Yes he does actually. If we place all of our attention on speed we are not going to be able to catch the little kid running out to get their ball.
Good driving and proper speed is something learned. It also involves looking at the road and assessing the situation. A good driver will not need to look at the speedo to know their speed is safe or not in general. The speedo is there to check and provide a reference when time permits.
I will tell you this. If I turn the corner and see a bunch of kids playing, I slow down. How much? Slow enough that I know I could stop if I need to. Why? Because the kids need to be able to be kids.
Do I take time to look at the speedo. No. Why? Because I am keeping an eye on the kids.
The human condition is one of distraction if you look at it in this way. You pretend you are a machine. Living in that fallacy is more harmful than someone who is awake, aware and trying hard to do the right thing.
After thinking about your points, I am not quite sure its either because it applies to people in an interesting way. If one can do the task then they get to do it by default. The government does not to get to say you cannot drive unless they have a good reason. For me this issue lies somewhere in between at the moment...
You called my view sick. I do not hold the view that whatever the state does is wrong and should be opposed. My view is that the state will abuse its position unless there are checks and balances on its power to govern. We need the state to govern, but we also need to insure said government is in our collective best interests, not those who currently hold the position of authority. Power corrupts, our founding fathers knew this, it's why our nation is structured the way it is.
We get to question our government because its healthy and to our benefit to do so. The state of California is questioning right now. The issue is being discussed and will be resolved in court where it should be.
Let me put forth a simple idea: Nobody has absolute control of anything. Why? Because we are not capable of such a thing for a lot of reasons the primary one being our very nature. We are not built like machines, we are messy, slow, not precise. Truth is, we should not be driving as a race if we need absolute control in order to do so.
In short, we all make mistakes. Breaking a law requires two basic components:
1. A guilty act.
2. A guilty mind.
The machine can easily detect the guilty act, but cannot assess the guilty mind. That is why we need warm bodies to clarify and add understanding to the situation. That is why we need to be judged by our peers and not a machine.
You say that these machines will remove bad drivers from the road making the roadway safer for the remaining good drivers. Ok in concept, but flawed in execution.
Everyone makes mistakes. Some of us make more than others, but we all do it. Have you ever been on a busy road? What is the safest way to travel?
- Maintain a speed average to the traffic. If people are moving a bit under the limit, do that, if they are all moving a bit over, do that as well.
- Maintain a defensive position while planning for troublesome situations. This means taking your eyes off the speedo and putting them on the other drivers, the road and evaluating, as often as you can, the potential decisions you could have to make.
The exact speed of the cars has very little to do with this. People in general will drive the safe speed because, in general, they have the best of intentions while driving.
Again, a machine will not be able to assess this situation. What we are looking for are the problem drivers. Ones who are either going too slow, not paying attention (hard to get these), or too fast, or in poor positions.
Warm bodies do this very well.
You say that being judged by your peers does not apply to a privlige. I disagree when the ability to make use of said privilige has a serious impact on your ability to exercise your other rights. That is exactly why our peers must be involved and not a machine.
This view has prevailed in many courts BTW. In my state, automated machines must be watched by officers who then must interpet the data they collect and act accordingly. Peers indeed.
You maintain a high rate of speed is dangerous and I agree. The primary cause of death in the USA is through trauma. The primary cause of trauma is human error with speed being a primary contributing factor as well.
Having said that, the people who engineer our roads have assessed these factors. In most states, the speed limits are set in a way that accounts for all of these factors while allowing for some error. (On both sides, engineering and drivers.)
It has also been shown that poorly set speed limits contribute to more deaths. (being too high or too low does not matter) For a given roadw
We have the right to travel freely. Driving is a form of transportation. Is it realistic to say that someone does not need to drive in society today in general? For a large percentage of us, driving is something we need to be able to do.
Not being able to drive is a pretty serious limit on ones freedom to travel.
If driving is indeed a right, by nature, why then do we license it? Safety. Those that do drive have a reasonable expectation of safe roads and qualified drivers. Driving is a right that can be lost if exercised irresponsibly just as many other rights can be.
Let me put it this way. If someone demonstrates they are qualified to drive, is there a reason why they should not get a license? Do they have any expectation such denial will occur? Of course not because everyone has a right to drive provided they do not abuse other people rights while exercising theirs. (Hitting someone with your car infringes on their right to live and prosper for example.)
We deny someone their ability to drive as punishment for poor execution, not because we can. Same for other rights. You might lose your right to move freely if you use that right to kill someone for example. 'nuff said about that, either we agree or not, but I wanted to have the other view present on this thread.
I agree with you regarding driving being a public act, however that does not, in itself, support your idea that law enforcement should be able to access this device at a distance. I think it does support the traffic accident reporting particularly when people are killed. The survivors or other interested parties need to know what happened so the correct decisions can be made. Nothing but good there.
The main problem I have with your distance query is the same problem I have with automated speed detectors; namely, that we should be judged by our peers. That is how the law is written and it is one of the founding principles of this country.
Getting a ticket for doing 5 miles over by an automated machine is simply a tax, nothing more. Think about it. What is punishment without explanation. It's cruel and pointless.
