It would be easy to change Gnutella to avoid this problem. Gnutella could make the assumption that any conenction on a specific port was a gnutella connection and encrypt the packets with the assumption that the first packet gave the session key. There would be no way to detect this without attempting to decrypt every unknown conenction (or disallowing unknown connections), but the Gnutella server and the router have diffrent "threat models," i.e. the router gets far far far more packs then a gnutella server, so the gnutella server could just push the key size to a point where it would be impossible to decrypt everything.
Now the collage could just "spot check" for Gnutella packets and revoke network access, but Gnutella could counter with pseudo-perminant public key system, i.e. not justthe session key system I described above.
The fundamental threat models for *preventing* Gnutella traffic are REALLY stacked in Gnutella's favor. The Gnutella we see only dose a small fraction of the things it could do automatically to aviod detection, but the collages could always start billing for large bandwidth consumption.. this would solve the whole problem almost immediatly.
You make a very good point about people not sharing their stuff, but these problems can be fixed by changing the Gnutella protocol, so lets talk about the possible fixes.
First, you can just limit how much of your bandwidth Gnutella allows people to use. Second, you can install systems which figure out which sever containing the file has the shortest ping times (they may do this now). Third, you can install a referal system where your system refuses to send a file to anyone within a day/week of sending it to someone (unless there is some local high bandwidth execption from the second category). Machine A would remember that machine B downloaded a file recently and tell machine C who now wants the file to go get the file from machine B. If B dose not have it then his IP address is blacklisted from A and C for a period of time. You could construct a "reputation system" to handle changing IP addresses if you wanted, but that would be more copmplex (and you probable do not want dialup people using Gnutella anyway). Fourth, you can market Gnutella cache servers for ISPS and colalges (note: the 3rd option might force these servers to let the whole internet use them).
Actually, the 3rd solution might make static IPs a bigger selling point for ISP, which is a very good thing. (If you live in a dynamic IP pool then there may be someone getting all the IPs blacklisted by leeching)
First, I should mention that I made an error. There are viruses with a 98% mortality rate, but they generally kill themselves off. I think 80% was the number I had heard to some of the larger plagus with actaully managed to kill many millions of people.
Second, you are absolutly correct. A major flaw with Bill Joy's argument was that people will be more vulnerable to nano/bio attacks when fewer people have studdied the technology. It was a serious mistake for me to ignore this point as it provides an more effective arguement then mear probabilities.
It is not impossible that these nonsentient devices could become an "enemy" in and of themselves. No person would be needed to cause harm to another using the machines, they would do it themselves.
Nonsentient devices are programmed by a human. A nonsentient device can evolve (like a virus) but I see no short term reason why this independant evolution would be faster then viruses evolution. We are not talking the virsus used for gene therapy here. We are talking fundamntal improvments to the evolutionary mechinism of a virus which "good ol' mother nature" has ben working on for many millions of years.
Actually, I would *suspect* that there is an average case upper bound on the evoutionary speed of a simple device like a virus or a dumb nanobot.. the thing runs by trial and error for gods sakes.. and it's not impossible that viruses have reached this limit.
Now this hypothetical limit will go up when you make the nanobot smarter, but the kinds of things a smart nanobot would be good at evolving into would be partially preprogrammed. Also, there will be limits on how smart a single nanobot can be.
I suppose you might design a nanobot cold virus killer which used group processing to evolved new attacks as the cold virus evolved new defences. This group processing would take the form of units 1 to 1000 try this and tell us if you live or kill viruses. I agree that something like this could have more potential for killing humans, but we are a long way away from something like this. Also, I suspect the communications channel betwen the nanobots would presuppose the ability to include a self destruct.
Your assertion that because predictions have failed to pan out seems valid, but the conclusion you draw does not follow from it - that we should not predict is ludicrous.
I never said we should not predict.. just that Bill Joy dose not know what he's talking about since his predictions are based on sci-fi instead of real theory. We predict the progress of the fiels you listed since we have a theory for them. The summery essentially said that the speakers who understand any present theory of biology and nanotechnology dismissed Bill Joy as a luddite. They were nicer then I was, but that's because they were only concerned with how Bill Joy was wrong.. where I think the things Bill Joy advocates are themselves far more dangerous.
ALWAYS applying a just law RIGIDLY, is what mandatory minimums are all about... that's why it's an injustice.
Exactly.
You're arguing the same side here..
No, Bill Joy wants to protect people by removing the open sharing of ideas which is the human aspect of technology. He is trying to lay claim to this quote because there is an "always," but he dose not understand science or progress, so he thinks that adding rigid restrictions on what people are allowed to talk about will protect people.
I'd trust the guy who's smart enough to get the PhD in biology over the luddite beurocrats Bill Joy wants to create to monitor this stuff. The number of people who can get a PhD without thinking about the world is not very high, but there are very high numbers of people in beuroctaric possitions who cause a lot of problems with their narrow views of the world. Who look more human and flexible now?
Bill joy said "the size [of the operating sytem] is expanding exponentially, the functionality is fixed"
Best cheap shot: Ray to Bill, "How many in the audience caught this news story," which he followed with a fake story about Sun deciding to give up all development of innovations which made the software "smarter." It was amusing, I wonder if they fought in the parking lot
That is funny. The more I here Bill Joy say the more ignorant/insane he sounds. It's pretty clear that there is a lot of research going on in operating systems today. Microkernel's, MIT's nokernel, virtual machines, etc. I'm shure there are even people who would change the most basic aspects of the operating system (things which users assume need to be there like files). Bill Joy is just a moron for claiming that this research dose not exist.
Regarding the rude audience. I assume that there are a lot of crackpots. These are frequently the rude ones at popular talks. ACtually, I suppose some of the speakers were crackpots since Joy was there..:)
We need ways of getting the information out to more people about product which take away your rights. I think one good way to do this would be to place stickers on the products in stores.
