Slashdot Mirror
Infinite Space
E-mail poured in all weekend about Infinite Space -- whether or not space on the Net and Web is forever expansible.
This was an offshoot of columns and discussions here last week about whether new connective technologies like eBay combined with the millions of middle-class Americans pouring onto the Web were escalating the concept of virtual property, already a custom on some gaming sites.
On the subject of Infinite Space, I heard from physicists, academics, engineers, gamers, computer execs, developers and designers some very brainy geeks who offered smart and diverging theories.
While a majority of e-mailers thought virtual property was a big idea whose time had come, there were also skeptics claiming this idea wasnt really anything new.
In one sense, theyre right. Gamers have been trading virtual parts, symbols and characters for awhile. But the impact of new technology is often felt when new and middle-class users mainstream it, not when pioneers invent it.
Linux isn't new either, but that doesn't mean nobody should write or talk about it. As open source reaches critical mass, it becomes significant. Same with other technologies from the phone to modems to computers themselves. Hackers were patching together BBSs from the earliest days of networked computing, but it wasnt until many more people, from housewives to business owners started pouring online that the Net took off. As more and more people -- most armed with credit cards and checkbooks -- continue to explore and use the Net and the Web, expect continuous and unimaginable change. But most of you know that.
Note: Lots of people wrote asking if I was changing my column format to include more of my e-mail responses. Yes, I am. An interactive column should, when possible, include more voices than one. Not only do I get sick of myself, but I get especially weary of getting so much smart and thoughtful e-mail nobody but me ever sees, while the often highly testicular public posts on Threads are visible to everybody. Many visitors, lurkers and readers confuse Threads with reality. It is one reality, but not the only one.
People have a perfect right to flame, but as my e-mail (and every other Slashdot writer and author demonstrates daily) smart lurkers constitute the vast, unseen majority of Slashdot readers. They also want to be seen and heard.
So here are just a few of the posts pro and con -- responding to my columns about virtual property and my questions about whether space on the Net is an Infinite Space:
Boredom is More Significant, from: Stephane Lajoie
"Is Net and Web property infinite? That is, is the Net so expansible that it could never be overcrowded and congested?
If you abstract away things like bandwidth and hard-drive storage (which seem to grow fast enough anyway), the answer to the first question is yes: the net is infinite. But you seem to imply that the second question is the same as the first, which it isn't.
Crowdedness happens in a specific physical place. We can say that New York City is crowded, while Arkansas is close to empty. If we extend this concept to the net, you can say that slashdot.org is crowded while kgjrhegh.com is empty (the DN isn't even registered, anybody could move in there for free; not anybody could move in to Microsoft.com though).
The same thing happens in physical space: if you abstract away things like the currently limited means of transportation, you can come to the conclusion that living space for humans in the universe is infinite. But just like people go to slashdot.org and not to kgjrhegh.com, you won't see people moving to Mars en masse even if affordable transportation becomes available: there just isn't anything fun to do there. I think it is Linus Torvalds who said that in a few decades, the primary motivation for people to do "anything" will be fear of boredom.
The limit here isn't free domain names or available land in an online game. It's the attention span of people. People buy powerful characters in UO to get attention from other players. Once the game become dated and people start moving to Everquest, Asheron's Call or others, these characters will loose all their value because there won't be anybody to show them off to.
You can't open a 20 screens megaplex in Nowhere, Arkansas. You can't sell web adds at kgjrhegh.com. Hope I could keep your attention for that long :).
PS: The Cyber-Movers example was kinda weak. I mean, it's a bunch of engineers copying files around and setting up domain name servers. Hardly the signs of a revolution if you ask me :). Still, very interesting subject matter.
PPS: I like this format of writing series of articles instead of moving on to a new subject for each article.
Stéphane Lajoie / Ludus Design
Nanotechnology and other answers, from Rob Jellinghaus:
"Is Net and Web property infinite? That is, is the Net so expansible that it could never be overcrowded and congested?"
This question is familiar in another domain: nanotechnology. The general form of the question is, "Given sufficient technological development, are resources potentially inexhaustible? And if so, what happens to the economy?"
In general, it is scarcity that creates value. In a world where there are infinite amounts of everything, there is no reason for everything not to be free. But when there is only so much of something, then competition arises for that scarce resource, and suddenly you need a way to determine who needs/wants/deserves it most. Presto: economics.
Ultima Online could probably, in principle, expand their cyberverse to accomodate the influx of people craving land. But it's not clear that they should. The scarcity of land there is greatly increasing the value of each individual property, perhaps intensifying the fervor of their citizens, and certainly buying them advertising that they couldn't buy with their own money (your article being a great example). In other words, by keeping their virtual real estate scarce, they are more effectively competing for the attention of the world's gamers, by making it clear just how valuable that real estate is.
In fact, UO (Ultima Online)perfectly exemplifies the two resources that are _not_infinite, and will never be: Human attention, as all domain name squatters know, is finite. There are only so many eyeballs, and only so many hours in a day that those eyeballs can be looking at your little corner of the cyberverse. UO is competing with Everquest (which is coming up fast). Catchy domain names ("slashdot.org") for instance, will always be more valuable than clunky ones ("www.mybiglongcompanyname.net").
- Computing and, especially, network resources are getting exponentially cheaper, but as exponentially more people go online, it remains fairly costly to serve large audiences. UO definitely incurs ongoing costs in hardware, network maintenance, and operations management, to keep its servers running; if they were to expand their universe infinitely, their costs would also expand infinitely. Later.
Anyway, thanks for the thought-provoking questions,
Liberating the Lurkers, from Dana Ryder, IMMSystems:"Congrats on the new format, if thats what it is. You are liberating the Lurkers! Posting comments like you are is the only way some of us can get our ideas out and hear the good ideas of others. The rule on Slashdot Threads seems to be that the dumber one is, the quicker you are to claim youre smarter than everybody else, or that you already knew everything everybody else is saying. I cant fault anybody for being stupid, but boy, are these people proud of it! Slashdots columns on Virtual Property were talked about all day at my company keep ?em coming!"
Of Course Not, from: Randall L Joiner:
"To your question about Infinite Space
There are several answers: Of course not, physical (hardware) resources are limited by definition, and thus, eventually will run out. Within reason, yes, it's infinite, as tech grows, space keeps getting cheaper, there will always be room of some sort.
The question really is, is valuable web property infinite? Many people have already answered that, and from the skim I did, most seem to think no. I have to disagree to an extent. Since games and sites only seem to hold interest for short time periods (game attention spans often measure in hours of game play), and people are constantly searching for the next game, I would guess that the interest of the gamers will constantly be going through these stages:
1. New game hits, is relatively unknown.
2. Some gamers become regulars, game grows to a small number of players.
3. Game catches on in the main stream, many people start playing.
4. The original players start tiring of it, (for various reasons) and sell out.
5. Older players go back to stage 1 with some other new game. I think we'll start seeing stage 5 in about 6 months to a year with Ultima. I give Diablo as an example... Few still play it, because everyone's jumped to Ultima. The new up-and coming is EverQuest. It's part of the game cycle, only now we have the middle-class coming in throwing money around. I want to know what's going to happen when the mass evac happens for the next great game, and the fools are stuck with character's they've spent loads of $ on, and are now not worth anything, and no one is around to play the game with? Even the "rich" couldn't keep up for to long, constantly buying new characters for each new game.
Another problem I don't think you've thought of... What happens if there's a network down time? What happens if/when a hard-drive crashes and wipes out any record of you having owned the property?
If I were the company running the hardware those games are running on, I'd make damn sure I had a clause stating they aren't responsible for lost characters/property/etc...
