The more ignorant the general (moronic) public remains of how the internet works, and the more our lives come to depend on internet access, the better.
I'm confused with the second part of your sentence, but I understand what you mean about how as the internet gets more 'mainstream', more morons will be using it. You use some strong language to describe the general public, and I often think that as well. That's my whole point. People need to stop being morons. That's it. I don't care if alot of them are comfortable in their ignorance, or whatever, playtime is over.
The fact is, the internet HAS BECOME mainstream. It's done. Past tense. Party's over. Everyone and their brother is posting shitty blogs, downloading brittney spears songs, and just clogging up the tubes. I'm calling for a massive wake up call.
It's amazing to me how much general knowledge has passed by the wayside. It seems like most men or women over the age of say 65 or so know how to can food, grow a garden, fix a combustion engine, repair clothing, and in general do alot for themselves. I grieve for the passing of these skills. Sure some are obsolete, fine...but they haven't been replaced with any new skills. That's what i'm calling for...if you don't feel like you need to know how to can tomatoes and make preserves, fine, but you damn well better have a basic understanding of the internet and how computers work. Everyone SHOULD know the basics of the internet because everyone is using it now.
it's time to recontextualize and essentially reboot our understanding of privacy, freedom, information, free speech, and similar civil rights
in other words, Americans as a whole need to learn what the internet does, and take a fresh look at how our freedoms are being shit on by the US government. we must demand the same digital freedoms and privacy protection that we have in non-digital media and more.
looking through this wikileaks story and a previous story about FOIA documents that show torture devices the government has been developing motivates me to seek a true change.
the American people must claim their rights or they will be taken
according to TFA, the microwave-induced voices in your head was developed and even demonstrated
except that it could only be heard within a persons head. In one experiment, communication of the words from one to ten using speech modulated microwave energy was successfully demonstrated. Microphones next to the person experiencing the voice could not pick up these sounds. Additional development of this would open up a wide range of possibilities.
I mean...!!! This is, as I see it, proof that the rumors and conspiracy theories about this were based in fact.
Most of the posts on this article have focues on the pain inducing aspects, but damn if this isn't groundbreaking. The government can make voices in your head that only you can hear.
repeat: this FOIA document outlines how the GOVERNMENT CAN PUT VOICES IN YOUR HEAD. This is just insane. Don't tell me for one second that they haven't been developing this further.
the effects of this development cannot be overstated.
I agree, but for some slightly different reasons that I'll get to below.
This can be done for free. That doesn't sell advertising
I agree that the CNN's, MSNBC's, NYT's, et. al are guided in part by the profit motive, but news in and of itself goes far beyond just putting asses in the seats.
The free press, aka the newsmedia, is a *cornerstone* of our country. It is the 4th estate. The newsmedia, at its best, is a check on government power, and the founders of our country understood this, and promoted it.
Now, newsmedia isn't just reporting of facts, it involves editorial decisions. What stories to cover, how to cover them, how long the article should be, who is sent to cover the story, what the headline reads, and where the story is put are all the kind of core decisions that filter the news from a flood of uncategorized facts to a understandable informative piece of journalism. No one has enough time to filter all the day's information for themselves, that's why we have editors.
I am a harsh critic of today's mainstream media, as I imagine you might be. But let's not forget that we need the news done right in order for our country to operate properly. I hate tabloid journalism like Fox News more than most people because I work in the media, and I know how harmful it is for that network to call itself 'news'...it's entertainment, a plastic husk fashioned to resemble true journalism, but inside, instead of facts, there is nothing.
The answer to the question from TFA is definitely 'hell no' partially b/c of the reasons given in your post, but more importantly, because any sort of internet user provided journalism will inevitably need an editorial function for it to be usable.
No one really wants to be 'that guy' in the circle of friends. You know, the one that's always soapboxing about some sort of social injustice, evil corporations, or whatever. However, that's more or less what you need to do, because people MUST understand what is at stake when our rights to privacy are taken away.
Now, you can help your friends understand how their privacy is seriously at risk without being an asshole. It just takes time, and perseverance. I have alot of friends who have very uninformed political opinions. It's rude to just lecture them every time the subject comes up, but there's nothing wrong with speaking the truth to your friends in a palatable, positive way.
The more you mention issues of privacy, and the more well-informed YOU are about the issue, the more it will create top of mind awareness for them. In time, they will see your point. They will encounter a loss of privacy in their own lives, and because you were such a well informed friend, they will have the ability to make the mental connection. You really are doing them a favor.
TFA is being hyperbolic to claim that the purchase bid "alone has some value for Microsoft." Not quite. We're definitely in "a little bit of both" territory here
MS was serious about its announcement about buying yahoo. If yahoo had been openly amenable to the idea, then the deal would be moving forward right now.
