Not to mention forcing him to learn these new complicated systems, at what point does it cease effectiveness.
Swords were simpler than muskets. Muskets were simpler than bolt action rifles. Bolt action rifles were simpler than automatic weapons and so on...
If you want a real world scenario I think the best would be the designated radio man in German Panzers on the onset of WWII. Radios were complicated and you actually had to train a fellow very well to not understand and maintain the equipment but the language used was also very complicated to learn and understand. Other nations like France and Russia felt this was unneeded and had their tanks communicate line of sight with flags and flares.
However as history has shown us the German tanks (at least in the early parts of the war) bested both French and Russian tanks due to their superior coordination and fire control even though the early German tanks were often fielded smaller guns and thinner armor.
Seeing this success US, Russia, and the British quickly adapted radios for all their armored vehicles and were able to beat the Germans at their own game of blitzkreig.
The point is that if you do specialize in technologies that enhance communication and coordination that you will beat opponents that lack that technology even though they may have superior firepower and numbers.
But what if you hit a problem that have no (practical) solution?
All problems have solutions and practicality becomes relative to how much you want to stay virus free.
Imagine a scenario like you mentioned in which there was no known solution, no patch forthcoming from MS or AV vendors, and internet connectivity meant you would be infected.
Then disconnecting your Windows computer from the net and using another operating system might be practical even if it means you have to give up productivity.
Suffice to say, if it were such a major problem that some large organization (the government) would put the pressure on MS to fix the damn problem before they get rooted again.
Lets see how long they keep them? The halo effect has been shown to be quite a peak-then-die thing unless the product has real staying power.
Comparing Macs to Halo is comparing Apples to Oranges. (I see what I did there)
It would make much more sense to compare Macs to Xbox360 and Leopard to Halo.
So when every person got bored with Halo did they throw out their Xbox360? Nah. They just stopped playing it till some other game came out. Even then its hard to compare Halo to Leopard because lord knows I can't get 60 hours of game play out of the Finder (and I've tried).
I think he was trying to point out that most of the world's engineering marvels built prior to 1700 was designed and built by men who did not read or write.
The majority of the great cathedrals of Europe were created by masons whose only formal education was apprenticeships. Of course this was during a time only the clergy knew how to read and write and even kings and queens weren't expected to know how to read.
These days literacy is required and is taken for granted as entertainment. Otherwise we wouldn't be having this discussion.
Sexual predator is the new "Communist" on capitol hill or the modern day witch. The way they portray them, its like they are hiding in every bush and under every rock around playgrounds and schools.
Not only are the numbers inflated to whip the voter base into a fury, if they actually need a sexual predator to put on a show trial, the evidence is circumstantial and often crimes of conspiracy (thought crimes) in which are used to simply create the crime to prove their point.
All this is done to pass legislation that infringes on the rights of people who have no desire to engage in illicit activity on the net.
It bothers me to no end... If Sexual Predators actually commit a crime then yes catch them and throw away the key, but to set up a sting to catch week willed men by actually inviting them into such situations creates a crime that would not have happened otherwise.
Then when they pass such legislation on the rest of us who have been minding our own business and breaking no law, its just more salt into the wound.
There are folks who think an advanced civilization from some other star has already come here to study us (Roswell), but if in fact those are aliens come to visit us, I think it more likely that it is a species descended from us come back in time to do some archaeology rather than visiting from Betelguise to work on a Wikipedia entry on us..
Here is the deal. Any civilization advanced enough to travel those long distances (or through time) would be sufficiently advanced to simulate any information (on computers) they need to inquire about any species or observe them without even entering the atmosphere (deep scanning).
And if time travel was possible there would no need to extract live subjects for testing. They would simply extract those who were going to die anyways at the time of death and no one would be the wiser.
But my theory is that any species sufficiently advanced to travel those long distances would either come for conquering or liberation and enlightenment (depending on how you view it). To them it would be like studying ants or conquering a rock.
Anyways... As soon as humans get the ability to colonize how well do you think we'll adhere to the respects of other species?
