Why you are joking about it? perhaps it will happen that way. First contact with aliens may make us realize our differences are not that big and then perhaps we stop the silly little wars of ours.
I agree with you, but where is the connection with aliens wanting to destroy us?
When Europeans conquered America, they killed the natives. But that was because Europeans were not really civilized, they were just coming out of the middle ages. A few hundred years later and genocides are no longer acceptable by mankind.
So, in the same line of thought as yours, aliens would not consider genocide an option when they reach a technological level that allows them to travel to other places in the universe.
In fact, I consider it highly unlikely that a civilization can have any meaningful progress and also maintain aggressiveness at the same time; the two are highly mutually exclusive...especially with technology as advanced as space travel, which requires co-operation on many levels.
The only possibility I see for aggressiveness is when we are antagonistic to them, i.e. we are about to develop or have developed interstellar space travel. Then, they might attack us, in fear of us getting too powerful and attacking them...which is something that has happened lots of times in human history anyway.
You just have to look at our own history of contact between various cultures to figure that out.
What makes you think aliens will have the same conqueror traits as humans?
As mankind progresses and environment awareness is increased, more and more people take care not to destroy the environment around them. For example, some people do not destroy ant nests. In the same line of thought, why should aliens destroy us? if they have the capability of interstellar travel, then obviously are far more advanced than us, so there should be no reason for them to destroy us, as it is no reason for us to destroy ants.
Almost everything else has gone up in price the last few months, and the excuse is the price of oil. But hard disks have lots of parts that are indirect products of oil, so someone would expect that the prices would not be decreased so easily.
Robots could be useful in many places. First of all, they can replace people in all the trivial jobs (yeah, temporarily bad for mankind, but inevitable). Secondly, they can be of great aid to those that need help, i.e. older people, handicapped people etc. Thirdly, there are many house chores that could be done by a robot (going to the grocery store, wash the car, dust the house, even cook). Forthly, robots can keep children occupied in a much better way than television.
The real problem is that we don't have advanced enough robots that we can talk to and they do the job. Our robot technology is in its infancy, because artificial intelligence is a very difficult problem to crack.
Your post sounds like those quotes from the 70s and before about computers in the home: some people said that the average person would never need an 'electronic brain' in their homes, yet look where we are today.
A single picture of the Apollo landing sites and all the equipment left there by the Apollo missions would permanently shut hoax supporters up. Why nobody has done it so far?
Politics is more important than the latest technological gizmo. You, as a self-proclaimed geek, should have more interest in things that average Joe does not know or want to deal with, since you are more educated and better trained in analysis and synthesis than the average Joe.
From reading the manifesto is clear that the guy had created the idea in his mind that he is superior to other people, and since only superior people must be allowed to live, he had a duty to exterminate the inferior ones.
That's total outright craziness, of course.
My question is: why people around him did not realize he was a nutjob? didn't he show his ideas to his parents, friends, and most importantly, his school?
Since the artificial borders between countries are starting to fade, we need an international law which covers all these problems.
It's no coincidence that sci-fi presents the future Earth as one big country. Our differences are petit and artificial, and the sooner we realize that, the better.
Indeed funny...but it was funny back then when some people thought they could fly, or that the Earth was not flat. Guess what? ridicule became reality...
I did not say we have to try interstellar travel now. What I said is that we have to try to find the technology which will enable us to try interstellar travel tomorrow.
RFID chips in uniforms are not particularly difficult to use for illegal activities. You can leave your uniform at a particular place, then use another one (that you bought yourself) to do whatever you want...or you can switch uniform's of kids to incriminate them.
If this measure is extended to the rest of society, the problems will be huge.
RFID on clothes is destined to fail. What will the governments of the world demand then? I know, and it's scary:
Yes, a capability to truly erase data would be welcomed, but only after a triple confirmation by the user.
I haven't used Vista because I don't need bloatware. I tried it, but it was ultimately slow on my machine, and very confusing, and the GUI sucks big time.
The pity for you is that you think Vista is a pioneering O/S because it has these features, whereas these features should exist in operating systems at least from 1990.
First of all, files should never be deleted, they should only be hidden, unless the disk is full, of course.
Secondly, "move" across different devices should be copy and then delete.
Thirdly, if you copy a folder over another one with the same name, the computer should ask you what the purpose is: merge or replace? merge is often as catastrophic as replace if merging results in undesirable file combinations.
Forthly, files should be versioned by the O/S, as in VMS. It was a great feature, I don't know why it's missing from all modern O/Ses.
