...it is a new and powerful example of a piece of code that has been mathematically proven to be impossible to reverse-engineer...
Brrrrrr.. spooky! This sounds like an incredible misinterpretation of whatever the original paper/research is actually doing though. Devices may be reverse engineered without even looking inside if you have access to its inputs and outputs and can continually test and hypothesize and retest, etc. A device that distinguishes between 'evil' and 'regular' packets (as input) and outputs a bit that indicates 1='evil' or 0='not evil' (or a floating point degree of evil, say..) is no different. If you have access to the code that runs this particular device running on a router or somewhere packets drift by then obviously the situation can be no worse. I'd definitely like to see the link to this mathematical proof..
If a government wants to censor content for a region then it seems ok for google to comply as long as the content doesn't simply disappear quietly. If Google puts a 'This result is CENSORED by your region's government.' in big red bold letters then maybe that's something. Maybe another push for the government to relax censorship.. if Wikipedia is blocked, and Google is sporting red text disclaimers equating to "your government is holding you back", while the rest of the world using both happily moves on. Wholesale dissatisfaction leads to the most rapid of changes. OTOH, if it IS censored without constant disclaimers saying it is censored then I can't understand how this wouldn't fall squarely into the evil column.
Re:My short experience with perl...
on
What is Perl 6?
·
· Score: 1
Perl can do arbitrarily nested data structures using numbers, strings, refs to arrays, refs to hashes, refs to code, etc. They are dereferenced in left to right order using [] for array parts or {} for hash parts. I.e.
$thing{NED}[30]{HAIR}{COLOR}{DAY}[5] = 'Wavy, like I dunno, fields of golden wheat, or something.';
print "On day 5: $thing{NED}[30]{HAIR}{TYPE}{DAY}[5]\n";
Perl handles any scripting I've had to do quickly and beautifully and the scripts/code I write with it seem pretty maintainable even a years after last I'd seen it. You have the option of treating things in an object oriented fashion as well too if you like. It's a fantastically efficient language and it doesn't have to look hideous if you don't want it too. There's an incredible number of modules on cpan too..
Square brackets around arrays declare anonymous arrays of things and return a reference fit for holding in a scalar type (anything prefixed with a '$').
Parenthesis declares arrays but returns a list type, fit for holding in an array type of thing (things prefixed with an '@').
So, can do either
@a = ([1,2],[3,4],5,[6,7,8]);
or
$a = [[1,2],[3,4],5,[6,7,8]];
But the '$a' case is a scalar thus needs deref first to get to array form. Deref via -> or by 'reinterpreting it' via '@' prefix: @$a. or $a->[3][1] to get to the 7.
Now python's between character string indexing scheme bothers the heck out of me though, of course with perl I hadn't a need to pursue it to find alternatives;P
The arrangement of numbers is physically modeled and computed using real physical logic gates and that total state is an arrangement of a machine so it is "real".
But owning states of machines, real or not seems strange to me as well. Why should anyone own what a physical device does or is doing? This is undeniably interrelated to ownership of numbers. And I agree that unique, useful numbers are difficult to find, we use patents for a group of numbers with certain properties on various interpreting architectures here, and copyright for particular instants. But this translates to something that prevents somebody from doing something unique / novel that is discovered, not because of artificial limitataions. It is fundamental property of the universe that is freely available. It is weird to me to legally prevent others from using a class of things that a machine represents / interprets, or to tell others about this configuration.
Wow, I stop here, moderated to 0 now! I thought this thread was even more nerdly than what usually appears, I love this stuff. Fundamental underpinnings of everything that our laws try to deal with in information domain. Maybe b/c it's all naive/incorrect/obvious what I say:(
...it's like the prisoner's dilemma: if you both co-operate you'll both benefit
It's sad to hear that interesting and novel discoveries in the manner by which a system operates can be owned. It marks a whole set of numbers in procedural code space with arrogant flags saying "I discovered/bought the rights to these numbers, don't use any of these on your own free projects or depend on it too heavily. I can charge for it in the future at any time I wish!".
Should we be allowed to own numbers? Or the effect they have if interpreted by a machine? Can you own the 'intent' of all number/program generated by something like:
...
for (i = 0; i < inf; i++)
if (program_does_not_core_dump_within_5_minutes(i))
file_for_patent(i);
...
Abstract computers can represent anything you like, and do this as best as the rules you specify. Rules in machine code I'm familiar with come from local properties of a program's numerical / bit representation. That is, aspects of the number the system is sensitive to. This is incredibly powerful. Corporations that own number sets to leverage control over an otherwise freely traversible number-procedural space are scariest to me because they can close off interesting roads ahead in this domain to the non-paying public.
Behemoth corporations with a vested interest in silencing truly free software and stifling various number sharing freedoms despite the happy optimistic nature of their commercials are the last ones I'd wish to be entrusted with such power. Fortunately, there are plenty of alternatives to get to the good stuff on the road ahead, and a silly FAT file system will always be available to the various distributions out of country or at least in some encrypted form if the laws get bad enough. If the laws concerning oppressive numeric ownership get too bad, encryption illegalized, and the revolutions fail, and nothing is very much fun anymore, well, I doubt I'd be hanging around anyway (unless hanging around is enforced too).
I'd suspect memory and other processing and so on are still possible in degrading degrees over time so that if pathways in the brain were electrochemically reactivated then it would probably be 'sensed' in some sense by the person even after clinical death. So brain experimentation after death seems a seriously bad idea to sign up for unless they're only testing pleasure center activation.
