I should have been more clear. I meant it will be trivial to achieve mathematically. Something leads me to believe, that unlike current multidimensional theories and superstrings and such, grand unification and a universal model will be extremely simple, just as newtonian thermodynamics and relativity are. Of course, it would probably be difficult to actually invent the machine that does it.:)
Unless some of the "wormhole" or "warp-bubble" theories pan out faster than light travel will never exist. (See Einstein's general theory of relativity.)
Relativity does not rule out faster-than-light travel, but it does say that you can't accelerate from slower-than-light to faster-than-light. It's believed that some things start their existance going faster than light already (certain types of neutrinos) and according to relativity, they would therefore be traveling backwards in time. Nifty.
Now, if we accept relativity, then gravity causes space to curve. If we accept some new theories out there that the Universe has far more than four dimensions, then wormholes are definately a possibility. If you have a circle and are only allowed to walk on the circumfrence, you'd have to walk half the circumfrance to get to the other side. But if you can figure out how to travel in the "direction" of a higher dimension (literally, entering hyperspace) then you can walk the diameter of the circle.
I think once an accurate geometrical model of The Universe can be discovered, (and, IMO, it will be extremely closely tied to Grand Unification) punching holes in space should be trivial.
This reminds me of how one day the FCC announced they were the sole authority in charge of electromagnetic frequencies in the US. I then wrote an application to purchase green, as no one else had bought it yet, and was promptly rejected.
The point is, the issue that needs to be resolved here is not whether there should exist a worldwide patenting office, but what the new, techno-savvy definition of intellectual property should be. That would make a far more interesting debate, I think
If something is taken to an extreme, people sometimes see the downside of it. If you are allowed to patent 'anything', people might begin to reconsider the entire concept of patenting.
Patents exist to protect our intellectual property. Naturally, you should not be able to patent almost snything, because that would then broaden and obfuscate (the already obfuscated) debate about what constitutes intellectual property. If you invent something new, you have the right to claim that technology so nobody else can "steal" your intellectual property, in much the same way that you can copyright written text. In either case, if someone copied you, they have stolen your property. In the US, at least, patents wear out after some time to prevent monopolies from forming, but guaranteeing the inventor a reasonable return on investment.
So, no, I don't think the entire idea of patents needs to be rethought at all; the system has been quite successful so far. What needs to be thought is this treaty - specifically what can and cannot be considered new technology that is patent-worthy.
The way the US has led the UN by the hand in justifying their military action lately (or skipping the UN entirely) is not exactly a good thing. And the US will continue to be a semi-agressor, doing what they please in the world unless someone does something. Another superpower can keep them in check. A Cold War doesn't even have to be the outcome.
That's a pretty naive view of power and responsibility. Here's how it works. Communists are evil. There's no room for ethical relativism here, they're bad. As the most powerful nation in the Free World, the United States has the responsibility to prevent evil people from threatening the sanctity of democracy. This may sound a bit meglomaniacal to you, but it's true. If the US had remained complacent while the USSR put nuclear missiles in Cuba, for example, they very well might have won the Cold War. It was US apathy during the 20's and 30's that let World War II escalate to the level it did.
Now I'll be the first to admit that the US has problems, and there are many things about its foreign policy with which I disagree. But I can think of no place I would rather live, and for that reason, I'll do my best to insure that the values with which this nation were founded are not destroyed by communists, terrorists, or holy wars.
Right - when I was getting the idea, it wasn't for regular IRC conversations, rather the "lectures" or "meetings" that happen on IRC sometimes which are conducted with a degree of formality. In those, usually people speak in full sentences. The bot (if and when I get around to writing it) would allow someone to "listen" in any language it supported. Obviously, it would be far from perfect; it would be the equivelent of reading a babelfished web page: nowhere near perfect, but you could get the gist of what was going on.
I was actually just thinking about a practical way to interface to some translation software to write a real-time IRC bot to translate conversations as they happen. The only free translation software I knew of to do this was Babelfish, and writing an interface to that would be slow as hell for a real-time app, but this thing might be the answer.:)
I had the pleasure of using an Amiga once. It was in a public access TV studio where I used to work, and was an Amiga 2500. That thing was one of the most amazing machines I had ever seen for its time. While I wasn't extremely fond of the OS, this machine, with a minimum ammount of disk space and RAM, could produce broadcast quality animations and logo with a little expertise in DPaint. I haven't seen anything quite like DPaint since, though I haven't been in the broadcasting business for a while.
