What scares the hell out of me is wether our brains are gonna be downloaded into Microsoft Windows 2999. Just imagine the spectacular genocide at 3000 AC....
Seriously though, I don't see anything wrong in replacing bodyparts with mechanical ones, if we're truly aware of its implications. Especially for medical reasons. However, it should be a natural evolution to plastic, not just means for escaping our flesh. We've got enough complexes about our body, I'm sure we can't escape it that easily. (Got small breasts? Get a breast-job! All your problems are over! Yeehaw!)
Also, we should be aware that we'd lose our humanity. We litteraly become machines. That may sound fascinating to many geeks out there, but it's ain't that much glory to it. (Picture a nuke from outer space EMPing us to virtual hell if you like, or.. corrodation)
A "simple reaction to stimuli" is probably defined as more than just a simple IF-ELSE. Neural nets are perfectly capable of being conditioned to much more complex reaction-patterns. Although, the most sophisticated use of just one neural net is probably that -- pattern matching. However, you can build a logical network of neural nets helped by actual code to reach higher goals. This is extremely difficult and unprediactable though, since neural nets have to be configured in a specific way to do specific jobs done at all. IOW, there's no guarantee that a neural net will converge just by "setting one or a dozen up", without thought.
Another thing is that with a neural net, it can constantly "improve itself" if you wish. Or unlearn things once your program discovers that feature was not wanted anyway. All this can be automated, but it's not easy to work with classical neural nets. And it's expensive CPU-wise if you're not relying on AI-hardware.
- Steeltoe
I "humbly" disagree Your Honor!
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I'm sure you're just trolling, but it's a good argument for argument's sake, so I'll respond as if it's not a troll. (I spotted some irony/sarcasm scattered through your post, though it might be unintentional)
Unfortunately this kind of thing has come around as a result of the blatent piracy that takes place across the entire computing world thanks to the "I'm not paying for that" mentality that seems to be the norm. Especially when the company is Microsoft, people seem to think that they have some kind of moral right to copy and distribute their products willy-nilly rather than give any more money to the "Evil Empire".
As if Microsoft really needs more money. What planet are you from? The company is alive and thriving as ever. So what if a few people make copies, it's a basic copyright. So what if a few people don't pay for the software at all, many probably wouldn't afford the stiff price anyways (hence they wouldn't buy it in the first place). But still, Microsoft is earning on them since they're promoting MS products by sharing them and using them. Do you really think Microsoft earns much money from people actually BUYING the software packages? No, they earn in from businesses and enforced hardware-deals. Tricking consumers, that's where Microsoft has had it's income. (That tax-fraud talked about above is just pocket-change going right into someone's pockets, I'm sure)
This kind of attitude is prevalent on/. with their rampant disregard for copyright, IP and any other restrictions on what they can have - if you can't get something as "Free Software" then hey, do the next best thing and pirate it. It's all for the cause right?
Ethics and morals are above enforcements and ideals of laws, rules and rights. It doesn't matter what you use as a cannon if the reasons you're using it is based on "bad" or flawed moral beliefs. Law is just a tool, which can be used for good or bad, just like any tool. Indeed, the very notion of "good" and "bad" is subjective opinion based on inner values. So, if you do something "wrong", but you're doing it because you don't want to conform to a violent society, are you really doing something wrong at all? It's all different for every person, and a person that can't understand and tolerate that, is very ignorant.
And this is from a demographic that is supposedly earning a lot more money than the rest of society. Does anyone else see the contradiction and indeed hyprocracy in this? You're all quite willing to take plenty of money from the large corporations you work for, but then all you do is bitch about your working hours and engage in criminal activities. Especially the sysadmins.
Today perhaps, but who knows under what conditions we'll be working under tomorrow? However, your argument is flawed since it is based on the common belief that you can't have good morals and doing the "right" thing (or believeing you are doing so) while being rich. As if having money or being pretty makes you a bad person (reflecting a feeling of inferiorness in the intolerant person). There's nothing wrong in itself with being rich. (Besides, I doubt most/. readers can be termed "rich" at all, wealthier is a better word. And that's just because that's how our free market works right now.)
Criminal activities you say? Where? What? There's not much piracy in the corporate world as you'd like us to believe. Perhaps in schools, but what teenager are gonna buy a full suite of Office 2000 and MS Windows ++?? Should every kid save up all their money so they can buy their "personalized" software (plus games)? What the hell should we be teaching kids today? To think for themselves, or conform to every authority demanding their attention?
What is flawed is the pricing software makers are charging.
Until this attitude of piracy being a good thing of course companies are going to try and impose additional restrictions on their software. Despite what the Stallman hardliners might think, people do deserve to make a living of off their work, and this kind of move is simply an attempt to do so. You've only got yourselves to blame.
First you say we make a very decent living, and now software companies suddenly can hardly stay alive? Make up your mind please! Why are we getting paid so much money if the companies are going under? (With all the clueless "Internet-companies" out there, you can hardly use statistics to prove your point..)
