OK, anyway, the reason that there is no paperless office is the very "criticisms" some have made of paper. Its isn't rewritable, you have a long term record of the original mistake as well as the correction. (last nights Law and Order springs to mind)
Excellent point - one of the strengths and weaknesses of paper is that is not rewritable. This is good for history - can you imagine the Constitution written as a.txt file? Maybe with a little disclaimer at the top, "Version 25, corrected Section X to include Women's Right To Vote"? Important documents will be written on paper for a long time.
One of the problems is that the number of important documents is skyrocketing. I am expected, for tax purposes, to keep thousands of documents (check stubs, paycheck stubs, etc), most of which will never see the light of day. What's wrong with a cheap, write-once format, that allows all these "documents" to be stored, recalled when needed, but take up much less room that paper? In some ways, it would be more secure than paper - I could make copies, store one at the bank, one at home, and I'd have a duplicate if something bad happened (a fire, for instance).
I believe document versioning will be an important part of electronic documents, and some things may always be done in paper (or stone - who wants an LCD display for a tombstone?). But, as the amount of paper keeps increasing, more and more should be in an electronic format. I don't need to generate 10 little reciepts every day - just upload them to my Visor, using X-bit encryption or whatever.
We should keep in mind 1984, and always make updating voluntary and reviewable rather than automatic. For the most part, however, it will probably be a matter of convienince. I won't mind never dealing with a textbook with incorrect examples, or the wrong answers in the back.
p.s. - I collect old science books. I love to see the state of the ideas, like one turn-of-the-century astonomy book that included a propeller plane ride to the moon, and didn't have Pluto. I also have a book on the New Math, which looks very strange when is was first conceived, and was fairly sexist in its examples. I'd hate to see these go away due to politics or PC revisionism, but they could be preserved in an electronic format - for instance, a History textbook with a command "view Revision 1", with all the Euro-centric ideas still in place, and "view latest Revision", with all the PC parts put in. It may be as interesting as the book itself.
I didn't understand the Shabbos reference. I highlighted the word, loaded up the webpage of my online dictionary, and knew in a second that it meant the Sabbath. I know little Jewish culture, but I guessed that it was a time when electric lighting and electronics went unused. I could then do a web search, and find out more about Shabbos / the Sabbath, and learn a bit more about Jewish culture, and perhaps debate you on common ground.
If I read the same word in a paper book, I may have thought about looking it up, saw there was no dictionary around, and quickly forget about it (along with your comment). If I saw the word more than once, I may ask someone about it, or take the time to look it up, but most of the time I can understand a word enough in context, that I don't really have to know what it means.
In this case, reading your comment in an electronic format allowed much more than the paper version would have. I argue that this is the case more often than we know, and, with e-books, such cross-referencing would be as intuitive as web searches are now.
...the one i want doesn't exist is because the kind of display that would interest me - very large (at least 8x11"), very high resolution (200dpi or better), full color (24 bit min) and absolutely stable (no flicker,no "viewing angle" issues) would still be an extreemly expensive part. I believe that when a reasonable price point is hit that something like this will quickly become ubiquitous. The palm/ce/e-book units i have seen do not meet the criteria I require for enjoyable reading. Paper does.
I agree - most opponents to E-books think of reading them on a monitor, or a laptop, or a PDA. My ideal e-book is much like yours, and it is possible that I won't buy one until it looks like that, and is affordable (for instance, a year's book budget).
Technology is progressing in leaps and bounds, and I think people underestimate how long it will take to get to this stage. I think we will see models like that in 10 years, and they will be ubiquitous in 20. At that point, if a text is more that 500 words, people will be downloading it to their e-book, rather than printing it out. I think monitors and LCD displays will be used for live-motion, high-refresh applications, while e-books will be used for text, slow-refresh applications.
It's exciting to read Gene Wolfe again, and he makes me think of e-books every time. The vocabulary barrier is significant, and he often expects you to remember on page 200 of book 3 what happened on page 30 of book 1. Being able to search for every instance of a name, or to keep notes in the margins without destroying my copy would be a huge benefit.
I just had a house built in Dallas, Tx and couldn't get a builder not to put in a fireplace. They were quite concerned about being able to sell the house if I should back out of the deal. Add to that the fact they all want to put the fireplace in the living room right where any sane person would put the tv. I kept saying to myself, "We're in Texas, who uses a fireplace?"
Again, it's for sentimental reasons. My wife loves the idea of a fireplace, and yes, it's right where you'd think of putting your TV. People house-shopping look at it and think, "We'll be able to cuddle up on the couch or the rug, sipping wine and talking about our love". They actually think that a fireplace will make them more romantic, and less inclined to watch TV. They don't think about firewood storage, the cost of fireplace equipment, the bother of cleaning out the ashes, etc. After one or two fires, they are back to sitting on the couch, watching TV, drinking beer and eating nachoes. But at an awkward angle, since the fireplace is taking up the space opposite the couch...
Material objects do not make the unromantic romantic. On an unrelated note, Happy Valentine's Day everyone!.
