So use a chat program. They are used for chatting, are they not? At the risk of defending a technology I hate... Who wants to spend time and emails arranging to meet in a certain chat room on a certain server at a certain time, hoping against hope that the server isn't full or down or infested with alien parasites or something? It's easier to leave a little box in the corner of the screen, and when it lights up, you start typing. Think of it as the mobile phone compared to the land line that is IRC.
If it's successful, you can't say it will never get big. I'm not saying it won't be big; it could well be huge. But have a look at freshmeat and see how many programmers there are who work on one programme only; a programme that they wrote for themselves, but that found a wider audience. A lot of these people would have no interest in working on someone else's code, and have no need of someone working on theirs (outside normal open sourcy-type work). I'd guess that these people are -- and will remain -- in the majority.
I typed in 'jj thompson' to see would it find my page about the legendary physicist (it's indexed by most engines). It didn't bother returning any matches, or even a 'no matches' message. And it's the most horrible page I've seen in a while. Green on pink text? Yeuch.
when you want to steal a car, you probably go very close to them, checking to see if the door is left open. If I were stealing a car, I'd walk slowly (but not too slowly) past all the cars, looking at the knobby-door-lock things (whatever they're called), but by moving my eyes, not my head (too much). If I saw one that was open, I'd climb in as I got to it.
In short, I'd act as if someone was watching me. Just like any clued-in thief would. I'd be trying to fool passers by, and would incidently fool the heuristics (probably).
This sound like measure people's ears to tell if they are going to become a criminal, or Jewish. People have been using ears to tell if someone's becoming Jewish for decades, now.
These apply to the car-theft example, but you can fill in the blanks yourself. 1. The system supposes you know where your car is. If you wander in a seemingly aimless fashion, you're picked up. 2. In a car park, there're cars wizzing backwards and forwards all the time. Therefore, you'll be looking left and right quite a bit. 3. You see your car, but you can't find your alarm zapper. You slow down, fumble, not wanting to stand beside the car looking like a tit who can't find his keys.
In all of the above cases, you're framed. The camera's will follow you, and ignore the guy ten metres away who's nicking a porche.
This system is also incredibly suceptible to decoys.
Well, if you don't use 'em, they must be useless. Pity those millions who don't have your insight, and imagine that they're using something beneficial.
It's a far-fetched scenario that'll probably never happen, but it's possible that someone, someday will want to hold a conversation with someone who isn't within range of a local call.
Speaking as the sysadmin in a cyber cafe, I'm really beginning to hate instant messaging. Every time we crank up a computer, it loads yahoo, MS, icq, aim... Having seen what people use (and why), I can be fairly confident that AT&T's effort is doomed, if not to failure, then to obscurity.
MS's version took off like a rat out of an aqueduct, simply because of that big-ass banner on the top of the hotmail page. To people who only use the computer for hotmail, this was an added feature, and one they embraced[1]. Aim, of course, already has godzillions of users.
So what about worldnet? Its new messenger will appeal only to those who haven't already got an account with one of the biggies. Anyone else'll ignore it.
[1]hotmail used to have a banner ad for internet telephony. At lest five times a day I had to explain that it was an ad, and not something they could use in hotmail.
Huh? Have you ever seen anyone reasonably suggest millions of identical clones like some bioengineered wheatfield No, and I'm not suggesting it myself. But diversity involves more than buffiness. Ultimately, any gene that has a detrimental effect and no known positive effect will be removed. We won't all be clones, but we will be considerably more alike than we are at present. And therein lies the danger.
It seems that a move towards this "co source" idea would make current open-source developers become more lazy I don't think so, mainly because co-source will never represent more than a tiny fraction of open source programmers. What it will do is to help those programmers (like our Russian chum) who wouldn't ordinarily be able to afford such largesse, while most (western) programmers will go about their business as normal.
If a programme develops bugs, the developer isn't going to hang around waiting for someone to pay them to fix it. Once word gets around that a fixable bug has been extant for a certain time, people will just stop using the software. Or, more likely, someone else'll take over the code.
The article says that we may see this sort of thing implemented in ink jets soon; I'm hanging onto mine. Ink jets have come a long way in the last few years, and they've reached the stage where, with the right paper, they can print photographic-quality pictures.
What does this mean? Well, everyone who's planning on doing something nasty-and-traceable will do it on an older printer. Some stupid people won't, and they'll get caught, justifying in the minds of the Man and the public that such watermarking is worthwhile. But, like drug smuggling, the vast majority will slip by unnoticed.
Freedoms will be curtailed, money will be wasted, and it'll all be for nothing. Have a nice day.
