In terms of physics and thermodynamics, information by it's existence violates the 2nd law. Well, if it existed in some sort of natural form. It actually takes more energy to create information than for information to dissipate and disappear.
Using your example, information *is* all the Nitrogen molecules being gathered in a corner of the room. It takes work and effort to collect all the N2 gas into a location, much like it takes work and effort to collect information into some useable form. If it takes effort to maintain N2 gas into an ordered state, it likewise takes effort to keep information in a useful form.
It may be argued that with the 'new' infrastructure that the energy of ordering is low enough to be 'almost' free, but it can never truly be free. Networks, sharing, storing, disseminating, does not come to zero cost. The best one can reach is *self* sustaining and self propogating, in which each individual assumes the cost unto Erself to maintain the information.
IE, people who want to run their own websites, scratch their own itches, etc, in the name of self interest. For them the cost is less than the value of the information...
So I disagree that information wants to be free; Information is a state of the universe that happens to be particularly strange; it's a very low cost replication, high cost production item, like CDs or money; once the design, presses, layout, groundwork has been set, the cost of making another is *extremely* low, where the cost of making 1 is extremely high. In a way, if you make the association of information==money, then the statement that information wants to be free translates correctly; it's something that wants *rapid* dissemination and sharing, in order to achieve something like a velocity effect, in which the more information moves around, the more effect it has in society.
Short version:
Information does not follow 2nd law of thermodynamics any differently than anything else. 2nd law does not justify it being 'free' in beer or 'free' in mobility.
A better analogy is that information has intrinsic value due to existence; the lack of information is nothingness. This value can be equated to money, and treated as such, perhaps
I don't know if I can full-heartedly agree with your assessment, especially with your recommendations.
A business is not doing anyone a favor if it does not maximize it's profits. It cannot continue to offer you a service, it cannot continue to survive and feed/pay itself, it cannot gain prestive, position, rank, or brand, if it cannot stay in business.
What is *wrong* with different prices for different buyers? I'm not saying more or less, but under what premise is equality of prices a guarantee? If you don't want to pay *more*, then go buy somewhere else. If you don't want to pay *less*, then there must be something wrong with you, I think.
As per the price fluctiations, there are several 'arguments' for. There is no real value assigned to, say, a book. It's value is only whatever a person is willing to pay for it. If that's 25, 26, 28, or 30, that's the 'price'. If you find it for 30, but want to pay 25, then you aren't going to buy it, and they won't sell it. If, however, they will sell it for 25, but you're willing to pay 30, they would be *stupid* for charging less.
Amazon, with this practice, can maximize profits. That's not wrong.
Another issue I can think of is the 'perishability' of their goods. Anything that sits in their warehouse over a certain amount of time is, essentially, a loss. Books that get printed every quarter, year, or even week; the circulation of books, like the circulation of money, is how they make a profit. If they sell 2000 books a month, and get 2000 books in every month, they have 0 inventory, and profit on 2000 books. If they sell 200 books a month, and get 200 books a month, they still have 0 inventory, but only profit on 200 books. It's to their advantage to maintain 0 inventory, before the next shipment comes in, and if that means lowering prices, well, then, it's certainly in their advantage.
As to raising prices, one can *always* go somewhere else. But the assumption is that you're paying money to Amazon to keep them alive. Brand loyalty means you like them, for whatever reason, and if you want them to suceed, you buy from them over, say B&N. If you have no loyalty, then it doesn't matter anyway. Which means you pay a brand tax; and, if they are smart, they use that profit to do something good, to ensure current and new buyers *prefer* Amazon over B&N. If they do something stupid or pointless, or irritating, customers can always leave.
If it's important to you, if it's necessary to you, get the resources necessary to fix it. Self interest, itches, et al.
If you *absolutely* do not have the talent to fix it, do not have the resources, capability, or whatever, to fix the problem, and it needs to be fixed...
Submit and document the bug to unsavory webzine and list it under an article as a 'flaw' in Linux that makes it undeserving of the desktop/workstation/server market.
