Back in the day there was an astute observation that rock should sound great on a crappy radio.
Not so astute at all. Van halen's first album (in LP form, not CD format) sounded like Van Halen were in your living room if your stereo was good enough. Not so through your ten dollar transistor radio.
Pop? Maybe. But rock? The better your sound system, the better Led Zeppelin is going to sound.
Of course, when you're mastering any genre of music you want it to sound as good as you can on anything it will be played on, but I've never heard any music that sounded great on a shitty stereo.
As someone who has gone through a near-death experience, I can tell you that when you're dying, ten seconds is the rest of your life! Remember what Einstein said about relativity - when you're with a pretty girl, an hour seems like a minute. When your hand is on a hot stove, a minute seems like an hour".
That said, I'd rather die from explosive decompression than most forms of natural causes, like a heart attack, alzheimers, cancer (god what a terrible way to go). With a few exceptions (like my ex mother in law, who died mid sentence and felt no pain, she just stopped), the only people who don't die horribly are convicted murderers who are executed in the US. The rest of us are most likely to die in horrible agony.
If I was on Mars and dying of cancer, I'd step outside. Ever seen anyone die of cancer? If not, you're lucky.
TFA says first law, I'd like to see it obey all three laws, except I'd make the second law "A robot must obey the orders given to it by its owner, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law".
I might think about a similar change to the first law, as well; change "a human being" to "its owner".
I loled at your moderation, the moderator must be some kid who's never read Asimov, seen STNG, or the movie I, Robot, or... well, for any nerd on earth, hiding in a cave. We slashdotters should be well aware of Asimov's laws.
BTW, another tidbit that everyone should know (and if you don't, why not?) is that Asimov coined the word "robotics".
If any of you really haven't read Asimov, get your butt to the library RIGHT NOW.
Goo dot gl? Let me guess... she's hiding in goatse? Why else would you post a shortened link? Especially one that someone who's been drinking too much might mnistake for google?
Well, cashless transactions aren't the only reason for this. It would be great for when your screen breaks, you could move all the data from the broken phone to the replacement easily.
As to cashless transaction, it wouldn't affect me at all, because I'm not going to be keeping financial info on a phone, anyway (I won't even bank or pay bills by internet).
As the first poster said, "well duh". Apple owners pay more for their gear, they want superior gear, and it stands to reason that someone who wants a top of the line computer (whether "top of the line" is real or percieved, many people always think the more expensive item must be better, even though Alieve and the generic naproxin sodium are identical but the prices are way apart) is going to want a top of the line room.
I don't see this as ripping off Apple users, I see it as catering to them.
Thank you for posting that! I was going to, but couldn't remember the name of the story. For those who may not have read it, Martians (decended from people who immigrated from Earth) need water, and Earth's dumb politicians won't let them have some (Asimov goes into the political details iirc) so they go to Saturn to harvest its rings.
Of course, anybody who's at slashdot who hasn't read Asimov, WHY NOT???
I was referring to the user himself. Obviously, his being on a botnet adversely affects you and me, while his computer being full of toolbars doesn't. But if you're going to load a TSR and you really don't have room, why shouldn't your AV (or OS itself) warn you?
That is actually what I was trying to convey; the dinasaurs of 65 million years ago adapted to the new environment and now poop on your car. The animals that needed to but didn't died out, the ones that didn't need to because either their environments stayed the same or they migrated didn't (some crab species are millions of years old).
I'm 60 and I stopped paying for cable a long time ago. I have an antenna for local news, the bar down the street for sports, and the internet for everything else.
Thirty years ago cable made sense. Ten bucks a month of ad-free watching (except local shows) including HBO, and it was long before Discovery and History and other such "educational" channels stopped educating and started sucking.
If they would offer networks by the channel (I refuse to pay for the Golf channel and the cooking channel and BET and LifeTime) for two bucks a channel, they might get ten or fifteen bucks a month from me again. But fifty bucks for a hundred channels of pure crap when I might watch five or ten once in a great while? I'd be a fool.
The end of the loudness wars (if this is accurate) came way too little and way too late for me.
Ok, since you missed the point... what makes your brain so special?
