She does have those powers. The whole point is that she does not exercise them. Her powers are like the sting of a bee - as soon as they are exercised, they are removed. It is very useful, IMO, to have such a thing around in the event of a national disaster. What would have happened in Germany in the 1930's if there had been a monarch? In the event of unnacceptable behaviour by some part of the British state, the presence of a monarch could be very useful.
BTW, if anyone mentions Godwins Law or whatever I'll kill them;)
The Queen is an extremely important part of the British Constitution.
1)For a Bill of Parliament to become Law, it has to be signed by the Queen. This means that in the event of some Adolf Hitler type being elected, the Queen has the capacity to frustrate his ambitions.
2)The Army, Air Force, Navy, Police Force etc etc all swear loyalty to the Queen, not to an elected official. This is extremely important and stabilising. In the event of instability in the country, an attempted coup or whatever, the Queen can call on the forces to obey her, and not some tyrant. In a day to day sense, it means that the forces can be more impartial. Can you imagine if they sweared loyalty to Ken Livingstone? Yuk.
3)The Queen is the fount of soveriegnty in Britain - all power flows from her and is exercised in her name. This is extremely useful in the light of encroachments from the EU and such bodies, so expect it to be challenged at some point by the Liberals. Of course they will provide arguments involving 'Democracy' and 'Modernity' and such nonsense, but that is just a front. They really want to submerge Britain and the British Identity into a European superstate.
An example of the usefulness and stabilising influence of a Monarchy can be found in Spain in 1974(?), when an attempted coup was foiled by the King, who rallied rebel troops and beurocrats who were supposed to be loyal to him, and him alone, not some rabble rousing general.
You may say "But that would never happen in Britain - we haven't had a revolution since 1688" but have you ever wondered why we have had such a stable governance, while Frenchies and Germans seem to revolt every ten years?
And who know what things may be like in one or two hundred years.
I just wish the Queen would exercise some of her powers now, and thwart some of Blairs more outrageous suggestions.
Personally, and speaking as a British Subject, I have no problem with these moves. In some other countries, such as Germany or the USA, these moves would be unnacceptable; this is because the populations of these countries do not trust their government, and rightly, given their histories.
However, Britain has the strongest tradition of democracy and free speech in the world, and has indeed defined many aspects of these institutions. Free speech has been guarranteed under Law for some 785 years. Also, Britain is a small and densly populated country, meaning that the typival Briton knows and trusts his fellow man.
Britain has no need of written constitutions, freedom laws etc etc. In Britain, the institutions of government are trusted and respected, and can be relied upon to do their job in a fair manner.
Red Hat & Gnome are sacrificing their ideals for the sake of a quick buck. You can't get into bed with the Commercial Devil and not die a little. The Gnome people are always Whoring themselves in front of Sun, Red Hat & IBM - especially over the last year.
IMO, the true inheritors of the FSF's open source ideals is KDE & the European distros, now that Troll Tech has GPL'ed the Qt libraries.
Gnome & KDE are swapping their traditional positions.
This shows that even the schemes of multinational corporations can be thwarted by amateurs.
So what about PGP, the encryption we rely on daily? Let there be no doubt that the NSA and other national bodies are spending billions and throwing the brightest minds at these encryption schemes. They may have been broken already, and we don't know anything about it.
Do you trust the NSA? Or MI6? Or GCHQ?
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
Surely the vast majority of geeks are loaded?
on
Geek Charities?
·
· Score: 4
So why do we need a charity for the most spoiled sector of the population?
With the advent of digital radio in most countries meaning that it is easy to cram hundreds of stations into a very small bandwidth, and given the fact that the infastructure for this already exists, what is the point of moving to satellite radio?
Surely satelite radio is a step backwards, because it would not provide local content, as it inevitably has an international footprint, and uses up priceless satelite bandwidth which could be better used for something else?
Because it seems ridiculous to me that prices for items that are only a few years old can be so high.
I wonder, is the 'geek' community especcially prone to overbearing sentimentality? One might have thought that they would be more rational than the community at large, but they seem to lose that rationality when confronted with some 1980's video games, just like they do when confronted with a ballot box. (joke!)
I'm afraid I don't agree.Science does not exist in a moral vacuum, however much you may like to think so.
I would lay the blame of much of the problems we have in society today at the doors of science. Einsteins Relativity theory and the uncertainties of Quantum Mechanics have filtered down into the Moral Relativism and uncertainty we see around us today, via the medium of failed religion and collapsed world views.
