OK, immortality was the wrong word. Elimination of death from aging, though.
If we managed that in say ten years, 20 billion should carry us another decade beyond that if we're lucky. What do you propose we do when we're at 120 billion in 40 years from now?
Problem is, we've already done it, and they're not working fast enough. The hazardous materials that REALLY would work well are rapidly coming to the point where they might eliminate the whole race. Oops!
Maybe it's because I'm just finishing up reading Bill Joy's remarkable article over at Wired (go find it for yourself!), but producing stem cells definitely leans towards eventual immortality, and the only way to survive that on earth is to completely stop reproducing.
Do people ever stop and think about whether a given development is a good thing or not, before pushing forward on it?
Holding companies like CGMI are the biggest failing of the free market economy in my opinion. Think for a second about what they are. A company that does nothing but make money by buying other companies. The produce nothing, create nothing, increase the value of nothing. They are nothing but money-sucking leeches in the very worst sense.
Unlike a company that actually produces something, it's almost impossible to boycott holding companies. If one of their companies doesn't get you, another one will; and the bigger they get, the harder they are to avoid.
These are the supermonopolies. The way things are going now, 90+% of the entire world's commerce will be between ten or fewer companies in a decade, and the actual consumers will be irrelevant.
"I'm glad I don't live in CA, but how long before it affects the rest of us?"
This question implies another one: "How long can the rest of us ignore it, and avoid taking action?"
That's right, how long can we avoid taking action? THAT's what everyone really wants to know. How long can we pretend that the problems are someone else's? How long can we run our computers 24 hours/day in our neighborhood, before the power outages come.
I'm hear to tell you friends that the time for action is now. Now, as in RIGHT now. The power grids are connected right across North America, and the power sources are dwindling worldwide. Our rate of power consumption is going up astronomically, and isn't going to change unless YOU do something about it.
Try asking a different question. Instead of asking how long before it affects us (it already is!), ask how we can keep the problem from affecting us at all (any more). In other words, find a solution for the problem before it's too late, instead of running away from it. (If you think that running away is a crazy solution which no one will ever take seriously, think about how many people you've heard say, "Thank God I was smart enough to see this coming and leave CA.")
This holistic approach goes for everything. We really do live in a global community now--let's try to repair and sustain it.
Men would acquire beards and moustaches. Women would get hairy pits and legs. We'd be warmer, we wouldn't use electricity in shaving, and we'd be more welcome in the EU!
Ah. I'll go along with that, although it may just be wishful thinking on my part.
We used SGIs for molecular modelling. Nothing came close (and even now nothing does) to them. We had Suns for data collection and number crunching, but spatial modelling required good graphics, and that required SGI. SOMETHING has to take their place, and combining the Mac platform and philosophy with a good Unix-based OS would do it.
Well then, you're looking at the number of people who are looking at buying new hardware to run non-MS operating systems, and whether they're willing to step entirely away from the Intel-esque world. I still don't see that it's going to be enough people to significantly affect the Linux community, especially the semi-mainstream segment.
As I've said before, mass-market appeal of any given platform is very tightly bound to available applications. It's useless to speculate about who will do what until enough good, solid, competitive apps are available to tempt people away.
Oh, and lest we forget--we're not discussing "OS X vs. a Free OS", it's "OS X vs. Linux (which happens to be a free OS)." Let's keep the rhetoric for the conversations where it has a bearing.
Critics panned the movie? Apparently critics are idiots.
<p>It's a very good adaptation of the book. In the few places where it's not 100% faithful, it's been changed to work well on the screen. Definitely worth seeing! In fact, that movie was the second date with the woman who eventually became my wife. (yes, she's a bit weird too:-) Ironically, A.C. Clarke himself called it 'the only science fiction movie ever made.' That was within the last decade or so.
<p>Back to Harlan Ellison for a moment, he also wrote a brilliant screenplay for Asimov's "I, Robot" which sadly will probably never get made. THAT movie would change the mind of our original poster about the 'old sociologists.'
