*sighs* I think I was the only other person that got his joke.
John Connor: You know what you're doing? The Terminator: I have detailed files on human anatomy. Sarah Connor: Makes you a more efficient killer, right? The Terminator: Correct.
Do you just shoot them? Beat the shit out of them until they stop?
If they have a gun or a knife and present a clear and present danger then the should be shot. If they have no gun or knife, then you call for back up and handcuff them. If you can't handcuff them with 4 or more police officers then call for more.
The problem with the taser is that it is being used by officers on people who were not a threat and could have been handcuffed quite easily.
Once you point the gun at someone you have immediately escalated into deadly force. If the perp doesn't back down - you have to shoot him. That's the entire idea behind a taser - non lethal force. This isn't like TV where people hold guns at each other and talk rationally, defuse the situation and move on to a commercial.
I think the real problem here is that because a taser is non lethal, is that it gets used a great deal more in situations that didn't require a gun or beating.
If there is a gun and/or knife involved it would be better (IMO) to just shoot them as a taser might end up failing and that the police officer involved knows that this is serious and not something trivial.
We have control over our actions, and MOST of us have control over our actions and thoughts.
I follow you, but why do certain groups use government in such ways they want it both ways?
They believe that books and movies can control you're behavior and that porn can turn you into an evil person.
If reading words, listening to sounds, and seeing moving images can control your behavior then that should mean the average human has no control over their actions.
So which is it? If humans have complete control over themselves then all images, sounds, and text should be legal no matter what an appropriate at all ages.
You argue that children are unable to understand things? So if that is the case then why are children tried as adults for murder these days?
What is the difference between an 17 year old a day before their birthday and then the day after they are 18? If 18 is arbitaraly the age in which a person is understanding then why can't they drink legally in the United States? They can smoke, look at porn, and die for the country? So why not drink? Can they not handle it? Or are the simply meat bags programmed to not understand themselves.
I hope you see what I am getting at, because I personally don't believe its either/or but rather a strange mix that we've gotten ourselves into with a huge amount of contradictions about personal responsibility and understanding.
I'd argue a fair amount of at least Americans even at the ages of 60+ don't understand reaction or reaction or personal responsibility. Take the mortgage crisis we just had, take the S&L crisis of the late 90s, the stock market crash of the 1920's. My point is that in groups humans will act very stupid regardless of whether or not you shout personal responsibility at them.
If you take a fox and put him in the chicken coup and tell him not to eat the chickens or you will punish him and then he eats the chickens... No amount of personal responsibility will ever correct the Fox's behavior. He eats chickens. That is what his genetic programming teaches him to do.
Same thing with humans and whatever they want.
Humans have had over 300 years of genetic evolution to get them where they are now and if I put the average human in a room with suitcase full of cash on the table and then I tell him not to run away with it or he will be punished for not following personal responsibility and then he does... Who is the bigger fool here. Me or the guy who put the fox in the hen house.
What I am trying to point out is that you can shout "personal responsibility" all day long at people but it won't change their behavior. If you want something done, (as they say) you have to do it yourself and not put the fox in the hen house or put your money out for people to take.
We could spend billions of dollars trying to educate people right and wrong's of societal behavior but with the current public education in the gutter as it is, it is doubtful that would work and I haven't even gotten to the topic of sociopaths and genetic inclinations.
How about issues you can't control... Lets say hunger and sleep. Humans have no control whether they feel hungry or tired. They can choose to not sleep or eat for as long as they can but either they will pass out or die. They have no free will when it comes to choosing.
Secondly with sex, humans are hardwired to want to have sex. It feels good and they are programmed to fantasize about all day long (at least men) and if you said to them they need to stop feeling like that then the only thing you can do is have them castrated because its not something a human can help.*
*Albeit a stringent living as an aesthetic... Either Buddhist or Hindu who can learn to meditate to actually rewire their brain so they feel neither hunger, pain, or sexual desires. Seeing most of the people in the US aren't into that, I would hedge my bets on the fact that most of us act like plain old animals and I should keep myself out of these situations and not let the fox in the hen house if I can help it.
Service is intended for one household only. And you're going "OMG GREEDY ISPS!!!" because they want to make money? It's their service! The greedy bastard here, is you. Newsflash: It's not your service.
What about people who lease business SDSL and/or T1s?
It's NO DIFFERENT THAN COMMON CABLE THEFT. Oh, do you support stealing that, too?
So is Comcast/Timewarner stealing bandwidth of the websites you visit? Cable service is a one way street. Internet connections are not. It is not actually illegal to share your bandwidth with you neighbor whereas stealing cable is. Yes, it breaks the EULAs but they aren't law and all the ISP can do is terminate your service.
