But seriously, the ramifications of nanotechnology are pretty scary. I thought the Foresight Institute was supposed to be about becoming aware of them, and keeping the scary ones from becoming reality. Now it seems like they just push the science forward as fast as possible. Did they get so much resistance to the idea of nanotechnology being real that they got permanently distracted into proving that it is?
This is one technology which might not let us clean up the mess afterwards (like what's happening now with genetic modification).
I don't know if he started it, but Dave Winer promoted Microsoft-Free Fridays in response to Microsoft's SmartTags (which are still in Office, and will will surely end up in Internet Explorer at some point).
As the saying goes, "it's all good." Clean water etc. doesn't have to come before third-world representation on-line, in fact the latter could help support the former.
More Slashdot posts from the third-world would lead to a more whole understanding of things here. Even the posts from (apparent) first-worlders who had lived in the Dominican Republic helped the solar panel conversation this way. And better understanding can lead to better action.
Does your willingness to build on software that is free/open come from a purely practical motivation, or do you also have social/political reasons for doing so?
If you do support some of the social/political motivations for developing free/open software, how does that play into your decision to do some of your development in the proprietary model? (e.g., how would you feel if your code ended up in the hands of a BigCorp willing to be obnoxious with its 'ownership'.)
The Science News article credits Heinlein with exoskeletons, in Starship Troopers. I was surprised they didn't mention Waldos, essentially a networked version of the same thing, which he is better known for.
How efficient of the Court! They have helped authors avoid two completely separate kinds of copyright infringement with one stroke.
The first is obvious, companies publishing authors' work without their permission.
The second is saving thousands of works from being (unlawfully?) altered by Microsoft's just-released Smart Tags feature, er, bug? (ah, parasite!)
Yes! Anyone who's interested in working on a free/open source WikiBrowser (WardsWiki) WikiBrowser
(Meatball) go read and contribute at those links, or contact me. It could be done as a sidebar in browsers that do that, and as a separate app for different OSes. (there's no project yet)
>4294967296 different languages
>4294967296 different characters
This scheme does not allow for enough languages--we should be ready for the time when each individual crafts their own personal language(s) for various purposes. There are already more than 6 billion people on the planet. Allowing for some population growth, one might think that 40 bits would be enough, allowing for 1099511627776 languages.
When the population reaches 100 billion, there's still enough space for 10 languages each.
But what about aliens? We should make sure our system is ready to interoperate with their languages and computer systems.
Liberal estimates suggest thousands of sentient species in our galaxy. To restrict ourself to our local group of galaxies, let's say fifty thousands species, of no more than a trillion individuals each (most of them have probably spread out to dozens of planets), and 10 languages per individual...
That would require 56 bits, to get about 7.2 x 10 ^16 different languages. This way, we won't have to upgrade again for a while!
On the other hand, 4294967296 characters for each language seems a bit high. Maybe we can save 8 bits and use only 24, for "only" 16777216. characters
Right, and corps aren't the only giants (govs, religions, etc.) that make "civilization" possible.
You can have a society without giants, but many of us aren't willing to go there if we can't keep missions to Mars, Slashdot, and easy world travel & communications...
Killing giants (just like the human death penalty) is an extreme corrective action, causing extreme dislocation. In the system as it is, i guess it's a good power for the people to have and be able to use.
And how can we change/reform/revolute things such that we rarely feel the urge to use it? ExtremeDemocracy...?
In fact, the article is titled "The Death Penalty for Corporations Comes of Age."
A judge in Alabama is pissed his state isn't one of those suing the tobacco companies, so he's going for revoking all their charters:-)...
He stumbled across an obscure 19th century statute giving any citizen the right to petition the state for a "writ of quo warranto"--a Latin phrase meaning "by what authority?" As Judge Wynn explains it, the writ of quo warranto allows a citizen to file a lawsuit against any corporation, posing the question: By what authority are you holding a corporate franchise to do business, when you are in fact breaking the law?
When i started reading this thread (and when i first heard the idea a couple years ago), i wondered if the impact on bigcorps chartered in multiple areas would be significant, but the the article says the tobacco companies would lose $2 million a day (it doesn't say why).
All in all, it's nice to have a big stick, but the real question, assuming we like at least some of the "stuff" that globe-spanning complex systems make possible, is how to maintain that without having these big systems ignore the feedback loops that should keep them from doing such stupid things before they happen (here i'm thinking more of perennial offenders like Unocal than the narrow Avant! case).