Or, write a program/virus/trojan to take advantage of the flaw ^^
I hope it's obvious that these were mainly joke replys!
Let this happen. Let the MPAA have its way, such that digital stuff can't record or timeshift or whatever.
We *want* consumers to see the effects the MPAA have on all of us. We want them to see the fact that TiVOs, HDTV, digital cable, etc, doesn't work. We want them to see that the MPAA is doing some stupid stuff. I think it would be reasonable to suffer this sort of inconvenience if it can topple the MPAA entirely. It's sort of an entrapment case, but in this situation, we let the MPAA set the trap and the bait itself, and we pull the trigger/noose later on it!
Let the MPAA take away *all* the rights consumers are used to. Don't let them record from DVDs->VCRs, don't let them copy CDs to mp3s, tapes, or other CDs, don't let them copy broadcast shows onto VCRs, TiVos, or mpgs, etc. See what happened when we let Circuit City debut DiVX? It *died*! Let the MPAA do what it wants, and let it collapse on itself!
Of course, if the people are all as stupid as *they* assume, they'll just win the battle...
If it *is* illegal, would you stop? Would you fight it? Would you ignore it? Would you change enough so it's only *technically* legal, but still violating the intent of proprietary uses?
I'm only an engineer, and can't speak for why upper management doesn't offer a Vectra bundled with Linux; we do support Linux on Vectra, through Linuxcare, but we do not ourselves sell desktop PCs with Linux. A thought on this is that Linux is not a desktop solution, yet, but works well for servers, workstations etc.
The whole point of my logic was that HP *should care* because we are using the products internally on Linux, and needs to support *itself*, and if it can't support itself, it won't progress. So if we're selling PCs with Linux support, even if we don't ourselves install or support Linux, and we're using our PCs with Linux, it stands to reason that other people are as well, and if only out of self interest by support our own needs, we'll also be meeting the needs and interests of others as well.
We don't use Epson printers because HP printers are better ^^
I hope I'm not saying anything out of hand here, but...
I'm in a 80 man shop. We use HPUX. We use HP printers. We use HP PCs and laptops running Windows NT and Linux. Linux accounts for about a third of our systems, for development use. It's really stupid that HP is not supporting Linux, officially, with this product, as we are as likely to use it internally as anyone else, externally, and we can't until it *officially* supports our needs, otherwise we can't get any help from the guys across the street.
We use print servers. We make print servers. We make printers. This is just something stupid that I hope gets resolved soon
That, my friend, is for the ingenuity and intelligence of future archeologists to discover how to deal with. Undoubtedly someone, somewhere, will have a CD inside a airtight seal, inside a storage case somewhere, trapped inside a forgotten building in the middle of the desert, and someone will find it in 20,000 years, and they will wonder; what is this?
We have to count on the intelligence of our descendents to decipher the 1/0 that make up our society today. It is with these 1/0s that we have our computers, our programs, our internet, and we cannot do them the disservice of removing that knowledge.
How would we today try to read a CD, then, if we found it? Let's assume we don't think it's a decoration or jewlery. Maybe they'll think they are some sort of currency, seeing as how many are printed, and how *everyone* has a collection of them. Not so far from the mark, actually...
Anyway, how would we unlock a CD, today? Visual analysis tells us that there are grooves, and that the grooves are close enough togeter to form spectral gratings. Which would require us to look closely at the groove structures to see why all CDs are not identical. The minute we look down we see pits of various sizes. Aha! At that point one can copy this directly into another medium.
Then the networks can get to work. Distributed.net volunteers time and cpucycles and such to try to 'crack' this stream of 1s and 0s. We can try various cyphers, we can try to apply linguistic theory, distribution codes, encryption codes, etc. Maybe it will take *years*, and millions upon millions of gigaflops of cycles to decode it.
Say 2 years later, we have distribution charts. We see that this disc used a primitive error correction code, and that there is some sort of syntax code that the linguists(by then a hard science) can tackle.
