Replying to the parent formally, but in fact to Roland.
Roland, learn some fucking computer science and quit your stupid anthropomorphisizing and out-of-ass expression of your "opinions". Do you have a credit card? Well guess what, a neural network formed an "opinion" that you should be allowed one. Not by NLP, but by pattern detection -- something that we humans evolved to do and are still the best at, for now.
I periodically experiment with my own mucus-riding robot. It's a tiny thing, composed of an exostruture and programming code within. I've named it "rhinitus".
I agree with the parent. I used to build several assemblies for the Tomcat with Grumman, and I knew its design pretty well.
The F-14 was an interceptor, more agile than its Phantom predecessor, but still designed to shoot down airborne targets at long range. After an avionics upgrade, with Pheonix and Sparrow missiles, the Tomcat could simultaneously fire and forget 6-7 targets at a range of about 150 kilometers. It was the first plane to do so, and that coupled with its effective variable sweep wing design made it an excellent plane. It was not designed to "kill people", except when they were trying to kill very, very many of us (you.) As time passed, the Tomcat's engines were upgraded in terms of pounds of thrust, but its avionics always were its strongest point.
My best friend flew a Tomcat, and realized that while it was a damn good plane to fly, the Hornet would eventually take over.
To the GP, were you even alive when the cold war was full on, or were you just naive and stupid?
I agree with your well-reasoned and properly circumspect comments. I would add some methods that I look to employ, and that I think are the future of HC interaction that we all seek -- fully immersed tactile interaction with relevant emotional components. Some helpful ones are (IMHO), using gravity as an aid to computer responsiveness, sugary soft-drinks applied through an input device (keyboard) to provide the machine with that extra energy boost, grabbing the nearest human and "interfacing" with him/her in the faint hope that the computer will do what you mean and not what you tell it to do because it is obviously that person's fault and never yours, telekinesis (for so many reasons), a strongly stretched elastic device leading the computer to your boss's office that is triggered by bugs, hunger, long work hours, etc. (as an option, the computer would have Obsidian blades protruding, to make the point properly). I'm sure I could come up with many more, but I try to help where I can. Besides, my f'ing computer is telling me that I have email and this nice Nigerian Prince needs my help again.
And, IIRC, a firm is selling speculative plots of land on Mars. OK, so a Corporation won't put any physical headquarters there anytime soon. But with a million lawyers typing queries on a million keyboards for citations and vague authority into LEXIS, they might be able to piggyback a trivial payload on a Mars lander mission denoting the corporate charter and physical articles of incorporation, and register a putative "agent" to handle such, and then, they might say "If we choose, these are the (nonexistent) rules and laws we must live by. Of course we are going to be good corporate citizens of Earth, but we reserve the right..."
Nah-nah-ne-nah-nah, we were there first. Checkmate.
I can't believe that no one has posted about the truism that it almost impossible to create a "tool", a generally useful artifact, that cannot be used to further violent aims. Trying to do so is about as likely to succeed as trying to stop developing any tools, in fact has almost as little likelihood of success. A more mature civilization/society works on realistically addressing the aspects of the political, cultural, ethnic, sociological, psychological, evolutionary, and biological aspects of human beings to counter our ever-increasing ability to do violence with ever more refined ways of circumventing those propensities.
Yup, and it's the solution to CC fraud that seems to best combine security and ease of use. It should be ubiquitous for everything online, and as much as possible offline. It should be pushed into your face by credit card companies and banks.
I agree in principle, but in this case I think you are wrong as far as the major cause. I worked in oversight of contractors in DOT construction for many years, for an outside non-government entity with no financial interest either way, and we caught them out in collusion by statistical means, non-obvious-network-analysis and other methods so many times that they no longer pursued that avenue, nor cronyism (at least to a much lesser extent). The fundamental problem with the Big Dig was that they tried to do something so complex that it was bound to have multiple failure points, even if everyone behaved ethically and assiduously once planning started and from then on. Obviously, some did not, which is not a surprise.
On a project of that size, the probability of execution meeting design tends to about.05. That's why engineers should be allowed/encouraged to design spec's at >2x what is physically projected as required, to guard against just this shit. Especially on big projects with large unknowns (such as building unheard-of tunnel drillers from scratch, and boring through a centuries old metro area.)
