Presuming (that's a big assumption) Robots get to the point of being self aware, there is now gaurentee that they will evolve an ethical system that will be superior to anything that has been developed on earth. Now if the robot is developed by a typical mad scientist type, if there is any ethics in there, it may be quite mad. Thus the scenario of the terminator movies, etc.
Thus the need for hassling out a sensible system of ethics. Otherwise we may be in trouble. Of course, it may be that man, in his currwenty state, is not capable of developing a system of ethics, and the robots will be in a position similar the Kirk in that famous star trek episode, where there is the alternat barbarian universe. The barbarian kirk could not deal with a civilized world.
We may wind up being the barbarians, more or less. Which would explain things like micorsoft, enron, goerge bush, bill clinton, rush limbaugh, matt drudge, geraldo rivera, etc.
the truly civilized, like linus torvald, are few and far between.
Not a quick commentary on how bad the radiation is for the fly, but on how bad the fly is for Africa.
[Sarcasm=1]
let's see - the Tsetse Fly is responsible for disease in millions of people, causing untold suffering. If we spread millions of Sterile (unable to reproduce = no offspring) flies, this means that the population will not suffer the disease rate, and so the native african population will not suffer the diseases and increased death rates associated with it. As a result the population will boom, and many more people will die for other reason, such as Aids.
So I guess you are right, we should not sterilize the flies and release them into the wild, crashing the fly population, and attempting fly genocide, because the sterile (unable to reproduce flies = no offspring) might cross breed producing dangerous young, spreading their infertility to lots of other species.
Cultural issues also contribute to the problem. Many spammers in Asia say they do not understand why spam is a problem.
"It's a sign of respect that someone sends you an electric business card. It means he wants you as a customer," said Zhao Peng, owner of a computer store in Hong Kong.
Of course what is a sign of respect there, may be a sign of disrepect in the here.
never mind the chinese open relay problem, which is also a real hassle.
Of course, by spreading the link to those very videos around the net, we make sure the almost anyone who cares knows that BT is just being a bit greedy. and very foolish.
God, I'd love to see this on the national news someplace.
Curious by its absence is any mention of DRM. Since I doubt that this new format will lack DRM, I would assume this ommision is because this new format will be locked down tighter than the Windows XP sourcecode repository against the states' representatives.
The new format, the Blu-ray Disc, will store more than 13 hours of film, compared with the current limit of 133 minutes, - It is expected to come into its own as more viewers become able to record TV shows on DVD machines.
I wonder if this is just for the media alone. Maybe the standard being agreed to is similar to layer 0 of the OSI model that you see in networking, the physical media.
Which would leave DRM to be decided later.
right now, I do not know who I would trust to manage my digital rights. [smile]
We would like to thank all of the little people who made this all possible.
Seriously, this is reaching a point where the corporate profit motive is starting to get in the way of pesky things like morals and human rights, etc.
I remember some Canadian professor going into this in great detail. Basically, the lack on morality in the pure profit motive is going to screw with the log term prospects of the planet
Spy gadgets from the other side are on display as well, including a replica of a large wooden seal of the United States that was a gift from the Soviet Union to Moscow's U.S. Embassy in 1945. It hung over the ambassador's desk for seven years before the listening device was discovered.
And These are people who were suspicious of the Russians to begin with? jeeze.....
But while we're at it, don't forget Jacob Ellehammer, the Danish flying pioneer. He also flew in 1906 but as his plane was tethered to a central pole his flight is usually not considered the first flight in Europe even though he flew before Santos Dumont did.
I had the mental image of a rope winding it's way around a pole. to an ending fit for a cartoon.
here we have again a situation where the consequences of a programmer philosophy may at some point clash really hard will political philosophy. A sort of cognitive dissonance, at least for some folks.
what happens when the technology you are promoting is adopted by people you might not like? You know, the whole anti-globalist thing?
Somehow, I don't think Price will be the issue, as far as the OS only goes. Note this from the article:
What is Apple selling? I would argue that Apple sells, "We are the computer company that cares about you. We try to build the best products we possible can." There's a level of trust and loyalty that people give Apple that is unmatched in the industry, and rarely matched outside it. Apple has that reputation because the company listens to customers. Yes, they make unpopular decisions, and a lot of people hate Apple. But Apple customers don't generally feel that way. They generally feel that Apple is doing the best that it can. Can Microsoft say the same? No.
Of course, Microsoft hasn't been able to reverse engineer the Steve Jobs Reality Distortion Field either.
