Exactly. We are blessed with instincts that date from before mammals evolved. Even reptiles have some of the same instincts. Does that mean that they are appropriate for us now?
We are largely ruled by our DNA. Our rational minds often struggle with that. Soon, we will be able to safely modify our DNA to be less obstructive to modern reality. Until then we must "THINK OF THE CHILDREN!"
There is an aspect to this story that may be disturbing to some. That is: we value some human lives higher than others. We have special laws to punish people who harm children, police, pregnant women, etc. We have unwritten laws (yet obvious to observers) that skin color changes the value of some humans. Age is another factor. Consider a situation where you must choose between saving the life of a sweet innocent baby and a crusty old college professor who is leading the research on a cancer cure. How do you value these lives? Which would you save?
"The problem is that the FBI was distributing child pornography for two weeks."
Perhaps you believe that they should have immediately arrested the operator of the site and let the thousands of others continue their activities elsewhere? And let the children remain in captivity? Assuming that the FBI is being honest with us, (?) most will agree that they did the right thing. Those two weeks are inconsequential in comparison.
"I made my browser window this wide because I want to see text this wide"
Absolutely, and to make it worse- if you try to make the text bigger, the column of text shrinks; now you have even more useless white space.
I know two solutions. One is the add-on HacktheWeb. Works on Firefox, YMMV. A couple clicks does it: Select the column you want to 'I'solate, press the letter I, and it fills the window. Optionally, you can select individual items and 'R'emove them.
The other solution is to avoid the site and use alterslash.org for a clean view of the day's gossip.
A third solution exists, works great except on/. Turn one of your monitors sideways for use with documents and web pages which tend to be taller than they are wide. Your Mac will reorient the screen content, otherwise YMMV.
One problem with taxing a robot is 'how much to charge?'. There is a similar challenge in the auto repair industry: how much to charge for... changing a headlamp in a 2015 Toyota Corolla, for example. The answer is a bit complicated. There are books that document every possible repair procedure and the average time of each repair. If the headlamp is a 15 minute job then the customer will be charged for 15 minutes' labor, regardless of the actual time the mechanic takes.
When a robot takes a human task, that human task should be measured similarly- how long would an average human take to do the job, and what pay grade would have applied? Then we know the value of the work, and the cost in human displacement, and we have a basis for taxing the robot.
Sold my Apple ][ -- miss it terribly. Still have my ancient Newton Messagepads and 15 year old TiBook. My main squeeze is a 10 year old iMac and my newest is a 5 year old 17" MBP. What makes them special?
One of the Newtons gives me trouble, the others all work like new. Never a problem through many software updates and peripheral devices. Rock solid reliable. Never a virus either.
When a newbie asks me what to buy, I reply with a question: What is your time worth? You can save $200+ buying a generic PC clone; or you can buy a Mac and save 200+ hours of your life debugging and fussing and not getting the results you want. Which is the bargain?
I grew up in an idyllic suburban countryside on the banks of a river and lived a Huck Finn childhood. Everyone in our community knew everyone else. No bicycle had ever been stolen there, though it may have been left at the beach for a week. Nice for kids, but stifling and claustrophobic for me the adult.
Now I live in walking distance of the finest park in America's Finest City (urban San Diego) with the best zoo in America and a score of museums and other entertainments. I'm in walking distance of dozens of fancy night clubs, a dozen coffee shops, many restaurants, exotic grocery stores, huge farmers' market, yadda... There are at least hundreds of employers in walking distance- tech firms, medical, advertising, and retail of course. Artists, musicians, photographers, hackers & con men. I make an effort to drive the car and the motorcycle once a week to charge their batteries, but there's really no place to go.
But best is the people I meet every day. Not your typical bland Starbucks suburbanites but creative, risk taking individuals of every stripe, and OK, some homeless people but even they are a cut above the suburban homeless. I'm at the far end of 70 now and I need this stimulation or I'll be bored to tears.
