The article paints a rosy success story, but consider the source. This is a Red Hat press release. While it all may be completely true with no misdirection, I put little stock in self-congratulation, especially after an amazing experience with a similar Microsoft claim.
Wait? Your confusing me?!
I think the point of the matter is who side you are on. Not personal experience or who funded whose studies.
Either you are for Microsoft or pro-Linux.
If you don't pick sides, your against both sides!
So are you a Microsoft Shill or a Linux Zealot? There is no room inbetween... Unless you are a Mac Fanboy! Then everything you say is in question!;)
So stop thinking for yourself and fall into line!
(I jest! I jest! Not in the face! Seriously, we all know its propaganda, but sometimes propaganda could be good depending on whose it is coming from, but it is still better to think for yourself.)
Do you need to know the difference between a knit and purl stich to wear a sweater? Do you need to know what advance and retard are to drive a car? Why the hell should you know what a hosts file is to use the www?
Do you need to know the differce between a "clip-in/saftey off" and a standard switch saftey in a hand gun?
One of them can save your life or kill you, if you forget their is a round in the chamber.
I think anyone that owns a handgun should most likley learn how their saftey catch works.
Same with a computer or any other peice of equipment that has certain things you need to know.
I mean you don't have to learn if you don't want to, but it kind of helps keep you out of trouble. (Although, chances are if you clean your computer infected with spyware, it isn't going to kill you like cleaning a gun with a round in the chamber with the safey off).
It will be fascinating to see what lengths society is willing to go to prohibit individuals from indulging in effortless reward. I can't wait to see copper wire on schedule I.
I think Ray Kurzweil briefly touched in one of his books, essays, or speeches (I can't remember which) about one of the darker sides of self stimulation about how a lab rate with a electrode tied directly to the part of his brain that had his joy (or good feeling) receptors.
This electrode would fire when the rat pressed the lever they setup for him.
However, the rat did nothing but press the lever and didn't bother to eat or drink or do anything else but press the bar.
Ray (being the optimist) skimmed over and didn't say much after that...
However, I think it can be inferred that given enough technology and choice, man would just put his brain into a machine controlled jar and then the electrodes would just fire away for all eternity.
Hopefully at that point we'd have Strong AI and the machines would take care of the problems in the world and figure out how to reverse things like Heat Death or the Big Crunch if they ever so did happen.
Personally, I foresee humanity having the ability to just will things away with technology. You can choose not to feel pain, nor boredom, nor any emotion you don't want to feel...
I used to see this as kind of dangerous, but then I realized that this is the common goal of Buddhism.
Perhaps the only way to avoid technological mind oblivion in the future (in where you can't resist turning on all your joy electrodes and just sitting in a incubator for 100,000,000 years) is to become Buddhist or a masochist.
Yes... I said masochist.. In where you willfully turn on your sensory far beyond a normal person where pain and boredom are amplified.
Where as all those who choose to sit in the jars and do nothing for eternity are just ignored by the beings that go out and do things because they are highly bored, horny, or pissed off at the universes current condition.
Of course this might mean immortal synthetic sadists wandering the universe highly pissed off destroying planets, but I don't think we'll have to worry about that for another 10,000 years or so. (If we survive that long).
But in WoW, players will just keep on trolling and nobody really cares.
Well... Most of the players don't care because you can't really betray anyone because the only thing you can do to each other is call each other names, ninja loot, or maybe scam trade.
Now if you made WoW more like the original UO in which you could steal, murder, and house loot... There was some betrayals and retributions.
So if you don't like the conculsions of her research, go to school, get a degree and do your own. Almost sounds like she has no interest in input from anyone but her peers. Most of which are probably not gamers.
However, at the same time, it is kind of like asking a WWI General about how the war is going on in the trenches when you are both sitting in a nice French Chateu sipping on noon tea.
Chances are they are quite educated about the analysis and the subject of war fare, but you are going to get quite a different outlook than when you ask the soldier who is sitting in the mud with shells going off about his fox hole.
The General may go down to the supply area (far back from the trenches) on a sunny day and ask one out of 100 troops his opinion which most of them unamiously agree the war is going great. So the general goes home and writes a letter home to his wife saying the war is going great.
