There won't be anyone left to ignore masive global climate change and write it off as a liberal agenda.
Yet another fabrication designed to scare us into international bondage with other nations. There is no proof outside of Liberal publications of any massive global climate change, and yet thanks to the Liberals stranglehold on our nation's "education" system, people are taught that there are things such as a hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica. Get real people, it's always been there. It's due to the magnetic forces at the pole, not the "evil" chemicals that are used in our fridges.
Obviously in an attempt to remove his dark influence from this Earth. Whereas most people are judged when they die (or when the Rapture comes!) Hawking was obviously destined for great blasphemies against the Lord, and was struck down for his sins.
I think it is obvious that only dark powers can be keeping him alive to spread his untruths.
gee...sounds like flatpacks H1B is going to expire soon. GOOD. Get the FUCK out of my country.
Ah yes, a fine example of why this country is no longer the shining beacon of intelligence and creativity it once was. Since I am an American citizen, and have lived here for more years than the 15 or so you appear to possess, I think I know a little more than you do about the decline of this great nation.
Freeloading foreigners taking money out of MY pocket, and food out of other hard working americans families mouths. GTFoff your high horse flatpack, no REAL RED BLOODED american would share your opinion.
And how are these H1B people taking the food out of the mouths of Americans? If this country had enough intelligent people and employers willing to consider their staff then we wouldn't have any need for H1Bs here would we? The people "taking the food out of other hard working americans families mouths" are Americans more interested in the latest football scores than in doing hard work.
Red blooded American indeed. Your xenophobia proves my point all too well.
It may not be a particularly "insightful" patent, but that doesn't by itself disqualify it from being invalid. The patent office does have guidelines about these sorts of things, and I think it's clear that Amazon were the first people to actually use this kind of system in a real-world situation.
To me this means it is a valid patent.
If you don't like this patent then attack the rules that made it possible, not Amazon. Amazon are a company persuing their fudiciary responsibilities to their shareholders, and of course they're going to take every avenue possible to increase their revenue streams.
And the IRS is nothing more than a den of armed robbers which, after the federal government managed to get the 16th Amendment passed though congress, was formed to turn honest Americans into little more than whores for the Government. We never needed income tax until the IRS was formed.
The sheer ignorance of your stance is typical of the current end product of American education - shallow "thinkers" who have read the first paragraph of a Nietzche book and then think that they are qualified to comment on topics which they, having been tought revisionist crap that has little relation to reality, have absolutely no clue about!
What this country needs is better education and less idiots like you.
Let's face it, the Government in it's "heroic" efforts to keep control of the fast-changing employment situation here in the US is not making it easy for foreign people to work here - even if you get an H1B you end up stuck in the same job for your entire period and then get kicked out the country like an illegal immegrant. Hardly an inspiring direction to take your life in.
And then there's the amazing lack of humanity in the majority of America's employers. What other country in the world lets it's citizens work 90 hour weeks without a single hour of overtime? Oh yeah, that's right, the whole reason for H1Bs is to get foreigners here to do those 90 hour weeks, and they don't even have to give you the same rights as nationals (not that America provides many for them either).
America's entire policy on foreigners working there is both rascist and short-sighted. For a country built from immegrants and minimal government, recent political viewpoints seem to be tending towards a xenophobic attitude in which only America counts, and if you're not an American, you can only come here if you're willing to live like a second class citizen.
Try another country - there are IT opportunities across the world, and in most places you won't get nearly as much shit as you'll be put through by the US government.
I remember the frenzy here on/. when it was originally announced that ICANN would be holding elections for the position of at-large directors, and how everyone thought it was a great step foward for online democracy and the rights of netizens. But this seems to me to a naive attitude in that it assumes that everybody is going to play fair and that large organisations can be trusted to play within the rules. This is why the Libertarians aren't in power, and this is why your vote won't matter.
The sad truth is that ICANN, like many other American organisations, is little more than a corporate whore pandering to the $$$ passed its way. I mean, they've already got things like the Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy designed to give their masters the advantage over mere people, and God forbid if anything should change this state of affairs! But rather than coming out and simply admitting this, they've chosen to allow a token gesture in the form of the at-large elections, although even then most of the candidates are in the pockets of big business.
Yes, this is another example of how customer-driven capitalism has fallen by the wayside to be replaced for producer-driven capitalism in which we are to be treated as "customers" rather than as citizens. No matter who is voted in in these elections, the corporations will still control ICANN, and they're not out to help anyone but themselves. It's just another example of how America, once the land of the free, has become a fascist superstate run by big business.
