'Sure, intelligence is a prerequisite to compassion, because it requires the complex ability to empathize. But it doesn't necessarily result from intelligence.'
Compassion is the inevitable result of empathy and empathy is the inevitable result of intelligence. You empathize because you have a sense of self, the more you see another lifeform as being the same as yourself the more devaluing them becomes devaluing yourself. Ever wonder why the vegetarians don't want to eat animals and yet continue to eat nothing but other types of dead lifeforms? The ones they eat are simply less like themselves. The entire concept of the sanctity of life is just an elaborate way of rooting for the home team.
'There the question becomes interesting. Is organization inevitable? Or does it require a first impulse, a Prime Mover?'
So far the evidence seems to indicate that organization is inevitable. This is observed in neural nets, birds flocking, bee hives, ant colonies, a handful of rat neurons tossed onto a sensor plate that in turn is connected to a flight simulator, etc. When you mix together a number of simple components that interact in a sufficient variety of ways their simple individual unorganized roles always end up creating a greater and more complex organized interaction.
What puzzles me is whether these more intricate and complex interactions are really organization or whether organization does not exist and is a byproduct of what we define as intelligence. Humans look at themselves and the world around them and define it in terms of patterns. They label the patterns, discover how to create new patterns through the interaction of patterns. Patterns of matter, elements, forces, properties, what do all those words have in common? They are labels we have assigned to patterns.
What if there is no individuality and the patterns aren't real. What if our intelligence is a sickness that a group of molecules in a sea random chaos have adopted... wait, a sickness would be a pattern...
'However, I must say the last fedora I saw was a good step in that direction...'
You need to see Ubuntu, using fedora is akin to jamming icicles in your eyes using only a toothpick for grip in comparison. As for video drivers, nvidia are easy enough, in ubuntu it takes two clicks to install the commercial drivers. ATI drivers still suck but yesterday or the day before there was an announcement that AMD is going to completely open the specs on the ATI drivers that means there will be fully optimized and functional 3D accelerated drivers that load out of the box. That beats windows where you have to go to the website and hunt out the drivers for any modern card.
Seriously, Ubuntu is ready for USE by your average user already. It isn't ready for administration by your average user but your average user doesn't know enough about the system to competently complete administration tasks even if they are made easy enough to click through.
'And having the parents kill her because she isn't the boy they planned to have (and the one-child-per-family policy) isn't?'
Maybe it is unethical of the parents to consent but that is between them, their code of imaginary rules called morality, their mythical deity of choice, and their child. There is nothing unethical about experimenting with informed and consenting volunteers however and when it comes to children consent comes from parents.
As far as the one child per family policy and killing off girls in favor of boys that is for their society/government to decide, not outsiders in a different culture with different values. The thing you have to remember about cultures and values is that they are arbitrary, there is no absolute right or wrong only adopted codes of behavior. People have different reasons for adopting such codes, for example (in order of sanity) logic suggests rules to allow humans to co-exist in a peaceful manner, they are the behaviors of a role model, or an old book says a magical and invisible man who can't be tested or questioned says to do it.
'But then of course the problem is that many of the test subjects may die before they can collect their payment.'
The payments go to the parents (if subject is under age) or whomever the subject chooses as next of kin (if of age). That is what would motivate desperate people to participate.
'Solution: instead of buying the services of the child, simply buy the child itself outright from its parents.'
Shame on you, that would be slavery and unethical. The child would be used without consent in a case like that. It isn't our fault if the potential subject is a child and it falls on a parent to decide what is in their interest. That is standard practice here in the first world as well after all. Parents happily partake in cementing the minds of their children and stunting their growth by keeping them as ignorant human dolls for as long as possible.
'Enrich third world parents, and advance first world medicine at the same time...I see a golden age of science on the horizon!'
The program should be voluntary but I see no reason it should have to be gratis. Pay top yen and conduct the experiments on female children in China. It's a win/win.
'(Although, to be perfectly honest, I've never actually had any trouble using nVidious graphics cards with the free nv driver. Yeah, I know, no 3d support; but as I've only got a 2D monitor, it hardly matters.)'
