I think one of the problems is that the mods system tries to do in one dimention categorization that is in multiple dimentions - Topicality, abusiveness, quality, humor. A post can easily be funny and flamebait, or insightful flamebait, or interesting and offtopic.
I would like to see the mod system as a series or radio buttons that go like [Funny | unfunny], [on | offtopic], [redundant | overrated | underrated], [flame | tame], [insightful | interesting | informative | incorrect]
with the ability to customize your view to rank comments based on humor, topicality, etc. instead of just the numerical ranking.
Re:Next you'll be telling kids to get off your law
on
Quake is 10
·
· Score: 1
Jesus, all the criticisms still go to show that to OSSers, gameplay is secondary to technical features. What you seem to regard as incremental improvements had major effects on the gameplay and the game community... I suppose you think Super Mario Bros. 3 is just a slightly improved version of Super Mario Bros.?
*Everything* is evolutionary if you're willing to be reductionist enough. Hey, it's all running around on a 3d arena and shooting things, right?
Counter-strike: Realistic setting - (not as real as Rainbow Six, but remember before this all FPSes had been sci-fi/fantasy because they were afraid of controversy), having to buy guns/gear between rounds, bomb defusal game. Gravity gun: Yup, gimmickey, but no one else had done it up til then AFAIK. Large outdoor areas: It does offer really different gameplay than tight indoor spaces. They actually existed in Doom engine games, but disappeared during the Quake generation because of technical constraints. I think Tribes was the first to bring it back. Halo: Okay, I forgot GoldenEye, but Halo is what made LAN parties mainstream. You don't know/don't care because you're a geek with a tricked out PC since the Eisenhower era, but believe me, Halo made FPSes accessible to the non-hardcore crowd. Voice chat: There were a bunch of incompatible third-party methods (I suppose including regular 'ol phones) for a while, but I think Halo may have been the first to make things standardized to the point where you could trust most people to have them. Anti-cheat software: Actually, I think you have the server actively checking for suspicious behavior, like how good people's aim is, etc. Voting: Yes, now they have non-hacked versions of this. Portables: God, I would love a good DS or PSP port of Quake. "Just more porting" my ass. This is the fundamental problem with tech heads, they think a game is like any other piece of code, like a compiler, a kernel, or accounting software. A game is a game, the rules and playflow that shape your interactions with intagible pixels - the way you interact with it is the whole point of the game. A portable version would be great, I hope you enjoy carrying a laptop around just for Quake.
Anyways, you can tell people it's all just Quake with more hacks, just like games are all just sitting in front of a monitor and hitting keys, if you want. I actually love Quake, but it isn't the slick FPSes of today, especially console ones. They each have their place, I guess.
Re:Next you'll be telling kids to get off your law
on
Quake is 10
·
· Score: 1
Wow, that kind of proved the point that Slashdotters are tech-obsessed junkies who won't know gameplay if it nailgunned them in the face:)
You don't play an engine, you play a game. This becomes an issue when you go multiplayer, because unless you have some really fancy game that will auto-interporate mods, you can only play against people with the same version or mods as you. So unless all the things you mention in your post are all rolled into one mod, it's kinda useless, since I'm sure the number of Quakeworld users is pretty damn low by Halo II or HL2 standards. But then, this is the open-source community, where forking and dividing the userbase is normal:)
Quake and its mods was revolutionary for introducing: in-game console full 3D mouselook grappling hook Threewave CTF Team Fortress Rocket Arena QuakeSpy
Post-Quake has seen innovations like: Counter-Strike gravity gun large outdoor areas Halo (good console play + xboxlive) voice chat anti-cheat software much better multiplayer setup (voting, level changes, the like)
Re:The Size was incredible
on
Quake is 10
·
· Score: 1, Funny
No, times have changed, it's now 9 Mebibytes in size.
Ironically, if you are ever in a lightining storm, it would be *safer* for you to be calling from inside a car, thanks to the large metal cage around you.
Of course, you might lose control from the sudden flash and boom...
Well, I just hope all their chairs are bolted down to the floor, or Steve Ballmer will be unstoppable when he forces his way in. "Gymnastic girls in tights!? FUCKING GOOGLE!! I'LL KILL YOU ALL!!!" (much chair throwing ensues)
I don't think so. I've lived in the states for many years, but I am Japanese, and am familiar with the anti-American sentiment in Japan and other countries. Perhaps I can explain for you.
You get french soldiers firing into crowds in Africa and killing dozens, and there's barely a peep about it even in France, let alone in the world media. Yet you get a couple marines allegedly murdering 15 civilians in Iraq..., and the whole world is screaming about it.... Now you tell me how that "matters more". It has nothing to do with which action is more important, or more harmful.
Maybe you missed the part where you dragged nearly 30 countries into the tar-pit of Iraq, which the French have not done so far in Africa. And fought the UN to give the invasion legitimacy, which was questionable to begin with. Japan had 600 of its soldiers (who are supposed to be for self-defence) dragged into the conflict, along with 3,000 South Koreans, 3,000 Italians, etc. in order to give your war a fig-leaf of international support. Of course, this was for the most part done against the people's will in most of these countries by politicians seeking favor with the U.S.
