only a person with a weak mind is going to actually go on a shooting rampage with a gun.
Given that people with "weak minds" going berko is inevitable in our society, you'd rather that more guns were available? Add this to the fact that most murderers know their victims well and that many murders are committed on the spur of the moment, do you really think a more heavily armed populace will reduce the number of gun killings?
All the martial arts in the world cannot compare to the usefulness of a gun against a foe.
Hey you're absolutely right! I have never heard of a mass killing committed using martial arts! What a great pro-guns message!
Also it's far easier to defend yourself with a gun than without. All other forms
of self defense are put to shame with the gun.
Sure, you defend yourself with your gun and the attacker (or anyone else unlucky enough to be in your line of fire) ends up dead. A gun is not a defensive weapon and cannot realisticly be defended against except by incapacitating the wielder.
I'd probably be working in the USA if not for one thing: guns (OK, OK and religious morons, infomercials, southern accents and rap music).
To paraphrase Dogbert: I wouldn't trust you goobers with anything more dangerous than string.
No, no, no How am I supposed to know that what I'm linking to isn't illegal? Unless I check all my links every day I can't. And you would have to get rid of all censorship, obscenity and IP laws before all information would be illegal. If linking to illegal material is made illegal it will be virtually the death of the internet (it will be much less useful without search engines), and also a real PITA for other media.
I'd just like to note that my country's admittedly rather stupid government has not yet forced us to install filtering software. In fact I'm downloading some rather nice net porn as I write this. Not that there isn't several religious fanatic politicians here who'd like to make all forms of fun illegal, but I defy you to say that's not the case about your country.
The main effect of Australia's brilliant new law has been to put money into the pockets of censorware companies and convince stupid parents that the internet is safe for their children.
Mr. Kiuchi was not convicted of linking to an illegal web site, he was convicted of aiding and abetting The Japanese legal system is not as concerned with precedents as the US system. This does not make all links to illegal sites illegal in Japan Even if it did, there is no reason a link to a link should be illegal. The main concern here is that links for your web site could aid in you getting convicted for a crime, but this is proabably true in most countries. The moral of the story is, if you're going to flaut a grey area of the law be more discreet. Since when do people need help finding porn of the internet anyway?
This comment is misleading at best. The government of Japan may be extremely pro-corporate but they are no more repressive and corrupt thatn any other government (IMO). Japan is an extremely free country, the impression of repression comes most from social restraints which are not as restrictive as most outsiders seem to think. And if selling used items is illegal it certainly doesn't stop millions of people from doing it. These thoughts come from my 1 year of living in Tokyo, YMMV.
Erm... Unisys's patent does not even cover the GIF format, let alone files with a.gif extension. The patent is on LZW compression, which is used by most GIF images. It's fairly obvious that Unisys's position is that of a fat, rich bastard who wants to be fatter, richer and even more bastardly.
Of course, if you were joking I now look like a complete dick. B==@
Re:Dystopian fiction from Stallman
on
RMS On eBooks
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· Score: 1
I can't help feeling that these problems are not so different than the ones consumers have been facing for a long time. Companies can rip people off, impose stupid restrictions and otherwise gouge the consumer, that's why we have consumer-oriented legislation.
The problems with the DMCA (and similar legislation which will slip through parliament in my country with nary a news report) is that there is nothing stopping companies from using it unethically. And we all know how ready companies are to use unethical means to raise profits.
My proposed course of action would be to raise a big stink if^H^Hwhen companies do start being real pricks. Of course, this hasn't happened with the MPAA, but it's early days yet.
And, of course, support companies who are dealing fairly with comsumers.
Re:Why Gaming is important
on
Carmack Speaks
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· Score: 1
I respect John Carmack's work as a programmer, but I really don't like what id games and other companies have done to computer games.
We now have games which have a very realistic simulation of a real world, and what have game companies done with it? A series which by now must number into hundereds of games in which the totality of play involves running around and killing stuff. Maybe with a few frustrating "puzzles" involving finding coloured keys behind secret doors.
