Let's see.. the RIAA has said it lost $300 million dollars a year to piracy. In 2000 they shipped 942 million CDs.
Now that they've eliminated all music piracy through their innovative copy protection techniques, we should all enjoy the price drop: $300,000,000 / 942,000,000 = $0.32 per CD. Since they are no longer losing all that money to piracy, we can look forward to paying 32 cents less for each CD! They are basically a trustworthy group, so I'm sure they'll pass the savings along to consumers.
Don't forget that they may be spending, say, $1 per CD to implement their new protection... but being trustworthy and fair, I'm sure they'll only raise prices by $1.00 - $0.32 = $0.68!
When I got to the part that mentioned it, I couldn't help picturing the Microsoft "Escalation Team" as a SWAT-like commando unit wielding AK-47s. Course, maybe it is...
Re:Begging Questions and Urban Planning
on
This is IT?
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I know I can stand riding around on something for 5 minutes in freezing weather. Just early this week I was walking for 15 minutes in 40 degree weather with a 20 mph wind!
Glad to know you guys can tough it out down there in Austin. Up here in New Hampshire, if the weather gets that good around now the joggers dig out their shorts.:-)
Seriously, though, if this device has some kind of traction for slippery conditions and the ability to function in low temperatures there's no reason people couldn't use it -- just like they use snowmobiles, skis, etc.
I just noticed that CNN has the headline "Delay Denied" for this article on Xbox manufacturing delays in the SCI-TECH section, in addition to the current main headline "Court Denies Microsoft Delay" on the front page.
Now if they wanted, they could use one headline for both articles -- think of the savings in, um... well... headlines.
After all, couldnt somone else
come up with a similar function, but using a different method? THAT is innovation, and that is the kind of innovation that traditional patenting
fosters
I'd like to think you're right, but I'm afraid you're not.
Many years ago I talked to a visiting senior IBM researcher about patents, and he (rather proudly) gave some advice on them. "Many people fall into the trap of patenting the thing they invented," he said. "They think that what took all the work and what was new should be patented. No. You should patent the basic, fundamental thing that everyone must do to do any solution to your problem. Then there's no way around it."
Talking about "structures" is all well and good, but as the article points out it's harder and it doesn't cover the individual cases. What I think we need in the IP debate is the "rights model" that supports the kind of "structure model" the editorial espouses.
The way I'm thinking about this, it seems that one can map a "structure model" (i.e., a set of assumptions, decision about who benefits, etc.) onto multiple "rights models" that (attempt to) support it. The extreme ones mentioned in the introduction are something like
"Information wants to be free" structure model: one possible rights model is "no IP rules at all", others are possible
"Traditional rights" structure model: supporting rights models include UCITA, DMCA
It's a good step to outline what structure we'd like to see for IP, but such a structure must be translated into rights before it can implemented -- or even defended adequately, IMO. It's easy to say that we'd like to support third world development, the rights of the disenfranched, etc., but we may be more critical of specific rights proposals intended to support those things because they may be more sweeping, more specific, more unverifiable, etc. than we like.
I like this guy's main points, though, which I think are that we should be suspicious of the "traditional IP model" megacorps are promoting, and that an IP-free model should not be our only alternative.
While the article title and the intro at the top both use the word "random", it becomes clear after the dateline that what they should be using is "normal". The question is whether the digits of pi, and also other similar natural constants, have a normal distribution of digits (in base 10 or any other base).
As plenty of other people are pointing out, the use of "random" suggests that the digits shouldn't be fixed, which is a bit of a problematic concept when you're talking about a constant...;-)
The minimum connection speed is a blistering 155 megabits per second-a hundred times faster than a typical university lab connection and almost 3,000 times faster than a dial-up modem.
Wow, maybe some of those universities need to upgrade their LocalTalk, or whatever they wired their labs with... I hear there's a new 10 megabits per second standard called "Ethernet" that's coming out of DEC really soon now.
As the article notes, the big media companies have included clauses that DO explicitly give them rights to electronic vesions for the past decade or so. So this is (mostly) going to apply only to 10+ year old articles or other works that were later put in electronic archives.
Unfortunately, the Turing test is no indicator of strong AI at all, just a very good rules system. Searle proved years ago that no rules-based system
(ie. a Turing machine) can ever be truly intelligent, no matter how much so it seems.
Not everyone believes Searle really "proved" his case with the Chinese Box argument. I haven't read this particular treatment of it, but just the fact that a Ph.D. in philosophy was granted for it would seem to suggest that it's not such an open-and-shut case, huh?
It wouldn't be the first time that something someone "proved" didn't hold up when you look at it a different way. To say that "something can't be truly intelligent no matter how much so it seems" seems to rule out even giving the issue the serious thought it deserves.
Back in the 19th century, mathematics was considered the "handmaiden of the sciences". This was before "pure" math could really be used for anything useful (like crypto today), so for math to be useful it had to be in the service of some other discipline.
It seems like a lot of the research in CS is geared toward solving other peoples' (that is, fields') problems, and that CS is in the same sort of role. Of course there's "purely" CS research in areas like networking and theory, but a huge amount of work is figuring out how to work with bigger data sets or new data types, how to do compute tasks faster or more efficiently, how to secure or share resources, etc. To demonstrate that these things are being done well, and that the attempts are worthwhile, of course they have to be done with some kind of problem or data that matters to someone.
I'm not sure whether it's good or bad to be the handmaiden (and yes, it's definitely a sweeping generalization to classify a whole field that way, of course).
