I'm a Graduate Student and I take my Powerbook to all classes. I pay for University and I'll be damned if a Professor will tell me how I'm going to learn and if I can/can't take my laptop to the class I am paying for.
If you were in the same class as me, I would prevent you from using your laptop. I can't think with clicking noises. I paid for that class too, and I have a right to learn just as much as you do.
This is like letting cigarettes in public places. It is not the smokers right to light up, it is the public right to breath clean air.
Your clicking is noise pollution. It is no different than starting a conversation with the person sitting next to you, and disrupting the class. The professor has every right to maximize the learning for all students, not to protect the rights of one to use his laptop.
You have every right to take your hand written notes and type them in your laptop after class. You don't have the right to do it during class when you can disturb others.
It sounds more like a VC "talent search", where the $50k MIGHT be enough cash to pay one person a mac-and-cheese salary and get a business plan and some collateral marketing done to get properly financed.
Where was Apple computers founded? They made the PC revolution happen, before any AT clones were seen in peoples homes. Wasn't it just a bunch of guys who liked computers, and put in work for the cause? I don't remember the exact facts, but didn't it start by ordering parts from a magazine and seeing what they could make it do? It was more of an intellectual game.
If a person already has their home rent paid for, a computer does not take up that much space. The choice between watching television or working on a program is not one of money, it is a choice of preference. $50K for winning a game sounds fun. You won't win $50K watching television.
Or, it could be a "anything you submit will become our property" type "scam", where some grad student has a unique approach that this group then becomes the owner of for a mere $50k. They can then take the idea and run with it, and reap the benefits.
In todays world, isn't everything already patented? Who cares if a company takes the idea and runs? $50,000 for just an idea is not bad! It beats washing dishes at the pizza joint.
No offense, but I totally disagree.
Some examples of major changes that come to mind and that IMO can't simply be downplayed as "toys":
- Medicine. Not having a large chance of dying/suffering of some incurable illness is a qualitative difference, I think (sorry, don't know the numbers).
- Human rights and democracy at least in parts of the world.
- A fairly complete rational description of the world (of course, not totally complete yet). Whatever "rational" means exactly -- but I think there *has* been an essential change and it's not all relative.
This is a perfect example of how relative everything trully is, and how we have not advanced, only created a superficial image which feeds man own narcissistic desires.
For example, you wrote: Human rights and democracy. Explain to me how this is a *major* advancement. Did you live in a communist country? I did for a short period of time, and I think they were more happy than westerners (like Americans). They had gaurenteed health care, free schooling including university, and job security. You can make philosophical arguments about which is more moral a state, or economic arguments about which is more efficient a state, but at the end, you can not say one is "better" than the other. That kind of statement can not be supported, it is a normative statement. We all know how politics is, and it stinks in all forms. But to say that people were less happy under socialist states would be flat wrong! How much money do we spend in the western world on television, movies, DVD's, all searching for something to occupy our time and make us feel better. Perhaps the lack of these goods in communist states has been a good thing, because people form relationships with other people, not their television set.
Your statement about medicine- Medicine. Not having a large chance of dying/suffering of some incurable illness. First, we all still die! You want to give me a major advancement, how about extending life at a geometric rate? But lets look at what has happened- What changed from 1960 to 2005, 45 years later? Did we extend a meaningful life by 5 or 6 years, or did we find ways to keep someone alive, but with deteriorated cognative ability- a half vegitable. The person can wake up, eat, but they stoped thinking about anything meaningful, and they don't enjoy living like they did. Young people can not understand this, because to them everything is seen and thought about. But to many older people, even when there is something in front and seen, like flowers or the sky, there is no thought giving to what is seen, it is all ignored.
I'll support my last paragraph with two examples. #1, visit a nursing home. You will see people who are the most DEJECTED, UNHAPPY, on the breaking point of crying. But they will recieve modern care and their life is extended for 3 or 4 years each. I've been there and seen it, it is horrible. People who are helped into a wheelchair by a nurse, pushed to some courtyard, and the person does not move all day, the head hangs low until someone comes around to tell them it's feeding time. I'll also give a less drastic example, consider people who wear eyeglasses. What happens, you give someone prescription eyeglasses, but their eyesight continues to worsen over the course of 40 years. While most people can do a test and say read the chart, and everyone agrees the person lost vision, the same thing happens in our minds, we lose the ability to think the same way.
People are the same today as they were 500 years ago. We are all born the same way, and we die. We all want the same things, we all desire food, to be loved. Humanity has not changed. We are the same beings. Science has not anwsered any questions such as "why am i here".
Now, for the sake of argument, I'll take the flip side and say the quality of life has deteriorated because of technology (I don't beleive this, but it is an argument that could be made). In the 1800's, how could people be killed? Someone wo
You don't think there's been much progress in the past hundred years?
Not really, there has not been that much progress. Life is pretty much the same, except we have different toys to occupy our time.
hell, in this generation alone we have had the birth of the Internet, email, and the WWW.
So what? It is a system of communication, it is not communication. People have been communicating since the beginning of time. What difference does it make if I talk to you face to face, or send you an IM? Maybe you don't have the time to come over and speak face to face, but could that also imply that if someone is unwilling to expend that energy on a communication then the value of the communication is lowered? Could the great WWW be a bad thing, increasing useless information?
You don't think there's been much progress in the past hundred years?
Lets look at history. How did the people live in the 1900's? 1800's? 1700's?. If you were to ask a person who was alive in 1900 how much more advanced he was to those of the 1800's, his eyes would light up and he would start with "we can farm much better, we can grow more crop." But in reality, all narcisism aside, aren't they pretty much the same? Same manner of birth, same clothing, same need for food and love, same in almost every way. Then you could ask the guy from the 1800's how he is better than the one from the 1700's, and you might get the same reply as the one from the 1900's talking about him!
When we skim away the distractions, what changed? We might change the way we send a letter, send an e-mail, but fundamentally we are still just talking. We might have went from walking, to horse riding, to horse carrige, to steam engine car, to gasoline engine car, but how is that an advancement that a car might travel at 60 mph versus a horse at 20 mph. Is it an earth shattering event?? Or is it a minor improvement over past conditions?
