That's interesting, because my beard doesn't work that way.
It opperates on the same principle as the scales on certain desert lizards. My facial hair captures moisture from the air and channels it through the method of wicking to my mouth. This is one reason that I usually appear to drink less water than the average human.
Consequentially, I more efficiently imbibe any liquid, including Guinness. I'd suspect that the average beardless drink would actually lose more Guinness than I, due to the evaporation of the foam left on their naked upper lip (even for the mrere fraction of a second it takes before they retrieve it with their tongue).
The sheer wierdness of it makes any papers you can find worth reading.
Truly. I'm having fun just imagining what "photonic" bussing would look like. I see a chunk of crystal, maybe, that's bevelled in just the right way to get individual photons where they need to go, or a network of these crystals.
The community model is compelling, so I'm posting my thought under this thread.
Most people have been writing about the poblem as being cheating, and when the "cheating" is uncalled for it is a problem. But with a community in place, certain kinds of "cheating" could be allowed by certain groups of people. Kind of like the old saw about hackers getting together on a closed system and having a virus war.
The game no longer becomes who can wiggle the joystick the fastest but who can write the snazzier code. In fact, with this code being openned, there is ample opportunity to write some really fantastic AIs and pit them against other player's AIs.
All it needs is the checksums in place that would be put there by a community style system, or what have you.
A couple of local, small businesses in Bellingham, WA sell monitor arms. They are a little more expensive than I'd ever like to spend, maybe $65-$90, and they probably won't do what you'd like 'em to do. They look like they only support the monitor, and I don't trust their less than sturdy looks. Sound like what you found?
Or some varient? I mean, how hard would it be to get a computer to read ASL (American Sign Language)? If you used an already established sign language you'd have a better learning curve and a wider acceptance. In fact, I could imagine the drivers for this thing to be built to accept a variety of sign languages.
I entirely enjoyed your discussion on whether splicing out some DNA and seeing if it lives constitutes creating life. My opinion is that it doesn't.
This brings up an interesting question which others have asked, though not earth shattering in my oppinion. Where do you draw the line at creating life? Do you have to construct every detail of a simple cell? Is it creating life if you coax it to grow from previously non-living matter (but you don't know what it'll look like cause you didn't construct it yourself)?
This is indeed a question for philosophy majors. But the only importance, really, is a matter of language. Do you call it creating life or not? If you do are don't doesn't really make a difference in whether or not the action you're performing is ethical (note that I do not use the word moral).
Based on the most simplest form of ethics, it is only ethical if the action does no harm to environment or entity. God doesn't have to play a single part in this. The real conundrum is if it is inethical to destroy this creation once we've created it, which we'll likely have to do, and that may only be a matter of conscience. If it'll be on our conscience, we shouldn't go there. But if it'll wiegh heavier if somebody with fewer scruples does it, and we can't stop 'em cause we don't know the details of how to, then we should swallow our hearts and go ahead (as I wrote in a previous post).
But bringing God, or any god, into this discussion is only a matter of aesthetics and esthetics, and excludes the vast majority of people concerned (namely everybody). So, bringing God into this discussion as a serious argument for or against is actually an inethical thing to do, no?
I'm going to go off the deep end and propose an ethical rational behind this creating life thing. Somebody's got to do it, so that the experiment can be done right, and we slashdotters have the tenacity to take the initiative, no? What it boils down to, of course, is if the public is ready for it. I'll expound on that after my rational.
Athiestic Ethical Rational Number FtW001
Under a sufficiently controlled environment this experiment can be done safely and ethically. First off, comparison to Jurassic Park is a good warning but scale is an issue. It is conceivable to build a sealed, starile room in which the experiment can be carried out and terminated. Such rooms already exist and harbor such dangerous organisms as Bochelism, HIV, and Anthrax. We are thus already prapared to handle the experiment with relative safety.
If we create it, we can destroy it. This is what should be done. Until we have examined all of the ethical ramifications of exposing the outside world to our creation, we should not let it leave this room. We destroy living creatures in the name of science all the time, particularly micro-organisms. This would be nothing new.
Since we cannot begin to comprehend the uses of this technology until we try it, we should try it in a controlled situation. As each use is discovered, we should have an intelligent and responsible group of people examine its ethics. Only by doing this step by step can we be prepared to deal with some rogue lab going out on its own and doing ethically questionable things.
The key is that now that the technology is at hand, ignorence is more dangerous than striking out on shaky ground. If we balk at this, somebody is going to do something that we don't understand and hurt somebody before we can say "now wait a minute!"