Seeing we haven't had any aliens showing up on our doorstep saying "We claim this land in the land of Xarboth the 145th, Emperor of the Known Universe. Now worship our true god or face extermination."
It only means either all other species are not interested in colonization, no other races have reached the technological level of space or time travel, or we are alone.
I suspect we just might be the first because as soon as a human like race actually figures out how to spread out planet to planet, its only a matter of time it will seek to colonize and conform the entire galaxy to its needs regardless of what other species things.
Even if humans can never achieve FTL they could still colonize the entire galaxy well under a million years. Thats a drop in the bucket compared to the time that has passed in the universe.
Hell, after Stallman dies, I can almost guarantee that they'll buy out the entire GNU foundation or buy seats on the leadership of the GNU and steer it back into the fold.
I'm sure Stallman would have a clause in his will that would forbid that. He would also probaly require the lawyer to refer to his last will and testament as the "GNUwill" and that his casket contain no proprietary parts. Also GPLv3 will be appended to the text on his gravestone which has to be constantly retroactively updated much to the displeasure of the person who carved it in stone for him.
If you have friends who believe in Creationism, respect them and provide for them sound arguments against it.
You could point out that the Papacy and the Catholic church themselves have no problem with the theory of evolution, but if you take a literal interpretation of the Bible there is no true room for logic and science. You could also point out the fallacy in believing in creationism without following the other aspects of the bible such as putting people to death who work on Sundays and those who touch pigs.
Trying to persuade them with logic and science actually might be a bad idea, but if you point out that God could have used evolution to create man in the philosophical sense it would possible encourage them. Of course you could point out that the people as we know it was put together by a bunch of angry men at the Concil of Nicea hundreds of years after Jesus's death by a Pagan who wasn't really a Christian until he was on his death bed.
Of course that might make them angry if you put it like that...
My experience leads me to believe that you are unusual among vegans, or even among people who are fashionably vegetarian for some short period of time.
I like a nice bloody steaks more than most people, but most of the time I won't eat meet like the poster above. Its not because I care for the environment or feel bad for the animals, but if I just keep the meat intake on the lowdown I seem to spend less time with stomach sickness related events (aka Montezuma's revenge which I'm prone too) and I can keep a healthy weight.
And more of late, I've just been avoiding eating out and buying meat products because its been getting too expensive due to inflation.
If vat meat because viable I might eat more meat because it would be of course cheaper and hopefully less prone to e-coli related illnesses.
Defense? If you do it right, you won't be the person in front of the jury.;)
But in seriousness, you could have your lawyer have an internet expert (a teenager) demonstrate how to break into a wireless router with Mac address security.
...I make shit up on my personal pages and use doctored images for alibis. Also, I make fake pages of people I don't like and make up incriminating evidence.
Actually I don't because I don't have an online social site anymore blog or Facebook, but my point is that if people were smart, they'd not post incriminating information and if they were really smart they'd make shit up. Back in the day before Myspace and even Livejournal I had an E/N blog which I realized family and friends were reading so I would make up impossible crazy stuff to throw them off or I'd write babbling posts that make no sense.
Ergo, using online sites to collect evidence might not be the best idea due to misinformation or self delusions.
I think they are globally unique, and since they are 6 bytes long the supply is practically infinite (256^6 = 216x10^12, ie every person can have something like 30,000 mac addresses)
Considering how trivial it is to defeat MAC address security for wireless, it wouldn't be hard to spoof it at random or just use someone else's you got while war driving.
The SAC mini series is great; but the surreal feeling you are talking about from stand alone complex is minimal when compared to the full original movie:)
Its a matter of opinion, but I like the SAC series better than the movies mostly because its more down to earth or in a sense it strives to deal with modern issues in a new context of a society on the verge of dealing with a technological singularity.
That and it often follows into more detail about the lives secondary characters like Batou and Togusa.
The movies are of course better visually and theatric wise, but the SAC series is one of the better Anime series out there to date.
If the company "calmly addresses the issues", then they'll be flooded by complainers, cheaters and opportunists within no time.
