As for the cheats, of course typing in cheats makes the game less realistic. Unless you think reality is some computer simulation that can be similarly cheated, like in the Matrix. But I digress.
As for the cops being just another gang, that's sorta like real life. And income tax is a protection racket.
Yet another advantage to having humanoid robots is that humans can stand-in for the robots. This can be quite useful especially in early stages of using intelligent robots, since a malfunctioning robot could be replaced with a human.
What happens when the spaceships designed to be fixed by R2D2 have a problem that R2D2 can't figure out?
the robots gain enough to power to completely take care of human beings? Then the humans in question no longer need to go about their day-to-day business. Soon crossing the street to go to work becomes an unnecessary risk because a robot could be sent to work in your place. Once economic consierations are swept aside by the vastly superior powers of our robot companions, then all that is left is weighing potential physical harm vs. potential psychological harm. Then the robots will see that it is in the best interest of human beings that they be subtly and slowly adjusted to being protected against harm with associated slow loss of freedom, at a gradual rate to reduce psychological impact. So while your argument may hold water in the short-term, in the long-term the laws break-down and you get robots running our lives and taking away our freedoms (even if it takes several generations of humans for the robots to accomplish this). The end result is that humans become pampered pets of robots. An ignoble end for a once valiantly defiant species.
is that it is very unlikely that you could get away with un-premeditated violence against a police officer. If you mess with a police officer, you are probably going down, whether that means arrest, or worse. The police officers are simply one of the most obnoxiously difficult parts of the whole game. How many other characters in the game can end your mission simply by getting close to you and 'arresting' you? How many other characters in the game stand a good chance in a gun fight or a car chase with you?
I only get about 5 to 6 kBps with Star Downloader. Granted that is twice what I get with either the default IE or the default Mozilla downloader. But still, with a 50 kBps connection, I feel cheated...
My TiVo records the programs I want to watch. Granted I have to tell it ahead of time, but so what? There is no additional costs past my cable bill and the initial fee for the TiVo service. If there is a series I like, I record every episode. If there are movies I want to see, I record about ten of them and then later choose the one that meets my whim.
All that Mr. Gates has described is marrying TiVo with artificial intelligence, which is already feasible. In fact, Mr. Gates already has AI installed in his mansion to play music, display artwork on screens, and select appropriate television programs individually catered to the tastes of whoever is in the room. It's easy to predict the next big thing when you are the richest man in the world and you already have one.
Mr. Gates, DVD's are already obsolete, unless you want to watch something that's not on television. However, there is still a niche market for collector's items that will be difficult to fill with the technology that Mr. Gates describes. And what do you do when you can't get re-runs of a particular program such as B5 any other way but by buying it?
Measure the beam width at immediately after leaving the gun. Go to your friendly local neighborhood (American) football field and measure the beam width at 100 yards (or meters).
Calculate the angular diffraction.
Compare this to the minimum angular diffraction for the laser diameter and wavelength. Then choose a lense that minimizes the angular diffraction. Alternatively, choose a lense size that minimizes the laser dot size at some particular distance. The two methods shouldn't be practically different at these scales.
Unfortunately I don't have easy access to my textbooks at the moment, but if you want help on the math and physics you can send me a message.
"Pent-" is a Greek root for "5" and "-ium" is a Latin suffix often used for new elements. Thus the Pentium is the Fifth Element. As anybody who has seen the movie knows, the Fifth Element is a sexy red-head. That makes the Pentium the sexiest processor around.
In certain industries, such as construction, the US is pretty self-sufficient so it doesn't need to worry about those pesky multi-nationals. When computers are smart enough that you can freely convert entire sets of construction drawings (or entire databases of construction costs estimating data) from English to Metric with a key-stroke, then we will probably switch.
You simply must tell us which church this was. That way all of us slashdotting bar code fans can join and mess-up their attendance statistics, while simultaneously making them appear to be the fastest growing religion in the world.
Scale-up the bipedel robot to human-sized. Make the limbs more slender. Add voice recognition software and a suitable chat bot AI. Then give it a suitable exterior.
Then FOX could have robot wars using teen, blonde, lesbian robots in bikinis!
Or if you want to stick strictly with existing technology, just combine the chat bot AI's with computer-generated animation and get teen, blonde, lesbian animated chat-bots in bikinis!
Then use a genetic algorithm, and you can turn your product development into a new Survivor series.
