It doesn't help that the wealthy children of foriegn heads of state who frequently attend BU like to crash their expensive sports cars into the center trolley strip on CommAve after an evening of imbibing alcohol, cocaine, and MDMA.
The virtual world idea may work but keep in mind as a general rule everytime AI researchers tried that idea they ended up against a plutonium door.
SHLRDU (sp?) was only able to converse intelligently about the relative position of blocks in it's virtual world. It has no way of grasping talk of anything beyond it's world of blocks.
The same goes for the virtual world of the expert systems that have been so popular, whether these expert systems diagnose illness or tell stories about buying hamburgers. Virtual worlds thus far have been closed systems.
The world that bodies inhabit is not a closed system in any practial sense. Any "rules" discovered may suddenly yield exceptions, special cases, or end up being falsified. There are always surprises, be they mundane or major. This world is not a closed system in that it is always open for interpretation. Remember that logic is argumentative but not necessarily descriptive.
My view is that the machine that will be able to have the sort of emotional responses that we humans can relate to it as an intelligence and not just as a complex machine will have to have some sort of window into the world-- this window being some sort of body.
I: Kids in inner city schools are not receiving adequate computer education even when they do get access to computers. Who is going to share technical knowledge with them? [rhetorical question-- meant as a call to action.]
AC: But if I were to walk up to these kids hanging out on street corners they would say "go fuck yourself," and it would be ridiculous for me to talk about computers to the black men who biy malt liquor and rolling papers at the 7-11.
Perhaps I am jumping to conclusions to label "go fuck yourself" as rude, but humor me. Do you not see the lack of logical connection between my thesis and suggestion and your objection? Do you not see that my suggestion is a general suggestion while your objection is purely annecdotal?
The internet's initial construction was funded by the government, corporations receiving government subsidies, and universities receiving government subsidies. Those subsidies came out of taxes, which all but the very poorest and those rich or sneaky enough to find loopholes have to pay.
The rich did not lay the wires, drive the trucks or work on the assembly lines that made the internet possible-- the working class did.
As far as your statement that, "What creates a class war is people thinking that they're entitled to [the fruits of] someone else's labour for no reason other than wanting it," well that sounds like what the rich have been doing.
The problem is that libertarianism is an 18th century political philosophy that is unable to respond to the realities of the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
The libertarian party line essentially eliminates social spending and erodes public institutions, the result, if fully implemented would be a pay as you go society where poor people cannot pay for services and thus do not receive services while rich people never have to worry about healthcare, education or having their garbage picked up.
In a situation like that, you are not rising or falling on your own personal merits, but on your fortune or misfortune of birth to a given class, race, family or locale.
Try reading the platform of the Libertarian party and actually think through the consequences instead of parroting their slogans.
Your example is annecdotal and the fact that you use such an annecdote as an excuse not to take positive action only confirms to me that you are a racist.
Your argument is that you should not share your knowledge to inquisitive inner city kids in schools and community centers because of rude teenagers who hangout on corners and black men who buy malt liquor at 7-11.
I work in the inner city; my students are in the inner city; I know the inner city-- or at least Roxbury and I recognize your annecdote for what it is-- a racist generalization.
Three suggestions:
1.) Try eating properly-- your brain will function better with some proper nutrition.
2.) Take a logic class next semester. You learn how to reason.
3.) If you are going to be a racist, at least learn to use Republican Party approved code words so you don't come across as an ignorant cracker.
I wish it were the case that the kids who are in school are all escaping poverty by getting an education.
However this is not the case. In the United States, education is compuslory; they have to go.
Of the kids who are in inner city schools who want to learn, they are generally hindered by over crowded classrooms, schools with limited material resources, over worked teachers and generally underfunded schools. In addition, when they go home, many of them live in unsafe neighborhoods, in rundown buildings in poor households.
Unlike many of the people who are posting on/., being ostracized and picked upon for being a geek is the least of their problems.
No matter how eager you are to learn, if you don't have the resources, your ability to suceed is limited. The problem is that for the most part, this society is not even making the effort to help those who want to learn if they happen to be poor.
It would be nice to help the ones who say "fuck you" but we're not even helping those who say "I want to learn the skills," or just "how do you do that?"
Nice bit of racist baiting. I can see why you want to be an "Anonymous Coward."
If you don't feel comfortable hanging around at 7-11s late at night, you could decide to instead go into a school during the day time or a community center in the afternoon and offer your knowledge.
Your racism and classism are made obvious by the fact that you think the only place to find "poor disadvantaged youths" and "black men" are on street corners and 7-11s. It's sort of funny that you focus on such stereotypically seedy locations when in my original post I suggested schools as a point of intervention.
