PLEASE GOD TELL ME ALREADY!!! I'd look up the URL for the news post I'm referencing, but your poor beloved archive is already slash-toast.
FYI/. readers, the Blue Spark Challenge was a made up race type mentioned ever so tantalizingly in regards to Mario Kart Double Dash.
BTW: You guys have the kind of satiric talent that would shine in any genre, and in the field of video game criticism its like staring at a goddamn supernova. I barely even play games anymore and I still check your posts daily. Thanks for your work.
In your weblog and other interviews concerning the Baroque Cycle you mention that the genesis of the series came in part from a realization you had about uniqueness of the era of western history known as the Enlightenment. The Baroque Cycle as a piece of historical fiction easily makes the case for that uniqueness, but begs the question of the author: What other periods of history would you say merit the same examination? Do you believe we have or will see another time like that of the Royal Society and the birth of the modern monetary system where so many rules of science and society are negotiated, written, or discovered in such a concentrated space/time/mind space?
Do you believe, as Cryptonomicon suggests, that we are actually in such a time right now, and what do you see are the key differences? It seems to me that after the whirlwinds of post-modernism there will never again come a time when singular men will have such places to stand as to move the world. Perhaps there is evidence that with information and organizational technologies small groups can wield the power men of the Enlightenment are attributed, but the issue gets so confused when there aren't faces or even personalities to attach to these ideas and policies as the Baroque Cycle and even other historical non-fictions have done.
Please feel free to pick and choose which parts of that question to answer, but more to the point you are by far my favorite author and I thank you so much for your enriching literature.
Because I realize that what I've said falls squarely in the category of criticising coders for not being more social and for not relating more to the 'liberal arts' crew that apparently knows how to better influence people and politicians better than they do. But that's not the idea, the idea is that in talking to coders, one can come away with a great understanding that they could not have gotten elsewhere. Coding truly lends itself to revelations about copyright, freedom, and expression that other fields do not. I just wish coders would speak up more to the right people instead of trying to pretend like they had degrees in Communications or Political Science, when having a conversation with someone who did would end up having a much greater impact in the long run.
I completely agree with the above post, but I also see the point of Declan's article. As an aside I'm sure that Lessig, contrary to what chrisd may believe, would definately see Declan's point as well.
I am not a coder, and if anything I'm more suited to politics than science. But through my associations with coders, and through reading books by Lessig and Stephenson and following discussions on/. and beyond (not to mention seeing Tron during my formative years), I've come to be very concerned with digital and cultural freedom. Its these facts that would make me better suited to do lobbying than any of/.'s coder majority.
Basically what Declan was saying was that it comes down to specialization. Coder's don't sew their own clothes because there are people and machines that do that for them better than they could. Same goes for lobbying and public influence of any kind. Coders have more power in the creation of subversive and revolutionary technologies than they do in their socio-polical skills.
And here I agree with Declan, but he also should have pointed out the need for a greater link between coders and skilled lobbyists and culturally minded individuals. The most active and revolutionary figures on the digital rights boat may not be coders, but they wouldn't be where they are if it weren't for Coders telling them what was up. Its that communication between people of differing skill sets, but similar value systems, that causes communal change.
In summary, the greatest challenges that coders can meet are those of coding (as Lessig himself would say) an architecture that is more free than Washington (or Hollywood) would want, and at the same time making sure that the people they converse with outside the tech community understand the battles that are being waged over the internet and technology (and the stakes that are involved). Its up to everyone, coders and everyone else, to talk about the things that are most important to them at all times, and to forge an understanding between those that are most affected by these new laws, and those that are most effective at fighting them in every arena.
We need more coders speaking up about their rights to a wider audience, but more than that we need more coders wispering into the ears of those who already have an audience. Lessig is such an important asset to the community precisely because he is outside of it. He is the voice of the coder (not to mention musician, user, free thinking individual) in the world of the law, because he devoted his life to law and legal discourse. If he had gotten a BS and a.com job instead, he wouldn't be as eloquent, well thought, or influential for the movement as he is. But by the same token, if it weren't for coders that hadn't gone to law school telling him of the importance of the issues affecting them, he would be working for Jack Valenti at this point, and not us.
Therein lies the ultimate goal. Accessing the greatest potential of your abilities in the name of freedom, while understanding the need of other individuals of different abilities in the same name. Helping those individuals do their jobs with a greater understanding of the dilemmas that face your specific community.
I really have nothing to say here, except that I frickin deekin love the Tattered Cover to death. I spent two years in Denver as a child, love the town, and just recently returned after 10 years for 8 hours on a roadtrip, spending 6 of those in the Tattered Cover. I'm so happy to see them being as cool in the legal world as they are in independent retail. If you have the means, I highly recommend the place. Congrats Tat'.
