In our time, we are accustomed to forklifts and cars "out-performing" us and so we take no special notice. We are now on the verge of machines beating us at our own game so to speak.
I don't see it quite that way. "Our own game" is being able to do everything at some level. My car can't out-lift me; the only thing it can pick up is a nail. The forklift at work can't beat me at chess, and Fritz can't outrun me even though your grandmother did. Building powerful tools to do specific tasks is not a sign of weakness, and I don't think we're in any near-term danger of the "machines beating us".
Realistically it's proving it is not yet the time of the machines against this one awesome player. Hell I cannot beat chessmaster from my Apple//e, much less a damn supercomputer.
Yup. Chessmaster surpassed my skills some time back. At some point, the decision making (rules) of the best players will be captured in code like other expert applications. After that, what is the point? The computer will never get tired or lose concentration. It will just prove that mankind can make machines that do a single task better than we can. It won't be the first time, and it won't be a *thinking* machine - just another specialized machine. It does not take a great programmer to write a program that cannot lose at tic-tac-toe against a human. It's only a matter of degree and processor power.
Hmm... is this *software boutique* anything like EB?
EB? The one that grew and lasted the longest was Egghead. Once software became a big enough seller to attract the big retailers, the boutiques went under (no loss). There are still stores like Sofware Etc. that are small, but the boutiques were just that - glass shelves, snotty salespeople, and maybe thirty packages to pick from.
This whole thing started when Bill G got laughed out of the homebrew computer club for throwing a hissy fit over how people were copying his version of basic.
This is true (and Bill did some dumpster diving to get BASIC), but the OP also has a valid point. When I built my first PC clone, I went to a *software boutique* and tried to buy a copy of MS DOS. (Anyone else remember PC software being so trendy that you had to go to a boutique to buy it?) It wasn't for sale, and they just laughed at me. You didn't *buy* DOS, you just *got it*, nudge, wink, get it? And MicroSoft didn't seem to mind it at all. Try doing that now.
And how exactly is that a bad thing? Huge PR gaffaw for the PRC when their moon mission doesn't come back, and would secure America's primacy in the cosmos, saving a lot of money that would otherwise be used on resuming the space race.
Umm, because the Chinese now have big rockets and nuclear weapons, tend to be easily offended, might consider it deliberate, and we'd have to say, *so sorry*. Apologies, I couldn't help it.:)
This sounds familiar... like things that are in almost every RDBMS. Minus that sending email thing.
When are you people just going to admit that MS products are feature-rich, just like the advertisments say? Why wouldn't five hundred of your closest friends and customers like to know whenever you update a table and get a hot screen saver at the same time? Ha, gotcha there!
Step 1: Provide MBA's with wizard-based software. MBA decides to save money by developing his own apps.
Step 2: MBA-developed apps within the company start to cause confusion, productivity loss, and overtime due to bad design, spaghetti code, etc.
Step 3: Company decides to hire professional developers to clean up the mess. The cost is greater than it would have been had they paid for the development help in the first place.
Step 4: PROFIT!
No, no, that was the old business model.
Step 1: Provide MBA's with wizard-based software. MBA decides to save money by developing his own apps.
Step 2: MBA-developed apps within the company start to cause confusion, productivity loss, and overtime due to bad design, spaghetti code, etc.
Step 3: CEO fires software staff and offshores all software development. Executive staff celebrates the new model, the huge bonuses, and their MBAs.
It reminds me of the first web pages I made with Frontpage. They were horrible, and they're still around. If the choice were up to me, they'd be replaced. I now use XHTML and CSS to compensate, and I no longer use Frontpage.
We all make mistakes. There are people who built things using Access and then denormalized to try to get some decent performance, only to have it all eventually turn to slag. Not that I know any of these people personally. Just hearsay, of course.:)
But the truth is, the Farscape characters are far more "human" and it is very easy to get wrapped up in the story - I've found myself actually mad at a character for being a jerk, and happy or sad for a character depending on what is going on. And none of the characters are always good, always bad, always selfish, always generous - hell, even the evil nemesis is humanized to the point that, in a lot ways, I find him very likeable. Scorpius is humanized far more than the Borg ever was. This makes things much more complex and interesting.
