I didn't say these guys are "primitive" but I have not read the book you mention.. There is much evidence for example that they used machines for cutting stone, and the ways they moved and erected large monuments is also very impressive. But from what I can see, the hallmark of all of these has been utter simplicity. This was the bronze age and they made fires more than 1000 degrees (f)...
I'd much more believe they created giant cantilevered gantry cranes to move the stones than elevators for stones...
Sci Fi set in the age of steam is called Steam Punk... Set in the age of Pyramids we would have to call it Reed Punk... This wasn't the first Pyramid built; however they built them, clearly the scaled up from job to job... It wasn't like they programmed "hello world" one day and the next started to create a complete OS from scratch. My guess is his solution is a little bit too neat, and relies on technology more than brawn.
Has there been any Peer review of this "discovery?"
This "prof" seems more than anything to be shilling for some 3D modeling software. The software is certainly quite impressive. The scene where the cap stone is raised by turning it, so that ropes attached to it twist and thereby lift it, is quite impressive as well; the ropes are suspended from a teepee like structure of wooden poles. I'm sure it would work once you got it moving the first ½ rotation; up to that point I'm sure you really had to push very hard...
Our good "prof" set out to find out how he could build a construction project (of the great pyramid) using only the materials of the day, based on whatever evidence there is, and of course on his modern understanding of the world.
The scenes where wooden carry frames transport major stone blocks by the aid of counter weights seemed straight out of Indiana Jones. It's certainly possible so he claimed, but the technology seems really pushed to the limit(s).
What happened to the idea that the stones were "wrapped" by four pieces of 90 degree "curves" so that when all tied together the stones could be rolled around like "wheels."
There is nothing wrong with the scenario which you described, although I would write a different one for music. Let's focus on the area you covered, "books."
The problem isn't that copyright protects the Authors, which was the intent, but that a 2nd intent was that after some reasonable period of time, those works enter into the public domain. Without that, for example, a modern writer say of a TV series like Star Trek TNG, couldn't include a "character" like Sherlock Holmes. In fact when they tried, the Estate of ACD asked them to stop...
The copyright law was designed to allow an author to fairly profit from their work and then get it into the public domain where others' could extend it and alter it, and publish it. It was even reasonable to extend the period of protection for some years. However, the current extension (The Sonny Bono Act) is far too long. Copyright should allow an author reasonable profit, not allow his Estate and Heirs to support themselves "forever."
'If it's smart it will call the iPhone a "reference design" and pass it to some suckers to build with someone else's marketing budget. Then it can wash its hands of any marketplace failures.'"
There is a lot of common wisdom in the reference design idea. If it's the greatest phone then it should work on and with every Network. Rather than get one Network to pump lots of $$ into the product, they should convince every network to support it and put a fair but not obscene amount of money in.. thus insuring a good launch and success as they only phone available on every network and in every market. That makes it much more of the "phone to have" that making me switch networks...
I'm using both their HTML and Java based email client on my phone(s). The Java based email client is as good as any I've used (Elm, MUTT, Eudora, Lee Mail, Netscape*, Yahoo Mail, etc.); in some ways it's faster then their GMAIL web client. Faster in terms of refresh and faster in terms of interface...
Using their phone based email client as a starting point, it would seem that what they really "need" is to maximize their revenue. They get their revenue as we know when someone who is online sees their ads. The question is how to do that on a phone?
Here are four approaches they might be looking into, one I don't like and three that are worthy talking about:
#1 One way would be to build a phone that using the ad revenue to in part subsidize the phone usage... NetZero if you will, for a phone. I DOUB'T this is what they are thinking. I would guess they have concluded that market isn't' right for that NOW and might NEVER be ready... It would also require them to get into the cell phone business which is highly competitive.
#2 They could do on phones what they have done on the web broswers...
A) Introduce useful low cost productivity tools (Search, Email, Etc.) B) Find ways to build ad content into those tools
#3 If they were really thinking outside the box, they could build a "new" OS or operating layer for phones. They would also build lots of mobile productivity apps for that OS... nothing crazy just some Unix/Linux and Java. Rob Pike and Vint Cerf did used to work for other famous phone companies.
A) Today a cell phone company has to build or license an OS B) Google could provide that OS for no fee (lowering costs); and support it C) Google could then provide a model which allowed the phone company, the phone network and Google to share the ad revenue. D) Since phone companies are good at getting people to pay for things like applications and ring tones, they might even be able to get people to pay to use the Google Apps; like the $10 a month I pay Sprint to use the Garmin GPS system.
