This is a great book w.r.t. combining technologies in creative ways. I mean, the wormhole starts as purely spacial in nature and is privately held. Then it becomes public domain just as they discover temporal placement, which eventually becomes public domain. But the coolest part of the book was the journey back in time following the mitochondrial DNA using AI recognition software. Excellent engineering twist.
I think the attempt at predicting the effect on pop culture was also worthy of a gold star. I loved the avant-garde beatnicks who lived naked in houses made of glass, as a blantant cultural metaphor. Same goes for the naked teenagers having sex everywhere.
The borg-like brain implants were kinda pushing it. I think such a small faction of paranoid people will exist that there wouldn't be enough funding to mass-market the inviso-suits. However, they would definitely be in the best interest of governments wanting to hide their spies, which would mean the suits would exist. But despite the availability of technology, the writer went through GREAT pains to cover every possible detail of how suit wearers would need to behave to avoid dropping DNA or being tracked. That was cool.
Read "The Transparent Society" by Brin. It reads more like a bunch of lectures than a discourse, but it covers many of the same concepts.
I'm firmly believe that in the future there will absolutely ZERO privacy: everyone will know everyting about everyone else. The challenge will be for all cultures to start ditching their modesty.
Some day we'll all know how big everyone's dick is, how many times they take a shit, and what kind of breakfast cereals they buy. Once a few decades of this kind of knowledge sinks in, modesty in these areas will seem as silly as being modest about showing your calves in a swimsuit, like in the 1910's.
Big deal, I say. If it wasn't constantly being proven wrong (or "not entirely correct" ^_^), science would be boring.
Then it wouldn't be science, it would be christianity. That's why science is so much more fun, you get to prove theories of the universe are wrong w/o the risk of going to hell.
It can be very very dirty, but it depends on the mortality of the script. And dirty isn't such a bad thing.;-)
If I know the script is going to be used by many people, I avoid all the cute little tricks that Perl allows. I hate to do it b/c I get off on being a slick programmer, but even I forget what the heck my scripts do after six months.
However, if I'm writing scripts on the fly for myself, I try to exploit the least verbose syntax forms. To quote a former programming mentor "You know you're done when you can't remove any more redundant code..." If I start to use the script frequently, I'll comment heavily.
Question is, how radical will the changes be? I mean, I don't use sockets or Tcl, I just stick to Perl basics, so will it affect (effect?) me? (grammer nazi, please indicate the proper verb.)
This seems rather juvenile: calling in the teacher on the playground b/c little johnny keeps calling me a cussword... (he did, too. the little bastard...)
The key phrase in the article was "profane abusive language". Isn't this more a wakeup call to the language we use? Why are people such prudes, is there any fundamental merit to someone claiming being offended by language? I don't think there is. I guess one could extrapolate to the supreme court's definition of porn...
Fuck, people really need to sit back and relax... either that or go to a kids sporting event and break the umpires jaw to blow off steam...
It's so silly that people just can't ignore this. No, they have to call in the legal system. I mean, I rise to bait as often as the next schmoe, but I chose to. (I think.) I can always PG-DWN/ignore. Hopefully baiting and trolling won't become misdemeanors in the future.
Next time you're channel surfing and pass the WWF station, take a look at the audience. That's the majority. Do want those people deciding the fate of the country? Less democracy, more special interests. At least they help keep a modicum of balance over hot issues. ---
. However, I am curious as to how differently Crusoe would have been accepted had Torvalds not helped in its development.
Probably with something like: "Trasmet-what?";-) Kidding.
People seriously interested the industry have been watching this story since Transmeta started, because back then only a few people were realizing the problems with power. (And back then Crusoe wasn't targeting mobile, wasn't it going to be a PC killer?)
I think Crusoe would have been accepted in probably much the same way if Linus wasn't part of it. It's the low-power operation makes is the meat of the issue, something that would have gotten lots of press anyway. I still don't see it's x86 compatibility as big a benefit as they expect.
The real bloodbath will start when you can run equivalently priced Transmeta- and Intel-based machines side-by-side. You think Linux vs. Windows is a jihad? Ain't nothin by comparison. It's gonna be ugly.
