One of the important points made in the article is that security in U.S.
airports and on U.S. airplanes before the bombing was lax compared to the
security in Europe.
The Economist article does not mention that the Bush Administration
in the U.S. had recently increased its support for the Israeli government
and therefore also Israeli violence. The Clinton administration, in contrast,
was more careful not to do things which could be interpreted as an incitement
to violence.
It is amazing to me that "intelligence" authorities claim that they did not
have any idea that there would be an attack like this. Below is a link to an
album cover from a band called "The Coup". It is black American "Party Music".
The album was sold long before today's bombing. The album cover shows both
towers of the World Trade Center in New York in flames:
Commentators on three of the largest U.S. TV networks, NBC, CBS, and
ABC, have made comments that assume without debate that the U.S. will engage
in military action in retaliation. One U.S. senator said on TV that the
U.S. response should be comparable to the U.S. response to the Japanese
bombing of Pearl Harbor. The U.S. response at the time of Pearl Harbor
was to be the only country that has ever used nuclear weapons, causing
genetic damage that continued long after Japan became a favored trading
partner of the U.S.
Under the stress of conflict, people show how they truly think. It
has always annoyed me that people who call themselves Christian often reveal
that they don't really believe in the important messages of Christianity, and
that they don't even understand those messages.
Basically, Jesus Christ's idea of not returning violence with violence
means that we can protect ourselves, but that any response must be the
true minimum necessary to achieve security. This is a theory that can be
recommended even to the majority of people in the world who are not Christian.
The theory seems to fit the facts. The facts seem to be that violence always
has severely negative side-effects that overwhelm any effect that might
be seen as positive.
This is my reply to the many people who are recommending violence as
an answer to violence:
Do you have any thought that violence in retaliation might be a mistake,
and might just invite further violence?
The U.S. government (not necessarily the U.S. people) has a history of
thinking that violence is the answer. The U.S. killed 2,100,000 people in
Vietnam and maybe 150,000 people in Iraq. The U.S. has bombed 14 countries in
30 years, killing a roughly estimated 3,000,000 people.
These people had mothers and fathers, friends and families and wives.
Most of the citizens of the U.S. had, and have, no idea of the beliefs
of the people that their government killed. Most people in the U.S. cannot
even locate the countries the U.S. government bombed on a map of the world.
No matter how violent a country is, or how many people a violent country
kills, there is still an inexhaustible supply of people in other countries
who also want to engage in violence. Violence can be unending. Do you want
that?
No matter how angry you are, there are thousands of people who are more
angry than you. Do you want them to attack you?
The Bush administration recently increased U.S. support for the violence
of the Israelis. This was sure to make the people being killed by the Israelis
unhappy. Do you find it surprising that some of them are motivated to violence
also?
There are many countries where people are severely distressed by Israeli
violence. Recently there was a TV news story about street violence in which
Israelis were killed. The Israeli counter-attack was shown on TV: A helicopter
fired rockets at a building, causing huge explosions. It is not important in
this instance whether the Israelis are the aggressors. What is important is
that a significant number of people think they are the aggressors.
The problems between the Jews and the Arabs have existed for 3,300
years. The Jews say that they are the "chosen people" of God. The Jews say
that Arabs are descended from an illegitimate child of their tribal founder,
Abraham, and a slave girl.
It is not difficult to understand the thoughts of the Arabs. It is not
difficult to understand that it is annoying to live next to a group of
people who claim that they are superior, and that Arabs are inferior. It
is not difficult to understand that it is annoying to live near people
who claim that you are a descendent of a bastard and that God doesn't like
you as much.
It is also not difficult to understand that the constant claims of the Jews
of superiority over everyone else (including people of European descent like
me) is mentally de-centering to Arabs who happen to be psychologically
conflicted. Mentally de-centered people engage in violence. It's that simple.
Does the U.S. really have a place in a dispute that began 3,100 years
before the founding of the country? How many people here really understand
this dispute? What percentage of the citizens of the U.S. can even find
Israel on a map of the world? I think the percentage is low.
I find the arrogance of my Jewish friends annoying, too. However, there
are many differences between myself and the terrorists. I am less conflicted.
I am better educated. It doesn't matter to me what other people have been
saying for thousands of years; I don't believe Jews actually are superior.
I don't live in an area where I am at risk of being killed by Israelis.