#4 Another approach would be more in the area of phones but not mobile phones per se. "We are not working on a mobile phone..." Imagine that they are: A) Building phones for office or home office use B) The phones work with a "wire" (or with Wi-Fi of they chose to) C) They tie into the Google Docs suite of productivity tools D) And if you happen to have two offices in two locations you can call from one "extension to the other" even if Alice is in Atlanta and Bob is Biloxi, routing the call over a VPN. E) Thus your "office" phone becomes an extension of your desktop and all your contacts, documents, etc. are with you as you go from meeting to meeting and office to office. F) IF you wanted to look down the road and be a bit "Scary" using Speech to Text and the same targeting software they use for ads, based on your phone conversation they could pop-up contact names, documents, and even Google Searches.
My point is that each method has some advantage and that in part it depends on the person who speaking or typing.
Your reply implies that everyone communicates well in person... and that is certainly not the case, although I would say I am personally better face to face than through email.
Your reply also implies that the person speaking is trying to communicate accurately and clearly. Some times people are more interested in deceit. I'm sure there are more bad actors than good. I doubt I could look someone in the eye and lie.
As I tried to detail in my first post, how you choose to communicate often most depends on if you are better communicating in person or in writing... Imagine that you have a bad stutter or an accent... imagine that you get "stage fright" or perhaps you are cross eyed... or in my case (when it comes to typing, that I'm dyslexic). Those are only a few examples.
You say an advantage of speaking in person is that you can answer unanticipated questions. That's certainly true if you're a fast enough thinker to do so, and that you have enough domain expertise. However, these questions can also turn the conversation from a point that you are interested in discussing and bring into some area(s) that you might not want to address.
Even assuming that the person needing to communicate does it well in person, it still takes at least two parties. It's one thing to talk to a friend or a bartender. Some people are more intimating than others perhaps a CEO, a parent or grand-parent or Marine Drill Sergeant... I once sat next to Bill Gates for twenty minutes and didn't say anything to him... as he rocked back and forth in his chair... Others might have turned it into a chance to get a job or whatever.
A bit off topic, but a friend just set up his new MRI scanner and of course the room it is in is well shielded. You need to keep its magnetic waves in the room and you don't want anything interfering with the machine. However, so they can do functional MRI, they need to project video into the machine (e.g., you can watch a video while getting scanned).
Since the video projector can't be in the room... they created a wave guide which is a metal tube of a size (width and length) that doesn't allow anything harmful in or out of the room (electro-magnetically speaking) but is effectively a literal hole in the wall that they can project through. In some studies about taste they can also run long tubes filled with "flavors" so that they can allow a person in the scanner to "taste" while being scanned.
Face to face is when you can use your personality and the intimacy of the situation of influence the discussion. The converse is true; you can use your personal presence to intimidate the other party as well.
Email, on the other hand, can be used when the other person might think your you have something to hide, "if they saw your face" or if you want to bury some facts deep within a dense bit a email. The converse is also true, if you are not particularly intimidating in person, you might have a better chance of coming off that way via email. Also if you don't have a winning personality, you can over come that through a well written email.
When considering F2F vs. Email think about the following as well. Face to face, you have to think on your feet and "roll w/ the punches" while emails can be much more crafted, thought-out, and cogent.
One other consideration is for someone like me who is dyslexic, I often come across much better in person, while in email, even with spelling checkers and grammar checkers, I can mistype, misspell and so forth. In person I can use more advanced vocabulary, while in email I have to use far simpler works that I can spell easily.
I loved the quote, " we are entering the "post-copyright" era for music"
This from the guy who is head of the International Intellectual Property Institute.
I have maintained since the late 80's that the road to the future on this issue is paying a few cents or a few dimes to verify that your copy is a good copy... and doing that direct with the labels or the bands... but some doing it with anyone they "trust."
When street "kids" can sell a terabyte of music on a corner like they used to sell crack, then my friend, copyright for this sort of thing will be dead.
There is one other "blame" besides the two headed griffen of DRM and bad Major Label Music, and that is the Sonny Bono Act and those acts that came before which have strenched out copyright protection so far into the future that let's be honest none of this stuff will ever see the light of the public domain; they killed public domain's cousin too, sweet little Fair Use (but then you knew that!!).