Another problem. What happens when (not _if_) someone hacks a game and suddenly goes nuts with it? How about Virtual Theft? If I cracked the game, steal your house that you just paid 100,000 for, what recourse do you have? Then there's the difficulty with calling it property... We have a bung-hole load of property laws in the states, but do any of them apply to cyberspace? How about in a game where killing and taking property is a legal action? If I kill your character and taken the property you just bought, do you have any legal recourse in RL? No, I really don't consider that a silly problem either, as I've read some of the things people have gone to court over (and won!) that are much much more silly. Altogether, I'm just completely amused by the concept, and consider this just one more proof that most people really don't understand what the world or the net is really about."
Please! Absolutely Nothing New Here, from: thom stuart (painfully):
Much as it pains me every single time I realize it, I'm afraid that I have to report that once again you're picking value out of vapor and getting all excited about something that, as always, isn't exciting or new at all.
I'm tempted to launch into an extensive diatribe, but i've got work to do today. Suffice it to say that the "virtual property" that's got you so frantic in the last couple days is nothing more than a sale of service.
It's amazing that you're managing to misunderstand this to the extent where you think there's something new. Every month i buy a package of 'minutes' for my mobile phone from my wireless company. These are just numbers in a computer, of course - am I purchasing "virtual property" here? And, if i am, haven't people been doing that for years?
I could subscribe to a paying-members-only web site; I could choose to pay for HBO; I could buy an Ultima Online account or good domain name from ebay. These are all the same thing - I'm buying the right to use a service. Just because Im not getting a physical product in return doesn't make it magic or 'cyber' or anything else you might want to think.
Okay, the UO accounts and domain names might have certain 'added value' in terms of the time/effort invested in bringing them to their current status, but that doesn't make it any different. by buying an account or a domain, the purchaser is simply entitled to access to certain kinds of service in return for their cold hard cash - but hey, who pays in "physical cash" these days, anyway?
Ooh! ooh! virtual property paid for with "virtual money"! another monumental technological discovery from jon katz! better write another /.column about this! please.
Crackers, Gaming and Infinite Space (anonymous):
Here's a copy of the comment I just posted... thought you might like it...BTW great set of articles, and I find your style to finally have settled out into something that doesn't seem megalomaniacal and much more suited to the world you've stepped into.. I've liked about 75% of your articles, those I didn't like were some of the earlier ones:
It's bad enough that hackers are being berated by main stream media for supposedly "stealing" from large, anonymous corporations, can we all see what will happen when the middle class has a vested interest in computer security?
What were to happen if a cracker got onto one of the Ultima online servers, helped himself to some UO Cash and then bought himself whatever he needs? Worse yet: Cracker gets onto the server, figures out some of it's data structure, and decides to get into another player's building and cleans him out?
Crackers/malitious hackers finally have something that has value to steal and they would be stealing from mainstream america instead of the corps.
This can have several consequences as I see it:
First and formost: The biggest hacker backlash in history. You think the Kevin Mitnick case was bad... now the law enforcement officials no longer have to work on the "estimated losses" reported by companies when they get documents copied off their servers (say source code), they have real world price tags on what the damages were.
Moreover, can we really trust mainstream american media to see the difference between hackers and crackers? It's bad enough that they can't do it now when the crackers are just defacing websites.
Secondly: With a bit of luck, this will drive all aspects of computer security forward. I can see dedicated players paying godo dollars for crypto systems that would protect their online assets. As well, Internationalization of crypto technology will be given a big boost as non-North american players will want access to the same quality of crypto as we are privileged to have.
Thirdly: Goverment regulation will quickly be pushed onto the scene. Any location generating real US$ seems to become the target of the US house and senate.
Third, B: TAXATION! As is, it's very difficult to keep the internet taxes at bay.
In the states, the problem seems to stem from the separation of states.. but if people start shelling out cash for virtual property, the likes of which cannot be seen right now, there will be a renewed effort by the USG to tax online transactions.
Fourth: Hopefully this will lead to the apparition of "free" servers that will pop up and have much more room to grow, allowing people to settle in. It'd be even nicer if a "Homesteading" act were to be implemented on UO (specific example) to move over onto the new systems, giving them some sort of bonuses (very much like the development of the "Wild West in early America.)
From Craig Wright: Interesting, But Shame On You!Virtual Property is an interesting issue but really is nothing new. Buying "space" from a isp for a large website has been around for years, paying someone else to build the website is comonplace, digitizing a photograph, and how about DOMAIN NAMES? - these are all forms of virtual property. Middle class americans have been paying cash for ownership of virtual materials for some time now.
Focusing on some geeks who spend too much on UO characters on ebay and then implying from that fact the economy is undergoing a fundamental change is really quite silly. Put your technophile cheerleader pom poms down and do a little research willyah?
Within the online gaming comunity there are other useful examples of virtual property such as Chron-X, Sanctum and other budding online games working on a far different paradigm than the "service" model of the "pay-as-you-play" games such as UO. C-X and Sanctum are wholly or partially based around the collectable card game paradigm introduced years ago by MAGIC: THE GATHERING.
The interesting thing about the online versions (which have been around for at least three years or so) is that they are ENTIRELY virtual property.
Unlike UO-type games where you have to buy the software and pay an ongoing service fee to keep playing. In these other games the only thing that one pays for is the virtual cards (software free, no fees except paying for more cards should you want them). As one might expect, trading, auctioning, and selling collections has been an integral part in the development of these games. I believe C-X at one time had over 70k accounts and may have plenty more now that they have moved to a Sony gaming site (I haven't played for nearly a year).
As a matter of fact Genetic Anomalies, the company behind Chron-X, began as a company devising a method for protecting virtual property and developed with what they call Collectible Bits (back in 1996 I believe) and designed their the game primarily as a way to illustrate what their software product could do in terms of reducing stealing and hacking problems already the cause of so many problems in various online gaming communities. UO tangent: it is neither the first, best nor probably even the largest of its genre. The 150k players - that's BS, online games inflate their players by counting ACCOUNTS rather than active players, many players play for a while and then either reduce their playing time significantly or stop playing altogether - but their ACCOUNTS are still counted. This is especially problematic with UO as there are a half dozen or so games all currently in stiff competition for the same audience.
By the way, UO is the only one of its genre in which its participants have attempted to bring a class action suit against the company because of their dissatisfaction with the game. The whole genre is unlikely to become a dominant faction within the online gaming community merely because it is so damn expensive to play. There have been dozens of experiments for specific subscription games or subscription gaming sites of several varieties and none have achieved more than moderate success.
I read a few of the /. comments on your first piece and ran across thoughful responses that disagreed with you which also made interesting points -- yet in your article you quote a few imbicilic flames as representative of those who disagree and more thoughtful responses of those who agree. This is a rather cheap way to make your argument appear stronger - shame on you! (Note: I only quote from e-mail, since thoughtful (and non-thoughtful) disagreements are posted openly on Threads. And I didnt get many disagreements last week. I always reflect an accurate balance of criticism versus agreement discussions where everybody agrees are sort of pointless, and, on the Net, impossible. As for nasty flames, they never bother me a bit kind of like mosquitoes or peas off a tank. Knowledgeable or thoughtful criticism, on the other hand, terrifies me).
Unlike many of your readers, I think that virtual property is unlimited in the sense that "good real estate" will always be available. The first thing to ask is, what is good real estate? Unlike the real world, where Nowhere, Arkansas can be relatively worthless, Internet property is accesible anywhere. Its value is based on how known it is. If the WWW was around twenty years ago, would www.microsoft.com be valuable? It is only valuable now because many people know about Microsoft. Admittedly, many of the obvious names are taken, but how many people really spend time typeing in, www.fun.com, www.tennis.com, or other simple names? These have some value, but most people use search engines or portals, again, sites that have value because they built it. Login names are similar; although the obvious good ones are taken quickly, the real value is the reputation associated with the name, and that takes time to build up. For game sites and property, resources are even less restricted. Not only could service providers add more service (suburbs?), thereby decreasing its value to consumers, but if it becomes too valuable it will attract competitors. Ultima property will face competition from property in other online games hosted by other sites that haven't even been created yet. As long as it is possible to create new property and to make that property compete with existing properties there will be no shortage.
