Well I can't speak for h JonKatz but I'll weigh in here.
You seemingly never fail to rail upon religion (more often than not, Christianity) in each of your posts here.
I'll field this one. He's an American. The United States is predominatly a Christian nation, and therefore the majority of an American's exposure to Religion will be Christianity (or atleast the Judeo-Christian mythology. (Is that flames I see for using the work "mythology"? Well answer me this, what makes any religion, different from any of the ancient mythologies? Remember, people don't invent gods if they don't truly belive in them.))
Now on to the "anti-Chrisitan" sentiment.
First the US is NOT anti-Christian. The majority of the people go to church/whatever and believe in a god(s). Nothing pisses me off more than see some televanglist getting on TV sitting in his gold spraypainted chalk chairs, on his gawdy set, saying how he's being oppressed and that he needs your social security check to counteract the forces of Satan.
When I was at the University of Illinois I took people on a tour of the CAVE at the NCSA. It's pretty cool. Four 7 foot projecttion screens on each side of you. You stand in the middle holding a joystick that is tracked by a sensor on the ceiling. LCD goggles that flip opaceity between your eyes gives you a 3D enviroment.
They the cab to a Catapiller bulldozer that they were looking into using as some sort of computer aided training.
It's alot like a first person shooter, only with out guns or textures. Personally I don't think VR will ever become something revolutionary until we develop a more immersive enviorment (real touch (not just that lame vibration stuff) and the solving the dismounted soldier problem for example).
You do know that DC's schools are some of the best funded in the country. Similarly, you know that DC has one of the best transportation systems in the country.
DC is just one city. We're talking about a systematic problem. Or in poker-lingo, "I'll see your Washington DC and raise you Detroit and Indian Reservartions."
Lack of books in the home I'll give you. If you asked nicely, I'd also give you "parents who don't give a s*** about their children's education."
Come now. The poor family that doesn't give a damn about their children is a horrible stereotype. The majority of poor families are just trying to make through life. Of course there are those that don't give a damn, and so we should just write off all poor kids because one was raised by an utter fuck.
Unfortunately, you probably wouldn't understand the concept.
What the hell does this comment mean? You're just shooting flames with out any reason.
"After survivng this wasteland of banality, you go to a Big-10 university and are forced to compete against Buffy and Tad who complain about their schools junior varsity swimming pool beingoutside, unlike the varisity swimming pool; or something equally decadent. They complain in calc based physics about the fact that this was just like high school. While some people sat there and said, "Calculus in high school?" Damn I had to take that this summer at community college."
Yeah, so what. I (and many others) had a similar experience at one of the Ivies. It's meaningless class bigotry.
This is not meaningless class bigotry. It underscores the fundamental flaw in how the public schools are funded; property taxes. Somehow society has gotten it through its head that this is somehow equitable (as opposed to a central fund where the state dolls out an allowance per student). Until the schools are funded differently, there will NEVER be any real improvement for poor school districts.
"That is how the 'underprivlaged' are not given access to information."
Underprivileged US citizen is an oxymoron.
Do you go to that inner-city library with your eyes closed and your hands over your ears or what?
If I am "disadvantaged" how does it prevent access to information?
Lack of books in the home. Lack of transportation to information. Lack of well funded education.
I was rather poor through my childhood and was still able to gain access to public libraries (ever heard of this new thing called the "free" library started in the 19th century and Carnagie).
I grew up working class one of (if not THE) poorest county in Illinois (hmmm...15% unemployment. Things are looking up.) I've been to the libraries back home. VC Andrews and 1978 National Geographics Circa 1986 non-ficition books? Not a chance.
But these are the city libraries. What about great repository of learning that is the school system. Encyclopedias from 1982. History books that stop at the Seven Days War. Science labs that are out of date. Physics teachers who go around saying, "I didn't do well in physics in college. So I'm not going to teach the physics in the book. I'm going to teach 'Conceptual Physics' instead. (Basically physics with no math. Amazing, but true.)
After survivng this wasteland of banality, you go to a Big-10 university and are forced to compete against Buffy and Tad who complain about their schools junior varsity swimming pool being outside, unlike the varisity swimming pool; or something equally decadent. They complain in calc based physics about the fact that this was just like high school. While some people sat there and said, "Calculus in high school?" Damn I had to take that this summer at community college.
Now imagine how this would be worse if my parents couldn't have afforded to send me to geek-camp, or give me vacations to view museumes in major cities.
That is how the "underprivlaged" are not given access to information.