Your points are very well said and clearly you know about this subject that I do.. I was going off of what I read in the current article and the link to SCO..
My point was that "SCO asserts that the GPL, under which Linux is distributed, violates the United States Constitution and the U.S. copyright and patent laws."
And what I believed IBM's claim that since SCO "repudiated the GPL" that they are (now) distributing Linux (which contains copywritten material) without a license (e.g., a violation of copyright law).
In the end this is great news for FOSS assuming the GPL gets' it's day in court; once proven it only gets stronger and so forth..
I'm not convinced that people who are NOT already "in the know" about Linux, and who have "sound bite length attention span" get much from this other than (if you will) some buffer overflow leaving them w/ the sense that Linux is some how legally murky.. (not that I think it is..)
I'm not saying MA Bell nor in today's networking climate that single provider is economically sound, nor sound for any other reason. My point was that the study could be turned on it's head and used to support the claim that only one network is a good thing.
While this maybe bad for SCO, those paying the the dance have more than got their money's worth.
They got some really big FUD going, plus the value of major distraction slowing down anyone following the play by play.
Clearly the long term play of MS is to get part or all of there free OS to be illegal. Illegal because they are TOOLS for ripping off copyright(s), or because they don't support legally mandated DRM, or because they they allow DRM to be by-passed, etc, etc., etc.
The only way around this is if more and more people use it and if the big box companies like Dell and Gateway ship boxes with Linux, etc.
The article notes, you can buy any mac without "Bluetooth, 802.11g Wi-Fi networking, Gigabit Ethernet, FireWire and even a remote control". I assume some of that can be disabled, but each one of those could be security risk in certain enterprises. I'm wondering how other/. readers feel about that? Clearly some small companies have little need for totally button down security but many larger companies feel they need total security? Security should be based on a risk analysis but any thoughts here?
It would seem a bare bones PC w/ LINUX could be built without any of this extra networking hardware with NONE of the software installed from the micro kernal to the drive level. (not even just commenting out unwanted code but totaly remove the code from the distribution.. that seems a lot more secure...?
There was probably no need for a single phone company in the US but a Mr. Bush (not our Bush), convinced the US Gov. that we needed a single provider. It sounds like that article supports the case for both net neural model as well as a single provider model (which of course the government would love, since they only have to tap and monitor one network...).
Blind trust is rarely deserved... and I think it odd that their is the assumption on wiki* that people will be honest. Much psychological testing of humans reveals with the opportunity for gain, many will cheat (e.g., the prisoner's dilemma).
I believe that wiki* works not because of TRUST but because they system is Open, Accountable, and Transparent. Lies and other such things get found out and groups are able to form; they can work cooperatively and adversarially within the wiki* system.
Since the dawn of telecommunications (e.g., the telegraph) governments have been monitoring communications and almost always lying about it. England's invovlment in such scheme's is well documented. Anyone who doesn't assume that their government is watching, is IMHO, maintaining a rather distorted view of how government functions.
That Sweden is admitting this, is really at least a breath of fresh air... not that it makes the practice any better, at least their can be public debate..
A hypothesis to test my assertions about this would be to look at more recent religions and see if they are more persuasive or less. My theory is that more recent religions, which survive their "birth", do better in the sense of evangelic outreach because they have overcome limitations of those that came before them.
I think it's something in our Meme Complex.. It's evolved in the Meme complex over time and its a stable strategy over the evolutionary time period relative to meme evolution.
As such, it's hard NOT to believe in it... and it has evolved to the point that it does provide some help; that isn't to say that religion itself doesn't cause some harm and in no way am I evaluating if religion has a Net "good" or Net "hard" to society...
Exactly what help religion provides maybe about a clear as exactly what each type of gene goes; even when we know how a gene expresses itself, that doesn't' mean we know everything it does. When only know it has stood the test of time. My speculation is that believing deity and "holy" texts, is a lot like writing a program within a well defined operating system and operating environment. Which is to say, "you don't have to spend a lot of time on background tasks like drawing screens, memory management, etc. Your OS/GOD has worked out all the details, you just need to subscribe to all the updates and show up in "Church" at the specified intervals.
I've been trying out the service all day.. I've posted a few questions and asked some as well.. I've voted on others people answers also...
What does that all mean?
