It is possible that Alien Spacecraft were totally automated. Training pilots and astronauts is expensive. They might even have been using generational ships, where they would have to make sure that the knowledge was passed on from one pilot to another.
Software on the other hand is easy to copy once written, and computers can easily be designed to last for hundreds of years. Having clear and durable visual clues is a lot better than vague geological features such as rivers and mountains, because rivers change, and mountains are not very common in the flat areas that make good landing sites. Also the data doesn't need to be sent back to base. Simply build the pyramids in a known formation, and get the software to look for that.
So the aliens are clever enough to build space ships that can travel across the vast distances of space reliably that many generations live and die on the ship before it arrives on the target planet. And they are sophisticated enough to convince and teach the local human population to use alien technology to build pyramids, and they're good enough at teaching the young aboard the ship to preserve this knowledge but not clever enough to teach the young how to actually fly the spacecraft that is holding the entire venture together?
sounds to me like you're really pulling at straws here.
But they knew NOTHING about geography. We can look at the moon, and choose a landing site. The aliens didn't have this option. They didn't have good enough telescopes.
huh?!? what?!?
They got to earth, they landed, presumably they had to spend a good deal of time exploring to find the right human civilization to be the guardians of their "spaceport", but they couldn't draw a map of the landscape? They didn't have to know about our geography before they got here, only afterwards!!! But if the pyramids were built by them, or by their influence upon us, then naturally they would have had to arrive here to do that influence - and they would have seen the landscape.
Why do scientists always have to come up with "rational explanations" when a simpler explanation is available?
Since when has the rational explanation not been the simplest? I guarantee that a smart person watching the sky with the aid of a few wooden tools is a lot simpler than fairy stories about aliens.
It's called Occam's Razor my friend, the simplest explanation is the best.
Yes, but most early civilizations emerged at or around the same distance from the equator as egypt and mexico/central america. There were civilizations around the indus river very early. There were civilizations in southern china and south east asia very early. But only in the middle east and central america do you get pyramids.
This also doesn't explain the several thousand year time span between the creation of the pyramids in the middle east and those in central america.
And it still doesn't explain why they would need such ridiculous beacons. Humans never need such large "beacons" to guide us. We do just fine with maps and longitude / lattitude calculations. Are you proposing that aliens capable of interstellar travel are incapable of making a map?
Well, I can't really speak for the aliens since I've never met anyone who I can be sure is an alien. However, since we must be at least as clever as the ancient Egyptians, it seems odd that we have a lot of trouble repeating their endeavours.
We do???
When was the last time anyone had trouble building big buildings? The medieval cathedrals are larger than the pyramids - nobody has trouble believing that human technology was insufficient for that. Anyone have any doubts as to whether the office towers in big cities around the world are constructed by humans or aliens?
As for any uncertainty about the exact methods the Egyptians employed, that's just an issue of scholarly debate. To say that because its unclear means that it must have been outside forces is not simply a fallacy of reasoning.
Look at it this way:
pyramid building == mystery.
aliens == mystery.
therefore: pyramid building == aliens ?!?
just because two things are mysterious doesn't mean they are the same. a mystery is by definition unknown and therefore there are no criteria at all upon which to associate it with anything else. It is a fallacy of the mythic imagination that can make the type of conclusions:
aliens == mystery == God == quantum physics etc.
The pyramids were porobably designed to be easily recognisable by optical recognition software. Hence alignment is also critical.
Why would optical recognition software be necessary? just because its a current technology doesn't mean it is at all necessary to interstellar or planetary navigation. People manage to go into space and have no trouble getting home without the need for such software, people managed to land on specific geographic areas of the moon without the need for it, we can land probes in precise regions of distant planets without any such need. Maybe the aliens are stupid?
Terrestrial navigation and interstellar navigation are 2 completely different problems that need to be solved separately.
RA time difference of several thousand years just shows that they weren't in a hurry. Given the time it takes to cross interstellar differences they must have felt it worth the wait. Drafting in local labour and materials reduces the amount of machinery needed to transport across the galaxy.
Again this doesn't explain why they would need such beacons. Why not just use a longitude & lattitude system? or why not navigate by geographical features? Finding Egypt from space isn't hard when you know even a little bit about geography. The pyramids are not visible from space without telephoto zoom - and that means you need to already know where to look.
As for location, I would guess that they were only interested in reasonable advanced civilisations near the equater for exactly the same reason that NASA is based so far south.
There were plenty of civilizations further to the equator than egypt - why them? There were civilizations along the Indus river very early - no pyramids, there were civilizations in south east asia very early - no pyramids.
When I say modern mythology, I'm speaking generally about its entrance into popular culture, which is worldwide, although more so in the more developed nations. But it is interesting that americans take it so much more to heart =P
"Come on folks; RA the sun god coming down in his golden chariot?"