I agree with everything you said about the self-rightous whining. I'm not too sure how likely it is that OS X will make a significant dent in the commercial world, though. Sun is selling fully supported hardware, with a (fairly) well thought out and consistent UI for not much more money than Macs right now. The sticking point is apps, as it always has been. There's already some reluctance among the Big Players to develop for the Mac, and I don't know how Apple is going to get the apps developed. IF they can do that, then they might have a winner.
1) Take all the Mac users.
2) Get rid of any who aren't currently using Linux, or likely to in the near future in the absence of OS X.
3) Of those who remain, calculate the percentage who are likely to jump ship.
If my numbers are correct, you end up with about 3.5 people.
OK, I know that's a gross exaggeration. The point still remains that there are a tiny tiny number of people actually running Linux on the Mac. OS X isn't going to affect the Linux community as a whole much at all; and it's probably not going to affect the Linux/Mac community much either since they're already going against the grain. They _are_ they techies, the hobbiests, and the tweakers; if they decide to run OS X, they'll figure out a dual boot system to do it on.
That's nice. You run along to your "real" science fiction authors, and leave the "mere sociologists" to those of us who appreciate it.
Here's a gentle history lesson for you. Sociology mixed with possible future advancements is what science fiction (now quite often--and in my mind more correctly--refered to as speculative fiction)
has ALWAYS been about. Good SF, anyways. Asimov, Bradbury, Clarke, Varley (hey, he's not that old!), le Guinn, and yes, Bear too. I haven't read anything by Neal Stephenson (yet!) so I can't comment, but I quit reading W. Gibson after his third novel proved to be just as second rate as the first two.
If you're looking for whiz-bang Sci-Fi, go back and watch the Matrix again. Don't pay attention to the story, though--you might find that there (surprisingly) actually is one.
Well this is admittedly a comparative measure. When I started out online, there was no such thing as spam. That rapidly changed, until at one point I was getting 20-30 spams/day! Now I get maybe five per week, across all of my accounts. I am confident that by this time next year, that number will drop to 1/week.
Usenet spam is down too, amazingly. Truth is that any actual company has learned (often the hard way) that spam hurts them. The only spammers left are a few die-hard fly-by-night operators who are looking for that one remaining sucker, and are finding him (the sucker) harder to discover.
OK, it ain't _quite_ dead. It's on its way out, though.
This article was so full of silly bollocks that I don't know how they managed to get any content in. Consider, for instance, "Advertisers, whom the entire Internet is funded by..."
What internet is HE living on???
Spam doesn't work (and is dying out almost completely). Pop up windows when you leave a website (i.e. what porn sites were so famous for) don't work. Pay-per-click doesn't work. And now it's finally sinking in that banner ads don't work.
Big surprise there.
Let's break down the different uses of the web, and look at how advertising fits into it. First of all, there's company (information) sites. These sites ARE advertising, just as surely as a catalog of new cars from Porsche, or a paper ad in Automobile. This is very important: COMPANY WEB SITES ARE VEHICLES FOR ***SUCCESSFUL*** ADVERTISING! They work, because they're perfectly targeted to the people who go there looking for information!
Secondly, there's the 'portals.' They're nothing but conventional ads, for the most part; and they work moderately well. Go to yahoo.com. Nearly all of those links eventually lead to paid-for corporate ads, and people tend to use them.
Then there's information/discussion sites, like/. and thousands of others. This is a sticky one--how does/. defray their costs? Understand here that they don't necessarily have to be a profit making venture--hobbyists can (and will!) easily run discussion sites if their continuing net outlay is zero, but they can't afford to dump tons of money into it. This is where banner ads seem like the most successful model, and yet they still don't work. What can be done then?
The answer is obvious, and being done right now. Discussion sites (and the like) will be owned and operated as a non-profit branch of profit-making companies. Yahoo owns Geocities./. is part of the Andover realm. THE PROFIT-MAKING COMPANIES WILL OPERATE NON-PROFIT SERVICES AS AN INHERENT ADVERTISING REVENUE STREAM. They'll do this without banner ads, and they'll do it successfully.
