Is interviews with 'those kind' of people, without any introduction. Talk to Carmack, or Ellison, or hell, even Gates, but don't tell anyone who it is.
Talk about things that won't immediatelly betray identity: "So, unintroduced person, how's it feel to have written Perl?" just ain't gonna do...
And then leave it to the readership to figure out who it is. Sort of like a secret Santa inteview.
Hey Rob!! You listening?? Can we have mystery guest Slashdot Interviews?? With beanie-prizes for the first person to correctly identify the interviewee?
And what a challenge it would be to come up with interview questions... Heh!
More than that do not understand technology any farther than they can throw a 21" monitor. It intimidates them, and makes their couch-potato heads hurt. So if a single company were to keep them safe from all dem goddanged teknikal details then that would be just honkey-dorey..
You'd probably get similar numbers if you asked if MS and AOL should merge.
We have to remember that the readership on/. is probably the top-most technically savvy 1%-10% of the online community. We see these issues from a different perspective than most 'computer users', and certainly different than most Americans.
67% of Americans like MS as it is. Jerry Springer is the most popular day-time talk show. Coincidence? I think not!
I know that in open source this is not a big concern (as far as it's continued existence is concerned) but, does this trouble anyone else?
The interconnection of huge companies is one thing, as long as there are alternatives. But mindshare is another concern. I suspect that VA Sys is caught up in the mega-merger surge, and is gobbling up the major players in the open-source field. Expect fusion with RedHat next...
The problem I see here is that with one false step, the reputation of open-source may be harmed. One large company controlling (effectively) the resources that the whole community relies upon (at this point) can be bought by... guess who?
Now, I know that the GPL protects the source against exploitation, and that we got to where we are without the reliance on a central authority, but... The instrumental people behind the movement have been gobbled up by these companies in the same way as the smaller companies have been absorbed into larger ones. They're under NDA now. Some may leave, others like the money and corporate status.
I'm getting the feeling that the grassroots movement is getting a new corporate domed stadium built over it.
First off, if the CPU is going to slide up and down on it's voltage, instead of just stepping down once (like the Intel) then new chipset support is needed. If you can put power management on the chip, great, but you've still got the rest of the system sucking juice. If your BIOS can manage power this way for the whole computer, even better.
Then there's integrating wireless communication, support for low and no power storage, maybe firewire... All the things that would be really nice to have now.
Then again, and I'm surprised nobody's mentioned it so far...
SOMEBODY has to burn those mobile-Linux in ROM chips.
These beasts are inherently evil, we all sense that. But the only way to protect your open source software is to patent the concept.
If it's something totally novel, you might get away with it, but you probably won't. If it's an alternative, you'd better hope yours is most efficient by orders of magnitude, else nobody cares about your approach at all.
And your definition of the algorithm/method has to be nebulous enough to prevent alternative implementations. After all, source code is not poetry, you can get the same effect if you rephrase things.
So this is how we get to the patents on 'one-click shopping' and the trademarking of the word MULTIMEDIA.
Open source is forware written by geeks, for geeks. The GNU community is self-serving, fulfilling it's own needs. That's the whole point of open source. You get the code, and you get the means of tweaking it until it fills your own needs.
Nobody is out to replace Windows or MacOS here. Total World Domination is a sarcastic battle-cry, one that's intended to promote the "Do It Yourself" ideology. We're not competing for Linux on every desktop here...
What the author suggests, at least implicitly, is that we need focus groups and marketting research user-proxy specifications to tell open source developers what sort of GUI the anonymous masses want to see. Sorry, I don't buy it.
A certain level of technical know-how has always been the price of admission into Unixland. If you don't like it, then you'll like what you're given.
The MS-Windows interface is confusing to new users as much as the X Windows interface. DOS commands, the concept of directory trees and shutting down before shutting off are all foreign concepts to new users - until they learn.
This is the true Achilles' Heel of open source/GNU/Linux. The steep learning curve. We don't need no stinkin' GUIs! What we need is a consistent means for newbies to become knowledgable users. We need to make self-education easier. We should not come up with a conceptual kludge GUI that shows soft links as fuzzy icons and hard links as fuzzy icons with a sharp outline, or any some such bull.
We need usable user documentation, online help that's not written in C or PERL, but rather in English (well, it's a start). man pages suck! We need a central repository for this knowledge, and we need it to be new user-friendly. HOWTO's are great once you know what you're doing and just need a heads-up on a specific item. They are after all, slightly polished notes on the process someone went through. They EXPLAIN LITTLE, they're recipes. We need readable docs, a Q&A bank, an online reference, and a human hand for new users to hold on to for the first few weeks.
Once they are off the ground, they'll run circles around MS-GUI users, in X, in ksh and in the {G}UI of their choice. That's the point. Empowerment. Choice. Can't do it without education.
As was stated in another of today's articles, (to paraphrase Marx) ..theory has removed the flowers from the chain, not so that man shall wear the unadorned chain, but so that he may recognise the chain for what it is, and throw off his shackles so that he may pick the flowers as they are..
