If you're suggesting that there's any age, sex, race, religious disposition, disability etc that procludes someone from being a terrorist trying to get onto a plane then I'd like to see your evidence.
As an armless, legless mudjahidin, I resent that remark.
After watching a burly airport screener search her lymphoma-stricken father,--8<--8<-- a Newsweek columnist wonders: --8<--"
And I wonder: why does it take a relative of this Newsweek columnist being hassled for said columnist to write a column about this? the TSA and its secret black lists, and the circus show that goes on in airports across the country, bringing nothing but the sense of security, aren't these enough to call this journalist's attention?
But no, apparently it's business as usual for reporters these days, unless what goes on in America *right now* affects them personally. If the Washington Post and other news outlets behaved 30 years ago like they do today, Nixon would have stayed in office until the end of his term.
Patent ethical robots and only patent lawyers will have ethical robots.
Hmm, that could be good: logically, robots belonging to lawyers would sooner or later obey their ethical programming and self-destruct as close as possible to their master.
Basically, he buried some psuedo-scientific thoughts into legalese and then patented it without any idea as to how to implement same.
The real question that nobody seems to ask is : HOW THE FUCK DOES THE USPTO EVEN CONSIDER SUCH APPLICATIONS?
And a related side question is, how the fuck does the USPTO grant so many obvious/devious/retarded/nonsensical patents? I know they don't have Einsteins on the payroll to review them, but come on!...
Bull honkus. If your competitors need hair, they'll write hair software, no problem. --8
Yes, very nice. What I see however is several teams of programmers working for several animation shops, and with your win-win situation, most of these programmers will be visiting the unemployment office, of will be working for Bolliwood, because once there's a common pool of code, there's no need for several teams to do the same thing in their own corner.
So, yeah, really great... Apart for the programmers.
Ok, who are tyhe mods responsable for making that a 3?! I would understand that if the article was on a site requiring some kind of subscription, but its not.
Apparently, reading what Dark Lord Seth responded, some people here hold a grudge against Roland Piquepaille and post his blog article here so Slashdot readers won't click through the link in the blurb, visit RP's blog and generate ad revenue for him.
Rather puerile reaction if you ask me, but there you have it...
I must have a bad case of synthetic vision here, I read Full story text for your convenience (Score:1, Informative) when it should read Full story text for your convenience (Score:-1, Redundant). How strange...
For those who don't know why this is so damn funny, I point you to
It's not funny because it relies on readers to know of something that's not very well known. It's called an obscure joke, something that most people who crack one end up looking pathetic with, and a few like Douglas Adams knew how to turn into fantastic jokes.
The parent poster is no Douglas Adams and obviously wouldn't know a good second-degree joke if it put on a silly hat and held a sign saying "I'm funny".
Well okay, so let's admit the IOC is sold to big media corps, which they are for various reasons involving money under the table no double, and they threaten to sue the hell out of olympians who post pictures and accounts. Let's say...
But disqualify them? under what rule? if someone wins an event fairly and his/her urine checks out, why would they be disqualified by this? is this a rule that was written that athletes agreed upon before? I bet it's not. And if it isn't, I wager olympians who already won something before this IOC statement could probably post something, because rules usually can't be made retroactive.
And at any rate, I'm quite sure athletes could challenge such a disqualification in court without too much trouble. But of course, they won't, because their goal is to win medals, not defend free speech, and also the last thing they need is to antagonize media monopolies, because a great part of their incomes come from airtime and grooming their public image.
So, way to go IOC. You fit just right in the current grand scheme of corrupt things. Not that I care greatly about what athlete have to say, they're usually fairly inane to listen to, but none the less they should have free speech like the rest of us.
Nothing is quite as funny as seeing someone buy organic food for 3x-4x the price. Too many people have become big babies these days and are afraid of even living.
More on topic though, it seems many more people today are allergic to all kinds of things than in the past, and it seems the more a society offers "hygienic", "pasteurized" or otherwise sterile food products and other products, the more kids growing up in that society get sick from over-reactivity to the things they weren't exposed in their youth.
I mean, just look at the french: they have all manners of un-pasteurized cheese and they seem to fare quite well on them, but when someone from the US and eats some of that cheese, that person usually gets a good hard case of "tourista", if you see what I mean.
That's proof that if you don't expose your body to stuff all the time, you become over-sensitive to said stuff. That's not necessarily better than letting your body learn how to deal with the stuff itself...
I regularly spindles of CDRs and in one out of four cases, when I unwrap them and open them, *man* there's some really nasty chemical smell coming from the CDs. It's so bad I have to close the spindle as fast as possible, and I'm not even remotely allergic to anything.
If they're anything like the CDRs I buy, this guy's must be hell for him...
"...Brought to the John St. Pumping Station, the water's cold will be extracted and used to lower the temperature in downtown buildings. The water will then be treated and enter the city's drinking supply...."
So might be a double whammy, the water isn't directly injected into the lake again.
Torontonians will really need good A/C to cool off after they're done drinking warm water from the tap...