The secondary effect (since yahoo was NOT amenable) was to destabilize yahoo, who is a competitor.
So, MS did a cost/benefit actuarial analysis and found that if they bought yahoo for a certain price, then they would benefit. Yahoo doesn't want to sell, but MS still gains b/c of the uncertainty that the bid caused. It was a win/win situation for them. This is how big business works.
It is exciting to me in the sense that it's a small sign that some companies (LG) and the 4 major labels are starting to glimpse the potential of the technology developed 5-10 years ago.
You're right, in everyday use, this announcement means very little. However, I see it as a social worker might see a drug addict. The addict has stopped using cocaine, but still uses acid and meth almost daily. It's a small sign of growth that could come later.
I would accept DRM'd music on my phone if I the ability to download virtually *any* song to virtually *any* cellphone, use it as ringtone, copy it to my computer, and share it. For no extra charge, no 'step up' in my plan, no ad ware, and a large per day song download limit (say 10 songs per day).
All phones would become defacto mp3 players.
Of course I would want the ability to put any file from my laptop onto my phone, just as if it was an external flash drive, and not have those files take DRM.
So, yeah I'm not holding my breath, but this is a small sign of progress.
Designing technology for those who are least able to uptake it
I never mentioned Design! You didn't read my post very well, did you. I said that the HYPE of buzzwords like 'semantic web' or 'web 2.0' is lame, unnecesarily confusing, and annoying. The word hype was the first word in the subject of my post!
Here, I've copied the paragraph from my post that you read incorrectly, emphasis mine
I also hate internet hype. I really fouls things up, more than some want to acknowledge. I try to keep my 64 year old dad educated enough to buy coffee beans on ebay, check email, look at news, etc. Every time he sees 'symantic web' or 'web 2.0' in the media, it just confuses him, and I imagine, people like him who just use the net for basics like online bill pay, ebay, etc. He doesn't need a new buzzword to be motivated to shop online or whatever.
You are a troll...either that, or you are not the sharpest knife in the drawer.
For example, a computer might be instructed to list the prices of flat screen HDTVs larger than 40 inches (1,000 mm) with 1080p resolution at shops in the nearest town that are open until 8pm on Tuesday evenings. Today, this task requires search engines that are individually tailored to every website being searched. The semantic web provides a common standard (RDF) for websites to publish the relevant information in a more readily machine-processable and integratable form
On first read, I like what they are trying to do, but I see so many problems with what they are thinking, and I am not a web designer in any sense.
First, I don't have a problem finding things to buy on the internet. The problem is, signal to noise ratio. There are TOO MANY google results for something like 'plasma tv.' No matter what kind of RDF is used, it will be abused by people who want their URL to show up in your search for whatever reason. I think someone touched on this earlier a little in this thread, but it deserves repeating.
Second, can you imagine a scenario where, say, best buy or fry's uses some 'semantic web' application to do real time web searchable updates of their inventory? That's what would have to happen for this to work, and do something that isn't already possible.
Right now, I can search for 'plasma tv' in google or ebay. Then I can call my local retailers to see if they carry that item, and have it in stock. In order for this system to make any kind of tangible change in the example given, retail chains would have to update their inventories online, whenever a purchase is made, or new items delivered to the store.
It's an interesting idea. I wonder if the retailers would go for it? All it means for them is fewer people comming into their stores...sounds like that would hurt sales.
I also hate internet hype. I really fouls things up, more than some want to acknowledge. I try to keep my 64 year old dad educated enough to buy coffee beans on ebay, check email, look at news, etc. Every time he sees 'symantic web' or 'web 2.0' in the media, it just confuses him, and I imagine, people like him who just use the net for basics like online bill pay, ebay, etc. He doesn't need a new buzzword to motivated to shop online or whatever.
he has the motivation already...silly contrived 'new meida' buzzwords just waste time and confuse people
You can still steal the car with the club on it almost as easily as any other, but it isn't really worth the extra effort if there is a car without the club sitting right next to it
Your club analogy. Ok, you're talking about one club. What I (and TFA) are talking about is putting 1 Club on your car steering wheel vs. putting 15 Clubs on your steering wheel. There's a point of diminishing returns. Then there's a tipping point where security measures are so bloated they actually have *negative* effects. That's the topic under discussion.
Tippett is right on with this, and I'd venture we could go further. Think of how much money is wasted on redundant security and the people to operate it, now add to that all the time and productivity wasted b/c rank and file employees have to navigate under such redundant incumberments.
I honestly feel like 9/11 and it's aftermath has *something* to do with how several sectors of our country are tripping over themselves to implement unnecessary, bloated, counterproductive measures in the name of 'security'.
