Debian still stands out as the distro most reflective of the GNU philosophy.
Actually, that's not true anymore. Things have changed and Debian is not the best example of free software or GNU. Check out GNU/Linex instead.
You'll not see a link to Debian from the FSF/GNU sites for this reason. Debian still distributes non-free software. Yes, you can install Debian without the optional non-free stuff, but they really do encourage installing non-free software on your system easily.
While RMS currently has a machine running Debian (without the non-free bits, I'm sure), he claims that it's because this new all-free distro (GNU/Linex) wasn't available at the time. See this recent RMS interview for more.
I would never say they were better than what we have now... or they wouldn't be becomeing extinct would they?
Old games can still be some of the greatest from a gameplay perspective. Keep in mind:
- great gameplay doesn't mean infinite replayability (you'll still get bored eventually and need a break) - great gameplay in a game you bought 10 years ago doesn't put money into many people's hands today (so someone keeps trying to seduce you into spending another $60 and then another and then another even if those new games aren't 'better')
For those interested or those who couldn't get through on the phone today...
I just called their toll-free number 1-800-726-8649, hit option 5 to speak to a representative. I explained that I may be interested in purchasing license(s) but needed clarification on their policy. Note that I don't currently own or operate any Linux systems that their license would apply to, but that I'm calling for some clarification of their policy.
Anyways, they wanted my company name, my name, and a return phone number. A sales rep will call me back. When I asked how long it would take, I was told it probably would not be this week since they've been backlogged with so many calls. Their sales director wasn't prepared for this large of a response. So either sales are going to be great for SCO this quarter, or their staff is going to be talking to a lot of time-wasters, money-wasters, and tire-kickers.
We bought a used Tektronix Phaser printer several years ago for the office. We've never looked back. Maintenance is virtually zero. Adding more wax is trivial, possibly easier/cleaner than toner. Black wax is free with our model (ie, ultra cheap per-page costs for B&W documents), and you pay for color wax. Output quality is fantasic whether it's B&W text, solid color regions, or near-photo quality. You could certainly burn a lot of wax if you printed color photos or solid pages all the time, but your B&W docs will be cheap.
As far as connectivity and compatibility...
Windows: Great. Drivers are easy found and work great.
Linux: The printer sits on our LAN with its own IP address, etc. so when I print from my Linux desktop I simply have a script that fires the [text/PDF]->Postscript straight into the printer's listening port. And I'm sure there's a better way to print to this printer from Linux (with Samba) that allows for proper queuing, etc.
First cavaet: The printer has a warmup sequence that keeps itself clean and ensures liquid wax is ready when needed. The good news is you never really have to think about turning it on or off or whatever; it just wakes up and warms itself up. (In fact, don't turn it off or it goes through an extended power-up cycle that burns additional wax.) The downside here is that it does burn a small amount of color wax each warmup and eventually I guess you'd run out of the color wax even if you weren't doing color printing. In real usage, this hasn't been an issue for our office, but I thought I'd mention it.
Second cavaet: This is a fairly big, heavy, expensive printer. It performs like a professional printer, not a light-duty home inkjet. So you do get what you pay for here, in my opinion.
Ours is an 800-series Phaser, but here are some current models from Xerox. And check into the free black wax issue -- I'm not sure if it's still the standard policy.
From the current announcement: It could even make Freenet faster than the World Wide Web in many circumstances.
From the Freenet FAQ: While it is unlikely that freenet sites will ever load faster than regular websites, it does adapt to sudden surges of visitors (which will often occur when relatively unknown sites get linked to from a big site) better, and high download speeds for big files are feasible too. Just don't expect very low latency.
I'm about to try my first Freenet install anyways because I'm curious about some of its other alleged benefits, but would anyone in the know care to comment on just how slow (in latency and/or throughput terms) the Freenet experience is really destined to be?
If you use there products, shoot them a quick email to say 'thanks'.
I've thanked them in the most meaningful way to possibly thank a corporation: I've purchased their products when their products are worthy. They are required to comply with the GPL. Thanking parties for not breaking licensing terms they've agreed to or contracts they've signed seems like unnecessary praise.