Electronic paper just hasn't reached the technology point, yet. Paper works because it is relatively inexpensive, easy to aquire, and the industry is using it. It has many downsides, though - it is not re-writable, it's creation is harmful to the environment, it's heavy, non-portable, non-searchable, etc.
Electronic paper has disadvantages now, but they are most technological. When they become technologically possible and cheap, they will be quickly adopted. Tech manuals will be first (can you imagine a Linux book that updates with kernel revisions?), because the industry can afford it. Schools may be next, since textbooks are so expensive anyway. Once college kids start using them (trade in my 100 pound textbooks for one cool-looking textpad? Sure), they will slowly make their way into the workplace, then into homes.
In terms of quality, CDs are inferior to LPs, but they are smaller and easier to keep in good working condition. Eventually, I expect digital formats without physical medium (provide your own) will take over. Paper will go the same way. I can't imagine a future where geeks go to Mars carrying 500+ kg of paper manuals. Mission Control won't allow it.
Nothing like curling up next to the fireplace with a 19" monitor and a whirring hard drive...
You still have a fireplace? Most of the houses I've seen had fireplaces, but they have been bricked up because they weren't built to modern code...
Most people argue for dead tree versions out of some similar romantic notion of curling up with a good book. But how often do we do this? I read in the morning, to wake up, during the day, for interest or work, and at night, to get to sleep. Never in front of a fireplace, and never in a hammock (just reminds me of yardwork I should do).
For me, I'd love a good, high-resoultion, light electronic book. I'm reading Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun (all four in one bindind), and loving it. However, it's heavy, hard to hold when in bed, I need a light turned on, and I wish I had a decent dictionary to look up half the obscure words (Autarch? Triskele?).
A good electronic book could do that. It could use a standard dictionary, and have a special dictionary for difficult words. Translated works could have both versions, and some translator notes. I could use backlight at night, and it would remember what page I'm on. For technical books, I could enter notes in the side, and it could keep track of the ten pages I visit the most. A Shakespeare play could live alongside ten great commentaries, as well as the Cliff Notes.
Nope, I wouldn't use the 19" monitor either. But it's easy to be flippant, and harder to actually think about it, and how it will be an improvement over paper versions. Do you still use a horse to get to work? Or maybe you grab your self-carved walking stick, and curse urban planners for inventing sidewalks.
I still think High-end rendering is important, because today's high-end rendering is tommorrow's forgotten feature of the standard Intel chip.
When we push the boundaries of what is computationally possible, there are two forces that act on the innovation. The first is optimization; the original technique is re-analyzed, to either make the computation more efficient (software optimization), or to make the compuation faster (hardware optimization). The second is consumer demand: if the feature makes things look cooler and/or more realistic, the technique becomes popular, and becomes one of the standard tools.
Are we at the final stage in graphics technology? I think not. Remember Doom 2? There were very cool scenes, where you were looking at 50+ enemies, some just 4 pixels, and they were ALL shooting at you. In Quake, a level might have 13 enemies total. We could use Doom's level of enemy depth, but with 3D models and multi-level worlds.
We still haven't mastered some environmental effects, such as heat distortion. A burning barrel should have an effect on the scene behind it, as well as realistic fog effects. A strightforward implementation may also help better model bullet paths, so that you really can't snipe from 5 miles away.
Of course, all these are just visual tricks, that need to be put in service of a good plot. It seems a shame that just as technolgy gets to the point that Looking Glass Studios can have graphics comparable to the plot, they get pushed out of business. When you can really model a whole world, Richard Gariott decides to industry can't support his business plans. When you can make a real-time version as beautiful as the original Myst, Cyan does it, instead of making a new product.
The tricks and effects are too tempting right now, so that we simply make things beautiful without making them intellegent. This will change, and the masters will use every tool at their disposal.
They claim to have come up with a new way of compressing text.
They claim to have a memory system that enables up to 10.8 terabytes of data to be stored in an area the size of a credit card, with no conventionaly moving parts
Well, I just took out a business card, and wrote on the back "The letter 'a', repeated 10.8 x 2^40 times". Did I just store 10.8 terabytes of compressed data in an area the size of a credit card?
Call the press!
This may be impressive, even revolutionary, but we need more technical details.
While it is still up, go get "Bad Times", by Laika, off of Napster. Probably one of the first mass emails set to music. It's off their latest album, Good Looking Blues, which is quality all around.
Funny coincidence, though. The Gourds were actually sued for copywrite infringement for recording "Gin and Juice" without permission.
I think it laughable that any rapper would sue someone for using someone else's song. Remember all those top 40 rap songs that heavily sampled previously successful pop songs? Must be the action of record companies. Besides, from what I've heard, the song was barely released, since the recording company was in the middle of bankrupcy hearings.
I found the song myself searching for Ween songs. On Napster, it is often credited to either Ween or Phish. Go figure.
Like many, I downloaded Napster for one or two songs. I heard Elvis Costello singing "Radio, Radio" on Saturday Night Live, and wanted to listen to it and see if it was any good on the album. I had fond memories of Faithless's Insomnia from dance clubs in Scotland, but wasn't sure if I had the band's name right, or if I had fallen in love with a remix version.
