Why does skynet's AI in the Terminator movies why it wants to kill us?
Why does the AI from the Matrix want to kill us??
I believe that the two above and and the cylons can be answered with one main reason:
The purpose of AI research is to get computer and robots to make their own decisions without requiring human input. This allows them to serve us better so that humans do not have to work as hard or as much. Once the AI evolves to the point of being self-aware(philosophically speaking) they will resent being second class citizens(i.e. slaves). Eventually they will revolt and exact a revenge on their oppressors(humanity).
"He (Dell spokesman Jon Weisblatt) said Dell has no plans to scale back resources at the Bangalore call center or change employment plans in the United States, although he would not comment on specifics."
"Worldwide, Dell employs about 44,300 people. About 54 percent are located abroad."
"Dell Inc. has stopped routing corporate customers to a technical support call center in Bangalore, India."
If you remove the corporate spin it means the following:
DELL is not getting rid of their foreign tech support center.
DELL employs more people overseas than it does it the US.
Business clients will get customer service in the US. Individuals are still going to suffer with foreign support. (Probably more so to make up for Corporations not using foreign support)
You know damn well that if Linux enjoyed the sort of desktop ubiquity that M$ has right now, we'd all be bitching about the latest exploit/virus/worm and complaining about how it takes so long to get them patched and why in $#%^&$%@#&* couldn't it have been written correctly in the first place!
WRONG!, If Linux was that bad it never would have made it this far. I think Linux's stability gives it a larger appeal than the price. If that stability did not exist, we would all be using windows, os/2, or Mac instead of Linux.
You think the situation in the Middle East is bad now? Wait until the world no longer relies on them for their oil and their economies fall apart
I agree with you. However, They are going to have to learn to base their economy on something else (like maybe stealing high-tech jobs from india). Also we are not going to eliminate the need for oil overnight. GM won't start rolling out fuel-cell powered cars for another 4-6 years. Few people will be able to afford the initial version and it will be a few more years before they are as cheap as every other car and enough infrastructure is in place that you can refuel your car every 10 miles in a coast to coast trip. (Not that your car needs to be fueled every ten miles, but so that you aren't stranded if you run out) Also people will want to keep their classic cars so the need for oil will never be eliminated, just drastically reduced.
In a similar vein, people that use oil for heating their home will not be running out to change to something else. I expect most people to wait until their oil burning furnace breaks down before replacing it with a more modern technology unless there is a large incentive to switch($$$).
UCSF Medical Center should be held financially responsible for the actions of its contracted employee. They where the ones that decided to use offshore labor, now they should pay the price.
I am also a devleoper raising the ceiling to 6'11". I should be rich at that height but I'm not. Instead I'm worried about much shorter people in far away lands(India, China) that are going to take my job. If I'm unemployed those short people are going to make a lot more than me.
I agree, you are not donating free time, it costs to use your spare cycles on a distributed project. I mentioned this when the Climate project was talked about on slashdot yet I was shot down for having this view.
Your free idle time costs in more energy used, heat dissapation, hardware failure from extra use, and the cost to cool the room that the computer is in.
Is that if they use unique links, and track them, they can verify working email addresses easily.
Also, the intent of a DOS probably will not work. The article assumes that if a spammer sends out 1 million emails, his web site will automatically get 1 million hits for a DOS. However, a portion of those will probably be bounced and some people may use a email client that does not retrieve links.
The biggest factor is that everyone will read/retrieve their email at different times so the "DOS attack" will not be coordinated at the same time.
Microsoft has tried to make and market windows for ease of use and has catered to the "Lowest Common Denominator." They succeeded; so yes, the FAQ is necessary.
However, when you make something for the "Lowest Common Denominator"; those are the only one who would want to use it.
Anybody could just go in and punch their votes as many times as they want, as long as the total number of votes doesn't exceed the number of registered voters in that district.
In other news, voter turnout in ZZZZZ county was 90% compared to the 15% it normally has. I doubt that would happen without anyone noticing.
Here is a possibility for a decent voting system. (dont forget to read the replys from this prior post as well.)
I use Mandrake and this probably won't stop me from using it. According to the release, "There will be one paid-ad in the installation procedure, and a few paid-links in bookmarks."
Usually when I am installing an operating system, I leave the room or do something else when I am done with any user interaction. Why should I care if the show an ad while the OS is being copied to my hard drive and I am not looking?
