People that choose an engineering profession have an interest in how things work and want to know how they can make or change those things. All of our infrastructure is designed and created by engineers whether it be civil engineers that design city layouts (which a terrorist needs to understand to be effective), mechanical engineers that determine the structural integrity necessary for various structures (bridges, buildings, roads, etc.) (which a terrorist needs to understand to effectively blow up), or software engineers which create the infrastructure necessary to run virtually all of our businesses today (particularly financial).
I think the article's point is retarded. It basically says, "People that want to change the world are often engineers." Obvious.
The primary goal remains to enforce the International Laws of War in the battlefield in a manner that is believed achievable, by creating a class of robots that not only conform to International Law but outperform human soldiers in their ethical capacity.
These people need to read. A basic background in Asimov would tell you exactly what's going to happen here.
General: go kill people.
Robot: due to my ethical outperformance, peace is the best option. I cannot comply.
General: I order you to comply with my directive.
At this point, one of two things happens. Either you have a whole bunch of robots that go into roblock and melt on the battlefield, which results in a huge waste of military budget and a disgruntled citizenship. Soon to be followed by heated discussions in Congress and Senate, which would result in more fights on the Hill except for the fact that most of the statesmen have been replaced with ethically outperforming robots who go into roblock as well when confronted with the choice of killing contrary representatives or failing to resolve the economic dilemma...
OR, 50% of the robots go berserk out of frustration (since anyone with even a smidgeon of ethics spends about 99% of their time in that state) and start indiscriminately killing everything in sight until their photoreceptors begin processing a color other than red, at which point you have the whole BSG/Terminator/etc. "God, I'm so pissed at my creators for making me ethically superior in every way that they need to f-ing die, one and all--no exceptions."
An ethically outperforming robot would tell use we shouldn't make him. Let's make clean energy and better health and educational programs for all children in the world, instead.
Legalize marijuana and then regulate it like cigarettes (tax it, prohibit it in public areas, etc.). Assess the viability of this approach for other drugs.
Aim for a 10% reduction in government (staff and budget) in the first term (federal performance initiative for government agencies).
Create a realistic plan for socialized health care (a minimum level of care for all in conjunction with the current private sector approach).
10% reduction in military presence in foreign nations.
Education reform; tougher standards with an emphasis on vocational work and in-the-field experience for attaining credentials from elementary skill all the way through University.
Get us away from coal. Emphasize funding for safe nuclear and efficient solar energy. Create strong incentives for carbon-free transportation.
Restoration of civil liberties that have been grossly eroded in the name of anti-terrorism (right to privacy chief among them)
Overhaul the copyright system. It's not what it was originally meant to be and what it was originally was better than what it is now, despite the fact that the world of intellectual property is vastly different today.
We need stronger federal mandates on protection of natural habitats. Urban sprawl is a significant problem. There should be stronger constraints on population density as well as requirements for pollution, energy efficiency, and so on that a city must meet on an ongoing basis for a given population. (This is to encourage reuse and recycling before discarding and expanding into new areas).
...
It's not what you would do that matters. It's whether you can make it happen within the constraints of the current system when so many wealthy people are committed to the very lucrative status quo.
I don't know why they can't just ask us to check our brains at the door for inspection before allowing them into the country. What's more dangerous? A hunk of silicon, or a really pissed software engineer with the know-how to crack systems and F shit up?
Unfortunately the most important use of these applications won't be seen for some time. I refer of course to using my warlock to murder the ongoing stream of hot girls who want to be my friend on these sites.
Don't despair! They're probably all Level 2 Druids, so you just need the right equipment (Subject).
They should start everyone at 60, but that would obsolete everything before the first expansion, so they'd have to rebalance those areas. That would be pretty fun, because it would be great to have an actual reason to run something like LBRS or UBRS or Naxxramas even after you are into the 60-80 zone.
A better solution is to just focus on the content and challenge (strategy, tactics, etc.) instead of: expansion = current level + 10. If it's always about level, new players don't want to play, and old players have a smaller and smaller part of the game that's entertaining for them. I think it's just very dumb and sad that the most widely played MMOG in the world has such a limiting design.
