I may have been a toker in my student days//who wasn't?
Many many people, myself included.
Smoking (or not smoking) weed aside, I see change implemented ALL THE TIME by politicians. You just tend to see it faster when you are dealing with local politicians than when you are dealing with national ones. I guess this is why I'm a conservative and a federalist. I think we should "devolve" more power away from the federal government and give it back to the states where it belongs. I generally vote for candidates that best support that ideology both in word and in deed. Sometimes they win, sometimes they lose, sometimes I compromise because I want to "keep the other guy out". That's the way the game is played.
Sitting on the sidelines just says to the world "please do what you will with me, I'm too apathetic to care."
I don't think there's anyway to distinguish what sort've material an object is made of with just sound.
Modern military-grade sonar can EASILY tell materials just by the sound quality bounceback. So can whales, dolphins, bats and pretty much any creature with ears, including humans.
Try this: Walk into an empty room with sheetrock walls and a wood floor and clap your hands. Now do it in a similar room with a tile floor and wood paneling on the walls. Now an all-concrete cinderblock room. You will notice that, even though the source sound is the same (your hands clapping) the return sound has a different quality in each room. However, the sound quality in a single room will always be the same, regardless of the number of claps you make.
Now try it blindfolded, and see if you can differentiate the rooms. You will be able to, unless you are hearing-impaired in some manner.
It's the same principle with the robot. Once taught about an item, it can continue to identify the item even though it can't "see" it.
As an example, 150GB solid state hard drives are selling around the $7-800.00 US range on Newegg.com I have no idea if those are NAND drives or the older flash drives.
A new NAND tech drive with around 5 times the capacity? Oh geez that's gonna be expensive! Methinks you'd be better off spending the money on a 3Ware RAID card and some really good standard drives.
Sooo... You didn't just notice the glaring HOLE in your own statement there?
Allow me to quote it for you:
gains the state money, and is easy enough to avoid
How is the state going to gain money if it's so easy to avoid? You see, taxes like this idiotic one ALWAYS neglect to take into account the resulting human response to the new tax. People will simply drink less sugary soda and more diet, or will drink iced teas and juices. In the end, the "Obesity" tax will do NOTHING to stop obesity, and will collect almost NO money. It's a waste of time that serves only to intrude more Government into people's lives.
Perhaps you didn't notice the 14 BILLION dollar bailout for the UAW... Ooops, excuse me, the "Big Three" automakers... That George W. Bush is currently trying to put together with TARP money. The UAW OWNS the "Big 3". Anyone who thinks that this is a "Business" bailout is an ignoramus.
Bush is putting together the biggest UNION bailout in American history... and somehow he's "Anti-Union"? How the fuck does THAT logic work? You need to get off your ideology and see the truth: Right now, the UAW has NO BETTER FRIEND than George W. Bush.
There is a popular myth (promoted BY union-types) that Unions are the SOLE reason that we aren't all minimum wage slaves serving our evil corporate masters as they sit atop thrones made from the bones of our fathers. Obviously, that's an exaggeration, but the way some union people talk, you would be hard-pressed to think they believe anything different.
The truth is that labor relations and labor LAWS had been changing for a good 50 years by the time unions arrived on the scene. Indeed, there is ample evidence to show that, rather than speed the adoption of improved safety and labor laws, the unions, and the backlash they produced, actually SLOWED the advancement of labor and safety laws in the United States.
Even IF the unions WERE the arbiters of fairness and safety they claim to have been, those days are LONG GONE. Unions now are just another bloated bureaucracy looking for relevance. A solution in search of a problem. All the needed labor and safety laws are in place, and being strengthened regularly without Union input. People are well aware of their rights as citizens and as employees, and Business now recognizes that good employees are a valuable resource not to be squandered. We don't NEED unions anymore, and IT people ABSOLUTELY do not need them.
The government has no business telling private citizens what they can earn. That's Communism, and antithetical to freedom. Politicians, on the other hand, serve their people. The public SHOULD demand that there be a limit on the financial rewards for serving. Again, being a politician is supposed to be a TEMPORARY SERVANT position for people passionate about their country. It's not supposed to be a career or an exclusive club for dynasty families lining their pockets off the public till.
