Chimps and other apes do sometimes fashion tools, which is to say they do more than pick up a rock... they actively shape a twig or branch to do what they want.
But the most impressive, was a crow that bent wire into a hook, to form a tool. Weird, eh?
As for being self-ware, recognizing yourself in a mirror... how useful is that as an indicator? I mean, pick some insect with compound eyes, a bee perhaps. Magically make it intelligent, could it recognize itself? What about some species that is naturally blind?
Also, I believe you people want to use the word sapient, not sentient. I would guess that there isn't a mammal in existence, that isn't sentient to an extent. Forgive me from borrowing from scifi, but Data (Star Trek) was argued to not be sentient, even though he was clearly intelligent. Sentience would be the ability to love, empathize, and lots of other things that are difficult to define.
Another interesting note on animal intelligence... anyone ever bothered to read up on octopi? These things can also solve problems if the reward is food, and they can learn to do so, simply by watching another octopus solve it. What's more, they have been known to climb out of aquariums entirely, across a floor, and into another to eat fish that they see.
Mostly, various religions have ingrained (maybe reinforced) the human tendency to discount any "lesser" animal as worthwhile. In modern times, that tends to amount to discounting their intelligence. I'm not about to stake my life on my cat scoring 190 on an IQ test, but it just seems right to think of her as a person. That tends to be difficult for those who can only assign value to an animal.
And lastly, in this mostly random rant of mine, I pose this question. If human intelligence can vary so greatly, from the barely more than vegetable, up to the ubergenius... why is it so hard to believe the same might be true of animals. And if they were already close to the lowest end of human intelligence, might not the occassional animal ubergenius be comparable to an average person? We might very well stumble across some dolphin that tells us to go fuck ourselves. (though how it will flip us the accompaning finger will frustrate it to no end).
My cat knows about 5 words, that have clear meaning. The one I hear most also seems to have some syntax. Call it "bird/prey" (seems to apply to all small animals, yet not insects... she'll chase houseflies, but they aren't called "bird/prey"). She'll repeat the word more times, if there are 4 birds, than if there is just one. Consistently. Haven't seen it enough to see if it's in any way accurate counting, but she at least distinguishes between singular and plural birds.
If you can imitate this sound accurately enough, she will come running. Though it usually pisses her off if you're lying. I try to do it only when there are birds at the window, so as to positively reinforce it. She also tends to repeat it afterward, but I suspect I'm anthropomorphizing when I believe she is correcting my pronunciation.
I thought a given acre of land might have a 1% chance of a single cosmic ray in any given year. This varies with New Orleans. It'specific to the acre, because the cosmic ray tends to rain it's decay particles straight down, not easy to detect at a significant angle. Warning: This is as I remember it, there is certainly some fraction of bullshit in all this, and I'm not sure which is which.
Anything that costs more than $20 tends to get crossed out on the list of cool toys. I've been thinking of building some other weather/geo sensors (even a seismograph) and logging stuff just for the heck of it.
Speaking of which, is there any way to detect cosmic rays without a university dept backing me up? The things are so rare, that I'd never know it wasn't working....
See? This is the most perfect example. Thank you, I could never have presented an example like this myself.
Me, I hate all people equally. White, black, yellow, paint your skin blue... you're still a stupid fuck. Why? Because when I present a logical argument, some part of your monkey brain fires up, and you spew this shit.
I would debunk your shit point for point, I want to. See, the part of my brain that fires up makes me want to point out the inconsistencies... but why bother? Through hard work, I've been able to suppress that behavior.
For the record, though. Take a typical black man, a typical white man. Physically, there exists little difference between the two, as little difference as there would be between 2 typical white men, or 2 typical black men. Given approximately equal weights, the difference in their atomic, molecular, protein and genetic makeup isn't significant. I don't really have any spritual or religious beliefs either, so there isn't much argument that there could be any difference in their "souls".
Racism does happen. Despite some conservatives' delusions that it doesn't happen, I suspect that it is even quite rampant in places. On an informal basis (institutionally, it's biased in the opposite direction), it's now only possible in socially small situations, though perhaps this is the worst case, since that tends to focus it more tightly, make the offenses more cruel. Think Amadu Diallo, or the one guy whose name escapes me at the moment (was sodomized with a broomstick during interrogation). But also, it's necessary to consider that racist elements are only a partial explanation, it mixes so readily with an attitude of adversarialism that the police tend to exhibit. There are other factors at work too, that I've never quite been able to decipher.
