>> Yeah, it's funny (in a sad sort of way) to see creationists suggesting that God faked the universe to fool scientists, and never pausing to consider that such a God might also fake scripture to fool creationists.
There was a sect in Rome at the time of early christianity called Gnosticism which believed that the creator of the material universe (ie existence as we know it) was the "devil" and not "God", on the grounds that "God" was "perfect", and since matter is inherently "imperfect", "God" would never sully itself by creating anything "material". "God" created the "Devil" (Gnostic god, also called the "demiurge"), and the "Devil" created "reality" including us.
This kind of thinking is parallel to Descartes' "Evil Genius" concept, where Descartes questions the nature of existence thusly: "How can I be sure that my perceptions correspond to something which is 'real' and that all I sense with my senses is not in fact an elaborate deception by a being more powerful and intelligent than myself?" Descartes' solution was that the proof of existence is thought itself, and that's what he built his philosophy on ("i think therefore I am", cogito ergo sum). Gnositicim posits that the "evil genius" DOES exist and as such, we are mortals living in a universe which is inherently evil not good. I don't know anything about Gnostic morality, btw.
What's my point? Oh yeah, anyone can doubt anything. One difference between science and religion is that science doubts as it sees fit, and religion doubts when the clergy says to. It's like, at some point you pick one of religion, art, or science. the undifferentiated viewpoint is that of a toddler; useful for that stage of psychological development but not equipped to meet certain scenarios. Like, how would a toddler choose between letting mommy die painlessly today or painfully tomorrow? The toddler would be overwhelmed with the emotional impact of considering the loss of it's mother. An older child might be more likely to be capable of considering the question abstractly ("Well, I want mommy around as long as possible, but I also don't want her to suffer, so because ____ is more important than ____, I select ___").
>> If things aren't as they seem, scientists aren't the only ones who can't trust the ground they're standing on.
That's f***ing deep. This is the sh*t I'm into. We start nowhere and end somewhere before returning to nothing. blah blah blah, yak yak yak
"The main problem with today's high-technology society is that we allow politicians to run it instead of people equipped with the wherewithal to understand it. Their mentalities are still in the nineteenth century. How can they hope to manage complex economies when they're not competent to run a yard-sale. What can they do that requires even a smattering of knowledge or intellect?" ~somebody else
Technically, the article said Hawking said that black holes do not lead to another universe. So if you want to think that there are other universes, you just have to look elsewhere.. String theory posits high dimensionality and "universes next door"; I'll remain parallel universe agnostic for the moment, but Hawking's point seems to have been that black holes do not eat information, and so they return the matter to the universe, and so he says, black holes are not an exit. If Hawking said definitively that our universe was the only existence, I would listen but I think unless we actually poke a hole into another universe with funky clues like, only 2 spatial dimensions (we could just be making a tesseract) or something, parallel universes will remain mostly philosophical.
Summary: Parallel universes aren't ruled out (at least by this article) so keep dreaming big! We'll need those other universes when entropy runs out in this one. Even better, ask someone who knows string theory whether the idea of multiple universes would be ruled out IF Hawking is right. Remember, he just lost a bet. He may be sure this time, but who's to say some bright kid 200 years from now won't have a different perspective... blah blah hypothetical
Beam me up Scotty, there's no intelligent life down here.
Baht Sair, ye've beamed down to planet SlashDot, world of geeks and nerds! There's got 'ta be *some* intelligent life down there?!
Scotty, now would be a good time... there's a flameware down here.. it's not pretty... AAAAH!! Oh, the pain! Oh the humanity! Oh, the pedantic trolling! They're all technically correct, yet they disagree! My brain is melting! AAAYYIIEEEEEE!!!!
I toned down what I said. I am not racist, but I am human. If you are from nigeria, say so. If you just want to attack someone, fuck you, @$$hole.
If I were a racist I would have said something racist. "Weak cowards" is simply an insult. It is not a racist phrase. If you think weakness or cowardice are apportioned by race, then YOU are the racist. RACIST! RACIST! Screw YOU, racist. Maybe you are an america hating fascist? How do you like it when others jump to conclusions? I think you are a racist homophobic anti-semite who hates american and worships a furby in the mall bathroom. SUCK IT 817C#
Thank you for contacting me regarding my imminent demise at the hands of a paid killer. I appreciate your forthrightness and honesty regarding this situation.
