Remind me of the billions spent per day in Iraq - and you blame it on helping people who need hospital treatment?
And money spent on national healthcare means less needs to be spent on private healthcare and insurance - so it doesn't mean that more is spent overall, it's just spread around differently.
Interesting that Microsoft can accuse others of "stealing" their software, but he advocates reading through other people's source code that he had no permission to access?
It's a shame that MS doesn't let other people learn from their software by releasing the source (even if only for older products), if they really thought that is the best way to learn.
I do hope MS have good hard drive destruction procedures - if someone managed to fish out some MS source code recovered from a discarded company PC, it would be fair game according to him to make use of that, right?
Whilst a "standard" has its advantages, unfortunately Microsoft aren't comparable to other standards. Can anyone come along and write their Windows compatible OS? Are there other companies doing so? No. It would be like if there was only one company that could make VHS or Blu-Ray, or if all computers were made by IBM.
But until that happened, there wasn't the same relentless drive for faster, better, cheaper computers that we take for granted today. The Commodore 64 was popular for years with identical hardware. The scale of the market didn't support constant research and development of faster consumer hardware.
Firstly, this has nothing to do with the OS, and hence Microsoft. The credit would be to the PC - the open nature meant companies were continually improving it. However, even there you are wrong to say computers didn't improve on other platforms. There was a continual improvement of computers, from simple 1K computers, through increasingly powerful 8 bits, then 16 bit and 32 bit platforms like the Amiga. And anyway, the PC had discrete generations too, such as 086, 286, 386, or the graphics standards. The only difference was that there were a lot more models.
Even if there's no other reason to like Microsoft, just be thankful it wasn't Apple that become the standard. It could have been a lot worse.
Don't get me wrong, I think Windows is the best OS of offerings today, but please let's not rewrite history:
If Gates hadn't come along to help popularize computers
He did what now? Back in the 80s there were loads of other platforms, not to mention lots of hardware companies popularising the PC.
Whatever else Gates did, right and wrong, he DID help to make it easy for your average dimwit to get started in computing.
Since when? In the 80s and 90s, Windows was pretty much playing catch-up with things like ease of use and GUIs.
BECAUSE Gates and others had the vision of a putting an affordable computer in every home
Yes, others, lots of others. IBM deserve credit for the PC, and even then, there were lots of other companies with other computers.
In fact, the idea of the PC as being affordable and in the home came fairly late. For the 80s and early 90s, they were business machines, and occupied a high price point. The home market was dominated by a range of other computer platforms, many of which were low cost and affordable, unlike PCs. And none of them ran anything from Microsoft (well, unless you count Microsoft Amiga Basic, but it's probably best for all that we forget that disaster...)
Get off my lawn! I remember when 640x480 was a luxury...
For mobile devices, I don't see it's bad, unless you plan on lugging a massive screen around with you? It's only a pain because so many stupid websites/applications/operating systems assume you're running at least 1024x768, and they've yet to catch up with the wide availability of Internet phones and netbooks.
He has a computer in his backpack and wears a headset. Compare with someone with a phone in their pocket, and wearing a bluetooth headset. I don't think even of them count as wearable computers. Yes, he's wearing a headset, and people talk about wearing bluetooth headsets with their phones too.
You classify a few cells as nonhuman. The next person classifies any fetus up to 8.99 months as nonhuman. The next person classifies blacks as nonhuman.
No, you've got it backwards. If a judgement is made based on sentience, then this is a matter of scientific evidence, and it certainly doesn't lead to classifying black people as non-human.
OTOH, it we come up with an arbitrary measure such as having a complete set of human chromosomes, then that argument leads to not treating people with Down's Syndrome as human. Hypothetically in the future, super-intelligent animals, or a mutated form of the human race, could be branded "non-human" on the grounds of their different DNA.
Plus of course, the same fallacious slippery slope argument that you made applies to the other side of the debate anyway - since everyone doesn't count sperm/eggs as human, so it's true that all of us "classify a few cells as nonhuman".
Laws on murder should not be subject to personal opinion.
Quite right. Laws should be based on reason, rational arguments and evidence. Not assertions, circluar arguments like "it's wrong because it's immoral", personal opinion or taste ("I think it's wrong") or religion.
So, let's hear these arguments against stem cells etc? I'm still waiting.
The embryos who are killed don't get to develop to the point that they can voice their opinion, so they get someone else's morals imposed on them in the most extreme manner.
Crumbs, won't somebody think of the underdeveloped embryos? Perhaps it's unfair that trees don't get a say in the matter when someone chops them down? This is as funny as the time in a fox hunting debate, someone said to me it was unfair as foxes didn't get a vote in the matter.
I suggested that foxes should be allowed the vote, when they are 18 years old. Same for embryos. (I'm against fox hunting btw, but this was a poor argument.)
a baby in the fifth week of its life is capable of surviving.