Here is one more example. Before there was the internet, there were bars in the wild west where people played card games like poker. They would sit around a table and drink and gamble. Today we have the internet, and people sit in their living room playing poker, and in some instances gambling.
I wrote those who are true to Gods love are at peace and happy. The reason there is suffering is because we have turned our back on God's instructions. Look at how our society has changed the past 20 years. We let gays think they are okay, when in fact they are sick. We let women kill their babies, and call it abortion. We don't take care of the poor in society. And we expect a reward for being enlightened with science?? Science is not all knowing, it can not tell us what is right and wrong.
To be happy, we need to do Gods will. If we follow his direction, and love, we will be happy and at peace.
First of all, you are ARE a monkey, all humans are.
That is not true. People were created by God, in His image. We did not decend from monkeys.
For evolution to happen, it would be like taking a watch and hitting it with a hammer until it was broken into a thousand peices, and then putting those peices in a bag and shaking the bag so the watch is magically put back together.
God is a story created by fearful and ignorant men.
God walked the earth, he was here. His name was Jesus. People saw him, he healed the sick, he walked on water, and he rose from the dead. There were witnesses to His actions.
Belief in a sentient creator flys in the face of all rational observation
No, everything a rational observer looks at gives proof that God does exist. He made everything, and when we look at a beautiful flower or the stars in the sky, we see our Creators work.
Without God, we would not exists. We're here because of his love.
Seems to me that as time goes on, the more quickly things change. This is true for pretty much anything, not just science and tech. Maybe you can predict what the next 5 or 10 years will be like, but I don't think you can claim that "The new century will be the century of Biology." With such a high rate of change, it's likely that there will be a radical change within the next decade. At which point, people will then make a new prediction for the rest of the century.
You're right. Back when I was in college some 15 years ago, all the science journals were proclaiming we were in the age of genetic engineering, and would discover cures to all diseases through genetic engineering. Cancer? Get rid of it by using modified viruses to seek and destroy cancerous cells. AIDS? Get rid of it in much the same way. It is all the same as 5 years ago with the stem cell debate, where there were claims of curing the paralyzed.
Science makes bold predictions, and it moves at a snails pace. We're not any different than people who lived 20 years ago, just like people who lived 20 years ago were not that different than people who lived 40 years ago. Consider how many major changes there have been in the past 100 years? Automobiles, television, and airplains. If you then throw out those 100 years, and go back from 1800 to 1500, how much change was there in 300 years? Someone invents gunpowder and that is the major catalyst of change.
People will remain the same, and our tools and toys might get new glamor, or repackaged as the next greatest hit, but science does not move that fast.
One final example is the amount of time it takes for a new medicine to get approved by the FDA. Most take a decade for the approval process. Why? Because science does not predict as much as watch and measure.
What was Edison's famous saying? "I did not fail 1,000,000 times, I found 999,999 ways that did not work".
Science will create new levels of meaning. The Internet already is made of one quintillion transistors, a trillion links, a million emails per second, 20 exabytes of memory. It is approaching the level of the human brain and is doubling every year, while the brain is not. It is all becoming effectively one machine. And we are the machine.
That statement is laughable. The internet will become like a human brain?
Science can not replace religion. Religion gives an explanation to the most fundamental questions. Science tries at its best to describe what we can perceive. And Science often fails. Did we descend from monkeys? I know I didn't, neither did my parents or grandparents. I could keep going back, generation after generation, and nobody in my lineage came from a monkey.
1) Private company freely provides service
2) It is found useful by individuals and companies for finding one another
3) Its use becomes wide-spread and significant in the success of companies (maybe)
4) One particular company sues provider of this free service for not catering to them
I agree in this case google should be free to rank whoever they want, wherever they want.
Whenever a company goes from small and usefull to large and not-so-useful, we should be aware that the service we get might change. The larger google gets, the more revenue they will need. In the past, google has only used text advertising in search results. Will the whole first page of results one day be based on paid companies? Will google pepper in paid advertising in the results without letting visiters know? I know google is not doing this yet, but consider phone companies that charge money for keeping your phone number private! To those phone numbers that are not private, they get sold to marketing firms to call. The company will find a way to make money no matter what your preference.
The key is to not let google become the only success in town. If google has serious competition, and we can limit the size of google, then all will be well. We don't want google to become the next microsoft, that dictates to all of us the rules.
Google is a private company with a private database. They have no obligation to rank any site equally, or even at all! In fact, Google could arbitrarily decide that some company was "bad" and simply remove them from their database. Kinderstart has no case, not even with their fractured English. Google is a corporation, not a public service, even though they seem like it on occasion.
I agree. If the courts say there must be a "fair" system to decide pagerank, then who decides? Do we want Google and Yahoo to return the same results?
If one of the search engines does not work, then don't use it. That's why I don't use google very often anymore. If I want to search for homes in an area, I don't get real estate offices in that area, I get too many pages of fake-mls pages that just want to advertise a different site. What good is it getting 1000 results, with the 10 or 20 good ones burried?
Googles pagerank algorithm does not work, I don't think any algorithm can work. It is too easy to manipulate. What we will need is a open source project, with people adding websites to an index. Maybe that will work, maybe it wont like Amazon where a few people can spam the scoring system.
Perhaps the real problem is the growth in the internet. Before google, even before yahoo, when I was using webcrawler, I would get very good search results. Most came from universities or private websites from people interested in their hobby or topic. Today, the best websites I find come by word of mouth, a friend saying check this out.
One thing that will increase advertising effectiveness, he said, was better targeting of ads. He said Google ads are very targetable, because Google knows a lot about the person surfing, especially if they have used personal search or logged into a service such as Gmail. This he said was true not only of text ads, but for display ads and eventually for video ads as well.
Am I the only one who does not like Google collecting surfing habits or using email to decide what ads to send my way. What other ways can this information be used? Will Google one day sell this information to employers? Will there be enough data that Google can link surfing habits to a real person, not a virtual internet user?