Here's a thought. I, at least, remember the line-number BASICs with great fondness, and apparently so do a lot of us. Do you think that's because BASIC had some properties that made it fun to hack in (I do) or that it's just because most of us were pretty young when we did that and this is just your standard nostalgia?
I remember coding in BASIC as being fun - you could just do things without the hassle of finding libraries, setting up a class structure, planning ahead... you know, all the things that a lot of other languages force you to do.
Hell, I've still probably coded more stuff in BASIC than any other language, and I haven't used it in about ten years:)
... still has to be GFA BASIC. Such a joy to program in, even compared to modern languages, and it had a decent syntax and a full set of control structures. And I so miss the feature that allowed you to collapse an entire function into a single line in the editor...
But yeah, the point is that pretty much any procedural language can take on whatever aspects of others it wishes. Sure BASIC uses a "novice" syntax, but that's no reason why there shouldn't be an implementation that successfully integrates object orientation and other features found in C++, Delphi or Java.
Unfortunately, VB is only partly there, and a bit of a mess to boot. But there's nothing to stop KBASIC from conquering these problems and producing a clean, useful implementation of the language which can be used for modern, large projects by both people with little programming experiance and those that have been coding for years.
BASIC is not the problem, it's implementations are.
Not really, because I won't be buying any of it. There were plenty of better things to be spending my money on than Episode 1, and I'm sure Episode 2 won't be any better.
And besides, you're missing the point. There'll be video versions before then, just not the DVD versions. That way, people can buy it on video and then buy it on DVD later, making Lucas twice as much money. And I'm sure there'll be "Director's cuts", "Remastered versions", "THX special versions" and all that shite too.
Of all of the people in the film industry I can't honestly think of one that has time and time again shown themselves to be only interested in the sheer amount of $$$ they can gouge from loyal fans.
First it was the incredible array of editions and boxed sets released for the original trilogy, then it was the fact that DVDs for the new trilogy were only going to be released in 2050 or some other point in the distant future, and now he's attacking fan sites who are catering to the interests of the very fans he makes his wads of cash from!
Seriously, George Lucas has done nothing since the original trilogy worth bothering with. Despite all of the anticipation felt by die-hard Star Wars fans in the buildup to the new movies, he disappointed them all by pandering to 10 year-old children with his movie and its slushy plot, cardboard characters and fucking annoying CGI aliens.
Fuck Geoege Lucas and the piles of cash he rolled in on.
Despite his attempts to use the ESR-friendly term "cracker" in this story, we see at the end that not even Taco really thinks that cracker is the correct terminology:
"Honestly, thats the best kind of hack. 2 years ago we had the bad kind of hacker: he rooted the whole damn system and never told us how they gained entry."
So next time Taco posts an article where he whinges about the difference between "hacker" and "cracker", it's pure pandering to the unwashed masses on/.
Yeah, but we're talking about the kind of chips bought by "power users" here, who are the kind of person that would use this technology. People that upgraded their processor from 166 to 200 to 233 to 333 and so on...
Not meaning to come across as flamebait, but it seems to me that the future for people wanting a high end system is better served if they start exploring SMP options rather than the increasingly flaky vapourware that Intel keeps pushing out. Sure, AMD are pushing ahead with some better quality chips, but why pay all that money for a high end chip when you can get two cheaper ones for the same price?
With Linux finally having some decent SMP support and Windows already possessing it (at least in the latest versions) it makes far more sense IMHO to go down this route if its performace you're looking for. Even with all the latest advances in processor technology, there's still only so much a single processor can do at once.
You heard me. You're just a slightly more up to date version of the folks who speak out against ATM machines, electro-magnetic radiation from home appliances, and the Evil Internet, yet accept technologies like refrigeration and internal combustion engines, because we've had that technology "forever".
Eh? Technology has been in most respects a positive driving force in our society for the last five hundred years or so. And whilst it has had a lot of negative side effects, these are due to us using technology excessively or before we understood the consequences. Tecnology in itself has the potential to offer us exciting new vistas, and is the only way we'll ever survive beyond the lifespan of the Sun.
Why is it so common to predict the end of the world (what do you think Escatology is about?) based on a pretty graph that shows steadily increasing technology?
I never said the world was going to end.
How do you define this "Humanity" that you propose we are abandoning in favor of technology? How, exactly, are we going to go about abandoning it?
Read the post replying to the post above yours. Humanity is defined by what we can and can't do, and these parameters are what shape our consciouss and unconsciouss minds in the way we call "humanity". By altering these parameters we alter how we think, and thus become something other than human.
What humanity is doesn't change, and hasn't changed. We are still the same race, with the same problems, the same hopes, and the same daily social trials as humanity had one thousand years ago.