Example: We need to keep people from buying portable music players which support SDMI. We could place information online about how to order stickers which say:
WARNING This product uses SDMI. SDMI is designed to maintain the music industry's monopoly over marketing and promotion of music. SDMI product have been known to restrict where you can obtain your music from, degrade the quality of independently produced mp3 music, require waisting of drive space to lissen to mp3s, and prevent you from letting your friends lissen to your music. We strongly discurage you from buying this product without further research. WE suggest instead that you learn about SDMI and purchas an mp3 player which dose not support SDMI.
People all over the country would order these stickers, distribute them at LUGs / protets/etc, and stick them on SDMI player in stores.
The problem is designing an efficent, cheap, and legal way of distributing such stickers. I think the most effective way would be via an affiliat program at some online sticker retaler. Perferably a retailer who would be willing to lower the unit price if large numbers of people ordered identical stickers.
Do not assume that your intelegent take on Libertarian views is the majority. I've seen the CATO institute and Reason bitching about the WTO protests. Now I am opposed to protectionism, but the truth is the WTO regulates more then just protectionism. It regulates the political force one country can exert on another.. and this is a very bad thing.
Libertarians also support school vouchers because they beleive that school vouchers with privatize public education. The reality of the situation is that school vouchers will still require taxes period. ACtually, they will require bigger taxes. It's just plain silly for the libertaians to support school vouchers since there are real privitisation alternatives which do not require tax funding. Specifically, require public and private school to design their schedule to allow students to mix and match classes from public and private schools. This would allow people who know how to teach one thing very well, like science, literature, religion, etc., to specilize without being forced to provide for all the students educational needs. It's really amazing that the libertarians are proposing school vouchers over this sort of reform (which is clearly more in-line with their plhiosophy).
Simillarly, I have also seen many libertarians supporting stronger copyright protection (like the DCMA). Property is a more sticky issue then most libertarians realize since a lack of fair-use protections quickly degenerates into a form of slavery. Anywho, I'm just saing that you should not assume that your fellow libertarians understand the issue as well as you do.
Oh, bitch! We could write a web crawler which went arround the internet, found people's name who are associated to high schools (frequently students), and turned them in via the web! I guess we would need to build some IP spofing into it, but that should not be hard.
Everybody gets on the bandwagon. If the blacklist that Pinkerton's is trying to build is filled with everybody, perhaps by volunteers calling from payphones (Remember that 800 numbers are NOT anonymous!), the system will collapse from too much spurious data.
Yes, this is the solution! Here is what we can do to help. We need to get people to print up stickers which say something like:
WARNING: The school is attempting to profile and monitor you! The school's new W.A.V.E. student profiling system will allow classmates to anonymously create trouble for you with the school administration and teachers. There is only one thing you can do to stop this. Every day for the next year call 1-800-???-???? from a payfone and fasely turn-in a random student at your school. It is importent to turn in students who are not the intended targests for this program too, i.e. if everyone just turns in the people that they think are wierd then the school will pay more attention to the program because it will seem successful. If many diffrent people are turned in this will create confusion and make their database useless. This is probable the only effective way you have of protecting yourself from this program.
and hand them out to students to stick all over the school.
I would suggest locating an online sticker printing company who will handle a large quantity of low-quality stickers for cheap, fill out all their paper work, and publish the paper work online to make it easy for other people to order the stickers too.
No it dose not! You did not read my post. QM talks about the results of experements. The experementer can be a person OR the film (your example). *You* *choose* what you want to treat classically and what you want to treat quantum mechanically when you predict the outcome of the experement. You can very well choose to treat the lab assistant watching the film quantum mechanically. The consious being that is the lab assistant will be in a supper-position period. Actually, you can declare a reader of the paper you are going to publish about the experiment to be the observer, so that YOU will be in a supper-position of yes/no while you write the paper! This choice is exactly what makes people dislike quantum mechanics, but they are wrong. This wierdness is not really a feature of quamtum mechanics at all. It is a feature of the expermenetal method. Neutonian mechanics has this feature too, but no one noticed since they were never told that they were not allowed to look at part of the experement, i.e. without supper-positions you did not get diffrent results based on diffrent observers. Hell, Quantum mechanics still would not give us very diffrent results when we treat the lab assistant quantum mechanically.
Geez, it is truely amazing how many people can read all these pulp physics books and not understand the most basic principals of the scientific method. They would rather believe a lot of bullshit about how special they are and how consiousness is a fundamental part of the universe instead of just looking at the rules to running an experement.
Note: if your are really video taping the experemnt you better treat the video camera classically since you can not construct a good quantum mechanical model.
Wrong! Consious has NOTHING to do with quantum mechanics! The definition of the experement IS what stops the regress. We define the experemental apparatus classically and say "the wave function collapses" when the classically described part of the system interacts with the part of the system which is described via quantum mechanics. If you describe Schrodingers cat (conshiousness and all) with quantum mechanics then the cat is alive and dead untill you open the box. I guess the cat is lucky that you can not describe it that well!:)
The point is "Quantum Mechanics talks about the results of experements!" The experemental aparatus is built into the most basic theory as the bra and ket!
The real problem that some educated people (einstein) have with Quantum Mechanics always that they think Realitivity dose "more" then describe the results of experements and they want Quantum Mechanics to do "more." The real question is "Are our ideas about physics doing more then predicting experements a load of crap?" The smartest physicists I've known say yes, i.e. we should not expect physics to do mroe then predict experements as predicting experements is the hart of the scientific method.
Now, people claim that Bomian Mechanics (when you pretend that there really is a phase space particl there) dose do "more" then what Quantum Mechanics dose, but I think you can prove that Bomian Mechnaics predicts nothing which Quantum Mechanics dose not predict, so people who are sticklers for the scientific method claim that they are no diffrent as theories.
OTOH how much can you really learn through rational and reasoned discourse on the subject of pink fluffy elephants?
This is one of the real keys! If it looks like a Santa Clause, smalls like a Santa Clause, quacks like a Santa Clause, then it's probable not real.:) (God == a bigger Santa Clause for adults.
