Isn't all this talk about music sharing really just the tip of the iceberg?
With the boiling down of information into simply ones and zeros and the birth of the 'Net, intellectual property is going to be a debate of the next twenty years.
How do you properly compensate the creators of anything that can be boiled down to just a unique series of ones and zeros that can be easily copied to millions of people with the push of a button?
It seems to me that all these guys like the RIAA, the MPAA, and others should be concentrating on coming up with a brand new paradigm that fits this problem rather than focusing on their little corner of the world. One quick look at the big picture shows that everyone dealing in information is in the same boat. We really haven't seen the start of the MPAA entering the controversy because movie sharing hasn't quite gotten to be a real major threat, but it will be with more computers in your entertainment center. And don't forget about books - once decent digital books with removable media in the binder become common place you'll see people trading novels, college texts, whatever, over the same P2P networks.
The real solution is a complete paradigm shift towards something that benefits everyone. In fact, someone should come up with that new business process and patent it and... uh... wait, forget everything I just said.
I fail to understand how this is going to be a winning strategy for the RIAA over the long term. Since they're only going after "substantial" amounts there are still thousands of others who will never even know about the existence of the RIAA.
All this means is that people will just make sure they don't amass a large enough collection to stick out from the masses. There's safety in numbers and I'm willing to bet most people are just going to keep doing what they're doing betting that they can play the odds.
For years during the 90's ISP's all over the country were salivating over the prospects of the killer applications that were promised once broadband came to every Tom, Dick, and Harry's doorstep.
I was always under the impression that the metric system was based off naturally occurring phenomenon. I thought the meter was related to the wavelength of something and I thought the cubic centimeter was really important as one cubic centimeter of water weighed one gram and the amount of energy needed to boil that water was a joule or something like that.
With today's technology why not set the units of measurements to things like a cube of water and the length of a light wave? That to me seems like it would make the most sense.
Can't a good, fairly well-written action movie just be a good, fairly well-written action movie?
I'm too young to remember, but was there this much philosophy applied to Star Wars when it debuted in '77?
That's why it's the Greek Oracle
on
Information Obesity
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
An endless supply of content ranging from banal trivia to awe-inspiring knowledge is why the Internet has become the modern equivalant of the Greek Oracle.
There is literally no question that I can't Google an answer for within ten minutes. It really is the sum collection of all human knowledge and the idea of periodically "cleaning it up" is simply ridiculous.
In the last 50 years many, many scientific discoveries have been made that invalidate the Miller experiment.
Which are talked about extensively in this article as well as a link from within this article here: http://www.astrobio.net/news/article5.html
They found that the atmospheric composition was dominated by nitrogen and carbon dioxide, with very little of Miller's hand-picked concoction present.
This is not a secret within the scientific community, but it does not negate the fact that his actual contribution to science was demonstrating that certain inorganic elements could be transformed into organic molecules through a simple process. Whether or not those were the exact conditions on early Earth is a bit irrelevant since the major breakthrough was the inorganic to organic transformation.
The Miller experiment will go down in history as another irrational jump to conclusions based on a less-than-adequate scientific understanding to promote certain political needs in the scientific community in an attempt to prove macroevolution.
Yep, they're going to discard his work just as quickly as they're going to discard Darwin's.
Decry the "nit-picking" all you wish, but the truth of the matter is that Miller's experiment, albeit revolutionary for the 1950's, is far from what modern science would ascribe as (1) reflective of the conditions of primeval earth and (2) extremely unlikely to occur even in the best of circumstances in the wild.
Check out the URL I provided above. Like I said, the major contribution of Miller's experiment was the transformation is possible through completely natural means. While the details as it pertains to early Earth may be wrong it still doesn't preclude a dozen or so other possibilities that are now open to speculation as a result of his work. You may disagree with macroevolution all you want, but Miller's contribution was in showing how certain organic building blocks could form through a natural process - sound science by any definition.
Same thing is true with operators. The fact that some yahoos assign weird functionality to operators doesn't diminish the uses for operators AND the ability to write large volumes of code shorthand through operators.
But you didn't post a reason to include operator overloading in a language other than not having to write the same pieces of code over and over and over again. At the same time I think you refuted your own argument - copy & paste allows me to refer to the same method call as often as I want with the same amount of keystrokes if I had overloaded &&.
