Bringing back Gopher is a regressive step - it is old and antiquated, there can be no disagreement with that.
What has happened in the meantime is research and study into hypermedia systems and information structuring, so the intelligent approach is to better organise the raw data, and then make it presentable and useable in different formats. A popular current example is WAP - it should be possbile to use the same information base to create WAP view and a HTML view (and a Java view, and... so on).
What the complaint should be about is bad and inappropriate design. There are some cases where it is virtually impossible to find what should be a simple piece of information in a graphically bloated and obscure WWW site.
>Patents are what are socialistic; they're about >as blatant a form of industrial policy as >exists. In a true free market, people would be >free to copy someone else's invention and >undercut their price
And why would people bother to create new designs if they were going to be stolen by some large corporation ? We'd all have to work for large corporations in veils of secrecy! No patents are just as bad as too many patents, there is some sort of equilibrium in the middle.
Patents help competition if used appropriately - but just like anything else, they can be abused - the same goes for virtually everything else in society. I am sure there are endless analogies.
The problem is that the "spirit" of patents has been long lost into the quagmire of technicalities, patenting everything and anything and various other forms of abuses. Part of this is the nature of how society is changing, perhaps in the future, patents will be seen as redundant, because society has moved into a new plane where the free flow of ideas is the way to go.
Building global optical networks is big business at the moment, and I would guess guaranteed cash flow for anyone that does so despite the enormous expense (reflected in the rush to grab optical fibre producers, layers and so on at high margins).
Look at http://www.globalcrossing.com for instance, with its funky network maps - good stuff for infrastructure junkies! If you look also at their implementation strategy (namely, cross atlantic, and so on) you can get an idea about where they expect to pull a lot of revenue from (build the low risk things first), and Asia is certainly there. Despite the recent hiccups in the Asian business environment, it is seen as an up and coming region.
This has nothing to do with the laws of physics, more the laws of economics which describe why certain technologies are chosen and used. Pure performance is only one factor considered by those that make intelligent commercial choices about technology - though I could conceed to you that there are many non-intelligent choices being made.
I am no GPS guru, but I think I know enough to do some handwaving -
My understanding is that the GPS satellites transmit timing information, and the receivers use this information (from multiple satellites) to perform a triangulation computation, and to determine a location.
What you could do is have the satellites transmit a signature along with the timing information, and this could prove that the timing information could only have come from a GPS satellite.
This means that your receiver knows that it is receiving real GPS information - however, everyone else in your immediate vicinity also receives the same information. The receiver actually carries out the computation to determine a location, so therefore, you would need to have the receiver sign the computation - this proves that the output was computed by a legitimate process.
Then, you could sign the result with your private key - this would prove that you signed some location information.
To verify all of this, the client (who you are proving to) would verify that you signed the location information - then it could verify that the location was created by a trusted process, but verifying the signature. It could also verify the timing signals from the satellite, to verify that they were legitmate, and that your signed location information was generated within a recent period of time (to prevent a replay of older information).
How does that sound ? Other technologies - differential GPS may blur this, and perhaps a GPS guru could comment on the above.
From a risk management perspective, the Crusoe is very important - it provides a bridge from the old world to the new world, and eventually, in the history of computing will be seen as such.
What Crusoe does is add an intermediate layer, that can adapt to various upper layers and therefore emulate different types of chips. Also, this intermediate layer, can be optimised and adapted to different firmware implementations that sit underneath - and as the marketing blurb tells you, in such a way to reduce power consumption as well.
In an age where computing is moving to a distributed, connected, more homogeneous type of environment, this is brilliant.
What I could expect to see is various different forms of firmware, with tight multiprocessing, and other custom features - and VLIW layers that can adapt. Also, VLIW adaption for intel, motorola and other processors which would be excellent as a migration path for existing software. Perhaps also, custom VLIW instructions can be useful for high performance applications.
It would be good to see Crusoe as the end for Intel, Motorola and others. I think the ARM may still have a price/benefit advantage in embedded systems, what many people don't remember is that ARM is often used as a ASIC core within silicon next to other functionality (e.g. RF, in communications chips) - I don't expect to see Transmetta offering Crusoe as an ASIC core in the immediate future, but who knows! ARM has a different market segment to Crusoe, and designers will know that.
Hardware prices will always drop, but there is a point where projects become economically viable (for whatever reason) - in their case, perhaps this is now.
Stopping Napster actually helps destroy the old world model which is based on centralising distribution. Napster is more of a commercial interest and works on this centralised model, whereas Gnutella is a truely decentralised peer to peer approach that accomodations not just music, but other forms of media as well.
You could - in some ways - see Gnutella as an early form of an 'Eternity' service - because as more people use the service, the content increasingly becomes highly distributed and massively redundant - and therefore tends to live forever, and is hard to remove. Music is the ideal medium for this to start with, because just about everyone listens to music.
The RIAA looks like it is trying to protect the old world of the middle man doing the distribution work. This is dead. The new world is where the technological framework does the distribution work. There is no middle man, because the middle man is replaced by technology.
Promotion may still need to occur, to provide incentives for people to try out and listen to new works, but that promotion should happen around the new decentralised and distributed framework.
Irrespective of what security mechanisms the music industry tries to put into recorded music, there is now a whole globe out their focused on breaking it. Once the security is broken -- just like how just about every commercial software in history has been cracked -- and the music is put into this distributed web, then it is virtually unstoppable.
Rather than fight against piracy and copy -- which has _always_ existed -- perhaps the smart thing to do is embrace free copy, and change the business model, to make money out of performances, merchandise, special releases or whatever other things can be thought of. Piracy and copy has always been the most significant and most popular way of distributing media - but until now it has been ignored and marginalised and a lot of time and energy has gone into eradicating it - what a waste! Better to find a new approach to distribution that embraces free copy, but makes money in other ways.
Actually - the recording industry is helping to destroy itself.
Napster is based on a flawed centralised model, whereas Gnutella is based on a more advanced distributed model. Napster contains more of the old world ideal than the new world ideal, compared to Gnutella.
This means that by shutting down Napster, the industry helping to destroy the old world and forcing users to move to something like Gnutella which is more aligned with the new world. If everyone stayed with Napster, then they would stay with a kind of flawed implementation of the future.