Seriously, we can draw some conclusions from "reproducibility," i.e. velcro works every time I use it, so I may as well start trusting it, but prayer works about as well as any placebo (in the same situation), so it's pretty safe to assume that vecro is real and prayer is a placebo.
Now this comparison gets a little sticky when we start talking about things with less evidence, like evolution, the big bang, quantum mechanics, etc., but we attempt to verify these things by maing verifiable predictions. Notice that religious predictins have tended to be a load of shit.
Now, I would like to make some comments about the book's topic (which I have not read). Why do scientific people want to call the universe a "mind?" This seems highly anthropomorphic. The universe may share some interesting properties with out minds, like an entropy driven system which produces effect which are roughly analogous to biological evolution (our thoughs process vs. universe's possible "evolution" of the laws of physics), but the diffrences seem to far far out weight the simillarities. You know little things, like the the fact that the speed of light would limit anything like "thoughs" which were spread accrost the universe.
I think we need to quit pandering to the religiious people with this "conshious universe" bullshit.. and get down to talking about the same stuff in a less anthropomorphic way. I understand that people want to make analogies, but I expect some real discussion about how entroy and boundery conmditions always leed to evolution like processes, not some vague bulshit aboutthe universe thinking (any kind of meaningful notion of thinking probably entails non-omipotence).
Evolution is the process where the real baggage is _naturally_ cut away from our strains.
We have no reason to suspect that nature is any better at this then we will be in 100 years. I'm shure if our scientist had patents to work with things for 1 million years they could make creatures which were far more intelegent then us.
You can't possibly simulate quantuum-effects to 100% correctness with a machine.
(a) what dose thi have to do with the conversation? (b) This may not be not true. We currently suspect it is possible to build a machine which uses quantum effects to run it's calculations. The original proposed application of these theoretical devices was not factoring large numbers, it was simulating quantum physics.
I'm sorry, but your just talking out of your ass here. You have absolutly no reason to suspectthat we will not be able to build AIs or modify our selves to be whatever we want to be.. And you sertonly have no reason to suspect that we will not be able to make an intelegent decission about what we want to be.
Flamage can have value, IMHO. If his students are this worked up, I'll bet he really is a crappy teacher.
This seems doubtful. I have seen many students get worked up over something stupid like a mild accent. Note: Undergraduates normally do not put in the time to mastere the fine art of lissening to crazy accents that graduate students must master, so I see undergrads bitching about a profs who really dose a good job once you get past the accent.
The libel laws are pretty clear and the web site should win, but it would be nice to have a feature to prevent duplicate reviews AND maintain anonymity. I think you could do it with an online voting algorithm, i.e. you only get one vote, but the site can not tell which vote was yours.
But, hopes and dreams, loves and hates, ARE our evolutionary baggage.
Baggage conotates the bad parts. He is postulating that we could kick out the parts we do not want and keep the aprts we do want. We seem to have been able to do this to some extent with many many things, but AI and psychological engenering are still a long way off.
We enjoy thinking and problem solving. It would be really cool to be able to build a machine which only enjoyed thinking and problem solving. It would have a much better chance of getting into collage then most humans.:) Short term we will probable see psychological engenering to make yor kids enjoy thinking more.
Penrose is probably still wrong, because he hasn't proven to my satisfaction that the human mind is not subject to the limitations of the Godel theorem.
Yes, Godel's theorem and the halting problem only say that these unanswerable questions exists, not that they really keep you from ding anything specific, but penrose makes a bigger mistake then this! A mistake that a physicist should not make! Godel's theorem and the halting problem say something about the mathematical method, not about what happens when you give the machine the ability to interact with the real world, i.e. the good old fashion scientific method. Biological evolution can be sen as a reall slow and sloppy way to practice the scientific method, so it seems reasonable to suspect that we can produce AI from our current programming driven slugs (cmputer) in less time the it took mother nature (say 1 million years). It's not a really useful upper bound, but it's a lot safer then the 30 years they were guessing 30 years ago..:)
As for justifying our existance to ourselves, all we need to know is that we can be happy. That in itself is reason enough for sticking around.
I agree that we should not look to the universe or a god for a purpose in life, but we should still see evolution as a kind of purpose for a variety of reasons:
(1) Technological development / Evolution makes it easy for a lot more people to be happy. Specifically, it increases your chances of being ammong the happy.. especially if you are ammong the group who are capable of developing.
(2) We have it partially wired into us as a survival trait, i.e. we have some drive for a purpose / future. Most people don't like to think "Hey, it's ok if the human race is wiped out in 100 yeras since I won't be here."
(3) It's just plain fun! Scientists are very happy people (modulo not having a mate who understands you). I think mathematicians frequently score number one on job satisfaction studdies. It's like a drug which reduces your tolernace to it over time!
There is a certain urge, or compulsion, within the human psyche that drives people to do certain things when they feel something. Many people dismiss this as merely an accidental consequence of our chemical makeup (or some other dismissive explanation), but few have actually studied why it works the way it does and come up with plausible models for the way emotions work. I don't quite agree with the "chemical accident" explanation because it doesn't explain why our emotions are simultaneously non-logical yet not totally random. If chemistry were all, I'd expect total randomness in emotions, but this is not the case.
This dose not make any sence. Chemical processes run many non-random things. Are you saing that some people believe individual emotions are a chemical accident? I doubt anyone seriously believes that our brains are a series of really lucky accidents. Are you saing it's bad that people beleive our brains evolved through a series of chemical accidents and survival of the fitist?
The truth is our brains evolutionary nature is perfectly consistent (I'm tempted to say manefestly obvious). Emotions are these sorts of vague drives based on what a slug or a modern computer dose, i.e. respond to programming. Evolution keeps on adding execptions and crosslinking the exeptions (why your have your brain in one place) untill you develop learned behavior and eventually rudementary reasoning.
Higher reasoning is much more complex sicne you now have social and learned factors along with the biological evolution, but the emotions remain as some sort of general flow chart for the brain. No randomness.. just lots of extra stuff added.