However, two trenches up closer to the main lines, the troops are distinctly aware that they are going to be over run and a severe breakthrough and encirclement is about to happen. Dispite their best efforts to let the general know, he disregards them because they are not his peers. The next day enemey troops kick down the Chateau doors and haul the general out of bed after a very bad route.
The moral of the story is... Just because you are an expert and do polls on a handful of people doesn't mean you know the entire picture and chances are your research did't include the right people.
I'm not sure how this relates to gaming, but from personal experience in the trenches, I've never experienced gaming causing me to get violent or want to murder someone... Expect Tetris... And my drinking habbits stem from work related stress... Not gaming. Of course this is personal experience and all other gamers in the world could have this problem, but if it was a serious issue like he says we'd have thousands of mass murders and alcoholics on the streets begging for change to play at the arcades.
When solar cells are used, they are feed directly into your houses power supply and any excess electricy produced goes back into the power grid. Not stored in batteries.
This seems rather odd, but when electricity goes back into the power grid, it spins your meter backwards. Anytime your meter goes backwards, you get cash back from your power company.
Soo... You are still depedant on your local power grid for nightime power, but perhaps that might change for people who want to not have anything to do with their power company.
Still... Because of tax benefits, the money you receive from your power company is usually more than you pay them per watt.
More info can be found at the Home Depot Solar Power installation site. I looked into it mostly out of curiousity and my plans on being a new home owner, but I think the costs might be still too great to be worth the installation.
One thing that always irks me about the slashdot crowd is that they tend to have more pessimism about emerging technologies than you'd think most nerd/geek crowds would have.
It is almost like everyone has a luddite streak in them that they just don't believe these things will happen just because we don't have StrongAI promised in 2001: Space Oddessy or flying cars like in Jetsons.
I know slashdot is getting old (with the 40+ something crowd being the majority of its readers), but c'mon!
2050? More like 2020 (or 2015 even).
Technological progress is increasing at an accelerating rate (pardon sounding like Ray Kurzweil) and we shouldn't be downplaying things outright. Sure EGG technologies needs a bit of scrutiny, but these guys aren't building Fusion plants or sending rockets to Mars.
We are talking about things that if they had enough funding as they guys who did the Phantom Console had, they might be able to bring a product to market by 2010-2015ish.
Heck... If you told me about the internet or cell phones of today in 1990, I thought you would be talking about a sci-fi novel or something, but look at what is going on.
Don't downplay emerging tech til we see them go bust.
They're fighting against an occupation by killing their countrymen?
As much a as a "countryman" a Serb is to a Croatian.
If you hadn't been paying attention there are about 3 types of Insurgents.
1. The old Saddam Bathists and Sunni Supports 2. The Al Queda Terrorists (mostly foreign) 3. And the Shia Militias
Or rather... The Sunni's and Shia's have no problem killing each other since they see each other as two different groups and the foreign Al Queda don't mind who they kill since they aren't Iraqi.
Each have their own agenda, but I do agree they don't really benefit the average Iraqi.
Yes there is a large degree of misdirection and a few unscrupulous groups that are nothing more than pyramid schemes or printing companies, but the basic precepts of most religions out there are founded, promoted, and executed with good intent.
Explain the crusades, inquisitions, the protestant vs Catholic civil wars throughout history.
Not the mention the whole sale slaughter of the indiginous people's throughout history.
Yeah... They have good intentions, but they don't care if it means if they have to pave the road to hell in the souls of the saved.
The reason why they do this is not for money or power... But because they want to be right.
They are afraid to be wrong. So the world must agree with them.
(This doesn't apply to just Christians, but to any religion or ideology that wanted to make everyone believe in their message)
Why should a dashboard in the mind representing how thirsty you are, how horny you are, how clever you think you are with your doubting of the common sense about our freedom... why should the mere presense of any of these representations in physical instantiation imply any diminishment of your capacity to will? I'd rather say the more representations on the dashboard, the more the driver is freely in control.
Oh its not that simple.
1. You are because of 4 billion years of evolutions. You are made of atoms and have to obey the laws of physics. That is a limitation that you have no control over.
2. You can only think in languages that have had about 10,000 years worth of work far beyond your control. Are there thoughts right now that you cannot comprehend because no human language can express it?
3. Your child hood and education was mostly done through means beyond your control. Only after your teen age years were you able to seek out material and persons on your own to learn more information rather than just relying on what your parents and school system fed to you... But here is the kicker...
