Slashdot has never banned for something as harmless as "bad language."
In fact the only time I have ever been banned for using the colorful english language has been on game servers - most recently with BattleField2. Many of them attempt to "protect the chilllldrwen" by use of automated censor filters. A few of them even kickban for the common work-arounds such as "SH1T, FVCK, FCUK, FUK, and 'FU CK'". None have added FRACKING or FRELLING, yet.:)
And I think you're the moron for not knowing about the thousands of anonymous proxies you could have used; or more recently about Tor; or about how most residential ISPs will automatically assign you a new dynamic IP if you flip your cable/dsl modem off for the couple hours it takes for your dhcp lease to expire and someone else gets it.
...but that's probably expecting too much from a troll, I know.
self-deactivating timers in a few months, with explosives that decay in a few years, and casings that bio-degrade in a few decades would be better. (for the winners)
Nah, costs too much.
"I'll take 100,000 dumb-mines for my $10mil, instead of only 50,000 'treehugger' mines"
I too got tired of all my freebie cloth & plastic mousepads getting nasty and wearing out over the years, so a couple months back I finally bought one that can't wear out on me: a glass "icemat"
~$26 for a 10"x12" sheet of tempered, rounded, colored glass with rubber feet seemed a little steep, but I'll be hanging on to this thing for years. My MX510 mouse (the model previous to the MX518) glides like butter across the surface, and I'd never go back to a normal pad.
Only two minor downsides to this type of glass mousepad:
It's slightly noisier than a coventional mousepad. It makes a sortof finegrit sandpaper scratch sound with fast mouse movement.
With a surface this smooth you can quickly start to feel a layer of dust build up on the less used upper parts of the pad; have to wipe it clean with my palm every day, but maybe I'm just being anal about it.
Sorry, but I simply don't believe we're 5 to 10 years away from robotics being a "multibillion dollar industry".
Then you'd be wrong -- just as wrong as the naysayers were in 1995 when they proclaimed "this Internet thing is just a fad", because they hadn't internalized how exponential progress works in ALL evolutionary systems, and then projected forward based on the doubling rate of nodes being added to the net. And yes, past performance IS very indicative of future performance when it comes to evolutionary progress (not markets); tons of evidence backs this up.
Robotics, AI, molecular manufacturing (nanotech), and performance per $, is accelerating, and these advances will continue to arrive much sooner than you think. If you simply project into the future by going on your "gut feelings" then you're stuck in a insanely-conservative intuitively linear view (that luddites also happen to more comfortable with).
The key thing I want to know about any "viral marketing" is WHO engineered the virus in the first place? Was it a stealth marketing shill trying to "subvert the cluetrain", or was it a truly grassroots meme like the Mentos+Coke thing?
If it's the latter, I'm fine with it, because it's genuine, but the former is just dirtier than even massmedia ads because the manipulation is sneekier and you KNOW the bastards are laughing all the way to the bank. At least with conventional ads you know someone's trying to sell you; with viral/stealth marketing it *could* be authentic, but it's more likely to be just some smirking jackasses taking everyone for a ride.
There is an advantage to second life.... Less kiddies and trolls
That and the average age in 2ndlife is 35, iirc. And around half the users are actually chicks, like my wife, into the whole socializing & dress-up thing (but didn't latch on to The Sims for reason). Heard these stats from some Google/2ndlife podcast event a couple months back.
I agree that 2ndlife sucks - not really because of the crappy graphics, but mostly because of the perverse "virtual economy" where almost everything costs you, when it needn't. It just feels like the level of artificial scarcity is out of whack with real-world server limitations. Feels dirty.
I mean it's supposed to be a game, so who needs a real-world $ incentive to have fun making shit?! Something better than 2ndlife will eventually come along; something with a much bigger opensource ethos...
No, not Moore's Law - it's specific to transistor count.
If you want to a more generalized law of exponential progress (for future reference), I'd suggest you aquaint yourself with Ray Kurzweil's Law of Accelerating Returns.
Re:These kinds of discussions make me sick.
on
On Point On Slacking
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· Score: 1
Work it harder, make it better, do it faster, makes us stronger!
You just had to make me go and queue up some Daft Punk didn't ya?:)
And on "work" -- it'll soon be over -- but in the meantime there's still a lot of real-world scarcity so we've got to work (whether actual-work that makes a diff or useless busy-work) to trade for food, clothing, etc. In about 20 years, though, with advanced robotics, AI, and especially "desktop" molecular manufacturing/recycling, everybody can be pretty close to a self-sufficient island.
