I think it's symptomatic that the hype have been going on for so long now, that people have resorted to hyperbole ("These guys are in way over their heads") and YELLING, in order for their arguments to be discerned admidst the frenzy.
Relax. Take a deep breath. Try not to succumb to the mass hysteria.
I'm from Europe and the unspoken truth here is that the EU officials are severely corrupt.
Well, I'm from the EU too, and your statement is absolute horseshit. It's true that there have been corruption scandals in the EU, but very few would actually believe that EU officials are corrupt as a general rule. On the other hand there is a lot of scepticism about the whole EU project within the member states, and opponents of the union are fighting to turn back the clock, every step of the way. It's not difficult to see why some of them would try and motivate there resentment with claims of unbounded corruption.
Your claim that the case against MS is the result of bribery, is downright ridiculous. It is perhaps politically motivated, but that's a different thing all together. And remember that the EU court is independant just like any other court, so even if your claim were true, it wouldn't change the fact that MS has been convicted by an independant court of law.
No it isn't. As you would know if you'd ever thought about it. I put it to you that manipulation is inherently selfless. Which makes about as much sense as what you postulate.
Like a dog on a couch, they know better.
So, a domesticated dog can be immoral? Can all dogs? What about non-domesticated children?
Actually LEGO is a danish acronym for "Leg godt". Which means the same thing. It's bad enough that the norwegian usurpers have stolen our North Sea oil. But they won't get away with stealing our beloved LEGO! As a dane a can only take so much from a former colony of ours.
This isn't what Apple does...it just sells its products at such high wholesale costs that resellers can't possibly sell below "Suggested" retail price and make a profit.
I don't know how it works in the USA, but in Denmark where I live, that practice is considered anti competitive and is illegal. Not that that is stopping companies like B&O from doing it anyway since it is so hard to prove them guilty of it.
You are a crying breed. You want a phone to make calls with. Well maybe i didn't RTFA, but I'm pretty sure that you can do that with this phone too. And it will be a long time (=never) before you can't listen to music on an iPod. You are part of race that always seem to believe that technology peaked some few years past and everything since has been a degradation. I can almost imagine you poo-pooing SMS when it first appeared: "It's a phone dammit! Why does it need to send and receive text messages?". And before that you propably complained about the decision to put a display on the same phones: "It's for talking in. Why would I want a display that just consumes precious battery life?"
I for one am happy to see the effort that is put into integrating all thes gadgets. Everytime they succeed it is one less gadget for me to carry around. I would like them to integrate the keys to my front door with my wallet, my phone, my calender and my portable music player. Then I will just need one pocket. Sure, some of these devices are quite frankensteinian (is that a word I wonder) and useless. But that's how progress works: Trial and error.
I don't understand why you have got anything against these devices. If you are happy with the ones you have got it's not like you are forced to upgrade. The ones you have will not wear out faster, and when they eventually do you still have the choice to buy any one of about a gazillion phones, used or new. And just maybe someone will ion the mean time have stumpled upon the one killer feature that redeems all the failed avenues.
Finally I find it amusing that you talk about the iPod as if was some indispencable class of product that you had gotten familiar with from a lifetime of use. It's a product that's less than 5 years old! And I wouldn't be surprised if I discovered that you were one of the intial nay-sayers: "Why would anyone need 5 GB of music in their pocket? You can get essentially the same fuctionality from 20$ analogous walkman".
Re:First, human self-knowledge
on
AI in Sci-Fi
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
So what's the research-program you're suggesting? Try random combinations of circuitry, and when one shows interesting behavior, duplicate and modify it many times?
How about trying out different programs that resemble intelligence? You would only have to understand an insects mind to make a program as intelligent as an insect. Once you've done that you can try something harder. And along the way you might learn something that would make further understanding come easier.
Another thing: Just because it has the brainpower of a human being doesn't mean it has to resemble a human mind. One could argue that dolphins have the brain power of a human being. But perhaps it would be easier for humans to understand the dolphin mind than their own. Perhaps it won't.
Anyways I don't believe that humanity will go about creating an über A.I. just to see if we can do it. It would be created to some end, and unless you can guess what that would be it is really very difficult to speculate on what such an A.I. would be like. I think most SciFi writers understand that. For example SkyNet in Terminator was created to be a paranoid defence system on purpose. It didn't need another agenda to wipe out humanity. I think that is what the author of the article calls a programming error, since it actually had a human agenda. Likewise you could imagine an A.I. with the brainpower equal to or greater than human that monitors the traffic of a large urban area. Since that would be the only concept in which it perceived the world it is hard to imagine that it would be remotely human.
