...which contain detailed prophecies about Jesus' life, death, and resurrection. The criticism against the Bible used to be that books like Isaiah contained way too much details about Jesus' death especially that the critics used to say "Isaiah must have been written/altered after Jesus of Nazareth came about because Isaiah couldn't have predicted all these details!". However, the dating of the DSS prove that the book of Isaiah was written at least before BC100 and had not been altered since.
So, applying Occam's razor, we conclude that Jesus never existed and the "prophecies" were transposed into "events which happened" by later writers.
I mean, on your case, you have:
100BC - detailed "prophecies" about this guy and what's going to happen to him 0 - no actual historical evidence of anything at all to do with "Jesus" 100AD - detailed account of how the "prophecies" all came true, PS please join my cult
Anyway, the point is that robot vs robot is war by proxy. Without the violence, the bloodshed, the impetus to end the war just won't be the same. They'll drag on for longer and longer, and resolution will be even less certain than it is today. I'm not sure that's necessarily such a good thing.
Isn't the problem with this really that robot v robot doesn't actually resolve anything? I.e., one side will simply destroy the other side's robots eventually, but then what happens? Just because their robots are gone, doesn't mean the loser of that part of the war simply surrenders. Instead the humans then pick up guns and fight the remaining robots/other humans from the other side.
E.g. if China is invading your homeland, and their robots beat your robots, does your homeland just surrender after the robot phase? I think not. For the same reasons that wars aren't decided by cricket matches or playing poker, they won't be decided by robots blowing each other up. War, by its nature and implications, will ultimately still require the killing of humans.
I suppose one plausible scenario is that robots get so good that once your robots kill the other robots, it would be pointless for the enemy humans to resist further (i.e. or they'll just be massacred by your death drones and T-800s). I find it hard to imagine that though.
And of course behind all of this, there'll still be nukes. No major power is going to start a serious war with any other major power while the possibility of being nuked remains. Proxy wars in unstable/valuable regions will remain the norm.
Yeah, Slashdot is only interesting when there's a story about some random unpopular Linux distro getting a minor update every 12 hours, not when there are stories about the OS used by hundreds of millions of people around the world!
For music, Apple is the company that finally ended DRM. For that you should thank and support them, not curse them.
So, I guess I can go to itunes.com, pay on-line and download DRM-free music files to whatever device I'm using at my leisure?
No? What's that you say, I must be running a copy of a specific piece of software on my machine and logged in to Apple's on-line service before I can buy anything? And it will remain perpetually linked to my account, which I will always need itunes to access? And Apple can update itunes at their leisure to break compatibility with non-approved devices?* And they price discriminate by detecting your region?
Sound like DRM to me. Call me when I can download high quality MP3/FLAC from a website without running itunes.
Oh and: a recording creates an independent record of a conversation. You can trust the other person as much as you like, but that record exists beyond their mind and can, and in some cases will, be obtained by third parties who were not part of the original implied agreement about the level of privacy of the conversation.
I mean, what if your confidant dies? Is arrested themself? Has their house burgled? Loses the recording? Forgets about it? Stores it in the fricking all-singing all-dancing data cloud?
A) In 38 states your conversations can be secretly recorded without your knowledge. Humanity has not crumbled under the weight.
A bit less privacy wouldn't cause society to crumble but would still be a bad thing. Ref: Soviet Union.
B) "Privacy does not stop at one individual". Correct, but it requires the consent of all of those people to maintain the privacy. You are trusting the other party to not repeat what you said, therefore you trust they won't use the recordings.
Yes, but also because it creates the inherent doubt of "my word against yours". Anyone can claim that something was said, a recording proves it with a much, much higher degree of reliability.
C) "You might tell someone something off-the-record in a conversation which you would never put in writing." Security via obscurity. If you don't want anyone to know you think it, don't write it or speak it.
...or just don't let them record it and tell them in person. Which is a tried and true technique used by people since, I would guess, writing was invented. What if I do want them to know what I think, but I don't want them to record it and republish it? Would it be ok with you if I am concerned about secret recording in that situation?
D) "What is the problem with simply telling someone you are going to record them?" Because in interactions with people with authority, they can use this to force you to stop doing so. See my original post. The right to record conversations you are a party to is a defensive one.