However, I do not have $40k right now and beyond that, I have a moral issue with being threatened when I do not feel I deserve it (and sometimes, when I do). Instead of wiring you the money, I have chosen option B (detailed below). Please do not worry about your fate, as the immortal soul of a human is not responsible for the actions of the material body (which you will soon be leaving behind), and in your next life, perhaps you will not be born into an ass-backwards crime state populated mainly by weak cowards such as your current incarnation. Anyway, may the best man win.
Yours truly, the best man.
*Option B involves me doing to you what you threatened to do to me. Also known as "If you can't take the heat, get the hell out of MY kitchen." Did you see the trailer for The Bourne Supremacy? Plan B is like that. Except, you don't have the defensive resources of a superpower nation-state to keep me from ending you. Well, sleep tight. Tired people are too easy to kill.
I find your argument tactful and insightful. I would like to continue this conversation via email, do you accept? Specifically, the second paragraph. I'd like to synthesize your view with mine to observe the result. If you want to email, respond and I will post my spam address.
Alternatively to email, here is what I see as "the rub" with what you said in response to what I said:
>> As for the slave state, robots don't need consciousness to do work. If it's not conscious, it's just a tool. If it's just a tool, you still need a human to wield it. If it's conscious, even though it's not human it must be accorded the rights we accord humans. This is my viewpoint and I am prepared to defend it.
>> Your understanding of robots is unfortunately tainted by your personal experience as a human. Touche. One question here though: are you human (and thus in the same boat with me) or non-human? Your response will dictate the method of my rhetoric but not it's contents.
>> There are countless ways to solve the ethical dilemma you describe (such as make them dumb terminals controlled by one master program who would get benefits, vacation and respect:) ). And when this is done, robots will play a very important role in solving all our problems and will make communism viable. If the ethical dilemma is easy to solve, why is slavery not common, or even accepted? I think that I am fully capable of arguing that a rose by any other name still smells as sweet. As for communism, I will not talk about it publicly, save to say that I am not an economic favoritist (ie, if it ain't broke, don't fix it... if communism can deliver a step towards Utopia, great. In other words I am not positing that communism==bad. I do however tread lightly when discussing it.. my country is full of lunatiks, we call them republicans, they call us unAmerican. *sigh*)
But I hear that Cuba's a crappy place to live if you're not close with Castro's government. The US may not have Canada style healthcare, but I'd rather live in the US than Cuba, thanks very much (No offense). As for communism using robots, it seems to me that you are missing the point of communism, and ignorant (again no offense) of the meaning of the word, "robot". A "robot" is a worker who performs difficult or undesirable labor. Unless you are positively ruling out the possiblity of non-organic consciousness (which I think is dumb), you are not proposing communism, you are proposing a slave state. Communism didn't work in Russia, not because the machines weren't functional (they did make a lot of stuff), but because of events on the world scene (Cold war, anyone?)
In other words, using robots to do the "shit work" is only different from using ethnic minorities IF you know the machines have no "spark" in them. Because some "shit work" requires a generalizing ability, you can't use robots to do everything unless you allow them some degree of "humanness" or consciousness. Do that and you're a slavemaster. Don't do it and instead of a robot you have a computerized hammer. Either way, there is no "magic bullet" to fixing communism (on any human endeavor for that matter). Capitalism is "working" in the USA. Communism is "working" in China. Iran is a religious dictatorship.
Robots are cool, robots are useful, robots can be what we make them. BUT, robots cannot be what we can not make them unless we give them self-determination/freedom/consciousness/learning etc, and if we do that, we have created metal humans, not singing toaster ovens. Once the Djinni is out of the lamp, even wishing won't put it back in. Or do you prefer a civil war between humans and machines, winner take existence? I'd rather let the humans try to work out the human problems, even if they are dirty heartbreakers, like, who gets vaccine? Who eats? who lives, who dies? They aren't pretty questions, but if they get asked, would you prefer to let the decision be made by a machine? I could rant all day and this goes off in a hundred directions. Let me say this: ROBOTS ARE NOT THE SOLUTION TO ALL OF LIFE'S PROBLEMS ANY MORE THAN COMPUTERS OR SUV'S ARE. THE SOLUTION TO LIFE'S PROBLEMS IS SPECIFIC TO THE INDIVIDUAL (ie friends, sex, money, religion, art, science, etc etc)
PS, I am a lonely, lonely man and would probably end up having a romantic or at least very close relationship with anything humanoid in my house. Hell, I consider my car a friend. Just didn't want anyone to think I'm anti-'bot.
