"The Truman Show" movie was basically about a guy who lived his entire life inside a virtual world where everyone was an actor and he was on television 24x7.

Imagine someone similar: an life guided by the decisions of "open source developers". That is, they make the decisions collectively, and the person executes those decisions. If it could be done, what kind of effects would you see? Would the decisions evolved into better decisions and make a better person out of the one executing the decisions? The "developers" would have to get a grasp of what the person is good at, and what talents need to be honed; what's necessary to be successful; long and short term goals; happiness; and so on.
What do you think?

One of my comments regarding what Time is that I think is interesting: :)

If we are just being "timesliced," then an outside observer could exist in the same time dimension, but that's a very strange and specific case, and it doesn't really address how time works anyway. (because you haven't examined the underlying time dimension at all.)

There is no time dimension: time is our perception of change. Our most accurate clocks are based on the rate of decay of an atom, or the rate of spin of an electron. A wind-up clock simply runs at a speed that we have determined will keep a reasonable account of time relative to other clocks. Time does not really exist - but it is useful for us to think of "time".

What does exist is change caused by the operation of our universe. Those outside our system could measure the number of cycles our universe has run for. It's a simple quantity.

The television stations complain that people who use commercial skip technology are thieves.

I disagree, but I'm not going to argue that point right now. I have a middle ground solution.

Why not employ technology that only skips a commercial if it is not the first time that commercial has been on? That way the viewer gets to see each unique commercial once (which should please the station), but doesn't have to grin and bear it through subsequent showings of the same commercial (which should please the viewer).

Technically, I don't think it would be that hard to do.

I've been thinking about how programmer time is more valuable than machine time and storage space for awhile now - since machines are so fast today with abundant storage space. In an article by Paul Graham, this paragraph sums it up pretty well:

http://www.paulgraham.com/hundred.html

"What programmers in a hundred years will be looking for, most of all, is a language where you can throw together an unbelievably inefficient version 1 of a program with the least possible effort. At least, that's how we'd describe it in present-day terms. What they'll say is that they want a language that's easy to program in.

Inefficient software isn't gross. What's gross is a language that makes programmers do needless work. Wasting programmer time is the true inefficiency, not wasting machine time. This will become ever more clear as computers get faster."

Should the resolution have been abandoned? Has diplomacy now taken a back seat to military action? What is your reaction to the ever increasing threat of war?

Please see the BBC news website to make your comments heard.

Subject: Thoughts:

I don't believe in Santa Claus, but I'm not going to sue somebody for singing a Ho-Ho-Ho song in December. I don't agree with Darwin but I didn't go out and hire a lawyer when my high school teacher taught his theory of evolution. Life, liberty or your pursuit of happiness will not be endangered because someone says a 30-second prayer before a football game. So what's the big deal? It's not like somebody is up there reading the entire book of Acts. They're just talking to a God they believe in and asking him to grant safety to the players on the field and the fans going home from the game.

"But it's a Christian prayer," some will argue. Yes, and this is the United States of America, a country founded on Christian principles. And we are in the Bible Belt. According to our very own phone book, Christian churches outnumber all others better than 200-to-1. So what would you expect -- somebody chanting Hare Krishna? If I went to a football game in Jerusalem, I would expect to hear a Jewish prayer.

If I went to a soccer game in Baghdad, I would expect to hear a Muslim prayer. If I went to a ping pong match in China, I would expect to hear someone pray to Buddha. And I wouldn't be offended. It wouldn't bother me one bit. When in Rome...

"But what about the atheists?" is another argument. What about them? Nobody is asking them to be baptized. We're not going to pass the collection plate. Just humor us for 30 seconds. If that's asking too much, bring a Walkman or a pair of ear plugs. Go to the bathroom. Visit the concession stand. Call your lawyer. Unfortunately, one or two will make that call. One or two will tell thousands what they can and cannot do. I don't think a short pray! er at a football game is going to shake the world's founda tions.

Christians are just sick and tired of turning the other cheek while our courts strip us of all our rights. Our parents and grandparents taught us to pray before eating, to pray before we go to sleep. Our Bible tells us just to pray without ceasing. Now a handful of people and their lawyers are telling us to cease praying. God, help us. And if that last sentence offends you, well..........just sue me. The silent majority has been silent too long... it's time we let that one or two who scream loud enough to be heard, that the vast majority don't care what they want... it is time the majority rules!

It's time we tell them, you don't have to pray.. you don't have to say the pledge of allegiance, you don't have to believe in God or attend services that honor Him. That is your right, and we will honor your right... but by! golly you are no longer going to take our rights away... we are fighting back... and we WILL WIN! After all the God you have the right to denounce is on our side!

God bless us one and all, especially those who denounce Him... God bless America, despite all her faults.. still the greatest nation of all.....

God bless our service men who are fighting to protect our right to pray and worship God...

May 2003 be the year the silent majority is heard and we put God back as the foundation of our families and institutions. Keep looking up...... In God WE Trust

If you agree with this, please pass it on. If not, delete it!!

I'm commenting briefly on the argument that television violence does not affect people.

Greater violence expands one's mind to the idea of greater violence. Prior to that exposure, one's idea of the greatest violence that can be committed is less. In the process of learning new depths of violence, one loses some innocence.

I believe that we think within boundaries. Those boundaries are pushed further outward as we learn new things, visit new places, etc... which is generally good. Pushing the boundaries of violence, dirty sex, etc... is very disruptive to the mind.

Unfortunately, that's the current trend it seems. I hope that will change.

Anyone else a _little_ freaked out by this website?

http://www.abika.com/

We should create an "open source law" (OSL) website. It should be a repository for all the fundamental values we (as a global community) hold dear. It should support discussions. It should allow someone to easily look up certain sections of the OSL.

This law would not be enforceable. However, it could be used as a reference point to measure our own local laws against. The OSL would be considered an ideal.

Companies which are heinously against the OSL should be listed on the front page. This war is fought with money. We need to stop giving money to those who turn and strike us down.

Over time, if enough people care about the OSL's ideals, I foresee local laws being molded into that ideal. It's in our hands - only time will tell.

Comments? Anyone know of a base system which could be used to support most of the features needed by such a website?

Through the course of time, I've talked to a lot of people about how they do backups of their personal computer files. Two answers come out way on top, over backup tape and zip disks: backed up onto another hard drive or computer, and backed up onto CDR media.

I know I've personally backed up a 150+ CDs worth of documents and applications downloaded from the Internet. Sometimes I burn a CD and date it (My Documents November 2002) and it gets burned the next month as well, and so on.

This brings me to my point that the music industry's complaints that CDR sales are skyrocketing and so must be music piracy. To me, that doesn't make a whole lot of sense. The the sizes of hard drives skyrocketing, too, and large media files being created (eg. home videos, digital camera pictures), there is an enormous amount of data which needs to be backed up. Equating music piracy with CDR sales is a very unsturdy assumption which has probably only been made because it helps them further their argument.
-end-

Do you remember in the movie The Fifth Element when the planetary defense people fired into the dark sphere, which only fueled the dark sphere more?

It strikes me as very similar to Microsoft versus Open Source software, except the sphere is white. The more Microsoft fires into the sphere of open source, the more powerful it becomes, the more determined we are all to see it succeed.