So, no blackberry OS, no blackberry keyboard, the same rectangle screen as everyone else, the same OS as everyone else. So what's left? The pretty logo? Congrats. Another messaging app? Watch me care. Secure? Bullshit of course. So much for pride. Ready for the fall.
Automating the primary tasks of a security guard were never difficult. A bunch of mounted cameras can do all of that.
Humans have always been better in two very important aspects. The first is the flexibility to handle something weird -- without completely losing functionality. Maybe that comes in the form of duct tape over the camera lense, or a bright flashlight into robot's lenses, or a bucket of water, or spray paint.
But the biggest reason for a human security guard has nothing to do with the human at all. It's the person that's significant. The person has legal rights. Huge legal rights. Like the legal right to not be beaten to a bloody pulp.
If a thief wants to steal a car, and winds up damaging a robot in the process, then grand theft auto becomes frand theft auto and destruction of property. Big deal. Compare that to grand theft auto and physical assault or grand theft auto and attempted murder. Most human thieves won't escalate to the next level of criminal behaviour. Most humans won't turn a verbal argument into a physical brawl.
But that doesn't exist with the robot.
So, the solution? Really simple: "Disabling a robot is tantamount to assault." Pass that law, and robotic security is an instant reality. Think real-life DRM circumvention laws.
So, buying a new car remains the "luxury" that it's always been. Is there a problem with this?
How about the other side of the coin: used cars are that much better, that much cheaper, and that much longer-lasting. The same $34'000 new car, after a five-year lease, is available for $15'000, and still has another 5 years of perfectly good, warrantied life.
Sounds like the average family income can support two perfectly good, previously-enjoyed cars. I don't see the problem.
Of course, with maintenance, gas, insurance, and the purchase price, it'll still cost $8'000 - $10'000 per year for any reasonable car.
Saying "no refunds" isn't illegal. Not giving a refund is illegal. I've built many ticketing systems, for consumer trade shows and such; every ticket says non-refundable right on it -- we even need to prioritize it in terms of layout space on a small ticket. But it's illegal to not provide refunds on such tickets, and every show is happy to provide a refund to anyone who asks. It's just not advertized that way -- it's counter-promoted. That's not illegal.
Similarly, the void-if-removed sticker is not illegal. Actually not respecting a warranty claim is what's covered by the law. I didn't read it thoroughly, but I highly doubt that the MMWA says anything about lying with a sticker.
Similarly again, telling a customer who calls in and asks "will you sell to people" that you don't serve is not illegal. Actually not serving them is.
Talk is cheap; or the I-believe-it's-polish expression: to talk and to love costs no money..
So, given the randomness, and unpredictability of any specific situation; and given that any attempt at anything can fail, backfire, or be otherwise incomplete; living individuals prefer that effort be focused on survival, rather than altruism.
You know, I don't often get to say that those around me make sensible decisions, but in this case, I'm overjoyed to say that finally, possibly for the first time in human history, there's actually a consensus regarding the one and only sensible choice!
$50 follow-up: what if the passenger is the driver's child? Wait, don't tell me, let me guess.
I think maybe percentage of the term would make sense. The 10% winner might get the last 4 months at the end of the 4 years, for example. With the 3 and a half years to prepare, and get things lined up, 4 months would be very productive..
My comment regarding ties was a reductive argument. I believe that general procedures should cover special cases, as opposed to special cases being handled through exceptions. Since the current counting of votes doesn't handle a tie, I think it's a terrible system all-around.
How about a 49% minority gets their way 49% of the time? How's that for basic math? You know, like when you share a hotel room with someone -- you alternate preferences. And when you share a hotel room with two others, you don't just screw the one guy who disagrees with his two friends. 2-to-1 means twice then once. It's not complicated.
What would your current voting system do with a two-person 50/50 slrit, each and every time? You can recount until you're blue in the face. It's a tie. What then?
Ah, democracy at it's best. Dozens, hundreds, thousands, or millions vote, but so few votes matter.
Perhaps it's time for a better voting system, you know, like one that actually gives everyone more than just a "say"? Maybe one that gives everyone some actual influence?
