If you made one that had enough intelligence in its programming to be able to arrange to have its lead heart lifted up again when it was sinking low, it could conceivably run forever.
Say, it knows well enough to hook its counterweight up to a pully, a tree limb perhaps, attach a rock to the end, and push the rock off a cliff.
In other news, Disney World has degenerated into Itchy and Scratchy land, and MacDonalds has decided to rebrand themselves to the more authentic "Krusty Burger" corporate image.
Honesty is the first halting step on the road to integrity. Maybe all this is a good sign.
Crass, wasteful, dishonest, exploitative, self-centered, ignorant, violent people are just as bad regardless of their color.
It's not "The rude Americans". It's all the things that they think make them so great, the things they strive for, the things they idealize... those are what make Americans so damned rotten to the core inside and terrible to share the face of the earth with...
You are right. It shouldn't just go unchecked. In most cases it should be the parents who solve the problem.
My dad subscribed to the "Drive you around in the car so you can find the bullies one at a time and beat the tar out of them in a fair fight, and physically intimidate any bully-parents that try to step in before you're done" method of solving the problem. It's a very effective method.
As I tell my clients, it's a computer... yes, I can make it do anything you want. I can make it butter your toast if you want... just takes time and money.
No, it exists as an admission by the instructor that they cannot quantify what they are supposed to be teaching, that they can't quantify what the students should know, and they won't be permitted to continue to operate if they don't pass students.
University doesn't teach people how to learn. People teach themselves that, or they don't. It's not even intended to teach them that. It's intended to teach them what to learn, so they don't need to go mucking about in the dark.
I can teach myself anything under the sun, without any university or school at all. And I have, for all of my professional career. I took a quick course to get my foot in the door, but it was a waste of time and money, just like all the others.
I might like to be able to go take a course that would teach me the sort of things I might need to know to solve particular types of problems, so I don't need to spend the extra time finding things out the hard way.
But the schools aren't to be trusted. They can't even quantify what I ought to know at the end enough to be able to test me and see if I've learned it or not. So why pay them? At this point, the strongest motivation I can see to get any further education is the social opportunities it might afford.
But feel free to give them all your money if it makes you happy.
The historical examples you are given are examples of the authorities having access to your "private" information, while the populace explicitly does not having access to "secret" information.
Just like what we see now.
It's not privacy that makes a society free. It's transparency. The freedom of a democracies about giving people the freedom to choose, and secrets remove choice utterly.
The illusion of privacy is how fear-mongering leaders who read all the secret reports turn everyone against each other.
If those spycams in the city centers were available to the public, 24/7, and the archives were also available, and those archives couldn't be edited because they were distributed, well, that's a neighbourhood watch. But when, by reason of privacy concerns, those cameras are monitored by the police and government but kept away from the population, well, that's when you've got a problem.
If they're public, and someone wants to ruin your reputation by showing videos of you pissing on a statue in a public park 10 years ago, well, you just pull out the inevitable video of your accuser doing something similar, and everyone agrees that this kind of foolishness shouldn't be given any weight at all.
On the other hand, as it stands now, they're not public. And while they're kept as government secrets, they're bullets waited to be fired at anyone who annoys those in power.
As for secret ballots... they didn't seem to hold up very well in the last US election, did they?
I can't. This isn't a free and open society. If I just opened myself up now, alone, I would be subjected to attack on the basis of trivialities, and though I am no less moral than any of you, your feet of clay would remain hidden while mine were revealed.
These things must be done systematically. It must be a sea-change that affects everyone. I will support that sea change and participate in it willingly, but I'm not opening myself up all alone and being the target of our societies most corrupt elements, those who have the most to lose from what I'm proposing.
Or to put it another way, I'll happily reveal that I smoked pot back in the day when your minister is obligated to also reveal that he too smoked pot back in the day. Then we can all be safe, we can all get over this smoking pot business and focus on something more important.
Ok, so say I'm imagining some horrors. What then? What do you propose should be done to me, to "sort me out"? You're assuming that I'm going to "do something stupid" so are you suggesting that my "ignorance and fear" should be corrected preemptively?
No, dumbass.
