That's certainly possible. If my experience with women didn't mirror that of every single man I've ever asked, I'd assume that the problem is mine.
However, that's not the case. Rather than being amazingly bad at choosing women, it turns out that the women we have to choose from are amazingly bad.
Hence the gyndroid. A "female" with none of the liabilities of a real woman, but the ability to be programmed to respond the way a man finds satisfying.
Seriously, imagine the simple psychological impact of your gyndroid "hearing" you say hello when you come home from work and it actually responds by saying that it's glad to see you and that it missed you while you were away.
This is such a simple phrase, and yet it's one that almost never occurs in American households. The amazing thing is that a woman doesn't even need to actually mean it for a man to be satisfied. All we need is to consistently hear the words.
A gyndroid can be programmed to say it likes to see you. A human woman can't. It's as simple as that.
Hm... I suppose the more accurate statement is that women are fun in bed, but only to a point. They are content to be on the receiving end, and I do have great fun with that. However, women seem unwilling to give at the same level as men.
Consequently, the difference between a gyndroid just laying there and a human woman just laying there are negligible. Certainly human women provide more feedback, but this is ultimately a matter of how sophisticated the programming of the gyndroid is.
Considering what's now possible on Android devices, it seems to me that the lack of response by a gyndroid could be easily overcome by simply embedding an Android device in it. Keep the voice recognition software running constantly, write a program that controls the gyndroid's actions via voice recognition alone.
Actually, now that I think of it...
Utility-wise, the gyndroid would probably spend a lot of time in storage. If it had an Android device embedded, a program could be written to allow the droid to "monitor" its surroundings by sound.
Suppose you leave the gyndroid on the couch, turned on and charging. You're at work and a miscreant breaks in. The droid could be programmed to respond by sending you an SMS.
That's it... I'm putting a Nexus One in one of these things...
The original poster asked why someone would buy this product. I explained, in as much detail as I thought necessary to communicate my perspective. Does the simple fact that you might disagree with my views make me a troll?
And again, on the subject at hand, this product is by no means unique nor the best on the market. I've never actually seen an AndyDroid, but on paper, it certainly looks like a considerably better product.
I'm guessing this is a troll, but the fact that this is modded "Interesting" instead of "Troll" says something disturbing about slashdot. I can only imagine that a reasonable number of readers agree with it. Presumably embittered male readers.
Indeed. There are two possibilities that might account for this:
The men of/. are generally sexist pigs who identify with my rant.
The men of/. have generally the same experience with women as I
I would suggest that instead of simply assuming the former, you consider that the latter might be valid.
So many things I could say, so let me pick the easiest: assets? Seriously? A neutral addition to the household, or a liability? How are they any more of a liability than YOU are, unless you are in fact suggesting that a woman's place is in the home and that "the skills that made them an asset in the past" are the only skills of value?
The reason that women tend to become a liability in the household is because, in general, the effect of having one in your life is an immediate, unceasing drain on a man's finances.
I enter a relationship looking for -- and intending to be in return -- a loving companion. What we get is massive headaches and bills. And at the same time, it becomes our responsibility to be emotionally supportive under any and all circumstances.
Men can deal with this if there's some kind of payoff. However, the payoff never comes. We spend energy, time, and money on women at an increasing rate while receiving little or nothing in return. If we consistently got some kind of praise or even appreciation for the time and energy, the money would be irrelevant.
But in general, we don't receive praise or appeciation. Our support (emotional and financial) is simply assumed to be something owed the women for her existence in our lives.
Well, it doesn't work that way. Nobody goes into a relationship just giving, giving, giving and never expecting to receive support when we need it. Indeed, most Western women will happily abandon a man the moment he needs support of any kind.
How long will most men put up with that kind of attitude?
As long as women behave this way, a gyndroid is simply more rewarding for a man. That's why this product exists, after all.
And by the way, having seen the videos of the droid, I'm unimpressed. A German company has been marketing a significantly more attractive and more sophisticated version for several years under the name AndyDroid.
In point of fact, I've considered switching teams. However, I'm not attracted in any way to men. I have no moral or even personal issues with homosexuality; but given my complete lack of interest whatsoever, I can only conclude that it's not for me. I assume that lesbian women must feel the same way about men.
Here's the reason men like me will buy products like this:
In general, Western women are just a pain in the ass to be around.
Western women make absolutely lousy companions. They're typically happy to be going somewhere or doing something she wants to do, but will drag her feet and complain when situation is reversed.
Western women also tend to view men as little more than a human wallet. One need go no further than any "family law" court to prove that this is so, but Western women display this attitude constantly. Try unexpectedly not paying your date's way and see if she goes on another.
Worse, if a man is married and loses his job, the marriage immediately hits the rocks. If he's out of work for long, it's over. "For richer or poorer," my ass.
Oh, and if you haven't noticed, the physical beauty of a woman is in direct proportion to the income of her boyfriend or husband. Frankly, I'm unclear why this isn't anything other than socially-acceptable prostitution.
Western women no longer have any skills that would make them assets as life companions. They microwave food just like men, keep house just like men, and have little skill in raising well-adjusted children. And before you go nuts, realize that I'm not suggesting that a woman's place is in the home. I'm simply pointing out that they no longer have the skills that made them an asset in the past. They're at best a neutral addition to the household; in general, they're just liabilities.
In general, women aren't any fun sexually, as they tend to just lay there. This continues to amaze me in the Internet age: any woman who cares to look will find a multitude of "how-to" guides in the form of porn. There are some exceptions, but in general women do nothing in bed. And I own and use a Hitachi Magic Wand on my lovers, so I won't buy the idea that it's my performance that's at fault. If you can't give a woman orgasms with a Magic Wand, you need to adjust your drool cup.
I'm middle-aged, and I've been waiting for a decent gyndroid (the female version of an android) for about five years. That was when, after a lifetime watching women misbehave, I finally gave up on finding a rational, well-adjusted woman to share my life.
In all seriousness, when you break it down, the disadvantages of having a relationship with a woman far outweigh the advantages. Indeed, Western women have deteriorated so badly that unless you want to procreate, they're nothing but trouble. I already have children and have no desire for more, so what can a woman offer me that a gyndroid can't?
And as to the cost... well, I don't know the pricing of this particular item, but I've looked at RealDolls and they're very pricey. However, think of it this way:
A man can expect to pay in the vicinity of a hundred bucks for a nice date -- the kind that impresses women and leads them to want to spend more time with you. That's every date. Then there's marriage and the inevitable use of a man's money in amounts that -- over time -- would astound a person.