You cannot monkey about with a society's certaintys and worldview without expecting consequences. We have seen a lot of that this century.
I only ask that scientists be careful and responsible, not that they censor themselves.
Our society, no matter how it ends up, is not anywhere close to the most important thing in the universe, and will never be.
I don't know about you, but its the most important thing in the universe as far as I'm concerned. I don't give a flying fsck about the Andromeda Galaxy - we are far more important.
'Important' is a subjective term, you see, and the only people we know of capable of applying it as an idea is Homo Sapiens Sapiens.
Every time I switch on the TV its 'Global Warming' this and 'environment' that, never mind the constant exhortations to be young, beautiful, wealthy, famous, and if you're not, screw you, you are guilty.
The whole of western civilisation is based upon guilt, IMO.
The assumption that a AI would _necessarially_ have the drive to subdue the natural world and attain the highest position on the food chain is a fallacy.
I'm not assuming any such thing. That is precisely the point - it's an unknown. I think it isn't worth the risk. Who knows what their motives and drives would be? We could try and design them in, but who can say what will happen? Thats the point.
If you look at the majority of consoles, such as the PSX and dreamcast, you will find that their sealed nature gives programmers an advantage ; they are free to expoit the system without having to worry about hardware variations.
But this Indrema system sounds quite adaptable, which will hamstring the game develepors attempts to tweak and optomise. Surely an unhackable system would be more sensible from the consumers point of view?
The way I see it, our fate will be either 1) or a combination of 2) & 3).
There will always be those who are scared of technology, and will be left behind, and there are those so enthusiastic that they will leave their human origins behind.
One possibility is uploading, whereby you upload your mind into computer hardware, and then modify it as you wish and run it thousands of times faster. I don't see why this shouldn't be possible in 100 years or so. I see humanity splitting down the middle, into the technologically aided, who will accellerate off into the future, and those left behind, who won't be too different from us.
And there will probably still be stone age tribes in the Brazillian jungle and other isolated places.
Technology tends to accrete, without outmoding that which has gone before. On a daily basis I use technology that is anything from 6 months old to 50000 years old. What will change in the future is that some people will not use or even understand how to use the latest technologies. (An extreme version of the 'blinking twelve problem')
Or at least, intelligent computers should never be created, IMO.
According to the essay 'The Singularity' by Vernor Vinge, the creation of an intelligent computer would spawn a moment of infinitely rapid technological progress, as each generation designs the next.
Humans would quickly become redundant in such a scenario, insofar as they would no longer have anything to contribute to the progress of our culture. The machines would inherit the Earth.
Why are we so enthusiastic about developing intelligent computers, given that this fate is inevitable? We should keep computers in their place as simple but fast Turing Machines, and not allow them to step up the ladder to sentience.
For God's sake, we are just talking about a simple governing body. There is no need to inflate it's status and give it such ridiculous responsibilities.
I mean, ICAAN is'nt even that important, anyway.
I propose that if it ain't broke, don't fix it. And certainly don't create another 'big government' style overbearing beurocracie.
For God's sake, we are just talking about a simple governing body. There is no need to inflate it's status and give it such ridiculous responsibilities.
I mean, ICAAN is'nt even that important, anyway.
I propose that if it ain't broke, don't fix it. And certainly don't create another 'big government' style overbearing beurocracie.
1)Built fucking loads of Telephone lines. 2)Created Unix
Created much of our modern telephone structure in the 70's 3)Built some of the first computers.
The things you mention were mostly pioneered in Europe, especially mobile phones. The frontier in the telecommunications industry now lies outwith America, in Europe and Japan.
I bet if AT&T had never been broken up, America would still have the lead.
There is a big problem in the Law Courts about standards of Evidence with regards to digital film. It is now so easy for the common man to modify digital film that much evidence from cameras, both still and film, will become redundant unless we can be sure that the film has not been modified.
The only solution to this grave problem, it seems to me, is to ensure that digital film is watermarked when recorded, so that if it is modified it is easy to tell. This is the only way we can preserve film as a trustworthy exhibit in the courts of the future.
If we do not, many innocent people will be jailed and many guilty people will get off free. The time to act is now.
What I mean by this is that as we look around ourselves, we see technology merging the boundaries of everything. How long until robots are bending the distinctions between the dead and the alive, in the same way that computer represented realities bend the distinctions between observed reality and perceived reality?
