Why is this the opposite of what the researchers were expecting? Game theory was not invented by evil capitalists, it was developed to describe observed situations and quantify rational decisions. It is trivial to demonstrate that cooperation (or "tit for tat") is the winningest strategy in an infinitely repeated Prisoner's Dilemma. It should come as no surprise that humans have evolved to choose the winning strategy in such situations.
Another Prisoner's Dilemma: if a moderator mods me down, and I am insightful, then we both lose (me right now, and the mod in metamoderation). But if he mods me down and I am trolling, then he wins and I lose. And if he mods me up and I am trolling, then I win and he loses. However, if he mods me up and I am insightful, then we break even again.
I think I'm as excited as any other coder about this development. The GNU team should be congratulated for doing so well with gcc and g++. It's amazing what people can do when they work together for years on end, even when they don't have any formal training or skills. But the availability of Kylix will be a breath of fresh air for those of us who want to be able to write standard C++ on the Linux platform without battling the bugs that plague g++ 3.0.
Can we not accept the remote possibility that there is a grain of truth in these doomesday prophecies? Is it not possible that the technology we surround ourselves with, protect ourselves and our families and our businesses with, might be vulnerable to attack?
Do I think it's likely? No. But bugs happen. Human error happens. Even the OpenBSD guys have root exploits on occaision. As unlikely as these predictions are, it is the government's job to be prepared to deal with these possibilities. If that means harsher penalties for hackers, the monitoring of electronic transmissions, and the regulation of strong encryption, than so be it. It's the price we pay for living in a free and prosperous society.
While I hate the MPAA and television as much as the next slashdotter, I have to say I approve of the senators' methods.
Our legislative system is bogged down with bureaucracy and partisan game-playing. The only decisions that get made with any efficiency are those dealing with terrorists or legislators' pay raises. So although I find their goals nauseating, the senators' approach of going straight to the source and sidestepping the whole legislative tar pit is admirable and invigorating.
Now let's hope some of the Good Guys (tm) start doing the same thing.
I think exploration equipment like the Pioneer are excellent investments and in the long run will benefit mankind immensely.
That makes it all the more painful that it is named after such a terrible period in American history. The pioneers swept across the West, killing Indians and the now nearly-extinct buffalo that had lived here since before white man knew the continent existed. They cut down old trees and ripped up fertile farmland, grabbing all they could in an Imperialist drive to acquire the world for the fledgling nation.
In contrast, the Pioneer 10 explores in a mission of peace and benevolence. I would find it humorous if it weren't so disturbing.
Is it just me, or is the idea of unmanned machines communicating miles above the Earth kind of scary? With advances in AI and orbital weapons systems (thanks, Dubya), we could soon be living in a world monitored and "protected" by a group superintelligent, armed robots that orbit the Earth. Not a happy thought.
Anyone else feel like maybe we should hold off on these kinds of experiments?
You know what would be a cool thing to do with a 64-bit chip that supports the i386 instruction set? Run one 32-bit OS (e.g., Windows) in the lower half and another one (Linux!) in the upper half.
Whole new meaning to the term "dual boot," and you can move things between address spaces with simple bit shifts!
Notice how quickly a patch appeared for this. If this were a Windblowz product, the script kiddies would be having a field day while Micro$hit denied the hole existed.
This is what free software is all about. I personally am not affected, as I prefer Perl to PHP, and my personal server is still down until I can figure out how to patch that Apache hole from a few weeks ago, but I am swollen with pride for my fellow Linux hackers.
It is incredible that in this day and age, with GPS in our cars and microwave ovens in our bedrooms, where children are more accustomed to AIM than to the telephone and "snail mail" is only used for paying those few bills that can't be paid online, in this brave new world we still know so little about what lurks beneath the indigo waves of the oceans that cover 80% of our planet.
We talk of finding life on other planets, which orbit around other stars. And we talk about environmental issues and geological events with such certainty, such God-given insight. Or is it indeed God-given? Have we not perhaps eaten instead of the Fruit of Knowledge? Did we doom ourselves long ago to the curse of insight? It is not for me to say, nor for any man. But we have no choice: we, as a species, are driven to seek information, knowledge, science.
