I agree with much of your analysis about the psychological reasons for the popularity of SETI@Home. A lot of people probably run the program because they've read a lot of sci-fi, or watched the X-Files. Some of your criticisms of the likelihood of discovering other intelligent life are also valid, and discussing the relative merits of SETI@Home vs weather modeling and protein folding is a tarpit I'm not willing to climb into today.
But in the end, your review relies heavily on claims that you cannot possibly know to be true.
"seti@home makes a lot of assumptions in order to make it's goals seems plausible. .."
No. SETI researchers make no such assumptions. They certainly don't make many of the assumptions you've claimed they make. For example, you say that one of SETI's assumptions is that every planet that develops life will eventually develop an intelligent civilization. I know of no serious researchers who assume such a thing. In fact, the URL you listed to demonstrate this assumption says precisely the opposite.
You correctly claim that our own evolutionary history would indicate that intelligence such as ours is probably an unlikely development. But you incorrectly claim that "intelligence itself is not evolutionarily stable." We only have a very few examples of intelligence, and not enough to make such a statement. Sure, brains are expensive, but judging from the success of mammals, they're a valuable investment. The only way to know for sure would be to look at the evolutionary paths of thousands of worlds, and compare them.
The rest of your review is based on several other unprovable assumptions:
- That the civilization will not invest the time or resources in contacting other worlds.
- That the energy requirements of a long-term project would be prohibitive.
- That most civilizations will self-destruct within a few centuries.
As to the first two, we don't know what energy technologies will be developed in the future, how committed a civilization might be to finding others, or how good a very advanced civilization would be at picking candidate planets to beam signals at.
For the third, I would dispute your claim that "We have come close to wiping ourselves out several times already." Even in the event of a full nuclear exchange, the extinction of the human race would not be guaranteed (please see the scientific simulation, Fallout for further information). We could certainly survive if a major city was nuked every decade or so. In short, I think the long term survivability of the human race is higher than you claim. More importantly, since we have no prior data, you have a rather flimsy basis for making these claims.
This is part of what makes SETI research so valuable. Finding out how common other intelligence in the universe is tells us a lot about our own situation. Even if we did a complete, thorough search of the entire EM spectrum for ten thousand years and came up with nothing, we'd still have learned something valuable. We'd have learned that successful, intelligent species are very few and far between, and that it was even more important that we not screw things up.
I don't have anything bad to say about the graphics. I'm thrilled, really.
What I dislike is the little red arrow that tells you exactly where you have to go. Of course it comes in handy, and I know it doesn't force me to not explore the side areas. But I keep getting this mental image of the PS2's processor tapping its foot impatiently and saying, "Still not done?" I wish there was a way to turn it off.
I'd also like to be able to skip the movies next time I play through. There's no way to do that. Heck, in the blitzball tutorial, you can't even skip out during the middle of one of the lessons. That, my friends, is bad interface design.
The lack of camera control also bothers me, even though none of the earlier games had it. It's just a bit more irksome now that you're playing through an actual 3D world.
The interface is too colorful for my taste.
The "temple puzzles" are not an "interesting diversion" as the GameSpot review claims. They are a nightmare of trial and error. I'd rather have more complicated puzzles whose solutions make some sort of sense.
All in all, this is a sucky game, and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go play blitzball. Can't wait to learn Venom Tackle.
I'm doing the same thing so that my bro can access the Continental Airlines employee page. The thing works perfectly under Mozilla, as long as I tell the site that I'm running IE 5.5 on a Win2K box.
Time for a "user-agent" string poll. That will clear everything up.:)
...apparently, for precisely the reason you hated it. It delves into background topics and personal biographies of the major players. I don't remember any mention of canines at all, but I did read it six months ago, and it's possible that the details slipped my mind.
I don't think that the material was "unrelated." I thought the author did a great job of showing how Microsoft's current situation was a direct consequence of the same sort of business practices that transformed them from a scrappy little company into a software giant to begin with. In order to demonstrate that thesis, a lot of this "unrelated stuff" was actually necessary. Some of it might not have been, but I enjoyed it nonetheless.
My favorite chapter covered the history between M$ and Novell (I spent a year going through a Novell CNE class, only to discover that there wasn't much demand for the certification. Me stupid.) I never really understood why Novell tanked before reading it. It covers the broken deals between the two companies, the war between IP and IPX, Novell's purchase of WordPerfect for way more than it was worth, and a litany of other mistakes that turned Novell from a powerhouse into a small company with an identity crisis.
If you're interested in the MS wars with Netscape, Oracle, IBM, and Sun, there are great chapters on each. Linux, unfortunately, got a single mention near the end of the book (IIRC, a single sentence).
[note to author of parent: It's an interesting idea, and I'm now going to proceed to make fun of it. Hope you don't mind.]
"Okay, we're booting up. As you can see, a door is slowly opening. Above it, it is labeled 'My Computer Place.' As you step in, you see a room full of filing cabinets, CD organizers, a sofa and loveseat in front of a TV, a washer/dryer set, and a small calico cat."
"Try clicking on the cat. Heh heh. It meowed. Heh heh, it meowed again. Oops, it exploded. The guys in Redmond have been playing too much Warcraft."
