If /. ever gets unicode support it may be possible to obscure bad grammar with lens flare glyphs. I wouldn't hold my breathe.

God, I forgot about that one. It asks you if you'd like to format it. Pretty nightmarish. If you use Ext2 IFS to automatically mount an ext2/3/4 partition under Windows, it occasionally fails. If you try to access the partition in the file manager at that point it also asks if you'd like to format it. You can nuke an entire partition with a single click and no password entry.

Still awesome.

Microsoft has decided to start using the wheel. I remember sometime before switching permanently to Linux when I noticed IE couldn't display PNG transparency. It was probably the last Windows-related facepalm I ever made as a Windows user.

I looked through all his comments and there was only one modded greater than zero.

http://slashdot.org/comments.p...

If you think spam is crazy sounding, read some of his comments. It's a real experience.

Heh, thanks. While self-commanding killer robots are the obvious focus of our fear, it's not always the most obvious expectation that bites one in the ass. Killer robots would either never get used or have so many safeguards they'd be half useless amidst the chaos of war and the treachery and adaptability of humans. Though they'd have some degree of self-preservation, they would have no desire or ability to reproduce. Malware on the other hand is designed to do anything to avoid removal and replicate through any means possible. What better way to avoid being deleted than to make the infected facility uninhabitable or exceedingly dangerous to those who could remove it? This logic could be extrapolated to "protecting" surrounding areas, or distant areas connected by network infrastructure that could be used as access points. It's the seeming innocence and perceived weakness of something intangible like software that could reduce the consideration and implementation of safeguards when crafting malware. Right now malware's just an expensive pain in the ass, but a day may come when during your coffee break all the doors lock, the ventilation system halts and the facility begins flooding with CO2.

This thought began as a joke, but this actually does sound how something like Skynet could be born. Malware is infamous for aggressively trying to preserve itself. We all joke about how stupid the idea of programming an AI with a strong sense of self-preservation is because of the obvious dangers, but that is exactly how malware is programmed. Programming it to control industrial systems as well (giving it a "body") seems like a really bad idea, particularly if the aim is not to sabotage the infected industrial system, but to cause as much damage to the target nation as possible (a reasonable wartime goal).

Write a bot to track The Pirate Bay. They give you the program name, upload date, and number of seeds and peers in real-time. They don't even require registration for this information, much less payment. Sure the data would require a little interpretation and extrapolation, but I can think of no better measure of success and popularity.

That's an excellent idea, although I thought of an improvement. Instead of sending waves of our own men to clear the kill counter, we could air drop inflatable sex dolls filled with snakes. Man, future war's gonna be crazy!

Maybe killer robots should be designed as peace keepers, with their primary function being to search out and disarm armed non-allied personnel and confiscate their weapons. It would only use lethal force when fired upon and could identify the shooter with near 100% accuracy. There would also be a timeout period per target so they wouldn't hunt them indefinitely. If the target surrendered, dropped or ejected the ammunition from their weapon the robot would break the target's kill AI. So they'd basically roam about like the Borg and only fuck you up when you attacked them. The robot could respond to lack of compliance to surrender a weapon without an attack with non-lethal force, then take the weapon from the incapacitated bearer.

I suppose my point is that there's a big difference between designing a robot that can kill when necessary and designing something like a walking gun turret from Aliens. Since they're robots (more expendable than people), the strategy of provoking the enemy into attacking them merely by their presence and continual demands to surrender weaponry (and thereby clearly identifying the attackers as proper targets) seems like a good one. Even when the bad guys finally figure out, "Hey man, whatever you do don't shoot that damn thing," if the robot is faster than they are it will attempt to disarm them manually which could again provoke an attack.

Good luck with your project. I've been working on something similar for the last four years, minus the customized, player-run servers. I think both projects share the same goal of bringing MMORPGs back to what their roots promised; freedom and infinite possibility. The real key to success I think is to ensure the systems and rules address from the bottom up (fundamentally) what allows a real society to flourish. Most MMOs systems start from high level concepts, resulting in systems that are poorly integrated and easily exploitable with no countermeasures available to the victims other than GM moderation or developer-implemented "invisible wall" style bandaids. If you get your systems just right and keep them basic enough, players will be able to construct their own defenses against would-be griefers, just like in real life.

Under what pretense? Funding terrorism? Tor, Ter, not too much a stretch I guess. Seriously, they can't do a thing to stop Tor funding without resorting to breaking or seriously misapplying their own laws. I don't think they'll go that far.

I really hate to dox someone, but I believe I've found out who Bennett is: http://youtu.be/G0tljvD49RU

All I can say is, if you're going to show up at his front door or make rape threats, you do so at your own peril.

Finally the world has a way to give their respective government a mighty middle finger after all the bullshit that's been going on lately. I hope they get millions from every corner of Earth.

Pride has held us back since we were first capable of feeling it. The inability to admit to being wrong because the evidence offends one's vanity has always plagued science and every other part of our culture and personal relationships.

Considering how little we understand life mechanically, much less life as mind bogglingly complex as a human, it's no surprise that we currently have no answer outside the realm of philosophy and general description. If "materialism" is what can be directly or indirectly observed by people, unfortunately there's no escaping that without divine intervention.

I think a lot of people, particularly atheist scientists, would be so surprised they'd immediately fall to their knees and ask God for forgiveness. Ironically I'd be overjoyed to discover we all had souls. Unfortunately the smell prevents me from believing it.