rivd's comments

It makes it possible to turn Windows into a subscription-based service.

seventh. Haskell made me remember why i love programming.

Going to read that in earnest, did a quick scan (not my native language) and yes: i want to differentiate here between the not-asleep and the i-think-i-know-i-am-thinking type of consciousness. It's not only experience, but knowing or thinking to know your own experience.

Furthermore, it seems only to exist or pinpoint when you're communicating with another person. In total solitude, boundaries between your self-image and the other(s) just don't hold up, and the whole thing becomes almost meaningless.

Edit: the concept of time seems to be connected to it as well, but i really need to read this paper first now, i think :)

The word "Consciousness" is almost like the word "God".

Many people seem to know what it is, no one can actually define it, and it has never been measured, located or proven to exist.

Maybe we should stop using it altogether.

mentioned article about fast string search:

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.13....

Kudos for mentioning this article. It is an excellent essay that more people should read.

Thank you. I will start there then.

Unrelated yet more relevant question:

How many people does it take to properly care for ourselves and the planet we live on?

Yes please, invite me as well :)

You're right of course, but the tactics they used (especially against oss/linux and the web) pissed off a lot of people.

If destroying meant: making yet a better product and marginalizing the competition (with the product or through marketing) it would be business as usual, but it seems microsoft didn't understand that their embrace-extend-extinguish method would backfire in the internet age.

In a pure theoretical sense, yes torture is very effective at hurting people. But only for watchers or executioners who have a need of seeing the person being tortured suffer. I really doubt if traumatizing (torture > just hurting/punishing) a criminal is going to change his behaviour for the better.

The question then would be if the goal of a justice system should be to hurt people in the most effective way imaginable.

I don't know what you mean by creating a "faux-clinical atmosphere".

Isn't the reason for punishing criminals that they broke some aspect of acceptable social interaction (not hurting others a major one of those aspects) ? Even in the context of the state having the monopoly on the use violence, they should not use violence to the fullest extent possible, if only to prove that some actions are really unacceptable and there is never a reason to sink to the same level of what the criminal did. Criminals may be one-time-offenders or life-long-monsters, they are still humans.

You may call that squeamish, but i don't think torture should have any place in a modern society.

I can't tell if you're serious.

Are you condoning torture, saying it has a function we should put to good use?

technology will overcome all problems, solve injustice and everyone will be happy. sure.

no mention of climate change, ever-increasing debts, failing antibiotics or social problems because of differences between people who can buy these "cybermedicine" / body-parts-replacements and those who cannot.

IIRC computers still have a hard time winning from even moderately skilled go players

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Go

the c2 article speaks of the difference between dynamic scoping and acquisition as the former being dependent on call context and the latter on "where you put it".

Can i conclude acquisition can be done in javascript by binding function objects ?

var fn = somefunc.bind(other_object)

Or is this still dynamic scoping because it only sets the value of this for fn ?

and again... no IE.

(as the article mentions: work-around needed with conditional comments)

absolutely off-topic and yes a bit unreasonable, but after years of webdevelopment, i'm getting a little cranky at every mention of this "browser" that microsoft forces developers to put up with. Yes, i know this is a "new" html5 feature and that i cant expect corporations or consumers to keep in-house browsers up-to-date, but really: its a microsoft failure. Is it really _that_ hard to keep up with the competition?

you _hate_ them? wow. anyway, i would also not jump out of the window, because some anonymous commenter says its not dangerous to do so.

> then they're not really interested in keeping in touch

Yes, or they are simply not interested in stories about the risks and plans of Google and Facebook. Or do not understand when you try to explain it.

A significant part of my family and friends is already on that path: only reachable through sites like facebook or gmail. Taking some "political stance" in not joining (how they see it) will very readily be translated in "you are not joining. you are not really interested in keeping in touch with me."

So no. It will work out precisely the other way around.