Because they are nice people, they are friends of mine. I believe them as I believe any other friends of mine who do nice things.
Frankly, with the dangerous intolerance and many-headed hydra of Islamism spreading the way it is it's safest to presume guilt until innocence is firmly established.
You complain about the intolerance of Islam and respond by intolerance. You don't seem prepared to accept that some muslims are good people. This is bigotry.
remember who funded the Taliban for years, and who armed them, and trained them (Hint: it wasn't a muslim country).
Pakistan is very much a Muslim country, I assure you.
I think you'll find it was the USA. The Stinger missiles, for instance. How Pakistan, with a completely destroyed economy, is supposed to fund a regime in another country is beyond me. Sure there are nasty people in Pakistan, but they are all funded by external countries.
Actually a lot of them a trying very hard - at least the ones I know are. They are involved in youth groups, eco groups, anti-poverty groups, all aimed at helping to reduce the poor living standards of a lot of people. They don't get out there with guns and fight it, because they strongly believe that terrorism is anti-islam. It is hard to see how much the moderate elements can really achieve in the current global political climate: remember who funded the Taliban for years, and who armed them, and trained them (Hint: it wasn't a muslim country).
Whereas to me, as soon as the whole Satanic Verses controversy errupted, it was pretty clear that Islam is fundamentally incompatible with a modern liberal democracy, just like Scientology is.
Don't make the mistake of thinking that Islam is a homogeneous entity. There appear to be as many different interpretations of Islam as there are of Christianity. Most of the Muslim world weren't burning the Satanic Verses. But of course these moderate silences didn't make as good tv.
I'll grant you thats possible, although the same thing could be said to apply to the physics of a glass of water standing still on my desk and we could probably model that quite well.
Now a brain's consciousness may be intrinsically and inextricably tied to other objects in the universe, however, one has to wonder what the nature of these interactions with the rest of the universe are. Since we seem to operate pretty much the same wherever we are in the earths orbit we are clearly not hypersensistive to these interactions. Do you think we would still seem human if we were on the other side of the galaxy? Perhaps we can simulate this external "noise" in some way. We are not aiming for an exact simulation of a particular human here remember, just a brain in a circumstance, so a statistically relevant noise input may do the job for us.
This theory of the universe that you are proposing is quite a deep one at that. Its a fascinating idea and one that merits further investigation. Say by trying to simulate a brain and seeing if it works or not:-)
A lot of people have created simulations of real neurons. Not the sort of simulations you will get in Neural Networks 101, but full on simulations of the movement of ions and such like. These behave a lot like real neurons. This would seem to be a strong possibility for creating AI - build a brain out of these simulated neurons. The major problem for this is computing power, which is really just a matter of waiting.
(Of course its certain to be more complicated than that, but you were just looking for "inklings or foundations".)
But I can see their point. If the EU commission can go and levy arbitrary fines if it doesn't like what Microsoft does then I can see Microsoft wanting guidance before releasing a new product. I don't think the EU Commission has treated Microsoft fairly - their dealings seem to be tinged with a bit of anti-Americanism that seems to be all the rage in Europe of late.
I think the EU commission has been fairly clear on what it wants. It wants MS to not abuse its monopoly. The EU have already, IIRC, given some guidance on potential problems with Vista. Besides which MS has a huge legal section, surely some of them can figure it out...
Oh, and as for anti-US (note not anti-Americanism, I don't think Canada and the entirity of Central and Southern America have anything to do with this), I do seem to recall that MS was prosecuted in the US for monopolistic practices. Perhaps its just that EU courts have a bit more independance from MS than the US courts.
And please MS, please, keep Vista away from Europe. The last thing I need is to have to work out how to connect the damn thing to my Unix servers.
Here in the UK, my sister, who is a librarian, is often asked for customers' data by the police. Usually for sensible reasons, e.g. they found a handbag with a library book in it and want to find the owner. However, she has had it made clear to her by her bosses that it is completely illegal to give such information out without a warrent - the data protection act simply doesn't allow it. She always finds it amusing to be having to explain to the police what the law is!
> An install should consist of:
> 1. Create users.