Since when is there a positive "right" to record conversations you are a party to? You seem to have a lust for entrapment - presumably you would enjoy living in a panopticon-type society where everyone records everyone else. Personally, I prefer a society where people can't covertly record one another in private interactions.
At the end of the day, the prohibition on 2nd party recording is to protect liars, cheats and thieves by removing the ability to accurately capture evidence of the conversation one was a party to and does nothing for privacy.
Yes, liars, cheats. Confiders. Penitants. Those seeking advice. Those seeking support. Those seeking comfort. Whistleblowers. People engaging in conduct which, while not wrong, would be judged by many. Those trying to show empathy or build camaraderie.
To be honest, your views on all this seem quite sociopathic to me. Human interaction is built on trust. Secret recording of conversations utterly destroys the scope for trust.
It is of course a totally different question as to whether police should be subject to secret or open recording. I happen to think that so long as they are acting as instruments of the state, they should be subject to recording. But private citizens should not without their informed consent.
So for an example, if party A has a conversation with B, A can't record it because B supposedly has a REP privacy right yet A has heard everything B said. They were having a conversation for christ's sake. B gave up their privacy to the statements once they engaged in said conversation. So A can detail the conversation to whomever will listen but if B denies what was said or that the conversation even took place, it becomes a he said, she said situation. Now, who does this protect? It protects B. It protects liars, cheats and thieves. Because it allows them to lie about what took place.
Interesting comments although I disagree with the above. It is perfectly reasonable to not want part of a conversation to be recorded without your knowledge or consent. Privacy does not stop at one individual - a conversation between two people can also be private.
I also think you have an unrealistic view of human relationships if you think that the constant threat of secret recording wouldn't make our interactions awkward at best, and unmanageable at worst.
For example, you might in a private conversation with another person choose to express views which are unpopular, or offensive, or in some other way not views you would choose to express to a larger audience. You might tell someone something off-the-record in a conversation which you would never put in writing. A person secretly recording you takes away your right to choose your audience if they then republish the recording.
Look at in on the flipside. What is the problem with simply telling someone you are going to record them? Then they may choose how to proceed, instead of you misleading them (because most humans assume that they are NOT being recorded at all times, so your non-disclosure is misleading).
The author is also engaging in time compression with respect to history.
How can you write an article about how ideas are dead when we are quite literally in the middle of the biggest technological revolutions in human history? First, computers and the internet. Second, biomedical and biotech.
Day to day it looks like there are "no good ideas" blah blah - but step back even to the decade scale and we are in the middle of an explosion of amazing ideas.
No, everyone gets an ID and you must carry it with you at all times. I don't see why that would be a big deal, it's basically just a plastic card with a summary of the information the government has on you anyway.
It's a "big deal" because the state doesn't own you, you own the state. They should have no right to force you to carry ID at all times. If you are a private citizen minding your own business, why should you be forced to identify yourself to the authorities? If the need for identity legitimately arises (hopefully via due process) then you can always produce appropriate proof then.
Interesting that Europe - which should, more than any other part of the world, appreciate why tight state control over citizens is a bad thing (Nazis/Stasi/USSR/etc) - has this type of setup.
Indeed, blocking known troublemakers from posting Twitter updates about their latest theft isn't exactly the civil rights disaster that TFA appears to be trying to paint.
Except that we know from recent experience in the "War on Terror" and the war on copyright infringement that what will be involved here is:
- secret information about an individual being determined by some faceless agency, possibly in conjunction with "industry partners"
- criteria for disconnection do not require proof of criminal guilt via a judicial process
- person is unilaterally disconnected from network
- person is added to various vague international lists shared by governments amongst themselves
- person has minimal or no right of appeal, right to reasons or right to information
- any complaints are painted as the bleating of a bleeding heart fool and not a cry for human rights to be respected
- in time, use of system expands from "known troublemakers" to "anyone we vaguely don't like"
- government as a side benefit has handy system for control of social networks in case of Unknown Future Emergencies
Vinyl records. Well, some people still hold on to them. But, CDs are generally sound better, are smaller, more robust, don't wear out as they are played, cheaper due to the small size, hold more audio, don't need to be double sided etc. There are apparently a few cases where vinyl is alleged to be better, and that's probably why they still exist.
