Furthermore, any company who doesn't want to distibute plans for use with these printers, just won't, and it's not like you'll be able to just grab your friend's random object he bought and print yourself one.
The printer is the first step. People will distribute plans, or blueprints, as they choose (or not, as you said).
However, the next step is the scanner. A non-destructive scanner would be optimal but I would imagine the first scanner would be destructive: it would tear apart the item an atom (or molecule) at a time. Or even in larger chunks, because atomic precision isn't necessary when replicating, say, a Corvette. But to replicate nanomachines we'd need atomic precision.
So McDonald's doesn't have to agree to give out any blueprints once the scanner becomes available: purchase a single Big Mac, stuff it in the scanner, and Freenet will have blueprints for "the perfect Big Mac" freely available to the world.
Whatever happened to the Linux Investment Group (perhaps it had another name; it was the "Linux company incubator" company) which was soliciting for investments from accredited investors back in the 1999/2000 timeframe?
I heard it had gone under. What happened to the money the investors invested? Did anyone get anything back, or was it all spent?
(I came very close to investing, but decided to put my $100K into a different company that went belly-up. Oh well.)
Perhaps it's the Vogon spaceship on its way to Earth, broadcasting the "you are about to be paved for an interstellar highway" message. It increased because the ship's getting closer...
I first read Engines of Creation about 10 years ago (it was published in 1986, and you can read it online, or download it for free, at the above link).
A few years later Drexler published Unbounding the Future which is also available on-line.
In 1995, Ed Regis wrote the book Nano which is not available on-line, but was a much better introduction to the technology and ideas behind it, geared toward the layman. (Read some of the user comments at Amazon.)
The technology is inevitable; if we ban it, then it will be created in (and controlled by!) other countries. So we must develop it, and we must develop it first, because there are plenty of issues with misuse (diseases targeted to a certain skin/hair/eye color, nationality, etc.), terrorism, and world destruction (the "gray goo" problem).
Eric Drexler and his wife Christine Peterson created the Foresight Institute which promotes nanotechnology policy and research, and Chris is also very big on open source as a way to disseminate nano. This is where I got most of the grandfather post from, her ideas on merging our current model with an open-source-based model.
There is also a Slashcode-based site for discussion of nanotechnology at Nanodot.org.
I realize you were joking, but this state of mind is brought on by something more powerful than recreational substances: ideas.
I don't expect to be able to walk into a 7-11 and snatch a bottle of Coke and tell them "Soda must be FREE! WooHoo!"
We're currently in the first stages of a complete technological revolution, brought about by advanced technology and culminating in nanotechnology.
Once we have full-blown nanotech, we will be able to "copy" any physical object. Just like Cringely's file-sharing business model, there will be an object-sharing business model: a company purchases one copy of all physical goods (a Corvette, a can of Coke, a desk, chair, table, lamp, TV, sofa, the best steak, etc.), and then "scans" them and makes the blueprints available to all shareholders.
So you just download the blueprints and your nanofactory creates the item for you. Yes, this causes problems because nobody is being paid (not even the makers of the nanofactories, because they can be scanned and duplicated -- we only need one nanofactory) -- but at that point money won't matter, because the struggling artist/Coke executive/Corvette dealer could simply obtain a nanofactory and "have it all" themselves.
The future system will be a lot like the open source society -- a gift society, where you are valued not by how much money you can earn, but by how much you can better the lives of your fellow wo/men.
And products will continue to be improved, just not under the current model. Someone in a previous article had asked "Why will companies continue to innovate? Who would want more horsepower, or lower MPG, when you can just copy the car?" The answer is that individuals will collaborate and innovate, not necessarily under the wing of a corporation. Automotive engineers, newly unemployed and with a cornucopia of goods available to them, would likely get bored after a bit and want to continue doing what inspired them; a community will grow just like the open source community has, around fostering new ideas and further developing older ones.
No, you can't walk into a store and say "Soda must be free!!!" and walk out with a bottle of Coke. But one day you'll be able to make a copy of that bottle in your own kitchen. Will you be breaking laws by doing so? Should those laws exist? In other words, given that technology can give us an unlimited supply of anything, should there be artificial legal boundaries simply to prop up older business models? If things go right, in the future there will be an abundant public domain; in fact, I would imagine us reverting to the way it was before copyrights, where ideas immediately enter the public domain upon conception.
[...] I'd say that Linux has a whole bunch of black eyes from this and it will still be a few years before it gets to court.
It's been said that "With enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow." (Linus Torvalds).