To expand on this post infinity is a theory. There is a 'weight' to the universe which means its limited. So in practice there are only so many atoms and parts of atoms capable of holding data.
From a scientific view I'd have to say that feasibly there is a finite limit, just as there is to food, air, water, fossil fuels etc. The limit may be huge but infinity is much bigger.
Sure perhaps if you ignore the technical aspects, but the technical aspects are a necessary part. No matter how much storage we have, no matter how much bandwidth, no matter how many IPs.. It will always be an infinite ammount less than infinite. Our present machines will die upon trying to represent extremely high numbers. This limit will increase as time goes by, but it can obviously never reach infinity.
you wouldn't believe what the freaks who're addicted to muds are capable of doing to advance in their pathetic little game.
99% crap. Could be worse. Could be all crap.
The only limitations on the net is that is must remain within the universe (or does it?).
And the universe is clearly not "infinite" (or is it?).
Clear?
. . . rather like Eric Raymond wailing about "testosterone poisoned slashdot twerps" or whatever it was. What Eric meant, I guess, was "people in training to be Eric Raymond when they grow up". Them's fightin' words whar I come from . . . Of course it's unfair to compare Katz to Raymond. Katz hears what people say.
Despite all of his protestations, Katz really is a one-way, old-school journalist. Instead of letting Slashdot Threads be the place in which his readers interactively discuss his work, he selectively quotes lurkers -- encouraging more people to make their comments to him instead of making them publicly.
The reason for this should be fairly obvious: He can control the resulting dialogue better by directing it through his mailbox instead of a public forum.
If he truly believed in interactivity, he would participate in Threads. (Of course, if he truly believed in technology, he would actually make use of it in his daily life. The furthest he has gotten into using a computer was to create a new document in a word processor. Everything else is beyond his capabilities.)
Rob screwed the pooch when he gave this guy the keys to the kingdom. The day someone creates a Katz-free Slashdot is the last day I visit this place.
Once more the internet law, "Any spelling or grammer flame will have an appropriate error of the same type within" is proven true.
I just find this flame to be both ironic and amusing, especially in light of the person volunteering to be an editor.
Anonymous Coward and proud of it.
NOTHING on the 'net can be "infinite"; even to suggest that proves the person suggesting it has no conception of the meaning of the word!
Everything on the 'net must have a UNIQUE address, be it an IP address, memory address, URL, etc. In order to address an infinite number of items, an infinite number of addresses are needed... which would require an infinite number of bits to provide unique encodings for each item! Now I ask you: how long does it take to transmit an infinite number of bits over the 'net?
The only way to make the net infinite, or even "very, very large" is to abandon the concept of unique one-to-one addressing which so far has been fundamental to the way the Internet operates.
Sheesh! I'll get off my soap box now...
The old saying is that applications will always expand to take all available memory and disk space.
This will be true with the internet; whenever there are advances in CPU's, bandwidth & storage, there will be new ways to waste them, keeping them all scarce in one way or another.
As a Quake II player who listens to music encoded to SHN's, I know what I'm talking about!
I can see it now. The IRS decides to try to collect taxes on UO, UO tells them to shove off, that it's just a game, and they'd ruin the spirit.
Two months later, little characters in black hoods with big clubs and "IRS" on their backs start running around and extorting money from people. Heh.
Ah, don't get so depressed. That's what the beautiful free (incredibly competitive) Internet market is for. Some company will start listing only the really good sites. I mean, that's what miningco.com does today. You hear about index sites like mining co.com from news places that have an interest in finding the best places to recommend (so they get more readers). Over time, the most popular Web sites get more links to them. If the Internet was graphed, with high-traffic areas black, and no-traffic areas black, lame sites slowly fade to a light grey. Right now, AOL 3L33T \/\/aReZ kiddies may go to stupid sites with pop-ups. When they find something they like more, they go there. In a free market, you benefit most by pandering to people (assuming competition, which is why we have to put up with crummy monopolists like M$). It'll just get better over time. Places like Geocities will fade, as other companies offer web pages without Javascript popups, and have better service.
.5 percent you want to see.
Give Adam Smith's Invisible Hand a chance. We keep goverment regs from ruining the perfectly competitive nature of the 'Net, and just wait for a few years, things will keep getting better. It's a huge market, lots of niches, almost zero barriers to entry/exit...I mean, the situation is *ideal*. Maybe 99.5 percent of the Web will be stuff you don't want to see. There *will* be an indexing comany that will happily point out the
>This article illustrates once again the ease
>with which cyberpundits spew bullcrap under the
>guise of "virtual reality" and "The New Frontier
>of the Internet".
Bravo.
Uh, look, my friend. You've seriously missed the point. If his column was "fully dismantled" by people "more intelligent, aware, and honest", good. Katz just started the discussion. The next posters cemented it, cleaned it up, and gave the right answer, under your worst-case scenerio. That's OK. He brought up a topic, and it ended up being answered. I don't care if he's right...that's the whole reason responses are allowed.
:-)
By your logic, every single thread-starting post on USENET of a factual nature would have to be perfect, ideal, all-encompassing, and perfectly persuasive. In which case there would be no need for threads. The need for your own letter was evidently created by the column.
If people were capable of making every statement perfect, with a response unnecessary, there would never be need for discussion or society.
If people being wrong make you unhappy, don't be angry at Katz for being wrong. Be happy that he allows responses, and that the "more intelligent, aware, and honest" peple answered in such a way to resolve the problem to your satisfaction.
Besides, if you don't like his articles, I'd really appreciate you taking a shot at writing them. I'm not being sarcastic -- I'd love more diversity and more nice articles to read. Go ahead, tell Slashdot or Katz or whoever that you're interested in doing a bit of writing. I mean, your responses are nice, but a full article would be even more appreciated.
It'll happen. Larry Ellison does have a point. Not much point in wasting huge amounts of energy going somewhere (say, talking to friends) when you could communicate with them efficiently, by just moving electrons. Telecommuting will increase by a massive amount. Not playing games-you can do real work on youre computer, y'know. I don't know why your friends would desert you...they'll eventually be doing the same thing. Same thing wit your family and most other people. Your friends would be real, not virtual...you'd just be communicating over an electronic medium (of course, the fundamental reasons for having friends are based on evolutionary quirks in human mentality, which may be modified by us as nanotech improves). You'd have a real life...the phrase "real life" smacks of a plethora of human misconceptions. You're of the last generation to live and communicate primarily as non-virtual entities through a pure analog voice medium. Excercise will become unneeded...it's purpose (excercise is already a "virtual" form of fighting and hunting from ancient times) is simply to invoke certain physical processes (increasing heart muscle mass, burning calories, and whatnot). Newer medical procedures will make exercise unnecessary.
:-( ). If your primary means of interaction with the outside world is through a computer, it's not a whole lot farther towards the rest. 3D goggles are next, an increasing number of medical treatments and solutions for a more and more senentary society will be next...which will facilitate staying in one place. Your computer will become your world.
A lot of people don't like the idea this. It is rather alien to what we've been doing so far, but I certainly wouldn't call it "bad" or "unpleasant". (I won't even try to define "bad"..."pleasant" can be related to the amount of endorphines in your brain, and is easier to define.) You wouldn't have to go through a lot of problems that we run into at our current level of existence. Things would be far less expensive, and your standard of living at this level would be far higher. 'Course, I can't really predict all the psychological and sociological changes that will happen...so I can't paint a perfect picture. The '40s view of a future utopia included floating cities and rocket ships, with colonies on other planets...not the Internet. We'll see.