"Notice that you can see both a trashcan and a fireplace. Click and drag a file from the filing cabinet to the trashcan. Now click an drag it back. You've recovered the file, although it has a couple of spots of bacon grease on it now. Pretty cool, eh? Now click and drag that same file to the fireplace. Now try and drag it back. See? You can't! Oh, that wasn't something you were working on, was it? Fifty hours of work, you say? Well, then you're not likely to ever forget the difference between the two."
"Now let's take a look at that washer/dryer set. This is where your 'virtual persona' does his laundry. Your virtual persona is much like you, as he can go around the house making changes. He's working hard, watching your behavior in order to learn your preferences. See what he's learned already? He's dragging all your files over to the fireplace. Your VP looks like Bill Gates by default, but you can change that."
"You also have a virtual pet. Er, had, anyways. Don't worry, they're a pain to take care of, and you're probably better off without it."
"Now let's take a tour of the basement, shall we? The room over to your left full of boxes is where we store seldom-used files. If you want to access the contents of this room, just tell your VP to drag the boxes up to the living room and sort through them. The process takes about three hours, and elicits a torrent of verbal abuse from your VP."
"Over there you see the water heater. By examining this, you can see the status of. . . er, well, your water-cooled heat sink. If you have one. Otherwise, just ignore it."
"Finally, behind this door, you have a server farm which controls your access to the outside world. You can sit down, and, by pressing virtual 'keys,' you can issue ipchain commands for your firewall, ping other computers, and boot up virtual mail and web servers. I think the mail server is running an older version of Linux, so you may need to upgrade it to the latest kernel."
"Now, back upstairs. This is the door to your computer room. Under no circumstances should it ever be opened by anyone. It has to do with Godel's incompleteness theorem. If you open the door, the computer will try to model itself, including the fact that there is a virtual computer inside the model which it needs to model, and so on to infinity. Trust me, the RAM upgrade alone would bankrupt a small country."
Great post. But I have to throw in a couple of points (or get back to work. I think this is preferable).
1) Technically, injecting an animal with growth hormones isn't a "genetic alteration." It would be more appropriate to call the meat "biochemically altered," or some similar label. I also think that the "unknown dangers" of ingesting genetically modified foods are vastly overstated. The effect of modified organisms on the environment is more of an issue for me.
2) While I agree that modern living is probably responsible for the sorts of diseases you mention, I wouldn't blame much of it on the EM flood. More likely (in order of decreasing likelihood:
The chemicals in our environment.
The fact that people are living longer and reproducing later in life (racking up genetic damage along the way).
The fact that Western medicine has turned the idea of "survival of the fittest" into "survival of just about everything." These genes just aren't being selected against as forcefully as they once were.
Wow. "It can't be bad research methodology and I have an anecdote to prove it!"
Before I read the article, I thought that it was probably due to the fact that Silicon Valley had a generally higher standard of living, and therefore better health care. So kids were, I assumed, getting diagnosed more because more of them are being run through evaluations.
But the article points out that the number of diagnosed cases is escalating all over California. But we don't know whether this is due to an increase in actual cases, or a change in the average doctor's understanding of what constitutes autism.
From the article:
It's not easy to arrive at a clear picture of whether there actually is a startling rise in the incidence of autism in California, as opposed to just an increase in diagnoses. One problem, says Linda Lotspeich, director of the Stanford Pervasive Developmental Disorders Clinic, is that "the rules in the DSM-IV don't work." The diagnostic criteria are subjective, like "Marked impairment in the use of nonverbal behaviors such as eye-to-eye gaze, facial expression, body posture, and gestures to regulate social interaction."
"How much 'eye-to-eye gaze' do you have to have to be normal?" asks Lotspeich. "How do you define what 'marked' is? In shades of gray, when does black become white?"
It's possible for even intelligent doctors to hop on a diagnostic bandwagon. Back in the 70's, when tonsil removal was such a fad, a study was done where something like 100 tonsilled children were sent to doctors for evaluation. Something like half of them were recommended for tonsil removal. Then the fifty (I don't remember the precise number) who were declared OK were sent to different doctors, and half of them were recommended for tonsil removal. At that point, they ran out of new doctors to send the kids to, but by then the point was already made.
I think there's something more than just statistical tomfoolery going on here, but I think you sound all too sure of the definitive nature of your "evidence."
While I'm not terribly surprised when I hear that John Katz might be wrong, I don't see any facts here that would invalidate anything he said in this article.
It's not even clear what you're claiming he's wrong about, since he mentioned himself that the movie was "a spoof of a spoof of a parody." If anything, you're both wrong, because there's a difference between an outright spoof and a movie that doesn't take itself too seriously. Or maybe I expect a movie has to bludgeon me over the head with a "This is Supposed to be Funny" bat before I recognize it as a spoof.
Either way, I think you're trying to get way too much mileage out of a pedestrian semantic argument.
Interesting point, but irrelevant for most of the comments he's talking about. I'd bet you three pez dispensers that 90% of the anti-Katz posts are written by people who know well ahead of time that they're going to hate the article. They read it anyways because they enjoy flaming him.
Done correctly, such behavior can turn into valuable constructive criticism. Done on slashdot, I don't see the point. The only saving grace is that Katz is a rather minor target, which improves the S/N ratio on the rest of the 'Net.
