It's not that the mutants survive, it's that everyone survives, so there's no basis for any one mutant having a better chance of survival.
Subtle but important point warning: evolution is not about survival, it's about *reproductive success*.
Evolution can't work if "survival of the fittest" really means "survival of everyone".
Oh yes, it can. Evolution would take place, based on the individual's reproductive success. Those that have more off-spring would be represented in the gene-pool.
It looks like we'll either stagnate or evolve completely randomly, in all directions that don't outright kill us.
Evolution has always worked that way; it's just there are more directions open to us now. The gene-pool will become more diverse than ever before possible.
Probably some combination -- all these random mutations won't get really exaggerated, because they'll just be absorbed back into the population.
Genetic changes are digital, not analogue, they don't get averaged out over time. That really would make evolution impossible.
Don't feel bad, Darwin himself struggled with that part of the theory (not knowing anything about genes).
Of course, that's not really the end of human evolution, it's more the end of meaningful human evolution.
There's never been any such thing, all evolution is meaningless. The Great Watchmaker is blind, with no plan or direction.
Eben Moglen, "Licenses are not contracts: the work's user is obliged to remain within the bounds of the license not because she voluntarily promised, but because she doesn't have any right to act at all except as the license permits."
May 8th 2003 From The Economist print edition Many of the innovations that made the IT industry's fortunes are rapidly becoming commodities--including the mighty transistor
IF GOOGLE were to close down its popular web-search service tomorrow, it would be much missed. Chinese citizens would have a harder time getting around the Great Firewall. Potential lovers could no longer do a quick background check on their next date. And college professors would need a new tool to find out whether a student had quietly lifted a paper from the internet.
Yet many IT firms would not be too unhappy if Google were to disappear. They certainly dislike the company's message to the world: you do not need the latest and greatest in technology to offer outstanding services. In the words of Marc Andreessen of Netscape fame, now chief executive of Opsware, a software start-up: "Except applications and services, everything and anything in computing will soon become a commodity."
Exactly what is meant by "commoditisation", though, depends on whom you talk to. It is most commonly applied to the PC industry. Although desktops and laptops are not a truly interchangeable commodity such as crude oil, the logo on a machine has not really mattered for years now. The sector's most successful company, Dell, is not known for its technological innovations, but for the efficiency of its supply chain.
As the term implies, "commoditisation" is not a state, but a dynamic. New hardware or software usually begins life at the top of the IT heap, or "stack" in geek speak, where it can generate good profits. As the technology becomes more widespread, better understood and standardised, its value falls. Eventually it joins the sector's "sediment", the realm of bottom feeders with hyper-efficient metabolisms that compete mainly on cost. Built-in obsolescence
Such sedimentation is not unique to information technology. Air conditioning and automatic transmission, once selling points for a luxury car, are now commodity features. But in IT the downward movement is much faster than elsewhere, and is accelerating--mainly thanks to Moore's law and currently to the lack of a new killer application. "The industry is simply too efficient," says Eric Schmidt, Google's chief executive (who seems to have gone quite grey during his mixed performance at his previous job as boss of Novell, a software firm).
The IT industry also differs from other technology sectors in that its wares become less valuable as they get better, and go from "undershoot" to "overshoot," to use the terms coined by Clayton Christensen, a professor at Harvard Business School. A technology is in "undershoot" when it is not good enough for most customers, so they are willing to pay a lot for something that is a bit better although not perfect. Conversely, "overshoot" means that a technology is more than sufficient for most uses, and margins sink lower.
PCs quickly became a commodity, mainly because IBM outsourced the components for its first venture into this market in the early 1980s, allowing others to clone the machines. Servers have proved more resistant, partly because these powerful data-serving computers are complicated beasts, partly because the internet boom created additional demand for high-end computers running the Unix operating system.
But although expensive Unix systems, the strength of Sun Microsystems, are--and will probably remain for some time--a must for "mission-critical" applications, servers are quickly commoditising. With IT budgets now tight, firms are increasingly buying computers based on PC technology. "Why pay $300,000 for a Unix server," asks Mr Andreessen, "if you can get ten Dell machines for $3,000 each--and better performance?"
Google goes even further. A visit to one of the company's data centres in Si
> The more advanced a society becomes the more likely it is to protect its weakest and least capable members. At some point a balance has to be tilted and things go downhill.