And as we do so, we will continue to find wonders that make us catch or breaths. Even in this modern world, beasts crawl the frightening depths, luring the simple-minded translucent fish to their jaws. What else lies beneath those waves? What else hides in the dark rain forests of South America, or in the frozen tundra of Canada? It's an amazing world out there, and this is just the tip of the iceberg.
Looking back at how far Linux has come, I can't help but get a little emotional. Yes, there was the first release of ext2 support, the first sound card driver, the primitive printing support (heh, still waiting for that one to pan out)...all outstanding achievments, since the entire OS was basically written by untrained amateurs in their free time.
And yet, I'm not sure what a good idea it is to publicize Linux's "game plan," as it were. By looking at this timeline, Linux's competitors (BSD, Micro$oft, Sun...) may get an idea of how we managed to do so much with so little. If this information falls into the hands of those who have not only more of a financial stake in their product, but a greater talent and experience pool from which to draw, then Linux may find itself driven from the market by its own strategies.:(
I like Linux. I like it a lot. I use it for email and web browsing, and it looks like one day soon I will be able to watch my DVD collection on it, and even connect it to my digital camera. These are exciting times for Linux, so it would especially painful to see it fail now.
Let's try to keep these timelines and things inside the community. Post them in mailing lists or newsgroups, but keep them off the web. And for heaven's sake, don't report them to slashdot!
I am a huge Bebop fan (as I'm sure many here on Slashdot are), and since I'm only a couple hours from New York, I may actually be able to attend this.
For those who have not seen CB: drop what you are doing, go out, and pick up all the episodes and the movie on DVD. You will not regret it. This is what movie-making is all about.
Cowboy is also known for its excellent English dubs. Many fans prefer the English voice acting (at least for some characters) to the original Japanese soundtrack. If you were disappointed by the dubbing of Akira, do not dispair: Bebop really is better.
My one reservation is in regards to the graphic violence that pervades CB. It is really a cultural thing, and won't be very shocking to anime aficionados. However, it is likely to put many American viewers off. Hopefully, they will remove some of the more gruesome scenes, or perhaps reanimate them so as to be less offensive to a sensible audience.
See you space cowboy... (that's what it always says after each episode!)
This is a good interview. The right of property ownership was a basic tenet on which this country was founded. I agree that it is tragic to see laws passed such as the DMCA that dictate what one may or may not do with one's property. Indeed, the last time we had a crisis over property ownership, it lead to the bloodiest war of our history, the Civil War. This is an issue that affects us all.
That said, we have seen a growing trend towards larger corporations. Improvements in communication and transportation technologies have made larger, more distributed businesses practical for the first time. This trend shows no signs of slowing.
Sadly for the consumer, this implies a decrease in the number of providers of any given service or product. This need not (and likely will not) bring with it a decrease in the competitiveness of the markets involved, though anti-globalists will no doubt wail about the end of "competition," which is apparently a count of corporations rather than a metric for economic efficiency.
The long and short of it is, even in the absence of patent and copyright laws (and there's no reason to suspect that they would go anywhere) that specifically give businesses extra rights in these situations, manufacturers will still have the ability to contract with their customers (retailers), who will have the ability (and, for the sake of argument, the contractual obligation) to contract with we, the end users. And these contracts will largely prohibit us from hacking, reverse engineering, and anything else that the manufacturer deems threatening.
If we do see a time when property may be freely modified and inspected, unhindered by contracts and EULAs, then it will be in a true free market system, well after the government has been done away with and the economy has had time to restabilize. Until then, the market will just not be competitive enough (in the true meaning of competition; number of businesses doesn't matter) for corporations to risk their intellectual property by offering consumers less restrictive terms.
I am not so sure this is a good idea. One very popular place to use laptops (other than Starbucks) is on airplanes, which have pressurized cabins. It seems like the increased pressure might weaken the piping system, causing leaks and failure. If I get one of these, I'll use a vacuum case for travelling with it.
I think this technology sounds cool; after all, with a light-emitting display, you could light a room and browse the web with the same piece of equipment. However, I question whether it is a good idea from a safety perspective. I foresee people being blinded by these things. Any thoughts?
Like most programmers, I use perl on a daily, if not hourly, basis. It is great for prototyping, proofs of concept, and the inevitable "glue" code. So I have been anticipating 5.8 for some time.