And on a side note... How can they tell if you are sharing on purpose it or your just another one of the many average joe's who don't know how to secure their routers.
Or how can you tell if its your one of your 5 room mates (in the same house) sharing the same connection or the neighbor next door? Does each room mate have to buy their own Comcast connection in that case?
And also... Which is worse for the ISP... Sharing your bandwidth with a neighbor who never would have bought their service and only browses a few web pages just like you or a person who buys their service and maxes out their bandwidth 24/7 with legal Torrents and download services such as Steam and iTunes.
Of course this is the whole argument of Network Neutrality.
There is no simple answer and an analogy to cable stealing doesn't work because bandwidth sharing is not illegal.
I've been wanting to try doing something like this, to make a large, community intranet. Perhaps no need for an internet connection, but internal DNS, DHCP, web and possibly email.
Like an old school BBS but on wireless and without the internet?
I don't know how feasible or useful it would be, but the thought of the geekdom recreating the BBS days without the rest of the commercial internet is tantalizing.
Personally, I'd be willing to buy a router that relays for this purpose only to extend the mesh but not actually volunteer my paid ISP bandwidth or actually hook up any computers to bridge the two networks.
Of course, I think the biggest problem is the fact there won't be that many people in range and some people will have to set up tunnels to bridge the gaps between the mesh areas.
Still its a cool idea... Anyone know of existing projects in metropolitan areas?
I can go see a film purely for the CGI aspects. I don't always want deep meaning attached.
Going to a movie to watch it for the CGI is like reading a book for the words.
Sure you can use some fancy ten syllable words, but if the plot sucks fancy words won't save the book.
Two movies come to mind when I say this... Star Wars: Episode I and Godzilla (The American One)
Now granted, CGI can be used with a good effect like Lord of the Rings, Matrix, and say Episode III.
These movies didn't have the most deep and thought provoking plots as some of those movies on the Sundance Film fest, but the actually had something that you could follow without having to think about the meaning of life.
I'm not bashing you because you go to the movies for the CGI, but I'm saying for many people who see a lot of movies and go home wishing they'd spent their $9 on something else... Well CGI stops being that important when its used all the time these days.
I'll probaly (might) go see Iron Man because I dig the comics and Robert Downey Jr. but I'm not holding my breathe for the years best movie.
A machine may be able to conduct, or play a piano, but a cello or guitar, for example, would be beyond a machine's abilities. At least that's what I hope is and remains the case.
Actually, its not hard for any machine to play any type of music because music notation itself is a programming language, but I think the thing that humans have over machines is analog imperfection which is the hardest part for the machine to replicate which every performance a human gives is (like you said) unique.
The other... Which is probaly something that machine intelligence will achieve in the next 20 to 100 years is the ability to actually create music that is not only entertaining but as provocative as some of the great composers which so far not computer can do.
Even so in 500 years I bet there will still be artists and musicians performing their trades even though machines could do it thousand times better only because the experience the musician gets from actually performing. Experience is something a machine can't really do for you.
I was thinking the whole time...next time I will take the cab this is crazy! What a waste of my time as I had not saved the game recently!
To be fair, all the mass murdering part of the game too isn't something it encourages if you want to beat the story line. The earlier games were a bit more lenient, but as the game got more realistic having 5 stars and a SWAT team on your ass was something you didn't really want unless it couldn't be avoided.
Sure, there are plenty of times I got bored and then just went postal for a good 30 minutes but it always results in me dying and loading from the last save.
Set it aside?! Wait just one minute! That happens to be my favorite theory!
Mature enough? Wouldn't it suck to be the last human who dies of war and disease and then the aliens show up and say "Ok. The rest of you get FTL space travel, a cure for cancer, and eternal youth!"
If there was a benevolent alien race the first thing it would do is find sentient life and enlighten it or exterminate it depending its views of what constitutes suffering.
2. Life evolves into intelligent life nearly 100% of the time, and nearly 100% of intelligent life actively disguises itself from detection.
Did the Conquistadors show up pretending to Aztecs?
If the Aliens are there and undetected they are quiet cruel for letter us suffer with our ignorance with death and disease. At least the conquistadors thought they were doing the Aztecs a favor by giving them Christianity albeit small pox.
If there are Aliens out there they obviously don't care about other sentient life and its suffering.
Because the trilobites couldn't find a way to get to the sweet Earth oceans before Mars dried up on them. And, therefore, there is a "Great Filter" that prevents us from colonizing the galaxy.
"The dinosaurs became extinct because they didn't have a space program." -Larry Niven
Also... The Galaxy is 100,000 light years across.