Yes, the sticker idea is a really good one. It requires no central orginisation and it allows you to communicate with a lot of people. Slashdoters should take notice of this idea because these are exactly the qualities we require too.
Example: Many companies are selling (so called) mp3 players which are SDMI compliant. We could run a stickering campaign to attach stickers to the devices (on store sheleves) warning about all the bad things SDMI dose. Stickers could also be attached to shrink wrapped censorware which would warn the consumer about all the good sites the software blocks (like blocked feminists sites, 70% bad blocks in the.edu domain, Utah library tests show 1 of 20 blocks is a bad block, etc).
Anywho, the sticker campaign could be really effective for "make people think issues" (like the SF thing) or "get the word out issues" (like my examplkes). The only question is "how do we distribute the stickers?"
The safest way to distribute the stickers would be to run a web site providing the materials necissary to order the stickers from the various custom sticker outfits online.
The Libertarians and Objectivists are properly classified as a non-religious right wing utopian movement. These philosophies are fundamentally flawed just like their left wing cousins (but it will probable take a while for these people to notice). You should check out the Critiques of Libertarianism page.
There are some pretty funny contradictions libertarianism, like supporting school vouchers, i.e. we don't like public funding of the schools via taxes, so lets publicly fund even more with taxes. It never crosses their minds to just require schools allow students to mix and match classes from diffrent public and private schools. The ideal outcome of the libertarian's proposed solution (school vouchers): more competitive education system where taxes pay for everything. The ideal outcome of my alternative libertarian proposal: an even more competitive education system where parents pay for everyhitng. Gee, I wonder which would be the more libertarian solution?
All this having been said, I'd be pretty surprised if the libertarians had much beef with the ACLU. I have heard argumentes from very concervative people that there is really no contraiction between being right wing and supporting the ACLU. I would be curious to read any specific account you can find about a conflict. Maybe the libertarians were just pissed about the ACLU actually getting the job done.. while they just lose ellections.
Actually, I'm pretty shure I know where the convlict lies. One of the things which makes the libertarian philosophy a failed utopian philosophy is it's idea that "only government can take away your rights," i.e. whatever the corperations want to do is fine so long as they do not hire gunmen. The ACLU takes the more realistic approach that corperations can abuse your rights too.
Everyone just loves banner ads and such on web sites, now - they can only be MORE popular in your favorite songs! Oh, to be fair, this might work...until some misanthrope decides to code up an "MP3 ad-clipper" program to conserve bandwidth.
There are two technical versions for the ads: (1) attach an HTML file and change all the players to support the attachment or (2) just talk over part of the song.
You can keep people from removing type (1) by including cool stuff like lyrics, art, etc. allong with the ads and offers to sell them band CDs and T-shirts.. it's just a question of S/N ratio. The great thing about the HTML attachments is: the lissener only sees them when they click the view attachment button on their player.
People would want to strip (2), but the band can very the placment and things so that it can not be automatically stripped. Plus, they can be tactfull about it, i.e. "Comming at you from DJ Bumbfuck at bumblefuck.com thanks to K-Mart, Toy R Us, and Joe's sex supplies where house."
Besides, MP3s already can encode at virtual CD quality...short of making the "artist's version" eight times slower to download, how are you going to make an improvement over that
May people do a shitty job of ripping CDs, so the artists just needs to use a really nicely tunned encoder to have better then average quality. People may not notice the quality most of the time, but they will sometimes and it will inspire them to buy good mp3s of the shit they really like.. especially if they buy them via paying to join a fan club which gives them access to all sorts of other shit which the pirates were all too lazy to pirate.
The point is the bands can make money by providing the little things that the pirates can not provide. Also, remember it is pretty easy to sue the one or two pirates who try to provide the stability (i.e. the whole fan club archive). It's just an issue of moving the battle to a place where you can win.
Could you require an open source product, i.e. project must be released under a GPL compatible licenss? Just say you want a product which will prevent people from ever locking you into one vendor, i.e. BSD would not work because someone might sell your orginisation custom modifications which were not open source in the future.
Regardless, it would be nice for them to set up a requirment for an "open source bid," i.e. we must access the cost of hiring a university or open source group to write the software that we need (if it dose not exist). The gov. could spend a little bit of money funding the open source bidding process too.
No, 30 q-bits might be useful. You do not need to store any instructions in the memory, just the numbers you need to keep in a super position, as the instructions are imposed on the computer from the MRI machine, i.e. we would use it like a reprogramable circut, not like a universal turing machine.
If the computer is really good and you do not need any error correction then you could factor a 16 digit number very fast, but more likely you would need serious error correction (might leave you with 4 q-bits if you were lucky; quantum error corrections was pretty expencive as I recall).
The article was pretty much bullshit. The music can not be produced without the artist, so the artists will continue to make a living from ANY internet distribution system.
Example: The artists can always flood the pirate sites with music that is slightly highwer quality then your average rip, but has advertisments in the song (or in an attached HTML file), i.e. use the pirates for promotion and corn-fuse the pirate community enough to make people just DL the music from the official web site. Now people may not pay for individual songs, but they will pay $20 for a year of "fan club access" which lets you DL songs without advertisments. Assuming the band releases a lot of songs this is a really good deal for both the band and the fan.. and unlike the current buisness model it would be stable because the pirate community would be spammed.:)
Anyway, those people are morons if they think the artists can not make money.. the question is how? Also, (1) do the artists become rich? (2) do the record companies become rich? (3) do the consumers need to spend a lot on money? Clearly, the good answers would be (1) yes, (2) no, (3) no, but we really have no idea what will happen.
Napster's real threat to the artists is: Napster could become a monopoly over promotion, i.e. give us $10,000 per year per song and we will put the version with the advertisments first in the search list when someone searches for the song. Clearly, it would be a lot cheaper for artists to spam Gnutella, IRC, and the FTP sites then pay off Napster. It might be a good thing for Napster to lose the law suit because then Gnutella could take over.
