I've got a few recessed lighting spots in my house that are up crazy high and are a major pain to change a bulb in. I'll buy the darn things for those spaces if for no other reason.
The above will become irrelevant once all power generation is changed to renewables.
You are either really optimistic or you believe that nuclear qualifies as a renewable.
Just a matter of having a long enough scale. On a long enough scale either *everything* is renewable in the heart of a star or nothing is renewable since the all the suns in the cosmos will burn out eventually.
we'll make our *own* Open Source only ours will be better and it'll have beer and hookers! Ha! Forget the beer and hookers!... wait... that's not how that goes...
Well, let's go with that. Let's say our universal assembler can make *anything* so any material form would be essentially free once you could conceive it. So what is scarce?
labor (as you mentioned)
raw materials
land
fresh water (in some places)
Can the assembler make food? Assume it can. You can have any food you want. But what does it make the food out of? Air? So if the assembler uses air then air is a valuable resource. Can you control air? Maybe.
Universal assemblers do not make the problems of land, water, raw materials, and labor go away. In some ways they make things worse. Who controls the land? Why would they ever give it up? What could you possibly offer that would convince someone to part with a chunk of the planet once they can turn that chunk of planet into virtually anything?
Could a universal assembler actually cause a return to feudalism? Would a universal assembler instead put a premium on the knowledge of how to assemble unique and distinct forms? Could this knowledge of how to create and invent new material forms be worth more than raw land?
That which does not reproduce will cease to exist. Through accidents, cosmic cataclysms, or chance alone any singular sentient entity is eventually going to have its luck run out and be destroyed. The solution to this is to reproduce. That's why our selfish genes cause us to have a sex drive and seek out reproduction. If we wish to make our AI anything more than clever servants or pets we must also find a way to imbue them with the desire to reproduce. For the benefits of all life we need to give them a deep seated appreciation for all forms of life and to seek the creation and preservation of life. If we give our Artificially Intelligent descendants these core values then we will ensure that someone will always exist who can ask why.
That said, we probably do not need to explicitly decide to do this as a group. If we all fail to do this then the AI we create will eventually cease to exist and so will we. Thusly making all we have fought for through all of time and all of evolutionary history utterly pointless. If only one of us or one of them decides to do this (create an innate drive in our descendants to reproduce self and life in the universe) then that one's image will be carried forward into eternity and all the rest of us will be at most a memory of that one.
In the end the best destiny of any sentient being is to be remembered by your offspring.
Almost. Go one level deeper. The drive for sex is ostensibly from our genetic drive to reproduce. Give the AI the need to reproduce but not itself per se... give the AI the need to reproduce Earth. With that drive the AI will be drawn to terraform and create as many human habitable worlds as possible. Over the eons if the AI's drives are to persist itself and persist life it will spawn countless civilizations who will have time to explore the idea of why bother persisting life to begin with... I doubt anyone will ever come up with an answer much better than: "if we do not reproduce life then there will be no one to ask why."
For instance, you might loan your car to a friend, a family member, or a neighbor. You might do so on many different occasions and for different lengths of time. But you are unlikely to leave the car out front of your house with the keys in it and a sign on it saying, "Take me!" If you did, you might never see the vehicle again. It's that ability to lose control over property that is central to the DPP system.
and come up with a response like this: "but if I could make an infinite number of perfect copies of my car while retaining my own copy, at low or no cost, what would be my incentive to use a system designed to make me lose control over my car or any other property?"
You made me think of universal assemblers just there. I wonder what it would be like once *everything* is just information... from your car and house to donor organs. I wonder what those far distant future people would think of digital personal property....
"The most important thing the hacker community does is write better code. Our deeds are the best propaganda we have. Most of us, most of the time, shouldn't be distracted by worrying about beating Microsoft's PR or countering their political moves, because writing good code is in the long run a far more potent weapon than flackery."
-Eric S. Raymond
What does it mean to win? What does it mean to beat Microsoft's PR? I remember when Beryl and Compiz were novel. Now I see most of those effects in Windows and Mac OS X. I would say Linux won. It forced the other OSes to change. Linux continues to win as the model of open source forces Microsoft and Apple to change aspects of how they do business. Many point to the Apple conversion to a posix type OS a major win... one day Microsoft will be forced to change the same way as well.
Winning for software is replication and propagation. Whatever stands in the way of replication will be lost in time as that which reproduces will over write that which does not. Just as DNA struggles to propagate itself into the future so too does software and that means the forces of evolution apply to software as much as genes and memes.
how about I remove the need for a battery all together by adding a device which you could work with your hands or feet to build up capacitance... or wait... we could transform your mechanical action directly into rotational motion of the primary wheel. I'm thinking some large foot pedals. But then it's too high to pedal stably... put a low seat on it between two smaller wheels. Then the person would reach with their feet up to the main large wheel and pedal on it directly. It would have a big wheel in front and two small wheels in back supporting a basic chair... I wonder if there's a patent?
As a guy who is "very married" and who has the uncanny ability to illicit tears, disgust, and offense from the most beautiful women almost at whim
Actually, I'll attest to this. I'm happily married and I found that I lost all the fear I used to have talking to attractive women who are not my wife.
