You know, I'm not a big fan of oppression of minority groups - but I still can't feel entirely terrible about this.
This technology will have to be tested on people before it can be used for the good of mankind. Now, in a perfect world, of course, I'd suggest some kind of "lottery" system where they picked a person at random and everyone wanted to volunteer.
But, let's face it, that's not going to happen. Instead, the technology is created by the highest bidder, who tests it on the lowest bidder. In the words of King Missile, "That's reality. That's the way it is."
Now, someone might say, "Aren't there any methods of learning that don't involve human/animal/vegetable testing?" To which I'd remind you that, as a group consisting largely of "computer people", we know better than anyone else that you learn twenty times more from your fuck-ups than from your successes.
In conclusion, human testing is sometimes necessary, and we should force it upon the Amish.
Oh yeah, big shot? Let's see a link to this supposed encoder-decoder.
Oh, what? It's not done? You're barely in the conceptual phase? Well, as it turns out, I'm working on a new OS, which I'm going to be calling GNAGA (GNAGA's Not A Good Acronym). It is currently better than your lame-ass encoder, because it has a name.
Incidentally, how is typing "vi" equivalent to "ripping apart"? Or are you literally looking at the binaries and trying to translate them into source code?
I'd just like to point out that you are the lamest, whiniest little bitch in history.
You may have a point about VQF, but you don't actually give any information on VQF. You appear to be name-dropping to look cool. Most of us probably either A) are hearing about VQF for the first time; or B) have sort of heard of VQF once in passing. Instead of acting ridiculously elitist, why don't you make yourself useful and DESCRIBE the VQF format and its comparative advantages?
Also, MP3 does *NOT* sound like an old, scratchy 78. It's obviously not quite CD format (because it's compressed), but in a blind "Pepsi challenge" type test through headphones, I could probably not distinguish the two.
I did notice you posted something pretty awesome earlier, although I forget what it was, so I'll give you props for that, but in terms of this last post, you suck.
I doubt it, but here's a little test we could run to find out.
1. Obtain a pile of money. Good methods include crime and inheritance.
2. Run around pulling at your hair screaming, "I HATE THE.BMP FORMAT!!" I'd just like to point out that I do hate the.BMP format. My friend and I were arguing about this the other day. I said, "Any modern computer will have no problem decompressing a.GIF or.JPG on the fly." He replied, "Yeah, but drive space is hardly an issue anymore." "Yes", I retorted, "But bandwidth is - and not everyone has direct access to a T1." At this point he hit me.
3. Where was I? Oh, yeah, lobby Congress to try to stamp out the.BMP format in its entirety. Print T-Shirts that say "Down with.BMP!" Threaten foreign countries who use.BMPs. Try to buy the.BMP format outright and claim that you invented it.
Will these steps cut down on the number of.BMPs on the internet? Maybe. But for every ten you get rid of, six slashdotters will embed them in their comments using MIME just to piss you off.
In conclusion,.BMP sucks, and I like Mountain Dew.
but according to Linus, Plan 9 is the direction in which Linux is headed. [Linux] 2.5 is slated to have per-process namespace and devfs. It's Plan 9 all over again
Maybe that's why it's a good thing that Linux is open-source. No matter how crazy and insane Linus becomes, he can't really screw it up for everybody.
I can think of companies whose crazy and insane visions do and have screwed it up for everybody... arrgh... it's right on the tip of my tongue...
I don't like these Quickiefests.
on
Quickiefest 2000
·
· Score: 3
As I mentioned in the subject line, I don't like these Quickiefests. Many of you are probably wondering, "Why doesn't Chiasmus_ like these Quickiefests? I think they're a fun way to get a lot of worthless information at once." Fortunately, I have reasons.
1. Without any coherent topic for discussion, the responses tend to be more than 75% trolls.
2. Because of this, moderators get frustrated, because they want to moderate something up, which brings in all the karma whores who post six worthless paragraphs on any given quickie.
3. Any topic which doesn't deserve a coherent discussion doesn't belong on Slashdot anyway.
4. Quickies are usually mind-numbingly stupid, like that "eight ball" thing that's been on the internet for six years.
5. If we're going to have trollfest discussions anyway, can't you at least include links to some Natalie Portman sites?
6. Signal 11 is guaranteed to post at least one rambling message or bad joke for each quickie.
Those are my six reasons that this discussion is worthless and nobody, including me, should post to it.
