For anyone thinking about Office 2007: It went over huge here, between the ribbon and all the visual additions (especially smart objects). Actually our Accounting department is loving the new excel, and our president is pretty excited about the toys in powerpoint. Word seems to be liked but that is the one we hear least about.
I have to admit that after playing around with Office 2007 that those apps can take your useless crap numbers and make it look important or that you paid a graphic artists to make it look important.
Great for boring speakers and people who want to fudge stock prices at meetings with fancy power point presentations.
One would naturally assume that the emotional repercussions would be non-existant in such a case, yet this research shows that people nevertheless feel some amount of stress.
One of the things I would like to point out that is that humans do mentally "anthromorphize" non-humans.
We get attached to stuffed animals, name our cars and boats, and even treat home gadgets and computers like family members. Not to mention family pets and plants.
In fact I would be if you give a child a teddy bear and let them grow attached to it and then come in and tell the child to punish the bear by ripping its head off that the child would object if they had feelings for it.
See... I think the point of it is that there is no magic connection with humans and other humans, but rather empathy based off our perceived subconscious notions.
Even if we know that 100% that that person on the screen is virtual, there may be a instinct or some type of altruism towards that non-human we may not have control over.
Or it could be the same reason why we don't mind it when people kill ugly animals en masse for our daily consumption, but we get riled up when they kill cute ones.
Seeing what the answer to that question will explain why piracy is doing better than legitimate sales.
As soon as they put the videos online for sale and download without DRM and a standardized format (Divx or Xvid), I think you will see a dramatic change.
Actually, I remember way back when that the SNES Kiosk in Babbages (anyone remember that store) would simply reset after 5 minutes of game play. I remember they had a bug in which you could still save games so I ended up speed playing to the save points, but after a while it was just too far in between.
There were plenty of other kiosks that did similar things or had similar features to get the next in line a chance.
The only other thing I would try because either reformatting Winxp would be to check firewall setup, turn off Windows Defender, and various other programs laying around.
If that was the only thing the book was about, it would have been forgotten long ago -- there are hundreds of stories like that. This particular story is interesting because it goes insides the minds of the people who make a totalitarian society work.
Actually, if you have ever studied Stalin and the history of the purges (pre-WWII) you will notice the great similarity of what the Soviets did and the government in the book.
Mostly about the rewriting of history. One of Stalins close friends would be assassinated by brain washed people who would confess to the crimes and Stalin would hold a great funeral possession, but everyone would know that it was Stalin who initiated the order for his friend to done away with.
People would be edited out of pictures and entire families would disappear. If the state purged you, then you would be stricken from the history books. The cameras were more of an analogy to the system of state authorized spying among its own citizenry.
There was a famous child who turned in his parents for conspiracy against the state (he had his own statue) and everyone was helping the state spy on each other. I think Orwell used the futuristic aspect as where the citizens are the machinery or the TVs themselves now.
As for his Animal Farm book... If you studied the October revolution with Lenin and others... Well that is a straight out copy of real life events.
I am, however, frequently annoyed by their mediocrity, and unbelievably frustrated that someone doesn't have the balls to start a company dedicated to making an absolutely, positively 100%-compatible Windows clone based on a Unix-like operating system.
Technically if you own an Intel Mac you can get Windows compatibility with Unix-like operating system with OS running Parallels.
If you are getting worked up over computer games then you really need to examine your life.
Bah! For a 6 figured salary many of these developers get, I'd be willing to get worked up over Barbie's Pink Pony Video Game Adventure if they gave me half of that.
Assuming that the worst case #1 is true is ridiculous. There is zero evidence to indicate it is true.
You had no choice but to say that.
Once the big bang happened, an almost infinite amount of events from the Colonization of the New world, creation of the modern English language, and the fact your ancestors didn't die off (and the creation of the internet) allowed you at that moment in time to create such a sentence.
Although you feel that you have free will, you mind was fated since the beginning of time to follow that path.
Yes... I made a spacious argument, but you cannot also disprove the fact the world was or was not created 6 seconds ago (or FSM for that matter).
but personally I hope free will exists - it (in theory) allows us to help people improve themselves.
Whether or not you have free will is a moot point if you still end up dead someday.