In addition, such an argument for limiting innocent customers is so stupidly flawed. How can customers who never pirated anything blame themselves? This argument is so flawed it hurts to think about it. It is primarily designed to get people to feel bad about themselves, so that people like you and others (who feel yourself superior in some way) can still feel you're in control, because that's the only feeling you have left.
Guess what? You don't fucking control me or anybody else who declares so. (Unless you used reverse-phsycology;-)
First I must say this is a very reflective and good post, which I agree on many accounts. I have just a comment on these last lines:
"I truly believe as the economic model removes the last vestiges of individuals owning anything, the hackers of society will just come up with bigger, better, faster, and more twisted ideas. Life will go on, but the old ways are dying fast, and the new ways are always being defined by those who get there first."
This is a bit pessimistic. We don't have to conform to these twisted ideas, we can make our own future. If we're gonna do it together, it takes creating a community for it. Talking to others about your opinion helps spread the information about what's going on. If we see ourselves as helpless, we will be helpless. However, being a martyr is overrated, we can do better.
Next, the Internet was first founded by geeks and professors at universities. But I have to disagree that the first-one-to-the-mill is the one who have everything to say. It's the one applying most violence that creates the rules. Violence may look different today than before, it's called economy and law today. Just as violence was an accepted fact before, with worshipping of conquerors etc, we now worship those who conquer the economy and law. (Just look at all the fuzz all those lawsuits and IPOs bring about here on/.) Not as saviours or heros mind you, but a "necessary evils" in commercialism, just like violence was a "necessary evil" centuries ago in making countries and prosperity "for all".
Why? I think it's part of our evolution. A child that never experiences pain and struggle, doesn't really learn much about life and grows very egocentrical and demanding. We call it becoming spoiled.
"You sound like a spoilt kid. You don't have to have a car, a computer or a house. Your ancestors in the "good old days" you wax nostaligically about didn't."
If he's a whiner, you are whining on the whining.
The claim here is that you usually DON'T own your car/house/computer. While I don't agree 100% with that, there is some truth in it. What happens is that you take up a loan (owing your bank), to purchase the expensive stuff. You pay for this service to the bank in form of monthly rates. In the end it's a feudal contract that people sign to get to live in luxury too often taken for granted, by devoting their lives to working paying for that standard of living. In the end, it's a choice everybody must make. You can't blame your bank, employer or car-salesman, but I wouldn't call it whining. It's healthy to give this some perspective, and question things.
It can even be economically rewarding to take up a loan, but if that is worth 30-50 years of your life is a personal issue. What to do with all your money in the end? Spoil your children?
Likewise, it can also be economically rewarding to lease for shorter periods of time. What's important is to make people aware that they should choose what they think is best. You don't go out and buy a car in a foreign country just to drive around on your holidays.
However, the downside of all this is commercial feudalism. We bind ourselves to contracts, and are expected to do this by everybody. Blaming others than yourself is futile, but you can "whine" to make people aware of what they choose.
Leasing on a long-term IS feudalism, and in history class we easily saw that this was bad. Today, we want to own as many things as we can, but forget that we're not gonna keep them forever. In my opinion, BOTH sides of this issue are wrong and need to look a little further.
"You don't like modern society? You don't _have_ to live in it!"
It's phrases like this that makes me wonder what intelligence certain people have... Why should people be forced to leave and corporation and governments be allowed to dictate everything?
The house/car/computer issue was a bad example. A much better example is information, art, trademarks, copyrights, patents, ideas. We lease these without thinking about their licenses, because we're not very mature in dealing with this new technology. However, corporations having monopoly on names, phrases, implementations, ideas will only continue to exapand until we lose the right to question it. People are not "whining" because it is so bad today, they are "whining" because things are getting worse all the time as corporations hijack the Internet.
No religion can replace human involvement, personal development, tolerance, understanding and love. The solution isn't One Religion or Conformance at all, it's making people care about themselves and others.
Religion is on the downrise nowadays, that's why people are saying moral is on decline. They equate church going with morals, which is of course absurd. No matter how much one cling to old values and power-structures, they will eventually vanish or get transformed.
Now, people are selfish these days, but it's a sign of things-are-gonna-get-worse-before-they-get-better. It's when a situation becomes intolerable people begin to realize things and change. As more people come in contact with their true feelings, they're gonna break apart and search for other answers.
God may very well have created this universe, be all-knowing and all-powerful yet still not helping us directly. That's because he made us in HIS image, not like puppets (which is a strong indication that God may also have a God btw). What are we here to learn do you think?
If you take christianity further you end up in spiritual beliefs, although you have to cast away alot of ego. Debunking a set of beliefs just because humans interpreted an avatar/miracles/ufos/whatever wrongly, is limiting.
You're talking of divorce as a bad thing, but that's a value from conservative viewpoint. If you look a bit further, you'll see that peoples notion of marriage, or rather the notion of _real love_, that is flawed.
People seem to think that a couple consisting of only two people _should_ stay together for the rest of their lives, or else their love is not "real love". So if my grandparents never divorced, it must have been Real Love, mustn't it? Not just a result of habit, expectation and sacrifice? No marriage/relationship is the same though, so neither you or I should judge too much.
