Does anybody ever keep track of whether any of these futuristic predictions are coming true? If nobody checks up on how good these predictions are turning out, it's basically a cottage industry to subsidize some guys sitting and spinning yarn.
I keep reading predictions in almost every magazine, but nobody ever cross-checks and makes a comparison. eg., "XYZ predicted this 5 yrs ago, and it was total crap" or "It's on track and the pieces are coming together".
The only two exceptions have been Cliff Stoll and Bob Metcalfe. Their biggest mistake was that they actually predicted something measurable in their lifetime, and even worse, about something less than 5 yrs in the future. I guess Bill Joy, Kurzweil and the rest have learnt from it and make sure to predict the future 20 or 50 yrs or so. That way, they will have sold all their books and be treated as "accurate" visionaries in their lifetime.
As Homer would say - So long suckers!
w/m
People not voting are a bunch of wankers
on
Should You Vote?
·
· Score: 2
This is bound to get a lot of knee-jerk negative responses in the US, under the guise of sophisticated apathy. But there are several things that nobody wants to do, which are necessary for society to function - for instance, almost nobody wants to serve on a jury, nobody wants to pay taxes, nobody wants to do lots of things which are very important to keep society functioning, such as stand in a line to get driver licenses.
I'm not saying that this gives the govt. the right to invade your property and so on. But it's important to consider the fact that certain inputs from citizens are ncessary to keep society functioning - the other alternative is a dictatorship.
It's pathetic for people to hate dictatorships and at the same time complain that their vote doesn't make a difference - how do they really want the power to be chosen or decisions made? You can't do everything by direct vote - imagine if they had one everytime an ambassador to Lithuania had to be chosen, or if the budget for the Dept. of Agriculture had to be decided. US citizens have one of the worst turnout records and hold the most power of any nation in the world.
Most of the people who whine about voting not making a difference have never set foot outside the US, it's a bit like some aristocrat's offspring complaining that the cake isn't good enough, or some self-indulgent weiner holding a can of beer and whining about MTV. Guess what - someone in society has to appoint supreme court justices who decide the deaths of people, and by some miracle, that person is chosen by society - not by inheritence (disagree? go and undo it, it's happened before), not by a bunch of academics, but by popular vote. It's necessary for a US president to bomb at least one country in his 4 year term to show his leadership and be popular for re-election. A bunch of people will die, and YOU decide who gets to push the buttons.
So go out there and vote. It may not matter to you, but it will to someone.
w/m
The Soviet way of thinking
on
Anonymity
·
· Score: 2
This point is basically made so often it's remarkable. Basically - if you are not guilty, you have nothing to hide, so you need have no fear of disclosing.
This principle was/is used by govts. with an authoritarian bent to intrude into all areas of private life, property and communication. Let's try applying these principles.
* If you earn an honest income, why should you hide it from the income tax officials? People shouldn't be free to just walk to an ATM and anonymously deposit/withdraw money or transfer it overseas in complete privacy - it could be illegal money.
* If you lead an honest life, there's no need to hide behind the anonymity of your private doors. Why, in good societies like the old communist regimes, people DID lead honest lives, which is why they didn't mind officials walking in to make sure everything was OK. It brought responsibility back into the system. Recently, the Russian govt. has been trying to pass a law that permits officials to look at all internet communications - the tapping would be live, but they would actually look at material only after approval by a judge. Makes sense, since people won't post crap online.
* If you conduct all your telephone conversations and correspondence responsibly and legally, you have nothing to fear from people tapping/reading into it. With the right to mail letters or use a phone, comes responsibility, such as not mailing death threats or harassing people. If communication is open and freely looked at, people will behave more responsibly instead of conducting stupid gossip or slander.
I'm sure most of you have noticed that the internet is full of garbage. Quite a lot of that garbage wouldn't be there if it weren't for the anonymity that exists.
I'm sure most of you have noticed that magazines are full of garbage. Quite a lot of that wouldn't be there if only the good stuff were permitted to be published.
And so on, ad nauseum. I'm tired of the "If you have rights, you need to have responsibilities" argument when applied to speech/communication. No, if you have priviliges, you need to have responsibilities - such as driving a car.
Besides, if we didn't have the freedom to create the 99% trash that people publish/post/write, much of the world's great literature/music/art would not exist.
Different societies tolerate different levels of intrusion. This means not just privacy, but any kind of intrusion against the individual.
The problem is that it's not just a matter of corporation vs. individual. It's also the govt. vs individual. Individual privacy is against attack from all kinds of organized powerful entities, including BOTH the govt. and the corporation.
For instance, in Australia, mass DNA screening of an entire town was carried out to catch a criminal. This was viewed as generally acceptable (there is no bill of rights in australia). On the other hand, when Australian companies gather data, there is widespread media scrutiny and suspicion. In Australia, govt. regulation of public lives is considered acceptable (they have censors to control what people watch or read) but there's a very high level of caution regarding companies.
In the UK, there is generally a much higher rate of govt. intrusion in electronic communication, a level that would be unacceptable in the US. ISPs are also held responsible for content, even in newsgroups, after the Godfrey vs. Demon case. This means more monitoring of content, since the ISP is liable, and in general, a greater intrusion into individual communication.
In the US, govt. intrusion is generally viewed with great suspicion. The one exception is police attacks on certain sections of society (because the anti-crime sentiment is strong, so people are willing to tolerate the cops busting a few doors and shooting a few people if it's to reduce the crime rate). OTOH, corporate abuse of individual lives is considered acceptable, because people have been indoctrinated since birth that if companies do something, they should be allowed to do so since the market will regulate itself. In days past, this meant that US companies could use DDT (now banned), operate nuclear power plants more freely (now regulated), use asbestos (now banned), or sell banned chemicals like DDT to third world countries (still allowed - it's good for exports).
Generally, these things all depend on how much a society permits its individuals to be powerless against the govt. or companies. In the US, it's a difficult proposition, since companies have bought out both major candidates. But there's still a high rate of suspicion of intervention in individual privacy, which results in some degree of regulation. Contrary to what people think, even though corporations influence politicians, the vote still counts (because that's how the prez gets elected, go figure), so they still pay a lot of attention to what the public considers acceptable.
What the public considers acceptable is just a matter of indoctrination, culture, and trends. Guns are acceptable and a hot topic in the US, not even an issue in most of Europe or Australia. Police abuse is common in the US while technically illegal, whereas in EU/aust/NZ, the cops have more powers but the level of abuse is less (except against native tribes).
Communication, well...it's a whole new game, and the rules are being written. Who knows what will happen?
I used to read Wired magazine some years ago, and I used to take it seriously. After some time, I began to notice a trend in its articles.
There's this clique of "digerati" who keep popping up on its pages and in similar forums/magazines/books, explaining the future in all its robotic nanotech cybernetic glory. The same names keep appearing over and over, repeating visions of a future so vague and full of popcorn sci-fi visions that you can't quite pin down anything specific, but can debate about it for weeks.
