It's definitely not open source, but I vote Reason 7, windows 7. You won't get the standard notation, but everything else you wanted, you'll get in droves. It's a seriously excellent program and sounds fantastic. Otherwise, I'm not sure what the state of the art is for free stuff. There's probably something out there, but I figured I'd cast my vote for Reason.

I am seriously surprised every time I find out a real person, not some federal talking head, thinks Snowden is a traitor. Seriously? How dumb do you have to be? I guess that's my own opinion, but wow, you gotta be seriously ignorant of how the constitution works and like what it means to blow a whistle to believe the feds when they say this guy is a traitor. It just boggles my mind that anyone would frame the question like this question was framed. When I read that kind of crap on other sites, it's a sure sign that the writer is a seriously conservative idiot who doesn't know how to step outside the patriotism above all mindset, or abandon the government-never-lies delusion.

I sure hope anyone who still loves Obama is paying attention to the cognitive dissonance of all the feds saying Snowden is a traitor, while it's pretty obvious Snowden wasn't a traitor. Kinda looks like the business, B.S. as usual government-model I know and love.

All opinion, of course, but I'm definitely not wrong. :)

For all the usefulness and commonsense my ATM experience exhibits, they could be running it on a retarded monkey with low blood sugar.

Also, I just want to stress how ridiculous people can get in their minds. The whole Jesus thing. I wouldn't be surprised if over half of the US population thinks they're talking to "God" or sometimes Satan (get out!). I'm not saying gods don't exist, but the idea that there's just one and he's in your head, that's stretching it. The idea that everything with a brain, all the humans and animals and such, can be in each other's heads, that's way more local. I actually do think there are spirits and gods and such out there though (sort of the natural denizens of the material that the ESP occurs in). Once you start accepting ESP, a whole lot opens up. But knowing what the hell is going on with that, wow, just holy shit, I have no idea. And very few do. But what Christians and all the other idiots do ;) is shove all of that weirdness into a seriously outdated, plagiarized, unscientific belief. I'm looking for the scientific one, and not the one that dismisses it but the one that actually explains the nuts and bolts. What are the laws? What is it? How the hell does this work? And what does it mean for the rest of reality? I want to see these answered! And saying I think gods exist, I don't believe this, it just kinda fits into the picture. That if you can communicate with other people you know via just your mind, and you can also apparently do it with ancient entities... I mean it's crazy, but again, what I'm talking about is what is the actual reality of this, that all religions and most of science and pop culture grossly misinterpret? Our scientific understanding of this stuff is like Chemistry before pre-chemistry. Just about worthless. But we have a long tradition of our science being horseshit and then someone figuring out some aspect, revolutionizing it, writing some simple laws. Cycle and repeat and we advance knowledge. And I definitely understand that quite a lot of what I think may be happening is easily not. I'm real open-minded about this. I put way more stock in the small-level ESP stuff. And I fully understand how easy it is for my mind to trick itself. :) I feel I'm actually pretty damn scientific about this, in that sense. It's a working hypothesis. I could easily be crazy. I always keep that hypothesis in mind too. And let me just say, I was raised by a statistician, so I have a pretty healthy respect for and knowledge of chance. And I played RPGs as a kid. :) I know how likely different dice rolls are. I know all about seeing chance events as meaningful when they're not. So it's all a working hypothesis for me and I'm not easily fooled. I hope. :)

Yeah, but wait till you have those experiences 100 times, and then you'll have your own body of personal evidence. But seriously, there has been science done on this. There's a great book, THE ESP ENIGMA, that summarizes a lot of it.

I hear what you're saying, but I think it's not that we don't have the concepts yet, it's that the mainstream and vast majority of people do not know those concepts exist already. There's a lot, say, in Buddhist literature and circles about this, and they have particular language and concepts and theories and even laws and such for how it all works. They've been studying it for a very long time. And there's people who say science has disproved it or not addressed it or can only find a tiny, weak possibly insignificant correlation, but it's an insulated feedback system of everyone believing it's not possible and citing the same studies, doing the same kind of studies, etc. That book I mentioned is really great about explaining why studies fail, how to do them better, etc. all based on the blood/activation flow in the brain as these things are happening. As in if you make your experiment extremely arbitrary and abstract (like virtually all ESP experiments do), you will be destroying the ESP effect that you're trying to measure. ESP is most in play when you're emotionally attached. You will get the biggest examples of it, especially the psychic, mind-to-mind, connection, concerning loved ones or physical danger, etc. If it relates to tomorrow's bitcoin price, good luck. :) The parts of the brain that do math and numbers and concepts are basically wired up to only work when the ESP parts are not working and to shut off the ESP parts when working. Find someone who's meditated their whole life and you'll find someone who regularly experiences ESP and knows how it works.

