How many articles per week must we put up with discussing how makes a 'killer linux box?'
Let's face it--due to their very nature, open OSes (Linux included but not exclusively) can be ported to and compiled for just about any chunk of hardware that has enough computing power!
Cal me a curmudgeon, but it just ain't news anymore. Linux can run everywhere. Whee.
Let's take a good look at this statement about being cool:
"Fortunately or otherwise, our cool-chasing is built into our genes"
And also...
"I'd really like to denigrate the cool-chasing impulse...But it's part of being human."
I'm not exactly sure where Jamie gets this idea. There doesn't seem to be any evidence, other than the odd reference to sociobiology and a few anecdotal experiments, none of which track the source of his 'coolness' factor. All of the discussion is about the consequences of it.
In fact, I strongly doubt that coolness is ingrained at all. That is not unless coolness means nothing more than 'lack of public censure;' and I'd say that corporate-driven censure as he talks about is an entirely unrelated and opportunistic (in fact, downright greedy!) non-necessity.
Pretty simple, really--listen to something, decide if you like it (and ideally, why), and then turn it off if it's shite. It's not MY fault that other people are stupid sheep, and it doesn't make me one either.
It was a sad day when thinking first branded one a rebel.
Damn, now where are my moderation points? That's the funniest thing I've read in the last 7.4 minutes!
Oportunistic billing models: Slightly OT
on
Napster Going Legit
·
· Score: 2
So with this model, you buy the music and then you pay for access to it as well. This is on top of your actual internet access, no? If so, then you're paying for your bandwitdh consumption twice, and your music twice. Nice trick! In fact, almost like...
CELL PHONES!
Here's the model for a land line: You pay for phone access (monthly), and pay for any outgoing calls outside of your local area.
Here's the model for a cell phone: You pay for phone access (monthly), you pay for every call outgoing AND incoming, and then pay EXTRA for outgoing long distance calls.
This is how technology gets taken over by marketing: Introduce a new technology not just at a high price, but using a cost model that provides more long-term profit when you drop the price to 'mass-market' levels.
Conversely, this is how net technology is used to increase prices and profits. Your cell phone plan was designed to correct the inefficiencies of land line telephone service. Nobody would be willing to get double charged on a phone that they've been single-charged on for the last 50 years, but they'll accept different charges when the technology appears different.
Nah. I never said that Linux would be a huge commercial success. Financially, there's damned little model for producing, updating, or selling the thing.
Nonetheless, Linux is out there, and used successfully in large commercial installations (Google!). In that sense, Linux IS big--bigger than one would have expected in 1997.
Similarly, I'm looking at decades of space research (and for quite a while, neglect) coming to fruition now. The first paying passenger went into space a month ago. We have a permanent space station in orbit. Private interests have been talking space travel for three or four years, and are starting to put up the money.
This is the thin edge of the wedge. Not space tourism yet, but it _is_ starting (and 'starting' is the key here) to happen.
Would you? I'd appreciate it. I'll send you a long list of all of my teachers, the media, the governments, etc., who said, "Why, by the year 2000 you'll be taking vacations on the moon!
Was it rhetoric? Of course, but I don't think anyone expected the space program worldwide to fall apart so badly.
And dammit, I wanted to turn 30 in space! Well, maybe I'll aim for 40 or 50 now.
Most of advertising in any media is designed for one thing: Brand name recognition and Pavlovian conditioning. (OK, that's two things)
In the big North American cities, there are pages of classified ads that have nothing but companies' names. That's an attempt at fostering name recognition (probably a pretty lousy one, but dirt cheap). TV ads are usually funny or sexy skits with heavy product placement. Does that tell you _anything_ about the product? No, but it equates fun or sex with the product in some basal part of your brain, and when you go shopping for whatever it is, that association might tweak you into buying their product over the competition's.
Of course, TV and radio ads like this don't work as soon as you start thinking about what you want to buy. Guess what? People don't think about what they want to buy! Ads like this are enormously successful, no matter how little they say about the product.
