I much prefered the movie, as the book had, for me, a complete lack of any sympathetic characters. I didn't care at all about Deckard, Rachael or the replicants in the book.
As is often the case with Sc-Fi novels, great ideas, but not actually (IMHO) a good novel
Still, the quality of the movie doesn't make it more faithful, I don't think faithfullness is that subjective, but not that important either.
I think a big problem is most people's experience of Java apps is they look horrible and run slowly.
Maybe you can write fast, nice looking Java apps, but until that becomes more common, users and developers will stay away becuase of the perception of them.
We use some Java apps at work, and I've yet to use one that start quickly, and doesn't have horrible looking interface.
While I'm sure some "software sweat shops" exist, a lot of people doing outsourced IT work in India have good working conditions, even by western standards.
I know its popular to think of the people doing the work as being exploited, helps people think of outsourcing as bad, but many of them are not being exploited. They are paid less, but the cost of living is much, much lower in India than the US (or UK).
I wonder if the UK gets a net gain from being in Europe, I really do.
It depends what you mean by net gain. In terms of the EU as a political initution, we give more to it than we receive. However, we also do more than half our trade with Europe, and being inside the EU is increabably advantageous when dealing with EU coutnties in terms of trade and tarrifs.
So, even though our governement is a net contributor to the EU budget, ecomonmically speaking the UK has huge gains being in Europe. In fact leaving the EU would have a very negative economic unless we could leave politically but negotiaite some sort of trade deal with the EU. A lot of international companies would leave the UKL for an EU country otherwise, and British companies that trade with Europe (over half our overseas trade remember) would suffer.
The EU has its problems, lack of democracy being one of them, but Britain ain't so Great anymore, and we have to face economic realities. Personally I'd rather we try to take a hand in directing Europe than follow the US wherever it goes, and I don't say that to be anti-US.
Scientist assume things stay the same, unless they have some evidence to the contrary. This is just Occam's Razor (Entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity).
If you don't have evidence the constants change, and they are called constants becuase they have always been observed to be the same, don't start assuming they have been without evidence. It isn't about faith, you assume it has not changed based on the observed facts that nobody has seen it change. If there is evidence of change, you rethink your assumptions.
Sometimes new ideas do take a while to displace old ones, as there is indeed resitance to paradigm shifts in science. Sometimes for the all too human reason of disliking change and what you thought you knew being swept away. It's better than jumping on any new theory or assuming things never observed to change have done becuase it is convenient to current thinking.
If the basic assumptions are wrong, they will eventually be disproved under the weight of evidence, but they should only be thrown out at that point.
If the IT staff aren't keeping the Windows machines and firewall secured, why would the keep Linux machines up to date? It isn't like Linux doesn't need patching. If Linux was more popular, it would get attacked more, and get compromised when people didn't keep it up to date.
Simply having Linux run hospitals doesn't help, having secured systems in hospitals does. MS is part of the problem, sure, but switching from it isn't a magic cure.
The security issue are usually known becuase by the time an exploit comes out it is already patched. The patch Sasser expoloited was patched before it came out. If you keep patches up to date, run AV software, firewall and anti-spyware it runs just fine.
You'd need to run the same stuff on any computer connected to the net, whatever the OS. MS certainly can improve on the speed patches come out, and default configuation, but I'm not aware of any major virus using a non-patchable exploit. The problem isn't accepting the shortcoming of Windows, its looking after the Windows machines properly. These days Windows machines can be very stable if correclty maintained.
If another OS, like Linux, overtook Windows in popularity, would people suddenly start keeping upto date with patches and looking after it properly? I rather doubt it.
If it is like most large software projects I have worked on, code doesn't get in until it is reviewed, QA tested and signed off. The QA tester is the one responsible for making sure nothing goes into releases with bugs, not the programmer.
The average user doesn't have any knowledge of UNIX systems. Unlike the average Slashdotter, for them a computer is just some thing they use, they don't keep track of computing trends, or know or care what a few percent of computer users are using.
