Re:Speculating about AI in this way is ignorant
on
A.I. and the Future
·
· Score: 1
First off, thanks for the non-inflamatory response that most slashdotters are so good at doing when someone disagrees and/or asks a valid question.
If it were possible to systematically prevent suffering, however, I would tend to agree with him that by allowing suffering when we could choose not to, we would be cruel. Regardless, I am certain that we, as a people, would do it anyway.
However, if we want to fully explore our consciousness, I think we both agree that an important part of that ability is our ability of free choice. Both between 'good' and 'evil', and between one 'good' choice and another 'good' choice (or 'evil' choices too). Some might argue that not giving an intelligent machine that was to have the 'mind of man' a choice in choosing good versus evil (since the machine would not have conscience of evil) would be paramount to enslaving it in our 'good' set of values, which since we are imperfect, would most likely be wrong, and therefore the machine would be a slave. This also would be a cruelty of sorts. If however we imparted the ability to choose, initially, the capability to the machine to choose the ability to know both evil and good (versus locking it into 'good' only), I wonder how such an 'intelligent' machine would respond. Since we designed it, imparting our own free will thinking, would it too want to rid itself of our values, even though we told it not to choose evil, and gave it a set of consequences that would occur if it did so?
Re:Speculating about AI in this way is ignorant
on
A.I. and the Future
·
· Score: 2
My question to you would then be:
Why would anyone engineer a machine to be capable of bad habits, uncontrollable fits of rage, contentious proclivities, and a ME first attitude? These are all part of 'human consciousness' as every newborn is taught to do good things, not bad things, as the doing bad things come naturally to a child (disobeying parents, whining when they don't get their way, even when it's the wrong way, like playing in the street, etc). And if you don't spend the time to teach your child what is right and good, then the child knows not what is right in society, except that if it pleases them, do it. They certainly won't 'pick it up' as they grow up, because from birth they are selfish jerks that want only to please themselves. They have to learn that it is good to please others, and not just themselves.
I don't see how or why you would provide these characteristics to a machine. You yourself said that even if we didn't try to give the machines our bad tendancies, that you would be sorry for them. Why would you create AI that had the capability to do wrong and feel bad for it if you didn't want to feel sorry for it? If it were me, I would rather my offspring know no evil, and be completely oblivious (naive really) of all the bad stuff in the world. And if you didn't give the machine these traits, then you wouldn't truly be following the 'science' of discovering everything about human consciousness, as you put it.
Therefore, each person must have a soul, capable of good and evil. I find your logic on the non-existence of a 'soul' in every human being to be quite perplexing and confusing. Could you please explain better why this is not making any sense to me?
They probably haven't taken over because we are an imperfect species, building imperfect tools. But that doesn't mean that the machines wouldn't try. But I agree with you, we'll continue to make imperfect machines which will ultimately eliviate our own imperfections rather than provide the machines with more perfect skill sets than our own. The machines will be built to enhance our lives, not take them over for us.
Actually, I think you meant to say it's people using technology to abuse other people, not just tech itself. So an AI 'girl' that you hook your friend up with in the future in a chat room as a prank, then tell him that she isn't real, well, that's damaging to his ego at least. It also deals a blow to the trust in your friendship. So although computer's may one day be able to display emotion like characteristics, they'll never have true heartfelt, irrational, wild mood swings like a human does. Sometimes us humans do things that go completely against our 'programming', such as risking one's life to save another's life with no regard for the outcome for yourself. If you program an AI machine to want to preserve it's life, it certainly isn't going to go against such instructions as it has no reason to love someone. I seriously doubt us humans could accurately (or even approximately) model unconditional love into a machine.
Finally, we have heard about a logical, fair, balanced resolution of a problem by both sides here on Slashdot. Obviously the lawyers, as is normal, still don't get it. Charge the company you work for, not the litigants, you morons!