Months later, I have quite a few singles, tracks that I would have never bought, except perhaps on a compilation. Would I have ever discovered the Gourd's "Gin and Juice" without Napster? Not likely. Despite the record company's protests, if I found enough songs to like, I bought the album. I ripped my CDs, some at home, some at work, and used Napster to transfer the MP3s from home to work, when I wanted a song or two. Life was good.
Now it looks like Napster is going down, at least for a little while, and I say thank you. My hard drive is stuffed with singles, sometimes multiple copies. Only one is a good copy, the rest are bad copies, mixes I don't like, bad live versions. Finally, I will have the time to go through them, weed out the bad ones, and put them onto CDs. I can think about a stereo setup that will allow MP3s to play over the good speakers. I will compile those playlists, for instant parties. I will finish ripping my existing CDs.
In short, I have some breathing room before moving on to Gnutella. Thanks, 9th Circuit Court of Appeals!
Interesting point. I played Origin games for quite a while, because I loved the Ultima series, and I trusted that other games would be interesting. I didn't know about Looking Glass Studios until they were gone, and now I seek them out. Why can't Sid Meyer make a bad game?
At the same time, my current favorite is CounterStrike. No plot to speak of, just pure action, strategy, and teamplay. It's a free add-on to Half-Life, which you can pick up for fairly cheap. If there was a open-source engine as good as Half-Life's (the Quake II engine, perhaps with some extras), then we may see a truly excellent open-source game.
One problem is that all the clients and servers have to be on the same page. Even though it would be open-source, it would follow the example of the Linux Kernel and some open-source games - one main effort, possibly a few variations, but all development focused on the kernel. Maybe there would be faster fixes to eliminate f**king cheaters, as a side benefit.
Bottom line? For an experience you remember for years, you almost can't beat closed source, billion dollar development games. But there is space out there for some kick-ass, no suprise plot open source games. You listening, Gooseman?
A little clarification: Having an anonymous postal dropbox is more restrictive than a anonymous internet account. There are Postal Inspectors whose sole job is to investigate crimes using the U.S. Mail, from fraud to child pornography.
A first-class letter comes with a guarentee of privacy, but, if they suspect you are doing something illegal, they can get a warrant to open your mail. Having an anonymous mailbox doesn't necessarily put you under suspicion, but the kind of mail you recieve (lots of legal-sized envelopes marked "photos, do not bend", or maybe lots of cash) may get you unwanted attention.
It would be ideal if we could create a similar system for the electronic world. Encrypted email with the legal protections of first-class mail would be useful, although it may have to be a three-key system, so the government could open email with a warrent, without the sender knowing of it. This may ring some warning bells on SlashDot, but it's better than your boss being able to read every piece of email you send, or the government reading all the un-encrypted email with Carnivore (or whatever they are calling it this week).
You report the regions are:
1: U.S., Canada, U.S. Territories
2: Japan, Europe, South Africa, and Middle East (including Egypt)
3: Southeast Asia and East Asia (including Hong Kong)
4: Australia, New Zealand, Pacific Islands, Central America, Mexico, South America, and the Caribbean
5: Eastern Europe (Former Soviet Union), Indian subcontinent, Africa, North Korea, and Mongolia
6: China
7: Reserved
8: Special international venues (airplanes, cruise ships, etc.)
I think it's interesting how the DVD regions seperate the world into 21st century regions. Remember the whole third-world label? I believe the proper breakdown was:
First World: Modern, democratic countries (U.S., Canada, Western Europe)
Second World: Modern, communist countries (Russia, China)
Third World: Everything else (places where first and second world armies fight)
Now, industry has a new category scheme, to break up the world:
Region 1: Where the big movies are produced, where much of the profit and expenses come from.
Region 2: Where big movies are consumed, some smaller movies produced (anime, stuff that gets considered in the Oscar's Foriegn Film category)
Region 3: Where some "on location" movies are made, and people can afford the movies
Region 4: Nice places for those who make movies to visit, but would you want to live there?
Region 5: Places where the people are probably too poor to buy DVD players, or at least in bulk. Hollywood types may visit, for personal growth.
Region 6: Places where you can be reasonably sure that piracy will eat up much of the profit.
Region 7: Places where Hollywood probably won't have any control (Linux, Mars)
Region 8: The region you are in when you are travelling between regions.
One way to possibly keep the lawyers out of it would to take the punishments out of the criminal justice system (a count of terrorism for an overheard comment?) and where it belongs, in the hands of school psycologists and counselors.
Anonymous tips should start a counseling cycle, which can be as short as one session, to determine whether a kid is serious, or is was just stupid. When possible, these early sessions should be removed from permanent records, to reduce the negative affects and allow kids to occasionally make mistakes.
Despite Columbine, it is still safer for kids to be in school than outside. Making the random comments of adolesents grounds for criminal charges is unreasonable and unforgivable. It fosters an "us against them" mentality, and further isolates borderline cases. It sounds like the ideas of politicians or insane school boards (zero-tolerance policies), rather than rational ideas from those who know kids best, who work with them every school day.
Reading over the article, I saw no mention of comparative cost. Usually, if this is a selling point, it shows up in the press release, which means it may be a technology for high end users, at least for the next 10 years or so.