The problem with web ads was one of perception. The web is all about linking and clicking, and for some reason the advertisers thought that they could measure interest in their ads (and thus efficacy) by counting clicks. Lo and behold, nobody clicks on the damned ads! At first it looked like web advertising was a bust, but in fact, they're now learning that people don't like traditional media ads any better than web ads, and wouldn't watch them voluntarily either. Now they're discovering the final result: Web banners work, and work in exactly the same way as traditional ads. Name recognition and mood association are just as annoying and effective no matter what the medium; and conversely, 'customer participation' (i.e. clicking through) is equally unlikely and irrelevant no matter what the medium.
So get used to the ads, because they're not going anywhere.
Good points, although much of it comes down to time==money. When you're looking at volunteers, hobbiests, and the like then time!=money and it might be worthwhile to keep them running.
But more to the point, what about the computers that are running perfectly but are old? I don't think anyone would object to running a P-100 or
the like until it failed. (except the brainless idiot who claims that a PII/450 is the bare mininmum to do anything functional) In fact, there are places I know of which collect old systems, configure them identically, and use the entire computer as a FRU. If something dies, the whole computer is swapped out in a minute with another one.
As for the settings via jumper, it's good for people to have obsolete knowledge in some ways. If nothing else, you can at least say, "I remember when..."
What about shops using Solaris (available, but not open), HP-UX, AIX, IRIX, SCO, MacOS (pre OS-X), OS/2, and so on? Are they charged the same as NT or as Open Source(tm)?
My suspicion is that whoever wrote this article has no idea what open source means, other than 'not Windows.' I could be wrong, but it certainly sounds that way.
From a legal perspective, you're exactly right. However, when you're dealing with Big Numbers (tm), then the EULA is irrelevant in the opposite direction. In other words, no matter WHAT legal protection you have, I'm going to bludgeon you, your company, and your children if your product breaks and takes our data with it!
From that point of view, the execs have a point. It still often leads to crappy software being used because of the 'support.'
I have a client that was just bought out by a company making business based on what a bunch of clueless execs decide in a little office, somewhere far away. I look at this situation, and understand perfectly well why MS is going to continue to steamroller over everyone they can. Here are some policies.
1) Thou shalt use no free software, because it's unsupported and will therefore break.
Now their main app is serving data up through samba, but because Mother Corp. says so, they're going to have to find something else. The stupid part is, they're outsourcing support anyways, and the company (mine) doing support _will_ support samba! There's just no vendor to blame when it breaks.
2) Thou shalt use (backup product A), despite the fact that (backup product B) is better, cheaper, has been successfully implemented across the company for several years, and is the only supported software for their large tape library.
With decisions like this, it's no wonder that companies (i.e. MS but not exclusively them) can get away with increasing their market share with a crappy product over and over again.
Here's an idea: Let the techs make the tech decisions for tech reasons, then watch bad companies rot and productivity increase immensely!
This isn't a question of 'inform and discuss.'
It's more like 'misinform, inflame, and ignore' on the part of the/. editors. They post stupid (and sometimes flat-out incorrect) articles just to get people riled up, and then sit back and ignore any corrections made to their original premise.
This is a crappy way of "informing" people, but an excellent way to generate traffic. Come to think of it, it sounds a lot like/. is being run by Jon Katz.
I remember some years ago, when Comdex declared that sex was evil and the hard-core porn game companies weren't welcome anymore. They had their own across the street, which is still going on in tandem with Comdex.
I remember when Chips&Bits used to sell said software, and when all of the ZD publications used to advertise it. Then suddenly ZD "Got Morality!" and quit accepting these ads. In other words, they could afford to turn their back on a revenue stream that helped make them the major publisher. That's their perogative, but their supposedly moral stance is bullshit.
Chips&Bits? They don't sell any of the old X-rated games anymore. Of course what formerly were X-rated games are now X-rated interactive DVDs.
So the publishing and reselling industry made their mark by pushing hardcore porn, and now everyone's all getting up in arms over softcore porn? Go figure!