Maybe we'll have to look and compare to any media that have been saved from that time period. Say, a n inscription that happens to be upon the side of a building that has survived all this time. From that 50 word script we have a rough letter distribution. We try to match language to language. We try to match word to word. We try to match syntax with every known variation of language we have from that period; English, Dutch, Chinese, Japanese, Swahili, whatever.
It's not impossible, especially since we are designing it to be read; as opposed to designing it to be *sold* or *used*
The 50k part is not so hard to believe, being made of tempered glass and all, and after going through some simulations in a particle accelerator, we can more or less say that the storage medium is okay.
The reentry part is the same; design and such to survive, otherwise launching it is pointless. So that's still otherwise okay, even if it isn't 100%.
Reasons why people may notice it's reentry 50k years from now; Space Agencies track it, because we are tracking anything bigger than a baseball, it's possible that we will continue doing so in the future. Likewise, it's re-entry is targeted to look *really* impressive, so if people today go to hunt down meteorites and meteroides, perhaps people of the future will as well, if only children doing so out of curiosity.
If people of the future lack all exploration and curiosity, then no, they will just let it sit wherever it lands and then I can't care anyway, because the human race will have died.
How about what *we* have done, in reconstructing 2000 year old languages? Analyzing dead sea scrolls, heiroglyphs, steles and stones? Why would archeologists and scientists of the future be any less intrepid and saavy? After all, this is, as you admit, and experiment in hope and optimism.
It's happened before, when we reconstruct a dinosaur, analyze a 10,000 year old bee's DNA, or try to figure out how a 20,000 year old human walks. Are you denying that people will continue to do so, 50,000 years from now?
And I am discouraged that you think there are better things to do with our time and money than hope, dream, and experiment...
I wonder how/why they'd do that, anyway? Track radio transmissions? Electronic activity?
KEO is supposedly totally passive, with no electrical activity. If they aim to target and destroy it, that'd be sending up *a lot* of money and effort at destroying, essentially, a rock.
Okay, so I'm not trying to hurt your ego. You're very insightful comments have been pre-empted by the KEO people; they are using glass disc/masters that have been put through accelerators to simulate 50k years in space, and they're still readable. The craft has several layers of debris shielding as well titanium and tungstun and all that other neato stuff thanks to space programs the world over.
Oh, and this is an experiement in hope, trust, and optimism. They expect our space to stay clean and clear *because* they expect the US to want to continue sending satellites into space, and super powers who want to send space stations and spies into space, etc. Self interest, and all. If we pollute space to the point where KEO gets knocked out, so would just about anything else, like shuttles, rockets, stations, satellites, etc.
precision is something on the order of magnitude 50k, so that if they *tried* carbon dating, they'd find that it was at least 50k years old, without knowing how much older it was...
This is based on the half life of C14 being 5730 years, as explained by this Carbon Dating guide
The whole point of this endeavor is hope, trust, and optimism. That there will be an Earth and humans 50k years from now to see what we were. Sort of the same reasoning as saving your granddad's pocket watch for your grandkids; how do you know you'll have grandkids? How do you know that they'll be able to treasure and appreciate this piece of art?
Besides, if 300 years from now someone wants to *go* out into space, retrieve this satellite, bring it back, and open it up, *we* can't stop them. But we can hope they can appreciate our work and put it back, or put something else similar, for similar reasons.
But why did Apple need this about 4 years ago? Windows 95 was barely out 4 years ago, and Apple didn't have a unified or comprehensive hardware platform either, what with over 20 different models available for sale.
What they needed 4 years ago was Steve Jobs, or someone similar.
You don't have to move the mouse *all* over the screen; just towards the buttons. I'm hoping that as the mouse approaches the buttons that *all* of them would flicker into glyph mode, and not just the one you select. That way as you go towards the upper right hand corner, you can actually see what you're doing.
The better analogy is that the sign in the distance is dark green, and as you approach it you can see that there are directions on it (left, right, forward). It's a focus kind of activity, I would think. A horrible implementation, on Apple's part, would have us go down each direction *a little* bit to find out what is there... Though I can see that might actually happen in Aqua...