I agree, but we've never had the chance to alter the way we think before. It's an entirely new situation in our history.
I mean, what do you expect?
That we continue to advance without trying to throw away that which we are and that which has gotten us this far? Not too much to ask IMHO.
Our boundaries are expanding all the time. Ability to go really fast. Ability to fly. Ability to see and measure distant stars. Ability to leave the earth. Ability to sort through an entire library of information in a second. Ability to send a message at light speed to the other side of the world. Ability to karma whore from thousands of people all over the globe.
These are all external boundaries - things we can do or things we can manipulate. None of them are boundaries in the fundamental structure of our mind, which is a boundary of a wholly new kind. People think in pretty much the same way today as they did when the Ice Age finished, and yet we're coming up to a point where it may be possible to alter this constant.
But, unless you give a strong argument as to why we should force our boundaries to remain static, I don't know why it would be bad to change them arbitrarily.
But then we won't be human any more. We are defined by both our capabilities and our limitations, and any attempt at altering the mechanisms of our conscioussness is invarably going to alter the very nature of who we are and how we think.
Will this be for the better? I doubt it, I think that it will merely be different. But the point is, it won't be human in a very real way. And what's the point of improving yourself if you end up alone and apart from all you knew and believed in?
Hello people? And for all that I thought we were all hard-working libertarians who believe in the principles of a free market for getting the best out of society, I find this immense surge of distaste for one of the primary marketing tools for corporations online.
The fact is that in order to increase their ability to create wealth, companies need to market their products and push ahead of the competition in terms of mind and market share. This is right, and this is healthy. There are already many traditional advertising channels which we take for granted now, although you can bet they weren't too popular at first.
So why is spam any different? It isn't is the answer. In fact, spam is if anything superior to traditional advertising channels because it costs the originating company nothing, and it is extremely easy for them to use demographic profiling to target individuals with ads offering them services that would benefit them!
Given that spam is simply a derogatory term for a new form of advertising, something which benefits everyone in our capitalist economy, I really can't help but think anyone criticising it is being hypocritical.
As enamoured as we all are with the state and progress of modern computing I think we need to take a step back and really examine the underpinnings of our beliefs about computers and the very paradigm of computing that has pervaded so much of our cultural and scientific thinking over the last few decades. This article raises some excellent points about the things that many of us hold to be self-evident, even when we don't conscioussly think about them in these terms, and these beliefs affect the way we think and act in everyday life.
The "eschatological cataclysm" that Lanier talks about occurring in the near future is truly a bleak picture for mankind as a whole, and yet it is one that I see talked about as if it were inevitable and a good thing. Just because we like computers are we really ready to throw away our humanity for a set of perceived benefits? We are what we are, and any gross changes in the state of our existance cannot help but fundamentally alter who we, as a species, are. There is no "intangible transition" between what we are and what we will be.
I personally am rather fond of the current modality of human existance, and I see anyone that believes in or even worse desires such a dramatic and unnecessary change as being at best a foolish idealist and at worst someone unable to accept the reality of their own existance. What other reasons can there be for what amounts to turning yourself into some(one|thing) else? No combination of bio/nano/computing technology is ever going to be me for the simple reason that it will have different boundaries from me, and our idea of self is shaped from these boundaries.
It's a scary prospect for the future, one in which people will willingly rush wholesale into abandoning their humanity for the promise of an artificial dream. I truly hope that I won't be around to see the fragmentation and then the end of humanity's promise.
You do read the news right? Even on places like/. we see the trends which are leading towards government oppression and the loss of all of our freedoms.
The government exists to protect.. The way it is done leaves a great deal to be desired.. but thats the main idea.
No, the government exists to govern a political unit, usually a country. Protecting its assets is merely good sense for such a body and means no more than me defending my home against a burglar.
The logic... Basicly My MP3 dosn't do anything that hurts music sales.. It dosn't effect the ecconomy at all. So getting rid of My MP3 just means eliminating a busness.. and potental taxes.
Sence the music ind. will not be injured in any way they'll still be able to move around larg amounts of money and generate larg amounts of taxes.
On the other hand with My MP3 they'll also have the taxes from them...
Yes, I know what My.MP3 is and does and sure, the government may earn a tiny piece more taxes from this. Of course, taxes are themselves un-Constitutional, but that's yet another example of unwanted and unwarranted government interference with our lives.
Now this dosn't help Napster in any way sence this is about private lissening.. Napster is still a public file sharing system...
So?
I guess it also means that I can keep my CDs ripped to MP3s on my machine and make them accessable vea FTP (with no Annon access)
Eh? You manage to contradict yourself here since you were talking about taxation earlier. I guess this post of yours is true eh?
