I don't see this as being practical in the future, where more and more financial transactions are becoming electronic.
If you look back in history, you can see that there's a problem with metal currency which has inherent value in it's composed material -- people would shave little pieces off of many coins to accumulate enough of that metal to be worth something. After some time, many coins were much smaller than their original minted state.
To cut down on this activity, everyone could carry a scale with them to weigh the metal they are transacting.
But another potential scam would exist to skirt this - people could create counterfiet metals by mixing in or plating over other heavy metals. So now you have to check density as well? And how hard will it be for counterfieters to find the right mix of metals to spoof the density, especially using nano-assembling technology?
I doubt we will regress back to using inherent-value hard currency in the future, especially given how quickly society is giving in to electronic transactions that leave very little room (if any) for counterfieting.
I've understood this to be the excuse as well, but one of the big promises of OLEDs was supposed to be that they can be made very cheaply.
So I ask, why don't they just put the OLED display into an easy-to-swap module and let us buy a new one for a few bucks every six months or so (like batteries)?
I've noticed that doing sketches on PDAs always looks like a 6-year old's drawings. I wonder if it's because the drawing surface of the PDA doesn't have any friction like a piece of paper would. Even attempting to draw with a mouse in a paint application tends to yield the same results.
One thing I did notice that helps is if you draw while in magnification mode, and then draw everything large, it doesn't look quite so kindergardenish when it's scaled back down.
The only time I've experienced a good electronic sketching input system is with the drawing tablets that artists use. I still have an old one in my storage somewhere, but I would have little use for it these days on my desktop PC.
I wonder why some of the PDA makers don't do some R&D into why sketches look so much better from tablets than they do with the typical stylus.
While I am able to call out on my new phone, I still (and remember, it's been a WEEK) cannot receive phone calls because ATT Wireless is taking their sweet ass time to finish their portion of the porting.
I wonder: can they can legally continue billing you during this period?
This would make a lot more sense than the one they are legally supposed to implement in Florida (though probably wont for a long time) to get the tourists around.
The population density is higher in LA/LV and it would be a much more linear and direct route than the "hop between all the big cities" route they want to put in FL.
Even if the nano-things did only work in water, aren't we just talking about a construction event? Once the object we want is constructed, we can take it out of the "water" and use it.
The simplest rule when it comes to all forms of scams:
Never give money to someone who initiates contact with you.
I've had the ACLU call me on the phone. I am 99% sure that they are legitimately from the ACLU, but I won't give them a single digit of my credit card, because THEY CALLED ME.
I kindly informed them that I would go to their (secure) website and make a donation. Of course the person calling me doesn't get their commission or whatever, but I'm following the rule.
I agree that it's good that this kind of behavior demonstrates to the less technically literate people in our society that the spammers are not just "eagar entrepreneurs", but that they are (as another post put it) slowly becoming a form of organized crime.
The bad side of these developments is that the spammers have created a job market for virus writers.
Some of them are probably being paid enough to make a living off of their destructive skills, which means they have more time to dedicate to making particularly malicious viruses.
MMOGs are awful this way. Most of the suggestions I see want to add a feature with nothing to counter-balance it.
For example, I often see suggestions which will add money to an economy without a way to remove it, to add a power to one class without balancing the others, make it easier to travel long distances without something to discourage using it incessantly (and hence taking an element out of the game).
I wonder if most of these unbalanced suggestions come from the younger audience. It could just be a sign of maturity to realize that a greater reward comes from a greater challenge.
Perhaps professionals who hold important positions in serious matters easily prone to corruption should not joke about their potential to perform such illegal activities.
I would expect that for the 90% of the population who earn less than $100,000 per year, that at least 50% of their income goes to taxes and fees in one way or another.
It would be interesting to see a fair report or thesis on what this number actually is. I wonder if there would be any pressure to stop the report before it's published...
