The funny thing is that the one honest moderation, in my humble opinion, of my original post would be "off-topic," yet it didn't receive a single one. It isn't a troll because I genuinely think what I'm saying is right. It isn't flamebait (although some of my responses to some of the responses pretty much are): I'm honestly surprised that anyone would bother to respond to it at all. Ah, my legacy. And I must say, I think Insightful is stretching a point, honestly. Of course, fuck of a lot of good your anonymous mod this down comment is going to do. Ironically, with the various ups and downs it ended up with the exact same score it started with. Your comment's title should have been "LET'S ROLL: MOD PARENT AND ALL SIBLINGS DOWN"
I'll bite, you yapping little punk. Go to Google, enter the phrase "let's roll" and search. Just a phrase, right, no connection to anything. Heavens no, no context their. Or go read the article. Microsoft is claiming an aggressive security approach to fight the threat of terrorism. The use of the phrase "Let's Roll" is, of course, completely irrelevant.
I could give a fuck for being reminded of 9-11. But what you have here is people invoking a phrase with the specific intention of connecting themselves to some image of heroism, initiative, American drive, whatever the hell bullshit, that they have not earned and do not deserve. It pisses me off. Plus I'm just really really tired of hearing it period. Yes, it is "a phrase," a phrase I hear about a thousand times as often as I used to.
And you're a mewling media suckling sheep who says "fine whatever" to whatever you're fed. Here's a thought: shut the fuck up. Dumbass.
You know, being a person that has to make some smartass response to everything is not an admirable personal trait. Microsoft is pursuing an AGRESSIVE security fixing policy threatening to CRITICALLY DAMAGE certain applications for users of older systems... and their justification is to prevent the possibility of TERRORIST HACKER ATTACKS. No, the phrase "Let's Roll" was not invented on 9-11-01... But COME ON man. Do I have to cut it up any smaller for you? Do I have to put it on a wittle spoon and feed it to you? "Here comes the airplane, into the south tower, vrrrooooooooooooooooooom." Open wide, baby.
"Microsoft's security honcho has a message for Windows users: Let's roll."
AAAARRRRRGGGGHHH! You know, people went DOWN in that freaking airplane, went down and smashed into the ground and died and burned up. And I am SICK TO DEATH of now hearing the phrase used to hawk and shuck and promote every kind of consumeristic bullshit and political jingo. Can we pass a consititutional provision to the First Amendment that you aren't allowed to use the phrase "Let's Roll" in public unless you're actually about to confront terrorists on a hijacked plane?
SOME say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice. From what I've tasted of desire I hold with those who favor fire. But if it had to perish twice, I think I know enough of hate To know that for destruction ice Is also great And would suffice.
SOME say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice. From what I've tasted of desire I hold with those who favor fire. But if it had to perish twice, I think I know enough of hate To know that for destruction ice Is also great And would suffice.
SOME say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice. From what I've tasted of desire I hold with those who favor fire. But if it had to perish twice, I think I know enough of hate To know that for destruction ice Is also great And would suffice.
I think you're on to the basic issue here, actually. We trust the recording inudstry to filter artists for us, assign them to genres and put them in places (like the radio) where we can get a taste for free. Problem is, as we know, they are not exactly blindly obedient to the goddesses of quality and art and such.
A potential solution lies in databasing. By crossreferencing genre assignments, stated influences, and how different people's preferences for more known quantities correlates to these unknown musicians - i.e. people who like Lou Reed tend to like Bob Nobody, whatever. Like everything else, the problem is the start-up and organization.
It seems like the creators syndicate might be a fine example to get to know, tho.
Isn't there a fairly successful indie-only electronic subscription service that's doing better than Pressplay and thier ilk anyway?
Sigh... Let's Have a Slashdot "Discussion!"
on
Carbon Releases in Asia
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· Score: 3, Insightful
C'mon, let's get those trolls and flames and armchair environmental scientist screeds going! Let's hear about how everybody who's anybody in science knows that global warming is totally for real and it's just the petro-electro-govermento-conspiracy that's propping up the idea there is any scientific doubt about it. Then let's hear about the doubters in the scientific field and how the Kyoto Protocol is a load of crap. Let's hear a hundred little snippets about computer models and volcanic eruptions and sequestration models that none of us are even remotely capable of really understanding, and gee, isn't it's cool, it's just like Congress, the discussion is almost completely partisan, as if our political leanings were guiding our our beliefs rather than the other way around.
And that guy that says hey, everyone, we may not know for sure but we should all start talking about the best way to deal with the whole big complex issue of energy and power consumption and pollution just in case, that kills me, it's like the twentyfirst century version of "can't we all just get along."
And when it's all over, opinions and attitudes will be changed! We will all be closer to the Truth because of the measured and well-reasoned discussion and debate! Conservatives and Liberals will share a cyber-hug, remarking that "we may have our little differences, but at heart we all want the very best for the Earth and all our brothers and sisters we share it with."
You know, I'd just like to smack you on the nose with a rolled-up newspaper for what your definition of "ridiculously important" is. Okay, making sure that we (since this is a USA-only service I'll be culturally insensitive and presume we're all Amurr'cuns here) approach a war in Iraq, which will unquestionably involve the use of chemical and possibly biological weapons against our ground troops is "ridiculously important." Getting some kind of rational scheme for changing our energy economy so it stops accelerating a process of depletion and pollution is "ridiculously important."