All that knowledge that you sought on your own... Was created by by someone else.
Even today... Try to tell me knowledge that you yourself came up with without any assistance whatsoever by another person or predisposed portion of our universe.
Yet... We claim to have free will as an individual, but everything we see is based on pre-dispotion to knowledge. Our only choices is to take what information that is given to us and pick the one that suits or most logical (or illogical need).
There is no free in that.
The only way we are to have free will is to to put our minds in a simulation that lets us live forever, feel no pain, and wipe our minds clean of our memories and let whatever thoughts come on to our own.
However, that is impossible so true free will may not be possible.
Free will is just a chemical reaction to make us feel comfortable with the choices as a biological being. Otherwise we cease making decisions and most likley not pass on our genes because we cease to bread.
Hence... Free will has been evolved into our genetics simply because those who did not have the feeling have died out.
When I see "Treacherous Computing," I know it's just going to be a bunch of loaded rhetoric trying to scare me into thinking my computer is magically going to shut me out. It's alarmism.
Do you do the same when you see the phrases "Trusted Computing" or "Digital Rights Managment"?
Sure... RMS method maybe alarmism, but when the other side says "Trusted Computing" I hope you see it in the same light.
Yeah, because capitalism is bad! Down with "the corporations!" Screw the content holders, they don't have any rights over distribution of their content. Right?
I didn't say they were bad nor did I say capitalism was bad. In fact I agree with how the system works.
But I'm saying they have no altrustic reasons to be doing nice things other than to make money.
Corporations do not exist for the benefit of mankind. Corporations exist to benefit the stockholders.
So unless you are stock holder of said companies, I don't understand why you stick up for them.
Heck... I own stocks and I support the companies I invest in, but why in God's name would I support any other company that has no finicial benefit to me? Corporations (unless non-profit) exist for nothing else but to return investment.
So unless you have some type of monetary investment... Then just stop trying to assume these companies are out to benefit you as an invidual. They only want to make money. They will do anything that in the bounds of legality to maximize profits.
That isn't bad per say for them (and maybe the economy as a whole), their employees (hey everyones gotta work), and their shareholder (and rightfully so), but I'm clueless how anyone else benefits from the exchange when they are just a consumer of their products.
Unless those products make you feel better about yourself... Well then more power to you.
Well the fact that Microsoft and the like use the words "Trusted Computing" and "Digital Rights Management" should clue you into the fact that they are using loaded phrases.
Yet for the life of me I don't understand why anyone can't see this. They might as well call it "The Freedom Patriot No Computer bit left behind act". Or they might as well be calling "consumer rights" as "collateral damage".
Sure, it seems silly every time RMS blurts out "Treacherous Computer" and "Digital Restriction Management", but I think that is what supposed to be achieving.
The companies are using a literal newspeak into getting people to believe these things have some benefit for them. Do you not realize that these people are basically sugar coating things that really suck?
The EFF RMS types are only pointing out the fallacy by fighting fire with fire.
Seriously, these companies do not have your interest at heart in anything other feeding their stockholders.
Please don't stick up for them. And for the love of god people... Don't associate yourself with the products you buy. Just because you bought or installed a product whether it is Windows, Mac, or Linux doesn't make you superior person. And don't think you have to constantly defend your buying habbits either.
Or maybe you would be interested in their "roadside property removal assistance"... You know... That term they came up with for "Highway robbery".
Seriously, I don't read Digg for comments unless I'm bored, but I will get current and more news without all the dupes and old hat out of date news that we see on Slashdot every now and then.
But I like Slashdot because most of the times the comments are more interesting than the news articles.
They are two different beasts in that respect... Besides, you don't have to read the comments on Digg, nor you have to read the articles on slashdot;)
So while I'm not a troll myself, I do enjoy the (very occasional) troll. I sometimes wonder if I'm too close to the border for them to restore my mod points.
I'm in the same boat. I noticed one day I couldn't mod anymore and wasn't sure why. I think it had to do with modding down somone during a heated BSD vs GNU debate, but this was when the meta-mod system was just came into place so most people were frantically using it to get more mod points.