It just goes to show how far off we are in terms of a truely intuitive user interface.
Interfaces do not need to be intuitive, do they? A.I. definitely has a goal of intuitive machine-human interaction, but interface design (depending on the application) also needs to think about efficiency, robustness, etc. For expert users or even frequent users, an unintuitive (to the outsider) but very efficient, reliable, reproducable interface might be the best idea. Keyboard? Steering wheel? (Think about it.) Foot pedals? These are all unintuitive controls that we invented to control our strange inventions and machines. And they actually work very well for all but the most untrained users. Humans are excellent at learning and adapting. Machines are not. What are your interface goals?
In fact, if you ask a human being for 3 random numbers, odds are very good that they will give you at least two sequential ones...such as 7 6 2...or 5 9 8...
What do you mean by "very good" odds? If you ask a TRNG (true random number generator) for 3 random numbers, odds are quite good (40%) that it will give you at least two sequential ones. This is just rough math (supplied upon request) off the top of my head with the assumption that 9 and 0 are considered to be adjacent; odds would be slightly lower if we reject this. My point is that your example has fairly significant odds, even by a TRNG.
But with random numbers...a human couldn't do it even remotely as well a computer can, so why is it considered such a weakness of computers?
Humans can toss a coin or roll a die or spin a wheel. Those are actually decent ways to generate numbers. It's an ability to interface with entropy that humans have (and computers don't, unless you want to stuff a natural/mechanical/chaotic process into a hardware RNG). And the sequences generated by humans in those ways are not easily recreated or predicted and a seed value doesn't really exist to weaken the scheme either (as it does with software RNGs). Assuming you give the wheel/die/coin a really good spin!
Hmm. That subject reads like a spam email. Anyways... I understand how this would be useful for viewing terrain in dense smoke, etc. But it's not going to show you dynamic things like enemy troops, vehicles, and tanks that are moving around in the smoke with you. And since this appears to be of GPS-resolution, it's not even going to be able to show you small, dangerous things to avoid running into like ditches, holes, traps, mines, etc.
As for viewing distant terrain... well... I can use topo maps to remove mountains in realtime, right now. Sure, you need a brain and good visualization skills to navigate with a map, but maps aren't subject to power loss, EMF weapons, etc. We're talking about terrain here. That's pretty static stuff, no? Keep it simple.
Russ Cooper, moderator of the NTBugTraq security list and a security expert for TruSecure Corp., seems to be contradicting himself in two stories on the same day (or is being misquoted). Make of this what you will...
This story quotes Cooper: "I do expect that in the next seven to 10 days we're going to see a worldwide wave" of attacks, probably via an Internet worm, Cooper said Wednesday. "And it will be effective."
And this story quotes Cooper: ""I doubt we will see an attack based on this," Cooper said. "It's pretty unlikely any such exploit attempt will get legs.""
why does every video game on tv sound like Pac Man for the 2600?
Ugh. The 2600 version has the worst sound fx of any version I've ever heard. Eating the dots sounds like "gonk gonk gonk gonk" instead of the authentic "waka waka waka waka".
One place comes to mind... Cal's Computer Warehouse on the north side of Grandview Highway west of Costco and east of Superstore. Open late 7 days per week. Wacky place. Some new product but mostly surplus and used. Hardware and software by the scoopful. NICs, audio cards, cables, adaptors, and monitors galore. I picked up a bunch of Wyse 60s there once (they dozens to sift through) for a team of programmers' serial debug terminals. Prices are so-so, but they've been willing to haggle. There's also an old microcomputer museum in the back with some treasures that aren't for sale. Check it out.
SFU used to have science & tech equipment auctions once in a while. UBC might also.
This is not a match between man and machine. It is a match between humans - the human chess player vs the human software programmer.
I disagree with you, since I could apply your reasoning and conclude that this is NOT Kasparov competing either. It is Kasparov's school teachers, nutritionists, chess instructors, fellow chess players, parents, programmers of software that Kasparov uses to train with, and authors of chess books that he no doubt assimilates knowledge from.