Have we learned nothing here in these last few years of being jacked over by corporations trying to sell products?
Where's your jaded/. instincts, boy???
Sure, this standard looks great, but for chrissakes wake up and smell the oligopolistic practices. Chances are this technology will be buried just as quickly as DSL is being kicked under the carpet. Its very likely that the new set manufacturers will simply not implement this technology into their sets, precisely because it will allow the existence of old sets along with new.
If people don't have to buy new sets, lots of them wont. If people know that old TV standards are headed for obsolescence, they will be more likely to buy new ones. This is the goal of Trinitron, RCA, Panasonic, and everyone else on the "Sell More Sets" bnandwagon. Its why DHTV was made in the first place, cuz everyone already has a friggin TV and they just can't sell as many as they used to.
We're jaded for a reason ladies and gents, don't forget that.
Only problem is, the geek world being as incestuous as it is, I'm quite sure a decent percentage of/. read the same Ars article you did.
CATS: YOU ARE ON YOUR WAY TO DESTRUCTION.
CAPTAIN: WHAT YOU SAY!!
I went to Stuy, and I know kids from Thomas Jefferson, Bronx Sci, Brooklyn Tech, and then I graduated HS from U of C Lab School in Chicago where I met kids from other (in)famous magnet schools like Whitney Young, and Lincoln Park. It's not for nothing that kids went there, on average kids from those schools are brighter than the average doornob. And actually, its the non-robots that always acted like they owned the world, the soulless math/sci robots stared at their feet to much to communicate any ego they might have developed.
Anyway, the whole idea of grade inflation at schools like that is to get other colleges to recognize the fact they they had to be relatively intelligent to take classes at those schools, without having to understand the cache of the school itself. So the whole argument goes out the window if colleges know about the HS's and start looking at 3.9's from Stuy as being better than 3.9's from Crenshaw. Unless Crenshaw is inflating... So now things get more complicated. Stuy sucks cuz as I'm surprised more Stuy ex-pats havne't pointed out, its on a 100.00 (and those decimal places do matter to far too many Stuyvies) scale, so 3.9's aren't possible. A better system is one like Whitney Young in Chicago, a 4.0 system that adds 1 point to the system for honors classes and 2 points for AP classes. That way any of the 'giftedness' is accounted for directly in the grading system.
The entire system needs an overhaul, but then again when hasn't a governmental institution needed an overhaul? I guess that's why we have a fascist for a president now, those private school waivers are looking mighty tempting...
No, he spent the last twenty years researching the films he wanted to make, as opposed to spending the Hollywood average of 20 minutes.
He did a lot of work on a project about Napolean in the 80's, but then decided against for lack of whatever it would take to make a good enough movie out of it. Then he spent the rest of his time researching for "AI", with a short (5 year?) break to put "Eyes Wide Shut" together exactly as it needed to be, only to have it edited at the last minute after his death.
I've heard that he had extensive talks with Spielberg about "AI", so I'm not completely aghast that such an opposite filmmaker (Kubrick != Spielberg) is taking the helm. Kubrick probably realized what one of the above trolls did, that "AI" may have to be a story about humanization and hence material for the biggest sappiest money-makingest (though still directorily free) director in Hollywood. At least that's what I hope, cuz if Spielberg wasn't right for this project, all I have left in my Kubrick waitlist is a glimmer of hope for an unedited "Eyes Wide Shut" DVD and the off chance that Criterion will ever finish their "Spartacus" DVD with some semblance of Kubrick's final cut in there.
What the DoD should do is spend all that money on a big parade to celebrate the Iridium re-entry into orbit. As the pieces enter the atmosphere everyone can watch them burn up like fireworks and celebrate in techno-pagan style a la "Max Headroom". All this new technology, we need to get on the ball making up new holidays, and Science Fiction has showed us enough examples that we should get on that already!
I've been up all night. Don't ask me what I've been doing, I really couldn't tell you. I've been up all night. In about 25 minutes I'll be going to breakfast. I went to breakfast yesterday as well, once again because I stayed up all night. Today is a little different from my other random purposeless all nighters. Today I got to be the first kid on my block to vote. The polls opened at 6 in the UIUC Snyder hall lounge. I rolled myself a cigarette, and mosied on over with my photo ID and certificate of registration. They told me I was the first person to vote at the dorms in this election. I voted for Ralph Nader.
Now I'm in a computer lab. Waiting for breakfast. For my omelet. Some Kiwi-Strawberry. A bagel.