Getting that same ticket because a warm body thought you might deserve it (or not) for some reason is being judged by your peers. That peer who chooses, or not, to write you that ticket will, in the case of writing it, let you know why it is being done and what you should do to avoid having it happen again. That action is what justice and law enforcement are all about. Those same actions can be shown to benefit society in a measurable way.
Those tickets from the automated machine, justifed or not, are simply a tax because no justice was done, no peer involvment took place; thus no corrective action and benefit to society will happen as a result.
So, a cop might download the last 20 minutes of driving. Lets say they do it right after people have traveled down an incline. Every last one of them will be speeding somewhat because that is what the vehicle naturally wants to do in that case. Our law enforcement could then write a ticket, or heck mail a bunch of them without having seen or judged the act.
A possible result: Navigating in traffic down an incline gets more dangerous as everyone concentrates on over control of their vehicle fearing an unwarranted ticket instead of the task at hand; namely, getting down that incline along with everyone else in an orderly manner.
This is exactly why I choose older cars. I can know completly the technologies used and how they will affect me. You don't want too old of a car because you lose the benefit of ongoing engineering however.
Good for California, they want people to know they might be judged in an automated fashion. Knowing the device is there makes a difference in how people react to it. This goes to another right we should have:
We all should have the right of full disclosure on any technology we make use of. If it does something without telling us, it is doing something wrong and potentially harmful that we should know about.
We need people doing different things; otherwise, we risk accepting the fact that the computers of today are the best we can build.
I am not sure that's true though I am sure the AmigaONE is the right path either. Comparing the two will be interesting however.
BTW I learned assembler on the 6502 (atari / apple). Then got a chance to work with the 6809. Man, what a sweet chip to work with. Too bad the better computers got the brain dead cpu's huh?
I was thinking about this a while back. Mp3 files are in the frequency / time domain while raw audio is in the amplitude / time domain.
If you have an x voice synth (maybe 64 / 128 or so) where each voice is a sinewave and where each voice can start at any phase with respect to the others, would you not have a synth that could reproduce most sound convincingly?
Seems that synth today is an mp3 player with the usual CPU ram and DAC, but it could be a bunch of nicely designed oscillators and a CPU and ram as well. The CPU probably would not have to do as much to get the music played because it would be in charge of only the ends of things, not all the bits inbetween.
Another choice would be to include a powerful CPU and the same synth design. The extra compute might make lower bit rates possible on less hardware than we would need today.
Maybe the parent of your post has it right, but not at quite the right level. Exchange frequency for instrument and it seems interesting at least.
management purchases are for. They already have Office + Exchange locking in lots of folks. Just as alternatives to those begin looking realistic, might as well tie them to accounting...
simple. Verisign is trying to change a very basic part of how the Internet works without following the process or without respect for any of the other member parts of the net.
It is a rude, arrogant and selfish action that benefits only Verisign. I hope they suffer for it.
You see, they are making money now, they just want more because they think they are in a position to get it. Nevermind the rest of the net...
Until recently, changes to the core structure of the Internet were discussed and peer-reviewed via the RFC and other processes to be sure things were thought through somewhat before the changes are made live.
Verisign did not do this. Nobody wants this but Verisign. Their action is going to cost the rest of the net a lot with no real gain. If they get away with this, how many other large companies are going to decide to just change things for their own good regardless of the rest of the net.
Another point, this change affects other countries besides the US. We may be the biggest part of the net, but not all of the net. (China and Japan are gaining ground as you read this. You don't notice because their content is in a language other than English.)
What gives them the right to affect everyone this way? Seems this move conflicts strongly with their image of (cough --gasp!) trust doesn't it?
We could go back and forth on the technical nature of the change and what it should affect and what it should not, but the truth is this:
Nobody really knows the true affect because the change is to core Internet behaviour. Think of all the applications and systems that assume the net works the way it does. Should they build in extra code for potential changes when they were not advised it might happen? What if the system were built 10 years ago?
THATS WHY THEY NEED TO RFC JUST LIKE EVERYONE ELSE.
As a result, I no longer use them for my root DNS. I suggest others do the same. If we can get a significant percentage of ISP services to recognize some of the other name services, Verisign will lose a lot of their current bully status. The net will be better for it.
These days you hear the word 'monitize'. That means that somebody wants to make money off of something currently free to most folks. Just remember when you read that word, you are getting screwed by a company wanting to grow at your expense. --You will not be compensated.
Also, where money flows, power does also. If something is monitized, it becomes owned by those closest to the money. What they say goes regardless of merit because they have the dollars and we don't.
Is that how you want Internet is going to develop from now on? I sure don't.
I agree 100 percent with the education bit. It should start with our representitives and move upward from there.
The part I hate the most is the Microsoft snow job. Everyone is using the software, Gates is a genius (which he is with regard to business BTW), something else must be done to preserve motherhood, apple pie and the American way right?
If you toss IE and Outlook, half of this goes away. A company with large cash reserves should not be allowed to push the burden onto its users. Something is wrong with that. This is one of the reasons I will not buy any Microsoft software --I don't want to contribute to the problem.
Microsoft gets tons of free tech support and still gets to make most of the money for its (broken) software. Why? Contracts and the general inability of our lawmakers to recognize software for what it is.
