Man, get over it. Microsoft is often abbreviated to M$ here, it's not necessarily a denigration, it's just habit, and as quick as MS. If Linux was abbreviated to L$, people wouldn't be complaining. Well, I guess the people who weren't getting the $ would be complaining.... but that's a different story.
I was completely tongue in cheek talking about "kid's speak" and everything, ie the booyakasha etc. What I was really referring to was the fact that kids and teenagers can and do have lives outside your influence, which generally are a hell of a lot worse than you realise. All positive influences help though, I guess - I guess I'm just disillusioned.
an ultraintelligent machine could design even better machines
The assumption is purely that it would be better at designing ultraintelligent machines than us. That's not an unreasonable assumption, considering it's intelligence, and it's familiarity with machinery. I personally think any AI that is fully realised, that is in any way comparable to human intelligence, will be able to produce another AI more sophisticated than itself, if it has the resources. I can't see how this would be disputable.
If you think that we would be better at designing computers than computers that were as intelligent as us, I'd like to hear why.
It's what makes sci-fi a genre where even mediocre works by unknown writers can be an exercise in imagination and thoughtfulness
I think that is why sci-fi is less respected than other genres of literature. Many is the sci-fi fan who will approach his English Lit friend with a tome of imagination and thoughtfulness. Unfortunately, that friend just says "it's badly written, it's crap".
I guess people are looking for different things - some look for ideas, some look to be entertained, some look to empathise, some look for beauty in the prose. Basically, what I've discovered is this : Never give a book to someone you don't know really well.
Artificially augmented telepathy is far from impossible. When you start invoking magic, which telepathy does imply, that is the problem. Two communicating chips which read emotions in two people's minds would be telepathy, and it is far from unfeasible. I'd go so far to say, it'd probably be achievable today, albeit at a basic level. I'm guessing you meant "magic" telepathy, ie. telepathy that is not explained adequately or at all.
FTL travel there is obviously no technique for now, and our current paradigm restricts it. Thus, I agree, any FTL travel makes a novel not hard sci-fi. However, I do not deign to assume that FTL travel will not occur in the future - to do so would be true arrogance. FTL to me is just very unlikely possible science. For those who claim that it is impossible, try selling the idea of curved space-time to the 18th century.
A lot of the concepts behind the industrial revolution had been demonstrated and thought of well before the industrial revolution actually happened. The industrial revolution was not important because of the major technological breakthroughs, it was important because it changed how people worked and lived, and it made working more efficient. The steam engine was demonstrated in concept in ancient Greece, 2000 years or so prior to the industrial revolution. The efficient implementation of the steam engine was one of the major driving forces behind the industrial revolution, not the discovery of it.
The same can be said with computers. If I was born 50 years ago, I would have lived a completely different life - for example, I use my computer at home now, for work and play, for about 12 hours a day most days. Say what you want about my lifestyle (no, I don't live in my parent's basement), but this alone has been a massive change in how people do live their lives.
Having said all this, I do think your overall argument stands to some extent. However, if you look at how society changed because of technology between 1750 and 1800 (I'm assuming in Britain, in other countries it was a lot less pronounced), it wasn't the complete all sweeping change that many assume - the percentage of people working in industry rose, but not by an amazing amount. The agricultural revolution was a prerequisite for the industrial revolution, and did more to change everyday practices than the industrial revolution, but it happened over a few hundred years. Neither have we had an all sweeping change in the last 50 years... but it has been substantial.
Niven and Pournelle did a great "asteroid hits earth" novel.
Wow, did I miss something? I know I slept heavily last night, but I thought I'd have noticed.
Seriously, I think this point is a little weird. People have known about asteroids hitting earth for millenia, speculating on the outcome of a big one has been pretty common too. In general I agree with your post overall though.
Reminds me of that engineering maxim (not sure if I've got it exactly right):
Fast
Good
Cheap
Pick two of the above.
Except with lawyers it'd be more like:
Sleazy
Money grubbing
Honest*
Pick two of the above**.
--
** - We reserve the right to change any aspect of the two picked at any time, for any reason. By picking two of these choices you are entering into a contractual agreement resulting in the donation of your first born child to Litigation Inc. You are not free to disseminate in any form or way the contents of this post, or of this notice. Any violations of this will result in charges of damages of not less than $250,000 (two hundred and fifty thousand dollars) per letter, payable to Litigation Inc.