"At some point, you have to say enough is enough. Today is that day for me.
I will go to the polls and vote for Ralph Nader. I am doing so for the
only reason you should ever vote for anyone. I am voting for Ralph because
it is what my conscience says is right. I am doing what they taught us to
do in civics class -- vote for who you think the best candidate is.
Period." -Michael Moore
2000_11_07, my first election day. I'm really young. I'm really young and
angry. I'm really young and annoyed. I'm really young and disolusioned. We
all are. And when it comes to voting, it doesn't even take being young to
be angry annoyed and disolusioned. This shit sucks. Campaigns suck.
Candidates suck. The Government sucks. Every day we see so much bullshit
all around us, its pathetic. I'm surprised anyone votes at all. Anyone.
The only reason I voted at all, the only reason I looked forward to my
first election, was Ralph Nader. The chance to vote for something
different. To say "I want something different." To point out in some small
way the fact that what we have isn't good enough. We all know why it isn't
good enough. Check the web links, read your friends' e-mails, whatever, its
obvious, so I wont even get into it.
We all know Ralph Nader is something different. We all know that the Green
Party is something different. We all know that simply acknowledging at a
federal level the notion of having more than one political party, er, I
mean, two political parties (had an inadvertent spurt of real awareness
there, sorry) is something different. We need something different. What we
have is not good enough. A lesser evil, a lesser anything is not good
enough.
It's time for breakfast. I feel good. I voted. I voted for something good.
Sure, quantum computing can factor enormous numbers really fast, but its been pointed out a number of times that as Quantum Computing Taketh Away, it also Giveth:
Encryption Destroyed and Resurrected
As mentioned above, the classic problem that a quantum computer is ideally suited for is cracking encryption codes, which relies on factoring large numbers. The strength of an encryption code is measured by the number of bits that needs to be factored. For example, it is illegal in the United States to export encryption technology using more than 40 bits (56 bits if you give a key to law-enforcement authorities). A 40-bit encryption method is not very secure. In September 1997, Ian Goldberg, a University of California at Berkeley graduate student, was able to crack a 40-bit code in three and a half hours using a network of 250 small computers.15 A 56-bit code is a bit better (16 bits better, actually). Ten months later, John Gilmore, a computer privacy activist, and Paul Kocher, an encryption expert, were able to break the 56-bit code in 56 hours using a specially designed computer that cost them $250,000 to build. But a quantum computer can easily factor any sized number (within its capacity). Quantum computing technology would essentially destroy digital encryption.
But as technology takes away, it also gives. A related quantum effect can provide a new method of encryption that can never be broken. Again, keep in mind that, in view of the Law of Accelerating Returns, "never" is not as long as it used to be.
This effect is called quantum entanglement. Einstein, who was not a fan of quantum mechanics, had a different name for it, calling it "spooky action at a distance." The phenomenon was recently demonstrated by Dr. Nicolas Gisin of the University of Geneva in a recent experiment across the city of Geneva.16 Dr. Gisin sent twin photons in opposite directions through optical fibers. Once the photons were about seven miles apart, they each encountered a glass plate from which they could either bounce off or pass through. Thus, they were each forced to make a decision to choose among two equally probable pathways. Since there was no possible communication link between the two photons, classical physics would predict that their decisions would be independent. But they both made the same decision. And they did so at the same instant in time, so even if there were an unknown communication path between them, there was not enough time for a message to travel from one photon to the other at the speed of light. The two particles were quantum entangled and communicated instantly with each other regardless of their separation. The effect was reliably repeated over many such photon pairs.
The apparent communication between the two photons takes place at a speed far greater than the speed of light. In theory, the speed is infinite in that the decoherence of the two photon travel decisions, according to quantum theory, takes place at exactly the same instant. Dr. Gisin's experiment was sufficiently sensitive to demonstrate the communication was at least ten thousand times faster than the speed of light.
So, does this violate Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity, which postulates the speed of light as the fastest speed at which we can transmit information? The answer is no -- there is no information being communicated by the entangled photons. The decision of the photons is random -- a profound quantum randomness -- and randomness is precisely not information. Both the sender and the receiver of the message simultaneously access the identical random decisions of the entangled photons, which are used to encode and decode, respectively, the message. So we are communicating randomness -- not information -- at speeds far greater than the speed of light. The only way we could convert the random decisions of the photons into information is if we edited the random sequence of photon decisions. But editing this random sequence would require observing the photon decisions, which in turn would cause quantum decoherence, which would destroy the quantum entanglement. So Einstein's theory is preserved.