What would be really cool is if they could keep the heat generated from the lightning strikes inside the tower, to add fuel to the convection currents. It wouldn't be hard. Just run the lightning rod down the inside of the tower, and have some sort of heatsink at the bottom. It might be as simple as just hooking it into the ground, but that's speculation on my part.
Would it make sense to simply run a giant straw up the side of a good sized mountain? If you could find a good geographic location for it, it seems like it would save a lot on building materials and make it more stable. The trick is to find a suitably high mountain sufficiently close to an empty flat area. For added benefit, just build a much smaller tower at the top.
Hmm. . . At that point, you might want to have the tower double as a TV antenna.
Maybe there would be a problem with heat loss that would make this idea impractical.
I would be highly skeptical of a project like this. It has a huge initial price tag, even if EVERYTHING goes according to plan. What if it doesn't go according to plan? With it so high up, maintenance costs could be extraordinary if anything went wrong.
Most of the really heavy maintenance stuff will be at or just above ground level. The only forseeable problem would be if there was some design flaw that would cause the whole thing to collapse, in which case it might be easier to demolish the thing and start from scratch.
This is a zero emissions plant, but it won't actually have lower emissions than a comparable fossil fuel powerplant until TWO AND A HALF YEARS later because of all the CO2 emissions created during construction?!?!? What would the lifetime of this project be?
Small point: Any plant one would build would require CO2 emissions as part of the construction phase. I don't know how the CO2 outlay would compare to that of a normal coal-fired plant. I would guess that the Aussie project would be slightly higher.
Spending a sizable fraction of a billion dollars to reduce co2 emissions by what appears to be an inconsequential amount doesn't appear to me to be a brilliant idea. Maybe it has some value as a test example, but if so, WHY does it have to be that big and cost near half a billion dollars.
"An inconsequential amount?" Compared to what? Mt. Pinatubo, perhaps, but compared to a coal plant over the same period, it's a huge savings.
The prototype for this was already built in Spain during the '80s. It sounds like it collapsed because the builders cut corners.
I'm not an Australian taxpayer, so I don't care if you go ahead and do it, but if I were, I would be highly skeptical...
As would I. But all you've done is ask questions. You haven't demonstrated that this is a bad idea. It will only be a bad idea if it turns out that there aren't good answers to those questions.
Keep an open mind. Keep asking these questions, but don't presume you already know how the answers will turn out.
Hmm. . . You're running an FTP server on a Windows box, and haven't "screwed with the default settings?" m4y 1 h4v3 y00r 1P 4dd4355 p133z???
At the elementary school level, the vast majority of kids aren't going to see any difference between Linux and Windows. Web browsing? Mozilla has a very similar look and feel to IE, even down to most of the same hotkeys. Word processing? Anyone who has used Wordpad will intuitively grok AbiWord, and vice versa.
In high school, most students will be in precisely the same situation. They'll end up double-clicking on a pretty icon and get to work. For the geekily inclined, Linux is vastly superior, precisely because it lets you explore the inner workings of the computer.
Operating systems today are like different martial arts styles: the basics are all the same. It's all double-clicking, dragging and dropping, and having some idea what the funny underlined text means.
The only disadvantage I see is that, until Linux gaming gets more competitive, kids aren't going to be able to install their favorite FPS on the systems, and hence will have no motivation to learn computers at all.
Riiiight. I want a mind-reading computer that goes in and deletes my files "automatically," before I even know I want them deleted.:)
You're missing the point of "metaphors." The idea is that things are made more intuitive (more like something that's already known). A good metaphor is certainly *not* wasting the user's time. The example you cite (dragging a file to the recycle bin and getting a picture of papers being thrown out) is meant to give the user a concrete picture of what's going on inside her computer box. It's surely much easier to remember than "rm -rf ", and easier to grasp than a screenful of "Deleting " scrolling faster than any human can hope to process (or worse, getting zero feedback because you didn't use verbose). I prefer the command line for deleting things anyways, but more because the pretty pictures are wasting precious, precious clock cycles.
Look at how many metaphors even a command-liner is being subject to. You've got the keyboard, which is an input metaphor. If you wanted a non-metaphorical interface, you'd have a '1' key, a '0' key, and nothing else. Emacs performs the same sort of abstraction when you read a file off of it. In reality, ASCII itself is simply a metaphor for the English alphabet, designed to save us from having to deal with 1's and 0's directly -- and before you argue, remember that this is exactly what the first computer builders had to do.
Not all metaphors are equally valuable or useful. So take whatever metaphor suits you best. But until you've mastered two-key, don't expect anyone to believe that you're living some sort of 1337, metaphor-free existence.
"Insightful?" Why is it that only-semi-coherent rants about "Western Bias" seem to be so frequently modded up?
Sure, the idea that "the people are the government" hasn't caught on in some backwards parts of the world (Washington D.C., for example). Perhaps that is a Western way of thinking about the world, but it's also a good idea. Government, by necessity, is the few making rules for the many, and the only way to keep a measure of balance is to let people elect those rulemakers.
Otherwise you end up with a system like Saudi Arabia, which is effectively an oligarchy for the super-rich. The Saudi government has been censoring print and broadcast media for ages, and now they're bringing censorship to the 'Net. From the article, "SmartFilter came with ready-made categories like pornography and gambling and was customized to include specific sites the Saudis perceived as defaming Islam or the royal family." This is just another example of people in power trying to maintain that power at the expense of freedom to others.
