A cure for cyberhondria
on
Cyberchondria
·
· Score: 1
1 lb. beefsteak, with 1 pt. bitter beer every 6 hours. 1 ten-mile walk every morning. 1 bed at 11 sharp every night. And don't stuff up your head with things you don't understand.
http://www.gutenberg.net/etext95/3boat10.txt
Re:on a serious note...
on
Space Burial
·
· Score: 1
You've read too much science fiction, my dear. Was it Neil R. Jones ("The Jameson Satellite") or Arthur Clark ("2061")?
If you arrange for your body to be sent into space, your chances for revival are very slim. Do you know how big the space is? It pretty fucking big. And the chances for you body to end up in the hands of some superintelligent race can be estimated at 0.00000000000000000. Sorry about that.
I don't know what you have against Alcor patients, but if you just think about your own survival, I hope you will not bet everything on a chance encounter with the aliens, but stay here on Earth, safely stored for a few decades to be revived by your own brethren.
Thanks for the correction and for the useful link. English is not my first language and I still need to improve on my grammar skills. I thought "were" is used only for the first person singular subjunctive (or for plural), like in the AC's example below, but not for the third person.
I hate stupid people. This journalist is stupid. I hate this journalist.
An FBI task force hunted today for a cyber-criminal who posted on the internet source code for Windows, the jewels of Microsoft's software empire. It hunted today, huh? Did they ride on horses when hunting? Will they stop hunting tomorrow? BTW, what the hell is "cyber-criminal"? And since when copyright violation is a crime? And didn't that idiot know that Windows is the brand for an OS, thus it's not really plural, so it would be jewel, not jewels.
In jeopardy is Microsoft's near-monopoly on operating systems found on 90 per cent of the world's personal computers. How exactly is the near-monopoly in jeopardy? And while we are trying to understand the sentence, is the near-monopoly found on 90% of computers or is it the monopoly on Windows (i.e. the OS on 90% of computers)?
"I can confirm that" the Northwest Cybercrime Task Force was investigating, FBI spokeswoman Robbie Burroughs said. What? Confirm WHAT??? Or, the quotation marks moved by themselves, never mind...
"Microsoft source code is both copyrighted and protected as a trade secret," the company said in a statement posted on its website today. At least he managed to copy-paste the quote... I can't understand what "Microsoft source code" is, though...
"As such, it is illegal to post it, make it available to others, download it or use it. The quote continues, but the ending quotation marks are missing... As for the MS press release, I really like them saying that it is illegal to make the Windows source code available to others. What did they just do?:) OK, they forgot to add "without permission from the copyright owner".
The posted program is part of the source codes, or blueprints, for Windows 2000 and Windows NT 4.0, according to the company. Pluralisation again... Are the source codes similar to cheat codes in any way? The last time I checked it was code. And saying "or blueprints" sounds really stupid. Really. Nobody uses blueprints for software.:)
Counterfeiters have been trying to get their hands on Windows source code for years. So have computer activists who say that programs could be made to work better with Windows if the source code were public. Oh, brilliant! I bet counterfeiters didn't knew what they were trying to do all that time. I though they were trying to duplicate CDs MS was openly selling in retail stores, sometimes cracking the copy-protection. Well, now that they got the source code they must be happy and probably will stop counterfeiting.:) And I would really like to know who the hell are these activists? What, "Americans for cleaner code" or "C coders for forward compatibility"? And he messed up the plurals again. It's source code now, but it "were public"...
Microsoft said that its own security had not been breached by whomever did the posting, nor was it released by a series of companies and governments with whom it shares the source code for the purpose of building software to work with Windows. What the fuck? Let me ponder the absurdity of this sentence for a second. The code neither came directly from MS machines, nor did it come from the series (what series?) of companies and governments who had the code? If I wasn't sure that the journalist is a total moron, I would presume he suspects universities or research institutes, the only remaining category, which was not vindicated.:) But since he is, let me just say that nothing like that was written in the MS press release. What MS claimed was that its internal security was not broken (the external security obviously was) and the code didn't leak via two specific programs - Microsoft?s Shared Source Initiative and Government Security Program.
