I'm not confident that the shape is necessarily bound, like you're indicating. The Wikipedia article, for instance, gives several alternatives, but doesn't say that scientists are pointing at one or the other.
I have seen articles presenting arguments for the different sorts of shapes that you are presenting, but I haven't seen anything saying, "But we know for sure, it's not infinite in all directions." To the contrary, I have seen many reputable sites (such as Hubble research sites, NASA sites, and so on,) that say, in effect, "We don't know; It may well be infinite in all directions."
If you like, I can dig up the links; I've been collecting them.
The space is mostly these enormous voids. Gravity has enough effect to form clusters and filament, but not enough to dramatically warp space on the scale of the entire universe.
If light existed only for 14.7 billion years, then objects couldn't be farther than 14.7 billion light years, in fact, much less. As the maximum speed they could have (relative to us) is the speed of light.
No; There's no reason to believe things didn't start beyond us. Furthermore, there is the expansion of space.
That is, at the time of the big bang, my understanding is that there may have been plasma that was billions of light years away. My understanding is that the big bang refers to initial density, and to expansion. But not necessarily to a beginning in a single point.
In my defense, I refer you to a NASA site, "WMAP Cosmology 101," the part that begins with: "Please avoid the following common misconceptions about the Big Bang and expansion..."
Well, I'm a programmer, not a scientist. I do get your question, but I don't know the answer to your question, either.
I'm not convinced that they think it was a "point;" I'm unclear on whether that's part of an analogy, using something that we can imagine (a point,) for the purpose of explaining expansion, or a literal statement about geometry.
"Tremendously dense," yes, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it's just a point. And "expansion of space" doesn't necessarily mean "outward" from "inward," since if you scale any 3-space by 2, you get the same results, regardless of origin.
Keep in mind that my understanding is that of a lay person keeping track of things by wikipedia, and occasional conversation with live scientist. But here's what I understand, so far.
Space is expanding, but it's expanding in the sense that the distance between galaxies is growing larger. Not that it's expanding out "into" something, or anything like that.
Imagine an infinite universe, existing in all directions, filled with galaxies.
Now, take the same space, but multiplying all (x,y,z) coordinates by, say, 1.2. (Note that, this transformation works the same, regardless of where you pick your origin!)
Now, the various forces hold atoms and planets and stars and galaxies together, so the galaxies, stars, planets, people, plants, themselves, don't get bigger. Only the space between galaxies.
This is a model of an expanding, infinite universe. It would have no "edge," it would just keep going.
The objects in the infinite universe have finite dimensions. But the space itself, may be infinite. Again, we don't know, but it's a possibility.
I ask myself: "Did the big bang necessarily occur out of a single point?" Because, you can have incredible densities, and a "bang" (by expanding universe,) but not necessarily have everything coming out of a single point. Mathematically, too, you can actually map all of the Real numbers, 1:1, in the space between 0.0 through 1.0. "Is it possible that the universe began with super-high density, in all directions?" I need to ask an astrophysicist this question, don't take my thoughts on this one.
I thought that the state of the art is that the universe is very nearly flat- that it's only when you get next to stars and galaxies that you start to notice curvature. But that on the scale of the large-scale structure of the universe, that it's flat. This would indicate that space extends infinitely in all directions.
As you look further and further away from where we are, you see deeper and deeper into the past, until you see back as far as we can, where we see only the cosmic microwave background radiation, uniformly, like a sphere, in all directions.
Most astrophysicists doubt that we are at the exact middle.
The reason we can't see things beyond the visible universe, is simply because light hasn't existed long enough to get to us, from things that exist beyond the edge of our light cone of vision.
Right? If light has only existed for, say, 14.7 billion light years, then you're not going to be seeing something that's 20 billion light years away. Or 100 billion light years away.
It makes sense that, at the very edge of our vision, we see the genesis of the universe, in all directions.
Astrophysicists today do not know how large the universe is, and it may well be infinite, in all directions. Astrophysicists take this idea very seriously, as far as I understand. That said, they also take seriously the idea that it is smaller than the observable universe, and just has a wrap-around effect.
But very briefly: Why do you think the Semantic Web is pointless, without Natural Language Processing?