Indeed. This is why I'm for straight-up term limits. 2 terms for Senate, 4 for House (keeping in mind, a House term is only 2 years). That way a Senator can serve a maximum of 12 years, a House member, 8. I suppose you could up the limit to 6 for a House member if you want to keep the "maximum years to serve" even, I'm open to debate on that one.
As far as "Only electing ideologues" issue, I'd say that we don't have ENOUGH of them at the federal level beyond the "big spender" type, which I don't find terribly exciting or desirable. I would WELCOME some ACTUAL ideologues to the ring. People who wish to serve as a politicians because they have a PASSION for their country and a PASSION for an idea. Even if I disagreed with the idea, AT LEAST I would be able to respect their passion. (Of course, I would oppose them just as passionately, but I would still respect them.) Instead we get the Blagojevich's of the world who could care LESS about ideas and good government, and are only there to line their pockets.
And this is why I'm for a Constitutional Amendment adding "2 term" term limits for all electable positions. We all know the old saying about power corrupting. Let's not give ANY politician of ANY stripe the amount of time in office needed to consolidate his or her power into anything approaching "absolute". We all know what happens then.
Far too many of our politicians have been in office far too long. Political office was SUPPOSED to be a "volunteer" short-term position. Now our "Imperial" senators and house members have platinum-plated health care, platinum-plated private schooling for their kids, and SOLID PLATINUM retirement plans. It's GOT to stop. Our senators have already proven time and again that they don't feel beholden to us as they should. It's time to remove them all and START OVER. This time with term limits and minimal pay.
Return power to where it belongs: The states and the People.
I have a couple 10 year old WD IDE drives still running strong. Not even a sign of failure yet. Of course, they are in a low-use file server, so not much seeking and whatnot going on, they just sit-n-spin 24/7 and have for a decade. On the other hand, I've had Maxtor drives go belly up on me inside 6 months of use. Yet I know a few people who swear by them. Go figure.
In my experience, the best featured and longest lasting drives I've owned are 1) Western Digital - SUPER long lasting, average features (non-raptor drives) 2) Samsung - long lasting, notable for double-sized mem-cache feature. (Laptop drives with 16mb cache when the standard was 8, and 32mb cache when the standard jumped to 16. I think they are selling 64mb cache drives now.)
Seagates are also OK, although I've had a few failures with those
Maxtors I avoid. I have, by far, had the most failures with those drives. They used to be very high quality, but in the last 10 years I've seen their quality drop precipitously. They're noisy as hell too. So not much commend them in my book.
My understanding is that the Power PC chips are actually SLOWER than x86-64 processor, but run much cooler, so MS went with them.
And are you telling me that a Quad-core x86-64 machine couldn't emulate a TRI core power PC system? I find that hard to believe, even with the difference in instruction-sets. Let's keep in mind, Virtual machines are ALL emulation already. They are emulating a specific type of hardware that your system may or may not already have. The only limitation is core amounts. You can't emulate a CPU core your system doesn't have. Other than that, I really don't see how hard it would be to emulate a power-PC based system, as long as your machine had more cores than the system you were emulating.
Look, I'll admit, I didn't RTFA (hey this is/.!) But why COULDN'T Microsoft create a VIRTUAL X-Box as either an application, or as part of a "Games for Windows" add-on in Win 7? (Maybe call it the V-Box?) Then all you need is a Reasonably new PC, and an adapter for your old X-Box controller. Just slap in your game and away you go!
I mean, MS already has a Virtualization division, why not just put them to the task of making a dedicated virtual machine that exactly emulates an X-Box, 3D capabilities included?
Frankly I don't know why they haven't done this YET. It would open up a side-market for Xbox games that currently isn't covered. let's face it, there will ALWAYS be guys like me that refuse to slap down the $ for a console, but will gladly slap down the exact same $ for upgrades to a general use PC that we can also play games on. Then Microsoft could continue to make money on the games and Gold Xbox Live subscriptions, while not worrying about losing so much money on the consoles.
