Well, what you're describing sounds a lot like META KEYWORD tags.
The problem with meta tags is that everyone has their own idea about how they should be used. I think Ichimunki had something like RDF or Dublin Core in mind when talking about a Dewey system equivalent for the Web. They define standard document properties which make searching through metadata a much easier process.
The UFP was started in the year 2161. Whether or not Starfleet was started is another matter.
Starfleet is one of the principal executive agencies defined in the Federation's Constitution (Chapter 8). There is mention that temporary forces would be "borrowed" from individual Federation members until Starfleet got its own fleet up and running. Perhaps this Enterprise will be such a ship.
The only presumable difference between the programs in the US and Australia is that the US programs are perhaps a bit narrower in scope - we don't have an unlimited right to welfare for life, nor is there universal free health care, and there may be means tests associated with the student loans.
Yeah, well, no offense, but those are big differences to a pinko leftie subversive like me.;)
And what is to stop them know, ala Kerr and Gough...
Because everybody discovered after the constitutional crisis of '75 that this is a serious ambiguity in our system of government, and everybody's scared s***less of the consequences should it happen again (why do you think the Senate hasn't dared to block supply since). It's the constitutional equivalent of nuclear war: if you usurp your opponents out of power by bringing about a double dissolution, they'll do it to you, and so on and so on, and the outcome won't be good.
Also, our GG's have generally been High Court justices, who are generally pretty responsible when it comes to maintaining the constitution.
We can't have another election for 6 months or so. Our only hope now is for a bolt of lightning to hit our State Parliament House.
The thing I love about our system of government is that the Governor (Governor-General for the Commonwealth) can dissolve parliament for the purposes of an election at any time (this is one of the so-called reserve powers). No fixed terms!
I'm looking forward to the day when we get an elected head of state, so the s/he has the legitimacy to exercise this power more often.
.. when you live in one of the most right-wing countries in the world (politically)? I don't know why, but even though Aussies are generally quite laid back, their political views are so right wing in my experience that I almost want to vomit.
Where'd you get that idea? Our politicians don't make overt displays of religious ferver. We have public health care, publicly funded university loans, national welfare institutions, etc, in short, a lot of things Americans have sacrificed to a combination of neo-liberal and right-wing ideology. The fact that by historical accident we don't have a bill of rights (we're working on that, though), and that we believe that voting is a civic responsibility doesn't make us Nazis.
Oh yeah, and in case you hadn't noticed, you live in a Democracy. In fact, it's the law that you have to vote. If you don't like it, lobby Parliament and vote them out next time.
We're generally not in the habit of making our voting choices on a single issue. We tend to consider a party's/candidate's entire policy platform when it comes to filling in a ballot. Anyway, the Liberal government in SA is in serious trouble already; this is probably just an appeal to the deeply conservative part of its base in the face of their desertion to the nationalistic One Nation (an extremist party who's biggest claim to fame is its quite obviously racist policies, but is riding the current wave of sentiment against economic rationalism and globalization).
Oh yeah, and most opinion polls indicate that most Australians have a big problem with censorship generally. We do have a beef with racial villification, incitement to violence, etc.
Omega is a highly unstable substance, a molecule of which contains as much energy as a starship's warp core. Also, when it goes boom, it destroys subspace in the surrounding region of space, making warp travel in that region impossible.
Starfleet vessels are supposed to safely neutralize any Omega they come across at any cost. The exact text of the Directive is reproduced all over the 'net. Do a search and you should find it pretty easily.
So now the Founders are this huge threat. They threaten the entire Alpha Quadrant. The Federation thinks it very well could lose this war. You mean to tell me that they will let a piece of paper they signed with the Romulans keep them from deploying the phased cloaking device? I don't believe that for a second.
Well, the Romulans did sign a non-aggression treaty with the Dominion at one stage, and the Federation really wouldn't want to piss off a potential future ally, so yes, I think they would be concerned about keeping the Romulans happy.