My search for 'hsbc ripoff' resulted in 36,000 results. This is one of the nastiest financial institutions on earth. The Wiki will explain some of the controversies around this London/Hongkong monstrosity but there is no easy way to grasp the financial pain that they have inflicted on ordinary individuals. Avoid at all cost!
"In most wealthy countries, kids are a liability..."
Not quite. In wealthy countries, the One Percent need us to have more kids. When 500,000,000 hungry people are fighting over 100,000,000 jobs, we won't have the time or energy to start a revolution against the rich and powerful.
In the best news sources there was always a clear distinction between 'news' and 'opinion'--entirely separate columns and on different pages in a newspaper, clearly marked where opinion reigned. The opinion was typically that of the publisher, editor or respected columnists.
That distinction has changed and even some of the most widely consumed sources mix news and opinion. Even where opinion is not obvious, a news item is often riddled with innuendo.
I have a particular bug up my butt about the use of children in the news. Any terrible event, such as civilian deaths in Syria, is made more terrible by counting the dead children. Is a dead child more significant than a dead adult? Or is it simply a pandering to the emotions of news consumers, ultimately striving for profit?
The obvious solution is to have bots present the news. Bots programmed not to have opinions or biases. This will happen, of course, and even the bots will be attacked as promoting some agenda. Meanwhile opinion will remain the primary and most profitable news source for the uneducated.
Google has long offered users an option to filter search results. No doubt many parents and some others prefer this. Why should this be a problem?
"SafeSearch can help you block inappropriate or explicit images from your Google Search results. The SafeSearch filter isn't 100% accurate, but it helps you avoid most violent and adult content."
3) Uber has a captive audience in every car. Ask yourself what Google and Facebook and TV networks do with their captive audience. 4) Uber has vast knowledge about where people go, and inferences about what people do as well as their financial and social status. Ask yourself what Google and Facebook do with similar information. 5) Uber's various conflicts with worldwide governments become an asset as they learn how to manipulate and coerce regulators. They will create favorable conditions for their present and future ambitions.
"The fact that they say it might make it to the market in ten years means it's barely more than a tenuous idea right now..."
Yeah, and those dang 'horseless carriages' are another waste of time. What a stupid idea! Noisy stinky unreliable contraption that can't go faster than a mule.
On a breadboard: 6800 CPU, 512 bytes memory, no storage. Hex keypad and eight 7segment LEDs. Assembly language in ROM. Great for creating clock, timers, thermometer, etc.
Three months later I got an Apple ][ and forgot all about the 6800. Wow, the Apple had a better keyboard, 16K RAM, big TV display, Assembly and Integer BASIC, and plenty of storage on affordable audio cassettes!
Most important was the big Red Apple Manual with detailed specifications of the computer circuits, the ROM code, memory map and even some sample programs (and many errors that made things interesting).
No, no, that's not right; most important was the user group that I helped create shortly afterwards. Two hundred people in my town, thousands more around the world... together we helped create the social structure that led to Slashdot. Computers come and go, people are more interesting.
Um, would it be terribly wrong to wait for the facts to arrive before jumping to conclusions? I can't help but observe that many commenters have some preconceived notions in this matter.
My mind is open to the actual facts, and while they are few and fleeting, it is clear that this is all part of a Trump conspiracy, aided by Russian spies and probably more than a few Turks.
Following the links, it seems they pay ~12/hour in California for laborers. No work-at-home listings were found. You might gross $1K/month. It could be a step up for an Uber driver. But there is a cost that all job hunters pay: you give up privacy big time. They can do anything they want with your data, including altering it, now and forever; here in the words of Amazon:
"1. are acknowledging that you have read the job description for the position you are applying for and that you understand the basic requirements needed to perform the job; 2. consent to the processing, analyzing and assessment of your personal data by Amazon, salesforce.com or any other third party for the purposes of your application and for any other legitimate purposes of Amazon. For the avoidance of doubt, the âoeprocessingâ of your personal data will include but not restricted to collecting, receiving, recording, organizing, collating, storing, updating, altering, using, disseminating, distributing, merging, linking, blocking, degrading, erasing or destroying of your personal data; and 3. consent to Amazon retaining your personal data after the application process, in order to assist it with the effective monitoring of its job application processes and to your personal data being stored in an electronic database in the USA."