The average user doesn't know the Mac has UNIX underneath either, or care. They just want a computer that works and looks nice. Apples success is in marketing and design, not building on something most people buying Macs don't know or care about.
Not according to the Declaration of Independence [ushistory.org]. "...they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights..." It says that governments only exist "to secure these rights," not to bestow them, implying that the rights themselves exist outside the framework of any governing body.
But this was written by a group of people founding a governing body. If they had written different rights down, you would have ended up with different ones. The governing body didn't even apply these rights to all people. Your treating that statement of them coming from a Creator as a matter of fact, but there is nothing to suggest it is (and plenty to suggest it isn't, unless you assume there is a Creator and the writers of that were divinely inspired).
I think human rights are very important, but it is self-delusion to think that they come from anywhere other than humans, and that ideas about rights have and will change over time and culture. They are nothing more (or less) than how some people think people should be treated. People in power enforce them, or take them away, and people will always have to fight to have them, or hold onto them.
As for "arbitrary interference with his privacy" I must admit, I don't conisder being on CCTV in a city centre, or having my liscence plate photed when driving down a public road does either. I live in the UK, and used to drive into London weekly, so I'm used to both. I know nobody who care, or even thinks, about CCTV cameras in city centres, or modifies their behvaiour becuase of them (although presumably some criminals do). I don't feel my privacy has been interfered with at all, although I do see how some technologies could in the future.
I don't subscribe to the slipperly slope argument though. I don't see the need to remove useful technologies becuase in the future something could be built on them that is problematic. I do think it is important to dicuss potential abuses in the future so they can be avoided.
but whether the Founding Fathers would have forbidden them if they had any idea that they were possible.
Maybe it's not being from the US, but I wonder why you care what a bunch of dead guys, who were certainly not infalible, would think about it? How about what the people living now, who are affected by it, think? Isn't that much more important and relevant?
Does it really have an infinte numeber of states? Or if you keep breaking it down, does it eventually end up as just very, very small descrete states?
Time isn't infinately divisible (that paradox with the guy shooting the arrow at the turtle), IANAP (I Am Not A Physicist) but I'm pretty sure when you get down to the quantum level particles have descrete steps of energy, and you can't get values in between.
Maybe someone more knowledgable on the subject can comment. Is there a medium a wave can travel through that really has an infinite number of states?
You could easliy beleive in a soul that continues after the body, but the consciousness dies with it, or has some other fate. Look at medeaval ideas about the soul/spirit, or cultures that beleived in multi-part souls.
That's some pretty strong evidence that consciousness is not entirely brain-based.
No, that's strong evidence the brain does other things as well, and has some redundancy. It does nothing to suggest the consciousness in any way, shape or form exists outside or beyond the brain.
How did you get from genius to geeks anyway? Assuming you actually do have "plenty of data" to back up your claim, of which I'm intensely sceptical, even if it were true for a genius, why should it matter for a run of the mill geek?
Why if you find a "special" woman do you have to avoid others? Geeks aren't allowed to have female friends? Are they supposed to avoid any female friends of their partner?
I'm sure some geniuses are self-destructive or unstable, many do seem to have emotional problems, and some are in relationships. I bet you can't prove any causation though, or that these people wouldn't suffer the same without the relationship.
Still, you carry on avoiding those women, it sounds like they may be better off that way anyway.
This could be changed. Technologies have gone from public (non-private) to private and protected before. Consider the switch from party lines to private lines in the telephone system. Now that we live in the 21st century shouldn't we demand a similar switch for email?
You can send encypted email right now, and you certainly should have the right to send encypted email. That is a long way from demanding all email must be protected. How about we let people choose? Or do you want to choose for them?
Bugs per 1000 lines has nothing to do with the design.
It's like one person saying "the plot of this novel is crap" and someone replying "that's not true, it has hardly any gramitical or spelling mistakes".
I can't imagine why the parent was modded as insightful (except MySQL fanboys?)