Who decides what is 'defective' and what isn't? Parents. It could be argued that they're not qualified, but neither are most of them qualified to be parents. However, see below.
Will parents be forced to disallow defective gene sequences? My bet is they won't be told. During 'routine checkups', anything genetically nasty will be excised. Nastiness being whatever the doctor doesn't like.
Will geneticists be sued if an engineered child isn't the well-behaved genius his/her parents hoped for? "This child comes with no guarantees whatsoever". Will people stand for it? My prediction: drug companies get the legislation pushed through, there's uproar for ten years, then it's accepted.
What will we lose by giving up some of our diversity? Survival. Ultimately, the species will face greater threats because we won't have that fraction of the population that's immune to something that's capable of killing 90%. How do we stop it? Extraterrestrial colonisation is my favourite answer.
Why have an idiosyncratic or rebellious offspring when you can choose a cheerful and pliant one?
This, along with the 'beautiful and smart' argument, is the most commonly cited problem we'll face with genegeneering. But ask yourself this: how many people reading Katz' essay would be willing to splice 'compliance' into their sprogs? Not many. Regardless of the technology, there'll always be a percentage of people who'll misuse it, and there'll always be a group of people who'll assume that this percentage is a majority. But I'd like to ask a few questions. 1. What percentage of the world's population were born into a world where their parents could take advantage of the latest medical technology? 2. Even assuming that universal medicare becomes available, is the entire world going to agree on what constitutes 'beautiful'? 'Smart' is also in the eye of the beholder.
The broadcasters are also not getting the advertisement money since it is not a registered broadcast So what? I'd look on iCrave as a value-added reseller. If you use the iCrave site, then you're also getting the original ads for which the networks were paid. There's a compelling argument, IMO, that iCrave should be able to charge the networks. They're opening the networks' adverts to a wider audience.
CHeck out their little demo and you'll see how visible live and/or hot things are; it's impressive. But the street sign shows up as black. Does this mean that street signs will be unreadable? I imagine there's some way around it other than switching off your scope, or Cadillac are just begging for lawsuits.
Here in Ireland, we're a bit behind on the movie front; it's generally out on video in the US before we get to see it. But anyway... Last week I saw an amusing science fiction movie called 'Tron', which starred Captain Sheridan. Great plot, great graphics... I can't recommend it highly enough. I was also jealous to note that you've all seen the new star wars movie. I'm really looking forward to it. Is it true that it's no longer called 'Revenge of the Jedi'?
Katz refers to the intelligentia as being anti-technology because of its effect of dumbing-down; this is doubtless true. But it's also inevitable. Literacy and eloquence are prized because, up to relatively recently, they were the only way you could advance yourself. Today, the ability to quote Obi-wan Kenobi is at least as likely to prove beneficial as the ability to quote Shakespeare. This isn't true in all cases of course; but the most popular web site aren't ones that cite the references to Plutarch in Julius Caesar. The web is truly the medium of all media, with something for everyone. You may not like it, but it's possible to put together a hugely popular web site about Brad Pitt while being barely literate. It's possible to make a living off that web site if the ads on your site are effective. America is dumbed down. The world will soon follow. But I've come to the conclusion that this isn't a bad thing; there are always poeple who will read and who will innovate and who will imagine. Those people will make it possible for the great unwashed to create, but using high-level creation tools (so to speak).
So why are people optimistic? Because however much people claim to have no interest in science, the rate of advancement is such that scarcely an issue of New Scientist comes out without the word 'breakthrough' in some story. Most Americans know or know of someone who has had their life saved by technology. The see no reason that this rate of advance shouldn't go on indefinitely. Just don't mention the phrase 'gray goo' to them.
I believe France is equally strict about its.fr domain Same in Ireland. Try to register anything that isn't your name and you have to produce a letterhead to prove that that's your company's name.
It's a pretty logical URL for someone to enter: www.business.com. I disagree; I think that this was a phenomenal waste of money and my heartiest congratulations go to Mr Ostrofsky. Domain dipping is only effective in the specific; if you're looking for the world's most-hyped beverage, do you type www.coke.com or www.cola.com? Similarly, no-one looks for Linux under www.operating-systems.com, and I would suspect entrepreneurs would look at a number of things -- www.entrepreneur.com, www.capital.com et al, and www.business.com will be but one of many they try.
business.com sounds like it's the sort of thing that will be effective, so ecompanies bought it without really thinking of whether it was worth it. A few minutes consideration and they'd have run away. I think.