A related set of side questions involve what holds control and senses of a body to one 'person' anyway? If, for example, two brains were side by side in an operating room and brain molecules could be swapped between them, or say atoms swapped with sufficient technology. Replacing a carbon atom in a brain is the same as before as long as carbon is the same as any other carbon right? Say half of the brain mass is swapped between the two. If you wake them up then who controls who at the end? If they live and react and talk, does the same person control the same body? Does the half that is removed from one simply turn off from that person's perspective? Does one gain sensory aspect of the second? Can 'you' see from two perspectives at once? Is the nature of 'self' gone, the 'soul' stripped away, or are the combinations entirely different people in both sensation and sense of control?
That technology could reveal an extremely easy way to cause enormous amounts of damage. That in itself presents the darwinistic challenge to our whole species into the hands of a few individuals. Perhaps something that can destroy our entire universe via locally initiated big-bang event (maybe something silly as massive superposition of photonic waves beyond some unknown breaking point), or tweaking the rule base of every particle in the universe by as yet unknown quantum entanglement tricks. If something like this is theorized then social devolvement may be nightmarish to say the least. Knowledge control, civilization & universe teetering on the brink of devastation. Forced psychological medications to keep everybody 'happy', surveiling those who know too much, vaporizing those who tinker with it, communications monitored, encryption illegal, unsanctioned Internet transmissions banned. Then there's all those X billions of worlds out there each with potential civilization of aliens pondering the same thing, perhaps some realize it's in their interest to destroy every other planet as fast as possible since every other civilization ultimately poses a serious threat. Movie plot? game plot? real plot?
Well this all sounds vaguely familiar.. oh right! our own federal government helps us decide what ok for us to see/hear/read before prison sentences are necessary too. Many web sites have been sacked here. Plus *IAA is also preoccupied with information policing. Yet attempts to block any class of information from transmission is easily superceded by obfuscation, dilution and rerouting. What's left to stop free information being transmitted across when it becomes too hard to eavesdrop on? There's plenty of hardware based methods workable with mass collusion of megacorps and interested parties. This is defended against by altering the hardware, building your own frobnicator, or resorting to antique / illegal technology. Generally difficult, crippling or expensive means. (category: printer dot-codes, tc, ???). Could we get as far as video/audio-card buffer transmission to your friendly chinese/american governmental morality monitoring center for spot checks? When will all our tin-foil hat choices contain drm/backdoors regardless of our illusory ability to always choose against these traits?
I've been curious what is the justification for support of:
particles are in multiple simultaneous states until measured causing the distributed probabilities to collapse into a definite known state
over the seemingly more 'classical':
the particle has a definite position and momentum, but our measuring devices are too clumsy / interactive to measure one without affecting the other before another measurement can be made. For example if we measure something by zinging it with a photon and remeasuring the (same?) photon after it interacts with it, then it causes it to do something else before we can zing it again.
Why shouldn't they have definite but not simultaneously measurable properties with a clumsy photon? Why can't they just have some chaotic function altering it from one state to the next that we don't know how to predict?
Alternately, if schroedinger's cat is in an alive/dead superposition in the box, then if the cat experiences a sane and straightforward set of experiences yet the outside-of-box observer claims it to be in an alive/dead combo state, then outside the box observer and inside the box observer's consciousness lines must potentially deviate. If the cat experiences no trouble at all, but the observer measures it to be dead then they're already in different 'universes' from one another.
So my last questions: is everybody else around here soulless zombies due to the great improbability that I'd be traveling along the same path as the 'conscious' ones? If not, why the heck are all you people following my conscious line for (or me yours)? That is, if multiple consciousness can occur at the split points, yet any one consciousness experiences a fluid and non-confusing pathway then how do the others experience anything. Where do they come from, who/what experiences it? Maybe we're all really the same person separated by whatever localized state our matter based brains are configured for, then given all possibilities we experience all of them, one after another after another. brrrrrrrr.. spooky!
I believe there is nothing wrong with the act of downloading music that is copyrighted. All harm comes from relying on our current ineffective methods of dealing with information. Forcing the bits in the universe into ownership (enslaving them??) is like claiming to own the waves in a pond while not owning the pond itself. It is a backwards way to view things.
It is our current system's failure treating information as a commodity, a limited resource, one that should be bottled up and protected from trespass, forced into secrecy by antiquated laws. We simply took the wrong path centuries ago. But only when the information age has broken into mainstream do we see the torrents of people who follow the natural course possibly without knowing why.
The contortions forced upon information by our system of laws and behaviors and all the ugliness caused by those whose interests lie in furthering this perversion will ultimately dissipate. It will work itself out just as slavery was worked out. Hopefully without all the conflict of a civil war! Ownership of ideas must be banished, credit for discovering them encouraged, and the ability to speak freely to those consenting to hear it protected. Unfortunately, it is very likely to get worse before there is a chance to get better. Fortunately, technology has presented a method whereby floodgates of people following the natural paths of an evolving society will keep the discussion open until the pendulum can swing towards freedom and break the hell off.
Building an 'artificial gravity device' even in weightless conditions is easy if you've got a sufficiently tall room spinning at constant angular velocity. (no need to feed some fantastic new technology line to the hapless "astro-nots").