Or maybe you missed the part where Iraqi deaths are estimated as being between 20,000 to 100,000. How many of those were like Haditha? Abu Ghraib and Haditha are seen as indications of greater problems with the U.S. invasion and culture.
Both you and the grandparent poster are correct. There is a general backlash against the U.S., and it can be very irrational sometimes. However, it is also true that the U.S. has a lot of power to screw up with, and it does matter more when they do. You are looking at one incident of Haditha vs. French murders in Africa; how about if you look at the whole war/occupation in Iraq versus peacekeeping in Africa?
In short: The French shit on people. The Americans dump a truckload of shit on people, and make their friends shit on them, too.
Yes, neither Asimov's laws or real AI process would have been required in this case, but the ideas raised in this article are real: we are seeing more and more robotic or computerized machines interacting with people in the 'outside world', and we need to think clearly about how those will be programmed.
A lot of people here seem to be of the opinion that it's 'not a robot' unless it has an actual Turing-level AI, but I disagree. I think a 'robot' can be defined as a machine that performs tasks without direct human control, based on its own sensor inputs' 'understanding' of the world. Whether or not a robot can recognize the difference between a human and a tree is less relevant than whether they are aware enough of their surroundings to avoid running into either object.
A Roomba has less 'intelligence' than a cockroach, but we let it run freely in our homes. The Roomba company is apparently going to build a lawnmower; who would let a cockroach or a cat operate a lawnmower?
The most likely cause of problems might be the automatic sensors companies like BMW and Honda are putting in their cars. Supposedly there are prototypes of cars that can do parallel parking without driver intercention. While there will be a driver there to supervise, how long until we hear about accidents involving self-driving cars? Or even just the 'back-up' sensors that are designed to tell if there's a kid behind your car - if your car tells you there's nothing behind you, and you run over some kids, can you blame the car? Assuming it's an area you woulldn't have seen the kids in the mirror yourself? What if the sensor had 'seen' the kid, but the AI determined it wasn't a problem?
Um, this is for looking inside. You get ambushed by the people you visit?
What kind of Girl Scout/Mormon/Scientologist/Vaccum Salesman are you?
You're supposed to ambush *them*, silly!
Pelley asked Jenkins what amazed him the most about the world since he left it in 1965.
He had never laid a hand on a computer, much less been on the Internet. He told 60 Minutes he was surprised there were so many women in the Army, that there were black policemen, and, as he put it, you can't smoke anywhere anymore.
Jenkins says he had been told about the historic landing of men of the moon. "I was told that by the Koreans, one of the officers. They wouldn't say what country, but they said, 'Una handa la'... some country landed on the moon."
So apparently, smoking bans are as shocking as landing on the moon:)
But seriously, what is it with people saying, "oh, things are no different now than they ever were?" Yes, women wore pants in armament factories, some people had tattoos and piercings, and there was some race mixing going on - but to pretend that there has been no cultural change since the early 20th century is rather shallow.
It is taking a binary absolutist position on social issues, and saying that "Since some people did X, therefore the whole culture was like that back then". A better issue is to look at cultural acceptance levels, which tend to have a analog scale of acceptability or "respectability".
To take women wearing pants, they were taken up as part of work uniforms long ago, but was not generally seen in general public until some subcultures adopted it in the 50's, and then the 60's created widespread adoption of the fashion, at least in the U.S.
I didn't know where to step into this discusssion, so I might as well do it here.
I think your post highlights a problem with western society in general, in that it glorifies those that lead and denigrates those who are led. It really tends to disrespect people who are loyal and serve others willingly. While it's nice that the feminists want women to be free of being in a position where they're not respected, they have simply adopted the western aggressive masculine values and asserted that women can fill those roles, too. They unfortunately have not worked to get men and women who do not want to be aggressive leaders respected.
A similar thing happened in the civil rights movement; African Americans were rather understandably fed up with being forced into positions of servitude to whites, so now their culture places great emphasis on not letting others tell you what to do. It probobly has gone to an extreme, however, now that blacks who want to succeed academically or in corporate cultures are accused of "acting white".
I come from an Asian background, and our culture tends to place great value in loyalty and servitude, which are seen as negative values in the west. Of course this can be taken to bad levels, but in general it's a culture that handles not being aggressive very well. In any social structure, there can be only one at the top; whereas Asian cultures teach that it's not a bad thing to be the leader, western culture tells people that they can be the leader if they try hard enough, and that you're a loser if you're not. Of course this is false, and only leads to disappointment and anger, as the feminists feel.
Sigh. As a guy who does not fit into the traditional masculine roles very well, I get really annoyed at feminists and their disrespect for those who don't mind being led. If I want a "big, strong woman" to lead me around, the feminists will be the first ones to lose respect in me, and treat me like a lapdog for women. And they'll still complain to me about how "men" have been oppressing them, and lump me together with their abusive ex-boyfriends and Hitler.
If only they learned not to make fun of people who are "losers"...