I know it sounds sci-fi ish, but I expect that within a decade of today, the primary method of communication will be over the 'Net. Recreation is moving rapidly to the 'Net...the music industry is the latest and the largest of these. Video (TV), games, and whatnot are moving or in place as well. E-mail...well, everyone knows about the explosion there. And so on. Videoconferencing will take a while...the structural problems are pretty nasty, but they'll be solved. (Will long-distance videoconferencing one day be the expensive long-distance phone calls of today?) Home offices will grow more common (perhaps with company provided terminals...probably they'll check on your productivity
I really think you're gonna like it. It won't be just a computer-geek paradise. When mainstreamed, it'll just be another (dominant) part of life.
Remember people disliking cars? Noisy, pollutants, made horses miserable? Everyone drives a car now. A massive part of our life (large corporations, suburbs, efficient commerce, and so on) is made possible through cars. The 'Net is far more fundamental. We'll see...but generally I'll place my bets on progress.
This is all fine and good, and the comments section does certainly provide fine rebuttals to Katz's half-witted dross. My main problem with the author is, as I said, not the sad quality of his writing, but the supposed interactivity he heralds by presenting readers' responses and speaking highly of the 'debate' surrounding the issues he puts forward. Katz himself is extremely averse to critical feedback, leading me to believe that he doesn't give a shit about his so-called ideas -- meaning they are worthless even in his own view, and presented for our consumption only as a means of striking thematic gold or selling more copies of some publication of his.
There's no taking Katz seriously until he assumes responsibility for his writing by coming out into the open discussion. Right now, it seems as if he were simply pulling insipid ideas out of his ass, quickly typing them up in MacWord 98 and crossing his fingers in hope of finally having found the next big thing. Thing is, given the author's staunch opposition to two-way communication, he appears as a trolling clown disrespecting or even overtly mocking those in his audience. This is what I reject, not necessarily the content of his writing, which, even though poor until now, could plausibly change for the better.
AC
Eh oui, pinguin, this is Katz for you. Two lines of useless repartie to a 4k email, completely missing the point of the reader's argument and replying with an obviously stock, superficial comment that makes you wonder whether he actually is smart enough to have an autoresponder set up.
AC
erm, some sets are not enumerable. imagine the list of all possible programs (an infinite set to be sure). we then create a set S such that N is in S iff program #N halts.
You can't prove that a given integer is in S, you can only (if you're lucky) prove that it's not in S.
this is wrong. (let A=aleph).
the continuum is precisely 2^(A_0), ie the cardinality of the power set of the natural numbers.
A_1 is the next infinite cardinal. A_2 is the third infinite cardinal, etc. this is difficult to explain, but suffice it to say that the cardinals are ordered according to size.
the continuum hypothesis states that 2^(A_0)==A_1. this is consistent with and independent from the axioms of set theory, which include the axiom of choice. most working mathematicians regard the axiom of choice as reasonable, but the continuum hypothesis as scary.
incidentally, there are no cardinalities between A_0 and A_1.
the banach-tarsky theorem (which depends on the axiom of choice and not the continuum hypothesis) says that you can take two open sets in n-dimensional space, and cut each of them into finitely many piece-wise congruent subsets which do not intersect. the usual illustration of this is that you can cut a pea into a few pieces, and put those pieces back together to form the earth, without leaving any holes.
and that is one of the many reasons why R^3 is not a good model of the space we live in.
also, in response to the first post, the rationals are not "discrete." they get very close to one another.
- pal
When reasonable people use "infinite" to describe any man-made object(e.g., the internet), they mean an infinity which describes their interaction with the object. I.e., "this disk drive is so huge that I'll never get close to filling it up, for me it is effectively infinite". Of course, then, what is infinite now may be inadequate a year from now (think memory usage by microsoft products). I have to think that 2^128 machines will qualify as an infinite number for some time to come.
This is similar to the concept in physics of defining a potential in terms of the motion of a particle to infinity. If one were to perform this procedure, one wouldn't really have to go to infinity, stopping after a mile or so would give him any degree of precision he was capable of measuring. Yet we could still speak of "going to infinity".
All this spouting about what infinity "means" is missing the point. It is always a concept the meaning of which depends on the context. Of course, in certain mathematical contexts the term has more precise meanings. The only way we can really abuse the term is to treat it as if it were really an actual amount somewhere beyond "big", by saying for example, "how big infinite really is".
Finally! Someone mentioned intangible assets...
Isn't there a commerce Major anywhere on here ?
BTW a major problem for the Accounting Profession is the valuing and reporting of items like intangibles and derivative contracts, which concern the owners rights to act in a particular way at a point in time.
People that think the web is infinite have no concept how big infinite really is. No the web is not infinite, it has a set number of machines that can be attached to it. Each of those machines has finite bandwidth, and finite storage. Granted you can put a lot of storage on one machine, probably more than you can realistically access off of one machine, is still finite.
IPv6 will allow us to address more machines than we will probably be able to manufacture in the next billion years, but it's still finite, and limited to the bandwidth restrictions. (2^128 is a damn big number, even if we could make a trillion machines a day for the next billion years we're still short by an 15 orders of magnitude.)
But that is still a lot less than infinite.
I'm quite annoyed at the use of the word "infinite" in this context, and I propose a gentleman's agreement:
No one should be allowed to use the word "infinite" or "finite" until they first receive a degree in math, or until they have those concepts explained to them by someone that knows what they mean.
Also, when one knows what infinite means, they should not confuse "finite measure of space => finite everything" with "finite measure of space && quantization && over finite time => finite everything."
And even then, it should be clear that we do not _know_ that these hyposthesis hold.
It just gets to me when people confuse "very large" and "infinite."
Katz, you talk about interactivity and revising the format of your columns to incorporate readers' responses. A great idea, of course, but one rendered absolutely meaningless by your failure to participate in the very forum you innundate with your drivel. I haven't seen any posts from you outside of a couple of unimaginative follow-ups to vapid ideas inspired by your writing: 'Oh, so is the sky blue for you geeks, because I wouldn't know?' or 'Interesting. Tell me more about OOP representing the next big step in the man-machine thought process integration.' Boring, trivial, unoriginal.
Katz, I wouldn't mind taking you seriously. After all, I've done my best to do the same with social sciences professors, bosses and acquaintances riding the enlightened bullshit wave. Each time I've met an individual interested in the belief he purportedly defended, however, that individual felt strongly enough to support his opinions in a heated discussion. You don't. Case in point, your column about virtual property, fully dismantled by people more intelligent, aware and honest than you, without as much as a squeak from your direction.
Katz, wake up, stand up for your ideas or others will continue exposing your sophism to the world. Alternatively, shut the fuck up about interactivity on the web and just admit that you're nothing but a typical columnist of an age long gone, a master of one way communication. As usual, it is not the attitude that pisses me off, it is the hypocrisy summoned to cover it up.
AC
Hey, _I_ thought of doing that. :) homesteading. I rent my apartment (and am moving 'cause the building's being sold out from under me- sucks) but I _own_ airwindows.com :) and hey- it's in the high rents! ;)
I didn't bother doing that....
I _shall_ do that! *pin*
Ahhh
This is exciting. After reading Jon's article I just want to get out and go virtual. Soon I'll never have to stop playing games, that will be my whole life, sitting in front of the computer all day. My friends will desert me, my family will disown me and people will think I'm wierd, but that's all right. I'll have virtual friends, virtual money, virtual reality, and a virtual life. How fun. If only I could get a real life.
Garden Hero - Ace of SpadesThe reason for this should be fairly obvious: He can control the resulting dialogue better by directing it through his mailbox instead of a public forum.