Obvously, my arguments are founded on certain fundemental assumptions, such as that what we are currently doing is ethical to begin with. If you disagree with these, than you can't argue the details, just come up with your own rational. My point is that we should be hashing out rationals left and right, right?
Now, that said, the real obstacle here is public opinion. By that, I don't mean Joe Sixpack exactly. I'm refering to the religious leaders that the scientists are consulting, and politicians, and corperations, and anybody and everybody who acts as a spokesperson or leader of the public. If the majority of these people are not ready for this technology, and by ready I mean a variety of things, then the experimentors are going to run into a world of trouble.
I'm sure you can imagine what I'm talking about. If the scientists went ahead without consulting everybody, you'd have religious terrorists bombing the labs (as other/.ers have suggested), you'd have corperations patenting the procedure and using it to create the ultimate protein food or the ultimate weapon, and you'd have government agents snatching key information from the lab databases, or whatever government agents really do, and you'd have more people voting for the candidate who wants to cut back on science.
I think that as an artist, one thing that would be cool to see is a printer with the capability of imprinting a watermark of my design, if I wanted it to. That way, I could print something with a digital signature on it.
This would only be really good, of course, if I registered that signature with some public group, like a PGP signature. And it isn't so terribly important because I can just sign the silly thing with my pen.
And, of course, if I had such a printer, I couldn't really trust it to not put the watermark there unless I could see the result. It would have to be visible like a real signature.
And then there is the Free Art philosophy, where the imagery and signature is free, but the art shows, the instruction workshops, and the artist's action figures cost money (as outlined by the Free Music Philosophy, posted on freemusic.com). This being the only way that digital art will really be distributed and work, the watermark printer will become not only pointless but inethical, artisticly speaking.
Yeah, right.
I'm only being a little fascetious here. It's something to think about.
Well, I'm just an afficianado of this stuff, so alls I got to add is what I read from Stephen Hawking (it's a bit cliche to quote him, but he really is a decent writer).
The idea that he outlined, and he seemed pretty uneasy about it of course, is that for virtual matter. I don't know who all worked on the idea, so I can't give credit where it's due, but I like it. It also happens to explain how black holes can lose mass.
The idea is that in a given bit of space, like the space between my two front teath maybe, there is a little bit of pressure exherted by mass that is constantly popping into and out of existence. A particle and an anti particle spontaniously form, like a standing wave, and spin back into each other and dissapear. In the black hole model, one of this pair gets eaten by the black hole while the other spins off into the rest of the universe, but only some of the time.
This seems nifty and tight, and wonderfully unevidenced at the moment.
There is nothing intrinsically complex about servers and someday basic server functionality will be this simple to acquire and administer; and this, the reputed final domain of the home PC, will also disappear into the specialized device world.
Ok. Thanks for the clarification. But I won't give up my magic box that easily.
Actually, I just had this vision: You have the household network, with microwave, coffee maker, alarmclock, cd player, telephone, etc. hooked into the little white box called the server. Among all those pieces of electronics, you also still have a scanner, a printer, a mouse, a screen, and maybe a joystick and some big storage media.
Why?
Because you need to do your homework, write a newsletter, work on your geneology, code, and play some serious Mechwarrior IX.
And so, you still effectively have a PC. It's just about the size of your house, that's all.
"Universal" portable computers like laptops and palmtops are in a slightly different realm. I'd rather have it all crammed into one component to lug around, rather than have to go out and purchase that compiler module that I have to clip onto my belt and connect to my personal network...
I see it, but I wonder how many people will actually like it.
This is good news for devices - and bad news for companies writing everything-but-the-kitchen-sink OSs that don't strip down well to device needs.
I hear this all the time on the news and industry reports. And maybe it's true. But let me offer an alternative vision:
Sure, you have a proliferation of dedicated, smart devices, all running OSS dedicated software no less. But every-thing-but-the-kitchen sink OSs stick around. Why? Because there is that one computer sitting in the bedroom, or in the closet, or maybe on a desk in the den that acts as a server.
Yeah, the whole house is networked, maybe even including the kitchen sink! Or maybe it's just a few things in the house, but still...
Oh, maybe it's a dedicated server... But I think for management and trouble shooting purposes, it would look a heck of a lot like your average pentium or AMD, complete with keyboard and mouse. And it will probably run either Windows or Linux, or it will be a Mac.
And why do I think this? Because I'm a hopeless romantic who can't get the notion of a real computer out of his heart and mind.
Maybe someone else more cpable of coherent thought and writing (read:anyone who sees fewer than three keyboards in front of them) who has read the articles could respond?