Whether or not the recording industry shuts down Napster, it has already lost - Gnutella, OpenNAP and a lot of other software is already out there; and is unstoppable. If they are closed down, someone will write something new. If that's closed down, then cryptography will come into play. It'll continue to be an arms race for both sides - what a waste of time and energy when that time and energy could be concentrated in the real issue: the music!
Shouldn't it be assumed from now on that the technologies exist to allow just about any material to be made available and unremovable on the net - music, software, etc ? Just look at Gnutella, Freedom and other technologies. In previous 'undergrounds', there were always problems of anonymity, being connected and other issues that the internet has 'solved' - the small, fragmented free information trade in the real world has now become a major force of activity in the connected digital world.
As for SDMI initiatives ? Who is going to buy SDMI players when they can buy MP3/open players ? And surely the market is open enough so that it is impossible to neutralise MP3/open players ?
Secondly...
This seems like a repeat of the past. Remember microcomputer software ? You could always buy games and other titles off the shelves - but there was always an underground trade. No matter what technical protection the industry could come up with, the underground could remove it; and there was always an underground network to distribute cracked wares. Now with music, the underground network is actually a mass global pool of connected individuals across the net. The internet has made the fragmented underground into a mass movement. And I don't mean underground in a negative sense.
There will always be the technologically illiterate or those disconnected from the underground that cannot access underground distribution; and perhaps they may have to buy off the shelf. So is the music industry going to try and prop itself up on the small minority ? How do the artists feel knowing that they are being supported by sucking off a minority of their fans ?
The music and software industries have always had to factor in piracy as an everpresent activity - their choice is whether to reject it, or to try and accept it and turn it to their benefit by altering their business models and means of distribution.
Perhaps they should embrace some sort of model for free distribution of music, but -- as John Perry Barlow writes -- make their money off the live performances and events. In global world where travel is cheap and easy, the popular acts could easy command performances around the world.
Free distribution would be like an open market - it would just 'be there', and communities would form, and acts would become popular, and then the popular acts can move into live performances, or they mercandise, or whatever else is the standard norm in this age of 'leverage your core'.
Like we already know: the internet destroys the middle man, and the music industry is the middle man. The new middle man is the internet, and is increasingy the technologies and communities around which the producers and consumers rotate. The middle man is technology, not people.
>Until there is a common format, Bluetooth will >fail. I hope someone will take the initaive to >create an open standard for content transfer.
You may be interested to know that IEEE is standardising Bluetooth wireless technology as 802.15 - perhaps they may address some of the issues you mention.
>Bluetooth as a wireless standard will fail. This >is the conclusion that I have come to after >watching the industry very carefully. The >reason? Not enough standardization.
I agree with the lack of standardisation, but I am not sure that it will cause the standard to fail. There is significant momentum behind the technology, and I suspect that will continue to drive it through - but unfortunately, the result may not be as ideal as was hoped.
Personally, there are aspects of the architecture that I think they could have done in a better way. I don't think that the architecture is conceptually abstract and rigid as it could be, and the lack of vision to include bandwidth extensibility, etc.
>So far, there has been no standardization for >content protocols over Bluetooth. The >only "standard" that could be considered close >is wrapping TCP/IP, from which you can get HTTP, >XML, etc. for passing data. However, Bluetooth >as it stands is not going to be the be-all and >end-all of information transfer, because there >is no common format.
I am not sure that there needs to be standardisation for content protocols. Bluetooth includes a Service Discovery Protocol that allows for any myriad of services to be developed and employed.
IMHO that is exactly what Bluetooth should do, just like TCP does not define any content protocols, because it is a transport layer.
>What's needed is a common implementation of a >method for applications to speak to each other >over an open protocol. No manufacturers have >been forthcoming about this. Instead, we see >fracturing of devices, unable to actually speak >to each other.
There is a common method in the Bluetooth SDP; and as far as I can see it does not preclude the use of something like Jini.
One problem I do see is that Bluetooth was designed to be something like an IrDA replacement, but now it is taken and used for other things outside of its design envelope. The question is whether the original conception of the design had enough vision to foresee these things, and will cope with them.
The key selling point of Bluetooth is economic - it is low cost and low power, and that's exactly what's needed for things like headsets and consumer electronics. Price pressure is everything. The Bluetooth chip manufacturers are at the cutting edge with RF-on-chip technology - and the winners in this race will be those that can come up with a small-size, low-power and low-cost solution.
My cynical perspective is that Bluetooth will become the technology of the wireless age, and like Microsoft and desktop computing, it will be both an enabler and a hindrance, and be somewhat controversial.
Rather than wasting time on a Seti@home card, they should build more general purpose beowulf cards - something you can stick into your Linux box to add more grunt.
It's not a bad way of using up so called 'obsolete' lower speed processors: put them into a multiprocessor card, put it into your PCI bus, and kerbang you have more grunt.
Bluetooth wireless technology will be part of a portfolio of wireless technologies.
Most 'designs' in life have trade offs - this is why you don't buy a sofa chair just for outdoor entertaining, nor do you buy a truck just to drive around town, nor do you buy an industrial grinder for home coffee. Some people do, but the large majority of people don't. Most people buy on some combination of factors, in which price is often quite important.
These same economic and design trade offs are visible in wireless communications, and is why Bluetooth will exist alongside 802.11b, mobile internet and so on. It would be great (from an academic and technical perspective) if there could be one unified standard that could scale up and down and do everything - perhaps that is the aim for 3G devices ? But I don't see that happening for another 10 years at least.
For Home Area Networks (HAN) and Personal Area Networks (PAN), competition is significantly built upon price differences. It is waste of money, time and effort to embed a high power technology (e.g. a GSM phone) into a consumer device (e.g. a washing machine).
Bluetooth is specifically designed for PANs - connections between phones, computers, printers, car alarms, remote controls, and other products that did incorporate infra-red or messy cables. Apart from IrDA, there is no standard in this area yet - and Bluetooth is filling that gap.