I am not Arab, so I am not the target of the strongest claims of Jews that
they are superior.
Violence is caused by mentally de-centered people. Being violent makes
mentally de-centered people even more mentally de-centered. That's why
violence is not a good answer to violence. Prevention is a good answer.
Better understanding is a good answer. Being charitable long before any
problems begin occurring is a good answer. But violence is not a good answer
to violence.
The U.S. government has a history of thinking that violence is the answer. The U.S. government killed 2,100,000 people in Vietnam and maybe 150,000 people in Iraq. The U.S. has bombed 14
countries in 30 years, killing a roughly estimated 3,000,000 people. None of the people who were killed were in any way directly threatening the U.S.
First, don't be upset with what I said. It is just my opinion.
I am only expressing the opinion that the human brain in far, far more powerful than people commonly think. Therefore "AI" is further in the future than the proponents say.
You are recommending violence as an answer to violence.
Do you have any thought that this might be a mistake, and just invite further violence?
The U.S. government has a history of thinking that violence is the answer. The U.S. killed 2,100,000 people in Vietnam and maybe 150,000 people in Iraq.
The Bush administration recently increased U.S. support for the violence of the Israelis.
No matter how violent a country is, there is still an inexhaustible supply of people in other countries who also want to engage in violence. Violence can be unending. Do you want that?
No matter how angry you are, there are thousands of people who are more angry than you. Do you want them to attack you?
Generally, I find that people who complain about a particular Microsoft abuse
don't know all the facts. If they did know all the facts, they would realize
that the situation is worse than it first appeared.
However, coverage of Microsoft is beginning
to be more complete. See Brian Livingston's column, Microsoft Passport Cracked for a few of the shortcomings of
Microsoft's Passport authentication scheme, which, surprise, benefits mostly
Microsoft,
and puts the user at very serious risk.
Knowledgeable people realize that Microsoft is abusive. But I don't think
there is anyone who knows the full extent of the abuse. The first step in
deciding judicial remedies should be to write down all the abuses in one
place. The result would be a large book. Just the Court's
Findings of Fact in the Microsoft anti-trust case lists 207 pages of
descriptions of abuses. There are some intense abuses listed, but what
surprised me was that they were not the abuses I knew.
In my opinion, one of the most important judicial remedies is that Microsoft
should be required to publish FULL descriptions of its file formats. Then
other office software would be able to compete, for example. A full
description would include descriptions of all the ways Microsoft's software
does not follow the intended design, that is, descriptions of the bugs.
The name is not DivX, it is DivX wink.
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I didn't understand what you said when I first read it. The name is not DivX, it is DivX wink.
So, what can be done about this? It isn't just the DivX project. Many open
source projects pick a foolish name. Most projects have home pages that are
incomprehensible unless you are one of the project members.
Marketing is just the planning of communication. Every project needs to communicate. There is a need for a marketing sub-project in every project.
I study the programming of the human brain. I have an opinion that is quite different than yours.
Most people in the U.S., and most people in the other cultures I've studied, believe that they are less intelligent and less mentally capable than they potentially are. Since they have a limited idea of their own brains, they make a mistake when they try to guess how easy it would be for a computer to duplicate human mental ability.
It is foolish to make a joke that few understand.
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jitenpai, it was a big mistake. I have experience with marketing, and I often marvel at how badly programming projects are marketed. Programmers are usually not skilled communicators, and this often costs them enormously. In the present instance, a considerable amount of work is necessary to tell people that the new business is not the old one that they hated.
It is foolish to make a joke that only a few people will understand, and that will confuse most people.
"AI" is an unusual deception. Normally things that are artificial are presented as genuine. Artificial Intelligence proponents adopt the opposite approach. They sell something that is genuine and call it artificial.
The computer programs called AI represent the real intelligence of the programmers who wrote them.
There are two technologies called DIVX.
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The original story should have said that there are two technologies called DIVX. The first is dead. The people who made the video compression software decided to re-use the name, thereby causing continual confusion.
It is difficult to find a group of people less skilfull in marketing than programmers, I think.
Re:The complexity in not in the display cells.
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"E-paper, on the other hand, is a single layer of circuits on plastic. The process of making e-paper is is very different than the highly expensive process of making an lcd screen."