You, sir, are a genius for somehow linking Samuel L. Jackson, the most badass gangsta on film, and Dick Cheney, the palest, stiffest Vice-President of The United States ever - and having it be totally on-topic! And modded Insightful! I salute you, good sir.
However, I should point out that it was, in fact, the John Travolta character who shot Marvin in the face. I will not even attempt to think about the implications of a John Travolta-Dick Cheney connection, which would be truely frightening.
Now for a on-topic addition:
"Oh sorry, didn't mean to shoot you in the face yet" - Ron Jeremy "Mr. Arafat? Hey, guess what I'm doing right now!" - Bill Clinton
No kidding, and they don't even cover the U.S. ones very well. What about New Orleans, which the Army Corps of Engineers admitted they screwed up on? And it's only a year or so ago? Losing an entire city counts as a disaster, I think.
Or how about Bhopal? Chernobyl? Texas City? All of those nearly destroyed an entire community.
Then there are the dam breaches, which are apparently more common than I thought. The Vajont Dam in 1963 (2,000 dead), Buffalo Creek flood of 1972 (125 dead), Val di Stave dam 1985 (268 dead), Shakidor dam in 2005(40 dead), Banqiao dam 1975 (26,000 dead), the list goes on.
As far as vehicles, how about the Pinto? Or the Comet jetliner?
I hope you're not putting too much faith in what you find in Google. I have a friend who happens to share a name with a gay porn star, who is of course the first hit on Google for his name. Thankfully, it's the kind of thing where looking at a (ahem) pic would confirm that it's not him, but imagine if it were not easily verifiable, like someone writing a blog about their experiences doing hard drugs.
As with blog news reports, things posted on blogs generally have no verifiability. That includes if the person posting is who they say they are. Someone could easily slander someone by planting a fake blog of them, and it would be hard to find out it's not true.
Anyway, I hope you are not taking blog posts supposedly by a job candidate at face value. Anything you read on a blog should be prefaced with, "A random person on the internet says that John Doe said: ".
Amen to that. To rehash what I said in a earlier thread, I bought a wifi card which had an GPL driver provided by the manufacturer themselves, only to find that it had not been merged into the Debian kernel or made into a binary deb file, and I had to apt-get install the source and compile the damn thing myself. Barely an improvement on downloading a tar.gz from the vendor's site.
Meanwhile, Ubuntu 5.10 supported the card out-of-the-box. No compiles, re-configurations, or downloading additional software needed.
Nearly 7 months later, Debian *still* doesn't have binary driver packages for the Ralink card, even though they've discussed it since last year. I know Debian's slow and conservative, but not shipping a driver for a card where a GPL driver already exists is extremely unhelpful. Especially when a vendor provides a GPL driver like we've always asked them to, it makes the community look bad if the distro doesn't actually merge it.
Sort of, kind of. From what I can tell, Linus does not really talk much to traditional media, and he does not announce his personal plans or activities. For someone as high profile as him, it probobly does count as 'reclusive'.
I live in the Portland area, Linus basically lives in the next town over. There is a very heavy geek population around here, but Linus does not have the kind of local physical presence you would expect from a guy of his stature in the geek community. I know one friend who has managed to meet him at a party, but that was mostly by luck. Apparently he keeps his plans pretty private. I met Ward Cunningham, the guy who invented Wikis and the Portland Pattern Repository, and he apparently doesn't see much of Linus, either.
He also does not come to many geeky functions or meetings, AFAIK he has not come to any local LUGs or conventions recently. When PSU dedicated its new CS/Engineering building, the governer and Steve Ballmer came, but no Linus. Maybe he didn't want a chair thrown at him:)
I think it is a combination of relative shyness, combined with a fear of having a horde of fans follow him or form a personality cult. There are so many Linux geeks around here that Linus might be able to form an actual cult if he tried. If he ran for mayor, he might actually come second or third. He wants to avoid that kind of limelight, I'm guessing. I don't see him on much traditional media.
However, he does talk to some alternative media: some random zine put out by a internet cafe managed to get an interview with him a few months ago.
So anyways, for reasons that are totally understandable, Linus is a reclusive hermit living in a hobbit-hole in the hills around Portland:) It is this very reclusiveness that has made him the ring-bearer, for none other than him can sneak undetected into the depths of Mordor...
Keep in mind that support varies between distros, as well. I got a Ralink-based PCMCIA wireless card for my laptop last fall, and found that Debian, Suse, and Knoppix did not support it, even though Ralink themselves had released GPL drivers for it. To quote HP's Linux wireless page: Like for the RT2400, Ralink wrote a Linux driver for the RT2500 and RT2750, but this time they decided to release it themselves as GPL. Moreover, the driver is functional, full of features and with a graphical utility, so this represent a very generous contribution to the OpenSource community.
Yes, I tried both testing and unstable for Debian, and fairly newish versions of Knoppix and Suse LiveEval. I suppose I could have compiled them myself for Debian, but I want to avoid that kind of hassle.
Luckily, I had a spare partition, and I found that Ubuntu 5.10 (Badger) supported the Ralink card just fine.