Movielink, on the other hand, is a goddamn joke. I can get lower prices, a shorter wait (they don't even say what download times are but their tutorial example shows a 40 minute wait), a more versatile format (maybe you have a broadband enabled computer hooked up to your teevee... I don't), and a much, much, much better selection (there are only about 300 movies on this site, possibly less, it was hard to estimate because of the incredible repetition of titles over genre categories) all at one of the two local viddy stores within a 10 minute drive. This is a terrible deal and the idea that there is some obligation to support the greed of the movie industry so they can bootstrap themselves up to something that isn't a simple ripoff is just plain-old ridiculous. Finally I'm sickened by your image that we are to creep to the Copyright Barons on our knees, caps in hand and tugging our forelocks, obsequiously offering our hard-earned cash so that these grossero rich bastards will deign to dip a fat bejewelled hand down into our scummy little world and grant the internet their blessing. Painted as criminal? If you believe that these publishing and recording interests will ever think of the public as anything else from now on you're off your nut.
And if it is just me responding in this way, then fine and well: they should ignore my letter, they can consider me whatever they wish, and I will go about my business. I am not interested in file-sharing, I never used Napster or any of the rest. I like to know I am supporting artists I enjoy listening to so I buy a new CD when possible (I will go with used or a recording if I can't get something new).
On the other hand, my home computer is a very fine and versatile jukebox for my CD collection. Not so with encumbered CDs.
What you're saying is, you won't be listened to, so don't bother to respond. Perhaps you think voting is a waste of time as well. Every time one of these stories come up people wonder how the industry can be so antagonistic to consumers.
One look at your attitude and it's easy to understand: because even consumers smart enough to know better make some fast, smart-ass excuse for themselves (you actually went out of your way to try and make me look like a jerk for expressing my opinion as a consumer) so you can just bitch a little on Slashdot and then eat whatever they hand you.
If consumers in general take it like that then yes, they'll do what they do and the lone voices of commie loons like me will be ignored. But I'll continue to voice my opinion as a consumer - unlike you I can say I did something.
No wonder they complain about decreasing CD sales if they stop shipping CDs...
Let's make this more than I joke. I just wrote to BMG and said, because of your stance I will not buy your product. I want a fully versatile CD and you are committed not to deliver.
And I will back this up with actions. Eventually I suspect I will have to transition to all independent producers. When I do so I will let them know why I decided to start investigating their product base. If something I want to purchase comes out on BMG I will contact the artist and tell them why they lost a sale.
The major recording labels see lost sales in unencumbered CDs. Whether this is ultimately true or not is not relevant. Unless they start seeing and hearing about lost sales because of Digital Rights Management they will continue on this course.
Universal got the same letter from me a year ago. I haven't purchased a product from them since.
The sad thing is that I think the mods of troll and flamebait are not probably accurate. I find it far more likely that you actually believe the garbage you're spewing. So let's dissect this pablum one point at a time.
Sure the public owns the beaches, but don't the property owners have some rights too? They have paid millions of dollars for thar land next to the beach, don't they deserve to keep it for a while before the ocean reclaims it?
Basically what you're saying is that incredibly wealthy people have a right to destroy public property because they paid a lot for their houses. You're an idiot. Nobody has a right to break the law. I don't have a right to drive 150 on the interstate just because I'm rich enough to buy an Italian sports car. If they want the law changed, being filthy rich they have much, much more access to the political system than most people do. If they can't change it through process then, like the rest of us, they have to obey the law or pay the consequences.
Also these are the same people putting millions if not billions into the local economy... Envionmentalism has its place, but without large buissnesses tax dollars things would suck.
God, no matter how many times I hear it it still makes me laugh. Thank God for the wealthy, they're saving America. Are YOU rich, man, or are you just a dumb little brain-washed pawn?
"The $150 billion for corporate subsidies and tax benefits eclipses the annual budget deficit of $130 billion. It's more than the $145 billion paid out annually for the core programs of the social welfare state: Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), student aid, housing, food and nutrition, and all direct public assistance (excluding Social Security and medical care). After World War II, the nation's tax bill was roughly split between corporations and individuals. But after years of changes in the federal tax code and international economy, the corporate share of taxes has declined to a fourth the amount individuals pay, according to the US Office of Management and Budget." --Boston Globe series on Corporate Welfare July 7-9 1996.
And don't get me started about the taxes wealthy individuals pay. Yeah, they pay a lot of taxes... because they are so insanely wealthy. Don't slap one of your canned conservative jives on me as to how the rich are propping up the tax system and paying such unfair income taxes I'll just nip you in the bud by pointing out the obvious realities tha anyone that isn't a stupid little shill for wealthy fucks knows, that these analyses are garbage because one, they don't consider payroll taxes - the top 1 percent of the population pays only 4.2 percent of the payroll taxes, whereas average Americans pay 7.65 percent on their earned income - and two, it is precisely the concentration of income at the top that leads to an increase in the percentage of income tax, which is what has occurred in recent years. The top 1 percent of the population has experienced extraordinary after-tax income gains that vastly exceed the gains in after-tax income of the rest of the population. These people are wealthier than ever.
This is to say nothing of Wealthy transnational tax evaders... military waste and fraud, Social Security tax inequities, accelerated depreciation, lower taxes on capital gains, The S&L Bailout ($32 billion/year for 30 years!), homeowners' tax breaks, agribusiness subsidies, tax-free municipal bonds, media handouts, excessive government pensions, insurance loopholes, nuclear subsidies, aviation subsidies, business meals and entertainment, mining subsidies, oil and gas tax breaks, export subsidies, synfuel tax credits, timber subsidies, and ozone tax exemptions... by some estimates being taken by the rich for a total of almost $470 billion in wealthfare each year. The bottom line is that the tiny skim of people at the top have done better and better, gotten wealthier and wealthier - while the wealth of EVERYONE else has stagnated or worse decreased.
Go envionmentalist, help the goverment collect more tax dollars.
Weren't you just saying how things would "suck" if businesses didn't pay taxes? Why the fuck should some coastal golf course in California, a sinkhole of wealth if I ever saw one, be allowed to evade permit fees, even assuming that is all they need to keep their boulder pile, which the article does not say, just that applying for a permit is ONE of the legalities this fucking adjacent to the Ritz-Carlton Half-Moon Bay golf course failed to follow. Thank god the poor harrassed golf-course developers have pansies like you to defend them from the oddball dot-com millionaire with a helicopter and a digital camera.