If he truly believed in interactivity, he would participate in Threads. (Of course, if he truly believed in technology, he would actually make use of it in his daily life. The furthest he has gotten into using a computer was to create a new document in a word processor. Everything else is beyond his capabilities.)
I'm still waiting for Katz to hold up his end of an attempted dialog (via e-mail and /.) about his Littleton articles, old-school versus new-school media, and forms of violence embedded in US culture. In his defense, I'll say that he's probably pretty busy; it's hard to respond to e-mail with more than a terse sentence or two when you're being deluged with the stuff. It's even harder to really read all the e-mail (as I've learned from one of his responses, in which he got pissed at a line in the couple of sentences without bothering to actually read the actual food-for-thought meat of the message).
The bottom line: Katz doesn't scale, and he continues to bring the mediocrity of the Old School to his New School ventures. The former can (and must) be forgiven, but the latter is unfortunate from someone who seeks to be the net.journalist. NetAid : a 24-hour Peace Netcast in honor of (and in aid of) Radio B92 on its 10th birthday, 15 May 1999.
--
--
=8^
The reason for this should be fairly obvious: He can control the resulting dialogue better by directing it through his mailbox instead of a public forum.
If he truly believed in interactivity, he would participate in Threads. (Of course, if he truly believed in technology, he would actually make use of it in his daily life. The furthest he has gotten into using a computer was to create a new document in a word processor. Everything else is beyond his capabilities.)
I'm still waiting for Katz to hold up his end of an attempted dialog (via e-mail and /.) about his Littleton articles, old-school versus new-school media, and forms of violence embedded in US culture. In his defense, I'll say that he's probably pretty busy; it's hard to respond to e-mail with more than a terse sentence or two when you're being deluged with the stuff. It's even harder to really read all the e-mail (as I've learned from one of his responses, in which he got pissed at a line in the first couple of sentences without bothering to actually read the actual food-for-thought meat of the message).
The bottom line: Katz doesn't scale, and he continues to bring the mediocrity of the Old School to his New School ventures. The former can (and must) be forgiven, but the latter is unfortunate from someone who seeks to be the net.journalist. NetAid : a 24-hour Peace Netcast in honor of (and in aid of) Radio B92 on its 10th birthday, 15 May 1999.
--
--
=8^
The interactivity that he inspires here should suffice for you, no matter that, amidst the genuine wisdom I see on /., there is often a lot of crap to wade through. Katz's time belongs to him, and if he should choose not to spend more time amongst us on these pages, I can understand. But I would say that a Katz-less interactivity isn't really as valuable as one that includes him; he's just one human being, and he probably doesn't have the time and energy to spend on being more hands-on here.
On second thought, maybe a Katz-less interactivity isn't really interactive at all. He just comes down from the mountain bearing his zeroes and ones; then he zips off elsewhere. Sending e-mail to him is a hit-and-miss proposition if you don't keep it trivial.
"Ever got the feelin' you been cheated?" -- Johnny Rotten, to the crowd, to Malcolm, to himself, after a disastrous 70's US Sex Pistols gig and tour.
(And Katz, if you're reading this, the ball remains in your court; I'm still curious to read your non-bleary-eyed take on the "guilty bystander" e-mail message.)
--
--
=8^
only about as theoretically big as all the hard drives out there
"There is no spoon" - Neo, The Matrix
ahhh...gotta love negative zero hehe :P
*breaths heavily* "Ahhhh...good old H2O"
"There is no spoon" - Neo, The Matrix
I hate to sound like the Marketroid here, but it's really all about MINDSHARE.
As ugly a word as that is - if you set up a web server with the answer to the secret of life, the universe and everything on it - it virtually does NOT exist, until it starts showing up in search engines, indexes (indices?) and links from newsgroups and chatrooms, or unless the URL gets spammed our in email.
Infinite info resources is one thing, but there are a finite number of conscious minds in existence at any given point in time to dial up and type in the URL, and read your page. And if that web server goes down before anyone gets a chance to view it, then the secret is lost, in the eternal 404 that is the internet. When everyone is gazing and drooling at their my.yahoo page, the sea of voices gets drowned out for a lack of free ears.
sorry.
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
-jafac's law
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
The Internet is definitely infinitely expandable, but that doesn't matter. The bigger it gets, the more crappy it's going to get. Most people do not know how to write decent web pages, and most people don't know anything about worthy content.
If I'm looking for an mp3 because a CD of mine is scratched beyond ripping capability, I have to wade through dozens of porno-pop-up-pages and hordes of broken links. I'm better off spending another 12 bucks for the same CD than looking for one track off of it.
That is just one example. Another great example is when looking for, say, a simple text file, and the page loads a 200K GIF/JPG as the background. The page could have loaded in a second, but instead takes up to a minute... or more... For plain text, that's absurd.
How many 404's have you run into in the last 24 hours? Quite a few, I'm sure.
As far as 'intellectual property' goes, all the power to them. If someone wants to build up a character for a year, only to auction it off later, that's fine by me. I certainly wouldn't buy it. I don't know any sane people who would. Isn't part of the fun of gaming working to build your character up? If people want to waste their money through laziness, go nuts.
Or better yet, go outside.
The Internet is probably 75% toxic waste. It's a pain in the ass to wade through the toxic waste to get to the gold mines...
It's obvious what is infinite on the Net: arrogance.
Nowhere is it so easy to trash your fellow human beings, with apparent impunity. Worse, because there is no lack of targets, people get good at this trashing. Shades of subtlety color the shit to make it seem like a reasonable response.
Certainly there are bone-heads on the net. Spammers, foul mouthed AC's, identity frauds all lurk, waiting for some chance to use up their 15 minutes of fame. But then you have the next level up, those who attempt to become important by denigrating the writing of others, dismissing it as stale, or the answer as well known.
These are the folks who do the most damage to the net in terms of PR. It's what causes people to brand Netizens as elitist Techno-Nazis.
It's easy to declare someone that is misinformed stupid. But it won't make your life O.K.
All the technology in the world won't hide your lack of vision, talent, or understanding.
Let's give Jon some credit. I don't think this is meant to be a number theory p*ssing contest. I believe that since the number of people in the universe is ruled by a similar set of constraints as the total number of computers/disk drives in the universe (there has to be enough matter to create them all, maintain them all, etc) what's really at the heart of the discussion is the ratio of people to bandwidth/disk space/cpu power. So the way I see it as long as the technology/productivity curve out paces the population curve there will be an appearently infinite amount of space on the net. Not all that space will have equal value, that's another story.
~~~ Trust me, I'm a professional! ~~~
Althought, at times a different Star Trek snipit comes to mind:
GNDN
Goes Nowhere, Does Nothing (As seen on the pipes in TOS)
(like trying to find something on the MSDN page today, and 1/2 the search results linked to a "this page has moved, try using search to find it" page.)
Over the weekend I read Tom Clancy's "Net Force: The Deadliest Game". It was based around a Virtual Reality Medieval War Game. In a mix of Hellmouth and Infinite Space the game took a terible turn. An uknown person started bumping successful players off of the game so he could become a little richer in the game. He bumped them off by either trashing the players computer or trashing the players themselves; so they would have to restore all the passcodes and by the time they got back in the game, there virtual possesions would be gone.
The game was so big that they added 'constucts' (equivalent of bots in Q3Arena) to fill in the gaps and do the dirty work. So it was almost unlimited space, they had to use spells to get from one end of the world to the other or take months of walking.
I just hope that the people playing Ultima and the successors (everlast, asheron's call, etc.) are the responsible intelligent type who wouldn't fall to that level. In the book it didn't seem all that possible to sell, trade characters because of the rules of the game. But if it was possible I don't think that the new owners could keep up the reputation of the prior player. In a lot of the current online games going around money does help you be succesful (ISDN or T1 for less lag, better machines for better performance, land and money in Ultima).
