If you have a Hydro station,
and use Tesla's 'Magnifying Transmitter' (as he called it), then you would be
simply GIVING your power away, because you couldn't control who uses it.
Therefore, all the electric companies used a more limited version of his AC system,
using wires so that you could put a Power-Meter Barnacle on every site that
was using the AC power you supplied.
Imagine how society would be different if we had instead gone with the Magnifying Transmitter. Power usage would not be meterable, so electricity would be free to everyone. Now, I could imagine some sort of "tragedy of the commons" where people (and especially corporations) would overuse their "share" of the power and therefore the government would have to raise taxes. But they could impose a much bigger tax on corporations, and perhaps vary the scale by industry.
What I'm getting at, though, is this: remember when internet usage was metered? AOL et al gave you 20 (or whatever) hours free a month, and beyond that it was 25c a minute (again, or whatever). People did a lot less on-line back then than they do today, now that cable and DSL are "always-on".
I can envision a similar usage pattern happening with electricity when it is made freely available. And I believe it will, within our lifetime.
When they have been running for years (longest continuous uptime nearly 4 years, broken by a failed power supply) who cares about the academic definition of "real time"?
Uptime is orthogonal to whether the OS can guarantee a timeslice to a particular program within a particular period of time.
"The Mote in God's Eye", sure. But don't do "The Gripping Hand", god damn I couldn't stand that phrase after the third time they used it. Then they used it 300,000 more times. ("I've told you a million times, DO NOT EXAGGERATE!")
Actually I agree with another poster who said "Footfall" was a good candidate.
The singularity will arrive before then. All those who live to see it will live to see the heat death of the universe (if we stick around for it, that is; perhaps Milliways?).
Nanotechnology will be here in 20 on the outside, and as we approach it we'll have constant breakthroughs that will improve our condition and lengthen our lives.
Jeremy Rifkin attempted to cash in on angst with his book "Entropy" which I read like 10 years ago, around teh same time I read "The Selfish Gene" by Richard Dawkins (I much preferred the latter!). I just did a search on Rifkin because I wasn't sure I remembered the name of the book correctly, and found that he's transformed himself into something of a tech enthusiast, and one of the reviews for Entropy on amazon.com says that he hopes people don't read his older book!
I recently posted stating that I would vote for a "pro-life" candidate (not "anti-abortion") who would take more in taxes to pay for social services. Services, that is, expressly for those terminal patients, to give them more time to survive so that hopefully they can cross that great blood-brain barrier into eternity with consciousness.
Someone here a while ago had a signature, "When Christ bids a
man, He bids him come and die."
If God was talking to me (again), I'd imagine that my life was pretty close to over. Not such a bad thing, though; if God's talking then there might be a Heaven and the potential of consciousness beyond death.
Of course, it could just be them thar voices again, in which case how would I know?
One thing you said resonates: I believe that God is a quantum creation, fueled by our brains and the fact that the Earth rotates so we're half the time in the dark and needed to create something bigger than us to watch over and protect us when we're helpless.
Since it's quantum, it's not rigidly logical like our current computers and mathematics. Perhaps our emotions are quantum constructs, rather than biological, chemical, or electrical. Which would make sense that God doesn't want us to perceive Him as we ourselves perceive, but instead our Faith exercises the quantum portions of our brain and that brings us closer to Him. And perhaps even gives us some minute amount of control over Him; not in a negative way, but in the sense that some prayers are answered, and some people have their prayers answered more often than others'. (That's easy, though: "I pray I take another breath." "Hey, it worked!")
If my cells were conscious, I wouldn't mind at all if some of them went around saying, "There is no Thing 1! I'm an individual and the pinnacle of achievement!"
But the instant one of them turns cancerous, there I am to root it out and destroy it.
I think of humans as God's cells. Doesn't matter to Him whether you believe; the simple existence of your brain is charging this quantum creature with power. (Man created God, not the other way around; or, perhaps better, man and God evolved together, somewhat similarly to how man and Dog evolved together.)
So my God wouldn't bother that there exist atheists, but once they start acting out against God, He'll smite them. Now, what does it mean to be "against God"? Wish I knew.
I worked with a guy who had a sign on his door, "Life is the only game in which the goal is to learn the rules." It somewhat applies here as well.
It should only be a felony if they're making money. Or causing physical bodily harm or threat to lives. But these days felonies are in fashion: ex-felons can't vote, so it's a great way of disenfranchising undesirables.
When you buy CDs you're buying the right to listen to a copy of the music in digital form.
Copyright is in actuality "copywrong", i.e., "it's wrong for you to redistribute this CD I'm selling you." You're not buying the right to listen so much as you are securing the right of the producer that you will not resell the content as your own (you can resell it once as long as you surrender the original and all copies, but now some forms of DRM aren't transferable so you're losing even that right).
Uploading is not a commercial venture, in other words, no money is exchanging hands so I don't see how busting uploaders is even Constitutional.