If a good gyndroid cost $10,000, it would be considerably less than a man spends on a woman when amortized over ten or fifteen years. Frankly, a gyndroid would be a real bargain.
Perhaps the reason it was marked as flamebait is because I invoked Bill Clinton's name in the original post. I tangentially intimated that the Bill Clinton defense of, "Oral sex isn't really sex," created a clear demarcation point regarding teenagers' views of sex.
(Let me state in advance that I'm a small-l libertarian and devotee of the Zero Aggression Principle, so my opinion of almost every President since Jefferson is pretty low. The Republicans will have me as a member of their party long enough to vote for Ron Paul in the Primaries -- and they'll keep me if he somehow wins. Beyond that, I've no special love nor hatred for Clinton: he was simply another in a long, long list of 19th- and 20th-century power-mad sociopaths who got elected. I see little difference between Clinton and those who pre- and anteceded him. In point of fact, I actually preferred Clinton because you always knew where you stood: he was in it for the power [and more specifically the sex that power afforded him], and he didn't make too many bones about it. Compare that with all the other Presidents who are in it for the power but try and convince us that there's some higher, nobler goal.
(That said:)
More or less before Bill Clinton, sex may have been something that teenagers talked about and gossiped about, but it rarely actually occurred. After Bill Clinton, sex -- particularly oral sex -- was considered a common everyday topic and girls started giving hummers because the "it's not really sex" defense made it socially acceptable.
It kind of evolved from there, to the point where today women fear no social repercussions from promiscuity.
Think what you like of Clinton, but if you're old enough to remember the Lewinsky scandal as a current event rather than a childhood memory, you have to admit that one of his legacies has been as a key figure in the normalization of sex among children.
So if I shot at your kids they wouldn't be afraid?
When they were infants? They'd be startled by the noise, no doubt. They might get angry because of the sudden (and, depending on the distance from you, painfully loud) report. But be afraid of anything other than that, no. How could they, without any kind of learned context into which to place the sound of a gunshot?
Contrary to the claims of victim disarmament proponents (the correct term for "gun control") guns aren't inherently terrifying. You have to learn to be afraid of them, the same as you have to learn to be afraid of a live 220-volt electrical cable.
If you shot at them today, when they're 11 and 13, no doubt they'd be afraid. They'd also be busy drawing their own sidearms to protect themselves, so I'd suggest keeping your gun holstered. They are, after all, pretty good markswomen.:)
Remember... you're talking to the Slashdot crowd here. Hookers turn them away.
Nah, the same statement applies: you can get almost any woman today to have sex with you simply by asking nicely.
The problem with people like ourselves, who tend to border on schizoid personality disorder, is that we never ask. We assume that the woman would reject us out of hand, consequently we don't bother to ask.
Being 42 and divorced several years, I've made a point to overcome my natural tendency to avoid social situations with a lot of people around. Consequently, I've asked for sex a fair amount and have no problem finding partners -- most of whom have been ten to twenty years younger than I. There's nothing special about me: I just discovered that unlike my youth, modern women have few standards and will almost always have sex with you if you ask.
Seriously, guys, it's not that difficult. You don't have to be particularly attractive, suave, or debonair (I'm certainly not). Having money helps, but much of the time, the woman never even learns how much you make. Modern women simply have no standards and will almost always sleep with anyone who asks.
So, one drug that impairs judgement is better than the other? May as well just get her a lobotomy and be done with it...
If you're a horny and unprincipled teenager or college kid, you want to get laid. This is much, much easier today than it was when I was a teenager. When I was young, women had certain standards, and would generally only agree to sex once those standards were met. Today, you can get almost any woman to agree to sex if you simply ask nicely.
However, assuming you're still getting a "no," and assuming you have no ethical problem with impairing a woman's judgement, then yes, some drugs are better than others for that purpose.
Alcohol is the drug of choice, of course, due to its low price and high availability. However, this will often impair a woman's ability to perform sexually, so it's not optimal.
Further, drugs such as rohypnol leave the woman in an extremely impaired state. Furthermore, depending on circumstances, she may remember parts of the encounter and recall that she was impaired at the time.
Where this drug would be best would be in the case where the woman wants to have sex, but various fears cause her to choose not to. The drug would apparently not interfere with her ability to perform, but would simply remove the inhibition due to fear.
As I say, in modern times there's probably little point in bothering, since almost any female over the age of 15 can be convinced to have sex without any coercion of any kind. Perhaps it would be useful for women afraid of anal sex or group sex... ?
Well, we get into a complex area, here -- one that this drug will no doubt make much clearer as it becomes clinically available.
I agree that some children fear heights. Neither of mine did, however.
Depending on temperament, they also fear strangers, from a very early age. These are not learned fears. They are innate.
Both of the fears you're talking about may have a lot to do with brain chemistry -- hence its effect being interpreted as a person's temperament and that varies from person to person.
As I say, this drug should have little impact on fears caused by brain chemistry. I still maintain, however, that the overwhelming majority of our modern fears are learned rather than innate. No doubt the clinical availability of this drug will help our understanding of which is which and why.
"In general I agree, but you might recall that babies have an innate fear of loud noises, especially when combined with sudden movements.
I think what you're observing is what pediatricians call the "startle reflex." I would theorize that the reaction to surprise is, in fact, an ingrained fear of some kind -- so you're right, this drug wouldn't be much use in trying to combat the fears caused by, say, haunted houses or having one's sibling jump out from behind a door.
"I can't imagine anyone using it for dangerous behavior. The fear is half the fun of dangerous behavior."
Hm... I guess what I was intimating was that it would be used for illicit purposes. Example:
When I was a teenager, I had a girlfriend who absolutely refused to have sex with me. Remember, this was very pre-Bill Clinton, when most girls didn't even perform oral sex for fear of the social repercussions of being branded a slut. Her issue wasn't with me or our relationship, but rather fear of pregnancy or what others might think if they found out.
These are clearly learned fears. For proof, simply have a look at the typical modern teenaged girl. Post-Bill Clinton, they've learned that if they're not eager to perform oral sex on the first date, they'll have to face the negative social repercussions of being branded frigid.
I can certainly see a use for this drug in situations like mine: I'd've gotten laid were it not for this girl's learned fears, after all. I'm too ethical to have ever slipped her any, but I know lots of guys who wouldn't have hesitated.
