I remember having a conversation in 1994 about the future of windows.
BYTE, November 1994:
Cairo Takes OLE to New Levels: The next version of Windows NT, code-named Cairo and targeted for release sometime in 1995...
AMD vs. Superman:...the K5 proves that AMD can design a competitive x86-compatible CPU that isn't merely an Intel clone. From it's unique R-op mux to its quad issue superscalar pipeline, the K5 boasts a clearly innovative microarchitecture... Indeed, it's possible that Intel's P6 will more closely resemble the K5 than the K5 resembles the Pentium.
PowerPC 620 Soars: Based on simulations at 133MHz with 4MB of secondsry level-2 cache clocked at 66.5MHz, the PowerPC 620 posts performance,arkds of 225 SPECint92 and 300 SPECfp92.
VLIW Questions: The first fruits of the HP/Intel alliance won't be available until 1997 or 1998. Until then, questions will remain concerning the viability of VLIW as a mainstream commercial processor.
Whither NextStep? Regardless of it's technical merits... NextStep faces a continuing uphill battle for acceptance.... Next's best chances probably lie in moving OpenStep into as many operating systems as possible and lining up major partners for distribution and backing.
Stallman also highlights the term "copy protection". "The word 'protection'... tries to disguise obstructionism and rampant power as an attempt to keep a program or book or song safe from harm. It is a propaganda word."
Using words to create associations is a powerful and seductive form of lying, because it is often too subtle to be noticed by the listener. The word "protection" can activate a person's needs for security, which is a very primitive and base need, which operates prior to any rational thought.
This is most worrying (to me), as it moves IT debate away from rational arguments about function and specification, and into the realms of pre-rational belief, tribalism, herd mentality, fear, etc.
These subtle tricks can be exposed by asking; exactly WHO is being protected from WHAT? Under WHICH conditions?
To which a VALID answer might be: The existing large music distribution companies are protecting their current level of control of the existing distribution media.
ie. it has nothing to do with protecting the existing buyer of music media from any sort of 'danger' -- "Oh boy, I'm in danger of paying less for music... I'm really scared"
No. The internet is a new digital distribution medium. The knowledge producers, like scientists and artists, can ensure the survivability of information by storing it digitally and maintaining copies. Let us not forget that we have a problem with the deterioration of paper records:
"Within the last year, an increasing amount of publicity has been given to the fact that we are facing the loss of an enormous part of our historical, cultural, and scientific record because of the self-destruction of the acidic papers on which books and other publications have been printed since the mid-lath century.
Digital media can be used to great benefit exacltly because it can be copied.
But some power groups wish to "disable" this very feature intrinsic to it's nature.
Content 'protection'? More like knowledge destruction.
cuz we may be able some day to apply this to National Missile Defence to help discriminate balloons from nukes
Sorry to go off at a tangent, but I'd settle for an AI that can discriminate between "ethical" scientists and "creators of weapons of mass murder" scientists.
Re:Reality-based interfaces are inefficient
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In short, don't think for a moment that modeling 3-D productivity tools after the real world is going to get you any sort of respect from your users.
Yes, just to clarify, that's exactly the point I was making (I wasn't very clear).
I mean, come on, how long does it take a user to run from one end of a Quake level to the other... when a 2D map and a click will get you there in an instant??
Especially when the 3D representations don't even need to have physical qualities. They don't have to behave like solids. Perhaps transluscent planes or clouds or something. Data with depth, or some sort of colour metaphor. These sorts of experiments might be interesting (isn't someone doing this stuff somewhere?), but might not lead anywhere anyhow.
The main problem is that there is no consistent paradigm for 3D interaction...
It's called "the World". It has cars, desks, chairs, rocks, sand, many varied animals, etc. I mean, come on, how long does it take a user to run from one end of a Quake level to the other... when a 2D map and a click will get you there in an instant?? I don't see the point of these "spinnable in xyz" 2D windows -- a sentiment shared by many I expect. It's like, we have language so I don't have to carry a stone everywhere every time I want to communicate "stone". We have windows that are abstractions of the 2D display device that we are using. The day we need a completely 3D interface is the day we have a Holodeck.
And this was the point of my message: where one accepts the presuppositions of modern Western psychology -- a certain reductionist view of human nature, a hyper-scientific understanding of the human psyche, a denigration or outright scorn of spirituality -- their insights make sense. Where one's presuppositions differ, their value is reduced. And, it would appear, even large segments of your own society do not share those presuppositions -- at least where it comes to human sexuality.
I have the impression now that while we started out arguing these points, our worldviews and interests in general are more similar. Have you read any Ken Wilber? He tries to show how all knowledge can be integrated (and annoys a lot of people who think their own fields are the only answer).
The word "psychology" means the study of the psyche, and the word "psyche" means mind or soul. In the Microsoft Thesaurus, for psyche we find: "self: atman, soul, spirit; subjectivity: higher self, spiritual self, spirit." One is reminded, yet again, that the roots of psychology lie deep within the human soul and spirit.
....
I once started taking notes for a history of psychology and philosophy that I was planning on writing. I had decided to do so because, in looking at most of the available history of psychology textbooks, I was struck by a strange and curious fact, that they all told the story of psychology--and the psyche--as if it abruptly came into being around 1879 in a laboratory in the University of Leipzig, headed by Wilhelm Wundt, who indeed was the father of a certain type of psychology anchored in introspection and structuralism. Still, did the psyche itself just jump into existence in 1879?
