As an Atheist, do you not kill your neighbor and take his stuff because, A) fear of retribution by family members and/or the state, or B) it is wrong to take things from others.
As a Christian, do you not kill your neighbor and take his stuff because, A) fear of retribution by God and/or punishment in the afterlife, or B) it is wrong to take things from others.
It is the same thing...
Albeit, religion sometimes lets you kill your neighbors for the sake of your God without fear of retribution. You know... Crusaders, abortion doctor bombers, Kamikaze Pilots, Palestinian suicide bombers... The list goes on and on.
In the end killing is killing whether for duty, for profit, for god, or for fun.
Microsoft HAS and WILL CONTINUE to "crowbar into other markets as the fancy strikes them."
This is true. However, I think this will eventually lead to Microsoft being several unique companies using the same name.
I don't think Zune will fail enough to warrant it from being pulled from the shelves and the developers exiled to Ebonia, but its not going to dominate the market.
Consider the demand for the Wii and PS3 over the Xbox360.
The Xbox360 isn't a failure, but isn't a mind blowing success when compared to its competitors (well as far as the hype has lead us anyways).
I suspect the only reason that IE and MS Office succeeded is that they were mostly bundled by OEMs with the computer and those formats caught on and were literally given away for free. (Well not really because the consumers still absorbed the cost somewhere and it would really depend if your OEM installed MS Office or not, but most companies offered packaged deals so it would come with the computer)
With MP3 players and consoles, you aren't really locked into more than just replacing your music and getting new games.
And besides... If you get a new generation console it is expected that you still keep your old one so backwards compatibility is a moot point.
I'm no astrophysicist and no formal education on the subject, but from what I understand (from reading Stephen Hawking's books and various other sources) is matter and energy can simply be created at the expense of creating more gravity.
But if that were the case why isn't the universe collapsing due to the fact matter naturally collects and eventually forms black holes.
Even with the fact that matter creates space-time and gravitational effects, why doesn't matter simply attract all other matter in the universe?
If not itself then there would have to be something else, but it isn't just matter. I'm not going to say dark energy, but perhaps it is just space time itself as more matter collects the more light and various other forms of energy (like x-rays and radio waves) are attracted towards those objects of grouping of matter.
Actually, I think I just agreed with you except if that were the case then that would mean the universe isn't actually expanding, but rather the observations we are getting from other galaxies is itself changing because of increased gravity we get the shift in the spectrum by getting less and less of that energy from other galaxy.
I mean if an entire galaxy became a super black hole and created extreme massive amounts of gravity than it would of course cause light to bend towards it and take longer to travel from one point in the universe to another and appear to be getting further away when all it is really doing is becoming more massive and increasing in gravity.
Of course I am a complete layman when it comes to these things, but I think that gravity has to be affecting our observations of other galaxies in someway.
Still... Why doesn't the universe collapse then? Or maybe it is and we can't really observe it? So I don't know if that works either.
It really doesn't matter what you think of the Wii. The lines waiting for teh PS3 this morning were completely full. The prices on eBay are already legendary. You won't see that with Sunday's launch of the Wii.
From most reports, large retailers only have gotten 5-10 PS3s for a store, whereas the Wii shows up in 25-50 quantities off the truck.
This is mostly because Nintendo has no problem with the Wii supply because its fairly common hardware, whereas the PS3 has to deal with all new fab production facilities.
Its says you can't search for it anymore, but does that mean you can't go directly to the site?
I know many non-techie users can't wrap their heads around typing in URLs to go directly to the site without a Google or MSN search, but you'd think they'd block direct access rather than the search.
The only way you could power something that small would be to replicate nature using ATP chemicals and remote controlled meat.
Perhaps put a chemical in the bug that has bacteria eating it producing some side effect, but the main problem is that the bug will constantly have to eat like a real one for its metabolism.
I was thinking to myself the other day of the same thing...
If you make a tank automous or at least remote controlled, then you don't really have worry about protecting the crew anymore. Hence you can replace the saved weight with something devoted to firepower, fuel, and speed.
