At the time I read the book, I thought Bradbury was alluding to soap operas with the Family room of wall-sized interactive televisions. Now I think that active webcams, chat rooms, Instant Messaging, and e-mail are more like what he had in mind. They all involve a bunch of unrelated, unacquainted people talking, chatting, and interacting. They form artificial bonds to these people, because when away from the PC, they're out of mind.
There is also an addiction factor to these casual acquaintances that mimics Mrs. Montag's addiction. Real people have broken up over Internet acquaintances, similar to the way Montag goes for an affair.
Another parallel that may work is with online games like Everquest. The addicted have a more fulfilling fantasy life than a real one--all achieved through sight, sound, and communications.
I've had limited exposure at my job to a US Federal Program Called a Small Business Initiative (SBI). This program allows the Federal Government to fund a private company to help make it's product, preferably for government use. The Government is the target user and supplies both money and usually assistance. When the product is complete, the small business retains the copyright, patent, and trademarks, and the government still has to buy the product.
The whole point of the program is get much needed items and software developed that don't currently exist. This isn't exactly your situation, but it provides a precedent of how a customer supplying a lot of resources does not own any rights to the product.
Back In late September I read and/or heard about these face recognition devices. According to statistics, the results were exactly correct.
Assume a 90% accuracy with a database of 10 criminals. If there are 100,000 samples, 10% will be false positives. That's 10,000 alarms that mean nothing. Of the remaining 90,000 people, you'll get 9 true alarms (assume they walk by!) and 1 gets away. Therefore you have to fend off about a thousand errors to get a real suspect. At that point, human error could easily step in and assume it's another false alarm.
This is the same objective reason racial profiling is wrong. You spend all your time and resources harrassing innocent people.
Of course, a cheap solution to this problem is multiple camera angles.
I saw the G4 site from the previous story today. CNet couldn't even keep a regular show on SciFi for very long. SciFi doesn't show SciFi 24 hours a day--now it's dipalatory goo and psychic guessmakers overnight. There is even less material available for video/computer games to fill the same time slots, plus you need advertisers.
Another problem occurs when the people who buy the majority of the games are not the people who play them. They give them to their kids when asked nicely. They won't watch the channel nor see the ads.
I believe such a channel should be interactive. Here's a concept: have the show windowed with the game. When the wiz-kid in Akron stats inching into the lead of whatever competition they're running, the show highlights his screen and name for the show, etc. Problem is, that sounds expensive.
It would be ironic if the channel had to be funded by those 1-hour infomercials for 1-900-chatme1 overnight.
I turned off my moderator points awhile ago, but I agree. Gamasutra is a very professional site for game developers that has resources that any independent game programmer could really use. Especially new game programmers. They have many in-depth articles on physics and realism.
The article is simply nostalgia wrapped in a thesis. I think the argument for killing the hard drive icon is very valid, but the rest of the paper devolves into the meanderings about desktops.
Multiple desktops are simply windows. Call them whatever you want, but the authors want a windowing motif without a base window to throw junk onto.
The other problem is the incredible naivetee of this statement from the article: Add unlimited files without fear of clutter. (You can change views in a directory.) The first time you used a Disk Operating System, you had a tendancy to throw all of your files into one directory. That's my definition of clutter, and it is no different than the desktop paradigm where junk files reside.
I think the authors are forgetting history and the reasons why we don't use bare-bones DOS to operate our applications. They're also forgetting that with a computer monitor, if you remove all of your desktops, what's left? there has to be some basic background, even if it has no functionality.
The cost of doing business in the music industry is summed up in the article as the production and pressing costs.Remove the production costs by allowing music to be published "as is" from new artists. A few new artists are quite capable of rendering professional sounds from their home PCs. Remove the pressing "risk" by not pressing any albums! The popular MP3 services sell music this way. There is very little risk making CDs one-at-a-time. It does, in fact, bypass most of the costs, and you're not sitting on a trashheap that won't sell, either.