Well put. When you find out the bad aliens aren't really all that bad or all that alien, it makes you think. When John was dissing Aeryn, I was yelling at the screen and almost hoping his character got killed (again). Then when you find out he's doing it because he knows Aeryn's condition and good old Scorpy is eavesdropping on them, it's such a relief. I never empathized with characters in any series like I did with those in Farscape.
Re:SG-1 kicks Farscape's ass anyway
on
Farscape is Back
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· Score: 1
Claudia Black, leather, bare midriff.
And let's not forget the grey, flexible, little strumpet, Chiana.:)
Re:Who do I have to thank for this little miracle?
on
Farscape is Back
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· Score: 1
Hey, buttplug, hey said ANY sci-fi discussion, not just one about Farscape.
Hey, genius, if he's annoyed by Farscape fans, why is he reading and posting to a Farscape article?
I am one of those fanatics that stopped watching the Sci-Fi channel altogether after the last episode aired. Okay, so I watched Children of Dune. We are all hypocrites.
Well, I'm not the only one. Children of Dune is the only thing I've watched on SciFi since Farscape was cancelled. I hope someone from the SciFi Channel is following this and realizes how many viewers they lost when they dumped Farscape. There's just nothing left for real SciFi fans. I used to turn it on for Farscape and watch the other stuff that followed but no more.
I think you are confusing Farscape for a good show. My god, it was Muppets in Space! (with worse acting)
So, you just came to troll? The acting was a heck of a lot better than Grunts in Space, er, I mean Stargate. The scenes where John rebuffs and then ignores Aeryn, and when Aeryn says she's leaving, really stirred up the fans, but that's probably a little too mushy for you. Cut-and-dried kill-the-aliens SciFi may be what you're looking for, but I appreciated Farscape for exploring the human and alien interaction. And the actors are actually quite good, even if they are not familiar to most Americans.
Hmm, I'm no expert on rpm, but why would it be using md5sum, and what would it be checking the RPM against? You might check the Mandrake Forum and search the topics for similar problems. Are you using dual-boot, and if so, does everything work under Windows?
No, I couldn't. And I don't think people would sell out that easily. At least not if the candidate was really that bad.
C'mon Anthony, I've seen your handle on many a comment here, and I can't believe you don't know how to navigate Slashdot. You are ADVOCATING people selling their vote but expect them to do it with good taste. Now that's funny. The point is, in the past, people have sold their vote to the highest bidder, and it has nothing to do with how "bad" the candidate is - it's about the money or "other compensation".
OK. The practice of buying votes...increases the costs of campaigning. Hmm, let me think about that. No, I'd have to say the practice of buying votes would decrease the costs of campaigning.
Short attention span? If you had read further, you would have seen that the cost of campaigning allowed the robber barrons to elect whomever they wanted (puppets) through vote buying, thereby buying legislation and favorable regulations.
And that's illegal, and you have no argument with me there. My question was what is wrong with buying votes, not what is wrong with extorting votes.
You wanted content and historical context, and I gave it. It was illegal then, and it happened. It is your "other compensation". *Protection* is illegal, and it still happens. It just doesn't happen with voting anymore thanks to secret ballots. And yes, it would matter who you voted for, and the ward bosses used the vote to prevent those changes that would have helped the people.
If the plurality of people agree to it, I don't see how it's any worse than any other pluralilty vote.
It seems to me that there is difference between a plurality of eligible voters who vote and a plurality who do not vote - for obvious reasons.
What do you mean by "potential" abuses?
Oligarchy, ward bosses, the Detroit political machine - all things the country learned from and adjusted to with voting and campaign reforms.
It's my vote, and I should be able to do whatever I want with it.
If you care so little for it, I have a suggestion as to what you should do with it.:) Seriously, I hope you reflect a bit on the learning and sacrifices that got us to this point. You know, those that ignore history are doomed to repeat it and all that stuff.
However, I am quite unable to get my computer to download any RPM's over approx. 3MB's in size without getting warnings of "md5 mismatch".
I've been using Mandrake since 7.whatever, and I don't recall ever seeing an error message like that. What are you using? Mandrake Update, urpmi, or what? Have you tried using a regular ftp client to do the downloads?
I wouldn't equate Mandrake and Lindows. Mandrake will be secure out of the box unless you tell it otherwise during installation. Lindows runs as root by default and should not be promoted by Linux users, IMHO.