Even though we cannot instantly transmit information using quantum entanglement, transmitting randomness is still very useful. It allows us to resurrect the process of encryption that quantum computing would destroy. If the sender and receiver of a message are at the two ends of an optical fiber, they can use the precisely matched random decisions of a stream of quantum entangled photons to respectively encode and decode a message. Since the encryption is fundamentally random and nonrepeating, it cannot be broken. Eavesdropping would also be impossible, as this would cause quantum decoherence that could be detected at both ends. So privacy is preserved.
Note that in quantum encryption, we are transmitting the code instantly. The actual message will arrive much more slowly -- at only the speed of light.
I thought the standard classification time limit was 50 years a la the Zabruder Film and all that JFK stuff. I don't really know though. That'd be pretty sad if they still thought the tech was a security risk today. It would imply that they did some seriously needed upgrading before the declassication occured.
What's more worrysome for me though is what they have classified that we don't know about. What sort of AI or Quantum Prime Factoring Machine do they have classified now that we'll be hearing about in 2055?
"I'm paranoid I'm paranoid that everybody's coming to get me Just say ya never met me I'm running under ground with the moles, livin in holes."
Hopefully you mean suing the living daylights out of contentville is cool, and that after it is a smoldering pit that cant put a price tag on thesii making them free as in beer if not speech. But otherwise, you should note that Contentville is in fact charging for stolen ideas.
how else could you differentiate different emails passing through the system?
How bout using software installed on ISP systems instead of some ominous black box clearly put their by watchers to avoid being watched. And once again I have to wonder if Cringley has his finger on a better pulse than EPIC or EFF with his article suggesting the FBI wants to start the process of creating an off switch for this newfangled 'internet'.
The main point here is not that the FBI is tapping e-mails. The general trend in National Intelligence (*muffled laughter*) is obviously going to yeild things like Carnivore, but what groups like the ACLU want is what we all want, KNOWLEDGE! We simply want to know what the hell is going on in this little black box, because we as citizens have a responsibility to watch the watchers.
Red tape or not, there should have been more information available on this little gizmo before the sudden accross the board implementation came about. Steady encroachments on rights are bad enough, but sudden sweeping moves deserve intense and widely publisized scrutiny in my opinion. Sets a good example...
Check out this computer science curriculum: http://www.stuy.edu/academics/compsci/ Stuyvesant is a public magnet math/science High School in New York City that's got a very well developed CS department based around the efforts of a guy they call 'Z'. During my short time there I never got the chance to delve into the CS classes but the kids are fanatically devoted to whatever it is that they do. The site hints at a lot of GNU/Linux open source training and developement, and the school is infamous for its hackers. Also, they're the only High School I know of that links to/.
What they should do is create a.tm for trademark or a.c for copyright, and reserve those for persons or corporations (which rtmark.com claims are the same under some obscure american law, see CRPP) who have slogans or name compyrighted or trademarked, and then allow the rest of the domains to be free as in speech. It's not as though WIPO is against reserving domain names, hence the criteria for getting a.edu or.gov. This would just make it alot simpler and less litigious.
The 'fishy' something may be very obvious. It could very simply be an "I told you so" game:
I (Stephen King, publisher bitch) am a happening twenty-first century writer, I am hip, and I am open to new ideas. I want to cater to those who believe the centralized publishing machine is fascist and outdated, therefor I will try out one of your new fangled 'internet' schemes for reimbursing an artist/writer for his/her time. Let's see how it works.
3 months later
Okay, this failed, (as I knew it would) and I didn't get reimbursed for my time. You geeks and your high faluten talk of a new artistic econony, look here, it didn't work! Now we can all go home, back to our centralized fascist distribution system, and hopefully now you wont keep bothering me (and the whipcracking publishers above me) about free(speach/beer, doesn't matter)dom of information.
Now, I like Stephen King, I've always had a soft spot for the little wierdo ever since The Shining and The Gunslinger, so I hope this isn't the case. But its very plausible, and a little thing called Ahkam's Razor (sp?) keeps poking me in the back. Maybe he is doing this, but without realizing the publisher's motives. I don't know, we'll see how it pans out.
Slashdot Mirror
Seconded, definitely thought this was a prank at first. Guess I'm more jaded than I thought.
PLEASE GOD TELL ME ALREADY!!!
/. readers, the Blue Spark Challenge was a made up race type mentioned ever so tantalizingly in regards to Mario Kart Double Dash.
I'd look up the URL for the news post I'm referencing, but your poor beloved archive is already slash-toast.