Personally, I hope the problems continue. Maybe people will begin to get a clue when some of their peers start to move away from the one size fits all intergrated Microsoft solution onto one that does the same things, but does not have anywhere near the number of potential issues to deal with.
Funny, I was working with a company today. The systems folks were laughing about how their investment in Lotus Notes was starting to pay off. At first, they considered it a mistake because it cost a lot and Exchange seemed to be a better deal. There was pressure to move off of the platform and onto Exchange to save money and administrative costs. The last couple of years have changed their tune.
They are considering either Mozilla and or Opera as their default browser to gain some more of the benefit they stumbled into with Lotus Notes.
So, go ahead and run win32. It's not a bad OS. (Would not be my choice though.) Just get rid of the problem areas.
Because they sell it to us. It then becomes ours. That means we can do what we want with it including use as gift, doorstop, trash it, destroy it, reverse engineer it, whatever.
If they want to make ms only hardware then they can rent or lease it and handle the cost of churn and upkeep themselves. Why don't they?
Because it is not worth it. That must mean that ms only hardware is not worth doing past what they are doing right now.
Basically the Mandrake distro rocks. (Well at least 8.2 does --hope 9.2 continues that.) People are not paying for Mandrake even though they are getting good value.
If the ads keep Mandrake healthy enough to continue their distribution, but can be changed, who really cares?
If this really bothers you, why not go and buy the boxed set and really help them out.
Mandrake is 100 percent free software. Its a nice mix that is worth something. The way I see it, you can either build your own distro, or support one that you like.
The software may be free, but the work packaging and intergrating it into a distribution is not. We need to pay Mandrake something, or lose Mandrake. Since they are doing fine work, I plan on paying them this time around instead of downloading. --They clearly need more support than they are getting and I get the message.
I'll bet they lose pretty big in this area. Lots of subject matter to cover combined with a short shelf life make this area of interest hard to service compared to other more traditional interests.
Sure, I buy computer books just like everyone else does, but I am generally interested in the new ones and I buy less now that the net does what it does so well.
I agree with your reasons for wanting to finish the series. I found that mix of elements interesting as well. The ending worked for me.
One thought comes to mind though. Perhaps authors, such as Hamilton, are beginning to explore other tech that just does not have the hard feel to it, but is still relevant in the same way the early SF was.
I am thinking of his 'bitek' construct. An interesting meld of biology and traditional technology. Perhaps we might head this same direction as we did with computers and other such things we take for granted today.
The possible directions might be somewhat mushy depending on the mix used. I am not saying fantasy is really SF, but maybe some SF might easily get mixed up with the fantasy depending on the bent and skill of the author creating the work...
Think about it a little. We have laws such as the DMCA that basically divide our current tech into little fiefdoms. Innovators are sued, hacking existing tech is quickly becoming a crime, and the existing players encourage passive use of their tech --not understanding.
Many of the ideals that make SF what it is are being marginalized today. Sort of depressing really.
Combine this with our present science and we know enough that reaching another star system will not happen in our lifetimes. Though Mars should --if it doesn't its political, not technical.
Almost smells like a plot to put all the smart ones back underground where they belong so the real business of making money today --right now, can get done...
Maybe I am just being a little too alarmist this morning. I personally enjoy SF and share the view of the author. Maybe nobody is really exploring SF because fantasy is easier or something...
BTW, what is the genre of "The Reality Disfunction" by Peter F. Hamilton? Seems to be SF, but does have some other elements. Any ideas?
This guy is selling the set of bits that Apple sold him. The problem is that those bits are combined with a service from Apple that makes them into something more than just bits.
It is like the (evil) Dish Network people and their receivers. Lets say I decide to quit using my equipment. I can sell the equipment, but not the agreement between Dish and I with regard to service needed to make good use of it.
The new owner of the equipment simply has the box, but needs to work with Dish in order to make it into something more than just an old box.
The iTunes service works the same way. If somebody actually pays the high bid in this auction, they are going to get a set of bits they cannot really use without a little help from Apple.
Since they have no agreement with Apple, they are going to need to enter into one. This will cost something of course, the price being about 0.99...
So, even though the owner of the bits has the right of first sale on the bits he purchased from Apple, selling them really is a waste of time.
What he should do is try and sell the iTunes account itself. That targets the Apple agreement in a more direct way that could actually result in something of value being transferred to the seller.
I am not sure I agree with that. In principle, it sounds ok, but in practice it's a lot different. The signal to noise ratio is a lot higher on many usenet groups than it is on lists in general. (Though I do see some noisy lists too.)
Lists have a privacy aspect that is kind of nice. Usenet is too public for some things where a list can stay nice and private under the radar. Isn't it easier to control distribution and new content via list compared to usenet group?
Of course, forums are a nice alternative, though I like having the content sorted into folders the way it can be done with lists. Maybe the RSS thing might not be so bad if the links stay active for a long time.
Sometimes, I will ignore lists for a while, but can easily catch up folder by folder if I want at a later time because I already have the content stored somewhere I can get to online or not.
I really don't see a problem resource wise with any of these methods.