No doubt there are lots of other fears. Perhaps one could take this drug in order to take the edge off of bungee jumping or sky-diving, for example... ?
To be honest, if I ever had to go into combat, I'd be begging for this stuff. If it works like I suspect it would, you'd avoid a lot of cases of shellshock that way.
What is "innate fear"? I would suggest that in fact, no such thing exists. Instead, virtually all fear is learned. Even the amorphous entity called "fear of the unknown" is simply a result of having spent time on Planet Earth and correctly learned that the unknown can kill you.
I make this claim based on my having raised two daughters. As infants and toddlers, they have no fear whatsoever: just endless simian curiosity. This is why parents have to child-proof the house, since no 18-month old yet has a fear of electrical outlets nor running ovens. These are things that a child must be taught to fear.
Similarly, now that they're teenagers, they have to be taught to fear things that are inherently unsafe -- in some ways, it's worse now than it was when they were toddlers. As an experienced adult, I know that hanging out at the mall with no purpose other than to be with your teenaged friends is an inherently dangerous idea...
(In any group of teenagers, take the IQ of the smartest one and divide by the number of teenagers present, and you'll have a rough idea of the collective intelligence of the group; divide this number by five, and you get a rough idea of the collective judgement).
... but my daughters think of it as fun. Only experience will teach them differently, just as it taught me.
Similarly, one has to be taught to fear certain aspects of combat: if you've never been exposed to it, how would you have any reaction to it at all, other than as a concept? I don't actually fear combat, and at 42, I should have such a fear if it was innate. I have a learned fear of death and I associate combat with mortality, so I know conceptually that combat should be avoided if possible. However, I have no real fear of it except as a concept because I've never personally experienced it.
I suspect that once this drug hits the market, we're going to discover clinically what I just suggested: that almost all fear is learned, consequently this drug will be used (and abused) to remove fears ranging from shellshock (I refuse to water the concept down by calling it PTSD) to fear of pregnancy or STDs from unprotected sex.
What this drug will probably be useless for is chronic anxiety due to brain chemistry. I suffer from this to varying degrees myself and I'm entirely aware that it's irrational and beyond my conscious control no matter how hard I try and relax. Instead, I take a medication intended to correct my brain's chemical imbalance. This drug will likely be useless to me but will find its way to the black market in short order for those who want to take tests without being nervous or engage in dangerous behaviour, both of which are learned fears.
Even the name "Homeland Security" freaks me out, not because they have extraordinary powers that threaten me, but because the name reminds me of something out of 1984 type double speak, sort of a Stalin-esk soviet type of pun.
Keep in mind that the English translation of "KGB" is "Committee for State Security". Allowing for idiomatic and cultural translations, the DHS is the American KGB. In point of fact, I've been referring to it as "the American KGB" since it was instituted.
Fortunately for all of us, enough of a free market still exists in the US to drive talented people into the private sector, leaving only the dregs who can't earn a living any other way than forcing taxpayers to cough up money to work for the government. This ensures that no matter how it tries, government programs can only be utterly incompetent.
The last thing we need, after all, is an American KGB that is as competent as its Soviet counterpart
You know, the constant crises and fear-mongering our politicians engage in is getting really tiresome as I enter middle age. After 42 years on planet Earth, I've learned that every time some politician whines about a crisis or makes a resolution like this, it turns out to be absolutely pointless and generally a non-issue.
It's one of the (many) reasons I don't global warming doesn't hit my radar: if that many politicians worldwide are whining, then it can't possibly be an important issue. And besides, I remember when politicians whined that global cooling was going to kill us all...
In terms of the actual dangers of the Internet, I refer to my good friend L. Neil Smith:
"You can't child-proof the world; you can only world-proof your child."
If you're a parent who doesn't understand that simple concept, turn your kids over to the nearest orphanage. They'll do a better job raising them than you will.
And that, my friends, is the most succinct argument as to why the copyright and patent system in the U.S. is (and has always been) immoral.
"Intellectual property" doesn't exist. It's a legal term with no real-world counterpart. Information isn't property: it's either known, unknown, or secret. Unknown information can be discovered and kept secret, but the moment it's out in public, there's no making it secret again, no matter how hard you try. You can have NDAs to protect against it no longer being secret, but that's as far as it goes.
Particularly with music -- which is information that by its very nature is intended to be public! -- there is no way to treat it as owned by a single individual. At best, one might devise a system to assure that proper credit is given for its creation and to restrict others from playing it.
However, the notion that a stream of bits on my hard drive isn't my property is identical to claiming that the memory of a song I heard at a concert isn't my property. Why, after all, do we have storage media? To assist in our own imperfect memories. If we all had eidetic memories, we wouldn't need to store the songs: we could listen to them once and then recall them in perfect detail any time.
One day, we'll have computers that plug into our brains directly and will actually allow us to recall every event we've ever experienced in perfect detail: memories are, after all, pathways literally burned into our brains, it's only our limited indexing and recall capacity that makes it impossible for us to access them. But that's a problem that will eventually be solved.
What modern copyright claims, in the final analysis, is that we don't own our own memories, particularly if we've got them on archived storage like a hard disk or CD. That's all vinyl records, 8-track tapes, cassette tapes, CDs, and hard drives are, after all: archival storage for our own minds.
Do you own your own memories, or does some musician? That's the real question.
It won't get called off. To call it off would require a complete dismantling of the U.S. copyright and patent system. Copyrights and patents as they presently stand were never consistent with reality and they've always been blatantly immoral. Easy digital reproduction simply makes this painfully obvious to even the dimmest bulb.
Clearly, there's too much money tied up in copyrights and patents (and consequently too many Congresscritters purchased by interested parties) for the current system system to be dismantled.
No, the sad fact is that what the RIAA does is legal and will remain so until the Republic finally falls and we can ignore those jokers in Washington. In ten years, there will be midnight copyright raids, the same as there are drug raids today and with the same justification.
Screw ethics and morality. The issue is always about how those in government can control the governed. Copyrights and patents are a wonderful way of making sure we all knuckle under.
To be honest, I'm glad they're busy passing laws that are unenforceable. It keeps them busy. If they weren't passing pointless laws like this, they're capable of inflicting real damage.