As far as I will agree... The day that man can choose not to die of old age is the day he really has free will. Otherwise all your personal improvements is lost upon your death and those that remember you will die someday and the information will just a blip on some database of mankind's history or a nice find at an archeology dig in a few thousand years.
Some genetic makeups may make you *more likely* to make poor (or dangerous to others) choices, but they don't make it a certainty. You may have a quick temper, but you might be able to control it because you know you have a family and a good job, and if you snap that guy's neck in a bar fight, you'd go to jail and they'd be poor.
What if you lost your job because of a bad economy or your family dead in a train wreck to to a freak accident with a mechanical function?
Fate? Destiny? Bad luck? Or a thousand years of bad decisions by your ancestors?
You have less free will that you know or your mind will be allowed to admit.
Your choices only affect a small portion of what we call "sphere of influence". Depending on your position in human society. However, even the most powerful man in the world could do nothing with his free will if say a neutron start ripped through the solar system tearing our protons apart instantly.
No I say... Our choices are simply being absorbed in the fabric of space time as the universe moves about us. The only choice we get in the matter is to choose in what we believe the universe is.
Whereas the universe does not care what you believe in it unless it involves our observation on particle states.
Even then, with heat death of the universe, we have no choice in the matter. Everything you do or say in a thousand trillion years from now will mean nothing because there will be nothing.
Kind of bleak outlook, no?
But once you accept futility of it all... It does make life worth living.
No. We live our lives like our actions are the result of our desires, and there is no other way we could exist and still have a functioning society.
As I've said to people "Knowing that I don't have free will, doesn't make tough decisions any easier."
But the truth of the matter if we realize how our mind really works and that if we don't have free will, would mean would could someday resolve that problem (perhaps).
Otherwise, we are fated to believe in free will. We have no choice;)
What possible explanatory purpose is served by adding or removing free will?
Actually, according to Buddhism, the only way to truly gain free will (Nirvana) is to acknowledge you don't have any.
Now this doesn't make sense to our western way of thinking, but these Neurologists are coming across things that perhaps Buddhist monks have known for thousands of years.
In order to actually have true "free will" you must overcome your mind or at least its physicality.
This isn't mumbo jumbo kind of "oh my body is floating about me in some glowing light" but actually become aware of what you mind/body is doing at any particular time.
As an example from a Buddhist monk that I recall... You are walking down the street and see an ice cream store and without thinking or because your mind impulsed you to, you go in and buy.
This can apply to most everything we do.
However, a Buddhist (or anyone who actively pays attention to their thought process) will go... "Oh. My mind thinks this ice cream would be tasty!" and acknowledges this fact. They may or may not choose to go and buy ice cream, but even if they do buy the ice cream they have free will over the impulse.
The other thing that human mind does is judge things and be objective about them. Where as a objective person hears a bell ringing and may think "That bell sound's nice" (or bad/irritating/loud) whereas someone not judgmental will think "I hear a bell".
When you don't judge you can often focus on things that are important rather than your personal opinions of the matter.
I'm not really an expert and I've only dabbled in reading Diamond Sutras and tried meditating on occasion, but I try to often acknowledge that I don't have free will over a good deal of my actions, but I can improve upon this problem if I put my mind to it.
If there are any real Buddhists on here feel free to chime in and correct me or add. (Again I'm no expert on the matter)
IANAL, but it isn't illegal for someone to post information about your illegal activity you had during a conversation.
Even if your lawyer or doctor (who has confidential laws on their side) decides to give information to the authorities they can.
The way confidentiality laws work is that the authorities or police can't force other parties you've entered into disclosure agreements (such as your lawyer) to give them incriminating evidence.
Even if you email me and say "The following is private information not to be shared with anyone... I just murdered my wife." You bet you aren't going to get any legal recourse when I turn you into the authorities.
They're not going to switch to some unknown thing they've never heard of without a strong, compelling reason.
My example is where people don't actively care what they have, but expect it to come with the computer. Most persons/customers/clients I have talked with get rather confused when MS Office doesn't come included with the computer.
Those who are familiar or have purchasing power care, but the people I am talking about are Joe 6 pack and have hard enough time figuring out how to make shortcuts on their desktop much less open them.
And if your Bible is missing that entire book, how can you be sure of what is actually said in so much as a single chapter and verse?
