i have to admit... i like your thinking. speaking as a christian, the general ethos of the more liberal-minded among us is 'God helps those who use what he's already given them' - i.e. our resource, our intelligence, and our belief. miracles are an amazing thing (if not, well, miraculous), but we shouldn't really *need* them to reinforce belief or understanding. it's pure showmanship to sway the easily led.
this argument's never gonna shake my faith, but it may well help it grow.
that's pretty similar to what i posted a coupla minutes back... it's nice to see that other people can also have a relatively enlightened view, even if their execution of it was, as you say, naive.
do you happen to know the name of this minister? i'd like to read more, i think...
So far, I've only skimmed the/. comments, but i'm getting some pretty distinct bad feeling against christians here... I'd just like to make one thing clear; not all of us christians are into bible-thumping and trying to put the 'fun' back into 'funadmentalist'. I've always considered God to be a craftsman. mayber there's just the off chance that this '6000 years' bollocks is because humans can't count in terms of the infinite. sounds weird, i know, but hear me out. we've already managed to establish a decent and pretty reliable form of carbon dating, yes? comparing half-lives of fairly inert materials gives us a good idea of temporal scale, right? maybe the seven days that the bible mentions is God's idea of seven days, and not ours... i think it's fair to say that the first, say, 5 billion years of the planet's existence were the prototyping stages; the whole 'right, i've got the ball of rock, let's make it habitable' period. we're already starting to consider some of the problems that we'd come up against when it involves terraforming, so it's fair to say that if you include planetary formation into that stretch of time, it increases significantly.
i reckon that yes, God made us; there's got to be a motive force behind it all: i believe it's a sapient beneficiary; otherwise we're all gonna go nuts with loneliness, in the existential sense. however, i also think that evolution is a matter of prototyping, and the design process. not all of us religious types are unreasonable; some of us realise that our holy books may have started as the word of God, but they were ultimately recorded by Man.
just my two pence. if you're gonna shoot me down in flames, then please do it in the form of a decent argument. otherwise, you're just as bad as the next fundamentalist...
This has more to do with the fact that people are becoming increasingly blase about the potential of coputing. at the moment, i am actually undertaking a project to try and design a human/computer interface that is totally removed from what engelbart came up with back in '68 - we're trying, essentially, to show people that thinking outside the box is the best way to improve the use of said box.
computers these days are capable of amazing things in 3-dimensional graphics, but we're still constrained by the 2-dimensional 'navigation' methods. instead of breaking barriers, and then returning to safe territory, how's about we burn the return bridges a bit? what i (and my group) are doing is to re-invent man/machine interaction; we're not, strictly speaking, doing anything very new; we're just trying to do it differently. the problem that people have imposed on themselves is a desperate love of throwbacks; i'm sitting here, typing on a keyboard not entirely dissimilar to the typewriters of the 1880s. we've got a machine that can calculate variances in chaos theory sitting under our desks, and we're still treating them as if they were mechanical, hand-milled machines. we need to learn to progress in of ourselves, as well as our technologies.
i've often wondered why this concept hasn't been entertained by more people, to be honest.
incidentally; if this gets marked as trolling or flamebait, then i'll be pretty disappointed.
i am a christian. as such, i believe in the idea that God created us. however; i look at the way that the ecosystem fits together, the niches that the various species occupy, and i can't help but wonder if any mind could have started a project (i.e. creation), and intended it to come out as it has today. which leads me to the next part; what if (and this is just an if - you'd need to be a better theologian/philosopher/scientist than me to prove/disprove this) the current biological state of every species on the planet has evolved from an original design?
i think that there's a fair chance that both evoluion and creationism are true; no-one ever said that God's idea of seven days was going to be the same as ours... for all we know, His 7 days could be our 4.6 billion years.
in which case, i ask you; have you never gone back to redress something that you designed some time ago? maybe that's how evolution wokrs out.
before i get some over-zealous types having a go at me, dubbing me a heretic, i'd like to add this: we were, according to every faith, given free will. this amounts to being able to define ourselves, and develop ourselves. hence; we can enforce our own evolution. the word 'evolution' does not directly preclude the existence of God; it means that a biological agent can adapt itself over time, is all. if we're designed to survive in a given environment, and we change that environment, does it not necessarily follow that we would adapt to maintain ourselves? isn't the point of good design to be able to adapt and survive to the surrounding environment?
in which case, this whole debate is pointless, and the proto-fundamentalists in middle america (who i have precisely zero respect for, by the way) can all shut up, and stop bible thumping. they're giving all of us religious types a really, really bad name.
anyhoo, that's just my personal view upon it. if i'm wrong, then i'm wrong. either way, don't flame me purely because it's not the most scientific of views, please...
hah. the old ipods already have something similar, i guess... which ties in kinda neatly (if a little perversely) with the current Jobs/Disney speculation; the black apple of death. think snow white...