It matters like you wouldn't believe. The biggest advantage of beryl isn't the pretty effects, its the fact that it offloads all the graphics processing to the GPU. Using 2D the video card is displaying everything of course but your processor is doing all the lifting.
'For what, all 3 games? Sure you can still use Wine, et. al., but still.'
I think you are underestimating wine/cedegra. These give equal or better performance on dozens of TOP end titles, including the only one that really counts atm which is WOW.
'Very true. I work in a shop the does a lot of high-end data visualization processing and every single one of our (400+ here and more globally) Linux workstations utilizes nVidia GPUs and cards.'
I am a computer professional and I know I have simply been blown away with Ubuntu.
I can compile and build a Linux system from scratch, I am intimately familiar with the system and certainly don't need any hand holding to configure hardware or get the job done. Using Linux I can customize and hone the system to the tasks it will perform, it is easy with a touch of script/code polish to make the system do anything I want EXACTLY the way I want with no mysteries.
What does mystify me is the individuals who can do all of these things and actually want to do them every time. I didn't get into computers because I like to work hard, I got into computers because I am a lazy SOB. If I was going to invest time learning something, it made perfect sense to master operating a machine that does work for you. Ubuntu installs and configures with no hassles, has reasonable configuration settings out of the box, has a massive software selection, doesn't merely comply with LSB but actually stores everything just where you'd expect to find it, and it's simplified configuration works in such a way that nothing breaks if you manually edit conf files.
I'm too lazy to look for the citation but I recall this as well. They added a large anti-cheat feature that resulted in thousands of Linux users being banned. An adjustment was made to the anti-cheat technology and the users were credited time back.
It isn't really surprising, there was originally going to be a Linux client for WOW but Blizzard dropped it. So while they ultimately didn't go through with it (kinda silly since there is an OpenGL mode in the game) Linux is certainly hitting their radar.
'then my next purchase will be a top of the range £300+ ATI card.'
I've never understood paying that kind of cash for a video card. At least not for gaming. What are you paying for, theoretical performance increases for games that won't exist before your next upgrade? $150 will get you an nvidia card that will handle any game on the market at top settings. For you that would be £75.
Do you have any idea just how many people 2% of the desktop market is? Just because it is a small portion of the total market doesn't mean you can't order cavier pizza's for you kid's pool party on the proceeds.
'You're not considering what regulations govern the Private Schools in the US. They aren't completely free, and is exactly why I said...'
No, I am dismissing it as irrelevant which is exactly what I said.
'Additionally, Michael Moore's latest movie Sicko'
I don't recall mentioning sicko at all. Congrats on psychically determining without any basis whatsoever the extent of my research.
'Additionally, these systems are so inefficient and so much money goes to it, that the rest of the system and people who don't want to pay for it, are forced to, and therefore earn a lot less than they would otherwise.'
Yes, healthcare is a net loss system. That is why it costs so dramatically much more in the US where in addition to all the same costs they have in Europe you have dramatically higher costs in order to cover massive profits for each component of the healthcare industry.
'And if you think that a business can provide a terrible service and get away with it (Without Government help), then you're not considering who is paying for it.'
Microsoft and pre-monopoly microsoft. There with an exception and a discount of the immediately raised excuse for the exception I disprove your point. People have short memories, people are ignorant and ill-informed, people are greedy, and the vast majority of them are idiots. It is entirely possible to sell crap and rake in profits. That is why time and again businesses flock en mass to terrible practices and the people in turn have to use the only recourse they have and hassle politicians to outlaw the practices. Saw dust in engines, lead in gasoline, dumping toxic waste in drinking supplies, making slight non-functional chemical changes to sell new versions of the same drug at premium prices... oh wait, that one isnt illegal yet so it is still a routine way of robbing insurance companies and the public.
'Have a look at each of these countries, and in almost every aspect the private service is far greater than the public service.'
Yes but that isn't really a fair comparison. In almost every nation in the world (including the US and the EU) the vast majority of resources is in the hands of a small number of people. No matter how good or poor the public services are there will always be flaws that someone with a massive budget and smaller number of clients can work around. That doesn't magically make having the services be a bad thing.
