The CIA taught him. So blame the CIA and the US government. They specifically taught the "freedom fighters" the advantages of car bombs and the art of war of attrition. Bin Ladin is sort of the the American prodical son, who came back after all those years,... except that he had a bomb in his pocket.
Probably the only real solution for the problem is to redefine Human as self aware creatures from earth, and incorporate this awareness somehow into robots, to some slight degree, so that Robots see Humans as "One of Us".
To kill a robot might not need to understand such complex relationships as human, self-awareness, earth, universe and so on. They could just be trained to shoot shapes that have two eyes, a nose, and a mouth or shapes that wear camouflage, or anything that moves that doesn't emit a certain recognized code signal.
There are various definitions of AI and "intelligence". Your definition is AI=act rationally/think rationally, one of the other definitions is AI=act like humans. So as long as a robot seems to act like a human he might be considered as having AI. Acting like a human might pass the Turing Test but that doesn't mean the robot will be thinking rationally, or even have self awareness. The robot will just act smart enough to fool people into thinking it has AI. Heck, the little pet dogs and little robotic vacuum cleaners could probably fool my grand parents into thinking they are "smart" and "intelligent" machines.
But why, haven't you ever asked yourself that question. Here is this huge country, much bigger than US, was it really that hard to see that everything was going downhill and there are only a couple of years left before the "red giant" collapses?
It turns out that this image of the Soviet Union as an uber-powerful country that will invade at any minute now, was in the interests of the neo-cons in power. It is known now that Congressional groups influenced by them, would go through the CIA evidence and re-interpret and mix everything with fantasy to make it sound as if the Russians have reached this unprecedented level of technological achievements and are ready to "push the button" at any minute. The media didn't know, it just regurgitated everything that the government told it to. So the minds and oppinions of ordinary Americans are controlled by this small group of people who have it as their main principle to hold the society in fear so they can control it.
Watch the "Power of Nightmares" movie. It is a British documentary, aired on BBC a while ago and now it is free for download here . It is very educational, it talks about the idiological forces behind the US neo-cons, and Islamic extremism, how it started how both clashed. There is also a Wiki page about the movie, check it out. Just search on Google for it. Warning: it is a 3 hour long thing, but I didn't regret taking that time to see it.
What that means is that there isn't actually an Al Qaeda, an almighty mega organization with thousands of sleeper cells ready to attack at any minute along with a centralized command center in the mountains of Afghanistan somewhere. You believe that or you think you believe that because you have been hearing it and seeing it on US media. Bin Ladin himself, before 9/11 _never_ referred to his organization as Al Qaeda, he addopted the name after the US said that "Al Qaeda is responsible" so he started using "Al Qaeda" since then. He doesn't have thousands of armed men protected him in a bunker somewhere. In one of the videos you see him with many such uniformed soldiers but he allegedly hired them for the day from a local war lord so they can appear on the video. "Al Qaeda" exists but it is actually small extremist groups of muslim men in certain countries that will be willing to kill themselves and civilians to shock and scare the world. Any such group of men is "Al Qaeda" -- they might not even know or have any connection with Bin Ladin's group. Sometimes these men will ask for donations from imams or wealthy arabs, but they don't all get salaries and health plans from Bin-Ladin. Anyway, watch the "Power of Nightmares" movie. It is a British documentary talking about this. It is very well done. You can download it for free . There is also a Wiki page on it, check it out, just search on Google, it will come up.
Good point. The US military, especially in the past during the Vietnam days, was a dumping ground for troubled teenagers, that small towns and "peaceful" suburbs wanted to get rid of. Often a teenager facing prison for violent, drunken or otherwise criminal behavior, would be given a choice of prison vs. army. With prison, the local county had to take him in, spend tax payers' money on feeding him and letting him lounge all day. Or they could hand him over to the Feds in a way, by asking him to join the army. The other part of the problem is that it is a volunteer army (not that I would want it otherwise) but what that means is that people who have sadistic and violent tendencies will be more likely to sign up. So one ends up with a bunch of mostly good people but mixed with a large number of potential violent offenders and/or a group of sadists, who find pleasure in the pain and even death of others. So whatever comes out is what we have now, good or bad -- I'll let others be the judge, perhaps some of those troubled teens eventually shape up with the discipline and all
These people start to sound just like the guys with the flying car and tabletop fusion -- it is always "just around the corner", "any day now", "start investing today!"...sheesh!
Nicaea Creed does not define Christianity
Yes. it does. It sure defines Christianity more than any comment on Slashdot written a thousand+ years later...