It's great to hear that they finally fixed the problems with threading, and Unicode support was a long time coming, but I'm sure well worth the wait. It is a shame the Perl team wasn't able to add true OO support and exception handling to this release, but I guess it is just another reality of open source software that projects are steered according to the whims of the programmers and not to what the users actually want. I'll be switching to Python, and I urge others to do the same.
In a few years we will see what comes of playing God in the lab. While this sounds cool now, we can only guess at the long-term repurcussions.
There are some secrets man just wasn't intended to unlock. And with the latest research into string theory, human cloning, and genetic engineering, we are coming extremely close to that line.
If we don't start thinking seriously about whether we want to go down certain paths, and back up our decisions with legislation and military force, then we may soon find ourselves in a hell of our own creation.
May God of mercy on our souls.
excellent article
on
Forbes on Linux
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
I really enjoyed this article. Although I consider myself somewhat of a Linux "guru," I actually learned a lot, if not about how Linux works, then about how it is perceived by those outside the community.
One thing that particularly struck me is Forbes' recommendation that "Linux not be depended on for mission-critical applications." In my business, I've always been willing to bet a lot on Linux's performance, and never (yet) been disappointed. After reading this article I may look into the offerings of Sun and HP, just to be on the safe side.
It goes to show, you can work in an industry for 20 years, and still learn something. I look forward to more informative articles from Forbes.
I agree. Bicycles are a basic human right, while airplanes are simply a luxury. Air travel is most definitely interstate commerce, since people are just another type of "good" that is being "traded." Also, you are correct that you have no right to drive a car, just an obligation.
Also, a quick note. By the 10th amendment, the Constitution itself is unconstitutional. Guess the founding fathers had read their Godel!
Okay, jokes about Windows bugs and government inefficiency are probably warranted. But when all is said and done, I don't mind this idea, at least in concept.
The need for a central source for security updates and patches is extremely glaring. I noticed this during the recent Apache exploit's publicity. I wanted to patch my installation, but I had no idea to whom to turn to get the patch. This is a big problem for all computer users, both at home and in business.
So, we accept the necessity of a central source for bug fixes and security patches. Now who will do it? Personally, I'd be more willing to place this responsibility in the hands of our government, which has no ulterior motives, than in the hands of some greedy business.
Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater here. And if we need to play it safe, we might want to consider saving the bathwater, too.
This sounds like a great resource for the community. I had the luck of inheriting a Toshiba Pentium laptop from a friend that worked perfectly under Linux 2.2. Sound, video, everything. Once I recompiled my kernel it even had functioning APM, if you didn't mind having to rmmod and insmod the sound drivers after waking it up. However, I understand that it is often a good deal more difficult to get Linux to run on laptops.
However, this website also could actually be bad for Linux users. There are a number of issues.
First, it suggests (however accurately) that getting Linux running on laptops is not a simple "plug and play" matter. This scares away potential new Linux users. Linux makes a lot of headway in colleges, but not among the huge number of students who own laptops. This site just makes them want to play it safe and stick with Windows.
Furthermore, I'm very frightened regarding the techniques for avoiding the "Micro$oft tax." Yes, I hate it as much as the next slashbot Linux geek, and that's why I try to build my own boxen whenever possible. But if you avoid the Windows license fee, then you are violating the contract among you, M$, and the laptop manufacturer. We need to fight the common media portrayal of Linux users as evil pirates and hackers, and publishing instructions for subverting the law is step in the wrong direction.
Finally, the effort being put into getting Linux to run on laptops comes at the expense of other worthy goals and projects. Linux makes the most impact (and shows the most growth potential) on low-end servers and "salvage" PCs (Pentium or 486 firewalls and the like that would otherwise be trashed). We should be fixing the installers for these niches, rather than chasing the evasive laptop market.
I will definitely bookmark the Linux on Laptops page. But I'm afraid it may end up hurting us more than it helps.
This is exactly what the record companies are trying with their doomed-to-fail mp3 portals. They will do a terrible job, so that they can go to the courts and say, "look, we tried, people don't want to do things the legal way" and have TiVo banned as a pirating tool that uses that terrorist hippie Lunix operating system.
