You would actually die; in the destination pod, what is essentially a perfect clone is born with your memories.
You are assuming that consciousness is a byproduct of matter and that the presence of the same exact configuration of it will be enough to recreate an identical consciousness at the other end of the teleportation. So far, it can't be considered as anything else than an hypothesis : it could be but it might not be, evidence is currently not conclusive in any way.
I always hear a lot of my scientifically knowledgeable (which I consider myself to be as well) friends infer that the former is obviously true and that Occam's razor dictates we should prefer it to the later, but I disagree : it makes as much sense to consider that the brain can just be a very precise receiver for an extremely tenuous kind of non-electromagnetic kind of wave which does interact with other matter only in infinitesimal proportions (sort of "static" neutrinos).
What we call consciousness would actually be a (very) complex waveform of this particular "radiation" (in the electromagnetic meaning of that term). It can't be electromagnetic otherwise we would have detected it, and consciousness would be disrupted by all electromagnetic fields surrounding us all the time. That would fit pretty well with string theory which postulates that more dimensions than space and time exist : the consciousness waveform would evolve mainly in the tiny and not-easily-perceivable dimensions : only an instrument as extremely precise and complex as the brain would be able to interact with it.
This hypothesis has a lot of explicative power in a lot of areas (even spiritual ones) and opens the way for a whole field of experimentations but its exploration belongs to another thread I guess so I'll stick to the current subject :
Quantum teleportation as we are able to implement it nowadays, assuming it can be scaled up to move a whole body of atoms would not transfer that consciousness waveform along with with the rest of the quantum data (I say "quantum data" because as was said by other posters above, no atoms or matter of any kind gets moved : we only replicate quantum state), and what you'd get at the other end would be a lifeless body collapsing to the ground as soon as it gets there.
But anyway, when we'll arrive at the point where replicating the quantum state of a complete human organism is possible we'll be actually testing the hypothesis that consciousness derives from matter. Those are going to be interesting and fruitful times.
That is, if climate warming doesn't destroyed civilization before we get there:)
It has been proposed over and over that we broadcast; and has been turned down every time. The question is, do we want to invite visitors? It is one thing to be curious to see if you have neighbors, and to learn the answer without disturbing them or letting them know we're here; it is entirely something else to let them know we're here, or to invite them over - as unlikely as that seems given what we know of physics today. Considering that it is unlikely, it would be all the more intimidating if someone from the Sirius system, just to pluck one out of a hat, heard our signal and a day after they heard it there, they showed up here. The question is, what would they show up with if their physics are that good? All they really need is the ability to shove a few large rocks in our direction and they could go home snickering about those silly primates that used to live on Sol 3... that concerns a lot of people. Some earth species are quite aggressive and territorial, and man is one of them. Looking at our own behavior, it doesn't seem too conservative to think that the same might apply to someone else. So the politics are knotty.
Well, if it is truly this reasoning which leads politics not to send a signal to our possible neighbours then it says a lot about what we can expect from them when it comes to handling earth-based international relations. I guess it's quite time we avoid voting for people with such mindsets, they are the very reason why we would not be that frequentable in the galaxy : they are affraid that our neighbours from Sirius (from your example) would do to them if they were actually as bad as ourselves...
If that's true, it might probably a good thing if those aliens wiped us out before we are able to bring them our "civilization":)
Since the bug seems to be quite reproducible under relatively well known conditions, then the action that would make the most sense would be : - write a small program exhibiting the bug - publish it on the internet, send it to several tech bloggers and newspapers as well as slashdot (don't forget to mention Apple's thread deletion) - wait for about one month for Apple to fix the bug under media pressure
Apple deletes the bug threads because it knows that as long as the problem is not an easily reproducible one, the media won't bother them too much about it. But should a hacker release a proof of concept program demonstrating that any Mac Pro with more than 3GB of RAM can be kernel panicked by a simple user program will cause them to act.
I will I'm at it, I have to say that I like Apple tools (I switched from the PC one year ago and bought a macbook, an ipod nano, an imac 20 since then), but I really despise the way Apple treats its customer. So far, I stay with them because Apple products are (according to my set of criterions) globally superior to the competition but if Steve Jobs doesn't change is set of mind sooner or later, they'll count me out of the party. Apple is currently not a better economic citizen than Microsoft is, only their small market share prevents them from doing real evil, I'm quite sure that as soon as they will be a major player we will be able to clearly see the limits of Steve Jobs "enlighted tiranny" on product evolution and consumer support/respect.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't the old way of doing this be something like/dev/extensions/audiocd/track1,/dev/extensions/sftp/,/dev/extensions/webdav, and so on? This type of a trick would have allowed these extensions to be used in any app that recognizes the file system, not only KDE type apps.
What was the reason for not implementing these as devices?
It's exactly what the hurd microkernel wants to achieve via its translators concept.
Note that the strenght of the hurd is that it is not actually implemented at the kernel level but at the user's one. The great advantage over the KDE system, is that you still have low level access to those protocols from the command line or all existing non-KDE-aware applications.
Putting this feature into the GUI/desktop handling system is IMHO a very bad architectural decision. Protocols offer access to low level data streams or sinks, they should be made available via low-level interfaces so to all applications without requiring a single change in their code.
The KDE approch requires all applications to link against KDE components or forces the user to use run time wrappers. This closed approach is in my view a very bad thing as it restricts the user possibilities rather than expanding them "restrictionlessly".
Protocols belong to the "device driver" land (be it a virtual device), let them there, and if that's not a flexible solution for you, then switch to the hurd where they can be user manipulated as a breeze.
