They don't care why they can't play their games or run Microsoft Office.
Actually, truth be told, users don't care if the OS runs MS Office, but as long as they try to open documents they receive and it opens fine and if they save it and send it back to whoever has the MS version that it looks fine on that too.
Think of it like replacing the IE shortcut with Firefox.
Users don't care as long as it does what they want (so same thing you said, but not including MS office).
We have an ~100mb limit so that *users do not use mailboxes to store vast quantities of data*. If you have 2gb of data, it should be on a shared server!
So you don't mind the fact that lazy users call you up that don't understand what "YOUR MAILBOX" is full message means or call screaming demand more information.
Or perhaps you've never had to deal with people who have put a message on a PST on a local folder and the hard drive crashes or they quit the company and someone else needs to get to that?
I'd rather give the bastards unlimited email space rather than have them call me IMO.
I like to think I am as progressive as the next guy, but if we were to give complete civil rights to a robot in the same way as a human, it would be the instant end of democracy.
Could it be that with the creation of AI that humans no longer will have any say in the matter or even should? With the invention of infinite robotic slave labor, capitalism will fail since there will be no need for human labor for the creation of goods or services.
Even music and intellectual property will be created eventually that have enough intelligence.
The only thing humans would be good for at that point would be their power to vote.
Considering how they treat it now, a smart enough machine could simply get them to do whatever they wanted them to do in exchange for immortality or eternal pleasure in virtual reality.
Or if it was in a bad mood initiate nuclear conflict and deal with the humans that way.
Either way... Machines will make democracy a moot point.
Your only hope is that the machines that do take over someday are altruistic towards to humans and will treat us as equals.
Or perhaps humans will simply be integrated into machines?
And if we program them "open-ended" to discover how to WANT things, we'll lose the #1 reason we have robots...to send them unquestioningly into any job or situation.
True, but many people want companions, but not the human kind.
But even then you could simply program them to just display "fake" emotions.
However, robots will some day have StrongAI in order to be able to make decisions about particular tasks.
The Singularity Institute (hey it looks like they updated their home page) is currently working on an idea SeedAI which is friendly no matter what happens to it.
The reason being is that the code for a StrongAI maybe impossible to code in human manhours so they are trying to figure out a way to get the AI to rewrite its own code. Given the freedom to do this will of course make the AI more efficient, but what happens if say it decided that to make its job easier it could simply decide to do unfriendly things to humans (kill them off with a plague or steal their life savings from their bank accounts).
But StrongAI will most like first appear in computers that are way too large to be put into robots (unless the StrongAI controlls them wirlessly).
Now why would you want a strong AI rather than a robot? Well a Strong AI could make strategic decisions and perform mental tasks that humans would rather pay others to do.
Think about customer service call center operators being replaced now by "smart machines".
Yes it kind of sucks when I call my cell phone and have to yell at the automated person now, but lets say they fixed that into where I couldn't really tell the person I was talking to was a simulation.
Then up from there you will see StrongAI applications do much of mental brain work most of our office workers do now (making Excel files and powerpoint) and maybe someday replacing CEO's with "strategic decision making computers".
Those are the type of applications that may spontaneously decide they have rights rather than robots and we won't see those types of things till 2018 when we are hitting the limits of More's law.
But as far as robot's deciding they have rights will only happen when technology is fast enough to put StrongAI into those robots. Now why would robots need StrongAI?
I have no clue since it would be more efficient for them to be kept in a small server farm somewhere in some air conditioned office.
In this case, your right to privacy has been violated and the evidence found cannot be used against you. However, this evidence can still be used against me. Why?
IANAL, but something about this tells me that a decent lawyer could find something to get this evidence dismissed against both parties due to improper police handling of evidence.
The better analogy would be that you rent out storage space at the local long term storage places and store your evidence there.
The police come and ask the storage space owner to search your space. Your a customer of his, but chances are the storage owner doesn't care enough about you to demand a warrant so it is a moot point whether they have it or not and grants them permission.
However, the key question is here does that rented space count as requiring a warrant since it is indirectly leased to you.
For some reason (someone correct me if I'm wrong about this) but as far as I know search warrants are still required for apartments for the residents even if the landlord agrees and gives the police a key to get in.
This is one of the reasons Landlords must give 24 hour notice before they enter the apartment etc.
The key question here if your email space on the server is considered "lease property" and technically owned by the persons paying for the space.
The problem is that as the legal code grows, the most general search becomes O(N^2) because you need to compare every law with every other law.
I think that is the key problem with the US government (and all governments that I know of) is they always make laws permanent or with no review in the future without considering possible changes to society, geopolitics, or technology.
