Okay, my suggestion with the sensors was for the creation of a *NEW* task, which is not that difficult. This *NEW* task would not compete with prior tasks (as in walking) at all, and would develop it's own nerve patterns.
If you are skeptical of what I just said, try this experiment for 1 month: Once a day, for 5 minutes (while wating for the TV commercials to end) *PUSH* up through the center of your palm. Nothing will happen that is visible to you, but the nerve association/muscle feedback will build this activity up as a task in your mind, and you will be able to actualy feel the difference between doing and not doing this task. That difference is detectable, and that is how squid inputs are designed.
So imagine an input system that allowed you to direct your movement by pointing in an arbitrary direction, with speed/direction rendered analog by a squid glove. (THink about the way you move in your dreams) Or even using a cranial ring (try the above experiment with pushing forward/back/left/right with the top of your head.
Talk about intuitive, but it does take about 15 minutes before you can get good input from such a system (the first time) but the long term (a day or two) finnese reachable beats hell out all other input devices.
There has been a lot of development in the squid field over the last few years (squids are a type of minute voltage detector), and while it takes a little training (ususaly about 10/15 minutes of practice to get navigable, which is much less than the time it took most of us to learn the nintindo controler) sqid based controlers have been under development for a few years. The idea is you only have to THINK about moving a muscle, and its voltage changes, but it dosn't actually move until you reach a treshold value. With this tech, there are all kinds of fun ways to solve the walking problem. Personaly, I would put squids in an input glove, and have it respond to *pushes*. -Crutcher
I admit a certain naiviety on this subject, but why does it HAVE to be a bit or byte at a time? Are you tansmiting network packets that size? Seems an awful waste. Why don't you encrypt blocks of the size you are pumping out in you packets, while it is not technicaly a stream, neither is the way in which we handle network communications, and it shouldn't really matter (except for real time systems, and people rarely combine real time applications with encryption, because encryption is so slow.)
This kind of crap has got to stop, you do NOT have rights to something just because you said it, especially when said something is a bit of theory. Have any of these idiots heard of the term "convergence"? I will grant limited (lifetime of the author + 25 years) copywrite protection, but protecting derivitavie works? After I read/see/hear it, all of my THOUGHTS are derivative works, everything I do for the rest of my LIFE is derivative, and If you don't think so, you don't understand anything about human psychology or psychiatry. As for IP on an IDEA? I just want to scream and start shooting people, its as childish (EXACTLY as childish, in exactly the same way) as "First Posts", "I thought of it first, so there".
I cant wait to spend my declining years on the moon, were idiots like this will get spaced before their greedily shortsighted and immature views can spread to children to young to know better.
But so what? I think that we "Will" have molecular computers sometime soon, but even if we had them TODAY, they would take a long time to ride the curve past our current silicon setups. Our computers are this fast because we have gotten really good and making them, it will take time to build a comupter based upon a new design theory that is faster/cheaper/more powerfull than available silicon. I'll probably be out of grad school (which I am a year or two away from entering) before I see one.
Some one should probably make some crack about running beowulf on molecular computers...:)
The birth rate for canada, the us, and most of europe has been LESS than the death rate for years. The only source of pop growth in these areas is immigration (or is it emmigration, can never keep those straight).
For years we have known that as standard of living raises above a certain point, birth rate drops. The world population problem has been one of getting the rest of the world's standard of living up to the point where it's population stabilizes.
As to why? well, as standard of living rises, people have a decreasing awareness of their own mortality, and increasing diversion to do things that kids would interfere with. People have children to RAISE their standard of living, and in situations where it is already high, the marginal utility of that extra set of hands and the emotional conection between parent and child, can easily become negative, especialy if child labor and chattle customs are discarded.
A stable high-tech population is MUCH smaller than the one we currently have, which is one thing that many eco-alarmists overlook (I am concerned about the environment, but the world is NOT going to end in five years if I eat a burger)
The problems that we, as hackers (true sense), have with technical movies about hacking are manifold, but boil down to 2: technical inacuracies and overdramatization.
These problems are not, however, restricted to our little baliwick. And they are not caused by "writers/producers/directors who just don't care", though they are exacerbated by such people.
The problems are basic ones of the art of storytelling, and I guarantee you, that the further from mainstream experience something is, be it hacking, neuroscience, or astronomy, the more it will be altered in the art of storytelling.
This is not an evil, because storytelling is about emotion, and emotion is not about technical details. The flashing screens are there because they elicit the emotion in a non-technical audiance that the 5 character error message would elicit in a technical audiance.
