Yeah I think this is likely to lead to a story like this...
A mother is taking her daughter to school and while at a stop sign she is rearended by a semi-truck and her child is baddly, oh hell lets make it really tragic, the child is killed outright. In a few weeks she will be suprised and pleased to recieve a ticket in the mail because her car was pushed over the whiteline at the intersection.
Sounds like exactly the sort of story we can expect to see from such a legal system.
I guess I am not the only one who gets tired of hearing how "in Soviet Russia the things that you do, actually does things to you". It was really only clever the first few times. I mean really, its time to let this phrase go the way of, "Hey imagine if we had a beowolf cluster of these things".
"Not that most people care, since they don't even bother to vote, right?"
I find it pretty hard to worry about electorial fraud anymore, in the same way (and for the same reason) that I am uninterested in a bad call in a pro wrestling match. Like the winner is decided by actual citizen votes, hehe, yeah right.
As far as I can tell, electronic ballots are serving the same function as the 15 foot tall chainlink cage they put over the top of the ring. Its supposed to increase the excitement and help you suspend disbelief that the danger (or the election process) is all just an elaborate act.
It will be quite a while I think before we will have the hardware power AND the software tools to program Asimov like inhibitions into our robots.
Asimov's Laws of Robotics:
1: A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
How much power will it take to let a robot decide what is and isnt going to be harmful to a human? Then have it do that in realtime while going about its business.
2: A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
This first part (A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings) is about the best I think we will see for a good long time. When they (robots) get to the point that they CAN do what you ask then we add on top of that the same processes it takes to maintain the first law.
This is one hell of a jump in processing. Imagine how many probability calculations it will take to see if painting a wall may impact a human that is near by. So as far as I can guess the best we can hope to see any time soon is a robot that obeys the first half, of the second law.
3: A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
This is really asking a lot of the robot designers.
I dont think Asimov was really thinking about robots very practicly, he wanted a good framework to tell his stories, and the popularity of his work is witness to how good that framework was.
Moore's Law has lots of time to work it's magic in 50 years though, so who really know's?
I do think that we will be using robots in ways that will put lots of people out of work in the near future though. One reason being sited for phasing out human jobs may be the safty of the workers themselvs. When a factory (or wharever) gets to the point that any job COULD be done by robots then there may be enough robots that are too simple for "Asimovian Inhibitors" to risk humans coming in contact with them while in operation.
The poke wasnt about spelling, I just thought it was funny to see a large group of people (Tammany Hall) lumped in with the list of the single individuals. It just seemed (to me anyway) like the poster thought that Tammany Hall was a "person". I am sure that the poster knew what they were saying, I just read it in a diffrent way I guess.
But you may be right, I could be an ignorant puke, but I am not an Anonymous Coward.
"They will happen in time. As time goes by computers will become solid state and very small. Basicly they will be tiny single chip deals that are powerfull as any computer today and cheap as a stamp. Then everything can have a computer doing something. Maybe ones sock will want to message the other socks that is has been lost between the washer and dryer. You get the idea. Micro computers will be a basic building block like steel, wood, and beer."
Will we finally get our flying cars and lunar vacations too?
I think cyberpunk meets the Maytag Repairman is all very interesting, but I still feel the urge to live in the world depicted in 1970s Popular Science magazines.
Oh Christ, it was supposed to be a sort of half-joke anyway, but my personal reaction to the story was to think of all these exotic pet freaks.
One day a friend calls you up and tells you to come look at his new "pet". When you show up he shows you this thing so ugly it could curdle milk and that whould die in a day if the cage isnt in just the right spot, at just the right temperature, and all this other shit he has to do to keep this rare thing alive. And then he tells you that it is so poisonous that if it bit you it would kill ya for sure. Then he trys to talk you into buying one from the guy that sold you his. You laugh and say not right now and that all there is....
But a few weeks later you find out that this "expert" handler that your friend bought his "Pet" from was killed handling his livestock.
What the fuck does anyone need a chunk of pure uranium ore for anyway? I just dont get the point, but atleast you dont have to feed it and you wont have to clean up a cage.
Re:on second thought, pass the lead gloves please.
on
United Nuclear
·
· Score: 3, Informative
I actually got this info from an interview I saw with an Army General (I think he was a general) who was incharge of the DU risk factor investigation team, and once he turned in his report it was tossed aside because we were already into destert storm. From what I hear he retired and is leading a movement to look into it in a more open manner.
Just saying I beleived what he said and the other reports they showed on the program.
Re:on second thought, pass the lead gloves please.
on
United Nuclear
·
· Score: 1
Are these the same experts that say that Depleted Uranium weapons do no leave any harmfull after effects after they are used? Are they the ones that say you can hide from an H-Bomb by crouching under your school desk?