Existence is insecurity. The only way for something to be 100% secure is for it not to exist.
It's been 11 years since then, and I'm still waiting to be able to purchase all those Nirvana shows
I'm right there with you. I write music reviews, and nirvana will always be the top for me. Granted, I didn't make a website with hundreds of bootlegs, but...man I would have downloaded every last one of them.
I was 15 in 1994, so I caught the tail end. Never had a real chance to see them live. I would cut off one of my toes to see them live.
What did you think of 'With the Lights Out'? I was very happy b/c if you take all the releases (the lame black 'Nirvana' courtney love jackoff included) and the boxed set you have:
1. original track
2. unplugged track
3. live track
for every song in their catalog at minimum. I've listened for over a decade, and I can say that I only really understand about 20% of their catalog as far as the songwriting. Take 'Scentless Apprentice'...it's a 10 line summary of the book Perfume (which also recently was made into a film)! When you discover something like that, it makes you wonder if you've missed anything else in Cobain's other songs.
I wore it snowboarding everyday for 2+ seasons in my chest pocket. Fell on it dozens of times, usually while doing high intensity tricks. A few times I fell on my ribs doing rails and funboxes (hard metal things you do snowboarding tricks on) and the Zen squarely took the impact. Also dropped it from the lift chair a few times. Still use it almost everyday...
More than once, I've regained consciousness from a bad fall to the sounds of Hum, Tool, Modest Mouse, or Chevelle...and for a quick second thought I had entered some sort of tripped-out afterlife...
man, it was awesome to be on the cutting edge of the internet back in the late 90's...so many new things were comming out...I remember when I was introduced to mp3 files, I just loved it...I could make my own mix CDs!...then early napster, any song I could want for free!...Even to this day it seems many people (RIAA) still do not understand just how revolutionary the mp3 file format (and the bandwidth to transfer them) really is
from your other post, i have a feeling you can relate
i forgot this was slashdot and people have egos about when they adopted software...sorry...don't get your panties in a twist
wow...you're calling BS on 10+ year old memories...details are hazy...however, in '97 my campus was one of the first to have campus wide ethernet in every dorm room with good computers provided, so I wouldn't be surprised if I was a fairly early adopter of winamp, i may have heard about it through one of the computer science majors or something...
so, the/. version of my mp3 player history is as follows, for those who really give a shit:
first was Sonique in 1997 to play mp3's, then i remember downloading realplayer and not liking it (don't remember if it was video or audio that I originally downloaded it for, but it sucked for both and had invasive features and adware), THEN in 1998 or '99 I switched to winamp (on the advice of my friend brian) and have been happy with that ever since. Winamp remote is fscking awesome...it streams through my xbox360 perfectly.
Sometimes I wonder if anyone uses realplayer anymore. I haven't given it a second thought since around '97 when I briefly used it before a buddy in the dorm showed me winamp (which I still use). The pop ups, adware, spyware, and invasiveness took such effort to use.
The true number of people who use it must be miniscule. Why would anyone ever use it?
goes horrendously over-budget and ends up being cancelled
I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt, I think you're joking around and vigorously oppose a 'big brother database.'
Others however, say 'who cares, the government is incompetent' and are serious. Those people are misguided at best...total idiots at worst.
If an incompetent carjacker was pointing a loaded gun at you, would you just go about your business and ignore him? Of course not. If something poses a legitimate threat to your freedom or safety, you take it seriously no matter how competent or incompetent you think the perpetrators are.
This policy by the British ID system/database (and its inevitable US counterpart) is going to flush freedom down the toilet. Ironically, when the government overreacts to terrorist threats and takes away freedoms...THE TERRORISTS WIN.
word...I missed out on the next gen RGP's...anything post-16-bit. I played through all the dragon warriors, FF's, and the like for the nintendo platforms, but that's it. I just never got into it. It's not like I studied on those lonely nights, mind you...mostly downloaded music
I played a dreamcast once and I must agree that it was better, from a purely hardware perspective.
it's amazing to me how rich gaming history has become.
I've got an xbox360 now. it was a social decision. all my gamer friends got 360's for Halo and Xbox live, so it was either get the ps3 (which i think is better) and fly solo, or go with the crowd. i've enjoyed playing tiger woods, halo, and fifa online w/ my homies, but I'd like to check out a 'japanese' style RPG...i just don't know if there are any worth playing for the 360 right now.