All in all, worry about the small cases that don't make the news, that get plead down, because the black kid from the projects is scared of being railroaded. OJ, though, is a fucking murderer, and Mark Furhman too stupid/not sophisticated enough to frame someone during a high-profile case, in such a way that it's not blatantly obvious.
Who is claiming that the conversions are being bribed?
I happen to know that in Saudia Arabia, that is standard practice to pay people (usually foreign workers) to convert to Islam. Would be ironic, if they accused others of the same.
As for India being a cauldron of religious fanaticism, I don't really believe that, it was just the first specific example that came to mind. You guys have 3 times the population of the USA, and I still bet we kill more in the name of religion that you guys. Shameful, eh?
If you are from India, then obviously you're the expert. Forgive any errors I've made. I don't read any religious-biased news that I'm aware of. It's been awhile since I've read this, but I seem to remember it having to do specifically with one temple.
The hindus have the current temple on the site (I believe), but the muslims claimed that it was originally a mosque, and if I'm not mistaken, even the christians claim that before that it was a church. So between them all killing each other and trying to take over the temple/site.
Tell me how much of this I've made up, and which parts, if you don't mind.
Keep in mind, that I didn't mean anything offensive about this, or that it is in any way particular to India. Nor did I intend to mean that this rose to the level of genocide, I meant something more along the lines of everyone acting like fools and dozens dying on both/all three sides of it.
As I noted, the religious freaks can be just as nuts in my own country (USA) too.
Assuming you mean racist "guy who privately hates blacks and tells nigger jokes", and not racist "grand dragon of the KKK, secretly involved in dozens of lynchings"... I don't see how his personal views are all that relevant. Obviously the second type of racist implies that he might actively frame OJ, but the first doesn't really do that at all. More so, the fact that it was a high-profile case, means that there were so many people working on it, that a single racist couldn't frame or sabotage the investigation.
In effect, this argument leads from the barely plausible "whitey is just trying to keep the black man down" to utterly ludicrous conspiracy theory bullshit, where all whites belong to a secret society scheming to keep them in their place.
Note to any blacks reading this: Next time, claim the police are imcompetent, apathetic, or just wanting to close the case in a hurry. I'm damned more likely to believe that.
Too busy to find links, but basically there is a 3 way race going in India. Hindus kill muslims, muslims kill christians, christians kill hindus. And then all three kill the sikhs. It's pretty easy to look up, and not particularly in the favor/disfavor of any of the religions.
You must not have watched the same trial I did. Besides the point is moot, post-verdict interviews with the jurors indicated the opposite... every one of them believed he was guilty, but they wanted to avoid race riots.
How anyone could believe there was anyone else who killed Nicole Simpson, is a mystery of reverse racism to me.
Christians in India do use bombs to kill in the name of religion.
Christians in the south use bombs to kill abortion doctors in the name of religion.
Muslim moderates aren't obligated to feel outrage over the extremists, especially not for your benefit.
Most christians in the US, even the non-KKK variety, were never really outraged against lynching. If they say so now, it's generally more of a political thing, rather than the true sentiment.
And, no. The jury is there to decide if the person actually committed the crime in question, not whether the law makes sense. While jury nullification is useful for the worst abuses of the legislative process, I would prefer that they generally stick to deciding guilt or innocence.
Remember, the last high-profile use of jury nullification was OJ. It wasn't that they thought that he didn't do it, but that they didn't want riots (a case of the law not making sense, taking into account what could happen).
The fact that thinking at the thing the wrong way makes it crash.
And that instead of a directory layout is 20 years less mature than unix systems, and that much flakier because of that.
Oh, and that it's security model would be utterly hilarious, if it wasn't so dangerous.
Or even that it's owned by a corporation that is out to enslave us all in an intellectual property sort of way.
I can even forgive the lack of a decent command line shell, and that the wizards insist I'm an idiot and that I don't know exactly how I want things to be.
Truly, the one thing for which there can be no excuse, no forgiveness, and no tolerance, is the lack of developer utilities. Even a 10 yr old that wants to learn to program would be forced to spend hundreds of dollars to do anything other than a dos batch file. It's even rumored that w2k was intentionally altered so that the free dos c compiler wouldn't run. Would it truly cost them anything to make a Visual Studio/C/Basic Hobbyist Edition? Just goes to show how evil the fuckers really are.