I'm not in favor of cultural imperialism, but the idea that people should be allowed to elect the people who govern them is an idea that should be exported.
BSD does, of course, have a nifty little mascot. But do not underestimate Tux. His kind is always impeccably dressed, and live in an environment that would incapacitate a good 95% of the species on this planet. Tux is tough, yet classy, much like James Bond.
I've also noticed that he has a chubby, friendly serenity about him, as though he has achieved true enlightenment, and is waiting patiently for the rest of us to catch up. We can only assume from this that he is a reincarnation of the Buddha. Someday we shall learn the truth behind Tux's paradoxical koan, "There is no kernel." Once we understand, then the world will be reborn for each of us, and code shall flow like the rivers in springtime.
... the response to this story is whining about censorship, demands for creative freedom, etc., when what people really mean is, "We want our smut!"
Is that so wrong?
Quite a few Hollywood movies are otherwise excellent productions that have been ruined by the addition of gratuitous sex, nudity, violence, coarse language, and so on. Why? Hollywood believes that it sells. But the truth is that most people don't appreciate the garbage, and would go see movies without it, and would be just as entertained. That's why edited movies [familysafemedia.com] are so popular.
Businesses like those you cite cater to a rather small clientelle. I wouldn't describe them as wildly popular.
They also demonstrate a selfishness on the part of the buyer. In order to snip out the offensive portions from videos, the editors have to hear each swear word and watch each scene a dozen times, all so that somebody can see a movie he didn't need to see without offending his sensibilities. It seems like such a self-defeating way to raise the moral standards of our country.
There are plenty of adults who prefer not to be exposed to unnecessary filth. Call us old-fashioned, uptight, naive. But the fact is that we're the ones holding the country together by raising good strong families.
Fine. You're old-fashioned, uptight, and naive. But I respect your right to view or not view what you choose. Your insinuation that only people who walked out on Titanic when Kate Winslet got naked can raise a good, strong family is both arrogant and uninformed.* But if that's what you have to tell yourself to justify not being able to see The Matrix, I respect your right to that opinion as well.
And don't excuse the garbage that Hollywood pushes by saying that movies just mirror reality. If anything, they present a selective view of reality -- there is much more to life than sex and violence!
What else is there? We could watch hours of people running errands, sitting in front of their television, reading newspapers, and having pointless conversations about the comparative advantages of different restaurants in their area.
You can make some truly great movies without sex, violence, or cursing. But most have to have elements of danger, love, and confrontation. The "filth" you describe is simply one way to depict those crucial elements. Without them, you don't have a movie. You have people running errands. Once you accept that, you should recognize that there are a lot of movies that simply couldn't be made without depicting those elements in a very realistic and gripping way. For example, Braveheart sans violence would be either impossible or unwatchable.
I'm in favor of this new system precisely because it will end up giving us edgier movies. Whenever self-righteous persons such as yourself complain, we can respond with a simple, "Turn it down to PG, you self-righteous person!" and go back to watching our degenerate filth.
* Note: I did walk out. I wanted to see it, but certainly not while sitting between my parents.
I can't say I don't have some misgivings about this. Generally speaking, I think technology is making life just a tad too customizable, and that has some disadvantages.
It used to be that we only got our news from three or four major sources. This was bad, but the advantage was that everyone was on basically the same page.
Now we have a wide variety of different news sources, of widely varying competence. Does this help keep everyone honest? Or does it offer recipients the ability to ignore just about everything they don't always agree with?
The answer, of course, is both. It's up to you whether you get all your news from a Rush Limbaugh/James Carville*, or select from a wide variety of sources to get a full picture of events.
So what happens when you get to decide precisely what you see and what you don't? Imagine being able to alter the CNN feed to bleep out any stories about errant bombs or atrocities by the Northern Alliance. Or filtering so that all you got was stories about Open source, school shootings, and the Microsoft/DOJ settlement. How skewed could your worldview get if you're only subjected to things which confirm it.
So inasfar as this allows people to see only that which they are comfortable with, I'm not comfortable with it. Most people, myself included, generally only seek out information which supports whatever memes are already lodged in their brains.
For example, if you liked what I've written so far, you could filter out the final paragraph which might change your opinion:
This is an evil weapon of intolerance, and it must be wiped off the face of the Earth! Death to all fanatics! Make me your king and bootlegged DVDs will flow through the streets!
I think it's more like buying a copy of the Mona Lisa, taking it home, and drawing glasses and a moustache on her. Sure, Da Vinci is rolling in his grave. I'm not even that big an art lover, and I'd be horrified. But it's the buyer's property, and she can do what she wants with it.
You have to remember that censorship is going to be applied one way or another. I would much rather give the artists free rein to create their vision, and implement controls on the user end. The alternative is for the artists to either soften movies to whatever level is required for the "target demographic," or stand up for their principles and take the potential pay cut.
Those who respect the "artist's vision" will appreciate that such a vision can be more fully implemented. Those who don't? The artists shouldn't care about their opinion anyways, and now they can actually get money from said cretins. It's a win-win for everyone.
