MobWalk

What's really irritating is that it was Yahoo who sued Google before their IPO. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

I don't think Facebook is going to stand for this. Obviously, I don't have access to Yahoo's patent portfolios, but it just seems frivolous. If they actually had a case it seems they would've sued a long time ago.

And Google did bite. I read they gave up some 2.7 million shares to Yahoo. It worked once for them, so it looks like they're trying it again.

Copying anything treads a fine line between intelligent and wrong in my eyes. There's two ways of looking at it:

1. Copying someone is intelligent. If they've done the work already, and you're building beyond what the other person did, then it saves you time and money to copy the code. By copying it, you allow yourself to devote your energies toward providing a higher-quality product, which in itself is a worthy goal, but at what cost?

2. Copying someone is wrong. Because they did the work, I feel that they earned the right to control where that work is used and who it is used by. Obviously, code that is open source is fair game, but to straight up copy somebody else's source code is unethical.

The way I see it, if you're going to copy someone, just ask them for permission! Most of the programmers I've met are pretty down-to-earth, friendly people who would be happy to help as long as they get some kind of credit for the work they did.

You are calling me arrogant for something I did not say. I did not claim that the US is the world's police. My point is that if we were as morally bound as we claimed to be, we wouldn't deal with the Chinese in the first place. We live in a world where corporations are the new countries. Years ago, companies felt a loyalty to the country they were based. Now, companies do whatever is necessary to achieve the highest possible profit margins. Do I blame them? No, not really. If I were in their position, I don't know how I would do it. There's definitely something to be said for trying to make as much money as possible. Greed is what makes the world go round, whether we like it or not. Do I think it's right? No, not really.

I just think it's a shame that companies are so willing to sell out for short-term profit without thinking about the long-term consequences of their action. I believe that if the US wants to sit on its' moral high horse and play world police that we should at least hold ourselves to the standards we expect the world to follow.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleasure_center#Experiments_on_...

Using the expression "what you fundamentally value" is not the right way to put it. In real life, what you fundamentally value changes on a minute-by-minute basis. If you were able to ask a rat what he valued, he would probably say food and water, aka survival. However, as soon as they put this rat into a Skinner box, it literally pleases itself until it dies of exhaustion, even though food and water were available to it.

I agree with you that the best way to run an AI/VI like this would be to skip the idea of "pleasure" entirely and simply make productivity its' fundamental value. You would also set it up so that while it could modify its' own source code, it could not change what it valued. It seems like it would be relatively easy to set it up so that it would "hide" parts of its' code from itself and make it off-limits from modification.

Smartphones abilities to track your exact location are becoming more and more capable. Think about the ways that this information can be used, both for and against us. It scares me a little bit that the little chunk of technology I carry around in my pocket could very well be reporting my location and everything that I say/do. The amount of information that companies collect about people is just mind-boggling, and with the apps that have been coming out and the user agreements you're forced to sign, you very well could be getting tracked. Being a law-abiding citizen, objectively I know that I don't really have anything to worry about, but the principle still scares me.

Has anyone actually read a EULA all the way through? I know this is slightly off-topic, I'm just following my train of thought.

I feel like this is proof that America has sold out. I understand China's role in the global economy and I understand why we've become dependent on them, I'm just ashamed we let it happen in the first place.

In my eyes, the beauty of the internet is that it literally makes the sum of all human knowledge to date available to anyone with a connection. To restrict the internet is to restrict knowledge, and restricting knowledge/information is one of the most dangerous things that any government or organization can do. Once you start, where do you stop?

I'd suggest downloading smcFanControl. That's what I use on my MB Pro, and it works well. You can set different modes that will keep the fan at or below a certain RPM. If I'm gaming, I let it go up to 6200 rpm. If I'm not doing much (like now, just browsing on the internet and maybe running a couple other programs) I drop it to 3000rpm. That usually puts me around 45* C and keeps it nice and quiet. Then I've got a middle setting at about 4200rpm that makes some noise, but isn't quite as obnoxious as full throttle.