Besides, who wants to be deprived of all its documentation every time DSL is down?
Without an internet connection I couldn't do any work on any documentation even though they are local on the machine... If you need manuals I'm sure you can export them to pdf and save them locally. If I am working on something then I usually have to have quick access to Google, Wiki, or other people online via IM or Email. Not to mention that I do all my banking and bills online as well. Kind of scary if you think about our dependence on the internet, but if it ever went down the only thing I could do is leave the room and read a book.
Apparently, the ED209 teacher models had a few bugs in them...
ED209: "Warning! You have entered Western European Art 101! Lethal force has been engaged! Write a ten page essay on the Flemish Art in the 1500's! You have ten seconds to comply! 10... 9... 8..."
Those installers put files in directories a normal user can't touch.
Why do they need to be put in those directories then? OS X is pretty standard. Why can't the devs just work around that and keep all the files in the drag and drop executable. I'm not looking at it as just a security issue, but if I wanted to uninstall a OS X app, I just expect to trash it and then delete the prefs and I've removed all traces of it. When an installer puts files willy nilly all over the system it's rather hard to clean up after it since there is not Add/Remove programs on a Mac.
He starts by saying that computers are now as smart as an insect -- which is unrefutable because nobody can quantify what that means -- and proceeds to predicting that they will be as smart as people once they get n times faster. No, I'm sorry, all that means is that they will be as smart as n insects. Whatever the hell that means.
But... But... You just said you can't quantify what "smart as insects" is?
But seriously, most people try to blow off the idea by saying AI will be just as smart as a dog over but just running 1,000 times faster than a dog mind. However neither the AI advocates nor the skeptics have any idea what makes the human mind tick or even what concioussness is.
Basically conciousness is a stream of thought process based off review of what has happened in the past and predicts based off that what will happen if you do a certain action. That is basically what concioussness is. The reason a computer does not work well (and even most animals) is that they can not interpet from past experience or retain knowledge of what will happen if they do a certain action.
Kind of like why animals always get hit by cars... They simply cannot grasp based off past experience from other animals (because animals lack the ability to comminicate this information) or comprehend the loss of life it may cause.
If an AI to get past this limitation then it's not longer an insect like animal (and some animals do have the concept of recognizing fear and death and various other emotions). This won't be done by speed alone but rather with programing.
But the reason why it will be only possible with computer 100,000 times more power than now is because we have to brute force all possibilities with an AI to get a desired result in moving from point A to point B or picking a choice. In a way that is how the human mind works before it makes a decision by ruling out all possible before going with what is left. As it stands right now an AI is usually programmed to actually try each possible outcome so it is rather time consuming processor wise.
I mean even the gaming community has talked about dedicated AI hardware for First Person shooter games.
but unless we create a worldwide civil society that is robust, honest, and representative; it won't make a dime's worth of difference.
Humans had 4,900 years to do that own without technology and it didn't happen. So I'd wager that if we do pull it off it will be because of technology.
Which brings up the point, do you really WANT to live 300 years?
You aren't thinking outside the box with this one. Most people have this problem and assume in the future man is going to retain a human body. Who is to say you can't just remove the brain and put it in a machine that keeps it alive with nutrients and replaces dead brain cells with new stem cells? That machine simulates your reality and you basically get to live forever in some sort of video game simulation.
Or remote control some sort of body...
Maybe I've watched too much Ghost in the Shell, but it seems the most logical route. Keeping the natural body is messy and hard to mass produce.
Although this doesn't answer your question about if people would want to live for 300 years or more? Let's put it this way. We've virtualized you to nothing and you basically cost nothing to exist and anything that needs to be done physical is done by robots or bored people remote controlling robots. Even space exploration will be done by brains in machine sending their craft to the surface to observer and what not.
However if you just wanted to sit in your brain jar and simulate realities you write through your own code you could.. Or play online with everyone else in some EverQuest simulation. That could keep you occupied for a few thousands years.