I haven't read those articles, but I've read
An Anthropologist on Mars
and
The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat
, both by Oliver Sacks. Good reading.
Anywho, though I can't remember which book it's in, Sacks relates a couple case histories of people who took damage to their fronal lobes, similar to your classical lobotomy. One is the great old story about the man who was tamping dynomite and had the rod shoved through his head. He then examines the details and extrapolates some interesting posibilities. It's a bit old, but still relevant, I think.
What I seem to remember is that this man who had the tamping rod blown through his frontal lobe became immoral, like these other subjects you talk about. But the immorality is relative, right. The trick is that he would have been concidered immoral in any culture, because what he really lost was his ability to forsee the consequences of his actions. As a another side effect, he also became a much worse chess player...
I also seem to remember that the other case history involved a juvinile delinquent who became "moral" after suffering damage to his frontal lobe. Fun, no?
That's why labotomies have been practiced. They actually get some results. [Shudder]
Anyway, it'd be neat if some neurologist, like Sacks himself, read this thread and added to it.
If you know any neurologists, poke them and prod them into participating, ok? In the mean time, I'll go hunt one down...
If we were the 'proprietary' industry what newbies could do would be much differant, but we're a community and the rules are different. Were you'll see problems is caused by newbies coming in and wanting to change the community[ make in thy own image], and the community will resisting the change(s).
Indeed. And despite my previous language, it should be no other way. Actually, it would be difficult to define a community as something that is so all inclusive. But these problems that arise can lead to some pretty good results, as well as some pretty bad results.
The pressure might cause the community to close up and become xenophobic in some areas.
It might cause it to refine its "imegrant" mechanism to increase or decrease the experience of the people allowed "in."
And it might cause the community to suffer a grand paradigm shift, or to buckle completely and split.
Or it might just change a few attitudes here and there, just enough to prevent too much strife with neighboring communities.
I guess I was adding to the strife...
Anyway, here's an interesting question for the benefit of us newbies: What seems to be happening along these lines in the OSS community?
I wouldn't expect anyone to speak for the whole community, that'd be naive. But speculations would be interesting, no?
I imediately regretted the tone of my words and logic after I posted my reply. Although, I figured it would get some good responces anyways. I apologize.
However, I was addressing an attitude that is prevalent in some people that really gets my goat. I suppose that's flamebait, but... I coulda worded it differently. I'm not a complete newbie, but I think that the newbie's first impression of things can be important sometimes. Don't you?
I can't help but agreeing with this article.... This brings us the the question of whether we WANT newbies using linux...
What a great point to bring up! I've been waiting for this subject to pop up for a while. Here's my angle:
This reminds me of something my friend said to me. I was lamenting about how unfriendly the Linux install and setup was to people new to the system, particularly for people new to computers in general. He replied, "no offense, but we, I mean the people who develop Linux, don't really give a damn about those kind of people."
Needless to say, I took offense. It is kind of hard not to.
Now, I understand that point of view. It makes sense for most of the hobiests and moonlighting developers of Linux. But I find it terminally sad that there isn't somebody out there that cares about the newbies. As a "community," if there is such a thing, I'd think you'd be insulted that companies like Microsoft think that they have a better handle on user friendliness than you do.
For the concept of training new developers, it makes perfect sense to be surly and cold towards the newbies. Forcing them to Read The Flatulant Manual first is actually a good exercise. And then after reading the manual having to put the ecoteric connections together breeds a better programmer. And if Linux is only for programmers, that's fine.
And it made me feel smart having to do all that. It was fun.
But, isn't there somebody out there in the development world who thinks that an OS like Linux, with the quality of Linux, could be developed for the layperson?
Wouldn't it just be damned neat?
Can it not be done?
Of course, I'm an art student, and I don't program worth beans. Maybe that's why I care. And maybe my opinion doesn't count in this, because I can't contribute the code. And since I can't contribute the code, I'm not part of the community.
I love Linux, I use it. I love/., it rocks. But attitudes blackenned against the welcoming of new users just leave the public cold, and are bad overall for any sort of movement. And if there is indeed a movement, like OSS. Then somebody needs to put some thought into this.
I'm constantly amazed by the engineering of the early space probes. They must of been designed to be more rigid and stronger than diamonds.
Indeed. Now, the next big thing is more numerous, smaller, and cheeper probes. Which is good in it's own right, less risky and all that. And maybe the simpler ones will be even tougher. But that's the question, will NASA continue to be able to make probes that go on and on, and have multiple uses over their lifetime. There is something to be said about flexibility. Sure, theoretically the ideal is possible, but we are talking about funding here.