I find there are few games around which are really entertaining and fun for more than a few hours. And none of these use highly sophisticated 3D graphics. I really hope that id's next game isn't another "twitch kill" gorefest, it would be really nice to find a game I can actually play for a while and not feel like I wasted the money.
Later on in the series there were more ships built of various types. I still remember the episode where they decided to retire the Argo / Yamato because they has all these great new ships. I was as upset as the Argo's crew.
The only bad thing about the show was the "Voltron Effect" - in every episode the good guys got their asses kicked all over the place until they decided to use the Wave Motion Gun, which solved all their problems. Made it a bit predictable (although less so than voltron).
The various techniques used in AI (feedforward NNs, SOMs, genetic algorithms, etc.) are all useful for a variety of tasks, although they have different strengths. That's the whole point - I can simulate human sound processing using a spectral analyser and library of patterns, but an SOM can adapt much better and do different tasks.
As for nervous systems, they only really have one tool - the neuron. It's the connections between them that make the difference, and while we know that there are vastly different connection patterns in different areas of the brain there is no evidence for particular "tools" being used in particular areas. That's why AI researchers have been trying to use NNs and similar techniques for every task under the sun - the human brain does it that way.
I do think that AI researchers are stuck on some things - like emulating the brain. For example, some models of visual processing take pride in the fact that they can replicate optical illusions in a similar way to the human eye - is that really relevant? There also seems to be an obsession with self-aware AIs, so it's good to hear from an AI researcher interested in any intelligent processes.
I think that's enough rambling from me for one topic.
Mine costs $30AU for up to 156 hrs/month. Of course, I'd have to double my caffeine intake to use that much. It's not the highest quality but I've had no problems setting it up under windows and Linux and I only occasionally can't connect.
I have already seen one ad last year that was partially filmed on MIR. Unfortunately it was for Australian Rules Football so most here probably haven't seen it. It actually wasn't too bad.
Nice comment, I hope you don't mind if I steal it for personal use.
When I was in high school, there was also this weird bunch of boys who would go out on a field and fight over a piece of dead pig - they really scared me.
"Abunai desu kara, kiroi sen no uchigawa made, osagari kudasai..." - Japanese Proverb
First time I've ever heard a railway safety sign referred to as a proverb.
I think this is really sad - every time I hear about somone blindly believing media hype without out even considering it, it makes me think more seriously about starting my own religious cult. Sometimes I think the populace's average intelligence must be decreasing at a steady rate.
Am I the only one who doesn't find these systems either totally cool or utterly evil? Unless I'm mistaken, the only new thing about them is anonymity. What's important is what the things are used for, not what they are.
So let's see, what people have done with the pseudo-anonymity the web currently gives them? With the notable exception of slashdot, 90% of anaonymous messaging I have seen have been used for pirating, porn, flaming or just pointless drivel.
So, while it may be cool to have a place to discuss dark-side hacking and get things like DeCSS and encryption tools, my pessimistic side believes that these mediums will be filled to the brim with utter trash before you can say "Hey look, I can do this and nobody can stop me".
If anyone has a good argument against this, it would sure lighten my day:-)
Re:Is this really a good thing?
on
Microsoft Loses
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· Score: 1
In stockmarket news, Microgeek (MSFT1) dropped 33 1/2 points in the wake of extremely damaging reports on the performance of it's recently released Windows 7.32.875 SP71 software. Chairman Bill Gates was quoted as blaming "Comparisons with other operating systems instead of our older software" for the reports.
Meanwhile Microgeek's sister company Microshaft (MSFT2) made impressive gains, despite the lack of any products or revenue. Microshaft's chairman Satanus Lucifege had this to say:
"Everone has noticed Microshaft's continued innovation in customer-focused shafting technology. Add that to our continued success in lawsuit against those abusing our patented Disk (tm) access technology, and we're looking at a really bright future."
When asked about the accusations of Microshaft's stock price being a magical illusion, Satanus had this to say:
"While I can neither confirm or deny the rumor, our lawyer are confident that nothing in current legislation forbids this. Besides, think of how many pension funds are riding on our stock price, the government would never be foolish enough to interfere."