Anyway, it seems to me that the two most revolutionary computers ever built were the Apple II and the Amiga (hell, throw the original Mac in there, too). Both died because of improper marketing and, if Microsoft had been eliminated early on, I think the war would be between Apple and Amiga. Both were amazing machines that nothing before (or after) can compare to--it's a shame the wintel market took so many years to come up with equivelent technology.
A "reliable source" told me that Q3 actually sends positional information about where your player is located in the game map, and what they are doing, back to the server you're using!!! Can you believe that? What's next, web browsers sending your IP address and browser type along with requests?
Though I understand your humor, those cases are different. The HTTP protocol, an open standard, requires that your IP and client get sent in the request. And if you're playing a game, well, duh. But this sends information that is neither necessary, nor does anyone know it's being sent.
The majority of people didn't care that they were paying too much for telephone service in the United States, but something was done about AT&T. Just because the majority of people don't care doesn't mean action can't be taken. The American Revolution was won by a committed minority. In many ways, in a democratic nation, a committed minority is more powerful than an apathetic majority who don't care one way or another.
There is a problem with sending this stuff back without asking. If a piece of software i start up says "Hey, for marketing reasons, we'd like to send us the make and model of your video card" I would gladly press OK. But, if it does this without your knowledge, that's definately immoral. It's an invasion of privacy. If you want (or don't mind) to give away information about your computer/house/family/etc., fine. But some people do. I don't mind, usually, but I DO mind if it's done without my permission.
While Id's reasons for doing this may be legitimate, the morality of such a move is questionable. Obviously, such things should ask permission before sending data. Now I'm no Stallman; i don't think there's anything wrong with closed-source or not-free software. If you work hard on something and want to sell it, that's your business, and I use a lot of closed source software. But, it's making me trust less and less anything I don't compile my self. God knows what kind of similar things are embedded in Windows. I'm just glad that for my mission critical systems, I use Linux and OpenBSD, and I can peer at the guts of my OS to my heart's content.
While this may be a cool technology, the fact that the Chinese are doing it is not cool at all. Think back to the cold war. Every time we came up with a new technology, the commies figured out how to circumvent it. Even if they couldn't invent an airplane to dogfight with a U2, they'd sure as hell fly a bunch of migs underneath it to block its camera's view of the ground. China, now the largest (iirc) communist nation, has launched space missions, is working hard on nuclear warfare, and can now possibly detect stealth technology. Another cold war? This is scary.
Re:Drivers Licenses are GROSSLY Immoral
on
License to Surf
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· Score: 1
If I own a car, it's my right to operate it. This is called "private property". Anything less may as well be communism. Drivers licenses depend on the false assumption that I have no right to use my own property in my own way, when and as I choose.
Actually, you can drive your car all you like without a license, on your own property. But when you go driving on the street, well, that's public property, and the government has the right to regulate that to maximize the safety of all involved.
All reactors suck, and the Ukranians just happened to suck the most. Actualy there operators suck the most, but the design of the reacrot shold have prevented diaster.
The design of the reactor at Chernobyl did prevent disaster; the only reason it malfunctioned was because things went wrong while basic safety measures had been circumvented for testing purposes. The Chernobyl disaster was a result of human error and coincidence, not design. Further, nuclear power remains one of the safest and most efficient forms of power today (until we invent cold fusion, anyway)
I don't know what the "Independant News" is, but they don't mention any sources. The papers talked about exist, however, as stated in an earlier post. What seems interesting to me, however, is that this goes beyond simply searching for words or phrases, but can actually parse quesions and find data related to the answer in an accurate manner. Soem sample questions might be
How many Americans are pro communist? What individuals or oganizations want to assassinate the President? What's the answer to the ultimate quesions of life, the universe, and everything?
The answers could be reasonably estimated from logs of phone calls and plaintext internet communications. Obviously, this has advantages for national security, but could easily be abused.
I always loved the "eraser" style pointers that stuck between two keys on the IBM Thinkpads. If the accuracy could be improved, I'd like one on a desktop sized keyboard, so I could reach over with one finger and point, and then go immediately back to typing.