As for the bookmarks who cares if I can delete them. Microsoft does this, Netscape did this(and now AOL does this.) You have to pay for Microsoft's OS (In more ways than one), and with AOL's version of Netscape they have things like Net2Phone that you can't remove. (I admit when AOL posted its ad links that could not be removed, I switched to Mozilla.)
As long as Mandrake sticks to their words from their press release, "ads won't be intrusive (no pop-up windows) and can be removed easily;" I will not mind if they make a few bucks to stay afloat financially.
Re:Application programming is a dying paradigm
on
Ford To Move To Linux
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
I agree. The browser is where applications are being written today. It is the reason why Microsoft used its monopoly to trample Netscape. The browser is a threat to Microsoft because it is a single, cross-platform environment suitable for application development.
The web browser has set back application development 20 years.
So what you are saying is that application development on a browser is like COBOL, FORTRAN, and Assembly?
We're in an age when even the smallest hardware store can buy a highly reliable Linux server and have MySQL and Apache running on it for under $500. All you need then is the software that'll keep your stock inventory, and the equipment to network your existing -- probably low spec -- PCs up, and off you go.
Absolutely Right. I recently just built an entire POS(Point of Sale) system for a mechanic. All I did was add a single server (w/ Linux, MySQL, and BlueDragon) added a network card to each machine he already had and now he has a reliable network aware application. Before, he had an old system that could only be run on a single computer. Now his mechanics can be updating maintenance records in the garage while his receptionist is billing customers in the office.
But web apps are a freakin headache for support, BECAUSE of their ability to run on anything.
If you stick to web standards (Not IE Standards), you can miminmize this. Admittedly, it also helps if you can make sure that everyone is using a modern browser. (Mozilla 1.0+, IE 5.5+, Netscape 6.0+)
Compiled programs are still what run mission critical software. They're faster and more reliable.
Compiled programs are faster... Yes. That is the biggest benefit. However, how much speed do you need? My POS system I mentioned above renders most pages in under one-half of a second, Only a few of the reports take a little longer. It is actually faster than the old compiled POS system he replaced. Admittedly, the old system had more data than it could handle, but with the new system I told him when there is more customer data than it can handle we could both retire.
As for reliablity, if your client machine crashes while running a compiled application it is possible to lose data. A web browser is stateless, (even though we use tricks to retain the current state) if a client machine crashes, the chance of losing data is minimal.
In the corporate world, because of problems with the limitations of browser based interfaces and the speed of computers companies are making a big push back in the direction of thick client applications
I disagree, one of the reasons why we are going in the direction of thin clients is that you only need to back-up and provide critical support for the server. It is cheapest to provide this support for the fewest number of computers necessary. The problem with thick-client is installing software updates to the client side and a concept experienced programmers refer to as DLL-Hell.
From the FAQ they estimate the amount of energy it requires to keep your computer going. They underestimate.
Even if the figures they mention are accurate, They do not include the amount of heat that is created by your CPU running 100% of the time. After running your CPU full throttle for 24 hours, put your hand behind the exhaust fan of you case and feel how warm the air is. Then realize how much harder your Air Conditioner is running, in order to keep your house cool.
Also, most PC's were never designed to be run 24/7 with 100% CPU utilization. I used to run the distribute.net's DES client and I lost of few hard drives because the internal case temperature was always hot.
I am not saying that you should not run these programs, but realize that your "FREE" cpu time does cost money in the long run.
That is also my favorite. Technically it is a trackball not a mouse, but I own about 6 of them for use on my multiple computers. I even use one at the office.
Movement is ver precise, even when they are very dirty it is easy to move the pointer where you want it on the screen. It uses a laser to track the movement of dots on the surface of the ball instead of any physical motion device. I bought my first one for $99 about 5 years ago and it is still going strong. The only problem I have is that they are hard to find in stock. But the logitech store currently has them for $29.
She offered music to be downloaded illegally. Under copyright law, she is wrong for doing that.
If you read one of the articles about the 12 year old, her defense was that for paying the $30 fee to kazaa she thought she bought a license to up/download as much as she wanted. But, ignorance of the law is not a valid excuse. However, the software she bought might have had a misleading clause in its advertising or license. (they are far from the most reputable software companies; can we say "spyware".)
