Personally I am shocked that Microsoft is taking this action. It's the number-one most consumer-friendly thing I've ever heard of them doing -- literally.
I am just as surprised as you are. Actually, this is the ONLY consumer oriented action I have ever seen them take; therefore, it must not be consumer oriented... I just have not figured out how yet.
And yes, I clearly know that you can get Apache free... which is why I am confused about this decision. It seems obvious that SOMEONE at the Apache Foundation must be benefiting from this since people rarely do things without some sort of motivation.
I would not say criminal. What laws were broken? I do kind of wonder what their motivation is though. Does it help sell more Apache web servers if this "ignore DNT" logic code is in it? I am confused about why they would take the time to do this.
Yeah, I was kind of wondering that too. 5 billion years is a LONG time. Even a single atom hitting something in orbit may have enough of an effect that the disc will no longer be in orbit in 5 billion years. Even a million years is tough row to hoe. Place it on the almost geologically dead moon and you might get your 5 billion years. Even then, it will have to be excavated after being buried from other bodies impacting the surface of the moon. Actually, in 5 billion years, I suspect there is a reasonable chance the disc will suffer a direct hit.
The Voyager program is one of the defining moments of human history. It may even be one of the defining moments in the entire universe if we are the first sentient beings to have woken up from oblivion and have tried to communicate with something other than ourselves. 50 thousand years from now if humans still exist (in some form) the Voyager program will be discussed... even if it must be in secret because anti-intellectualism won. Other than actually walking on the moon, I can not think of any action that humans have taken that can be compared in importance. Of course, actually becoming sentient IS the "hugest" thing but that is not an action.
Interesting. We have found no evidence of life ANYWHERE else in the entire universe... and yet you say that if we found something like this we would just go, "Meh"? Oh right. Life is so common that any species/race that can travel amongst stars would have already found thousands of such civilizations still thriving so who cares about a life form that may be utterly alien to anything you have ever ran across before. *sigh*
Why do people love stroking their ego so much? Is it so hard to comprehend that in terms of the universe our lives are completely meaningless?
Whoah whoah whoah there buddy. Wouldn't it have been awesome if the Martians had left a similar disc? Has anyone checked to see if they did? It is not about vanity. It is about being fucking awesome to those who come after.
Your concerns would be valid if we were talking hundreds, thousands, possibly even millions of years later. Even millions of years is an order of magnitude below just 1 billion years, much less 3 or 5 billion. At 5 billion years, there will be no discoverable trace of mankind at all on Earth (unless we live that long in which case we do not need the disc). Tectonic movement, subduction, etc all say that everything that exists right now will disappear as if it had never existed. Granted, finding that little disc in an orbit around something the size of Earth is akin to finding a needle in a haystack... but at least the disc will still exist in 5 billion years rather than melted into its component atoms and molecules.
Designed to last for 5 billion years? Won't it and the Earth be one with the sun in about 3 or 4 billion?
It is called quality. You overshoot the design estimations so that when unforeseen things happen, your thingy is still useful. Not much of it about nowadays unfortunately.
Honestly, I have tried to understand the thought experiment but what I know of reality keeps getting in the way. Who cares if you KNOW whether the cat is alive or dead before you open the box? If the cat is alive, it does not matter. If the cat is dead, you can check the decomposition of the cat and know when it died. I just HAVE to be missing something here. How can the cat REALLY be both alive and dead when you can check on the exact time of death?
First off, on what planet to people keep their PCs for 10 years? It's more like 3... at the most; for both home and business.
Hm. I will need to disagree with you. The computer I am sitting on right now was bought 3.5 years ago and I have absolutely NO interest in upgrading. Specs: dual quad-core E5620 xeons @ 2.4ghz. 24 gigs of ram. GTX 460 video card. 3 terabyte RAID array. etc etc.
The computer my son uses was bought in the summer of 2007. It has a dual core Athlon chip. Unsure of the freq it runs at. seems like it is 2.6 ghz. It has 6 gigs of ram, an 8800GTX, two 10k rpm 35 gig drives in RAID 0 for the boot/OS and a 750 gig storage drive.
I am unsure either of those computers will last 10 years but short of video games, both are still obscene overkill for most current computing needs despite being "ancient" and outdated.