FYI
BTW: You guys have the kind of satiric talent that would shine in any genre, and in the field of video game criticism its like staring at a goddamn supernova. I barely even play games anymore and I still check your posts daily. Thanks for your work.
In your weblog and other interviews concerning the Baroque Cycle you mention that the genesis of the series came in part from a realization you had about uniqueness of the era of western history known as the Enlightenment. The Baroque Cycle as a piece of historical fiction easily makes the case for that uniqueness, but begs the question of the author: What other periods of history would you say merit the same examination? Do you believe we have or will see another time like that of the Royal Society and the birth of the modern monetary system where so many rules of science and society are negotiated, written, or discovered in such a concentrated space/time/mind space?
Do you believe, as Cryptonomicon suggests, that we are actually in such a time right now, and what do you see are the key differences? It seems to me that after the whirlwinds of post-modernism there will never again come a time when singular men will have such places to stand as to move the world. Perhaps there is evidence that with information and organizational technologies small groups can wield the power men of the Enlightenment are attributed, but the issue gets so confused when there aren't faces or even personalities to attach to these ideas and policies as the Baroque Cycle and even other historical non-fictions have done.
Please feel free to pick and choose which parts of that question to answer, but more to the point you are by far my favorite author and I thank you so much for your enriching literature.
Because I realize that what I've said falls squarely in the category of criticising coders for not being more social and for not relating more to the 'liberal arts' crew that apparently knows how to better influence people and politicians better than they do. But that's not the idea, the idea is that in talking to coders, one can come away with a great understanding that they could not have gotten elsewhere. Coding truly lends itself to revelations about copyright, freedom, and expression that other fields do not. I just wish coders would speak up more to the right people instead of trying to pretend like they had degrees in Communications or Political Science, when having a conversation with someone who did would end up having a much greater impact in the long run.
I completely agree with the above post, but I also see the point of Declan's article. As an aside I'm sure that Lessig, contrary to what chrisd may believe, would definately see Declan's point as well.
/. and beyond (not to mention seeing Tron during my formative years), I've come to be very concerned with digital and cultural freedom. Its these facts that would make me better suited to do lobbying than any of /.'s coder majority.
.com job instead, he wouldn't be as eloquent, well thought, or influential for the movement as he is. But by the same token, if it weren't for coders that hadn't gone to law school telling him of the importance of the issues affecting them, he would be working for Jack Valenti at this point, and not us.
I am not a coder, and if anything I'm more suited to politics than science. But through my associations with coders, and through reading books by Lessig and Stephenson and following discussions on
Basically what Declan was saying was that it comes down to specialization. Coder's don't sew their own clothes because there are people and machines that do that for them better than they could. Same goes for lobbying and public influence of any kind. Coders have more power in the creation of subversive and revolutionary technologies than they do in their socio-polical skills.
And here I agree with Declan, but he also should have pointed out the need for a greater link between coders and skilled lobbyists and culturally minded individuals. The most active and revolutionary figures on the digital rights boat may not be coders, but they wouldn't be where they are if it weren't for Coders telling them what was up. Its that communication between people of differing skill sets, but similar value systems, that causes communal change.
In summary, the greatest challenges that coders can meet are those of coding (as Lessig himself would say) an architecture that is more free than Washington (or Hollywood) would want, and at the same time making sure that the people they converse with outside the tech community understand the battles that are being waged over the internet and technology (and the stakes that are involved). Its up to everyone, coders and everyone else, to talk about the things that are most important to them at all times, and to forge an understanding between those that are most affected by these new laws, and those that are most effective at fighting them in every arena.
We need more coders speaking up about their rights to a wider audience, but more than that we need more coders wispering into the ears of those who already have an audience. Lessig is such an important asset to the community precisely because he is outside of it. He is the voice of the coder (not to mention musician, user, free thinking individual) in the world of the law, because he devoted his life to law and legal discourse. If he had gotten a BS and a
Therein lies the ultimate goal. Accessing the greatest potential of your abilities in the name of freedom, while understanding the need of other individuals of different abilities in the same name. Helping those individuals do their jobs with a greater understanding of the dilemmas that face your specific community.
Just get it off of KaZaA. not that there's anything right with that...
I really have nothing to say here, except that I frickin deekin love the Tattered Cover to death. I spent two years in Denver as a child, love the town, and just recently returned after 10 years for 8 hours on a roadtrip, spending 6 of those in the Tattered Cover. I'm so happy to see them being as cool in the legal world as they are in independent retail. If you have the means, I highly recommend the place.
Congrats Tat'.