What's the matter? You think it took the invention of television to create a human imagination? Haven't you ever had a dream while you were sleeping? You seriously think that the only way people could come up with that is by meeting aliens? Come on folks - get over it.
What are you afraid of?
That humans might be capable of remarkable things without alien intervention?
1) a pyramid is a very commonly understood shape - it doesn't take a genius to figure it out, little kids can spontaneously come up with pyramidal shapes when playing - there's nothing mystical or extraterrestrial about multiple cultures coming up with them independantly.
2) If the aliens wanted navigation beacons, and are so impressively advanced technologically - why not build them themselves? Why should they convince the native human populations who would take centuries to build them, and would require the entire economic output of the largest civilizations then in existence? If the aliens had the capacity to cross the gulf of space, why should they waste so much time on having us build these irregular beacons when they themselves could easily have built much better ones in a much shorter time?
3) Why should aliens need navigation beacons? If they managed to find their way across the immense gulf of space, what help would a few piles of rocks do them? mountains and other natural marks are much more prominent and ( *apply cluestick* ) visible from space !!!
4) If they really needed a few human-built pyramids to navigate with - why are these structures limited to central america and the middle east? there have been tons of human civilizations capable of creating pyramids - and theoretically the aliens would want navigation beacons spread all over the world - why only these two places?
5) The central american pyramids and the egyptian pyramids were constructed at times differing by thousands of years - why such a gulf in time? If the aliens wanted to fly about - they'd want them all over the place at the same time?
Wacked out theories like this are a convenient explanation for the naive and the ignorant. Do a little research and you'll see just how shabbily the theory holds together - ie. it doesn't at all.
The pyramids are marvels of human accomplishment, and you really do a disservice to the heritage we have inherited by making up fairy stories to discredit the achievements of these people.
I always like seeing such simple common-sense answers as these coming out. It shows that a little common sense is all that's needed to dispel the ridiculous "mysteries of the pyramids - were the egyptians in communication with aliens?" type hype.
Aliens are a modern mythology, this is true, and we like our mythologies to explain all unknowns. But it really does a big disservice to our appreciation of what these people accomplished with their limited technology.
I think in the end we moderns have a strong cultural prejudice, and like to believe that without the wonders of our modern world such accomplishments as the pyramids should not be possible without the aid of equally or greater technological skill - hence the desire for bringing aliens into the issue. But lets face it, the Egyptians weren't stupid, there's no evidence to suggest that human intelligence has increased over the millenia - just our technology. The Egyptians managed to create structures on a scale so grand that today we still marvel at them, its a marvel of human ingenuity - nothing to do with little grey men.
Naturally this is true, because currently the only telcos. laying out high bandwidth lines are american ones - why? because the vast majority of internet content is located in the US & Canada, and that's what people want to access.
There really aren't many South Korean websites that constitute a demand for direct Japan-SK. connections. Europe is currently at the stage of internet development that N.A. was in say '97, '98, hell they still have internet cafes. Once the local content goes up, local telcos. will start building extra-N.A. network infrastructure.
"Today on Sport Fishing Television we see the amazing catch of a truly monster Great White Shark, and you'll be truly amazed what we find when we split open its belly - 30 thousand kilometers of fiber optic cable - What a monster!"
</ACCENT>
I think you mistake my meaning, and are confusing the point I was trying to make with something else.
I was not claiming that writing is more natural or more intuitive than speech, certainly not. That would indeed be absurd. We are naturally inclined to learn to speek, its in our biological nature as much as is learning to walk. We are not predisposed in the same way to learn to write, and the basic concepts needed for writing would not be present if one had not already learned to speak. I absolutely agree with you on this, 100% - spoken language is the more natural and intuitive of the two.
However my original argument had nothing to do with how intuitive a form of communication is, but rather with that medium's abilities to contain precise and exact information. These are two very different issues. I would argue that the requirements of these are actually contradictory.
The very reasons that text is non-intuitive make it actually better for clarity and precision of meaning. We long ago gave up on rote memorization and started writing all important things down for these exact reasons. Speech is more intuitive, but it is much less reliable than writing for preserving meaning.
I am not arguing that all instances of writing are more precise and compressed in terms of meaning than all instances of speech. Naturally anyone can be obscure or vague in any medium. However the potential of writing is greater for clarity than is speech, and forms of writing have evolved that optimize meaning much better than any form of speech. A good example is the essay. The evolution of writing has developed this particular structure of communication because it is more precise and compressed in its ability to communicate a set of complexe ideas clearly and without confusion. Even the best speaker cannot be so precise as the best essay.
The main reason for this clarity is the very fact that writing is not temporally bound the way speech is. A sentence, once spoken is gone, and must be repeated to be retransmitted. However a sentence, once written, continues to be written and can be read as many times as necessary.