That is a rigged comparison. A better comparison is between the best private hospitals in the US and the public hospitals in the EU. Or between the private schools in the US and the public in the EU. In both cases you will find that pretty much across the board the public services in the EU are better than the private services in the US.
'And in the instances where the private isn't as good as the public, I guarantee you that there will be government regulation causing this.'
So proponents of capitalism claim. I would content that in the US things started that way, some of the regulations are bought and paid for, but the vast majority exist for a reason. They didn't just suddenly materialize, they materialized because of massive widespread abuse by private industry. Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
I think people are in love with the modular design mentality more than X itself. However, I do like Beryl and Gnome better than anything in the windows world. Beryl is actually prettier and more functional than Vista or MacOSX. I haven't seen laggy menus in years, you do have 3D acceleration working and enough ram that your system never swaps right? Non-uniformity has never bothered me, I am from the video game generation and every video game has a completely unique interface they are all easy to pick up.
'and the fragility'
That I have never seen. Over the past several years I have seen video glitches before (mostly long ago) but unlike in the windows world I can just ctrl+alt+backspace to reload X without restarting the computer. In windows if the gui freezes the system has crashed.
Elsewhere I have heard that the x.org crew is addressing some of my complaints. Particularly the hardware detection, it should be no big deal to take your tower and connect it to another monitor without manual configuration. Hopefully one day Beryl will also be loaded by default because it is currently a pain in the arse.
'I'll throw you the health care working better as a socialized system, but what socialist countries are high ranking in all those things you listed?'
Well there are really two nations that are the poster child for each (both have back woods third world nations as well), the EU and the United States. The EU states consider themselves independent but the member states individually only command the raw resources, population, and military power of a US state so for a fair comparison you must look at the EU as a whole. As far as I know, the EU tops the United States in all of those areas. I am not saying there isn't plenty of room for improvement, only that socialism is producing better results.
'You greatly underestimate the effects of a well run propaganda campaign.'
Let me put it another way, I've never met (or even heard of) anyone of any age who ever actually believed smoking was good for you. That the dangers were overstated yes but never that smoking was good for you.
'And the society that became addicted to nicotine choose to do so based on valid information, not lied to by the pushers who told them it was good for their health?'
That is and always has been ridiculous. I refuse to believe that anyone ever actually believed that something that irritated your lungs and makes you cough, gag, breath more shallowly and causes your lungs to hurt or even bleed when you exert yourself is good for you. It really doesn't matter what the tobacco companies said.
'Now that was a bad counter, given that for many years there were NOT smoke-free restaurants/bars to compete with the smoke-filled ones. In theory the idea that someone would take an opportunity to service a segment seems sound, but practice of this from the last few decades have shown this not to be the case. The cry of "capitalism will take care of this naturally" has experimentally proven to be falsehood on many fronts. Only with legislation passed that require restaurants/bars to be smoke-free has the ability to find such a place emerge.'
That is because previously the demand simply didn't exist. Especially in bars. Remember, smoking only became vile and evil within the last ten years or so. It was only a few particularly obnoxious individuals who found smokers evil. If you go back 20 years, being a smoker was actually the social norm.
'On paper socialism isn't a bad system of government either, but in reality thy both have serious problems.'
No doubt. That said, in practice socialism is the most effective system in the modern world. Capitalism is a distant second. Economically capitalism has performed almost as well but it has certainly dropped to the bottom rung in terms of research and development, medicine and health care, academics and the school systems as a whole, the criminal justice systems in capitalist nations are also poor.
'Will it always really be necessary to keep offering such strong protections to creators at a cost to society?'
It was NEVER necessary.
'At what point could we look to patronage and ego to supply enough new works to keep things fresh, without needing copyright law at all?'
We are there. In fact, I would contend that patronage and ego would produce better quality materials than the commercialized crap we get now. Even movies, the greatest expense these days is paying actors (there are lots of actors in the world) and for special effects (serious artificial inflation in this field, several orders of magnitude).
Technology has made copyright obsolete, copyright was only implemented because of fear mongering by book publishers in the first place.
Slashdot Mirror
'Sure, intelligence is a prerequisite to compassion, because it requires the complex ability to empathize. But it doesn't necessarily result from intelligence.'