It seems plausible to simulate convincingly to most everybody a launch and orbit under fake-spinning room artificial gravity.
Consider faking this with a nicely decorated cardboard exterior capsule. You load the poor rubes into a capsule. You've gone over all of the stages above with them. You shut the doors to the outside, provide fake video feeds inside of 'travel to the launch site'. Meanwhile outside the prod. crew rips the fake cardboard off the outside and carts the 'capsule' via pickup truck to a field somewhere. Attaches it to the modified carnival ride centrifuge so the back are toward ground and feet away from direction of angular acceleration. The whole 'capsule' is on pivots so the "back" direction follows the changing gravity vector.
Now if the centrifuge angularly accelerates slowly enough then the temporary force against the feet (during angular acceleration only) is possibly unnoticeable (any shaking of the capsule can further disorient).
Spin 'er up. Then slow it down, shake some more, say "Congratulations on the terrific launch, you're in free fall orbit now but due to a few experiments (...), we regret we must maintain earth level gravity at all times."
Poke it with sticks to simulate various 'space junk collisions' w/ dust. Video footage of Earth below/above/wherever, stars around, the moon etc.
I'm not sure how to simulate even part of the reduced return trip without a drop off a nearby cliff or something though:/
I think it would be very hard for anybody to tell the difference with enough care put into the simulation.
... The people who still have aspirations of 'changing the world' and being responsible for the next big thing. They've lost touch with the fact that people don't care about any of that anymore.
Wow, that's a stunning statement to read mod'd so high on slashdot (nevermind, upon preview it's knocked to a 2). My comments never clear '1's, but all the same: When I read things like that, I think whatever part of humanity arguing against 'capability for better control over their systems' can keep their fsck'd up propi. OS's and closed softs, and pay for every new capability, and use only software with a tard-GUI slapped on it, buried in EULAs and restrictions and all your programs locked up and drm'd to hell.
'Tinkering' with your system in the way that you misdirect doesn't seem as common. You get drivers you set high level settings in your kernel to pick what you want, etc. Many people aren't attempting mods to drivers or modifying kernel routines or tweaking protocol stacks ever so slightly. (OTOH many are since they can and it is of interest to them).
But the freedom comes both there and much higher levels of control. You can configure the hell out of many software packages, most provide sensible defaults as well. The difference is you have the freedom to alter these. AND if you don't like how it works fundamentally, if you need something more and have the capability or wish to pay somebody who does have the capability, then you/they can change it! It is not illegal to do this w/ OSS. How is seeking this manner of operation everywhere out of touch? It's what should've been done all along. It just takes a while to fix all the mistakes where this isn't done yet.
It is illegal to do w/ proprietary and closed source softs that infest common user's environments. It is this software that will ultimately sink into obscurity hopefully with a kick in its collective ass for all the trouble it's caused as it goes down.
It IS better over here. If scientists have discovered something that 99.99999% of the population do not initially care about and have possibly never heard of but it's achingly better in so many respects, shouldn't they be vocal about it? And when you have defenders of the old crappy ways to do it, who resist this fundamental change in society, shouldn't they be told again and again how this thing that many people do not use is better?
For me I'll stick with the 'lost touch' crowd that hasn't given up to that sad of a state. It's where the stuff with the highest future potential I've seen anywhere is at.
"...is that God does not want people to enforce their will on others in order to make them moral and ethical people. Instead, God wants..."
These types of statements bother me a bit. The biggest complaint: "how the heck does anybody know what 'God' wants anyway?" Suppose God got pissed somewhere after an apple of knowledge eating party in the B.C. era where people sought knowledge (or, ate an actual apple or whatever symbols existed at the time). "Crap!" says God, "I had no idea these things would do that!" He goes sends them into some thorny territories and goes back to revise his instruction manual.
Maybe then he eventually became the fire-and-brimstone type of god to send various sinners / non-believers / ancient folk / Buddhists / Jewish folk / Aborigines (sp) in Australia / communists / babies / capitalists / people without the benefit of christian parentage, or who haven't been converted all the way yet by those with such fortune / misc. to hell. For their own good of course, or not.. Well, if that's anywhere in the teachings of your religion then it seems applying sane thought processes to such a being is a bit of a stretch.
Even without a hell, what of the everyday. People attacking each other, and dying horribly, divine interventions seem never to occur. Maybe another stain shows up on a billboard someplace. Bad things happening everywhere all the time, animals eating each other alive. Pain, fear, hunger, and various coercions strangely similar to what evolution would seem to guide us towards to stay alive. But through it all, what happens? Societies evolve to 'fix' such ills. Could it be society is our savior from the various crap found around this planet? A peacefully interoperational one that tosses our troubles one by one into antiquity?
Or is your god just waiting around the corner to come back when the problems are solved to put a stop to all that peace and goodwill? What can be taken as the truth? I'd say it's easiest to follow the:
EVOLUTION IN A SOCIETY CODE OF ETHICS document (GPL), DOH!
It states initially, but modify and re-release as you wish:
For a sufficiently advanced society as ours it is in everybody's best interests to have others' interests at heart. Improvement to society improves our own conditions. An easy way to improve yourself and others' conditions is to do things that do not cause detrimental problems in society. Things like trying not to rape, rob, or kill seem inherently obvious. Being polite and respectful help others. Not running over people to get to where you're going helps others and yourself ultimately too. Not being an asshole by trying to convert everybody in sight based on a viral chain-letter-like religion (do this or else! pass it on to X others or ___) gets bonus points because it takes some strength not to buy some of the cleverly crafted crap proposed to you sometimes under such dire consequences. Everybody for themselves non-societal traditional evolution provides less benefit for groups and generally pisses other members off enough that they come after you, so don't do it.