...
That is all I heard of Gustav Fechner, until several years later, when I was rummaging through a store filled with wonderfully old philosophy books, and there, rather shockingly, was a book with a striking title-- On Life after Death --written in 1835, and by none other than Gustav Fechner. It had the most arresting opening lines: "Man lives on earth not once, but three times: the first stage of his life is continual sleep; the second, sleeping and waking by turns; the third, waking forever."
...
From body to mind to spirit, the three stages of the growth of consciousness; and it is only as men and women die to the separate self, that they awaken to the expansiveness of universal Spirit. There was Fechner's real philosophy of life, mind, soul, and consciousness; and why did the textbooks not bother to tell us that? That's when I decided I wanted to write a history of psychology, simply because "Somebody has got to tell."
The full preface is available online. And I was reminded of it by your point that modern psychology is at best a poor repackaging of the ancient insights.
Generally, Wilber is in full agreement with the Great Chain of Being. And if I understand him, he does make a point that each system focusses on a particular level of the Great Chain. So the Eastern systems generally emphasise the higher levels, while the West pretty much ignores their existance.
But in the East's emphasis on the higher, they perhaps pay less attention to the lower levels, which is where western psychology has focussed it's efforts. But the lower levels are also important, for they influence and distort the potential higher levels -- for example, trying to teach meditation to a child with autism is rather futile -- for the child's development has been arrested at a very early/low level -- so we need to find something that works at the level of the problem.
Wilber emphasises that we need to acknowledge and include all levels of the Great Chain, from the pre-personal, to the personal/egoic, to the trans-personal. He "plugs" the various therapies into their respective levels:
Well, I didn't realise I was talking to someone from Taiwan. I know nothing about Taiwan, which makes talking with you, I realise now, quite difficult. I don't understand your frame of reference, your cultural context, your point of view. We're both talking in english, but I fear our words are used quite uniquely and differently.
For me, there is a difference between what the original poster was talking about, and "free-for-all". To me they are not the same thing. To you they appear identical.
Are yours somehow more valid than mine?
Maybe. What if they were? How would you know? Anyhow, to me you seem to display scorn for the "Jung, psychotheraputic" etc. etc. Maybe you don't mean it that way (scorn). One thing I would like to say to you about this is that these people have a contribution to make to what humans understand. They don't give the final answer. You are familiar with the idea of evolution? In knowledge, in science, in art, in consciousness? All these evolve, and I don't think dismissing entire fields of knowledge (like Jung) is appropriate. They made a contribution. So do the Buddhists. And the Daoists. And the Sufis. And... the list is endless. Ask rather what you might learn from each, rather than dismissing Freud because you think he's labelling you a sexual misfit (he's not).
why is that some folks insist on labelling any who don't agree with their free-for-all attitude toward sex as "morbid", "deeply afraid of sexuality", "loathing of females", "repressed"/"oppressive", "Victorian", and/or otherwise "mentally ill"?
I think it was Freud. But seriously, did Angst Badger really use the term "free for all"??
Anyhow, I feel that the comment which you dislike,
institutionalized form of mental illness, a phobia of sexuality that manifests itself in the form of political oppression on the grand scale and domestic terror
is not completely out of place. It's our very own western psychology and psychotheraputic studies which have produced insights into our unacknowledged sexual "stuff". And 'terror' and 'oppression' are the sorts of words used in connection with these issues, exactly because 'terror' etc. are typically experienced. Now I'll stop there, as I'm not qualified, but let me add that Angst Badger's post bears some resemblance to the issue of how we go about measuring sanity -- ie. 'the degree to which an individual has adjusted to society'. This definition of sanity raises the issue, as extensively researched by Erich Fromm in "The Sane Society", of whether society itself is sane.
So while I agree with your principle of reserving the right to a "difference of opinion", you may wish to ask yourself just where "your" opinion came from.
CargoLifter AG, plans to build an airship, the CL160, that could bear 160-ton loads across the ocean, which only boats might otherwise manage--buoyed by nonflammable helium, not the hydrogen that filled the Hindenburg.
It wasn't the hydrogen. As reported in a Channel 4 (UK) documentary, Secrets of the Dead, (and discussed on/.), the Hindenburg had been completely painted with a compound made of iron oxide and powdered aluminum, ie. rocket fuel.
It seems the Nazis were more comfortable saying that an 'act of god' had caused the freak ignition of the hydrogen in the tanks, than admit that the german engineers had deliberately painted the skin with such a substance.
This begins to sound less revolutionary when you consider that every instruction supported by a CPU is a 'software procedure' (often literally so, written in microcode).
You could say, though, that when the 'building blocks' become a certain size, then new things can happen. Like, DNA is just a bunch of molecules, but it is also not just a bunch of molecules.
Anyhow, I don't have a strong opinion either way. It's just that a lot of posts are saying "no big deal/it's a scam", and I wonder if that's the whole story.
One final quote is useful; from a paper Turing gave in 1945, which describes, almost
prophetically, what we have accomplished with ORIGIN. "There will positively be no
internal alterations to be made even if we wish suddenly to switch from calculating
the energy levels of the neon atom to the enumeration of groups of order 720". In
modern terms we would say that there will positively be no internal alterations in
moving from a spreadsheet to a graphics package to an airline reservation system, all
use the same "software procedures", the only difference in the applications being in
the sequence in which the "software procedures" are processed. The applications
developed with the set of "software procedures" are themselves quite tiny, taking only
a few dozen bytes for applications that, within the conventional approach, take tens and hundreds of thousands of bytes.