So if a civilization is able to travel at 1/10th the speed of light, they can get to one side of the other in a million years. Sounds like a long time, but cosmologically a million years is a drop in the bucket when you talk about time.
So if you simply planet hoped to all planets closet to your planet and then colonized and then repeated the process you could colonize the galaxy a lot faster than it took for evolution to go from single cell creatures to mammals... Heck... You could do it before amphibian and dinosaurs show up.
The guy dismisses the possibility that most civilizations evolve in some direction other than midlessly colonizing every star they can reach.
If we take the view that intelligent life has the same rules of evolution then one is eventually bound to evolve like a bacteria and spread to every planet possible. Even if there are millions of intelligent civilizations in the universe quite content to never leave their solar system, all it takes one species hellbent on galactic colonization before they are on every rock in the galaxy. Even if the speed of light can never be broken, it would only take a million years to travel to most places in the Milky Way at speeds just under the speed of light.
What if most evolve beyond physical forms? What if most lose themselves in virtual realities. What if many simply don't bother leaving their own solar system because the speed of light proves to be unbreakable and they aren't interested in planting colonies that will have little or no contact or impact on their own civilization?
Thats a good question that I've asked myself. However, if one does live in a virtual reality society one may at least recognize the fact that the universe as we know it may face serious problems such as Heat Death or the Big crunch. Even if we as humans are unable to understand the problem while we are playing World of Warcraft 40,000 in our brain cells, we will most likley have set out intelligent machines to go about and requisition resources to determine if the universe can be saved from its doomed fate.
The machines themselves might need extraordinary computational power and go about aquiring entire systems with computers big as Jupiter running simulations to answer best how to save their civilization from doom after all the suns burn out.
Actually... Isaac Asimov wrote a short story on this called "The Last Question" Its a good read...
Anyways... In order for these intelligent machines to finish their task, they may deem it needed to build dyson spheres and aquire as much mass and energy as possible in order to prevent the end of the universe so at which time may decide to show up at the lesser civilizations doors asking to use their sun as part of their computational requirements to solve the question.
Also, the real point here is that Slashdot submitters and editors are apparently no longer capable of distinguishing the Internet from the World-Wide Web.
I would agree, but then I realized to myself I myself use web interface for both email and ftp these days so more or less the move towards everything on port 80 with a web browser as a front.
Also... If you have a laptop (which are becoming more popular than desktops these days) then to the average person there is no difference between hard drive and cpu.
I use to correct friends and family members on the terminology but then I think its pointless after the 100th time. Society is going to bastardize our terminology so point in wasting our time on it.
I know it is routine now for investigators to seize computer equipment even in drug arrests, and I wonder how much taxpayer money is being wasted so federal agents can look through internet histories and MSN buddy lists.
Speaking of which, on my latest Equifax report there was a big bold scary headline that says FBI reports that identity theft is the largest growing crime.
Rather than using these vast resources to combat IP Infringment and "Think of the Children" issues, wouldn't it be better devoted to actually fighting what more people actually have their lives ruined by?
Some guy talking nasty in a chat room or a guy hocking pirated DVDs on the corner is no where as near as a threat to me and you as someone who is going to use the lax social security and credit system to open thousands of dollars worth of loan accounts in your name forever damaging your ability to buy a house, get a job, or even get a cell phone without a $1000 security deposit ever again.
The thing is most of these types of crimes are low tech and simply going through people's trash and mailbox so this multi-million dollar system of scanning data is worthless to the real threat the average joe faces.
See, once you have children, they have something they can use to keep you honest (read, subservient, read also, shackled). See, a man who accepts that all is transient, and family comes and goes as does youth and riches and poverty, will be hard to shackle down, or to enslave.
Despite those who have modded you down, I think most people fail to understand their natural desires to procreate is simply 300 million years of evolution without actually logically thinking about what impact that will have on themselves and society.
To what purpose does having children have in modern society? It won't grant you immortality. Your children will end up with the same fate as you. For many unhappy persons children will not make you any happier (there was a study that shows couples without children are just as happy as those without). There is no fields to till and no need for large families for survival of half the children dying.
And to those who disagree it is almost certain that their reaction is based on the natural evolution of the mind to justify having children (as the need to socialize and have that family connection).
So when you look at it logically it seems absurd to have children when you look at the fact that they'll be just as bad off as you and if you do decide to have them then logically it would be best to wait till you are older and more stable with savings so that you can make sure you can give them their college education.
However, I suspect that one can not will this instinct away and only sociopaths, loners, celibates, and aesthetics who realize that life is not about having children.