If you are refering to the fact that Mr. Romero was inspired by the novel "I am Legend" then you are mistaken, in that the novel is MUCH diffrent than Romero's tales.
If you mean you think that NOTLD was a remake of the first movie inspired by that novel, (which was called "The Last Man on Earth") it wasn't. That movie stared Vincent Price and was actually pretty close to the novel as I remember. The Charelton Heston classic "The Omega Man" was also based on "I am Legend".
If you mean that you think that Mr. Savini's remake in the 90's is more popular than the original, then I think you are just plain wrong period.
The 90's remake was a pretty good attempt to modernize the original script but failed to really capture the grit of the original. While BOTH of George Romero's "Living Dead" sequils were largly embraced by his faithfull following, only "Dawn of the Dead" is considered to be better than the original "Night of the Living Dead".
"And in LoTR, so much time was spent showing battle after battle, landscape after landscape, hokey special effect after hokey special effect, that it took 3 and a half hours to tell one third of a 2 hour movie."
Our milage differs I guess.
I think ALL of the visuals and effects were needed. Jackson just took too much screentime playing with them instead of doing justice to Tolkien's work. His bigest mistake wasn't turning a 2 hour movie into a 3+ hr movie, it was turning 6, 2+ hr movies into 3, 3+ hr ones. I knew the return to Hobbiton was cut as soon as I heard Bombadil was tossed out. There is just no going back from there.
I thought everyone agreed that voice command was going to be best in these kinds of situations.
I mean I really dont see what the need is when buttons, sliders and knobs have done just fine. Once VoiceWare is perfected we should be just about set. I dont see any appeal here at all.
Next thing you know they will be wanting us to watch an animated hand that makes responce gestures to tell you the fucking check engine light is flashing at you. Just more Tech for the sake of Tech.
Didnt MS convince Creative Labs to discontinue support of OS2 Warp drivers. If I remember right, didnt Microsoft threaton to somehow hinder Creative if they continued to support the competition.
This is the same fucking trick here I suspect, They want to cause us to think badly of a hardware company that was supporting open source OS users. Now if they manage to get us to stick with OSs that hardware manufacurers will support (because if they do work for microsloth they get to continue to remain in business).
Before the loss of Creatives driver support I was headed to OS2 in a big way because I was hearing how well it handled windows and dos software. I had to stop dead in my tracks once I discovered the lack of soundcard drivers (I am a video editing and Game playing fool) because sound support was pretty high on my list of of "Good Things" to have in an OS.
Im not so sure this will work with Linux or other open source OS's but I think that did play a large role in killing off OS2.
"how many free open source Linux games are topping the sales charts?"
I would guess its about the same as the number of flying pigs, you see, pigs dont fly. And free games dont really make it onto sales charts. Because they would have to be sold to make it onto the chart in the first place, and if they WERE sold then they werent free then were they?
Me too, in the same way a parent looks forward to hearing their child explain how sneaking out in at 3 am on a school night and having to be picked up at the police station isnt their fault.
Should be worth a few laughs.
But I guess now I have my answer to how the omition of Bombadil could work in the final movie. For those less familiar, Gandalf goes to visit Tom on the way back to Hobbiton, leaving the hobbits to continue on alone. But, no return to the shire, problem solved. I probably wont go see Return of the King in the theatre at all.
At the very least PJ must be thanked for uncovering the origin of all sports involving travel via standing on a flat surface. The Elves invinted it all, skis, surfing, skateboarding, you name it, it was all the Elves idea. hehe
I fail to see how giving a person an item prevents them from buying more of the same item. Unless the RIAA has some method of finding out who has the unauthorized copies and tells all the authorized outlets NOT to sell to those people, how are they then prevented?
So, in the real world that Mr. Coward lives in everyone owns an authorised copy of every work ever written recorded or performed...
That is unless they were given an unauthorised copy before they aquired the mandatory authorised one they are supposed to have. By the way a pizza in the Coward universe costs 5 million bucks. Otherwise a fast food cook would never be able to keep on the good side of the RIAA, and out of media prison.
Mr. Coward is failing to see that there may just possibly be some people who will buy an IP protected work even though (indeed perhaps because of) being given a free copy of it first. Then there are also some people who would not buy the work one way or the other. In both cases no real loss at all, in the former case an untapped profit is had.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah I think this is likely to lead to a story like this...
A mother is taking her daughter to school and while at a stop sign she is rearended by a semi-truck and her child is baddly, oh hell lets make it really tragic, the child is killed outright. In a few weeks she will be suprised and pleased to recieve a ticket in the mail because her car was pushed over the whiteline at the intersection.
Sounds like exactly the sort of story we can expect to see from such a legal system.
I need to get my eyes checked, cause I read that as.....
" Mmmmmm... mmmm.... tastes like CHILDREN! "
Call that the "Soylent Green Effect".
