Customers: I've paid my insurance premiums all my life. Now that I've had this terrible accident I need you to cover some modest expenses required for me to maintain the semblence of the life I once had.
Insurers: We thank you for your custom. Your call is important to us. However, you fail to understand even the most basic aspects of our business model. We're here to fuck you, not help you. Coverage denied. Thank you for playing.
(Applicable to most forms of health-related insurance it seems)
In the context of things like this, it amazes me (as an American, no less) that the US still finds itself embroiled in the health-care debate the rest of the industrialized world successfully resolved more than 60 years ago (in some places, as long as 80-90 years ago). Even with neanderthals like the Republicans around, you'd have thought the moderate and progressive populations of the country would have dragged that country out of the stone age by now... but I digress.
Did ANYONE even read the patent? I'm looking at the patent now, and while it's not rocket science, it's nowhere near as simple as "associating a piece of data with multiple categories". In fact, that quote is from the article, not the patent.
It's a software patent, and therfor, to all of us not living in the United States, laughable.
Of course it could get just so confusing at one point that we just decide to ignore everything that is going around us.
Or we upgrade our intelligence so that we have no trouble understanding what is going on and can keep up with it. Perhaps we think faster, perhaps we modify ourselves and become mechanized beings, or software, or (in grand Star Trek tradition) "beings of energy" who perceive an microsecond as an epoch, and still fine a pace of change you and I would find incomprehensibly fast to be in fact rather sedate. ("Beings of energy" is a bit tongue in cheeck, but I suppose you never know.)
Is it about how singularity can't happen because it is naturally limiting itself? Like growth of anything is limited by resources, and will end in a balance? And like the effects of nearing singularity will deprive one of the resource to be able to do things, resulting in the same balance?:)
A singularity implies discontinuity, a fundamental breakdown of cause and predictable effect. I argue in my novel "Autonomy" that there is no such thing as a singularity as such, just a technological horozion beyond which we cannot currently see. Arthur C. Clark defined that boundary, or horizon, perfectly: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." That horizon precisely defines what we can imagine, but not comprehend the workings of. Everything this side of that boundary defines the set of things we can both imagine and understand, everything on the far side the set of things we can neither imagine nor understand. The point being that the set of things we can both imagine and understand grows as we approach the horizon, revealing new things we can imagine but not (yet) understand, and eventually revealing things that are imaginable but previously were not.[1]
Put more simply: as our ancesters could not see the Internet, or virtual reality, or the concept of living software, beyond their horizon, and as their ancesters could not imagine spaceflight, or the world as a globe, or a sky that didn't have a big bearded scary fairy in it throwing down thunderbolds should they ever take his name in vain, and so on.
That doesn't rule out exponential progress, or an event that from our limited point of view will look like a singularity. It's entirely possible that we could wake up one day with the world incomprehensively changed because another group crossed a threshold and now lives life at an accelerated and accelerating rate, and have left us in their dust. But that still isn't a discontinuity... that group will still perceive change and progress as a gradual, continuous series of steps and advancements, not some explosive, unpredictable discontinuity.
Whether something looks like a singularity or just a world where change happens a little more quickly than it used to (sound familiar?) will depend largely on one's perspective, and which side of the "digital" (or "quantum comptuing" or whatever) divide one stands on when those thresholds are crossed. If they ever are.
[1]It is of course assumed that understanding requires the ability to imagine, so the fourth set (those things we can understand but not imagine) is, logically, empty.
I'm just going to read books for now on. They're much cheaper and the stories aren't ruined by screenplay writers.
Dateline 2020, United Corproate States of America(tm)
It has come to the attention of your(tm) media(tm) elite(tm) that books do not offer a sufficient rate of return per consumer-hour to justify permitting their continued use. As is well known, consumer time is a precious commodity underpinning much of our(tm) service(tm) industry(tm), the squandering of which does untold(tm) economic(tm) damage(tm) and is thus punishable by ecomonic incentive(tm) (read: life-crippling fines), betterment through education(tm) (prison), or both.
Consider: The current cost for watching a 2 hour reality TV episode consisting of 12 minutes RIAA approved and licensed music, 42 minutes inane chatter from the judges (inclusive 54 minutes of subliminal product placement), and 66 minutes of formally viewed commercials is $399,999.99 (EUR 39.95, £399.00) per consumer-viewer per download. That equates to approximately $200,000 (EUR 20, £200) of revinue generation per viewer per hour supporting Your(tm) Industry(tm).
In contrast, the average book costs less than a meal out, a scant $99,950.00 (EUR 9.99, £99.95) on average. BUT, the average reader takes approximately 10 hours to read an average length book, resulting in a revinue stream of only $9,999.50 per hour (that's less than EUR 0.99, or about £10, per consumer-hour). Clearly, allowing consumers to entertain themselves for so little per hour is unacceptable. Worse, they can lend books to one another, or re-read them, reducing Your(tm) Industry(tm)'s rate of return per consumer-hour even further.
Clearly this cannot be permitted. You have three days to your local X-Factor(tm) or Earth's Got Talent(tm) screening centre with every copy of every book that is thieving your eyes from Our Content(tm), to be presented for immediate destruction, or face prosecution under the Microsoft(tm) Disney(tm) Time-Warner(tm) Media(tm) Act(tm) (copyright (c) 2010 US Government, all reproduction forbidden) for unlawful squandering consumer-hours (doing what you want instead of watching what we require).
And while you're visiting your local screening centre, be sure to take advantage of our newest offer to humiliate you publicly, at no cost to ourselves, as you try pathetically to have your image replicated on millions of our DRM protected, authorized and officially sanctioned media outlets.
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Seriously, don't bother with the US Market. Europe is currently software-patent free, as is China and much of the oil-rich middle east. Other markets abound as well.