You must be thinking about reasoners, and such, but consider: Just the ability to network data, alone, is staggeringly useful. Semantic Web efforts are going strong, and producing good work. A friend of mine living nearby makes his living, working with biology data in RDF formats and such, and I know he's not alone.
These technologies will take much longer than you anticipate before they are usable in the manner you describe.
To collect all that data together, automatically, transparently, on it's own, without being "told," sure. I give it 2030-2050. But if someone has the slightest amount of intentionality, that figure goes down. For the face-recognition to timestamp to GPS, you could automatically scan faces, and manually write a program to correlate the data, today. In 2015, it'll be much easier. In 2025, I think it'll be trivial.
I don't think your work by analogy really works here.
Consider: The laws around guns and murder are very complex. Can you own a gun? Why would you want to own a gun? For what purposes is it legal to own a gun? Where can you point a gun? Can you have something that looks like a gun, but isn't? When is murder legal? When is murder illegal? When is it illegal, but you can get away with it?
Are our answers to those questions shaped by how easy it is to get ahold of a gun? Are our answers to those questions shaped by our ability to gather evidence from the scene of a crime? If you couldn't find bullets, blood, or any other evidence, after a gun had been used, is it reasonable to believe that our laws about guns would be different? Is it reasonable to believe that our world would be different, if that's how things worked?
If so, then I don't think your gun analogy works very well.
backwards countries have more privacy protection laws than advanced ones?
Backwards countries fear empowered people. "Ideas," and such.
Privacy, especially a forced privacy, hinders the flow of ideas; Just ask any Iranian blogger, who is having privacy forced onto them.
By limiting the processor count and such, you are forcing privacy on people. You're also, quite materially, limiting their intelligence.
I think if we limit our intelligence, as a people, we'll just end up harming ourselves.
You're asking for more rigor, and scare-quoting this "study."
I'm asking, "Why so skeptical?"
When you read the article, you see that the people performing the study are well aware that this is only "pointing at" possibilities, not definitively saying, "This is true."
You're requesting more rigor, and I don't think they'd disagree with you. They performed a study. They're looking at the results. The questions that come out of this study will inspire further study.
The article portrays a picture of ambiguity. Sounds about right.
This is not a "study," this is a study proper. Studies do not demand the churning out of new Laws. Its sufficient to frame an experiment, say, "Well, I think it's X; It warrants a further look," and then tell people that.
It will not be very long (a decade? two decades?) before face, body, gait, license plate, voice, speech, handwriting, textual habits, (and so on) recognition software will be powerful enough to recognize people in real-time, from a variety of real-time inputs.
Even the past will be open to analysis, a theme called "retroactive surveillance." For example, the Seattle bus system keeps timestamped footage of people coming in and out of the bus, and the Seattle bus system keeps records of where the buses are, and when, by GPS. In theory, these two systems can be correlated, and, if you have a system for analyzing faces, you should be able to connect the "network of data" to figure out who is where and when. This type of correlation is what software visionaries are working hard to achieve, with efforts such as the Semantic Web.
People who are worried about "the mark of the beast," through such things as RFID tags and so on, are worried about the wrong thing. You won't need to "wear" anything. You won't need any special marks, once software is sufficiently capable. Your face, your clothes, the way you walk, your posture, the regular patterns you follow every day, your voice, all are sufficient enough, in themselves, to serve as the "mark of the beast."
It is conceivable that you will be able to limit government use of this sort of technology. But will you be able to stop private users from using this sort of technology? If you envision a future revolution of some sort, do you believe that the revolutionaries would not use this technology themselves? To track the motion of police vehicles, and individual policemen, and the people who work for and against you?
The underlying activities behind these technologies: Collecting information, seeing, hearing, sensing, and then correlating what is seen, what is heard- these are foundational. The "problem" is simply intelligence, itself.
I doubt that willful blindness or doubt is going to help us in our path to the future. We see that backwards countries practicing willful blindness, not advanced ones.
Most likely, they're talking about the rapidly-growing "casual gamers" crowd.
They want a super-smooth and polished purchase, install, and play path for casual gamers. They want an experience as reliable and smooth as that of purchasing a game for a console, but for a computer with Windows installed.
On a console, the hardware is basically identical. The OS software is basically identical. The controllers are standardized, and perfectly regular.