Well, it does all sound pretty revolutionary, and too good to be true. But life is strange.... and maybe CS took a wrong turn after Turing, and maybeBernard Hodson (who was part of Alan Turing's department at the University of Manchester) has understood this, and maybe redressing such a fundamental mistake will revolutionise computing. And maybe the Establishment won't listen. Maybe he'll be dismissed as a quack.
Apparently, it takes 10 minutes or so for the brain to get the message that the stomach is 'full'. By eating more slowly, you will have eaten less past the mark (otherwise, a lot can be eaten in ten minutes).
Juice is a new technology for distributing executable content across the World Wide Web. Juice differs from Java in several important aspects that allow it to outperform Java in many "downloadable Applets" applications. Juice is intended to be a complement to Java, giving users a choice: Java or Juice.
the root of the problem is that we tend to organize ourselves into tribes
Being part of a tribe is one step up from being a single family. And being part of a nation is one higher than being a tribe... each larger organisation brings new potentials for good and bad... so tribes aren't inherently bad, so long as the problems you're trying to solve can be solved at the level of the tribe.
Today we have an environmental problem, which cannot be solved at the level of the 'nation'. It transcends national boundaries, and demands a worldcentric identity/process/solution. Some problems can't even be seen until you transcend up a level. The car is not a problem to the individual motorist (it gets him from A to B), but it is a problem to the individual planet.
Using this approach, the linux/microsoft tribalism will persist until both 'tribes' can be united in a higher and broader perspective. Maybe the internet is that perspective. Maybe we're still waiting.
but I've been using computers for 18 years, and programming them for 5, and this was a huge pain in the ass!
You've reported your experieces with that mac pretty much in a straight forward way. That's cool. And what surprises me is that given your 15 years of experience using computers in general, you decided not to learn how that particular platform 'works'. And the problems you had with 'platform interoperability' are not easy tasks... even plain text files are different.
I've tried Linux several times, but have hated each time.
What's the Yoda quote... about there not being a 'try'. "I tried to fly the 747, but they woudn't let me..." "I tried to go jogging, but I didn't feel like it..."
It was IMPOSSIBLE!
No, and you know it isn't. You just decided to quit. Maybe you figured you didn't want to be back learning basics, so decided to stick with what you know. Which is fine.
However, I think the fall of Microsoft, whenever it comes, is going to come from below.
Or it might come when the 'gestalt' of the situation is right. I'm thinking of the 'nuclear accident' scenario, where several small and otherwise 'inconsequential' mistakes, were made, which in combination created a sudden and unstoppable 'shock'.
Debating where these small sparks might come from may be more interesting that the big "yes it will/no it won't" argument here on/.
I read this article, really - I did... Lanier thinks we are stuck in some tech-limbo... - and I am not certain at all what Lanier said about software "sucking."... And his comments about "humanity" not knowing how to make software, or even what software is, were just plain over-dramatic, hippified philosobabble.
It's a way of talking. Some prefer the 'specific', some the 'interconnected'. The article praises him for being 'outside', so to see the same perspective, you'll have to drop the 'unix works, and our software does what it's written to do' point of view, at least temporarily, and view it from 'outside':
Imitating the Moore's Law extrapolation exercises of his intellectual sparring partners, most notably Ray Kurzweil, author of "The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence" (Viking), Lanier predicts a world in which every living person on the planet is employed in some sort of a software help desk role.
Here he's looking at the machine power advances, and saying, that from the point of view of intelligence, there is no advance. Adding numbers at 100GHz does not a smart machine make. Even the human brain was around for 100k's of years, pretty much fully physically formed, before language emerged.
the Great Shame of computer science... is that we don't seem to be able to write software much better.
Again, just step back until you see his perspective. Yes, we currently have new applications, and our old applications have new features, but his view is broader...
Edward de Bono spoke of computers as being tools for thinking. Notice he didn't say 'calculating', or 'sorting', or 'converting' etc. Computers may one day be used to create ideas in novel ways. But Lanier is saying, never mind the AI by 2020 rubbish -- can a computer replace a secretary's ability to organise and co-ordinate information? Not anytime soon.
At present, we can't stop our 'typewriters' and 'adding machines' from crashing. And we have to train people to use them, and have help desks on hand coz there's too many features and quirks to teach in three days. It's the 'AI-will-replace-Humanity' camp that's over-dramatic, hippified philosobabble, and Lanier is exactly against this.
"I'm an enthusiast of the potential for quality," says Lanier. "It's sort of a faith with me. I don't know if it's possible, but I'd like to try. Measure it on those terms, and there ain't no Moore's Law going on right now. There's only stagnation."
Quality isn't about 'I can now dictate, (mostly), to my PC instead of typing', but about having tools that make things more elegant, simpler, clearer and less hassle. He's taking a broad perspective, partly to demolish the 'our machines are so clever' attitude, and partly to refocus us on the 'simple' things, like how to program our machines to usefully model the concept of a "letter", or a "phone call".
He dislikes unix, I suppose, because the 'everything is a file' model is a bit like trying to say that 'all knowledge is a loop of neurons'.