My point is that computer algorithms aren't the only thing shaped by the contributions and knowledge of others.
Both Kasparov and Deep Junior are "black boxes" with a recognized I/O protocol for playing chess. One box is made of meat and one is made of hardware/software. Neither box is created itself without huge amounts of guidance, programming, critiquing, iterative refinements, constant tweaking of strategies, etc.
The current legislation defines "blank audio recording medium" as "a recording medium, regardless of its material form, onto which a sound recording may be reproduced, that is of a kind ordinarily used by individual consumers for that purpose and on which no sounds have ever been fixed". Details here
So if manufacturers cared to record some sound onto a CD-RW (heck, make it an advertisement, for all I care) then perhaps it would not be subject to the levy.
"every TiVo Series2 DVR contains a unique public/private key pair," so only "designated" units within your home can share programs, you "cannot send content outside the home," and transfers over your home network will be encrypted (no sniffing!)
I read the "TiVOGuard" portion of the press release. But it leaves me curious about how they determine the bounds of one's 'home'. Is this subnet masking or something that determines what IP addresses are inside my home? What if someone wants to designate their own weekend cottage or parents' home as shareable? Care to speculate?
Consider a similar, but non-computing, scenario... Let's say you're Joe's Crematorium. A subpoena comes in for a corpse you have on the line on its way into the furnace. As the business owner or manager, you receive the subpoena. You're not certain at this point if the "job" has "run" yet or not. But you think maybe it hasn't. So you hustle over to the phone and call down to the guy in the furnace room who actually does the work. No answer. Crap. You run down the stairs yourself. He's not there. You don't know yourself how to stop the conveyor belt with the bodies on it. You don't know if the evidence in question has been destroyed or not. You make some more phone calls to see where the furnace guy might be. No luck. Bodies are continuing to get toasted. You finally find him (he was on a legitimate break, let's say). You tell him what's going on. 20 minutes have passed now. He stops the belt. It becomes known that the evidence has been incinerated.
Are you guilty of "destroying evidence"? Is your company? Is the furnace guy?
I see everyone talking about the computability of 2048 bit keys, legal issues, etc. But the project organizers tell us on the first page of their site that if they are "aproached by M$"[sic], they "will be ditching the Xbox project all together as we cannot afford the legal fees."
Doesn't everyone agree that Microsoft would be foolish to not to "approach" them and just put this to sleep?
Scientists are speculating that the study of this creature might lead to more than better cameras. They believe that this knowledge could be applied to optical fiber networks as well, greatly improving their efficiency and speed.
So this sea creature is going to help us increase the speed of light? Amazing!
(I'm sure they meant effective throughput of an entire cluster of fiber or some other property that's actually possible to alter.)
Driving a car takes lessons, an understanding of how a clutch works, and practice.
Nobody needs to know how to use a clutch today, just like nobody needs to know how to crank start a car or kick-start a motorcycle (unless you really want to for a specialized application). It still requires practice, but very little learning on the mechanical and technical fronts compare to a couple of generations ago. Are we heading towards roads and cars that communicate with each other to the point of navigation not requiring any practice? Yes, at some point. You'll be able to step into a car and choose your destination and effectively own and operate your car without any learning required. Home bakers don't have to learn and practice to kneed or roll dough anymore. There are computers you can talk to to accomplish simple useful things, but not to degree of Star Trek. Will I be able to do something next year that I couldn't do this year simply by speaking to a computer? Absolutely. Small steps, but each one eliminates the learning curve for someone who just wanted to do something simple. Learning curves change drastically over time. Some go away completely, unless you're a tinkerer or hobbyist or professional user.
Computer technology is no different than other technology.