Yes. However, there seems to me to be a lie in this. Actual e-paper display panels will, in practice, be rigid and complicated because of all the transistors and interconnects involved.
LCD displays are difficult to make, not because laying down layers of liquid crystal is difficult, but because the layers must be integrated with transistors. Addressing pixels separately is a bear of a problem. Having simple display cells reduces the complexity of only the element that was already quite simple.
It seems to me that attaining flexibility is also a huge problem. Flexible things achieve flexibility by being alloewed to pull themselves apart internally. Only things that are very thin achieve durability while being flexed.
I don't see how e-paper can be e-paper. I think that, for the forseeable future, "e-paper" will always be "rigid black-and-white display panel in a world that increasingly demands color".
That's where I see the lie. I think the developers of "e-paper" know what I've said here. A usable product is a lot further away than they are implying. Also, it is likely that, by the time e-paper is reduced in overall cost, color LCD panels will be reduced in cost, also.
Anyone interested in the activities of secret U.S. agencies may have been interested in a segment on the CBS show "60 Minutes" about the involvement of former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in the killing of Chilean General Rene Schneider. The show aired this Sunday, September 9, 2001. General Schneider was a strong supporter of democracy.
We tend to hear about the activities of secret U.S. government agencies about 30 years after they occur. What are they doing now?
Here are links to information about U.S. interference with democracy in Chile:
'As a rule, I will *never* work for any organization where project
management is in the hands of people who are not technically current.'
By far, the biggest problems in technically-oriented companies are the
non-technically-oriented managers. They are generally making far more money
than they would at a non-technical company. They are willing to do anything to
keep their jobs, including making life miserable for everyone else.
The best acting I have ever seen was not in a Hollywood movie. The best acting
I have ever seen was by a manager trying to make everyone believe that he
could manage without thorough understanding.
When they sink their companies, they are generally able to get another job,
because the people who hire them are faking it, too.
The dot-coms failed because they hired good actors and not knowledgeable
people. The dot-coms did not fail because of highly complex situations that
could not be understood in advance. They failed because they did extremely
foolish things.
The use of non-technical managers will continue as long as there are investors
who will put money into something they don't understand.
You probably think that your cat is just a normal cat. However, I see right here in your records that your cat is a number 420-3390JX listening device.
*grin*
There is a real issue in this discussion, though: Secrecy corrupts.
Using a Matrox card as an example was a mistake.
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You are right. Using a Matrox card as an example was a mistake.
It has been reported many times that the budgets of the secret agencies of
the
U.S. government are hidden in appropriations for other items. You and I
certainly have no way of knowing how much money is spent.
The NSA is an agency that is allowed to lie. The secret agencies of the U.S.
government are allowed to put mis-information in U.S. newspapers. How
can you
determine when they are telling the truth? I don't think you can.
There are no laws that effectively govern secret agencies, because what they
do is secret. No one can know whether they lived by the law.
The NSA spies on everyone, you, me, and everyone in the world. This is an
issue for everyone, not just U.S. citizens. The NSA is an agency that respects
no boundaries. The NSA is part of a worldwide secret police force. It is
an example of the U.S. emphasis on being adversarial rather than
cooperating.
The result has been extremely expensive and devastating. The U.S. helped
Saddam Hussein become strong, then killed 150,000 Iraqis when he became
too strong.
We often hear about secret activities of the U.S. government after it is too
late to object. The U.S. supported the killing of president Mossadegh of Iran,
and supported an extremely weak man, the Shah. (See Iran
1953: Making it safe for the King of Kings), for example.) This
provoked a
revolution in Iran that was hostile to the U.S. Citizens of the U.S. were kept
hostage. The U.S. secret agencies' secret answer to the anti-U.S. sentiment
was to support Saddam Hussein of Iraq against Iran.
When executives do things openly they make lots of mistakes, and are
sometimes held accountable, usually in a very peaceful way, and often by
their own staffs. When executives do things in secret, there is little
accountability, and the mistakes can become huge.
Not only did the U.S. kill 150,000 Iraqis, the U.S. killed more than 2,000,000
Vietnamese during its war in Vietnam. As I said in an earlier post, the U.S.
has invaded 13 countries in the last 30 years.
Invading countries and killing the residents and destroying their property is
not a way of relating I consider socially skilled. Why do the citizens of one
country think they can kill the citizens of another? If killing is the answer,
can't the U.S. ask a better question?