I hope that won't be the case and that computers catch up to the human brain's power some day.
The human brain has been around in it's physical form for what, a few 100k years? And yet despite being physically 'complete', back then all it could 'think' was a few primitive images and the odd grunt. Human evolution has been a very long and slow process (although it does accelerate), and most of that time has been spent developing the 'content' of the brain, rather than the brain itself.
Besides, when we geeks talk about intelligence, we're kinda referring to the ability to have an 'internal dialogue' (what we call 'thinking'), which is a very high brain function. Much lower down, and shared with animals, is the ability to have the 'inner movie' of consciousness, the ability to construct a 'reality' based on some very raw sensory input (the eye doesn't 'see' -- the 'image' is created by the brain).
And notice that the lower brain functions evolved before the higher. When I think 'table', my higher brain is producing a symbol representing a collection of experiences created by the image forming functions of the lower brain (I'm being simplistic).
And there's something distinctly odd, if you think about it... the way that I can look at a person, and 'somewhere' hidden inside their mind (whatever that is), is another 'picture' happening, containing their image of me... a picture that science can't reveal directly (a list of a hundred billion 'on/off' states is not the same as my direct inner vision). It is just very very odd... and I suspect that anyone who doesn't find it 'odd', hasn't really tried to grasp it.
Anyway, sorry for the tangent off of the parent post's side comment. Will 10GHz really mean a ten fold increase in computation power?
it wouldn't be the first OS to more closely tie the GUI to the kernel.... it would surely mean a more integrated (and speedy) desktop. There's alot you can't do with a GUI in UNIX because of the rift between userland and kernelland.
Ehm, I don't know much about this, but isn't even Apples' Aqua just a BSD app? Login as ">console" and that's all you get.
The irony here is that Microsoft can wait until the money-losing Linux companies finally perfect their upstart open-source operating system.... [and] hijack... every bit of the costly research and development done... by the open-source software movement.
There's something that I find (all be it intuitively), odd about this line of reasoning. It's as if whatever MS does, they will succeed. If MS started selling cheese tomorrow, every other cheese maker on the planet is supposed to ceremoniously drown themselves in big vats of milk?
No. Linux is a platform. Windows is a platform. Be is a... you get my drift. MS is not going to drop Windows and port everything to Linux. MS is Windows. MS is Office. MS has built a whole ecosystem of OS's & Apps and user base and image and market share and user attitude ("do it all the MS way"), that they cannot simply cut off a large part of their anatomy. Simply announcing a MS Linux distro would weaken their position.
Witness the traditional way MS deals with competition, namely, 'Duplication': VBScript v. JavaScript, Direct3D v. OpenGL, Cool v. Java. etc. They don't challenge you on the playing field; they go off and build their own playing field, and charge you (the competitor) to get in!
MS would not simply 'adopt' Linux, like some long lost child, who turns up on your door step a teenager, saying "hello daddy". MS could not be seen to be supporting and validating Linux. They would have to develop their own open source OS, and it wouldn't be called "linux", but "SourceX" or some such. They would start a big 'open' research project into the next generation global knowledge network or something. In short, they would try to take over the idea.
Oh, but wait. A big company starts an open source project... that's like, Darwin, or Mozilla... and Darwin's innards were mostly open before Apple got it's hands on it anyway...
I think what we're seeing is that this idea of openness, propagation by usefulness, freedom to adapt, is more integrative and encompassing than what a single company could "suck up" and decimate in it's corporate vacuum cleaner. But I don't think we're going to see 'human freedom' transformed or anything like that,* but I do think that those who sought power and control via software, are going to have to go elsewhere for their kicks.
* IIRC, the Church was real upset when the Bible became something that could be printed and widely circulated. The 'Word of God' was now something people could read for themselves, rather than have to ask a priest. Anyhow, the Church adapted and kept some power by other means
Graphic material is always developed for a "screen size". With web pages, that screen size is variable, but you still have a minimum point at which you say, "Welp, they'll have to turn the page to see the rest of this content."
Being 'new' to web site building, I got interested in what approach to take to deal with this problem of different screen sizes. I seldom see a web site that fits my viewport just right.
So it occurs to me that the notion of a 'page' is just not valid. We have the 'url', and we have a 'variable viewport'. But there are no pages. The viewport destroys that.
In a CAD system you draw using real coordinates (like mm) -- it's only when you plot onto paper that you need to set a scale, to handle the limitations of the real page. The problem you describe with the pda being even smaller is just symptomatic of the problem. Just wait until you have to cope with users on 200dpi 21" screens.
In viewports we just don't have anything resembling 'pages', other than what site designers try to force with their habits aquired from printed media. Try taking a full length snapshot of the contents of a/. 'page', and what you get resembles more a toilet roll* than any 'golden ratio'd' proportions.
I think we can just drop the page metaphor and design the structures and mechanisms for adapting content to the viewport. At present very little information is available about the browser and the preferences of the user.
It would be nice to let the user set their preferences to "never scroll horizontally" or "reduce color depth of graphics" or stuff like that. We shouldn't have to turn PDA's into friggin desktop machines in order to access the train times info from a web site via a pocket gizmo.
Perhaps site builders design thinking is still stuck working on old print media problems of "balances of abstract 'Mondrian'ist elements positioned in the pure space of pages", while the web is going beyond all that onto more interesting design problems of "information survivability in an ecology of graphical rendering architectures" or whatever (insert favourite poncy designer blurb here).