Of course, an economy of abundance will take a while for old cultural values to adjust to: "Why should anyone be given life's necessities for free?!" "If nobody has the fear of not being able to put food on the table, now or in retirement, why will anyone do anything?! What incentives are left?!" "If just anyone can manufacture diamond rings and cars for next to nothing, how am I to set myself apart enough to get the good chicks?!" "TANSTAAFL!"...
I think Cory Doctorow was dead-on with his idea of "Whuffie" (or reputation) becoming a new currency; where everybody's comfortably baseline, but there's perks for not being useless asshole.
Even if a space elevator made of static nanotube ribbon turns out to be impossible from a conventional maintenance perspective, that doesn't mean that this ideal method to get out of a gravity well is dead -- it would only mean we'd have to wait just a few more years of accelerating progress for full-blown nanotech to make active, self-repairing materials a reality.
Current "nanotech" is mostly just fancy materials science and top-down bulk-tech chemistry (with the nano buzzword thrown in to make getting funding easier). Bottom-up active nanotech & molecular manufacturing will make space elevators, and ever more "impossible" inventions, possible.
I'm no doctor, but I know enough that our larynx and vocal cords are made of fleshy muscle; not bone.
In order to accurately figure out what somebody's voice might have sounded like -- minus unknowable unique accent quirks -- would require a DNA sample and technology we don't yet have(1).
(1) Namely, vastly faster computers that can take some source DNA and quickly "grow" (protein unfolding, etc) an adult human being in simulation, then send the right signals to the nerves to make virtual speech. Complicated, yes, but doable in a couple decades thanks to accelerating progress.
Actually, it's not ALL downhill after 30 anymore, but for a reason peculiar to the times we live in: there's a crossover point for anyone under around 70 years-old where exponentially advancing technology will slow, stop, then reverse the biological aging disease.
Just don't get hit by a bus until then and most of us have a good shot at becoming biologically then non-biologically immortal (or none of do).
it's mind-blowing to see how much people are willing to pay for hardware, and then they'll freak out about paying for software.
No, it's really not so mind-blowing; you can't reproduce hardware at near-zero cost like you can with software - yet. When you buy physical products today there's no nagging thought in the back of your head that you're getting ripped off, unlike with most software (regardless of initial production costs).
In the not-too-distant future molecular manufacturing will make it possible for anyone to duplicate almost anything given the blueprints (open or "3D scanned warez"), free stored solar energy, and freely recycled component molecules (mostly carbon).
In such a world of abundant material wealth, conventional trade is dead, and the incentive to create both intangible and tangible products then shifts from the old need to put food on the table to reputation building.
So, companies wanting to charge for hardware will also seem insane soon enough. The difference is that nobody starves. (Sortof an offtopic response, but it's on my brain.)
"Only viewers within the United States can watch these full length episodes."
Or anyone with a list of US-based proxies, heh.
Yeah - if you don't mind the higher latency (double the hops), waste of bandwidth, and setup hassle. lawl. I can see you've never tried streaming through some random non-logging proxy, or through Tor. Sure you can use it to streamrip a copy, but why bother at that point? Just torrent it.
Watch out with the newer 20" widescreen model (2007), VS the older one (2005). Reports indicate that the newer model fixes some of the light bleeding from the corners that plagued the older model (is barely noticable on mine), but that the colors are more washed out. So, you'd be paying more $ for not much besides a better contrast ratio, and blacker blacks, and getting crappier color reproduction. I went for the cheaper 2005fpw.
I had also considered getting the 24"incher instead, but then I weighed in on power consumption: it ate as much power as my old 19" CRT (about 130Watts), but the 20" ate only 55W. So I figure I'll get 24" when they switch from always-on backlit LCD to OLED in the next couple years, for massive power savings and a big boost in natural color range. The other thing being that to drive 3D gaming @ native 1920x1200 vs 1680x1050 would require a beefier videocard than I was prepared to buy.
Not once has it made sense to upgrade the processor.
Usually you'd be right that it makes no sense to upgrade the CPU in leu of building a completely new system around it, HOWEVER one CPU upgrade that does make a significant difference for a lot of people these days is going from single to dual core -- if your motherboard supports it (via bios upgrade or not).
I just upgraded from a uni AMD64 3000+ -- that I built with my MSI Neo4 Platinum system a little over a year ago -- to a dualcore AMD64 X2 3800+ (best bang/buck) and the difference in FEEL is night and day no thanks to the small GHz bump. This was the first time I've bothered to replace a CPU on the same motherboard in over 10years of building my own systems. socket 939 might be end of life, but a dualcore upgrade is a worthy exception.