I think Spader likes the idea of acting across the inadvertent "wiseman" (albeit with "mad cow" disease) played by Shatner. The writing is pretty good on that show to let Capt. Kirk, however unintentially, be pithy.
I have a brain-injury that renders me unable to perceive sarcasm. Your post may have been a breakthrough in my recovery from this terrible affliction, and I thank you.
The foregoing was not sarcasm (like I would know if it was, given my "mental condition" (; ) but rather plaudits for you getting to the point.
(I know people that work for the Lottery in Florida, and they are embarrased, to say the least, about what they do.)
In essence you are correct, the taxman does always cometh. But I wager that the supranational internet can get around it. I also wager that some bright hacker will out a Congressman or two playing PartyPoker.
I further fear to wager, but I do, that our Calvinist, Puritanical heritage will blind us to some real problems we face; the USA sometimes seems fated to cut its nose off to spite its face.
I've done some research on this, and am no closer than the average idiot. Could you email me some good links?
Email address at, if you have time...
jay_brock@eusearch,net
Thx.
Yes and no. the way that a given protein folds determines its function, and it a very complex process that cannot quite model yet. Prions are proteins, but foreign to the body, and the ones you mentioned cause CJD, after a pretty long time. (They share some protein shape characteristics with Alzheimers and other diseases that occur as a misstep in protein folding - it's really amazing that proteins ever fold correctly at all.)
More interesting clinically and for research is the way that proteins mis-fold and give rise to amyloid plaques and fibrillary tangles that start the path to Alzheimer's Disease, long before overt symptons occur. One irony is that amyloid-precursor-protein (APP) is a necessary factor in brain metabolism. But, things can go awry.
APP is associated with the cell membrane, the thin barrier that encloses the cell. After it is made, APP sticks through the neuron's membrane, partly inside and partly outside the cell- big trouble.
Enzymes act on the APP and cut it into fragments of protein, one of which is called beta-amyloid.
The beta-amyloid fragments begin coming together into clumps outside the cell, then join other molecules and non-nerve cells to form insoluble plaques. Those plaques progressively interfere with cognition and degrade neural function, eventually resulting in death.
A long unpleasant journey into darkness, which I have seen all of my older relatives take.
Eventually, M$ is going to f'up enough that they piss off a large company with well-paid lawyers on retainer. They will do their usual "overwhelming force" legal response, but one unsympathetic judge or jury could decide to bite them in the wallet hard, and not just in the "business as usual" amounts that the EU fines are. Microsoft pushes the limit as often as they think that they can get away with it. It's risky behavior, and I would love to see the Big Bite in the Ass upon them, much as I hate lawyers
That's why I always travel in my lead-lined softly cushioned "mobile sleeping unit", tastefully outfitted on the outside in a rich Cherrywood finish, with an easily opened top cover and a sunlight sensor on the outside. I also carry some dirt from my central European ethnic homeland to help me remember who I am. And I stay away from garlic.
RocketMan (Sorry, RocketGeek),
Is there any forum that you know of where people can discuss technical issues like this without degenerating into polemics? I'm thinking of a sort of meritocracy of ideas and talent, where no question is too stupid and no answer is accepted as dogmatic without a reasoned argument. Faint hope, I know, but if you know of such, let me know. (Call Guiness, I used the word "know" three times in one sentence.)
Regards
"Nice analogy. However if someone in your family murders you, frankly no one else gives a damn."
Except perhaps your kids, or other relatives who care about you.
"As oppossed [sic] to, say, a few thousand people getting killed at the same time and witnessed by people around the globe. People who then wonder, can I even count on being safe going to work in the morning."
No, you cannot count on being safe going to work in the morning, taking a shower, or any other thing you do in life. Where did you find the "being safe" clause in the renter's agreement for your life?
As for the rest of your diatribe, you might want to read a bit more history than that of Czarist Russia. It seems that if you had your way, we would all be allowed to exist, but not to live.
I wish that there was a "I want the Government to hold my hand and make me feel better" place that you could go live. I am sure that Jefferson, Adams, Payne, et al. would wish that as well. It would be good riddance.