Slashdot Mirror
Why is this the opposite of what the researchers were expecting? Game theory was not invented by evil capitalists, it was developed to describe observed situations and quantify rational decisions. It is trivial to demonstrate that cooperation (or "tit for tat") is the winningest strategy in an infinitely repeated Prisoner's Dilemma. It should come as no surprise that humans have evolved to choose the winning strategy in such situations.
Another Prisoner's Dilemma: if a moderator mods me down, and I am insightful, then we both lose (me right now, and the mod in metamoderation). But if he mods me down and I am trolling, then he wins and I lose. And if he mods me up and I am trolling, then I win and he loses. However, if he mods me up and I am insightful, then we break even again.
So which is it, punk?
I think I'm as excited as any other coder about this development. The GNU team should be congratulated for doing so well with gcc and g++. It's amazing what people can do when they work together for years on end, even when they don't have any formal training or skills. But the availability of Kylix will be a breath of fresh air for those of us who want to be able to write standard C++ on the Linux platform without battling the bugs that plague g++ 3.0.
Anyone else similarly excited?
Can we not accept the remote possibility that there is a grain of truth in these doomesday prophecies? Is it not possible that the technology we surround ourselves with, protect ourselves and our families and our businesses with, might be vulnerable to attack?
Do I think it's likely? No. But bugs happen. Human error happens. Even the OpenBSD guys have root exploits on occaision. As unlikely as these predictions are, it is the government's job to be prepared to deal with these possibilities. If that means harsher penalties for hackers, the monitoring of electronic transmissions, and the regulation of strong encryption, than so be it. It's the price we pay for living in a free and prosperous society.
While I hate the MPAA and television as much as the next slashdotter, I have to say I approve of the senators' methods.
Our legislative system is bogged down with bureaucracy and partisan game-playing. The only decisions that get made with any efficiency are those dealing with terrorists or legislators' pay raises. So although I find their goals nauseating, the senators' approach of going straight to the source and sidestepping the whole legislative tar pit is admirable and invigorating.
Now let's hope some of the Good Guys (tm) start doing the same thing.
I think exploration equipment like the Pioneer are excellent investments and in the long run will benefit mankind immensely.
That makes it all the more painful that it is named after such a terrible period in American history. The pioneers swept across the West, killing Indians and the now nearly-extinct buffalo that had lived here since before white man knew the continent existed. They cut down old trees and ripped up fertile farmland, grabbing all they could in an Imperialist drive to acquire the world for the fledgling nation.
In contrast, the Pioneer 10 explores in a mission of peace and benevolence. I would find it humorous if it weren't so disturbing.
Is it just me, or is the idea of unmanned machines communicating miles above the Earth kind of scary? With advances in AI and orbital weapons systems (thanks, Dubya), we could soon be living in a world monitored and "protected" by a group superintelligent, armed robots that orbit the Earth. Not a happy thought.
Anyone else feel like maybe we should hold off on these kinds of experiments?
You know what would be a cool thing to do with a 64-bit chip that supports the i386 instruction set? Run one 32-bit OS (e.g., Windows) in the lower half and another one (Linux!) in the upper half.
Whole new meaning to the term "dual boot," and you can move things between address spaces with simple bit shifts!
Notice how quickly a patch appeared for this. If this were a Windblowz product, the script kiddies would be having a field day while Micro$hit denied the hole existed.
This is what free software is all about. I personally am not affected, as I prefer Perl to PHP, and my personal server is still down until I can figure out how to patch that Apache hole from a few weeks ago, but I am swollen with pride for my fellow Linux hackers.
First a 60-foot squid, now a mutant two-headed hard drive. What next, the announcement of the Bearded Lady Linux distro?
It is incredible that in this day and age, with GPS in our cars and microwave ovens in our bedrooms, where children are more accustomed to AIM than to the telephone and "snail mail" is only used for paying those few bills that can't be paid online, in this brave new world we still know so little about what lurks beneath the indigo waves of the oceans that cover 80% of our planet.
We talk of finding life on other planets, which orbit around other stars. And we talk about environmental issues and geological events with such certainty, such God-given insight. Or is it indeed God-given? Have we not perhaps eaten instead of the Fruit of Knowledge? Did we doom ourselves long ago to the curse of insight? It is not for me to say, nor for any man. But we have no choice: we, as a species, are driven to seek information, knowledge, science.