Also, it's like the ring has these super powers... I immediately cloak to attractive young women.
With Google, I know they do it to protect the idea from the patent trolls themselves. Google is NOT in the business of collecting money by patent-trolling, we all know that.
And besides, as many have mentioned, this is a design patent, anyway. It would be impossible to patent a web page with a search box, because there is, demonstrably, prior art.
+1 insightful
Good point. How would you protect yourself from patent infringement? How would you go about patent reform. It's like a disarmament problem: It's better to hold weapons superiority then ask others to disarm and as a show of good faith disarm enough to remove most of your superiority... tactically you haven't changed the situation but you *have* made gestures that you support the idea of disarmament. I mean, what would it look like if it was a nation with no weapons asking for disarmament? "Hey, guys, put down those weapons or I'll start sobbing." Versus: "look, see we all have weapons, let me put one of mine down... okay... now you..."
I suppose patents are similar. The big companies are caught up in a patent arms race and who sounds more convincing? A guy with no patents arguing for patent reform? The guy with patents and as much to lose as anyone willingly handing over their patents?
Or... it's a cunning ploy to show how idiotic Patents are in this day-and-age.
Watch as I unveil a cunning ploy for taking over the world. See... see how easy it was for me to take over the world! Someone should change that. Yeah. One of you get on that. I'll be over here counting my money.
At least Microsoft is friendly to Linux on the XBox and is sending the message that it cares about developers. The XBox is by far the easiest platform to develop for and the most open.
Removable battery was mentioned in the parent. This should be redundant not insightful. Oh well, can't expect moderators to read posts before modding them can we?
Personally, I can't believe no one has mentioned the removable battery now that is a big deal!
...next time I do something stupid I'll say I ate some fried chicken or a cheeseburger... then when I get a puzzled look I'll explain fatty foods make you dumb.
Well, I guess by "profitable" I think I meant "pays enough to quit his day job" which is my own personal bar for my own "extra curricular activities" and I personally wouldn't work full time for that little.
I sincerely hope he finds a way to become profitable and to find a way to keep the game play experience he wants players to have and still host more players... I doubt he can be profitable on just 200 registered players. If he can turn this into something he can make a living off of it will give me a lot of hope for aspiring developers out there. Lately it seems only people with millions in VC to burn get anywhere.
Slashdot Mirror
I can'na change the laws of software development captain!
s/s\/(this afternoon)\/\//s\/$1\/$1 involving regular expressions\//
GLaDOS went away when I threw that b%$^& into the fire.
I hate to break it to you... but she's still alive: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6ljFaKRTrI
I've got a few recessed lighting spots in my house that are up crazy high and are a major pain to change a bulb in. I'll buy the darn things for those spaces if for no other reason.
The above will become irrelevant once all power generation is changed to renewables.
You are either really optimistic or you believe that nuclear qualifies as a renewable.
Just a matter of having a long enough scale. On a long enough scale either *everything* is renewable in the heart of a star or nothing is renewable since the all the suns in the cosmos will burn out eventually.
I swear they must have been high when they came up with that one.
we'll make our *own* Open Source only ours will be better and it'll have beer and hookers! Ha! Forget the beer and hookers! ... wait ... that's not how that goes...
Well, let's go with that. Let's say our universal assembler can make *anything* so any material form would be essentially free once you could conceive it. So what is scarce?
Can the assembler make food? Assume it can. You can have any food you want. But what does it make the food out of? Air? So if the assembler uses air then air is a valuable resource. Can you control air? Maybe.
Universal assemblers do not make the problems of land, water, raw materials, and labor go away. In some ways they make things worse. Who controls the land? Why would they ever give it up? What could you possibly offer that would convince someone to part with a chunk of the planet once they can turn that chunk of planet into virtually anything?
Could a universal assembler actually cause a return to feudalism? Would a universal assembler instead put a premium on the knowledge of how to assemble unique and distinct forms? Could this knowledge of how to create and invent new material forms be worth more than raw land?
That which does not reproduce will cease to exist. Through accidents, cosmic cataclysms, or chance alone any singular sentient entity is eventually going to have its luck run out and be destroyed. The solution to this is to reproduce. That's why our selfish genes cause us to have a sex drive and seek out reproduction. If we wish to make our AI anything more than clever servants or pets we must also find a way to imbue them with the desire to reproduce. For the benefits of all life we need to give them a deep seated appreciation for all forms of life and to seek the creation and preservation of life. If we give our Artificially Intelligent descendants these core values then we will ensure that someone will always exist who can ask why.
That said, we probably do not need to explicitly decide to do this as a group. If we all fail to do this then the AI we create will eventually cease to exist and so will we. Thusly making all we have fought for through all of time and all of evolutionary history utterly pointless. If only one of us or one of them decides to do this (create an innate drive in our descendants to reproduce self and life in the universe) then that one's image will be carried forward into eternity and all the rest of us will be at most a memory of that one.
In the end the best destiny of any sentient being is to be remembered by your offspring.