... is to have all kinds of databases centrally registered by government agencies such as the NSA, CIA and FBI. You can bet that the first condition of this law is to have each and every user and piece of data registered with the appropriate agencies, for them to look at and construct profiles from.
And yet again, we'll be cheering them on because on the surface it looks like a win for the "fair use" doctrine. Wake up people! The government exists solely to increase its own powers, not to benefit its citizens. They'd love to be able to have every database in this country on file and available at the click of a button, and when they can play people and organisations against each other so that people want this to happen, they have won.
From here it's just a small step to identity cards, continuous surveillance and a police state controlled by the abuse of legislation designed to let government "protect" the rights of the people. This is America and we don't need to stand up for this blatent removal of our rights, we can fight back using our Second Amendment freedoms! We need to make the people aware of the dangers that KKKlinton and his cronies pose our freedom before it is too late and we're crushed under the boots of our "protectors".
I think that as we move more towards a "wired" world (sorry for the Katzism) in which any fool with a net connection can make there views heard we will see an increase in factionalisation as people reject traditional parties in favour of their own conclusions. In the short term, perhaps an end to party politics as we see them today. In the long term, the reduction of politics to anarchy and flamewars.
After all the net gives everyone their own pulpit from which to preach, but it doesn't guarantee anyone would be heard. And in a world where five years is becoming a huge period of time, people's opinions will change by the hour as they fall under different influences.
But is this a good thing? I dunno, but there is the risk of popular orators and demagogues being able to capture large chunks of the voting population through rhetoric and promises rather than through even an attempt at a solid foundation of policy. Throughout history we see how entire nations have fallen under the sway of charismatic leaders, and do we want to return to an era in which democracy falls to the first person who can make a good speech?
Hmmm, another novel trying to capitalise on the feelings of social isolation and increased powerlessness that the modern world and the rapid changes in technology have bought us. If you've ever read any near-future books, you've probably read all of the themes already.
The fact is that we can all see how technology, the driving force behind modern culture, is alienating people... how many people here prefer to conduct their relationships online rather than in the real world? The net is not the cause of this problem, but it sure as hell facilitates it - it provides endless ways to avoid the necessity of having real life relationships.
The real start of this alienation was the concept of mass production, which changed workers from individuals to mere parts in a process. The metaphor of the assembly line pervades our society in many ways - the interchangability of relationships mentioned in the review, the sharply defined skill sets required by many jobs, and the increasing disconnection between different cultural groups leading to prejudice, rascism and eventually violence.
As for the future? It's still getting worse at the moment, and the net is giving people a whole new way to avoid the real world. Spirituality has become a dirty word, and in an increasingly secular society people have no reason to find joy in their lives. Maybe the net will eventually allow us to transcend this separation, but I think it's just as likely we'll all end up compartmentalised and alone.
Sorry, but I don't "warez child porn" as you so "eloquently" put it. As a parent and a long-standing net user I am merely concerned about the sheer volume of filth that pervades IRC, and any legitimate conversations (if there are any, which I can't seem to find) could just as easily be done using mailing lists.
It seems to me that you're the one with the problem, after all I didn't lash out at you and call you a "sick bastard" did I? Feeling any residual guilt are we?
The idea that the new generation of consoles will allow players to enter any number of online worlds in which they can interact with potentially vast numbers of other players is both intriguing and scary at the same time.
It's intriguing because it will bring the technology needed to do this into millions of homes worldwide, in an easy to use format which Joe Sixpack and his wife and kids can all enjoy - just look at the penetration delivered by the Playstation into family homes worldwide. Although games like Ultima Online and Everquest exist at the moment, the numbers using them pale to what these new consoles could bring.
In an interactive world populated by a cast of thousands, who knows what interactions will occur? It'll be like watching a miniture version of this world, but one that can experiment with different scenarios.
And this brings me on to the danger of these developments. With every new technology the potential for immersion grows, and more and more people, especially children, become vulnerable to losing track of the real world in their electronic fantasies. We must never lose track of the beauty that is the Lord's creation, even when false realities seem better to some of us, especially the technically-orientated but socially inept people that/. is primarily made up of. No virtual reality can ever match the real one, and people who lose sight of this are in danger of becoming less than human.
So I'm going to be looking at these with interest, but I'm going to be doing so from a step back.
Mac OS X already has its own GUI framework, and there is absolutely no way that X could improve upon that. After all, the Mac GUI has always been its main selling point, whereas X is roundly, and deservedly, slated as being slow, buggy and holding back Linux on the desktop.
I honestly don't see the point in this. Surely it's not progress, it's going backwards?