Overloading operators always just seemed like a feature that normally powerless geek programmers existing in reality could use in order to make themselves feel so much more powerful in the abstract cyber realities of silicon.
as many of Evolution's theories don't even follow the laws of Thermodynamics
Thermodynamics don't even apply to biological evolution - you're making the common mistake that evolution somehow implies an "uphill" process.
1) Mutation and reproductive errors yield additional genetic material that may or may not have some expression in the phenotype. Additional genetic material is key, though, and has been documented. For this example, assume no expression in the phenotype - just additional raw material.
2) Additional raw genetic material is shuffled and randomized (again documented) and now begins expression in the phenotype with natural selection acting upon this random sorting.
3) New characteristics emerge as a result of natural selection.
What part of this implies any kind of "uphill" process that (even if Thermodynamics did apply) goes against thermodynamics?
Actually, science doesn't just claim it delivers truth - it has demonstrated through applied technology that it is the ONLY way at getting at the truth of the material, physical, world.
Those other kinds of "truth" are philosophies and religions. Science doesn't even come close to claiming it can deliver any truth on those fronts. But it's accomplishments in the physical realm are indisputable, so yes, it can deliver truth - regardless of whether people want to accept what science has to say.
Well, actually, the better analogy would be that Microsoft could have collected 220 computer specialists that Linux is bad and all that would prove is that Microsoft isn't going anywhere.
While China continues to grow technologically as well as economically the world's attention is devoted to terrorism thanks to 9/11 - it's probably the best thing that could have happened to China. China was going to be the next USSR and now they have nearly a clear run at becoming an extremely dominant force on the world scene with very little harrassment from the U.S. while getting there.
Doesn't the U.S. still have a pretty tight government hold one what goes into orbit? NASA is a government agency.
What do you think would happen if China decided to "open up space" to the paying public? Well, the paying commerical public? I'm not talking about tourism, I'm talking about undercutting NASA for getting commerical satellites up in orbit.
China is going to continue to become a bigger and bigger force in the world while our attention is on little ole bin Laden.
I completely agree about it being presumptuous to think we can evolutionarily predict the future 200 million years out.
As far as I'm concerned this just gives the damn Creationist Scientists more ammunition. "Look at those ridiculous evolutionists thinking they can predict what will happen in 200 million years! What hubris! How can they possibly be right about the monkey/human connection?"
Experiments to prove Free-Energy exists, and over 22 other free energy projects, experiments and diagrams, plus a complete list of patents and more!
And...
Run your car on Water, build a Hydrogen generator with simple step-by-step instructions and illustrations. Convert a gasoline-powered engine to run on hydrogen
not to mention...
Brilliant lightsaber beam is produced by the flick of a switch on the hand grip. Produces glowing, humming blade of light 26 inches long and virtually identical to those seen in the movies but this one is real!
I think the reviewer should have rated this posting (Score:2 Funny)
There are no doubt managers who do not understand the underlying concepts behind the decisions they are supposed to be making. These managers tend to be able to hide in larger corporations where it's much easier to hide blatant stupidity and ineptitude.
However, in the company I work for, and I suspect in many smaller companies - it is nearly impossible for a manager to not have an understanding of the time required to write software and build hardware.
In my experience, the techies who complain the most and loudest are the ones who are high on their own technical talent and are under the mistaken notion that hacking kernel code means they're smart enough to make intelligent business decisions.
The truly excellent managers and techies are the ones who, at the very least, understand there are things they each don't know and must trust the other to provide accurate data and/or decisions.
I don't think that's too idyllic.
Re:A few notes on Pluto, MACHOs, Dark Matter, etc.
on
Planets Without Stars
·
· Score: 1
In my humble opinion, I think the work being done with string theory and ten dimensional math will explain the dark matter in a fantastic way.
A few months ago, Scientific American ran a great article explaining it pretty clearly. I won't get into here since it's off topic, but needless to say, my guess is that the dark matter is a result of us being able to observe the effects of gravitons that are radiating from beyond a distance that we could travel normally. In other, crazier sounding words, the gravitons are being emitted from objects that are beyond our current dimension.
Trust me, try and get your hands on the article. It's fascinating stuff. And while I'm so far off topic already, may I recommend the book Hyperspace by Michio Kaku.
Slashdot Mirror
Isn't all this talk about music sharing really just the tip of the iceberg?
With the boiling down of information into simply ones and zeros and the birth of the 'Net, intellectual property is going to be a debate of the next twenty years.
