The cool thing about this is that although I always thought that Babbage was a crackpot with a good idea that he was actually Lucasian professor at Cambridge. Holding the same position that Isaac Newton and now Stephen Hawking hold.
I always knew that he demonstrated the mouse in 1968 but I didn't know he had demonstrated such a complete system!
I used to think that Xerox PARC had done a lot of innovating to come up with the Alto in the early 70's but Doug's stuff at SRI seems to have beaten them to the punch.
He [Heinlein] was apparently a bit put out to discover them being considered a sexual novelty for sleazy motels
He was??? That's surprising, because if there is any theme that runs throughout most of his science fiction its SEX (e.g. Friday, Stranger from a strange land, I shall fear no evil, To sail beyond the sunset, etc etc etc).
Actually, this is probably correct. I use Outlook 2000 from home and when I send email to people who don't have Outlook but some generic email program like PINE or Netscape Mail they get an attachment.
I know this only because I've received several emails where people tell me that they couldn't read the attachment I sent them...and I think to myself - what attachment??? That's right, I didn't send an attachment but the encoded part of the mail message is getting stripped out somehow and ends up as those generic attachments which people can't read.
Humans are machines albeit very sophisticated ones. Problem is people often try to attach consciousness to software that is intelligent. I believe that in order to have a conscious machine you'd have to have special hardware that has whatever special properties the human brain has.
Short of the special hardware all you'd have is a very intelligent software program but it wouldn't be conscious.
but people have also tried to make cars do everything practically. I remember a news story about 15 years ago that covered a guy who had retrofitted his classic car (circa 50') with a bar, kitchen, shower (you basically hung off the side of the car while it was moving I think!), and many other items that I can't remember. No, there was no internet or GPS that car didn't have any of that new fangled stuff...
It looks like Thau and Taylor have posted an interesting critique of this issue. I think that one of their main points is that the plaintiffs case makes accessing copyrighted works after the copyright expires impossible thus making the technology illegal???
I think another point (and it is hard to read this legalese!) they make is that the copyright law and in particular the DMCA was not supposed to give copyright holders a stranglehold on access to copyrighted works so long as the "authorized user" had a legitimately acquired DVD disc. In other words, I don't think the MPAA can control the access to DVD. This makes it seem like their practice of giving a license to companies to make "authorized players" is illegal because they should be able to make players for legimate copies of DVD without a license.
A guy in a dress shirt with glasses approaches a scruffy looking guy: "Hey! The scruffy beard, the long suspenders, the sandals...you're one of those UNIX guys..."
The scruffy guy in suspenders responds: "Here's a nickel kid. Go get yourself a real computer."
I remember reading in some Scientific American or some such magazine that researchers had determined that Einstein had a much higher percentage of Glial cells in his brain than does the average population. I believe I have heard similar things in the last couple of years.
As for Einstein's brilliance. I think he truly was an intuitive genius having published five ground breaking papers in 1905 and devising SR and GR. Not to mention making an important argument in QM in the form of the EPR paradox which led John Bell to try to prove Einstein right though Bell ended up showing that QM is weird after all. He did however lack some advanced mathematical skills otherwise he wouldn't have required having mathematical assistants throughout his career.
Muon-Catalyzed Fusion and the Princeton Fusion FAQ
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Fusion Via Persuasion
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· Score: 2
The first time I heard of this type of fusion was when I visited a friend of a friend who is a physicist. He is working on cold fusion but showed me a printout of the Princeton fusion FAQ. I read pretty much most of it and it indicated that there was another form of cold fusion, namely this muon-catalyzed one. I asked him about it and he said that it went nowhere because the muons were extremely short lived. I think this type of fusion was proposed by Enrico Fermi.
Anyway I tried to find the Princeton Fusion FAQ but all I could find was a snippet of it that someone who does Q&A posted at Princeton.
Yes someone please repost this story on the front page! I found it completely by accident.
I don't agree that copyrights and patents should be made equivalent. After all, patents protect something that is an invention of some sort whereas copyrights protect a document of some sort. They should not be equated. No one is hurt if something is copyrighted for several hundred years whereas society could be setback/hurt if a patent should last so long since it is a useful invention.
I can think of one reason why copyrights might be made to last so long and that is that it could be possible that the author does not make any money from their creation and it may take some time after they died for any significant profits to appear. This money would obviously benefit his/her heirs. Why should the author's children be robbed of that? If you want an example, consider Edgar Allan Poe. He died pretty much broke. Consider how wealthy his heirs would be if their copyright rights had been protected as well back in the 19th century.
