... you may also install a Linux desktop and restrict it to the minimum required functionnality (word processor, spreadsheet, web browsing, email reading).
I did this two years ago and my parents stopped calling me every week about crashes, data losses, and so on. The only computer-related call I got from them since that was hardware-related (thanks to my mother's "buy at the lowest price" way of thinking)
When you want to drive a car, which is a dangerous tool indeed if it's not properly used, you have to get an authorization from the state that indicates you have been found able to drive.
Most computer users are not educated enough. Computers _are_ dangerous tools ; I believe people should be forced to go through some education and certification before they are allowed to use a computer.
Ads that spread the common "a computer does everything for you, and the internet is something _so_ cool !" crap are mostly responsible for the surge of uneducated (and thus dangerous) users. I believe those suckers should be blamed.
Now, about you gunpoint analogy... There is a big difference : you won't have helped the guy holding the gun to rob you. Nothing prevents you from thinking and acting accordingly when you recieve an email.
First things first : 1) I'm drunk, so I may be overreacting, and 2) I did not read the entire thread, so that post may be redundant... Anyway:
2x2 matrices... meaning at most 4 complex or hypercomplex numbers... Moreover, according to your description of that book and the theory behind it, seems like every entry in that matrix has 2^2 (Low or High for two parameters) possible values...
Well... That may be a good solution for ruling humanity as a whole, I dunno, not there yet, however... Even at a high corporate level (say "CEO"), isn't that a bit simplistic ? Isn't that trying to think like each employee does not exist as an individual, but is a drone that obeys a program ? This does not seem logical to me, and I guess the whole crap about this is to rationnalize human behavior, so...
The thing is, humanity has became what it is because of a phenomena known as "emergence". Sure, most people (myself included) will behave in a very predictable way most of the time. However, what makes us human, and what lead humanity to evolve (as a society) is the fact that some elements do not always behave as they are meant to. That can have pretty awful consequences, but most of the time, it leads to progress.
I believe that trying to exclude that factor and forget what makes us different from machines is a big mistake, because, in the first place, you don't have the same point(s) of view as the people or groups you are describing using your decision matrix ; it does not account for that, therefore I think it is bogus.
I confirm that, I worked at a company that used Dell Optiplex computers and they _were_ shipped with RH at the time. However, they discontinued that because of the "lack of demand" (well, that's what they told us anyway)
Our economy is planned in that it encourages an on-going increase in the standard of living for those that take part in the system.
This is the theory ; true, it works when speaking at a gross level (say a country). However, there is a glitch somewhere, for goods and services tend to regroup in the hands of a very few.
Which is why drugs, prostitution, and thievery are written into law as it has been regarded as a threat to the status-quo of American prosperity.
True ; not American-specific however.
But let me remind you that these are means to the same goal than the rest of the economy : selling drugs makes you rich, "managing" a bunch of prostitutes and thievery too.
Making one rich is increasing one's standard of living.
Moreover, I don't really see the difference between selling drugs and selling video games (both cost a lot and are addictive), between prostitution and live shows on the 'net, or between thievery and, say, patents abuse.
If you violate these laws, you will be punished.
Once again, this is under the assumption that you'll get caught.
If you compare the risk to the profit, even if you know you may have to pay fines and spend some time in jail... well, I'm not sure that it always has a negative outcome in the long run.
Remember, pure evolution can only take place in a system of pure anarchy.
I do agree on this one.
And the moment laws are broken, checks and balances (such as regulations) will be put into place to enforce those said laws.
In my opinion, mankind (including demographics, economics, etc...) is a very complex dynamic system.
It will be chaotic without any laws, right.
Adding a few laws makes it fractal, self-repeating ; just check stock market archives over the last century. The system is almost stable.
However, I think that adding too much laws breaks the whole system ; it will not become more stable. On the contrary, it will become chaotic again.
Dictionary.com on Economy "Careful, thrifty management of resources, such as money, materials, or labor"
This is a general definition, it can be applied to the "economy" of a prehistoric tribe living in a village.
However, applying this definition to today's system seems a bit exagerated, especially for the "careful" part.
Our economy in the US is not an artifact. Our economy IS planed with an onjective goal in mind. That is, you trade labor, services, or good in exchange for the same of different value.
1) Planed ? I can't find a plan in what seems to be fractal patterns.
2) According to what you say, the goal of your economy (ours as well) is to maintain itself. Not anything else ; and not social progress, in any way.
If what you say were true, then by all intent, thievery would be acceptable as a natural form of economic evolution.
It is, as long as you don't get caught - survival of the fittest (the one able to steal without being caught), remember ?
Even if the obfuscator code was not static during execution (self obfuscating obfuscator;->) the actual program using it would contain a static bootstrap sequence which could be "easily" reverse engineered.
I totally agree with points 2 and 3 ; however, one may note that point 1 is not completly right.
Competition works very well when applied to biological entities.