I suspect that they do not want to have all that extra XP media out there. especially when there are tools that apparently can generate XP activation keys oby the dozen on a daily basis. [See this report on the Register for Details]
What I suspect is happening is that MS is muscling in on IP Ringhts in some way on HP via various aggreements, as seen by example here with Sony.
I recall that a year or so ago objects were discovered way out well past pluto, maybe even out to half a light year or more. (30,000 AU?)(ah, here's the link) With a number of these conveniently placed, travel to the stars could be done via these distant places, in a manner very much like Island hopping used by the Polynesians. The Kuiper Belt becomes a launching pad, training ground, etc. But this may not be the case.
If convenient objects are just a quarter light year or so apart, then the journeys do not have to be so long.
Just make sure to bring along a whole lot of cheese doodles. we'll be sending GW with you. (smile)
Which brings up the question of who should we send as the the first people to travel?
Actually as seen the the Scientific American article on TV Addiction, The problem probably is not the video games, but with TV in General. of whioch Video Games are a subset.
To which all the TV addicts scream, "we are not addicted, we can watch anytime we want"
Of course, if TV can cause some sort of a hypnotic or trance state, then all bets are off. Of course, then you have these guys who call every focused mental activity a trance, which is a bit off the mark as well
DDR333 manufacturers are starting to get the feeling that the technology is essentially moving too fast to allow companies to reap the benefits of their investment in research and development.
This can be a problem. You should be able to make back the money so you cover your costs. Unfortunately, you may have to have deep pockets to stay in the game for a long time.
You actually had a decent chance of being included in the comment base if you took the time to actually write an intelligent thoughtful comment. Form letters were tossed as obvious attempts to flood the channel. It probably winds up being similar to the number of comments in any number of Slash articles, and reading everything above 0.
15,000 submittals that were not trolls, flamebait, etc, and which actually had some content is probably not that bad."
probably better than here at slash. 47 comments that rated a 5+ - too bad their weren't any threads.
"
with the progress towards XML, etc. the WWW is moving away from those things that made the explosion of the WWW possible. The inherent simplicity in HTML, as something you could get the basics of in a few days of mild effort, or in a morning, if you were ambitious, is disappearing.
What I am nervous about is that with the advance towards the more sophisticated technologies, the earlier simpler technologies will be "obsoleted". This may have implications for the democracy of the web slowing going away because only experts can do what used to be an everyman task.
Only about 20 BountyQuest contests have resulted in bounty-winning prior art since the site's inception. New bounty offers, meanwhile, have slowed to a trickle; 23 contests were running when the company launched but only three contests are now open for submissions.
This may be a part of the problem right here. Although, I do not know about the
financing of the site in the first place.
Let's face it. I would expect that we would have an increase in the number of contests. or did it quickly get into areas that were just to obscure?
another dam buncha lawyers who think the world owes them a living.living. and then there the the state regulators getting into the act with their brilliance in trying to regulate the internet.
pardon me, while I bang my head against this convenient stone wall to get rid of this head ache.
In some countries, the decimal refers to the period (or point) between dollars and cents, while the comma is used between hundreds, thousands and millions.
Some countries reverse this and use the comma as a decimal and the period between hundreds, thousands and millions. (ie. In Brazil, $3.409,75 would be Three Thousand Four Hundred Nine REAL and 75 CENTAVOS.)
Slashdot Mirror
Thus the need for hassling out a sensible system of ethics. Otherwise we may be in trouble. Of course, it may be that man, in his currwenty state, is not capable of developing a system of ethics, and the robots will be in a position similar the Kirk in that famous star trek episode, where there is the alternat barbarian universe. The barbarian kirk could not deal with a civilized world.
We may wind up being the barbarians, more or less. Which would explain things like micorsoft, enron, goerge bush, bill clinton, rush limbaugh, matt drudge, geraldo rivera, etc.
the truly civilized, like linus torvald, are few and far between.
[okay, enough sucking up here ;-) ]
[Sarcasm=1]
let's see - the Tsetse Fly is responsible for disease in millions of people, causing untold suffering. If we spread millions of Sterile (unable to reproduce = no offspring) flies, this means that the population will not suffer the disease rate, and so the native african population will not suffer the diseases and increased death rates associated with it. As a result the population will boom, and many more people will die for other reason, such as Aids.
So I guess you are right, we should not sterilize the flies and release them into the wild, crashing the fly population, and attempting fly genocide, because the sterile (unable to reproduce flies = no offspring) might cross breed producing dangerous young, spreading their infertility to lots of other species.
[Sarcasm=0]
you get the idea
http://www.earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/Blue Marble/
I have this half formed thought, something about the idiot need to kill the goose that lays the golden egg because they are such a glutton for goose.