Believe it or not, if you step into a school or a community center, you'll find at least a few young people who aren't interested in "malt liquor and rolling papers" and won't tell you "to go fuck yourself," when you try to offer them something better than the squalor they rather avoid.
Sadly, some individual people are already lost causes-- but that doesn't mean that everyone in their neighborhood is a lost cause.
Of course, judging from your comments, you are too much of a racist to even want to go near any black people.
It really bothers me how much crypto-racism I am seeing amongst the replies to this issue.
If you are praising the "greatness" of a libertarian capitalist society, then you are supporting the side effects of such a society: economic, technological, technical, and information poverty. This poverty disproportionately affects African-Americans and Latinos.
When inner city schools do get computers, have you have any idea what they are used for (assuming that students get access?) They are used almost exclusively for web browsing and "educational" games, perhaps even for word processing. Computer science is not a subject being taught.
Yes, you can build a good machine for cheap from spare and used parts, but who has that knowledge? How many people with the knowledge are sharing it with the less well off or even teaching young poor people why they should want the knowledge?
So long as you sit by the sidelines and say that you don't want to help because your parents didn't make the same mistakes as someone else's parents, or that because they made the mistake of being born poor and to a race that is targeted for discrimination and considered dispensible by corporate and governmental powers, you are part of the problem.
"Thousand Points of Light" was a fine nonsensical campaign slogan, but it only makes a difference for the handful of people lucky enough to be blessed by one of those points of light. It will take a long term commitment by the society to heal society's ills.
Wake up. So long as you buy the libertarian line you are siding with the rich in a class war against the poor-- and in the USA, that means furthering racial inequality.
Computers For Developing Countries
on
High Tech Junk
·
· Score: 1
I was particularly intrigued by the comment from the African user who asked that the western countries not donate old junk, noting that to really be useful for the needs of those nations, the computers shoulf have at least 486s (assuming that they are PCs.)
Look inside a PC box-- you have a power supply, hard drives, various cards, etc. that can be salvaged from a pre-486 machine.
With simple acts of salvaging, the people of developing nations can still get cheap internet worthy machines. It's not as good as getting the brand spanking new equipment but just look at how many slashdot members use old machines.
Slashdot Mirror
It doesn't help that the wealthy children of foriegn heads of state who frequently attend BU like to crash their expensive sports cars into the center trolley strip on CommAve after an evening of imbibing alcohol, cocaine, and MDMA.
The virtual world idea may work but keep in mind as a general rule everytime AI researchers tried that idea they ended up against a plutonium door.
SHLRDU (sp?) was only able to converse intelligently about the relative position of blocks in it's virtual world. It has no way of grasping talk of anything beyond it's world of blocks.
The same goes for the virtual world of the expert systems that have been so popular, whether these expert systems diagnose illness or tell stories about buying hamburgers. Virtual worlds thus far have been closed systems.
The world that bodies inhabit is not a closed system in any practial sense. Any "rules" discovered may suddenly yield exceptions, special cases, or end up being falsified. There are always surprises, be they mundane or major. This world is not a closed system in that it is always open for interpretation. Remember that logic is argumentative but not necessarily descriptive.
My view is that the machine that will be able to have the sort of emotional responses that we humans can relate to it as an intelligence and not just as a complex machine will have to have some sort of window into the world-- this window being some sort of body.
Your point being?
Let us examine the flow of this discussion:
I: Kids in inner city schools are not receiving adequate computer education even when they do get access to computers. Who is going to share technical knowledge with them? [rhetorical question-- meant as a call to action.]
AC: But if I were to walk up to these kids hanging out on street corners they would say "go fuck yourself," and it would be ridiculous for me to talk about computers to the black men who biy malt liquor and rolling papers at the 7-11.
Perhaps I am jumping to conclusions to label "go fuck yourself" as rude, but humor me. Do you not see the lack of logical connection between my thesis and suggestion and your objection? Do you not see that my suggestion is a general suggestion while your objection is purely annecdotal?
The internet's initial construction was funded by the government, corporations receiving government subsidies, and universities receiving government subsidies. Those subsidies came out of taxes, which all but the very poorest and those rich or sneaky enough to find loopholes have to pay.
The rich did not lay the wires, drive the trucks or work on the assembly lines that made the internet possible-- the working class did.
As far as your statement that, "What creates a class war is people thinking that they're entitled to [the fruits of] someone else's labour for no reason other than wanting it," well that sounds like what the rich have been doing.