And as we do so, we will continue to find wonders that make us catch or breaths. Even in this modern world, beasts crawl the frightening depths, luring the simple-minded translucent fish to their jaws. What else lies beneath those waves? What else hides in the dark rain forests of South America, or in the frozen tundra of Canada? It's an amazing world out there, and this is just the tip of the iceberg.
It boggles my brains.
Looking back at how far Linux has come, I can't help but get a little emotional. Yes, there was the first release of ext2 support, the first sound card driver, the primitive printing support (heh, still waiting for that one to pan out)...all outstanding achievments, since the entire OS was basically written by untrained amateurs in their free time.
:(
And yet, I'm not sure what a good idea it is to publicize Linux's "game plan," as it were. By looking at this timeline, Linux's competitors (BSD, Micro$oft, Sun...) may get an idea of how we managed to do so much with so little. If this information falls into the hands of those who have not only more of a financial stake in their product, but a greater talent and experience pool from which to draw, then Linux may find itself driven from the market by its own strategies.
I like Linux. I like it a lot. I use it for email and web browsing, and it looks like one day soon I will be able to watch my DVD collection on it, and even connect it to my digital camera. These are exciting times for Linux, so it would especially painful to see it fail now.
Let's try to keep these timelines and things inside the community. Post them in mailing lists or newsgroups, but keep them off the web. And for heaven's sake, don't report them to slashdot!
I am a huge Bebop fan (as I'm sure many here on Slashdot are), and since I'm only a couple hours from New York, I may actually be able to attend this.
For those who have not seen CB: drop what you are doing, go out, and pick up all the episodes and the movie on DVD. You will not regret it. This is what movie-making is all about.
Cowboy is also known for its excellent English dubs. Many fans prefer the English voice acting (at least for some characters) to the original Japanese soundtrack. If you were disappointed by the dubbing of Akira, do not dispair: Bebop really is better.
My one reservation is in regards to the graphic violence that pervades CB. It is really a cultural thing, and won't be very shocking to anime aficionados. However, it is likely to put many American viewers off. Hopefully, they will remove some of the more gruesome scenes, or perhaps reanimate them so as to be less offensive to a sensible audience.
See you space cowboy... (that's what it always says after each episode!)
This is a good interview. The right of property ownership was a basic tenet on which this country was founded. I agree that it is tragic to see laws passed such as the DMCA that dictate what one may or may not do with one's property. Indeed, the last time we had a crisis over property ownership, it lead to the bloodiest war of our history, the Civil War. This is an issue that affects us all.
That said, we have seen a growing trend towards larger corporations. Improvements in communication and transportation technologies have made larger, more distributed businesses practical for the first time. This trend shows no signs of slowing.
Sadly for the consumer, this implies a decrease in the number of providers of any given service or product. This need not (and likely will not) bring with it a decrease in the competitiveness of the markets involved, though anti-globalists will no doubt wail about the end of "competition," which is apparently a count of corporations rather than a metric for economic efficiency.
The long and short of it is, even in the absence of patent and copyright laws (and there's no reason to suspect that they would go anywhere) that specifically give businesses extra rights in these situations, manufacturers will still have the ability to contract with their customers (retailers), who will have the ability (and, for the sake of argument, the contractual obligation) to contract with we, the end users. And these contracts will largely prohibit us from hacking, reverse engineering, and anything else that the manufacturer deems threatening.
If we do see a time when property may be freely modified and inspected, unhindered by contracts and EULAs, then it will be in a true free market system, well after the government has been done away with and the economy has had time to restabilize. Until then, the market will just not be competitive enough (in the true meaning of competition; number of businesses doesn't matter) for corporations to risk their intellectual property by offering consumers less restrictive terms.
I am not so sure this is a good idea. One very popular place to use laptops (other than Starbucks) is on airplanes, which have pressurized cabins. It seems like the increased pressure might weaken the piping system, causing leaks and failure. If I get one of these, I'll use a vacuum case for travelling with it.
I think this technology sounds cool; after all, with a light-emitting display, you could light a room and browse the web with the same piece of equipment. However, I question whether it is a good idea from a safety perspective. I foresee people being blinded by these things. Any thoughts?
Like most programmers, I use perl on a daily, if not hourly, basis. It is great for prototyping, proofs of concept, and the inevitable "glue" code. So I have been anticipating 5.8 for some time.