Regardless of conflicting theories, Dark Energy will live on. This is for two reasons: 1- Dark Energy is rather essential to some science fiction fantasy; and 2- Dark Energy is not copyrighted by Disney or any other litigious entity. Try using 'the Force', 'the Spice Melange', 'Sonic Screwdriver' or 'the One Ring' to explain your scifi miracles and legal problems arise.
And, hey, It's Dark, and it's Energy; what's not to like?
A great deal of technology went into the success of the re-useable rocket. I'm curious to know how much of that is shared. In bioscience, for instance, there is much sharing of information, presumably for the public good. Does Musk share his discoveries with other space programs?
We at Slashdot all have an interest in patents and copyright. We are of many opinions but seem generally antagonistic toward locking up Intellectual Property. Should space exploration developments be shared? How would that effect or offset the expensive research necessary to pull off this re-useable rocket success?
I can do the same thing with hypnosis. I can convince you that piss tastes like merlot or chardonnay. I can encourage your mind to think almost anything about anything. In a group situation (such as a theater or arena) I can help thousands to believe they are drinking lemonade instead of water. Your mind is doing the work, I am simply a guide. Your mind has great potential that scientists and psychologists have yet to explore. It is frustrating that science refuses to examine hypnosis because it defies any common theory. Suggestion (a form of hypnosis) may explain this particular situation. Meanwhile, I suggest you relax and enjoy Slashdot and get a good night's sleep afterward.
Phones / phoney - very clever play on words. My phone is very 'phoney'; it can make and receive calls all day long, but I prefer no calls when I'm sleeping. I feel bad for people whose phones are not phoney. But maybe they are satisfied if they do texts and Twittey.
The meat is, presumably, muscle tissue. Tissue that lays in a petri dish or bobbles along a conveyor belt in a big factory. Unless this muscle is used, made to do work against a substantial resistance, it seems likely that it will never form the fibers, the texture that we associate with animal meat. I imagine a texture like liver or perhaps a viscous fluid or an oatmeal consistency.
OTOH, I also imagine that it might have a very exotic flavor. Human teeth will be replaced by a round sucking mouth (like on a carp or tube worm) as evolution favors eaters of manufactured foods.
According to the headline: "West African Village Weighs Using Genetically Modified Mosquitoes..."
According to Wikipedia: "In 2014 its population was estimated at just over 17.3 million." That's a mighty big village! Actually Burkina Faso is a country. Very few villages could afford such a program and it would be pointless when it was surrounded by other villages who prefer regular mosquitos. Don't know why the headlines here so often mislead the readers and continue to add caps to every word- just like in good old 1856 when headlines sold papers.
It seems you haven't looked very hard. Where I live, we get a billing statement with a graph showing our usage for each day of the month, and highlighting the peak usage period(s). The recent month is compared to the same month last year. This, and related information, can be useful for the consumer and the utility.
More importantly, the meters are necessary for the near future when Uber pricing is imposed (you pay more during peak demand periods). I'm sure there are other benefits to someone; statisticians, perhaps.
In the US, utilities are often provided by private, for-profit, companies and regulated by government appointees who are very friendly with the companies and Wall Street investors. Ratepayers end up covering any unusual costs (even when company management is at fault) while investors benefit from the substantial profits.
Now let's get this thinking into medical and other research, solar and other physical product development, and finally... government. Oh yes, and that girl next door.
Slashdot Mirror
"Instict is an evolution-driven trait"
Exactly. We are blessed with instincts that date from before mammals evolved. Even reptiles have some of the same instincts. Does that mean that they are appropriate for us now?