Then again, if a large company can be cut down to size by a better performing smaller one with more intelligent or harder working people, isn't that fair? I'm not saying I'd like to see people and companies lose money for their hard work, but if someone is doing it better, then maybe it's time to find a new line of work...
If we make it known to other nations that we are prepared for a possible nuclear attack, it leads them to be less likely to attempt on. Whereas if we were publicly announcing we did not see the need for the defense, we would become an obvious target.
And to add my two cents to this discussion...
Not only will they be less likely to attack because they know our defenses would most likely thwart all but an all out world annhilating nuke attack (considering 10 years from now once the star wars program has yielded highly reliable defense systems), they will also be MORE likely to play nicey nice with the US to gain some of the similar defense systems for their own country. The reason every one else in the world is pissed about it is because they know their own ignorant populations won't or can't afford to build such defenses, and therefore they don't want us to have any more power than them. This leads them to saying how evil and bad an idea this is, when in reality, it's the best thing our country can do. Being able to shoot down a nuke with a non-nuke, is a lot better than a retaliation 'nuke for nuke' defense police. (Hence the reason there even was a cold war in the first place.)
Hmmm... That's an interesting viewpoint. My brother said it was a great movie too, and he's played just as much of the FF game series as I have (I've played through FF3, some of FF4, FF7, & FF9). This may be part of the reason why so many people are ripping the movie for its plot-line. If it IS based on the games closely, then I would expect it to contain the same elements of storytelling, which yes, to the uninitiated seem at first rather boring because of their simplicity, but usually get much more involving once the underlying stories come out.
The only thing I could see being a problem is not enough time in the movie to develop the story fully, as in the FF series which even when played at a breakneck pace, usually takes 20+ hours (and can take 100+ hours going at a more inquisitive, slower pace). But for its technical merits and attempts at 'new things' (60,000+ strands of Aki's hair rendered!!!) I think I'll go see it.
Costs have to be attached to sending mail to strangers, either micropayments or risk of jail.
jamie, what's wrong with you?! Making people pay doesn't stop the spam! I get more snail mail spam than I do email spam on a daily basis. Charging for email and enacting a million rules to govern its use won't help either. At a certain point, it just makes it prohibitively expensive or litigous ridden for the common user, me, to actually use it 'cause there's too many rules to follow and fees to pay. Your thinking on this one is wrong.
If I like a website enough to pay for it, I will. But there's already too much commercialism on the net that I could care less if slashdot or other advertising supported websites begin charging their users. I'll just go elsewhere to find my FREE tech news, sports news, etc. Hopefully this will cut down on the noise ratio at least, getting rid of arrogant websites that think they can charge their users for marginally good information and still expect to make a profit. Here's my prediction: All websites that now survive from banner ad revenue alone switch to 'subscription' systems. They lose users to all the.ORG's of the world with the same info, and no charge. Said, now unprofitable, websites create an online coalition like the RIAA, we'll call it: S.H.I.T. for short. They begin to sue all the free content providers for 'copyright' and 'trademark' infringement over the information carried on their websites. Our world spins out of control and becomes an elitist versus the commoner world where everyone hates their life, and only wants to make everyone else as miserable as they are or worse.
If you don't get my sarcastic pessimism about profit and the need for everyone to be making ridiculous amounts of it (aka - GREED), then I can take you out back and show you exactly what I mean.
slashdot.org was first built as a non-profit organization for everyone to use free of charge. It then got bought out, and changing it to slashdot.com could potentially confuse it's original user base. MySQL.org was set up by a for-profit business first, so I do have issue with that over slashdot. But I still got a chuckle out of your post.;)
So true man! I haven't bought one new group's CD since Napster died either. I recently bought four new CD's, but they were all from groups I have multiple albums from anyways. I be ROFLMAO when the record companies realize what idiots they are to try and block technological advance when they have to announce after this Christmas that they made half what they did last year.
Besides, the only way to maintain 100% compliance is to hold all the 'allowed' songs on a central server, which goes completely against all that the Napster architecture is.
