Bad laws should be enforced, even if it requires new laws.
Bad laws that are not strictly enforced remain in power.
Bad laws that are not enforced give enforcers too much power (whether to turn a "blind eye").
Bad laws that are not enforced create a distrust of law in general, and lawlessness.
Maybe once copyright is TRULY enforced on all of society, people will realize that these restrictions are simply not worth it and finally abolish copyrights.
I believe that words like "steal" are subjective and do not contribute to an accurate depiction.
But yes, I do believe that general concept.
I believe that artificial scarcity set on software deprives society of a lot more value than it aids to generate.
I also believe that by allowing distribution of software in closed/binary/secret form, it becomes an evolutionary dead end - further depriving advancements of society.
No, closed-source software has little to do with the explosion in the availability of PC's.
And while I do think opensource is slowly beating the closed-source software in the market place, I believe that closed-source software exploits copyright law to gain a financial advantage that lets it compete and in some cases be technically better.
Its still immoral, should be abolished, and fought against.
Many of us believe that "normal" use of software copyrights is very immoral and harmful. By NOT acting against it, and even giving fuel to these immoral beings (closed-source distributors) you are encouraging immoral acts, and making closed non-free software more common.
So we believe that as long as software copyrights exist, the only moral thing is to try to make it more difficult for closed-sources distributors to make everyone's lives more difficult.
The BSD license makes it EASIER for them to make everyone's lives more difficult.
I always hated the fact that we have embedded flash applications to play Video.
But frankly, all browsers' handling of embedded MPEG's in sites were completely unusable. Especially that of Firefox on Linux.
It is very unreliable and unpredictably opening new windows. I can always watch an embedded MPEG if I want to, but its always so damn difficult and annoying.
Flash may be annoying to install, but once installed, it works easily and reliably.
People find google with DNS, yes. But who cares if your domain name is "blah.bleh.bluh.com/really/ugly?url=true" or if it is: "www.wow_omg_tld" when you find it via Google anyhow?
If by "Take as long as" you mean in units of time (e.g seconds), then you are probably wrong. There is no real reason that the time constants for AI will be the same as those of a natural brain. Look at it another way: If the AI takes 5 years to learn what a child learns in 5 years - what happens when you double its execution speed (technically, by speeding up its processors/system)? It will take 2.5 years, of course.
If you mean that it will take about as much learning material and exposure to stimuli/etc, then that sounds intuitively right (assuming it will be as efficient as we are at using its source material).
I think he meant it to be a silly question because it is a question about definitions. It only depends on how you define what thinking is, and is not philosophical or practical. Its answer has no consequences whatsoever.
As independent authors, musicians and Free software developers and movie makers prove again and again, creating wonderful works of art and creativity does not require copyrights for a monetary incentive.
Movies, perhaps, require more financial support, but note: without copyrights, each of us would be exposed to many more movies which will all be far more accessible (non-copyrighted material can be distributed much more easily). So even if less movies are made, we will still enjoy more of them.
When you buy a piece of software, music or pay to see a movie, your money is not supporting the artists, or even supporting further creation. What you are supporting is a lobby that furthers laws to benefit companies to the great detriment of society. You are funding the enemies of society.
Please do not pay the copyright lobby to pass more anti-society laws.
I disagree. How many human minds does it take to "simulate" a single CPU's activity? Its not possible, humans are too slow.
CPU's and humans work in completely different ways, so one "emulating" the other will of course suffer a huge performance penalty.
This does not necessarily imply much about the relationship of computational power between them.
I think that if we replace CPU's with some other technology that is more similar to parallel neurons, we will be able to simulate this with far better performance.
My experience is quite the reverse. I use Ubuntu almost exclusively.
Whenever I need to use Windows, I am appalled by the lack of polish and consistency of Windows applications.
My wireless devices worked out of the box in Ubuntu, but I had to download drivers to make them work in XP.
When I wanted to install applications, I could just point and click in a central repository, and they're all installed in minutes. Security updates work without stupid activations/etc.