If your house was next to a park, and the lake in the park flooded every year wouldn't you want some protection?
If you build your house next to a park that floods every year you're an idiot. These rich assholes know damn good and well that they are buying property that is eroding, and that the laws of their state prevent them from a cheap-ass ecology-destroying stop-gap, and they do it anyway, in plain sight from a public vantage point, and you're squeaking about how this guy is violating their privacy?!! Yeah, get that one on the refferendum, how dare we violate the rights of the exceptionally wealthy to privately break the law in view of public beaches? Please have yourself sterilized immediately.
despite my occasional success at being clever, however;
upon the painful discovery that he had become one of THEM, the NANOJATH had no choice but to adopt the shameful name of Anonymn Trismegistus, to switch his email to a lowly Hotmail account, to deliver his SIG unto Gormenghast, to hang it up, sign off, and generally pack it in. May the flamebaiters, the trolls, the goatses, and the rest of the vile crowd I have become sadly one of storm my account and reduce my karma to the state that it deserves
the nickname is nanojath, the password is wampetus
upon the painful discovery that he had become one of THEM, the NANOJATH had no choice but to adopt the shameful name of Anonymn Trismegistus, to switch his email to a lowly Hotmail account, to deliver his SIG unto Gormenghast, to hang it up, sign off, and generally pack it in. May the flamebaiters, the trolls, the goatses, and the rest of the vile crowd I have become sadly one of storm my account and reduce my karma to the state that it deserves.
the nickname is nanojath, the password is wampetus
I think that the judge essentially came to the same conclusion. I don't think they were saying, this is the final word on met accessibility... just that applying the ADA as is to the internet as is is not the right way to address the topic.
But I don't really agree with how you state your proposition, i.e. "the requiring of any technology to be designed around the few who are different than the population en mass is completely idiotic." First off it's en MASSE. But that's not important. To my mind, it is fair for us as a society to make the decision, through our government, to accomodate as many members of our society as possible in as many ways as possible. And yes, it can go to an extreme where giving accessibility to a few is so costly as to severely restrict access to all. We have to be careful of how we define disability and that we are fair about letting the affected providers of whatever come up with a cost-effective, reasonable alternative. But to me the basic impulse is not at all idiotic. It is a deemonstration of the superiority of our society. And it is not such a small group. Some estimates put the number of people with disability in America alone close to 50 million. How much is it worth to us as a society to help 50 million people be productive and self-sufficient?
You raise an interesting point... it's common enough, you take some standard estimate of the land area of the earth, come up with some method of estimating human land use, divide the latter by the former, multiply by a hundred, round to the nearest whole digit, et viola!
Like so often when figures and statistics are reported in the media, there's no error factor, and I would bet even money that they couldn't even come close to justifying the two significant digits they claim.
I'm filled with questions... how exactly do you define "wild" territories? How much of a human presence defines an area as being "used" by humans? I mean, population density in the Sahara is less than one per square km; Australia as a whole has a population density of about 5 per square km. Is a state forest that is not being logged but is open to visitors being "used" by humans?
Not that it isn't an interesting study to make but I'd find real data a lot more interesting than little sound-bite statistics with no possible basis in anything I'd call a fact. And what does it encourage? The bandaid solution of little wildlife preserves. If we waste the whole planet those reserves are not going to survive; if we fail to get it on with truly sustainable development and the modern economy and thrust of civilization goes to hell, you're telling me that resource hungry humans are going to stay out of that "preerved" land because somebody signed a piece of paper and some money changed hands N years ago?
I guess what I'm saying is, point made, old boys - we're taking up a damn lot of space. But personally, I would much rather focus on how intensively we are using the lands we do inhabit, how much impact we are having on habitats, and how ecology is holding up in the presence of our presence there. The fact is... we're here for the long haul. We're smart and damn hard to kill (as a collective). Rather than pine for some unspoiled world that is unlikely to exist again and stort working under the assumption that it would be nice to preserve beauty, health, and diversity in our ecologies DESPITE our presence. The all or nothing mentality (either land is being "used" by humans or else it is "pristine").
Nevertheless, the processing speed of the human nervous system is effectively fixed. CPU processing speed is increasing exponentially. The lines on the graph will cross sooner than you think. As to what happens next, Vernor Vinge said it best: "Will there ever be a computer as smart as a human?" I think the correct answer is, "Well, yes. . . very briefly."
The assumption here is that processing speed is equivalent to cognition. This assumption has no basis in fact (I'm not saying it's untrue - although in my opinion it is untrue - but that there are no objective scientific facts to back the assertion up). The salient phrase in logic is "necessary but not sufficient." We have no idea what is "sufficient" to create human-level intelligence or greater.
By estimating the processing power of the human nervous system, and extrapolating from trends in computer hardware. No matter where you estimate the first, it is effectively fixed, while the second is growing exponentially.
The "estimation" of the "processing power" of the human nervous system is a very suspect thing. You can measure nerve impulses, you can count synaptic gaps. But our scientific understanding of what the process of intelligent cognition actually involves is very, very limited and partial. There is no basis for the assumption that once you have the ability to transact a certain number of impulses per second, you've arrived at (or are even close to) creating artificial intelligence.
I take it you don't accept repeatedly passing the Turing Test as a valid, objective indicator if intelligence?