Will credit card companies and banks join a data mining company to share collected information?
Can people imagine if their bank, ISP, and employer joined forces to paint a complete profile of a person? Can that data, when taken as a whole, be used to predict things like how much a person will cost in health insurance, and that data be used to not hire a person?
What do you think of IRC, is that recorded? I am new to computers and don't really know what is recorded and what is not. I know Yahoo IM can be recorded.
I don't know why computer communication isn't given the same legal protections as phone conversations. In most states, intercepting a phone call is illegal, and so is recording them without concent. How is communicating with a computer different than communicating with a phone?
I also religiously encrypt outbound email, and ask my correspondants to encrypt mail they send to me.
How can I encrypt my emails so the person recieving can read them, but everyone else can't?
Well, if it was legal in the US then a percentage of the profits would be collected as income taxes, rather than being forced overseas, and could be used for government purposes such as education or blowing up things or whatever floats your boat.
I get that. But what has a higher income to the state? Collecting 100% of the funds, minus payouts, OR collecting a small tax on a private gambling site?
My true feeling is gambling is bad, and it causes harm to many people. I don't think it is good for government to be the site of gambling, but at least there is more control than when it's a private entity.
When the US doesn't directly profit from the gambling (national lottery, Las Vegas economy, etc.) they try to get rid of it stating it is "immoral".
The state run lottery is supposed to fund education. Where does the profits from privare gambling go? I am not saying I'm for state run lottery, just that the proceeds go to something most people would like to see funded better.
For those who are addicted to gambling, I doubt they get the same high playing lotto as they do betting on college basketball games. That might be a second reason to ban internet gambling.
And if I'm going to be taxed buying a book at Amazon, why shouldn't people be taxed who want to gamble in off-shore sites?
Re:Watch favorite shows on the internet?
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I don't have an index of stuff... I just lookk around and find things. Maybe I need to start posting that stuff on a blog somewhere and then others can subscribe to the torrents via my css feed. Hmmmm... do I smell opportunity? Maybe if I was more ambitious - right now I got too much other stuff on my plate.
I'd be in line to subscribe. And you could make money with adsense or whatever google has going.
The cool thing about the show is I didn't need bit torrent to download. I got rid of that software a long time ago, after the 100th download that stalled at 92% or 93%. I like odd stuff, and there are never that many people sharing the stuff I like.
particular show is fantastically better in many respects than ANY Hollywood movie ever made about "the internet" and pirates and bootleggers and all that stuff... is it not?
It is good. And it probably has to be one of the cheapest to film. What does he have, one camera? LOL. It is ingenious. I just watched the 4th episode, and finally there was a second actress in front of the camera, just long enough to give a quick titty shot.
So maybe these folks don't get a big deal hollywood contract to make "the scene:the movie" - but maybe they DO get writing contracts, or a technical consulting deals, or even the chance to sell the storyline to someone else who wants to make "the scene:the movie."
That's sick, that it has to be filtered by the powers that be, that outsiders can't make their own flicks and distribute them. Maybe that will change with the internet.
If there is more stuff like this on the web, I must be blind because I've never found it before. I guess I have a bunch of websites in "my favorites", and finding new ones isn't all that easy. Dang google is flooded with all sorts of links to links to links of somethinge. Too many websites with no real content, it gets discouraging to search.
Re:Watch favorite shows on the internet?
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While BASIC dsl prices are not too bad (30 bucks around here) it's only 128kbs on oversold channels - streaming performance on such a connection is not exactly worthwhile.
You might want to check out Yahoo SBC DSL (if they have it in your area). It is only $12.99 a month for 12 months. For $4 bucks more, they sell a 3meg DSL. It's a much better deal than cable which ripped me a new one with a $100 bill for basic and internet. I got rid of them, and started buying DVD sets, and I came out ahead.
Did you not get the example I gave about West Wing? Where do you think that came from? Someone in the UK, or Switzerland, or one of those euro countries where everyone has a fat pipe into their homes had already recorded the show via their local satellite broadcaster, ripped it to avi, and posted it to usenet before the show had even finished airing in the US!
I thought all the C-Dish broadcasts were getting DRM'ed to high hell.
for example, there's a great show called "welcome to the scene" that has 18 episodes now in the can. The entire show is simply one long screencap - one of the main characters chats with other characters, surfs the internet, and emails.
How do you find shows like this? I wonder how these guys make any money??? They film a show, and then give it away on the web. I've watched the first three episodes, and it's pretty good.
Do you have any other reccomendations? Or better yet, an index of web based shows?
Oh, about the show. Why would these guys want to go through the trouble of offering a hollywood movie to the internet. Why do they care if someone in asia is selling it on the street. I don't get the reasons why being first is so important. And what is wrong with the main character. His gf is naked, and is busy talking to his irc buddies.
LOL, that show was a good find!
Re:Watch favorite shows on the internet?
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Who has the bandwidth to watch crappy, jerky streams?
It does not have to be that way. Most people have DSL or Cable Modems, and they can get a good resolution video without the stream stopping to rebuffer.
Maybe some shows are slightly less res than television because the provider wants to make money twice. They want to sell it on the internet, and then again on DVD. They have been doing this for a long time. How many DVD's have been re-released multiple times with "special edition" then "directors cut" then "2 disc fan set".
If the producers can sell the same product to the consumer 10 times, they will. We, the consumers must stop buying content over and over again. Would you pay five times for the same book? Then why pay five times for a film?
The best possible scenereo for end users is one large MPEG file in high res. MPEG can play on any machine, it does not buffer, it plays fast and well. Most people with DSL and Cable Modems can handle a 1.5 gig file no problem, and that should be good resolution for an hour long show.
Until they fill that worldwide "analog hole" there's no way this stuff is really going to compete.
This is going to sound so politically uncorrect. Who cars about the world? They care about the USA, Canada, UK, France, Germany and other advanced nations. If we all must wait for the world to catch up to speed, then we'll never get it. Does anyone care if the people of Zimbabwe can't watch streaming video?