This is, IMHO, the sole and most valable reason why the hurd will eventually take precedence over unixes as it will have a huge effect on application configuration costs due to massive inter application data exchanges : the more the operating system handles, the less user and applications need to duplicate work and effort.
I tend to agree with the global warming hypothesis but I am still going to monitor the other literature to see if it will change my opinion.
Don't waste your time doing so when a whole intergovernmental group of scientists has been appointed to the task by the United Nations' governments.
The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) reviews all scientific litterature and publishes the current evidence for or against climate change.
You will find more information (including their extensive reports) here : http://www.ipcc.ch.
Regarding education not being a right, well, this is your opinion
No, its not. In a technical sense, "rights" are legal definitions. What rights you have are a matter of legality, not a matter of opinion.
True. And as such, most european nations have technically and legally made education a right. Education is also stated as a right in some of the UN fundation documents, I don't remember which one, but I'm quite sure it's explicitely written.
Yes. But it's also in the interest of a democracy for every citizen to have a job - but declare employment a right and suddenly every unemployed person is having their rights violated. Just because it would be good to have something, doesn't mean that thing should be a right.
Sure, but as it's each nation responsability to decide so, it doesn't mean neither that it should'nt be a right. It all depends on the political model that those nations citizens support. Compare Europe and the USA on privacy, this is a really weak right in the USA, a very strong one in Europe. Even in Europe, nations have very different priorities, in some Scandinavian countries, work is indeed a right and everyone gets a salary just by being a citizen (I don't remember which one though). They are not anyway near bankrupcy though.
George Bush's actions have nothing to do with restriction of education; he had access to the best available.
When listening to his speeches, this is far from being obvious, but it's not my point:) I was speaking about the voters' education. GWB was not elected because of his education, he was because of the lack of education of the population (most of the poors don't vote in the USA even though they would have a big influence if they supported a third candidate).
And yet European nations still have copyrights and patents - designed specifically to restrict knowldege.
This is a common misunderstanding of the patent system and of copyrights. Copyrights do not regulate knowledge in any way, they regulate copy, they do not forbid "inspirated" (inspired ?) work. Patents have been designed specifically to help the spread of knowledge by providing an incentive for inventors to innovate and an official means to register and publish *all technical details* of their inventions, thus making them public. (the fact that the patent system is currently being subverted is another topic)
Don't be silly. Education isn't a right - you have the right to pursue an education if you want to, but the government is under no moral obligation to ensure all its citizens are educated.
Silly ? Any opinion is worth having if it's argumented, silliness only lies in voluntary ignorance.
Regarding education not being a right, well, this is your opinion (modded +3 ? waoh... why didn't mine go that high ? it was at least informative) but most of the european nations don't share it and have made another principle govern access to college education.
If I remember correctly, the goal of the state is to protect and serve the citizens. And it is the interest of every democraty to have citizens as highly educated as possible (see what the United States now have as a president because of restricting access to college education to a wealthy minority). The air we breathe is free, and I - with the majority of europeans - think the knowledge with which we build our citizen brains and spirits should be too.
I think that Bill Ford is a not-kidding environmentalist. Some of their factories are really leading the way in terms of green building [...] Ford has also become a lot more reasonable on climate and emissions issues over even just the past three years [...]
Sure, but Ford is only trying to walk in the feet of japanese and european automakers there. Starting after the second oil crisis, those countries industries have made huge efforts to increase their energy efficiency in order to lessen their dependence on oil, which in turn has a big effect on their greenhouse gases emissions. Which is why they produce less GHG per capita than the USAs despite having similar GNP per capita (similar not meaning identical). The United States industry is unfortunately still far behind there. But, of course every step in the good direction is welcome. That said, I still think that buying a japanese hybrid car is a much better way to incitate american automakers to make efforts, that's the way concurrence works anyhow.
[about SUVs] 1. Every one of these light trucks is being used by a farmer or contractor, and any attempt to regulate fuel emissions back to, say, early 80's standards will annihilate small business in America [...]
It depends on how fast it's done, you can let time to the automobile market to adapt and promote more energy efficient vehicles. A good way to help is to have negative taxes for more energy-efficient vehicles (as was planned in France a few weeks ago but the bill was canceled because of automakers pressure...). This way you won't annihilate any small business, you will even make sure that irresponsible polluters pay to ensure reasonnable citizens will have access to less polluting transporting means.
Bug the truth certainly is that the big automakers don't want to adapt to any external constraints. The french example is quite revealing here.
I guess a good perk would be for the company to buy my plane ticket to India when they outsource my job there. Language classes would be good too.
That's definitely something I'd consider. But I'd opt for a boat ticket for several reasons: - a small hollyday break never hurts - lets you time to read books and learn about the foreign culture you are going to integrate - you get the chance to have a nice tan so the locals will not mistake you with a fat red-burned tourist:) - 40 times less greenhouse gases emitted than for a plane flight (and ghg emissions by planes are a real threat, see IPCC documents about this : IPCC) - absolutely 0 chances that your boat will finish in the middle of a skyscraper because of a terrorist attack
Well, I did the same, except that: 1) My dad was unemployed during most of my studies 2) I didn't have to work much during my studies 3) I actually got money left at the end How did I do it ? Very simple... I grew up in a country(Switzerland) where the education system is not targeted towards the rich(can afford to pay)
The same is true of many european nations, and partially true in Japan (some japanese/.er might contradict me there, i'm not so sure of myself on that point).
Education is a right and should be free. Provided you have the adequate level of knowledge to study, the state should pay. This is, at least, a principle that many european nations follow.
Honestly, I just don't get the hype over hybrids. A Jetta turbo diesel gets comparable mileage, is a larger, more comfortable, more powerful car, and presents no extraordinary risk to emergency services trying to free you in an accident.