Gods, that was the most poorly written pile of pigswill I've seen in ages! I have no problems with the content, but rather the writing style. I would give a grade seven student a "C" for this article. There's no consistency between paragraphs, there's completely inappropriate and unnecessary use of obscure vocabulary (apparently used to make the author seem more learned), and the grammar is embarassingly broken. Note this early sentence:
"A "massively multi-player online role-playing game," or, only slightly less awkwardly, an M.M.P.O.R.P.G., Ultima Online is managed and operated by Origin Systems, a gaming company based in Austin, which charges subscribers nine ninety-five a month to maintain a character, or "avatar," in Britannia."
One sentence.ONE sentence! One sentence containing eight commas!
Can't the New Yorker, that fine bastion of intelligent comment, afford editors anymore?
Balls! If your policy needs 7kB to summarise, you need a new policy.
How about this?
"UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES WHATSOEVER shall email transactions of any sort be considered authoritative or legally binding with respect to (the company), regardless of statements to the contrary."
Maybe tweak a few words, but it says pretty much all that has to be said. Hell of a lot less than 7kB, too.
Cool stuff! I don't agree with it all, but very cool.
For starters, single points of progress aren't exactly linear, simply because they're single points. The invention of the airplane was a single point. The invention of the radio was a single point. The invention of the transistor was a single point. The fallout from those single points was a huge 'ramp' on the technology ladder, but over the long term they smooth out. Technology _as a whole_ advances exponentially.
Now, here's a hypothesis for you. First of all, you mention the invention of the plane as dramatic, and then you suggest that the computer is an extension/replacement of the radio.
Maybe the computer is replacing air travel? For the most part that is--people will always travel places and visit people. However, you can learn more about other places and visit with remote friends better now than in the history of the world--I suspect that airflight is going to begin dropping off in the next few years as a result.
Computers have had a more enourmous effect on people than we can measure--we just don't realise quite yet what parts of society it's affecting the most.
Furthermore, something--that is, some _single_thing_--will come about in the near
future and will crank up the rate of technological development as it relates to society. Ten years might be too narrow of a time frame, but technology _does_ advance increasingly fast.
Oh, and the bit about students needing 3000 pages to understand a proof--the fact that advances are much harder than before--is right on the money. However, look at when academics are starting to get permanent jobs now. Can you imagine a bright, dedicated, persistence student not getting a tenure-track job until their mid-30's a century ago? Soon we'll be in school until age 30, just to get a technicians job.
Well, I was in Ireland--both sides--last summer, and you know what? Most of the population is more interested in rebuilding, living together (or apart), and ending the bombings, because it's financially more intelligent to do so. In other words, money-grubbing is gradually replacing religion (which in this particular case, is a good thing).
Iran? Singapore? Israel? The fact that religion is the driving factor in these countries is the biggest factor acting to marginalise them as world powers! Yeah, Iran is big--how big would they be if they were a straighforward trading partner with the non-religious world? (and I mean all of it) Bigger! That's how big.
The thing is this: We're heading more and more towards some form of global economy, and the economically powerful nations will hold sway--that doesn't leave a lot of room for religious philosophy as a country's centre of existence.
I'm not saying this is a good thing. I'm just saying that I believe it's coming.
First of all, technological change will always be greater in the future than it was in the past, unless some large scale disaster sets us back horrendously. Change in philosophy? Well, we've seen the end of religious philosophy as the major force in the world. It seems that we're stuck with money-grubbing and power-mongering as the predominant forces now. What will tomorrow bring? Something better, I _hope_.
Real world peace will never happen. Not until we find someone else to fight. Humans (and in fact, earthlings in general) are just too violent and ambitious.
Fifty years from now, we won't have computers, so to speak. Hell, they're so prevalent now that they're starting to dissappear. I suspect that in a mere ten years you won't often buy a computer--you'll just have it as part of your house, apartment, or what have you.