I've said for years that the end of the Republic is a bunch of idiots sitting in Washington passing laws that nobody bothers to care about. We're on track. Now, just as soon as enough people don't bother to care about their taxes, we'll have these little power-mad sociopaths right where we want them.
Flashing lights are good. Any sysadmin with an ounce of sense knows that a clean, well-ordered server room with lots of flashing lights impresses the clueless suits. If lights are flashing, work must be happening, right?
Plus, it makes you look that much more knowledgeable when said suits come poking around the server room asking questions... then you squint at a flashing light, furrow your brow, ask them to hang on for a second while you tap out 'ls -al/var/log | sort | less', then stare intently at the screen for a few moments. Then you can tell them that you're seeing a minor glitch in the AE-35 unit that if left uncorrected will cause a fault in less than 24 hours... so can they come back later, after you've fixed it?
Lights are good, my friends, lights are good.
Look, the US Constitution is an apocryphal document. It's meaningless, just a piece of paper to be referenced in political speeches when you want to stimulate a patriotic feeling in your audience. It's not something anyone has to pay attention to any more. Certainly your elected representatives don't pay attention to it, or they wouldn't be spending 99.99999999999999% of their time actively violating it.
The US was founded on the notion that you have intrinsic rights and that the only reason for government to exist was to protect them. This idea (predictably) failed as early as the Jefferson Administration but was certainly dead and buried under Lincoln.
Today, you have whatever rights your masters in Washington wish to allow you to have. That's the plain, hard truth of the matter. You may not like it (I certainly don't), but short of governmental collapse, it's not going to change. The US Federal Government is now no different from any other government on Earth. It has and will continue to legislate away your free speech, and nothing you can do will stop them.
I mean, why should they be afraid of you? You're not human beings, you're assets to be managed. It's not like you could revolt against your masters, that ability was taken from you with the very first Federal victim disarmament legislation almost a century ago.
You're a modern-day version of a serf, subject to the whim of your betters. Live with it.
In having refined movie tastes, and the active desire to seek out inspired movies over insipid ones
But see, that's the thing: my tastes aren't refined, nor do I have a particular desire to see inspired movies.
Again, case in point: Superman Returns. I would never in a million years expect it to be particularly inspired, meaningful filmmaking. I would expect it to be two hours of action and special effects, of the Man of Steel doing the post-millennial equivalent of leaping tall buildings in a single bound. I'd want to see the good guy trounce the bad guy while I cheer him on.
And I didn't get it. There wasn't much Superman in the Superman movie at all, and due to rotten direction and cinematography I couldn't see what he was doing half the time anyway. I should have left the movie feeling good: I left feeling like I'd only seen half a movie and spend 2.5 hours doing it.
It was just not a good movie, and there's no reason it couldn't have been other than everyone involved simply doesn't know how to make a fun movie. That's hardly the viewer's fault, is it?
The other problem is the viewing audience. They don't want to see new things.
Sorry, gotta take issue with that.
It's not that we don't want to see something new, it's that we can't see something new if it's not being produced.
I don't think I've seen a movie I really liked and was enthusiastic about in at least ten years, with the exception of The Matrix (and neither of its ridiculous sequels). It's not the viewer's fault if Hollywierd keeps on churning out the same junk year after excrutiating year.
Take, for example, Superman Returns. Like Singer, I'm a huge fan of S1 in particular, and it's a movie that holds up well today. If Warner Brothers re-released S1 in theaters, I bet it would do decent business even in spite of being available on DVD. It's just that good.
I wanted to like SR. I walked into the theater with every expectation that I would enjoy a $250M Superman movie directed by Bryan Singer. And it turned out to be a very pedantic remake of S1 featuring very little of the title character. It wasn't even well-directed, what with its constant quick-cuts and the camera shaking so badly during action sequences that even on a 12-inch screen, the audience is hard-pressed to follow the action.
If this is the best that an admitted fan and supposed rising star can do with $250M, then it's no wonder that Hollywierd can't produce a decent movie to save its life.
It's not the audience's fault. The producers have literally no idea what makes a good movie, consequently they make movies that suck, consequently they don't make much money. That's why we have sequels and derivitives, because for some bizarre reason, producers can't figure out what audiences want to watch, so they look into the past, hoping audiences will watch something similar again.
Pop culture and modern technology being in the sorry state that it is, I think the best we can hope for is the final laying to rest of Hollywierd as the primary purveyor of entertainment. Fortunately, quality filmmaking is no longer technically impossible on a small budget (see Star Trek New Voyages or any number of other amateur/fan films), and the Internet provides a distribution mechanism. It remains to be seen if it can be made a commercially successful medium, but I'd rather spend an hour watching shorts from Blame Society Films (Chad Vader, though I actually prefer some of their other stuff) than plunk down twenty bucks to see a movie I can almost guarantee is going to be a total waste of my time and cash.
There was a time when I would have detested the laptop keyboard I'm using now. I grew up when typwriters were still in use -- lugged a portable around my college campus, in fact. For a long time, I hated keyboards that didn't have the same kind of tactile feedback as my typewriter.
But I got used to it. The conversion from real to virtual keyboard would probably be even more seamless, because there's really no reason one's datagloves couldn't have a "rumble" feature like that found in modern gamepads. I.e., hit a virtual key, feel a slight jolt.
Though to be honest, given the conversion from typewriter keyboards to modern ones, I'm unclear that it would be necessary. You might include configuration options for they virtual keyboard that would allow the rumble to be turned on or off, or include configurable visual cues, such as a key lighting up slightly when struck.
Regardless, I would imagine that a VRUI-based computer, not bound by the design constraints of monitor/keyboard/mouse, would be very small and basically have a lot of inputs -- for size and speed reasons, probably 1394 interfaces. No reason there couldn't be 1394 keyboards or even a couple of legacy USB ports for physical keyboards or mice.
I would imagine that a GUI would be available as a two-dimensional virtual screen in an otherwise three-dimensional VRUI. No reason it couldn't, after all -- the same way you can run KDE apps under Gnome if you have the KDE libraries installed.
Same with the CLI. I don't see it ever going away, because there are tasks for which it's suited (scripting repetitive actions, OS installs on bare metal, etc).
I see the adoption of the VRUI over the GUI as the same kind of transition from pure-CLI to primarily GUI some ten or fifteen years ago. The time is ripe for the development of the VRUI as the primary user interface the same as the time was ripe for the introduction of the GUI in the 1980s.