Other technologies commonly have computers to thank for drastic reductions in their learning curves. Fuzzy logic bread makers and washers that really work well. No knowledge of stains or dirt or bleach or gluten or yeast tricks are required. I'm sure you'll find a microcontroller in your lawn mower and sewing machine, and that has a lot to do with them being easier to use. I used to have to understand how to 'prime' my mower and pull the cord with just the right 'snap'. Now, I press a button labelled 'Start'. I don't need to learn anything about a lawn mower now before using it. Computers quicken the reduction of learning curves. Five or six years ago (pre-USB) my elder relatives couldn't dream of learning enough to buy a parallel port printer and install it and the drivers and configure it themselves. You know what one of them did this weekend? Bought a printer, plugged it in, watched it get auto-recognized and config'ed by the OS, and they were printing web pages in minutes. The important point here is they 'learned' nothing in the process. Nada. That's how it should be. Learning curves are being reduced to -zero- for basic users all the time. We should expect this.
Okay, maybe this is a stretch, but hear me out. I believe pi is considered to be normal. See here and here for background on what "normal" means. Essentially, it says the digits are equally distributed over the long run. I believe then, that you can also prove that by exploring sufficiently deep within pi, you will find every conceivable string of digits (ie, in any order you desire and of any length). I think my math is reasonably correct here, but feel free to put me back on track.
Anyways, if this is the case, all digital works are already rendered in pi. All past and future audio master recordings are already in pi. All source and binary distributions of all software are already dumped in pi. Etc.
So the implication is: Am I breaking simple copyright law or the DMCA by computing pi? Am I a criminal for posessing a sufficiently large dump of pi's digits? If I find the rip of a new audio CD in pi, can I keep it?
Enjoy the following plans for snapping together your very own cultural icons! Start saving your 1x1 bricks! (these are undithered, top-viewed LEGO art and use only 6 colors: black, white, yellow, red, green, blue) Ellen Feiss Osama Bin Laden Bill Gates and, of course... the goatse.cx guy
Slashdot Mirror
Debian still stands out as the distro most reflective of the GNU philosophy.
Actually, that's not true anymore. Things have changed and Debian is not the best example of free software or GNU. Check out GNU/Linex instead.
You'll not see a link to Debian from the FSF/GNU sites for this reason. Debian still distributes non-free software. Yes, you can install Debian without the optional non-free stuff, but they really do encourage installing non-free software on your system easily.
While RMS currently has a machine running Debian (without the non-free bits, I'm sure), he claims that it's because this new all-free distro (GNU/Linex) wasn't available at the time. See this recent RMS interview for more.
I would never say they were better than what we have now ... or they wouldn't be becomeing extinct would they?
Old games can still be some of the greatest from a gameplay perspective. Keep in mind:
- great gameplay doesn't mean infinite replayability (you'll still get bored eventually and need a break)
- great gameplay in a game you bought 10 years ago doesn't put money into many people's hands today (so someone keeps trying to seduce you into spending another $60 and then another and then another even if those new games aren't 'better')
For those interested or those who couldn't get through on the phone today...
I just called their toll-free number 1-800-726-8649, hit option 5 to speak to a representative. I explained that I may be interested in purchasing license(s) but needed clarification on their policy. Note that I don't currently own or operate any Linux systems that their license would apply to, but that I'm calling for some clarification of their policy.
Anyways, they wanted my company name, my name, and a return phone number. A sales rep will call me back. When I asked how long it would take, I was told it probably would not be this week since they've been backlogged with so many calls. Their sales director wasn't prepared for this large of a response. So either sales are going to be great for SCO this quarter, or their staff is going to be talking to a lot of time-wasters, money-wasters, and tire-kickers.
We bought a used Tektronix Phaser printer several years ago for the office. We've never looked back. Maintenance is virtually zero. Adding more wax is trivial, possibly easier/cleaner than toner. Black wax is free with our model (ie, ultra cheap per-page costs for B&W documents), and you pay for color wax. Output quality is fantasic whether it's B&W text, solid color regions, or near-photo quality. You could certainly burn a lot of wax if you printed color photos or solid pages all the time, but your B&W docs will be cheap.
As far as connectivity and compatibility...
Windows: Great. Drivers are easy found and work great.