No, I don't - and on both sides of the AI question. On one hand, I can envision a computer with a sufficient store of semantic cues, logical constructs, conversational examples, and so forth and the processing speed and power to be capable of imitating a human to the degree I couldn't say with assurance it wasn't. I can also imagine a lot of humans that could convince me they were computers, when in fact all they were was stupid and unimaginative. On the other hand, I can also imagine a machine capable of something I might define as intelligent thought, but which could not "converse" with me in human language. Incidentally, I'm not a lone nut in this opinion. Plenty of real AI researchers question the Turing Test. See papers and articles by Blay Whitby, John R. Searle, Larry Hauser, Pat Hayes, Vince Vatter... There is plenty of interesting discourse on the subject, and I think the world of real AI research is still very much debating what the actual goal is.
The trend underlying Moore's Law has remained constant for well over a century.
First, a century is really not a very long time to track the development of technology. This can go both ways - the discovery or perfection of some new fundamental technology of computation could make it all go faster. Still, I think it's worth quoting Gordon Moore himself on what Moore's Law actually means...
"I first observed the "doubling of transistor density on a manufactured die every year" in 1965, just four years after the first planar integrated circuit was discovered. The press called this "Moore's Law" and the name has stuck. To be honest, I did not expect this law to still be true some 30 years later, but I am now confident that it will be true for another 20 years... it's not until the year 2017 that we see the physical limitations of wafer fabrication technology being reached" (intel.com).
What evidence do you have for the claim that only biological systems can support consciousness in principle?
None - but that's irrelevant because I'm not making that claim. What I'm saying is that there is no evidence that computer systems CAN support consciousness (and here we get into an interesting issue... we've moved from "intelligence" to "consciousness:" are the two identical? Could a machine be "intelligent" but not self-aware? ). And until such evidence exists I have to view predictions on when AI and the fabulous mind-download will occur as bunk.
Where exactly do you think the ever-accelerating trend of replacing biological components with nonbiological ones will stop, and why?
I don't necessarily think it will stop. Plenty of things could stop it - some as-yet unrecognized absolute technological limitation, perhaps, or the interruption of civilization by some disaster-induced dark age, or simply a long-term failure to figure out how to make a computer really "think." But I was never arguing that it couldn't or wouldn't happen. Just that what we're getting here is a very suspect prediction of exactly when and how it will happen. I prefer my science fiction in novels, thanks.
Counterexample: Flyboy Action Figure COmes With Gasmask (or something like that) by punk self-publisher Jim Munroe, available last time I looked for free download at his website, nomediakings.org. It's outta print in it's paper form (originally published by Harper Collins) and he's not ready to re-release it so he makes it freely available as download. I got it, immediately printed it on regular letter size paper, "bound" it with a binder clip and read it just like that. Easy.
On the other hand I agree with you. Computers are a great way to make text AVAILABLE but a rotten way to display it for reading. For resolution and ease on the eyes print still rules.
I think you can go beyond the mere technical objections (which are entirely reasonable) and get down with the ideas the basic assumptions feed into. Human intelligence is the result of a, just to throw a random figure out there, 3.5 billion year process of evolution (the exact figure is heavily debatable but that's a ballpark).
The capacity for thought we have is an intensely complex combination of the neural processes of survival and reproduction, with all those billions of years behind it, plus the geologically recent development of a whole lot of extra cognitive juice in the frontal lobe department, plus a couple of million years of tweaking this wetware system in the context of social, tool-using behavior, plus several tens of thousands years of social behavior combined with the meta-social instruction of language, art, text and such...
We have some bare inklings and theories of how we acquire language, intelligence, social functioning. The barest inklings. We're working on it. There is still a helluva lot of controversy on what exactly intelligence is, and no end in sight.
At the dint of enormous effort we have computers that can take a stab at interpreting meaning of isolated phrases based on context and a whole lotta cultural and semantic training by humans. The most powerful computers built for the job can hit-and-miss beat the finest human chess players... a game with a fully mathematically limited scope which is almost entirely susceptible to a brute force approach. "Seeing" computers can be trained to make some decent interpretations based on heavily patterned information. Voice recognition still has to be tuned to every individual, and it's pretty damn iffy for all that. Nowhere near to a computer that can hold anything resembling a conversation.
So where in hell do we get an estimate like "Strong AI by...?" As far as I'm concerned science has barely framed the question of what that would mean... and only in qualitative terms at that. So I'll tell you where these pointless predictions come from: ballpark some meaningless figure about biology - numbers of neural gaps, firing rates, impulses per second, whatever. Connect it in some arbitrary manner to some measurable function in a computer, extrapolate based on some law of technological development with far less than a century of statistical evidence and no basis mechanism whatever behind it (statistical evidence without an explanation is ALWAYS suspect in interpretation) and - viola! - you're a futurist. Or, as I like to say, a worthless dumbass.
ANd how do you get from there to the process of downloading consciousness, despite the fact that there is not even an inkling of a glimmer of the slightest valid theory about how an active and continuously shifting neourochemical proccess of personality and intellectual template, stored memory and present cognition (not to even touch the primal, the emotional, the glandular, the spiritual) gets translated to something that can be interpreted by a machine or stored in a meaningful sense or caused to be active outside of a biological framework? Well you just pull that one right out of your ass because it doesn't have even the flimsiest basis in the "reality" of doodling with a few facts and figures on your scientific calculator.
I'm not sure exactly why but the idea of people making carreers based on this bullshit makes me so mad I could kick puppies.
Why is the damn government failing us so badly? Well, here's a little hint: notice how, every year, the amounts of money spent on elections gets bigger.
Hmm, I wonder if this has anything to do with the way the government seems to be more and more about protecting personal and corporate wealth?
Have you been getting the feeling lately that you're always voting "against" some candidate, but seldom voting "for" someone? I can't remember, I really can't remember, the last time I voted for someone I thought has a snowball's chance of actually winning and thought they were likely to even try to do any real good. It's much more a matter of wow, she stinks... but that other guy is REALLY reprehensible!
The Same Old Shit party has its line and you idiots buy it - even though they never really seem to deliver and even though some of the things they support are really questionable and they do seem to be way in bed with the wealthy elite and the big corporate interests... but damnit, if those bozos on the other side get into power things'll REALLY go to shit!