Parent's subject has to be the lamest thing I've read in the last 3 months on slashdot. However lame his suggestion is, he has a point about this discussion. It is pointless, but fun, and it brings people together...kind of like gaming itself;)
I rank platforms in my mind in sort of an evolutionary chain of what was the best system for its era...the single must have (only dorks and rich introvert kids had two of the same gen systems)...here's my chain:
Atari 2600>NES>Super NES>N64>Playstation 2>???
Sorry Sega...tech stats, cool commercials, and having fanboys don't get you in my list. Sega was cool, but I felt sorry for the guys who had one (any of them) because almost everyone else had the comparable nintendo. I mean, how long can you play Sonic the Hedgehog alone while all the other kids are playing SFII turbo? It's nothing personal, sega...
Playstation 1 didn't make it b/c it represented the triumph of the kind of mindless gaming that I have always hated, Nintendo still ruled at that time. Remeber the kids in the dorm on their PS1's? Playing some lame excuse for a 3D pvp fighter while all the cool kids were playing 4 player bond or mario kart...seriously... PS2, however, wins in my book b/c gamecube kind of gave up on anyone over the age of 14 with that tiny controller.
I agree with your main point, in that real soldiers have a self-preservation priority that changes significantly if robots are used instead.
My concern is that they still have lethal capability. If you have time read my other post. Basically I do not think a robot can be programmed to make any kind of proper decision about when to use lethal force. I'm pro technology, UAV's (in general), and even armed UAV's (if they are only used in hot battle, not for law enforcement). I'm just against the autonomous part.
I just cannot envision any kind of program or list of rules that would be anywhere near sufficient to guide an autonomous robot with lethal capability. It's too complicated of a decision.
If we stick with non-lethal, or less than lethal, I would support it.
This paper is a bad omen. We must develop a consensus alternative to the kind of warfare described in this paper.
Here's my contention: humans make choices about when to use lethal force better than machines.
Why? Because only the human mind itself can possibly formulate a choice for when lethal action against a human is justified in the moment of decision.
Why? Because decisions regarding human conflict require logic AND intuition. Machines are only capable of doing logic.
Please read on, if you are interested in how I arrived at that conclusion...
Here are a few basics from the report that I agree with.
1. The military will continue to search for and develop more technology to accomplish its mission.
2. That trend has led to development of unmanned, autonomous, lethal warfighting capabilities (robots)
From there, the report has several fundamental flaws.
1. Incorrect understanding and definition of "war"...philosophers, warriors, politcians, and historians throw the word "war" around so much, it has lost all specificity of meaning. All definitions fail. Human conflict is the central issue. What kind of human conflict should be considered "war"? What is the difference between war and police action? The article took some handy bulleted 'rules of engagement' and used them as basic suppositions for its arguments, when in actual human conflict, those 'rules' are guides at best.
2. Flow charts cannot describe ethical or moral behavior. The academic structures of philosophy, ethics, psychology, etc. have created bloated unnecessary theories of human behavior that can be simply understood by economic terms. We will never be able to describe 'morals' or 'ethics' as actually practiced in everyday life because actual human choices have too many factors to account for, and what those factors are is a matter of perspective. It is speculation at best. Economic theory is best to describe/predict human behavior at any given event, and it is not highly reliable.
---
We all know 'what could possibly go wrong' when machines are made with the ability to use lethal force in a human conflict setting. It's a staple of recent science fiction.
Because of the two reasons listed above (i tried to be concise), inevitably, these lethal machines will fail to be better than humans. Of course we can game the system, and make the benchmarks 'fit' to force results that say they have been successful, but in the context of human conflict resolution, they will be worse than the humans they are replacing.
Human beings are the most complicated things in the *known* universe. Nothing is more complicated. Trying to quantify human behavior and use that as a framework for computer programs to make lethal choices is doomed to failure because we do not understand ourselves and why we do things. At least that understanding is not 'known' in any quantifiable way. Sure, theories predict some behavior, but we set the expectations for them low (that's another rant about academia...)
Intuition is by definition unquantifiable.
I propose:
1. We stop developing autonomous technology designed for lethal action, and instead focus our research (and $) towards technology that AUGMENTS humans. In other words, build better suits of armor instead of making something to replace us on the field (some posts above also advocate this and I agree with them).
2. Significantly increase the compensation for our military at ALL levels (even the president). Think about it. Our system uses $$$ as an incentive for behavior. The report lists several survey results given to soldiers and marines about traditional rules of war. The answers were not encouraging, and the report uses those results to make the claim that autonomous could do it better. Wrong...our soldiers do so poorly on those surveys because the current applicant pool for our military is mostly low-skilled and undereducated. If we paid the military significantly more, we wou
It's a false choice...tv or the web...it's about types of media and the method of delivery. "TV" is just video and audio. Take it a little further and you could say traditional ideas of "TV" involve sending video and audio content via broadcast radio waves. But, with the introduction of VHS home video, the traditional method started to erode.