But ultimately the downloads are not 'free' because you're forced to register with them. Plus, that link on their home page is there, but as a person searching to find out more about MySQL, how would I know who was MYSQL AB? I've never used MySQL before, so to me, this does appear like something that ought to be fixed. Also, the MySQL.com people were never contacted about mysql.org going live, and I would think in the OpenSource community you should make an effort to keep the original developers informed when the product you built is better than their original design. At the very least, they should at least just say, "We're sorry if any confusion was caused, we'll fix it." But, most companies are pretty arrogant and self-serving now-a-days, so I doubt this will happen.
NuSphere may not be 'obscure', but the mysql.org website seems a little deceptive. If I didn't investigate it more, I wouldn't have known the difference between mysql.org or mysql.com just by looking at the front page of the website. MySQL.org presents their website in a manner that does not give credit where credit is due.
For one, if you go to mysql.org you will find that it doesn't say whether it developed the software, it just says it's got mysql software available for 'free' download. But the mysql.com guy is correct, in that you cannot download any software without registering with mysql.org first. That indicates to me that it's not 'free' because now mysql.org has customer data to use to market their product to. Plus, it doesn't say: "Hey, we didn't write the software, mysql.com is where you can find that info. We just improved upon it." Besides, I don't think.org websites should ever be for-profit businesses as that is not how that domain was intended to be used.
There is even one of the Aki naked, although I am not sure why it got made in the first place.
If you were a graphical artist, wouldn't you do the same? You can't add to the form without first creating the initial framework for that form. Then again, maybe someone just took the bikini shot and 'modified' it like all those tomb raider and CS hostage hacks that did the same with those female characters.
Technological advances, in general, increase the profitability of any business. Even if the technology results in fewer short term jobs, it increases the wealth and productivity of the business and ultimately results in MORE money in the market. Those bookstores who do not embrace this new technology obviously will stand to lose lots of money in the long run. Besides, the point of the machine is to provide on-sight specialty book printing. I think it would be highly useful for quickly creating out-of-print or hard to find books.
Well, Microsoft is completely legit on this one. Why shouldn't they protect their IP? They've got a right to do so. I personally would prefer to see them tackle bigger giants of piracy like all of Eastern Asia, in particular China, but hey, this is legal too.
And when it comes to providing a school with a Linux or BSD type box, why not? Not all the teachers have to have it. For the informed student who would rather use the Linux box in the library to type up another English paper on it because everyone else is hogging the Windows machines, why not? Free Software is a labor of love, AppleII was not viable in the classroom cause you still had to purchase it. Linux and StarOffice and all the other free programs are just that FREE! If not that many kids can use it, so what, it didn't cost the school one red cent to get it. And if one extra kid per graduating class in the school has a handle on how to use Linux, then great! That's got to amount to more well versed employees in the future. Especially ones that realize that there are free alternatives to the pricey juggernaut of M$ software.
Look, paying for online content is not something that people shun.
Case in point: My roommate and I both read WorldNetDaily.com almost religiously. It's a free daily news site, that also publishes a small offline magazine. My roommate thought it was worth his money to get a subscription, I did not (and not simply because we live together, these decisions were made before we were actually roommates). The problem with online sites charging for content is not on whether they can get people to pay, because many probably will. The problem is how many people can they retain when they go from free, to fee? If they lose too much of their readership, they still won't make up for lost banner ad revenue or corporate sponsorship revenue. This is the hard truth that the dot-coms are learning suddenly. If I need info badly enough to pay for it, I will. Otherwise, I, Joe Consumer, am going to find the cheapest alternative, and on the net, that's pretty easy to find. So I say, feel free to charge people for access to the content you provide. Just don't expect everyone to stick around when you do.
