Wow, so I can't believe how un-helpful most of the posts in response to this have been, Mostly of the "forgetting is good" variety. I'll get to that later, but first, on the technical front.
I myself have been trying to do this for the last decade or so. Some devices you might like to look into.
Pretty light head mounted camera. Can record about 8hrs of footage at lowest Res. I had to hardware hack it and attach a bigger battery as it runs out before it runs out of recording. Every night I slurped off the recording to my Mirrored raid "lifelog" drive at home. Look into some good VJ software. Almost any good VJ software has the ability to tag and index parts of a video. If something noteworthy happened in the day I'd take 10 min in the evening to jump to it and tag it in the SW. (hence for future search of little Timmy being cute)
Basically if you want to go 24/7 (actually just when you're awake) you'll need to build your own rig. I recommend a pinhole camera from a spy shop online. They make cameras that look like buttons you can integrate into your shirt. A Raberry Pi and a huuuge SD card will get you a days recording. In the evening pop the SD into the PC and have an auto-sync pull the data to your big redundant life array.
The only thing that's kept me from keeping this up is storage. Even LQ video and mono audio and you're looking at gigs a week. It adds up really fast to about a HD a week. Not sustainable. As soon as Drives get bigger I would be doing this for sure.
Why? So if I die the future super beings can pretty faithfully recreate me from the records. My future simulated me will be way better resolution than the rest of you jokers.;) If nothing else it can be used to "fill in gaps" in my mind if it's damaged in Cryo-storage. Yes.. I'm a transhumanist.:P
I always find these "OMG new chatbot is practically human!" posts pretty disappointing. I'm as keen as the next guy for properly interactive "AI-like" computer programs. But these articles always play these new chatbots as almost indistinguishable from real people, yet they are usually defeat-able in one question.
One of the things _none_ of these bots do well is abstract reasoning. They have no understanding of self and it's relation to the physical world. As such a simple sentence like "If you and I are holding hands, whose hand am I holding?" will send them in to a nonsensical spiral. We are still no-where _near_ a convincing "chat human" and these articles always make it seem like we're but a few short lines of code away from sex bots that can fulfil all our interaction needs.
Try the sentence above with any chatbot you like. It's an instant killer. Hell, I'd be happy if someone would just add it to their "rote replies" DB so it answered correctly. The first time that happens I think I'll call over in amazement.
He' been saying that telomerase lengthening is a good area of research for life extension for years and years. It's good to see one of his 7 therepudic targets for immortality verified.
I must admit that I'm surprised that in nearly 200 comments there have only been a couple of mentions of Permaculture. I would have expected that the highly systematic and evidence based approach to sustainable high yield food cropping would have been right up the slashdot crowds alley.
They are already turning this kind of environment into productive landscape in even harsher climates than Africa (the very salty depleted areas of low lying jordan for example) Look on youtube for "greening the desert" (over view here : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sohI6vnWZmk).
Permaculture (while it has it's hippy adherents) is moslty based in very well understood horticultural and scientific processes for repairing damaged landscapes in a rapid and sustainable way using pioneer species that not only stabalise the environment but enhance it. (Natural Nitrogen fixing precursor species) alongside cheap human manageable earthworks and seed planting techniques.
I highly recommend any geek interested in ecological revitalization read up on and get into permaculture.
Most of them were plagiarized by the Bible authors.
So? This isn't a term paper where plagiarism matters.
True, But many Christians hold that "Without the bible there can be no morality". They use this as a justification for the rightness of their religion. Most of them are completely unaware that there were complete and consistent moral systems hundreds if not thousands of years before the bible was written. I've met quite a few of the "if the bible didn't exist we'd all be rioting in the streets crowd. You ask them how did society work before the bible and they turn their head to the side like a confused dog and say "BEFORE the bible?" Like that's an impossibility.
Pragmatic reasons. Christianity has done pretty damn well for itself over the last 2,000 year in terms of advancement of human civilization and human rights.
You're right! Where would we be today without the Dark ages? The Crusades? The AIDs epidemic in Africa? The Inquisition? The Salem Witch burnings?... Why... why... we'd be.... centuries more advanced probably.
Have you seen "YubiKey" : http://www.yubico.com/yubikey I use this for pretty much all my authentication now. (where posible) You can either let it auth off their servers or if you don't trust them (I don;'t) you can generate your own auth server for your key or even local auth or flat password. It's pretty cool and you could use it to generate a auth key for the applications you list. But yea.. it's the way to go. No wallet access without me pushing the button on my yubikey.