Bluetooth will probably be pushed into HANs - because it is ideally suited for household and office consumer devices, and recent developments to scale up the air interface will allow it to transport higher bandwidth multimedia information. I can (eventually) envisage Bluetooth in medical equipment as well. I can see Bluetooth coupled with Jini and other collaborative agent technologies.
When it comes to the home: I think the household will end up having an information gateway - high speed information pipe to the rest of the world. Within the house, Bluetooth will be one of the major wireless technologies, but there will need to be a higher bandwidth technology for inter-home computing and entertainment systems - I can't even see a highspeed Bluetooth providing this, but maybe I'll eat my words in the near future. Perhaps Bluetooth will interact with one of the HomeRF solutions, but I personally think that the HomeRF solutions out there are dead inlight of Bluetooth.
"open source software" for telecommunications isn't so much for the network, but for the end user on the desktop.
The existing telecommunications networks are defunct: the so called 'intelligent' network that employed SS7 and smart nation-wide routing systems is a technological legacy due to the increasing ubiquity of the Internet and the progress of technology in the guise of moore's law. It's only a manner of time before it all migrates to an IP based network, and even AT&T has acknowledged this by declining from buying anything other than IP based equipment - this is why Nortel, Lucent, Ericcson and the major provides of old-school equipment are forging into new markets.
Using the net for voice/media calls is still problematic because QoS and billing issues have yet to be sorted out. The mistake that many people make is to think that there will be an "internet telephone company" - there will not be, because the whole concept of "a telephone company" is defunct in light of the Internet. What there is, is a collection of bandwidth providers, and on top of that, there are all sorts of services, of which telephone is one.
What will happen is that internet QoS mechanisms will come into place, and you will be able to "buy" guaranteed information streams across the network, and on top of that, you can run your video/audio/multimedia one-to-one or group communications tool. That obviously assumes the availability of considerable bandwidth, and it will take a while before the networks are in place, but you can be sure that they are heading there.
While a lot of other software has become popularised through open source, no integrated telephony software has - I accept that there are various bits of software (desktop phone, internet videophones, etc), but there is no real movement or interest group in the way that there is for other software technologies and no real common understanding of what it means to make voice calls across the Internet - not enough people understand this concept yet. Even systems like IRC had a large interest community of developors that evolved the code. Where has that been happening for telephony ?
This is summary: the concept of a telephone company is dead, and so is the idea of SS7 and 'old school' switching technologies. The internet is rapidly replacing all of this as a common transport medium upon which voice calls will be just "one type of service". Although various internet telephone companies are around, there is no real unification or movement to develop an internet based phone/media software platform that is open, extensable and integrated on the desktop for the use of the masses. And the masses do not yet understand the concept, nor have an incentive make the change - there needs to be some kind of infrastructure in place (i.e. once many people start to use DSL services, then perhaps if voice/video phone services became available, people would make the voice/video call over DSL/internet rather than making a standard POTS call, and from then onwards, would just not go back to making POTS calls ever again).
Too many people still think that the internet is something at the end of their phone line, that do not yet realise that their phone line is the internet, and a voice call is just some service offered.
The sorts of concept video phones that have been thrown around are also in the wrong paradigm, they work on the idea of an 'enhanced telephone' - the whole idea of a telephone is dead, as is an enhanced one. What is alive, and always will be, is the idea of 'communication' - "call mom" is something people want to do irrespective of whether they use a phone or an internet multimedia service -- all the more better by using the latter and being able to see her face as well.
Through all of this, the biggest problem is the paradigm shift - people still thinking in old ways until a sort of critical mass and juncture hits them in the face, and then they see the new world, and by then, the old world is long on the way out.
Consider that Unix and Open Source development is working like a free market: while there is a lot of variety, and while that causes problems, the benefit is that people do want simpler solutions, but instead of 'staying with' some simpler solution imposed upon them, people choose the best are available (e.g. Red Hat), and run with it, and then so does everyone else, and the bad solutions die.
The interesting comment about people developing Windows Manager skins reflects this: people get fed up with too many window managers, and start to develop skins. Then it becomes possible to have any 'style' window manager, sitting above a 'core' window manager : so then everyone starts to choose the best 'core' window manager. At the end of the day, you have the best solution: an excellent 'core' window manager, and an excellent freedom of different 'styles'.
Personally, I think that the best approach for an application development framework is a server-based model like BeOS. In Windows, programs duplicate functionality that's handled by one server in BeOS. Linux (and UNIX) is a great command-line environment, and provides a rich environment on top of that. Just don't use X for anything more than xterm, xclock, and xload.
I think you are right - also for the reason that GPU's are continuing to advance forward so that they offload tasks from the CPU. In order to accomodate advancing GPU's, and the different sorts of display environments that are going to exist, then a server/active modular design in important.
Consider this scenario: you are sitting at a cyber cafe and you have loaded some graphics task, but then you go home, and migrate that task to your home computer, and what should happen is that as the task migrates to your home computer, the graphics functionality can be offloaded onto the GPU, when perhaps at the cyber cafe it was running on a low quality GPU.
DLL's and shared libraries are old school given current state of the art computing and software. What _should_ happen is an application can feel free to drawn upon a multitude of components, each of which is dependant on other components - and it should be possible for multiple versions of older components to exist for legacy reasons. When you install new software, it should only need to install object components that don't exist, and it should just throw them into a large database of components - hell, it should really be able to fetch them across the net if need be. Future operating systems are just databases of code and objects, all of which can reach out to other machines or to the net. This is kind of where ASPs are heading, and what Microsoft is doing with.net - even though the implementation probably won't be very good. My argument is that Linux and Unix are old school for this reason. There are enough lessons learnt from operating systems now, that an advanced generation operating system should just look like a blob of objects sitting around the edge of a tight microkernel. Some of those blobs are going to be device drivers, and some of them are going to be executing tasks. And those objects should be able to migrate across machines. What you can do is sit down at home and have agents and tasks running on your home computer, then later in the day sit down at a cybercafe and have some of those tasks migrate locally - they may even migrate back if you so desire. Some of those tasks may actually run on RNA/biological computers that are 'out there' in the net, and some of that data may sit on a virtual drive out there on the net. This is why in 5-10 years time, Linux will look like a dinosaur. It's much better than Windows, Novell and everything else out there, but it doesn't really look forward, it only looks to be better than what's back there - and that is an important distinction to make.