If all (or even most) people were reponsible enough to only talk on cell phones when either a) they didn't bother anyone or b) they had something terribly important to tell/hear noone would be waging the war on cell phones.
As it is, though, there are many cases when pointless idle chatter disturbs many people without a benefit even to the person talking on the phone. Consider a common example of a stupid bimbo receiving a phone call in the middle of a movie and spending at least a minute to tell her equally stupid friend that she is in fact in the movie theatre, she is watching such and such film and then proceeding to discussing plans for the evening.
If it would be possible to block only the phones of the idiots, or better deprive these idiots of all and any civil rights, I would be all for it. As it is, unfortunately, our only solution are the jammers.
BTW, I neither advocate, nor oppose the use of jammers.
What is the most annoying, at least to me, are the ring tones. If I wanted to hear Bach or Bethoven, I would go to a concert. Please spare me from your annoying polyphonic melodies where a simple beeep would suffice. And why most phones have aural feedback for ALL key-presses by deafult?!
Well done, thanks for the lesson. We'd appreciate if you do it more often, preferably admitting it in a follow-up post (after the original one was upmoded).:)
Are you stupid or just trolling? Why is the article misleading? It says about Safe Haven:
A technological counter-measure is on the way. Iceberg Systems, a British firm, is rolling out a system called Safe Haven that disables the camera portion of a phone while leaving its other functions alone. Locations using such "privacy zones" would broadcast a shutdown signal to specially equipped picture phones or digital cameras.
Nowhere the article calls it a "camera phone jammer".
As for the complaints over camera phones, the problem is not with some "perverts". The problem is that ordinary people turn into perverts when they are in locker rooms and start making these photos. However, I agree with your point and will add a mental note to check for the presence of such technology when I buy my next phone/camera. I already remember to do it for the next scanner/printer/xerox.
Re:No action taken
on
Cell-Phone Wars
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
people yelling into thier phones and saying "can you hear me?"
Especially as the digital GSM (GPRS, CDMA, etc.) phones being digital either work or don't. If the signal is too low, yelling does not help.:)
Why would anyone block a 911 call? Unless we are talking about jammers that cover whole city blocks, the person with the jammer is likely to be around when the heart attack happens. Hopefully he will be considerate enough to turn it off, especially when he sees that calls do not get through. And if we are talking about jammers that kill all mobile phones miles around, I think the police/cellular company/FCC is likely to something about that (and it's not like they are terribly useful for mundane purposes).
I like technology arms races...
on
Cell-Phone Wars
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
...especially when noone is hurt. And believe me, the dangers of jamming cell phones are miniscule, don't try to sell me the stories of blocked 911 calls. I see nothing but good coming out of this. Either we will have low-power cellular communications, a better communications mode, less noisy phones or may be more polite people. It's always exciting to watch the struggle of guns vs. armour. More power to the jammers!
This is going to be a big dissappointment for fans of LOTR expecting more of the same from Peter Jackson. Indeed. Like the TTT and ROTK were a huge disappointment for fans of FOTR (although the majority ate all three).
The LOTR trilogy contains a beautifully realised fantasy world and an epic story with way more material than you need for a movie. Nothing of which happened because of PJ.
Why not come up with a new idea instead of remaking a fifty-year old idea? Because he doesn't have [m]any original ideas and he run out of classic books which were not filmed yet.
Not to deride Peter's directing talent, but without the genius of Tolkein's story-telling I don't think his genius with directing is going to make the 100-foot monkey movie fly. Exactly. The best thing about LOTR movies were the source material, Alan Lee's illustrations and 300 mln $$$. In my opinion, directing (or screen-writing) talents of PJ never entered the equation, which should be obvious to anyone who saw ROTK and observed the averageness of all actors shining in every scene.
