Fundamentalist Christians don't like Jews much either (or indeed anyone who doesn't agree with their religion), but Jews in the US don't use that as an excuse to go around killing fundamentalist Christians.
Just because someone hates you idelogically, that's no reason to treat them like shit.
Your program can attempt to make theories about what moves give you what scores in what contexts, test those theories, and if they seem to work, continue with them; if not, try another theory. The program has to be a good scientist - working out the rules of the world in which it finds itself.
Re:Um, what the reviewer said ....
on
Breaking Windows
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Even education and non-profits are run like for-profit megacorps -- organizations can not exist if they fail to balance the books and stay on track (hence the spawn of many nearly worthless mission statements;-).
There's a big difference between failing to exist, and failing to expand. Megacorps have to expand so they can meet their shareholders demands for more profits. For nonprofits, expansion can allow them to do more good work in some cases, but it's not always pursued, and it doesn't have to be.
What you describe is very much like the neural net approach. Neural network research is not currently stymied by lack of hardware power - you can add as much hardware as you want, but we don't know how to organise it so it learns in a really intelligent way. Yes they can do simple tasks, but not everything (and another problem is, they're hard to verify/test - black-box testing is the only option, so they're not suitable for critical systems).
Look, you just don't seem to understand. NO computer existing today can understand natural language. That is the "huge" technical problem. And by huge I really do mean huge.
Not all scarcity would be eliminated, certainly - but perhaps the basic material necessities of life (food, shelter, clothing, warmth etc.) would become very very cheap. That would mean one radical change which I'm interested in: low-paid workers wouldn't have to accept awful conditions or wages just to feed their hungry children. Sure, unemployment is no bed of roses in a social sense, but if your basic material needs are met and you don't have the pressure of work, some people might choose it as a step upwards. I see that as a major improvement.
Even libertarians should rejoice, because you could abolish welfare with much less political opposition.
The problem is, even with omnipresent surveillance, you still need observers to watch what's going on. In the absence of strong AI, the government wouldn't have enough staff to be certain that no-one was creating a nanoweapon.
Um, bacteria don't have design goals. Not only that, but evolution might have accidentally cut off some more efficient avenues (like non-carbon-based life, perhaps).
Simple : to differenciate laws that are just the reflect of natural notions (such as property of material goods, enforcement of contracts, etc), from laws that try to introduce artificial, ideology-based notions (such as collectivization of land or IP), just ask if you can trace back when the notion was introduced.
What is a "natural" notion? What definition allows us to distinguish between "natural" and "artificial" notions? Example: enforcement of contracts. In many countries around the world today, the government does not invest enough into enforcing law and order generally in certain areas (e.g. rural areas). Thus, there contracts may have to be "enforced" by contractees themselves (if at all), by things like "reputation systems", social ostracism, violence, threats of violence, social "backstabbing", stealing, etc.... This has been true in many parts of the world throughout history.
So which notion of enforcing contracts is a "natural" notion - the government one or the non-government one?
Also, is someone who tries to get away without fulfilling their part of a bargain "unnatural"? No - if any rational company is given the choice between paying a supplier or letting that supplier go bankrupt due to lack of revenue, they will feel free to do the latter if it benefits them (because there is no comeback in law). It is hardly unnatural, it is purely economically self-interested rational behaviour.
Anyway, that's all irrelevant. The point is, what's the point of asking whether something's natural or unnatural? There is no point. In most cases, it tells you nothing about whether it is better or worse. We are not naturally flying creatures, but that does not make air travel bad or wrong in any way, just because it may be in some sense "unnatural".
If your e-mail quota are filling up, they should simply refuse to accept more mail, not delete old stuff.
Uh, that is a denial of service attack. I don't particularly care if they delete mail I haven't bothered to file or save - I do care if they start preventing mail getting to me!
Uh, it's his baby, what's the problem? Do you have a problem with the film industry choosing to use cigarettes in scenes less? No? Then shut up.
By the way, ET is fiction. It's a story. Not a documentary. Calm down, buddy. That bold and those triple question marks don't cast you in a good light.
