The mind is getting better, while the quality of the actual experience diminishes.
Let me elaborate.
We're getting better at predicting, survival, information. While the *thinking* part is actually getting faster and more developed, the connectedness and the affinity with the world is diminishing. we're thinking more "about" things, from "the stands", and are wrapped up in our opinions. But we're loosing out on the actual quality of life, on the being present and in the moment.
The sad thing is that it really doesn't make us happy. We can suck up way more information, like a sponge, but what does it really help us?
But then again if you think about it... As it stands poker is still a game of chance... A bot can only play optimum hands based upon the cards it sees and what it knows is still in the deck
Actually, all these "chance" games count on "in the long run..." principle. basically, if chances favor you, than in a long run after playing many games there is a pretty good chance you'll come out on top. casinos are set up so that in the long run they win. sure, occasionally somebody hits the jackpot, but overall they do make money.
Funny How you mention all this in light of what's going on in the government right now. What about religion? what about all the crap ashcroft is trying to pull? one of the main pillars of the right is their religious base, and the crap that's going on... you can't possibly insist that religion = freedom of expression, can you?
I think the issue here is that the people *assume* that the phone just works. Quality of service is usually attributed to the provider.
Now that we got that out of the way, once people take reliability for granted they look at optional things, such as camera, organizer, phone book, etc.. nothing wrong with it, just how the mentality works.
Didn't Motorola CEO get kicked out because that's precisely what he was saying ("concentrate on quality that's obviously suffering right now, and not race for features")?
I think in the current market there is always race for features. More, more more and more. Until some complaint gets too loud and bites the company in the ass. Then fixing it becomes a future as well ("Our dialer is now better than ever").
I found it interesting how Microsoft acted back in the day. They bloated their software with features, many many features, to beat the feature list of the competitor. Well, so what that it crashed constantly, so what that it didn't do the job that well. (sarcasm). For some reason, it's still around...
think about it: average salary is $100 per month, or $1200 per/year. Now, assume that about 6 people probably take care of this, that's $100,000 per year, or 84 times the average salary!!
Now let's transfer it in american terms: Average salary (I assume): $30,000 84x that: over $2.5 million per year!!... any further questions?
I've read somewhere that there was a test when subliminal messages were put in every 25th frame in some movie saying "buy coka-cola" or something of that sort. supposedly after the movie people rushed to buy coke, but later on majority reported severe headaches and mental problems.
Since this area is not really explored as much, i think there is a good potential for harm.
I don't entirely agree with you. The problem is that right now quiet the opposite is slowly becoming true: the politicians and certain interest groups dictate rules, not the marketplace. For example, take stern: the guy was pulled off the air primarily for attacking bush, not for enraging people. He is #1 in almost every market that he's broadcast in! That sais something about the market rules right there. right now the president appealing to religious groups for the election overrides "common sense" principles, unfortunately.
Also, I'm an adult and i WOULD like to hear and see things on the radio and tv. In most of the europe, you can walk into many regular "un-screened" stored and see boobies and cursewords on postcards, mugs and etc.. people know better, and think critically. Here (in usa), you'll always have somebody scream "OH MY GOD!!! WILL SOMEBODY THINK OF THE CHILDREN" and all hell breaks loose... fuckers
You are really confusing things here. The FCC previously established that bono's words weren't uttered with sexual intent... but now they are saying that words themselves are illegal no matter what the intent is!!! THAT is the whole point of people's outrage over this
i think the author's point was not that you save time by taking a woman shopping but that one time sacrifice like that (a trip to the mall) will make sure that when you dress in the dark in the morning, things will match.
Re:For anyone too lazy to read the entire article.
on
Orwellian Tech Support
·
· Score: 2, Funny
wow, you scored with your wife, what an accomplishment
how much things are worth is dependent on where you buy it (how much is a brick of ice worth in siberia vs. in africa?)
my job has not been outsourced, but when people from other countries start stereotyping based on what they've *heard* about america, it pisses me off.
