I like that, also, there's a poster on Slashdot who once said, "Democracy is two wolves and a lamb sitting down and voting on what to have for dinner". Unfortunately, most Americans don't seem to realize that our government and our constitution were designed to stop the majority from tyranizing the minority. Further, it seems that most people are perfectly happy to accept oppressive laws so long as don't affect an issue about which they care. Most of my computer illiterate friends love AOL and Microsoft. Not only don't they understand how both companies are hard at work trying to lobby or monopolize our traditional freedoms away in the digital world, they don't care. Hell, they even welcome the erosion of freedom with arms wide open. Then again, I suppose that the loss of digital freedoms pales in comparison to the loss of physical freedoms such as the freedom to practice what most Christians feel are vices, such as narcotic drug use or prostitution for two good examples. Even worse, with laws against suicide, we don't even have safe or effective legal means of deciding when and how we are going to die if we, as individuals, see fit. I only wish that every American would read Peter Mc Williams "Aint nobody's business if you do". Maybe then, people would have a better grasp on how our 'democracy'
is supposed to work.
As an Agnostic, I believe that it is possible that a supreme entity of some sort is responsible for the creation of the universe in which we live, either intentionally or incidentally. I also believe that it is possible and even likely that there are entities in this universe that are superior to human beings in every material measure. However, I firmly believe that there is no supreme being personally interested in the doings of any human being, individually or collectively. The only miracle that I'll concede is existence itself. God or no god, existence is a mind bending concept. Oh, and the word to describe people who believe in God but no particular God, is deist.
What the hell, I've got karma to burn. I'm sorry, the above comment may or may not be flamebait, but shaunak raises a valid point. President Bush is an inarticulate man with a poor grasp of the world outside of America. During his campaign last year one of his more notible screwups was to refer to Kosovars as 'Kosovoians'. Shaunak also rightly points out that Bush is beholden to his rich campaign contributors and corporate America in general. Personaly, I'd rate the comment as maybe funny and definitely on topic.
I remember reading a really old book by Ursala Leguine, in which such devices were used for intersteller communication between far flung human colonies. The device was called an Ansible, named after the ansible effect that you describe. I wonder if it would be possible to entangle two particles and then package them in such a way as to make an easily portable communication device. Imagine the possibilities in networking and telecomunications, personal communications, etc...
You must not have heard of Freenet then. One of the features that Freenet is supposed to implement, when it's completed, is exactly like the dynamic caching of popular web pages mentioned in the Microsoft article.
Allow me to borrow from your review format's style.
--KOffice does not have live spell checking. He seemed to think this was a limitation.:-)
(I disagree; the live spell check feature in MS Office irritates me almost as much as the stupid paperclip.) Both of which I leave turned off. All the more power to those who enjoy these features, I say.
I'm not upset, though I guess that my reply could be read that way. I just was genuinely curious as to where you disagreed with me in the first place. You start out stating that your opinion differs from mine; then what followed, I took as an explanation of where you differed with me. So again, my reply wasn't a flame, I just clarified and restated my post and asked the same of you.
Yes, the human brain is far more powerful than most people would give it credit for being. I have read that the adult human brain has up to one hundred billion neurons, each connected to up to fifty thousand other neurons. Add to this the various states of activation that these individual connections can achieve through the dozens major neurotransmitters, and you have a system capable of enormous complexity. So far, I haven't read anything indicating that anyone knows the exact computational or storage capabilities of a neuron or the connections themselves. Perhaps you know of additional resources (Internet preferably) that a layman like myself might find of interest? Surely, the additional complexity of the neurons and connections, added to their own sheer numbers, if quantified, would generate numbers with far too many zeros for me to wrap my mind around. While I'm at it, just multiply the above absurd number times the speed at which the neurons and connections that are active at any give moment operate. I'm in the camp that believes "AI" will be a reality in the next hundred years or so. But what really captures my imagination is the concept of Artificial Consciousness, of which you haven't yet stated an opinion one way or the other. Seeking to understand the human mind is a vast undertaking and a noble calling; I salute you for your efforts.