Suse LiveEval on the other hand supported my built-in Broadcom chipset, apparently through ndiswrapper.
I must say that I lost some faith in Debian through this. I mean, a company does what we've always asked companies to do - release full GPL drivers, which is more than what other companies in the field have done - and the Debian team did not live up to their expectations. I found out that the drivers had been discussed for inclusion since October of '05, but as of today, May of '06, there are only sourcepackages available for Debian.
Not really. While it's not true 'racism' if they're not depicted negatively, sterotyping can be bad if it restricts people to a one-dimentional view of a people or builds up expectations that can't be met.
One example is little people - people sterotype them as being more childish, carefree or happy like gnomes or dwarves in movies and fantasy. That is not a negative trait, but being sterotyped as such and being expected to be always happy and such probobly are annoying as hell. Of corse it also makes worse the problem of not being taken seriously, which little people have in general.
Being told that you "are a credit to your race", or "why can't you be nice, like other ", is wierd and not a great feeling. I guess white people don't have as many instances of it because most of the culture here is white and there is no serious attempt to pigeonhole white people(at least in the west). When you're of a different race, it can be a burden to live up to (or down to) certain expectations of you based on your race.
Sorry, no. The whole "they're trying to challenge expectations" thing is crap.
If they wanted to challenge preconcived notions, they should have cast the Orcs as the "European" race, and the humans as the 'noble savage' race. If you're thinking, "That doesn't make sense, the orcs have to be the noble savages, the humans are based on Europeans", then that really only shows how deep-rooted the sterotyping goes.
Now, I'm not an guy that gets hung up on the uber-PC "Don't offend anyone, anytime" thing. I'm willing to play a Rastafarian Middle-Earth monster in a loincloth, or a bushido psychic space swordsman. But I'm not going to pretend the basis for those characters aren't in various sterotypes we have about other cultures, or that the most balanced character race is often based on our own culture, which we see as most well-rounded, while other cultures represent the more extreme elements.
The Klingons have changed a bit over the years. The original Klingons were a stand-in for the Soviets, with features that were more Asiatic than European.
By the TNG era, they had a much more samurai/mongol warrior feel, with a constant martial and honor-obsessed outlook, but with a spiritual side that sounded like rehashed Zen. And their skin had mysteriously darkened, like a reverse Michael Jackson.
By the late TNG/DS9 era, they also had a lot of Norse influence, their stuff about Sto'Vo'Kor was obviously based on Valhalla and their behavior(especially when drinking) was very rough, like sterotypical Vikings.
The Romulans, OTOH, have always had more of a Asian feel to them. They were the 'other bad guy empire' in TOS, an obvious allusion to the communist Chinese. They were portrayed as more secretive than the Klingons, which China was compared to the USSR at the time. Also, they are related to the Vulcans, who were the equivalent of the Japanese or Taiwanese, the 'good asians' in the cold war era. The fact that they are still more secretive and imperial while the Klingons 'came around' to peace towards the Feds highlights it some more. (Yes, the Klingons having peace with the Feds was an allusion to the hoped-for ending of the Cold War between the US and USSR, desipite TNG being made before that).
The cloaking device thing is clearly based on submarine analogies, true.
The thing is, all the non-human races have some mixed sterotypes of other races thrown in, with no simple race X = Y correlation. Let's not even get started on the Ferengi...
Ahh, finally I can put my class skillz to good use!:)
I've been actually taking a class on terrorism, from a guy who's very right-wing. One of the criteria for regular terrorism is that it must be by a "non-state actor", for political/religious or other "non-criminal" reasons, and usually must be through unlawful means. There is a separate definition of "state terrorism", which must be judged on a different criteria.
So on your definitons:
al quaeda = yes, obviously. pro-life protestors = some of them clearly are. school bullies = no, unless there is a political, religious, or racial motivation. NSA = no, though they might be going over the line as far as the law is concerned. George W. Bush = a popular sentiment, but no. As head of state, he has the power to go to wage war. FBI = no. PETA = no, though their friends in the Animal Liberation Front are. Greenpeace = no, though their friends in Earth Liberation Front are. Patent trolls = no, they're just taking advantage of your stupid legal system. China = no. Calling a whole country 'terrorist' usually is incorrect. Perhaps parts of their government, but state terror is somewhat different. Microsoft = no. UN = no. MPAA/RIAA = no. I have heard some of their actions might violate the RICO act, but they are still unprosecuted.
bomb assasinate Bush Blair Osama kill terror anthrax Chavez oil Castro Iran Iraq hijack suicide bomber 9/11 jihad I find your ideas intruiging and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
you'll be earning money if an agent buys a book You will know "they" are watching you when Amazon says "People who bought this book also bought: Wiretapping For Dummies, How To Inflitrate Friends And Blackmail People, The Eleven Habits Of Highly Effective Crossdressers."
Slashdot Mirror
I think one of the problems is that the mods system tries to do in one dimention categorization that is in multiple dimentions - Topicality, abusiveness, quality, humor. A post can easily be funny and flamebait, or insightful flamebait, or interesting and offtopic.