We really do not have that much of a problem at least in the US of getting information to people.
However, I think he was mistaken. Ancient societies left stone tablets, cave paintings and the like behind, and there's no-one who fully understands the languages or the contexts (when an archaeologist says an object is of "ritual significance" he actually means he doesn't know what it's for). We do have the technology now, as the poster says, to migrate our data ever forwards into new storage, assuming no cataclysm occurs. And even if it does, it is far more important, in terms of recovering data, that the language (source code) survives, rather than CD ROM drives, Minidisc players etc (the binaries), because then data recovery is an essentially straightforward task.
The point is is that stone tablets are damn durable, while digital mediums (take your pick) aren't. When you see a stone tablet you see the inscription and you can say, "Golly gee! There's something written on this! It looks like a horse." or what not. When you see a CD, you look at it and say, "Hmm kind of shinny. Mirror?" or if you're smart/lucky "CD!" Then of course you have to figure out whether it's filled, or empty, whetherit's an audio CD, or data CD. Okay now there's files on it. Is it using rock ridge, joliet, or iso. Is this file data or is this an excutable, or some support file like a libary. Is it for mac, windows, solaris, linux, Be...
We have this problem today. I can give you an 8 inch floppy disk and say, "Behold! The answer to all the world's problem lies within. All you must do is read it and begin." Do you know where to even get an 8 inch drive? I sure don't. The only one I've ever seen was in "Wargames".
You talk about the fact that it's more important for source code to survive. That way you can reconstruct the system that produced the data, and then you can read it. Sounds reasonable enough. One problem. What is source code typically stored on? Big stuff sure as hell isn't stored on paper (However, I did one time see PGP source code printed and bound in an appendix to a book, don't remember which one though. (It had something to do with PGP. Suprise. Suprise.)). Source code is typically stored on a digital medium, because it makes it easier to use. It's a catch-22.
Now don't tell me about "well everyone will know" because "everyone" knew back in the past how to read Myan, and we all know how well that turned out.
Cheeta (Think! It doesn't make sense if it was leopard.) running. Mountain biker chases, catches up, does a cowboy-dismount on the cheeta and wrestles it to the ground. Sticks ihis arm down the the cheeta's throat and pulls out a Mountain Dew can.
When I saw Mad Dog at LInux World (Chicago Comdex) last year someone asked him this very thing. His answer was quite insightful. Basically said:
I was an educator before I started doing what I'm doing now. I've seen people cheat. Why do they do it? They're too lazy to do the work themselves. Now if you're lazy, are you actually going to take the time to covertracks right, or are you just going to do a halfass job?
If it looks like someone has stolen something, people are going to look at it, watch what goes in and what comes out, figure out what is going on, and then eventually call the theif on it. It's just like any other company enforcing patent or copyright infringement.
Coaxial raises up off the couch and prepares to lay the smacketh down on someone who greatly deserves it.
I find it almost impossible to read Slashdot when it comes to certain words. It seems as if the words are being used in multiple ways and it makes the discussion very confusing.
So? English is like that. Secondly, that's the terminology. Learn it. This comment makes me remember my first grade teacher, and her "conference" with my mother.
Teacher: I wish Jonathan wouldn't use certain words. Mom: He's swearing?!? Teacher: Oh no! He uses certain..."big words"; and I'm afraid that the other children don't know what he's talking about. Mom:There isn't a chance in hell I'm going to tell my son not to use his vocabulary. That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard; and you call yourself an "educator"?
(This "educator" also liked to get on me for reading ahead, counting beyond 10, and bringing books from home. A fine example of the public school system. (conform obey never question)
We seem to do fine with "open source" and "gpl" and even know the difference between Linux and Linus, but some words just don't make sense anymore.
Who's "we"? Since you're DEFINATLY not including me in that statment; I'm going to assume "we" means "you".
Of course "open source" != "GPL". One is a concept, the other is a legal document.
Only an idiot confuses "Linux" and "Linus". One is a operating system, the other is a person.
nanotechnology: Either the ability to work with a material at an extremly small level or a self replicating machine.
I have NEVER seen "nanotechnology"::= "self-replicating machine". They're two entirely different concepts. I can build a self-replicating machine today.
hacker: Either a war3z d00d or script kiddie or a person capable of coming up with an elegant solution involving technology.
What's your point? A "pig" is either a swine or cop. A flame is either a small piece of fire or an Internet message such as this. I suggest you read the Jargon File.
government, law, tax, etc.: Either a function of the United States that only applies to the United States, despite the fact that my log indicates that the U.S. is a minority in Slashdot or a vague concept that may or may not apply to any country.
Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! What's this about "your log"? You're not one of the Intergalactic Blockstackers. How the hell do have any logs about who accesses slashdot? That makes no sense.
Secondly the US is still the dominate county on the Internet. Sure some other countries are coming up, but they haven't matched us yet. It's definatly the dominate country on/., because if it wasn't you wouldn't be having this problem. When I read a site in Europe, I would expect it to be Eurocentric. This is based out of Michigan, so It's going to be Americancentric.
(To avoid any more confusion, "American" means "pertaining to the United States of America". Why? Because we claimed the word first. I'd like to see someone try stop us from using it.
Thrirdly, how is "government", "tax" or "law" vauge concepts? They've existed since the beginning of civilization. And what's that crack about "may or may not apply to any contry"?
------------- And now for the moderators:
How the hell is this "informative"? There is ZERO information in that post!
There's alot of talk about scanning in every neuron in the brain and all their connections and represent it in software (or even hardware) throw a switch and then the person encounters his exact psychological duplicate.
If the goal here is to gain effective immortality that's cool. I think it would be great to spawn off a duplicate so I could do two things at once. (One goes to work, one stays home and watches tv, one hacks on my email client) Of course for this to be really useful each duplicate should be to sync its experiences with all the other copies. (Similar to the Borg collective). There's nothing wrong with terminating one duplicate because you haven't really lost anything since you still have the other's experiences There's just now only one of you. (You wouldn't truly be dead until every copy of yourself was destroyed. (Even archival copies.)
Everyone deep down knows there something more to the brain than just neurons. I'm an athiest so I'm reluctant to call It a "soul"; so I'll call it the "software" instead. Creating a conciousness won't happen by just scanning a brain, no more than a TEM can create a Linux box.
I know neuroscience and psychology have discovered that certain areas of the brain are associated with different functions, but we still don't know the exact mechanics envolved. ("Some neurons fire, and a few chemicals are released, and then you get scared.") The Cat Cam a while back was damn amazing, but it's still fundamentally infrastructure. I'd like to know what kind of research is being done in how the brain actually stores information, mechanically how does a brain interpret a pattern of photons to mean "fire" (let alone, "I shouldn't touch that.").
All the big grandiose AI projects to build sentient machines have all failed because we simply don't know how it's done. (That and the hardware wasn't nearly powerful enough.) What's going on in regards to this research (the neuoroscience research, not the AI research)?
Gee I wish I had a site that hundred of thousands of people watched for news so that I could grandstand any ol' time I wanted. Perhaps I should create a geek gossip site for just this kind of stuff. ("Did you hear? Cowboy Neal went on a date! With a REAL WOMAN! Rumor has it was with the X10 QuickCam ``Babe''!")
I've said it before and I'll say it again, the UK is the true land of the free. You yanks with your namby pamby constitution and your free speach, right to arms and all that...
Namby pamby? NANBY PAMBY?!? Dem be fightin' words ya thin liped tea drinkin' pansey. We kicked your ass twice before, we can do it again.:)
But in all seriousness I am consistantly shocked by the fact that the UK doesnt have a written Bill of Rights; by far the single greatest feature of the US Constitution. (Yeah yeah, it's amemendments, but they were immediate amemendments.)
I'll bet his lawyers will win an appeal stating that with our technology rich society, not having access to the net is somehow perceived as cuel and unusual punishment.
Oh please! You don't honestly believe that tripe you spit out do you? I mean amputation, vivasection, stoning, and burning all pale in compression to not being able to surf the net for nudie pics and get into IRC pissing contests.
The majority of the people in the USA (and the vast majority of the world) isn't even on the the Internet. Are they being punished? No. Are they're lives somehow less? Not a chance. Are they not able to function in society, hold adequate jobs, or raise families? OF COURSE THEY CAN!
If you believe that not having a cable modem running to you home somehow makes you less of a person you've been reading Wired and listening to Madison Avenue for too damn long.
People here are saying: "Computers are everywhere! He violates his parole just walking across the street." Only fools don't know what the court meant by "computer". The judge meant PCs, Macs, workstations, servers, etc. In general anything that can reasonably be used as a cracking device. Use common sense people! When you hear someone say they're going to use the computer do really stop and thing, "Gee. I wonder if they're going to be using the CD player, or maybe the washing machine? No wait I got it! The digital alarm clock!" Trying to excalate an embeded microcontroller to the same level as the machine each and every one of you are using this very moment is a gross overstatment.