And why would you refuse to see something based on that reason? Jealousy? Envy? Throughout all of history, men have brought up their sons to do what they do. Blacksmiths, doctors, etc, all taught their sons their trades. Acting is a trade too. You were not lucky enough to have a father who could teach you things that would make you very wealthy. Mr. Smith's son is. Deal with it.
I have been unable to watch Starship Troopers and enjoy it because it has about as much to do with the contents of the book as my comment has to do with whether or not there is ice on the moon. With Lord of the Rings, it was not so objectionable but Starship Troopers and not even a single mention of H&MP? History and Moral Philosophy was an absolutely central tenet of that book. It is not like leaving Tom Bombadil out (even though he was important to understanding some things).
Simple things, like "I will not create mass mailers for commercial uses"
Just like machinists will refuse to make guns for mass murderers? In theory, a great idea. In reality, well... more thought is needed.
I have created at least one mass mailing program for "internal" use (the targets were the owner/user of certain configurations of computers). Internal is in quotes because the organization I wrote it for had locations on several continents and it seems weird to use the word internal in such a situation. Could the program have been repurposed and used outside of the organization? Of course (but extremely bloody unlikely).
You kind of missed the point of my offer. The most you could use a script for is to pull all +4 comments and higher... but a human still needs to evaluate them... and humans seem to change their evaluations based on the time of month and how much coffee they had this morning.
Hm. Perhaps we could do a Slashdot style moderation system on all of those comments and have everyone moderate them: +1 insightful, -1 fallacious (fellatious shills) logic, +1 coherent, etc. Perhaps the gems could be sorted that way?
We would still need some information that we do not have such as timestamped traffic stats and such so that we can see overall throughput of high quality comments. That way we can see how things have absolutely changed and as a function of traffic.
Okay, this is looking more doable than I thought. Get me the traffic logs and I will write a script to go through all Slashdot articles and extract anything +4 or higher. I will then set up a web server with Slashcode (how tough is it to set up Slashcode?) on it with the comments. I will modify Slashcode to adjust the types of moderations of available. Does this sound reasonable to you?
Honestly, while it appears that there is more crap and fewer true nerds, I still see enough good stuff here to keep trying to keep the community running... at least until whatever corp "owns" Slashdot decides to _really_ screw it up. Ads are annoying, but I see less intrusive ads here than other places. I could disable the advertising with a checkbox but I do not. The money for all of the traffic and sysadmins needs to come from somewhere. Of course, I used to never see ads here because I run noscript but allowed Slashdot to run scripts. Now that they figured out that I do not run scripts from foreign sites, they can show me ads.
Granted, the chance to ask famous (not because they are famous but because they are interesting) people interesting questions is rather rare but certainly not a one off. John Carmack is another interesting person who used to post here. I still remember his response to an OpenGL vs DirectX debate. How can you argue with a man whose fortunes were made working directly with such topics? Of course, all answers should be viewed with skepticism.
I do agree with you about the computing and political topics. Even worse is the environment topics! Wow. Some normally reasonable guys go off the deep end and say crap like, "all the scientists agree, are you going to argue with them?". Where in the hell does a justification like THAT come from? Intelligent people have _never_ accepted that as an answer. Why now? (not saying that anything about the climate is true or false, just pointing out that THAT particular argument is about as worthless as it gets).
Some of that crap is purely about money. Someone is paying them to say something. Freedom of speech. Anyone can say whatever they like for whatever reason they like, right? Personally, I do not care about the shills and the crap they spew. Normal people are easily swayed by their crap arguments, but "we" are aware of the incredibly weak attempts at swaying opinions and the smarter attempts usually get smacked down properly so that even the slower folks amongst us can see the incorrectness of the shills arguments. I see all of that as a good thing. All of us need to hone our skills concerning bullshit detection and rational thinking. The pollution of the shills gives us a chance to do so. We only lose when intelligent people decide not to participate. They do not have to be famous.
Concerning proof, this is just a friendly discussion, not a scientific matter about our perceptions. I took your "proof" about computing and politics and addressed it. I did not argue it because anyone with a brain can see what you are talking about.
I do suspect that a part (how much, I have no idea) of the problem is the, "things were better back then", sort of problem. Music and movies were better yesterday. The music had more soul and the actors were more believable... and the posters on Slashdot were more engaging, witty, and better at trolling. I am unsure how you could possibly write a script to prove either of our assertions. What we see as an insightful comment today might be puerile trash tomorrow when we learn more or become more mature. I would be willing to write that script if someone could come up with an algorithm to impartially judge (?) quality.:)
We just had a chance to ask Steve Wozniak, the actual person, any questions we wanted. And he responded. Here. We have articles about the Mars rovers and actual scientists who are working on them respond. We have some highly intelligent debate that illuminate issues deeply.