However, the result is quite random : a very fit species may be destroyed by a random event (such as a meteor fall) and it's place taken over by a "lesser" species (I mean, a species which isn't as fit as the first one was, but for some reason - luck, etc... - managed to survive). Natural evolution does not get the "best" solution, only the one that seems to work at a given time in a given environnement.
I believe that what happens to corporations follows the same pattern ; therefore competition does not lead to "better" companies.
I totally agree with the initial, non-troll-rated poster in the sense that the idea behind communism, socialism, is quite good... well, it's good as long as it stays a theory.
The problem being - and communism, that later became stalinism, is a clear example - that if you take a large enough group of people, this group will include people whose only goals are to become richer, more powerful and by doing less work than the other people.
I believe this is inherent to the human nature. I wouldn't be much an exception myself, by the way.
The way computers play and the way human brain works are two completly different things and follow two opposite pathes.
Whereas the computer has to go through calculating moves explicitly, millions of move, the human brain has a kind of "fast pattern recognition" feature that allows him to _know_ what the right thing to do is, in less than one second.
Compare this to face recognition : it took _years_ to create a robot that is able to recognize a few faces, whereas your brain identifies any of your friends in milliseconds, in almost every possible situation.
I believe that this software will never be used by game companies ; sure, it would be fine for it would shorten the porting effort. The problem i'm thinking about is related to Java code being easy to reverse engineer.
I do not believe there is an easy way - except downloading a private decryption key from a server each time the game is started - and even this would not be 100% sure (because you may sniff the key or whatever)
So do you really think game companies would ever release a product that would be so easy to reverse engineer ? No, I'm sure they wouldn't - it'd be "dangerous" for their precious revenue streams.
I'm sorry to see that once again the money which should lead the evolution of the industry ahead will block and stop that evolution.
Privacy is only in your mind and in your home. When you go out into public and transmit messages on private networks you give up some privacy. You don't own the airplanes, fiber lines, servers, routers or switches. Get used to it.
Sure, sure... When you're talking on the phone, you do not own the phone lines nor the radio frequencies, thus you should get used to have someone listening at it; and the air you are using to speak isn't yours, thus when you are whispering, talking or whatever, you should get used to have someone listening at what you are saying anytime, anywhere.
With this kind of logic, we could go far...
Slashdot Mirror
Well, JMS's Babylon 5. Especially Shadow and Vorlon technology. And there's that season 1 episode too, 'Infection'.
... you may also install a Linux desktop and restrict it to the minimum required functionnality (word processor, spreadsheet, web browsing, email reading).
I did this two years ago and my parents stopped calling me every week about crashes, data losses, and so on. The only computer-related call I got from them since that was hardware-related (thanks to my mother's "buy at the lowest price" way of thinking)
See, I can't agree with this.
... There is a big difference : you won't have helped the guy holding the gun to rob you. Nothing prevents you from thinking and acting accordingly when you recieve an email.
When you want to drive a car, which is a dangerous tool indeed if it's not properly used, you have to get an authorization from the state that indicates you have been found able to drive.
Most computer users are not educated enough. Computers _are_ dangerous tools ; I believe people should be forced to go through some education and certification before they are allowed to use a computer.
Ads that spread the common "a computer does everything for you, and the internet is something _so_ cool !" crap are mostly responsible for the surge of uneducated (and thus dangerous) users. I believe those suckers should be blamed.
Now, about you gunpoint analogy
First things first : 1) I'm drunk, so I may be overreacting, and 2) I did not read the entire thread, so that post may be redundant ... Anyway :
... meaning at most 4 complex or hypercomplex numbers ... Moreover, according to your description of that book and the theory behind it, seems like every entry in that matrix has 2^2 (Low or High for two parameters) possible values ...
... That may be a good solution for ruling humanity as a whole, I dunno, not there yet, however ... Even at a high corporate level (say "CEO"), isn't that a bit simplistic ? Isn't that trying to think like each employee does not exist as an individual, but is a drone that obeys a program ? This does not seem logical to me, and I guess the whole crap about this is to rationnalize human behavior, so ...
2x2 matrices
Well
The thing is, humanity has became what it is because of a phenomena known as "emergence". Sure, most people (myself included) will behave in a very predictable way most of the time. However, what makes us human, and what lead humanity to evolve (as a society) is the fact that some elements do not always behave as they are meant to. That can have pretty awful consequences, but most of the time, it leads to progress.
I believe that trying to exclude that factor and forget what makes us different from machines is a big mistake, because, in the first place, you don't have the same point(s) of view as the people or groups you are describing using your decision matrix ; it does not account for that, therefore I think it is bogus.
I confirm that, I worked at a company that used Dell Optiplex computers and they _were_ shipped with RH at the time. However, they discontinued that because of the "lack of demand" (well, that's what they told us anyway)
Our economy is planned in that it encourages an on-going increase in the standard of living for those that take part in the system.
... well, I'm not sure that it always has a negative outcome in the long run.
...
This is the theory ; true, it works when speaking at a gross level (say a country). However, there is a glitch somewhere, for goods and services tend to regroup in the hands of a very few.
