That is a total f*cking ripoff! You can get 256MB of PC133 SDRAM for $47. Checkout prices at www.pricewatch.com , so you don't get jerked around at places like crucial and other name-brand places.
Considering that a stick of 128MB of SDRAM costs around $25, I have no sympathy for anyone who doesn't run a PC based system with at least 128MB of ram. You don't have to be rich to invest $25 in an extra 128MB of memory. Linux will thank you for the upgrade.
Good point. The courts will almost choose to remain ignorant of computational theory, simply because of the special interests that want to maintain digital copyrights.
I don't think that no IP would stop advancements in tech either. People will still continue to develop new cool stuff, and users will use the stuff and copy it and build on it. It would require more effort to make money off of ephemeral products like code and data (they can actually be formalized as the same thing: code or proof).
The courts could move to another extreme, and acknowledge and explicitly allow for the absolute ownership of mathematical things. It would really mess up society though. I would copyright/patent the number 1. It's probably the most important natural number, considering that all of the other natural numbers besides 0 are created from it.
Of course, the many philosophies of mathematics would only complicate the matter of copyrighted numbers.
The Consumer Electronics Show is like a strip club for geeks. Really though! For instance:
GeekBeta: Man, my girlfriend is going to kill me for going to a place like this. GeekAlpha: Come on, just chill out, enjoy the scenery... GeekBeta: Ok, but I feel guilty. Jessica says I neglect her too much and spend too much time at *cough* electronic shows... GeekAlpha: Damn! Look at the Linux on that one! Announcer: Everyone, say hello to Yopitta, the mobile Linux workstation which fits on your lap! *screems from the crowd* Woooo!!!! TAKE IT OFF!!! Take off the dust jacket!!! GeekAlpha: Lets see her booty! I mean, lets see her boot!
It would also be nice to get Mathematicians (Computer Scientists are "Mathematicians", not "Scientists"... history landed the field with a bad name). Scientists don't cover all of the new tech cases, and expert mathematicians are also needed.
Any good mathematician could describe to a judge how an algorithm is nothing more than a mathematical proof (see Curry-Howard isomorphism for a starter) with cut-elimination as the actual computation/processing, and digital data is nothing more than a natural number written in base 2 (see any good "intro computation theory" book). Therefore protecting all computer programs and data under first amendment rights which already protect mathematical things such as proofs and numbers. Now, if the law wanted to limit mathematical things based on the formalisms they are written in, such as writting your proofs in C++ or some other conventional programming language is not allowed protection, well, that would be completely arbitrary law, seeing as two seemingly different formalisms can represent the same mathematical thing and Godel's incompleteness proof showed how their can be no universal mathematical formalism. Such laws would literally choke the freedom of mathematical expression.
DeCSS, nothing more than a proof coupled with a nice big number. How can the law forbid formal mathematical proofs and numbers? Is mathematics limited based on formalism?
I would like to recommend a book that demonstrates the beauty of creativity. It's a book about a mathematician, an artist, and a musician... or, that is at least one way of looking at it. Godel Escher Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid weaves together the works of three creative individuals, demonstrating through example, that the things commoningly known as mathematics, art, music - they all share the same beauty. With a second glance, the book is about three mathematicians, or three artists, or three musicians, or any combination thereof!
Anyway, this book is very common. You can find it at your library, or you can buy your own copy for $18. It is worth your time, money, effort! If you are a programmer, an engineer, a mathematician... a musician, and/or an artist, this book will make great bedtime reading.
It is important to stress the example of Alan Turing, one of the main originators of computer science and artificial intelligence. Most techies/nerds would agree that Alan Turing made huge contributions to society, effectivly furthuring the common good. However, society repaid Turing with hate... leading to his eventual suicide.
The laws at the time forced him to take hormone medicines which cannot be healthly for a professor. Society shunned him, treated him badly, destroyed his life... Turing was never repaid, in his life time, for the greatness of his accomplishments.
Don't forget that PocketLinux 1.0 has recently been released, and MobileLinux, from Transmeta (Linus and crew) is supposedly going to be publically released within the next week! I see 3 major PDA linux distros rising to power:
1. PocketLinux
2. MobileLinux
3. Yopy's Linux
Will a Linux OS for PDAs splinter or will the various distros eventually merge? Time will tell.
Ok, the REX6000 was just released a few days ago. Its the size of a PCMCIA card (a credit card), and it has touch screen input, 2MB of memory, a 4Mhz CPU, a larger screen resolution than a PalmPilot, and it runs off of tiny batteries for 6 months!