You know, the refrigerator did not stop people from selling ice. I'm pretty sure that more ice is sold now than was sold in the early 1900s.
I have news for you: I've travelled the world quite extensively, and *only in the US* is ice so widely available for sale to the general public. I can think of no other first world country (I visited) where one can pop into a supermarket and get out with a bag of frozen water. Why is that do you think?
The rest of us are consumers however much we'd like to think of ourselves as somehow above the comman man. But the fact is we buy our equipment from big corporations. Those big corporations will take whatever steps are necessary to stay in business and prosper.
I know I shouldn't feed the trolls and you're going to get rightly modded down to oblivion after I'm done writing this, but...
Big companies of today will try to keep the way they do business unchanged, until such time as the consumer will grow tired enough of their attitude that they'll vote with their wallets. When that happens, those companies one of two things:
- They will evolve and adopt the way consumers want them to do business, simply because it's in their best interest, if nothing else to survive.
- If they can't evolve, they will go the way of the dodo.
You can see the latter happening to media companies. They had their hayday, and they used to have a purpose, which is distributing intellectual material (music, movies...) by distributing the media they're stored on. Now that technology allows people to share the intellectual material without exchanging the physical media, media companies find themselves with no business case. They're superfluous and struggling to stay alive, but they won't be able to adapt, simply because they aren't needed anymore.
Now, in your example, nobody will need to build computers from scratch, because computer-making companies will adapt to whatever new way of distributing goods emerges. That's because, as you point out, people have a need for someone to manufacture computers for them.
I don't know what the new way of distributing/selling computers will be, and how it will happen, but rest assured that it will happen. The RIAAs and MPAAs of the world however will not be part of the new world, that's for sure. The only question is, how many victims will they make in their downfalls...
Slashdot Mirror
If you're suggesting that there's any age, sex, race, religious disposition, disability etc that procludes someone from being a terrorist trying to get onto a plane then I'd like to see your evidence.
As an armless, legless mudjahidin, I resent that remark.
After watching a burly airport screener search her lymphoma-stricken father,--8<--8<-- a Newsweek columnist wonders: --8<--"
And I wonder: why does it take a relative of this Newsweek columnist being hassled for said columnist to write a column about this? the TSA and its secret black lists, and the circus show that goes on in airports across the country, bringing nothing but the sense of security, aren't these enough to call this journalist's attention?
But no, apparently it's business as usual for reporters these days, unless what goes on in America *right now* affects them personally. If the Washington Post and other news outlets behaved 30 years ago like they do today, Nixon would have stayed in office until the end of his term.
Prior art: politician
Politicians can't be defined as robots. Robots obey those who own them, politicians stop obeying the people once they're elected.
Patent ethical robots and only patent lawyers will have ethical robots.
Hmm, that could be good: logically, robots belonging to lawyers would sooner or later obey their ethical programming and self-destruct as close as possible to their master.
Basically, he buried some psuedo-scientific thoughts into legalese and then patented it without any idea as to how to implement same.
The real question that nobody seems to ask is : HOW THE FUCK DOES THE USPTO EVEN CONSIDER SUCH APPLICATIONS?
And a related side question is, how the fuck does the USPTO grant so many obvious/devious/retarded/nonsensical patents? I know they don't have Einsteins on the payroll to review them, but come on!...
A Californian counselor has just patented the ten ethical laws of robotics.
Does this mean I'm free to create an open-source psychopath mass-murdering robot?
Also, I think perhaps there's prior art on 3 of the 10 patented laws... Might have to do some research here...
Bull honkus. If your competitors need hair, they'll write hair software, no problem.
--8
Yes, very nice. What I see however is several teams of programmers working for several animation shops, and with your win-win situation, most of these programmers will be visiting the unemployment office, of will be working for Bolliwood, because once there's a common pool of code, there's no need for several teams to do the same thing in their own corner.
So, yeah, really great... Apart for the programmers.
Ok, who are tyhe mods responsable for making that a 3?! I would understand that if the article was on a site requiring some kind of subscription, but its not.
Apparently, reading what Dark Lord Seth responded, some people here hold a grudge against Roland Piquepaille and post his blog article here so Slashdot readers won't click through the link in the blurb, visit RP's blog and generate ad revenue for him.
Rather puerile reaction if you ask me, but there you have it...
I must have a bad case of synthetic vision here, I read Full story text for your convenience (Score:1, Informative) when it should read Full story text for your convenience (Score:-1, Redundant). How strange...
Internal Server Error
No worries, here's a link to the real state of the Onion for you.
HELLO? When was FAT patented...NEVER. Microsoft didn't even invent fat. Please think before you post.
Ignorant people shouldn't yak.
$ sudo mount -t vfat /dev/hdd1 /mnt/win1
Instant patent violation!
Actually, double patent violation: FAT and sudo.
Now pull down your pants, bend over and prepare to meet my lawyers.