Thanks to the indie film makers there's already better stuff freely available on the internet than on most of those 500 TV channels, anyway.
Care to give a few examples? What are the shows like? Are they in english, could they make it on prime time tv in the USA? Or is it more like the cable access channel?
I couldn't find the price to view shows. Are they giving it away for free, just forcing advertising?
I really don't want to instal Media Player 10. I had it on a system, and I just didn't like it compared to Media Player 6. I wonder what good the DRM in 10 is if people can record the video when it plays?
Wow, I never knew Canada was so totalitarian when it came to freedom of speech. Guess if you don't tow the liberal line your wallet suffers the consequences, even though there is no reasonable expectation that your actions will cause physical harm to anyone (and if there was such a reasonable expectation, then the laws need to be a lot stronger then a mere fine).
I agree, this is the work of liberals.
Can anyone think of an example where conservatives or libertarians wanted to take away the right of a person to speak or write? Ideas are protected as free speech on the right.
I wonder how much the politics of lobbying and money influence these decisions of what is hate speech? Will a law be passed saying "Any speech against Albino's is hateful", just because the Albino population has a strong and wealthy lobby? If I form a group, and donate $50,000 to 50 senators, can I then have them push a law through saying "Any speech against geeks is hatefull and is criminal"? Will this just break down to all groups getting lobbyists, and nobody being able to say anything?? This might sound rediculous, but if speech is regulated by law the way road construction is, we might have a society where lobbyists decide what can and can't be spoken or printed.
I don't want to troll or flame, but are the Jews 100% innocent about all world events? If groups can't argue about how extensive the holocaust was, then what is next? Will they not be able to express an opinion about the current situtation in the middle east?
It seems like a very slippery slope, lubed up for everyone to slide down. I bet the first group to chime in will be the Native Americans, who have one of the strongest lobbies. The next time you tell a joke about a Native American and whisky, you might go to jail.
The only thing that is really censored is hate speech (including Holcaust denial).
How is arguing a position the same as hate speech? If someone believes the Holcaust never happened, why can't they make that argument, show their facts, and show their logic.
What is better of the following 2 choices?
1: Make it illegal to speak some idea. The idea will go underground, where nobody will dispute it. Groups will form, the idea will survive.
2: All speech is protected. The idea will be spoken openly. People who disagree will come in mass numbers and disprove the idea.
What is next? Will the people who wrote The Bell Curve go to jail for expressing ideas that most people disagree with? Will Rush Limbaugh be sentanced to prision for saying he thinks a black QB is given more chances to succeed than a white one?
There is a HUGE difference between expressing an idea and motivating other people to violence. There is a difference between writing "Black people unfairly steal admissions seats at the University of Michigan Law School" on the internet, and going to the University of Michigan and giving a speech in front of a mob to incite them to violence.
What will happen, if we let those with $$ decide what is true and false, is that anything they disagree with will become off-limits for debate.
So if he has the files, he's a criminal. But if he doesn't have the files, he's also a criminal? How is deliberate obstruction determined in a case like this?
Or the third possibility is he does not delete the files, and there are no files which shows he violated his work contract. The crime was in deleting the files. There could not be a crime in leaving the files there.
What most likely happened was he used his employers laptop in starting his own buisness. Who knows how he did this, maybe he used trade secrets or something else. When he decided to quit, he wanted to remove the evidence of his actions, so he removed everything from the laptop.
The company has a right to issue the laptop and require it is returned in the same condition, and that would include the software and data on the laptop.
Is the laptop's data the property of the employer? That is the question. If the laptop is the property of the employer, and the employer has a right to the data on the laptop, then what this guy did is the same thing as if he deleted records from a PC in his cubicle. Or is it different because he can take a laptop out of the office?
My gut reaction is to want more privacy. But maybe that is not possible anymore. Heck, the government demanded search records from Yahoo, MSN, and Google a few months ago so they could see who was searching for prohibited porn and terrorism. Google was the only one who did not provide the data, but not because they wanted to protect their users privacy, but because they did not want other companies to see their data.
Re:How long do plastic bags and bottles last anywa
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The problem is really apparent if you travel through India or another less developed country. They have no social stigma against littering like we do in western countries.
Plastic bags and water bottles are everywhere throughout the landscape, I've seen mountain villages use otherwise pristine streams as dumping grounds for vast mounds of plastic.
Will these things ever break down?
As technology increased, we will find solutions. Look at space travel. At one time, it was something only a large government superpower like the USA or USSR could do. 30 years later there are other nations. And today we have private companies taking people into space. What will happen in another 20 years, will a ticket for a space flight fall to $500?
One possible solution to the problem you describe is to use the great incinerator in the sky. Maybe NASA will become profitable as the largest garbage company?? They will support their research branch by hauling away our plastics on one way trips to the sun in cheap shuttles.
Maybe some company will find a way to refine or recycle plastics into usefull products. India is filled with engineers, one of them will think something up. Maybe the trash plastic can be melted and reshaped into a rock hard bycicle frame? Or it can be shaped like drywall to make cheap housing. Who knows. The only thing which limits us is our imagination. Until then, there will be lots of trash.
Last I checked, heating styrofoam let off some pretty nasty gasses... Is this really the whiz-bang solution we were hoping for?
I don't know how true this is, but when I was in highschool there was a book which was popular with the science guys called "Anarchist Cookbook". I remember something about disolving styrofoam cups in gasoline to make napalm.
Something that might be a little off topic, but I was reading the news and a highschool kid got expelled for browsing the web for the cookbook. When I was in highschool we were allowed to read anything we wanted.
In turn, what it accomplishes is that there will be fewer and fewer people with relevant skills. Let's face it, everyone, literally everyone, who is in the security biz today, from 'net security to virus analysis has some kind of record. Either a public one or (if he's good) at least one that didn't get public. But everyone has scratched and sniffed at a server or two.
I disagree with this statement. Many people learned security the right way. There are places with servers designed for testing. You don't have to crack the computers at U of State to learn security. You don't have hack the computers at GE to learn security.