That is the point: we don't know what makes the brain so special. We don't know what sentience is or what causes it. Give someone a bag of electronic parts, enough to build a radio, who has very little knowledge of electricity and no knowlege of radio waves to build a radio out of them. It just won't happen. Or in this case, give him a chemical brain and ask him to build a radio out of that.
Until you understand how neurons work, and how learning works, you can't know whether computers are or are not sentient.
Maybe rocks and trees and cars are sentient, too. Highly unlikely, I'd say. But we do know that neurons and synampses are nothing like logic gates.
Actually, I agree with you. Thwo outspoken athiests I know in meatspace were both brought up in religious families, one Catholic and one strict Southern Baptist. OTOH, another fellow I know was brought up by a athiest parents, and after his alcoholism left him homeless and destitute, he had a religious experience and now knows God personally.
Shoving religion (or lack of it) down someone's throats, especially children's, is often if not usually counterproductive.
Agnosticism is the only logical choice unless you have experienced divinity, in which case divinity's existance has been shown to you. In that case disbelief would be counter-logical. You don't need faith to know that elephants are real (assuming you have seen elephants). You do need faith to pet one, faith in the fact that he won't stomp you in the ground. To deny the existance of elephants on the grounds that such an animal is impossible, despite having people directly tell you they have seen elephants, is irrational. Unless you have seen it yourself, saying "there could be such a thing but I doubt it" or "I think it's probably ture" are the logical choices.
As you note, there's a big difference between lack of education and child abuse. Until the middle of the last century, illiteracy and innumeracy was the worldwide norm.
"Where do you draw the line" is a good question. We as a society (well, in the US anyway, Europe is more civilized than us) withhold food from children. Christmas is a horrible time for most children in the Harvard Park neighorhrood here in Springfield, because they go hungry over Christmas break when they don't get school lunches. They did better last year, my church gave every family with children who attended Harvard Park Elementary two weeks worth of groceries. But there should not have been a need to do that. Churches shouldn't have to do the job that governments are supposed to.
I'd say that lack of food trumps lack of education. And the kids going hungry aren't learning much anyway, and they're almost all going to grow up to be pimps and whores and gangbangers. Their educations are meaningless; thay do indeed have an inability to earn an honest living.
Would you take children away from parents who believe literacy and numeracy are evil? Taking a kid away always harms the child greatly; I know adults who were brought up in foster homes, they are without exception seriously fucked up individuals. You should never take a kid away from his parents unless staying would be worse for the kid.
I live close to Harvard Park, most of the poverty is from poor upbringing, including being raised in foster homes (some is due to mental illnesses which we as a society refuse to treat).
The parent who believes literacy and numeracy are evil are going to be illiterate and innumerate themselves, and will be poor. Very few poor people ever rise out of poverty. It does happen, but isn't really all that common.
When climates change, animals can either evolve or move. Ice age? Move south. Global warming? Move north. It's the ones that can't or don't move that must evolve when the climate changes.
People in Florida will either have to move north, or evolve gills when the sea level rises.
Evolution and creationism directly contradict each other
No they don't. The bible simply says that God created everything, evolution explains how he went about it. Not mutually exclusive at all. And in fact, almost all Christians do in fact accept evolution, even the Pope does.
If someone considers mathematics and writing the work of the devil, should they be allowed to bring their children up without teaching them how to count, read or write?
What gives you the right to tell someone else how to raise their children? Especially since the parents themselves wouldn't know how to read, write, or count. Athiests teach their children that religion is evil, and they have every right to do so.
Now a school system, otoh, does not have that right, nor should they be teaching creationism in science class, that belongs in philosophy class or Sunday school.
Believe what you will, but many of us have direct experience with God. Despite the fact that you don't believe elephants are possible, I've been to the zoo.
Your faith in the lack of God is impressive; I have no need of faith in his existance. "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God."
As to evolution, that's pretty much been settled scientifically, these fundies are misguided.
Slashdot Mirror
Back in the day there was an astute observation that rock should sound great on a crappy radio.
Not so astute at all. Van halen's first album (in LP form, not CD format) sounded like Van Halen were in your living room if your stereo was good enough. Not so through your ten dollar transistor radio.
Pop? Maybe. But rock? The better your sound system, the better Led Zeppelin is going to sound.
Of course, when you're mastering any genre of music you want it to sound as good as you can on anything it will be played on, but I've never heard any music that sounded great on a shitty stereo.
