Then you will have to move to Cuba. Cuba may not be the best place to live right now due to the economic difficulties caused by the embargo and the collapse of the socialist countries worldwide, but you can't deny that the government there (and Fidel in particular) cares deeply about the wellbeing of the people. Education and health systems there are nothing short of spectacular. And every kid gets free (as in beer) milk until he is 6 years old (not kidding).
I am sure that even if American corporations (with bought politicians) limit the access to robots, some of the remaining communist/socialist states will use the technology (robots + AI) to finally build communism, just as they wanted to do for a century now. It may end up being kind of like Australia Project in Brain's Manna.
Yes, I do. I've read a fair number of history books and nowhere the authors mention the insurmountable crime problems of the ancient cities (Rome, Athens, Carthage). I believe that it must have been similar in Mesoamerica and Indo-China as well. Eventually police forces developed everywhere, but their numbers (officers per 1000 people) where initially much smaller than today. Also there is ample evidence that over time the education improved, quality of life improved, so if anything, there is now LESS incentive to commit crimes than there ever was.
So while I am not advocating disbanding all police units immediately (in large cities they may have a purpose), I am absolutely 100% sure that we need much less police than we currently have.
That was exactly the point. The American people are just like the Romans in most respects, it's not like genetic mutation caused dangerous criminals to appear in the US and made police necessary. If Rome could manage without CCTV, why does the US need them so much?
I am from the Soviet Union and live in Russia now. And let me tell you, compared with what is happening today everywhere there was not much totalitarian in the USSR. First, Soviet government was, at least, in theory, trying to work for people, it didn't have big business to cater too. Second, there was no technology to control everybody and everything all the time. Such technology is slowly appearing today.
Interestingly, no matter how much former Soviet people liked their newly acquired freedom, they almost lost it all when a pseudo-patriotic demagogue (Putin) came to power.
As for the Second Amendment, there is an eye-opening video on the Net of AC-130 Gunship killing Afganis. They had guns too, but technology prevailed. There is no reason why the US government would not use overwhelming force to control the population when it will try to oppose it.
We don't need "100%" protection from the police - people kill each other with such protection just as much as they did without. And police is too often corrupt and inefficient. Unfortunately, once the government becomes too powerful, there is little hope that anyone can oppose it - you have to wait until it destroys itself. I am extremely optimistic when it comes to the future of the humankind in general, but the US and Russia make me really worried that they will follow a darker path.
Well, I have no intention of going to the USA anytime soon. I'd rather not learn about your police state firsthand...
But similar things are happening in many places recently and, sadly, in my country as well (to a very large extent). And since most government officials are stupid, they tend to copy whatever others do, including trying to build bigger surveilance systems.
Women's right to vote, abolishment of slavery, freedom to own property, to vote and be elected are great, but ultimately irrelevant to what I was talking about. We managed to live without police just fine (regardless of whether there was universal suffrage) and I don't see why we suddenly need CCTV everywhere.
As for totalitarism, I only said that the US is progressing towards a totalitarian state. It is folly to deny it.
P.S. Nice user ID, BTW. P.P.S. Could you be a little bit more polite?
Is it even possible to live free and untracked anymore? Is this just the price we pay for living in a civilized society? Yes, it is. No, it isn't. There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that increased surveilance is needed anywhere in the world. The primary reason why more and more tools are being used to track you and me is because the technology is available and the government can never have too much control (in their opinion).
Nothing changed in our cities from the 1940s - the crimes are the same, rapists, burglars, gangs, murderers, pickpocketers, speeders, flashers, drug dealers - there is no change. Look back 100 more years and the 1840s will be the same. Go back in Europe and 1000 years back in time. The 840s, same crimes, no difference whatsoever. Then go back 1000 years more and move to Rome. Same people lived there, they lived the same lives, with same worries about the same criminals. May be they didn't have iPods with white headphones or expensive mobile handsets to lose to the robbers, but whatever trinkets they carried they probably cared just as much for them as we do for ours.