There is never any ambiguity, in a Nintendo Wii game, about what the "(A)" button refers to, and what the "[B]" button refers to. The same on a PS2 controller, with an X, a triangle, and so on. The game developers know exactly how everything is laid out.
There are never install problems, you just put the disk in, and it works. If it doesn't work, it's because the disk is bad. There are very simple decision trees at work here.
When you're in the store, looking for the Wii games, there's no difficulty finding them. Not only are the sectioned, but all the titles have the same look and feel. Hoards of consumer psychologists have found out that Brands Work.
They want to make it possible for there to be "Windows Games," which work on Windows just like N64 games work on an N64. Platform, platform, platform.
It's a sensible strategy.
They're not talking about games that hard core gamers play. They're not talking about your community. They are talking about a super-fast growing market segment. Businesses love super-fast growing markets, it's where all the action in determining what the landscape will look like is. Things that don't grow are basically set in their patterns, and change is only made very slowly, unless the market is being torn apart by some obsoleting force.
I'm not entirely confident that the "steam-release valve" explanation is the right one. And I'm not confident that "free speech" is our best argument.
I do think "steam valve" and "free speech" have value, but I'm skeptical that it's the total picture.
I think that there is something deeper at work here, and that the situation is worth examining.
I would like to ask the question: "What explanations, other than steam-release valve, can both explain our interest, and explain the value of, media that depicts taboo acts?" (Sex or violence.)
Some possible questions: "Why are we compelled to preserve media that depict the taboo?"
Some possible deeper answers: "Because we want to be free to be honest about our desires, whatever they may be." "Because we want to be able to communicate about our desires, even if we realize that their realization would be bad." "Because we want a society of trust in adults, rather than enforcement of
Some other questions the debate brings up: "Will we as a society entrust men with dangerous desires?" "Will we as a society labor to direct men away from dangerous desires?" "What does empirical evidence show?" "Should we socially and legally enforce belief in a falsehood (that men are not naturally attracted to young women,) because we can't trust men's behavior if the truth is known?" "How flexible is male sexual interest?" "If we could eliminate male interest in young women, would we do it?"
I'd be much happier with the discussion if I saw deeper delving into these sorts of questions. Something more than just the "whet-desire thought-control desensitization steam-valve" rehash that we see repeated over and over.
It may be too late, but: If anyone can,... please mod this post up? Pretty please?
In terms of the Linux community, the desktop is where the excitement and interest is, rather than the kernel.
But beyond just the Linux community, considering "the space" of programmers as a whole, the excitement is web-side.
Automatic installation, no maintenance, etc., etc.; These things are exciting to people. Companies are all making deals with each other: "Oh, you can get the user to install something? Will you put this in there, too?" No install questions on the web based stuff.
I've seen some efforts that are trying to make the bottleneck of the web browser a bit wider- there's that project the Firefox dev is working on (forget the name,) and I understand that Microsoft has some ideas, and then there's Flash, which already does that to a degree. But many people are trying to make that bottleneck a bit wider. Whether that "widening" is platform dependent, or platform independent, will mean a lot to whether the OS is important again, or not.
But for the time being, the answer appears to be, "No, not very."
Your point about Word 6.0 is fair, but I think it's still within my point: Its an app that runs on the OS, and the OS is the platform that the developers are concerned about. (Word is a special case, because the devs happen to belong to the same company as the OS platform manufacturer: Microsoft.) Developers across the board, all apps: "What OS do I write this to?" But most of the new exciting things, the assumption is: "This goes on the web." Or, "This goes on flash." Or whatever.
"What is the fuss all about today? How is it new?" It's new in that the OS is hidden, because the focus is on the web browser, and the myriad semi-standards, such as HTML, XML, CSS, XHTML, DHTML, JavaScript, Java, and so on. (And things that aren't open standards, such as Flash, and so on.) All of these things are cross-platform. That wasn't the case nearly as much, before.
What this means is that people care far less about Microsoft. They're mainly interested in: "How far can I stretch the web?" You go too far, and you have to start going OS specific again. (3D games, or real-time XYZ, Voice-over-IP, or anything where you don't want data to go over the wire.) Even with stuff that doesn't work via Internet, there are now so many mature capable cross-platform compatibility libraries, that the specific OS doesn't matter so much.
