Under US law, the concept of "ownership," especially when it comes to digital media, is becoming increasingly slippery. Microsoft and other big software manufacturers have, with a great deal of success, taken the line that you don't actually own the software you buy from them -- that what you buy is a very limited license, on their terms, not the software itself. The entertainment industry is pushing a similar model.
It seems to me that test pilots don't think like normal pilots. Normal pilots -- even fighter jocks -- have to think like anyone else operating a piece of expensive and potentially dangerous equipment: do the job, get yourself and the machine back safely. Test pilots don't have a "job" to do in the same sense; their job is to push the machine to its limits, and if they get back to the ground in one piece, well, that's gravy.
I'm glad there are people out there doing that kind of thing. I'm also glad I'm not one of them.
Based on how slowly their server is moving at the moment, I have the feeling they've been/.ed with a vengeance. It's not as good as murder, but if nothing else, it will slow them down for a while.
I'm sure it's just a matter of time before someone figures out how to get any DRM/crippling software off of our systems.
I can see moves and countermoves here. Suppose "someone" posts "instructions for removing the DRM software" that turn out to be destructive... most users would probably follow the instructions without being careful about it, particularly if they're obfuscated. Later, much too late, you find out that "someone" is an employee of the RIAA.
Perhaps this dichotomy arises because formal training in programming teaches useful skills, whereas formal training in management teaches nothing of any use whatsoever.
Unfortunately, if it's got Bill Frist as a co-sponsor, it does have a pretty good chance of passing. The political clout of the Majority Leader is not something to take lightly.
Presumably, many if not all of the archived newspapers are from major cities -- London, obviously, and also Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool, etc. There will be an abundance of sensationalism (19th century journalism makes complaints about modern journalism -- charges of a lack of objectivity and the "if it bleeds, it leads" policy -- seem like a joke) but probably not the provincialism you're expecting.
The book includes a fascinating account of just how tantalisingly close the Greeks came to inventing calculus. One can only wonder what would've happened if they'd done it.
The Greeks would have sat around having endless philosophical discussions about the ethical significance of the relationship between differentiation and integration. The Romans would have taken it from the Greeks and used it to build things. By now, we'd be speaking Latin in orbit around Alpha Centauri.
The obvious rebuttal, which has also been said many times, is that businesses are not going to commit significant amounts of money to space until they see the profit potential, and we're not there yet.
Look, I'm a huge believer in the commercial possibilities of space, and I don't mean just for the people who build the rockets. I want, and hope, to see space tourism, 0-g manufacturing, asteroid mining, and eventually permanent colonization, and I even have some hope of seeing these things before I'm too decrepit to have a chance of getting on a rocket myself. But the suits aren't going to pour their money into making these things possible, no matter how much we might wish otherwise. NASA, or something like it, has to build the infrastructure. And we've got a lot of infrastructure to go before corporate investment on a massive scale is even a remote possibility. At the very least, we need launch vehicles that can reliably move people to and from orbit for no more than a few thousand dollars per trip per passenger, and can haul cargo at similarly reduced rates.
IIRC, the Wright Brothers' first paying customer was the Army...
Since America's Army is supposed to be at least partly a recruiting and pre-training tool, as a former medic, I say: GOOD. Anyone who wants a realistic combat experience in a video game... should get exactly that.
Re:Using the right tool for the job
on
OpenGL in PHP
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· Score: 1
Perhaps the reason you got modded down is because your original post is a cut'n'paste troll a la "BSD Is Dying"? I've seen the same post in several other stories on PHP. If you can't come up with an original argument, please just give up.
There is no "[Apple] part of the computing world." There is only the computing world -- or more specifically, the desktop part of the computing world -- and in that product space, Microsoft is a monopoly and no one else is. Talking about the Apple part of the computing world, I say again, makes as much sense as talking about the Ford part of the car world, or the McDonalds part of the fast-food world.