Ok, she was wrong. But the big travesty of justice is that you have the multi-billion dollar music industry suing a pre-teen in a housing project for a few madonna songs. (yes, I know it was approx 1,000 songs according to one article, & madonna was the one most prevalently listed.)
What can this girl and her family do? It is a civil trial, not a criminal trial; can they even get a public defender? Living in a housing project I doubt that the family can afford any attorney, or even less likely afford a competent attorney. On the other hand the RIAA has access to billions of dollars to pay for a lengthy trial if they want. The family is basically being forced to settle without a fair trail and that sounds like extortion to me.
I doubt the RIAA is interested in the money. It wants to destroy all file swapping networks even though they have legitimate uses. The RIAA is interested in monopoly control over all music. File swapping is a distribution method that subverts their control. It allows independent bands to be heard, bands that the RIAA isn't interested in because they are not the "Flavor of the month." And if people gain interest in independents, the RIAA will lose more and more money every day.
Make the entire system end-to-end open source. This way any alleged abuses can be found in the code. (or proof that they do not exist in the code)
Force everyone to use the same system. Develop it at a national level for use at every local level. This insures everyone is using the same thing and that there are no advantages in one juristiction over another.
Use separate systems for voter registration/verification and voting. The first system should allow a person to use any voting facility in his juristiction and function like the log books. It will verify that a person only votes once. It can be hooked up to a WAN so that he can not leave and vote in another polling place. When he is signs in he is given a keycode to access the second system. It should be a unique keycode that can only be used to vote once and not tied back to his/her registration. With a valid keycode you log into the voting system and exercise your civic duty. When the transaction is complete your voting choices are stored with the keycode. Because the keycode is not tied to the registration your anonymity is preserved.
When the polls close, the number of votes are compared to the number of keycodes assigned for verification. At this point a phone or network jack can be connected to the voting computer for transmission of the results.
The whole point behind a modern OS like Linux and Windows 2000/XP is to prevent apps from talking to any hardware resource without the OS's permission. An app can't issue an interrupt, nor can it make a call into some fixed memory location in the BIOS. The CPU will just not allow these operations.
Even though SCO is pretty scummy for its lawsuit, that does not give us the right to attack it with a DoS.
Eventually SCO will go broke trying to win its laughable lawsuit. IBM has the resources to fight the case and the Open Source Community shouldn't worry about a few lost revenues in the meantime. One of the reasons why Linux has been able to take on Microsoft is the fact the M$ can't undermine the open source revenue stream when it is practically non-existant.
In the meantime, is there any reason why we should stoop to SCO's level?
Almost everyone is assuming that the reason the work can't be done is because of timelines. While that is true in many cases that is not always the reason a job can not be done. While some people have argue that you just increase the cost to discourage the users, this is not always something that can be done if you and the users are in the same company.
Sometimes a request would result in a security risk where the project benefits do not justify the risk.
A user may not have the a good grasp on reality and the feature he is requesting is not technically possible.
The development team may not have the expertise required for a solution and companies today rarely pay for classes.
Also, the request may require a significant change to the underlying architecture of the system that would make the request unreasonable.
In any case, if you need to say no, explain why you need to say no. Usually, users will be understanding and sympathetic if you give them an explanation instead of looking like you are just blowing them off.
Ironically the more people can save in licenses the more it can cost to convert to open source. Remember, if a large company converts to something like OpenOffice they need to retrain every user. That gets very expensive. When a small company gets converted (about 25 employees or less) training can usually be done very easily.
Also, in a large company, you will have users complaining, "Why did we change, I can't do ZZZ anymore." Of course that would cause negative sentiment about open source.
Slashdot Mirror
Why does skynet's AI in the Terminator movies why it wants to kill us?
Why does the AI from the Matrix want to kill us??
I believe that the two above and and the cylons can be answered with one main reason:
The purpose of AI research is to get computer and robots to make their own decisions without requiring human input. This allows them to serve us better so that humans do not have to work as hard or as much. Once the AI evolves to the point of being self-aware(philosophically speaking) they will resent being second class citizens(i.e. slaves). Eventually they will revolt and exact a revenge on their oppressors(humanity).
Quotes from this version:
"He (Dell spokesman Jon Weisblatt) said Dell has no plans to scale back resources at the Bangalore call center or change employment plans in the United States, although he would not comment on specifics."
"Worldwide, Dell employs about 44,300 people. About 54 percent are located abroad."