I don't understand where your opinion differs from mine. You insinuate that I share a set of beliefs with the people whom you study and you falsely assume that I, like they, have a limited idea of the capabilities of my own brain. I didn't set out to claim that the current state of the art in computing approaches anything close to the full capabilities of human intelligence. Nor did I claim that this would be an 'easy' feat by any means. What I claimed, was that in time, there would not be an intellectual task that a human could perform that an AI couldn't perform equally well or better. Do you believe that the human brain will never be met or exceeded, in most intellectual tasks and raw computing ability, by an artificial means? Furthermore, my point with which you choose to differ is merely the setup for my assertion that A.I. alone will not be the breakthrough that A.C. will be. We already have machines that can beat a human Grandmaster at chess, yet they don't have the ability to savor their victory. Personally, I find the concept of a machine that can feel as well as think, allot more fascinating than a machine that does nothing more than crunch numbers better than us humans. All of that aside, my intention wasn't to argue with your point, so much as I was just going off on a tangent and opening up a new line of discussion.
I think that to a limited degree, AI already exists. There is no reason why computers won't eventually be able to perfectly mimic or exceed humans at all intellectual tasks. The true breakthrough in CS will be the creation of AC, (Artificial Consciousness). Once the principals that make consciousness, self-awareness, and emotions possible are understood, a machine that is 'alive' in a human sense of the word will be possible. Without consciousness, a computer will
never be anything more or less than a number cruncher. The most advanced intelligence without emotions is like a well crafted doll in that it appeals to our human senses, while having none itself.
I have always wondered why Microsoft never tried
to make the GUI and fonts scale with the desktop resolution. The way things are currently, many end users used to using older 640 x 480 applications see higher resolution as "making everything smaller". So as a technician without the time on my hands to explain the difference to someone who'd rather have a root canal than hear any "technical talk", I just set the resolution back down to the a pixellated and crappy looking 640 x 480. The end user then gets a noticeable expression of relief on their face and then smugly tells me, "now that's allot better". A GUI that scaled to the desktop resolution, and according to the size of the monitor, would allow computer illiterate end users to use the full visual potential of their machines without any effort or headaches. If Atheos has such a feature, it truly is an innovation worth emulating. One that would take care of one of my personal pet peeves and benefit both advanced and novice users, I might add.
Yes, I am doling out some blame to some victims some of the time, seems perfectly rational to me.
I never said anything about a group of musicians under the exact circumstances that you lay out. I'm also well aware of the advantages a music publisher has in the creation of a contract over the musicians. That said, 22 year old 'adults' should have more sense than to sign any contract without first having their own attorney and accountant read and review it. If they can't afford their own attorney or accountant, they should walk away from a contract that they don't understand. Being blinded by greed seems a likely motivation for such an absense of common sense on the part of an artist to me.
If you sign a contract that's been put in front of you without the intent or talent to live up to it's terms, then you are cheating or stealing. This applies to a no-talent musician as surely as it applies to a no-talent startup. There is nothing "Amazing" about any of this, and I never said anything about a record company executive being blameless.
Record companies have been screwing the artists who sign on with them for decades. The sleaziness of the music industry is legendary, yet they have no problems with finding musicians too blinded by their own greed to heed common sense. A good con works by tricking the mark into thinking that they are the ones doing the screw job, all the while they are getting the short end of the stick.
Most people are honest in that they won't go out of their way to cheat or steal, however, when a record company executive or a VC presents them with a golden opportunity, the temptation becomes too great. I'm sure that allot of engineers who are approached by a VC already know that their idea will never make money or is unfeasable, and still they go forward with the VC. At the end of the day it all comes down to this: A reputation for cheating will always be overshadowed by the wild success stories of the few lucky people who managed to buck the trends and make big money.
I have only ever used the command line on one 386 DX, and even at my measly 25 WPM, there was a several letter lag between my keystrokes and the letters appearing on the screen. Still, maybe I'm wrong to generalize my single experience with one use of one machine. It could be that the hardware itself was faulty. However, from my other experiences and uses of 386 based machines, there is no doubt in my mind that they are painfully slow for modern workstation applications.
I agree, the four hundred to six hundred MHZ range
seems to be the sweet spot for running a modern
GUI and office suite. My K6-2+ 550 (OCed 450) is more than adequate for my office and business software and my cable internet rocks. Even for gaming, my Voodoo 3 3000 coupled with my processor and 160MB of RAM is still serviceable even though it's not exactly a screamer. If I were building a new system at today's prices I'd probably error on the side of power and still manage to put together a complete workstation for under five hundred bucks. For now, I have to make do with what I have, which at least is livable.