Spammers, on the other hand, should be found and banned from the net for a very long time. (Forever if I had my way.) The threat of having to access the internet via proxy because nobody will trust you with your own connection would help make a lot of people think twice about spamming or other forms of net abuse.
The whole thing is retarded. The older I get, the more I realize some things never change.
I live in Oregon. (I know, big mistake right now.) The number of new tax ideas coming out of Salem is astounding. If only they put that much effort into saving money.
Lets just hope they don't get the tax. Might give another drain bramaged state ideas...
I hear what you are saying, but it does not completely add up.
I don't do divx. I do however watch DVD movies with Ogle and DeCSS. (Or some derivitive of it.) It is wrong to catagorize decss as evil just because it can be used to do evil things. (Evil in the context of the MPAA BTW --I could care less about divx;)
The current situation sucks.
I purchase DVD media, player, computer and obtain player software, but I must break the law to actually just view the media on my machine because I choose to run an open OS.
This is just silly.
You know, I setup that machine to be a smartass. Downloaded Ogle, did the decss thing and, in general, setup a very nice bedroom movie player. Thought I would see what all the buzz was about. Well, Guess what?
That machine happens to be better than all the other players I own combined! I can skip the FBI crap, previews, and other long segments on just about every movie with zero problems. Seek times, menu-navigation and other things work well and in a simple way. On Linux of all things!
I find it disgusting that, here in the land of the free, a paying DVD customer must deal with all the restrictions. It's an insult at the very least! Ask my family after using Ogle for a while. They ask why they cannot fast forward to the good parts! I get to tell them they are not trusted and be reminded how they could be criminals each and everytime they choose to watch a movie.
DeCss has actually increased the use value of my DVD collection because it does not force me to bother with all the crap that makes it a waste of time.
It is not about people making copies. This very clearly is about control and how they manage our lack of it!
Enough of a rant. Just don't see your point of view. Not everybody wants to just rip/encode/share everything they get their hands on. Plenty of people just want to be treated like an adult when they spend their money.
Having to watch that damn FBI segment every last time I watch a DVD makes me want to setup the pirate equipment just so I can encode my collection minus that particular stream. Having gone through the work of such an encode share it? Damn right! because nobody should be treated the way DVD viewers are today.
Decss actually prevents piracy in my situation (heh, heh)
If I think a movie sucks, I get to tell others. I will however trade that right for free admission:)
That is what a small thing called free speech allows for.
I will make another trade as well. Lets say they actually get some sort of ban on messaging at the movies. (Which I don't think they will get.) I will just put it on mailing lists and the web. More eyeballs that way.
They are just bitching that it has become a lot easier for people to communicate, thus making their poor efforts harder to hide. Why try to make money the hard way when you can just legislate your piece of the pie?
Until this quits working, we are going to continue to see this foolish crap.
Wireless technologies are more than able to fill this need with the same or less effort.
For all you folks dogging the HAMs, consider the do it yourself hacker nature they represent. Don't we need to nurture and cultivate this kind of thinking given the general law making trends today?
Again, its a bad idea that can easily be solved other ways.
Afterall their own track record in Russia is not all that pretty. To me, there is something wrong with getting pollution in place and running right away on mars.
I would rather somebody plant something that can handle the environment. --On second thought, with no competetors, that could be a bad thing...
Again, I go back to basic stuff. Lets say we frame it this way:
Lets take a couple different platforms. (K-12) Things that are in general use. (Linux, win32, OS X)
If they understand on some level what the parts of those are, understanding other things later will be easier. They do not have to get all the parts exactly right, nor do they need to understand each part.
Each of these topics you present have a *lot* of depth. Just don't cover it! Present a couple well chosen *easy* models to learn from and go from there. (Pretend that they are seperate for instructional purposes. It won't hurt them at all.)
If the kids ask really hard questions, there is always Google for both the student and the teacher acting as mentor for the learning.
--It will do them both good. This synergy is exactly what happened long ago when I started. Rather than pretend to know all, our teacher guided the learning while learning himself. --Next years class (Ours was the first) was a whole lot better.
I am not going to disagree with you in that your core argument is sound. Teachers by and large cannot really teach this stuff. And it is hard to teach.
I will however hold this position:
1. It needs to be taught at a basic level being careful to avoid the depth that will need to come later. Think of it as basic K-12 computer science to go along with other general science. Taught the same way. Just enough to give a kid some ground rules to work with, without really going into the depth required for full understanding of the topic at hand.
2. Our teachers are behind the curve. The current body of common knowledge includes examples of each of your topics. Maybe not with the diversity you indicate however.
3. We really should do something about 1 and 2, because it can be done and would do our kids and teachers some good to go through the experience.
Again, at college level, they should be able to cover these sort of things; otherwise why pay? Google is only a netconnection away...
Slashdot Mirror
Yes he does actually. If we place all of our attention on speed we are not going to be able to catch the little kid running out to get their ball.
Good driving and proper speed is something learned. It also involves looking at the road and assessing the situation. A good driver will not need to look at the speedo to know their speed is safe or not in general. The speedo is there to check and provide a reference when time permits.
I will tell you this. If I turn the corner and see a bunch of kids playing, I slow down. How much? Slow enough that I know I could stop if I need to. Why? Because the kids need to be able to be kids.
