It's about the development of web browsers for animals, in this case a 17-month-old african grey parrot. Here is the researcher's site." This does explain all that aol.com traffic.
If we charge right onto the moon and try to exploit it, we could damage it as severely as we have the Earth. We never know what we might want to use the moon for in the future -- and disturbing its natural balance might ruin future plans.
Of course you're right, but let's keep a sense of proportion here. We're talking about abusing a deserted rock, in the interests of preserving the home of the entire supply of known critters. If there were no other considerations, sure, save the moon. If it'll keep the Earth's environment from getting yet further trashed, I have to vote: screw the moon.
Just like in Star Trek, shouldn't our goal be to seek out and explore (and adapt to) strange new worlds instead of pillaging them and warping them to suit our whims?
Again, you've got a theoretical point. But sing along for a moment:
Our galaxy itself contains a hundred million stars;
It's a hundred thousand light-years side to side; It bulges in the middle sixteen thousand light-years thick, But out by us it's just three thousand light-years wide. We're thirty thousand light-years from Galactic Central Point, We go 'round every two hundred million years; And our galaxy itself is one of millions of billions In this amazing and expanding universe.
We're not likely to seriously mess up the supply of unique planets out there, and if we're going to see any of them, we'll have to fiddle with them somewhat. If this idea actually panned out, getting that much energy from a mere 25 tons of material would be a large benefit for relatively little fiddling.
how does the above comment shed any kind of actual insight on the above article?
I can only suppose that this was in reference to pointing out the related mouse developments (and I forgot to mention, as you pointed out, glowing green mice). Sure, "insightful" is a little odd... but don't rain on my parade!;-)
I'm going to guess and say that Dr. Healey hasn't much of an idea as to what a computer actually is.
Which is understandable, and very common. As a geek, I (and likely most of you) run into this sort of thing all the time. Most people don't understand what the internet is; they understand what a web browser is. And it's darned hard to explain to somebody, "no, I can't show you Linux." I can show you Windowmaker, and I can show you a Bash prompt, but you have to understand what Linux itself is.
A computer is, in a sense, the universal machine. It can become a calculator, or a watch, or an artist's canvas... hypothetically even a brain. Now to say that a windows machine doesn't belong in the classroom, that's plausible. You can make a case, too, that kids don't need to be researching their Julius Caesar report on the web. But to say that computers stifle learning and creativity, and that young children should not be allowed on them for any reason at all? Oh, please! Even if you can't find any better use for them, you can't tell me filling a scan-tron sheet is more educational than clicking radio boxes.
Of course, then there's the other extreme: computers are the greatest educational tool since the guidance counselor (most of whom are real tools...). Any kid with the unhappy fate of going to school without one is doomed to misery, probably as a useless minor bureaucrat in a public school.
People were getting damned good educations before computers. Often better ones, in fact. Hell, in the late 19th century, 1 Englishman in 5 was a Dickens reader... enjoying grammar that would snap the poor minds of most folks today. And a kid with a good grounding in symbolic logic, even if he's never seen a computer, is going to be better suited for IT work than one who spent 13 years pointing and clicking his way though most schools' pseudo-educational crap.
Computers aren't necessary to a good education, but they're probably useful in providing one. How they may be useful doesn't seem to be well-understood by our teachers just yet, and they (the computers, not the teachers) doubless do much more harm than good when misused.
My somewhat off-topic opinion? In the US we've not even been able to settle on a curriculum that works, much less an approach to computers. A centrally orchestrated, one-size-fits-all approach develops as poor an educational system as an operating system. Separate school and state, let schools create their own computing policies, and watch the effective ideas propagate through the system. There's no sense in trying to figure out the best educational use of computers a priori. I think I might do a better job of it than Dr. Healey, but surely nowhere near as well as would a healthy system of creative competition.
So what's the story behind all this stuff? Scientists have produced mice that are 30-40% larger than normal, mice which live 3 times as long as normal mice, and, of course, the brilliant Doogie Mice.
We seem to be laying the groundwork for a master race of mice... but why? Maybe there's more to Hitchhiker's than we thought...