Times like this make me ashamed of reading slashdot.
I was quite put off by the amount of sheer marketing put into it. This was simply a moneymaking venture by Lucas, nothing more.
I've heard people say this many times about TPM, and this pisses me off to no end? Why? It's revisionist history. Let's take a joy ride in Mr. Peabody's Wayback Machine...
"Back in the day" we had action figures, posters, costumes, bookbags, lunchboxes, books, games (both computer and board), vitamins, shoes, you name it it had the logo on it. And this scene was repeated everytime a movie came out. So don't go around telling that bullshit that somehow TPM was merchandized more than the originals, that's just damn lie.
This doesn't sound like the legendary Steve Jobs to me. Sounds more like a Corpro-Tron 6000. Sure there's alot of people that go into making software, but there's alot of people that go into making a movie too. (Hell Hollywood even credits the damn caterer.) It's a tradition. It encourages pride in your work.
Sure someone may go after your talent if yopu publish their names. But killing your corporate culture doesn't exactly make people want to stick around.
What has happend to the guy that said once asked, "Do you want to change the world, or do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life?"?
Damn. "Un-American Activities"? I feel I'm back in the 1950s. If advocating strong crypto is going to get you added to blacklist, I have just one thing to say:
You're definatly right about the lack of a good interface and the lack of a killer app. I feel asthetics needs to enter into the mix as well when considering wearable computing. Right now they're big and kind of wierd looking. People don't want to look like a freak. (Of course this is the very thing people said about the walkman when it was introduced 20 years ago.)
Now for my spiel on interfaces. Each computing device, whether it's desktops, PDS, or wearables are used in fundamentally different ways. For a desktop, the desktop-document metaphore works because it's primarly used for "desk work". But for a PDA it doesn't make sense. That's why WinCE failed. People use a PDA like a notepad so a notepadesque interface is the best (like PalmOS). Same thing goes for wearables. People aren't looking for wearables to replace desktops any more than people looked for PDAs to replace desktops. Therefore a new interface needs to be developed. Personally I'd like to see something like the interface used in ohnny Mnemonic. You just need finger/head tracking. No real devices. That's the interface I think people want to use.
It looks like it's time lay the smack down on someone...
When guys are patenting obvious, or worse, prior art like "multimedia transmitted over the internet" and actually getting people to pay up, while other guys are increasing the cost-effectiveness of the information infrastructure by, oh, lets say a factor of 10, and can't receive substantial returns in support their talent for future risk-taking innovation -- the patent of invention has gone the way of the patent of nobility: It is obsolete.
Is the patent system abused? Yes. Obsolete? Hell no.
What, apparently, has made the patent of invention obsolete is the corruption of invention by legalistics.
The problem with is that the threshold for granting them is pathetically low. (See this patent on refrigerator magnets.) Add a Patent Office that doesn't/can't do nearly the research that should be done to determine prior art. Throw in a culture of litigation and fear of litigation; and you have a situation ripe for abuse.
This situation can be corrected removing any of those conditions (However correcting a culture tends to to be alot harder than correcting the others.)
Increase the budget to the Patent Office, so they can actually do research and determine if something is prior art.
Make it easier for the patent office to declare unpatentable concepts (i.e. Cardboard glued to a magnet. Gee, didn't I make one of those back in grade school?)
Have people actually challenge patents for once. No company will because they're afraid someone will come after they're dubious patents. A public action group would be ideal for this.
In technological civilization, nobility is in the creative act. The problem is the politicians and lawyers have demonstrated they are, as a cultural phenomenon, hostile to true nobility.
Mmmmm no. It's simple "Buisness is War". Who are the warriors in buisness? No, not the engineers and scientists, but rather lawyers. You create what you can and you hinder your competition <Malcom X> by any means necessary </Malcom X>. Hostile take over. Lawsuits. HR Raids. Patents. It's all the same.
The creative act deserves the respect, reward and protection traditionally reserved for nobles.
Yes creativity deserves resepect. Yes it deserves protection. Guess what? There's already a mechanism to protect products of creativity. It's called "patents".
Nobels on the other hand deserve nothing since all they did to get their title was be born. Those that spout Divine-Right and Divine-Right-eque beliefs are either damn liars or damn fools. (However this does not mean you should go and spit in the face of Queen Elizabeth II or call her "Liz", her title deserves respect. However can lobby for the abolishion of the very monarchy she heads.)