Its static nature in time also lends writing to editing, which cannot be easily done with speech.
This is exactly why writing is the most significant form of communication for all serious endeavors: science, academics, law, government, etc. All rely on writing more than they do speech, because the written word can be modified until it is as absolutely correct as the language permits. Speech cannot be modified in this way, because it is gone the instant it is realized.
Essentially I see this issue as being very different from the issue of intuitive use of communication, where of course speech reigns supreme. But as I mentioned earlier, the significant points in which forms of communication have played a role in the evolution of civilization have all been modifications upon writing, not speech. Granted that the telephone and radio and recorded audio are exceptions to this, however even in these cases the above points about editing and precision still hold true.
One mistake you made which I think I must point out:
"It is completely serial, whereas speech is only partially serial. Words are spoken at once (at the same time, they are transmitted), and processed at once. Words are written, however, letter by letter, transmitted, then processed letter by letter (although we are so good at reading it seems as though we read words, we actually read letters and then interpret them as words). This costs more time. "
Speech is also serial in this nature, one can only be produced in a single-file order of syllables. Furthermore they can only be heard in whatever order the person speaks them in, whereas writing can be read in multiple orders.
Studies in the way we read have demonstrated that once people have become fluent in a language, they do not actually process words letter by letter, but rather tend to recognize various patterns of letters as groups. That is to say, they recognize the form of a word as an entirety, not as a set of individual letters that need to be processed in linear fashion to make sense. This is why you can often mistake words for other similar words when you view them only briefly - your eye has caught the general pattern and makes an incorrect association. Related to this is the fact that as we read, we tend to only observe the topmost portions of letters, and recognize words mostly from the pattern of rises and falls in the letters that make it up; this is why all caps text is much harder to read.
compare:
read this text very quickly, or out of the corner of your eye.
or
READ THIS TEXT VERY QUICKLY OR OUT OF THE CORNER OF YOUR EYE.
The truth is that writing is almost always faster than speaking. This has nothing to do with "processing time" in your brain, but the physical articulation in your throat. It is a common sign of a learning disorder when someone mouths out words as they read or silently "articulates" the words - often seen as a persons larynx rises and falls with the words as they read. These people tend to read at about half the speed of a normal reader.
"Nobody has yet figured out a viable way to handle electronic data other than by giving it a name and attributes. It will probably be a long time before we can manage data without text. "
And with good reason. Over 10,000 years of human history we have developped literally thousands of different media for communication, and in all this time text remains the most compressed, most precise form of communication. Despite all the wonders we can perform with 3d, video and audio, they simply expand the quantity of data transmitted, but always lose in precision. You can't express a precise meaning through 3d or video unless you include speech, and speech is temporal and can't be edited easily like text which is fixed in time.
Think over cultural evolution, and all of the significant events in the history of communication have been when we found new ways to work with text.
the invention of writing
the succession of hand-writing forms over iconic writing ( ie to real writing from hieroglyphs )
the invention of papyrus, then parchment, then paper
the invention of moveable type, and hence printing. ( leads to the invention of newspapers, and subsequently the existence of journalism )
telegraph then teletype
digital representation of text, then computers, then computer communication protocols, then the internet.
Despite the usefulness of images to convey emotion, they lack precision needed for serious communication. Nobody writes laws or technical manuals by recording them as a music video - we write them down, that's what gives them authoritativeness - because the exact precision of the meaning involved can be universally transmitted.
3d graphics are just as arbitrary and nonspecific as 2d graphics are - perhaps more so. It makes for great flights of the imagination, but is totally impractical for the specifics of operating a complexe system like a computer.
"In order to reboot your server, make your way to the secret chamber hidden in the catacombs and obtain root permissions in the form of a great golden hammer. Then take the hammer to the top of the cathedral and strike the bell five times."
Anyone else get the feeling that this is just futurism taken a little too far? Yes, I think that 3d space has great possibilities for improving useability, but this project has got it way off the mark.
Why should I wander for five minutes through a massively complexe virtual world just to access some element of my system I could do from a 2d GUI in a matter of seconds - or from a command line in less time? Yes, 3d space is inherently more intuitive than 2d, but you have to build intelligently, otherwise you make things worse.
The constraints of 3d space are that everything must not only be distanced from each other in order to be perceiveable, but that also the spatial relationships have to be meaningful and have to be intuitively similar to the computing architecture they reflect. Otherwise you needlessly distance the user from his/her system just to make pretty graphics.
The problem with Gibsonesque virtual reality is that there is no constraint on how the underlying structure of the computer is reflected in 3d geometry. Its basically a free-for-all of the imagination where your harddrive could be represented by anything from a chest of drawers to a mutant caterpillar - there is no underlying logic to the organization. Sure, it makes for interesting reading, but it sucks for useability. "oh, when the mutant caterpillar wiggles its butt like that it means I have email".