* You get a "gold coin" for everything you do (ask, answer, vote, etc.) * They accept 5 answers for each question * Each person who answers, gets to vote on the other answers (letting your experience and ego get in the way of what others might say..) * Based on the voting and other input, you basically get qualified in some particular area of domain expertise * Once you are "an expert" they give you super powers.. not yet sure what those are but perhaps you get to vote on all of the answers within your area of expertise.
Thoughts... All of this seems good.. I'm wondering if I'm going to get any points for having a very broad range of experience. There are some questions and problems which are better suited for generalists and other (like open heart surgery) best left to specialists with lots of hands on experience..
There were some very strange questions in there like "how much would you pay for a Quantum Computer." Some were very detailed like questions about some error condition during a driver installation..
The real question is the value of the answers. I put in my answer and I was able to see what else had been suggested. The question I answered, asked about uploading video from a cell phone to a computer. I took a direct approach and suggested a data cable and then link in some example cables from the Amazon store.
Other people, who answered the same question, detailed how you could upload the video to a web site and then download it to the computer in question.
What you end up with here is a mini "Delphi" study.. [Which is a technique a method of generating ideas and facilitating consensus among individuals" with "expert" knowledge of some topic. You ask a bunch of java programmers how long would it take to program X and the average of the answer is supposed to be better than any one answer.]
I thought my own answer was good because it accurately answered the question. but my answer would require the person to go buy something new, hook it up, etc. The other answers certainly would be something they could do "right now" without any expense.
What I think is good here is that the person who asked the questions will see a range of answers and they can decide which of any of them to follow.
How it worked: #1 I have an amazon account so I was able to log right it (I like that) #2 It was hard finding a question that I would actually answer since the high level questions are very broad and I was lookig for a question I really know and understand. #3 I answered the question #4 I was asked to LINK web pages, Amazon Merch or a video to my answer #5 I got a gold coin #6 I saw other answers to the same question
(see my reply to this question where I will detail my thoughts about the service)
Slashdot Mirror
That was my point. Thanks for saying it better..
I didn't say these guys are "primitive" but I have not read the book you mention.. There is much evidence for example that they used machines for cutting stone, and the ways they moved and erected large monuments is also very impressive. But from what I can see, the hallmark of all of these has been utter simplicity. This was the bronze age and they made fires more than 1000 degrees (f)...
I'd much more believe they created giant cantilevered gantry cranes to move the stones than elevators for stones...
In any event i'm waiting for the peer review..
Sci Fi set in the age of steam is called Steam Punk... Set in the age of Pyramids we would have to call it Reed Punk... This wasn't the first Pyramid built; however they built them, clearly the scaled up from job to job... It wasn't like they programmed "hello world" one day and the next started to create a complete OS from scratch. My guess is his solution is a little bit too neat, and relies on technology more than brawn.
Has there been any Peer review of this "discovery?"
This "prof" seems more than anything to be shilling for some 3D modeling software. The software is certainly quite impressive. The scene where the cap stone is raised by turning it, so that ropes attached to it twist and thereby lift it, is quite impressive as well; the ropes are suspended from a teepee like structure of wooden poles. I'm sure it would work once you got it moving the first ½ rotation; up to that point I'm sure you really had to push very hard...
Our good "prof" set out to find out how he could build a construction project (of the great pyramid) using only the materials of the day, based on whatever evidence there is, and of course on his modern understanding of the world.
The scenes where wooden carry frames transport major stone blocks by the aid of counter weights seemed straight out of Indiana Jones. It's certainly possible so he claimed, but the technology seems really pushed to the limit(s).
What happened to the idea that the stones were "wrapped" by four pieces of 90 degree "curves" so that when all tied together the stones could be rolled around like "wheels."
There is nothing wrong with the scenario which you described, although I would write a different one for music. Let's focus on the area you covered, "books."
The problem isn't that copyright protects the Authors, which was the intent, but that a 2nd intent was that after some reasonable period of time, those works enter into the public domain. Without that, for example, a modern writer say of a TV series like Star Trek TNG, couldn't include a "character" like Sherlock Holmes. In fact when they tried, the Estate of ACD asked them to stop...
The copyright law was designed to allow an author to fairly profit from their work and then get it into the public domain where others' could extend it and alter it, and publish it. It was even reasonable to extend the period of protection for some years. However, the current extension (The Sonny Bono Act) is far too long. Copyright should allow an author reasonable profit, not allow his Estate and Heirs to support themselves "forever."
I feel Mr. Jobs is a bit of a control freak.