How much police did they have? The farther back in time you go, the less police they had per 1000 people. In Ancient Rome there was no police at all. We are scaried of the crime today, they must have lived in constant fear for their lives, haven't they? Turns out, they haven't. Turns out that even without police people somehow managed to stay fine.
So let me repeat, there is absolutely no reason to have CCTV monitoring of our streets, the illusion of safety they provide is just that - the illusion, but with the attached risk of government abuse. Do we want it? Perhaps not. Do we need it? Absolutely not. Can we change anything? Only by violently overthrowing the government, but it is probably already too late. It's too powerful and it won't die - it will grow, and grow, and grow until it devours the whole world and every free person is controlled by the police state. And ACLU or EFF can't change anything now, they can only slow down the inevitable progress to the totalitarian hell.
You don't really understand. (a) It's not just the geek standard-loving flash-hating crowd that leaves such sites in dusgust. It's your average Joe Shmoe that opens something on his 33.6 dial-up connection, waits a bit, doesn't see anything informative, looks around for clues, doesn't find them and says "fuck it". Ask anyone who had the tiniest bit of usability testing experience. The stupid masses are not stupid when it comes to being forced to do unfunny things. (b) When someone comes to doom3.com they already got the image. They are interested, but nothing more - just interested. No matter how good Doom3 is it's just a game most people can live without. And there are many games just as good as Doom3 is. If id wants to sell as many copies as they want, they should cater to their customers, not attempt to force them to "buy an image". They don't want to buy an image, they wanted to buy a game, but no more, thank you very much.
We always knew that media content owners are greedy, this is no news. The question is what should we do. I believe that the only solution is to stop paying for content. Stop paying for music, for movies, for software, for books, etc. The goal of such boycott should not be to impress or persuade anyone, but to give as little money as possible to copyright violators (i.e. those who violate the very purpose of copyright that is enriching the public domain). Don't worry about artists, musicians or set builders, just spend the money on something else. If you like a film or a tune, download it from P2P, buy a pirated copy or (if you have no other option), rent it for 1$ on DVD.
The goal is not to break media companies financially, one person can't do it. The goal is to feel good about not contributing to the ongoing rape of the public domain.
As opposed to saying they would pirate less if downloads were faster? That's not exactly what I would call an interesting result...
Personally I can only say "whatever". I will still go to theatres because I can do it for 1.5$ (morning showings), but I will still download movies because the movie theatres usually only play the latest stuff or don't play the latest stuff because international distribution is sometimes fucked up.
There was little speculation about that. At least at the Slashdot I visit, don't know about yours. However, there are some known facts and among them is the fact that lots of code in MS products was, although not stolen, bought at gunpoint or through deception. MS doesn't want to have anything with GPL code, because they can't control it, but they are happy with using innovations of others by buying some of competing companies and crushing the rest.
What can you say about that, you basher of MS-bashing?
Definitely, but the "last old generation" is getting smaller. Most of the old people in the future will be "young people of old age", i.e. their beliefs, philosophy (and tolerance) will be comparable with that of young people.
The worst "problem" with old people is not their age, it's the times when they were raised.
What's really funny is how long that was not understood. Only a few years ago the Shuttle epitomized the advanced technologies of the United States and then, boom, everyone calls it a total failure. Just a bit more than one year, but how much has changed... unbelievable. How much is going to happen in the next 20-30 years if the rate of change continues or even increases?
Look back at your home planet. According to pretty much every astronaut or cosmonaut who spoke on the issue, seeing Earth from space is an awesome, stunning and life-changing experience. This alone should be worth the price.
"innocent until proven guilty" applies to citizens of the United States.
Nice logic, congrats. BTW, did you know that "innocent until proven guilty" didn't apply to political criminals in the USSR? Nobody was sent to gulag in violation of the Soviet law. And everyone who was sent there was guilty of something terrible like treason. The funniest thing is that a very significant share of people who were convicted paradoxically continued to believe that the system is infallible and everyone else was guilty...
Laws can be unjust, but many people have trouble understanding them. The fact that American government can invent a million reason why what they did was OK doesn't change the fact that it actually wasn't.