You should be able to check the records of the person you suspect and assure yourself that there isn't anything going on.
And if there is abuse going on, thanks for turning them out. We better all put a stop to that together, don't you think?
And if there isn't any abuse going on, now you can relax and not go about your life under horrible false assumptions.
Understand... privacy is at the root of the whole "1984esque-thoughtcrime" idea. In that scenario, your neighbour doesn't know what you do, you don't know what they do, but big brother knows what everyone does.
Understand... you can't cut off "big brother", it isn't possible. He's already there, now, reading your credit card records and watching you on the uncensored version of google earth.
All you can do is see to it that big brother doesn't know more than you do, and that your neighbours are equally well informed.
The more you struggle vainly to defend your privacy, the more you ensure that there is a greater imbalance of knowledge between those in power and those not in power.
You assure that there will be no one brave enough to speak beside you when you are found to be violating the law IN THE EXACT SAME WAY THEY ARE because they don't want anyone to know that they are like you.
You are sold privacy by those who are advantaged by it in the exact way I describe. But it is not in your best interest.
It is an instrumental part of the mechanism of your control.
No. There isn't a difference. The illusion that there's a difference is what makes all these monstrous things possible.
If you're sitting around thinking that so and so is molesting children, either they are indeed molesting children, and we need to get that sorted out right away before it happens again, or you're sitting there imagining horrors that aren't real to fill in the gaps of your ignorance and fear, and we need to get that sorted out right away before you do something stupid.
In this case though, all we have is a bunch of threats made from cover of anonymity, destroying the lives of the threatened.
In addition to the harm already done, we have the certain knowledge that there are people entering into the highest offices of law who are of such shockingly poor moral fiber that they would threaten to rape and sodomize one of their peers when they think they can get away with it.
That makes the entire mechanism of law suspect. And being that it is suspect, it has no moral authority over anyone. It is not deserving of the respect you give something noble and good in its current state, but only of the fearful respect you give to something that might hurt you unpredictably.
When people like me aren't outspoken, you elect smarmy leaders who go around talking out of the corner of their mouthes ripping off the rest of the world.
I cheer when I hear about your dead soldiers in the news.
I cut ordinary people off from the benefits of my knowledge and capacities if I find out they are sympathetic to your national interests with the utmost prejudice.
I throw rocks at police forces who defend your leadership when they visit my country.
I steal your so-called intellectual property exports and keep them on hand even if they have no value to me, just so I can share them with others who might like them.
I fucking hate your vicious, selfish culture, I want you all to die suffering in poverty, and I don't mind making a few personal sacrifices towards that end.
If I could have one wish, that plane would have hit the president of your filthy nation full of war criminals.
Invest what? Your share of the nebulous "money" that you can't eat or wear or take shelter under, that only has existence and value in that it gives you power over me and others around you?
Burn your money, invest your money, makes no fucking difference. Money doesn't do anything except keep count of these predatory arrangements that give men power over each other.
In other words, you can say "Oh, but if I didn't invest in drug companies, but instead bought candy, there would be no drugs for your illnesses." But it's a big lie. You cordoned off resources that were floating around out there and put them in your pocket. My house. My factory. My land. My good idea.
They're only yours to administer because of the cops and guns.
If I want them, I'll take them by force, and if I'm more effective in my violence or have more friends on my side than you have cops, well, now they're mine.
This is all wrong.
The force of guns, the force of owning all the food and houses, they're the same force.
Secret police and the state, public police and international cartels of rich selfish bastards, all the same to me. Same fucking evil organizations.
This ideology wants to replace the free and spontaneous evolution of mankind by a sort of central (now global) planning.
The environmentalists ask for immediate political action because they do not believe in the long-term positive impact of economic growth.
He hit it precisely. That is exactly right.
Exploitative arrangements must be replaced with fair central planning.
The currently observed economic growth is the result of the wealth that is plentiful being converted to the poverty that is artificial scarcity to the detriment of us all.
Capitalists are an affront to life itself on this world and every one of us who lives here on this world.
They also own all the weapons of mass destruction, so we won't be able to just walk away and leave them shouting at an empty court.
We're going to have to go get them and take their weapons away from them.
