The WAP spec is constantly being refined though. And you pay per k, not for second. The nice thing about WAP though is it offers much more robust programming experiences for content/site admins. And of course, when 3G debuts, the speed issue will become effectively nil (I believe 3G does data transfer at 112kbps, but I could be wrong).
Hopefully though, WAP v2 will address all these issues (I believe I read somewhere that WAP v2 would debut with 3G services, but then again, who knows)
I can see two sides to the argument here. On the one hand, this would seem like a "Bad Thing" because WAP is trying to be the standard of most of these European countries/companies. Whenever you try to have a standard, it hurts to have division, because it encourages others to break ranks, or stipulates compatibility
On the other hand, it could be construed as a "Good Thing" because it would encourage competition and give a kickstart to the latent WAP market by demonstrating the more powerful i-mode applications, forcing vendors to adopt to the full WAP specification (as most only do text right now, when WAP fully supports grayscale imaging in spec).
A couple URLs for a comparison between WAP and i-mode are:
A bug a cartridge, eh? Any bug? *rubs hands deviously* I knew that ant hill would come in handy... now how to figure out how to get them all out... <evil laughter>
If you'll excuse me, I have work to do... bwa ha ha ha..
As we all know, the coding is being done by a thousand monkeys on a thousand typewriters. Feeling that they were being strongly misrepresented by the name Helix (which evoked images of a certain black cat during market analysis), they staged a revolt, flinging their feces in broad arcs throughout the air. In order to prevent the monkeys from being bought out by Microsoft (as their fecal flinging abilities are what Microsoft values in an employee), the Helix team instituted a name change to Ximian.
Don't believe me? Read between the lines here:
How do you say Ximian?
ZIM-ee-un, to rhyme with "simian."
It may seem cruel, but this might be one of the best ways to screen for jobs. It will allow our businesses to have the best and healthiest employees. This will lead to increased production and satisfaction by the customer.
So what you are saying is you would rather have someones potential life determined at birth rather than allow people to live their lives and make themselves what they want to be? Genes, for the most part, do not hardcode when it comes to disease and other forms of mental dispositions (ie: depression, homosexuality, excessive happiness, etc) - They simply indicate a predisposition.
By hiring/firing based on these genetic predispositions, you are entirely negating the impact that the individual person has upon their own destiny. Under your logic, it would be argumentably sound to say "Al The Geek had 1 girlfriend in highschool. Thus, he has an X% (for the sake of example, lets say 90%) of never getting married due to social ineptitude. Therefore, we must prevent Al from ever being able to marry".
The only difference is, in this case, "Al" has a genetic predisposition to Alzheimers, and thus shouldn't be allowed to work in any important task which may allow for social advancement or betterment because of the risk that he may develop the symptoms and at some point "forget" a crucial instruction. Or that Grace, who has a genetic predisposition to the possibility of poor eyesight in her middle ages cannot be allowed to be a pilot, even though no symptoms are exhibited of poor eyesight.
Genetic discrimination is something that those eschewing social darwinism have been waiting for - but instead of keeping the poor in menial jobs and the social elite making the money, instead they keep the "weak" in the menial jobs and establish positions to allow the genetic superior to become the social superior.
As much as I, in my geekness, would love to see the day come where intelligence is more respected then how many parties I throw during high school/how many cheerleaders I get in the sack, I would shudder at the idea where I am, from birth, bred for a position of social superiority due to some genetic indicator which indicates I "may be" a better learner than others.
As far as society goes, do you think a society which shuns/respects people based solely on labels (ie: studies have shown that, when given a diverse and statistically equal group, where certain students are described as teachers to be "slow learners" - when there is no basis for that - that the students then become slow learners based upon the treatment by the teachers on the assumption that they are slow learners) can handle the knowledge of whether someone "may or may not" develop a disease in the future?
In summary, I simply say "Fah!" to you and your elitist ideals.
I don't see any problem with that. Employers should be able to hire/fire based on dress code. I mean, come on, I think it's perfectly justified to fire someone for dirty jeans....
"Fax text images..." Is that like listen to text sound? "Oh my, your voice sounds simply operatic when I listen with it through ASCII"
"User-friendly 3.5 inch touch-screen LCD" - since when has anything that small been user friendly?
"Stylus pen inputting" - mandatory election comment: Look out Palm Beachers, this camera is not for you.
"Text mode" - someone want to explain to me why a camera would have text mode? The only possible use I can see would be having it "Matrix-fied" [sic], but I doubt that is what they mean.