And the comment about the 'filled with worms and rotting from the inside out' is just uncalled for.
So they slipped; should they have shipped anyway, knowing they weren't finished? I dunno, I think it's 'morally' better to slip than to cheat someone with an inferior product.
Apple slips. Linux slips. Windows slips. What's the big deal? Life is not revolving around OS releases, are they?
I'd be interested in seeing more description of how this works...
AKA, in fingerprinting, you choose interesting features and landmarks because you can see the *entire* fingerprint at a time, and not by tracing the grooves; yet as far as I can see, because you're sampling across time/frequency, you're forced into something analgous to trying to find features by tracing the grooves in a fingerprint.
I can see where one would choose instrument switches, pauses in singing, rhythm changes, or something else that is suitably obvious. The only problem is how the system can identify these portions in song... I'd love to see the 'math' behind this, even if it takes a couple months of reading to actually understand it.
Of course, to cheat would create a fingerprint using some sort of GA, and select the genes that creates the most *useful* fingerprints, in terms of categorizing and identifying, and code those genes into a formal program...
Don't be so condemning or praising of the two companies. They *both* act out of necessity. AMD would love to be in Intel's position, with Intel's worries.
Both are market driven; Intel defines the market, and AMD has to become skilled at playing in that market. However, if Intel ever stops defining the market, AMD has the potential to catch up and define it for themselves. Once they define the market in such a way that they(AMD) get all the advantage, then AMD will also get all the money.
Still, I would think Intel is making enough money and has enough mindshare that it wouldn't do something so stupid as rush to market...
A fingerprint is a watermark, where a watermark is not a fingerprint:
If you removed a fingerprint from the work, you essentially destroy the work. At least, from your above statement, that digital watermarks are designed for difficulty of removal.
So you can use a finger print for just about all the purposes of a watermark, when you can't use a watermark for all the purposes of a fingerprint.
I wasn't sure that you clearly saw the distinction between the people and the logic they use. Most people aren't very good at separating what they think vs what they do. Your initial reaction was good, but your response *was* a bit harsh.
I'm enjoying this thread between you, Bongo, and everyone else though. I hope you aren't getting frustrated and all ^^
Actually, I'm not sure if the point was clearly expressed by Bongo.
If everyone is conformist, then the first threat to attack the conforming trait wipes out nearly everyone. It doesn't matter if it's genes, fads, appearance, behavior, etc. If *everyone* eats rice, a rice crop failure significantly affects *everyone*. Diversity is a benefit then in reducing risks (which is an old meme in the stocks/bonds game)
So people like redbird(even though I agree his *reasoning* is stupid) isn't all that useless. They may not be able to understand their choices, so they make dumb reasons without making dumb choices. Logic fails them (gosh, I sound patronizing. Gomen!) where intuition doesn't. Without redbird and crew, there would not be the small core of anti-fashionable people to take up the arms when the fashionable people all bite it. Say everyone uses NT, but redbird uses Linux cuz it's different. Ooh, outlook virus wipes out half the PCs in the world, but redbird gets to stay alive cuz he was different. Or somethine like that ^^
So blast him for his logic, I agree with that, but not for trying to be different. It's a survival technique that works, even if it isn't nearly as efficient as flocking/schooling/conforming.
Slashdot Mirror
In terms of physics and thermodynamics, information by it's existence violates the 2nd law. Well, if it existed in some sort of natural form. It actually takes more energy to create information than for information to dissipate and disappear.
Using your example, information *is* all the Nitrogen molecules being gathered in a corner of the room. It takes work and effort to collect all the N2 gas into a location, much like it takes work and effort to collect information into some useable form. If it takes effort to maintain N2 gas into an ordered state, it likewise takes effort to keep information in a useful form.
It may be argued that with the 'new' infrastructure that the energy of ordering is low enough to be 'almost' free, but it can never truly be free. Networks, sharing, storing, disseminating, does not come to zero cost. The best one can reach is *self* sustaining and self propogating, in which each individual assumes the cost unto Erself to maintain the information.