I can still meta-mod just fine myself and don't really miss the mod points that much... I just see the lack of Mod points as the gods way of telling me I should post more becaues they think my posts are so insightful they don't want me to waste time with moderating other people;)
The Singularity will make genetics a moot point
on
An Alternate Human
·
· Score: 1
By the time we figure out how to make these kind of humans, the singularity will have brought about nano technology and bio-organize life forms will be obsolete.;)
Much like things on a shop shelf are "free"; sure you can take them and walk out of the shop, but the business model relies on customers paying, be it cash or ad views.
In a shop they actually sell something upfront, but they don't give away products to people that are willing to look at ads. Maybe they give away free samples like those cheese cubes, but they don't give away food to people that look at ads.
The main kind of service that I can think of off the top of my head is porn sites (not that I would know). They give away free samples and they you pay for the actual "product".
Now live Journal is more like a magazine service. They aren't selling actual items or content but rather a place where you can upload text and pictures.
It would be like a magazine that provides two version... The pay version and then free version.
The free version would be a magazine with less pictures and more ads. Kind of likes those free newspapers you can pick up like Creative Loafing in which are totally supported by ads.
The pay magazine has no ads and then have more pictures. This would be more like National Geographic.
The issue here is that they are giving away a free ad based newspaper and then asking you to not cut the ads out of them.
But on reading further, this is more about those who have the "ad supported" LJs with more icons and HTML functionality and I think the old free version (the one with limited HTML functionality and fewer pictures) remains the same.
Slashdot Mirror
The article paints a rosy success story, but consider the source. This is a Red Hat press release. While it all may be completely true with no misdirection, I put little stock in self-congratulation, especially after an amazing experience with a similar Microsoft claim.
;)
Wait? Your confusing me?!
I think the point of the matter is who side you are on. Not personal experience or who funded whose studies.
Either you are for Microsoft or pro-Linux.
If you don't pick sides, your against both sides!
So are you a Microsoft Shill or a Linux Zealot? There is no room inbetween... Unless you are a Mac Fanboy! Then everything you say is in question!
So stop thinking for yourself and fall into line!
(I jest! I jest! Not in the face! Seriously, we all know its propaganda, but sometimes propaganda could be good depending on whose it is coming from, but it is still better to think for yourself.)
Do you need to know the difference between a knit and purl stich to wear a sweater? Do you need to know what advance and retard are to drive a car? Why the hell should you know what a hosts file is to use the www?
Do you need to know the differce between a "clip-in/saftey off" and a standard switch saftey in a hand gun?
One of them can save your life or kill you, if you forget their is a round in the chamber.
I think anyone that owns a handgun should most likley learn how their saftey catch works.
Same with a computer or any other peice of equipment that has certain things you need to know.
I mean you don't have to learn if you don't want to, but it kind of helps keep you out of trouble. (Although, chances are if you clean your computer infected with spyware, it isn't going to kill you like cleaning a gun with a round in the chamber with the safey off).
It will be fascinating to see what lengths society is willing to go to prohibit individuals from indulging in effortless reward. I can't wait to see copper wire on schedule I.
I think Ray Kurzweil briefly touched in one of his books, essays, or speeches (I can't remember which) about one of the darker sides of self stimulation about how a lab rate with a electrode tied directly to the part of his brain that had his joy (or good feeling) receptors.
This electrode would fire when the rat pressed the lever they setup for him.
However, the rat did nothing but press the lever and didn't bother to eat or drink or do anything else but press the bar.
Ray (being the optimist) skimmed over and didn't say much after that...
However, I think it can be inferred that given enough technology and choice, man would just put his brain into a machine controlled jar and then the electrodes would just fire away for all eternity.
Hopefully at that point we'd have Strong AI and the machines would take care of the problems in the world and figure out how to reverse things like Heat Death or the Big Crunch if they ever so did happen.
Personally, I foresee humanity having the ability to just will things away with technology. You can choose not to feel pain, nor boredom, nor any emotion you don't want to feel...
I used to see this as kind of dangerous, but then I realized that this is the common goal of Buddhism.
Perhaps the only way to avoid technological mind oblivion in the future (in where you can't resist turning on all your joy electrodes and just sitting in a incubator for 100,000,000 years) is to become Buddhist or a masochist.
Yes... I said masochist.. In where you willfully turn on your sensory far beyond a normal person where pain and boredom are amplified.