let's say your college loan payment is around $500 per month, your rent (cheapest apartment with no bedrooms, just one big studio) is at least $500, car payment (can't get to work without it, distances are much greater here) is around $400 per month (with insurance, which is mandatory here, anybody would agree it's a bargain), and food being at least $200 per months (let's assume you cook it yourself and just buy in bulk). that's $1600 per month just to sustain your existance. so, just for basic needs you need at least $19200 to survive (not counting food, medical bills, and thousands of other things). now let's say your job is moved to some poorer country where somebody is willing to do the same for $6000 per year, because the college cost $2k total, apartment is $40 per month, car is not required since everything is relatively close and food is $100 per month. for them the $6,000 is a good deal. can you compete with that?!
even the most subsidized (by government) public colleges cost around $8-10K. if you want to go anywhere a little higher up, $18,000 per year is actually a very decent price for a *decent* (but in now way great) college education. so basically, we are faced with a choice - spend that much for college or settle for a high-school degree (which is worth a damn).
Now, if you want to train to become a doctor, a half-decent school starts at $30,000 per year! now take into consideration that they go to school for at least like 7 years, sum it up yourself and see what it runs up to.
just the way things are here. take it or leave it. seems like a lot of money for you (one of my russian friends went to the best computer-related university in st. petersburg, russia, for around $2,000... that's the cost of 1.5 classes here, on average)
interesting... when reading the article, i notice the cost of their daily lunch is around 50 cents. now, for comparing:
average college cost - $70,000 average apartment cost - $800 daily lunch - around $7
just a few items. hey, to be honest i'd be happy making $20,000 per year if my lunch would cost 50 cents daily, apartment $30 per month (or free, as it is in many countries) and the best college runs around $3,000 for all 4 years.
all the amounts people make are relative to what they have to spend. would you like to make $300,000 per year? if your rent becomes $20,000 per month (hypothetically, for the sake of comparison), all of a sudden that doesn't seem like that much money.
I just love how people assume that in america everybody is fat and have free money growing on trees. we work 50 hours per week and our bills are very expensive!!!
I get tons of spam at my work address and i DEFINATELY haven't given it out anywhere. have you ever heard of dictionary attacks? try creating an e-mail address which resembles a common name (such as bill or tom or jenny or anything else relatively common) at your isp, and see how much spam you get in. i can almost guarantee there will be much
From my understanding, current Bayesian filtering works by just statistically separating words that are relevant (from a "ham" pile) and good from the words that you don't like and consider spam. so, what the author of this article essentially does after thousands of trials is he discovers the words that are probably just most commonly occur in his own good emails.
How is this original in any way?!?
it's like a babysitter who was told to not open a door to anybody but the owners of the house: "After trying out many different disguises, the babysitter [surprise!] opened a door to somebody most closely resembling the house owners".
I think most of this probably could've been deducted by any half-intelligent person. the trick (i admit) is that the "good" pile of words is different for each person. but still, the method lacks the "wow" factor completely, in my opinion.
well, that's questionable as well. since emotions (in the basic understanding) are chemical reactions that usually alter our behavior patterns, how hard is it to make AI change it's statistics to act a certain way?
For example, one will hardly argue that experiences play a major part in our behavior (if you broke your leg skiing and spent many months in bed, you'll probably avoid snow and skiing like plague). Now, since AI systems are trained statistically based on existing data, how hard is it to just substitute the statistics and replace some successful paths with failed ones? next time around, computer will probably make a different decision knowing previous times failed. now, in "good mood" mode, substitute a few failures with successes and all of a sudden a machine is much more "optimistic"!
just because you pay for it doesn't mean you don't get the ads! Am I the only one who's just amazed at the amount of ads we are force-fed before the movie starts in a movie theater? I was fine with previews of movies to come (after all, it's interesting and relevant), but some on! right now if the movie starts at 5, that means that at 5 there is a 20 minute block of commercials, and the actual movie starts at 5:20. and if I see a shaving cream commercial at 5:10 (when i really should be watching a movie), I really wonder what I'm paying for there.
Hey, what about magazines? every other page is a huge ad for something in most of the magazines out there. Therefore paid-for doesn't really imply "ad-free", and that's why i think we'll soon see services such as XM populated with ads as well
I was really sick and tired of buying a CD and having to skip most "non-advertised" songs. What da hell?! i don't listen to radio much either, mostly in the car, but the commercials HAVE gotten annoying.