IE, people who want to run their own websites, scratch their own itches, etc, in the name of self interest. For them the cost is less than the value of the information...
So I disagree that information wants to be free; Information is a state of the universe that happens to be particularly strange; it's a very low cost replication, high cost production item, like CDs or money; once the design, presses, layout, groundwork has been set, the cost of making another is *extremely* low, where the cost of making 1 is extremely high. In a way, if you make the association of information==money, then the statement that information wants to be free translates correctly; it's something that wants *rapid* dissemination and sharing, in order to achieve something like a velocity effect, in which the more information moves around, the more effect it has in society.
Short version:
Information does not follow 2nd law of thermodynamics any differently than anything else. 2nd law does not justify it being 'free' in beer or 'free' in mobility.
A better analogy is that information has intrinsic value due to existence; the lack of information is nothingness. This value can be equated to money, and treated as such, perhaps
The nick is a joke! Really!
I don't know if I can full-heartedly agree with your assessment, especially with your recommendations.
A business is not doing anyone a favor if it does not maximize it's profits. It cannot continue to offer you a service, it cannot continue to survive and feed/pay itself, it cannot gain prestive, position, rank, or brand, if it cannot stay in business.
What is *wrong* with different prices for different buyers? I'm not saying more or less, but under what premise is equality of prices a guarantee? If you don't want to pay *more*, then go buy somewhere else. If you don't want to pay *less*, then there must be something wrong with you, I think.
As per the price fluctiations, there are several 'arguments' for. There is no real value assigned to, say, a book. It's value is only whatever a person is willing to pay for it. If that's 25, 26, 28, or 30, that's the 'price'. If you find it for 30, but want to pay 25, then you aren't going to buy it, and they won't sell it. If, however, they will sell it for 25, but you're willing to pay 30, they would be *stupid* for charging less.
Amazon, with this practice, can maximize profits. That's not wrong.
Another issue I can think of is the 'perishability' of their goods. Anything that sits in their warehouse over a certain amount of time is, essentially, a loss. Books that get printed every quarter, year, or even week; the circulation of books, like the circulation of money, is how they make a profit. If they sell 2000 books a month, and get 2000 books in every month, they have 0 inventory, and profit on 2000 books. If they sell 200 books a month, and get 200 books a month, they still have 0 inventory, but only profit on 200 books. It's to their advantage to maintain 0 inventory, before the next shipment comes in, and if that means lowering prices, well, then, it's certainly in their advantage.
As to raising prices, one can *always* go somewhere else. But the assumption is that you're paying money to Amazon to keep them alive. Brand loyalty means you like them, for whatever reason, and if you want them to suceed, you buy from them over, say B&N. If you have no loyalty, then it doesn't matter anyway. Which means you pay a brand tax; and, if they are smart, they use that profit to do something good, to ensure current and new buyers *prefer* Amazon over B&N. If they do something stupid or pointless, or irritating, customers can always leave.
The nick is a joke! Really!
Is to fix it yourself.
If it's important to you, if it's necessary to you, get the resources necessary to fix it. Self interest, itches, et al.
If you *absolutely* do not have the talent to fix it, do not have the resources, capability, or whatever, to fix the problem, and it needs to be fixed...
Submit and document the bug to unsavory webzine and list it under an article as a 'flaw' in Linux that makes it undeserving of the desktop/workstation/server market.
Or, write a program/virus/trojan to take advantage of the flaw ^^
I hope it's obvious that these were mainly joke replys!
The nick is a joke! Really!
Let this happen. Let the MPAA have its way, such that digital stuff can't record or timeshift or whatever.
We *want* consumers to see the effects the MPAA have on all of us. We want them to see the fact that TiVOs, HDTV, digital cable, etc, doesn't work. We want them to see that the MPAA is doing some stupid stuff. I think it would be reasonable to suffer this sort of inconvenience if it can topple the MPAA entirely. It's sort of an entrapment case, but in this situation, we let the MPAA set the trap and the bait itself, and we pull the trigger/noose later on it!
