Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×

Comment Re:But can we trust Woz's judgement? (Score 1) 549

After all, here is a guy (who insists on using a juvenile nickname) who had the wool pulled over his eyes by perhaps one of the most successful psychopaths of this and the last century: Steve Jobs. Do you really think this guy is qualified?

It's not obvious that Jobs snowed him; I suspect that they always had motivations and goals that were nigh orthogonal.

Comment Transporters (Score 3, Interesting) 383

ISTM that Star Trek transporters are a type of 3D scanner/printer. But somehow they have to get your hundred-trillion synapses to connect the right cells, and at the right connection strength. Possibly even the current neural firing patterns, since when you get 'printed' you immediately have all your facilities and remember what you were up to when you got into the transporter.

I don't think that's ever going to be possible. But if it was, would the end result still be you, or just an artificial twin?

If transporter technology was feasible, they should be able to keep the original and print the copy using the contents of the refrigerator. I suppose that, like forking a process, it wouldn't be easy for the participants to tell who is the original and who is the copy, but I wouldn't expect them to share a common consciousness.

Comment Re:Ok, but... (Score 4, Interesting) 383

Perhaps your consciousness could be transferred into an electronic brain the same way it was transferred from your brain several years ago to your current brain: cell by cell.

FYI, brains don't progressively replace themselves like some organs do. You have almost all the neurons you'll ever have when you're born. There was a story here a few days ago about the discovery of a small region of the hippocampus that does generate new cells, unlike most of the rest of the brain.

Your post also brings up another interesting thought, a question raised by ancient philosophers. Suppose Jason comes home on the Argo and props it up on blocks to keep for a souvenir. As the years go by, whenever a plank rots he replaces it with a new one. Does it stop being the Argo at some point?

Comment Re:Why the hell are people accepting this? (Score 4, Insightful) 622

This is the kind of crap that was held up as examples of why communist countries were so much worse than the US.

People, the government is supposed to work for you, not the other way around.

How many times in the last 12 years have you heard "the President's job is to keep us safe"?

How many times in the last 12 years have you heard "the President's job is to keep us free"?

Most people vote for low taxes, baseball stadiums, security theater, and enforcing their values on everyone else. Freedom and privacy get trumped by too many of those things.

Comment Re:Easy (Score 5, Funny) 622

Live in a cabin in the mountains that is over 100 miles from the nearest cell phone tower. Also ensure that you have top cover so satellite surveillance cannot see your house. Add enough insulating material (dirt would be easiest) above your cabin so that there is little/no thermal footprint. And never leave your new found cabin, since cars and feet all leave tracks.

I cover my footprints with aluminum foil, so the satellites and drones can't spot them.

Slashdot Top Deals

The only possible interpretation of any research whatever in the `social sciences' is: some do, some don't. -- Ernest Rutherford

Working...