A pretty face that abstracts the workings (and knowledge thereof) of a system is just sticking more flowers in the chain, so the user feels grateful for being led around by a sweet smelling garland. It's not right.
Sometimes, a non-intuitive (to an ignorant user - no offense intended) interface is the best way to represent the underlying concept beneath it. People who understand the inner workings of the system see it a certain way - true to the core functionality. Misrepresenting the system beneath the interface does the user harm in the long term. It keeps new users from becoming knowledgable about HOW the system works.
Let's not try to save ignorant users from their own ignorance by giving them an indiot-proof interface. Istead, let's teach them to fish.
Let me repeat all this: The deCSS program is neither designed nor necessary for copying DVD movies, which isn't economically feasible anyway and not technically possible with the partially prewritten blank disks being sold today. In any case, a tool to copy DVDs would be legal for personal use.
If the matter can be summarized to this two sentence paragraph, why in the world is this even an issue??
I have to read The Motley Fool more often, and so should lawyers, judges and execs.. Poor Jon Johannsen.
To spec your system, try Falcon Northwest. Granted, they're primarily gaming-oriented, but they build the machine to your specifications. I don't know if they're willing/able to build a high-end business system (a'la RAID), but they're a resource.
Expect to pay a premium for the individual attention though. It's someone's time, not another unit off an assembly line.
I can't imagine a real use of being a 'mind in a box', unless the process is revercible. Using a computer as temporary storage, while a new body is vat-grown, or a cyborg host is assembled... Maybe then.
But the really interesting result of this becoming reality is not hosting the mind in hardware, it's blurring the boundary between brain and computer.
If we manage to solve the problems of transferring the mind into hardware, all we need to do is provide an interface for the mind to hook into hardware and vice versa. Imagine being able to precisely recall all facts you've ever been exposed to, and all you haven't, on a whim. Imagine being able to do super-complex math (not symbolics where biology beats algorithms hand's down, but number crunching) as easily as you would throw a baseball.
A transparent interface to a computer would make this possible. Your mind stays where it is, but your thoughts can suddenly extend to an environment tailored to tasks we (biology) can not do well. Consider having UV and IR sensor inputs overlaid onto your visual data stream. You could see heat... as just another color.
Now, extend the concept. Cross-sensory interfaces. I sky-dive, you get the rush. (Brainstorm comes to mind). Imagine the first killer app... A virtual roller-coaster, where you feel the G's sitting on your couch. Imagine the real killer app... Just like for the VCR, cross-sensory sex would be a huge money maker. You could 'experience' Pamela Lee, you sick little monkey!!
Now extend the concept again. The Internet as the interconnecting medium, computers and minds all jacked in. You need to have expert knowledge of law, well, there's a lawyer out there who might be willing to answer your questions on-line (on-mind?).. It's just like talking to yourself, a computer facilitated telepathy if you will. Sharing ideas would actually become a reality. UML be damned! No need for language. No lies. All cards on the table - my idea of hell.:)
You thought the search engines had a hard time keeping up before? In a world where the pieces generate their own content, we'd need a new kind of search engine - or maybe a new kind of profession - professional networking might actually mean something.
We would need to mature psychology into a real science, and psychiatry could treat crazy people as faulty hardware. Your shrink could actually get into your head, and make adjustments. Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer, do...
You thought the Melissa virus was bad?? Hey, the Samantha virus might shut down your kidneys!!
I can speculate too, I can read William Gibson, and spew my own visions of the future. Can I be as famous as Ray??
Presumably external stimuli will have to be provided through some interface with the external world. Thus you will "see", "hear", "taste" and "touch" etc based on what is fed to you by the storage machine's interface.
Wow, this would make a great movie... Except that it would need an antagonist. Let's see...
The computer is actually in charge, and it feeds off of the body heat of the people... And we'll get some big name actors to be in it. And throw in some existentialist and pseudo-religions mumbo-jumbo. Maybe even a Messiah type of thread. Don't forget a kicking soundtrack and awesome eye-candy digital effects. People really eat that stuff up.
Yeah, and speaking of eye-candy, we can get Carrie Ann Moss in some tight shinny pants! It would ROCK!
But getting back on topic:
With all due respect, Mr. Kurzweil, we don't have the slightest clue about what neural patterns mean or how nerves encode signals. We have no clue what-so-ever about capturing the 'state' of the brain/mind. We don't know the rules for changing states, for what inputs take us to which state, for what outputs result, and wether there is even a huge but finite set of states or not.
Mr. Kurzweil, this is a speculative dream proposing a solution in search of a problem. To what end? Because we can? Not good enough, since by that token we should be in the middle of a nuclear winter.
I suspect that we are not simply hugely-complex Turing Machines. Though even if we are, we don't know where to even begin modeling ourselves. IMHO, Ray Kurzweil should stick to making synthesizers, he's been talking to Negraponte too much.
Presumably external stimuli will have to be provided through some interface with the external world. Thus you will "see", "hear", "taste" and "touch" etc based on what is fed to you by the storage machine's interface.