Slashdot Mirror
There won't be anyone left to ignore masive global climate change and write it off as a liberal agenda.
Yet another fabrication designed to scare us into international bondage with other nations. There is no proof outside of Liberal publications of any massive global climate change, and yet thanks to the Liberals stranglehold on our nation's "education" system, people are taught that there are things such as a hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica. Get real people, it's always been there. It's due to the magnetic forces at the pole, not the "evil" chemicals that are used in our fridges.
Obviously in an attempt to remove his dark influence from this Earth. Whereas most people are judged when they die (or when the Rapture comes!) Hawking was obviously destined for great blasphemies against the Lord, and was struck down for his sins.
I think it is obvious that only dark powers can be keeping him alive to spread his untruths.
gee...sounds like flatpacks H1B is going to expire soon. GOOD. Get the FUCK out of my country.
Ah yes, a fine example of why this country is no longer the shining beacon of intelligence and creativity it once was. Since I am an American citizen, and have lived here for more years than the 15 or so you appear to possess, I think I know a little more than you do about the decline of this great nation.
Freeloading foreigners taking money out of MY pocket, and food out of other hard working americans families mouths. GTFoff your high horse flatpack, no REAL RED BLOODED american would share your opinion.
And how are these H1B people taking the food out of the mouths of Americans? If this country had enough intelligent people and employers willing to consider their staff then we wouldn't have any need for H1Bs here would we? The people "taking the food out of other hard working americans families mouths" are Americans more interested in the latest football scores than in doing hard work.
Red blooded American indeed. Your xenophobia proves my point all too well.
It may not be a particularly "insightful" patent, but that doesn't by itself disqualify it from being invalid. The patent office does have guidelines about these sorts of things, and I think it's clear that Amazon were the first people to actually use this kind of system in a real-world situation.
To me this means it is a valid patent.
If you don't like this patent then attack the rules that made it possible, not Amazon. Amazon are a company persuing their fudiciary responsibilities to their shareholders, and of course they're going to take every avenue possible to increase their revenue streams.
And the IRS is nothing more than a den of armed robbers which, after the federal government managed to get the 16th Amendment passed though congress, was formed to turn honest Americans into little more than whores for the Government. We never needed income tax until the IRS was formed.
The sheer ignorance of your stance is typical of the current end product of American education - shallow "thinkers" who have read the first paragraph of a Nietzche book and then think that they are qualified to comment on topics which they, having been tought revisionist crap that has little relation to reality, have absolutely no clue about!
What this country needs is better education and less idiots like you.
Let's face it, the Government in it's "heroic" efforts to keep control of the fast-changing employment situation here in the US is not making it easy for foreign people to work here - even if you get an H1B you end up stuck in the same job for your entire period and then get kicked out the country like an illegal immegrant. Hardly an inspiring direction to take your life in.
And then there's the amazing lack of humanity in the majority of America's employers. What other country in the world lets it's citizens work 90 hour weeks without a single hour of overtime? Oh yeah, that's right, the whole reason for H1Bs is to get foreigners here to do those 90 hour weeks, and they don't even have to give you the same rights as nationals (not that America provides many for them either).
America's entire policy on foreigners working there is both rascist and short-sighted. For a country built from immegrants and minimal government, recent political viewpoints seem to be tending towards a xenophobic attitude in which only America counts, and if you're not an American, you can only come here if you're willing to live like a second class citizen.
Try another country - there are IT opportunities across the world, and in most places you won't get nearly as much shit as you'll be put through by the US government.
I remember the frenzy here on /. when it was originally announced that ICANN would be holding elections for the position of at-large directors, and how everyone thought it was a great step foward for online democracy and the rights of netizens. But this seems to me to a naive attitude in that it assumes that everybody is going to play fair and that large organisations can be trusted to play within the rules. This is why the Libertarians aren't in power, and this is why your vote won't matter.
The sad truth is that ICANN, like many other American organisations, is little more than a corporate whore pandering to the $$$ passed its way. I mean, they've already got things like the Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy designed to give their masters the advantage over mere people, and God forbid if anything should change this state of affairs! But rather than coming out and simply admitting this, they've chosen to allow a token gesture in the form of the at-large elections, although even then most of the candidates are in the pockets of big business.
Yes, this is another example of how customer-driven capitalism has fallen by the wayside to be replaced for producer-driven capitalism in which we are to be treated as "customers" rather than as citizens. No matter who is voted in in these elections, the corporations will still control ICANN, and they're not out to help anyone but themselves. It's just another example of how America, once the land of the free, has become a fascist superstate run by big business.
