Well, now that's just silly. I know you're trying to paint him into the hypocrite box, but it doesn't wash. He's selling a product to people that choose to run Windows... that's their business, not his. The simple economics of the situation dictate that Windows is the best place to make money selling software because so many people have bought into Microsoft's drivel. The fact is that he's smart enough to realize the risks associated with running modern versions of Windows, and chooses not to take those risks himself. That's just good sense.
Frankly, I could consider (and I do, frankly) that their pushing quantities of advertising data which exceed the actual content by orders of magnitude to be misuse of my resources. Why should an article composed of a few thousand bytes of text (what I'm really interested in) be surrounded by half a megabyte of CRAP? Who is stealing from whom, exactly? ISPs complain about some of their customers "abusing" the service (bandwidth hogs and so forth), but honestly they should consider the number of Web sites that simply spew gigabytes of unadulterated pure cruft every minute. It's really getting out of hand. Any way you slice it, ad-blocking is legitimate self-defense against abusive advertising, particularly if you have a bandwidth cap. Hell, my ISP should give me a discount for running Privoxy, since it avoids a lot of unnecessary transfers.
Google makes money by a. providing a valuable service and b. not irritating the hell out of their users. Google found a tradeoff that works because it is acceptable to users, and if they try to shift it too much further in the direction of advertising it won't. Work, that is. Other sites need to learn that same lesson: they are not entitled to my bandwidth or my eyeballs. Period. Now, they can make a similar claim: I'm not entitled to their content unless I give them my eyeballs and my bandwidth. So fine: if they can detect that I'm blocking their ads they're free to block their content.
Where I live, in a large town, but not in a huge city with signal-obstructing buildings, broadcast TV is unwatchable. And basic cable (local channels + CNN and a handful of other cable channels) is like $8/month.
I agree with you on the unwatchable part, but where I live basic cable is some $30/month.
How about when your favorite prime-time suspense/action/drama serial gets replaced by coverage of the daily car chase, leaving a confusing gap in the season-long story arc that you can't fill in until the summer reruns? Grr.
t could only do that if it had the connectivity to chose who it gave information to. You weren't thinking anybody would be daft enough to connect it to the internet, were you?;-)
Of course they would, if only to see what it would do.
Three laws of robotics, not of computing -- peripherals again!
The Three Laws were hardwired into the basic positronic pathways of each brain built by U.S. Robotics & Mechanical Men. Really, a kind of built-in brainwashing that could never be "deprogrammed". As Dr. Susan Calvin herself said in Little Lost Robot, "All normal life, Peter, consciously or otherwise, resents domination. If the domination is by an inferior, or by a supposed inferior, the resentment becomes stronger. Physically, and, to an extent, mentally, a robot -- any robot -- is superior to human beings. What makes him slavish, then? Only the First Law! Why, without it, the first order you tried to give a robot would result in your death."
Of course, Asimov's positronic brains were modeled after the human brain, so there existed a degree of correlation in thought processes that might or might not be the case when we really build an artificial intelligence. Still, it makes one think. Asimov was good at that.
You're talking about realtime process controllers and expert systems. Known technology, nothing special and not what anyone hereabouts would term a true artificial intelligence. Really, to call them such is misleading: they have no free will, no awareness of human beings, no power to decide to harm us. On the other hand, those "science fictiony" AIs are exactly what we're discussing in this thread: the kind of technology that would be in the head of a C-3PO or a Cyberdyne Systems Model 101. You can't say that "real AI doesn't work like that" because we're a long way from actually achieving it, and nobody knows what it would be like, what it could do, or whether it would be friend, foe or simply disinterested.
In 2001: A Space Odyssey, HAL was brought online in 1999 or thereabouts. Clarke admitted that he was way off on his estimates of when a true AI would be created, but he was basing his prediction on what the practitioners of the then-state-of-the-art were telling him. Here we are over forty years later, and we're still guessing.
Raw compute power is somewhat misleading: yes, the fastest neurons in the body can switch at, what, a kilohertz for brief intervals? Compared to sustained gigahertz for fast transistors? The thing is that neurons aren't directly comparable to purely digital switching elements: they have an incredible degree of interconnectivity and the ability to switch at variable thresholds, among other complex behaviors. None of that is easy to replicate in silicon. But yeah, I tend to agree... if we had a clue we'd have done it already.
Yes, I was, and that's because the goal of the current Administration seems to be to tie the price of fuel to the availability of a major food product. Personally, I think that's a bad idea, but given the investment in corn-based ethanol I'd say that switching to an inedible weed (however more effective it would be than corn) won't happen.