New power sources? Not if that idiot who took power in the US has anything to say about it. The oil companies are _powerful_ worldwide, and the only way they'll let significant amounts of alternate energy be developed is if they really start to run out of oil.
Space will be badly neglected, except for 5 year "sprints" once in a while. Maybe two of them in the next 50 years.
Violence, chaos, paranoia, and polution will thrive. On the other hand, art should be magnificent.
"Tottenville is as clean as a whistle and quiet. It is a crime to burn raw coal and pollute air with smoke and soot. In the homes electricity is used to warm walls and to cook."
Apparently he didn't expect _quite_ so much greedy industry involvement, and DEFINITELY not Bush jr. The rest of the world is going to have to stop selling him raw materials if he can't play nicely with the earth.
First of all, Go endgames are entirely deterministic. A good go player (say 3 dan or better) can read out endgames pretty much flawlessly, as can a computer. You can buy end-game tutuors which literally can't be beat.
Midgame programming is gradually progressing, but it's tough--not exactly because of the number of positions, but because of the vagueness in what defines them as strong or weak.
Openings are almost completely beyond current computer thought. Note that I didn't say computing power--it's our (current) lack of ability to translate abstract thoughts into deterministic code that limits computer Go.
I don't know where the programs are currently, but I'm quite sure that it'll be a good number of years and some serious advances in programming theory before Go programs even begin to challenge good players. Given that chess programs are roughly neck-and-neck with the best human players in the world, I suspect that it'll be a decade or two before go programs get that good.
Slashdot Mirror
I believe they said servers.
The shit you (and I) glue together from random spare parts aren't servers. The surplus PCs and sparc workstations lying around aren't servers.
If you're running mission critical apps/services on these machines, you're in trouble. Call me when you go bankrupt.
How many articles per week must we put up with discussing how makes a 'killer linux box?'
Let's face it--due to their very nature, open OSes (Linux included but not exclusively) can be ported to and compiled for just about any chunk of hardware that has enough computing power!
Cal me a curmudgeon, but it just ain't news anymore. Linux can run everywhere. Whee.
Let's take a good look at this statement about being cool:
"Fortunately or otherwise, our cool-chasing is built into our genes"
And also...
"I'd really like to denigrate the cool-chasing impulse...But it's part of being human."
I'm not exactly sure where Jamie gets this idea. There doesn't seem to be any evidence, other than the odd reference to sociobiology and a few anecdotal experiments, none of which track the source of his 'coolness' factor. All of the discussion is about the consequences of it.
In fact, I strongly doubt that coolness is ingrained at all. That is not unless coolness means nothing more than 'lack of public censure;' and I'd say that corporate-driven censure as he talks about is an entirely unrelated and opportunistic (in fact, downright greedy!) non-necessity.
Pretty simple, really--listen to something, decide if you like it (and ideally, why), and then turn it off if it's shite. It's not MY fault that other people are stupid sheep, and it doesn't make me one either.
It was a sad day when thinking first branded one a rebel.
Damn, now where are my moderation points? That's the funniest thing I've read in the last 7.4 minutes!
So with this model, you buy the music and then you pay for access to it as well. This is on top of your actual internet access, no? If so, then you're paying for your bandwitdh consumption twice, and your music twice. Nice trick! In fact, almost like...
CELL PHONES!
Here's the model for a land line: You pay for phone access (monthly), and pay for any outgoing calls outside of your local area.
Here's the model for a cell phone: You pay for phone access (monthly), you pay for every call outgoing AND incoming, and then pay EXTRA for outgoing long distance calls.
This is how technology gets taken over by marketing: Introduce a new technology not just at a high price, but using a cost model that provides more long-term profit when you drop the price to 'mass-market' levels.
Conversely, this is how net technology is used to increase prices and profits. Your cell phone plan was designed to correct the inefficiencies of land line telephone service. Nobody would be willing to get double charged on a phone that they've been single-charged on for the last 50 years, but they'll accept different charges when the technology appears different.
Great joke!