As someone who has gone through a near-death experience, I can tell you that when you're dying, ten seconds is the rest of your life! Remember what Einstein said about relativity - when you're with a pretty girl, an hour seems like a minute. When your hand is on a hot stove, a minute seems like an hour".
That said, I'd rather die from explosive decompression than most forms of natural causes, like a heart attack, alzheimers, cancer (god what a terrible way to go). With a few exceptions (like my ex mother in law, who died mid sentence and felt no pain, she just stopped), the only people who don't die horribly are convicted murderers who are executed in the US. The rest of us are most likely to die in horrible agony.
If I was on Mars and dying of cancer, I'd step outside. Ever seen anyone die of cancer? If not, you're lucky.
TFA says first law, I'd like to see it obey all three laws, except I'd make the second law "A robot must obey the orders given to it by its owner, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law".
I might think about a similar change to the first law, as well; change "a human being" to "its owner".
I loled at your moderation, the moderator must be some kid who's never read Asimov, seen STNG, or the movie I, Robot, or... well, for any nerd on earth, hiding in a cave. We slashdotters should be well aware of Asimov's laws.
BTW, another tidbit that everyone should know (and if you don't, why not?) is that Asimov coined the word "robotics".
If any of you really haven't read Asimov, get your butt to the library RIGHT NOW.
The results are far superior, at least for our style of music.
A human is alwasy far superior, for any style of music (except maybe techno).
Goo dot gl? Let me guess... she's hiding in goatse? Why else would you post a shortened link? Especially one that someone who's been drinking too much might mnistake for google?
Well, cashless transactions aren't the only reason for this. It would be great for when your screen breaks, you could move all the data from the broken phone to the replacement easily.
As to cashless transaction, it wouldn't affect me at all, because I'm not going to be keeping financial info on a phone, anyway (I won't even bank or pay bills by internet).
From the Department of Redundancy Department
As the first poster said, "well duh". Apple owners pay more for their gear, they want superior gear, and it stands to reason that someone who wants a top of the line computer (whether "top of the line" is real or percieved, many people always think the more expensive item must be better, even though Alieve and the generic naproxin sodium are identical but the prices are way apart) is going to want a top of the line room.
I don't see this as ripping off Apple users, I see it as catering to them.
There's your next companion.. right there. Moffatt.. that's a freebee.
What? You're saying she landed in Springfield? And here I thought aliens abducted her and took her to the Delta Quadrant!
Thank you for posting that! I was going to, but couldn't remember the name of the story. For those who may not have read it, Martians (decended from people who immigrated from Earth) need water, and Earth's dumb politicians won't let them have some (Asimov goes into the political details iirc) so they go to Saturn to harvest its rings.
Of course, anybody who's at slashdot who hasn't read Asimov, WHY NOT???
Hmmm, good point.
I was referring to the user himself. Obviously, his being on a botnet adversely affects you and me, while his computer being full of toolbars doesn't. But if you're going to load a TSR and you really don't have room, why shouldn't your AV (or OS itself) warn you?
That is actually what I was trying to convey; the dinasaurs of 65 million years ago adapted to the new environment and now poop on your car. The animals that needed to but didn't died out, the ones that didn't need to because either their environments stayed the same or they migrated didn't (some crab species are millions of years old).
I'm 60 and I stopped paying for cable a long time ago. I have an antenna for local news, the bar down the street for sports, and the internet for everything else.
Thirty years ago cable made sense. Ten bucks a month of ad-free watching (except local shows) including HBO, and it was long before Discovery and History and other such "educational" channels stopped educating and started sucking.
If they would offer networks by the channel (I refuse to pay for the Golf channel and the cooking channel and BET and LifeTime) for two bucks a channel, they might get ten or fifteen bucks a month from me again. But fifty bucks for a hundred channels of pure crap when I might watch five or ten once in a great while? I'd be a fool.
The end of the loudness wars (if this is accurate) came way too little and way too late for me.
Ok, since you missed the point... what makes your brain so special?
That is the point: we don't know what makes the brain so special. We don't know what sentience is or what causes it. Give someone a bag of electronic parts, enough to build a radio, who has very little knowledge of electricity and no knowlege of radio waves to build a radio out of them. It just won't happen. Or in this case, give him a chemical brain and ask him to build a radio out of that.