However, when you start dissecting this "real love"-thing, you'll see so many variations self-depriving views all around this world, you may very well want to cry, especially as you find this in yourself too. We're in a process of turning this around and make new rules, but don't expect a New World Order to come around at the year 2000. In fact, hope that it doesn't since revolutions and fast changes too often become too extreme.
How is limiting a good thing? Are we to blindly promote Linux in every way so that the "Good side" may win? Why not just put some extra text on the GPL-license to only be used with a GPL/Linux core? What do we do when everybody finally uses Linux? (A sad computer-world that would be)
No, people must stand for what they believe in. Obviously you don't believe in freedom. If you move an inch, you lose an inch. RMS sees that more clearly than most people, and is not afraid to act upon it. His theories go way deeper than just free software, you should read the GNU website for his philosophies. Why should he conform to everybody else? Why do we conform at all, instead of thinking for ourself and taking a stance, accepting others to do the same?
From the link: "They always take things personally,'' Jolley said. Because the boy used a home computer, rather than one at school, the incident was handled by the Beaver County sheriff, Jolley said. But removing a student from school in order to keep the peace is not unheard of, either. In Layton, Northridge High School Principal Michael Duckworth said that years ago, when he was at another school, a group of students posted throughout the building signs designed to belittle a school administrator. "Those kids were removed from school,'' he said. "When they had learned their lesson, they were split up and sent to other schools." The students were disciplined under the Davis School District's safe schools policy, which is based on the federal safe and drug-free schools policy. The policy is interpreted differently in each of the state's 40 school districts, said Verne Larsen of the State Office of Education. "What works in Weber County won't work in Beaver County,'' Larsen said. Principal Linda Sandstrom at Alta High School said a similar incident would certainly prompt recourse at her school, the largest in the state. "There are just certain things you cannot say and get away with it,'' she said. "Kids have a pretty high capacity for this stuff anymore,'' Jolley said. "I hope this situation is correctable for the sake of him and his family."
How little self-esteem do teachers and other people have? It really sounds like this boy hit a nerve here. If someone attacks your reputation, you defend yourself. However, criminalizing the very act of criticizing is the coward's way. I know it may be hard to defend against groundless attacks, but most people don't listen to that. If you just take your time, people will listen. Especially when you debunk the whole crap.
People should be more robust and be able to work things out. Not cut away "bad elements", that only shows how much they REALLY care and understand.
So if someone gets attacked on the streets by a hidden sniper, the most appropiate reaction, for the majority, would be to execute the victim. That's your best shot at stopping the sniper??
It's an interesting line of thought, but nevertheless stupid. When I read all this, I thought exactly the same thing as the previous poster. Of course, most people want to take the easy way out, but it'll hurt them until they understand what's best.
Of course if people listened more to their true heart, instead of being selfish and greedy (read: intellectual), we wouldn't have this problem at all.
Your first two comments assume that a huge mass of people can evaluate everything collectively. It's nice on paper, but doesn't work so well in a world run by Governments, TimeWarner/AOL and RIAA controlling the media. Big governments and corporations DON'T want people to think for themselves, since they would then lose control and power. Hence we have created our "mass-mentality" which lulls us into _safe_ and _boring_ lives. Ever been in the military? If you have, then you know what I'm talking about..
You're talking about "justification" as if it's something else than an illusion we have about what we do to eachother. As if anybody _naturally_ need your "approval" to do what they do?
Civil disobidience can involve ANYTHING. Ever heard about revolutions? That's just an extreme case of civil disobidience.
You talk about selfish people. Well, look at yourself. Are you any better? We're all selfish, and we're going to continue hurting eachother until we "get it". A monopoly seems pretty "selfish" to me too, so what? It's just an expression of greed and violence, which is what our entire society is based on. Intellect can't easily solve this one..
Besides, I personally don't think you can compare _sharing information, knowledge and ideas_ to _stealing_..
Napster doesn't give you music. Napster offers a service to come in contact with other human beings that may (or may not) have the music you are interested in. It doesn't censor, distribute or regulate any content. It also offers an ftp-like service, so that you can copy information that other person has stored on his/her harddrive, or offer some information on your own.
Wether such a service should be banned is highly controversial. However, I don't think it should be since Napster Inc is NOT distributing any illegal music tracks at all. Free market and freedom should rule here, not draconian laws and enforcements.
If you're going to ban companies that allow people to find eachother and share information, you'll have to shut down AOL.... Hey, wait a minute, that might be a good idea afterall, huh?;-)
>Duplicate register sets. Processes already have duplicate register sets. This overhead is already there.
>Different instruction pointers. Ditto.
>Greater memory load.
Only if you are loading more pages. Ok, maybe you'd want to completely separate the pages between processes, but the cache could be made to operate independently of any (weak?) MMU scheme for protecting data.
>More hardware complexity.