Where as all those who choose to sit in the jars and do nothing for eternity are just ignored by the beings that go out and do things because they are highly bored, horny, or pissed off at the universes current condition.
Of course this might mean immortal synthetic sadists wandering the universe highly pissed off destroying planets, but I don't think we'll have to worry about that for another 10,000 years or so. (If we survive that long).
But in WoW, players will just keep on trolling and nobody really cares.
Well... Most of the players don't care because you can't really betray anyone because the only thing you can do to each other is call each other names, ninja loot, or maybe scam trade.
Now if you made WoW more like the original UO in which you could steal, murder, and house loot... There was some betrayals and retributions.
So if you don't like the conculsions of her research, go to school, get a degree and do your own. Almost sounds like she has no interest in input from anyone but her peers. Most of which are probably not gamers.
However, at the same time, it is kind of like asking a WWI General about how the war is going on in the trenches when you are both sitting in a nice French Chateu sipping on noon tea.
Chances are they are quite educated about the analysis and the subject of war fare, but you are going to get quite a different outlook than when you ask the soldier who is sitting in the mud with shells going off about his fox hole.
The General may go down to the supply area (far back from the trenches) on a sunny day and ask one out of 100 troops his opinion which most of them unamiously agree the war is going great. So the general goes home and writes a letter home to his wife saying the war is going great.
However, two trenches up closer to the main lines, the troops are distinctly aware that they are going to be over run and a severe breakthrough and encirclement is about to happen. Dispite their best efforts to let the general know, he disregards them because they are not his peers. The next day enemey troops kick down the Chateau doors and haul the general out of bed after a very bad route.
The moral of the story is... Just because you are an expert and do polls on a handful of people doesn't mean you know the entire picture and chances are your research did't include the right people.
I'm not sure how this relates to gaming, but from personal experience in the trenches, I've never experienced gaming causing me to get violent or want to murder someone... Expect Tetris... And my drinking habbits stem from work related stress... Not gaming. Of course this is personal experience and all other gamers in the world could have this problem, but if it was a serious issue like he says we'd have thousands of mass murders and alcoholics on the streets begging for change to play at the arcades.
Why is the DEC corporate logo the graphic for this article?
Did HP decide to use their corporate corpse to produce Blu-ray or HD-DVD players?
Here is the deal...
When solar cells are used, they are feed directly into your houses power supply and any excess electricy produced goes back into the power grid. Not stored in batteries.
This seems rather odd, but when electricity goes back into the power grid, it spins your meter backwards. Anytime your meter goes backwards, you get cash back from your power company.
Soo... You are still depedant on your local power grid for nightime power, but perhaps that might change for people who want to not have anything to do with their power company.
Still... Because of tax benefits, the money you receive from your power company is usually more than you pay them per watt.
More info can be found at the Home Depot Solar Power installation site. I looked into it mostly out of curiousity and my plans on being a new home owner, but I think the costs might be still too great to be worth the installation.
One thing that always irks me about the slashdot crowd is that they tend to have more pessimism about emerging technologies than you'd think most nerd/geek crowds would have.
It is almost like everyone has a luddite streak in them that they just don't believe these things will happen just because we don't have StrongAI promised in 2001: Space Oddessy or flying cars like in Jetsons.
I know slashdot is getting old (with the 40+ something crowd being the majority of its readers), but c'mon!
2050? More like 2020 (or 2015 even).
Technological progress is increasing at an accelerating rate (pardon sounding like Ray Kurzweil) and we shouldn't be downplaying things outright. Sure EGG technologies needs a bit of scrutiny, but these guys aren't building Fusion plants or sending rockets to Mars.
We are talking about things that if they had enough funding as they guys who did the Phantom Console had, they might be able to bring a product to market by 2010-2015ish.
Heck... If you told me about the internet or cell phones of today in 1990, I thought you would be talking about a sci-fi novel or something, but look at what is going on.
Don't downplay emerging tech til we see them go bust.
Talk about opportunities for loss of privacy. In a truely cashless society, there would be no way to have private transactions.
Huh? What? If you are that concerned about invasion of privacy, you could always barter.
People do it all the time. Swaping dvds, hard ward bits and peices, pokemon cards, and lord knows what else...
They're fighting against an occupation by killing their countrymen?
As much a as a "countryman" a Serb is to a Croatian.
