Langly and Frohicke were seen pressing the strips of paper between two pieces of contact paper and then scanning the sheet. A program therein sorted the strips, and matched them up. Voila, un-shredded document.
For those who have done University-level computer science work... I'd estimate the difficulty of this as roughly a two-week, maybe three-week homework project for a decent Computer Vision graduate-level class. (With appropriately well-defined problem; the technical details of image formatting and such would consume some time but any dot-com web schmoe can handle that.)
In other words, with the proper techniques this is downright trivial work.
Just a tidbit of information to help you decide what you think about this news.
It's not half bad from an engineering point of view. Bear in mind I'm not a fanboy and so have no particular interest in "forcing" Star Wars to work. (In fact I tend to prefer ultra-hard sci-fi like A Fire In The Deep.)
The requirement of being "space worthy" does not itself add any shape requirements to a spaceship. Many sci-fi spaceships are spheres, for maximum bang-for-the-buck surface area/enclosed volume ratio. Also due to limitations on materials. One of Vernor Vinges spacecraft described in Marooned In Realtime, for instance, was an assemblage of spheres, not even physically connected to each other (impossible due to other technological considerations).
But Star Wars spacecraft aren't traditional spacecraft. The ones we see are typically combat craft, and that adds several concerns into the mix:
Mounting space: There must be space to mount weapons platforms, such as missles, turbolasers, ion cannons, and other things. A Spherical design is actually a little too efficient with the surface area in this case; you probably need more room then a Sphere would have left over, plus you'd be challenged to get spacing and angling right.
Reduced silhouette: You want to be able to present a reduced silhouette to the enemy, so you can be harder to hit. This means that there is some other angle with an increased silhouette, but the tradeoff is worthwhile, if you have an intelligent pilot. Again, a Sphere, or a random misshapen lump of metal, does not meet this criterion, and this strongly indicates a traditional aircraft-type design, with a limited number of thin protrusions and as small a main body as possible. (Of course this doesn't indicate exactly an aircraft; the B-Wing fits this just fine.)
Manueverability: You need to be manueverable. Whether you have air-like physics as in Star Wars, or real Newtonian physics in space, that indicates being able to turn quickly and focusing the thrust elsewhere. Again, random lumps of metal don't do this well. This forces a relatively short axis on the thrust line, so you don't get too much rotational inertia, again limiting your freedom of design.
Add this all up and you aren't free to throw hunks of metal together.
Most of the designs on that page aren't too bad, and thrust coming from off-axis is regrettably already established in Star Wars (B-Wings in particular look really wrong to me, the engines should be about 25% lower, unless the lower spike is entirely hollow, in which case it should not exist for other good reasons). Star Wars has already established high levels of technology, such that while we'd never build those ships, they make OK sense in that universe.
Once you have these limited protrusions, you might as well go ahead and make them wing-like. All Star Wars craft have enough power that true wings are not necessary, in the sense of providing lift, but they can still provide valuable manueverability by acting as control surfaces in atmosphere. Also, since drag rises quite quickly, you still want to limit drag in a craft that will spend significant time in an atmosphere, as many, if not all, craft in Star Wars do. Again, "misshapen hunk of metal", while spaceworthy, doesn't help you here.
All in all, while Star Wars craft are fanciful and deliberately made for aesthetic effect, they aren't too badly done, and harsh criticism of them, once you accept the aircraft-maneuverability "physics" of Star Wars, really isn't too justified. (Criticism of the physics is, but you have to at least admit they knew they were wrong and they were deliberately imitating WWII dogfights, which mitigates it a little; I find deliberate violation less annoying then accidental violation.)
It seems there are already sites out there *cough*Amazon*cough* where a bot could scour this information for millions of titles.
That almost certinaly would be illegal. See eBay vs. Bidder's Edge for what is probably the closest thing to precedent in this area. (A Google search turns up all you'd need to know.)
All but the most rabid Slashbot should find this reasonable; compute the cost in bandwidth and processing power to suck down all of Amazon.com's book listings and you'll find it to be decidely non-trivial. There's a big, big, big, big, big difference between using a website and conducting what would have to be a denial-of-service attack to download that much information in a reasonable amount of time.
My Slashdot Legal Advice (TM, Copyright 2003 Slashdot Inc., Patent Pending in Four Countries) is to go ahead and reciprocate on her advances, tell her you're going to send her a photo of you nekkid, and forward her a picture of our dear beloved friend.
For those of you who do not have the domain warnings turned on, that link should be followed by a [goatse.cx]. For those of you new to Slashdot you can directly translate that to Don't Click On That Link (TM, Copyright 2004 Slashdot Inc., "No Click Does Nothing" technology Patent # 4,234,123).
Also note for once, I'm not checking the link, so that may not be quite right. (Is it supposed to end in.cs?)
If that doesn't turn her off of you, nothing will.
This has been Slashdot Legal Advice (TM, Copyright 2003 Slashdot Inc., Patent Pending now in Five Countries). Remember, whatever you do, when you need legal advice do not seek out a professional attorney when you can have the benefit and wisdom of hundreds of random yahoos who could not care less about your plight.
In any case, what Bray is really saying is that if you develop for open source and/or the web, then no one is going to come along with a new product that mimics or competes with yours.
It is truly scary how many people can't read.
What he's really saying is that there is no vendor for the web or open source that can shift the ground out from underneath you, and either absorb your functionality or just destroy it, without you having any recourse. One of the ways a platform vendor can accomplish this is to build competition directly into the platform, but it's only one way and it's only in reference to the platform vendor, not competition in general. (You're on a level playing field with the other compeition, but you are distinctly underneath the platform vendor.)
There's not a damn thing in that piece about ensuring competition won't exist, because such a thing is neither possible nor desirable!
And as of this writing that's at +4, so at least two or three moderators thought that was right, too...
Huh. So, when I'm fragging bad guys in Quake, is that "database interaction" or "content creation?"
Database interaction. What you see on the screen is a representation of the data inside the computer, and you have a selection of ways of manipulating that data, and no significant way of entering your own data. This describes Quake as well as your local Human Resources application. Quake may look pretty, but fundamentally, that's all it is.
Remember Doom? Remember Doom's automap? Remember you could still run around, and depending on your keybindings, fire and everything? The graphics are just window dressing, the fundamental data model is not that complicated.
"Content creation" is when you are authoring your own levels, which is a seperate function. Note how night-and-day different the interface is.
"Gosh, this ball and chain is great! I don't have to run anywhere near as fast as I used to in order to get the same amount of exercise!"
You misunderstand. Browsers are good for the users because it's not possible to do complicated things in the browser. Browsers are good for the users precisely because they hobble the developers.
It's worth noting that we are only now hearing developers really seriously chomp at the bit, and even so, it's muted. And about 75% of the moaning I've heard will go away when and if browsers build a better text entry field, preferably with good spell-checking, into the browser. This would have long since happened if Microsoft did not have a strategic interest in not doing this and if they did not own so much of the browser market. This all strongly implies that the vast majority of time, we do not need all the singing, dancing widgets we think we do. (There are many exceptions, but if you think about it you'll find most of them are in the "content creation" bucket Timothy Bray mentions and explcitly excepts.)
In fact, this is exactly why Microsoft has not built spellchecking and (easy) rich text entry into the browser: with those two features alone, one can easily build cheap apps that would catch about 75% of the common use cases for Microsoft Office, and correspondingly fewer people would need to buy it. (For instance, "student papers" would be quite adequately covered with a good rich-text web entry application, plus a few accoutrements for footnotes and a bibliography.)