Trust me... Death is over rated as an escape from life. The only way to keep from existing as something else is to remain existing as "you" now. Or chances are you will spontaneously exist over an infinite amount of time as something else. That maybe metaphysics in a sense, but everyone here has obviously spontaneously come into existence so who is to say it won't happen again. I'd rather take my chances of immortality. Even if I am wrong and we do go forever into the void when we kick the bucket then are you saying that is better?
We could never agree on what utopia should be like, and would fight about it.
Not unless that Utopia involves virtualization so that everyone could simulate their own Utopia based on whatever they felt should be the case... Then let the robots deal with the problems of the real world. You know that would make a good movie... Oh wait...
Those Think Geek Ts that says: "I read your email", are true you know.
That's because they have rooted your local machine and used a keylogger to get your password.
Oh and btw the next time you and missus decide to take pictures... Could you actually give the file a descriptive name or warning on the folder on your desktop. There are somethings we'd rather not read.
You use dialup in the meantime and suffer for not switching to cable. (I jest! I jest! I wouldn't wish any of that on anyone.)
No, but seriously it depends on the company doing the document providing. Chances are that if a major company like Google is doing this then they'll have a full time staff of PHD $200K per year salary team of security advisors working around the clock to make sure it is secure. Do you have a full time security staff devoted to your laptop?
Although, other smaller companies I'd be a bit more leary of... But then again... I think this would be good for highschool/college students who are writing papers or for people who aren't writing sensitive documents.
I would prefer to keep my documents secure and local.
Like Obscurity... Being local does not always make secure. The chances are that if they've collected your password to the server, they also have gained access to your local computer remotley.
Hacking is art if it has an aesthetic value. Something a person would look at and feel emotions, pleasure, or disgust but as an observatory role (rather than someone seeing all their hard work destroyed and being upset about that fact).
Hacking is a science if it has a proven methology that can be recreated through a certain process.
If I remember correctly, didn't Apple computer have a spat with Apple Records (the ones the Beattles started) but settled by saying they will stay out of the sound business and even later having a fight over the sound card on a mac?
Although, I guess apple could call the label "iTunes Records"
Although, it appears wacky, I'm glad others know what transhumanism is.
The only doubt I have of it is that the singularity may or may not happen in our lifetime and even then we may not have control of even if happens or not.
However, the singularity is inevitable if society continues on its present course. When technology can produce anything for the price of nothing then we start to see the affects of the problems of brick and mortar fighting the changes in the business methods. This will eventually lead to all items that we now still pay money for weather it be food, shelter, and entertainment. There will be a sector of society which will resist this to the bitter end, but as the parent says Transhumanism will render this a moot point. Although I don't know what that has to do with selling used games, but then again... The same principal applies when there is nothing that can be manufactures for free than what do you pay people for their ideas and time in creation of software entertainment or various other things that involve "intellectual property".
It scares MS to death that people will want a blu-ray DVD player because that is a HUGE valueadd to the PS3.
A long time ago I was thinking about buying a DVD player my room mate happened to get a PS2. He left it plugged up to the TV so when I found out that it played DVDs I saved the money and just used his PS2. If the PS3 plays Blu-Ray discs and my current room mate happens to have one, then I'll prolly buy into Blu-Ray movies instead of buying a HD-DVD or Blu-Ray player.
If someone asks you if you are doing illegal activities than only those who don't care if they get caught will answer yes.
The people that answered "no" to the poll also use P2P illegally, speed, shoplift, and smoke pot like everyone else, but they'll never get caught because they no how to answer the question correctly when an officer asks. The people that answered "I plead the 5th!!! Where is my laywer!?" to the poll are not only richer than the other two types poll participants, but also are usually involved in politics.
While moving between star, open or microsoft office is trivial for technical people, the average user has major problems with the gui being slighting different and commands being in different menus.
I'll have to interject here. My job requires me to interact with people who often are upgraded from MS Office 2000 to 2002 or 2003 and the biggest complaint and call ins about those upgrades are on the Mail Merge GUI changes. These are actually the majority of calls on sucessful Office upgrades (rather than people calling in and saying "My Office gets a fatal exception!")
The steps when to three on a pop up on 2000 to a 6 step process on the task pane (which most persons upgrade to 2003 request for a way to turn off).
