Mmmm, I like it, but I suspect there may be scalability and robustness problems. As I understand it the island is about the size of a cubicle and its primary resource is rock. Now, if it was caffeinated rock I wouldn't have a problem...
Well I don't know the face of God, but I think I've glimpsed the whisker that says "cutting people's heart out is a bad idea". I haven't got all the answers morality-wise, but it doesn't mean they don't exist.
Moral relativism is an easy intellectual position to take because of it's extremity. It's a useful scientific position to take if you're an anthropologist. But as an moral system it ignores the vast common areas of morality shared across human cultures and it denies any moral sense.
The problem with arguments from these extremes is that they leave no room for moral progress. The Aztecs may have cut people's heart out in a critical ritualistic ceremony, but that doesn't mean that all morality is relativistic, just that it's a bad idea to tell an Aztec priest you need open-heart surgery.
Similarly just because chattel slavery was common in the ancient world doesn't mean it was ethically justified. Morality has, in some way, progressed. Apparently it hasn't progressed much past "don't cut people's heart out," but it's a start, anyway. The point is it's not a choice between a very strict set of moral rules and complete nihilism; there is a very useful grey area.
The UN is inherently one of the largest and slowest bureaucracies on the planet. There's a lot of talk of working on "Internet time". For an indication of "UN time", look at the Korean war, which until recently was technically still going, just in the middle of a 40 year ceasefire.
Not every country is a member of the UN. From memory Indonesia is not a member, and it's both one of the most populous nations and rapidly increasing it's uptake of technology.
What would they police? What real common ground is there between nations on the regulation of information and remote access to services? I don't think there's really anything that counts as an international "Internet crime" short of kiddie porn. And organisations and alliances already exist to deal with that at an international scale.
There's no reason such a scheme couldn't be added to the current Java scheme. The advantage of the scheme is that you can structure your own code without fear of name conflicts and without talking to anyone. This is entirely appropriate if you're writing code that for one reason or another is not likely to leave the organisation.
Mr Adams, You've been a commentator on the usefulness and usability of technology for a while now. What would you say is the worldwide most widely used, useless gizmo?
Or more interestingly, corporations like the East India Company, who not only had a mandate from the government but had their own armed forces which were also part of the British Army. More I think about the history of corporations more they seem to be outgrowths of the government; even Microsoft lives in the hollow of a giant tax break.
Assuming your labour has been the optimum way to achieve the task achieved it indicates how much effort another team would have to go to to duplicate your effort.
I went to a private school for three years at the end of high school after many years in the public school system. We dealt with this nonsense all the time. The school had a dress code that enforced conformity...
A short note on conformity... in my experience school uniform relieves conformity pressure in a high school environment. Teenagers are highly tribal and status sensitive. Clothing is one of the easiest way to display that status, especially on the basis of wealth. Uniform clothing removes one dimension for picking on people who are different.
The US is an extroverted society - it advertises and idolises public involvement, confession and celebration. This particular uneasiness with geeks seems to me to stem from this - a constant campaign against introverts.
For example, a recent study of "healing" among cancer suffers at the shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe showed that the rate of "healing" was somewhat lower than the rate of spontanious cancer remissions in the general population (including those who do not pray or do not believe in God).
.. well, the Lord, being a merciful God, wants to give those pesky atheists some more time to repent...
I suspect that attempting to find proof for the existence of God misses the point somewhere; there are serious problems with falsifiability. I propose to use the Adams Babel Fish defence:)
No matter how many zeroes we may have on the end of our paychecks, we are still working class.
Not middle class (which doesn't really exist outside of tax forms), not ruling class, not even managerial class, but working class.
How genuine. How moving. What brilliant neo-Marxist rhetoric. What a wank.
Pretty much everyone in the western world with a place to live is middle class. This is particularly true in the welfare and semi-welfare states, but even in the US anyone above the minimum wage is middle-class. The relevant credentials are education and wealth. Because most everyone in the first world is wealthier than ever before in the history of the world in real terms, when you include such things as access to clean air and water.
What the first world has done is effectively export the working class to the developing world. Anyone with a university degree claiming to be working class is making a sick joke.
