Hrm... You know you just might be on to something.
What if someone sent up a solar powered computer that anyone could establish an internet connection to (with quite a few spare redudant hard drives I might add) into space.
Not like the MPAA and the RIAA they are going to spend the time or money to shoot it down.
However if the OS crashes it's going to be a bitch to reboot.
I'm not sure about humans, more specifically our brains, living for centuries otherwise. Boredom, schizophrenia, cynicism...that would be one crotchety populus.
Perhaps one could buy amnesia from the powers that be. No need to kill yourself. Just sign up for a brain wipe with a pre-chose set of parenting algorythims.
That means I could play Grand Theft Auto and watch Lord of the Rings forever and be happy!
I think most people are not seeing the real benefit of this. If everyone lived forever than it wouldn't be a big deal to spend a few centuries traveling about the galaxy.
Then the population issue wouldn't be a big deal since we could send as many people as need be off the planet elsewhere or we just put get rid of the body and put their brains into jars to conserve space via neural interfaces in a virutal reality.
This of course may sound farfected, but if you are saying immortality (for a thousand years at least) then my feeling is that inter solor system travel and neural interfaces aren't that impossible either.
By 2050 we will most likely have robots able to do all manual labor and service or at least beat us at soccer.
Either the powers that be will be *coughs* generous with this technology or we will have 8* billion unemployed people that are very irrate since they can't afford anything the robots produce leading to the first robot vs human war that leads to something like this movie I saw once but can't remember it's name... Something with that guy from Bill and Ted movie...
*8 billion is a rough estimate. We might have more or less depending on birth control acceptance and as always nuclear war, super virus, and/or large comets...
You know, if the web master was really a bastard they'd put the text of the articles into gif files and then put them in the same directories of the ads so that you can't wild card them anymore.
Or put text and the ads to gether in a flat image... But I'd have to question why I am visiting a site that has my personal discomfort as one of their goals.
The 300 foot tall version will only have 60 seconds of power without a direct feed and must be powered by kids and have some plot that doesn't make sense and angers it's viewers on the last episode.
OS X (out of the box) is generally secure by default. You cannot run an executable directly with safari. You have to download it somewhere and you have to double click on it. If it runs an installer and does anything major, it will require an admin password. If it is just an executable and it's the first time you have run that program you will get a prompt that says "Hey. This program is running for the first time on this computer. Do you really want to run it?"
Although I'm sure someone can be goaded into going through all those hoops to finally install something the program itself will not have access to critcal parts of the system unless somehow it gets the password and super user itself and breaks into root. Did I mention by default Admin is not really an admin and you often haft to SU yourself from command lin in darwin to do critical things (or think you shouldn't really be doing).
Secondly, there is not registry or dll hell... Uninstalling programs only usually require me dragging the icon into the trash and thats it.
Did I mention the already integrated firewall?
Will someone make mac spyware? Sure as day... But will it be as bad as Windows even if the Mac someday got a greater market share?
Not even close.
And if they do... I'll keep using Firefox for OS X;)
If you think about the improbables than you have to think about your own existance for example. The shear fact that your descendants did not die from disease or get killed in some manner over the centuries leading up to your birth is quite amazing.
Then you have to think about why you are who you are rather than why weren't you born as someone else (IE born in 1500AD vs 2500AD) then you are just stumped on how you even begin to exist.
Well the matter is that the universe has infinite time and infinite variants so you had to exist sometime and this was just that time. I have no idea what makes someone exist or even have a soul to begin with, but all sorts of combinations have existed. Perhaps our planet is a fluke and the on average most planets are dead.
Secondly, I would have to ask you: What if you were born into Islam? Would now that be the truth for you? What about other Christians now? Is their book still "the truth".
I'm not stating an answer for anything or saying that you are wrong. I could be very well mistaken. Just something for you to think about.
Creationism, as stated in the Bible, is very improbable. An all-powerful God could, of course, spontaneously create a Universe, complete with a history of dinosaurs, and complete with planets shooting away from each other as if there had once been a big bang; this suggests that, if the Universe is really only a few thousand years old, God has a great sense of humor.
Actually, creationism makes sense if god were a computer and life was a simulated reality created by restoring from backup tape.
Of course that would mean that history never really happened in our reality... Just someone elses reality that was created instantly in ours... Brains... Starting... To... Hurt...
This could be used as an anti-beer goggle via facial recognition for the swinger types, which would tell you if the person you are interested in has been modded down by previous interlopers after waking up to find they were sorely mistaken.