Compassion is the inevitable result of empathy and empathy is the inevitable result of intelligence. You empathize because you have a sense of self, the more you see another lifeform as being the same as yourself the more devaluing them becomes devaluing yourself. Ever wonder why the vegetarians don't want to eat animals and yet continue to eat nothing but other types of dead lifeforms? The ones they eat are simply less like themselves. The entire concept of the sanctity of life is just an elaborate way of rooting for the home team.
'There the question becomes interesting. Is organization inevitable? Or does it require a first impulse, a Prime Mover?'
So far the evidence seems to indicate that organization is inevitable. This is observed in neural nets, birds flocking, bee hives, ant colonies, a handful of rat neurons tossed onto a sensor plate that in turn is connected to a flight simulator, etc. When you mix together a number of simple components that interact in a sufficient variety of ways their simple individual unorganized roles always end up creating a greater and more complex organized interaction.
What puzzles me is whether these more intricate and complex interactions are really organization or whether organization does not exist and is a byproduct of what we define as intelligence. Humans look at themselves and the world around them and define it in terms of patterns. They label the patterns, discover how to create new patterns through the interaction of patterns. Patterns of matter, elements, forces, properties, what do all those words have in common? They are labels we have assigned to patterns.
What if there is no individuality and the patterns aren't real. What if our intelligence is a sickness that a group of molecules in a sea random chaos have adopted... wait, a sickness would be a pattern...
'However, I must say the last fedora I saw was a good step in that direction...'
You need to see Ubuntu, using fedora is akin to jamming icicles in your eyes using only a toothpick for grip in comparison. As for video drivers, nvidia are easy enough, in ubuntu it takes two clicks to install the commercial drivers. ATI drivers still suck but yesterday or the day before there was an announcement that AMD is going to completely open the specs on the ATI drivers that means there will be fully optimized and functional 3D accelerated drivers that load out of the box. That beats windows where you have to go to the website and hunt out the drivers for any modern card.
Seriously, Ubuntu is ready for USE by your average user already. It isn't ready for administration by your average user but your average user doesn't know enough about the system to competently complete administration tasks even if they are made easy enough to click through.
'And having the parents kill her because she isn't the boy they planned to have (and the one-child-per-family policy) isn't?'
Maybe it is unethical of the parents to consent but that is between them, their code of imaginary rules called morality, their mythical deity of choice, and their child. There is nothing unethical about experimenting with informed and consenting volunteers however and when it comes to children consent comes from parents.
As far as the one child per family policy and killing off girls in favor of boys that is for their society/government to decide, not outsiders in a different culture with different values. The thing you have to remember about cultures and values is that they are arbitrary, there is no absolute right or wrong only adopted codes of behavior. People have different reasons for adopting such codes, for example (in order of sanity) logic suggests rules to allow humans to co-exist in a peaceful manner, they are the behaviors of a role model, or an old book says a magical and invisible man who can't be tested or questioned says to do it.
'But then of course the problem is that many of the test subjects may die before they can collect their payment.'
:)
The payments go to the parents (if subject is under age) or whomever the subject chooses as next of kin (if of age). That is what would motivate desperate people to participate.
'Solution: instead of buying the services of the child, simply buy the child itself outright from its parents.'
Shame on you, that would be slavery and unethical. The child would be used without consent in a case like that. It isn't our fault if the potential subject is a child and it falls on a parent to decide what is in their interest. That is standard practice here in the first world as well after all. Parents happily partake in cementing the minds of their children and stunting their growth by keeping them as ignorant human dolls for as long as possible.
'Enrich third world parents, and advance first world medicine at the same time...I see a golden age of science on the horizon!'
Yes
'human volunteer program'
The program should be voluntary but I see no reason it should have to be gratis. Pay top yen and conduct the experiments on female children in China. It's a win/win.
'(Although, to be perfectly honest, I've never actually had any trouble using nVidious graphics cards with the free nv driver. Yeah, I know, no 3d support; but as I've only got a 2D monitor, it hardly matters.)'
It matters like you wouldn't believe. The biggest advantage of beryl isn't the pretty effects, its the fact that it offloads all the graphics processing to the GPU. Using 2D the video card is displaying everything of course but your processor is doing all the lifting.