The philosophy was present since HTML1, but some designers keep trying to fight against it, rather than designing ways to help and enhance it.
* Before it's used... although some first posts...
Re:I have a question...
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So what does one say to the people that decry "You oppose the RIP act, so therefore you support pornography/child abuse/whatever" ?
They are using the accusation as a way to stop you arguing with them. It means they are not interested in a rational discussion. They are only interested in "being right" by killing off any opposition to their narrow point of view. "Mess with us, and you'll get branded a child molester".
How does one frame the argument that privacy is worth more than child abuse (to be provocative, for a moment) in a concincing manner to the supporters of RIP, who blather on about 'the children' at every opportunity?
Recently the UK news reported about a children's home run by child molesting 'social workers'. So we know things are 'complicated'. Given we know the world is a complicated place, do ordinary people sitting in their homes think that they will personally become more safe with less privacy? Stalkers can already find out where you live etc. -- do you want them knowing more, because they've got access to a cracked government monitoring system? Will you feel safer when some weirdo sends you a transcript of a personal email you sent to your girl/boyfriend, (thanks to the efficient recording of all communications)?
People may say, "stop muddying the issue!", but that's my point: We're so used to thinking in simple either/or ways, that 'we', generally speaking, lack the ability to think in terms of systems of systems, compexities, side effects, combinations of effects, and possible and supposedly 'impossible' outcomes.
But if you want a simple answer from me, it's: I blame the schools.*
* It's where most programming takes place. I say fix the bugs in the source.
Slashdot Mirror
I remember having a conversation in 1994 about the future of windows.
BYTE, November 1994:
Cairo Takes OLE to New Levels: The next version of Windows NT, code-named Cairo and targeted for release sometime in 1995...
AMD vs. Superman: ...the K5 proves that AMD can design a competitive x86-compatible CPU that isn't merely an Intel clone. From it's unique R-op mux to its quad issue superscalar pipeline, the K5 boasts a clearly innovative microarchitecture... Indeed, it's possible that Intel's P6 will more closely resemble the K5 than the K5 resembles the Pentium.
PowerPC 620 Soars: Based on simulations at 133MHz with 4MB of secondsry level-2 cache clocked at 66.5MHz, the PowerPC 620 posts performance ,arkds of 225 SPECint92 and 300 SPECfp92.
VLIW Questions: The first fruits of the HP/Intel alliance won't be available until 1997 or 1998. Until then, questions will remain concerning the viability of VLIW as a mainstream commercial processor.
Whither NextStep? Regardless of it's technical merits... NextStep faces a continuing uphill battle for acceptance. ... Next's best chances probably lie in moving OpenStep into as many operating systems as possible and lining up major partners for distribution and backing.
Stallman also highlights the term "copy protection". "The word 'protection' ... tries to disguise obstructionism and rampant power as an attempt to keep a program or book or song safe from harm. It is a propaganda word."
Exactly. Just like the Nazi Exhibition of Degenerate Art in Germany.
Using words to create associations is a powerful and seductive form of lying, because it is often too subtle to be noticed by the listener. The word "protection" can activate a person's needs for security, which is a very primitive and base need, which operates prior to any rational thought.
This is most worrying (to me), as it moves IT debate away from rational arguments about function and specification, and into the realms of pre-rational belief, tribalism, herd mentality, fear, etc.
These subtle tricks can be exposed by asking; exactly WHO is being protected from WHAT? Under WHICH conditions?
To which a VALID answer might be: The existing large music distribution companies are protecting their current level of control of the existing distribution media.
ie. it has nothing to do with protecting the existing buyer of music media from any sort of 'danger' -- "Oh boy, I'm in danger of paying less for music... I'm really scared"
No. The internet is a new digital distribution medium. The knowledge producers, like scientists and artists, can ensure the survivability of information by storing it digitally and maintaining copies. Let us not forget that we have a problem with the deterioration of paper records:
Digital media can be used to great benefit exacltly because it can be copied.
But some power groups wish to "disable" this very feature intrinsic to it's nature.
Content 'protection'? More like knowledge destruction.
This chapter will self erase in 60 minutes...
cuz we may be able some day to apply this to National Missile Defence to help discriminate balloons from nukes
Sorry to go off at a tangent, but I'd settle for an AI that can discriminate between "ethical" scientists and "creators of weapons of mass murder" scientists.
In short, don't think for a moment that modeling 3-D productivity tools after the real world is going to get you any sort of respect from your users.
Yes, just to clarify, that's exactly the point I was making (I wasn't very clear).
Especially when the 3D representations don't even need to have physical qualities. They don't have to behave like solids. Perhaps transluscent planes or clouds or something. Data with depth, or some sort of colour metaphor. These sorts of experiments might be interesting (isn't someone doing this stuff somewhere?), but might not lead anywhere anyhow.
Peace.
The main problem is that there is no consistent paradigm for 3D interaction...
It's called "the World". It has cars, desks, chairs, rocks, sand, many varied animals, etc. I mean, come on, how long does it take a user to run from one end of a Quake level to the other... when a 2D map and a click will get you there in an instant?? I don't see the point of these "spinnable in xyz" 2D windows -- a sentiment shared by many I expect. It's like, we have language so I don't have to carry a stone everywhere every time I want to communicate "stone". We have windows that are abstractions of the 2D display device that we are using. The day we need a completely 3D interface is the day we have a Holodeck.