Wow, this would make a great movie... Except that it would need an antagonist. Let's see...
The computer is actually in charge, and it feeds off of the body heat of the people... And we'll get some big name actors to be in it. And throw in some existentialist and pseudo-religions mumbo-jumbo. Maybe even a Messiah type of thread. Don't forget a kicking soundtrack and awesome eye-candy digital effects. People really eat that stuff up.
Yeah, and speaking of eye-candy, we can get Carrie Ann Moss in some tight shinny pants! It would ROCK!
But getting back on topic:
With all due respect, Mr. Kurzweil, we don't have the slightest clue about what neural patterns mean or how nerves encode signals. We have no clue what-so-ever about capturing the 'state' of the brain/mind. We don't know the rules for changing states, for what inputs take us to which state, for what outputs result, and wether there is even a huge but finite set of states or not.
Mr. Kurzweil, this is a speculative dream proposing a solution in search of a problem. To what end? Because we can? Not good enough, since by that token we should be in the middle of a nuclear winter.
I suspect that we are not simply hugely-complex Turing Machines. Though even if we are, we don't know where to even begin modeling ourselves. IMHO, Ray Kurzweil should stick to making synthesizers, he's been talking to Negraponte too much.
There certainly are both good an bad sides of these organizations. I wonder how 'corrupt' medical organizations would be if the Bar Association didn't make it so easy to sue a Doctor for malpractice.;)
These organizations need to be held accountable for the practice withing the field they claim to advocate. For example, it should be a part of every legal oath (is there such a thing?) to not entertain a frivilous lawsuit (with parameters provided and kept up to date, to define such a suit), just as all doctors swear to 'first, do no harm'...
Also, you seem to suggest that teachers have no skills. If I misunderstand, then I apologise. Teachers need special training to impart knowledge onto students, especially in the age group most resistant to being taught. They need special training is child psychology, conflict resolution, structuring of the learning process and other things, that make education uniform across schools and regions.
The requirement of being degreed in Education in order to teach in any field is not true at University levels, and also not adhered to in many private schools. In these areas, an expert in the field is preferable - especially in education. Once education is no longer required, and students make the choice of being there, then the Educational training otherwise required is no longer needed.
But I do agree with you in principle. Education is a great place for a lazy person to get comfy... This is why the whole idea of tenure prings up a systemic deficiency in the educational system. It takes literally years to remove a tenured teacher from their position. You need to use the words 'sexual abuse' just to get the overseeing 'bored of ed.' to wake up and take notice.
Returning to the topic of the article though, Software Engineering is not the same thing as programming. The difference is that a programmer implements the design of the SE. The SE needs professional training and programming experience, the programmer needs skills. The degree to which the programmer has freedom of design is a managerial matter, dictated largely by the legal department, and mostly (in the final tally) by the accountants.
The engineering firm I work in has very few P.E.'s. Most are degreed engineers who just never took the PE exam, or don't bother to keep paying the fees for maintaining the license. The thing is that the PE's have 'sign-off responsibility' which allows them to authorize design changes. Even if the changes are the idea of a non-PE. They have approval, they are the ones to get hit if the changes are wrong, and they get paid a bit more for that.
As an SE/Programmer (still fuzzy for us in CS) I can make design changes, and all I have to do is get buy-in to the idea from other developers and management. I can argue the point, and the only repercussion for failure is that it was MY idea. My professionalism, or the integrity of my career or employability, is never at stake. Unlike an architect who is branded for life if his building collapses, when my software crashes, I get to say 'oops' and try again.
There are significant portions of the CS industry where this is not acceptable. Colliding jumbo-jets is one such area. Cratering a probe on Mars, because they said feet, and you heard meters, is another.
A P.S.E. certificate would not really set up a racket. I really don't think it would. It WOULD reduce wages for people who do not hold the cert. The head architect(s) of the system would still make in the six figures per annum. The guys that crank out 10 KSLOC per week straight out of high-school, having read a single VB in 21 days book would realize their value in the grand scheme of things right quick.
The Bar Assoc and the Medical Board may protect their members, but they do a lot more.
They provide assurance of the credentials of the people they accept into their ranks. Some quacks slip through the ranks, but many fewer than would be able to practice were these governing bodies not there. The alternative is federal management, and that bodes ill.
I do not want a cheap, home-grown surgeon taking out my kid's appendix. I do not someone with little more than a strong opinion to represent me in a Court Of Law. I require proof of competency!
In the consumer market, software will most likely remain Caveat Emptor, but I do not accept the future where missle guidance systems, air traffic control software, embedded pacemaker logic and other critical systems are written by self-taught lowest bidders.
It is these fields where professional training, professional certification and licensing will debut. After that, we'll see professional designers offer higher-cost alternatives to commercial software - and some people will choose this over the quick and dirty versions.
Now, I won't argue that experience counts for a great deal. It's crucial. This is BTW why people fresh out of medical school have to do residency - where their every move is scrutinized and approved before it becomes terminal (pun int).