The interference in the affairs of other countries by the secret U.S. agencies
has prompted some people to retaliate. These people who retaliate are called
"terrorists" in the U.S. The terrorists make everyone in the U.S. less safe.
So, U.S. citizens have, in some ways, gotten less security for the money that
they spent.
The violent attitude has spread to the internal police forces in the U.S. When
some religious fanatics decided to do stupid things in Waco, Texas, the U.S.
government responded by bringing in very violent-minded people. The
result was death.
There were people who didn't like the activities of the U.S. police forces in
Waco. There were people who were psychologically de-centered by these
activities. One of them bombed a U.S. government building in Oklahoma. So
then the U.S. government killed him.
Secrecy encourages people not to trust. Violence encourages violence.
Secrecy in government does not work. It should be minimized or eliminated.
The main issue here is not whether the NSA sometimes does terrible things,
or whether one country should maintain secret police forces (the NSA and
CIA and others) in all the other countries. The issue is that we have no way
of knowing what secret agencies do. When what they do is wrong, they
don't even need to hide their mistakes, because everything is already secret.
There in no intent in this to claim that people in the U.S. are better or
worse than people anywhere. The main point is only that huge amounts of
money combined with secrecy result in huge mistakes.
The complexity in not in the display cells.
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Yes, but the complexity is in getting the digital information to the display cells, not in the display cells themselves.
This is backwards. The issue is not that the people who run for office don't
understand technology. The issue is that, in fact, we can know that the NSA
does not receive effective oversight from the senators and congressmen and
women. We can know this because we know that none of them are technically
knowledgeable.
These considerations are important to everyone on the world, because the NSA
spies on everyone in the world. This is NOT just an issue for people in the
U.S.
I presume you are Irish or Scottish or British. If your country had a secret technical agency, it would not receive any
better oversight than in the U.S. There are politicians, and there are people who are technically knowledgeable, but there are no politicians who are technically knowledgeable.
Secrecy is imcompatible with democracy. The U.S. must find some way of relating to
the world besides being sneaky.
One problem with secrecy is that the secret agencies get out of control very
quickly. Remember, the NSA spies on YOU. Probably you aren't doing anything that the NSA finds interesting. But the NSA does listen to your telephone conversations.
I would be very happy to believe that the NSA is doing good work if I had evidence of that. But the point is, I don't know if they are, and you don't either, and neither of us can gather accurate information.
Definition of a terrorist: The other country's CIA.
The U.S. has bombed 13 countries in the past 30 years. I consider this evidence of a lack of social skills in relating to other people. The system, whatever it is, isn't working, and you and I don't have any way of discovering why, or changing anything. Our role is only to pay.
De-serializers require lots of transistors.
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Interesting.
However, serializers and de-serializers require lots of transisters. I don't
think they can be reliably embedded in a flexible medium, and I don't think
they can be cheap. Also, there are still lots of wires.
Digital paper is not feasible at present, I think. The display cells are
available, but the electronics is a huge challenge. It is the electronics that is the challenge, not the display cells.
I think the promoters of
this technology know that they cannot deliver without a huge amount of
expensive additional research. They seem to be hiding that fact from people who are less knowledgeable. It's like the dot-com frauds; people taking advantage of the lesser knowledge of other people.
My original post did not make clear that I think that digital paper is, effectively, a lie.
The electronics necessary to address the pixels is of the kind used with LCD panels used in laptop computers. This electronics has been available for several years, so it is somewhat mature. It is VERY expensive. A large part of the cost of a laptop is the cost of the LCD panel.
It is true that electronics to drive a black-and-white display would be less complex. But it is still a very expensive problem to solve, especially if it is expected to be flexible.
My guess is that the companies are trying to get funding. My guess is that they know that the electronics is very expensive, and not likely to come down in price without a HUGE amount of additional research. To me, this seems to be a
cover-up of the kind we have seen so often recently in connection with the dot-coms. The companies seem to me to be taking advantage of the lack of technical knowledge on the part of the investors.
All true, but each pixel must be separately connected. Those connections must be cheap, durable, and flexible. When I have tried to design something like that, I have thought that it was a very difficult problem.
My use of a video card as an example in my comment above was unfortunate, because it led readers away from my main point.