These are mostly average office workers who know nothing about Office other than the original way that they were taught, so this increases support and training costs for those upgraded even on just Microsoft products.
Personally, I think Microsoft has a bad habbit of over complicating things and not putting the minimum desired options on the screen at the same time. However, Office Vista might change that trend, but we will have to see.
You're confusing the act of duplicating a CD, with the process of recording, engineering, producing, marketing, and distributing an album. Nobody -- not the artist, the engineer, the person who ran the register at the record store, or the dozens of other people involved -- does this for free. Nobody.
Actually, from first hand experience in the music industry I would have to disagree in someways and agree in others.
$.25 is actually expensive cost per CD for a Major label. If you produce more than 10,000 CDs than you can get your price per cd below the $.10 mark. I'm sure the majors that release 100,000+ get a better deal than that. Most major put up between $30,000 to $100,000 up front for most bands. Because of recording technology is so cheap these days with home studios and what not, most bands use that for living expenses and for the salary of a producer, graphic artist, and what not. This money is technically a loan against projected profits and not really money paid even though the bands usually don't have to pay anything back if they album bombs but they won't get any pay or most likley another deal. The record company usually pays 5-7% of the price of what they make on each cd and most likely less... Only superstars get paid around 10% and higher. This doesn't count for the total price you see in stores but what the record company gets from the distributor (and we haven't even gotten to the store price yet and sometimes the distributor and record label are one and the same but they artist still gets the lowest profit margin of the two) so most artists get pennies for each album sold. The artist themselves don't even take up a fraction of the CD cost even with their upfront loan. The main cost is of course promotion and various other "costs" that the record label tacks on. Without promotion the artist is dead in water unless they already have a fan base.
Still even if a record company spend a million dollars to promote an artist and they sold one million albums they still make 400%-1000% profit. They pay 1 penny per cd to artist (which they won't pay until they made their money back) and 1 cent to make the cd and 1 dollar per cd for promotion and maybe.000005 for the graphic artist for the name and after that they may sell their cd to a distributor for $5-7 or more (thats a rough ball park... I usually sell my indie label's cd for about $6.25 to distributors to keep the price around $11.00 or less so, but you have to keep in mind we don't print 10,000 cds so we usually have to pay $3 per cd pressed if we want good quality)
I use this roughly because most new artists are lucky even to sell 100,000 albums or even get more than $100,000 to spend on promotion.
So in the end... It does cost the major labels a great to release a cd but if you compare it to the scale of the profits from a successful cd really costs them nothing at all so yess... They could in theory sell CDs around $5 and still make a huge profit (although I hope they wouldn't because I wouldn't be able to sell albums that low and still pay printing costs).
Actually Mankind (that French Space MMOG) had a similar idea that you could play for free but you couldn't purchase certain units or build past a certain point if you didn't pay a subscription.
FTA it appears that the company makes it's money of selling items to players so hence players how want to get ahead of others can buy items and such rather than slogging like the rest of them. Hence the rest of the players can play for free but I'd wadger that the paying players will always have some sort of advantage.
Ethics is tricky business, and neither "the ends justify the means" nor "all's well that ends well" are sufficient ethical justifications.
If you had to murder 1 person to save the lives of a million, would it be worth it?
If you had to murder 1,000,000 people to save the lives of everyone on the planet, would it be worth it?
If you had to blow up the earth to save the rest of the sentient life in the universe would it be worth it?
If your inaction would result in the death of those persons who you had to kill anyways then it is possibly justified. However, most of us won't be given such grandiose moral problems to deal with in our lives, but it is something to ponder of how far you would go. Sometimes horrible actions are needed... Sometimes they go too far... Either way stem cell research needs to continue in order to end the suffering of millions of those already alive on earth.
Slashdot Mirror
Besides, who wants to be deprived of all its documentation every time DSL is down?
Without an internet connection I couldn't do any work on any documentation even though they are local on the machine... If you need manuals I'm sure you can export them to pdf and save them locally. If I am working on something then I usually have to have quick access to Google, Wiki, or other people online via IM or Email. Not to mention that I do all my banking and bills online as well. Kind of scary if you think about our dependence on the internet, but if it ever went down the only thing I could do is leave the room and read a book.