I don't think designing the rover is expensive, most of the costs are in developing the underlying technologies - putting them all together is simplier. Even if you don't send the same rover to Europa, you will still save huge amounts of money, if you don't need to constantly reinvent the wheel, so to speak.:)
Why is it bad? Tolerance is not the end in itself, it's just a simple strategy that proved to be effective in certain circumstances. In particular, tolerance only works when it is mutual. Read something like "Selfish Gene" by Dawkins, he describes the process of behaviour evolutionary development quite well. Tolerance does not work with intolerant people, period. The same goes for "functionally retarded". If a person is too stupid to understand anything, his opinion becomes irrelevant. That's just logical, although logic is too often ignored.
As for the older generation, they are the last one, hopefully.:) There is nothing that prevents us from maintaining the health, vigor and clear minds indefinitely in the future. Or at least, no laws of nature or insurmountable technological problems - human stupidity might be a more serious obstacle...
You are right, but your method is unreliable, as nobody knows when Wikipedia search will be disabled again because of heavy server load.:-) But for now I will actually change my shortcut, thanks.
Young people today are tolerant and open-minded by their nature. There is simply no going back - those 90% of functionally retarded people in the world will not matter, the progress will run them over.:) And the modern technology doesn't help the puritans, unless they manage to control all of it and that is impossible.
I may be overoptimistic, it's hard to tell right now how everything will turn out in the end, but I have hope.
If you were talking about the history, I would agree. Things like witch-burnings worked exactly that way. She studies something suspicious, we must kill her. But I have a firm belief that this won't work in the future. As more and more things become possible, the more and more tolerant we must become. I would argue that any society today becomes more tolerant over time, the bursts of intolerance are just anomalies. Most people will not forget their personal kinks simply because someone may be watching. Of course, the illegal stuff (rape, murder, tax evasion) will not be tolerated (although some of what is now illegal will be decriminalised), but everything legal will not be frowned upon for long.
A simple example. When you were a kid/teen, you probably wanted to masturbate. You did it in secret, hoping that noone will catch you. What would change if your house was wired with security cameras, motion detectors, etc. and everyone would be notified when you start jerking off and see a live feed from your room? One possible outcome is that everyone will start carefully monitor every step, every breath, every eye movement, in order not to make others suspect you did or wanted to do anything bad. That's possible, but everyone would end with neurosis in a few months of that. There is no chance such system can be sustainable for the whole society. Another potential outcome, of course, is that after a few weeks of abstinence you would finally think "what the heck?" and start spanking the monkey. Your parents (or vice police) would either have to severely punish you (possible, but unworkable on a national scale, especially in the future when you see everything and must act on every minor illegal act) or make this acceptable. That's exactly what is done in normal families with healthy psychological climate. That's exactly what I expect to happen in our future.
Not exactly. The society will have to change, to adapt to the spread of surveillance and sousveillance technologies. In the future world without anonymity we will have to become much more tolerant, we will have to accept that fact that people read about weird shit, talk about weird shit, think about weird shit and sometimes do weird shit. Currently, even when we open our eyes to this, we tell it's not our business. In the future we will have to realise that it can be our business if we care, but no matter how weird it is, it's all right and if we don't like it, we don't have to watch.
In the future you will be able to openly admit that you think your boss is a jerk, the president deserves to be killed and child porn is hot. Of course, you won't be able to admit that you cheated on taxes, but only because noone will be able to cheat on taxes anymore.:)
Bullshit. Nobody expects consumers to buy a new product every year. But consumers do expect producers not to sit on their asses for the whole year, but come up with something original instead. Especially in a rapidly developing industry. I may be perfectly content with my 4 year old PDA, mobile phone or camera, but if I decide to upgrade tomorrow, I don't want to buy a 2002 or a 2003 model (unless I am being cheap), I want to buy a 2004 model, which is faster, bigger, better has more features and is generally more badass.
If a particular manufacturer decides that once every 3 years is enough, it will not sell anything for the 70% of the time, because everyone will buy updated models from the competitors instead.