The differences are narrowing, but for now, there's definite differences.
So we agree...it's just a matter of time before the gap narrows and traditional TV and the internet merge as methods of delivering Audio/Video content.
The differences are narrowing, but for now, there's definite differences.
"computers will never do anything we don't tell them to do"
so let's talk about this statement. For the purposes of this little discussion, you can consider me a philosopher. Which is another way of saying I only understand the basic basics of programming. But I can make some relevant points in a discussion about AI...
I am going to stick with my statement. I do not know the jargon, but even AI that 'learns' was still programed to learn in a certain way by a human who had to look at several options for programing a computer to learn, and then pick the best one. At the core, it's still decisions made by a human that cause/predict AI behavior.
In that sense, the largest sense, AI (computers...whathaveyou) will not do anything a human does not at some point, 'tell' or maybe enable it to do.
C'mon, be a sport and give me an example...but don't jargon it up too much, i only have so much time to look things up on wikipedia.
Slashdot Mirror
it's time to recontextualize and essentially reboot our understanding of privacy, freedom, information, free speech, and similar civil rights
in other words, Americans as a whole need to learn what the internet does, and take a fresh look at how our freedoms are being shit on by the US government. we must demand the same digital freedoms and privacy protection that we have in non-digital media and more.
looking through this wikileaks story and a previous story about FOIA documents that show torture devices the government has been developing motivates me to seek a true change.
the American people must claim their rights or they will be taken
I mean...!!! This is, as I see it, proof that the rumors and conspiracy theories about this were based in fact.
Most of the posts on this article have focues on the pain inducing aspects, but damn if this isn't groundbreaking. The government can make voices in your head that only you can hear.
repeat: this FOIA document outlines how the GOVERNMENT CAN PUT VOICES IN YOUR HEAD. This is just insane. Don't tell me for one second that they haven't been developing this further.
the effects of this development cannot be overstated.
I agree, but for some slightly different reasons that I'll get to below.
I agree that the CNN's, MSNBC's, NYT's, et. al are guided in part by the profit motive, but news in and of itself goes far beyond just putting asses in the seats.
The free press, aka the newsmedia, is a *cornerstone* of our country. It is the 4th estate. The newsmedia, at its best, is a check on government power, and the founders of our country understood this, and promoted it.
Now, newsmedia isn't just reporting of facts, it involves editorial decisions. What stories to cover, how to cover them, how long the article should be, who is sent to cover the story, what the headline reads, and where the story is put are all the kind of core decisions that filter the news from a flood of uncategorized facts to a understandable informative piece of journalism. No one has enough time to filter all the day's information for themselves, that's why we have editors.
I am a harsh critic of today's mainstream media, as I imagine you might be. But let's not forget that we need the news done right in order for our country to operate properly. I hate tabloid journalism like Fox News more than most people because I work in the media, and I know how harmful it is for that network to call itself 'news'...it's entertainment, a plastic husk fashioned to resemble true journalism, but inside, instead of facts, there is nothing.
The answer to the question from TFA is definitely 'hell no' partially b/c of the reasons given in your post, but more importantly, because any sort of internet user provided journalism will inevitably need an editorial function for it to be usable.
You ask a good question...
No one really wants to be 'that guy' in the circle of friends. You know, the one that's always soapboxing about some sort of social injustice, evil corporations, or whatever. However, that's more or less what you need to do, because people MUST understand what is at stake when our rights to privacy are taken away.
Now, you can help your friends understand how their privacy is seriously at risk without being an asshole. It just takes time, and perseverance. I have alot of friends who have very uninformed political opinions. It's rude to just lecture them every time the subject comes up, but there's nothing wrong with speaking the truth to your friends in a palatable, positive way.
The more you mention issues of privacy, and the more well-informed YOU are about the issue, the more it will create top of mind awareness for them. In time, they will see your point. They will encounter a loss of privacy in their own lives, and because you were such a well informed friend, they will have the ability to make the mental connection. You really are doing them a favor.
TFA is being hyperbolic to claim that the purchase bid "alone has some value for Microsoft." Not quite. We're definitely in "a little bit of both" territory here
MS was serious about its announcement about buying yahoo. If yahoo had been openly amenable to the idea, then the deal would be moving forward right now.
The secondary effect (since yahoo was NOT amenable) was to destabilize yahoo, who is a competitor.
So, MS did a cost/benefit actuarial analysis and found that if they bought yahoo for a certain price, then they would benefit. Yahoo doesn't want to sell, but MS still gains b/c of the uncertainty that the bid caused. It was a win/win situation for them. This is how big business works.