I agree. I used to watch a wide variety of TV. Then the content got bad, so I started watching only the "infotainment" channels like Discovery and TLC channels, but then over the past year or two they started to shift their ratio of Programme:Commercial airtime from about 3:1 to about 1.5:1, and even seeming like 1:1 for some shows.
The commercials got louder and more ridiculously consumeristic. The programs got worse, even on the informative channels, deviating away from fun educational topics into less educational and more MTV-attention-span type of topics.
About that time I stopped watching TV altogether and dug deep into the realm of MMO games (my current favorite is Second Life). I don't see myself ever going back to Television as a big part of my leisure time unless it makes a lot of progress towards the viewership replacing the advertisers as the source of sponsorship (or at least having the option to).
These days, I occasionally flip the TV on, but 4 times out of 5 it goes right back off after about 2-3 minutes of looking around the premium movie channels for something good. I'd much rather entertain myself by designing 3D models, writing programs to control them, and showing them off to my online friends, than sit alone on the couch and recieve my daily dose of commercial propaganda...
I wonder if anyone has done a project like this where they take a LED scroller display and replace the LEDs with with laser diodes (and whatever else is necessary to power them) =)
Items can be instantly copied, sold, given away, etc. Each object possesses a "Properties" panel which lets the creator assign permissions similar to the creative commons licensing system.
Going from memory, it was something like this:
Object can be: - Copied - Modified - Sold/Given Away Next owner can: - Copy - Modify - Sell/Give Away
The "Next owner can" set of permissions will be applied to a copy of the object at the time of purchase.
I saw yesterday's article about them changing their TOS so that all users own their own creations, so I thought I'd jump in and take a look around. I have to admit I didn't have any idea how far along Second Life had come. The reviews and the website don't do the system justice. I don't see how a geek could possibly not get hooked by Second Life...
The client is a pretty amazing piece of code. There's all kinds of information you can get on every object in the world, and there's something like a half dozen debug panels. These kinds of programs definitely look like the seeds of a "metaverse".
Avatars are nearly *ridiculously* customizable. I've played Star Wars Galaxies, and I thought that the flexibility with the avatars there was impressive, but in SL, I saw: 11 different slider attributes (each with values 1-100) for nose, 13 for eyes, 11 for head, 9 for mouth, 9 for chin, 12 for torso, 8 for legs, 26 for skin, and 34 for hair. On top of all that, you can attach objects you create to your avatars so that you can make glasses, jewelrey, clothing, horns, a tail, etc.
The scripting language looks fairly straightforward. I've only seen a couple of scripts, but it looks like you can do a lot of stuff with it.
I guess i'm starting to sound like an advertisment, but I'm really just someone who jumped in yesterday to take a look around, and now that I'm probably going to subscribe (even though I have 6 days left in my trial), I'm thinking it'd be all the better if more people were there, as I noticed it gets pretty quiet in the middle of the night when I'm up =)
Shareaza is now the best. It's freeware with no spyware, and it supports P2P transfers on Gnutella, Gnutella2, eDonkey, BitTorrent, etc all simultaneously in one interface...
Unfortunatly to many who read here, it's a Win32 app.
The only thing that I've wondered for some time now is that I don't know what the motivation is behind developing this application for free other than to establish the Gnutella2 network... But that even seems like a lot of work considering how much work has been put into interfacing with the other networks...
Slashdot Mirror
I don't see this as being practical in the future, where more and more financial transactions are becoming electronic.
If you look back in history, you can see that there's a problem with metal currency which has inherent value in it's composed material -- people would shave little pieces off of many coins to accumulate enough of that metal to be worth something. After some time, many coins were much smaller than their original minted state.
To cut down on this activity, everyone could carry a scale with them to weigh the metal they are transacting.
But another potential scam would exist to skirt this - people could create counterfiet metals by mixing in or plating over other heavy metals. So now you have to check density as well? And how hard will it be for counterfieters to find the right mix of metals to spoof the density, especially using nano-assembling technology?