Apple's effectively got a monopoly on Apple hardware Operating Systems, so wouldn't you say they're basically forcing QuickTime and iTunes (I think that's bundled with OS X... if not, it probably will be soon) on users? Explain why this is OK.
This particular argument -- "Apple has a monopoly on Apple products" -- comes up often enough that it's worth a separate refutation. Trivially, of course, it's true; Apple does have a monopoly on Macs, OS X, the iPod, etc. And Ford has a monopoly on Ford cars, and McDonalds has a monopoly on Big Macs, and...
But of course none of these companies are monopolies, because the concept of a monopoly is valid only in a particular product space. Apple isn't competing against Apple; it's competing against Microsoft and Dell and HP and Sony. Similarly, Ford is competing against other car companies, and McDonalds is competing against other fast-food restaurants. Right now, Microsoft is the monopoly in the desktop OS space; to claim that Apple, or anyone else, holds such a position is absurd.
It makes perfect sense, and I wish more people understood the point you're making. What it comes down to is that the purpose of software is not to make money for Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, et al.; the purpose of software is to get things done, hopefully faster and cheaper and easier than they would get done without the software. F/OSS helps people reach this goal -- sometimes easier, often faster, and almost always cheaper, than proprietary software does. That adds value to the entire economy, not just the narrow portion of it represented by shrink-wrap software companies.
I wish that were the case. But I've lost count of the number of times I've heard a blurb on CNN et al. to the effect of, "There's an eeevil new virus / worm / mysterious computer thingie out there on the big scary Internet that will DOWNLOAD PORN TO YOUR KIDS' COMPUTER and SEND YOUR BANK ACCOUNT INFORMATION TO OSAMA BIN LADEN... fortunately, those wonderful people at Microsoft have innovated a brilliant new piece of software that will fix this terrible problem that can attack ANY COMPUTER ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD!!!"
Then the last moments of your life will be psychologically agonizing. In fact, the stress of worrying about your impending death is going to hasten it (we'll drink a toast on your grave). The rest of us will be happy until the moment we die, and the total quality of our lives will be greater than yours. How horrible to live in fear of death. Perhaps you should see a shrink about your problem.
When I was in Basic, a couple of weeks in, my drill sergeant asked my platoon, "How many of you aren't afraid to die? Raise your hands!" Most of us kind of looked around at each other, muttered, didn't move. Finally a few guys, the Rambo wannabe types, raised their hands.
The drill sergeant, who had been EOD (Explosives Ordinance Disposal, aka "crawling through minefields with a sharp stick", in Vietnam) spent the next half-hour explaining to those guys, in excruciating detail, what idiots they were. His closing line, IIRC, was, "If you're not afraid to die, you don't belong in my Army." People who aren't afraid to die are stupid, and they do stupid things, and very often they get not only themselves killed, but also the people around them.
Yes, I am afraid to die. After I got out of the infantry, I did two terms as a medic, and I saw death up close and personal many times over. Does this mean I obsess over it? No; I go about my life quite happily, and I don't assume I'm going to die any time soon. But it is because I'm happy with my life that I want as much of it as possible; and seventy or eighty or even a hundred years is not enough.
Oh, yeah, and your appeal to biology is quite wrong. During fetal development certain cells are programmed to die. During mating the male of certain species of spider intentionally touches the female in a way that triggers her to eat him starting with the head, his reproductive parts still locked on to hers. A species that decides to selfishly cling to life will soon become extinct.
Programmed cell death (which occurs throughout life, BTW, not just in fetal development) contributes to the survival of the organism, and sacrifical mating contributes to the survival of the species. In both cases the overall purpose is to ensure that life goes on.
Of course every technological advance brings with it various problems, and dealing with them is complex; this is particularly true when it comes to biology and medicine. But in this case, if aging vs. not aging is a binary choice, then objections deserve a binary answer. You can die, or not die: it's up to you. And I have the feeling I know which choice most people would make, no matter what objections they may raise now.