Focus stealing still plagues Windows, and that drives me nuts.
Sure Ubuntu isn't perfect and I had to work to make some things work, but it was far closer to perfect than Windows ever was.
Of course these are anecdotes, and I heard of people whose wireless devices worked out of the box in Windows, and not in Ubuntu. But its important to remember that your experience is not the definitive one.
Now for another anecdote which represents an essential difference between these systems. Yesterday I wanted to mount a remote file system via SSH. I did not want to inherit the remote file permissions - because those allow everyone to read/write (which is OK in the remote LAN, not OK in a computer in the large internet). The "umask" feature supposed to do this did not work.
In about 10 minutes, using the great tools Ubuntu has to offer, I managed to report the bug, fix it for myself, and attach a patch. You cannot do this, and will never be able to do this on the Windows platform.
This is where the symmetry breaks.
Both of us have anecdotes about this and that working here and not working there. You have your games running on Windows, and I have apt and a nagless experience almost free of thoughts about security.
But the tie-breaker is freedom.
I have my freedom and you are a Microsoft hostage who can only beg for them to fix the bugs that annoy you.
Slashdot Mirror
Which functional languages did you use?
My friends that have extensively used C# can live with it, but feel that it is very mediocre.
I have that right. Limiting my right to copy bits in my own home, for the dubious goal of creating incentive to create games? That's ludicrous.
Right. It doesn't prevent ALL innovation. Only most of it.
If the ISPs cannot handle P2P users, then they should explicitly make this known when they give the service.
They shouldn't promise a service they cannot actually give.
Also, their problem is the bandwidth used, not the protocol - so why don't they just place bandwidth limits on users, or sell bandwidth?
Bad laws should be enforced, even if it requires new laws.
Bad laws that are not strictly enforced remain in power.
Bad laws that are not enforced give enforcers too much power (whether to turn a "blind eye").
Bad laws that are not enforced create a distrust of law in general, and lawlessness.
Maybe once copyright is TRULY enforced on all of society, people will realize that these restrictions are simply not worth it and finally abolish copyrights.
I believe that words like "steal" are subjective and do not contribute to an accurate depiction.
But yes, I do believe that general concept.
I believe that artificial scarcity set on software deprives society of a lot more value than it aids to generate.
I also believe that by allowing distribution of software in closed/binary/secret form, it becomes an evolutionary dead end - further depriving advancements of society.
If someone avoids downloading software if he won't pay for it anyway, then the productivity he could gain from that software is lost.
If he does download it without paying for it, he gains productivity, while the author of the software loses nothing.
Why is it that you prefer that he loses the productivity, all other considerations being equal?
The workloads on a "server" and "workstation" are different - but why does that mean we need different OS flavors for it?
Why can't the scheduler and memory manager treat server processes one way, and GUI applications another way?
What's the huge difference, other than some parameter tuning?
No, closed-source software has little to do with the explosion in the availability of PC's.
And while I do think opensource is slowly beating the closed-source software in the market place, I believe that closed-source software exploits copyright law to gain a financial advantage that lets it compete and in some cases be technically better.
Its still immoral, should be abolished, and fought against.
I think your view is too simplistic.
Many of us believe that "normal" use of software copyrights is very immoral and harmful. By NOT acting against it, and even giving fuel to these immoral beings (closed-source distributors) you are encouraging immoral acts, and making closed non-free software more common.
So we believe that as long as software copyrights exist, the only moral thing is to try to make it more difficult for closed-sources distributors to make everyone's lives more difficult.
The BSD license makes it EASIER for them to make everyone's lives more difficult.
I always hated the fact that we have embedded flash applications to play Video.
But frankly, all browsers' handling of embedded MPEG's in sites were completely unusable. Especially that of Firefox on Linux.
It is very unreliable and unpredictably opening new windows.
I can always watch an embedded MPEG if I want to, but its always so damn difficult and annoying.
Flash may be annoying to install, but once installed, it works easily and reliably.