The article doesn't mention all of the contracts in place between record companies, recording studios, and CD manufacturers. The companies can't change the way they do business if there are long-term contracts in place. They are afraid to change their distribution practices because music-buyers are resistant to change as well. It's an awful Catch-22.
It'll actually take the bankruptcy of several major labels to change the way music is sold. I don't see that happening anytime soon.
Replace "China" with "United States" and replace "Internet Bars" with "Libraries" and I think you've got yourself an American article from the near future.
Toadnet was my first IP, back when they were geographically localized extension of an Atari fan store. Yes, Atari. Extremely good service from my recollection as well.
Great ideas from everyone. There is a Serial Experiments: Lain lunchbox, which has been sold out for about a year now, and a reissue which I've seen at just about every GameStop in the Baltimore area. The reissue is just a box wrapped around the 4 separates.
The Cowboy Bebop box is going to feature a limited edition (9,000 total, I think) and supposedly has an extra of some sort. I find this series (I'm not quite through it) more quirky than geek, but then there is the Edward character, super geek grrl.
People in the IT industry have a great deal of searching resources at their disposal which they use on a regular basis. This reduces the amount of personal privacy you have. Your only recourse to preserve your last remnants of privacy, or at least, the illusion of privacy, is to distance yourself from personal relationships.
Best Stuff for geek who has, or wants, these systems:
Playstation 2: Metal Gear Solid 2
XBox: Dead or Alive 3 (High Kicks) GameCube: Star Wars Rogue Leader
Dreamcast: European Shenmue 2 and an all-country disk (plus, you should probably get him another game system)
PC games are a toughie. I think the geekiest PC gift is a pre-purchased voucher for Neverwinter Nights.
Motor-Powered Fill-In-Blank
on
Inventions of 2001
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Wow, after the amazing biotech advances we have a motor-powered scooter, a motor-powered surfboard, a motor-powered IT. These are certainly insignificant.
A motor-powered scooter is called a scooter. A motor-powered surfboard is called a jet ski or a boat. These aren't new nor noteworthy. They are, in fact, furthering America's ambition to remove all exercise from their life and let the machine do the work (I am, BTW, an overweight, underexercised American, too).
I think they should have trimmed their list a bit.
Thanks for both comments. The legal case is a very important one. What I meant was: Though it is an interpretation of the Constitution, it is not explicitly in there. If I read that correctly, anti-spam legislation is effectively rendered impotent by this ruling.
I have caller ID on my phone. I have filters on my e-mail. I recycle unsolicited junkmail. I'm paying for all that.
The junkmail costs so much, that only the serious junkmailers send.
The e-mail filter doesn't work well, and I'm afraid to use accept-only because people change e-mail all the time, and I may receive friendly e-mail in the future. The spammers use name generators and alter the headers.
The caller ID is the most effective one. Num Blocked? Don't answer. Number Unknown? Don't answer. John K. Rutherford? Don't know, don't care. I also erase unsolicited voice mail before I hear it.
I think it's clear I'm losing the battle. I feel that 100% mandatory identification of businesses, including government agencies, on all communication would easily clear some of this up.
Thanks for this insight. Most people aren't aware of the distributed cost of the internet.
I can say, without a shadow of a doubt, that results of spamming have nothing to do me deleting them off. First, they're relentless, which to me constitutes harassment. Second, for every 999 people that simply delete, 1 (or more) responds.
Unsolicited business requests are not, with the exception of legal precedent, Constitutionally guaranteed. Unsolicited e-mail, unsolicited junkmail, and especially unsolicited phone calls should be illegal. The Constitution only guarantees individuals, not companies, free speech.
Re:My crutch doesn't exist because I need it
on
God's Debris
·
· Score: 1
To the AC: It isn't a serious scientific comment, it's flippant. So I guess it's that weak form of humor, sarcasm.
Re:My crutch doesn't exist because I need it
on
God's Debris
·
· Score: 2
Without directly contradicting your statements, you need to recognize two things:
1) Because something can't be disproven doesn't mean it exists.