Slashdot Mirror
I sent the following letter to my friends:
______________________
Subject: What should be the response to violence?
September 11, 2001
Everyone,
As is often the case, the Economist seems to have the best story: America under Attack
Also see The Economist front page
One of the important points made in the article is that security in U.S. airports and on U.S. airplanes before the bombing was lax compared to the security in Europe.
The Economist article does not mention that the Bush Administration in the U.S. had recently increased its support for the Israeli government and therefore also Israeli violence. The Clinton administration, in contrast, was more careful not to do things which could be interpreted as an incitement to violence.
It is amazing to me that "intelligence" authorities claim that they did not have any idea that there would be an attack like this. Below is a link to an album cover from a band called "The Coup". It is black American "Party Music". The album was sold long before today's bombing. The album cover shows both towers of the World Trade Center in New York in flames:
The Coup -- Party Music, album cover shows the towers burning.
Commentators on three of the largest U.S. TV networks, NBC, CBS, and ABC, have made comments that assume without debate that the U.S. will engage in military action in retaliation. One U.S. senator said on TV that the U.S. response should be comparable to the U.S. response to the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor. The U.S. response at the time of Pearl Harbor was to be the only country that has ever used nuclear weapons, causing genetic damage that continued long after Japan became a favored trading partner of the U.S.
Under the stress of conflict, people show how they truly think. It has always annoyed me that people who call themselves Christian often reveal that they don't really believe in the important messages of Christianity, and that they don't even understand those messages.
Basically, Jesus Christ's idea of not returning violence with violence means that we can protect ourselves, but that any response must be the true minimum necessary to achieve security. This is a theory that can be recommended even to the majority of people in the world who are not Christian. The theory seems to fit the facts. The facts seem to be that violence always has severely negative side-effects that overwhelm any effect that might be seen as positive.
This is my reply to the many people who are recommending violence as an answer to violence:
Do you have any thought that violence in retaliation might be a mistake, and might just invite further violence?
The U.S. government (not necessarily the U.S. people) has a history of thinking that violence is the answer. The U.S. killed 2,100,000 people in Vietnam and maybe 150,000 people in Iraq. The U.S. has bombed 14 countries in 30 years, killing a roughly estimated 3,000,000 people.
These people had mothers and fathers, friends and families and wives. Most of the citizens of the U.S. had, and have, no idea of the beliefs of the people that their government killed. Most people in the U.S. cannot even locate the countries the U.S. government bombed on a map of the world.
No matter how violent a country is, or how many people a violent country kills, there is still an inexhaustible supply of people in other countries who also want to engage in violence. Violence can be unending. Do you want that?
No matter how angry you are, there are thousands of people who are more angry than you. Do you want them to attack you?
The Bush administration recently increased U.S. support for the violence of the Israelis. This was sure to make the people being killed by the Israelis unhappy. Do you find it surprising that some of them are motivated to violence also?
There are many countries where people are severely distressed by Israeli violence. Recently there was a TV news story about street violence in which Israelis were killed. The Israeli counter-attack was shown on TV: A helicopter fired rockets at a building, causing huge explosions. It is not important in this instance whether the Israelis are the aggressors. What is important is that a significant number of people think they are the aggressors.
The problems between the Jews and the Arabs have existed for 3,300 years. The Jews say that they are the "chosen people" of God. The Jews say that Arabs are descended from an illegitimate child of their tribal founder, Abraham, and a slave girl.
It is not difficult to understand the thoughts of the Arabs. It is not difficult to understand that it is annoying to live next to a group of people who claim that they are superior, and that Arabs are inferior. It is not difficult to understand that it is annoying to live near people who claim that you are a descendent of a bastard and that God doesn't like you as much.
It is also not difficult to understand that the constant claims of the Jews of superiority over everyone else (including people of European descent like me) is mentally de-centering to Arabs who happen to be psychologically conflicted. Mentally de-centered people engage in violence. It's that simple.
Does the U.S. really have a place in a dispute that began 3,100 years before the founding of the country? How many people here really understand this dispute? What percentage of the citizens of the U.S. can even find Israel on a map of the world? I think the percentage is low.
I find the arrogance of my Jewish friends annoying, too. However, there are many differences between myself and the terrorists. I am less conflicted. I am better educated. It doesn't matter to me what other people have been saying for thousands of years; I don't believe Jews actually are superior. I don't live in an area where I am at risk of being killed by Israelis. I am not Arab, so I am not the target of the strongest claims of Jews that they are superior.