Meanwhile, users are jumping for joy that "Ctrl-Meta-x, Alt-# while in the Mitigating Preferences tab of the Technobabble Control Dialog" can't be made to do anything in a browser.
I believe that every Democratic candidate except Dean voted in favor of the Patriot Act. Dean didn't get a vote, but he was outspoken against it from the very beginning.
Riffing off of this... speaking as someone who is concerned about civil liberties quite a bit (not enough to qualify as a one-issue voter, but definately above average on that issue), I would love to vote against Bush on those grounds, or perhaps more accurately, vote against Ashcroft.
But I have no reason whatsoever to believe any other candidate (with a serious chance of winning this election) would be any better, and frankly, "the left" (strong influence in Green, weaker but still present influence in the Dems, and yes, I'm viciously simplifying so this post isn't 100KB long) has a worse track record when it comes to freedom then "the right" does. The Dems happily voted for the Patriot act, and there has been bilateral support for a lot of other things like that too, like the DMCA. This issue is really a wash; only a libertarian president would do, and that's not going to happen this time.
A lot of the other reasons cited against Bush I find somewhere between "fallacious" to downright "airheaded"... for instance, as a pragmatic environmentalist, which I would define as someone who is truly concerned about the environment but does not automatically believe anything some moronic "green" person claims is harmful to the environment*, I have a hard time voting for a green or a dem on this basis, since they're actually too interested in being seen as helping the environment to actually do anything substantiave, rather then token, to help it. I'd be really afraid they'd do something stupid like sign the Kyoto accord which would be a Class A-1 Bad Idea. (I don't think I've ever seen a treaty which would be more damaging to the environment if implemented; the first-order affects are all fluffy bunnies and happy tree-hugging, but the second order economic effects, and consequent third-order environmental effects are a net loss for the environment. Like it or not the only hope for the environment right now is high technology, ASAP, which requires a robust economy. Either that or a massive die-off which is not acceptable.)
I have a hard time blaming the economy on Bush, as the damage was done during Clinton (the bubble), and frankly, I don't blame it on him, either; it was investors.
When it comes down to it, Bush isn't perfect for me by any stretch of the imagination, but I can't find an alternative that I'm convinced would be any better.
*: The average proposal to help the environment typically harms it if you dig for the whole story, because the "greens" only examine first-order effects which aren't anywhere near the whole story; the reality is the status quo isn't as bad as all that because most proposed alternatives are worse and about the only thing that definately helps the environment is packing people in a bit more densely so we don't destroy more swampland and such... and some ecosystems, like the Plains ecosystems, aren't as affected by that as is my local wetlands. The worst thing that ever happened to environmentalism was turning it into a "movement"; people swallow whatever trash "the movement" produces because if they don't, they aren't allowed to call themselves "environmentalists" anymore; I don't bother trying to call myself that anymore because I can't tolerate the image it would give me. The environmentalists sometimes have OK science, but they have the worst, most naive, most simplified interpretations of it imaginable. (How to check if you're in "the movement": If this paragraph actually offended you (as opposed to you merely thinking I'm wrong but well-meaning), you're in the movement; you're offended because I'm questioning your dogma.)
Err, well, I doubt that the Brothers Grimm could have claimed copyright for each story
Incorrect. Copyright covers expressions, and the Brothers Grimm would hold a copyright on their rendition of the story. Someone else could re-tell the story entirely and it would be a different expression; for example, The Seven Samurai has apparently been retold more times then can be counted, in various formats, but since they are completely independent retellings the copyrights are all seperate.
If they hypothetically recorded the source's telling of the story, the source would own a copyright on that telling. The Brother's Grimm would then need to license their telling of the story. (Although if they get it from enough distinct sources they could probably get away with an amalgam of all the various stories.)
This would not stop Disney from using those stories though, because the Brothers Grimm would only own copyrights on their own expression of the story, and Disney could get the stories from somewhere else. However, in modern times there would still be grounds for a lawsuit and since copyright actions are civil cases where "innocent until proven guilty" doesn't apply, if Disney could not convince the judge that they still weren't deriving from the Brothers Grimm versions of the stories (because they were trying to claim another source of the story to get around paying the Brothers Grimm), they might get nailed. Depends on the judge.
Compiling a program and linking it into executables, libraries, jar files, etc. simply isn't that hard to do.
I'm not exactly sure what the original problem was that motivated autoconf,
It seems the programmers write what they please and, then, invent these kludges of tools to deal with those programs.
Between these two statements, combined with the fact you didn't deny it despite obviously going over my message with a fine-tooth comb, you're only reinforcing my original guess that you've never written a large program or worked on one.
The first is just flat wrong in static languages; compile orders are frequently hairy and circular dependencies happen with distressing frequency, and tools can only help so much, especially when the large project start including multiple languages or compiled data sources.
The third makes it even more obvious you've never done this stuff; I've had to insert workarounds for critical applications between two different point releases of Netscape 4. Given that the code is out of my control, and given that even in the open source world it is no longer feasible to fix every bug in every library you may have to use (especially since such fixes often would involve major architectural changes in a project you don't really care to get involved in and may themselves break umpteen other projects for whom it's literally not a bug, but a feature), the it's not possible to remove the workarounds. Characterizing them as "smoke and mirrors" just pushes the point home even further; any given project ought to be clean within its own boundaries, yes, but there's no conceivable way, even in theory, for the boundaries of disparate projects to be clean.
You clearly are not a serious programmer and I do not find you competent to have an opinion on project building tools that is of any value to me. Barring pointing to a major product with "pmw" listed as the lead developer, I don't expect you can change my call on that. (And of course everyone else is free to hold their opinions; make sure you actually read the opening sentence of this paragraph.)
A build system for software should be easy, intuitive, transparent, etc. etc.
No. A build system for software must reflect the complexities what it is attempting to build. No build system for C++ programs can ever be fully "easy, intuitive, transparent, etc. etc." because there are C++ programs that aren't any of the above. Same for C.
Ever tried to compile XFree86 by hand from source? It must be possible, because Gentoo can do it, but I've never managed myself. While it can probably be made easier, the simple fact is that it's a complicated set of programs with a complicated build order and no matter how hard you try, it would take a full-fledged AI to make it "easy".
On the other hand, a pure Python project, even a large one, needs no special build system at all, because Python automatically compiles with few or no hassles (and what hassles exist can not be solved by a build system, they tend to be user error). Of course large projects are rarely all Python (building C extensions, compiling human-readable data representations into faster data or code, etc.), but since Python is more simple, the build system can be equally simple (or in this case, non-existant).
Make can be improved on, it's a decades old design with multiple layers of hacks jostling each other. A new, clean design can at least simplify away the parts of the build process that involve "fighting with make". But a build system for C can only become finitely simple, or you'll start to lose capabilities that C has because your build system can't handle them.
Small shell scripts and makefiles. Is more really necessary to call cc and ld or javac or whatever for each file in a directory tree? The differences among platforms can't be so dire as to require gigantic build automation tools, which introduce more problems than they solve!