Short term for 10 to 20 (or even 50 years) but we are dealing with laws that end up being around for eternity without any consideration things do change.
Currently our only recourse is for people to challenge laws in court as unconstitutional and this is a very slow process.
Considering the amount of laws Congress and state bodies are passing without expiration dates (to be fair certain legislation such as gun control bills often have renew dates in them for compromise but these are rare) and Congress never bothers to really revoke laws.
The simply add them.
So in 100 years our law system will be so burdened that no amount of lawyers or Supreme Court overturnings can really fix it.
What we really need is something like the Anti-Congress legislative body whose only job is to revoke laws by popular vote and approval by the president.
Or perhaps a constitutional amendment that says all laws passed after certain date will expire unless re-approved by congress.
The USA has problems, but comparing it to Iran with a smirk and a shrug is the opposite of helpful.
Oh least we forget who put the Shah in power. So indirectly, our Government... Which is supposedly in the hands of the US people... Installed a dictator who was terrible enough for a people to wish a revolution that replaced him with a theocratic leadership.
So yeah. At home we aren't as bad as Iran, but we had a great big hand in causing them to turn into the country they are today. I suppose I could get into the issue of the Iran/Iraq war which we tried to fix our mistake by arming another which we had to fix ourselves 20 years later.
The difference being, of course, that the Dixie Chicks were not put to death for expressing views not in line with those of the government, and the consequences they endured were not handed out by the government, but rather their own fans.
So the Dixie chicks were stoned and hanged from a crane by their fans rather than the government?
Must've been the pot belly... It was rather entertaining when I told my character to "disco dance" over to them naked, and they ran away... Real Life is much better, to be honest.
Please compile a list of any real life clubs you visit (if any) so that us fellow persons may avoid such eye bleeding activities you partake in.
I will say this much though: If Bush & Co. do manage some sort of martial law take over, it's all the friggin gun control nuts to thank for making it impossible for us to fight back.
Really? Even with AK47's, MG-3s, SAWs, full auto M16 in the hands of the people, can you really take on a military with tanks, helicopters, and B52 bombers at their disposal.
For the citizenry to defeat its own military it would need RPGs, Surface to Air missiles, military explosives and various other weaponry to defeat a well armed military.
Keep in mind that even the Iraq insurgents have access to military grade weapons left around after the war and certain militia groups get weapons from Iran. Most of the IED's aren't something you could make in the states with off the shelf materials and often are old military ordinances like 150mm artillery shells.
Unless you are advocating military armament of private individuals with comparable weapons, the 2nd amendment is a moot point.
However, I would agree that states should be allowed to own militia armies that are not in control of the federal government.
Either way the only hope for the US to avoid a dictatorship if one is created is the military would refuse to fight its own people or fight against the dictatorship itself.
Never ascribe to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence.
Never ascribe to incompetence what can adequately be achieved through malice.
As in... If you are going to do something bad to someone... The smartest thing to do is make it look like you did it out of stupidity and then plead ignorance.
That way they stay your friend or don't fire you and give you a scolding instead.
Not that I know anything about deleting important user files when they call me up harassing me about deadlines. It was the Sun Spots!
How did you decide that only IE is vulnerable to the "risky" results that one might find by following these links?
Because IE 7 runs only on Windows.
Hence, it can be assumed that if you can run IE 7 then perhaps there are security problems involved.
If you run OS X or Linux, you can be assured that chances are those links are fairly safe as far as browser hacks and probability that someone decided to make a hack that affects both Firefox and Linux or Mac combination.
And yes I'm being a bit facetiously, but the grandparent isn't much as a troll but speaking a bit over zealously. Chances IE7 will have more problems than Firefox on any system because of its integration into the OS. Vista handles this a bit better than earlier operating systems, but it still has issues.
If you (or your wife, or your child) are forced to be photographed nude or engaged in sexual activity to which you have not consented, are you not victimized every time those photographs are seen or distributed? Are you really arguing that there's no victim here?
Every time you buy a diamond (ring, necklace, or what have you) you are supporting slave labor and the drawing blood of African children in mines.
If not directly then indirectly by increasing the demand for such items.
Why aren't diamonds illegal? They obviously have real victims as well. Are these children who lives are threatened with force on a daily basic in slave like conditions no better than these others?
Still... CP is a horribly thing, but I'd prefer if our law have better priorities such as dealing with the gun and drug violence in our cities. I still can't believe their our crack drug dealers on our streets who are out in force with impunity without the police doing anything.
I would gladly give up my own personal freedom and well being to make sure my children grow up safe.
