and there are a few people who stand behind the coined term in order to enhance their position is this meritocracy we have
If only the US were lucky enough to be an actual meritocracy. I think we live in something closer to an idiocracy.
Seriously though, the people are not the people with enough merit to be in power. I, personally, would love it if the US were a meritocracy. Maybe then we'd see some common sense showing up in the government.
I have to say, the company where I just finished working at had one of the best working environments I've ever seen. Absolutely perfect. Everyone was happy, even when knee deep in coding pointless crap that some moronic client decided to add.
There was a main area with a bunch of large L-shaped desks all layed out. No walls or dividers or anything to seperate the different desks. Much to everyones enjoyment, a couple of large stereo's blasted Rob Zombie, VNV Nations and Megadeth. To make sure everyone got music they liked, we created XMMS and Winamp plugins to allow for voting of song changing: didnt like the song and just click the next button on winamp. If no one objected by clicking to negate teh change within 5 seconds, song changed. It goes without saying that this was an extremely social room. But everyone would be constantly working while they talked. It also helped to have the director of operations in the room, so there was no excuse to slack.
When someone was getting into deep code mode and started to get annoyed by the tunes of Front 242, they were free to move into one of the offices. Since everything is stored remotely on the network and most of the people were fairly computer savy, we didnt have to bring anything with us to escape the social room. Just walk in and log in. Thats it.
Unfortunately, this work environment only works really well with a bunch of tolerant people who are at least amiable towards each other. It was also extremely fortunate that we all liked the same music, otherwise we would have had to resorted to marginal volume levels or even head phones.
It didnt hurt morale either that playing Unreal:Tournament or Quake 3 at the end of the day was standard operating proceedures. Semi-Monthly fragathons also helped keep morale up; dragging in clients and friends and having nice huge games running. (Hmm... 100baseT connection to a kickin switch to a dual 700mhz Xeon (2mb l2 cache) system w/ 1 gig of ram and a 5+1 SCSI tower running Unreal:Tournament server). Having stuff like that helped morale immensely.
The first piece I'd like to present against this is that Gnutellaworks. Hypotheticals aside, it flat out works. There are plenty of users using gnutella and it seems to work fine for all them. Just go get gnutella and see for yourself. Theres a client for every OS under the sun, so you have no excuse.
In terms of why it works: when you search a "virus" network, it doesnt go around in a linearized chain style. Nothing as sophmoric as A connects to B connects to C. Something like that would be just flat out inane! what would the network do if a couple of client/servers just shut off, all at once? You'd have to include major safeguards. In a chain network like you suggested, the network would tear itself to shreds within minutes.
An intelligent virus distributed network (See: Gnutella and what I'm doing) maintains a list of 10 or so connections. When requesting a file, it sends out its request to those 10 connections. Those 10 that recieve the query pass it on to every system they know of. They in turn pass it on to every 10 they know of.
I can see the questions already: Dear god! The bandwidth something like that might take! And how would it end?
Use your head. Put a byte for TTL (time to live) on a query which defines how many times it'll get passed before ending. That way, you'll never get more than (ActiveConnections)**(TTL) total messages sent out. Take this another step further and use intelligent routing. Keep a small table of recently recieved packets and ignore any repeats. That way, the message doesnt ever get caught in an infinite loop. There are tons of optimizations that can be done. Gnutella does some optimizations already.
But enough of this tangent. My point is that Gnutella's form of distributed networking not only can work, but is being used right now.
Seriously, napster is... of marginal usability? I'll be frank. Napster's protocol is total crap. Its based around single unconnected servers. Now, not only is this not totally decentralized (==bad) but since the napservers arent connected, you dont have access to every file (Yes, there are multiple napservers. (Choose your server with napigator)).
What we really need is a protocol that uses/abuses MD5 (RFC or a less technical overview), so you _know_ your getting the same file. Its not too much to ask to send a couple more bytes just once to know your getting the right song. Way more favorable option than having to backup your file before resuming a download, listening to make sure its the exact same file, et al. Way better
In terms of other options, I'd have to recommend a couple of different things: first off, check out Gnutella which is far superior to napster. Open protocol, truly distributed network. Everything. Second off, I'm gonna throw in a plug for Pie in the Sky, what I'm doing for BitWrench, the company I'm working for. Pie in the Sky (PitS) is the mother of all mp3 programs. When it does come out (end of summer time frame), it will support searching across napster, gnutella, freenet and scour. It will also boast possibly the most intelligent Gnutella router seen, extended protocols for enhanced communication with other PitS servnets and more. Check it.