I read somewhere (sorry no link) that as animated characters become more realistic, they reach a stage where they are so realistic that it's disturbing and (paradoxically) seems more unrealistic. The gollum character got around this because he was supposed to be disturbing... or something... anyone find the link for that? Anyhow, how would they achieve the same effect with king-kong? Just google for uncanny valley. But the truth is that we are already over the valley in CGI in regards to everything, but close-up scenes. And doing a giant monkey is nothing particularly complex today.
Don't forget what a flop the remake of Godzilla was. I hope the new King-Kong flops just as badly, so that anyone can see that the king is naked.:)
There is a idea in biology, called "handicap principle". It presumes that certain animals may evolve features that are grossly inconvenient and really decrease their chances for survival (such as huge tails, etc.). The usual reasoning implies that in order to survive and "win the girl" with such a handicap the male animal has to be perfectly fit in regards to the rest of his characteristics.
As of today, some of the prominent scientists in the field of evolutionary theory believe that this idea may actually be true, at least as applied to the males "advertising" their quality through the handicap feature. The evolutionary stable strategy (however strange it may seem) actually is the perfect correlation between the quality and the "size" of handicap.
Applying this to our dating/diamond example, it does make sense from the evolutionary selfish point of view (from the point of view of your genes/memes), but you must be really stupid to purposely follow this principle and spend $10,000 on a diamond.
Remember, rarity determines the price only on the seller's side. On the buyer's side the price should be determined by utility (unless you are stupid). Furthermore, it's not necessary to throw away $10,000 just to prove that you are rich. Just give her the cash if you must.:)
People are stupid, but that doesn't mean they are stupid your way. I don't believe DeBeers will be able to persuade customers to continue spending their two-month salary on worthless diamonds. Many USian companies are forced to move production to other countries, even though they could have written "Genuine American" on their products and attempt to sell at a premium. But apparently, that doesn't work.:) There is only so much marketdroids can invent to control people.:)
The most irrational thing would be for people to move to emeralds, rubies, etc. That would be stupid, ultimately pointless (how much time can the jewellers buy?) and won't help DeBeers anyway.:)
Thus DeBeers provides an important incentive for development of diamond manufacturing techniques. If diamonds were sold for 25% of their current price, they would be used much wider, but it is possible that the interest towards synthetic diamonds would be less. As it is, synthetic diamond manufacturers have very favourable conditions to develop in...
You are happy, so what? The point is you are addicted to certain chemicals and are unable to think objectively about your fiancee and the time you spend with her. When I was in love, I felt the same way, but right now (and before) I can think objectively and I can tell you that I prefer it this way.
I am happy knowing that I can behave in a way best for me and not for my genes. I am happy that I can prevent myself from falling in love again and just live alone nicely. You, on the other hand, are doing what you were programmed to do and I can feel nothing but pity towards you.
Sorry, can't find the link, but some time ago, an employee of Amazon posted here and pointed out that Amazon has neither the resources, nor interest to do what you describe. He went as far as to claim that Amazon doesn't (didn't) actually need/want the reviews, but the users demanded them. So, according to that guy, nobody at Amazon wants (has time) to police the reviews, except to remove the most blatantly bad ones. I am not sure we can trust his account, but that would actually make sense.
Personally I had written exactly one negative review on Amazon and it is still there. That also was, AFAIR, the only book I ever bought there.
P.S. Amazon's search sucks. (a honest an unbiased opinion)
If there was even a slim chance that I would need a book about databases, or GoLive, or whatever, I would take the time to find your name and make a note to never buy anything written by you.
There is no fair reason for the author to demand that any reviews are removed. If a negative review is biased enough, someone else ought to do it, never the author. Unless he only cares about money, in which case there are easier ways to earn it.
In the shows I perform in, there is plenty of interaction between cast and orchestra. Mediated, of course, through the CONDUCTOR. That's what he's there for. And the conductor is supposed to pick up the vibe from the audience, and will if he's any good, which adds a third party into the mix.