Here's a thought. I, at least, remember the line-number BASICs with great fondness, and apparently so do a lot of us. Do you think that's because BASIC had some properties that made it fun to hack in (I do) or that it's just because most of us were pretty young when we did that and this is just your standard nostalgia?
I remember coding in BASIC as being fun - you could just do things without the hassle of finding libraries, setting up a class structure, planning ahead... you know, all the things that a lot of other languages force you to do.
Hell, I've still probably coded more stuff in BASIC than any other language, and I haven't used it in about ten years :)
... still has to be GFA BASIC. Such a joy to program in, even compared to modern languages, and it had a decent syntax and a full set of control structures. And I so miss the feature that allowed you to collapse an entire function into a single line in the editor...
But yeah, the point is that pretty much any procedural language can take on whatever aspects of others it wishes. Sure BASIC uses a "novice" syntax, but that's no reason why there shouldn't be an implementation that successfully integrates object orientation and other features found in C++, Delphi or Java.
Unfortunately, VB is only partly there, and a bit of a mess to boot. But there's nothing to stop KBASIC from conquering these problems and producing a clean, useful implementation of the language which can be used for modern, large projects by both people with little programming experiance and those that have been coding for years.
BASIC is not the problem, it's implementations are.
Not really, because I won't be buying any of it. There were plenty of better things to be spending my money on than Episode 1, and I'm sure Episode 2 won't be any better.
And besides, you're missing the point. There'll be video versions before then, just not the DVD versions. That way, people can buy it on video and then buy it on DVD later, making Lucas twice as much money. And I'm sure there'll be "Director's cuts", "Remastered versions", "THX special versions" and all that shite too.
Of all of the people in the film industry I can't honestly think of one that has time and time again shown themselves to be only interested in the sheer amount of $$$ they can gouge from loyal fans.
First it was the incredible array of editions and boxed sets released for the original trilogy, then it was the fact that DVDs for the new trilogy were only going to be released in 2050 or some other point in the distant future, and now he's attacking fan sites who are catering to the interests of the very fans he makes his wads of cash from!
Seriously, George Lucas has done nothing since the original trilogy worth bothering with. Despite all of the anticipation felt by die-hard Star Wars fans in the buildup to the new movies, he disappointed them all by pandering to 10 year-old children with his movie and its slushy plot, cardboard characters and fucking annoying CGI aliens.
Fuck Geoege Lucas and the piles of cash he rolled in on.
Despite his attempts to use the ESR-friendly term "cracker" in this story, we see at the end that not even Taco really thinks that cracker is the correct terminology:
"Honestly, thats the best kind of hack. 2 years ago we had the bad kind of hacker: he rooted the whole damn system and never told us how they gained entry."
So next time Taco posts an article where he whinges about the difference between "hacker" and "cracker", it's pure pandering to the unwashed masses on /.
Yeah, but we're talking about the kind of chips bought by "power users" here, who are the kind of person that would use this technology. People that upgraded their processor from 166 to 200 to 233 to 333 and so on...
Not meaning to come across as flamebait, but it seems to me that the future for people wanting a high end system is better served if they start exploring SMP options rather than the increasingly flaky vapourware that Intel keeps pushing out. Sure, AMD are pushing ahead with some better quality chips, but why pay all that money for a high end chip when you can get two cheaper ones for the same price?
With Linux finally having some decent SMP support and Windows already possessing it (at least in the latest versions) it makes far more sense IMHO to go down this route if its performace you're looking for. Even with all the latest advances in processor technology, there's still only so much a single processor can do at once.
Luddite.
... how I've missed you.
You heard me. You're just a slightly more up to date version of the folks who speak out against ATM machines, electro-magnetic radiation from home appliances, and the Evil Internet, yet accept technologies like refrigeration and internal combustion engines, because we've had that technology "forever".
Eh? Technology has been in most respects a positive driving force in our society for the last five hundred years or so. And whilst it has had a lot of negative side effects, these are due to us using technology excessively or before we understood the consequences. Tecnology in itself has the potential to offer us exciting new vistas, and is the only way we'll ever survive beyond the lifespan of the Sun.
Why is it so common to predict the end of the world (what do you think Escatology is about?) based on a pretty graph that shows steadily increasing technology?
I never said the world was going to end.
How do you define this "Humanity" that you propose we are abandoning in favor of technology? How, exactly, are we going to go about abandoning it?
Read the post replying to the post above yours. Humanity is defined by what we can and can't do, and these parameters are what shape our consciouss and unconsciouss minds in the way we call "humanity". By altering these parameters we alter how we think, and thus become something other than human.
What humanity is doesn't change, and hasn't changed. We are still the same race, with the same problems, the same hopes, and the same daily social trials as humanity had one thousand years ago.