I understand the cheaters part, but being flooded with complainers is what a CSR is paid to handle. Simply banning all discussion hurts the community in the long run and if I was a shareholder of said company I would be upset that the customer relations department is damaging the image of the company by not putting up with things its paid to handle.
The license is perfectly clear, not even close to being unconscionable, 100% enforceable, ans Psystar knows this.
Right? But the idea was that you (the user) would do the install of OS X and be the ones breaking the EULA. Seeing that Psystar isn't installing it for you, they aren't the ones breaking the license.
BTW: "You are an idiot." may sound like an insult, but from time to time it's just an accurate diagnosis:-)
True, but in a work place environment its usually best to be more tactful. Even if you're CEO of the company yelling at the janitor, dressing someone down is generally bad for moral and in cases where you are the janitor calling the CEO the idiot, you'll loose your job.
If the IT person calls you an idiot, I'd bring it up with his supervisor as bad interpersonal skills.
If he had felt he was dealing with an idiot the best approach would be to say "The issue is too complex for a short explanation, do you have about an hour to spare or do you need to get back up and running ASAP?"
I was going to point out all the things you just said that were wrong, but the previous AC put it much better. And, you don't drink much do you?
I usually don't reply, but what parts are exactly wrong? I'm confused. The vast majority of western civilization drank alcohol instead of water up until the 1800's because water was intolerable to drink because of commutable diseases like dysentery which basically killed anyone who drank well water. Tea as a popular drink didn't take off until after 1750s which was only suitable because of the idea of boiling water.
During the middle ages everyone in Europe drank alcohol regardless of class and wealth. Yes there was a watered down versions for daily usage but it still alcohol which has some type of chemical modification to the mind.
Anyway, this theory is very likely rubbish, because plenty of old kingdoms - such as ancient Egypt - already existed far before 3000 years ago, and it's hard to imagine how merely following hallucinations without conscious forethought could build and upkeep large and complex societies; for that matter, it is hard to imagine just how the heck such a double-mind could develop. Getting sudden hallucinations while you're hunting woolly mammoths is not a good thing.
Hold on there. Sanitary and nutritional conditions up until the 19th century left something to be desired. A great deal of the witch craft issues that cropped up during the 15th century were most likley due to mass hallucinations due to contaminated mills which let mold spread to everyones bread (back then mill stones were shared by villages which usually meant if someone brought in some contaminated wheat it got on everyones flour).
Considering you are talking about people who lived in 10,000 BC, they often ate just about anything they could get their hands on (what doesn't kill me, feeds me) and they were also not cooking meat that well and living in filth and squalor.
I don't think what they are saying is that cavemen sat around and did mushrooms to hallucinate just to get high, but its possible that these people were tripping most of the time because they didn't understand what they were eating (by the way did you know the reason why most people's potraits from the 17th century have rosy cheeks? It was because everyone was drunk off their gord because you coudln't drink the water and everyone drank alcohol all the time. Considering that was the case for most of our history up until the 18th century, most of our greatest historical figures were most likley high on alcohol most of the time)
The reasoning behind the idea is that society got its start when man kind started believing in things that weren't actually there or happening which caused a communal bond of religion.
The fact of the matter is that most of our ancestors were crazy because of what they ate and drank and luckily for us civilization formed because or despite of it.
Ah, but if it's deterministic but unpredictable, then where does that leave us?
Its only unpredictable if you went around with a true random number generator and made your daily decisions based off what it told you. Of course, your questions are always predetermined so half of your decision making process is deterministic.
So I suppose you'd have to have a random question generator and a random answer to each of those to have a truly unpredictable (or non deterministic) way of living.
Slashdot Mirror
Not to mention forcing him to learn these new complicated systems, at what point does it cease effectiveness.
Swords were simpler than muskets.
Muskets were simpler than bolt action rifles.
Bolt action rifles were simpler than automatic weapons and so on...
If you want a real world scenario I think the best would be the designated radio man in German Panzers on the onset of WWII. Radios were complicated and you actually had to train a fellow very well to not understand and maintain the equipment but the language used was also very complicated to learn and understand. Other nations like France and Russia felt this was unneeded and had their tanks communicate line of sight with flags and flares.