Please do not overwrite the bible; it is very important to many university classes, and several Sunday-morning TV shows. If you feel strongly about it, you can always moderate it down.
I am always amazed by the amount of (apparant) hostility that US citizens seem to display to their Government. Is this because they feel it's not their government at all?
There's something in that, but Americans also have a long history of feeling hostile towards any sort of government at all. Sort of an anarchistic streak.
In the opening, he brashly claims (from memory) "The first great contribution of the West to science is the Calculus; the second is the Algorithm. There is no third."
Is this refutable?
Refutable? Not without a strict definition of great. But you hit the nail on the head when you said, "snotty".
I would say the scientific method, and empiricism itself, qualify as great contributions. Hell, deductive reasoning. And personally, I'd be kind of proud if I'd discovered evolution, or DNA, or atoms.
Anyway, who exactly does he mean by, "the West", and to whom is he contrasting them? I seem to recall the Chinese were developing calculus about the same time as Liebnitz and Newton... so maybe the west has had only one great contribution.:-)
One must wonder what contribution Mr. Berlinski has made to science, to so judge the contributions of others. I guess/. doesn't have a monopoly on technological ingrates!
Nice job, guys! Way to pummel their poor server to death!
Whilst we wait for the/. effect to ebb, this press release might amuse you. It's from a year ago... released by both UC Berkeley and U of Chicago Both the articles are pretty much the same... you needn't hit them both.
Aparently they're both part of the same program, along with Rochester. Some interesting details, despite being a year old. Talks about forming an artificial star with a laser, too.:-)
how would strength enhancement, or intellect enhancement be seen?
Strength enhancement is here today, and most people don't think highly of it. Except those using it.
Of course, steroids must have slipped your mind. The answer is that it's seen negatively. But it's a more difficult question than most people consider. Your body produces testosterone... creatine occurs in red meat... vitamins are in most healthy food. The the more interesting question is, where are the boundries? What is enhancement?
Or Shakespeare. How many stories have been redone using the same "concept" that Shakespeare originated? But a fresh look at an old concept can still make a great story.
Virtually none. Fyi, Shakespeare originated darned few stories... I understand the scholars think The Tempest was the only story he came up with himself.
Which, of course, furthers your point. But what you're talking about is, I think, not that uncommon in sci-fi. Besides Star Trek you've got the scientifically unoriginal Star Wars, Dr. Who, Ender's Game...
New York, Nov. 26 2004 - What began with two men hanging small children from geckos has blossomed into a small industry.
In mid-2000, Kellar Autumn and Robert Full published their findings on the adhesive properties of gecko feet in the journal Nature. By early 2001, they had started the company Setae@Home to develop and market technological applications for their research. Today GeckoTape(tm) has almost completely replaced Duck Tape, making Autumn and Full billionaires. Gecko technology is important in many other fields as well.
But early efforts frustrated the entrepeneurs. My Pretty Gecko(tm), a wall-crawling toy which was their first commercial effort, failed when parents began buying their children real geckos, which were cheaper. Setae@Home was forced to begin selling treadmills for pet geckos instead. The technology itself took time to mature as well.
"The research was often difficult," Full said. "For instance, the geckos' adhesive powers works in a vacuum, but the little suckers kept exploding, so it was hard to tell." Full also notes that today's life-saving Gecko Firebots(tm) had a rocky beginning. "It was hard getting the data necessary to build them," he says, "Imagine tossing a swarm of trained geckos into a burning building. They really didn't perform nearly as well as we'd hoped."
The definition of a monopoly is a company that uses it's dominance in one market to affect another market.
No, it isn't. That a company uses its monopoly in one market to affect another market is the criteria by which antitrust cases are judged. A company may, in the US, legally have a monopoly if they do not attempt to use it to affect other markets.
The dictionary definition of a monopoly, as it appies to business, is:
exclusive ownership through legal privilege, command of supply, or concerted action
In the common use of the word, Microsoft is assuredly not a monopoly. Frankly, I don't know the legal definition of a monopoly... by now I've heard too many conflicting account to be sure. I can tell you that the Sherman Act uses the word, but does not define it.