Meanwhile you got your Different Day party and they talk a nice talk ad you idiots buy it... even though they never really seem to deliver and some of the things they support are really questionable and they do seem to be way in bed with the wealthy elite and the big corporate interests... but damnit, if those fascist SOSers get into power things'll REALLY go to shit!
And the balance swings hither and the balance swings yon, and you SOS cronies will tell you how that DD president was a damn crook but good old so and so, he's the best man we ever had at the helm, and the DD Elite will assure you that he was really a great President, but that SOS bastard, now that guy, ohmigod...
And you idiots buy it, and buy it, and buy it, and then complain about freedom and copyright law and Microsoft and on and on and on. Wake up. There is one party, and it's called the Status Quo party. It comes in two flavors to keep the idiots neatly divided but it has one simple plank in its platform: don't rock the boat, cause the gentlemen with the fat checkbooks like the way the boat is just fine. Do you? If not, maybe you should stop voting for guys that are taking handouts from the people that built the boat and set the sails. By the money, for the money, and of the money.
It gets into the reality that we really don't know the first thing, thermodynamically, about what it takes for life of any sort to exist, let alone "intelligent" life (whatever that means...)
It boils down to the assumption that if the physical conditions are judged to be similar to Earth's, the genesis of life and its subsequent evolution will follow a similar track. Suggesting that some scientists don't completely get the difference between necessary and sufficient conditions and need to take a remedial course in logic immediately.
All the statistics that float around about the prevalence (or absence) of life and/or intelligence in the universe are sheer guesswork based on untestable rules of thumb. Maybe we'll get to some of these places, or get a signal from somewhere, maybe we'll get some good samples of non-terrestrial life from our own solar system and will come to a better understanding of evolution and genetics to the extent that we can make a better educated guess... at the moment it's almost 100% fluff, color for the astronomy/cosmology set.
Slashdot Mirror
The funny thing is that the one honest moderation, in my humble opinion, of my original post would be "off-topic," yet it didn't receive a single one. It isn't a troll because I genuinely think what I'm saying is right. It isn't flamebait (although some of my responses to some of the responses pretty much are): I'm honestly surprised that anyone would bother to respond to it at all. Ah, my legacy. And I must say, I think Insightful is stretching a point, honestly. Of course, fuck of a lot of good your anonymous mod this down comment is going to do. Ironically, with the various ups and downs it ended up with the exact same score it started with. Your comment's title should have been "LET'S ROLL: MOD PARENT AND ALL SIBLINGS DOWN"
I could give a fuck for being reminded of 9-11. But what you have here is people invoking a phrase with the specific intention of connecting themselves to some image of heroism, initiative, American drive, whatever the hell bullshit, that they have not earned and do not deserve. It pisses me off. Plus I'm just really really tired of hearing it period. Yes, it is "a phrase," a phrase I hear about a thousand times as often as I used to.
And you're a mewling media suckling sheep who says "fine whatever" to whatever you're fed. Here's a thought: shut the fuck up. Dumbass.
You know, being a person that has to make some smartass response to everything is not an admirable personal trait. Microsoft is pursuing an AGRESSIVE security fixing policy threatening to CRITICALLY DAMAGE certain applications for users of older systems... and their justification is to prevent the possibility of TERRORIST HACKER ATTACKS. No, the phrase "Let's Roll" was not invented on 9-11-01... But COME ON man. Do I have to cut it up any smaller for you? Do I have to put it on a wittle spoon and feed it to you? "Here comes the airplane, into the south tower, vrrrooooooooooooooooooom." Open wide, baby.
AAAARRRRRGGGGHHH! You know, people went DOWN in that freaking airplane, went down and smashed into the ground and died and burned up. And I am SICK TO DEATH of now hearing the phrase used to hawk and shuck and promote every kind of consumeristic bullshit and political jingo. Can we pass a consititutional provision to the First Amendment that you aren't allowed to use the phrase "Let's Roll" in public unless you're actually about to confront terrorists on a hijacked plane?
SOME say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To know that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
SOME say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To know that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
SOME say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To know that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
To give you an opportunity to get on your high horse.
Hiyyyyy-o Silver! Awaaaaay!
A potential solution lies in databasing. By crossreferencing genre assignments, stated influences, and how different people's preferences for more known quantities correlates to these unknown musicians - i.e. people who like Lou Reed tend to like Bob Nobody, whatever. Like everything else, the problem is the start-up and organization.
It seems like the creators syndicate might be a fine example to get to know, tho.
Isn't there a fairly successful indie-only electronic subscription service that's doing better than Pressplay and thier ilk anyway?
And that guy that says hey, everyone, we may not know for sure but we should all start talking about the best way to deal with the whole big complex issue of energy and power consumption and pollution just in case, that kills me, it's like the twentyfirst century version of "can't we all just get along."
And when it's all over, opinions and attitudes will be changed! We will all be closer to the Truth because of the measured and well-reasoned discussion and debate! Conservatives and Liberals will share a cyber-hug, remarking that "we may have our little differences, but at heart we all want the very best for the Earth and all our brothers and sisters we share it with."
And the world will be a little bit better for it.
'Cause this is Slashdot, damnit!
"ridiculously important." Getting some kind of rational scheme for changing our energy economy so it stops accelerating a process of depletion and pollution is "ridiculously important."