I'm 25. Been married for nearly 5 years. We had our first child when I was 22. Lived in this house for two years. And despite having two kids and a wife to keep me "subservient" or whatever you propose, we've paid down nearly 10% of our mortgage, and put about 25% of my net income per month away in savings and investments. It isn't hard to do if you are committed to it. Having kids early, getting married early, really isn't a strain if you are disciplined in money management. And if you aren't disciplined in money management, you'll blow it on loose women, cars, computers or beer as a single guy anyways.
I think he was trying to point out that perhaps people shouldn't have kids at a young age and because it leads to financial woes because kids in themselves are exponentially more expensive than anyone blowing money on personal things. (College in itself)
From an anecdotal perspective, all my previous landlords in a major metropolitan city have either been gay couples, married couples without kids, and bachelor men in the 40s without kids. This struck me at one point that perhaps that not having children might be related by being financially successful and my parents didn't have me until they were well in their 30s (and they only had one and dad did very well with himself).
Sure there are plenty of exceptions of people able to be financially successful while having kids at an early age but for the vast majority of Americans having kids early hampers your ability to finish college and get a successful career.
The major point that many people overlook when having kids is that not only are you impacting yourself but you are all impacting the person you bring into the world because if you can't afford to send them to college, stastically speaking on the average they aren't going to go.
Now with the recession, having kids will be almost intolerable for an entire generation. There was an article on CNN about people putting off having kids with the economic situation we are having these days. Anyone seriously responsible would give it a great deal of thought at this point of our history whether or not to have children.
I spent the majority of my childhood until I was 18 picking rock and bailing hay on a farm. You think you're in a tedious, repetitive and boring job? The fact that you're posting on Slashdot during work hours tells me otherwise. I'll bet you have air conditioning.
I think he may have misinterpreted what he really means by boredom as burnout.
What do Soldiers, Firemen, Paramedics, and IT person have in common?
Jobs that have times of lulls and then complete disasters that were never the same as before. This is why they attribute post traumatic stress symptoms to soldiers due because its a constant emotional rollercoasters of pure boredom and then unexpected disasters.
Now, IT is no where as bad as being a front line soldier (no ones buddy was ambushed by a sniper in the server room) but overall the same issues that are bad for the mind for the soldier are the same for the IT person.
An IT person sits around until the phone rings, Blackberry goes off, or gets an email and then they have an unexpected issue on their hands they they could have never predicted. It might be as simple as having to show someone how to install a printer to a complete disaster where the exchange server goes down and the CEO needs an important email for a big contract.
A single issue in itself isn't that bad, but the issues keep happening and they are often not the same or at a predictable interval.
I remember a psychological test done on lab rats with such a scenario where they shocked one rat with electricity at regular intervals and then shocked the other at random. Even though the one at regular intervals was shocked more often, the rat that was shocked at random ate less and slept less and could not adapt to the situation.
Same thing with IT and burnout... From an anectdotal experience, I work IT but I have also worked in places like warehouses lifting boxes and sorting orders for a mail order company.
The warehouse was hot and the boxes were heavy and the task with hurt your fingers but for the life of me I miss the job because my job was straight forward and the task was predictable. Sadly, I had to give it up for money and moved back into IT and just deal with the stress as best I can.
So while farming and assembly line work is mundane and boring as heck, the stress levels aren't that bad because the tasks are predictable and your aren't running to one issue or another like a fireman trying to put out fires or a soldier who keeps getting ambushed.
The key to wireless power is resonance. Think of a wineglass that shatters when an opera singer hits just the right note. When the voice matches the glass's resonant frequency--the tone you hear when you tap the glass--the glass efficiently absorbs the singer's energy and cracks. Using magnetic induction and two identical copper coils that resonate at the same frequency, the MIT scientists successfully powered a 60-watt lightbulb from a power source seven feet away. The team called their invention WiTricity, short for "wireless electricity." Next up: sending the juice even farther and more efficiently.
There are the D&D players who eventually get into Wicca and other "majik" kind of stuff to the point where they believe that they can cast spells and talk to spirits.
As opposed to the other 80% of humanity who believes in resurrection after death? Not to mention the varying degrees of divine wrath and miracles?
Though if you think about it Jesus, Buddha, and Mohamed would not be that out of place in a D&D campaign setting. Heck... Walking across water is probaly a 3rd level spell (don't make me look it up... I always played warrior).
Swords take a lot of training. Bludgeoning weapons or spears would have been a better example. The common footman didn't get a sword, those were usually reserved for the professionals.
Yes, maybe the longbow or pike would be a better example, but I was more on the lines that you have less of a problem with misfires with a musket (rain, spring problems, or general dirtiness) than a plain old sword which still can kill people with minimal training on a rainy day.
Slashdot Mirror
They have detailed files on human anatomy.
Its CPU is a neural net processor, a learning computer. The more contact it has with humans, the more it learns.