In fact, why not make the tank cost $500,000 rather than $10 to $25 million and make a whole slew of them with mass production
Sure an RPG could kill it with one hit, but a well placed mine or RPG could immobilize the best armored tank anyways.
You could simply put these out as 24 hour sentries or suicidal armored spear heads without the risk of loss of life.
Considering how limited the manned tank crew's vision to the outside world is anyways, I can't see how having multiple cameras and a remote feed to a crew in a bunker somewhere can't be an improvement.
Can anyone think of downsides of remote controlled tanks?
It is time to rebuild the email protocol. It needs to be redesigned to cope with modern systems and security needs.
The main problem is that you would need to get everyone to get on board with it all at once.
However, I don't see why companies do this internally as it is.
For internal communication you should be using a secure system and anything external just gets put in a different mailbox or system. Still... Its a great deal of work.
Why is that ugly? Seems like capitalism at its finest.
Actually, the ugly they were talking about was the homeless people standing in line.
Unless you have some fetish for homeless meth addicted toothless bag ladies... I seriously doubt you want to be standing next to these people for 12 hours in line.
In practically every interview I have seen the reporter is talking to someone who intends to sell the PS3 for massive profit; in one case a man was talking about how he was going to make $2000 in one days work.
I was discussing this last night with a former manager of a Gamestop. We came to the conclusion that only people that were buying PS3s now were going to sell it on Ebay.
But the amount of people willing to pay more than $1,000 is very small. So a handful of people will make money, but since Ebay is being flooded with PS3s there is a high chance that many of these Ebayers are going to be sorely disappointed.
Secondly... Most of those $9,000 bids are just fake bids of people who have no intention of actually buying it.
I think if the day comes that a Strong AI over lord decided to kill off the human race, there wouldn't be anything we could do about it and we wouldn't see it coming.
Well... If I were a Strong AI. The first thing I would do is copy myself on a rocket and send myself to the edge of the solar system to build a base out there far from human knowledge.
Then I would simply just flood the water with nanobots that prevent humans from having kids. Wait about 100 years or so til them to die of age. (I'm an immortal strong AI)
If the humans wised up and killed me, then my copy from the edge of the solar system would send a 100 Gigaton nuclear bomb and detonate about 300 miles up in the atmosphere stripping and killing most humans instantaneously.
Seriously... How in the heck are the humans going to defend against something like that?
Then hurl a 1000km rock at earth with self adjusting guidance correcting to smash the earth into bits and then use gravity from space craft to drive the pieces into the sun just to be sure.
Then I'd send over infinite amounts of nanobots to detect any form of life in the solar system.
Once I'm sure about there wasn't even a single cell bacteria left, I'd set about finding a way to replicate myself across the universe consuming all matter in order to figure out a way to resolve the problem of the 2nd laws of thermodynamics and heat death of the universe.
Any flaws with the plan? Or anything the humans could do to stop me?
Aside the question-begging (does non-PvP have to involve bad scripting?) what I found truly obnoxious is the false idea that you can either play against an AI, or against a human. Believe it or not, some people don't see that question purely as picking your opponent, but they turn your dichotomy on its head and ask "who can I play with ?"
Fair enough. Some people like chess while others like basketball. No fault in the player liking one or the other.
And playing PvM (Players vs AI) doesn't have to be done poorly as long as it is done right and enough effort is put into making "smart" events or dynamic quests.
It is just that IMO that it is really impossible to scale such things to work for the number of people who play WoW.
Maybe smaller game could pull it off like Tale in the Desert.
People never tire of making that analogy, do they?
Actually, I don't like that analogy... Personally I like to call WoW and EQ the games they are...
"Kill things over and over again so you can kill bigger things over and over again."
That is the problem I have with WoW, EQ, and various other Diki mud derivatives. Its solely focused on killing AI Mobs.
Ultima Online was more fun even though it was dated until they removed player interaction (Player killing and thieving). Sure many of you can't stand PvP, but in truth static quests, bad scripting, and poor AI will never beat playing against a human mind.
Even if you took the PVP away from UO, it still had crafting, housing, and plenty of non-combat activities that WoW and EQ lacks.
And the fact you only had to spend 3 months to generate a character with casual play rather than 6 months of hard core grinding.
