The most (to my mind) credible explanation for how teleportation will be achieved is through Energy/Matter conversion.
At point A the object is disassembled into its atomic parts and those go into a hopper or are converted into energy.
A message is sent to point B to inform the "transporter" of what to make and it does so, perhaps using the energy transmitted from point A but unlikely since local sources are almost always cheaper.
Once you've done this once you realize that its far easier not to disassemble anything and to instead just create what you want at point B with a stored message (instructions on how to make the object).
So that makes it pointless for the transport of goods. What about people?
You stand on the "transporter pad" are disassembled and an exact replica of you is created at point B. This is fine for everyone who knows you because you haven't changed but you just died and it's small consolation to know that there'll be an exact copy of you at the other side. In other words, you're dead, nobody has noticed and nobody is going to miss you.
Phyles, ala Neil Stephensons "Snow Crash" and "A young Lady's illustrated primer" (a.k.a. The Diamond Age) will become a reality.
You and your neighbors may be living in the same physical country but increasingly you will be members of different nations.
In the short term, many "nations" will cling to racial and religious identity with present-day ghetto's becoming larger as people of the same ideology locate together.
Highly specialized nations will emerge however, based around a particular skill or world-view. They may not be large in terms of membership but they will hold a disproportionate amount of power.
Present-day nation-states such as the USA, France, Germany and the UK will fragment into smaller and smaller self-governing states.
This trend is already underway with eastern European states breaking away from the USSR and devolution of power to Scotland and Wales in the UK. A world-wide resurgence in a sense of national identity and pride is already accelerating this trend bringing with it a tide of xenophobia.
Nationality will become a choice rather than an automatic birthright with nations vying for the best and brightest.
The best organised nations will win out. Not by war but by luring away the talented from other nations or by displacing their neighbor-states by sheer weight of numbers.
There will be a massive underclass to whom no nation wants to grant citizenship. Outside the protective walls of nation compounds lawlessness will be the norm.
It isn't utopian by any stretch but this will be the result of nationalist sentiment, the preoccupation of the West with the rights of the individual over the individuals responsibility to their community and the dumbing down and distribution of democratic power.
I'll probably have been killed by the ISP riots of '04 by then and will be beyond caring.
I alluded to this elsewhere but let me ask straight out. What about COM?
A lot of Delphi applications make use of COM. Borland/Inprise has been providing more and more support for COM technologies (ActiveX, Automation etc) in Delphi.
A Delphi without COM won't really be Delphi. Is COM support available in Linux?
I agree. Porting Win32 Delphi code to Linux will be easier when Delphi for Linux appears.
However,
I use Delphi every day and I try to make full use of the OS platform. That means I have a heavy reliance on COM.
This makes it unlikely I will ever port my applications to Linux - they are too integrated with Microsoft services. I suspect I'm not the only Delphi programmer who faces this problem.
Delphi and C++ Builder make developing some types of application easier than VB/VC++ but since they create code for an MS plaform (namely Windows) you do have to "deal with" MS technology.
You still have to have a grip on key MS technologies like COM/DCOM to really get the best from Delphi/C++Builder and the Windows platform.
Some time ago, a company I worked for was going through a buy-out. The management (of both companies) wanted the programmers to identify patentable technology in our (software) product.
When I pointed out that there was nothing truly unique in our software (is there in anything?) and thus nothing patentable the response I got was : "It doesn't matter if it's enforceable, just applying for a patent will increase our value and the threat of a lawsuit will slow down our rivals."
They didn't get any ideas out of us but it shows how pathetically cynical the whole patent process has become.
The failure to include a sig., is in itself a sig.
Why should the military care about some enthusiasts creating armour-plated remote control cars with pickaxes, hydraulic rams, spikes and aerosol flamethrowers as weapons?
The next genius of Weapons of mass destruction? I don't think so. The next genuius of NASA rovers maybe.
There's a stunning career waiting for you as a conspiracy theorist.
My wife is a biochemist, I wouldn't know if the field is rife with these kinds of problems but I have heard of examples of all 3.
Perhaps the worst is the "sit on research" tactic mentioned in #3. Reviewers simply should not be able to stall their peers while they complete their own research in the same field.
Yep we have wireless & cable (in places) and there are some over-powergrid trials running too.
One of the key differences between the UK and the US is scale. We're pretty densely packed in, putting a lot of people within what would be a "local call". If local calls were free the telco(s) would lose a big slice of revenue.
