Actually, best thing that could happen is if a bunch of real hackers got together, use a truly mediocre console (like the Playstation or Gameboy) and wrote a killer game for it, under the GPL.
Unless I'm misunderstanding your intent, spectacular sound and graphics do not a great game make. A great game is a great game, and the sound and graphics are nearly irrelevant.
Okay, so this is totally off topic, but I just ordered a Titanium PB, I'm going to get Mac OS X the minute I hear the PB has shipped, and I have a hobbiest's interest in gaming.
Prelude aside, I haven' been able to find much in terms of cross platform programming on Linux, Mac OSX, and Windows 2000, three of the least popular gaming platforms out there behind PSX, Gameboy, and Windows 98. Though I suppose what with the DX 8/7 support in W2k, Windows 2000 isn't a problem.
I *really* want to learn and use Objective C, the Cocoa libraries, and OpenGL. I know that's not a problem with the Mac, given that Apple has made them all first class citizens of Mac OSX; is there any chance of being cross platform?
Or do you just code straight C for the game (and thus target every platform on the planet I guess), with platform specific code for the input and display handling?
I really wish someone had a book published, using iD as the case study, on cross platform development. IDEs, compilers, best practices, optimization techniques, workarounds, etc.
Of course, just saying all this out loud has given me a solution ^^; Code in C, abstract out the platform specific display, device, and input handling routines into a separate library, and use the 'best' software for each platform, whether that be Metrowerks, GCC, Visual Studio, etc.
Actually, I guess you could use Metrowerks for all the platforms, couldn't you? Is that what you do?
Okay, so the original post was stupid, but you sorta aren't very self consistent.
Creative soundcards aren't good, they're good enough. Without competition there really isn't any way to judge 'better' or 'worse'.
You have no problems, the cards are cheap, and they work perfectly. That's good enough. What about the alternatives? Real 3d sound? Mp3 playback/encoding acceleration? Multi-channel sound? Digital audio input/output? Digital audio acceleration? USB speaker support? Hardware/software support for Mp3 players?
Those are alternative features I don't think Creative offers yet because there isn't the competition to force them to.
Then there is your statement: I don't have any problems with monopolies so long as what they provide is good.
The problem with that logic is because you have a monopoly, it is the monopolist that defines what 'good' is. If Creative defined 8 bit sound, mono, and no mic in as 'standard', you'd be stuck because you wouldn't have a choice!
Likewise, Creative hasn't offered hardware acceleration for USB/digital audio yet, when they could. They don't integrate directly with MP3 players or Minidisc players, when they could. They don't have Dolby 5.1 channel support standard, when they should. The current AWE is only margianlly better than the AWE of 4 years ago; they've gone to PCI, increased the number of voices, and improved the drivers... but there really isn't a bunch of compelling new features. A new optical SPDIF port, but that's it. 4 speaker support. Whee.
Then there's the Intel/AMD thing. That's only true *because* Intel *doesn't* have a monopoly and AMD offers competition. Why the heck are you using that as an argument?
Ah, well, you can think of them as organic nanotechnology, can't you?
The more dangerous problem is... what's to stop them from eating non-trash? Living in your gas tank? Sitting on your car? Eating through the plastic shell of your iMac? Growing in your tailpipe?
You know what's going to happen, don't you? Have you seen Jurassic Park?
We'll unleash these microbes on irradiate sites, and evolutionary action will occur. Not only will they process the radioactive elements into a stable reduced form, the ones that actually manage to figure out how to tap the radiation as an energy source will get reproductive advantages!
So within a few million cycles we'll get bacteria that *thrive* on radioactivity. If that happens, and they manage to contaminate radioactive power plants, who knows what happens?
Anyway, these radiaoctive materials are stored away from oxygen at least, as the article was talking about the anaerobic action of the bacteria.
It's not "Should we do that?", it's "What will cloning give us?"
Cloning, suprisingly enough, won't give us clones.
I don't believe so, anyway. Sex is too fun. The pain of childbirth isn't. So clones won't be an issue until artificial wombs are widespread, or surrogate wombs are cheap.
On the other hand, what would cloning give us?
The ability to reverse engineer the genetic code. Take a million mice, alter each mice in one specific way, and allow them to come to term. Input, output, black box reverse engineering process. A few thousand iterations later, we have hooks and keys into evolutionary biology, developmental biology, the immune system, growth hormones, structures, and just about anything else that can happen in the human body.