While that quote filled me with as much bile as I'm sure it did to you, I'm afraid that the anti-advertising culture of the internet is crumbling with the constant onslaught of ads. Hell, the original mandate for the internet forbade advertising, and look at where we are now.
I disagree. I understand and agree with your comment about what/. _does_, but not about the fact that they _should_.
There is a line between interesting comments that incite intelligent discussion, and just plain inflamatory rubbish which incites, "CmdrTaco is an idiot!!!!" comments.
My point is this: They're not doing their own community any good. It has nothing to do with journalistic integrity, just increasing the signal/noise around here.
OK, we've all heard (and many of us have participated in) the spelling/grammar/facts flamage of the 'editors' of/.. This isn't one of those posts.
A recommendation, though; quit with the 'one-line editorials.' If you're going to comment on a submission, then either write a _real_ comment, or don't bother at all. These silly little comments tossed off (i.e. the whole "Now mind you since nothing will ever happen... doesn't appear that anything will change." bit) are nothing but annoying filler. If they were submitted to the discussion thread, they'd probably get modded down as 'troll' or 'flamebait.'
The more I hear this quote tossed out, the more I think it was shouted out when Ben was in a "screw them all, damn it!" mode. I can't argue with him, but if we don't attain freedom for (nearly?) everyone, then the tiny few who have it will be ostracised, hunted, and eventually eliminated.
QVC != JVC. HOW FUCKING STUPID can the/. "editors" be??? I mean, do they have any purpose at all?
Secondly, this _is_ indicative of how things are going. I await the day that a company like QVC gets raked over the coals to the extent that they so richly deserve. If sleazy third-rate asshole companies keep this up, sooner or later someone will refuse to be pushed.
I thought long and hard about this question mr. AC. If you don't have a login on/., you should get one--we need more discussion like this poses.
I've been proclaiming for years how much better the internet was when we had usenet, archie, etc.; and before the commercial WWW became synonymous with 'the net.'
But at the same time, we have to ask ourselves: Do we want the internet (in whatever form, be it the web or IP-enabled BBSes) to be a perfect medium loaded with smart (although somewhat diverse) people, or do we want to effect wholescale social change? If the latter, then we HAVE to get it to the masses. If the former, then it's just a toy.
Unfortunately, if we go back to the world of the BBS, we'll end up having the same number of people as we did then.
People are too damned lazy and short of attention span to fight for freedom or for that matter, privacy. Make no mistake--about 85% of the population in the western world WILL quietly accept graver and graver restrictions on their internet access until they view exactly what the government and corporations tell them to.
Well my point was that it was entirely possible. The Acura engine is a straight-four. Strap two of 'em together, and you've got a 3.6L 355bhp engine.
You want something more powerful? How about the Porsche Boxter S engine, which gets 251HP from 3.2L. In Europe, they have the 911 GT3, which gets 360bhp from a 3.6L normally aspirated flat-6. There's that 100HP/L number again.
Expensive--sure it is! Nobody else is doing it!
Of course, we have to ask why we need 350HP. What if we cut the weight of the car in half, and put 220HP in instead? Pretty easy to do, when you start with a tank.
The point is, there's no reason why the US manufacturers keep flogging FIFTY YEAR OLD ENGINES on us! Why aren't they developing high power, high torque, low emissions, efficient aluminium-block engines? Because people keep going, "Oooooh, a big heavy steel engine!" and buying the damned things.
It's time for a bit of innovation in the auto industry. Not rehashes of half-century-old cars with cute dashboard computers.
Slashdot Mirror
OK, immortality was the wrong word. Elimination of death from aging, though.
If we managed that in say ten years, 20 billion should carry us another decade beyond that if we're lucky. What do you propose we do when we're at 120 billion in 40 years from now?
Heh.
Problem is, we've already done it, and they're not working fast enough. The hazardous materials that REALLY would work well are rapidly coming to the point where they might eliminate the whole race. Oops!