FWIW, I don't think anyone is expecting a magic pill that turns off the aging process to be invented one day. Much more likely is that we will take on aging one part at a time, and people will live longer and longer; at some point, there will be a generation that can reasonably expect immortality, because they will live longer than it takes to find the Next Big Thing that extends human lifespan by a significant amount of time. I have no idea if we're part of that generation or not, though of course I hope we are -- and there's only one way to find out.
The problem is that I want to live forever, but I don't particularly want to have to share the world with everyone else being immortal as well. If world population were reduced by 75%, culling out the bottom 75% of the IQ curve, the world would be very nearly perfect.
Heh. You've got a point. Oh well, if aging turns out to be curable, maybe stupidity will too.;)
As to the question of life becoming so long that it loses its meaning, De Grey has a response that's truly guaranteed to silence critics: If you don't want to try it, you can simply reject rejuvenation therapy and fade away.
Bingo. It seems like there are always people who whine every time the subject of immortality comes up -- overpopulation, interfering with the divine plan, or just, "I wouldn't want to live forever. I'd get bored." To which the proper answer is: you can always die. If you feel that you're selfishly using up too much of the planet's resources, or that God doesn't want you to live past a certain age, or the ennui of your endless existence is too much to bear (oh, the angst!), fine -- please kill yourself now.
But of course people don't do this, because it is inherent in the nature of life to want to live. People who think a 200- or 1000- or 50000-year lifespan is nightmarish will still struggle, at the end of their lives, to hold on to whatever years or months or even days of life they have left. We rage against the dying of the light because the urge to live is part of our every cell.
So, for those of you who think this kind of research is a terrible thing, an affront to God and man -- please go off somewhere to die quietly. And those of us who choose to live will drink a toast on your graves.
Yep. There is a very simple way to protect yourself from someone else patenting your idea and taking it away from you: release it as public domain. "Defensive patenting" is a lie.
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Under US law, the concept of "ownership," especially when it comes to digital media, is becoming increasingly slippery. Microsoft and other big software manufacturers have, with a great deal of success, taken the line that you don't actually own the software you buy from them -- that what you buy is a very limited license, on their terms, not the software itself. The entertainment industry is pushing a similar model.
"We have no eternal allies or eternal enemies, only eternal interests."
It seems to me that test pilots don't think like normal pilots. Normal pilots -- even fighter jocks -- have to think like anyone else operating a piece of expensive and potentially dangerous equipment: do the job, get yourself and the machine back safely. Test pilots don't have a "job" to do in the same sense; their job is to push the machine to its limits, and if they get back to the ground in one piece, well, that's gravy.
I'm glad there are people out there doing that kind of thing. I'm also glad I'm not one of them.
Based on how slowly their server is moving at the moment, I have the feeling they've been /.ed with a vengeance. It's not as good as murder, but if nothing else, it will slow them down for a while.
I don't really see much of a difference.
You don't deserve to be an American.
I'm sure it's just a matter of time before someone figures out how to get any DRM/crippling software off of our systems.
... most users would probably follow the instructions without being careful about it, particularly if they're obfuscated. Later, much too late, you find out that "someone" is an employee of the RIAA.
I can see moves and countermoves here. Suppose "someone" posts "instructions for removing the DRM software" that turn out to be destructive
Perhaps this dichotomy arises because formal training in programming teaches useful skills, whereas formal training in management teaches nothing of any use whatsoever.
Unfortunately, if it's got Bill Frist as a co-sponsor, it does have a pretty good chance of passing. The political clout of the Majority Leader is not something to take lightly.
History is to the nation what memory is to the individual.
Presumably, many if not all of the archived newspapers are from major cities -- London, obviously, and also Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool, etc. There will be an abundance of sensationalism (19th century journalism makes complaints about modern journalism -- charges of a lack of objectivity and the "if it bleeds, it leads" policy -- seem like a joke) but probably not the provincialism you're expecting.
Oh, I forgot to tell you -- your school called the other day ...