Laws against DDoSs. Great idea. Btw, let's next outlaw Hurricanes from destroying properties.
DDoSs is different. IMHO, DDoSs is like a boycott. Unions did this before computers were invented. I can give you one example. A local shipping factory was going to take away health insurance from the truck drivers. The union voted to strike, and the compnay hired scabs. The truck drivers protested in front of the factory for a couple days, but realized they were not making progress. So what did they do? The truck drivers on strike got in their private trucks, vans, and whatever cars they could find, and they drove in a circle around the factory. This made it impossible for trucks to enter or leave the factory, and jammed up all the local intersections. But it was 100% legal. The police were called in, and the truck drivers were not breaking any laws. The company was forced to deal with the union.
The end result is for the company to find others willing to pay for the upgrades. Users who desire something at a discount should be willing to at least admit that they're also part of the problem -- they tell the developers that they'll buy a product at a certain price, and they give the developers reason for finding ways to pay for that product in the long haul.
I could not disagree more strongly.
What if the market place decided that cars will sell best at $10,000? But auto makers want to make $15,000. Would it be okay to make the car with a non-functioning radio, and then tell the consumers "We have an upgrade, it's better", but the new upgrade is a radio you can't turn off, filled with advertising. Or they tell you "we have an upgrade for your engine", but it is a GPS that collects data about where you go, so they can tell if you prefer Best Buy or Circuit City?
If I want to spend $50 for software, then either there is software I can buy, or there is not. It is deceptive to sell software for $50, then turn around and hide spyware in it, invade my privacy, or find some other way to milk me for more money. If there is a security patch, or performance patch which corrects a programming mistake, then let me download the patch without any unwanted code.
One other thing I hate is when there is an upgrade, and the end user can't stop it. For example, use AOL. It will download "upgrades" in the background. Even if you try and exit AOL, the upgrade will continue to download unless you unplug the phone line.
There should be truth in advertising. And don't tell me there is an urgent security bug fix, but force me to accept a new EULA or take on new software. Just sell the software so it works. Stop double dipping.
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If you were in the same class as me, I would prevent you from using your laptop. I can't think with clicking noises. I paid for that class too, and I have a right to learn just as much as you do.
This is like letting cigarettes in public places. It is not the smokers right to light up, it is the public right to breath clean air.
Your clicking is noise pollution. It is no different than starting a conversation with the person sitting next to you, and disrupting the class. The professor has every right to maximize the learning for all students, not to protect the rights of one to use his laptop.
You have every right to take your hand written notes and type them in your laptop after class. You don't have the right to do it during class when you can disturb others.
Where was Apple computers founded? They made the PC revolution happen, before any AT clones were seen in peoples homes. Wasn't it just a bunch of guys who liked computers, and put in work for the cause? I don't remember the exact facts, but didn't it start by ordering parts from a magazine and seeing what they could make it do? It was more of an intellectual game.
If a person already has their home rent paid for, a computer does not take up that much space. The choice between watching television or working on a program is not one of money, it is a choice of preference. $50K for winning a game sounds fun. You won't win $50K watching television.
Or, it could be a "anything you submit will become our property" type "scam", where some grad student has a unique approach that this group then becomes the owner of for a mere $50k. They can then take the idea and run with it, and reap the benefits.
In todays world, isn't everything already patented? Who cares if a company takes the idea and runs? $50,000 for just an idea is not bad! It beats washing dishes at the pizza joint.
- Medicine. Not having a large chance of dying/suffering of some incurable illness is a qualitative difference, I think (sorry, don't know the numbers).
- Human rights and democracy at least in parts of the world.
- A fairly complete rational description of the world (of course, not totally complete yet). Whatever "rational" means exactly -- but I think there *has* been an essential change and it's not all relative.
This is a perfect example of how relative everything trully is, and how we have not advanced, only created a superficial image which feeds man own narcissistic desires.
For example, you wrote: Human rights and democracy. Explain to me how this is a *major* advancement. Did you live in a communist country? I did for a short period of time, and I think they were more happy than westerners (like Americans). They had gaurenteed health care, free schooling including university, and job security. You can make philosophical arguments about which is more moral a state, or economic arguments about which is more efficient a state, but at the end, you can not say one is "better" than the other. That kind of statement can not be supported, it is a normative statement. We all know how politics is, and it stinks in all forms. But to say that people were less happy under socialist states would be flat wrong! How much money do we spend in the western world on television, movies, DVD's, all searching for something to occupy our time and make us feel better. Perhaps the lack of these goods in communist states has been a good thing, because people form relationships with other people, not their television set.
Your statement about medicine- Medicine. Not having a large chance of dying/suffering of some incurable illness. First, we all still die! You want to give me a major advancement, how about extending life at a geometric rate? But lets look at what has happened- What changed from 1960 to 2005, 45 years later? Did we extend a meaningful life by 5 or 6 years, or did we find ways to keep someone alive, but with deteriorated cognative ability- a half vegitable. The person can wake up, eat, but they stoped thinking about anything meaningful, and they don't enjoy living like they did. Young people can not understand this, because to them everything is seen and thought about. But to many older people, even when there is something in front and seen, like flowers or the sky, there is no thought giving to what is seen, it is all ignored.
I'll support my last paragraph with two examples. #1, visit a nursing home. You will see people who are the most DEJECTED, UNHAPPY, on the breaking point of crying. But they will recieve modern care and their life is extended for 3 or 4 years each. I've been there and seen it, it is horrible. People who are helped into a wheelchair by a nurse, pushed to some courtyard, and the person does not move all day, the head hangs low until someone comes around to tell them it's feeding time. I'll also give a less drastic example, consider people who wear eyeglasses. What happens, you give someone prescription eyeglasses, but their eyesight continues to worsen over the course of 40 years. While most people can do a test and say read the chart, and everyone agrees the person lost vision, the same thing happens in our minds, we lose the ability to think the same way.
People are the same today as they were 500 years ago. We are all born the same way, and we die. We all want the same things, we all desire food, to be loved. Humanity has not changed. We are the same beings. Science has not anwsered any questions such as "why am i here".