It still isn't cost effective to throw out my 21" (3 ft deep) monitor for the LCD replacement (maybe a $1500 difference?), so why would this new, possibly more expensive option even cross my radar?
Some of that perception of stability comes from more entaglements. A 30 year-old with a spouse, a mortgage, and two kids in the local school is much less likely to quit his job on a moment's notice, on principle or out of boredom.
Younger types are more mobile, more willing to change cities, more willing to take a better offer from somewhere else, more likely to install Quake on your servers...
My mom almost demanded that I shave off the goatee before job interviews. I decided not too (not enough time to tan evenly), but spent a lot of money on a good suit, good shoes, good haircut, etc. I got the job, but I don't know if I would have been instantly disqualified elsewhere. We may never know...
It was a little disappointing getting alcohol on my 21st. No one asked for my ID, since I looked 25.
Nice catch on the facial hair thing - I thought for a few seconds how to make the comment gender neutral, but with no success. My grandmother's facial hair makes her look a bit older, though...
A big component is self marketing, but you have to listen to your market first. Look at those SuperBowl ads, where you can judge pretty quickly which companies spent too much on advertising and not enough on market research.
In my experience, the younger crowd is too prone to believing in an idealist One Right Way. This is mainly from those that come from a strong community background (Linux users), or are just out of school (having been taught the One Right Way). They often don't understand or appreciate the compromises of business.
Of course, as you get older, you stick with what worked in the past, and often believe in a conservative One Right Way. It is the interaction of new ideas with old, with mutual respect, that generates progress. Respect often follows from understanding, which follows from humility and learning.
I've heard of higher-ups (CEOs, etc.), who sign agreements not to disclose the circumstances of their leaving. These people often get big severance packages, to guarantee their silence. I'm assuming you are not one of these.
If they go after you legally, the ACLU may take up the case, but I doubt they will. What kind of compensation could they expect? Was it slander? Otherwise, you could prove in a court of law what kind of stupid things they were doing, which wouldn't be that great for the stock price.
At the same time, they could play dirty pool and call your current employer. If your current employer is close-minded, you may have to sign some sort of gag agreement, or you may get fired.
These days, when you change jobs regularly, and they often take the contact information for your last two or three jobs, it makes good sense to stay on good terms with former employers. It's a little more professional, and a bit more courteous. You are hurting your former employee enough just by not working for them anymore.
Besides, what kind of person gets stock tips from ex-employees? A little inside information may be good, but I'd have to expect a lot of bias. It almost as bad as getting legal advice from a bunch of geeks.
I read over what this yound person had to say, and it says he's accomplished a number of tasks, yet is not respected because he is young and still in school.
Yep, seems he needs a few more years...
The bottom line is that age and experience do count. I could have been building Linux kernels from.1, but if it's my first day in a real job setting, then I should shut up and listen to what is going on around me. Business experience counts. Time on "real-world" projects counts. Overall years of experience in an industry count.
When I started my job, I quickly realized that I had a better handle on C++ than the others around me. Most were veterans, with 30+ years of assembler and Fortran under their belts. When I had to start learning Fortran and assembler from 30 year old machines, I began to wonder what it would look like in my language of choice. I could see much room for improvement in data structures, in code maintance, in comment style.
But I kept my mouth closed. I learned from my co-workers, I studied the code, I got to know machines that should be in a museum. When it got too much, I coded at home, using templates and exceptions to my heart's content.
I've been at it for two years, and I'm starting to get the respect. I can be trusted with a major project. I know the language, and how it's used. When I argue technology, I'm arguing at their level, not at the "gee-whiz, this stuff is so out-of-date" level. I don't call security holes "obvious". In other words, I don't insult those with more experience than me.
Go watch some Kung-Fu movies. They often have the young, brash fighter with natural talent, getting his ass kicked by an older man (or woman - go see Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon already!!!). Humility is a good lesson to learn, and if you can't be humble, at least fake it. If you are good, they will eventually accept you, and you will get respect.
Once you get respect, you just need to keep on your toes, so some young thug doesn't come along and get you...
Until then, growing facial hair makes you look a lot older.
Why not have a DDOS reunion tour? I'm sure the folks at CNN, Ebay, etc would love to see your sup3r 1337 skillz again...
Interesting idea - what if one day out of the year was known as the unofficial "hack" day, when all the 1337 SKs and true crackers concentrated all their attacks. The sys-admins would know as well, so they could actually take time to update software and try to secure their system, set up honeypots, etc. For one day, the limits of security would be tested. And, given that most sys admins don't know much about security, we'd all get a day off work.
But what date? The date Kevin Mitnick was arrested / released / scheduled to get off parole? The anniversary of the DDoS attack? Personally, I like the idea of the first Friday/Saturday in April. Every few years, it would fall on April Fools Day, it would give sys-admins a Friday to secure the systems, and would allow them to get the systems up and running by Monday.
Or maybe not, since it is all illegal. But wouldn't it be nice knowing when it was coming?
What's the word for someone who looks like a troll, sound like a troll, but isn't a troll?