It is exciting to me in the sense that it's a small sign that some companies (LG) and the 4 major labels are starting to glimpse the potential of the technology developed 5-10 years ago.
You're right, in everyday use, this announcement means very little. However, I see it as a social worker might see a drug addict. The addict has stopped using cocaine, but still uses acid and meth almost daily. It's a small sign of growth that could come later.
I would accept DRM'd music on my phone if I the ability to download virtually *any* song to virtually *any* cellphone, use it as ringtone, copy it to my computer, and share it. For no extra charge, no 'step up' in my plan, no ad ware, and a large per day song download limit (say 10 songs per day).
All phones would become defacto mp3 players.
Of course I would want the ability to put any file from my laptop onto my phone, just as if it was an external flash drive, and not have those files take DRM.
So, yeah I'm not holding my breath, but this is a small sign of progress.
you are definitely a troll...this 'discussion' is over
I never mentioned Design! You didn't read my post very well, did you. I said that the HYPE of buzzwords like 'semantic web' or 'web 2.0' is lame, unnecesarily confusing, and annoying. The word hype was the first word in the subject of my post!
Here, I've copied the paragraph from my post that you read incorrectly, emphasis mine
You are a troll...either that, or you are not the sharpest knife in the drawer.
On first read, I like what they are trying to do, but I see so many problems with what they are thinking, and I am not a web designer in any sense.
First, I don't have a problem finding things to buy on the internet. The problem is, signal to noise ratio. There are TOO MANY google results for something like 'plasma tv.' No matter what kind of RDF is used, it will be abused by people who want their URL to show up in your search for whatever reason. I think someone touched on this earlier a little in this thread, but it deserves repeating.
Second, can you imagine a scenario where, say, best buy or fry's uses some 'semantic web' application to do real time web searchable updates of their inventory? That's what would have to happen for this to work, and do something that isn't already possible.
Right now, I can search for 'plasma tv' in google or ebay. Then I can call my local retailers to see if they carry that item, and have it in stock. In order for this system to make any kind of tangible change in the example given, retail chains would have to update their inventories online, whenever a purchase is made, or new items delivered to the store.
It's an interesting idea. I wonder if the retailers would go for it? All it means for them is fewer people comming into their stores...sounds like that would hurt sales.
I also hate internet hype. I really fouls things up, more than some want to acknowledge. I try to keep my 64 year old dad educated enough to buy coffee beans on ebay, check email, look at news, etc. Every time he sees 'symantic web' or 'web 2.0' in the media, it just confuses him, and I imagine, people like him who just use the net for basics like online bill pay, ebay, etc. He doesn't need a new buzzword to motivated to shop online or whatever.
he has the motivation already...silly contrived 'new meida' buzzwords just waste time and confuse people
Your club analogy. Ok, you're talking about one club. What I (and TFA) are talking about is putting 1 Club on your car steering wheel vs. putting 15 Clubs on your steering wheel. There's a point of diminishing returns. Then there's a tipping point where security measures are so bloated they actually have *negative* effects. That's the topic under discussion.
Tippett is right on with this, and I'd venture we could go further. Think of how much money is wasted on redundant security and the people to operate it, now add to that all the time and productivity wasted b/c rank and file employees have to navigate under such redundant incumberments.
I honestly feel like 9/11 and it's aftermath has *something* to do with how several sectors of our country are tripping over themselves to implement unnecessary, bloated, counterproductive measures in the name of 'security'.
Existence is insecurity. The only way for something to be 100% secure is for it not to exist.
I'm right there with you. I write music reviews, and nirvana will always be the top for me. Granted, I didn't make a website with hundreds of bootlegs, but...man I would have downloaded every last one of them.
I was 15 in 1994, so I caught the tail end. Never had a real chance to see them live. I would cut off one of my toes to see them live.
What did you think of 'With the Lights Out'? I was very happy b/c if you take all the releases (the lame black 'Nirvana' courtney love jackoff included) and the boxed set you have:
1. original track
2. unplugged track
3. live track
for every song in their catalog at minimum. I've listened for over a decade, and I can say that I only really understand about 20% of their catalog as far as the songwriting. Take 'Scentless Apprentice'...it's a 10 line summary of the book Perfume (which also recently was made into a film)! When you discover something like that, it makes you wonder if you've missed anything else in Cobain's other songs.
yeah...i could talk about Nirvana forever
Creative Zen Nano is also pretty tough
I wore it snowboarding everyday for 2+ seasons in my chest pocket. Fell on it dozens of times, usually while doing high intensity tricks. A few times I fell on my ribs doing rails and funboxes (hard metal things you do snowboarding tricks on) and the Zen squarely took the impact. Also dropped it from the lift chair a few times. Still use it almost everyday...