And this was the point of my message: where one accepts the presuppositions of modern Western psychology -- a certain reductionist view of human nature, a hyper-scientific understanding of the human psyche, a denigration or outright scorn of spirituality -- their insights make sense. Where one's presuppositions differ, their value is reduced. And, it would appear, even large segments of your own society do not share those presuppositions -- at least where it comes to human sexuality.
I have the impression now that while we started out arguing these points, our worldviews and interests in general are more similar. Have you read any Ken Wilber? He tries to show how all knowledge can be integrated (and annoys a lot of people who think their own fields are the only answer).
From the preface to Integral Psychology:
The full preface is available online. And I was reminded of it by your point that modern psychology is at best a poor repackaging of the ancient insights.
Generally, Wilber is in full agreement with the Great Chain of Being. And if I understand him, he does make a point that each system focusses on a particular level of the Great Chain. So the Eastern systems generally emphasise the higher levels, while the West pretty much ignores their existance.
But in the East's emphasis on the higher, they perhaps pay less attention to the lower levels, which is where western psychology has focussed it's efforts. But the lower levels are also important, for they influence and distort the potential higher levels -- for example, trying to teach meditation to a child with autism is rather futile -- for the child's development has been arrested at a very early/low level -- so we need to find something that works at the level of the problem.
Wilber emphasises that we need to acknowledge and include all levels of the Great Chain, from the pre-personal, to the personal/egoic, to the trans-personal. He "plugs" the various therapies into their respective levels:
Sorry about the long post... I thought you might find it interesting.
Well, I didn't realise I was talking to someone from Taiwan. I know nothing about Taiwan, which makes talking with you, I realise now, quite difficult. I don't understand your frame of reference, your cultural context, your point of view. We're both talking in english, but I fear our words are used quite uniquely and differently.
For me, there is a difference between what the original poster was talking about, and "free-for-all". To me they are not the same thing. To you they appear identical.
Are yours somehow more valid than mine?
Maybe. What if they were? How would you know? Anyhow, to me you seem to display scorn for the "Jung, psychotheraputic" etc. etc. Maybe you don't mean it that way (scorn). One thing I would like to say to you about this is that these people have a contribution to make to what humans understand. They don't give the final answer. You are familiar with the idea of evolution? In knowledge, in science, in art, in consciousness? All these evolve, and I don't think dismissing entire fields of knowledge (like Jung) is appropriate. They made a contribution. So do the Buddhists. And the Daoists. And the Sufis. And ... the list is endless. Ask rather what you might learn from each, rather than dismissing Freud because you think he's labelling you a sexual misfit (he's not).
why is that some folks insist on labelling any who don't agree with their free-for-all attitude toward sex as "morbid", "deeply afraid of sexuality", "loathing of females", "repressed"/"oppressive", "Victorian", and/or otherwise "mentally ill"?
I think it was Freud. But seriously, did Angst Badger really use the term "free for all"??
Anyhow, I feel that the comment which you dislike,
institutionalized form of mental illness, a phobia of sexuality that manifests itself in the form of political oppression on the grand scale and domestic terror
is not completely out of place. It's our very own western psychology and psychotheraputic studies which have produced insights into our unacknowledged sexual "stuff". And 'terror' and 'oppression' are the sorts of words used in connection with these issues, exactly because 'terror' etc. are typically experienced. Now I'll stop there, as I'm not qualified, but let me add that Angst Badger's post bears some resemblance to the issue of how we go about measuring sanity -- ie. 'the degree to which an individual has adjusted to society'. This definition of sanity raises the issue, as extensively researched by Erich Fromm in "The Sane Society", of whether society itself is sane.
So while I agree with your principle of reserving the right to a "difference of opinion", you may wish to ask yourself just where "your" opinion came from.
It wasn't the hydrogen. As reported in a Channel 4 (UK) documentary, Secrets of the Dead, (and discussed on /.), the Hindenburg had been completely painted with a compound made of iron oxide and powdered aluminum, ie. rocket fuel.
It seems the Nazis were more comfortable saying that an 'act of god' had caused the freak ignition of the hydrogen in the tanks, than admit that the german engineers had deliberately painted the skin with such a substance.
This begins to sound less revolutionary when you consider that every instruction supported by a CPU is a 'software procedure' (often literally so, written in microcode).
You could say, though, that when the 'building blocks' become a certain size, then new things can happen. Like, DNA is just a bunch of molecules, but it is also not just a bunch of molecules.
Anyhow, I don't have a strong opinion either way. It's just that a lot of posts are saying "no big deal/it's a scam", and I wonder if that's the whole story.
he has been making grandious claims about his software for years
From the whitepaper:
Well, it does all sound pretty revolutionary, and too good to be true. But life is strange.... and maybe CS took a wrong turn after Turing, and maybe Bernard Hodson (who was part of Alan Turing's department at the University of Manchester) has understood this, and maybe redressing such a fundamental mistake will revolutionise computing. And maybe the Establishment won't listen. Maybe he'll be dismissed as a quack.
So what is the best ... tool ... for doing ... application development?
16 cups of this.
Appetite is regulated in the brain
Apparently, it takes 10 minutes or so for the brain to get the message that the stomach is 'full'. By eating more slowly, you will have eaten less past the mark (otherwise, a lot can be eaten in ten minutes).