Slashdot Mirror
It would be easy to change Gnutella to avoid this problem. Gnutella could make the assumption that any conenction on a specific port was a gnutella connection and encrypt the packets with the assumption that the first packet gave the session key. There would be no way to detect this without attempting to decrypt every unknown conenction (or disallowing unknown connections), but the Gnutella server and the router have diffrent "threat models," i.e. the router gets far far far more packs then a gnutella server, so the gnutella server could just push the key size to a point where it would be impossible to decrypt everything.
Now the collage could just "spot check" for Gnutella packets and revoke network access, but Gnutella could counter with pseudo-perminant public key system, i.e. not justthe session key system I described above.
The fundamental threat models for *preventing* Gnutella traffic are REALLY stacked in Gnutella's favor. The Gnutella we see only dose a small fraction of the things it could do automatically to aviod detection, but the collages could always start billing for large bandwidth consumption.. this would solve the whole problem almost immediatly.
You make a very good point about people not sharing their stuff, but these problems can be fixed by changing the Gnutella protocol, so lets talk about the possible fixes.
First, you can just limit how much of your bandwidth Gnutella allows people to use. Second, you can install systems which figure out which sever containing the file has the shortest ping times (they may do this now). Third, you can install a referal system where your system refuses to send a file to anyone within a day/week of sending it to someone (unless there is some local high bandwidth execption from the second category). Machine A would remember that machine B downloaded a file recently and tell machine C who now wants the file to go get the file from machine B. If B dose not have it then his IP address is blacklisted from A and C for a period of time. You could construct a "reputation system" to handle changing IP addresses if you wanted, but that would be more copmplex (and you probable do not want dialup people using Gnutella anyway). Fourth, you can market Gnutella cache servers for ISPS and colalges (note: the 3rd option might force these servers to let the whole internet use them).
Actually, the 3rd solution might make static IPs a bigger selling point for ISP, which is a very good thing. (If you live in a dynamic IP pool then there may be someone getting all the IPs blacklisted by leeching)
First, I should mention that I made an error. There are viruses with a 98% mortality rate, but they generally kill themselves off. I think 80% was the number I had heard to some of the larger plagus with actaully managed to kill many millions of people.
Second, you are absolutly correct. A major flaw with Bill Joy's argument was that people will be more vulnerable to nano/bio attacks when fewer people have studdied the technology. It was a serious mistake for me to ignore this point as it provides an more effective arguement then mear probabilities.
It is not impossible that these nonsentient devices could become an "enemy" in and of themselves. No person would be needed to cause harm to another using the machines, they would do it themselves.
Nonsentient devices are programmed by a human. A nonsentient device can evolve (like a virus) but I see no short term reason why this independant evolution would be faster then viruses evolution. We are not talking the virsus used for gene therapy here. We are talking fundamntal improvments to the evolutionary mechinism of a virus which "good ol' mother nature" has ben working on for many millions of years.
Actually, I would *suspect* that there is an average case upper bound on the evoutionary speed of a simple device like a virus or a dumb nanobot.. the thing runs by trial and error for gods sakes.. and it's not impossible that viruses have reached this limit.
Now this hypothetical limit will go up when you make the nanobot smarter, but the kinds of things a smart nanobot would be good at evolving into would be partially preprogrammed. Also, there will be limits on how smart a single nanobot can be.
I suppose you might design a nanobot cold virus killer which used group processing to evolved new attacks as the cold virus evolved new defences. This group processing would take the form of units 1 to 1000 try this and tell us if you live or kill viruses. I agree that something like this could have more potential for killing humans, but we are a long way away from something like this. Also, I suspect the communications channel betwen the nanobots would presuppose the ability to include a self destruct.
Your assertion that because predictions have failed to pan out seems valid, but the conclusion you draw does not follow from it - that we should not predict is ludicrous.
I never said we should not predict.. just that Bill Joy dose not know what he's talking about since his predictions are based on sci-fi instead of real theory. We predict the progress of the fiels you listed since we have a theory for them. The summery essentially said that the speakers who understand any present theory of biology and nanotechnology dismissed Bill Joy as a luddite. They were nicer then I was, but that's because they were only concerned with how Bill Joy was wrong.. where I think the things Bill Joy advocates are themselves far more dangerous.
ALWAYS applying a just law RIGIDLY, is what mandatory minimums are all about... that's why it's an injustice.
Exactly.
You're arguing the same side here..
No, Bill Joy wants to protect people by removing the open sharing of ideas which is the human aspect of technology. He is trying to lay claim to this quote because there is an "always," but he dose not understand science or progress, so he thinks that adding rigid restrictions on what people are allowed to talk about will protect people.
I'd trust the guy who's smart enough to get the PhD in biology over the luddite beurocrats Bill Joy wants to create to monitor this stuff. The number of people who can get a PhD without thinking about the world is not very high, but there are very high numbers of people in beuroctaric possitions who cause a lot of problems with their narrow views of the world. Who look more human and flexible now?
Bill joy said "the size [of the operating sytem] is expanding exponentially, the functionality is fixed"
:)
Best cheap shot: Ray to Bill, "How many in the audience caught this news story," which he followed with a fake story about Sun deciding to give up all development of innovations which made the software "smarter." It was amusing, I wonder if they fought in the parking lot
That is funny. The more I here Bill Joy say the more ignorant/insane he sounds. It's pretty clear that there is a lot of research going on in operating systems today. Microkernel's, MIT's nokernel, virtual machines, etc. I'm shure there are even people who would change the most basic aspects of the operating system (things which users assume need to be there like files). Bill Joy is just a moron for claiming that this research dose not exist.
Regarding the rude audience. I assume that there are a lot of crackpots. These are frequently the rude ones at popular talks. ACtually, I suppose some of the speakers were crackpots since Joy was there..
We need ways of getting the information out to more people about product which take away your rights. I think one good way to do this would be to place stickers on the products in stores.
/etc, and stick them on SDMI player in stores.