What about the Bible? It's remained the same for century upon century and still is a 'best seller'. Even more copies of it exist in more languages than all the books you name above, put together! Now that's longevity no matter how you look at it, even if you don't believe it to be valid as the source for an entire religion. I wonder if the Khoran or Buddhist writings are approaching that same worldwide kind of influence, being that they haven't been around as long?
The point is that attention isn't a natural resource in limited supply, we can't run out of it. We have to choose at any given point what to pay attention to.
And you just contradicted yourself! If you have to make a choice on what to pay attention to, you are are making a supply & demand decision. You can only supply so much attention to the increasingly overwhelming demand for attention in the post-industrial world we live in. This is Katz's point, and I think it's a good one.
You are right on the religion thing, and 'loving thy neighbor', because this promotes selflessness. Because there is so much demand for our attention, many people in their natural human state turn their attention towards themselves and attempt to please themselves. This usually does not benefit others as you are focusing on getting the most for 'me', not the most for others. Caring about 'the things that matter' involves putting others needs and wants above your own.
Your nick indicates your unfaltering belief in Christianity, which indicates to me that you believe that Christ died to pay the price for the world's sins (selflessly), and therefore we are to do the same for others. If this is so, then the demand for our attention by companies is obviously going to detract from the amount of time that we can 'focus on the things that matter' as you so put it. This begats the argument that indeed, Katz's quoting the economist as saying: "What Information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention." is right on target because it means that our current deficit of attention is causing a lack of caring, apathy in general, and a greediness that will continue to get worse if we are to be bombarded by an ever increasing amount of information.
I'm obviously not flaming you, just trying to correct you're slightly flawed (incomplete?) argument.
I think I can tell the difference between Adobe's software and KDE's software though. It's not deceiving me into thinking that KIllustrator is actually Adobe software, so what's Adobe's big beef?
I don't think Apple and Sun are trademarked. I believe "Apple Computers" and "Sun Microsystems" are.
That's the point. Why should companies flip out when an ordinary part of their name (like the word apple, or sun) is used as part of another name. If I called my software company Red Apple, Inc., Apple Computers should not sue me just because I used the word Apple in my companies' name. You missed the point completely.
As is typical with the Pentagon, they will be paying 1.2 million dollars for 2000 copies of the CD.
Are you kidding? The DoD already has a measly budget, I'm sure they're not stupid enough to pay for free software. Besides, since it's open source, they can tweak it to track every government worker's productivity to make sure no one is skipping their daily regimen of coffee and smoke breaks.:) Besides, everyone knows the government is inefficient at best due to the sheer size of it all, so they don't need the best software out there like M$ Office Suite. This sounds like someone actually did some thinking high up in the political realm of the DoD for once.
Yes! DO NOT neglect the modem and/or cable connections. These are wires, and will carry current. About a year ago I lost a pretty nice voice modem during a thunderstorm. The telephone line was not protected, and well, I learned the hard way...
I believe that I've said this several ways but, I guess, I haven't been clear enough. Let me try again. Since market share information is based upon supply-side research, not a survey, a survey instrument wasn't needed or used. So, there are no questions to share with the Slashdot community.
OK, I understand what you're saying now. I guess my original question was more directed at how do we (or you) verify the data with which you are presented (be it actual sales figures, or subjective questions asked of individuals and/or companies). As you mentioned in response to my post to this discussion, some clients rely upon you to merely collect data for them, then they analyze it as they see fit. So I guess what your saying is that any 'result' that someone publishes should definitely be taken with several grains of salt, and merely used as a guide post, but not the only way to measure a conclusion. This seems fair, and really does answer my question in that, if I pay your company for all the collected data, in essence, I would have access to see all the sales figures with which you used to do the analysis. Thank you!
Slashdot Mirror
If it were possible to systematically prevent suffering, however, I would tend to agree with him that by allowing suffering when we could choose not to, we would be cruel. Regardless, I am certain that we, as a people, would do it anyway.