Yes, there is a lot of crap and the gems seem fewer and fewer... but you are absolutely correct. He/she/it needs to provide proof for their claims.
Well we have gotten what we've asked for, right? We're more secure now, right?
More secure in some ways. Less secure in others. These folks are not effectively manipulating the security situation to bring about more security. All they are doing is stirring the waters. I think a scientist would say something like, "For every action, there is an equal but opposite reaction.", and everyone is looking at prime causes but ignoring secondary effects.
One obvious situation is that we are (yes really) making it somewhat more difficult to attack us directly. The obverse of that is that we are creating many more people who want to try and hurt us. Overall, a losing strategy. "Make something foolproof and the universe creates a more ingenious fool.", kind of translates roughly to, "Make something terror-proof and the universe creates a more ingenious terrorist."
Hm. They actually do indeed provide more security than nothing at all; however, I remain unconvinced that the price/security ratio is reasonable. I also remain unconvinced that the freedom/security ratio is reasonable either... but then, I am just me living amongst a HUGE number of people who all have different goals and priorities.
Apparently, their goals and priorities do not match mine... and it seems no country has a government that does. America is the best I can do for now. I do try very hard to make America a better place. I also try to present a positive face of America when I travel internationally.
Yes, but it is harder to direct scientific research funds through a friend's business so that money can be skimmed from the top. So tell me again the short-term motivation for spending money on scientific research? I say short term because the people who are chasing the money appear to be devious and crafty but incredibly stupid in a big picture kind of way. Rather like crack or meth addicts.
Slashdot Mirror
Personally I am shocked that Microsoft is taking this action. It's the number-one most consumer-friendly thing I've ever heard of them doing -- literally.
I am just as surprised as you are. Actually, this is the ONLY consumer oriented action I have ever seen them take; therefore, it must not be consumer oriented... I just have not figured out how yet.
And yes, I clearly know that you can get Apache free... which is why I am confused about this decision. It seems obvious that SOMEONE at the Apache Foundation must be benefiting from this since people rarely do things without some sort of motivation.
I would not say criminal. What laws were broken? I do kind of wonder what their motivation is though. Does it help sell more Apache web servers if this "ignore DNT" logic code is in it? I am confused about why they would take the time to do this.
Yeah, I was kind of wondering that too. 5 billion years is a LONG time. Even a single atom hitting something in orbit may have enough of an effect that the disc will no longer be in orbit in 5 billion years. Even a million years is tough row to hoe. Place it on the almost geologically dead moon and you might get your 5 billion years. Even then, it will have to be excavated after being buried from other bodies impacting the surface of the moon. Actually, in 5 billion years, I suspect there is a reasonable chance the disc will suffer a direct hit.
The Voyager program is one of the defining moments of human history. It may even be one of the defining moments in the entire universe if we are the first sentient beings to have woken up from oblivion and have tried to communicate with something other than ourselves. 50 thousand years from now if humans still exist (in some form) the Voyager program will be discussed... even if it must be in secret because anti-intellectualism won. Other than actually walking on the moon, I can not think of any action that humans have taken that can be compared in importance. Of course, actually becoming sentient IS the "hugest" thing but that is not an action.
You should have been on the team choosing the photos. Your ideas and thoughts are clear and have meaning. I fully agree.
Interesting. We have found no evidence of life ANYWHERE else in the entire universe... and yet you say that if we found something like this we would just go, "Meh"? Oh right. Life is so common that any species/race that can travel amongst stars would have already found thousands of such civilizations still thriving so who cares about a life form that may be utterly alien to anything you have ever ran across before. *sigh*
Why do people love stroking their ego so much? Is it so hard to comprehend that in terms of the universe our lives are completely meaningless?
Whoah whoah whoah there buddy. Wouldn't it have been awesome if the Martians had left a similar disc? Has anyone checked to see if they did? It is not about vanity. It is about being fucking awesome to those who come after.