-- Signed: Bill Gates
For those who don't know why this is so damn funny, I point you to
It's not funny because it relies on readers to know of something that's not very well known. It's called an obscure joke, something that most people who crack one end up looking pathetic with, and a few like Douglas Adams knew how to turn into fantastic jokes.
The parent poster is no Douglas Adams and obviously wouldn't know a good second-degree joke if it put on a silly hat and held a sign saying "I'm funny".
Well okay, so let's admit the IOC is sold to big media corps, which they are for various reasons involving money under the table no double, and they threaten to sue the hell out of olympians who post pictures and accounts. Let's say...
But disqualify them? under what rule? if someone wins an event fairly and his/her urine checks out, why would they be disqualified by this? is this a rule that was written that athletes agreed upon before? I bet it's not. And if it isn't, I wager olympians who already won something before this IOC statement could probably post something, because rules usually can't be made retroactive.
And at any rate, I'm quite sure athletes could challenge such a disqualification in court without too much trouble. But of course, they won't, because their goal is to win medals, not defend free speech, and also the last thing they need is to antagonize media monopolies, because a great part of their incomes come from airtime and grooming their public image.
So, way to go IOC. You fit just right in the current grand scheme of corrupt things. Not that I care greatly about what athlete have to say, they're usually fairly inane to listen to, but none the less they should have free speech like the rest of us.
Apparently, since Cray uses Linux in clusters now, I'm sure SCO thinks Cray machines would be even greater if they costed $699 more per node...
no nevermind.
found an interesting rock dubbed 'Longhorn'.
Sheesh, when NASA works faster than Microsoft, there's a cause for concern...
...will not happen. 3 words: Abu Ghraib photos.
Nothing is quite as funny as seeing someone buy organic food for 3x-4x the price. Too many people have become big babies these days and are afraid of even living.
You'd enjoy reading this.
More on topic though, it seems many more people today are allergic to all kinds of things than in the past, and it seems the more a society offers "hygienic", "pasteurized" or otherwise sterile food products and other products, the more kids growing up in that society get sick from over-reactivity to the things they weren't exposed in their youth.
I mean, just look at the french: they have all manners of un-pasteurized cheese and they seem to fare quite well on them, but when someone from the US and eats some of that cheese, that person usually gets a good hard case of "tourista", if you see what I mean.
That's proof that if you don't expose your body to stuff all the time, you become over-sensitive to said stuff. That's not necessarily better than letting your body learn how to deal with the stuff itself...
I regularly spindles of CDRs and in one out of four cases, when I unwrap them and open them, *man* there's some really nasty chemical smell coming from the CDs. It's so bad I have to close the spindle as fast as possible, and I'm not even remotely allergic to anything.
If they're anything like the CDRs I buy, this guy's must be hell for him...
Patch 'em if you've got 'em...
What a crock of shit. Everybody knows Cisco boxes are no route to host
From the article:
"...Brought to the John St. Pumping Station, the water's cold will be extracted and used to lower the temperature in downtown buildings. The water will then be treated and enter the city's drinking supply...."
So might be a double whammy, the water isn't directly injected into the lake again.
Torontonians will really need good A/C to cool off after they're done drinking warm water from the tap...
You know, the refrigerator did not stop people from selling ice. I'm pretty sure that more ice is sold now than was sold in the early 1900s.
I have news for you: I've travelled the world quite extensively, and *only in the US* is ice so widely available for sale to the general public. I can think of no other first world country (I visited) where one can pop into a supermarket and get out with a bag of frozen water. Why is that do you think?
The rest of us are consumers however much we'd like to think of ourselves as somehow above the comman man. But the fact is we buy our equipment from big corporations. Those big corporations will take whatever steps are necessary to stay in business and prosper.
I know I shouldn't feed the trolls and you're going to get rightly modded down to oblivion after I'm done writing this, but...
Big companies of today will try to keep the way they do business unchanged, until such time as the consumer will grow tired enough of their attitude that they'll vote with their wallets. When that happens, those companies one of two things:
- They will evolve and adopt the way consumers want them to do business, simply because it's in their best interest, if nothing else to survive.
- If they can't evolve, they will go the way of the dodo.
You can see the latter happening to media companies. They had their hayday, and they used to have a purpose, which is distributing intellectual material (music, movies...) by distributing the media they're stored on. Now that technology allows people to share the intellectual material without exchanging the physical media, media companies find themselves with no business case. They're superfluous and struggling to stay alive, but they won't be able to adapt, simply because they aren't needed anymore.
Now, in your example, nobody will need to build computers from scratch, because computer-making companies will adapt to whatever new way of distributing goods emerges. That's because, as you point out, people have a need for someone to manufacture computers for them.
I don't know what the new way of distributing/selling computers will be, and how it will happen, but rest assured that it will happen. The RIAAs and MPAAs of the world however will not be part of the new world, that's for sure. The only question is, how many victims will they make in their downfalls...
We all know spyware is a fucking waste of both resources and internet bandwidth
You just made my Bonzibuddy all cross now, you horrible thing...