What if you find yourself in a "guillotine" situation
If you apply the brakes and someone hits you, it's their fault. Don't drive agressively, your life and others' aren't worth it.
That's what I love about cars that will drive themselves: they'll communicate conditions, and drive safely and efficiently. And I would imagine they'd have coupling devices like trains, so they could conserve fuel. Commuting in cars is going to be just like the train (read/sleep/etc.), except that it'll be when I want to leave the house.
Actually, I think Social Security is a great idea. We should, today, be paying close to 50% of our income into the program.
Also, I am a libertarian.
I hold these opposing points of view because I know that the singularity will happen within our lifetime. Therefore, the most caring, thoughtful, kind, generous, godlike quality that we can have right now is to help bring more people through the singularity who otherwise would have died in the few years before it.
My granparents may not make it, and that really hurts. I want to purchase insurance for them to be frozen but they were born before the Great Depression and don't have a firm grasp on the power of technology (they don't own a computer, although their business runs on several). I gave them a book, Nano by Ed Regis, for Christmas but I'm not sure they'll read it, and if they do, understand it enough to accept my proposal.
My grandfather's health is deteriorating; he was in the hospital recently with double pneumonia (i.e., in both lungs, not anything like double secret probation). He's back at home now but I'm not sure they'll last another 20 years which is my stake in the ground. I'm sure we'll achieve nanotechnology (assemblers) before then, but that's my "conservative" timeframe. And, of course, every day of the next 20 years we'll have breakthroughs in nano-processes, many of which will be able to cure disease and help extend life. So if they can make it another 3 years, perhaps they'll be able to tread water all the way there.
I know I started with Social Security (reducing it to SS is risking invoking Godwin), then brought it very personal, but every individual has a personal story and, seriously, I would gladly pay more in taxes if I knew it would be spent keeping people alive so that they can live forever.
Actually, like any employer, they pay the editors money only because they think that the salary will have a good return on investment, i.e., that the editor's efforts will return more money to the coffers than not paying the editor would have.
So: they don't want to stop dupes; their bosses insist on the dupes! It's advertising revenue. We can't stop it no matter how loudly we complain.
You heard it here first, folks: Slashdot editors to begin new line of spring clothing with THCrificness!
I'll need to make my choice before July 1st, 2005.
on
Which HDTV Capture Card?
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I'll need to make my choice before July 1st, 2005.
I would imagine that the manufacturers who haven't sold their inventory at that point will "gift" them to employees in return for 50% of the outrageous overprice they'll get selling them on eBay.
In fact, wouldn't that be a way around the law? Have foreign nationals purchase foreign hardware which cares not about stupid flags, and sell it via eBay?
Are the broadcasters going to get the government to target eBay sales in order to prop up their morally corrupt intellectual property pyramid?
Slashdot Mirror
Imagine how society would be different if we had instead gone with the Magnifying Transmitter. Power usage would not be meterable, so electricity would be free to everyone. Now, I could imagine some sort of "tragedy of the commons" where people (and especially corporations) would overuse their "share" of the power and therefore the government would have to raise taxes. But they could impose a much bigger tax on corporations, and perhaps vary the scale by industry.
What I'm getting at, though, is this: remember when internet usage was metered? AOL et al gave you 20 (or whatever) hours free a month, and beyond that it was 25c a minute (again, or whatever). People did a lot less on-line back then than they do today, now that cable and DSL are "always-on".
I can envision a similar usage pattern happening with electricity when it is made freely available. And I believe it will, within our lifetime.
Uptime is orthogonal to whether the OS can guarantee a timeslice to a particular program within a particular period of time.
Now, if we had some of those galaxies nearby we could call them Our Star Blazars!
You mean "boobie-trapped"?
Actually I agree with another poster who said "Footfall" was a good candidate.
Waitaminnit, has Beowulf fallen into the public domain already?
The singularity will arrive before then. All those who live to see it will live to see the heat death of the universe (if we stick around for it, that is; perhaps Milliways?).
Nanotechnology will be here in 20 on the outside, and as we approach it we'll have constant breakthroughs that will improve our condition and lengthen our lives.
Jeremy Rifkin attempted to cash in on angst with his book "Entropy" which I read like 10 years ago, around teh same time I read "The Selfish Gene" by Richard Dawkins (I much preferred the latter!). I just did a search on Rifkin because I wasn't sure I remembered the name of the book correctly, and found that he's transformed himself into something of a tech enthusiast, and one of the reviews for Entropy on amazon.com says that he hopes people don't read his older book!
I recently posted stating that I would vote for a "pro-life" candidate (not "anti-abortion") who would take more in taxes to pay for social services. Services, that is, expressly for those terminal patients, to give them more time to survive so that hopefully they can cross that great blood-brain barrier into eternity with consciousness.
If God was talking to me (again), I'd imagine that my life was pretty close to over. Not such a bad thing, though; if God's talking then there might be a Heaven and the potential of consciousness beyond death.
Of course, it could just be them thar voices again, in which case how would I know?