Example: We need to keep people from buying portable music players which support SDMI. We could place information online about how to order stickers which say:
WARNING This product uses SDMI. SDMI is designed to maintain the music industry's monopoly over marketing and promotion of music. SDMI product have been known to restrict where you can obtain your music from, degrade the quality of independently produced mp3 music, require waisting of drive space to lissen to mp3s, and prevent you from letting your friends lissen to your music. We strongly discurage you from buying this product without further research. WE suggest instead that you learn about SDMI and purchas an mp3 player which dose not support SDMI.
People all over the country would order these stickers, distribute them at LUGs / protets
The problem is designing an efficent, cheap, and legal way of distributing such stickers. I think the most effective way would be via an affiliat program at some online sticker retaler. Perferably a retailer who would be willing to lower the unit price if large numbers of people ordered identical stickers.
Do not assume that your intelegent take on Libertarian views is the majority. I've seen the CATO institute and Reason bitching about the WTO protests. Now I am opposed to protectionism, but the truth is the WTO regulates more then just protectionism. It regulates the political force one country can exert on another.. and this is a very bad thing.
Libertarians also support school vouchers because they beleive that school vouchers with privatize public education. The reality of the situation is that school vouchers will still require taxes period. ACtually, they will require bigger taxes. It's just plain silly for the libertaians to support school vouchers since there are real privitisation alternatives which do not require tax funding. Specifically, require public and private school to design their schedule to allow students to mix and match classes from public and private schools. This would allow people who know how to teach one thing very well, like science, literature, religion, etc., to specilize without being forced to provide for all the students educational needs. It's really amazing that the libertarians are proposing school vouchers over this sort of reform (which is clearly more in-line with their plhiosophy).
Simillarly, I have also seen many libertarians supporting stronger copyright protection (like the DCMA). Property is a more sticky issue then most libertarians realize since a lack of fair-use protections quickly degenerates into a form of slavery. Anywho, I'm just saing that you should not assume that your fellow libertarians understand the issue as well as you do.
Oh, bitch! We could write a web crawler which went arround the internet, found people's name who are associated to high schools (frequently students), and turned them in via the web! I guess we would need to build some IP spofing into it, but that should not be hard.
Everybody gets on the bandwagon. If the blacklist that Pinkerton's is trying to build is filled with everybody, perhaps by volunteers calling from payphones (Remember that 800 numbers are NOT anonymous!), the system will collapse from too much spurious data.
Yes, this is the solution! Here is what we can do to help. We need to get people to print up stickers which say something like:
WARNING: The school is attempting to profile and monitor you! The school's new W.A.V.E. student profiling system will allow classmates to anonymously create trouble for you with the school administration and teachers. There is only one thing you can do to stop this. Every day for the next year call 1-800-???-???? from a payfone and fasely turn-in a random student at your school. It is importent to turn in students who are not the intended targests for this program too, i.e. if everyone just turns in the people that they think are wierd then the school will pay more attention to the program because it will seem successful. If many diffrent people are turned in this will create confusion and make their database useless. This is probable the only effective way you have of protecting yourself from this program.
and hand them out to students to stick all over the school.
I would suggest locating an online sticker printing company who will handle a large quantity of low-quality stickers for cheap, fill out all their paper work, and publish the paper work online to make it easy for other people to order the stickers too.
Consious does have a relationship with QM.
No it dose not! You did not read my post. QM talks about the results of experements. The experementer can be a person OR the film (your example). *You* *choose* what you want to treat classically and what you want to treat quantum mechanically when you predict the outcome of the experement. You can very well choose to treat the lab assistant watching the film quantum mechanically. The consious being that is the lab assistant will be in a supper-position period. Actually, you can declare a reader of the paper you are going to publish about the experiment to be the observer, so that YOU will be in a supper-position of yes/no while you write the paper! This choice is exactly what makes people dislike quantum mechanics, but they are wrong. This wierdness is not really a feature of quamtum mechanics at all. It is a feature of the expermenetal method. Neutonian mechanics has this feature too, but no one noticed since they were never told that they were not allowed to look at part of the experement, i.e. without supper-positions you did not get diffrent results based on diffrent observers. Hell, Quantum mechanics still would not give us very diffrent results when we treat the lab assistant quantum mechanically.
Geez, it is truely amazing how many people can read all these pulp physics books and not understand the most basic principals of the scientific method. They would rather believe a lot of bullshit about how special they are and how consiousness is a fundamental part of the universe instead of just looking at the rules to running an experement.
Note: if your are really video taping the experemnt you better treat the video camera classically since you can not construct a good quantum mechanical model.
Wrong! Consious has NOTHING to do with quantum mechanics! The definition of the experement IS what stops the regress. We define the experemental apparatus classically and say "the wave function collapses" when the classically described part of the system interacts with the part of the system which is described via quantum mechanics. If you describe Schrodingers cat (conshiousness and all) with quantum mechanics then the cat is alive and dead untill you open the box. I guess the cat is lucky that you can not describe it that well! :)
The point is "Quantum Mechanics talks about the results of experements!" The experemental aparatus is built into the most basic theory as the bra and ket!
The real problem that some educated people (einstein) have with Quantum Mechanics always that they think Realitivity dose "more" then describe the results of experements and they want Quantum Mechanics to do "more." The real question is "Are our ideas about physics doing more then predicting experements a load of crap?" The smartest physicists I've known say yes, i.e. we should not expect physics to do mroe then predict experements as predicting experements is the hart of the scientific method.
Now, people claim that Bomian Mechanics (when you pretend that there really is a phase space particl there) dose do "more" then what Quantum Mechanics dose, but I think you can prove that Bomian Mechnaics predicts nothing which Quantum Mechanics dose not predict, so people who are sticklers for the scientific method claim that they are no diffrent as theories.
OTOH how much can you really learn through rational and reasoned discourse on the subject of pink fluffy elephants?
:) (God == a bigger Santa Clause for adults.
This is one of the real keys! If it looks like a Santa Clause, smalls like a Santa Clause, quacks like a Santa Clause, then it's probable not real.