Do you need God to tell you to do nice things? Or believe there are many natural ways evolved into place to coexist with others in a group, society, culture, world, universe? Why do people force their minds to rely on a really pissed off deity to scare them into converting others or leading by example besides fear? To feel they're totally worthless and grasp for salvation they're told they need as punishment for existing.
You think most people would be doing these nice things anyway? Heard of all those roving bands of atheist gangs commiting crimes in the news recently? Suicide bomber agnostics?
Wouldn't this be a great area to use a login / moderation system, (meta-moderated) based on a kind of trust factor and correctness of what's said?
Someone who tells the truth consistently carries more influence, but if they start spewing false slanderous things and others know it, then their believability and influence drops like a rock. Couldn't people then say what they want whenever they want anonymously (person behind login protected); liable/slander troubles relegated to the past?
Sharing/receiving information with/from others is not thievery, it was NEVER thievery.
Our legal troubles with information sharing lie in the archaic system that attempts to control non-private information. If money is still funneled to those who create the works, and problems of promotion and broadcasting solved by dissolving them into the strengths of the Internet rather than control pf record labels, then hasn't everything been solved?
There are probably many ways to solve the money funneling problem:
1) voluntary money donations (PBS?) to various projects?
2) more forcibly, tax based funneling of funds to various projects, art, research controlled by the people,
or by organizations that represent various organizations
(various information types: music, movie, research,...), more socialist? (police, firefighters, libraries, welfare, why not information?) bureaucracy? (more a different republic with participation in various fields based on qualifications), etc.
Consider a world where this problem is solved. Where novels, pamphlets, art, music, research, games, utilities,.. everything are accessible at a whim without people having to to be told how horribly bad they're being by stooge after stooge who can't get it that this is the way it should be and that they're attacking the wrong symptom?
Now clearly even here it is not stealing. It's not bad either. This kind of system is different. It encourages people to share information. Why? Artists, researchers most often wish more exposure for their creation! The only thing different is the system is now amicably aligned with information sharing. Everybody who counts benefits. They don't have to feel bad any longer for doing things which should naturally be protected and encouraged. Isn't this the way it should be?
Possibly land would be much less valuable than today too in this hypothetical post-singularity. Sensing things around us (land, 'space', objects, other people,..) is done solely through our perceptions. Perceptions delivered directly into a brain via machine (Matrix(tm) style!) can convey entire universes of space and stuff, all representable in a much smaller amount of matter if the details are hierarchically compressed away.
If our brain is interacting in a machine supported world/universe then
we wouldn't need large land or houses or apartments, or perhaps even any space larger than a closet. Our bodies are mere support structures for our brains (to get around, to interact, to reproduce), so if we could get rid of the body support by technological advancement, then perhaps only a shoebox worth of volume per brain is needed. 10,000 people per 'room', all interconnected as they see fit to everybody else out there. All a mere few inches away from their 26 brain-box neighbors. But they never need to see this space. It might as well not exist to them if they don't have any need to control things there. Hell, these boxes may even be stored deep underground to protect everyone from catastrophic space rock strikes, and shielded from reasonably distant hyper-novae. Who needs a bigger space when your shoebox has everything you need?
How amazing it would be to see the deconstruction of all the 'real world' space wasters like car dealerships, airports, supermarkets, buildings, houses, roads, hospitals, vacation resorts... Absolutely nobody's job on the outside would be useful anymore, there's no reason to stay behind to hang around in a ghost world as people/pets/dolphins/some monkeys/... turn 'inward' to this incredible utopia. Perhaps then we could besiege the rest of the godforsaken real world with a nanofog that breaks things down into a useful materials paste used by machinery and organisms deep within the planet / or aboard spacecraft spreading out to avoid the death of our star millions of years in the future, though the ping rates might become prohibitive for non local groups.
Losing useless control in the 'real world' for such freedom in another housed in the real world I think would ultimately happen. Though perhaps control is gained through interfacing with robotic agents that exist in the real world, perhaps to 'do' things outside for materials shuttling purposes, or fun, or defense against the misguided brain eating aliens from the Pegasus galaxy.
Not easy stuff to do, but it probably builds from one idea to the next, and in any case it's the post-singularity after all...
Singularity 2nd stage:
The next stage I'd think would be the "Why should I/we bother to 'think' at all?" stage. Thinking is there to solve problems, to prevent extinction, but what if the problems have all been solved? Perhaps thought itself would be seen as an antique dead 'mechanism' to be thrown out in favor of pure sensation? Or the thoughts to be controlled mechanically by the machine and influenced by our feedback to it. Perhaps it can think better mechanically under guide of our sensations than we can.
Perhaps thought is given up and we achieve the smallest representational unit that conveys any sense of self, maybe this is as small as a few cells. houses and real world space wasting things -> shoebox -> multicellular. Perhaps we evolve into this form, a sort of 'living' Internet.. connected by nerves, we the cells periodically firing in a strange
sensational utopia, materials shuttling around. 1000 years streaming by in the pleasant hum of a zen loop, with your 10000 best zen loop girls or whatever they are by your side, FUD and bitterness things of the past, seemingly infinite new collection of possible universes. Perhaps wedged safely in a tight local time loop so not even a universal implosion / explosion can reach us, no hypernovae, blackholes, particle degradation, no archaic god(s), nor unnecessary heavens nor hells.