Ostrofsky also will become an adviser to business.com. If you're going to hire an advisor, you might as well hire one that's capable for selling a domain for thousands of times its worth.
I doubt that Comet is sufficiently large that more than two or three people read the source; it's entirely possible for the problem to have gone unnoticed until now. Maybe they're bastards; maybe they aren't. I'm willing to give anyone* the benefit out the doubt, and wait to see what they do next. They're aware of the problem, and they're aware that we're aware of the problem. If it goes away now, I'll be happy. I still won't use their software coz it won't run on Linux, but that's a separate issue.
IMHO, this is yet another of those cases were someone implemented a nifty feature without thinking it through. What we have here is a company that can, with some effort, find out what a person is doing. at the moment, all they know is that someone, somewhere, visited a certain number of sites. There's be the inevitable massive calls for boycotting, and (as tends to be the case), this will be an overreaction. I'm happy with Comet's response, and I don't think this is a reason to hang them out to dry.
The caps lock key is as important to AOL users as the little windows key is to all our 9x-using chums. Don't diss it.
I don't care how small the space bar gets as long as I can hit it with my right thumb. My old five-year-old dell space key is quite dirty, except for a 1-cm length that I've tapped millions of times. I've a dirty thumb, though.
An investment in Mozilla would help Red Hat on the desktop, where Linux has yet to significantly penetrate
Best news I've read in ages. There's no doubt that the browser is Linux's biggest weakness on the desktop at the moment, and an open source browser would go a long way to convincing many that Linux is a viable option to MS.
As for the inevitable anti-RH diatribes: pah! I say to you all. Red Hat has acted with honour on all occasions, and I'll continue to be a fan as long as they continue to do such great stuff for Linux, for Open Source and for Red Hat.
For a while now the (I think) US Navy has been experimenting with thought-controlled flight sims, but they were limited to moving a cursor up and down, and much practise was required. This looks cooler and better, and one step closer to the day when you can work without those distracting keyboards and microphones.
Try and find Lysistrata, the Sex Play. Voila. Canterbury Tales here Offtopic? Not a bit of it. These illustrate the fact that the web is a powerful force for good, and that loners who spend a lot of time surfing are at least as like to come out the other end as erudite, interesting members of society as sociopaths.
Slashdot Mirror
So use a chat program. They are used for chatting, are they not?
At the risk of defending a technology I hate...
Who wants to spend time and emails arranging to meet in a certain chat room on a certain server at a certain time, hoping against hope that the server isn't full or down or infested with alien parasites or something? It's easier to leave a little box in the corner of the screen, and when it lights up, you start typing. Think of it as the mobile phone compared to the land line that is IRC.
If it's successful, you can't say it will never get big.
I'm not saying it won't be big; it could well be huge. But have a look at freshmeat and see how many programmers there are who work on one programme only; a programme that they wrote for themselves, but that found a wider audience. A lot of these people would have no interest in working on someone else's code, and have no need of someone working on theirs (outside normal open sourcy-type work). I'd guess that these people are -- and will remain -- in the majority.
I typed in 'jj thompson' to see would it find my page about the legendary physicist (it's indexed by most engines). It didn't bother returning any matches, or even a 'no matches' message. And it's the most horrible page I've seen in a while. Green on pink text? Yeuch.
when you want to steal a car, you probably go very close to them, checking to see if the door is left open.
If I were stealing a car, I'd walk slowly (but not too slowly) past all the cars, looking at the knobby-door-lock things (whatever they're called), but by moving my eyes, not my head (too much). If I saw one that was open, I'd climb in as I got to it.
In short, I'd act as if someone was watching me. Just like any clued-in thief would. I'd be trying to fool passers by, and would incidently fool the heuristics (probably).
This sound like measure people's ears to tell if they are going to become a criminal, or Jewish.
People have been using ears to tell if someone's becoming Jewish for decades, now.
These apply to the car-theft example, but you can fill in the blanks yourself.
1. The system supposes you know where your car is. If you wander in a seemingly aimless fashion, you're picked up.
2. In a car park, there're cars wizzing backwards and forwards all the time. Therefore, you'll be looking left and right quite a bit.
3. You see your car, but you can't find your alarm zapper. You slow down, fumble, not wanting to stand beside the car looking like a tit who can't find his keys.
In all of the above cases, you're framed. The camera's will follow you, and ignore the guy ten metres away who's nicking a porche.
This system is also incredibly suceptible to decoys.
Well, if you don't use 'em, they must be useless. Pity those millions who don't have your insight, and imagine that they're using something beneficial.