Now, for the sake of argument, I'll take the flip side and say the quality of life has deteriorated because of technology (I don't beleive this, but it is an argument that could be made). In the 1800's, how could people be killed? Someone wo
Not really, there has not been that much progress. Life is pretty much the same, except we have different toys to occupy our time.
hell, in this generation alone we have had the birth of the Internet, email, and the WWW.
So what? It is a system of communication, it is not communication. People have been communicating since the beginning of time. What difference does it make if I talk to you face to face, or send you an IM? Maybe you don't have the time to come over and speak face to face, but could that also imply that if someone is unwilling to expend that energy on a communication then the value of the communication is lowered? Could the great WWW be a bad thing, increasing useless information?
You don't think there's been much progress in the past hundred years?
Lets look at history. How did the people live in the 1900's? 1800's? 1700's?. If you were to ask a person who was alive in 1900 how much more advanced he was to those of the 1800's, his eyes would light up and he would start with "we can farm much better, we can grow more crop." But in reality, all narcisism aside, aren't they pretty much the same? Same manner of birth, same clothing, same need for food and love, same in almost every way. Then you could ask the guy from the 1800's how he is better than the one from the 1700's, and you might get the same reply as the one from the 1900's talking about him!
When we skim away the distractions, what changed? We might change the way we send a letter, send an e-mail, but fundamentally we are still just talking. We might have went from walking, to horse riding, to horse carrige, to steam engine car, to gasoline engine car, but how is that an advancement that a car might travel at 60 mph versus a horse at 20 mph. Is it an earth shattering event?? Or is it a minor improvement over past conditions?
Here is one more example. Before there was the internet, there were bars in the wild west where people played card games like poker. They would sit around a table and drink and gamble. Today we have the internet, and people sit in their living room playing poker, and in some instances gambling.
Has life really changed all that much?
have you read the news lately?
I wrote those who are true to Gods love are at peace and happy. The reason there is suffering is because we have turned our back on God's instructions. Look at how our society has changed the past 20 years. We let gays think they are okay, when in fact they are sick. We let women kill their babies, and call it abortion. We don't take care of the poor in society. And we expect a reward for being enlightened with science?? Science is not all knowing, it can not tell us what is right and wrong.To be happy, we need to do Gods will. If we follow his direction, and love, we will be happy and at peace.
That is not true. People were created by God, in His image. We did not decend from monkeys.
For evolution to happen, it would be like taking a watch and hitting it with a hammer until it was broken into a thousand peices, and then putting those peices in a bag and shaking the bag so the watch is magically put back together.
God is a story created by fearful and ignorant men.
God walked the earth, he was here. His name was Jesus. People saw him, he healed the sick, he walked on water, and he rose from the dead. There were witnesses to His actions.
Belief in a sentient creator flys in the face of all rational observation
No, everything a rational observer looks at gives proof that God does exist. He made everything, and when we look at a beautiful flower or the stars in the sky, we see our Creators work.
Without God, we would not exists. We're here because of his love.
You're right. Back when I was in college some 15 years ago, all the science journals were proclaiming we were in the age of genetic engineering, and would discover cures to all diseases through genetic engineering. Cancer? Get rid of it by using modified viruses to seek and destroy cancerous cells. AIDS? Get rid of it in much the same way. It is all the same as 5 years ago with the stem cell debate, where there were claims of curing the paralyzed.
Science makes bold predictions, and it moves at a snails pace. We're not any different than people who lived 20 years ago, just like people who lived 20 years ago were not that different than people who lived 40 years ago. Consider how many major changes there have been in the past 100 years? Automobiles, television, and airplains. If you then throw out those 100 years, and go back from 1800 to 1500, how much change was there in 300 years? Someone invents gunpowder and that is the major catalyst of change.
People will remain the same, and our tools and toys might get new glamor, or repackaged as the next greatest hit, but science does not move that fast.
One final example is the amount of time it takes for a new medicine to get approved by the FDA. Most take a decade for the approval process. Why? Because science does not predict as much as watch and measure.
What was Edison's famous saying? "I did not fail 1,000,000 times, I found 999,999 ways that did not work".
That statement is laughable. The internet will become like a human brain?
Science can not replace religion. Religion gives an explanation to the most fundamental questions. Science tries at its best to describe what we can perceive. And Science often fails. Did we descend from monkeys? I know I didn't, neither did my parents or grandparents. I could keep going back, generation after generation, and nobody in my lineage came from a monkey.
It is through God that we are at peace and happy.
God bless all of you!
1) Private company freely provides service
2) It is found useful by individuals and companies for finding one another
3) Its use becomes wide-spread and significant in the success of companies (maybe)
4) One particular company sues provider of this free service for not catering to them
I agree in this case google should be free to rank whoever they want, wherever they want.
Whenever a company goes from small and usefull to large and not-so-useful, we should be aware that the service we get might change. The larger google gets, the more revenue they will need. In the past, google has only used text advertising in search results. Will the whole first page of results one day be based on paid companies? Will google pepper in paid advertising in the results without letting visiters know? I know google is not doing this yet, but consider phone companies that charge money for keeping your phone number private! To those phone numbers that are not private, they get sold to marketing firms to call. The company will find a way to make money no matter what your preference.
The key is to not let google become the only success in town. If google has serious competition, and we can limit the size of google, then all will be well. We don't want google to become the next microsoft, that dictates to all of us the rules.
I agree. If the courts say there must be a "fair" system to decide pagerank, then who decides? Do we want Google and Yahoo to return the same results?
If one of the search engines does not work, then don't use it. That's why I don't use google very often anymore. If I want to search for homes in an area, I don't get real estate offices in that area, I get too many pages of fake-mls pages that just want to advertise a different site. What good is it getting 1000 results, with the 10 or 20 good ones burried?
Googles pagerank algorithm does not work, I don't think any algorithm can work. It is too easy to manipulate. What we will need is a open source project, with people adding websites to an index. Maybe that will work, maybe it wont like Amazon where a few people can spam the scoring system.