Well, you see... ubiquitous wireless mesh networking is sortof like a car that's efficiently shared by a dozen people in the area. i.e. it's COMMUNISM! And if the mesh links are encrypted with random hops between nodes (like Tor/Freenet) then it's secure and anonymous like a carbomber who can't be tracked down. i.e. TERRORISM!
I think I've made my point-by-car-analogy quite clear.
IMO, patent length should be inversely proportional to the exponentially accelerating rate of technological progress. Twenty years, in say 1906, felt like 20 years; but in 2006, 20 years is more like 500 years at the old 1906-rate-of-development. As time goes on it hurts everybody much more to have one entity squatting ideas -- even deserving patents -- for relatively longer periods.
The problem with this idea is that most people still haven't really internalized the implications of accelerating change, and are stuck in the old intuitive linear view that a year is a year is a year.
Slashdot Mirror
Slashdot has never banned for something as harmless as "bad language."
:)
In fact the only time I have ever been banned for using the colorful english language has been on game servers - most recently with BattleField2. Many of them attempt to "protect the chilllldrwen" by use of automated censor filters. A few of them even kickban for the common work-arounds such as "SH1T, FVCK, FCUK, FUK, and 'FU CK'". None have added FRACKING or FRELLING, yet.
And I think you're the moron for not knowing about the thousands of anonymous proxies you could have used; or more recently about Tor; or about how most residential ISPs will automatically assign you a new dynamic IP if you flip your cable/dsl modem off for the couple hours it takes for your dhcp lease to expire and someone else gets it.
...but that's probably expecting too much from a troll, I know.
Seems like you forgot to blur out one instance of "samiran".
;-)
Hmm... Interesting... "Samir" + "BioGenesis" == Terrahist Threat!
self-deactivating timers in a few months, with explosives that decay in a few years, and casings that bio-degrade in a few decades would be better. (for the winners)
Nah, costs too much.
"I'll take 100,000 dumb-mines for my $10mil, instead of only 50,000 'treehugger' mines"
Got a YouTube video link?
:)
No? Then it never happened.
~$26 for a 10"x12" sheet of tempered, rounded, colored glass with rubber feet seemed a little steep, but I'll be hanging on to this thing for years. My MX510 mouse (the model previous to the MX518) glides like butter across the surface, and I'd never go back to a normal pad.
Only two minor downsides to this type of glass mousepad:
Sorry, but I simply don't believe we're 5 to 10 years away from robotics being a "multibillion dollar industry".
Then you'd be wrong -- just as wrong as the naysayers were in 1995 when they proclaimed "this Internet thing is just a fad", because they hadn't internalized how exponential progress works in ALL evolutionary systems, and then projected forward based on the doubling rate of nodes being added to the net. And yes, past performance IS very indicative of future performance when it comes to evolutionary progress (not markets); tons of evidence backs this up.
Robotics, AI, molecular manufacturing (nanotech), and performance per $, is accelerating, and these advances will continue to arrive much sooner than you think. If you simply project into the future by going on your "gut feelings" then you're stuck in a insanely-conservative intuitively linear view (that luddites also happen to more comfortable with).
Sorry, but due to rampant inflation, the rate today is already $32 millions.
Sorry, but dollars are no longer accepted. The rate is now 1,683 bars of gold and 500 sex slaves.
The key thing I want to know about any "viral marketing" is WHO engineered the virus in the first place? Was it a stealth marketing shill trying to "subvert the cluetrain", or was it a truly grassroots meme like the Mentos+Coke thing?
If it's the latter, I'm fine with it, because it's genuine, but the former is just dirtier than even massmedia ads because the manipulation is sneekier and you KNOW the bastards are laughing all the way to the bank. At least with conventional ads you know someone's trying to sell you; with viral/stealth marketing it *could* be authentic, but it's more likely to be just some smirking jackasses taking everyone for a ride.
There is an advantage to second life.... Less kiddies and trolls
That and the average age in 2ndlife is 35, iirc. And around half the users are actually chicks, like my wife, into the whole socializing & dress-up thing (but didn't latch on to The Sims for reason). Heard these stats from some Google/2ndlife podcast event a couple months back.
I agree that 2ndlife sucks - not really because of the crappy graphics, but mostly because of the perverse "virtual economy" where almost everything costs you, when it needn't. It just feels like the level of artificial scarcity is out of whack with real-world server limitations. Feels dirty.
I mean it's supposed to be a game, so who needs a real-world $ incentive to have fun making shit?! Something better than 2ndlife will eventually come along; something with a much bigger opensource ethos...
No, not Moore's Law - it's specific to transistor count.