An important distinction to make here is among the different meanings of the word 'property'. Clearly there are many things one can own that are solely bits on a drive somewhere (domain names, mutual funds).
What is new here is that we are talking about the ownership of something that is primarily experienced as 2-dimensional, the same way that land is (yes, i know that buildings are three dimensional, but property rights are generally owned for a 2D patch of land, then extended along the vertical dimension). That fact, as Stephenson's "Snow Crash" makes abundantly clear, changes the way that property is valued. Unlike domain names, there is distance between properties (i.e., it takes longer to go from A to B than from A to C.)
Such an environment will then create local hotspots where there are lots of people, and thus property where things can be sold or done are more valuable. For example, no one would pay money to participate in a virtual Sahara, cause there'd be nothing to do. But people are paying for eProperty (you heard it here first!) where there are things to do, where you have neighbors to adventure with, traders to buy from, and so forth. This works even if there were no scarcity of property in UO.
The popularity of cities is a testament to this aspect of human life. We are not evenly distributed over the world's land.
So, when will the first corporation buy a piece of eProperty and put an real-world ad ("Have a Coke while you play!" or "Got ADSL?") on the space?
mahlen
When I read a story, I skip the explanations; yet the moment I begin to write
one, I find that I must have an explanation.
--Anthony Hope, "The Prisoner of Zenda"
What about the idea of evolution whereby the strong survive? Slashdot has overcome the odds in that strong content has allowed it to evolve into something more than most news sites. A site like "my personal list of my favorite CD's" - though it may exist - it won't thrive in this universe.
I think that gravity in this respect won't make it collaspe but gather into larger and more powerful systems that help the web to grow. It's effect will help sort through the trash instead.
-----------
Resume
Football Sports Contest - Win $500 for having an e
> the continuum is precisely 2^(A_0), ie the cardinality of the power set of the natural
;-)
;-)
> numbers.
wow.. you're braver than i am. i ducked out with a handwave rather than facing the task of explaining cardinalities.
thank you, as well, for the correct identification of C. it's been a while, and i'd forgotten the exact relationship.
> also, in response to the first post, the rationals are not "discrete." they get very
> close to one another.
loose use of terminology on my part, sorry..
i should've known better than to toss out a word with a specific mathematical definition and hope to get away with the conventional usage. it just sounded better than 'unique' or 'distinct' at the time. heat of the moment, thrill of the chase, and all that, y'know..
first off: yes, i have studied transfinite numbers, so i'm not just making this up as i go.
the fact of the matter is that infinities come in different sizes. the number of integers in the number line is designated with the symbol aleph-nought.. that's the first letter of the hebrew alphabet, sub zero. aleph-nought is also the number of rational fractions, even numbers, odd numbers, integers greater (or less) than zero, integer multiples of 37, or any other value which can be expressed strictly as a combination of integers. as an interesting side effect, there are exactly as many discrete, rational points in a one-dimensional line of length 1 as there are in an infinite three-dimensional space.
the number of irrational fractions.. numbers which cannot be expressed as a combination of any finite integers, like the square root of five.. is also infinite. it's just that the infinite number of irrationals is provably larger than aleph-nought. that number is designated as 'continuum', which is written as a gothic C, and falls somewhere between aleph-one and aleph-two if memory serves me correctly.
as for what aleph-one and aleph-two are, trust me, it's not worth the explanation it would take.. they're just more orders of infinity, each being a provably different size than any of the others. there are actually an infinite number of possible infinities, each of which is infinitely larger (or smaller) than any other.
that's why mathemeticians call transfinite mathematics 'counterintuitive'.
meanwhile, numerical analysis.. the discipline which studies the approximation of values to an arbitrary level of precision.. offers a completely different spin on the issue.
the basic tenet of analysis is that in the real world, you eventually have to stop calculating decimal places and get on with life. it admits freely that the numbers it produces are wrong, but compensates by being able to prove that any inaccuracy in the numbers it produces will be small enough not to matter. numerical analysis effectively redefines zero as "any number so small we can ignore it".
that's signifcantly more useful in everyday life than the absolute precision of pure mathematics. anyone who wishes to argue otherwise will please refrain from doing so until they've first calculated the complete expansion of Pi.
the redefinition of zero has a serious impact on the concept of infinity, because infinity can be expressed as the value of any number divided by zero. at a more practical level, analysis only deals with one kind of infinity, which is defined as 'any number so large that making it bigger doesn't matter'.
by the second standard, yes, the web can be described as infinite. of course, so can a shoebox. the decision not to care is purely subjective, on the part of the person doing the measuring. as Hamlet said: "i could be bounded in a nut shell, and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that i have bad dreams."
it's infinite for you of you say it is, and not infinite for me if i say it's not, and there's nothing in the laws of mathematics or logic which says those two positions have to be mutually exclusive unless we've both agreed on some kind of standard for 'big enough'. three grams is one hell of an error if you're measuring the mass of a proton, but irrelevant if you're measuring the mass of a galaxy. there's no such standard here, so there's no meaningful argument either way.
and don't even get me started on the subjectivity inherent in the word 'valuable'.
of course, on what you mean by 'infinite' - by ANALOGY we say that the infinite is LIKE a very large number, but by at least one definition, infinite means 'having no size at all', it is 'sizeless and spaceless'. But PRACTICALLY, we usually mean infinite to be more than one can count, reckon, comprehend, use, or need. A seeming infinite disk space or address space is one that, while still finite, is larger than you need at the moment or can ever forsee needing. Certainly there could be enough capacity created to handle the entire earth's population (over 6 bill isn't it now?) getting online with virtually plenty of room to spare.
Chuck
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Huh, you know I... ah, never mind.
Bite the hand.
I personally think you're mistaken about what he meant, but dammit, it's good to see somebody raising language issues in a coherent and polite way. Somebody will probably moderate you down, but hey, that's why I keep my threshold at -1.
"Once a solution is found, a compatibility problem becomes indescribably boring because it has only... practical importance"
"Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law." --
...or at least that what my friends tell me.
I don't know if Katz meant "highly testicular" when he wrote "highly testicular," but I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and say no. He was probably trying to use an fancy form of "testy" and not the adjective form of "teste."
If Jon really needs an editor, I'm volunteering, but I think a simple disctionary will do.
Maybe the net will grow and grow like the real universe until it reaches a limit and all the gravitational pull makes it collapse upon itself. :)
:)
:)
it's all because of the exchange of virtual particles called attenti-ons. when a web site comes into the vicinity of another website in the cyberspace, tiny virtual 'particles' of attention (but they're not really just attention particles, remember the medium-message duality?) that are being constantly generated and annihilated within the website finally come close enough to each other that instead of staying inside one web site, they swap places, and a large number of such brief exchanges results in an attraction between the two web sites that is stronger than charge-based repulsion. hence the creation of multi-site nuclei (i.e. portals).
this is difficult to observe, because the attenti-ons are so tiny that they cannot be observed by bombardment with our statistical photons, but the results of their interactions can be observed by formation of such macroscopic structures as 'URL links' - which are really just models for exchange of attenti-ons.
it's also quite interesting to observe when a tiny web site traveling at a very high hype velocity collides with a large but stationary site - the results, such as slashdotting, can be quite spectacular, including a release of a large number of attenti-ons, and sometimes even flame-ons. but that's a whole different story.
r
now where's that quark model of attention i've been working on?
My other car is a cons.
Happily, this is already more true on the net than in the Star Trek Universe, where IDIC pretty much just referred to forehead wrinkles. The few times there was any *real* difference, it would be the *only* real difference, and a major point of the plot.