Lastly: Even if a greater than human brainpower, human mind-like intelligence did get created, it would still only be one, and we would be many. And there are presumably many people in existence with the brainpower of say Einstein, yet very few actual Einsteins. Something to think about.
I can tell that you're an american. In truth this seems like a discussion that concerns mostly americans. While I agree with some of your points, most of what you say seem rather alien to me. I live in the EU where most countries either has been or are currently being governed by social democrats. We've got this idea called solidarity. This is the idea that even though we're different we should all try to pull together. As a consequence most european countries have free healthcare. The only people in Denmark (where I come from) I know of that would ever consider paying for health treatments are profesional sportspeople who need to be ready in the shortest possible amount of time and so will pay to go to a private clinic or hospital (of which there are very few).
You seem to think that people who are "perfect" shouldn't be punished for others imperfections. We believe that if at all possible people shouldn't be punished for their imperfections either, since it is precious few who are indeed perfect.
I will finish by mentioning that inquirering about an employees credit history is I believe illegal in Denmark. And I know for sure that to some extent it is even illegal to ask for an employees criminal record (although for many kinds of jobs it is standard and legal).
I am not talking about what I (in lack of the correct medical term) call physological addictiveness of neither of these drugs. In terms of that cocain, I grant you, is not so scary.
But the fact is that because of the overwhelming feelings of joy you feel when you use cocain for the first time (you actually feel like a much, much better version of yourself) It is very hard to resist the temptation to try it again.
Of course you may not be addicted after trying it just once, and there are propably lots of people who have tried it just that one time.
But cocain has something in terms of temptation going for it, that for examble heroin has not. It has been pointed out that taken under medical supervision, one can survive and even function in a normal life with a heroin habbit. But coke beats that. Coke let's people fuction twice as good as they would without the drug! Everything is better on coke.
The reason coke is considered more addictive even than heroin is that of all the drugs you decide to try out "only once", it is the one that has the highest propability of becoming an addiction.
Check out the price of caffein. Caffein is more addictive than cocain
Where do you get that?! Cocain is one of the most addictive drugs there is. Even though heroin is more physiquely addictive, cocain is worse because you can get psychologicaly addicted (I hope I'm using the right terms, though propably I'm not) from trying it just once. A person who has just one cup of coffee or even ten cups would, I imagine, not have a lot of trouble shaking the habbit.
That having been said, I do enjoy watching slashdotters squirm in their pants when accused of hipocrisy.
I don't get this ceaseless talk about hipocrisy. The people who read this forum should know that there are as many many opinions (at least) as there are slashdotters. Yet som posters seem to think that slashdot has some kind of united voice and that it is hence suspicious whenever it is caught in a selfcontradiction.
I can appreciate the point you're making, however I would say that you're taking something to extremes to dramatize.
That's my point exactly. I firmly believe, that any extreme is bad. In this case too much surveilance or too much police. I agree with you that there has to be a balance. It's just a matter of how to balance things so that they, as you say, lean towards the positive side. That is by the way a much more interesting but also more difficult discussion.
How do you feel about other human beings being in the area, all ready to watch you intently the moment you do something outside of the norm? That is quite simply the reality of being in a public space. Do you scream for everyone to turn their gaze the other way lest they capture some of the light beams that have reflected off you?
How would you feel if those "other human beings" all were police officers, "all ready to watch you intently the moment you do something outside of the norm"? I bet you wouldn't like it, even if you didn't plan or mean to break the law. That's the reason the term police state has got such a negative ring to it.
Like it or not, cameras are extremely effective criminal deterrence...
Yes, sure they are. So are a bunch of other things that you definitly wouldn't like. I won't give you any examples, but if you use your imagination, I'm certain that you could come up with a few yourself. You will be surprised to find out that many of them have been thought of before and used. (Hint: Think former east block countries).
Like it or not, the prize one must pay to live in a safer society is often that of personal freedom. How much of that you are willing to pay is what you have to ask yourself.
If the manufacturers are the ones directly responsible for shipping the guns, then heck yeah, fry them. They're trying to do business in a jurisdiction where their product is as illegal as crack cocaine. I've got no problem with the good ol' fashioned corporate death penalty here.
The only trouble is that it doesn't work that way. It is for examble illegal for anyone living in the EU to import drugs like steroids or viagra from the US. These are commonly advertised on the Internet. But since these drugs are legal (some of them at least - I think) in the US, european courts can't procecute the responsible companies (unless the drugs were shiped from inside of the EU, in which case they could shut that part of the operation down). Now, if the reverse was true, the US could and would try to procecute the companies under US jurisdiction.This will only matter though if the companies in question have any kinds of financial values tied in the US because these are the values they stand to loose if the refuse to recognize US jurisdiction.