You may have seen these names before, waving hands and talking about the amazing future - Nicholas Negroponte, Marc Andreesen (even makes the cover of wired recently, all for having co-written mosaic w/ eric bina), Lanier, Kurzweil, Ted Nelson, Gelertner, etc. Most or all of these have been "has beens", who never quite produce anything useful, except visions of the future that are lapped up by journalists and viewed as the gospel.
Sure, it was interesting to read about futuristic visions of tomorrow, but after 5 years of this crap, and hardly any progress in bandwidth, usability, AI, speech rec, home automation, etc., I have had enough of reading about this thing. Anybody can write vague gee whiz stuff, full of buzzwords that nobody quite agrees upon.
Trust me, after you're read this sort of stuff for a while, it begins to enter the territory of the social sciences - it's always full of controversy, you can never prove anything wrong with it, but its proponents can always make their point with something so vague that it sounds profound.
Give it a rest. It's not even as entertaining as campy 70s futurism.
w/m
PS - Funny how REAL contributors to technology of the future never write articles like this, maybe because they have something at stake? For instance, you don't see crap like this from Drexler, peter shor, or seth lloyd.
And for all the people falling over themselves trying to write serious posts. If you think you're l33t at using buzzwords, try Alan Sokal
is the fact that so many on/. are such l33t hax0rs and have an intimate knowledge of AOL instant messenger, that they know of multiple ways to hack it.
Mainstream tech. coverage has been consistently lame, and I've felt that newsweek has an advantage over time with Levy on its side.
One thing I've found quite different about Time vs. Newsweek is the technology coverage. Newsweek tends to have a pretty realistic grasp on things, even if I don't agree with some of the focus. Time, on the other hand, is remarkably lame on computer/software coverage for a magazine of its stature. For instance, in the early 90s, they had a cover story about the Internet being 85% full of porn, or something like that, which was repudiated by another study and caused major embarrassment. Time Digital lists the "Cyber Elite" (that title should tell you something); in recent years, it included John Romero TWICE in a row, AND Lara Croft thrown in among famous net names. I guess it was supposed to make it look hip and trendy, and this is the kind of stuff people sipping mochas at starbucks buy into.
This is somewhat understandable - editors are generally older generation people who are carried away by the gee whiz aura and have difficulty figuring out lame fads from real trends. Somewhat like managers who can't figure out the real tech-heads from the fast talkers. But this has a major impact on tech coverage in mainstream newspapers and magazines. In fact, I generally find most of them not worth even reading on this subject except for NY Times (which has markoff) and newsweek.
I wish media would hire more people who know this stuff, rather than devote pages to crap about hackers breaking into banks, viruses and futuristic nonsense. At least people who know the meaning of the word "hackers".:)
On the very next line, I said the same thing - if you change your employer, you need to get a new work permit.
What I meant by not working for one employer was that if you're on an H1B, you don't have to "work for that employer forever until they send you back", which is the impression many people have.
Yes, an H1B is employer specific, but you can change it if you want to work for a new employer. In reality, the best way to do this is to start the new one without telling your current employer, since it takes so long and the new job may be gone by the time you get the papers.
Finding two employers willing to do an H1B was easier when it took only 2 weeks. The time factor is the major thing in all of this.
There's also a difference between a visa and a work permit. A visa is only for entry into a country. Once you enter, so long as you keep your work permit valid, you are legally entitled to stay and work even if the visa expires. It just means you can't exit and re-enter on that visa.
Yeah, but you try to discard the bad stuff and keep the good stuff.
If you make a religion/language/race "official", then it has the practical effect of making the minorities disadvantaged and likely to be oppressed in some way. While the founders of the US made many mistakes like slavery, some of their ideas were pretty good - such as the separation of church and state. Basically - the govt. should not establish a particular religion.
I used to think making English the official language would be a good thing, since it promotes a standard and makes things easier, but on further thought, look at it this way. If you don't speak english, not only are you at a disadvantage, but you and your kids will be stigmatized in society because they don't follow the "official" govt. sanctioned cultural medium.
The likely abuse of a language standard is similar to that of a religious standard - if you're not one of us, you are not good for our society.
I also think not having an official language is cool from an abstract point of view - you're mature enough as a society to believe in an abstract principle and letting culture flourish without imposing a standard, instead of imposing a standard cultural tool. After all, most of the languages we speak today are the result of a lot of linguistic exchange, and all languages are richer for it.
After a few hundred articles on linux vs. windows, both sides were so tired they were practically falling asleep on each other's shoulders. A lively new theme is needed to get people foaming at the mouth. This has manifested itself in the form of the H1B visa story, which gets repeated a few times a month.
It brings out emotions. Strong emotions. People get as ready for a punch-up as a drunken Pat Buchanan facing an illegal Mexican immigrant auto-plant worker flung in front of him after a day of polling results.
Strong emotions on/. means two things - lots of posts, lots of points. Follow these simple steps to get yours.
1) Mention "slave labor". This is a no-brainer. But you gotta be early, coz it gets repeated to death. The law of diminishing returns applies to the use of the term "slave labor(1)" as much as it does to SMP scaling. If you're REALLY early, use it in your title, and watch the karma $$$ roll in.
2) Use these phrases - "retrain", "older workers", "cheap" used in a combination with "import", "third world", "India", "China", "sweatshop", "indentured". DO NOT just type them randomly - moderaters aren't that dumb. Use them in full sentences, the effort is worth it.
3) Two words - corporate greed. To moderaters, it's like honey to hungry bears. Rant about evil companies. For a nice touch, throw in a few references to MS (don't use the $, they'll think you're so passe), Sun, Oracle, Intel, etc.
4) Personal experience - Mention personally knowing someone on an H1B living in a basement with rats and subsisting on bread and water. With 20 other H1B immigrants.
5) "There is no shortage of tech workers." Yeah, you can just cut 'n paste that. It's like pushing buttons. Easy as pie.
6) History - Make some mention about the founding fathers, or how cheap immigrants flooding in is contrary to all that America is about.
7) Facts - You don't have to know anything about immigration law to talk about it. In fact, most immigration lawyers don't. Guess what, their clients never complain if they lose. Make up statistics as you go along, use terms like "half", "a quarter of", "4", "3", well, just type in some numbers in a plausible looking sentence about H1B workers.
8) The old days - Say something about the old days, when it wasn't like this, and people had enough skills to hook up a telegraph pad to an old mainframe and make it play Quake on punch cards, and how all these new cheap school kids and foreigners just have it so easy, and are destroying everything. This stuff works, trust me.
9) Linux/Linus/GNU - Try bringing up this stuff somehow. It helps that Torvalds is a foreign worker, but DO NOT use the above strategies if you try this approach....