I realise that, but I am trying to make a point about a more general issue.
Also,
(a) USENET is an increasingly archaic medium, and when it does go away, whatever replaces it will be hypermedia. (b) It is possible to post markups to USENET, even if some readers cannot interpret them.
That would be changing what I say. While my work is placed and published into the public domain, it does not mean they can change what I say - if they change my hyperlinks - they are changing what I say! Is that allowable ?
This is probably what will happen: humans will continue to evolve, and start to use post-human technologies to augment their sensory systems.
Because of this, 44Khz CD's and MP3s will sound different, and people will be claiming that at the start of the digital revolution, we lost a lot of heritage due to the digital conversation.
(I don't know whether it will happen - I'm just a big cynic!)
Is there something like a press association that could pay for his legal counsel ?
That would be seem to be the way to remove any possibility of his employer having a vested interest.
I assume that he claims to be a 'press professional', and therefore would claim to uphold standards of ethics and rights that an association would put forward. This is what happens with other professions, such as engineering.
The association would be in the best position to represent him, and part of their existance would be to ensure the standards and ethics of its members.
If he is being asked to testify about the validity of his information -- i.e. that he did not invent the story, then there's a slight problem - this would be like an engineering consultant being asked to testify that he followed known standards and approachs in a design issue. In this case, the court has every right to question his working _practices_, but not to question his working _material_ (there's an important different there - the concern with the process of his work, not with its product).
The court should have no place in questioning his sources, and he should stand firm on that, and his assocation should back him. But if he did not follow accepted codes of practice - that's a different matter.
Basically: it doesn't matter what you say, you should be allowed to say it - but, that doesn't give you the right to lie and misrepresent.
make star office a real distributed application ..
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Sun May GPL StarOffice
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It is my belief that traditional PC type desktop packages are eventually going to die. They fail to be open and flexible. For instance, consider what Microsoft tried to do with Outlook: create an application built upon a database, and allow the application to be highly configurable, accessible and fungible.
Where applications are heading is into some sort of ASP hybrid. The core application will sit on your local computer, but you'll be able to use distributed services and resources. For instance, say you want to open a new template for a Word file - what you do is actually browse the net. Somewhere out there is a word-template 'exchange' that lists the location of all available templates, and the cost of those templates.
Another failure of the web so far is to properly integrate distributed application components. For instance, I can read 'events' information at www.iacr.org, but I cannot cut and paste those into my scheduling tool. And I can't access my scheduling tool on my PDA, desktop or mobile phone.
The existing office type applications are already 'old world', what counts now is integrating the distributed application that the web is rapidly becoming. What Sun is doing is great and should be applauded, but take a big picture of how application technologies are evolving, and make sure that the development of the open-source heads into the right direction - otherwise the open-source community becomes just as bad as the commercial community. I am not down on open-source, but just trying to make sure that positive and negative aspects are covered - you need to take a realist/objective view of the situation.
What the open source community should do is take StarOffice and pull it apart, and turn it into a distributed application, so that parts of it can be run on the desktop, and other parts across the network. Money can be made from running data exchanges, and selling computational resources and services.
What I'd really like to see is hypermedia and information structuring research and technologies used to rebuild the application, that would be cool. Then the concept of spreadsheets, documents and everything else melds into a generic hypermedia style system. That would be making the right step towards where the internet and information technologies are heading.
Bluetooth is specifically design to be a short range wireless standard, and not designed for medium and long range deployment. To try and use it in this situation would require significant work in the standard to accommodate fading, multi-path and other medium range RF problems.
Consider the anaology to transport, there are bicycles, skateboards, scooters, motorcycles, cars, vans, RVs, trucks, minivans, trains, planes, buses, etc. There are many different modes of transport because each has been designed to fit its niche. Trying to design one that fits all, or trying to extend (e.g. a bicycle for intercity transport) is not economically viable, and has drawbacks.
The Bluetooth standard has been extended in range and bandwidth, but should remain a short range technology. It is better to use something like 3G wireless for medium to long range, as it has all the necessary design issues solved for medium to long range environmental conditions. 3G also blends the likes of PCS (very short range used for inner city). 3G also has significant more bandwidth than Bluetooth.
>Here's a helpful metaphor, should you ever find >yourself in a fashion emergency. >Fashion is a line of sheep running in single >file. Each sheep is desperately trying to cram >its nose up the ass of the sheep in front. >Often, a sheep will stumble out of line, trip, >and end up inspecting its own colon at close >range. >Moral: Don't move too fast or too slow. Watch >where you put your feet. And for heaven's sake, >don't run with scissors.
That's a good one. Some of us watch from the outside, and don't line up on the inside.
>My, you are full of yourself, aren't you?
Have you ever met me in person ? Yes, I am a little full of myself. Do you have a problem with that ?
>You know what I hate about people who follow the >overpriced, overrated and overbearing trends of >so-called "Fashion"? It's that (A) they expect >everyone else to do the same, (B) they look down >on those who don't care that they're not wearing >this season's color and (C) they expect others >to treat them specially because the clothes >they're wearing cost more than their janitor's >monthly wage.
Hopefully you are not implying that this is my mentality - because it isn't. AFAIK clothes are a personal expression. Some people don't care, but some do. Real fashion isn't about following trends, but about being stylish with 'things' even if they are not expensive. Go visit Holland or Italy, and watch the people that are not rich, nor fashion victims - but know how to dress well.
>My opinion? You suck.
My opinion? You make judgements without knowing anything about me.
>Wow. So I'm to understand that big plastic pants >have nothing to do with aspiring to "class," and >that in reality it's, finally, a genuine and >sincere reflection of asthetics among our >generation? >Riiiight. I think "Urban Outfitters" has that in >its mission statement.
Did I say that? Of course outfits are a bit part of aspiring to class, but at the same time they are a reflection other social trends as well. I'm no expert, and even an expert would probably need to write pages to describe the complexity of the situation.
Slashdot Mirror
Bringing back Gopher is a regressive step - it is old and antiquated, there can be no disagreement with that.