Fortunately, creators, themselves, possess great power.
Wait. Did I miss something? Previously you said that the transistor inventors "can't receive substantial returns in support their talent for future risk-taking innovation" but now you say they have "great power" which is it? If you don't have the abiltiy to follow through with your invention what good is it?
Why not just build some of those rotating thingies from the Lawnmower Man?
Because they don't do anything. Your static while the the "sphere" rotates you along two axes simultaneously. Since your rotating in two directions you don't get disoriented. (I know I went to Space Camp. The idea is just to ride it, not to stop it like they say in that sucky movie.)
[The] [b]rowser war? Sure, we could lose that. No big deal really.
Uhh no. To ~99% of the people, the browser is the main way to access the Internet. It's your HTML viewer, it's your FTP client, it's your USENET/mail reader. Hell it's even enables people to chat (with appropriate plugins). If you give up the browser, you're giving up one of the most strategic pieces of software on the planet. Microsoft realized this (eventually) and that's why they licensed Spyglass Mosaic to jumpstart IE.
We've already "won" the war against proprietary software -- we've built a wholly free operating system.
Builing a Free operating system is just showing up for the fight. That's not victory at all. Victory is total anilation of the enemy. Who's the enemy? Currently Redmond, but more generally anything that's proprietary. (Of course we can take the war further, turning on Whoever-is-Not-Us. That's competition, it's a war. Kill or be killed.) What's the penalty for losing? Complete marginalization.
I get the feeling that people in our community feel threatened by proprietary software and I don't understand that reasoning. I use exclusively free software on my systems (except for ssh, but that will hopefully change soon); I have no need for proprietary software, so why should I feel threatened by it?
The fear is marginlization, and marginalization == death in this industry. If we allow ourselves to be marginalized we'll be no different than the Amigans. ("I have an Amiga, I have no need for the PC. Why should I fear it?" Uhh you can't do anything modern with it today?) That is the price of failure.
You use Free Software. That's great. So do I, but would you still use if advancements passed it by? Why doesn't anyone use NCSA Mosaic anymore? It was Free. It was the best thing out there for years. Now if you try and use that you're out in the cold.
To make Free Software worthwhile, it needs to be at least comprable to it's proprietary counterparts. Sure we get lots of times we get close (GNOME, KDE, Gimp, Gnumeric,...) but they are not professional grade tools. (Gimp lacks the ability to draw cricles, lines, and rectangles. (Or at least every installation of Gimp I've seen.)) Only then can we we say we're in the competitive. Proof of Concept != Viable Alternative.
Most people don't give a damn about ideals. They want what works. When The Movement has the best product in the market, and so many people uses it,that The Movement gets to set the agenda then we would have won. That is victory.
Slashdot Mirror
Well I can't speak for h JonKatz but I'll weigh in here.
You seemingly never fail to rail upon religion (more often than not, Christianity) in each of your posts here.
I'll field this one. He's an American. The United States is predominatly a Christian nation, and therefore the majority of an American's exposure to Religion will be Christianity (or atleast the Judeo-Christian mythology. (Is that flames I see for using the work "mythology"? Well answer me this, what makes any religion, different from any of the ancient mythologies? Remember, people don't invent gods if they don't truly belive in them.))
Now on to the "anti-Chrisitan" sentiment.
First the US is NOT anti-Christian. The majority of the people go to church/whatever and believe in a god(s). Nothing pisses me off more than see some televanglist getting on TV sitting in his gold spraypainted chalk chairs, on his gawdy set, saying how he's being oppressed and that he needs your social security check to counteract the forces of Satan.
--
Religion is the opiate of the people
When I was at the University of Illinois I took people on a tour of the CAVE at the NCSA. It's pretty cool. Four 7 foot projecttion screens on each side of you. You stand in the middle holding a joystick that is tracked by a sensor on the ceiling. LCD goggles that flip opaceity between your eyes gives you a 3D enviroment.
They the cab to a Catapiller bulldozer that they were looking into using as some sort of computer aided training.
It's alot like a first person shooter, only with out guns or textures. Personally I don't think VR will ever become something revolutionary until we develop a more immersive enviorment (real touch (not just that lame vibration stuff) and the solving the dismounted soldier problem for example).
(I wonder why I'm even bothering with an AC...)
You do know that DC's schools are some of the best funded in the country. Similarly, you know that DC has one of the best transportation systems in the country.
DC is just one city. We're talking about a systematic problem. Or in poker-lingo, "I'll see your Washington DC and raise you Detroit and Indian Reservartions."