In mission critical, safety minded and heavy-financial application, where lives and big money is on the line, accountability is required. Even in many consumer goods markets, the sort of accountability and competency assurance that comes from having a Professional Engineer design the anti-lock brakes and air-bags is a Good Thing.
We need to consider just one thing. If we were releasing a new chip, capable of running any other (theoretically) architecture's instructions, and thie feature being in upgradable software, with the intention of putting something on the market in reasonable time.... Which ONE architecture would we choose to support?
I'm not at all devastated by the fact that 86k, PPC, Z80 or whatever else isn't supported. In time, the smaller segments of the market will either be supported, or will convert.
What I would really like to see now is direct Java bytecode support.:) That is, no VM layer.
As for the power consumption aspect taking center stage, it's right to do so. The general public and casual user of portable devices isn't hampered by poor performance, they're hamstrung by battery life. This is HUGE.
Mobile users have never, EVER considered running multi-platform apps on the same machine. Code morphing is wizz-bang, but not much else to them.
Hey, will this thing multitask platform specific apps? Or is there a reboot needed for platform switches?? Anyone figure that one out yet?
Did you see the slashdot plug on the Transmeta 'going mobile' page. It just gives ya the warm and fuzzies... Ahh.... Now where'd I leave that The Who album with "Going Mobile" on it??
Now, I didn't see the announcement, but I know for a fact that a processor MUST have instructions. That's sort of the point of it. These need not be x86, and in the case of Crusoe they're not. But there MUST necessarily be native instructions on this chip. It is these instructions that the x86 instructions (mapping in software) are morphed into.
These instructions on the Crusoe, are in almost all certainty RISC rather than CISC, since it's easier (drawing on intuition) to decompose CISC instructions into sequences of RISC instructions. It actually makes a lot of sense. You have a lookup of CISC instructions for a particular architecture (x86 to start) and their corresponding RISC (native) operation sequence. It's surely more complex than this but: when executing x86 code, you encounter some instruction, you look up the corresponding native sequence and execute it.
Anyhoo, while Crusoe is not 'just a RISC chip', it's native instruction set must be simpler than x86 CISC, since you can't reasonably go in the opposite direction. The magic of this chip is that it seems to do runtime optimization of instructions... And executing only what it needs to??? Freaky!
Neither do 1's and 0's. It's people who use them irresponsibly that cause harm.
Free speach is not about the right to say any thing one pleases, it's about being able to voice an opinion. There are such things as pointless spewing, and the line between worthwhile and worthless is fine and fuzzy.
While I agree that too many people tend to over-react to what is only words (sexual harassment is real hard to quantify for example), I disagree that words don't hurt. Words mean whatever we want them to, but some words have very specific conotations of which we are all well aware.
Did you ever get bullied as a kid? Did it hurt?
Words from an anonymous stranger online may be easier to shrug off, but people are usually not able to just tune out their emotions. Those that can are often seen a clinically dysfunctional, since emotional reaction is a normal human trait.
And for another slant on the argument, the words of a judge are just words, but they do carry consequences.
Nowhere in the Be page does it say that BeOS would be Open Source (truly free). It will be free to use, in binary form. Correct me if I'm wrong, but that's how it reads.
That's not the sort of freedom we're striving for. In fact it would be better, in principle, to sell (for a reasonable price i.e. their current $100) the source code than to give away the binary.
IMHO, compilation is a value-added convenience, while seeing the guts of your system is a God given right.:)
[rant on] There are a million reasons why open source is better than free binary. You get what you pay for is one. With a free binary, there's little impetus to improve or fix THAT version. The paying corporate version will get the lion share of closed developer time. Don't think for a second that there won't be a different version for the paying corporate users. Don't delude yourself that way.
Open source will focus critique of shortcomings in the implementation, possibly embarassing the developers into fixing things - while also providing amateur assistance. Skill-specialized outsiders could do a great job contributing to an open source Be. People who have written exotic drivers would find it easier to port them to Be than would other developers. People who have worked in the dark corners of Linux and BSD could offer insights into improving BeOS.
Also, it will allow cross-polination of novel approaches to other OSes. Not to name any names, bit Linux would really benefit from a multi-media, data-moving based OS entrails being made open source. [rant off]
What Be proposes is not freedom. It's a marketting move, like Apple's giving Macs to schools, so they buy them at college and at work. This is a move to hook people at home, in the hope that they'll push for buying Be for the office.
Slashdot Mirror
Is interviews with 'those kind' of people, without any introduction. Talk to Carmack, or Ellison, or hell, even Gates, but don't tell anyone who it is.
Talk about things that won't immediatelly betray identity: "So, unintroduced person, how's it feel to have written Perl?" just ain't gonna do...
And then leave it to the readership to figure out who it is. Sort of like a secret Santa inteview.
Hey Rob!! You listening?? Can we have mystery guest Slashdot Interviews?? With beanie-prizes for the first person to correctly identify the interviewee?
And what a challenge it would be to come up with interview questions... Heh!
Check this out everybody...