I think what you, and the others who are saying things like you, are missing, is what the conversation is all about.
Nobodies seriously arguing that "OS'es don't matter," or that OS'es will somehow magically, poof, up and disappear, somehow. If you think that's what the message is, you're almost certainly misinterpreting.
There will always be stuff that people will only entrust to their own computer, and run on an OS, and so on. Like the fellow who replied to you first said: "I don't want to authenticate, just to edit a word document." Quite right.
What they're saying, or one of the things they're saying, (since "they" are quite large and nebulous,) is that the era of the super-important dominance of the OS is at an end.
That is, that software developers, around the world, are never going to go back to the heady days of 1995, where every new platform change to Windows or Apple was the compelling subject of the magazines.
It's sort of like in Linux. Who cares what happens to the kernel anymore? It's all about the desktop efforts.
Sure, the old stuff never went away: There are still innovations in the Linux Kernel, and, there are communities of people who keep up with what's happening in kernels and so on, and the myriad activities and so on. Even exciting things still happening there. But it isn't the focus of the discussion.
The primary discussion, the things businesses and users and developers and so on are concerned about, is something different.
So, this is the context in which you interpret: "The net is the OS."
They mean something very big and complex, but when you put a message into the political sphere, it's gotta be short. You have to apply the context to decipher the message.
People in this idea may also be interested in an idea of mine: OverHear.
Basically:
I want to be able to declare my phone and VoIP conversations "public access."
I want anyone in the world to be able to overhear my public conversations.
I want to be able to apply group tags to the conversation, to limit access to participants within groups.
I want a "door knocking" mechanism, so people can ask to gain speaking priviledges on the channel.
I want more people to know "voice protocols," methods of directing group conversations in voice-only less-than-flawless channels.
I want conversations to be indexed in real-time, so that we can find conversations around the globe where certain words, phrases, or ideas are being invoked publicly.
What you say is true. Regardless, I suspect that of all faiths, there are those outliners who have been quick to say, "Convert or die should be the policy."
And I'm saying, that regardless your religion, that you should reject that, vocally, and refuse association with, anyone who says those things. You should say, "That is not acceptable, and I won't associate with you, because you think that way."
I promise to do the same with athiests. If an athiest says, "I think we'd be much better off without religion." And I would ask: "You don't mean killing religious people, do you?" And if they say, even in jest, "Well, it's an idea," then I will say: "That's completely unacceptable, and I will not associate with you, until you think for a while, and retract that statement."
I expect the same from religious people, considering the athiests, and considering people of other faiths.
This should be utterly clear, and I would not equivocate or jest about this, or make it a light matter.
No, actually, the problem, very material and real, is that religious people think that people over other religions, or no religions, must be killed.
That's a fact, and that's a problem, and it's worthy of attention.
Humanity has many problems, this is one in particular. This one deserves careful attention.
We're not saying that religion is bad here. And nobody here is saying that religious people should all be killed. We're just saying: This is a problem.
If you are religious, then this is something you should speak out against. If you are religious, you should say: "People should not try to kill people who do not share our religion." And you should be firm about this, with people of other religions. You should say: "It is not acceptable to have a religious belief that people who do not belong to your faith should be killed."
And if religious people band together, and say, "The athiests should be killed," then you should be firm: "Atheists should not be killed."
This is a no-brainer. And if you don't accept this, I will simply say: This is not acceptable in my company. I will have nothing to do with you.
Wired had an article about a congressman who said that if you vote for you, he will vote on all bills strictly like the people in his district want, by direct internal vote.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not confident that the shape is necessarily bound, like you're indicating. The Wikipedia article, for instance, gives several alternatives, but doesn't say that scientists are pointing at one or the other.
I have seen articles presenting arguments for the different sorts of shapes that you are presenting, but I haven't seen anything saying, "But we know for sure, it's not infinite in all directions." To the contrary, I have seen many reputable sites (such as Hubble research sites, NASA sites, and so on,) that say, in effect, "We don't know; It may well be infinite in all directions."
If you like, I can dig up the links; I've been collecting them.
My understanding is, "No."
Gravity is very weak at the scale of the large scale structure of the universe.