No doubt! I can build a very powerfull workstation
with a decent 17 inch monitor, a keyboard, and
mouse that don't have twenty years of crud built
up in them for under four hundred dollars. I don't
care what you run on a 386DX based computer, even
the DOS prompt is so slow that I can type faster
than my input will be displayed on the screen!
The author of the artical is probably the kind of
guy that would look at a burned out, eye-straining
monitor and think that it's good enough. Then there is the graphics adapter, which will surely be inadequate in both visaul quality and display speed, good monitor or not. He makes excellent points, however, I think he takes the cheap hardware idea to cheap and obsolete realms to which it doesn't need to go. At least not for a modern office: Third world countries, sweat shops, and businesses that don't use their workstations on a daily basis being a few possible exceptions. Obsolete hardware leaves no room for upgrading to new and usefull applications that require the additional
horsepower of a modern CPU and graphics adapter.
I would rather GNU Linux and other free software
be associated with 'frugality', not 'cheapness' or parsimony.
The above link leads to a company that has been working with creating nanoscale materials in industrial quantities. I read an artical about their company years ago that went on to describe how their process would revolutionize engineering grade materials. Ordinary metals and materials made with nanoscale granularity had substantialy different physical properties than their microscale counterparts. For instance, copper forged with nanoscale granularity was as strong as steel, and some ceramics were flexible enough to be molded.
If I'm not mistaken, NASA gets it's CPUs from a custom fab process to rad harden them. AFAIK Intel gave NASA a licence to use the 486 and early Pentium technology for free.
All you need to wreck that scenario is a highly placed clueless user to castrate your ability to run your network sensibly. They end up telling you to let everyone install and configure everything and anything. Then, there are still allot of shops running pentium 133's with Windows 95 A version and no patches because they see no benefit to an upgrade. As a contractor I more often than not run into situations where everything on an older computer is replaced except for the monitor. It doesn't matter that the screen is half burned out, blurry, and tinged heavily purple. You can make out text and images on it, and that's good enough. MOst people can't percieve a 60HZ refresh rate, so that is what a monitor ends up set at, along with a 640 x 480 resolution. I don't even bother trying to change the resolution to something more serviceable like 1024 x 768 anymore. It's next to impossible to explain to an end user why "Everything is so small now". I'd just as soon try to teach a pig how to sing as try and explain that font and icon size is adjustable. Most older computer illiterate managers are not only clueless, but they genuinely loath computers. They won't spend a single dime more on computers or newer office equipment than they absolutely have to and they will avoid changes to existing equipment and proceedures like the plague. All us techs can do is try and do things the right way as much as possible under the circumstances and maybe put a bug in the manager's ears about the more critical issues.
When productivity gets to the point where only a small fraction of available workers is neccessary to produce the goods that everyone needs, what do the redundant workers do? You are correct that in a capitalistic system the haves rely on the have-nots, however, I believe that continued advances in material and intellectual automation will eventually leave the richest of us holding all the production capicity without need or incentive to deal with the have nots. Nobody is going to shut down their TV factory when they can just simply jack up the price of a tv and sell only to other capital holders. This is already occuring in the pharmaceutical industry where the preference is to price drugs to maximise profits among a wealthy or insured clientel rather than sell them at lower prices to a broader market.
In addition to the monopoly the wealthy will have with production of material goods, they will gain full control over the length and quality of lifecycle in material and intellectual products that traditionally never had them. One post mentioned clothes that disintegrated when a subscription to use them ended. Microsoft with their.NET strategy is an example of how corporations will strive to replace ownership of their purchased products with the ongoing burden of subscriptions. When everything you own is subscription based, you will never be able to accumulate wealth and enjoy the benefits of the near infinite productivity that nanotech and automation will bring in the future. You can thank greed, a lack of vision, and the scarcity mentality that seems to pervade society in general for technology failing to live up to it's promise of better living for everyone.