Do you just shoot them? Beat the shit out of them until they stop?
If they have a gun or a knife and present a clear and present danger then the should be shot. If they have no gun or knife, then you call for back up and handcuff them. If you can't handcuff them with 4 or more police officers then call for more.
The problem with the taser is that it is being used by officers on people who were not a threat and could have been handcuffed quite easily.
Once you point the gun at someone you have immediately escalated into deadly force. If the perp doesn't back down - you have to shoot him. That's the entire idea behind a taser - non lethal force. This isn't like TV where people hold guns at each other and talk rationally, defuse the situation and move on to a commercial.
I think the real problem here is that because a taser is non lethal, is that it gets used a great deal more in situations that didn't require a gun or beating.
If there is a gun and/or knife involved it would be better (IMO) to just shoot them as a taser might end up failing and that the police officer involved knows that this is serious and not something trivial.
We have control over our actions, and MOST of us have control over our actions and thoughts.
I follow you, but why do certain groups use government in such ways they want it both ways?
They believe that books and movies can control you're behavior and that porn can turn you into an evil person.
If reading words, listening to sounds, and seeing moving images can control your behavior then that should mean the average human has no control over their actions.
So which is it? If humans have complete control over themselves then all images, sounds, and text should be legal no matter what an appropriate at all ages.
You argue that children are unable to understand things? So if that is the case then why are children tried as adults for murder these days?
What is the difference between an 17 year old a day before their birthday and then the day after they are 18? If 18 is arbitaraly the age in which a person is understanding then why can't they drink legally in the United States? They can smoke, look at porn, and die for the country? So why not drink? Can they not handle it? Or are the simply meat bags programmed to not understand themselves.
I hope you see what I am getting at, because I personally don't believe its either/or but rather a strange mix that we've gotten ourselves into with a huge amount of contradictions about personal responsibility and understanding.
I'd argue a fair amount of at least Americans even at the ages of 60+ don't understand reaction or reaction or personal responsibility. Take the mortgage crisis we just had, take the S&L crisis of the late 90s, the stock market crash of the 1920's. My point is that in groups humans will act very stupid regardless of whether or not you shout personal responsibility at them.
If you take a fox and put him in the chicken coup and tell him not to eat the chickens or you will punish him and then he eats the chickens... No amount of personal responsibility will ever correct the Fox's behavior. He eats chickens. That is what his genetic programming teaches him to do.
Same thing with humans and whatever they want.
Humans have had over 300 years of genetic evolution to get them where they are now and if I put the average human in a room with suitcase full of cash on the table and then I tell him not to run away with it or he will be punished for not following personal responsibility and then he does... Who is the bigger fool here. Me or the guy who put the fox in the hen house.
What I am trying to point out is that you can shout "personal responsibility" all day long at people but it won't change their behavior. If you want something done, (as they say) you have to do it yourself and not put the fox in the hen house or put your money out for people to take.
We could spend billions of dollars trying to educate people right and wrong's of societal behavior but with the current public education in the gutter as it is, it is doubtful that would work and I haven't even gotten to the topic of sociopaths and genetic inclinations.
How about issues you can't control... Lets say hunger and sleep. Humans have no control whether they feel hungry or tired. They can choose to not sleep or eat for as long as they can but either they will pass out or die. They have no free will when it comes to choosing.
Secondly with sex, humans are hardwired to want to have sex. It feels good and they are programmed to fantasize about all day long (at least men) and if you said to them they need to stop feeling like that then the only thing you can do is have them castrated because its not something a human can help.*
*Albeit a stringent living as an aesthetic... Either Buddhist or Hindu who can learn to meditate to actually rewire their brain so they feel neither hunger, pain, or sexual desires. Seeing most of the people in the US aren't into that, I would hedge my bets on the fact that most of us act like plain old animals and I should keep myself out of these situations and not let the fox in the hen house if I can help it.
Service is intended for one household only. And you're going "OMG GREEDY ISPS!!!" because they want to make money? It's their service! The greedy bastard here, is you. Newsflash: It's not your service.
What about people who lease business SDSL and/or T1s?
It's NO DIFFERENT THAN COMMON CABLE THEFT. Oh, do you support stealing that, too?
So is Comcast/Timewarner stealing bandwidth of the websites you visit? Cable service is a one way street. Internet connections are not. It is not actually illegal to share your bandwidth with you neighbor whereas stealing cable is. Yes, it breaks the EULAs but they aren't law and all the ISP can do is terminate your service.
And on a side note... How can they tell if you are sharing on purpose it or your just another one of the many average joe's who don't know how to secure their routers.