War of the Worlds did have a class action suit brought against it, but it was thrown out because good ol' Orson was smart enough to stick a disclaimer at the beginning of his broadcast. All the people who panicked had tuned in late and missed the disclaimer.
Under the banner of "no regulation," the FCC threatens to permit this network to calcify as earlier telecommunications networks did. Further, and ironically, the FCC's supposed "hand's off" approach will ultimately lead to more, rather than less regulation.
Regulation
Pardom my libertarianism, but the Internet has done just fine without any regulation. It was conceived as an open model, developed as such, and still tends to exist as such to a wide extent. So why all the fuss? Does the transition from a publically funded and maintained architecture (NSFNET, NYSERnet, etc.) to a commercial one (Sprint, MCI) necessitate regulation? I don't think so. As long as the environment is competitive and the Internet continues to grow as it has been, I don't foresee any problems.
The bigger the better. Panoram Technology has a nifty LCD Display that sells for only $27,000. My questions are A: When are LCD monitors going to become practical (aka cheap) B: Just out of curiosity, are there any other display technologies in the works besides CRT and LCD? What about holographic displays?
So...now I don't have to remember ten thousand different passwords for my favorite e-commerce sites?
All in all, this seems pretty interesting, though HP's What is e-speak page is nothing but meaningless marketing buzz. I'm still very fuzzy on what this thing actually does though from what I understand it's a standard interface to e-commerce vendors and buyers. That sounds nifty, but whatever happened to mail-order? That still works for me....
My install nightmares over, I began to explore the system. What I found impressed me. The distribution was quite minimalistic compared to a distro such as Red Hat Linux. It was a nice feeling to know what every binary on my box was used for. I had the impression that every file and every directory had been placed with a distinct purpose. The layout seemed carefully contemplated. Unfortunately, I still don't know what many of the binaries on my Linux box are for, and they are often scattered around almost randomly. Instead of careful design, I feel like my distribution was simply trying to fit the most free software possible onto my hard-drive. I don't mind this behavior on my workstation, but I definitely don't enjoy cleaning up cruft from my servers! OpenBSD handily beats Linux here.
Right on! That was one of the hardest things I encountered when getting used to Linux. Binaries in/bin,/sbin,/usr/local/bin, etc. In thinking of a better way to set up an OS (yeah, like I'm gonna invent an OS) I figured most binaries will need:
Source (of course) for available hacking/patching
Docs/manpages
configuration files/scripts
the binary itself
other stuff
There's two ways to organize this, either every binary has it's own location (in one distinct repository) under which all of the above is included, or the above categories are divided into several locations, such as/bin,/conf,/src, etc. Which do you think would be a better model? I'd vote for the latter, as long as it was easily predictable where things were.
There's a good reason for that - it prevents people from writing their own versions and mucking with the results. Again, as we've learned from Microsoft, anything you don't inspect and compile yourself can be dangerous, so it's a risk you need to take...
What makes them great is that at long last we have a virtually limitless number of slots for devices. 127 on a USB bus, 63 on a Firewire bus. Only problem is, it's not getting implimented correctly. For example, vendors are making USB hard drives and removable media drives. USB was NOT designed for this. It's certainly faster than serial connections or good ol' ADB, but it was designed for low bandwidth peripherals, i.e. modems, keyboards, mouses, printers, cameras. I'd love to see more Firewire devices (especially sotrage) out there...bye bye SCSI!
It's great to see many more distributed efforts going on! Imagine a completely network distributed operating system, where idle NC's are given tasks to complete for distributable calculations. Does anyone know if anything like this exists? The protocol would have to account for things such as network bandwidth and saturation, as well as the capabilities of participating NC's.
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I should have been more clear. I meant it will be trivial to achieve mathematically. Something leads me to believe, that unlike current multidimensional theories and superstrings and such, grand unification and a universal model will be extremely simple, just as newtonian thermodynamics and relativity are. Of course, it would probably be difficult to actually invent the machine that does it. :)
Relativity does not rule out faster-than-light travel, but it does say that you can't accelerate from slower-than-light to faster-than-light. It's believed that some things start their existance going faster than light already (certain types of neutrinos) and according to relativity, they would therefore be traveling backwards in time. Nifty.