It's great to hear that they finally fixed the problems with threading, and Unicode support was a long time coming, but I'm sure well worth the wait. It is a shame the Perl team wasn't able to add true OO support and exception handling to this release, but I guess it is just another reality of open source software that projects are steered according to the whims of the programmers and not to what the users actually want. I'll be switching to Python, and I urge others to do the same.
Sorry, may God have mercy on our souls.
Slow Down Cowboy!
In a few years we will see what comes of playing God in the lab. While this sounds cool now, we can only guess at the long-term repurcussions.
There are some secrets man just wasn't intended to unlock. And with the latest research into string theory, human cloning, and genetic engineering, we are coming extremely close to that line.
If we don't start thinking seriously about whether we want to go down certain paths, and back up our decisions with legislation and military force, then we may soon find ourselves in a hell of our own creation.
May God of mercy on our souls.
I really enjoyed this article. Although I consider myself somewhat of a Linux "guru," I actually learned a lot, if not about how Linux works, then about how it is perceived by those outside the community.
One thing that particularly struck me is Forbes' recommendation that "Linux not be depended on for mission-critical applications." In my business, I've always been willing to bet a lot on Linux's performance, and never (yet) been disappointed. After reading this article I may look into the offerings of Sun and HP, just to be on the safe side.
It goes to show, you can work in an industry for 20 years, and still learn something. I look forward to more informative articles from Forbes.
I agree. Bicycles are a basic human right, while airplanes are simply a luxury. Air travel is most definitely interstate commerce, since people are just another type of "good" that is being "traded." Also, you are correct that you have no right to drive a car, just an obligation.
Also, a quick note. By the 10th amendment, the Constitution itself is unconstitutional. Guess the founding fathers had read their Godel!
I've always dreamed of travelling to the sun in a sphere.
Okay, jokes about Windows bugs and government inefficiency are probably warranted. But when all is said and done, I don't mind this idea, at least in concept.
The need for a central source for security updates and patches is extremely glaring. I noticed this during the recent Apache exploit's publicity. I wanted to patch my installation, but I had no idea to whom to turn to get the patch. This is a big problem for all computer users, both at home and in business.
So, we accept the necessity of a central source for bug fixes and security patches. Now who will do it? Personally, I'd be more willing to place this responsibility in the hands of our government, which has no ulterior motives, than in the hands of some greedy business.
Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater here. And if we need to play it safe, we might want to consider saving the bathwater, too.
This sounds like a great resource for the community. I had the luck of inheriting a Toshiba Pentium laptop from a friend that worked perfectly under Linux 2.2. Sound, video, everything. Once I recompiled my kernel it even had functioning APM, if you didn't mind having to rmmod and insmod the sound drivers after waking it up. However, I understand that it is often a good deal more difficult to get Linux to run on laptops.
However, this website also could actually be bad for Linux users. There are a number of issues.
First, it suggests (however accurately) that getting Linux running on laptops is not a simple "plug and play" matter. This scares away potential new Linux users. Linux makes a lot of headway in colleges, but not among the huge number of students who own laptops. This site just makes them want to play it safe and stick with Windows.
Furthermore, I'm very frightened regarding the techniques for avoiding the "Micro$oft tax." Yes, I hate it as much as the next slashbot Linux geek, and that's why I try to build my own boxen whenever possible. But if you avoid the Windows license fee, then you are violating the contract among you, M$, and the laptop manufacturer. We need to fight the common media portrayal of Linux users as evil pirates and hackers, and publishing instructions for subverting the law is step in the wrong direction.
Finally, the effort being put into getting Linux to run on laptops comes at the expense of other worthy goals and projects. Linux makes the most impact (and shows the most growth potential) on low-end servers and "salvage" PCs (Pentium or 486 firewalls and the like that would otherwise be trashed). We should be fixing the installers for these niches, rather than chasing the evasive laptop market.
I will definitely bookmark the Linux on Laptops page. But I'm afraid it may end up hurting us more than it helps.
This is exactly what the record companies are trying with their doomed-to-fail mp3 portals. They will do a terrible job, so that they can go to the courts and say, "look, we tried, people don't want to do things the legal way" and have TiVo banned as a pirating tool that uses that terrorist hippie Lunix operating system.