We are largely ruled by our DNA. Our rational minds often struggle with that. Soon, we will be able to safely modify our DNA to be less obstructive to modern reality. Until then we must "THINK OF THE CHILDREN!"
There is an aspect to this story that may be disturbing to some. That is: we value some human lives higher than others. We have special laws to punish people who harm children, police, pregnant women, etc. We have unwritten laws (yet obvious to observers) that skin color changes the value of some humans. Age is another factor. Consider a situation where you must choose between saving the life of a sweet innocent baby and a crusty old college professor who is leading the research on a cancer cure. How do you value these lives? Which would you save?
"The problem is that the FBI was distributing child pornography for two weeks."
Perhaps you believe that they should have immediately arrested the operator of the site and let the thousands of others continue their activities elsewhere? And let the children remain in captivity? Assuming that the FBI is being honest with us, (?) most will agree that they did the right thing. Those two weeks are inconsequential in comparison.
"I made my browser window this wide because I want to see text this wide"
Absolutely, and to make it worse- if you try to make the text bigger, the column of text shrinks; now you have even more useless white space.
I know two solutions. One is the add-on HacktheWeb. Works on Firefox, YMMV. A couple clicks does it: Select the column you want to 'I'solate, press the letter I, and it fills the window. Optionally, you can select individual items and 'R'emove them.
The other solution is to avoid the site and use alterslash.org for a clean view of the day's gossip.
A third solution exists, works great except on /. Turn one of your monitors sideways for use with documents and web pages which tend to be taller than they are wide. Your Mac will reorient the screen content, otherwise YMMV.
One problem with taxing a robot is 'how much to charge?'. There is a similar challenge in the auto repair industry: how much to charge for ... changing a headlamp in a 2015 Toyota Corolla, for example. The answer is a bit complicated. There are books that document every possible repair procedure and the average time of each repair. If the headlamp is a 15 minute job then the customer will be charged for 15 minutes' labor, regardless of the actual time the mechanic takes.
When a robot takes a human task, that human task should be measured similarly- how long would an average human take to do the job, and what pay grade would have applied? Then we know the value of the work, and the cost in human displacement, and we have a basis for taxing the robot.
Sold my Apple ][ -- miss it terribly. Still have my ancient Newton Messagepads and 15 year old TiBook. My main squeeze is a 10 year old iMac and my newest is a 5 year old 17" MBP. What makes them special?
One of the Newtons gives me trouble, the others all work like new. Never a problem through many software updates and peripheral devices. Rock solid reliable. Never a virus either.
When a newbie asks me what to buy, I reply with a question: What is your time worth? You can save $200+ buying a generic PC clone; or you can buy a Mac and save 200+ hours of your life debugging and fussing and not getting the results you want. Which is the bargain?
I grew up in an idyllic suburban countryside on the banks of a river and lived a Huck Finn childhood. Everyone in our community knew everyone else. No bicycle had ever been stolen there, though it may have been left at the beach for a week. Nice for kids, but stifling and claustrophobic for me the adult.
Now I live in walking distance of the finest park in America's Finest City (urban San Diego) with the best zoo in America and a score of museums and other entertainments. I'm in walking distance of dozens of fancy night clubs, a dozen coffee shops, many restaurants, exotic grocery stores, huge farmers' market, yadda... There are at least hundreds of employers in walking distance- tech firms, medical, advertising, and retail of course. Artists, musicians, photographers, hackers & con men. I make an effort to drive the car and the motorcycle once a week to charge their batteries, but there's really no place to go.
But best is the people I meet every day. Not your typical bland Starbucks suburbanites but creative, risk taking individuals of every stripe, and OK, some homeless people but even they are a cut above the suburban homeless. I'm at the far end of 70 now and I need this stimulation or I'll be bored to tears.