They are called "metaphors", and the form the cornerstone of storytelling, and incidentally, learning. We start with what the people already know, and we add something.
So when you watch a technical film on a subject which you know something about, ask yourself this: "Was the metaphor of representation good, and did the audiance come away with a better understanding AT ALL of the subject?" If the answer is no, bitch away, but if it is yes, don't critasize the writer/director/producer for poorly explaining a subject in 90 minutes which took you 5 years to understand.
-Crutcher
Re:Cracking is a crime. Period.
on
One for the Kids
·
· Score: 1
The DOJ is using the bully pulpit in a means that is just as effective and admirable as the "Just say No" campaign of the 80's.
EVERY single study on the "Just Say No" campaign says that it did NOTHING but waste money. It had NO impact on drug use.
Neither will this campaign, in fact, it will make the kids MORE cynical about the legalities of what they do. -Crutcher
I want the matrix. I want the neuromancer matrix. I want it now.
We have: 1) Great 3d engines, using precalculated binary files. Used for games, very pretty, very LARGE.
2) VRML, a text format that should REALLY be binary, to save run time calculations, but at least it plays nice with the rest of the net. Small, SLOW, used for, um, well, hmm?
When will the quake engine allow for some form of quick portal linking between servers, and nice fast loading levels? With only a few basic file io functions layered in, and a "non-game" mode of play with lower sync security, as well as texture caching and posibly room "templates", quake's engine could be THE killer app of ccyberspace.
So why isn't it? The network requirments aren't large, and the system is self ordering, like the web. This could have been done with quake 1.
Please, Please, Please give us a plugin friendly fast and caching version of quake.
Well, since I am planning to enter this field, I hav some thoughts on the matter. For starters, things we have:
A) Video: We have direct cortex implants that supply low res/approx 640x480, and we have the beginings of artificial retinas, which could have video piped into them.
B) Communication: The power requirements/broadcast range of the new ultra-wide spectrum burst tech is perfect for this kind of stuff. Small and Strong.
C) Output: We have the beginnings of direct brain implanted output, though the main researcher in that field understands lots of nuroscience and little CS, so he isn't makeing real good use of the channels he is setting up. We also have implantable "nerve sensors" for lack of a better word, that have been developed to drive prostetics, that don't go anywhere near the brain, and could be put in a healthy system, just to grab its output.
D) Audio: Actually, weve had audio for decades, as it's REALLY easy, just tag a voltage source onto the audio nerve.
We have all the pieces, it seems, but why don't we have cybernetics yet? Well, take a look at What We Don't Have:
A) Power: We need a good implantable power source, be it a long term battery, a really good thermocouple, or an expansion-generating polymer run alongside a muscle to grab a little juice when you extend.
B) Community: THe developers working on the parts in different fields are not yet treating them as "parts" and aren't really talking yet. We need more cross-field communication.
C) Miniturization: While we have all this neat tech, it is simply to big right now to think about an integrated system.
How We Will Get It:
A) The Disabled: As much as I may claim I need a Jack, my doctor doesn't believe me. But Parapalegics have a MUCH better case, and between them and the blind, we have a large population that has a genuine need for this kind of equipment.
B) Insurance Companys: That large population cost certain people a great deal of money, and anything which reduces that cost, is considered a GOOD thing, so insurance companys have and will continue finacning research into this field.
C) The Law: I don't care who you are, you can't say NO to a blind crippled baby and stay in office, so no one will outlaw this kind of tech, and it will mature.
D) Crazy Hackers: And then I will go and get some, and just like the comercialization of breast implants, I will keep going to different doctors until I find one who will say "YES".
There are a few comments about land fills and that the moon is not controlled by anyone body (due to that ancient treaty).
Why?
There is no environment on the moon, hence nothing to ruin. Why not just dump all your non-organics (you would throw your organics back into the system) in a crater until you wanted to get arround to recycling them?
There also is no UN Peacekeepers(tm) to keep you from controling the moon. If your there, its yours, as per the ancient laws of playgrounds and nations. THat stupid treaty was just a handwave by the US during the initial moon race.
Okay, I ususaly enjoy (and mostly agree with) Katz, but I have to say that this article was silly.
If Katz had left his analysis as that, analysis, this article would have rocked, but instead he got carried away, and started stroking our egos with his glowing rendition of what we wonderful "Netizens" are like.
I'll tell you what we are like: we are lazy, greedy, and stuborn; just like everyone else, but because of the nature of the net, the SNR keeps growing (because our filters improve, and our links get recast), which is why we sometimes appear to be so wonderful.