Oh well, nothing like reading English translations from Japanese pages, if I do so myself.
Article 12.
No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.
An interesting thought if we were to actually see the company try to subject Tongan's to mandatory DNA testing. This is a UN document, so I don't know it's affect on Tonga, but it just reaffirms that the conspiracy theories many (including myself) have tossed around may be unfounded.
The problem is that 96% of the genetic code is shared between humans and monkeys alone, and current studies suggest that only you are only 1% distinct of that 4% from the person sitting next to you. In addition, like was said before, you would first have to map a 'control' population in order to understand the 'ideal' genetic code, and then compare the 'ideal' with the Tongans to isolate differences (empirically derived is the term), and then find some way to alter a virus to target the strands.
However, the very nature of the virus to attack a cell makes it nearly impossible to 'program' a virus to selectively attack cells which posses a certain DNA strand. To draw an analogy, it would be like being shown 3 identical black boxes, and that one of these has a bomb in them, and that you must get rid of it. But, add in the effect that touching the 'bomb box' will set it off, killing you, and it makes it nearly impossible to use some method to identify it.
However, if the Tongans posessed something not genetically different but biochemically different, such as the presence of a minimum amount of such and such hormone, or the presence of some third-party cell/virus/bacteria within them all, then you could 'program' a virus to be such that. But I'm sure you'll find such a correlation between all Tongan's a statisical near-impossibility.
As with any PR-consciencious commercial entity dealing in the unethically obtained genetic information through a deal with an opressive royal family (or so I am led to believe by other/.ers), I would suspect that it would be a police effort. Countries can stand to look bad (ie: Cuba) and leaders can stand to look bad (ie: Yassar Arafat), but companies cannot stand to look bad (ie: Microsoft coming up with the "Freedom to Innovate" PR releases to make it look like they weren't a monopoly).
The real question is when will the organizations devoted to human rights step in?
Of course, if you lend yourself to Scott Adam's (of Dilbert fame for you unintiated) interpretation of the Swiss, you could instead be studying the DNA of benevolent aliens.... An interesting thought;-)
As various others have mentioned, the sad reality is that the government is an elite ruling family.
As for your questions about the United States, where would you find protection from such DNA mapping? I would no doubt expect someone would take the US Government to court (esp in this modern litiginous society) if they were to try it, but do any real laws prevent them?
As for fingerprints when you are born, AFAIK, your fingers are not sufficiently developed w/ regards to the skin, and thus your fingerprint wouldn't really work. And if they were to use ink, instead of the only-recently introduced optical biometric scanners, then the potential for ink with such small channels being between the rings is too great to get an accurate sample. Small fingers are much harder to measure.
In light of all of this, I'm reminded of the one-funny joke which now brings back a rather sour aftertaste.... Just because you are paranoid doesn't mean they aren't after you
On the topic of Super Football player, you can go see the American bastardized-football version of the genetically enhanced uber-footballer in 6th day. Slightly relevant to your message, but an interesting movie.
If I had my psych notes, I could give you exact studies and what not, but this whole concept of selective breeding was explored by a psychologist, named Sheldon, under the guise that he was 'measuring body types'... the whole concept of ectomorph/endomorph/mesomorph was his classification for these, and through measuring Ivy League students (male and female) as they were accepted, he was trying to pattern the necessities for breeding an elite race of 'super-geeks' (I say geeks because they were Ivy Leaguers, but mind you, I know they were not *true* geeks, or at least not the LARGE majority).
In either event, I don't quite remember what happened to him after that. Either there was a public cry much like that against Frankenstein's monster... or there was apathy... either way, I wouldn't place it very far in the future, with such atrocities occuring....
Mind you, this was primitive studies, and in today's world of DNA manipulation and understanding, with the human genome mapped, you really have to wonder if there won't be some Neo-Sheldon who will attempt such a thing. I suspect it would be someone with a large amount of money and the guise of helping the public...
I almost wonder if this shouldn't be an issue of human rights... What you have is a government basically selling out the individual rights of the populace for $200 million - which, if you read the article, will go the the Ministry of Health - owned by the government.....
Rather than sell their people into slavery, something clearly socially and morally unacceptable, they are essentially selling the people into a life of lab-monkeying. I'm sorry, but where is the outcry? When commercialization and trampling of human rights combine, it only makes me fear the day of MegaCorp (also known to some psychics as Microsoft) owning our governments.....
For me, the lure of open source was that you could always write what you wanted to write, and somehow, through this strange world we've come to know as the Internet, there would be someone out there with the exact same thoughts on writing a program. Thus, you two (or three, or hundred, or thousand, etc) can all collaborate on writing software that satisfies your specific needs and desires.