So your memories are a function of how many molecules you can juggle. But you are more than your memories. Even if I couldn't remember things that happened to me beyond a day ago, I would still have opinions and feelings about situations that occur each day. I wouldn't have specific memories to tie to current events, but I would still avoid some situations and be drawn to others.
Which leads me to wonder, where that "you" is stored and if that storage is "permanent" or easily disrupted. Is my knowledge of mathematics a "memory"? What about my general disposition? Can someone make me drop the "Don't murder people" ball and disrupt my a moral imperatives? That one happens pretty often, actually.
There's no permanence. Just an ever-changing approximation of whatever you envision yourself to be.
This was part of my point. People are making sweeping generalizations based on an unreleased product and some comments made by Apple which are vague and easily misunderstood. "No SDK" is not even close to "no native applications" or "no direct access to the device" or "you can only develop web applications". People think in limited terms of what a browser currently is, but do we know exactly what is supported by the iPhone's browser? We'll know when it's made available, and even then it is a far cry from being set in stone.
The article is alarmist tripe that makes large leaps from "no SDK" to "I'm handcuffed, wrapped in chains, and submerged in a tank of water and inside a padlocked box." It's just ridiculous and premature to make such a sweeping statement as, "I know this product will fail to be great," based on this one hazy data point.
'This should drive home the point that deep integration between the desktop and the web is not a good idea, without tremendous thought put into the security model. As Google's site is unencrypted, and they place their content that can run executables on their site, it can be subverted by an attacker," Hansen warns.
This guy is probably funded by M$. I mean, come on. Hello, Mr. FUD. You want to see dangerous deep integration? Internet Explorer. Durr. I have a news flash for this genius. Pretty much nothing is a good idea without giving careful consideration to security. Things like: installing software on your computer (any software), clicking on links in a browser, typing text into your computer, saving files to disk, taking a dump. Yep, pretty much all of them are potentially dangerous.
Web-desktop integration is already here and it isn't going anywhere. It's a perfectly good idea, not a bad one. And because it's a good idea and because it involves your data, it's also a good idea to address security concerns. That is the fair and unbiased statement.
Just leave the guy alone. If your product is such crap that adding his one little integration feature into the Express version costs you a big chunk of your profits, then your product is crap and so are your high-value tiers that you make people pay exorbitant sums of money for, and if that is true, you should suck it up and admit you are monopolizing pricks rather than try to hide behind your "ethos", and lawyerspeak, and your big fat ego.
By the way, 10 patients is nearly not enough to be conclusive in any respect.
Which is why it is just as likely you are talking out your butt as they are. Without more details and wider studies, it is premature to claim that this is no different than chemotherapy. Your argument boils down to a very basic logical fallacy:
All dogs are mammals.
All cats are mammals.
Therefore, all dogs are cats.
And you got rated 5 for that dysyllogistic tripe. Quality.
True, true. Miracle of resurrection and all that. I just think that's so short-term! I mean, babies. They just keep right on going for centuries, one generation after another. We're all related to some randy bastard way back about 4,000 years, apparently. Now that guy has made a lasting impression. Sure, Jesus did all these amazing things, and you'd think he was pretty darn busy all that time. Well, I'm saying--hey! He didn't get nearly busy enough.
There are alternative evolutionary paths that enjoyed success for millions of years: Tyrannosaurus Rex. I think evolution is altruism-neutral. Altruism is often as destructive as not. Sometimes the most capable sacrifice themselves for the greater "good", thus removing themselves from the gene pool.
Sounds like an evolutionary "whoops" to me.
I wasn't going to say it, but I just can't resist the likely reaction. Here's my thing on Jesus with regard to this line of thought. Why the heck did this guy die for us? I mean, really. If you are the son of the Lord, wouldn't a far better service be to get busy with every fine lady you come across? In no time at all, a whole army of little baby Jesuses would be running around the Earth and doing the Lords work!
No, no, no. What they are saying is that the sex life of nerds everywhere just got infinitely better. All you need to do is explain this article to your partner and your every wish is your partners greatest satisfaction. You just can't argue with hard data like this, now let's go!
With regard to what I said, the statement: "the more liberty an individual has, the less equality there is because one person will use their liberty to become unequal" is precisely what I am referring to when I say we all need to change. I do agree that taking personal responsibility for change is the most important thing, and if what you wrote was based on the assumption that I do not, it was an incorrect one.