---
Lots of websites now have privacy policies saying "we will not sell
your email address, or send you unsolicited emails" - sometimes you
have to check a checkbox to make it come into effect. But how can you
trust them? Well with this hypothetical idea, you wouldn't have to:
The first part is easy, and well-known. Generate a one-time email
address (various means are available). Associate it with the site
(e.g. by naming it something like fake-addy-ebay@mycomputer.com if
you're registering with ebay, say) Give it to the sign-up form,
purchase form or whatever. If you actually want to receive a limited
kind of email from them, or want to know if/when they've broken their
promise, ensure that this one-time email addy forwards to a real
address of yours, or at least ensure that you'll be able to read mail
sent to it.
Trivial extension (and too trivial to be patentable, besides, this
post constitutes sufficient Prior Art) - How can you prove that you've
never used this email address again, by accident or on purpose, in
order to nail the spammers in court? You can't on your own - but what
about a trusted third party? Call it TTP. In order to make the process
virtually beyond suspicion, TTP would provide special form-filling
software, activated by you the user. When you're asked for your email
address by a site you don't trust, you'd activate the software and it
would send the form to TTPs servers, which would generate a one-time
email address, store it in their database, and forward the filled-in
form to the real site (transferring an existing session to another IP
could be tricky, but you'd probably just have to log in to the site
again through TTP's proxy if you weren't already using it - and in
most cases you wouldn't be logged in to the site yet, you'd still be
registering). TTP database would also record which privacy options
you'd ticked on the form. The real generated email address is NEVER
transmitted to your machine - the software is designed so it's
virtually impossible for the user to surreptiously find out what the
email address is. All mail sent to that address (up to say 100 emails)
would be logged in TTP's database, and forwarded to the user with the
To address replaced with the user's real address. Total storage space
required per user on TTP's servers: miniscule.
Possible problems:
1. Would a court trust TTP sufficiently to make their evidence pass
muster on its own?
2. How could TTP prevent a malicious user finding out the generated
email address by filling out a form on a server which THEY (the
malicious user) owned or had access to? Fortunately, they don't have
to PREVENT it - all they have to do is RECORD where the data was sent
- so if the address was actually sent to haxxors.com owned at the time
by J. Cracker, and the complaint is by J. Cracker against yahoo.com,
you can be pretty sure it's a scam. Heh.
3. Obviously, you have to trust TTP itself with your personal info!
That's why it's called a Trusted Third Party, duh!;-)
If these problems can be overcome, the best part is, if someone is
stupid enough to sell your one-time email address to hundreds of
spammers, you could use this virtually cast-iron evidence from TTP to
sue both the list-seller for breach of contract (or whatever laws are
most suitable to sue them under) AND ALL the spammers you could track
down to a physical address (if you're in a suitable antispam
jurisdiction)! Catch them red-handed! If they're selling something
they have to be traceable to a physical address. And it's not only you
that benefits - ANY rogue company would think twice about selling
their email lists after one or two high-profile cases like that.
If you wanted to be REALLY REALLY secure against arguments that "TTP
could have issued same email addy twice by accident" - but this is
probably over the top - maybe you could get it notarised with a
"Trusted Fourth Party" specialising in notarising (but it'd have to be
cheap). Disclaimer: I know nothing about notarising.
Now, one unsolicited email is not necessarily enough to interest the
courts in all antispam jurisdictions. But with this process automated,
it'd be far easier to form a class action suit to make it more
sizeable (I would imagine - IANAL) - when one stupid company sent out
spams to 10,000 TTP users that had registered with them - especially
REPEATED "this is a one time mailing" spams, grrrrrr - they'd be
toast! And in some jurisdictions TTP could join the class action suit
and claim even more damages, because it'd in effect be the ISP for
those email addresses! (Remember, TTP is not just a spam honeypot -
you can choose to receive legitimate kinds of emails through it - so I
wouldn't imagine the defendants could seriously argue it was
entrapment)
If anyone's seen this idea before somewhere, please point me in the
direction...
If this works, someone who got in first with being a Trusted Third
Party in this scheme could clean up... if lots of people care that
much about nailing spammers... and I think they do! I would DEFINITELY
pay a modest amount to use this kind of service!
