> The original proposal was for a fully functional AI that could positively identify the target type, the threat level, and respond appropriately. It would include lethal and non-lethal force responses for enemy targets...
As of 1996, your categorization of the US's murder rate as "one of the lowest in the world" is misleading. Only 23 of 86 surveyed countries had higher rates.
Why bother? It's pretty easy to get Knoppix booting off a 1GB USB flash stick. You can partition the stick so you have a big read-only section for Knoppix itself, and a still-sizable partition for settings and data. Encrypted loopback filesystem support is built-in with Knoppix, so your data is pretty darn secure. True, older machines can't boot off USB, but they can boot off CD or floppy, allowing you to load USB drivers and divert the boot.
If, in these mad times, this is upheld by the relevant courts, could we (the people) not use it to our own advantage?
I'm imagining copyrighting my own appearance. Could I not then prevent private interests from videotaping or photographing me (for the news, for "security purposes")?
Just think, you could screen print all your favorite shirts with a warning message - "the wearer of this shirt has copyrighted his image; any replication of this image is in violation of federal copyright law" in infrared ink so it would show up through CCD imaging, but not to the naked eye!
"The Eiffel Tower's likeness had long since been part of the public domain, when in 2003, it was abruptly repossessed by the city of Paris. That's the year that the SNTE, the company charged with maintaining the tower, adorned it with a distinctive lighting display, copyrighted the design, and in one feel swoop, reclaimed the nighttime image and likeness of the most popular monument on earth. In short: they changed the actual likeness of the tower, and then copyrighted that.
As a result, it's no longer legal to publish current photographs of the Eiffel Tower at night without permission."
Or is it because you imagine that the attention of a FBI employee would be necessary to monitor your internet activities? They've already got Carnivore, an automated system to do just that. If the FBI needs no justification or advance approval to use it, do you find it hard to believe they'll watch us all?
Maybe you think your porn habit is too trivial to warrant attention from the FBI. Folks who swap music online probably felt the same way... until the FBI started raiding schools.
I agree with you; I'm not saying that the KKK using my code would make me racist.
And I very much support free speech; I wouldn't want anyone preventing the KKK or any other group from having their say, hateful or blinkered as it may be.
I just don't want to feel that I'm personally helping them out in any way.
Is open source software exempt from this sort of criticism?
As a coder, one of the things that makes me feel a little squeamish about the GPL is giving up the right to tell people they can't use my software for certain purposes. I'd rather my code not be used by the military to blow people up or by the KKK to serve racist webpages.
> letting the 3rd world starve is not just wrong in a moral sense, it's not smart considering what will happen a few years down the road when the remaining billions come for our throats.
Just so I'm clear on this; your argument is that if we don't feed them now, the Ethiopian stickmen are liable to invade the U.S. later..?
If they want to go somewhere secret on their off hours, leave the business phone at home...
I think a lot of people - particularly techies - have jobs that more-or-less demand being on call. I'm responsible for a network; I have a work-supplied phone with me at all times. The phone seldom rings; I consider it a very small intrusion.
My employer having the ability to monitor my comings and goings, however, strikes me as a significant intrusion.
I'm still trying to decide if I'm going to cancel my eMusic account or grudgingly accept one of their new plans.
Either way, I figured the smart move would be to download as much as possible before the changes take effect... but tonight I find I can't get a single song to download. Every track says "Download failed." *That* never happened before. Seems like a fair portion of their subscribers have the same idea - download like there's no tomorrow.
For me, at least, the service isn't working at all right now. I wonder to what degree this will expedite the process of reducing their subscriber base.
...what with its open-ended gameplay, subscriber content creation, and clever Linux-based server-side technology. I was preparing to sign up for the free trial when I discovered it only runs on XP/2000. Pfffft!
About a year ago, an officemate of mine bought the Toyota Prius. He loves it and enjoys evangelizing about hybrid vehicles. After riding in his Prius, my wife and I decided to trade in her Toyota 4Runner for a hybrid. We did some reading on the net and test drove the 2003 Honda Civic hybrid. We bought it the same day.