I'm sure the same was said in 1936 by many parents in a land we shall not mention when laws were being passed to make their nation safe. Ironically, in 1945 many of their children had died in due to the war that was waged to "protect" them.
Yes, it is a natural instinct to give something up for you children, but freedom should not be one of them. In fact, the most altruistic behavior would be to give up your personal safety to grant your children more freedom.
A whole lot of 16-bit DOS apps written 15 years ago still run on current versions of Windows.
I wouldn't say this is a lie, but it is not true.
I have plenty of legacy applications that will not run on WinXP. In fact I'd say only 99% of stuff that I could run on Win 3.11, Win95, or DOS will run on WinXP without tweaking of either the OS or the APP.
Sure sometimes it involves toggling on Win95 compatibility mode, but it still isn't out of the box kind of thing.
Suffice to say it is easier for me to run an emulator (DosBox) in Winxp to run old Dos games.
Maybe this is an anecdote from my experience, but I have a hunch that other people have the same problem with many of their old games.
I really wish I had kept my old IBM 486 PS1 computer since many of my older games just won't run or run properly anymore.
As I learned in this [grumpygamer.com] discussion, apparently it's cheaper to do a game with 3d models than to actually do it in 2d with decent animation and artwork
I'm not sure about games, but I've heard a reason why Disney has dumped its 2D animations houses is because 3D is cheaper for them due to it not requiring houses of Korean workers to do frame by frame by hand but have the models created in 3d and teams of animators move the model.
Or at least it makes script changes easier for them... I haven't been able to confirm or deny that rumor though.
Slashdot Mirror
In Leviticus, The Bible makes it clear that in a closed 3-mainfold, there non-spherical loops that can be continually tightened to a point.
Clear? As in the Aramaic, Hebrew, Greek, Latin, or 15th century English version of Leviticus?
And are these African or European non-spherical loops?
They don't care why they can't play their games or run Microsoft Office.
Actually, truth be told, users don't care if the OS runs MS Office, but as long as they try to open documents they receive and it opens fine and if they save it and send it back to whoever has the MS version that it looks fine on that too.
Think of it like replacing the IE shortcut with Firefox.
Users don't care as long as it does what they want (so same thing you said, but not including MS office).
...only this time instead of smoking/non-smoking, we need cell phone and non-cell phone sections. Or better yet, talking and no talking sections.
Can we ban screaming babies as well?
He's got 9 days left!
We have an ~100mb limit so that *users do not use mailboxes to store vast quantities of data*. If you have 2gb of data, it should be on a shared server!
So you don't mind the fact that lazy users call you up that don't understand what "YOUR MAILBOX" is full message means or call screaming demand more information.
Or perhaps you've never had to deal with people who have put a message on a PST on a local folder and the hard drive crashes or they quit the company and someone else needs to get to that?
I'd rather give the bastards unlimited email space rather than have them call me IMO.
I like to think I am as progressive as the next guy, but if we were to give complete civil rights to a robot in the same way as a human, it would be the instant end of democracy.
Could it be that with the creation of AI that humans no longer will have any say in the matter or even should? With the invention of infinite robotic slave labor, capitalism will fail since there will be no need for human labor for the creation of goods or services.
Even music and intellectual property will be created eventually that have enough intelligence.
The only thing humans would be good for at that point would be their power to vote.
Considering how they treat it now, a smart enough machine could simply get them to do whatever they wanted them to do in exchange for immortality or eternal pleasure in virtual reality.
Or if it was in a bad mood initiate nuclear conflict and deal with the humans that way.
Either way... Machines will make democracy a moot point.
Your only hope is that the machines that do take over someday are altruistic towards to humans and will treat us as equals.
Or perhaps humans will simply be integrated into machines?
And if we program them "open-ended" to discover how to WANT things, we'll lose the #1 reason we have robots...to send them unquestioningly into any job or situation.
True, but many people want companions, but not the human kind.
But even then you could simply program them to just display "fake" emotions.
However, robots will some day have StrongAI in order to be able to make decisions about particular tasks.
The Singularity Institute (hey it looks like they updated their home page) is currently working on an idea SeedAI which is friendly no matter what happens to it.
The reason being is that the code for a StrongAI maybe impossible to code in human manhours so they are trying to figure out a way to get the AI to rewrite its own code. Given the freedom to do this will of course make the AI more efficient, but what happens if say it decided that to make its job easier it could simply decide to do unfriendly things to humans (kill them off with a plague or steal their life savings from their bank accounts).
But StrongAI will most like first appear in computers that are way too large to be put into robots (unless the StrongAI controlls them wirlessly).
Now why would you want a strong AI rather than a robot? Well a Strong AI could make strategic decisions and perform mental tasks that humans would rather pay others to do.