Or how can you tell if its your one of your 5 room mates (in the same house) sharing the same connection or the neighbor next door? Does each room mate have to buy their own Comcast connection in that case?
And also... Which is worse for the ISP... Sharing your bandwidth with a neighbor who never would have bought their service and only browses a few web pages just like you or a person who buys their service and maxes out their bandwidth 24/7 with legal Torrents and download services such as Steam and iTunes.
Of course this is the whole argument of Network Neutrality.
There is no simple answer and an analogy to cable stealing doesn't work because bandwidth sharing is not illegal.
I've been wanting to try doing something like this, to make a large, community intranet. Perhaps no need for an internet connection, but internal DNS, DHCP, web and possibly email.
Like an old school BBS but on wireless and without the internet?
I don't know how feasible or useful it would be, but the thought of the geekdom recreating the BBS days without the rest of the commercial internet is tantalizing.
Personally, I'd be willing to buy a router that relays for this purpose only to extend the mesh but not actually volunteer my paid ISP bandwidth or actually hook up any computers to bridge the two networks.
Of course, I think the biggest problem is the fact there won't be that many people in range and some people will have to set up tunnels to bridge the gaps between the mesh areas.
Still its a cool idea... Anyone know of existing projects in metropolitan areas?
I can go see a film purely for the CGI aspects. I don't always want deep meaning attached.
Going to a movie to watch it for the CGI is like reading a book for the words.
Sure you can use some fancy ten syllable words, but if the plot sucks fancy words won't save the book.
Two movies come to mind when I say this... Star Wars: Episode I and Godzilla (The American One)
Now granted, CGI can be used with a good effect like Lord of the Rings, Matrix, and say Episode III.
These movies didn't have the most deep and thought provoking plots as some of those movies on the Sundance Film fest, but the actually had something that you could follow without having to think about the meaning of life.
I'm not bashing you because you go to the movies for the CGI, but I'm saying for many people who see a lot of movies and go home wishing they'd spent their $9 on something else... Well CGI stops being that important when its used all the time these days.
I'll probaly (might) go see Iron Man because I dig the comics and Robert Downey Jr. but I'm not holding my breathe for the years best movie.
A machine may be able to conduct, or play a piano, but a cello or guitar, for example, would be beyond a machine's abilities. At least that's what I hope is and remains the case.
*coughs*
Actually, its not hard for any machine to play any type of music because music notation itself is a programming language, but I think the thing that humans have over machines is analog imperfection which is the hardest part for the machine to replicate which every performance a human gives is (like you said) unique.
The other... Which is probaly something that machine intelligence will achieve in the next 20 to 100 years is the ability to actually create music that is not only entertaining but as provocative as some of the great composers which so far not computer can do.
Even so in 500 years I bet there will still be artists and musicians performing their trades even though machines could do it thousand times better only because the experience the musician gets from actually performing. Experience is something a machine can't really do for you.
I was thinking the whole time...next time I will take the cab this is crazy! What a waste of my time as I had not saved the game recently!
To be fair, all the mass murdering part of the game too isn't something it encourages if you want to beat the story line. The earlier games were a bit more lenient, but as the game got more realistic having 5 stars and a SWAT team on your ass was something you didn't really want unless it couldn't be avoided.
Sure, there are plenty of times I got bored and then just went postal for a good 30 minutes but it always results in me dying and loading from the last save.
Set it aside?! Wait just one minute! That happens to be my favorite theory!
Mature enough? Wouldn't it suck to be the last human who dies of war and disease and then the aliens show up and say "Ok. The rest of you get FTL space travel, a cure for cancer, and eternal youth!"
If there was a benevolent alien race the first thing it would do is find sentient life and enlighten it or exterminate it depending its views of what constitutes suffering.
2. Life evolves into intelligent life nearly 100% of the time, and nearly 100% of intelligent life actively disguises itself from detection.
Did the Conquistadors show up pretending to Aztecs?
If the Aliens are there and undetected they are quiet cruel for letter us suffer with our ignorance with death and disease. At least the conquistadors thought they were doing the Aztecs a favor by giving them Christianity albeit small pox.
If there are Aliens out there they obviously don't care about other sentient life and its suffering.
Because the trilobites couldn't find a way to get to the sweet Earth oceans before Mars dried up on them. And, therefore, there is a "Great Filter" that prevents us from colonizing the galaxy.
"The dinosaurs became extinct because they didn't have a space program." -Larry Niven
Also... The Galaxy is 100,000 light years across.
So if a civilization is able to travel at 1/10th the speed of light, they can get to one side of the other in a million years. Sounds like a long time, but cosmologically a million years is a drop in the bucket when you talk about time.
