what? Feel free to flame me.
I never really got that "Why" question. Why what? What makes you think there is a purpose? That "How/Why" phrase has been quoted countless times as a proof that science and religion don't contradict, but to me it seems that merely admitting there is a need for "Why" is a contradiction.
Actually, if creationists "proof" that sounds sensible if you don't have clue is not countered, people who otherwise wouldn't fall for such ploys would believe it.
How many C programmers know, (really KNOW) how, say, malloc(); works?
So do you know exactly what sort of signals does your opcode generate in the CPU? You better track those electrons or you don't know what you are doing. And them orbitals! Are you sure you know where your orbitals are?
I know that
malloc() allocates size bytes and returns a pointer to the
allocated memory. The memory is not cleared.
If I need to know more, I'll dig up that glibc source, but if I don't and find more enjoyment from pretty perl scripts than obscure platform-specific tricks, don't call me a loser.
Instead of beotching, go make it better. Memes have a habit of catching; maybe, just maybe, if you wrote a bunch of good, basic, informative, descriptive nodes, people would look, think "gee, that's not such a bad idea", and follow.
And site displaying nice, properly rendering page that says "sorry, we think your browser can't do this so we won't let you" is better than badly rendering page with actual content and a little "best viewed with IE" banner how?
[person who thinks all fiction should be HARD fiction speaking]
Yes, but there is a question of consistency, or potential realism, or whatever you call it. As I see it, suspension of disbelief means that you will treat the world as true even though it is different from our world. However, I cannot (as I suspect barawn can't, either) suspend my disbelief when I'm presented with a world that is internally inconsistent, or, impossible to exist. With impossible to exist I mean that there has to be clear, distinct rules for every universe, whether fictional or real, and these rules are all there is. In a world like Matrix's, which very clearly shares all the rules of ours, only differing in the contents (the setting of world), things seem highly unplausible even in suspension of disbelief. That kind of world (or at least the history) couldn't exist if you created infinite random universes.
Yes, scifi is more fun when you let your imagination fill in. What do you think they are doing here? Did you see the thread about plugs and stuff?
P.S.....and cheesy scientific explanations. -- scuse me, isn't this science fiction? It's SUPPOSED to be scientific, damn it. Call it "unscientific, inconsistent, totally unplausible fiction that you shouldn't watch with your brains on" instead if you think like that
Hmm. Wait a minute. You (the above one) are saying that the plug is hooked to brains and sending a SIGKILL to it kills the brains... so... why wouldn't they just kill Neo through this SIGKILL? Surely they weren't stupid enough not to leave a forced SIGKILL backdoor to Matrix?
For that matter, I don't understand why the AIs weren't omnipotent in Matrix. Did they have the Frankenstein situation, created the Matrix, found it became sentient and ran out of control or what? Raise your hands, everybody who hasn't heard a story about computer that turned on its creators...
P.S. What is it with people pointing at every sufficiently complex system and screaming "it's conscious! sentient! self-aware!"? Of course we (and especially I) don't know a shit about mechanisms of consciousness, but I dare claim that consciousness does not automatically follow from a damn large MUD that Matrix is. Or that's how I would figure; Matrix would contain a full state dump of Earth and just run the simulation under few simple laws of physics, with one exception: brains in bodies in the system do not follow the laws but instead are blackboxes linked to the brains in tanks. Um. Although you might ask what's the point, but this takes us to the question of "bioelectricity? what the fsck is that?".
Um. Why does slashdot always make me like this. I'm scared to proofread these posts.
Obviously, with 'knows how to use computers' I mean 'knows enough to be able to use script kiddie toys'. Your little sister (6), just like my little brother (10), can't, even though they can boot up games and in case of my little brother, install them (and scream for help if a quick link to desktop doesn't appear... sheesh).
When I was 12 I coded demos in qbasic. But I'm talking today.