Even if the phased cloaking device is dangerously unstable, you could make unmanned ships piloted by a Daystrom computer and send them to wreak havoc among the Founders' forces. Even if half the ships wound up being destroyed by cloak malfunctions, the other half would be able to do some serious damage.
Very expensive in resources, though. The Federation doesn't have a limitless supply of dilithium and other non-replicatable substances you need to build a starship.
Covert team idea? Sounds like Contact/Special Circumstances ("the moral equivalent of black holes, where the rules cease to apply") from Iain M Banks' Culture novels.
AFAIK, the Culture has no qualms about wantonly interfering in another society's development, unlike the Federation. I think it's actually encouraged.
Except the Culture has better starships - General System Vessels forty klicks long, with names like "What Are The Civilian Applications?" and "Very Little Gravitas Indeed".
Don't forget The Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival.:>
If the Federation had a cloaking device that not only made things invisible but could actually make things slide through solid matter, wouldn't they have done something with it when fighting a major war?
There was a TNG episode ("The Pegasus", I think), where the Federation did develop a phased cloak that could make your ship go through stuff (the Enterprise used it to fly through a large asteroid), but the development and use of cloaking devices is banned under the Treaty of Algeron (the treaty that ended the second Romulan War).
We know that sometimes the Federation sends in a covert team to make sure things go smoothly--remember the episode where Riker was undercover and that alien chick was blackmailing him for sex?
I don't know that episode, but of course occasionally the Prime Directive gets bent. I don't know whether the script writers would allow such systemic breakage of Starfleet General Order One. Remember, this is the show where the major ethical dilemma is "Should we save these people, or should we let their planet blow up beneath them to prevent contamination of their culture?"
I have some ideas I would like to see written about regarding the treatment of nascent space-faring cultures:
We know that cultures that seek admission to the Federation go through a lengthy petition process (e.g. Bajor, and they had the incentive of the wormhole). It would be interesting to see what goes on during this process. The show could centre around the team that the Federation Council sends to the planet seeking admittance.
What rights does a new space-faring culture have in Federation space. Do they have to obey local interstellar law. What about providing space/planets for colonies. After all, it isn't their fault that they evolved in space claimed by the Federation. I don't know how that translates into a workable show, though.
Just my $0.02, in a culture where money is an outmoded concept from a barbaric era...
I think so, but it doesn't change the general principle that if I knowingly do something bad with any given widget, I'm responsible, not the manufacturer of the widget.
I'd like to see monitor makers compelled to include documentation in an unavoidable place (e.g. the first thing you see when you open the box, in large, bold letters) telling consumers about the hazards of improperly disposing of or failing to recycle their monitor. Better still, make them use the safer alternatives, even if it is at higher cost, but I don't believe they're responsible for what the people they sell the monitor to do with it.
These days, it seems that manufacturers are being asked to take on more and more responsibility for what customers do with their products (witness Napster, et al). I remember reading on Salon a while back about a proposal to make monitor manufacturers responsible for environmentally unsound disposal of monitors and their toxic innards (a fine for every monitor dumped, I think was the proposal).
Now, manufacturers have a duty of care to inform their customers about correct use and disposal of their product, but if manufacturers are being asked to be liable for the actions of their customers, it only makes sense that they should be able to exert some control over those customers, doesn't it?
Actually, considering the patent office's recent performance, you have a point. Someone will have to teach these tribes about IP lawyers, but that's exactly the kind of deleterious interference in a society's evolution the Prime Directive's supposed to prevent.
Whatever happens, researchers will probably require you to sign a consent form before they stick in the biopsy needle. Just make GPL copyleft restrictions a condition of consent.
Of course, researchers probably won't have a lot of legal room to manoeuver in (in all likelihood, they just have standard consent forms), in which case, it's up to us to lobby your representative/congresscritter/duly elected scumbag to give them that room, or make copyleft standard conditions of consent.
Re:That's not what they mean by "unique."
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Who Owns Your Body?
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It's not as if they're patenting chemicals/cells that can only be found in *you*. Things like that would be next to useless, since the only person that could possibly use discoveries related to the "unique" thing would be yourself.