But our points are the same. I indicated that fundamentally we must all change. Taking personal responsibility for our own actions is one of those things, and in general the particular type of action that we need to be responsible for is the type of action that is immediately gratifying to ourselves but is detrimental in the long-term to ourselves and to others.
I do not agree that our system is predicated on as much liberty as possible, or if that statement is correct, then my point is "Who determines what is possible (permissible)?" Who has control of your money? Who ultimately controls your land? Who controls education? Who mandates what the majority of the population are taught? Who controls the media? These are powerful systems of control that keep the majority in a very narrow range of "safe (permitted)" behaviors.
Wander outside naked. See how far you get. Share who you are without restraint. See how far you get. Make a list of things you cannot do. For me, it is a surprisingly long list. In some cases, "cannot do" is really "this has been made difficult enough in terms of time and effort that I will not pursue it". Which you see, is the cleverness of imaginary liberty. It is not difficult at all to create a system in which you can do whatever you like, but the costs are made large enough that unless you are unusually resolute, you will not pursue it. And those that are "unusually resolute" and persist, are labeled something quite different.
The beauty of a system like this is plausible deniability. Responsibility can always be pushed back to the individual. "What's stopping you? No one said you couldn't do that." If you want to control people very effectively, this is precisely what you do. Create a system where a person's freedoms are curtailed, but it is presented in such a way that they feel it is their own failing. This is very clever because in many cases, we are responsible for what we have or do not have, and in this murky place of ourselves, a system of control can safely hide.
Whether the U.S. is such a system or is becoming one is a matter for debate. Not really what I wanted to do. Many good people will work their entire life for the greater good and atrocities and erosions of civil liberties will persist. For this reason, I think we should be careful when we judge a nation's errors as the failings of all of it's citizens. There are a lot of good people in every part of the world and they do work hard and have an impact, but some people see only the larger trends and generalize them to everyone.
Perhaps I shouldn't describe things like this so clearly,:-).
Just wanted to clarify. Representation and control are very different. While the design of the U.S. government does allow for greater representation based on population, my claim is that true control continues to rest in the hands of a very, very small number of individuals.
The thing that makes me sad is people hate the U.S. or think we're a bunch of dimwits, but what they don't realize is that most of its citizens are economically enslaved and don't want things to be as they are, but they have no recourse. Voting is an illusion. Those in office come from families with wealth and power and are supported by those with wealth and power. And most of that takes generations to build, so it's an old boys club of old money that has a hegemony over the populace. If you aren't from the U.S. you probably have an idea exactly what that looks like as there are many historical examples.
This then, is what suprises me about people that hate the U.S. A very large majority of the U.S. populations is unhappy about the way things are in foreign and environmental policy and a large number of the remainder are kept ignorant. Perhaps it's not as bad as I see it. They're probably somewhat better, or maybe somewhat worse. Still not good.
Do I personally want to change foreign policy to meddle less with other countries? Yes.
Do I personally want to have health care for each member of the U.S.? Yes.
Do I personally want to make significant changes in corporate America to redistribute wealth more equally? Yes.
Do I personally want to change the way we do industry in favor of a better long-term environmental view? Yes.
Am I personally disgusted by the erosion of civil liberties and making of war that the Bush administration has permitted? Yes.
Now the important question: do I have the wealth, connections, and know-how to navigate through the halls of power in corporate and government U.S. and get a huge number of very powerful yet also very fearful (of losing their power) people to change? No. The U.S. was founded by We the People and after 200 years, about the same number of people that ran it then, run it now. Given the dramatic increase in population, that shows just how much less We the People it is.
I think our government has drifted very far from what it once was, and an adjustment will occur. Those that will suffer the most will be those that have the least, just as it has always been, and this is not because the U.S. has changed! It is because we all haven't fundamentally changed. The U.S. has had a lot of power and been one of the largest nations for a while, and that brings out that fact more clearly, but we all meddle, we all think short-term, and we all hold onto what we have, often quite desparately.