Linux: The printer sits on our LAN with its own IP address, etc. so when I print from my Linux desktop I simply have a script that fires the [text/PDF]->Postscript straight into the printer's listening port. And I'm sure there's a better way to print to this printer from Linux (with Samba) that allows for proper queuing, etc.
First cavaet: The printer has a warmup sequence that keeps itself clean and ensures liquid wax is ready when needed. The good news is you never really have to think about turning it on or off or whatever; it just wakes up and warms itself up. (In fact, don't turn it off or it goes through an extended power-up cycle that burns additional wax.) The downside here is that it does burn a small amount of color wax each warmup and eventually I guess you'd run out of the color wax even if you weren't doing color printing. In real usage, this hasn't been an issue for our office, but I thought I'd mention it.
Second cavaet: This is a fairly big, heavy, expensive printer. It performs like a professional printer, not a light-duty home inkjet. So you do get what you pay for here, in my opinion.
Ours is an 800-series Phaser, but here are some current models from Xerox. And check into the free black wax issue -- I'm not sure if it's still the standard policy.
I see contradictory claims. Help me out here...
From the current announcement: It could even make Freenet faster than the World Wide Web in many circumstances.
From the Freenet FAQ: While it is unlikely that freenet sites will ever load faster than regular websites, it does adapt to sudden surges of visitors (which will often occur when relatively unknown sites get linked to from a big site) better, and high download speeds for big files are feasible too. Just don't expect very low latency.
I'm about to try my first Freenet install anyways because I'm curious about some of its other alleged benefits, but would anyone in the know care to comment on just how slow (in latency and/or throughput terms) the Freenet experience is really destined to be?
When you absolutely, positively, have to kill every motherfscking RFID tag in the store, accept no substitutes...
The Electromagnetic Bomb
The Electromagnetic Bomb
The Electromagnetic Bomb
High-Power Microwave Bomb
If you use there products, shoot them a quick email to say 'thanks'.
I've thanked them in the most meaningful way to possibly thank a corporation: I've purchased their products when their products are worthy. They are required to comply with the GPL. Thanking parties for not breaking licensing terms they've agreed to or contracts they've signed seems like unnecessary praise.
It just goes to show how far off we are in terms of a truely intuitive user interface.
Interfaces do not need to be intuitive, do they? A.I. definitely has a goal of intuitive machine-human interaction, but interface design (depending on the application) also needs to think about efficiency, robustness, etc. For expert users or even frequent users, an unintuitive (to the outsider) but very efficient, reliable, reproducable interface might be the best idea. Keyboard? Steering wheel? (Think about it.) Foot pedals? These are all unintuitive controls that we invented to control our strange inventions and machines. And they actually work very well for all but the most untrained users. Humans are excellent at learning and adapting. Machines are not. What are your interface goals?
it's illegal to make a false statement on the census. Jedi is NOT a registered religion
And it's never gonna be, with that attitude, Mister!
In fact, if you ask a human being for 3 random numbers, odds are very good that they will give you at least two sequential ones...such as 7 6 2...or 5 9 8...
What do you mean by "very good" odds? If you ask a TRNG (true random number generator) for 3 random numbers, odds are quite good (40%) that it will give you at least two sequential ones. This is just rough math (supplied upon request) off the top of my head with the assumption that 9 and 0 are considered to be adjacent; odds would be slightly lower if we reject this. My point is that your example has fairly significant odds, even by a TRNG.
But with random numbers...a human couldn't do it even remotely as well a computer can, so why is it considered such a weakness of computers?
Humans can toss a coin or roll a die or spin a wheel. Those are actually decent ways to generate numbers. It's an ability to interface with entropy that humans have (and computers don't, unless you want to stuff a natural/mechanical/chaotic process into a hardware RNG). And the sequences generated by humans in those ways are not easily recreated or predicted and a seed value doesn't really exist to weaken the scheme either (as it does with software RNGs). Assuming you give the wheel/die/coin a really good spin!