What has happened in the meantime is research and study into hypermedia systems and information structuring, so the intelligent approach is to better organise the raw data, and then make it presentable and useable in different formats. A popular current example is WAP - it should be possbile to use the same information base to create WAP view and a HTML view (and a Java view, and
What the complaint should be about is bad and inappropriate design. There are some cases where it is virtually impossible to find what should be a simple piece of information in a graphically bloated and obscure WWW site.
>Patents are what are socialistic; they're about >as blatant a form of industrial policy as >exists. In a true free market, people would be >free to copy someone else's invention and >undercut their price
And why would people bother to create new designs if they were going to be stolen by some large corporation ? We'd all have to work for large corporations in veils of secrecy! No patents are just as bad as too many patents, there is some sort of equilibrium in the middle.
Patents help competition if used appropriately - but just like anything else, they can be abused - the same goes for virtually everything else in society. I am sure there are endless analogies.
The problem is that the "spirit" of patents has been long lost into the quagmire of technicalities, patenting everything and anything and various other forms of abuses. Part of this is the nature of how society is changing, perhaps in the future, patents will be seen as redundant, because society has moved into a new plane where the free flow of ideas is the way to go.
Building global optical networks is big business at the moment, and I would guess guaranteed cash flow for anyone that does so despite the enormous expense (reflected in the rush to grab optical fibre producers, layers and so on at high margins).
Look at http://www.globalcrossing.com for instance, with its funky network maps - good stuff for infrastructure junkies! If you look also at their implementation strategy (namely, cross atlantic, and so on) you can get an idea about where they expect to pull a lot of revenue from (build the low risk things first), and Asia is certainly there. Despite the recent hiccups in the Asian business environment, it is seen as an up and coming region.
This has nothing to do with the laws of physics, more the laws of economics which describe why certain technologies are chosen and used. Pure performance is only one factor considered by those that make intelligent commercial choices about technology - though I could conceed to you that there are many non-intelligent choices being made.
I am no GPS guru, but I think I know enough to do some handwaving -
My understanding is that the GPS satellites transmit timing information, and the receivers use this information (from multiple satellites) to perform a triangulation computation, and to determine a location.
What you could do is have the satellites transmit a signature along with the timing information, and this could prove that the timing information could only have come from a GPS satellite.
This means that your receiver knows that it is receiving real GPS information - however, everyone else in your immediate vicinity also receives the same information. The receiver actually carries out the computation to determine a location, so therefore, you would need to have the receiver sign the computation - this proves that the output was computed by a legitimate process.
Then, you could sign the result with your private key - this would prove that you signed some location information.
To verify all of this, the client (who you are proving to) would verify that you signed the location information - then it could verify that the location was created by a trusted process, but verifying the signature. It could also verify the timing signals from the satellite, to verify that they were legitmate, and that your signed location information was generated within a recent period of time (to prevent a replay of older information).
How does that sound ? Other technologies - differential GPS may blur this, and perhaps a GPS guru could comment on the above.
From a risk management perspective, the Crusoe is very important - it provides a bridge from the old world to the new world, and eventually, in the history of computing will be seen as such.
What Crusoe does is add an intermediate layer, that can adapt to various upper layers and therefore emulate different types of chips. Also, this intermediate layer, can be optimised and adapted to different firmware implementations that sit underneath - and as the marketing blurb tells you, in such a way to reduce power consumption as well.
In an age where computing is moving to a distributed, connected, more homogeneous type of environment, this is brilliant.
What I could expect to see is various different forms of firmware, with tight multiprocessing, and other custom features - and VLIW layers that can adapt. Also, VLIW adaption for intel, motorola and other processors which would be excellent as a migration path for existing software. Perhaps also, custom VLIW instructions can be useful for high performance applications.
It would be good to see Crusoe as the end for Intel, Motorola and others. I think the ARM may still have a price/benefit advantage in embedded systems, what many people don't remember is that ARM is often used as a ASIC core within silicon next to other functionality (e.g. RF, in communications chips) - I don't expect to see Transmetta offering Crusoe as an ASIC core in the immediate future, but who knows! ARM has a different market segment to Crusoe, and designers will know that.
Hardware prices will always drop, but there is a point where projects become economically viable (for whatever reason) - in their case, perhaps this is now.
Stopping Napster actually helps destroy the old world model which is based on centralising distribution. Napster is more of a commercial interest and works on this centralised model, whereas Gnutella is a truely decentralised peer to peer approach that accomodations not just music, but other forms of media as well.
You could - in some ways - see Gnutella as an early form of an 'Eternity' service - because as more people use the service, the content increasingly becomes highly distributed and massively redundant - and therefore tends to live forever, and is hard to remove. Music is the ideal medium for this to start with, because just about everyone listens to music.
The RIAA looks like it is trying to protect the old world of the middle man doing the distribution work. This is dead. The new world is where the technological framework does the distribution work. There is no middle man, because the middle man is replaced by technology.
Promotion may still need to occur, to provide incentives for people to try out and listen to new works, but that promotion should happen around the new decentralised and distributed framework.
Irrespective of what security mechanisms the music industry tries to put into recorded music, there is now a whole globe out their focused on breaking it. Once the security is broken -- just like how just about every commercial software in history has been cracked -- and the music is put into this distributed web, then it is virtually unstoppable.
Rather than fight against piracy and copy -- which has _always_ existed -- perhaps the smart thing to do is embrace free copy, and change the business model, to make money out of performances, merchandise, special releases or whatever other things can be thought of. Piracy and copy has always been the most significant and most popular way of distributing media - but until now it has been ignored and marginalised and a lot of time and energy has gone into eradicating it - what a waste! Better to find a new approach to distribution that embraces free copy, but makes money in other ways.
Actually - the recording industry is helping to destroy itself.
Napster is based on a flawed centralised model, whereas Gnutella is based on a more advanced distributed model. Napster contains more of the old world ideal than the new world ideal, compared to Gnutella.
This means that by shutting down Napster, the industry helping to destroy the old world and forcing users to move to something like Gnutella which is more aligned with the new world. If everyone stayed with Napster, then they would stay with a kind of flawed implementation of the future.
Am I right or wrong ?