I wonder what they're gonna cool this chip with.;-)
My greatest concern here is the bus and memory. It gotta be made specifically for multiprocessing, or else you're gonna have an expensive bottleneck on your hands.
Besides, you talk about information as something we can prove is there or not theoretically. That is not so, all our information is derived from observation, interpreting it into knowledge. You can't have knowledge without observation (experience). If you have biased judgements, you will live inside a shell missing out of alot. Of course doing this together might be fun, but only just for so long.
So, any particle can have an unimaginable amount of information. It's just up to us to find a way to observe it. Some information is tied to the physical limited by "the speed of light", while other information might go through other channels.
Btw, how fast to you think the gravitational-force propgates? Just because _variations_ in gravity doesn't go faster than light, doesn't mean the force itself isn't. Of course, if we define the world to, it will be so for us.. Another thing is that everything have a frequency (wave), but what medium is everything frequenting through (aka how can a wave exist without a medium to vibrate in)? There's much unknown to us still.
Disclaimer: IANAP (I Am Not A Physisist), not even qualified to understand the Relativity Theory. But when I attended the classes in highschool and college I got a little grains of understanding of this difficult-to-envision topic. Not from the teacher though, he only sited examples from the books without being able to explain much that made any sense). Here goes nothing.
In science you need a way to define time meaningfully. What does it mean that two events _are happening at the same time_? How do you define that?
Of course in science you need to test, observe, measure and calculate every hypothesis you come up with before you can write down established theories (which may later be called 'bogus' anyways, that's how rude and arrogant some people are..).
Since you must observe everything to prove anything, and light is the fastest known way of communication we know of (except gravity), you need to define two events happening at the same time to an _observer_ as when their emitted lights arrive so that you can observe. If you never receieve anything, the events never happened.
Of course, this is not how reality really works. It is how we choose to _perceieve_ reality scientifically. Now, when you define time like this, the light from the stars (supernovas etc) are telling us what is happening up there _right now_ _scientifically_ (the light from a nearby tree and the light from a distant star is perceived at the same time). This is just because someone was smart enough to redefine time, that is why this is all so confusing!
Note that we're really talking about theoretical light in theoretical arguments about RT, since real light can be altered by gravitation and mirrors (without altering our whole map of space-time that much). Theoretical light moves with a speed in all direction with the speed of c.
So in this case the signal must be received before it was transmitted in order for it to be faster than light. That doesn't mean it went backwards in time according to a more "universal time".
I've always favored C++ over Pascal because C++ is more expressive and compact. However, C++ is beginning to get old to me (I started programming it when I was 14, 10 years ago). I realize that how few bytes your sourcefile contains has not that much to do with a good program, and I'm searching for languages that can express more (meta-languages). With even more expression, it starts getting ridiculous to continue using so many operators.
I think you hit the nail on the head with your points.
Excuse me, macros/preprocessor instructions _clean_??? *cough* The way C / C++ handles this is one of the absolutely weakest points of the language. It's only useful for hacks, you can't really morph the language in a proper way. There exists languages that do that, but C / C++ is not one of them. Forth comes to mind, it let's you extend and morph the language as you like. (Btw, morphing a language is not that good if you don't have a meta-language to convert between the dialects automatically)
There are many others reasons to put OO concepts into the language:
1) standardization, readability, compactability 2) portability, abstraction from the hardware 3) reusing objects in a controlled manner, clearly defining the interfaces 4) hiding data, more robust channels 5) avoid nasty pointer-bugs 6) faster to program and understand once you grasp the concepts
Btw, "if else if else if else if else if else" is huge, static, cludgy and non-scalable. It's certainly not generically faster than switch() or vtables.
Yes, you have to sacrifice a little execution speed for all this. However, with todays CPU- architectures you won't probably notice the difference anyways. The CPU impact is not so much of inefficiency in the C++ language, as it is that compilers are rather constrained how "good/hacky" code they can produce. Especially concering dynamic libraries, but the benefits of these should be obvious as well.
If you read our posts again you'll see that our argument is a chicken-and-egg problem as well..
However I don't agree that we should trust software-vendors as much as we do today. Having the source DOES help in most situations we have today. Maybe tomorrow hardware will be more Open Source as well? We can't stop just because we can't leap all the way to nirvana today. The more layers you cover, the _less likelihood_ and harder it is for malicious code to exist. Especially since a fully automated microcode handling all possible compilers, are just not possible for us today. (Sidenote: The exploit was handling one special type of UNIX-compiler. This spurs the argument that there really is benefit in security in heterogenous systems and environments, just like in genetics.)
Today, it's all too easy for companies doing things customers would object to HEAVILY and not buy/try the product/demo, if only they knew about it. Wether you define this as security-holes or breach of privacy, remains subjective definitions, though they are still unwanted by many users.
I am fully aware that in the end, all that is left is trust. However, peoples mileage on this varies heavily.
Slashdot Mirror
What scares the hell out of me is wether our brains are gonna be downloaded into Microsoft Windows 2999. Just imagine the spectacular genocide at 3000 AC....