Proof by counterexample: autoconf exists, therefore it is clearly necessary, because nobody would trouble to build it if it didn't address a problem. (Whether it solves it is another question, but given its vast popularity in the open source meritocracy I'd say the onus is on you to show that it truly causes more problems then it solves; every project that uses it is a vote against that statement.) You've clearly never written massively cross-platform code; grab a decent sized package, look at the output autoconf generates, and look at what the program does with it. Odds are every single line you see during configure, with the possible exception of some really standard ones that seem to be a standard part of the package ("CC works?"), is used somewhere in the program, especially lines like "Is your pthreads implementation broken?... yes, using workaround". The workaround may itself not work if pthreads isn't broken!
That's probably a reference to the Grand Unified Field Theory, the Holy Grail of particle physics where all forces are reduced to various aspects of one force.
Once upon a time, electricity and magnetism were thought to be different forces. Now we know they are two aspects of the same thing. Later it was found at high energy states the nuclear weak force and electromagentism were also two aspects of the same "electroweak" force. I'm not a physicist but IIRC they've also shown how the nuclear strong force (holds atoms together) is the same.
The force that refuses to be unified is gravity. It still remains a seperate term in all theories. It is hoped that by pushing particle accelerators to higher and higher energy states, enough clues will be given to piece together the relationships once and for all.
However, the link will not be found at room temperature and mere thousands of volts; we're talking millions of degrees, you know, the kinds of temperatures where us mere mortals stop caring which scale it's being measured in, and densities that would make a neutron star green with envy. Basically, barring Extraordinary Evidence, the line that so intrigued you is indicative of the ignorance of the writer, not an interesting phenomenon.
However, if you find this interesting I would encourage you to go ahead and learn about real particle physics; it boggles my mind why people enjoy various tin-hat conspiracy-type theories about physics when the real thing is so much richer and more fascinating then any man-made fiction could ever be. Like I said, I'm not a physicist but I enjoy laymen-level particle physics and cosmology and would love to learn more about it sometime in a context where nobody was forcing me to turn in homework;-)
By the way, on the topic of the GUT, go here and grab this sound file... it won't be much more informative overall then this post but it will be much more fun.
If one can sue over copyright infringment based of a reppetitive set of tones, what is to stop someone from generating millions of tonal combintations with a computer copyrighting the lot of them and suing every "artist" that ends up duplicating them?
First, and most importantly, because no judge in the land would buy this argument. No conceivable perversion of copyright law's reasons for existing could justify this. (It can't even be said to meet the creativity criterion, IMHO, and yes, I do know how low a bar that sets.)
Second, it is well established that if the same expression is duplicated, entirely independently of each other, both authors have full rights to the expression. It is rare, but it has happened. Copyright does not magically give you rights to all possible incarnations of your expression, it only protects people deriving other expressions from your expression. In real life, in most domains, the odds of duplication are so low as to be irrelevant, but music is an exception.
Handwriting is like body language; despite the fact I've seen several people try to catalog what this twitch means and what that jiggle means, it's more a gestalt thing then anything else.
"Messy" doesn't automatically say bad; certainly it's not usually a point in the person's favor, but it's not that simplistic. Similarly, "neat" doesn't say good; sometimes it says "careful", sometimes it says "anal".
It's another dimension to the communication, one much harder to fake. Certain lies are easy to write, but if the handwriting doesn't match, along with other things like grammar and spelling, it's a red flag. Only a moron or a person who must make snap judgements would depend on such things, but I can and do use them as part of the picture; the correlation isn't 100% but by now it's well past 90%, and you just can't ignore that, even if it isn't perfect.
(Same for body language; three seconds of seeing someone walk while their with their buddies and I've generally got a very good idea what they are like; I'm not always right but it's generally borne out, esp. if they're otherwise trying to be on their "best behavior". When people are trying to act more suave, or honest, or sophisticated then they are, they almost always neglect to update their body language to match what they are trying to project; arrogant people tend to swagger even when they're trying to kiss butt, for instance.)
For that matter, even online such hints are useful; I can often figure out someone is a women after just a paragraph or two of their writing, even with no other clues, and I've surprised at least a couple of them by causually using the correct pronoun even though they knew they didn't tell me their sex;-). There's just something different about how the average smart women writes, vs. the average smart man. (The stupid of either sex are virtually indistinguishable, at least to me.)
An interesting side-effect would be that the people who left, assuming equal opportunity for all, would overwhelmingly be from poor countries like India and Nigeria.
We've seen this happen before; the US was formed from the outcasts of Europe, and Australia from the actual criminals. With the resources of space, the impetus to stay alive prompting more and better tech, and the fact that being poor brings out good work habits rather more then being rich does on the average, I think the space society would outclass the Earth-bound one in every significant way in about a generation or two.
And see what's happening to Europe... their elite is now so disconnected from reality they're preparing to trash the whole continent... I suspect that all Earth would look like that.
Another factor nobody has mentioned is the continuing growth of the Internet to pace the size of the network.
Redundency in the network is of no value if losing one link raises the traffic far enough on the redundent paths to lock them up solid.
I'm in Lansing, MI (middle of the lower part of the state), and we've had our primary link to Chicago severed before. Our packets were re-routed through northern MI, but the links are much, much slower then the primary link to Chicago. Packets got through, but forget P2P; email was about all you could expect to work, and slowly at that.
Until traffic levels off, the redundency isn't ever going to be enough that you simply won't notice a link dropping out.
I meant socially... nobody believes it's possible.
There are theoretical technologies that might allow it other then the mythical "free energy", but until they happen, nobody will believe it's possible. When they do the psychology of humanity will change radically.
Even if, as you say, the adults will mostly be too pig-headed to leave, which I agree with, the children would go, and the parents would most likely encourage it if they believe they could live a better life out there then down here, which for much of the world is probably true. Right now, though, we don't have a frontier.
It is often said that the effects of this kind of thing are overestimated in the short term, but underestimated in the long term.
I won't directly speculate, but I'd point a few thing things out:
One, almost axiomatic right now is that even if we colonize space, we could never afford to lift any significant fraction of humanity off the surface. Effectively infinite power makes this possible, and the social changes this would unleash, even before it happened, the effect on the public conciousness and unconciousness, are almost entirely unpredictable. Right now, without even thinking about it much, we live on Earth, and there is nothing else. We have no Frontier anymore. Having one again would change things in almost unimaginable ways.
Two, it's the secondary effects you can't predict. Physicists might be able to build a bigger and better particle accelerator with more power, thanks to some previously prohibitively-energy-expensive alloy or something, and crack the secrets of the universe.
Three, the final limits of computation as we know it are driven by power consumption. Consequences of that left to the imagination. (Quantum computing may provide a partial out, but then again, probably only partial if it's significant at all; There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.)
I think the basic problem is the patent system is not designed to handle software or business method patents. It was set up from day one to handle physical objects and processes, and it does that tolerably well. It's possible to look at two processes or objects and make a reasonable determination whether they are the same. The equivalent is not really possible for software or business method patents.
Remember one of the purposes of patents was not to lock up entire ideas, but lock up one implementation, encouraging others to create other implementations to stimulate market competition. Since the patent system is fundamentally unsound in this domain, and has no reasonable way to determine if two things are the same, the patent system has "defaulted" to the broadest possible interpretation of "same" (as opposed to the narrowest possible, in which case it would be virtually impossible to violate a patent, patents would be nearly worthless, and by extension, the Patent Office would be nearly worthless and powerless, which is the Number One Anathema to a beauracracy). As a result it's not possible to create alternate implementations without automatically infringing.