I've used a Universal USB pen drive with both 9.1 and 9.2. You just plug it in, and the first time Mandrake adds an icon to the desktop. Right-click on the icon to mount or umount.
I must be blind as well as dumb, because I don't see anything in the thread which explains what's wrong with vote selling.
I'm sure this is a master trolling, and I don't know why I'm playing. You couldn't find this just above your complaint?
Still don't see anything about vote buying/selling.
Let's try one with a white background for more contrast. Now go to your browser's search dialog, type in "buying votes", and click the button. There is text above and below concerning the topic.
I'm talking about allowing people to trade their vote for money or some other consideration.
Exactly. And it is not just money that has been used to buy votes. It was a problem (generally before the Civil War) that eventually led to voting reforms. Consider if a couple of thugs invite you to the polling place and tell you that if you vote for their guy, you get to keep all your fingers and they won't rape your wife. That's "other consideration".
It's of utmost importance that we give everyone the *opportunity* to vote. But that doesn't mean we can't allow consenting adults to trade that opportunity for something they consider more valuable.
I completely agree with the first sentence and completely disagree with the rest. If people don't wish to vote, fine. They are probably not informed about the election anyway and should not vote. First, one should not be allowed to *buy* an elected position or a referendum vote. Second the potential abuses of vote buying/selling/trading have already been proven.
See my earlier comment just above in the thread, "hot shot". I'm now guessing you never took a history class and never read about the evils of ward bosses, vote buying, poll taxes, or why we have our current (secret ballot) system - flawed as it is. You need content? Here's a dribble, but a history book focusing on national politics would be better. Y'know, at first, I thought you were just trolling.
Welfare is essentially vote buying with the governments money. The candidate gets votes because he promises certain people money
Pandering is nothing new, and campaign promises are often (usually) forgotten. Vote buying is completely different in that the voter receives a cash payment upon proof of the *correct* vote, which would lead to the rich winning any election they wanted to pay for. Our current system makes vote buying unlikely at best.
Slashdot Mirror
In our time, we are accustomed to forklifts and cars "out-performing" us and so we take no special notice. We are now on the verge of machines beating us at our own game so to speak.
I don't see it quite that way. "Our own game" is being able to do everything at some level. My car can't out-lift me; the only thing it can pick up is a nail. The forklift at work can't beat me at chess, and Fritz can't outrun me even though your grandmother did. Building powerful tools to do specific tasks is not a sign of weakness, and I don't think we're in any near-term danger of the "machines beating us".
Realistically it's proving it is not yet the time of the machines against this one awesome player. Hell I cannot beat chessmaster from my Apple //e, much less a damn supercomputer.
Yup. Chessmaster surpassed my skills some time back. At some point, the decision making (rules) of the best players will be captured in code like other expert applications. After that, what is the point? The computer will never get tired or lose concentration. It will just prove that mankind can make machines that do a single task better than we can. It won't be the first time, and it won't be a *thinking* machine - just another specialized machine. It does not take a great programmer to write a program that cannot lose at tic-tac-toe against a human. It's only a matter of degree and processor power.
Hmm... is this *software boutique* anything like EB?
EB? The one that grew and lasted the longest was Egghead. Once software became a big enough seller to attract the big retailers, the boutiques went under (no loss). There are still stores like Sofware Etc. that are small, but the boutiques were just that - glass shelves, snotty salespeople, and maybe thirty packages to pick from.
Isn't that dying faster than *BSD?
We hope so. We sent one of our middle-management types there hoping it would be contagious.
This whole thing started when Bill G got laughed out of the homebrew computer club for throwing a hissy fit over how people were copying his version of basic.
This is true (and Bill did some dumpster diving to get BASIC), but the OP also has a valid point. When I built my first PC clone, I went to a *software boutique* and tried to buy a copy of MS DOS. (Anyone else remember PC software being so trendy that you had to go to a boutique to buy it?) It wasn't for sale, and they just laughed at me. You didn't *buy* DOS, you just *got it*, nudge, wink, get it? And MicroSoft didn't seem to mind it at all. Try doing that now.
And how exactly is that a bad thing? Huge PR gaffaw for the PRC when their moon mission doesn't come back, and would secure America's primacy in the cosmos, saving a lot of money that would otherwise be used on resuming the space race.