What I have found more enjoyable is actually internet radio. there seems to be plenty of choices, and non-stop supply of music. There are less and less free stations now, but even if you pay $10 or so per month and have a month of music to enjoy it still beats buying 4 cds and getting sick of them in a week.
I also can't wait to see how the situation develops with sirius and xm radio. they sound promising. my friend has xm, very happy with it. but i wonder - how long would it take for it to also become bloated with commercials as well? hey, once enough people listen to it, it'll be extremely tempting for the stations to go the ad route...
Later windows versions always had a handicap of having all this legacy to support, and many design decisions were influenced by this. It's definately a step in the needed direction for them, to find out how to make the system flexible enough for new stuff while keeping the core relatively consistent.
Really? I have sprint right now, but have always considered T-mobile a step down for me.
Many of my friends jumped onto t-mobile bandwagon precisely because of low prices and much minutes, but the service ended up being horrible. And this is in Philly, btw. some really obvious areas are not covered, and the quality often is much degraded (actually, quality of conversation is one of the strongest points of sprint, CDMA although somewhat more expensive did prove to be better quality).
anyway, i'm personally thinking of jumping on cingular. great minutes, rollover, and seems to work everywhere i need it to.
P.S. anybody with cingular gsm in n-e philly area? what are your thoughts on this?
i would think this is due to different causes. for example, the article implies that being taller is a direct reason for higher pay, when in reality it's a little deeper than that. I would think that probably on average if you are taller you feel more confident about yourself, which comes through in the interviews, thereby usually giving you a little boost in your negotiation terms. therefore being taller doesn't necessary guarantee better offer, but the amount of self-confidence (partially due to your exceptional height) usually does.
i live just outside of philly too, and for the past 3 years the signal has been better than most providers out there (with sprint). areas without signal at all are ouw perfect. it definately beats tmobile, for example (i've driven behind my friend with a tmobile service, and he lost service 3 times within a span of a mile, while i've been almost full). anyway, they used to be pretty terrible like 4-5 years back, but are good now. still, i would like a better phone (non-flip) and an easier way to send text messages (without going through the damn web every time).
Slashdot Mirror
The mind is getting better, while the quality of the actual experience diminishes.
Let me elaborate.
We're getting better at predicting, survival, information. While the *thinking* part is actually getting faster and more developed, the connectedness and the affinity with the world is diminishing. we're thinking more "about" things, from "the stands", and are wrapped up in our opinions. But we're loosing out on the actual quality of life, on the being present and in the moment.
The sad thing is that it really doesn't make us happy. We can suck up way more information, like a sponge, but what does it really help us?
But then again if you think about it... As it stands poker is still a game of chance... A bot can only play optimum hands based upon the cards it sees and what it knows is still in the deck
Actually, all these "chance" games count on "in the long run..." principle. basically, if chances favor you, than in a long run after playing many games there is a pretty good chance you'll come out on top. casinos are set up so that in the long run they win. sure, occasionally somebody hits the jackpot, but overall they do make money.
set up many bots, and you'll make money
Funny How you mention all this in light of what's going on in the government right now. What about religion? what about all the crap ashcroft is trying to pull? one of the main pillars of the right is their religious base, and the crap that's going on... you can't possibly insist that religion = freedom of expression, can you?
I think the issue here is that the people *assume* that the phone just works. Quality of service is usually attributed to the provider.
Now that we got that out of the way, once people take reliability for granted they look at optional things, such as camera, organizer, phone book, etc.. nothing wrong with it, just how the mentality works.
Didn't Motorola CEO get kicked out because that's precisely what he was saying ("concentrate on quality that's obviously suffering right now, and not race for features")?
I think in the current market there is always race for features. More, more more and more. Until some complaint gets too loud and bites the company in the ass. Then fixing it becomes a future as well ("Our dialer is now better than ever").
I found it interesting how Microsoft acted back in the day. They bloated their software with features, many many features, to beat the feature list of the competitor. Well, so what that it crashed constantly, so what that it didn't do the job that well. (sarcasm). For some reason, it's still around...
think about it: average salary is $100 per month, or $1200 per/year. Now, assume that about 6 people probably take care of this, that's $100,000 per year, or 84 times the average salary!!
... any further questions?
Now let's transfer it in american terms:
Average salary (I assume): $30,000
84x that: over $2.5 million per year!!