Also, I wish that coders would find somebody with 3d modelling talent before jumping into projects like this. Those screenshots have got to be the ugliest things I've seen in decades. "Wow, I've got some green spiky blob of something walking about on a plane in blank space - d00d I am so 1337 - I created the matrix."
yeah, right.
3d space offers great possibilities for improving the GUI concept - but this is NOT the way to do it.
Re:don't get mad, get even
on
ICANN Meetings
·
· Score: 1
we used to have a similar problem with the.ca namespace, but now that's been deregulated.
Since it looks like ICANN is being totally anal, why don't you guys deregulate your.us namespace.
you could keep the conventions of other countries, such as using.com.us/.co.us type namespaces.
I agree that www.mysite.smalltown.somestate.us
is a bit of an ugly url, but just petition the.us nic to open this up, it might have made sense to keep things hierarchically organized like this in the past, but this is the 21st century after all.
Sounds to me like someone has found a creative way to make money off the fear that big record companies have towards mp3. Sell them some fancy system that will basically just be a big waste of time.
Let's think about just a few of the simple ways to defeat such a system.
Firstly - password protect mp3 download sites - Duh. In which case if the robot gets unauthorized access to the site, the ppl running it would be liable to break & enter charges.
Secondly, it would be a very simple matter to have an mp3 encoder shift a lot of the audio values around so that any track appears quite differently from the perspective of a binary analysis, but doesn't alter the end sound remarkably.
Yet another example of how AI isn't. And how it is always much simpler to fool an AI than it is to improve it. Think of the Iraqi techniques to fool american smart-bombs - current AI systems are all incredibly stupid when put against even moderate human ingenuity.
You americans are so spoiled.
You've got full control of the upper level domains, and then run amock with the process for it. Not that I support ICANN, I think you guys should give them the boot.
But don't forget you guys still have your own country domain, just like the rest of the world -.us - lucky bastards =)
When was the last time you ever saw a.us website? nobody pays it any attention, well maybe you should start taking advantage of the luxury of having this additional upper level domain space. go register some.us websites and give icann the finger. http://www.nic.us/
anyone else get the feeling that some unnamed companies *cough*M$*cough*..excuse me.. are feeling a little desperate, and are reaching wildly for some leverage, even if it means clubbing their own customers?
whoever thinks that chasing after and threatening your own customers is a good business practice is either certifiably psychotic or else really desperate for leverage somewhere.
sounds to me like some company who is in danger of becoming a set of severed limbs in the next few years is squirming violently in its death-throws.
face it Bill, your dead, you just haven't stopped wriggling is all. =)
The law that gives the doubling time for the number of qubits on a single device is know as Qbert's law. It is based upon the quantum chances of Qbert making it to all the squares on the board and successfully avoiding all the nasty snakes and bad guys without leaping off the edge.
=P
Two problems I can see right away with this kind of encryption.
As one person already pointed out, the actual encryption used here is a one time pad - which naturally needs to be kept secret and secure and known only to the correct two people for the scheme to work. The safe transmission of this key is what is being addressed in this article, not the creation of a new encryption scheme. Naturally this only ensures safe transmission from one point to another, but security of either end still remains an issue.
The second problem I see is this - this is a good point to point transmission scheme, but it says nothing for the kind of transmission that would occur over the internet for example. I would like to know more about the system they described that could be set up to reliably transmit such keys over a LAN or WAN, but from what I can tell from the principle of the thing this isn't really practical.
If the passive presence of Eve, the eavesdropper is sufficient to alter the quantum states of the particles enough that the snooping would be detectable, then certainly the actions of any network switch or router would completely destroy this carefully balanced sequence of quantum states. Unless of course, one was to install routers at every point along the network that would allow the correct checking and validation of these codes - but of course that opens up the issue of tampering and monitoring at each of these hops between bob and alice.
And if you consider the kind of security that is very easily implemented when you have the resources for a secure dedicated line directly from point a to point b, then I must question, what additional security does this really give the users? Even within the largest governments, setting up dedicated lines such as this is so costly and high in maintenance that it can only be practically used for the most important transmissions.
so, yes its a nice idea - but I question its valid uses. the best systems seem to be those that transmit directly through the air - ground to satellite etc. but of course you've got to have line of sight from point a to point b - ordinary people could never use this practically - you could try bouncing signals off satellites, but again you have the insecurity of the satellite itself - you'd have to trust those who build and maintain the satellite that it would accurately report to both end points its own internal validations without doing any snooping or tampering of its own, the satellite is essentially just a router in space.
If anyone knows where I'm going wrong with this logic, please let me know, but it doesn't seem to me that this is a very practical form of encryption for anybody but the most powerful of institutions, and even then only for their most important of operations.