My money has always been on Freenet, ever since it was made public. I will start making heavier use of it, when searchability is added. I am currently running a node, but I haven't inserted anything yet.
Many Slashdotters also dislike various government enforced intellectual property laws, such as patents, trademarks, and copyrights. The typically slashdotter sees these things as perverted to the point of throwing large amounts of power in "large corporations'" arena.
For every social action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. If corporations abuse their power, the individuals will pull in the opposite direction. Hence, the common use of Napster as a tool for "pirating" music.
If markets are left to their own, they self-regulate. Unions form, public property grows in the form of open source, mass disregard for intellectual property laws in the form of large scale copying... these are symptoms of corporatism getting out of hand.
If you solve only one side of the problem, you will do far more damage than such a polar system does on its own.
Freenet can be used through your web browser. You can effectivly surf websites that exist within freenet. There are two main drawbacks to Freenet:
1) Not searchable
2) Sharing a directory of files is cumbersom, in that it requires insertion. Sharing files on Freenet requires to you duplicate your MP3s... or insert them all, and delete the native filesystem versions... that would makes most people nervous.
Sure, everyone knows about the scaling problems of GNUtella and clones, but the latest version of BearShare is an easy to use, no, idiot proof GNUtella clone for M$-windoze. I have been using it for a couple days now.
One of the main sources of problems for GNUtella is the type of content traded on the network. With 5MB songs, trading is quick and easy, but with 700MB mp4 DVD rips, trades take half a day, causing would-be-sharers to be locked into a small number of leachers for about half a day. GNUtella and clones tend to trade larger files more often than Napster. This causes you to be queued far more often, when requesting a file from a source who is sharing a DVD or two.
While it is important to look towards the future technologies such as Freenet or Alpine, the here-and-now matters the most. The current status of both Freenet and Alpine is not good enough for widespread use as a P2P network. The best thing for now is to try one of the new GNUtella servants (far better than the original in terms of ease-of-use and performance)... or try a hacked napster. However, sticking with the Napster tech is a bad idea... tech should move towards full distributed networks for robustness reasons.
Even though GNUtella can't scale in its current protocol version, I still see it as being the next generation after napster. Soon, the GNUtella protocol will be revised to greatly improve performance, and the GNUtella generation will hit prime time.
After that, people will want even better performance, anonymity, security, etc...
Those forces will bring about the following generation. Who will fill it? Well, thats the generation when we will see Freenet, Alpine, and other more ideal networks, fight for power.
All the while, in between generations, "duct tape" proxies will be used to mend the gaps.
Sperm contains half of your genetics. They can't clone you from sperm. It would be better to chop off a finger and put it in a ziplock back, than send a used condom up into space.
Yeah, with IPv6, you could nearly assign an individual IP address to every atom in the universe, or is that IPv7? I know we are getting close to something like that.
I sent in my TiVo $100 rebate over 2 months ago, and I still haven't received my check! I paid for the full lifetime service over 2 months ago. Whats the hold up? Anyone else having problems with the TiVo rebate? BTW, its a nice piece of equipment. Makes TV tolerable and even fun.
I get the mental image of the guy who loses money is eaten by a soda machine, so the guy freaks and starts beating the crap out of the machine, and then hundreds of cans of soda rush out of the machine.
I fail to see the true distinction between the mental construct of natural numbers and other mental constructs. They are all mental constructs that may or may not reflect the true nature of the physical world.
Yes, you are right. Whether any of our ideas reflect the truth of a world outside of us is unknown. However, the construct of natural numbers is not really a construct, sense it has always existed (hence my use of "a priori"), as our intuition of "time" (not science's time). Thats what sets it apart from the rest. There are ideas which are spontanious and those which are concrete in the sense that they are either "a priori"/"primordial" or are constructed mathematically from such concrete ideas. When I was born, I never had the concept of "tooth fairy" (not the name, but the idea itself) natively embedded in my mind. However, when I was born, simply by the nature of my self-awareness, I didn't just understand next, next of next, next of next of next, etc... it has been a part of me ever since I existed. Its because of the fact that we cannot get away from our "selfawareness" that we cannot get away from our innate realization of the natural numbers - its our intuition of time. Just as you justify your existance ABSOLUTELY, the existance of the natural numbers is also absolute. I don't think all in the now. For me, there is now, then next, then next of next, etc... We just assign names to this innate concept. Now is 1 and next of now is 2, etc... of course, "now" and "next" are words, but the innate nature of our conciousness forces us to know such a concept. You could even lose all of your 5 senses (sight, smell, taste, touch, tactile feeling), but you would still be forced to understand "now", which becomes past as the "next of now" becomes the present.