Two observations:
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Firstly
Whether or not the recording industry shuts down Napster, it has already lost - Gnutella, OpenNAP and a lot of other software is already out there; and is unstoppable. If they are closed down, someone will write something new. If that's closed down, then cryptography will come into play. It'll continue to be an arms race for both sides - what a waste of time and energy when that time and energy could be concentrated in the real issue: the music!
Shouldn't it be assumed from now on that the technologies exist to allow just about any material to be made available and unremovable on the net - music, software, etc ? Just look at Gnutella, Freedom and other technologies. In previous 'undergrounds', there were always problems of anonymity, being connected and other issues that the internet has 'solved' - the small, fragmented free information trade in the real world has now become a major force of activity in the connected digital world.
As for SDMI initiatives ? Who is going to buy SDMI players when they can buy MP3/open players ? And surely the market is open enough so that it is impossible to neutralise MP3/open players ?
Secondly
This seems like a repeat of the past. Remember microcomputer software ? You could always buy games and other titles off the shelves - but there was always an underground trade. No matter what technical protection the industry could come up with, the underground could remove it; and there was always an underground network to distribute cracked wares. Now with music, the underground network is actually a mass global pool of connected individuals across the net. The internet has made the fragmented underground into a mass movement. And I don't mean underground in a negative sense.
There will always be the technologically illiterate or those disconnected from the underground that cannot access underground distribution; and perhaps they may have to buy off the shelf. So is the music industry going to try and prop itself up on the small minority ? How do the artists feel knowing that they are being supported by sucking off a minority of their fans ?
The music and software industries have always had to factor in piracy as an everpresent activity - their choice is whether to reject it, or to try and accept it and turn it to their benefit by altering their business models and means of distribution.
Perhaps they should embrace some sort of model for free distribution of music, but -- as John Perry Barlow writes -- make their money off the live performances and events. In global world where travel is cheap and easy, the popular acts could easy command performances around the world.
Free distribution would be like an open market - it would just 'be there', and communities would form, and acts would become popular, and then the popular acts can move into live performances, or they mercandise, or whatever else is the standard norm in this age of 'leverage your core'.
Like we already know: the internet destroys the middle man, and the music industry is the middle man. The new middle man is the internet, and is increasingy the technologies and communities around which the producers and consumers rotate. The middle man is technology, not people.
>Until there is a common format, Bluetooth will >fail. I hope someone will take the initaive to >create an open standard for content transfer.
You may be interested to know that IEEE is standardising Bluetooth wireless technology as 802.15 - perhaps they may address some of the issues you mention.
>Bluetooth as a wireless standard will fail. This >is the conclusion that I have come to after >watching the industry very carefully. The >reason? Not enough standardization.
I agree with the lack of standardisation, but I am not sure that it will cause the standard to fail. There is significant momentum behind the technology, and I suspect that will continue to drive it through - but unfortunately, the result may not be as ideal as was hoped.
Personally, there are aspects of the architecture that I think they could have done in a better way. I don't think that the architecture is conceptually abstract and rigid as it could be, and the lack of vision to include bandwidth extensibility, etc.
>So far, there has been no standardization for >content protocols over Bluetooth. The >only "standard" that could be considered close >is wrapping TCP/IP, from which you can get HTTP, >XML, etc. for passing data. However, Bluetooth >as it stands is not going to be the be-all and >end-all of information transfer, because there >is no common format.
I am not sure that there needs to be standardisation for content protocols. Bluetooth includes a Service Discovery Protocol that allows for any myriad of services to be developed and employed.
IMHO that is exactly what Bluetooth should do, just like TCP does not define any content protocols, because it is a transport layer.
>What's needed is a common implementation of a >method for applications to speak to each other >over an open protocol. No manufacturers have >been forthcoming about this. Instead, we see >fracturing of devices, unable to actually speak >to each other.
There is a common method in the Bluetooth SDP; and as far as I can see it does not preclude the use of something like Jini.
One problem I do see is that Bluetooth was designed to be something like an IrDA replacement, but now it is taken and used for other things outside of its design envelope. The question is whether the original conception of the design had enough vision to foresee these things, and will cope with them.
The key selling point of Bluetooth is economic - it is low cost and low power, and that's exactly what's needed for things like headsets and consumer electronics. Price pressure is everything. The Bluetooth chip manufacturers are at the cutting edge with RF-on-chip technology - and the winners in this race will be those that can come up with a small-size, low-power and low-cost solution.
My cynical perspective is that Bluetooth will become the technology of the wireless age, and like Microsoft and desktop computing, it will be both an enabler and a hindrance, and be somewhat controversial.
Rather than wasting time on a Seti@home card, they should build more general purpose beowulf cards - something you can stick into your Linux box to add more grunt.
It's not a bad way of using up so called 'obsolete' lower speed processors: put them into a multiprocessor card, put it into your PCI bus, and kerbang you have more grunt.
Bluetooth wireless technology will be part of a portfolio of wireless technologies.
Most 'designs' in life have trade offs - this is why you don't buy a sofa chair just for outdoor entertaining, nor do you buy a truck just to drive around town, nor do you buy an industrial grinder for home coffee. Some people do, but the large majority of people don't. Most people buy on some combination of factors, in which price is often quite important.
These same economic and design trade offs are visible in wireless communications, and is why Bluetooth will exist alongside 802.11b, mobile internet and so on. It would be great (from an academic and technical perspective) if there could be one unified standard that could scale up and down and do everything - perhaps that is the aim for 3G devices ? But I don't see that happening for another 10 years at least.
For Home Area Networks (HAN) and Personal Area Networks (PAN), competition is significantly built upon price differences. It is waste of money, time and effort to embed a high power technology (e.g. a GSM phone) into a consumer device (e.g. a washing machine).
Bluetooth is specifically designed for PANs - connections between phones, computers, printers, car alarms, remote controls, and other products that did incorporate infra-red or messy cables. Apart from IrDA, there is no standard in this area yet - and Bluetooth is filling that gap.
Bluetooth will probably be pushed into HANs - because it is ideally suited for household and office consumer devices, and recent developments to scale up the air interface will allow it to transport higher bandwidth multimedia information. I can (eventually) envisage Bluetooth in medical equipment as well. I can see Bluetooth coupled with Jini and other collaborative agent technologies.