However as history has shown us the German tanks (at least in the early parts of the war) bested both French and Russian tanks due to their superior coordination and fire control even though the early German tanks were often fielded smaller guns and thinner armor.
Seeing this success US, Russia, and the British quickly adapted radios for all their armored vehicles and were able to beat the Germans at their own game of blitzkreig.
The point is that if you do specialize in technologies that enhance communication and coordination that you will beat opponents that lack that technology even though they may have superior firepower and numbers.
I've already saved myself the trouble of doing either by buying a Mac Mini and installing it inside a loud PC case with crazy glue.
Oh wait...
But what if you hit a problem that have no (practical) solution?
All problems have solutions and practicality becomes relative to how much you want to stay virus free.
Imagine a scenario like you mentioned in which there was no known solution, no patch forthcoming from MS or AV vendors, and internet connectivity meant you would be infected.
Then disconnecting your Windows computer from the net and using another operating system might be practical even if it means you have to give up productivity.
Suffice to say, if it were such a major problem that some large organization (the government) would put the pressure on MS to fix the damn problem before they get rooted again.
Your best bet would be to find an open proxy in the UK... If one exists.
Lets see how long they keep them? The halo effect has been shown to be quite a peak-then-die thing unless the product has real staying power.
Comparing Macs to Halo is comparing Apples to Oranges. (I see what I did there)
It would make much more sense to compare Macs to Xbox360 and Leopard to Halo.
So when every person got bored with Halo did they throw out their Xbox360? Nah. They just stopped playing it till some other game came out. Even then its hard to compare Halo to Leopard because lord knows I can't get 60 hours of game play out of the Finder (and I've tried).
Oh yeah? What about when you learned to read?
I think he was trying to point out that most of the world's engineering marvels built prior to 1700 was designed and built by men who did not read or write.
The majority of the great cathedrals of Europe were created by masons whose only formal education was apprenticeships. Of course this was during a time only the clergy knew how to read and write and even kings and queens weren't expected to know how to read.
These days literacy is required and is taken for granted as entertainment. Otherwise we wouldn't be having this discussion.
Sexual predator is the new "Communist" on capitol hill or the modern day witch. The way they portray them, its like they are hiding in every bush and under every rock around playgrounds and schools.
Not only are the numbers inflated to whip the voter base into a fury, if they actually need a sexual predator to put on a show trial, the evidence is circumstantial and often crimes of conspiracy (thought crimes) in which are used to simply create the crime to prove their point.
All this is done to pass legislation that infringes on the rights of people who have no desire to engage in illicit activity on the net.
It bothers me to no end... If Sexual Predators actually commit a crime then yes catch them and throw away the key, but to set up a sting to catch week willed men by actually inviting them into such situations creates a crime that would not have happened otherwise.
Then when they pass such legislation on the rest of us who have been minding our own business and breaking no law, its just more salt into the wound.
The Jeffersonian view is that government have no rights. Only persons have rights.
You don't have a 4th Amendment right to cross the US border.
The spirit of the rights applies to any given person at any given time at any given place as rights cannot be granted or taken away by the government.
However, government tends to ignore that intention of the constitution in most regards.
There are folks who think an advanced civilization from some other star has already come here to study us (Roswell), but if in fact those are aliens come to visit us, I think it more likely that it is a species descended from us come back in time to do some archaeology rather than visiting from Betelguise to work on a Wikipedia entry on us..
Here is the deal. Any civilization advanced enough to travel those long distances (or through time) would be sufficiently advanced to simulate any information (on computers) they need to inquire about any species or observe them without even entering the atmosphere (deep scanning).
And if time travel was possible there would no need to extract live subjects for testing. They would simply extract those who were going to die anyways at the time of death and no one would be the wiser.
But my theory is that any species sufficiently advanced to travel those long distances would either come for conquering or liberation and enlightenment (depending on how you view it). To them it would be like studying ants or conquering a rock.
Anyways... As soon as humans get the ability to colonize how well do you think we'll adhere to the respects of other species?