Seriously though, I don't see anything wrong in replacing bodyparts with mechanical ones, if we're truly aware of its implications. Especially for medical reasons. However, it should be a natural evolution to plastic, not just means for escaping our flesh. We've got enough complexes about our body, I'm sure we can't escape it that easily. (Got small breasts? Get a breast-job! All your problems are over! Yeehaw!)
Also, we should be aware that we'd lose our humanity. We litteraly become machines. That may sound fascinating to many geeks out there, but it's ain't that much glory to it. (Picture a nuke from outer space EMPing us to virtual hell if you like, or.. corrodation)
- Steeltoe
A "simple reaction to stimuli" is probably defined as more than just a simple IF-ELSE. Neural nets are perfectly capable of being conditioned to much more complex reaction-patterns. Although, the most sophisticated use of just one neural net is probably that -- pattern matching. However, you can build a logical network of neural nets helped by actual code to reach higher goals. This is extremely difficult and unprediactable though, since neural nets have to be configured in a specific way to do specific jobs done at all. IOW, there's no guarantee that a neural net will converge just by "setting one or a dozen up", without thought.
Another thing is that with a neural net, it can constantly "improve itself" if you wish. Or unlearn things once your program discovers that feature was not wanted anyway. All this can be automated, but it's not easy to work with classical neural nets. And it's expensive CPU-wise if you're not relying on AI-hardware.
- Steeltoe
Unfortunately this kind of thing has come around as a result of the blatent piracy that takes place across the entire computing world thanks to the "I'm not paying for that" mentality that seems to be the norm. Especially when the company is Microsoft, people seem to think that they have some kind of moral right to copy and distribute their products willy-nilly rather than give any more money to the "Evil Empire".
As if Microsoft really needs more money. What planet are you from? The company is alive and thriving as ever. So what if a few people make copies, it's a basic copyright. So what if a few people don't pay for the software at all, many probably wouldn't afford the stiff price anyways (hence they wouldn't buy it in the first place). But still, Microsoft is earning on them since they're promoting MS products by sharing them and using them. Do you really think Microsoft earns much money from people actually BUYING the software packages? No, they earn in from businesses and enforced hardware-deals. Tricking consumers, that's where Microsoft has had it's income. (That tax-fraud talked about above is just pocket-change going right into someone's pockets, I'm sure)
This kind of attitude is prevalent on
Ethics and morals are above enforcements and ideals of laws, rules and rights. It doesn't matter what you use as a cannon if the reasons you're using it is based on "bad" or flawed moral beliefs. Law is just a tool, which can be used for good or bad, just like any tool. Indeed, the very notion of "good" and "bad" is subjective opinion based on inner values. So, if you do something "wrong", but you're doing it because you don't want to conform to a violent society, are you really doing something wrong at all? It's all different for every person, and a person that can't understand and tolerate that, is very ignorant.
And this is from a demographic that is supposedly earning a lot more money than the rest of society. Does anyone else see the contradiction and indeed hyprocracy in this? You're all quite willing to take plenty of money from the large corporations you work for, but then all you do is bitch about your working hours and engage in criminal activities. Especially the sysadmins.
Today perhaps, but who knows under what conditions we'll be working under tomorrow? However, your argument is flawed since it is based on the common belief that you can't have good morals and doing the "right" thing (or believeing you are doing so) while being rich. As if having money or being pretty makes you a bad person (reflecting a feeling of inferiorness in the intolerant person). There's nothing wrong in itself with being rich. (Besides, I doubt most
Criminal activities you say? Where? What? There's not much piracy in the corporate world as you'd like us to believe. Perhaps in schools, but what teenager are gonna buy a full suite of Office 2000 and MS Windows ++?? Should every kid save up all their money so they can buy their "personalized" software (plus games)? What the hell should we be teaching kids today? To think for themselves, or conform to every authority demanding their attention?
What is flawed is the pricing software makers are charging.
Until this attitude of piracy being a good thing of course companies are going to try and impose additional restrictions on their software. Despite what the Stallman hardliners might think, people do deserve to make a living of off their work, and this kind of move is simply an attempt to do so. You've only got yourselves to blame.
First you say we make a very decent living, and now software companies suddenly can hardly stay alive? Make up your mind please! Why are we getting paid so much money if the companies are going under? (With all the clueless "Internet-companies" out there, you can hardly use statistics to prove your point..)
In addition, such an argument for limiting innocent customers is so stupidly flawed. How can customers who never pirated anything blame themselves? This argument is so flawed it hurts to think about it. It is primarily designed to get people to feel bad about themselves, so that people like you and others (who feel yourself superior in some way) can still feel you're in control, because that's the only feeling you have left.
Guess what? You don't fucking control me or anybody else who declares so. (Unless you used reverse-phsycology
- Steeltoe
With a CD-image (Recovery Disc), you may have to go back to your old hardware and software and upgrade from there...
- Steeltoe
First I must say this is a very reflective and good post, which I agree on many accounts. I have just a comment on these last lines:
/.) Not as saviours or heros mind you, but a "necessary evils" in commercialism, just like violence was a "necessary evil" centuries ago in making countries and prosperity "for all".