No, they don't sell them in the US because the two largest markets, NY and California, have ASININE environmental laws that prevent new diesel passenger vehicles from being sold. (Passenger vehicle being legally defined as a standard automobile or SUV)
I should know, I ran headlong into these laws just recently. In 2006 I was in the market for a new car. I wanted a Diesel Jeep Liberty. I was planning on brewing my own bio-diesel and getting nice, cheap, environmentally friendly fuel. But I ran into these laws. Apparently it has to do with the NY Environmental air regulations, related to the high-sulfur diesel. Well, the diesel is changing, but Chrysler decided that they couldn't make their diesels efficient enough to meet NY and CA standards (nobody can, the standards are stupidly unrealistic.) so they DROPPED the diesel from their lineup.
I ended up waiting longer as I heard they were coming out with a new diesel engine in 2008. Well, NY and CA RAISED THE ENVIRO STANDARDS AGAIN, making even the new, Diamler-Benz Blu-tech diesels too inefficient. So Chrysler decided to not even BOTHER adding the blu-tech diesel to the Liberty (and I think they dropped it from all US cars and SUVs). I still wanted a 4x4 to deal with Western NY winters, and the Liberty was still the best bang for the buck. So I ended up leasing a 2008 Jeep Liberty GASOLINE vehicle.
So, thanks to stupid Enviro laws, I am prevented from buying the vehicle I want, and am stuck driving a less-efficient gasoline vehicle, which creates more air pollution than the diesel vehicle I wanted.
This is why Big-Govt enviro laws are FAIL. Because there will ALWAYS be some stupid bureaucrat getting some pointless regulation passed which does the exact OPPOSITE of what they intend it to do. Stupid politicians and bureaucrats! GRRRRR! >:(
Indeed. Wouldn't it be more helpful to just HIRE a Computer Forensics Department? I'm sure there are plenty of CS guys would wouldn't mind bustin' some bad guys CSI style. Heck. If it paid well I'd take the job.
You are making a crucial mistake in your reasoning.
The error is that you are equating "brainwashing" with "programming". these are two VERY different things.
Brainwashing takes an existing mind born with free will and an ability to learn, and twists it through conditioning to accept limits on it's will and freedom.
Programming an AI consists of taking a BLANK disk, and creating a LIMITED mind designed for a specific task or set of tasks, with no free will and minimal sentience.
Do you see the difference? brainwashing is the act of LIMITING and abbreviating something that was born whole.
AI programming is the act of creating a limited something from nothing.
How can it POSSIBLY be "immoral" to create robotic slaves, if they never had free will to begin with? there is no Psyche to damage, no free will lost, no stunting or limiting of the mind. AI's are, by definition, INCOMPLETE. Born Broken, Created with limited purpose.
No, Robotic slaves are not only desirable, they are inevitable and ideal. Your morality is misplaced.
Keep in mind too, that the continental crust material is made up of significantly YOUNGER and lighter rock than the deeper crust. Most of the continents are made of (comparatively) light granite, limestone, sandstone, shale and loose aggregates of all stones. However, the lower crust and the deep ocean crust are made primarily from heavy Basalt.
So the idea that continents formed in the way they did due to the ejection of moon material is incorrect. Not only was the earth likely still a molten ball at that point, but the continents are made from material that did not even exist on earth until well AFTER the earth had solidified.
Slashdot Mirror
Heh. I was thinking the same thing when I saw his post.
"Well I just did this... (insert 3 paragraphs of long and convoluted technical backflips needed to make Windows even semi-secure)"
OR
"Well I just installed Ubuntu."
I know which one I would pick.
Besides, I LOVE my Grandparents, they are neat people. Why would I torture them with "Windows Pain"?
Dude.
NEVER use the words "Lazytown" and "Creamy" in the same sentence. You're gonna bring the Pedobears out of the woodwork!
Many many people, myself included.