Slashdot Mirror
Then you will have to move to Cuba. Cuba may not be the best place to live right now due to the economic difficulties caused by the embargo and the collapse of the socialist countries worldwide, but you can't deny that the government there (and Fidel in particular) cares deeply about the wellbeing of the people. Education and health systems there are nothing short of spectacular. And every kid gets free (as in beer) milk until he is 6 years old (not kidding).
I am sure that even if American corporations (with bought politicians) limit the access to robots, some of the remaining communist/socialist states will use the technology (robots + AI) to finally build communism, just as they wanted to do for a century now. It may end up being kind of like Australia Project in Brain's Manna.
Yes, I do. I've read a fair number of history books and nowhere the authors mention the insurmountable crime problems of the ancient cities (Rome, Athens, Carthage). I believe that it must have been similar in Mesoamerica and Indo-China as well. Eventually police forces developed everywhere, but their numbers (officers per 1000 people) where initially much smaller than today. Also there is ample evidence that over time the education improved, quality of life improved, so if anything, there is now LESS incentive to commit crimes than there ever was.
So while I am not advocating disbanding all police units immediately (in large cities they may have a purpose), I am absolutely 100% sure that we need much less police than we currently have.
That was exactly the point. The American people are just like the Romans in most respects, it's not like genetic mutation caused dangerous criminals to appear in the US and made police necessary. If Rome could manage without CCTV, why does the US need them so much?
I am from the Soviet Union and live in Russia now. And let me tell you, compared with what is happening today everywhere there was not much totalitarian in the USSR. First, Soviet government was, at least, in theory, trying to work for people, it didn't have big business to cater too. Second, there was no technology to control everybody and everything all the time. Such technology is slowly appearing today.
Interestingly, no matter how much former Soviet people liked their newly acquired freedom, they almost lost it all when a pseudo-patriotic demagogue (Putin) came to power.
As for the Second Amendment, there is an eye-opening video on the Net of AC-130 Gunship killing Afganis. They had guns too, but technology prevailed. There is no reason why the US government would not use overwhelming force to control the population when it will try to oppose it.
We don't need "100%" protection from the police - people kill each other with such protection just as much as they did without. And police is too often corrupt and inefficient. Unfortunately, once the government becomes too powerful, there is little hope that anyone can oppose it - you have to wait until it destroys itself. I am extremely optimistic when it comes to the future of the humankind in general, but the US and Russia make me really worried that they will follow a darker path.
Well, I have no intention of going to the USA anytime soon. I'd rather not learn about your police state firsthand...
But similar things are happening in many places recently and, sadly, in my country as well (to a very large extent). And since most government officials are stupid, they tend to copy whatever others do, including trying to build bigger surveilance systems.
Women's right to vote, abolishment of slavery, freedom to own property, to vote and be elected are great, but ultimately irrelevant to what I was talking about. We managed to live without police just fine (regardless of whether there was universal suffrage) and I don't see why we suddenly need CCTV everywhere.
As for totalitarism, I only said that the US is progressing towards a totalitarian state. It is folly to deny it.
P.S. Nice user ID, BTW.
P.P.S. Could you be a little bit more polite?
Is it even possible to live free and untracked anymore? Is this just the price we pay for living in a civilized society?
Yes, it is. No, it isn't. There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that increased surveilance is needed anywhere in the world. The primary reason why more and more tools are being used to track you and me is because the technology is available and the government can never have too much control (in their opinion).
Nothing changed in our cities from the 1940s - the crimes are the same, rapists, burglars, gangs, murderers, pickpocketers, speeders, flashers, drug dealers - there is no change. Look back 100 more years and the 1840s will be the same. Go back in Europe and 1000 years back in time. The 840s, same crimes, no difference whatsoever. Then go back 1000 years more and move to Rome. Same people lived there, they lived the same lives, with same worries about the same criminals. May be they didn't have iPods with white headphones or expensive mobile handsets to lose to the robbers, but whatever trinkets they carried they probably cared just as much for them as we do for ours.
How much police did they have? The farther back in time you go, the less police they had per 1000 people. In Ancient Rome there was no police at all. We are scaried of the crime today, they must have lived in constant fear for their lives, haven't they? Turns out, they haven't. Turns out that even without police people somehow managed to stay fine.