Not necessarily. Everybody's genome contains little random quirks that make everybody's biochemistry unique. It's entirely possible that your (or my) cells contain some magic stuff that nobody else's does, just as a result of a mutation or chance interaction between our parents' genes that's never been tried before. And just because the substance is unique, that doesn't mean it's only good for you. If the particular aspect of your physiology that this hypothetical substance works on is common to everybody, then it will be useful to everybody. OTOH, if it works on some other idiosynchratic feature of your physiology, then yes, the rest of the human race is out of luck.
All they're trying to do is save a little money by skipping the costs of figuring out legal language for a consent form, etc. Whatever is biopsied from you is only used in the capacity of representing human cells, not your own.
I think consent is important, simply because of the privacy issues surrounding genetics. The samples are out of your control once they leave you, and there should be a clear, transparent process surrounding what happens to them.
Leaving aside the IP issues, which have been done to death elsewhere...:)
Certainly, you have a vital interest in the substances that make up your body while they're busy maintaining your existence, but what about after they've been removed? I'm assuming that in the examples in the article, tissue was removed with consent, in which case, why do you have special rights over it?
I appreciate the privacy questions associated with the storage and distribution of genetic data, but claiming ownership over any discoveries derived from my tissue is a bit much. AFAIC, any samples from my body are just lumps of carbon with a few trace elements thrown in. Nothing special. And it's not as if I can claim to have put an effort into creating my genome, and my work is now being unfairly appropriated, can I?
Actually, despite what my stomach thinks, goatse.cx doesn't offend me. If some guy wants to post those kinds of pictures of himself on the 'net, good on him, that's his choice and he's entitled to it; he's not doing anybody else any harm (apart from costing them their lunch, that is). I haven't visited the other pages, so I can't comment on them.
But you seem to have gotten the impression that I want the site taken down. I don't, unless animals really were abused to create it, which I think we all know isn't the case.
There is a world of difference between Karma Sink writing a message disagreeing with you and government wielding force to silence someone.
True enough, although I didn't appreciate being told to get off/. simply because I had the temerity to strongly disagree with a particular idea or point of view.
If you're offended, tough. It's that damn freedom of speech thing again. If there's a law against simulating putting kittens in jars, that law is unconstitutional.
Read my original post. I didn't say that they shouldn't be allowed to put material like this up; my point was that if it looks real, then it is legitimately the subject of an investigation into cruelty, and that freedom of speech allows me to pass comment just as much as it allows the site authors to create the original material. I probably wasn't very clear about it, for which I apologize.
Of course, it's all a joke... But, most importantly, the only pictures are of kittens half in jars for long enough to take a picture. THat's it. big fucking deal. If you can't deal with something that controversial, get the fuck off slashdot, and check out something more your speed.
Sure, it's someone's idea of a joke, but I happen to find it offensive and don't mind saying so. Deal with it. The fact that you can't countenance the idea of someone taking offense at what someone else says makes you just as politically correct and fascist as the authorities trying to take the site down.
And for the record, I didn't write them. Feeding trolls is not my idea of a fun weekend.
Any attempts at "humour" aside, this is actually pretty horrible. Law enforcement is justified in investigating a potential case of cruelty, even if such cruelty is performed in the name of creative expression.
I defend their right to say it (provided they didn't do this to any actual kittens, in which case they should be taken to a public place and have something horrible done to them involving their entrails), but I also defend my right to send them a friendly e-mail saying precisely what I think of them, and speculating on the reasons as to why they did this, including but not limited to poor sexual performance/experience, little social interaction with their peers, and a complete lack of common humanity, maturity or intelligence.
But it starts to think of programs in a level even higher than text, if that makes sense. I could almost think it's trying to treat the source code as annotation and description of a program, and not the actual implementation...It's different than 'visual' thinking, in which you have functional blocks with busses, data directions, transformations, blocks and checks, etc.