Even if they can't do that... It would be just good to find out where the hell you are as you are fleeing down the street in your undies the morning after.
With all the device convergence, not only is there the danger of radiation, there is the danger of being killed by a Koopa turtle, the danger of hearing naughty rap lyrics, and the danger of receiving really ugly photos.
So that's why Nintendo rejected my game idea: "Mario in Da Hood, Yo!" featuring goatse man as the end boss.
Seeing it for the first time a little voice in my head said "MY NEW FILE SERVER!" really loudly. Just set up VNC, SSH or Telnet (gah) on it and run it without keyboard, head, or mouse. The wireless option would be nice, but not needed. I could throw 20 of them in the closet without a dent in space.
However I would have to be able to crack it open and put a larger hard drive in like you can with standard macs. I wonder if that is possible with this version?
Perhaps heat would be an issue though like the old G4 cubes.
You can no more prove or disprove the existence of God than Spock could prove or disprove the existence of Gene Roddenberry. Your statement, like mine, is a statement of faith.
Oh, that's easy to do. All one has to do is shout:
THERE IS NO GOD AND IF THERE IS MAY HE STRIKE ME DOWN!
See! I'm perfectly fine... Oh crap, I just spilt my 2 liter Mountain Dew on my keyboard and power strip. Hold on... AAAAAAARGGHHH! [NO CARRIER]
Joe: *opens his bedroom window and begins to slowly push PXA270 out the window*
PXA270: Look Joe, I can see you're really upset about this. I honestly think you ought to sit down calmly, take a stress pill, and think how much DRM benefits youuuu...... *smash* I can feel it Joe. My mind is going. Let me sing you a song... *bbbzzt* Ooops, sorry it's copyrighted.
We consider anyone who can't read or write "stupid". We also consider those who can't speak well "stupid". (This of course is not true for everyone, but I'm talking about the majority's perspective).
Today, computers are becoming an extension of human communication and much like one would consider a person who can't use the basic functions of a rotary phone in the 1980's "stupid", those in the future generations (like it or not) will look down on those who cannot use computer technology as "stupid".
And right now I'm sure someone is looking down on my grammar...
What is the point of writing something if no one reads it?
The only thing I can think of is personal entertainment and being able to organize your thoughts.
Even diaries will be read by other people unless you destroy them before you die.
Lastly, like most forms of media, no one forces you to read them. If you don't have anything better to do than read blogs/journals than perhaps your energies would be better spent writing in that pen and paper diary you speak of.
People make this mistake all the time: "ooh! hurricane! I bet all that spending on new windows helped the economy!". No, it didn't. It took money that would have otherwise been spent at restaurants, book stores, etc., (or left in banks and brokerage accounts, where it helps build other sectors of the economy) and moved that money into glass repair shops and plywood factories.
You are right in that it did not magically create more money in the economy, but you forget that it's really good to be a worker in the glass and window manufacturing industry at that time.
With the Y2K scare, the money that was going to be spent on other things (like down payments on corporations CEO's nice yacht and private savings of small business owners), instead went to the pockets of those who were in the IT industry.
As a member of the IT industry I really benefited from this as well (as I am sure) many others on Slashdot.
The people that were spending money were usually the ones that refused to ever upgrade their systems unless forced to and I always saw a side benefit of building new computers to replace 286 boxes that in the end would only bring the price of new processors down.
So not only did I get more money, things that I liked to buy would become cheaper.
It's a win/win situation all around;)
That it put the money in the hands of corporations investing in technological advances (such as computer technology) and that is always a benefit to mankind.
Otherwise this money would be wasted on things not involving me!
Flashy presentations is a sign of a lack of design sense. That's not a prerequisite to being smart.
Sadly enough I work in an outsource company that one of my primary job is assisting hundreds of people from hundreds of various companies per week create power point presentations, excel spread sheets to put in power point presentations...
With this in mind... I sometimes wonder if these people do nothing more than doing fancy graphs and presentations to prove their job has worth.
Or perhaps once you get a real corporate job that that is all one has to do to keep your job... To make these power point presentations. Least it gives the techies in IT jobs that involve recovering backup files from tape and moving the mouse for them when they can't seem to click on the lines around the autoshape.
Slashdot Mirror
Hrm... You know you just might be on to something.
What if someone sent up a solar powered computer that anyone could establish an internet connection to (with quite a few spare redudant hard drives I might add) into space.
Not like the MPAA and the RIAA they are going to spend the time or money to shoot it down.