Natural selection doesn't work according to your concepts of "weak". Would you regard Stephen Hawking as an asset or a burden to our society?
The Nazis were keen practioners of eugenics, promoting the strong and removing the weak. It didn't help their long-term survival, did it?
Ooops. Here comes Microsoft with a program that looks, acts, and feels EXACTLY the same. Microsoft makes millions and millions. Your father makes... nothing. You get nothing. Your father hires a lawyer, spends hundreds of thousands of dollars chasing Microsoft around in court, Microsoft gets away without paying a dime.
That's what life would be like without software patents.
Microsoft pulls this shit all the time. This *is* the world we live in. Software patents make it worse, not better.
I manage a web-hosting operation for one of the largest insurance companies in the world. We are an internal department in the corporate IT division. Like your clients, we have kept the interesting work in-house and out-sourced our 1st and 2nd line support.
I would employ you based on what you've written here. Well, bring you in for interview, anyway.
I've recruited Web, Unix, network, and firewall admin roles. My best successes have all come from those first and second line support teams. They work hard, they are aware of the elements of customer service, they appreciate little things like being able to decide when your own lunch-time is going to be.
I also like the motivation you've shown in organising college-courses, and that you're clearly got an interest in learning about the technology.
A degree on top of that wouldn't sway me *that* much. I'd be impressed by anyone motiviated enough to do a degree in their own time. It's the motivation that impresses me, not the techie stuff you've may or may not have learned. There will always be learning curve when you come into a new job however good/experienced you are, and I expect to have to train people.
So don't underestimate what you've got under your belt already, and start looking for 3rd-line techie jobs with your clients and other big corporates.
Re:Before anyone says anything about free speech
on
EU Bans Sock-Puppet Blogs
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Also, European human rights legislation only applies to us actual humans, not legal persons. Corporations claiming human rights is a feature of the US legal system.
I doubt that any significant fraction of these 25 million people also shoplift movies out of Best Buy, which is what this is tantamount to. I'd say a significant fraction of those 25 million would disagree with your astroturfed opinion. They are not remotely the same thing.
The European Court of Humans Rights is in *Strasbourg*, and hears human rights complaints against the 40-odd signatories to the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights. It is nothing to do with Brussels or the EU.
The 1999 Human Rights Act incorporates the ECHR into UK law, so there is no need for any UK citizen to go to Strabourg, the UK courts will hear your complaint.
In the UK, each police force is monitored by a committee of local representatives called a Police Authority. Their role is to ensure effective, efficient and fair policing for their area.
Complaints are handled by the Independent Police Complaints Commission which is fully independent with its own investigators. Seats on the commission are not open to former police officers.
There are lots of things wrong with the way things are run in Britain, but policing isn't one of them.
An old joke makes that observation. In European heaven, the chefs are French, the engineers are German, the Italians are the lovers, the British are the police and it's all run by the Swiss. In European hell, the French are the engineers, the Germans are the police, the British are the chefs, the Swiss are the lovers, and it's all run by the Italians.
I have mixed feelings about War Games. Some of it was good and realistic, the text logins and the war-dialling, like you say, but some of it was pushing things a little, like computers are alive and one them has been put in charge of the nuclear button.
And some of it was just complete fantasy-land, like the cute girl wanted to hang out with the class nerd while he played a computer game in his bedroom. I ask you.
Carry a card in your wallet that says "I am a carer. If anything happens to me, my disabled child will be alone and in need of assistance. Please take the following steps:... "
Actually it's Coca-Cola Zero, which addresses something else Coca-Cola marketers have been worrying about, that the labels "Coke" and "Diet Coke" have been watering down the "Coca-Cola" brand name.
Windows Fister may taste like pumpkin pie, but I'd never know, cause I wouldn't eat the filthy motherfucker.
Seriously, it going to be years and years. At home I've got a Win2k partition for games, Ubuntu for everything else. I work for a *huge* corporate that is still on the NT-to-XP treadmill, so I won't be seeing it in work anytime soon either.
You've got this backwards. All Microsoft products being withdrawn from Europe is the EU's nuclear option against Microsoft, *not* the other way around.
Microsoft would probably survive such a move, albeit in some reduced form. Gates and Ballmer certainly wouldn't, the shareholders would have their heads on a pole.