Hmm. That subject reads like a spam email. Anyways... I understand how this would be useful for viewing terrain in dense smoke, etc. But it's not going to show you dynamic things like enemy troops, vehicles, and tanks that are moving around in the smoke with you. And since this appears to be of GPS-resolution, it's not even going to be able to show you small, dangerous things to avoid running into like ditches, holes, traps, mines, etc.
As for viewing distant terrain... well... I can use topo maps to remove mountains in realtime, right now. Sure, you need a brain and good visualization skills to navigate with a map, but maps aren't subject to power loss, EMF weapons, etc. We're talking about terrain here. That's pretty static stuff, no? Keep it simple.
Russ Cooper, moderator of the NTBugTraq security list and a security expert for TruSecure Corp., seems to be contradicting himself in two stories on the same day (or is being misquoted). Make of this what you will...
This story quotes Cooper: "I do expect that in the next seven to 10 days we're going to see a worldwide wave" of attacks, probably via an Internet worm, Cooper said Wednesday. "And it will be effective."
And this story quotes Cooper: ""I doubt we will see an attack based on this," Cooper said. "It's pretty unlikely any such exploit attempt will get legs.""
why does every video game on tv sound like Pac Man for the 2600?
Ugh. The 2600 version has the worst sound fx of any version I've ever heard. Eating the dots sounds like "gonk gonk gonk gonk" instead of the authentic "waka waka waka waka".
anything even REMOTELY similar in Vancouver?
One place comes to mind... Cal's Computer Warehouse on the north side of Grandview Highway west of Costco and east of Superstore. Open late 7 days per week. Wacky place. Some new product but mostly surplus and used. Hardware and software by the scoopful. NICs, audio cards, cables, adaptors, and monitors galore. I picked up a bunch of Wyse 60s there once (they dozens to sift through) for a team of programmers' serial debug terminals. Prices are so-so, but they've been willing to haggle. There's also an old microcomputer museum in the back with some treasures that aren't for sale. Check it out.
SFU used to have science & tech equipment auctions once in a while. UBC might also.
This is not a match between man and machine. It is a match between humans - the human chess player vs the human software programmer.
I disagree with you, since I could apply your reasoning and conclude that this is NOT Kasparov competing either. It is Kasparov's school teachers, nutritionists, chess instructors, fellow chess players, parents, programmers of software that Kasparov uses to train with, and authors of chess books that he no doubt assimilates knowledge from.
My point is that computer algorithms aren't the only thing shaped by the contributions and knowledge of others.
Both Kasparov and Deep Junior are "black boxes" with a recognized I/O protocol for playing chess. One box is made of meat and one is made of hardware/software. Neither box is created itself without huge amounts of guidance, programming, critiquing, iterative refinements, constant tweaking of strategies, etc.
The current legislation defines "blank audio recording medium" as "a recording medium, regardless of its material form, onto which a sound recording may be reproduced, that is of a kind ordinarily used by individual consumers for that purpose and on which no sounds have ever been fixed". Details here
So if manufacturers cared to record some sound onto a CD-RW (heck, make it an advertisement, for all I care) then perhaps it would not be subject to the levy.
"every TiVo Series2 DVR contains a unique public/private key pair," so only "designated" units within your home can share programs, you "cannot send content outside the home," and transfers over your home network will be encrypted (no sniffing!)
I read the "TiVOGuard" portion of the press release. But it leaves me curious about how they determine the bounds of one's 'home'. Is this subnet masking or something that determines what IP addresses are inside my home? What if someone wants to designate their own weekend cottage or parents' home as shareable? Care to speculate?
Which episodes does this measurement contradict?
Consider a similar, but non-computing, scenario... Let's say you're Joe's Crematorium. A subpoena comes in for a corpse you have on the line on its way into the furnace. As the business owner or manager, you receive the subpoena. You're not certain at this point if the "job" has "run" yet or not. But you think maybe it hasn't. So you hustle over to the phone and call down to the guy in the furnace room who actually does the work. No answer. Crap. You run down the stairs yourself. He's not there. You don't know yourself how to stop the conveyor belt with the bodies on it. You don't know if the evidence in question has been destroyed or not. You make some more phone calls to see where the furnace guy might be. No luck. Bodies are continuing to get toasted. You finally find him (he was on a legitimate break, let's say). You tell him what's going on. 20 minutes have passed now. He stops the belt. It becomes known that the evidence has been incinerated.
