OK, let's say that God exists. Which one? We've imagined about a million of em. Pick the wrong one and you go to Hell for sure.
At least with separation of church and state you are safe until you die, but under a theocracy you don't just get to spend your afterlife in hell but you also get to suffer during your normal life:(
This is different from the ID crowd, who apparently feel that 'God did it' means you actively refuse to even think about the rules.
I think it's interesting to note the reason they think this way: They avoid thinking about the rules because they are to stupid to understand them, and they try to censor true science because they don't want anyone else to be able to show that they are smarter than them.
If this guy's theory is correct, then I would assume that any such flaws would persist until the end of our universe and then get fixed for the next one.
Oh, now I see why Americans voted for Bush: It's a bug in the simulation! Do you mean this bug is going to persist until the universe's heat death? Please, someone stop the simulation now!:)
Another interesting read is MUH (mathematical universe hypothesis).
To those who *assume* that if universe is a virtual reality simulation then there should be *someone* running or creating the simulation: I do *not* think that it is necessary for a simulation to be *created* by an *external* entity. Of course it's a good question for philosophy, but I believe that nature could perfectly simulate itself without an external entity telling it what to simulate. Therefore, I do not think that it is necessary to assume that someone simulates us, it could very well be that we are just being simulated by some kind of emergent holographic natural phenomenon, without anyone directing or even initiating the process.
Dr Ron Paul will scrap the IRS, will let you have guns, will let you homeschool your kids, and will let you live in peace without crying over a killed relative in Iraq. Why you don't vote for him? Here in EU some are very jealous and we wish we had a politician like him. I can understand that you would be reluctant to vote for third party, but having such a man in a mainstream party and not voting for him makes me wonder. Why you don't vote for him?
Possession makes some sense in absence of law, but law is designed to balance possesion with other issues. A thief may *control* your expensive HiFi set after a burglary because they now *possess* it, but they don't *own* it according to law.
The system should use different weightings for laptops and desktops: Many times when I am using a subnotebook I do so while I am walking or eating outdoors. Some times if I get interrupted by something I close the lid and I continue what I was doing afterwards. So laptop users are likely to take longer to complete a task compared to desktop users.
Also, while I was still learning to type in dvorak I needed amazingly more time to type than before on my desktop (after I learnt it I type ok, but I still have learnt it only for English and not for other languages). Could their algorithm take such training periods into account?
the system monitors certain behaviors tied to frustration (such as elevated heart rate)
Oh yeah. I can see now that the system is guaranteed to misread the frustration levels whenever a user looks at porn peep shows. Yeah, this is 99.99999% of users, so they should take this into account somehow. Perhaps they should monitor the user's erection as well to make sure the detected heart rate is not related to libido!
then it triggers the routine that asks other users for help
I can imagine that... "Hello Sir: Do you need helping viewing your porn today?"
The idea, which was birthed at Microsoft Research
Expected. They have lots of users who feel frustration with their products.
if your employer asks you to patch on a pair of electrodes before sitting down to work in the morning, my advice is to find another company to work for.
Better become self-employed, I'd say (tip: it's easier than it sounds, especially if you save a lot before you begin). True freedom cannot be attained while being an employee of a traditional company.
Supposedly laws exist to protect the victims. Who is the victim if a person has nmap in their PC and uses it for the right purposes? The victim is surely not a server operator, since the nmap user only uses nmap in their internal network. The victim is surely not the state, for the same reason. Who is the victim? There's no victim. Nobody is hurt if a kid carries a USB key with nmap in it and uses it only on computers they own. But if the law makes possession of such software illegal (and there are no safeguards against misuse - note that I haven't read the law), then if that kid gets caught they will have problems, even though they never created any problems to anyone. In cases where there is no victim, I cannot see why law should be involved. Laws prohibiting possession of anything open the road to misuse against unfortunate innocent people who may be doing their job, protecting their own computers, just playing, or merely downloading something for fun just out of curiosity. Not to say that now everyone is threatened by people who for any reason may want to destroy you by copying a "cracker tool" onto your hard disk while you aren't looking and then calling the police.