The future I fear is one where their is unlimited wealth and resources and limited access for society overall to enjoy them. I'm afraid that every task that a human can perform will eventually be automated away. The only people who will enjoy this scenario are the landed and capital holders who made their fortunes while a human still could. As for the unlanded and non capital holding poor, the future will be to either starve or do the most menial and unrewarding of work, no matter what their abilities or inclinations are. What will happen when the working and middle class are completely irrelevant to the production of the very goods and services they need? In America, cheap foreign slave labor is already giving us a small taste of what automation is going to do to us.
What good will nano-technology do for the poor and middle class when the "Intellectual Property" to make and use it is licensed and locked down? People who are fortunate enough to own land could try living in an efficient and self sufficient manner. The only problem with that being, property taxes demand cold hard cash which you need to be able to provide a good or a service that someone is willing to pay for to acquire it in the first place. So watch as you can't afford to license and activate the nanotech
that you need to generate revenue to keep the property that you are "renting" from the government.
As much as I would like to see a Star Trek scenario of infinite wealth and plenty for everyone, I envision a darker future. I think that things will devolve into more of a state of feudalism where society is stratified into classes of haves and have-nots. Not because there isn't enough wealth to go around either. Rather, the people holding the ability to create wealth will never part with the least bit of any of it to give back to the society that enabled them to become wealthy to begin with. Don't get me wrong, I believe that for the time being there are opportunities for enterprizing individuals who are intelligent and willing to work. It's just that I believe that the capitalistic base of laws that we live under today in regards to real and intellectual property are only going to lead to poverty, oppression, and artificial scarcity in the future. Too bad, it doesn't have to be that way. I hope that nanotech does become an enabling resource to the average person like some other posters have suggested. I'd rather live to see that happen than what I think is going to happen.
All human infants instinctively know how to swim from birth through the first few months of life or so. I wish that I could still remember, as my ability to swim now is clumsy at best.
This patent should never have been granted in the first place because it is obvious that you can charge for downloads to anyone "skilled in the art". Also, it is absurd that Barnes and Noble would have to get by Amazons one click patent by having a two click system. Thats like me going out and patenting jacking off left handed instead of right handed. Lately, it seems as if the priviledge of implementing any idea or system no matter how simple or obvious, is open to the highest bidder with the lowest scruples.
Slashdot Mirror
I like that, also, there's a poster on Slashdot who once said, "Democracy is two wolves and a lamb sitting down and voting on what to have for dinner". Unfortunately, most Americans don't seem to realize that our government and our constitution were designed to stop the majority from tyranizing the minority. Further, it seems that most people are perfectly happy to accept oppressive laws so long as don't affect an issue about which they care. Most of my computer illiterate friends love AOL and Microsoft. Not only don't they understand how both companies are hard at work trying to lobby or monopolize our traditional freedoms away in the digital world, they don't care. Hell, they even welcome the erosion of freedom with arms wide open. Then again, I suppose that the loss of digital freedoms pales in comparison to the loss of physical freedoms such as the freedom to practice what most Christians feel are vices, such as narcotic drug use or prostitution for two good examples. Even worse, with laws against suicide, we don't even have safe or effective legal means of deciding when and how we are going to die if we, as individuals, see fit. I only wish that every American would read Peter Mc Williams "Aint nobody's business if you do". Maybe then, people would have a better grasp on how our 'democracy'
is supposed to work.
As an Agnostic, I believe that it is possible that a supreme entity of some sort is responsible for the creation of the universe in which we live, either intentionally or incidentally. I also believe that it is possible and even likely that there are entities in this universe that are superior to human beings in every material measure. However, I firmly believe that there is no supreme being personally interested in the doings of any human being, individually or collectively. The only miracle that I'll concede is existence itself. God or no god, existence is a mind bending concept. Oh, and the word to describe people who believe in God but no particular God, is deist.
What the hell, I've got karma to burn. I'm sorry, the above comment may or may not be flamebait, but shaunak raises a valid point. President Bush is an inarticulate man with a poor grasp of the world outside of America. During his campaign last year one of his more notible screwups was to refer to Kosovars as 'Kosovoians'. Shaunak also rightly points out that Bush is beholden to his rich campaign contributors and corporate America in general. Personaly, I'd rate the comment as maybe funny and definitely on topic.
Thanks for clearing that up for me.
I remember reading a really old book by Ursala Leguine, in which such devices were used for intersteller communication between far flung human colonies. The device was called an Ansible, named after the ansible effect that you describe. I wonder if it would be possible to entangle two particles and then package them in such a way as to make an easily portable communication device. Imagine the possibilities in networking and telecomunications, personal communications, etc...
