God is the only one who holds the promise for an eternity better than anyone can conceive. God also loves us so he wants to see us happy.
I think that the 'offtopic' mod is unwarranted, the thread is about science eliminating ageing and you are offering an alternative —albeit unpopular POV. One problem I have with your proposition, though, is that science is something that any random human that cares enough can verify for themselves. Not so with the God 'promise'.
To begin with, it's not God whom holds the promise. It's random humans that do. They claim that God speaks to them, and maybe he does but it's not falsifiable.
If I'm not a geneticist, or a scientist, science is still open to me and I can go out and study and learn what we humans know so far about how things work. The possibility is open for me, personally, to work in this or any other scientific research and continue it and add to it. Not so with this promises that supposedly come from God. There is no verifiable, replicable mean for Virtual Raider to acquire the knowledge that the people that spoke to God claim to have.
I can go to some university and verify the scientific theories; but I can't go to the mosque or the synagogue, read The Word, try to reproduce those claims and ask to please talk with God to ask Him about some inconsistencies on His word on chapter whatever. Granted, I can't ask to talk to Einstein either, but if I so choose I can replicate all of his work and verify or disprove it (LHC anyone?). There is simply no way to verify any claims made by any religion.
That doesn't mean that they are false, mind you. But for all we know God does exist and doesn't give a hoot about us. Or really, really hates us and enjoys making us suffer and it was Him who purposefully introduced pain and evil in the world for us to have a hard time. Maybe He exists but is so Vast, Magnificent, Unhumanlike and Incomprehensible that we have no hope of ever extracting any meaning from His actions. Or maybe He does love us and wants to see us happy. The point is, we have no way to know so that offers little comfort for certain type of order-and-answers-craving kind of minds.
Why, even if He's waiting for me with arms wide open, isn't He Eternal and Everlasting and can wait a few more hundred or thousand years for me to go to Him? If He does exist, wouldn't you like to show up before Him with some achievements under your arm like a kid that comes home from kindergarten to show daddy his drawings? "Hey, look, I made people live 20 times longer than before!" or even "Look how many people I made happy by building bridges, cooking pizza, teaching to use Ubuntu during my 754 years alive!";)
In sum, while IMHO you're not off-topic it's kinda pointless to say "yeah this is cool but I have something completely unverifiable that is way better, you just have to believe it is better without any proof whatsoever". Makes the case hard to argue.
You're fucking over your kids and grandkids, who probably won't be allowed to be born for reasons of overpopulation while you selfishly hog the great tit of life.
Interesting emotional argument. What "rights" do you ascribe to my hypothetical, not-yet-born offspring? How do they compare against my own rights as a very real person that lives and breathes now?
This argument is different from saying for instance, that "because I'm alive now I can consume all the Earth's resources indiscriminately and not care for the future generations", because if I live 300 years I am the future generations.
Maybe I don't want to have offspring. Maybe I don't want to have it at 21, or at 35, or at 241 years old. Why is that beneficial or damaging to society/humanity? I've already refused to reproduce at the first mentioned ages and continue to do so [alright, I'm in/. so may not have had a huge say in the matter;)], and yet I reserve the right to change my mind at any moment so far as it is still biologically feasible. Am I forsaking any sacred duty to my hypothetical heirs or something?
The big question is how it would affect us psychologically: If death was no longer inevitable, would we give life more value? Would men still march to war? Would terrorism become a far more compelling tool? Would we spend eternity cowering inside private fortresses, fearing the slightest risks to our fragile immortality?
We already do —and don't do— this, in industrialized countries life expectancy is already twice as much as 200 years ago and 20+ years more than 30 years ago [No citation, Google is your friend] and because of this we are already cowering in our living rooms afraid of the dark, of the darks, of the unknown, of the different...
Terrorism is already a very effective tool. It's used by those on power to scare those outside the elites into submission. We're already sue and lock up parents because they fail to protect their children from stuff that we did when we were kids. There are already booming industries that feed on our fear of getting sick to sell us everything from pills, to methods to simple comforters (such as food, toys, drugs).
So, while we're not immortal, life is much more valuable now so on the one hand we value it more and are more afraid of losing it to the point of being afraid of living; and on the other humanity continues to kill, maim and destroy as it always has. I would like the opportunity to live longer while in use of my mental capacity and physical might (?) but I don't think it's a great idea just now. I'd personally rather die "young" if that meant that more people on the current undeveloped countries got a better shot at enjoying some of the stuff that I do.
Redistributing/spreading wealth and health is not as sexy or popular because is harder to care about Petey J. Random dying of malnutrition or dysentery in Africa/Asia/the Sprawl than it is to care about ourselves. Not criticizing, just my opinion.