But Bush hasn't done anything to put him into the same category as Nixon yet. Then again, maybe by the time he dies...
Nah. I never said that Linux would be a huge commercial success. Financially, there's damned little model for producing, updating, or selling the thing.
Nonetheless, Linux is out there, and used successfully in large commercial installations (Google!). In that sense, Linux IS big--bigger than one would have expected in 1997.
Similarly, I'm looking at decades of space research (and for quite a while, neglect) coming to fruition now. The first paying passenger went into space a month ago. We have a permanent space station in orbit. Private interests have been talking space travel for three or four years, and are starting to put up the money.
This is the thin edge of the wedge. Not space tourism yet, but it _is_ starting (and 'starting' is the key here) to happen.
Exactly like that! Although the only part of that description that makes it stupid is the 'vacation' aspect of it.
Besides, is it worse than hang-gliding, bungee jumping, skydiving, or many other things that people do for vacation?
*BOOM!*
Would you? I'd appreciate it. I'll send you a long list of all of my teachers, the media, the governments, etc., who said, "Why, by the year 2000 you'll be taking vacations on the moon!
Was it rhetoric? Of course, but I don't think anyone expected the space program worldwide to fall apart so badly.
And dammit, I wanted to turn 30 in space! Well, maybe I'll aim for 40 or 50 now.
All I can say is that it's about bloody TIME!
We were promised this decades ago. Now it's starting to happen. Maybe I'll see space tourism in my lifetime afterall.
You've hit the nail squarely on the side. :-)
Most of advertising in any media is designed for one thing: Brand name recognition and Pavlovian conditioning. (OK, that's two things)
In the big North American cities, there are pages of classified ads that have nothing but companies' names. That's an attempt at fostering name recognition (probably a pretty lousy one, but dirt cheap). TV ads are usually funny or sexy skits with heavy product placement. Does that tell you _anything_ about the product? No, but it equates fun or sex with the product in some basal part of your brain, and when you go shopping for whatever it is, that association might tweak you into buying their product over the competition's.
Of course, TV and radio ads like this don't work as soon as you start thinking about what you want to buy. Guess what? People don't think about what they want to buy! Ads like this are enormously successful, no matter how little they say about the product.
The problem with web ads was one of perception. The web is all about linking and clicking, and for some reason the advertisers thought that they could measure interest in their ads (and thus efficacy) by counting clicks. Lo and behold, nobody clicks on the damned ads! At first it looked like web advertising was a bust, but in fact, they're now learning that people don't like traditional media ads any better than web ads, and wouldn't watch them voluntarily either. Now they're discovering the final result: Web banners work, and work in exactly the same way as traditional ads. Name recognition and mood association are just as annoying and effective no matter what the medium; and conversely, 'customer participation' (i.e. clicking through) is equally unlikely and irrelevant no matter what the medium.
So get used to the ads, because they're not going anywhere.
Good points, although much of it comes down to time==money. When you're looking at volunteers, hobbiests, and the like then time!=money and it might be worthwhile to keep them running.
But more to the point, what about the computers that are running perfectly but are old? I don't think anyone would object to running a P-100 or
the like until it failed. (except the brainless idiot who claims that a PII/450 is the bare mininmum to do anything functional) In fact, there are places I know of which collect old systems, configure them identically, and use the entire computer as a FRU. If something dies, the whole computer is swapped out in a minute with another one.
As for the settings via jumper, it's good for people to have obsolete knowledge in some ways. If nothing else, you can at least say, "I remember when..."
This article mentions:
Windows NT/2000
"Open Source" operating systems
What about shops using Solaris (available, but not open), HP-UX, AIX, IRIX, SCO, MacOS (pre OS-X), OS/2, and so on? Are they charged the same as NT or as Open Source(tm)?
My suspicion is that whoever wrote this article has no idea what open source means, other than 'not Windows.' I could be wrong, but it certainly sounds that way.