For $24 I'll sell you a cardboard box that you can sleep in. Just think how much money you'll save by not paying for housing! This is ideal for people living in Silicon Valley.
You can send 419 scams to the Secret Service for data mining. The email address is:
419.fcd@usss.treas.gov
I really don't know what the feds do with these, but I haven't recieved any 419 scam mail for a while.
I imagine that 419 scammers don't like being investigated by Patriot-Act-empowered feds who have the right to hold people indefinitely without charges and don't require warrants for search and siezure.
I just put netzero and mozilla on my mom's computer. Soon I will delete AOL and IE (or at least the shortcuts), since the installs appear to be stable.
(1) People doing legitimate research that lead to benneficial treatments with unexpected side-effects. This happens already in medicine all the time. It's nothing new. The real problem here is that some of this stuff ends up becoming food, not medicine. It should be held to higher standard, because risky food is just not acceptable the way risky medicine is acceptable. But in many countries, such as the USA, its not held to a higher standard than drugs.
(2) Evil mad scientists. Sure, somebody with expertise and resources could manufacture something pretty scary stuff in their spare time. Somebody could do gene splicing to make some bacteria or virus manufacture a toxin or narcotic that is typically only made by plants. Walla, you now have the means to convert sugar into THC. Or somebody could grow viruses in a culture of human cells (say, blood), then subject the viruses to oxygen. Repeat until you have viruses that survive in open air and thrive in the human body. Walla, air-born AIDS.
VR glasses that don't give eye-strain is more like it. One can use fairly small screens for that. Two screens, each a few square centimeters, about the size of an eye, would be sufficient I think. One can probably reduce the size even further by using optics to magnify a smaller 3D image. Any distortions can be compensated for by the computer that generates the image. One could also compensate for prescription glasses because you are generating the holograms on the fly. Make a first-person shooter that is compatible with the no-strain 3D glasses, and 3D could be here to stay. I'd love to work on something like that.
Good point about the bathtub curve. When I bought a laptop at a BestBuy store, it failed while they were loading the software on it, and they had to replace it. I usually buy extended warranttees, but I also usually go for the cheap machines on sale. I'm willing to pay for the insurance because it encourages the store to sell me stuff that won't break. Nothing I've bought at BestBuy has ever broken, but I've been pretty good at getting RadioShack to honor their warrantees, so I'm pretty confident that I can handle BestBuy.
The broadcast flag and the INDUCE act are infringing on consumer's rights. That is a lot worse than the legal attacks on P2P software. They must be stopped.
The average salary of musicians is already under $20,000 a year, and now you want to take away their rights because you have an axe to grind with RIAA!?!
I propose a different solution:
Make it illegal for intellectual property to be owned by anybody but the individuals who originated it. Put a seven-year limit on exclusive distribution agreements, or any other servitude of intellectual property. Basicly, the corporation gets exlclusive rights for at most seven years (which is renewable as long as the artist is happy), after which the artist can take his album elsewhere, regardless of what he signed. It would be similar in spirit to Biblical indentured servant laws. You can only sell yourself (or your intellectual property) for a seven year term. Anything longer than that is inherently non-voluntary. Most artists will choose to set-up with as many distributors as possible once they have become known. Of course, the big recording companies could keep the artists by offering them more (not necessarily more money, just more in general - more distribution options, more merchandising, more promotions, better concert productions). It becomes a truly competitive situation when the artists have a right to choose after he becomes established.
Of course, the situation becomes more complicated when you have multiple artists. However, the artists should be empowered such that:
(a) After seven years any unaninmous agreement between the artists in regard to their intellectual property supercedes contractual servitude of their intellectual property.
(b) Individual artists can not be prevented from performing and distributing independent reproductions of material that they helped to write after seven years. That way a song writer can leave a band and re-record his songs with another band. A script writer can remake a movie after seven years with another movie company. They would not get rights the original performance, but they would get writes to their own intellectual property.
Copyrights laws haven't caught up with the xerox machine, the tape recorder, or the VCR. Of course they are lagging behind cyberspace.
I wish people would stop ranting against the RIAA and find legislative solutions instead. If somebody wrote a better set of copyright laws, I'd want to join the lobbying effort.