So ICANN *wants* to be in the position of accounting for what fields of work involve are of the right class or caste to be deemed "professional" ? and stick their nose into what counts as a real business? in 200 countries?
Sounds suicidal to me. Hasn't the brouhaha around intellectual property rights over names kept them busy enough?.edu is offensive enough, imho.
What i want to know is when the first time that someone sat in front of a teletype machine (or whatever) and interactively edited/moved files. Did early paper-tape coders occasionally hack a few lines in memory, making any pre-CLI/CLI line too fuzzy?
In other news, Steve Jobs announced that, compared to the Colossus, the G4 is "twice as fast" using standard 1944 Bytemark benchmarks.
These results are somewhat suspect, as the only suite the Bytemark software was able to run after loading into the Colossus consisted of timing the paper tape speed of repeated "hello world" s.
The Mac G4 was twice as fast updating "hello world"s on the desktop, the analogous suite.
Life,
Rademir
The GPL is like making adultery illegal: a net loss of individual freedom for a net gain in morality.
If the law is silly enough to let people lock code in a box, then it seems complementary (if not fair) to let people lock their code out in the open.
Re:China's millenium? Space war treaties?
on
China Aims At Moon
·
· Score: 1
the propaganda value for the Chinese would be incredibly valuable... just as it was for America in the sixties.
Sure. They could say that only Chinese have walked on the moon in the current millenium.
I know there were some treaties at some point with countries agreeing not to war in space. Anyone know what these agreements really specified, and whether China signed them?
...except that nobody was saying that St. Pepper's would become a "touchstone" six months before it came out (probably because an unfinished pre-release wasn't sold for $30 then).
Slashdot Mirror
I wish that folks could go with a "tipjar" model and just help the artists they like directly
You're talking about a href="http://www.fairtunes.com/
My point was that if the NC idea had any widespread applicability, it would've been applied to game boxes.
At least we know he'll never sell out to the likes of Hasbro.
Makes the smallest web server seem pretty huge, hunh?
But seriously, the ramifications of nanotechnology are pretty scary. I thought the Foresight Institute was supposed to be about becoming aware of them, and keeping the scary ones from becoming reality. Now it seems like they just push the science forward as fast as possible. Did they get so much resistance to the idea of nanotechnology being real that they got permanently distracted into proving that it is?
This is one technology which might not let us clean up the mess afterwards (like what's happening now with genetic modification).
I don't know if he started it, but Dave Winer promoted Microsoft-Free Fridays in response to Microsoft's SmartTags (which are still in Office, and will will surely end up in Internet Explorer at some point).
As the saying goes, "it's all good." Clean water etc. doesn't have to come before third-world representation on-line, in fact the latter could help support the former.
More Slashdot posts from the third-world would lead to a more whole understanding of things here. Even the posts from (apparent) first-worlders who had lived in the Dominican Republic helped the solar panel conversation this way. And better understanding can lead to better action.
Does your willingness to build on software that is free/open come from a purely practical motivation, or do you also have social/political reasons for doing so?
If you do support some of the social/political motivations for developing free/open software, how does that play into your decision to do some of your development in the proprietary model? (e.g., how would you feel if your code ended up in the hands of a BigCorp willing to be obnoxious with its 'ownership'.)
Hard drives on game boxes pretty much proves the (in general) worthlessness of the whole diskless Network Computer idea.
Now the important question is, will someone port USB-to-ADB-adapter driver software so that i can use my original Apple Extended keyboard?
The Science News article credits Heinlein with exoskeletons, in Starship Troopers. I was surprised they didn't mention Waldos, essentially a networked version of the same thing, which he is better known for.
The .GNU project is already in the planning stage.
How efficient of the Court! They have helped authors avoid two completely separate kinds of copyright infringement with one stroke. The first is obvious, companies publishing authors' work without their permission.
The second is saving thousands of works from being (unlawfully?) altered by Microsoft's just-released Smart Tags feature, er, bug? (ah, parasite!)
How to fix Smart Tags
How 'bout this, the next time Microsoft makes noises about how bad free software is: Where do you want to code today? Rademir
Yes! Anyone who's interested in working on a free/open source WikiBrowser (WardsWiki) WikiBrowser (Meatball) go read and contribute at those links, or contact me. It could be done as a sidebar in browsers that do that, and as a separate app for different OSes. (there's no project yet)
Life,
John
>4294967296 different languages
>4294967296 different characters
This scheme does not allow for enough languages--we should be ready for the time when each individual crafts their own personal language(s) for various purposes. There are already more than 6 billion people on the planet. Allowing for some population growth, one might think that 40 bits would be enough, allowing for 1099511627776 languages.