Slashdot Mirror
Software on the other hand is easy to copy once written, and computers can easily be designed to last for hundreds of years. Having clear and durable visual clues is a lot better than vague geological features such as rivers and mountains, because rivers change, and mountains are not very common in the flat areas that make good landing sites. Also the data doesn't need to be sent back to base. Simply build the pyramids in a known formation, and get the software to look for that.
So the aliens are clever enough to build space ships that can travel across the vast distances of space reliably that many generations live and die on the ship before it arrives on the target planet. And they are sophisticated enough to convince and teach the local human population to use alien technology to build pyramids, and they're good enough at teaching the young aboard the ship to preserve this knowledge but not clever enough to teach the young how to actually fly the spacecraft that is holding the entire venture together?
sounds to me like you're really pulling at straws here.
But they knew NOTHING about geography. We can look at the moon, and choose a landing site. The aliens didn't have this option. They didn't have good enough telescopes.
huh?!? what?!?
They got to earth, they landed, presumably they had to spend a good deal of time exploring to find the right human civilization to be the guardians of their "spaceport", but they couldn't draw a map of the landscape? They didn't have to know about our geography before they got here, only afterwards!!! But if the pyramids were built by them, or by their influence upon us, then naturally they would have had to arrive here to do that influence - and they would have seen the landscape.
Since when has the rational explanation not been the simplest? I guarantee that a smart person watching the sky with the aid of a few wooden tools is a lot simpler than fairy stories about aliens.
It's called Occam's Razor my friend, the simplest explanation is the best.
Now we know how they get the timbits out of the middle =P
LOL - yes that is funny.
Obviously the aliens don't ask for travel ID before allowing you on board. =)
Yes, but most early civilizations emerged at or around the same distance from the equator as egypt and mexico/central america. There were civilizations around the indus river very early. There were civilizations in southern china and south east asia very early. But only in the middle east and central america do you get pyramids.
This also doesn't explain the several thousand year time span between the creation of the pyramids in the middle east and those in central america.
And it still doesn't explain why they would need such ridiculous beacons. Humans never need such large "beacons" to guide us. We do just fine with maps and longitude / lattitude calculations. Are you proposing that aliens capable of interstellar travel are incapable of making a map?
We do???
When was the last time anyone had trouble building big buildings? The medieval cathedrals are larger than the pyramids - nobody has trouble believing that human technology was insufficient for that. Anyone have any doubts as to whether the office towers in big cities around the world are constructed by humans or aliens?
As for any uncertainty about the exact methods the Egyptians employed, that's just an issue of scholarly debate. To say that because its unclear means that it must have been outside forces is not simply a fallacy of reasoning. Look at it this way:
pyramid building == mystery.
aliens == mystery.
therefore: pyramid building == aliens ?!?
just because two things are mysterious doesn't mean they are the same. a mystery is by definition unknown and therefore there are no criteria at all upon which to associate it with anything else. It is a fallacy of the mythic imagination that can make the type of conclusions: aliens == mystery == God == quantum physics etc.
The pyramids were porobably designed to be easily recognisable by optical recognition software. Hence alignment is also critical.
Why would optical recognition software be necessary? just because its a current technology doesn't mean it is at all necessary to interstellar or planetary navigation. People manage to go into space and have no trouble getting home without the need for such software, people managed to land on specific geographic areas of the moon without the need for it, we can land probes in precise regions of distant planets without any such need. Maybe the aliens are stupid?
Terrestrial navigation and interstellar navigation are 2 completely different problems that need to be solved separately.
RA time difference of several thousand years just shows that they weren't in a hurry. Given the time it takes to cross interstellar differences they must have felt it worth the wait. Drafting in local labour and materials reduces the amount of machinery needed to transport across the galaxy.
Again this doesn't explain why they would need such beacons. Why not just use a longitude & lattitude system? or why not navigate by geographical features? Finding Egypt from space isn't hard when you know even a little bit about geography. The pyramids are not visible from space without telephoto zoom - and that means you need to already know where to look.
As for location, I would guess that they were only interested in reasonable advanced civilisations near the equater for exactly the same reason that NASA is based so far south.
There were plenty of civilizations further to the equator than egypt - why them? There were civilizations along the Indus river very early - no pyramids, there were civilizations in south east asia very early - no pyramids.
When I say modern mythology, I'm speaking generally about its entrance into popular culture, which is worldwide, although more so in the more developed nations. But it is interesting that americans take it so much more to heart =P
What's the matter? You think it took the invention of television to create a human imagination? Haven't you ever had a dream while you were sleeping? You seriously think that the only way people could come up with that is by meeting aliens? Come on folks - get over it.
What are you afraid of?
That humans might be capable of remarkable things without alien intervention?
1) a pyramid is a very commonly understood shape - it doesn't take a genius to figure it out, little kids can spontaneously come up with pyramidal shapes when playing - there's nothing mystical or extraterrestrial about multiple cultures coming up with them independantly.