Patents do not belong in this domain, they are downright oxymoronic.
The vast majority of patents are held by coroporations. The inventions of individual inventors are owned by corporations because of an employment agreement or are sold to a corporation for a pittance for fear that the corporation will win any legal battle owing to their superior financial resources, regardless of the merit of their claims.
There's an important lesson here that I wish all Slashbots would learn: Anything you give to the little guy is also given to corporations.
You think you can just "give" patents to the little guy and suddenly he can compete? Nope, a big corporation still has thousands of man hours vs. the little guy. You can't give the little guy anything that isn't multiplied by thousands in the hands of a large corporation.
The only way to give the little guy even a fighting chance is to take things away, or protect things for everybody. In this context, "taking things away" means no software patents for anyone, and....
Make patents non-transferrable and make ip agreements that assign ownership invention to corporations illegal and they'll be back in business.
is an instance of protecting everybody equally, because the non-transferability means that corporations can't get an advantage. (Although you'll find a difficult way to make this stick and I'm not proposing it as a good idea; personally I go more for no software patents at all.)
Similar arguments arise in other domains, but they would not be on topic. It's a general principle, though.
Not to take away from your post but the N64 - financially, was a sucuess.
I think you mean that it made a profit, which may be true. But I'm looking at the larger levels: Marketshare, developer mindshare, user mindshare, even cool game mindshare. Sure, some amazing stuff was put out on the system but it was despite of the limitations of the console, not because of the power of the console. Compared to what could, and even perhaps should have been, the N64 bombed.
Part of this is handwaving, because I can't show screenshots, but with my knowlege I can see how the N64 would have looked if its fairly-impressive polygon power was backed up by enough memory to hold real textures; I won't claim it could have unseated the Playstation but the fact is it would have been head-and-shoulders above the Playstation in visual appearence, in a way that it really wan't in the cartridge incarnation. (For a modern demonstration of the importance of textures, compare a last-generation DC game with a first generation PS2 game, before the PS2 developers really figured out how to get textures going across the bus correctly; while the PS2 had more power, the DC's relatively large texture buffers held enough data to make up for the polygon difference handily; frankly some DC games still impress me.)
FWIW, I know more Dreamcast owners in my personal circle of geek friends then N64 owners. In fact I know 3 confirmed DC owners, and I can only think of one N64 candidate (I'm not sure he owns one). And the Dreamcast is typically considered a major failure for Sega, despite being a pretty cool system in a lot of ways.
I'm not trying to be a fanboy or an anti-fanboy (is there a term for that?); I really hate to see Nintendo making what I see as another blunder brought on by excessive conservatism. In this field, it's a "trend" after six months and a full-fledged pattern after two years, but it seems to take Nintendo as many as four or five years to catch on to those things. Given that they do a lot of crazy stuff (that silly little e-Reader, for instance), some of which sticks and some doesn't, this strongly says "insular corporate culture" to me. It's a tribute to them they've made it that far on such an insular culture, but long-term it's still a liability, despite their demonstrated abilities to handle it somewhat.
How many times can they miss the boat and still survive?
The Super Nintendo was a good product. The GBA was seriously flawed, as evidenced by the success of the GBA-SP, which is also a good product. (BTW, missing headphone port seriously overrated; I got the adapter and still almost never use it when traveling, which given the ease of folding the SP up and slapping it in my pocket is quite frequently. But this could too easily turn into an SP-love-fest...) The N64 was also seriously flawed because Nintendo missed the optical disk trend, and was seriously hobbled by using cartridges as a result.
The Gamecube is, as far as I know, a good product (don't own one, but haven't heard systematic complaints about it), so maybe they're due for a Major Boat Missing again. Will they be able to survive?
Granted, this isn't quite as bad as the N64 going with carts, despite the fact it had been obvious for multiple years that they could not hold enough data, especially for 3D, where a single good texture would be the size of a 1980 megahit videogame. Online gaming in the console arena is too new to be called a run-away success. On the other hand, the trend in the PC world is crystal clear; while not everything has to be playable online, anything that can be, should be, and it will contribute to its success in ways that a non-online experience couldn't have. (Would Diablo have been as much of a success without online support?) If nothing else, online play relieves the game house of the still-nearly-impossible task of writing an AI!
I'd feel pretty safe in predicting that if they don't include online capabilities in the base-unit, or as a really cheaply-priced upgrade, that it will be seen as a mistake on par with sticking a 3D system like the N64 with just cartridges for data storage. People like playing with people and that is not going to change.
In fact, phrase it that way and one almost wonders at the hubris of thinking you can discard the single best AI intelligence there is on your console and still compete against the console systems who will tap that AI to the fullest!
guns can't really do anything useful other than kill and main, so in the case of guns it is reasonable to ban the technology.
"kill and maim" is not the intrinsically immoral things you seem to be making them out to be. Few people would say that "killing" a deer with the intent of eating it is immoral. (Such people do exist, yes, but I think "few" is an adequate description of their numbers.) Few people would say that killing or maiming someone attacking you or your children is immoral. (Again, people who think you have a moral imperative to never be violent, even in the face of violence, exist, but even fewer of them really mean it when push comes to shove, and the ones that do tend to die off.)
Getting married has made me think a lot more about carrying a concealed weapon; the prospect of seeing someone attack my wife while I could do nothing about it turns my stomach, whereas self-defense never seemed quite important enough. I think if I ever have children that will tip me over the edge and I will definately start carrying. The odds are slim but the consequences of not being ready are life-changing. (Not that it's a guarentee in any direction, but owning a gun definately affects the odds in my favor.)
In case you can't tell, I'm male; this must be those "hunter/provider/protecter" genes kicking in.
Why are you so focused on negativity? With the nightly news pushing out stories left and right about what's wrong with the world, can't we at least keep our Slashdot book reviews a good positive example of what's right with the world?
For a given reviewer, you need both positive and negative reviews so you can get a feel for what the reviewer is looking for, and how closely it matches what you are looking for. In something as subjective as books or video games, this is critical. This allows you to align your views with the reviewer.
In this environment, where it's a different reviewer is reviewing each time, it's much less useful. Reviews are really only useful in the context of knowing something about the reviewer. (I just thought of this, and after I post this I intend to shut off reviews from my Slashdot feed, since they are uniformly useless to anybody seriously looking to use them due to this overwhelming flaw in the process.)
In fact, the bad reviews are typically far more informative then the good ones. Most good reviews can be boiled down to "It's great!" with little loss of content, where the bad reviews have actual criticisms of the reviewed product. What you do then is read the criticisms and see if you might agree with them. If you're reading a video game review (which I use because it has great examples), and it says "Game X has far too many little numbers to keep track of for your characters", and you're old-skool and you like fiddly little numbers, then the negative review may actually boost your opinion. A lot of what appears in reviews is that sort of opinion, relatively little is concerned with universal things like "I couldn't get this game to run stably for more then 5 minutes on any of the four computers I tried it on here."
For a book review, such negative comments really go a long ways towards clarifying what the book is. "This book didn't give any examples on how to process XML" tells you more about the book's focus then "This book is great for anyone who programs and uses text!".
The point of "The Power of Positive Thinking", IIRC, wasn't to be unremittingly positive in every way; that's actually counterproductive and can take you out of touch with the real world. In fact, IIRC, it can best be summarized as "Don't be negative; that's bad.";-)
Slashdot Mirror
Langly and Frohicke were seen pressing the strips of paper between two pieces of contact paper and then scanning the sheet. A program therein sorted the strips, and matched them up. Voila, un-shredded document.