A hybrid is interesting especially in urban traffic, there it does *much* better than any car, and there's nothing you can do about it (apart from removing mass to your car) because technically hybrid are more efficient in this kind of traffic. The toyota prius in urban traffic consumes only a little more than a SMART. How does a Jetta compare there ?
If you're worried about emissions, run it on biodiesel. Now you've closed the carbon loop, and are running on a 100% renewable resource. Even hybrids can't make that claim.
Sure, but the entire surface of the USA would have to be used to produce biodiesel and you wouldn't have anything more to eat. So this is not a viable general solution, only a marginal one.
We must stop transporting one tone of steel just to move tens of kilograms of flesh, there lies the solution : adapt our vehicules to their real main use.
Just do the math. When I look at masses of traffic stuck at rush hour I can't help but imagine how many litres of fuel are being burnt while the cars are all but totally stationary for hours on end.
True. But do some other maths too : when I look at the average number of people per car at any hour and not just rush hour, I can't help but imagine how many gazillions litres of fuel are being burnt for the sole sake of moving a one ton steel vehicule, in which the driver's mass is almost insignificant.
There lies the real waste : moving more than one ton of steel when
most of the time
we just need to move like 100 kilograms of flesh and bones.
Wasn't there a story on slashdot a while back on how the mileage ratings for hybrid cars were a crock? I read a review of the Escape hybrid in USA Today and they weren't able to get better than 28 mpg highway, which is a whopping 3 mpg better than the non hybrid version.
And there's a physical reason behind this : no hybrid breaks the laws of thermodynamics. A hybrid uses a regular diesel engine to power the car and oil is the only energy source you have to put in. So in ideal conditions (highway, long distance, no breaking, no regime change) an hybrid can't do much better than a "regular" car because they both have (almost) the same engine and working conditions.
However, hybrids are much more efficients than regular cars in city traffic and short distance runs. This because when not much power is needed the engine runs at its optimal torque (minimum consumption) (not exactly true but you get it) to provide the electric engines with power. Running at a (almost) constant rate is enormously more efficient than constantly changing regimes. Moreover, when breaking, part of the kinetic energy is converted back into electricty and fed to the batteries which reduces again the global consumption.
But anyway, it's inherently innefficient energy-wise to use a 4 place car to travel short distances run. Moving one+ ton of steel just to transport one person most of the time is ridiculously innefficient. A bike, or a motorbike (if the distance is too long) would be much better.
This is has honestly been the only reason that I still boot up in Windows.
Also seems I not the only one:
"iTunes has been our No. 1 most requested application," CodeWeavers CEO Jeremy White said in a statement.
Then, I hope, that - as I just did, you went to Apple support and wrote them a line requesting a linux version of iTune. I just can't imagine they'd ignore such a request even if half of the linux slashdotters reading this article did it.
Here's the link : just do it now. (important : indicate that you will use iTunes to buy songs (if that's true of course))
I read a book when I was 8 that said we'd contact aliens by 2010-2015. I've been holding my breath ever since. They also wrote about the flying cars, moon bases, and solar power satellites that we've been enjoying these past 4 years or so... I just wish I didn't live in such a back-waters part of the country that's still driving around on 4 tyres.
Hum, this was not so innacurate. At least we'll have the flying cars soon if this company doesn't bankrupt before shipping the first one.
As for the solar satellites, this was a bad idea anyway and as for the moon, if we want to send GWB there, we'll have to build it quite soon so all hope is not lost yet;)
See, Kanada, hate to burst your pouty bubble...but...you don't matter You're just another euro-stan, except you're on this side of the ocean...same euro-trash socialism(with a dash of french snottiness)...whoop-ti-freakn-do... Too bad you have to try crapping on others to boost your self-esteem...typical loser attitude...
Hey, look, there guys ! One of them seems to be trying to communicate ! What ? Yes ! Sure ! Look at the neural detector, it says that its second neuron is somewhat trying to heat up ! He seems to be stuck on some monotonous repetitive ritual chant, but at least it's better than just drooling on the carpet no ?
You want to keep the system simple if you want it to be used for simple things such as what you give as an example (registering only once for a download)
If this requires going to your site, issuing a ticket by copy/pasting the site ID, sending it, then entering your ID on the site, and then wait for the site to say "we've checked : it's ok", you can be sure no one will use it
It would be probably a good idea to have most things done directly via the browser without the need to send a ticket. How ? This implies some kind of intelligence in the browser : it must be able to to all that work for you as soon as you click on a dedicated button. So, mozilla.xpi extensions could be a possible way to do it.
This would have another advantage : data could be encrypted by the user itself and not by your server prior to storage in the database. Thus increasing the trust people can have towards you. Moreover, you could disclose the source of the extension, which would even more add to your credibility.
And, in other news, Kazaa serves its 100-billionth song. And the RIAA serves its 1-billionth lawsuit. And the Slashborg respond with another 100 comments. Here, let me outline the next 99 for you:
Is there any chance that some mecanism might be implemented so people making those kind of remarks will automatically have their/. settings changed so they will now browse/. with only +3 or +4 scores visible ?
Or perhaps add some new "meta globally redundant" (-1000) modding line ?
I think I'd prefer non-commercial software, please...
I think I'd prefer non closed source software.
Paying for someone else's efforts is not something I despise, it's the very reason why I can pay my bills each month : because my employer gives me money as a compensation for my working for him.
I just can't see what's wrong with paying to have something that can't be considered a public service. Everything has a price, live with it ! Either it's money, either it's a developer's time, but nothing's ever free.