>A robot interacting with life forms on Jupiter (Asimov didn't have the benefit of modern space probe data) apologises to a native Jovian for killing some bacteria-type samples in a lab as a result of the robot emitting radiation.
I remember that story... IIRC, the robot was using one of its tools/senses to observe microorganisms in a lab environment. The Jovians had a superiority/invincibility complex, and the robots were total pacifists, and on killing the microorganisms, the robot apologized. Good story... pretty much all of Asimov's were.
Geez man, posting that link is like handing out gr3nades in falluja. Disruptive, Offensive, Deceptive, and Idionsyncratic, hmm? It's a good thing you didn't get first post, because Netcraft's confirmation of Stephen King's death could reignite the flamewar about hot.. oh, you know the rest.
Having spent $X billion so far, (and worth it, imho), the worst blunder possible is to deny the additional funding. Now that the probes are up and operating, a dollar spent here is worth ten (if not more) spent tomorrow, because the risk phase is over. Everything we get now is bonus.
<semi-sarcasm>Anyway, most of our politicking seems to be based on "not telegraphing weakness"... So, don't cut short the mission, or else the terrorists win.</semi-sarcasm>
I think it's when you do logic using reads from data beyond the packet header.
Packets are composed in layers. The lower ones have to do with transmission over the network. The higher ones have to do with the interpretation of the packet (like which application session etc it belongs to). And of course you have the payload, the data being sent, like the letter in the envelope.
.. and when all's said and done, that's all that counts, or works. Sure, a metal detector will stop espionage if the bad guy has a minidisc in his wazoo. Sure. Point taken. There are security considerations which can limit intrusion/theft. That being said, not every secret is over 1.4 MB. Sure, the corporate database might take 50 tapes to hold it. how long is the key? The figures for this quarter look good, but how much debt is hidden in teh cooked books? Isn't that something worth knowing, either by investors or competitors? Let the man have his USB watch. What's he gonna do, #4X0r the mainframe with it? Puh-lease. What are you going to do if a new hire has a photographic memory, pull out his brain? NDA is the only way to keep a secret. Well, that and professionally administered lie detection (which is almost as good as NDA).
Moderators: don't mod this up, because I'm agreeing with the parent.
Jerry: (to Kramer) Yeah, I got it on Ebay. Isreali surplus. You can see through walls!
Kramer: Ya-hey! Let me borrow it.
Jerry: You? What do you need to look through walls for?
Kramer: Elaine's neighbor invited me to dinner tonight.
Jerry: No way. I'm not going to let you spy on Elaine. Besides, why should you get to try it before I do?
George: Isn't the whole idea a little unethical? I mean, most people can't look through walls. Its almost like you're cheating somehow.
Jerry: Lighten up, George. It creates a simulated picture based on ultra-wide band radiofrequency scans. It's not really looking through a wall. If I see nudity, is it really any worse than if I just close my eyes and imagine it?
(I'm sure Elaine would have her own view on this.:)
Uber-corporation Microsoft (c) announced a new search service today. Microsoft bigwig Steve Ballmer had this to say:
"Our new search engine is the ultimate in modern search technology. It indexes the entire internet and stores it in a Microsoft Access (tm) database. Users querying the engine for a given term (such as "linux") are given links to a random assortment of possibly-related sites."
(interviewer) Google's search is lauded as highly relevant and lightening fast. Yet you've innovated and taken a different course, returning random results. Why is this better than Google's method?
(S.B.) "Well, you have to keep in mind that our concern is the average windows user. We have discovered a flaw in Google's technology; the heavy reliance on research, strong programming and intelligence, while novel, has resulted in a system where relevant, useful results are returned very quickly."
(interviewer)..and your method is better than this because...
(S.B.) "Ok. When someone searches on Google, they are limited to only relevant items, because that's what Google has latched onto. The weakness in Google's method is that most pages are not returned, because a machine has decided they are irrelevant. The new Microsoft (c) paradigm is that we let the USER decide what's relevant and what's not; the machine makes no determination of what is or is not relevant. See how it's better? Look, 99% of all computers in the world run Windows. And people don't mind rebooting, not at all. We've added value to this model, someone's got to do the work, why not just dump it on the user, let them take the blame? My porsche won't go any slower because someone else had to do extra work. That's the beauty of the Microsoft way (tm)! We let other people do all the work, then we take the credit."