School itself is a crime against the brilliant, independent and non-conformists. In elementary school, we are taught that school is going to prepare us intellectually for the world. We are engraved with the concept of school being a place for developing our minds.
Once we hit middle school though, the whole focus of school shifts. School is no longer academic, it becomes something else entirely: social. No longer do we have the motivation of having a sole teacher who knows our ins and outs and allows us to be truly challenged. The challenge of school suddenly becomes social without any warning or transition.
Many kids are left behind though. Many keep themselves focused on the future, always looking ahead at better times when they will be the next Bill Gates, Einstein or Galileo. Kids run on hopes to change the world, to become great and not get lost in the tome of history where our entries eventually get edited down into the now proverbial "mostly harmless."
And eventually even that wears off. So the independent thinkers are left with nothing to motivate them. They find themselves all alone in a world they usually despise. The challenge in life is gone, life becomes a monotonous daydream where we float through just trying to get to the end, tolerating the jests and jeers by fellow, enduring time as our tolerance ebs away into nothing.
And when something goes wrong, the press points its finger at us. Sure, they may have pulled the trigger, but is it totally incomprehensible? Honestly, the bureaucratic government wont help us, our 'peers' tease us and ostracize us for being smarter. And now the press labels us as killers and then tells everyone to be nice to these outcasts or else they'll go out and kill more people.
Or just as bad, they label other things as the cause of the problems. Some of the articles the press has written are far worse than any murder ever committed. For example; The Washington Post somehow linked trench coats with Nazi's, most likely because it just so happened to be that a couple of nazi's wore trench coats. Of course this is like saying lunch is the cause of all murders since all murders ate lunch. The perceived connection is a strange perversion and manipulation of the truth. Further perversions committed by the Washington Post include blaming video games like Doom and music such as KMFDM and Marilyn Manson for leading to the killings. As anyone who actually uses these tools to vent anger and angst knows and would tell you, the Post is most definitely incorrect. These games and music serve to calm anger and hatred built up. Valuable venting tools such as a game of Quake2 being played to the earthshaking anti-racist anti-violence songs of KMFDM can very easily prevent someone from going postal after a hard day.
All the underground 'outcast' cultures and subcultures need to stop being labeled as unhealthy. Their little trademarks (ex: black clothing for goth's) should be seen as menacing to society. If you look deep enough; putting aside day one through three of the horribly written presumptuous horrible press coverage, you'll see the two killers in Colorado weren't actually part of the alleged 'trench coat Mafia.' They were outcasts even from that group to many extents. This is much akin to the civil rights era with the Watts Riots where not a single town with a strong Black Panther presence ever rioted. These little 'unhealthy' or 'outcast' groups, as demented as they are, prevent people from feeling totally lost and alone. That's why no one in the trench coat Mafia took part in the killing, they had support. So stop branding these underground cultures and subcultures as unhealthy, they may just have saved some lives.
It's not the video games, its not dungeons and dragons, its not NIN or KMFDM, its not trench-coats, and its not underground cultures that are doing this, its angst. We live in a world of hype and all we see is mediocrity. We strive for the impossible, only to find it out of reach. We are filled with hope for so much, consumed by a young idealism taught to us throughout our elementary years only to have it all torn down in a barrage of reality which assaults us as we hit 7th or 8th grade.
So what can we do to stop this? Honestly, what can really be done without restricting the liberties of kids? What can we do to make gun control unnecessary? We have two options: we can officially brand the people we've always labeled as outcasts and jail them all as anarchists and dangerous to society or we can do something very simple. Just make middle school and high school what we say its going to be. Academic. Make honors classes mean something for once. Dont just drop the geniuses in with the moderately competent people who are good at homework in honors classes, mandate intelligence and independent for these higher standards. Support magnet programs. Support the ability to skip a class for fast learners capable of doing so. Get AP classes. Make school motivating like it once was in elementary school. Dont break the promise, make the promise.