America has been more than happy to assits in the overthorwing of democracies when it suits them, like they elect a socailist government (Chillie), or they are planning to nationalise the oil reserves (Iran).
It even happliy has allies like the brutal regimes in Uzbekistan because it suits their purpose.
Now all countries act like this, in their own national interests. However, you can't claim any sort of moral high ground for American foreign policy, sure it has removed some brutal dictators, but has been happy to help install and work with others.
Backing brutal and unpopular regimes abroad may be way a lot of the rest of the world does not see America as some guardian of freedom.
I don't know what enterprises you are familiar with, but from my experience those with more centralised IT policies simply won't let you set up a box, and certainly not have a department go Linux. It simply won't be allowed on the corporate network, and won't get any support.
Small business probably has it much easier, as it is often much less formal and people can just go ahead and do things.
I'm not particullarly pro-Windows, but I doubt that Linux will be 30% of workstations. Maybe it will, but I'm certainly not convinced it is inevitable. Right now Linux only sometimes is as easy to use as Windows on the desktop, and Windows still leaves a lot to be desired. Maybe it will catch up and suprass it, but don't assume it is inevitable.
Most people just don't have the skills to "change it yourself", and for the investment it would take to aquire them the rational thing to do is just put some money down for a closed source program that does what they want.
If open source developers only ever want to write for themselves that isn't a problem, but it seems a chunk of the community want open source to spread, for economic or philisophical reasons. If you want that, gotta think of the non-techie users.
Supernatural does not mean "things we don't yet understand", there is a term for those, and it is "things we don't yet understand". Any scientist worth anything will readily admit there is plenty of things we don't understand.
To describe something as supernatural instantly carries very strong connotations of magic, miracle, or some paranormal force that is not just unknown science, but something other than it and beyond it
As for quacks, they are just that. By sheer chance a few will be end up being partially right about something becuase so many people have so many crazy ideas. Thing is, you can't tell the ones who are right by chance from the rest without working through it. It is as important to know why you are right as being right, those scientists "scaling the rocky face" are doing the important work.
I don't know where you get the idea a studio album is a copy of a liver performance, becuase it is not, it is a very distinct thing. I love going to live gigs, but I also love listening to music around the house, in the car or at work.
When I do, I generally don't want to listen to live tracks, but well prodcued studio stuff. It probably took weeks or even months for the band, the producers and other skilled technicians to create it, and it is a different creation from recording a live gig. They aren't "diluting" their work, they are make a different creation.
The thing about copies is, it is cheap to make the second one, but that first one cost a lot of money. Now, I'm no fan of the RIAA, and I think copyright needs a major overhaul, but someone has to pay for that original creation. If you don't want to, that's certainly your right, don't buy the album.
I strongly disagree with the notion distibuting it devalues it somehow. That non-live copy is worth something to me, and a lot of others. Like all economics the value of it is what we put on it as much as the cost of distributing. I've spent a lot of money in the past getting hold of rare or import CDs becuase they have a song I really want. Given the enjoyment I have had for listening to it, it has usually been good value for money in my opinion, and being my money that is the only one that matters.
You also seem to think most artisits make money from royalties, they don't. Since the record companies take all their expenses out of the artist's royalies, only very successful artists make much on record sales. Read some stuff by Janis Ian or Courtney Love, or previous Slashdot stories. Most artisit only make their money by the touring and live gigs, so your rant is somewhat misdirected.
I mean the screenplay is already written for you, just shoot the damn thing.
You do know adapting a novel for the cinema takes a lot of work? A novel is not screenplay, it is not "already written for you", in many cases not even close. What works in one medium does not automatically work in another.
I can't beleive claiming otherwise is considered insightful
Slashdot Mirror
I much prefered the movie, as the book had, for me, a complete lack of any sympathetic characters. I didn't care at all about Deckard, Rachael or the replicants in the book.
