IMHO, the original 2001 was different. It was, in a way, more than just a movie. Which made it kind of hard to watch for some people, while being very interesting for others (like me). The sequels very "just" normal sci-fi flicks, which is not a bad thing at all, since IMO they were rather good sci-fi flicks.
On a sidenote, I think the recently released Solaris was, at least, trying to be different. Obviously, whether it succeeded or not is a matter of taste, and IIRC there was a large discussion about it here on Slashdot. I missed that, though, not having seen the movie at that point I didn't want to be spoiled. I must say I liked it a lot, after I gave it some time. Extremely moody film, with a fantastic soundtrack. However, as with 2001, I can see many people absolutely "not getting it" - and I mean that in an absolutely neutral way.
(Note: I'm German. We've got problems of our own, but nevertheless:) Agreed, the state of affairs in Italy is pretty terrible. I'm always horrified when I see a TV report on Berlusconi's latest madness, I can't believe stuff like this is happening in 21st century's Europe. I wish some European politicians would speak up (as they did in the case of Austria's Haider - this seems more serious and thus far worse to me), but I assume they can't afford more open internal distress at the moment. Or something. Of course, your laws on marijuana are apparently a bit more advanced than ours.;) But I think we're getting there, too.
Oh and I know this is off-topic. I don't care - this is important enough to burn some karma on.
That's the point. If you abstract the information from the information medium (ie the disks), then you have the same information. Not similar, same. It's put on two seperate disks, but it's still the same information. In the case of two disks, the medium is similar, as well, but you could also put one instance on a disk and carve the other instance into wood. It'd still be the same information.
Same thing as using a master drive image at a computer factory. None of those produced are the original..
An apt example, really. I consider two pieces of information (e.g. programs, hard disk contents, etc) to be the same if every bit is the same. Of course, two hard disks with the same content are not the same, because they have physical properties to them, as well, for instance one HD might have been running longer and might die earlier, etc. But the information contained on them is the same, in every sense of the word. It's simply irrelevant to the information how it is encoded.
Likewise, if you create an exact ("bitwise") copy of a human, it will be the same human. How exact this copy has to be has yet to be discovered, but assumedly a physical copy as created by teleportation would suffice. If, as you say, "the concept of "self" derives from the interaction of electrochemical signals", then re-creating those signals and the context for their interaction would create the same being as the original. It'd be a duplicate, but that is as irrelevant as the fact that the number two in the sentence "2 plus 2 equals 4" appears in two duplicates.
It's quite difficult to put into words. Sorry if I'm a bit vague.;)
There's the problem right there though, it's not the same particles, the result on the other end is NOT you, it's a duplicate.
Obviously, all of this depends on how you define your "self". If you are the particles you're made of, then yeah, you're gone after (Star-Trek-style) teleporting. If you are your self-awareness, your consciousness, then you'll still be you. I'd tend to the latter definition. Parts of your body matter (like your blood) gets destroyed and rebuilt - partly from particles that are/were most definetely not you (like food) - every day. Does that mean that that blood is not yours? Okay, not a very good analogy.
(Obviously, this more a philosophical discussion than anything else. If it is possible at all, none of us will witness human teleportation.)
Bah, bullshit. If anything, eMule improved the network's performance. Client to client source propagation, intelligent corruption handling, the queue rating system - the list goes on and on. Your notion of eMule affecting Overnet performance is ridiculous - eMule doesn't do anything with Overnet, the protocol was never implemented. Maybe you're thinking of mldonkey; that one does have some Overnet support.
As for your choice of P2P, according to my experience, eMule is one of the best "fire and forget" clients. Mostly everything is available, and after you added it to the queue, all you've got to do is wait. It takes a while, but eventually it'll be done. I never used Overnet, but from what I gather it's similar, albeit a bit slower overall. On the other hand, when I used Direct Connect, a computer crash basically meant you were fucked, and if you wanted a quick match of some online game, well tough. The other extreme would be the IRC or, worse, the FXP scene - you're among the first to get stuff, but considering how much time you spend for it, you could just as well get a real job and go the lawful route.
Yes. Just like "matrices" is the plural of "matrix". Not that the words have a similar etymology - according to dictionary.com it's, in the authors' words, "A weak pun on Multics".
Well, you can describe most occurences in nature with an extremely deterministic set of rules, the basic laws of physics everyone learns in school. It's not like a random, "probability-based system" was necessary to understand, simulate or imitate the behaviour he described. Also note that the digital representation in a computer also physically exists in the real world (in whatever way you chose to store them) and is thus influenced by the same "random" effects - although I wouldn't blame any software bugs on quantum phyics.
That said, I also have a hard time creating a connection between what he suggests and the example he gives. Maybe you need better drugs to grok it.;)
Disclaimer: I'm not a physicist, and that likely shows. Heck, I'm not even a qualified computer scientist, yet.
As far as the decoder can see, streams created by any of them were created by the same encoder.