...and the remaining 10% would be more than enough to create major support headaches and bad press for Apple.
Unfounded speculation.
But unlike you, a large part of the target OSX market does not know or care what soundcard they have, nor would they get any useful advice from the salesdroid at Kwik-E-PC-mart.
That's why Apple should keep their hardware line (for those people that they want their O/S to just work), but should also allow the rest of the world to sample its delights, through deals with major manufacturers.
The big, huge, stonking risk of "OS X for PC" is that it would attract existing potential Mac buyers - decimating sales of Apple hardware - without attracting enough Windows "switchers" to compensate for that loss.
You are wrong. A large part of computer users are interested in running a better O/S than Windows (i.e. OS X) but they are not interested at all in Mac hardware.
Here in work we bought a Mac Mini (for some Java apps that were required to run on Mac). Good O/S, potentially better than Windows, but we all said the same thing: if only it existed for PCs...we would install it/replace Windows at first chance. And many other people have said so, online and offline.
Apple is losing a great market share from not releasing OS X for general PCs.
But the argument was still the same "Oh, I've heard so much about how wonderful NeXTStep is - but the cubes are sooo expensive - if only I could buy the software for the PC". They released a PC version (check the wikipedia articles) and - it didn't sell.
But the PC version was virtually unknown by everyone. No ads, no press, nothing. How they would expect people to adopt it? I am into computers from 1985 and although I heard about NeXTStep, I never learned that it was available for PCs until now.
Why does everybody think that Apple should stop selling hardware? no, they should not.
They should split Apple in Apple Hardware and Apple Software businesses, then release MacOS for generic 80x86 running on mainstream peripherals.
Most of the world has peripherals from the major manufacturers anyway.
I wouldn't mind changing my soundcard or mouse in order to run OS X, but I do mind to have a second computer (I have no space, and I don't want to spend the bucks for things I already have).
Apple should not abandon its principles, Apple should be aware that they can expand their business, be much more profitable, and allow us to run their fine O/S which is not plugged with security and other kinds of problems (unless it's not so fine and they really have a hard time running it on other hardware).
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Why you are joking about it? perhaps it will happen that way. First contact with aliens may make us realize our differences are not that big and then perhaps we stop the silly little wars of ours.
I agree with you, but where is the connection with aliens wanting to destroy us?
When Europeans conquered America, they killed the natives. But that was because Europeans were not really civilized, they were just coming out of the middle ages. A few hundred years later and genocides are no longer acceptable by mankind.
So, in the same line of thought as yours, aliens would not consider genocide an option when they reach a technological level that allows them to travel to other places in the universe.
In fact, I consider it highly unlikely that a civilization can have any meaningful progress and also maintain aggressiveness at the same time; the two are highly mutually exclusive...especially with technology as advanced as space travel, which requires co-operation on many levels.
The only possibility I see for aggressiveness is when we are antagonistic to them, i.e. we are about to develop or have developed interstellar space travel. Then, they might attack us, in fear of us getting too powerful and attacking them...which is something that has happened lots of times in human history anyway.
First you say "don't make assumptions on aliens", then you go on making assumptions.
Despite this, aliens might eat meat but perhaps they have evolved beyond destroying others.
What makes you think aliens will have the same conqueror traits as humans?
As mankind progresses and environment awareness is increased, more and more people take care not to destroy the environment around them. For example, some people do not destroy ant nests. In the same line of thought, why should aliens destroy us? if they have the capability of interstellar travel, then obviously are far more advanced than us, so there should be no reason for them to destroy us, as it is no reason for us to destroy ants.
Almost everything else has gone up in price the last few months, and the excuse is the price of oil. But hard disks have lots of parts that are indirect products of oil, so someone would expect that the prices would not be decreased so easily.
Robots could be useful in many places. First of all, they can replace people in all the trivial jobs (yeah, temporarily bad for mankind, but inevitable). Secondly, they can be of great aid to those that need help, i.e. older people, handicapped people etc. Thirdly, there are many house chores that could be done by a robot (going to the grocery store, wash the car, dust the house, even cook). Forthly, robots can keep children occupied in a much better way than television.
The real problem is that we don't have advanced enough robots that we can talk to and they do the job. Our robot technology is in its infancy, because artificial intelligence is a very difficult problem to crack.
Your post sounds like those quotes from the 70s and before about computers in the home: some people said that the average person would never need an 'electronic brain' in their homes, yet look where we are today.