Do I take time to look at the speedo. No. Why? Because I am keeping an eye on the kids.
The human condition is one of distraction if you look at it in this way. You pretend you are a machine. Living in that fallacy is more harmful than someone who is awake, aware and trying hard to do the right thing.
Right vs privilege...
After thinking about your points, I am not quite sure its either because it applies to people in an interesting way. If one can do the task then they get to do it by default. The government does not to get to say you cannot drive unless they have a good reason. For me this issue lies somewhere in between at the moment...
You called my view sick. I do not hold the view that whatever the state does is wrong and should be opposed. My view is that the state will abuse its position unless there are checks and balances on its power to govern. We need the state to govern, but we also need to insure said government is in our collective best interests, not those who currently hold the position of authority. Power corrupts, our founding fathers knew this, it's why our nation is structured the way it is.
We get to question our government because its healthy and to our benefit to do so. The state of California is questioning right now. The issue is being discussed and will be resolved in court where it should be.
Let me put forth a simple idea: Nobody has absolute control of anything. Why? Because we are not capable of such a thing for a lot of reasons the primary one being our very nature. We are not built like machines, we are messy, slow, not precise. Truth is, we should not be driving as a race if we need absolute control in order to do so.
In short, we all make mistakes. Breaking a law requires two basic components:
1. A guilty act.
2. A guilty mind.
The machine can easily detect the guilty act, but cannot assess the guilty mind. That is why we need warm bodies to clarify and add understanding to the situation. That is why we need to be judged by our peers and not a machine.
You say that these machines will remove bad drivers from the road making the roadway safer for the remaining good drivers. Ok in concept, but flawed in execution.
Everyone makes mistakes. Some of us make more than others, but we all do it. Have you ever been on a busy road? What is the safest way to travel?
- Maintain a speed average to the traffic. If people are moving a bit under the limit, do that, if they are all moving a bit over, do that as well.
- Maintain a defensive position while planning for troublesome situations. This means taking your eyes off the speedo and putting them on the other drivers, the road and evaluating, as often as you can, the potential decisions you could have to make.
The exact speed of the cars has very little to do with this. People in general will drive the safe speed because, in general, they have the best of intentions while driving.
Again, a machine will not be able to assess this situation. What we are looking for are the problem drivers. Ones who are either going too slow, not paying attention (hard to get these), or too fast, or in poor positions.
Warm bodies do this very well.
You say that being judged by your peers does not apply to a privlige. I disagree when the ability to make use of said privilige has a serious impact on your ability to exercise your other rights. That is exactly why our peers must be involved and not a machine.
This view has prevailed in many courts BTW. In my state, automated machines must be watched by officers who then must interpet the data they collect and act accordingly. Peers indeed.
You maintain a high rate of speed is dangerous and I agree. The primary cause of death in the USA is through trauma. The primary cause of trauma is human error with speed being a primary contributing factor as well.
Having said that, the people who engineer our roads have assessed these factors. In most states, the speed limits are set in a way that accounts for all of these factors while allowing for some error. (On both sides, engineering and drivers.)
It has also been shown that poorly set speed limits contribute to more deaths. (being too high or too low does not matter) For a given roadw
We have the right to travel freely. Driving is a form of transportation. Is it realistic to say that someone does not need to drive in society today in general? For a large percentage of us, driving is something we need to be able to do.
Not being able to drive is a pretty serious limit on ones freedom to travel.
If driving is indeed a right, by nature, why then do we license it? Safety. Those that do drive have a reasonable expectation of safe roads and qualified drivers. Driving is a right that can be lost if exercised irresponsibly just as many other rights can be.
Let me put it this way. If someone demonstrates they are qualified to drive, is there a reason why they should not get a license? Do they have any expectation such denial will occur? Of course not because everyone has a right to drive provided they do not abuse other people rights while exercising theirs. (Hitting someone with your car infringes on their right to live and prosper for example.)
We deny someone their ability to drive as punishment for poor execution, not because we can. Same for other rights. You might lose your right to move freely if you use that right to kill someone for example. 'nuff said about that, either we agree or not, but I wanted to have the other view present on this thread.
I agree with you regarding driving being a public act, however that does not, in itself, support your idea that law enforcement should be able to access this device at a distance. I think it does support the traffic accident reporting particularly when people are killed. The survivors or other interested parties need to know what happened so the correct decisions can be made. Nothing but good there.
The main problem I have with your distance query is the same problem I have with automated speed detectors; namely, that we should be judged by our peers. That is how the law is written and it is one of the founding principles of this country.
Getting a ticket for doing 5 miles over by an automated machine is simply a tax, nothing more. Think about it. What is punishment without explanation. It's cruel and pointless.
Getting that same ticket because a warm body thought you might deserve it (or not) for some reason is being judged by your peers. That peer who chooses, or not, to write you that ticket will, in the case of writing it, let you know why it is being done and what you should do to avoid having it happen again. That action is what justice and law enforcement are all about. Those same actions can be shown to benefit society in a measurable way.
Those tickets from the automated machine, justifed or not, are simply a tax because no justice was done, no peer involvment took place; thus no corrective action and benefit to society will happen as a result.