Linux should be doing it now, getting in on the ground floor and leading the way. If there isn't a Gnome- or KDE-level project to do so in the very near future, Jobs or Gates will end up doing it first -- and in the process, do a lot of damage to Linux in all its spaces.
Slashdot Mirror
Wow. You are amazingly bad at choosing women.
That's certainly possible. If my experience with women didn't mirror that of every single man I've ever asked, I'd assume that the problem is mine.
However, that's not the case. Rather than being amazingly bad at choosing women, it turns out that the women we have to choose from are amazingly bad.
Hence the gyndroid. A "female" with none of the liabilities of a real woman, but the ability to be programmed to respond the way a man finds satisfying.
Seriously, imagine the simple psychological impact of your gyndroid "hearing" you say hello when you come home from work and it actually responds by saying that it's glad to see you and that it missed you while you were away.
This is such a simple phrase, and yet it's one that almost never occurs in American households. The amazing thing is that a woman doesn't even need to actually mean it for a man to be satisfied. All we need is to consistently hear the words.
A gyndroid can be programmed to say it likes to see you. A human woman can't. It's as simple as that.
In general, women aren't any fun sexually
What? What!?!
Man, are you doing something wrong...
Hm ... I suppose the more accurate statement is that women are fun in bed, but only to a point. They are content to be on the receiving end, and I do have great fun with that. However, women seem unwilling to give at the same level as men.
Consequently, the difference between a gyndroid just laying there and a human woman just laying there are negligible. Certainly human women provide more feedback, but this is ultimately a matter of how sophisticated the programming of the gyndroid is.
Considering what's now possible on Android devices, it seems to me that the lack of response by a gyndroid could be easily overcome by simply embedding an Android device in it. Keep the voice recognition software running constantly, write a program that controls the gyndroid's actions via voice recognition alone.
Actually, now that I think of it ...
Utility-wise, the gyndroid would probably spend a lot of time in storage. If it had an Android device embedded, a program could be written to allow the droid to "monitor" its surroundings by sound.
Suppose you leave the gyndroid on the couch, turned on and charging. You're at work and a miscreant breaks in. The droid could be programmed to respond by sending you an SMS.
That's it ... I'm putting a Nexus One in one of these things ...
The original poster asked why someone would buy this product. I explained, in as much detail as I thought necessary to communicate my perspective. Does the simple fact that you might disagree with my views make me a troll?
And again, on the subject at hand, this product is by no means unique nor the best on the market. I've never actually seen an AndyDroid, but on paper, it certainly looks like a considerably better product.
I'm guessing this is a troll, but the fact that this is modded "Interesting" instead of "Troll" says something disturbing about slashdot. I can only imagine that a reasonable number of readers agree with it. Presumably embittered male readers.
Indeed. There are two possibilities that might account for this:
I would suggest that instead of simply assuming the former, you consider that the latter might be valid.
So many things I could say, so let me pick the easiest: assets? Seriously? A neutral addition to the household, or a liability? How are they any more of a liability than YOU are, unless you are in fact suggesting that a woman's place is in the home and that "the skills that made them an asset in the past" are the only skills of value?
The reason that women tend to become a liability in the household is because, in general, the effect of having one in your life is an immediate, unceasing drain on a man's finances.
I enter a relationship looking for -- and intending to be in return -- a loving companion. What we get is massive headaches and bills. And at the same time, it becomes our responsibility to be emotionally supportive under any and all circumstances.
Men can deal with this if there's some kind of payoff. However, the payoff never comes. We spend energy, time, and money on women at an increasing rate while receiving little or nothing in return. If we consistently got some kind of praise or even appreciation for the time and energy, the money would be irrelevant.
But in general, we don't receive praise or appeciation. Our support (emotional and financial) is simply assumed to be something owed the women for her existence in our lives.
Well, it doesn't work that way. Nobody goes into a relationship just giving, giving, giving and never expecting to receive support when we need it. Indeed, most Western women will happily abandon a man the moment he needs support of any kind.
How long will most men put up with that kind of attitude?
As long as women behave this way, a gyndroid is simply more rewarding for a man. That's why this product exists, after all.
And by the way, having seen the videos of the droid, I'm unimpressed. A German company has been marketing a significantly more attractive and more sophisticated version for several years under the name AndyDroid.
In point of fact, I've considered switching teams. However, I'm not attracted in any way to men. I have no moral or even personal issues with homosexuality; but given my complete lack of interest whatsoever, I can only conclude that it's not for me. I assume that lesbian women must feel the same way about men.
Here's the reason men like me will buy products like this:
In general, Western women are just a pain in the ass to be around.
Western women make absolutely lousy companions. They're typically happy to be going somewhere or doing something she wants to do, but will drag her feet and complain when situation is reversed.
Western women also tend to view men as little more than a human wallet. One need go no further than any "family law" court to prove that this is so, but Western women display this attitude constantly. Try unexpectedly not paying your date's way and see if she goes on another.
Worse, if a man is married and loses his job, the marriage immediately hits the rocks. If he's out of work for long, it's over. "For richer or poorer," my ass.
Oh, and if you haven't noticed, the physical beauty of a woman is in direct proportion to the income of her boyfriend or husband. Frankly, I'm unclear why this isn't anything other than socially-acceptable prostitution.
Western women no longer have any skills that would make them assets as life companions. They microwave food just like men, keep house just like men, and have little skill in raising well-adjusted children. And before you go nuts, realize that I'm not suggesting that a woman's place is in the home. I'm simply pointing out that they no longer have the skills that made them an asset in the past. They're at best a neutral addition to the household; in general, they're just liabilities.
In general, women aren't any fun sexually, as they tend to just lay there. This continues to amaze me in the Internet age: any woman who cares to look will find a multitude of "how-to" guides in the form of porn. There are some exceptions, but in general women do nothing in bed. And I own and use a Hitachi Magic Wand on my lovers, so I won't buy the idea that it's my performance that's at fault. If you can't give a woman orgasms with a Magic Wand, you need to adjust your drool cup.
I'm middle-aged, and I've been waiting for a decent gyndroid (the female version of an android) for about five years. That was when, after a lifetime watching women misbehave, I finally gave up on finding a rational, well-adjusted woman to share my life.
In all seriousness, when you break it down, the disadvantages of having a relationship with a woman far outweigh the advantages. Indeed, Western women have deteriorated so badly that unless you want to procreate, they're nothing but trouble. I already have children and have no desire for more, so what can a woman offer me that a gyndroid can't?