Personally, I though GP was being sarcastic, but you do have a very serious point about religion.
If one were to take religion seriously, you must really consider the problem of the nature of Holy Books and man's interaction with them.
Unless you believe much like Kings of the Medieval era that if god didn't want you to do something he wouldn't have made you king.
As in... If god didn't want you to read this particular set of books rather then another set a books in even a different language and context then he would have done so.
So the question if god is all powerful then why does he fail at communication unless he tried several times and humans didn't get it right, which means the only group that is right is Islam considering they were the last of the big three (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) to get their word of god and they actually claim to have gotten their book directly from god and the book says you have to read it in Arabic to interpret it.
So... Unless you believe the Pope at the time was the mouthpiece of god and that god was indeed telling him what books were go into the gospel and what language to translate it in (Latin) then perhaps they got it wrong.
There was actually a Christian sect of Agnostics called the Cathars who actually believed the bible was not holy and it was simply man's attempt to understand god (they also believed the Judaic old testament was actually evil). The Pope did not approve so he set about and killed them all off.
So what if the Cathar's were right and that the Catholic Bible was simply a political tool of the Papacy to bring the incorrect version of God's word to man. Obviously man has free will to do what he pleases (unless you believe in predestination like certain sects do) so the possibility that over the age's that man disobeyed God's will and changed the Bible to of man's own choosing is possible.
Disregarding science versus religion, there is a possibility the modern Bible is indeed not really God's true will and many Christians are actually worshiping it as an idol rather than what God really wants them to do.
Slashdot Mirror
For anyone thinking about Office 2007: It went over huge here, between the ribbon and all the visual additions (especially smart objects). Actually our Accounting department is loving the new excel, and our president is pretty excited about the toys in powerpoint. Word seems to be liked but that is the one we hear least about.
I have to admit that after playing around with Office 2007 that those apps can take your useless crap numbers and make it look important or that you paid a graphic artists to make it look important.
Great for boring speakers and people who want to fudge stock prices at meetings with fancy power point presentations.
Ads are like having prostitiution support your schools.
So if I use Ad block extension, it means I'm having sex with prostitutes for free?
and i thought the professor was a cartoon character!!
Nope, he was a real live person:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philo_Farnsworth
And he did invent something called the Fusor
Although, Futurama did pay homage to him with the Professor character.
What kind of super powers does he have?
Apparently to have the ability to still have children after 13 nuclear tests.
One would naturally assume that the emotional repercussions would be non-existant in such a case, yet this research shows that people nevertheless feel some amount of stress.
One of the things I would like to point out that is that humans do mentally "anthromorphize" non-humans.
We get attached to stuffed animals, name our cars and boats, and even treat home gadgets and computers like family members. Not to mention family pets and plants.
In fact I would be if you give a child a teddy bear and let them grow attached to it and then come in and tell the child to punish the bear by ripping its head off that the child would object if they had feelings for it.
See... I think the point of it is that there is no magic connection with humans and other humans, but rather empathy based off our perceived subconscious notions.
Even if we know that 100% that that person on the screen is virtual, there may be a instinct or some type of altruism towards that non-human we may not have control over.
Or it could be the same reason why we don't mind it when people kill ugly animals en masse for our daily consumption, but we get riled up when they kill cute ones.
Seeing what the answer to that question will explain why piracy is doing better than legitimate sales.
As soon as they put the videos online for sale and download without DRM and a standardized format (Divx or Xvid), I think you will see a dramatic change.
Actually, I remember way back when that the SNES Kiosk in Babbages (anyone remember that store) would simply reset after 5 minutes of game play. I remember they had a bug in which you could still save games so I ended up speed playing to the save points, but after a while it was just too far in between.
There were plenty of other kiosks that did similar things or had similar features to get the next in line a chance.
Hrm... Got me.
The only other thing I would try because either reformatting Winxp would be to check firewall setup, turn off Windows Defender, and various other programs laying around.
Are you using the "Steam" version or the version off the website? (people have issues with Steam from my understanding)
And you have upgraded to latest 1.2?
Since VHS is out. They win by default.
Seriously, BluRay and HD won't be common place until 2012 at this rate.
By then, we'll have iPod like devices that could hold more video than a Station wagon full of BlueRay discs.