Yes, you have a valid point - as skillful as a sys admin might be, sys admin != hacker. But it's also a skill that is not really trainable. You have to understand these beasts, these boxen, you have to grok rebuilding kernels, understand stacks and weak points, and be able to decipher CERN reports. It is a skilled industry.
As another said: To the casual Windows user, anyone with these skills is a hacker. These people also know that they would never put hacker on a business card, never expect to hear Cox's name mentioned in the same breath as their own.
It seems easy and trivial to us, but these are skills, often bought with the currency of time, a social life, and popularity in high school. We are being rewarded now, with high-paying jobs, management that doesn't understand us but lets us do our thing, and the ability to play with our favorite toys. Surprise, Surprise, we keep the business going, in a business where they are starting to measure the dollars lost per minute of server down time.
The hacker ethic is alive and well, even in these folks who touch code once every two weeks. Don't start pissing games because they haven't re-written a kernel.
When disecting someone else's code, I often have to print it out, write notes, flip pages, and generally become the World's Slowest Debugger. At first glance, a general technology like this would help the process of learning new code. You could run the Analyzer on pre-exisiting code, send the file to a print shop, and hang it prominently on the common area wall. Soon, all programming environments will be competing for the best on-screen version...
Of course, unless this actually helps you understand the code, and is better than pre-existing methods, why bother? Sure, it looks cool, but a similar representation of paths to local chinese restraunts may look as cool (you can take 5th st, or 15th st, represented as spikes off an oval, etc...)
If it really is an aid for comprehension, or even better, exposes structural flaws, then this is great! Let's make the FPS version, with a profiler coloring or texturizing (is that a word?) the environment, to show time taken in different subroutines (rooms?)
Anyway, cool idea, but lets give it a few months to see if it is just cool, or cool and useful.
At the risk of repeating what the AC said, those of us who went to college in the last 10 or so years (6 years since I was a freshman) didn't memorize our social security numbers before college.
The reason we memorized them is, starting Junior year or so, every college application, every load application, every application for any kind of information or benefit demanded your social security number right after your name (or sometimes, instead of a name). I first tried a post-it at my desk, then said "screw it" and memorized the damn thing.
Of course, it isn't funny after you have to explain it... Inside joke, I guess.
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Excellent point - one of the strengths and weaknesses of paper is that is not rewritable. This is good for history - can you imagine the Constitution written as a .txt file? Maybe with a little disclaimer at the top, "Version 25, corrected Section X to include Women's Right To Vote"? Important documents will be written on paper for a long time.
One of the problems is that the number of important documents is skyrocketing. I am expected, for tax purposes, to keep thousands of documents (check stubs, paycheck stubs, etc), most of which will never see the light of day. What's wrong with a cheap, write-once format, that allows all these "documents" to be stored, recalled when needed, but take up much less room that paper? In some ways, it would be more secure than paper - I could make copies, store one at the bank, one at home, and I'd have a duplicate if something bad happened (a fire, for instance).
I believe document versioning will be an important part of electronic documents, and some things may always be done in paper (or stone - who wants an LCD display for a tombstone?). But, as the amount of paper keeps increasing, more and more should be in an electronic format. I don't need to generate 10 little reciepts every day - just upload them to my Visor, using X-bit encryption or whatever.
We should keep in mind 1984, and always make updating voluntary and reviewable rather than automatic. For the most part, however, it will probably be a matter of convienince. I won't mind never dealing with a textbook with incorrect examples, or the wrong answers in the back.
p.s. - I collect old science books. I love to see the state of the ideas, like one turn-of-the-century astonomy book that included a propeller plane ride to the moon, and didn't have Pluto. I also have a book on the New Math, which looks very strange when is was first conceived, and was fairly sexist in its examples. I'd hate to see these go away due to politics or PC revisionism, but they could be preserved in an electronic format - for instance, a History textbook with a command "view Revision 1", with all the Euro-centric ideas still in place, and "view latest Revision", with all the PC parts put in. It may be as interesting as the book itself.
I didn't understand the Shabbos reference. I highlighted the word, loaded up the webpage of my online dictionary, and knew in a second that it meant the Sabbath. I know little Jewish culture, but I guessed that it was a time when electric lighting and electronics went unused. I could then do a web search, and find out more about Shabbos / the Sabbath, and learn a bit more about Jewish culture, and perhaps debate you on common ground.
If I read the same word in a paper book, I may have thought about looking it up, saw there was no dictionary around, and quickly forget about it (along with your comment). If I saw the word more than once, I may ask someone about it, or take the time to look it up, but most of the time I can understand a word enough in context, that I don't really have to know what it means.
In this case, reading your comment in an electronic format allowed much more than the paper version would have. I argue that this is the case more often than we know, and, with e-books, such cross-referencing would be as intuitive as web searches are now.
I agree - most opponents to E-books think of reading them on a monitor, or a laptop, or a PDA. My ideal e-book is much like yours, and it is possible that I won't buy one until it looks like that, and is affordable (for instance, a year's book budget).
Technology is progressing in leaps and bounds, and I think people underestimate how long it will take to get to this stage. I think we will see models like that in 10 years, and they will be ubiquitous in 20. At that point, if a text is more that 500 words, people will be downloading it to their e-book, rather than printing it out. I think monitors and LCD displays will be used for live-motion, high-refresh applications, while e-books will be used for text, slow-refresh applications.