> 2. Would like me to create the partitions for you? (offer an advanced feature as well)
> 3. Are you going to use DHCP, or a static address?
> 4. Would you like to review the software that is going to be installed?
> 5. Click next to complete.
Unless of course you don't live in the US, in which case it is nice to be able to select language, time zone, keyboard etc.
A friend of mine was checking out some of her friends pages of LJ and saw an ad for an Ad blocker for Firefox! Seems they may be contravening there own policies...
Slashdot Mirror
Because they are nice people, they are friends of mine. I believe them as I believe any other friends of mine who do nice things.
You complain about the intolerance of Islam and respond by intolerance. You don't seem prepared to accept that some muslims are good people. This is bigotry. I think you'll find it was the USA. The Stinger missiles, for instance. How Pakistan, with a completely destroyed economy, is supposed to fund a regime in another country is beyond me. Sure there are nasty people in Pakistan, but they are all funded by external countries.Actually a lot of them a trying very hard - at least the ones I know are. They are involved in youth groups, eco groups, anti-poverty groups, all aimed at helping to reduce the poor living standards of a lot of people. They don't get out there with guns and fight it, because they strongly believe that terrorism is anti-islam. It is hard to see how much the moderate elements can really achieve in the current global political climate: remember who funded the Taliban for years, and who armed them, and trained them (Hint: it wasn't a muslim country).
Don't make the mistake of thinking that Islam is a homogeneous entity. There appear to be as many different interpretations of Islam as there are of Christianity. Most of the Muslim world weren't burning the Satanic Verses. But of course these moderate silences didn't make as good tv.
I'll grant you thats possible, although the same thing could be said to apply to the physics of a glass of water standing still on my desk and we could probably model that quite well. Now a brain's consciousness may be intrinsically and inextricably tied to other objects in the universe, however, one has to wonder what the nature of these interactions with the rest of the universe are. Since we seem to operate pretty much the same wherever we are in the earths orbit we are clearly not hypersensistive to these interactions. Do you think we would still seem human if we were on the other side of the galaxy? Perhaps we can simulate this external "noise" in some way. We are not aiming for an exact simulation of a particular human here remember, just a brain in a circumstance, so a statistically relevant noise input may do the job for us. This theory of the universe that you are proposing is quite a deep one at that. Its a fascinating idea and one that merits further investigation. Say by trying to simulate a brain and seeing if it works or not :-)
A lot of people have created simulations of real neurons. Not the sort of simulations you will get in Neural Networks 101, but full on simulations of the movement of ions and such like. These behave a lot like real neurons. This would seem to be a strong possibility for creating AI - build a brain out of these simulated neurons. The major problem for this is computing power, which is really just a matter of waiting. (Of course its certain to be more complicated than that, but you were just looking for "inklings or foundations".)
I think the EU commission has been fairly clear on what it wants. It wants MS to not abuse its monopoly. The EU have already, IIRC, given some guidance on potential problems with Vista. Besides which MS has a huge legal section, surely some of them can figure it out...
Oh, and as for anti-US (note not anti-Americanism, I don't think Canada and the entirity of Central and Southern America have anything to do with this), I do seem to recall that MS was prosecuted in the US for monopolistic practices. Perhaps its just that EU courts have a bit more independance from MS than the US courts.
And please MS, please, keep Vista away from Europe. The last thing I need is to have to work out how to connect the damn thing to my Unix servers.
Here in the UK, my sister, who is a librarian, is often asked for customers' data by the police. Usually for sensible reasons, e.g. they found a handbag with a library book in it and want to find the owner. However, she has had it made clear to her by her bosses that it is completely illegal to give such information out without a warrent - the data protection act simply doesn't allow it. She always finds it amusing to be having to explain to the police what the law is!
> An install should consist of: > 1. Create users. > 2. Would like me to create the partitions for you? (offer an advanced feature as well) > 3. Are you going to use DHCP, or a static address? > 4. Would you like to review the software that is going to be installed? > 5. Click next to complete. Unless of course you don't live in the US, in which case it is nice to be able to select language, time zone, keyboard etc.
A friend of mine was checking out some of her friends pages of LJ and saw an ad for an Ad blocker for Firefox! Seems they may be contravening there own policies...