There is, I feel, one particularly significant point that all of this is failing to even approach.
We're sitting here, discussing the possiblity of sentience within computer systems; a point that I'm not willing to dispute - they probably do have the capacity for it, at least, on some 'low' level. However, we have a very long way to go before we can even solidify our understanding of the systems (for lack of a better term) involved in the workings of our own minds. Understanding the human consciousness is something that people have been working on for centuries; even after all of that effort, we have gotten no further than observing visible and documented traits in behaviour; we don't know why something happens in a person's head, we're not even sure how it happens. Trying to describe/incite the possiblity of these ill-understood concepts in a machine, even one which is evolving daily, as the bleeding edge of the computing field does, is not, I feel a proper use of time/resource. At least, not yet.
Before I'm bashed into a metaphorical pulp, I don't hold this opinion because I fear that we're playing God. I feel this way because we're trying to accelerate the reverse-engineering of a design that took, from what I remember of my various sciences, approximately three hundred thousand years to develop to its current level. It's not the smartest way to work; people have been shouting 'why haven't we got AI yet?' when we don't even know how the hell we happened across non-artificial intelligence yet.
I've done a bit of studying around the field of artifical intelligence; it's required reading for my degree. the only thing that i see as a common thread is that people keep on quoting Turing (an undisputedly great thinker), and then trying to square their own odeas with his. Typically, it fails, purely because we don't have the slightest clue about what it is we're trying to emulate.
If anyone here reckons that i'm talking crap, then you tell me this; what is concsiousness. Define it. How does it work? What makes it 'go' (for lack of a better term)? Until you can answer these things, I don't reckon that we're going to be capable of recognizing, much less creating, true artifical intelligence.
Hah. have you seen how ineptly most large organisations spend money when it comes to any kind of specialist A/V computer hardware? there's this general philosophy that if it's not pricey, it's no good. so i'm inclined to believe that yes, they have snaffled several thousand dollars to do this with. it's probably much easier to mask the purchases if they're big enough, ironically.
Hi.
I find myself wondering why I'm forced into using third-party software to create Windows installation discs that don't have programs like Internet Explorer, outlook express, paint, WordPad, msn et cetera?
Would it not be possible to actually have a *working* application selection process during the installation? For example; I know that Windows update makes use of Internet Explorer specifically; wouldn't it be better to follow the open source model and have a specific updater program, that doesn't require a separate piece of software to provide a front end? Also, is WordPad really necessary? There's always notepad, and if someone needs to do any real word processing, they'll usually find a way to get hold of some kind of office software, whether it be your own or not is immaterial to me. You'll have to pardon my rudeness here, but paint is just a waste of space, as are all of the extras like movie maker and so forth.
The gist of my question boils down to this; Windows is not, inherently, a bad operating system. There are some elements of it that I quite like. However, it would become quite a good operating system if all of the rubbish was siphoned out of it, and the installing party had more control over what went in.
As far as I'm concerned, you can put whatever you like into the home edition of Windows; I use a legal license for Windows XP pro. and yet, I still find such unnecessary extras as paint, msn explorer, address book (incidentally, I'm not a fan of address software being built into any OS - I tend to use an email client, in this case outlook XP, to store such things), synchronise, remote assistance (I mean come on, seriously; anyone that actually uses remote desktop software usually has a proprietary piece of software to do it anyway).
Anyway; I don't want this to become a rant. All I would really, really like to see would be a decent method of selection for software installation, please.
well said that man. i have to admit; i still have a soft spot for win2k, purely because it's a tough, stable system , with a very strong core. i was a little dismayed that it took microsoft sooooo long to embrace the idea of a decent hardware abstraction layer (i don't personally think that they had perfected it in NT, but that's just my observations), but it was a well-executed piece of design. i think the main geek gripe that most weren't willing to admit (when xp came out, at least) was that there waslittle by way of new innovation between windows releases, and the crayola-sponsored desktop was just patronising. but the general populace loved it, which is its victory.
when people tend to rant about windows v linux, they don't seem to remember that yes, linuxis a good operating system, but windows wins because it appeals to the lowest common denominator, i.e. 80% of the world. as to whether it's more secure/stable/hackable/tweakable/whateverable is immaterial. joe public has the buying power.
what, like quark did? they've since, in effect, died on their arses, purely because they didn't compare themselves to other products, such as indesign. i appreciate that this isn't quite the same as with perating systems, but, nonetheless, you *have* to keep an eye on what's going on around you.