However if the OS crashes it's going to be a bitch to reboot.
I'm not sure about humans, more specifically our brains, living for centuries otherwise. Boredom, schizophrenia, cynicism...that would be one crotchety populus.
Perhaps one could buy amnesia from the powers that be. No need to kill yourself. Just sign up for a brain wipe with a pre-chose set of parenting algorythims.
That means I could play Grand Theft Auto and watch Lord of the Rings forever and be happy!
Oh wait... People already do that.
I think most people are not seeing the real benefit of this. If everyone lived forever than it wouldn't be a big deal to spend a few centuries traveling about the galaxy.
Then the population issue wouldn't be a big deal since we could send as many people as need be off the planet elsewhere or we just put get rid of the body and put their brains into jars to conserve space via neural interfaces in a virutal reality.
This of course may sound farfected, but if you are saying immortality (for a thousand years at least) then my feeling is that inter solor system travel and neural interfaces aren't that impossible either.
By 2050 we will most likely have robots able to do all manual labor and service or at least beat us at soccer. Either the powers that be will be *coughs* generous with this technology or we will have 8* billion unemployed people that are very irrate since they can't afford anything the robots produce leading to the first robot vs human war that leads to something like this movie I saw once but can't remember it's name... Something with that guy from Bill and Ted movie... *8 billion is a rough estimate. We might have more or less depending on birth control acceptance and as always nuclear war, super virus, and/or large comets...
You know, if the web master was really a bastard they'd put the text of the articles into gif files and then put them in the same directories of the ads so that you can't wild card them anymore.
Or put text and the ads to gether in a flat image... But I'd have to question why I am visiting a site that has my personal discomfort as one of their goals.
The 300 foot tall version will only have 60 seconds of power without a direct feed and must be powered by kids and have some plot that doesn't make sense and angers it's viewers on the last episode.
I think people fail to see something:
Redundancy means little when failure is intentional.
Conspiracy theory aside... I've often wondered what it would take to bring down say Everquest servers. Ala walking in and pulling some plugs etc...
Who knows. Maybe someone had a post they wanted to really get rid of.
That's not entirely true.
;)
OS X (out of the box) is generally secure by default. You cannot run an executable directly with safari. You have to download it somewhere and you have to double click on it. If it runs an installer and does anything major, it will require an admin password. If it is just an executable and it's the first time you have run that program you will get a prompt that says "Hey. This program is running for the first time on this computer. Do you really want to run it?"
Although I'm sure someone can be goaded into going through all those hoops to finally install something the program itself will not have access to critcal parts of the system unless somehow it gets the password and super user itself and breaks into root. Did I mention by default Admin is not really an admin and you often haft to SU yourself from command lin in darwin to do critical things (or think you shouldn't really be doing).
Secondly, there is not registry or dll hell... Uninstalling programs only usually require me dragging the icon into the trash and thats it.
Did I mention the already integrated firewall?
Will someone make mac spyware? Sure as day... But will it be as bad as Windows even if the Mac someday got a greater market share?
Not even close.
And if they do... I'll keep using Firefox for OS X
If you think about the improbables than you have to think about your own existance for example. The shear fact that your descendants did not die from disease or get killed in some manner over the centuries leading up to your birth is quite amazing.
Then you have to think about why you are who you are rather than why weren't you born as someone else (IE born in 1500AD vs 2500AD) then you are just stumped on how you even begin to exist.
Well the matter is that the universe has infinite time and infinite variants so you had to exist sometime and this was just that time. I have no idea what makes someone exist or even have a soul to begin with, but all sorts of combinations have existed. Perhaps our planet is a fluke and the on average most planets are dead.
Secondly, I would have to ask you: What if you were born into Islam? Would now that be the truth for you? What about other Christians now? Is their book still "the truth".
I'm not stating an answer for anything or saying that you are wrong. I could be very well mistaken. Just something for you to think about.
Creationism, as stated in the Bible, is very improbable. An all-powerful God could, of course, spontaneously create a Universe, complete with a history of dinosaurs, and complete with planets shooting away from each other as if there had once been a big bang; this suggests that, if the Universe is really only a few thousand years old, God has a great sense of humor.
Actually, creationism makes sense if god were a computer and life was a simulated reality created by restoring from backup tape.
Of course that would mean that history never really happened in our reality... Just someone elses reality that was created instantly in ours... Brains... Starting... To... Hurt...
This could be used as an anti-beer goggle via facial recognition for the swinger types, which would tell you if the person you are interested in has been modded down by previous interlopers after waking up to find they were sorely mistaken.