Good programmers won't need these trivial incremental "improvements", and a new language isn't going to make crappy programmers any better.
If anything, this 'more intuitive' language will just invite more non-programmers to dabble in coding, thus proliferating the already festering heap of shit code in the world.
DirectX vs. OGL all over again. "Innovation"... yeah, right. Merely avoiding Java licensing fees by yet again obfuscating the development platform.
Sure vivesection is ugly, and the videos from the band "Consolidated"'s stage shows are really gross, (hey, anything involving entrails makes me woozy), but there are some silly side effects caused by PETA.
For example, I live in Califronia and there was a ballot initiative in 1996 which passed: It's illegal to eat horses! Do you believe there was a freakin' BALLOT about that?
Dennis Leary has a monologue about only eating the ugly animals (cows vs. otters). He's so right. I would eagerly try horse, dog or cat. And I love cats! But I'd still like to taste one.
The early 90's light-rap band Basehead said it best on the inside of their album cover "Not in Kansas Anymore" regarding PETA: "[People for the ethical treatment of other people seems like time better spent...]"
Right on.
Can't wait to see what other domain names go down before someone on The Hill takes a stand...
I've always described Fraiser as a cross between William F. Buckley and Don Knotts.;-) That show uses the same old slapstick, and the same formulae as any sitcom today, with the exception that the content of the jokes are taken from extreme upper-class society.
But I think he is quite a loser, and would agree that he parallels sort of a frenetic Arthur Philip Denu...
But then, look at the successful protagonists who excel with their looks, wit, intelligence and physique: Xena, Michael Knight, VIP bimbos, Mcgyver, Walker Texas Ranger, Dr. Quinn, Manimal... I think they're more pathetic than the 'losers' in sitcom world.
They claim that they would be innundated by mail and couldn't handle the response so will not even put up an email address. Or a phone number for customer service, or subscription problems or sign up.
I find it somewhat ironic that "Consumer Reports" would have the least professional consumer support.
Object-oriented programming design is a great way to organize a problem into manageable, scalable abstractions. Everything you learn in college about the virtues of OOP is well founded, would anyone here disagree?
The problem is C++. It's not a very good OOP. Would most people here agree its a pretty harsh hack of the C syntax? When compared to (IMO) the mother of all OOPs: LISP?
Students that never learned C++ on their own learn it in college, usually from a TA. Now I'm not knocking TA's, but they usually have zero practical experience with large projects. And to compound the problem, they learned their C++ programming skills from... ANOTHER TA! And so on. See the problem? (And the worst part is: would you want to hire someone who just learned how to code in C++ during their 2nd or 3rd years in college! Companies do. I want to hire someone who's been programming before they were pubescent!)
So not only is the OOP paradigm lost by lame C++ instruction (here's printf, write, fwrite, and 'cout ', gee, that makes sense...), the entirety of programming education is at risk by the lack of truly knowledgable instructors. And then these kids go out and program for a living! No wonder there is so mush bullshit buggy code in the commercial world.
Ok, sorry about the rant. But any attempts to teach any computer concept with C++ seems to me to be hopelessly flawed and will end up doing more harm then good. Teach with LISP from the top and C from the bottom, and assembly from the real bottom.
I agree with the 'problem' and 'solution' domain approach. OOP on top so that there is flexibility and scalability in the entire design; procedural C on the bottom for portability and high-performance.
C++ -- the great hack, the facilitator of even greater hacks -- has done horrors to the world that will take decades to undo.
---
Re:I don't think they knew their target audience
on
Review: 'Titan A.E.'
·
· Score: 1
I think boys aged 5-10 might enjoy this movie.
Key word: "might"
Was 'X' any better?
Long live Heavy Metal! At least there was at least sex and insane drug usage. and DEVO!
"sterrrrrn! STEEEEERRRRNNNN!! Burnin's too good for him... hangin's to GOOD for HIM!!! He should be torn into little pieces, and buried ALIVE!!!"
So if this is the celeron killer what are the implications facing Intel now? How is Intel going to respond to this latest attack by AMD? Anyone know?