Kids meet your new assistant principal...robocop!
Apparently, the ED209 teacher models had a few bugs in them...
ED209: "Warning! You have entered Western European Art 101! Lethal force has been engaged! Write a ten page essay on the Flemish Art in the 1500's! You have ten seconds to comply! 10... 9... 8..."
And here all you people were complaining about how we never RTFA! Irony I say... Irony.
Those installers put files in directories a normal user can't touch.
Why do they need to be put in those directories then? OS X is pretty standard. Why can't the devs just work around that and keep all the files in the drag and drop executable. I'm not looking at it as just a security issue, but if I wanted to uninstall a OS X app, I just expect to trash it and then delete the prefs and I've removed all traces of it. When an installer puts files willy nilly all over the system it's rather hard to clean up after it since there is not Add/Remove programs on a Mac.
We will eat you.
No. That is what the Flesh Eating Robotic spiders are for. This was about the technological singularity you know.
He starts by saying that computers are now as smart as an insect -- which is unrefutable because nobody can quantify what that means -- and proceeds to predicting that they will be as smart as people once they get n times faster. No, I'm sorry, all that means is that they will be as smart as n insects. Whatever the hell that means.
But... But... You just said you can't quantify what "smart as insects" is?
But seriously, most people try to blow off the idea by saying AI will be just as smart as a dog over but just running 1,000 times faster than a dog mind. However neither the AI advocates nor the skeptics have any idea what makes the human mind tick or even what concioussness is.
Basically conciousness is a stream of thought process based off review of what has happened in the past and predicts based off that what will happen if you do a certain action. That is basically what concioussness is. The reason a computer does not work well (and even most animals) is that they can not interpet from past experience or retain knowledge of what will happen if they do a certain action.
Kind of like why animals always get hit by cars... They simply cannot grasp based off past experience from other animals (because animals lack the ability to comminicate this information) or comprehend the loss of life it may cause.
If an AI to get past this limitation then it's not longer an insect like animal (and some animals do have the concept of recognizing fear and death and various other emotions). This won't be done by speed alone but rather with programing.
But the reason why it will be only possible with computer 100,000 times more power than now is because we have to brute force all possibilities with an AI to get a desired result in moving from point A to point B or picking a choice. In a way that is how the human mind works before it makes a decision by ruling out all possible before going with what is left. As it stands right now an AI is usually programmed to actually try each possible outcome so it is rather time consuming processor wise.
I mean even the gaming community has talked about dedicated AI hardware for First Person shooter games.
but unless we create a worldwide civil society that is robust, honest, and representative; it won't make a dime's worth of difference.
Humans had 4,900 years to do that own without technology and it didn't happen. So I'd wager that if we do pull it off it will be because of technology.
Which brings up the point, do you really WANT to live 300 years?
You aren't thinking outside the box with this one. Most people have this problem and assume in the future man is going to retain a human body. Who is to say you can't just remove the brain and put it in a machine that keeps it alive with nutrients and replaces dead brain cells with new stem cells? That machine simulates your reality and you basically get to live forever in some sort of video game simulation.
Or remote control some sort of body...
Maybe I've watched too much Ghost in the Shell, but it seems the most logical route. Keeping the natural body is messy and hard to mass produce.
Although this doesn't answer your question about if people would want to live for 300 years or more? Let's put it this way. We've virtualized you to nothing and you basically cost nothing to exist and anything that needs to be done physical is done by robots or bored people remote controlling robots. Even space exploration will be done by brains in machine sending their craft to the surface to observer and what not.
However if you just wanted to sit in your brain jar and simulate realities you write through your own code you could.. Or play online with everyone else in some EverQuest simulation. That could keep you occupied for a few thousands years.
Trust me... Death is over rated as an escape from life. The only way to keep from existing as something else is to remain existing as "you" now. Or chances are you will spontaneously exist over an infinite amount of time as something else. That maybe metaphysics in a sense, but everyone here has obviously spontaneously come into existence so who is to say it won't happen again. I'd rather take my chances of immortality. Even if I am wrong and we do go forever into the void when we kick the bucket then are you saying that is better?