That and the fact that BT (British Telecom) has a near-monopoly on the 'phone network and the regulatory system is weak so it can charge what it likes.
We've all been through it to some degree or another.
School years are the by far the worst, no power, no say, bossed around by people with no idea and often with lower IQ's.
Then one day you wake up and life has reversed.
Those people who made life difficult for you when you were younger now have dull, 9-5 lives, wishing always for the weekend. They are living in purgatory.
And you? You're pulling in 4x + more money than the oldest of them, doing a job you love, looking forward to monday mornings.
The internet isn't going to solve the worlds problems any more than the invention of the telephone.
Every time a new technology becomes widely available it is siezed by different members of society and turned to their own purposes.
Video recorders were grabbed as perfect distribution channels for Pornographers, for Educationalists for people wanting to send video diaries back to friends & family.
The same happened with the telephone years before that - phone sex for pornographers, remote learning for educationalists, people calling home.
Inevitably a groups of utopians latch onto any new technology and present it as the means to a new fairer society.
Technologies change, people don't. If you want to use knowledge of the human genome to advance human society, use it to engineer a better class of humans and eradicate us "unreconstructed" folks (don't expect me to help).
Absolutely. If you want Linux to be better than MS's offerings, make it better - don't waste time on slanging matches which produce nothing but entrenched positions and bad press.
I hear people on/. saying "It's all about the code." all the time.
But this isn't the code speaking for itself it's self-proclaimed Linux evangelists in a slanging match with Microsoft. This is just playing MS at their own game.
To some extent Linux and OSS movement are based on personality cults so Linux needs personalities to rally around but does it really need zealots and self-proclaimed evangelists? No, only religions need those.
My view is that/. puts up with far too many AC's who, in this case, used their anonymity as a convenient shield to hide behind while they got really offensive.
I'm opposed to censorship but Rob censors all the material that is sent to him each day as news stories and nobody complains about that. If he didn't/. would be chock-full of rubbish.
I'm not opposed to AC's either but I think an editorial policy of censoring AC's if they are *really* offensive is warranted.
Who should decide if something is *really* offensive?/. readership should - just complain about comments that overstep the mark and Rob will be forced to remove them and put in their place "This message removed for offensive comment" (it shouldn't be removed without a trace).
That wouldn't stop logged-in idiots overstepping the mark but at least their comments would be attributable to them and the rest of us can ignore them in future.
Lets not get so lost in personal freedoms that we forget personal responsibility.
I was intrigued by the Water-cooler story so I checked out the web address...or tried to.
It appears that the water-cooling inventor has also created a fool-proof way of crashing IE 4.0 under NT.
I attach no interpretation to this fact. You may think this a good thing or a bad thing, I simply say it is true (at least for my IE 4.0 under NT WS4 SP4).
Ok. Go ahead, show your superior enlightenment by flaming me for mentioning IE and NT on/.
I don't always agree with Katz but I think he can write. Ok, sometimes his spelling is off but for me writing is about content. I'd rather have bad spelling and worthwhile content than good spelling and pointless content.
When I say worthwhile I mean : Makes you think. If it makes you think "Katz is an idiot" that's fine, at least you thought about it and hey, it's your mind.
Katz isn't a programmer, he's a writer. He's contributing what he can. You may like or hate his contribution but at least he's putting something in and you're under no obligation to patch it in to your wetware kernel.
If the management of this site are giving Katz an open forum for his writings that's upto them. Katz has the/. religion (OSS, Linux, Net Utopia) so they ain't going to censor him - I do note however that it's not editorial policy to promote and present an alternative view. At least they let the/. masses comment on his work.
Personally I don't buy the religious aspect of this site. Its a free world and I'll wash my own brain thanks all the same. But that's my opinion, you reserve the right to yours just as Katz does.
- SparkyUK.
I've tried to be reasonable in this post but if you must prove your superior enlightenment go ahead, flame me.
Slashdot Mirror
The most (to my mind) credible explanation for how teleportation will be achieved is through Energy/Matter conversion.
At point A the object is disassembled into its atomic parts and those go into a hopper or are converted into energy.
A message is sent to point B to inform the "transporter" of what to make and it does so, perhaps using the energy transmitted from point A but unlikely since local sources are almost always cheaper.