If you form an LLP or LLC as others suggested, you might consider incorporating in a European company and selling your product in markets where software patents do not exist.
In addition, as others have mentioned you should file an amicus brief for the Supreme court opposing software patents, write a letter (or better yet, lobby) your local representative to repeal software patents, and patent a few ideas of your own to use against anyone who comes after you.
As for open sourcing being a threat, that is probably the new meme Microsoft shills will begin spreading to try and undermine the underpinnings of the free software social contract ("share and share alike"), but it is highly debatable whether or not it actually increases risk. Microsoft didn't exactly open source word, or any of the numerous other products they sell that have been found to violate third party patents, so source code availability or secrecy doesn't appear to have any effect on your exposure to litigation one way or the other. But it makes a good soundbite, one I'm sure proprietary software vendors and monopolists are drooling over.
If you do open source your product, GPL v. 3 may offer you some of the litigation protection you need. IBM, Sun, and others have certainly felt it does... your situation is different of course, and nothing will give you perfect protection from American litigiousness except to stay out of markets where software patents are considered valid. Luckilly that means you can sell your product in most of the world, and with America's economic decline and the ongoing, chronic weakness of the dollar, you might find yourself earning quite a bit more by casting your net further afield.
And your qualificatione for shaking your head are what?
Presumably, having a mind capable of critical thought. Something you would be advised to learn. You are engaging in both the classic logical fallacy of "Appeal to Authority" (described here) and a tired ad homonem attack (you imply the grandparent poster watches star trek, which you implicitly indicate makes any thought they have on the subject meaningless. Both assumptions are themselves meaningless and irreleveant in the context of this discussion, but serve for you to classify the grandparent poster as a member of a group you view inherently as inferior to your rather arrogant self, which you then use as grounds to denigrate and dismiss their argument out of hand, without a shred of supporting logic to justify your stance).
The fact of the matter is that no one, inside of NASA or out, is an "authority" on extra-terrestrial life. No one has ever, as far as we know, detected, much less observed extra-terrestrial life. Everything we know, or think we know, is based purely on supposition and guesswork. In the case of NASA (and the view your post suggests you hold), the supposition that life elsewhere in the universe must (or is even likely to) mimic life on Earth.
Assuming extra-terrestrial life will be like Earth-based life is no more defensible, rational, or likely to be correct than assuming extra-terrestrial life will be nothing like Earth-based life. Assuming water must be intrinsic to life everywhere because we've observed it on one tiny, insignificant planet orbiting an unremarkable star in the outskirts of an equally unremarkable galaxy amounts to drawing statistical conclusions from a sample base with N=1, which is no better, or more intellectually rigorous, than just making random shit up.
The grandparent is right to shake his or her head. Any critically-thinking person would be inclined to do the same when confronted with such broad assumptions about something no one knows anything about, built upon such flimsy evidence.
All life in the universe may require water. Or not. Flip a coin. Based on the data we currently have, you are as likely to be right as any self-appointed "expert" in exobiology.
(Hell, water-based life might be the exception, not the rule. Just because it's us doesn't make it average or representative of the rest of the cosmos. Until we actually find some extra-terrestrial life, we can't even begin to guess the truth on this one way or another).
The Internet is improving everyday as better routers, faster servers, new better cables/antennas are deployed, the last mile connection options are also multiplying. IPv6 is put on hold as there is no real need for it at the moment.
IPv6 is NOT on hold. Most of Asia are already using IPv6. If you use Apple there's a good chance you're using IPv6 without even realising it. The EU is mandating moves to IPv6 in the coming years, and I imagine most countries are doing something similar.
The US may have its head in the sand, but that doesn't mean everyone else does.
Under IPv6 will I still be able to block posting access to my Japanese discussion site from African/Russian 419 scammers? I have a nice list of IP addresses that are automatically sent an empty http response when they try to become members. I used to give them a chance but every single one turned out to be a scammer so now I just block whole regions outside of Japan. (And luckily most aren't smart enough to bother with a proxy.) Will I still be able to do this under IPv6?
Yes, you'll just need to know their IPv6 addresses/adress-ranges and block those.
Except, according to the Oxford dictionary, realize is more correct (because of its Greek origins). The use of -ise instead of -ize is a recent British innovation (recent in the sense of the last century or so)... mainly so people don't misspell analyse the way we do (which is not of Greek origin). -ize is one of the rare cases where the North American spelling is actually closer to traditional, "correct" English than the UK -ise... in stark contrast to almost every other difference between the two ("tire" vs. "tyre", "color" vs. "colour", "jewelry" vs. "jewellery") where the UK spelling is more correct and often more nuanced.
Not that it matters... I can't spell on either side of the pond.
I'm confused... how can 2012 be attributed to Christian myth even by the most loose of interpretations?
It isn't. It's attributed to Mayan myth (and its a fundamental change in the world, not necessarily the end of the world). But you get some confused people who think that's "another sign" of the last days, and that Jesus/the Apacalypse/what have you is coming then.
Totally illogical, not to mention heretical by their own belief system, but that doesn't seem to slow them down any.
If you believe your local religious nutball, it will be sooner than that. 2012 (for those confused in their religiosity, mixing Mayan and Christian myth), 2 years (if you're one of those bozos who believe the Iranian president is the new Mahadi), by the end of this year (if you believe the wingnuts who think Obama is the anti-christ and national healthcare the end of civilization), or several times in the past decade (if you're one to jump into your bunker everytime the Jehovah's Witnesses call the end of the world).
Get your Apacalypse here! Step right up! One to a customer! Step right up!
Back in the day, you could get a knighthood for attempting to sack Jerusalem in the name of Christianity -- presumably including killing people. If we're down to online trolling, that's a good thing.