Just a thought. 5 million votes for A, 5 million and 1 votes for B. B wins. 5 million voters never ever ever get what they want, because as the minority, they have zero influence. Ah the 49% minority.
How about a MUCH better system for considering votes?
It's the biggest "surveillance network" not because of what it is, but because of how it's used. If you only read facebook, and everyone reads facebook, then the facebook node is a great point of surveillance. If you read 100+ resources, and everyone reads a different 100+ resources, then there is no good node for surveillance.
Surveillance was always easy. Your government could always stand at your driveway, or at your grocery store, and watch. But with so many driveways, and so many stores, it wasn't cost-effective.
It's only cost-effective because so many people use the very same resources.
I don't use gmail. I have my own e-mail server. I also don't use acamai. I also don't use google, nor facebook. I don't use a major browser, nor OS. I don't keep all of my stuff on a single service. If someone wanted to watch me, they'd need to spend far more effort than to watch the typical user. Sure they could see my amazon purchases -- so they'd see three purchases per year, because I shop at many places that aren't amazon. Even if they watched me in ten locations, they'd be missing out on half of my data, and since it ain't evenly distributed, they'd have erroneous data, useless and incorrect in every way.
Spread out your activity, and your data will simply be too sparse to collect.
Like always, it's the routine behaviours that allow any bank robber to dodge the security guard who goes for coffee every day at 3:35pm for 12 and a half minutes. It's a sucky movie-plot, every time.
It's tough[er] to track down the last 1%. It's not worth the effort, purely because 99% is enough.
Your point doesn't stand. If you're carrying a rifle, and you're a rifleman, then it doesn't matter if the rifle can break, because you can deal with it. If you know what you're doing with windows as a business tool, then windows doesn't upgrade itself in the middle of the jungle.
I'm confused by your comment. Why would I be relying on a slightly damaged AK-47? Wouldn't I have had it properly repaired/configured/setup in-advance of my trip? Wouldn't I have my contracted rifleman check it daily? Wouldn't I bring a proper weapon to a proper scenario?
Would you just borrow a friend's gun to protect you on such a trip? Seems like a very dumb thing to do.
There's something amiss here. I had four computers, win 7/8, with the little icon ready to upgrade. I said no. The icon sat there for eight months. It never tried to do anything on its own.
But I use these machines for business. That means I've spent more than a few minutes properly configuring them to act like business machines -- in a reliable, determined-by-me kind of way. They take orders from me, and they do as I instruct.
Of course I turned off automatic updates. Of course when I don't want them to download on their own, I disable the internet access. and, of course, they were the pro OS versions.
There are so many ways to configure windows to ensure that it only ever does exactly what you ask. Hey, they had a year of warning for this. They could have simply blocked the update at the windows firewall level. Or at the windows check-for-internet-access level. Or, and here's a thought, at the radio link level!
What idiot set up a radio link internet connection in the middle of the jungle, and didn't restrict access like any business network manager? Next up, researcher in the middle of the jungle watches porn, suddenly surrounded my monkeys.
Here's what actually happened (my guess). Someone tried to save time, money, effort, and knowledge. They got a free computer that someone said they could borrow. They got a random radio connection that someone said they could piggy back. They configured nothing. They checked nothing. And, having spent zero dollars on a primary tool, it failed them.
Well, you know what, the twenty year-old swiss army knife that I stole from my sister when we were ten, didn't fit the number two robbertson screw that I was using to build my $15'000 deck in the back yard this weekend. What a piece of crap.
...because women are responsible for their own adult decisions, where children are not. Because we have all sorts of tax-paid services to protect children from dangers that they can't possibly understand -- otherwise, they'd be forced to stay at home and with parents 24/7, which is not the kind of society that we want.
But if grown women need to be told to avoid stupid and dangerous decisions, like meeting strange men in their homes all alone, then you're simply asking us to spend more tax dollars on their protection. It's a great thought, but we don't have that many tax dollars. It's that simple. We can't afford such a big police/surveillance/enforcement/legal system.
At some point, a person needs to be responsible for their own reasonable safety. In this case, that point is a grown adult women not taking candy from strangers and not getting into a stranger's car.