You can get a refurbished Core 2 Duo from tigerdirect with a gig of dual-channel DDR RAM, a 250G SATA drive, integrated 5.1, dual-monitor supporting integrated graphics, front mounted card reader, USB2 and firewire for under 500 CAD.
You can upgrade that to 3G of RAM for another 80 bucks.
Long term, it supports upgrading to 8G of RAM, has 6 SATA ports so you can add in terabytes of RAID-0 storage, and is socket compatable with the Quad-Cores from Intel.
Shits all over anything you can get from Apple, and it's still covered by warranty.
This article is ridiculous. The argument amounts to "See, there are PCs from Sony that cost more than a Mac." Any generalized price comparison between Mac and PC that includes a Sony product has already lost all credibility before they even start comparing specs.
I can't imagine running a small internet business and having to keep track of the sales tax regulations for every state.
Which makes it so only large corporations can participate and see a profit. Which leaves lots of room for shady backroom deals and centralized monitoring and control. Which is consistent with the values of every politician in the USA.
Slashdot Mirror
When you're a geek, making other people look stupid with words is an effective mating strategy.
Geeks are the best at doing that. So we practice our skills on each other here.
Athletic types are over at the gym practicing their skill in making us look weak this very moment.
They hone their skills practicing that on each other in just the same way.
Slashdot is about getting laid just like working out is about getting laid.
If you made one that had enough intelligence in its programming to be able to arrange to have its lead heart lifted up again when it was sinking low, it could conceivably run forever.
Say, it knows well enough to hook its counterweight up to a pully, a tree limb perhaps, attach a rock to the end, and push the rock off a cliff.
Eternal life!
In other news, Disney World has degenerated into Itchy and Scratchy land, and MacDonalds has decided to rebrand themselves to the more authentic "Krusty Burger" corporate image.
Honesty is the first halting step on the road to integrity. Maybe all this is a good sign.
Crass, wasteful, dishonest, exploitative, self-centered, ignorant, violent people are just as bad regardless of their color.
It's not "The rude Americans". It's all the things that they think make them so great, the things they strive for, the things they idealize... those are what make Americans so damned rotten to the core inside and terrible to share the face of the earth with...
You are right. It shouldn't just go unchecked. In most cases it should be the parents who solve the problem.
My dad subscribed to the "Drive you around in the car so you can find the bullies one at a time and beat the tar out of them in a fair fight, and physically intimidate any bully-parents that try to step in before you're done" method of solving the problem. It's a very effective method.
As a Canadian, I like the trade embargo.
It means there's a nice warm international vacation destination with no Americans.
Now, that's something that money just can't buy.
See, he should have killed all those in the justice system that took his kids away, instead of just stopping at his ex wife.
I feel back for the guy. But that's what you get for going to America, Hans.
Yeah, Google will do in Germany what it didn't do in China? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_by_Google# China (OK, not exactly the same thing but you get the point). I won't bet on it.
Yes I wonder why they didn't stand up to a government that executes more people then the rest of the world combined...
Would that be the US government?
It's a General Purpose Central Processing Unit.
As I tell my clients, it's a computer... yes, I can make it do anything you want. I can make it butter your toast if you want... just takes time and money.
What you heard is obviously a blatant lie.
Maybe it's just your standard, plain jane corruption. It's in the right place.
No, it exists as an admission by the instructor that they cannot quantify what they are supposed to be teaching, that they can't quantify what the students should know, and they won't be permitted to continue to operate if they don't pass students.
University doesn't teach people how to learn. People teach themselves that, or they don't. It's not even intended to teach them that. It's intended to teach them what to learn, so they don't need to go mucking about in the dark.
I can teach myself anything under the sun, without any university or school at all. And I have, for all of my professional career. I took a quick course to get my foot in the door, but it was a waste of time and money, just like all the others.
I might like to be able to go take a course that would teach me the sort of things I might need to know to solve particular types of problems, so I don't need to spend the extra time finding things out the hard way.
But the schools aren't to be trusted. They can't even quantify what I ought to know at the end enough to be able to test me and see if I've learned it or not. So why pay them? At this point, the strongest motivation I can see to get any further education is the social opportunities it might afford.