So... SCO may blacken some of those eyes, but there will be many more that are left untarnished. Yes, SCO is giving Linux many black eyes, but this is the height of the "then they fight you" phase that Gandhi spoke of. I predict the fight will get dirtier before the "then you win" phase.
(Aside: I've wanted to short SCO since they were at 9. Good thing I don't have any money left! 1/2;-)
The article is actually a note for PRNewswire to disregard the earlier article about SCO's acquisition of Vultus Technology, but the headline gave me a good chuckle.
Not having to compress video and audio, thus not degrading the quality, is one use we would not mind having. It is good for both pros and average users alike.
Audio and video should be compressed, always -- but with a lossless compression rather than the currently-popular lossy compression formats.
Lossless compression, like FLAC et al (not sure of the state-of-the-art in video lossless compression) truly saves space without sacrificing a bit of quality.
Now, having it built into the file system would be a neat feat. NTFS already has compression built into it; it'd be cool to have it recognize certain files types and determine the class of compression algorithm to use based on the file type. (Or, just thinking out loud, perhaps it could test various forms of compression to determine the best one for that particular file? It'd have to be done "in the background" and at a low priority, but that'd be interesting...)
Re:Dean for President
on
Saving the Net
·
· Score: 2, Funny
And I for one welcome our new flying car overlords!
Hi, I respect you (and thanks for your sig) so please keep down the name calling.
Last year I passed the Series 3 exam (commodities) and became a commodities broker for a short period of time (they were a bunch of crooks so I didn't last long). We were handed sheets of paper that were faxed to them containing names and numbers.
Now, yes, I could imagine that the broker would trust that the company they get them from ran it through the database. However, given that the cost per violation is something like $10,000, I would bet money that the broker would instruct every salesperson to verify the numbers prior to calling.
Or, the manager who receives the faxes would run each number through the database. My point is that there are costs to comply with this law, and those costs come directly out of the consumer's wallet (in the increased costs to the company of providing goods and services).
Thanks again for your sig.;-)
If the government was smart about it, they could add "improved services" to the Do Not Call List, so that for $20 a year you could be added to a Do Not Call List for Political calls as well. And an additional $30/yr to not receive non-profit calls. And an extra $100/yr to not receive the survey calls.
Another free porn site is ninenine.com, also advertised here. Again, thanks!
Exactly -- and MS had to tell Wall Street or risk being sued. They need to disclose the risks to their business to their shareholders; not doing so would lead to a lawsuit if Linux started eating Microsoft's market share.
Puts them between a rock and a hard place: by stating the risk, they're alerting people to the idea that Linux is an acceptable replacement for Windows. They don't want to do that, but they also fear shareholder lawsuits. So it's really good news that they stated this, for all involved: Microsoft believes a shareholder lawsuit is worse than publicly stating that Linux is superior; and we are happy to hear them admit that Linux is superior.
Probably the single biggest improvement is something that we call a "mod" and I think BitKeeper calls a "changeset". It's a collection of files that you check in all at once and can track as a single entity.
Perforce has had this for many years. (It too is not free, but it's not that huge an improvement; I am not familiar with the state-of-the-art in free software, but I would imagine at least one system has atomic checkins.)
The Do Not Call List is interesting. I believe it's going to do great damage to the economy (like we need any more): before calling, a marketer must first verify that the number they are about to call is not on the list. This should take between 30 and 60 seconds, given a decent web interface (not sure they will have one, though, but a company can put together a database application -- in fact, if the government doesn't create one I'm sure a cottage industry will pop up selling such).
A marketer who calls 100 people in an average day will then have almost two extra hours of work to do -- either increasing his day, or decreasing his productivity.
In discussing it with someone else, they said that it might actually increase his productivity, as he would then be calling people who want to be called. This idea has some merit, as after all it is a game of percentages.
Personally, I've been getting a ton of "survey" calls recently, which the Do Not Call List forced: sales calls are illegal, but three types of calls are exempt: political, non-profit, and surveys. So companies are now performing "surveys" in which they ask about products, and if the callee responds positively to the survey, they're told where and how they can purchase the product. Sneaky and pretty stupid, because now all survey callers get hung up on, including any that may have been valid.
Plus, it's impossible never do anything that infracts on the law. Especially here in the US where mere words are considered crimes.
These words were written 50 years ago, but are all too relevant today. From Atlas Shrugged:
"Did you really think that we want those laws to be observed?" said Dr. Ferris. "We
want them broken. You'd better get it straight That it's not a bunch of boy scouts you're up against- then you'll know that this is not the age for beautiful gestures. We're after power and we mean it. You fellows were pikers, but we know the real trick, and you'd better get wise to it. There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What's there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced nor objectively interpreted - and you create a nation of law-breakers - and then you cash in on guilt. Now that's the system, Mr. Rearden, that's the game, and once you understand it, you'll be much easier to deal with."