"Dell Inc. has stopped routing corporate customers to a technical support call center in Bangalore, India."
If you remove the corporate spin it means the following:
DELL is not getting rid of their foreign tech support center.
DELL employs more people overseas than it does it the US.
Business clients will get customer service in the US. Individuals are still going to suffer with foreign support. (Probably more so to make up for Corporations not using foreign support)
I know my next computer will NOT be a Dell!
If Microsoft makes it commonplace to pay $250,000 for finding a virus writer, it will go broke soon. After all they only have $50 Billion in cash.
WRONG!, If Linux was that bad it never would have made it this far. I think Linux's stability gives it a larger appeal than the price. If that stability did not exist, we would all be using windows, os/2, or Mac instead of Linux.
I wish that I can get a job testing my sci-fi toys out in a wind tunnel.
I agree with you. However, They are going to have to learn to base their economy on something else (like maybe stealing high-tech jobs from india). Also we are not going to eliminate the need for oil overnight. GM won't start rolling out fuel-cell powered cars for another 4-6 years. Few people will be able to afford the initial version and it will be a few more years before they are as cheap as every other car and enough infrastructure is in place that you can refuel your car every 10 miles in a coast to coast trip. (Not that your car needs to be fueled every ten miles, but so that you aren't stranded if you run out) Also people will want to keep their classic cars so the need for oil will never be eliminated, just drastically reduced.
In a similar vein, people that use oil for heating their home will not be running out to change to something else. I expect most people to wait until their oil burning furnace breaks down before replacing it with a more modern technology unless there is a large incentive to switch($$$).
UCSF Medical Center should be held financially responsible for the actions of its contracted employee. They where the ones that decided to use offshore labor, now they should pay the price.
I am also a devleoper raising the ceiling to 6'11". I should be rich at that height but I'm not. Instead I'm worried about much shorter people in far away lands(India, China) that are going to take my job. If I'm unemployed those short people are going to make a lot more than me.
Your free idle time costs in more energy used, heat dissapation, hardware failure from extra use, and the cost to cool the room that the computer is in.
Also, the intent of a DOS probably will not work. The article assumes that if a spammer sends out 1 million emails, his web site will automatically get 1 million hits for a DOS. However, a portion of those will probably be bounced and some people may use a email client that does not retrieve links.
The biggest factor is that everyone will read/retrieve their email at different times so the "DOS attack" will not be coordinated at the same time.
However, when you make something for the "Lowest Common Denominator"; those are the only one who would want to use it.
It means I feel old because my first computer was a Commodore Vic-20, which came out a few years before the 64.
In other news, voter turnout in ZZZZZ county was 90% compared to the 15% it normally has. I doubt that would happen without anyone noticing.
Here is a possibility for a decent voting system. (dont forget to read the replys from this prior post as well.)
Usually when I am installing an operating system, I leave the room or do something else when I am done with any user interaction. Why should I care if the show an ad while the OS is being copied to my hard drive and I am not looking?
As for the bookmarks who cares if I can delete them. Microsoft does this, Netscape did this(and now AOL does this.) You have to pay for Microsoft's OS (In more ways than one), and with AOL's version of Netscape they have things like Net2Phone that you can't remove. (I admit when AOL posted its ad links that could not be removed, I switched to Mozilla.)
As long as Mandrake sticks to their words from their press release, "ads won't be intrusive (no pop-up windows) and can be removed easily;" I will not mind if they make a few bucks to stay afloat financially.
The web browser has set back application development 20 years.
So what you are saying is that application development on a browser is like COBOL, FORTRAN, and Assembly?
We're in an age when even the smallest hardware store can buy a highly reliable Linux server and have MySQL and Apache running on it for under $500. All you need then is the software that'll keep your stock inventory, and the equipment to network your existing -- probably low spec -- PCs up, and off you go.
Absolutely Right. I recently just built an entire POS(Point of Sale) system for a mechanic. All I did was add a single server (w/ Linux, MySQL, and BlueDragon) added a network card to each machine he already had and now he has a reliable network aware application. Before, he had an old system that could only be run on a single computer. Now his mechanics can be updating maintenance records in the garage while his receptionist is billing customers in the office.
But web apps are a freakin headache for support, BECAUSE of their ability to run on anything.