I always keep an ear out for tidbits about the future of space exploration, and how the U.S. and other countries are going to fund it. The trend, despite any of NASA's efforts to the contrary, is to move towards privatizing space. Just look what Boeing and their contemporaries are doing in the area of sea-launch platforms. Pretty spiffy looking stuff...
I guess what I'd like to know is whether or not NASA might be around in the future, and whether or not they'll be contributing their expertise. If anybody could fill this in, that'd be great. Cause I've been to busy doing artsy-fartsy stuff to keep up, much.
This isn't consumer apps running on a portal, this is a business to business startup, and fulfills a similar function as UUNET, Exodus, or AboveNet.... etc
Actually, that angle makes me want to drool. In a positive way.
Exactly how good a product is the hosted application concept, anyway?
I suppose I could see it's use within a business network, where it would be more space efficient. But I hear all sorts of people in the media talking about all the public uses of hosted applications. That it would allow people to buy smaller computers and download and use applications only when they need them. And maybe it's my geek-nature, but hearing that just gives me the heeby-jeebies.
I mean, I like owning installation disks and setting aside space for mostly stable software. It means that I know I can rely on being able to use it. Sorta.
Now I know that this is a "free market" that is supposed to be governed by the consumers. But I don't really trust our "free market" to do things my way.
Of course, for a while we'll have the best of both worlds, and maybe things won't change that much at all.
But still, hearing about industry plans for my living room sometimes makes me want to grab my PEZ and run for the hills.
All I want is for the chips to go fast, and the system to stay up.
If somebody can answer this to get it out of the way, I'm just posting it to be thorough and polite:
There is much use of the words "not required." Does this mean that the specs and standards don't require hardware IPv6 addresses to be transmitted, but allow it? Or does it mean that the specs and standards require the system to not require the hardware addresses? Could somebody design or build something to take advantage of hardware addresses, despite the specs and standards?
Somebody's got to ask the stupid questions, for the masses, you know.
Huh? Correct me if I'm wrong, but he was being sarcastic. Read his last paragraph.
You know? I think you might be right. But it is so hard to tell which way he is being sarcastic. But the more I read it, the more I'm not sure I interperated it correctly. Still, that last sentence I quoted bugs me itself.
If AC's post is satire, it is good, beautifully twisted, but maybe too subtle for my brutish frontal lobe.
I apologize for any misunderstanding on my part, while still standing by the main point of my reply.
Contempt for simple decency and good manners is a sign of a dying culture. Period.
Speaking as an Anthropology minor. In general, cultures don't "die out." They change maybe, or get assimilated by another culture. And maybe a culture will get wiped off the face of this planet by some grand catastrophy. But they don't generally "rot from within," as some people put it.
In other words, common decency and morals are completely relative. There is no universal standard. I'd bother to illustrate this, but most Anthropology text books do very well, so you might want to just look up cultural relativism. It's very interesting, insightful, and admittedly has some of it's own pitfalls.
On the other hand, AC raises some good points about the various catch 22s that exist in the U.S.'s current cultural climate. But his reactionism simply reduces his words to flame bate. He uses terms, such as "Politically Correct Liberal fascism," that are only really meaningful if you come from the same subculture as he does. Let's ignore those, and translate:
Because certain groups of people, called "minorities," are attempting to shrug off oppression, and other certain groups of people have given them a voice (academics, media, polititians, activists), we have something called "Political Correctness." The problem is that no one can quite agree on what is "Politically Correct." This is because each individual in any said "minority" has had a different experience. This is probably because our country is so incredibly big. In any case, this breeds conflicting messages, and these conflicts are extremely frustrating.
This, I think, is quite true. But it will work itself out, somehow.
It might be very simple to troll for cars that don't have transeivers/transmitters. You simply have a couple other devices that detect, say, the presence of a large amount of metal and a camera to take a snapshot of the liscence plate. This could easily be done at most intersections, where they already have sensors in place.
If you've removed the transmitter, you get a ticket in the mail a couple days later, and if that doesn't bare any fruit, then the police start looking for a car that matches the photo.
I could see this as a major plot device in a movie.
"There! There it is again! A phantam car!...a...Chandler MetalSmith...Mark...III, with no transmitter, and no autopilot signature! That thing's manual!"
Sneakers also emphasized all the right dramatic scenes, the discussions between the characters, the discussions about their goal, the history and interaction of their team, and the physical legwork.