We could never agree on what utopia should be like, and would fight about it.
Not unless that Utopia involves virtualization so that everyone could simulate their own Utopia based on whatever they felt should be the case... Then let the robots deal with the problems of the real world. You know that would make a good movie... Oh wait...
Those Think Geek Ts that says: "I read your email", are true you know.
That's because they have rooted your local machine and used a keylogger to get your password.
Oh and btw the next time you and missus decide to take pictures... Could you actually give the file a descriptive name or warning on the folder on your desktop. There are somethings we'd rather not read.
"or your DSL goes down"
You use dialup in the meantime and suffer for not switching to cable. (I jest! I jest! I wouldn't wish any of that on anyone.)
No, but seriously it depends on the company doing the document providing. Chances are that if a major company like Google is doing this then they'll have a full time staff of PHD $200K per year salary team of security advisors working around the clock to make sure it is secure. Do you have a full time security staff devoted to your laptop?
Although, other smaller companies I'd be a bit more leary of... But then again... I think this would be good for highschool/college students who are writing papers or for people who aren't writing sensitive documents.
I would prefer to keep my documents secure and local.
Like Obscurity... Being local does not always make secure. The chances are that if they've collected your password to the server, they also have gained access to your local computer remotley.
It can be both...
Hacking is art if it has an aesthetic value. Something a person would look at and feel emotions, pleasure, or disgust but as an observatory role (rather than someone seeing all their hard work destroyed and being upset about that fact).
Hacking is a science if it has a proven methology that can be recreated through a certain process.
If I remember correctly, didn't Apple computer have a spat with Apple Records (the ones the Beattles started) but settled by saying they will stay out of the sound business and even later having a fight over the sound card on a mac?
Although, I guess apple could call the label "iTunes Records"
Although, it appears wacky, I'm glad others know what transhumanism is.
The only doubt I have of it is that the singularity may or may not happen in our lifetime and even then we may not have control of even if happens or not.
However, the singularity is inevitable if society continues on its present course. When technology can produce anything for the price of nothing then we start to see the affects of the problems of brick and mortar fighting the changes in the business methods. This will eventually lead to all items that we now still pay money for weather it be food, shelter, and entertainment. There will be a sector of society which will resist this to the bitter end, but as the parent says Transhumanism will render this a moot point. Although I don't know what that has to do with selling used games, but then again... The same principal applies when there is nothing that can be manufactures for free than what do you pay people for their ideas and time in creation of software entertainment or various other things that involve "intellectual property".
"Are they going to sell used copies of Microsoft Office and if not why not?,"
I already tried. The reason they gave me was they couldn't resell a CD-R with just a printout of astalavista.box.sk
It scares MS to death that people will want a blu-ray DVD player because that is a HUGE valueadd to the PS3.
A long time ago I was thinking about buying a DVD player my room mate happened to get a PS2. He left it plugged up to the TV so when I found out that it played DVDs I saved the money and just used his PS2. If the PS3 plays Blu-Ray discs and my current room mate happens to have one, then I'll prolly buy into Blu-Ray movies instead of buying a HD-DVD or Blu-Ray player.
But... But... The only time I RTFA is when someone posts it as a comment?!!
If someone asks you if you are doing illegal activities than only those who don't care if they get caught will answer yes.
The people that answered "no" to the poll also use P2P illegally, speed, shoplift, and smoke pot like everyone else, but they'll never get caught because they no how to answer the question correctly when an officer asks. The people that answered "I plead the 5th!!! Where is my laywer!?" to the poll are not only richer than the other two types poll participants, but also are usually involved in politics.
While moving between star, open or microsoft office is trivial for technical people, the average user has major problems with the gui being slighting different and commands being in different menus.
I'll have to interject here. My job requires me to interact with people who often are upgraded from MS Office 2000 to 2002 or 2003 and the biggest complaint and call ins about those upgrades are on the Mail Merge GUI changes. These are actually the majority of calls on sucessful Office upgrades (rather than people calling in and saying "My Office gets a fatal exception!")