Slashdot Mirror
i have to admit... i like your thinking. speaking as a christian, the general ethos of the more liberal-minded among us is 'God helps those who use what he's already given them' - i.e. our resource, our intelligence, and our belief. miracles are an amazing thing (if not, well, miraculous), but we shouldn't really *need* them to reinforce belief or understanding. it's pure showmanship to sway the easily led. this argument's never gonna shake my faith, but it may well help it grow.
hahaha! that's possibly the wittiest post i've read on here... well done you :)
Cheers :) - i've just found it on amazon for 7 quid, so i think i'll have to give it a read...
that's pretty similar to what i posted a coupla minutes back... it's nice to see that other people can also have a relatively enlightened view, even if their execution of it was, as you say, naive. do you happen to know the name of this minister? i'd like to read more, i think...
So far, I've only skimmed the /. comments, but i'm getting some pretty distinct bad feeling against christians here... I'd just like to make one thing clear; not all of us christians are into bible-thumping and trying to put the 'fun' back into 'funadmentalist'. I've always considered God to be a craftsman. mayber there's just the off chance that this '6000 years' bollocks is because humans can't count in terms of the infinite. sounds weird, i know, but hear me out. we've already managed to establish a decent and pretty reliable form of carbon dating, yes? comparing half-lives of fairly inert materials gives us a good idea of temporal scale, right? maybe the seven days that the bible mentions is God's idea of seven days, and not ours... i think it's fair to say that the first, say, 5 billion years of the planet's existence were the prototyping stages; the whole 'right, i've got the ball of rock, let's make it habitable' period. we're already starting to consider some of the problems that we'd come up against when it involves terraforming, so it's fair to say that if you include planetary formation into that stretch of time, it increases significantly.
i reckon that yes, God made us; there's got to be a motive force behind it all: i believe it's a sapient beneficiary; otherwise we're all gonna go nuts with loneliness, in the existential sense. however, i also think that evolution is a matter of prototyping, and the design process. not all of us religious types are unreasonable; some of us realise that our holy books may have started as the word of God, but they were ultimately recorded by Man.
just my two pence. if you're gonna shoot me down in flames, then please do it in the form of a decent argument. otherwise, you're just as bad as the next fundamentalist...
This has more to do with the fact that people are becoming increasingly blase about the potential of coputing. at the moment, i am actually undertaking a project to try and design a human/computer interface that is totally removed from what engelbart came up with back in '68 - we're trying, essentially, to show people that thinking outside the box is the best way to improve the use of said box. computers these days are capable of amazing things in 3-dimensional graphics, but we're still constrained by the 2-dimensional 'navigation' methods. instead of breaking barriers, and then returning to safe territory, how's about we burn the return bridges a bit? what i (and my group) are doing is to re-invent man/machine interaction; we're not, strictly speaking, doing anything very new; we're just trying to do it differently. the problem that people have imposed on themselves is a desperate love of throwbacks; i'm sitting here, typing on a keyboard not entirely dissimilar to the typewriters of the 1880s. we've got a machine that can calculate variances in chaos theory sitting under our desks, and we're still treating them as if they were mechanical, hand-milled machines. we need to learn to progress in of ourselves, as well as our technologies.
my arse produces gas like that, and i'm fully aware of how it happens. get back to me when you have something to report.
i've often wondered why this concept hasn't been entertained by more people, to be honest. incidentally; if this gets marked as trolling or flamebait, then i'll be pretty disappointed. i am a christian. as such, i believe in the idea that God created us. however; i look at the way that the ecosystem fits together, the niches that the various species occupy, and i can't help but wonder if any mind could have started a project (i.e. creation), and intended it to come out as it has today. which leads me to the next part; what if (and this is just an if - you'd need to be a better theologian/philosopher/scientist than me to prove/disprove this) the current biological state of every species on the planet has evolved from an original design? i think that there's a fair chance that both evoluion and creationism are true; no-one ever said that God's idea of seven days was going to be the same as ours... for all we know, His 7 days could be our 4.6 billion years. in which case, i ask you; have you never gone back to redress something that you designed some time ago? maybe that's how evolution wokrs out. before i get some over-zealous types having a go at me, dubbing me a heretic, i'd like to add this: we were, according to every faith, given free will. this amounts to being able to define ourselves, and develop ourselves. hence; we can enforce our own evolution. the word 'evolution' does not directly preclude the existence of God; it means that a biological agent can adapt itself over time, is all. if we're designed to survive in a given environment, and we change that environment, does it not necessarily follow that we would adapt to maintain ourselves? isn't the point of good design to be able to adapt and survive to the surrounding environment? in which case, this whole debate is pointless, and the proto-fundamentalists in middle america (who i have precisely zero respect for, by the way) can all shut up, and stop bible thumping. they're giving all of us religious types a really, really bad name. anyhoo, that's just my personal view upon it. if i'm wrong, then i'm wrong. either way, don't flame me purely because it's not the most scientific of views, please...
that's a cracking set of links, in there. cheers for pointing me over to it... i was completely unaware that MiT did anything like that :)
apparently, there's a firmware upgrade that'll also convert lead to gold...
hah. the old ipods already have something similar, i guess... which ties in kinda neatly (if a little perversely) with the current Jobs/Disney speculation; the black apple of death. think snow white...
otherwise, how would it BSOD?