Simple. With 1-Watt Celerons. Check the specs on the Duron: It's hot. REAL hot. 22 W for the 700 part!!! And that's at a 90 degree T-die!!! That's insane!!! This thing will never make it into mobile, let alone set-top boxes... With those two options out, it's left to compete with Athlon and Coppermine. I don't think its gonna do to well.
Neurons could hardly be called simple. It will be a long time before we even fully understand how a neuron works. Creating an abstract enough nanobot to simulate AI by the billions... well it's too early to think like that w/o my coffee...;)
i understand the disconnect now: i'm one of those people that believes that the US keeps these 'most wanted' people alive on purpose, for many reasons. its always good to have a bad-guy on hand to justify military spending, or for good political posturing. i believe that in some cases it is best to keep the 'most wanted' people alive for uses like that.
I've read a number of posts that equate mutations with evolution. At this point in time, nanobots are intended to be very basic creatures; their effectiveness will be in mass numbers, not brainpower or AI. Looking into the future, I don't think you could make a nanometer sized CPU capabable of sufficient AI, given the thermodynamics required for that kind of computation on such a small scale.
However, the metaphor of DNA mutation = evolution probably won't apply for quite some time based on this thought: change a random bit in your a linux kernel binary. Do you think flipping one bit would make linux run better, or crash it?
IMHO, for a good long time, nanabots will be nothing but really tiny embedded machines that would simply fail if there was a slight modification to their code. And as a corolary, given the # of atoms in a nanobot, I doubt they will ever be capable of computational AI, even when it is available on desktop.
Nanotechnology is also the CIA's dream come true... Think about it - now that the US can kill anyone, anywhere and without any evidence, what will happen
What makes you think they can't do this already, w/o the aid of nanotechnology? ---
Agreed. More and more, this not-so-subtle homage is appearing in engineering design (hell, I work a few streets away from a company called Jedi). It's kind of depressing b/c I always hoped it would be more subtle, you know? Something only a diehard geek would recognize (I'm sure there's tons of that already out there that I'm missing;-). Lack of creativity is always somewhat depressing. I'm sure the code for controlling the robot is far more creative than its aesthetic.
You know, I thought about this when Terminator 1 was released. I always thought that should we ever (when we ever) get to the point where we can design robotic/cybernetic hit-men, who could resist programming it to say "Hasta la vista, Baby" (sorry if I butchered that). In effect, this becomes a self-fufulling prophecy, similar to the one used in T-2.
I was all excited about this until I saw the price lists. Petty steep even, with the "10% off of 10 or more" deal. Some components are $7-8 for 25 pieces? That's quite a bit considering it would take many thousands of pieces to make anything considerably large. I wonder if they have a bulk-, bulk-discount... Maybe I could intern with them...
I still prefer concrete: it is WAY cheaper, and you can make really monstrous things that will remain in the middle of your garage for thousands of years because no one realized it would weigh so much when you were pouring like crazy on a boring sunday afternoon (speaking from personal experience, of course...;-)
And when I am eating, I type one handed. When I am on the phone I also type one handed, hell, sometimes one fingered...
And when I'm chatting, I type one-handed...;-)
Of course, you also chose to ignore the second half of my post which is simply, "They have NO RIGHT to limit my fair use of music"... : :
I completely agree with everything you said in both posts about fair use, despite you the fact that my ears are still ringing from your reply.;-) I only commented on the 1st 1/2 because I'm more interested in the uniqueness of peoples' typing styles and being able to differentiate them via statistical/frequency analaysis.
This software has NO chance of correctly identifying me.
Hmmm. That's a bold statement.
Suppose the software made you type a passage, like "The quick brown fox...". I think it is very plausible that within a reasonable margin of error everyone would have a distinct way of typing this phrase.
From years of using an Apple//e I still can type the words "catalog" and "pr#3" and "brun fid" with lightning accuracy. And I bet no one types them with the same delays and speed that my musculature tends toward.