Really?
Like my son, who was born week 25+2 (meaning 25 weeks plus two days),
Meaning, nothing like five weeks?
I think many pro-choice people are okay with (or at least, okay to accept) the legal limits that typically stop around 24-26 weeks (what's the law in the US?).
Odd thing: even minutes before his birth it would have been legal to abort him. Doing the same five minutes after his birth would constitute as murder. Who decides that this baby, when it is still in the womb, can be killed?
How about instead of abortions, the fetus is removed. If it can fend for itself, nothing is killed. If not, then the claim it could survive wasn't true in the first place...
Some psychologists claim that any human being, if isolated from communication for a long enough period, will actually lose sentience. Or at the very least will lose the ability to speak, read, or even feel pain.
Do you have references? It seems quite a strong claim to say that sentience, and the ability to experience pain, is linked to being able to speak.
Either way, I don't see what this has to do with the debate about abortion or stem cells.
It would not do to focus on actually having achieved anything, but merely on the potential.
Why? Saying "But this other person doesn't have sentience either" isn't an argument against the point. The obvious examples being people who are brain dead - there's plenty of people who believe it's fine to let such a person die.
The funny thing is that I do agree with the OP in that suffering and sentience should be the means by which we judge the morality, and not arbtirary stuff like "it's a cell with human DNA". But it's unclear that a fetus has this level of sentience. Whilst we do give animals some rights, to avoid unnecessary suffering, as you note it is still okay to kill them.
(The other argument for abortion is that it's the woman's body, which takes priority no matter what - consider the thought experiment where someone needs to be hooked up to you for nine months in order to live. Must you be compelled legally to oblige?)
It takes a unique type of idiot to lack the ability to distinguish conceptually between a collection of cells, and a sentient conscious being. Perhaps we should give plants rights, after all, they're no different to animals, right?
Why is the number of chromosomes so important? It doesn't affect the point about "potential to become a human". And by your logic, someone with Down's Syndrome can be treated as if they weren't a human, because they have a different number of chromosomes?
If the same had happened with someone not having the right to print physical books, would they have taken the books back?
And even if you want to make the receiving stolen goods analogy, the point is that it's the job of the police and courts to do that, not a private company.
The OP is correct to say talk is cheap. "Oh sorry, I took your book. Btw you're not getting it back". It's not actually an apology.
I don't really care about this site, but that's the classic code for anyone in favour of censorship - "But what need does society have for this?" they'll cry.
I never thought I'd see the day when there was so much support for censorship on Slashdot. I guess next time Scientology get Slashdot to censor a post, other people can say "nothing of value was lost", right?
No source is given for this "more drastic action". If it happened at all, the weasel-worded "some others suggest" suggests to me that it could just be some random individual who posted; there is no evidence to suggests there is any kind of consensus, or even if this was a serious suggestion in the first place.
It would be like judging Slashdot based on what some trolls here occasionally post. But don't let me stop you with your straw man.
Oh I'm sorry, someone with mod points has spoken - I'm obviously mistaken at all the defence people gave for the Iphone lacking MMS.
And heaven forbid someone mentions another phone - a Motorola V980, btw - in the comments. (What is up with the mod system lately? I can't remember the last time I had points, yet they're given out to people who misuse negative mods for "I disagree with this person"?) I'm not trolling, I'm arguing my point of view. Just because you disagree doesn't make it a Troll.
By the time that AI is good enough to replace any kind of programmer, I suspect that AI will be good enough to replace a vast number of skilled jobs. So either we'll all be living in a work-free utopia, or a mass-unemployment dystopia where only those who already own wealth/robots/etc will reap the benefits. Either way, programmers won't be the first in line.
There's also a crucial point here in that the AI itself is written by programmers: so when the AI programmers can be replaced by the AI, you can say hello to the singularity, and the revolution will greatly affect everyone.
it's called the third industrial revolution and it's been making people unemployed since the 80s.
Too right! Ever since the 1880s we've been having these pesky machines making people unemployed. Life was some much better when everyone had a job doing manual labour 14 hours a day.
In most western countries, it's already the case that people get benefits if they are unable to get a job. So that choice has already been made: if it's really true that there are no jobs available that they have the ability to do, then they'll get benefits.
To be honest though, I'm not sure that there really is that wide a gap in human intelligence? My suspicion is that once we get AI that is as good as "stupid humans" in every area, then it'll be a relatively short time before we go from that, to having AIs that are as good as the most intelligent humans.
Slashdot Mirror
Remind me of the billions spent per day in Iraq - and you blame it on helping people who need hospital treatment?
And money spent on national healthcare means less needs to be spent on private healthcare and insurance - so it doesn't mean that more is spent overall, it's just spread around differently.