Would you also be in favor of the MPAA suing people who a) fast forward or b) closed their eyes during a particularly decapitastic scene? After all, both are using available user controls in order to modify their viewing experience in a way that the original artists never intended.
The canonical opinion among slashdotters (insomuch as one exists) is that people have a right to use their DVDs in any way they wish. If that means modifying their viewing experience to avoid being subjected to Satanic(TM) images of people making love, or disparaging references to Richard Nixon, or whatever, I say more power to them.
Besides, this is a far better option than forcing everyone into the same straightjacket. A producer could make the NC-17 movie he intended, release an R version to the theaters, and let people watch whatever version they are most comfortable with on DVD. It liberates movie makers and movie watchers alike. So I do hope this idea isn't subject to Raging Lawyer Hordes. Too many good ideas fall under their onslaught.
1) Because it's been tested more thoroughly. They don't want any nasty surprises, and pushing the customers towards an older, safer product is therefore a good thing.
2) Once XP has been thoroughly tested/debugged/patched, they can send out their salesmen to explain/make up critical reasons to upgrade. This will make them more money.
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But in the end, your review relies heavily on claims that you cannot possibly know to be true.
No. SETI researchers make no such assumptions. They certainly don't make many of the assumptions you've claimed they make. For example, you say that one of SETI's assumptions is that every planet that develops life will eventually develop an intelligent civilization. I know of no serious researchers who assume such a thing. In fact, the URL you listed to demonstrate this assumption says precisely the opposite.
You correctly claim that our own evolutionary history would indicate that intelligence such as ours is probably an unlikely development. But you incorrectly claim that "intelligence itself is not evolutionarily stable." We only have a very few examples of intelligence, and not enough to make such a statement. Sure, brains are expensive, but judging from the success of mammals, they're a valuable investment. The only way to know for sure would be to look at the evolutionary paths of thousands of worlds, and compare them.
The rest of your review is based on several other unprovable assumptions:
- That the civilization will not invest the time or resources in contacting other worlds.
- That the energy requirements of a long-term project would be prohibitive.
- That most civilizations will self-destruct within a few centuries.
As to the first two, we don't know what energy technologies will be developed in the future, how committed a civilization might be to finding others, or how good a very advanced civilization would be at picking candidate planets to beam signals at.
For the third, I would dispute your claim that "We have come close to wiping ourselves out several times already." Even in the event of a full nuclear exchange, the extinction of the human race would not be guaranteed (please see the scientific simulation, Fallout for further information). We could certainly survive if a major city was nuked every decade or so. In short, I think the long term survivability of the human race is higher than you claim. More importantly, since we have no prior data, you have a rather flimsy basis for making these claims.
This is part of what makes SETI research so valuable. Finding out how common other intelligence in the universe is tells us a lot about our own situation. Even if we did a complete, thorough search of the entire EM spectrum for ten thousand years and came up with nothing, we'd still have learned something valuable. We'd have learned that successful, intelligent species are very few and far between, and that it was even more important that we not screw things up.
I don't have anything bad to say about the graphics. I'm thrilled, really.
What I dislike is the little red arrow that tells you exactly where you have to go. Of course it comes in handy, and I know it doesn't force me to not explore the side areas. But I keep getting this mental image of the PS2's processor tapping its foot impatiently and saying, "Still not done?" I wish there was a way to turn it off.
I'd also like to be able to skip the movies next time I play through. There's no way to do that. Heck, in the blitzball tutorial, you can't even skip out during the middle of one of the lessons. That, my friends, is bad interface design.
The lack of camera control also bothers me, even though none of the earlier games had it. It's just a bit more irksome now that you're playing through an actual 3D world.
The interface is too colorful for my taste.
The "temple puzzles" are not an "interesting diversion" as the GameSpot review claims. They are a nightmare of trial and error. I'd rather have more complicated puzzles whose solutions make some sort of sense.
All in all, this is a sucky game, and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go play blitzball. Can't wait to learn Venom Tackle.
I'm doing the same thing so that my bro can access the Continental Airlines employee page. The thing works perfectly under Mozilla, as long as I tell the site that I'm running IE 5.5 on a Win2K box.
:)
Time for a "user-agent" string poll. That will clear everything up.
...apparently, for precisely the reason you hated it. It delves into background topics and personal biographies of the major players. I don't remember any mention of canines at all, but I did read it six months ago, and it's possible that the details slipped my mind.
I don't think that the material was "unrelated." I thought the author did a great job of showing how Microsoft's current situation was a direct consequence of the same sort of business practices that transformed them from a scrappy little company into a software giant to begin with. In order to demonstrate that thesis, a lot of this "unrelated stuff" was actually necessary. Some of it might not have been, but I enjoyed it nonetheless.
My favorite chapter covered the history between M$ and Novell (I spent a year going through a Novell CNE class, only to discover that there wasn't much demand for the certification. Me stupid.) I never really understood why Novell tanked before reading it. It covers the broken deals between the two companies, the war between IP and IPX, Novell's purchase of WordPerfect for way more than it was worth, and a litany of other mistakes that turned Novell from a powerhouse into a small company with an identity crisis.
If you're interested in the MS wars with Netscape, Oracle, IBM, and Sun, there are great chapters on each. Linux, unfortunately, got a single mention near the end of the book (IIRC, a single sentence).