This is the core of the DOJ case. This is what Microsoft did (and does).
That's true, though their case is not that MS has monopoly power, but that they abuse their monopoly power.
It doesn't matter what else happens, this will always be true, and Microsoft is the very definition of a monopoly.
Well, if you choose to define monopolies in terms of Microsoft, I guess I can't argue.:-) Maybe a situation where a higher-quality alternative is free and easy to get can be a monopoly... but it hardly seems like a threat to the free market.
This would be a funny case in which MS would indeed have the monopoly of the retail market, but they wouldn't have monopoly power on the OS market because most OS are shipped in another way.
You are right that MS sholdn't be punished in this case, but this is because they don't have monopoly power on it and thus can't abuse it.
So you agree that there are two markets to speak of here. I'll follow your lead and call one the "retail market"; the other I'll call the "installation market" (since in a sense they're both OS markets).
Now you agree that absolute control over the retail market, measured in sales, is insufficient for being a monopoly. Neither, of course, can domination of the installation market be sufficient for having a monopoly... otherwise, in the example, Debain would be a monopoly.
It would appear that to be a monopolist, one must dominate in both markets. Great. For the moment, let's call Microsoft a monopoly. Now in your words:
If a company has a monopoly but manage to keep simply because they have the best product and the best price
(or, of course, because people choose them for their own reasons...)
and other companies can't outmatch them and they didn't use their monopoly power to keep them at bay (say, sell at a loss) then more power to them, if the customers want choice they have the possibility.
Now explain to me how Microsoft can use their monopoly power to sustain their domination of the installation market (and thus their monopoly). Any end user who wants Debian can install it on his PC, free of charge. If enough of them chose to do so, Microsoft would have no monopoly. What power has Microsoft to stop the laws of competition in the installation market?
Microsoft can neither raise the price of operating systems generally,
Oh, and what did they do to IBM. Did they not multiply the price of Windows for them because they wanted to develop an alternative to office? And keeping your price the same while it would have dropped in a competitive environment is just as bad.
They raised the price of Windows, not of operating systems generally. As well they can do; they own Windows. The same way McDonald's can charge $100 a Big Mac if it pleases them... because while only they can sell Big Macs, they don't have a monopoly on hamburgers. If their price goes up too much, people will begin eating Whoppers, even if they don't think they're as tasty.
That's competition. Companies frequently do increase their prices in competitive environments, if they think they'll profit by it. And it's no different with Operating Systems. High quality alternatives are available. If Microsoft's price goes higher than the market will bear, people will switch.
nor prevent people from using high-quality alternatives.
MS can,
I, and many other Slashdotters, are living proof they can't.
at least they try very hard.
Sure. No law against being obnoxious.
They do it by making it very hard for Windows and other MS applicaitons to cooperate with other applications/OS's. Why do you think Wine and Samba are such huge projects?
I don't like what Microsoft does. But they're entitled to change their protocols and data formats every day, as far as I am (or the law is) concerned. It certainly hasn't kept me from using Linux.
Are you claiming that since their action did have good consequence the charged should be droped, even though the action itself was bad?
Of course not. I'm claiming that the free market produced a better result than timely government interference would have... as is almost always the case. The laws are bad.
Are you kidding?? IBM had a market share of 65% at the beginning of the case! The case was dismissed after 13 years because it was totally irrelevant. That's a sad testiment to the nature of big government, not big business.
Yup, but this was largely due to the fact that they didn't have as much room to use the same tactics during the 13 years (remember that IBM was already using the FUD method among others), thus making it easier for competitors to...compete (and among them...MS).
a) In what world is 65% of a market a monopoly? b) FUD is not, nor should it ever be, illegal c) Personal Computers, with standardized, interchangable parts, changed the market, and there was nothing IBM could have done to stop that. The DOJ's imposed upon the taxpayers' wallets and IBM's freedom, without producing anything.
You will have a hard time making me believe that Microsoft were breaking anti-trust laws for the sake of civil disobedience.
I don't mean to; Microsoft is neither idealistic nor, IMHO, admirable. But their motives aren't at issue. MS is, I believe, breaking an unjust law, which is why the comparision is appropriate. I chose very sympathetic examples merely to make my point, not to flatter MS.