There are a few movies out there that are about academic things, like "The Big Gun" for instance, that largely involve a team of characters that are working on some puzzle that is normally beyond the interest of the average Joe. But the few that I have seen have been really fascinating, and even exciting. Saddly, they are not the kind of movie that Holliwood thinks will sell.
"Real Genius" also had merits along this line. Although it also had its fluff.
Slashdot Mirror
That's interesting, because my beard doesn't work that way.
It opperates on the same principle as the scales on certain desert lizards. My facial hair captures moisture from the air and channels it through the method of wicking to my mouth. This is one reason that I usually appear to drink less water than the average human.
Consequentially, I more efficiently imbibe any liquid, including Guinness. I'd suspect that the average beardless drink would actually lose more Guinness than I, due to the evaporation of the foam left on their naked upper lip (even for the mrere fraction of a second it takes before they retrieve it with their tongue).
Truly. I'm having fun just imagining what "photonic" bussing would look like. I see a chunk of crystal, maybe, that's bevelled in just the right way to get individual photons where they need to go, or a network of these crystals.
And that probably the least of the wierdness.
The community model is compelling, so I'm posting my thought under this thread.
Most people have been writing about the poblem as being cheating, and when the "cheating" is uncalled for it is a problem. But with a community in place, certain kinds of "cheating" could be allowed by certain groups of people. Kind of like the old saw about hackers getting together on a closed system and having a virus war.
The game no longer becomes who can wiggle the joystick the fastest but who can write the snazzier code. In fact, with this code being openned, there is ample opportunity to write some really fantastic AIs and pit them against other player's AIs.
All it needs is the checksums in place that would be put there by a community style system, or what have you.
A couple of local, small businesses in Bellingham, WA sell monitor arms. They are a little more expensive than I'd ever like to spend, maybe $65-$90, and they probably won't do what you'd like 'em to do. They look like they only support the monitor, and I don't trust their less than sturdy looks. Sound like what you found?
Or some varient? I mean, how hard would it be to get a computer to read ASL (American Sign Language)? If you used an already established sign language you'd have a better learning curve and a wider acceptance. In fact, I could imagine the drivers for this thing to be built to accept a variety of sign languages.
This brings up an interesting question which others have asked, though not earth shattering in my oppinion. Where do you draw the line at creating life? Do you have to construct every detail of a simple cell? Is it creating life if you coax it to grow from previously non-living matter (but you don't know what it'll look like cause you didn't construct it yourself)?
This is indeed a question for philosophy majors. But the only importance, really, is a matter of language. Do you call it creating life or not? If you do are don't doesn't really make a difference in whether or not the action you're performing is ethical (note that I do not use the word moral).
Based on the most simplest form of ethics, it is only ethical if the action does no harm to environment or entity. God doesn't have to play a single part in this. The real conundrum is if it is inethical to destroy this creation once we've created it, which we'll likely have to do, and that may only be a matter of conscience. If it'll be on our conscience, we shouldn't go there. But if it'll wiegh heavier if somebody with fewer scruples does it, and we can't stop 'em cause we don't know the details of how to, then we should swallow our hearts and go ahead (as I wrote in a previous post).
But bringing God, or any god, into this discussion is only a matter of aesthetics and esthetics, and excludes the vast majority of people concerned (namely everybody). So, bringing God into this discussion as a serious argument for or against is actually an inethical thing to do, no?
Woah... That's a shift of subject... Or is it?
The right people have to be convinced, afterall.
I'm going to go off the deep end and propose an ethical rational behind this creating life thing. Somebody's got to do it, so that the experiment can be done right, and we slashdotters have the tenacity to take the initiative, no? What it boils down to, of course, is if the public is ready for it. I'll expound on that after my rational.
Athiestic Ethical Rational Number FtW001Under a sufficiently controlled environment this experiment can be done safely and ethically. First off, comparison to Jurassic Park is a good warning but scale is an issue. It is conceivable to build a sealed, starile room in which the experiment can be carried out and terminated. Such rooms already exist and harbor such dangerous organisms as Bochelism, HIV, and Anthrax. We are thus already prapared to handle the experiment with relative safety.
If we create it, we can destroy it. This is what should be done. Until we have examined all of the ethical ramifications of exposing the outside world to our creation, we should not let it leave this room. We destroy living creatures in the name of science all the time, particularly micro-organisms. This would be nothing new.
Since we cannot begin to comprehend the uses of this technology until we try it, we should try it in a controlled situation. As each use is discovered, we should have an intelligent and responsible group of people examine its ethics. Only by doing this step by step can we be prepared to deal with some rogue lab going out on its own and doing ethically questionable things.