Here's let's "change the language" as you like to put it, although I don't understand how changing the language doesn't completely change the conversation in the first place.
"...dozens of grown non-retarded women willingly chose to get into a stranger's car after being offered candy..."
This just in: solitary women meeting strange men alone in a dark alley are taking a risk.
I was shocked when a female real estate agent met me on an arbitrary street corner of my choosing 100 miles from her home.
Of course they "can" sue the site, you have a legal system that basically allows anyone to sue anyone for anything. That's the beginning of the process. Winning is something totally different.
I'd imagine that the site would need to have actually had some degree of knowledge that the future rape was intentended, or likely, and some form of guarantee that the past rape was a direct cause of the site's use.
It'll take twenty years before the world stops needing as much fossil fuel as it does now. And then africa with want it's own industrial age. Canadian oil sands will wind up being the easiest-access fossil fuels (better work conditions compared to ocean rigs and such), once global usage begins to dip, so it'll survive to the very last customer.
Of course, Canada's got a few million square clicks for wind power -- which is still the stupidest most useless form of renewal energy that's also guaranteed to have even bigger environmental problems than fossil fuels (guess what happens when you slow down the wind). And even more land for solar, should it ever become efficient enough at such latitudes.
But this is all rediculous. There's only one form of environmentally-sourced renewal power that could ever power modern civilization, and it's so obvious.
I'll give you a hint: every other energy-generation technique to date generates electricity from something, usually turbines and usually driven by boiling water. Wouldn't it be fantastic if we didn't need to generate the electricity that we need from anything? Wouldn't it be great if the electricity that we need were just produced for us directly by mother nature, for free, and fell from the sky as pure and abundant electricity? Say, millions and millions of times per year.
You screwed up. You corrected my numbers by keeping the 300 square miles. Try again, but this time correct my numbers my keeping my population density.
I think we can generally conclude that intermingling two forms of transportation is always a dumb idea. Streetcars vs cars, cars vs bicycles, bicycles vs pedestrians, trains vs cars. Rules-of-the-road take into account the capabilities of the vessels. Drastically different capabilities would make rules-of-the-road (lights, turning, signaling, visibility, et cetera) forever impossible.
You've accidentally brought up yet another point -- what happens when this giant bus thing turns? It holds 1'400 people. It's huge. It'll block visibility of so many things.
a) yes holophrastic is my real name. I pay federal and provincial taxes under it. Don't see how you think that you are able to authenticate my name just by reading it. Also, I'm not asking for your birth certificate. I'm just asking for a name to group your posts, so I know if I'm talking to the same person or not.
b) you aren't an ex-slashdotter. you're here; now.
c) you want to complain for fun? You must be jewish. No one mentioned anything about modding up your posts. I actually replied to you. No one forced me to. Don't know why you're complaining.
d) Don't know what you're talking about vis-a-vis ads and downloads. I see no ads -- slashdot removes them for me. I've downloaded no software.
You want to be here? Great. You want to leave. Also: Great. You can't dance at two weddings with one ass. It's that simple. Make up your mind, and enjoy your day. There's no reason to be upset with your own actions.
Never said walking distance. How about a 10-mile radius? Is 300 square miles enough for you? That's a residential suburb population of 50'000. That's in houses. You can quadruple that in a metropolis. Add people who work from home. Add the perfectly reasonable 25% who actually do break the radius.
I think that you're forgetting the cost to your city in terms of constnt commuting -- both in hours of work, hours of home, value growth of home, education of children, family time, road maintenance, and pollution. I think you'll find diminishing returns in most commuter environments.
I don't think you read it. It's a two-lane bus. On a three-lane road, it ain't the full width.
As for the lighting, we don't believe it. You think they're going to put a light as bright as the sun? They mean sunny vs overcast vs night. They don't mean a celestial object.
Clearly, your argument isn't worth anything, since you aren't willing to put your name to it.
Slashdot Mirror
So, no blackberry OS, no blackberry keyboard, the same rectangle screen as everyone else, the same OS as everyone else. So what's left? The pretty logo? Congrats. Another messaging app? Watch me care. Secure? Bullshit of course. So much for pride. Ready for the fall.