I stream my MP3s on a Sony Vaio using a PCMCIA wireless LAN card. This wireless connection goes to a server in the NOC on the other side of the building, which relays over to a box sitting right next to me, from which at least 10 people are playing MP3s at any given time. It also runs a web server, an eggdrop bot, and lots of my ridiculous C code that sucks.
Their reaction to CBS showing people eating rats on the grounds that it will encourage imitation (err... yeah) I mean, what about Cheers when Norm would head over to the Hungry Heifer? Where was PETA then? Their objection to people actually eating rats (do you think they *like* this? It's a survival issue, methinks) The fact that they pursued a *lawsuit* to shut down a parody site
What really fries me is that PETA shut down a parody site when one of their main means of delivering their message is by defacing fast food chains with their slogan-bearing stickers. Apparently, PETA would like "slightly questionable free speech" to work only in their favor.
Speaking as a member of the internet community, I take extreme offense to your action in getting a court order to shut down your parody site PETA.ORG.
PETA.ORG was not masquerading as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals; in fact, it explicitly stated that it was a parody site and included a link to your actual site. Perhaps PETA, not unlike McDonald's, or any of the major corporations it fights against, has become an organization based not on principles, but on using "bully tactics" - taking legal actions and lining the pockets of the right people to shut down any alternative views or parodies.
Your attack on free speech and the internet community is intolerable to those of us who think that our basic constitutional rights--in this case, freedom of speech--is more important than the agenda of any organization, no matter how "right" they think they are. The use of "force", legal or otherwise, to limit access to others' points of view is fascist, no matter what the points of view in question are.
As evidenced by the discussion on Slashdot, you have offended literally thousands, or even hundreds of thousands, of people across the country. Your fanatacism about animal rights does not justify trampling on everyone else's right to free speech. There is little recourse any of us can take, but rest assured that many of us are now openly hostile to PETA, and that this has not helped your cause in any way.
Life formed in the prescence of amino acids and protiens; these were necessary for (our carbon-based form of) life to exist.
Sugars and protiens, AFAIK, have a lot in common. It seems to me that these sugars could suggest a carbon-based-life-friendly environment, but do not necessarily prove that there is life.
Signal 11 knows how to play the game. There's no really good way to moderate this down. It's not Offtopic, it's not a Troll (I think all trolls are offtopic by definition), it's not really Flamebait (It'll bait flames, but then, just the name Signal 11 has become flamebait in that sense), it's not Overrated (it hasn't been rated at all), and it's definitely not Redundant.
Maybe we need a new moderation category, like "Unfunny", "Worthless", or "Lame".
A friend of mine got a case of nootropics from Switzerland (I think) about 18 months ago.
He claimed it made him smarter. I have my doubts. Then again, when you're smoking a lot of pot at the same time, you don't necessarily have good scientific experiment conditions.
I see no reason that genetic enhancements would aim to make us all identical. Many people tend to have a strong draw toward the unique. Also, although your extremely general statement is a good piece of FUD, can you think of any specific instance where improving our ability to learn and making us uniformly smarter would damage the species? I'm not asking for more FUD, like "What if they screw it up?" Your point is that variation is always preferable. My question, in the specific case of intelligence, is, "Why?"
Essentially, humans are hacking our own source code as we speak. Perhaps there will be a "Microsoft Human" distribution (or, for that matter, "American Human" distribution) and a "Open-Source Human" distribution.
As long as individuals retain some control over the genes (source code) of their children, there will always be variety.
Remember how those of us running Linux weren't affected by ILOVEYOU? Siggy's right - a uniform species is more prone to attack, just like a uniform OS - but as long as we remain vigilant against some entity trying to force us to standarize our gene pool, we should be just fine.
Fortunately, I've already foiled you with my strategy of "sleeping with ugly girls"
It's not always pleasant, but, hey, I'm a professional coder.
Speaking of which, can we forego the "smart" gene and focus on "attractive" genes? I think the human species tends to be smart enough for my taste. I'd rather be around hot chicks that I could trick into sleeping with me than hideously ugly chicks who could beat me at chess.
That's actually one of the concerns I have about our current ethical paradigm, wherere screwing around with the genetics of animals is "research", and screwing around with the genetics of people is "playing God".