So if you simply planet hoped to all planets closet to your planet and then colonized and then repeated the process you could colonize the galaxy a lot faster than it took for evolution to go from single cell creatures to mammals... Heck... You could do it before amphibian and dinosaurs show up.
The guy dismisses the possibility that most civilizations evolve in some direction other than midlessly colonizing every star they can reach.
If we take the view that intelligent life has the same rules of evolution then one is eventually bound to evolve like a bacteria and spread to every planet possible. Even if there are millions of intelligent civilizations in the universe quite content to never leave their solar system, all it takes one species hellbent on galactic colonization before they are on every rock in the galaxy. Even if the speed of light can never be broken, it would only take a million years to travel to most places in the Milky Way at speeds just under the speed of light.
What if most evolve beyond physical forms? What if most lose themselves in virtual realities. What if many simply don't bother leaving their own solar system because the speed of light proves to be unbreakable and they aren't interested in planting colonies that will have little or no contact or impact on their own civilization?
Thats a good question that I've asked myself. However, if one does live in a virtual reality society one may at least recognize the fact that the universe as we know it may face serious problems such as Heat Death or the Big crunch. Even if we as humans are unable to understand the problem while we are playing World of Warcraft 40,000 in our brain cells, we will most likley have set out intelligent machines to go about and requisition resources to determine if the universe can be saved from its doomed fate.
The machines themselves might need extraordinary computational power and go about aquiring entire systems with computers big as Jupiter running simulations to answer best how to save their civilization from doom after all the suns burn out.
Actually... Isaac Asimov wrote a short story on this called "The Last Question" Its a good read...
http://www.multivax.com/last_question.html
Anyways... In order for these intelligent machines to finish their task, they may deem it needed to build dyson spheres and aquire as much mass and energy as possible in order to prevent the end of the universe so at which time may decide to show up at the lesser civilizations doors asking to use their sun as part of their computational requirements to solve the question.
Also, the real point here is that Slashdot submitters and editors are apparently no longer capable of distinguishing the Internet from the World-Wide Web.
I would agree, but then I realized to myself I myself use web interface for both email and ftp these days so more or less the move towards everything on port 80 with a web browser as a front.
Also... If you have a laptop (which are becoming more popular than desktops these days) then to the average person there is no difference between hard drive and cpu.
I use to correct friends and family members on the terminology but then I think its pointless after the 100th time. Society is going to bastardize our terminology so point in wasting our time on it.
I know it is routine now for investigators to seize computer equipment even in drug arrests, and I wonder how much taxpayer money is being wasted so federal agents can look through internet histories and MSN buddy lists.
Speaking of which, on my latest Equifax report there was a big bold scary headline that says FBI reports that identity theft is the largest growing crime.
Rather than using these vast resources to combat IP Infringment and "Think of the Children" issues, wouldn't it be better devoted to actually fighting what more people actually have their lives ruined by?
Some guy talking nasty in a chat room or a guy hocking pirated DVDs on the corner is no where as near as a threat to me and you as someone who is going to use the lax social security and credit system to open thousands of dollars worth of loan accounts in your name forever damaging your ability to buy a house, get a job, or even get a cell phone without a $1000 security deposit ever again.
The thing is most of these types of crimes are low tech and simply going through people's trash and mailbox so this multi-million dollar system of scanning data is worthless to the real threat the average joe faces.
By that statement I gather you claim to know the purpose of our existence? Do share!
I don't know myself, but if the meaning of life is simply about having children then what a sorry meaning it is.
(Especially for sterile couples.)
See, once you have children, they have something they can use to keep you honest (read, subservient, read also, shackled). See, a man who accepts that all is transient, and family comes and goes as does youth and riches and poverty, will be hard to shackle down, or to enslave.
Despite those who have modded you down, I think most people fail to understand their natural desires to procreate is simply 300 million years of evolution without actually logically thinking about what impact that will have on themselves and society.
To what purpose does having children have in modern society? It won't grant you immortality. Your children will end up with the same fate as you. For many unhappy persons children will not make you any happier (there was a study that shows couples without children are just as happy as those without). There is no fields to till and no need for large families for survival of half the children dying.
And to those who disagree it is almost certain that their reaction is based on the natural evolution of the mind to justify having children (as the need to socialize and have that family connection).
So when you look at it logically it seems absurd to have children when you look at the fact that they'll be just as bad off as you and if you do decide to have them then logically it would be best to wait till you are older and more stable with savings so that you can make sure you can give them their college education.
However, I suspect that one can not will this instinct away and only sociopaths, loners, celibates, and aesthetics who realize that life is not about having children.