Movielink, on the other hand, is a goddamn joke. I can get lower prices, a shorter wait (they don't even say what download times are but their tutorial example shows a 40 minute wait), a more versatile format (maybe you have a broadband enabled computer hooked up to your teevee... I don't), and a much, much, much better selection (there are only about 300 movies on this site, possibly less, it was hard to estimate because of the incredible repetition of titles over genre categories) all at one of the two local viddy stores within a 10 minute drive. This is a terrible deal and the idea that there is some obligation to support the greed of the movie industry so they can bootstrap themselves up to something that isn't a simple ripoff is just plain-old ridiculous. Finally I'm sickened by your image that we are to creep to the Copyright Barons on our knees, caps in hand and tugging our forelocks, obsequiously offering our hard-earned cash so that these grossero rich bastards will deign to dip a fat bejewelled hand down into our scummy little world and grant the internet their blessing. Painted as criminal? If you believe that these publishing and recording interests will ever think of the public as anything else from now on you're off your nut.
On the other hand, my home computer is a very fine and versatile jukebox for my CD collection. Not so with encumbered CDs.
What you're saying is, you won't be listened to, so don't bother to respond. Perhaps you think voting is a waste of time as well. Every time one of these stories come up people wonder how the industry can be so antagonistic to consumers.
One look at your attitude and it's easy to understand: because even consumers smart enough to know better make some fast, smart-ass excuse for themselves (you actually went out of your way to try and make me look like a jerk for expressing my opinion as a consumer) so you can just bitch a little on Slashdot and then eat whatever they hand you.
If consumers in general take it like that then yes, they'll do what they do and the lone voices of commie loons like me will be ignored. But I'll continue to voice my opinion as a consumer - unlike you I can say I did something.
Let's make this more than I joke. I just wrote to BMG and said, because of your stance I will not buy your product. I want a fully versatile CD and you are committed not to deliver.
And I will back this up with actions. Eventually I suspect I will have to transition to all independent producers. When I do so I will let them know why I decided to start investigating their product base. If something I want to purchase comes out on BMG I will contact the artist and tell them why they lost a sale.
The major recording labels see lost sales in unencumbered CDs. Whether this is ultimately true or not is not relevant. Unless they start seeing and hearing about lost sales because of Digital Rights Management they will continue on this course.
Universal got the same letter from me a year ago. I haven't purchased a product from them since.
The sad thing is that I think the mods of troll and flamebait are not probably accurate. I find it far more likely that you actually believe the garbage you're spewing. So let's dissect this pablum one point at a time.
Sure the public owns the beaches, but don't the property owners have some rights too? They have paid millions of dollars for thar land next to the beach, don't they deserve to keep it for a while before the ocean reclaims it?
Basically what you're saying is that incredibly wealthy people have a right to destroy public property because they paid a lot for their houses. You're an idiot. Nobody has a right to break the law. I don't have a right to drive 150 on the interstate just because I'm rich enough to buy an Italian sports car. If they want the law changed, being filthy rich they have much, much more access to the political system than most people do. If they can't change it through process then, like the rest of us, they have to obey the law or pay the consequences.
Also these are the same people putting millions if not billions into the local economy... Envionmentalism has its place, but without large buissnesses tax dollars things would suck.
God, no matter how many times I hear it it still makes me laugh. Thank God for the wealthy, they're saving America. Are YOU rich, man, or are you just a dumb little brain-washed pawn?
"The $150 billion for corporate subsidies and tax benefits eclipses the annual budget deficit of $130 billion. It's more than the $145 billion paid out annually for the core programs of the social welfare state: Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), student aid, housing, food and nutrition, and all direct public assistance (excluding Social Security and medical care). After World War II, the nation's tax bill was roughly split between corporations and individuals. But after years of changes in the federal tax code and international economy, the corporate share of taxes has declined to a fourth the amount individuals pay, according to the US Office of Management and Budget." --Boston Globe series on Corporate Welfare July 7-9 1996.
And don't get me started about the taxes wealthy individuals pay. Yeah, they pay a lot of taxes... because they are so insanely wealthy. Don't slap one of your canned conservative jives on me as to how the rich are propping up the tax system and paying such unfair income taxes I'll just nip you in the bud by pointing out the obvious realities tha anyone that isn't a stupid little shill for wealthy fucks knows, that these analyses are garbage because one, they don't consider payroll taxes - the top 1 percent of the population pays only 4.2 percent of the payroll taxes, whereas average Americans pay 7.65 percent on their earned income - and two, it is precisely the concentration of income at the top that leads to an increase in the percentage of income tax, which is what has occurred in recent years. The top 1 percent of the population has experienced extraordinary after-tax income gains that vastly exceed the gains in after-tax income of the rest of the population. These people are wealthier than ever.
This is to say nothing of Wealthy transnational tax evaders... military waste and fraud, Social Security tax inequities,
accelerated depreciation, lower taxes on capital gains, The S&L Bailout ($32 billion/year for 30 years!), homeowners' tax breaks, agribusiness subsidies, tax-free municipal bonds, media handouts, excessive government pensions, insurance loopholes, nuclear subsidies, aviation subsidies, business meals and entertainment, mining subsidies, oil and gas tax breaks, export subsidies, synfuel tax credits, timber subsidies, and ozone tax exemptions... by some estimates being taken by the rich for a total of almost $470 billion in wealthfare each year. The bottom line is that the tiny skim of people at the top have done better and better, gotten wealthier and wealthier - while the wealth of EVERYONE else has stagnated or worse decreased.
Go envionmentalist, help the goverment collect more tax dollars.
Weren't you just saying how things would "suck" if businesses didn't pay taxes? Why the fuck should some coastal golf course in California, a sinkhole of wealth if I ever saw one, be allowed to evade permit fees, even assuming that is all they need to keep their boulder pile, which the article does not say, just that applying for a permit is ONE of the legalities this fucking adjacent to the Ritz-Carlton Half-Moon Bay golf course failed to follow. Thank god the poor harrassed golf-course developers have pansies like you to defend them from the oddball dot-com millionaire with a helicopter and a digital camera.
If your house was next to a park, and the lake in the park flooded every year wouldn't you want some protection?