Alas, we're not just down to trolling (and that's been going on, in one form or another, since the Inquisition, probably earlier). Killing people over petty religious differences about what the fairy in the sky wants us to do, or how we're supposed to abase ourselves before him, or mistreat our wives and daughters, or whatever is very much alive and well. If you're a medical doctor specializing in women's medicine and willing to provide an abortion, your life as as good as foreit in large swathes of the United States. Of course, you'll have trouble finding such a physician in most of the US, because they've been terrorized out of their clinics, their homes, their communties, and often their careers.
Unruly mobs are already being stirred up to shout down and intimidate our elected officials for daring to consider something most of the industrialized world already has and relies on with great (albeit certainly not perfect) success: national healthcare.
At least one news anchor on Fox has publicly suggested killing the speaker of the house with poison (under the guise of humor, but in a way bound to incite the nutjobs that hang off Fox News' every word).
As for sacking a city on the basis of religion, have you taken a look at Bagdad lately, or forgotten how our then-president Bush claimed to be on a "crusade" and that he spoke with God prior to ordering the invasion.
I'm not so sure things have gotten any better. So far the US has been insulated from the consiquences of our leaders' actions (9/11 notwithstanding), but that is unlikely to continue in even the medium, and certainly not in the long run. And certainly, from the view of much of the rest of the world, it's highly debatable whether the US' actions are any better than those of any other maurading, plundering nation.
Try listing all the countries we've either invaded or bombed over the least twenty-five years or so. You'll find the list surprisingly long (and you'll notice this is all POST Vietnam/Cambodia/Laos, so it hardly includes our most dramatic actions of the last half century). It's profoundly depressing to discover what an out of control bully we've become. But hey, we can keep telling ourselves we're "the best in the world!" and make sure not to listen to the rest of the planet that knows better. Of course, that means we won't be able to benefit from the experiences of others (like the many nations with working and thriving national healthcare systems), but that's a small price to pay for "being the best."
I can only wonder if there have been other deaths in this program that did not make the news.
Probably. What I can't believe is that no one seems to be questioning the assumptions of this nonsense (or if they are, the media in its usual incompetent or complicit way is ignorning it): that internet addiction even exists, period.
The very concept is farcical. Like "television addiction", there may be people whose lifestyles are too sedentary, whose lives center more on the couch or computer than most of us are comfortable with, but come on! As Ricky Gervais said when discussing obeisity: "this is not a disease". It's a lifestyle choice, and one that certainly does not deserve incarceration or treatment of any kind, much less lethal abuse!
This whole thing reminds me of the quacks using electroshock therepy to "cure" homosexuality", as has been done in Utah and China in the 1990s and perhaps even more recently. Bigotry dressed up as outreach treatment, only this time its Geeks instead of Gays.
What's next...curing an unruly kid of their addiction to oxygen by putting a pillow over their face and making them go "cold turkey"?
Intelligent people do not need the kind of rubberstamp advice you find in self-help books. As long you remain honest, open and calm, you are very well off. Not doing stupid thing like playing WoW (ATTN! compare to watching football with you buddies and sipping beer) through your anniversary helps, too.
I can't second this enough. In the 4.5 years I've been married, the ONLY time we ever ran into any real trouble was when I tried to "manage" information. The excuse you'll typically tell yourself if tempted to do this is that it's to "spare her feelings", "you couldn't cope with it then", or "spare us an unnecessary fight". Those are excuses...the real reason is you don't want to deal with her reaction and the fallout. Don't give in to that temptation. Be honest, and demand honesty from your partner. That, and a good dose of compatabiltiy and love, will take you through just about anything).
The other underlying principle I'd add is: take the attitude that you're a team, and its you against the world--not necessarily in a combative sense, but in a "we stick together" and an economic (perhaps competative) sense. If you do these two things, you'll do well, and weather just about any storm.
There are other obvious guidelines, like not tearing each other down to your friends (even joking about the ball-and-chain will propogate memes that undermine what you have, so don't do it), not engaging in activity that can result in relationship-destroying behavior that you'll regret--like drunken "boy's nights out" in nightclubs or pick-up joints, or my personal favorite: these idiotic bachelor parties/stag dos that people go on right before they tie the knot (talk about laying the groundwork for a divorce before you're even married)... but these are all common sense things that are directly derived from the two basic principles above: be absolutely honest with each other even when (or more precisely, especially when) it is difficult, and stick together as a team against the inevitable external pressures that the rest of the world will exert (in whatever form it takes, be it economic, cultural, external tempation, vicious inlaws, jealous exes, or whatever).
But isn't violating a "business model" a seriouser threat to our homeland security?
"Credit Fraud? My God, that's worse than murder!"
--A line from Max Headroom, a television series about an uploaded personality and his human counterpart that aired in the early 1980s.
What was once hilarious spoof is now reality. The show should be required viewing for anyone living in the developed world of the 21st century.
Other great lines include "I know, let's fire someone" and "Security Systems. In your home, in your place of work, wherever you go, there we are." I used to look forward to science fiction becoming reality--pity our culture seems to have only opted for the dystopian visions becoming reality.
It's always seemed to me that the major hole in the Fermi paradox is the assumption that technologically advanced alien civilizations would be emitting signals we would recognize.
Absolutely right!
I've argued this for years...given exponential progress, the period of time an alien civilization would even be recognizable yet detectable at a distance can probably be measured in decades, centuries at the outside. It's possible to imagine all kinds of Ascendance Scenarios where a species transcends its biological (and perhaps physical) form altogether, whether it's becoming digital life living in the Virtual, transcendent life encoding itself into the basic fabric of space-time (and thereby perhaps doing an end run around the "death by entropy/expansions/big crunch" apacolypse...or not, if that space-time is smacked by the incoming brane of another universe on a collision course, but I digress...), or--arguably most likely--some form we'd have as much difficulty imagining as the victorians would our notion of digital life.