Worried about the threat of clones grown for body parts? Wouldn't cloning, and the ability to understand how a kidney develops from proto-cells, give us the ability to actually grow a new kidney, in the host body, from a single 'fixed' kidney cell? Or from a 'fixed' kidney culture? Why bother with a new clone body? The host body originally created two kidneys! What's going to stop it from making a third?
Imagine that cloning will enble us to do everything we do now, but easier. Instead of doing organ transplants and artificial organs, we now grow and repair the organs in situ. Instead of LASIK and glasses and contacts, we can force the eyes to reshape, or the corneas to reshape, live. Instead of piercings, mutilations, and tatoos, we can grow tiger striped fur, or skunk tailed hair, or bright iridescent green scales. Instead of hair transplants, chemicals, and wigs, we can grow new hair.
Clones as a source of repair tissue:
There's another alternative, more practical and less sticky. Say cloning technology matures. You can take a mouse, and create a million other mice, barring lack of suitable mothers.
Rather than growing a whole human to transplant, say, a kidney, you treat the kidney already in the person to start repair and growth processes.
How? I don't know yet. What's my logic? Well, the kidney *originally* grew inside the person. What's stoppying the human body from doing it again? We, for the most part, have all the capabilities and resources to grow new organs from scratch. We did it in the womb, and I think it is lack of understanding and technology that allows us to do so now.
How does cloning help? So take these million mice. By subtly altering the genetics of each of these mice in a different way than the original, we can actually 'reverse engineer' the DNA. Turn off a gene, replace a gene, activate a gene, remove a gene, introduce a gene! Or fiddle wit some of the introns and junk DNA! Eventually we'll be able to decode the language of genetics the same way engineers today figure out how to emulate Playstations and Gameboys!
How about the issue of creating a new child from the old? Honestly, this is almost a non issue. If you take the old child and recreate it, from scratch, it will be a different person. Unless we find that genetics match to personality near perfectly, the parents are about as well off creating a new one from scratch. Sex is more fun anyway. Anyway, the clone child will have no more or less difficulty than the second child, in your example? The process of cloning is not the problem, it is the nature of the parents!
How about the clone of self issue? Same! It'd be very much a lie to believe a clone of the self is the same as the self. Might as well have a natural child. Again, the sex is better. Again, the problem is the parent, and not the clone!
If any of these are problems, it's not because clone tech is available or possible, it's because the humans who want to make clones have problems. It's the same logic as stopping drunk drivers, and not the cars, because the cars are just tools and toys and technology, and it's the drunks that get into accidents.
We can sorta do an extrapolation. Imagine cloning technology exists. What does that mean?
It means you can take a cell out of a living creature and grow a new creature out of it. Independent of this process, there's the mother to be taken into account, and until we can develop artificial wombs, we'll have to do it the old fashioned way and implant these embyoes in females.
In this respect, cloning is no more or less hard or difficult than having a child. Ethical issues aside about individuality and morals, sex just seems to be more fun and more exciting, so I don't think this is a terribly big issue.
On the other hand, cloning as a process gives us another tool in our genetic toolbox. I've said this in another post, but I think it's important enough to bear repeating.
If we can clone a mouse 500 times, but in each case change, remove, replace, or add to the gene sequence, we can do much more precise genetic research. We can figure out evolutionary biology, developmental biology, structural biology, and a whole host of other things.
Just being able to produce clones at this level means we can create drugs and viruses that attack specific cells, like cancers, because we know enough about genetics that we can actually have tailor made viruses that target cancer cells, reproduce in cancer cells, and destroy cancer cells.
We can fix near sightedness or far sightedness. We can deal with male pattern baldness. We can fix glaucoma. We can wear tiger skin patterns or stripes in our hair. We can grow extra teeth, fangs, or tusks. We can grow wings, or gills, or extra tough skin, extra tough bones, extra strong muscles. We can create humans that can survive the radiation of space, the atrophying debilitation of zero g, or the stresses of a recycled and constrained environment.
Cloning a person is a separate issue than the process of cloning as a technology.
I somehow doubt Joe Sixpack makes enough of these armors to even match the quantity of industrial processes.
Still, in terms of being careful, you're right. But the smog filled hellhole like LA is, if I recall correctly, due to the 2% of cars that are so old that they don't need to, or even able to, pass inspection, but belch out more than all the cars built in the last decade. Of course that's an urban myth, but it's the best one I know.