'If it's smart it will call the iPhone a "reference design" and pass it to some suckers to build with someone else's marketing budget. Then it can wash its hands of any marketplace failures.'"
There is a lot of common wisdom in the reference design idea. If it's the greatest phone then it should work on and with every Network. Rather than get one Network to pump lots of $$ into the product, they should convince every network to support it and put a fair but not obscene amount of money in.. thus insuring a good launch and success as they only phone available on every network and in every market. That makes it much more of the "phone to have" that making me switch networks...
It's a 3T MRI and I think the guide is Aluminum.
re: a) I only know that the room is shielded so that outside for example you can wear your watch.. but of course not inside...
I'm using both their HTML and Java based email client on my phone(s). The Java based email client is as good as any I've used (Elm, MUTT, Eudora, Lee Mail, Netscape*, Yahoo Mail, etc.); in some ways it's faster then their GMAIL web client. Faster in terms of refresh and faster in terms of interface...
Using their phone based email client as a starting point, it would seem that what they really "need" is to maximize their revenue. They get their revenue as we know when someone who is online sees their ads. The question is how to do that on a phone?
Here are four approaches they might be looking into, one I don't like and three that are worthy talking about:
#1
One way would be to build a phone that using the ad revenue to in part subsidize the phone usage... NetZero if you will, for a phone. I DOUB'T this is what they are thinking. I would guess they have concluded that market isn't' right for that NOW and might NEVER be ready... It would also require them to get into the cell phone business which is highly competitive.
#2
They could do on phones what they have done on the web broswers...
A) Introduce useful low cost productivity tools (Search, Email, Etc.)
B) Find ways to build ad content into those tools
#3
If they were really thinking outside the box, they could build a "new" OS or operating layer for phones. They would also build lots of mobile productivity apps for that OS... nothing crazy just some Unix/Linux and Java. Rob Pike and Vint Cerf did used to work for other famous phone companies.
A) Today a cell phone company has to build or license an OS
B) Google could provide that OS for no fee (lowering costs); and support it
C) Google could then provide a model which allowed the phone company, the phone network and Google to share the ad revenue.
D) Since phone companies are good at getting people to pay for things like applications and ring tones, they might even be able to get people to pay to use the Google Apps; like the $10 a month I pay Sprint to use the Garmin GPS system.
#4
Another approach would be more in the area of phones but not mobile phones per se. "We are not working on a mobile phone..." Imagine that they are:
A) Building phones for office or home office use
B) The phones work with a "wire" (or with Wi-Fi of they chose to)
C) They tie into the Google Docs suite of productivity tools
D) And if you happen to have two offices in two locations you can call from one "extension to the other" even if Alice is in Atlanta and Bob is Biloxi, routing the call over a VPN.
E) Thus your "office" phone becomes an extension of your desktop and all your contacts, documents, etc. are with you as you go from meeting to meeting and office to office.
F) IF you wanted to look down the road and be a bit "Scary" using Speech to Text and the same targeting software they use for ads, based on your phone conversation they could pop-up contact names, documents, and even Google Searches.
My point is that each method has some advantage and that in part it depends on the person who speaking or typing.
Your reply implies that everyone communicates well in person... and that is certainly not the case, although I would say I am personally better face to face than through email.
Your reply also implies that the person speaking is trying to communicate accurately and clearly. Some times people are more interested in deceit. I'm sure there are more bad actors than good. I doubt I could look someone in the eye and lie.
As I tried to detail in my first post, how you choose to communicate often most depends on if you are better communicating in person or in writing... Imagine that you have a bad stutter or an accent... imagine that you get "stage fright" or perhaps you are cross eyed... or in my case (when it comes to typing, that I'm dyslexic). Those are only a few examples.
You say an advantage of speaking in person is that you can answer unanticipated questions. That's certainly true if you're a fast enough thinker to do so, and that you have enough domain expertise. However, these questions can also turn the conversation from a point that you are interested in discussing and bring into some area(s) that you might not want to address.
Even assuming that the person needing to communicate does it well in person, it still takes at least two parties. It's one thing to talk to a friend or a bartender. Some people are more intimating than others perhaps a CEO, a parent or grand-parent or Marine Drill Sergeant... I once sat next to Bill Gates for twenty minutes and didn't say anything to him... as he rocked back and forth in his chair... Others might have turned it into a chance to get a job or whatever.