Slashdot Mirror
This is a great book w.r.t. combining technologies in creative ways. I mean, the wormhole starts as purely spacial in nature and is privately held. Then it becomes public domain just as they discover temporal placement, which eventually becomes public domain. But the coolest part of the book was the journey back in time following the mitochondrial DNA using AI recognition software. Excellent engineering twist.
I think the attempt at predicting the effect on pop culture was also worthy of a gold star. I loved the avant-garde beatnicks who lived naked in houses made of glass, as a blantant cultural metaphor. Same goes for the naked teenagers having sex everywhere.
The borg-like brain implants were kinda pushing it. I think such a small faction of paranoid people will exist that there wouldn't be enough funding to mass-market the inviso-suits. However, they would definitely be in the best interest of governments wanting to hide their spies, which would mean the suits would exist. But despite the availability of technology, the writer went through GREAT pains to cover every possible detail of how suit wearers would need to behave to avoid dropping DNA or being tracked. That was cool.
Read "The Transparent Society" by Brin. It reads more like a bunch of lectures than a discourse, but it covers many of the same concepts.
I'm firmly believe that in the future there will absolutely ZERO privacy: everyone will know everyting about everyone else. The challenge will be for all cultures to start ditching their modesty.
Some day we'll all know how big everyone's dick is, how many times they take a shit, and what kind of breakfast cereals they buy. Once a few decades of this kind of knowledge sinks in, modesty in these areas will seem as silly as being modest about showing your calves in a swimsuit, like in the 1910's.
---
Big deal, I say. If it wasn't constantly being proven wrong (or "not entirely correct" ^_^), science would be boring.
Then it wouldn't be science, it would be christianity. That's why science is so much more fun, you get to prove theories of the universe are wrong w/o the risk of going to hell.
---
Great news for broadband.
---
It can be very very dirty, but it depends on the mortality of the script. And dirty isn't such a bad thing. ;-)
If I know the script is going to be used by many people, I avoid all the cute little tricks that Perl allows. I hate to do it b/c I get off on being a slick programmer, but even I forget what the heck my scripts do after six months.
However, if I'm writing scripts on the fly for myself, I try to exploit the least verbose syntax forms. To quote a former programming mentor "You know you're done when you can't remove any more redundant code..." If I start to use the script frequently, I'll comment heavily.
Question is, how radical will the changes be? I mean, I don't use sockets or Tcl, I just stick to Perl basics, so will it affect (effect?) me? (grammer nazi, please indicate the proper verb.)
---
$2300 bucks for a 500 MHz machine is sooooo much money! No wonder most Mac users are starving artists.
---
This seems rather juvenile: calling in the teacher on the playground b/c little johnny keeps calling me a cussword... (he did, too. the little bastard...)
The key phrase in the article was "profane abusive language". Isn't this more a wakeup call to the language we use? Why are people such prudes, is there any fundamental merit to someone claiming being offended by language? I don't think there is. I guess one could extrapolate to the supreme court's definition of porn...
Fuck, people really need to sit back and relax... either that or go to a kids sporting event and break the umpires jaw to blow off steam...
It's so silly that people just can't ignore this. No, they have to call in the legal system. I mean, I rise to bait as often as the next schmoe, but I chose to. (I think.) I can always PG-DWN/ignore. Hopefully baiting and trolling won't become misdemeanors in the future.
---
Next time you're channel surfing and pass the WWF station, take a look at the audience. That's the majority. Do want those people deciding the fate of the country? Less democracy, more special interests. At least they help keep a modicum of balance over hot issues.
---
. However, I am curious as to how differently Crusoe would have been accepted had Torvalds not helped in its development.
;-) Kidding.
Probably with something like: "Trasmet-what?"
People seriously interested the industry have been watching this story since Transmeta started, because back then only a few people were realizing the problems with power. (And back then Crusoe wasn't targeting mobile, wasn't it going to be a PC killer?)
I think Crusoe would have been accepted in probably much the same way if Linus wasn't part of it. It's the low-power operation makes is the meat of the issue, something that would have gotten lots of press anyway. I still don't see it's x86 compatibility as big a benefit as they expect.