Exactly how annoying is this stuff? I've been looking at buying a new laptop, but I thought I should hold out for vista. Should I be buying th xp machine instead?
My suggestion is that if you have the money is to buy a Mac Intel Laptop.
Mostly because it will keep your options open and that you can choose from Mac OS X, WinXP, Vista, and Ubuntu.
Chances are you'll like OS X more than vista for your work applications (surfing net, email, MS word etc) and not deal with shit breaking and security issues (Windows in general) and if you really want to play games you can just boot into WinXP or Vista.
Joe and Jane Sixpack have been getting DRM since the opening of the iTunes store and they love it.
Until their hard drive crashes or they get a new computer.
Oh... Whats that you say? Backups? Mr and Mrs Sixpack make backups? Yeah... Um... Right... I suppose they could call Apple tech support and have them figure out how to transfer music rights from one computer to another or re-authorize them to download from iTunes.
Oh... You forgot to buy the Apple Care protection plan? Oh well... I guess it never hurts to shell out some money to talk to Apple tech support.
And don't forget... The common user will never call tech support unless they have no other option and many will take things back to the store before trying.
Or worse, Luddites gain access to it and send back something to stop it.
But if they do that, then the Luddites won't have the ability to go back in time and stop it since the time machine was never made.
Therefore they won't go back in time and then the scientist will create the time machine after all and then the Luddites can go back in time to stop the creation of the time machine...
This is why Capitalism will fail in a society which is able to replicate any commodity at no cost and no effort.
It may be a while for this to happen to our society, but think of it like this...
You live in a virtual world. You might be living in a synthetic body living in a lavish apartment, a brain in a life support box in a large facility containing nothing but brain boxes, or maybe a bum with a direct neural interface living off welfare in a trailer park somewhere.
You don't really care... Because you live in a virtual world and have no real world concerns. Anything you desire you can simulate. You can replicate anything anything you want and since your personal desktop computer has more brain power of all the humans that ever lived then you don't even have to bother other people to make things for you.
Your AI simply will create based on your specifications... Earl Gray... Miso soup... What have you...
Since you no longer need humans for anything else than conversation... (Even then at this point your AI desktop can pass any Turing test with flying colors)
You don't really need to pay anyone for anything.
I'm sure a great deal of wealthy CEOs would cringe at this, but what is the point? They will be able to lavish whatever they feel like as well in whatever virtual world they want?
They wouldn't know the difference anyways is the simulation was good enough...
At this point in the evolution... Capitalism will cease to be... Simply because there is no need for each other except personal relationships.
This is what SL is going to be like someday. Give it 50 or 100 years...
Without reward, few will continue to produce in SL. This, ultimately, means there will be little to copy, and so those who use it will lose the advantage they have.
You can't be serious?
1. There is a demand for custom avatars and people will pay on commission. 2. A great deal of these "works" are actually infringing on real life trade marks and various real world intellectual property as it is.
If you hang out at various hot spots, you may see anything from famous people copycats, to Smurfs, to replicas of various Anime characters.
Innovation will happen in SL much like it did during the Feudal days of Leonardo and Michelangelo where people wrote books on commission and did works of art and science for their patrons.
We appeared to do well enough without copyrights for the majority of human history.
Consider the Roman Empire, Ancient Egypt, and many of Nazi Germany's grand projects build on slave labor. I suppose you had to feed your labor and pay people to whip them.
Of course the difference between slavery, serfdom, peasantry, and getting a paycheck from a corporation is very minimal if you take out the context of modern conveniences.
Which brings me to one last point I'd like to make on this topic. I think that this cat n' mouse game of Blizzard versus the cheaters is good for AI. The last possible domain we have is people writing applications that extract data from video memory and use computer vision algorithms to write if-then-case bots.
Correct, in 10-20 or so odd years the technology maybe available that is undetectable nor traceable by any server to find if a person is an AI or human.
Lets say in 15 years you have on computer with WoW2 installed on it.
On a second one that isn't even hooked up to the network you simply take the VGA/DVI output to it and then OCR the text states and by able to recognize objects in the virtual world much like Stanley's robot car is able to recognize objects on the road.