In other words, one could compare it to VHLLs like Haskell (functional programming) and Prolog (logical programming). The former describes the relationship between the input and output as a series of equations, and the latter uses predicate calculus (sort of) to describe a world in which the program is true. Both of these are text-based languages. The real difference is that in traditional languages, there is no real distinction between representation and substance: what you see is what the compiler sees. In this new language, this distinction exists, and basically allows you to represent a program as whatever you want. The best analogy I can think of is the document-view pattern/architecture frequently used in OO programming, if that makes sense.
There's no reason why you can't use the kind of diagrams you describe, provided they encapsulate the underlying semantics of the language. I think that's actually a pretty cool idea; it certainly makes conceptualizing a program's behaviour and function much easier.
It's probably a good start towards mission critical code style, in which there needs to be correctness, validation and verification built into the language in the first place.
Haskell certainly allowed for this kind of formal analysis (for instance, one could prove equivalence between two programs, although I sucked at it and can't say how applicable it is for correctness proofs and other verification strategies.
The simple fact is that there are only a few processor manufacturers, and this will not change as the market is not big enough to support more.
The problem with the chip market is not the size, it's trying to break your way in when you have such high initial infrastructure costs. Secondly, people seem to be a bit leary of buying silicon from an untrusted producer.
Therefore, holding copyright on the design of a chip is largely irrelevant, especially when the manufacturers essentially operate as a cartel. Have you seen Motorolla designing an x86 chip recently? Didn't think so. With a few public exceptions the processor manufacturers largely stay away from each other.
Exactly what defines an "x86 processor"? I would contend that the instruction set is mainly responsible for setting one processor apart from another. If you want to do something different and offer programmers something different from x86 (e.g. RISC), you use a different ISA more suited to your objectives, and the result is by definition not an x86. If, however, you're like AMD and want to break into the consumer market, you emulate the market leader and give customers what they're used to, i.e. the x86 ISA. That doesn't mean the core of your part has to look anything like a vanilla x86. In fact, you'll want something better and therefore something different, otherwise why would people bother switching to you?
However, they will be receptive to open source as it would allow them to downgrade their expensive design engineering teams, outsource and up the shares dividends accordingly.
Hmmm. Most people involved in OSS seem to do so because they can see something going back into the community, although I don't mean to generalize across the entire group of OSS developers. I don't see how you could get that with processors, unless the manufacturers start giving away chips for free. Either way, the differences between hardware and software production are too great to make any predictions at this stage.
I think Open Source designed processors will be higher quality, but it won't make any difference to price or competition in the field.
Well, we'll see:). The fact that you will have a lot of ideas about processors just floating around should see a big reduction in the R&D budgets of any startup chip manufacturers, which should ameliorate the problem outlined at the beginning of this post. I have a hard time predicting the viability of open source hardware when the verdict is still out on open source software.
Re:It might be interesting-
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OS X on x86?
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I am a programmer, and portability depends a lot on the app in question. You should be able to port a well-written app from one instruction set to another simply by re-compiling for the target machine. If the app in question is finnicky about the size of data types it uses, this can be a problem, but not usually a major difficulty. Of course, if you're using inline assembly to bum every last cycle of performance you can or something else freaky...well, life gets interesting.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, what you're describing sounds a lot like META KEYWORD tags.
The problem with meta tags is that everyone has their own idea about how they should be used. I think Ichimunki had something like RDF or Dublin Core in mind when talking about a Dewey system equivalent for the Web. They define standard document properties which make searching through metadata a much easier process.
The UFP was started in the year 2161. Whether or not Starfleet was started is another matter.
Starfleet is one of the principal executive agencies defined in the Federation's Constitution (Chapter 8). There is mention that temporary forces would be "borrowed" from individual Federation members until Starfleet got its own fleet up and running. Perhaps this Enterprise will be such a ship.
Yeah, well, no offense, but those are big differences to a pinko leftie subversive like me. ;)
Because everybody discovered after the constitutional crisis of '75 that this is a serious ambiguity in our system of government, and everybody's scared s***less of the consequences should it happen again (why do you think the Senate hasn't dared to block supply since). It's the constitutional equivalent of nuclear war: if you usurp your opponents out of power by bringing about a double dissolution, they'll do it to you, and so on and so on, and the outcome won't be good.