Slashdot Mirror
Now I guess I've got to decide whether Slashdot is "useful" or "fun"...
Let's see.. the RIAA has said it lost $300 million dollars a year to piracy. In 2000 they shipped 942 million CDs.
Now that they've eliminated all music piracy through their innovative copy protection techniques, we should all enjoy the price drop: $300,000,000 / 942,000,000 = $0.32 per CD. Since they are no longer losing all that money to piracy, we can look forward to paying 32 cents less for each CD! They are basically a trustworthy group, so I'm sure they'll pass the savings along to consumers.
Don't forget that they may be spending, say, $1 per CD to implement their new protection... but being trustworthy and fair, I'm sure they'll only raise prices by $1.00 - $0.32 = $0.68!
When I got to the part that mentioned it, I couldn't help picturing the Microsoft "Escalation Team" as a SWAT-like commando unit wielding AK-47s. Course, maybe it is...
I know I can stand riding around on something for 5 minutes in freezing weather. Just early this week I was walking for 15 minutes in 40 degree weather with a 20 mph wind!
:-)
Glad to know you guys can tough it out down there in Austin. Up here in New Hampshire, if the weather gets that good around now the joggers dig out their shorts.
Seriously, though, if this device has some kind of traction for slippery conditions and the ability to function in low temperatures there's no reason people couldn't use it -- just like they use snowmobiles, skis, etc.
I just noticed that CNN has the headline "Delay Denied" for this article on Xbox manufacturing delays in the SCI-TECH section, in addition to the current main headline "Court Denies Microsoft Delay" on the front page.
Now if they wanted, they could use one headline for both articles -- think of the savings in, um... well... headlines.
CNN has a PDF of the court decision here
After all, couldnt somone else come up with a similar function, but using a different method? THAT is innovation, and that is the kind of innovation that traditional patenting fosters
I'd like to think you're right, but I'm afraid you're not.
Many years ago I talked to a visiting senior IBM researcher about patents, and he (rather proudly) gave some advice on them. "Many people fall into the trap of patenting the thing they invented," he said. "They think that what took all the work and what was new should be patented. No. You should patent the basic, fundamental thing that everyone must do to do any solution to your problem. Then there's no way around it."
It disheartened me then, and it still does now.
Jamie
Talking about "structures" is all well and good, but as the article points out it's harder and it doesn't cover the individual cases. What I think we need in the IP debate is the "rights model" that supports the kind of "structure model" the editorial espouses.
The way I'm thinking about this, it seems that one can map a "structure model" (i.e., a set of assumptions, decision about who benefits, etc.) onto multiple "rights models" that (attempt to) support it. The extreme ones mentioned in the introduction are something like
It's a good step to outline what structure we'd like to see for IP, but such a structure must be translated into rights before it can implemented -- or even defended adequately, IMO. It's easy to say that we'd like to support third world development, the rights of the disenfranched, etc., but we may be more critical of specific rights proposals intended to support those things because they may be more sweeping, more specific, more unverifiable, etc. than we like.
I like this guy's main points, though, which I think are that we should be suspicious of the "traditional IP model" megacorps are promoting, and that an IP-free model should not be our only alternative.
My $.02
Jamie
While the article title and the intro at the top both use the word "random", it becomes clear after the dateline that what they should be using is "normal". The question is whether the digits of pi, and also other similar natural constants, have a normal distribution of digits (in base 10 or any other base).
As plenty of other people are pointing out, the use of "random" suggests that the digits shouldn't be fixed, which is a bit of a problematic concept when you're talking about a constant... ;-)
The minimum connection speed is a blistering 155 megabits per second-a hundred times faster than a typical university lab connection and almost 3,000 times faster than a dial-up modem.
Wow, maybe some of those universities need to upgrade their LocalTalk, or whatever they wired their labs with... I hear there's a new 10 megabits per second standard called "Ethernet" that's coming out of DEC really soon now.
As the article notes, the big media companies have included clauses that DO explicitly give them rights to electronic vesions for the past decade or so. So this is (mostly) going to apply only to 10+ year old articles or other works that were later put in electronic archives.
Unfortunately, the Turing test is no indicator of strong AI at all, just a very good rules system. Searle proved years ago that no rules-based system (ie. a Turing machine) can ever be truly intelligent, no matter how much so it seems.
Not everyone believes Searle really "proved" his case with the Chinese Box argument. I haven't read this particular treatment of it, but just the fact that a Ph.D. in philosophy was granted for it would seem to suggest that it's not such an open-and-shut case, huh?
It wouldn't be the first time that something someone "proved" didn't hold up when you look at it a different way. To say that "something can't be truly intelligent no matter how much so it seems" seems to rule out even giving the issue the serious thought it deserves.
Jamie
Back in the 19th century, mathematics was considered the "handmaiden of the sciences". This was before "pure" math could really be used for anything useful (like crypto today), so for math to be useful it had to be in the service of some other discipline.
It seems like a lot of the research in CS is geared toward solving other peoples' (that is, fields') problems, and that CS is in the same sort of role. Of course there's "purely" CS research in areas like networking and theory, but a huge amount of work is figuring out how to work with bigger data sets or new data types, how to do compute tasks faster or more efficiently, how to secure or share resources, etc. To demonstrate that these things are being done well, and that the attempts are worthwhile, of course they have to be done with some kind of problem or data that matters to someone.
I'm not sure whether it's good or bad to be the handmaiden (and yes, it's definitely a sweeping generalization to classify a whole field that way, of course).
Jamie