It's remarkable how like a regular car the hybrid is. I was for some reason expecting the handling to be balky and the acceleration poor. Instead, I find that it handles very well and the pickup is quite impressive. The low-end torque from the electric motor is surprising; the first time I backed it out of our driveway I spun gravel all over the place! I didn't anticipate that I would enjoy driving the hybrid, but have been quite pleasantly surprised. It does not feel like the "granny car" I was expecting.
By putting the Civic in "Economy" mode, you allow it to shut the engine completely off whenever the car is at a dead stop. Lacking a separate starter motor, the restart when you let off the brake is virtually instantaneous. It feels unsettling to me to have the engine shut off like that, though, and in the summer, it's a drag because it turns the A/C off as well. For these reasons, I generally leave "Economy" mode off.
The milage is great; even with my lead foot, the A/C on, and the "Economy" setting turned off, I get about 43MPG. With "Economy" turned on and the A/C off, it gets more like 50MPG. Because of the way the hybrid engine works, you actually get slightly better milage in the city than you do on the interstate.
My only complaints - and they're pretty minor - are the trunk space and the styling. The trunk isn't tiny, but it isn't as large as I'd like on a family-type car. When we put the baby stroller in the trunk, there's scarcely room for anything else. As far as the styling, it's purely a matter of taste - my wife likes the look of the Civic. It's not sporty enough to suit me.
In all, we're extremely happy with our purchase. I'm looking forward to replacing my car with a fuel cell model a few years down the road.
Slashdot Mirror
> The original proposal was for a fully functional AI that could positively identify the target type, the threat level, and respond appropriately. It would include lethal and non-lethal force responses for enemy targets...
So, ED-209, then?
As of 1996, your categorization of the US's murder rate as "one of the lowest in the world" is misleading. Only 23 of 86 surveyed countries had higher rates.
n t.html/
d y.html/
http://www.haciendapub.com/stolinsky.html/
Despite pro-death marketing, studies pretty consistently show that capital punishment has no deterrent effect.
http://www.csicop.org/si/2004-07/capital-punishme
In fact, murder rates tend to go up during periods in which death sentences are actually carried out.
http://www.prisonactivist.org/death-penalty/dpstu
Why bother? It's pretty easy to get Knoppix booting off a 1GB USB flash stick. You can partition the stick so you have a big read-only section for Knoppix itself, and a still-sizable partition for settings and data. Encrypted loopback filesystem support is built-in with Knoppix, so your data is pretty darn secure. True, older machines can't boot off USB, but they can boot off CD or floppy, allowing you to load USB drivers and divert the boot.
If, in these mad times, this is upheld by the relevant courts, could we (the people) not use it to our own advantage?
I'm imagining copyrighting my own appearance. Could I not then prevent private interests from videotaping or photographing me (for the news, for "security purposes")?
Just think, you could screen print all your favorite shirts with a warning message - "the wearer of this shirt has copyrighted his image; any replication of this image is in violation of federal copyright law" in infrared ink so it would show up through CCD imaging, but not to the naked eye!
Funny you should mention the Eiffel Tower...
i ffel_tower_repossessed.html
"The Eiffel Tower's likeness had long since been part of the public domain, when in 2003, it was abruptly repossessed by the city of Paris. That's the year that the SNTE, the company charged with maintaining the tower, adorned it with a distinctive lighting display, copyrighted the design, and in one feel swoop, reclaimed the nighttime image and likeness of the most popular monument on earth. In short: they changed the actual likeness of the tower, and then copyrighted that.
As a result, it's no longer legal to publish current photographs of the Eiffel Tower at night without permission."
http://blog.fastcompany.com/archives/2005/02/02/e
Do you feel this way because you are unaware that the Bush administration has declared war on pornography..?