4th Amendment:
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
What do you guys think would happen if you were to, say, wrap your laptop in clingfilm with a copy of that amendment affixed on top of it?
But then how do you know you can trust that auditing organisation any more than you trusted the people who supplied the software in the first place? And so the cycle continues, ad infinitum.
You raise a valid question, and I'd answer it this way: You have to place your trust based on the results.
Thus far, the results coming out of some commercial companies —I'm looking at you MS, Sony— indicate that they in fact do underhanded things. They do in fact incorporate 'features' that serve only their interests and are in direct detriment of the owner of the box.
On the other hand, the results thus far indicate that free-source software does not for the largest part.
In either case you can choose whom to trust, and there are good solid commercial companies trying to compete in the basis of sturdy and useful products just as there are shady groups of internet thugs releasing trojan-infested apps. It all comes down to education, one can perfectly and often does run systems with combination of FOSS and commercial software.
Again, some people can't be bothered, and some others would but don't even know they should. Those who do know and do care are a very small subset of the population and they are already choosing their providers based on similar criteria to what I just described, so it really isn't a serpent eating it's tail, there are some checks and balances that are fed back into the cycle.
What disturbs me is that many other countries are implementing similar Big-Brotherish measures than [ed]USA[ed] is. Since some of them (e.g. China) seem not to be ideologically aligned with the USA on things like The War on Terror, I have to conclude that the Twin Towers-disaster and the WOT are handy excuses, the REAL motivation seems to be more control over the world's populations in general. Yeah, and why all at the same time?
Seems the world will become a much more interesting place in future....
My pet theory is that all these people in power not only are preparing for the aftershocks of peak oil but also for the water shortages. World's population is far too large and resources are waning.
So, from all the possible paths to choose from in front of these two events, they are choosing damage control and then simply 'control', rather than some other more humanitarian and illuminated courses of action.
Sad, really. I for one do not welcome our new totalitarian overlords.
You seem to have contracted the brain==computer meme. Here, let me give you a thought to ponder: The brain is analog.
Neurons don't only have an on/off, it-s'_working/ain't_working_status but they also vary in intensity and have degrees of activity.
On top of that, neurons do not act in a vacuum, they interact throught and are influenced by a myriad of other factors which include but are not limited to neurotransmitters, particular nutrients, sugar levels, etc.
One can imagine accounting for each and every of this elements and simulate their interactions, but just have a look at fluid dynamics and their simulations and you'll have a better idea of what you'd be up against to try and reproduce a working brain.
We are largely driven by our biology. Have you ever been subjected to a stressful situation while hungry? Have you ever been to the brink of exhilaration or exhaustion? In the extremely unlikely event that you are a woman (hey, this is/. !), have you ever menstruated? The body performs differently and this leads to the brain actually THINKING different (in a non-Apple way). If you're a male you don't escape it, testosterone levels vary thoughout the day, and you have andropause...
My point? you can have something that resembles a human's brain behavior but to get something that would be equivalent you'd have to create something beyond the complexity of anything achiveable in the near or even mid-term future. Or have a child;)
Apologies for the spelling, my brain is full of other languages at the moment:P
Oh, for the love of Cthulhu! When mouses (mice? hmm...) were first introduced on the PC plataform they were 100% elective and not all the programs supported them.
Of course, later on it was an integral part of windows, but that wasn't until they became popular and somewhat widespread*. Why would it be impossible/unfeasible to in-built a touchpad in the new keyboards to take advantage of this?
Why not create cheapo lcd touchscreen "mousepads" that you navigate with your hand rather than the mouse?
If one is redefining the interface might as well introduce new gadgets. Everyone is assuming touch must be on the monitor, but last time I checked monitors AREN'T multi-touch so you would need to replace them or buy some sort of add-on gimmick to transform them into one. I for one would love the LCD palmpad(C).
* I know Xerox introduced it and they were deviced by Stanford but they became mainstream/popular in the intel-PC platform.
+R
Oh wait, all those people will live in a different country. Racist much? That's not racism, that's nationalism. What country a person lives in doesn't say anything about their race.
Off topic: Racism and Nationalism (and many such "isms") are the same exact idea working in the same exact manner, the only difference is the object of discrimination. So while gramatically AC's point is true, I believe the "spirit" of GP's comment stands.
On topic (hopefully!): Commercial entities' raison d'etere is to make money. If Dell is shifting from it's previous business model towards a different one, chances are that they had some financial bigwigs and tech people looking through a bunch of numbers (statistics, trends, historic behavior, etc) to make the decision. Not all decisions that we dislike or can't understand are wrong.