Interesting that Microsoft can accuse others of "stealing" their software, but he advocates reading through other people's source code that he had no permission to access?
It's a shame that MS doesn't let other people learn from their software by releasing the source (even if only for older products), if they really thought that is the best way to learn.
I do hope MS have good hard drive destruction procedures - if someone managed to fish out some MS source code recovered from a discarded company PC, it would be fair game according to him to make use of that, right?
Why do you need that 25% of resources that you're not using?
Well there he's talking about Linux users. The OP is talking about platforms beating Microsoft that were around before Linux was even thought of.
Whilst a "standard" has its advantages, unfortunately Microsoft aren't comparable to other standards. Can anyone come along and write their Windows compatible OS? Are there other companies doing so? No. It would be like if there was only one company that could make VHS or Blu-Ray, or if all computers were made by IBM.
But until that happened, there wasn't the same relentless drive for faster, better, cheaper computers that we take for granted today. The Commodore 64 was popular for years with identical hardware. The scale of the market didn't support constant research and development of faster consumer hardware.
Firstly, this has nothing to do with the OS, and hence Microsoft. The credit would be to the PC - the open nature meant companies were continually improving it. However, even there you are wrong to say computers didn't improve on other platforms. There was a continual improvement of computers, from simple 1K computers, through increasingly powerful 8 bits, then 16 bit and 32 bit platforms like the Amiga. And anyway, the PC had discrete generations too, such as 086, 286, 386, or the graphics standards. The only difference was that there were a lot more models.
Even if there's no other reason to like Microsoft, just be thankful it wasn't Apple that become the standard. It could have been a lot worse.
I agree here!
Don't get me wrong, I think Windows is the best OS of offerings today, but please let's not rewrite history:
If Gates hadn't come along to help popularize computers
He did what now? Back in the 80s there were loads of other platforms, not to mention lots of hardware companies popularising the PC.
Whatever else Gates did, right and wrong, he DID help to make it easy for your average dimwit to get started in computing.
Since when? In the 80s and 90s, Windows was pretty much playing catch-up with things like ease of use and GUIs.
BECAUSE Gates and others had the vision of a putting an affordable computer in every home
Yes, others, lots of others. IBM deserve credit for the PC, and even then, there were lots of other companies with other computers.
In fact, the idea of the PC as being affordable and in the home came fairly late. For the 80s and early 90s, they were business machines, and occupied a high price point. The home market was dominated by a range of other computer platforms, many of which were low cost and affordable, unlike PCs. And none of them ran anything from Microsoft (well, unless you count Microsoft Amiga Basic, but it's probably best for all that we forget that disaster...)
A common misconception, but no, we still use the same billion as the Americans. Possibly things were different back in 1979, I don't know.
Get off my lawn! I remember when 640x480 was a luxury...
For mobile devices, I don't see it's bad, unless you plan on lugging a massive screen around with you? It's only a pain because so many stupid websites/applications/operating systems assume you're running at least 1024x768, and they've yet to catch up with the wide availability of Internet phones and netbooks.
He has a computer in his backpack and wears a headset. Compare with someone with a phone in their pocket, and wearing a bluetooth headset. I don't think even of them count as wearable computers. Yes, he's wearing a headset, and people talk about wearing bluetooth headsets with their phones too.
He's not wearing this computer either - it's in the backpack, according to TFA.
You classify a few cells as nonhuman. The next person classifies any fetus up to 8.99 months as nonhuman. The next person classifies blacks as nonhuman.
No, you've got it backwards. If a judgement is made based on sentience, then this is a matter of scientific evidence, and it certainly doesn't lead to classifying black people as non-human.
OTOH, it we come up with an arbitrary measure such as having a complete set of human chromosomes, then that argument leads to not treating people with Down's Syndrome as human. Hypothetically in the future, super-intelligent animals, or a mutated form of the human race, could be branded "non-human" on the grounds of their different DNA.
Plus of course, the same fallacious slippery slope argument that you made applies to the other side of the debate anyway - since everyone doesn't count sperm/eggs as human, so it's true that all of us "classify a few cells as nonhuman".
Laws on murder should not be subject to personal opinion.
Quite right. Laws should be based on reason, rational arguments and evidence. Not assertions, circluar arguments like "it's wrong because it's immoral", personal opinion or taste ("I think it's wrong") or religion.
So, let's hear these arguments against stem cells etc? I'm still waiting.
The embryos who are killed don't get to develop to the point that they can voice their opinion, so they get someone else's morals imposed on them in the most extreme manner.
Crumbs, won't somebody think of the underdeveloped embryos? Perhaps it's unfair that trees don't get a say in the matter when someone chops them down? This is as funny as the time in a fox hunting debate, someone said to me it was unfair as foxes didn't get a vote in the matter.