Seriously, we can draw some conclusions from "reproducibility," i.e. velcro works every time I use it, so I may as well start trusting it, but prayer works about as well as any placebo (in the same situation), so it's pretty safe to assume that vecro is real and prayer is a placebo.
Now this comparison gets a little sticky when we start talking about things with less evidence, like evolution, the big bang, quantum mechanics, etc., but we attempt to verify these things by maing verifiable predictions. Notice that religious predictins have tended to be a load of shit.
Now, I would like to make some comments about the book's topic (which I have not read). Why do scientific people want to call the universe a "mind?" This seems highly anthropomorphic. The universe may share some interesting properties with out minds, like an entropy driven system which produces effect which are roughly analogous to biological evolution (our thoughs process vs. universe's possible "evolution" of the laws of physics), but the diffrences seem to far far out weight the simillarities. You know little things, like the the fact that the speed of light would limit anything like "thoughs" which were spread accrost the universe.
I think we need to quit pandering to the religiious people with this "conshious universe" bullshit.. and get down to talking about the same stuff in a less anthropomorphic way. I understand that people want to make analogies, but I expect some real discussion about how entroy and boundery conmditions always leed to evolution like processes, not some vague bulshit aboutthe universe thinking (any kind of meaningful notion of thinking probably entails non-omipotence).
Evolution is the process where the real baggage is _naturally_ cut away from our strains.
We have no reason to suspect that nature is any better at this then we will be in 100 years. I'm shure if our scientist had patents to work with things for 1 million years they could make creatures which were far more intelegent then us.
You can't possibly simulate quantuum-effects to 100% correctness with a machine.
(a) what dose thi have to do with the conversation? (b) This may not be not true. We currently suspect it is possible to build a machine which uses quantum effects to run it's calculations. The original proposed application of these theoretical devices was not factoring large numbers, it was simulating quantum physics.
I'm sorry, but your just talking out of your ass here. You have absolutly no reason to suspectthat we will not be able to build AIs or modify our selves to be whatever we want to be.. And you sertonly have no reason to suspect that we will not be able to make an intelegent decission about what we want to be.
Flamage can have value, IMHO. If his students are this worked up, I'll bet he really is a crappy teacher.
This seems doubtful. I have seen many students get worked up over something stupid like a mild accent. Note: Undergraduates normally do not put in the time to mastere the fine art of lissening to crazy accents that graduate students must master, so I see undergrads bitching about a profs who really dose a good job once you get past the accent.
The libel laws are pretty clear and the web site should win, but it would be nice to have a feature to prevent duplicate reviews AND maintain anonymity. I think you could do it with an online voting algorithm, i.e. you only get one vote, but the site can not tell which vote was yours.
But, hopes and dreams, loves and hates, ARE our evolutionary baggage.
:) Short term we will probable see psychological engenering to make yor kids enjoy thinking more.
Baggage conotates the bad parts. He is postulating that we could kick out the parts we do not want and keep the aprts we do want. We seem to have been able to do this to some extent with many many things, but AI and psychological engenering are still a long way off.
We enjoy thinking and problem solving. It would be really cool to be able to build a machine which only enjoyed thinking and problem solving. It would have a much better chance of getting into collage then most humans.
Penrose is probably still wrong, because he hasn't proven to my satisfaction that the human mind is not subject to the limitations of the Godel theorem.
:)
Yes, Godel's theorem and the halting problem only say that these unanswerable questions exists, not that they really keep you from ding anything specific, but penrose makes a bigger mistake then this! A mistake that a physicist should not make! Godel's theorem and the halting problem say something about the mathematical method, not about what happens when you give the machine the ability to interact with the real world, i.e. the good old fashion scientific method. Biological evolution can be sen as a reall slow and sloppy way to practice the scientific method, so it seems reasonable to suspect that we can produce AI from our current programming driven slugs (cmputer) in less time the it took mother nature (say 1 million years). It's not a really useful upper bound, but it's a lot safer then the 30 years they were guessing 30 years ago..
As for justifying our existance to ourselves, all we need to know is that we can be happy. That in itself is reason enough for sticking around.
I agree that we should not look to the universe or a god for a purpose in life, but we should still see evolution as a kind of purpose for a variety of reasons:
(1) Technological development / Evolution makes it easy for a lot more people to be happy. Specifically, it increases your chances of being ammong the happy.. especially if you are ammong the group who are capable of developing.
(2) We have it partially wired into us as a survival trait, i.e. we have some drive for a purpose / future. Most people don't like to think "Hey, it's ok if the human race is wiped out in 100 yeras since I won't be here."
(3) It's just plain fun! Scientists are very happy people (modulo not having a mate who understands you). I think mathematicians frequently score number one on job satisfaction studdies. It's like a drug which reduces your tolernace to it over time!
There is a certain urge, or compulsion, within the human psyche that drives people to do certain things when they feel something. Many people dismiss this as merely an accidental consequence of our chemical makeup (or some other dismissive explanation), but few have actually studied why it works the way it does and come up with plausible models for the way emotions work. I don't quite agree with the "chemical accident" explanation because it doesn't explain why our emotions are simultaneously non-logical yet not totally random. If chemistry were all, I'd expect total randomness in emotions, but this is not the case.
This dose not make any sence. Chemical processes run many non-random things. Are you saing that some people believe individual emotions are a chemical accident? I doubt anyone seriously believes that our brains are a series of really lucky accidents. Are you saing it's bad that people beleive our brains evolved through a series of chemical accidents and survival of the fitist?
The truth is our brains evolutionary nature is perfectly consistent (I'm tempted to say manefestly obvious). Emotions are these sorts of vague drives based on what a slug or a modern computer dose, i.e. respond to programming. Evolution keeps on adding execptions and crosslinking the exeptions (why your have your brain in one place) untill you develop learned behavior and eventually rudementary reasoning.
Higher reasoning is much more complex sicne you now have social and learned factors along with the biological evolution, but the emotions remain as some sort of general flow chart for the brain. No randomness.. just lots of extra stuff added.