A bit off topic, but a friend just set up his new MRI scanner and of course the room it is in is well shielded. You need to keep its magnetic waves in the room and you don't want anything interfering with the machine. However, so they can do functional MRI, they need to project video into the machine (e.g., you can watch a video while getting scanned).
Since the video projector can't be in the room... they created a wave guide which is a metal tube of a size (width and length) that doesn't allow anything harmful in or out of the room (electro-magnetically speaking) but is effectively a literal hole in the wall that they can project through. In some studies about taste they can also run long tubes filled with "flavors" so that they can allow a person in the scanner to "taste" while being scanned.
Face to face is when you can use your personality and the intimacy of the situation of influence the discussion. The converse is true; you can use your personal presence to intimidate the other party as well.
Email, on the other hand, can be used when the other person might think your you have something to hide, "if they saw your face" or if you want to bury some facts deep within a dense bit a email. The converse is also true, if you are not particularly intimidating in person, you might have a better chance of coming off that way via email. Also if you don't have a winning personality, you can over come that through a well written email.
When considering F2F vs. Email think about the following as well. Face to face, you have to think on your feet and "roll w/ the punches" while emails can be much more crafted, thought-out, and cogent.
One other consideration is for someone like me who is dyslexic, I often come across much better in person, while in email, even with spelling checkers and grammar checkers, I can mistype, misspell and so forth. In person I can use more advanced vocabulary, while in email I have to use far simpler works that I can spell easily.
I loved the quote, " we are entering the "post-copyright" era for music"
This from the guy who is head of the International Intellectual Property Institute.
I have maintained since the late 80's that the road to the future on this issue is paying a few cents or a few dimes to verify that your copy is a good copy... and doing that direct with the labels or the bands... but some doing it with anyone they "trust."
When street "kids" can sell a terabyte of music on a corner like they used to sell crack, then my friend, copyright for this sort of thing will be dead.
There is one other "blame" besides the two headed griffen of DRM and bad Major Label Music, and that is the Sonny Bono Act and those acts that came before which have strenched out copyright protection so far into the future that let's be honest none of this stuff will ever see the light of the public domain; they killed public domain's cousin too, sweet little Fair Use (but then you knew that!!).
Just to be clear I agree. And I hope this makes it to court.
SCO/McBride is making the claim basically that you can't copyright something and then license it for free.
Perhaps we should shut down all of those "free" public libraries... they are certainly taking business away from B&N and Amazon.com
Your points are very well said and clearly you know about this subject that I do.. I was going off of what I read in the current article and the link to SCO..
My point was that "SCO asserts that the GPL, under which Linux is distributed, violates the United States Constitution and the U.S. copyright and patent laws."
And what I believed IBM's claim that since SCO "repudiated the GPL" that they are (now) distributing Linux (which contains copywritten material) without a license (e.g., a violation of copyright law).
In the end this is great news for FOSS assuming the GPL gets' it's day in court; once proven it only gets stronger and so forth..
I'm not convinced that people who are NOT already "in the know" about Linux, and who have "sound bite length attention span" get much from this other than (if you will) some buffer overflow leaving them w/ the sense that Linux is some how legally murky.. (not that I think it is..)
I'm not saying MA Bell nor in today's networking climate that single provider is economically sound, nor sound for any other reason. My point was that the study could be turned on it's head and used to support the claim that only one network is a good thing.
SCO was funded to do this "legal dance."
While this maybe bad for SCO, those paying the the dance have more than got their money's worth.
They got some really big FUD going, plus the value of major distraction slowing down anyone following the play by play.
Clearly the long term play of MS is to get part or all of there free OS to be illegal. Illegal because they are TOOLS for ripping off copyright(s), or because they don't support legally mandated DRM, or because they they allow DRM to be by-passed, etc, etc., etc.
The only way around this is if more and more people use it and if the big box companies like Dell and Gateway ship boxes with Linux, etc.
The article notes, you can buy any mac without "Bluetooth, 802.11g Wi-Fi networking, Gigabit Ethernet, FireWire and even a remote control". I assume some of that can be disabled, but each one of those could be security risk in certain enterprises. I'm wondering how other /. readers feel about that? Clearly some small companies have little need for totally button down security but many larger companies feel they need total security? Security should be based on a risk analysis but any thoughts here?
It would seem a bare bones PC w/ LINUX could be built without any of this extra networking hardware with NONE of the software installed from the micro kernal to the drive level. (not even just commenting out unwanted code but totaly remove the code from the distribution.. that seems a lot more secure...?