It's exciting to read Gene Wolfe again, and he makes me think of e-books every time. The vocabulary barrier is significant, and he often expects you to remember on page 200 of book 3 what happened on page 30 of book 1. Being able to search for every instance of a name, or to keep notes in the margins without destroying my copy would be a huge benefit.
Again, it's for sentimental reasons. My wife loves the idea of a fireplace, and yes, it's right where you'd think of putting your TV. People house-shopping look at it and think, "We'll be able to cuddle up on the couch or the rug, sipping wine and talking about our love". They actually think that a fireplace will make them more romantic, and less inclined to watch TV. They don't think about firewood storage, the cost of fireplace equipment, the bother of cleaning out the ashes, etc. After one or two fires, they are back to sitting on the couch, watching TV, drinking beer and eating nachoes. But at an awkward angle, since the fireplace is taking up the space opposite the couch...
Material objects do not make the unromantic romantic. On an unrelated note, Happy Valentine's Day everyone!.
Electronic paper has disadvantages now, but they are most technological. When they become technologically possible and cheap, they will be quickly adopted. Tech manuals will be first (can you imagine a Linux book that updates with kernel revisions?), because the industry can afford it. Schools may be next, since textbooks are so expensive anyway. Once college kids start using them (trade in my 100 pound textbooks for one cool-looking textpad? Sure), they will slowly make their way into the workplace, then into homes.
In terms of quality, CDs are inferior to LPs, but they are smaller and easier to keep in good working condition. Eventually, I expect digital formats without physical medium (provide your own) will take over. Paper will go the same way. I can't imagine a future where geeks go to Mars carrying 500+ kg of paper manuals. Mission Control won't allow it.
You still have a fireplace? Most of the houses I've seen had fireplaces, but they have been bricked up because they weren't built to modern code...
Most people argue for dead tree versions out of some similar romantic notion of curling up with a good book. But how often do we do this? I read in the morning, to wake up, during the day, for interest or work, and at night, to get to sleep. Never in front of a fireplace, and never in a hammock (just reminds me of yardwork I should do).
For me, I'd love a good, high-resoultion, light electronic book. I'm reading Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun (all four in one bindind), and loving it. However, it's heavy, hard to hold when in bed, I need a light turned on, and I wish I had a decent dictionary to look up half the obscure words (Autarch? Triskele?).
A good electronic book could do that. It could use a standard dictionary, and have a special dictionary for difficult words. Translated works could have both versions, and some translator notes. I could use backlight at night, and it would remember what page I'm on. For technical books, I could enter notes in the side, and it could keep track of the ten pages I visit the most. A Shakespeare play could live alongside ten great commentaries, as well as the Cliff Notes.
Nope, I wouldn't use the 19" monitor either. But it's easy to be flippant, and harder to actually think about it, and how it will be an improvement over paper versions. Do you still use a horse to get to work? Or maybe you grab your self-carved walking stick, and curse urban planners for inventing sidewalks.
When we push the boundaries of what is computationally possible, there are two forces that act on the innovation. The first is optimization; the original technique is re-analyzed, to either make the computation more efficient (software optimization), or to make the compuation faster (hardware optimization). The second is consumer demand: if the feature makes things look cooler and/or more realistic, the technique becomes popular, and becomes one of the standard tools.
Are we at the final stage in graphics technology? I think not. Remember Doom 2? There were very cool scenes, where you were looking at 50+ enemies, some just 4 pixels, and they were ALL shooting at you. In Quake, a level might have 13 enemies total. We could use Doom's level of enemy depth, but with 3D models and multi-level worlds.
We still haven't mastered some environmental effects, such as heat distortion. A burning barrel should have an effect on the scene behind it, as well as realistic fog effects. A strightforward implementation may also help better model bullet paths, so that you really can't snipe from 5 miles away.
Of course, all these are just visual tricks, that need to be put in service of a good plot. It seems a shame that just as technolgy gets to the point that Looking Glass Studios can have graphics comparable to the plot, they get pushed out of business. When you can really model a whole world, Richard Gariott decides to industry can't support his business plans. When you can make a real-time version as beautiful as the original Myst, Cyan does it, instead of making a new product.
The tricks and effects are too tempting right now, so that we simply make things beautiful without making them intellegent. This will change, and the masters will use every tool at their disposal.
Well, I just took out a business card, and wrote on the back "The letter 'a', repeated 10.8 x 2^40 times". Did I just store 10.8 terabytes of compressed data in an area the size of a credit card?
Call the press!
This may be impressive, even revolutionary, but we need more technical details.
While it is still up, go get "Bad Times", by Laika, off of Napster. Probably one of the first mass emails set to music. It's off their latest album, Good Looking Blues, which is quality all around.
I think it laughable that any rapper would sue someone for using someone else's song. Remember all those top 40 rap songs that heavily sampled previously successful pop songs? Must be the action of record companies. Besides, from what I've heard, the song was barely released, since the recording company was in the middle of bankrupcy hearings.