Perhaps the real problem is the growth in the internet. Before google, even before yahoo, when I was using webcrawler, I would get very good search results. Most came from universities or private websites from people interested in their hobby or topic. Today, the best websites I find come by word of mouth, a friend saying check this out.
Am I the only one who does not like Google collecting surfing habits or using email to decide what ads to send my way. What other ways can this information be used? Will Google one day sell this information to employers? Will there be enough data that Google can link surfing habits to a real person, not a virtual internet user?
Will credit card companies and banks join a data mining company to share collected information?
Can people imagine if their bank, ISP, and employer joined forces to paint a complete profile of a person? Can that data, when taken as a whole, be used to predict things like how much a person will cost in health insurance, and that data be used to not hire a person?
What do you think of IRC, is that recorded? I am new to computers and don't really know what is recorded and what is not. I know Yahoo IM can be recorded.
I don't know why computer communication isn't given the same legal protections as phone conversations. In most states, intercepting a phone call is illegal, and so is recording them without concent. How is communicating with a computer different than communicating with a phone?
I also religiously encrypt outbound email, and ask my correspondants to encrypt mail they send to me.
How can I encrypt my emails so the person recieving can read them, but everyone else can't?
I get that. But what has a higher income to the state? Collecting 100% of the funds, minus payouts, OR collecting a small tax on a private gambling site?
My true feeling is gambling is bad, and it causes harm to many people. I don't think it is good for government to be the site of gambling, but at least there is more control than when it's a private entity.
The state run lottery is supposed to fund education. Where does the profits from privare gambling go? I am not saying I'm for state run lottery, just that the proceeds go to something most people would like to see funded better.
For those who are addicted to gambling, I doubt they get the same high playing lotto as they do betting on college basketball games. That might be a second reason to ban internet gambling.
And if I'm going to be taxed buying a book at Amazon, why shouldn't people be taxed who want to gamble in off-shore sites?
I'd be in line to subscribe. And you could make money with adsense or whatever google has going.
The cool thing about the show is I didn't need bit torrent to download. I got rid of that software a long time ago, after the 100th download that stalled at 92% or 93%. I like odd stuff, and there are never that many people sharing the stuff I like.
particular show is fantastically better in many respects than ANY Hollywood movie ever made about "the internet" and pirates and bootleggers and all that stuff... is it not?
It is good. And it probably has to be one of the cheapest to film. What does he have, one camera? LOL. It is ingenious. I just watched the 4th episode, and finally there was a second actress in front of the camera, just long enough to give a quick titty shot.
So maybe these folks don't get a big deal hollywood contract to make "the scene:the movie" - but maybe they DO get writing contracts, or a technical consulting deals, or even the chance to sell the storyline to someone else who wants to make "the scene:the movie."
That's sick, that it has to be filtered by the powers that be, that outsiders can't make their own flicks and distribute them. Maybe that will change with the internet.
If there is more stuff like this on the web, I must be blind because I've never found it before. I guess I have a bunch of websites in "my favorites", and finding new ones isn't all that easy. Dang google is flooded with all sorts of links to links to links of somethinge. Too many websites with no real content, it gets discouraging to search.
You might want to check out Yahoo SBC DSL (if they have it in your area). It is only $12.99 a month for 12 months. For $4 bucks more, they sell a 3meg DSL. It's a much better deal than cable which ripped me a new one with a $100 bill for basic and internet. I got rid of them, and started buying DVD sets, and I came out ahead.
Did you not get the example I gave about West Wing? Where do you think that came from? Someone in the UK, or Switzerland, or one of those euro countries where everyone has a fat pipe into their homes had already recorded the show via their local satellite broadcaster, ripped it to avi, and posted it to usenet before the show had even finished airing in the US!
I thought all the C-Dish broadcasts were getting DRM'ed to high hell.
for example, there's a great show called "welcome to the scene" that has 18 episodes now in the can. The entire show is simply one long screencap - one of the main characters chats with other characters, surfs the internet, and emails.
How do you find shows like this? I wonder how these guys make any money??? They film a show, and then give it away on the web. I've watched the first three episodes, and it's pretty good.
Do you have any other reccomendations? Or better yet, an index of web based shows?
Oh, about the show. Why would these guys want to go through the trouble of offering a hollywood movie to the internet. Why do they care if someone in asia is selling it on the street. I don't get the reasons why being first is so important. And what is wrong with the main character. His gf is naked, and is busy talking to his irc buddies.
LOL, that show was a good find!
It does not have to be that way. Most people have DSL or Cable Modems, and they can get a good resolution video without the stream stopping to rebuffer.
Maybe some shows are slightly less res than television because the provider wants to make money twice. They want to sell it on the internet, and then again on DVD. They have been doing this for a long time. How many DVD's have been re-released multiple times with "special edition" then "directors cut" then "2 disc fan set".
If the producers can sell the same product to the consumer 10 times, they will. We, the consumers must stop buying content over and over again. Would you pay five times for the same book? Then why pay five times for a film?
The best possible scenereo for end users is one large MPEG file in high res. MPEG can play on any machine, it does not buffer, it plays fast and well. Most people with DSL and Cable Modems can handle a 1.5 gig file no problem, and that should be good resolution for an hour long show.
Until they fill that worldwide "analog hole" there's no way this stuff is really going to compete.
This is going to sound so politically uncorrect. Who cars about the world? They care about the USA, Canada, UK, France, Germany and other advanced nations. If we all must wait for the world to catch up to speed, then we'll never get it. Does anyone care if the people of Zimbabwe can't watch streaming video?
Thanks to the indie film makers there's already better stuff freely available on the internet than on most of those 500 TV channels, anyway.
Care to give a few examples? What are the shows like? Are they in english, could they make it on prime time tv in the USA? Or is it more like the cable access channel?
I really don't want to instal Media Player 10. I had it on a system, and I just didn't like it compared to Media Player 6. I wonder what good the DRM in 10 is if people can record the video when it plays?