Christianity is not a logical theorem. People made logic, they use it to prove and disprove things. It is good for math, it is good for science it is good for arguing with you wife and kids. Using it to "prove" that God exists or doesn't or other stuff like that won't work. Common sense logic doesn't even apply to science anymore when you get into Quantum Mechanics world and consider such things as entanglement.
Christianity is about faith and belief. I don't know why it has to be this way, but then again, I don't know many other things of why we are here, where are we headed, what will happen after death and so on. The way I percieve God and know his existance , I can't outline a proof to 100% convince you of it, such that you couldn't possibly refute it.
I feel that there are multiple levels of reality. There is an exact physical world where strict laws of physics and math apply, but there is another world -- the human world. Where such things as pain, love, desire, needs, hopes come into play. All those are very real -- nobody will tell you that pain is not real, but you surely can't measure it. A scale of 1 to 10 won't encompas the pain of a mother loosing her child, or the pain being stuck in a POW camp.
Then perhaps there is yet another level of reality, a spiritual world if you wish, where God is, where we'll go after death and so on. Maybe it is another dimension, who knows.
But why am I a Christian? I was also raised in a Christian family, but I had to discover it on my own later in life. I think what convinced me the most, were the people, the Saints through the centuries who were willing to give up their life for their faith. Now, if you look at the apostles and the early Christians. If they didn't see the resurected Christ, but claimed they did, when it came to renouncing the faith, they should have all said "screw-it, we lied, we just wanted to be famous, forgive us, we recanant -- it was all farce and so on." -- but they didn't, none of apostles did it, they chose torture and death instead. That, at least for me, is a good deal of "reinforcing evidence".
A Christian is someone who follows the teachings of Christ
According to Him, he was the the Son of God. He wasn't a "nice" moral teacher. He was either the Son of God or a crazy person, there is no middle ground here. Kind of like someone claiming that he is Napoleon. They either are Napoleon or they are crazy. But anyway, if take most of the Christians today and those that have lived through the 2 thousand years, they would claim that indeed to be a Christian one would have to believe in the fact that Christ is God. One can claim today that they are Christian but they actually believe and worship Buddha. So they can go claiming they are Christians, just as I walked around claiming I am the president. Nobody can stop me but it would not be true.
I already mentioned this in a post above, but I'll say it again. Watch the Power Of Nightmares movie. It is a 3 hour British documentary. Very well done. Get it at archive.org, just search for it, it is also probably in the "top 3 dowloaded" box.
It turns out that "fear mongering" is what the neo-conservatives now in power in Washington DC need to do what they do. The most interesting conclusion of the film is that al Qaeda isn't this all global organization with thousands of sleeper cells ready to commit attrocities. That is what people like Bush, Cheney and Wolfowitz want us to believe. To find out why, whatch the move...
The "Christian Science" doesn't seem to have much in common with either Christianity or Science. I am not trying to flame them, I am just saying that the name is confusing. This Church was started by Mary Baker Eddys. Her view of God was nothing what the traditional, Christian God is. She presented an impersonal God or more exactly a "divine Principle of all being". As far as Christ goes, they don't believe in his deity. So they are not quite Christian.
They are also not very scientific in their approach, as they often would refuse to be treated by doctors, and refuse to acknowledge the existense of bacteria, viruses and other micro-organisms and how these can cause disease.
I think they should just pick a new name. There was such a group on my campus and I approached their table thinking it is a group of scientists who are just Christian that have meetings, Bible study and what not, I had no idea it was a religion all by itself...
A couple of days I watched the "Power of Nightmares" -- a British documentary. It talks about how both Islamic extremism and neo-conservatism both have a lot in common, especially in the fact that both have this absolutist, idealized view of the world. For ones like Osama, Islam is the answer to all, and the justification of all means, and for Bush, Cheney, Wolfowits and "gang" it is the "American Way" that has to be imposed over all countries. US is seen as the incarnation of pure good and its destiny is to fight and conquer evil. Anyway, another point of the movie is that al Qaeda doesn't really exist in the way we think it exists, there are no organized sleeper cells, Osama didn't even use the name until after 9/11 the Americans gave it to his organisation. The al Qaeda global super organization myth is actually serving the neo-conservatives in this country. Anyway, if you have time, watch the film: free on archive.org. It is about 3 hours long. It is very well done, not as heavy propaganda laden as the Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, which I thought was as good of a documentary as "Mars Attacks".
Enterprise managers are ol' timey folk, they know a few brand names and they will stick to them: IBM, Sun, Novell, Microsoft, SCO, and so on. So when they want to cut cost and try this "crazy new Linux thing" they'll go to a company like Novell because it evokes the warm fuzzy feelings from back in the day -- early 90s. Strange african sounding names or colored hats are way too much for them to handle...