The problem is that libertarianism is an 18th century political philosophy that is unable to respond to the realities of the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
The libertarian party line essentially eliminates social spending and erodes public institutions, the result, if fully implemented would be a pay as you go society where poor people cannot pay for services and thus do not receive services while rich people never have to worry about healthcare, education or having their garbage picked up.
In a situation like that, you are not rising or falling on your own personal merits, but on your fortune or misfortune of birth to a given class, race, family or locale.
Try reading the platform of the Libertarian party and actually think through the consequences instead of parroting their slogans.
Your example is annecdotal and the fact that you use such an annecdote as an excuse not to take positive action only confirms to me that you are a racist.
Your argument is that you should not share your knowledge to inquisitive inner city kids in schools and community centers because of rude teenagers who hangout on corners and black men who buy malt liquor at 7-11.
I work in the inner city; my students are in the inner city; I know the inner city-- or at least Roxbury and I recognize your annecdote for what it is-- a racist generalization.
Three suggestions:
1.) Try eating properly-- your brain will function better with some proper nutrition.
2.) Take a logic class next semester. You learn how to reason.
3.) If you are going to be a racist, at least learn to use Republican Party approved code words so you don't come across as an ignorant cracker.
I wish it were the case that the kids who are in school are all escaping poverty by getting an education.
/., being ostracized and picked upon for being a geek is the least of their problems.
However this is not the case. In the United States, education is compuslory; they have to go.
Of the kids who are in inner city schools who want to learn, they are generally hindered by over crowded classrooms, schools with limited material resources, over worked teachers and generally underfunded schools. In addition, when they go home, many of them live in unsafe neighborhoods, in rundown buildings in poor households.
Unlike many of the people who are posting on
No matter how eager you are to learn, if you don't have the resources, your ability to suceed is limited. The problem is that for the most part, this society is not even making the effort to help those who want to learn if they happen to be poor.
It would be nice to help the ones who say "fuck you" but we're not even helping those who say "I want to learn the skills," or just "how do you do that?"
Nice bit of racist baiting. I can see why you want to be an "Anonymous Coward."
If you don't feel comfortable hanging around at 7-11s late at night, you could decide to instead go into a school during the day time or a community center in the afternoon and offer your knowledge.
Your racism and classism are made obvious by the fact that you think the only place to find "poor disadvantaged youths" and "black men" are on street corners and 7-11s. It's sort of funny that you focus on such stereotypically seedy locations when in my original post I suggested schools as a point of intervention.
Believe it or not, if you step into a school or a community center, you'll find at least a few young people who aren't interested in "malt liquor and rolling papers" and won't tell you "to go fuck yourself," when you try to offer them something better than the squalor they rather avoid.
Sadly, some individual people are already lost causes-- but that doesn't mean that everyone in their neighborhood is a lost cause.
Of course, judging from your comments, you are too much of a racist to even want to go near any black people.
It really bothers me how much crypto-racism I am seeing amongst the replies to this issue.
If you are praising the "greatness" of a libertarian capitalist society, then you are supporting the side effects of such a society: economic, technological, technical, and information poverty. This poverty disproportionately affects African-Americans and Latinos.
When inner city schools do get computers, have you have any idea what they are used for (assuming that students get access?) They are used almost exclusively for web browsing and "educational" games, perhaps even for word processing. Computer science is not a subject being taught.
Yes, you can build a good machine for cheap from spare and used parts, but who has that knowledge? How many people with the knowledge are sharing it with the less well off or even teaching young poor people why they should want the knowledge?
So long as you sit by the sidelines and say that you don't want to help because your parents didn't make the same mistakes as someone else's parents, or that because they made the mistake of being born poor and to a race that is targeted for discrimination and considered dispensible by corporate and governmental powers, you are part of the problem.
"Thousand Points of Light" was a fine nonsensical campaign slogan, but it only makes a difference for the handful of people lucky enough to be blessed by one of those points of light. It will take a long term commitment by the society to heal society's ills.
Wake up. So long as you buy the libertarian line you are siding with the rich in a class war against the poor-- and in the USA, that means furthering racial inequality.
I was particularly intrigued by the comment from the African user who asked that the western countries not donate old junk, noting that to really be useful for the needs of those nations, the computers shoulf have at least 486s (assuming that they are PCs.)
Look inside a PC box-- you have a power supply, hard drives, various cards, etc. that can be salvaged from a pre-486 machine.
With simple acts of salvaging, the people of developing nations can still get cheap internet worthy machines. It's not as good as getting the brand spanking new equipment but just look at how many slashdot members use old machines.