Actually, vinyl is a format which is growing quickly at the moment. If you go to an actual decent music shop (yes, they still exist) you will find most new good, non-pop music available on vinyl. Even better, you can generally get an LP on vinyl plus a digital version for about $20 - the best of both worlds.
The fact that the guy in TFA cites vinyl as something which has disappeared indicates he is totally clueless about social trends, and therefore that his predictions are worthless.
Ah; a story on how hiding behind pseudonyms is no bad thing....followed by a comment thread in which lots of people hiding behind pseudonyms insult each other in ways they would not do if their names were actually attached and the comments could follow them home.
And what harm, exactly, is the comment thread causing?
Is it harmful if you can't personally identify people you disagree with, somehow? Or do you think you have the right to force people to be 'nice' according to your standards?
You come off like an angry Nintendo fan. Nintendo has publicly stated that Apple is their biggest competitor, so they know all too well the threat of mobile gaming.
Could it be that people don't really give a crap about shitty mobile gaming, despite the industry working itself up into a frenzy about it? This would have the following consequences:
- people maybe willing to risk a few bucks on a mobile game, not $50-100
- people not being willing to buy a device which ONLY does mobile gaming
- people trying mobile gaming as an incident to using a much more useful feature of a product (phone/computer)
In other words, I think Apple and Nintendo are fighting over a market segment that really isn't going to go anywhere. As a gamer, I'm never going to substitute a 3DS or iphone for a real gaming machine. Apple can quite happily sell apps, including games, but that is an incident to the fact that iphones/ipads are useful devices and apps cost virtually nothing, not because there's a huge market dying for crappy 2D games with bad controls.
Doing this kind of thing is a breeze in Belgium. Everyone has an ID card with chip containing a couple of certificates on it. A site can use these to validate you say who you say you are by checking through a government server. Ebay does account verification in this way. Quick, painless.
Indeed, I was going to get this on Steam, but that's just completely unacceptable. No sale.
Irony overload. You ordered it via one intrusive DRM system which requires an Internet connection but you're boycotting it because it has a different intrusive DRM system which required an internet connection...
Isn't the whole appeal of games and virtual worlds that you are NOT yourself when you use them?
If you want to do standup comedy while looking and acting exactly like yourself there's this other system for that. IIRC it's called "the real world".
Wow I have heard of not reading the article, but you didn't even bother to read the crappy slashdot summary. The whole point is the avatar DOESN'T have to look exactly like you, it mimics your expressions and actions not your looks and features. It adds to the experience while still allowing people to hide themselves.
How is that made clear in any way in the "crappy slashdot summary"? To quote:
"It uses Kinect to determine body position and facial expression and maps these in real-time onto an avatar displayed on the screen along with other similar avatars."
Sounds a lot like it's simply mapping your image onto a virtual version of you, not animating a completely different character using your position/expression.
1. The whole attraction of Twitter is its simplicity and brevity. People use Twitter precisely because they don't want an integrated, complicated system (otherwise they wouldn't have left FB in the first place for their messaging needs).
2. Twitter allows you to participate with minimal involvement with the company Twitter. You need an account, provide 0 details, end of story. Your Twitter account isn't tied to anything else. Using Google for similar purposes would require you to hand over a significantly larger chunk of your privacy for the privilege. Google will be able to tie together your tweets (or whatever the G+ substitute is), email, search history etc. It's obvious why Google would want that, but why would users want that?
But their adventures weren’t over for the night. Next, a pack of dogs approached and began barking loudly. Aghaei said they dispersed the dogs by inventing a new application for green laser pointers.
Bothersome dogs? Nothing a little permanent eye damage can't remedy.
If there's one thing that makes standing around in a warzone full of special forces US troops safer, it's waving a laser pointer around erratically in the dark whilst setting up a device that looks a lot like a mortar.
Slashdot Mirror
...which contain detailed prophecies about Jesus' life, death, and resurrection. The criticism against the Bible used to be that books like Isaiah contained way too much details about Jesus' death especially that the critics used to say "Isaiah must have been written/altered after Jesus of Nazareth came about because Isaiah couldn't have predicted all these details!". However, the dating of the DSS prove that the book of Isaiah was written at least before BC100 and had not been altered since.
So, applying Occam's razor, we conclude that Jesus never existed and the "prophecies" were transposed into "events which happened" by later writers.