2) Strong scientific knowledge does not appear to be a factor in whether someone is strong or weak minded.
If all things that can't be proven must exist, the universe would suddenly become so crowded with things that it would destroy itself.
I'm certainly not well trained in psychology, but I've always seen alcohol addiction as some sort of weakness: biological, mental, or both. It is clear that alcoholism is not related to intelligence.
Re:as far as religion goes (from a Christian)
on
God's Debris
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
As for the science vs. religion, I never understood the hypocricy of people who get angry about the past of religion's stupidity towards scientific discovery and the scientific method, yet then turn around and pull the same crap.
The intelligent reaction to religion's stupidty towards scientific discovery is to recognize that any belief that contradicts known facts is false, or at best, fantasy. Unfortunately, this renders Christianity into the realm of fantasy when taken literally. When not taken literally, the tenets of Christianity tend to become odorless, actionless, matterless, aetherial sort of things. That's how a rational person disagrees with religion.
Turning around and pulling the same kind of crap is when someone worships science. What a concept! True science is nothing but a bunch of facts. A good example is all of that eastern metaphysical shit that's in The Dancing Wu Li Masters, an otherwise good book. A lot of people "worship" the Theory of Evoloution, because they believe it's survival of the fittest, implying some sort of conscious choice.
He doesn't know who'd in win in Adric Vs. Wesley Crusher, but Adric would lose the hairstyle event. So that's where my salad bowl went! Thank you, Dutch Boy!
Wil Wheaton also played a character his own age, which is rare on TV. Adric was initially played by a 19-year-old.
They get their money from the application process. So the incentive is get through as many patents as possible. There is a quota system that supports this policy.
Slashdot Mirror
If those devices violate DMCA, then even if Nintendo has them, they still violate the act. I'm afraid their request doesn't completely make sense.
- Allow AOL users to buy it online and receive it two-weeks before street date
- Put excerpts of the first two chapters exclusively on AOL
- Offer a deal to buy the book cheaper with an AOL contract
They used these tactics with the Madonna Concert, and it was highly successful.At the time I read the book, I thought Bradbury was alluding to soap operas with the Family room of wall-sized interactive televisions. Now I think that active webcams, chat rooms, Instant Messaging, and e-mail are more like what he had in mind. They all involve a bunch of unrelated, unacquainted people talking, chatting, and interacting. They form artificial bonds to these people, because when away from the PC, they're out of mind.
There is also an addiction factor to these casual acquaintances that mimics Mrs. Montag's addiction. Real people have broken up over Internet acquaintances, similar to the way Montag goes for an affair.
Another parallel that may work is with online games like Everquest. The addicted have a more fulfilling fantasy life than a real one--all achieved through sight, sound, and communications.
I've had limited exposure at my job to a US Federal Program Called a Small Business Initiative (SBI). This program allows the Federal Government to fund a private company to help make it's product, preferably for government use. The Government is the target user and supplies both money and usually assistance. When the product is complete, the small business retains the copyright, patent, and trademarks, and the government still has to buy the product.
The whole point of the program is get much needed items and software developed that don't currently exist. This isn't exactly your situation, but it provides a precedent of how a customer supplying a lot of resources does not own any rights to the product.
Back In late September I read and/or heard about these face recognition devices. According to statistics, the results were exactly correct.
Assume a 90% accuracy with a database of 10 criminals. If there are 100,000 samples, 10% will be false positives. That's 10,000 alarms that mean nothing. Of the remaining 90,000 people, you'll get 9 true alarms (assume they walk by!) and 1 gets away. Therefore you have to fend off about a thousand errors to get a real suspect. At that point, human error could easily step in and assume it's another false alarm.
This is the same objective reason racial profiling is wrong. You spend all your time and resources harrassing innocent people.
Of course, a cheap solution to this problem is multiple camera angles.