I doubt we will regress back to using inherent-value hard currency in the future, especially given how quickly society is giving in to electronic transactions that leave very little room (if any) for counterfieting.
Using a bootable linux CD to see if the problem is hardware or software related would be a good start to solving the problem.
I've understood this to be the excuse as well, but one of the big promises of OLEDs was supposed to be that they can be made very cheaply.
So I ask, why don't they just put the OLED display into an easy-to-swap module and let us buy a new one for a few bucks every six months or so (like batteries)?
Interesting. It says they can be top-emitting, bottom-emitting, or both ways.
I wonder if you can still see through them from the side they are not emitting to? That would make for some interesting designs in eyewear =)
Very cool techology. The future is almost here =)
A very informative post =) Thanks for the info.
I've noticed that doing sketches on PDAs always looks like a 6-year old's drawings. I wonder if it's because the drawing surface of the PDA doesn't have any friction like a piece of paper would. Even attempting to draw with a mouse in a paint application tends to yield the same results.
One thing I did notice that helps is if you draw while in magnification mode, and then draw everything large, it doesn't look quite so kindergardenish when it's scaled back down.
The only time I've experienced a good electronic sketching input system is with the drawing tablets that artists use. I still have an old one in my storage somewhere, but I would have little use for it these days on my desktop PC.
I wonder why some of the PDA makers don't do some R&D into why sketches look so much better from tablets than they do with the typical stylus.
While I am able to call out on my new phone, I still (and remember, it's been a WEEK) cannot receive phone calls because ATT Wireless is taking their sweet ass time to finish their portion of the porting.
I wonder: can they can legally continue billing you during this period?
This may be a sign that the AT&T wireless provider in your area is not a good choice to switch to =)
This would make a lot more sense than the one they are legally supposed to implement in Florida (though probably wont for a long time) to get the tourists around.
The population density is higher in LA/LV and it would be a much more linear and direct route than the "hop between all the big cities" route they want to put in FL.
After a google search to verify the non-existance of the word, I hereby give freely to the world:
roboribosomes
Now that's just fun to say out loud =)
Money would not be much different from what we have now, except there will be no hard currency.
Don't forget that land property will still have value in a replicator-enabled society. Energy will also probably need to be purchased.
Even if the nano-things did only work in water, aren't we just talking about a construction event? Once the object we want is constructed, we can take it out of the "water" and use it.
The simplest rule when it comes to all forms of scams:
Never give money to someone who initiates contact with you.
I've had the ACLU call me on the phone. I am 99% sure that they are legitimately from the ACLU, but I won't give them a single digit of my credit card, because THEY CALLED ME.
I kindly informed them that I would go to their (secure) website and make a donation. Of course the person calling me doesn't get their commission or whatever, but I'm following the rule.
I agree that it's good that this kind of behavior demonstrates to the less technically literate people in our society that the spammers are not just "eagar entrepreneurs", but that they are (as another post put it) slowly becoming a form of organized crime.
The bad side of these developments is that the spammers have created a job market for virus writers.
Some of them are probably being paid enough to make a living off of their destructive skills, which means they have more time to dedicate to making particularly malicious viruses.
MMOGs are awful this way. Most of the suggestions I see want to add a feature with nothing to counter-balance it.
For example, I often see suggestions which will add money to an economy without a way to remove it, to add a power to one class without balancing the others, make it easier to travel long distances without something to discourage using it incessantly (and hence taking an element out of the game).
I wonder if most of these unbalanced suggestions come from the younger audience. It could just be a sign of maturity to realize that a greater reward comes from a greater challenge.
Perhaps professionals who hold important positions in serious matters easily prone to corruption should not joke about their potential to perform such illegal activities.
I would expect that for the 90% of the population who earn less than $100,000 per year, that at least 50% of their income goes to taxes and fees in one way or another.
It would be interesting to see a fair report or thesis on what this number actually is. I wonder if there would be any pressure to stop the report before it's published...