Great idea, but is there any reason to have them for (bio)nanotechnology in particular? What about nuclear technology, genetic engineering, spaceflight, etc, etc.
Another point is that there is no-one to enforce this kind of thing, it will be useless. If a company has a choice between making millions of dollars or violating ethical guidelines and pissing off lots of people the result will be pretty predictable. The only way to do this is to get governments to ban certain types of technology, which is slow and usually not done properly.
QM provides a way to deal with the things we observe but can't explain, and it is proven useful in doing so.
This is true of all areas of science - even Newton's laws can never be proven true, they just work.
I believe in QM, as I believe in Natural selection and other theories as being useful ways to describe the world around us. But the philosophies that rest on them many times are just wrong.
I'm really not expressing that QM is false, just the notion people have, the philosophy that God does play dice with the universe (and sometimes he throws them where he can't see them.)
I don't understand how this conflicts with religion. Science makes theories about how the world works, quantum mechanics is no different. If god can decide the outcome of a horse race, why can't he also decide the outcome of a QM event?
Some people may try to use it as an argument that god doesn't exist, but it clearly is not - people like Prof. Davies understand QM pretty deeply and still have their beliefs.
Re:Philosophy and physics overlap
on
The Mind of God
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· Score: 1
A quick question, though: if physicists are so adamant about an orderly universe governed by rules, why assume that it came about by chaos and chance?
We know that the universe is orderly and has rules, there's no need to assume anything.
All theories about the origin of physical laws are just that - theories. AFAIK superstring theory is the only area attempting to do this, but i know basically nothing about it.
The point I am trying to make is that a sentient supernatural entity is not a valid default whever we do not understand something, any more than "its just chance" is. Without any evidence, both are merely saying that we have no explanation.
Re:Philosophy and physics overlap
on
The Mind of God
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· Score: 1
Funny, I read all these quotes as "There's stuff we don't understand, therefore there must be a god". Once you get to this stage it ceases to be science.
Re:Is it so hard to accept the possibility?
on
The Mind of God
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· Score: 1
infinite number? How? There has been a finite amount of time since the universe started, and the billions of years usually tossed around as the standard age of the universe are frankly, too short a time for an 'infinite' number of experiments to have occured.
There's a rather amusing quantum mechanics argument which goes something like this:
As an unobserved universe is just a large probability wave function and we only observe one universe, it is inevitable that the universe we observe has sentient life in it.
To put it another way, no matter how remote the possibility of sentient life coming about, it will exist because they (or us) will be there to observe that universe.
Just thought I'd throw that into the "Impossible to Disprove" box.
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps I should add to that list the fact that some americans appear to be missing a humor gene. But that's true of most countries in my experience.
QCAD is another one, although I can't comment on how good it is.
So you're only going to take it out for special occaisions, like when the guy down the store really pisses you off?
Given that people with "weak minds" going berko is inevitable in our society, you'd rather that more guns were available? Add this to the fact that most murderers know their victims well and that many murders are committed on the spur of the moment, do you really think a more heavily armed populace will reduce the number of gun killings?
Hey you're absolutely right! I have never heard of a mass killing committed using martial arts! What a great pro-guns message!
Sure, you defend yourself with your gun and the attacker (or anyone else unlucky enough to be in your line of fire) ends up dead. A gun is not a defensive weapon and cannot realisticly be defended against except by incapacitating the wielder.
I'd probably be working in the USA if not for one thing: guns (OK, OK and religious morons, infomercials, southern accents and rap music).
To paraphrase Dogbert: I wouldn't trust you goobers with anything more dangerous than string.
Way to go - you just made slashdot illegal in Japan :-)
No, no, no How am I supposed to know that what I'm linking to isn't illegal? Unless I check all my links every day I can't. And you would have to get rid of all censorship, obscenity and IP laws before all information would be illegal. If linking to illegal material is made illegal it will be virtually the death of the internet (it will be much less useful without search engines), and also a real PITA for other media.