* - This is not a valid option. Any who pick this option deliberately, and with intent to defraud Litigation Inc. will be charged for time used by Litigation Inc. correcting this, at the cost of not less than $250,000 (two hundred and fifty thousand dollars) per man/minute.
It's almost degrading to women that people keep bringing this stuff up. Condescending might be the right word. Like when someone feels the need to comment about how well Colin Powell speaks. There's an unspoken 'and he's black' that is left hanging for the listener to fill in by themselves.
The thing is that people consistently come up with the idea of "masculine" and "feminine" qualities. My mother is a pretty strong feminist, and hated Thatcher, because of what she stood for. Her sex did not matter.
We've had a female prime minister, as have other countries. Look at India, Pakistan, etc. The US has only ever had white christian men. If that is not prejudice, I don't know what is.
If exploits were as easy to use with OSX, there would be a hell of a lot of exploits and botnets on OSX now. The Mac market is not insignificant. People complain about windows because it is so easy to compromise your basic install, and there are so many out there with basic installs.
I'm predominately a windows user - I like windows. That being said, I run win2k because it works for me. However, I know, from past experience, if I didn't regulate and monitor my 2k installation, I'd get loads of spyware, and be sat on a botnet. Windows users are more vulnerable to that. It is a fact. Most users don't regulate anything.
Windows is easier to get into than any other mainstream OS. The worst thing about it is that most people don't know they've been infiltrated.
I've argued with someone about this very same issue. Technically, it should be singular, as others have pointed out. However, when talking about groups of people, most slip into pluralised groups. For example : "Manchester United is a good team" sounds absolutely wrong (to me), but is technically correct. "They are a good team" is definately technically wrong, but I use it all the time.
Teams and companies should technically always be referred to in the singular. However, no one does, because it sounds weird.
Of course I am already seen as cool by aspiring teens
To be honest, anyone who says this is never ever ever going to be cool. Or wicked. Or down with the kidz. Quit your self delusion - they are humouring you. Booyakasha.
I do agree that most men (including myself) judge women on their looks more than they do men, but that's because they are men, and (generally) find women more sexually attractive than men. If you speak to gay men, they are generally just as centred on looks as straight men are. The trouble is when men can't get past their initial looks based judgement.
Apple just chooses not to get into the rock bottom computer competition game.
Apple only chooses not to do this, because it's margins would be seen to be absurd. Look, you can pick up a decent PC for $500 (excluding screen, a decent gaming pc too). The margins on Mac hardware are high - that is how they are profitable. PCs are cheap.... that is why they are attractive. Macs just work better (generally), that is why they cost a little more.
1. Limited to 62 mph? You drive that slow on about any road around the US, and you'll get KILLED. On the highway, I almost get run over doing 80mph (on the days I'm driving a little slower than usual).
Really? I thought the maximum speed limit* in most of the US was 65 (I just checked - found out most of the US it's 70, the same as here, though significant portions are 65 or 75). Anyway, the difference between this thing's top speed, and the theoretical top speed is 13mph. If someone manages to not see something they're going only that much faster than, they shouldn't be on the road in the first place. To complain that a car is dangerous because it's speed limiter is a few mpg below maximum speeds is a little strange.
Another thing - aren't trucks in the US limited to less than 62mph already? Just about all trucks in the UK are limited to 56mph or 60mph. This is done purely by the companies - it is not a legal requirement or anything - to ensure better mileage.
Also, you have to remember that people's speedometers do not always show accurate speeds - most are off by 5% or so. Thus someone actually going 62mph would seem to be going at least 65mph to most people.
* - I do realise that a lot of people do not follow the maximum speed limit, and I've no problem with that, as long as it is safe. Most people drive at around 80-90mph here at peak times (if they can with all the traffic:P). If you think you might be dangerous if you came across a car going 60mph, slow down! I've no idea how bad a driver you must be, if you think you might have trouble in this situation, but anyway...
The GP never once denied that the US made a large contribution to WWII. Perhaps you should read the post again. In fact, I do not think I saw one thing that was factually inaccurate, or even implied something that wasn't true. The GGP post was obviously dumb, since it spouted some inaccuracies without backing them up at all. The GP corrected them.
I always have a slight problem with this sentiment. Millions, if not billions of people would have paid to be in their place. I certainly would. Does that make us all potential heroes, or does that just make them very fortunate for being given that opportunity?
Then there was the time a power outage caused both drives to fail in my server simultaneously... it'd been up and running for around a year with no problems. A little bad weather and boom, not only was my uptime ruined, but so was my data.