This galaxy alone could be teaming with life. If a civilization progresses from the industrial revolution to transcendence in, say, 400 Earth years on average (and from their first radio broadcast to transcendence in, say, 200 years), there could be many thousands of cultures out there right now, and over the course of the past 13 or so billion years, many millions in this galaxy alone, and none of them would ever be detectable by us during this phase of our existence. Indeed, few if any would ever meet one another during this phase of their existence... perhaps as you surmise they might meet in a common post-transcendent medium, or perhaps not (there may be many more options for transcending this universe than there are species to transcend, making it very unlikely that any two civilizations would ever meet or recognize each other at any point during their evolution). Who knows? What we do know is there are plenty of ways for civilizations to thrive, and be commonplace, without them ever being able to detect, much less encounter, one another.
Now the (few & relatively minor) downsides. I cannot comment on their Linux driver support. We use Windows Seagull drivers to host ours
Translation: I completely ignored your question and simply expounded about something I like with no relevance at all to your inquiry regarding good solutions for Linux. But don't let that get in the way of me influencing your decision, despite tossing my two cents worth in about something I'm admittadly unqualified to comment on.
Maybe I should be more patient with this sort of nonsense, but I just got out of a two hour meeting that could have been concluded in 15 minutes were it not for some bozo engaging in exactly this kind of "I have no idea about the topic at hand but I know a fair amount about, and have strong opinions on, this other topic that has no relevance to what we're trying to accomplish here, so allow me to expound on that until your ears go numb or your brains melt, whichever comes first."
This is the first time I've seriously begun to question whether or not the global warming studies are in fact legitimate. If they won't allow free access to the data, so others can verify results or run it through alternative (or more refined) climate models, then the very obvious question becomes "why?"
What exactly is it they so keen on hiding that they'll remove all source citations from their publicatons?
NOTE: I am not about to buy into the fossile-fuel-funded arguments that global warming "isn't real"...it's very real, as anyone living in the northern lattitudes can trivially see. Even in London it's obvious that insects and plantlife that never used to thrive this far north now do...but anectdotal evidence, even as widespread and pervasive as this, is no substitute for rigorous scientific study, and I repeat the question: what the hell is it these people are trying to hide? There's no excuse for keeping data that is so fundamental to scientific inquiry, and has such a profound effects on public policy, secret.
Actually, I quite like the cure. It would be an end to patents once and for all, which given their chilling effect on innovation across just about every field (don't believe me? Look up what happened to aviation in the United States before and after the US government nationalized the Wright Brothers' patents on flight) would be a very good thing.
What killed apple during the 'clone wars' was that their products were inferior and more expensive than the cloners.
That really wasn't the case. Apples were actually better hardware than the clones (remember CGA?). So was Atari, among others. What allowed the PC clone market to take off was exactly that...it was a market of multiple vendors competing, so while the technology was inferior, it was also much cheaper, and much more open for new products to appear at sensible price points (such as, initially, monochrome graphics capable cards to replace monochrome text-only video output, then CGA which, while crap, was cheap, and so on). Eventually the hardware outpaced Apple's offerings, but Apple had already lost their market dominance at that point.
It was percieved openness and competition (and the affordability that resulted) of the IBM PC clone market, that knocked Apple out of its dominant position, not any kind of hardware superiority.
In other words, Apple is the new Microsoft. I am sure this will be moded down very soon, but since the time Apple has hit jackpot with ipod/iphone, they have shown their true colors.
I've said it for years: Steve Jobs/Apple are Bill Gates/Microsoft wannabes. Before their marketshare fell in the 1990s Apple had been very monopolistic in their practices...sueing and putting clone makers out of business, deciding whose software was "good enough" to run on their platform (sometimes disallowing stuff simply because it competed with, and was better, than Apple's offerings), etc. It is because of those behaviors that Microsoft rose to prominance in the early days, on the back of IBM clone makers, because the Intel platform was perceived to be more open (and it was...until Microsoft established its monopoly. That said, it remains more open on the hardware side).
I like Apple's products. I go so far as to recommend Apple to friends and family who are not technically savvy enough or interested in running Linux, but that said, make no mistake: the moment Apple feels it has market dominance, it's behavior is likely to be very reminiscent of the monopolistic practices of Microsoft, and before them IBM. Perhaps that moment has arrived.
As anathema as it is to Apple fanbois, iPhone addicts, and those who like to wear cynicism as a ficade in a futule effort to look worldly and "wise", it has to be said: once again, Richard Stallman has been vindicated. If you really want freedom in the digital age, be it freedom to innovate, freedom to use, freedom to create, or (apparently in this case, for the past several months) freedom to speak and discuss technical details of interoperability without fear of economic or legal reprisal, you'd better be using a free and open platform. Alas, most people aren't too concerned about that...until something like this happens to them (or something a little less draconian, like...oops, your financial data is no longer accessible and the software you need to access it doesn't run on a current os, and is no longer available for purchase. Then suddenly gnu cash looks pretty appealing, and voila! you have another advocate of free software. You'd be surprised how many in the business world, on the business rather than technical side of things, are starting to adopt that attitude.)
Hmm, this is interesting. The more cynical part of me wonders why, and can't help but recall the protections against patent litigation built into GPLv3, and notably missing from GPLv2... Makes me wonder if that old adage "Beware of Greeks bearing gifts" isn't somewhat apropos the 21st century (with some modified verbiage): "Beware patent bearing monopolists offering non-GPLv3-ed code..."
Slashdot Mirror
Customers: I've paid my insurance premiums all my life. Now that I've had this terrible accident I need you to cover some modest expenses required for me to maintain the semblence of the life I once had.
Insurers: We thank you for your custom. Your call is important to us. However, you fail to understand even the most basic aspects of our business model. We're here to fuck you, not help you. Coverage denied. Thank you for playing.