My search for 'hsbc ripoff' resulted in 36,000 results. This is one of the nastiest financial institutions on earth. The Wiki will explain some of the controversies around this London/Hongkong monstrosity but there is no easy way to grasp the financial pain that they have inflicted on ordinary individuals. Avoid at all cost!
"In most wealthy countries, kids are a liability..."
Not quite. In wealthy countries, the One Percent need us to have more kids. When 500,000,000 hungry people are fighting over 100,000,000 jobs, we won't have the time or energy to start a revolution against the rich and powerful.
In the best news sources there was always a clear distinction between 'news' and 'opinion'--entirely separate columns and on different pages in a newspaper, clearly marked where opinion reigned. The opinion was typically that of the publisher, editor or respected columnists.
That distinction has changed and even some of the most widely consumed sources mix news and opinion. Even where opinion is not obvious, a news item is often riddled with innuendo.
I have a particular bug up my butt about the use of children in the news. Any terrible event, such as civilian deaths in Syria, is made more terrible by counting the dead children. Is a dead child more significant than a dead adult? Or is it simply a pandering to the emotions of news consumers, ultimately striving for profit?
The obvious solution is to have bots present the news. Bots programmed not to have opinions or biases. This will happen, of course, and even the bots will be attacked as promoting some agenda. Meanwhile opinion will remain the primary and most profitable news source for the uneducated.
Google has long offered users an option to filter search results. No doubt many parents and some others prefer this. Why should this be a problem?
"SafeSearch can help you block inappropriate or explicit images from your Google Search results. The SafeSearch filter isn't 100% accurate, but it helps you avoid most violent and adult content."
"There's only 2 way Uber can turn a profit:"
Oh, ye of little imagination ...
3) Uber has a captive audience in every car. Ask yourself what Google and Facebook and TV networks do with their captive audience.
4) Uber has vast knowledge about where people go, and inferences about what people do as well as their financial and social status. Ask yourself what Google and Facebook do with similar information.
5) Uber's various conflicts with worldwide governments become an asset as they learn how to manipulate and coerce regulators. They will create favorable conditions for their present and future ambitions.
There are many ways for Uber to profit.
"The fact that they say it might make it to the market in ten years means it's barely more than a tenuous idea right now ..."
Yeah, and those dang 'horseless carriages' are another waste of time. What a stupid idea! Noisy stinky unreliable contraption that can't go faster than a mule.
On a breadboard: 6800 CPU, 512 bytes memory, no storage. Hex keypad and eight 7segment LEDs. Assembly language in ROM. Great for creating clock, timers, thermometer, etc.
Three months later I got an Apple ][ and forgot all about the 6800. Wow, the Apple had a better keyboard, 16K RAM, big TV display, Assembly and Integer BASIC, and plenty of storage on affordable audio cassettes!
Most important was the big Red Apple Manual with detailed specifications of the computer circuits, the ROM code, memory map and even some sample programs (and many errors that made things interesting).
No, no, that's not right; most important was the user group that I helped create shortly afterwards. Two hundred people in my town, thousands more around the world ... together we helped create the social structure that led to Slashdot. Computers come and go, people are more interesting.
Um, would it be terribly wrong to wait for the facts to arrive before jumping to conclusions? I can't help but observe that many commenters have some preconceived notions in this matter.
My mind is open to the actual facts, and while they are few and fleeting, it is clear that this is all part of a Trump conspiracy, aided by Russian spies and probably more than a few Turks.
This was about Amazon, wasn't it?