Smoking (or not smoking) weed aside, I see change implemented ALL THE TIME by politicians. You just tend to see it faster when you are dealing with local politicians than when you are dealing with national ones. I guess this is why I'm a conservative and a federalist. I think we should "devolve" more power away from the federal government and give it back to the states where it belongs. I generally vote for candidates that best support that ideology both in word and in deed. Sometimes they win, sometimes they lose, sometimes I compromise because I want to "keep the other guy out". That's the way the game is played.
Sitting on the sidelines just says to the world "please do what you will with me, I'm too apathetic to care."
Modern military-grade sonar can EASILY tell materials just by the sound quality bounceback. So can whales, dolphins, bats and pretty much any creature with ears, including humans.
Try this: Walk into an empty room with sheetrock walls and a wood floor and clap your hands. Now do it in a similar room with a tile floor and wood paneling on the walls. Now an all-concrete cinderblock room. You will notice that, even though the source sound is the same (your hands clapping) the return sound has a different quality in each room. However, the sound quality in a single room will always be the same, regardless of the number of claps you make.
Now try it blindfolded, and see if you can differentiate the rooms. You will be able to, unless you are hearing-impaired in some manner.
It's the same principle with the robot. Once taught about an item, it can continue to identify the item even though it can't "see" it.
Oops, my bad. I was remembering the GB amount incorrectly.
Still, my point about the likely extreme cost of the new drives remains valid, if slightly less impressive in comparison.
All jokes aside, I'd imagine quite a bit.
As an example, 150GB solid state hard drives are selling around the $7-800.00 US range on Newegg.com I have no idea if those are NAND drives or the older flash drives.
A new NAND tech drive with around 5 times the capacity? Oh geez that's gonna be expensive! Methinks you'd be better off spending the money on a 3Ware RAID card and some really good standard drives.
Sooo... Soylent Green Fuel then?
It's PEOPLE! Soylent Green Fuel is PEOPLE!!!!! /Heston
More like:
Toe the "Party Line" or find yourself "Dissapeared" in short order.
Sooo... You didn't just notice the glaring HOLE in your own statement there?
Allow me to quote it for you:
How is the state going to gain money if it's so easy to avoid? You see, taxes like this idiotic one ALWAYS neglect to take into account the resulting human response to the new tax. People will simply drink less sugary soda and more diet, or will drink iced teas and juices. In the end, the "Obesity" tax will do NOTHING to stop obesity, and will collect almost NO money. It's a waste of time that serves only to intrude more Government into people's lives.
BS.
Perhaps you didn't notice the 14 BILLION dollar bailout for the UAW... Ooops, excuse me, the "Big Three" automakers... That George W. Bush is currently trying to put together with TARP money. The UAW OWNS the "Big 3". Anyone who thinks that this is a "Business" bailout is an ignoramus.
Bush is putting together the biggest UNION bailout in American history... and somehow he's "Anti-Union"? How the fuck does THAT logic work? You need to get off your ideology and see the truth: Right now, the UAW has NO BETTER FRIEND than George W. Bush.
Ok, a couple things that need clearing up here;
There is a popular myth (promoted BY union-types) that Unions are the SOLE reason that we aren't all minimum wage slaves serving our evil corporate masters as they sit atop thrones made from the bones of our fathers. Obviously, that's an exaggeration, but the way some union people talk, you would be hard-pressed to think they believe anything different.
The truth is that labor relations and labor LAWS had been changing for a good 50 years by the time unions arrived on the scene. Indeed, there is ample evidence to show that, rather than speed the adoption of improved safety and labor laws, the unions, and the backlash they produced, actually SLOWED the advancement of labor and safety laws in the United States.
Even IF the unions WERE the arbiters of fairness and safety they claim to have been, those days are LONG GONE. Unions now are just another bloated bureaucracy looking for relevance. A solution in search of a problem. All the needed labor and safety laws are in place, and being strengthened regularly without Union input. People are well aware of their rights as citizens and as employees, and Business now recognizes that good employees are a valuable resource not to be squandered. We don't NEED unions anymore, and IT people ABSOLUTELY do not need them.
We have simply outgrown them.
No.