X screams under beryl.
'For what, all 3 games? Sure you can still use Wine, et. al., but still.'
I think you are underestimating wine/cedegra. These give equal or better performance on dozens of TOP end titles, including the only one that really counts atm which is WOW.
'Very true. I work in a shop the does a lot of high-end data visualization processing and every single one of our (400+ here and more globally) Linux workstations utilizes nVidia GPUs and cards.'
;)
Until the next upgrade.
I am a computer professional and I know I have simply been blown away with Ubuntu.
I can compile and build a Linux system from scratch, I am intimately familiar with the system and certainly don't need any hand holding to configure hardware or get the job done. Using Linux I can customize and hone the system to the tasks it will perform, it is easy with a touch of script/code polish to make the system do anything I want EXACTLY the way I want with no mysteries.
What does mystify me is the individuals who can do all of these things and actually want to do them every time. I didn't get into computers because I like to work hard, I got into computers because I am a lazy SOB. If I was going to invest time learning something, it made perfect sense to master operating a machine that does work for you. Ubuntu installs and configures with no hassles, has reasonable configuration settings out of the box, has a massive software selection, doesn't merely comply with LSB but actually stores everything just where you'd expect to find it, and it's simplified configuration works in such a way that nothing breaks if you manually edit conf files.
Ubuntu is sexy as hell.
If I see something concrete on this I will need to change the cards in my upcoming purchases.
I'm too lazy to look for the citation but I recall this as well. They added a large anti-cheat feature that resulted in thousands of Linux users being banned. An adjustment was made to the anti-cheat technology and the users were credited time back.
It isn't really surprising, there was originally going to be a Linux client for WOW but Blizzard dropped it. So while they ultimately didn't go through with it (kinda silly since there is an OpenGL mode in the game) Linux is certainly hitting their radar.
'then my next purchase will be a top of the range £300+ ATI card.'
I've never understood paying that kind of cash for a video card. At least not for gaming. What are you paying for, theoretical performance increases for games that won't exist before your next upgrade? $150 will get you an nvidia card that will handle any game on the market at top settings. For you that would be £75.
Do you have any idea just how many people 2% of the desktop market is? Just because it is a small portion of the total market doesn't mean you can't order cavier pizza's for you kid's pool party on the proceeds.
'You're not considering what regulations govern the Private Schools in the US. They aren't completely free, and is exactly why I said...'
No, I am dismissing it as irrelevant which is exactly what I said.
'Additionally, Michael Moore's latest movie Sicko'
I don't recall mentioning sicko at all. Congrats on psychically determining without any basis whatsoever the extent of my research.
'Additionally, these systems are so inefficient and so much money goes to it, that the rest of the system and people who don't want to pay for it, are forced to, and therefore earn a lot less than they would otherwise.'
Yes, healthcare is a net loss system. That is why it costs so dramatically much more in the US where in addition to all the same costs they have in Europe you have dramatically higher costs in order to cover massive profits for each component of the healthcare industry.
'And if you think that a business can provide a terrible service and get away with it (Without Government help), then you're not considering who is paying for it.'
Microsoft and pre-monopoly microsoft. There with an exception and a discount of the immediately raised excuse for the exception I disprove your point. People have short memories, people are ignorant and ill-informed, people are greedy, and the vast majority of them are idiots. It is entirely possible to sell crap and rake in profits. That is why time and again businesses flock en mass to terrible practices and the people in turn have to use the only recourse they have and hassle politicians to outlaw the practices. Saw dust in engines, lead in gasoline, dumping toxic waste in drinking supplies, making slight non-functional chemical changes to sell new versions of the same drug at premium prices... oh wait, that one isnt illegal yet so it is still a routine way of robbing insurance companies and the public.
'Have a look at each of these countries, and in almost every aspect the private service is far greater than the public service.'
Yes but that isn't really a fair comparison. In almost every nation in the world (including the US and the EU) the vast majority of resources is in the hands of a small number of people. No matter how good or poor the public services are there will always be flaws that someone with a massive budget and smaller number of clients can work around. That doesn't magically make having the services be a bad thing.