Once upon a time there was an enchanted prince in his wonderful kingdom. Everyone trusted this prince, so nobody said anything when he proposed to enact a law forbidding free speech in order to catch criminals who used it for spreading lies about false stock investment opportunities. Every resident thought that since the prince is so good, even the most fascist law is assured to be used only for good in his hands.
So, the law was enacted, the criminals were caught, and the prince kept his promise and remained a good ruler. He never misused the law. However, after many years, when the populace had come to see the law as a normal part of their lives and thought of it as a necessary instrument for a safe society, the country was invaded by a foreign army.
The prince tried to defend his country and his populace, but the invaders won a decisive battle, sent the prince into exile, and decided to put their warlord in his post. The warlord checked the existing laws and decided that they perfectly suited his purposes. Most of the populace was still fighting the war against the invaders even after the defeat of the prince, so the warlord went to the capital city and announced himself as the new ruler and promised that he would keep all laws intact if the populace would accept him as the new legitimate ruler of the land.
The populace at first was distrustful of the warlord, but slowly it started to think that since the prince was now gone there is no other choice, and since the warlord promises to not change any law then life could continue as normal. They believed that since both the prince and the warlord would follow exactly the same laws, the warlord would be effectively as good as the prince. So, the populace agreed to stop the war and accept the warlord as the new ruler.
The warlord then started applying the law according to its letter and sent all political enemies and the most dangerous fighters into exile. The populace was too slow to take notice, because it was used to seeing the anti-freespeech law as an integral part of civil society under the prince's rule. The warlord quickly turned the kingdom into a slavery society, all thanks to the ready laws which he found when he took over the country. If he had to introduce the anti-freespeech laws himself, the populace wouldn't accept him, but with the laws of the previous legitimate government ready, his coup d' etat was able to conquer the land without much of the populace understanding what was going on.
The warlord later died of cancer, and the prince returned to his land and freed the populace. He then promised the populace never to enact any anti-freedom law again, no matter how bad the criminal problem was, because as he said while he was known to use his laws for helping the society, future rulers of the land could use the same laws for harming the populace. He didn't want to give ready tools to future invaders or rulers, so he kept his promise and his kingdom was remained free for ever.
Given that 'crackers' don't call themselves 'crackers' they call themselves 'hackers' and they call what they do 'hacking', the word has *CHANGED ITS MEANING*
The word hacker is being abused by criminals who don't want to call themselves criminals, so we call them with the correct name for them: crackers.
There's a difference in legitimate language change and language abuse.
It is a great honour to be called a hacker and everyone should pursue such an honour.
People who build buildings that kill people after an earthquake are perfectly certified engineers who have passed all their exams and satisfy all their conditions for certification.
Some people are extremely afraid of misidentification. Can the screeners distinguish between terrorists who are afraid of being caught and lawful citizens who are afraid of being killed on the spot by overzealous counterterrorism agents who misread a facial expression or two?
If an alien came to my planet and asked me why the fellow members of my species observe holidays and attach significance to numbers in a calendar system, I would truthfully reply "I have no idea, bro".
It's both amazing and depressing that for all the talk from politicians about the need and importance of education, I've never heard of one running on a platform of improving the libraries and offering free education through them on research techniques and scientific methodology.
Yeah it's depressing, but I think we citizens could self-organise and advocate for science or donate funds to libraries (if all of us donated half a euro, and the most wealthy of us some more, then the final sum would be significant). I'm a bit distrustful of charities that *collect* funds and then claim that they donate them to good cause, though, I would prefer the approach of giving circles where each participant *pledges* to donate a small amount to a cause and then all those who have pledged do so independently. I don't think we should expect everything from the state or politicians, we can do many things and bring change in society with our power as individuals if we really want.
the biggest threat to MS is people who self-organise to create useful software with no strings attached. Open source is a social process, and it is this social process which threatens MS.