I would like to see the mod system as a series or radio buttons that go like
[Funny | unfunny], [on | offtopic], [redundant | overrated | underrated], [flame | tame], [insightful | interesting | informative | incorrect]
with the ability to customize your view to rank comments based on humor, topicality, etc. instead of just the numerical ranking.
Jesus, all the criticisms still go to show that to OSSers, gameplay is secondary to technical features. What you seem to regard as incremental improvements had major effects on the gameplay and the game community... I suppose you think Super Mario Bros. 3 is just a slightly improved version of Super Mario Bros.?
*Everything* is evolutionary if you're willing to be reductionist enough. Hey, it's all running around on a 3d arena and shooting things, right?
Counter-strike: Realistic setting - (not as real as Rainbow Six, but remember before this all FPSes had been sci-fi/fantasy because they were afraid of controversy), having to buy guns/gear between rounds, bomb defusal game.
Gravity gun: Yup, gimmickey, but no one else had done it up til then AFAIK.
Large outdoor areas: It does offer really different gameplay than tight indoor spaces. They actually existed in Doom engine games, but disappeared during the Quake generation because of technical constraints. I think Tribes was the first to bring it back.
Halo: Okay, I forgot GoldenEye, but Halo is what made LAN parties mainstream. You don't know/don't care because you're a geek with a tricked out PC since the Eisenhower era, but believe me, Halo made FPSes accessible to the non-hardcore crowd.
Voice chat: There were a bunch of incompatible third-party methods (I suppose including regular 'ol phones) for a while, but I think Halo may have been the first to make things standardized to the point where you could trust most people to have them.
Anti-cheat software: Actually, I think you have the server actively checking for suspicious behavior, like how good people's aim is, etc.
Voting: Yes, now they have non-hacked versions of this.
Portables: God, I would love a good DS or PSP port of Quake. "Just more porting" my ass. This is the fundamental problem with tech heads, they think a game is like any other piece of code, like a compiler, a kernel, or accounting software. A game is a game, the rules and playflow that shape your interactions with intagible pixels - the way you interact with it is the whole point of the game. A portable version would be great, I hope you enjoy carrying a laptop around just for Quake.
Anyways, you can tell people it's all just Quake with more hacks, just like games are all just sitting in front of a monitor and hitting keys, if you want. I actually love Quake, but it isn't the slick FPSes of today, especially console ones. They each have their place, I guess.
Wow, that kind of proved the point that Slashdotters are tech-obsessed junkies who won't know gameplay if it nailgunned them in the face :)
:)
You don't play an engine, you play a game. This becomes an issue when you go multiplayer, because unless you have some really fancy game that will auto-interporate mods, you can only play against people with the same version or mods as you. So unless all the things you mention in your post are all rolled into one mod, it's kinda useless, since I'm sure the number of Quakeworld users is pretty damn low by Halo II or HL2 standards. But then, this is the open-source community, where forking and dividing the userbase is normal
Quake and its mods was revolutionary for introducing:
in-game console
full 3D mouselook
grappling hook
Threewave CTF
Team Fortress
Rocket Arena
QuakeSpy
Post-Quake has seen innovations like:
Counter-Strike
gravity gun
large outdoor areas
Halo (good console play + xboxlive)
voice chat
anti-cheat software
much better multiplayer setup (voting, level changes, the like)
No, times have changed, it's now 9 Mebibytes in size.
Ironically, if you are ever in a lightining storm, it would be *safer* for you to be calling from inside a car, thanks to the large metal cage around you.
Of course, you might lose control from the sudden flash and boom...
Well, I just hope all their chairs are bolted down to the floor, or Steve Ballmer will be unstoppable when he forces his way in. "Gymnastic girls in tights!? FUCKING GOOGLE!! I'LL KILL YOU ALL!!!" (much chair throwing ensues)
I don't think so. I've lived in the states for many years, but I am Japanese, and am familiar with the anti-American sentiment in Japan and other countries. Perhaps I can explain for you.
..., and the whole world is screaming about it .... Now you tell me how that "matters more". It has nothing to do with which action is more important, or more harmful.
You get french soldiers firing into crowds in Africa and killing dozens, and there's barely a peep about it even in France, let alone in the world media. Yet you get a couple marines allegedly murdering 15 civilians in Iraq
Maybe you missed the part where you dragged nearly 30 countries into the tar-pit of Iraq, which the French have not done so far in Africa. And fought the UN to give the invasion legitimacy, which was questionable to begin with. Japan had 600 of its soldiers (who are supposed to be for self-defence) dragged into the conflict, along with 3,000 South Koreans, 3,000 Italians, etc. in order to give your war a fig-leaf of international support. Of course, this was for the most part done against the people's will in most of these countries by politicians seeking favor with the U.S.
Or maybe you missed the part where Iraqi deaths are estimated as being between 20,000 to 100,000. How many of those were like Haditha? Abu Ghraib and Haditha are seen as indications of greater problems with the U.S. invasion and culture.