For those who have done University-level computer science work... I'd estimate the difficulty of this as roughly a two-week, maybe three-week homework project for a decent Computer Vision graduate-level class. (With appropriately well-defined problem; the technical details of image formatting and such would consume some time but any dot-com web schmoe can handle that.)
In other words, with the proper techniques this is downright trivial work.
Just a tidbit of information to help you decide what you think about this news.
The requirement of being "space worthy" does not itself add any shape requirements to a spaceship. Many sci-fi spaceships are spheres, for maximum bang-for-the-buck surface area/enclosed volume ratio. Also due to limitations on materials. One of Vernor Vinges spacecraft described in Marooned In Realtime, for instance, was an assemblage of spheres, not even physically connected to each other (impossible due to other technological considerations).
But Star Wars spacecraft aren't traditional spacecraft. The ones we see are typically combat craft, and that adds several concerns into the mix:
- Mounting space: There must be space to mount weapons platforms, such as missles, turbolasers, ion cannons, and other things. A Spherical design is actually a little too efficient with the surface area in this case; you probably need more room then a Sphere would have left over, plus you'd be challenged to get spacing and angling right.
- Reduced silhouette: You want to be able to present a reduced silhouette to the enemy, so you can be harder to hit. This means that there is some other angle with an increased silhouette, but the tradeoff is worthwhile, if you have an intelligent pilot. Again, a Sphere, or a random misshapen lump of metal, does not meet this criterion, and this strongly indicates a traditional aircraft-type design, with a limited number of thin protrusions and as small a main body as possible. (Of course this doesn't indicate exactly an aircraft; the B-Wing fits this just fine.)
- Manueverability: You need to be manueverable. Whether you have air-like physics as in Star Wars, or real Newtonian physics in space, that indicates being able to turn quickly and focusing the thrust elsewhere. Again, random lumps of metal don't do this well. This forces a relatively short axis on the thrust line, so you don't get too much rotational inertia, again limiting your freedom of design.
Add this all up and you aren't free to throw hunks of metal together.Most of the designs on that page aren't too bad, and thrust coming from off-axis is regrettably already established in Star Wars (B-Wings in particular look really wrong to me, the engines should be about 25% lower, unless the lower spike is entirely hollow, in which case it should not exist for other good reasons). Star Wars has already established high levels of technology, such that while we'd never build those ships, they make OK sense in that universe.
Once you have these limited protrusions, you might as well go ahead and make them wing-like. All Star Wars craft have enough power that true wings are not necessary, in the sense of providing lift, but they can still provide valuable manueverability by acting as control surfaces in atmosphere. Also, since drag rises quite quickly, you still want to limit drag in a craft that will spend significant time in an atmosphere, as many, if not all, craft in Star Wars do. Again, "misshapen hunk of metal", while spaceworthy, doesn't help you here.
All in all, while Star Wars craft are fanciful and deliberately made for aesthetic effect, they aren't too badly done, and harsh criticism of them, once you accept the aircraft-maneuverability "physics" of Star Wars, really isn't too justified. (Criticism of the physics is, but you have to at least admit they knew they were wrong and they were deliberately imitating WWII dogfights, which mitigates it a little; I find deliberate violation less annoying then accidental violation.)
It seems there are already sites out there *cough*Amazon*cough* where a bot could scour this information for millions of titles.
That almost certinaly would be illegal. See eBay vs. Bidder's Edge for what is probably the closest thing to precedent in this area. (A Google search turns up all you'd need to know.)
All but the most rabid Slashbot should find this reasonable; compute the cost in bandwidth and processing power to suck down all of Amazon.com's book listings and you'll find it to be decidely non-trivial. There's a big, big, big, big, big difference between using a website and conducting what would have to be a denial-of-service attack to download that much information in a reasonable amount of time.
My Slashdot Legal Advice (TM, Copyright 2003 Slashdot Inc., Patent Pending in Four Countries) is to go ahead and reciprocate on her advances, tell her you're going to send her a photo of you nekkid, and forward her a picture of our dear beloved friend.
.cs?)
For those of you who do not have the domain warnings turned on, that link should be followed by a [goatse.cx]. For those of you new to Slashdot you can directly translate that to Don't Click On That Link (TM, Copyright 2004 Slashdot Inc., "No Click Does Nothing" technology Patent # 4,234,123).
Also note for once, I'm not checking the link, so that may not be quite right. (Is it supposed to end in
If that doesn't turn her off of you, nothing will.
This has been Slashdot Legal Advice (TM, Copyright 2003 Slashdot Inc., Patent Pending now in Five Countries). Remember, whatever you do, when you need legal advice do not seek out a professional attorney when you can have the benefit and wisdom of hundreds of random yahoos who could not care less about your plight.
The browser's page based metaphor greatly impedes the design of appropriate database interfaces.
Of course it does. Responsibly used, more widgets are always better then fewer widgets.
Careful analysis of that last sentence left as an exercise to the reader; it's got the whole point wrapped up in there.
In any case, what Bray is really saying is that if you develop for open source and/or the web, then no one is going to come along with a new product that mimics or competes with yours.
It is truly scary how many people can't read.
What he's really saying is that there is no vendor for the web or open source that can shift the ground out from underneath you, and either absorb your functionality or just destroy it, without you having any recourse. One of the ways a platform vendor can accomplish this is to build competition directly into the platform, but it's only one way and it's only in reference to the platform vendor, not competition in general. (You're on a level playing field with the other compeition, but you are distinctly underneath the platform vendor.)
There's not a damn thing in that piece about ensuring competition won't exist, because such a thing is neither possible nor desirable!
And as of this writing that's at +4, so at least two or three moderators thought that was right, too...
Huh. So, when I'm fragging bad guys in Quake, is that "database interaction" or "content creation?"
Database interaction. What you see on the screen is a representation of the data inside the computer, and you have a selection of ways of manipulating that data, and no significant way of entering your own data. This describes Quake as well as your local Human Resources application. Quake may look pretty, but fundamentally, that's all it is.
Remember Doom? Remember Doom's automap? Remember you could still run around, and depending on your keybindings, fire and everything? The graphics are just window dressing, the fundamental data model is not that complicated.
"Content creation" is when you are authoring your own levels, which is a seperate function. Note how night-and-day different the interface is.
"Gosh, this ball and chain is great! I don't have to run anywhere near as fast as I used to in order to get the same amount of exercise!"
You misunderstand. Browsers are good for the users because it's not possible to do complicated things in the browser. Browsers are good for the users precisely because they hobble the developers.
It's worth noting that we are only now hearing developers really seriously chomp at the bit, and even so, it's muted. And about 75% of the moaning I've heard will go away when and if browsers build a better text entry field, preferably with good spell-checking, into the browser. This would have long since happened if Microsoft did not have a strategic interest in not doing this and if they did not own so much of the browser market. This all strongly implies that the vast majority of time, we do not need all the singing, dancing widgets we think we do. (There are many exceptions, but if you think about it you'll find most of them are in the "content creation" bucket Timothy Bray mentions and explcitly excepts.)
In fact, this is exactly why Microsoft has not built spellchecking and (easy) rich text entry into the browser: with those two features alone, one can easily build cheap apps that would catch about 75% of the common use cases for Microsoft Office, and correspondingly fewer people would need to buy it. (For instance, "student papers" would be quite adequately covered with a good rich-text web entry application, plus a few accoutrements for footnotes and a bibliography.)