The real bloodbath will start when you can run equivalently priced Transmeta- and Intel-based machines side-by-side. You think Linux vs. Windows is a jihad? Ain't nothin by comparison. It's gonna be ugly.
---
Good programmers won't need these trivial incremental "improvements", and a new language isn't going to make crappy programmers any better.
If anything, this 'more intuitive' language will just invite more non-programmers to dabble in coding, thus proliferating the already festering heap of shit code in the world.
DirectX vs. OGL all over again. "Innovation"... yeah, right. Merely avoiding Java licensing fees by yet again obfuscating the development platform.
Sorry, I'm feeling cynical today.
---
Sure vivesection is ugly, and the videos from the band "Consolidated"'s stage shows are really gross, (hey, anything involving entrails makes me woozy), but there are some silly side effects caused by PETA.
For example, I live in Califronia and there was a ballot initiative in 1996 which passed: It's illegal to eat horses! Do you believe there was a freakin' BALLOT about that?
Dennis Leary has a monologue about only eating the ugly animals (cows vs. otters). He's so right. I would eagerly try horse, dog or cat. And I love cats! But I'd still like to taste one.
The early 90's light-rap band Basehead said it best on the inside of their album cover "Not in Kansas Anymore" regarding PETA: "[People for the ethical treatment of other people seems like time better spent...]"
Right on.
Can't wait to see what other domain names go down before someone on The Hill takes a stand...
---
TWO endings? Could you elaborate on this a little more? It seems pertinant to this discussion.
---
I've always described Fraiser as a cross between William F. Buckley and Don Knotts.
But I think he is quite a loser, and would agree that he parallels sort of a frenetic Arthur Philip Denu...
But then, look at the successful protagonists who excel with their looks, wit, intelligence and physique: Xena, Michael Knight, VIP bimbos, Mcgyver, Walker Texas Ranger, Dr. Quinn, Manimal... I think they're more pathetic than the 'losers' in sitcom world.
---
They claim that they would be innundated by mail and couldn't handle the response so will not even put up an email address. Or a phone number for customer service, or subscription problems or sign up.
I find it somewhat ironic that "Consumer Reports" would have the least professional consumer support.
---
There was nothing on IBM's website about power and speed. Does anyone know how these to metrics compare to the flash used in MP3 devices?
As a side note, it is now possible to choke to death on a multi-gigabyte hard-drive.
---
Object-oriented programming design is a great way to organize a problem into manageable, scalable abstractions. Everything you learn in college about the virtues of OOP is well founded, would anyone here disagree?
The problem is C++. It's not a very good OOP. Would most people here agree its a pretty harsh hack of the C syntax? When compared to (IMO) the mother of all OOPs: LISP?
Students that never learned C++ on their own learn it in college, usually from a TA. Now I'm not knocking TA's, but they usually have zero practical experience with large projects. And to compound the problem, they learned their C++ programming skills from... ANOTHER TA! And so on. See the problem? (And the worst part is: would you want to hire someone who just learned how to code in C++ during their 2nd or 3rd years in college! Companies do. I want to hire someone who's been programming before they were pubescent!)
So not only is the OOP paradigm lost by lame C++ instruction (here's printf, write, fwrite, and 'cout ', gee, that makes sense...), the entirety of programming education is at risk by the lack of truly knowledgable instructors. And then these kids go out and program for a living! No wonder there is so mush bullshit buggy code in the commercial world.
Ok, sorry about the rant. But any attempts to teach any computer concept with C++ seems to me to be hopelessly flawed and will end up doing more harm then good. Teach with LISP from the top and C from the bottom, and assembly from the real bottom.
I agree with the 'problem' and 'solution' domain approach. OOP on top so that there is flexibility and scalability in the entire design; procedural C on the bottom for portability and high-performance.
C++ -- the great hack, the facilitator of even greater hacks -- has done horrors to the world that will take decades to undo.
---
I think boys aged 5-10 might enjoy this movie.
Key word: "might"
Was 'X' any better?
Long live Heavy Metal! At least there was at least sex and insane drug usage. and DEVO!
"sterrrrrn! STEEEEERRRRNNNN!! Burnin's too good for him... hangin's to GOOD for HIM!!! He should be torn into little pieces, and buried ALIVE!!!"