However, if we want to fully explore our consciousness, I think we both agree that an important part of that ability is our ability of free choice. Both between 'good' and 'evil', and between one 'good' choice and another 'good' choice (or 'evil' choices too). Some might argue that not giving an intelligent machine that was to have the 'mind of man' a choice in choosing good versus evil (since the machine would not have conscience of evil) would be paramount to enslaving it in our 'good' set of values, which since we are imperfect, would most likely be wrong, and therefore the machine would be a slave. This also would be a cruelty of sorts. If however we imparted the ability to choose, initially, the capability to the machine to choose the ability to know both evil and good (versus locking it into 'good' only), I wonder how such an 'intelligent' machine would respond. Since we designed it, imparting our own free will thinking, would it too want to rid itself of our values, even though we told it not to choose evil, and gave it a set of consequences that would occur if it did so?
Why would anyone engineer a machine to be capable of bad habits, uncontrollable fits of rage, contentious proclivities, and a ME first attitude? These are all part of 'human consciousness' as every newborn is taught to do good things, not bad things, as the doing bad things come naturally to a child (disobeying parents, whining when they don't get their way, even when it's the wrong way, like playing in the street, etc). And if you don't spend the time to teach your child what is right and good, then the child knows not what is right in society, except that if it pleases them, do it. They certainly won't 'pick it up' as they grow up, because from birth they are selfish jerks that want only to please themselves. They have to learn that it is good to please others, and not just themselves.
I don't see how or why you would provide these characteristics to a machine. You yourself said that even if we didn't try to give the machines our bad tendancies, that you would be sorry for them. Why would you create AI that had the capability to do wrong and feel bad for it if you didn't want to feel sorry for it? If it were me, I would rather my offspring know no evil, and be completely oblivious (naive really) of all the bad stuff in the world. And if you didn't give the machine these traits, then you wouldn't truly be following the 'science' of discovering everything about human consciousness, as you put it.
Therefore, each person must have a soul, capable of good and evil. I find your logic on the non-existence of a 'soul' in every human being to be quite perplexing and confusing. Could you please explain better why this is not making any sense to me?
They probably haven't taken over because we are an imperfect species, building imperfect tools. But that doesn't mean that the machines wouldn't try. But I agree with you, we'll continue to make imperfect machines which will ultimately eliviate our own imperfections rather than provide the machines with more perfect skill sets than our own. The machines will be built to enhance our lives, not take them over for us.
Actually, I think you meant to say it's people using technology to abuse other people, not just tech itself. So an AI 'girl' that you hook your friend up with in the future in a chat room as a prank, then tell him that she isn't real, well, that's damaging to his ego at least. It also deals a blow to the trust in your friendship. So although computer's may one day be able to display emotion like characteristics, they'll never have true heartfelt, irrational, wild mood swings like a human does. Sometimes us humans do things that go completely against our 'programming', such as risking one's life to save another's life with no regard for the outcome for yourself. If you program an AI machine to want to preserve it's life, it certainly isn't going to go against such instructions as it has no reason to love someone. I seriously doubt us humans could accurately (or even approximately) model unconditional love into a machine.
Finally, we have heard about a logical, fair, balanced resolution of a problem by both sides here on Slashdot. Obviously the lawyers, as is normal, still don't get it. Charge the company you work for, not the litigants, you morons!
Then again, if a large company can be cut down to size by a better performing smaller one with more intelligent or harder working people, isn't that fair? I'm not saying I'd like to see people and companies lose money for their hard work, but if someone is doing it better, then maybe it's time to find a new line of work...
And to add my two cents to this discussion...
Not only will they be less likely to attack because they know our defenses would most likely thwart all but an all out world annhilating nuke attack (considering 10 years from now once the star wars program has yielded highly reliable defense systems), they will also be MORE likely to play nicey nice with the US to gain some of the similar defense systems for their own country. The reason every one else in the world is pissed about it is because they know their own ignorant populations won't or can't afford to build such defenses, and therefore they don't want us to have any more power than them. This leads them to saying how evil and bad an idea this is, when in reality, it's the best thing our country can do. Being able to shoot down a nuke with a non-nuke, is a lot better than a retaliation 'nuke for nuke' defense police. (Hence the reason there even was a cold war in the first place.)