You keep repeating that these are immature children, and implying that once they hit puberty this will stop. This sounds rather contradictory to the usual stereotype to me; the classic "these are people who can't have sex" would suggest that they're in fact kids who *are* in puberty right now. In fact, I would dare claim that this terrorism isn't about property; at least where I live, that sort of behaviour disappears at age of 12 or so, and I've never seen a 12-year-old who could use a computer (strange, isn't it?).
Rather, I'd say it's about sex and the lack of it, just like they said. Without too much experience in issue, I'd say that it's not exactly uncommon that 'normal' kids do pretty dumb stuff too, just because they think it'll improve their chances of getting laid, or to impress their friends. Usually they just don't have enough power to do much; here they do.
I'm ashamed to admit it, but the IRC politics, wars and the attack sounded just cool when I read it. Yes, cool. In times past, weren't the kids in puberty those who fought? It's the war instinct, if there is such.
Umm. I'm not going to read that again, it sounds pretty strange.
Firewall-like controls:I'd like to be able to tell Netscape/Mozilla to "block traffic from doubleclick.net", or whatever. I can do this if I mess with the firewall, but I'd rather leave it alone.
You can, in a fashion. developer.netscape.com seems to be down so I can't check the URL, but my local copy of file has title "Using the Client Autoconfiguration File"; it's about configuring proxy server usage flexibly.
Basically, you write a file with extension.pac containing javascript code for function FindProxyForURL and then put an URL (local file:/ will do) to that on "automatic proxy configuration" in Edit/Prefs/Advanced/Proxies. This script will receive complete url that's being accessed as 1st parameter, and the hostname-portion of url as second. It will return a "; " -separated list of proxy usage directives, the list will be descended until something that works is found.
How is this related to blocking, you wonder? Well, put a check to see if host is on unwanted domain and if so, return something like "PROXY 127.0.0.1:666" or whatever to point at a nonexistant server (or even better, one returning empty pages). Here's an example PAC that will use local proxy for HTTP connections to everything2.com and direct connection to elsewhere:
function FindProxyForURL(url,host) {
if (shExpMatch(url,"http:*") && dnsDomainIs(host,"everything2.com")) {
return "PROXY 127.0.0.1:4505";
} else {
return "DIRECT";
}
}
I know it's unflexible, but since you specifically stated you don't want to go around mucking with firewalls or blocking proxies... I think this's the next best thing.
P.S. Posting code in/. really sucks. is "junk characters"?!?!
My understanding is that Gates has a vision for user-friendly computing, and belives that he must control the entire show in order to provide that vision for the people. He's not evil, he's doing it for us, the users. I just think that his vision is sadly mistaken.
Sorry, couldn't help it, but doesn't that description apply to basically every good and bad tyrant history has ever seen?
I think it's impossible to craft such an explanation that would be accurate and at same time satisfy you (pl as in plural, god, I hate english non-plurality you-pronoun). You can't define "consciousness"; how do you know it exists?
If there were a machine that reacted like you to outside world, it wouldn't be you, necessarilay. But if there were a machine whose internal neural networks would run in similar patterns to yours, then it would be you.
What I'm saying is that... well, sorry, your last paragraph just made me remove some words. This "I-ness" could indeed be just another feature in the network, but your question "just WHAT is consciousness" as some sort of fundamental question feels strange. You don't have the exact mechanism for anything in human brain from motorics to quantum mechanicss, why should this be anything special?
Sorry, I just got the impression that you were saying consciousness is somehow special, something that mechanist world couldn't create.
P.S. I always wondered about those people who offer souls, dualism, quantum mechanics as sentience tool and all that as solution to consciousness problem... wouldn't that just move the problem bit farther instead of solving? Doesn't every universe need clearly defined rules, making it just another MechaVerse? And just why would this "randomness" in QM create consciousness? I thought these seemingly random events are just as bound to laws of nature as anything, only with several equal outcomes instead of one.