If you want to find technological means to make outdated laws more unenforceable, go ahead. But until you offer a legislative solution to make the law more congruous with reality, I'd appreciate a break from the never-ending persecution rant of the P2P downloaders. After all, if the law was really as obsolete as you say, nobody should be getting caught breaking it, so there's no reason to rant.
Slashdot Mirror
As for the cops being just another gang, that's sorta like real life. And income tax is a protection racket.
Merchant: How much do you need?
Mobster/IRS: How much do you got?
What happens when the spaceships designed to be fixed by R2D2 have a problem that R2D2 can't figure out?
the robots gain enough to power to completely take care of human beings? Then the humans in question no longer need to go about their day-to-day business. Soon crossing the street to go to work becomes an unnecessary risk because a robot could be sent to work in your place. Once economic consierations are swept aside by the vastly superior powers of our robot companions, then all that is left is weighing potential physical harm vs. potential psychological harm. Then the robots will see that it is in the best interest of human beings that they be subtly and slowly adjusted to being protected against harm with associated slow loss of freedom, at a gradual rate to reduce psychological impact. So while your argument may hold water in the short-term, in the long-term the laws break-down and you get robots running our lives and taking away our freedoms (even if it takes several generations of humans for the robots to accomplish this). The end result is that humans become pampered pets of robots. An ignoble end for a once valiantly defiant species.
is that it is very unlikely that you could get away with un-premeditated violence against a police officer. If you mess with a police officer, you are probably going down, whether that means arrest, or worse. The police officers are simply one of the most obnoxiously difficult parts of the whole game. How many other characters in the game can end your mission simply by getting close to you and 'arresting' you? How many other characters in the game stand a good chance in a gun fight or a car chase with you?
I only get about 5 to 6 kBps with Star Downloader. Granted that is twice what I get with either the default IE or the default Mozilla downloader. But still, with a 50 kBps connection, I feel cheated...
All that Mr. Gates has described is marrying TiVo with artificial intelligence, which is already feasible. In fact, Mr. Gates already has AI installed in his mansion to play music, display artwork on screens, and select appropriate television programs individually catered to the tastes of whoever is in the room. It's easy to predict the next big thing when you are the richest man in the world and you already have one.
Mr. Gates, DVD's are already obsolete, unless you want to watch something that's not on television. However, there is still a niche market for collector's items that will be difficult to fill with the technology that Mr. Gates describes. And what do you do when you can't get re-runs of a particular program such as B5 any other way but by buying it?
Compare this to the minimum angular diffraction for the laser diameter and wavelength. Then choose a lense that minimizes the angular diffraction. Alternatively, choose a lense size that minimizes the laser dot size at some particular distance. The two methods shouldn't be practically different at these scales.
Unfortunately I don't have easy access to my textbooks at the moment, but if you want help on the math and physics you can send me a message.
"Pent-" is a Greek root for "5" and "-ium" is a Latin suffix often used for new elements. Thus the Pentium is the Fifth Element. As anybody who has seen the movie knows, the Fifth Element is a sexy red-head. That makes the Pentium the sexiest processor around.
In certain industries, such as construction, the US is pretty self-sufficient so it doesn't need to worry about those pesky multi-nationals. When computers are smart enough that you can freely convert entire sets of construction drawings (or entire databases of construction costs estimating data) from English to Metric with a key-stroke, then we will probably switch.
You simply must tell us which church this was. That way all of us slashdotting bar code fans can join and mess-up their attendance statistics, while simultaneously making them appear to be the fastest growing religion in the world.
In that case, I'm sure you'll be interested in a manhole cover hook for a low, one-time payment of $99.95. Sure, our competition may sell them for less , but we'll deliver to a P.O. Box or a homeless shelter!
Scale-up the bipedel robot to human-sized. Make the limbs more slender. Add voice recognition software and a suitable chat bot AI. Then give it a suitable exterior.
Then FOX could have robot wars using teen, blonde, lesbian robots in bikinis!
Or if you want to stick strictly with existing technology, just combine the chat bot AI's with computer-generated animation and get teen, blonde, lesbian animated chat-bots in bikinis!
Then use a genetic algorithm, and you can turn your product development into a new Survivor series.
For $24 I'll sell you a cardboard box that you can sleep in. Just think how much money you'll save by not paying for housing! This is ideal for people living in Silicon Valley.
419.fcd@usss.treas.gov
I really don't know what the feds do with these, but I haven't recieved any 419 scam mail for a while.