Now, if we accept relativity, then gravity causes space to curve. If we accept some new theories out there that the Universe has far more than four dimensions, then wormholes are definately a possibility. If you have a circle and are only allowed to walk on the circumfrence, you'd have to walk half the circumfrance to get to the other side. But if you can figure out how to travel in the "direction" of a higher dimension (literally, entering hyperspace) then you can walk the diameter of the circle.
I think once an accurate geometrical model of The Universe can be discovered, (and, IMO, it will be extremely closely tied to Grand Unification) punching holes in space should be trivial.
The point is, the issue that needs to be resolved here is not whether there should exist a worldwide patenting office, but what the new, techno-savvy definition of intellectual property should be. That would make a far more interesting debate, I think
Patents exist to protect our intellectual property. Naturally, you should not be able to patent almost snything, because that would then broaden and obfuscate (the already obfuscated) debate about what constitutes intellectual property. If you invent something new, you have the right to claim that technology so nobody else can "steal" your intellectual property, in much the same way that you can copyright written text. In either case, if someone copied you, they have stolen your property. In the US, at least, patents wear out after some time to prevent monopolies from forming, but guaranteeing the inventor a reasonable return on investment.
So, no, I don't think the entire idea of patents needs to be rethought at all; the system has been quite successful so far. What needs to be thought is this treaty - specifically what can and cannot be considered new technology that is patent-worthy.
That's a pretty naive view of power and responsibility. Here's how it works. Communists are evil. There's no room for ethical relativism here, they're bad. As the most powerful nation in the Free World, the United States has the responsibility to prevent evil people from threatening the sanctity of democracy. This may sound a bit meglomaniacal to you, but it's true. If the US had remained complacent while the USSR put nuclear missiles in Cuba, for example, they very well might have won the Cold War. It was US apathy during the 20's and 30's that let World War II escalate to the level it did.
Now I'll be the first to admit that the US has problems, and there are many things about its foreign policy with which I disagree. But I can think of no place I would rather live, and for that reason, I'll do my best to insure that the values with which this nation were founded are not destroyed by communists, terrorists, or holy wars.
Right - when I was getting the idea, it wasn't for regular IRC conversations, rather the "lectures" or "meetings" that happen on IRC sometimes which are conducted with a degree of formality. In those, usually people speak in full sentences. The bot (if and when I get around to writing it) would allow someone to "listen" in any language it supported. Obviously, it would be far from perfect; it would be the equivelent of reading a babelfished web page: nowhere near perfect, but you could get the gist of what was going on.
I was actually just thinking about a practical way to interface to some translation software to write a real-time IRC bot to translate conversations as they happen. The only free translation software I knew of to do this was Babelfish, and writing an interface to that would be slow as hell for a real-time app, but this thing might be the answer. :)
Anyway, it seems to me that the two most revolutionary computers ever built were the Apple II and the Amiga (hell, throw the original Mac in there, too). Both died because of improper marketing and, if Microsoft had been eliminated early on, I think the war would be between Apple and Amiga. Both were amazing machines that nothing before (or after) can compare to--it's a shame the wintel market took so many years to come up with equivelent technology.
Though I understand your humor, those cases are different. The HTTP protocol, an open standard, requires that your IP and client get sent in the request. And if you're playing a game, well, duh. But this sends information that is neither necessary, nor does anyone know it's being sent.
The majority of people didn't care that they were paying too much for telephone service in the United States, but something was done about AT&T. Just because the majority of people don't care doesn't mean action can't be taken. The American Revolution was won by a committed minority. In many ways, in a democratic nation, a committed minority is more powerful than an apathetic majority who don't care one way or another.
There is a problem with sending this stuff back without asking. If a piece of software i start up says "Hey, for marketing reasons, we'd like to send us the make and model of your video card" I would gladly press OK. But, if it does this without your knowledge, that's definately immoral. It's an invasion of privacy. If you want (or don't mind) to give away information about your computer/house/family/etc., fine. But some people do. I don't mind, usually, but I DO mind if it's done without my permission.
While Id's reasons for doing this may be legitimate, the morality of such a move is questionable. Obviously, such things should ask permission before sending data. Now I'm no Stallman; i don't think there's anything wrong with closed-source or not-free software. If you work hard on something and want to sell it, that's your business, and I use a lot of closed source software. But, it's making me trust less and less anything I don't compile my self. God knows what kind of similar things are embedded in Windows. I'm just glad that for my mission critical systems, I use Linux and OpenBSD, and I can peer at the guts of my OS to my heart's content.