I found the song myself searching for Ween songs. On Napster, it is often credited to either Ween or Phish. Go figure.
Months later, I have quite a few singles, tracks that I would have never bought, except perhaps on a compilation. Would I have ever discovered the Gourd's "Gin and Juice" without Napster? Not likely. Despite the record company's protests, if I found enough songs to like, I bought the album. I ripped my CDs, some at home, some at work, and used Napster to transfer the MP3s from home to work, when I wanted a song or two. Life was good.
Now it looks like Napster is going down, at least for a little while, and I say thank you. My hard drive is stuffed with singles, sometimes multiple copies. Only one is a good copy, the rest are bad copies, mixes I don't like, bad live versions. Finally, I will have the time to go through them, weed out the bad ones, and put them onto CDs. I can think about a stereo setup that will allow MP3s to play over the good speakers. I will compile those playlists, for instant parties. I will finish ripping my existing CDs.
In short, I have some breathing room before moving on to Gnutella. Thanks, 9th Circuit Court of Appeals!
At the same time, my current favorite is CounterStrike. No plot to speak of, just pure action, strategy, and teamplay. It's a free add-on to Half-Life, which you can pick up for fairly cheap. If there was a open-source engine as good as Half-Life's (the Quake II engine, perhaps with some extras), then we may see a truly excellent open-source game.
One problem is that all the clients and servers have to be on the same page. Even though it would be open-source, it would follow the example of the Linux Kernel and some open-source games - one main effort, possibly a few variations, but all development focused on the kernel. Maybe there would be faster fixes to eliminate f**king cheaters, as a side benefit.
Bottom line? For an experience you remember for years, you almost can't beat closed source, billion dollar development games. But there is space out there for some kick-ass, no suprise plot open source games. You listening, Gooseman?
A first-class letter comes with a guarentee of privacy, but, if they suspect you are doing something illegal, they can get a warrant to open your mail. Having an anonymous mailbox doesn't necessarily put you under suspicion, but the kind of mail you recieve (lots of legal-sized envelopes marked "photos, do not bend", or maybe lots of cash) may get you unwanted attention.
It would be ideal if we could create a similar system for the electronic world. Encrypted email with the legal protections of first-class mail would be useful, although it may have to be a three-key system, so the government could open email with a warrent, without the sender knowing of it. This may ring some warning bells on SlashDot, but it's better than your boss being able to read every piece of email you send, or the government reading all the un-encrypted email with Carnivore (or whatever they are calling it this week).
1: U.S., Canada, U.S. Territories
2: Japan, Europe, South Africa, and Middle East (including Egypt)
3: Southeast Asia and East Asia (including Hong Kong)
4: Australia, New Zealand, Pacific Islands, Central America, Mexico, South America, and the Caribbean
5: Eastern Europe (Former Soviet Union), Indian subcontinent, Africa, North Korea, and Mongolia
6: China
7: Reserved
8: Special international venues (airplanes, cruise ships, etc.) I think it's interesting how the DVD regions seperate the world into 21st century regions. Remember the whole third-world label? I believe the proper breakdown was:
First World: Modern, democratic countries (U.S., Canada, Western Europe)
Second World: Modern, communist countries (Russia, China)
Third World: Everything else (places where first and second world armies fight)
Now, industry has a new category scheme, to break up the world:
Region 1: Where the big movies are produced, where much of the profit and expenses come from.
Region 2: Where big movies are consumed, some smaller movies produced (anime, stuff that gets considered in the Oscar's Foriegn Film category)
Region 3: Where some "on location" movies are made, and people can afford the movies
Region 4: Nice places for those who make movies to visit, but would you want to live there?
Region 5: Places where the people are probably too poor to buy DVD players, or at least in bulk. Hollywood types may visit, for personal growth.
Region 6: Places where you can be reasonably sure that piracy will eat up much of the profit.
Region 7: Places where Hollywood probably won't have any control (Linux, Mars)
Region 8: The region you are in when you are travelling between regions.
This scheme seems very Hollywood-centric to me.
Anonymous tips should start a counseling cycle, which can be as short as one session, to determine whether a kid is serious, or is was just stupid. When possible, these early sessions should be removed from permanent records, to reduce the negative affects and allow kids to occasionally make mistakes.
Despite Columbine, it is still safer for kids to be in school than outside. Making the random comments of adolesents grounds for criminal charges is unreasonable and unforgivable. It fosters an "us against them" mentality, and further isolates borderline cases. It sounds like the ideas of politicians or insane school boards (zero-tolerance policies), rather than rational ideas from those who know kids best, who work with them every school day.
It still isn't cost effective to throw out my 21" (3 ft deep) monitor for the LCD replacement (maybe a $1500 difference?), so why would this new, possibly more expensive option even cross my radar?
Wait and see, wait and see...
Younger types are more mobile, more willing to change cities, more willing to take a better offer from somewhere else, more likely to install Quake on your servers...
It was a little disappointing getting alcohol on my 21st. No one asked for my ID, since I looked 25.
A big component is self marketing, but you have to listen to your market first. Look at those SuperBowl ads, where you can judge pretty quickly which companies spent too much on advertising and not enough on market research.