Are you guilty of "destroying evidence"? Is your company? Is the furnace guy?
I see everyone talking about the computability of 2048 bit keys, legal issues, etc. But the project organizers tell us on the first page of their site that if they are "aproached by M$"[sic], they "will be ditching the Xbox project all together as we cannot afford the legal fees."
Doesn't everyone agree that Microsoft would be foolish to not to "approach" them and just put this to sleep?
Scientists are speculating that the study of this creature might lead to more than better cameras. They believe that this knowledge could be applied to optical fiber networks as well, greatly improving their efficiency and speed.
So this sea creature is going to help us increase the speed of light? Amazing!
(I'm sure they meant effective throughput of an entire cluster of fiber or some other property that's actually possible to alter.)
Driving a car takes lessons, an understanding of how a clutch works, and practice.
Nobody needs to know how to use a clutch today, just like nobody needs to know how to crank start a car or kick-start a motorcycle (unless you really want to for a specialized application). It still requires practice, but very little learning on the mechanical and technical fronts compare to a couple of generations ago. Are we heading towards roads and cars that communicate with each other to the point of navigation not requiring any practice? Yes, at some point. You'll be able to step into a car and choose your destination and effectively own and operate your car without any learning required. Home bakers don't have to learn and practice to kneed or roll dough anymore. There are computers you can talk to to accomplish simple useful things, but not to degree of Star Trek. Will I be able to do something next year that I couldn't do this year simply by speaking to a computer? Absolutely. Small steps, but each one eliminates the learning curve for someone who just wanted to do something simple. Learning curves change drastically over time. Some go away completely, unless you're a tinkerer or hobbyist or professional user.
Computer technology is no different than other technology.
Other technologies commonly have computers to thank for drastic reductions in their learning curves. Fuzzy logic bread makers and washers that really work well. No knowledge of stains or dirt or bleach or gluten or yeast tricks are required. I'm sure you'll find a microcontroller in your lawn mower and sewing machine, and that has a lot to do with them being easier to use. I used to have to understand how to 'prime' my mower and pull the cord with just the right 'snap'. Now, I press a button labelled 'Start'. I don't need to learn anything about a lawn mower now before using it. Computers quicken the reduction of learning curves. Five or six years ago (pre-USB) my elder relatives couldn't dream of learning enough to buy a parallel port printer and install it and the drivers and configure it themselves. You know what one of them did this weekend? Bought a printer, plugged it in, watched it get auto-recognized and config'ed by the OS, and they were printing web pages in minutes. The important point here is they 'learned' nothing in the process. Nada. That's how it should be. Learning curves are being reduced to -zero- for basic users all the time. We should expect this.
Okay, maybe this is a stretch, but hear me out. I believe pi is considered to be normal. See here and here for background on what "normal" means. Essentially, it says the digits are equally distributed over the long run. I believe then, that you can also prove that by exploring sufficiently deep within pi, you will find every conceivable string of digits (ie, in any order you desire and of any length). I think my math is reasonably correct here, but feel free to put me back on track.
Anyways, if this is the case, all digital works are already rendered in pi. All past and future audio master recordings are already in pi. All source and binary distributions of all software are already dumped in pi. Etc.
So the implication is: Am I breaking simple copyright law or the DMCA by computing pi? Am I a criminal for posessing a sufficiently large dump of pi's digits? If I find the rip of a new audio CD in pi, can I keep it?
...to avoid crying.
I dunno. Works for onions.
Enjoy the following plans for snapping together your very own cultural icons! Start saving your 1x1 bricks!
(these are undithered, top-viewed LEGO art and use only 6 colors: black, white, yellow, red, green, blue)
Ellen Feiss
Osama Bin Laden
Bill Gates
and, of course...
the goatse.cx guy