(Applicable to most forms of health-related insurance it seems)
In the context of things like this, it amazes me (as an American, no less) that the US still finds itself embroiled in the health-care debate the rest of the industrialized world successfully resolved more than 60 years ago (in some places, as long as 80-90 years ago). Even with neanderthals like the Republicans around, you'd have thought the moderate and progressive populations of the country would have dragged that country out of the stone age by now ... but I digress.
Did ANYONE even read the patent? I'm looking at the patent now, and while it's not rocket science, it's nowhere near as simple as "associating a piece of data with multiple categories". In fact, that quote is from the article, not the patent.
It's a software patent, and therfor, to all of us not living in the United States, laughable.
Of course it could get just so confusing at one point that we just decide to ignore everything that is going around us.
Or we upgrade our intelligence so that we have no trouble understanding what is going on and can keep up with it. Perhaps we think faster, perhaps we modify ourselves and become mechanized beings, or software, or (in grand Star Trek tradition) "beings of energy" who perceive an microsecond as an epoch, and still fine a pace of change you and I would find incomprehensibly fast to be in fact rather sedate. ("Beings of energy" is a bit tongue in cheeck, but I suppose you never know.)
Is it about how singularity can't happen because it is naturally limiting itself? Like growth of anything is limited by resources, and will end in a balance? And like the effects of nearing singularity will deprive one of the resource to be able to do things, resulting in the same balance? :)
A singularity implies discontinuity, a fundamental breakdown of cause and predictable effect. I argue in my novel "Autonomy" that there is no such thing as a singularity as such, just a technological horozion beyond which we cannot currently see. Arthur C. Clark defined that boundary, or horizon, perfectly: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." That horizon precisely defines what we can imagine, but not comprehend the workings of. Everything this side of that boundary defines the set of things we can both imagine and understand, everything on the far side the set of things we can neither imagine nor understand. The point being that the set of things we can both imagine and understand grows as we approach the horizon, revealing new things we can imagine but not (yet) understand, and eventually revealing things that are imaginable but previously were not.[1]
Put more simply: as our ancesters could not see the Internet, or virtual reality, or the concept of living software, beyond their horizon, and as their ancesters could not imagine spaceflight, or the world as a globe, or a sky that didn't have a big bearded scary fairy in it throwing down thunderbolds should they ever take his name in vain, and so on.
That doesn't rule out exponential progress, or an event that from our limited point of view will look like a singularity. It's entirely possible that we could wake up one day with the world incomprehensively changed because another group crossed a threshold and now lives life at an accelerated and accelerating rate, and have left us in their dust. But that still isn't a discontinuity ... that group will still perceive change and progress as a gradual, continuous series of steps and advancements, not some explosive, unpredictable discontinuity.
Whether something looks like a singularity or just a world where change happens a little more quickly than it used to (sound familiar?) will depend largely on one's perspective, and which side of the "digital" (or "quantum comptuing" or whatever) divide one stands on when those thresholds are crossed. If they ever are.
[1]It is of course assumed that understanding requires the ability to imagine, so the fourth set (those things we can understand but not imagine) is, logically, empty.
I'm just going to read books for now on. They're much cheaper and the stories aren't ruined by screenplay writers.
Dateline 2020, United Corproate States of America(tm)
It has come to the attention of your(tm) media(tm) elite(tm) that books do not offer a sufficient rate of return per consumer-hour to justify permitting their continued use. As is well known, consumer time is a precious commodity underpinning much of our(tm) service(tm) industry(tm), the squandering of which does untold(tm) economic(tm) damage(tm) and is thus punishable by ecomonic incentive(tm) (read: life-crippling fines), betterment through education(tm) (prison), or both.
Consider: The current cost for watching a 2 hour reality TV episode consisting of 12 minutes RIAA approved and licensed music, 42 minutes inane chatter from the judges (inclusive 54 minutes of subliminal product placement), and 66 minutes of formally viewed commercials is $399,999.99 (EUR 39.95, £399.00) per consumer-viewer per download. That equates to approximately $200,000 (EUR 20, £200) of revinue generation per viewer per hour supporting Your(tm) Industry(tm).
In contrast, the average book costs less than a meal out, a scant $99,950.00 (EUR 9.99, £99.95) on average. BUT, the average reader takes approximately 10 hours to read an average length book, resulting in a revinue stream of only $9,999.50 per hour (that's less than EUR 0.99, or about £10, per consumer-hour). Clearly, allowing consumers to entertain themselves for so little per hour is unacceptable. Worse, they can lend books to one another, or re-read them, reducing Your(tm) Industry(tm)'s rate of return per consumer-hour even further.
Clearly this cannot be permitted. You have three days to your local X-Factor(tm) or Earth's Got Talent(tm) screening centre with every copy of every book that is thieving your eyes from Our Content(tm), to be presented for immediate destruction, or face prosecution under the Microsoft(tm) Disney(tm) Time-Warner(tm) Media(tm) Act(tm) (copyright (c) 2010 US Government, all reproduction forbidden) for unlawful squandering consumer-hours (doing what you want instead of watching what we require).
And while you're visiting your local screening centre, be sure to take advantage of our newest offer to humiliate you publicly, at no cost to ourselves, as you try pathetically to have your image replicated on millions of our DRM protected, authorized and officially sanctioned media outlets.
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Seriously, don't bother with the US Market. Europe is currently software-patent free, as is China and much of the oil-rich middle east. Other markets abound as well.
If you form an LLP or LLC as others suggested, you might consider incorporating in a European company and selling your product in markets where software patents do not exist.
In addition, as others have mentioned you should file an amicus brief for the Supreme court opposing software patents, write a letter (or better yet, lobby) your local representative to repeal software patents, and patent a few ideas of your own to use against anyone who comes after you.