I agree, but we've never had the chance to alter the way we think before. It's an entirely new situation in our history.
I mean, what do you expect?
That we continue to advance without trying to throw away that which we are and that which has gotten us this far? Not too much to ask IMHO.
Our boundaries are expanding all the time. Ability to go really fast. Ability to fly. Ability to see and measure distant stars. Ability to leave the earth. Ability to sort through an entire library of information in a second. Ability to send a message at light speed to the other side of the world. Ability to karma whore from thousands of people all over the globe.
These are all external boundaries - things we can do or things we can manipulate. None of them are boundaries in the fundamental structure of our mind, which is a boundary of a wholly new kind. People think in pretty much the same way today as they did when the Ice Age finished, and yet we're coming up to a point where it may be possible to alter this constant.
But, unless you give a strong argument as to why we should force our boundaries to remain static, I don't know why it would be bad to change them arbitrarily.
But then we won't be human any more. We are defined by both our capabilities and our limitations, and any attempt at altering the mechanisms of our conscioussness is invarably going to alter the very nature of who we are and how we think.
Will this be for the better? I doubt it, I think that it will merely be different. But the point is, it won't be human in a very real way. And what's the point of improving yourself if you end up alone and apart from all you knew and believed in?
Hello people? And for all that I thought we were all hard-working libertarians who believe in the principles of a free market for getting the best out of society, I find this immense surge of distaste for one of the primary marketing tools for corporations online.
The fact is that in order to increase their ability to create wealth, companies need to market their products and push ahead of the competition in terms of mind and market share. This is right, and this is healthy. There are already many traditional advertising channels which we take for granted now, although you can bet they weren't too popular at first.
So why is spam any different? It isn't is the answer. In fact, spam is if anything superior to traditional advertising channels because it costs the originating company nothing, and it is extremely easy for them to use demographic profiling to target individuals with ads offering them services that would benefit them!
Given that spam is simply a derogatory term for a new form of advertising, something which benefits everyone in our capitalist economy, I really can't help but think anyone criticising it is being hypocritical.
As enamoured as we all are with the state and progress of modern computing I think we need to take a step back and really examine the underpinnings of our beliefs about computers and the very paradigm of computing that has pervaded so much of our cultural and scientific thinking over the last few decades. This article raises some excellent points about the things that many of us hold to be self-evident, even when we don't conscioussly think about them in these terms, and these beliefs affect the way we think and act in everyday life.
The "eschatological cataclysm" that Lanier talks about occurring in the near future is truly a bleak picture for mankind as a whole, and yet it is one that I see talked about as if it were inevitable and a good thing. Just because we like computers are we really ready to throw away our humanity for a set of perceived benefits? We are what we are, and any gross changes in the state of our existance cannot help but fundamentally alter who we, as a species, are. There is no "intangible transition" between what we are and what we will be.
I personally am rather fond of the current modality of human existance, and I see anyone that believes in or even worse desires such a dramatic and unnecessary change as being at best a foolish idealist and at worst someone unable to accept the reality of their own existance. What other reasons can there be for what amounts to turning yourself into some(one|thing) else? No combination of bio/nano/computing technology is ever going to be me for the simple reason that it will have different boundaries from me, and our idea of self is shaped from these boundaries.
It's a scary prospect for the future, one in which people will willingly rush wholesale into abandoning their humanity for the promise of an artificial dream. I truly hope that I won't be around to see the fragmentation and then the end of humanity's promise.
That is a bit paranoid...
You do read the news right? Even on places like /. we see the trends which are leading towards government oppression and the loss of all of our freedoms.
The government exists to protect.. The way it is done leaves a great deal to be desired.. but thats the main idea.
No, the government exists to govern a political unit, usually a country. Protecting its assets is merely good sense for such a body and means no more than me defending my home against a burglar.
The logic... Basicly My MP3 dosn't do anything that hurts music sales.. It dosn't effect the ecconomy at all. So getting rid of My MP3 just means eliminating a busness.. and potental taxes. Sence the music ind. will not be injured in any way they'll still be able to move around larg amounts of money and generate larg amounts of taxes. On the other hand with My MP3 they'll also have the taxes from them...
Yes, I know what My.MP3 is and does and sure, the government may earn a tiny piece more taxes from this. Of course, taxes are themselves un-Constitutional, but that's yet another example of unwanted and unwarranted government interference with our lives.
Now this dosn't help Napster in any way sence this is about private lissening.. Napster is still a public file sharing system...
So?
I guess it also means that I can keep my CDs ripped to MP3s on my machine and make them accessable vea FTP (with no Annon access)
Eh? You manage to contradict yourself here since you were talking about taxation earlier. I guess this post of yours is true eh?