Thus, I don't understand a few things about how this would work. If the appeal is in creating what you want and showing the world, isn't that lost in a corporate environment? How will they decide what projects are 'worthwhile' - or more accurately, what projects to sell.
And if the rank the projects, and thus do some sort of "bundling" deal - how will the buyers know the good nuggets of software in the flack of coders. I always shied from those shareware megapack CDs, because so rarely were there good games, but when there was a good game, I'd buy it and tell all my friends about it. The problem is though, is that this nature has permeated the marketplace since they days of DOS, and from a commercial standpoint it sounds like a monumental challenge to overturn this mindset.
And what if they don't opt for the route of bundling, instead choosing to license individual peices. In this case, how do they decide the worthwhile projects. Yes, I recognize the democratic nature of it, but w/ the FSF, there are no "losers" - with democracy (and capitalism), there will always be losers.
Recognize though that the concept of licensing distributions is a bit tricky. Tell me, would you pay $5 for a license for a distribution for a peice of software you could just as easily get off Freshmeat? Would you pay for support for that product when there are thousands of able-minded (albiet perhaps not able-bodied) geeks, with the hope at least one or two would be courteous enough to help? I guess it all boils down to the business model.
Linus has the kernel. The cadres have apache and XFree86. And the democracy has.... what? When they determine what software to sell, then the logistics should all fall into place. But this joyful triumph cannot occur until all of these things are considered.
You mean to tell me Microsoft actually has to work at making buggy software? I thought it was as natural as falsifying benchmarks and stealing software to those guys.... Wow.. Learn something new;-)
I mean, wired monkeys have been controlling things over the net for ages. Ok, sure, we call them AOLers and First Posters (or "Management", if you want to be really brutal), but that's an issue of semantics which shouldn't be discussed.
I wonder though, how that would compare w/ those new internet enabled sex suits (ugh, wheres the Yahoo! Magazine w/ the link when you need it) I'll avoid the obvious word puns though.
But it is clearly the "will of the people" that Rambus suceed, for it has been decided that Rambus is better and faster, so no doubt it would win the "popular vote", so I don't understand why this judge wouldn't allow Rambus to trample any opposition. I mean, come on, the people want Rambus, don't they?
Slashdot Mirror
All this wonderful person do is claim every link is a goatse.cx link...
Uh, have you tried clicking the link? It's a valid one
The WAP spec is constantly being refined though. And you pay per k, not for second. The nice thing about WAP though is it offers much more robust programming experiences for content/site admins. And of course, when 3G debuts, the speed issue will become effectively nil (I believe 3G does data transfer at 112kbps, but I could be wrong). Hopefully though, WAP v2 will address all these issues (I believe I read somewhere that WAP v2 would debut with 3G services, but then again, who knows)
On the other hand, it could be construed as a "Good Thing" because it would encourage competition and give a kickstart to the latent WAP market by demonstrating the more powerful i-mode applications, forcing vendors to adopt to the full WAP specification (as most only do text right now, when WAP fully supports grayscale imaging in spec).
A couple URLs for a comparison between WAP and i-mode are:
Enjoy the reading.
warehouse for sale for a bug a cardtridge
A bug a cartridge, eh? Any bug? *rubs hands deviously* I knew that ant hill would come in handy... now how to figure out how to get them all out... <evil laughter>
If you'll excuse me, I have work to do... bwa ha ha ha..
You're right. I'm only as funny as the voices tell me I am. But the voices never lie. Do we?
Don't believe me? Read between the lines here:
See? No further proof needed.
The site is mysteriously down and disappeared. What is funny is that Wired just ran an article on the company (and the teenage owner) at http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,40673, 00.html
So what you are saying is you would rather have someones potential life determined at birth rather than allow people to live their lives and make themselves what they want to be? Genes, for the most part, do not hardcode when it comes to disease and other forms of mental dispositions (ie: depression, homosexuality, excessive happiness, etc) - They simply indicate a predisposition.
By hiring/firing based on these genetic predispositions, you are entirely negating the impact that the individual person has upon their own destiny. Under your logic, it would be argumentably sound to say "Al The Geek had 1 girlfriend in highschool. Thus, he has an X% (for the sake of example, lets say 90%) of never getting married due to social ineptitude. Therefore, we must prevent Al from ever being able to marry".