Well, I certainly am ill-placed to speak for themselves but apparently, officials and employees (judgin from article and posts from some of them here) seem to believe sincerly that they did nothing wrong.
They know they broke laws (of course... thus the coverup); they don't believe they did anything wrong. Big difference.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm sorry, I find this totally offensive.
To parrots.
semi-practical :-) The item up for comparison is mining the moon for H-3 and using it for fusion.
Of course you're right, but let's keep a sense of proportion here. We're talking about abusing a deserted rock, in the interests of preserving the home of the entire supply of known critters. If there were no other considerations, sure, save the moon. If it'll keep the Earth's environment from getting yet further trashed, I have to vote: screw the moon.
Just like in Star Trek, shouldn't our goal be to seek out and explore (and adapt to) strange new worlds instead of pillaging them and warping them to suit our whims?
Again, you've got a theoretical point. But sing along for a moment:
We're not likely to seriously mess up the supply of unique planets out there, and if we're going to see any of them, we'll have to fiddle with them somewhat. If this idea actually panned out, getting that much energy from a mere 25 tons of material would be a large benefit for relatively little fiddling.
No, not laundry detergent. That's not funny.
I can only suppose that this was in reference to pointing out the related mouse developments (and I forgot to mention, as you pointed out, glowing green mice). Sure, "insightful" is a little odd... but don't rain on my parade! ;-)
Which is understandable, and very common. As a geek, I (and likely most of you) run into this sort of thing all the time. Most people don't understand what the internet is; they understand what a web browser is. And it's darned hard to explain to somebody, "no, I can't show you Linux." I can show you Windowmaker, and I can show you a Bash prompt, but you have to understand what Linux itself is.
A computer is, in a sense, the universal machine. It can become a calculator, or a watch, or an artist's canvas... hypothetically even a brain. Now to say that a windows machine doesn't belong in the classroom, that's plausible. You can make a case, too, that kids don't need to be researching their Julius Caesar report on the web. But to say that computers stifle learning and creativity, and that young children should not be allowed on them for any reason at all? Oh, please! Even if you can't find any better use for them, you can't tell me filling a scan-tron sheet is more educational than clicking radio boxes.
Of course, then there's the other extreme: computers are the greatest educational tool since the guidance counselor (most of whom are real tools...). Any kid with the unhappy fate of going to school without one is doomed to misery, probably as a useless minor bureaucrat in a public school.
People were getting damned good educations before computers. Often better ones, in fact. Hell, in the late 19th century, 1 Englishman in 5 was a Dickens reader... enjoying grammar that would snap the poor minds of most folks today. And a kid with a good grounding in symbolic logic, even if he's never seen a computer, is going to be better suited for IT work than one who spent 13 years pointing and clicking his way though most schools' pseudo-educational crap.
Computers aren't necessary to a good education, but they're probably useful in providing one. How they may be useful doesn't seem to be well-understood by our teachers just yet, and they (the computers, not the teachers) doubless do much more harm than good when misused.
My somewhat off-topic opinion? In the US we've not even been able to settle on a curriculum that works, much less an approach to computers. A centrally orchestrated, one-size-fits-all approach develops as poor an educational system as an operating system. Separate school and state, let schools create their own computing policies, and watch the effective ideas propagate through the system. There's no sense in trying to figure out the best educational use of computers a priori. I think I might do a better job of it than Dr. Healey, but surely nowhere near as well as would a healthy system of creative competition.
Uh... no. This is not a Linux news site... not even a computer news site. And if you want your suggestions taken seriously, log in.
The movie on Neo's TV was Night of the Lepus, and they were giant rabbits. More of the White Rabbit theme.
Being ein sheissekopf. A policy of Moderation has failed us... zis offers ze Final Solution to ze Troll Problem. A greater Slashdot is at hand...
We seem to be laying the groundwork for a master race of mice... but why? Maybe there's more to Hitchhiker's than we thought...