2) If the aliens wanted navigation beacons, and are so impressively advanced technologically - why not build them themselves? Why should they convince the native human populations who would take centuries to build them, and would require the entire economic output of the largest civilizations then in existence? If the aliens had the capacity to cross the gulf of space, why should they waste so much time on having us build these irregular beacons when they themselves could easily have built much better ones in a much shorter time?
3) Why should aliens need navigation beacons? If they managed to find their way across the immense gulf of space, what help would a few piles of rocks do them? mountains and other natural marks are much more prominent and ( *apply cluestick* ) visible from space !!!
4) If they really needed a few human-built pyramids to navigate with - why are these structures limited to central america and the middle east? there have been tons of human civilizations capable of creating pyramids - and theoretically the aliens would want navigation beacons spread all over the world - why only these two places?
5) The central american pyramids and the egyptian pyramids were constructed at times differing by thousands of years - why such a gulf in time? If the aliens wanted to fly about - they'd want them all over the place at the same time?
Wacked out theories like this are a convenient explanation for the naive and the ignorant. Do a little research and you'll see just how shabbily the theory holds together - ie. it doesn't at all.
The pyramids are marvels of human accomplishment, and you really do a disservice to the heritage we have inherited by making up fairy stories to discredit the achievements of these people.
I always like seeing such simple common-sense answers as these coming out. It shows that a little common sense is all that's needed to dispel the ridiculous "mysteries of the pyramids - were the egyptians in communication with aliens?" type hype.
Aliens are a modern mythology, this is true, and we like our mythologies to explain all unknowns. But it really does a big disservice to our appreciation of what these people accomplished with their limited technology.
I think in the end we moderns have a strong cultural prejudice, and like to believe that without the wonders of our modern world such accomplishments as the pyramids should not be possible without the aid of equally or greater technological skill - hence the desire for bringing aliens into the issue. But lets face it, the Egyptians weren't stupid, there's no evidence to suggest that human intelligence has increased over the millenia - just our technology. The Egyptians managed to create structures on a scale so grand that today we still marvel at them, its a marvel of human ingenuity - nothing to do with little grey men.
ya, there were lots of internet cafes in Toronto a few years back, and they all seem to have disappeared. Kinda sucks really - I like the idea.
30 x [ 486dx66, 16mb ] + beowulf = super computer.
I'm sorry I can't let you do that dave...
P.S. HAL - shift one alpha == IBM, curious no?
Naturally this is true, because currently the only telcos. laying out high bandwidth lines are american ones - why? because the vast majority of internet content is located in the US & Canada, and that's what people want to access.
There really aren't many South Korean websites that constitute a demand for direct Japan-SK. connections. Europe is currently at the stage of internet development that N.A. was in say '97, '98, hell they still have internet cafes. Once the local content goes up, local telcos. will start building extra-N.A. network infrastructure.
"Today on Sport Fishing Television we see the amazing catch of a truly monster Great White Shark, and you'll be truly amazed what we find when we split open its belly - 30 thousand kilometers of fiber optic cable - What a monster!"
</ACCENT>
foreach $ballot ( @ballot_box ){ /Bush/ ){
/Gore/ ){
...
if( $ballot =~
push( $ballot, @GOP );
}elsif( $ballot =~
push( $ballot, @Dem );
push( $ballot, @GOP );
}
}
whoops, looks like buggy counting software to me,
now I wonder how did that get there
I was not claiming that writing is more natural or more intuitive than speech, certainly not. That would indeed be absurd. We are naturally inclined to learn to speek, its in our biological nature as much as is learning to walk. We are not predisposed in the same way to learn to write, and the basic concepts needed for writing would not be present if one had not already learned to speak. I absolutely agree with you on this, 100% - spoken language is the more natural and intuitive of the two.
However my original argument had nothing to do with how intuitive a form of communication is, but rather with that medium's abilities to contain precise and exact information. These are two very different issues. I would argue that the requirements of these are actually contradictory.
The very reasons that text is non-intuitive make it actually better for clarity and precision of meaning. We long ago gave up on rote memorization and started writing all important things down for these exact reasons. Speech is more intuitive, but it is much less reliable than writing for preserving meaning.
I am not arguing that all instances of writing are more precise and compressed in terms of meaning than all instances of speech. Naturally anyone can be obscure or vague in any medium. However the potential of writing is greater for clarity than is speech, and forms of writing have evolved that optimize meaning much better than any form of speech. A good example is the essay. The evolution of writing has developed this particular structure of communication because it is more precise and compressed in its ability to communicate a set of complexe ideas clearly and without confusion. Even the best speaker cannot be so precise as the best essay.