But if it has definable characteristics within a mathematical system, then it is part of mathematics!
Again, you are right, but infinity is not definable with natural numbers alone. You might say, "Well how about the set of all natural numbers?" Remember, we have an innate understanding of something which is happening, this constant shifting of our selfawareness from now to being a past memory because of the next now coming into awareness.
I would calim that the existance of myself is "true". Sure, you might just say that I am a dream or whatever, but I need no justification for my existance... its immediate. This is how mathematical intuitionism gains its "truth". Mathematics is supposed to be as immediate as your own self-awareness, because otherwise it would lose its certainty, its "truth".
Now, you could get picky and win the arguement by claiming that your mind is completely and totally different than mine. In no way are you self aware or whatever. Yeah, its a claim based on faith that your mind (selfawareness) is somehow, in the most basic way, similar to mine.
I know this is no way to win an arguement. I can only hope my horrid use of natural language will somehow inspire something in you. Anyway, if you are the least bit interested in learning why and how the popular mathematics is flawed, and you want to learn a little bit about a mathematics which is free from contradiction/paradoxes/many other problems associated with popular math, then check out the "From Hilbert to Brouwer" book that I linked to, or even better (but more expensive), is Brouwer's Intuitionism by W. P. Van Stigt
Intuitionism is the most sound mathematical system, yet it is the least known, taught, and therefore it is the most misunderstood. Its not a new thing nor is it an unproven thing. You take the blue pill, the story ends. You wake up in your bed and you believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in wonderland. And, I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.
I left out one thing. My use of "existance" means that it exists as a mathematical construct within the mind from the Self's priomordial intuition of time. This use of the word "existance" implies that for something to exist, it must be known in an undeniable and certain way. Sorry, but describing these things is difficult. I can only hope it inspires the correct thoughts in your mind. I obviously seems to be failing at that. Well, such is communication.
Slashdot Mirror
That is a total f*cking ripoff! You can get 256MB of PC133 SDRAM for $47. Checkout prices at www.pricewatch.com , so you don't get jerked around at places like crucial and other name-brand places.
Considering that a stick of 128MB of SDRAM costs around $25, I have no sympathy for anyone who doesn't run a PC based system with at least 128MB of ram. You don't have to be rich to invest $25 in an extra 128MB of memory. Linux will thank you for the upgrade.
Remember, www.pricewatch.com
Even if it could run under VMware, you wouldn't be able to appreciate the hard real-time performance benefits of an OS like QNX.
QNX is fast and responsive. In my opinion, that makes it a good foundation for a end user's desktop.
I had some kind of 2001 monolith experience with those shots of DoomX.
Oh, by the way, DoomX is a far better name, than Doom3.
One more hint, keep like a chaste virgin before her wedding. Be very conservative with the screenshot releases and DemoTest releases.
Good point. The courts will almost choose to remain ignorant of computational theory, simply because of the special interests that want to maintain digital copyrights.
I don't think that no IP would stop advancements in tech either. People will still continue to develop new cool stuff, and users will use the stuff and copy it and build on it. It would require more effort to make money off of ephemeral products like code and data (they can actually be formalized as the same thing: code or proof).
The courts could move to another extreme, and acknowledge and explicitly allow for the absolute ownership of mathematical things. It would really mess up society though. I would copyright/patent the number 1. It's probably the most important natural number, considering that all of the other natural numbers besides 0 are created from it.
Of course, the many philosophies of mathematics would only complicate the matter of copyrighted numbers.
Yeah, you are right, but whenever I bring up such a thing around most people, they get all weird, claiming that I don't understand science.
Solipsism states that science doesn't bring us the truth that some would have us believe.
Some scientists are just too attatched to "the Matrix", so to speak, to see their profession for what it really is.
The Consumer Electronics Show is like a strip club for geeks. Really though! For instance:
GeekBeta: Man, my girlfriend is going to kill me for going to a place like this.
GeekAlpha: Come on, just chill out, enjoy the scenery...
GeekBeta: Ok, but I feel guilty. Jessica says I neglect her too much and spend too much time at *cough* electronic shows...