I would say that the future of _America_ looks more like a combo of those two movies. I've now lived in the USA and many countries overseas and in my experience America seems to be the only country that really really glorifies mindless patriotism over education.
That's because you shouldn't eat diet food.. It's pre-packaged crap for people who are too lazy to learn how to cook properly for themselves.
Shortcuts are never tasty
I highly recommend getting a book called "The Okinawan Program" which is a study of some of the healthiest people on the planet and their diet and lifestyle.
It contains some delicious healthy recipes that leave you feeling very full, are exotic and tasty as hell and yet keep you below that horrific calorie level needed for weight loss
To take what someone said earlier and expand on it. "Stop eating so much fatty, and learn to cook!"
Idling? Dude.. it's an ELECTRIC CAR! The engine doesn't "turn over" when you're not moving. Charge is used when you move, an/if you're running internal electronics (air con etc) if you're in a traffic jam.. just turn it off. It's not like you have to "re-start the engine" when it's time to move.
As a British Citizen who lived in NZ for 15 years and is now trying to get permanent residence in AU I have to call "bullshit" on point 2 there. I've been trying to dig through the red tape here in AU for 8 months with little luck. Getting a Green card in the US was a snap by comparison. Even after living over half my life in NZ they treat me here like I've just shown up on Easter island in a boat speaking Arabic.
I remember someone telling me once that we are going about this whole "space travel" thing all wrong.
Apparently all we need to do is tell the Japanese that we have discovered a planet on the other side of the galaxy populated only by tentacle monsters and schooolgirls and they will have the speed of light problem licked by the end of the month.
It actually makes perfect sense if you look upon acceptance of religion as a really deep seated fear of the "ending of self".
Because they are so afraid of dying or ending, they cling to religious belief to make them feel better that they will "continue after death". But deep down they don't truly _feel_ that certainty. So they fight death with all the fear that drove them to religion in the first place.
Those of us who have accepted that death mean the ending of self don't _want_ to die. But we've accepted it becasue we are no longer _afraid_ of it.
Saddened by it, yes. Want to avoid it, yes. But terrified of it to the point that we will lie to ourselves about the existence of an afterlife?
As a science type, I encourage you to not turn off your brain to astrology, Feng Shui, crystal power, and other crap.
Instead, test it formally, with double blinds, hoping that it works (so you don't subconsciously suppress data). Then if you find something, have others duplicate your work. That's the scientific method.
Done, Done, done and done. There have been _endless_ double blind tests of alternative medicine and other magic beans. All of them show that the accuracy (if even testable) is no better than blind chance.
The reason "us science types" are so dismissive of these things is we're sick of re-debunking ideas we finished with _decades_ ago.
Actually by your argument what this will actually do is accelerate evolution of the human race. As some people will select for (according to you) features in their children that will make them more sickly and other "dog breeder" problems. These will eventually reach the point where they will become sterile and/or die young and the people who didn't design their babies inherit the earht. Huzzah!, or something.
Or if the designing works well the designed babies will out-breed and perform the non designer babies and _they_ will inherit the earth.
Evolution at it's finest!
It's actually amusing that I looked up from sitting at my PC reading The new Peter F Hamilton book on my sony PRS-505 when this article popped up in my RSS feed.
I bought my Sony about 6 months ago. I'd been following e-readers for a while but they were either too expensive, too DRMed or too crap for me to bother. When the 505 came out I kept an eye on reviews and finally decided to "treat" myself and buy one.
I bought it with some trepidation worried that I wouldn't like the "feel" of it or would miss books (smell touch etc). I am happy to report that I have used it almost ceaselessly since I got it for all kinda of reading. It's a joy to read on and truly does "disappear" when I'm reading as a good book should do.
I love it for travelling because instead of stuffing my bag with 2-3 big paperbacks I just slide the PRS (in the hard clamshell I bought for it) into my laptop bag.
I discovered 3 months ago the libprs software that took it from a great reader to an awesome one allowing me to DL and format multiple online magazines and blogs for my reader.
My _only_ complaint (and this is just me getting used to it) is that I often forget to charge the unit (because it needs charging so infrequently) and I'll sometimes get an an airplane without realising I only have 1 hour of battery left. Nothing is more frustrating than having your batteries go flat at an exciting part of a book on a 12 hour flight. But It's only happened to me once and I always make sure I charge it before I travel now. (You feel quite silly loading up your laptop on a plane so you can plug your book into the USB port to power it.:P )
All in all it's been a highly pleasant experience and simply as a result of me using it at work on my lunch breaks something like 10 of my workmates have bought them and also use them daily (we actually have to label our books now so no-one walks off with anyone elses.)