--hanover fist
---
So if this is the celeron killer what are the implications facing Intel now? How is Intel going to respond to this latest attack by AMD? Anyone know?
Simple. With 1-Watt Celerons. Check the specs on the Duron: It's hot. REAL hot. 22 W for the 700 part!!! And that's at a 90 degree T-die!!! That's insane!!! This thing will never make it into mobile, let alone set-top boxes... With those two options out, it's left to compete with Athlon and Coppermine. I don't think its gonna do to well.
---
Neurons could hardly be called simple. It will be a long time before we even fully understand how a neuron works. Creating an abstract enough nanobot to simulate AI by the billions... well it's too early to think like that w/o my coffee... ;)
---
i understand the disconnect now: i'm one of those people that believes that the US keeps these 'most wanted' people alive on purpose, for many reasons. its always good to have a bad-guy on hand to justify military spending, or for good political posturing. i believe that in some cases it is best to keep the 'most wanted' people alive for uses like that.
---
I've read a number of posts that equate mutations with evolution. At this point in time, nanobots are intended to be very basic creatures; their effectiveness will be in mass numbers, not brainpower or AI. Looking into the future, I don't think you could make a nanometer sized CPU capabable of sufficient AI, given the thermodynamics required for that kind of computation on such a small scale.
However, the metaphor of DNA mutation = evolution probably won't apply for quite some time based on this thought: change a random bit in your a linux kernel binary. Do you think flipping one bit would make linux run better, or crash it?
IMHO, for a good long time, nanabots will be nothing but really tiny embedded machines that would simply fail if there was a slight modification to their code. And as a corolary, given the # of atoms in a nanobot, I doubt they will ever be capable of computational AI, even when it is available on desktop.
my $0.03.
---
Nanotechnology is also the CIA's dream come true... Think about it - now that the US can kill anyone, anywhere and without any evidence, what will happen
What makes you think they can't do this already, w/o the aid of nanotechnology?
---
Agreed. More and more, this not-so-subtle homage is appearing in engineering design (hell, I work a few streets away from a company called Jedi). It's kind of depressing b/c I always hoped it would be more subtle, you know? Something only a diehard geek would recognize (I'm sure there's tons of that already out there that I'm missing
You know, I thought about this when Terminator 1 was released. I always thought that should we ever (when we ever) get to the point where we can design robotic/cybernetic hit-men, who could resist programming it to say "Hasta la vista, Baby" (sorry if I butchered that). In effect, this becomes a self-fufulling prophecy, similar to the one used in T-2.
---
I was all excited about this until I saw the price lists. Petty steep even, with the "10% off of 10 or more" deal. Some components are $7-8 for 25 pieces? That's quite a bit considering it would take many thousands of pieces to make anything considerably large. I wonder if they have a bulk-, bulk-discount... Maybe I could intern with them...
I still prefer concrete: it is WAY cheaper, and you can make really monstrous things that will remain in the middle of your garage for thousands of years because no one realized it would weigh so much when you were pouring like crazy on a boring sunday afternoon (speaking from personal experience, of course...
---
And when I am eating, I type one handed. When I am on the phone I also type one handed, hell, sometimes one fingered...
;-)
...
;-) I only commented on the 1st 1/2 because I'm more interested in the uniqueness of peoples' typing styles and being able to differentiate them via statistical/frequency analaysis.
And when I'm chatting, I type one-handed...
Of course, you also chose to ignore the second half of my post which is simply, "They have NO RIGHT to limit my fair use of music"
:
:
I completely agree with everything you said in both posts about fair use, despite you the fact that my ears are still ringing from your reply.
---
Hmmm. That's a bold statement.
Suppose the software made you type a passage, like "The quick brown fox...". I think it is very plausible that within a reasonable margin of error everyone would have a distinct way of typing this phrase.
From years of using an Apple //e I still can type the words "catalog" and "pr#3" and "brun fid" with lightning accuracy. And I bet no one types them with the same delays and speed that my musculature tends toward.
I wouldn't dismiss the idea that quickly.
---