Let's look at the ideal scenario:
1. You never list your email addresses anywhere public (at least not
without spamproofing them first)
2. You use TTP software for all your transactions, because it's so
easy
3. ANY spam you get can be tracked down to either one of:
i) A rogue company who you can PROVE in court either spammed you, or
sold your address without your permission.
ii) If TTP has no record of it, you can be 99% sure it's because you
have a rogue email PROVIDER who sold your email address, or listed you
in a public member directory even though you told it not to. In this
case, you can't necessarily prove it, but there's a simple remedy -
switch provider.
Comments? Obvious flaws? It is very late so I might have missed
something obvious. Please let me know - but please DON'T email me -
I'll read replies on comp.mail.misc.
At any given point in time, if you think you have a chance of finding a person with the required skills in a reasonably short space of time, it's cheaper to fire and search than it is to train. The only problem with that argument is that your belief that you have a chance of finding someone might be wrong. It's risk-taking activity, not necessarily irrational.
Oh come on. Do you think we're all completely ignorant of history? The Nazis weren't real socialists, they just put "socialist" in their names to appeal to the working class.
Saying "the Nazis were socialists" is like saying "Rush Limbaugh is a communist".
Slashdot Mirror
Just because someone hates you idelogically, that's no reason to treat them like shit.
There's a big difference between failing to exist, and failing to expand. Megacorps have to expand so they can meet their shareholders demands for more profits. For nonprofits, expansion can allow them to do more good work in some cases, but it's not always pursued, and it doesn't have to be.
Besides, the fact that black Africans were involved doesn't negate the wrong done by white Americans (obviously).
Even libertarians should rejoice, because you could abolish welfare with much less political opposition.
What is a "natural" notion? What definition allows us to distinguish between "natural" and "artificial" notions? Example: enforcement of contracts. In many countries around the world today, the government does not invest enough into enforcing law and order generally in certain areas (e.g. rural areas). Thus, there contracts may have to be "enforced" by contractees themselves (if at all), by things like "reputation systems", social ostracism, violence, threats of violence, social "backstabbing", stealing, etc.... This has been true in many parts of the world throughout history.
So which notion of enforcing contracts is a "natural" notion - the government one or the non-government one?
Also, is someone who tries to get away without fulfilling their part of a bargain "unnatural"? No - if any rational company is given the choice between paying a supplier or letting that supplier go bankrupt due to lack of revenue, they will feel free to do the latter if it benefits them (because there is no comeback in law). It is hardly unnatural, it is purely economically self-interested rational behaviour.
Anyway, that's all irrelevant. The point is, what's the point of asking whether something's natural or unnatural? There is no point. In most cases, it tells you nothing about whether it is better or worse. We are not naturally flying creatures, but that does not make air travel bad or wrong in any way, just because it may be in some sense "unnatural".
Uh, that is a denial of service attack. I don't particularly care if they delete mail I haven't bothered to file or save - I do care if they start preventing mail getting to me!
By the way, ET is fiction. It's a story. Not a documentary. Calm down, buddy. That bold and those triple question marks don't cast you in a good light.
I had an idea for detecting and proving when a site has sold your email address or spammed you - I posted it to comp.mail.misc here:
d %4 0hotmail.com&hl=en&safe=off&rnum=1&selm=f9cd2ccc.0 107291915.68572f17%40posting.google.com
;-)
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=author:greenr
Here is the post:
---
Lots of websites now have privacy policies saying "we will not sell
your email address, or send you unsolicited emails" - sometimes you
have to check a checkbox to make it come into effect. But how can you
trust them? Well with this hypothetical idea, you wouldn't have to:
The first part is easy, and well-known. Generate a one-time email
address (various means are available). Associate it with the site
(e.g. by naming it something like fake-addy-ebay@mycomputer.com if
you're registering with ebay, say) Give it to the sign-up form,
purchase form or whatever. If you actually want to receive a limited
kind of email from them, or want to know if/when they've broken their
promise, ensure that this one-time email addy forwards to a real
address of yours, or at least ensure that you'll be able to read mail
sent to it.