So, a cop might download the last 20 minutes of driving. Lets say they do it right after people have traveled down an incline. Every last one of them will be speeding somewhat because that is what the vehicle naturally wants to do in that case. Our law enforcement could then write a ticket, or heck mail a bunch of them without having seen or judged the act.
A possible result: Navigating in traffic down an incline gets more dangerous as everyone concentrates on over control of their vehicle fearing an unwarranted ticket instead of the task at hand; namely, getting down that incline along with everyone else in an orderly manner.
This is exactly why I choose older cars. I can know completly the technologies used and how they will affect me. You don't want too old of a car because you lose the benefit of ongoing engineering however.
Good for California, they want people to know they might be judged in an automated fashion. Knowing the device is there makes a difference in how people react to it. This goes to another right we should have:
We all should have the right of full disclosure on any technology we make use of. If it does something without telling us, it is doing something wrong and potentially harmful that we should know about.
We need people doing different things; otherwise, we risk accepting the fact that the computers of today are the best we can build.
I am not sure that's true though I am sure the AmigaONE is the right path either. Comparing the two will be interesting however.
BTW I learned assembler on the 6502 (atari / apple). Then got a chance to work with the 6809. Man, what a sweet chip to work with. Too bad the better computers got the brain dead cpu's huh?
I was thinking about this a while back. Mp3 files are in the frequency / time domain while raw audio is in the amplitude / time domain.
If you have an x voice synth (maybe 64 / 128 or so) where each voice is a sinewave and where each voice can start at any phase with respect to the others, would you not have a synth that could reproduce most sound convincingly?
Seems that synth today is an mp3 player with the usual CPU ram and DAC, but it could be a bunch of nicely designed oscillators and a CPU and ram as well. The CPU probably would not have to do as much to get the music played because it would be in charge of only the ends of things, not all the bits inbetween.
Another choice would be to include a powerful CPU and the same synth design. The extra compute might make lower bit rates possible on less hardware than we would need today.
Maybe the parent of your post has it right, but not at quite the right level. Exchange frequency for instrument and it seems interesting at least.
Just a couple thoughts...
management purchases are for. They already have Office + Exchange locking in lots of folks. Just as alternatives to those begin looking realistic, might as well tie them to accounting...
simple. Verisign is trying to change a very basic part of how the Internet works without following the process or without respect for any of the other member parts of the net.
It is a rude, arrogant and selfish action that benefits only Verisign. I hope they suffer for it.
You see, they are making money now, they just want more because they think they are in a position to get it. Nevermind the rest of the net...
Until recently, changes to the core structure of the Internet were discussed and peer-reviewed via the RFC and other processes to be sure things were thought through somewhat before the changes are made live.
Verisign did not do this. Nobody wants this but Verisign. Their action is going to cost the rest of the net a lot with no real gain. If they get away with this, how many other large companies are going to decide to just change things for their own good regardless of the rest of the net.
Another point, this change affects other countries besides the US. We may be the biggest part of the net, but not all of the net. (China and Japan are gaining ground as you read this. You don't notice because their content is in a language other than English.)
What gives them the right to affect everyone this way? Seems this move conflicts strongly with their image of (cough --gasp!) trust doesn't it?
We could go back and forth on the technical nature of the change and what it should affect and what it should not, but the truth is this:
Nobody really knows the true affect because the change is to core Internet behaviour. Think of all the applications and systems that assume the net works the way it does. Should they build in extra code for potential changes when they were not advised it might happen? What if the system were built 10 years ago?
THATS WHY THEY NEED TO RFC JUST LIKE EVERYONE ELSE.
As a result, I no longer use them for my root DNS. I suggest others do the same. If we can get a significant percentage of ISP services to recognize some of the other name services, Verisign will lose a lot of their current bully status. The net will be better for it.
These days you hear the word 'monitize'. That means that somebody wants to make money off of something currently free to most folks. Just remember when you read that word, you are getting screwed by a company wanting to grow at your expense. --You will not be compensated.
Also, where money flows, power does also. If something is monitized, it becomes owned by those closest to the money. What they say goes regardless of merit because they have the dollars and we don't.
Is that how you want Internet is going to develop from now on? I sure don't.
I agree 100 percent with the education bit. It should start with our representitives and move upward from there.
The part I hate the most is the Microsoft snow job. Everyone is using the software, Gates is a genius (which he is with regard to business BTW), something else must be done to preserve motherhood, apple pie and the American way right?
If you toss IE and Outlook, half of this goes away. A company with large cash reserves should not be allowed to push the burden onto its users. Something is wrong with that. This is one of the reasons I will not buy any Microsoft software --I don't want to contribute to the problem.
Microsoft gets tons of free tech support and still gets to make most of the money for its (broken) software. Why? Contracts and the general inability of our lawmakers to recognize software for what it is.
Personally, I hope the problems continue. Maybe people will begin to get a clue when some of their peers start to move away from the one size fits all intergrated Microsoft solution onto one that does the same things, but does not have anywhere near the number of potential issues to deal with.
Funny, I was working with a company today. The systems folks were laughing about how their investment in Lotus Notes was starting to pay off. At first, they considered it a mistake because it cost a lot and Exchange seemed to be a better deal. There was pressure to move off of the platform and onto Exchange to save money and administrative costs. The last couple of years have changed their tune.