What's actually even more amusing, as I was re-reading the end of the quote, is that religion has been "cashing in on guilt" for millenia. But it's the government I fear more, since religions (these days) generally don't have guns to use to separate their customers from their cash (as governments do).
Soilder? As in Soil Der Pants? I know I would if a nuke was incoming.
I know this is a joke, but it's really interesting as to why we soil our pants in times of crisis.
It's evolutionary: prey, when running from predators, would take a dump in order to "lighten the load" so to speak. It's not much, but every ounce counts when your life is on the line.
Slashdot Mirror
No, it's $4 million.
4 large == $4,000.
If you're going to use Italian mathematics please make sure to get the units correct. ;-)
The printer is the first step. People will distribute plans, or blueprints, as they choose (or not, as you said).
However, the next step is the scanner. A non-destructive scanner would be optimal but I would imagine the first scanner would be destructive: it would tear apart the item an atom (or molecule) at a time. Or even in larger chunks, because atomic precision isn't necessary when replicating, say, a Corvette. But to replicate nanomachines we'd need atomic precision.
So McDonald's doesn't have to agree to give out any blueprints once the scanner becomes available: purchase a single Big Mac, stuff it in the scanner, and Freenet will have blueprints for "the perfect Big Mac" freely available to the world.
</a>
I heard it had gone under. What happened to the money the investors invested? Did anyone get anything back, or was it all spent?
(I came very close to investing, but decided to put my $100K into a different company that went belly-up. Oh well.)
Perhaps it's the Vogon spaceship on its way to Earth, broadcasting the "you are about to be paved for an interstellar highway" message. It increased because the ship's getting closer...
I haven't read the entire patent (like most software patents, it's very verbose), but you can look it up here.
There's a link on their web site to that patent (bottom of the About page).
Btw, what's up with the soft-porn? The chick clearly has a nipple...
I first read Engines of Creation about 10 years ago (it was published in 1986, and you can read it online, or download it for free, at the above link).
A few years later Drexler published Unbounding the Future which is also available on-line.
In 1995, Ed Regis wrote the book Nano which is not available on-line, but was a much better introduction to the technology and ideas behind it, geared toward the layman. (Read some of the user comments at Amazon.)
The technology is inevitable; if we ban it, then it will be created in (and controlled by!) other countries. So we must develop it, and we must develop it first, because there are plenty of issues with misuse (diseases targeted to a certain skin/hair/eye color, nationality, etc.), terrorism, and world destruction (the "gray goo" problem).
Eric Drexler and his wife Christine Peterson created the Foresight Institute which promotes nanotechnology policy and research, and Chris is also very big on open source as a way to disseminate nano. This is where I got most of the grandfather post from, her ideas on merging our current model with an open-source-based model.
There is also a Slashcode-based site for discussion of nanotechnology at Nanodot.org.
I realize you were joking, but this state of mind is brought on by something more powerful than recreational substances: ideas.
We're currently in the first stages of a complete technological revolution, brought about by advanced technology and culminating in nanotechnology.
Once we have full-blown nanotech, we will be able to "copy" any physical object. Just like Cringely's file-sharing business model, there will be an object-sharing business model: a company purchases one copy of all physical goods (a Corvette, a can of Coke, a desk, chair, table, lamp, TV, sofa, the best steak, etc.), and then "scans" them and makes the blueprints available to all shareholders.
So you just download the blueprints and your nanofactory creates the item for you. Yes, this causes problems because nobody is being paid (not even the makers of the nanofactories, because they can be scanned and duplicated -- we only need one nanofactory) -- but at that point money won't matter, because the struggling artist/Coke executive/Corvette dealer could simply obtain a nanofactory and "have it all" themselves.
The future system will be a lot like the open source society -- a gift society, where you are valued not by how much money you can earn, but by how much you can better the lives of your fellow wo/men.
And products will continue to be improved, just not under the current model. Someone in a previous article had asked "Why will companies continue to innovate? Who would want more horsepower, or lower MPG, when you can just copy the car?" The answer is that individuals will collaborate and innovate, not necessarily under the wing of a corporation. Automotive engineers, newly unemployed and with a cornucopia of goods available to them, would likely get bored after a bit and want to continue doing what inspired them; a community will grow just like the open source community has, around fostering new ideas and further developing older ones.