Prince has come forward as a defender of Napster as well, having written about the issues on his website: http://www.npgonlineltd.com
The Offspring had that napster tour, and Radiohead has announced their support of what Napster has done for their fans and their popularity.
Have we learned nothing here in these last few years of being jacked over by corporations trying to sell products? /. instincts, boy???
Where's your jaded
Sure, this standard looks great, but for chrissakes wake up and smell the oligopolistic practices. Chances are this technology will be buried just as quickly as DSL is being kicked under the carpet. Its very likely that the new set manufacturers will simply not implement this technology into their sets, precisely because it will allow the existence of old sets along with new.
If people don't have to buy new sets, lots of them wont. If people know that old TV standards are headed for obsolescence, they will be more likely to buy new ones. This is the goal of Trinitron, RCA, Panasonic, and everyone else on the "Sell More Sets" bnandwagon. Its why DHTV was made in the first place, cuz everyone already has a friggin TV and they just can't sell as many as they used to.
We're jaded for a reason ladies and gents, don't forget that.
-chorder
Only problem is, the geek world being as incestuous as it is, I'm quite sure a decent percentage of /. read the same Ars article you did.
CATS: YOU ARE ON YOUR WAY TO DESTRUCTION.
CAPTAIN: WHAT YOU SAY!!
scrappy indeed, loveable no doubt.
love ya!
-rt
I went to Stuy, and I know kids from Thomas Jefferson, Bronx Sci, Brooklyn Tech, and then I graduated HS from U of C Lab School in Chicago where I met kids from other (in)famous magnet schools like Whitney Young, and Lincoln Park. It's not for nothing that kids went there, on average kids from those schools are brighter than the average doornob. And actually, its the non-robots that always acted like they owned the world, the soulless math/sci robots stared at their feet to much to communicate any ego they might have developed.
Anyway, the whole idea of grade inflation at schools like that is to get other colleges to recognize the fact they they had to be relatively intelligent to take classes at those schools, without having to understand the cache of the school itself. So the whole argument goes out the window if colleges know about the HS's and start looking at 3.9's from Stuy as being better than 3.9's from Crenshaw. Unless Crenshaw is inflating... So now things get more complicated. Stuy sucks cuz as I'm surprised more Stuy ex-pats havne't pointed out, its on a 100.00 (and those decimal places do matter to far too many Stuyvies) scale, so 3.9's aren't possible. A better system is one like Whitney Young in Chicago, a 4.0 system that adds 1 point to the system for honors classes and 2 points for AP classes. That way any of the 'giftedness' is accounted for directly in the grading system.
The entire system needs an overhaul, but then again when hasn't a governmental institution needed an overhaul? I guess that's why we have a fascist for a president now, those private school waivers are looking mighty tempting...
-rt
Preach on Brother Man.
I'd rather be a Kubrick Buff than a Film Buff any day of the week.
No, he spent the last twenty years researching the films he wanted to make, as opposed to spending the Hollywood average of 20 minutes.
He did a lot of work on a project about Napolean in the 80's, but then decided against for lack of whatever it would take to make a good enough movie out of it. Then he spent the rest of his time researching for "AI", with a short (5 year?) break to put "Eyes Wide Shut" together exactly as it needed to be, only to have it edited at the last minute after his death.
I've heard that he had extensive talks with Spielberg about "AI", so I'm not completely aghast that such an opposite filmmaker (Kubrick != Spielberg) is taking the helm. Kubrick probably realized what one of the above trolls did, that "AI" may have to be a story about humanization and hence material for the biggest sappiest money-makingest (though still directorily free) director in Hollywood. At least that's what I hope, cuz if Spielberg wasn't right for this project, all I have left in my Kubrick waitlist is a glimmer of hope for an unedited "Eyes Wide Shut" DVD and the off chance that Criterion will ever finish their "Spartacus" DVD with some semblance of Kubrick's final cut in there.
-Not So Annonymous Kubrick Devotee
What the DoD should do is spend all that money on a big parade to celebrate the Iridium re-entry into orbit. As the pieces enter the atmosphere everyone can watch them burn up like fireworks and celebrate in techno-pagan style a la "Max Headroom". All this new technology, we need to get on the ball making up new holidays, and Science Fiction has showed us enough examples that we should get on that already!
I've been up all night. Don't ask me what I've been doing, I really couldn't tell you. I've been up all night. In about 25 minutes I'll be going to breakfast. I went to breakfast yesterday as well, once again because I stayed up all night. Today is a little different from my other random purposeless all nighters. Today I got to be the first kid on my block to vote. The polls opened at 6 in the UIUC Snyder hall lounge. I rolled myself a cigarette, and mosied on over with my photo ID and certificate of registration. They told me I was the first person to vote at the dorms in this election. I voted for Ralph Nader.