When it comes to the home: I think the household will end up having an information gateway - high speed information pipe to the rest of the world. Within the house, Bluetooth will be one of the major wireless technologies, but there will need to be a higher bandwidth technology for inter-home computing and entertainment systems - I can't even see a highspeed Bluetooth providing this, but maybe I'll eat my words in the near future. Perhaps Bluetooth will interact with one of the HomeRF solutions, but I personally think that the HomeRF solutions out there are dead inlight of Bluetooth.
"open source software" for telecommunications isn't so much for the network, but for the end user on the desktop.
The existing telecommunications networks are defunct: the so called 'intelligent' network that employed SS7 and smart nation-wide routing systems is a technological legacy due to the increasing ubiquity of the Internet and the progress of technology in the guise of moore's law. It's only a manner of time before it all migrates to an IP based network, and even AT&T has acknowledged this by declining from buying anything other than IP based equipment - this is why Nortel, Lucent, Ericcson and the major provides of old-school equipment are forging into new markets.
Using the net for voice/media calls is still problematic because QoS and billing issues have yet to be sorted out. The mistake that many people make is to think that there will be an "internet telephone company" - there will not be, because the whole concept of "a telephone company" is defunct in light of the Internet. What there is, is a collection of bandwidth providers, and on top of that, there are all sorts of services, of which telephone is one.
What will happen is that internet QoS mechanisms will come into place, and you will be able to "buy" guaranteed information streams across the network, and on top of that, you can run your video/audio/multimedia one-to-one or group communications tool. That obviously assumes the availability of considerable bandwidth, and it will take a while before the networks are in place, but you can be sure that they are heading there.
While a lot of other software has become popularised through open source, no integrated telephony software has - I accept that there are various bits of software (desktop phone, internet videophones, etc), but there is no real movement or interest group in the way that there is for other software technologies and no real common understanding of what it means to make voice calls across the Internet - not enough people understand this concept yet. Even systems like IRC had a large interest community of developors that evolved the code. Where has that been happening for telephony ?
This is summary: the concept of a telephone company is dead, and so is the idea of SS7 and 'old school' switching technologies. The internet is rapidly replacing all of this as a common transport medium upon which voice calls will be just "one type of service". Although various internet telephone companies are around, there is no real unification or movement to develop an internet based phone/media software platform that is open, extensable and integrated on the desktop for the use of the masses. And the masses do not yet understand the concept, nor have an incentive make the change - there needs to be some kind of infrastructure in place (i.e. once many people start to use DSL services, then perhaps if voice/video phone services became available, people would make the voice/video call over DSL/internet rather than making a standard POTS call, and from then onwards, would just not go back to making POTS calls ever again).
Too many people still think that the internet is something at the end of their phone line, that do not yet realise that their phone line is the internet, and a voice call is just some service offered.
The sorts of concept video phones that have been thrown around are also in the wrong paradigm, they work on the idea of an 'enhanced telephone' - the whole idea of a telephone is dead, as is an enhanced one. What is alive, and always will be, is the idea of 'communication' - "call mom" is something people want to do irrespective of whether they use a phone or an internet multimedia service -- all the more better by using the latter and being able to see her face as well.
Through all of this, the biggest problem is the paradigm shift - people still thinking in old ways until a sort of critical mass and juncture hits them in the face, and then they see the new world, and by then, the old world is long on the way out.
>"Matthew Gream is a goat fucker."
>-Richard M. Stallman, 1996
You should try it sometime, it may relieve that anger that you have built up.
Consider that Unix and Open Source development is working like a free market: while there is a lot of variety, and while that causes problems, the benefit is that people do want simpler solutions, but instead of 'staying with' some simpler solution imposed upon them, people choose the best are available (e.g. Red Hat), and run with it, and then so does everyone else, and the bad solutions die.
The interesting comment about people developing Windows Manager skins reflects this: people get fed up with too many window managers, and start to develop skins. Then it becomes possible to have any 'style' window manager, sitting above a 'core' window manager : so then everyone starts to choose the best 'core' window manager. At the end of the day, you have the best solution: an excellent 'core' window manager, and an excellent freedom of different 'styles'.
The free market has decided.
Personally, I think that the best approach for an application development framework is a server-based model like BeOS. In Windows, programs duplicate functionality that's handled by one server in BeOS. Linux (and UNIX) is a great command-line environment, and provides a rich environment on top of that. Just don't use X for anything more than xterm, xclock, and xload.
I think you are right - also for the reason that GPU's are continuing to advance forward so that they offload tasks from the CPU. In order to accomodate advancing GPU's, and the different sorts of display environments that are going to exist, then a server/active modular design in important.
Consider this scenario: you are sitting at a cyber cafe and you have loaded some graphics task, but then you go home, and migrate that task to your home computer, and what should happen is that as the task migrates to your home computer, the graphics functionality can be offloaded onto the GPU, when perhaps at the cyber cafe it was running on a low quality GPU.
DLL's and shared libraries are old school given current state of the art computing and software. What _should_ happen is an application can feel free to drawn upon a multitude of components, each of which is dependant on other components - and it should be possible for multiple versions of older components to exist for legacy reasons. When you install new software, it should only need to install object components that don't exist, and it should just throw them into a large database of components - hell, it should really be able to fetch them across the net if need be. Future operating systems are just databases of code and objects, all of which can reach out to other machines or to the net. This is kind of where ASPs are heading, and what Microsoft is doing with .net - even though the implementation probably won't be very good. My argument is that Linux and Unix are old school for this reason. There are enough lessons learnt from operating systems now, that an advanced generation operating system should just look like a blob of objects sitting around the edge of a tight microkernel. Some of those blobs are going to be device drivers, and some of them are going to be executing tasks. And those objects should be able to migrate across machines. What you can do is sit down at home and have agents and tasks running on your home computer, then later in the day sit down at a cybercafe and have some of those tasks migrate locally - they may even migrate back if you so desire. Some of those tasks may actually run on RNA/biological computers that are 'out there' in the net, and some of that data may sit on a virtual drive out there on the net. This is why in 5-10 years time, Linux will look like a dinosaur. It's much better than Windows, Novell and everything else out there, but it doesn't really look forward, it only looks to be better than what's back there - and that is an important distinction to make.