Also, our GG's have generally been High Court justices, who are generally pretty responsible when it comes to maintaining the constitution.
Whoops, forgot to make the standard "barring idiots, nutters and psychos" disclaimer. Sorry. ;)
The thing I love about our system of government is that the Governor (Governor-General for the Commonwealth) can dissolve parliament for the purposes of an election at any time (this is one of the so-called reserve powers). No fixed terms!
I'm looking forward to the day when we get an elected head of state, so the s/he has the legitimacy to exercise this power more often.
Where'd you get that idea? Our politicians don't make overt displays of religious ferver. We have public health care, publicly funded university loans, national welfare institutions, etc, in short, a lot of things Americans have sacrificed to a combination of neo-liberal and right-wing ideology. The fact that by historical accident we don't have a bill of rights (we're working on that, though), and that we believe that voting is a civic responsibility doesn't make us Nazis.
We're generally not in the habit of making our voting choices on a single issue. We tend to consider a party's/candidate's entire policy platform when it comes to filling in a ballot. Anyway, the Liberal government in SA is in serious trouble already; this is probably just an appeal to the deeply conservative part of its base in the face of their desertion to the nationalistic One Nation (an extremist party who's biggest claim to fame is its quite obviously racist policies, but is riding the current wave of sentiment against economic rationalism and globalization).Oh yeah, and most opinion polls indicate that most Australians have a big problem with censorship generally. We do have a beef with racial villification, incitement to violence, etc.
Starfleet vessels are supposed to safely neutralize any Omega they come across at any cost. The exact text of the Directive is reproduced all over the 'net. Do a search and you should find it pretty easily.
AFAIK, the Culture has no qualms about wantonly interfering in another society's development, unlike the Federation. I think it's actually encouraged.
Except the Culture has better starships - General System Vessels forty klicks long, with names like "What Are The Civilian Applications?" and "Very Little Gravitas Indeed".
Don't forget The Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival. :>
There was a TNG episode ("The Pegasus", I think), where the Federation did develop a phased cloak that could make your ship go through stuff (the Enterprise used it to fly through a large asteroid), but the development and use of cloaking devices is banned under the Treaty of Algeron (the treaty that ended the second Romulan War).
We know that sometimes the Federation sends in a covert team to make sure things go smoothly--remember the episode where Riker was undercover and that alien chick was blackmailing him for sex?
I don't know that episode, but of course occasionally the Prime Directive gets bent. I don't know whether the script writers would allow such systemic breakage of Starfleet General Order One. Remember, this is the show where the major ethical dilemma is "Should we save these people, or should we let their planet blow up beneath them to prevent contamination of their culture?"
I have some ideas I would like to see written about regarding the treatment of nascent space-faring cultures:
Just my $0.02, in a culture where money is an outmoded concept from a barbaric era...
I'd like to see monitor makers compelled to include documentation in an unavoidable place (e.g. the first thing you see when you open the box, in large, bold letters) telling consumers about the hazards of improperly disposing of or failing to recycle their monitor. Better still, make them use the safer alternatives, even if it is at higher cost, but I don't believe they're responsible for what the people they sell the monitor to do with it.
Now, manufacturers have a duty of care to inform their customers about correct use and disposal of their product, but if manufacturers are being asked to be liable for the actions of their customers, it only makes sense that they should be able to exert some control over those customers, doesn't it?
It's not right, I know...
Actually, considering the patent office's recent performance, you have a point. Someone will have to teach these tribes about IP lawyers, but that's exactly the kind of deleterious interference in a society's evolution the Prime Directive's supposed to prevent.
Of course, researchers probably won't have a lot of legal room to manoeuver in (in all likelihood, they just have standard consent forms), in which case, it's up to us to lobby your representative/congresscritter/duly elected scumbag to give them that room, or make copyleft standard conditions of consent.