Ok so java has been there before but surely that fact doesn'e preclude someone else trying it out.
See also Juice
the root of the problem is that we tend to organize ourselves into tribes
Being part of a tribe is one step up from being a single family. And being part of a nation is one higher than being a tribe... each larger organisation brings new potentials for good and bad ... so tribes aren't inherently bad, so long as the problems you're trying to solve can be solved at the level of the tribe.
Today we have an environmental problem, which cannot be solved at the level of the 'nation'. It transcends national boundaries, and demands a worldcentric identity/process/solution. Some problems can't even be seen until you transcend up a level. The car is not a problem to the individual motorist (it gets him from A to B), but it is a problem to the individual planet.
Using this approach, the linux/microsoft tribalism will persist until both 'tribes' can be united in a higher and broader perspective. Maybe the internet is that perspective. Maybe we're still waiting.
but I've been using computers for 18 years, and programming them for 5, and this was a huge pain in the ass!
You've reported your experieces with that mac pretty much in a straight forward way. That's cool. And what surprises me is that given your 15 years of experience using computers in general, you decided not to learn how that particular platform 'works'. And the problems you had with 'platform interoperability' are not easy tasks... even plain text files are different.
I've tried Linux several times, but have hated each time.
What's the Yoda quote... about there not being a 'try'. "I tried to fly the 747, but they woudn't let me..." "I tried to go jogging, but I didn't feel like it..."
It was IMPOSSIBLE!
No, and you know it isn't. You just decided to quit. Maybe you figured you didn't want to be back learning basics, so decided to stick with what you know. Which is fine.
However, I think the fall of Microsoft, whenever it comes, is going to come from below.
Or it might come when the 'gestalt' of the situation is right. I'm thinking of the 'nuclear accident' scenario, where several small and otherwise 'inconsequential' mistakes, were made, which in combination created a sudden and unstoppable 'shock'.
Debating where these small sparks might come from may be more interesting that the big "yes it will/no it won't" argument here on /.
I read this article, really - I did ... Lanier thinks we are stuck in some tech-limbo... - and I am not certain at all what Lanier said about software "sucking." ... And his comments about "humanity" not knowing how to make software, or even what software is, were just plain over-dramatic, hippified philosobabble.
It's a way of talking. Some prefer the 'specific', some the 'interconnected'. The article praises him for being 'outside', so to see the same perspective, you'll have to drop the 'unix works, and our software does what it's written to do' point of view, at least temporarily, and view it from 'outside':
Here he's looking at the machine power advances, and saying, that from the point of view of intelligence, there is no advance. Adding numbers at 100GHz does not a smart machine make. Even the human brain was around for 100k's of years, pretty much fully physically formed, before language emerged.
Again, just step back until you see his perspective. Yes, we currently have new applications, and our old applications have new features, but his view is broader...
Edward de Bono spoke of computers as being tools for thinking. Notice he didn't say 'calculating', or 'sorting', or 'converting' etc. Computers may one day be used to create ideas in novel ways. But Lanier is saying, never mind the AI by 2020 rubbish -- can a computer replace a secretary's ability to organise and co-ordinate information? Not anytime soon.
At present, we can't stop our 'typewriters' and 'adding machines' from crashing. And we have to train people to use them, and have help desks on hand coz there's too many features and quirks to teach in three days. It's the 'AI-will-replace-Humanity' camp that's over-dramatic, hippified philosobabble , and Lanier is exactly against this.
Quality isn't about 'I can now dictate, (mostly), to my PC instead of typing', but about having tools that make things more elegant, simpler, clearer and less hassle. He's taking a broad perspective, partly to demolish the 'our machines are so clever' attitude, and partly to refocus us on the 'simple' things, like how to program our machines to usefully model the concept of a "letter", or a "phone call".He dislikes unix, I suppose, because the 'everything is a file' model is a bit like trying to say that 'all knowledge is a loop of neurons'.
I hope that won't be the case and that computers catch up to the human brain's power some day.
The human brain has been around in it's physical form for what, a few 100k years? And yet despite being physically 'complete', back then all it could 'think' was a few primitive images and the odd grunt. Human evolution has been a very long and slow process (although it does accelerate), and most of that time has been spent developing the 'content' of the brain, rather than the brain itself.
Besides, when we geeks talk about intelligence, we're kinda referring to the ability to have an 'internal dialogue' (what we call 'thinking'), which is a very high brain function. Much lower down, and shared with animals, is the ability to have the 'inner movie' of consciousness, the ability to construct a 'reality' based on some very raw sensory input (the eye doesn't 'see' -- the 'image' is created by the brain).
And notice that the lower brain functions evolved before the higher. When I think 'table', my higher brain is producing a symbol representing a collection of experiences created by the image forming functions of the lower brain (I'm being simplistic).
And there's something distinctly odd, if you think about it... the way that I can look at a person, and 'somewhere' hidden inside their mind (whatever that is), is another 'picture' happening, containing their image of me... a picture that science can't reveal directly (a list of a hundred billion 'on/off' states is not the same as my direct inner vision). It is just very very odd... and I suspect that anyone who doesn't find it 'odd', hasn't really tried to grasp it.
Anyway, sorry for the tangent off of the parent post's side comment.