Or is it because you imagine that the attention of a FBI employee would be necessary to monitor your internet activities? They've already got Carnivore, an automated system to do just that. If the FBI needs no justification or advance approval to use it, do you find it hard to believe they'll watch us all?
Maybe you think your porn habit is too trivial to warrant attention from the FBI. Folks who swap music online probably felt the same way... until the FBI started raiding schools.
I agree with you; I'm not saying that the KKK using my code would make me racist.
And I very much support free speech; I wouldn't want anyone preventing the KKK or any other group from having their say, hateful or blinkered as it may be.
I just don't want to feel that I'm personally helping them out in any way.
I strongly support free speech; I'd never want a KKK web server taken down via "hate speech" or other laws.
I still don't want to support the KKK with my source code or anything else, though.
Is open source software exempt from this sort of criticism?
As a coder, one of the things that makes me feel a little squeamish about the GPL is giving up the right to tell people they can't use my software for certain purposes. I'd rather my code not be used by the military to blow people up or by the KKK to serve racist webpages.
> letting the 3rd world starve is not just wrong in a moral sense, it's not smart considering what will happen a few years down the road when the remaining billions come for our throats.
Just so I'm clear on this; your argument is that if we don't feed them now, the Ethiopian stickmen are liable to invade the U.S. later..?
I think a lot of people - particularly techies - have jobs that more-or-less demand being on call. I'm responsible for a network; I have a work-supplied phone with me at all times. The phone seldom rings; I consider it a very small intrusion.
My employer having the ability to monitor my comings and goings, however, strikes me as a significant intrusion.
I'm still trying to decide if I'm going to cancel my eMusic account or grudgingly accept one of their new plans.
Either way, I figured the smart move would be to download as much as possible before the changes take effect... but tonight I find I can't get a single song to download. Every track says "Download failed." *That* never happened before. Seems like a fair portion of their subscribers have the same idea - download like there's no tomorrow.
For me, at least, the service isn't working at all right now. I wonder to what degree this will expedite the process of reducing their subscriber base.
...what with its open-ended gameplay, subscriber content creation, and clever Linux-based server-side technology. I was preparing to sign up for the free trial when I discovered it only runs on XP/2000. Pfffft!
About a year ago, an officemate of mine bought the Toyota Prius. He loves it and enjoys evangelizing about hybrid vehicles. After riding in his Prius, my wife and I decided to trade in her Toyota 4Runner for a hybrid. We did some reading on the net and test drove the 2003 Honda Civic hybrid. We bought it the same day.
It's remarkable how like a regular car the hybrid is. I was for some reason expecting the handling to be balky and the acceleration poor. Instead, I find that it handles very well and the pickup is quite impressive. The low-end torque from the electric motor is surprising; the first time I backed it out of our driveway I spun gravel all over the place! I didn't anticipate that I would enjoy driving the hybrid, but have been quite pleasantly surprised. It does not feel like the "granny car" I was expecting.
By putting the Civic in "Economy" mode, you allow it to shut the engine completely off whenever the car is at a dead stop. Lacking a separate starter motor, the restart when you let off the brake is virtually instantaneous. It feels unsettling to me to have the engine shut off like that, though, and in the summer, it's a drag because it turns the A/C off as well. For these reasons, I generally leave "Economy" mode off.
The milage is great; even with my lead foot, the A/C on, and the "Economy" setting turned off, I get about 43MPG. With "Economy" turned on and the A/C off, it gets more like 50MPG. Because of the way the hybrid engine works, you actually get slightly better milage in the city than you do on the interstate.
My only complaints - and they're pretty minor - are the trunk space and the styling. The trunk isn't tiny, but it isn't as large as I'd like on a family-type car. When we put the baby stroller in the trunk, there's scarcely room for anything else. As far as the styling, it's purely a matter of taste - my wife likes the look of the Civic. It's not sporty enough to suit me.
In all, we're extremely happy with our purchase. I'm looking forward to replacing my car with a fuel cell model a few years down the road.