People have made the "playing God" argument about all sorts of technologies. Airplanes were "playing God" - men shouldn't be able to fly. The Polio vaccine was "playing God" - men shouldn't be able to prevent disease.
The only problem is, when we "play God", we seem to do a better job than God.
And if we start going around genetically enhancing every other species we can find, eventually, we're going to make them a little too good. I'm not talking about doomsday scenarios, like that stupid-ass movie with the "smart sharks" - but don't you think that a bunch of smart mice, or houseflies, or cats, could get a little annoying?
Personally, I do NOT want my hamster to be able to figure out how to open the fridge - or, for that matter, how to log on and post flamebait about how much Signal 11 sucks.
If you post a hyperlink to a page that has a phone number on it, and when you call that number, you get a URL to another page that has nothing on it except <blink>I'm going to assassinate the president!</blink>, are you criminally liable?
Oh, yeah. Like you're going to ask a marketing guy whether his NOC equipment is on the floor. I don't think our marketing guy has ever seen our NOC, so he probably doesn't know that it has fire sprinklers in it. He also probably doesn't know that the building is on a flood plain.
Actually, you'd probably get the best results if you called tech support, asked them a ridiculously weird question, finally asked for the NOC administrator, and then asked him questions like that. But, then the marketing guys would probably hate you and the NOC administrator, in his perpetual state of caffeine-induced agitation, would be so perturbed that you wasted his time that he'd make your life a living hell.
In conclusion, the only way to know whether or not to colate somewhere is to put in a job application, work for them for three weeks, and then quit.
Slashdot Mirror
You know, I'm not a big fan of oppression of minority groups - but I still can't feel entirely terrible about this.
This technology will have to be tested on people before it can be used for the good of mankind. Now, in a perfect world, of course, I'd suggest some kind of "lottery" system where they picked a person at random and everyone wanted to volunteer.
But, let's face it, that's not going to happen. Instead, the technology is created by the highest bidder, who tests it on the lowest bidder. In the words of King Missile, "That's reality. That's the way it is."
Now, someone might say, "Aren't there any methods of learning that don't involve human/animal/vegetable testing?" To which I'd remind you that, as a group consisting largely of "computer people", we know better than anyone else that you learn twenty times more from your fuck-ups than from your successes.
In conclusion, human testing is sometimes necessary, and we should force it upon the Amish.
Oh yeah, big shot? Let's see a link to this supposed encoder-decoder.
Oh, what? It's not done? You're barely in the conceptual phase? Well, as it turns out, I'm working on a new OS, which I'm going to be calling GNAGA (GNAGA's Not A Good Acronym). It is currently better than your lame-ass encoder, because it has a name.
Incidentally, how is typing "vi" equivalent to "ripping apart"? Or are you literally looking at the binaries and trying to translate them into source code?
Bitch!
C sharp is the enharmonic equivalent of D flat. Which is probably what I'll end up calling this language.
I'd just like to point out that you are the lamest, whiniest little bitch in history.
You may have a point about VQF, but you don't actually give any information on VQF. You appear to be name-dropping to look cool. Most of us probably either A) are hearing about VQF for the first time; or B) have sort of heard of VQF once in passing. Instead of acting ridiculously elitist, why don't you make yourself useful and DESCRIBE the VQF format and its comparative advantages?
Also, MP3 does *NOT* sound like an old, scratchy 78. It's obviously not quite CD format (because it's compressed), but in a blind "Pepsi challenge" type test through headphones, I could probably not distinguish the two.
I did notice you posted something pretty awesome earlier, although I forget what it was, so I'll give you props for that, but in terms of this last post, you suck.
Signal 11 has posted 0 comments (this only counts the last few weeks)
That's weird. I could have sworn I posted hostile responses to Signal 11's crappy comments at least ten times or so in the last few weeks.
I doubt it, but here's a little test we could run to find out.
.BMP FORMAT!!" I'd just like to point out that I do hate the .BMP format. My friend and I were arguing about this the other day. I said, "Any modern computer will have no problem decompressing a .GIF or .JPG on the fly." He replied, "Yeah, but drive space is hardly an issue anymore." "Yes", I retorted, "But bandwidth is - and not everyone has direct access to a T1." At this point he hit me.