I mean, on your case, you have:
100BC - detailed "prophecies" about this guy and what's going to happen to him
0 - no actual historical evidence of anything at all to do with "Jesus"
100AD - detailed account of how the "prophecies" all came true, PS please join my cult
Seems pretty clear cut to me.
Anyway, the point is that robot vs robot is war by proxy. Without the violence, the bloodshed, the impetus to end the war just won't be the same. They'll drag on for longer and longer, and resolution will be even less certain than it is today. I'm not sure that's necessarily such a good thing.
Isn't the problem with this really that robot v robot doesn't actually resolve anything? I.e., one side will simply destroy the other side's robots eventually, but then what happens? Just because their robots are gone, doesn't mean the loser of that part of the war simply surrenders. Instead the humans then pick up guns and fight the remaining robots/other humans from the other side.
E.g. if China is invading your homeland, and their robots beat your robots, does your homeland just surrender after the robot phase? I think not. For the same reasons that wars aren't decided by cricket matches or playing poker, they won't be decided by robots blowing each other up. War, by its nature and implications, will ultimately still require the killing of humans.
I suppose one plausible scenario is that robots get so good that once your robots kill the other robots, it would be pointless for the enemy humans to resist further (i.e. or they'll just be massacred by your death drones and T-800s). I find it hard to imagine that though.
And of course behind all of this, there'll still be nukes. No major power is going to start a serious war with any other major power while the possibility of being nuked remains. Proxy wars in unstable/valuable regions will remain the norm.
Yeah, Slashdot is only interesting when there's a story about some random unpopular Linux distro getting a minor update every 12 hours, not when there are stories about the OS used by hundreds of millions of people around the world!
This is where you went off the rails and into space
You do not need a "specific piece of software" to play AAC files. I can play them on a Zune...
Not to play, to buy. Can I BUY these files without itunes and an account with Apple? No, I can't.
For music, Apple is the company that finally ended DRM. For that you should thank and support them, not curse them.
So, I guess I can go to itunes.com, pay on-line and download DRM-free music files to whatever device I'm using at my leisure?
No? What's that you say, I must be running a copy of a specific piece of software on my machine and logged in to Apple's on-line service before I can buy anything? And it will remain perpetually linked to my account, which I will always need itunes to access? And Apple can update itunes at their leisure to break compatibility with non-approved devices?* And they price discriminate by detecting your region?
Sound like DRM to me. Call me when I can download high quality MP3/FLAC from a website without running itunes.
* yes, they actually do this
Oh and: a recording creates an independent record of a conversation. You can trust the other person as much as you like, but that record exists beyond their mind and can, and in some cases will, be obtained by third parties who were not part of the original implied agreement about the level of privacy of the conversation.
I mean, what if your confidant dies? Is arrested themself? Has their house burgled? Loses the recording? Forgets about it? Stores it in the fricking all-singing all-dancing data cloud?
A) In 38 states your conversations can be secretly recorded without your knowledge. Humanity has not crumbled under the weight.
A bit less privacy wouldn't cause society to crumble but would still be a bad thing. Ref: Soviet Union.
B) "Privacy does not stop at one individual". Correct, but it requires the consent of all of those people to maintain the privacy. You are trusting the other party to not repeat what you said, therefore you trust they won't use the recordings.
Yes, but also because it creates the inherent doubt of "my word against yours". Anyone can claim that something was said, a recording proves it with a much, much higher degree of reliability.
C) "You might tell someone something off-the-record in a conversation which you would never put in writing." Security via obscurity. If you don't want anyone to know you think it, don't write it or speak it.
...or just don't let them record it and tell them in person. Which is a tried and true technique used by people since, I would guess, writing was invented. What if I do want them to know what I think, but I don't want them to record it and republish it? Would it be ok with you if I am concerned about secret recording in that situation?
D) "What is the problem with simply telling someone you are going to record them?" Because in interactions with people with authority, they can use this to force you to stop doing so. See my original post. The right to record conversations you are a party to is a defensive one.
Since when is there a positive "right" to record conversations you are a party to? You seem to have a lust for entrapment - presumably you would enjoy living in a panopticon-type society where everyone records everyone else. Personally, I prefer a society where people can't covertly record one another in private interactions.
At the end of the day, the prohibition on 2nd party recording is to protect liars, cheats and thieves by removing the ability to accurately capture evidence of the conversation one was a party to and does nothing for privacy.