I am not trying to troll or to offend you here. But let me tell you, I don't care about that interaction. I don't go to concerts often, and when I go, I can't really tell the difference between good performance and a crappy one. Yeah, you might say I am a bad listener. I might even agree with you. But the truth is that most people who happen to listen to you, just don't care. Some of those, who don't care can be suckered to pay extra just for the fact of it being a live performance, even thought they won't hear the difference. But others will happily go to a semi-synthesied one and pay less (or get another benefit, like greater availability). In the end it is for us to decide, how music should be played commercially. You don't like it, get together with your friends and play some music for your own enjoyment. But please, don't even think about forcing us to pay more for "genuine" diamonds, music performances or whatever it is, just so that you have a better paid job.
To make half the experience artificial is to taint the other half, also. It's not like people aren't going to be able to tell.
Artificial? As opposed to what, natural music? Here is the news - all music is artificial, because all instruments are artificial. It's not like they mine natural music in South Africa or grow it on Brazil plantations.
Regarding your last comment, let's the people decide. If they don't like it, they will refuse to pay and this idea will be scrapped. If, on the other hand, they will like it just as much as the "natural" music (whatever it is), the producers will succeed. No need for the unions to get involved, there are enough luddites as it is.
Have you ever seen a game that is too polished? I haven't, but I've seen a lot of buggy game that were unplayable on my machine until a few patches came out. So let me respectfully disagree with you about the importance of engineers' perfectionism in this particular field.
P.S. BTW, I think that the closedness of the industry takes a hard toll on it. Yes, being egoistic by nature, game development companies refuse to go the open source way and it has even became an accepted fact that we need strong copyright for games, because you can't make a quality game with open source. But what the developers are missing is that a lot of content needs to be recreated from scratch for each new game. With a common platform for content development and open sharing of objects games could become much cheaper and easier to make.
This is not even human nature, that's the nature of any system consisting of relatively "free" entities. If they are free enough, there will likely be natural selection, which will lead to evolutionary stable strategies, which are likely to resemble "open markets". A good read on this topic is "Selfish Gene" by Dawkins.
But the best thing about communism is that it is nearly inevitable once you have sufficient means of production. The whole Soviet history was a race to accumulate sufficient means of production. More machines, more tractors, more excavators, more turbines, more nuclear reactors, etc. There have been a few problems, though. One being the Second World War, which really set us back. The second being the Cold War and the militaristic USian Empire, which forced USSR to waste way too much on military. If not for these two things, the Soviet Union had great chances to survive until the computer and telecommunication revolutions, which had the potential to greatly improve the efficiency of the economy (see the Chilean example of a planning computer network, unfortunately destroyed by Pinochet/was discussed here on Slashdot/). With that (and with no pressure from the US) the Soviet Union would have been perfectly capable to last until the nanotechnology revolution, which would finally bring the Utopia.
When there is no advantage to being selfish, selfishness ceases to be a useful trait and natural selection will no longer select for it. Thus the selfish (greedy, lazy, etc.) people will die out, and those few that remain will not cause any harm anyway.
You know what is the biggest problem? The fact that capital is owned by private individuals is. If the capital didn't belong to anybody, but to the people as a whole, it could be much easier. This social order is, of course, called communism.:)
And eventually (in a few decades) it will happen. I predict that in 10-20 years we will have general-purpose robots capable of doing most jobs with right software, including dish-washing, carpentry, assembly, etc. 10 years is a very optimistic estimate, 20 years is a more realistic one. They might be expensive at first, but don't forget, they will be made mostly of plastic (i.e. carbon + oxygen + hydrogen), aluminium, copper and iron, none of which are particularly expensive. The most expensive is the R&D, but once it is done, prices can drop extremely low. Once we have the robots, open source Ferraris will become a possibility. Independently from the robotic revolution, in 20-30 years we can expect nanotechnology to mature and give us nanoassemblers. That would make open source everything possible, although we'll not be able to enjoy it for long with technological singularity and stuff...
Slashdot Mirror
1 lb. beefsteak, with
1 pt. bitter beer every 6 hours.