Now I'm in a computer lab. Waiting for breakfast. For my omelet. Some Kiwi-Strawberry. A bagel.
"At some point, you have to say enough is enough. Today is that day for me. I will go to the polls and vote for Ralph Nader. I am doing so for the only reason you should ever vote for anyone. I am voting for Ralph because it is what my conscience says is right. I am doing what they taught us to do in civics class -- vote for who you think the best candidate is. Period." -Michael Moore
2000_11_07, my first election day. I'm really young. I'm really young and angry. I'm really young and annoyed. I'm really young and disolusioned. We all are. And when it comes to voting, it doesn't even take being young to be angry annoyed and disolusioned. This shit sucks. Campaigns suck. Candidates suck. The Government sucks. Every day we see so much bullshit all around us, its pathetic. I'm surprised anyone votes at all. Anyone. The only reason I voted at all, the only reason I looked forward to my first election, was Ralph Nader. The chance to vote for something different. To say "I want something different." To point out in some small way the fact that what we have isn't good enough. We all know why it isn't good enough. Check the web links, read your friends' e-mails, whatever, its obvious, so I wont even get into it.
We all know Ralph Nader is something different. We all know that the Green Party is something different. We all know that simply acknowledging at a federal level the notion of having more than one political party, er, I mean, two political parties (had an inadvertent spurt of real awareness there, sorry) is something different. We need something different. What we have is not good enough. A lesser evil, a lesser anything is not good enough.
It's time for breakfast. I feel good. I voted. I voted for something good.
-chorder
Sure, quantum computing can factor enormous numbers really fast, but its been pointed out a number of times that as Quantum Computing Taketh Away, it also Giveth:
Encryption Destroyed and Resurrected
As mentioned above, the classic problem that a quantum computer is ideally suited for is cracking encryption codes, which relies on factoring large numbers. The strength of an encryption code is measured by the number of bits that needs to be factored. For example, it is illegal in the United States to export encryption technology using more than 40 bits (56 bits if you give a key to law-enforcement authorities). A 40-bit encryption method is not very secure. In September 1997, Ian Goldberg, a University of California at Berkeley graduate student, was able to crack a 40-bit code in three and a half hours using a network of 250 small computers.15 A 56-bit code is a bit better (16 bits better, actually). Ten months later, John Gilmore, a computer privacy activist, and Paul Kocher, an encryption expert, were able to break the 56-bit code in 56 hours using a specially designed computer that cost them $250,000 to build. But a quantum computer can easily factor any sized number (within its capacity). Quantum computing technology would essentially destroy digital encryption.
But as technology takes away, it also gives. A related quantum effect can provide a new method of encryption that can never be broken. Again, keep in mind that, in view of the Law of Accelerating Returns, "never" is not as long as it used to be.
This effect is called quantum entanglement. Einstein, who was not a fan of quantum mechanics, had a different name for it, calling it "spooky action at a distance." The phenomenon was recently demonstrated by Dr. Nicolas Gisin of the University of Geneva in a recent experiment across the city of Geneva.16 Dr. Gisin sent twin photons in opposite directions through optical fibers. Once the photons were about seven miles apart, they each encountered a glass plate from which they could either bounce off or pass through. Thus, they were each forced to make a decision to choose among two equally probable pathways. Since there was no possible communication link between the two photons, classical physics would predict that their decisions would be independent. But they both made the same decision. And they did so at the same instant in time, so even if there were an unknown communication path between them, there was not enough time for a message to travel from one photon to the other at the speed of light. The two particles were quantum entangled and communicated instantly with each other regardless of their separation. The effect was reliably repeated over many such photon pairs.
The apparent communication between the two photons takes place at a speed far greater than the speed of light. In theory, the speed is infinite in that the decoherence of the two photon travel decisions, according to quantum theory, takes place at exactly the same instant. Dr. Gisin's experiment was sufficiently sensitive to demonstrate the communication was at least ten thousand times faster than the speed of light.
So, does this violate Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity, which postulates the speed of light as the fastest speed at which we can transmit information? The answer is no -- there is no information being communicated by the entangled photons. The decision of the photons is random -- a profound quantum randomness -- and randomness is precisely not information. Both the sender and the receiver of the message simultaneously access the identical random decisions of the entangled photons, which are used to encode and decode, respectively, the message. So we are communicating randomness -- not information -- at speeds far greater than the speed of light. The only way we could convert the random decisions of the photons into information is if we edited the random sequence of photon decisions. But editing this random sequence would require observing the photon decisions, which in turn would cause quantum decoherence, which would destroy the quantum entanglement. So Einstein's theory is preserved.