You've got this backwards. All Microsoft products being withdrawn from Europe is the EU's nuclear option against Microsoft, *not* the other way around.
Microsoft would probably survive such a move, albeit in some reduced form. Gates and Ballmer certainly wouldn't, the shareholders would have their heads on a pole.
I dont understand why MS doesnt just say "Ok, fuck you" and withdraw from europe.
You've got this backwards. All the Microsoft products being withdrawn from Europe is the EU's nuclear option against Microsoft, *not* the other way around.
Microsoft would probably survive such a move, albeit in some reduced form. Gates and Ballmer certainly wouldn't, the shareholders would have their heads on a pole.
Who is to say that guilty until proven innocent is anymore right or wrong than innocent until proven innocent. I don't agree with the European method, but I am an American.
The American Bill of Rights and the European Convention on Human Rights are very similar both drawing heavily from Anglo-Saxon traditions of justice and individual liberty. Article 6 of the ECHR sets the standards for a fair trial and includes everything you would expect including the presumption of innocence.
The treatment of corporations is where the two systems differ. In the US corporations are protected, but the European system only applies to real humans.
so does this mean that laws made in Britain prior to the US Constitution are binding now in the USA?
No. But, British common law from before the Revolution sometimes does.
American common law originates in Britain (the slate wasn't wiped clean at the time of the Revolution) but they did go their seperate ways at that point. So things British judges said before 1776 are part of American common law, and are possibly binding if no newer American law has replaced it.
In summary, this ruling is not binding in the US, but the original 1677 law it refers to *might* be if nothing newer has replaced it. This judge has merely ruled nothing newer replaces it in the UK and it does apply to email, he's made no such analysis of the legal landscape in the US.
Slashdot Mirror
It's not that the mutants survive, it's that everyone survives, so there's no basis for any one mutant having a better chance of survival.
Subtle but important point warning: evolution is not about survival, it's about *reproductive success*.
Evolution can't work if "survival of the fittest" really means "survival of everyone".
Oh yes, it can. Evolution would take place, based on the individual's reproductive success. Those that have more off-spring would be represented in the gene-pool.
It looks like we'll either stagnate or evolve completely randomly, in all directions that don't outright kill us.
Evolution has always worked that way; it's just there are more directions open to us now. The gene-pool will become more diverse than ever before possible.
Probably some combination -- all these random mutations won't get really exaggerated, because they'll just be absorbed back into the population.
Genetic changes are digital, not analogue, they don't get averaged out over time. That really would make evolution impossible.
Don't feel bad, Darwin himself struggled with that part of the theory (not knowing anything about genes).
Of course, that's not really the end of human evolution, it's more the end of meaningful human evolution.
There's never been any such thing, all evolution is meaningless. The Great Watchmaker is blind, with no plan or direction.
Eben Moglen, "Licenses are not contracts: the work's user is obliged to remain within the bounds of the license not because she voluntarily promised, but because she doesn't have any right to act at all except as the license permits."
[http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/enforcing-gpl.html]
http://www.economist.com/surveys/displaystory.cfm? story_id=E1_TSQSPDT
Modifying Moore's law
May 8th 2003
From The Economist print edition
Many of the innovations that made the IT industry's fortunes are rapidly becoming commodities--including the mighty transistor
IF GOOGLE were to close down its popular web-search service tomorrow, it would be much missed. Chinese citizens would have a harder time getting around the Great Firewall. Potential lovers could no longer do a quick background check on their next date. And college professors would need a new tool to find out whether a student had quietly lifted a paper from the internet.
Yet many IT firms would not be too unhappy if Google were to disappear. They certainly dislike the company's message to the world: you do not need the latest and greatest in technology to offer outstanding services. In the words of Marc Andreessen of Netscape fame, now chief executive of Opsware, a software start-up: "Except applications and services, everything and anything in computing will soon become a commodity."
Exactly what is meant by "commoditisation", though, depends on whom you talk to. It is most commonly applied to the PC industry. Although desktops and laptops are not a truly interchangeable commodity such as crude oil, the logo on a machine has not really mattered for years now. The sector's most successful company, Dell, is not known for its technological innovations, but for the efficiency of its supply chain.