The government has no business telling private citizens what they can earn. That's Communism, and antithetical to freedom. Politicians, on the other hand, serve their people. The public SHOULD demand that there be a limit on the financial rewards for serving. Again, being a politician is supposed to be a TEMPORARY SERVANT position for people passionate about their country. It's not supposed to be a career or an exclusive club for dynasty families lining their pockets off the public till.
Indeed. This is why I'm for straight-up term limits. 2 terms for Senate, 4 for House (keeping in mind, a House term is only 2 years). That way a Senator can serve a maximum of 12 years, a House member, 8. I suppose you could up the limit to 6 for a House member if you want to keep the "maximum years to serve" even, I'm open to debate on that one.
As far as "Only electing ideologues" issue, I'd say that we don't have ENOUGH of them at the federal level beyond the "big spender" type, which I don't find terribly exciting or desirable. I would WELCOME some ACTUAL ideologues to the ring. People who wish to serve as a politicians because they have a PASSION for their country and a PASSION for an idea. Even if I disagreed with the idea, AT LEAST I would be able to respect their passion. (Of course, I would oppose them just as passionately, but I would still respect them.) Instead we get the Blagojevich's of the world who could care LESS about ideas and good government, and are only there to line their pockets.
And this is why I'm for a Constitutional Amendment adding "2 term" term limits for all electable positions. We all know the old saying about power corrupting. Let's not give ANY politician of ANY stripe the amount of time in office needed to consolidate his or her power into anything approaching "absolute". We all know what happens then.
Far too many of our politicians have been in office far too long. Political office was SUPPOSED to be a "volunteer" short-term position. Now our "Imperial" senators and house members have platinum-plated health care, platinum-plated private schooling for their kids, and SOLID PLATINUM retirement plans. It's GOT to stop. Our senators have already proven time and again that they don't feel beholden to us as they should. It's time to remove them all and START OVER. This time with term limits and minimal pay.
Return power to where it belongs: The states and the People.
I have a couple 10 year old WD IDE drives still running strong. Not even a sign of failure yet. Of course, they are in a low-use file server, so not much seeking and whatnot going on, they just sit-n-spin 24/7 and have for a decade. On the other hand, I've had Maxtor drives go belly up on me inside 6 months of use. Yet I know a few people who swear by them. Go figure.
In my experience, the best featured and longest lasting drives I've owned are
1) Western Digital - SUPER long lasting, average features (non-raptor drives)
2) Samsung - long lasting, notable for double-sized mem-cache feature. (Laptop drives with 16mb cache when the standard was 8, and 32mb cache when the standard jumped to 16. I think they are selling 64mb cache drives now.)
Seagates are also OK, although I've had a few failures with those
Maxtors I avoid. I have, by far, had the most failures with those drives. They used to be very high quality, but in the last 10 years I've seen their quality drop precipitously. They're noisy as hell too. So not much commend them in my book.
Of course, your mileage may vary.
No, you're thinking of a similar product from the "slashfiction" Star Trek universe, the pornoemitters.
My understanding is that the Power PC chips are actually SLOWER than x86-64 processor, but run much cooler, so MS went with them.
And are you telling me that a Quad-core x86-64 machine couldn't emulate a TRI core power PC system? I find that hard to believe, even with the difference in instruction-sets. Let's keep in mind, Virtual machines are ALL emulation already. They are emulating a specific type of hardware that your system may or may not already have. The only limitation is core amounts. You can't emulate a CPU core your system doesn't have. Other than that, I really don't see how hard it would be to emulate a power-PC based system, as long as your machine had more cores than the system you were emulating.
Why does it have to be a PC port?
Look, I'll admit, I didn't RTFA (hey this is /.!) But why COULDN'T Microsoft create a VIRTUAL X-Box as either an application, or as part of a "Games for Windows" add-on in Win 7? (Maybe call it the V-Box?) Then all you need is a Reasonably new PC, and an adapter for your old X-Box controller. Just slap in your game and away you go!
I mean, MS already has a Virtualization division, why not just put them to the task of making a dedicated virtual machine that exactly emulates an X-Box, 3D capabilities included?