"I truly believe as the economic model removes the last vestiges of individuals owning anything, the hackers of society will just come up with bigger, better, faster, and more twisted ideas. Life will go on, but the old ways are dying fast, and the new ways are always being defined by those who get there first."
This is a bit pessimistic. We don't have to conform to these twisted ideas, we can make our own future. If we're gonna do it together, it takes creating a community for it. Talking to others about your opinion helps spread the information about what's going on. If we see ourselves as helpless, we will be helpless. However, being a martyr is overrated, we can do better.
Next, the Internet was first founded by geeks and professors at universities. But I have to disagree that the first-one-to-the-mill is the one who have everything to say. It's the one applying most violence that creates the rules. Violence may look different today than before, it's called economy and law today. Just as violence was an accepted fact before, with worshipping of conquerors etc, we now worship those who conquer the economy and law. (Just look at all the fuzz all those lawsuits and IPOs bring about here on
Why? I think it's part of our evolution. A child that never experiences pain and struggle, doesn't really learn much about life and grows very egocentrical and demanding. We call it becoming spoiled.
- Steeltoe
"You sound like a spoilt kid. You don't have to have a car, a computer or a house. Your ancestors in the "good old days" you wax nostaligically about didn't."
If he's a whiner, you are whining on the whining.
The claim here is that you usually DON'T own your car/house/computer. While I don't agree 100% with that, there is some truth in it. What happens is that you take up a loan (owing your bank), to purchase the expensive stuff. You pay for this service to the bank in form of monthly rates. In the end it's a feudal contract that people sign to get to live in luxury too often taken for granted, by devoting their lives to working paying for that standard of living. In the end, it's a choice everybody must make. You can't blame your bank, employer or car-salesman, but I wouldn't call it whining. It's healthy to give this some perspective, and question things.
It can even be economically rewarding to take up a loan, but if that is worth 30-50 years of your life is a personal issue. What to do with all your money in the end? Spoil your children?
Likewise, it can also be economically rewarding to lease for shorter periods of time. What's important is to make people aware that they should choose what they think is best. You don't go out and buy a car in a foreign country just to drive around on your holidays.
However, the downside of all this is commercial feudalism. We bind ourselves to contracts, and are expected to do this by everybody. Blaming others than yourself is futile, but you can "whine" to make people aware of what they choose.
Leasing on a long-term IS feudalism, and in history class we easily saw that this was bad. Today, we want to own as many things as we can, but forget that we're not gonna keep them forever. In my opinion, BOTH sides of this issue are wrong and need to look a little further.
"You don't like modern society? You don't _have_ to live in it!"
It's phrases like this that makes me wonder what intelligence certain people have... Why should people be forced to leave and corporation and governments be allowed to dictate everything?
The house/car/computer issue was a bad example. A much better example is information, art, trademarks, copyrights, patents, ideas. We lease these without thinking about their licenses, because we're not very mature in dealing with this new technology. However, corporations having monopoly on names, phrases, implementations, ideas will only continue to exapand until we lose the right to question it. People are not "whining" because it is so bad today, they are "whining" because things are getting worse all the time as corporations hijack the Internet.
- Steeltoe
No religion can replace human involvement, personal development, tolerance, understanding and love. The solution isn't One Religion or Conformance at all, it's making people care about themselves and others.
. It's when a situation becomes intolerable people begin to realize things and change. As more people come in contact with their true feelings, they're gonna break apart and search for other answers.
Religion is on the downrise nowadays, that's why people are saying moral is on decline. They equate church going with morals, which is of course absurd. No matter how much one cling to old values and power-structures, they will eventually vanish or get transformed.
Now, people are selfish these days, but it's a sign of things-are-gonna-get-worse-before-they-get-better
- Steeltoe
Religion > Christianity
There's alot of more saner religions out there than pure Catolisism and Protestantism.
- Steeltoe
Simple: We learn and grow from pain and struggle.
God may very well have created this universe, be all-knowing and all-powerful yet still not helping us directly. That's because he made us in HIS image, not like puppets (which is a strong indication that God may also have a God btw). What are we here to learn do you think?
If you take christianity further you end up in spiritual beliefs, although you have to cast away alot of ego. Debunking a set of beliefs just because humans interpreted an avatar/miracles/ufos/whatever wrongly, is limiting.
- Steeltoe
You're talking of divorce as a bad thing, but that's a value from conservative viewpoint. If you look a bit further, you'll see that peoples notion of marriage, or rather the notion of _real love_, that is flawed.
People seem to think that a couple consisting of only two people _should_ stay together for the rest of their lives, or else their love is not "real love". So if my grandparents never divorced, it must have been Real Love, mustn't it? Not just a result of habit, expectation and sacrifice? No marriage/relationship is the same though, so neither you or I should judge too much.
However, when you start dissecting this "real love"-thing, you'll see so many variations self-depriving views all around this world, you may very well want to cry, especially as you find this in yourself too. We're in a process of turning this around and make new rules, but don't expect a New World Order to come around at the year 2000. In fact, hope that it doesn't since revolutions and fast changes too often become too extreme.