Exactly why should this "feeling" of I-ness be anything special? These consciousness talks get all muddled up because you look at them from inside your head, so to speak. Look inside your head as 3rd person; it's a machine that takes input of slashdot.org and produces output of "because I think I'm I, there must be God".
I don't really see the problem. Theoretically it sounds entirely possible to build a machine that would react like that.
Personally (the magic word), I'd say that this whole conscience thing is overrated. You think of it as some sort of entity, soul. As far as I'm concerned, chair as conscience just like you do -or don't-, you just react (read-reply-read-reply) to your environment in more complicated way than the chair. Or slug. Or slime mold.
My little brother uses computer as much as I did at his age. I knew a lot more of mine then than he does now, I had to just to make it work. I'm sure I'm not the only one to observe this. Largely, one learns things out of necessity.
I don't see the point of making physical 3D. Human vision is 2x2D, so instead of 640x480x500 (whatever...) = 153M/update, why not do 640x480x2 directly in the brain? With head movement detection you could even have that moving thing. And while I realize this is expensive, it might be cheaper than to stack, stack, stack the screens. -Kaatunut
If it is unevitable future that we will move into computer-brain phase, I won't like that view of future. I mean, who the hell would like to live forever? I expect I'd be friggin' bored at 80 years or earlier already, only that some thing in our biological bodies would somehow make me more resistant to boredom. Would such thing preserve in computer transformation? Sorry if I offended any old people anyhow. Still, I would expect very few people would actually be immortal, who could stand it. -Kaatunut
Hehe, currently I'm working on a project, free software version of game I love, and I'm doing it with someone else just so that I wouldn't give up. Too bad he's almost as bad as me, so we both got tired:I
Even though "nolife appearance" doesn't equal computer skills nor opposite, you really didn't argue the original post's point, that for persons with "nolife" (note the "") areas of interest enhancing his/her (note the pronoun) computer skills might be a BIT more appealing than others... Oh, and your 1001101101 had 10 bits, why is that?
Well, I fit the description some - I don't have life, I'm really shy, I hide in my dark room and never leave the house. But, strangely enough, I'm not real coder: I never get anything done... can't concentrate. So... coders aren't like that, those like that aren't coders? Uh.
So US is free land, and thus anyone can sue anyone. So US isn't free land, because suing is game played by the rich, comparable to stock market in factual usability. So US isn't free land, because megacorps rule it. So US is free land because you can sue megacorps? No... you won't win them unless you have your own megacorp too. But hey, think positive, with all this stuff we got -material for jokes -fun/. stories -Ally McBeal
Slashdot Mirror
Really, as someone who reads mostly at threshold=3 or threshold=4 (right, hit me with a spoon, but I don't have time to read 200-500 comments every fscking time I see an interesting article)...
in these so-called "controversial" issues I generally do see opinions you would call 'contrary' at reasonably high ratings. Of course, since I basically never read at threshold=-1, I can't know if there's a sea of reasonable, well-thought and intelligent posts that prove the slashdot/GNU/linux/free software/whatever -conspiracy, but somehow I find that unlikely. If I'm dreadfully incorrect, flame me and moderate my every comment to -1, but until then, I'm happy to read comments of *both* sides (and in some cases, the third side) in controversial issue, even with very high thresholds.
Isn't Planetarion just earth 2060 in steroids? I heard similar hype about the named earth 2060 (or whatever), but I _really_ wasn't impressed. Without any sort of spatial dimension, they are essentially just number crunching. I know I shouldn't say the same about Planetarion, not having played it, but I've saw someone else play it a couple of times, asked him a few questions and it sounds just the same.
VGA planets, on the other hand... technically, it's total bullshit, but man! just try it out one day. And don't think that planets-style PBEM-in-space sucks simply because Stars! sucks.
OK, so I'm a bit opinionated here, so what? Feel free to flame me.
So do you know exactly what sort of signals does your opcode generate in the CPU? You better track those electrons or you don't know what you are doing. And them orbitals! Are you sure you know where your orbitals are?