I would not want to go without my e-book now and while I do still pick up the occasional book not available in e-format that's getting less common as the catalogues get more complete.
I still like classic book.. but I'm _totally_ sold on e-book readers.
The comments that lead up to this post and the others scattered throughout this entire thread of "I don't know anywhere in the bible that condones this!" Just goes to show how little most Christians actually understand of their own faith, or how many have actually read the entire bible.
I was brought up Roman Catholic and it was the day that I sat down and decided to read the bible cover to cover that I started turning into an Atheist. I was halfway through the old testament by the time I was like "What the hell is all this? People encourage this stuff? Why did no-one tell me this was in here?"
I think if more Christians did read the bible we'd end up with more Atheists and the ones that were left would be clearly fundamental or very good at rationalising "what was meant, not what was said."
for people who are self RFID tagged. Amal and myself came up with the idea of a dedicated community forums last year and it's been growing and expanding since.
Full of useful rescources and information on the process and technologies of self tagging.
If you go to the eskeptic link there is a mention of a lawyer who helped form the group campaining for creation theory.
"The Thomas More Law Center (TMLC), founded by conservative Catholic businessman Tom Monaghan and former Kevorkian prosecutor Richard Thompson, was itching for a fight with the ACLU from the time of its formation in 1999."
I note that Jack Thompson is also known as Richard Thompson in some documents and his domain registration. Could it be that this is the same lawyer thompson?
Anti-game crusader and creation theory nut? If so that would just be too rich for words.
Well I personally belive that 2 + 2 = 5, and when I answer as such on a maths test I shouldn't be penalised for regurgitating the answer that the maths teacher gave me!
My grades shouldn't suffer because I chose to answer the test as I belive.
Slashdot Mirror
Wow, so I can't believe how un-helpful most of the posts in response to this have been, Mostly of the "forgetting is good" variety. I'll get to that later, but first, on the technical front.
;) If nothing else it can be used to "fill in gaps" in my mind if it's damaged in Cryo-storage. Yes.. I'm a transhumanist. :P
I myself have been trying to do this for the last decade or so. Some devices you might like to look into.
http://www.looxcie.com/
Pretty light head mounted camera. Can record about 8hrs of footage at lowest Res. I had to hardware hack it and attach a bigger battery as it runs out before it runs out of recording. Every night I slurped off the recording to my Mirrored raid "lifelog" drive at home. Look into some good VJ software. Almost any good VJ software has the ability to tag and index parts of a video. If something noteworthy happened in the day I'd take 10 min in the evening to jump to it and tag it in the SW. (hence for future search of little Timmy being cute)
Basically if you want to go 24/7 (actually just when you're awake) you'll need to build your own rig. I recommend a pinhole camera from a spy shop online. They make cameras that look like buttons you can integrate into your shirt. A Raberry Pi and a huuuge SD card will get you a days recording. In the evening pop the SD into the PC and have an auto-sync pull the data to your big redundant life array.
The only thing that's kept me from keeping this up is storage. Even LQ video and mono audio and you're looking at gigs a week. It adds up really fast to about a HD a week. Not sustainable. As soon as Drives get bigger I would be doing this for sure.
Why? So if I die the future super beings can pretty faithfully recreate me from the records. My future simulated me will be way better resolution than the rest of you jokers.
I always find these "OMG new chatbot is practically human!" posts pretty disappointing. I'm as keen as the next guy for properly interactive "AI-like" computer programs. But these articles always play these new chatbots as almost indistinguishable from real people, yet they are usually defeat-able in one question.
One of the things _none_ of these bots do well is abstract reasoning. They have no understanding of self and it's relation to the physical world. As such a simple sentence like "If you and I are holding hands, whose hand am I holding?" will send them in to a nonsensical spiral. We are still no-where _near_ a convincing "chat human" and these articles always make it seem like we're but a few short lines of code away from sex bots that can fulfil all our interaction needs.
Try the sentence above with any chatbot you like. It's an instant killer. Hell, I'd be happy if someone would just add it to their "rote replies" DB so it answered correctly. The first time that happens I think I'll call over in amazement.
He' been saying that telomerase lengthening is a good area of research for life extension for years and years. It's good to see one of his 7 therepudic targets for immortality verified.
I must admit that I'm surprised that in nearly 200 comments there have only been a couple of mentions of Permaculture. I would have expected that the highly systematic and evidence based approach to sustainable high yield food cropping would have been right up the slashdot crowds alley.