Once you've done this once you realize that its far easier not to disassemble anything and to instead just create what you want at point B with a stored message (instructions on how to make the object).
So that makes it pointless for the transport of goods. What about people?
You stand on the "transporter pad" are disassembled and an exact replica of you is created at point B. This is fine for everyone who knows you because you haven't changed but you just died and it's small consolation to know that there'll be an exact copy of you at the other side. In other words, you're dead, nobody has noticed and nobody is going to miss you.
I really don't think it will catch on.
Phyles, ala Neil Stephensons "Snow Crash" and "A young Lady's illustrated primer" (a.k.a. The Diamond Age) will become a reality.
You and your neighbors may be living in the same physical country but increasingly you will be members of different nations.
In the short term, many "nations" will cling to racial and religious identity with present-day ghetto's becoming larger as people of the same ideology locate together.
Highly specialized nations will emerge however, based around a particular skill or world-view. They may not be large in terms of membership but they will hold a disproportionate amount of power.
Present-day nation-states such as the USA, France, Germany and the UK will fragment into smaller and smaller self-governing states.
This trend is already underway with eastern European states breaking away from the USSR and devolution of power to Scotland and Wales in the UK. A world-wide resurgence in a sense of national identity and pride is already accelerating this trend bringing with it a tide of xenophobia.
Nationality will become a choice rather than an automatic birthright with nations vying for the best and brightest.
The best organised nations will win out. Not by war but by luring away the talented from other nations or by displacing their neighbor-states by sheer weight of numbers.
There will be a massive underclass to whom no nation wants to grant citizenship. Outside the protective walls of nation compounds lawlessness will be the norm.
It isn't utopian by any stretch but this will be the result of nationalist sentiment, the preoccupation of the West with the rights of the individual over the individuals responsibility to their community and the dumbing down and distribution of democratic power.
I'll probably have been killed by the ISP riots of '04 by then and will be beyond caring.
I alluded to this elsewhere but let me ask straight out. What about COM?
A lot of Delphi applications make use of COM. Borland/Inprise has been providing more and more support for COM technologies (ActiveX, Automation etc) in Delphi.
A Delphi without COM won't really be Delphi. Is COM support available in Linux?
I agree. Porting Win32 Delphi code to Linux will be easier when Delphi for Linux appears.
However,
I use Delphi every day and I try to make full use of the OS platform. That means I have a heavy reliance on COM.
This makes it unlikely I will ever port my applications to Linux - they are too integrated with Microsoft services. I suspect I'm not the only Delphi programmer who faces this problem.
>
This is nonsense.
Delphi and C++ Builder make developing some types of application easier than VB/VC++ but since they create code for an MS plaform (namely Windows) you do have to "deal with" MS technology.
You still have to have a grip on key MS technologies like COM/DCOM to really get the best from Delphi/C++Builder and the Windows platform.
- SparkyUK.
Some time ago, a company I worked for was going through a buy-out. The management (of both companies) wanted the programmers to identify patentable technology in our (software) product.
When I pointed out that there was nothing truly unique in our software (is there in anything?) and thus nothing patentable the response I got was : "It doesn't matter if it's enforceable, just applying for a patent will increase our value and the threat of a lawsuit will slow down our rivals."
They didn't get any ideas out of us but it shows how pathetically cynical the whole patent process has become.
The failure to include a sig., is in itself a sig.
Get a grip.
Why should the military care about some enthusiasts creating armour-plated remote control cars with pickaxes, hydraulic rams, spikes and aerosol flamethrowers as weapons?
The next genius of Weapons of mass destruction? I don't think so. The next genuius of NASA rovers maybe.
There's a stunning career waiting for you as a conspiracy theorist.
- SparkyUK.
My wife is a biochemist, I wouldn't know if the field is rife with these kinds of problems but I have heard of examples of all 3.
Perhaps the worst is the "sit on research" tactic mentioned in #3. Reviewers simply should not be able to stall their peers while they complete their own research in the same field.
Yep we have wireless & cable (in places) and there are some over-powergrid trials running too.
One of the key differences between the UK and the US is scale. We're pretty densely packed in, putting a lot of people within what would be a "local call". If local calls were free the telco(s) would lose a big slice of revenue.
That and the fact that BT (British Telecom) has a near-monopoly on the 'phone network and the regulatory system is weak so it can charge what it likes.
Things are changing, just far tooo sloooowly.