As is often the case with Sc-Fi novels, great ideas, but not actually (IMHO) a good novel
Still, the quality of the movie doesn't make it more faithful, I don't think faithfullness is that subjective, but not that important either.
Numerous of which, like Dr. David Kelly, who were working on genetic-specific weapons for the Isreali war machine. Interesting, no?
Do you have an actual source for that? Without it it just sounds like the ravings of the tinfoil hat brigade.
As for arguments, I'm not even sure what the actual subject matter you're writing about even is.
I think a big problem is most people's experience of Java apps is they look horrible and run slowly.
Maybe you can write fast, nice looking Java apps, but until that becomes more common, users and developers will stay away becuase of the perception of them.
We use some Java apps at work, and I've yet to use one that start quickly, and doesn't have horrible looking interface.
While I'm sure some "software sweat shops" exist, a lot of people doing outsourced IT work in India have good working conditions, even by western standards.
I know its popular to think of the people doing the work as being exploited, helps people think of outsourcing as bad, but many of them are not being exploited. They are paid less, but the cost of living is much, much lower in India than the US (or UK).
I wonder if the UK gets a net gain from being in Europe, I really do.
It depends what you mean by net gain. In terms of the EU as a political initution, we give more to it than we receive. However, we also do more than half our trade with Europe, and being inside the EU is increabably advantageous when dealing with EU coutnties in terms of trade and tarrifs.
So, even though our governement is a net contributor to the EU budget, ecomonmically speaking the UK has huge gains being in Europe. In fact leaving the EU would have a very negative economic unless we could leave politically but negotiaite some sort of trade deal with the EU. A lot of international companies would leave the UKL for an EU country otherwise, and British companies that trade with Europe (over half our overseas trade remember) would suffer.
The EU has its problems, lack of democracy being one of them, but Britain ain't so Great anymore, and we have to face economic realities. Personally I'd rather we try to take a hand in directing Europe than follow the US wherever it goes, and I don't say that to be anti-US.
Scientist assume things stay the same, unless they have some evidence to the contrary. This is just Occam's Razor (Entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity).
If you don't have evidence the constants change, and they are called constants becuase they have always been observed to be the same, don't start assuming they have been without evidence. It isn't about faith, you assume it has not changed based on the observed facts that nobody has seen it change. If there is evidence of change, you rethink your assumptions.
Sometimes new ideas do take a while to displace old ones, as there is indeed resitance to paradigm shifts in science. Sometimes for the all too human reason of disliking change and what you thought you knew being swept away. It's better than jumping on any new theory or assuming things never observed to change have done becuase it is convenient to current thinking.
If the basic assumptions are wrong, they will eventually be disproved under the weight of evidence, but they should only be thrown out at that point.
If the IT staff aren't keeping the Windows machines and firewall secured, why would the keep Linux machines up to date? It isn't like Linux doesn't need patching. If Linux was more popular, it would get attacked more, and get compromised when people didn't keep it up to date.
Simply having Linux run hospitals doesn't help, having secured systems in hospitals does. MS is part of the problem, sure, but switching from it isn't a magic cure.
The security issue are usually known becuase by the time an exploit comes out it is already patched. The patch Sasser expoloited was patched before it came out. If you keep patches up to date, run AV software, firewall and anti-spyware it runs just fine.
You'd need to run the same stuff on any computer connected to the net, whatever the OS. MS certainly can improve on the speed patches come out, and default configuation, but I'm not aware of any major virus using a non-patchable exploit. The problem isn't accepting the shortcoming of Windows, its looking after the Windows machines properly. These days Windows machines can be very stable if correclty maintained.
If another OS, like Linux, overtook Windows in popularity, would people suddenly start keeping upto date with patches and looking after it properly? I rather doubt it.
If it is like most large software projects I have worked on, code doesn't get in until it is reviewed, QA tested and signed off. The QA tester is the one responsible for making sure nothing goes into releases with bugs, not the programmer.