There is, I feel, one particularly significant point that all of this is failing to even approach. We're sitting here, discussing the possiblity of sentience within computer systems; a point that I'm not willing to dispute - they probably do have the capacity for it, at least, on some 'low' level. However, we have a very long way to go before we can even solidify our understanding of the systems (for lack of a better term) involved in the workings of our own minds. Understanding the human consciousness is something that people have been working on for centuries; even after all of that effort, we have gotten no further than observing visible and documented traits in behaviour; we don't know why something happens in a person's head, we're not even sure how it happens. Trying to describe/incite the possiblity of these ill-understood concepts in a machine, even one which is evolving daily, as the bleeding edge of the computing field does, is not, I feel a proper use of time/resource. At least, not yet. Before I'm bashed into a metaphorical pulp, I don't hold this opinion because I fear that we're playing God. I feel this way because we're trying to accelerate the reverse-engineering of a design that took, from what I remember of my various sciences, approximately three hundred thousand years to develop to its current level. It's not the smartest way to work; people have been shouting 'why haven't we got AI yet?' when we don't even know how the hell we happened across non-artificial intelligence yet. I've done a bit of studying around the field of artifical intelligence; it's required reading for my degree. the only thing that i see as a common thread is that people keep on quoting Turing (an undisputedly great thinker), and then trying to square their own odeas with his. Typically, it fails, purely because we don't have the slightest clue about what it is we're trying to emulate. If anyone here reckons that i'm talking crap, then you tell me this; what is concsiousness. Define it. How does it work? What makes it 'go' (for lack of a better term)? Until you can answer these things, I don't reckon that we're going to be capable of recognizing, much less creating, true artifical intelligence.
Hah. have you seen how ineptly most large organisations spend money when it comes to any kind of specialist A/V computer hardware? there's this general philosophy that if it's not pricey, it's no good. so i'm inclined to believe that yes, they have snaffled several thousand dollars to do this with. it's probably much easier to mask the purchases if they're big enough, ironically.
Hi. I find myself wondering why I'm forced into using third-party software to create Windows installation discs that don't have programs like Internet Explorer, outlook express, paint, WordPad, msn et cetera? Would it not be possible to actually have a *working* application selection process during the installation? For example; I know that Windows update makes use of Internet Explorer specifically; wouldn't it be better to follow the open source model and have a specific updater program, that doesn't require a separate piece of software to provide a front end? Also, is WordPad really necessary? There's always notepad, and if someone needs to do any real word processing, they'll usually find a way to get hold of some kind of office software, whether it be your own or not is immaterial to me. You'll have to pardon my rudeness here, but paint is just a waste of space, as are all of the extras like movie maker and so forth. The gist of my question boils down to this; Windows is not, inherently, a bad operating system. There are some elements of it that I quite like. However, it would become quite a good operating system if all of the rubbish was siphoned out of it, and the installing party had more control over what went in. As far as I'm concerned, you can put whatever you like into the home edition of Windows; I use a legal license for Windows XP pro. and yet, I still find such unnecessary extras as paint, msn explorer, address book (incidentally, I'm not a fan of address software being built into any OS - I tend to use an email client, in this case outlook XP, to store such things), synchronise, remote assistance (I mean come on, seriously; anyone that actually uses remote desktop software usually has a proprietary piece of software to do it anyway). Anyway; I don't want this to become a rant. All I would really, really like to see would be a decent method of selection for software installation, please.
... i guess that i'm just gonna be deemed a pervert for eschewing all of these flash sites, and using browsers like links2, then. sod you all :)
well said that man. i have to admit; i still have a soft spot for win2k, purely because it's a tough, stable system , with a very strong core. i was a little dismayed that it took microsoft sooooo long to embrace the idea of a decent hardware abstraction layer (i don't personally think that they had perfected it in NT, but that's just my observations), but it was a well-executed piece of design. i think the main geek gripe that most weren't willing to admit (when xp came out, at least) was that there waslittle by way of new innovation between windows releases, and the crayola-sponsored desktop was just patronising. but the general populace loved it, which is its victory. when people tend to rant about windows v linux, they don't seem to remember that yes, linuxis a good operating system, but windows wins because it appeals to the lowest common denominator, i.e. 80% of the world. as to whether it's more secure/stable/hackable/tweakable/whateverable is immaterial. joe public has the buying power.
what, like quark did? they've since, in effect, died on their arses, purely because they didn't compare themselves to other products, such as indesign. i appreciate that this isn't quite the same as with perating systems, but, nonetheless, you *have* to keep an eye on what's going on around you.
yeah, but do you really want a bunch of inbreeds pioneering the first colonisation of a different planet? thought not.