If they saw any money in the future for that market I'm pretty sure they would keep a brach dedicated to custom-built H/W. The fact that Dell doesn't do this tells me that it doesn't fit into the way they wish to conduct business. After all, that kind of market is comprised mostly of whiners like us slashdotters, and we (in a broad generalization) never seemed to like their offerings much.
And last.fm was beaten to the punch by imeem.com, and imeem doesn't have that annoying 3 listen limit that last.fm does.
Dude, that site is repulsive... it's plagued by those annoying scamvertisements disguised as system windows, "You have one message, click the OK button before time runs out!"
I can't wait for ad-block to be updated to FF3b5:'(
I meant to disclaim that I'm indeed not an average user, but forgot about it:)
Since we're backing up our POVs with anecdotes, I find it strange that your non-techie friends can do all of the above but you seem to think it's a hardship to read RSS? The non-techies I know do it. Why, you just have to go "subscribe to this page" and if you're signed up with Google as so many people these days, it asks you whether you want to use it as your default reader.
We're not talking about IE-only crowd either, they wouldn't even know you can use wireless networking, how to set it up, or even that the EEE exists;nonetheless, non-techie and "complete moron" aren't synonyms either. So if they know this things, chances are they're using at least Firefox, and with it RSS is a no brainer. But I concede on the learning curve being non-issue. I just went to the store to take a look at one (I had only read thech reviews, didn't know what the GUI looked like) and it seems it wouldn't give anybody that's used windows any trouble to operate.
I would need XP because it's an ultraportable that out of the box could run all my work applications, connect to my work's outlook, and I'd be able to move around more easily to troubleshoot stuff using company-standardized software. I get to use most of my existing windows programs (as far as it's possible because the processor) some of them I've paid-for because I liked them enough. So it really depends on what does any individual user intending to do with it.
Imagine a non-tech person wants to browse the web, use it as an ebook of sorts to read RSS feeds (which your average user can do with TOO much trouble), watch youtube and just haul it around the house more like an electronic magazine than a computer. S/he would probably pick something that already knows how to use so all they need to figure out is how to hook it to the net and get going. While not insurmountable, the Linux learning curve would be slightly higher for this type of users and they make up for a larger market than the computer-savvy.
Heck, I might even get the XP version just because of what I said above and then dual boot or run DSL on it:D
And your game of telephone analogy doesn't work. The brilliant thing about the Internet is that when I pass on a story to a friend I literally pass a pointer to that story. Everyone along the chain gets a link back to the same content, there is no degradation of signal.
I beg to differ. There's this phenomenon called blogging, which is nothing else but editorializing. We see it here at/. all the time, guy1 finds some news in site A and blogs about it on B. Guy2 blogs about B on his own blog, C. Guy3 submits it to slashdot or digg or whathaveyou. What are the chances that all the recipients follow the chain to the source? And this was a small chain. There is some broken telephone going on for sure.
We spade and neuter our pets after all, why not our peers? -W
If you think about it more in depth for a second, the answer as to why not is clear: there is no easy way to evaluate the 'worthiness' of anyone. There may not even be any way to do it whatsoever. For instance,
You seem to assume yourself to be part of the educated group that would be exempt from the reproductive ban. In real life nothing assures that you will form part of the control elite. For past examples think of party officials in communist states, slave owners, whites in apartheid. The harsher the restrictions imposed on a population, the more power those enforcing the restrictions bear and the bigger the gap between the rulers and the ruled. And the less likely it is for any given individual to move from one group to the other.
The word 'peer' is misused. The word 'intelligent' is misused. You are effectively proposing a class distinction: educated and uneducated, and as I pointed above, you appear to be excluding yourself from the uneducated, thus they are by your own definition not your peers. That is by design an unjust system to boot. Do you really, honestly believe that only worthy people were party officials? Only unworthy lowlifes where slaves? That blacks, browns, yellows, green-polka-dots are fundamentally 'less' than whites? Why? Why not? How is this any different? Good luck trying to get your way if someone with more power than yourself deems you inappropriate under an institutionalized discriminatory system.
Education levels are subject to debate, quality of education is not uniform, some types of education emphasise certain aspects of human life and other types underline different matters. Within the same country (any one) there are regional differences, how would those be accounted for? Without trying to insult you or anything, based solely on the stuff you wrote I consider you to be less well educated than myself and by your proposal I would deny you the right to reproduce because I consider your ideas wrong and dangerous. The problem is that because I believe what I believe I wouldn't permit that system to be implemented, but because you believe what you believe you would.
It's highly unfeasible to try issuing licences for people to exercise their biology.