10) Opposing views - This is a risky approach. You can defend foreign workers, but keep in mind that it's like defending Windows on slashdot - the odds are against you. If you choose this path, be sure to say that you have been trying to hire qualified people and can't find them, or make a convincing argument about the structural flaws of the INS, or describe the complex nuances of the cross-continental exchange of skills in a globalised economy against a backdrop of xenophobia, labor laws, and antiquated immigration policies. Bonus points if you do this as an AC and win.
w/m
(1) If you are weaned on British English, remember not to spell it 'labour', which will make you stand out as an immigrant worker yourself, casting doubt on your integrity and raising accusations of trolling.
To prove their point, one of them would periodically ask the lab TA if the lights were on. The TA would usually respond with a different answer
This doesn't prove anything. Maybe this happened because *their* communication skills were just as bad.:)
It is largely a matter of accent. Once an American complained to me about the English not being able to speak properly. The irony of this was a bit too much for me. I've also had Asians complain about Americans not being able to spell or master rudimentary English.
Once I saw an American tourist ask an Australian at an airport to repeat himself because she couldn't understand him. Naturally, you'd think - thick Aussie accent. Imagine if you'd seen her do the same to a Chinese person - would your opinion of his communication skills differ a lot from that of the Australian? Think about it...
There's no reason why an American or European accent is the "correct" or default way to pronounce English.
I find it strange how the/. crowd revels in amusement from clever remarks about the Hitchhiker's guide and the babelfish. Very wise and understanding about the tapestry of human culture and thought - all that makes us what we are, and how we live together. But when it comes to the real world, and people traveling and working in different countries and speaking with a different accent, there is so much veiled hostility and underlying scorn towards "them".
Before everyone spouts their opinion, here are some background facts which may help you understand this better.
First, green cards. These are a Kafkaesque nightmare.
* An employer can sponsor a green card (permanent residency) which takes about 3-6 years. An employee may quit, but this stops his green card processing and he has to start from scratch at the next company. (In case you're wondering, most employers are eager to sponsor. Guess why...)
* If the H1B expires at the end of 6 years, the green card process can be continued overseas (Consular Processing). OTOH, if the process is at the final stage, the employee may file for an "Adjustment of Status" (AoS) and continue to work in the US (for the same employer) until he/she obtains the green card - generally 3 more years.
During this time, US law prohibits the person from leaving & re-entering the country unless he obtains INS permission after stating the cause, even for short trips. (Land of liberty!) They are literally treated as prisoners in some sense - the word the INS uses to describe a software engineer allowed to go visit his home country is advanced parole (this is a DOJ site) Violating this is extremely serious.
Some people forget this rule and visit canada for a holiday, which pretty much fucks up their weekend and much of their life.
* Green card processing time varies dramatically from state to state, sometimes by years. So a PhD in California might take longer to get it than an agricultural worker in Washington. In short, if you are planning to get one, spend some heavy research poring over tables of figures on avg. timelines.
H1Bs
-----
* H1B is a non-immigrant visa, so those who hold it are "non-immigrants" (if you can imagine that); green card folks are "applicants for immigrant status".
* An H1B takes about 3 months to obtain. You are not obliged to work for one employer, and can change.
* An employer can't "send them back". This is a HUGE misconception. Even if the company fires someone, he is legally present with a valid work permit, which normally doesn't expire until a yr or two. So long as the programmer has another company apply for a new work permit, he can continue to stay in the US (but cannot work until he gets the new visa.)
* You can start > 1 H1B visa applications. For instance, a programmer agrees to join companies X and Y, both of which apply for visas. X gets it first, and the programmers says bye to Y. This happens sometimes (see above scenario) - I know more than one person who's done it, it's a tough world - and companies can't do anything about it (can't have much sympathy for them, really).
* Big slashdot error - H1B people are NOT being deported. The article does not mention it. Deportation is a legal action taken by the INS against unlawful aliens, which is fought out in the courts. In this case, what they are describing is a case of programmers voluntarily leaving BEFORE their visa expires.
* H1B law allows an unlimited number of employers, but a max cap of 6 yrs in the US. After 6 years, the person must spend 1 yr outside the US, at which time the counter is ROLLED BACK. He can then come to the US for another 6 yrs.
* Inspite of the mass hysteria, employers can't pay anything they want - they have to legally state how much they pay and this has to be approved by the DoL (dept. of labor) BEFORE they grant it.
* H1B folks can apply for a green card at any time during their employment. From the frying pan into the fire.
* They can also apply for Canadian permanent residency while in the US. This takes about 6 months and you need not have to be in Canada for even a day. They have enough trouble keeping their own people.
* H1B law is equally ruthless to all nationalities - it takes several weeks for everyone. Equal opportunity rocks.
* One consequence of a 3 month processing time for H1B is that companies are unwilling to hire people to start so far into the future, instead of a 15 day period.
* When H1Bs took 15 days to process (they used to some yrs ago) there was little disparity between conditions for citizens and visa workers, since people had to give a 2 week notice anyway, during which the visa was processed. This whole fuckup began due to overloading of under-budgeted INS offices.
In short, immigrant programmers face enormous hurdles - inspite of having legal status, they are trapped between the govt., corporations, and a xenophobic population (read some/. posts).
I've noticed a regrettable trend. Many Americans tend to take out their anger against immigration policy on their H1B co-workers or anyone who looks like one (visa status isn't exactly stamped on people's foreheads), which creates an unpleasant, racially hostile situation in many offices. Oddly enough, they tend to discard this attitude when they themselves have to go thru a bureaucratic nightmare to work in Europe or australia or Asia.
Wow, what an exciting moment. A govt. committee is thinking that...."An analysis of Open Source licensing agreements is needed, with an ultimate goal of agreeing upon a single common licensing agreement for Open Source software development.
So, there are some promising things that may come out of the report."
This is fantastic news! All of this, from a committee that is......"Defining a policy framework for accomplishing these goals". A govt. committee that is analysing and in the very process of defining a policy. Why, everyone in a US govt. agency must be paying attention to this committee!
This is terribly exciting, and we must all pop out the champagne.
Whew, now that I'm calmer, I'm wondering if there are thousands of these committees formulating policy decisions.
As for the govt. "investing heavily in open source", I think that's how TCP/IP came about, along with practically everything that constitutes the Internet infrastructure, though they didn't have the GNU/free/open-source labels flying around. After all, the US govt. doesn't invest in proprietary MS or Sun research projects.
Imagine walking on the street with this, we would be able to see where we're going in the
real world just like in Quake!
There's an even better way - take off that fancy equipment and just use your eyes. The resolution is much better, and miraculously, it's in sync with your other senses.
It's an incredible i/o engine. Works every time for me. Changing the fov is a bitch though - you have to get pretty drunk to do that, or use your "configuration" method of choice. YMMV.
The day is not far when somebody will try to OC. In view of this fact, I think it's important to warn people of various hazards.
* Overclocking bikes is different from OC'ing PCs. A crash is slightly more likely to be non-recoverable.
* Immersing bikes in liquid nitrogen tanks while dressed in scuba gear and driving by chicks to impress them with your leading edge status in the OC community is a Bad Idea.