I agree, this is the work of liberals.
Can anyone think of an example where conservatives or libertarians wanted to take away the right of a person to speak or write? Ideas are protected as free speech on the right.
I wonder how much the politics of lobbying and money influence these decisions of what is hate speech? Will a law be passed saying "Any speech against Albino's is hateful", just because the Albino population has a strong and wealthy lobby? If I form a group, and donate $50,000 to 50 senators, can I then have them push a law through saying "Any speech against geeks is hatefull and is criminal"? Will this just break down to all groups getting lobbyists, and nobody being able to say anything?? This might sound rediculous, but if speech is regulated by law the way road construction is, we might have a society where lobbyists decide what can and can't be spoken or printed.
I don't want to troll or flame, but are the Jews 100% innocent about all world events? If groups can't argue about how extensive the holocaust was, then what is next? Will they not be able to express an opinion about the current situtation in the middle east?
It seems like a very slippery slope, lubed up for everyone to slide down. I bet the first group to chime in will be the Native Americans, who have one of the strongest lobbies. The next time you tell a joke about a Native American and whisky, you might go to jail.
How is arguing a position the same as hate speech? If someone believes the Holcaust never happened, why can't they make that argument, show their facts, and show their logic.
What is better of the following 2 choices?
What is next? Will the people who wrote The Bell Curve go to jail for expressing ideas that most people disagree with? Will Rush Limbaugh be sentanced to prision for saying he thinks a black QB is given more chances to succeed than a white one?
There is a HUGE difference between expressing an idea and motivating other people to violence. There is a difference between writing "Black people unfairly steal admissions seats at the University of Michigan Law School" on the internet, and going to the University of Michigan and giving a speech in front of a mob to incite them to violence.
What will happen, if we let those with $$ decide what is true and false, is that anything they disagree with will become off-limits for debate.
Or the third possibility is he does not delete the files, and there are no files which shows he violated his work contract. The crime was in deleting the files. There could not be a crime in leaving the files there.
What most likely happened was he used his employers laptop in starting his own buisness. Who knows how he did this, maybe he used trade secrets or something else. When he decided to quit, he wanted to remove the evidence of his actions, so he removed everything from the laptop.
The company has a right to issue the laptop and require it is returned in the same condition, and that would include the software and data on the laptop.
Is the laptop's data the property of the employer? That is the question. If the laptop is the property of the employer, and the employer has a right to the data on the laptop, then what this guy did is the same thing as if he deleted records from a PC in his cubicle. Or is it different because he can take a laptop out of the office?
My gut reaction is to want more privacy. But maybe that is not possible anymore. Heck, the government demanded search records from Yahoo, MSN, and Google a few months ago so they could see who was searching for prohibited porn and terrorism. Google was the only one who did not provide the data, but not because they wanted to protect their users privacy, but because they did not want other companies to see their data.
Plastic bags and water bottles are everywhere throughout the landscape, I've seen mountain villages use otherwise pristine streams as dumping grounds for vast mounds of plastic.
Will these things ever break down?
As technology increased, we will find solutions. Look at space travel. At one time, it was something only a large government superpower like the USA or USSR could do. 30 years later there are other nations. And today we have private companies taking people into space. What will happen in another 20 years, will a ticket for a space flight fall to $500?
One possible solution to the problem you describe is to use the great incinerator in the sky. Maybe NASA will become profitable as the largest garbage company?? They will support their research branch by hauling away our plastics on one way trips to the sun in cheap shuttles.
Maybe some company will find a way to refine or recycle plastics into usefull products. India is filled with engineers, one of them will think something up. Maybe the trash plastic can be melted and reshaped into a rock hard bycicle frame? Or it can be shaped like drywall to make cheap housing. Who knows. The only thing which limits us is our imagination. Until then, there will be lots of trash.
I don't know how true this is, but when I was in highschool there was a book which was popular with the science guys called "Anarchist Cookbook". I remember something about disolving styrofoam cups in gasoline to make napalm.
Something that might be a little off topic, but I was reading the news and a highschool kid got expelled for browsing the web for the cookbook. When I was in highschool we were allowed to read anything we wanted.
I disagree with this statement. Many people learned security the right way. There are places with servers designed for testing. You don't have to crack the computers at U of State to learn security. You don't have hack the computers at GE to learn security.
Laws against DDoSs. Great idea. Btw, let's next outlaw Hurricanes from destroying properties.
DDoSs is different. IMHO, DDoSs is like a boycott. Unions did this before computers were invented. I can give you one example. A local shipping factory was going to take away health insurance from the truck drivers. The union voted to strike, and the compnay hired scabs. The truck drivers protested in front of the factory for a couple days, but realized they were not making progress. So what did they do? The truck drivers on strike got in their private trucks, vans, and whatever cars they could find, and they drove in a circle around the factory. This made it impossible for trucks to enter or leave the factory, and jammed up all the local intersections. But it was 100% legal. The police were called in, and the truck drivers were not breaking any laws. The company was forced to deal with the union.
I could not disagree more strongly.
What if the market place decided that cars will sell best at $10,000? But auto makers want to make $15,000. Would it be okay to make the car with a non-functioning radio, and then tell the consumers "We have an upgrade, it's better", but the new upgrade is a radio you can't turn off, filled with advertising. Or they tell you "we have an upgrade for your engine", but it is a GPS that collects data about where you go, so they can tell if you prefer Best Buy or Circuit City?
If I want to spend $50 for software, then either there is software I can buy, or there is not. It is deceptive to sell software for $50, then turn around and hide spyware in it, invade my privacy, or find some other way to milk me for more money. If there is a security patch, or performance patch which corrects a programming mistake, then let me download the patch without any unwanted code.
One other thing I hate is when there is an upgrade, and the end user can't stop it. For example, use AOL. It will download "upgrades" in the background. Even if you try and exit AOL, the upgrade will continue to download unless you unplug the phone line.
There should be truth in advertising. And don't tell me there is an urgent security bug fix, but force me to accept a new EULA or take on new software. Just sell the software so it works. Stop double dipping.