Automating the primary tasks of a security guard were never difficult. A bunch of mounted cameras can do all of that.
Humans have always been better in two very important aspects. The first is the flexibility to handle something weird -- without completely losing functionality. Maybe that comes in the form of duct tape over the camera lense, or a bright flashlight into robot's lenses, or a bucket of water, or spray paint.
But the biggest reason for a human security guard has nothing to do with the human at all. It's the person that's significant. The person has legal rights. Huge legal rights. Like the legal right to not be beaten to a bloody pulp.
If a thief wants to steal a car, and winds up damaging a robot in the process, then grand theft auto becomes frand theft auto and destruction of property. Big deal. Compare that to grand theft auto and physical assault or grand theft auto and attempted murder. Most human thieves won't escalate to the next level of criminal behaviour. Most humans won't turn a verbal argument into a physical brawl.
But that doesn't exist with the robot.
So, the solution? Really simple: "Disabling a robot is tantamount to assault." Pass that law, and robotic security is an instant reality. Think real-life DRM circumvention laws.
So, buying a new car remains the "luxury" that it's always been. Is there a problem with this?
How about the other side of the coin: used cars are that much better, that much cheaper, and that much longer-lasting. The same $34'000 new car, after a five-year lease, is available for $15'000, and still has another 5 years of perfectly good, warrantied life.
Sounds like the average family income can support two perfectly good, previously-enjoyed cars. I don't see the problem.
Of course, with maintenance, gas, insurance, and the purchase price, it'll still cost $8'000 - $10'000 per year for any reasonable car.
If my grandmother had wheels, she'd be a wagon.
"could be", "implying", "can themselves" -- those're a lot of if's.
Saying "no refunds" isn't illegal. Not giving a refund is illegal. I've built many ticketing systems, for consumer trade shows and such; every ticket says non-refundable right on it -- we even need to prioritize it in terms of layout space on a small ticket. But it's illegal to not provide refunds on such tickets, and every show is happy to provide a refund to anyone who asks. It's just not advertized that way -- it's counter-promoted. That's not illegal.
Similarly, the void-if-removed sticker is not illegal. Actually not respecting a warranty claim is what's covered by the law. I didn't read it thoroughly, but I highly doubt that the MMWA says anything about lying with a sticker.
Similarly again, telling a customer who calls in and asks "will you sell to people" that you don't serve is not illegal. Actually not serving them is.
Talk is cheap; or the I-believe-it's-polish expression: to talk and to love costs no money..
So, given the randomness, and unpredictability of any specific situation; and given that any attempt at anything can fail, backfire, or be otherwise incomplete; living individuals prefer that effort be focused on survival, rather than altruism.
You know, I don't often get to say that those around me make sensible decisions, but in this case, I'm overjoyed to say that finally, possibly for the first time in human history, there's actually a consensus regarding the one and only sensible choice!
$50 follow-up: what if the passenger is the driver's child? Wait, don't tell me, let me guess.
I think maybe percentage of the term would make sense. The 10% winner might get the last 4 months at the end of the 4 years, for example. With the 3 and a half years to prepare, and get things lined up, 4 months would be very productive..
Cool vid; well spoken.
My comment regarding ties was a reductive argument. I believe that general procedures should cover special cases, as opposed to special cases being handled through exceptions. Since the current counting of votes doesn't handle a tie, I think it's a terrible system all-around.
How about a 49% minority gets their way 49% of the time? How's that for basic math? You know, like when you share a hotel room with someone -- you alternate preferences. And when you share a hotel room with two others, you don't just screw the one guy who disagrees with his two friends. 2-to-1 means twice then once. It's not complicated.
What would your current voting system do with a two-person 50/50 slrit, each and every time? You can recount until you're blue in the face. It's a tie. What then?
Ah, democracy at it's best. Dozens, hundreds, thousands, or millions vote, but so few votes matter.
Perhaps it's time for a better voting system, you know, like one that actually gives everyone more than just a "say"? Maybe one that gives everyone some actual influence?
Just a thought. 5 million votes for A, 5 million and 1 votes for B. B wins. 5 million voters never ever ever get what they want, because as the minority, they have zero influence. Ah the 49% minority.