Sounds to me like this could be the result of a power spike, ie. not the drives' fault. I might be wrong, but the chances of two drives failing simultaneously just because of a power outage seems remarkably thin.
It's ignoring the other definitions though. Simple rule - if it's a noun, it's effect, if it's a verb, it's affect. The use of effect as a verb is pretty uncommon (deliberately) now.
But then what if everyone bids high so they win, thinking they'll pay a much lower second price?
In that case, the buyers are morons. Seriously, if you can't understand that someone might try to do the same thing as you do, you really are stupid.
Not allowing a bidding war will also mean a reduced price for the seller.
So your first point claims people will pay too much, the second claims people will pay too little. Bidding wars do not necessarily raise prices across the board. Some people start a bidding war, then drop out assuming the opposition is too determined. With blind bids, people will bid the amount they are willing to pay.
People who are wanting to buy but don't know the market price or value of the product will not be able to bid.
Come on - if you don't know the rough market value of an item, you shouldn't be bidding on it at all. Anyway, this system protects people who wildly overbid to some degree - you only pay the second highest bid.
A secret ballot means you don't know you're out of the bidding until it's too late to find another auction, so all the losers in the auction are severely inconvenienced.
I think this is the only really valid point here. However, it's not all that important depending on the auction. Many different timeframes can be used with this style of auction.
No, I'm afraid this Vickrey method is full of flaws.
I'm so glad we've got you to point them all out. You've convinced me....
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Man, get over it. Microsoft is often abbreviated to M$ here, it's not necessarily a denigration, it's just habit, and as quick as MS. If Linux was abbreviated to L$, people wouldn't be complaining. Well, I guess the people who weren't getting the $ would be complaining.... but that's a different story.
I was completely tongue in cheek talking about "kid's speak" and everything, ie the booyakasha etc. What I was really referring to was the fact that kids and teenagers can and do have lives outside your influence, which generally are a hell of a lot worse than you realise. All positive influences help though, I guess - I guess I'm just disillusioned.
an ultraintelligent machine could design even better machines
The assumption is purely that it would be better at designing ultraintelligent machines than us. That's not an unreasonable assumption, considering it's intelligence, and it's familiarity with machinery. I personally think any AI that is fully realised, that is in any way comparable to human intelligence, will be able to produce another AI more sophisticated than itself, if it has the resources. I can't see how this would be disputable.
If you think that we would be better at designing computers than computers that were as intelligent as us, I'd like to hear why.
It's what makes sci-fi a genre where even mediocre works by unknown writers can be an exercise in imagination and thoughtfulness
I think that is why sci-fi is less respected than other genres of literature. Many is the sci-fi fan who will approach his English Lit friend with a tome of imagination and thoughtfulness. Unfortunately, that friend just says "it's badly written, it's crap".
I guess people are looking for different things - some look for ideas, some look to be entertained, some look to empathise, some look for beauty in the prose. Basically, what I've discovered is this : Never give a book to someone you don't know really well.
Artificially augmented telepathy is far from impossible. When you start invoking magic, which telepathy does imply, that is the problem. Two communicating chips which read emotions in two people's minds would be telepathy, and it is far from unfeasible. I'd go so far to say, it'd probably be achievable today, albeit at a basic level. I'm guessing you meant "magic" telepathy, ie. telepathy that is not explained adequately or at all.
FTL travel there is obviously no technique for now, and our current paradigm restricts it. Thus, I agree, any FTL travel makes a novel not hard sci-fi. However, I do not deign to assume that FTL travel will not occur in the future - to do so would be true arrogance. FTL to me is just very unlikely possible science. For those who claim that it is impossible, try selling the idea of curved space-time to the 18th century.
I personally do get a lot more satisfaction out of hard sci-fi novels generally - though I have to admit one of my favourite novels is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Stars_My_Destinat ion.
A lot of the concepts behind the industrial revolution had been demonstrated and thought of well before the industrial revolution actually happened. The industrial revolution was not important because of the major technological breakthroughs, it was important because it changed how people worked and lived, and it made working more efficient. The steam engine was demonstrated in concept in ancient Greece, 2000 years or so prior to the industrial revolution. The efficient implementation of the steam engine was one of the major driving forces behind the industrial revolution, not the discovery of it.