Lucas had however received quite a bit of criticism about the morality of the Star Wars universe after Episode I came out. Episode I made things look like the universe was one in which the only way to be great was to be born great. Young girls were born into monarchy and being given authority based on their royal birth alone (not just "Queen Amidala" but also "Princess Leia"). The Jedi were all genetically superior (high midiclorian counts). The Force was only strong for Luke Skywalker because he was the son of Darth Vader, not because he was our lonely hero. And the annoying kid Anakin was born by some kind of Immaculate Conception. Lucas altered things in Episode II deliberately to change those perceptions.
That's the kind of thing that makes me want to scream! It all happened "a long time ago"---It's supposed to be a fairy tale! And why is it moraly wrong to have a universe in which it is necessary to be born great to be great? I'll tell you why: Because it contradicts the American Dream. And that's the reason that I want to scream out loud. I am NOT american, and to anyone like me it feels like an assault of the mind to be made to believe that americans have seen the light and everyone else has not! (I will now go and eat som fruit to raise my bloodsugar).
The RIAA's Rosen, however, sees some of this as bogus logic. ''It's in vogue to diss record companies. That gives fans the license to say, `Well, we're only hurting record companies. We're not hurting the artists,''' she says. ''People sometimes think `If an artist is well known enough and I've heard of them, they have a lot of money and I don't care. And if an artist is unknown, they ought to be grateful to me for spreading their name around.' So they create this sort of rationalization.''
I admit to having used "this sort of rationalization". So I'm wondering why she doesn't proceed by explaining to me what's wrong with it. I know of course why it's wrong in the sense of the law, but it seems to me like she's appealing to my sense of morality?
My morality tells that if I have to pay 20 dollars for something, it has to be worth 20 dollars to me.
Example:
A couple of years back I bought the Americana album by Offspring because I thought I might like it. I'd seen the hit video (pretty fly) on MTV and thought it was cool. I have listened to that album less than 10 times since I bought it, and it has not been worth the price I payed. Today I'd just download the mp3. But as matters are I feel like I've been cheated.
Example 2:
I collect Nick Cave albums. I would never dream of just downloading the tracks or get them burned on a CD at a friends. To me these albums are special--collectors items so to speak (even if they're not rare). They are easily worth the price I paid for them.
Hmm. I hope this made sense. I'm not used to writing in english and so it may not be as clear as I would like it to be. And anyway this is the first time I've ever posted.
Slashdot Mirror
I think it's symptomatic that the hype have been going on for so long now, that people have resorted to hyperbole ("These guys are in way over their heads") and YELLING, in order for their arguments to be discerned admidst the frenzy.
Relax. Take a deep breath. Try not to succumb to the mass hysteria.
I'm from Europe and the unspoken truth here is that the EU officials are severely corrupt.
Well, I'm from the EU too, and your statement is absolute horseshit. It's true that there have been corruption scandals in the EU, but very few would actually believe that EU officials are corrupt as a general rule. On the other hand there is a lot of scepticism about the whole EU project within the member states, and opponents of the union are fighting to turn back the clock, every step of the way. It's not difficult to see why some of them would try and motivate there resentment with claims of unbounded corruption.
Your claim that the case against MS is the result of bribery, is downright ridiculous. It is perhaps politically motivated, but that's a different thing all together. And remember that the EU court is independant just like any other court, so even if your claim were true, it wouldn't change the fact that MS has been convicted by an independant court of law.
[...]since manipulatioin is inherently selfish.
No it isn't. As you would know if you'd ever thought about it. I put it to you that manipulation is inherently selfless. Which makes about as much sense as what you postulate.
Like a dog on a couch, they know better.
So, a domesticated dog can be immoral? Can all dogs? What about non-domesticated children?
Originally, Lego = Lek Godt. That's Norwegian, directly translated "Play Well".
Actually LEGO is a danish acronym for "Leg godt". Which means the same thing. It's bad enough that the norwegian usurpers have stolen our North Sea oil. But they won't get away with stealing our beloved LEGO! As a dane a can only take so much from a former colony of ours.
This isn't what Apple does...it just sells its products at such high wholesale costs that resellers can't possibly sell below "Suggested" retail price and make a profit.
I don't know how it works in the USA, but in Denmark where I live, that practice is considered anti competitive and is illegal. Not that that is stopping companies like B&O from doing it anyway since it is so hard to prove them guilty of it.