So let me repeat, there is absolutely no reason to have CCTV monitoring of our streets, the illusion of safety they provide is just that - the illusion, but with the attached risk of government abuse. Do we want it? Perhaps not. Do we need it? Absolutely not. Can we change anything? Only by violently overthrowing the government, but it is probably already too late. It's too powerful and it won't die - it will grow, and grow, and grow until it devours the whole world and every free person is controlled by the police state. And ACLU or EFF can't change anything now, they can only slow down the inevitable progress to the totalitarian hell.
Sad, isn't it?
You don't really understand. (a) It's not just the geek standard-loving flash-hating crowd that leaves such sites in dusgust. It's your average Joe Shmoe that opens something on his 33.6 dial-up connection, waits a bit, doesn't see anything informative, looks around for clues, doesn't find them and says "fuck it". Ask anyone who had the tiniest bit of usability testing experience. The stupid masses are not stupid when it comes to being forced to do unfunny things. (b) When someone comes to doom3.com they already got the image. They are interested, but nothing more - just interested. No matter how good Doom3 is it's just a game most people can live without. And there are many games just as good as Doom3 is. If id wants to sell as many copies as they want, they should cater to their customers, not attempt to force them to "buy an image". They don't want to buy an image, they wanted to buy a game, but no more, thank you very much.
We always knew that media content owners are greedy, this is no news. The question is what should we do. I believe that the only solution is to stop paying for content. Stop paying for music, for movies, for software, for books, etc. The goal of such boycott should not be to impress or persuade anyone, but to give as little money as possible to copyright violators (i.e. those who violate the very purpose of copyright that is enriching the public domain). Don't worry about artists, musicians or set builders, just spend the money on something else. If you like a film or a tune, download it from P2P, buy a pirated copy or (if you have no other option), rent it for 1$ on DVD.
The goal is not to break media companies financially, one person can't do it. The goal is to feel good about not contributing to the ongoing rape of the public domain.
Not He was blackmailing the company., but "he could have potentially blackmailed the company if they stiffled him."
As opposed to saying they would pirate less if downloads were faster? That's not exactly what I would call an interesting result...
Personally I can only say "whatever". I will still go to theatres because I can do it for 1.5$ (morning showings), but I will still download movies because the movie theatres usually only play the latest stuff or don't play the latest stuff because international distribution is sometimes fucked up.
There was little speculation about that. At least at the Slashdot I visit, don't know about yours. However, there are some known facts and among them is the fact that lots of code in MS products was, although not stolen, bought at gunpoint or through deception. MS doesn't want to have anything with GPL code, because they can't control it, but they are happy with using innovations of others by buying some of competing companies and crushing the rest.
What can you say about that, you basher of MS-bashing?
Definitely, but the "last old generation" is getting smaller. Most of the old people in the future will be "young people of old age", i.e. their beliefs, philosophy (and tolerance) will be comparable with that of young people.
The worst "problem" with old people is not their age, it's the times when they were raised.
And we've got the graphics already!
What's really funny is how long that was not understood. Only a few years ago the Shuttle epitomized the advanced technologies of the United States and then, boom, everyone calls it a total failure. Just a bit more than one year, but how much has changed... unbelievable. How much is going to happen in the next 20-30 years if the rate of change continues or even increases?
Look back at your home planet. According to pretty much every astronaut or cosmonaut who spoke on the issue, seeing Earth from space is an awesome, stunning and life-changing experience. This alone should be worth the price.
"innocent until proven guilty" applies to citizens of the United States.
Nice logic, congrats. BTW, did you know that "innocent until proven guilty" didn't apply to political criminals in the USSR? Nobody was sent to gulag in violation of the Soviet law. And everyone who was sent there was guilty of something terrible like treason. The funniest thing is that a very significant share of people who were convicted paradoxically continued to believe that the system is infallible and everyone else was guilty...
Laws can be unjust, but many people have trouble understanding them. The fact that American government can invent a million reason why what they did was OK doesn't change the fact that it actually wasn't.