Even though we cannot instantly transmit information using quantum entanglement, transmitting randomness is still very useful. It allows us to resurrect the process of encryption that quantum computing would destroy. If the sender and receiver of a message are at the two ends of an optical fiber, they can use the precisely matched random decisions of a stream of quantum entangled photons to respectively encode and decode a message. Since the encryption is fundamentally random and nonrepeating, it cannot be broken. Eavesdropping would also be impossible, as this would cause quantum decoherence that could be detected at both ends. So privacy is preserved.
Note that in quantum encryption, we are transmitting the code instantly. The actual message will arrive much more slowly -- at only the speed of light.
-Ray Kurzweil, The Age of Spiritual Machines, pg. 115
More on Quantum Cryptography at:
http://qso.lanl.gov/qc/
For those of us who are Paranoically Inclined (tm)
I want the future now!
http://www.lanl. gov
This one works.
I thought the standard classification time limit was 50 years a la the Zabruder Film and all that JFK stuff. I don't really know though. That'd be pretty sad if they still thought the tech was a security risk today. It would imply that they did some seriously needed upgrading before the declassication occured.
What's more worrysome for me though is what they have classified that we don't know about. What sort of AI or Quantum Prime Factoring Machine do they have classified now that we'll be hearing about in 2055?
"I'm paranoid I'm paranoid that everybody's coming to get me
Just say ya never met me
I'm running under ground with the moles, livin in holes."
I'm not sick, but I'm not well.
Hopefully you mean suing the living daylights out of contentville is cool, and that after it is a smoldering pit that cant put a price tag on thesii making them free as in beer if not speech. But otherwise, you should note that Contentville is in fact charging for stolen ideas.
how else could you differentiate different emails passing through the system?
How bout using software installed on ISP systems instead of some ominous black box clearly put their by watchers to avoid being watched. And once again I have to wonder if Cringley has his finger on a better pulse than EPIC or EFF with his article suggesting the FBI wants to start the process of creating an off switch for this newfangled 'internet'.
The main point here is not that the FBI is tapping e-mails. The general trend in National Intelligence (*muffled laughter*) is obviously going to yeild things like Carnivore, but what groups like the ACLU want is what we all want, KNOWLEDGE! We simply want to know what the hell is going on in this little black box, because we as citizens have a responsibility to watch the watchers.
Red tape or not, there should have been more information available on this little gizmo before the sudden accross the board implementation came about. Steady encroachments on rights are bad enough, but sudden sweeping moves deserve intense and widely publisized scrutiny in my opinion. Sets a good example...
Check out this computer science curriculum: /.
http://www.stuy.edu/academics/compsci/ Stuyvesant is a public magnet math/science High School in New York City that's got a very well developed CS department based around the efforts of a guy they call 'Z'. During my short time there I never got the chance to delve into the CS classes but the kids are fanatically devoted to whatever it is that they do. The site hints at a lot of GNU/Linux open source training and developement, and the school is infamous for its hackers. Also, they're the only High School I know of that links to
What they should do is create a .tm for trademark or a .c for copyright, and reserve those for persons or corporations (which rtmark.com claims are the same under some obscure american law, see CRPP) who have slogans or name compyrighted or trademarked, and then allow the rest of the domains to be free as in speech. It's not as though WIPO is against reserving domain names, hence the criteria for getting a .edu or .gov. This would just make it alot simpler and less litigious.
-chorder
The 'fishy' something may be very obvious. It could very simply be an "I told you so" game:
I (Stephen King, publisher bitch) am a happening twenty-first century writer, I am hip, and I am open to new ideas. I want to cater to those who believe the centralized publishing machine is fascist and outdated, therefor I will try out one of your new fangled 'internet' schemes for reimbursing an artist/writer for his/her time. Let's see how it works.
3 months later
Okay, this failed, (as I knew it would) and I didn't get reimbursed for my time. You geeks and your high faluten talk of a new artistic econony, look here, it didn't work! Now we can all go home, back to our centralized fascist distribution system, and hopefully now you wont keep bothering me (and the whipcracking publishers above me) about free(speach/beer, doesn't matter)dom of information.
Now, I like Stephen King, I've always had a soft spot for the little wierdo ever since The Shining and The Gunslinger, so I hope this isn't the case. But its very plausible, and a little thing called Ahkam's Razor (sp?) keeps poking me in the back. Maybe he is doing this, but without realizing the publisher's motives. I don't know, we'll see how it pans out.