The main reason for this clarity is the very fact that writing is not temporally bound the way speech is. A sentence, once spoken is gone, and must be repeated to be retransmitted. However a sentence, once written, continues to be written and can be read as many times as necessary.
Its static nature in time also lends writing to editing, which cannot be easily done with speech. This is exactly why writing is the most significant form of communication for all serious endeavors: science, academics, law, government, etc. All rely on writing more than they do speech, because the written word can be modified until it is as absolutely correct as the language permits. Speech cannot be modified in this way, because it is gone the instant it is realized.
Essentially I see this issue as being very different from the issue of intuitive use of communication, where of course speech reigns supreme. But as I mentioned earlier, the significant points in which forms of communication have played a role in the evolution of civilization have all been modifications upon writing, not speech. Granted that the telephone and radio and recorded audio are exceptions to this, however even in these cases the above points about editing and precision still hold true.
One mistake you made which I think I must point out:
"It is completely serial, whereas speech is only partially serial. Words are spoken at once (at the same time, they are transmitted), and processed at once. Words are written, however, letter by letter, transmitted, then processed letter by letter (although we are so good at reading it seems as though we read words, we actually read letters and then interpret them as words). This costs more time. "
Speech is also serial in this nature, one can only be produced in a single-file order of syllables. Furthermore they can only be heard in whatever order the person speaks them in, whereas writing can be read in multiple orders.
Studies in the way we read have demonstrated that once people have become fluent in a language, they do not actually process words letter by letter, but rather tend to recognize various patterns of letters as groups. That is to say, they recognize the form of a word as an entirety, not as a set of individual letters that need to be processed in linear fashion to make sense. This is why you can often mistake words for other similar words when you view them only briefly - your eye has caught the general pattern and makes an incorrect association. Related to this is the fact that as we read, we tend to only observe the topmost portions of letters, and recognize words mostly from the pattern of rises and falls in the letters that make it up; this is why all caps text is much harder to read.
compare:
read this text very quickly, or out of the corner of your eye.
or
READ THIS TEXT VERY QUICKLY OR OUT OF THE CORNER OF YOUR EYE.
The truth is that writing is almost always faster than speaking. This has nothing to do with "processing time" in your brain, but the physical articulation in your throat. It is a common sign of a learning disorder when someone mouths out words as they read or silently "articulates" the words - often seen as a persons larynx rises and falls with the words as they read. These people tend to read at about half the speed of a normal reader.
And with good reason. Over 10,000 years of human history we have developped literally thousands of different media for communication, and in all this time text remains the most compressed, most precise form of communication. Despite all the wonders we can perform with 3d, video and audio, they simply expand the quantity of data transmitted, but always lose in precision. You can't express a precise meaning through 3d or video unless you include speech, and speech is temporal and can't be edited easily like text which is fixed in time.
Think over cultural evolution, and all of the significant events in the history of communication have been when we found new ways to work with text.
- the invention of writing
- the succession of hand-writing forms over iconic writing ( ie to real writing from hieroglyphs )
- the invention of papyrus, then parchment, then paper
- the invention of moveable type, and hence printing. ( leads to the invention of newspapers, and subsequently the existence of journalism )
- telegraph then teletype
- digital representation of text, then computers, then computer communication protocols, then the internet.
Despite the usefulness of images to convey emotion, they lack precision needed for serious communication. Nobody writes laws or technical manuals by recording them as a music video - we write them down, that's what gives them authoritativeness - because the exact precision of the meaning involved can be universally transmitted.3d graphics are just as arbitrary and nonspecific as 2d graphics are - perhaps more so. It makes for great flights of the imagination, but is totally impractical for the specifics of operating a complexe system like a computer.
"In order to reboot your server, make your way to the secret chamber hidden in the catacombs and obtain root permissions in the form of a great golden hammer. Then take the hammer to the top of the cathedral and strike the bell five times."
Anyone else get the feeling that this is just futurism taken a little too far? Yes, I think that 3d space has great possibilities for improving useability, but this project has got it way off the mark.
Why should I wander for five minutes through a massively complexe virtual world just to access some element of my system I could do from a 2d GUI in a matter of seconds - or from a command line in less time? Yes, 3d space is inherently more intuitive than 2d, but you have to build intelligently, otherwise you make things worse.
The constraints of 3d space are that everything must not only be distanced from each other in order to be perceiveable, but that also the spatial relationships have to be meaningful and have to be intuitively similar to the computing architecture they reflect. Otherwise you needlessly distance the user from his/her system just to make pretty graphics.
The problem with Gibsonesque virtual reality is that there is no constraint on how the underlying structure of the computer is reflected in 3d geometry. Its basically a free-for-all of the imagination where your harddrive could be represented by anything from a chest of drawers to a mutant caterpillar - there is no underlying logic to the organization. Sure, it makes for interesting reading, but it sucks for useability. "oh, when the mutant caterpillar wiggles its butt like that it means I have email".