Seeing we haven't had any aliens showing up on our doorstep saying "We claim this land in the land of Xarboth the 145th, Emperor of the Known Universe. Now worship our true god or face extermination."
It only means either all other species are not interested in colonization, no other races have reached the technological level of space or time travel, or we are alone.
I suspect we just might be the first because as soon as a human like race actually figures out how to spread out planet to planet, its only a matter of time it will seek to colonize and conform the entire galaxy to its needs regardless of what other species things.
Even if humans can never achieve FTL they could still colonize the entire galaxy well under a million years. Thats a drop in the bucket compared to the time that has passed in the universe.
Hell, after Stallman dies, I can almost guarantee that they'll buy out the entire GNU foundation or buy seats on the leadership of the GNU and steer it back into the fold.
I'm sure Stallman would have a clause in his will that would forbid that. He would also probaly require the lawyer to refer to his last will and testament as the "GNUwill" and that his casket contain no proprietary parts. Also GPLv3 will be appended to the text on his gravestone which has to be constantly retroactively updated much to the displeasure of the person who carved it in stone for him.
If you have friends who believe in Creationism, respect them and provide for them sound arguments against it.
You could point out that the Papacy and the Catholic church themselves have no problem with the theory of evolution, but if you take a literal interpretation of the Bible there is no true room for logic and science. You could also point out the fallacy in believing in creationism without following the other aspects of the bible such as putting people to death who work on Sundays and those who touch pigs.
Trying to persuade them with logic and science actually might be a bad idea, but if you point out that God could have used evolution to create man in the philosophical sense it would possible encourage them. Of course you could point out that the people as we know it was put together by a bunch of angry men at the Concil of Nicea hundreds of years after Jesus's death by a Pagan who wasn't really a Christian until he was on his death bed.
Of course that might make them angry if you put it like that...
My experience leads me to believe that you are unusual among vegans, or even among people who are fashionably vegetarian for some short period of time.
I like a nice bloody steaks more than most people, but most of the time I won't eat meet like the poster above. Its not because I care for the environment or feel bad for the animals, but if I just keep the meat intake on the lowdown I seem to spend less time with stomach sickness related events (aka Montezuma's revenge which I'm prone too) and I can keep a healthy weight.
And more of late, I've just been avoiding eating out and buying meat products because its been getting too expensive due to inflation.
If vat meat because viable I might eat more meat because it would be of course cheaper and hopefully less prone to e-coli related illnesses.
(Or if their site gets Slashdotted)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEQSqmKc7XI
Defense? If you do it right, you won't be the person in front of the jury. ;)
But in seriousness, you could have your lawyer have an internet expert (a teenager) demonstrate how to break into a wireless router with Mac address security.
...I make shit up on my personal pages and use doctored images for alibis. Also, I make fake pages of people I don't like and make up incriminating evidence.
Actually I don't because I don't have an online social site anymore blog or Facebook, but my point is that if people were smart, they'd not post incriminating information and if they were really smart they'd make shit up. Back in the day before Myspace and even Livejournal I had an E/N blog which I realized family and friends were reading so I would make up impossible crazy stuff to throw them off or I'd write babbling posts that make no sense.
Ergo, using online sites to collect evidence might not be the best idea due to misinformation or self delusions.
I think they are globally unique, and since they are 6 bytes long the supply is practically infinite (256^6 = 216x10^12, ie every person can have something like 30,000 mac addresses)
Considering how trivial it is to defeat MAC address security for wireless, it wouldn't be hard to spoof it at random or just use someone else's you got while war driving.
I don't care if Google knows what websites I visit. Oooo! A single 29-year-old male goes to porn sites!! How EEEEEVIL of Google to know this!
What if visiting porn sites became illegal or the information was used by uptight employers to fire you?
Personally, I'm not so concerned about Google tracking me, but I'm concerned who they give it to even if what I do now is perfectly legal.