They are already turning this kind of environment into productive landscape in even harsher climates than Africa (the very salty depleted areas of low lying jordan for example) Look on youtube for "greening the desert" (over view here : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sohI6vnWZmk).
Permaculture (while it has it's hippy adherents) is moslty based in very well understood horticultural and scientific processes for repairing damaged landscapes in a rapid and sustainable way using pioneer species that not only stabalise the environment but enhance it. (Natural Nitrogen fixing precursor species) alongside cheap human manageable earthworks and seed planting techniques.
I highly recommend any geek interested in ecological revitalization read up on and get into permaculture.
This sounds like a perfect recipe for meat puppets and remote crime!
Most of them were plagiarized by the Bible authors.
So? This isn't a term paper where plagiarism matters.
True, But many Christians hold that "Without the bible there can be no morality". They use this as a justification for the rightness of their religion. Most of them are completely unaware that there were complete and consistent moral systems hundreds if not thousands of years before the bible was written. I've met quite a few of the "if the bible didn't exist we'd all be rioting in the streets crowd. You ask them how did society work before the bible and they turn their head to the side like a confused dog and say "BEFORE the bible?" Like that's an impossibility.
Pragmatic reasons. Christianity has done pretty damn well for itself over the last 2,000 year in terms of advancement of human civilization and human rights.
You're right! Where would we be today without the Dark ages? The Crusades? The AIDs epidemic in Africa? The Inquisition? The Salem Witch burnings?... Why... why... we'd be.... centuries more advanced probably.
Only 15% see religion and science as in conflict because the other 85% see religion as irrelevant....
Have you seen "YubiKey" : http://www.yubico.com/yubikey I use this for pretty much all my authentication now. (where posible) You can either let it auth off their servers or if you don't trust them (I don;'t) you can generate your own auth server for your key or even local auth or flat password. It's pretty cool and you could use it to generate a auth key for the applications you list. But yea.. it's the way to go. No wallet access without me pushing the button on my yubikey.
I would say that the future of _America_ looks more like a combo of those two movies. I've now lived in the USA and many countries overseas and in my experience America seems to be the only country that really really glorifies mindless patriotism over education.
That's because you shouldn't eat diet food.. It's pre-packaged crap for people who are too lazy to learn how to cook properly for themselves.
Shortcuts are never tasty
I highly recommend getting a book called "The Okinawan Program" which is a study of some of the healthiest people on the planet and their diet and lifestyle.
It contains some delicious healthy recipes that leave you feeling very full, are exotic and tasty as hell and yet keep you below that horrific calorie level needed for weight loss
To take what someone said earlier and expand on it. "Stop eating so much fatty, and learn to cook!"
Geee... let me see... "without changing their diets" Could this perhaps be it?
"I'm burning 300 calories a day in excersise and taking in 2000 a day in whoppers. Why can't I lose weight?"
Science fail!
Idling? Dude.. it's an ELECTRIC CAR! The engine doesn't "turn over" when you're not moving. Charge is used when you move, an/if you're running internal electronics (air con etc) if you're in a traffic jam.. just turn it off. It's not like you have to "re-start the engine" when it's time to move.
As a British Citizen who lived in NZ for 15 years and is now trying to get permanent residence in AU I have to call "bullshit" on point 2 there. I've been trying to dig through the red tape here in AU for 8 months with little luck. Getting a Green card in the US was a snap by comparison. Even after living over half my life in NZ they treat me here like I've just shown up on Easter island in a boat speaking Arabic.
I remember someone telling me once that we are going about this whole "space travel" thing all wrong.
Apparently all we need to do is tell the Japanese that we have discovered a planet on the other side of the galaxy populated only by tentacle monsters and schooolgirls and they will have the speed of light problem licked by the end of the month.
It actually makes perfect sense if you look upon acceptance of religion as a really deep seated fear of the "ending of self".
Because they are so afraid of dying or ending, they cling to religious belief to make them feel better that they will "continue after death". But deep down they don't truly _feel_ that certainty. So they fight death with all the fear that drove them to religion in the first place.
Those of us who have accepted that death mean the ending of self don't _want_ to die. But we've accepted it becasue we are no longer _afraid_ of it.
Saddened by it, yes. Want to avoid it, yes. But terrified of it to the point that we will lie to ourselves about the existence of an afterlife?
No.
As a science type, I encourage you to not turn off your brain to astrology, Feng Shui, crystal power, and other crap.
Instead, test it formally, with double blinds, hoping that it works (so you don't subconsciously suppress data). Then if you find something, have others duplicate your work. That's the scientific method.