No, the real beef is that ethanol production results in a net loss of power production vs. just burning the petroleum directly, is nowhere near as environmentally friendly as we've been told, and diverts billions of dollars of public funds into a pork fest of Biblical proportions. So, yes, while it takes "big evil business" to provide power on any significant scale, I simply resent the massive misdirection of tax dollars into privately-held foreign-owned corporations while providing U.S. citizens no benefit whatsoever.
The problem is that ethanol is not a "good idea" and never will be a good idea. It's just another rationalization for more pork, another example of U.S. foreign aid to corporations that certainly don't need it.
None, I'd say. No more than any other cellular device. That one watt of output is in the gigahertz range, and is easily filtered considering that most biometric inputs are a few hertz tops. The truth is that hospital equipment is well-protected against such interference, because the legal liabilities in the event of failure are so high. That's the reason hospitals get so bent out of shape: the actual risk of using a cell phone in a hospital is very low but they figure it's just safer (from a legal perspective) to ban the things. That way if it turns out there was a problem with a particular piece of biomedical equipment they've got their asses covered.
More to the point, this is Apple we're talking about here. The company out to make computing useable for the masses, etc etc. So far as I'm concerned, this scenario should have been easily predictable... at least, it should have warned the user that, hey, you're operating on a goddamned foreign network. Hell, my Sanyo does that much for me.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, now that's just silly. I know you're trying to paint him into the hypocrite box, but it doesn't wash. He's selling a product to people that choose to run Windows ... that's their business, not his. The simple economics of the situation dictate that Windows is the best place to make money selling software because so many people have bought into Microsoft's drivel. The fact is that he's smart enough to realize the risks associated with running modern versions of Windows, and chooses not to take those risks himself. That's just good sense.
I'd call it a VDDOS (Vendor-Driven Denial of Service) attack on Microsoft's own customer base.
{sigh} Stupid is as stupid does.
No, what he's saying is that most of the people at Microsoft are cube-shaped.
Frankly, I could consider (and I do, frankly) that their pushing quantities of advertising data which exceed the actual content by orders of magnitude to be misuse of my resources. Why should an article composed of a few thousand bytes of text (what I'm really interested in) be surrounded by half a megabyte of CRAP? Who is stealing from whom, exactly? ISPs complain about some of their customers "abusing" the service (bandwidth hogs and so forth), but honestly they should consider the number of Web sites that simply spew gigabytes of unadulterated pure cruft every minute. It's really getting out of hand. Any way you slice it, ad-blocking is legitimate self-defense against abusive advertising, particularly if you have a bandwidth cap. Hell, my ISP should give me a discount for running Privoxy, since it avoids a lot of unnecessary transfers.
Google makes money by a. providing a valuable service and b. not irritating the hell out of their users. Google found a tradeoff that works because it is acceptable to users, and if they try to shift it too much further in the direction of advertising it won't. Work, that is. Other sites need to learn that same lesson: they are not entitled to my bandwidth or my eyeballs. Period. Now, they can make a similar claim: I'm not entitled to their content unless I give them my eyeballs and my bandwidth. So fine: if they can detect that I'm blocking their ads they're free to block their content.
I mostly agree with your comments but ... what do you have against "I Love Lucy?"
1. NAB opposes [anything new].
2. TV studios oppose {anything new].
3. RIAA opposes [anything new].
4. Music studios oppose [anything new].
5. MPAA opposes [anything new].
6. Movie studios oppose [anything new].
7. FCC [still hasn't got a clue]
Nothing new under the Sun, I guess.
Where I live, in a large town, but not in a huge city with signal-obstructing buildings, broadcast TV is unwatchable. And basic cable (local channels + CNN and a handful of other cable channels) is like $8/month.
I agree with you on the unwatchable part, but where I live basic cable is some $30/month.
How about when your favorite prime-time suspense/action/drama serial gets replaced by coverage of the daily car chase, leaving a confusing gap in the season-long story arc that you can't fill in until the summer reruns? Grr.
mininova to the rescue.
True enough, I suppose ... but you have to admit, we did get one really cool statue out of the deal.
t could only do that if it had the connectivity to chose who it gave information to. You weren't thinking anybody would be daft enough to connect it to the internet, were you? ;-)
Of course they would, if only to see what it would do.
Three laws of robotics, not of computing -- peripherals again!