(interviewer) But most people say they like Google specifically *because* it returns relevant terms so quickly.. aren't you just dumping all the work of searching back on the user's lap?
(S.B.) "You clearly are an enemy of innovation. Look, People are smarter than machines. Therefore, since a person can only view one page at a time, a person must view every existing web page to know whether or not their guess of which page is most relevant, is in fact true. And so, our search engine is better, because we don't prevent the user--"
(interviewer) Isn't this all just a semantic argument against your economic competitor and technological superior, Google?
(S.B.) "This interview is over."
A Microsoft Public Relations Representative did note that search terms pertaining to the purchase of goods and services did in fact not return random results, and in point of fact return only a single link, to www.microsoft.com.
I was gonna ask you why you stole my.sig, but then I realized it's just a quote, and if anyone owns it, Voltaire does. So I'm not b*tching per se, just a little territorial. Btw, I'm curious if you got it from me... I can't tax you, I'd just be gratified to know that someone copied/me/. If you didn't, that's fine too. Yes, I do plan to sabotage my High School reunion. Think flesh eating bacteria.
Yes, please do come in. Won't you have some tea? we're discussing Star Wars.
Ah, good. I was looking for some potential converts to the world of Gene Roddenberry. Phasers can shoot through light-sabers, you know.
Careful, the tea's hot. And everyone knows that Imperial Shields can stop any energy/ballistic attack as long as the Shield Generators remain undamaged. Then Darth Vader would force-choke Captain Kirk into submission.
Mmm, good tea. May I have a scone?
Oh, please do.
Thank you. But that's absurd, if Geordi modulated the phasars on a plasma-variance intercorrelation loop, the meso-barions surrounding the ---
*knock knock* Is this the Paris Hilton vs. Natalie Portman thread?
(all) next thread, by the water cooler
Ah, much obliged. *leaves*
--look, Kirk was a ninny, anyway.
Hey, Kirk could kick Picard's pseudo-French hiney any day of the week!
Oh yeah, well Picard favorably impressed the Q continuum, so in them he has the friendship of a literal race of Gods, I think I've made my point.
See here, let's not have this bickering and whining about who killed who..
Hey, that's Monty Python! GET HIM!!!!!
Can't we all just get along?
Apparently not, but we can argue about why next week.
Oh yeah, just to stay on topic, my list: Oui, Adbusters, Time. (parent is actually ontopic, considering this is a story on a website about which magazines we read (not e-zines)) Also highlights how great GB is... I mean, for an eighties movie, when virtually No-one knew about packet-switched networking, saying "Print is Dead" was eerily prophetic. Yeah yeah, I'm a fanboy.:)
A bird in the hand is worth -OW! Hey, it pecked my hand! Come back here, you @#%@#!!!!
Slashdot Mirror
There was a sect in Rome at the time of early christianity called Gnosticism which believed that the creator of the material universe (ie existence as we know it) was the "devil" and not "God", on the grounds that "God" was "perfect", and since matter is inherently "imperfect", "God" would never sully itself by creating anything "material". "God" created the "Devil" (Gnostic god, also called the "demiurge"), and the "Devil" created "reality" including us.
This kind of thinking is parallel to Descartes' "Evil Genius" concept, where Descartes questions the nature of existence thusly: "How can I be sure that my perceptions correspond to something which is 'real' and that all I sense with my senses is not in fact an elaborate deception by a being more powerful and intelligent than myself?" Descartes' solution was that the proof of existence is thought itself, and that's what he built his philosophy on ("i think therefore I am", cogito ergo sum). Gnositicim posits that the "evil genius" DOES exist and as such, we are mortals living in a universe which is inherently evil not good. I don't know anything about Gnostic morality, btw.
What's my point? Oh yeah, anyone can doubt anything. One difference between science and religion is that science doubts as it sees fit, and religion doubts when the clergy says to. It's like, at some point you pick one of religion, art, or science. the undifferentiated viewpoint is that of a toddler; useful for that stage of psychological development but not equipped to meet certain scenarios. Like, how would a toddler choose between letting mommy die painlessly today or painfully tomorrow? The toddler would be overwhelmed with the emotional impact of considering the loss of it's mother. An older child might be more likely to be capable of considering the question abstractly ("Well, I want mommy around as long as possible, but I also don't want her to suffer, so because ____ is more important than ____, I select ___").