I'm 25. Been married for nearly 5 years. We had our first child when I was 22. Lived in this house for two years. And despite having two kids and a wife to keep me "subservient" or whatever you propose, we've paid down nearly 10% of our mortgage, and put about 25% of my net income per month away in savings and investments. It isn't hard to do if you are committed to it. Having kids early, getting married early, really isn't a strain if you are disciplined in money management. And if you aren't disciplined in money management, you'll blow it on loose women, cars, computers or beer as a single guy anyways.
I think he was trying to point out that perhaps people shouldn't have kids at a young age and because it leads to financial woes because kids in themselves are exponentially more expensive than anyone blowing money on personal things. (College in itself)
From an anecdotal perspective, all my previous landlords in a major metropolitan city have either been gay couples, married couples without kids, and bachelor men in the 40s without kids. This struck me at one point that perhaps that not having children might be related by being financially successful and my parents didn't have me until they were well in their 30s (and they only had one and dad did very well with himself).
Sure there are plenty of exceptions of people able to be financially successful while having kids at an early age but for the vast majority of Americans having kids early hampers your ability to finish college and get a successful career.
The major point that many people overlook when having kids is that not only are you impacting yourself but you are all impacting the person you bring into the world because if you can't afford to send them to college, stastically speaking on the average they aren't going to go.
Now with the recession, having kids will be almost intolerable for an entire generation. There was an article on CNN about people putting off having kids with the economic situation we are having these days. Anyone seriously responsible would give it a great deal of thought at this point of our history whether or not to have children.
I spent the majority of my childhood until I was 18 picking rock and bailing hay on a farm. You think you're in a tedious, repetitive and boring job? The fact that you're posting on Slashdot during work hours tells me otherwise. I'll bet you have air conditioning.
I think he may have misinterpreted what he really means by boredom as burnout.
What do Soldiers, Firemen, Paramedics, and IT person have in common?
Jobs that have times of lulls and then complete disasters that were never the same as before. This is why they attribute post traumatic stress symptoms to soldiers due because its a constant emotional rollercoasters of pure boredom and then unexpected disasters.
Now, IT is no where as bad as being a front line soldier (no ones buddy was ambushed by a sniper in the server room) but overall the same issues that are bad for the mind for the soldier are the same for the IT person.
An IT person sits around until the phone rings, Blackberry goes off, or gets an email and then they have an unexpected issue on their hands they they could have never predicted. It might be as simple as having to show someone how to install a printer to a complete disaster where the exchange server goes down and the CEO needs an important email for a big contract.
A single issue in itself isn't that bad, but the issues keep happening and they are often not the same or at a predictable interval.
I remember a psychological test done on lab rats with such a scenario where they shocked one rat with electricity at regular intervals and then shocked the other at random. Even though the one at regular intervals was shocked more often, the rat that was shocked at random ate less and slept less and could not adapt to the situation.
Same thing with IT and burnout... From an anectdotal experience, I work IT but I have also worked in places like warehouses lifting boxes and sorting orders for a mail order company.
The warehouse was hot and the boxes were heavy and the task with hurt your fingers but for the life of me I miss the job because my job was straight forward and the task was predictable. Sadly, I had to give it up for money and moved back into IT and just deal with the stress as best I can.
So while farming and assembly line work is mundane and boring as heck, the stress levels aren't that bad because the tasks are predictable and your aren't running to one issue or another like a fireman trying to put out fires or a soldier who keeps getting ambushed.
sorry, a wife-murdering total cock.
You don't find the fact that his wife had dated a confessed serial killer at all odd? (Not Reiser but the other guy that confessed to several murders)
He could of murdered his wife, but the situation is rather strange to begin with. Wouldn't be surprised if the wife showed up in Russia somewhere.
Someone hasn't been paying to recent technological developments...
http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2008-01/electricity-air
There are the D&D players who eventually get into Wicca and other "majik" kind of stuff to the point where they believe that they can cast spells and talk to spirits.
As opposed to the other 80% of humanity who believes in resurrection after death? Not to mention the varying degrees of divine wrath and miracles?
Though if you think about it Jesus, Buddha, and Mohamed would not be that out of place in a D&D campaign setting. Heck... Walking across water is probaly a 3rd level spell (don't make me look it up... I always played warrior).
They also talk about how picking an attractive avatar leads to more confidence in the real world an hour later.
So if I pick Sauron as an avatar, I'll be 9 feet tall and able to bash a dozen men with my mace shortly thereafter?
Swords take a lot of training. Bludgeoning weapons or spears would have been a better example. The common footman didn't get a sword, those were usually reserved for the professionals.
Yes, maybe the longbow or pike would be a better example, but I was more on the lines that you have less of a problem with misfires with a musket (rain, spring problems, or general dirtiness) than a plain old sword which still can kill people with minimal training on a rainy day.