Maybe it's because I'm just finishing up reading Bill Joy's remarkable article over at Wired (go find it for yourself!), but producing stem cells definitely leans towards eventual immortality, and the only way to survive that on earth is to completely stop reproducing.
Do people ever stop and think about whether a given development is a good thing or not, before pushing forward on it?
But remember that CMGI is just one, and possibly not even a very good one.
What about Sony? Virgin? They do produce things, but at the top level they're moving towards holding company status as well.
Besides, it's hard to kill a company that big, even if they are nothing but smoke and mirrors and hot air.
This goes beyond mere stupid patents.
Holding companies like CGMI are the biggest failing of the free market economy in my opinion. Think for a second about what they are. A company that does nothing but make money by buying other companies. The produce nothing, create nothing, increase the value of nothing. They are nothing but money-sucking leeches in the very worst sense.
Unlike a company that actually produces something, it's almost impossible to boycott holding companies. If one of their companies doesn't get you, another one will; and the bigger they get, the harder they are to avoid.
These are the supermonopolies. The way things are going now, 90+% of the entire world's commerce will be between ten or fewer companies in a decade, and the actual consumers will be irrelevant.
"I'm glad I don't live in CA, but how long before it affects the rest of us?"
This question implies another one: "How long can the rest of us ignore it, and avoid taking action?"
That's right, how long can we avoid taking action? THAT's what everyone really wants to know. How long can we pretend that the problems are someone else's? How long can we run our computers 24 hours/day in our neighborhood, before the power outages come.
I'm hear to tell you friends that the time for action is now. Now, as in RIGHT now. The power grids are connected right across North America, and the power sources are dwindling worldwide. Our rate of power consumption is going up astronomically, and isn't going to change unless YOU do something about it.
Try asking a different question. Instead of asking how long before it affects us (it already is!), ask how we can keep the problem from affecting us at all (any more). In other words, find a solution for the problem before it's too late, instead of running away from it. (If you think that running away is a crazy solution which no one will ever take seriously, think about how many people you've heard say, "Thank God I was smart enough to see this coming and leave CA.")
This holistic approach goes for everything. We really do live in a global community now--let's try to repair and sustain it.
Everyone should quit shaving.
Men would acquire beards and moustaches. Women would get hairy pits and legs. We'd be warmer, we wouldn't use electricity in shaving, and we'd be more welcome in the EU!
Ah. I'll go along with that, although it may just be wishful thinking on my part.
We used SGIs for molecular modelling. Nothing came close (and even now nothing does) to them. We had Suns for data collection and number crunching, but spatial modelling required good graphics, and that required SGI. SOMETHING has to take their place, and combining the Mac platform and philosophy with a good Unix-based OS would do it.
Well then, you're looking at the number of people who are looking at buying new hardware to run non-MS operating systems, and whether they're willing to step entirely away from the Intel-esque world. I still don't see that it's going to be enough people to significantly affect the Linux community, especially the semi-mainstream segment.
As I've said before, mass-market appeal of any given platform is very tightly bound to available applications. It's useless to speculate about who will do what until enough good, solid, competitive apps are available to tempt people away.
Oh, and lest we forget--we're not discussing "OS X vs. a Free OS", it's "OS X vs. Linux (which happens to be a free OS)." Let's keep the rhetoric for the conversations where it has a bearing.
Critics panned the movie? Apparently critics are idiots.
:-) Ironically, A.C. Clarke himself called it 'the only science fiction movie ever made.' That was within the last decade or so.
<p>It's a very good adaptation of the book. In the few places where it's not 100% faithful, it's been changed to work well on the screen. Definitely worth seeing! In fact, that movie was the second date with the woman who eventually became my wife. (yes, she's a bit weird too
<p>Back to Harlan Ellison for a moment, he also wrote a brilliant screenplay for Asimov's "I, Robot" which sadly will probably never get made. THAT movie would change the mind of our original poster about the 'old sociologists.'
Hmm. Wit? Charm? Gee, sounds like Stephenson must be one of those old/dead/boring authors. :-)
Seriously, I will admit that there's a great deal of brilliant SF that doesn't (and won't) translate well to the screen, ESPECIALLY in Sillywood.