And as to the cost ... well, I don't know the pricing of this particular item, but I've looked at RealDolls and they're very pricey. However, think of it this way:
A man can expect to pay in the vicinity of a hundred bucks for a nice date -- the kind that impresses women and leads them to want to spend more time with you. That's every date. Then there's marriage and the inevitable use of a man's money in amounts that -- over time -- would astound a person.
If a good gyndroid cost $10,000, it would be considerably less than a man spends on a woman when amortized over ten or fifteen years. Frankly, a gyndroid would be a real bargain.
I know how to tell if my contribution is significant. It's really very simple: I get paid.
Perhaps the reason it was marked as flamebait is because I invoked Bill Clinton's name in the original post. I tangentially intimated that the Bill Clinton defense of, "Oral sex isn't really sex," created a clear demarcation point regarding teenagers' views of sex.
(Let me state in advance that I'm a small-l libertarian and devotee of the Zero Aggression Principle, so my opinion of almost every President since Jefferson is pretty low. The Republicans will have me as a member of their party long enough to vote for Ron Paul in the Primaries -- and they'll keep me if he somehow wins. Beyond that, I've no special love nor hatred for Clinton: he was simply another in a long, long list of 19th- and 20th-century power-mad sociopaths who got elected. I see little difference between Clinton and those who pre- and anteceded him. In point of fact, I actually preferred Clinton because you always knew where you stood: he was in it for the power [and more specifically the sex that power afforded him], and he didn't make too many bones about it. Compare that with all the other Presidents who are in it for the power but try and convince us that there's some higher, nobler goal.
(That said:)
More or less before Bill Clinton, sex may have been something that teenagers talked about and gossiped about, but it rarely actually occurred. After Bill Clinton, sex -- particularly oral sex -- was considered a common everyday topic and girls started giving hummers because the "it's not really sex" defense made it socially acceptable.
It kind of evolved from there, to the point where today women fear no social repercussions from promiscuity.
Think what you like of Clinton, but if you're old enough to remember the Lewinsky scandal as a current event rather than a childhood memory, you have to admit that one of his legacies has been as a key figure in the normalization of sex among children.
When they were infants? They'd be startled by the noise, no doubt. They might get angry because of the sudden (and, depending on the distance from you, painfully loud) report. But be afraid of anything other than that, no. How could they, without any kind of learned context into which to place the sound of a gunshot?
Contrary to the claims of victim disarmament proponents (the correct term for "gun control") guns aren't inherently terrifying. You have to learn to be afraid of them, the same as you have to learn to be afraid of a live 220-volt electrical cable.
If you shot at them today, when they're 11 and 13, no doubt they'd be afraid. They'd also be busy drawing their own sidearms to protect themselves, so I'd suggest keeping your gun holstered. They are, after all, pretty good markswomen. :)
Nah, the same statement applies: you can get almost any woman today to have sex with you simply by asking nicely.
The problem with people like ourselves, who tend to border on schizoid personality disorder, is that we never ask. We assume that the woman would reject us out of hand, consequently we don't bother to ask.
Being 42 and divorced several years, I've made a point to overcome my natural tendency to avoid social situations with a lot of people around. Consequently, I've asked for sex a fair amount and have no problem finding partners -- most of whom have been ten to twenty years younger than I. There's nothing special about me: I just discovered that unlike my youth, modern women have few standards and will almost always have sex with you if you ask.
Seriously, guys, it's not that difficult. You don't have to be particularly attractive, suave, or debonair (I'm certainly not). Having money helps, but much of the time, the woman never even learns how much you make. Modern women simply have no standards and will almost always sleep with anyone who asks.
If you're a horny and unprincipled teenager or college kid, you want to get laid. This is much, much easier today than it was when I was a teenager. When I was young, women had certain standards, and would generally only agree to sex once those standards were met. Today, you can get almost any woman to agree to sex if you simply ask nicely.
However, assuming you're still getting a "no," and assuming you have no ethical problem with impairing a woman's judgement, then yes, some drugs are better than others for that purpose.
Alcohol is the drug of choice, of course, due to its low price and high availability. However, this will often impair a woman's ability to perform sexually, so it's not optimal.
Further, drugs such as rohypnol leave the woman in an extremely impaired state. Furthermore, depending on circumstances, she may remember parts of the encounter and recall that she was impaired at the time.
Where this drug would be best would be in the case where the woman wants to have sex, but various fears cause her to choose not to. The drug would apparently not interfere with her ability to perform, but would simply remove the inhibition due to fear.
As I say, in modern times there's probably little point in bothering, since almost any female over the age of 15 can be convinced to have sex without any coercion of any kind. Perhaps it would be useful for women afraid of anal sex or group sex ... ?
No doubt we'll find out. ;)
Well, we get into a complex area, here -- one that this drug will no doubt make much clearer as it becomes clinically available.
I agree that some children fear heights. Neither of mine did, however.
Both of the fears you're talking about may have a lot to do with brain chemistry -- hence its effect being interpreted as a person's temperament and that varies from person to person.
As I say, this drug should have little impact on fears caused by brain chemistry. I still maintain, however, that the overwhelming majority of our modern fears are learned rather than innate. No doubt the clinical availability of this drug will help our understanding of which is which and why.
I think what you're observing is what pediatricians call the "startle reflex." I would theorize that the reaction to surprise is, in fact, an ingrained fear of some kind -- so you're right, this drug wouldn't be much use in trying to combat the fears caused by, say, haunted houses or having one's sibling jump out from behind a door.
Hm ... I guess what I was intimating was that it would be used for illicit purposes. Example:
When I was a teenager, I had a girlfriend who absolutely refused to have sex with me. Remember, this was very pre-Bill Clinton, when most girls didn't even perform oral sex for fear of the social repercussions of being branded a slut. Her issue wasn't with me or our relationship, but rather fear of pregnancy or what others might think if they found out.
These are clearly learned fears. For proof, simply have a look at the typical modern teenaged girl. Post-Bill Clinton, they've learned that if they're not eager to perform oral sex on the first date, they'll have to face the negative social repercussions of being branded frigid.
I can certainly see a use for this drug in situations like mine: I'd've gotten laid were it not for this girl's learned fears, after all. I'm too ethical to have ever slipped her any, but I know lots of guys who wouldn't have hesitated.