You are a crying breed. You want a phone to make calls with. Well maybe i didn't RTFA, but I'm pretty sure that you can do that with this phone too. And it will be a long time (=never) before you can't listen to music on an iPod. You are part of race that always seem to believe that technology peaked some few years past and everything since has been a degradation. I can almost imagine you poo-pooing SMS when it first appeared: "It's a phone dammit! Why does it need to send and receive text messages?". And before that you propably complained about the decision to put a display on the same phones: "It's for talking in. Why would I want a display that just consumes precious battery life?"
I for one am happy to see the effort that is put into integrating all thes gadgets. Everytime they succeed it is one less gadget for me to carry around. I would like them to integrate the keys to my front door with my wallet, my phone, my calender and my portable music player. Then I will just need one pocket. Sure, some of these devices are quite frankensteinian (is that a word I wonder) and useless. But that's how progress works: Trial and error.
I don't understand why you have got anything against these devices. If you are happy with the ones you have got it's not like you are forced to upgrade. The ones you have will not wear out faster, and when they eventually do you still have the choice to buy any one of about a gazillion phones, used or new. And just maybe someone will ion the mean time have stumpled upon the one killer feature that redeems all the failed avenues.
Finally I find it amusing that you talk about the iPod as if was some indispencable class of product that you had gotten familiar with from a lifetime of use. It's a product that's less than 5 years old! And I wouldn't be surprised if I discovered that you were one of the intial nay-sayers: "Why would anyone need 5 GB of music in their pocket? You can get essentially the same fuctionality from 20$ analogous walkman".
So what's the research-program you're suggesting? Try random combinations of circuitry, and when one shows interesting behavior, duplicate and modify it many times?
How about trying out different programs that resemble intelligence? You would only have to understand an insects mind to make a program as intelligent as an insect. Once you've done that you can try something harder. And along the way you might learn something that would make further understanding come easier.
Another thing: Just because it has the brainpower of a human being doesn't mean it has to resemble a human mind. One could argue that dolphins have the brain power of a human being. But perhaps it would be easier for humans to understand the dolphin mind than their own. Perhaps it won't.
Anyways I don't believe that humanity will go about creating an über A.I. just to see if we can do it. It would be created to some end, and unless you can guess what that would be it is really very difficult to speculate on what such an A.I. would be like. I think most SciFi writers understand that. For example SkyNet in Terminator was created to be a paranoid defence system on purpose. It didn't need another agenda to wipe out humanity. I think that is what the author of the article calls a programming error, since it actually had a human agenda. Likewise you could imagine an A.I. with the brainpower equal to or greater than human that monitors the traffic of a large urban area. Since that would be the only concept in which it perceived the world it is hard to imagine that it would be remotely human.
Lastly: Even if a greater than human brainpower, human mind-like intelligence did get created, it would still only be one, and we would be many. And there are presumably many people in existence with the brainpower of say Einstein, yet very few actual Einsteins. Something to think about.
I can tell that you're an american. In truth this seems like a discussion that concerns mostly americans. While I agree with some of your points, most of what you say seem rather alien to me. I live in the EU where most countries either has been or are currently being governed by social democrats. We've got this idea called solidarity. This is the idea that even though we're different we should all try to pull together. As a consequence most european countries have free healthcare. The only people in Denmark (where I come from) I know of that would ever consider paying for health treatments are profesional sportspeople who need to be ready in the shortest possible amount of time and so will pay to go to a private clinic or hospital (of which there are very few).
You seem to think that people who are "perfect" shouldn't be punished for others imperfections. We believe that if at all possible people shouldn't be punished for their imperfections either, since it is precious few who are indeed perfect.
I will finish by mentioning that inquirering about an employees credit history is I believe illegal in Denmark. And I know for sure that to some extent it is even illegal to ask for an employees criminal record (although for many kinds of jobs it is standard and legal).
I am not talking about what I (in lack of the correct medical term) call physological addictiveness of neither of these drugs. In terms of that cocain, I grant you, is not so scary.
But the fact is that because of the overwhelming feelings of joy you feel when you use cocain for the first time (you actually feel like a much, much better version of yourself) It is very hard to resist the temptation to try it again.
Of course you may not be addicted after trying it just once, and there are propably lots of people who have tried it just that one time. But cocain has something in terms of temptation going for it, that for examble heroin has not. It has been pointed out that taken under medical supervision, one can survive and even function in a normal life with a heroin habbit. But coke beats that. Coke let's people fuction twice as good as they would without the drug! Everything is better on coke.The reason coke is considered more addictive even than heroin is that of all the drugs you decide to try out "only once", it is the one that has the highest propability of becoming an addiction.