I see real potential for robots to become the next civil liberty issue, as various pressure groups call for them to be given rights, and not be exploited.
Will we treat our robots as we used to treat our women?
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
Re:3D Realism is becoming dangerous.
on
Nvidia's NV20
·
· Score: 1
Regardless of what you think, it is best to err on the side of caution. The simple fact is that the human race has never had accurate depictions of reality in it's history, never mind ones in which it is necessary to behave in a psychopathic fashion to succeed.
I have played games for hours on end, and have personally felt distanced from reality at the end. Wandering around in a stupor. In the future, this effect will worsen. I cannot be as blase as you, my friend.
Another implication of 3D games is the annihilation of imagination. Why try to think of your own universes, when they are provided them on a plate?
Why do you make the assumption that a game looks like reality, therefore reality must act like a game? It seems to me that again, you must be mentally unbalanced if you are to make this leap in logic.
I don't make this assumption. I am saying that such an assumption is made at an unconscious level. People are not rational animals, Mr Coward, however much you may like to think so.
Slashdot Mirror
BTW, if anyone mentions Godwins Law or whatever I'll kill them ;)
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
1)For a Bill of Parliament to become Law, it has to be signed by the Queen. This means that in the event of some Adolf Hitler type being elected, the Queen has the capacity to frustrate his ambitions.
2)The Army, Air Force, Navy, Police Force etc etc all swear loyalty to the Queen, not to an elected official. This is extremely important and stabilising. In the event of instability in the country, an attempted coup or whatever, the Queen can call on the forces to obey her, and not some tyrant. In a day to day sense, it means that the forces can be more impartial. Can you imagine if they sweared loyalty to Ken Livingstone? Yuk.
3)The Queen is the fount of soveriegnty in Britain - all power flows from her and is exercised in her name. This is extremely useful in the light of encroachments from the EU and such bodies, so expect it to be challenged at some point by the Liberals. Of course they will provide arguments involving 'Democracy' and 'Modernity' and such nonsense, but that is just a front. They really want to submerge Britain and the British Identity into a European superstate.
An example of the usefulness and stabilising influence of a Monarchy can be found in Spain in 1974(?), when an attempted coup was foiled by the King, who rallied rebel troops and beurocrats who were supposed to be loyal to him, and him alone, not some rabble rousing general.
You may say "But that would never happen in Britain - we haven't had a revolution since 1688" but have you ever wondered why we have had such a stable governance, while Frenchies and Germans seem to revolt every ten years?
And who know what things may be like in one or two hundred years.
I just wish the Queen would exercise some of her powers now, and thwart some of Blairs more outrageous suggestions.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
However, Britain has the strongest tradition of democracy and free speech in the world, and has indeed defined many aspects of these institutions. Free speech has been guarranteed under Law for some 785 years. Also, Britain is a small and densly populated country, meaning that the typival Briton knows and trusts his fellow man.
Britain has no need of written constitutions, freedom laws etc etc. In Britain, the institutions of government are trusted and respected, and can be relied upon to do their job in a fair manner.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
Red Hat & Gnome are sacrificing their ideals for the sake of a quick buck. You can't get into bed with the Commercial Devil and not die a little. The Gnome people are always Whoring themselves in front of Sun, Red Hat & IBM - especially over the last year.
IMO, the true inheritors of the FSF's open source ideals is KDE & the European distros, now that Troll Tech has GPL'ed the Qt libraries.
Gnome & KDE are swapping their traditional positions.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
So what about PGP, the encryption we rely on daily? Let there be no doubt that the NSA and other national bodies are spending billions and throwing the brightest minds at these encryption schemes. They may have been broken already, and we don't know anything about it.
Do you trust the NSA? Or MI6? Or GCHQ?
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
Jesus, what's wrong with Ethiopians and stuff?
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
Surely satelite radio is a step backwards, because it would not provide local content, as it inevitably has an international footprint, and uses up priceless satelite bandwidth which could be better used for something else?
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
I wonder, is the 'geek' community especcially prone to overbearing sentimentality? One might have thought that they would be more rational than the community at large, but they seem to lose that rationality when confronted with some 1980's video games, just like they do when confronted with a ballot box. (joke!)