As the term implies, "commoditisation" is not a state, but a dynamic. New hardware or software usually begins life at the top of the IT heap, or "stack" in geek speak, where it can generate good profits. As the technology becomes more widespread, better understood and standardised, its value falls. Eventually it joins the sector's "sediment", the realm of bottom feeders with hyper-efficient metabolisms that compete mainly on cost.
Built-in obsolescence
Such sedimentation is not unique to information technology. Air conditioning and automatic transmission, once selling points for a luxury car, are now commodity features. But in IT the downward movement is much faster than elsewhere, and is accelerating--mainly thanks to Moore's law and currently to the lack of a new killer application. "The industry is simply too efficient," says Eric Schmidt, Google's chief executive (who seems to have gone quite grey during his mixed performance at his previous job as boss of Novell, a software firm).
The IT industry also differs from other technology sectors in that its wares become less valuable as they get better, and go from "undershoot" to "overshoot," to use the terms coined by Clayton Christensen, a professor at Harvard Business School. A technology is in "undershoot" when it is not good enough for most customers, so they are willing to pay a lot for something that is a bit better although not perfect. Conversely, "overshoot" means that a technology is more than sufficient for most uses, and margins sink lower.
PCs quickly became a commodity, mainly because IBM outsourced the components for its first venture into this market in the early 1980s, allowing others to clone the machines. Servers have proved more resistant, partly because these powerful data-serving computers are complicated beasts, partly because the internet boom created additional demand for high-end computers running the Unix operating system.
But although expensive Unix systems, the strength of Sun Microsystems, are--and will probably remain for some time--a must for "mission-critical" applications, servers are quickly commoditising. With IT budgets now tight, firms are increasingly buying computers based on PC technology. "Why pay $300,000 for a Unix server," asks Mr Andreessen, "if you can get ten Dell machines for $3,000 each--and better performance?"
Google goes even further. A visit to one of the company's data centres in Si
Not to mention their famous front-page article from July 1934 "Hurrah for the Blackshirts".
1 .php#hurrah
http://www.voiceoftheturtle.org/dictionary/dict_h
> The more advanced a society becomes the more likely it is to protect its weakest and least capable members. At some point a balance has to be tilted and things go downhill.
Natural selection doesn't work according to your concepts of "weak". Would you regard Stephen Hawking as an asset or a burden to our society?
The Nazis were keen practioners of eugenics, promoting the strong and removing the weak. It didn't help their long-term survival, did it?
Ooops. Here comes Microsoft with a program that looks, acts, and feels EXACTLY the same. Microsoft makes millions and millions. Your father makes... nothing. You get nothing. Your father hires a lawyer, spends hundreds of thousands of dollars chasing Microsoft around in court, Microsoft gets away without paying a dime.
That's what life would be like without software patents.
Microsoft pulls this shit all the time. This *is* the world we live in. Software patents make it worse, not better.
Can the EC dictate what I should price my products at so as to help my failing competition out?
If the competition are failing because of your illegal actions, then yes, they should.
I manage a web-hosting operation for one of the largest insurance companies in the world. We are an internal department in the corporate IT division. Like your clients, we have kept the interesting work in-house and out-sourced our 1st and 2nd line support.
I would employ you based on what you've written here. Well, bring you in for interview, anyway.
I've recruited Web, Unix, network, and firewall admin roles. My best successes have all come from those first and second line support teams. They work hard, they are aware of the elements of customer service, they appreciate little things like being able to decide when your own lunch-time is going to be.
I also like the motivation you've shown in organising college-courses, and that you're clearly got an interest in learning about the technology.
A degree on top of that wouldn't sway me *that* much. I'd be impressed by anyone motiviated enough to do a degree in their own time. It's the motivation that impresses me, not the techie stuff you've may or may not have learned. There will always be learning curve when you come into a new job however good/experienced you are, and I expect to have to train people.
So don't underestimate what you've got under your belt already, and start looking for 3rd-line techie jobs with your clients and other big corporates.
Also, European human rights legislation only applies to us actual humans, not legal persons. Corporations claiming human rights is a feature of the US legal system.
The European Court of Humans Rights is in *Strasbourg*, and hears human rights complaints against the 40-odd signatories to the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights. It is nothing to do with Brussels or the EU.