Acutally I believe the TAM site states that this is a modified OS .61 4 Stroke motor modified with a sparkplug to run on a custom fuel mixture.
This is a piston engine propeller driven RC plane.
I love that one.
I guess I am not the only one who gets tired of hearing how "in Soviet Russia the things that you do, actually does things to you". It was really only clever the first few times. I mean really, its time to let this phrase go the way of, "Hey imagine if we had a beowolf cluster of these things".
I mean it.
-"He could have at least chosen the good Rush albums."-
If he had done that the article still wouldnt be done yet.
That would be great... but only if people never noticed that the price was 50 cents to start with.
"Not that most people care, since they don't even bother to vote, right?"
I find it pretty hard to worry about electorial fraud anymore, in the same way (and for the same reason) that I am uninterested in a bad call in a pro wrestling match. Like the winner is decided by actual citizen votes, hehe, yeah right.
As far as I can tell, electronic ballots are serving the same function as the 15 foot tall chainlink cage they put over the top of the ring. Its supposed to increase the excitement and help you suspend disbelief that the danger (or the election process) is all just an elaborate act.
It will be quite a while I think before we will have the hardware power AND the software tools to program Asimov like inhibitions into our robots.
Asimov's Laws of Robotics:
1: A robot may not injure a human being, or,
through inaction, allow a human being to come to
harm.
How much power will it take to let a robot decide what is and isnt going to be harmful to a human? Then have it do that in realtime while going about its business.
2: A robot must obey the orders given it by
human beings except where such orders would
conflict with the First Law.
This first part (A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings) is about the best I think we will see for a good long time. When they (robots) get to the point that they CAN do what you ask then we add on top of that the same processes it takes to maintain the first law.
This is one hell of a jump in processing. Imagine how many probability calculations it will take to see if painting a wall may impact a human that is near by. So as far as I can guess the best we can hope to see any time soon is a robot that obeys the first half, of the second law.
3: A robot must protect its own existence as
long as such protection does not conflict with
the First or Second Law.
This is really asking a lot of the robot designers.
I dont think Asimov was really thinking about robots very practicly, he wanted a good framework to tell his stories, and the popularity of his work is witness to how good that framework was.
Moore's Law has lots of time to work it's magic in 50 years though, so who really know's?
I do think that we will be using robots in ways that will put lots of people out of work in the near future though. One reason being sited for phasing out human jobs may be the safty of the workers themselvs. When a factory (or wharever) gets to the point that any job COULD be done by robots then there may be enough robots that are too simple for "Asimovian Inhibitors" to risk humans coming in contact with them while in operation.
The poke wasnt about spelling, I just thought it was funny to see a large group of people (Tammany Hall) lumped in with the list of the single individuals. It just seemed (to me anyway) like the poster thought that Tammany Hall was a "person". I am sure that the poster knew what they were saying, I just read it in a diffrent way I guess.
But you may be right, I could be an ignorant puke, but I am not an Anonymous Coward.
Yeah that "Tammany" Guy really pissed me off. Oh wait, Who was he(she) again?
"They will happen in time. As time goes by computers will become solid state and very small. Basicly they will be tiny single chip deals that are powerfull as any computer today and cheap as a stamp. Then everything can have a computer doing something. Maybe ones sock will want to message the other socks that is has been lost between the washer and dryer. You get the idea. Micro computers will be a basic building block like steel, wood, and beer."
Will we finally get our flying cars and lunar vacations too?
I think cyberpunk meets the Maytag Repairman is all very interesting, but I still feel the urge to live in the world depicted in 1970s Popular Science magazines.
Oh Christ, it was supposed to be a sort of half-joke anyway, but my personal reaction to the story was to think of all these exotic pet freaks.
One day a friend calls you up and tells you to come look at his new "pet". When you show up he shows you this thing so ugly it could curdle milk and that whould die in a day if the cage isnt in just the right spot, at just the right temperature, and all this other shit he has to do to keep this rare thing alive. And then he tells you that it is so poisonous that if it bit you it would kill ya for sure. Then he trys to talk you into buying one from the guy that sold you his. You laugh and say not right now and that all there is....
But a few weeks later you find out that this "expert" handler that your friend bought his "Pet" from was killed handling his livestock.
What the fuck does anyone need a chunk of pure uranium ore for anyway? I just dont get the point, but atleast you dont have to feed it and you wont have to clean up a cage.
I actually got this info from an interview I saw with an Army General (I think he was a general) who was incharge of the DU risk factor investigation team, and once he turned in his report it was tossed aside because we were already into destert storm. From what I hear he retired and is leading a movement to look into it in a more open manner.
Just saying I beleived what he said and the other reports they showed on the program.