A Boy and his Dog. Now that was SF.
I agree with everything you said about the self-rightous whining. I'm not too sure how likely it is that OS X will make a significant dent in the commercial world, though. Sun is selling fully supported hardware, with a (fairly) well thought out and consistent UI for not much more money than Macs right now. The sticking point is apps, as it always has been. There's already some reluctance among the Big Players to develop for the Mac, and I don't know how Apple is going to get the apps developed. IF they can do that, then they might have a winner.
Let's look at how Big of a Question this is.
1) Take all the Mac users.
2) Get rid of any who aren't currently using Linux, or likely to in the near future in the absence of OS X.
3) Of those who remain, calculate the percentage who are likely to jump ship.
If my numbers are correct, you end up with about 3.5 people.
OK, I know that's a gross exaggeration. The point still remains that there are a tiny tiny number of people actually running Linux on the Mac. OS X isn't going to affect the Linux community as a whole much at all; and it's probably not going to affect the Linux/Mac community much either since they're already going against the grain. They _are_ they techies, the hobbiests, and the tweakers; if they decide to run OS X, they'll figure out a dual boot system to do it on.
*pat pat pat*
That's nice. You run along to your "real" science fiction authors, and leave the "mere sociologists" to those of us who appreciate it.
Here's a gentle history lesson for you. Sociology mixed with possible future advancements is what science fiction (now quite often--and in my mind more correctly--refered to as speculative fiction)
has ALWAYS been about. Good SF, anyways. Asimov, Bradbury, Clarke, Varley (hey, he's not that old!), le Guinn, and yes, Bear too. I haven't read anything by Neal Stephenson (yet!) so I can't comment, but I quit reading W. Gibson after his third novel proved to be just as second rate as the first two.
If you're looking for whiz-bang Sci-Fi, go back and watch the Matrix again. Don't pay attention to the story, though--you might find that there (surprisingly) actually is one.
Well this is admittedly a comparative measure. When I started out online, there was no such thing as spam. That rapidly changed, until at one point I was getting 20-30 spams/day! Now I get maybe five per week, across all of my accounts. I am confident that by this time next year, that number will drop to 1/week.
Usenet spam is down too, amazingly. Truth is that any actual company has learned (often the hard way) that spam hurts them. The only spammers left are a few die-hard fly-by-night operators who are looking for that one remaining sucker, and are finding him (the sucker) harder to discover.
OK, it ain't _quite_ dead. It's on its way out, though.
This article was so full of silly bollocks that I don't know how they managed to get any content in. Consider, for instance, "Advertisers, whom the entire Internet is funded by..."
/. and thousands of others. This is a sticky one--how does /. defray their costs? Understand here that they don't necessarily have to be a profit making venture--hobbyists can (and will!) easily run discussion sites if their continuing net outlay is zero, but they can't afford to dump tons of money into it. This is where banner ads seem like the most successful model, and yet they still don't work. What can be done then?
/. is part of the Andover realm. THE PROFIT-MAKING COMPANIES WILL OPERATE NON-PROFIT SERVICES AS AN INHERENT ADVERTISING REVENUE STREAM. They'll do this without banner ads, and they'll do it successfully.
What internet is HE living on???
Spam doesn't work (and is dying out almost completely). Pop up windows when you leave a website (i.e. what porn sites were so famous for) don't work. Pay-per-click doesn't work. And now it's finally sinking in that banner ads don't work.
Big surprise there.
Let's break down the different uses of the web, and look at how advertising fits into it. First of all, there's company (information) sites. These sites ARE advertising, just as surely as a catalog of new cars from Porsche, or a paper ad in Automobile. This is very important: COMPANY WEB SITES ARE VEHICLES FOR ***SUCCESSFUL*** ADVERTISING! They work, because they're perfectly targeted to the people who go there looking for information!
Secondly, there's the 'portals.' They're nothing but conventional ads, for the most part; and they work moderately well. Go to yahoo.com. Nearly all of those links eventually lead to paid-for corporate ads, and people tend to use them.