When the population reaches 100 billion, there's still enough space for 10 languages each.
But what about aliens? We should make sure our system is ready to interoperate with their languages and computer systems.
Liberal estimates suggest thousands of sentient species in our galaxy. To restrict ourself to our local group of galaxies, let's say fifty thousands species, of no more than a trillion individuals each (most of them have probably spread out to dozens of planets), and 10 languages per individual...
That would require 56 bits, to get about 7.2 x 10 ^16 different languages. This way, we won't have to upgrade again for a while!
On the other hand, 4294967296 characters for each language seems a bit high. Maybe we can save 8 bits and use only 24, for "only" 16777216. characters
Life,
Rademir
Who votes stocks held by mutual funds?
Right, and corps aren't the only giants (govs, religions, etc.) that make "civilization" possible.
You can have a society without giants, but many of us aren't willing to go there if we can't keep missions to Mars, Slashdot, and easy world travel & communications...
Killing giants (just like the human death penalty) is an extreme corrective action, causing extreme dislocation. In the system as it is, i guess it's a good power for the people to have and be able to use.
And how can we change/reform/revolute things such that we rarely feel the urge to use it? ExtremeDemocracy...?
In fact, the article is titled "The Death Penalty for Corporations Comes of Age."
A judge in Alabama is pissed his state isn't one of those suing the tobacco companies, so he's going for revoking all their charters :-)...
When i started reading this thread (and when i first heard the idea a couple years ago), i wondered if the impact on bigcorps chartered in multiple areas would be significant, but the the article says the tobacco companies would lose $2 million a day (it doesn't say why).
All in all, it's nice to have a big stick, but the real question, assuming we like at least some of the "stuff" that globe-spanning complex systems make possible, is how to maintain that without having these big systems ignore the feedback loops that should keep them from doing such stupid things before they happen (here i'm thinking more of perennial offenders like Unocal than the narrow Avant! case).
Actually it had already dropped off yesterday.
That's cool, i'll just go for some Phish now...
Why do we care so much about Napster? The server-less solutions will get up-to-snuff Real Soon Now...
The URL goes to the scond part of the article. See:
o gy /space_elevator_001226.html
r d_ tethers_000328.html
http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/technol
The reality in the article is next June's space tether experiment in generating electricity (using the power directly for spacecraft propulsion):
http://www.space.com/sciencefiction/books/forwa
Of course the best known material to be strong enough for a space elevator turns out to be buckytubes...
John
So ICANN *wants* to be in the position of accounting for what fields of work involve are of the right class or caste to be deemed "professional" ? and stick their nose into what counts as a real business? in 200 countries?
.edu is offensive enough, imho.
Sounds suicidal to me. Hasn't the brouhaha around intellectual property rights over names kept them busy enough?
Rad
What i want to know is when the first time that someone sat in front of a teletype machine (or whatever) and interactively edited/moved files. Did early paper-tape coders occasionally hack a few lines in memory, making any pre-CLI/CLI line too fuzzy?
Deadly curious,
Rad
Okay, who gets title of first computer is obviously one fuzzy decision (the implicit question, what capabilities are necessary & sufficient?).
When/what are the contenders for the first command line interface?
Life,
Rademir
In other news, Steve Jobs announced that, compared to the Colossus, the G4 is "twice as fast" using standard 1944 Bytemark benchmarks.
These results are somewhat suspect, as the only suite the Bytemark software was able to run after loading into the Colossus consisted of timing the paper tape speed of repeated "hello world" s.
The Mac G4 was twice as fast updating "hello world"s on the desktop, the analogous suite.
Life,
Rademir
The GPL is like making adultery illegal: a net loss of individual freedom for a net gain in morality.
If the law is silly enough to let people lock code in a box, then it seems complementary (if not fair) to let people lock their code out in the open.
the propaganda value for the Chinese would be incredibly valuable... just as it was for America in the sixties.
Sure. They could say that only Chinese have walked on the moon in the current millenium.
I know there were some treaties at some point with countries agreeing not to war in space. Anyone know what these agreements really specified, and whether China signed them?
Life,
Rad
Yup, Mac OS X is just like Sgt. Pepper's...
...except that nobody was saying that St. Pepper's would become a "touchstone" six months before it came out (probably because an unfinished pre-release wasn't sold for $30 then).
Life,
Rademir