It's a far-fetched scenario that'll probably never happen, but it's possible that someone, someday will want to hold a conversation with someone who isn't within range of a local call.
Speaking as the sysadmin in a cyber cafe, I'm really beginning to hate instant messaging. Every time we crank up a computer, it loads yahoo, MS, icq, aim...
Having seen what people use (and why), I can be fairly confident that AT&T's effort is doomed, if not to failure, then to obscurity.
MS's version took off like a rat out of an aqueduct, simply because of that big-ass banner on the top of the hotmail page. To people who only use the computer for hotmail, this was an added feature, and one they embraced[1]. Aim, of course, already has godzillions of users.
So what about worldnet? Its new messenger will appeal only to those who haven't already got an account with one of the biggies. Anyone else'll ignore it.
[1]hotmail used to have a banner ad for internet telephony. At lest five times a day I had to explain that it was an ad, and not something they could use in hotmail.
Huh? Have you ever seen anyone reasonably suggest millions of identical clones like some bioengineered wheatfield
No, and I'm not suggesting it myself. But diversity involves more than buffiness. Ultimately, any gene that has a detrimental effect and no known positive effect will be removed. We won't all be clones, but we will be considerably more alike than we are at present. And therein lies the danger.
It seems that a move towards this "co source" idea would make current open-source developers become more lazy
I don't think so, mainly because co-source will never represent more than a tiny fraction of open source programmers. What it will do is to help those programmers (like our Russian chum) who wouldn't ordinarily be able to afford such largesse, while most (western) programmers will go about their business as normal.
If a programme develops bugs, the developer isn't going to hang around waiting for someone to pay them to fix it. Once word gets around that a fixable bug has been extant for a certain time, people will just stop using the software. Or, more likely, someone else'll take over the code.
The article says that we may see this sort of thing implemented in ink jets soon; I'm hanging onto mine.
Ink jets have come a long way in the last few years, and they've reached the stage where, with the right paper, they can print photographic-quality pictures.
What does this mean? Well, everyone who's planning on doing something nasty-and-traceable will do it on an older printer. Some stupid people won't, and they'll get caught, justifying in the minds of the Man and the public that such watermarking is worthwhile. But, like drug smuggling, the vast majority will slip by unnoticed.
Freedoms will be curtailed, money will be wasted, and it'll all be for nothing. Have a nice day.
Who decides what is 'defective' and what isn't?
Parents. It could be argued that they're not qualified, but neither are most of them qualified to be parents. However, see below.
Will parents be forced to disallow defective gene sequences?
My bet is they won't be told. During 'routine checkups', anything genetically nasty will be excised. Nastiness being whatever the doctor doesn't like.
Will geneticists be sued if an engineered child isn't the well-behaved genius his/her parents hoped for?
"This child comes with no guarantees whatsoever". Will people stand for it? My prediction: drug companies get the legislation pushed through, there's uproar for ten years, then it's accepted.
What will we lose by giving up some of our diversity?
Survival. Ultimately, the species will face greater threats because we won't have that fraction of the population that's immune to something that's capable of killing 90%. How do we stop it? Extraterrestrial colonisation is my favourite answer.
Why have an idiosyncratic or rebellious offspring when you can choose a cheerful and pliant one?
This, along with the 'beautiful and smart' argument, is the most commonly cited problem we'll face with genegeneering. But ask yourself this: how many people reading Katz' essay would be willing to splice 'compliance' into their sprogs? Not many.
Regardless of the technology, there'll always be a percentage of people who'll misuse it, and there'll always be a group of people who'll assume that this percentage is a majority. But I'd like to ask a few questions.
1. What percentage of the world's population were born into a world where their parents could take advantage of the latest medical technology?
2. Even assuming that universal medicare becomes available, is the entire world going to agree on what constitutes 'beautiful'? 'Smart' is also in the eye of the beholder.
The broadcasters are also not getting the advertisement money since it is not a registered broadcast
So what? I'd look on iCrave as a value-added reseller. If you use the iCrave site, then you're also getting the original ads for which the networks were paid. There's a compelling argument, IMO, that iCrave should be able to charge the networks. They're opening the networks' adverts to a wider audience.
CHeck out their little demo and you'll see how visible live and/or hot things are; it's impressive. But the street sign shows up as black. Does this mean that street signs will be unreadable? I imagine there's some way around it other than switching off your scope, or Cadillac are just begging for lawsuits.
Here in Ireland, we're a bit behind on the movie front; it's generally out on video in the US before we get to see it.
But anyway...