The book includes a fascinating account of just how tantalisingly close the Greeks came to inventing calculus. One can only wonder what would've happened if they'd done it.
The Greeks would have sat around having endless philosophical discussions about the ethical significance of the relationship between differentiation and integration. The Romans would have taken it from the Greeks and used it to build things. By now, we'd be speaking Latin in orbit around Alpha Centauri.
The obvious rebuttal, which has also been said many times, is that businesses are not going to commit significant amounts of money to space until they see the profit potential, and we're not there yet.
...
Look, I'm a huge believer in the commercial possibilities of space, and I don't mean just for the people who build the rockets. I want, and hope, to see space tourism, 0-g manufacturing, asteroid mining, and eventually permanent colonization, and I even have some hope of seeing these things before I'm too decrepit to have a chance of getting on a rocket myself. But the suits aren't going to pour their money into making these things possible, no matter how much we might wish otherwise. NASA, or something like it, has to build the infrastructure. And we've got a lot of infrastructure to go before corporate investment on a massive scale is even a remote possibility. At the very least, we need launch vehicles that can reliably move people to and from orbit for no more than a few thousand dollars per trip per passenger, and can haul cargo at similarly reduced rates.
IIRC, the Wright Brothers' first paying customer was the Army
Your proposed "Algorithmic Computing" branch would very quickly become the sort of fluffy IT curriculum you decry.
Since America's Army is supposed to be at least partly a recruiting and pre-training tool, as a former medic, I say: GOOD. Anyone who wants a realistic combat experience in a video game ... should get exactly that.
Perhaps the reason you got modded down is because your original post is a cut'n'paste troll a la "BSD Is Dying"? I've seen the same post in several other stories on PHP. If you can't come up with an original argument, please just give up.
There is no "[Apple] part of the computing world." There is only the computing world -- or more specifically, the desktop part of the computing world -- and in that product space, Microsoft is a monopoly and no one else is. Talking about the Apple part of the computing world, I say again, makes as much sense as talking about the Ford part of the car world, or the McDonalds part of the fast-food world.
Apple's effectively got a monopoly on Apple hardware Operating Systems, so wouldn't you say they're basically forcing QuickTime and iTunes (I think that's bundled with OS X... if not, it probably will be soon) on users? Explain why this is OK.
...
This particular argument -- "Apple has a monopoly on Apple products" -- comes up often enough that it's worth a separate refutation. Trivially, of course, it's true; Apple does have a monopoly on Macs, OS X, the iPod, etc. And Ford has a monopoly on Ford cars, and McDonalds has a monopoly on Big Macs, and
But of course none of these companies are monopolies, because the concept of a monopoly is valid only in a particular product space. Apple isn't competing against Apple; it's competing against Microsoft and Dell and HP and Sony. Similarly, Ford is competing against other car companies, and McDonalds is competing against other fast-food restaurants. Right now, Microsoft is the monopoly in the desktop OS space; to claim that Apple, or anyone else, holds such a position is absurd.
Hope this makes some sense.
It makes perfect sense, and I wish more people understood the point you're making. What it comes down to is that the purpose of software is not to make money for Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, et al.; the purpose of software is to get things done, hopefully faster and cheaper and easier than they would get done without the software. F/OSS helps people reach this goal -- sometimes easier, often faster, and almost always cheaper, than proprietary software does. That adds value to the entire economy, not just the narrow portion of it represented by shrink-wrap software companies.
I wish that were the case. But I've lost count of the number of times I've heard a blurb on CNN et al. to the effect of, "There's an eeevil new virus / worm / mysterious computer thingie out there on the big scary Internet that will DOWNLOAD PORN TO YOUR KIDS' COMPUTER and SEND YOUR BANK ACCOUNT INFORMATION TO OSAMA BIN LADEN ... fortunately, those wonderful people at Microsoft have innovated a brilliant new piece of software that will fix this terrible problem that can attack ANY COMPUTER ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD!!!"