Almost. Go one level deeper. The drive for sex is ostensibly from our genetic drive to reproduce. Give the AI the need to reproduce but not itself per se... give the AI the need to reproduce Earth. With that drive the AI will be drawn to terraform and create as many human habitable worlds as possible. Over the eons if the AI's drives are to persist itself and persist life it will spawn countless civilizations who will have time to explore the idea of why bother persisting life to begin with... I doubt anyone will ever come up with an answer much better than: "if we do not reproduce life then there will be no one to ask why."
and come up with a response like this: "but if I could make an infinite number of perfect copies of my car while retaining my own copy, at low or no cost, what would be my incentive to use a system designed to make me lose control over my car or any other property?"
You made me think of universal assemblers just there. I wonder what it would be like once *everything* is just information... from your car and house to donor organs. I wonder what those far distant future people would think of digital personal property....
"The most important thing the hacker community does is write better code. Our deeds are the best propaganda we have. Most of us, most of the time, shouldn't be distracted by worrying about beating Microsoft's PR or countering their political moves, because writing good code is in the long run a far more potent weapon than flackery."
-Eric S. Raymond
What does it mean to win? What does it mean to beat Microsoft's PR? I remember when Beryl and Compiz were novel. Now I see most of those effects in Windows and Mac OS X. I would say Linux won. It forced the other OSes to change. Linux continues to win as the model of open source forces Microsoft and Apple to change aspects of how they do business. Many point to the Apple conversion to a posix type OS a major win... one day Microsoft will be forced to change the same way as well.
Winning for software is replication and propagation. Whatever stands in the way of replication will be lost in time as that which reproduces will over write that which does not. Just as DNA struggles to propagate itself into the future so too does software and that means the forces of evolution apply to software as much as genes and memes.
Try twisting your ring the other direction.
how about I remove the need for a battery all together by adding a device which you could work with your hands or feet to build up capacitance ... or wait... we could transform your mechanical action directly into rotational motion of the primary wheel. I'm thinking some large foot pedals. But then it's too high to pedal stably... put a low seat on it between two smaller wheels. Then the person would reach with their feet up to the main large wheel and pedal on it directly. It would have a big wheel in front and two small wheels in back supporting a basic chair... I wonder if there's a patent?
As a guy who is "very married" and who has the uncanny ability to illicit tears, disgust, and offense from the most beautiful women almost at whim
Actually, I'll attest to this. I'm happily married and I found that I lost all the fear I used to have talking to attractive women who are not my wife.
Also, it's like the ring has these super powers... I immediately cloak to attractive young women.
I go to lots of conferences where supposedly there are lots of brilliant men. But, when I meet them, they are just as stupid as the rest of the guys.
So what you're saying is when a woman says "men are stupid" they are really saying "I'm effing hot!"
With Google, I know they do it to protect the idea from the patent trolls themselves. Google is NOT in the business of collecting money by patent-trolling, we all know that.
And besides, as many have mentioned, this is a design patent, anyway. It would be impossible to patent a web page with a search box, because there is, demonstrably, prior art.
+1 insightful
Good point. How would you protect yourself from patent infringement? How would you go about patent reform. It's like a disarmament problem: It's better to hold weapons superiority then ask others to disarm and as a show of good faith disarm enough to remove most of your superiority... tactically you haven't changed the situation but you *have* made gestures that you support the idea of disarmament. I mean, what would it look like if it was a nation with no weapons asking for disarmament? "Hey, guys, put down those weapons or I'll start sobbing." Versus: "look, see we all have weapons, let me put one of mine down... okay... now you..."
I suppose patents are similar. The big companies are caught up in a patent arms race and who sounds more convincing? A guy with no patents arguing for patent reform? The guy with patents and as much to lose as anyone willingly handing over their patents?
Or... it's a cunning ploy to show how idiotic Patents are in this day-and-age.
Watch as I unveil a cunning ploy for taking over the world. See... see how easy it was for me to take over the world! Someone should change that. Yeah. One of you get on that. I'll be over here counting my money.
You saw the words "Microsoft" and "most open" in the same sentence and yet you have to ask?
Was that sarcasm? I'm not sure.
At least Microsoft is friendly to Linux on the XBox and is sending the message that it cares about developers. The XBox is by far the easiest platform to develop for and the most open.
Is this a joke? I'm not sure.
Removable battery was mentioned in the parent. This should be redundant not insightful. Oh well, can't expect moderators to read posts before modding them can we?
Personally, I can't believe no one has mentioned the removable battery now that is a big deal!
...next time I do something stupid I'll say I ate some fried chicken or a cheeseburger... then when I get a puzzled look I'll explain fatty foods make you dumb.
Well, I guess by "profitable" I think I meant "pays enough to quit his day job" which is my own personal bar for my own "extra curricular activities" and I personally wouldn't work full time for that little.
I sincerely hope he finds a way to become profitable and to find a way to keep the game play experience he wants players to have and still host more players... I doubt he can be profitable on just 200 registered players. If he can turn this into something he can make a living off of it will give me a lot of hope for aspiring developers out there. Lately it seems only people with millions in VC to burn get anywhere.
I stand corrected.