Frankly I don't know why they haven't done this YET. It would open up a side-market for Xbox games that currently isn't covered. let's face it, there will ALWAYS be guys like me that refuse to slap down the $ for a console, but will gladly slap down the exact same $ for upgrades to a general use PC that we can also play games on. Then Microsoft could continue to make money on the games and Gold Xbox Live subscriptions, while not worrying about losing so much money on the consoles.
Seems like a win-win to me.
No, they don't sell them in the US because the two largest markets, NY and California, have ASININE environmental laws that prevent new diesel passenger vehicles from being sold. (Passenger vehicle being legally defined as a standard automobile or SUV)
I should know, I ran headlong into these laws just recently. In 2006 I was in the market for a new car. I wanted a Diesel Jeep Liberty. I was planning on brewing my own bio-diesel and getting nice, cheap, environmentally friendly fuel. But I ran into these laws. Apparently it has to do with the NY Environmental air regulations, related to the high-sulfur diesel. Well, the diesel is changing, but Chrysler decided that they couldn't make their diesels efficient enough to meet NY and CA standards (nobody can, the standards are stupidly unrealistic.) so they DROPPED the diesel from their lineup.
I ended up waiting longer as I heard they were coming out with a new diesel engine in 2008. Well, NY and CA RAISED THE ENVIRO STANDARDS AGAIN, making even the new, Diamler-Benz Blu-tech diesels too inefficient. So Chrysler decided to not even BOTHER adding the blu-tech diesel to the Liberty (and I think they dropped it from all US cars and SUVs). I still wanted a 4x4 to deal with Western NY winters, and the Liberty was still the best bang for the buck. So I ended up leasing a 2008 Jeep Liberty GASOLINE vehicle.
So, thanks to stupid Enviro laws, I am prevented from buying the vehicle I want, and am stuck driving a less-efficient gasoline vehicle, which creates more air pollution than the diesel vehicle I wanted.
This is why Big-Govt enviro laws are FAIL. Because there will ALWAYS be some stupid bureaucrat getting some pointless regulation passed which does the exact OPPOSITE of what they intend it to do. Stupid politicians and bureaucrats! GRRRRR! >:(
Indeed. Wouldn't it be more helpful to just HIRE a Computer Forensics Department? I'm sure there are plenty of CS guys would wouldn't mind bustin' some bad guys CSI style. Heck. If it paid well I'd take the job.
As long as I got a shiny badge. ;)
Wait. Every time you do WHAT with your sister?
Dude, what kind of family do you HAVE?
You are making a crucial mistake in your reasoning.
The error is that you are equating "brainwashing" with "programming". these are two VERY different things.
Brainwashing takes an existing mind born with free will and an ability to learn, and twists it through conditioning to accept limits on it's will and freedom.
Programming an AI consists of taking a BLANK disk, and creating a LIMITED mind designed for a specific task or set of tasks, with no free will and minimal sentience.
Do you see the difference? brainwashing is the act of LIMITING and abbreviating something that was born whole.
AI programming is the act of creating a limited something from nothing.
How can it POSSIBLY be "immoral" to create robotic slaves, if they never had free will to begin with? there is no Psyche to damage, no free will lost, no stunting or limiting of the mind. AI's are, by definition, INCOMPLETE. Born Broken, Created with limited purpose.
No, Robotic slaves are not only desirable, they are inevitable and ideal. Your morality is misplaced.
www.realdoll.com
***NSFW WARNING!***
You will have to add your own mechanization "guts" to it, but you can get the shell customized however you want.
Enjoy!
Keep in mind too, that the continental crust material is made up of significantly YOUNGER and lighter rock than the deeper crust. Most of the continents are made of (comparatively) light granite, limestone, sandstone, shale and loose aggregates of all stones. However, the lower crust and the deep ocean crust are made primarily from heavy Basalt.
So the idea that continents formed in the way they did due to the ejection of moon material is incorrect. Not only was the earth likely still a molten ball at that point, but the continents are made from material that did not even exist on earth until well AFTER the earth had solidified.
Well, I took the safe bet and browsed the article using an encrypted Tor connection.
Boss ain't gonna know JACK about that article.