The steps when to three on a pop up on 2000 to a 6 step process on the task pane (which most persons upgrade to 2003 request for a way to turn off).
These are mostly average office workers who know nothing about Office other than the original way that they were taught, so this increases support and training costs for those upgraded even on just Microsoft products.
Personally, I think Microsoft has a bad habbit of over complicating things and not putting the minimum desired options on the screen at the same time. However, Office Vista might change that trend, but we will have to see.
Good always trumps free.
:(
But million dollar marketing campaigns, FUD, and 800lb gorillas always trumps good.
You're confusing the act of duplicating a CD, with the process of recording, engineering, producing, marketing, and distributing an album. Nobody -- not the artist, the engineer, the person who ran the register at the record store, or the dozens of other people involved -- does this for free. Nobody.
.000005 for the graphic artist for the name and after that they may sell their cd to a distributor for $5-7 or more (thats a rough ball park... I usually sell my indie label's cd for about $6.25 to distributors to keep the price around $11.00 or less so, but you have to keep in mind we don't print 10,000 cds so we usually have to pay $3 per cd pressed if we want good quality)
Actually, from first hand experience in the music industry I would have to disagree in someways and agree in others.
$.25 is actually expensive cost per CD for a Major label. If you produce more than 10,000 CDs than you can get your price per cd below the $.10 mark. I'm sure the majors that release 100,000+ get a better deal than that. Most major put up between $30,000 to $100,000 up front for most bands. Because of recording technology is so cheap these days with home studios and what not, most bands use that for living expenses and for the salary of a producer, graphic artist, and what not. This money is technically a loan against projected profits and not really money paid even though the bands usually don't have to pay anything back if they album bombs but they won't get any pay or most likley another deal. The record company usually pays 5-7% of the price of what they make on each cd and most likely less... Only superstars get paid around 10% and higher. This doesn't count for the total price you see in stores but what the record company gets from the distributor (and we haven't even gotten to the store price yet and sometimes the distributor and record label are one and the same but they artist still gets the lowest profit margin of the two) so most artists get pennies for each album sold. The artist themselves don't even take up a fraction of the CD cost even with their upfront loan. The main cost is of course promotion and various other "costs" that the record label tacks on. Without promotion the artist is dead in water unless they already have a fan base.
Still even if a record company spend a million dollars to promote an artist and they sold one million albums they still make 400%-1000% profit. They pay 1 penny per cd to artist (which they won't pay until they made their money back) and 1 cent to make the cd and 1 dollar per cd for promotion and maybe
I use this roughly because most new artists are lucky even to sell 100,000 albums or even get more than $100,000 to spend on promotion.
So in the end... It does cost the major labels a great to release a cd but if you compare it to the scale of the profits from a successful cd really costs them nothing at all so yess... They could in theory sell CDs around $5 and still make a huge profit (although I hope they wouldn't because I wouldn't be able to sell albums that low and still pay printing costs).
Did anyone else think Sharper Image Ionic breeze when they saw the cooling device in the article?
Actually Mankind (that French Space MMOG) had a similar idea that you could play for free but you couldn't purchase certain units or build past a certain point if you didn't pay a subscription.
FTA it appears that the company makes it's money of selling items to players so hence players how want to get ahead of others can buy items and such rather than slogging like the rest of them. Hence the rest of the players can play for free but I'd wadger that the paying players will always have some sort of advantage.
Ethics is tricky business, and neither "the ends justify the means" nor "all's well that ends well" are sufficient ethical justifications.
If you had to murder 1 person to save the lives of a million, would it be worth it?
If you had to murder 1,000,000 people to save the lives of everyone on the planet, would it be worth it?
If you had to blow up the earth to save the rest of the sentient life in the universe would it be worth it?
If your inaction would result in the death of those persons who you had to kill anyways then it is possibly justified. However, most of us won't be given such grandiose moral problems to deal with in our lives, but it is something to ponder of how far you would go. Sometimes horrible actions are needed... Sometimes they go too far... Either way stem cell research needs to continue in order to end the suffering of millions of those already alive on earth.