OK, but all of that being said, people can be really dumb about attributing cause and effect, especially in their own mind. I'm not advocating labeling anything weird as ESP. But there are rules and such that seem to be in play when they happen. I am personally convinced because of having so many and seeing others do the same, *even though* I am only sure about some portion of all of the possible experiences. The precognition for me is nuts. At first it was sci-fi, then theory, and then a friend reporting that it was happening via dreams and dream journaling. Read up on it, saw some study was done a century ago. Tried it out, recording my dreams regularly, and then started to find regular precognitive events that were so random (not always important) and particular, specific, unlikely for me to just dream up or even think about, that would happen afterwards. I mean people I hadn't seen in a couple decades, in a dream and then run into them on the street. Stuff I found that I'll never find again, seeing myself carrying it, and then in real life, carrying it. Weird, random, specific details. Not generalities and vague predictions. And again, often not important, though there were a few of those. And that's just the precognition. Other stuff like mind-to-mind communication... I am never really sure about it, but when I think of someone and then they call/email me, and it happens once a week or so, sometimes more, sometimes less, I start to recognize what's going on there and weed out the it's-just-chance explanation. I try to stay doubtful and open-minded, if that makes sense. But to me, I just can't explain all of that stuff with the standard theories anymore. I could have 15 years ago, but I've had a thousand plus more experiences, samples, experiments, etc. since then. So now I'm like 70% convinced. :) And most of those are inconsequential. The ones that were so nuts that I still regularly tell as stories, like someone teaching me how to read each other's worst memories in an instant, a few hours after confirming that her eyes could indeed emit flashes of light... that's still nuts to me, and yet it happened. haha I am eagerly awaiting being able to pigeonhole that one. Or others where my life was in danger, where even someone else died instead of me. I don't know for sure, but it's in this growing body of evidence that has me pretty convinced that there's something to ESP. AND that basically everyone experiences it. We're mostly just such hardcore disbelievers that we don't notice it. It doesn't fit in our worldview. So I changed my worldview. :)

Yeah. I was pretty pissed when I read the summary. For no reason, as it turns out. And this is kinda common here on slashdot, that the summary is inflammatory and seemingly written by someone who didn't read or understand the article. Not to mention the frequent mispellings. :) Hell, I edit my posts that then get modded down and give me bad karma. Ie. it's a seriously pointless thing to do and yet I do it. How about some more attention spent on the summaries, submitters?

Problem with most people, especially smart ones that think they know how the world works, is that they just don't know when ESP hits. Yes, there is precognition. Yes, ESP, psychic communication between minds--this stuff happens all the time.

The problem with ESP is that it really, really seems like you're just thinking. You're basically using your "organ of thought" or mind or something in multiple ways. And to most people, this will seem like coincidence when they notice it. And they will not notice it most of the time. If you pay attention, the coincidences start stacking up until they're no longer coincidences.

It took me a few decades to go from a disbeliever but avid sci-fi fan of ESP to actually discovering that I had ESP and basically everyone else does too. It's subtle, only it's not that subtle once you've been paying attention for a long time. Actually, it's still subtle then. I mean I doubt this kind of thing all the time, but presumably others who aren't as noisy in their own heads (reading slashdot and thinking and shit ;)) have it easier. I've certainly known many.

The short answer as to how this stuff works is that when you're thinking, using the parts of your brain that are built for concepts, math, tech, science, logic, etc., the part of your brain that can do ESP is no longer active. There's been some interesting brain imaging studies done, tons of them, that basically show this. It explains why doubters and especially scientists (!!) do not experience ESP.

Look, just as far as precognition goes, I have had all kinds of precognitive visions and dreams and shit. And this is not unusual. The only unusual thing about it is that I go ahead and assume that some of that is precognition. I have found, and a whole lot of other people have found this too, that if you regularly write down your dreams, you will find many which come true--many very specific and weird things, combined with other random stuff, that is so much of a coincidence, and it keeps happening, every other night, that precognition starts to look like the only reasonable explanation. I'm sure 95% of you will either try to mod me down or scoff! :) But look, I do understand chance and the odds and all of that jazz. I know when things are just coincidence, and when the coincidences happen over and over and you realize you're just calling them coincidences because you're using an outdated model of how everything works... then you realize it's synchronicity or precognition.