The average user doesn't have any knowledge of UNIX systems. Unlike the average Slashdotter, for them a computer is just some thing they use, they don't keep track of computing trends, or know or care what a few percent of computer users are using.
The average user doesn't know the Mac has UNIX underneath either, or care. They just want a computer that works and looks nice. Apples success is in marketing and design, not building on something most people buying Macs don't know or care about.
Not according to the Declaration of Independence [ushistory.org]. "...they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights..." It says that governments only exist "to secure these rights," not to bestow them, implying that the rights themselves exist outside the framework of any governing body.
But this was written by a group of people founding a governing body. If they had written different rights down, you would have ended up with different ones. The governing body didn't even apply these rights to all people. Your treating that statement of them coming from a Creator as a matter of fact, but there is nothing to suggest it is (and plenty to suggest it isn't, unless you assume there is a Creator and the writers of that were divinely inspired).
I think human rights are very important, but it is self-delusion to think that they come from anywhere other than humans, and that ideas about rights have and will change over time and culture. They are nothing more (or less) than how some people think people should be treated. People in power enforce them, or take them away, and people will always have to fight to have them, or hold onto them.
As for "arbitrary interference with his privacy" I must admit, I don't conisder being on CCTV in a city centre, or having my liscence plate photed when driving down a public road does either. I live in the UK, and used to drive into London weekly, so I'm used to both. I know nobody who care, or even thinks, about CCTV cameras in city centres, or modifies their behvaiour becuase of them (although presumably some criminals do). I don't feel my privacy has been interfered with at all, although I do see how some technologies could in the future.
I don't subscribe to the slipperly slope argument though. I don't see the need to remove useful technologies becuase in the future something could be built on them that is problematic. I do think it is important to dicuss potential abuses in the future so they can be avoided.
but whether the Founding Fathers would have forbidden them if they had any idea that they were possible.
Maybe it's not being from the US, but I wonder why you care what a bunch of dead guys, who were certainly not infalible, would think about it? How about what the people living now, who are affected by it, think? Isn't that much more important and relevant?
Does it really have an infinte numeber of states? Or if you keep breaking it down, does it eventually end up as just very, very small descrete states?
Time isn't infinately divisible (that paradox with the guy shooting the arrow at the turtle), IANAP (I Am Not A Physicist) but I'm pretty sure when you get down to the quantum level particles have descrete steps of energy, and you can't get values in between.
Maybe someone more knowledgable on the subject can comment. Is there a medium a wave can travel through that really has an infinite number of states?
You could easliy beleive in a soul that continues after the body, but the consciousness dies with it, or has some other fate. Look at medeaval ideas about the soul/spirit, or cultures that beleived in multi-part souls.
That's some pretty strong evidence that consciousness is not entirely brain-based.
No, that's strong evidence the brain does other things as well, and has some redundancy. It does nothing to suggest the consciousness in any way, shape or form exists outside or beyond the brain.
How did you get from genius to geeks anyway? Assuming you actually do have "plenty of data" to back up your claim, of which I'm intensely sceptical, even if it were true for a genius, why should it matter for a run of the mill geek?
Why if you find a "special" woman do you have to avoid others? Geeks aren't allowed to have female friends? Are they supposed to avoid any female friends of their partner?
I'm sure some geniuses are self-destructive or unstable, many do seem to have emotional problems, and some are in relationships. I bet you can't prove any causation though, or that these people wouldn't suffer the same without the relationship.
Still, you carry on avoiding those women, it sounds like they may be better off that way anyway.
This could be changed. Technologies have gone from public (non-private) to private and protected before. Consider the switch from party lines to private lines in the telephone system. Now that we live in the 21st century shouldn't we demand a similar switch for email?
You can send encypted email right now, and you certainly should have the right to send encypted email. That is a long way from demanding all email must be protected. How about we let people choose? Or do you want to choose for them?
Seems to me Google would make rather less money with a crappy site and crappy ads.
Although shareholders may not grasp that.