Isn't it more interesting that more than half of the students copy their homework? :)
"Killlllllllllll me..."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douche_and_Turd
You don't have to do it, apt does it for you :-)
Seriously, why do you care?
apt-get install k3b, and it just works!
That sounds like a bootstrapping problem anyhow. You could have AI parenting AI's, or internet-data stimuli/etc.
People find google with DNS, yes. But who cares if your domain name is "blah.bleh.bluh.com/really/ugly?url=true"
or if it is:
"www.wow_omg_tld" when you find it via Google anyhow?
Not necessarily - by not needing oxygen, and a way out, etc, it can prolong the stay. Maybe it can even more-than-compensate for its slowness.
So its not that clear-cut.
Does that make the robot less effective, or just slower?
Does anyone really look strings up in DNS? People look up strings in Google, "Awesome bar" and Quicksilver.
If by "Take as long as" you mean in units of time (e.g seconds), then you are probably wrong. There is no real reason that the time constants for AI will be the same as those of a natural brain.
Look at it another way: If the AI takes 5 years to learn what a child learns in 5 years - what happens when you double its execution speed (technically, by speeding up its processors/system)? It will take 2.5 years, of course.
If you mean that it will take about as much learning material and exposure to stimuli/etc, then that sounds intuitively right (assuming it will be as efficient as we are at using its source material).
I think he meant it to be a silly question because it is a question about definitions.
It only depends on how you define what thinking is, and is not philosophical or practical.
Its answer has no consequences whatsoever.
As independent authors, musicians and Free software developers and movie makers prove again and again, creating wonderful works of art and creativity does not require copyrights for a monetary incentive.
Movies, perhaps, require more financial support, but note: without copyrights, each of us would be exposed to many more movies which will all be far more accessible (non-copyrighted material can be distributed much more easily). So even if less movies are made, we will still enjoy more of them.
When you buy a piece of software, music or pay to see a movie, your money is not supporting the artists, or even supporting further creation. What you are supporting is a lobby that furthers laws to benefit companies to the great detriment of society. You are funding the enemies of society.
Please do not pay the copyright lobby to pass more anti-society laws.
Thanks.
I disagree. How many human minds does it take to "simulate" a single CPU's activity? Its not possible, humans are too slow.
CPU's and humans work in completely different ways, so one "emulating" the other will of course suffer a huge performance penalty.
This does not necessarily imply much about the relationship of computational power between them.
I think that if we replace CPU's with some other technology that is more similar to parallel neurons, we will be able to simulate this with far better performance.
My experience is quite the reverse.
I use Ubuntu almost exclusively.
Whenever I need to use Windows, I am appalled by the lack of polish and consistency of Windows applications.
My wireless devices worked out of the box in Ubuntu, but I had to download drivers to make them work in XP.
When I wanted to install applications, I could just point and click in a central repository, and they're all installed in minutes. Security updates work without stupid activations/etc.
Focus stealing still plagues Windows, and that drives me nuts.
Sure Ubuntu isn't perfect and I had to work to make some things work, but it was far closer to perfect than Windows ever was.
Of course these are anecdotes, and I heard of people whose wireless devices worked out of the box in Windows, and not in Ubuntu. But its important to remember that your experience is not the definitive one.
Now for another anecdote which represents an essential difference between these systems. Yesterday I wanted to mount a remote file system via SSH. I did not want to inherit the remote file permissions - because those allow everyone to read/write (which is OK in the remote LAN, not OK in a computer in the large internet). The "umask" feature supposed to do this did not work.
In about 10 minutes, using the great tools Ubuntu has to offer, I managed to report the bug, fix it for myself, and attach a patch. You cannot do this, and will never be able to do this on the Windows platform.
This is where the symmetry breaks.
Both of us have anecdotes about this and that working here and not working there. You have your games running on Windows, and I have apt and a nagless experience almost free of thoughts about security.
But the tie-breaker is freedom.
I have my freedom and you are a Microsoft hostage who can only beg for them to fix the bugs that annoy you.
Most trolls have much higher UID's.
When was the last time you have tried Ubuntu?