You keep using that word... I do not think it means what you think it means... :-)
This will probably not do what you expect. Try:
Slashdot >> the_bible
Please do not overwrite the bible; it is very important to many university classes, and several Sunday-morning TV shows. If you feel strongly about it, you can always moderate it down.
There's something in that, but Americans also have a long history of feeling hostile towards any sort of government at all. Sort of an anarchistic streak.
A nineteenth-century engraving of Charles Darwin and his Mini-Me?
Is this refutable?
Refutable? Not without a strict definition of great. But you hit the nail on the head when you said, "snotty".
I would say the scientific method, and empiricism itself, qualify as great contributions. Hell, deductive reasoning. And personally, I'd be kind of proud if I'd discovered evolution, or DNA, or atoms.
Anyway, who exactly does he mean by, "the West", and to whom is he contrasting them? I seem to recall the Chinese were developing calculus about the same time as Liebnitz and Newton... so maybe the west has had only one great contribution. :-)
One must wonder what contribution Mr. Berlinski has made to science, to so judge the contributions of others. I guess /. doesn't have a monopoly on technological ingrates!
A Woz interview would be an excellent thing... good suggestion.
Only on Slashdot do you find everyone going on about The Woz, and some lone soul asking, "What about Jobs?" :-)
Actually, the artificial star thing wasn't really as interesting as it looked at first glance. :-)
Whilst we wait for the /. effect to ebb, this press release might amuse you. It's from a year ago... released by both UC Berkeley and U of Chicago Both the articles are pretty much the same... you needn't hit them both.
Aparently they're both part of the same program, along with Rochester. Some interesting details, despite being a year old. Talks about forming an artificial star with a laser, too. :-)
Strength enhancement is here today, and most people don't think highly of it. Except those using it.
Of course, steroids must have slipped your mind. The answer is that it's seen negatively. But it's a more difficult question than most people consider. Your body produces testosterone... creatine occurs in red meat... vitamins are in most healthy food. The the more interesting question is, where are the boundries? What is enhancement?
Yunz is right! It sucks when people misspell da Burgh, an'at...
Virtually none. Fyi, Shakespeare originated darned few stories... I understand the scholars think The Tempest was the only story he came up with himself.
Which, of course, furthers your point. But what you're talking about is, I think, not that uncommon in sci-fi. Besides Star Trek you've got the scientifically unoriginal Star Wars, Dr. Who, Ender's Game...
In mid-2000, Kellar Autumn and Robert Full published their findings on the adhesive properties of gecko feet in the journal Nature. By early 2001, they had started the company Setae@Home to develop and market technological applications for their research. Today GeckoTape(tm) has almost completely replaced Duck Tape, making Autumn and Full billionaires. Gecko technology is important in many other fields as well.
But early efforts frustrated the entrepeneurs. My Pretty Gecko(tm), a wall-crawling toy which was their first commercial effort, failed when parents began buying their children real geckos, which were cheaper. Setae@Home was forced to begin selling treadmills for pet geckos instead. The technology itself took time to mature as well.
"The research was often difficult," Full said. "For instance, the geckos' adhesive powers works in a vacuum, but the little suckers kept exploding, so it was hard to tell." Full also notes that today's life-saving Gecko Firebots(tm) had a rocky beginning. "It was hard getting the data necessary to build them," he says, "Imagine tossing a swarm of trained geckos into a burning building. They really didn't perform nearly as well as we'd hoped."
No, it isn't. That a company uses its monopoly in one market to affect another market is the criteria by which antitrust cases are judged. A company may, in the US, legally have a monopoly if they do not attempt to use it to affect other markets.
The dictionary definition of a monopoly, as it appies to business, is:
exclusive ownership through legal privilege, command of supply, or concerted action
In the common use of the word, Microsoft is assuredly not a monopoly. Frankly, I don't know the legal definition of a monopoly... by now I've heard too many conflicting account to be sure. I can tell you that the Sherman Act uses the word, but does not define it.
This is the core of the DOJ case. This is what Microsoft did (and does).
That's true, though their case is not that MS has monopoly power, but that they abuse their monopoly power.
It doesn't matter what else happens, this will always be true, and Microsoft is the very definition of a monopoly.