The same can be said with computers. If I was born 50 years ago, I would have lived a completely different life - for example, I use my computer at home now, for work and play, for about 12 hours a day most days. Say what you want about my lifestyle (no, I don't live in my parent's basement), but this alone has been a massive change in how people do live their lives.
Having said all this, I do think your overall argument stands to some extent. However, if you look at how society changed because of technology between 1750 and 1800 (I'm assuming in Britain, in other countries it was a lot less pronounced), it wasn't the complete all sweeping change that many assume - the percentage of people working in industry rose, but not by an amazing amount. The agricultural revolution was a prerequisite for the industrial revolution, and did more to change everyday practices than the industrial revolution, but it happened over a few hundred years. Neither have we had an all sweeping change in the last 50 years... but it has been substantial.
Niven and Pournelle did a great "asteroid hits earth" novel.
Wow, did I miss something? I know I slept heavily last night, but I thought I'd have noticed.
Seriously, I think this point is a little weird. People have known about asteroids hitting earth for millenia, speculating on the outcome of a big one has been pretty common too. In general I agree with your post overall though.
Reminds me of that engineering maxim (not sure if I've got it exactly right) :
Fast
Good
Cheap
Pick two of the above.
Except with lawyers it'd be more like :
Sleazy
Money grubbing
Honest*
Pick two of the above**.
--
** - We reserve the right to change any aspect of the two picked at any time, for any reason. By picking two of these choices you are entering into a contractual agreement resulting in the donation of your first born child to Litigation Inc. You are not free to disseminate in any form or way the contents of this post, or of this notice. Any violations of this will result in charges of damages of not less than $250,000 (two hundred and fifty thousand dollars) per letter, payable to Litigation Inc.
* - This is not a valid option. Any who pick this option deliberately, and with intent to defraud Litigation Inc. will be charged for time used by Litigation Inc. correcting this, at the cost of not less than $250,000 (two hundred and fifty thousand dollars) per man/minute.
It's almost degrading to women that people keep bringing this stuff up. Condescending might be the right word. Like when someone feels the need to comment about how well Colin Powell speaks. There's an unspoken 'and he's black' that is left hanging for the listener to fill in by themselves.
The thing is that people consistently come up with the idea of "masculine" and "feminine" qualities. My mother is a pretty strong feminist, and hated Thatcher, because of what she stood for. Her sex did not matter.
We've had a female prime minister, as have other countries. Look at India, Pakistan, etc. The US has only ever had white christian men. If that is not prejudice, I don't know what is.
Good luck to you - I didn't mean to disparage what you have with your teenage relations. At least you have 600hp.
Some teenagers are harder to get to than by having a cool persona, the most important ones will not come to you.
If exploits were as easy to use with OSX, there would be a hell of a lot of exploits and botnets on OSX now. The Mac market is not insignificant. People complain about windows because it is so easy to compromise your basic install, and there are so many out there with basic installs.
I'm predominately a windows user - I like windows. That being said, I run win2k because it works for me. However, I know, from past experience, if I didn't regulate and monitor my 2k installation, I'd get loads of spyware, and be sat on a botnet. Windows users are more vulnerable to that. It is a fact. Most users don't regulate anything.
Windows is easier to get into than any other mainstream OS. The worst thing about it is that most people don't know they've been infiltrated.
What's worse than finding a worm in an apple?
Finding half a worm in an apple...
I've argued with someone about this very same issue. Technically, it should be singular, as others have pointed out. However, when talking about groups of people, most slip into pluralised groups. For example : "Manchester United is a good team" sounds absolutely wrong (to me), but is technically correct. "They are a good team" is definately technically wrong, but I use it all the time.
Teams and companies should technically always be referred to in the singular. However, no one does, because it sounds weird.
Of course I am already seen as cool by aspiring teens
To be honest, anyone who says this is never ever ever going to be cool. Or wicked. Or down with the kidz. Quit your self delusion - they are humouring you. Booyakasha.
Bill Gates looks like Prof. Frink. But no one is laughing at him for his appearance. We respect (or disrespect) him for his accomplishments.
Come on! You've got to be kidding me. I, for one, have laughed at Bill Gates' appearance at least 17,492 times. If you haven't, you must be a lot more mature than me. I present http://z.about.com/d/crime/1/0/P/8/gatesbill.jpg and http://autonomoussource.com/mt-static/images/nerds tud1.jpg and http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/41774000/jpg /_41774012_02_group_ap416.jpg.