The only difference is, in this case, "Al" has a genetic predisposition to Alzheimers, and thus shouldn't be allowed to work in any important task which may allow for social advancement or betterment because of the risk that he may develop the symptoms and at some point "forget" a crucial instruction. Or that Grace, who has a genetic predisposition to the possibility of poor eyesight in her middle ages cannot be allowed to be a pilot, even though no symptoms are exhibited of poor eyesight.
Genetic discrimination is something that those eschewing social darwinism have been waiting for - but instead of keeping the poor in menial jobs and the social elite making the money, instead they keep the "weak" in the menial jobs and establish positions to allow the genetic superior to become the social superior.
As much as I, in my geekness, would love to see the day come where intelligence is more respected then how many parties I throw during high school/how many cheerleaders I get in the sack, I would shudder at the idea where I am, from birth, bred for a position of social superiority due to some genetic indicator which indicates I "may be" a better learner than others.
As far as society goes, do you think a society which shuns/respects people based solely on labels (ie: studies have shown that, when given a diverse and statistically equal group, where certain students are described as teachers to be "slow learners" - when there is no basis for that - that the students then become slow learners based upon the treatment by the teachers on the assumption that they are slow learners) can handle the knowledge of whether someone "may or may not" develop a disease in the future?
In summary, I simply say "Fah!" to you and your elitist ideals.
I don't see any problem with that. Employers should be able to hire/fire based on dress code. I mean, come on, I think it's perfectly justified to fire someone for dirty jeans....
Oh.. wait.. you meant genes. My bad.
From the specifications page:
"Fax text images..." Is that like listen to text sound? "Oh my, your voice sounds simply operatic when I listen with it through ASCII"
"User-friendly 3.5 inch touch-screen LCD" - since when has anything that small been user friendly?
"Stylus pen inputting" - mandatory election comment: Look out Palm Beachers, this camera is not for you.
"Text mode" - someone want to explain to me why a camera would have text mode? The only possible use I can see would be having it "Matrix-fied" [sic], but I doubt that is what they mean.
Oh well, nothing like reading English translations from Japanese pages, if I do so myself.
Article 12. No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.
An interesting thought if we were to actually see the company try to subject Tongan's to mandatory DNA testing. This is a UN document, so I don't know it's affect on Tonga, but it just reaffirms that the conspiracy theories many (including myself) have tossed around may be unfounded.
The problem is that 96% of the genetic code is shared between humans and monkeys alone, and current studies suggest that only you are only 1% distinct of that 4% from the person sitting next to you. In addition, like was said before, you would first have to map a 'control' population in order to understand the 'ideal' genetic code, and then compare the 'ideal' with the Tongans to isolate differences (empirically derived is the term), and then find some way to alter a virus to target the strands.
However, the very nature of the virus to attack a cell makes it nearly impossible to 'program' a virus to selectively attack cells which posses a certain DNA strand. To draw an analogy, it would be like being shown 3 identical black boxes, and that one of these has a bomb in them, and that you must get rid of it. But, add in the effect that touching the 'bomb box' will set it off, killing you, and it makes it nearly impossible to use some method to identify it.
However, if the Tongans posessed something not genetically different but biochemically different, such as the presence of a minimum amount of such and such hormone, or the presence of some third-party cell/virus/bacteria within them all, then you could 'program' a virus to be such that. But I'm sure you'll find such a correlation between all Tongan's a statisical near-impossibility.
As with any PR-consciencious commercial entity dealing in the unethically obtained genetic information through a deal with an opressive royal family (or so I am led to believe by other /.ers), I would suspect that it would be a police effort. Countries can stand to look bad (ie: Cuba) and leaders can stand to look bad (ie: Yassar Arafat), but companies cannot stand to look bad (ie: Microsoft coming up with the "Freedom to Innovate" PR releases to make it look like they weren't a monopoly).
The real question is when will the organizations devoted to human rights step in?
Of course, if you lend yourself to Scott Adam's (of Dilbert fame for you unintiated) interpretation of the Swiss, you could instead be studying the DNA of benevolent aliens.... An interesting thought ;-)
Makes ya wonder if Faust was Tongan
</allusion>
As various others have mentioned, the sad reality is that the government is an elite ruling family.
As for your questions about the United States, where would you find protection from such DNA mapping? I would no doubt expect someone would take the US Government to court (esp in this modern litiginous society) if they were to try it, but do any real laws prevent them?
As for fingerprints when you are born, AFAIK, your fingers are not sufficiently developed w/ regards to the skin, and thus your fingerprint wouldn't really work. And if they were to use ink, instead of the only-recently introduced optical biometric scanners, then the potential for ink with such small channels being between the rings is too great to get an accurate sample. Small fingers are much harder to measure.