I hate that too. "Grande" means big in Spanish, so as a native speaker it just sounds wrong to me and when I go I ask for a "medium-sized whathaveyou" and they ALWAYS try to 'correct' me. I usually politely reply that I refuse to to use their marketspeak and I point to the medium-size display glass that they usually have and repeat my request. I'm polite 'cuz it's their job, but I really hate that stupid naming convention.
I always leave comments to that effect with different pseudonyms every time I go to a new store. No, I don't expect it to have any effect but it's not a life-or-death matter either so that's enough to calm my nerves.;)
I have a whole lot more respect for a good auto mechanic or other problem solvers than your average doctor. Auto mechanic isn't done with your car until it runs right. Networking guy isn't done until your computer has a connection. Doctor can keep running tests forever.
There is a fundamental difference between the two activities: ANY technology-related problem can be solved because the whole system is human-designed. It's been understood from the beginning and the goals and functions of every single element are known because it was made to be so. You can read the documentation about it and you will know whithout a doubt how it's supposed to work so you can find out why it doesn't.
We currently know a great deal about the way a human body does, but it's complexity is vastly superior to that of any known machine, and it's full of parts we don't know how they work, why they work, or even what are they supposed to do. Difficulty of ruling out failures in this environment is orders of magnitude higher. And I am not even counting in infections by external entities such as virus, bacteria, fungi and the like.
You are correct about the customer service but elsewhere I read that Starbucks have their own music label and its through it that they publish the music that you see at their cafes. So if that's true (can't be bothered to Google it, [not counting the fact that this assumes Google to be the paramount of authoritative sources ] ), then it means that Starbucks does in fact make the Star Bucks on this sales. Hey, it's even better than selling the actual plastic as they save the manufacturing costs and get to amortize the networking costs among free wireless access and whatever else they use the net for, so they probably make more money off selling you the aetherbits than the off the CD.
You are correct. It amazes me that being a place where so much advanced technology comes to life, the US seems to have a really crappy telecom and cable market. I was at Seoul recently and I saw many nifty things that could be done with your mobile, such as entering your number on a locker in a train station and getting an SMS with the combination key to unlock one compartment. When you pick up your stuff you just punch the combination again and the locker opens. The fee is charged to your mobile, no need for any sort of card, no exchange of money required. You can also use it to pay for your bus fee and that was way cool and quite similar to this use they seem to be trying to patent.
I wonder what the peaceful applications of this could be? It bothers me that so much money is spent on military technology having so many other issues that could be addressed. I'm guessing that soldering might be one good use, with a scaled down model but can't think of much else at the moment. On the other hand if they are going to research more ways to destroy stuff I'd like to see a true laser hand pistol...
And where's the downside? I saw Gattaca, thought it was really stupid and badly conceived, and I think it's ridiculous that genetic screening would lead to biggotry. So I'm not sure there's anything here to worry about.
People already discriminate based on race; blacks are inferior, latinos are lazy, blondes are retarded, so on and so forth. People already discriminate based on religion; muslims are murderous fundamentalists, christians are close minded murderous fundamentalists, jews are greedy close minded murderous fundamentalists (:P) etcetera ad nauseam. People already discriminate based on economic status; you are worth as much as your possessions, as much as your SUV, your pool, your clothes, your iPod, your rig, on and on...
So I think you are one of those persons that wouldn't discriminate and that's why you find the idea ludicrous but people are competitive by nature and, sadly, many a time that competition manifests through very unhealthy channels. Add ignorance, fear, fanaticism... I definitely see this being abused.
Why does everyone consider that having more information in the case of teenage male drivers is a good thing while arguing that having more information on our genetic code is a bad one?
Because "teenage males" are just a bunch of numbers. They are not talking about Virtual_Raider and francisst being crappy drivers. They are counting how many people of within a certain range fit on a given profile. Yes, they need to know your age when this happens to count you, but when you get assimilated into the statistics your individuality dissolves whereas if they look into your genome they will be unequivocally talking about you. This is disturbing to some people.
There is a subtle difference between:
me telling the agent I am 25,35,45 or whatever and him looking at a table and going "hmm... well, this is the rate for people your age"
and me giving the agent my sequenced genome and he looking at a table and going "hmm... well, this is the rate for people your age, plus premium A for your predisposition to diabetes, premium B for your predisposition to obesity (which is well known to be correlated and/or cause several other major diseases), and premium C for your predisposition to internet trolling."
So, IMHO, the main complaint is that they feel this technology may be used to make their lives more expensive, but really the underlying reason is more a psychological one: making it more personal makes one feel like they are picking on us rather than being "fair" (read: dispensing average, faceless and impersonal treatment).
TFA states that it does not have wifi. And also says that you can access websites like google or wikipedia, but I wondered whether you'd be able to access other sites because of the flashy graphics and bling. The refresh rate on this screen is so low as to make that unfeasible. And it does have PDA. My point stands.