Wrong. The first was the Babbage Analytical Engine Number One.
BTW, the inability to add more memory to the thing due to financial or mechanical constraints doesn't invalidate that he had all the pieces there, and working.
Not really. You are assuming things based on what I gather are fuzzy memories of the difference engine. The analytical engine (never completely built) was capable of everything that modern computers were, and more so, could easily have outperformed Z3, ENIAC or Colossus. No vacuum tubes, or relays... gearworks. It could crank alot faster than anything short of the transistor.
Does it count? Well, the designs were sound, and the machinery could have built, given the the technical limitations of the day. If Babbage had been a slightly better fundraiser, or could have managed to stick with a design and finish the damn thing, the era of the mainframe could have started 100 years earlier than it did.
And while this isn't exactly relevant to this thread, I could relay-based computers to be eletronic, not mechanical. The distinction between tubes and relays....
If most of this is being performed by spambots, couldn't some image "what is the word" turing test be added to the system? Hell, there's probably even a perl module.
Then again, won't stop the spammeisters from dutifully doing this by hand.
Hmm.
I propose the equivalent of a turing test for spammers. It would be posed as a single question that they find impossible to to answer successfully. Examples:
Is it ethical to advertise to people without their prior consent?
Should all commercial email be protected by free speech?
Have you ever been persecuted by evil, fanatical anti-spam zealots?
Sure, there might be 1 or 2 out there savvy enough to not be caught by this, but the vast majority would hit the yes button before really giving it any thought.
Pointing out a bad moderation is the only guaranteed way to hit -1, troll in 10 seconds that I know of. Have fun with your (now, or soon) negative karma.
Slashdot Mirror
Chimps and other apes do sometimes fashion tools, which is to say they do more than pick up a rock... they actively shape a twig or branch to do what they want.
But the most impressive, was a crow that bent wire into a hook, to form a tool. Weird, eh?
As for being self-ware, recognizing yourself in a mirror... how useful is that as an indicator? I mean, pick some insect with compound eyes, a bee perhaps. Magically make it intelligent, could it recognize itself? What about some species that is naturally blind?
Also, I believe you people want to use the word sapient, not sentient. I would guess that there isn't a mammal in existence, that isn't sentient to an extent. Forgive me from borrowing from scifi, but Data (Star Trek) was argued to not be sentient, even though he was clearly intelligent. Sentience would be the ability to love, empathize, and lots of other things that are difficult to define.
Another interesting note on animal intelligence... anyone ever bothered to read up on octopi? These things can also solve problems if the reward is food, and they can learn to do so, simply by watching another octopus solve it. What's more, they have been known to climb out of aquariums entirely, across a floor, and into another to eat fish that they see.
Mostly, various religions have ingrained (maybe reinforced) the human tendency to discount any "lesser" animal as worthwhile. In modern times, that tends to amount to discounting their intelligence. I'm not about to stake my life on my cat scoring 190 on an IQ test, but it just seems right to think of her as a person. That tends to be difficult for those who can only assign value to an animal.
And lastly, in this mostly random rant of mine, I pose this question. If human intelligence can vary so greatly, from the barely more than vegetable, up to the ubergenius... why is it so hard to believe the same might be true of animals. And if they were already close to the lowest end of human intelligence, might not the occassional animal ubergenius be comparable to an average person? We might very well stumble across some dolphin that tells us to go fuck ourselves. (though how it will flip us the accompaning finger will frustrate it to no end).
My cat knows about 5 words, that have clear meaning. The one I hear most also seems to have some syntax. Call it "bird/prey" (seems to apply to all small animals, yet not insects... she'll chase houseflies, but they aren't called "bird/prey"). She'll repeat the word more times, if there are 4 birds, than if there is just one. Consistently. Haven't seen it enough to see if it's in any way accurate counting, but she at least distinguishes between singular and plural birds.
If you can imitate this sound accurately enough, she will come running. Though it usually pisses her off if you're lying. I try to do it only when there are birds at the window, so as to positively reinforce it. She also tends to repeat it afterward, but I suspect I'm anthropomorphizing when I believe she is correcting my pronunciation.
I keep hoping for a breakthrough that will enable me to communicate with my own. Perhaps the border collie could translate?
Didn't he die too early?
I wouldn't be shocked if they weren't to blame for his death. Pro-copyright zealots have always been willing to go to any extreme....
I always knew Lars Ulrich gave head for money, but to think that he is worth $500 per blowjob is just ludicrous.