From a legal perspective, you're exactly right. However, when you're dealing with Big Numbers (tm), then the EULA is irrelevant in the opposite direction. In other words, no matter WHAT legal protection you have, I'm going to bludgeon you, your company, and your children if your product breaks and takes our data with it!
From that point of view, the execs have a point. It still often leads to crappy software being used because of the 'support.'
I have a client that was just bought out by a company making business based on what a bunch of clueless execs decide in a little office, somewhere far away. I look at this situation, and understand perfectly well why MS is going to continue to steamroller over everyone they can. Here are some policies.
1) Thou shalt use no free software, because it's unsupported and will therefore break.
Now their main app is serving data up through samba, but because Mother Corp. says so, they're going to have to find something else. The stupid part is, they're outsourcing support anyways, and the company (mine) doing support _will_ support samba! There's just no vendor to blame when it breaks.
2) Thou shalt use (backup product A), despite the fact that (backup product B) is better, cheaper, has been successfully implemented across the company for several years, and is the only supported software for their large tape library.
With decisions like this, it's no wonder that companies (i.e. MS but not exclusively them) can get away with increasing their market share with a crappy product over and over again.
Here's an idea: Let the techs make the tech decisions for tech reasons, then watch bad companies rot and productivity increase immensely!
Ah, but therein lies the problem.
/. editors. They post stupid (and sometimes flat-out incorrect) articles just to get people riled up, and then sit back and ignore any corrections made to their original premise.
/. is being run by Jon Katz.
This isn't a question of 'inform and discuss.'
It's more like 'misinform, inflame, and ignore' on the part of the
This is a crappy way of "informing" people, but an excellent way to generate traffic. Come to think of it, it sounds a lot like
I remember some years ago, when Comdex declared that sex was evil and the hard-core porn game companies weren't welcome anymore. They had their own across the street, which is still going on in tandem with Comdex.
I remember when Chips&Bits used to sell said software, and when all of the ZD publications used to advertise it. Then suddenly ZD "Got Morality!" and quit accepting these ads. In other words, they could afford to turn their back on a revenue stream that helped make them the major publisher. That's their perogative, but their supposedly moral stance is bullshit.
Chips&Bits? They don't sell any of the old X-rated games anymore. Of course what formerly were X-rated games are now X-rated interactive DVDs.
So the publishing and reselling industry made their mark by pushing hardcore porn, and now everyone's all getting up in arms over softcore porn? Go figure!
Well written? WELL WRITTEN??!?!!!
Gods, that was the most poorly written pile of pigswill I've seen in ages! I have no problems with the content, but rather the writing style. I would give a grade seven student a "C" for this article. There's no consistency between paragraphs, there's completely inappropriate and unnecessary use of obscure vocabulary (apparently used to make the author seem more learned), and the grammar is embarassingly broken. Note this early sentence:
"A "massively multi-player online role-playing game," or, only slightly less awkwardly, an M.M.P.O.R.P.G., Ultima Online is managed and operated by Origin Systems, a gaming company based in Austin, which charges subscribers nine ninety-five a month to maintain a character, or "avatar," in Britannia."
One sentence.ONE sentence! One sentence containing eight commas!
Can't the New Yorker, that fine bastion of intelligent comment, afford editors anymore?
Balls! If your policy needs 7kB to summarise, you need a new policy. How about this? "UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES WHATSOEVER shall email transactions of any sort be considered authoritative or legally binding with respect to (the company), regardless of statements to the contrary." Maybe tweak a few words, but it says pretty much all that has to be said. Hell of a lot less than 7kB, too.
Now be gentle. That was the AC quote, and not one of our illustrious /. editors speaking.
Granted, they make enough silly mistakes, but I won't hold this one against them.'
Cool stuff! I don't agree with it all, but very cool.
For starters, single points of progress aren't exactly linear, simply because they're single points. The invention of the airplane was a single point. The invention of the radio was a single point. The invention of the transistor was a single point. The fallout from those single points was a huge 'ramp' on the technology ladder, but over the long term they smooth out. Technology _as a whole_ advances exponentially.