But even this is not going to eliminate all the angst and nihilism. But that's ok, we're never going to get rid of all of it. But by not disillusioning our youth with false promises we can eliminate a lot of it. The very nature of the fast paced, materialistic and capitalistic world creates rage and fury amongst everyone, teens especially since they feel like they've been thrown into a world they never had any control over.
Speaking as a 10th grade self proclaimed nerd; I know the horrible crimes school has committed against me. I'm an independent, a loner, a renegade, and a non-conformist and hated because of it. But the one mistake I will never let myself make is taking my eyes off the future. Any geek capable of surviving this unholy hell some call school and not letting it crush their spirit will emerge from this horrible place a stronger person.
"Talent does what it can; genius does what it must." -Unknown "The best way to predict the future is to invent it." -Alan Kay "Knowledge is power." -Hobbes, Leviathan
Quite frankly, I'm extremely disappointed to see the plain lack of ingenuity in the entire computer industry.
You've got a cable capable of sending a whole spectrum of light, so why wouldnt you divide it up into the different colors? The fact that dividing it up into different areas of the spectrum is a new idea and hasnt been utilized for years now almost disgusts me. It seems almost common logic for this to be the next logical step. I honestly expected technology to utilize potentials like this. Do modems do the same, utilize only on or off pulses or do they take advantage of the possiblity of changing amplitude and frequency to allow for potential increase?
I'm sorry, you evidently have been living in a cave for quite some time now. MIT already has a very healthy populatioin of wearable computer cyborgs and numerous other places (georgia tech) are starting their own programs. Possibly the best leaps in this field are by Steve Mann whose creating something truly practical and marketable which is also what I intend to create for my colledge computer, an underwearable computer. That is a computer which is totally integrated into your clothing and not noticable to anyone else. A completely integrated computer undetectable to anyone else.
MIT webpage: http://lcs.www.media.mit.edu/projects/wearables/ Mann's: http://n1nlf-1.eecg.toronto.edu/
Slashdot Mirror
Agreed 100% on every other point, but, from some of the anecdotes and rumors I've hear, Rob Zombie is actually quite articulate and intelligent.
Just gotta give credit where its due
Myren
.sig -> <a href="http://www.geekcode.com">geekcode</a>
and there are a few people who stand behind the coined term in order to enhance their position is this meritocracy we have
If only the US were lucky enough to be an actual meritocracy. I think we live in something closer to an idiocracy.
Seriously though, the people are not the people with enough merit to be in power. I, personally, would love it if the US were a meritocracy. Maybe then we'd see some common sense showing up in the government.
I have to say, the company where I just finished working at had one of the best working environments I've ever seen. Absolutely perfect. Everyone was happy, even when knee deep in coding pointless crap that some moronic client decided to add.
There was a main area with a bunch of large L-shaped desks all layed out. No walls or dividers or anything to seperate the different desks. Much to everyones enjoyment, a couple of large stereo's blasted Rob Zombie, VNV Nations and Megadeth. To make sure everyone got music they liked, we created XMMS and Winamp plugins to allow for voting of song changing: didnt like the song and just click the next button on winamp. If no one objected by clicking to negate teh change within 5 seconds, song changed. It goes without saying that this was an extremely social room. But everyone would be constantly working while they talked. It also helped to have the director of operations in the room, so there was no excuse to slack.
When someone was getting into deep code mode and started to get annoyed by the tunes of Front 242, they were free to move into one of the offices. Since everything is stored remotely on the network and most of the people were fairly computer savy, we didnt have to bring anything with us to escape the social room. Just walk in and log in. Thats it.
Unfortunately, this work environment only works really well with a bunch of tolerant people who are at least amiable towards each other. It was also extremely fortunate that we all liked the same music, otherwise we would have had to resorted to marginal volume levels or even head phones.
It didnt hurt morale either that playing Unreal:Tournament or Quake 3 at the end of the day was standard operating proceedures. Semi-Monthly fragathons also helped keep morale up; dragging in clients and friends and having nice huge games running. (Hmm... 100baseT connection to a kickin switch to a dual 700mhz Xeon (2mb l2 cache) system w/ 1 gig of ram and a 5+1 SCSI tower running Unreal:Tournament server). Having stuff like that helped morale immensely.