GeekAlpha: Damn! Look at the Linux on that one!
Announcer: Everyone, say hello to Yopitta, the mobile Linux workstation which fits on your lap!
*screems from the crowd* Woooo!!!! TAKE IT OFF!!! Take off the dust jacket!!!
GeekAlpha: Lets see her booty! I mean, lets see her boot!
It would also be nice to get Mathematicians (Computer Scientists are "Mathematicians", not "Scientists"... history landed the field with a bad name). Scientists don't cover all of the new tech cases, and expert mathematicians are also needed.
Any good mathematician could describe to a judge how an algorithm is nothing more than a mathematical proof (see Curry-Howard isomorphism for a starter) with cut-elimination as the actual computation/processing, and digital data is nothing more than a natural number written in base 2 (see any good "intro computation theory" book). Therefore protecting all computer programs and data under first amendment rights which already protect mathematical things such as proofs and numbers. Now, if the law wanted to limit mathematical things based on the formalisms they are written in, such as writting your proofs in C++ or some other conventional programming language is not allowed protection, well, that would be completely arbitrary law, seeing as two seemingly different formalisms can represent the same mathematical thing and Godel's incompleteness proof showed how their can be no universal mathematical formalism. Such laws would literally choke the freedom of mathematical expression.
DeCSS, nothing more than a proof coupled with a nice big number. How can the law forbid formal mathematical proofs and numbers? Is mathematics limited based on formalism?
I would like to recommend a book that demonstrates the beauty of creativity. It's a book about a mathematician, an artist, and a musician... or, that is at least one way of looking at it. Godel Escher Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid weaves together the works of three creative individuals, demonstrating through example, that the things commoningly known as mathematics, art, music - they all share the same beauty. With a second glance, the book is about three mathematicians, or three artists, or three musicians, or any combination thereof!
Anyway, this book is very common. You can find it at your library, or you can buy your own copy for $18. It is worth your time, money, effort! If you are a programmer, an engineer, a mathematician... a musician, and/or an artist, this book will make great bedtime reading.
Sorry, left it out... for those who are not aware, Alan Turing was a homosexual. That is why society at the time treated him so badly.
It is important to stress the example of Alan Turing, one of the main originators of computer science and artificial intelligence. Most techies/nerds would agree that Alan Turing made huge contributions to society, effectivly furthuring the common good. However, society repaid Turing with hate... leading to his eventual suicide.
The laws at the time forced him to take hormone medicines which cannot be healthly for a professor. Society shunned him, treated him badly, destroyed his life... Turing was never repaid, in his life time, for the greatness of his accomplishments.
Don't forget that PocketLinux 1.0 has recently been released, and MobileLinux, from Transmeta (Linus and crew) is supposedly going to be publically released within the next week! I see 3 major PDA linux distros rising to power:
1. PocketLinux
2. MobileLinux
3. Yopy's Linux
Will a Linux OS for PDAs splinter or will the various distros eventually merge? Time will tell.
Ok, the REX6000 was just released a few days ago. Its the size of a PCMCIA card (a credit card), and it has touch screen input, 2MB of memory, a 4Mhz CPU, a larger screen resolution than a PalmPilot, and it runs off of tiny batteries for 6 months!
*thump*
...says so in my bible!
*thump*
*thump*
*thump*
Atheist's have no proof that a God does not exist. Atheism is therefore a religion, which bases its beliefs on the faith that no God exists.
Atheist tend to contradict themselve's. You are safer to take a solipsist agnostic stance, if you do not want to "subscribe to odd notions".
I have not known of anyone who as either falsified or proved the existance of god.
It is possible to not know stuff.
My money has always been on Freenet, ever since it was made public. I will start making heavier use of it, when searchability is added. I am currently running a node, but I haven't inserted anything yet.
Many Slashdotters also dislike various government enforced intellectual property laws, such as patents, trademarks, and copyrights. The typically slashdotter sees these things as perverted to the point of throwing large amounts of power in "large corporations'" arena.
For every social action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. If corporations abuse their power, the individuals will pull in the opposite direction. Hence, the common use of Napster as a tool for "pirating" music.
If markets are left to their own, they self-regulate. Unions form, public property grows in the form of open source, mass disregard for intellectual property laws in the form of large scale copying... these are symptoms of corporatism getting out of hand.
If you solve only one side of the problem, you will do far more damage than such a polar system does on its own.