Check out the price of caffein. Caffein is more addictive than cocain
Where do you get that?! Cocain is one of the most addictive drugs there is. Even though heroin is more physiquely addictive, cocain is worse because you can get psychologicaly addicted (I hope I'm using the right terms, though propably I'm not) from trying it just once. A person who has just one cup of coffee or even ten cups would, I imagine, not have a lot of trouble shaking the habbit.
Caffeine more addictive than cocain? Puh-lease!
That having been said, I do enjoy watching slashdotters squirm in their pants when accused of hipocrisy.
I don't get this ceaseless talk about hipocrisy. The people who read this forum should know that there are as many many opinions (at least) as there are slashdotters. Yet som posters seem to think that slashdot has some kind of united voice and that it is hence suspicious whenever it is caught in a selfcontradiction.
I think you have a lot to learn about government and taxes, my friend. Where, pray tell, do you think these 'state governments' get money from?
I think he already answered that, if you'd care to read the next couple of lines of his post.
I can appreciate the point you're making, however I would say that you're taking something to extremes to dramatize.
That's my point exactly. I firmly believe, that any extreme is bad. In this case too much surveilance or too much police. I agree with you that there has to be a balance. It's just a matter of how to balance things so that they, as you say, lean towards the positive side. That is by the way a much more interesting but also more difficult discussion.
How do you feel about other human beings being in the area, all ready to watch you intently the moment you do something outside of the norm? That is quite simply the reality of being in a public space. Do you scream for everyone to turn their gaze the other way lest they capture some of the light beams that have reflected off you?
How would you feel if those "other human beings" all were police officers, "all ready to watch you intently the moment you do something outside of the norm"? I bet you wouldn't like it, even if you didn't plan or mean to break the law. That's the reason the term police state has got such a negative ring to it.
Like it or not, cameras are extremely effective criminal deterrence...
Yes, sure they are. So are a bunch of other things that you definitly wouldn't like. I won't give you any examples, but if you use your imagination, I'm certain that you could come up with a few yourself. You will be surprised to find out that many of them have been thought of before and used. (Hint: Think former east block countries).
Like it or not, the prize one must pay to live in a safer society is often that of personal freedom. How much of that you are willing to pay is what you have to ask yourself.
If the manufacturers are the ones directly responsible for shipping the guns, then heck yeah, fry them. They're trying to do business in a jurisdiction where their product is as illegal as crack cocaine. I've got no problem with the good ol' fashioned corporate death penalty here.
The only trouble is that it doesn't work that way. It is for examble illegal for anyone living in the EU to import drugs like steroids or viagra from the US. These are commonly advertised on the Internet. But since these drugs are legal (some of them at least - I think) in the US, european courts can't procecute the responsible companies (unless the drugs were shiped from inside of the EU, in which case they could shut that part of the operation down). Now, if the reverse was true, the US could and would try to procecute the companies under US jurisdiction.This will only matter though if the companies in question have any kinds of financial values tied in the US because these are the values they stand to loose if the refuse to recognize US jurisdiction.
That's the kind of thing that makes me want to scream! It all happened "a long time ago"---It's supposed to be a fairy tale! And why is it moraly wrong to have a universe in which it is necessary to be born great to be great? I'll tell you why: Because it contradicts the American Dream. And that's the reason that I want to scream out loud. I am NOT american, and to anyone like me it feels like an assault of the mind to be made to believe that americans have seen the light and everyone else has not! (I will now go and eat som fruit to raise my bloodsugar).
/Adam Lett
I admit to having used "this sort of rationalization". So I'm wondering why she doesn't proceed by explaining to me what's wrong with it. I know of course why it's wrong in the sense of the law, but it seems to me like she's appealing to my sense of morality?
My morality tells that if I have to pay 20 dollars for something, it has to be worth 20 dollars to me.
Example:
A couple of years back I bought the Americana album by Offspring because I thought I might like it. I'd seen the hit video (pretty fly) on MTV and thought it was cool. I have listened to that album less than 10 times since I bought it, and it has not been worth the price I payed. Today I'd just download the mp3. But as matters are I feel like I've been cheated.
Example 2: I collect Nick Cave albums. I would never dream of just downloading the tracks or get them burned on a CD at a friends. To me these albums are special--collectors items so to speak (even if they're not rare). They are easily worth the price I paid for them.
Hmm. I hope this made sense. I'm not used to writing in english and so it may not be as clear as I would like it to be. And anyway this is the first time I've ever posted.
-- Adam.