If katz would stick to reporting and writing, instead of posturing, he be a really good journalist, because he picks the right issues at the right times. Posturing is used by those who want to force an issue, and it just isn't necessary for most of the stuff he writes about.
>>I'll admit that this may be more expensive in terms of implementation complexity and resource usage, >> but I think it's a conceptually clearer system than what exists now.
No, No, No, to this and all other forms of (server side) Trust or reputation based moderation systems. Why, because you have to evaluate an N-Dimensional polygon (where N is the number of user accounts on Slashdot) EVERY time you load a page. And you have to optimize it, with potentialy N forks trying to change it in parallel. It gives me a headache just thinking about it. The system just can NOT handle more than a few values for each user, and I can't even start to handle trees. -Crutcher
Sorry, Bad Math on my example, here's a working version.
Ex. Quux posts at 1 Foo modertates a comment to 2, the comment raises to 2 Bar moderates to 2, the comment stays at 2 Baz moderates to 3, the comment changes to 3 Bat moderates to 5, the comment raises to 4 Monkey moderates to -1, the comment stays at 4 (because of the buffer point provided by Bar) -Crutcher
Comment Karma vs. Moderation Karma
on
Moderation Ideas
·
· Score: 1
A quick point, the ability to form and write ideas cogently and the ability to judge them, while related, are NOT equivalent.
My Suggestion: Have the basic karma work as is, but have a moderator rating that is affected by the M2 ratings you have recieved, that affects how MANY points you get. Make it nicely logrithmic, and consitantly GOOD moderators raise to the level they need to be, while the rest of us stay hampered around 5 pts.
And yes, you will get people spending hours a day moderating slashdot, with MANY points. But those people will only be your good moderators.
On another point, race conditions are mentioned in this discusion, and I think that while a given moderator should be able to specify what level s/he wants a comment to go to, I don't think that moderator should be able to supply more than 1 pt towards that goal.
Ex. Quux posts at 1 Foo modertates a comment to 4, the comment raises to 2. Bar moderates to 3, the comment raises to 3 Baz moderates to 3, the comment does not change Bat moderates to 5, the comment raises to 5. (Bar + Baz brings it to 3, Foo brings it to 4, Bat brings it to 5) -Crutcher
This LinuxLite is Yet Another Option, and Linux has ALWAYS been about options, so don't yell that a trimmed version is evil, or foolish, or that people should all RTFM.
Mainly, because yelling won't make them.
His point is good and valid, and if following will bring us more linux users, then lets do it. The whole point is MORE. The evolution of the system is driven by numbers, and an uneducated linux user can only become one thing: a more educated linux user. But first, we have to get them on the system, and we have to get their resources to support the system.
And there does need to be a LinuxLite ONLY Cd, because we want them to play with it, but we don't want them to hurt themselves, and we dont want to scare them (so no "Experienced users ONLY" options).
If Linux is a tank, think of Linux Lite as the Poeple's Car (the Volkswagon). It is built around the same ideas, but is simple enough to be understood JUST by taking it apart, and is straightforward enough, that a newbie can put it back together.
Okay fellow slashdoters, we have a problem. Our enemy (and make no mistake, we have enemys, and Bertelsmann falls quite squarely into this catagory) holds one of the ultimate trump cards in the Game of manipulating the populace: The Welfare of the Children, Who Must Be Protected. This is NOT going to go away, we can not ignore it.
We can attempt a campaign of education (always worth the effort, but not always succesful); or we can finaly play dirty politics, and squish this bug.
The Cards we can play are the following (add more if you think of them) : *You Dirty Nazi - play up on the publisher's association with the Nazi party as a way to discredit them in the EU. No one wants a monster protecting their children. *You Dirty Babilonian - play up on the dangers of comfortable slavery, with plenty of biblical referances. this will get you the silent majority in your pocket. *You Dirty Profeter - play up on how MUCH money this will make Bertelsmann, and that end users wont get reimbursed for the time they spend rating their content. no one likes to feel used, especialy by Big Rich Guys(tm).
This really must be killed, censorship is bad, GLOBAL CENSORSHIP is to bad for me to get my mind around.
I am sorry if this is offtopic or flaimbait, but I feel that I must defend myself, as I spend a great deal of my time fighting bigotry, and can't stand to be accused of it.