How about a MUCH better system for considering votes?
It's the biggest "surveillance network" not because of what it is, but because of how it's used. If you only read facebook, and everyone reads facebook, then the facebook node is a great point of surveillance. If you read 100+ resources, and everyone reads a different 100+ resources, then there is no good node for surveillance.
Surveillance was always easy. Your government could always stand at your driveway, or at your grocery store, and watch. But with so many driveways, and so many stores, it wasn't cost-effective.
It's only cost-effective because so many people use the very same resources.
I don't use gmail. I have my own e-mail server. I also don't use acamai. I also don't use google, nor facebook. I don't use a major browser, nor OS. I don't keep all of my stuff on a single service. If someone wanted to watch me, they'd need to spend far more effort than to watch the typical user. Sure they could see my amazon purchases -- so they'd see three purchases per year, because I shop at many places that aren't amazon. Even if they watched me in ten locations, they'd be missing out on half of my data, and since it ain't evenly distributed, they'd have erroneous data, useless and incorrect in every way.
Spread out your activity, and your data will simply be too sparse to collect.
Like always, it's the routine behaviours that allow any bank robber to dodge the security guard who goes for coffee every day at 3:35pm for 12 and a half minutes. It's a sucky movie-plot, every time.
It's tough[er] to track down the last 1%. It's not worth the effort, purely because 99% is enough.
I am the 1%.
Your point doesn't stand. If you're carrying a rifle, and you're a rifleman, then it doesn't matter if the rifle can break, because you can deal with it. If you know what you're doing with windows as a business tool, then windows doesn't upgrade itself in the middle of the jungle.
I'm confused by your comment. Why would I be relying on a slightly damaged AK-47? Wouldn't I have had it properly repaired/configured/setup in-advance of my trip? Wouldn't I have my contracted rifleman check it daily? Wouldn't I bring a proper weapon to a proper scenario?
Would you just borrow a friend's gun to protect you on such a trip? Seems like a very dumb thing to do.
There's something amiss here. I had four computers, win 7/8, with the little icon ready to upgrade. I said no. The icon sat there for eight months. It never tried to do anything on its own.
But I use these machines for business. That means I've spent more than a few minutes properly configuring them to act like business machines -- in a reliable, determined-by-me kind of way. They take orders from me, and they do as I instruct.
Of course I turned off automatic updates. Of course when I don't want them to download on their own, I disable the internet access. and, of course, they were the pro OS versions.
There are so many ways to configure windows to ensure that it only ever does exactly what you ask. Hey, they had a year of warning for this. They could have simply blocked the update at the windows firewall level. Or at the windows check-for-internet-access level. Or, and here's a thought, at the radio link level!
What idiot set up a radio link internet connection in the middle of the jungle, and didn't restrict access like any business network manager? Next up, researcher in the middle of the jungle watches porn, suddenly surrounded my monkeys.
Here's what actually happened (my guess). Someone tried to save time, money, effort, and knowledge. They got a free computer that someone said they could borrow. They got a random radio connection that someone said they could piggy back. They configured nothing. They checked nothing. And, having spent zero dollars on a primary tool, it failed them.
Well, you know what, the twenty year-old swiss army knife that I stole from my sister when we were ten, didn't fit the number two robbertson screw that I was using to build my $15'000 deck in the back yard this weekend. What a piece of crap.
The word "literally" is often used figuratively. It's an oxymoron wrapped up into a single word. Kind of amusing when you think about it.
...because women are responsible for their own adult decisions, where children are not. Because we have all sorts of tax-paid services to protect children from dangers that they can't possibly understand -- otherwise, they'd be forced to stay at home and with parents 24/7, which is not the kind of society that we want.
But if grown women need to be told to avoid stupid and dangerous decisions, like meeting strange men in their homes all alone, then you're simply asking us to spend more tax dollars on their protection. It's a great thought, but we don't have that many tax dollars. It's that simple. We can't afford such a big police/surveillance/enforcement/legal system.
At some point, a person needs to be responsible for their own reasonable safety. In this case, that point is a grown adult women not taking candy from strangers and not getting into a stranger's car.