Certainly, you have a vital interest in the substances that make up your body while they're busy maintaining your existence, but what about after they've been removed? I'm assuming that in the examples in the article, tissue was removed with consent, in which case, why do you have special rights over it?
I appreciate the privacy questions associated with the storage and distribution of genetic data, but claiming ownership over any discoveries derived from my tissue is a bit much. AFAIC, any samples from my body are just lumps of carbon with a few trace elements thrown in. Nothing special. And it's not as if I can claim to have put an effort into creating my genome, and my work is now being unfairly appropriated, can I?
But you seem to have gotten the impression that I want the site taken down. I don't, unless animals really were abused to create it, which I think we all know isn't the case.
True enough, although I didn't appreciate being told to get off /. simply because I had the temerity to strongly disagree with a particular idea or point of view.
Read my original post. I didn't say that they shouldn't be allowed to put material like this up; my point was that if it looks real, then it is legitimately the subject of an investigation into cruelty, and that freedom of speech allows me to pass comment just as much as it allows the site authors to create the original material. I probably wasn't very clear about it, for which I apologize.
And for the record, I didn't write them. Feeding trolls is not my idea of a fun weekend.
I defend their right to say it (provided they didn't do this to any actual kittens, in which case they should be taken to a public place and have something horrible done to them involving their entrails), but I also defend my right to send them a friendly e-mail saying precisely what I think of them, and speculating on the reasons as to why they did this, including but not limited to poor sexual performance/experience, little social interaction with their peers, and a complete lack of common humanity, maturity or intelligence.
And I don't even like cats... :)
There's no reason why you can't use the kind of diagrams you describe, provided they encapsulate the underlying semantics of the language. I think that's actually a pretty cool idea; it certainly makes conceptualizing a program's behaviour and function much easier.
Haskell certainly allowed for this kind of formal analysis (for instance, one could prove equivalence between two programs, although I sucked at it and can't say how applicable it is for correctness proofs and other verification strategies.The problem with the chip market is not the size, it's trying to break your way in when you have such high initial infrastructure costs. Secondly, people seem to be a bit leary of buying silicon from an untrusted producer.
Therefore, holding copyright on the design of a chip is largely irrelevant, especially when the manufacturers essentially operate as a cartel. Have you seen Motorolla designing an x86 chip recently? Didn't think so. With a few public exceptions the processor manufacturers largely stay away from each other.
Exactly what defines an "x86 processor"? I would contend that the instruction set is mainly responsible for setting one processor apart from another. If you want to do something different and offer programmers something different from x86 (e.g. RISC), you use a different ISA more suited to your objectives, and the result is by definition not an x86. If, however, you're like AMD and want to break into the consumer market, you emulate the market leader and give customers what they're used to, i.e. the x86 ISA. That doesn't mean the core of your part has to look anything like a vanilla x86. In fact, you'll want something better and therefore something different, otherwise why would people bother switching to you?
However, they will be receptive to open source as it would allow them to downgrade their expensive design engineering teams, outsource and up the shares dividends accordingly.
Hmmm. Most people involved in OSS seem to do so because they can see something going back into the community, although I don't mean to generalize across the entire group of OSS developers. I don't see how you could get that with processors, unless the manufacturers start giving away chips for free. Either way, the differences between hardware and software production are too great to make any predictions at this stage.
I think Open Source designed processors will be higher quality, but it won't make any difference to price or competition in the field.
Well, we'll see :). The fact that you will have a lot of ideas about processors just floating around should see a big reduction in the R&D budgets of any startup chip manufacturers, which should ameliorate the problem outlined at the beginning of this post. I have a hard time predicting the viability of open source hardware when the verdict is still out on open source software.
I am a programmer, and portability depends a lot on the app in question. You should be able to port a well-written app from one instruction set to another simply by re-compiling for the target machine. If the app in question is finnicky about the size of data types it uses, this can be a problem, but not usually a major difficulty. Of course, if you're using inline assembly to bum every last cycle of performance you can or something else freaky...well, life gets interesting.