Yes, liars, cheats. Confiders. Penitants. Those seeking advice. Those seeking support. Those seeking comfort. Whistleblowers. People engaging in conduct which, while not wrong, would be judged by many. Those trying to show empathy or build camaraderie.
To be honest, your views on all this seem quite sociopathic to me. Human interaction is built on trust. Secret recording of conversations utterly destroys the scope for trust.
It is of course a totally different question as to whether police should be subject to secret or open recording. I happen to think that so long as they are acting as instruments of the state, they should be subject to recording. But private citizens should not without their informed consent.
So for an example, if party A has a conversation with B, A can't record it because B supposedly has a REP privacy right yet A has heard everything B said. They were having a conversation for christ's sake. B gave up their privacy to the statements once they engaged in said conversation. So A can detail the conversation to whomever will listen but if B denies what was said or that the conversation even took place, it becomes a he said, she said situation. Now, who does this protect? It protects B. It protects liars, cheats and thieves. Because it allows them to lie about what took place.
Interesting comments although I disagree with the above. It is perfectly reasonable to not want part of a conversation to be recorded without your knowledge or consent. Privacy does not stop at one individual - a conversation between two people can also be private.
I also think you have an unrealistic view of human relationships if you think that the constant threat of secret recording wouldn't make our interactions awkward at best, and unmanageable at worst.
For example, you might in a private conversation with another person choose to express views which are unpopular, or offensive, or in some other way not views you would choose to express to a larger audience. You might tell someone something off-the-record in a conversation which you would never put in writing. A person secretly recording you takes away your right to choose your audience if they then republish the recording.
Look at in on the flipside. What is the problem with simply telling someone you are going to record them? Then they may choose how to proceed, instead of you misleading them (because most humans assume that they are NOT being recorded at all times, so your non-disclosure is misleading).
The author is also engaging in time compression with respect to history.
How can you write an article about how ideas are dead when we are quite literally in the middle of the biggest technological revolutions in human history? First, computers and the internet. Second, biomedical and biotech.
Day to day it looks like there are "no good ideas" blah blah - but step back even to the decade scale and we are in the middle of an explosion of amazing ideas.
Australia has working, cheap healthcare yet mysteriously we are not required to carry around compulsory ID cards.
No, everyone gets an ID and you must carry it with you at all times. I don't see why that would be a big deal, it's basically just a plastic card with a summary of the information the government has on you anyway.
It's a "big deal" because the state doesn't own you, you own the state. They should have no right to force you to carry ID at all times. If you are a private citizen minding your own business, why should you be forced to identify yourself to the authorities? If the need for identity legitimately arises (hopefully via due process) then you can always produce appropriate proof then.
Interesting that Europe - which should, more than any other part of the world, appreciate why tight state control over citizens is a bad thing (Nazis/Stasi/USSR/etc) - has this type of setup.
Indeed, blocking known troublemakers from posting Twitter updates about their latest theft isn't exactly the civil rights disaster that TFA appears to be trying to paint.
Except that we know from recent experience in the "War on Terror" and the war on copyright infringement that what will be involved here is:
- secret information about an individual being determined by some faceless agency, possibly in conjunction with "industry partners"
- criteria for disconnection do not require proof of criminal guilt via a judicial process
- person is unilaterally disconnected from network
- person is added to various vague international lists shared by governments amongst themselves
- person has minimal or no right of appeal, right to reasons or right to information
- any complaints are painted as the bleating of a bleeding heart fool and not a cry for human rights to be respected
- in time, use of system expands from "known troublemakers" to "anyone we vaguely don't like"
- government as a side benefit has handy system for control of social networks in case of Unknown Future Emergencies
Er... isn't the widespread shutting down of social services regarded as one of the key drivers behind this outbreak of chaos?
Your post is funny but also scarily accurate.
How are these Bad People TM going to be identified, exactly?
Vinyl records. Well, some people still hold on to them. But, CDs are generally sound better, are smaller, more robust, don't wear out as they are played, cheaper due to the small size, hold more audio, don't need to be double sided etc. There are apparently a few cases where vinyl is alleged to be better, and that's probably why they still exist.