More than once, I've regained consciousness from a bad fall to the sounds of Hum, Tool, Modest Mouse, or Chevelle...and for a quick second thought I had entered some sort of tripped-out afterlife...
Thanks Zen Nano!
it happens my friend
man, it was awesome to be on the cutting edge of the internet back in the late 90's...so many new things were comming out...I remember when I was introduced to mp3 files, I just loved it...I could make my own mix CDs!...then early napster, any song I could want for free!...Even to this day it seems many people (RIAA) still do not understand just how revolutionary the mp3 file format (and the bandwidth to transfer them) really is
from your other post, i have a feeling you can relate
i forgot this was slashdot and people have egos about when they adopted software...sorry...don't get your panties in a twist
/. version of my mp3 player history is as follows, for those who really give a shit:
wow...you're calling BS on 10+ year old memories...details are hazy...however, in '97 my campus was one of the first to have campus wide ethernet in every dorm room with good computers provided, so I wouldn't be surprised if I was a fairly early adopter of winamp, i may have heard about it through one of the computer science majors or something...
so, the
first was Sonique in 1997 to play mp3's, then i remember downloading realplayer and not liking it (don't remember if it was video or audio that I originally downloaded it for, but it sucked for both and had invasive features and adware), THEN in 1998 or '99 I switched to winamp (on the advice of my friend brian) and have been happy with that ever since. Winamp remote is fscking awesome...it streams through my xbox360 perfectly.
Sometimes I wonder if anyone uses realplayer anymore. I haven't given it a second thought since around '97 when I briefly used it before a buddy in the dorm showed me winamp (which I still use). The pop ups, adware, spyware, and invasiveness took such effort to use.
The true number of people who use it must be miniscule. Why would anyone ever use it?
I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt, I think you're joking around and vigorously oppose a 'big brother database.'
Others however, say 'who cares, the government is incompetent' and are serious. Those people are misguided at best...total idiots at worst.
If an incompetent carjacker was pointing a loaded gun at you, would you just go about your business and ignore him? Of course not. If something poses a legitimate threat to your freedom or safety, you take it seriously no matter how competent or incompetent you think the perpetrators are.
This policy by the British ID system/database (and its inevitable US counterpart) is going to flush freedom down the toilet. Ironically, when the government overreacts to terrorist threats and takes away freedoms...THE TERRORISTS WIN.
word...I missed out on the next gen RGP's...anything post-16-bit. I played through all the dragon warriors, FF's, and the like for the nintendo platforms, but that's it. I just never got into it. It's not like I studied on those lonely nights, mind you...mostly downloaded music
I played a dreamcast once and I must agree that it was better, from a purely hardware perspective.
it's amazing to me how rich gaming history has become.
I've got an xbox360 now. it was a social decision. all my gamer friends got 360's for Halo and Xbox live, so it was either get the ps3 (which i think is better) and fly solo, or go with the crowd. i've enjoyed playing tiger woods, halo, and fifa online w/ my homies, but I'd like to check out a 'japanese' style RPG...i just don't know if there are any worth playing for the 360 right now.
Parent's subject has to be the lamest thing I've read in the last 3 months on slashdot. However lame his suggestion is, he has a point about this discussion. It is pointless, but fun, and it brings people together...kind of like gaming itself ;)
I rank platforms in my mind in sort of an evolutionary chain of what was the best system for its era...the single must have (only dorks and rich introvert kids had two of the same gen systems)...here's my chain:
Atari 2600>NES>Super NES>N64>Playstation 2>???
Sorry Sega...tech stats, cool commercials, and having fanboys don't get you in my list. Sega was cool, but I felt sorry for the guys who had one (any of them) because almost everyone else had the comparable nintendo. I mean, how long can you play Sonic the Hedgehog alone while all the other kids are playing SFII turbo? It's nothing personal, sega...
Playstation 1 didn't make it b/c it represented the triumph of the kind of mindless gaming that I have always hated, Nintendo still ruled at that time. Remeber the kids in the dorm on their PS1's? Playing some lame excuse for a 3D pvp fighter while all the cool kids were playing 4 player bond or mario kart...seriously... PS2, however, wins in my book b/c gamecube kind of gave up on anyone over the age of 14 with that tiny controller.
Ok, back to my trade study
I agree with your main point, in that real soldiers have a self-preservation priority that changes significantly if robots are used instead.
My concern is that they still have lethal capability. If you have time read my other post. Basically I do not think a robot can be programmed to make any kind of proper decision about when to use lethal force. I'm pro technology, UAV's (in general), and even armed UAV's (if they are only used in hot battle, not for law enforcement). I'm just against the autonomous part.