Then there's information/discussion sites, like
The answer is obvious, and being done right now. Discussion sites (and the like) will be owned and operated as a non-profit branch of profit-making companies. Yahoo owns Geocities.
While that quote filled me with as much bile as I'm sure it did to you, I'm afraid that the anti-advertising culture of the internet is crumbling with the constant onslaught of ads. Hell, the original mandate for the internet forbade advertising, and look at where we are now.
I disagree. I understand and agree with your comment about what /. _does_, but not about the fact that they _should_.
There is a line between interesting comments that incite intelligent discussion, and just plain inflamatory rubbish which incites, "CmdrTaco is an idiot!!!!" comments.
My point is this: They're not doing their own community any good. It has nothing to do with journalistic integrity, just increasing the signal/noise around here.
OK, we've all heard (and many of us have participated in) the spelling/grammar/facts flamage of the 'editors' of /.. This isn't one of those posts.
... doesn't appear that anything will change." bit) are nothing but annoying filler. If they were submitted to the discussion thread, they'd probably get modded down as 'troll' or 'flamebait.'
A recommendation, though; quit with the 'one-line editorials.' If you're going to comment on a submission, then either write a _real_ comment, or don't bother at all. These silly little comments tossed off (i.e. the whole "Now mind you since nothing will ever happen
The more I hear this quote tossed out, the more I think it was shouted out when Ben was in a "screw them all, damn it!" mode. I can't argue with him, but if we don't attain freedom for (nearly?) everyone, then the tiny few who have it will be ostracised, hunted, and eventually eliminated.
First of all, like many have already pointed out.
/. "editors" be??? I mean, do they have any purpose at all?
QVC != JVC. HOW FUCKING STUPID can the
Secondly, this _is_ indicative of how things are going. I await the day that a company like QVC gets raked over the coals to the extent that they so richly deserve. If sleazy third-rate asshole companies keep this up, sooner or later someone will refuse to be pushed.
I thought long and hard about this question mr. AC. If you don't have a login on /., you should get one--we need more discussion like this poses.
I've been proclaiming for years how much better the internet was when we had usenet, archie, etc.; and before the commercial WWW became synonymous with 'the net.'
But at the same time, we have to ask ourselves: Do we want the internet (in whatever form, be it the web or IP-enabled BBSes) to be a perfect medium loaded with smart (although somewhat diverse) people, or do we want to effect wholescale social change? If the latter, then we HAVE to get it to the masses. If the former, then it's just a toy.
Tough call, either way.
Unfortunately, if we go back to the world of the BBS, we'll end up having the same number of people as we did then.
People are too damned lazy and short of attention span to fight for freedom or for that matter, privacy. Make no mistake--about 85% of the population in the western world WILL quietly accept graver and graver restrictions on their internet access until they view exactly what the government and corporations tell them to.
NO this ISN'T fucking America! It's the whole, goddamned world; and the US is less than 5% of that.
Normally I can ignore the "US FIRST!!!" posts, but this is just over the top.
Well my point was that it was entirely possible. The Acura engine is a straight-four. Strap two of 'em together, and you've got a 3.6L 355bhp engine.
You want something more powerful? How about the Porsche Boxter S engine, which gets 251HP from 3.2L. In Europe, they have the 911 GT3, which gets 360bhp from a 3.6L normally aspirated flat-6. There's that 100HP/L number again.
Expensive--sure it is! Nobody else is doing it!
Of course, we have to ask why we need 350HP. What if we cut the weight of the car in half, and put 220HP in instead? Pretty easy to do, when you start with a tank.
The point is, there's no reason why the US manufacturers keep flogging FIFTY YEAR OLD ENGINES on us! Why aren't they developing high power, high torque, low emissions, efficient aluminium-block engines? Because people keep going, "Oooooh, a big heavy steel engine!" and buying the damned things.
It's time for a bit of innovation in the auto industry. Not rehashes of half-century-old cars with cute dashboard computers.