Last week I saw an amusing science fiction movie called 'Tron', which starred Captain Sheridan. Great plot, great graphics... I can't recommend it highly enough.
I was also jealous to note that you've all seen the new star wars movie. I'm really looking forward to it. Is it true that it's no longer called 'Revenge of the Jedi'?
Katz refers to the intelligentia as being anti-technology because of its effect of dumbing-down; this is doubtless true.
But it's also inevitable.
Literacy and eloquence are prized because, up to relatively recently, they were the only way you could advance yourself. Today, the ability to quote Obi-wan Kenobi is at least as likely to prove beneficial as the ability to quote Shakespeare. This isn't true in all cases of course; but the most popular web site aren't ones that cite the references to Plutarch in Julius Caesar.
The web is truly the medium of all media, with something for everyone. You may not like it, but it's possible to put together a hugely popular web site about Brad Pitt while being barely literate. It's possible to make a living off that web site if the ads on your site are effective.
America is dumbed down. The world will soon follow. But I've come to the conclusion that this isn't a bad thing; there are always poeple who will read and who will innovate and who will imagine. Those people will make it possible for the great unwashed to create, but using high-level creation tools (so to speak).
So why are people optimistic? Because however much people claim to have no interest in science, the rate of advancement is such that scarcely an issue of New Scientist comes out without the word 'breakthrough' in some story.
Most Americans know or know of someone who has had their life saved by technology. The see no reason that this rate of advance shouldn't go on indefinitely. Just don't mention the phrase 'gray goo' to them.
I believe France is equally strict about its .fr domain
Same in Ireland. Try to register anything that isn't your name and you have to produce a letterhead to prove that that's your company's name.
It's a pretty logical URL for someone to enter: www.business.com.
I disagree; I think that this was a phenomenal waste of money and my heartiest congratulations go to Mr Ostrofsky.
Domain dipping is only effective in the specific; if you're looking for the world's most-hyped beverage, do you type www.coke.com or www.cola.com? Similarly, no-one looks for Linux under www.operating-systems.com, and I would suspect entrepreneurs would look at a number of things -- www.entrepreneur.com, www.capital.com et al, and www.business.com will be but one of many they try.
business.com sounds like it's the sort of thing that will be effective, so ecompanies bought it without really thinking of whether it was worth it. A few minutes consideration and they'd have run away. I think.
Ostrofsky also will become an adviser to
business.com.
If you're going to hire an advisor, you might as well hire one that's capable for selling a domain for thousands of times its worth.
I doubt that Comet is sufficiently large that more than two or three people read the source; it's entirely possible for the problem to have gone unnoticed until now.
Maybe they're bastards; maybe they aren't. I'm willing to give anyone* the benefit out the doubt, and wait to see what they do next.
They're aware of the problem, and they're aware that we're aware of the problem. If it goes away now, I'll be happy. I still won't use their software coz it won't run on Linux, but that's a separate issue.
*well, almost everyone.
IMHO, this is yet another of those cases were someone implemented a nifty feature without thinking it through. What we have here is a company that can, with some effort, find out what a person is doing. at the moment, all they know is that someone, somewhere, visited a certain number of sites.
There's be the inevitable massive calls for boycotting, and (as tends to be the case), this will be an overreaction. I'm happy with Comet's response, and I don't think this is a reason to hang them out to dry.
The caps lock key is as important to AOL users as the little windows key is to all our 9x-using chums. Don't diss it.
I don't care how small the space bar gets as long as I can hit it with my right thumb. My old five-year-old dell space key is quite dirty, except for a 1-cm length that I've tapped millions of times. I've a dirty thumb, though.
An investment in Mozilla would help Red Hat on the desktop, where Linux has yet to significantly penetrate
Best news I've read in ages. There's no doubt that the browser is Linux's biggest weakness on the desktop at the moment, and an open source browser would go a long way to convincing many that Linux is a viable option to MS.
As for the inevitable anti-RH diatribes: pah! I say to you all. Red Hat has acted with honour on all occasions, and I'll continue to be a fan as long as they continue to do such great stuff for Linux, for Open Source and for Red Hat.
For a while now the (I think) US Navy has been experimenting with thought-controlled flight sims, but they were limited to moving a cursor up and down, and much practise was required. This looks cooler and better, and one step closer to the day when you can work without those distracting keyboards and microphones.
Try and find Lysistrata, the Sex Play.
Voila.
Canterbury Tales
here
Offtopic? Not a bit of it. These illustrate the fact that the web is a powerful force for good, and that loners who spend a lot of time surfing are at least as like to come out the other end as erudite, interesting members of society as sociopaths.