Numbers. As in your days are numbered and your number is small. :)
I don't think designing the rover is expensive, most of the costs are in developing the underlying technologies - putting them all together is simplier. Even if you don't send the same rover to Europa, you will still save huge amounts of money, if you don't need to constantly reinvent the wheel, so to speak. :)
Why is it bad? Tolerance is not the end in itself, it's just a simple strategy that proved to be effective in certain circumstances. In particular, tolerance only works when it is mutual. Read something like "Selfish Gene" by Dawkins, he describes the process of behaviour evolutionary development quite well. Tolerance does not work with intolerant people, period. The same goes for "functionally retarded". If a person is too stupid to understand anything, his opinion becomes irrelevant. That's just logical, although logic is too often ignored.
:) There is nothing that prevents us from maintaining the health, vigor and clear minds indefinitely in the future. Or at least, no laws of nature or insurmountable technological problems - human stupidity might be a more serious obstacle...
As for the older generation, they are the last one, hopefully.
You are right, but your method is unreliable, as nobody knows when Wikipedia search will be disabled again because of heavy server load. :-) But for now I will actually change my shortcut, thanks.
Young people today are tolerant and open-minded by their nature. There is simply no going back - those 90% of functionally retarded people in the world will not matter, the progress will run them over. :) And the modern technology doesn't help the puritans, unless they manage to control all of it and that is impossible.
I may be overoptimistic, it's hard to tell right now how everything will turn out in the end, but I have hope.
If you were talking about the history, I would agree. Things like witch-burnings worked exactly that way. She studies something suspicious, we must kill her. But I have a firm belief that this won't work in the future. As more and more things become possible, the more and more tolerant we must become. I would argue that any society today becomes more tolerant over time, the bursts of intolerance are just anomalies. Most people will not forget their personal kinks simply because someone may be watching. Of course, the illegal stuff (rape, murder, tax evasion) will not be tolerated (although some of what is now illegal will be decriminalised), but everything legal will not be frowned upon for long.
A simple example. When you were a kid/teen, you probably wanted to masturbate. You did it in secret, hoping that noone will catch you. What would change if your house was wired with security cameras, motion detectors, etc. and everyone would be notified when you start jerking off and see a live feed from your room? One possible outcome is that everyone will start carefully monitor every step, every breath, every eye movement, in order not to make others suspect you did or wanted to do anything bad. That's possible, but everyone would end with neurosis in a few months of that. There is no chance such system can be sustainable for the whole society. Another potential outcome, of course, is that after a few weeks of abstinence you would finally think "what the heck?" and start spanking the monkey. Your parents (or vice police) would either have to severely punish you (possible, but unworkable on a national scale, especially in the future when you see everything and must act on every minor illegal act) or make this acceptable. That's exactly what is done in normal families with healthy psychological climate. That's exactly what I expect to happen in our future.
you will be more selective about what you study
:)
Not exactly. The society will have to change, to adapt to the spread of surveillance and sousveillance technologies. In the future world without anonymity we will have to become much more tolerant, we will have to accept that fact that people read about weird shit, talk about weird shit, think about weird shit and sometimes do weird shit. Currently, even when we open our eyes to this, we tell it's not our business. In the future we will have to realise that it can be our business if we care, but no matter how weird it is, it's all right and if we don't like it, we don't have to watch.
In the future you will be able to openly admit that you think your boss is a jerk, the president deserves to be killed and child porn is hot. Of course, you won't be able to admit that you cheated on taxes, but only because noone will be able to cheat on taxes anymore.
Much simplier if you ask me, and also faster.
Bullshit. Nobody expects consumers to buy a new product every year. But consumers do expect producers not to sit on their asses for the whole year, but come up with something original instead. Especially in a rapidly developing industry. I may be perfectly content with my 4 year old PDA, mobile phone or camera, but if I decide to upgrade tomorrow, I don't want to buy a 2002 or a 2003 model (unless I am being cheap), I want to buy a 2004 model, which is faster, bigger, better has more features and is generally more badass.
If a particular manufacturer decides that once every 3 years is enough, it will not sell anything for the 70% of the time, because everyone will buy updated models from the competitors instead.