You wouldn't happen to be referring to SUPRNOVA.ORG , would you?
Not that I am suggesting that anyone go to that site...
Why not? Suprnova doesn't host any infringing material itself -- neither did the late ShareReactor.com for that matter (whack-a-mole replacement: ShareConnector.com) -- but only.torrent POINTERS to data which MAY or MAY NOT infringe.
Of course, if the new "PIRATE" bill becomes law, a lawyer (in the U.S., so it doesn't matter until a treaty makes it international) might say that both BitTorrent itself and Suprnova "induce" copyright infringement, and indeed 95% of the torrents are to content released under restrictive copyright rather than freer copyleft.
People expected a utopia where machines do all the work, and people had lots of free time to do what they want. Now we don't exactly have the utopia unless you're a rich stock holder.
That's right - instead of the productivity gains of accelerating automation being spread out more equally, it is increasingly being concentrated by the extremely wealthy; us "useless eaters" are left to scramble for shittier and lower-paying make-work jobs (and hopefully die of disease-of-the-month to free up some realestate for more golf courses)
"Despite recent good news on employment growth, the current economic recovery, now approaching its third year, remains the most unbalanced on record in respect to the distribution of income gains between corporate profits and labor compensation. Essentially, rapid gains in productivity have been translating into higher corporate profits without increasing the wage and salary income of American workers."
Arthur C. Clarke is famous for saying that the space elevator "will be built about 10 years after everybody stops laughing," so who's the joker who's still laughing and holding us up an extra 5 years?:)
Remember people who would run the Add New Hardware Wizard in Windows 95 to add stuff they didn't have?
These "dumb" people were just ahead of their time. They'll get the last laugh in 2015 when they attach a DRM-free GNU Molecular Assembler to their system and the "Add New Hardware Wizard" actually works!:)
"Hey, free computer equipment! Free diamonds! Free food! And free solar cells to power it all from the Sun! And a free molecular recycler! I am an island!"
I imagine that the effective viewing angle on these planar 3D displays is very restrictive; move a couple inches to either side and all you'll end up seeing is the half-resolution image meant for one eye.
The "3D displays to come" that hold the most promise, however, will require that you wear (non-dorky) viewing glasses. These normal looking glasses will use a safe Retinal Scanning laser to directly overlay 3D imagery onto your field of view. Of course, we won't see this tech in BestBuy until the Law of Accelerating Returns has run the course of a few more years.
It's not too hard to think of several killer apps for augmented vision that make all other conventional displays pale in comparison. Even a wall-sized OLED display would take 2nd.
A more workable (albeit still iffy) solution would be to figure out what makes people want to develop WMDs
The solution is a Catch-22, IMO.
People WANT to develop WMD's to increase their innate desire for more POWER. The alphamale/alphatribe that strove for more power got control of more scarce resources (and the women) so their genes & memes spread at the expense the "peacenik monkeys". This law of the jungle still lurks beneath the facade of our presentday civilization.
Getting rid of our self-destructive nature requires advanced technology, and a willingness to part with the evolutionary psychology that served us well in the ancestral environment. Catch22.
how do you run a world where every individual has the power to wipe out everyone else?
You either physically distribute the population to limit the inevitable genocides, or you put a powerful, benevolent AI in charge (yeah right), and/or you change human nature itself.
In a nutshell, the problem with exponentially advancing technology is that it is increasingly outpacing our primitive human brain's ability to intelligently deal with it.
Each new tech advance is more powerful and more accessible than the last, but the minds that wield it are relatively stagnant and still saddled with millions of years of selfish evolutionary baggage which we won't be able to fix for quite a while yet.
Humankind is within ~30 years of reaching the vingean Singularity, and the only question is the odds on making it without sabotaging ourselves first. IMO, the odds are very low, but unlike Bill Joy, I don't think there's any point in attempting to STOP or even slow this progress -- all we can do is try to safely guide the tech and hope for the best.
Every year builds on the last, exponentially, so it won't be long before this kind of autonomous nav is childs play. A winner next year wouldn't surprise me either. What would surprise me, though, is a legged robotic soccer team not winning the World Cup well before 2050. Team Asimo VS Battle Angel Alita:)
Heh. The year is 2020: An evil team of bio and nanotech scientists on the RIAA's payroll develop a nasty virus that reconfigures your cochlea to either auto-debit your account or filter out any unpaid-for sound that matches the audio fingerprint of their Intellectual Property. The new cochlea's database of fingerprints is updated via a backchannel during the nightly two minutes of hate broadcast. "USA! USA! 101100100010100101100111111010011 USA! USA!"
The MPAA is interested in a similar version for the optic nerve, which should prove doable, but the United Nations will have to wait for the MindMapping project to finish before they can get their ObedienceBooster hack.
Read the ingredients on the back. The ingredients for Listerine and Clariton (for example) are exactly the same as the generics and in the same proportion. In this case however, it's only the *active* ingredient that matters anyway.