1 ten-mile walk every morning.
1 bed at 11 sharp every night.
And don't stuff up your head with things you don't understand.
http://www.gutenberg.net/etext95/3boat10.txt
You've read too much science fiction, my dear. Was it Neil R. Jones ("The Jameson Satellite") or Arthur Clark ("2061")?
If you arrange for your body to be sent into space, your chances for revival are very slim. Do you know how big the space is? It pretty fucking big. And the chances for you body to end up in the hands of some superintelligent race can be estimated at 0.00000000000000000. Sorry about that.
I don't know what you have against Alcor patients, but if you just think about your own survival, I hope you will not bet everything on a chance encounter with the aliens, but stay here on Earth, safely stored for a few decades to be revived by your own brethren.
Thanks for the correction and for the useful link. English is not my first language and I still need to improve on my grammar skills. I thought "were" is used only for the first person singular subjunctive (or for plural), like in the AC's example below, but not for the third person.
I hate stupid people. This journalist is stupid. I hate this journalist.
:) OK, they forgot to add "without permission from the copyright owner".
:)
:) And I would really like to know who the hell are these activists? What, "Americans for cleaner code" or "C coders for forward compatibility"? And he messed up the plurals again. It's source code now, but it "were public"...
:) But since he is, let me just say that nothing like that was written in the MS press release. What MS claimed was that its internal security was not broken (the external security obviously was) and the code didn't leak via two specific programs - Microsoft?s Shared Source Initiative and Government Security Program.
An FBI task force hunted today for a cyber-criminal who posted on the internet source code for Windows, the jewels of Microsoft's software empire.
It hunted today, huh? Did they ride on horses when hunting? Will they stop hunting tomorrow? BTW, what the hell is "cyber-criminal"? And since when copyright violation is a crime? And didn't that idiot know that Windows is the brand for an OS, thus it's not really plural, so it would be jewel, not jewels.
In jeopardy is Microsoft's near-monopoly on operating systems found on 90 per cent of the world's personal computers.
How exactly is the near-monopoly in jeopardy? And while we are trying to understand the sentence, is the near-monopoly found on 90% of computers or is it the monopoly on Windows (i.e. the OS on 90% of computers)?
"I can confirm that" the Northwest Cybercrime Task Force was investigating, FBI spokeswoman Robbie Burroughs said.
What? Confirm WHAT??? Or, the quotation marks moved by themselves, never mind...
"Microsoft source code is both copyrighted and protected as a trade secret," the company said in a statement posted on its website today.
At least he managed to copy-paste the quote... I can't understand what "Microsoft source code" is, though...
"As such, it is illegal to post it, make it available to others, download it or use it.
The quote continues, but the ending quotation marks are missing... As for the MS press release, I really like them saying that it is illegal to make the Windows source code available to others. What did they just do?
The posted program is part of the source codes, or blueprints, for Windows 2000 and Windows NT 4.0, according to the company.
Pluralisation again... Are the source codes similar to cheat codes in any way? The last time I checked it was code. And saying "or blueprints" sounds really stupid. Really. Nobody uses blueprints for software.
Counterfeiters have been trying to get their hands on Windows source code for years. So have computer activists who say that programs could be made to work better with Windows if the source code were public.
Oh, brilliant! I bet counterfeiters didn't knew what they were trying to do all that time. I though they were trying to duplicate CDs MS was openly selling in retail stores, sometimes cracking the copy-protection. Well, now that they got the source code they must be happy and probably will stop counterfeiting.
Microsoft said that its own security had not been breached by whomever did the posting, nor was it released by a series of companies and governments with whom it shares the source code for the purpose of building software to work with Windows.
What the fuck? Let me ponder the absurdity of this sentence for a second. The code neither came directly from MS machines, nor did it come from the series (what series?) of companies and governments who had the code? If I wasn't sure that the journalist is a total moron, I would presume he suspects universities or research institutes, the only remaining category, which was not vindicated.