Both you and the grandparent poster are correct. There is a general backlash against the U.S., and it can be very irrational sometimes. However, it is also true that the U.S. has a lot of power to screw up with, and it does matter more when they do. You are looking at one incident of Haditha vs. French murders in Africa; how about if you look at the whole war/occupation in Iraq versus peacekeeping in Africa?
In short: The French shit on people. The Americans dump a truckload of shit on people, and make their friends shit on them, too.
Yes, neither Asimov's laws or real AI process would have been required in this case, but the ideas raised in this article are real: we are seeing more and more robotic or computerized machines interacting with people in the 'outside world', and we need to think clearly about how those will be programmed.
A lot of people here seem to be of the opinion that it's 'not a robot' unless it has an actual Turing-level AI, but I disagree. I think a 'robot' can be defined as a machine that performs tasks without direct human control, based on its own sensor inputs' 'understanding' of the world. Whether or not a robot can recognize the difference between a human and a tree is less relevant than whether they are aware enough of their surroundings to avoid running into either object.
A Roomba has less 'intelligence' than a cockroach, but we let it run freely in our homes. The Roomba company is apparently going to build a lawnmower; who would let a cockroach or a cat operate a lawnmower?
The most likely cause of problems might be the automatic sensors companies like BMW and Honda are putting in their cars. Supposedly there are prototypes of cars that can do parallel parking without driver intercention. While there will be a driver there to supervise, how long until we hear about accidents involving self-driving cars? Or even just the 'back-up' sensors that are designed to tell if there's a kid behind your car - if your car tells you there's nothing behind you, and you run over some kids, can you blame the car? Assuming it's an area you woulldn't have seen the kids in the mirror yourself? What if the sensor had 'seen' the kid, but the AI determined it wasn't a problem?
Um, this is for looking inside. You get ambushed by the people you visit? What kind of Girl Scout/Mormon/Scientologist/Vaccum Salesman are you? You're supposed to ambush *them*, silly!
We Slashdot users, of course, will never stoop to such measures just to get modded up :)
I used to think that too, until I played Rock-Paper-Scissors-Chuck Norris.
"Roc-"
"CHUCK NORRIS!"
(a roundhouse kick to the head)
"I win!"
Well, according to this interview (on the 3rd page) with Charles R. Jenkins, who spent 40 years in North Korea,
:)
Pelley asked Jenkins what amazed him the most about the world since he left it in 1965.
He had never laid a hand on a computer, much less been on the Internet. He told 60 Minutes he was surprised there were so many women in the Army, that there were black policemen, and, as he put it, you can't smoke anywhere anymore.
Jenkins says he had been told about the historic landing of men of the moon. "I was told that by the Koreans, one of the officers. They wouldn't say what country, but they said, 'Una handa la'... some country landed on the moon."
So apparently, smoking bans are as shocking as landing on the moon
But seriously, what is it with people saying, "oh, things are no different now than they ever were?" Yes, women wore pants in armament factories, some people had tattoos and piercings, and there was some race mixing going on - but to pretend that there has been no cultural change since the early 20th century is rather shallow.
It is taking a binary absolutist position on social issues, and saying that "Since some people did X, therefore the whole culture was like that back then". A better issue is to look at cultural acceptance levels, which tend to have a analog scale of acceptability or "respectability".
To take women wearing pants, they were taken up as part of work uniforms long ago, but was not generally seen in general public until some subcultures adopted it in the 50's, and then the 60's created widespread adoption of the fashion, at least in the U.S.
I didn't know where to step into this discusssion, so I might as well do it here.
I think your post highlights a problem with western society in general, in that it glorifies those that lead and denigrates those who are led. It really tends to disrespect people who are loyal and serve others willingly. While it's nice that the feminists want women to be free of being in a position where they're not respected, they have simply adopted the western aggressive masculine values and asserted that women can fill those roles, too. They unfortunately have not worked to get men and women who do not want to be aggressive leaders respected.
A similar thing happened in the civil rights movement; African Americans were rather understandably fed up with being forced into positions of servitude to whites, so now their culture places great emphasis on not letting others tell you what to do. It probobly has gone to an extreme, however, now that blacks who want to succeed academically or in corporate cultures are accused of "acting white".
I come from an Asian background, and our culture tends to place great value in loyalty and servitude, which are seen as negative values in the west. Of course this can be taken to bad levels, but in general it's a culture that handles not being aggressive very well. In any social structure, there can be only one at the top; whereas Asian cultures teach that it's not a bad thing to be the leader, western culture tells people that they can be the leader if they try hard enough, and that you're a loser if you're not. Of course this is false, and only leads to disappointment and anger, as the feminists feel.
Sigh. As a guy who does not fit into the traditional masculine roles very well, I get really annoyed at feminists and their disrespect for those who don't mind being led. If I want a "big, strong woman" to lead me around, the feminists will be the first ones to lose respect in me, and treat me like a lapdog for women. And they'll still complain to me about how "men" have been oppressing them, and lump me together with their abusive ex-boyfriends and Hitler.
If only they learned not to make fun of people who are "losers"...