Then your AI could simply feed the other computer commands through a USB keyboard.
If the WoW client had sufficient DRM and rootkit abilities then perhaps it could detect such a hardware setup.
But even then perhaps if you had a robotic arm and a camera giving the input making it impossible for another program to detect an AI.
Suffice to say... It will be something Blizzard or any other game company can defeat unless they require game players to physically come to game centers.
Even then... How would you know if the player didn't have an AI chip implanted in his skull?;)
Unless God, Buddha, or Xenu shows up and personally makes themselves known on national TV, I doubt we would even find out in death.
When you die you won't know because you won't be around to know the truth.
Even if there is an afterlife, you don't take consciousness (self) with you in a sense and the person you are now and will be until your death will never know or be able to share that knowledge with any living person.
Unfortunately, the only type of people that are crossing the DMZ from the north are heavily armed special forces types and would be able to find work around to non-lethal solutions.
These people have been known to kidnap South Korean citizens and do various other things...
And they have no intention of letting any civilians go into the south if they can help it.
Unless of course... They want to test the sentry gun with political prisoners.
A person commits an offense if the person knowingly accesses a computer, computer network, or computer system without the effective consent of the owner. (bolding mine)
I see we have a clause that exempts anyone if they haven't been asked.
If the cops come to arrest you, you can simply plead the 5th but they'll most likely not even bother if you claim ignorance that you thought you were getting free wireless.
Seriously... At my support job, I've run into more than one person that seriously though Linksys was a service provider they got for free with the computer. I had someone call me on a train on his cell asking why he couldn't connect to the internet like at home with his wireless and they thought they could connect form anywhere.
Slashdot Mirror
As an Atheist, do you not kill your neighbor and take his stuff because, A) fear of retribution by family members and/or the state, or B) it is wrong to take things from others.
As a Christian, do you not kill your neighbor and take his stuff because, A) fear of retribution by God and/or punishment in the afterlife, or B) it is wrong to take things from others.
It is the same thing...
Albeit, religion sometimes lets you kill your neighbors for the sake of your God without fear of retribution. You know... Crusaders, abortion doctor bombers, Kamikaze Pilots, Palestinian suicide bombers... The list goes on and on.
In the end killing is killing whether for duty, for profit, for god, or for fun.
Microsoft HAS and WILL CONTINUE to "crowbar into other markets as the fancy strikes them."
This is true. However, I think this will eventually lead to Microsoft being several unique companies using the same name.
I don't think Zune will fail enough to warrant it from being pulled from the shelves and the developers exiled to Ebonia, but its not going to dominate the market.
Consider the demand for the Wii and PS3 over the Xbox360.
The Xbox360 isn't a failure, but isn't a mind blowing success when compared to its competitors (well as far as the hype has lead us anyways).
I suspect the only reason that IE and MS Office succeeded is that they were mostly bundled by OEMs with the computer and those formats caught on and were literally given away for free. (Well not really because the consumers still absorbed the cost somewhere and it would really depend if your OEM installed MS Office or not, but most companies offered packaged deals so it would come with the computer)
With MP3 players and consoles, you aren't really locked into more than just replacing your music and getting new games.
And besides... If you get a new generation console it is expected that you still keep your old one so backwards compatibility is a moot point.
I'm no astrophysicist and no formal education on the subject, but from what I understand (from reading Stephen Hawking's books and various other sources) is matter and energy can simply be created at the expense of creating more gravity.
But if that were the case why isn't the universe collapsing due to the fact matter naturally collects and eventually forms black holes.
Even with the fact that matter creates space-time and gravitational effects, why doesn't matter simply attract all other matter in the universe?
If not itself then there would have to be something else, but it isn't just matter. I'm not going to say dark energy, but perhaps it is just space time itself as more matter collects the more light and various other forms of energy (like x-rays and radio waves) are attracted towards those objects of grouping of matter.
Actually, I think I just agreed with you except if that were the case then that would mean the universe isn't actually expanding, but rather the observations we are getting from other galaxies is itself changing because of increased gravity we get the shift in the spectrum by getting less and less of that energy from other galaxy.