This is the biggest advantage of Novell. They'll milk their brand name for all its worth -- and they need it too...
The problem is #4: 4. Google encrypts the data with your public key...
:: so are you letting Google encrypt your data? You are back at square 1 in terms of security then. What exactly would prevent Google from saving a plaintext version of your data or send it straight to Uncle Sam?
You NEVER NEVER EVER let anyone you don't completely trust, which means only yourself, you family, your dog --- whatever, definetly not a large company! encrypt the data for you. It is like meeting someone on the street and asking them to go deposit a bunch of money for you.
There is a fundamental discrepancy here between the need to index and encypt. Google is not a phillantropic organisation, giving away email and GDrives for free! They use the stuff you hold in there to spit ads back at you. They will co-operate with the Feds. Security in this case is your and only your responsability. Just like you would't trust someone else with you money or your kids, don't trust someone else with your private/secret files. This means that everyone should be disciplined and encrypt their data. Privacy should be a concern for more people, encryption should be the norm, not the exception.
Depends what enterprise... If Ubuntu is easy to use, and there will be ways to distribute updates automatically, there will be way to remotely administer machines and other goodies, so I don't see why a company "thinking about" linux/open source won't agree to give it a try. Two years ago nobody has heard of Ubuntu and today it is one of the most popular Linux distributions worldwide. Who knows what might happen in another 2-3 years... I have used all 3: Redhat, SuSE and Ubuntu and I find that Ubuntu works best for me at home (scientific computing, some database manipulation + other regualar stuff like browsing and email stuff).
It is not that they have to compete with major OS systems, but there are also a bunch of competing Linux distributions, some of which are completely free and will even offer many goodies for the enterprise customers (the new Ubuntu Dapper for ex.). It is really hard for a linux distribution to stand out. They better have stellar customer support and hope to land some huge contracts with that. They can and will milk the name "Novel" that many recognize from the early 90's but that will only take them so far...
I have tried SuSE, it was nice, polished interface but it just didn't stand out. Now I am addicted to Ubuntu, it is simple, it does what I want and nothing more, kind of like crack cocaine...
Pig hearts are rarely used for working heart machine study, pig hearts are a lot more sensitive and rupture a lot easier than either human or mice heart. But we can use rabbit hearts and hamster hearts. Larger animals would need a complete re-design of our machines...
Lung cancer is probably the most deadly too. Perhaps there aren't many people who can stick a "I am a lung cancer survivor" sticker on the their car. Another interesting note is how today people will freely say to each other "oh, you should quit smoking" but they are a lot more hesitant to say to an obese person "oh, Janet, maybe you shouldn't have that 3rd doughnut, you should really lose some weight!" Both are serious health conditions that put life at risk, but somehow there is this discrepancy between the attitude towards each one...
Good, talk to your congressman about FDA regulations of Aspartame, Hydrogentated soy and other such stuff! I think the bigger poison are the plain old high fructose soda drinks (Coke, pop, whatever...) that children gulp down by the gallons every day, and there is increasing evidence of that. But also before you talk to the congressman you better have a some good evidence or preliminary findings that it is the aspartame that causes whatever diseasase, otherwise you risk of sounding like some crazed conspiracy freak.
And, yes, I'll keep "fucking" with mice. Unless you have a better biological model for us to test the drugs that we test...
and background oddities like myself aren't going to change that, whatever we might think.
Don't think that. You are at the computer, connected to the Internet. Today, bloggers can influence a great deal of things. 20 years ago, ordinary people (like us/. geeks) couldn't do much to be heard to to change anything, but not anymore. And I think you should want for people to agree with you, if you think you are right, you should share that with others.
I had mice at home when I was 15. A female gave birth to 6 young ones. Then after she was done, she ate the heads of two of her babies. I was quite upset, as I was waiting for the new mice and wanting to see her take care of them and nurse them and protect them. Eventually I let them all go free. No more mice for me, except at the lab were we experiment on them.
But that wasn't the mice's fault. It was mine -- I had human expectations for them. People constantly anthropomorphize animals. They think of them as people and assign them human qualities.. "Dog are compassionate", "Mice are cute". That can go either way. The PETA people assign them all these noble qualities and protect the animals as if they are people. People who work in labs see the mice eat their babies and think how "evil" and "disgusting they are, they almost deserve to be experimented on". The truth is, it is neither, the are not moral, they just do what the instincts tell them to do.
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The CIA taught him. So blame the CIA and the US government. They specifically taught the "freedom fighters" the advantages of car bombs and the art of war of attrition. Bin Ladin is sort of the the American prodical son, who came back after all those years, ... except that he had a bomb in his pocket.