If you hadn't been paying attention there are about 3 types of Insurgents.
1. The old Saddam Bathists and Sunni Supports
2. The Al Queda Terrorists (mostly foreign)
3. And the Shia Militias
Or rather... The Sunni's and Shia's have no problem killing each other since they see each other as two different groups and the foreign Al Queda don't mind who they kill since they aren't Iraqi.
Each have their own agenda, but I do agree they don't really benefit the average Iraqi.
Have you ever been to Detroit?
Yes... Of course the gun shots and car vandalism happens in any big city.
I felt that I saw a bit too much of it first hand on my small trip to Detriot.
Still... The blocks and blocks of burnt out houses still is pretty bad.
Much worse than say... North Philly.
But I don't know if Detroit is worse than Camden (across the river from us).
Religion by itself is neither good nor evil.
Neither are atomic bombs.
Yes there is a large degree of misdirection and a few unscrupulous groups that are nothing more than pyramid schemes or printing companies, but the basic precepts of most religions out there are founded, promoted, and executed with good intent.
Explain the crusades, inquisitions, the protestant vs Catholic civil wars throughout history.
Not the mention the whole sale slaughter of the indiginous people's throughout history.
Yeah... They have good intentions, but they don't care if it means if they have to pave the road to hell in the souls of the saved.
The reason why they do this is not for money or power... But because they want to be right.
They are afraid to be wrong. So the world must agree with them.
(This doesn't apply to just Christians, but to any religion or ideology that wanted to make everyone believe in their message)
Why should a dashboard in the mind representing how thirsty you are, how horny you are, how clever you think you are with your doubting of the common sense about our freedom ... why should the mere presense of any of these representations in physical instantiation imply any diminishment of your capacity to will? I'd rather say the more representations on the dashboard, the more the driver is freely in control.
Oh its not that simple.
1. You are because of 4 billion years of evolutions. You are made of atoms and have to obey the laws of physics. That is a limitation that you have no control over.
2. You can only think in languages that have had about 10,000 years worth of work far beyond your control. Are there thoughts right now that you cannot comprehend because no human language can express it?
3. Your child hood and education was mostly done through means beyond your control. Only after your teen age years were you able to seek out material and persons on your own to learn more information rather than just relying on what your parents and school system fed to you... But here is the kicker...
All that knowledge that you sought on your own... Was created by by someone else.
Even today... Try to tell me knowledge that you yourself came up with without any assistance whatsoever by another person or predisposed portion of our universe.
Yet... We claim to have free will as an individual, but everything we see is based on pre-dispotion to knowledge. Our only choices is to take what information that is given to us and pick the one that suits or most logical (or illogical need).
There is no free in that.
The only way we are to have free will is to to put our minds in a simulation that lets us live forever, feel no pain, and wipe our minds clean of our memories and let whatever thoughts come on to our own.
However, that is impossible so true free will may not be possible.
Free will is just a chemical reaction to make us feel comfortable with the choices as a biological being. Otherwise we cease making decisions and most likley not pass on our genes because we cease to bread.
Hence... Free will has been evolved into our genetics simply because those who did not have the feeling have died out.
When I see "Treacherous Computing," I know it's just going to be a bunch of loaded rhetoric trying to scare me into thinking my computer is magically going to shut me out. It's alarmism.
Do you do the same when you see the phrases "Trusted Computing" or "Digital Rights Managment"?
Sure... RMS method maybe alarmism, but when the other side says "Trusted Computing" I hope you see it in the same light.
Yeah, because capitalism is bad! Down with "the corporations!" Screw the content holders, they don't have any rights over distribution of their content. Right?
I didn't say they were bad nor did I say capitalism was bad. In fact I agree with how the system works.
But I'm saying they have no altrustic reasons to be doing nice things other than to make money.
Corporations do not exist for the benefit of mankind. Corporations exist to benefit the stockholders.
So unless you are stock holder of said companies, I don't understand why you stick up for them.
Heck... I own stocks and I support the companies I invest in, but why in God's name would I support any other company that has no finicial benefit to me? Corporations (unless non-profit) exist for nothing else but to return investment.
So unless you have some type of monetary investment... Then just stop trying to assume these companies are out to benefit you as an invidual. They only want to make money. They will do anything that in the bounds of legality to maximize profits.