Meanwhile, users are jumping for joy that "Ctrl-Meta-x, Alt-# while in the Mitigating Preferences tab of the Technobabble Control Dialog" can't be made to do anything in a browser.
I believe that every Democratic candidate except Dean voted in favor of the Patriot Act. Dean didn't get a vote, but he was outspoken against it from the very beginning.
Riffing off of this... speaking as someone who is concerned about civil liberties quite a bit (not enough to qualify as a one-issue voter, but definately above average on that issue), I would love to vote against Bush on those grounds, or perhaps more accurately, vote against Ashcroft.
But I have no reason whatsoever to believe any other candidate (with a serious chance of winning this election) would be any better, and frankly, "the left" (strong influence in Green, weaker but still present influence in the Dems, and yes, I'm viciously simplifying so this post isn't 100KB long) has a worse track record when it comes to freedom then "the right" does. The Dems happily voted for the Patriot act, and there has been bilateral support for a lot of other things like that too, like the DMCA. This issue is really a wash; only a libertarian president would do, and that's not going to happen this time.
A lot of the other reasons cited against Bush I find somewhere between "fallacious" to downright "airheaded"... for instance, as a pragmatic environmentalist, which I would define as someone who is truly concerned about the environment but does not automatically believe anything some moronic "green" person claims is harmful to the environment*, I have a hard time voting for a green or a dem on this basis, since they're actually too interested in being seen as helping the environment to actually do anything substantiave, rather then token, to help it. I'd be really afraid they'd do something stupid like sign the Kyoto accord which would be a Class A-1 Bad Idea. (I don't think I've ever seen a treaty which would be more damaging to the environment if implemented; the first-order affects are all fluffy bunnies and happy tree-hugging, but the second order economic effects, and consequent third-order environmental effects are a net loss for the environment. Like it or not the only hope for the environment right now is high technology, ASAP, which requires a robust economy. Either that or a massive die-off which is not acceptable.)
I have a hard time blaming the economy on Bush, as the damage was done during Clinton (the bubble), and frankly, I don't blame it on him, either; it was investors.
When it comes down to it, Bush isn't perfect for me by any stretch of the imagination, but I can't find an alternative that I'm convinced would be any better.
*: The average proposal to help the environment typically harms it if you dig for the whole story, because the "greens" only examine first-order effects which aren't anywhere near the whole story; the reality is the status quo isn't as bad as all that because most proposed alternatives are worse and about the only thing that definately helps the environment is packing people in a bit more densely so we don't destroy more swampland and such... and some ecosystems, like the Plains ecosystems, aren't as affected by that as is my local wetlands. The worst thing that ever happened to environmentalism was turning it into a "movement"; people swallow whatever trash "the movement" produces because if they don't, they aren't allowed to call themselves "environmentalists" anymore; I don't bother trying to call myself that anymore because I can't tolerate the image it would give me. The environmentalists sometimes have OK science, but they have the worst, most naive, most simplified interpretations of it imaginable. (How to check if you're in "the movement": If this paragraph actually offended you (as opposed to you merely thinking I'm wrong but well-meaning), you're in the movement; you're offended because I'm questioning your dogma.)
Err, well, I doubt that the Brothers Grimm could have claimed copyright for each story
Incorrect. Copyright covers expressions, and the Brothers Grimm would hold a copyright on their rendition of the story. Someone else could re-tell the story entirely and it would be a different expression; for example, The Seven Samurai has apparently been retold more times then can be counted, in various formats, but since they are completely independent retellings the copyrights are all seperate.
If they hypothetically recorded the source's telling of the story, the source would own a copyright on that telling. The Brother's Grimm would then need to license their telling of the story. (Although if they get it from enough distinct sources they could probably get away with an amalgam of all the various stories.)
This would not stop Disney from using those stories though, because the Brothers Grimm would only own copyrights on their own expression of the story, and Disney could get the stories from somewhere else. However, in modern times there would still be grounds for a lawsuit and since copyright actions are civil cases where "innocent until proven guilty" doesn't apply, if Disney could not convince the judge that they still weren't deriving from the Brothers Grimm versions of the stories (because they were trying to claim another source of the story to get around paying the Brothers Grimm), they might get nailed. Depends on the judge.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure (buy) astroturf is the term.
(PS, I wish I was paid for that.)
Compiling a program and linking it into executables, libraries, jar files, etc. simply isn't that hard to do.
I'm not exactly sure what the original problem was that motivated autoconf,
It seems the programmers write what they please and, then, invent these kludges of tools to deal with those programs.
Between these two statements, combined with the fact you didn't deny it despite obviously going over my message with a fine-tooth comb, you're only reinforcing my original guess that you've never written a large program or worked on one.
The first is just flat wrong in static languages; compile orders are frequently hairy and circular dependencies happen with distressing frequency, and tools can only help so much, especially when the large project start including multiple languages or compiled data sources.
The third makes it even more obvious you've never done this stuff; I've had to insert workarounds for critical applications between two different point releases of Netscape 4. Given that the code is out of my control, and given that even in the open source world it is no longer feasible to fix every bug in every library you may have to use (especially since such fixes often would involve major architectural changes in a project you don't really care to get involved in and may themselves break umpteen other projects for whom it's literally not a bug, but a feature), the it's not possible to remove the workarounds. Characterizing them as "smoke and mirrors" just pushes the point home even further; any given project ought to be clean within its own boundaries, yes, but there's no conceivable way, even in theory, for the boundaries of disparate projects to be clean.
You clearly are not a serious programmer and I do not find you competent to have an opinion on project building tools that is of any value to me. Barring pointing to a major product with "pmw" listed as the lead developer, I don't expect you can change my call on that. (And of course everyone else is free to hold their opinions; make sure you actually read the opening sentence of this paragraph.)
A build system for software should be easy, intuitive, transparent, etc. etc.
... yes, using workaround". The workaround may itself not work if pthreads isn't broken!
No. A build system for software must reflect the complexities what it is attempting to build. No build system for C++ programs can ever be fully "easy, intuitive, transparent, etc. etc." because there are C++ programs that aren't any of the above. Same for C.
Ever tried to compile XFree86 by hand from source? It must be possible, because Gentoo can do it, but I've never managed myself. While it can probably be made easier, the simple fact is that it's a complicated set of programs with a complicated build order and no matter how hard you try, it would take a full-fledged AI to make it "easy".
On the other hand, a pure Python project, even a large one, needs no special build system at all, because Python automatically compiles with few or no hassles (and what hassles exist can not be solved by a build system, they tend to be user error). Of course large projects are rarely all Python (building C extensions, compiling human-readable data representations into faster data or code, etc.), but since Python is more simple, the build system can be equally simple (or in this case, non-existant).
Make can be improved on, it's a decades old design with multiple layers of hacks jostling each other. A new, clean design can at least simplify away the parts of the build process that involve "fighting with make". But a build system for C can only become finitely simple, or you'll start to lose capabilities that C has because your build system can't handle them.
Small shell scripts and makefiles. Is more really necessary to call cc and ld or javac or whatever for each file in a directory tree? The differences among platforms can't be so dire as to require gigantic build automation tools, which introduce more problems than they solve!