According to these satellite images from Terraserver, Area 51 really does not exist... There's just a big black hole there.
I'm sorry Agent Smith, was I not supposed to see that?
Never, ever eat Golden Snow..
Eeeww....
67% of Americans like MS as it is.
/. is probably the top-most technically savvy 1%-10% of the online community. We see these issues from a different perspective than most 'computer users', and certainly different than most Americans.
More than that do not understand technology any farther than they can throw a 21" monitor. It intimidates them, and makes their couch-potato heads hurt. So if a single company were to keep them safe from all dem goddanged teknikal details then that would be just honkey-dorey..
You'd probably get similar numbers if you asked if MS and AOL should merge.
We have to remember that the readership on
67% of Americans like MS as it is. Jerry Springer is the most popular day-time talk show. Coincidence? I think not!
I know that in open source this is not a big concern (as far as it's continued existence is concerned) but, does this trouble anyone else?
The interconnection of huge companies is one thing, as long as there are alternatives. But mindshare is another concern. I suspect that VA Sys is caught up in the mega-merger surge, and is gobbling up the major players in the open-source field. Expect fusion with RedHat next...
The problem I see here is that with one false step, the reputation of open-source may be harmed. One large company controlling (effectively) the resources that the whole community relies upon (at this point) can be bought by... guess who?
Now, I know that the GPL protects the source against exploitation, and that we got to where we are without the reliance on a central authority, but... The instrumental people behind the movement have been gobbled up by these companies in the same way as the smaller companies have been absorbed into larger ones. They're under NDA now. Some may leave, others like the money and corporate status.
I'm getting the feeling that the grassroots movement is getting a new corporate domed stadium built over it.
No need! It already comes that way!!
I can code that in three APL glyphs!
First off, if the CPU is going to slide up and down on it's voltage, instead of just stepping down once (like the Intel) then new chipset support is needed. If you can put power management on the chip, great, but you've still got the rest of the system sucking juice. If your BIOS can manage power this way for the whole computer, even better.
Then there's integrating wireless communication, support for low and no power storage, maybe firewire... All the things that would be really nice to have now.
Then again, and I'm surprised nobody's mentioned it so far...
SOMEBODY has to burn those mobile-Linux in ROM chips.
Sirens of Titan, The Player Piano, or at least Welcome to the Monkey House.
And don't forget Stanislaus Lem.
These beasts are inherently evil, we all sense that. But the only way to protect your open source software is to patent the concept.
If it's something totally novel, you might get away with it, but you probably won't. If it's an alternative, you'd better hope yours is most efficient by orders of magnitude, else nobody cares about your approach at all.
And your definition of the algorithm/method has to be nebulous enough to prevent alternative implementations. After all, source code is not poetry, you can get the same effect if you rephrase things.
So this is how we get to the patents on 'one-click shopping' and the trademarking of the word MULTIMEDIA.
As I read it, and IANAL either, is that you can not produce proprietary, closed programs if you base them on something that is GPL.
This is why GPL is sometimes referred to as viral copyright, it infects all derivative work to be like it, or not be at all.
And you thought Microsoft was the BORG?? Resistance is futile, you will be GPL! Ha!
Open source is forware written by geeks, for geeks. The GNU community is self-serving, fulfilling it's own needs. That's the whole point of open source. You get the code, and you get the means of tweaking it until it fills your own needs.
..theory has removed the flowers from the chain, not so that man shall wear the unadorned chain, but so that he may recognise the chain for what it is, and throw off his shackles so that he may pick the flowers as they are..
Nobody is out to replace Windows or MacOS here. Total World Domination is a sarcastic battle-cry, one that's intended to promote the "Do It Yourself" ideology. We're not competing for Linux on every desktop here...
What the author suggests, at least implicitly, is that we need focus groups and marketting research user-proxy specifications to tell open source developers what sort of GUI the anonymous masses want to see. Sorry, I don't buy it.
A certain level of technical know-how has always been the price of admission into Unixland. If you don't like it, then you'll like what you're given.
The MS-Windows interface is confusing to new users as much as the X Windows interface. DOS commands, the concept of directory trees and shutting down before shutting off are all foreign concepts to new users - until they learn.
This is the true Achilles' Heel of open source/GNU/Linux. The steep learning curve. We don't need no stinkin' GUIs! What we need is a consistent means for newbies to become knowledgable users. We need to make self-education easier. We should not come up with a conceptual kludge GUI that shows soft links as fuzzy icons and hard links as fuzzy icons with a sharp outline, or any some such bull.
We need usable user documentation, online help that's not written in C or PERL, but rather in English (well, it's a start). man pages suck! We need a central repository for this knowledge, and we need it to be new user-friendly. HOWTO's are great once you know what you're doing and just need a heads-up on a specific item. They are after all, slightly polished notes on the process someone went through. They EXPLAIN LITTLE, they're recipes. We need readable docs, a Q&A bank, an online reference, and a human hand for new users to hold on to for the first few weeks.