Let the MPAA take away *all* the rights consumers are used to. Don't let them record from DVDs->VCRs, don't let them copy CDs to mp3s, tapes, or other CDs, don't let them copy broadcast shows onto VCRs, TiVos, or mpgs, etc. See what happened when we let Circuit City debut DiVX? It *died*! Let the MPAA do what it wants, and let it collapse on itself!
Of course, if the people are all as stupid as *they* assume, they'll just win the battle...
The nick is a joke! Really!
If it *is* illegal, would you stop? Would you fight it? Would you ignore it? Would you change enough so it's only *technically* legal, but still violating the intent of proprietary uses?
The nick is a joke! Really!
You mean for calling you an idiot?
I'm only an engineer, and can't speak for why upper management doesn't offer a Vectra bundled with Linux; we do support Linux on Vectra, through Linuxcare, but we do not ourselves sell desktop PCs with Linux. A thought on this is that Linux is not a desktop solution, yet, but works well for servers, workstations etc.
The whole point of my logic was that HP *should care* because we are using the products internally on Linux, and needs to support *itself*, and if it can't support itself, it won't progress. So if we're selling PCs with Linux support, even if we don't ourselves install or support Linux, and we're using our PCs with Linux, it stands to reason that other people are as well, and if only out of self interest by support our own needs, we'll also be meeting the needs and interests of others as well.
We don't use Epson printers because HP printers are better ^^
The nick is a joke! Really!
I hope I'm not saying anything out of hand here, but...
I'm in a 80 man shop. We use HPUX. We use HP printers. We use HP PCs and laptops running Windows NT and Linux. Linux accounts for about a third of our systems, for development use. It's really stupid that HP is not supporting Linux, officially, with this product, as we are as likely to use it internally as anyone else, externally, and we can't until it *officially* supports our needs, otherwise we can't get any help from the guys across the street.
We use print servers. We make print servers. We make printers. This is just something stupid that I hope gets resolved soon
The nick is a joke! Really!
About the ocean landing; it was designed with a bouancy of less than 1 to insure it floated, assuming it lands intact.
c e</a>
<a href="http://www.keo.org/uk/technik.html">Referen
You may be right about the frames of reference thing. We just don't know if future selves have the capability of decoding it all.
The nick is a joke! Really!
That, my friend, is for the ingenuity and intelligence of future archeologists to discover how to deal with. Undoubtedly someone, somewhere, will have a CD inside a airtight seal, inside a storage case somewhere, trapped inside a forgotten building in the middle of the desert, and someone will find it in 20,000 years, and they will wonder; what is this?
We have to count on the intelligence of our descendents to decipher the 1/0 that make up our society today. It is with these 1/0s that we have our computers, our programs, our internet, and we cannot do them the disservice of removing that knowledge.
How would we today try to read a CD, then, if we found it? Let's assume we don't think it's a decoration or jewlery. Maybe they'll think they are some sort of currency, seeing as how many are printed, and how *everyone* has a collection of them. Not so far from the mark, actually...
Anyway, how would we unlock a CD, today? Visual analysis tells us that there are grooves, and that the grooves are close enough togeter to form spectral gratings. Which would require us to look closely at the groove structures to see why all CDs are not identical. The minute we look down we see pits of various sizes. Aha! At that point one can copy this directly into another medium.
Then the networks can get to work. Distributed.net volunteers time and cpucycles and such to try to 'crack' this stream of 1s and 0s. We can try various cyphers, we can try to apply linguistic theory, distribution codes, encryption codes, etc. Maybe it will take *years*, and millions upon millions of gigaflops of cycles to decode it.
Say 2 years later, we have distribution charts. We see that this disc used a primitive error correction code, and that there is some sort of syntax code that the linguists(by then a hard science) can tackle.
Maybe we'll have to look and compare to any media that have been saved from that time period. Say, a n inscription that happens to be upon the side of a building that has survived all this time. From that 50 word script we have a rough letter distribution. We try to match language to language. We try to match word to word. We try to match syntax with every known variation of language we have from that period; English, Dutch, Chinese, Japanese, Swahili, whatever.