I do agree that most men (including myself) judge women on their looks more than they do men, but that's because they are men, and (generally) find women more sexually attractive than men. If you speak to gay men, they are generally just as centred on looks as straight men are. The trouble is when men can't get past their initial looks based judgement.
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Apple just chooses not to get into the rock bottom computer competition game.
Apple only chooses not to do this, because it's margins would be seen to be absurd. Look, you can pick up a decent PC for $500 (excluding screen, a decent gaming pc too). The margins on Mac hardware are high - that is how they are profitable. PCs are cheap.... that is why they are attractive. Macs just work better (generally), that is why they cost a little more.
You unpack the Mac; plug the CPU into the wall socket;
Ok, unpacked ok. Got the CPU right here. Wall socket - doesn't look like it fits much, must be some weird adapter. I'll try anyway.
ARGH!!! It Burns!!!!!!
Damn Apple, I thought this was a real breakthrough - I'm going back to Windows 3.1.
1. Limited to 62 mph? You drive that slow on about any road around the US, and you'll get KILLED. On the highway, I almost get run over doing 80mph (on the days I'm driving a little slower than usual).
Really? I thought the maximum speed limit* in most of the US was 65 (I just checked - found out most of the US it's 70, the same as here, though significant portions are 65 or 75). Anyway, the difference between this thing's top speed, and the theoretical top speed is 13mph. If someone manages to not see something they're going only that much faster than, they shouldn't be on the road in the first place. To complain that a car is dangerous because it's speed limiter is a few mpg below maximum speeds is a little strange.
Another thing - aren't trucks in the US limited to less than 62mph already? Just about all trucks in the UK are limited to 56mph or 60mph. This is done purely by the companies - it is not a legal requirement or anything - to ensure better mileage.
Also, you have to remember that people's speedometers do not always show accurate speeds - most are off by 5% or so. Thus someone actually going 62mph would seem to be going at least 65mph to most people.
* - I do realise that a lot of people do not follow the maximum speed limit, and I've no problem with that, as long as it is safe. Most people drive at around 80-90mph here at peak times (if they can with all the traffic :P). If you think you might be dangerous if you came across a car going 60mph, slow down! I've no idea how bad a driver you must be, if you think you might have trouble in this situation, but anyway...
The GP never once denied that the US made a large contribution to WWII. Perhaps you should read the post again. In fact, I do not think I saw one thing that was factually inaccurate, or even implied something that wasn't true. The GGP post was obviously dumb, since it spouted some inaccuracies without backing them up at all. The GP corrected them.
the men who rode it were no-foolin' heroes.
I always have a slight problem with this sentiment. Millions, if not billions of people would have paid to be in their place. I certainly would. Does that make us all potential heroes, or does that just make them very fortunate for being given that opportunity?
The Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution VIII FQ400 has a two litre powerplant, which produces 400bhp. Not sure how big the turbo is on it though ;P.
Then there was the time a power outage caused both drives to fail in my server simultaneously... it'd been up and running for around a year with no problems. A little bad weather and boom, not only was my uptime ruined, but so was my data.
Sounds to me like this could be the result of a power spike, ie. not the drives' fault. I might be wrong, but the chances of two drives failing simultaneously just because of a power outage seems remarkably thin.
It's ignoring the other definitions though. Simple rule - if it's a noun, it's effect, if it's a verb, it's affect. The use of effect as a verb is pretty uncommon (deliberately) now.
But then what if everyone bids high so they win, thinking they'll pay a much lower second price?
In that case, the buyers are morons. Seriously, if you can't understand that someone might try to do the same thing as you do, you really are stupid.
Not allowing a bidding war will also mean a reduced price for the seller.
So your first point claims people will pay too much, the second claims people will pay too little. Bidding wars do not necessarily raise prices across the board. Some people start a bidding war, then drop out assuming the opposition is too determined. With blind bids, people will bid the amount they are willing to pay.
People who are wanting to buy but don't know the market price or value of the product will not be able to bid.
Come on - if you don't know the rough market value of an item, you shouldn't be bidding on it at all. Anyway, this system protects people who wildly overbid to some degree - you only pay the second highest bid.
A secret ballot means you don't know you're out of the bidding until it's too late to find another auction, so all the losers in the auction are severely inconvenienced.
I think this is the only really valid point here. However, it's not all that important depending on the auction. Many different timeframes can be used with this style of auction.
No, I'm afraid this Vickrey method is full of flaws.
I'm so glad we've got you to point them all out. You've convinced me....