They are considering either Mozilla and or Opera as their default browser to gain some more of the benefit they stumbled into with Lotus Notes.
So, go ahead and run win32. It's not a bad OS. (Would not be my choice though.) Just get rid of the problem areas.
Because they sell it to us. It then becomes ours. That means we can do what we want with it including use as gift, doorstop, trash it, destroy it, reverse engineer it, whatever.
If they want to make ms only hardware then they can rent or lease it and handle the cost of churn and upkeep themselves. Why don't they?
Because it is not worth it. That must mean that ms only hardware is not worth doing past what they are doing right now.
Simple really.
Basically the Mandrake distro rocks. (Well at least 8.2 does --hope 9.2 continues that.) People are not paying for Mandrake even though they are getting good value.
If the ads keep Mandrake healthy enough to continue their distribution, but can be changed, who really cares?
If this really bothers you, why not go and buy the boxed set and really help them out.
Mandrake is 100 percent free software. Its a nice mix that is worth something. The way I see it, you can either build your own distro, or support one that you like.
The software may be free, but the work packaging and intergrating it into a distribution is not. We need to pay Mandrake something, or lose Mandrake. Since they are doing fine work, I plan on paying them this time around instead of downloading. --They clearly need more support than they are getting and I get the message.
Keep up the good work guys!
I'll bet they lose pretty big in this area. Lots of subject matter to cover combined with a short shelf life make this area of interest hard to service compared to other more traditional interests.
Sure, I buy computer books just like everyone else does, but I am generally interested in the new ones and I buy less now that the net does what it does so well.
Just a thought or two...
I agree with your reasons for wanting to finish the series. I found that mix of elements interesting as well. The ending worked for me.
One thought comes to mind though. Perhaps authors, such as Hamilton, are beginning to explore other tech that just does not have the hard feel to it, but is still relevant in the same way the early SF was.
I am thinking of his 'bitek' construct. An interesting meld of biology and traditional technology. Perhaps we might head this same direction as we did with computers and other such things we take for granted today.
The possible directions might be somewhat mushy depending on the mix used. I am not saying fantasy is really SF, but maybe some SF might easily get mixed up with the fantasy depending on the bent and skill of the author creating the work...
Think about it a little. We have laws such as the DMCA that basically divide our current tech into little fiefdoms. Innovators are sued, hacking existing tech is quickly becoming a crime, and the existing players encourage passive use of their tech --not understanding.
Many of the ideals that make SF what it is are being marginalized today. Sort of depressing really.
Combine this with our present science and we know enough that reaching another star system will not happen in our lifetimes. Though Mars should --if it doesn't its political, not technical.
Almost smells like a plot to put all the smart ones back underground where they belong so the real business of making money today --right now, can get done...
Maybe I am just being a little too alarmist this morning. I personally enjoy SF and share the view of the author. Maybe nobody is really exploring SF because fantasy is easier or something...
BTW, what is the genre of "The Reality Disfunction" by Peter F. Hamilton? Seems to be SF, but does have some other elements. Any ideas?
This guy is selling the set of bits that Apple sold him. The problem is that those bits are combined with a service from Apple that makes them into something more than just bits.
It is like the (evil) Dish Network people and their receivers. Lets say I decide to quit using my equipment. I can sell the equipment, but not the agreement between Dish and I with regard to service needed to make good use of it.
The new owner of the equipment simply has the box, but needs to work with Dish in order to make it into something more than just an old box.
The iTunes service works the same way. If somebody actually pays the high bid in this auction, they are going to get a set of bits they cannot really use without a little help from Apple.
Since they have no agreement with Apple, they are going to need to enter into one. This will cost something of course, the price being about 0.99...
So, even though the owner of the bits has the right of first sale on the bits he purchased from Apple, selling them really is a waste of time.
What he should do is try and sell the iTunes account itself. That targets the Apple agreement in a more direct way that could actually result in something of value being transferred to the seller.
people that actually give a shit. Everybody knows Microsoft is here to make their cash pile larger at any cost.
The Mozilla folks are here to make sure we have a good browser that runs on what we choose to run it on.
I am not sure I agree with that. In principle, it sounds ok, but in practice it's a lot different. The signal to noise ratio is a lot higher on many usenet groups than it is on lists in general. (Though I do see some noisy lists too.)
Lists have a privacy aspect that is kind of nice. Usenet is too public for some things where a list can stay nice and private under the radar. Isn't it easier to control distribution and new content via list compared to usenet group?
Of course, forums are a nice alternative, though I like having the content sorted into folders the way it can be done with lists. Maybe the RSS thing might not be so bad if the links stay active for a long time.
Sometimes, I will ignore lists for a while, but can easily catch up folder by folder if I want at a later time because I already have the content stored somewhere I can get to online or not.
I really don't see a problem resource wise with any of these methods.
Spammers, on the other hand, should be found and banned from the net for a very long time. (Forever if I had my way.) The threat of having to access the internet via proxy because nobody will trust you with your own connection would help make a lot of people think twice about spamming or other forms of net abuse.