No doubt there are lots of other fears. Perhaps one could take this drug in order to take the edge off of bungee jumping or sky-diving, for example ... ?
To be honest, if I ever had to go into combat, I'd be begging for this stuff. If it works like I suspect it would, you'd avoid a lot of cases of shellshock that way.
What is "innate fear"? I would suggest that in fact, no such thing exists. Instead, virtually all fear is learned. Even the amorphous entity called "fear of the unknown" is simply a result of having spent time on Planet Earth and correctly learned that the unknown can kill you.
I make this claim based on my having raised two daughters. As infants and toddlers, they have no fear whatsoever: just endless simian curiosity. This is why parents have to child-proof the house, since no 18-month old yet has a fear of electrical outlets nor running ovens. These are things that a child must be taught to fear.
Similarly, now that they're teenagers, they have to be taught to fear things that are inherently unsafe -- in some ways, it's worse now than it was when they were toddlers. As an experienced adult, I know that hanging out at the mall with no purpose other than to be with your teenaged friends is an inherently dangerous idea ...
(In any group of teenagers, take the IQ of the smartest one and divide by the number of teenagers present, and you'll have a rough idea of the collective intelligence of the group; divide this number by five, and you get a rough idea of the collective judgement).
... but my daughters think of it as fun. Only experience will teach them differently, just as it taught me.
Similarly, one has to be taught to fear certain aspects of combat: if you've never been exposed to it, how would you have any reaction to it at all, other than as a concept? I don't actually fear combat, and at 42, I should have such a fear if it was innate. I have a learned fear of death and I associate combat with mortality, so I know conceptually that combat should be avoided if possible. However, I have no real fear of it except as a concept because I've never personally experienced it.
I suspect that once this drug hits the market, we're going to discover clinically what I just suggested: that almost all fear is learned, consequently this drug will be used (and abused) to remove fears ranging from shellshock (I refuse to water the concept down by calling it PTSD) to fear of pregnancy or STDs from unprotected sex.
What this drug will probably be useless for is chronic anxiety due to brain chemistry. I suffer from this to varying degrees myself and I'm entirely aware that it's irrational and beyond my conscious control no matter how hard I try and relax. Instead, I take a medication intended to correct my brain's chemical imbalance. This drug will likely be useless to me but will find its way to the black market in short order for those who want to take tests without being nervous or engage in dangerous behaviour, both of which are learned fears.
Even the name "Homeland Security" freaks me out, not because they have extraordinary powers that threaten me, but because the name reminds me of something out of 1984 type double speak, sort of a Stalin-esk soviet type of pun.
Keep in mind that the English translation of "KGB" is "Committee for State Security". Allowing for idiomatic and cultural translations, the DHS is the American KGB. In point of fact, I've been referring to it as "the American KGB" since it was instituted.
Fortunately for all of us, enough of a free market still exists in the US to drive talented people into the private sector, leaving only the dregs who can't earn a living any other way than forcing taxpayers to cough up money to work for the government. This ensures that no matter how it tries, government programs can only be utterly incompetent.
The last thing we need, after all, is an American KGB that is as competent as its Soviet counterpart
You know, the constant crises and fear-mongering our politicians engage in is getting really tiresome as I enter middle age. After 42 years on planet Earth, I've learned that every time some politician whines about a crisis or makes a resolution like this, it turns out to be absolutely pointless and generally a non-issue.
It's one of the (many) reasons I don't global warming doesn't hit my radar: if that many politicians worldwide are whining, then it can't possibly be an important issue. And besides, I remember when politicians whined that global cooling was going to kill us all ...
In terms of the actual dangers of the Internet, I refer to my good friend L. Neil Smith:
"You can't child-proof the world; you can only world-proof your child."
If you're a parent who doesn't understand that simple concept, turn your kids over to the nearest orphanage. They'll do a better job raising them than you will.
I don't think there were any missing.
And that, my friends, is the most succinct argument as to why the copyright and patent system in the U.S. is (and has always been) immoral.
"Intellectual property" doesn't exist. It's a legal term with no real-world counterpart. Information isn't property: it's either known, unknown, or secret. Unknown information can be discovered and kept secret, but the moment it's out in public, there's no making it secret again, no matter how hard you try. You can have NDAs to protect against it no longer being secret, but that's as far as it goes.
Particularly with music -- which is information that by its very nature is intended to be public! -- there is no way to treat it as owned by a single individual. At best, one might devise a system to assure that proper credit is given for its creation and to restrict others from playing it.
However, the notion that a stream of bits on my hard drive isn't my property is identical to claiming that the memory of a song I heard at a concert isn't my property. Why, after all, do we have storage media? To assist in our own imperfect memories. If we all had eidetic memories, we wouldn't need to store the songs: we could listen to them once and then recall them in perfect detail any time.
One day, we'll have computers that plug into our brains directly and will actually allow us to recall every event we've ever experienced in perfect detail: memories are, after all, pathways literally burned into our brains, it's only our limited indexing and recall capacity that makes it impossible for us to access them. But that's a problem that will eventually be solved.
What modern copyright claims, in the final analysis, is that we don't own our own memories, particularly if we've got them on archived storage like a hard disk or CD. That's all vinyl records, 8-track tapes, cassette tapes, CDs, and hard drives are, after all: archival storage for our own minds.
Do you own your own memories, or does some musician? That's the real question.
It won't get called off. To call it off would require a complete dismantling of the U.S. copyright and patent system. Copyrights and patents as they presently stand were never consistent with reality and they've always been blatantly immoral. Easy digital reproduction simply makes this painfully obvious to even the dimmest bulb.
Clearly, there's too much money tied up in copyrights and patents (and consequently too many Congresscritters purchased by interested parties) for the current system system to be dismantled.
No, the sad fact is that what the RIAA does is legal and will remain so until the Republic finally falls and we can ignore those jokers in Washington. In ten years, there will be midnight copyright raids, the same as there are drug raids today and with the same justification.
Screw ethics and morality. The issue is always about how those in government can control the governed. Copyrights and patents are a wonderful way of making sure we all knuckle under.
To be honest, I'm glad they're busy passing laws that are unenforceable. It keeps them busy. If they weren't passing pointless laws like this, they're capable of inflicting real damage.
I've said for years that the end of the Republic is a bunch of idiots sitting in Washington passing laws that nobody bothers to care about. We're on track. Now, just as soon as enough people don't bother to care about their taxes, we'll have these little power-mad sociopaths right where we want them.
