My guess is that #11 is at least partly a Rorshach test. I bet Mr. Stiegler doesn't have a "point" to #11, but wants to see what "points" people attribute to him.
Anyway, anyone else find it funny how this "final exam" is about the future of computing but most of the questions (1-4,8-10) were about, well, mostly money and the commercialization (sp?) of the internet? Is that all the internet is good for these days? *sigh* Granted there were some privacy questions in there, but 8/11 about money?
Even granting your ratio -- a couple of those were only peripherally "about money" -- I think it's a sign that there's some realism behind the questions. A lot of issues are about money, even if it's in terms of "How do we support things like peace and justice and freedom when so many people are willing to sell chunks of those things away (especially other folks' peace and justice and freedom) for some ready cash?"
I thought "EarthWeb" was ok, but not as interesting as "David's Sling". His collection of short stories called "The Gentle Seduction" was pretty good, too. (Unfortunately, they're both out of print. Check your friendly neighborhood used book stores.)
Isn't there a way of making regulation without suing someone first?:/
In most countries, yes. That's what happened in the US. After a long, hard effort the Americans with Disabilities Act was passed.
It was passed nine friggin' years ago, and people are still ignoring it. (And/or spinning silly horror stories about supposed implications without having the slightest clue what the fuck they're talking about.)
If this has any resemblence at all to other ADA cases I'm familiar with, disability rights activists have spent years trying to encourage AOL to change, offering possible solutions that benefit the "temporarily able-bodied" as much as they would benefit themselves, doing everything short of offering AOL an elbow and leading them gently across the road.
Given how bloody difficult it often is to take on and push through an ADA case, AOL has probably been insistently oblivious and or stupidly stubborn.
Re:Criticizing molecular espresso machines
on
Nanosystems
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· Score: 2
I've not read the nanosystems book...
Obviously. RTFB.
One of the reasons Drexler wrote Nanosystems was to respond to just this sort of comment from people who insisted on commenting on the topic without understanding it. And no doubt one of the reasons Chris wrote the review was that he was dead-tired of Slashdotters commenting on the topic without understanding it.
Go read the book. Read the related stuff being published by chemists, biochemists, physicists, etc, etc. Then comment on it.
There are actually free HTML versions of both Engines of Creation and Unbounding the Future available on the Foresight web site, here.
Re:Alright I see something here but.
on
Nanosystems
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· Score: 1
So called "futurists" like Caral Sagan and other scifi/philosophers have said that we should have moon bases established and be to mars and back by now. I don't see any of that happening.
Um, so? Some predictions pan out, some don't. In any case, Drexler seems to be pretty careful about just pointing out what could be and not saying that he knows what will be. Granted, some nano-enthusiasts get carried away and make pretty ludicrous predictions, but that's hardly Drexler's fault. In fact, he tries to discourage bogosity.
Usually the folks at Slashdot offer some sort of comment or opinion about the subject because, after all, we all DO have an opinion.
This is a pretty common attitude (at least in the US, where everyone has a right to their opinion, no matter how stupid), but it's an attitude that annoys the shit out of me.
No, dammit, I do not have an opinion about this. I'm not qualified to have a meaningful opinion about it, and probably neither are most Slashdot readers. Roblimo is evidently smart enough to know his limits, unlike most people.
If you want to guess, you go right ahead. But don't think that your guesses are opinions, and don't think that your opinions are facts.
Yup, loaded it onto my Visor a couple of days ago.
I don't remember the original in detail, but I think this might be more acurately described as based on the original SIM City. Fun, though I'm not sure it's quite worth the price they're charging.
I haven't noticed any speed problems yet, but I haven't gotten a very big city yet, either.
Contrary to popular belief, ownership by individuals of extraterrestrial properties is not forbidden.
Well, ok, but it does not therefore follow that anyone will take any of these claims seriously.
The US government has several years to contest such a claim. They never did. Neither did the United Nations nor the Russian Government.