I like it, pay in UltimaCash for groceries, buy a car for the value of a self-sustaining SimCity model. What we need is a standard internet currency, or maybe one for each ISP or top level domain (.gov-cash, .edu-cash) - and let InterNIC worry about exchange rates much like the IMF does now.
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
I'm pretty sure, judging by the backlash that always follows from a Katz article, that he intentionally poked at the testosterone driven crown.
:)
Personally, I thought it was quite the zinger. I must remember it for the next staff meeting.
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
The purchase of a reputation then is really no different than the purchase of a product.
If I go out and spend a fortune on an exotic car, and promptly wrap it around a tree, it becomes worthless. If I maneuver myself to the head of a prestigious company, and bankrupt it, it's reputation becomes a memory.
Likewise, if I buy a car from a reputable company - and pay accordingly, but the car has a design flaw and so actions of the parent devalue it...
Identity seems to equate to property on this plane, virtual, actual or whatever.
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
Any astro/quantum-physicists out there care to chime in?
/. because there are too many ads on CNN.COM. :)
Excellent point. Like attracts like, where information is concerned.
So let's look at it in multiple dimensions.
On one plane you have my concept of information coaggulating into clumps based on mass/density; on a perpendicular plane there's your rebuttal of 'charged' information - attracting the like and repelling the unlike (except there's degrees of charge here)..
So what we end up with is globs of information, polarized by value, with the additional 'spin' or 'color' or 'flavor' (or some other QUARKiness) to differentiate among the various interest-groups.
Ultimately, I think we'll end up with weather prediction methods being folded into the discussion. An apparently chaotic system on the detail level, but with a superlative order which derives from the miniscule disorder. The flap of a butterfly wing that feeds the jet-stream draws another analog with my frequenting
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
Companies have been choosing their names based on the image the name projects, for a long time. Smaller companies have been taking-on names LIKE those of big companies, to give themselves credibility they didn't earn.
:)
This is not as much about value as about reputation, and reputation is the cornerstone of the 'old boys network' and as such, predates the internet by thousands of years.
That Hun, Attila, he's a bad MoFo, so let him have your daughter and he won't kill you. Nobody ever got fired for choosing Microsoft. My nick is Jar Jar, so I must be a total loser.
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
This sounds a lot like the signal to noise ratio of the net. At some point (arguably already upon us) the amount of junk on the net will overwhelm the volume of useful information, and the net will cease to be a useful resource.
:)
With spam, web pages containing more ad banners than content, and everyone and their grandma 'working the web', we're getting dangerously close to this info-gravitational collapse.
The metaphor holds surprisingly well to layman astronomy. We have certain singularities of unusually dense matter on the net - AOL to name one. This dense matter distorts the flow of information around it, and emits a particularly dangerous form of radiation; MeToo-on radiation.
Ha! While at it, there's the M$sphere firing off FUD particles in every direction.
Another perspective is that of the net being a natural resource. The more junk we pump into the datastream, the more polluted and less usable it becomes. Eventually the frogs die off, the lurkers get other hobbies, and the cyber-ecosystem dies.
Add to this the ever increasing complexity of the net, which makes it harder and harder for a bot search engine to tell fact from fiction and content from bunk, and you've got a thicket of URLs that makes me long for the Dewey decimal system at times.
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
The idea of "infinite virtual space" is rubbish. A virtual space is only as infinite as the storage/communication medium of which it exists. Someone pointed out in order to have infinite virtual space you would need an infinite ammount of bits and so forth. This is true. As for virtual existance, I find that no matter how screwed up it seems, I rather enjoy this world I live on in my own private perception of reality. I wouldnt want to live in a virtual world. No way no how. I may have an eBay account, an email address and do forth...but does that mean I have a virtual life? I dont think so. It just means I tried to sell some software online once. And I prefer free electronic mail that never gets run over by my mail (wo)man. This is a question that popped up in the early 90s when Virtual Reality was introduced to the public. they wondered then if you make a univwerse boundless if it truely was infinite. Infinity cant be counted, computers count. Therefore computers can't reproduce infinity without being infinite themselves which means they no longer have physical substance, being infinite and all. So it becomes a paradox that lasts off into infinity...which can't be calculated. So there.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
When new things get into mainstream, the mainstream make them into great deals. Indeed, we human think something is important when we don't understand it. Unluckily, mainstream tend to have more misconception on things than others.
Property is always something virtual. I mean, seperate the rights you own something and the entity itself. So if you own something, you can do a lot of different things on it because you have the rights to do it. WHen you can't do something on it, it's either because you don't have the right to do it, or the physical properties of the thing itself make you too costful to do it. When we own something, we actually refer to the rights, although it's related to the phsical presence. To an extreme, if I say I can let you have love by paying me, as long as you think you have love from that even I do particularly nothing, that you still think you own the love, and I respect it. So many others would respect it too.
So UO character is virtual property, so as you real house, so as the diamond, and so as the water. As long as you derive happiness from owning this thing, there's a value for you. Does the physical properties of this things affect a lot on the value? I would give up nothing for an UO character, but somebody would give up thousands dollars. Yes, they may not be able to sell it out later, but they don't care, so that thousands dollars are the opportunity cost they are willing to give up. I respect people's preference. I'm willing to give up $100 dollars for wearing a diamond for a year, so if that diamond's price now is $10,000, I would buy it only if I expect I could sell it out at least $9,900 next year. If the price now is $99, I would buy it without considering the next year's price. Did I get any usable value from that diamond? I bet I would enjoy watching it only. So you think.
On the other hand, money is always virtual. People always tend to think that money should tie up to phsyically useful or scared things, like gold. Indeed, money's value is the value we believe it has. That's why ancient people can use stones as money, that's why prisoners' use cigarettes money, that's why we use paper notes as money. Money is just units to reflect the relative value of commodities.
So the web/net space is finite physically, but as long as the scarcity has not kick in, the price is zero, the value is in our mind, and looks like infinite, which again many people believe something is free of charge means it's infinite. Check a textbook on math to see the concept of infinity. Something with infinite supply and limited demand have zero scarcity, but not the vice versa.
A sig is redundant.
Infinity however means an unlimited number of something (ie something which cannot possibly be enumerated.)
With all of the web pages out there which are NOT purely simple files, but rather are GENERATED pages, I would say that the web can certainly be infinite. Sure the number of physical machines has a limit (albiet a very large one) and even the storage space on those machines is limited (albiet always growing), but the perception of the "internet" is that which appears before a given user, and this is ALWAYS growing, and unmeasuarable, both because people keep adding new information, but also because pages (and therefore "places") exist which are generated on the fly.
Just my 2 cents.
-- Join us in Chicago May 1-4th for MeshForum -- writer, historian, tech geek, entrepreneur, internet junky since '91 --
...with the purchase a virtual real estate and virtual goods with real world money, what it the "real value of money" today?
The real value is what someone is willing to give you for it.
Does anyone see the possibility of using UO game cash to purchase real goods? (Like on Ebay or some barter site?)
Sure! It's called barter. It's been going on for millenia. The web, like the central marketplace in a village, makes it easier for people to find other people who want to trade with them, but the underlying principle is the same. Two people, each with something the other wants, agree to an exchange.
No taxes, where would you declare them??
I don't know about other countries, but in the US, barter isn't supposed to be taxed. If enough items of value are exchanged this way (without the use of taxable currency) the powers-that-be might be tempted to implement a tax. Don't know how they'd go about it tho'.
I'm not sure if anyone has mentioned this in a previous post (actually, someone did talk about the current value of gold and platinum on UO), but with the purchase a virtual real estate and virtual goods with real world money, what it the "real value of money" today? In today's world, we can see that the actual value of currency is not gold anymore, but what you can purchase. If you can trade currency for goods, and thanks to ebay, trade virtual goods for currency, would you not be able to trade goods for virtual currency? I have never played Ultima Online myself, but the concept seems simple enough. Property and characters have value in the game, and are only available in limited numbers. People use the virtual cash in the game to purchase goods and property. Does anyone see the possibility of using UO game cash to purchase real goods? (Like on Ebay or some barter site?) No taxes, where would you declare them??