That's cause you didn't RTFA. It is not single purpose, it has wireless connection and also audio so conceivably it's a competitor for other devices, such as music players.
From TFA:
The Kindle's real breakthrough springs from a feature that its predecessors never offered: wireless connectivity, via a system called Whispernet. (It's based on the EVDO broadband service offered by cell-phone carriers, allowing it to work anywhere, not just Wi-Fi hotspots.) As a result, says Bezos, "This isn't a device, it's a service."
I just skimmed the article so I may have missed whether you have to subscribe to some particular data plan to use this feature, but it does say that you can subscribe to newspapers, magazines and blogs and get them >beamed to you as they become available. You don't even have to go get them. Now that is something that will convince people that want to use things rather than toy with them as techies do.
Then perhaps fraud is not the best word. But how would you describe the act of benefiting from something that was made expressly available in return for money but was obtained without honoring the paying end of the bargain?
Copyright means exactly that: the officially sanctioned authorization to duplicate. When you download, you are making a copy and you don't have legal permission to do it, it's as simple as that. It is hard to pin down because of the strange nature of the "crime*": Let's say A pays $RELEASER for a copy of work 'X'. Then A makes 'X' available to B (through P2P, burning him a copy, whatever). When B obtains a copy of 'X' he didn't even get it from the original source. He stole nothing as now effectively there exist more instances of 'X'. Yet, the original $RELEASER of 'X' doesn't get any of the compensation he expects from anybody benefiting from 'X', even though B is fully enjoying said benefits. I think B's committing fraud for want of a better name but IANAL =)
* Please note the quotation marks to denote the inaccuracy of the term.
Slashdot Mirror
God is the only one who holds the promise for an eternity better than anyone can conceive. God also loves us so he wants to see us happy.
I think that the 'offtopic' mod is unwarranted, the thread is about science eliminating ageing and you are offering an alternative —albeit unpopular POV. One problem I have with your proposition, though, is that science is something that any random human that cares enough can verify for themselves. Not so with the God 'promise'.
To begin with, it's not God whom holds the promise. It's random humans that do. They claim that God speaks to them, and maybe he does but it's not falsifiable.
If I'm not a geneticist, or a scientist, science is still open to me and I can go out and study and learn what we humans know so far about how things work. The possibility is open for me, personally, to work in this or any other scientific research and continue it and add to it. Not so with this promises that supposedly come from God. There is no verifiable, replicable mean for Virtual Raider to acquire the knowledge that the people that spoke to God claim to have.
I can go to some university and verify the scientific theories; but I can't go to the mosque or the synagogue, read The Word, try to reproduce those claims and ask to please talk with God to ask Him about some inconsistencies on His word on chapter whatever. Granted, I can't ask to talk to Einstein either, but if I so choose I can replicate all of his work and verify or disprove it (LHC anyone?). There is simply no way to verify any claims made by any religion.
That doesn't mean that they are false, mind you. But for all we know God does exist and doesn't give a hoot about us. Or really, really hates us and enjoys making us suffer and it was Him who purposefully introduced pain and evil in the world for us to have a hard time. Maybe He exists but is so Vast, Magnificent, Unhumanlike and Incomprehensible that we have no hope of ever extracting any meaning from His actions. Or maybe He does love us and wants to see us happy. The point is, we have no way to know so that offers little comfort for certain type of order-and-answers-craving kind of minds.
Why, even if He's waiting for me with arms wide open, isn't He Eternal and Everlasting and can wait a few more hundred or thousand years for me to go to Him? If He does exist, wouldn't you like to show up before Him with some achievements under your arm like a kid that comes home from kindergarten to show daddy his drawings? "Hey, look, I made people live 20 times longer than before!" or even "Look how many people I made happy by building bridges, cooking pizza, teaching to use Ubuntu during my 754 years alive!" ;)
In sum, while IMHO you're not off-topic it's kinda pointless to say "yeah this is cool but I have something completely unverifiable that is way better, you just have to believe it is better without any proof whatsoever". Makes the case hard to argue.
You're fucking over your kids and grandkids, who probably won't be allowed to be born for reasons of overpopulation while you selfishly hog the great tit of life.
Interesting emotional argument. What "rights" do you ascribe to my hypothetical, not-yet-born offspring? How do they compare against my own rights as a very real person that lives and breathes now?
This argument is different from saying for instance, that "because I'm alive now I can consume all the Earth's resources indiscriminately and not care for the future generations", because if I live 300 years I am the future generations.