Or, would I buy something as critical as an operating system without having access to its source code...oh...wait, nevermind.
To kill a robot might not need to understand such complex relationships as human, self-awareness, earth, universe and so on. They could just be trained to shoot shapes that have two eyes, a nose, and a mouth or shapes that wear camouflage, or anything that moves that doesn't emit a certain recognized code signal.
There are various definitions of AI and "intelligence". Your definition is AI=act rationally/think rationally, one of the other definitions is AI=act like humans. So as long as a robot seems to act like a human he might be considered as having AI. Acting like a human might pass the Turing Test but that doesn't mean the robot will be thinking rationally, or even have self awareness. The robot will just act smart enough to fool people into thinking it has AI. Heck, the little pet dogs and little robotic vacuum cleaners could probably fool my grand parents into thinking they are "smart" and "intelligent" machines.
It turns out that this image of the Soviet Union as an uber-powerful country that will invade at any minute now, was in the interests of the neo-cons in power. It is known now that Congressional groups influenced by them, would go through the CIA evidence and re-interpret and mix everything with fantasy to make it sound as if the Russians have reached this unprecedented level of technological achievements and are ready to "push the button" at any minute. The media didn't know, it just regurgitated everything that the government told it to. So the minds and oppinions of ordinary Americans are controlled by this small group of people who have it as their main principle to hold the society in fear so they can control it.
Watch the "Power of Nightmares" movie. It is a British documentary, aired on BBC a while ago and now it is free for download here . It is very educational, it talks about the idiological forces behind the US neo-cons, and Islamic extremism, how it started how both clashed. There is also a Wiki page about the movie, check it out. Just search on Google for it. Warning: it is a 3 hour long thing, but I didn't regret taking that time to see it.
What that means is that there isn't actually an Al Qaeda, an almighty mega organization with thousands of sleeper cells ready to attack at any minute along with a centralized command center in the mountains of Afghanistan somewhere. You believe that or you think you believe that because you have been hearing it and seeing it on US media. Bin Ladin himself, before 9/11 _never_ referred to his organization as Al Qaeda, he addopted the name after the US said that "Al Qaeda is responsible" so he started using "Al Qaeda" since then. He doesn't have thousands of armed men protected him in a bunker somewhere. In one of the videos you see him with many such uniformed soldiers but he allegedly hired them for the day from a local war lord so they can appear on the video. "Al Qaeda" exists but it is actually small extremist groups of muslim men in certain countries that will be willing to kill themselves and civilians to shock and scare the world. Any such group of men is "Al Qaeda" -- they might not even know or have any connection with Bin Ladin's group. Sometimes these men will ask for donations from imams or wealthy arabs, but they don't all get salaries and health plans from Bin-Ladin. Anyway, watch the "Power of Nightmares" movie. It is a British documentary talking about this. It is very well done. You can download it for free . There is also a Wiki page on it, check it out, just search on Google, it will come up.
These people start to sound just like the guys with the flying car and tabletop fusion -- it is always "just around the corner", "any day now", "start investing today!"...sheesh!
Nicaea Creed does not define Christianity Yes. it does. It sure defines Christianity more than any comment on Slashdot written a thousand+ years later...
Christianity is about faith and belief. I don't know why it has to be this way, but then again, I don't know many other things of why we are here, where are we headed, what will happen after death and so on. The way I percieve God and know his existance , I can't outline a proof to 100% convince you of it, such that you couldn't possibly refute it.
I feel that there are multiple levels of reality. There is an exact physical world where strict laws of physics and math apply, but there is another world -- the human world. Where such things as pain, love, desire, needs, hopes come into play. All those are very real -- nobody will tell you that pain is not real, but you surely can't measure it. A scale of 1 to 10 won't encompas the pain of a mother loosing her child, or the pain being stuck in a POW camp.
Then perhaps there is yet another level of reality, a spiritual world if you wish, where God is, where we'll go after death and so on. Maybe it is another dimension, who knows.
But why am I a Christian? I was also raised in a Christian family, but I had to discover it on my own later in life. I think what convinced me the most, were the people, the Saints through the centuries who were willing to give up their life for their faith. Now, if you look at the apostles and the early Christians. If they didn't see the resurected Christ, but claimed they did, when it came to renouncing the faith, they should have all said "screw-it, we lied, we just wanted to be famous, forgive us, we recanant -- it was all farce and so on." -- but they didn't, none of apostles did it, they chose torture and death instead. That, at least for me, is a good deal of "reinforcing evidence".