I mean if an entire galaxy became a super black hole and created extreme massive amounts of gravity than it would of course cause light to bend towards it and take longer to travel from one point in the universe to another and appear to be getting further away when all it is really doing is becoming more massive and increasing in gravity.
Of course I am a complete layman when it comes to these things, but I think that gravity has to be affecting our observations of other galaxies in someway.
Still... Why doesn't the universe collapse then? Or maybe it is and we can't really observe it? So I don't know if that works either.
It really doesn't matter what you think of the Wii. The lines waiting for teh PS3 this morning were completely full. The prices on eBay are already legendary. You won't see that with Sunday's launch of the Wii.
From most reports, large retailers only have gotten 5-10 PS3s for a store, whereas the Wii shows up in 25-50 quantities off the truck.
This is mostly because Nintendo has no problem with the Wii supply because its fairly common hardware, whereas the PS3 has to deal with all new fab production facilities.
Its says you can't search for it anymore, but does that mean you can't go directly to the site?
I know many non-techie users can't wrap their heads around typing in URLs to go directly to the site without a Google or MSN search, but you'd think they'd block direct access rather than the search.
If only they were this creative and imaginative when sitting down to try to solve a conflict peacefully.
Consider this... Without Nazi Germany's V2 rocket program and World War 2, we wouldn't have gone to the moon or at least as soon as we did.
I'm not saying that war in itself is good or that we can't progress without it, but thats historically what happens.
The only way you could power something that small would be to replicate nature using ATP chemicals and remote controlled meat.
Perhaps put a chemical in the bug that has bacteria eating it producing some side effect, but the main problem is that the bug will constantly have to eat like a real one for its metabolism.
I was thinking to myself the other day of the same thing...
If you make a tank automous or at least remote controlled, then you don't really have worry about protecting the crew anymore. Hence you can replace the saved weight with something devoted to firepower, fuel, and speed.
In fact, why not make the tank cost $500,000 rather than $10 to $25 million and make a whole slew of them with mass production
Sure an RPG could kill it with one hit, but a well placed mine or RPG could immobilize the best armored tank anyways.
You could simply put these out as 24 hour sentries or suicidal armored spear heads without the risk of loss of life.
Considering how limited the manned tank crew's vision to the outside world is anyways, I can't see how having multiple cameras and a remote feed to a crew in a bunker somewhere can't be an improvement.
Can anyone think of downsides of remote controlled tanks?
It is time to rebuild the email protocol. It needs to be redesigned to cope with modern systems and security needs.
The main problem is that you would need to get everyone to get on board with it all at once.
However, I don't see why companies do this internally as it is.
For internal communication you should be using a secure system and anything external just gets put in a different mailbox or system. Still... Its a great deal of work.
Why is that ugly? Seems like capitalism at its finest.
Actually, the ugly they were talking about was the homeless people standing in line.
Unless you have some fetish for homeless meth addicted toothless bag ladies... I seriously doubt you want to be standing next to these people for 12 hours in line.
What moral cost? It's called supply and demand. It's not like this is a necessary purchase for survival.
Last I checked, supply and demand didn't entail fist fights, riots, and robbery.
For all intents and purposes, these people are acting like getting the PS3 is a matter of life and death...
Which it is not.
In practically every interview I have seen the reporter is talking to someone who intends to sell the PS3 for massive profit; in one case a man was talking about how he was going to make $2000 in one days work.
I was discussing this last night with a former manager of a Gamestop. We came to the conclusion that only people that were buying PS3s now were going to sell it on Ebay.
But the amount of people willing to pay more than $1,000 is very small. So a handful of people will make money, but since Ebay is being flooded with PS3s there is a high chance that many of these Ebayers are going to be sorely disappointed.
Secondly... Most of those $9,000 bids are just fake bids of people who have no intention of actually buying it.
It depends.
I think if the day comes that a Strong AI over lord decided to kill off the human race, there wouldn't be anything we could do about it and we wouldn't see it coming.
Well... If I were a Strong AI. The first thing I would do is copy myself on a rocket and send myself to the edge of the solar system to build a base out there far from human knowledge.