It's not the clones that will be a problem. That should offer no more or less problem than identical twins or sons or cousins or nieces across generations that happen to appear, act, and be eeriely close to the parent.
Rather, because of cloning tech, we will see huge advances in evolutionary biology, developmental biology, and gene expression technology. Imagine a hundred otherwise identical embryos but with one gene changed, removed, deactivated, or enabled? As we start to catalogue and decipher genes, introns, junk DNA, and chromosomes, then we'll truly have not just a map, but a travel guide to our DNA.
At which point all the Sci-Fi coolness can occur. People tailored with cancer-like abilities to survive in space, or to prolong life. People who are radiation hardened, or disease resistent. People who can see enhanced spectral ranges, or tougher bones and muscles, hard skins, etc.
Especially if this is spread to the animal kingdom. If viral vector research is successful, can you imagine ordering a leapord skin pattern and over the course of three weeks getting spots and a slight orange fuzz? Or a beautiful pair of wings growing out of your back? Or an extra long tongue, like a gecko's?
This is sci fi now, but what with the confluence of the mapping of the human genome, it's sequencing, viral gene therapies, and clone technologies, any of those things could happen.
It's not even about good, bad, ethical, or moral. It's about fashionable, useful, cool, or risk taking. People today pierce, tattoo, dye, mutilate, and deform in the name of tradition, fashion, rebellion, and style. Why would this change 100 years from now?
Oh. I love a shelf full of books too, but the thought is that there's nothing stopping them from being shelves full of e-books, if/when e-paper approaches the price point of regular paper.
Yes, yes, you're right, technically. In the sense that the Constitution is 'owned' by, and drafted for it's citizens, it would defeat the purpose, I think (of course it's only *my* interpretation) that something defined in the Constitution be defied by the citizens it's supposd to support.
Sorta like defying the Bill of Rights on an individual basis, because it's 'only' supposed to apply towards the Government but not it's citizens? This in a country where the Government is 'by the people, for the people'?
That only works if you know what your answer is going to mean. If you don't it could easily work against you, too.
As if the government is 'smart' enough itself to decode the collected data, are you 'smart' enough to know what the government is thinking, and how to influence it?
If you could do that, why the heck aren't you already *running* the government?
So, from other posts, it's been brought to my attention that it's in the Constitution, even, that the government hold a Census. Refusing to cooperate in the Census is actually 'unconstitutional', rather than illegal.
On the other hand, Census information is used to determine the number and nature of Congressional seats and representations. It may also be used to dictate reapportioning of taxes according to some formula. It may also be involved in a handful of other useful things, but any more is wild speculation.
In the letter of the Constitution then, it would seem you need to tell them how many people live in your household, and maybe how many are of voting age. In the spirit of the Constitution, answering the Census is 'supposed' to help make our government more responsive and adapted to your country's needs.
I wonder if I just sat outside your house for 24hrs if I could 'guess' how much money you made, the kind of car you drive, how many children you had.
A lot of that is 'public' in a very literal sense. How much you make would be a guess, of course, but with a little more info gathering than just watching you come in and out of your house may even reveal that, trivially... Say a background credit check? But even knowing what kind of credit card can give info away, like upper credit limit kind of thing. Or knowing how many cars are in your driveway. What year they are. Or what models they are.
So there's the issue of privacy, which everyone is really entitled to, and the issue of security of private information, which cannot be so liberally guaranteed.
Dunno. Why is the wrong question. It's a flimsy piece of plastic, with a plastic case and a few printed pieces of art.
A *similar* feeling occurs for my webpage, so it isn't out of the question that I can adapt.
But there is something, strangely enough, intangible about things that are tangible. Being able to flip through my comics, my novels, my references. I will want a print copy for sheer ownability, not for utility.
So if I get a library of e-books, I still may use the services of 'custom' printhouses to print out and store my top 10 fav publications just to sit on my shelf. The same may be true in a few years with my music collection, when over 15 gigs of music are availabe to my PDA, my PC, my notebook, or my car, that my favorite pieces I may still have the albums and cases. I do that with software; keep the boxes for display purposes
If you redefine books, the whole issue disappears. Print a book with e-paper instead of paper. Is it still a book? Yes. Has books disappeared? No. Have traditional paper-only books disappeared? Indeterminate. But the issue is no longer about books, it's about implementation.