Here's let's "change the language" as you like to put it, although I don't understand how changing the language doesn't completely change the conversation in the first place.
"...dozens of grown non-retarded women willingly chose to get into a stranger's car after being offered candy..."
This just in: solitary women meeting strange men alone in a dark alley are taking a risk.
I was shocked when a female real estate agent met me on an arbitrary street corner of my choosing 100 miles from her home.
Of course they "can" sue the site, you have a legal system that basically allows anyone to sue anyone for anything. That's the beginning of the process. Winning is something totally different.
I'd imagine that the site would need to have actually had some degree of knowledge that the future rape was intentended, or likely, and some form of guarantee that the past rape was a direct cause of the site's use.
It'll take twenty years before the world stops needing as much fossil fuel as it does now. And then africa with want it's own industrial age. Canadian oil sands will wind up being the easiest-access fossil fuels (better work conditions compared to ocean rigs and such), once global usage begins to dip, so it'll survive to the very last customer.
Of course, Canada's got a few million square clicks for wind power -- which is still the stupidest most useless form of renewal energy that's also guaranteed to have even bigger environmental problems than fossil fuels (guess what happens when you slow down the wind). And even more land for solar, should it ever become efficient enough at such latitudes.
But this is all rediculous. There's only one form of environmentally-sourced renewal power that could ever power modern civilization, and it's so obvious.
I'll give you a hint: every other energy-generation technique to date generates electricity from something, usually turbines and usually driven by boiling water. Wouldn't it be fantastic if we didn't need to generate the electricity that we need from anything? Wouldn't it be great if the electricity that we need were just produced for us directly by mother nature, for free, and fell from the sky as pure and abundant electricity? Say, millions and millions of times per year.
Ah, to dream.
You screwed up. You corrected my numbers by keeping the 300 square miles. Try again, but this time correct my numbers my keeping my population density.
Nice observation. You're bang-on.
I think we can generally conclude that intermingling two forms of transportation is always a dumb idea. Streetcars vs cars, cars vs bicycles, bicycles vs pedestrians, trains vs cars. Rules-of-the-road take into account the capabilities of the vessels. Drastically different capabilities would make rules-of-the-road (lights, turning, signaling, visibility, et cetera) forever impossible.
You've accidentally brought up yet another point -- what happens when this giant bus thing turns? It holds 1'400 people. It's huge. It'll block visibility of so many things.
a) yes holophrastic is my real name. I pay federal and provincial taxes under it. Don't see how you think that you are able to authenticate my name just by reading it. Also, I'm not asking for your birth certificate. I'm just asking for a name to group your posts, so I know if I'm talking to the same person or not.
b) you aren't an ex-slashdotter. you're here; now.
c) you want to complain for fun? You must be jewish. No one mentioned anything about modding up your posts. I actually replied to you. No one forced me to. Don't know why you're complaining.
d) Don't know what you're talking about vis-a-vis ads and downloads. I see no ads -- slashdot removes them for me. I've downloaded no software.
You want to be here? Great. You want to leave. Also: Great. You can't dance at two weddings with one ass. It's that simple. Make up your mind, and enjoy your day. There's no reason to be upset with your own actions.
Never said walking distance. How about a 10-mile radius? Is 300 square miles enough for you? That's a residential suburb population of 50'000. That's in houses. You can quadruple that in a metropolis. Add people who work from home. Add the perfectly reasonable 25% who actually do break the radius.
I think that you're forgetting the cost to your city in terms of constnt commuting -- both in hours of work, hours of home, value growth of home, education of children, family time, road maintenance, and pollution. I think you'll find diminishing returns in most commuter environments.
Is the tunnel moving? Does it come at you from behind? Do you like that sort of thing?
How about focusing on building communities where 99% of the population doesn't need to travel continuously?
I don't think you read it. It's a two-lane bus. On a three-lane road, it ain't the full width.
As for the lighting, we don't believe it. You think they're going to put a light as bright as the sun? They mean sunny vs overcast vs night. They don't mean a celestial object.
Clearly, your argument isn't worth anything, since you aren't willing to put your name to it.