The problem here, is seing closed-source software spreading on linux. That, is much more of a concern to me than to pay for a ready-to-use,easy-to-setup,no-rtfm-support piece of software.
Sure, this kind of science has a long way to go [...] I always had this weird fear growing up of anything making me blind. When I was a kid I actually wanted to get glasses specifically for the purpose of having a shield over my eyes!
I'm not so sure that it would be advances in optical science that would benefit you the best.
I guess you should either: - avoid sticking things into your eyes - be more cautious when moving your head - learn how to get rid of this childish need to protect yourself from the outside world
So actually, you should probably seek help from your nearest psychologist rather than from some foreign optical scientist;)
Even if some assumptions made are probably a bit exagerated, the benefits from using a space elevator would greatly offset the costs. As a matter of facts the costs mentionned are much lower than many other space projects ones even if multiplied by some "security margin" factor.
Another major benefit would be a huge decrease in environmental stress due to space travel. We tend to forget it but sending ships to space represents an enormous amount of greenhouse gases emissions. This still represents a small fraction of all emissions, but as space traffic increases it might become a not so neglectable cause of global warming. If you look at spaceship one first success it's quite obvious space traffic might increase rapidly.
Given the incredible ratio of greenhouse gases emissions per kilogram of matter "displaced" in conventional space journeys, this simply would not be suitable.
I haven't made any calculations yet, but I wouldn't be surprised if it would become bigger than the air traffic emissions which themselves are an increasing source of concern amongst the scientific community because of their also very high ratio of emissions per kilogram of matter transported.
I guess that if we want space travel and a non hostile climate at the same time, then it's quite time we begin building this space elevator. It's such a win-win game move that I wonder why no more money was put into research for so many years...
The war on terror isn't about the terrorists, it's all PR.
But that's the point! Terror is not about killing people, it's about scaring the public and causing them to act a certain way.
I read an essay about this subject. The guy was saying that terrorism was efficient because by killing very few people, it could influence the foreign policy of a whole country. As a matter of fact, only about 3000 were killed because of terrorism in the USA in 2001, which is a really minor cause of death compared to all others : see this graphic with all causes of death in the USA. In 1998, 12752 people were killed in road accidents in the USA, accounting for 51.8% of all death causes. Which means that USA citizens are killing themselves on the road much more efficiently than Al Qaida will ever be able to do using huilding-crashing planes.
This does absolutely not mean that terrorism shouldn't be fought appropriately and that we should forget the 9/11 victims, it just means that public opinion should be more aware that it's emotional impact is much higher than it should be : we hurt ourselves every year much more than the terrorists will ever be able to hurt us.
They don't care *now*. They certainly *will* care in a few years when their new computer won't talk to their portable or their new portable won't play the music files on their computer.
Note that they already do care of this in Japan, where the public expresses a real demand for more and more multimedia/computing features in high tech portable devices. All of this concentrating essentially on phones, simply because they are an essential (at least perceived so...) tool to communicate. I bet that we'll see hard drives or multi gigabyte flash memories in phones coming from Japan and nowhere else in a quite short span of time.
Japan is definitely a dream country for geeks. There is real innovation there... not just marketing plots aimed at people prompt at paying too much for something they don't really need;)
Ok the iPod competitor sucks, but come on, how much time do you spend using the interface of those devices ? 1% 1 per 1000 ? is it really worth paying so much when open source firmware exists with a much better GUI exist for those competitors (Archos notably with Rockbox)
If there are so few competitors matching Apple in western countries, I guess it's certainly because of the lack of exigence from consumers there. Japan consumers seem to reward innovation much more than we do and thus their high tech market is much less subject to marketing plots such as Apple's.
ou're the 10,000,000,000th person to point out that the 15 gig iPod is only $50 more. You obviously don't understand who the mini is being marketed to (hint: not geeks).
What frightens me here is the absolute lack of competition. Apple is certainly having huge margins with this product so there should be enough place for some competitor to insert here and propose something at least as shiny and funky (sorry...I don't think it's true, but most buyers do I guess;) ) as the mini IPod but at a real, honest price.
The fact that no one but Apple had thought of it despite the relatively big number of HD mp3/music players around (Archos and some others) is certainly a bad thing as it allows Apple to rip unknowledeable non-geek customers without really offering much innovation. Everyone loses here, high prices, zero innovation, and brand addiction (that's probably the aspect that worries me the most when I hear some non-geek guys/gals talk about how CooooOOOOOoooOOOOOL is the iPod even when they absolutely have no more use for it than their current walkman/cdplayer but it's another topic).
Apple might become another Microsoft if they keep being so efficient at ripping off people thanks to the global lack of intelligence on the consumer product tech. market.
I won't buy it simply because it's ridiculous that the content expires in two months. What's the point of being able to load up to 500 books on that device if they expire 60 days later????
You have a strong point here. Surely is this device wonderful, both for geeks and non-geeks, but the marketting and mentality beyond its commercial exploitation is just sickening.
This quotes from the Guardian article make this really clear: "To keep a tight rein on the flow of ebooks, 15 major publishers and newspapers, including Kodansha, Asahi Shimbun and Yomiuri Shimbun, have teamed up with Sony to form a company called Publishing Link and to provide content through a website known as Timebook Town. [...] The variety of content appears to cover most bases - there are niche clubs dedicated to language learners and female readers and Timebook-only titles from major authors - but the sting in the tail is that each title is really only borrowed. Thanks to Open MG protection, the content is unreadable after two months, so it's best to think of the Libriè experience as a library of sorts."
So, this device has one obvious goal : transform things that you are currently used to buy into things that you will be forced to *rent*.