.BMP format in its entirety. Print T-Shirts that say "Down with .BMP!" Threaten foreign countries who use .BMPs. Try to buy the .BMP format outright and claim that you invented it.
.BMPs on the internet? Maybe. But for every ten you get rid of, six slashdotters will embed them in their comments using MIME just to piss you off.
.BMP sucks, and I like Mountain Dew.
1. Obtain a pile of money. Good methods include crime and inheritance.
2. Run around pulling at your hair screaming, "I HATE THE
3. Where was I? Oh, yeah, lobby Congress to try to stamp out the
Will these steps cut down on the number of
In conclusion,
This is timothy with the fake i. See? It's that weird foreign i. He's not the real Slim Shady.
but according to Linus, Plan 9 is the direction in which Linux is headed. [Linux] 2.5 is slated to have per-process namespace and devfs. It's Plan 9 all over again
Maybe that's why it's a good thing that Linux is open-source. No matter how crazy and insane Linus becomes, he can't really screw it up for everybody.
I can think of companies whose crazy and insane visions do and have screwed it up for everybody... arrgh... it's right on the tip of my tongue...
As I mentioned in the subject line, I don't like these Quickiefests. Many of you are probably wondering, "Why doesn't Chiasmus_ like these Quickiefests? I think they're a fun way to get a lot of worthless information at once." Fortunately, I have reasons.
1. Without any coherent topic for discussion, the responses tend to be more than 75% trolls.
2. Because of this, moderators get frustrated, because they want to moderate something up, which brings in all the karma whores who post six worthless paragraphs on any given quickie.
3. Any topic which doesn't deserve a coherent discussion doesn't belong on Slashdot anyway.
4. Quickies are usually mind-numbingly stupid, like that "eight ball" thing that's been on the internet for six years.
5. If we're going to have trollfest discussions anyway, can't you at least include links to some Natalie Portman sites?
6. Signal 11 is guaranteed to post at least one rambling message or bad joke for each quickie.
Those are my six reasons that this discussion is worthless and nobody, including me, should post to it.
I stream my MP3s on a Sony Vaio using a PCMCIA wireless LAN card. This wireless connection goes to a server in the NOC on the other side of the building, which relays over to a box sitting right next to me, from which at least 10 people are playing MP3s at any given time. It also runs a web server, an eggdrop bot, and lots of my ridiculous C code that sucks.
I have had no problems.
Their reaction to CBS showing people eating rats on the grounds that it will encourage imitation (err ... yeah) I mean, what about Cheers when Norm would head over to the Hungry Heifer? Where was PETA then?
Their objection to people actually eating rats (do you think they *like* this? It's a survival issue, methinks)
The fact that they pursued a *lawsuit* to shut down a parody site
What really fries me is that PETA shut down a parody site when one of their main means of delivering their message is by defacing fast food chains with their slogan-bearing stickers. Apparently, PETA would like "slightly questionable free speech" to work only in their favor.
Here's my letter. Where's yours?
To Whom it May Concern:
Speaking as a member of the internet community, I take extreme offense to your action in getting a court order to shut down your parody site PETA.ORG.
PETA.ORG was not masquerading as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals; in fact, it explicitly stated that it was a parody site and included a link to your actual site. Perhaps PETA, not unlike McDonald's, or any of the major corporations it fights against, has become an organization based not on principles, but on using "bully tactics" - taking legal actions and lining the pockets of the right people to shut down any alternative views or parodies.
Your attack on free speech and the internet community is intolerable to those of us who think that our basic constitutional rights--in this case, freedom of speech--is more important than the agenda of any organization, no matter how "right" they think they are. The use of "force", legal or otherwise, to limit access to others' points of view is fascist, no matter what the points of view in question are.
As evidenced by the discussion on Slashdot, you have offended literally thousands, or even hundreds of thousands, of people across the country. Your fanatacism about animal rights does not justify trampling on everyone else's right to free speech. There is little recourse any of us can take, but rest assured that many of us are now openly hostile to PETA, and that this has not helped your cause in any way.
Wasn't the movie in question "Shaving Ryan's Privates"?
Personally, I think if you're dumb enough to confuse them, you deserve to be watching the wrong one.
Well, even though you've shown me to be a little uninformed, this does a lot to reinforce my point.