I'm not sure if anyone has mentioned this in a previous post (actually, someone did talk about the current value of gold and platinum on UO), but with the purchase a virtual real estate and virtual goods with real world money, what it the "real value of money" today?
In today's world, we can see that the actual value of currency is not gold anymore, but what you can purchase. If you can trade currency for goods, and thanks to ebay, trade virtual goods for currency, would you not be able to trade goods for virtual currency?
I have never played Ultima Online myself, but the concept seems simple enough. Property and characters have value in the game, and are only available in limited numbers. People use the virtual cash in the game to purchase goods and property.
Does anyone see the possibility of using UO game cash to purchase real goods? (Like on Ebay or some barter site?)
No taxes, where would you declare them??
wrong story, put the above on -1
It only works if you can 'do' the reputation. If you take the name Moriarty in homage to the Sherlock Holmes adversary, then those that get the reference may associate some of the characters qualities to you. This quickly fades if you act in a completely different manner.
It's a cute affectation to show a kind of membership in a particular subculture, but reputation must ultimately be earned and cannot be bought.
Futhermore, when you take on a name where someone else has the primary control, future reputations may be altered by the parent's use of the name.
You take the name Neo, then in the sequel to the Matrix find out he is simple a pawn and betrays everyone, and Trinity is the true savior. If you paid to have that name, how would you feel now? Ok, this is perhaps an unlikely situation, but my point is that one shouldn't *pay* for a name based on pre-existing reputations. The association between the name and what it represents is too easily broken, either by your own actions or anothers.
I'm not sure of the mindset of someone who would want a name already in use. Ok, I get the fact you liked -the Matrix-, but taking an *already existing* name at a place like Slashdot would mean you 'inherit' the history and reputation associated with that name.
If I were to buy 'slashdot.org', for example, the value would be associated with what this site has done. If I then removed all the news for nerds and replaced it with sermons for teletubbies or something, then I have devalued my new property.
So, when the next new thing comes along, there might be a rush on acquiring names and characters related to it (I imagine all the new characters in Phantom Menace got taken here in on AOl, etc. shortly after the first rumors and news came out), but trying to acquire a specific name@place that's already being used seems insane to me.
I mean, would anyone want the CmdrTaco name?
but what about something that is constantly expanding (a.k.a. the universe)? While it may not start as an infinite entity, if it is continually becoming larger it would be moving towards the infinite and given ulimited time would eventually get there. Which is of course impossible in a strict definition sense, IMHO, but where does something that is always growing larger fit?
But that is still a lot less than infinite.
but a heck of a lot closer to it, eh?
"Infinity and Nothing: same sides of different coins and both equally impossible."~Wah thought for the moment.
+&x
Maybe the net will grow and grow like the real universe until it reaches a limit and all the gravitational pull makes it collapse upon itself.
:)
Do really dense people warp space more than others?
The Internet could be well summed up with a little snipit from the Star Trek Universe:
IDIC
Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations. (Vulcan Saying)
It's as diverse and dynamic as the nature of people themselves.
Yes I am a commerce major... managemnt information systems, so I take all commerce classes along with my database, IT, networking, etc.
I should have read all the way down before posting above... but what I mentioned is the difference between intangible, and tangible assets, but more importantly, "goodwill" on financial staements.
If slashdot decided they've had enuf and these guys want to spend the rest of their life in a hut on a beach, well they'd sell off the domain. And could probably get much more than Network Solution's 70 bones for it. why? well because of slashdot dot org's "goodwill" (If you are not familiar with this term, try to get the idea of a goodwill store out of your head)
The funny thing about accounting today... is that very few accountants have the knowledge to implement this information technology revolution into their number crunching. Where do you put a domain on a financial statement? Well theres really only two options... tangible assets, or intangible assets.
I spent a good two weeks pondering this until it made me so confused I gave up. A domain is obviously not tangible... you can't reach out and touch it, or anything on the net for that matter, but should it be included with patents, etc? I certainly hope not.
As for all this talk about infinity... well I can't get into that becasue when I think about infinity I get sick to my stomach... it has to end somewhere... arrrrgh.
-cebe
You have paid for a total of 0 pages and so far 0 have been used up (0 today).
I am SO tired of the "virtual universe" metaphor. It's pure and utter garbage.
As far as there being "infinite space": If we in fact assume that bandwidth and disk space are unlimited, then, yes, we have infinite space. But that assumption is absurd. Bandwidth and disk space will ALWAYS be limited. The limits will grow, but, applying Hofstadter's Law, we will always be bumping into them. There's also isn't enough room in the universe to store an infinite number of disk drives.
This is kinda like saying that the amount of information in the universe is infinite. Well, it might be, but the amount of knowable information is necessarily finite, because there's only so much space to store it in, and so much time to find it.
The namespace issue is nothing new: we've long recognized that there is value in easily remembered names, that easily-remembered names are limited, and names acquire meaning through use. This is why we have trademark law, which is hundreds of years old.
This article illustrates once again the ease with which cyberpundits spew bullcrap under the guise of "virtual reality" and "The New Frontier of the Internet". The Internet is interesting and important, but it is NOT a "New Frontier", just a new paint job on the old one.
... is nothing new. Lawyers call it "intangible property" and have known about it for centuries. There's nothing new or interesting about property-like arrangements where the property interest exists by virtue of the obligations between people that it creates. ALL property interests exist only because of the obligations they create between people.
What's different between the right to play an Ultima Online character and the right to operate a McDonald's? Not much. In fact, almost nothing at all. Franchise rights have been considered intangible property for decades, if not centuries.
This is all much hype, little substance.
Being in the VR biz, it's a subject that gets thought of from time to time. A few observations
.333 error bar on that number. So there is a finite and limited set of "major approved web destinations" for each user, group of users, culture of users, pool of all users. Hence as this becomes saturated, to enter that zone is to need to bump someone else out. Happily, the net is very dynamic, so this does happen on a pretty regular basis, but I would call the sets of web sites held in memory from individuals to the collective web community to be the most limited real estate on the web. I have found slashdot. I like slashdot. Someone I used to like is going to have to get bumped down to "the things I have references to but never directly remember"
1) OK, the math geeks have weighed in, and I only solve big polys, I'm not a math geek. Comments on transfinite numbers are an effective technical containment for this conversation, so I accept those as givens.
2) The real interesting bit is the historical meaning of real estate (this is the web, go to altavista or wherever). A fundamental truth is that it is completely based on a finite nonrenewable (yes recirculating) supply. Web space is not infinite, but at the same time it is not finite the way physical real estate is finite. Hence when the web has pricing metaphors for space that mimic the real estate model things get interesting, theoretically, and very lucrative, commercially. It's the conflict between extensibility (the web) and non-extensibility (real estate). I think that the real real estate (hmm, real^2 estate?) will be real interesting when we have real companies like bechtel making new real estate, e.g. undersea living. Yes I agree this should be done in an intellegent fashion, I do have a son and therefore do care about issues that extend beyond my lifetime.
3) As far as infinite real estate for cool new sites, don't I wish. It would theoretically make anyones chance of site success much bigger. I think the deal is that as individuals or as cultures, we have only so many balls we can keep in the air at once. It's that old saw that people can keep seven things in their head at once with a
Dracosystems - Virtual Reality Engines and Applications
Quite an intellectual remarq...
I would love to hear more of this subject from you, you seem to have a lot to say about it...
Psycho....
To the fool, he who speaks wisdom will sound foolish. ---Euripides