I know that
If I need to know more, I'll dig up that glibc source, but if I don't and find more enjoyment from pretty perl scripts than obscure platform-specific tricks, don't call me a loser.
Instead of beotching, go make it better. Memes have a habit of catching; maybe, just maybe, if you wrote a bunch of good, basic, informative, descriptive nodes, people would look, think "gee, that's not such a bad idea", and follow.
Yes, but there is a question of consistency, or potential realism, or whatever you call it. As I see it, suspension of disbelief means that you will treat the world as true even though it is different from our world. However, I cannot (as I suspect barawn can't, either) suspend my disbelief when I'm presented with a world that is internally inconsistent, or, impossible to exist. With impossible to exist I mean that there has to be clear, distinct rules for every universe, whether fictional or real, and these rules are all there is. In a world like Matrix's, which very clearly shares all the rules of ours, only differing in the contents (the setting of world), things seem highly unplausible even in suspension of disbelief. That kind of world (or at least the history) couldn't exist if you created infinite random universes.
Yes, scifi is more fun when you let your imagination fill in. What do you think they are doing here? Did you see the thread about plugs and stuff?
P.S. ....and cheesy scientific explanations. -- scuse me, isn't this science fiction? It's SUPPOSED to be scientific, damn it. Call it "unscientific, inconsistent, totally unplausible fiction that you shouldn't watch with your brains on" instead if you think like that
For that matter, I don't understand why the AIs weren't omnipotent in Matrix. Did they have the Frankenstein situation, created the Matrix, found it became sentient and ran out of control or what? Raise your hands, everybody who hasn't heard a story about computer that turned on its creators...
P.S. What is it with people pointing at every sufficiently complex system and screaming "it's conscious! sentient! self-aware!"? Of course we (and especially I) don't know a shit about mechanisms of consciousness, but I dare claim that consciousness does not automatically follow from a damn large MUD that Matrix is. Or that's how I would figure; Matrix would contain a full state dump of Earth and just run the simulation under few simple laws of physics, with one exception: brains in bodies in the system do not follow the laws but instead are blackboxes linked to the brains in tanks. Um. Although you might ask what's the point, but this takes us to the question of "bioelectricity? what the fsck is that?".
Um. Why does slashdot always make me like this. I'm scared to proofread these posts.
When I was 12 I coded demos in qbasic. But I'm talking today.
Rather, I'd say it's about sex and the lack of it, just like they said. Without too much experience in issue, I'd say that it's not exactly uncommon that 'normal' kids do pretty dumb stuff too, just because they think it'll improve their chances of getting laid, or to impress their friends. Usually they just don't have enough power to do much; here they do.
I'm ashamed to admit it, but the IRC politics, wars and the attack sounded just cool when I read it. Yes, cool. In times past, weren't the kids in puberty those who fought? It's the war instinct, if there is such.
Umm. I'm not going to read that again, it sounds pretty strange.
You can, in a fashion. developer.netscape.com seems to be down so I can't check the URL, but my local copy of file has title "Using the Client Autoconfiguration File"; it's about configuring proxy server usage flexibly.
Basically, you write a file with extension .pac containing javascript code for function FindProxyForURL and then put an URL (local file:/ will do) to that on "automatic proxy configuration" in Edit/Prefs/Advanced/Proxies. This script will receive complete url that's being accessed as 1st parameter, and the hostname-portion of url as second. It will return a "; " -separated list of proxy usage directives, the list will be descended until something that works is found.
How is this related to blocking, you wonder? Well, put a check to see if host is on unwanted domain and if so, return something like "PROXY 127.0.0.1:666" or whatever to point at a nonexistant server (or even better, one returning empty pages). Here's an example PAC that will use local proxy for HTTP connections to everything2.com and direct connection to elsewhere:
function FindProxyForURL(url,host) {
if (shExpMatch(url,"http:*") && dnsDomainIs(host,"everything2.com")) {
return "PROXY 127.0.0.1:4505";
} else {
return "DIRECT";
}
}
I know it's unflexible, but since you specifically stated you don't want to go around mucking with firewalls or blocking proxies... I think this's the next best thing.