Now, here's a hypothesis for you. First of all, you mention the invention of the plane as dramatic, and then you suggest that the computer is an extension/replacement of the radio.
Maybe the computer is replacing air travel? For the most part that is--people will always travel places and visit people. However, you can learn more about other places and visit with remote friends better now than in the history of the world--I suspect that airflight is going to begin dropping off in the next few years as a result.
Computers have had a more enourmous effect on people than we can measure--we just don't realise quite yet what parts of society it's affecting the most.
Furthermore, something--that is, some _single_thing_--will come about in the near
future and will crank up the rate of technological development as it relates to society. Ten years might be too narrow of a time frame, but technology _does_ advance increasingly fast.
Oh, and the bit about students needing 3000 pages to understand a proof--the fact that advances are much harder than before--is right on the money. However, look at when academics are starting to get permanent jobs now. Can you imagine a bright, dedicated, persistence student not getting a tenure-track job until their mid-30's a century ago? Soon we'll be in school until age 30, just to get a technicians job.
Interesting stuff!
Well, I was in Ireland--both sides--last summer, and you know what? Most of the population is more interested in rebuilding, living together (or apart), and ending the bombings, because it's financially more intelligent to do so. In other words, money-grubbing is gradually replacing religion (which in this particular case, is a good thing).
Iran? Singapore? Israel? The fact that religion is the driving factor in these countries is the biggest factor acting to marginalise them as world powers! Yeah, Iran is big--how big would they be if they were a straighforward trading partner with the non-religious world? (and I mean all of it) Bigger! That's how big.
The thing is this: We're heading more and more towards some form of global economy, and the economically powerful nations will hold sway--that doesn't leave a lot of room for religious philosophy as a country's centre of existence.
I'm not saying this is a good thing. I'm just saying that I believe it's coming.
Interesting concepts.
First of all, technological change will always be greater in the future than it was in the past, unless some large scale disaster sets us back horrendously. Change in philosophy? Well, we've seen the end of religious philosophy as the major force in the world. It seems that we're stuck with money-grubbing and power-mongering as the predominant forces now. What will tomorrow bring? Something better, I _hope_.
Real world peace will never happen. Not until we find someone else to fight. Humans (and in fact, earthlings in general) are just too violent and ambitious.
Fifty years from now, we won't have computers, so to speak. Hell, they're so prevalent now that they're starting to dissappear. I suspect that in a mere ten years you won't often buy a computer--you'll just have it as part of your house, apartment, or what have you.
New power sources? Not if that idiot who took power in the US has anything to say about it. The oil companies are _powerful_ worldwide, and the only way they'll let significant amounts of alternate energy be developed is if they really start to run out of oil.
Space will be badly neglected, except for 5 year "sprints" once in a while. Maybe two of them in the next 50 years.
Violence, chaos, paranoia, and polution will thrive. On the other hand, art should be magnificent.
"Tottenville is as clean as a whistle and quiet. It is a crime to burn raw coal and pollute air with smoke and soot. In the homes electricity is used to warm walls and to cook."
Apparently he didn't expect _quite_ so much greedy industry involvement, and DEFINITELY not Bush jr. The rest of the world is going to have to stop selling him raw materials if he can't play nicely with the earth.
First of all, Go endgames are entirely deterministic. A good go player (say 3 dan or better) can read out endgames pretty much flawlessly, as can a computer. You can buy end-game tutuors which literally can't be beat.
Midgame programming is gradually progressing, but it's tough--not exactly because of the number of positions, but because of the vagueness in what defines them as strong or weak.
Openings are almost completely beyond current computer thought. Note that I didn't say computing power--it's our (current) lack of ability to translate abstract thoughts into deterministic code that limits computer Go.
I don't know where the programs are currently, but I'm quite sure that it'll be a good number of years and some serious advances in programming theory before Go programs even begin to challenge good players. Given that chess programs are roughly neck-and-neck with the best human players in the world, I suspect that it'll be a decade or two before go programs get that good.