They've never contested my claim that I'm Napolean Bonapart, either.
Two former US President and several very prominent stars own their Lunar property already.
Did they actually *buy* claims, or were they gag gifts?
This is all pretty silly. If some really rich person -- let's call him D.D. Harriman -- went up and established a lunar colony, and some nut tried to take him to court because he did it on land "claimed" this way, it'd take a judge about 5 minutes to throw the case out. (Not counting the 15 minutes it'd take to stop laughing.)
"They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown." - Carl Sagan
The knighthood had already been granted, but the timing of the story was such that Clarke asked that the ceremony be postponed until he could respond to the charges.
The idea of patenting genes is truly offensive to my personal spiritual and political beliefs. How can anyone claim ownership of life itself?
They're not. They're claiming patent on a particular use of a particular genetic sequence. Which has ethical complications itself, of course, but I wish people would find out more about a topic before they respond to it.
An analogy: This is sorta like protesting a patent on a particular chip design by questioning whether anyone should be able to patent silicon.
Third world nations practice slash and burn agrigulture. They don't practice any sort of soil conservation, and once they have exhausted the bit of soil they are working, they go off to find another bit of forest to cut down and burn.
For low enough population levels, that works. (And we aren't doing too hot on the soil conservation thing, either.)
They burn inefficient fuels, with no emissions controls.
And they burn much, much less of them per person.
They dump their garbage and sewage into the local rivers with no thought to what it may be doing down stream.
(Sounds kinda familiar. How much thought do most people give to what their garbage and sewage is doing downstream?) And they produce much, much less garbage per person. Probably somewhat less sewage, too.
I've seen this possibility being kicked around. Some important things to keep in mind:
1) It assumes that eventually the population demographics of the whole world will follow that of "more developed regions" as the less developed regions become more developed... and it assumes that the whole world will become "more developed".
2) If, indeed, the whole world becomes "more developed", then the rate of resource consumption and environmental impact will rise dramatically, unless said development follows very different patterns. (That's possible with new technologies and intelligent "leap-frogging", but it's not a given, especially if we in the "more developed" regions don't make a major emphasis of setting a much better example than we do now.)
3) Even if this population forcast is correct, world population will peek at roughly 9 billion. That's 3 people for ever 2 we have now. Combine this with #2, and it's pretty clear that human population trends still have disasterous potential even without the related age-related demographic trends.
If you'd win typing speed, I wouldn't see a problem, but they claim this thing is as fast as the normal graffiti operation, not faster.
That was my first thought, but CmdrTaco seems to have misstated that part. They claim that "with practice, the tiny keyboard is faster than handwriting using Graffiti."
For people interested in speeding up their Palm entry, there's a hack to use the Twiddler here.
"The smaller the parts the more you have to spend to build it."
This doesn't always follow. The parts in my PC are *much* smaller than the parts they're using to build the bridge near where I work, but the bridge costs *much* more.
"To get a technology to be widespread in industry you need to have it cheaply mass produced 1.2.1. Overhead will prevent this due to creation of machines."
I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. Nanotech will probably be amenable to mass production, just as micro-tech currently is.
"Something has to have speed to have any value in modern society."
Which (a) is not always a good thing and (b) is, thankfully, not always true. In any case, nanotech may enable speeds (both production speeds and travel speeds) in excess of what's available today.
"Anything on even a small scale to humans will not be possible cheaply."
Uh, given the context in which this discussion is taking place, this is just... silly. Ever look at a CPU in a microscope?
"No one wants to risk an investment on something that has little possibility of success."
While these speculations are simplistic -- and presented as such! -- pointing out that someone else's prediction about something else was wrong has little to do with whether these predictions will be wrong. That's not a rebuttal, that's faulty logic.
