Conspicuous consumption demonstrates to others how wealthy/powerful you are, so the more you can afford to waste, the more the chicks will want your provider genes and the more the other beta-monkeys will respect/fear you. Conservation is for greeny weenies and eurotrash!:)
Indeed. By the end of this summer you'll be able to buy the Dell 24" LCD for only around $700(!), and currently you can get it for only $900 (25% off the official $1200 price) if you know where to look.
What used to be luxury displays will soon become commodity, much to the shagrin of the Apple Cinema fans (who fall back on the "aluminum style" defense).
Anyway, 24" is about the size limit a person can tolerate for a desktop display if you don't want to have to physically pan your head around to take it all in. The price drops can't come soon enough for me, as this is the huge, low-response display I (and everyone else) have been drooling over for months...
...the rover stopped to take a neat picture after it freed itself from the rut, only to get stuck once again in so doing!
Everybody knows that in situations like that you're supposed to KEEP MOVING for a long ways after freeing yourself so that you don't sink back into similar muck nearby, but those nerds apparently missed that life lesson.:)
Not every museum may want to check the sex of its specimens because it requires cutting a long bone in half
That won't be a concern for long. Soon (10-20 years), we'll have the ability to molecularly "scan" objects by controlling swarms of nanites which work their way through it by recording and reconnecting the bonds. The amount of energy required to do this depends on the material (lattice enthalpy), and the resolution needed; the object is left in perfect condition as if it was never touched.
On a related (archaeological) note, this same tech will also be used early on after its development to 3d image the entire Earth. Sampling a molecule every 1mm would be enough initial pattern to reveal all the lost treasures, fossils, geological features, etc., in one fell swoop. The downside is that there'd be no more mysteries left to discover the old-fashioned way.
the ability to retract unread messages (45%) and a way to track the forwarding of their own email (43%)
If that's really the case then it sounds like Microsoft will have its work cut out for them in selling DRM to these people, since that's the only reliable way a control-freak can track & control "his" email once it's on someone elses machine.
Web-bug tracking images and return receipts aren't evil enough?
Yeah, but only from an introvert's perspective. Unfortunately, the majority (90%) of people are extroverts by nature and expect everyone to be happy-happy-social just like them or you're not normal.
Hm. So the seal at the entrance was transmitting some kind of directional keep-alive signal into the mountain, and if the nanites -- which were released from the "holy grail" when drunk from -- in your body's cells lose this signal for too long, then the aging disease is allowed to continue. How cruel.
The obvious fix is to either figure out what the signal is and take it with you always, or, when the tech is available, replace the grail's cripple-ware immortality with GNU immortality nanites (if you want to remain in a biological body that is).
Depends on how greedy and naive you are I guess. i.e. The vast majority of people will never see seven figures in their lifetime but they'll defend the idea of the right to make obscene amounts of income, just so they can hold out the dream of one day being more wealthy than everyone else too.
IMO, after a certain point, a person doesn't even feel the money anymore, and everything in the stratosphere should be taxed at 100%(!) to help reduce the widening wealth gap.
Apparently, an ad is a form of mental engineering designed to increase awareness of CompanyX's warez, and is usually targetted at young & stupid, easily-influenced, captive audiences.
Caching pages is a good use of RAM, if you've got it, not a waste. It's a killer feature precisely because UI responsiveness matters. A lot.
For years, in Opera, I've been able to use mouse-rockers to instantaneously switch back and forth between pages. In FireFox, doing the same thing is currently slug-slow and is a major reason why Opera is still my primary browser (the other reason being its quick full-page zoom with +/-).
Anyway, if you're stuck on a system with too little RAM, you've probably got other bottlenecks to worry about.
You know, everything after, say, the first one million in an OBSCENE payout like that should be going to some central account to be redistributed back to the citizens at large.
All these multibillion-dollar tobacco awards and the like should be going back to all the people directly, rather than to a few individuals & lawyers.
Spending ~$1,000 isn't that much for a LCD of that size and quality which will last for more than 3 years. That's especially the case when you consider the insane amounts of money other "normal" people have no problem wasting on options for their status symbol cars. So, if you're the type of person who stares at a screen for >8 hours per day, it's a good investment.