Your concerns would be valid if we were talking hundreds, thousands, possibly even millions of years later. Even millions of years is an order of magnitude below just 1 billion years, much less 3 or 5 billion. At 5 billion years, there will be no discoverable trace of mankind at all on Earth (unless we live that long in which case we do not need the disc). Tectonic movement, subduction, etc all say that everything that exists right now will disappear as if it had never existed. Granted, finding that little disc in an orbit around something the size of Earth is akin to finding a needle in a haystack... but at least the disc will still exist in 5 billion years rather than melted into its component atoms and molecules.
Designed to last for 5 billion years? Won't it and the Earth be one with the sun in about 3 or 4 billion?
It is called quality. You overshoot the design estimations so that when unforeseen things happen, your thingy is still useful. Not much of it about nowadays unfortunately.
Honestly, I have tried to understand the thought experiment but what I know of reality keeps getting in the way. Who cares if you KNOW whether the cat is alive or dead before you open the box? If the cat is alive, it does not matter. If the cat is dead, you can check the decomposition of the cat and know when it died. I just HAVE to be missing something here. How can the cat REALLY be both alive and dead when you can check on the exact time of death?
The road to hell is paved with good intentions. If you can get this idea to fly, I hope that you avoid hell.
Regards,
Dave
It is a shame that your comment is at the bottom of the page. Could have saved a LOT of heartbreak by a LOT of people.
That might make sense if the Russian Freighter weren't booking these passengers into YOUR Vacation Home, and paying nothing for the privilege.
And that might make sense if NASA had built that home all on their own. Just sayin'.
Fair enough. You suspect that they just want your money and will provide no artistic integrity.
I do hope that you will excuse me for reading in jealousy and envy when the only indication of your intent is this:
I don't intend to contribute to a Movie Star promoting his son into Movie Star II
First off, on what planet to people keep their PCs for 10 years? It's more like 3... at the most; for both home and business.
Hm. I will need to disagree with you. The computer I am sitting on right now was bought 3.5 years ago and I have absolutely NO interest in upgrading. Specs: dual quad-core E5620 xeons @ 2.4ghz. 24 gigs of ram. GTX 460 video card. 3 terabyte RAID array. etc etc.
The computer my son uses was bought in the summer of 2007. It has a dual core Athlon chip. Unsure of the freq it runs at. seems like it is 2.6 ghz. It has 6 gigs of ram, an 8800GTX, two 10k rpm 35 gig drives in RAID 0 for the boot/OS and a 750 gig storage drive.
I am unsure either of those computers will last 10 years but short of video games, both are still obscene overkill for most current computing needs despite being "ancient" and outdated.
And why would you refuse to see something based on that reason? Jealousy? Envy? Throughout all of history, men have brought up their sons to do what they do. Blacksmiths, doctors, etc, all taught their sons their trades. Acting is a trade too. You were not lucky enough to have a father who could teach you things that would make you very wealthy. Mr. Smith's son is. Deal with it.
I have been unable to watch Starship Troopers and enjoy it because it has about as much to do with the contents of the book as my comment has to do with whether or not there is ice on the moon. With Lord of the Rings, it was not so objectionable but Starship Troopers and not even a single mention of H&MP? History and Moral Philosophy was an absolutely central tenet of that book. It is not like leaving Tom Bombadil out (even though he was important to understanding some things).
Simple things, like "I will not create mass mailers for commercial uses"
Just like machinists will refuse to make guns for mass murderers? In theory, a great idea. In reality, well... more thought is needed.
I have created at least one mass mailing program for "internal" use (the targets were the owner/user of certain configurations of computers). Internal is in quotes because the organization I wrote it for had locations on several continents and it seems weird to use the word internal in such a situation. Could the program have been repurposed and used outside of the organization? Of course (but extremely bloody unlikely).
You kind of missed the point of my offer. The most you could use a script for is to pull all +4 comments and higher... but a human still needs to evaluate them... and humans seem to change their evaluations based on the time of month and how much coffee they had this morning.
Hm. Perhaps we could do a Slashdot style moderation system on all of those comments and have everyone moderate them: +1 insightful, -1 fallacious (fellatious shills) logic, +1 coherent, etc. Perhaps the gems could be sorted that way?
We would still need some information that we do not have such as timestamped traffic stats and such so that we can see overall throughput of high quality comments. That way we can see how things have absolutely changed and as a function of traffic.
Okay, this is looking more doable than I thought. Get me the traffic logs and I will write a script to go through all Slashdot articles and extract anything +4 or higher. I will then set up a web server with Slashcode (how tough is it to set up Slashcode?) on it with the comments. I will modify Slashcode to adjust the types of moderations of available. Does this sound reasonable to you?