Same with Moore's Law. If you redefine it to 'prcoessing power' and not 'MHz', I don't think the question is valid any more. We will continue to increase processing power (double every 18 months?) without having to worry about physical limits as concerning speed. Just change the question slightly, and a different answer will be produced.
As per driving flying cars to work and to the mall... with Telecommuting, the internet, and the electronic office, driving may become much less of an issue as well, even disregarding the fact we don't have flying cars. Though I want a flying car myself ^^
JonKatz will write interesting articles. There is no spoon.
We'll vacation on the moon. We're still working on that! Really!
Terabytes of data will be stored on a credit card sized device. Okay, so that's definitely wishful thinking, right now. But soon, I think!
Robots will do all of our house work: What, you actually keep your house clean?
CmdrTaco will learn to spell: Redefine the language to match CmdrTaco, and he spells fine!
I take great joy in all these posts. Maybe I'm overloading slashdot.
Anyway, none of what you argue is without merit.
But if Xerox, IBM, and Eink/Lucent have their way, instead of a shelf full of paper books, you'd have a shelf full of e-paper books.
Nothing you want goes away, but you get some of the benefits of electronic technology. Of being able to compare notes and annotations with fellow Asimov or Tolkien fans, of getting regular updates from local fan websites concerning your fav authors booksigning tour, or just browsing email from your favorite book ^^
This is the first argument I've seen that makes perfect sense why books won't die. I myself *love* my shelf of books. And DVDs. And CDs.
<BR>
<BR>Despite the fact that everything in my shelves could be scanned or stored digitally and archived, searchable, browseable, the fact that I have a shelf of stuff gives me satisfaction.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, best thing that could happen is if a bunch of real hackers got together, use a truly mediocre console (like the Playstation or Gameboy) and wrote a killer game for it, under the GPL.
Unless I'm misunderstanding your intent, spectacular sound and graphics do not a great game make. A great game is a great game, and the sound and graphics are nearly irrelevant.
-AS
Oh cool, I guess I do need to look up Metrowerks...
-AS
Okay, so this is totally off topic, but I just ordered a Titanium PB, I'm going to get Mac OS X the minute I hear the PB has shipped, and I have a hobbiest's interest in gaming.
Prelude aside, I haven' been able to find much in terms of cross platform programming on Linux, Mac OSX, and Windows 2000, three of the least popular gaming platforms out there behind PSX, Gameboy, and Windows 98. Though I suppose what with the DX 8/7 support in W2k, Windows 2000 isn't a problem.
I *really* want to learn and use Objective C, the Cocoa libraries, and OpenGL. I know that's not a problem with the Mac, given that Apple has made them all first class citizens of Mac OSX; is there any chance of being cross platform?
Or do you just code straight C for the game (and thus target every platform on the planet I guess), with platform specific code for the input and display handling?
I really wish someone had a book published, using iD as the case study, on cross platform development. IDEs, compilers, best practices, optimization techniques, workarounds, etc.
Of course, just saying all this out loud has given me a solution ^^; Code in C, abstract out the platform specific display, device, and input handling routines into a separate library, and use the 'best' software for each platform, whether that be Metrowerks, GCC, Visual Studio, etc.
Actually, I guess you could use Metrowerks for all the platforms, couldn't you? Is that what you do?
-AS
Okay, so the original post was stupid, but you sorta aren't very self consistent.
Creative soundcards aren't good, they're good enough. Without competition there really isn't any way to judge 'better' or 'worse'.
You have no problems, the cards are cheap, and they work perfectly. That's good enough. What about the alternatives? Real 3d sound? Mp3 playback/encoding acceleration? Multi-channel sound? Digital audio input/output? Digital audio acceleration? USB speaker support? Hardware/software support for Mp3 players?
Those are alternative features I don't think Creative offers yet because there isn't the competition to force them to.
Then there is your statement: I don't have any problems with monopolies so long as what they provide is good.
The problem with that logic is because you have a monopoly, it is the monopolist that defines what 'good' is. If Creative defined 8 bit sound, mono, and no mic in as 'standard', you'd be stuck because you wouldn't have a choice!
Likewise, Creative hasn't offered hardware acceleration for USB/digital audio yet, when they could. They don't integrate directly with MP3 players or Minidisc players, when they could. They don't have Dolby 5.1 channel support standard, when they should. The current AWE is only margianlly better than the AWE of 4 years ago; they've gone to PCI, increased the number of voices, and improved the drivers... but there really isn't a bunch of compelling new features. A new optical SPDIF port, but that's it. 4 speaker support. Whee.