Remember that novel written by that guy from the FSF in which you never acquired a permanent right on things you wanted to read (books), watch (movies) or hear (music) ? It's just becoming the scary truth...
It seems that the bigger those megacorporations are, the lesser they are confident in their ability to be rewarded from their innovative behaviour by customers buying stuff from them. Why would they keep trying enslaving us if they were so confident about it ?
The stronger you are and the stronger you want to become, the more you have to lose and the more you r fear it seems... Those behemoths are managed by children without a sense of moral. This is great, just great !
Slashdot Mirror
You are assuming that consciousness is a byproduct of matter and that the presence of the same exact configuration of it will be enough to recreate an identical consciousness at the other end of the teleportation.
So far, it can't be considered as anything else than an hypothesis : it could be but it might not be, evidence is currently not conclusive in any way.
I always hear a lot of my scientifically knowledgeable (which I consider myself to be as well) friends infer that the former is obviously true and that Occam's razor dictates we should prefer it to the later, but I disagree : it makes as much sense to consider that the brain can just be a very precise receiver for an extremely tenuous kind of non-electromagnetic kind of wave which does interact with other matter only in infinitesimal proportions (sort of "static" neutrinos).
What we call consciousness would actually be a (very) complex waveform of this particular "radiation" (in the electromagnetic meaning of that term). It can't be electromagnetic otherwise we would have detected it, and consciousness would be disrupted by all electromagnetic fields surrounding us all the time.
That would fit pretty well with string theory which postulates that more dimensions than space and time exist : the consciousness waveform would evolve mainly in the tiny and not-easily-perceivable dimensions : only an instrument as extremely precise and complex as the brain would be able to interact with it.
This hypothesis has a lot of explicative power in a lot of areas (even spiritual ones) and opens the way for a whole field of experimentations but its exploration belongs to another thread I guess so I'll stick to the current subject :
Quantum teleportation as we are able to implement it nowadays, assuming it can be scaled up to move a whole body of atoms would not transfer that consciousness waveform along with with the rest of the quantum data (I say "quantum data" because as was said by other posters above, no atoms or matter of any kind gets moved : we only replicate quantum state), and what you'd get at the other end would be a lifeless body collapsing to the ground as soon as it gets there.
But anyway, when we'll arrive at the point where replicating the quantum state of a complete human organism is possible we'll be actually testing the hypothesis that consciousness derives from matter. Those are going to be interesting and fruitful times.
That is, if climate warming doesn't destroyed civilization before we get there
Well, if it is truly this reasoning which leads politics not to send a signal to our possible neighbours then it says a lot about what we can expect from them when it comes to handling earth-based international relations.
I guess it's quite time we avoid voting for people with such mindsets, they are the very reason why we would not be that frequentable in the galaxy : they are affraid that our neighbours from Sirius (from your example) would do to them if they were actually as bad as ourselves...
If that's true, it might probably a good thing if those aliens wiped us out before we are able to bring them our "civilization"
Since the bug seems to be quite reproducible under relatively well known conditions, then the action that would make the most sense would be :
- write a small program exhibiting the bug
- publish it on the internet, send it to several tech bloggers and newspapers as well as slashdot (don't forget to mention Apple's thread deletion)
- wait for about one month for Apple to fix the bug under media pressure
Apple deletes the bug threads because it knows that as long as the problem is not an easily reproducible one, the media won't bother them too much about it.
But should a hacker release a proof of concept program demonstrating that any Mac Pro with more than 3GB of RAM can be kernel panicked by a simple user program will cause them to act.
I will I'm at it, I have to say that I like Apple tools (I switched from the PC one year ago and bought a macbook, an ipod nano, an imac 20 since then), but I really despise the way Apple treats its customer. So far, I stay with them because Apple products are (according to my set of criterions) globally superior to the competition but if Steve Jobs doesn't change is set of mind sooner or later, they'll count me out of the party.
Apple is currently not a better economic citizen than Microsoft is, only their small market share prevents them from doing real evil, I'm quite sure that as soon as they will be a major player we will be able to clearly see the limits of Steve Jobs "enlighted tiranny" on product evolution and consumer support/respect.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't the old way of doing this be something like
What was the reason for not implementing these as devices?
It's exactly what the hurd microkernel wants to achieve via its translators concept.
Note that the strenght of the hurd is that it is not actually implemented at the kernel level but at the user's one. The great advantage over the KDE system, is that you still have low level access to those protocols from the command line or all existing non-KDE-aware applications.
Putting this feature into the GUI/desktop handling system is IMHO a very bad architectural decision. Protocols offer access to low level data streams or sinks, they should be made available via low-level interfaces so to all applications without requiring a single change in their code.
The KDE approch requires all applications to link against KDE components or forces the user to use run time wrappers.
This closed approach is in my view a very bad thing as it restricts the user possibilities rather than expanding them "restrictionlessly".
Protocols belong to the "device driver" land (be it a virtual device), let them there, and if that's not a flexible solution for you, then switch to the hurd where they can be user manipulated as a breeze.
This is, IMHO, the sole and most valable reason why the hurd will eventually take precedence over unixes as it will have a huge effect on application configuration costs due to massive inter application data exchanges : the more the operating system handles, the less user and applications need to duplicate work and effort.
I tend to agree with the global warming hypothesis but I am still going to monitor the other literature to see if it will change my opinion.
Don't waste your time doing so when a whole intergovernmental group of scientists has been appointed to the task by the United Nations' governments.
The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) reviews all scientific litterature and publishes the current evidence for or against climate change.
You will find more information (including their extensive reports) here : http://www.ipcc.ch.