My post was from three distinct (and VERY simplified) points of view. I cast the groups I described as "Believers" and "Scientists", I could as easily have named them "Foobies" and "Barites", and they represented simplified philosophys of the ethics of science. I was trying to, in a limmited space, provide a bit of thought on why I think a certain group (the "Foobies") is wrong, but not for the reasons that the other group (the "Barites") traditionaly gives.
As to my own, personal beliefs, they are none of your business, and I try to keep them out off my arguments. I did NOT say that scientists did not believe, any more than I said believers were against medical science. Perhaps if you had read the article more closely, you would have noticed the abstraction of the labels "Believer" and "Scientist", and would have noticed that I did not cast myself into EITHER camp. -Crutcher
So here we stand, at the threshold of creating life, and around us two camps grow. One proclaiming that we are wrong to play God by doing this thing (whom I shall call the Believers); and the other, that God doesn't care about this, or doesn't exist (whom I shall call the Scientists). This drama has played itself out many times before, and shall play itself out many times again; and though I know I cannot stop it, I offer my futile thoughts on the subject in an effort to do the imposible.
The first claim held by the Believers is that there are regions of action reserved for God, things that, rather than being good or evil, are in some way beyond us, sacrsanct territory for God alone, and to tread within these areas is childish and irresponsible of us.
The Scientists response to this is to claim that their is no God, and thus no reservation of action can be attributed to him.
My response is to say "hogwash". If God had reserved an area for himself, it would STAY reserved, he being God and all; leaving us neatly in the realm of natural rights (those things we are physicaly capable of doing or causing to happen) that the Scientists support, without inviolating the God of the Believers.
The second claim made by the Believers is that there are certain decisions which, were we to choose one of the options available, we would be playing God. Aborition, Geneticaly Engineered Foods, Euthanasia, and the like are such decsions.
The general response of the Scientists is to say "go away you silly Believer, this is just the first claim rephrased".
My response is that this second claim, while dependant upon the first, is also "hogwash"; because If I posses the power to act, and choose not to, then THAT is an action, and I am as responsible as If I had acted for the outcome.
An Example: Case 1: I do not know cpr, you have a heart attack, I rage at God for letting you die. Case 2: I do know cpr, you have a heart attack, I do nothing, I feel guilty (and am prosecuted) for letting you die.
For once we have a knowledge or a power, we are responsible for every thing to which it can be applied (even if we don't apply it)
Militant Agnostic - I don't know and you don't either.
A labeling system, an effective one, REQUIRES an effective monitoring system. An effective monitoring system REQUIRES compliance in software. Alpha and Beta software is almost never fully compliant to all specs. Therefore, this could (easily) be used to squish experimental new protocols and programs, because they aren't compliant. This is a BOON to large software firms, but it is HORRIBLE to OSS advocates.
Not to mention what you could do once you finaly had such a monitoring system in place (remember the big stink about CIA monitoring troubles on IP?) -Crutcher
There have been a lot of posts about how fan control would work in 3 space, and the answer is NOT 6 fans (though that would work). The minimum number of control points you need is 4, distributed evenly over the surface of the device.
The four would give you all the mobility you would need, though the control logic would be horrible (but logic is cheap, hardware is expensive) For starters, every adjustment would use all the fans (except for maybee a few distinct special cases).
Also, if it's gyro stabilized, your aditude adjustments would largely be gyro based, with occasional gyro spin downs using the fans.
Personaly, I would stick a dual fan in the core (on axis, spining in alternate directions) and route inflow and out flow with valves leading to external control points. properly engineered, it could be used as a gyro as well.
Mozilla with a IRC/Chat program internal? Hmm, wonder how M$ likes a taste of their own medicine.
But seriously, this is a GOOD THING. Do you know how many modules exist for EMACS? No, you don't, that's the whole point, OSS means never having to say, "Thats ALL I can do with this program", (and by extension, it means never being able to say "I understand it completely") but we want the damn bazar, because it works. Don't say it's bad because YOU dont want a particular feature, OSS software almost always allows to disable any thing you want, and the specs on how Mozilla folds modules in are beautiful. IE will never be able to compete with this, precisely because they limit it to what THEY think most people want. -Crutcher
Slashdot Mirror
Okay, my suggestion with the sensors was for the creation of a *NEW* task, which is not that difficult. This *NEW* task would not compete with prior tasks (as in walking) at all, and would develop it's own nerve patterns.
If you are skeptical of what I just said, try this experiment for 1 month: Once a day, for 5 minutes (while wating for the TV commercials to end) *PUSH* up through the center of your palm. Nothing will happen that is visible to you, but the nerve association/muscle feedback will build this activity up as a task in your mind, and you will be able to actualy feel the difference between doing and not doing this task. That difference is detectable, and that is how squid inputs are designed.