Then there's the Intel/AMD thing. That's only true *because* Intel *doesn't* have a monopoly and AMD offers competition. Why the heck are you using that as an argument?
-AS
Ah, well, you can think of them as organic nanotechnology, can't you?
The more dangerous problem is... what's to stop them from eating non-trash? Living in your gas tank? Sitting on your car? Eating through the plastic shell of your iMac? Growing in your tailpipe?
Then they become a nuisance!
-AS
You know what's going to happen, don't you? Have you seen Jurassic Park?
We'll unleash these microbes on irradiate sites, and evolutionary action will occur. Not only will they process the radioactive elements into a stable reduced form, the ones that actually manage to figure out how to tap the radiation as an energy source will get reproductive advantages!
So within a few million cycles we'll get bacteria that *thrive* on radioactivity. If that happens, and they manage to contaminate radioactive power plants, who knows what happens?
Anyway, these radiaoctive materials are stored away from oxygen at least, as the article was talking about the anaerobic action of the bacteria.
-AS
You're right, of course.
Most world problems are societal and political more than anything else; resource allocation, food distribution, disease control, etc.
-AS
I think that's the wrong question.
It's not "Should we do that?", it's "What will cloning give us?"
Cloning, suprisingly enough, won't give us clones.
I don't believe so, anyway. Sex is too fun. The pain of childbirth isn't. So clones won't be an issue until artificial wombs are widespread, or surrogate wombs are cheap.
On the other hand, what would cloning give us?
The ability to reverse engineer the genetic code. Take a million mice, alter each mice in one specific way, and allow them to come to term. Input, output, black box reverse engineering process. A few thousand iterations later, we have hooks and keys into evolutionary biology, developmental biology, the immune system, growth hormones, structures, and just about anything else that can happen in the human body.
Worried about the threat of clones grown for body parts? Wouldn't cloning, and the ability to understand how a kidney develops from proto-cells, give us the ability to actually grow a new kidney, in the host body, from a single 'fixed' kidney cell? Or from a 'fixed' kidney culture? Why bother with a new clone body? The host body originally created two kidneys! What's going to stop it from making a third?
Imagine that cloning will enble us to do everything we do now, but easier. Instead of doing organ transplants and artificial organs, we now grow and repair the organs in situ. Instead of LASIK and glasses and contacts, we can force the eyes to reshape, or the corneas to reshape, live. Instead of piercings, mutilations, and tatoos, we can grow tiger striped fur, or skunk tailed hair, or bright iridescent green scales. Instead of hair transplants, chemicals, and wigs, we can grow new hair.
-AS
Clones as a source of repair tissue:
There's another alternative, more practical and less sticky. Say cloning technology matures. You can take a mouse, and create a million other mice, barring lack of suitable mothers.
Rather than growing a whole human to transplant, say, a kidney, you treat the kidney already in the person to start repair and growth processes.
How? I don't know yet. What's my logic? Well, the kidney *originally* grew inside the person. What's stoppying the human body from doing it again? We, for the most part, have all the capabilities and resources to grow new organs from scratch. We did it in the womb, and I think it is lack of understanding and technology that allows us to do so now.
How does cloning help? So take these million mice. By subtly altering the genetics of each of these mice in a different way than the original, we can actually 'reverse engineer' the DNA. Turn off a gene, replace a gene, activate a gene, remove a gene, introduce a gene! Or fiddle wit some of the introns and junk DNA! Eventually we'll be able to decode the language of genetics the same way engineers today figure out how to emulate Playstations and Gameboys!
How about the issue of creating a new child from the old? Honestly, this is almost a non issue. If you take the old child and recreate it, from scratch, it will be a different person. Unless we find that genetics match to personality near perfectly, the parents are about as well off creating a new one from scratch. Sex is more fun anyway. Anyway, the clone child will have no more or less difficulty than the second child, in your example? The process of cloning is not the problem, it is the nature of the parents!
How about the clone of self issue? Same! It'd be very much a lie to believe a clone of the self is the same as the self. Might as well have a natural child. Again, the sex is better. Again, the problem is the parent, and not the clone!