Maybe I don't want to have offspring. Maybe I don't want to have it at 21, or at 35, or at 241 years old. Why is that beneficial or damaging to society/humanity? I've already refused to reproduce at the first mentioned ages and continue to do so [alright, I'm in /. so may not have had a huge say in the matter ;)], and yet I reserve the right to change my mind at any moment so far as it is still biologically feasible. Am I forsaking any sacred duty to my hypothetical heirs or something?
The big question is how it would affect us psychologically: If death was no longer inevitable, would we give life more value? Would men still march to war? Would terrorism become a far more compelling tool? Would we spend eternity cowering inside private fortresses, fearing the slightest risks to our fragile immortality?
We already do —and don't do— this, in industrialized countries life expectancy is already twice as much as 200 years ago and 20+ years more than 30 years ago [No citation, Google is your friend] and because of this we are already cowering in our living rooms afraid of the dark, of the darks, of the unknown, of the different...
Terrorism is already a very effective tool. It's used by those on power to scare those outside the elites into submission. We're already sue and lock up parents because they fail to protect their children from stuff that we did when we were kids. There are already booming industries that feed on our fear of getting sick to sell us everything from pills, to methods to simple comforters (such as food, toys, drugs).
So, while we're not immortal, life is much more valuable now so on the one hand we value it more and are more afraid of losing it to the point of being afraid of living; and on the other humanity continues to kill, maim and destroy as it always has. I would like the opportunity to live longer while in use of my mental capacity and physical might (?) but I don't think it's a great idea just now. I'd personally rather die "young" if that meant that more people on the current undeveloped countries got a better shot at enjoying some of the stuff that I do.
Redistributing/spreading wealth and health is not as sexy or popular because is harder to care about Petey J. Random dying of malnutrition or dysentery in Africa/Asia/the Sprawl than it is to care about ourselves. Not criticizing, just my opinion.
What do you guys think would happen if you were to, say, wrap your laptop in clingfilm with a copy of that amendment affixed on top of it?
Why, I hear Cuba is lovely this time of year...
In fact, the french is "Voi lá" which literally means "see there" or in more common english, "there it is".
But then how do you know you can trust that auditing organisation any more than you trusted the people who supplied the software in the first place? And so the cycle continues, ad infinitum.
You raise a valid question, and I'd answer it this way: You have to place your trust based on the results.
Thus far, the results coming out of some commercial companies —I'm looking at you MS, Sony— indicate that they in fact do underhanded things. They do in fact incorporate 'features' that serve only their interests and are in direct detriment of the owner of the box.
On the other hand, the results thus far indicate that free-source software does not for the largest part.
In either case you can choose whom to trust, and there are good solid commercial companies trying to compete in the basis of sturdy and useful products just as there are shady groups of internet thugs releasing trojan-infested apps. It all comes down to education, one can perfectly and often does run systems with combination of FOSS and commercial software.
Again, some people can't be bothered, and some others would but don't even know they should. Those who do know and do care are a very small subset of the population and they are already choosing their providers based on similar criteria to what I just described, so it really isn't a serpent eating it's tail, there are some checks and balances that are fed back into the cycle.
What disturbs me is that many other countries are implementing similar Big-Brotherish measures than [ed]USA[ed] is. Since some of them (e.g. China) seem not to be ideologically aligned with the USA on things like The War on Terror, I have to conclude that the Twin Towers-disaster and the WOT are handy excuses, the REAL motivation seems to be more control over the world's populations in general. Yeah, and why all at the same time?
Seems the world will become a much more interesting place in future....
My pet theory is that all these people in power not only are preparing for the aftershocks of peak oil but also for the water shortages. World's population is far too large and resources are waning.
So, from all the possible paths to choose from in front of these two events, they are choosing damage control and then simply 'control', rather than some other more humanitarian and illuminated courses of action.
Sad, really. I for one do not welcome our new totalitarian overlords.
You seem to have contracted the brain==computer meme. Here, let me give you a thought to ponder: The brain is analog.
Neurons don't only have an on/off, it-s'_working/ain't_working_status but they also vary in intensity and have degrees of activity.
On top of that, neurons do not act in a vacuum, they interact throught and are influenced by a myriad of other factors which include but are not limited to neurotransmitters, particular nutrients, sugar levels, etc.
One can imagine accounting for each and every of this elements and simulate their interactions, but just have a look at fluid dynamics and their simulations and you'll have a better idea of what you'd be up against to try and reproduce a working brain.
We are largely driven by our biology. Have you ever been subjected to a stressful situation while hungry? Have you ever been to the brink of exhilaration or exhaustion? In the extremely unlikely event that you are a woman (hey, this is /. !), have you ever menstruated? The body performs differently and this leads to the brain actually THINKING different (in a non-Apple way). If you're a male you don't escape it, testosterone levels vary thoughout the day, and you have andropause...