>> If things aren't as they seem, scientists aren't the only ones who can't trust the ground they're standing on.
That's f***ing deep. This is the sh*t I'm into. We start nowhere and end somewhere before returning to nothing. blah blah blah, yak yak yak
"The main problem with today's high-technology society is that we allow politicians to run it instead of people equipped with the wherewithal to understand it. Their mentalities are still in the nineteenth century. How can they hope to manage complex economies when they're not competent to run a yard-sale. What can they do that requires even a smattering of knowledge or intellect?" ~somebody else
Technically, the article said Hawking said that black holes do not lead to another universe. So if you want to think that there are other universes, you just have to look elsewhere.. String theory posits high dimensionality and "universes next door"; I'll remain parallel universe agnostic for the moment, but Hawking's point seems to have been that black holes do not eat information, and so they return the matter to the universe, and so he says, black holes are not an exit. If Hawking said definitively that our universe was the only existence, I would listen but I think unless we actually poke a hole into another universe with funky clues like, only 2 spatial dimensions (we could just be making a tesseract) or something, parallel universes will remain mostly philosophical.
Summary: Parallel universes aren't ruled out (at least by this article) so keep dreaming big! We'll need those other universes when entropy runs out in this one. Even better, ask someone who knows string theory whether the idea of multiple universes would be ruled out IF Hawking is right. Remember, he just lost a bet. He may be sure this time, but who's to say some bright kid 200 years from now won't have a different perspective... blah blah hypothetical
Time required for /.ers to complete self-congratulation: 1/2 hour.
Time until SCO regains a semblence of dignity: one Eon.
Baht Sair, ye've beamed down to planet SlashDot, world of geeks and nerds! There's got 'ta be *some* intelligent life down there?!
Scotty, now would be a good time... there's a flameware down here.. it's not pretty... AAAAH!! Oh, the pain! Oh the humanity! Oh, the pedantic trolling! They're all technically correct, yet they disagree! My brain is melting! AAAYYIIEEEEEE!!!!
If I were a racist I would have said something racist. "Weak cowards" is simply an insult. It is not a racist phrase. If you think weakness or cowardice are apportioned by race, then YOU are the racist. RACIST! RACIST! Screw YOU, racist. Maybe you are an america hating fascist? How do you like it when others jump to conclusions? I think you are a racist homophobic anti-semite who hates american and worships a furby in the mall bathroom. SUCK IT 817C#
jumpandlink (a) yahoo
Dear Towogbola,
Thank you for contacting me regarding my imminent demise at the hands of a paid killer. I appreciate your forthrightness and honesty regarding this situation.
However, I do not have $40k right now and beyond that, I have a moral issue with being threatened when I do not feel I deserve it (and sometimes, when I do). Instead of wiring you the money, I have chosen option B (detailed below). Please do not worry about your fate, as the immortal soul of a human is not responsible for the actions of the material body (which you will soon be leaving behind), and in your next life, perhaps you will not be born into an ass-backwards crime state populated mainly by weak cowards such as your current incarnation. Anyway, may the best man win.
Yours truly, the best man.
*Option B involves me doing to you what you threatened to do to me. Also known as "If you can't take the heat, get the hell out of MY kitchen." Did you see the trailer for The Bourne Supremacy? Plan B is like that. Except, you don't have the defensive resources of a superpower nation-state to keep me from ending you. Well, sleep tight. Tired people are too easy to kill.
Alternatively to email, here is what I see as "the rub" with what you said in response to what I said:
>> As for the slave state, robots don't need consciousness to do work. If it's not conscious, it's just a tool. If it's just a tool, you still need a human to wield it. If it's conscious, even though it's not human it must be accorded the rights we accord humans. This is my viewpoint and I am prepared to defend it.
>> Your understanding of robots is unfortunately tainted by your personal experience as a human. Touche. One question here though: are you human (and thus in the same boat with me) or non-human? Your response will dictate the method of my rhetoric but not it's contents.