The 1999 Human Rights Act incorporates the ECHR into UK law, so there is no need for any UK citizen to go to Strabourg, the UK courts will hear your complaint.
In the UK, each police force is monitored by a committee of local representatives called a Police Authority. Their role is to ensure effective, efficient and fair policing for their area.
Complaints are handled by the Independent Police Complaints Commission which is fully independent with its own investigators. Seats on the commission are not open to former police officers.
There are lots of things wrong with the way things are run in Britain, but policing isn't one of them.
An old joke makes that observation. In European heaven, the chefs are French, the engineers are German, the Italians are the lovers, the British are the police and it's all run by the Swiss. In European hell, the French are the engineers, the Germans are the police, the British are the chefs, the Swiss are the lovers, and it's all run by the Italians.
> It's not like Sealand will have "weapons of mass destruction"
No, they will accuse it of trafficking in kiddie porn.
How many people on Slashdot have said that the gene pool has become watered down due to the protections of civilization?
Far too many and they are all wrong. A diverse gene pool is a strong gene pool, over-specialization frequently leads to extinction.
The name "Greenland" was Eric the Red's sales pitch. He was exiled from Iceland and trying to encourage others to migrate with him.
I have mixed feelings about War Games. Some of it was good and realistic, the text logins and the war-dialling, like you say, but some of it was pushing things a little, like computers are alive and one them has been put in charge of the nuclear button.
And some of it was just complete fantasy-land, like the cute girl wanted to hang out with the class nerd while he played a computer game in his bedroom. I ask you.
Carry a card in your wallet that says "I am a carer. If anything happens to me, my disabled child will be alone and in need of assistance. Please take the following steps: ... "
Coke Zero -- no "diet" on the can.
Actually it's Coca-Cola Zero, which addresses something else Coca-Cola marketers have been worrying about, that the labels "Coke" and "Diet Coke" have been watering down the "Coca-Cola" brand name.
Welcome to the 21st century, where Russia's economy is smaller than Belgium's.
Windows Fister may taste like pumpkin pie, but I'd never know, cause I wouldn't eat the filthy motherfucker.
Seriously, it going to be years and years. At home I've got a Win2k partition for games, Ubuntu for everything else. I work for a *huge* corporate that is still on the NT-to-XP treadmill, so I won't be seeing it in work anytime soon either.
You've got this backwards. All Microsoft products being withdrawn from Europe is the EU's nuclear option against Microsoft, *not* the other way around.
Microsoft would probably survive such a move, albeit in some reduced form. Gates and Ballmer certainly wouldn't, the shareholders would have their heads on a pole.
You've got this backwards. All Microsoft products being withdrawn from Europe is the EU's nuclear option against Microsoft, *not* the other way around.
Microsoft would probably survive such a move, albeit in some reduced form. Gates and Ballmer certainly wouldn't, the shareholders would have their heads on a pole.
I dont understand why MS doesnt just say "Ok, fuck you" and withdraw from europe.
You've got this backwards. All the Microsoft products being withdrawn from Europe is the EU's nuclear option against Microsoft, *not* the other way around.
Microsoft would probably survive such a move, albeit in some reduced form. Gates and Ballmer certainly wouldn't, the shareholders would have their heads on a pole.
Who is to say that guilty until proven innocent is anymore right or wrong than innocent until proven innocent. I don't agree with the European method, but I am an American.
The American Bill of Rights and the European Convention on Human Rights are very similar both drawing heavily from Anglo-Saxon traditions of justice and individual liberty. Article 6 of the ECHR sets the standards for a fair trial and includes everything you would expect including the presumption of innocence.
The treatment of corporations is where the two systems differ. In the US corporations are protected, but the European system only applies to real humans.
so does this mean that laws made in Britain prior to the US Constitution are binding now in the USA?
No. But, British common law from before the Revolution sometimes does.
American common law originates in Britain (the slate wasn't wiped clean at the time of the Revolution) but they did go their seperate ways at that point. So things British judges said before 1776 are part of American common law, and are possibly binding if no newer American law has replaced it.
In summary, this ruling is not binding in the US, but the original 1677 law it refers to *might* be if nothing newer has replaced it. This judge has merely ruled nothing newer replaces it in the UK and it does apply to email, he's made no such analysis of the legal landscape in the US.