Following the links, it seems they pay ~12/hour in California for laborers. No work-at-home listings were found. You might gross $1K/month. It could be a step up for an Uber driver. But there is a cost that all job hunters pay: you give up privacy big time. They can do anything they want with your data, including altering it, now and forever; here in the words of Amazon:
"1. are acknowledging that you have read the job description for the position you are applying for and that you understand the basic requirements needed to perform the job;
2. consent to the processing, analyzing and assessment of your personal data by Amazon, salesforce.com or any other third party for the purposes of your application and for any other legitimate purposes of Amazon. For the avoidance of doubt, the âoeprocessingâ of your personal data will include but not restricted to collecting, receiving, recording, organizing, collating, storing, updating, altering, using, disseminating, distributing, merging, linking, blocking, degrading, erasing or destroying of your personal data; and
3. consent to Amazon retaining your personal data after the application process, in order to assist it with the effective monitoring of its job application processes and to your personal data being stored in an electronic database in the USA."
Regardless of conflicting theories, Dark Energy will live on. This is for two reasons: 1- Dark Energy is rather essential to some science fiction fantasy; and 2- Dark Energy is not copyrighted by Disney or any other litigious entity. Try using 'the Force', 'the Spice Melange', 'Sonic Screwdriver' or 'the One Ring' to explain your scifi miracles and legal problems arise.
And, hey, It's Dark, and it's Energy; what's not to like?
A great deal of technology went into the success of the re-useable rocket. I'm curious to know how much of that is shared. In bioscience, for instance, there is much sharing of information, presumably for the public good. Does Musk share his discoveries with other space programs?
We at Slashdot all have an interest in patents and copyright. We are of many opinions but seem generally antagonistic toward locking up Intellectual Property. Should space exploration developments be shared? How would that effect or offset the expensive research necessary to pull off this re-useable rocket success?
I can do the same thing with hypnosis. I can convince you that piss tastes like merlot or chardonnay. I can encourage your mind to think almost anything about anything. In a group situation (such as a theater or arena) I can help thousands to believe they are drinking lemonade instead of water. Your mind is doing the work, I am simply a guide. Your mind has great potential that scientists and psychologists have yet to explore. It is frustrating that science refuses to examine hypnosis because it defies any common theory. Suggestion (a form of hypnosis) may explain this particular situation. Meanwhile, I suggest you relax and enjoy Slashdot and get a good night's sleep afterward.
Phones / phoney - very clever play on words. My phone is very 'phoney'; it can make and receive calls all day long, but I prefer no calls when I'm sleeping. I feel bad for people whose phones are not phoney. But maybe they are satisfied if they do texts and Twittey.
Terrible!
The meat is, presumably, muscle tissue. Tissue that lays in a petri dish or bobbles along a conveyor belt in a big factory. Unless this muscle is used, made to do work against a substantial resistance, it seems likely that it will never form the fibers, the texture that we associate with animal meat. I imagine a texture like liver or perhaps a viscous fluid or an oatmeal consistency.
OTOH, I also imagine that it might have a very exotic flavor. Human teeth will be replaced by a round sucking mouth (like on a carp or tube worm) as evolution favors eaters of manufactured foods.
According to the headline: "West African Village Weighs Using Genetically Modified Mosquitoes..."
According to Wikipedia: "In 2014 its population was estimated at just over 17.3 million." That's a mighty big village! Actually Burkina Faso is a country. Very few villages could afford such a program and it would be pointless when it was surrounded by other villages who prefer regular mosquitos. Don't know why the headlines here so often mislead the readers and continue to add caps to every word- just like in good old 1856 when headlines sold papers.
" There is no discernible reason ... "
It seems you haven't looked very hard. Where I live, we get a billing statement with a graph showing our usage for each day of the month, and highlighting the peak usage period(s). The recent month is compared to the same month last year. This, and related information, can be useful for the consumer and the utility.
More importantly, the meters are necessary for the near future when Uber pricing is imposed (you pay more during peak demand periods). I'm sure there are other benefits to someone; statisticians, perhaps.
In the US, utilities are often provided by private, for-profit, companies and regulated by government appointees who are very friendly with the companies and Wall Street investors. Ratepayers end up covering any unusual costs (even when company management is at fault) while investors benefit from the substantial profits.
Now let's get this thinking into medical and other research, solar and other physical product development, and finally ... government. Oh yes, and that girl next door.