As for open sourcing being a threat, that is probably the new meme Microsoft shills will begin spreading to try and undermine the underpinnings of the free software social contract ("share and share alike"), but it is highly debatable whether or not it actually increases risk. Microsoft didn't exactly open source word, or any of the numerous other products they sell that have been found to violate third party patents, so source code availability or secrecy doesn't appear to have any effect on your exposure to litigation one way or the other. But it makes a good soundbite, one I'm sure proprietary software vendors and monopolists are drooling over.
If you do open source your product, GPL v. 3 may offer you some of the litigation protection you need. IBM, Sun, and others have certainly felt it does ... your situation is different of course, and nothing will give you perfect protection from American litigiousness except to stay out of markets where software patents are considered valid. Luckilly that means you can sell your product in most of the world, and with America's economic decline and the ongoing, chronic weakness of the dollar, you might find yourself earning quite a bit more by casting your net further afield.
Best of luck, whatever you decide to do.
And your qualificatione for shaking your head are what?
Presumably, having a mind capable of critical thought. Something you would be advised to learn. You are engaging in both the classic logical fallacy of "Appeal to Authority" (described here) and a tired ad homonem attack (you imply the grandparent poster watches star trek, which you implicitly indicate makes any thought they have on the subject meaningless. Both assumptions are themselves meaningless and irreleveant in the context of this discussion, but serve for you to classify the grandparent poster as a member of a group you view inherently as inferior to your rather arrogant self, which you then use as grounds to denigrate and dismiss their argument out of hand, without a shred of supporting logic to justify your stance).
The fact of the matter is that no one, inside of NASA or out, is an "authority" on extra-terrestrial life. No one has ever, as far as we know, detected, much less observed extra-terrestrial life. Everything we know, or think we know, is based purely on supposition and guesswork. In the case of NASA (and the view your post suggests you hold), the supposition that life elsewhere in the universe must (or is even likely to) mimic life on Earth.
Assuming extra-terrestrial life will be like Earth-based life is no more defensible, rational, or likely to be correct than assuming extra-terrestrial life will be nothing like Earth-based life. Assuming water must be intrinsic to life everywhere because we've observed it on one tiny, insignificant planet orbiting an unremarkable star in the outskirts of an equally unremarkable galaxy amounts to drawing statistical conclusions from a sample base with N=1, which is no better, or more intellectually rigorous, than just making random shit up.
The grandparent is right to shake his or her head. Any critically-thinking person would be inclined to do the same when confronted with such broad assumptions about something no one knows anything about, built upon such flimsy evidence.
All life in the universe may require water. Or not. Flip a coin. Based on the data we currently have, you are as likely to be right as any self-appointed "expert" in exobiology.
(Hell, water-based life might be the exception, not the rule. Just because it's us doesn't make it average or representative of the rest of the cosmos. Until we actually find some extra-terrestrial life, we can't even begin to guess the truth on this one way or another).
The Internet is improving everyday as better routers, faster servers, new better cables/antennas are deployed, the last mile connection options are also multiplying. IPv6 is put on hold as there is no real need for it at the moment.
IPv6 is NOT on hold. Most of Asia are already using IPv6. If you use Apple there's a good chance you're using IPv6 without even realising it. The EU is mandating moves to IPv6 in the coming years, and I imagine most countries are doing something similar.
The US may have its head in the sand, but that doesn't mean everyone else does.
Under IPv6 will I still be able to block posting access to my Japanese discussion site from African/Russian 419 scammers? I have a nice list of IP addresses that are automatically sent an empty http response when they try to become members. I used to give them a chance but every single one turned out to be a scammer so now I just block whole regions outside of Japan. (And luckily most aren't smart enough to bother with a proxy.) Will I still be able to do this under IPv6?
Yes, you'll just need to know their IPv6 addresses/adress-ranges and block those.
There's no money in enforcing a patent against Open Office, so we won't sue you.
Particularly when "you" (ODF) in fact don't violate our patent, and have nothing in your standard that is even analogous to our patent.
Should you start making a lot of money, we'll get back to you with our updated policy.
Good luck with that. See above.
Except, according to the Oxford dictionary, realize is more correct (because of its Greek origins). The use of -ise instead of -ize is a recent British innovation (recent in the sense of the last century or so) ... mainly so people don't misspell analyse the way we do (which is not of Greek origin). -ize is one of the rare cases where the North American spelling is actually closer to traditional, "correct" English than the UK -ise ... in stark contrast to almost every other difference between the two ("tire" vs. "tyre", "color" vs. "colour", "jewelry" vs. "jewellery") where the UK spelling is more correct and often more nuanced.
Not that it matters ... I can't spell on either side of the pond.
I'm confused... how can 2012 be attributed to Christian myth even by the most loose of interpretations?
It isn't. It's attributed to Mayan myth (and its a fundamental change in the world, not necessarily the end of the world). But you get some confused people who think that's "another sign" of the last days, and that Jesus/the Apacalypse/what have you is coming then.
Totally illogical, not to mention heretical by their own belief system, but that doesn't seem to slow them down any.
If you believe your local religious nutball, it will be sooner than that. 2012 (for those confused in their religiosity, mixing Mayan and Christian myth), 2 years (if you're one of those bozos who believe the Iranian president is the new Mahadi), by the end of this year (if you believe the wingnuts who think Obama is the anti-christ and national healthcare the end of civilization), or several times in the past decade (if you're one to jump into your bunker everytime the Jehovah's Witnesses call the end of the world).
Get your Apacalypse here! Step right up! One to a customer! Step right up!
Back in the day, you could get a knighthood for attempting to sack Jerusalem in the name of Christianity -- presumably including killing people. If we're down to online trolling, that's a good thing.