Then the last moments of your life will be psychologically agonizing. In fact, the stress of worrying about your impending death is going to hasten it (we'll drink a toast on your grave). The rest of us will be happy until the moment we die, and the total quality of our lives will be greater than yours. How horrible to live in fear of death. Perhaps you should see a shrink about your problem.
When I was in Basic, a couple of weeks in, my drill sergeant asked my platoon, "How many of you aren't afraid to die? Raise your hands!" Most of us kind of looked around at each other, muttered, didn't move. Finally a few guys, the Rambo wannabe types, raised their hands.
The drill sergeant, who had been EOD (Explosives Ordinance Disposal, aka "crawling through minefields with a sharp stick", in Vietnam) spent the next half-hour explaining to those guys, in excruciating detail, what idiots they were. His closing line, IIRC, was, "If you're not afraid to die, you don't belong in my Army." People who aren't afraid to die are stupid, and they do stupid things, and very often they get not only themselves killed, but also the people around them.
Yes, I am afraid to die. After I got out of the infantry, I did two terms as a medic, and I saw death up close and personal many times over. Does this mean I obsess over it? No; I go about my life quite happily, and I don't assume I'm going to die any time soon. But it is because I'm happy with my life that I want as much of it as possible; and seventy or eighty or even a hundred years is not enough.
Oh, yeah, and your appeal to biology is quite wrong. During fetal development certain cells are programmed to die. During mating the male of certain species of spider intentionally touches the female in a way that triggers her to eat him starting with the head, his reproductive parts still locked on to hers. A species that decides to selfishly cling to life will soon become extinct.
Programmed cell death (which occurs throughout life, BTW, not just in fetal development) contributes to the survival of the organism, and sacrifical mating contributes to the survival of the species. In both cases the overall purpose is to ensure that life goes on.
Of course every technological advance brings with it various problems, and dealing with them is complex; this is particularly true when it comes to biology and medicine. But in this case, if aging vs. not aging is a binary choice, then objections deserve a binary answer. You can die, or not die: it's up to you. And I have the feeling I know which choice most people would make, no matter what objections they may raise now.
FWIW, I don't think anyone is expecting a magic pill that turns off the aging process to be invented one day. Much more likely is that we will take on aging one part at a time, and people will live longer and longer; at some point, there will be a generation that can reasonably expect immortality, because they will live longer than it takes to find the Next Big Thing that extends human lifespan by a significant amount of time. I have no idea if we're part of that generation or not, though of course I hope we are -- and there's only one way to find out.
The problem is that I want to live forever, but I don't particularly want to have to share the world with everyone else being immortal as well. If world population were reduced by 75%, culling out the bottom 75% of the IQ curve, the world would be very nearly perfect.
;)
Heh. You've got a point. Oh well, if aging turns out to be curable, maybe stupidity will too.
As to the question of life becoming so long that it loses its meaning, De Grey has a response that's truly guaranteed to silence critics: If you don't want to try it, you can simply reject rejuvenation therapy and fade away.
Bingo. It seems like there are always people who whine every time the subject of immortality comes up -- overpopulation, interfering with the divine plan, or just, "I wouldn't want to live forever. I'd get bored." To which the proper answer is: you can always die. If you feel that you're selfishly using up too much of the planet's resources, or that God doesn't want you to live past a certain age, or the ennui of your endless existence is too much to bear (oh, the angst!), fine -- please kill yourself now.
But of course people don't do this, because it is inherent in the nature of life to want to live. People who think a 200- or 1000- or 50000-year lifespan is nightmarish will still struggle, at the end of their lives, to hold on to whatever years or months or even days of life they have left. We rage against the dying of the light because the urge to live is part of our every cell.
So, for those of you who think this kind of research is a terrible thing, an affront to God and man -- please go off somewhere to die quietly. And those of us who choose to live will drink a toast on your graves.
Yep. There is a very simple way to protect yourself from someone else patenting your idea and taking it away from you: release it as public domain. "Defensive patenting" is a lie.