I was only speaking on the originality of Microsoft's idea, not it's usefullness.
You must not have heard of Freenet then. One of the features that Freenet is supposed to implement, when it's completed, is exactly like the dynamic caching of popular web pages mentioned in the Microsoft article.
Allow me to borrow from your review format's style.
--KOffice does not have live spell checking. He seemed to think this was a limitation.:-)
(I disagree; the live spell check feature in MS Office irritates me almost as much as the stupid paperclip.) Both of which I leave turned off. All the more power to those who enjoy these features, I say.
I'm not upset, though I guess that my reply could be read that way. I just was genuinely curious as to where you disagreed with me in the first place. You start out stating that your opinion differs from mine; then what followed, I took as an explanation of where you differed with me. So again, my reply wasn't a flame, I just clarified and restated my post and asked the same of you.
Yes, the human brain is far more powerful than most people would give it credit for being. I have read that the adult human brain has up to one hundred billion neurons, each connected to up to fifty thousand other neurons. Add to this the various states of activation that these individual connections can achieve through the dozens major neurotransmitters, and you have a system capable of enormous complexity. So far, I haven't read anything indicating that anyone knows the exact computational or storage capabilities of a neuron or the connections themselves. Perhaps you know of additional resources (Internet preferably) that a layman like myself might find of interest? Surely, the additional complexity of the neurons and connections, added to their own sheer numbers, if quantified, would generate numbers with far too many zeros for me to wrap my mind around. While I'm at it, just multiply the above absurd number times the speed at which the neurons and connections that are active at any give moment operate. I'm in the camp that believes "AI" will be a reality in the next hundred years or so. But what really captures my imagination is the concept of Artificial Consciousness, of which you haven't yet stated an opinion one way or the other. Seeking to understand the human mind is a vast undertaking and a noble calling; I salute you for your efforts.
I don't understand where your opinion differs from mine. You insinuate that I share a set of beliefs with the people whom you study and you falsely assume that I, like they, have a limited idea of the capabilities of my own brain. I didn't set out to claim that the current state of the art in computing approaches anything close to the full capabilities of human intelligence. Nor did I claim that this would be an 'easy' feat by any means. What I claimed, was that in time, there would not be an intellectual task that a human could perform that an AI couldn't perform equally well or better. Do you believe that the human brain will never be met or exceeded, in most intellectual tasks and raw computing ability, by an artificial means? Furthermore, my point with which you choose to differ is merely the setup for my assertion that A.I. alone will not be the breakthrough that A.C. will be. We already have machines that can beat a human Grandmaster at chess, yet they don't have the ability to savor their victory. Personally, I find the concept of a machine that can feel as well as think, allot more fascinating than a machine that does nothing more than crunch numbers better than us humans. All of that aside, my intention wasn't to argue with your point, so much as I was just going off on a tangent and opening up a new line of discussion.
I think that to a limited degree, AI already exists. There is no reason why computers won't eventually be able to perfectly mimic or exceed humans at all intellectual tasks. The true breakthrough in CS will be the creation of AC, (Artificial Consciousness). Once the principals that make consciousness, self-awareness, and emotions possible are understood, a machine that is 'alive' in a human sense of the word will be possible. Without consciousness, a computer will
never be anything more or less than a number cruncher. The most advanced intelligence without emotions is like a well crafted doll in that it appeals to our human senses, while having none itself.
I have always wondered why Microsoft never tried
to make the GUI and fonts scale with the desktop resolution. The way things are currently, many end users used to using older 640 x 480 applications see higher resolution as "making everything smaller". So as a technician without the time on my hands to explain the difference to someone who'd rather have a root canal than hear any "technical talk", I just set the resolution back down to the a pixellated and crappy looking 640 x 480. The end user then gets a noticeable expression of relief on their face and then smugly tells me, "now that's allot better". A GUI that scaled to the desktop resolution, and according to the size of the monitor, would allow computer illiterate end users to use the full visual potential of their machines without any effort or headaches. If Atheos has such a feature, it truly is an innovation worth emulating. One that would take care of one of my personal pet peeves and benefit both advanced and novice users, I might add.
Yes, I am doling out some blame to some victims some of the time, seems perfectly rational to me.