I just cannot envision any kind of program or list of rules that would be anywhere near sufficient to guide an autonomous robot with lethal capability. It's too complicated of a decision.
If we stick with non-lethal, or less than lethal, I would support it.
This paper is a bad omen. We must develop a consensus alternative to the kind of warfare described in this paper.
Here's my contention: humans make choices about when to use lethal force better than machines.
Why? Because only the human mind itself can possibly formulate a choice for when lethal action against a human is justified in the moment of decision.
Why? Because decisions regarding human conflict require logic AND intuition. Machines are only capable of doing logic.
Please read on, if you are interested in how I arrived at that conclusion...
Here are a few basics from the report that I agree with.
1. The military will continue to search for and develop more technology to accomplish its mission.
2. That trend has led to development of unmanned, autonomous, lethal warfighting capabilities (robots)
From there, the report has several fundamental flaws.
1. Incorrect understanding and definition of "war"...philosophers, warriors, politcians, and historians throw the word "war" around so much, it has lost all specificity of meaning. All definitions fail. Human conflict is the central issue. What kind of human conflict should be considered "war"? What is the difference between war and police action? The article took some handy bulleted 'rules of engagement' and used them as basic suppositions for its arguments, when in actual human conflict, those 'rules' are guides at best.
2. Flow charts cannot describe ethical or moral behavior. The academic structures of philosophy, ethics, psychology, etc. have created bloated unnecessary theories of human behavior that can be simply understood by economic terms. We will never be able to describe 'morals' or 'ethics' as actually practiced in everyday life because actual human choices have too many factors to account for, and what those factors are is a matter of perspective. It is speculation at best. Economic theory is best to describe/predict human behavior at any given event, and it is not highly reliable.
---
We all know 'what could possibly go wrong' when machines are made with the ability to use lethal force in a human conflict setting. It's a staple of recent science fiction.
Because of the two reasons listed above (i tried to be concise), inevitably, these lethal machines will fail to be better than humans. Of course we can game the system, and make the benchmarks 'fit' to force results that say they have been successful, but in the context of human conflict resolution, they will be worse than the humans they are replacing.
Human beings are the most complicated things in the *known* universe. Nothing is more complicated. Trying to quantify human behavior and use that as a framework for computer programs to make lethal choices is doomed to failure because we do not understand ourselves and why we do things. At least that understanding is not 'known' in any quantifiable way. Sure, theories predict some behavior, but we set the expectations for them low (that's another rant about academia...)
Intuition is by definition unquantifiable.
I propose:
1. We stop developing autonomous technology designed for lethal action, and instead focus our research (and $) towards technology that AUGMENTS humans. In other words, build better suits of armor instead of making something to replace us on the field (some posts above also advocate this and I agree with them).
2. Significantly increase the compensation for our military at ALL levels (even the president). Think about it. Our system uses $$$ as an incentive for behavior. The report lists several survey results given to soldiers and marines about traditional rules of war. The answers were not encouraging, and the report uses those results to make the claim that autonomous could do it better. Wrong...our soldiers do so poorly on those surveys because the current applicant pool for our military is mostly low-skilled and undereducated. If we paid the military significantly more, we wou
Walker Texas Ranger sucks
You're both right and wrong.
It's a false choice...tv or the web...it's about types of media and the method of delivery. "TV" is just video and audio. Take it a little further and you could say traditional ideas of "TV" involve sending video and audio content via broadcast radio waves. But, with the introduction of VHS home video, the traditional method started to erode.
provable that video and audio content will increasingly be delivered via the internet, and it is conceivable that internet broadcasting will replace traditional broadcasting altogether. Instead of the new Survivor episodd (or whatever...it's all trash) being broadcast at a certain day and time, it could simply be posted on the internet at the same day/time. It's simply a matter of bandwidth. Which leads me to:
So we agree...it's just a matter of time before the gap narrows and traditional TV and the internet merge as methods of delivering Audio/Video content. The differences are narrowing, but for now, there's definite differences.
so let's talk about this statement. For the purposes of this little discussion, you can consider me a philosopher. Which is another way of saying I only understand the basic basics of programming. But I can make some relevant points in a discussion about AI...
I am going to stick with my statement. I do not know the jargon, but even AI that 'learns' was still programed to learn in a certain way by a human who had to look at several options for programing a computer to learn, and then pick the best one. At the core, it's still decisions made by a human that cause/predict AI behavior.
In that sense, the largest sense, AI (computers...whathaveyou) will not do anything a human does not at some point, 'tell' or maybe enable it to do.
C'mon, be a sport and give me an example...but don't jargon it up too much, i only have so much time to look things up on wikipedia.