[note to author of parent: It's an interesting idea, and I'm now going to proceed to make fun of it. Hope you don't mind.]
"Okay, we're booting up. As you can see, a door is slowly opening. Above it, it is labeled 'My Computer Place.' As you step in, you see a room full of filing cabinets, CD organizers, a sofa and loveseat in front of a TV, a washer/dryer set, and a small calico cat."
"Try clicking on the cat. Heh heh. It meowed. Heh heh, it meowed again. Oops, it exploded. The guys in Redmond have been playing too much Warcraft."
"Notice that you can see both a trashcan and a fireplace. Click and drag a file from the filing cabinet to the trashcan. Now click an drag it back. You've recovered the file, although it has a couple of spots of bacon grease on it now. Pretty cool, eh? Now click and drag that same file to the fireplace. Now try and drag it back. See? You can't! Oh, that wasn't something you were working on, was it? Fifty hours of work, you say? Well, then you're not likely to ever forget the difference between the two."
"Now let's take a look at that washer/dryer set. This is where your 'virtual persona' does his laundry. Your virtual persona is much like you, as he can go around the house making changes. He's working hard, watching your behavior in order to learn your preferences. See what he's learned already? He's dragging all your files over to the fireplace. Your VP looks like Bill Gates by default, but you can change that."
"You also have a virtual pet. Er, had, anyways. Don't worry, they're a pain to take care of, and you're probably better off without it."
"Now let's take a tour of the basement, shall we? The room over to your left full of boxes is where we store seldom-used files. If you want to access the contents of this room, just tell your VP to drag the boxes up to the living room and sort through them. The process takes about three hours, and elicits a torrent of verbal abuse from your VP."
"Over there you see the water heater. By examining this, you can see the status of. . . er, well, your water-cooled heat sink. If you have one. Otherwise, just ignore it."
"Finally, behind this door, you have a server farm which controls your access to the outside world. You can sit down, and, by pressing virtual 'keys,' you can issue ipchain commands for your firewall, ping other computers, and boot up virtual mail and web servers. I think the mail server is running an older version of Linux, so you may need to upgrade it to the latest kernel."
"Now, back upstairs. This is the door to your computer room. Under no circumstances should it ever be opened by anyone. It has to do with Godel's incompleteness theorem. If you open the door, the computer will try to model itself, including the fact that there is a virtual computer inside the model which it needs to model, and so on to infinity. Trust me, the RAM upgrade alone would bankrupt a small country."
1) Technically, injecting an animal with growth hormones isn't a "genetic alteration." It would be more appropriate to call the meat "biochemically altered," or some similar label. I also think that the "unknown dangers" of ingesting genetically modified foods are vastly overstated. The effect of modified organisms on the environment is more of an issue for me.
2) While I agree that modern living is probably responsible for the sorts of diseases you mention, I wouldn't blame much of it on the EM flood. More likely (in order of decreasing likelihood:
Before I read the article, I thought that it was probably due to the fact that Silicon Valley had a generally higher standard of living, and therefore better health care. So kids were, I assumed, getting diagnosed more because more of them are being run through evaluations.
But the article points out that the number of diagnosed cases is escalating all over California. But we don't know whether this is due to an increase in actual cases, or a change in the average doctor's understanding of what constitutes autism.
From the article:
It's possible for even intelligent doctors to hop on a diagnostic bandwagon. Back in the 70's, when tonsil removal was such a fad, a study was done where something like 100 tonsilled children were sent to doctors for evaluation. Something like half of them were recommended for tonsil removal. Then the fifty (I don't remember the precise number) who were declared OK were sent to different doctors, and half of them were recommended for tonsil removal. At that point, they ran out of new doctors to send the kids to, but by then the point was already made.
I think there's something more than just statistical tomfoolery going on here, but I think you sound all too sure of the definitive nature of your "evidence."
While I'm not terribly surprised when I hear that John Katz might be wrong, I don't see any facts here that would invalidate anything he said in this article.
It's not even clear what you're claiming he's wrong about, since he mentioned himself that the movie was "a spoof of a spoof of a parody." If anything, you're both wrong, because there's a difference between an outright spoof and a movie that doesn't take itself too seriously. Or maybe I expect a movie has to bludgeon me over the head with a "This is Supposed to be Funny" bat before I recognize it as a spoof.
Either way, I think you're trying to get way too much mileage out of a pedestrian semantic argument.
Interesting point, but irrelevant for most of the comments he's talking about. I'd bet you three pez dispensers that 90% of the anti-Katz posts are written by people who know well ahead of time that they're going to hate the article. They read it anyways because they enjoy flaming him.
Done correctly, such behavior can turn into valuable constructive criticism. Done on slashdot, I don't see the point. The only saving grace is that Katz is a rather minor target, which improves the S/N ratio on the rest of the 'Net.
"Like shooting fish in a barrel" is a rather tired similie, and I think it's time to upgrade it.
s/like\ shooting\ fish\ in\ a\ barrel/like\ taking\ a\ barrel\ full\ of\ fish\ and\ throwing\ in\ a\ stick\ of\ dynamite/i
A bit more wordy, I'll admit. But with the cost of digital media plummeting, I think the world is ready for it.
Doesn't anybody use gzip? You could compress that down to 1/20th of a mile easily.