We've all been through it to some degree or another.
School years are the by far the worst, no power, no say, bossed around by people with no idea and often with lower IQ's.
Then one day you wake up and life has reversed.
Those people who made life difficult for you when you were younger now have dull, 9-5 lives, wishing always for the weekend. They are living in purgatory.
And you? You're pulling in 4x + more money than the oldest of them, doing a job you love, looking forward to monday mornings.
That's more than most people can say.
Just hold on...it's worth it.
If America didn't have so many guns, it wouldn't have so many shootings.
There are nutters everywhere, but America gives them the constitutional right to bear arms.
Duh!
High-level languages have been invented guys!
But if you can write that much assembler in a year, all power to ya, you code-gods!
The "we are the world" attitude that too many Americans seem to have is very short-sighted.
Please try to be better world citizens. If you means America, say "in America".
I don't know what population of the world actually lives in the USA but I'm willing to bet its a relatively small one.
Not much.
The internet isn't going to solve the worlds problems any more than the invention of the telephone.
Every time a new technology becomes widely available it is siezed by different members of society and turned to their own purposes.
Video recorders were grabbed as perfect distribution channels for Pornographers, for Educationalists for people wanting to send video diaries back to friends & family.
The same happened with the telephone years before that - phone sex for pornographers, remote learning for educationalists, people calling home.
Inevitably a groups of utopians latch onto any new technology and present it as the means to a new fairer society.
Technologies change, people don't. If you want to use knowledge of the human genome to advance human society, use it to engineer a better class of humans and eradicate us "unreconstructed" folks (don't expect me to help).
...by a British Guy.
Absolutely. If you want Linux to be better than MS's offerings, make it better - don't waste time on slanging matches which produce nothing but entrenched positions and bad press.
Why?
/. saying "It's all about the code." all the time.
I hear people on
But this isn't the code speaking for itself it's self-proclaimed Linux evangelists in a slanging match with Microsoft. This is just playing MS at their own game.
To some extent Linux and OSS movement are based on personality cults so Linux needs personalities to rally around but does it really need zealots and self-proclaimed evangelists? No, only religions need those.
My view is that /. puts up with far too many AC's who, in this case, used their anonymity as a convenient shield to hide behind while they got really offensive.
/. would be chock-full of rubbish.
/. readership should - just complain about comments that overstep the mark and Rob will be forced to remove them and put in their place "This message removed for offensive comment" (it shouldn't be removed without a trace).
I'm opposed to censorship but Rob censors all the material that is sent to him each day as news stories and nobody complains about that. If he didn't
I'm not opposed to AC's either but I think an editorial policy of censoring AC's if they are *really* offensive is warranted.
Who should decide if something is *really* offensive?
That wouldn't stop logged-in idiots overstepping the mark but at least their comments would be attributable to them and the rest of us can ignore them in future.
Lets not get so lost in personal freedoms that we forget personal responsibility.
I was intrigued by the Water-cooler story so I checked out the web address...or tried to.
/.
It appears that the water-cooling inventor has also created a fool-proof way of crashing IE 4.0 under NT.
I attach no interpretation to this fact. You may think this a good thing or a bad thing, I simply say it is true (at least for my IE 4.0 under NT WS4 SP4).
Ok. Go ahead, show your superior enlightenment by flaming me for mentioning IE and NT on
I don't always agree with Katz but I think he can write. Ok, sometimes his spelling is off but for me writing is about content. I'd rather have bad spelling and worthwhile content than good spelling and pointless content.
/. religion (OSS, Linux, Net Utopia) so they ain't going to censor him - I do note however that it's not editorial policy to promote and present an alternative view. At least they let the /. masses comment on his work.
When I say worthwhile I mean : Makes you think.
If it makes you think "Katz is an idiot" that's fine, at least you thought about it and hey, it's your mind.
Katz isn't a programmer, he's a writer. He's contributing what he can. You may like or hate his contribution but at least he's putting something in and you're under no obligation to patch it in to your wetware kernel.
If the management of this site are giving Katz an open forum for his writings that's upto them. Katz has the
Personally I don't buy the religious aspect of this site. Its a free world and I'll wash my own brain thanks all the same. But that's my opinion, you reserve the right to yours just as Katz does.
- SparkyUK.
I've tried to be reasonable in this post but if you must prove your superior enlightenment go ahead, flame me.