The only thing I could see being a problem is not enough time in the movie to develop the story fully, as in the FF series which even when played at a breakneck pace, usually takes 20+ hours (and can take 100+ hours going at a more inquisitive, slower pace). But for its technical merits and attempts at 'new things' (60,000+ strands of Aki's hair rendered!!!) I think I'll go see it.
jamie, what's wrong with you?! Making people pay doesn't stop the spam! I get more snail mail spam than I do email spam on a daily basis. Charging for email and enacting a million rules to govern its use won't help either. At a certain point, it just makes it prohibitively expensive or litigous ridden for the common user, me, to actually use it 'cause there's too many rules to follow and fees to pay. Your thinking on this one is wrong.
If you don't get my sarcastic pessimism about profit and the need for everyone to be making ridiculous amounts of it (aka - GREED), then I can take you out back and show you exactly what I mean.
slashdot.org was first built as a non-profit organization for everyone to use free of charge. It then got bought out, and changing it to slashdot.com could potentially confuse it's original user base. MySQL.org was set up by a for-profit business first, so I do have issue with that over slashdot. But I still got a chuckle out of your post. ;)
Besides, the only way to maintain 100% compliance is to hold all the 'allowed' songs on a central server, which goes completely against all that the Napster architecture is.
But ultimately the downloads are not 'free' because you're forced to register with them. Plus, that link on their home page is there, but as a person searching to find out more about MySQL, how would I know who was MYSQL AB? I've never used MySQL before, so to me, this does appear like something that ought to be fixed. Also, the MySQL.com people were never contacted about mysql.org going live, and I would think in the OpenSource community you should make an effort to keep the original developers informed when the product you built is better than their original design. At the very least, they should at least just say, "We're sorry if any confusion was caused, we'll fix it." But, most companies are pretty arrogant and self-serving now-a-days, so I doubt this will happen.
For one, if you go to mysql.org you will find that it doesn't say whether it developed the software, it just says it's got mysql software available for 'free' download. But the mysql.com guy is correct, in that you cannot download any software without registering with mysql.org first. That indicates to me that it's not 'free' because now mysql.org has customer data to use to market their product to. Plus, it doesn't say: "Hey, we didn't write the software, mysql.com is where you can find that info. We just improved upon it." Besides, I don't think .org websites should ever be for-profit businesses as that is not how that domain was intended to be used.
If you were a graphical artist, wouldn't you do the same? You can't add to the form without first creating the initial framework for that form. Then again, maybe someone just took the bikini shot and 'modified' it like all those tomb raider and CS hostage hacks that did the same with those female characters.
Technological advances, in general, increase the profitability of any business. Even if the technology results in fewer short term jobs, it increases the wealth and productivity of the business and ultimately results in MORE money in the market. Those bookstores who do not embrace this new technology obviously will stand to lose lots of money in the long run. Besides, the point of the machine is to provide on-sight specialty book printing. I think it would be highly useful for quickly creating out-of-print or hard to find books.
And when it comes to providing a school with a Linux or BSD type box, why not? Not all the teachers have to have it. For the informed student who would rather use the Linux box in the library to type up another English paper on it because everyone else is hogging the Windows machines, why not? Free Software is a labor of love, AppleII was not viable in the classroom cause you still had to purchase it. Linux and StarOffice and all the other free programs are just that FREE! If not that many kids can use it, so what, it didn't cost the school one red cent to get it. And if one extra kid per graduating class in the school has a handle on how to use Linux, then great! That's got to amount to more well versed employees in the future. Especially ones that realize that there are free alternatives to the pricey juggernaut of M$ software.