Slashdot Mirror
Disney couldn't milk the Lion King forever
Not to mention it doesn't look like the Lion King was Disney's corps. idea to start with:
http://www.kimbawlion.com/rant2.htm.
...it is a new and powerful example of a piece of code that has been mathematically proven to be impossible to reverse-engineer...
Brrrrrr.. spooky! This sounds like an incredible misinterpretation of whatever the original paper/research is actually doing though. Devices may be reverse engineered without even looking inside if you have access to its inputs and outputs and can continually test and hypothesize and retest, etc. A device that distinguishes between 'evil' and 'regular' packets (as input) and outputs a bit that indicates 1='evil' or 0='not evil' (or a floating point degree of evil, say..) is no different. If you have access to the code that runs this particular device running on a router or somewhere packets drift by then obviously the situation can be no worse. I'd definitely like to see the link to this mathematical proof..
If a government wants to censor content for a region then it seems ok for google to comply as long as the content doesn't simply disappear quietly. If Google puts a 'This result is CENSORED by your region's government.' in big red bold letters then maybe that's something. Maybe another push for the government to relax censorship .. if Wikipedia is blocked, and Google is sporting red text disclaimers equating to "your government is holding you back", while the rest of the world using both happily moves on. Wholesale dissatisfaction leads to the most rapid of changes. OTOH, if it IS censored without constant disclaimers saying it is censored then I can't understand how this wouldn't fall squarely into the evil column.
@a = ([1,2],[3,4],5,[6,7,8]); ."\n";
;P
print $a[0][0] . $a[0][1] . $a[1][0] . $a[1][1] . $a[2] . $a[3][0] . $a[3][1] . $a[3][2]
Perl can do arbitrarily nested data structures using numbers, strings, refs to arrays, refs to hashes, refs to code, etc. They are dereferenced in left to right order using [] for array parts or {} for hash parts. I.e.
$thing{NED}[30]{HAIR}{COLOR}{DAY}[5] = 'Wavy, like I dunno, fields of golden wheat, or something.';
print "On day 5: $thing{NED}[30]{HAIR}{TYPE}{DAY}[5]\n";
Perl handles any scripting I've had to do quickly and beautifully and the scripts/code I write with it seem pretty maintainable even a years after last I'd seen it. You have the option of treating things in an object oriented fashion as well too if you like. It's a fantastically efficient language and it doesn't have to look hideous if you don't want it too. There's an incredible number of modules on cpan too..
Square brackets around arrays declare anonymous arrays of things and return a reference fit for holding in a scalar type (anything prefixed with a '$').
Parenthesis declares arrays but returns a list type, fit for holding in an array type of thing (things prefixed with an '@').
So, can do either @a = ([1,2],[3,4],5,[6,7,8]);
or
$a = [[1,2],[3,4],5,[6,7,8]];
But the '$a' case is a scalar thus needs deref first to get to array form. Deref via -> or by 'reinterpreting it' via '@' prefix: @$a. or $a->[3][1] to get to the 7.
Now python's between character string indexing scheme bothers the heck out of me though, of course with perl I hadn't a need to pursue it to find alternatives
The arrangement of numbers is physically modeled and computed using real physical logic gates and that total state is an arrangement of a machine so it is "real".
:(
...it's like the prisoner's dilemma: if you both co-operate you'll both benefit
:)
But owning states of machines, real or not seems strange to me as well. Why should anyone own what a physical device does or is doing? This is undeniably interrelated to ownership of numbers. And I agree that unique, useful numbers are difficult to find, we use patents for a group of numbers with certain properties on various interpreting architectures here, and copyright for particular instants. But this translates to something that prevents somebody from doing something unique / novel that is discovered, not because of artificial limitataions. It is fundamental property of the universe that is freely available. It is weird to me to legally prevent others from using a class of things that a machine represents / interprets, or to tell others about this configuration.
Wow, I stop here, moderated to 0 now! I thought this thread was even more nerdly than what usually appears, I love this stuff. Fundamental underpinnings of everything that our laws try to deal with in information domain. Maybe b/c it's all naive/incorrect/obvious what I say
Agreed!
Should we be allowed to own numbers? Or the effect they have if interpreted by a machine? Can you own the 'intent' of all number/program generated by something like:
Abstract computers can represent anything you like, and do this as best as the rules you specify. Rules in machine code I'm familiar with come from local properties of a program's numerical / bit representation. That is, aspects of the number the system is sensitive to. This is incredibly powerful. Corporations that own number sets to leverage control over an otherwise freely traversible number-procedural space are scariest to me because they can close off interesting roads ahead in this domain to the non-paying public.
Behemoth corporations with a vested interest in silencing truly free software and stifling various number sharing freedoms despite the happy optimistic nature of their commercials are the last ones I'd wish to be entrusted with such power. Fortunately, there are plenty of alternatives to get to the good stuff on the road ahead, and a silly FAT file system will always be available to the various distributions out of country or at least in some encrypted form if the laws get bad enough. If the laws concerning oppressive numeric ownership get too bad, encryption illegalized, and the revolutions fail, and nothing is very much fun anymore, well, I doubt I'd be hanging around anyway (unless hanging around is enforced too).