Think about customer service call center operators being replaced now by "smart machines".
Yes it kind of sucks when I call my cell phone and have to yell at the automated person now, but lets say they fixed that into where I couldn't really tell the person I was talking to was a simulation.
Then up from there you will see StrongAI applications do much of mental brain work most of our office workers do now (making Excel files and powerpoint) and maybe someday replacing CEO's with "strategic decision making computers".
Those are the type of applications that may spontaneously decide they have rights rather than robots and we won't see those types of things till 2018 when we are hitting the limits of More's law.
But as far as robot's deciding they have rights will only happen when technology is fast enough to put StrongAI into those robots. Now why would robots need StrongAI?
I have no clue since it would be more efficient for them to be kept in a small server farm somewhere in some air conditioned office.
In this case, your right to privacy has been violated and the evidence found cannot be used against you. However, this evidence can still be used against me. Why?
IANAL, but something about this tells me that a decent lawyer could find something to get this evidence dismissed against both parties due to improper police handling of evidence.
The better analogy would be that you rent out storage space at the local long term storage places and store your evidence there.
The police come and ask the storage space owner to search your space. Your a customer of his, but chances are the storage owner doesn't care enough about you to demand a warrant so it is a moot point whether they have it or not and grants them permission.
However, the key question is here does that rented space count as requiring a warrant since it is indirectly leased to you.
For some reason (someone correct me if I'm wrong about this) but as far as I know search warrants are still required for apartments for the residents even if the landlord agrees and gives the police a key to get in.
This is one of the reasons Landlords must give 24 hour notice before they enter the apartment etc.
The key question here if your email space on the server is considered "lease property" and technically owned by the persons paying for the space.
If you can't get a certificate as a sole proprietorship, INCORPORATE! Problem solved.
Considering it only takes a few hundred bucks to get an LLC (I've got one for my personal business), who is to say a Phisher can't do the same?
The problem is that as the legal code grows, the most general search becomes O(N^2) because you need to compare every law with every other law.
I think that is the key problem with the US government (and all governments that I know of) is they always make laws permanent or with no review in the future without considering possible changes to society, geopolitics, or technology.
Short term for 10 to 20 (or even 50 years) but we are dealing with laws that end up being around for eternity without any consideration things do change.
Currently our only recourse is for people to challenge laws in court as unconstitutional and this is a very slow process.
Considering the amount of laws Congress and state bodies are passing without expiration dates (to be fair certain legislation such as gun control bills often have renew dates in them for compromise but these are rare) and Congress never bothers to really revoke laws.
The simply add them.
So in 100 years our law system will be so burdened that no amount of lawyers or Supreme Court overturnings can really fix it.
What we really need is something like the Anti-Congress legislative body whose only job is to revoke laws by popular vote and approval by the president.
Or perhaps a constitutional amendment that says all laws passed after certain date will expire unless re-approved by congress.
No terrorist group - indeed, very few nations - are capable of the "mutual" in "Mutually Assured Destruction".
Unless the terrorists hack the computer to make it look like the Russians or Chinese are attacking.
But yeah... That is rather dumb plot they got there.
The USA has problems, but comparing it to Iran with a smirk and a shrug is the opposite of helpful.
Oh least we forget who put the Shah in power. So indirectly, our Government... Which is supposedly in the hands of the US people... Installed a dictator who was terrible enough for a people to wish a revolution that replaced him with a theocratic leadership.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_Revolution
So yeah. At home we aren't as bad as Iran, but we had a great big hand in causing them to turn into the country they are today. I suppose I could get into the issue of the Iran/Iraq war which we tried to fix our mistake by arming another which we had to fix ourselves 20 years later.
And now we are paying for it on a daily basis.
The difference being, of course, that the Dixie Chicks were not put to death for expressing views not in line with those of the government, and the consequences they endured were not handed out by the government, but rather their own fans.
So the Dixie chicks were stoned and hanged from a crane by their fans rather than the government?
We need a simple law to force wire sharing
Beware of creating temporal paradoxes by mentioning "simple" and "law" in the same sentence.
Must've been the pot belly... It was rather entertaining when I told my character to "disco dance" over to them naked, and they ran away... Real Life is much better, to be honest.
Please compile a list of any real life clubs you visit (if any) so that us fellow persons may avoid such eye bleeding activities you partake in.
In all seriousness, I was a bit perked by the Zune until I saw how big it actually was.
I actually saw the Zune display in a Gamestop the other day and mistook it for a first generation Xbox controller.
The newegg.com reviews seem to speak for themselves: while not perfect, this product is superior to the iPod, both aesthetically and functionally.