My point? you can have something that resembles a human's brain behavior but to get something that would be equivalent you'd have to create something beyond the complexity of anything achiveable in the near or even mid-term future. Or have a child ;)
Apologies for the spelling, my brain is full of other languages at the moment :P
Oh, for the love of Cthulhu! When mouses (mice? hmm...) were first introduced on the PC plataform they were 100% elective and not all the programs supported them.
Of course, later on it was an integral part of windows, but that wasn't until they became popular and somewhat widespread*. Why would it be impossible/unfeasible to in-built a touchpad in the new keyboards to take advantage of this?
Why not create cheapo lcd touchscreen "mousepads" that you navigate with your hand rather than the mouse?
If one is redefining the interface might as well introduce new gadgets. Everyone is assuming touch must be on the monitor, but last time I checked monitors AREN'T multi-touch so you would need to replace them or buy some sort of add-on gimmick to transform them into one. I for one would love the LCD palmpad(C).
* I know Xerox introduced it and they were deviced by Stanford but they became mainstream/popular in the intel-PC platform. +ROff topic: Racism and Nationalism (and many such "isms") are the same exact idea working in the same exact manner, the only difference is the object of discrimination. So while gramatically AC's point is true, I believe the "spirit" of GP's comment stands.
On topic (hopefully!): Commercial entities' raison d'etere is to make money. If Dell is shifting from it's previous business model towards a different one, chances are that they had some financial bigwigs and tech people looking through a bunch of numbers (statistics, trends, historic behavior, etc) to make the decision. Not all decisions that we dislike or can't understand are wrong.
If they saw any money in the future for that market I'm pretty sure they would keep a brach dedicated to custom-built H/W. The fact that Dell doesn't do this tells me that it doesn't fit into the way they wish to conduct business. After all, that kind of market is comprised mostly of whiners like us slashdotters, and we (in a broad generalization) never seemed to like their offerings much.
Dude, that site is repulsive... it's plagued by those annoying scamvertisements disguised as system windows, "You have one message, click the OK button before time runs out!"
I can't wait for ad-block to be updated to FF3b5 :'(
I meant to disclaim that I'm indeed not an average user, but forgot about it :)
Since we're backing up our POVs with anecdotes, I find it strange that your non-techie friends can do all of the above but you seem to think it's a hardship to read RSS? The non-techies I know do it. Why, you just have to go "subscribe to this page" and if you're signed up with Google as so many people these days, it asks you whether you want to use it as your default reader.
We're not talking about IE-only crowd either, they wouldn't even know you can use wireless networking, how to set it up, or even that the EEE exists;nonetheless, non-techie and "complete moron" aren't synonyms either. So if they know this things, chances are they're using at least Firefox, and with it RSS is a no brainer. But I concede on the learning curve being non-issue. I just went to the store to take a look at one (I had only read thech reviews, didn't know what the GUI looked like) and it seems it wouldn't give anybody that's used windows any trouble to operate.
I would need XP because it's an ultraportable that out of the box could run all my work applications, connect to my work's outlook, and I'd be able to move around more easily to troubleshoot stuff using company-standardized software. I get to use most of my existing windows programs (as far as it's possible because the processor) some of them I've paid-for because I liked them enough. So it really depends on what does any individual user intending to do with it.
Imagine a non-tech person wants to browse the web, use it as an ebook of sorts to read RSS feeds (which your average user can do with TOO much trouble), watch youtube and just haul it around the house more like an electronic magazine than a computer. S/he would probably pick something that already knows how to use so all they need to figure out is how to hook it to the net and get going. While not insurmountable, the Linux learning curve would be slightly higher for this type of users and they make up for a larger market than the computer-savvy.
Heck, I might even get the XP version just because of what I said above and then dual boot or run DSL on it :D
I beg to differ. There's this phenomenon called blogging, which is nothing else but editorializing. We see it here at /. all the time, guy1 finds some news in site A and blogs about it on B. Guy2 blogs about B on his own blog, C. Guy3 submits it to slashdot or digg or whathaveyou. What are the chances that all the recipients follow the chain to the source? And this was a small chain. There is some broken telephone going on for sure.
If you think about it more in depth for a second, the answer as to why not is clear: there is no easy way to evaluate the 'worthiness' of anyone. There may not even be any way to do it whatsoever. For instance,
It's highly unfeasible to try issuing licences for people to exercise their biology.
I hate that too. "Grande" means big in Spanish, so as a native speaker it just sounds wrong to me and when I go I ask for a "medium-sized whathaveyou" and they ALWAYS try to 'correct' me. I usually politely reply that I refuse to to use their marketspeak and I point to the medium-size display glass that they usually have and repeat my request. I'm polite 'cuz it's their job, but I really hate that stupid naming convention.