Fin
Myren
The first piece I'd like to present against this is that Gnutella works. Hypotheticals aside, it flat out works. There are plenty of users using gnutella and it seems to work fine for all them. Just go get gnutella and see for yourself. Theres a client for every OS under the sun, so you have no excuse.
In terms of why it works: when you search a "virus" network, it doesnt go around in a linearized chain style. Nothing as sophmoric as A connects to B connects to C. Something like that would be just flat out inane! what would the network do if a couple of client/servers just shut off, all at once? You'd have to include major safeguards. In a chain network like you suggested, the network would tear itself to shreds within minutes.
An intelligent virus distributed network (See: Gnutella and what I'm doing) maintains a list of 10 or so connections. When requesting a file, it sends out its request to those 10 connections. Those 10 that recieve the query pass it on to every system they know of. They in turn pass it on to every 10 they know of.
I can see the questions already: Dear god! The bandwidth something like that might take! And how would it end?
Use your head. Put a byte for TTL (time to live) on a query which defines how many times it'll get passed before ending. That way, you'll never get more than (ActiveConnections)**(TTL) total messages sent out. Take this another step further and use intelligent routing. Keep a small table of recently recieved packets and ignore any repeats. That way, the message doesnt ever get caught in an infinite loop. There are tons of optimizations that can be done. Gnutella does some optimizations already.
But enough of this tangent. My point is that Gnutella's form of distributed networking not only can work, but is being used right now.
Matt.
Make a real file sharing network.
Seriously, napster is... of marginal usability? I'll be frank. Napster's protocol is total crap. Its based around single unconnected servers. Now, not only is this not totally decentralized (==bad) but since the napservers arent connected, you dont have access to every file (Yes, there are multiple napservers. (Choose your server with napigator)).
What we really need is a protocol that uses/abuses MD5 (RFC or a less technical overview), so you _know_ your getting the same file. Its not too much to ask to send a couple more bytes just once to know your getting the right song. Way more favorable option than having to backup your file before resuming a download, listening to make sure its the exact same file, et al. Way better
In terms of other options, I'd have to recommend a couple of different things: first off, check out Gnutella which is far superior to napster. Open protocol, truly distributed network. Everything. Second off, I'm gonna throw in a plug for Pie in the Sky, what I'm doing for BitWrench, the company I'm working for. Pie in the Sky (PitS) is the mother of all mp3 programs. When it does come out (end of summer time frame), it will support searching across napster, gnutella, freenet and scour. It will also boast possibly the most intelligent Gnutella router seen, extended protocols for enhanced communication with other PitS servnets and more. Check it.
Alright, enough ranting. Matt
School itself is a crime against the brilliant, independent and non-conformists. In elementary school, we are taught that school is going to prepare us intellectually for the world. We are engraved with the concept of school being a place for developing our minds.
Once we hit middle school though, the whole focus of school shifts. School is no longer academic, it becomes something else entirely: social. No longer do we have the motivation of having a sole teacher who knows our ins and outs and allows us to be truly challenged. The challenge of school suddenly becomes social without any warning or transition.
Many kids are left behind though. Many keep themselves focused on the future, always looking ahead at better times when they will be the next Bill Gates, Einstein or Galileo. Kids run on hopes to change the world, to become great and not get lost in the tome of history where our entries eventually get edited down into the now proverbial "mostly harmless."
And eventually even that wears off. So the independent thinkers are left with nothing to motivate them. They find themselves all alone in a world they usually despise. The challenge in life is gone, life becomes a monotonous daydream where we float through just trying to get to the end, tolerating the jests and jeers by fellow, enduring time as our tolerance ebs away into nothing.
And when something goes wrong, the press points its finger at us. Sure, they may have pulled the trigger, but is it totally incomprehensible? Honestly, the bureaucratic government wont help us, our 'peers' tease us and ostracize us for being smarter. And now the press labels us as killers and then tells everyone to be nice to these outcasts or else they'll go out and kill more people.