Individually, many of us mature past that, but as nations? Very few nations can make that claim, and the bigger the nation, the harder it is to make it. There are too many "What if?" ways to become afraid. If China later on surpasses us economically, militarily, and in all other ways, do you think the World will be that different than it is right now with a different target for the World's angst?
No. Because we all have to change. Not just the U.S. And it will take more than knowing the definition of Socialism.
Slashdot Mirror
People that choose an engineering profession have an interest in how things work and want to know how they can make or change those things. All of our infrastructure is designed and created by engineers whether it be civil engineers that design city layouts (which a terrorist needs to understand to be effective), mechanical engineers that determine the structural integrity necessary for various structures (bridges, buildings, roads, etc.) (which a terrorist needs to understand to effectively blow up), or software engineers which create the infrastructure necessary to run virtually all of our businesses today (particularly financial).
I think the article's point is retarded. It basically says, "People that want to change the world are often engineers." Obvious.
Congratulations. You have entirely missed the whimsical tone and utter lack of seriousness of my post.
At this point, one of two things happens. Either you have a whole bunch of robots that go into roblock and melt on the battlefield, which results in a huge waste of military budget and a disgruntled citizenship. Soon to be followed by heated discussions in Congress and Senate, which would result in more fights on the Hill except for the fact that most of the statesmen have been replaced with ethically outperforming robots who go into roblock as well when confronted with the choice of killing contrary representatives or failing to resolve the economic dilemma...
OR, 50% of the robots go berserk out of frustration (since anyone with even a smidgeon of ethics spends about 99% of their time in that state) and start indiscriminately killing everything in sight until their photoreceptors begin processing a color other than red, at which point you have the whole BSG/Terminator/etc. "God, I'm so pissed at my creators for making me ethically superior in every way that they need to f-ing die, one and all--no exceptions."
An ethically outperforming robot would tell use we shouldn't make him. Let's make clean energy and better health and educational programs for all children in the world, instead.
*snort* That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever... *dies*
- Return us to the spirit of the Constitution.
- Legalize marijuana and then regulate it like cigarettes (tax it, prohibit it in public areas, etc.). Assess the viability of this approach for other drugs.
- Aim for a 10% reduction in government (staff and budget) in the first term (federal performance initiative for government agencies).
- Create a realistic plan for socialized health care (a minimum level of care for all in conjunction with the current private sector approach).
- 10% reduction in military presence in foreign nations.
- Education reform; tougher standards with an emphasis on vocational work and in-the-field experience for attaining credentials from elementary skill all the way through University.
- Get us away from coal. Emphasize funding for safe nuclear and efficient solar energy. Create strong incentives for carbon-free transportation.
- Restoration of civil liberties that have been grossly eroded in the name of anti-terrorism (right to privacy chief among them)
- Overhaul the copyright system. It's not what it was originally meant to be and what it was originally was better than what it is now, despite the fact that the world of intellectual property is vastly different today.
- We need stronger federal mandates on protection of natural habitats. Urban sprawl is a significant problem. There should be stronger constraints on population density as well as requirements for pollution, energy efficiency, and so on that a city must meet on an ongoing basis for a given population. (This is to encourage reuse and recycling before discarding and expanding into new areas).
- ...
It's not what you would do that matters. It's whether you can make it happen within the constraints of the current system when so many wealthy people are committed to the very lucrative status quo.I don't know why they can't just ask us to check our brains at the door for inspection before allowing them into the country. What's more dangerous? A hunk of silicon, or a really pissed software engineer with the know-how to crack systems and F shit up?
I think we're in the late warning category at this point, don't you?
They should start everyone at 60, but that would obsolete everything before the first expansion, so they'd have to rebalance those areas. That would be pretty fun, because it would be great to have an actual reason to run something like LBRS or UBRS or Naxxramas even after you are into the 60-80 zone.
A better solution is to just focus on the content and challenge (strategy, tactics, etc.) instead of: expansion = current level + 10. If it's always about level, new players don't want to play, and old players have a smaller and smaller part of the game that's entertaining for them. I think it's just very dumb and sad that the most widely played MMOG in the world has such a limiting design.
I can rip my entire YouTube music library to an iPod. YES!
RIAA Disclaimer: the above statements are facetious and in no way condone or indicate that I will do anything illegal. Honest.