Also, I wish that coders would find somebody with 3d modelling talent before jumping into projects like this. Those screenshots have got to be the ugliest things I've seen in decades. "Wow, I've got some green spiky blob of something walking about on a plane in blank space - d00d I am so 1337 - I created the matrix."
yeah, right.
3d space offers great possibilities for improving the GUI concept - but this is NOT the way to do it.
we used to have a similar problem with the .ca namespace, but now that's been deregulated.
.us namespace.
.com.us/.co.us type namespaces.
.us nic to open this up, it might have made sense to keep things hierarchically organized like this in the past, but this is the 21st century after all.
Since it looks like ICANN is being totally anal, why don't you guys deregulate your
you could keep the conventions of other countries, such as using
I agree that www.mysite.smalltown.somestate.us
is a bit of an ugly url, but just petition the
just a thought
Sounds to me like someone has found a creative way to make money off the fear that big record companies have towards mp3. Sell them some fancy system that will basically just be a big waste of time.
Let's think about just a few of the simple ways to defeat such a system.
Firstly - password protect mp3 download sites - Duh. In which case if the robot gets unauthorized access to the site, the ppl running it would be liable to break & enter charges.
Secondly, it would be a very simple matter to have an mp3 encoder shift a lot of the audio values around so that any track appears quite differently from the perspective of a binary analysis, but doesn't alter the end sound remarkably.
Yet another example of how AI isn't. And how it is always much simpler to fool an AI than it is to improve it. Think of the Iraqi techniques to fool american smart-bombs - current AI systems are all incredibly stupid when put against even moderate human ingenuity.
You've got full control of the upper level domains, and then run amock with the process for it. Not that I support ICANN, I think you guys should give them the boot.
But don't forget you guys still have your own country domain, just like the rest of the world - .us - lucky bastards =)
When was the last time you ever saw a .us website? nobody pays it any attention, well maybe you should start taking advantage of the luxury of having this additional upper level domain space. go register some .us websites and give icann the finger. http://www.nic.us/
anyone else get the feeling that some unnamed companies *cough*M$*cough* ..excuse me.. are feeling a little desperate, and are reaching wildly for some leverage, even if it means clubbing their own customers?
whoever thinks that chasing after and threatening your own customers is a good business practice is either certifiably psychotic or else really desperate for leverage somewhere.
sounds to me like some company who is in danger of becoming a set of severed limbs in the next few years is squirming violently in its death-throws.
face it Bill, your dead, you just haven't stopped wriggling is all. =)
the brontosaurus is thin at one end,
much much thicker in the middle,
and thin again at the far end.
That is my theory and what it is too."
The law that gives the doubling time for the number of qubits on a single device is know as Qbert's law. It is based upon the quantum chances of Qbert making it to all the squares on the board and successfully avoiding all the nasty snakes and bad guys without leaping off the edge.
=P
Two problems I can see right away with this kind of encryption.
As one person already pointed out, the actual encryption used here is a one time pad - which naturally needs to be kept secret and secure and known only to the correct two people for the scheme to work. The safe transmission of this key is what is being addressed in this article, not the creation of a new encryption scheme. Naturally this only ensures safe transmission from one point to another, but security of either end still remains an issue.
The second problem I see is this - this is a good point to point transmission scheme, but it says nothing for the kind of transmission that would occur over the internet for example. I would like to know more about the system they described that could be set up to reliably transmit such keys over a LAN or WAN, but from what I can tell from the principle of the thing this isn't really practical.
If the passive presence of Eve, the eavesdropper is sufficient to alter the quantum states of the particles enough that the snooping would be detectable, then certainly the actions of any network switch or router would completely destroy this carefully balanced sequence of quantum states. Unless of course, one was to install routers at every point along the network that would allow the correct checking and validation of these codes - but of course that opens up the issue of tampering and monitoring at each of these hops between bob and alice.
And if you consider the kind of security that is very easily implemented when you have the resources for a secure dedicated line directly from point a to point b, then I must question, what additional security does this really give the users? Even within the largest governments, setting up dedicated lines such as this is so costly and high in maintenance that it can only be practically used for the most important transmissions.
so, yes its a nice idea - but I question its valid uses. the best systems seem to be those that transmit directly through the air - ground to satellite etc. but of course you've got to have line of sight from point a to point b - ordinary people could never use this practically - you could try bouncing signals off satellites, but again you have the insecurity of the satellite itself - you'd have to trust those who build and maintain the satellite that it would accurately report to both end points its own internal validations without doing any snooping or tampering of its own, the satellite is essentially just a router in space.
If anyone knows where I'm going wrong with this logic, please let me know, but it doesn't seem to me that this is a very practical form of encryption for anybody but the most powerful of institutions, and even then only for their most important of operations.