... is to have all kinds of databases centrally registered by government agencies such as the NSA, CIA and FBI. You can bet that the first condition of this law is to have each and every user and piece of data registered with the appropriate agencies, for them to look at and construct profiles from.
And yet again, we'll be cheering them on because on the surface it looks like a win for the "fair use" doctrine. Wake up people! The government exists solely to increase its own powers, not to benefit its citizens. They'd love to be able to have every database in this country on file and available at the click of a button, and when they can play people and organisations against each other so that people want this to happen, they have won.
From here it's just a small step to identity cards, continuous surveillance and a police state controlled by the abuse of legislation designed to let government "protect" the rights of the people. This is America and we don't need to stand up for this blatent removal of our rights, we can fight back using our Second Amendment freedoms! We need to make the people aware of the dangers that KKKlinton and his cronies pose our freedom before it is too late and we're crushed under the boots of our "protectors".
I think that as we move more towards a "wired" world (sorry for the Katzism) in which any fool with a net connection can make there views heard we will see an increase in factionalisation as people reject traditional parties in favour of their own conclusions. In the short term, perhaps an end to party politics as we see them today. In the long term, the reduction of politics to anarchy and flamewars.
After all the net gives everyone their own pulpit from which to preach, but it doesn't guarantee anyone would be heard. And in a world where five years is becoming a huge period of time, people's opinions will change by the hour as they fall under different influences.
But is this a good thing? I dunno, but there is the risk of popular orators and demagogues being able to capture large chunks of the voting population through rhetoric and promises rather than through even an attempt at a solid foundation of policy. Throughout history we see how entire nations have fallen under the sway of charismatic leaders, and do we want to return to an era in which democracy falls to the first person who can make a good speech?
Hmmm, another novel trying to capitalise on the feelings of social isolation and increased powerlessness that the modern world and the rapid changes in technology have bought us. If you've ever read any near-future books, you've probably read all of the themes already.
The fact is that we can all see how technology, the driving force behind modern culture, is alienating people... how many people here prefer to conduct their relationships online rather than in the real world? The net is not the cause of this problem, but it sure as hell facilitates it - it provides endless ways to avoid the necessity of having real life relationships.
The real start of this alienation was the concept of mass production, which changed workers from individuals to mere parts in a process. The metaphor of the assembly line pervades our society in many ways - the interchangability of relationships mentioned in the review, the sharply defined skill sets required by many jobs, and the increasing disconnection between different cultural groups leading to prejudice, rascism and eventually violence.
As for the future? It's still getting worse at the moment, and the net is giving people a whole new way to avoid the real world. Spirituality has become a dirty word, and in an increasingly secular society people have no reason to find joy in their lives. Maybe the net will eventually allow us to transcend this separation, but I think it's just as likely we'll all end up compartmentalised and alone.
Sorry, but I don't "warez child porn" as you so "eloquently" put it. As a parent and a long-standing net user I am merely concerned about the sheer volume of filth that pervades IRC, and any legitimate conversations (if there are any, which I can't seem to find) could just as easily be done using mailing lists.
It seems to me that you're the one with the problem, after all I didn't lash out at you and call you a "sick bastard" did I? Feeling any residual guilt are we?
The idea that the new generation of consoles will allow players to enter any number of online worlds in which they can interact with potentially vast numbers of other players is both intriguing and scary at the same time.
It's intriguing because it will bring the technology needed to do this into millions of homes worldwide, in an easy to use format which Joe Sixpack and his wife and kids can all enjoy - just look at the penetration delivered by the Playstation into family homes worldwide. Although games like Ultima Online and Everquest exist at the moment, the numbers using them pale to what these new consoles could bring.
In an interactive world populated by a cast of thousands, who knows what interactions will occur? It'll be like watching a miniture version of this world, but one that can experiment with different scenarios.
And this brings me on to the danger of these developments. With every new technology the potential for immersion grows, and more and more people, especially children, become vulnerable to losing track of the real world in their electronic fantasies. We must never lose track of the beauty that is the Lord's creation, even when false realities seem better to some of us, especially the technically-orientated but socially inept people that /. is primarily made up of. No virtual reality can ever match the real one, and people who lose sight of this are in danger of becoming less than human.
So I'm going to be looking at these with interest, but I'm going to be doing so from a step back.
Mac OS X already has its own GUI framework, and there is absolutely no way that X could improve upon that. After all, the Mac GUI has always been its main selling point, whereas X is roundly, and deservedly, slated as being slow, buggy and holding back Linux on the desktop.
I honestly don't see the point in this. Surely it's not progress, it's going backwards?