P.S. Posting code in /. really sucks. is "junk characters"?!?!
Sorry, couldn't help it, but doesn't that description apply to basically every good and bad tyrant history has ever seen?
If there were a machine that reacted like you to outside world, it wouldn't be you, necessarilay. But if there were a machine whose internal neural networks would run in similar patterns to yours, then it would be you.
What I'm saying is that... well, sorry, your last paragraph just made me remove some words. This "I-ness" could indeed be just another feature in the network, but your question "just WHAT is consciousness" as some sort of fundamental question feels strange. You don't have the exact mechanism for anything in human brain from motorics to quantum mechanicss, why should this be anything special?
Sorry, I just got the impression that you were saying consciousness is somehow special, something that mechanist world couldn't create.
P.S. I always wondered about those people who offer souls, dualism, quantum mechanics as sentience tool and all that as solution to consciousness problem... wouldn't that just move the problem bit farther instead of solving? Doesn't every universe need clearly defined rules, making it just another MechaVerse? And just why would this "randomness" in QM create consciousness? I thought these seemingly random events are just as bound to laws of nature as anything, only with several equal outcomes instead of one.
I don't really see the problem. Theoretically it sounds entirely possible to build a machine that would react like that.
Personally (the magic word), I'd say that this whole conscience thing is overrated. You think of it as some sort of entity, soul. As far as I'm concerned, chair as conscience just like you do -or don't-, you just react (read-reply-read-reply) to your environment in more complicated way than the chair. Or slug. Or slime mold.
My little brother uses computer as much as I did at his age. I knew a lot more of mine then than he does now, I had to just to make it work. I'm sure I'm not the only one to observe this. Largely, one learns things out of necessity.
I don't see the point of making physical 3D. Human vision is 2x2D, so instead of 640x480x500 (whatever...) = 153M/update, why not do 640x480x2 directly in the brain? With head movement detection you could even have that moving thing. And while I realize this is expensive, it might be cheaper than to stack, stack, stack the screens. -Kaatunut
that it was Metallica.
...but batmud for one has had rules regulating rl-mud trade for long time, as have many muds propably.
/secure/typo! You better had provide some more fast!
Yea, why bother with anything but BAT?
"Error: unable to clone
If it is unevitable future that we will move into computer-brain phase, I won't like that view of future. I mean, who the hell would like to live forever? I expect I'd be friggin' bored at 80 years or earlier already, only that some thing in our biological bodies would somehow make me more resistant to boredom. Would such thing preserve in computer transformation? Sorry if I offended any old people anyhow. Still, I would expect very few people would actually be immortal, who could stand it. -Kaatunut
Hehe, currently I'm working on a project, free software version of game I love, and I'm doing it with someone else just so that I wouldn't give up. Too bad he's almost as bad as me, so we both got tired :I
Even though "nolife appearance" doesn't equal computer skills nor opposite, you really didn't argue the original post's point, that for persons with "nolife" (note the "") areas of interest enhancing his/her (note the pronoun) computer skills might be a BIT more appealing than others... Oh, and your 1001101101 had 10 bits, why is that?
Well, I fit the description some - I don't have life, I'm really shy, I hide in my dark room and never leave the house. But, strangely enough, I'm not real coder: I never get anything done... can't concentrate. So... coders aren't like that, those like that aren't coders? Uh.
So US is free land, and thus anyone can sue anyone. So US isn't free land, because suing is game played by the rich, comparable to stock market in factual usability. So US isn't free land, because megacorps rule it. So US is free land because you can sue megacorps? No... you won't win them unless you have your own megacorp too. But hey, think positive, with all this stuff we got -material for jokes -fun /. stories -Ally McBeal