Hm. If it's all the same to the decoder, why did I have to install a codec to get XviD videos to run? Without it, I only got audio and a green screen... Not that I mind, took me 5 minutes to acquire a compiled version of XviD. (Sorry if the question is dumb -- if it helps, I'm eager to learn.;))
Water vapor is a strong greenhouse gas, but it's only problematic if released in very high altitudes. So, the water vapor released by cars is not a problem, the water vapor released by airplanes, however, is.
You're absolutely correct, but I assume to original poster is mistaken in claiming a 1 kbyte key was broken, he probably meant 1 kbit, which would make his calculations correct.:)
The story that dealt with this (as an add-on) isn't even off the main page yet. This is as much a dupe as this comment probably is by the time I press submit. sigh
You totally missed the question. Nobody wonders whether it makes business sense for an ISP to charge for bandwidth, it's rather a question on if there is any technical reason for it, as well. Obviously making money per byte is good for an ISP, but how low could they go per byte before they make a loss?
That's an arbitrary definition of when a problem is serious and when it is not. I don't think everything people protest in the streets is a "serious problem"[1], I do however think that some things people are simply "worried, anxious" about are "serious problems". You might also want to check your definition of the noun "issue" - yours (if no protest than not an issue) seems to be way off. I can't find any requirement for public protest in the A.H. definitions. You are of course welcome to have your own definitions of words and own ways to classify urgent problems. I don't think I agree with them, though.
[1] Whatever exactly that may be - it's obviously highly subjective which taints this whole discussion.
As I pointed out in a reply above and in my original post, I was merely presenting those horribly mangled arguments to point out that there are, in fact, arguments at all. I admitted they're pretty much absurd in the sentence immediatly following them. Rest assured I spent less time inventing them than you did uselessly refuting them. There are sociologic studies which dicuss the topic in-depth, and neither I nor, assumedly, you are competent to discuss the problem in its entirity. Personally, I'm not sure where I stand on the topic, so I'm careful to argue strongly either way. I also try to keep my personal interest as an avid gamer apart from the fact that those games I enjoy, might, in fact, be harmful to children.
That is a pretty broad statement to make. [...] What makes you presume you know the maturity level of any given kid?
It's a totally broad statement and I wouldn't for a minute believe it. In fact, I explicitly say two sentences later that the arguments I present are daft. They're not daft enough to be shrugged away without thought or outright ignored, as the original poster did. If anything, they are horribly oversimplified versions of long studies on the issues. Those studies can not be ignored, either, obviously, but this is just what many gamers do as some sort of misplaced defensive reaction.
On a sidenote, I also played Wolf 3D when I was 9, 10 years old. I'm pretty sure the violence didn't hurt me in any way, but then, self-observation is a difficult thing.
Yep. While saying that Moore displayed a screen feed from Mortal Kombat, and I couldn't hepl but smirk - Midway (developers of MK) is situated in Chicago...
Slashdot Mirror
Oh my god, damn you! Iwanted to make that exact same joke and I felt so original for it.
God hates me.
IMHO, the original 2001 was different. It was, in a way, more than just a movie. Which made it kind of hard to watch for some people, while being very interesting for others (like me). The sequels very "just" normal sci-fi flicks, which is not a bad thing at all, since IMO they were rather good sci-fi flicks.
On a sidenote, I think the recently released Solaris was, at least, trying to be different. Obviously, whether it succeeded or not is a matter of taste, and IIRC there was a large discussion about it here on Slashdot. I missed that, though, not having seen the movie at that point I didn't want to be spoiled. I must say I liked it a lot, after I gave it some time. Extremely moody film, with a fantastic soundtrack. However, as with 2001, I can see many people absolutely "not getting it" - and I mean that in an absolutely neutral way.
(Note: I'm German. We've got problems of our own, but nevertheless:) Agreed, the state of affairs in Italy is pretty terrible. I'm always horrified when I see a TV report on Berlusconi's latest madness, I can't believe stuff like this is happening in 21st century's Europe. I wish some European politicians would speak up (as they did in the case of Austria's Haider - this seems more serious and thus far worse to me), but I assume they can't afford more open internal distress at the moment. Or something. ;) But I think we're getting there, too.
Of course, your laws on marijuana are apparently a bit more advanced than ours.
Oh and I know this is off-topic. I don't care - this is important enough to burn some karma on.
What exactly did dos4gw.exe do, incidently? I always used to wonder.
That's the point. If you abstract the information from the information medium (ie the disks), then you have the same information. Not similar, same. It's put on two seperate disks, but it's still the same information. In the case of two disks, the medium is similar, as well, but you could also put one instance on a disk and carve the other instance into wood. It'd still be the same information.
Likewise, if you create an exact ("bitwise") copy of a human, it will be the same human. How exact this copy has to be has yet to be discovered, but assumedly a physical copy as created by teleportation would suffice. If, as you say, "the concept of "self" derives from the interaction of electrochemical signals", then re-creating those signals and the context for their interaction would create the same being as the original. It'd be a duplicate, but that is as irrelevant as the fact that the number two in the sentence "2 plus 2 equals 4" appears in two duplicates.