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
I would lay the blame of much of the problems we have in society today at the doors of science. Einsteins Relativity theory and the uncertainties of Quantum Mechanics have filtered down into the Moral Relativism and uncertainty we see around us today, via the medium of failed religion and collapsed world views.
You cannot monkey about with a society's certaintys and worldview without expecting consequences. We have seen a lot of that this century.
I only ask that scientists be careful and responsible, not that they censor themselves.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
I don't know about you, but its the most important thing in the universe as far as I'm concerned. I don't give a flying fsck about the Andromeda Galaxy - we are far more important.
'Important' is a subjective term, you see, and the only people we know of capable of applying it as an idea is Homo Sapiens Sapiens.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
When they discover something new, they always get some talking head to say 'It just shows how insignificant we are'
I have never seen a scientist wax lyrical about how incredible we are, it's always how insignificant we are.
We don't need that shit just now.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
The whole of western civilisation is based upon guilt, IMO.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
I'm not assuming any such thing. That is precisely the point - it's an unknown. I think it isn't worth the risk. Who knows what their motives and drives would be? We could try and design them in, but who can say what will happen? Thats the point.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
But this Indrema system sounds quite adaptable, which will hamstring the game develepors attempts to tweak and optomise. Surely an unhackable system would be more sensible from the consumers point of view?
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
There will always be those who are scared of technology, and will be left behind, and there are those so enthusiastic that they will leave their human origins behind.
One possibility is uploading, whereby you upload your mind into computer hardware, and then modify it as you wish and run it thousands of times faster. I don't see why this shouldn't be possible in 100 years or so. I see humanity splitting down the middle, into the technologically aided, who will accellerate off into the future, and those left behind, who won't be too different from us.
And there will probably still be stone age tribes in the Brazillian jungle and other isolated places.
Technology tends to accrete, without outmoding that which has gone before. On a daily basis I use technology that is anything from 6 months old to 50000 years old. What will change in the future is that some people will not use or even understand how to use the latest technologies. (An extreme version of the 'blinking twelve problem')
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
According to the essay 'The Singularity' by Vernor Vinge, the creation of an intelligent computer would spawn a moment of infinitely rapid technological progress, as each generation designs the next.
Humans would quickly become redundant in such a scenario, insofar as they would no longer have anything to contribute to the progress of our culture. The machines would inherit the Earth.
Why are we so enthusiastic about developing intelligent computers, given that this fate is inevitable? We should keep computers in their place as simple but fast Turing Machines, and not allow them to step up the ladder to sentience.
It's for our own good.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
I mean, ICAAN is'nt even that important, anyway.
I propose that if it ain't broke, don't fix it. And certainly don't create another 'big government' style overbearing beurocracie.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
I mean, ICAAN is'nt even that important, anyway.
I propose that if it ain't broke, don't fix it. And certainly don't create another 'big government' style overbearing beurocracie.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
The Linux community copies MS ideas at every opportunity it gets - WINE, Samba, even the look & feel of the desktops.
If MS really does copy aspects of Linux, then it is a victory for the Linux community, and validated us in copying MS ideas.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
Here are some things that AT&T did:
1)Built fucking loads of Telephone lines.
2)Created Unix
Created much of our modern telephone structure in the 70's
3)Built some of the first computers.
The things you mention were mostly pioneered in Europe, especially mobile phones. The frontier in the telecommunications industry now lies outwith America, in Europe and Japan.
I bet if AT&T had never been broken up, America would still have the lead.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
The only solution to this grave problem, it seems to me, is to ensure that digital film is watermarked when recorded, so that if it is modified it is easy to tell. This is the only way we can preserve film as a trustworthy exhibit in the courts of the future.
If we do not, many innocent people will be jailed and many guilty people will get off free. The time to act is now.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
I see real potential for robots to become the next civil liberty issue, as various pressure groups call for them to be given rights, and not be exploited.
Will we treat our robots as we used to treat our women?
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
I have played games for hours on end, and have personally felt distanced from reality at the end. Wandering around in a stupor. In the future, this effect will worsen. I cannot be as blase as you, my friend.
Another implication of 3D games is the annihilation of imagination. Why try to think of your own universes, when they are provided them on a plate?
Why do you make the assumption that a game looks like reality, therefore reality must act like a game? It seems to me that again, you must be mentally unbalanced if you are to make this leap in logic.
I don't make this assumption. I am saying that such an assumption is made at an unconscious level. People are not rational animals, Mr Coward, however much you may like to think so.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.