There was probably no need for a single phone company in the US but a Mr. Bush (not our Bush), convinced the US Gov. that we needed a single provider. It sounds like that article supports the case for both net neural model as well as a single provider model (which of course the government would love, since they only have to tap and monitor one network...).
Blind trust is rarely deserved... and I think it odd that their is the assumption on wiki* that people will be honest. Much psychological testing of humans reveals with the opportunity for gain, many will cheat (e.g., the prisoner's dilemma).
I believe that wiki* works not because of TRUST but because they system is Open, Accountable, and Transparent. Lies and other such things get found out and groups are able to form; they can work cooperatively and adversarially within the wiki* system.
Since the dawn of telecommunications (e.g., the telegraph) governments have been monitoring communications and almost always lying about it. England's invovlment in such scheme's is well documented. Anyone who doesn't assume that their government is watching, is IMHO, maintaining a rather distorted view of how government functions.
That Sweden is admitting this, is really at least a breath of fresh air...
not that it makes the practice any better, at least their can be public debate..
A hypothesis to test my assertions about this would be to look at more recent religions and see if they are more persuasive or less. My theory is that more recent religions, which survive their "birth", do better in the sense of evangelic outreach because they have overcome limitations of those that came before them.
I think it's something in our Meme Complex.. It's evolved in the Meme complex over time and its a stable strategy over the evolutionary time period relative to meme evolution.
e _strategy
As such, it's hard NOT to believe in it... and it has evolved to the point that it does provide some help; that isn't to say that religion itself doesn't cause some harm and in no way am I evaluating if religion has a Net "good" or Net "hard" to society...
Exactly what help religion provides maybe about a clear as exactly what each type of gene goes; even when we know how a gene expresses itself, that doesn't' mean we know everything it does. When only know it has stood the test of time. My speculation is that believing deity and "holy" texts, is a lot like writing a program within a well defined operating system and operating environment. Which is to say, "you don't have to spend a lot of time on background tasks like drawing screens, memory management, etc. Your OS/GOD has worked out all the details, you just need to subscribe to all the updates and show up in "Church" at the specified intervals.
Please see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memeplex
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionarily_stabl
I've been trying out the service all day.. I've posted a few questions and asked some as well.. I've voted on others people answers also...
What does that all mean?
* You get a "gold coin" for everything you do (ask, answer, vote, etc.)
* They accept 5 answers for each question
* Each person who answers, gets to vote on the other answers (letting your experience and ego get in the way of what others might say..)
* Based on the voting and other input, you basically get qualified in some particular area of domain expertise
* Once you are "an expert" they give you super powers.. not yet sure what those are but perhaps you get to vote on all of the answers within your area of expertise.
Thoughts...
All of this seems good.. I'm wondering if I'm going to get any points for having a very broad range of experience. There are some questions and problems which are better suited for generalists and other (like open heart surgery) best left to specialists with lots of hands on experience..
So what did I think of the service..
There were some very strange questions in there like "how much would you pay for a Quantum Computer." Some were very detailed like questions about some error condition during a driver installation..
The real question is the value of the answers. I put in my answer and I was able to see what else had been suggested. The question I answered, asked about uploading video from a cell phone to a computer. I took a direct approach and suggested a data cable and then link in some example cables from the Amazon store.
Other people, who answered the same question, detailed how you could upload the video to a web site and then download it to the computer in question.
What you end up with here is a mini "Delphi" study.. [Which is a technique a method of generating ideas and facilitating consensus among individuals" with "expert" knowledge of some topic. You ask a bunch of java programmers how long would it take to program X and the average of the answer is supposed to be better than any one answer.]
I thought my own answer was good because it accurately answered the question. but my answer would require the person to go buy something new, hook it up, etc. The other answers certainly would be something they could do "right now" without any expense.
What I think is good here is that the person who asked the questions will see a range of answers and they can decide which of any of them to follow.
I just answered a question...
How it worked:
#1 I have an amazon account so I was able to log right it (I like that)
#2 It was hard finding a question that I would actually answer since the high level questions are very broad and I was lookig for a question I really know and understand.
#3 I answered the question
#4 I was asked to LINK web pages, Amazon Merch or a video to my answer
#5 I got a gold coin
#6 I saw other answers to the same question
(see my reply to this question where I will detail my thoughts about the service)