- Steeltoe
Not to mention the PR.
- Steeltoe
How is limiting a good thing? Are we to blindly promote Linux in every way so that the "Good side" may win? Why not just put some extra text on the GPL-license to only be used with a GPL/Linux core? What do we do when everybody finally uses Linux? (A sad computer-world that would be)
No, people must stand for what they believe in. Obviously you don't believe in freedom. If you move an inch, you lose an inch. RMS sees that more clearly than most people, and is not afraid to act upon it. His theories go way deeper than just free software, you should read the GNU website for his philosophies. Why should he conform to everybody else? Why do we conform at all, instead of thinking for ourself and taking a stance, accepting others to do the same?
Liff ain't easy.
- Steeltoe
From the link:
"They always take things personally,'' Jolley said.
Because the boy used a home computer, rather than one at school, the incident was handled by the Beaver County sheriff, Jolley said.
But removing a student from school in order to keep the peace is not unheard of, either.
In Layton, Northridge High School Principal Michael Duckworth said that years ago, when he was at another school, a group of students posted throughout the building signs designed to belittle a school administrator.
"Those kids were removed from school,'' he said. "When they had learned their lesson, they were split up and sent to other schools."
The students were disciplined under the Davis School District's safe schools policy, which is based on the federal safe and drug-free schools policy.
The policy is interpreted differently in each of the state's 40 school districts, said Verne Larsen of the State Office of Education.
"What works in Weber County won't work in Beaver County,'' Larsen said.
Principal Linda Sandstrom at Alta High School said a similar incident would certainly prompt recourse at her school, the largest in the state.
"There are just certain things you cannot say and get away with it,'' she said.
"Kids have a pretty high capacity for this stuff anymore,'' Jolley said. "I hope this situation is correctable for the sake of him and his family."
How little self-esteem do teachers and other people have? It really sounds like this boy hit a nerve here. If someone attacks your reputation, you defend yourself. However, criminalizing the very act of criticizing is the coward's way. I know it may be hard to defend against groundless attacks, but most people don't listen to that. If you just take your time, people will listen. Especially when you debunk the whole crap.
People should be more robust and be able to work things out. Not cut away "bad elements", that only shows how much they REALLY care and understand.
- Steeltoe
So if someone gets attacked on the streets by a hidden sniper, the most appropiate reaction, for the majority, would be to execute the victim. That's your best shot at stopping the sniper??
It's an interesting line of thought, but nevertheless stupid. When I read all this, I thought exactly the same thing as the previous poster. Of course, most people want to take the easy way out, but it'll hurt them until they understand what's best.
Of course if people listened more to their true heart, instead of being selfish and greedy (read: intellectual), we wouldn't have this problem at all.
- Steeltoe
"Libel, copyright violation, broadcasting military secrets, and the like have never been protected."
That's a nice way of saying: "Libel, copyright violation, broadcasting military secrets, and the like have always been attacked."
Amazing how our intellect works ain't it? Just express things the right way, and everybody will agree with you..
- Steeltoe
Noone is to be trusted my dear friend, trust me *slick smile* :->
- Steeltoe
Your first two comments assume that a huge mass of people can evaluate everything collectively. It's nice on paper, but doesn't work so well in a world run by Governments, TimeWarner/AOL and RIAA controlling the media. Big governments and corporations DON'T want people to think for themselves, since they would then lose control and power. Hence we have created our "mass-mentality" which lulls us into _safe_ and _boring_ lives. Ever been in the military? If you have, then you know what I'm talking about..
You're talking about "justification" as if it's something else than an illusion we have about what we do to eachother. As if anybody _naturally_ need your "approval" to do what they do?
Civil disobidience can involve ANYTHING. Ever heard about revolutions? That's just an extreme case of civil disobidience.
You talk about selfish people. Well, look at yourself. Are you any better? We're all selfish, and we're going to continue hurting eachother until we "get it". A monopoly seems pretty "selfish" to me too, so what? It's just an expression of greed and violence, which is what our entire society is based on. Intellect can't easily solve this one..
Besides, I personally don't think you can compare _sharing information, knowledge and ideas_ to _stealing_..
- Steeltoe
Napster doesn't give you music. Napster offers a service to come in contact with other human beings that may (or may not) have the music you are interested in. It doesn't censor, distribute or regulate any content. It also offers an ftp-like service, so that you can copy information that other person has stored on his/her harddrive, or offer some information on your own.
;-)
Wether such a service should be banned is highly controversial. However, I don't think it should be since Napster Inc is NOT distributing any illegal music tracks at all. Free market and freedom should rule here, not draconian laws and enforcements.
If you're going to ban companies that allow people to find eachother and share information, you'll have to shut down AOL.... Hey, wait a minute, that might be a good idea afterall, huh?
- Steeltoe
>Duplicate register sets.
;-)
Processes already have duplicate register sets. This overhead is already there.
>Different instruction pointers.