Umm, because the Chinese now have big rockets and nuclear weapons, tend to be easily offended, might consider it deliberate, and we'd have to say, *so sorry*. Apologies, I couldn't help it. :)
This sounds familiar... like things that are in almost every RDBMS. Minus that sending email thing.
When are you people just going to admit that MS products are feature-rich, just like the advertisments say? Why wouldn't five hundred of your closest friends and customers like to know whenever you update a table and get a hot screen saver at the same time? Ha, gotcha there!
No, no, that was the old business model.
Step 1: Provide MBA's with wizard-based software. MBA decides to save money by developing his own apps.
Step 2: MBA-developed apps within the company start to cause confusion, productivity loss, and overtime due to bad design, spaghetti code, etc.
Step 3: CEO fires software staff and offshores all software development. Executive staff celebrates the new model, the huge bonuses, and their MBAs.
Step 4: PROFIT!
Step 5: GOTO Step 1.
It reminds me of the first web pages I made with Frontpage. They were horrible, and they're still around. If the choice were up to me, they'd be replaced. I now use XHTML and CSS to compensate, and I no longer use Frontpage.
We all make mistakes. There are people who built things using Access and then denormalized to try to get some decent performance, only to have it all eventually turn to slag. Not that I know any of these people personally. Just hearsay, of course. :)
Why not just attach this throwaway rocket and instead of aiming it to fall in one of earth's oceans, aim it at the moon just to see what happens!
With NASA's luck, it would land on the Chinese moon mission.
I got 9.3M in 0.11 secs at Google, did someone add 1.2M links this morning? ;)
Just shows how quickly Linux is spreading. :)
But the truth is, the Farscape characters are far more "human" and it is very easy to get wrapped up in the story - I've found myself actually mad at a character for being a jerk, and happy or sad for a character depending on what is going on. And none of the characters are always good, always bad, always selfish, always generous - hell, even the evil nemesis is humanized to the point that, in a lot ways, I find him very likeable. Scorpius is humanized far more than the Borg ever was. This makes things much more complex and interesting.
Well put. When you find out the bad aliens aren't really all that bad or all that alien, it makes you think. When John was dissing Aeryn, I was yelling at the screen and almost hoping his character got killed (again). Then when you find out he's doing it because he knows Aeryn's condition and good old Scorpy is eavesdropping on them, it's such a relief. I never empathized with characters in any series like I did with those in Farscape.
Claudia Black, leather, bare midriff.
And let's not forget the grey, flexible, little strumpet, Chiana. :)
Hey, buttplug, hey said ANY sci-fi discussion, not just one about Farscape.
Hey, genius, if he's annoyed by Farscape fans, why is he reading and posting to a Farscape article?
I am one of those fanatics that stopped watching the Sci-Fi channel altogether after the last episode aired. Okay, so I watched Children of Dune. We are all hypocrites.
Well, I'm not the only one. Children of Dune is the only thing I've watched on SciFi since Farscape was cancelled. I hope someone from the SciFi Channel is following this and realizes how many viewers they lost when they dumped Farscape. There's just nothing left for real SciFi fans. I used to turn it on for Farscape and watch the other stuff that followed but no more.
I think you are confusing Farscape for a good show. My god, it was Muppets in Space! (with worse acting)
So, you just came to troll? The acting was a heck of a lot better than Grunts in Space, er, I mean Stargate. The scenes where John rebuffs and then ignores Aeryn, and when Aeryn says she's leaving, really stirred up the fans, but that's probably a little too mushy for you. Cut-and-dried kill-the-aliens SciFi may be what you're looking for, but I appreciated Farscape for exploring the human and alien interaction. And the actors are actually quite good, even if they are not familiar to most Americans.
"It was ok to tell 5,000 of my closest friends."
Oops. Exceeded that somewhat. :)
Hmm, I'm no expert on rpm, but why would it be using md5sum, and what would it be checking the RPM against? You might check the Mandrake Forum and search the topics for similar problems. Are you using dual-boot, and if so, does everything work under Windows?
No, I couldn't. And I don't think people would sell out that easily. At least not if the candidate was really that bad.