For stuff like cheetos, tobasco sauce, and beer, there are subtle diffs in the recipe that you *can* taste and may prefer.
I'm not talking about cheesiepoofs, because storebrand cheetos aren't identical to Cheetos(TM). e.g. Try comparing Listerine to generic, or Clariton to generic - they're EXACTLY the same.
Has it always been like that? I swear it didn't used to be - else I was so turned off by the flood of vertical ads that I just assumed the rest of the page was more of the same. Anyway, no ads with the passwd.
often the difference between several products is just the labelling (and the price;)
Right, but only "poor people" buy the IDENTICAL storebrand version of a product. Everybody else has enough money and not enough time to care about being mentally engineered to buy a product inflated with advertising costs. Oh, then there's the conspicuous consumption aspect of wanting to be seen with the more well-known expensive crap.
My favorite 'unscientific' explaination: dark matter == Matrioshka Brains. Lots of 'em. And they all keep to themselves mostly-- those anti-social, navel-gazing, super-intelligent aliens!:)
Slashdot Mirror
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Why not? Suprnova doesn't host any infringing material itself -- neither did the late ShareReactor.com for that matter (whack-a-mole replacement: ShareConnector.com) -- but only .torrent POINTERS to data which MAY or MAY NOT infringe.
Of course, if the new "PIRATE" bill becomes law, a lawyer (in the U.S., so it doesn't matter until a treaty makes it international) might say that both BitTorrent itself and Suprnova "induce" copyright infringement, and indeed 95% of the torrents are to content released under restrictive copyright rather than freer copyleft.
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That's right - instead of the productivity gains of accelerating automation being spread out more equally, it is increasingly being concentrated by the extremely wealthy; us "useless eaters" are left to scramble for shittier and lower-paying make-work jobs (and hopefully die of disease-of-the-month to free up some realestate for more golf courses)
The pyramid needs to be flattened...
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It's probably the nanotube/nanotech pessimists who are ignorant of the law of accelerating returns.
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By the time we actually have the tech to backup your brain and respawn your body w/ brain, you won't be needed anyway. Robots will rule.
Should be fun for playing realistic 'paintball' tho...
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These "dumb" people were just ahead of their time. They'll get the last laugh in 2015 when they attach a DRM-free GNU Molecular Assembler to their system and the "Add New Hardware Wizard" actually works! :)
"Hey, free computer equipment! Free diamonds! Free food! And free solar cells to power it all from the Sun! And a free molecular recycler! I am an island!"
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Then you'll just have to wait for open molecular manufacturing like the rest of us.
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The "3D displays to come" that hold the most promise, however, will require that you wear (non-dorky) viewing glasses. These normal looking glasses will use a safe Retinal Scanning laser to directly overlay 3D imagery onto your field of view. Of course, we won't see this tech in BestBuy until the Law of Accelerating Returns has run the course of a few more years.
It's not too hard to think of several killer apps for augmented vision that make all other conventional displays pale in comparison. Even a wall-sized OLED display would take 2nd.
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The solution is a Catch-22, IMO.
People WANT to develop WMD's to increase their innate desire for more POWER. The alphamale/alphatribe that strove for more power got control of more scarce resources (and the women) so their genes & memes spread at the expense the "peacenik monkeys". This law of the jungle still lurks beneath the facade of our presentday civilization.
Getting rid of our self-destructive nature requires advanced technology, and a willingness to part with the evolutionary psychology that served us well in the ancestral environment. Catch22.
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You either physically distribute the population to limit the inevitable genocides, or you put a powerful, benevolent AI in charge (yeah right), and/or you change human nature itself.
--
Each new tech advance is more powerful and more accessible than the last, but the minds that wield it are relatively stagnant and still saddled with millions of years of selfish evolutionary baggage which we won't be able to fix for quite a while yet.
Humankind is within ~30 years of reaching the vingean Singularity, and the only question is the odds on making it without sabotaging ourselves first. IMO, the odds are very low, but unlike Bill Joy, I don't think there's any point in attempting to STOP or even slow this progress -- all we can do is try to safely guide the tech and hope for the best.
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The MPAA is interested in a similar version for the optic nerve, which should prove doable, but the United Nations will have to wait for the MindMapping project to finish before they can get their ObedienceBooster hack.
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- Accelerate the New World Order totalitarian government takeover conspiracy (hello my freemason brothers!).
- Mandate fuzzy-sounding "Trusted Computing" and the "Secure Internet" infrastructure, effectively putting the internet genie back in the bottle.
- Profit!
--For stuff like cheetos, tobasco sauce, and beer, there are subtle diffs in the recipe that you *can* taste and may prefer.
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Yeah, that's what my mama says.
Until there's some real evidence of what dark matter actually is, this theory is just as good as the "more boring" ones.
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Right, but only "poor people" buy the IDENTICAL storebrand version of a product. Everybody else has enough money and not enough time to care about being mentally engineered to buy a product inflated with advertising costs. Oh, then there's the conspicuous consumption aspect of wanting to be seen with the more well-known expensive crap.
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