The 24" Dell's are among the best available today (I've done my research but am still waiting for my 3.5yr-old 19" CRT to die first); most of the larger LCDs usually have shitty response times. e.g. Samsung's 21.3"er - an otherwise awesome LCD - is stuck at 25ms, where ghosting is still very noticable.
Check out lineak to make those funky "internet keys" accessible in linux. I first ran into lineakd back when SuSE included it by default, along with a handy tray applet to choose your keyboard, but Fedora doesn't include it and the KDE tray applet has since been discontinued so you have to configure and start the lineakd daemon manually.
The one annoying thing about lineakd, though, is that every so often is just dies and the internet keys aren't respsonsive, so you have to restart it.
Oh, so slashdot uses captcha's now? Guess so (had to block cookies for a sec to confirm). You wouldn't know it from the all the crapflooding I've still seen since Monday, but those are probably human trolls with actual pimples.
Anyway, aren't there brail machines available that can convert the display to black & white and raise the black dots so the blind can feel the captcha characters?
When you go to sleep you effectively "die" and wake up a slightly different person. While you were unconscious some of your braincells' have reconfigured, as have the cells in your body. In fact, about every 7 years all the cells in your body are refreshed.
Likewise, your consciousness could be transferred to a new body in a very similar gradual way that replaces the old with the new, bit-by-bit, retaining continuity.
Only a dogmatic idiot would claim that "you" (they mean "soul") are really dead in either case. The pattern of mind survives.
That's where the money will be. Allowing the rich people to take over a younger person's body.
Why would there be money in "young bodies"? Bio-bodies aren't exactly scarce; these days anybody can use their computer to choose an bodytype of any age from fastsimulation-grown vDNA, merge a selected brainpattern (your own backup, or JennaJamesonLITE(TM)) with an old bulky meatbrain or a more robust substrate, then output that from a your garden variety large-nanoassembler.
Maybe you're from some alternate universe where an evil power elite kept abundance scarce in order to preserve the hiearchical social order?
Simply because your mind isn't operating on the slow organic substrate we evolved with is no reason to think you'd be "dead" when transferred to better, faster artificial substrates, whether in a traditional meatspace vessel, or VR worlds.
To clarify:
"You" are your emergent pattern of mind: Software.
"You" are NOT necessarily what composes your operating substrate: Hardware.
I understand the cognitive dissonance a lot of people have to the idea of transhumanism, but that doesn't make it valid. People just tend to anthropomorphize the future because it's what we're used to. Case in point: most people are planetary chauvinists in the thinking that Mars is a great gravity well to terraform, when what we'll probably end up doing is tearing the planet(s) apart to create much more efficient substrates and infrastructure (not bound by gravity wells).
Slashdot Mirror
Conspicuous consumption demonstrates to others how wealthy/powerful you are, so the more you can afford to waste, the more the chicks will want your provider genes and the more the other beta-monkeys will respect/fear you. Conservation is for greeny weenies and eurotrash! :)
What used to be luxury displays will soon become commodity, much to the shagrin of the Apple Cinema fans (who fall back on the "aluminum style" defense).
Anyway, 24" is about the size limit a person can tolerate for a desktop display if you don't want to have to physically pan your head around to take it all in. The price drops can't come soon enough for me, as this is the huge, low-response display I (and everyone else) have been drooling over for months...
Everybody knows that in situations like that you're supposed to KEEP MOVING for a long ways after freeing yourself so that you don't sink back into similar muck nearby, but those nerds apparently missed that life lesson. :)
That won't be a concern for long. Soon (10-20 years), we'll have the ability to molecularly "scan" objects by controlling swarms of nanites which work their way through it by recording and reconnecting the bonds. The amount of energy required to do this depends on the material (lattice enthalpy), and the resolution needed; the object is left in perfect condition as if it was never touched.
On a related (archaeological) note, this same tech will also be used early on after its development to 3d image the entire Earth. Sampling a molecule every 1mm would be enough initial pattern to reveal all the lost treasures, fossils, geological features, etc., in one fell swoop. The downside is that there'd be no more mysteries left to discover the old-fashioned way.