Violence is caused by mentally de-centered people. Being violent makes mentally de-centered people even more mentally de-centered. That's why violence is not a good answer to violence. Prevention is a good answer. Better understanding is a good answer. Being charitable long before any problems begin occurring is a good answer. But violence is not a good answer to violence.
Regards,
Michael Jennings
The U.S. government has a history of thinking that violence is the answer. The U.S. government killed 2,100,000 people in Vietnam and maybe 150,000 people in Iraq. The U.S. has bombed 14 countries in 30 years, killing a roughly estimated 3,000,000 people. None of the people who were killed were in any way directly threatening the U.S.
First, don't be upset with what I said. It is just my opinion.
I am only expressing the opinion that the human brain in far, far more powerful than people commonly think. Therefore "AI" is further in the future than the proponents say.
You are recommending violence as an answer to violence.
Do you have any thought that this might be a mistake, and just invite further violence?
The U.S. government has a history of thinking that violence is the answer. The U.S. killed 2,100,000 people in Vietnam and maybe 150,000 people in Iraq.
The Bush administration recently increased U.S. support for the violence of the Israelis.
No matter how violent a country is, there is still an inexhaustible supply of people in other countries who also want to engage in violence. Violence can be unending. Do you want that?
No matter how angry you are, there are thousands of people who are more angry than you. Do you want them to attack you?
Generally, I find that people who complain about a particular Microsoft abuse don't know all the facts. If they did know all the facts, they would realize that the situation is worse than it first appeared.
However, coverage of Microsoft is beginning to be more complete. See Brian Livingston's column, Microsoft Passport Cracked for a few of the shortcomings of Microsoft's Passport authentication scheme, which, surprise, benefits mostly Microsoft, and puts the user at very serious risk.
Knowledgeable people realize that Microsoft is abusive. But I don't think there is anyone who knows the full extent of the abuse. The first step in deciding judicial remedies should be to write down all the abuses in one place. The result would be a large book. Just the Court's Findings of Fact in the Microsoft anti-trust case lists 207 pages of descriptions of abuses. There are some intense abuses listed, but what surprised me was that they were not the abuses I knew.
In my opinion, one of the most important judicial remedies is that Microsoft should be required to publish FULL descriptions of its file formats. Then other office software would be able to compete, for example. A full description would include descriptions of all the ways Microsoft's software does not follow the intended design, that is, descriptions of the bugs.
I didn't understand what you said when I first read it. The name is not DivX, it is DivX wink.
So, what can be done about this? It isn't just the DivX project. Many open source projects pick a foolish name. Most projects have home pages that are incomprehensible unless you are one of the project members.
Marketing is just the planning of communication. Every project needs to communicate. There is a need for a marketing sub-project in every project.
I study the programming of the human brain. I have an opinion that is quite different than yours.
Most people in the U.S., and most people in the other cultures I've studied, believe that they are less intelligent and less mentally capable than they potentially are. Since they have a limited idea of their own brains, they make a mistake when they try to guess how easy it would be for a computer to duplicate human mental ability.
jitenpai, it was a big mistake. I have experience with marketing, and I often marvel at how badly programming projects are marketed. Programmers are usually not skilled communicators, and this often costs them enormously. In the present instance, a considerable amount of work is necessary to tell people that the new business is not the old one that they hated.
It is foolish to make a joke that only a few people will understand, and that will confuse most people.
"AI" is an unusual deception. Normally things that are artificial are presented as genuine. Artificial Intelligence proponents adopt the opposite approach. They sell something that is genuine and call it artificial.
The computer programs called AI represent the real intelligence of the programmers who wrote them.
The original story should have said that there are two technologies called DIVX. The first is dead. The people who made the video compression software decided to re-use the name, thereby causing continual confusion.
It is difficult to find a group of people less skilfull in marketing than programmers, I think.
"E-paper, on the other hand, is a single layer of circuits on plastic. The process of making e-paper is is very different than the highly expensive process of making an lcd screen."
Yes. However, there seems to me to be a lie in this. Actual e-paper display panels will, in practice, be rigid and complicated because of all the transistors and interconnects involved.