The space is mostly these enormous voids. Gravity has enough effect to form clusters and filament, but not enough to dramatically warp space on the scale of the entire universe.
If light existed only for 14.7 billion years, then objects couldn't be farther than 14.7 billion light years, in fact, much less. As the maximum speed they could have (relative to us) is the speed of light.
No; There's no reason to believe things didn't start beyond us. Furthermore, there is the expansion of space.
That is, at the time of the big bang, my understanding is that there may have been plasma that was billions of light years away. My understanding is that the big bang refers to initial density, and to expansion. But not necessarily to a beginning in a single point.
In my defense, I refer you to a NASA site, "WMAP Cosmology 101," the part that begins with: "Please avoid the following common misconceptions about the Big Bang and expansion..."
Well, I'm a programmer, not a scientist. I do get your question, but I don't know the answer to your question, either.
I'm not convinced that they think it was a "point;" I'm unclear on whether that's part of an analogy, using something that we can imagine (a point,) for the purpose of explaining expansion, or a literal statement about geometry.
"Tremendously dense," yes, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it's just a point. And "expansion of space" doesn't necessarily mean "outward" from "inward," since if you scale any 3-space by 2, you get the same results, regardless of origin.
Keep in mind that my understanding is that of a lay person keeping track of things by wikipedia, and occasional conversation with live scientist. But here's what I understand, so far.
Space is expanding, but it's expanding in the sense that the distance between galaxies is growing larger. Not that it's expanding out "into" something, or anything like that.
Imagine an infinite universe, existing in all directions, filled with galaxies.
Now, take the same space, but multiplying all (x,y,z) coordinates by, say, 1.2. (Note that, this transformation works the same, regardless of where you pick your origin!)
Now, the various forces hold atoms and planets and stars and galaxies together, so the galaxies, stars, planets, people, plants, themselves, don't get bigger. Only the space between galaxies.
This is a model of an expanding, infinite universe. It would have no "edge," it would just keep going.
The objects in the infinite universe have finite dimensions. But the space itself, may be infinite. Again, we don't know, but it's a possibility.
I ask myself: "Did the big bang necessarily occur out of a single point?" Because, you can have incredible densities, and a "bang" (by expanding universe,) but not necessarily have everything coming out of a single point. Mathematically, too, you can actually map all of the Real numbers, 1:1, in the space between 0.0 through 1.0. "Is it possible that the universe began with super-high density, in all directions?" I need to ask an astrophysicist this question, don't take my thoughts on this one.
I thought that the state of the art is that the universe is very nearly flat- that it's only when you get next to stars and galaxies that you start to notice curvature. But that on the scale of the large-scale structure of the universe, that it's flat. This would indicate that space extends infinitely in all directions.
Ah; Excellent question.
If you look at the "known universe," it appears that we are in the exact middle, dead center, of the known universe.
When we see the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation, we are seeing "the edge" of the visible universe, that we can see.
As you look further and further away from where we are, you see deeper and deeper into the past, until you see back as far as we can, where we see only the cosmic microwave background radiation, uniformly, like a sphere, in all directions.
Most astrophysicists doubt that we are at the exact middle.
The reason we can't see things beyond the visible universe, is simply because light hasn't existed long enough to get to us, from things that exist beyond the edge of our light cone of vision.
Right? If light has only existed for, say, 14.7 billion light years, then you're not going to be seeing something that's 20 billion light years away. Or 100 billion light years away.
It makes sense that, at the very edge of our vision, we see the genesis of the universe, in all directions.
Astrophysicists today do not know how large the universe is, and it may well be infinite, in all directions. Astrophysicists take this idea very seriously, as far as I understand. That said, they also take seriously the idea that it is smaller than the observable universe, and just has a wrap-around effect.
Too many points to respond to.
But very briefly: Why do you think the Semantic Web is pointless, without Natural Language Processing?
You must be thinking about reasoners, and such, but consider: Just the ability to network data, alone, is staggeringly useful. Semantic Web efforts are going strong, and producing good work. A friend of mine living nearby makes his living, working with biology data in RDF formats and such, and I know he's not alone.
These technologies will take much longer than you anticipate before they are usable in the manner you describe.