I'd suspect memory and other processing and so on are still possible in degrading degrees over time so that if pathways in the brain were electrochemically reactivated then it would probably be 'sensed' in some sense by the person even after clinical death. So brain experimentation after death seems a seriously bad idea to sign up for unless they're only testing pleasure center activation.
A related set of side questions involve what holds control and senses of a body to one 'person' anyway? If, for example, two brains were side by side in an operating room and brain molecules could be swapped between them, or say atoms swapped with sufficient technology. Replacing a carbon atom in a brain is the same as before as long as carbon is the same as any other carbon right? Say half of the brain mass is swapped between the two. If you wake them up then who controls who at the end? If they live and react and talk, does the same person control the same body? Does the half that is removed from one simply turn off from that person's perspective? Does one gain sensory aspect of the second? Can 'you' see from two perspectives at once? Is the nature of 'self' gone, the 'soul' stripped away, or are the combinations entirely different people in both sensation and sense of control?
That technology could reveal an extremely easy way to cause enormous amounts of damage. That in itself presents the darwinistic challenge to our whole species into the hands of a few individuals. Perhaps something that can destroy our entire universe via locally initiated big-bang event (maybe something silly as massive superposition of photonic waves beyond some unknown breaking point), or tweaking the rule base of every particle in the universe by as yet unknown quantum entanglement tricks. If something like this is theorized then social devolvement may be nightmarish to say the least. Knowledge control, civilization & universe teetering on the brink of devastation. Forced psychological medications to keep everybody 'happy', surveiling those who know too much, vaporizing those who tinker with it, communications monitored, encryption illegal, unsanctioned Internet transmissions banned. Then there's all those X billions of worlds out there each with potential civilization of aliens pondering the same thing, perhaps some realize it's in their interest to destroy every other planet as fast as possible since every other civilization ultimately poses a serious threat. Movie plot? game plot? real plot?
Well this all sounds vaguely familiar.. oh right! our own federal government helps us decide what ok for us to see/hear/read before prison sentences are necessary too. Many web sites have been sacked here. Plus *IAA is also preoccupied with information policing. Yet attempts to block any class of information from transmission is easily superceded by obfuscation, dilution and rerouting. What's left to stop free information being transmitted across when it becomes too hard to eavesdrop on?
There's plenty of hardware based methods workable with mass collusion of megacorps and interested parties. This is defended against by altering the hardware, building your own frobnicator, or resorting to antique / illegal technology. Generally difficult, crippling or expensive means. (category: printer dot-codes, tc, ???). Could we get as far as video/audio-card buffer transmission to your friendly chinese/american governmental morality monitoring center for spot checks? When will all our tin-foil hat choices contain drm/backdoors regardless of our illusory ability to always choose against these traits?
Ah, cool info in responses all around here, slashdot's great!
over the seemingly more 'classical':
Why shouldn't they have definite but not simultaneously measurable properties with a clumsy photon? Why can't they just have some chaotic function altering it from one state to the next that we don't know how to predict?
Alternately, if schroedinger's cat is in an alive/dead superposition in the box, then if the cat experiences a sane and straightforward set of experiences yet the outside-of-box observer claims it to be in an alive/dead combo state, then outside the box observer and inside the box observer's consciousness lines must potentially deviate. If the cat experiences no trouble at all, but the observer measures it to be dead then they're already in different 'universes' from one another.
So my last questions: is everybody else around here soulless zombies due to the great improbability that I'd be traveling along the same path as the 'conscious' ones? If not, why the heck are all you people following my conscious line for (or me yours)? That is, if multiple consciousness can occur at the split points, yet any one consciousness experiences a fluid and non-confusing pathway then how do the others experience anything.
Where do they come from, who/what experiences it? Maybe we're all really the same person separated by whatever localized state our matter based brains are configured for, then given all possibilities we experience all of them, one after another after another. brrrrrrrr.. spooky!
I believe there is nothing wrong with the act of downloading music that is copyrighted. All harm comes from relying on our current ineffective methods of dealing with information. Forcing the bits in the universe into ownership (enslaving them??) is like claiming to own the waves in a pond while not owning the pond itself. It is a backwards way to view things.
It is our current system's failure treating information as a commodity, a limited resource, one that should be bottled up and protected from trespass, forced into secrecy by antiquated laws. We simply took the wrong path centuries ago. But only when the information age has broken into mainstream do we see the torrents of people who follow the natural course possibly without knowing why.
The contortions forced upon information by our system of laws and behaviors and all the ugliness caused by those whose interests lie in furthering this perversion will ultimately dissipate. It will work itself out just as slavery was worked out. Hopefully without all the conflict of a civil war! Ownership of ideas must be banished, credit for discovering them encouraged, and the ability to speak freely to those consenting to hear it protected. Unfortunately, it is very likely to get worse before there is a chance to get better. Fortunately, technology has presented a method whereby floodgates of people following the natural paths of an evolving society will keep the discussion open until the pendulum can swing towards freedom and break the hell off.
To free speakers everywhere, cheers!
Building an 'artificial gravity device' even in weightless conditions is easy if you've got a sufficiently tall room spinning at constant angular velocity. (no need to feed some fantastic new technology line to the hapless "astro-nots").
:/
It seems plausible to simulate convincingly to most everybody a launch and orbit under fake-spinning room artificial gravity.