LCD displays are difficult to make, not because laying down layers of liquid crystal is difficult, but because the layers must be integrated with transistors. Addressing pixels separately is a bear of a problem. Having simple display cells reduces the complexity of only the element that was already quite simple.
It seems to me that attaining flexibility is also a huge problem. Flexible things achieve flexibility by being alloewed to pull themselves apart internally. Only things that are very thin achieve durability while being flexed.
I don't see how e-paper can be e-paper. I think that, for the forseeable future, "e-paper" will always be "rigid black-and-white display panel in a world that increasingly demands color".
That's where I see the lie. I think the developers of "e-paper" know what I've said here. A usable product is a lot further away than they are implying. Also, it is likely that, by the time e-paper is reduced in overall cost, color LCD panels will be reduced in cost, also.
Anyone interested in the activities of secret U.S. agencies may have been interested in a segment on the CBS show "60 Minutes" about the involvement of former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in the killing of Chilean General Rene Schneider. The show aired this Sunday, September 9, 2001. General Schneider was a strong supporter of democracy.
We tend to hear about the activities of secret U.S. government agencies about 30 years after they occur. What are they doing now?
Here are links to information about U.S. interference with democracy in Chile:
National Security Archive Chile Documentation Project
PBS News Hour: "... evidence of a policy to undermine democracy in Chile and to support dictatorship there"
Hinchey Report, CIA Activities in Chile
'As a rule, I will *never* work for any organization where project management is in the hands of people who are not technically current.'
By far, the biggest problems in technically-oriented companies are the non-technically-oriented managers. They are generally making far more money than they would at a non-technical company. They are willing to do anything to keep their jobs, including making life miserable for everyone else.
The best acting I have ever seen was not in a Hollywood movie. The best acting I have ever seen was by a manager trying to make everyone believe that he could manage without thorough understanding.
When they sink their companies, they are generally able to get another job, because the people who hire them are faking it, too.
The dot-coms failed because they hired good actors and not knowledgeable people. The dot-coms did not fail because of highly complex situations that could not be understood in advance. They failed because they did extremely foolish things.
The use of non-technical managers will continue as long as there are investors who will put money into something they don't understand.
You probably think that your cat is just a normal cat. However, I see right here in your records that your cat is a number 420-3390JX listening device.
*grin*
There is a real issue in this discussion, though: Secrecy corrupts.
You are right. Using a Matrox card as an example was a mistake.
It has been reported many times that the budgets of the secret agencies of the U.S. government are hidden in appropriations for other items. You and I certainly have no way of knowing how much money is spent.
The NSA is an agency that is allowed to lie. The secret agencies of the U.S. government are allowed to put mis-information in U.S. newspapers. How can you determine when they are telling the truth? I don't think you can.
There are no laws that effectively govern secret agencies, because what they do is secret. No one can know whether they lived by the law.
The NSA spies on everyone, you, me, and everyone in the world. This is an issue for everyone, not just U.S. citizens. The NSA is an agency that respects no boundaries. The NSA is part of a worldwide secret police force. It is an example of the U.S. emphasis on being adversarial rather than cooperating.
The result has been extremely expensive and devastating. The U.S. helped Saddam Hussein become strong, then killed 150,000 Iraqis when he became too strong.
We often hear about secret activities of the U.S. government after it is too late to object. The U.S. supported the killing of president Mossadegh of Iran, and supported an extremely weak man, the Shah. (See Iran 1953: Making it safe for the King of Kings), for example.) This provoked a revolution in Iran that was hostile to the U.S. Citizens of the U.S. were kept hostage. The U.S. secret agencies' secret answer to the anti-U.S. sentiment was to support Saddam Hussein of Iraq against Iran.
When executives do things openly they make lots of mistakes, and are sometimes held accountable, usually in a very peaceful way, and often by their own staffs. When executives do things in secret, there is little accountability, and the mistakes can become huge.
Not only did the U.S. kill 150,000 Iraqis, the U.S. killed more than 2,000,000 Vietnamese during its war in Vietnam. As I said in an earlier post, the U.S. has invaded 13 countries in the last 30 years.
Invading countries and killing the residents and destroying their property is not a way of relating I consider socially skilled. Why do the citizens of one country think they can kill the citizens of another? If killing is the answer, can't the U.S. ask a better question?