It's quite difficult to put into words. Sorry if I'm a bit vague.
Obviously, all of this depends on how you define your "self". If you are the particles you're made of, then yeah, you're gone after (Star-Trek-style) teleporting. If you are your self-awareness, your consciousness, then you'll still be you. I'd tend to the latter definition.
Parts of your body matter (like your blood) gets destroyed and rebuilt - partly from particles that are/were most definetely not you (like food) - every day. Does that mean that that blood is not yours? Okay, not a very good analogy.
(Obviously, this more a philosophical discussion than anything else. If it is possible at all, none of us will witness human teleportation.)
Ah, the glorious days of Audiogalaxy. Rest in peace.
Bah, bullshit. If anything, eMule improved the network's performance. Client to client source propagation, intelligent corruption handling, the queue rating system - the list goes on and on. Your notion of eMule affecting Overnet performance is ridiculous - eMule doesn't do anything with Overnet, the protocol was never implemented. Maybe you're thinking of mldonkey; that one does have some Overnet support.
As for your choice of P2P, according to my experience, eMule is one of the best "fire and forget" clients. Mostly everything is available, and after you added it to the queue, all you've got to do is wait. It takes a while, but eventually it'll be done. I never used Overnet, but from what I gather it's similar, albeit a bit slower overall. On the other hand, when I used Direct Connect, a computer crash basically meant you were fucked, and if you wanted a quick match of some online game, well tough.
The other extreme would be the IRC or, worse, the FXP scene - you're among the first to get stuff, but considering how much time you spend for it, you could just as well get a real job and go the lawful route.
Yes. Just like "matrices" is the plural of "matrix". Not that the words have a similar etymology - according to dictionary.com it's, in the authors' words, "A weak pun on Multics".
Thanks! That explains some of the peculiarities I experienced when dealing with AVIs.
Well, you can describe most occurences in nature with an extremely deterministic set of rules, the basic laws of physics everyone learns in school. It's not like a random, "probability-based system" was necessary to understand, simulate or imitate the behaviour he described. Also note that the digital representation in a computer also physically exists in the real world (in whatever way you chose to store them) and is thus influenced by the same "random" effects - although I wouldn't blame any software bugs on quantum phyics.
;)
That said, I also have a hard time creating a connection between what he suggests and the example he gives. Maybe you need better drugs to grok it.
Disclaimer: I'm not a physicist, and that likely shows. Heck, I'm not even a qualified computer scientist, yet.
Water vapor is a strong greenhouse gas, but it's only problematic if released in very high altitudes. So, the water vapor released by cars is not a problem, the water vapor released by airplanes, however, is.
You're absolutely correct, but I assume to original poster is mistaken in claiming a 1 kbyte key was broken, he probably meant 1 kbit, which would make his calculations correct. :)
The story that dealt with this (as an add-on) isn't even off the main page yet. This is as much a dupe as this comment probably is by the time I press submit. sigh
You totally missed the question. Nobody wonders whether it makes business sense for an ISP to charge for bandwidth, it's rather a question on if there is any technical reason for it, as well. Obviously making money per byte is good for an ISP, but how low could they go per byte before they make a loss?
That's an arbitrary definition of when a problem is serious and when it is not. I don't think everything people protest in the streets is a "serious problem"[1], I do however think that some things people are simply "worried, anxious" about are "serious problems".
You might also want to check your definition of the noun "issue" - yours (if no protest than not an issue) seems to be way off. I can't find any requirement for public protest in the A.H. definitions. You are of course welcome to have your own definitions of words and own ways to classify urgent problems. I don't think I agree with them, though.
[1] Whatever exactly that may be - it's obviously highly subjective which taints this whole discussion.
Concern isn't real unless it's taken to the streets in protest? BS.
Thank you.
Jesus Christ, does anyone here bother to read the post they're replying to, much less the existing replies? Gawd.
As I pointed out in a reply above and in my original post, I was merely presenting those horribly mangled arguments to point out that there are, in fact, arguments at all. I admitted they're pretty much absurd in the sentence immediatly following them. Rest assured I spent less time inventing them than you did uselessly refuting them.
There are sociologic studies which dicuss the topic in-depth, and neither I nor, assumedly, you are competent to discuss the problem in its entirity. Personally, I'm not sure where I stand on the topic, so I'm careful to argue strongly either way. I also try to keep my personal interest as an avid gamer apart from the fact that those games I enjoy, might, in fact, be harmful to children.
On a sidenote, I also played Wolf 3D when I was 9, 10 years old. I'm pretty sure the violence didn't hurt me in any way, but then, self-observation is a difficult thing.
Yep. While saying that Moore displayed a screen feed from Mortal Kombat, and I couldn't hepl but smirk - Midway (developers of MK) is situated in Chicago ...