In the interest of full disclosure, we must mention that Jeremy is now employed by VA Linux.
Good work/.... it may be full of chaos, rumour and reposts, but it's critical for independence that disclosure is maintained. It also protects your back from accusations of impropriety.
Sure they should post to Andover, but at the same time they do so they should note Andover owns/. Most people know this already, but it's important for transparency. For example The Australian always refers to the Murdoch empire as "News Corporation (publishers of this newspaper)./. should say "This article on Andover (owners of/.)" Same with VA.
When there is no longer a viable means of enforcing a intellectual property right, it is time to let it go.
Taken further: when there is no longer a viable means of enforcing a property right, it is time to let it go. Much as we don't prosecute over breathing other people's air, neither should we pursue the absorption of ideas.
Acknowledgement of high-quality air is a different matter...
Newbie question: I get the impression that most games write their own protocols on top of TCP/IP for performance reasons. If that's the case, can you get Linux ports of Windows games to talk to their Win counterparts? If not, how wacky a proposition is it?
I also have to note that I was very pleasantly surprised with the tone of article. It was written with a clean, readable style far removed from corporate press-release gobbledygook.
This indicates that Jeff and his copywriters understand their target audience, and that someone there is a quite able politician. This should be kept in mind, for good or ill.
Talking without any legal or legislative experience, you could introduce a feedback mechanism. I don't think the patent office is going to be staffed by competent workers during times of high technological change because those workers are in very high demand. The patent office won't pay that much.
Patents were historically introduced to encourage inventors to share their works rather than hide them in the back shed, and so promote the works of innovation and a technological society. As the pace of technology increases, this becomes less important, and in fact allows organisations to strangle access to particular technologies, stifling innovation. The length of patents should be modified accordingly and automatically.
I don't see the people at the patent office getting a clue about innovation anytime soon. The incremental stripping away and smoothing of features is very much a part of technological improvement. Also, massive innovations are sometimes recognised only in retrospect. Determining the difference between genuine innovation and technological "smoothing" leaves the patent office open to all sorts of problems with inconsistency.
Length of patents could be determined by some constant divided by the number of patents issued to all organisations over the previous year (not from Jan, from the date of submission). Alternatively some more sophisticated exponential based formula could be used. This would give a boost to innovators in slow periods and the acceptance of lots of spurious patents would quite appreciably devalue the value of other patents submitted.
It kind of "floats" patent duration like currencies are floated. Maybe you could extend the concept and have some kind of patent market, I'm not sure. I'm not sure whether you'd want it.
Slashdot Mirror
Mmmm, I like it, but I suspect there may be scalability and robustness problems. As I understand it the island is about the size of a cubicle and its primary resource is rock. Now, if it was caffeinated rock I wouldn't have a problem ...
Moral relativism is an easy intellectual position to take because of it's extremity. It's a useful scientific position to take if you're an anthropologist. But as an moral system it ignores the vast common areas of morality shared across human cultures and it denies any moral sense.
Similarly just because chattel slavery was common in the ancient world doesn't mean it was ethically justified. Morality has, in some way, progressed. Apparently it hasn't progressed much past "don't cut people's heart out," but it's a start, anyway. The point is it's not a choice between a very strict set of moral rules and complete nihilism; there is a very useful grey area.
If only she had been wearing her Microsoft Kerberoos, this could have been prevented, Boy Wonder.
The UN is inherently one of the largest and slowest bureaucracies on the planet. There's a lot of talk of working on "Internet time". For an indication of "UN time", look at the Korean war, which until recently was technically still going, just in the middle of a 40 year ceasefire.
Not every country is a member of the UN. From memory Indonesia is not a member, and it's both one of the most populous nations and rapidly increasing it's uptake of technology.
What would they police? What real common ground is there between nations on the regulation of information and remote access to services? I don't think there's really anything that counts as an international "Internet crime" short of kiddie porn. And organisations and alliances already exist to deal with that at an international scale.
There's no reason such a scheme couldn't be added to the current Java scheme. The advantage of the scheme is that you can structure your own code without fear of name conflicts and without talking to anyone. This is entirely appropriate if you're writing code that for one reason or another is not likely to leave the organisation.
Cmdr Taco.