A Christian is someone who follows the teachings of Christ
According to Him, he was the the Son of God. He wasn't a "nice" moral teacher. He was either the Son of God or a crazy person, there is no middle ground here. Kind of like someone claiming that he is Napoleon. They either are Napoleon or they are crazy. But anyway, if take most of the Christians today and those that have lived through the 2 thousand years, they would claim that indeed to be a Christian one would have to believe in the fact that Christ is God. One can claim today that they are Christian but they actually believe and worship Buddha. So they can go claiming they are Christians, just as I walked around claiming I am the president. Nobody can stop me but it would not be true.
3.6 Billion Degree superheated liquid, rushing out under extreme pressure and speed-- a truly exotic state of matter.
It turns out that "fear mongering" is what the neo-conservatives now in power in Washington DC need to do what they do. The most interesting conclusion of the film is that al Qaeda isn't this all global organization with thousands of sleeper cells ready to commit attrocities. That is what people like Bush, Cheney and Wolfowitz want us to believe. To find out why, whatch the move...
They are also not very scientific in their approach, as they often would refuse to be treated by doctors, and refuse to acknowledge the existense of bacteria, viruses and other micro-organisms and how these can cause disease.
I think they should just pick a new name. There was such a group on my campus and I approached their table thinking it is a group of scientists who are just Christian that have meetings, Bible study and what not, I had no idea it was a religion all by itself...
Check out the Wiki page on it too...
This is the biggest advantage of Novell. They'll milk their brand name for all its worth -- and they need it too...
When it is not clear, you are free to assume the worse. Whatever you assume about it, blame the ambiguous market speak of Boxxet...
This one bites if you reach for it.
Blame the sysadmin, fire the IT team if they screw up, I think that will make them more responsible and make them work harder.
You NEVER NEVER EVER let anyone you don't completely trust, which means only yourself, you family, your dog --- whatever, definetly not a large company! encrypt the data for you. It is like meeting someone on the street and asking them to go deposit a bunch of money for you.
There is a fundamental discrepancy here between the need to index and encypt. Google is not a phillantropic organisation, giving away email and GDrives for free! They use the stuff you hold in there to spit ads back at you. They will co-operate with the Feds. Security in this case is your and only your responsability. Just like you would't trust someone else with you money or your kids, don't trust someone else with your private/secret files. This means that everyone should be disciplined and encrypt their data. Privacy should be a concern for more people, encryption should be the norm, not the exception.
Depends what enterprise... If Ubuntu is easy to use, and there will be ways to distribute updates automatically, there will be way to remotely administer machines and other goodies, so I don't see why a company "thinking about" linux/open source won't agree to give it a try. Two years ago nobody has heard of Ubuntu and today it is one of the most popular Linux distributions worldwide. Who knows what might happen in another 2-3 years... I have used all 3: Redhat, SuSE and Ubuntu and I find that Ubuntu works best for me at home (scientific computing, some database manipulation + other regualar stuff like browsing and email stuff).
I have tried SuSE, it was nice, polished interface but it just didn't stand out. Now I am addicted to Ubuntu, it is simple, it does what I want and nothing more, kind of like crack cocaine...
Pig hearts are rarely used for working heart machine study, pig hearts are a lot more sensitive and rupture a lot easier than either human or mice heart. But we can use rabbit hearts and hamster hearts. Larger animals would need a complete re-design of our machines...
Lung cancer is probably the most deadly too. Perhaps there aren't many people who can stick a "I am a lung cancer survivor" sticker on the their car. Another interesting note is how today people will freely say to each other "oh, you should quit smoking" but they are a lot more hesitant to say to an obese person "oh, Janet, maybe you shouldn't have that 3rd doughnut, you should really lose some weight!" Both are serious health conditions that put life at risk, but somehow there is this discrepancy between the attitude towards each one...
And, yes, I'll keep "fucking" with mice. Unless you have a better biological model for us to test the drugs that we test...
and background oddities like myself aren't going to change that, whatever we might think. /. geeks) couldn't do much to be heard to to change anything, but not anymore. And I think you should want for people to agree with you, if you think you are right, you should share that with others.
Don't think that. You are at the computer, connected to the Internet. Today, bloggers can influence a great deal of things. 20 years ago, ordinary people (like us
But that wasn't the mice's fault. It was mine -- I had human expectations for them. People constantly anthropomorphize animals. They think of them as people and assign them human qualities.. "Dog are compassionate", "Mice are cute". That can go either way. The PETA people assign them all these noble qualities and protect the animals as if they are people. People who work in labs see the mice eat their babies and think how "evil" and "disgusting they are, they almost deserve to be experimented on". The truth is, it is neither, the are not moral, they just do what the instincts tell them to do.