But feel free to give them all your money if it makes you happy.
The historical examples you are given are examples of the authorities having access to your "private" information, while the populace explicitly does not having access to "secret" information.
Just like what we see now.
It's not privacy that makes a society free. It's transparency. The freedom of a democracies about giving people the freedom to choose, and secrets remove choice utterly.
The illusion of privacy is how fear-mongering leaders who read all the secret reports turn everyone against each other.
If those spycams in the city centers were available to the public, 24/7, and the archives were also available, and those archives couldn't be edited because they were distributed, well, that's a neighbourhood watch. But when, by reason of privacy concerns, those cameras are monitored by the police and government but kept away from the population, well, that's when you've got a problem.
If they're public, and someone wants to ruin your reputation by showing videos of you pissing on a statue in a public park 10 years ago, well, you just pull out the inevitable video of your accuser doing something similar, and everyone agrees that this kind of foolishness shouldn't be given any weight at all.
On the other hand, as it stands now, they're not public. And while they're kept as government secrets, they're bullets waited to be fired at anyone who annoys those in power.
As for secret ballots... they didn't seem to hold up very well in the last US election, did they?
I can't. This isn't a free and open society. If I just opened myself up now, alone, I would be subjected to attack on the basis of trivialities, and though I am no less moral than any of you, your feet of clay would remain hidden while mine were revealed.
These things must be done systematically. It must be a sea-change that affects everyone. I will support that sea change and participate in it willingly, but I'm not opening myself up all alone and being the target of our societies most corrupt elements, those who have the most to lose from what I'm proposing.
Or to put it another way, I'll happily reveal that I smoked pot back in the day when your minister is obligated to also reveal that he too smoked pot back in the day. Then we can all be safe, we can all get over this smoking pot business and focus on something more important.
Ok, so say I'm imagining some horrors. What then? What do you propose should be done to me, to "sort me out"? You're assuming that I'm going to "do something stupid" so are you suggesting that my "ignorance and fear" should be corrected preemptively?
No, dumbass.
You should be able to check the records of the person you suspect and assure yourself that there isn't anything going on.
And if there is abuse going on, thanks for turning them out. We better all put a stop to that together, don't you think?
And if there isn't any abuse going on, now you can relax and not go about your life under horrible false assumptions.
Understand... privacy is at the root of the whole "1984esque-thoughtcrime" idea. In that scenario, your neighbour doesn't know what you do, you don't know what they do, but big brother knows what everyone does.
Understand... you can't cut off "big brother", it isn't possible. He's already there, now, reading your credit card records and watching you on the uncensored version of google earth.
All you can do is see to it that big brother doesn't know more than you do, and that your neighbours are equally well informed.
The more you struggle vainly to defend your privacy, the more you ensure that there is a greater imbalance of knowledge between those in power and those not in power.
You assure that there will be no one brave enough to speak beside you when you are found to be violating the law IN THE EXACT SAME WAY THEY ARE because they don't want anyone to know that they are like you.
You are sold privacy by those who are advantaged by it in the exact way I describe. But it is not in your best interest.
It is an instrumental part of the mechanism of your control.
No. There isn't a difference. The illusion that there's a difference is what makes all these monstrous things possible.
If you're sitting around thinking that so and so is molesting children, either they are indeed molesting children, and we need to get that sorted out right away before it happens again, or you're sitting there imagining horrors that aren't real to fill in the gaps of your ignorance and fear, and we need to get that sorted out right away before you do something stupid.
In this case though, all we have is a bunch of threats made from cover of anonymity, destroying the lives of the threatened.
In addition to the harm already done, we have the certain knowledge that there are people entering into the highest offices of law who are of such shockingly poor moral fiber that they would threaten to rape and sodomize one of their peers when they think they can get away with it.
That makes the entire mechanism of law suspect. And being that it is suspect, it has no moral authority over anyone. It is not deserving of the respect you give something noble and good in its current state, but only of the fearful respect you give to something that might hurt you unpredictably.
That's what privacy gives you. Conspiracy.
Clearly, we need transparency more than we need privacy.