Jared Diamond's book - Guns, Germs, and Steel - analyzes how technology developed and why the globe is the way it is today. His theory is that when a new technology is invented in an isolated society, it progresses slowly or is lost due to the small number of people using it. In contrast, when a highly interactive society develops technology, it gets passed on to other societies, gets modified and blended with other technologies and rapidly improves.
Around 1000-1400 AD, china was the world's superpower - they had everything, massive ships, gunpowder, paper, etc. But they locked up their society and refused to let any foreigners in or explore other worlds. Many historians speculate that this is why China lost its edge, as the rest of the world rapidly interacted and exchanged technology (Arab and Hindu math, Greek geometry, Roman military and legal systems.) One might say that the US is at the center of a vibrant exchange - no other country accepts so many immigrants with so many ideas and philosophies. Just note how many recent Nobel winners are foreign born US citizens.
In other words, a society that confidently relies on its own greatness and closes its doors loses its edge. This is probably why "Fortress Europe", with so many restrictions on the movement of foreign employees and companies, does not attract the kind of talent the US does.
My ignorance here is the result of working at a major university for three years.
It shows - you can barely spell. Pity you didn't complete your education.
It's funny how many of the bigoted comments are coming from functionally illiterate people who are trying to keep the foreigners out. Somewhat proves a point about the shortage. Ironic, isn't it?
How do they name particles? The boson is named after Bose (the physicist, not the audio system). So how is a Higgs particle different from a normal boson, and how are particle names decided?
A physicist told me that Bose deserved the Nobel, but didn't win due to politics. (In any case, it's probaly cooler to have a subatomic particle named after yourself rather than win the Nobel.)
On another note, from the article:
"Such a Higgs signature may have been seen in several unusual events observed recently at Lep. "
You're right -- people are way too smart to get taken in by that kind of thing. I mean, it's not like some 23 year-old could release fake stock market news that would cause the stock of some electronics company to plummet
As you eloquently pointed out, the masses are confused by some young guy posting a stock market rumor. And they are confused by fake sites pretending to be something else. What would your solution be? can you really think of any fix to this, other than letting the thing settle down and everyone chill out and understand how the net works?
Whenever something new happens on the net, there is always mass panic and hysteria, but eventually people settle down. The way to deal with issues of confusion is not to PREVENT abuses from happening, or put in "safeguards" to avoid the dumb masses from getting confused.
Things that need regulation need to have a high threshold to satisfy a need to slow down the anarchy and vibrancy of the net. Stuff like market rumors or fake sites or accented characters...geez, let millions of people panic and get confused and learn in the process. They will get over it and figure it out. There's no way to hold everyone's hand and regulate panic and confusion.
I also think there's a misunderstanding about accented chars. people who type something know what they want. For instance, someone who didn't know English at all might wonder if people get confused by some fake site registering yah00.com or m1cros0ft.com - they all look the same to him.
The o and the o with 2 dots above it may seem the same to us, but it's about as different to a Norwegian as a zero is to an 'o'. So don't worry, "they" won't get confused by similar looking domains. Even if they do, they'll get over it.
Slashdot has had to ban accented characters to prevent this kind of abuse; ICANN should do the same lest they a similar outbreak of mimicry infect the entire Web.
History of the "Something must be done to control the outbreak" syndrome.
Early 1990s: OMG! People are making up their own web sites in large numbers. Thousands of people will see them and be unable to distinguish fact from fiction.
Mid 1990s: OMG! People are now making up their own news sites. Millions of people are reading them and can't tell the difference between real and fake news.
Late 1990s: OMG! People are posting stock market tips which are causing market fluctuations. People will be unable to tell the difference between real and fake stock market news!
Early 2000s: OMG! People are allowed to use accented chars. Millions of people will be diverted to fake sites which use similar accented chars in their domain name, and thus be unable to tell the difference between real and fake sites!
Here, take a chill pill. Welcome to the internet, my friend.
There's a good chance we wouldn't be using laptops so far in the future. Just imagine someone in the previous century making predictions - "People will have telegraphy poles in their homes using advanced electrical technologies, and these poles will be so light, that anybody can lift them easiy, for they will be made of miraculous substances like plastics!"
Same thing - laptops may be the gee-whiz gadgets of today, just like room size computers were in the 50s. And they are as likely to be relevant in a future using quantum technology.
I don't see why the article focused on laptops, instead of just general quantum computing. No sense of perspective. Put this in the same category as those futuristic articles some decades ago about disposable paper clothes and waterproof furniture.
This is a very good idea, but frankly, I've found the Useless pages to be the best chronicle of the web. Everything, from the ate my balls pages, to the first spam sites, to the first annoying business pages, are listed in their raw earnest early form.
As for the aussie site, it suffers from the same disease as any govt. funded site - official seriousness. The most interesting and popular stuff on the net is not the crap put on the web by govt. commissions, but the output of real people. But this is all explained right on Pandora's site:
"At the beginning of 1996, before the PANDORA Project was formally set up, the Selection Committee on Online Australian Publications (SCOAP) developed selection guidelines"
The incredibly long and boring selection guidelines reveal that the SCOAP is out of touch with what the net's all about.
"4.1.1 To be selected for national preservation, a significant proportion of a work should
be written by an Australian(11) of recognised authority and constitute a contribution to international knowledge"
Yeah, that takes a realistic snapshot of what the web is like.
That says a lot - 4 yrs of committee work, and not much to show for it. Just goes to prove the govt. should stay out of anything to do with the net, including archiving it for historic reasons.
A challenge isn't a bad thing - any sort of major change is a challenge to companies.
For most of them, dealing with open source is a big challenge. On one hand, it's cutting into their sales. On the other hand, they are wary of releasing their 'crown jewels' because there are few recorded cases of companies which have released previously-closed software and made a profit from it. (Red Hat, etc., don't count since they are mostly packaging already available software, as contrasted w/ MS, Oracle, etc., which make tons of money from their privately developed closed product.)
While talking about open-sourcing software generates good publicity and lots of feel-good support, it must be kept in mind that the main goal of companies is to make money, and based on the past few quarters, none of the major players is losing their shirt from doing business as it is. But then, OSS is definitely cutting into sales. From that perspective, the whole open source movement is a big challenge to companies, in the sense of figuring out a way to continue to make money and also ride the popularity of the OSS wave (they are not interested in ideology).
I remember an old interview w/ Jim Gray in a database magazine (I think D. Programming & Design), in which he describes his reason for joining MS - along the lines of, if you can't beat them, join them, or something similar. In any case, there's nothing inherently evil about joining MS - if he had joined a competitor, it would have been equally closed source. Almost every company was in the 80s.
Slashdot Mirror
Does anybody ever keep track of whether any of these futuristic predictions are coming true? If nobody checks up on how good these predictions are turning out, it's basically a cottage industry to subsidize some guys sitting and spinning yarn.