"Oh, Btw, If any of this is complete BS, is most likely because its 6am and I'm just about to go to bed, not because I don't know what I'm talking about - generally, I do." Maybe so, but this time you don't. All of these things have been addressed -- sometimes repeatedly, and from various directions -- in the literature. Look it up. Articles like this one are very simplified -- and yes, often oversimplified -- overviews of the field. Critiquing the subject on the basis of articles like this is likewise oversimplified.
Who would have thought even a few years back that the Queen's website would be on linux?
Who would have thought even a few years back that the Queen would have a website at all? Despite having immediately recognized the web as a soon-to-be-very-hot thing when I first ran Mosaic back in early '94, I'm still sometimes astonished at how far and fast it's spread.
Slashdot Mirror
My guess is that #11 is at least partly a Rorshach test. I bet Mr. Stiegler doesn't have a "point" to #11, but wants to see what "points" people attribute to him.
Even granting your ratio -- a couple of those were only peripherally "about money" -- I think it's a sign that there's some realism behind the questions. A lot of issues are about money, even if it's in terms of "How do we support things like peace and justice and freedom when so many people are willing to sell chunks of those things away (especially other folks' peace and justice and freedom) for some ready cash?"
P.S. It's "Stiegler".
In most countries, yes. That's what happened in the US. After a long, hard effort the Americans with Disabilities Act was passed.
It was passed nine friggin' years ago, and people are still ignoring it. (And/or spinning silly horror stories about supposed implications without having the slightest clue what the fuck they're talking about.)
If this has any resemblence at all to other ADA cases I'm familiar with, disability rights activists have spent years trying to encourage AOL to change, offering possible solutions that benefit the "temporarily able-bodied" as much as they would benefit themselves, doing everything short of offering AOL an elbow and leading them gently across the road.
Given how bloody difficult it often is to take on and push through an ADA case, AOL has probably been insistently oblivious and or stupidly stubborn.
... maybe they should've phoned for directions.
Obviously. RTFB.
One of the reasons Drexler wrote Nanosystems was to respond to just this sort of comment from people who insisted on commenting on the topic without understanding it. And no doubt one of the reasons Chris wrote the review was that he was dead-tired of Slashdotters commenting on the topic without understanding it.
Go read the book. Read the related stuff being published by chemists, biochemists, physicists, etc, etc. Then comment on it.
There are actually free HTML versions of both Engines of Creation and Unbounding the Future available on the Foresight web site, here.
Um, so? Some predictions pan out, some don't. In any case, Drexler seems to be pretty careful about just pointing out what could be and not saying that he knows what will be. Granted, some nano-enthusiasts get carried away and make pretty ludicrous predictions, but that's hardly Drexler's fault. In fact, he tries to discourage bogosity.
This is a pretty common attitude (at least in the US, where everyone has a right to their opinion, no matter how stupid), but it's an attitude that annoys the shit out of me.
No, dammit, I do not have an opinion about this. I'm not qualified to have a meaningful opinion about it, and probably neither are most Slashdot readers. Roblimo is evidently smart enough to know his limits, unlike most people.
If you want to guess, you go right ahead. But don't think that your guesses are opinions, and don't think that your opinions are facts.
I don't remember the original in detail, but I think this might be more acurately described as based on the original SIM City. Fun, though I'm not sure it's quite worth the price they're charging.
I haven't noticed any speed problems yet, but I haven't gotten a very big city yet, either.
Contrary to popular belief, ownership by individuals of extraterrestrial properties is not forbidden.
Well, ok, but it does not therefore follow that anyone will take any of these claims seriously.
The US government has several years to contest such a claim. They never did. Neither did the United Nations nor the Russian Government.
They've never contested my claim that I'm Napolean Bonapart, either.
Two former US President and several very prominent stars own their Lunar property already.
Did they actually *buy* claims, or were they gag gifts?
This is all pretty silly. If some really rich person -- let's call him D.D. Harriman -- went up and established a lunar colony, and some nut tried to take him to court because he did it on land "claimed" this way, it'd take a judge about 5 minutes to throw the case out. (Not counting the 15 minutes it'd take to stop laughing.)