And then there's the psychic connection, talking between minds. That's pretty regular and easily missed. It's what's happening when you start thinking about a good friend or family member right before they call or email you. It's really noticeable when you start thinking about people you haven't talked to in a year and then go check your email and find an email from them. Like I said way up top, this info comes in looking like your own thoughts, with slight differences, and also seriously throwing doubt on the whole nature of thought itself. But it's like a seriously confused sense--some info coming in and you just haven't been trained to understand it yet. Like being a baby before you understand how vision and hands and all that crap works. It takes time for the brain to sort it out, and it also takes feedback. So our ESP senses are basically never talked about, never practiced, never shown to us by our parents, our schools. It's a skill, a language, an organ, take your pick, that we are essentially all retarded at, but not because we don't have the innate ability. Our society just hasn't figured out that it exists. And yet, quite a few in our society have. Just not the mainstream scientists and pop culture.

I'm rambling a bit and I'm sure this will be modded down when people think I'm full of shit and crazy... obviously.

I wish that you guys, whoever makes it this far, would maybe trust me when I say there's a dozen experiences in my life that absolutely have no other explanation than ESP (or crazier magick, creating stuff out of nothing skills, so ESP is the simpler option here). There's hundreds more that I think look like it easily, but I just don't have time to spell out the top stories that left me with no doubt. I remember being on the other side of this equation, being in awe and serious doubt about anyone claiming to be able to do this, but then I met dozens of people who became friends who experienced this stuff, I began to notice it and experience it. I knew people whose minds were so still (buddhist monks) that they would regularly communicate via ESP. I knew people who would be dead now if they hadn't paid attention to a precognition and slightly altered their behavior (like buckling up before a major accident). Hell, I would be dead now if it wasn't for two separate "coincidences." And yet I ignore ESP *all the time*. It's still subtle. And most people in our society think it's either bullshit or God/Jesus talking to them (which it ain't).

So yeah, it's real, real weak, like the parent poster said, but only if you don't believe in it and don't pay attention to it. You can learn to use it and develop it like any other sense or skill. Going into it by thinking a lot is a surefire way to not experience it. Yet, it will leak into your thoughts all the time. Just try out the hypothesis that not all of those thoughts are actually originating in your own head, or at least not by that thing you think of as your self. Which sounds crazy, but seriously, the key to actually experiencing ESP is to first believe it's possible. Then you realize it's always been happening. You just didn't notice it. It's called having an open mind. :)

actually, when I see someone walking around, talking on their bluetooth, I figure they're an asshole. Did at first, still do. But I want something like google glass someday, not for the video but for the HUD. Taking video of what I'm doing is about the least interesting thing I can think of to do with a HUD equipped comp on my face.

Wait, so you were making cell phone chips and that means you're unbiased when it comes to judging someone else for feeling this way about cell phone users? B/c I for sure did. On the outside, not making cell phone chips ;), it annoyed the shit out of me when people would just have conversations over their cell, sitting next to me, in line with me, on the bus, at a restaurant. It still annoys me. We lost something in our society a decade plus back when everyone got on board the it's-OK-to-be-assholes-in-public-as-long-as-you're-on-a-phone train. I remember a time when people walking around, talking to themselves, having one-way conversations, were crazy homeless guys rather than the norm.

Nobody's figured out yet to tell the user to put their barcode facing the window in the mailer. I mean I figured it out when I noticed the window.. but there's nothing on the envelope, no email I remember getting, nothing on the website that's telling me obviously hey, turn it this way. Seems to me like they might just be propagating a certain culture that appears to be A-list but is really missing a whole segment of people who would think of obvious things like this... or not continue such a stupid recommendation engine (unless it changed recently, haven't paid attention, but it used to be just stupid inaccurate, a change from being pretty useful in the early days). I guess I can understand their lack of streaming titles if it's just due to the Hollywood companies not selling rights, but I have to wonder if they're just clueless about how much their streaming sucks content-wise for anybody who's actually watched a few movies.