It's not impossible, especially since we are designing it to be read; as opposed to designing it to be *sold* or *used*
The nick is a joke! Really!
So I suffer a little despair reading your reply.
The 50k part is not so hard to believe, being made of tempered glass and all, and after going through some simulations in a particle accelerator, we can more or less say that the storage medium is okay.
The reentry part is the same; design and such to survive, otherwise launching it is pointless. So that's still otherwise okay, even if it isn't 100%.
Reasons why people may notice it's reentry 50k years from now; Space Agencies track it, because we are tracking anything bigger than a baseball, it's possible that we will continue doing so in the future. Likewise, it's re-entry is targeted to look *really* impressive, so if people today go to hunt down meteorites and meteroides, perhaps people of the future will as well, if only children doing so out of curiosity.
If people of the future lack all exploration and curiosity, then no, they will just let it sit wherever it lands and then I can't care anyway, because the human race will have died.
How about what *we* have done, in reconstructing 2000 year old languages? Analyzing dead sea scrolls, heiroglyphs, steles and stones? Why would archeologists and scientists of the future be any less intrepid and saavy? After all, this is, as you admit, and experiment in hope and optimism.
It's happened before, when we reconstruct a dinosaur, analyze a 10,000 year old bee's DNA, or try to figure out how a 20,000 year old human walks. Are you denying that people will continue to do so, 50,000 years from now?
And I am discouraged that you think there are better things to do with our time and money than hope, dream, and experiment...
The nick is a joke! Really!
They're using tempered glass masters, as explained at their site.
The nick is a joke! Really!
I wonder how/why they'd do that, anyway? Track radio transmissions? Electronic activity?
KEO is supposedly totally passive, with no electrical activity. If they aim to target and destroy it, that'd be sending up *a lot* of money and effort at destroying, essentially, a rock.
The nick is a joke! Really!
Read the KEO faq! They've already tested sample CDs in a particle accelerator, and they're still readable...
The nick is a joke! Really!
Okay, so I'm not trying to hurt your ego. You're very insightful comments have been pre-empted by the KEO people; they are using glass disc/masters that have been put through accelerators to simulate 50k years in space, and they're still readable. The craft has several layers of debris shielding as well titanium and tungstun and all that other neato stuff thanks to space programs the world over.
Oh, and this is an experiement in hope, trust, and optimism. They expect our space to stay clean and clear *because* they expect the US to want to continue sending satellites into space, and super powers who want to send space stations and spies into space, etc. Self interest, and all. If we pollute space to the point where KEO gets knocked out, so would just about anything else, like shuttles, rockets, stations, satellites, etc.
The nick is a joke! Really!
precision is something on the order of magnitude 50k, so that if they *tried* carbon dating, they'd find that it was at least 50k years old, without knowing how much older it was...
This is based on the half life of C14 being 5730 years, as explained by this Carbon Dating guide
The nick is a joke! Really!
The whole point of this endeavor is hope, trust, and optimism. That there will be an Earth and humans 50k years from now to see what we were. Sort of the same reasoning as saving your granddad's pocket watch for your grandkids; how do you know you'll have grandkids? How do you know that they'll be able to treasure and appreciate this piece of art?
Besides, if 300 years from now someone wants to *go* out into space, retrieve this satellite, bring it back, and open it up, *we* can't stop them. But we can hope they can appreciate our work and put it back, or put something else similar, for similar reasons.
The nick is a joke! Really!
But why did Apple need this about 4 years ago? Windows 95 was barely out 4 years ago, and Apple didn't have a unified or comprehensive hardware platform either, what with over 20 different models available for sale.
What they needed 4 years ago was Steve Jobs, or someone similar.
The nick is a joke! Really!
or accurate at *all*.
You don't have to move the mouse *all* over the screen; just towards the buttons. I'm hoping that as the mouse approaches the buttons that *all* of them would flicker into glyph mode, and not just the one you select. That way as you go towards the upper right hand corner, you can actually see what you're doing.