The state of the world is mute evidence that privacy doesn't entice whistleblowing, or we never would have gotten to this state.
Privacy entices threats of rape and sodomy. And not among stupid two-bit criminals either. This is what it evokes among those entrusted with the law.
Privacy is a state of Ignorance
Maintaining Privacy is a Conspiracy
Privacy has no place in a free society.
Modern testing is about concealing the fact that modern education is a pile of bullshit.
Tests should have one appropriate score; 100%, and if you don't get that, you fail.
But instead, they grade them on the curve and pass those who scored highest.
Even though they're incompetent.
You know you can make nitrocellulose out of car batteries,d slaughterhouse dirt and sawdust?
Don't get too comfy.
My child regularly gets offered modeling contracts. Sorry.
It's better that way.
When people like me aren't outspoken, you elect smarmy leaders who go around talking out of the corner of their mouthes ripping off the rest of the world.
I don't want you to elect someone else.
I want you all to die suffering.
Keep electing whoever you like.
Nope, not sarcasm.
I'm not with you, I'm against you.
I cheer when I hear about your dead soldiers in the news.
I cut ordinary people off from the benefits of my knowledge and capacities if I find out they are sympathetic to your national interests with the utmost prejudice.
I throw rocks at police forces who defend your leadership when they visit my country.
I steal your so-called intellectual property exports and keep them on hand even if they have no value to me, just so I can share them with others who might like them.
I fucking hate your vicious, selfish culture, I want you all to die suffering in poverty, and I don't mind making a few personal sacrifices towards that end.
If I could have one wish, that plane would have hit the president of your filthy nation full of war criminals.
Invest what? Your share of the nebulous "money" that you can't eat or wear or take shelter under, that only has existence and value in that it gives you power over me and others around you?
Burn your money, invest your money, makes no fucking difference. Money doesn't do anything except keep count of these predatory arrangements that give men power over each other.
In other words, you can say "Oh, but if I didn't invest in drug companies, but instead bought candy, there would be no drugs for your illnesses." But it's a big lie. You cordoned off resources that were floating around out there and put them in your pocket. My house. My factory. My land. My good idea.
They're only yours to administer because of the cops and guns.
If I want them, I'll take them by force, and if I'm more effective in my violence or have more friends on my side than you have cops, well, now they're mine.
This is all wrong.
The force of guns, the force of owning all the food and houses, they're the same force.
Secret police and the state, public police and international cartels of rich selfish bastards, all the same to me. Same fucking evil organizations.
Same fate in the end.
This ideology wants to replace the free and spontaneous evolution of mankind by a sort of central (now global) planning.
The environmentalists ask for immediate political action because they do not believe in the long-term positive impact of economic growth.
He hit it precisely. That is exactly right.
Exploitative arrangements must be replaced with fair central planning.
The currently observed economic growth is the result of the wealth that is plentiful being converted to the poverty that is artificial scarcity to the detriment of us all.
Capitalists are an affront to life itself on this world and every one of us who lives here on this world.
They also own all the weapons of mass destruction, so we won't be able to just walk away and leave them shouting at an empty court.
We're going to have to go get them and take their weapons away from them.
Be ready.
You can get a refurbished Core 2 Duo from tigerdirect with a gig of dual-channel DDR RAM, a 250G SATA drive, integrated 5.1, dual-monitor supporting integrated graphics, front mounted card reader, USB2 and firewire for under 500 CAD.
You can upgrade that to 3G of RAM for another 80 bucks.
Long term, it supports upgrading to 8G of RAM, has 6 SATA ports so you can add in terabytes of RAID-0 storage, and is socket compatable with the Quad-Cores from Intel.
Shits all over anything you can get from Apple, and it's still covered by warranty.
This article is ridiculous. The argument amounts to "See, there are PCs from Sony that cost more than a Mac." Any generalized price comparison between Mac and PC that includes a Sony product has already lost all credibility before they even start comparing specs.
I can't imagine running a small internet business and having to keep track of the sales tax regulations for every state.
Which makes it so only large corporations can participate and see a profit. Which leaves lots of room for shady backroom deals and centralized monitoring and control. Which is consistent with the values of every politician in the USA.
This bill will pass.