Once they are off the ground, they'll run circles around MS-GUI users, in X, in ksh and in the {G}UI of their choice. That's the point. Empowerment. Choice. Can't do it without education.
As was stated in another of today's articles, (to paraphrase Marx)
A pretty face that abstracts the workings (and knowledge thereof) of a system is just sticking more flowers in the chain, so the user feels grateful for being led around by a sweet smelling garland. It's not right.
Sometimes, a non-intuitive (to an ignorant user - no offense intended) interface is the best way to represent the underlying concept beneath it. People who understand the inner workings of the system see it a certain way - true to the core functionality. Misrepresenting the system beneath the interface does the user harm in the long term. It keeps new users from becoming knowledgable about HOW the system works.
Let's not try to save ignorant users from their own ignorance by giving them an indiot-proof interface. Istead, let's teach them to fish.
Let me repeat all this: The deCSS program is neither designed nor necessary for copying DVD movies, which isn't economically feasible anyway and not technically possible with the partially prewritten blank disks being sold today. In any case, a tool to copy DVDs would be legal for personal use.
If the matter can be summarized to this two sentence paragraph, why in the world is this even an issue??
I have to read The Motley Fool more often, and so should lawyers, judges and execs.. Poor Jon Johannsen.
To spec your system, try Falcon Northwest. Granted, they're primarily gaming-oriented, but they build the machine to your specifications. I don't know if they're willing/able to build a high-end business system (a'la RAID), but they're a resource.
Expect to pay a premium for the individual attention though. It's someone's time, not another unit off an assembly line.
The article was submitted by lovecraft, a username inspired surely by...
H.P. Lovecraft who conceived of the City of Kadath, which inspired the story...
Kadath in the Cold Waste which is exactly about being alive inside a computer.
Some days are just better than others. The Universe made a pun. Enjoy it.
I can't imagine a real use of being a 'mind in a box', unless the process is revercible. Using a computer as temporary storage, while a new body is vat-grown, or a cyborg host is assembled... Maybe then.
:)
But the really interesting result of this becoming reality is not hosting the mind in hardware, it's blurring the boundary between brain and computer.
If we manage to solve the problems of transferring the mind into hardware, all we need to do is provide an interface for the mind to hook into hardware and vice versa. Imagine being able to precisely recall all facts you've ever been exposed to, and all you haven't, on a whim. Imagine being able to do super-complex math (not symbolics where biology beats algorithms hand's down, but number crunching) as easily as you would throw a baseball.
A transparent interface to a computer would make this possible. Your mind stays where it is, but your thoughts can suddenly extend to an environment tailored to tasks we (biology) can not do well. Consider having UV and IR sensor inputs overlaid onto your visual data stream. You could see heat... as just another color.
Now, extend the concept. Cross-sensory interfaces. I sky-dive, you get the rush. (Brainstorm comes to mind). Imagine the first killer app... A virtual roller-coaster, where you feel the G's sitting on your couch. Imagine the real killer app... Just like for the VCR, cross-sensory sex would be a huge money maker. You could 'experience' Pamela Lee, you sick little monkey!!
Now extend the concept again. The Internet as the interconnecting medium, computers and minds all jacked in. You need to have expert knowledge of law, well, there's a lawyer out there who might be willing to answer your questions on-line (on-mind?).. It's just like talking to yourself, a computer facilitated telepathy if you will. Sharing ideas would actually become a reality. UML be damned! No need for language. No lies. All cards on the table - my idea of hell.
You thought the search engines had a hard time keeping up before? In a world where the pieces generate their own content, we'd need a new kind of search engine - or maybe a new kind of profession - professional networking might actually mean something.
We would need to mature psychology into a real science, and psychiatry could treat crazy people as faulty hardware. Your shrink could actually get into your head, and make adjustments. Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer, do...
You thought the Melissa virus was bad?? Hey, the Samantha virus might shut down your kidneys!!
I can speculate too, I can read William Gibson, and spew my own visions of the future. Can I be as famous as Ray??
Presumably external stimuli will have to be provided through some interface with the external world. Thus you will "see", "hear", "taste" and "touch" etc based on what is fed to you by the storage machine's interface.
Wow, this would make a great movie... Except that it would need an antagonist. Let's see...
The computer is actually in charge, and it feeds off of the body heat of the people... And we'll get some big name actors to be in it. And throw in some existentialist and pseudo-religions mumbo-jumbo. Maybe even a Messiah type of thread.
Don't forget a kicking soundtrack and awesome eye-candy digital effects. People really eat that stuff up.
Yeah, and speaking of eye-candy, we can get Carrie Ann Moss in some tight shinny pants! It would ROCK!
But getting back on topic:
With all due respect, Mr. Kurzweil, we don't have the slightest clue about what neural patterns mean or how nerves encode signals. We have no clue what-so-ever about capturing the 'state' of the brain/mind. We don't know the rules for changing states, for what inputs take us to which state, for what outputs result, and wether there is even a huge but finite set of states or not.
Mr. Kurzweil, this is a speculative dream proposing a solution in search of a problem. To what end? Because we can? Not good enough, since by that token we should be in the middle of a nuclear winter.