Bugs per 1000 lines has nothing to do with the design. It's like one person saying "the plot of this novel is crap" and someone replying "that's not true, it has hardly any gramitical or spelling mistakes". I can't imagine why the parent was modded as insightful (except MySQL fanboys?)
We are in way off topic land but...
America has been more than happy to assits in the overthorwing of democracies when it suits them, like they elect a socailist government (Chillie), or they are planning to nationalise the oil reserves (Iran).
It even happliy has allies like the brutal regimes in Uzbekistan because it suits their purpose.
Now all countries act like this, in their own national interests. However, you can't claim any sort of moral high ground for American foreign policy, sure it has removed some brutal dictators, but has been happy to help install and work with others.
Backing brutal and unpopular regimes abroad may be way a lot of the rest of the world does not see America as some guardian of freedom.
I don't know what enterprises you are familiar with, but from my experience those with more centralised IT policies simply won't let you set up a box, and certainly not have a department go Linux. It simply won't be allowed on the corporate network, and won't get any support.
Small business probably has it much easier, as it is often much less formal and people can just go ahead and do things.
I'm not particullarly pro-Windows, but I doubt that Linux will be 30% of workstations. Maybe it will, but I'm certainly not convinced it is inevitable. Right now Linux only sometimes is as easy to use as Windows on the desktop, and Windows still leaves a lot to be desired. Maybe it will catch up and suprass it, but don't assume it is inevitable.
Most people just don't have the skills to "change it yourself", and for the investment it would take to aquire them the rational thing to do is just put some money down for a closed source program that does what they want.
If open source developers only ever want to write for themselves that isn't a problem, but it seems a chunk of the community want open source to spread, for economic or philisophical reasons. If you want that, gotta think of the non-techie users.
Supernatural does not mean "things we don't yet understand", there is a term for those, and it is "things we don't yet understand". Any scientist worth anything will readily admit there is plenty of things we don't understand.
To describe something as supernatural instantly carries very strong connotations of magic, miracle, or some paranormal force that is not just unknown science, but something other than it and beyond it
As for quacks, they are just that. By sheer chance a few will be end up being partially right about something becuase so many people have so many crazy ideas. Thing is, you can't tell the ones who are right by chance from the rest without working through it. It is as important to know why you are right as being right, those scientists "scaling the rocky face" are doing the important work.
I don't know where you get the idea a studio album is a copy of a liver performance, becuase it is not, it is a very distinct thing. I love going to live gigs, but I also love listening to music around the house, in the car or at work.
When I do, I generally don't want to listen to live tracks, but well prodcued studio stuff. It probably took weeks or even months for the band, the producers and other skilled technicians to create it, and it is a different creation from recording a live gig. They aren't "diluting" their work, they are make a different creation.
The thing about copies is, it is cheap to make the second one, but that first one cost a lot of money. Now, I'm no fan of the RIAA, and I think copyright needs a major overhaul, but someone has to pay for that original creation. If you don't want to, that's certainly your right, don't buy the album.
I strongly disagree with the notion distibuting it devalues it somehow. That non-live copy is worth something to me, and a lot of others. Like all economics the value of it is what we put on it as much as the cost of distributing. I've spent a lot of money in the past getting hold of rare or import CDs becuase they have a song I really want. Given the enjoyment I have had for listening to it, it has usually been good value for money in my opinion, and being my money that is the only one that matters.
You also seem to think most artisits make money from royalties, they don't. Since the record companies take all their expenses out of the artist's royalies, only very successful artists make much on record sales. Read some stuff by Janis Ian or Courtney Love, or previous Slashdot stories. Most artisit only make their money by the touring and live gigs, so your rant is somewhat misdirected.
I mean the screenplay is already written for you, just shoot the damn thing.
You do know adapting a novel for the cinema takes a lot of work? A novel is not screenplay, it is not "already written for you", in many cases not even close. What works in one medium does not automatically work in another.
I can't beleive claiming otherwise is considered insightful