That's EXACTLY the kind of thinking that triggered russian revolution and 70 years of komunism / socialism.
"Bol'sheviki" that overthrew the government translates as "belonging to the majority"
I've read somewhere that there was a test when subliminal messages were put in every 25th frame in some movie saying "buy coka-cola" or something of that sort. supposedly after the movie people rushed to buy coke, but later on majority reported severe headaches and mental problems.
Since this area is not really explored as much, i think there is a good potential for harm.
I don't entirely agree with you. The problem is that right now quiet the opposite is slowly becoming true: the politicians and certain interest groups dictate rules, not the marketplace. For example, take stern: the guy was pulled off the air primarily for attacking bush, not for enraging people. He is #1 in almost every market that he's broadcast in! That sais something about the market rules right there. right now the president appealing to religious groups for the election overrides "common sense" principles, unfortunately.
Also, I'm an adult and i WOULD like to hear and see things on the radio and tv. In most of the europe, you can walk into many regular "un-screened" stored and see boobies and cursewords on postcards, mugs and etc.. people know better, and think critically. Here (in usa), you'll always have somebody scream "OH MY GOD!!! WILL SOMEBODY THINK OF THE CHILDREN" and all hell breaks loose... fuckers
You are really confusing things here. The FCC previously established that bono's words weren't uttered with sexual intent... but now they are saying that words themselves are illegal no matter what the intent is!!! THAT is the whole point of people's outrage over this
i think the author's point was not that you save time by taking a woman shopping but that one time sacrifice like that (a trip to the mall) will make sure that when you dress in the dark in the morning, things will match.
wow, you scored with your wife, what an accomplishment
(the above was meant sarcastically)
how much things are worth is dependent on where you buy it (how much is a brick of ice worth in siberia vs. in africa?)
my job has not been outsourced, but when people from other countries start stereotyping based on what they've *heard* about america, it pisses me off.
let's say your college loan payment is around $500 per month, your rent (cheapest apartment with no bedrooms, just one big studio) is at least $500, car payment (can't get to work without it, distances are much greater here) is around $400 per month (with insurance, which is mandatory here, anybody would agree it's a bargain), and food being at least $200 per months (let's assume you cook it yourself and just buy in bulk). that's $1600 per month just to sustain your existance. so, just for basic needs you need at least $19200 to survive (not counting food, medical bills, and thousands of other things). now let's say your job is moved to some poorer country where somebody is willing to do the same for $6000 per year, because the college cost $2k total, apartment is $40 per month, car is not required since everything is relatively close and food is $100 per month. for them the $6,000 is a good deal. can you compete with that?!
even the most subsidized (by government) public colleges cost around $8-10K. if you want to go anywhere a little higher up, $18,000 per year is actually a very decent price for a *decent* (but in now way great) college education. so basically, we are faced with a choice - spend that much for college or settle for a high-school degree (which is worth a damn).
Now, if you want to train to become a doctor, a half-decent school starts at $30,000 per year! now take into consideration that they go to school for at least like 7 years, sum it up yourself and see what it runs up to. just the way things are here. take it or leave it. seems like a lot of money for you (one of my russian friends went to the best computer-related university in st. petersburg, russia, for around $2,000... that's the cost of 1.5 classes here, on average)
interesting... when reading the article, i notice the cost of their daily lunch is around 50 cents. now, for comparing:
average college cost - $70,000
average apartment cost - $800
daily lunch - around $7
just a few items. hey, to be honest i'd be happy making $20,000 per year if my lunch would cost 50 cents daily, apartment $30 per month (or free, as it is in many countries) and the best college runs around $3,000 for all 4 years.
all the amounts people make are relative to what they have to spend. would you like to make $300,000 per year? if your rent becomes $20,000 per month (hypothetically, for the sake of comparison), all of a sudden that doesn't seem like that much money.
I just love how people assume that in america everybody is fat and have free money growing on trees. we work 50 hours per week and our bills are very expensive!!!