How do you properly compensate the creators of anything that can be boiled down to just a unique series of ones and zeros that can be easily copied to millions of people with the push of a button?
It seems to me that all these guys like the RIAA, the MPAA, and others should be concentrating on coming up with a brand new paradigm that fits this problem rather than focusing on their little corner of the world. One quick look at the big picture shows that everyone dealing in information is in the same boat. We really haven't seen the start of the MPAA entering the controversy because movie sharing hasn't quite gotten to be a real major threat, but it will be with more computers in your entertainment center. And don't forget about books - once decent digital books with removable media in the binder become common place you'll see people trading novels, college texts, whatever, over the same P2P networks.
The real solution is a complete paradigm shift towards something that benefits everyone. In fact, someone should come up with that new business process and patent it and... uh... wait, forget everything I just said.
I fail to understand how this is going to be a winning strategy for the RIAA over the long term. Since they're only going after "substantial" amounts there are still thousands of others who will never even know about the existence of the RIAA.
All this means is that people will just make sure they don't amass a large enough collection to stick out from the masses. There's safety in numbers and I'm willing to bet most people are just going to keep doing what they're doing betting that they can play the odds.
I find it interesting that the published report is via ASP...
That would just never happen. Microsoft isn't exactly known for their interest in helping the masses circumvent copyrights...
According to my friend, the former Chinese Premier, Zhu Yongi...
Your friend is the former Chinese Premier? Wow...
Unless, of course, you're hoping to someday get a job as a flight operator for a Predator drone.
What if Miramax had told filmmaker Kevin Smith that no one would watch "Clerks" and suggested he develop a marketable teen sex comedy instead?
You mean like Mall Rats?
More games like GTA Vice City, but more straight up Pr0n?
I suppose there's always maiming kittens and puppies for sport...
For years during the 90's ISP's all over the country were salivating over the prospects of the killer applications that were promised once broadband came to every Tom, Dick, and Harry's doorstep.
And now that it's here they don't like it?
I was always under the impression that the metric system was based off naturally occurring phenomenon. I thought the meter was related to the wavelength of something and I thought the cubic centimeter was really important as one cubic centimeter of water weighed one gram and the amount of energy needed to boil that water was a joule or something like that.
With today's technology why not set the units of measurements to things like a cube of water and the length of a light wave? That to me seems like it would make the most sense.
The 21st century's equivalent of the 80's calculator watch?
Can't a good, fairly well-written action movie just be a good, fairly well-written action movie?
I'm too young to remember, but was there this much philosophy applied to Star Wars when it debuted in '77?
An endless supply of content ranging from banal trivia to awe-inspiring knowledge is why the Internet has become the modern equivalant of the Greek Oracle.
There is literally no question that I can't Google an answer for within ten minutes. It really is the sum collection of all human knowledge and the idea of periodically "cleaning it up" is simply ridiculous.
In the last 50 years many, many scientific discoveries have been made that invalidate the Miller experiment.
Which are talked about extensively in this article as well as a link from within this article here: http://www.astrobio.net/news/article5.html
They found that the atmospheric composition was dominated by nitrogen and carbon dioxide, with very little of Miller's hand-picked concoction present.
This is not a secret within the scientific community, but it does not negate the fact that his actual contribution to science was demonstrating that certain inorganic elements could be transformed into organic molecules through a simple process. Whether or not those were the exact conditions on early Earth is a bit irrelevant since the major breakthrough was the inorganic to organic transformation.
The Miller experiment will go down in history as another irrational jump to conclusions based on a less-than-adequate scientific understanding to promote certain political needs in the scientific community in an attempt to prove macroevolution.
Yep, they're going to discard his work just as quickly as they're going to discard Darwin's.
Decry the "nit-picking" all you wish, but the truth of the matter is that Miller's experiment, albeit revolutionary for the 1950's, is far from what modern science would ascribe as (1) reflective of the conditions of primeval earth and (2) extremely unlikely to occur even in the best of circumstances in the wild.
Check out the URL I provided above. Like I said, the major contribution of Miller's experiment was the transformation is possible through completely natural means. While the details as it pertains to early Earth may be wrong it still doesn't preclude a dozen or so other possibilities that are now open to speculation as a result of his work. You may disagree with macroevolution all you want, but Miller's contribution was in showing how certain organic building blocks could form through a natural process - sound science by any definition.