Now, I might pay that much to fuck old Hillary Rosen in the ass... til it's for sale though, I'll have to settle for ripping mp3s.
I thought a given acre of land might have a 1% chance of a single cosmic ray in any given year. This varies with New Orleans. It'specific to the acre, because the cosmic ray tends to rain it's decay particles straight down, not easy to detect at a significant angle. Warning: This is as I remember it, there is certainly some fraction of bullshit in all this, and I'm not sure which is which.
Anything that costs more than $20 tends to get crossed out on the list of cool toys. I've been thinking of building some other weather/geo sensors (even a seismograph) and logging stuff just for the heck of it.
Speaking of which, is there any way to detect cosmic rays without a university dept backing me up? The things are so rare, that I'd never know it wasn't working....
See? This is the most perfect example. Thank you, I could never have presented an example like this myself.
Me, I hate all people equally. White, black, yellow, paint your skin blue... you're still a stupid fuck. Why? Because when I present a logical argument, some part of your monkey brain fires up, and you spew this shit.
I would debunk your shit point for point, I want to. See, the part of my brain that fires up makes me want to point out the inconsistencies... but why bother? Through hard work, I've been able to suppress that behavior.
For the record, though. Take a typical black man, a typical white man. Physically, there exists little difference between the two, as little difference as there would be between 2 typical white men, or 2 typical black men. Given approximately equal weights, the difference in their atomic, molecular, protein and genetic makeup isn't significant. I don't really have any spritual or religious beliefs either, so there isn't much argument that there could be any difference in their "souls".
Racism does happen. Despite some conservatives' delusions that it doesn't happen, I suspect that it is even quite rampant in places. On an informal basis (institutionally, it's biased in the opposite direction), it's now only possible in socially small situations, though perhaps this is the worst case, since that tends to focus it more tightly, make the offenses more cruel. Think Amadu Diallo, or the one guy whose name escapes me at the moment (was sodomized with a broomstick during interrogation). But also, it's necessary to consider that racist elements are only a partial explanation, it mixes so readily with an attitude of adversarialism that the police tend to exhibit. There are other factors at work too, that I've never quite been able to decipher.
All in all, worry about the small cases that don't make the news, that get plead down, because the black kid from the projects is scared of being railroaded. OJ, though, is a fucking murderer, and Mark Furhman too stupid/not sophisticated enough to frame someone during a high-profile case, in such a way that it's not blatantly obvious.
Who is claiming that the conversions are being bribed?
I happen to know that in Saudia Arabia, that is standard practice to pay people (usually foreign workers) to convert to Islam. Would be ironic, if they accused others of the same.
As for India being a cauldron of religious fanaticism, I don't really believe that, it was just the first specific example that came to mind. You guys have 3 times the population of the USA, and I still bet we kill more in the name of religion that you guys. Shameful, eh?
If you are from India, then obviously you're the expert. Forgive any errors I've made. I don't read any religious-biased news that I'm aware of. It's been awhile since I've read this, but I seem to remember it having to do specifically with one temple.
The hindus have the current temple on the site (I believe), but the muslims claimed that it was originally a mosque, and if I'm not mistaken, even the christians claim that before that it was a church. So between them all killing each other and trying to take over the temple/site.
Tell me how much of this I've made up, and which parts, if you don't mind.
Keep in mind, that I didn't mean anything offensive about this, or that it is in any way particular to India. Nor did I intend to mean that this rose to the level of genocide, I meant something more along the lines of everyone acting like fools and dozens dying on both/all three sides of it.
As I noted, the religious freaks can be just as nuts in my own country (USA) too.
Assuming you mean racist "guy who privately hates blacks and tells nigger jokes", and not racist "grand dragon of the KKK, secretly involved in dozens of lynchings"... I don't see how his personal views are all that relevant. Obviously the second type of racist implies that he might actively frame OJ, but the first doesn't really do that at all. More so, the fact that it was a high-profile case, means that there were so many people working on it, that a single racist couldn't frame or sabotage the investigation.
In effect, this argument leads from the barely plausible "whitey is just trying to keep the black man down" to utterly ludicrous conspiracy theory bullshit, where all whites belong to a secret society scheming to keep them in their place.
Note to any blacks reading this: Next time, claim the police are imcompetent, apathetic, or just wanting to close the case in a hurry. I'm damned more likely to believe that.