Alas, we're not just down to trolling (and that's been going on, in one form or another, since the Inquisition, probably earlier). Killing people over petty religious differences about what the fairy in the sky wants us to do, or how we're supposed to abase ourselves before him, or mistreat our wives and daughters, or whatever is very much alive and well. If you're a medical doctor specializing in women's medicine and willing to provide an abortion, your life as as good as foreit in large swathes of the United States. Of course, you'll have trouble finding such a physician in most of the US, because they've been terrorized out of their clinics, their homes, their communties, and often their careers.
Unruly mobs are already being stirred up to shout down and intimidate our elected officials for daring to consider something most of the industrialized world already has and relies on with great (albeit certainly not perfect) success: national healthcare.
At least one news anchor on Fox has publicly suggested killing the speaker of the house with poison (under the guise of humor, but in a way bound to incite the nutjobs that hang off Fox News' every word).
As for sacking a city on the basis of religion, have you taken a look at Bagdad lately, or forgotten how our then-president Bush claimed to be on a "crusade" and that he spoke with God prior to ordering the invasion.
I'm not so sure things have gotten any better. So far the US has been insulated from the consiquences of our leaders' actions (9/11 notwithstanding), but that is unlikely to continue in even the medium, and certainly not in the long run. And certainly, from the view of much of the rest of the world, it's highly debatable whether the US' actions are any better than those of any other maurading, plundering nation.
Try listing all the countries we've either invaded or bombed over the least twenty-five years or so. You'll find the list surprisingly long (and you'll notice this is all POST Vietnam/Cambodia/Laos, so it hardly includes our most dramatic actions of the last half century). It's profoundly depressing to discover what an out of control bully we've become. But hey, we can keep telling ourselves we're "the best in the world!" and make sure not to listen to the rest of the planet that knows better. Of course, that means we won't be able to benefit from the experiences of others (like the many nations with working and thriving national healthcare systems), but that's a small price to pay for "being the best."
You can microwave it. The RFID antenna collects to much power and fries the circuit. Should take a second or two.
While an inoperative RFID may not invalidate your passport, I suspect a big honking scorch mark in the middle of the thing just might.
I can only wonder if there have been other deaths in this program that did not make the news.
Probably. What I can't believe is that no one seems to be questioning the assumptions of this nonsense (or if they are, the media in its usual incompetent or complicit way is ignorning it): that internet addiction even exists, period.
The very concept is farcical. Like "television addiction", there may be people whose lifestyles are too sedentary, whose lives center more on the couch or computer than most of us are comfortable with, but come on! As Ricky Gervais said when discussing obeisity: "this is not a disease". It's a lifestyle choice, and one that certainly does not deserve incarceration or treatment of any kind, much less lethal abuse!
This whole thing reminds me of the quacks using electroshock therepy to "cure" homosexuality", as has been done in Utah and China in the 1990s and perhaps even more recently. Bigotry dressed up as outreach treatment, only this time its Geeks instead of Gays.
What's next...curing an unruly kid of their addiction to oxygen by putting a pillow over their face and making them go "cold turkey"?
Infinitely absurd and moronic, all of it.
Intelligent people do not need the kind of rubberstamp advice you find in self-help books. As long you remain honest, open and calm, you are very well off. Not doing stupid thing like playing WoW (ATTN! compare to watching football with you buddies and sipping beer) through your anniversary helps, too.
I can't second this enough. In the 4.5 years I've been married, the ONLY time we ever ran into any real trouble was when I tried to "manage" information. The excuse you'll typically tell yourself if tempted to do this is that it's to "spare her feelings", "you couldn't cope with it then", or "spare us an unnecessary fight". Those are excuses...the real reason is you don't want to deal with her reaction and the fallout. Don't give in to that temptation. Be honest, and demand honesty from your partner. That, and a good dose of compatabiltiy and love, will take you through just about anything).
The other underlying principle I'd add is: take the attitude that you're a team, and its you against the world--not necessarily in a combative sense, but in a "we stick together" and an economic (perhaps competative) sense. If you do these two things, you'll do well, and weather just about any storm.
There are other obvious guidelines, like not tearing each other down to your friends (even joking about the ball-and-chain will propogate memes that undermine what you have, so don't do it), not engaging in activity that can result in relationship-destroying behavior that you'll regret--like drunken "boy's nights out" in nightclubs or pick-up joints, or my personal favorite: these idiotic bachelor parties/stag dos that people go on right before they tie the knot (talk about laying the groundwork for a divorce before you're even married) ... but these are all common sense things that are directly derived from the two basic principles above: be absolutely honest with each other even when (or more precisely, especially when) it is difficult, and stick together as a team against the inevitable external pressures that the rest of the world will exert (in whatever form it takes, be it economic, cultural, external tempation, vicious inlaws, jealous exes, or whatever).
But isn't violating a "business model" a seriouser threat to our homeland security?
"Credit Fraud? My God, that's worse than murder!"
--A line from Max Headroom, a television series about an uploaded personality and his human counterpart that aired in the early 1980s.
What was once hilarious spoof is now reality. The show should be required viewing for anyone living in the developed world of the 21st century.
Other great lines include "I know, let's fire someone" and "Security Systems. In your home, in your place of work, wherever you go, there we are." I used to look forward to science fiction becoming reality--pity our culture seems to have only opted for the dystopian visions becoming reality.
I still don't have my flying car.
It's always seemed to me that the major hole in the Fermi paradox is the assumption that technologically advanced alien civilizations would be emitting signals we would recognize.
Absolutely right!
I've argued this for years...given exponential progress, the period of time an alien civilization would even be recognizable yet detectable at a distance can probably be measured in decades, centuries at the outside. It's possible to imagine all kinds of Ascendance Scenarios where a species transcends its biological (and perhaps physical) form altogether, whether it's becoming digital life living in the Virtual, transcendent life encoding itself into the basic fabric of space-time (and thereby perhaps doing an end run around the "death by entropy/expansions/big crunch" apacolypse...or not, if that space-time is smacked by the incoming brane of another universe on a collision course, but I digress...), or--arguably most likely--some form we'd have as much difficulty imagining as the victorians would our notion of digital life.