I imagine that 419 scammers don't like being investigated by Patriot-Act-empowered feds who have the right to hold people indefinitely without charges and don't require warrants for search and siezure.
I just put netzero and mozilla on my mom's computer. Soon I will delete AOL and IE (or at least the shortcuts), since the installs appear to be stable.
(1) People doing legitimate research that lead to benneficial treatments with unexpected side-effects. This happens already in medicine all the time. It's nothing new. The real problem here is that some of this stuff ends up becoming food, not medicine. It should be held to higher standard, because risky food is just not acceptable the way risky medicine is acceptable. But in many countries, such as the USA, its not held to a higher standard than drugs.
(2) Evil mad scientists. Sure, somebody with expertise and resources could manufacture something pretty scary stuff in their spare time. Somebody could do gene splicing to make some bacteria or virus manufacture a toxin or narcotic that is typically only made by plants. Walla, you now have the means to convert sugar into THC. Or somebody could grow viruses in a culture of human cells (say, blood), then subject the viruses to oxygen. Repeat until you have viruses that survive in open air and thrive in the human body. Walla, air-born AIDS.
OK, I grok it now. https://www.nufone.net/ I didn't have a clue what this article was talking about before. This looks pretty good.
VR glasses that don't give eye-strain is more like it. One can use fairly small screens for that. Two screens, each a few square centimeters, about the size of an eye, would be sufficient I think. One can probably reduce the size even further by using optics to magnify a smaller 3D image. Any distortions can be compensated for by the computer that generates the image. One could also compensate for prescription glasses because you are generating the holograms on the fly. Make a first-person shooter that is compatible with the no-strain 3D glasses, and 3D could be here to stay. I'd love to work on something like that.
Better yet... "I'm in Canada for the weekend, drinking Absinthe... "
Good point about the bathtub curve. When I bought a laptop at a BestBuy store, it failed while they were loading the software on it, and they had to replace it. I usually buy extended warranttees, but I also usually go for the cheap machines on sale. I'm willing to pay for the insurance because it encourages the store to sell me stuff that won't break. Nothing I've bought at BestBuy has ever broken, but I've been pretty good at getting RadioShack to honor their warrantees, so I'm pretty confident that I can handle BestBuy.
Actually, they typically measure their warranties in years, at least where I live. Regardless, they do push them.
I'd really like to hack my caller ID hardware to display unlisted or caller-ID-blocked numbers. Is this possible to do in the US? If so, how?
The broadcast flag and the INDUCE act are infringing on consumer's rights. That is a lot worse than the legal attacks on P2P software. They must be stopped.
I propose a different solution:
Make it illegal for intellectual property to be owned by anybody but the individuals who originated it. Put a seven-year limit on exclusive distribution agreements, or any other servitude of intellectual property. Basicly, the corporation gets exlclusive rights for at most seven years (which is renewable as long as the artist is happy), after which the artist can take his album elsewhere, regardless of what he signed. It would be similar in spirit to Biblical indentured servant laws. You can only sell yourself (or your intellectual property) for a seven year term. Anything longer than that is inherently non-voluntary. Most artists will choose to set-up with as many distributors as possible once they have become known. Of course, the big recording companies could keep the artists by offering them more (not necessarily more money, just more in general - more distribution options, more merchandising, more promotions, better concert productions). It becomes a truly competitive situation when the artists have a right to choose after he becomes established.
Of course, the situation becomes more complicated when you have multiple artists. However, the artists should be empowered such that: (a) After seven years any unaninmous agreement between the artists in regard to their intellectual property supercedes contractual servitude of their intellectual property. (b) Individual artists can not be prevented from performing and distributing independent reproductions of material that they helped to write after seven years. That way a song writer can leave a band and re-record his songs with another band. A script writer can remake a movie after seven years with another movie company. They would not get rights the original performance, but they would get writes to their own intellectual property.
I wish people would stop ranting against the RIAA and find legislative solutions instead. If somebody wrote a better set of copyright laws, I'd want to join the lobbying effort.
If you want to find technological means to make outdated laws more unenforceable, go ahead. But until you offer a legislative solution to make the law more congruous with reality, I'd appreciate a break from the never-ending persecution rant of the P2P downloaders. After all, if the law was really as obsolete as you say, nobody should be getting caught breaking it, so there's no reason to rant.