Consider faking this with a nicely decorated cardboard exterior capsule. You load the poor rubes into a capsule. You've gone over all of the stages above with them. You shut the doors to the outside, provide fake video feeds inside of 'travel to the launch site'. Meanwhile outside the prod. crew rips the fake cardboard off the outside and carts the 'capsule' via pickup truck to a field somewhere. Attaches it to the modified carnival ride centrifuge so the back are toward ground and feet away from direction of angular acceleration. The whole 'capsule' is on pivots so the "back" direction follows the changing gravity vector.
Now if the centrifuge angularly accelerates slowly enough then the temporary force against the feet (during angular acceleration only) is possibly unnoticeable (any shaking of the capsule can further disorient). Spin 'er up. Then slow it down, shake some more, say "Congratulations on the terrific launch, you're in free fall orbit now but due to a few experiments (...), we regret we must maintain earth level gravity at all times."
Poke it with sticks to simulate various 'space junk collisions' w/ dust. Video footage of Earth below/above/wherever, stars around, the moon etc. I'm not sure how to simulate even part of the reduced return trip without a drop off a nearby cliff or something though
I think it would be very hard for anybody to tell the difference with enough care put into the simulation.
Wow, that's a stunning statement to read mod'd so high on slashdot (nevermind, upon preview it's knocked to a 2). My comments never clear '1's, but all the same: When I read things like that, I think whatever part of humanity arguing against 'capability for better control over their systems' can keep their fsck'd up propi. OS's and closed softs, and pay for every new capability, and use only software with a tard-GUI slapped on it, buried in EULAs and restrictions and all your programs locked up and drm'd to hell.
'Tinkering' with your system in the way that you misdirect doesn't seem as common. You get drivers you set high level settings in your kernel to pick what you want, etc. Many people aren't attempting mods to drivers or modifying kernel routines or tweaking protocol stacks ever so slightly. (OTOH many are since they can and it is of interest to them).
But the freedom comes both there and much higher levels of control. You can configure the hell out of many software packages, most provide sensible defaults as well. The difference is you have the freedom to alter these. AND if you don't like how it works fundamentally, if you need something more and have the capability or wish to pay somebody who does have the capability, then you/they can change it! It is not illegal to do this w/ OSS. How is seeking this manner of operation everywhere out of touch? It's what should've been done all along. It just takes a while to fix all the mistakes where this isn't done yet.
It is illegal to do w/ proprietary and closed source softs that infest common user's environments. It is this software that will ultimately sink into obscurity hopefully with a kick in its collective ass for all the trouble it's caused as it goes down.
It IS better over here. If scientists have discovered something that 99.99999% of the population do not initially care about and have possibly never heard of but it's achingly better in so many respects, shouldn't they be vocal about it? And when you have defenders of the old crappy ways to do it, who resist this fundamental change in society, shouldn't they be told again and again how this thing that many people do not use is better?
For me I'll stick with the 'lost touch' crowd that hasn't given up to that sad of a state. It's where the stuff with the highest future potential I've seen anywhere is at.
"...is that God does not want people to enforce their will on others in order to make them moral and ethical people. Instead, God wants..."
These types of statements bother me a bit. The biggest complaint: "how the heck does anybody know what 'God' wants anyway?" Suppose God got pissed somewhere after an apple of knowledge eating party in the B.C. era where people sought knowledge (or, ate an actual apple or whatever symbols existed at the time). "Crap!" says God, "I had no idea these things would do that!" He goes sends them into some thorny territories and goes back to revise his instruction manual.
Maybe then he eventually became the fire-and-brimstone type of god to send various sinners / non-believers / ancient folk / Buddhists / Jewish folk / Aborigines (sp) in Australia / communists / babies / capitalists / people without the benefit of christian parentage, or who haven't been converted all the way yet by those with such fortune / misc. to hell. For their own good of course, or not.. Well, if that's anywhere in the teachings of your religion then it seems applying sane thought processes to such a being is a bit of a stretch.
Even without a hell, what of the everyday. People attacking each other, and dying horribly, divine interventions seem never to occur. Maybe another stain shows up on a billboard someplace. Bad things happening everywhere all the time, animals eating each other alive. Pain, fear, hunger, and various coercions strangely similar to what evolution would seem to guide us towards to stay alive. But through it all, what happens? Societies evolve to 'fix' such ills. Could it be society is our savior from the various crap found around this planet? A peacefully interoperational one that tosses our troubles one by one into antiquity?
Or is your god just waiting around the corner to come back when the problems are solved to put a stop to all that peace and goodwill? What can be taken as the truth? I'd say it's easiest to follow the:
EVOLUTION IN A SOCIETY CODE OF ETHICS document (GPL), DOH!
It states initially, but modify and re-release as you wish:
For a sufficiently advanced society as ours it is in everybody's best interests to have others' interests at heart. Improvement to society improves our own conditions. An easy way to improve yourself and others' conditions is to do things that do not cause detrimental problems in society. Things like trying not to rape, rob, or kill seem inherently obvious. Being polite and respectful help others. Not running over people to get to where you're going helps others and yourself ultimately too. Not being an asshole by trying to convert everybody in sight based on a viral chain-letter-like religion (do this or else! pass it on to X others or ___) gets bonus points because it takes some strength not to buy some of the cleverly crafted crap proposed to you sometimes under such dire consequences. Everybody for themselves non-societal traditional evolution provides less benefit for groups and generally pisses other members off enough that they come after you, so don't do it.