In any case, Mi
If all (or even most) people were reponsible enough to only talk on cell phones when either
a) they didn't bother anyone
or
b) they had something terribly important to tell/hear
noone would be waging the war on cell phones.
As it is, though, there are many cases when pointless idle chatter disturbs many people without a benefit even to the person talking on the phone. Consider a common example of a stupid bimbo receiving a phone call in the middle of a movie and spending at least a minute to tell her equally stupid friend that she is in fact in the movie theatre, she is watching such and such film and then proceeding to discussing plans for the evening.
If it would be possible to block only the phones of the idiots, or better deprive these idiots of all and any civil rights, I would be all for it. As it is, unfortunately, our only solution are the jammers.
BTW, I neither advocate, nor oppose the use of jammers.
What is the most annoying, at least to me, are the ring tones. If I wanted to hear Bach or Bethoven, I would go to a concert. Please spare me from your annoying polyphonic melodies where a simple beeep would suffice. And why most phones have aural feedback for ALL key-presses by deafult?!
Well done, thanks for the lesson. We'd appreciate if you do it more often, preferably admitting it in a follow-up post (after the original one was upmoded). :)
Are you stupid or just trolling? Why is the article misleading? It says about Safe Haven:
A technological counter-measure is on the way. Iceberg Systems, a British firm, is rolling out a system called Safe Haven that disables the camera portion of a phone while leaving its other functions alone. Locations using such "privacy zones" would broadcast a shutdown signal to specially equipped picture phones or digital cameras.
Nowhere the article calls it a "camera phone jammer".
As for the complaints over camera phones, the problem is not with some "perverts". The problem is that ordinary people turn into perverts when they are in locker rooms and start making these photos. However, I agree with your point and will add a mental note to check for the presence of such technology when I buy my next phone/camera. I already remember to do it for the next scanner/printer/xerox.
people yelling into thier phones and saying "can you hear me?"
:)
Especially as the digital GSM (GPRS, CDMA, etc.) phones being digital either work or don't. If the signal is too low, yelling does not help.
Why would anyone block a 911 call? Unless we are talking about jammers that cover whole city blocks, the person with the jammer is likely to be around when the heart attack happens. Hopefully he will be considerate enough to turn it off, especially when he sees that calls do not get through. And if we are talking about jammers that kill all mobile phones miles around, I think the police/cellular company/FCC is likely to something about that (and it's not like they are terribly useful for mundane purposes).
...especially when noone is hurt. And believe me, the dangers of jamming cell phones are miniscule, don't try to sell me the stories of blocked 911 calls. I see nothing but good coming out of this. Either we will have low-power cellular communications, a better communications mode, less noisy phones or may be more polite people. It's always exciting to watch the struggle of guns vs. armour. More power to the jammers!
This is going to be a big dissappointment for fans of LOTR expecting more of the same from Peter Jackson.
:)
Indeed. Like the TTT and ROTK were a huge disappointment for fans of FOTR (although the majority ate all three).
The LOTR trilogy contains a beautifully realised fantasy world and an epic story with way more material than you need for a movie.
Nothing of which happened because of PJ.
Why not come up with a new idea instead of remaking a fifty-year old idea?
Because he doesn't have [m]any original ideas and he run out of classic books which were not filmed yet.
Not to deride Peter's directing talent, but without the genius of Tolkein's story-telling I don't think his genius with directing is going to make the 100-foot monkey movie fly.
Exactly. The best thing about LOTR movies were the source material, Alan Lee's illustrations and 300 mln $$$. In my opinion, directing (or screen-writing) talents of PJ never entered the equation, which should be obvious to anyone who saw ROTK and observed the averageness of all actors shining in every scene.
I read somewhere (sorry no link) that as animated characters become more realistic, they reach a stage where they are so realistic that it's disturbing and (paradoxically) seems more unrealistic. The gollum character got around this because he was supposed to be disturbing... or something... anyone find the link for that? Anyhow, how would they achieve the same effect with king-kong?