That isn't bad per say for them (and maybe the economy as a whole), their employees (hey everyones gotta work), and their shareholder (and rightfully so), but I'm clueless how anyone else benefits from the exchange when they are just a consumer of their products.
Unless those products make you feel better about yourself... Well then more power to you.
That implies that anything finite has a decidable outcome.
Which would mean that everything has a decidable outcome.
Well... Mostly because there isn't anything that is infinite in the universe.
Unless of course the universe is not a closed system... Then all bets are off.
Honestly, I stopped reading at this point.
Huh?
Well the fact that Microsoft and the like use the words "Trusted Computing" and "Digital Rights Management" should clue you into the fact that they are using loaded phrases.
Yet for the life of me I don't understand why anyone can't see this. They might as well call it "The Freedom Patriot No Computer bit left behind act". Or they might as well be calling "consumer rights" as "collateral damage".
Sure, it seems silly every time RMS blurts out "Treacherous Computer" and "Digital Restriction Management", but I think that is what supposed to be achieving.
The companies are using a literal newspeak into getting people to believe these things have some benefit for them. Do you not realize that these people are basically sugar coating things that really suck?
The EFF RMS types are only pointing out the fallacy by fighting fire with fire.
Seriously, these companies do not have your interest at heart in anything other feeding their stockholders.
Please don't stick up for them. And for the love of god people... Don't associate yourself with the products you buy. Just because you bought or installed a product whether it is Windows, Mac, or Linux doesn't make you superior person. And don't think you have to constantly defend your buying habbits either.
Or maybe you would be interested in their "roadside property removal assistance"... You know... That term they came up with for "Highway robbery".
There's no such thing as a virtual coup d'etat (well, you can hack the page, granted, but that's usually overthrown quickly again).
Don't forget the lawyers... You can always sue a website out of existence.
Seriously, I don't read Digg for comments unless I'm bored, but I will get current and more news without all the dupes and old hat out of date news that we see on Slashdot every now and then.
;)
But I like Slashdot because most of the times the comments are more interesting than the news articles.
They are two different beasts in that respect... Besides, you don't have to read the comments on Digg, nor you have to read the articles on slashdot
So while I'm not a troll myself, I do enjoy the (very occasional) troll. I sometimes wonder if I'm too close to the border for them to restore my mod points.
;)
I'm in the same boat. I noticed one day I couldn't mod anymore and wasn't sure why. I think it had to do with modding down somone during a heated BSD vs GNU debate, but this was when the meta-mod system was just came into place so most people were frantically using it to get more mod points.
I can still meta-mod just fine myself and don't really miss the mod points that much... I just see the lack of Mod points as the gods way of telling me I should post more becaues they think my posts are so insightful they don't want me to waste time with moderating other people
By the time we figure out how to make these kind of humans, the singularity will have brought about nano technology and bio-organize life forms will be obsolete. ;)
Yeah, I've noticed program changes with Adult Swim. Someone tell me why they are showing "Saved by the Bell" on Adult Swim?
I don't know. I hated the show growing up and I hate it now.
I watch adult swim for the Anime, Boondocks, and ATHF... I wouldn't mind live action, but it would have to be adult swim like.
Or when we no longer double the density every 18 months or so.
;)
But then we'll stop using transistors
Much like things on a shop shelf are "free"; sure you can take them and walk out of the shop, but the business model relies on customers paying, be it cash or ad views.
In a shop they actually sell something upfront, but they don't give away products to people that are willing to look at ads. Maybe they give away free samples like those cheese cubes, but they don't give away food to people that look at ads.
The main kind of service that I can think of off the top of my head is porn sites (not that I would know). They give away free samples and they you pay for the actual "product".
Now live Journal is more like a magazine service. They aren't selling actual items or content but rather a place where you can upload text and pictures.
It would be like a magazine that provides two version... The pay version and then free version.
The free version would be a magazine with less pictures and more ads. Kind of likes those free newspapers you can pick up like Creative Loafing in which are totally supported by ads.
The pay magazine has no ads and then have more pictures. This would be more like National Geographic.
The issue here is that they are giving away a free ad based newspaper and then asking you to not cut the ads out of them.
But on reading further, this is more about those who have the "ad supported" LJs with more icons and HTML functionality and I think the old free version (the one with limited HTML functionality and fewer pictures) remains the same.