Until you understand how neurons work, and how learning works, you can't know whether computers are or are not sentient.
Maybe rocks and trees and cars are sentient, too. Highly unlikely, I'd say. But we do know that neurons and synampses are nothing like logic gates.
You should have been modded up, that was concise and accurate.
Yeah it's what you do when you use aliteration
*groan*
BTW - does Bob have one of those helpful guides for people who don't understand closing HTML tags?
If you're referring to the .</a>, that was deliberate; it looks wierd when the period comes after the [angryflower.com].
Animals never need to evolve
In the same way that you don't need to breathe, eat, and drink.
Actually, I agree with you. Thwo outspoken athiests I know in meatspace were both brought up in religious families, one Catholic and one strict Southern Baptist. OTOH, another fellow I know was brought up by a athiest parents, and after his alcoholism left him homeless and destitute, he had a religious experience and now knows God personally.
Shoving religion (or lack of it) down someone's throats, especially children's, is often if not usually counterproductive.
Agnosticism is the only logical choice unless you have experienced divinity, in which case divinity's existance has been shown to you. In that case disbelief would be counter-logical. You don't need faith to know that elephants are real (assuming you have seen elephants). You do need faith to pet one, faith in the fact that he won't stomp you in the ground. To deny the existance of elephants on the grounds that such an animal is impossible, despite having people directly tell you they have seen elephants, is irrational. Unless you have seen it yourself, saying "there could be such a thing but I doubt it" or "I think it's probably ture" are the logical choices.
As you note, there's a big difference between lack of education and child abuse. Until the middle of the last century, illiteracy and innumeracy was the worldwide norm.
"Where do you draw the line" is a good question. We as a society (well, in the US anyway, Europe is more civilized than us) withhold food from children. Christmas is a horrible time for most children in the Harvard Park neighorhrood here in Springfield, because they go hungry over Christmas break when they don't get school lunches. They did better last year, my church gave every family with children who attended Harvard Park Elementary two weeks worth of groceries. But there should not have been a need to do that. Churches shouldn't have to do the job that governments are supposed to.
I'd say that lack of food trumps lack of education. And the kids going hungry aren't learning much anyway, and they're almost all going to grow up to be pimps and whores and gangbangers. Their educations are meaningless; thay do indeed have an inability to earn an honest living.
Would you take children away from parents who believe literacy and numeracy are evil? Taking a kid away always harms the child greatly; I know adults who were brought up in foster homes, they are without exception seriously fucked up individuals. You should never take a kid away from his parents unless staying would be worse for the kid.
I live close to Harvard Park, most of the poverty is from poor upbringing, including being raised in foster homes (some is due to mental illnesses which we as a society refuse to treat).
The parent who believes literacy and numeracy are evil are going to be illiterate and innumerate themselves, and will be poor. Very few poor people ever rise out of poverty. It does happen, but isn't really all that common.
Human's are complex, social creatures
Yeah, if I were aliterate I'd probably post anonymously, too. You might want to meet Bob.
Oh, and look the word up before you pounce on "aliterate". It is not a misspelling of "illiterate".
When climates change, animals can either evolve or move. Ice age? Move south. Global warming? Move north. It's the ones that can't or don't move that must evolve when the climate changes.
People in Florida will either have to move north, or evolve gills when the sea level rises.
Evolution and creationism directly contradict each other
No they don't. The bible simply says that God created everything, evolution explains how he went about it. Not mutually exclusive at all. And in fact, almost all Christians do in fact accept evolution, even the Pope does.
If someone considers mathematics and writing the work of the devil, should they be allowed to bring their children up without teaching them how to count, read or write?
What gives you the right to tell someone else how to raise their children? Especially since the parents themselves wouldn't know how to read, write, or count. Athiests teach their children that religion is evil, and they have every right to do so.
Now a school system, otoh, does not have that right, nor should they be teaching creationism in science class, that belongs in philosophy class or Sunday school.
God is a concept made up by humanity.
Believe what you will, but many of us have direct experience with God. Despite the fact that you don't believe elephants are possible, I've been to the zoo.
Your faith in the lack of God is impressive; I have no need of faith in his existance. "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God."
As to evolution, that's pretty much been settled scientifically, these fundies are misguided.