If they wait too long to ship, what are they going to give the people who are on the golden upgrade path? Another service pack?
Kind of funny that Microsoft shows signs of waiting until its right AFTER they get their customers to pay for the lesson...
Your post is somewhat confusing in this area, point well taken.
I too want the arguments to be sound. Understanding this point is only half the battle though. Winning the PR war is the other half...
Dead on.
The whole thing is retarded. The older I get, the more I realize some things never change.
I live in Oregon. (I know, big mistake right now.) The number of new tax ideas coming out of Salem is astounding. If only they put that much effort into saving money.
Lets just hope they don't get the tax. Might give another drain bramaged state ideas...
RECALL process...
Morons, when are they going to understand the bubble is gone?
Worse, how are they going to find your LAN? Perhaps a business only tax.
What if its all wireless? Where does on mans LAN start and another ends?
I hear what you are saying, but it does not completely add up.
;)
I don't do divx. I do however watch DVD movies with Ogle and DeCSS. (Or some derivitive of it.) It is wrong to catagorize decss as evil just because it can be used to do evil things. (Evil in the context of the MPAA BTW --I could care less about divx
The current situation sucks.
I purchase DVD media, player, computer and obtain player software, but I must break the law to actually just view the media on my machine because I choose to run an open OS.
This is just silly.
You know, I setup that machine to be a smartass. Downloaded Ogle, did the decss thing and, in general, setup a very nice bedroom movie player. Thought I would see what all the buzz was about. Well, Guess what?
That machine happens to be better than all the other players I own combined! I can skip the FBI crap, previews, and other long segments on just about every movie with zero problems. Seek times, menu-navigation and other things work well and in a simple way. On Linux of all things!
I find it disgusting that, here in the land of the free, a paying DVD customer must deal with all the restrictions. It's an insult at the very least! Ask my family after using Ogle for a while. They ask why they cannot fast forward to the good parts! I get to tell them they are not trusted and be reminded how they could be criminals each and everytime they choose to watch a movie.
DeCss has actually increased the use value of my DVD collection because it does not force me to bother with all the crap that makes it a waste of time.
It is not about people making copies. This very clearly is about control and how they manage our lack of it!
Enough of a rant. Just don't see your point of view. Not everybody wants to just rip/encode/share everything they get their hands on. Plenty of people just want to be treated like an adult when they spend their money.
Having to watch that damn FBI segment every last time I watch a DVD makes me want to setup the pirate equipment just so I can encode my collection minus that particular stream. Having gone through the work of such an encode share it? Damn right! because nobody should be treated the way DVD viewers are today.
Decss actually prevents piracy in my situation (heh, heh)
If I think a movie sucks, I get to tell others. I will however trade that right for free admission :)
That is what a small thing called free speech allows for.
I will make another trade as well. Lets say they actually get some sort of ban on messaging at the movies. (Which I don't think they will get.) I will just put it on mailing lists and the web. More eyeballs that way.
They are just bitching that it has become a lot easier for people to communicate, thus making their poor efforts harder to hide. Why try to make money the hard way when you can just legislate your piece of the pie?
Until this quits working, we are going to continue to see this foolish crap.
I think the whole power line thing is a bad idea.
Wireless technologies are more than able to fill this need with the same or less effort.
For all you folks dogging the HAMs, consider the do it yourself hacker nature they represent. Don't we need to nurture and cultivate this kind of thinking given the general law making trends today?
Again, its a bad idea that can easily be solved other ways.
Afterall their own track record in Russia is not all that pretty. To me, there is something wrong with getting pollution in place and running right away on mars.
I would rather somebody plant something that can handle the environment. --On second thought, with no competetors, that could be a bad thing...
Fair enough.
Again, I go back to basic stuff. Lets say we frame it this way:
Lets take a couple different platforms. (K-12) Things that are in general use. (Linux, win32, OS X)
If they understand on some level what the parts of those are, understanding other things later will be easier. They do not have to get all the parts exactly right, nor do they need to understand each part.
Each of these topics you present have a *lot* of depth. Just don't cover it! Present a couple well chosen *easy* models to learn from and go from there. (Pretend that they are seperate for instructional purposes. It won't hurt them at all.)
If the kids ask really hard questions, there is always Google for both the student and the teacher acting as mentor for the learning.
--It will do them both good. This synergy is exactly what happened long ago when I started. Rather than pretend to know all, our teacher guided the learning while learning himself. --Next years class (Ours was the first) was a whole lot better.
I am not going to disagree with you in that your core argument is sound. Teachers by and large cannot really teach this stuff. And it is hard to teach.
I will however hold this position:
1. It needs to be taught at a basic level being careful to avoid the depth that will need to come later. Think of it as basic K-12 computer science to go along with other general science. Taught the same way. Just enough to give a kid some ground rules to work with, without really going into the depth required for full understanding of the topic at hand.
2. Our teachers are behind the curve. The current body of common knowledge includes examples of each of your topics. Maybe not with the diversity you indicate however.
3. We really should do something about 1 and 2, because it can be done and would do our kids and teachers some good to go through the experience.
Again, at college level, they should be able to cover these sort of things; otherwise why pay? Google is only a netconnection away...