Well, if you choose to define monopolies in terms of Microsoft, I guess I can't argue. :-) Maybe a situation where a higher-quality alternative is free and easy to get can be a monopoly... but it hardly seems like a threat to the free market.
You are right that MS sholdn't be punished in this case, but this is because they don't have monopoly power on it and thus can't abuse it.
So you agree that there are two markets to speak of here. I'll follow your lead and call one the "retail market"; the other I'll call the "installation market" (since in a sense they're both OS markets).
Now you agree that absolute control over the retail market, measured in sales, is insufficient for being a monopoly. Neither, of course, can domination of the installation market be sufficient for having a monopoly... otherwise, in the example, Debain would be a monopoly.
It would appear that to be a monopolist, one must dominate in both markets. Great. For the moment, let's call Microsoft a monopoly. Now in your words:
If a company has a monopoly but manage to keep simply because they have the best product and the best price
(or, of course, because people choose them for their own reasons...)
and other companies can't outmatch them and they didn't use their monopoly power to keep them at bay (say, sell at a loss) then more power to them, if the customers want choice they have the possibility.
Now explain to me how Microsoft can use their monopoly power to sustain their domination of the installation market (and thus their monopoly). Any end user who wants Debian can install it on his PC, free of charge. If enough of them chose to do so, Microsoft would have no monopoly. What power has Microsoft to stop the laws of competition in the installation market?
Microsoft can neither raise the price of operating systems generally,
Oh, and what did they do to IBM. Did they not multiply the price of Windows for them because they wanted to develop an alternative to office? And keeping your price the same while it would have dropped in a competitive environment is just as bad.
They raised the price of Windows, not of operating systems generally. As well they can do; they own Windows. The same way McDonald's can charge $100 a Big Mac if it pleases them... because while only they can sell Big Macs, they don't have a monopoly on hamburgers. If their price goes up too much, people will begin eating Whoppers, even if they don't think they're as tasty.
That's competition. Companies frequently do increase their prices in competitive environments, if they think they'll profit by it. And it's no different with Operating Systems. High quality alternatives are available. If Microsoft's price goes higher than the market will bear, people will switch.
nor prevent people from using high-quality alternatives.
MS can,
I, and many other Slashdotters, are living proof they can't.
at least they try very hard.
Sure. No law against being obnoxious.
They do it by making it very hard for Windows and other MS applicaitons to cooperate with other applications/OS's. Why do you think Wine and Samba are such huge projects?
I don't like what Microsoft does. But they're entitled to change their protocols and data formats every day, as far as I am (or the law is) concerned. It certainly hasn't kept me from using Linux.
Are you claiming that since their action did have good consequence the charged should be droped, even though the action itself was bad?
Of course not. I'm claiming that the free market produced a better result than timely government interference would have... as is almost always the case. The laws are bad.
Are you kidding?? IBM had a market share of 65% at the beginning of the case! The case was dismissed after 13 years because it was totally irrelevant. That's a sad testiment to the nature of big government, not big business.
Yup, but this was largely due to the fact that they didn't have as much room to use the same tactics during the 13 years (remember that IBM was already using the FUD method among others), thus making it easier for competitors to...compete (and among them...MS).
a) In what world is 65% of a market a monopoly?
b) FUD is not, nor should it ever be, illegal
c) Personal Computers, with standardized, interchangable parts, changed the market, and there was nothing IBM could have done to stop that. The DOJ's imposed upon the taxpayers' wallets and IBM's freedom, without producing anything.
You will have a hard time making me believe that Microsoft were breaking anti-trust laws for the sake of civil disobedience.
I don't mean to; Microsoft is neither idealistic nor, IMHO, admirable. But their motives aren't at issue. MS is, I believe, breaking an unjust law, which is why the comparision is appropriate. I chose very sympathetic examples merely to make my point, not to flatter MS.
Well, I certainly am ill-placed to speak for themselves but apparently, officials and employees (judgin from article and posts from some of them here) seem to believe sincerly that they did nothing wrong.
They know they broke laws (of course... thus the coverup); they don't believe they did anything wrong. Big difference.