Flashing lights are good. Any sysadmin with an ounce of sense knows that a clean, well-ordered server room with lots of flashing lights impresses the clueless suits. If lights are flashing, work must be happening, right? Plus, it makes you look that much more knowledgeable when said suits come poking around the server room asking questions ... then you squint at a flashing light, furrow your brow, ask them to hang on for a second while you tap out 'ls -al /var/log | sort | less', then stare intently at the screen for a few moments. Then you can tell them that you're seeing a minor glitch in the AE-35 unit that if left uncorrected will cause a fault in less than 24 hours ... so can they come back later, after you've fixed it?
Lights are good, my friends, lights are good.
I'm rather amazed anyone is surprised about this.
Look, the US Constitution is an apocryphal document. It's meaningless, just a piece of paper to be referenced in political speeches when you want to stimulate a patriotic feeling in your audience. It's not something anyone has to pay attention to any more. Certainly your elected representatives don't pay attention to it, or they wouldn't be spending 99.99999999999999% of their time actively violating it.
The US was founded on the notion that you have intrinsic rights and that the only reason for government to exist was to protect them. This idea (predictably) failed as early as the Jefferson Administration but was certainly dead and buried under Lincoln.
Today, you have whatever rights your masters in Washington wish to allow you to have. That's the plain, hard truth of the matter. You may not like it (I certainly don't), but short of governmental collapse, it's not going to change. The US Federal Government is now no different from any other government on Earth. It has and will continue to legislate away your free speech, and nothing you can do will stop them.
I mean, why should they be afraid of you? You're not human beings, you're assets to be managed. It's not like you could revolt against your masters, that ability was taken from you with the very first Federal victim disarmament legislation almost a century ago.
You're a modern-day version of a serf, subject to the whim of your betters. Live with it.
In having refined movie tastes, and the active desire to seek out inspired movies over insipid ones
Again, case in point: Superman Returns. I would never in a million years expect it to be particularly inspired, meaningful filmmaking. I would expect it to be two hours of action and special effects, of the Man of Steel doing the post-millennial equivalent of leaping tall buildings in a single bound. I'd want to see the good guy trounce the bad guy while I cheer him on.
And I didn't get it. There wasn't much Superman in the Superman movie at all, and due to rotten direction and cinematography I couldn't see what he was doing half the time anyway. I should have left the movie feeling good: I left feeling like I'd only seen half a movie and spend 2.5 hours doing it.
It was just not a good movie, and there's no reason it couldn't have been other than everyone involved simply doesn't know how to make a fun movie. That's hardly the viewer's fault, is it?
Sorry, gotta take issue with that.
It's not that we don't want to see something new, it's that we can't see something new if it's not being produced.
I don't think I've seen a movie I really liked and was enthusiastic about in at least ten years, with the exception of The Matrix (and neither of its ridiculous sequels). It's not the viewer's fault if Hollywierd keeps on churning out the same junk year after excrutiating year.
Take, for example, Superman Returns. Like Singer, I'm a huge fan of S1 in particular, and it's a movie that holds up well today. If Warner Brothers re-released S1 in theaters, I bet it would do decent business even in spite of being available on DVD. It's just that good.
I wanted to like SR. I walked into the theater with every expectation that I would enjoy a $250M Superman movie directed by Bryan Singer. And it turned out to be a very pedantic remake of S1 featuring very little of the title character. It wasn't even well-directed, what with its constant quick-cuts and the camera shaking so badly during action sequences that even on a 12-inch screen, the audience is hard-pressed to follow the action.
If this is the best that an admitted fan and supposed rising star can do with $250M, then it's no wonder that Hollywierd can't produce a decent movie to save its life.
It's not the audience's fault. The producers have literally no idea what makes a good movie, consequently they make movies that suck, consequently they don't make much money. That's why we have sequels and derivitives, because for some bizarre reason, producers can't figure out what audiences want to watch, so they look into the past, hoping audiences will watch something similar again.
Pop culture and modern technology being in the sorry state that it is, I think the best we can hope for is the final laying to rest of Hollywierd as the primary purveyor of entertainment. Fortunately, quality filmmaking is no longer technically impossible on a small budget (see Star Trek New Voyages or any number of other amateur/fan films), and the Internet provides a distribution mechanism. It remains to be seen if it can be made a commercially successful medium, but I'd rather spend an hour watching shorts from Blame Society Films (Chad Vader, though I actually prefer some of their other stuff) than plunk down twenty bucks to see a movie I can almost guarantee is going to be a total waste of my time and cash.
Oh, and regarding a "real" keyboard ...
There was a time when I would have detested the laptop keyboard I'm using now. I grew up when typwriters were still in use -- lugged a portable around my college campus, in fact. For a long time, I hated keyboards that didn't have the same kind of tactile feedback as my typewriter.
But I got used to it. The conversion from real to virtual keyboard would probably be even more seamless, because there's really no reason one's datagloves couldn't have a "rumble" feature like that found in modern gamepads. I.e., hit a virtual key, feel a slight jolt.
Though to be honest, given the conversion from typewriter keyboards to modern ones, I'm unclear that it would be necessary. You might include configuration options for they virtual keyboard that would allow the rumble to be turned on or off, or include configurable visual cues, such as a key lighting up slightly when struck.
Regardless, I would imagine that a VRUI-based computer, not bound by the design constraints of monitor/keyboard/mouse, would be very small and basically have a lot of inputs -- for size and speed reasons, probably 1394 interfaces. No reason there couldn't be 1394 keyboards or even a couple of legacy USB ports for physical keyboards or mice.
I would imagine that a GUI would be available as a two-dimensional virtual screen in an otherwise three-dimensional VRUI. No reason it couldn't, after all -- the same way you can run KDE apps under Gnome if you have the KDE libraries installed.
Same with the CLI. I don't see it ever going away, because there are tasks for which it's suited (scripting repetitive actions, OS installs on bare metal, etc).
I see the adoption of the VRUI over the GUI as the same kind of transition from pure-CLI to primarily GUI some ten or fifteen years ago. The time is ripe for the development of the VRUI as the primary user interface the same as the time was ripe for the introduction of the GUI in the 1980s.
Linux should be doing it now, getting in on the ground floor and leading the way. If there isn't a Gnome- or KDE-level project to do so in the very near future, Jobs or Gates will end up doing it first -- and in the process, do a lot of damage to Linux in all its spaces.