I agree. I used to watch a wide variety of TV. Then the content got bad, so I started watching only the "infotainment" channels like Discovery and TLC channels, but then over the past year or two they started to shift their ratio of Programme:Commercial airtime from about 3:1 to about 1.5:1, and even seeming like 1:1 for some shows.
The commercials got louder and more ridiculously consumeristic. The programs got worse, even on the informative channels, deviating away from fun educational topics into less educational and more MTV-attention-span type of topics.
About that time I stopped watching TV altogether and dug deep into the realm of MMO games (my current favorite is Second Life). I don't see myself ever going back to Television as a big part of my leisure time unless it makes a lot of progress towards the viewership replacing the advertisers as the source of sponsorship (or at least having the option to).
These days, I occasionally flip the TV on, but 4 times out of 5 it goes right back off after about 2-3 minutes of looking around the premium movie channels for something good. I'd much rather entertain myself by designing 3D models, writing programs to control them, and showing them off to my online friends, than sit alone on the couch and recieve my daily dose of commercial propaganda...
You could always upgrade to ceramic fillings =P
Perhaps you need a lesson from a little thing called September 12.
It's very simple concept to understand. Except for maybe a complete moron like Bush.
I wonder if anyone has done a project like this where they take a LED scroller display and replace the LEDs with with laser diodes (and whatever else is necessary to power them) =)
Items can be instantly copied, sold, given away, etc. Each object possesses a "Properties" panel which lets the creator assign permissions similar to the creative commons licensing system.
Going from memory, it was something like this:
Object can be:
- Copied
- Modified
- Sold/Given Away
Next owner can:
- Copy
- Modify
- Sell/Give Away
The "Next owner can" set of permissions will be applied to a copy of the object at the time of purchase.
I agree with everything you say, except the part where you imply video quality should be judged by how it looks when you pause it.
Remember that video codecs are designed to do their best work when played as video. They are not designed to look good paused.
However, I certianly do agree with you that it's always good to move up to a more efficient codec =)
Didn't the Amiga Operating System do this nearly two decades ago?
If not, how does this differ?
I saw yesterday's article about them changing their TOS so that all users own their own creations, so I thought I'd jump in and take a look around. I have to admit I didn't have any idea how far along Second Life had come. The reviews and the website don't do the system justice. I don't see how a geek could possibly not get hooked by Second Life...
The client is a pretty amazing piece of code. There's all kinds of information you can get on every object in the world, and there's something like a half dozen debug panels. These kinds of programs definitely look like the seeds of a "metaverse".
Avatars are nearly *ridiculously* customizable. I've played Star Wars Galaxies, and I thought that the flexibility with the avatars there was impressive, but in SL, I saw: 11 different slider attributes (each with values 1-100) for nose, 13 for eyes, 11 for head, 9 for mouth, 9 for chin, 12 for torso, 8 for legs, 26 for skin, and 34 for hair. On top of all that, you can attach objects you create to your avatars so that you can make glasses, jewelrey, clothing, horns, a tail, etc.
The scripting language looks fairly straightforward. I've only seen a couple of scripts, but it looks like you can do a lot of stuff with it.
I guess i'm starting to sound like an advertisment, but I'm really just someone who jumped in yesterday to take a look around, and now that I'm probably going to subscribe (even though I have 6 days left in my trial), I'm thinking it'd be all the better if more people were there, as I noticed it gets pretty quiet in the middle of the night when I'm up =)
Shareaza is now the best. It's freeware with no spyware, and it supports P2P transfers on Gnutella, Gnutella2, eDonkey, BitTorrent, etc all simultaneously in one interface...
Unfortunatly to many who read here, it's a Win32 app.
The only thing that I've wondered for some time now is that I don't know what the motivation is behind developing this application for free other than to establish the Gnutella2 network... But that even seems like a lot of work considering how much work has been put into interfacing with the other networks...