The question, I suppose, is what you could use for a keel. I wonder if anything like this would be useful .... it seems mainly intra-solar system.
Trolls for $0.99! Everything must go!
Mr Adams,
You've been a commentator on the usefulness and usability of technology for a while now. What would you say is the worldwide most widely used, useless gizmo?
Can Marvin beat than Superman? Is Superman faster than the Flash?
A Suffusion of Yellow.
Or more interestingly, corporations like the East India Company, who not only had a mandate from the government but had their own armed forces which were also part of the British Army. More I think about the history of corporations more they seem to be outgrowths of the government; even Microsoft lives in the hollow of a giant tax break.
Assuming your labour has been the optimum way to achieve the task achieved it indicates how much effort another team would have to go to to duplicate your effort.
A short note on conformity ... in my experience school uniform relieves conformity pressure in a high school environment. Teenagers are highly tribal and status sensitive. Clothing is one of the easiest way to display that status, especially on the basis of wealth. Uniform clothing removes one dimension for picking on people who are different.
The US is an extroverted society - it advertises and idolises public involvement, confession and celebration. This particular uneasiness with geeks seems to me to stem from this - a constant campaign against introverts.
I suspect that attempting to find proof for the existence of God misses the point somewhere; there are serious problems with falsifiability. I propose to use the Adams Babel Fish defence :)
You do realise that 24*7*365 is seven years straight uptime :) ...
Not middle class (which doesn't really exist outside of tax forms), not ruling class, not even managerial class, but working class.
How genuine. How moving. What brilliant neo-Marxist rhetoric. What a wank.
Pretty much everyone in the western world with a place to live is middle class. This is particularly true in the welfare and semi-welfare states, but even in the US anyone above the minimum wage is middle-class. The relevant credentials are education and wealth. Because most everyone in the first world is wealthier than ever before in the history of the world in real terms, when you include such things as access to clean air and water.
What the first world has done is effectively export the working class to the developing world. Anyone with a university degree claiming to be working class is making a sick joke.
Good work /. ... it may be full of chaos, rumour and reposts, but it's critical for independence that disclosure is maintained. It also protects your back from accusations of impropriety.
Sure they should post to Andover, but at the same time they do so they should note Andover owns /. Most people know this already, but it's important for transparency. For example The Australian always refers to the Murdoch empire as "News Corporation (publishers of this newspaper). /. should say "This article on Andover (owners of /.)" Same with VA.
Taken further: when there is no longer a viable means of enforcing a property right, it is time to let it go. Much as we don't prosecute over breathing other people's air, neither should we pursue the absorption of ideas.
Acknowledgement of high-quality air is a different matter ...
Newbie question: I get the impression that most games write their own protocols on top of TCP/IP for performance reasons. If that's the case, can you get Linux ports of Windows games to talk to their Win counterparts? If not, how wacky a proposition is it?
This indicates that Jeff and his copywriters understand their target audience, and that someone there is a quite able politician. This should be kept in mind, for good or ill.
Patents were historically introduced to encourage inventors to share their works rather than hide them in the back shed, and so promote the works of innovation and a technological society. As the pace of technology increases, this becomes less important, and in fact allows organisations to strangle access to particular technologies, stifling innovation. The length of patents should be modified accordingly and automatically.
I don't see the people at the patent office getting a clue about innovation anytime soon. The incremental stripping away and smoothing of features is very much a part of technological improvement. Also, massive innovations are sometimes recognised only in retrospect. Determining the difference between genuine innovation and technological "smoothing" leaves the patent office open to all sorts of problems with inconsistency.
Length of patents could be determined by some constant divided by the number of patents issued to all organisations over the previous year (not from Jan, from the date of submission). Alternatively some more sophisticated exponential based formula could be used. This would give a boost to innovators in slow periods and the acceptance of lots of spurious patents would quite appreciably devalue the value of other patents submitted.
It kind of "floats" patent duration like currencies are floated. Maybe you could extend the concept and have some kind of patent market, I'm not sure. I'm not sure whether you'd want it.
Hmm, depends how obscure the reference is ... could be a cyborg reference to Angus Thermopyle in the Gap series by Stephen Donalson ...