In light of all of this, I'm reminded of the one-funny joke which now brings back a rather sour aftertaste....
Just because you are paranoid doesn't mean they aren't after you
Depends on how long it takes AOL-Warner to buy out the company and include it as Keyword: DNA / channel #1...
On the topic of Super Football player, you can go see the American bastardized-football version of the genetically enhanced uber-footballer in 6th day. Slightly relevant to your message, but an interesting movie.
If I had my psych notes, I could give you exact studies and what not, but this whole concept of selective breeding was explored by a psychologist, named Sheldon, under the guise that he was 'measuring body types'... the whole concept of ectomorph/endomorph/mesomorph was his classification for these, and through measuring Ivy League students (male and female) as they were accepted, he was trying to pattern the necessities for breeding an elite race of 'super-geeks' (I say geeks because they were Ivy Leaguers, but mind you, I know they were not *true* geeks, or at least not the LARGE majority).
In either event, I don't quite remember what happened to him after that. Either there was a public cry much like that against Frankenstein's monster... or there was apathy... either way, I wouldn't place it very far in the future, with such atrocities occuring....
Mind you, this was primitive studies, and in today's world of DNA manipulation and understanding, with the human genome mapped, you really have to wonder if there won't be some Neo-Sheldon who will attempt such a thing. I suspect it would be someone with a large amount of money and the guise of helping the public...
and his name shall be Bill, for he shall be evil.
I almost wonder if this shouldn't be an issue of human rights... What you have is a government basically selling out the individual rights of the populace for $200 million - which, if you read the article, will go the the Ministry of Health - owned by the government.....
Rather than sell their people into slavery, something clearly socially and morally unacceptable, they are essentially selling the people into a life of lab-monkeying. I'm sorry, but where is the outcry? When commercialization and trampling of human rights combine, it only makes me fear the day of MegaCorp (also known to some psychics as Microsoft) owning our governments.....
For me, the lure of open source was that you could always write what you wanted to write, and somehow, through this strange world we've come to know as the Internet, there would be someone out there with the exact same thoughts on writing a program. Thus, you two (or three, or hundred, or thousand, etc) can all collaborate on writing software that satisfies your specific needs and desires.
Thus, I don't understand a few things about how this would work. If the appeal is in creating what you want and showing the world, isn't that lost in a corporate environment? How will they decide what projects are 'worthwhile' - or more accurately, what projects to sell.
And if the rank the projects, and thus do some sort of "bundling" deal - how will the buyers know the good nuggets of software in the flack of coders. I always shied from those shareware megapack CDs, because so rarely were there good games, but when there was a good game, I'd buy it and tell all my friends about it. The problem is though, is that this nature has permeated the marketplace since they days of DOS, and from a commercial standpoint it sounds like a monumental challenge to overturn this mindset.
And what if they don't opt for the route of bundling, instead choosing to license individual peices. In this case, how do they decide the worthwhile projects. Yes, I recognize the democratic nature of it, but w/ the FSF, there are no "losers" - with democracy (and capitalism), there will always be losers.
Recognize though that the concept of licensing distributions is a bit tricky. Tell me, would you pay $5 for a license for a distribution for a peice of software you could just as easily get off Freshmeat? Would you pay for support for that product when there are thousands of able-minded (albiet perhaps not able-bodied) geeks, with the hope at least one or two would be courteous enough to help? I guess it all boils down to the business model.
Linus has the kernel. The cadres have apache and XFree86. And the democracy has.... what? When they determine what software to sell, then the logistics should all fall into place. But this joyful triumph cannot occur until all of these things are considered.
The "Plex86 Incompatbility Project"
;-)
You mean to tell me Microsoft actually has to work at making buggy software? I thought it was as natural as falsifying benchmarks and stealing software to those guys.... Wow.. Learn something new
I mean, wired monkeys have been controlling things over the net for ages. Ok, sure, we call them AOLers and First Posters (or "Management", if you want to be really brutal), but that's an issue of semantics which shouldn't be discussed. I wonder though, how that would compare w/ those new internet enabled sex suits (ugh, wheres the Yahoo! Magazine w/ the link when you need it) I'll avoid the obvious word puns though.
But it is clearly the "will of the people" that Rambus suceed, for it has been decided that Rambus is better and faster, so no doubt it would win the "popular vote", so I don't understand why this judge wouldn't allow Rambus to trample any opposition. I mean, come on, the people want Rambus, don't they?