Some people might also like to be able to mark them or write on them, but I would never do that.
I do it all the time and it's very good: While I read a book my mind works all the time and I'm thinking a lot, and if I have an idea I write it on the margin, or elaborate some of the mathematics that the author didn't explain much. My marginalia go back 10+ years, so I can see all my life in them, as I often include the current date with most marginalia. It's also funny when you lend a book... you can actually communicate with fellow nerds only with marginalia. All my books are treated as workbooks, in the sense that my books aren't trophies that are bought for their beauty and left on the bookshelf, but are supposed to put something into my brain, so being able to write notes on the margins helps a lot with activelly reading the material. I also keep longer notes on my PDA and my wiki, but marginalia is something like a cultural thing or a custom, so even if I had no need to do that I would still do it because I like it. It's also useful because it helps you keep track of how your ideas and your understanding of particular books changes over the years. It's really nice to be able to know exactly what I was thinking for every paragraph I was reading 10 years ago. It's a way to personalise your books and make them really yours, unique, and different from all the other copies of the same book, and it also helps you have a much more personal and better relationship with your book.
I buy books because I reread them and because I want to keep marginalia (notes on the margins etc) and personalise them, and I also want to know that they are mine (I see relationships with books as personal relationships, not sure whether I can convey the meaning effectivelly). I don't go to libraries (not that there are any here), but I do maintain paid subscriptions to many digital libraries (academic and technical) where I can get books and papers as ascii text or PDF. Is it waste of money to buy books? Yes it is because fscking publishers charge too much for giving so little (and killing trees in the process)... most scientific academic books are over 100-200 EUR a piece, some go much higher, but the knowledge they contain is of course priceless, so the price is irrelevant (if you can pay, of course, if not then you're screwed unless you have a library nearby or you can do your work with Gutenberg)... if publishers (and authors cooperating with them) had even the slightest interest in educating people they would release their books under the GFDL or Creative Commons. There are some projects aiming at creating free books (Wikibooks is one), but it seems that the people who are capable of reading books and have time in their hands aren't many.
Slashdot Mirror
At least with separation of church and state you are safe until you die, but under a theocracy you don't just get to spend your afterlife in hell but you also get to suffer during your normal life :(
I think it's interesting to note the reason they think this way: They avoid thinking about the rules because they are to stupid to understand them, and they try to censor true science because they don't want anyone else to be able to show that they are smarter than them.
What if the nature, the "real" world, has the inherent holographic capability to simulate itself in some form of emergent phenomenon?
Oh, now I see why Americans voted for Bush: It's a bug in the simulation! Do you mean this bug is going to persist until the universe's heat death? Please, someone stop the simulation now! :)
Another interesting read is MUH (mathematical universe hypothesis).
To those who *assume* that if universe is a virtual reality simulation then there should be *someone* running or creating the simulation: I do *not* think that it is necessary for a simulation to be *created* by an *external* entity. Of course it's a good question for philosophy, but I believe that nature could perfectly simulate itself without an external entity telling it what to simulate. Therefore, I do not think that it is necessary to assume that someone simulates us, it could very well be that we are just being simulated by some kind of emergent holographic natural phenomenon, without anyone directing or even initiating the process.
Dr Ron Paul will scrap the IRS, will let you have guns, will let you homeschool your kids, and will let you live in peace without crying over a killed relative in Iraq. Why you don't vote for him? Here in EU some are very jealous and we wish we had a politician like him. I can understand that you would be reluctant to vote for third party, but having such a man in a mainstream party and not voting for him makes me wonder. Why you don't vote for him?
Possession makes some sense in absence of law, but law is designed to balance possesion with other issues. A thief may *control* your expensive HiFi set after a burglary because they now *possess* it, but they don't *own* it according to law.
The system should use different weightings for laptops and desktops: Many times when I am using a subnotebook I do so while I am walking or eating outdoors. Some times if I get interrupted by something I close the lid and I continue what I was doing afterwards. So laptop users are likely to take longer to complete a task compared to desktop users.