This galaxy alone could be teaming with life. If a civilization progresses from the industrial revolution to transcendence in, say, 400 Earth years on average (and from their first radio broadcast to transcendence in, say, 200 years), there could be many thousands of cultures out there right now, and over the course of the past 13 or so billion years, many millions in this galaxy alone, and none of them would ever be detectable by us during this phase of our existence. Indeed, few if any would ever meet one another during this phase of their existence ... perhaps as you surmise they might meet in a common post-transcendent medium, or perhaps not (there may be many more options for transcending this universe than there are species to transcend, making it very unlikely that any two civilizations would ever meet or recognize each other at any point during their evolution). Who knows? What we do know is there are plenty of ways for civilizations to thrive, and be commonplace, without them ever being able to detect, much less encounter, one another.
Now the (few & relatively minor) downsides. I cannot comment on their Linux driver support. We use Windows Seagull drivers to host ours
Translation: I completely ignored your question and simply expounded about something I like with no relevance at all to your inquiry regarding good solutions for Linux. But don't let that get in the way of me influencing your decision, despite tossing my two cents worth in about something I'm admittadly unqualified to comment on.
Maybe I should be more patient with this sort of nonsense, but I just got out of a two hour meeting that could have been concluded in 15 minutes were it not for some bozo engaging in exactly this kind of "I have no idea about the topic at hand but I know a fair amount about, and have strong opinions on, this other topic that has no relevance to what we're trying to accomplish here, so allow me to expound on that until your ears go numb or your brains melt, whichever comes first."
This is the first time I've seriously begun to question whether or not the global warming studies are in fact legitimate. If they won't allow free access to the data, so others can verify results or run it through alternative (or more refined) climate models, then the very obvious question becomes "why?"
What exactly is it they so keen on hiding that they'll remove all source citations from their publicatons?
NOTE: I am not about to buy into the fossile-fuel-funded arguments that global warming "isn't real"...it's very real, as anyone living in the northern lattitudes can trivially see. Even in London it's obvious that insects and plantlife that never used to thrive this far north now do...but anectdotal evidence, even as widespread and pervasive as this, is no substitute for rigorous scientific study, and I repeat the question: what the hell is it these people are trying to hide? There's no excuse for keeping data that is so fundamental to scientific inquiry, and has such a profound effects on public policy, secret.
The disease is bad. Your cure is worse.
Actually, I quite like the cure. It would be an end to patents once and for all, which given their chilling effect on innovation across just about every field (don't believe me? Look up what happened to aviation in the United States before and after the US government nationalized the Wright Brothers' patents on flight) would be a very good thing.
What killed apple during the 'clone wars' was that their products were inferior and more expensive than the cloners.
That really wasn't the case. Apples were actually better hardware than the clones (remember CGA?). So was Atari, among others. What allowed the PC clone market to take off was exactly that...it was a market of multiple vendors competing, so while the technology was inferior, it was also much cheaper, and much more open for new products to appear at sensible price points (such as, initially, monochrome graphics capable cards to replace monochrome text-only video output, then CGA which, while crap, was cheap, and so on). Eventually the hardware outpaced Apple's offerings, but Apple had already lost their market dominance at that point.
It was percieved openness and competition (and the affordability that resulted) of the IBM PC clone market, that knocked Apple out of its dominant position, not any kind of hardware superiority.
In other words, Apple is the new Microsoft. I am sure this will be moded down very soon, but since the time Apple has hit jackpot with ipod/iphone, they have shown their true colors.
I've said it for years: Steve Jobs/Apple are Bill Gates/Microsoft wannabes. Before their marketshare fell in the 1990s Apple had been very monopolistic in their practices...sueing and putting clone makers out of business, deciding whose software was "good enough" to run on their platform (sometimes disallowing stuff simply because it competed with, and was better, than Apple's offerings), etc. It is because of those behaviors that Microsoft rose to prominance in the early days, on the back of IBM clone makers, because the Intel platform was perceived to be more open (and it was...until Microsoft established its monopoly. That said, it remains more open on the hardware side).
I like Apple's products. I go so far as to recommend Apple to friends and family who are not technically savvy enough or interested in running Linux, but that said, make no mistake: the moment Apple feels it has market dominance, it's behavior is likely to be very reminiscent of the monopolistic practices of Microsoft, and before them IBM. Perhaps that moment has arrived.
As anathema as it is to Apple fanbois, iPhone addicts, and those who like to wear cynicism as a ficade in a futule effort to look worldly and "wise", it has to be said: once again, Richard Stallman has been vindicated. If you really want freedom in the digital age, be it freedom to innovate, freedom to use, freedom to create, or (apparently in this case, for the past several months) freedom to speak and discuss technical details of interoperability without fear of economic or legal reprisal, you'd better be using a free and open platform. Alas, most people aren't too concerned about that...until something like this happens to them (or something a little less draconian, like...oops, your financial data is no longer accessible and the software you need to access it doesn't run on a current os, and is no longer available for purchase. Then suddenly gnu cash looks pretty appealing, and voila! you have another advocate of free software. You'd be surprised how many in the business world, on the business rather than technical side of things, are starting to adopt that attitude.)
Hmm, this is interesting. The more cynical part of me wonders why, and can't help but recall the protections against patent litigation built into GPLv3, and notably missing from GPLv2... Makes me wonder if that old adage "Beware of Greeks bearing gifts" isn't somewhat apropos the 21st century (with some modified verbiage): "Beware patent bearing monopolists offering non-GPLv3-ed code..."