Just google for uncanny valley. But the truth is that we are already over the valley in CGI in regards to everything, but close-up scenes. And doing a giant monkey is nothing particularly complex today.
Don't forget what a flop the remake of Godzilla was.
I hope the new King-Kong flops just as badly, so that anyone can see that the king is naked.
There is a idea in biology, called "handicap principle". It presumes that certain animals may evolve features that are grossly inconvenient and really decrease their chances for survival (such as huge tails, etc.). The usual reasoning implies that in order to survive and "win the girl" with such a handicap the male animal has to be perfectly fit in regards to the rest of his characteristics.
:)
As of today, some of the prominent scientists in the field of evolutionary theory believe that this idea may actually be true, at least as applied to the males "advertising" their quality through the handicap feature. The evolutionary stable strategy (however strange it may seem) actually is the perfect correlation between the quality and the "size" of handicap.
Applying this to our dating/diamond example, it does make sense from the evolutionary selfish point of view (from the point of view of your genes/memes), but you must be really stupid to purposely follow this principle and spend $10,000 on a diamond.
Remember, rarity determines the price only on the seller's side. On the buyer's side the price should be determined by utility (unless you are stupid). Furthermore, it's not necessary to throw away $10,000 just to prove that you are rich. Just give her the cash if you must.
People are stupid, but that doesn't mean they are stupid your way. I don't believe DeBeers will be able to persuade customers to continue spending their two-month salary on worthless diamonds. Many USian companies are forced to move production to other countries, even though they could have written "Genuine American" on their products and attempt to sell at a premium. But apparently, that doesn't work. :) There is only so much marketdroids can invent to control people. :)
:)
The most irrational thing would be for people to move to emeralds, rubies, etc. That would be stupid, ultimately pointless (how much time can the jewellers buy?) and won't help DeBeers anyway.
Thus DeBeers provides an important incentive for development of diamond manufacturing techniques. If diamonds were sold for 25% of their current price, they would be used much wider, but it is possible that the interest towards synthetic diamonds would be less. As it is, synthetic diamond manufacturers have very favourable conditions to develop in...
You are happy, so what? The point is you are addicted to certain chemicals and are unable to think objectively about your fiancee and the time you spend with her. When I was in love, I felt the same way, but right now (and before) I can think objectively and I can tell you that I prefer it this way.
I am happy knowing that I can behave in a way best for me and not for my genes. I am happy that I can prevent myself from falling in love again and just live alone nicely. You, on the other hand, are doing what you were programmed to do and I can feel nothing but pity towards you.
Sorry, can't find the link, but some time ago, an employee of Amazon posted here and pointed out that Amazon has neither the resources, nor interest to do what you describe. He went as far as to claim that Amazon doesn't (didn't) actually need/want the reviews, but the users demanded them. So, according to that guy, nobody at Amazon wants (has time) to police the reviews, except to remove the most blatantly bad ones. I am not sure we can trust his account, but that would actually make sense.
Personally I had written exactly one negative review on Amazon and it is still there. That also was, AFAIR, the only book I ever bought there.
P.S. Amazon's search sucks. (a honest an unbiased opinion)
If there was even a slim chance that I would need a book about databases, or GoLive, or whatever, I would take the time to find your name and make a note to never buy anything written by you.
There is no fair reason for the author to demand that any reviews are removed. If a negative review is biased enough, someone else ought to do it, never the author. Unless he only cares about money, in which case there are easier ways to earn it.
In the shows I perform in, there is plenty of interaction between cast and orchestra. Mediated, of course, through the CONDUCTOR. That's what he's there for. And the conductor is supposed to pick up the vibe from the audience, and will if he's any good, which adds a third party into the mix.