While this may be a cool technology, the fact that the Chinese are doing it is not cool at all. Think back to the cold war. Every time we came up with a new technology, the commies figured out how to circumvent it. Even if they couldn't invent an airplane to dogfight with a U2, they'd sure as hell fly a bunch of migs underneath it to block its camera's view of the ground. China, now the largest (iirc) communist nation, has launched space missions, is working hard on nuclear warfare, and can now possibly detect stealth technology. Another cold war? This is scary.
Actually, you can drive your car all you like without a license, on your own property. But when you go driving on the street, well, that's public property, and the government has the right to regulate that to maximize the safety of all involved.
The design of the reactor at Chernobyl did prevent disaster; the only reason it malfunctioned was because things went wrong while basic safety measures had been circumvented for testing purposes. The Chernobyl disaster was a result of human error and coincidence, not design. Further, nuclear power remains one of the safest and most efficient forms of power today (until we invent cold fusion, anyway)
How many Americans are pro communist?
What individuals or oganizations want to assassinate the President?
What's the answer to the ultimate quesions of life, the universe, and everything?
The answers could be reasonably estimated from logs of phone calls and plaintext internet communications. Obviously, this has advantages for national security, but could easily be abused.
I always loved the "eraser" style pointers that stuck between two keys on the IBM Thinkpads. If the accuracy could be improved, I'd like one on a desktop sized keyboard, so I could reach over with one finger and point, and then go immediately back to typing.
War of the Worlds did have a class action suit brought against it, but it was thrown out because good ol' Orson was smart enough to stick a disclaimer at the beginning of his broadcast. All the people who panicked had tuned in late and missed the disclaimer.
Regulation
Pardom my libertarianism, but the Internet has done just fine without any regulation. It was conceived as an open model, developed as such, and still tends to exist as such to a wide extent. So why all the fuss? Does the transition from a publically funded and maintained architecture (NSFNET, NYSERnet, etc.) to a commercial one (Sprint, MCI) necessitate regulation? I don't think so. As long as the environment is competitive and the Internet continues to grow as it has been, I don't foresee any problems.
The bigger the better. Panoram Technology has a nifty LCD Display that sells for only $27,000. My questions are
A: When are LCD monitors going to become practical (aka cheap)
B: Just out of curiosity, are there any other display technologies in the works besides CRT and LCD? What about holographic displays?
All in all, this seems pretty interesting, though HP's What is e-speak page is nothing but meaningless marketing buzz. I'm still very fuzzy on what this thing actually does though from what I understand it's a standard interface to e-commerce vendors and buyers. That sounds nifty, but whatever happened to mail-order? That still works for me....
Right on! That was one of the hardest things I encountered when getting used to Linux. Binaries in /bin, /sbin, /usr/local/bin, etc. In thinking of a better way to set up an OS (yeah, like I'm gonna invent an OS) I figured most binaries will need:
- Source (of course) for available hacking/patching
- Docs/manpages
- configuration files/scripts
- the binary itself
- other stuff
There's two ways to organize this, either every binary has it's own location (in one distinct repository) under which all of the above is included, or the above categories are divided into several locations, such asThere's a good reason for that - it prevents people from writing their own versions and mucking with the results. Again, as we've learned from Microsoft, anything you don't inspect and compile yourself can be dangerous, so it's a risk you need to take...
What makes them great is that at long last we have a virtually limitless number of slots for devices. 127 on a USB bus, 63 on a Firewire bus. Only problem is, it's not getting implimented correctly. For example, vendors are making USB hard drives and removable media drives. USB was NOT designed for this. It's certainly faster than serial connections or good ol' ADB, but it was designed for low bandwidth peripherals, i.e. modems, keyboards, mouses, printers, cameras. I'd love to see more Firewire devices (especially sotrage) out there...bye bye SCSI!
It's great to see many more distributed efforts going on! Imagine a completely network distributed operating system, where idle NC's are given tasks to complete for distributable calculations. Does anyone know if anything like this exists? The protocol would have to account for things such as network bandwidth and saturation, as well as the capabilities of participating NC's.