Too busy to find links, but basically there is a 3 way race going in India. Hindus kill muslims, muslims kill christians, christians kill hindus. And then all three kill the sikhs. It's pretty easy to look up, and not particularly in the favor/disfavor of any of the religions.
You must not have watched the same trial I did. Besides the point is moot, post-verdict interviews with the jurors indicated the opposite... every one of them believed he was guilty, but they wanted to avoid race riots.
How anyone could believe there was anyone else who killed Nicole Simpson, is a mystery of reverse racism to me.
Christians in India do use bombs to kill in the name of religion.
Christians in the south use bombs to kill abortion doctors in the name of religion.
Muslim moderates aren't obligated to feel outrage over the extremists, especially not for your benefit.
Most christians in the US, even the non-KKK variety, were never really outraged against lynching. If they say so now, it's generally more of a political thing, rather than the true sentiment.
No.
No.
And, no. The jury is there to decide if the person actually committed the crime in question, not whether the law makes sense. While jury nullification is useful for the worst abuses of the legislative process, I would prefer that they generally stick to deciding guilt or innocence.
Remember, the last high-profile use of jury nullification was OJ. It wasn't that they thought that he didn't do it, but that they didn't want riots (a case of the law not making sense, taking into account what could happen).
The fact that thinking at the thing the wrong way makes it crash.
And that instead of a directory layout is 20 years less mature than unix systems, and that much flakier because of that.
Oh, and that it's security model would be utterly hilarious, if it wasn't so dangerous.
Or even that it's owned by a corporation that is out to enslave us all in an intellectual property sort of way.
I can even forgive the lack of a decent command line shell, and that the wizards insist I'm an idiot and that I don't know exactly how I want things to be.
Truly, the one thing for which there can be no excuse, no forgiveness, and no tolerance, is the lack of developer utilities. Even a 10 yr old that wants to learn to program would be forced to spend hundreds of dollars to do anything other than a dos batch file. It's even rumored that w2k was intentionally altered so that the free dos c compiler wouldn't run. Would it truly cost them anything to make a Visual Studio/C/Basic Hobbyist Edition? Just goes to show how evil the fuckers really are.
Shit, looks like someone beat me to the joke. Don't suppose you'd believe me if I said I've never seen that? Not as if it isn't obvious.
They wanted to emphasize that this was "more" than just a celeron, and of course, they had to keep the -on suffix.
Introducing the AMD Moron....
And when that hammer is PHP, its a styrofoam prop carved to look like a caveman's club.
SOFT WARS
Darth McBride: The Source is strong with this one
Emperor Bilgatine: The son of Linus must not become a Coder
Darth McBride: He will join us, or die, my master.
Ricstawaca the Wookie: ROOOOAAR!
Wrong. The first was the Babbage Analytical Engine Number One.
BTW, the inability to add more memory to the thing due to financial or mechanical constraints doesn't invalidate that he had all the pieces there, and working.
Not really. You are assuming things based on what I gather are fuzzy memories of the difference engine. The analytical engine (never completely built) was capable of everything that modern computers were, and more so, could easily have outperformed Z3, ENIAC or Colossus. No vacuum tubes, or relays... gearworks. It could crank alot faster than anything short of the transistor.
Does it count? Well, the designs were sound, and the machinery could have built, given the the technical limitations of the day. If Babbage had been a slightly better fundraiser, or could have managed to stick with a design and finish the damn thing, the era of the mainframe could have started 100 years earlier than it did.
And while this isn't exactly relevant to this thread, I could relay-based computers to be eletronic, not mechanical. The distinction between tubes and relays....
If most of this is being performed by spambots, couldn't some image "what is the word" turing test be added to the system? Hell, there's probably even a perl module.
Then again, won't stop the spammeisters from dutifully doing this by hand.
Hmm.
I propose the equivalent of a turing test for spammers. It would be posed as a single question that they find impossible to to answer successfully. Examples:
Is it ethical to advertise to people without their prior consent?
Should all commercial email be protected by free speech?
Have you ever been persecuted by evil, fanatical anti-spam zealots?
Sure, there might be 1 or 2 out there savvy enough to not be caught by this, but the vast majority would hit the yes button before really giving it any thought.
I could have sworn this was a "on fark 2 days ago" story, not a dupe.
Pointing out a bad moderation is the only guaranteed way to hit -1, troll in 10 seconds that I know of. Have fun with your (now, or soon) negative karma.