I am not trying to troll or to offend you here. But let me tell you, I don't care about that interaction. I don't go to concerts often, and when I go, I can't really tell the difference between good performance and a crappy one. Yeah, you might say I am a bad listener. I might even agree with you. But the truth is that most people who happen to listen to you, just don't care. Some of those, who don't care can be suckered to pay extra just for the fact of it being a live performance, even thought they won't hear the difference. But others will happily go to a semi-synthesied one and pay less (or get another benefit, like greater availability). In the end it is for us to decide, how music should be played commercially. You don't like it, get together with your friends and play some music for your own enjoyment. But please, don't even think about forcing us to pay more for "genuine" diamonds, music performances or whatever it is, just so that you have a better paid job.
Luddites have no future! Adapt or perish!
To make half the experience artificial is to taint the other half, also. It's not like people aren't going to be able to tell.
Artificial? As opposed to what, natural music? Here is the news - all music is artificial, because all instruments are artificial. It's not like they mine natural music in South Africa or grow it on Brazil plantations.
Regarding your last comment, let's the people decide. If they don't like it, they will refuse to pay and this idea will be scrapped. If, on the other hand, they will like it just as much as the "natural" music (whatever it is), the producers will succeed. No need for the unions to get involved, there are enough luddites as it is.
No, excessive delays don't hurt those industries were delays aren't common. Which is pretty much every industry out there.
North Korea is reputedly working on a way to have 100 men dig a hole 100 feet deep in 1 minute.
Simple. You just dig 100 1-foot deep holes in 1 minute and then stack each on the bottom of the next.
Have you ever seen a game that is too polished? I haven't, but I've seen a lot of buggy game that were unplayable on my machine until a few patches came out. So let me respectfully disagree with you about the importance of engineers' perfectionism in this particular field.
P.S. BTW, I think that the closedness of the industry takes a hard toll on it. Yes, being egoistic by nature, game development companies refuse to go the open source way and it has even became an accepted fact that we need strong copyright for games, because you can't make a quality game with open source. But what the developers are missing is that a lot of content needs to be recreated from scratch for each new game. With a common platform for content development and open sharing of objects games could become much cheaper and easier to make.
This is not even human nature, that's the nature of any system consisting of relatively "free" entities. If they are free enough, there will likely be natural selection, which will lead to evolutionary stable strategies, which are likely to resemble "open markets". A good read on this topic is "Selfish Gene" by Dawkins.
/was discussed here on Slashdot/). With that (and with no pressure from the US) the Soviet Union would have been perfectly capable to last until the nanotechnology revolution, which would finally bring the Utopia.
But the best thing about communism is that it is nearly inevitable once you have sufficient means of production. The whole Soviet history was a race to accumulate sufficient means of production. More machines, more tractors, more excavators, more turbines, more nuclear reactors, etc. There have been a few problems, though. One being the Second World War, which really set us back. The second being the Cold War and the militaristic USian Empire, which forced USSR to waste way too much on military. If not for these two things, the Soviet Union had great chances to survive until the computer and telecommunication revolutions, which had the potential to greatly improve the efficiency of the economy (see the Chilean example of a planning computer network, unfortunately destroyed by Pinochet
When there is no advantage to being selfish, selfishness ceases to be a useful trait and natural selection will no longer select for it. Thus the selfish (greedy, lazy, etc.) people will die out, and those few that remain will not cause any harm anyway.
You know what is the biggest problem? The fact that capital is owned by private individuals is. If the capital didn't belong to anybody, but to the people as a whole, it could be much easier. This social order is, of course, called communism. :)
And eventually (in a few decades) it will happen. I predict that in 10-20 years we will have general-purpose robots capable of doing most jobs with right software, including dish-washing, carpentry, assembly, etc. 10 years is a very optimistic estimate, 20 years is a more realistic one. They might be expensive at first, but don't forget, they will be made mostly of plastic (i.e. carbon + oxygen + hydrogen), aluminium, copper and iron, none of which are particularly expensive. The most expensive is the R&D, but once it is done, prices can drop extremely low. Once we have the robots, open source Ferraris will become a possibility. Independently from the robotic revolution, in 20-30 years we can expect nanotechnology to mature and give us nanoassemblers. That would make open source everything possible, although we'll not be able to enjoy it for long with technological singularity and stuff...