If any of these are problems, it's not because clone tech is available or possible, it's because the humans who want to make clones have problems. It's the same logic as stopping drunk drivers, and not the cars, because the cars are just tools and toys and technology, and it's the drunks that get into accidents.
-AS
There are other viewpoints too.
We can sorta do an extrapolation. Imagine cloning technology exists. What does that mean?
It means you can take a cell out of a living creature and grow a new creature out of it. Independent of this process, there's the mother to be taken into account, and until we can develop artificial wombs, we'll have to do it the old fashioned way and implant these embyoes in females.
In this respect, cloning is no more or less hard or difficult than having a child. Ethical issues aside about individuality and morals, sex just seems to be more fun and more exciting, so I don't think this is a terribly big issue.
On the other hand, cloning as a process gives us another tool in our genetic toolbox. I've said this in another post, but I think it's important enough to bear repeating.
If we can clone a mouse 500 times, but in each case change, remove, replace, or add to the gene sequence, we can do much more precise genetic research. We can figure out evolutionary biology, developmental biology, structural biology, and a whole host of other things.
Just being able to produce clones at this level means we can create drugs and viruses that attack specific cells, like cancers, because we know enough about genetics that we can actually have tailor made viruses that target cancer cells, reproduce in cancer cells, and destroy cancer cells.
We can fix near sightedness or far sightedness. We can deal with male pattern baldness. We can fix glaucoma. We can wear tiger skin patterns or stripes in our hair. We can grow extra teeth, fangs, or tusks. We can grow wings, or gills, or extra tough skin, extra tough bones, extra strong muscles. We can create humans that can survive the radiation of space, the atrophying debilitation of zero g, or the stresses of a recycled and constrained environment.
Cloning a person is a separate issue than the process of cloning as a technology.
-AS
I somehow doubt Joe Sixpack makes enough of these armors to even match the quantity of industrial processes.
Still, in terms of being careful, you're right. But the smog filled hellhole like LA is, if I recall correctly, due to the 2% of cars that are so old that they don't need to, or even able to, pass inspection, but belch out more than all the cars built in the last decade. Of course that's an urban myth, but it's the best one I know.
-AS
It's not the clones that will be a problem. That should offer no more or less problem than identical twins or sons or cousins or nieces across generations that happen to appear, act, and be eeriely close to the parent.
Rather, because of cloning tech, we will see huge advances in evolutionary biology, developmental biology, and gene expression technology. Imagine a hundred otherwise identical embryos but with one gene changed, removed, deactivated, or enabled? As we start to catalogue and decipher genes, introns, junk DNA, and chromosomes, then we'll truly have not just a map, but a travel guide to our DNA.
At which point all the Sci-Fi coolness can occur. People tailored with cancer-like abilities to survive in space, or to prolong life. People who are radiation hardened, or disease resistent. People who can see enhanced spectral ranges, or tougher bones and muscles, hard skins, etc.
Especially if this is spread to the animal kingdom. If viral vector research is successful, can you imagine ordering a leapord skin pattern and over the course of three weeks getting spots and a slight orange fuzz? Or a beautiful pair of wings growing out of your back? Or an extra long tongue, like a gecko's?
This is sci fi now, but what with the confluence of the mapping of the human genome, it's sequencing, viral gene therapies, and clone technologies, any of those things could happen.
It's not even about good, bad, ethical, or moral. It's about fashionable, useful, cool, or risk taking. People today pierce, tattoo, dye, mutilate, and deform in the name of tradition, fashion, rebellion, and style. Why would this change 100 years from now?
-AS
I hear there's an 8 letter limit now.
So you'd want:
5w8+5h0p
Or something like that.
-AS
Oh. I love a shelf full of books too, but the thought is that there's nothing stopping them from being shelves full of e-books, if/when e-paper approaches the price point of regular paper.
-AS
Yes, yes, you're right, technically. In the sense that the Constitution is 'owned' by, and drafted for it's citizens, it would defeat the purpose, I think (of course it's only *my* interpretation) that something defined in the Constitution be defied by the citizens it's supposd to support.
Sorta like defying the Bill of Rights on an individual basis, because it's 'only' supposed to apply towards the Government but not it's citizens? This in a country where the Government is 'by the people, for the people'?
-AS
That only works if you know what your answer is going to mean. If you don't it could easily work against you, too.
As if the government is 'smart' enough itself to decode the collected data, are you 'smart' enough to know what the government is thinking, and how to influence it?