Actually, vinyl is a format which is growing quickly at the moment. If you go to an actual decent music shop (yes, they still exist) you will find most new good, non-pop music available on vinyl. Even better, you can generally get an LP on vinyl plus a digital version for about $20 - the best of both worlds.
The fact that the guy in TFA cites vinyl as something which has disappeared indicates he is totally clueless about social trends, and therefore that his predictions are worthless.
Ah; a story on how hiding behind pseudonyms is no bad thing.. ..followed by a comment thread in which lots of people hiding behind pseudonyms insult each other in ways they would not do if their names were actually attached and the comments could follow them home.
And what harm, exactly, is the comment thread causing?
Is it harmful if you can't personally identify people you disagree with, somehow? Or do you think you have the right to force people to be 'nice' according to your standards?
You come off like an angry Nintendo fan. Nintendo has publicly stated that Apple is their biggest competitor, so they know all too well the threat of mobile gaming.
Could it be that people don't really give a crap about shitty mobile gaming, despite the industry working itself up into a frenzy about it? This would have the following consequences:
- people maybe willing to risk a few bucks on a mobile game, not $50-100
- people not being willing to buy a device which ONLY does mobile gaming
- people trying mobile gaming as an incident to using a much more useful feature of a product (phone/computer)
In other words, I think Apple and Nintendo are fighting over a market segment that really isn't going to go anywhere. As a gamer, I'm never going to substitute a 3DS or iphone for a real gaming machine. Apple can quite happily sell apps, including games, but that is an incident to the fact that iphones/ipads are useful devices and apps cost virtually nothing, not because there's a huge market dying for crappy 2D games with bad controls.
Doing this kind of thing is a breeze in Belgium. Everyone has an ID card with chip containing a couple of certificates on it. A site can use these to validate you say who you say you are by checking through a government server. Ebay does account verification in this way. Quick, painless.
Can you choose not to have one?
Otherwise that sounds like a horrendous plan.
Not sure who the "we" is in the summary, but I don't know anyone who thinks the facial recognition feature is anything other than creepy.
Indeed, I was going to get this on Steam, but that's just completely unacceptable. No sale.
Irony overload. You ordered it via one intrusive DRM system which requires an Internet connection but you're boycotting it because it has a different intrusive DRM system which required an internet connection...
Isn't the whole appeal of games and virtual worlds that you are NOT yourself when you use them?
If you want to do standup comedy while looking and acting exactly like yourself there's this other system for that. IIRC it's called "the real world".
Wow I have heard of not reading the article, but you didn't even bother to read the crappy slashdot summary. The whole point is the avatar DOESN'T have to look exactly like you, it mimics your expressions and actions not your looks and features. It adds to the experience while still allowing people to hide themselves.
How is that made clear in any way in the "crappy slashdot summary"? To quote:
"It uses Kinect to determine body position and facial expression and maps these in real-time onto an avatar displayed on the screen along with other similar avatars."
Sounds a lot like it's simply mapping your image onto a virtual version of you, not animating a completely different character using your position/expression.
Isn't the whole appeal of games and virtual worlds that you are NOT yourself when you use them?
If you want to do standup comedy while looking and acting exactly like yourself there's this other system for that. IIRC it's called "the real world".
1. The whole attraction of Twitter is its simplicity and brevity. People use Twitter precisely because they don't want an integrated, complicated system (otherwise they wouldn't have left FB in the first place for their messaging needs).
2. Twitter allows you to participate with minimal involvement with the company Twitter. You need an account, provide 0 details, end of story. Your Twitter account isn't tied to anything else. Using Google for similar purposes would require you to hand over a significantly larger chunk of your privacy for the privilege. Google will be able to tie together your tweets (or whatever the G+ substitute is), email, search history etc. It's obvious why Google would want that, but why would users want that?
FTA:
But their adventures weren’t over for the night. Next, a pack of dogs approached and began barking loudly. Aghaei said they dispersed the dogs by inventing a new application for green laser pointers.
Bothersome dogs? Nothing a little permanent eye damage can't remedy.
If there's one thing that makes standing around in a warzone full of special forces US troops safer, it's waving a laser pointer around erratically in the dark whilst setting up a device that looks a lot like a mortar.
Totally true. First, look at her picture.
You're right. Only good looking, smart people with tech skills deserve to have their rights respected.
PS - is your sig from the blurb to a low budget gay porno or what?