Case in point: My roommate and I both read WorldNetDaily.com almost religiously. It's a free daily news site, that also publishes a small offline magazine. My roommate thought it was worth his money to get a subscription, I did not (and not simply because we live together, these decisions were made before we were actually roommates). The problem with online sites charging for content is not on whether they can get people to pay, because many probably will. The problem is how many people can they retain when they go from free, to fee? If they lose too much of their readership, they still won't make up for lost banner ad revenue or corporate sponsorship revenue. This is the hard truth that the dot-coms are learning suddenly. If I need info badly enough to pay for it, I will. Otherwise, I, Joe Consumer, am going to find the cheapest alternative, and on the net, that's pretty easy to find. So I say, feel free to charge people for access to the content you provide. Just don't expect everyone to stick around when you do.
What about the Bible? It's remained the same for century upon century and still is a 'best seller'. Even more copies of it exist in more languages than all the books you name above, put together! Now that's longevity no matter how you look at it, even if you don't believe it to be valid as the source for an entire religion. I wonder if the Khoran or Buddhist writings are approaching that same worldwide kind of influence, being that they haven't been around as long?
And you just contradicted yourself! If you have to make a choice on what to pay attention to, you are are making a supply & demand decision. You can only supply so much attention to the increasingly overwhelming demand for attention in the post-industrial world we live in. This is Katz's point, and I think it's a good one.
You are right on the religion thing, and 'loving thy neighbor', because this promotes selflessness. Because there is so much demand for our attention, many people in their natural human state turn their attention towards themselves and attempt to please themselves. This usually does not benefit others as you are focusing on getting the most for 'me', not the most for others. Caring about 'the things that matter' involves putting others needs and wants above your own.
Your nick indicates your unfaltering belief in Christianity, which indicates to me that you believe that Christ died to pay the price for the world's sins (selflessly), and therefore we are to do the same for others. If this is so, then the demand for our attention by companies is obviously going to detract from the amount of time that we can 'focus on the things that matter' as you so put it. This begats the argument that indeed, Katz's quoting the economist as saying: "What Information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention." is right on target because it means that our current deficit of attention is causing a lack of caring, apathy in general, and a greediness that will continue to get worse if we are to be bombarded by an ever increasing amount of information.
I'm obviously not flaming you, just trying to correct you're slightly flawed (incomplete?) argument.
I think I can tell the difference between Adobe's software and KDE's software though. It's not deceiving me into thinking that KIllustrator is actually Adobe software, so what's Adobe's big beef?
That's the point. Why should companies flip out when an ordinary part of their name (like the word apple, or sun) is used as part of another name. If I called my software company Red Apple, Inc., Apple Computers should not sue me just because I used the word Apple in my companies' name. You missed the point completely.
Are you kidding? The DoD already has a measly budget, I'm sure they're not stupid enough to pay for free software. Besides, since it's open source, they can tweak it to track every government worker's productivity to make sure no one is skipping their daily regimen of coffee and smoke breaks. :) Besides, everyone knows the government is inefficient at best due to the sheer size of it all, so they don't need the best software out there like M$ Office Suite. This sounds like someone actually did some thinking high up in the political realm of the DoD for once.
Yes! DO NOT neglect the modem and/or cable connections. These are wires, and will carry current. About a year ago I lost a pretty nice voice modem during a thunderstorm. The telephone line was not protected, and well, I learned the hard way...
OK, I understand what you're saying now. I guess my original question was more directed at how do we (or you) verify the data with which you are presented (be it actual sales figures, or subjective questions asked of individuals and/or companies). As you mentioned in response to my post to this discussion, some clients rely upon you to merely collect data for them, then they analyze it as they see fit. So I guess what your saying is that any 'result' that someone publishes should definitely be taken with several grains of salt, and merely used as a guide post, but not the only way to measure a conclusion. This seems fair, and really does answer my question in that, if I pay your company for all the collected data, in essence, I would have access to see all the sales figures with which you used to do the analysis. Thank you!