To collect all that data together, automatically, transparently, on it's own, without being "told," sure. I give it 2030-2050. But if someone has the slightest amount of intentionality, that figure goes down. For the face-recognition to timestamp to GPS, you could automatically scan faces, and manually write a program to correlate the data, today. In 2015, it'll be much easier. In 2025, I think it'll be trivial.
Put a hard legal limit on the processing power any person is allowed to possess.
Nice; You'll also need to put a hard legal limit on the ability of people to congre-^H^H^H to network their intellig-^H^H^H devices.
Alternatively.. make it a crime to use facial recognition software without the consent of the person who's face is to be recognized.
Sure, but how are you going to monitor something like that? You'll need something like the Secure Hardware Environment.
Re: your gun analogy.
I don't think your work by analogy really works here.
Consider: The laws around guns and murder are very complex. Can you own a gun? Why would you want to own a gun? For what purposes is it legal to own a gun? Where can you point a gun? Can you have something that looks like a gun, but isn't? When is murder legal? When is murder illegal? When is it illegal, but you can get away with it?
Are our answers to those questions shaped by how easy it is to get ahold of a gun? Are our answers to those questions shaped by our ability to gather evidence from the scene of a crime? If you couldn't find bullets, blood, or any other evidence, after a gun had been used, is it reasonable to believe that our laws about guns would be different? Is it reasonable to believe that our world would be different, if that's how things worked?
If so, then I don't think your gun analogy works very well.
backwards countries have more privacy protection laws than advanced ones?
Backwards countries fear empowered people. "Ideas," and such.
Privacy, especially a forced privacy, hinders the flow of ideas; Just ask any Iranian blogger, who is having privacy forced onto them.
By limiting the processor count and such, you are forcing privacy on people. You're also, quite materially, limiting their intelligence.
I think if we limit our intelligence, as a people, we'll just end up harming ourselves.
You're asking for more rigor, and scare-quoting this "study."
I'm asking, "Why so skeptical?"
When you read the article, you see that the people performing the study are well aware that this is only "pointing at" possibilities, not definitively saying, "This is true."
You're requesting more rigor, and I don't think they'd disagree with you. They performed a study. They're looking at the results. The questions that come out of this study will inspire further study.
The article portrays a picture of ambiguity. Sounds about right.
This is not a "study," this is a study proper. Studies do not demand the churning out of new Laws. Its sufficient to frame an experiment, say, "Well, I think it's X; It warrants a further look," and then tell people that.
It will not be very long (a decade? two decades?) before face, body, gait, license plate, voice, speech, handwriting, textual habits, (and so on) recognition software will be powerful enough to recognize people in real-time, from a variety of real-time inputs.
Even the past will be open to analysis, a theme called "retroactive surveillance." For example, the Seattle bus system keeps timestamped footage of people coming in and out of the bus, and the Seattle bus system keeps records of where the buses are, and when, by GPS. In theory, these two systems can be correlated, and, if you have a system for analyzing faces, you should be able to connect the "network of data" to figure out who is where and when. This type of correlation is what software visionaries are working hard to achieve, with efforts such as the Semantic Web.
People who are worried about "the mark of the beast," through such things as RFID tags and so on, are worried about the wrong thing. You won't need to "wear" anything. You won't need any special marks, once software is sufficiently capable. Your face, your clothes, the way you walk, your posture, the regular patterns you follow every day, your voice, all are sufficient enough, in themselves, to serve as the "mark of the beast."
It is conceivable that you will be able to limit government use of this sort of technology. But will you be able to stop private users from using this sort of technology? If you envision a future revolution of some sort, do you believe that the revolutionaries would not use this technology themselves? To track the motion of police vehicles, and individual policemen, and the people who work for and against you?
The underlying activities behind these technologies: Collecting information, seeing, hearing, sensing, and then correlating what is seen, what is heard- these are foundational. The "problem" is simply intelligence, itself.
I doubt that willful blindness or doubt is going to help us in our path to the future. We see that backwards countries practicing willful blindness, not advanced ones.
They're not talking about those people.
Most likely, they're talking about the rapidly-growing "casual gamers" crowd.
They want a super-smooth and polished purchase, install, and play path for casual gamers. They want an experience as reliable and smooth as that of purchasing a game for a console, but for a computer with Windows installed.
On a console, the hardware is basically identical. The OS software is basically identical. The controllers are standardized, and perfectly regular.