Which is why drugs, prostitution, and thievery are written into law as it has been regarded as a threat to the status-quo of American prosperity.
True ; not American-specific however.
But let me remind you that these are means to the same goal than the rest of the economy : selling drugs makes you rich, "managing" a bunch of prostitutes and thievery too.
Making one rich is increasing one's standard of living.
Moreover, I don't really see the difference between selling drugs and selling video games (both cost a lot and are addictive), between prostitution and live shows on the 'net, or between thievery and, say, patents abuse.
If you violate these laws, you will be punished.
Once again, this is under the assumption that you'll get caught.
If you compare the risk to the profit, even if you know you may have to pay fines and spend some time in jail
Remember, pure evolution can only take place in a system of pure anarchy.
I do agree on this one.
And the moment laws are broken, checks and balances (such as regulations) will be put into place to enforce those said laws.
In my opinion, mankind (including demographics, economics, etc...) is a very complex dynamic system.
It will be chaotic without any laws, right.
Adding a few laws makes it fractal, self-repeating ; just check stock market archives over the last century. The system is almost stable.
However, I think that adding too much laws breaks the whole system ; it will not become more stable. On the contrary, it will become chaotic again.
Sorry for polluting this topic
Dictionary.com on Economy
"Careful, thrifty management of resources, such as money, materials, or labor"
This is a general definition, it can be applied to the "economy" of a prehistoric tribe living in a village.
However, applying this definition to today's system seems a bit exagerated, especially for the "careful" part.
Our economy in the US is not an artifact. Our economy IS planed with an onjective goal in mind. That is, you trade labor, services, or good in exchange for the same of different value.
1) Planed ? I can't find a plan in what seems to be fractal patterns.
2) According to what you say, the goal of your economy (ours as well) is to maintain itself. Not anything else ; and not social progress, in any way.
If what you say were true, then by all intent, thievery would be acceptable as a natural form of economic evolution.
It is, as long as you don't get caught - survival of the fittest (the one able to steal without being caught), remember ?
Once the freedom of anarchy directly affects our economy in a negative way [...]
Sorry about this one, but...
Economy is an artifact, a mere consequence of a way of organizing ourselves.
As for "negative ways", evolution works by trying, and failing more often than succeeding.
Well ... Maybe the tera-horde of worms rampaging the internet will lead to emergence and evolution ; worms could evolve due to communications errors.
It could lead to something interresting, even if it's damn boring and, well, quite ugly in a "read-your-snort-logs" sense...
Even if the obfuscator code was not static during execution (self obfuscating obfuscator ;->) the actual program using it would contain a static bootstrap sequence which could be "easily" reverse engineered.
I totally agree with points 2 and 3 ; however, one may note that point 1 is not completly right.
Competition works very well when applied to biological entities.
However, the result is quite random : a very fit species may be destroyed by a random event (such as a meteor fall) and it's place taken over by a "lesser" species (I mean, a species which isn't as fit as the first one was, but for some reason - luck, etc... - managed to survive). Natural evolution does not get the "best" solution, only the one that seems to work at a given time in a given environnement.
I believe that what happens to corporations follows the same pattern ; therefore competition does not lead to "better" companies.
I do not believe you are right.
... well, it's good as long as it stays a theory.
I totally agree with the initial, non-troll-rated poster in the sense that the idea behind communism, socialism, is quite good
The problem being - and communism, that later became stalinism, is a clear example - that if you take a large enough group of people, this group will include people whose only goals are to become richer, more powerful and by doing less work than the other people.
I believe this is inherent to the human nature. I wouldn't be much an exception myself, by the way.
The way computers play and the way human brain works are two completly different things and follow two opposite pathes.
Whereas the computer has to go through calculating moves explicitly, millions of move, the human brain has a kind of "fast pattern recognition" feature that allows him to _know_ what the right thing to do is, in less than one second.
Compare this to face recognition : it took _years_ to create a robot that is able to recognize a few faces, whereas your brain identifies any of your friends in milliseconds, in almost every possible situation.
I believe that this software will never be used by game companies ; sure, it would be fine for it would shorten the porting effort. The problem i'm thinking about is related to Java code being easy to reverse engineer.
I do not believe there is an easy way - except downloading a private decryption key from a server each time the game is started - and even this would not be 100% sure (because you may sniff the key or whatever)
So do you really think game companies would ever release a product that would be so easy to reverse engineer ? No, I'm sure they wouldn't - it'd be "dangerous" for their precious revenue streams.
I'm sorry to see that once again the money which should lead the evolution of the industry ahead will block and stop that evolution.
Privacy is only in your mind and in your home. When you go out into public and transmit messages on private networks you give up some privacy. You don't own the airplanes, fiber lines, servers, routers or switches. Get used to it.
Sure, sure... When you're talking on the phone, you do not own the phone lines nor the radio frequencies, thus you should get used to have someone listening at it; and the air you are using to speak isn't yours, thus when you are whispering, talking or whatever, you should get used to have someone listening at what you are saying anytime, anywhere.
With this kind of logic, we could go far...