You, sir, are a genius for somehow linking Samuel L. Jackson, the most badass gangsta on film, and Dick Cheney, the palest, stiffest Vice-President of The United States ever - and having it be totally on-topic! And modded Insightful! I salute you, good sir.
However, I should point out that it was, in fact, the John Travolta character who shot Marvin in the face. I will not even attempt to think about the implications of a John Travolta-Dick Cheney connection, which would be truely frightening.
Now for a on-topic addition:
"Oh sorry, didn't mean to shoot you in the face yet" - Ron Jeremy
"Mr. Arafat? Hey, guess what I'm doing right now!" - Bill Clinton
No kidding, and they don't even cover the U.S. ones very well. What about New Orleans, which the Army Corps of Engineers admitted they screwed up on? And it's only a year or so ago? Losing an entire city counts as a disaster, I think.
Or how about Bhopal? Chernobyl? Texas City? All of those nearly destroyed an entire community.
Then there are the dam breaches, which are apparently more common than I thought. The Vajont Dam in 1963 (2,000 dead), Buffalo Creek flood of 1972 (125 dead), Val di Stave dam 1985 (268 dead), Shakidor dam in 2005(40 dead), Banqiao dam 1975 (26,000 dead), the list goes on.
As far as vehicles, how about the Pinto? Or the Comet jetliner?
Things I hope don't turn out to be engineering disasters: Umatilla chemical weapons depot, Yucca mountain, Three Gorges dam.
Okay, so if a (Fart * Greenhouse = Earth * 5C), how many Volkswagons Of Exhaust equals the heat generated by a Burning Library Of Congress?
Is it anything like a 747 Full Of Encyclopedias crashing into a Football Field per Second? (and if so, is it a European or American Football Field?)
I hope you're not putting too much faith in what you find in Google. I have a friend who happens to share a name with a gay porn star, who is of course the first hit on Google for his name. Thankfully, it's the kind of thing where looking at a (ahem) pic would confirm that it's not him, but imagine if it were not easily verifiable, like someone writing a blog about their experiences doing hard drugs.
As with blog news reports, things posted on blogs generally have no verifiability. That includes if the person posting is who they say they are. Someone could easily slander someone by planting a fake blog of them, and it would be hard to find out it's not true.
Anyway, I hope you are not taking blog posts supposedly by a job candidate at face value. Anything you read on a blog should be prefaced with, "A random person on the internet says that John Doe said: ".
Amen to that. To rehash what I said in a earlier thread, I bought a wifi card which had an GPL driver provided by the manufacturer themselves, only to find that it had not been merged into the Debian kernel or made into a binary deb file, and I had to apt-get install the source and compile the damn thing myself. Barely an improvement on downloading a tar.gz from the vendor's site.
Meanwhile, Ubuntu 5.10 supported the card out-of-the-box. No compiles, re-configurations, or downloading additional software needed.
Nearly 7 months later, Debian *still* doesn't have binary driver packages for the Ralink card, even though they've discussed it since last year. I know Debian's slow and conservative, but not shipping a driver for a card where a GPL driver already exists is extremely unhelpful. Especially when a vendor provides a GPL driver like we've always asked them to, it makes the community look bad if the distro doesn't actually merge it.
Sort of, kind of. From what I can tell, Linus does not really talk much to traditional media, and he does not announce his personal plans or activities. For someone as high profile as him, it probobly does count as 'reclusive'.
:)
:) It is this very reclusiveness that has made him the ring-bearer, for none other than him can sneak undetected into the depths of Mordor...
I live in the Portland area, Linus basically lives in the next town over. There is a very heavy geek population around here, but Linus does not have the kind of local physical presence you would expect from a guy of his stature in the geek community. I know one friend who has managed to meet him at a party, but that was mostly by luck. Apparently he keeps his plans pretty private. I met Ward Cunningham, the guy who invented Wikis and the Portland Pattern Repository, and he apparently doesn't see much of Linus, either.
He also does not come to many geeky functions or meetings, AFAIK he has not come to any local LUGs or conventions recently. When PSU dedicated its new CS/Engineering building, the governer and Steve Ballmer came, but no Linus. Maybe he didn't want a chair thrown at him
I think it is a combination of relative shyness, combined with a fear of having a horde of fans follow him or form a personality cult. There are so many Linux geeks around here that Linus might be able to form an actual cult if he tried. If he ran for mayor, he might actually come second or third. He wants to avoid that kind of limelight, I'm guessing. I don't see him on much traditional media.
However, he does talk to some alternative media: some random zine put out by a internet cafe managed to get an interview with him a few months ago.
So anyways, for reasons that are totally understandable, Linus is a reclusive hermit living in a hobbit-hole in the hills around Portland
Keep in mind that support varies between distros, as well. I got a Ralink-based PCMCIA wireless card for my laptop last fall, and found that Debian, Suse, and Knoppix did not support it, even though Ralink themselves had released GPL drivers for it. To quote HP's Linux wireless page: Like for the RT2400, Ralink wrote a Linux driver for the RT2500 and RT2750, but this time they decided to release it themselves as GPL. Moreover, the driver is functional, full of features and with a graphical utility, so this represent a very generous contribution to the OpenSource community.