A single picture of the Apollo landing sites and all the equipment left there by the Apollo missions would permanently shut hoax supporters up. Why nobody has done it so far?
Politics is more important than the latest technological gizmo. You, as a self-proclaimed geek, should have more interest in things that average Joe does not know or want to deal with, since you are more educated and better trained in analysis and synthesis than the average Joe.
From reading the manifesto is clear that the guy had created the idea in his mind that he is superior to other people, and since only superior people must be allowed to live, he had a duty to exterminate the inferior ones.
That's total outright craziness, of course.
My question is: why people around him did not realize he was a nutjob? didn't he show his ideas to his parents, friends, and most importantly, his school?
Why nobody paid attention to the obvious?
Since the artificial borders between countries are starting to fade, we need an international law which covers all these problems.
It's no coincidence that sci-fi presents the future Earth as one big country. Our differences are petit and artificial, and the sooner we realize that, the better.
Indeed funny...but it was funny back then when some people thought they could fly, or that the Earth was not flat. Guess what? ridicule became reality...
I did not say we have to try interstellar travel now. What I said is that we have to try to find the technology which will enable us to try interstellar travel tomorrow.
RFID chips in uniforms are not particularly difficult to use for illegal activities. You can leave your uniform at a particular place, then use another one (that you bought yourself) to do whatever you want...or you can switch uniform's of kids to incriminate them.
If this measure is extended to the rest of society, the problems will be huge.
RFID on clothes is destined to fail. What will the governments of the world demand then? I know, and it's scary:
IMPLANTS.
It's unavoidable...
It may be impossible to travel to other stars, but we don't know that for certain. We have to try, and then declare it impossible.
If there is a way to travel to other stars though, it would be the greatest thing ever happened to mankind.
...now with these 'social' networks, a kind might sit behind a computer all day and still be considered social.
It's a change with fundamental consequences for society...
Yeah, you guessed it. It's called Windows Vista.
Ultimate heat source for those long cold winter nights...
Yes, a capability to truly erase data would be welcomed, but only after a triple confirmation by the user.
I haven't used Vista because I don't need bloatware. I tried it, but it was ultimately slow on my machine, and very confusing, and the GUI sucks big time.
The pity for you is that you think Vista is a pioneering O/S because it has these features, whereas these features should exist in operating systems at least from 1990.
First of all, files should never be deleted, they should only be hidden, unless the disk is full, of course.
Secondly, "move" across different devices should be copy and then delete.
Thirdly, if you copy a folder over another one with the same name, the computer should ask you what the purpose is: merge or replace? merge is often as catastrophic as replace if merging results in undesirable file combinations.
Forthly, files should be versioned by the O/S, as in VMS. It was a great feature, I don't know why it's missing from all modern O/Ses.
"Those were just the examples that occurred to me over the course of five minutes"
The ambulance you had the colon surgery in crashed to a van currying plutonium?
"likely marked as the end of the Intel age"
Oh no! not before Duke Nukem Forever is released...
"AVerage people don't care about writing their own software or customizing their experience (beyond wallpaper and ringtones)...."
I don't blame them. If I was not a programmer, Java/C#/C++/C/Python/Perl/etc would scare the hell out of me...
And from the perspective of a teenager, they are all over 50...
You are wrong. A large part of computer users are interested in running a better O/S than Windows (i.e. OS X) but they are not interested at all in Mac hardware.
Here in work we bought a Mac Mini (for some Java apps that were required to run on Mac). Good O/S, potentially better than Windows, but we all said the same thing: if only it existed for PCs...we would install it/replace Windows at first chance. And many other people have said so, online and offline.
Apple is losing a great market share from not releasing OS X for general PCs.
But the PC version was virtually unknown by everyone. No ads, no press, nothing. How they would expect people to adopt it? I am into computers from 1985 and although I heard about NeXTStep, I never learned that it was available for PCs until now.Why does everybody think that Apple should stop selling hardware? no, they should not.
They should split Apple in Apple Hardware and Apple Software businesses, then release MacOS for generic 80x86 running on mainstream peripherals.
Most of the world has peripherals from the major manufacturers anyway.
I wouldn't mind changing my soundcard or mouse in order to run OS X, but I do mind to have a second computer (I have no space, and I don't want to spend the bucks for things I already have).
Apple should not abandon its principles, Apple should be aware that they can expand their business, be much more profitable, and allow us to run their fine O/S which is not plugged with security and other kinds of problems (unless it's not so fine and they really have a hard time running it on other hardware).