The key is that now that the technology is at hand, ignorence is more dangerous than striking out on shaky ground. If we balk at this, somebody is going to do something that we don't understand and hurt somebody before we can say "now wait a minute!"
Obvously, my arguments are founded on certain fundemental assumptions, such as that what we are currently doing is ethical to begin with. If you disagree with these, than you can't argue the details, just come up with your own rational. My point is that we should be hashing out rationals left and right, right?
Now, that said, the real obstacle here is public opinion. By that, I don't mean Joe Sixpack exactly. I'm refering to the religious leaders that the scientists are consulting, and politicians, and corperations, and anybody and everybody who acts as a spokesperson or leader of the public. If the majority of these people are not ready for this technology, and by ready I mean a variety of things, then the experimentors are going to run into a world of trouble.
I'm sure you can imagine what I'm talking about. If the scientists went ahead without consulting everybody, you'd have religious terrorists bombing the labs (as other /.ers have suggested), you'd have corperations patenting the procedure and using it to create the ultimate protein food or the ultimate weapon, and you'd have government agents snatching key information from the lab databases, or whatever government agents really do, and you'd have more people voting for the candidate who wants to cut back on science.
And that's my pair of coppers
I think that as an artist, one thing that would be cool to see is a printer with the capability of imprinting a watermark of my design, if I wanted it to. That way, I could print something with a digital signature on it.
This would only be really good, of course, if I registered that signature with some public group, like a PGP signature. And it isn't so terribly important because I can just sign the silly thing with my pen.
And, of course, if I had such a printer, I couldn't really trust it to not put the watermark there unless I could see the result. It would have to be visible like a real signature.
And then there is the Free Art philosophy, where the imagery and signature is free, but the art shows, the instruction workshops, and the artist's action figures cost money (as outlined by the Free Music Philosophy, posted on freemusic.com). This being the only way that digital art will really be distributed and work, the watermark printer will become not only pointless but inethical, artisticly speaking.
Yeah, right.I'm only being a little fascetious here. It's something to think about.
Well, I'm just an afficianado of this stuff, so alls I got to add is what I read from Stephen Hawking (it's a bit cliche to quote him, but he really is a decent writer).
The idea that he outlined, and he seemed pretty uneasy about it of course, is that for virtual matter. I don't know who all worked on the idea, so I can't give credit where it's due, but I like it. It also happens to explain how black holes can lose mass.
The idea is that in a given bit of space, like the space between my two front teath maybe, there is a little bit of pressure exherted by mass that is constantly popping into and out of existence. A particle and an anti particle spontaniously form, like a standing wave, and spin back into each other and dissapear. In the black hole model, one of this pair gets eaten by the black hole while the other spins off into the rest of the universe, but only some of the time.
This seems nifty and tight, and wonderfully unevidenced at the moment.
Anyway, I hope this wasn't too redundant.
There are some that believe that if you do not appreciate anime, then you are not a proper nerd.
I would go a step further and say that if you do not appreciate anime, then you are not a proper human being.
Besides, good anime comes out, in the U.S. at least, rarely enough that it doesn't really take up that much bandwidth on /. to cover it.
Ok. Thanks for the clarification. But I won't give up my magic box that easily.
Actually, I just had this vision: You have the household network, with microwave, coffee maker, alarmclock, cd player, telephone, etc. hooked into the little white box called the server. Among all those pieces of electronics, you also still have a scanner, a printer, a mouse, a screen, and maybe a joystick and some big storage media.
Why?
Because you need to do your homework, write a newsletter, work on your geneology, code, and play some serious Mechwarrior IX.
And so, you still effectively have a PC. It's just about the size of your house, that's all.
"Universal" portable computers like laptops and palmtops are in a slightly different realm. I'd rather have it all crammed into one component to lug around, rather than have to go out and purchase that compiler module that I have to clip onto my belt and connect to my personal network...
I see it, but I wonder how many people will actually like it.
I hear this all the time on the news and industry reports. And maybe it's true. But let me offer an alternative vision:
Sure, you have a proliferation of dedicated, smart devices, all running OSS dedicated software no less. But every-thing-but-the-kitchen sink OSs stick around. Why? Because there is that one computer sitting in the bedroom, or in the closet, or maybe on a desk in the den that acts as a server.
Yeah, the whole house is networked, maybe even including the kitchen sink! Or maybe it's just a few things in the house, but still...
Oh, maybe it's a dedicated server... But I think for management and trouble shooting purposes, it would look a heck of a lot like your average pentium or AMD, complete with keyboard and mouse. And it will probably run either Windows or Linux, or it will be a Mac.