That is a rigged comparison. A better comparison is between the best private hospitals in the US and the public hospitals in the EU. Or between the private schools in the US and the public in the EU. In both cases you will find that pretty much across the board the public services in the EU are better than the private services in the US.
'And in the instances where the private isn't as good as the public, I guarantee you that there will be government regulation causing this.'
So proponents of capitalism claim. I would content that in the US things started that way, some of the regulations are bought and paid for, but the vast majority exist for a reason. They didn't just suddenly materialize, they materialized because of massive widespread abuse by private industry. Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
So... that's agreement then?
I think people are in love with the modular design mentality more than X itself. However, I do like Beryl and Gnome better than anything in the windows world. Beryl is actually prettier and more functional than Vista or MacOSX. I haven't seen laggy menus in years, you do have 3D acceleration working and enough ram that your system never swaps right? Non-uniformity has never bothered me, I am from the video game generation and every video game has a completely unique interface they are all easy to pick up.
'and the fragility'
That I have never seen. Over the past several years I have seen video glitches before (mostly long ago) but unlike in the windows world I can just ctrl+alt+backspace to reload X without restarting the computer. In windows if the gui freezes the system has crashed.
Elsewhere I have heard that the x.org crew is addressing some of my complaints. Particularly the hardware detection, it should be no big deal to take your tower and connect it to another monitor without manual configuration. Hopefully one day Beryl will also be loaded by default because it is currently a pain in the arse.
'I'll throw you the health care working better as a socialized system, but what socialist countries are high ranking in all those things you listed?'
Well there are really two nations that are the poster child for each (both have back woods third world nations as well), the EU and the United States. The EU states consider themselves independent but the member states individually only command the raw resources, population, and military power of a US state so for a fair comparison you must look at the EU as a whole. As far as I know, the EU tops the United States in all of those areas. I am not saying there isn't plenty of room for improvement, only that socialism is producing better results.
'You greatly underestimate the effects of a well run propaganda campaign.'
Let me put it another way, I've never met (or even heard of) anyone of any age who ever actually believed smoking was good for you. That the dangers were overstated yes but never that smoking was good for you.
What's your point?
'And the society that became addicted to nicotine choose to do so based on valid information, not lied to by the pushers who told them it was good for their health?'
That is and always has been ridiculous. I refuse to believe that anyone ever actually believed that something that irritated your lungs and makes you cough, gag, breath more shallowly and causes your lungs to hurt or even bleed when you exert yourself is good for you. It really doesn't matter what the tobacco companies said.
'Now that was a bad counter, given that for many years there were NOT smoke-free restaurants/bars to compete with the smoke-filled ones. In theory the idea that someone would take an opportunity to service a segment seems sound, but practice of this from the last few decades have shown this not to be the case. The cry of "capitalism will take care of this naturally" has experimentally proven to be falsehood on many fronts. Only with legislation passed that require restaurants/bars to be smoke-free has the ability to find such a place emerge.'
That is because previously the demand simply didn't exist. Especially in bars. Remember, smoking only became vile and evil within the last ten years or so. It was only a few particularly obnoxious individuals who found smokers evil. If you go back 20 years, being a smoker was actually the social norm.
'On paper socialism isn't a bad system of government either, but in reality thy both have serious problems.'
No doubt. That said, in practice socialism is the most effective system in the modern world. Capitalism is a distant second. Economically capitalism has performed almost as well but it has certainly dropped to the bottom rung in terms of research and development, medicine and health care, academics and the school systems as a whole, the criminal justice systems in capitalist nations are also poor.
'So when will copyright no longer be needed?'
Today
'Will it always really be necessary to keep offering such strong protections to creators at a cost to society?'
It was NEVER necessary.
'At what point could we look to patronage and ego to supply enough new works to keep things fresh, without needing copyright law at all?'
We are there. In fact, I would contend that patronage and ego would produce better quality materials than the commercialized crap we get now. Even movies, the greatest expense these days is paying actors (there are lots of actors in the world) and for special effects (serious artificial inflation in this field, several orders of magnitude).
Technology has made copyright obsolete, copyright was only implemented because of fear mongering by book publishers in the first place.