If that was the only thing the book was about, it would have been forgotten long ago -- there are hundreds of stories like that. This particular story is interesting because it goes insides the minds of the people who make a totalitarian society work.
Actually, if you have ever studied Stalin and the history of the purges (pre-WWII) you will notice the great similarity of what the Soviets did and the government in the book.
Mostly about the rewriting of history. One of Stalins close friends would be assassinated by brain washed people who would confess to the crimes and Stalin would hold a great funeral possession, but everyone would know that it was Stalin who initiated the order for his friend to done away with.
People would be edited out of pictures and entire families would disappear. If the state purged you, then you would be stricken from the history books. The cameras were more of an analogy to the system of state authorized spying among its own citizenry.
There was a famous child who turned in his parents for conspiracy against the state (he had his own statue) and everyone was helping the state spy on each other. I think Orwell used the futuristic aspect as where the citizens are the machinery or the TVs themselves now.
As for his Animal Farm book... If you studied the October revolution with Lenin and others... Well that is a straight out copy of real life events.
I'm just wondering who would buy these at such a price. What is the real value of an exploit?
People who want to make Vista zombie bots.
And who would want to do that?
Spammers
Yes. I hear Best Buy's Geek Squad is hiring to deal with the influx of confused and angry customer.
I am, however, frequently annoyed by their mediocrity, and unbelievably frustrated that someone doesn't have the balls to start a company dedicated to making an absolutely, positively 100%-compatible Windows clone based on a Unix-like operating system.
Technically if you own an Intel Mac you can get Windows compatibility with Unix-like operating system with OS running Parallels.
Before long each new Dell and every other new computer will be shipping with Vista.
Maybe.
Maybe not.
If you are getting worked up over computer games then you really need to examine your life.
Bah! For a 6 figured salary many of these developers get, I'd be willing to get worked up over Barbie's Pink Pony Video Game Adventure if they gave me half of that.
Assuming that the worst case #1 is true is ridiculous. There is zero evidence to indicate it is true.
You had no choice but to say that.
Once the big bang happened, an almost infinite amount of events from the Colonization of the New world, creation of the modern English language, and the fact your ancestors didn't die off (and the creation of the internet) allowed you at that moment in time to create such a sentence.
Although you feel that you have free will, you mind was fated since the beginning of time to follow that path.
Yes... I made a spacious argument, but you cannot also disprove the fact the world was or was not created 6 seconds ago (or FSM for that matter).
If we have no free will, then you also can't blame people for their actions.
;)
Oh, law doesn't matter if you don't have free will, but doesn't mean we can throw you in jail for the safety of society.
We can say we had no choice but to throw the criminal in jail
but personally I hope free will exists - it (in theory) allows us to help people improve themselves.
Whether or not you have free will is a moot point if you still end up dead someday.
As far as I will agree... The day that man can choose not to die of old age is the day he really has free will. Otherwise all your personal improvements is lost upon your death and those that remember you will die someday and the information will just a blip on some database of mankind's history or a nice find at an archeology dig in a few thousand years.
Some genetic makeups may make you *more likely* to make poor (or dangerous to others) choices, but they don't make it a certainty. You may have a quick temper, but you might be able to control it because you know you have a family and a good job, and if you snap that guy's neck in a bar fight, you'd go to jail and they'd be poor.
What if you lost your job because of a bad economy or your family dead in a train wreck to to a freak accident with a mechanical function?
Fate? Destiny? Bad luck? Or a thousand years of bad decisions by your ancestors?
You have less free will that you know or your mind will be allowed to admit.
Your choices only affect a small portion of what we call "sphere of influence". Depending on your position in human society. However, even the most powerful man in the world could do nothing with his free will if say a neutron start ripped through the solar system tearing our protons apart instantly.
No I say... Our choices are simply being absorbed in the fabric of space time as the universe moves about us. The only choice we get in the matter is to choose in what we believe the universe is.
Whereas the universe does not care what you believe in it unless it involves our observation on particle states.
Even then, with heat death of the universe, we have no choice in the matter. Everything you do or say in a thousand trillion years from now will mean nothing because there will be nothing.
Kind of bleak outlook, no?
But once you accept futility of it all... It does make life worth living.
No. We live our lives like our actions are the result of our desires, and there is no other way we could exist and still have a functioning society.