Slashdot Mirror
Roland, learn some fucking computer science and quit your stupid anthropomorphisizing and out-of-ass expression of your "opinions". Do you have a credit card? Well guess what, a neural network formed an "opinion" that you should be allowed one. Not by NLP, but by pattern detection -- something that we humans evolved to do and are still the best at, for now.
I periodically experiment with my own mucus-riding robot. It's a tiny thing, composed of an exostruture and programming code within. I've named it "rhinitus".
I agree with the parent. I used to build several assemblies for the Tomcat with Grumman, and I knew its design pretty well. The F-14 was an interceptor, more agile than its Phantom predecessor, but still designed to shoot down airborne targets at long range. After an avionics upgrade, with Pheonix and Sparrow missiles, the Tomcat could simultaneously fire and forget 6-7 targets at a range of about 150 kilometers. It was the first plane to do so, and that coupled with its effective variable sweep wing design made it an excellent plane. It was not designed to "kill people", except when they were trying to kill very, very many of us (you.) As time passed, the Tomcat's engines were upgraded in terms of pounds of thrust, but its avionics always were its strongest point. My best friend flew a Tomcat, and realized that while it was a damn good plane to fly, the Hornet would eventually take over. To the GP, were you even alive when the cold war was full on, or were you just naive and stupid?
I agree with your well-reasoned and properly circumspect comments. I would add some methods that I look to employ, and that I think are the future of HC interaction that we all seek -- fully immersed tactile interaction with relevant emotional components. Some helpful ones are (IMHO), using gravity as an aid to computer responsiveness, sugary soft-drinks applied through an input device (keyboard) to provide the machine with that extra energy boost, grabbing the nearest human and "interfacing" with him/her in the faint hope that the computer will do what you mean and not what you tell it to do because it is obviously that person's fault and never yours, telekinesis (for so many reasons), a strongly stretched elastic device leading the computer to your boss's office that is triggered by bugs, hunger, long work hours, etc. (as an option, the computer would have Obsidian blades protruding, to make the point properly). I'm sure I could come up with many more, but I try to help where I can. Besides, my f'ing computer is telling me that I have email and this nice Nigerian Prince needs my help again.
And, IIRC, a firm is selling speculative plots of land on Mars. OK, so a Corporation won't put any physical headquarters there anytime soon. But with a million lawyers typing queries on a million keyboards for citations and vague authority into LEXIS, they might be able to piggyback a trivial payload on a Mars lander mission denoting the corporate charter and physical articles of incorporation, and register a putative "agent" to handle such, and then, they might say "If we choose, these are the (nonexistent) rules and laws we must live by. Of course we are going to be good corporate citizens of Earth, but we reserve the right..." Nah-nah-ne-nah-nah, we were there first. Checkmate.
I can't believe that no one has posted about the truism that it almost impossible to create a "tool", a generally useful artifact, that cannot be used to further violent aims. Trying to do so is about as likely to succeed as trying to stop developing any tools, in fact has almost as little likelihood of success. A more mature civilization/society works on realistically addressing the aspects of the political, cultural, ethnic, sociological, psychological, evolutionary, and biological aspects of human beings to counter our ever-increasing ability to do violence with ever more refined ways of circumventing those propensities.
I don't get you're "Real Genius" reference. Lasers are obviously for putting on the heads of sharks!
In the UK, you excrete at the WC. In WindowsLand, the WC excretes at you.
Yup, and it's the solution to CC fraud that seems to best combine security and ease of use. It should be ubiquitous for everything online, and as much as possible offline. It should be pushed into your face by credit card companies and banks.
On a project of that size, the probability of execution meeting design tends to about .05. That's why engineers should be allowed/encouraged to design spec's at >2x what is physically projected as required, to guard against just this shit. Especially on big projects with large unknowns (such as building unheard-of tunnel drillers from scratch, and boring through a centuries old metro area.)
I think Spader likes the idea of acting across the inadvertent "wiseman" (albeit with "mad cow" disease) played by Shatner. The writing is pretty good on that show to let Capt. Kirk, however unintentially, be pithy.
Followed by the revenge sequel -- A Plane on Snakes.