Do you need God to tell you to do nice things? Or believe there are many natural ways evolved into place to coexist with others in a group, society, culture, world, universe? Why do people force their minds to rely on a really pissed off deity to scare them into converting others or leading by example besides fear? To feel they're totally worthless and grasp for salvation they're told they need as punishment for existing. You think most people would be doing these nice things anyway? Heard of all those roving bands of atheist gangs commiting crimes in the news recently? Suicide bomber agnostics?
Wouldn't this be a great area to use a login / moderation system, (meta-moderated) based on a kind of trust factor and correctness of what's said?
Someone who tells the truth consistently carries more influence, but if they start spewing false slanderous things and others know it, then their believability and influence drops like a rock. Couldn't people then say what they want whenever they want anonymously (person behind login protected); liable/slander troubles relegated to the past?
Our legal troubles with information sharing lie in the archaic system that attempts to control non-private information. If money is still funneled to those who create the works, and problems of promotion and broadcasting solved by dissolving them into the strengths of the Internet rather than control pf record labels, then hasn't everything been solved?
There are probably many ways to solve the money funneling problem:
1) voluntary money donations (PBS?) to various projects?
2) more forcibly, tax based funneling of funds to various projects, art, research controlled by the people, or by organizations that represent various organizations (various information types: music, movie, research, ...), more socialist? (police, firefighters, libraries, welfare, why not information?) bureaucracy? (more a different republic with participation in various fields based on qualifications), etc.
.. everything are accessible at a whim without people having to to be told how horribly bad they're being by stooge after stooge who can't get it that this is the way it should be and that they're attacking the wrong symptom?
Consider a world where this problem is solved. Where novels, pamphlets, art, music, research, games, utilities,
Now clearly even here it is not stealing. It's not bad either. This kind of system is different. It encourages people to share information. Why? Artists, researchers most often wish more exposure for their creation! The only thing different is the system is now amicably aligned with information sharing. Everybody who counts benefits. They don't have to feel bad any longer for doing things which should naturally be protected and encouraged. Isn't this the way it should be?
Possibly land would be much less valuable than today too in this hypothetical post-singularity. Sensing things around us (land, 'space', objects, other people, ..) is done solely through our perceptions. Perceptions delivered directly into a brain via machine (Matrix(tm) style!) can convey entire universes of space and stuff, all representable in a much smaller amount of matter if the details are hierarchically compressed away.
If our brain is interacting in a machine supported world/universe then we wouldn't need large land or houses or apartments, or perhaps even any space larger than a closet. Our bodies are mere support structures for our brains (to get around, to interact, to reproduce), so if we could get rid of the body support by technological advancement, then perhaps only a shoebox worth of volume per brain is needed. 10,000 people per 'room', all interconnected as they see fit to everybody else out there. All a mere few inches away from their 26 brain-box neighbors. But they never need to see this space. It might as well not exist to them if they don't have any need to control things there. Hell, these boxes may even be stored deep underground to protect everyone from catastrophic space rock strikes, and shielded from reasonably distant hyper-novae. Who needs a bigger space when your shoebox has everything you need?
How amazing it would be to see the deconstruction of all the 'real world' space wasters like car dealerships, airports, supermarkets, buildings, houses, roads, hospitals, vacation resorts... Absolutely nobody's job on the outside would be useful anymore, there's no reason to stay behind to hang around in a ghost world as people/pets/dolphins/some monkeys/... turn 'inward' to this incredible utopia. Perhaps then we could besiege the rest of the godforsaken real world with a nanofog that breaks things down into a useful materials paste used by machinery and organisms deep within the planet / or aboard spacecraft spreading out to avoid the death of our star millions of years in the future, though the ping rates might become prohibitive for non local groups. Losing useless control in the 'real world' for such freedom in another housed in the real world I think would ultimately happen. Though perhaps control is gained through interfacing with robotic agents that exist in the real world, perhaps to 'do' things outside for materials shuttling purposes, or fun, or defense against the misguided brain eating aliens from the Pegasus galaxy.
Not easy stuff to do, but it probably builds from one idea to the next, and in any case it's the post-singularity after all...
Singularity 2nd stage:
The next stage I'd think would be the "Why should I/we bother to 'think' at all?" stage. Thinking is there to solve problems, to prevent extinction, but what if the problems have all been solved? Perhaps thought itself would be seen as an antique dead 'mechanism' to be thrown out in favor of pure sensation? Or the thoughts to be controlled mechanically by the machine and influenced by our feedback to it. Perhaps it can think better mechanically under guide of our sensations than we can.
Perhaps thought is given up and we achieve the smallest representational unit that conveys any sense of self, maybe this is as small as a few cells. houses and real world space wasting things -> shoebox -> multicellular. Perhaps we evolve into this form, a sort of 'living' Internet.. connected by nerves, we the cells periodically firing in a strange sensational utopia, materials shuttling around. 1000 years streaming by in the pleasant hum of a zen loop, with your 10000 best zen loop girls or whatever they are by your side, FUD and bitterness things of the past, seemingly infinite new collection of possible universes. Perhaps wedged safely in a tight local time loop so not even a universal implosion / explosion can reach us, no hypernovae, blackholes, particle degradation, no archaic god(s), nor unnecessary heavens nor hells.
Thi