So imagine an input system that allowed you to direct your movement by pointing in an arbitrary direction, with speed/direction rendered analog by a squid glove. (THink about the way you move in your dreams) Or even using a cranial ring (try the above experiment with pushing forward/back/left/right with the top of your head.
Talk about intuitive, but it does take about 15 minutes before you can get good input from such a system (the first time) but the long term (a day or two) finnese reachable beats hell out all other input devices.
-Crutcher
-Crutcher
There has been a lot of development in the squid field over the last few years (squids are a type of minute voltage detector), and while it takes a little training (ususaly about 10/15 minutes of practice to get navigable, which is much less than the time it took most of us to learn the nintindo controler) sqid based controlers have been under development for a few years. The idea is you only have to THINK about moving a muscle, and its voltage changes, but it dosn't actually move until you reach a treshold value. With this tech, there are all kinds of fun ways to solve the walking problem. Personaly, I would put squids in an input glove, and have it respond to *pushes*.
-Crutcher
IANAG : I am not a guru, But ...
I admit a certain naiviety on this subject, but why does it HAVE to be a bit or byte at a time? Are you tansmiting network packets that size? Seems an awful waste. Why don't you encrypt blocks of the size you are pumping out in you packets, while it is not technicaly a stream, neither is the way in which we handle network communications, and it shouldn't really matter (except for real time systems, and people rarely combine real time applications with encryption, because encryption is so slow.)
-Crutcher
This kind of crap has got to stop, you do NOT have rights to something just because you said it, especially when said something is a bit of theory. Have any of these idiots heard of the term "convergence"? I will grant limited (lifetime of the author + 25 years) copywrite protection, but protecting derivitavie works? After I read/see/hear it, all of my THOUGHTS are derivative works, everything I do for the rest of my LIFE is derivative, and If you don't think so, you don't understand anything about human psychology or psychiatry. As for IP on an IDEA? I just want to scream and start shooting people, its as childish (EXACTLY as childish, in exactly the same way) as "First Posts", "I thought of it first, so there".
I cant wait to spend my declining years on the moon, were idiots like this will get spaced before their greedily shortsighted and immature views can spread to children to young to know better.
-Crutcher
But so what? I think that we "Will" have molecular computers sometime soon, but even if we had them TODAY, they would take a long time to ride the curve past our current silicon setups. Our computers are this fast because we have gotten really good and making them, it will take time to build a comupter based upon a new design theory that is faster/cheaper/more powerfull than available silicon. I'll probably be out of grad school (which I am a year or two away from entering) before I see one.
:)
Some one should probably make some crack about running beowulf on molecular computers...
-Crutcher
Check out the UN Pop Growth figgures.
The birth rate for canada, the us, and most of europe has been LESS than the death rate for years. The only source of pop growth in these areas is immigration (or is it emmigration, can never keep those straight).
For years we have known that as standard of living raises above a certain point, birth rate drops. The world population problem has been one of getting the rest of the world's standard of living up to the point where it's population stabilizes.
As to why? well, as standard of living rises, people have a decreasing awareness of their own mortality, and increasing diversion to do things that kids would interfere with. People have children to RAISE their standard of living, and in situations where it is already high, the marginal utility of that extra set of hands and the emotional conection between parent and child, can easily become negative, especialy if child labor and chattle customs are discarded.
A stable high-tech population is MUCH smaller than the one we currently have, which is one thing that many eco-alarmists overlook (I am concerned about the environment, but the world is NOT going to end in five years if I eat a burger)
My $0.02
-Crutcher
We have been known to fri a few CDs of the AOL variety around here, they make cool wall deco. Never hooked up a video cammera before.
-Crutcher
The problems that we, as hackers (true sense), have with technical movies about hacking are manifold, but boil down to 2: technical inacuracies and overdramatization.
These problems are not, however, restricted to our little baliwick. And they are not caused by "writers/producers/directors who just don't care", though they are exacerbated by such people.
The problems are basic ones of the art of storytelling, and I guarantee you, that the further from mainstream experience something is, be it hacking, neuroscience, or astronomy, the more it will be altered in the art of storytelling.
This is not an evil, because storytelling is about emotion, and emotion is not about technical details. The flashing screens are there because they elicit the emotion in a non-technical audiance that the 5 character error message would elicit in a technical audiance.