I'd just like to note that my country's admittedly rather stupid government has not yet forced us to install filtering software. In fact I'm downloading some rather nice net porn as I write this. Not that there isn't several religious fanatic politicians here who'd like to make all forms of fun illegal, but I defy you to say that's not the case about your country.
The main effect of Australia's brilliant new law has been to put money into the pockets of censorware companies and convince stupid parents that the internet is safe for their children.
Mr. Kiuchi was not convicted of linking to an illegal web site, he was convicted of aiding and abetting The Japanese legal system is not as concerned with precedents as the US system. This does not make all links to illegal sites illegal in Japan Even if it did, there is no reason a link to a link should be illegal. The main concern here is that links for your web site could aid in you getting convicted for a crime, but this is proabably true in most countries. The moral of the story is, if you're going to flaut a grey area of the law be more discreet. Since when do people need help finding porn of the internet anyway?
This comment is misleading at best. The government of Japan may be extremely pro-corporate but they are no more repressive and corrupt thatn any other government (IMO). Japan is an extremely free country, the impression of repression comes most from social restraints which are not as restrictive as most outsiders seem to think. And if selling used items is illegal it certainly doesn't stop millions of people from doing it. These thoughts come from my 1 year of living in Tokyo, YMMV.
Erm... Unisys's patent does not even cover the GIF format, let alone files with a .gif extension. The patent is on LZW compression, which is used by most GIF images. It's fairly obvious that Unisys's position is that of a fat, rich bastard who wants to be fatter, richer and even more bastardly.
Of course, if you were joking I now look like a complete dick. B==@
I can't help feeling that these problems are not so different than the ones consumers have been facing for a long time. Companies can rip people off, impose stupid restrictions and otherwise gouge the consumer, that's why we have consumer-oriented legislation.
The problems with the DMCA (and similar legislation which will slip through parliament in my country with nary a news report) is that there is nothing stopping companies from using it unethically. And we all know how ready companies are to use unethical means to raise profits.
My proposed course of action would be to raise a big stink if^H^Hwhen companies do start being real pricks. Of course, this hasn't happened with the MPAA, but it's early days yet.
And, of course, support companies who are dealing fairly with comsumers.
I respect John Carmack's work as a programmer, but I really don't like what id games and other companies have done to computer games.
We now have games which have a very realistic simulation of a real world, and what have game companies done with it? A series which by now must number into hundereds of games in which the totality of play involves running around and killing stuff. Maybe with a few frustrating "puzzles" involving finding coloured keys behind secret doors.
I find there are few games around which are really entertaining and fun for more than a few hours. And none of these use highly sophisticated 3D graphics. I really hope that id's next game isn't another "twitch kill" gorefest, it would be really nice to find a game I can actually play for a while and not feel like I wasted the money.
Later on in the series there were more ships built of various types. I still remember the episode where they decided to retire the Argo / Yamato because they has all these great new ships. I was as upset as the Argo's crew.
The only bad thing about the show was the "Voltron Effect" - in every episode the good guys got their asses kicked all over the place until they decided to use the Wave Motion Gun, which solved all their problems. Made it a bit predictable (although less so than voltron).
The various techniques used in AI (feedforward NNs, SOMs, genetic algorithms, etc.) are all useful for a variety of tasks, although they have different strengths. That's the whole point - I can simulate human sound processing using a spectral analyser and library of patterns, but an SOM can adapt much better and do different tasks.
As for nervous systems, they only really have one tool - the neuron. It's the connections between them that make the difference, and while we know that there are vastly different connection patterns in different areas of the brain there is no evidence for particular "tools" being used in particular areas. That's why AI researchers have been trying to use NNs and similar techniques for every task under the sun - the human brain does it that way.
I do think that AI researchers are stuck on some things - like emulating the brain. For example, some models of visual processing take pride in the fact that they can replicate optical illusions in a similar way to the human eye - is that really relevant? There also seems to be an obsession with self-aware AIs, so it's good to hear from an AI researcher interested in any intelligent processes.
I think that's enough rambling from me for one topic.
Mine costs $30AU for up to 156 hrs/month. Of course, I'd have to double my caffeine intake to use that much. It's not the highest quality but I've had no problems setting it up under windows and Linux and I only occasionally can't connect.