Trivial extension (and too trivial to be patentable, besides, this
post constitutes sufficient Prior Art) - How can you prove that you've
never used this email address again, by accident or on purpose, in
order to nail the spammers in court? You can't on your own - but what
about a trusted third party? Call it TTP. In order to make the process
virtually beyond suspicion, TTP would provide special form-filling
software, activated by you the user. When you're asked for your email
address by a site you don't trust, you'd activate the software and it
would send the form to TTPs servers, which would generate a one-time
email address, store it in their database, and forward the filled-in
form to the real site (transferring an existing session to another IP
could be tricky, but you'd probably just have to log in to the site
again through TTP's proxy if you weren't already using it - and in
most cases you wouldn't be logged in to the site yet, you'd still be
registering). TTP database would also record which privacy options
you'd ticked on the form. The real generated email address is NEVER
transmitted to your machine - the software is designed so it's
virtually impossible for the user to surreptiously find out what the
email address is. All mail sent to that address (up to say 100 emails)
would be logged in TTP's database, and forwarded to the user with the
To address replaced with the user's real address. Total storage space
required per user on TTP's servers: miniscule.
Possible problems:
1. Would a court trust TTP sufficiently to make their evidence pass
muster on its own?
2. How could TTP prevent a malicious user finding out the generated
email address by filling out a form on a server which THEY (the
malicious user) owned or had access to? Fortunately, they don't have
to PREVENT it - all they have to do is RECORD where the data was sent
- so if the address was actually sent to haxxors.com owned at the time
by J. Cracker, and the complaint is by J. Cracker against yahoo.com,
you can be pretty sure it's a scam. Heh.
3. Obviously, you have to trust TTP itself with your personal info!
That's why it's called a Trusted Third Party, duh!
If these problems can be overcome, the best part is, if someone is
stupid enough to sell your one-time email address to hundreds of
spammers, you could use this virtually cast-iron evidence from TTP to
sue both the list-seller for breach of contract (or whatever laws are
most suitable to sue them under) AND ALL the spammers you could track
down to a physical address (if you're in a suitable antispam
jurisdiction)! Catch them red-handed! If they're selling something
they have to be traceable to a physical address. And it's not only you
that benefits - ANY rogue company would think twice about selling
their email lists after one or two high-profile cases like that.
If you wanted to be REALLY REALLY secure against arguments that "TTP
could have issued same email addy twice by accident" - but this is
probably over the top - maybe you could get it notarised with a
"Trusted Fourth Party" specialising in notarising (but it'd have to be
cheap). Disclaimer: I know nothing about notarising.
Now, one unsolicited email is not necessarily enough to interest the
courts in all antispam jurisdictions. But with this process automated,
it'd be far easier to form a class action suit to make it more
sizeable (I would imagine - IANAL) - when one stupid company sent out
spams to 10,000 TTP users that had registered with them - especially
REPEATED "this is a one time mailing" spams, grrrrrr - they'd be
toast! And in some jurisdictions TTP could join the class action suit
and claim even more damages, because it'd in effect be the ISP for
those email addresses! (Remember, TTP is not just a spam honeypot -
you can choose to receive legitimate kinds of emails through it - so I
wouldn't imagine the defendants could seriously argue it was
entrapment)
If anyone's seen this idea before somewhere, please point me in the
direction...
If this works, someone who got in first with being a Trusted Third
Party in this scheme could clean up... if lots of people care that
much about nailing spammers... and I think they do! I would DEFINITELY
pay a modest amount to use this kind of service!
Let's look at the ideal scenario:
1. You never list your email addresses anywhere public (at least not
without spamproofing them first)
2. You use TTP software for all your transactions, because it's so
easy
3. ANY spam you get can be tracked down to either one of:
i) A rogue company who you can PROVE in court either spammed you, or
sold your address without your permission.
ii) If TTP has no record of it, you can be 99% sure it's because you
have a rogue email PROVIDER who sold your email address, or listed you
in a public member directory even though you told it not to. In this
case, you can't necessarily prove it, but there's a simple remedy -
switch provider.
Comments? Obvious flaws? It is very late so I might have missed
something obvious. Please let me know - but please DON'T email me -
I'll read replies on comp.mail.misc.
Wake up man, it's made up bullshit!
Saying "the Nazis were socialists" is like saying "Rush Limbaugh is a communist".