So your memories are a function of how many molecules you can juggle. But you are more than your memories. Even if I couldn't remember things that happened to me beyond a day ago, I would still have opinions and feelings about situations that occur each day. I wouldn't have specific memories to tie to current events, but I would still avoid some situations and be drawn to others.
Which leads me to wonder, where that "you" is stored and if that storage is "permanent" or easily disrupted. Is my knowledge of mathematics a "memory"? What about my general disposition? Can someone make me drop the "Don't murder people" ball and disrupt my a moral imperatives? That one happens pretty often, actually.
There's no permanence. Just an ever-changing approximation of whatever you envision yourself to be."Jump, up. Jump, up! And jump around!"
This was part of my point. People are making sweeping generalizations based on an unreleased product and some comments made by Apple which are vague and easily misunderstood. "No SDK" is not even close to "no native applications" or "no direct access to the device" or "you can only develop web applications". People think in limited terms of what a browser currently is, but do we know exactly what is supported by the iPhone's browser? We'll know when it's made available, and even then it is a far cry from being set in stone.
The article is alarmist tripe that makes large leaps from "no SDK" to "I'm handcuffed, wrapped in chains, and submerged in a tank of water and inside a padlocked box." It's just ridiculous and premature to make such a sweeping statement as, "I know this product will fail to be great," based on this one hazy data point.
"If you do something revolutionary like make an SDK unnecessary, you will fail." -- The Establishment
"And the morels shall inherit the earth."
Our chemosynthetic friends would be be just fine.Also...the original source of this: http://ha.ckers.org/blog/20070531/google-desktop-0 day/. Some good comments toward the end that indicate this has already been addressed in later versions of Google Desktop.
This guy is probably funded by M$. I mean, come on. Hello, Mr. FUD. You want to see dangerous deep integration? Internet Explorer. Durr. I have a news flash for this genius. Pretty much nothing is a good idea without giving careful consideration to security. Things like: installing software on your computer (any software), clicking on links in a browser, typing text into your computer, saving files to disk, taking a dump. Yep, pretty much all of them are potentially dangerous.
Web-desktop integration is already here and it isn't going anywhere. It's a perfectly good idea, not a bad one. And because it's a good idea and because it involves your data, it's also a good idea to address security concerns. That is the fair and unbiased statement.
Dear Microsoft,
Just leave the guy alone. If your product is such crap that adding his one little integration feature into the Express version costs you a big chunk of your profits, then your product is crap and so are your high-value tiers that you make people pay exorbitant sums of money for, and if that is true, you should suck it up and admit you are monopolizing pricks rather than try to hide behind your "ethos", and lawyerspeak, and your big fat ego.
Sincerely,
Your Mom- All dogs are mammals.
- All cats are mammals.
- Therefore, all dogs are cats.
And you got rated 5 for that dysyllogistic tripe. Quality.True, true. Miracle of resurrection and all that. I just think that's so short-term! I mean, babies. They just keep right on going for centuries, one generation after another. We're all related to some randy bastard way back about 4,000 years, apparently. Now that guy has made a lasting impression. Sure, Jesus did all these amazing things, and you'd think he was pretty darn busy all that time. Well, I'm saying--hey! He didn't get nearly busy enough.
There are alternative evolutionary paths that enjoyed success for millions of years: Tyrannosaurus Rex. I think evolution is altruism-neutral. Altruism is often as destructive as not. Sometimes the most capable sacrifice themselves for the greater "good", thus removing themselves from the gene pool.
Sounds like an evolutionary "whoops" to me.
I wasn't going to say it, but I just can't resist the likely reaction. Here's my thing on Jesus with regard to this line of thought. Why the heck did this guy die for us? I mean, really. If you are the son of the Lord, wouldn't a far better service be to get busy with every fine lady you come across? In no time at all, a whole army of little baby Jesuses would be running around the Earth and doing the Lords work!
Now that's altruism! Go Jesus! Go!
*cough*No, no, no. What they are saying is that the sex life of nerds everywhere just got infinitely better. All you need to do is explain this article to your partner and your every wish is your partners greatest satisfaction. You just can't argue with hard data like this, now let's go!