I keep reading predictions in almost every magazine, but nobody ever cross-checks and makes a comparison. eg., "XYZ predicted this 5 yrs ago, and it was total crap" or "It's on track and the pieces are coming together".
The only two exceptions have been Cliff Stoll and Bob Metcalfe. Their biggest mistake was that they actually predicted something measurable in their lifetime, and even worse, about something less than 5 yrs in the future. I guess Bill Joy, Kurzweil and the rest have learnt from it and make sure to predict the future 20 or 50 yrs or so. That way, they will have sold all their books and be treated as "accurate" visionaries in their lifetime.
As Homer would say - So long suckers!
w/m
This is bound to get a lot of knee-jerk negative responses in the US, under the guise of sophisticated apathy. But there are several things that nobody wants to do, which are necessary for society to function - for instance, almost nobody wants to serve on a jury, nobody wants to pay taxes, nobody wants to do lots of things which are very important to keep society functioning, such as stand in a line to get driver licenses.
I'm not saying that this gives the govt. the right to invade your property and so on. But it's important to consider the fact that certain inputs from citizens are ncessary to keep society functioning - the other alternative is a dictatorship.
It's pathetic for people to hate dictatorships and at the same time complain that their vote doesn't make a difference - how do they really want the power to be chosen or decisions made? You can't do everything by direct vote - imagine if they had one everytime an ambassador to Lithuania had to be chosen, or if the budget for the Dept. of Agriculture had to be decided. US citizens have one of the worst turnout records and hold the most power of any nation in the world.
Most of the people who whine about voting not making a difference have never set foot outside the US, it's a bit like some aristocrat's offspring complaining that the cake isn't good enough, or some self-indulgent weiner holding a can of beer and whining about MTV. Guess what - someone in society has to appoint supreme court justices who decide the deaths of people, and by some miracle, that person is chosen by society - not by inheritence (disagree? go and undo it, it's happened before), not by a bunch of academics, but by popular vote. It's necessary for a US president to bomb at least one country in his 4 year term to show his leadership and be popular for re-election. A bunch of people will die, and YOU decide who gets to push the buttons.
So go out there and vote. It may not matter to you, but it will to someone.
w/m
This point is basically made so often it's remarkable. Basically - if you are not guilty, you have nothing to hide, so you need have no fear of disclosing.
This principle was/is used by govts. with an authoritarian bent to intrude into all areas of private life, property and communication. Let's try applying these principles.
* If you earn an honest income, why should you hide it from the income tax officials? People shouldn't be free to just walk to an ATM and anonymously deposit/withdraw money or transfer it overseas in complete privacy - it could be illegal money.
* If you lead an honest life, there's no need to hide behind the anonymity of your private doors. Why, in good societies like the old communist regimes, people DID lead honest lives, which is why they didn't mind officials walking in to make sure everything was OK. It brought responsibility back into the system. Recently, the Russian govt. has been trying to pass a law that permits officials to look at all internet communications - the tapping would be live, but they would actually look at material only after approval by a judge. Makes sense, since people won't post crap online.
* If you conduct all your telephone conversations and correspondence responsibly and legally, you have nothing to fear from people tapping/reading into it. With the right to mail letters or use a phone, comes responsibility, such as not mailing death threats or harassing people. If communication is open and freely looked at, people will behave more responsibly instead of conducting stupid gossip or slander.
I'm sure most of you have noticed that the internet is full of garbage. Quite a lot of that garbage wouldn't be there if it weren't for the anonymity that exists.
I'm sure most of you have noticed that magazines are full of garbage. Quite a lot of that wouldn't be there if only the good stuff were permitted to be published.
And so on, ad nauseum. I'm tired of the "If you have rights, you need to have responsibilities" argument when applied to speech/communication. No, if you have priviliges, you need to have responsibilities - such as driving a car.
Besides, if we didn't have the freedom to create the 99% trash that people publish/post/write, much of the world's great literature/music/art would not exist.
w/m
Different societies tolerate different levels of intrusion. This means not just privacy, but any kind of intrusion against the individual.
The problem is that it's not just a matter of corporation vs. individual. It's also the govt. vs individual. Individual privacy is against attack from all kinds of organized powerful entities, including BOTH the govt. and the corporation.
For instance, in Australia, mass DNA screening of an entire town was carried out to catch a criminal. This was viewed as generally acceptable (there is no bill of rights in australia). On the other hand, when Australian companies gather data, there is widespread media scrutiny and suspicion. In Australia, govt. regulation of public lives is considered acceptable (they have censors to control what people watch or read) but there's a very high level of caution regarding companies.
In the UK, there is generally a much higher rate of govt. intrusion in electronic communication, a level that would be unacceptable in the US. ISPs are also held responsible for content, even in newsgroups, after the Godfrey vs. Demon case. This means more monitoring of content, since the ISP is liable, and in general, a greater intrusion into individual communication.
In the US, govt. intrusion is generally viewed with great suspicion. The one exception is police attacks on certain sections of society (because the anti-crime sentiment is strong, so people are willing to tolerate the cops busting a few doors and shooting a few people if it's to reduce the crime rate). OTOH, corporate abuse of individual lives is considered acceptable, because people have been indoctrinated since birth that if companies do something, they should be allowed to do so since the market will regulate itself. In days past, this meant that US companies could use DDT (now banned), operate nuclear power plants more freely (now regulated), use asbestos (now banned), or sell banned chemicals like DDT to third world countries (still allowed - it's good for exports).
Generally, these things all depend on how much a society permits its individuals to be powerless against the govt. or companies. In the US, it's a difficult proposition, since companies have bought out both major candidates. But there's still a high rate of suspicion of intervention in individual privacy, which results in some degree of regulation. Contrary to what people think, even though corporations influence politicians, the vote still counts (because that's how the prez gets elected, go figure), so they still pay a lot of attention to what the public considers acceptable.
What the public considers acceptable is just a matter of indoctrination, culture, and trends. Guns are acceptable and a hot topic in the US, not even an issue in most of Europe or Australia. Police abuse is common in the US while technically illegal, whereas in EU/aust/NZ, the cops have more powers but the level of abuse is less (except against native tribes).
Communication, well...it's a whole new game, and the rules are being written. Who knows what will happen?
w/m
I used to read Wired magazine some years ago, and I used to take it seriously. After some time, I began to notice a trend in its articles.
There's this clique of "digerati" who keep popping up on its pages and in similar forums/magazines/books, explaining the future in all its robotic nanotech cybernetic glory. The same names keep appearing over and over, repeating visions of a future so vague and full of popcorn sci-fi visions that you can't quite pin down anything specific, but can debate about it for weeks.
You may have seen these names before, waving hands and talking about the amazing future - Nicholas Negroponte, Marc Andreesen (even makes the cover of wired recently, all for having co-written mosaic w/ eric bina), Lanier, Kurzweil, Ted Nelson, Gelertner, etc. Most or all of these have been "has beens", who never quite produce anything useful, except visions of the future that are lapped up by journalists and viewed as the gospel.