I suggested that foxes should be allowed the vote, when they are 18 years old. Same for embryos. (I'm against fox hunting btw, but this was a poor argument.)
a baby in the fifth week of its life is capable of surviving.
Really?
Like my son, who was born week 25+2 (meaning 25 weeks plus two days),
Meaning, nothing like five weeks?
I think many pro-choice people are okay with (or at least, okay to accept) the legal limits that typically stop around 24-26 weeks (what's the law in the US?).
Odd thing: even minutes before his birth it would have been legal to abort him. Doing the same five minutes after his birth would constitute as murder. Who decides that this baby, when it is still in the womb, can be killed?
How about instead of abortions, the fetus is removed. If it can fend for itself, nothing is killed. If not, then the claim it could survive wasn't true in the first place...
Some psychologists claim that any human being, if isolated from communication for a long enough period, will actually lose sentience. Or at the very least will lose the ability to speak, read, or even feel pain.
Do you have references? It seems quite a strong claim to say that sentience, and the ability to experience pain, is linked to being able to speak.
Either way, I don't see what this has to do with the debate about abortion or stem cells.
It would not do to focus on actually having achieved anything, but merely on the potential.
Why? Saying "But this other person doesn't have sentience either" isn't an argument against the point. The obvious examples being people who are brain dead - there's plenty of people who believe it's fine to let such a person die.
The funny thing is that I do agree with the OP in that suffering and sentience should be the means by which we judge the morality, and not arbtirary stuff like "it's a cell with human DNA". But it's unclear that a fetus has this level of sentience. Whilst we do give animals some rights, to avoid unnecessary suffering, as you note it is still okay to kill them.
(The other argument for abortion is that it's the woman's body, which takes priority no matter what - consider the thought experiment where someone needs to be hooked up to you for nine months in order to live. Must you be compelled legally to oblige?)
Amazon are the police now? I missed that memo.
It takes a unique type of idiot to lack the ability to distinguish conceptually between a collection of cells, and a sentient conscious being. Perhaps we should give plants rights, after all, they're no different to animals, right?
Why is the number of chromosomes so important? It doesn't affect the point about "potential to become a human". And by your logic, someone with Down's Syndrome can be treated as if they weren't a human, because they have a different number of chromosomes?
If the same had happened with someone not having the right to print physical books, would they have taken the books back?
And even if you want to make the receiving stolen goods analogy, the point is that it's the job of the police and courts to do that, not a private company.
The OP is correct to say talk is cheap. "Oh sorry, I took your book. Btw you're not getting it back". It's not actually an apology.
"and nothing of value was lost"
I don't really care about this site, but that's the classic code for anyone in favour of censorship - "But what need does society have for this?" they'll cry.
I never thought I'd see the day when there was so much support for censorship on Slashdot. I guess next time Scientology get Slashdot to censor a post, other people can say "nothing of value was lost", right?
No source is given for this "more drastic action". If it happened at all, the weasel-worded "some others suggest" suggests to me that it could just be some random individual who posted; there is no evidence to suggests there is any kind of consensus, or even if this was a serious suggestion in the first place.
It would be like judging Slashdot based on what some trolls here occasionally post. But don't let me stop you with your straw man.
Why is a DDoS attack bad? Because it stops people from being able to (legitimately) access the server. That's the irony.
Oh I'm sorry, someone with mod points has spoken - I'm obviously mistaken at all the defence people gave for the Iphone lacking MMS.
And heaven forbid someone mentions another phone - a Motorola V980, btw - in the comments. (What is up with the mod system lately? I can't remember the last time I had points, yet they're given out to people who misuse negative mods for "I disagree with this person"?) I'm not trolling, I'm arguing my point of view. Just because you disagree doesn't make it a Troll.
By the time that AI is good enough to replace any kind of programmer, I suspect that AI will be good enough to replace a vast number of skilled jobs. So either we'll all be living in a work-free utopia, or a mass-unemployment dystopia where only those who already own wealth/robots/etc will reap the benefits. Either way, programmers won't be the first in line.
There's also a crucial point here in that the AI itself is written by programmers: so when the AI programmers can be replaced by the AI, you can say hello to the singularity, and the revolution will greatly affect everyone.
it's called the third industrial revolution and it's been making people unemployed since the 80s.
Too right! Ever since the 1880s we've been having these pesky machines making people unemployed. Life was some much better when everyone had a job doing manual labour 14 hours a day.
-- Ned Ludd
In most western countries, it's already the case that people get benefits if they are unable to get a job. So that choice has already been made: if it's really true that there are no jobs available that they have the ability to do, then they'll get benefits.
To be honest though, I'm not sure that there really is that wide a gap in human intelligence? My suspicion is that once we get AI that is as good as "stupid humans" in every area, then it'll be a relatively short time before we go from that, to having AIs that are as good as the most intelligent humans.