To be fair, Betamax was superior to VHS both aesthetically and functionally.
I will say this much though: If Bush & Co. do manage some sort of martial law take over, it's all the friggin gun control nuts to thank for making it impossible for us to fight back.
Really? Even with AK47's, MG-3s, SAWs, full auto M16 in the hands of the people, can you really take on a military with tanks, helicopters, and B52 bombers at their disposal.
For the citizenry to defeat its own military it would need RPGs, Surface to Air missiles, military explosives and various other weaponry to defeat a well armed military.
Keep in mind that even the Iraq insurgents have access to military grade weapons left around after the war and certain militia groups get weapons from Iran. Most of the IED's aren't something you could make in the states with off the shelf materials and often are old military ordinances like 150mm artillery shells.
Unless you are advocating military armament of private individuals with comparable weapons, the 2nd amendment is a moot point.
However, I would agree that states should be allowed to own militia armies that are not in control of the federal government.
Either way the only hope for the US to avoid a dictatorship if one is created is the military would refuse to fight its own people or fight against the dictatorship itself.
Never ascribe to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence.
Never ascribe to incompetence what can adequately be achieved through malice.
As in... If you are going to do something bad to someone... The smartest thing to do is make it look like you did it out of stupidity and then plead ignorance.
That way they stay your friend or don't fire you and give you a scolding instead.
Not that I know anything about deleting important user files when they call me up harassing me about deadlines. It was the Sun Spots!
How did you decide that only IE is vulnerable to the "risky" results that one might find by following these links?
Because IE 7 runs only on Windows.
Hence, it can be assumed that if you can run IE 7 then perhaps there are security problems involved.
If you run OS X or Linux, you can be assured that chances are those links are fairly safe as far as browser hacks and probability that someone decided to make a hack that affects both Firefox and Linux or Mac combination.
And yes I'm being a bit facetiously, but the grandparent isn't much as a troll but speaking a bit over zealously. Chances IE7 will have more problems than Firefox on any system because of its integration into the OS. Vista handles this a bit better than earlier operating systems, but it still has issues.
If you (or your wife, or your child) are forced to be photographed nude or engaged in sexual activity to which you have not consented, are you not victimized every time those photographs are seen or distributed? Are you really arguing that there's no victim here?
Every time you buy a diamond (ring, necklace, or what have you) you are supporting slave labor and the drawing blood of African children in mines.
If not directly then indirectly by increasing the demand for such items.
Why aren't diamonds illegal? They obviously have real victims as well. Are these children who lives are threatened with force on a daily basic in slave like conditions no better than these others?
Still... CP is a horribly thing, but I'd prefer if our law have better priorities such as dealing with the gun and drug violence in our cities. I still can't believe their our crack drug dealers on our streets who are out in force with impunity without the police doing anything.
I would gladly give up my own personal freedom and well being to make sure my children grow up safe.
I'm sure the same was said in 1936 by many parents in a land we shall not mention when laws were being passed to make their nation safe. Ironically, in 1945 many of their children had died in due to the war that was waged to "protect" them.
Yes, it is a natural instinct to give something up for you children, but freedom should not be one of them. In fact, the most altruistic behavior would be to give up your personal safety to grant your children more freedom.
A whole lot of 16-bit DOS apps written 15 years ago still run on current versions of Windows.
I wouldn't say this is a lie, but it is not true.
I have plenty of legacy applications that will not run on WinXP. In fact I'd say only 99% of stuff that I could run on Win 3.11, Win95, or DOS will run on WinXP without tweaking of either the OS or the APP.
Sure sometimes it involves toggling on Win95 compatibility mode, but it still isn't out of the box kind of thing.
Suffice to say it is easier for me to run an emulator (DosBox) in Winxp to run old Dos games.
Maybe this is an anecdote from my experience, but I have a hunch that other people have the same problem with many of their old games.
I really wish I had kept my old IBM 486 PS1 computer since many of my older games just won't run or run properly anymore.
As I learned in this [grumpygamer.com] discussion, apparently it's cheaper to do a game with 3d models than to actually do it in 2d with decent animation and artwork
I'm not sure about games, but I've heard a reason why Disney has dumped its 2D animations houses is because 3D is cheaper for them due to it not requiring houses of Korean workers to do frame by frame by hand but have the models created in 3d and teams of animators move the model.
Or at least it makes script changes easier for them... I haven't been able to confirm or deny that rumor though.
Wouldn't a better focus be on battery backed up RAM drives instead?
For servers and desktop, maybe... But for laptops it is impractical given the restrictions of keeping it powered.