If you build your house next to a park that floods every year you're an idiot. These rich assholes know damn good and well that they are buying property that is eroding, and that the laws of their state prevent them from a cheap-ass ecology-destroying stop-gap, and they do it anyway, in plain sight from a public vantage point, and you're squeaking about how this guy is violating their privacy?!! Yeah, get that one on the refferendum, how dare we violate the rights of the exceptionally wealthy to privately break the law in view of public beaches? Please have yourself sterilized immediately.
upon the painful discovery that he had become one of THEM, the NANOJATH had no choice but to adopt the shameful name of Anonymn Trismegistus, to switch his email to a lowly Hotmail account, to deliver his SIG unto Gormenghast, to hang it up, sign off, and generally pack it in. May the flamebaiters, the trolls, the goatses, and the rest of the vile crowd I have become sadly one of storm my account and reduce my karma to the state that it deserves
the nickname is nanojath, the password is wampetus
furthermore:
upon the painful discovery that he had become one of THEM, the NANOJATH had no choice but to adopt the shameful name of Anonymn Trismegistus, to switch his email to a lowly Hotmail account, to deliver his SIG unto Gormenghast, to hang it up, sign off, and generally pack it in. May the flamebaiters, the trolls, the goatses, and the rest of the vile crowd I have become sadly one of storm my account and reduce my karma to the state that it deserves.
the nickname is nanojath, the password is wampetus
yeah, yeah, you're right.
But I don't really agree with how you state your proposition, i.e. "the requiring of any technology to be designed around the few who are different than the population en mass is completely idiotic." First off it's en MASSE. But that's not important. To my mind, it is fair for us as a society to make the decision, through our government, to accomodate as many members of our society as possible in as many ways as possible. And yes, it can go to an extreme where giving accessibility to a few is so costly as to severely restrict access to all. We have to be careful of how we define disability and that we are fair about letting the affected providers of whatever come up with a cost-effective, reasonable alternative. But to me the basic impulse is not at all idiotic. It is a deemonstration of the superiority of our society. And it is not such a small group. Some estimates put the number of people with disability in America alone close to 50 million. How much is it worth to us as a society to help 50 million people be productive and self-sufficient?
Like so often when figures and statistics are reported in the media, there's no error factor, and I would bet even money that they couldn't even come close to justifying the two significant digits they claim.
I'm filled with questions... how exactly do you define "wild" territories? How much of a human presence defines an area as being "used" by humans? I mean, population density in the Sahara is less than one per square km; Australia as a whole has a population density of about 5 per square km. Is a state forest that is not being logged but is open to visitors being "used" by humans?
Not that it isn't an interesting study to make but I'd find real data a lot more interesting than little sound-bite statistics with no possible basis in anything I'd call a fact. And what does it encourage? The bandaid solution of little wildlife preserves. If we waste the whole planet those reserves are not going to survive; if we fail to get it on with truly sustainable development and the modern economy and thrust of civilization goes to hell, you're telling me that resource hungry humans are going to stay out of that "preerved" land because somebody signed a piece of paper and some money changed hands N years ago?
I guess what I'm saying is, point made, old boys - we're taking up a damn lot of space. But personally, I would much rather focus on how intensively we are using the lands we do inhabit, how much impact we are having on habitats, and how ecology is holding up in the presence of our presence there. The fact is... we're here for the long haul. We're smart and damn hard to kill (as a collective). Rather than pine for some unspoiled world that is unlikely to exist again and stort working under the assumption that it would be nice to preserve beauty, health, and diversity in our ecologies DESPITE our presence. The all or nothing mentality (either land is being "used" by humans or else it is "pristine").
who is it?
land shark...
The assumption here is that processing speed is equivalent to cognition. This assumption has no basis in fact (I'm not saying it's untrue - although in my opinion it is untrue - but that there are no objective scientific facts to back the assertion up). The salient phrase in logic is "necessary but not sufficient." We have no idea what is "sufficient" to create human-level intelligence or greater.
By estimating the processing power of the human nervous system, and extrapolating from trends in computer hardware. No matter where you estimate the first, it is effectively fixed, while the second is growing exponentially.
The "estimation" of the "processing power" of the human nervous system is a very suspect thing. You can measure nerve impulses, you can count synaptic gaps. But our scientific understanding of what the process of intelligent cognition actually involves is very, very limited and partial. There is no basis for the assumption that once you have the ability to transact a certain number of impulses per second, you've arrived at (or are even close to) creating artificial intelligence.
I take it you don't accept repeatedly passing the Turing Test as a valid, objective indicator if intelligence?
No, I don't - and on both sides of the AI question. On one hand, I can envision a computer with a sufficient store of semantic cues, logical constructs, conversational examples, and so forth and the processing speed and power to be capable of imitating a human to the degree I couldn't say with assurance it wasn't. I can also imagine a lot of humans that could convince me they were computers, when in fact all they were was stupid and unimaginative. On the other hand, I can also imagine a machine capable of something I might define as intelligent thought, but which could not "converse" with me in human language. Incidentally, I'm not a lone nut in this opinion. Plenty of real AI researchers question the Turing Test. See papers and articles by Blay Whitby, John R. Searle, Larry Hauser, Pat Hayes, Vince Vatter... There is plenty of interesting discourse on the subject, and I think the world of real AI research is still very much debating what the actual goal is.
The trend underlying Moore's Law has remained constant for well over a century.
First, a century is really not a very long time to track the development of technology. This can go both ways - the discovery or perfection of some new fundamental technology of computation could make it all go faster. Still, I think it's worth quoting Gordon Moore himself on what Moore's Law actually means...
"I first observed the "doubling of transistor density on a manufactured die every year" in 1965, just four years after the first planar integrated circuit was discovered. The press called this "Moore's Law" and the name has stuck. To be honest, I did not expect this law to still be true some 30 years later, but I am now confident that it will be true for another 20 years... it's not until the year 2017 that we see the physical limitations of wafer fabrication technology being reached" (intel.com).