Are these the same experts that say that Depleted Uranium weapons do no leave any harmfull after effects after they are used? Are they the ones that say you can hide from an H-Bomb by crouching under your school desk?
YOU trust them.
Umm... NO!
If you are refering to the fact that Mr. Romero was inspired by the novel "I am Legend" then you are mistaken, in that the novel is MUCH diffrent than Romero's tales.
If you mean you think that NOTLD was a remake of the first movie inspired by that novel, (which was called "The Last Man on Earth") it wasn't. That movie stared Vincent Price and was actually pretty close to the novel as I remember. The Charelton Heston classic "The Omega Man" was also based on "I am Legend".
If you mean that you think that Mr. Savini's remake in the 90's is more popular than the original, then I think you are just plain wrong period.
The 90's remake was a pretty good attempt to modernize the original script but failed to really capture the grit of the original. While BOTH of George Romero's "Living Dead" sequils were largly embraced by his faithfull following, only "Dawn of the Dead" is considered to be better than the original "Night of the Living Dead".
"And in LoTR, so much time was spent showing battle after battle, landscape after landscape, hokey special effect after hokey special effect, that it took 3 and a half hours to tell one third of a 2 hour movie."
Our milage differs I guess.
I think ALL of the visuals and effects were needed. Jackson just took too much screentime playing with them instead of doing justice to Tolkien's work. His bigest mistake wasn't turning a 2 hour movie into a 3+ hr movie, it was turning 6, 2+ hr movies into 3, 3+ hr ones. I knew the return to Hobbiton was cut as soon as I heard Bombadil was tossed out. There is just no going back from there.
I thought everyone agreed that voice command was going to be best in these kinds of situations.
I mean I really dont see what the need is when buttons, sliders and knobs have done just fine. Once VoiceWare is perfected we should be just about set. I dont see any appeal here at all.
Next thing you know they will be wanting us to watch an animated hand that makes responce gestures to tell you the fucking check engine light is flashing at you. Just more Tech for the sake of Tech.
Didnt MS convince Creative Labs to discontinue support of OS2 Warp drivers. If I remember right, didnt Microsoft threaton to somehow hinder Creative if they continued to support the competition.
This is the same fucking trick here I suspect, They want to cause us to think badly of a hardware company that was supporting open source OS users. Now if they manage to get us to stick with OSs that hardware manufacurers will support (because if they do work for microsloth they get to continue to remain in business).
Before the loss of Creatives driver support I was headed to OS2 in a big way because I was hearing how well it handled windows and dos software. I had to stop dead in my tracks once I discovered the lack of soundcard drivers (I am a video editing and Game playing fool) because sound support was pretty high on my list of of "Good Things" to have in an OS.
Im not so sure this will work with Linux or other open source OS's but I think that did play a large role in killing off OS2.
Movies are rated by choice not mandate. Some of the best movies I ever saw were "Not Rated" by the MPAA at all.
"people will pick up the new madonna cd along with their toilet paper."
Yes but then they will have to figure out which one is best for wiping their ass with.
"how many free open source Linux games are topping the sales charts?"
I would guess its about the same as the number of flying pigs, you see, pigs dont fly. And free games dont really make it onto sales charts. Because they would have to be sold to make it onto the chart in the first place, and if they WERE sold then they werent free then were they?
Now who is the moron?
Me too, in the same way a parent looks forward to hearing their child explain how sneaking out in at 3 am on a school night and having to be picked up at the police station isnt their fault.
Should be worth a few laughs.
But I guess now I have my answer to how the omition of Bombadil could work in the final movie. For those less familiar, Gandalf goes to visit Tom on the way back to Hobbiton, leaving the hobbits to continue on alone. But, no return to the shire, problem solved. I probably wont go see Return of the King in the theatre at all.
At the very least PJ must be thanked for uncovering the origin of all sports involving travel via standing on a flat surface. The Elves invinted it all, skis, surfing, skateboarding, you name it, it was all the Elves idea. hehe
I fail to see how giving a person an item prevents them from buying more of the same item. Unless the RIAA has some method of finding out who has the unauthorized copies and tells all the authorized outlets NOT to sell to those people, how are they then prevented?
So, in the real world that Mr. Coward lives in everyone owns an authorised copy of every work ever written recorded or performed...
That is unless they were given an unauthorised copy before they aquired the mandatory authorised one they are supposed to have. By the way a pizza in the Coward universe costs 5 million bucks. Otherwise a fast food cook would never be able to keep on the good side of the RIAA, and out of media prison.
Mr. Coward is failing to see that there may just possibly be some people who will buy an IP protected work even though (indeed perhaps because of) being given a free copy of it first. Then there are also some people who would not buy the work one way or the other. In both cases no real loss at all, in the former case an untapped profit is had.
Even the "just say no" administration sold drugs to fund its cover ops. If it was good enough for Ronnie.....