Some companies can be such idiots.
never mind the chinese open relay problem, which is also a real hassle.
God, I'd love to see this on the national news someplace.
How much you bet someone like gates or ellison gets into the bidding war? I could see this going really high, if people with deep pockets get into it.
we should only be so lucky, since both men are notoriously stubborn.
The new format, the Blu-ray Disc, will store more than 13 hours of film, compared with the current limit of 133 minutes, - It is expected to come into its own as more viewers become able to record TV shows on DVD machines.
I wonder if this is just for the media alone. Maybe the standard being agreed to is similar to layer 0 of the OSI model that you see in networking, the physical media.
Which would leave DRM to be decided later.
right now, I do not know who I would trust to manage my digital rights. [smile]
Seriously, this is reaching a point where the corporate profit motive is starting to get in the way of pesky things like morals and human rights, etc.
I remember some Canadian professor going into this in great detail. Basically, the lack on morality in the pure profit motive is going to screw with the log term prospects of the planet
Automatic document shredding, unless specifically marked with the archive bit set to 1
It would sety a new standard for microsoft reliability.
And These are people who were suspicious of the Russians to begin with? jeeze.....
I had the mental image of a rope winding it's way around a pole. to an ending fit for a cartoon.
what happens when the technology you are promoting is adopted by people you might not like? You know, the whole anti-globalist thing?
Lots of differnt answers to that question.
What is Apple selling? I would argue that Apple sells, "We are the computer company that cares about you. We try to build the best products we possible can." There's a level of trust and loyalty that people give Apple that is unmatched in the industry, and rarely matched outside it. Apple has that reputation because the company listens to customers. Yes, they make unpopular decisions, and a lot of people hate Apple. But Apple customers don't generally feel that way. They generally feel that Apple is doing the best that it can. Can Microsoft say the same? No.
Of course, Microsoft hasn't been able to reverse engineer the Steve Jobs Reality Distortion Field either.
I suspect that they do not want to have all that extra XP media out there. especially when there are tools that apparently can generate XP activation keys oby the dozen on a daily basis. [See this report on the Register for Details]
What I suspect is happening is that MS is muscling in on IP Ringhts in some way on HP via various aggreements, as seen by example here with Sony.
If convenient objects are just a quarter light year or so apart, then the journeys do not have to be so long.
Just make sure to bring along a whole lot of cheese doodles. we'll be sending GW with you. (smile)
Which brings up the question of who should we send as the the first people to travel?
Having a mad scientist for a parent does have some benefits sometimes.
To which all the TV addicts scream, "we are not addicted, we can watch anytime we want"
Of course, if TV can cause some sort of a hypnotic or trance state, then all bets are off. Of course, then you have these guys who call every focused mental activity a trance, which is a bit off the mark as well
This can be a problem. You should be able to make back the money so you cover your costs. Unfortunately, you may have to have deep pockets to stay in the game for a long time.
You actually had a decent chance of being included in the comment base if you took the time to actually write an intelligent thoughtful comment. Form letters were tossed as obvious attempts to flood the channel. It probably winds up being similar to the number of comments in any number of Slash articles, and reading everything above 0. 15,000 submittals that were not trolls, flamebait, etc, and which actually had some content is probably not that bad."
probably better than here at slash. 47 comments that rated a 5+ - too bad their weren't any threads. "
What I am nervous about is that with the advance towards the more sophisticated technologies, the earlier simpler technologies will be "obsoleted". This may have implications for the democracy of the web slowing going away because only experts can do what used to be an everyman task.
This may be a part of the problem right here. Although, I do not know about the financing of the site in the first place.
Let's face it. I would expect that we would have an increase in the number of contests. or did it quickly get into areas that were just to obscure?
[sigh]
another dam buncha lawyers who think the world owes them a living.living. and then there the the state regulators getting into the act with their brilliance in trying to regulate the internet.
pardon me, while I bang my head against this convenient stone wall to get rid of this head ache.
Well there is the issue of if IQ goes down in proportion to the size of the mob times the average intelligence.
For example, an individual scientist might be brilliant, but a group of them can be pretty dumb.
On this basis, the collective IQ around here has got to be heading into negative numbers.
[Joke! Joke!]
Of course, we are all waiting to see if
1) she replies in this forum,
2) if the reply is moderated to 5+.
3) Or will it go to -1 as redundant
Some countries reverse this and use the comma as a decimal and the period between hundreds, thousands and millions. (ie. In Brazil, $3.409,75 would be Three Thousand Four Hundred Nine REAL and 75 CENTAVOS.)