C'mon Anthony, I've seen your handle on many a comment here, and I can't believe you don't know how to navigate Slashdot. You are ADVOCATING people selling their vote but expect them to do it with good taste. Now that's funny. The point is, in the past, people have sold their vote to the highest bidder, and it has nothing to do with how "bad" the candidate is - it's about the money or "other compensation".
OK. The practice of buying votes...increases the costs of campaigning. Hmm, let me think about that. No, I'd have to say the practice of buying votes would decrease the costs of campaigning.
Short attention span? If you had read further, you would have seen that the cost of campaigning allowed the robber barrons to elect whomever they wanted (puppets) through vote buying, thereby buying legislation and favorable regulations.
And that's illegal, and you have no argument with me there. My question was what is wrong with buying votes, not what is wrong with extorting votes.
You wanted content and historical context, and I gave it. It was illegal then, and it happened. It is your "other compensation". *Protection* is illegal, and it still happens. It just doesn't happen with voting anymore thanks to secret ballots. And yes, it would matter who you voted for, and the ward bosses used the vote to prevent those changes that would have helped the people.
If the plurality of people agree to it, I don't see how it's any worse than any other pluralilty vote.
It seems to me that there is difference between a plurality of eligible voters who vote and a plurality who do not vote - for obvious reasons.
What do you mean by "potential" abuses?
Oligarchy, ward bosses, the Detroit political machine - all things the country learned from and adjusted to with voting and campaign reforms.
It's my vote, and I should be able to do whatever I want with it.
If you care so little for it, I have a suggestion as to what you should do with it. :) Seriously, I hope you reflect a bit on the learning and sacrifices that got us to this point. You know, those that ignore history are doomed to repeat it and all that stuff.
However, I am quite unable to get my computer to download any RPM's over approx. 3MB's in size without getting warnings of "md5 mismatch".
I've been using Mandrake since 7.whatever, and I don't recall ever seeing an error message like that. What are you using? Mandrake Update, urpmi, or what? Have you tried using a regular ftp client to do the downloads?
I wouldn't equate Mandrake and Lindows. Mandrake will be secure out of the box unless you tell it otherwise during installation. Lindows runs as root by default and should not be promoted by Linux users, IMHO.
Perhaps usb memory keys work in 9.2, though.
I've used a Universal USB pen drive with both 9.1 and 9.2. You just plug it in, and the first time Mandrake adds an icon to the desktop. Right-click on the icon to mount or umount.
I must be blind as well as dumb, because I don't see anything in the thread which explains what's wrong with vote selling.
I'm sure this is a master trolling, and I don't know why I'm playing. You couldn't find this just above your complaint?
Still don't see anything about vote buying/selling.
Let's try one with a white background for more contrast. Now go to your browser's search dialog, type in "buying votes", and click the button. There is text above and below concerning the topic.
I'm talking about allowing people to trade their vote for money or some other consideration.
Exactly. And it is not just money that has been used to buy votes. It was a problem (generally before the Civil War) that eventually led to voting reforms. Consider if a couple of thugs invite you to the polling place and tell you that if you vote for their guy, you get to keep all your fingers and they won't rape your wife. That's "other consideration".
It's of utmost importance that we give everyone the *opportunity* to vote. But that doesn't mean we can't allow consenting adults to trade that opportunity for something they consider more valuable.
I completely agree with the first sentence and completely disagree with the rest. If people don't wish to vote, fine. They are probably not informed about the election anyway and should not vote. First, one should not be allowed to *buy* an elected position or a referendum vote. Second the potential abuses of vote buying/selling/trading have already been proven.
. . . then why don't you explain it, hot shot?
See my earlier comment just above in the thread, "hot shot". I'm now guessing you never took a history class and never read about the evils of ward bosses, vote buying, poll taxes, or why we have our current (secret ballot) system - flawed as it is. You need content? Here's a dribble, but a history book focusing on national politics would be better. Y'know, at first, I thought you were just trolling.
Welfare is essentially vote buying with the governments money. The candidate gets votes because he promises certain people money
Pandering is nothing new, and campaign promises are often (usually) forgotten. Vote buying is completely different in that the voter receives a cash payment upon proof of the *correct* vote, which would lead to the rich winning any election they wanted to pay for. Our current system makes vote buying unlikely at best.