Sometimes, atoms come together in simple configurations. This does not imply life.
I am very, very drunk right now.
Are you sure that's proof??
Life formed in the prescence of amino acids and protiens; these were necessary for (our carbon-based form of) life to exist.
Sugars and protiens, AFAIK, have a lot in common. It seems to me that these sugars could suggest a carbon-based-life-friendly environment, but do not necessarily prove that there is life.
Signal 11 knows how to play the game. There's no really good way to moderate this down. It's not Offtopic, it's not a Troll (I think all trolls are offtopic by definition), it's not really Flamebait (It'll bait flames, but then, just the name Signal 11 has become flamebait in that sense), it's not Overrated (it hasn't been rated at all), and it's definitely not Redundant.
Maybe we need a new moderation category, like "Unfunny", "Worthless", or "Lame".
A friend of mine got a case of nootropics from Switzerland (I think) about 18 months ago.
He claimed it made him smarter. I have my doubts. Then again, when you're smoking a lot of pot at the same time, you don't necessarily have good scientific experiment conditions.
I believe you're repeating yourself.
I see no reason that genetic enhancements would aim to make us all identical. Many people tend to have a strong draw toward the unique. Also, although your extremely general statement is a good piece of FUD, can you think of any specific instance where improving our ability to learn and making us uniformly smarter would damage the species? I'm not asking for more FUD, like "What if they screw it up?" Your point is that variation is always preferable. My question, in the specific case of intelligence, is, "Why?"
Let me make an analogy.
Essentially, humans are hacking our own source code as we speak. Perhaps there will be a "Microsoft Human" distribution (or, for that matter, "American Human" distribution) and a "Open-Source Human" distribution.
As long as individuals retain some control over the genes (source code) of their children, there will always be variety.
Remember how those of us running Linux weren't affected by ILOVEYOU? Siggy's right - a uniform species is more prone to attack, just like a uniform OS - but as long as we remain vigilant against some entity trying to force us to standarize our gene pool, we should be just fine.
Fortunately, I've already foiled you with my strategy of "sleeping with ugly girls"
It's not always pleasant, but, hey, I'm a professional coder.
Speaking of which, can we forego the "smart" gene and focus on "attractive" genes? I think the human species tends to be smart enough for my taste. I'd rather be around hot chicks that I could trick into sleeping with me than hideously ugly chicks who could beat me at chess.
Does anyone else hear a helicopter?
That's actually one of the concerns I have about our current ethical paradigm, wherere screwing around with the genetics of animals is "research", and screwing around with the genetics of people is "playing God".
People have made the "playing God" argument about all sorts of technologies. Airplanes were "playing God" - men shouldn't be able to fly. The Polio vaccine was "playing God" - men shouldn't be able to prevent disease.
The only problem is, when we "play God", we seem to do a better job than God.
And if we start going around genetically enhancing every other species we can find, eventually, we're going to make them a little too good. I'm not talking about doomsday scenarios, like that stupid-ass movie with the "smart sharks" - but don't you think that a bunch of smart mice, or houseflies, or cats, could get a little annoying?
Personally, I do NOT want my hamster to be able to figure out how to open the fridge - or, for that matter, how to log on and post flamebait about how much Signal 11 sucks.
Or if Nabisco were somehow able to convince String Cheese companies to make cheese that was only Nabisco-compatible.
I've had cheese compatability issues in several of my ham sandwiches before.. damn Subway
If you post a hyperlink to a page that has a phone number on it, and when you call that number, you get a URL to another page that has nothing on it except <blink>I'm going to assassinate the president!</blink>, are you criminally liable?
Oh, yeah. Like you're going to ask a marketing guy whether his NOC equipment is on the floor. I don't think our marketing guy has ever seen our NOC, so he probably doesn't know that it has fire sprinklers in it. He also probably doesn't know that the building is on a flood plain.
Actually, you'd probably get the best results if you called tech support, asked them a ridiculously weird question, finally asked for the NOC administrator, and then asked him questions like that. But, then the marketing guys would probably hate you and the NOC administrator, in his perpetual state of caffeine-induced agitation, would be so perturbed that you wasted his time that he'd make your life a living hell.
In conclusion, the only way to know whether or not to colate somewhere is to put in a job application, work for them for three weeks, and then quit.