Will 10GHz really mean a ten fold increase in computation power?
it wouldn't be the first OS to more closely tie the GUI to the kernel.... it would surely mean a more integrated (and speedy) desktop. There's alot you can't do with a GUI in UNIX because of the rift between userland and kernelland.
Ehm, I don't know much about this, but isn't even Apples' Aqua just a BSD app? Login as ">console" and that's all you get.
There's something that I find (all be it intuitively), odd about this line of reasoning. It's as if whatever MS does, they will succeed. If MS started selling cheese tomorrow, every other cheese maker on the planet is supposed to ceremoniously drown themselves in big vats of milk?
No. Linux is a platform. Windows is a platform. Be is a... you get my drift. MS is not going to drop Windows and port everything to Linux. MS is Windows. MS is Office. MS has built a whole ecosystem of OS's & Apps and user base and image and market share and user attitude ("do it all the MS way"), that they cannot simply cut off a large part of their anatomy. Simply announcing a MS Linux distro would weaken their position.
Witness the traditional way MS deals with competition, namely, 'Duplication': VBScript v. JavaScript, Direct3D v. OpenGL, Cool v. Java. etc. They don't challenge you on the playing field; they go off and build their own playing field, and charge you (the competitor) to get in!
MS would not simply 'adopt' Linux, like some long lost child, who turns up on your door step a teenager, saying "hello daddy". MS could not be seen to be supporting and validating Linux. They would have to develop their own open source OS, and it wouldn't be called "linux", but "SourceX" or some such. They would start a big 'open' research project into the next generation global knowledge network or something. In short, they would try to take over the idea.
Oh, but wait. A big company starts an open source project... that's like, Darwin, or Mozilla ... and Darwin's innards were mostly open before Apple got it's hands on it anyway...
I think what we're seeing is that this idea of openness, propagation by usefulness, freedom to adapt, is more integrative and encompassing than what a single company could "suck up" and decimate in it's corporate vacuum cleaner. But I don't think we're going to see 'human freedom' transformed or anything like that,* but I do think that those who sought power and control via software, are going to have to go elsewhere for their kicks.
* IIRC, the Church was real upset when the Bible became something that could be printed and widely circulated. The 'Word of God' was now something people could read for themselves, rather than have to ask a priest. Anyhow, the Church adapted and kept some power by other means
Graphic material is always developed for a "screen size". With web pages, that screen size is variable, but you still have a minimum point at which you say, "Welp, they'll have to turn the page to see the rest of this content."
Being 'new' to web site building, I got interested in what approach to take to deal with this problem of different screen sizes. I seldom see a web site that fits my viewport just right.
So it occurs to me that the notion of a 'page' is just not valid. We have the 'url', and we have a 'variable viewport'. But there are no pages. The viewport destroys that.
In a CAD system you draw using real coordinates (like mm) -- it's only when you plot onto paper that you need to set a scale, to handle the limitations of the real page. The problem you describe with the pda being even smaller is just symptomatic of the problem. Just wait until you have to cope with users on 200dpi 21" screens.
In viewports we just don't have anything resembling 'pages', other than what site designers try to force with their habits aquired from printed media. Try taking a full length snapshot of the contents of a /. 'page', and what you get resembles more a toilet roll* than any 'golden ratio'd' proportions.
I think we can just drop the page metaphor and design the structures and mechanisms for adapting content to the viewport. At present very little information is available about the browser and the preferences of the user.
It would be nice to let the user set their preferences to "never scroll horizontally" or "reduce color depth of graphics" or stuff like that. We shouldn't have to turn PDA's into friggin desktop machines in order to access the train times info from a web site via a pocket gizmo.
Perhaps site builders design thinking is still stuck working on old print media problems of "balances of abstract 'Mondrian'ist elements positioned in the pure space of pages", while the web is going beyond all that onto more interesting design problems of "information survivability in an ecology of graphical rendering architectures" or whatever (insert favourite poncy designer blurb here).
The philosophy was present since HTML1, but some designers keep trying to fight against it, rather than designing ways to help and enhance it.
* Before it's used... although some first posts...
So what does one say to the people that decry "You oppose the RIP act, so therefore you support pornography/child abuse/whatever" ?
They are using the accusation as a way to stop you arguing with them. It means they are not interested in a rational discussion. They are only interested in "being right" by killing off any opposition to their narrow point of view. "Mess with us, and you'll get branded a child molester".
How does one frame the argument that privacy is worth more than child abuse (to be provocative, for a moment) in a concincing manner to the supporters of RIP, who blather on about 'the children' at every opportunity?
Recently the UK news reported about a children's home run by child molesting 'social workers'. So we know things are 'complicated'. Given we know the world is a complicated place, do ordinary people sitting in their homes think that they will personally become more safe with less privacy? Stalkers can already find out where you live etc. -- do you want them knowing more, because they've got access to a cracked government monitoring system? Will you feel safer when some weirdo sends you a transcript of a personal email you sent to your girl/boyfriend, (thanks to the efficient recording of all communications)?
People may say, "stop muddying the issue!", but that's my point: We're so used to thinking in simple either/or ways, that 'we', generally speaking, lack the ability to think in terms of systems of systems, compexities, side effects, combinations of effects, and possible and supposedly 'impossible' outcomes.
But if you want a simple answer from me, it's: I blame the schools.*
* It's where most programming takes place. I say fix the bugs in the source.