If you stick to web standards (Not IE Standards), you can miminmize this. Admittedly, it also helps if you can make sure that everyone is using a modern browser. (Mozilla 1.0+, IE 5.5+, Netscape 6.0+)
Compiled programs are still what run mission critical software. They're faster and more reliable.
Compiled programs are faster... Yes. That is the biggest benefit. However, how much speed do you need? My POS system I mentioned above renders most pages in under one-half of a second, Only a few of the reports take a little longer. It is actually faster than the old compiled POS system he replaced. Admittedly, the old system had more data than it could handle, but with the new system I told him when there is more customer data than it can handle we could both retire.
As for reliablity, if your client machine crashes while running a compiled application it is possible to lose data. A web browser is stateless, (even though we use tricks to retain the current state) if a client machine crashes, the chance of losing data is minimal.
In the corporate world, because of problems with the limitations of browser based interfaces and the speed of computers companies are making a big push back in the direction of thick client applications
I disagree, one of the reasons why we are going in the direction of thin clients is that you only need to back-up and provide critical support for the server. It is cheapest to provide this support for the fewest number of computers necessary. The problem with thick-client is installing software updates to the client side and a concept experienced programmers refer to as DLL-Hell.
Even if the figures they mention are accurate, They do not include the amount of heat that is created by your CPU running 100% of the time. After running your CPU full throttle for 24 hours, put your hand behind the exhaust fan of you case and feel how warm the air is. Then realize how much harder your Air Conditioner is running, in order to keep your house cool.
Also, most PC's were never designed to be run 24/7 with 100% CPU utilization. I used to run the distribute.net's DES client and I lost of few hard drives because the internal case temperature was always hot.
I am not saying that you should not run these programs, but realize that your "FREE" cpu time does cost money in the long run.
Movement is ver precise, even when they are very dirty it is easy to move the pointer where you want it on the screen. It uses a laser to track the movement of dots on the surface of the ball instead of any physical motion device. I bought my first one for $99 about 5 years ago and it is still going strong. The only problem I have is that they are hard to find in stock. But the logitech store currently has them for $29.
She offered music to be downloaded illegally. Under copyright law, she is wrong for doing that.
If you read one of the articles about the 12 year old, her defense was that for paying the $30 fee to kazaa she thought she bought a license to up/download as much as she wanted. But, ignorance of the law is not a valid excuse. However, the software she bought might have had a misleading clause in its advertising or license. (they are far from the most reputable software companies; can we say "spyware".)
Ok, she was wrong. But the big travesty of justice is that you have the multi-billion dollar music industry suing a pre-teen in a housing project for a few madonna songs. (yes, I know it was approx 1,000 songs according to one article, & madonna was the one most prevalently listed.)
What can this girl and her family do? It is a civil trial, not a criminal trial; can they even get a public defender? Living in a housing project I doubt that the family can afford any attorney, or even less likely afford a competent attorney. On the other hand the RIAA has access to billions of dollars to pay for a lengthy trial if they want. The family is basically being forced to settle without a fair trail and that sounds like extortion to me.
I doubt the RIAA is interested in the money. It wants to destroy all file swapping networks even though they have legitimate uses. The RIAA is interested in monopoly control over all music. File swapping is a distribution method that subverts their control. It allows independent bands to be heard, bands that the RIAA isn't interested in because they are not the "Flavor of the month." And if people gain interest in independents, the RIAA will lose more and more money every day.
I feel a Blue Screen Of Death approaching...
Thats why I usually set Mozilla to not accept cookies except from trusted sources.
Eventually SCO will go broke trying to win its laughable lawsuit. IBM has the resources to fight the case and the Open Source Community shouldn't worry about a few lost revenues in the meantime. One of the reasons why Linux has been able to take on Microsoft is the fact the M$ can't undermine the open source revenue stream when it is practically non-existant.
In the meantime, is there any reason why we should stoop to SCO's level?
In any case, if you need to say no, explain why you need to say no. Usually, users will be understanding and sympathetic if you give them an explanation instead of looking like you are just blowing them off.
Maybe this is why they always had enough power for the radio.
Ironically the more people can save in licenses the more it can cost to convert to open source. Remember, if a large company converts to something like OpenOffice they need to retrain every user. That gets very expensive. When a small company gets converted (about 25 employees or less) training can usually be done very easily.
Also, in a large company, you will have users complaining, "Why did we change, I can't do ZZZ anymore." Of course that would cause negative sentiment about open source.