I get tons of spam at my work address and i DEFINATELY haven't given it out anywhere. have you ever heard of dictionary attacks? try creating an e-mail address which resembles a common name (such as bill or tom or jenny or anything else relatively common) at your isp, and see how much spam you get in. i can almost guarantee there will be much
From my understanding, current Bayesian filtering works by just statistically separating words that are relevant (from a "ham" pile) and good from the words that you don't like and consider spam. so, what the author of this article essentially does after thousands of trials is he discovers the words that are probably just most commonly occur in his own good emails.
How is this original in any way?!?
it's like a babysitter who was told to not open a door to anybody but the owners of the house: "After trying out many different disguises, the babysitter [surprise!] opened a door to somebody most closely resembling the house owners".
I think most of this probably could've been deducted by any half-intelligent person. the trick (i admit) is that the "good" pile of words is different for each person. but still, the method lacks the "wow" factor completely, in my opinion.
well, that's questionable as well. since emotions (in the basic understanding) are chemical reactions that usually alter our behavior patterns, how hard is it to make AI change it's statistics to act a certain way?
For example, one will hardly argue that experiences play a major part in our behavior (if you broke your leg skiing and spent many months in bed, you'll probably avoid snow and skiing like plague). Now, since AI systems are trained statistically based on existing data, how hard is it to just substitute the statistics and replace some successful paths with failed ones? next time around, computer will probably make a different decision knowing previous times failed. now, in "good mood" mode, substitute a few failures with successes and all of a sudden a machine is much more "optimistic"!
just because you pay for it doesn't mean you don't get the ads! Am I the only one who's just amazed at the amount of ads we are force-fed before the movie starts in a movie theater? I was fine with previews of movies to come (after all, it's interesting and relevant), but some on! right now if the movie starts at 5, that means that at 5 there is a 20 minute block of commercials, and the actual movie starts at 5:20. and if I see a shaving cream commercial at 5:10 (when i really should be watching a movie), I really wonder what I'm paying for there.
Hey, what about magazines? every other page is a huge ad for something in most of the magazines out there. Therefore paid-for doesn't really imply "ad-free", and that's why i think we'll soon see services such as XM populated with ads as well
I was really sick and tired of buying a CD and having to skip most "non-advertised" songs. What da hell?! i don't listen to radio much either, mostly in the car, but the commercials HAVE gotten annoying.
What I have found more enjoyable is actually internet radio. there seems to be plenty of choices, and non-stop supply of music. There are less and less free stations now, but even if you pay $10 or so per month and have a month of music to enjoy it still beats buying 4 cds and getting sick of them in a week.
I also can't wait to see how the situation develops with sirius and xm radio. they sound promising. my friend has xm, very happy with it. but i wonder - how long would it take for it to also become bloated with commercials as well? hey, once enough people listen to it, it'll be extremely tempting for the stations to go the ad route...
Later windows versions always had a handicap of having all this legacy to support, and many design decisions were influenced by this. It's definately a step in the needed direction for them, to find out how to make the system flexible enough for new stuff while keeping the core relatively consistent.
Really? I have sprint right now, but have always considered T-mobile a step down for me.
Many of my friends jumped onto t-mobile bandwagon precisely because of low prices and much minutes, but the service ended up being horrible. And this is in Philly, btw. some really obvious areas are not covered, and the quality often is much degraded (actually, quality of conversation is one of the strongest points of sprint, CDMA although somewhat more expensive did prove to be better quality).
anyway, i'm personally thinking of jumping on cingular. great minutes, rollover, and seems to work everywhere i need it to.
P.S. anybody with cingular gsm in n-e philly area? what are your thoughts on this?
fp
i would think this is due to different causes. for example, the article implies that being taller is a direct reason for higher pay, when in reality it's a little deeper than that. I would think that probably on average if you are taller you feel more confident about yourself, which comes through in the interviews, thereby usually giving you a little boost in your negotiation terms.
therefore being taller doesn't necessary guarantee better offer, but the amount of self-confidence (partially due to your exceptional height) usually does.
i live just outside of philly too, and for the past 3 years the signal has been better than most providers out there (with sprint). areas without signal at all are ouw perfect. it definately beats tmobile, for example (i've driven behind my friend with a tmobile service, and he lost service 3 times within a span of a mile, while i've been almost full).
anyway, they used to be pretty terrible like 4-5 years back, but are good now. still, i would like a better phone (non-flip) and an easier way to send text messages (without going through the damn web every time).