Yes, I tried both testing and unstable for Debian, and fairly newish versions of Knoppix and Suse LiveEval. I suppose I could have compiled them myself for Debian, but I want to avoid that kind of hassle.
Luckily, I had a spare partition, and I found that Ubuntu 5.10 (Badger) supported the Ralink card just fine.
Suse LiveEval on the other hand supported my built-in Broadcom chipset, apparently through ndiswrapper.
I must say that I lost some faith in Debian through this. I mean, a company does what we've always asked companies to do - release full GPL drivers, which is more than what other companies in the field have done - and the Debian team did not live up to their expectations. I found out that the drivers had been discussed for inclusion since October of '05, but as of today, May of '06, there are only source packages available for Debian.
Not really. While it's not true 'racism' if they're not depicted negatively, sterotyping can be bad if it restricts people to a one-dimentional view of a people or builds up expectations that can't be met.
One example is little people - people sterotype them as being more childish, carefree or happy like gnomes or dwarves in movies and fantasy. That is not a negative trait, but being sterotyped as such and being expected to be always happy and such probobly are annoying as hell. Of corse it also makes worse the problem of not being taken seriously, which little people have in general.
Being told that you "are a credit to your race", or "why can't you be nice, like other ", is wierd and not a great feeling. I guess white people don't have as many instances of it because most of the culture here is white and there is no serious attempt to pigeonhole white people(at least in the west). When you're of a different race, it can be a burden to live up to (or down to) certain expectations of you based on your race.
Sorry, no. The whole "they're trying to challenge expectations" thing is crap.
If they wanted to challenge preconcived notions, they should have cast the Orcs as the "European" race, and the humans as the 'noble savage' race. If you're thinking, "That doesn't make sense, the orcs have to be the noble savages, the humans are based on Europeans", then that really only shows how deep-rooted the sterotyping goes.
Now, I'm not an guy that gets hung up on the uber-PC "Don't offend anyone, anytime" thing. I'm willing to play a Rastafarian Middle-Earth monster in a loincloth, or a bushido psychic space swordsman. But I'm not going to pretend the basis for those characters aren't in various sterotypes we have about other cultures, or that the most balanced character race is often based on our own culture, which we see as most well-rounded, while other cultures represent the more extreme elements.
The Klingons have changed a bit over the years. The original Klingons were a stand-in for the Soviets, with features that were more Asiatic than European.
By the TNG era, they had a much more samurai/mongol warrior feel, with a constant martial and honor-obsessed outlook, but with a spiritual side that sounded like rehashed Zen. And their skin had mysteriously darkened, like a reverse Michael Jackson.
By the late TNG/DS9 era, they also had a lot of Norse influence, their stuff about Sto'Vo'Kor was obviously based on Valhalla and their behavior(especially when drinking) was very rough, like sterotypical Vikings.
The Romulans, OTOH, have always had more of a Asian feel to them. They were the 'other bad guy empire' in TOS, an obvious allusion to the communist Chinese. They were portrayed as more secretive than the Klingons, which China was compared to the USSR at the time. Also, they are related to the Vulcans, who were the equivalent of the Japanese or Taiwanese, the 'good asians' in the cold war era. The fact that they are still more secretive and imperial while the Klingons 'came around' to peace towards the Feds highlights it some more. (Yes, the Klingons having peace with the Feds was an allusion to the hoped-for ending of the Cold War between the US and USSR, desipite TNG being made before that).
The cloaking device thing is clearly based on submarine analogies, true.
The thing is, all the non-human races have some mixed sterotypes of other races thrown in, with no simple race X = Y correlation. Let's not even get started on the Ferengi...
Ahh, finally I can put my class skillz to good use! :)
I've been actually taking a class on terrorism, from a guy who's very right-wing. One of the criteria for regular terrorism is that it must be by a "non-state actor", for political/religious or other "non-criminal" reasons, and usually must be through unlawful means. There is a separate definition of "state terrorism", which must be judged on a different criteria.
So on your definitons:
al quaeda = yes, obviously.
pro-life protestors = some of them clearly are.
school bullies = no, unless there is a political, religious, or racial motivation.
NSA = no, though they might be going over the line as far as the law is concerned.
George W. Bush = a popular sentiment, but no. As head of state, he has the power to go to wage war.
FBI = no.
PETA = no, though their friends in the Animal Liberation Front are.
Greenpeace = no, though their friends in Earth Liberation Front are.
Patent trolls = no, they're just taking advantage of your stupid legal system.
China = no. Calling a whole country 'terrorist' usually is incorrect. Perhaps parts of their government, but state terror is somewhat different.
Microsoft = no.
UN = no.
MPAA/RIAA = no. I have heard some of their actions might violate the RICO act, but they are still unprosecuted.
bomb assasinate Bush Blair Osama kill terror anthrax Chavez oil Castro Iran Iraq hijack suicide bomber 9/11 jihad
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