The interference in the affairs of other countries by the secret U.S. agencies has prompted some people to retaliate. These people who retaliate are called "terrorists" in the U.S. The terrorists make everyone in the U.S. less safe. So, U.S. citizens have, in some ways, gotten less security for the money that they spent.
The violent attitude has spread to the internal police forces in the U.S. When some religious fanatics decided to do stupid things in Waco, Texas, the U.S. government responded by bringing in very violent-minded people. The result was death.
There were people who didn't like the activities of the U.S. police forces in Waco. There were people who were psychologically de-centered by these activities. One of them bombed a U.S. government building in Oklahoma. So then the U.S. government killed him.
Secrecy encourages people not to trust. Violence encourages violence.
Secrecy in government does not work. It should be minimized or eliminated. The main issue here is not whether the NSA sometimes does terrible things, or whether one country should maintain secret police forces (the NSA and CIA and others) in all the other countries. The issue is that we have no way of knowing what secret agencies do. When what they do is wrong, they don't even need to hide their mistakes, because everything is already secret.
There in no intent in this to claim that people in the U.S. are better or worse than people anywhere. The main point is only that huge amounts of money combined with secrecy result in huge mistakes.
Yes, but the complexity is in getting the digital information to the display cells, not in the display cells themselves.
This is backwards. The issue is not that the people who run for office don't understand technology. The issue is that, in fact, we can know that the NSA does not receive effective oversight from the senators and congressmen and women. We can know this because we know that none of them are technically knowledgeable.
These considerations are important to everyone on the world, because the NSA spies on everyone in the world. This is NOT just an issue for people in the U.S.
I presume you are Irish or Scottish or British. If your country had a secret technical agency, it would not receive any better oversight than in the U.S. There are politicians, and there are people who are technically knowledgeable, but there are no politicians who are technically knowledgeable.
Secrecy is imcompatible with democracy. The U.S. must find some way of relating to the world besides being sneaky.
One problem with secrecy is that the secret agencies get out of control very quickly. Remember, the NSA spies on YOU. Probably you aren't doing anything that the NSA finds interesting. But the NSA does listen to your telephone conversations.
I would be very happy to believe that the NSA is doing good work if I had evidence of that. But the point is, I don't know if they are, and you don't either, and neither of us can gather accurate information.
Definition of a terrorist: The other country's CIA.
The U.S. has bombed 13 countries in the past 30 years. I consider this evidence of a lack of social skills in relating to other people. The system, whatever it is, isn't working, and you and I don't have any way of discovering why, or changing anything. Our role is only to pay.
Interesting.
However, serializers and de-serializers require lots of transisters. I don't think they can be reliably embedded in a flexible medium, and I don't think they can be cheap. Also, there are still lots of wires.
Digital paper is not feasible at present, I think. The display cells are available, but the electronics is a huge challenge. It is the electronics that is the challenge, not the display cells.
I think the promoters of this technology know that they cannot deliver without a huge amount of expensive additional research. They seem to be hiding that fact from people who are less knowledgeable. It's like the dot-com frauds; people taking advantage of the lesser knowledge of other people.
Don't you see that this story and the one posted before it are connected? The spots they see changing are evidence of digital paper on Mars!
My original post did not make clear that I think that digital paper is, effectively, a lie.
The electronics necessary to address the pixels is of the kind used with LCD panels used in laptop computers. This electronics has been available for several years, so it is somewhat mature. It is VERY expensive. A large part of the cost of a laptop is the cost of the LCD panel.
It is true that electronics to drive a black-and-white display would be less complex. But it is still a very expensive problem to solve, especially if it is expected to be flexible.
My guess is that the companies are trying to get funding. My guess is that they know that the electronics is very expensive, and not likely to come down in price without a HUGE amount of additional research. To me, this seems to be a cover-up of the kind we have seen so often recently in connection with the dot-coms. The companies seem to me to be taking advantage of the lack of technical knowledge on the part of the investors.
All true, but each pixel must be separately connected. Those connections must be cheap, durable, and flexible. When I have tried to design something like that, I have thought that it was a very difficult problem.
My use of a video card as an example in my comment above was unfortunate, because it led readers away from my main point.
You are right that the refresh rate could be slower. I think people would want to change pages in about one-half second.
The last paragraph of my post above, #2269044 makes the point that there is a lot more complexity than just the pixel that turns black or white.