What would be really cool is if they could keep the heat generated from the lightning strikes inside the tower, to add fuel to the convection currents. It wouldn't be hard. Just run the lightning rod down the inside of the tower, and have some sort of heatsink at the bottom. It might be as simple as just hooking it into the ground, but that's speculation on my part.
Would it make sense to simply run a giant straw up the side of a good sized mountain? If you could find a good geographic location for it, it seems like it would save a lot on building materials and make it more stable. The trick is to find a suitably high mountain sufficiently close to an empty flat area. For added benefit, just build a much smaller tower at the top.
Hmm. . . At that point, you might want to have the tower double as a TV antenna.
Maybe there would be a problem with heat loss that would make this idea impractical.
Most of the really heavy maintenance stuff will be at or just above ground level. The only forseeable problem would be if there was some design flaw that would cause the whole thing to collapse, in which case it might be easier to demolish the thing and start from scratch.
Small point: Any plant one would build would require CO2 emissions as part of the construction phase. I don't know how the CO2 outlay would compare to that of a normal coal-fired plant. I would guess that the Aussie project would be slightly higher.
"An inconsequential amount?" Compared to what? Mt. Pinatubo, perhaps, but compared to a coal plant over the same period, it's a huge savings.
The prototype for this was already built in Spain during the '80s. It sounds like it collapsed because the builders cut corners.
As would I. But all you've done is ask questions. You haven't demonstrated that this is a bad idea. It will only be a bad idea if it turns out that there aren't good answers to those questions.
Keep an open mind. Keep asking these questions, but don't presume you already know how the answers will turn out.
Hmm. . . You're running an FTP server on a Windows box, and haven't "screwed with the default settings?" m4y 1 h4v3 y00r 1P 4dd4355 p133z???
At the elementary school level, the vast majority of kids aren't going to see any difference between Linux and Windows. Web browsing? Mozilla has a very similar look and feel to IE, even down to most of the same hotkeys. Word processing? Anyone who has used Wordpad will intuitively grok AbiWord, and vice versa.
In high school, most students will be in precisely the same situation. They'll end up double-clicking on a pretty icon and get to work. For the geekily inclined, Linux is vastly superior, precisely because it lets you explore the inner workings of the computer.
Operating systems today are like different martial arts styles: the basics are all the same. It's all double-clicking, dragging and dropping, and having some idea what the funny underlined text means.
The only disadvantage I see is that, until Linux gaming gets more competitive, kids aren't going to be able to install their favorite FPS on the systems, and hence will have no motivation to learn computers at all.
Riiiight. I want a mind-reading computer that goes in and deletes my files "automatically," before I even know I want them deleted. :)
You're missing the point of "metaphors." The idea is that things are made more intuitive (more like something that's already known). A good metaphor is certainly *not* wasting the user's time. The example you cite (dragging a file to the recycle bin and getting a picture of papers being thrown out) is meant to give the user a concrete picture of what's going on inside her computer box. It's surely much easier to remember than "rm -rf ", and easier to grasp than a screenful of "Deleting " scrolling faster than any human can hope to process (or worse, getting zero feedback because you didn't use verbose). I prefer the command line for deleting things anyways, but more because the pretty pictures are wasting precious, precious clock cycles.
Look at how many metaphors even a command-liner is being subject to. You've got the keyboard, which is an input metaphor. If you wanted a non-metaphorical interface, you'd have a '1' key, a '0' key, and nothing else. Emacs performs the same sort of abstraction when you read a file off of it. In reality, ASCII itself is simply a metaphor for the English alphabet, designed to save us from having to deal with 1's and 0's directly -- and before you argue, remember that this is exactly what the first computer builders had to do.
Not all metaphors are equally valuable or useful. So take whatever metaphor suits you best. But until you've mastered two-key, don't expect anyone to believe that you're living some sort of 1337, metaphor-free existence.
"Insightful?" Why is it that only-semi-coherent rants about "Western Bias" seem to be so frequently modded up?
Sure, the idea that "the people are the government" hasn't caught on in some backwards parts of the world (Washington D.C., for example). Perhaps that is a Western way of thinking about the world, but it's also a good idea. Government, by necessity, is the few making rules for the many, and the only way to keep a measure of balance is to let people elect those rulemakers.
Otherwise you end up with a system like Saudi Arabia, which is effectively an oligarchy for the super-rich. The Saudi government has been censoring print and broadcast media for ages, and now they're bringing censorship to the 'Net. From the article, "SmartFilter came with ready-made categories like pornography and gambling and was customized to include specific sites the Saudis perceived as defaming Islam or the royal family." This is just another example of people in power trying to maintain that power at the expense of freedom to others.
I'm not in favor of cultural imperialism, but the idea that people should be allowed to elect the people who govern them is an idea that should be exported.
BSD does, of course, have a nifty little mascot. But do not underestimate Tux. His kind is always impeccably dressed, and live in an environment that would incapacitate a good 95% of the species on this planet. Tux is tough, yet classy, much like James Bond.
I've also noticed that he has a chubby, friendly serenity about him, as though he has achieved true enlightenment, and is waiting patiently for the rest of us to catch up. We can only assume from this that he is a reincarnation of the Buddha. Someday we shall learn the truth behind Tux's paradoxical koan, "There is no kernel." Once we understand, then the world will be reborn for each of us, and code shall flow like the rivers in springtime.