As for patents...I think the whole system is completely out of whack. The USPTO seems to be giving a patent to any tom, dick and harry who requests one regardless of the fact that the invention is obvious or trivial. I mean how long would it take to conceptualize the design of a system to do this international trade thing? What a couple of minutes? It's trivial.
Btw, I'm about to file my patent on a novel method of transportation involving a cluster of solid-phase matter objects isomorphic to a Poincare representation of a hyperbolic space (Hint: the wheel).
Re:Is LEGO a proprietary standard?
on
The LEGO Desk
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· Score: 1
Check some articles about this in Wired and Scientific American. They are about Tour and Reed. It talks about their plan on developing molecular computers. Sounds like they are very close to coming up with transistors but have quite a ways to go to come up with wiring!
Slashdot Mirror
The cool thing about this is that although I always thought that Babbage was a crackpot with a good idea that he was actually Lucasian professor at Cambridge. Holding the same position that Isaac Newton and now Stephen Hawking hold.
I used to think that Xerox PARC had done a lot of innovating to come up with the Alto in the early 70's but Doug's stuff at SRI seems to have beaten them to the punch.
He was??? That's surprising, because if there is any theme that runs throughout most of his science fiction its SEX (e.g. Friday, Stranger from a strange land, I shall fear no evil, To sail beyond the sunset, etc etc etc).
I know this only because I've received several emails where people tell me that they couldn't read the attachment I sent them...and I think to myself - what attachment??? That's right, I didn't send an attachment but the encoded part of the mail message is getting stripped out somehow and ends up as those generic attachments which people can't read.
3.14159 26 53 58 979 32 38 46 26
I guess for me it starts out with the first 6 digits and progresses mostly in groups of two.
1. It's a dumb idea to scan barcodes just to go to a web page.
2. The thing is really really hard to get to install.
3. It doesn't even work right when installed.
Yep, mine is still in the box and staying there.
Short of the special hardware all you'd have is a very intelligent software program but it wouldn't be conscious.
but people have also tried to make cars do everything practically. I remember a news story about 15 years ago that covered a guy who had retrofitted his classic car (circa 50') with a bar, kitchen, shower (you basically hung off the side of the car while it was moving I think!), and many other items that I can't remember. No, there was no internet or GPS that car didn't have any of that new fangled stuff...
I think another point (and it is hard to read this legalese!) they make is that the copyright law and in particular the DMCA was not supposed to give copyright holders a stranglehold on access to copyrighted works so long as the "authorized user" had a legitimately acquired DVD disc. In other words, I don't think the MPAA can control the access to DVD. This makes it seem like their practice of giving a license to companies to make "authorized players" is illegal because they should be able to make players for legimate copies of DVD without a license.
A guy in a dress shirt with glasses approaches a scruffy looking guy: "Hey! The scruffy beard, the long suspenders, the sandals...you're one of those UNIX guys..."
The scruffy guy in suspenders responds: "Here's a nickel kid. Go get yourself a real computer."
hee hee hee...
Oh, I found a link about Einstein's glial cells.
As for Einstein's brilliance. I think he truly was an intuitive genius having published five ground breaking papers in 1905 and devising SR and GR. Not to mention making an important argument in QM in the form of the EPR paradox which led John Bell to try to prove Einstein right though Bell ended up showing that QM is weird after all. He did however lack some advanced mathematical skills otherwise he wouldn't have required having mathematical assistants throughout his career.
Anyway I tried to find the Princeton Fusion FAQ but all I could find was a snippet of it that someone who does Q&A posted at Princeton.
Yes someone please repost this story on the front page! I found it completely by accident.
I can think of one reason why copyrights might be made to last so long and that is that it could be possible that the author does not make any money from their creation and it may take some time after they died for any significant profits to appear. This money would obviously benefit his/her heirs. Why should the author's children be robbed of that? If you want an example, consider Edgar Allan Poe. He died pretty much broke. Consider how wealthy his heirs would be if their copyright rights had been protected as well back in the 19th century.
As for patents...I think the whole system is completely out of whack. The USPTO seems to be giving a patent to any tom, dick and harry who requests one regardless of the fact that the invention is obvious or trivial. I mean how long would it take to conceptualize the design of a system to do this international trade thing? What a couple of minutes? It's trivial.
Btw, I'm about to file my patent on a novel method of transportation involving a cluster of solid-phase matter objects isomorphic to a Poincare representation of a hyperbolic space (Hint: the wheel).
I can just see it now! Open-Source LEGO or OSL!
Anyone remember the working computer that Danny Hillis made using Tinker Toys? I wonder if you could build a computer with LEGOs?
Check some articles about this in Wired and Scientific American. They are about Tour and Reed. It talks about their plan on developing molecular computers. Sounds like they are very close to coming up with transistors but have quite a ways to go to come up with wiring!