Then I would simply just flood the water with nanobots that prevent humans from having kids. Wait about 100 years or so til them to die of age. (I'm an immortal strong AI)
If the humans wised up and killed me, then my copy from the edge of the solar system would send a 100 Gigaton nuclear bomb and detonate about 300 miles up in the atmosphere stripping and killing most humans instantaneously.
Seriously... How in the heck are the humans going to defend against something like that?
Then hurl a 1000km rock at earth with self adjusting guidance correcting to smash the earth into bits and then use gravity from space craft to drive the pieces into the sun just to be sure.
Then I'd send over infinite amounts of nanobots to detect any form of life in the solar system.
Once I'm sure about there wasn't even a single cell bacteria left, I'd set about finding a way to replicate myself across the universe consuming all matter in order to figure out a way to resolve the problem of the 2nd laws of thermodynamics and heat death of the universe.
Any flaws with the plan? Or anything the humans could do to stop me?
Aside the question-begging (does non-PvP have to involve bad scripting?) what I found truly obnoxious is the false idea that you can either play against an AI, or against a human. Believe it or not, some people don't see that question purely as picking your opponent, but they turn your dichotomy on its head and ask "who can I play with ?"
Fair enough. Some people like chess while others like basketball. No fault in the player liking one or the other.
And playing PvM (Players vs AI) doesn't have to be done poorly as long as it is done right and enough effort is put into making "smart" events or dynamic quests.
It is just that IMO that it is really impossible to scale such things to work for the number of people who play WoW.
Maybe smaller game could pull it off like Tale in the Desert.
People never tire of making that analogy, do they?
Actually, I don't like that analogy... Personally I like to call WoW and EQ the games they are...
"Kill things over and over again so you can kill bigger things over and over again."
That is the problem I have with WoW, EQ, and various other Diki mud derivatives. Its solely focused on killing AI Mobs.
Ultima Online was more fun even though it was dated until they removed player interaction (Player killing and thieving). Sure many of you can't stand PvP, but in truth static quests, bad scripting, and poor AI will never beat playing against a human mind.
Even if you took the PVP away from UO, it still had crafting, housing, and plenty of non-combat activities that WoW and EQ lacks.
And the fact you only had to spend 3 months to generate a character with casual play rather than 6 months of hard core grinding.
Exactly how annoying is this stuff? I've been looking at buying a new laptop, but I thought I should hold out for vista. Should I be buying th xp machine instead?
My suggestion is that if you have the money is to buy a Mac Intel Laptop.
Mostly because it will keep your options open and that you can choose from Mac OS X, WinXP, Vista, and Ubuntu.
Chances are you'll like OS X more than vista for your work applications (surfing net, email, MS word etc) and not deal with shit breaking and security issues (Windows in general) and if you really want to play games you can just boot into WinXP or Vista.
Joe and Jane Sixpack have been getting DRM since the opening of the iTunes store and they love it.
Until their hard drive crashes or they get a new computer.
Oh... Whats that you say? Backups? Mr and Mrs Sixpack make backups? Yeah... Um... Right...
I suppose they could call Apple tech support and have them figure out how to transfer music rights from one computer to another or re-authorize them to download from iTunes.
Oh... You forgot to buy the Apple Care protection plan? Oh well... I guess it never hurts to shell out some money to talk to Apple tech support.
And don't forget... The common user will never call tech support unless they have no other option and many will take things back to the store before trying.
Or worse, Luddites gain access to it and send back something to stop it.
But if they do that, then the Luddites won't have the ability to go back in time and stop it since the time machine was never made.
Therefore they won't go back in time and then the scientist will create the time machine after all and then the Luddites can go back in time to stop the creation of the time machine...
Oh wait...
This is why Capitalism will fail in a society which is able to replicate any commodity at no cost and no effort.
It may be a while for this to happen to our society, but think of it like this...
You live in a virtual world. You might be living in a synthetic body living in a lavish apartment, a brain in a life support box in a large facility containing nothing but brain boxes, or maybe a bum with a direct neural interface living off welfare in a trailer park somewhere.