Sure, it was interesting to read about futuristic visions of tomorrow, but after 5 years of this crap, and hardly any progress in bandwidth, usability, AI, speech rec, home automation, etc., I have had enough of reading about this thing. Anybody can write vague gee whiz stuff, full of buzzwords that nobody quite agrees upon.
Trust me, after you're read this sort of stuff for a while, it begins to enter the territory of the social sciences - it's always full of controversy, you can never prove anything wrong with it, but its proponents can always make their point with something so vague that it sounds profound.
Give it a rest. It's not even as entertaining as campy 70s futurism.
w/m
PS - Funny how REAL contributors to technology of the future never write articles like this, maybe because they have something at stake? For instance, you don't see crap like this from Drexler, peter shor, or seth lloyd.
And for all the people falling over themselves trying to write serious posts. If you think you're l33t at using buzzwords, try Alan Sokal
is the fact that so many on /. are such l33t hax0rs and have an intimate knowledge of AOL instant messenger, that they know of multiple ways to hack it.
w/m
Mainstream tech. coverage has been consistently lame, and I've felt that newsweek has an advantage over time with Levy on its side.
:)
One thing I've found quite different about Time vs. Newsweek is the technology coverage. Newsweek tends to have a pretty realistic grasp on things, even if I don't agree with some of the focus. Time, on the other hand, is remarkably lame on computer/software coverage for a magazine of its stature. For instance, in the early 90s, they had a cover story about the Internet being 85% full of porn, or something like that, which was repudiated by another study and caused major embarrassment. Time Digital lists the "Cyber Elite" (that title should tell you something); in recent years, it included John Romero TWICE in a row, AND Lara Croft thrown in among famous net names. I guess it was supposed to make it look hip and trendy, and this is the kind of stuff people sipping mochas at starbucks buy into.
This is somewhat understandable - editors are generally older generation people who are carried away by the gee whiz aura and have difficulty figuring out lame fads from real trends. Somewhat like managers who can't figure out the real tech-heads from the fast talkers. But this has a major impact on tech coverage in mainstream newspapers and magazines. In fact, I generally find most of them not worth even reading on this subject except for NY Times (which has markoff) and newsweek.
I wish media would hire more people who know this stuff, rather than devote pages to crap about hackers breaking into banks, viruses and futuristic nonsense. At least people who know the meaning of the word "hackers".
w/m
On the very next line, I said the same thing - if you change your employer, you need to get a new work permit.
What I meant by not working for one employer was that if you're on an H1B, you don't have to "work for that employer forever until they send you back", which is the impression many people have.
Yes, an H1B is employer specific, but you can change it if you want to work for a new employer. In reality, the best way to do this is to start the new one without telling your current employer, since it takes so long and the new job may be gone by the time you get the papers.
Finding two employers willing to do an H1B was easier when it took only 2 weeks. The time factor is the major thing in all of this.
There's also a difference between a visa and a work permit. A visa is only for entry into a country. Once you enter, so long as you keep your work permit valid, you are legally entitled to stay and work even if the visa expires. It just means you can't exit and re-enter on that visa.
What a nightmare this whole thing is.
Yeah, but you try to discard the bad stuff and keep the good stuff.
If you make a religion/language/race "official", then it has the practical effect of making the minorities disadvantaged and likely to be oppressed in some way. While the founders of the US made many mistakes like slavery, some of their ideas were pretty good - such as the separation of church and state. Basically - the govt. should not establish a particular religion.
I used to think making English the official language would be a good thing, since it promotes a standard and makes things easier, but on further thought, look at it this way. If you don't speak english, not only are you at a disadvantage, but you and your kids will be stigmatized in society because they don't follow the "official" govt. sanctioned cultural medium.
The likely abuse of a language standard is similar to that of a religious standard - if you're not one of us, you are not good for our society.
I also think not having an official language is cool from an abstract point of view - you're mature enough as a society to believe in an abstract principle and letting culture flourish without imposing a standard, instead of imposing a standard cultural tool. After all, most of the languages we speak today are the result of a lot of linguistic exchange, and all languages are richer for it.
w/m
After a few hundred articles on linux vs. windows, both sides were so tired they were practically falling asleep on each other's shoulders. A lively new theme is needed to get people foaming at the mouth. This has manifested itself in the form of the H1B visa story, which gets repeated a few times a month.
/. means two things - lots of posts, lots of points. Follow these simple steps to get yours.
It brings out emotions. Strong emotions. People get as ready for a punch-up as a drunken Pat Buchanan facing an illegal Mexican immigrant auto-plant worker flung in front of him after a day of polling results.
Strong emotions on
1) Mention "slave labor". This is a no-brainer. But you gotta be early, coz it gets repeated to death. The law of diminishing returns applies to the use of the term "slave labor(1)" as much as it does to SMP scaling. If you're REALLY early, use it in your title, and watch the karma $$$ roll in.
2) Use these phrases - "retrain", "older workers", "cheap" used in a combination with "import", "third world", "India", "China", "sweatshop", "indentured". DO NOT just type them randomly - moderaters aren't that dumb. Use them in full sentences, the effort is worth it.
3) Two words - corporate greed. To moderaters, it's like honey to hungry bears. Rant about evil companies. For a nice touch, throw in a few references to MS (don't use the $, they'll think you're so passe), Sun, Oracle, Intel, etc.
4) Personal experience - Mention personally knowing someone on an H1B living in a basement with rats and subsisting on bread and water. With 20 other H1B immigrants.
5) "There is no shortage of tech workers." Yeah, you can just cut 'n paste that. It's like pushing buttons. Easy as pie.
6) History - Make some mention about the founding fathers, or how cheap immigrants flooding in is contrary to all that America is about.
7) Facts - You don't have to know anything about immigration law to talk about it. In fact, most immigration lawyers don't. Guess what, their clients never complain if they lose. Make up statistics as you go along, use terms like "half", "a quarter of", "4", "3", well, just type in some numbers in a plausible looking sentence about H1B workers.
8) The old days - Say something about the old days, when it wasn't like this, and people had enough skills to hook up a telegraph pad to an old mainframe and make it play Quake on punch cards, and how all these new cheap school kids and foreigners just have it so easy, and are destroying everything. This stuff works, trust me.
9) Linux/Linus/GNU - Try bringing up this stuff somehow. It helps that Torvalds is a foreign worker, but DO NOT use the above strategies if you try this approach....
10) Opposing views - This is a risky approach. You can defend foreign workers, but keep in mind that it's like defending Windows on slashdot - the odds are against you. If you choose this path, be sure to say that you have been trying to hire qualified people and can't find them, or make a convincing argument about the structural flaws of the INS, or describe the complex nuances of the cross-continental exchange of skills in a globalised economy against a backdrop of xenophobia, labor laws, and antiquated immigration policies. Bonus points if you do this as an AC and win.
w/m
(1) If you are weaned on British English, remember not to spell it 'labour', which will make you stand out as an immigrant worker yourself, casting doubt on your integrity and raising accusations of trolling.