The SAC mini series is great; but the surreal feeling you are talking about from stand alone complex is minimal when compared to the full original movie :)
Its a matter of opinion, but I like the SAC series better than the movies mostly because its more down to earth or in a sense it strives to deal with modern issues in a new context of a society on the verge of dealing with a technological singularity.
That and it often follows into more detail about the lives secondary characters like Batou and Togusa.
The movies are of course better visually and theatric wise, but the SAC series is one of the better Anime series out there to date.
If the company "calmly addresses the issues", then they'll be flooded by complainers, cheaters and opportunists within no time.
I understand the cheaters part, but being flooded with complainers is what a CSR is paid to handle. Simply banning all discussion hurts the community in the long run and if I was a shareholder of said company I would be upset that the customer relations department is damaging the image of the company by not putting up with things its paid to handle.
The license is perfectly clear, not even close to being unconscionable, 100% enforceable, ans Psystar knows this.
Right? But the idea was that you (the user) would do the install of OS X and be the ones breaking the EULA. Seeing that Psystar isn't installing it for you, they aren't the ones breaking the license.
BTW: "You are an idiot." may sound like an insult, but from time to time it's just an accurate diagnosis :-)
True, but in a work place environment its usually best to be more tactful. Even if you're CEO of the company yelling at the janitor, dressing someone down is generally bad for moral and in cases where you are the janitor calling the CEO the idiot, you'll loose your job.
If the IT person calls you an idiot, I'd bring it up with his supervisor as bad interpersonal skills.
If he had felt he was dealing with an idiot the best approach would be to say "The issue is too complex for a short explanation, do you have about an hour to spare or do you need to get back up and running ASAP?"
I was going to point out all the things you just said that were wrong, but the previous AC put it much better. And, you don't drink much do you?
I usually don't reply, but what parts are exactly wrong? I'm confused. The vast majority of western civilization drank alcohol instead of water up until the 1800's because water was intolerable to drink because of commutable diseases like dysentery which basically killed anyone who drank well water. Tea as a popular drink didn't take off until after 1750s which was only suitable because of the idea of boiling water.
During the middle ages everyone in Europe drank alcohol regardless of class and wealth. Yes there was a watered down versions for daily usage but it still alcohol which has some type of chemical modification to the mind.
Anyway, this theory is very likely rubbish, because plenty of old kingdoms - such as ancient Egypt - already existed far before 3000 years ago, and it's hard to imagine how merely following hallucinations without conscious forethought could build and upkeep large and complex societies; for that matter, it is hard to imagine just how the heck such a double-mind could develop. Getting sudden hallucinations while you're hunting woolly mammoths is not a good thing.
Hold on there. Sanitary and nutritional conditions up until the 19th century left something to be desired. A great deal of the witch craft issues that cropped up during the 15th century were most likley due to mass hallucinations due to contaminated mills which let mold spread to everyones bread (back then mill stones were shared by villages which usually meant if someone brought in some contaminated wheat it got on everyones flour).
Considering you are talking about people who lived in 10,000 BC, they often ate just about anything they could get their hands on (what doesn't kill me, feeds me) and they were also not cooking meat that well and living in filth and squalor.
I don't think what they are saying is that cavemen sat around and did mushrooms to hallucinate just to get high, but its possible that these people were tripping most of the time because they didn't understand what they were eating (by the way did you know the reason why most people's potraits from the 17th century have rosy cheeks? It was because everyone was drunk off their gord because you coudln't drink the water and everyone drank alcohol all the time. Considering that was the case for most of our history up until the 18th century, most of our greatest historical figures were most likley high on alcohol most of the time)
The reasoning behind the idea is that society got its start when man kind started believing in things that weren't actually there or happening which caused a communal bond of religion.
The fact of the matter is that most of our ancestors were crazy because of what they ate and drank and luckily for us civilization formed because or despite of it.
Ah, but if it's deterministic but unpredictable, then where does that leave us?
Its only unpredictable if you went around with a true random number generator and made your daily decisions based off what it told you. Of course, your questions are always predetermined so half of your decision making process is deterministic.
So I suppose you'd have to have a random question generator and a random answer to each of those to have a truly unpredictable (or non deterministic) way of living.