Also, while I was still learning to type in dvorak I needed amazingly more time to type than before on my desktop (after I learnt it I type ok, but I still have learnt it only for English and not for other languages). Could their algorithm take such training periods into account?
From TFA:
the system monitors certain behaviors tied to frustration (such as elevated heart rate)Oh yeah. I can see now that the system is guaranteed to misread the frustration levels whenever a user looks at porn peep shows. Yeah, this is 99.99999% of users, so they should take this into account somehow. Perhaps they should monitor the user's erection as well to make sure the detected heart rate is not related to libido!
then it triggers the routine that asks other users for helpI can imagine that... "Hello Sir: Do you need helping viewing your porn today?"
The idea, which was birthed at Microsoft ResearchExpected. They have lots of users who feel frustration with their products.
if your employer asks you to patch on a pair of electrodes before sitting down to work in the morning, my advice is to find another company to work for.Better become self-employed, I'd say (tip: it's easier than it sounds, especially if you save a lot before you begin). True freedom cannot be attained while being an employee of a traditional company.
Supposedly laws exist to protect the victims. Who is the victim if a person has nmap in their PC and uses it for the right purposes? The victim is surely not a server operator, since the nmap user only uses nmap in their internal network. The victim is surely not the state, for the same reason. Who is the victim? There's no victim. Nobody is hurt if a kid carries a USB key with nmap in it and uses it only on computers they own. But if the law makes possession of such software illegal (and there are no safeguards against misuse - note that I haven't read the law), then if that kid gets caught they will have problems, even though they never created any problems to anyone. In cases where there is no victim, I cannot see why law should be involved. Laws prohibiting possession of anything open the road to misuse against unfortunate innocent people who may be doing their job, protecting their own computers, just playing, or merely downloading something for fun just out of curiosity. Not to say that now everyone is threatened by people who for any reason may want to destroy you by copying a "cracker tool" onto your hard disk while you aren't looking and then calling the police.
Once upon a time there was an enchanted prince in his wonderful kingdom. Everyone trusted this prince, so nobody said anything when he proposed to enact a law forbidding free speech in order to catch criminals who used it for spreading lies about false stock investment opportunities. Every resident thought that since the prince is so good, even the most fascist law is assured to be used only for good in his hands.
So, the law was enacted, the criminals were caught, and the prince kept his promise and remained a good ruler. He never misused the law. However, after many years, when the populace had come to see the law as a normal part of their lives and thought of it as a necessary instrument for a safe society, the country was invaded by a foreign army.
The prince tried to defend his country and his populace, but the invaders won a decisive battle, sent the prince into exile, and decided to put their warlord in his post. The warlord checked the existing laws and decided that they perfectly suited his purposes. Most of the populace was still fighting the war against the invaders even after the defeat of the prince, so the warlord went to the capital city and announced himself as the new ruler and promised that he would keep all laws intact if the populace would accept him as the new legitimate ruler of the land.
The populace at first was distrustful of the warlord, but slowly it started to think that since the prince was now gone there is no other choice, and since the warlord promises to not change any law then life could continue as normal. They believed that since both the prince and the warlord would follow exactly the same laws, the warlord would be effectively as good as the prince. So, the populace agreed to stop the war and accept the warlord as the new ruler.
The warlord then started applying the law according to its letter and sent all political enemies and the most dangerous fighters into exile. The populace was too slow to take notice, because it was used to seeing the anti-freespeech law as an integral part of civil society under the prince's rule. The warlord quickly turned the kingdom into a slavery society, all thanks to the ready laws which he found when he took over the country. If he had to introduce the anti-freespeech laws himself, the populace wouldn't accept him, but with the laws of the previous legitimate government ready, his coup d' etat was able to conquer the land without much of the populace understanding what was going on.