Regarding education not being a right, well, this is your opinion
:)
No, its not. In a technical sense, "rights" are legal definitions. What rights you have are a matter of legality, not a matter of opinion.
True. And as such, most european nations have technically and legally made education a right.
Education is also stated as a right in some of the UN fundation documents, I don't remember which one, but I'm quite sure it's explicitely written.
Yes. But it's also in the interest of a democracy for every citizen to have a job - but declare employment a right and suddenly every unemployed person is having their rights violated. Just because it would be good to have something, doesn't mean that thing should be a right.
Sure, but as it's each nation responsability to decide so, it doesn't mean neither that it should'nt be a right. It all depends on the political model that those nations citizens support.
Compare Europe and the USA on privacy, this is a really weak right in the USA, a very strong one in Europe. Even in Europe, nations have very different priorities, in some Scandinavian countries, work is indeed a right and everyone gets a salary just by being a citizen (I don't remember which one though). They are not anyway near bankrupcy though.
George Bush's actions have nothing to do with restriction of education; he had access to the best available.
When listening to his speeches, this is far from being obvious, but it's not my point
I was speaking about the voters' education. GWB was not elected because of his education, he was because of the lack of education of the population (most of the poors don't vote in the USA even though they would have a big influence if they supported a third candidate).
And yet European nations still have copyrights and patents - designed specifically to restrict knowldege.
This is a common misunderstanding of the patent system and of copyrights.
Copyrights do not regulate knowledge in any way, they regulate copy, they do not forbid "inspirated" (inspired ?) work.
Patents have been designed specifically to help the spread of knowledge by providing an incentive for inventors to innovate and an official means to register and publish *all technical details* of their inventions, thus making them public.
(the fact that the patent system is currently being subverted is another topic)
Don't be silly. Education isn't a right - you have the right to pursue an education if you want to, but the government is under no moral obligation to ensure all its citizens are educated.
Silly ? Any opinion is worth having if it's argumented, silliness only lies in voluntary ignorance.
Regarding education not being a right, well, this is your opinion (modded +3 ? waoh... why didn't mine go that high ? it was at least informative) but most of the european nations don't share it and have made another principle govern access to college education.
If I remember correctly, the goal of the state is to protect and serve the citizens. And it is the interest of every democraty to have citizens as highly educated as possible (see what the United States now have as a president because of restricting access to college education to a wealthy minority).
The air we breathe is free, and I - with the majority of europeans - think the knowledge with which we build our citizen brains and spirits should be too.
Regards.
I think that Bill Ford is a not-kidding environmentalist. Some of their factories are really leading the way in terms of green building [...] Ford has also become a lot more reasonable on climate and emissions issues over even just the past three years [...]
Sure, but Ford is only trying to walk in the feet of japanese and european automakers there. Starting after the second oil crisis, those countries industries have made huge efforts to increase their energy efficiency in order to lessen their dependence on oil, which in turn has a big effect on their greenhouse gases emissions. Which is why they produce less GHG per capita than the USAs despite having similar GNP per capita (similar not meaning identical).
The United States industry is unfortunately still far behind there. But, of course every step in the good direction is welcome.
That said, I still think that buying a japanese hybrid car is a much better way to incitate american automakers to make efforts, that's the way concurrence works anyhow.
[about SUVs] 1. Every one of these light trucks is being used by a farmer or contractor, and any attempt to regulate fuel emissions back to, say, early 80's standards will annihilate small business in America [...]
It depends on how fast it's done, you can let time to the automobile market to adapt and promote more energy efficient vehicles. A good way to help is to have negative taxes for more energy-efficient vehicles (as was planned in France a few weeks ago but the bill was canceled because of automakers pressure...).
This way you won't annihilate any small business, you will even make sure that irresponsible polluters pay to ensure reasonnable citizens will have access to less polluting transporting means.
Bug the truth certainly is that the big automakers don't want to adapt to any external constraints. The french example is quite revealing here.
I guess a good perk would be for the company to buy my plane ticket to India when they outsource my job there.
: :)
Language classes would be good too.
That's definitely something I'd consider.
But I'd opt for a boat ticket for several reasons
- a small hollyday break never hurts
- lets you time to read books and learn about the foreign culture you are going to integrate
- you get the chance to have a nice tan so the locals will not mistake you with a fat red-burned tourist
- 40 times less greenhouse gases emitted than for a plane flight (and ghg emissions by planes are a real threat, see IPCC documents about this : IPCC)
- absolutely 0 chances that your boat will finish in the middle of a skyscraper because of a terrorist attack
Well, I did the same, except that :
/.er might contradict me there, i'm not so sure of myself on that point).
1) My dad was unemployed during most of my studies
2) I didn't have to work much during my studies
3) I actually got money left at the end
How did I do it ? Very simple...
I grew up in a country(Switzerland) where the education system is not targeted towards the rich(can afford to pay)
The same is true of many european nations, and partially true in Japan (some japanese
Education is a right and should be free. Provided you have the adequate level of knowledge to study, the state should pay.
This is, at least, a principle that many european nations follow.
Honestly, I just don't get the hype over hybrids. A Jetta turbo diesel gets comparable mileage, is a larger, more comfortable, more powerful car, and presents no extraordinary risk to emergency services trying to free you in an accident.
A hybrid is interesting especially in urban traffic, there it does *much* better than any car, and there's nothing you can do about it (apart from removing mass to your car) because technically hybrid are more efficient in this kind of traffic.
The toyota prius in urban traffic consumes only a little more than a SMART. How does a Jetta compare there ?
If you're worried about emissions, run it on biodiesel. Now you've closed the carbon loop, and are running on a 100% renewable resource. Even hybrids can't make that claim.