Lack of books in the home I'll give you. If you asked nicely, I'd also give you "parents who don't give a s*** about their children's education."
Come now. The poor family that doesn't give a damn about their children is a horrible stereotype. The majority of poor families are just trying to make through life. Of course there are those that don't give a damn, and so we should just write off all poor kids because one was raised by an utter fuck.
Unfortunately, you probably wouldn't understand the concept.
What the hell does this comment mean? You're just shooting flames with out any reason.
"After survivng this wasteland of banality, you go to a Big-10 university and are forced to compete against Buffy and Tad who complain about their schools junior varsity swimming pool beingoutside, unlike the varisity swimming pool; or something equally decadent. They complain in calc based physics about the fact that this was just like high school. While some people sat there and said, "Calculus in high school?" Damn I had to take that this summer at community college."
Yeah, so what. I (and many others) had a similar experience at one of the Ivies. It's meaningless class bigotry.
This is not meaningless class bigotry. It underscores the fundamental flaw in how the public schools are funded; property taxes. Somehow society has gotten it through its head that this is somehow equitable (as opposed to a central fund where the state dolls out an allowance per student). Until the schools are funded differently, there will NEVER be any real improvement for poor school districts.
"That is how the 'underprivlaged' are not given access to information."
Underprivileged US citizen is an oxymoron.
Do you go to that inner-city library with your eyes closed and your hands over your ears or what?
*ding* *ding* now entering the ring, The Liberal
If I am "disadvantaged" how does it prevent access to information?
Lack of books in the home. Lack of transportation to information. Lack of well funded education.
I was rather poor through my childhood and was still able to gain access to public libraries (ever heard of this new thing called the "free" library started in the 19th century and Carnagie).
I grew up working class one of (if not THE) poorest county in Illinois (hmmm...15% unemployment. Things are looking up.) I've been to the libraries back home. VC Andrews and 1978 National Geographics Circa 1986 non-ficition books? Not a chance.
But these are the city libraries. What about great repository of learning that is the school system. Encyclopedias from 1982. History books that stop at the Seven Days War. Science labs that are out of date. Physics teachers who go around saying, "I didn't do well in physics in college. So I'm not going to teach the physics in the book. I'm going to teach 'Conceptual Physics' instead. (Basically physics with no math. Amazing, but true.)
After survivng this wasteland of banality, you go to a Big-10 university and are forced to compete against Buffy and Tad who complain about their schools junior varsity swimming pool being outside, unlike the varisity swimming pool; or something equally decadent. They complain in calc based physics about the fact that this was just like high school. While some people sat there and said, "Calculus in high school?" Damn I had to take that this summer at community college.
Now imagine how this would be worse if my parents couldn't have afforded to send me to geek-camp, or give me vacations to view museumes in major cities.
That is how the "underprivlaged" are not given access to information.
We really do not have that much of a problem at least in the US of getting information to people.
However, I think he was mistaken. Ancient societies left stone tablets, cave paintings and the like behind, and there's no-one who fully understands the languages or the contexts (when an archaeologist says an object is of "ritual significance" he actually means he doesn't know what it's for). We do have the technology now, as the poster says, to migrate our data ever forwards into new storage, assuming no cataclysm occurs. And even if it does, it is far more important, in terms of recovering data, that the language (source code) survives, rather than CD ROM drives, Minidisc players etc (the binaries), because then data recovery is an essentially straightforward task.
The point is is that stone tablets are damn durable, while digital mediums (take your pick) aren't. When you see a stone tablet you see the inscription and you can say, "Golly gee! There's something written on this! It looks like a horse." or what not. When you see a CD, you look at it and say, "Hmm kind of shinny. Mirror?" or if you're smart/lucky "CD!" Then of course you have to figure out whether it's filled, or empty, whetherit's an audio CD, or data CD. Okay now there's files on it. Is it using rock ridge, joliet, or iso. Is this file data or is this an excutable, or some support file like a libary. Is it for mac, windows, solaris, linux, Be...
We have this problem today. I can give you an 8 inch floppy disk and say, "Behold! The answer to all the world's problem lies within. All you must do is read it and begin." Do you know where to even get an 8 inch drive? I sure don't. The only one I've ever seen was in "Wargames".