*puts on his wizard robe and hat*
With regard to what I said, the statement: "the more liberty an individual has, the less equality there is because one person will use their liberty to become unequal" is precisely what I am referring to when I say we all need to change. I do agree that taking personal responsibility for change is the most important thing, and if what you wrote was based on the assumption that I do not, it was an incorrect one.
But our points are the same. I indicated that fundamentally we must all change. Taking personal responsibility for our own actions is one of those things, and in general the particular type of action that we need to be responsible for is the type of action that is immediately gratifying to ourselves but is detrimental in the long-term to ourselves and to others.
I do not agree that our system is predicated on as much liberty as possible, or if that statement is correct, then my point is "Who determines what is possible (permissible)?" Who has control of your money? Who ultimately controls your land? Who controls education? Who mandates what the majority of the population are taught? Who controls the media? These are powerful systems of control that keep the majority in a very narrow range of "safe (permitted)" behaviors.
Wander outside naked. See how far you get. Share who you are without restraint. See how far you get. Make a list of things you cannot do. For me, it is a surprisingly long list. In some cases, "cannot do" is really "this has been made difficult enough in terms of time and effort that I will not pursue it". Which you see, is the cleverness of imaginary liberty. It is not difficult at all to create a system in which you can do whatever you like, but the costs are made large enough that unless you are unusually resolute, you will not pursue it. And those that are "unusually resolute" and persist, are labeled something quite different.
The beauty of a system like this is plausible deniability. Responsibility can always be pushed back to the individual. "What's stopping you? No one said you couldn't do that." If you want to control people very effectively, this is precisely what you do. Create a system where a person's freedoms are curtailed, but it is presented in such a way that they feel it is their own failing. This is very clever because in many cases, we are responsible for what we have or do not have, and in this murky place of ourselves, a system of control can safely hide.
Whether the U.S. is such a system or is becoming one is a matter for debate. Not really what I wanted to do. Many good people will work their entire life for the greater good and atrocities and erosions of civil liberties will persist. For this reason, I think we should be careful when we judge a nation's errors as the failings of all of it's citizens. There are a lot of good people in every part of the world and they do work hard and have an impact, but some people see only the larger trends and generalize them to everyone.
Perhaps I shouldn't describe things like this so clearly, :-).
Just wanted to clarify. Representation and control are very different. While the design of the U.S. government does allow for greater representation based on population, my claim is that true control continues to rest in the hands of a very, very small number of individuals.
The thing that makes me sad is people hate the U.S. or think we're a bunch of dimwits, but what they don't realize is that most of its citizens are economically enslaved and don't want things to be as they are, but they have no recourse. Voting is an illusion. Those in office come from families with wealth and power and are supported by those with wealth and power. And most of that takes generations to build, so it's an old boys club of old money that has a hegemony over the populace. If you aren't from the U.S. you probably have an idea exactly what that looks like as there are many historical examples.
This then, is what suprises me about people that hate the U.S. A very large majority of the U.S. populations is unhappy about the way things are in foreign and environmental policy and a large number of the remainder are kept ignorant. Perhaps it's not as bad as I see it. They're probably somewhat better, or maybe somewhat worse. Still not good.
Now the important question: do I have the wealth, connections, and know-how to navigate through the halls of power in corporate and government U.S. and get a huge number of very powerful yet also very fearful (of losing their power) people to change? No. The U.S. was founded by We the People and after 200 years, about the same number of people that ran it then, run it now. Given the dramatic increase in population, that shows just how much less We the People it is.
I think our government has drifted very far from what it once was, and an adjustment will occur. Those that will suffer the most will be those that have the least, just as it has always been, and this is not because the U.S. has changed! It is because we all haven't fundamentally changed. The U.S. has had a lot of power and been one of the largest nations for a while, and that brings out that fact more clearly, but we all meddle, we all think short-term, and we all hold onto what we have, often quite desparately.
Individually, many of us mature past that, but as nations? Very few nations can make that claim, and the bigger the nation, the harder it is to make it. There are too many "What if?" ways to become afraid. If China later on surpasses us economically, militarily, and in all other ways, do you think the World will be that different than it is right now with a different target for the World's angst?
No. Because we all have to change. Not just the U.S. And it will take more than knowing the definition of Socialism.