To prove their point, one of them would periodically ask the lab TA if the lights were on. The TA would usually respond with a different answer
:)
/. crowd revels in amusement from clever remarks about the Hitchhiker's guide and the babelfish. Very wise and understanding about the tapestry of human culture and thought - all that makes us what we are, and how we live together. But when it comes to the real world, and people traveling and working in different countries and speaking with a different accent, there is so much veiled hostility and underlying scorn towards "them".
This doesn't prove anything. Maybe this happened because *their* communication skills were just as bad.
It is largely a matter of accent. Once an American complained to me about the English not being able to speak properly. The irony of this was a bit too much for me. I've also had Asians complain about Americans not being able to spell or master rudimentary English.
Once I saw an American tourist ask an Australian at an airport to repeat himself because she couldn't understand him. Naturally, you'd think - thick Aussie accent. Imagine if you'd seen her do the same to a Chinese person - would your opinion of his communication skills differ a lot from that of the Australian? Think about it...
There's no reason why an American or European accent is the "correct" or default way to pronounce English.
I find it strange how the
w/m
Before everyone spouts their opinion, here are some background facts which may help you understand this better.
/. posts).
First, green cards. These are a Kafkaesque nightmare.
* An employer can sponsor a green card (permanent residency) which takes about 3-6 years. An employee may quit, but this stops his green card processing and he has to start from scratch at the next company. (In case you're wondering, most employers are eager to sponsor. Guess why...)
* If the H1B expires at the end of 6 years, the green card process can be continued overseas (Consular Processing). OTOH, if the process is at the final stage, the employee may file for an "Adjustment of Status" (AoS) and continue to work in the US (for the same employer) until he/she obtains the green card - generally 3 more years.
During this time, US law prohibits the person from leaving & re-entering the country unless he obtains INS permission after stating the cause, even for short trips. (Land of liberty!) They are literally treated as prisoners in some sense - the word the INS uses to describe a software engineer allowed to go visit his home country is advanced parole (this is a DOJ site) Violating this is extremely serious.
Some people forget this rule and visit canada for a holiday, which pretty much fucks up their weekend and much of their life.
* Green card processing time varies dramatically from state to state, sometimes by years. So a PhD in California might take longer to get it than an agricultural worker in Washington. In short, if you are planning to get one, spend some heavy research poring over tables of figures on avg. timelines.
H1Bs
-----
* H1B is a non-immigrant visa, so those who hold it are "non-immigrants" (if you can imagine that); green card folks are "applicants for immigrant status".
* An H1B takes about 3 months to obtain. You are not obliged to work for one employer, and can change.
* An employer can't "send them back". This is a HUGE misconception. Even if the company fires someone, he is legally present with a valid work permit, which normally doesn't expire until a yr or two. So long as the programmer has another company apply for a new work permit, he can continue to stay in the US (but cannot work until he gets the new visa.)
* You can start > 1 H1B visa applications. For instance, a programmer agrees to join companies X and Y, both of which apply for visas. X gets it first, and the programmers says bye to Y. This happens sometimes (see above scenario) - I know more than one person who's done it, it's a tough world - and companies can't do anything about it (can't have much sympathy for them, really).
* Big slashdot error - H1B people are NOT being deported. The article does not mention it. Deportation is a legal action taken by the INS against unlawful aliens, which is fought out in the courts. In this case, what they are describing is a case of programmers voluntarily leaving BEFORE their visa expires.
* H1B law allows an unlimited number of employers, but a max cap of 6 yrs in the US. After 6 years, the person must spend 1 yr outside the US, at which time the counter is ROLLED BACK. He can then come to the US for another 6 yrs.
* Inspite of the mass hysteria, employers can't pay anything they want - they have to legally state how much they pay and this has to be approved by the DoL (dept. of labor) BEFORE they grant it.
* H1B folks can apply for a green card at any time during their employment. From the frying pan into the fire.
* They can also apply for Canadian permanent residency while in the US. This takes about 6 months and you need not have to be in Canada for even a day. They have enough trouble keeping their own people.
* H1B law is equally ruthless to all nationalities - it takes several weeks for everyone. Equal opportunity rocks.
* One consequence of a 3 month processing time for H1B is that companies are unwilling to hire people to start so far into the future, instead of a 15 day period.
* When H1Bs took 15 days to process (they used to some yrs ago) there was little disparity between conditions for citizens and visa workers, since people had to give a 2 week notice anyway, during which the visa was processed. This whole fuckup began due to overloading of under-budgeted INS offices.
In short, immigrant programmers face enormous hurdles - inspite of having legal status, they are trapped between the govt., corporations, and a xenophobic population (read some
I've noticed a regrettable trend. Many Americans tend to take out their anger against immigration policy on their H1B co-workers or anyone who looks like one (visa status isn't exactly stamped on people's foreheads), which creates an unpleasant, racially hostile situation in many offices. Oddly enough, they tend to discard this attitude when they themselves have to go thru a bureaucratic nightmare to work in Europe or australia or Asia.
Party on.
w/m
Wow, what an exciting moment. A govt. committee is thinking that...."An analysis of Open Source licensing agreements is needed, with an ultimate goal of agreeing upon a single common licensing agreement for Open Source software development.
So, there are some promising things that may come out of the report."
This is fantastic news! All of this, from a committee that is......"Defining a policy framework for accomplishing these goals". A govt. committee that is analysing and in the very process of defining a policy. Why, everyone in a US govt. agency must be paying attention to this committee!
This is terribly exciting, and we must all pop out the champagne.
Whew, now that I'm calmer, I'm wondering if there are thousands of these committees formulating policy decisions.
As for the govt. "investing heavily in open source", I think that's how TCP/IP came about, along with practically everything that constitutes the Internet infrastructure, though they didn't have the GNU/free/open-source labels flying around. After all, the US govt. doesn't invest in proprietary MS or Sun research projects.
w/m
Imagine walking on the street with this, we would be able to see where we're going in the
real world just like in Quake!
There's an even better way - take off that fancy equipment and just use your eyes. The resolution is much better, and miraculously, it's in sync with your other senses.
It's an incredible i/o engine. Works every time for me. Changing the fov is a bitch though - you have to get pretty drunk to do that, or use your "configuration" method of choice. YMMV.
w/m
The day is not far when somebody will try to OC. In view of this fact, I think it's important to warn people of various hazards.
* Overclocking bikes is different from OC'ing PCs. A crash is slightly more likely to be non-recoverable.
* Immersing bikes in liquid nitrogen tanks while dressed in scuba gear and driving by chicks to impress them with your leading edge status in the OC community is a Bad Idea.