But for all I know, they send out emails to people who fail to turn the barcode in the right direction. I dunno. I just started doing it years ago and actually got confirmation that it's the right thing to do by some post up top. :) I mean yeah, it seemed like the right thing to do. There's just no text on the mailer that says "this direction please."

I would think making sure the score section of the net gets special emphasis might help with the harder games. Separate inputs even with the numbers of various things known to a human player (score, lives), rather than having the AI get that from a bitmap and separate/extract.

Also, I'm guessing they're not using all the tricks one can with neural nets. Like long short-term memory. That would seem to seriously help with this sort of thing. Basically I'm guessing their lack of success with the harder games is not due to inherent limitations like some of the above posters said, but due to limitations in their implementation.

I agree, and with the command line, you have to remember all the commands. :) It's nice having a windowed/menu interface for getting to something, and it's nice to have a GUI telling you hey, you're about to wipe your HD with that command or even limit your choices to stuff that won't hose your HD... thinking about installing linux and dual-boots and such before the tools had nice gnome equivalents. ... now, was it a 0 or a 1 that I put here?

If Netflix is so hot, so A-list, firing anyone mediocre, hiring only the best, how do they keep making such dumb mistakes? Sure, they're #1, but their instant streaming *blows* now. Their recommendation engine *blows*. It worked several years ago. I remember when they changed it over and it stopped making any sense and being of any use to me. So they're doing some things right, for sure, but now their performance makes more sense to me in light of the fact that they don't keep their talent around. I remember calling them up once and making a suggestion, which they implemented for everyone. I don't know if I was the only one or the last straw or what, but that was very impressive. But the whole qwikster thing and the total lack of anything good for their streaming service... I don't understand why they think they're such hot stuff. In my opinion, they're on their way down. Give it another couple years. Their self-produced stuff is pretty amazing, but I'm only going to activate my instant account for a month at a time to watch that stuff. I feel like a whole lot of their instant watching userbase is just there because they don't know how to get better instant streaming or because there is no better alternative for them at the moment. If they could turn around their streaming movie selection, that would be something, but I keep checking in and it just keeps getting worse.

I'm not sure if these are equipped with wireless transmitters, but "mesh network" sounds like it. I think that's a pretty bad idea. Wireless communication is one possible culprit for this thing. There's some evidence that these signals are disrupting a whole lot of plant life, for instance, and bees are pretty nuts with their quantum dance they do, the magnetic fields they sense and create. If you're going to put wireless transmission on these, maybe run a cable to a hundred feet away and use directional antennas. I suppose you could do controls without the wireless gear, but I would bet that the colonies with internet hubs broadcasting in their midst are not going to do so well. :) Seriously.

Oh, post right above me just pointed this out. Beat me to it. :)

Yeah, keep it safe, tell all our descendants, stretching longer than from now to the birth of our civilizations, our history, to deal with potentially ecosphere-killing crap, an exponentially growing pool of waste. Shit, if we don't have a storage system *right now*, like, IDK, 80 years into this show, however many generations later, and we're just storing stuff on top of the stupid reactors, ready to lay waste to a heavily populated island should some natural disaster hit (and news flash: over the span of 10k years, there's going to be quite a few natural disasters), what the hell? How is this safe? How is this a better alternative? OK, sure, it doesn't warm the climate. Way to go. It just generates shit that is so amazingly toxic to nearly every lifeform on this planet, and we still keep the damn stuff laying around, behind barbed wire, on top of a roof, with an infrastructure of people designed to handle it. Should that infrastructure ever fail, like say, IDK, civil war, humongous calamity/disaster, some other random shit we can't predict, it's death, just waiting, waiting.

It's so amazingly shortsighted to go nuclear. Yeah, hell yeah, there's probably ways to do it right, but we sure aren't using those methods. I talked to a grad student in nuclear physics who claimed we could just reprocess all of our spent fuel, use that to fuel reactors for ever. for ever. Great, great idea, glad it's possible, but let's do it then. And what we're talking about when we talk about nuke plants is more of this incredible waste generating BS.

Coal? Oh, fuck coal. Those mountains could have stayed there, for sure. Natural gas? Fracking, OMG, this is going to be seriously bad. Give it more decades, you'll see. So *cough* how about all that green shit we keep researching and talking about and, oh, say, europe keeps implementing? Let's do that. Wow, does that ever make sense. Nuclear? Gawd.