Plus, how many consoles make use of the keyboard? Kind of hard to chat, or use the many useful key-combos with just a wimpy controller.
If that's really the case then it sounds like Microsoft will have its work cut out for them in selling DRM to these people, since that's the only reliable way a control-freak can track & control "his" email once it's on someone elses machine.
Web-bug tracking images and return receipts aren't evil enough?
Yeah, but only from an introvert's perspective. Unfortunately, the majority (90%) of people are extroverts by nature and expect everyone to be happy-happy-social just like them or you're not normal.
The obvious fix is to either figure out what the signal is and take it with you always, or, when the tech is available, replace the grail's cripple-ware immortality with GNU immortality nanites (if you want to remain in a biological body that is).
Depends on how greedy and naive you are I guess. i.e. The vast majority of people will never see seven figures in their lifetime but they'll defend the idea of the right to make obscene amounts of income, just so they can hold out the dream of one day being more wealthy than everyone else too.
IMO, after a certain point, a person doesn't even feel the money anymore, and everything in the stratosphere should be taxed at 100%(!) to help reduce the widening wealth gap.
Because many people care more about the common good and the Golden Rule than in supporting the broken window fallacy?
Sure, because a lump of cells is equivalent to a "youngling" with a fully-formed conscious brain. Not.
Apparently, an ad is a form of mental engineering designed to increase awareness of CompanyX's warez, and is usually targetted at young & stupid, easily-influenced, captive audiences.
No worries. As usual, they won't sell these mice to the left-handed heathens.
Caching pages is a good use of RAM, if you've got it, not a waste. It's a killer feature precisely because UI responsiveness matters. A lot.
For years, in Opera, I've been able to use mouse-rockers to instantaneously switch back and forth between pages. In FireFox, doing the same thing is currently slug-slow and is a major reason why Opera is still my primary browser (the other reason being its quick full-page zoom with +/-).
Anyway, if you're stuck on a system with too little RAM, you've probably got other bottlenecks to worry about.
All these multibillion-dollar tobacco awards and the like should be going back to all the people directly, rather than to a few individuals & lawyers.
The 24" Dell's are among the best available today (I've done my research but am still waiting for my 3.5yr-old 19" CRT to die first); most of the larger LCDs usually have shitty response times. e.g. Samsung's 21.3"er - an otherwise awesome LCD - is stuck at 25ms, where ghosting is still very noticable.
Well, you'd also want to account for document.layers if you care about old Netscape 4.
The one annoying thing about lineakd, though, is that every so often is just dies and the internet keys aren't respsonsive, so you have to restart it.
...can I bring a pie? To... eat?
Ah, the Aeron... because nothing says "schmuck" like the $700 chair that everyone just had to have during the dotbomb.
Anyway, aren't there brail machines available that can convert the display to black & white and raise the black dots so the blind can feel the captcha characters?
pop quiz: which of those two harmless pointers is currently "more illegal"? :)
Likewise, your consciousness could be transferred to a new body in a very similar gradual way that replaces the old with the new, bit-by-bit, retaining continuity.
Only a dogmatic idiot would claim that "you" (they mean "soul") are really dead in either case. The pattern of mind survives.
Why would there be money in "young bodies"? Bio-bodies aren't exactly scarce; these days anybody can use their computer to choose an bodytype of any age from fastsimulation-grown vDNA, merge a selected brainpattern (your own backup, or JennaJamesonLITE(TM)) with an old bulky meatbrain or a more robust substrate, then output that from a your garden variety large-nanoassembler.
Maybe you're from some alternate universe where an evil power elite kept abundance scarce in order to preserve the hiearchical social order?
To clarify:
- "You" are your emergent pattern of mind: Software.
- "You" are NOT necessarily what composes your operating substrate: Hardware.
I understand the cognitive dissonance a lot of people have to the idea of transhumanism, but that doesn't make it valid. People just tend to anthropomorphize the future because it's what we're used to. Case in point: most people are planetary chauvinists in the thinking that Mars is a great gravity well to terraform, when what we'll probably end up doing is tearing the planet(s) apart to create much more efficient substrates and infrastructure (not bound by gravity wells).