All homage to the penguin. Shalom.
Is that so wrong?
Businesses like those you cite cater to a rather small clientelle. I wouldn't describe them as wildly popular.
They also demonstrate a selfishness on the part of the buyer. In order to snip out the offensive portions from videos, the editors have to hear each swear word and watch each scene a dozen times, all so that somebody can see a movie he didn't need to see without offending his sensibilities. It seems like such a self-defeating way to raise the moral standards of our country.
Fine. You're old-fashioned, uptight, and naive. But I respect your right to view or not view what you choose. Your insinuation that only people who walked out on Titanic when Kate Winslet got naked can raise a good, strong family is both arrogant and uninformed.* But if that's what you have to tell yourself to justify not being able to see The Matrix, I respect your right to that opinion as well.
What else is there? We could watch hours of people running errands, sitting in front of their television, reading newspapers, and having pointless conversations about the comparative advantages of different restaurants in their area.
You can make some truly great movies without sex, violence, or cursing. But most have to have elements of danger, love, and confrontation. The "filth" you describe is simply one way to depict those crucial elements. Without them, you don't have a movie. You have people running errands. Once you accept that, you should recognize that there are a lot of movies that simply couldn't be made without depicting those elements in a very realistic and gripping way. For example, Braveheart sans violence would be either impossible or unwatchable.
I'm in favor of this new system precisely because it will end up giving us edgier movies. Whenever self-righteous persons such as yourself complain, we can respond with a simple, "Turn it down to PG, you self-righteous person!" and go back to watching our degenerate filth.
* Note: I did walk out. I wanted to see it, but certainly not while sitting between my parents.
I can't say I don't have some misgivings about this. Generally speaking, I think technology is making life just a tad too customizable, and that has some disadvantages.
It used to be that we only got our news from three or four major sources. This was bad, but the advantage was that everyone was on basically the same page.
Now we have a wide variety of different news sources, of widely varying competence. Does this help keep everyone honest? Or does it offer recipients the ability to ignore just about everything they don't always agree with?
The answer, of course, is both. It's up to you whether you get all your news from a Rush Limbaugh/James Carville*, or select from a wide variety of sources to get a full picture of events.
So what happens when you get to decide precisely what you see and what you don't? Imagine being able to alter the CNN feed to bleep out any stories about errant bombs or atrocities by the Northern Alliance. Or filtering so that all you got was stories about Open source, school shootings, and the Microsoft/DOJ settlement. How skewed could your worldview get if you're only subjected to things which confirm it.
So inasfar as this allows people to see only that which they are comfortable with, I'm not comfortable with it. Most people, myself included, generally only seek out information which supports whatever memes are already lodged in their brains.
For example, if you liked what I've written so far, you could filter out the final paragraph which might change your opinion:
This is an evil weapon of intolerance, and it must be wiped off the face of the Earth! Death to all fanatics! Make me your king and bootlegged DVDs will flow through the streets!
*I almost said "George Carlin." Weird.
I think it's more like buying a copy of the Mona Lisa, taking it home, and drawing glasses and a moustache on her. Sure, Da Vinci is rolling in his grave. I'm not even that big an art lover, and I'd be horrified. But it's the buyer's property, and she can do what she wants with it.
You have to remember that censorship is going to be applied one way or another. I would much rather give the artists free rein to create their vision, and implement controls on the user end. The alternative is for the artists to either soften movies to whatever level is required for the "target demographic," or stand up for their principles and take the potential pay cut.
Those who respect the "artist's vision" will appreciate that such a vision can be more fully implemented. Those who don't? The artists shouldn't care about their opinion anyways, and now they can actually get money from said cretins. It's a win-win for everyone.
Would you also be in favor of the MPAA suing people who a) fast forward or b) closed their eyes during a particularly decapitastic scene? After all, both are using available user controls in order to modify their viewing experience in a way that the original artists never intended.
The canonical opinion among slashdotters (insomuch as one exists) is that people have a right to use their DVDs in any way they wish. If that means modifying their viewing experience to avoid being subjected to Satanic(TM) images of people making love, or disparaging references to Richard Nixon, or whatever, I say more power to them.
Besides, this is a far better option than forcing everyone into the same straightjacket. A producer could make the NC-17 movie he intended, release an R version to the theaters, and let people watch whatever version they are most comfortable with on DVD. It liberates movie makers and movie watchers alike. So I do hope this idea isn't subject to Raging Lawyer Hordes. Too many good ideas fall under their onslaught.
If anybody thinks that this will be enough to drag the Amish kicking and screaming into the 21st century, that person is sorely mistaken.
Next up, a horse-drawn buggy with a TV/VCR combo to keep the kids in the back seat quiet.
Oh, hello, doctor. Is it time for my medication already? Keyboard? What keyboard?
1) Because it's been tested more thoroughly. They don't want any nasty surprises, and pushing the customers towards an older, safer product is therefore a good thing.
2) Once XP has been thoroughly tested/debugged/patched, they can send out their salesmen to explain/make up critical reasons to upgrade. This will make them more money.
Any questions?
Great idea. A computer with a fan belt. Next they'll be asking that the I/O streams be governed by cam shafts.