What evidence do you have for the claim that only biological systems can support consciousness in principle?
None - but that's irrelevant because I'm not making that claim. What I'm saying is that there is no evidence that computer systems CAN support consciousness (and here we get into an interesting issue... we've moved from "intelligence" to "consciousness:" are the two identical? Could a machine be "intelligent" but not self-aware? ). And until such evidence exists I have to view predictions on when AI and the fabulous mind-download will occur as bunk.
Where exactly do you think the ever-accelerating trend of replacing biological components with nonbiological ones will stop, and why?
I don't necessarily think it will stop. Plenty of things could stop it - some as-yet unrecognized absolute technological limitation, perhaps, or the interruption of civilization by some disaster-induced dark age, or simply a long-term failure to figure out how to make a computer really "think." But I was never arguing that it couldn't or wouldn't happen. Just that what we're getting here is a very suspect prediction of exactly when and how it will happen. I prefer my science fiction in novels, thanks.
On the other hand I agree with you. Computers are a great way to make text AVAILABLE but a rotten way to display it for reading. For resolution and ease on the eyes print still rules.
The capacity for thought we have is an intensely complex combination of the neural processes of survival and reproduction, with all those billions of years behind it, plus the geologically recent development of a whole lot of extra cognitive juice in the frontal lobe department, plus a couple of million years of tweaking this wetware system in the context of social, tool-using behavior, plus several tens of thousands years of social behavior combined with the meta-social instruction of language, art, text and such...
We have some bare inklings and theories of how we acquire language, intelligence, social functioning. The barest inklings. We're working on it. There is still a helluva lot of controversy on what exactly intelligence is, and no end in sight.
At the dint of enormous effort we have computers that can take a stab at interpreting meaning of isolated phrases based on context and a whole lotta cultural and semantic training by humans. The most powerful computers built for the job can hit-and-miss beat the finest human chess players... a game with a fully mathematically limited scope which is almost entirely susceptible to a brute force approach. "Seeing" computers can be trained to make some decent interpretations based on heavily patterned information. Voice recognition still has to be tuned to every individual, and it's pretty damn iffy for all that. Nowhere near to a computer that can hold anything resembling a conversation.
So where in hell do we get an estimate like "Strong AI by...?" As far as I'm concerned science has barely framed the question of what that would mean... and only in qualitative terms at that. So I'll tell you where these pointless predictions come from: ballpark some meaningless figure about biology - numbers of neural gaps, firing rates, impulses per second, whatever. Connect it in some arbitrary manner to some measurable function in a computer, extrapolate based on some law of technological development with far less than a century of statistical evidence and no basis mechanism whatever behind it (statistical evidence without an explanation is ALWAYS suspect in interpretation) and - viola! - you're a futurist. Or, as I like to say, a worthless dumbass.
ANd how do you get from there to the process of downloading consciousness, despite the fact that there is not even an inkling of a glimmer of the slightest valid theory about how an active and continuously shifting neourochemical proccess of personality and intellectual template, stored memory and present cognition (not to even touch the primal, the emotional, the glandular, the spiritual) gets translated to something that can be interpreted by a machine or stored in a meaningful sense or caused to be active outside of a biological framework? Well you just pull that one right out of your ass because it doesn't have even the flimsiest basis in the "reality" of doodling with a few facts and figures on your scientific calculator.
I'm not sure exactly why but the idea of people making carreers based on this bullshit makes me so mad I could kick puppies.
Hmm, I wonder if this has anything to do with the way the government seems to be more and more about protecting personal and corporate wealth?
Have you been getting the feeling lately that you're always voting "against" some candidate, but seldom voting "for" someone? I can't remember, I really can't remember, the last time I voted for someone I thought has a snowball's chance of actually winning and thought they were likely to even try to do any real good. It's much more a matter of wow, she stinks... but that other guy is REALLY reprehensible!
The Same Old Shit party has its line and you idiots buy it - even though they never really seem to deliver and even though some of the things they support are really questionable and they do seem to be way in bed with the wealthy elite and the big corporate interests... but damnit, if those bozos on the other side get into power things'll REALLY go to shit!
Meanwhile you got your Different Day party and they talk a nice talk ad you idiots buy it... even though they never really seem to deliver and some of the things they support are really questionable and they do seem to be way in bed with the wealthy elite and the big corporate interests... but damnit, if those fascist SOSers get into power things'll REALLY go to shit!
And the balance swings hither and the balance swings yon, and you SOS cronies will tell you how that DD president was a damn crook but good old so and so, he's the best man we ever had at the helm, and the DD Elite will assure you that he was really a great President, but that SOS bastard, now that guy, ohmigod...
And you idiots buy it, and buy it, and buy it, and then complain about freedom and copyright law and Microsoft and on and on and on. Wake up. There is one party, and it's called the Status Quo party. It comes in two flavors to keep the idiots neatly divided but it has one simple plank in its platform: don't rock the boat, cause the gentlemen with the fat checkbooks like the way the boat is just fine. Do you? If not, maybe you should stop voting for guys that are taking handouts from the people that built the boat and set the sails. By the money, for the money, and of the money.
It boils down to the assumption that if the physical conditions are judged to be similar to Earth's, the genesis of life and its subsequent evolution will follow a similar track. Suggesting that some scientists don't completely get the difference between necessary and sufficient conditions and need to take a remedial course in logic immediately.
All the statistics that float around about the prevalence (or absence) of life and/or intelligence in the universe are sheer guesswork based on untestable rules of thumb. Maybe we'll get to some of these places, or get a signal from somewhere, maybe we'll get some good samples of non-terrestrial life from our own solar system and will come to a better understanding of evolution and genetics to the extent that we can make a better educated guess... at the moment it's almost 100% fluff, color for the astronomy/cosmology set.