You talk about the fact that it's more important for source code to survive. That way you can reconstruct the system that produced the data, and then you can read it. Sounds reasonable enough. One problem. What is source code typically stored on? Big stuff sure as hell isn't stored on paper (However, I did one time see PGP source code printed and bound in an appendix to a book, don't remember which one though. (It had something to do with PGP. Suprise. Suprise.)). Source code is typically stored on a digital medium, because it makes it easier to use. It's a catch-22.
Now don't tell me about "well everyone will know" because "everyone" knew back in the past how to read Myan, and we all know how well that turned out.
Product: Mountain Dew
Scene: The Serengti.
Cheeta (Think! It doesn't make sense if it was leopard.) running. Mountain biker chases, catches up, does a cowboy-dismount on the cheeta and wrestles it to the ground. Sticks ihis arm down the the cheeta's throat and pulls out a Mountain Dew can.
[cut to mountain biker's friends]
"See that's why I'm not a cat person."
Coaxial raises up off the couch and prepares to lay the smacketh down on someone who greatly deserves it.
::= "self-replicating machine". They're two entirely different concepts. I can build a self-replicating machine today.
/., because if it wasn't you wouldn't be having this problem. When I read a site in Europe, I would expect it to be Eurocentric. This is based out of Michigan, so It's going to be Americancentric.
I find it almost impossible to read Slashdot when it comes to certain words. It seems as if the words are being used in multiple ways and it makes the discussion very confusing.
So? English is like that. Secondly, that's the terminology. Learn it. This comment makes me remember my first grade teacher, and her "conference" with my mother.
Teacher: I wish Jonathan wouldn't use certain words.
Mom: He's swearing?!?
Teacher: Oh no! He uses certain..."big words"; and I'm afraid that the other children don't know what he's talking about.
Mom:There isn't a chance in hell I'm going to tell my son not to use his vocabulary. That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard; and you call yourself an "educator"?
(This "educator" also liked to get on me for reading ahead, counting beyond 10, and bringing books from home. A fine example of the public school system. (conform obey never question)
We seem to do fine with "open source" and "gpl" and even know the difference between Linux and Linus, but some words just don't make sense anymore.
Who's "we"? Since you're DEFINATLY not including me in that statment; I'm going to assume "we" means "you".
Of course "open source" != "GPL". One is a concept, the other is a legal document.
Only an idiot confuses "Linux" and "Linus". One is a operating system, the other is a person.
nanotechnology: Either the ability to work with a material at an extremly small level or a self replicating machine.
I have NEVER seen "nanotechnology"
hacker: Either a war3z d00d or script kiddie or a person capable of coming up with an elegant solution involving technology.
What's your point? A "pig" is either a swine or cop. A flame is either a small piece of fire or an Internet message such as this. I suggest you read the Jargon File.
government, law, tax, etc.: Either a function of the United States that only applies to the United States, despite the fact that my log indicates that the U.S. is a minority in Slashdot or a vague concept that may or may not apply to any country.
Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! What's this about "your log"? You're not one of the Intergalactic Blockstackers. How the hell do have any logs about who accesses slashdot? That makes no sense.
Secondly the US is still the dominate county on the Internet. Sure some other countries are coming up, but they haven't matched us yet. It's definatly the dominate country on
(To avoid any more confusion, "American" means "pertaining to the United States of America". Why? Because we claimed the word first. I'd like to see someone try stop us from using it.
Thrirdly, how is "government", "tax" or "law" vauge concepts? They've existed since the beginning of civilization. And what's that crack about "may or may not apply to any contry"?
-------------
And now for the moderators:
How the hell is this "informative"? There is ZERO information in that post!
There's alot of talk about scanning in every neuron in the brain and all their connections and represent it in software (or even hardware) throw a switch and then the person encounters his exact psychological duplicate.
If the goal here is to gain effective immortality that's cool. I think it would be great to spawn off a duplicate so I could do two things at once. (One goes to work, one stays home and watches tv, one hacks on my email client) Of course for this to be really useful each duplicate should be to sync its experiences with all the other copies. (Similar to the Borg collective). There's nothing wrong with terminating one duplicate because you haven't really lost anything since you still have the other's experiences There's just now only one of you. (You wouldn't truly be dead until every copy of yourself was destroyed. (Even archival copies.)
Everyone deep down knows there something more to the brain than just neurons. I'm an athiest so I'm reluctant to call It a "soul"; so I'll call it the "software" instead. Creating a conciousness won't happen by just scanning a brain, no more than a TEM can create a Linux box.