>> There are countless ways to solve the ethical dilemma you describe (such as make them dumb terminals controlled by one master program who would get benefits, vacation and respect :) ). And when this is done, robots will play a very important role in solving all our problems and will make communism viable. If the ethical dilemma is easy to solve, why is slavery not common, or even accepted? I think that I am fully capable of arguing that a rose by any other name still smells as sweet. As for communism, I will not talk about it publicly, save to say that I am not an economic favoritist (ie, if it ain't broke, don't fix it... if communism can deliver a step towards Utopia, great. In other words I am not positing that communism==bad. I do however tread lightly when discussing it.. my country is full of lunatiks, we call them republicans, they call us unAmerican. *sigh*)
In other words, using robots to do the "shit work" is only different from using ethnic minorities IF you know the machines have no "spark" in them. Because some "shit work" requires a generalizing ability, you can't use robots to do everything unless you allow them some degree of "humanness" or consciousness. Do that and you're a slavemaster. Don't do it and instead of a robot you have a computerized hammer. Either way, there is no "magic bullet" to fixing communism (on any human endeavor for that matter). Capitalism is "working" in the USA. Communism is "working" in China. Iran is a religious dictatorship.
Robots are cool, robots are useful, robots can be what we make them. BUT, robots cannot be what we can not make them unless we give them self-determination/freedom/consciousness/learning etc, and if we do that, we have created metal humans, not singing toaster ovens. Once the Djinni is out of the lamp, even wishing won't put it back in. Or do you prefer a civil war between humans and machines, winner take existence? I'd rather let the humans try to work out the human problems, even if they are dirty heartbreakers, like, who gets vaccine? Who eats? who lives, who dies? They aren't pretty questions, but if they get asked, would you prefer to let the decision be made by a machine? I could rant all day and this goes off in a hundred directions. Let me say this: ROBOTS ARE NOT THE SOLUTION TO ALL OF LIFE'S PROBLEMS ANY MORE THAN COMPUTERS OR SUV'S ARE. THE SOLUTION TO LIFE'S PROBLEMS IS SPECIFIC TO THE INDIVIDUAL (ie friends, sex, money, religion, art, science, etc etc)
PS, I am a lonely, lonely man and would probably end up having a romantic or at least very close relationship with anything humanoid in my house. Hell, I consider my car a friend. Just didn't want anyone to think I'm anti-'bot.
I remember that story... IIRC, the robot was using one of its tools/senses to observe microorganisms in a lab environment. The Jovians had a superiority/invincibility complex, and the robots were total pacifists, and on killing the microorganisms, the robot apologized. Good story... pretty much all of Asimov's were.
Dude, please, don't talk like Jar-Jar.
Will whoever stole Reverend Brother Magoun's p0m please return it? m=rn
Having spent $X billion so far, (and worth it, imho), the worst blunder possible is to deny the additional funding. Now that the probes are up and operating, a dollar spent here is worth ten (if not more) spent tomorrow, because the risk phase is over. Everything we get now is bonus.
<semi-sarcasm>Anyway, most of our politicking seems to be based on "not telegraphing weakness"... So, don't cut short the mission, or else the terrorists win.</semi-sarcasm>
I think it's when you do logic using reads from data beyond the packet header.
Packets are composed in layers. The lower ones have to do with transmission over the network. The higher ones have to do with the interpretation of the packet (like which application session etc it belongs to). And of course you have the payload, the data being sent, like the letter in the envelope.
Mu!
>> I remember my counter-intel classes going over that stuff.
Wow, the FBI really does surf Slashdot!
Smile, you can't tell if it's funny.
Moderators: don't mod this up, because I'm agreeing with the parent.
I already have excellent karma, you insensitive clod! ;)
Good one; but, can't Superman see through walls? 8-]
(..)
||
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======
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Kramer: Ya-hey! Let me borrow it.
Jerry: You? What do you need to look through walls for?
Kramer: Elaine's neighbor invited me to dinner tonight.
Jerry: No way. I'm not going to let you spy on Elaine. Besides, why should you get to try it before I do?
George: Isn't the whole idea a little unethical? I mean, most people can't look through walls. Its almost like you're cheating somehow.
Jerry: Lighten up, George. It creates a simulated picture based on ultra-wide band radiofrequency scans. It's not really looking through a wall. If I see nudity, is it really any worse than if I just close my eyes and imagine it?
(I'm sure Elaine would have her own view on this. :)
that's Fox "News".