They are called "metaphors", and the form the cornerstone of storytelling, and incidentally, learning. We start with what the people already know, and we add something.
So when you watch a technical film on a subject which you know something about, ask yourself this: "Was the metaphor of representation good, and did the audiance come away with a better understanding AT ALL of the subject?" If the answer is no, bitch away, but if it is yes, don't critasize the writer/director/producer for poorly explaining a subject in 90 minutes which took you 5 years to understand.
-Crutcher
The DOJ is using the bully pulpit in a means that is just as effective and admirable as the "Just say No" campaign of the 80's.
EVERY single study on the "Just Say No" campaign says that it did NOTHING but waste money. It had NO impact on drug use.
Neither will this campaign, in fact, it will make the kids MORE cynical about the legalities of what they do.
-Crutcher
I want the matrix.
I want the neuromancer matrix.
I want it now.
We have:
1) Great 3d engines, using precalculated binary files. Used for games, very pretty, very LARGE.
2) VRML, a text format that should REALLY be binary, to save run time calculations, but at least it plays nice with the rest of the net. Small, SLOW, used for, um, well, hmm?
When will the quake engine allow for some form of quick portal linking between servers, and nice fast loading levels? With only a few basic file io functions layered in, and a "non-game" mode of play with lower sync security, as well as texture caching and posibly room "templates", quake's engine could be THE killer app of ccyberspace.
So why isn't it? The network requirments aren't large, and the system is self ordering, like the web. This could have been done with quake 1.
Please, Please, Please give us a plugin friendly fast and caching version of quake.
I want my matrix.
-Crutcher
Lets not forget about the rampant overpopulation problem in Asia, India, and Africa.
We will have food wars unless we are VERY lucky, and they will be bloody and onesided.
My prediction: 2014
-Crutcher
... are taught in 2nd year Computer Science.
They Exist, They are simple.
Then again, so are nuron simulation algorithms.
The problem we have is that they have HUGE costs in space/time, and we dont have computers that can run them (yet).
But rest assured that they do exist, and they are provable.
-Crutcher
Well, since I am planning to enter this field, I hav some thoughts on the matter. For starters, things we have:
A) Video: We have direct cortex implants that supply low res/approx 640x480, and we have the beginings of artificial retinas, which could have video piped into them.
B) Communication: The power requirements/broadcast range of the new ultra-wide spectrum burst tech is perfect for this kind of stuff. Small and Strong.
C) Output: We have the beginnings of direct brain implanted output, though the main researcher in that field understands lots of nuroscience and little CS, so he isn't makeing real good use of the channels he is setting up. We also have implantable "nerve sensors" for lack of a better word, that have been developed to drive prostetics, that don't go anywhere near the brain, and could be put in a healthy system, just to grab its output.
D) Audio: Actually, weve had audio for decades, as it's REALLY easy, just tag a voltage source onto the audio nerve.
We have all the pieces, it seems, but why don't we have cybernetics yet? Well, take a look at What We Don't Have:
A) Power: We need a good implantable power source, be it a long term battery, a really good thermocouple, or an expansion-generating polymer run alongside a muscle to grab a little juice when you extend.
B) Community: THe developers working on the parts in different fields are not yet treating them as "parts" and aren't really talking yet. We need more cross-field communication.
C) Miniturization: While we have all this neat tech, it is simply to big right now to think about an integrated system.
How We Will Get It:
A) The Disabled: As much as I may claim I need a Jack, my doctor doesn't believe me. But Parapalegics have a MUCH better case, and between them and the blind, we have a large population that has a genuine need for this kind of equipment.
B) Insurance Companys: That large population cost certain people a great deal of money, and anything which reduces that cost, is considered a GOOD thing, so insurance companys have and will continue finacning research into this field.
C) The Law: I don't care who you are, you can't say NO to a blind crippled baby and stay in office, so no one will outlaw this kind of tech, and it will mature.
D) Crazy Hackers: And then I will go and get some, and just like the comercialization of breast implants, I will keep going to different doctors until I find one who will say "YES".
-Crutcher
There are a few comments about land fills and that the moon is not controlled by anyone body (due to that ancient treaty).
Why?
There is no environment on the moon, hence nothing to ruin. Why not just dump all your non-organics (you would throw your organics back into the system) in a crater until you wanted to get arround to recycling them?
There also is no UN Peacekeepers(tm) to keep you from controling the moon. If your there, its yours, as per the ancient laws of playgrounds and nations. THat stupid treaty was just a handwave by the US during the initial moon race.