Sure, but the entire surface of the USA would have to be used to produce biodiesel and you wouldn't have anything more to eat. So this is not a viable general solution, only a marginal one.
We must stop transporting one tone of steel just to move tens of kilograms of flesh, there lies the solution : adapt our vehicules to their real main use.
True. But do some other maths too : when I look at the average number of people per car at any hour and not just rush hour, I can't help but imagine how many gazillions litres of fuel are being burnt for the sole sake of moving a one ton steel vehicule, in which the driver's mass is almost insignificant.
There lies the real waste : moving more than one ton of steel when
- most of the time
we just need to move like 100 kilograms of flesh and bones.Wasn't there a story on slashdot a while back on how the mileage ratings for hybrid cars were a crock? I read a review of the Escape hybrid in USA Today and they weren't able to get better than 28 mpg highway, which is a whopping 3 mpg better than the non hybrid version.
And there's a physical reason behind this : no hybrid breaks the laws of thermodynamics. A hybrid uses a regular diesel engine to power the car and oil is the only energy source you have to put in.
So in ideal conditions (highway, long distance, no breaking, no regime change) an hybrid can't do much better than a "regular" car because they both have (almost) the same engine and working conditions.
However, hybrids are much more efficients than regular cars in city traffic and short distance runs. This because when not much power is needed the engine runs at its optimal torque (minimum consumption) (not exactly true but you get it) to provide the electric engines with power. Running at a (almost) constant rate is enormously more efficient than constantly changing regimes.
Moreover, when breaking, part of the kinetic energy is converted back into electricty and fed to the batteries which reduces again the global consumption.
But anyway, it's inherently innefficient energy-wise to use a 4 place car to travel short distances run. Moving one+ ton of steel just to transport one person most of the time is ridiculously innefficient. A bike, or a motorbike (if the distance is too long) would be much better.
This is has honestly been the only reason that I still boot up in Windows.
.
Also seems I not the only one:
"iTunes has been our No. 1 most requested application," CodeWeavers CEO Jeremy White said in a statement.
Then, I hope, that - as I just did, you went to Apple support and wrote them a line requesting a linux version of iTune.
I just can't imagine they'd ignore such a request even if half of the linux slashdotters reading this article did it.
Here's the link : just do it now
(important : indicate that you will use iTunes to buy songs (if that's true of course))
I read a book when I was 8 that said we'd contact aliens by 2010-2015. I've been holding my breath ever since. They also wrote about the flying cars, moon bases, and solar power satellites that we've been enjoying these past 4 years or so... I just wish I didn't live in such a back-waters part of the country that's still driving around on 4 tyres.
;)
Hum, this was not so innacurate. At least we'll have the flying cars soon if this company doesn't bankrupt before shipping the first one.
As for the solar satellites, this was a bad idea anyway and as for the moon, if we want to send GWB there, we'll have to build it quite soon so all hope is not lost yet
See, Kanada, hate to burst your pouty bubble...but...you don't matter
You're just another euro-stan, except you're on this side of the ocean...same euro-trash socialism(with a dash of french snottiness)...whoop-ti-freakn-do...
Too bad you have to try crapping on others to boost your self-esteem...typical loser attitude...
Hey, look, there guys ! One of them seems to be trying to communicate ! What ? Yes ! Sure ! Look at the neural detector, it says that its second neuron is somewhat trying to heat up !
He seems to be stuck on some monotonous repetitive ritual chant, but at least it's better than just drooling on the carpet no ?
Here is my 2(euro) cents tought :
.xpi extensions could be a possible way to do it.
You want to keep the system simple if you want it to be used for simple things such as what you give as an example (registering only once for a download)
If this requires going to your site, issuing a ticket by copy/pasting the site ID, sending it, then entering your ID on the site, and then wait for the site to say "we've checked : it's ok", you can be sure no one will use it
It would be probably a good idea to have most things done directly via the browser without the need to send a ticket. How ? This implies some kind of intelligence in the browser : it must be able to to all that work for you as soon as you click on a dedicated button. So, mozilla
This would have another advantage : data could be encrypted by the user itself and not by your server prior to storage in the database. Thus increasing the trust people can have towards you.
Moreover, you could disclose the source of the extension, which would even more add to your credibility.
And, in other news, Kazaa serves its 100-billionth song. And the RIAA serves its 1-billionth lawsuit. And the Slashborg respond with another 100 comments. Here, let me outline the next 99 for you:
/. settings changed so they will now browse /. with only +3 or +4 scores visible ?
:)
Is there any chance that some mecanism might be implemented so people making those kind of remarks will automatically have their
Or perhaps add some new "meta globally redundant" (-1000) modding line ?
I sure dream of this every night
I think I'd prefer non-commercial software, please...
I think I'd prefer non closed source software.
Paying for someone else's efforts is not something I despise, it's the very reason why I can pay my bills each month : because my employer gives me money as a compensation for my working for him.
I just can't see what's wrong with paying to have something that can't be considered a public service. Everything has a price, live with it !
Either it's money, either it's a developer's time, but nothing's ever free.
The problem here, is seing closed-source software spreading on linux.
That, is much more of a concern to me than to pay for a ready-to-use,easy-to-setup,no-rtfm-support piece of software.
Sure, this kind of science has a long way to go [...] I always had this weird fear growing up of anything making me blind. When I was a kid I actually wanted to get glasses specifically for the purpose of having a shield over my eyes!
:
;)
I'm not so sure that it would be advances in optical science that would benefit you the best.