I forget where I'm plagiarizing that from.
(Score: -infinity, redundant)
Uber-corporation Microsoft (c) announced a new search service today. Microsoft bigwig Steve Ballmer had this to say:
"Our new search engine is the ultimate in modern search technology. It indexes the entire internet and stores it in a Microsoft Access (tm) database. Users querying the engine for a given term (such as "linux") are given links to a random assortment of possibly-related sites."
(interviewer) Google's search is lauded as highly relevant and lightening fast. Yet you've innovated and taken a different course, returning random results. Why is this better than Google's method?
(S.B.) "Well, you have to keep in mind that our concern is the average windows user. We have discovered a flaw in Google's technology; the heavy reliance on research, strong programming and intelligence, while novel, has resulted in a system where relevant, useful results are returned very quickly."
(interviewer) ..and your method is better than this because...
(S.B.) "Ok. When someone searches on Google, they are limited to only relevant items, because that's what Google has latched onto. The weakness in Google's method is that most pages are not returned, because a machine has decided they are irrelevant. The new Microsoft (c) paradigm is that we let the USER decide what's relevant and what's not; the machine makes no determination of what is or is not relevant. See how it's better? Look, 99% of all computers in the world run Windows. And people don't mind rebooting, not at all. We've added value to this model, someone's got to do the work, why not just dump it on the user, let them take the blame? My porsche won't go any slower because someone else had to do extra work. That's the beauty of the Microsoft way (tm)! We let other people do all the work, then we take the credit."
(interviewer) But most people say they like Google specifically *because* it returns relevant terms so quickly.. aren't you just dumping all the work of searching back on the user's lap?
(S.B.) "You clearly are an enemy of innovation. Look, People are smarter than machines. Therefore, since a person can only view one page at a time, a person must view every existing web page to know whether or not their guess of which page is most relevant, is in fact true. And so, our search engine is better, because we don't prevent the user--"
(interviewer) Isn't this all just a semantic argument against your economic competitor and technological superior, Google?
(S.B.) "This interview is over."
A Microsoft Public Relations Representative did note that search terms pertaining to the purchase of goods and services did in fact not return random results, and in point of fact return only a single link, to www.microsoft.com.
I was gonna ask you why you stole my .sig, but then I realized it's just a quote, and if anyone owns it, Voltaire does. So I'm not b*tching per se, just a little territorial. Btw, I'm curious if you got it from me... I can't tax you, I'd just be gratified to know that someone copied /me/. If you didn't, that's fine too. Yes, I do plan to sabotage my High School reunion. Think flesh eating bacteria.
Is this room 215?
Yes, can I help you?
Hi, I'm here for the flamewar?
Yes, please do come in. Won't you have some tea? we're discussing Star Wars.
Ah, good. I was looking for some potential converts to the world of Gene Roddenberry. Phasers can shoot through light-sabers, you know.
Careful, the tea's hot. And everyone knows that Imperial Shields can stop any energy/ballistic attack as long as the Shield Generators remain undamaged. Then Darth Vader would force-choke Captain Kirk into submission.
Mmm, good tea. May I have a scone?
Oh, please do.
Thank you. But that's absurd, if Geordi modulated the phasars on a plasma-variance intercorrelation loop, the meso-barions surrounding the ---
*knock knock* Is this the Paris Hilton vs. Natalie Portman thread?
(all) next thread, by the water cooler
Ah, much obliged. *leaves*
--look, Kirk was a ninny, anyway.
Hey, Kirk could kick Picard's pseudo-French hiney any day of the week!
Oh yeah, well Picard favorably impressed the Q continuum, so in them he has the friendship of a literal race of Gods, I think I've made my point.
See here, let's not have this bickering and whining about who killed who..
Hey, that's Monty Python! GET HIM!!!!!
Can't we all just get along?
Apparently not, but we can argue about why next week.
"Don't cross the streams. It would be bad."
Oh yeah, just to stay on topic, my list: Oui, Adbusters, Time. (parent is actually ontopic, considering this is a story on a website about which magazines we read (not e-zines)) Also highlights how great GB is... I mean, for an eighties movie, when virtually No-one knew about packet-switched networking, saying "Print is Dead" was eerily prophetic. Yeah yeah, I'm a fanboy. :)
A bird in the hand is worth -OW! Hey, it pecked my hand! Come back here, you @#%@#!!!!