"They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown." - Carl Sagan
The knighthood had already been granted, but the timing of the story was such that Clarke asked that the ceremony be postponed until he could respond to the charges.
Statement by Sir Arthur's Executive Secretary, on the SFWA website
I haven't heard anything about the outcome of Sir Arthur's legal action against the paper.
The current production technique is a bit awkward and labor intensive. But samples can be purchased here.
They're not. They're claiming patent on a particular use of a particular genetic sequence. Which has ethical complications itself, of course, but I wish people would find out more about a topic before they respond to it.
An analogy: This is sorta like protesting a patent on a particular chip design by questioning whether anyone should be able to patent silicon.
They're not.
For low enough population levels, that works. (And we aren't doing too hot on the soil conservation thing, either.)
They burn inefficient fuels, with no emissions controls.
And they burn much, much less of them per person.
They dump their garbage and sewage into the local rivers with no thought to what it may be doing down stream.
(Sounds kinda familiar. How much thought do most people give to what their garbage and sewage is doing downstream?) And they produce much, much less garbage per person. Probably somewhat less sewage, too.
1) It assumes that eventually the population demographics of the whole world will follow that of "more developed regions" as the less developed regions become more developed ... and it assumes that the whole world will become "more developed".
2) If, indeed, the whole world becomes "more developed", then the rate of resource consumption and environmental impact will rise dramatically, unless said development follows very different patterns. (That's possible with new technologies and intelligent "leap-frogging", but it's not a given, especially if we in the "more developed" regions don't make a major emphasis of setting a much better example than we do now.)
3) Even if this population forcast is correct, world population will peek at roughly 9 billion. That's 3 people for ever 2 we have now. Combine this with #2, and it's pretty clear that human population trends still have disasterous potential even without the related age-related demographic trends.
That was a joke. Lots of folks fell for it, though.
That was my first thought, but CmdrTaco seems to have misstated that part. They claim that "with practice, the tiny keyboard is faster than handwriting using Graffiti."
For people interested in speeding up their Palm entry, there's a hack to use the Twiddler here.
Yup. Opticom, from 3M.
This doesn't always follow. The parts in my PC are *much* smaller than the parts they're using to build the bridge near where I work, but the bridge costs *much* more.
"To get a technology to be widespread in industry you need to have it cheaply mass produced 1.2.1. Overhead will prevent this due to creation of machines."
I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. Nanotech will probably be amenable to mass production, just as micro-tech currently is.
"Something has to have speed to have any value in modern society."
Which (a) is not always a good thing and (b) is, thankfully, not always true. In any case, nanotech may enable speeds (both production speeds and travel speeds) in excess of what's available today.
"Anything on even a small scale to humans will not be possible cheaply."
Uh, given the context in which this discussion is taking place, this is just ... silly. Ever look at a CPU in a microscope?
"No one wants to risk an investment on something that has little possibility of success."
People are already investing in nanotech.
While these speculations are simplistic -- and presented as such! -- pointing out that someone else's prediction about something else was wrong has little to do with whether these predictions will be wrong. That's not a rebuttal, that's faulty logic.
"Oh, Btw, If any of this is complete BS, is most likely because its 6am and I'm just about to go to bed, not because I don't know what I'm talking about - generally, I do." Maybe so, but this time you don't. All of these things have been addressed -- sometimes repeatedly, and from various directions -- in the literature. Look it up. Articles like this one are very simplified -- and yes, often oversimplified -- overviews of the field. Critiquing the subject on the basis of articles like this is likewise oversimplified.
It doesn't directly affect you.
Who would have thought even a few years back that the Queen would have a website at all? Despite having immediately recognized the web as a soon-to-be-very-hot thing when I first ran Mosaic back in early '94, I'm still sometimes astonished at how far and fast it's spread.