I never said anything about a group of musicians under the exact circumstances that you lay out. I'm also well aware of the advantages a music publisher has in the creation of a contract over the musicians. That said, 22 year old 'adults' should have more sense than to sign any contract without first having their own attorney and accountant read and review it. If they can't afford their own attorney or accountant, they should walk away from a contract that they don't understand. Being blinded by greed seems a likely motivation for such an absense of common sense on the part of an artist to me.
If you sign a contract that's been put in front of you without the intent or talent to live up to it's terms, then you are cheating or stealing. This applies to a no-talent musician as surely as it applies to a no-talent startup. There is nothing "Amazing" about any of this, and I never said anything about a record company executive being blameless.
Record companies have been screwing the artists who sign on with them for decades. The sleaziness of the music industry is legendary, yet they have no problems with finding musicians too blinded by their own greed to heed common sense. A good con works by tricking the mark into thinking that they are the ones doing the screw job, all the while they are getting the short end of the stick.
Most people are honest in that they won't go out of their way to cheat or steal, however, when a record company executive or a VC presents them with a golden opportunity, the temptation becomes too great. I'm sure that allot of engineers who are approached by a VC already know that their idea will never make money or is unfeasable, and still they go forward with the VC. At the end of the day it all comes down to this: A reputation for cheating will always be overshadowed by the wild success stories of the few lucky people who managed to buck the trends and make big money.
I have only ever used the command line on one 386 DX, and even at my measly 25 WPM, there was a several letter lag between my keystrokes and the letters appearing on the screen. Still, maybe I'm wrong to generalize my single experience with one use of one machine. It could be that the hardware itself was faulty. However, from my other experiences and uses of 386 based machines, there is no doubt in my mind that they are painfully slow for modern workstation applications.
I agree, the four hundred to six hundred MHZ range
seems to be the sweet spot for running a modern
GUI and office suite. My K6-2+ 550 (OCed 450) is more than adequate for my office and business software and my cable internet rocks. Even for gaming, my Voodoo 3 3000 coupled with my processor and 160MB of RAM is still serviceable even though it's not exactly a screamer. If I were building a new system at today's prices I'd probably error on the side of power and still manage to put together a complete workstation for under five hundred bucks. For now, I have to make do with what I have, which at least is livable.
No doubt! I can build a very powerfull workstation
with a decent 17 inch monitor, a keyboard, and
mouse that don't have twenty years of crud built
up in them for under four hundred dollars. I don't
care what you run on a 386DX based computer, even
the DOS prompt is so slow that I can type faster
than my input will be displayed on the screen!
The author of the artical is probably the kind of
guy that would look at a burned out, eye-straining
monitor and think that it's good enough. Then there is the graphics adapter, which will surely be inadequate in both visaul quality and display speed, good monitor or not. He makes excellent points, however, I think he takes the cheap hardware idea to cheap and obsolete realms to which it doesn't need to go. At least not for a modern office: Third world countries, sweat shops, and businesses that don't use their workstations on a daily basis being a few possible exceptions. Obsolete hardware leaves no room for upgrading to new and usefull applications that require the additional
horsepower of a modern CPU and graphics adapter.
I would rather GNU Linux and other free software
be associated with 'frugality', not 'cheapness' or parsimony.
The above link leads to a company that has been working with creating nanoscale materials in industrial quantities. I read an artical about their company years ago that went on to describe how their process would revolutionize engineering grade materials. Ordinary metals and materials made with nanoscale granularity had substantialy different physical properties than their microscale counterparts. For instance, copper forged with nanoscale granularity was as strong as steel, and some ceramics were flexible enough to be molded.
If I'm not mistaken, NASA gets it's CPUs from a custom fab process to rad harden them. AFAIK Intel gave NASA a licence to use the 486 and early Pentium technology for free.