What other possibilities exist? Add to the list.
w/m
Jared Diamond's book - Guns, Germs, and Steel - analyzes how technology developed and why the globe is the way it is today. His theory is that when a new technology is invented in an isolated society, it progresses slowly or is lost due to the small number of people using it. In contrast, when a highly interactive society develops technology, it gets passed on to other societies, gets modified and blended with other technologies and rapidly improves.
Around 1000-1400 AD, china was the world's superpower - they had everything, massive ships, gunpowder, paper, etc. But they locked up their society and refused to let any foreigners in or explore other worlds. Many historians speculate that this is why China lost its edge, as the rest of the world rapidly interacted and exchanged technology (Arab and Hindu math, Greek geometry, Roman military and legal systems.) One might say that the US is at the center of a vibrant exchange - no other country accepts so many immigrants with so many ideas and philosophies. Just note how many recent Nobel winners are foreign born US citizens.
In other words, a society that confidently relies on its own greatness and closes its doors loses its edge. This is probably why "Fortress Europe", with so many restrictions on the movement of foreign employees and companies, does not attract the kind of talent the US does.
w/m
My ignorance here is the result of working at a major university for three years.
It shows - you can barely spell. Pity you didn't complete your education.
It's funny how many of the bigoted comments are coming from functionally illiterate people who are trying to keep the foreigners out. Somewhat proves a point about the shortage. Ironic, isn't it?
w/m
How do they name particles? The boson is named after Bose (the physicist, not the audio system). So how is a Higgs particle different from a normal boson, and how are particle names decided?
:)
A physicist told me that Bose deserved the Nobel, but didn't win due to politics. (In any case, it's probaly cooler to have a subatomic particle named after yourself rather than win the Nobel.)
On another note, from the article:
"Such a Higgs signature may have been seen in several unusual events observed recently at Lep. "
Yeah, such as a cut in funding.
w/m
You're right -- people are way too smart to get taken in by that kind of thing. I mean, it's not like some 23 year-old could release fake stock market news that would cause the stock of some electronics company to plummet
As you eloquently pointed out, the masses are confused by some young guy posting a stock market rumor. And they are confused by fake sites pretending to be something else. What would your solution be? can you really think of any fix to this, other than letting the thing settle down and everyone chill out and understand how the net works?
Whenever something new happens on the net, there is always mass panic and hysteria, but eventually people settle down. The way to deal with issues of confusion is not to PREVENT abuses from happening, or put in "safeguards" to avoid the dumb masses from getting confused.
Things that need regulation need to have a high threshold to satisfy a need to slow down the anarchy and vibrancy of the net. Stuff like market rumors or fake sites or accented characters...geez, let millions of people panic and get confused and learn in the process. They will get over it and figure it out. There's no way to hold everyone's hand and regulate panic and confusion.
I also think there's a misunderstanding about accented chars. people who type something know what they want. For instance, someone who didn't know English at all might wonder if people get confused by some fake site registering yah00.com or m1cros0ft.com - they all look the same to him.
The o and the o with 2 dots above it may seem the same to us, but it's about as different to a Norwegian as a zero is to an 'o'. So don't worry, "they" won't get confused by similar looking domains. Even if they do, they'll get over it.
w/m
Slashdot has had to ban accented characters to prevent this kind of abuse; ICANN should do the same lest they a similar outbreak of mimicry infect the entire Web.
History of the "Something must be done to control the outbreak" syndrome.
Early 1990s: OMG! People are making up their own web sites in large numbers. Thousands of people will see them and be unable to distinguish fact from fiction.
Mid 1990s: OMG! People are now making up their own news sites. Millions of people are reading them and can't tell the difference between real and fake news.
Late 1990s: OMG! People are posting stock market tips which are causing market fluctuations. People will be unable to tell the difference between real and fake stock market news!
Early 2000s: OMG! People are allowed to use accented chars. Millions of people will be diverted to fake sites which use similar accented chars in their domain name, and thus be unable to tell the difference between real and fake sites!
Here, take a chill pill. Welcome to the internet, my friend.
w/m
There's a good chance we wouldn't be using laptops so far in the future. Just imagine someone in the previous century making predictions - "People will have telegraphy poles in their homes using advanced electrical technologies, and these poles will be so light, that anybody can lift them easiy, for they will be made of miraculous substances like plastics!"
Same thing - laptops may be the gee-whiz gadgets of today, just like room size computers were in the 50s. And they are as likely to be relevant in a future using quantum technology.
I don't see why the article focused on laptops, instead of just general quantum computing. No sense of perspective. Put this in the same category as those futuristic articles some decades ago about disposable paper clothes and waterproof furniture.
w/m
The Internet Archive has been doing this for several years now. There was a scientific amer. article on this.
This is a very good idea, but frankly, I've found the Useless pages to be the best chronicle of the web. Everything, from the ate my balls pages, to the first spam sites, to the first annoying business pages, are listed in their raw earnest early form.
As for the aussie site, it suffers from the same disease as any govt. funded site - official seriousness. The most interesting and popular stuff on the net is not the crap put on the web by govt. commissions, but the output of real people. But this is all explained right on Pandora's site:
"At the beginning of 1996, before the PANDORA Project was formally set up, the Selection Committee on Online Australian Publications (SCOAP) developed selection guidelines"
The incredibly long and boring selection guidelines reveal that the SCOAP is out of touch with what the net's all about.
"4.1.1 To be selected for national preservation, a significant proportion of a work should
be written by an Australian(11) of recognised authority and constitute a contribution to international knowledge"
Yeah, that takes a realistic snapshot of what the web is like.
That says a lot - 4 yrs of committee work, and not much to show for it. Just goes to prove the govt. should stay out of anything to do with the net, including archiving it for historic reasons.
w/m
A challenge isn't a bad thing - any sort of major change is a challenge to companies.
For most of them, dealing with open source is a big challenge. On one hand, it's cutting into their sales. On the other hand, they are wary of releasing their 'crown jewels' because there are few recorded cases of companies which have released previously-closed software and made a profit from it. (Red Hat, etc., don't count since they are mostly packaging already available software, as contrasted w/ MS, Oracle, etc., which make tons of money from their privately developed closed product.)
While talking about open-sourcing software generates good publicity and lots of feel-good support, it must be kept in mind that the main goal of companies is to make money, and based on the past few quarters, none of the major players is losing their shirt from doing business as it is. But then, OSS is definitely cutting into sales. From that perspective, the whole open source movement is a big challenge to companies, in the sense of figuring out a way to continue to make money and also ride the popularity of the OSS wave (they are not interested in ideology).
I remember an old interview w/ Jim Gray in a database magazine (I think D. Programming & Design), in which he describes his reason for joining MS - along the lines of, if you can't beat them, join them, or something similar. In any case, there's nothing inherently evil about joining MS - if he had joined a competitor, it would have been equally closed source. Almost every company was in the 80s.
w/m
does it bother anyone else that they're bringing back the wooly mammoth
Doesn't bother me.
w/m
Hmm...and it worked.
w/m