I saw the G4 site from the previous story today. CNet couldn't even keep a regular show on SciFi for very long. SciFi doesn't show SciFi 24 hours a day--now it's dipalatory goo and psychic guessmakers overnight. There is even less material available for video/computer games to fill the same time slots, plus you need advertisers.
Another problem occurs when the people who buy the majority of the games are not the people who play them. They give them to their kids when asked nicely. They won't watch the channel nor see the ads.
I believe such a channel should be interactive. Here's a concept: have the show windowed with the game. When the wiz-kid in Akron stats inching into the lead of whatever competition they're running, the show highlights his screen and name for the show, etc. Problem is, that sounds expensive.
It would be ironic if the channel had to be funded by those 1-hour infomercials for 1-900-chatme1 overnight.
I turned off my moderator points awhile ago, but I agree. Gamasutra is a very professional site for game developers that has resources that any independent game programmer could really use. Especially new game programmers. They have many in-depth articles on physics and realism.
The article is simply nostalgia wrapped in a thesis. I think the argument for killing the hard drive icon is very valid, but the rest of the paper devolves into the meanderings about desktops.
Multiple desktops are simply windows. Call them whatever you want, but the authors want a windowing motif without a base window to throw junk onto.
The other problem is the incredible naivetee of this statement from the article: Add unlimited files without fear of clutter. (You can change views in a directory.) The first time you used a Disk Operating System, you had a tendancy to throw all of your files into one directory. That's my definition of clutter, and it is no different than the desktop paradigm where junk files reside.
I think the authors are forgetting history and the reasons why we don't use bare-bones DOS to operate our applications. They're also forgetting that with a computer monitor, if you remove all of your desktops, what's left? there has to be some basic background, even if it has no functionality.
The cost of doing business in the music industry is summed up in the article as the production and pressing costs.Remove the production costs by allowing music to be published "as is" from new artists. A few new artists are quite capable of rendering professional sounds from their home PCs. Remove the pressing "risk" by not pressing any albums! The popular MP3 services sell music this way. There is very little risk making CDs one-at-a-time. It does, in fact, bypass most of the costs, and you're not sitting on a trashheap that won't sell, either.
The article doesn't mention all of the contracts in place between record companies, recording studios, and CD manufacturers. The companies can't change the way they do business if there are long-term contracts in place. They are afraid to change their distribution practices because music-buyers are resistant to change as well. It's an awful Catch-22.
It'll actually take the bankruptcy of several major labels to change the way music is sold. I don't see that happening anytime soon.
Replace "China" with "United States" and replace "Internet Bars" with "Libraries" and I think you've got yourself an American article from the near future.
Toadnet was my first IP, back when they were geographically localized extension of an Atari fan store. Yes, Atari. Extremely good service from my recollection as well.
Great ideas from everyone. There is a Serial Experiments: Lain lunchbox, which has been sold out for about a year now, and a reissue which I've seen at just about every GameStop in the Baltimore area. The reissue is just a box wrapped around the 4 separates.
The Cowboy Bebop box is going to feature a limited edition (9,000 total, I think) and supposedly has an extra of some sort. I find this series (I'm not quite through it) more quirky than geek, but then there is the Edward character, super geek grrl.
People in the IT industry have a great deal of searching resources at their disposal which they use on a regular basis. This reduces the amount of personal privacy you have. Your only recourse to preserve your last remnants of privacy, or at least, the illusion of privacy, is to distance yourself from personal relationships.
Postscript: Also get him (assuming him) the book The Art of The Matrix for the complete Matrix Geek set.
Two highly geeky DVDs (amongst many) are:
The Matrix/Matrix Revisited Box Set
The Star Trek Box Set (Treks one thru nine)
And not quite as geeky, but with heavy Internet overtones:
Serial Experiments: Lain Box Set
Best Stuff for geek who has, or wants, these systems:
Playstation 2: Metal Gear Solid 2
XBox: Dead or Alive 3 (High Kicks)
GameCube: Star Wars Rogue Leader
Dreamcast: European Shenmue 2 and an all-country disk (plus, you should probably get him another game system)
PC games are a toughie. I think the geekiest PC gift is a pre-purchased voucher for Neverwinter Nights.