All you need to wreck that scenario is a highly placed clueless user to castrate your ability to run your network sensibly. They end up telling you to let everyone install and configure everything and anything. Then, there are still allot of shops running pentium 133's with Windows 95 A version and no patches because they see no benefit to an upgrade. As a contractor I more often than not run into situations where everything on an older computer is replaced except for the monitor. It doesn't matter that the screen is half burned out, blurry, and tinged heavily purple. You can make out text and images on it, and that's good enough. MOst people can't percieve a 60HZ refresh rate, so that is what a monitor ends up set at, along with a 640 x 480 resolution. I don't even bother trying to change the resolution to something more serviceable like 1024 x 768 anymore. It's next to impossible to explain to an end user why "Everything is so small now". I'd just as soon try to teach a pig how to sing as try and explain that font and icon size is adjustable. Most older computer illiterate managers are not only clueless, but they genuinely loath computers. They won't spend a single dime more on computers or newer office equipment than they absolutely have to and they will avoid changes to existing equipment and proceedures like the plague. All us techs can do is try and do things the right way as much as possible under the circumstances and maybe put a bug in the manager's ears about the more critical issues.
When productivity gets to the point where only a small fraction of available workers is neccessary to produce the goods that everyone needs, what do the redundant workers do? You are correct that in a capitalistic system the haves rely on the have-nots, however, I believe that continued advances in material and intellectual automation will eventually leave the richest of us holding all the production capicity without need or incentive to deal with the have nots. Nobody is going to shut down their TV factory when they can just simply jack up the price of a tv and sell only to other capital holders. This is already occuring in the pharmaceutical industry where the preference is to price drugs to maximise profits among a wealthy or insured clientel rather than sell them at lower prices to a broader market.
.NET strategy is an example of how corporations will strive to replace ownership of their purchased products with the ongoing burden of subscriptions. When everything you own is subscription based, you will never be able to accumulate wealth and enjoy the benefits of the near infinite productivity that nanotech and automation will bring in the future. You can thank greed, a lack of vision, and the scarcity mentality that seems to pervade society in general for technology failing to live up to it's promise of better living for everyone.
In addition to the monopoly the wealthy will have with production of material goods, they will gain full control over the length and quality of lifecycle in material and intellectual products that traditionally never had them. One post mentioned clothes that disintegrated when a subscription to use them ended. Microsoft with their
The future I fear is one where their is unlimited wealth and resources and limited access for society overall to enjoy them. I'm afraid that every task that a human can perform will eventually be automated away. The only people who will enjoy this scenario are the landed and capital holders who made their fortunes while a human still could. As for the unlanded and non capital holding poor, the future will be to either starve or do the most menial and unrewarding of work, no matter what their abilities or inclinations are. What will happen when the working and middle class are completely irrelevant to the production of the very goods and services they need? In America, cheap foreign slave labor is already giving us a small taste of what automation is going to do to us.
What good will nano-technology do for the poor and middle class when the "Intellectual Property" to make and use it is licensed and locked down? People who are fortunate enough to own land could try living in an efficient and self sufficient manner. The only problem with that being, property taxes demand cold hard cash which you need to be able to provide a good or a service that someone is willing to pay for to acquire it in the first place. So watch as you can't afford to license and activate the nanotech
that you need to generate revenue to keep the property that you are "renting" from the government.
As much as I would like to see a Star Trek scenario of infinite wealth and plenty for everyone, I envision a darker future. I think that things will devolve into more of a state of feudalism where society is stratified into classes of haves and have-nots. Not because there isn't enough wealth to go around either. Rather, the people holding the ability to create wealth will never part with the least bit of any of it to give back to the society that enabled them to become wealthy to begin with. Don't get me wrong, I believe that for the time being there are opportunities for enterprizing individuals who are intelligent and willing to work. It's just that I believe that the capitalistic base of laws that we live under today in regards to real and intellectual property are only going to lead to poverty, oppression, and artificial scarcity in the future. Too bad, it doesn't have to be that way. I hope that nanotech does become an enabling resource to the average person like some other posters have suggested. I'd rather live to see that happen than what I think is going to happen.
All human infants instinctively know how to swim from birth through the first few months of life or so. I wish that I could still remember, as my ability to swim now is clumsy at best.
Yeah, knowing the porn industry there's probably a whole movie made around the concept. LOL
This patent should never have been granted in the first place because it is obvious that you can charge for downloads to anyone "skilled in the art". Also, it is absurd that Barnes and Noble would have to get by Amazons one click patent by having a two click system. Thats like me going out and patenting jacking off left handed instead of right handed. Lately, it seems as if the priviledge of implementing any idea or system no matter how simple or obvious, is open to the highest bidder with the lowest scruples.