No, you can't walk into a store and say "Soda must be free!!!" and walk out with a bottle of Coke. But one day you'll be able to make a copy of that bottle in your own kitchen. Will you be breaking laws by doing so? Should those laws exist? In other words, given that technology can give us an unlimited supply of anything, should there be artificial legal boundaries simply to prop up older business models? If things go right, in the future there will be an abundant public domain; in fact, I would imagine us reverting to the way it was before copyrights, where ideas immediately enter the public domain upon conception.
Exactly -- those dinosaurs refuse to be trained in the new ways of doing business, and will die out.
It's been said that "With enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow." (Linus Torvalds).
So... SCO may blacken some of those eyes, but there will be many more that are left untarnished. Yes, SCO is giving Linux many black eyes, but this is the height of the "then they fight you" phase that Gandhi spoke of. I predict the fight will get dirtier before the "then you win" phase.
(Aside: I've wanted to short SCO since they were at 9. Good thing I don't have any money left! 1/2 ;-)
Umm... who, IBM or SCO? Or both?
Repeated below:
Audio and video should be compressed, always -- but with a lossless compression rather than the currently-popular lossy compression formats.
Lossless compression, like FLAC et al (not sure of the state-of-the-art in video lossless compression) truly saves space without sacrificing a bit of quality.
Now, having it built into the file system would be a neat feat. NTFS already has compression built into it; it'd be cool to have it recognize certain files types and determine the class of compression algorithm to use based on the file type. (Or, just thinking out loud, perhaps it could test various forms of compression to determine the best one for that particular file? It'd have to be done "in the background" and at a low priority, but that'd be interesting...)
And I for one welcome our new flying car overlords!
I was all set to read about a text-to-speech enhancement for OS X. Laugh at me.
For Beatles crossed with Metallica, check out Beatallica.
Last year I passed the Series 3 exam (commodities) and became a commodities broker for a short period of time (they were a bunch of crooks so I didn't last long). We were handed sheets of paper that were faxed to them containing names and numbers.
Now, yes, I could imagine that the broker would trust that the company they get them from ran it through the database. However, given that the cost per violation is something like $10,000, I would bet money that the broker would instruct every salesperson to verify the numbers prior to calling.
Or, the manager who receives the faxes would run each number through the database. My point is that there are costs to comply with this law, and those costs come directly out of the consumer's wallet (in the increased costs to the company of providing goods and services).
Thanks again for your sig. ;-)
If the government was smart about it, they could add "improved services" to the Do Not Call List, so that for $20 a year you could be added to a Do Not Call List for Political calls as well. And an additional $30/yr to not receive non-profit calls. And an extra $100/yr to not receive the survey calls.
Another free porn site is ninenine.com, also advertised here. Again, thanks!
Exactly -- and MS had to tell Wall Street or risk being sued. They need to disclose the risks to their business to their shareholders; not doing so would lead to a lawsuit if Linux started eating Microsoft's market share.
Puts them between a rock and a hard place: by stating the risk, they're alerting people to the idea that Linux is an acceptable replacement for Windows. They don't want to do that, but they also fear shareholder lawsuits. So it's really good news that they stated this, for all involved: Microsoft believes a shareholder lawsuit is worse than publicly stating that Linux is superior; and we are happy to hear them admit that Linux is superior.
Perforce has had this for many years. (It too is not free, but it's not that huge an improvement; I am not familiar with the state-of-the-art in free software, but I would imagine at least one system has atomic checkins.)
ObSimpsons:
A marketer who calls 100 people in an average day will then have almost two extra hours of work to do -- either increasing his day, or decreasing his productivity.
In discussing it with someone else, they said that it might actually increase his productivity, as he would then be calling people who want to be called. This idea has some merit, as after all it is a game of percentages.
Personally, I've been getting a ton of "survey" calls recently, which the Do Not Call List forced: sales calls are illegal, but three types of calls are exempt: political, non-profit, and surveys. So companies are now performing "surveys" in which they ask about products, and if the callee responds positively to the survey, they're told where and how they can purchase the product. Sneaky and pretty stupid, because now all survey callers get hung up on, including any that may have been valid.
None of those links were valid.
These words were written 50 years ago, but are all too relevant today. From Atlas Shrugged:
What's actually even more amusing, as I was re-reading the end of the quote, is that religion has been "cashing in on guilt" for millenia. But it's the government I fear more, since religions (these days) generally don't have guns to use to separate their customers from their cash (as governments do).
I know this is a joke, but it's really interesting as to why we soil our pants in times of crisis.
It's evolutionary: prey, when running from predators, would take a dump in order to "lighten the load" so to speak. It's not much, but every ounce counts when your life is on the line.