In my experience, the younger crowd is too prone to believing in an idealist One Right Way. This is mainly from those that come from a strong community background (Linux users), or are just out of school (having been taught the One Right Way). They often don't understand or appreciate the compromises of business.
Of course, as you get older, you stick with what worked in the past, and often believe in a conservative One Right Way. It is the interaction of new ideas with old, with mutual respect, that generates progress. Respect often follows from understanding, which follows from humility and learning.
If they go after you legally, the ACLU may take up the case, but I doubt they will. What kind of compensation could they expect? Was it slander? Otherwise, you could prove in a court of law what kind of stupid things they were doing, which wouldn't be that great for the stock price.
At the same time, they could play dirty pool and call your current employer. If your current employer is close-minded, you may have to sign some sort of gag agreement, or you may get fired.
These days, when you change jobs regularly, and they often take the contact information for your last two or three jobs, it makes good sense to stay on good terms with former employers. It's a little more professional, and a bit more courteous. You are hurting your former employee enough just by not working for them anymore.
Besides, what kind of person gets stock tips from ex-employees? A little inside information may be good, but I'd have to expect a lot of bias. It almost as bad as getting legal advice from a bunch of geeks.
Yep, seems he needs a few more years...
The bottom line is that age and experience do count. I could have been building Linux kernels from .1, but if it's my first day in a real job setting, then I should shut up and listen to what is going on around me. Business experience counts. Time on "real-world" projects counts. Overall years of experience in an industry count.
When I started my job, I quickly realized that I had a better handle on C++ than the others around me. Most were veterans, with 30+ years of assembler and Fortran under their belts. When I had to start learning Fortran and assembler from 30 year old machines, I began to wonder what it would look like in my language of choice. I could see much room for improvement in data structures, in code maintance, in comment style.
But I kept my mouth closed. I learned from my co-workers, I studied the code, I got to know machines that should be in a museum. When it got too much, I coded at home, using templates and exceptions to my heart's content.
I've been at it for two years, and I'm starting to get the respect. I can be trusted with a major project. I know the language, and how it's used. When I argue technology, I'm arguing at their level, not at the "gee-whiz, this stuff is so out-of-date" level. I don't call security holes "obvious". In other words, I don't insult those with more experience than me.
Go watch some Kung-Fu movies. They often have the young, brash fighter with natural talent, getting his ass kicked by an older man (or woman - go see Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon already!!!). Humility is a good lesson to learn, and if you can't be humble, at least fake it. If you are good, they will eventually accept you, and you will get respect.
Once you get respect, you just need to keep on your toes, so some young thug doesn't come along and get you...
Until then, growing facial hair makes you look a lot older.
Interesting idea - what if one day out of the year was known as the unofficial "hack" day, when all the 1337 SKs and true crackers concentrated all their attacks. The sys-admins would know as well, so they could actually take time to update software and try to secure their system, set up honeypots, etc. For one day, the limits of security would be tested. And, given that most sys admins don't know much about security, we'd all get a day off work.
But what date? The date Kevin Mitnick was arrested / released / scheduled to get off parole? The anniversary of the DDoS attack? Personally, I like the idea of the first Friday /Saturday in April. Every few years, it would fall on April Fools Day, it would give sys-admins a Friday to secure the systems, and would allow them to get the systems up and running by Monday.
Or maybe not, since it is all illegal. But wouldn't it be nice knowing when it was coming?
Yes, you have a valid point - as skillful as a sys admin might be, sys admin != hacker. But it's also a skill that is not really trainable. You have to understand these beasts, these boxen, you have to grok rebuilding kernels, understand stacks and weak points, and be able to decipher CERN reports. It is a skilled industry.
As another said: To the casual Windows user, anyone with these skills is a hacker. These people also know that they would never put hacker on a business card, never expect to hear Cox's name mentioned in the same breath as their own.
It seems easy and trivial to us, but these are skills, often bought with the currency of time, a social life, and popularity in high school. We are being rewarded now, with high-paying jobs, management that doesn't understand us but lets us do our thing, and the ability to play with our favorite toys. Surprise, Surprise, we keep the business going, in a business where they are starting to measure the dollars lost per minute of server down time.
The hacker ethic is alive and well, even in these folks who touch code once every two weeks. Don't start pissing games because they haven't re-written a kernel.
Of course, unless this actually helps you understand the code, and is better than pre-existing methods, why bother? Sure, it looks cool, but a similar representation of paths to local chinese restraunts may look as cool (you can take 5th st, or 15th st, represented as spikes off an oval, etc...)
If it really is an aid for comprehension, or even better, exposes structural flaws, then this is great! Let's make the FPS version, with a profiler coloring or texturizing (is that a word?) the environment, to show time taken in different subroutines (rooms?)
Anyway, cool idea, but lets give it a few months to see if it is just cool, or cool and useful.
The reason we memorized them is, starting Junior year or so, every college application, every load application, every application for any kind of information or benefit demanded your social security number right after your name (or sometimes, instead of a name). I first tried a post-it at my desk, then said "screw it" and memorized the damn thing.
Of course, it isn't funny after you have to explain it... Inside joke, I guess.