;)
As I've said to people "Knowing that I don't have free will, doesn't make tough decisions any easier."
But the truth of the matter if we realize how our mind really works and that if we don't have free will, would mean would could someday resolve that problem (perhaps).
Otherwise, we are fated to believe in free will. We have no choice
What possible explanatory purpose is served by adding or removing free will?
Actually, according to Buddhism, the only way to truly gain free will (Nirvana) is to acknowledge you don't have any.
Now this doesn't make sense to our western way of thinking, but these Neurologists are coming across things that perhaps Buddhist monks have known for thousands of years.
In order to actually have true "free will" you must overcome your mind or at least its physicality.
This isn't mumbo jumbo kind of "oh my body is floating about me in some glowing light" but actually become aware of what you mind/body is doing at any particular time.
As an example from a Buddhist monk that I recall... You are walking down the street and see an ice cream store and without thinking or because your mind impulsed you to, you go in and buy.
This can apply to most everything we do.
However, a Buddhist (or anyone who actively pays attention to their thought process) will go... "Oh. My mind thinks this ice cream would be tasty!" and acknowledges this fact. They may or may not choose to go and buy ice cream, but even if they do buy the ice cream they have free will over the impulse.
The other thing that human mind does is judge things and be objective about them. Where as a objective person hears a bell ringing and may think "That bell sound's nice" (or bad/irritating/loud) whereas someone not judgmental will think "I hear a bell".
When you don't judge you can often focus on things that are important rather than your personal opinions of the matter.
I'm not really an expert and I've only dabbled in reading Diamond Sutras and tried meditating on occasion, but I try to often acknowledge that I don't have free will over a good deal of my actions, but I can improve upon this problem if I put my mind to it.
If there are any real Buddhists on here feel free to chime in and correct me or add. (Again I'm no expert on the matter)
IANAL, but it isn't illegal for someone to post information about your illegal activity you had during a conversation.
Even if your lawyer or doctor (who has confidential laws on their side) decides to give information to the authorities they can.
The way confidentiality laws work is that the authorities or police can't force other parties you've entered into disclosure agreements (such as your lawyer) to give them incriminating evidence.
Even if you email me and say "The following is private information not to be shared with anyone... I just murdered my wife." You bet you aren't going to get any legal recourse when I turn you into the authorities.
They're not going to switch to some unknown thing they've never heard of without a strong, compelling reason.
My example is where people don't actively care what they have, but expect it to come with the computer. Most persons/customers/clients I have talked with get rather confused when MS Office doesn't come included with the computer.
Those who are familiar or have purchasing power care, but the people I am talking about are Joe 6 pack and have hard enough time figuring out how to make shortcuts on their desktop much less open them.
And if your Bible is missing that entire book, how can you be sure of what is actually said in so much as a single chapter and verse?
Personally, I though GP was being sarcastic, but you do have a very serious point about religion.
If one were to take religion seriously, you must really consider the problem of the nature of Holy Books and man's interaction with them.
Unless you believe much like Kings of the Medieval era that if god didn't want you to do something he wouldn't have made you king.
As in... If god didn't want you to read this particular set of books rather then another set a books in even a different language and context then he would have done so.
So the question if god is all powerful then why does he fail at communication unless he tried several times and humans didn't get it right, which means the only group that is right is Islam considering they were the last of the big three (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) to get their word of god and they actually claim to have gotten their book directly from god and the book says you have to read it in Arabic to interpret it.
So... Unless you believe the Pope at the time was the mouthpiece of god and that god was indeed telling him what books were go into the gospel and what language to translate it in (Latin) then perhaps they got it wrong.
There was actually a Christian sect of Agnostics called the Cathars who actually believed the bible was not holy and it was simply man's attempt to understand god (they also believed the Judaic old testament was actually evil). The Pope did not approve so he set about and killed them all off.
So what if the Cathar's were right and that the Catholic Bible was simply a political tool of the Papacy to bring the incorrect version of God's word to man. Obviously man has free will to do what he pleases (unless you believe in predestination like certain sects do) so the possibility that over the age's that man disobeyed God's will and changed the Bible to of man's own choosing is possible.
Disregarding science versus religion, there is a possibility the modern Bible is indeed not really God's true will and many Christians are actually worshiping it as an idol rather than what God really wants them to do.