Even if they can't do that... It would be just good to find out where the hell you are as you are fleeing down the street in your undies the morning after.
With all the device convergence, not only is there the danger of radiation, there is the danger of being killed by a Koopa turtle, the danger of hearing naughty rap lyrics, and the danger of receiving really ugly photos.
So that's why Nintendo rejected my game idea: "Mario in Da Hood, Yo!" featuring goatse man as the end boss.
Seeing it for the first time a little voice in my head said "MY NEW FILE SERVER!" really loudly. Just set up VNC, SSH or Telnet (gah) on it and run it without keyboard, head, or mouse. The wireless option would be nice, but not needed. I could throw 20 of them in the closet without a dent in space.
However I would have to be able to crack it open and put a larger hard drive in like you can with standard macs. I wonder if that is possible with this version?
Perhaps heat would be an issue though like the old G4 cubes.
You can no more prove or disprove the existence of God than Spock could prove or disprove the existence of Gene Roddenberry. Your statement, like mine, is a statement of faith.
Oh, that's easy to do. All one has to do is shout:
THERE IS NO GOD AND IF THERE IS MAY HE STRIKE ME DOWN!
See! I'm perfectly fine... Oh crap, I just spilt my 2 liter Mountain Dew on my keyboard and power strip. Hold on... AAAAAAARGGHHH! [NO CARRIER]
(5 minutes later)
PXA270: Just what do you think you're doing, Joe?
Joe: *opens his bedroom window and begins to slowly push PXA270 out the window*
PXA270: Look Joe, I can see you're really upset about this. I honestly think you ought to sit down calmly, take a stress pill, and think how much DRM benefits youuuu...... *smash* I can feel it Joe. My mind is going. Let me sing you a song... *bbbzzt* Ooops, sorry it's copyrighted.
That is true, but...
We consider anyone who can't read or write "stupid". We also consider those who can't speak well "stupid". (This of course is not true for everyone, but I'm talking about the majority's perspective).
Today, computers are becoming an extension of human communication and much like one would consider a person who can't use the basic functions of a rotary phone in the 1980's "stupid", those in the future generations (like it or not) will look down on those who cannot use computer technology as "stupid".
And right now I'm sure someone is looking down on my grammar...
No one has a constitutional right to trade secrets. Then again, neither does Think Secret have a right to divulge them... Oh wait...
What is the point of writing something if no one reads it?
The only thing I can think of is personal entertainment and being able to organize your thoughts.
Even diaries will be read by other people unless you destroy them before you die.
Lastly, like most forms of media, no one forces you to read them. If you don't have anything better to do than read blogs/journals than perhaps your energies would be better spent writing in that pen and paper diary you speak of.
People make this mistake all the time: "ooh! hurricane! I bet all that spending on new windows helped the economy!". No, it didn't. It took money that would have otherwise been spent at restaurants, book stores, etc., (or left in banks and brokerage accounts, where it helps build other sectors of the economy) and moved that money into glass repair shops and plywood factories.
;)
You are right in that it did not magically create more money in the economy, but you forget that it's really good to be a worker in the glass and window manufacturing industry at that time.
With the Y2K scare, the money that was going to be spent on other things (like down payments on corporations CEO's nice yacht and private savings of small business owners), instead went to the pockets of those who were in the IT industry.
As a member of the IT industry I really benefited from this as well (as I am sure) many others on Slashdot.
The people that were spending money were usually the ones that refused to ever upgrade their systems unless forced to and I always saw a side benefit of building new computers to replace 286 boxes that in the end would only bring the price of new processors down.
So not only did I get more money, things that I liked to buy would become cheaper.
It's a win/win situation all around
That it put the money in the hands of corporations investing in technological advances (such as computer technology) and that is always a benefit to mankind.
Otherwise this money would be wasted on things not involving me!
Flashy presentations is a sign of a lack of design sense. That's not a prerequisite to being smart. Sadly enough I work in an outsource company that one of my primary job is assisting hundreds of people from hundreds of various companies per week create power point presentations, excel spread sheets to put in power point presentations... With this in mind... I sometimes wonder if these people do nothing more than doing fancy graphs and presentations to prove their job has worth. Or perhaps once you get a real corporate job that that is all one has to do to keep your job... To make these power point presentations. Least it gives the techies in IT jobs that involve recovering backup files from tape and moving the mouse for them when they can't seem to click on the lines around the autoshape.