Honestly, while it appears that there is more crap and fewer true nerds, I still see enough good stuff here to keep trying to keep the community running... at least until whatever corp "owns" Slashdot decides to _really_ screw it up. Ads are annoying, but I see less intrusive ads here than other places. I could disable the advertising with a checkbox but I do not. The money for all of the traffic and sysadmins needs to come from somewhere. Of course, I used to never see ads here because I run noscript but allowed Slashdot to run scripts. Now that they figured out that I do not run scripts from foreign sites, they can show me ads.
Granted, the chance to ask famous (not because they are famous but because they are interesting) people interesting questions is rather rare but certainly not a one off. John Carmack is another interesting person who used to post here. I still remember his response to an OpenGL vs DirectX debate. How can you argue with a man whose fortunes were made working directly with such topics? Of course, all answers should be viewed with skepticism.
I do agree with you about the computing and political topics. Even worse is the environment topics! Wow. Some normally reasonable guys go off the deep end and say crap like, "all the scientists agree, are you going to argue with them?". Where in the hell does a justification like THAT come from? Intelligent people have _never_ accepted that as an answer. Why now? (not saying that anything about the climate is true or false, just pointing out that THAT particular argument is about as worthless as it gets).
Some of that crap is purely about money. Someone is paying them to say something. Freedom of speech. Anyone can say whatever they like for whatever reason they like, right? Personally, I do not care about the shills and the crap they spew. Normal people are easily swayed by their crap arguments, but "we" are aware of the incredibly weak attempts at swaying opinions and the smarter attempts usually get smacked down properly so that even the slower folks amongst us can see the incorrectness of the shills arguments. I see all of that as a good thing. All of us need to hone our skills concerning bullshit detection and rational thinking. The pollution of the shills gives us a chance to do so. We only lose when intelligent people decide not to participate. They do not have to be famous.
Concerning proof, this is just a friendly discussion, not a scientific matter about our perceptions. I took your "proof" about computing and politics and addressed it. I did not argue it because anyone with a brain can see what you are talking about.
I do suspect that a part (how much, I have no idea) of the problem is the, "things were better back then", sort of problem. Music and movies were better yesterday. The music had more soul and the actors were more believable... and the posters on Slashdot were more engaging, witty, and better at trolling. I am unsure how you could possibly write a script to prove either of our assertions. What we see as an insightful comment today might be puerile trash tomorrow when we learn more or become more mature. I would be willing to write that script if someone could come up with an algorithm to impartially judge (?) quality. :)
We just had a chance to ask Steve Wozniak, the actual person, any questions we wanted. And he responded. Here. We have articles about the Mars rovers and actual scientists who are working on them respond. We have some highly intelligent debate that illuminate issues deeply.
Yes, there is a lot of crap and the gems seem fewer and fewer... but you are absolutely correct. He/she/it needs to provide proof for their claims.
Well we have gotten what we've asked for, right? We're more secure now, right?
More secure in some ways. Less secure in others. These folks are not effectively manipulating the security situation to bring about more security. All they are doing is stirring the waters. I think a scientist would say something like, "For every action, there is an equal but opposite reaction.", and everyone is looking at prime causes but ignoring secondary effects.
One obvious situation is that we are (yes really) making it somewhat more difficult to attack us directly. The obverse of that is that we are creating many more people who want to try and hurt us. Overall, a losing strategy. "Make something foolproof and the universe creates a more ingenious fool.", kind of translates roughly to, "Make something terror-proof and the universe creates a more ingenious terrorist."
Note that security is not even on the list.
Hm. They actually do indeed provide more security than nothing at all; however, I remain unconvinced that the price/security ratio is reasonable. I also remain unconvinced that the freedom/security ratio is reasonable either... but then, I am just me living amongst a HUGE number of people who all have different goals and priorities.
Apparently, their goals and priorities do not match mine... and it seems no country has a government that does. America is the best I can do for now. I do try very hard to make America a better place. I also try to present a positive face of America when I travel internationally.
Yes, but it is harder to direct scientific research funds through a friend's business so that money can be skimmed from the top. So tell me again the short-term motivation for spending money on scientific research? I say short term because the people who are chasing the money appear to be devious and crafty but incredibly stupid in a big picture kind of way. Rather like crack or meth addicts.