Or just as bad, they label other things as the cause of the problems. Some of the articles the press has written are far worse than any murder ever committed. For example; The Washington Post somehow linked trench coats with Nazi's, most likely because it just so happened to be that a couple of nazi's wore trench coats. Of course this is like saying lunch is the cause of all murders since all murders ate lunch. The perceived connection is a strange perversion and manipulation of the truth. Further perversions committed by the Washington Post include blaming video games like Doom and music such as KMFDM and Marilyn Manson for leading to the killings. As anyone who actually uses these tools to vent anger and angst knows and would tell you, the Post is most definitely incorrect. These games and music serve to calm anger and hatred built up. Valuable venting tools such as a game of Quake2 being played to the earthshaking anti-racist anti-violence songs of KMFDM can very easily prevent someone from going postal after a hard day.
All the underground 'outcast' cultures and subcultures need to stop being labeled as unhealthy. Their little trademarks (ex: black clothing for goth's) should be seen as menacing to society. If you look deep enough; putting aside day one through three of the horribly written presumptuous horrible press coverage, you'll see the two killers in Colorado weren't actually part of the alleged 'trench coat Mafia.' They were outcasts even from that group to many extents. This is much akin to the civil rights era with the Watts Riots where not a single town with a strong Black Panther presence ever rioted. These little 'unhealthy' or 'outcast' groups, as demented as they are, prevent people from feeling totally lost and alone. That's why no one in the trench coat Mafia took part in the killing, they had support. So stop branding these underground cultures and subcultures as unhealthy, they may just have saved some lives.
It's not the video games, its not dungeons and dragons, its not NIN or KMFDM, its not trench-coats, and its not underground cultures that are doing this, its angst. We live in a world of hype and all we see is mediocrity. We strive for the impossible, only to find it out of reach. We are filled with hope for so much, consumed by a young idealism taught to us throughout our elementary years only to have it all torn down in a barrage of reality which assaults us as we hit 7th or 8th grade.
So what can we do to stop this? Honestly, what can really be done without restricting the liberties of kids? What can we do to make gun control unnecessary? We have two options: we can officially brand the people we've always labeled as outcasts and jail them all as anarchists and dangerous to society or we can do something very simple. Just make middle school and high school what we say its going to be. Academic. Make honors classes mean something for once. Dont just drop the geniuses in with the moderately competent people who are good at homework in honors classes, mandate intelligence and independent for these higher standards. Support magnet programs. Support the ability to skip a class for fast learners capable of doing so. Get AP classes. Make school motivating like it once was in elementary school. Dont break the promise, make the promise.
But even this is not going to eliminate all the angst and nihilism. But that's ok, we're never going to get rid of all of it. But by not disillusioning our youth with false promises we can eliminate a lot of it. The very nature of the fast paced, materialistic and capitalistic world creates rage and fury amongst everyone, teens especially since they feel like they've been thrown into a world they never had any control over.
Speaking as a 10th grade self proclaimed nerd; I know the horrible crimes school has committed against me. I'm an independent, a loner, a renegade, and a non-conformist and hated because of it. But the one mistake I will never let myself make is taking my eyes off the future. Any geek capable of surviving this unholy hell some call school and not letting it crush their spirit will emerge from this horrible place a stronger person.
"Talent does what it can; genius does what it must." -Unknown
"The best way to predict the future is to invent it." -Alan Kay
"Knowledge is power." -Hobbes, Leviathan
For the future
Myren
Quite frankly, I'm extremely disappointed to see the plain lack of ingenuity in the entire computer industry.
You've got a cable capable of sending a whole spectrum of light, so why wouldnt you divide it up into the different colors? The fact that dividing it up into different areas of the spectrum is a new idea and hasnt been utilized for years now almost disgusts me. It seems almost common logic for this to be the next logical step. I honestly expected technology to utilize potentials like this. Do modems do the same, utilize only on or off pulses or do they take advantage of the possiblity of changing amplitude and frequency to allow for potential increase?
Myren
I'm sorry, you evidently have been living in a cave for quite some time now. MIT already has a very healthy populatioin of wearable computer cyborgs and numerous other places (georgia tech) are starting their own programs. Possibly the best leaps in this field are by Steve Mann whose creating something truly practical and marketable which is also what I intend to create for my colledge computer, an underwearable computer. That is a computer which is totally integrated into your clothing and not noticable to anyone else. A completely integrated computer undetectable to anyone else.
/
MIT webpage:
http://lcs.www.media.mit.edu/projects/wearables
Mann's:
http://n1nlf-1.eecg.toronto.edu/
Your cave correction team!
Myren