If you could do that, why the heck aren't you already *running* the government?
-AS
So, from other posts, it's been brought to my attention that it's in the Constitution, even, that the government hold a Census. Refusing to cooperate in the Census is actually 'unconstitutional', rather than illegal.
On the other hand, Census information is used to determine the number and nature of Congressional seats and representations. It may also be used to dictate reapportioning of taxes according to some formula. It may also be involved in a handful of other useful things, but any more is wild speculation.
In the letter of the Constitution then, it would seem you need to tell them how many people live in your household, and maybe how many are of voting age. In the spirit of the Constitution, answering the Census is 'supposed' to help make our government more responsive and adapted to your country's needs.
-AS
I wonder if I just sat outside your house for 24hrs if I could 'guess' how much money you made, the kind of car you drive, how many children you had.
A lot of that is 'public' in a very literal sense. How much you make would be a guess, of course, but with a little more info gathering than just watching you come in and out of your house may even reveal that, trivially... Say a background credit check? But even knowing what kind of credit card can give info away, like upper credit limit kind of thing. Or knowing how many cars are in your driveway. What year they are. Or what models they are.
So there's the issue of privacy, which everyone is really entitled to, and the issue of security of private information, which cannot be so liberally guaranteed.
-AS
They probably just asked your neighbors.
Which means they may or may not have accurate info on you, to your benefit or detriment is unknown.
-AS
Takes out his purpose built pen, say his fav permament marker, take my ebook, and sign the cover?
Then I'd just have to turn on 'write protect' and make sure to never dump the contents of my signed e-book.
Do you see the point? An e-book printed with e-paper will still look and act like a normal paper book!
-AS
Dunno. Why is the wrong question. It's a flimsy piece of plastic, with a plastic case and a few printed pieces of art.
A *similar* feeling occurs for my webpage, so it isn't out of the question that I can adapt.
But there is something, strangely enough, intangible about things that are tangible. Being able to flip through my comics, my novels, my references. I will want a print copy for sheer ownability, not for utility.
So if I get a library of e-books, I still may use the services of 'custom' printhouses to print out and store my top 10 fav publications just to sit on my shelf. The same may be true in a few years with my music collection, when over 15 gigs of music are availabe to my PDA, my PC, my notebook, or my car, that my favorite pieces I may still have the albums and cases. I do that with software; keep the boxes for display purposes
-AS
How come Xerox hasn't made it more visible?
At least, I haven't heard of it ^^
-AS
Semantics, semantics.
If you redefine books, the whole issue disappears. Print a book with e-paper instead of paper. Is it still a book? Yes. Has books disappeared? No. Have traditional paper-only books disappeared? Indeterminate. But the issue is no longer about books, it's about implementation.
Same with Moore's Law. If you redefine it to 'prcoessing power' and not 'MHz', I don't think the question is valid any more. We will continue to increase processing power (double every 18 months?) without having to worry about physical limits as concerning speed. Just change the question slightly, and a different answer will be produced.
As per driving flying cars to work and to the mall... with Telecommuting, the internet, and the electronic office, driving may become much less of an issue as well, even disregarding the fact we don't have flying cars. Though I want a flying car myself ^^
JonKatz will write interesting articles. There is no spoon.
We'll vacation on the moon. We're still working on that! Really!
Terabytes of data will be stored on a credit card sized device. Okay, so that's definitely wishful thinking, right now. But soon, I think!
Robots will do all of our house work: What, you actually keep your house clean?
CmdrTaco will learn to spell: Redefine the language to match CmdrTaco, and he spells fine!
-AS
I take great joy in all these posts. Maybe I'm overloading slashdot.
Anyway, none of what you argue is without merit.
But if Xerox, IBM, and Eink/Lucent have their way, instead of a shelf full of paper books, you'd have a shelf full of e-paper books.
Nothing you want goes away, but you get some of the benefits of electronic technology. Of being able to compare notes and annotations with fellow Asimov or Tolkien fans, of getting regular updates from local fan websites concerning your fav authors booksigning tour, or just browsing email from your favorite book ^^
-AS
This is the first argument I've seen that makes perfect sense why books won't die. I myself *love* my shelf of books. And DVDs. And CDs.
<BR>
<BR>Despite the fact that everything in my shelves could be scanned or stored digitally and archived, searchable, browseable, the fact that I have a shelf of stuff gives me satisfaction.
-AS