Same thing is true with operators. The fact that some yahoos assign weird functionality to operators doesn't diminish the uses for operators AND the ability to write large volumes of code shorthand through operators.
But you didn't post a reason to include operator overloading in a language other than not having to write the same pieces of code over and over and over again. At the same time I think you refuted your own argument - copy & paste allows me to refer to the same method call as often as I want with the same amount of keystrokes if I had overloaded &&.
Overloading operators always just seemed like a feature that normally powerless geek programmers existing in reality could use in order to make themselves feel so much more powerful in the abstract cyber realities of silicon.
So what does he do with those 12 years while he's waiting for maturity to set it?
Anything but be mature.
as many of Evolution's theories don't even follow the laws of Thermodynamics
Thermodynamics don't even apply to biological evolution - you're making the common mistake that evolution somehow implies an "uphill" process.
1) Mutation and reproductive errors yield additional genetic material that may or may not have some expression in the phenotype. Additional genetic material is key, though, and has been documented. For this example, assume no expression in the phenotype - just additional raw material.
2) Additional raw genetic material is shuffled and randomized (again documented) and now begins expression in the phenotype with natural selection acting upon this random sorting.
3) New characteristics emerge as a result of natural selection.
What part of this implies any kind of "uphill" process that (even if Thermodynamics did apply) goes against thermodynamics?
Actually, science doesn't just claim it delivers truth - it has demonstrated through applied technology that it is the ONLY way at getting at the truth of the material, physical, world.
Those other kinds of "truth" are philosophies and religions. Science doesn't even come close to claiming it can deliver any truth on those fronts. But it's accomplishments in the physical realm are indisputable, so yes, it can deliver truth - regardless of whether people want to accept what science has to say.
Well, actually, the better analogy would be that Microsoft could have collected 220 computer specialists that Linux is bad and all that would prove is that Microsoft isn't going anywhere.
That's what they were seeking to prove.
Well, Star Trek eventually came back on the air after 20 some odd years.
Maybe our kids will be watching Farscape: The Next Generation.
While China continues to grow technologically as well as economically the world's attention is devoted to terrorism thanks to 9/11 - it's probably the best thing that could have happened to China. China was going to be the next USSR and now they have nearly a clear run at becoming an extremely dominant force on the world scene with very little harrassment from the U.S. while getting there.
Doesn't the U.S. still have a pretty tight government hold one what goes into orbit? NASA is a government agency.
What do you think would happen if China decided to "open up space" to the paying public? Well, the paying commerical public? I'm not talking about tourism, I'm talking about undercutting NASA for getting commerical satellites up in orbit.
China is going to continue to become a bigger and bigger force in the world while our attention is on little ole bin Laden.
I completely agree about it being presumptuous to think we can evolutionarily predict the future 200 million years out.
As far as I'm concerned this just gives the damn Creationist Scientists more ammunition. "Look at those ridiculous evolutionists thinking they can predict what will happen in 200 million years! What hubris! How can they possibly be right about the monkey/human connection?"
Experiments to prove Free-Energy exists, and over 22 other free energy projects, experiments and diagrams, plus a complete list of patents and more!
And...
Run your car on Water, build a Hydrogen generator with simple step-by-step instructions and illustrations. Convert a gasoline-powered engine to run on hydrogen
not to mention...
Brilliant lightsaber beam is produced by the flick of a switch on the hand grip. Produces glowing, humming blade of light 26 inches long and virtually identical to those seen in the movies but this one is real!
I think the reviewer should have rated this posting (Score:2 Funny)
However, in the company I work for, and I suspect in many smaller companies - it is nearly impossible for a manager to not have an understanding of the time required to write software and build hardware.
In my experience, the techies who complain the most and loudest are the ones who are high on their own technical talent and are under the mistaken notion that hacking kernel code means they're smart enough to make intelligent business decisions.
The truly excellent managers and techies are the ones who, at the very least, understand there are things they each don't know and must trust the other to provide accurate data and/or decisions.
I don't think that's too idyllic.
A few months ago, Scientific American ran a great article explaining it pretty clearly. I won't get into here since it's off topic, but needless to say, my guess is that the dark matter is a result of us being able to observe the effects of gravitons that are radiating from beyond a distance that we could travel normally. In other, crazier sounding words, the gravitons are being emitted from objects that are beyond our current dimension.
Trust me, try and get your hands on the article. It's fascinating stuff. And while I'm so far off topic already, may I recommend the book Hyperspace by Michio Kaku.