Yes, the sticker idea is a really good one. It requires no central orginisation and it allows you to communicate with a lot of people. Slashdoters should take notice of this idea because these are exactly the qualities we require too.
.edu domain, Utah library tests show 1 of 20 blocks is a bad block, etc).
Example: Many companies are selling (so called) mp3 players which are SDMI compliant. We could run a stickering campaign to attach stickers to the devices (on store sheleves) warning about all the bad things SDMI dose. Stickers could also be attached to shrink wrapped censorware which would warn the consumer about all the good sites the software blocks (like blocked feminists sites, 70% bad blocks in the
Anywho, the sticker campaign could be really effective for "make people think issues" (like the SF thing) or "get the word out issues" (like my examplkes). The only question is "how do we distribute the stickers?"
The safest way to distribute the stickers would be to run a web site providing the materials necissary to order the stickers from the various custom sticker outfits online.
I suppose this is a troll, but I'll reply anyway.
The Libertarians and Objectivists are properly classified as a non-religious right wing utopian movement. These philosophies are fundamentally flawed just like their left wing cousins (but it will probable take a while for these people to notice). You should check out the Critiques of Libertarianism page.
There are some pretty funny contradictions libertarianism, like supporting school vouchers, i.e. we don't like public funding of the schools via taxes, so lets publicly fund even more with taxes. It never crosses their minds to just require schools allow students to mix and match classes from diffrent public and private schools. The ideal outcome of the libertarian's proposed solution (school vouchers): more competitive education system where taxes pay for everything. The ideal outcome of my alternative libertarian proposal: an even more competitive education system where parents pay for everyhitng. Gee, I wonder which would be the more libertarian solution?
All this having been said, I'd be pretty surprised if the libertarians had much beef with the ACLU. I have heard argumentes from very concervative people that there is really no contraiction between being right wing and supporting the ACLU. I would be curious to read any specific account you can find about a conflict. Maybe the libertarians were just pissed about the ACLU actually getting the job done.. while they just lose ellections.
Actually, I'm pretty shure I know where the convlict lies. One of the things which makes the libertarian philosophy a failed utopian philosophy is it's idea that "only government can take away your rights," i.e. whatever the corperations want to do is fine so long as they do not hire gunmen. The ACLU takes the more realistic approach that corperations can abuse your rights too.
BTW> see who the ACLU has helped this year.
Everyone just loves banner ads and such on web sites, now - they can only be MORE popular in your favorite songs! Oh, to be fair, this might work...until some misanthrope decides to code up an "MP3 ad-clipper" program to conserve bandwidth.
There are two technical versions for the ads: (1) attach an HTML file and change all the players to support the attachment or (2) just talk over part of the song.
You can keep people from removing type (1) by including cool stuff like lyrics, art, etc. allong with the ads and offers to sell them band CDs and T-shirts.. it's just a question of S/N ratio. The great thing about the HTML attachments is: the lissener only sees them when they click the view attachment button on their player.
People would want to strip (2), but the band can very the placment and things so that it can not be automatically stripped. Plus, they can be tactfull about it, i.e. "Comming at you from DJ Bumbfuck at bumblefuck.com thanks to K-Mart, Toy R Us, and Joe's sex supplies where house."
Besides, MP3s already can encode at virtual CD quality...short of making the "artist's version" eight times slower to download, how are you going to make an improvement over that
May people do a shitty job of ripping CDs, so the artists just needs to use a really nicely tunned encoder to have better then average quality. People may not notice the quality most of the time, but they will sometimes and it will inspire them to buy good mp3s of the shit they really like.. especially if they buy them via paying to join a fan club which gives them access to all sorts of other shit which the pirates were all too lazy to pirate.
The point is the bands can make money by providing the little things that the pirates can not provide. Also, remember it is pretty easy to sue the one or two pirates who try to provide the stability (i.e. the whole fan club archive). It's just an issue of moving the battle to a place where you can win.
Could you require an open source product, i.e. project must be released under a GPL compatible licenss? Just say you want a product which will prevent people from ever locking you into one vendor, i.e. BSD would not work because someone might sell your orginisation custom modifications which were not open source in the future.
Regardless, it would be nice for them to set up a requirment for an "open source bid," i.e. we must access the cost of hiring a university or open source group to write the software that we need (if it dose not exist). The gov. could spend a little bit of money funding the open source bidding process too.
No, 30 q-bits might be useful. You do not need to store any instructions in the memory, just the numbers you need to keep in a super position, as the instructions are imposed on the computer from the MRI machine, i.e. we would use it like a reprogramable circut, not like a universal turing machine.
If the computer is really good and you do not need any error correction then you could factor a 16 digit number very fast, but more likely you would need serious error correction (might leave you with 4 q-bits if you were lucky; quantum error corrections was pretty expencive as I recall).
The article was pretty much bullshit. The music can not be produced without the artist, so the artists will continue to make a living from ANY internet distribution system.
:)
Example: The artists can always flood the pirate sites with music that is slightly highwer quality then your average rip, but has advertisments in the song (or in an attached HTML file), i.e. use the pirates for promotion and corn-fuse the pirate community enough to make people just DL the music from the official web site. Now people may not pay for individual songs, but they will pay $20 for a year of "fan club access" which lets you DL songs without advertisments. Assuming the band releases a lot of songs this is a really good deal for both the band and the fan.. and unlike the current buisness model it would be stable because the pirate community would be spammed.
Anyway, those people are morons if they think the artists can not make money.. the question is how? Also, (1) do the artists become rich? (2) do the record companies become rich? (3) do the consumers need to spend a lot on money? Clearly, the good answers would be (1) yes, (2) no, (3) no, but we really have no idea what will happen.
Napster's real threat to the artists is: Napster could become a monopoly over promotion, i.e. give us $10,000 per year per song and we will put the version with the advertisments first in the search list when someone searches for the song. Clearly, it would be a lot cheaper for artists to spam Gnutella, IRC, and the FTP sites then pay off Napster. It might be a good thing for Napster to lose the law suit because then Gnutella could take over.
Amen!