Freenet can be used through your web browser. You can effectivly surf websites that exist within freenet. There are two main drawbacks to Freenet:
1) Not searchable
2) Sharing a directory of files is cumbersom, in that it requires insertion. Sharing files on Freenet requires to you duplicate your MP3s... or insert them all, and delete the native filesystem versions... that would makes most people nervous.
Sure, everyone knows about the scaling problems of GNUtella and clones, but the latest version of BearShare is an easy to use, no, idiot proof GNUtella clone for M$-windoze. I have been using it for a couple days now.
One of the main sources of problems for GNUtella is the type of content traded on the network. With 5MB songs, trading is quick and easy, but with 700MB mp4 DVD rips, trades take half a day, causing would-be-sharers to be locked into a small number of leachers for about half a day. GNUtella and clones tend to trade larger files more often than Napster. This causes you to be queued far more often, when requesting a file from a source who is sharing a DVD or two.
Still, if you have 10 minutes, check out either:
BearShare (for Windblows)
Limeware (for Linux, etc)
While it is important to look towards the future technologies such as Freenet or Alpine, the here-and-now matters the most. The current status of both Freenet and Alpine is not good enough for widespread use as a P2P network. The best thing for now is to try one of the new GNUtella servants (far better than the original in terms of ease-of-use and performance)... or try a hacked napster. However, sticking with the Napster tech is a bad idea... tech should move towards full distributed networks for robustness reasons.
Even though GNUtella can't scale in its current protocol version, I still see it as being the next generation after napster. Soon, the GNUtella protocol will be revised to greatly improve performance, and the GNUtella generation will hit prime time.
After that, people will want even better performance, anonymity, security, etc...
Those forces will bring about the following generation. Who will fill it? Well, thats the generation when we will see Freenet, Alpine, and other more ideal networks, fight for power.
All the while, in between generations, "duct tape" proxies will be used to mend the gaps.
Sperm contains half of your genetics. They can't clone you from sperm. It would be better to chop off a finger and put it in a ziplock back, than send a used condom up into space.
Yeah, with IPv6, you could nearly assign an individual IP address to every atom in the universe, or is that IPv7? I know we are getting close to something like that.
Ok, $700 for the Cappoccino, and $50,000 for my mini-satillite. Hmmm, just about $49,700 shy of what I need.
I sent in my TiVo $100 rebate over 2 months ago, and I still haven't received my check! I paid for the full lifetime service over 2 months ago. Whats the hold up? Anyone else having problems with the TiVo rebate? BTW, its a nice piece of equipment. Makes TV tolerable and even fun.
I get the mental image of the guy who loses money is eaten by a soda machine, so the guy freaks and starts beating the crap out of the machine, and then hundreds of cans of soda rush out of the machine.
Again, you are right, but infinity is not definable with natural numbers alone. You might say, "Well how about the set of all natural numbers?" Remember, we have an innate understanding of something which is happening, this constant shifting of our selfawareness from now to being a past memory because of the next now coming into awareness.
I would calim that the existance of myself is "true". Sure, you might just say that I am a dream or whatever, but I need no justification for my existance... its immediate. This is how mathematical intuitionism gains its "truth". Mathematics is supposed to be as immediate as your own self-awareness, because otherwise it would lose its certainty, its "truth".
Now, you could get picky and win the arguement by claiming that your mind is completely and totally different than mine. In no way are you self aware or whatever. Yeah, its a claim based on faith that your mind (selfawareness) is somehow, in the most basic way, similar to mine.
I know this is no way to win an arguement. I can only hope my horrid use of natural language will somehow inspire something in you. Anyway, if you are the least bit interested in learning why and how the popular mathematics is flawed, and you want to learn a little bit about a mathematics which is free from contradiction/paradoxes/many other problems associated with popular math, then check out the "From Hilbert to Brouwer" book that I linked to, or even better (but more expensive), is Brouwer's Intuitionism by W. P. Van Stigt
Intuitionism is the most sound mathematical system, yet it is the least known, taught, and therefore it is the most misunderstood. Its not a new thing nor is it an unproven thing.
You take the blue pill, the story ends. You wake up in your bed and you believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in wonderland. And, I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.
I left out one thing. My use of "existance" means that it exists as a mathematical construct within the mind from the Self's priomordial intuition of time. This use of the word "existance" implies that for something to exist, it must be known in an undeniable and certain way. Sorry, but describing these things is difficult. I can only hope it inspires the correct thoughts in your mind. I obviously seems to be failing at that. Well, such is communication.