If the truth in advertising laws had any teeth, if would be properly named Vista Rife. Has a nice ring to it, though Vista Bloat comes in close.
I have a brain-injury that renders me unable to perceive sarcasm. Your post may have been a breakthrough in my recovery from this terrible affliction, and I thank you. The foregoing was not sarcasm (like I would know if it was, given my "mental condition" (; ) but rather plaudits for you getting to the point. (I know people that work for the Lottery in Florida, and they are embarrased, to say the least, about what they do.)
I further fear to wager, but I do, that our Calvinist, Puritanical heritage will blind us to some real problems we face; the USA sometimes seems fated to cut its nose off to spite its face.
Mice? Pheh. I bow to our evolutionarily superior protein overlords, and humbly abase myself before the chaos they will wreak on our inferior brains.
I've done some research on this, and am no closer than the average idiot. Could you email me some good links? Email address at, if you have time... jay_brock@eusearch,net Thx.
Yes and no. the way that a given protein folds determines its function, and it a very complex process that cannot quite model yet. Prions are proteins, but foreign to the body, and the ones you mentioned cause CJD, after a pretty long time. (They share some protein shape characteristics with Alzheimers and other diseases that occur as a misstep in protein folding - it's really amazing that proteins ever fold correctly at all.) More interesting clinically and for research is the way that proteins mis-fold and give rise to amyloid plaques and fibrillary tangles that start the path to Alzheimer's Disease, long before overt symptons occur. One irony is that amyloid-precursor-protein (APP) is a necessary factor in brain metabolism. But, things can go awry. APP is associated with the cell membrane, the thin barrier that encloses the cell. After it is made, APP sticks through the neuron's membrane, partly inside and partly outside the cell- big trouble. Enzymes act on the APP and cut it into fragments of protein, one of which is called beta-amyloid. The beta-amyloid fragments begin coming together into clumps outside the cell, then join other molecules and non-nerve cells to form insoluble plaques. Those plaques progressively interfere with cognition and degrade neural function, eventually resulting in death. A long unpleasant journey into darkness, which I have seen all of my older relatives take.
Eventually, M$ is going to f'up enough that they piss off a large company with well-paid lawyers on retainer. They will do their usual "overwhelming force" legal response, but one unsympathetic judge or jury could decide to bite them in the wallet hard, and not just in the "business as usual" amounts that the EU fines are. Microsoft pushes the limit as often as they think that they can get away with it. It's risky behavior, and I would love to see the Big Bite in the Ass upon them, much as I hate lawyers
Does this mean that my hot-running Inspiron is now a terrorist weapon (aside from the fact that it runs Windows)?
That's why I always travel in my lead-lined softly cushioned "mobile sleeping unit", tastefully outfitted on the outside in a rich Cherrywood finish, with an easily opened top cover and a sunlight sensor on the outside. I also carry some dirt from my central European ethnic homeland to help me remember who I am. And I stay away from garlic.
RocketMan (Sorry, RocketGeek), Is there any forum that you know of where people can discuss technical issues like this without degenerating into polemics? I'm thinking of a sort of meritocracy of ideas and talent, where no question is too stupid and no answer is accepted as dogmatic without a reasoned argument. Faint hope, I know, but if you know of such, let me know. (Call Guiness, I used the word "know" three times in one sentence.) Regards
Speak truth to those in the throes of stupidity.
Except perhaps your kids, or other relatives who care about you.
"As oppossed [sic] to, say, a few thousand people getting killed at the same time and witnessed by people around the globe. People who then wonder, can I even count on being safe going to work in the morning."
No, you cannot count on being safe going to work in the morning, taking a shower, or any other thing you do in life. Where did you find the "being safe" clause in the renter's agreement for your life?
As for the rest of your diatribe, you might want to read a bit more history than that of Czarist Russia. It seems that if you had your way, we would all be allowed to exist, but not to live.
I wish that there was a "I want the Government to hold my hand and make me feel better" place that you could go live. I am sure that Jefferson, Adams, Payne, et al. would wish that as well. It would be good riddance.
My apologies. I forgot this is Slashdot. The far larger problem to solve is how to get a wife in the first place.