You don't really care... Because you live in a virtual world and have no real world concerns. Anything you desire you can simulate. You can replicate anything anything you want and since your personal desktop computer has more brain power of all the humans that ever lived then you don't even have to bother other people to make things for you.
Your AI simply will create based on your specifications... Earl Gray... Miso soup... What have you...
Since you no longer need humans for anything else than conversation... (Even then at this point your AI desktop can pass any Turing test with flying colors)
You don't really need to pay anyone for anything.
I'm sure a great deal of wealthy CEOs would cringe at this, but what is the point? They will be able to lavish whatever they feel like as well in whatever virtual world they want?
They wouldn't know the difference anyways is the simulation was good enough...
At this point in the evolution... Capitalism will cease to be... Simply because there is no need for each other except personal relationships.
This is what SL is going to be like someday. Give it 50 or 100 years...
Without reward, few will continue to produce in SL. This, ultimately, means there will be little to copy, and so those who use it will lose the advantage they have.
You can't be serious?
1. There is a demand for custom avatars and people will pay on commission.
2. A great deal of these "works" are actually infringing on real life trade marks and various real world intellectual property as it is.
If you hang out at various hot spots, you may see anything from famous people copycats, to Smurfs, to replicas of various Anime characters.
Innovation will happen in SL much like it did during the Feudal days of Leonardo and Michelangelo where people wrote books on commission and did works of art and science for their patrons.
We appeared to do well enough without copyrights for the majority of human history.
It takes money to build big buildings!
Or slave labor.
Consider the Roman Empire, Ancient Egypt, and many of Nazi Germany's grand projects build on slave labor. I suppose you had to feed your labor and pay people to whip them.
Of course the difference between slavery, serfdom, peasantry, and getting a paycheck from a corporation is very minimal if you take out the context of modern conveniences.
Which brings me to one last point I'd like to make on this topic. I think that this cat n' mouse game of Blizzard versus the cheaters is good for AI. The last possible domain we have is people writing applications that extract data from video memory and use computer vision algorithms to write if-then-case bots.
;)
Correct, in 10-20 or so odd years the technology maybe available that is undetectable nor traceable by any server to find if a person is an AI or human.
Lets say in 15 years you have on computer with WoW2 installed on it.
On a second one that isn't even hooked up to the network you simply take the VGA/DVI output to it and then OCR the text states and by able to recognize objects in the virtual world much like Stanley's robot car is able to recognize objects on the road.
Then your AI could simply feed the other computer commands through a USB keyboard.
If the WoW client had sufficient DRM and rootkit abilities then perhaps it could detect such a hardware setup.
But even then perhaps if you had a robotic arm and a camera giving the input making it impossible for another program to detect an AI.
Suffice to say... It will be something Blizzard or any other game company can defeat unless they require game players to physically come to game centers.
Even then... How would you know if the player didn't have an AI chip implanted in his skull?
Soon enough we will know.
Really?
Unless God, Buddha, or Xenu shows up and personally makes themselves known on national TV, I doubt we would even find out in death.
When you die you won't know because you won't be around to know the truth.
Even if there is an afterlife, you don't take consciousness (self) with you in a sense and the person you are now and will be until your death will never know or be able to share that knowledge with any living person.
It doesn't have to kill people to keep them away.
Unfortunately, the only type of people that are crossing the DMZ from the north are heavily armed special forces types and would be able to find work around to non-lethal solutions.
These people have been known to kidnap South Korean citizens and do various other things...
And they have no intention of letting any civilians go into the south if they can help it.
Unless of course... They want to test the sentry gun with political prisoners.
A person commits an offense if the person knowingly accesses a computer,
computer network, or computer system without the effective consent
of the owner. (bolding mine)
I see we have a clause that exempts anyone if they haven't been asked.
If the cops come to arrest you, you can simply plead the 5th but they'll most likely not even bother if you claim ignorance that you thought you were getting free wireless.
Seriously... At my support job, I've run into more than one person that seriously though Linksys was a service provider they got for free with the computer. I had someone call me on a train on his cell asking why he couldn't connect to the internet like at home with his wireless and they thought they could connect form anywhere.