There is never any ambiguity, in a Nintendo Wii game, about what the "(A)" button refers to, and what the "[B]" button refers to. The same on a PS2 controller, with an X, a triangle, and so on. The game developers know exactly how everything is laid out.
There are never install problems, you just put the disk in, and it works. If it doesn't work, it's because the disk is bad. There are very simple decision trees at work here.
When you're in the store, looking for the Wii games, there's no difficulty finding them. Not only are the sectioned, but all the titles have the same look and feel. Hoards of consumer psychologists have found out that Brands Work.
They want to make it possible for there to be "Windows Games," which work on Windows just like N64 games work on an N64. Platform, platform, platform.
It's a sensible strategy.
They're not talking about games that hard core gamers play. They're not talking about your community. They are talking about a super-fast growing market segment. Businesses love super-fast growing markets, it's where all the action in determining what the landscape will look like is. Things that don't grow are basically set in their patterns, and change is only made very slowly, unless the market is being torn apart by some obsoleting force.
OK, but regardless: What the rest of the world calls hentai, they have in Japan, (whatever they choose to call it,) all over the place.
The point stands.
You know, it's interesting;
... please mod this post up? Pretty please?
I'm not entirely confident that the "steam-release valve" explanation is the right one. And I'm not confident that "free speech" is our best argument.
I do think "steam valve" and "free speech" have value, but I'm skeptical that it's the total picture.
I think that there is something deeper at work here, and that the situation is worth examining.
I would like to ask the question: "What explanations, other than steam-release valve, can both explain our interest, and explain the value of, media that depicts taboo acts?" (Sex or violence.)
Some possible questions: "Why are we compelled to preserve media that depict the taboo?"
Some possible deeper answers: "Because we want to be free to be honest about our desires, whatever they may be." "Because we want to be able to communicate about our desires, even if we realize that their realization would be bad." "Because we want a society of trust in adults, rather than enforcement of
Some other questions the debate brings up: "Will we as a society entrust men with dangerous desires?" "Will we as a society labor to direct men away from dangerous desires?" "What does empirical evidence show?" "Should we socially and legally enforce belief in a falsehood (that men are not naturally attracted to young women,) because we can't trust men's behavior if the truth is known?" "How flexible is male sexual interest?" "If we could eliminate male interest in young women, would we do it?"
I'd be much happier with the discussion if I saw deeper delving into these sorts of questions. Something more than just the "whet-desire thought-control desensitization steam-valve" rehash that we see repeated over and over.
It may be too late, but: If anyone can,
So, pretty much the entire population of Japan is guilty of child abuse?
Kids see hentai all over Japan. It's not "directed" at anybody, like it is here.
The kids see it. They come out fine. It's as simple as that.
Ah, yes.... "Scales badly..."
...but can it scale? "
That was the catchword, in the 1990's, wasn't it?
Remember, when to everything, the measure was, "...but is is scalable?"
"Yes, that's a nice database you have there...
Today, that word has been replaced by "simple."
I doubt that tomorrows virtue ethics will be "complex," but I do wonder, "What will it be?"
Surely, people will get bored with "simple."
Yes, yes. Quite right.
In terms of the Linux community, the desktop is where the excitement and interest is, rather than the kernel.
But beyond just the Linux community, considering "the space" of programmers as a whole, the excitement is web-side.
Automatic installation, no maintenance, etc., etc.; These things are exciting to people. Companies are all making deals with each other: "Oh, you can get the user to install something? Will you put this in there, too?" No install questions on the web based stuff.
I've seen some efforts that are trying to make the bottleneck of the web browser a bit wider- there's that project the Firefox dev is working on (forget the name,) and I understand that Microsoft has some ideas, and then there's Flash, which already does that to a degree. But many people are trying to make that bottleneck a bit wider. Whether that "widening" is platform dependent, or platform independent, will mean a lot to whether the OS is important again, or not.
But for the time being, the answer appears to be, "No, not very."
Your point about Word 6.0 is fair, but I think it's still within my point: Its an app that runs on the OS, and the OS is the platform that the developers are concerned about. (Word is a special case, because the devs happen to belong to the same company as the OS platform manufacturer: Microsoft.) Developers across the board, all apps: "What OS do I write this to?" But most of the new exciting things, the assumption is: "This goes on the web." Or, "This goes on flash." Or whatever.