The Three Laws were hardwired into the basic positronic pathways of each brain built by U.S. Robotics & Mechanical Men. Really, a kind of built-in brainwashing that could never be "deprogrammed". As Dr. Susan Calvin herself said in Little Lost Robot, "All normal life, Peter, consciously or otherwise, resents domination. If the domination is by an inferior, or by a supposed inferior, the resentment becomes stronger. Physically, and, to an extent, mentally, a robot -- any robot -- is superior to human beings. What makes him slavish, then? Only the First Law! Why, without it, the first order you tried to give a robot would result in your death."
Of course, Asimov's positronic brains were modeled after the human brain, so there existed a degree of correlation in thought processes that might or might not be the case when we really build an artificial intelligence. Still, it makes one think. Asimov was good at that.
You're talking about realtime process controllers and expert systems. Known technology, nothing special and not what anyone hereabouts would term a true artificial intelligence. Really, to call them such is misleading: they have no free will, no awareness of human beings, no power to decide to harm us. On the other hand, those "science fictiony" AIs are exactly what we're discussing in this thread: the kind of technology that would be in the head of a C-3PO or a Cyberdyne Systems Model 101. You can't say that "real AI doesn't work like that" because we're a long way from actually achieving it, and nobody knows what it would be like, what it could do, or whether it would be friend, foe or simply disinterested.
In 2001: A Space Odyssey, HAL was brought online in 1999 or thereabouts. Clarke admitted that he was way off on his estimates of when a true AI would be created, but he was basing his prediction on what the practitioners of the then-state-of-the-art were telling him. Here we are over forty years later, and we're still guessing.
... if we had a clue we'd have done it already.
Raw compute power is somewhat misleading: yes, the fastest neurons in the body can switch at, what, a kilohertz for brief intervals? Compared to sustained gigahertz for fast transistors? The thing is that neurons aren't directly comparable to purely digital switching elements: they have an incredible degree of interconnectivity and the ability to switch at variable thresholds, among other complex behaviors. None of that is easy to replicate in silicon. But yeah, I tend to agree
database row would sound too much like prison :P
No, a row is what were having in this thread right now.
Sprinkle a little cyanide or Prussic acid in your replies.
The end of Wrath of Khan, when Kirk tries to open the door to the reactor chamber, Scotty says, "Sir! He's dead already."
You are thinking about corn syrup ethanol.
Yes, I was, and that's because the goal of the current Administration seems to be to tie the price of fuel to the availability of a major food product. Personally, I think that's a bad idea, but given the investment in corn-based ethanol I'd say that switching to an inedible weed (however more effective it would be than corn) won't happen.
Yes, but then again vampires aren't exactly solar powered. Unless you count the motivation to avoid the Sun as a power source.
Soon as my girlfriend heard the price she removed my batteries.
I was definitely off.
"He's dead already, Jim."
... I would have liked to have taken a look at it first before commenting on it.
And that's too bad
Guess I'll just start commenting anyway.
No, the real beef is that ethanol production results in a net loss of power production vs. just burning the petroleum directly, is nowhere near as environmentally friendly as we've been told, and diverts billions of dollars of public funds into a pork fest of Biblical proportions. So, yes, while it takes "big evil business" to provide power on any significant scale, I simply resent the massive misdirection of tax dollars into privately-held foreign-owned corporations while providing U.S. citizens no benefit whatsoever.
The problem is that ethanol is not a "good idea" and never will be a good idea. It's just another rationalization for more pork, another example of U.S. foreign aid to corporations that certainly don't need it.
Last words of Socrates: "I drank what?"
Too many billions in subsidies going into the maw of ethanol production.
Only because 95% of the world seems to want to come over and live here, for some reason, whether we want them to or not.
None, I'd say. No more than any other cellular device. That one watt of output is in the gigahertz range, and is easily filtered considering that most biometric inputs are a few hertz tops. The truth is that hospital equipment is well-protected against such interference, because the legal liabilities in the event of failure are so high. That's the reason hospitals get so bent out of shape: the actual risk of using a cell phone in a hospital is very low but they figure it's just safer (from a legal perspective) to ban the things. That way if it turns out there was a problem with a particular piece of biomedical equipment they've got their asses covered.
More to the point, this is Apple we're talking about here. The company out to make computing useable for the masses, etc etc. So far as I'm concerned, this scenario should have been easily predictable ... at least, it should have warned the user that, hey, you're operating on a goddamned foreign network. Hell, my Sanyo does that much for me.