I suspect that we are not simply hugely-complex Turing Machines. Though even if we are, we don't know where to even begin modeling ourselves. IMHO, Ray Kurzweil should stick to making synthesizers, he's been talking to Negraponte too much.
Presumably external stimuli will have to be provided through some interface with the external world. Thus you will "see", "hear", "taste" and "touch" etc based on what is fed to you by the storage machine's interface.
Wow, this would make a great movie... Except that it would need an antagonist. Let's see...
The computer is actually in charge, and it feeds off of the body heat of the people... And we'll get some big name actors to be in it. And throw in some existentialist and pseudo-religions mumbo-jumbo. Maybe even a Messiah type of thread.
Don't forget a kicking soundtrack and awesome eye-candy digital effects. People really eat that stuff up.
Yeah, and speaking of eye-candy, we can get Carrie Ann Moss in some tight shinny pants! It would ROCK!
But getting back on topic:
With all due respect, Mr. Kurzweil, we don't have the slightest clue about what neural patterns mean or how nerves encode signals. We have no clue what-so-ever about capturing the 'state' of the brain/mind. We don't know the rules for changing states, for what inputs take us to which state, for what outputs result, and wether there is even a huge but finite set of states or not.
Mr. Kurzweil, this is a speculative dream proposing a solution in search of a problem. To what end? Because we can? Not good enough, since by that token we should be in the middle of a nuclear winter.
I suspect that we are not simply hugely-complex Turing Machines. Though even if we are, we don't know where to even begin modeling ourselves. IMHO, Ray Kurzweil should stick to making synthesizers, he's been talking to Negraponte too much.
There certainly are both good an bad sides of these organizations. I wonder how 'corrupt' medical organizations would be if the Bar Association didn't make it so easy to sue a Doctor for malpractice. ;)
These organizations need to be held accountable for the practice withing the field they claim to advocate. For example, it should be a part of every legal oath (is there such a thing?) to not entertain a frivilous lawsuit (with parameters provided and kept up to date, to define such a suit), just as all doctors swear to 'first, do no harm'...
Also, you seem to suggest that teachers have no skills. If I misunderstand, then I apologise. Teachers need special training to impart knowledge onto students, especially in the age group most resistant to being taught. They need special training is child psychology, conflict resolution, structuring of the learning process and other things, that make education uniform across schools and regions.
The requirement of being degreed in Education in order to teach in any field is not true at University levels, and also not adhered to in many private schools. In these areas, an expert in the field is preferable - especially in education. Once education is no longer required, and students make the choice of being there, then the Educational training otherwise required is no longer needed.
But I do agree with you in principle. Education is a great place for a lazy person to get comfy... This is why the whole idea of tenure prings up a systemic deficiency in the educational system. It takes literally years to remove a tenured teacher from their position. You need to use the words 'sexual abuse' just to get the overseeing 'bored of ed.' to wake up and take notice.
Returning to the topic of the article though, Software Engineering is not the same thing as programming. The difference is that a programmer implements the design of the SE. The SE needs professional training and programming experience, the programmer needs skills. The degree to which the programmer has freedom of design is a managerial matter, dictated largely by the legal department, and mostly (in the final tally) by the accountants.
The engineering firm I work in has very few P.E.'s. Most are degreed engineers who just never took the PE exam, or don't bother to keep paying the fees for maintaining the license. The thing is that the PE's have 'sign-off responsibility' which allows them to authorize design changes. Even if the changes are the idea of a non-PE. They have approval, they are the ones to get hit if the changes are wrong, and they get paid a bit more for that.
As an SE/Programmer (still fuzzy for us in CS) I can make design changes, and all I have to do is get buy-in to the idea from other developers and management. I can argue the point, and the only repercussion for failure is that it was MY idea. My professionalism, or the integrity of my career or employability, is never at stake. Unlike an architect who is branded for life if his building collapses, when my software crashes, I get to say 'oops' and try again.
There are significant portions of the CS industry where this is not acceptable. Colliding jumbo-jets is one such area. Cratering a probe on Mars, because they said feet, and you heard meters, is another.
A P.S.E. certificate would not really set up a racket. I really don't think it would. It WOULD reduce wages for people who do not hold the cert. The head architect(s) of the system would still make in the six figures per annum. The guys that crank out 10 KSLOC per week straight out of high-school, having read a single VB in 21 days book would realize their value in the grand scheme of things right quick.
The Bar Assoc and the Medical Board may protect their members, but they do a lot more.
They provide assurance of the credentials of the people they accept into their ranks. Some quacks slip through the ranks, but many fewer than would be able to practice were these governing bodies not there. The alternative is federal management, and that bodes ill.
I do not want a cheap, home-grown surgeon taking out my kid's appendix. I do not someone with little more than a strong opinion to represent me in a Court Of Law. I require proof of competency!
In the consumer market, software will most likely remain Caveat Emptor, but I do not accept the future where missle guidance systems, air traffic control software, embedded pacemaker logic and other critical systems are written by self-taught lowest bidders.