"What is the fuss all about today? How is it new?" It's new in that the OS is hidden, because the focus is on the web browser, and the myriad semi-standards, such as HTML, XML, CSS, XHTML, DHTML, JavaScript, Java, and so on. (And things that aren't open standards, such as Flash, and so on.) All of these things are cross-platform. That wasn't the case nearly as much, before.
What this means is that people care far less about Microsoft. They're mainly interested in: "How far can I stretch the web?" You go too far, and you have to start going OS specific again. (3D games, or real-time XYZ, Voice-over-IP, or anything where you don't want data to go over the wire.) Even with stuff that doesn't work via Internet, there are now so many mature capable cross-platform compatibility libraries, that the specific OS doesn't matter so much.
I think what you, and the others who are saying things like you, are missing, is what the conversation is all about.
Nobodies seriously arguing that "OS'es don't matter," or that OS'es will somehow magically, poof, up and disappear, somehow. If you think that's what the message is, you're almost certainly misinterpreting.
There will always be stuff that people will only entrust to their own computer, and run on an OS, and so on. Like the fellow who replied to you first said: "I don't want to authenticate, just to edit a word document." Quite right.
What they're saying, or one of the things they're saying, (since "they" are quite large and nebulous,) is that the era of the super-important dominance of the OS is at an end.
That is, that software developers, around the world, are never going to go back to the heady days of 1995, where every new platform change to Windows or Apple was the compelling subject of the magazines.
It's sort of like in Linux. Who cares what happens to the kernel anymore? It's all about the desktop efforts.
Sure, the old stuff never went away: There are still innovations in the Linux Kernel, and, there are communities of people who keep up with what's happening in kernels and so on, and the myriad activities and so on. Even exciting things still happening there. But it isn't the focus of the discussion.
The primary discussion, the things businesses and users and developers and so on are concerned about, is something different.
So, this is the context in which you interpret: "The net is the OS."
They mean something very big and complex, but when you put a message into the political sphere, it's gotta be short. You have to apply the context to decipher the message.
Oh, they already have this technology: They can already overhear whoever they want to hear.
It's the general public that is out of the loop.
More power for the kings, governments, and corporations, I suppose.
Basically:
That is all.
I'd play Secret of Mana, straight through.
I swear, it is the most beautiful game in the world.
What you say is true. Regardless, I suspect that of all faiths, there are those outliners who have been quick to say, "Convert or die should be the policy."
And I'm saying, that regardless your religion, that you should reject that, vocally, and refuse association with, anyone who says those things. You should say, "That is not acceptable, and I won't associate with you, because you think that way."
I promise to do the same with athiests. If an athiest says, "I think we'd be much better off without religion." And I would ask: "You don't mean killing religious people, do you?" And if they say, even in jest, "Well, it's an idea," then I will say: "That's completely unacceptable, and I will not associate with you, until you think for a while, and retract that statement."
I expect the same from religious people, considering the athiests, and considering people of other faiths.
This should be utterly clear, and I would not equivocate or jest about this, or make it a light matter.
Regardless of whether this was religiously acceptable in the past, it is not acceptable today, regardless Deuteronomy 19:19-20.
No, actually, the problem, very material and real, is that religious people think that people over other religions, or no religions, must be killed.
That's a fact, and that's a problem, and it's worthy of attention.
Humanity has many problems, this is one in particular. This one deserves careful attention.
We're not saying that religion is bad here. And nobody here is saying that religious people should all be killed. We're just saying: This is a problem.
If you are religious, then this is something you should speak out against. If you are religious, you should say: "People should not try to kill people who do not share our religion." And you should be firm about this, with people of other religions. You should say: "It is not acceptable to have a religious belief that people who do not belong to your faith should be killed."
And if religious people band together, and say, "The athiests should be killed," then you should be firm: "Atheists should not be killed."
This is a no-brainer. And if you don't accept this, I will simply say: This is not acceptable in my company. I will have nothing to do with you.
Wired had an article about a congressman who said that if you vote for you, he will vote on all bills strictly like the people in his district want, by direct internal vote.
I thought that was an interesting idea.