>Usenet is plain text, there is no HTML.
I realise that, but I am trying to make a point about a more general issue.
Also,
(a) USENET is an increasingly archaic medium, and when it does go away, whatever replaces it will be hypermedia.
(b) It is possible to post markups to USENET, even if some readers cannot interpret them.
What happens if I post marked up text ? Will they change my text ?
That would be changing what I say. While my work is placed and published into the public domain, it does not mean they can change what I say - if they change my hyperlinks - they are changing what I say! Is that allowable ?
This is probably what will happen: humans will continue to evolve, and start to use post-human technologies to augment their sensory systems.
Because of this, 44Khz CD's and MP3s will sound different, and people will be claiming that at the start of the digital revolution, we lost a lot of heritage due to the digital conversation.
(I don't know whether it will happen - I'm just a big cynic!)
Is there something like a press association that could pay for his legal counsel ?
That would be seem to be the way to remove any possibility of his employer having a vested interest.
I assume that he claims to be a 'press professional', and therefore would claim to uphold standards of ethics and rights that an association would put forward. This is what happens with other professions, such as engineering.
The association would be in the best position to represent him, and part of their existance would be to ensure the standards and ethics of its members.
If he is being asked to testify about the validity of his information -- i.e. that he did not invent the story, then there's a slight problem - this would be like an engineering consultant being asked to testify that he followed known standards and approachs in a design issue. In this case, the court has every right to question his working _practices_, but not to question his working _material_ (there's an important different there - the concern with the process of his work, not with its product).
The court should have no place in questioning his sources, and he should stand firm on that, and his assocation should back him. But if he did not follow accepted codes of practice - that's a different matter.
Basically: it doesn't matter what you say, you should be allowed to say it - but, that doesn't give you the right to lie and misrepresent.
It is my belief that traditional PC type desktop packages are eventually going to die. They fail to be open and flexible. For instance, consider what Microsoft tried to do with Outlook: create an application built upon a database, and allow the application to be highly configurable, accessible and fungible.
Where applications are heading is into some sort of ASP hybrid. The core application will sit on your local computer, but you'll be able to use distributed services and resources. For instance, say you want to open a new template for a Word file - what you do is actually browse the net. Somewhere out there is a word-template 'exchange' that lists the location of all available templates, and the cost of those templates.
Another failure of the web so far is to properly integrate distributed application components. For instance, I can read 'events' information at www.iacr.org, but I cannot cut and paste those into my scheduling tool. And I can't access my scheduling tool on my PDA, desktop or mobile phone.
The existing office type applications are already 'old world', what counts now is integrating the distributed application that the web is rapidly becoming. What Sun is doing is great and should be applauded, but take a big picture of how application technologies are evolving, and make sure that the development of the open-source heads into the right direction - otherwise the open-source community becomes just as bad as the commercial community. I am not down on open-source, but just trying to make sure that positive and negative aspects are covered - you need to take a realist/objective view of the situation.
What the open source community should do is take StarOffice and pull it apart, and turn it into a distributed application, so that parts of it can be run on the desktop, and other parts across the network. Money can be made from running data exchanges, and selling computational resources and services.
What I'd really like to see is hypermedia and information structuring research and technologies used to rebuild the application, that would be cool. Then the concept of spreadsheets, documents and everything else melds into a generic hypermedia style system. That would be making the right step towards where the internet and information technologies are heading.
Bluetooth is specifically design to be a short range wireless standard, and not designed for medium and long range deployment. To try and use it in this situation would require significant work in the standard to accommodate fading, multi-path and other medium range RF problems.
Consider the anaology to transport, there are bicycles, skateboards, scooters, motorcycles, cars, vans, RVs, trucks, minivans, trains, planes, buses, etc. There are many different modes of transport because each has been designed to fit its niche. Trying to design one that fits all, or trying to extend (e.g. a bicycle for intercity transport) is not economically viable, and has drawbacks.
The Bluetooth standard has been extended in range and bandwidth, but should remain a short range technology. It is better to use something like 3G wireless for medium to long range, as it has all the necessary design issues solved for medium to long range environmental conditions. 3G also blends the likes of PCS (very short range used for inner city). 3G also has significant more bandwidth than Bluetooth.
>Here's a helpful metaphor, should you ever find >yourself in a fashion emergency.
>Fashion is a line of sheep running in single >file. Each sheep is desperately trying to cram >its nose up the ass of the sheep in front. >Often, a sheep will stumble out of line, trip, >and end up inspecting its own colon at close >range.
>Moral: Don't move too fast or too slow. Watch >where you put your feet. And for heaven's sake, >don't run with scissors.
That's a good one. Some of us watch from the outside, and don't line up on the inside.
>My, you are full of yourself, aren't you?
Have you ever met me in person ? Yes, I am a little full of myself. Do you have a problem with that ?
>You know what I hate about people who follow the >overpriced, overrated and overbearing trends of >so-called "Fashion"? It's that (A) they expect >everyone else to do the same, (B) they look down >on those who don't care that they're not wearing >this season's color and (C) they expect others >to treat them specially because the clothes >they're wearing cost more than their janitor's >monthly wage.
Hopefully you are not implying that this is my mentality - because it isn't. AFAIK clothes are a personal expression. Some people don't care, but some do. Real fashion isn't about following trends, but about being stylish with 'things' even if they are not expensive. Go visit Holland or Italy, and watch the people that are not rich, nor fashion victims - but know how to dress well.
>My opinion? You suck.
My opinion? You make judgements without knowing anything about me.
>Wow. So I'm to understand that big plastic pants >have nothing to do with aspiring to "class," and >that in reality it's, finally, a genuine and >sincere reflection of asthetics among our >generation?
>Riiiight. I think "Urban Outfitters" has that in >its mission statement.
Did I say that? Of course outfits are a bit part of aspiring to class, but at the same time they are a reflection other social trends as well. I'm no expert, and even an expert would probably need to write pages to describe the complexity of the situation.