-Crutcher
Okay, I ususaly enjoy (and mostly agree with) Katz, but I have to say that this article was silly.
If Katz had left his analysis as that, analysis, this article would have rocked, but instead he got carried away, and started stroking our egos with his glowing rendition of what we wonderful "Netizens" are like.
I'll tell you what we are like: we are lazy, greedy, and stuborn; just like everyone else, but because of the nature of the net, the SNR keeps growing (because our filters improve, and our links get recast), which is why we sometimes appear to be so wonderful.
If katz would stick to reporting and writing, instead of posturing, he be a really good journalist, because he picks the right issues at the right times. Posturing is used by those who want to force an issue, and it just isn't necessary for most of the stuff he writes about.
-Crutcher
>>I'll admit that this may be more expensive in terms of implementation complexity and resource usage,
>> but I think it's a conceptually clearer system than what exists now.
No, No, No, to this and all other forms of (server side) Trust or reputation based moderation systems.
Why, because you have to evaluate an N-Dimensional polygon (where N is the number of user accounts on Slashdot) EVERY time you load a page. And you have to optimize it, with potentialy N forks trying to change it in parallel. It gives me a headache just thinking about it. The system just can NOT handle more than a few values for each user, and I can't even start to handle trees.
-Crutcher
Sorry, Bad Math on my example, here's a working version.
Ex. Quux posts at 1
Foo modertates a comment to 2, the comment raises to 2
Bar moderates to 2, the comment stays at 2
Baz moderates to 3, the comment changes to 3
Bat moderates to 5, the comment raises to 4
Monkey moderates to -1, the comment stays at 4 (because of the buffer point provided by Bar)
-Crutcher
A quick point, the ability to form and write ideas cogently and the ability to judge them, while related, are NOT equivalent.
My Suggestion:
Have the basic karma work as is, but have a moderator rating that is affected by the M2 ratings you have recieved, that affects how MANY points you get. Make it nicely logrithmic, and consitantly GOOD moderators raise to the level they need to be, while the rest of us stay hampered around 5 pts.
And yes, you will get people spending hours a day moderating slashdot, with MANY points. But those people will only be your good moderators.
On another point, race conditions are mentioned in this discusion, and I think that while a given moderator should be able to specify what level s/he wants a comment to go to, I don't think that moderator should be able to supply more than 1 pt towards that goal.
Ex. Quux posts at 1
Foo modertates a comment to 4, the comment raises to 2.
Bar moderates to 3, the comment raises to 3
Baz moderates to 3, the comment does not change
Bat moderates to 5, the comment raises to 5. (Bar + Baz brings it to 3, Foo brings it to 4, Bat brings it to 5)
-Crutcher
Stop the flame war, I have a point.
This LinuxLite is Yet Another Option, and Linux has ALWAYS been about options, so don't yell that a trimmed version is evil, or foolish, or that people should all RTFM.
Mainly, because yelling won't make them.
His point is good and valid, and if following will bring us more linux users, then lets do it. The whole point is MORE. The evolution of the system is driven by numbers, and an uneducated linux user can only become one thing: a more educated linux user. But first, we have to get them on the system, and we have to get their resources to support the system.
And there does need to be a LinuxLite ONLY Cd, because we want them to play with it, but we don't want them to hurt themselves, and we dont want to scare them (so no "Experienced users ONLY" options).
If Linux is a tank, think of Linux Lite as the Poeple's Car (the Volkswagon). It is built around the same ideas, but is simple enough to be understood JUST by taking it apart, and is straightforward enough, that a newbie can put it back together.
-Crutcher
Okay fellow slashdoters, we have a problem. Our enemy (and make no mistake, we have enemys, and Bertelsmann falls quite squarely into this catagory) holds one of the ultimate trump cards in the Game of manipulating the populace: The Welfare of the Children, Who Must Be Protected. This is NOT going to go away, we can not ignore it.
We can attempt a campaign of education (always worth the effort, but not always succesful); or we can finaly play dirty politics, and squish this bug.
The Cards we can play are the following (add more if you think of them) :
*You Dirty Nazi - play up on the publisher's association with the Nazi party as a way to discredit them in the EU. No one wants a monster protecting their children.
*You Dirty Babilonian - play up on the dangers of comfortable slavery, with plenty of biblical referances. this will get you the silent majority in your pocket.
*You Dirty Profeter - play up on how MUCH money this will make Bertelsmann, and that end users wont get reimbursed for the time they spend rating their content. no one likes to feel used, especialy by Big Rich Guys(tm).