It is these fields where professional training, professional certification and licensing will debut. After that, we'll see professional designers offer higher-cost alternatives to commercial software - and some people will choose this over the quick and dirty versions.
Now, I won't argue that experience counts for a great deal. It's crucial. This is BTW why people fresh out of medical school have to do residency - where their every move is scrutinized and approved before it becomes terminal (pun int).
In mission critical, safety minded and heavy-financial application, where lives and big money is on the line, accountability is required. Even in many consumer goods markets, the sort of accountability and competency assurance that comes from having a Professional Engineer design the anti-lock brakes and air-bags is a Good Thing.
Interesting point.
All you 16 year olds out there, quick, compile GNU code, sell commercially, file for IPO.
Hurry, before the bubble bursts, and you're old enough to vote.
We need to consider just one thing. If we were releasing a new chip, capable of running any other (theoretically) architecture's instructions, and thie feature being in upgradable software, with the intention of putting something on the market in reasonable time.... Which ONE architecture would we choose to support?
:) That is, no VM layer.
I'm not at all devastated by the fact that 86k, PPC, Z80 or whatever else isn't supported. In time, the smaller segments of the market will either be supported, or will convert.
What I would really like to see now is direct Java bytecode support.
As for the power consumption aspect taking center stage, it's right to do so. The general public and casual user of portable devices isn't hampered by poor performance, they're hamstrung by battery life. This is HUGE.
Mobile users have never, EVER considered running multi-platform apps on the same machine. Code morphing is wizz-bang, but not much else to them.
Hey, will this thing multitask platform specific apps? Or is there a reboot needed for platform switches?? Anyone figure that one out yet?
Did you see the slashdot plug on the Transmeta 'going mobile' page. It just gives ya the warm and fuzzies... Ahh.... Now where'd I leave that The Who album with "Going Mobile" on it??
Hold on a sec...
Now, I didn't see the announcement, but I know for a fact that a processor MUST have instructions. That's sort of the point of it. These need not be x86, and in the case of Crusoe they're not. But there MUST necessarily be native instructions on this chip. It is these instructions that the x86 instructions (mapping in software) are morphed into.
These instructions on the Crusoe, are in almost all certainty RISC rather than CISC, since it's easier (drawing on intuition) to decompose CISC instructions into sequences of RISC instructions.
It actually makes a lot of sense. You have a lookup of CISC instructions for a particular architecture (x86 to start) and their corresponding RISC (native) operation sequence. It's surely more complex than this but: when executing x86 code, you encounter some instruction, you look up the corresponding native sequence and execute it.
Anyhoo, while Crusoe is not 'just a RISC chip', it's native instruction set must be simpler than x86 CISC, since you can't reasonably go in the opposite direction. The magic of this chip is that it seems to do runtime optimization of instructions... And executing only what it needs to??? Freaky!
Neither do 1's and 0's. It's people who use them irresponsibly that cause harm.
Free speach is not about the right to say any thing one pleases, it's about being able to voice an opinion. There are such things as pointless spewing, and the line between worthwhile and worthless is fine and fuzzy.
While I agree that too many people tend to over-react to what is only words (sexual harassment is real hard to quantify for example), I disagree that words don't hurt. Words mean whatever we want them to, but some words have very specific conotations of which we are all well aware.
Did you ever get bullied as a kid? Did it hurt?
Words from an anonymous stranger online may be easier to shrug off, but people are usually not able to just tune out their emotions. Those that can are often seen a clinically dysfunctional, since emotional reaction is a normal human trait.
And for another slant on the argument, the words of a judge are just words, but they do carry consequences.
Nowhere in the Be page does it say that BeOS would be Open Source (truly free). It will be free to use, in binary form. Correct me if I'm wrong, but that's how it reads.
:)
That's not the sort of freedom we're striving for. In fact it would be better, in principle, to sell (for a reasonable price i.e. their current $100) the source code than to give away the binary.
IMHO, compilation is a value-added convenience, while seeing the guts of your system is a God given right.
[rant on]
There are a million reasons why open source is better than free binary. You get what you pay for is one. With a free binary, there's little impetus to improve or fix THAT version. The paying corporate version will get the lion share of closed developer time. Don't think for a second that there won't be a different version for the paying corporate users. Don't delude yourself that way.
Open source will focus critique of shortcomings in the implementation, possibly embarassing the developers into fixing things - while also providing amateur assistance.
Skill-specialized outsiders could do a great job contributing to an open source Be. People who have written exotic drivers would find it easier to port them to Be than would other developers. People who have worked in the dark corners of Linux and BSD could offer insights into improving BeOS.
Also, it will allow cross-polination of novel approaches to other OSes. Not to name any names, bit Linux would really benefit from a multi-media, data-moving based OS entrails being made open source.
[rant off]
What Be proposes is not freedom. It's a marketting move, like Apple's giving Macs to schools, so they buy them at college and at work. This is a move to hook people at home, in the hope that they'll push for buying Be for the office.