The warlord later died of cancer, and the prince returned to his land and freed the populace. He then promised the populace never to enact any anti-freedom law again, no matter how bad the criminal problem was, because as he said while he was known to use his laws for helping the society, future rulers of the land could use the same laws for harming the populace. He didn't want to give ready tools to future invaders or rulers, so he kept his promise and his kingdom was remained free for ever.
The word hacker is being abused by criminals who don't want to call themselves criminals, so we call them with the correct name for them: crackers.
There's a difference in legitimate language change and language abuse.
It is a great honour to be called a hacker and everyone should pursue such an honour.
M$ has made sure to put this into every computer, don't worry!
People who build buildings that kill people after an earthquake are perfectly certified engineers who have passed all their exams and satisfy all their conditions for certification.
That's just a theory. The truth is in .
language was devised to communicate, not spread nonsense.
What I want from life is smaller ThinkPad-grade models: A 5" ThinkPad-grade UMPC and a 8-9" ThinkPad would be exactly what I want as a road warrior.
Some people are extremely afraid of misidentification. Can the screeners distinguish between terrorists who are afraid of being caught and lawful citizens who are afraid of being killed on the spot by overzealous counterterrorism agents who misread a facial expression or two?
No, Jimmy Wales had this idea for a long long time.
If an alien came to my planet and asked me why the fellow members of my species observe holidays and attach significance to numbers in a calendar system, I would truthfully reply "I have no idea, bro".
you meant 40 years.
Yeah it's depressing, but I think we citizens could self-organise and advocate for science or donate funds to libraries (if all of us donated half a euro, and the most wealthy of us some more, then the final sum would be significant). I'm a bit distrustful of charities that *collect* funds and then claim that they donate them to good cause, though, I would prefer the approach of giving circles where each participant *pledges* to donate a small amount to a cause and then all those who have pledged do so independently. I don't think we should expect everything from the state or politicians, we can do many things and bring change in society with our power as individuals if we really want.
the biggest threat to MS is people who self-organise to create useful software with no strings attached. Open source is a social process, and it is this social process which threatens MS.
...so I can skip reading without remorse.
I do it all the time and it's very good: While I read a book my mind works all the time and I'm thinking a lot, and if I have an idea I write it on the margin, or elaborate some of the mathematics that the author didn't explain much. My marginalia go back 10+ years, so I can see all my life in them, as I often include the current date with most marginalia. It's also funny when you lend a book... you can actually communicate with fellow nerds only with marginalia. All my books are treated as workbooks, in the sense that my books aren't trophies that are bought for their beauty and left on the bookshelf, but are supposed to put something into my brain, so being able to write notes on the margins helps a lot with activelly reading the material. I also keep longer notes on my PDA and my wiki, but marginalia is something like a cultural thing or a custom, so even if I had no need to do that I would still do it because I like it. It's also useful because it helps you keep track of how your ideas and your understanding of particular books changes over the years. It's really nice to be able to know exactly what I was thinking for every paragraph I was reading 10 years ago. It's a way to personalise your books and make them really yours, unique, and different from all the other copies of the same book, and it also helps you have a much more personal and better relationship with your book.
I buy books because I reread them and because I want to keep marginalia (notes on the margins etc) and personalise them, and I also want to know that they are mine (I see relationships with books as personal relationships, not sure whether I can convey the meaning effectivelly). I don't go to libraries (not that there are any here), but I do maintain paid subscriptions to many digital libraries (academic and technical) where I can get books and papers as ascii text or PDF. Is it waste of money to buy books? Yes it is because fscking publishers charge too much for giving so little (and killing trees in the process)... most scientific academic books are over 100-200 EUR a piece, some go much higher, but the knowledge they contain is of course priceless, so the price is irrelevant (if you can pay, of course, if not then you're screwed unless you have a library nearby or you can do your work with Gutenberg)... if publishers (and authors cooperating with them) had even the slightest interest in educating people they would release their books under the GFDL or Creative Commons. There are some projects aiming at creating free books (Wikibooks is one), but it seems that the people who are capable of reading books and have time in their hands aren't many.