This really must be killed, censorship is bad, GLOBAL CENSORSHIP is to bad for me to get my mind around.
-Crutcher
I am sorry if this is offtopic or flaimbait, but I feel that I must defend myself, as I spend a great deal of my time fighting bigotry, and can't stand to be accused of it.
My post was from three distinct (and VERY simplified) points of view. I cast the groups I described as "Believers" and "Scientists", I could as easily have named them "Foobies" and "Barites", and they represented simplified philosophys of the ethics of science. I was trying to, in a limmited space, provide a bit of thought on why I think a certain group (the "Foobies") is wrong, but not for the reasons that the other group (the "Barites") traditionaly gives.
As to my own, personal beliefs, they are none of your business, and I try to keep them out off my arguments. I did NOT say that scientists did not believe, any more than I said believers were against medical science. Perhaps if you had read the article more closely, you would have noticed the abstraction of the labels "Believer" and "Scientist", and would have noticed that I did not cast myself into EITHER camp.
-Crutcher
So here we stand, at the threshold of creating life, and around us two camps grow. One proclaiming that we are wrong to play God by doing this thing (whom I shall call the Believers); and the other, that God doesn't care about this, or doesn't exist (whom I shall call the Scientists). This drama has played itself out many times before, and shall play itself out many times again; and though I know I cannot stop it, I offer my futile thoughts on the subject in an effort to do the imposible.
The first claim held by the Believers is that there are regions of action reserved for God, things that, rather than being good or evil, are in some way beyond us, sacrsanct territory for God alone, and to tread within these areas is childish and irresponsible of us.
The Scientists response to this is to claim that their is no God, and thus no reservation of action can be attributed to him.
My response is to say "hogwash". If God had reserved an area for himself, it would STAY reserved, he being God and all; leaving us neatly in the realm of natural rights (those things we are physicaly capable of doing or causing to happen) that the Scientists support, without inviolating the God of the Believers.
The second claim made by the Believers is that there are certain decisions which, were we to choose one of the options available, we would be playing God. Aborition, Geneticaly Engineered Foods, Euthanasia, and the like are such decsions.
The general response of the Scientists is to say "go away you silly Believer, this is just the first claim rephrased".
My response is that this second claim, while dependant upon the first, is also "hogwash"; because If I posses the power to act, and choose not to, then THAT is an action, and I am as responsible as If I had acted for the outcome.
An Example:
Case 1: I do not know cpr, you have a heart attack, I rage at God for letting you die.
Case 2: I do know cpr, you have a heart attack, I do nothing, I feel guilty (and am prosecuted) for letting you die.
For once we have a knowledge or a power, we are responsible for every thing to which it can be applied (even if we don't apply it)
Militant Agnostic
- I don't know and you don't either.
-Crutcher
A labeling system, an effective one, REQUIRES an effective monitoring system. An effective monitoring system REQUIRES compliance in software. Alpha and Beta software is almost never fully compliant to all specs. Therefore, this could (easily) be used to squish experimental new protocols and programs, because they aren't compliant. This is a BOON to large software firms, but it is HORRIBLE to OSS advocates.
Not to mention what you could do once you finaly had such a monitoring system in place (remember the big stink about CIA monitoring troubles on IP?)
-Crutcher
There have been a lot of posts about how fan control would work in 3 space, and the answer is NOT 6 fans (though that would work). The minimum number of control points you need is 4, distributed evenly over the surface of the device.
The four would give you all the mobility you would need, though the control logic would be horrible (but logic is cheap, hardware is expensive) For starters, every adjustment would use all the fans (except for maybee a few distinct special cases).
Also, if it's gyro stabilized, your aditude adjustments would largely be gyro based, with occasional gyro spin downs using the fans.
Personaly, I would stick a dual fan in the core (on axis, spining in alternate directions) and route inflow and out flow with valves leading to external control points. properly engineered, it could be used as a gyro as well.
My $0.02
-Crutcher
Mozilla with a IRC/Chat program internal?
Hmm, wonder how M$ likes a taste of their own medicine.
But seriously, this is a GOOD THING. Do you know how many modules exist for EMACS? No, you don't, that's the whole point, OSS means never having to say, "Thats ALL I can do with this program", (and by extension, it means never being able to say "I understand it completely") but we want the damn bazar, because it works. Don't say it's bad because YOU dont want a particular feature, OSS software almost always allows to disable any thing you want, and the specs on how Mozilla folds modules in are beautiful. IE will never be able to compete with this, precisely because they limit it to what THEY think most people want.
-Crutcher