And why do I think this? Because I'm a hopeless romantic who can't get the notion of a real computer out of his heart and mind.
I haven't read those articles, but I've read
- An Anthropologist on Mars
and- The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat
, both by Oliver Sacks. Good reading.Anywho, though I can't remember which book it's in, Sacks relates a couple case histories of people who took damage to their fronal lobes, similar to your classical lobotomy. One is the great old story about the man who was tamping dynomite and had the rod shoved through his head. He then examines the details and extrapolates some interesting posibilities. It's a bit old, but still relevant, I think.
What I seem to remember is that this man who had the tamping rod blown through his frontal lobe became immoral, like these other subjects you talk about. But the immorality is relative, right. The trick is that he would have been concidered immoral in any culture, because what he really lost was his ability to forsee the consequences of his actions. As a another side effect, he also became a much worse chess player...
I also seem to remember that the other case history involved a juvinile delinquent who became "moral" after suffering damage to his frontal lobe. Fun, no?
That's why labotomies have been practiced. They actually get some results. [Shudder]
Anyway, it'd be neat if some neurologist, like Sacks himself, read this thread and added to it.
If you know any neurologists, poke them and prod them into participating, ok? In the mean time, I'll go hunt one down...
Indeed. And despite my previous language, it should be no other way. Actually, it would be difficult to define a community as something that is so all inclusive. But these problems that arise can lead to some pretty good results, as well as some pretty bad results.
The pressure might cause the community to close up and become xenophobic in some areas.
It might cause it to refine its "imegrant" mechanism to increase or decrease the experience of the people allowed "in."
And it might cause the community to suffer a grand paradigm shift, or to buckle completely and split.
Or it might just change a few attitudes here and there, just enough to prevent too much strife with neighboring communities.
I guess I was adding to the strife...
Anyway, here's an interesting question for the benefit of us newbies: What seems to be happening along these lines in the OSS community?
I wouldn't expect anyone to speak for the whole community, that'd be naive. But speculations would be interesting, no?
Too, true.
I imediately regretted the tone of my words and logic after I posted my reply. Although, I figured it would get some good responces anyways. I apologize.
However, I was addressing an attitude that is prevalent in some people that really gets my goat. I suppose that's flamebait, but... I coulda worded it differently. I'm not a complete newbie, but I think that the newbie's first impression of things can be important sometimes. Don't you?
Again, I apologize for my rashness.
What a great point to bring up! I've been waiting for this subject to pop up for a while. Here's my angle:
This reminds me of something my friend said to me. I was lamenting about how unfriendly the Linux install and setup was to people new to the system, particularly for people new to computers in general. He replied, "no offense, but we, I mean the people who develop Linux, don't really give a damn about those kind of people."
Needless to say, I took offense. It is kind of hard not to.
Now, I understand that point of view. It makes sense for most of the hobiests and moonlighting developers of Linux. But I find it terminally sad that there isn't somebody out there that cares about the newbies. As a "community," if there is such a thing, I'd think you'd be insulted that companies like Microsoft think that they have a better handle on user friendliness than you do.
For the concept of training new developers, it makes perfect sense to be surly and cold towards the newbies. Forcing them to Read The Flatulant Manual first is actually a good exercise. And then after reading the manual having to put the ecoteric connections together breeds a better programmer. And if Linux is only for programmers, that's fine.
And it made me feel smart having to do all that. It was fun.
But, isn't there somebody out there in the development world who thinks that an OS like Linux, with the quality of Linux, could be developed for the layperson?
Wouldn't it just be damned neat?
Can it not be done?
Of course, I'm an art student, and I don't program worth beans. Maybe that's why I care. And maybe my opinion doesn't count in this, because I can't contribute the code. And since I can't contribute the code, I'm not part of the community.
I love Linux, I use it. I love /., it rocks. But attitudes blackenned against the welcoming of new users just leave the public cold, and are bad overall for any sort of movement. And if there is indeed a movement, like OSS. Then somebody needs to put some thought into this.
Indeed. Now, the next big thing is more numerous, smaller, and cheeper probes. Which is good in it's own right, less risky and all that. And maybe the simpler ones will be even tougher. But that's the question, will NASA continue to be able to make probes that go on and on, and have multiple uses over their lifetime. There is something to be said about flexibility. Sure, theoretically the ideal is possible, but we are talking about funding here.
I always keep an ear out for tidbits about the future of space exploration, and how the U.S. and other countries are going to fund it. The trend, despite any of NASA's efforts to the contrary, is to move towards privatizing space. Just look what Boeing and their contemporaries are doing in the area of sea-launch platforms. Pretty spiffy looking stuff...