(The ISP is Acay network computing)
I have already seen one ad last year that was partially filmed on MIR. Unfortunately it was for Australian Rules Football so most here probably haven't seen it. It actually wasn't too bad.
Nice comment, I hope you don't mind if I steal it for personal use.
When I was in high school, there was also this weird bunch of boys who would go out on a field and fight over a piece of dead pig - they really scared me.
"Abunai desu kara, kiroi sen no uchigawa made, osagari kudasai..." - Japanese Proverb
First time I've ever heard a railway safety sign referred to as a proverb.
I think this is really sad - every time I hear about somone blindly believing media hype without out even considering it, it makes me think more seriously about starting my own religious cult. Sometimes I think the populace's average intelligence must be decreasing at a steady rate.
Am I the only one who doesn't find these systems either totally cool or utterly evil? Unless I'm mistaken, the only new thing about them is anonymity. What's important is what the things are used for, not what they are.
So let's see, what people have done with the pseudo-anonymity the web currently gives them? With the notable exception of slashdot, 90% of anaonymous messaging I have seen have been used for pirating, porn, flaming or just pointless drivel.
So, while it may be cool to have a place to discuss dark-side hacking and get things like DeCSS and encryption tools, my pessimistic side believes that these mediums will be filled to the brim with utter trash before you can say "Hey look, I can do this and nobody can stop me".
If anyone has a good argument against this, it would sure lighten my day :-)
In stockmarket news, Microgeek (MSFT1) dropped 33 1/2 points in the wake of extremely damaging reports on the performance of it's recently released Windows 7.32.875 SP71 software. Chairman Bill Gates was quoted as blaming "Comparisons with other operating systems instead of our older software" for the reports.
Meanwhile Microgeek's sister company Microshaft (MSFT2) made impressive gains, despite the lack of any products or revenue. Microshaft's chairman Satanus Lucifege had this to say:
"Everone has noticed Microshaft's continued innovation in customer-focused shafting technology. Add that to our continued success in lawsuit against those abusing our patented Disk (tm) access technology, and we're looking at a really bright future."
When asked about the accusations of Microshaft's stock price being a magical illusion, Satanus had this to say:
"While I can neither confirm or deny the rumor, our lawyer are confident that nothing in current legislation forbids this. Besides, think of how many pension funds are riding on our stock price, the government would never be foolish enough to interfere."
Great idea, but is there any reason to have them for (bio)nanotechnology in particular? What about nuclear technology, genetic engineering, spaceflight, etc, etc.
Another point is that there is no-one to enforce this kind of thing, it will be useless. If a company has a choice between making millions of dollars or violating ethical guidelines and pissing off lots of people the result will be pretty predictable. The only way to do this is to get governments to ban certain types of technology, which is slow and usually not done properly.
This is true of all areas of science - even Newton's laws can never be proven true, they just work.
I don't understand how this conflicts with religion. Science makes theories about how the world works, quantum mechanics is no different. If god can decide the outcome of a horse race, why can't he also decide the outcome of a QM event?
Some people may try to use it as an argument that god doesn't exist, but it clearly is not - people like Prof. Davies understand QM pretty deeply and still have their beliefs.
We know that the universe is orderly and has rules, there's no need to assume anything.
All theories about the origin of physical laws are just that - theories. AFAIK superstring theory is the only area attempting to do this, but i know basically nothing about it.
The point I am trying to make is that a sentient supernatural entity is not a valid default whever we do not understand something, any more than "its just chance" is. Without any evidence, both are merely saying that we have no explanation.
Funny, I read all these quotes as "There's stuff we don't understand, therefore there must be a god". Once you get to this stage it ceases to be science.
There's a rather amusing quantum mechanics argument which goes something like this:
As an unobserved universe is just a large probability wave function and we only observe one universe, it is inevitable that the universe we observe has sentient life in it.
To put it another way, no matter how remote the possibility of sentient life coming about, it will exist because they (or us) will be there to observe that universe.
Just thought I'd throw that into the "Impossible to Disprove" box.