Proof by counterexample: autoconf exists, therefore it is clearly necessary, because nobody would trouble to build it if it didn't address a problem. (Whether it solves it is another question, but given its vast popularity in the open source meritocracy I'd say the onus is on you to show that it truly causes more problems then it solves; every project that uses it is a vote against that statement.) You've clearly never written massively cross-platform code; grab a decent sized package, look at the output autoconf generates, and look at what the program does with it. Odds are every single line you see during configure, with the possible exception of some really standard ones that seem to be a standard part of the package ("CC works?"), is used somewhere in the program, especially lines like "Is your pthreads implementation broken?
That's probably a reference to the Grand Unified Field Theory, the Holy Grail of particle physics where all forces are reduced to various aspects of one force.
;-)
Once upon a time, electricity and magnetism were thought to be different forces. Now we know they are two aspects of the same thing. Later it was found at high energy states the nuclear weak force and electromagentism were also two aspects of the same "electroweak" force. I'm not a physicist but IIRC they've also shown how the nuclear strong force (holds atoms together) is the same.
The force that refuses to be unified is gravity. It still remains a seperate term in all theories. It is hoped that by pushing particle accelerators to higher and higher energy states, enough clues will be given to piece together the relationships once and for all.
However, the link will not be found at room temperature and mere thousands of volts; we're talking millions of degrees, you know, the kinds of temperatures where us mere mortals stop caring which scale it's being measured in, and densities that would make a neutron star green with envy. Basically, barring Extraordinary Evidence, the line that so intrigued you is indicative of the ignorance of the writer, not an interesting phenomenon.
However, if you find this interesting I would encourage you to go ahead and learn about real particle physics; it boggles my mind why people enjoy various tin-hat conspiracy-type theories about physics when the real thing is so much richer and more fascinating then any man-made fiction could ever be. Like I said, I'm not a physicist but I enjoy laymen-level particle physics and cosmology and would love to learn more about it sometime in a context where nobody was forcing me to turn in homework
By the way, on the topic of the GUT, go here and grab this sound file... it won't be much more informative overall then this post but it will be much more fun.
If one can sue over copyright infringment based of a reppetitive set of tones, what is to stop someone from generating millions of tonal combintations with a computer copyrighting the lot of them and suing every "artist" that ends up duplicating them?
First, and most importantly, because no judge in the land would buy this argument. No conceivable perversion of copyright law's reasons for existing could justify this. (It can't even be said to meet the creativity criterion, IMHO, and yes, I do know how low a bar that sets.)
Second, it is well established that if the same expression is duplicated, entirely independently of each other, both authors have full rights to the expression. It is rare, but it has happened. Copyright does not magically give you rights to all possible incarnations of your expression, it only protects people deriving other expressions from your expression. In real life, in most domains, the odds of duplication are so low as to be irrelevant, but music is an exception.
Handwriting is like body language; despite the fact I've seen several people try to catalog what this twitch means and what that jiggle means, it's more a gestalt thing then anything else.
;-). There's just something different about how the average smart women writes, vs. the average smart man. (The stupid of either sex are virtually indistinguishable, at least to me.)
"Messy" doesn't automatically say bad; certainly it's not usually a point in the person's favor, but it's not that simplistic. Similarly, "neat" doesn't say good; sometimes it says "careful", sometimes it says "anal".
It's another dimension to the communication, one much harder to fake. Certain lies are easy to write, but if the handwriting doesn't match, along with other things like grammar and spelling, it's a red flag. Only a moron or a person who must make snap judgements would depend on such things, but I can and do use them as part of the picture; the correlation isn't 100% but by now it's well past 90%, and you just can't ignore that, even if it isn't perfect.
(Same for body language; three seconds of seeing someone walk while their with their buddies and I've generally got a very good idea what they are like; I'm not always right but it's generally borne out, esp. if they're otherwise trying to be on their "best behavior". When people are trying to act more suave, or honest, or sophisticated then they are, they almost always neglect to update their body language to match what they are trying to project; arrogant people tend to swagger even when they're trying to kiss butt, for instance.)
For that matter, even online such hints are useful; I can often figure out someone is a women after just a paragraph or two of their writing, even with no other clues, and I've surprised at least a couple of them by causually using the correct pronoun even though they knew they didn't tell me their sex
An interesting side-effect would be that the people who left, assuming equal opportunity for all, would overwhelmingly be from poor countries like India and Nigeria.
We've seen this happen before; the US was formed from the outcasts of Europe, and Australia from the actual criminals. With the resources of space, the impetus to stay alive prompting more and better tech, and the fact that being poor brings out good work habits rather more then being rich does on the average, I think the space society would outclass the Earth-bound one in every significant way in about a generation or two.
And see what's happening to Europe... their elite is now so disconnected from reality they're preparing to trash the whole continent... I suspect that all Earth would look like that.
Another factor nobody has mentioned is the continuing growth of the Internet to pace the size of the network.
Redundency in the network is of no value if losing one link raises the traffic far enough on the redundent paths to lock them up solid.
I'm in Lansing, MI (middle of the lower part of the state), and we've had our primary link to Chicago severed before. Our packets were re-routed through northern MI, but the links are much, much slower then the primary link to Chicago. Packets got through, but forget P2P; email was about all you could expect to work, and slowly at that.
Until traffic levels off, the redundency isn't ever going to be enough that you simply won't notice a link dropping out.
I meant socially... nobody believes it's possible.
There are theoretical technologies that might allow it other then the mythical "free energy", but until they happen, nobody will believe it's possible. When they do the psychology of humanity will change radically.
Even if, as you say, the adults will mostly be too pig-headed to leave, which I agree with, the children would go, and the parents would most likely encourage it if they believe they could live a better life out there then down here, which for much of the world is probably true. Right now, though, we don't have a frontier.
It is often said that the effects of this kind of thing are overestimated in the short term, but underestimated in the long term.
I won't directly speculate, but I'd point a few thing things out:
One, almost axiomatic right now is that even if we colonize space, we could never afford to lift any significant fraction of humanity off the surface. Effectively infinite power makes this possible, and the social changes this would unleash, even before it happened, the effect on the public conciousness and unconciousness, are almost entirely unpredictable. Right now, without even thinking about it much, we live on Earth, and there is nothing else. We have no Frontier anymore. Having one again would change things in almost unimaginable ways.
Two, it's the secondary effects you can't predict. Physicists might be able to build a bigger and better particle accelerator with more power, thanks to some previously prohibitively-energy-expensive alloy or something, and crack the secrets of the universe.
Three, the final limits of computation as we know it are driven by power consumption. Consequences of that left to the imagination. (Quantum computing may provide a partial out, but then again, probably only partial if it's significant at all; There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.)
I think the basic problem is the patent system is not designed to handle software or business method patents. It was set up from day one to handle physical objects and processes, and it does that tolerably well. It's possible to look at two processes or objects and make a reasonable determination whether they are the same. The equivalent is not really possible for software or business method patents.
Remember one of the purposes of patents was not to lock up entire ideas, but lock up one implementation, encouraging others to create other implementations to stimulate market competition. Since the patent system is fundamentally unsound in this domain, and has no reasonable way to determine if two things are the same, the patent system has "defaulted" to the broadest possible interpretation of "same" (as opposed to the narrowest possible, in which case it would be virtually impossible to violate a patent, patents would be nearly worthless, and by extension, the Patent Office would be nearly worthless and powerless, which is the Number One Anathema to a beauracracy). As a result it's not possible to create alternate implementations without automatically infringing.