Ditto.
>Greater memory load.
Only if you are loading more pages. Ok, maybe you'd want to completely separate the pages between processes, but the cache could be made to operate independently of any (weak?) MMU scheme for protecting data.
>More hardware complexity.
I wonder what they're gonna cool this chip with.
My greatest concern here is the bus and memory. It gotta be made specifically for multiprocessing, or else you're gonna have an expensive bottleneck on your hands.
- Steeltoe
Do you have anything to back that up?
- Steeltoe
Fact is that we really don't know.
Besides, you talk about information as something we can prove is there or not theoretically. That is not so, all our information is derived from observation, interpreting it into knowledge. You can't have knowledge without observation (experience). If you have biased judgements, you will live inside a shell missing out of alot. Of course doing this together might be fun, but only just for so long.
So, any particle can have an unimaginable amount of information. It's just up to us to find a way to observe it. Some information is tied to the physical limited by "the speed of light", while other information might go through other channels.
Btw, how fast to you think the gravitational-force propgates? Just because _variations_ in gravity doesn't go faster than light, doesn't mean the force itself isn't. Of course, if we define the world to, it will be so for us.. Another thing is that everything have a frequency (wave), but what medium is everything frequenting through (aka how can a wave exist without a medium to vibrate in)? There's much unknown to us still.
- Steeltoe
Disclaimer: IANAP (I Am Not A Physisist), not even qualified to understand the Relativity Theory. But when I attended the classes in highschool and college I got a little grains of understanding of this difficult-to-envision topic. Not from the teacher though, he only sited examples from the books without being able to explain much that made any sense). Here goes nothing.
In science you need a way to define time meaningfully. What does it mean that two events _are happening at the same time_? How do you define that?
Of course in science you need to test, observe, measure and calculate every hypothesis you come up with before you can write down established theories (which may later be called 'bogus' anyways, that's how rude and arrogant some people are..).
Since you must observe everything to prove anything, and light is the fastest known way of communication we know of (except gravity), you need to define two events happening at the same time to an _observer_ as when their emitted lights arrive so that you can observe. If you never receieve anything, the events never happened.
Of course, this is not how reality really works. It is how we choose to _perceieve_ reality scientifically. Now, when you define time like this, the light from the stars (supernovas etc) are telling us what is happening up there _right now_ _scientifically_ (the light from a nearby tree and the light from a distant star is perceived at the same time). This is just because someone was smart enough to redefine time, that is why this is all so confusing!
Note that we're really talking about theoretical light in theoretical arguments about RT, since real light can be altered by gravitation and mirrors (without altering our whole map of space-time that much). Theoretical light moves with a speed in all direction with the speed of c.
So in this case the signal must be received before it was transmitted in order for it to be faster than light. That doesn't mean it went backwards in time according to a more "universal time".
- Steeltoe
I think you hit the nail on the head with your points.
- Steeltoe
Checked out www.tunes.org? They need YOUR help.
Excuse me, macros/preprocessor instructions _clean_??? *cough* The way C / C++ handles this is one of the absolutely weakest points of the language. It's only useful for hacks, you can't really morph the language in a proper way. There exists languages that do that, but C / C++ is not one of them. Forth comes to mind, it let's you extend and morph the language as you like. (Btw, morphing a language is not that good if you don't have a meta-language to convert between the dialects automatically)
There are many others reasons to put OO concepts into the language:
1) standardization, readability, compactability
2) portability, abstraction from the hardware
3) reusing objects in a controlled manner, clearly defining the interfaces
4) hiding data, more robust channels
5) avoid nasty pointer-bugs
6) faster to program and understand once you grasp the concepts
Btw, "if else if else if else if else if else" is huge, static, cludgy and non-scalable. It's certainly not generically faster than switch() or vtables.
Yes, you have to sacrifice a little execution speed for all this. However, with todays CPU- architectures you won't probably notice the difference anyways. The CPU impact is not so much of inefficiency in the C++ language, as it is that compilers are rather constrained how "good/hacky" code they can produce. Especially concering dynamic libraries, but the benefits of these should be obvious as well.
- Steeltoe
If you read our posts again you'll see that our argument is a chicken-and-egg problem as well..
However I don't agree that we should trust software-vendors as much as we do today. Having the source DOES help in most situations we have today. Maybe tomorrow hardware will be more Open Source as well? We can't stop just because we can't leap all the way to nirvana today. The more layers you cover, the _less likelihood_ and harder it is for malicious code to exist. Especially since a fully automated microcode handling all possible compilers, are just not possible for us today. (Sidenote: The exploit was handling one special type of UNIX-compiler. This spurs the argument that there really is benefit in security in heterogenous systems and environments, just like in genetics.)
Today, it's all too easy for companies doing things customers would object to HEAVILY and not buy/try the product/demo, if only they knew about it. Wether you define this as security-holes or breach of privacy, remains subjective definitions, though they are still unwanted by many users.
I am fully aware that in the end, all that is left is trust. However, peoples mileage on this varies heavily.
- Steeltoe