I always leave comments to that effect with different pseudonyms every time I go to a new store. No, I don't expect it to have any effect but it's not a life-or-death matter either so that's enough to calm my nerves. ;)
There is a fundamental difference between the two activities: ANY technology-related problem can be solved because the whole system is human-designed. It's been understood from the beginning and the goals and functions of every single element are known because it was made to be so. You can read the documentation about it and you will know whithout a doubt how it's supposed to work so you can find out why it doesn't.
We currently know a great deal about the way a human body does, but it's complexity is vastly superior to that of any known machine, and it's full of parts we don't know how they work, why they work, or even what are they supposed to do. Difficulty of ruling out failures in this environment is orders of magnitude higher. And I am not even counting in infections by external entities such as virus, bacteria, fungi and the like.
You are correct about the customer service but elsewhere I read that Starbucks have their own music label and its through it that they publish the music that you see at their cafes. So if that's true (can't be bothered to Google it, [not counting the fact that this assumes Google to be the paramount of authoritative sources ] ), then it means that Starbucks does in fact make the Star Bucks on this sales. Hey, it's even better than selling the actual plastic as they save the manufacturing costs and get to amortize the networking costs among free wireless access and whatever else they use the net for, so they probably make more money off selling you the aetherbits than the off the CD.
You are correct. It amazes me that being a place where so much advanced technology comes to life, the US seems to have a really crappy telecom and cable market. I was at Seoul recently and I saw many nifty things that could be done with your mobile, such as entering your number on a locker in a train station and getting an SMS with the combination key to unlock one compartment. When you pick up your stuff you just punch the combination again and the locker opens. The fee is charged to your mobile, no need for any sort of card, no exchange of money required. You can also use it to pay for your bus fee and that was way cool and quite similar to this use they seem to be trying to patent.
I wonder what the peaceful applications of this could be? It bothers me that so much money is spent on military technology having so many other issues that could be addressed. I'm guessing that soldering might be one good use, with a scaled down model but can't think of much else at the moment. On the other hand if they are going to research more ways to destroy stuff I'd like to see a true laser hand pistol...
Oh, I almost forgot the meme: Sharks!
People already discriminate based on race; blacks are inferior, latinos are lazy, blondes are retarded, so on and so forth. People already discriminate based on religion; muslims are murderous fundamentalists, christians are close minded murderous fundamentalists, jews are greedy close minded murderous fundamentalists (:P) etcetera ad nauseam. People already discriminate based on economic status; you are worth as much as your possessions, as much as your SUV, your pool, your clothes, your iPod, your rig, on and on...
So I think you are one of those persons that wouldn't discriminate and that's why you find the idea ludicrous but people are competitive by nature and, sadly, many a time that competition manifests through very unhealthy channels. Add ignorance, fear, fanaticism... I definitely see this being abused.
Because "teenage males" are just a bunch of numbers. They are not talking about Virtual_Raider and francisst being crappy drivers. They are counting how many people of within a certain range fit on a given profile. Yes, they need to know your age when this happens to count you, but when you get assimilated into the statistics your individuality dissolves whereas if they look into your genome they will be unequivocally talking about you. This is disturbing to some people.
There is a subtle difference between:
So, IMHO, the main complaint is that they feel this technology may be used to make their lives more expensive, but really the underlying reason is more a psychological one: making it more personal makes one feel like they are picking on us rather than being "fair" (read: dispensing average, faceless and impersonal treatment).
TFA states that it does not have wifi. And also says that you can access websites like google or wikipedia, but I wondered whether you'd be able to access other sites because of the flashy graphics and bling. The refresh rate on this screen is so low as to make that unfeasible. And it does have PDA. My point stands.
Then perhaps fraud is not the best word. But how would you describe the act of benefiting from something that was made expressly available in return for money but was obtained without honoring the paying end of the bargain?
Copyright means exactly that: the officially sanctioned authorization to duplicate. When you download, you are making a copy and you don't have legal permission to do it, it's as simple as that. It is hard to pin down because of the strange nature of the "crime*": Let's say A pays $RELEASER for a copy of work 'X'. Then A makes 'X' available to B (through P2P, burning him a copy, whatever). When B obtains a copy of 'X' he didn't even get it from the original source. He stole nothing as now effectively there exist more instances of 'X'. Yet, the original $RELEASER of 'X' doesn't get any of the compensation he expects from anybody benefiting from 'X', even though B is fully enjoying said benefits. I think B's committing fraud for want of a better name but IANAL =)
* Please note the quotation marks to denote the inaccuracy of the term.