The better analogy is that the sign in the distance is dark green, and as you approach it you can see that there are directions on it (left, right, forward). It's a focus kind of activity, I would think. A horrible implementation, on Apple's part, would have us go down each direction *a little* bit to find out what is there... Though I can see that might actually happen in Aqua...
The nick is a joke! Really!
And the comment about the 'filled with worms and rotting from the inside out' is just uncalled for.
So they slipped; should they have shipped anyway, knowing they weren't finished? I dunno, I think it's 'morally' better to slip than to cheat someone with an inferior product.
Apple slips. Linux slips. Windows slips. What's the big deal? Life is not revolving around OS releases, are they?
The nick is a joke! Really!
I'd be interested in seeing more description of how this works...
AKA, in fingerprinting, you choose interesting features and landmarks because you can see the *entire* fingerprint at a time, and not by tracing the grooves; yet as far as I can see, because you're sampling across time/frequency, you're forced into something analgous to trying to find features by tracing the grooves in a fingerprint.
I can see where one would choose instrument switches, pauses in singing, rhythm changes, or something else that is suitably obvious. The only problem is how the system can identify these portions in song... I'd love to see the 'math' behind this, even if it takes a couple months of reading to actually understand it.
Of course, to cheat would create a fingerprint using some sort of GA, and select the genes that creates the most *useful* fingerprints, in terms of categorizing and identifying, and code those genes into a formal program...
The nick is a joke! Really!
Don't be so condemning or praising of the two companies. They *both* act out of necessity. AMD would love to be in Intel's position, with Intel's worries.
Both are market driven; Intel defines the market, and AMD has to become skilled at playing in that market. However, if Intel ever stops defining the market, AMD has the potential to catch up and define it for themselves. Once they define the market in such a way that they(AMD) get all the advantage, then AMD will also get all the money.
Still, I would think Intel is making enough money and has enough mindshare that it wouldn't do something so stupid as rush to market...
The nick is a joke! Really!
A fingerprint is a watermark, where a watermark is not a fingerprint:
If you removed a fingerprint from the work, you essentially destroy the work. At least, from your above statement, that digital watermarks are designed for difficulty of removal.
So you can use a finger print for just about all the purposes of a watermark, when you can't use a watermark for all the purposes of a fingerprint.
Does that make sense?
The nick is a joke! Really!
You were calling people morons, lame, etc.
I wasn't sure that you clearly saw the distinction between the people and the logic they use. Most people aren't very good at separating what they think vs what they do. Your initial reaction was good, but your response *was* a bit harsh.
I'm enjoying this thread between you, Bongo, and everyone else though. I hope you aren't getting frustrated and all ^^
The nick is a joke! Really!
Actually, I'm not sure if the point was clearly expressed by Bongo.
If everyone is conformist, then the first threat to attack the conforming trait wipes out nearly everyone. It doesn't matter if it's genes, fads, appearance, behavior, etc. If *everyone* eats rice, a rice crop failure significantly affects *everyone*. Diversity is a benefit then in reducing risks (which is an old meme in the stocks/bonds game)
So people like redbird(even though I agree his *reasoning* is stupid) isn't all that useless. They may not be able to understand their choices, so they make dumb reasons without making dumb choices. Logic fails them (gosh, I sound patronizing. Gomen!) where intuition doesn't. Without redbird and crew, there would not be the small core of anti-fashionable people to take up the arms when the fashionable people all bite it. Say everyone uses NT, but redbird uses Linux cuz it's different. Ooh, outlook virus wipes out half the PCs in the world, but redbird gets to stay alive cuz he was different. Or somethine like that ^^
So blast him for his logic, I agree with that, but not for trying to be different. It's a survival technique that works, even if it isn't nearly as efficient as flocking/schooling/conforming.
The nick is a joke! Really!
What's even scarier than CNN linking to this (presumably under journalistic freedom) is that Time-Warner-AOL got them to remove the link!
The nick is a joke! Really!