I guess you should either
- avoid sticking things into your eyes
- be more cautious when moving your head
- learn how to get rid of this childish need to protect yourself from the outside world
So actually, you should probably seek help from your nearest psychologist rather than from some foreign optical scientist
Even if some assumptions made are probably a bit exagerated, the benefits from using a space elevator would greatly offset the costs. As a matter of facts the costs mentionned are much lower than many other space projects ones even if multiplied by some "security margin" factor.
Another major benefit would be a huge decrease in environmental stress due to space travel.
We tend to forget it but sending ships to space represents an enormous amount of greenhouse gases emissions. This still represents a small fraction of all emissions, but as space traffic increases it might become a not so neglectable cause of global warming. If you look at spaceship one first success it's quite obvious space traffic might increase rapidly.
Given the incredible ratio of greenhouse gases emissions per kilogram of matter "displaced" in conventional space journeys, this simply would not be suitable.
I haven't made any calculations yet, but I wouldn't be surprised if it would become bigger than the air traffic emissions which themselves are an increasing source of concern amongst the scientific community because of their also very high ratio of emissions per kilogram of matter transported.
I guess that if we want space travel and a non hostile climate at the same time, then it's quite time we begin building this space elevator.
It's such a win-win game move that I wonder why no more money was put into research for so many years...
The war on terror isn't about the terrorists, it's all PR.
But that's the point! Terror is not about killing people, it's about scaring the public and causing them to act a certain way.
I read an essay about this subject. The guy was saying that terrorism was efficient because by killing very few people, it could influence the foreign policy of a whole country. As a matter of fact, only about 3000 were killed because of terrorism in the USA in 2001, which is a really minor cause of death compared to all others : see this graphic with all causes of death in the USA.
In 1998, 12752 people were killed in road accidents in the USA, accounting for 51.8% of all death causes. Which means that USA citizens are killing themselves on the road much more efficiently than Al Qaida will ever be able to do using huilding-crashing planes.
This does absolutely not mean that terrorism shouldn't be fought appropriately and that we should forget the 9/11 victims, it just means that public opinion should be more aware that it's emotional impact is much higher than it should be : we hurt ourselves every year much more than the terrorists will ever be able to hurt us.
They don't care *now*. They certainly *will* care in a few years when their new computer won't talk to their portable or their new portable won't play the music files on their computer.
;)
Note that they already do care of this in Japan, where the public expresses a real demand for more and more multimedia/computing features in high tech portable devices. All of this concentrating essentially on phones, simply because they are an essential (at least perceived so...) tool to communicate. I bet that we'll see hard drives or multi gigabyte flash memories in phones coming from Japan and nowhere else in a quite short span of time.
Japan is definitely a dream country for geeks.
There is real innovation there... not just marketing plots aimed at people prompt at paying too much for something they don't really need
Ok the iPod competitor sucks, but come on, how much time do you spend using the interface of those devices ? 1% 1 per 1000 ? is it really worth paying so much when open source firmware exists with a much better GUI exist for those competitors (Archos notably with Rockbox)
If there are so few competitors matching Apple in western countries, I guess it's certainly because of the lack of exigence from consumers there. Japan consumers seem to reward innovation much more than we do and thus their high tech market is much less subject to marketing plots such as Apple's.
ou're the 10,000,000,000th person to point out that the 15 gig iPod is only $50 more.
;) ) as the mini IPod but at a real, honest price.
You obviously don't understand who the mini is being marketed to (hint: not geeks).
What frightens me here is the absolute lack of competition. Apple is certainly having huge margins with this product so there should be enough place for some competitor to insert here and propose something at least as shiny and funky (sorry...I don't think it's true, but most buyers do I guess
The fact that no one but Apple had thought of it despite the relatively big number of HD mp3/music players around (Archos and some others) is certainly a bad thing as it allows Apple to rip unknowledeable non-geek customers without really offering much innovation. Everyone loses here, high prices, zero innovation, and brand addiction (that's probably the aspect that worries me the most when I hear some non-geek guys/gals talk about how CooooOOOOOoooOOOOOL is the iPod even when they absolutely have no more use for it than their current walkman/cdplayer but it's another topic).
Apple might become another Microsoft if they keep being so efficient at ripping off people thanks to the global lack of intelligence on the consumer product tech. market.
I won't buy it simply because it's ridiculous that the content expires in two months. What's the point of being able to load up to 500 books on that device if they expire 60 days later????
:
You have a strong point here. Surely is this device wonderful, both for geeks and non-geeks, but the marketting and mentality beyond its commercial exploitation is just sickening.
This quotes from the Guardian article make this really clear
"To keep a tight rein on the flow of ebooks, 15 major publishers and newspapers, including Kodansha, Asahi Shimbun and Yomiuri Shimbun, have teamed up with Sony to form a company called Publishing Link and to provide content through a website known as Timebook Town.
[...]
The variety of content appears to cover most bases - there are niche clubs dedicated to language learners and female readers and Timebook-only titles from major authors - but the sting in the tail is that each title is really only borrowed. Thanks to Open MG protection, the content is unreadable after two months, so it's best to think of the Libriè experience as a library of sorts."
So, this device has one obvious goal : transform things that you are currently used to buy into things that you will be forced to *rent*.
Remember that novel written by that guy from the FSF in which you never acquired a permanent right on things you wanted to read (books), watch (movies) or hear (music) ? It's just becoming the scary truth...
It seems that the bigger those megacorporations are, the lesser they are confident in their ability to be rewarded from their innovative behaviour by customers buying stuff from them.
Why would they keep trying enslaving us if they were so confident about it ?
The stronger you are and the stronger you want to become, the more you have to lose and the more you r fear it seems... Those behemoths are managed by children without a sense of moral. This is great, just great !