Patents do not belong in this domain, they are downright oxymoronic.
The vast majority of patents are held by coroporations. The inventions of individual inventors are owned by corporations because of an employment agreement or are sold to a corporation for a pittance for fear that the corporation will win any legal battle owing to their superior financial resources, regardless of the merit of their claims.
....
There's an important lesson here that I wish all Slashbots would learn: Anything you give to the little guy is also given to corporations.
You think you can just "give" patents to the little guy and suddenly he can compete? Nope, a big corporation still has thousands of man hours vs. the little guy. You can't give the little guy anything that isn't multiplied by thousands in the hands of a large corporation.
The only way to give the little guy even a fighting chance is to take things away, or protect things for everybody. In this context, "taking things away" means no software patents for anyone, and
Make patents non-transferrable and make ip agreements that assign ownership invention to corporations illegal and they'll be back in business.
is an instance of protecting everybody equally, because the non-transferability means that corporations can't get an advantage. (Although you'll find a difficult way to make this stick and I'm not proposing it as a good idea; personally I go more for no software patents at all.)
Similar arguments arise in other domains, but they would not be on topic. It's a general principle, though.
Not to take away from your post but the N64 - financially, was a sucuess.
I think you mean that it made a profit, which may be true. But I'm looking at the larger levels: Marketshare, developer mindshare, user mindshare, even cool game mindshare. Sure, some amazing stuff was put out on the system but it was despite of the limitations of the console, not because of the power of the console. Compared to what could, and even perhaps should have been, the N64 bombed.
Part of this is handwaving, because I can't show screenshots, but with my knowlege I can see how the N64 would have looked if its fairly-impressive polygon power was backed up by enough memory to hold real textures; I won't claim it could have unseated the Playstation but the fact is it would have been head-and-shoulders above the Playstation in visual appearence, in a way that it really wan't in the cartridge incarnation. (For a modern demonstration of the importance of textures, compare a last-generation DC game with a first generation PS2 game, before the PS2 developers really figured out how to get textures going across the bus correctly; while the PS2 had more power, the DC's relatively large texture buffers held enough data to make up for the polygon difference handily; frankly some DC games still impress me.)
FWIW, I know more Dreamcast owners in my personal circle of geek friends then N64 owners. In fact I know 3 confirmed DC owners, and I can only think of one N64 candidate (I'm not sure he owns one). And the Dreamcast is typically considered a major failure for Sega, despite being a pretty cool system in a lot of ways.
I'm not trying to be a fanboy or an anti-fanboy (is there a term for that?); I really hate to see Nintendo making what I see as another blunder brought on by excessive conservatism. In this field, it's a "trend" after six months and a full-fledged pattern after two years, but it seems to take Nintendo as many as four or five years to catch on to those things. Given that they do a lot of crazy stuff (that silly little e-Reader, for instance), some of which sticks and some doesn't, this strongly says "insular corporate culture" to me. It's a tribute to them they've made it that far on such an insular culture, but long-term it's still a liability, despite their demonstrated abilities to handle it somewhat.
How many times can they miss the boat and still survive?
The Super Nintendo was a good product. The GBA was seriously flawed, as evidenced by the success of the GBA-SP, which is also a good product. (BTW, missing headphone port seriously overrated; I got the adapter and still almost never use it when traveling, which given the ease of folding the SP up and slapping it in my pocket is quite frequently. But this could too easily turn into an SP-love-fest...) The N64 was also seriously flawed because Nintendo missed the optical disk trend, and was seriously hobbled by using cartridges as a result.
The Gamecube is, as far as I know, a good product (don't own one, but haven't heard systematic complaints about it), so maybe they're due for a Major Boat Missing again. Will they be able to survive?
Granted, this isn't quite as bad as the N64 going with carts, despite the fact it had been obvious for multiple years that they could not hold enough data, especially for 3D, where a single good texture would be the size of a 1980 megahit videogame. Online gaming in the console arena is too new to be called a run-away success. On the other hand, the trend in the PC world is crystal clear; while not everything has to be playable online, anything that can be, should be, and it will contribute to its success in ways that a non-online experience couldn't have. (Would Diablo have been as much of a success without online support?) If nothing else, online play relieves the game house of the still-nearly-impossible task of writing an AI!
I'd feel pretty safe in predicting that if they don't include online capabilities in the base-unit, or as a really cheaply-priced upgrade, that it will be seen as a mistake on par with sticking a 3D system like the N64 with just cartridges for data storage. People like playing with people and that is not going to change.
In fact, phrase it that way and one almost wonders at the hubris of thinking you can discard the single best AI intelligence there is on your console and still compete against the console systems who will tap that AI to the fullest!
guns can't really do anything useful other than kill and main, so in the case of guns it is reasonable to ban the technology.
"kill and maim" is not the intrinsically immoral things you seem to be making them out to be. Few people would say that "killing" a deer with the intent of eating it is immoral. (Such people do exist, yes, but I think "few" is an adequate description of their numbers.) Few people would say that killing or maiming someone attacking you or your children is immoral. (Again, people who think you have a moral imperative to never be violent, even in the face of violence, exist, but even fewer of them really mean it when push comes to shove, and the ones that do tend to die off.)
Getting married has made me think a lot more about carrying a concealed weapon; the prospect of seeing someone attack my wife while I could do nothing about it turns my stomach, whereas self-defense never seemed quite important enough. I think if I ever have children that will tip me over the edge and I will definately start carrying. The odds are slim but the consequences of not being ready are life-changing. (Not that it's a guarentee in any direction, but owning a gun definately affects the odds in my favor.)
In case you can't tell, I'm male; this must be those "hunter/provider/protecter" genes kicking in.
Why are you so focused on negativity? With the nightly news pushing out stories left and right about what's wrong with the world, can't we at least keep our Slashdot book reviews a good positive example of what's right with the world?
;-)
For a given reviewer, you need both positive and negative reviews so you can get a feel for what the reviewer is looking for, and how closely it matches what you are looking for. In something as subjective as books or video games, this is critical. This allows you to align your views with the reviewer.
In this environment, where it's a different reviewer is reviewing each time, it's much less useful. Reviews are really only useful in the context of knowing something about the reviewer. (I just thought of this, and after I post this I intend to shut off reviews from my Slashdot feed, since they are uniformly useless to anybody seriously looking to use them due to this overwhelming flaw in the process.)
In fact, the bad reviews are typically far more informative then the good ones. Most good reviews can be boiled down to "It's great!" with little loss of content, where the bad reviews have actual criticisms of the reviewed product. What you do then is read the criticisms and see if you might agree with them. If you're reading a video game review (which I use because it has great examples), and it says "Game X has far too many little numbers to keep track of for your characters", and you're old-skool and you like fiddly little numbers, then the negative review may actually boost your opinion. A lot of what appears in reviews is that sort of opinion, relatively little is concerned with universal things like "I couldn't get this game to run stably for more then 5 minutes on any of the four computers I tried it on here."
For a book review, such negative comments really go a long ways towards clarifying what the book is. "This book didn't give any examples on how to process XML" tells you more about the book's focus then "This book is great for anyone who programs and uses text!".
The point of "The Power of Positive Thinking", IIRC, wasn't to be unremittingly positive in every way; that's actually counterproductive and can take you out of touch with the real world. In fact, IIRC, it can best be summarized as "Don't be negative; that's bad."