One thing you said resonates: I believe that God is a quantum creation, fueled by our brains and the fact that the Earth rotates so we're half the time in the dark and needed to create something bigger than us to watch over and protect us when we're helpless.
Since it's quantum, it's not rigidly logical like our current computers and mathematics. Perhaps our emotions are quantum constructs, rather than biological, chemical, or electrical. Which would make sense that God doesn't want us to perceive Him as we ourselves perceive, but instead our Faith exercises the quantum portions of our brain and that brings us closer to Him. And perhaps even gives us some minute amount of control over Him; not in a negative way, but in the sense that some prayers are answered, and some people have their prayers answered more often than others'. (That's easy, though: "I pray I take another breath." "Hey, it worked!")
But the instant one of them turns cancerous, there I am to root it out and destroy it.
I think of humans as God's cells. Doesn't matter to Him whether you believe; the simple existence of your brain is charging this quantum creature with power. (Man created God, not the other way around; or, perhaps better, man and God evolved together, somewhat similarly to how man and Dog evolved together.)
So my God wouldn't bother that there exist atheists, but once they start acting out against God, He'll smite them. Now, what does it mean to be "against God"? Wish I knew.
I worked with a guy who had a sign on his door, "Life is the only game in which the goal is to learn the rules." It somewhat applies here as well.
It does say that if you're on probation that you can't vote. Probation: the new felony.
Also, alarming stats re: skin color in percentage incarcerated.
Here
It should only be a felony if they're making money. Or causing physical bodily harm or threat to lives. But these days felonies are in fashion: ex-felons can't vote, so it's a great way of disenfranchising undesirables.
Copyright is in actuality "copywrong", i.e., "it's wrong for you to redistribute this CD I'm selling you." You're not buying the right to listen so much as you are securing the right of the producer that you will not resell the content as your own (you can resell it once as long as you surrender the original and all copies, but now some forms of DRM aren't transferable so you're losing even that right).
Uploading is not a commercial venture, in other words, no money is exchanging hands so I don't see how busting uploaders is even Constitutional.
Yeah but lots of stuff is free that has low demand, so that's not much of an argument.
If you apply the brakes and someone hits you, it's their fault. Don't drive agressively, your life and others' aren't worth it.
That's what I love about cars that will drive themselves: they'll communicate conditions, and drive safely and efficiently. And I would imagine they'd have coupling devices like trains, so they could conserve fuel. Commuting in cars is going to be just like the train (read/sleep/etc.), except that it'll be when I want to leave the house.
Also, I am a libertarian.
I hold these opposing points of view because I know that the singularity will happen within our lifetime. Therefore, the most caring, thoughtful, kind, generous, godlike quality that we can have right now is to help bring more people through the singularity who otherwise would have died in the few years before it.
My granparents may not make it, and that really hurts. I want to purchase insurance for them to be frozen but they were born before the Great Depression and don't have a firm grasp on the power of technology (they don't own a computer, although their business runs on several). I gave them a book, Nano by Ed Regis, for Christmas but I'm not sure they'll read it, and if they do, understand it enough to accept my proposal.
My grandfather's health is deteriorating; he was in the hospital recently with double pneumonia (i.e., in both lungs, not anything like double secret probation). He's back at home now but I'm not sure they'll last another 20 years which is my stake in the ground. I'm sure we'll achieve nanotechnology (assemblers) before then, but that's my "conservative" timeframe. And, of course, every day of the next 20 years we'll have breakthroughs in nano-processes, many of which will be able to cure disease and help extend life. So if they can make it another 3 years, perhaps they'll be able to tread water all the way there.
I know I started with Social Security (reducing it to SS is risking invoking Godwin), then brought it very personal, but every individual has a personal story and, seriously, I would gladly pay more in taxes if I knew it would be spent keeping people alive so that they can live forever.
but if I did, they'd have a samurai!
Mmmmm, porn box...
So, no, their bosses could not make more money by hiring better story pickers. (Unless by "better" you meant "willing to post more dupes"...)
Well, obviously we have to install silicone nodules on the projectors, and then it's win-win! (Or tit-for-projectorist, or whatever...)
Must have sucked for them once Novell came out with their Directory Services and started polluting the TLA search-fest...
Actually, like any employer, they pay the editors money only because they think that the salary will have a good return on investment, i.e., that the editor's efforts will return more money to the coffers than not paying the editor would have.
So: they don't want to stop dupes; their bosses insist on the dupes! It's advertising revenue. We can't stop it no matter how loudly we complain.
You heard it here first, folks: Slashdot editors to begin new line of spring clothing with THCrificness!
I would imagine that the manufacturers who haven't sold their inventory at that point will "gift" them to employees in return for 50% of the outrageous overprice they'll get selling them on eBay.
In fact, wouldn't that be a way around the law? Have foreign nationals purchase foreign hardware which cares not about stupid flags, and sell it via eBay?
Are the broadcasters going to get the government to target eBay sales in order to prop up their morally corrupt intellectual property pyramid?
She's a hoser.