I guess what I'd like to know is whether or not NASA might be around in the future, and whether or not they'll be contributing their expertise. If anybody could fill this in, that'd be great. Cause I've been to busy doing artsy-fartsy stuff to keep up, much.
Actually, that angle makes me want to drool. In a positive way.
Exactly how good a product is the hosted application concept, anyway?
I suppose I could see it's use within a business network, where it would be more space efficient. But I hear all sorts of people in the media talking about all the public uses of hosted applications. That it would allow people to buy smaller computers and download and use applications only when they need them. And maybe it's my geek-nature, but hearing that just gives me the heeby-jeebies.
I mean, I like owning installation disks and setting aside space for mostly stable software. It means that I know I can rely on being able to use it. Sorta.
Now I know that this is a "free market" that is supposed to be governed by the consumers. But I don't really trust our "free market" to do things my way.
Of course, for a while we'll have the best of both worlds, and maybe things won't change that much at all.
But still, hearing about industry plans for my living room sometimes makes me want to grab my PEZ and run for the hills.
All I want is for the chips to go fast, and the system to stay up.
This is frivolous, but:
I suspected that I knew the answers to my questions, but I actually picked up some well described technical stuff that I didn't know! Rad!
This goes to the other people who replied as well.
I'd moderate all of your answers up as interesting, if I could.
If somebody can answer this to get it out of the way, I'm just posting it to be thorough and polite:
There is much use of the words "not required." Does this mean that the specs and standards don't require hardware IPv6 addresses to be transmitted, but allow it? Or does it mean that the specs and standards require the system to not require the hardware addresses? Could somebody design or build something to take advantage of hardware addresses, despite the specs and standards?
Somebody's got to ask the stupid questions, for the masses, you know.
You know? I think you might be right. But it is so hard to tell which way he is being sarcastic. But the more I read it, the more I'm not sure I interperated it correctly. Still, that last sentence I quoted bugs me itself.
If AC's post is satire, it is good, beautifully twisted, but maybe too subtle for my brutish frontal lobe.
I apologize for any misunderstanding on my part, while still standing by the main point of my reply.
What a touchy subject, no?
Respectfully, I think I can reply to this.
Speaking as an Anthropology minor. In general, cultures don't "die out." They change maybe, or get assimilated by another culture. And maybe a culture will get wiped off the face of this planet by some grand catastrophy. But they don't generally "rot from within," as some people put it.
In other words, common decency and morals are completely relative. There is no universal standard. I'd bother to illustrate this, but most Anthropology text books do very well, so you might want to just look up cultural relativism. It's very interesting, insightful, and admittedly has some of it's own pitfalls.
On the other hand, AC raises some good points about the various catch 22s that exist in the U.S.'s current cultural climate. But his reactionism simply reduces his words to flame bate. He uses terms, such as "Politically Correct Liberal fascism," that are only really meaningful if you come from the same subculture as he does. Let's ignore those, and translate:
Because certain groups of people, called "minorities," are attempting to shrug off oppression, and other certain groups of people have given them a voice (academics, media, polititians, activists), we have something called "Political Correctness." The problem is that no one can quite agree on what is "Politically Correct." This is because each individual in any said "minority" has had a different experience. This is probably because our country is so incredibly big. In any case, this breeds conflicting messages, and these conflicts are extremely frustrating.
This, I think, is quite true. But it will work itself out, somehow.
To get really paranoid:
It might be very simple to troll for cars that don't have transeivers/transmitters. You simply have a couple other devices that detect, say, the presence of a large amount of metal and a camera to take a snapshot of the liscence plate. This could easily be done at most intersections, where they already have sensors in place.
If you've removed the transmitter, you get a ticket in the mail a couple days later, and if that doesn't bare any fruit, then the police start looking for a car that matches the photo.
I could see this as a major plot device in a movie.
"There! There it is again! A phantam car! ...a ...Chandler MetalSmith ...Mark ...III, with no transmitter, and no autopilot signature! That thing's manual!"
Sneakers also emphasized all the right dramatic scenes, the discussions between the characters, the discussions about their goal, the history and interaction of their team, and the physical legwork.
There are a few movies out there that are about academic things, like "The Big Gun" for instance, that largely involve a team of characters that are working on some puzzle that is normally beyond the interest of the average Joe. But the few that I have seen have been really fascinating, and even exciting. Saddly, they are not the kind of movie that Holliwood thinks will sell.
"Real Genius" also had merits along this line. Although it also had its fluff.