Wow, after the amazing biotech advances we have a motor-powered scooter, a motor-powered surfboard, a motor-powered IT. These are certainly insignificant.
A motor-powered scooter is called a scooter. A motor-powered surfboard is called a jet ski or a boat. These aren't new nor noteworthy. They are, in fact, furthering America's ambition to remove all exercise from their life and let the machine do the work (I am, BTW, an overweight, underexercised American, too).
I think they should have trimmed their list a bit.
Thanks for both comments. The legal case is a very important one. What I meant was: Though it is an interpretation of the Constitution, it is not explicitly in there. If I read that correctly, anti-spam legislation is effectively rendered impotent by this ruling.
I have caller ID on my phone. I have filters on my e-mail. I recycle unsolicited junkmail. I'm paying for all that.
The junkmail costs so much, that only the serious junkmailers send.
The e-mail filter doesn't work well, and I'm afraid to use accept-only because people change e-mail all the time, and I may receive friendly e-mail in the future. The spammers use name generators and alter the headers.
The caller ID is the most effective one. Num Blocked? Don't answer. Number Unknown? Don't answer. John K. Rutherford? Don't know, don't care. I also erase unsolicited voice mail before I hear it.
I think it's clear I'm losing the battle. I feel that 100% mandatory identification of businesses, including government agencies, on all communication would easily clear some of this up.
Thanks for this insight. Most people aren't aware of the distributed cost of the internet.
I can say, without a shadow of a doubt, that results of spamming have nothing to do me deleting them off. First, they're relentless, which to me constitutes harassment. Second, for every 999 people that simply delete, 1 (or more) responds.
Unsolicited business requests are not, with the exception of legal precedent, Constitutionally guaranteed. Unsolicited e-mail, unsolicited junkmail, and especially unsolicited phone calls should be illegal. The Constitution only guarantees individuals, not companies, free speech.
To the AC: It isn't a serious scientific comment, it's flippant. So I guess it's that weak form of humor, sarcasm.
Without directly contradicting your statements, you need to recognize two things:
1) Because something can't be disproven doesn't mean it exists.
2) Strong scientific knowledge does not appear to be a factor in whether someone is strong or weak minded.
If all things that can't be proven must exist, the universe would suddenly become so crowded with things that it would destroy itself.
I'm certainly not well trained in psychology, but I've always seen alcohol addiction as some sort of weakness: biological, mental, or both. It is clear that alcoholism is not related to intelligence.
As for the science vs. religion, I never understood the hypocricy of people who get angry about the past of religion's stupidity towards scientific discovery and the scientific method, yet then turn around and pull the same crap.
The intelligent reaction to religion's stupidty towards scientific discovery is to recognize that any belief that contradicts known facts is false, or at best, fantasy. Unfortunately, this renders Christianity into the realm of fantasy when taken literally. When not taken literally, the tenets of Christianity tend to become odorless, actionless, matterless, aetherial sort of things. That's how a rational person disagrees with religion.
Turning around and pulling the same kind of crap is when someone worships science. What a concept! True science is nothing but a bunch of facts. A good example is all of that eastern metaphysical shit that's in The Dancing Wu Li Masters, an otherwise good book. A lot of people "worship" the Theory of Evoloution, because they believe it's survival of the fittest, implying some sort of conscious choice.
He doesn't know who'd in win in Adric Vs. Wesley Crusher, but Adric would lose the hairstyle event. So that's where my salad bowl went! Thank you, Dutch Boy!
Wil Wheaton also played a character his own age, which is rare on TV. Adric was initially played by a 19-year-old.
WIL WHEATON DOT NET
May peace prevail on earth
And then the time is ripe for Wheaton to rule the world! Mwaaa ha ha!
They get their money from the application process. So the incentive is get through as many patents as possible. There is a quota system that supports this policy.