Done, Done, done and done. There have been _endless_ double blind tests of alternative medicine and other magic beans. All of them show that the accuracy (if even testable) is no better than blind chance.
The reason "us science types" are so dismissive of these things is we're sick of re-debunking ideas we finished with _decades_ ago.
Actually by your argument what this will actually do is accelerate evolution of the human race. As some people will select for (according to you) features in their children that will make them more sickly and other "dog breeder" problems. These will eventually reach the point where they will become sterile and/or die young and the people who didn't design their babies inherit the earht. Huzzah!, or something.
Or if the designing works well the designed babies will out-breed and perform the non designer babies and _they_ will inherit the earth. Evolution at it's finest!
It's actually amusing that I looked up from sitting at my PC reading The new Peter F Hamilton book on my sony PRS-505 when this article popped up in my RSS feed. I bought my Sony about 6 months ago. I'd been following e-readers for a while but they were either too expensive, too DRMed or too crap for me to bother. When the 505 came out I kept an eye on reviews and finally decided to "treat" myself and buy one. I bought it with some trepidation worried that I wouldn't like the "feel" of it or would miss books (smell touch etc). I am happy to report that I have used it almost ceaselessly since I got it for all kinda of reading. It's a joy to read on and truly does "disappear" when I'm reading as a good book should do. I love it for travelling because instead of stuffing my bag with 2-3 big paperbacks I just slide the PRS (in the hard clamshell I bought for it) into my laptop bag. I discovered 3 months ago the libprs software that took it from a great reader to an awesome one allowing me to DL and format multiple online magazines and blogs for my reader. My _only_ complaint (and this is just me getting used to it) is that I often forget to charge the unit (because it needs charging so infrequently) and I'll sometimes get an an airplane without realising I only have 1 hour of battery left. Nothing is more frustrating than having your batteries go flat at an exciting part of a book on a 12 hour flight. But It's only happened to me once and I always make sure I charge it before I travel now. (You feel quite silly loading up your laptop on a plane so you can plug your book into the USB port to power it. :P )
All in all it's been a highly pleasant experience and simply as a result of me using it at work on my lunch breaks something like 10 of my workmates have bought them and also use them daily (we actually have to label our books now so no-one walks off with anyone elses.)
I would not want to go without my e-book now and while I do still pick up the occasional book not available in e-format that's getting less common as the catalogues get more complete.
I still like classic book.. but I'm _totally_ sold on e-book readers.
No, Murder is a _crime_. No need to bring gods or the tooth fairy into it to make the fact that taking someone else's life is wrong.
Hasn't it gone quiet? :)
The comments that lead up to this post and the others scattered throughout this entire thread of "I don't know anywhere in the bible that condones this!" Just goes to show how little most Christians actually understand of their own faith, or how many have actually read the entire bible.
I was brought up Roman Catholic and it was the day that I sat down and decided to read the bible cover to cover that I started turning into an Atheist. I was halfway through the old testament by the time I was like "What the hell is all this? People encourage this stuff? Why did no-one tell me this was in here?"
I think if more Christians did read the bible we'd end up with more Atheists and the ones that were left would be clearly fundamental or very good at rationalising "what was meant, not what was said."
For those that might be interested there is a pretty big community at
http://tagged.kaos.gen.nz/
for people who are self RFID tagged. Amal and myself came up with the idea of a dedicated community forums last year and it's been growing and expanding since.
Full of useful rescources and information on the process and technologies of self tagging.
Enjoy!
Speaking as someone who has had an RFID tag for about a year.... yay! I'm finally the overlord of someone!
I was actually just thinking about something the other day. I noticed in the "intelligent design" article 2 days ago : http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/12/2 0/1656228&tid=99&tid=14
If you go to the eskeptic link there is a mention of a lawyer who helped form the group campaining for creation theory.
"The Thomas More Law Center (TMLC), founded by conservative Catholic businessman Tom Monaghan and former Kevorkian prosecutor Richard Thompson, was itching for a fight with the ACLU from the time of its formation in 1999."
I note that Jack Thompson is also known as Richard Thompson in some documents and his domain registration. Could it be that this is the same lawyer thompson?
Anti-game crusader and creation theory nut? If so that would just be too rich for words.
Well I personally belive that 2 + 2 = 5, and when I answer as such on a maths test I shouldn't be penalised for regurgitating the answer that the maths teacher gave me!
My grades shouldn't suffer because I chose to answer the test as I belive.
Well played Mr Aristotle, well played.