If you want to a more generalized law of exponential progress (for future reference), I'd suggest you aquaint yourself with Ray Kurzweil's Law of Accelerating Returns.
You just had to make me go and queue up some Daft Punk didn't ya? :)
And on "work" -- it'll soon be over -- but in the meantime there's still a lot of real-world scarcity so we've got to work (whether actual-work that makes a diff or useless busy-work) to trade for food, clothing, etc. In about 20 years, though, with advanced robotics, AI, and especially "desktop" molecular manufacturing/recycling, everybody can be pretty close to a self-sufficient island.
Of course, an economy of abundance will take a while for old cultural values to adjust to: "Why should anyone be given life's necessities for free?!" "If nobody has the fear of not being able to put food on the table, now or in retirement, why will anyone do anything?! What incentives are left?!" "If just anyone can manufacture diamond rings and cars for next to nothing, how am I to set myself apart enough to get the good chicks?!" "TANSTAAFL!" ...
I think Cory Doctorow was dead-on with his idea of "Whuffie" (or reputation) becoming a new currency; where everybody's comfortably baseline, but there's perks for not being useless asshole.
Nihilist: Ve don't care. Ve still vant ze money, Lebowski, or ve fuck you up.
Current "nanotech" is mostly just fancy materials science and top-down bulk-tech chemistry (with the nano buzzword thrown in to make getting funding easier). Bottom-up active nanotech & molecular manufacturing will make space elevators, and ever more "impossible" inventions, possible.
Did you really think your Mom was never a horny human being?
I'll never get why so many people pretend to be shocked about completely normal behavior.
In order to accurately figure out what somebody's voice might have sounded like -- minus unknowable unique accent quirks -- would require a DNA sample and technology we don't yet have(1).
(1) Namely, vastly faster computers that can take some source DNA and quickly "grow" (protein unfolding, etc) an adult human being in simulation, then send the right signals to the nerves to make virtual speech. Complicated, yes, but doable in a couple decades thanks to accelerating progress.
Just don't get hit by a bus until then and most of us have a good shot at becoming biologically then non-biologically immortal (or none of do).
Or maybe your record-setting 43 year-old is a genetic freak, just like Lance Armstrong and 100 year-old smokers are.
No, it's really not so mind-blowing; you can't reproduce hardware at near-zero cost like you can with software - yet. When you buy physical products today there's no nagging thought in the back of your head that you're getting ripped off, unlike with most software (regardless of initial production costs).
In the not-too-distant future molecular manufacturing will make it possible for anyone to duplicate almost anything given the blueprints (open or "3D scanned warez"), free stored solar energy, and freely recycled component molecules (mostly carbon).
In such a world of abundant material wealth, conventional trade is dead, and the incentive to create both intangible and tangible products then shifts from the old need to put food on the table to reputation building.
So, companies wanting to charge for hardware will also seem insane soon enough. The difference is that nobody starves. (Sortof an offtopic response, but it's on my brain.)
Or anyone with a list of US-based proxies, heh.
Yeah - if you don't mind the higher latency (double the hops), waste of bandwidth, and setup hassle. lawl. I can see you've never tried streaming through some random non-logging proxy, or through Tor. Sure you can use it to streamrip a copy, but why bother at that point? Just torrent it.
You don't think I know that? That's what I meant by "no thanks to the bump in GHz". i.e. the clockspeed isn't to thank; the 2nd core is.
I had also considered getting the 24"incher instead, but then I weighed in on power consumption: it ate as much power as my old 19" CRT (about 130Watts), but the 20" ate only 55W. So I figure I'll get 24" when they switch from always-on backlit LCD to OLED in the next couple years, for massive power savings and a big boost in natural color range. The other thing being that to drive 3D gaming @ native 1920x1200 vs 1680x1050 would require a beefier videocard than I was prepared to buy.
Usually you'd be right that it makes no sense to upgrade the CPU in leu of building a completely new system around it, HOWEVER one CPU upgrade that does make a significant difference for a lot of people these days is going from single to dual core -- if your motherboard supports it (via bios upgrade or not).
I just upgraded from a uni AMD64 3000+ -- that I built with my MSI Neo4 Platinum system a little over a year ago -- to a dualcore AMD64 X2 3800+ (best bang/buck) and the difference in FEEL is night and day no thanks to the small GHz bump. This was the first time I've bothered to replace a CPU on the same motherboard in over 10years of building my own systems. socket 939 might be end of life, but a dualcore upgrade is a worthy exception.
I think I've made my point-by-car-analogy quite clear.
The problem with this idea is that most people still haven't really internalized the implications of accelerating change, and are stuck in the old intuitive linear view that a year is a year is a year.