I know neuroscience and psychology have discovered that certain areas of the brain are associated with different functions, but we still don't know the exact mechanics envolved. ("Some neurons fire, and a few chemicals are released, and then you get scared.") The Cat Cam a while back was damn amazing, but it's still fundamentally infrastructure. I'd like to know what kind of research is being done in how the brain actually stores information, mechanically how does a brain interpret a pattern of photons to mean "fire" (let alone, "I shouldn't touch that.").
All the big grandiose AI projects to build sentient machines have all failed because we simply don't know how it's done. (That and the hardware wasn't nearly powerful enough.) What's going on in regards to this research (the neuoroscience research, not the AI research)?
Gee I wish I had a site that hundred of thousands of people watched for news so that I could grandstand any ol' time I wanted. Perhaps I should create a geek gossip site for just this kind of stuff. ("Did you hear? Cowboy Neal went on a date! With a REAL WOMAN! Rumor has it was with the X10 QuickCam ``Babe''!")
I've said it before and I'll say it again, the UK is the true land of the free. You yanks with your namby pamby constitution and your free speach, right to arms and all that...
:)
Namby pamby? NANBY PAMBY?!? Dem be fightin' words ya thin liped tea drinkin' pansey. We kicked your ass twice before, we can do it again.
But in all seriousness I am consistantly shocked by the fact that the UK doesnt have a written Bill of Rights; by far the single greatest feature of the US Constitution. (Yeah yeah, it's amemendments, but they were immediate amemendments.)
I'll bet his lawyers will win an appeal stating that with our technology rich society, not having access to the net is somehow perceived as cuel and unusual punishment.
Oh please! You don't honestly believe that tripe you spit out do you? I mean amputation, vivasection, stoning, and burning all pale in compression to not being able to surf the net for nudie pics and get into IRC pissing contests.
The majority of the people in the USA (and the vast majority of the world) isn't even on the the Internet. Are they being punished? No. Are they're lives somehow less? Not a chance. Are they not able to function in society, hold adequate jobs, or raise families? OF COURSE THEY CAN!
If you believe that not having a cable modem running to you home somehow makes you less of a person you've been reading Wired and listening to Madison Avenue for too damn long.
People here are saying: "Computers are everywhere! He violates his parole just walking across the street." Only fools don't know what the court meant by "computer". The judge meant PCs, Macs, workstations, servers, etc. In general anything that can reasonably be used as a cracking device. Use common sense people! When you hear someone say they're going to use the computer do really stop and thing, "Gee. I wonder if they're going to be using the CD player, or maybe the washing machine? No wait I got it! The digital alarm clock!" Trying to excalate an embeded microcontroller to the same level as the machine each and every one of you are using this very moment is a gross overstatment.
Times like this make me ashamed of reading slashdot.
But picoJava is hardwired Java -- the point about Crusoe is that basically any VM can be soft/hardwired.
Ture, but it is a hardware implimentation. If all you're concerned with is java bytecode then this would be a cheaper solution.
Sun has already come out with something that does this; the picoJava microcontroller. Read all about it (alb iet in PDF).
I was quite put off by the amount of sheer marketing put into it. This was simply a moneymaking venture by Lucas, nothing more.
I've heard people say this many times about TPM, and this pisses me off to no end? Why? It's revisionist history. Let's take a joy ride
in Mr. Peabody's Wayback Machine...
"Back in the day" we had action figures, posters, costumes, bookbags, lunchboxes, books, games (both computer and board), vitamins, shoes, you name it it had the logo on it. And this scene was repeated everytime a movie came out. So don't go around telling that bullshit that somehow TPM was merchandized more than the originals, that's just damn lie.
I'm using librcx and a cross-compiling gcc. I'd use legOS if I could get it to work, but using librcx and standard C is pretty good.
I haven't done anything cool yet because I don't have enough sensors. Having a second brick would be nice too. Hmm
This doesn't sound like the legendary Steve Jobs to me. Sounds more like a Corpro-Tron 6000. Sure there's alot of people that go into making software, but there's alot of people that go into making a movie too. (Hell Hollywood even credits the damn caterer.) It's a tradition. It encourages pride in your work.
Sure someone may go after your talent if yopu publish their names. But killing your corporate culture doesn't exactly make people want to stick around.
What has happend to the guy that said once asked, "Do you want to change the world, or do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life?"?
Damn. "Un-American Activities"? I feel I'm back in the 1950s. If advocating strong crypto is going to get you added to blacklist, I have just one thing to say:
Where do I sign?
You're definatly right about the lack of a good interface and the lack of a killer app. I feel asthetics needs to enter into the mix as well when considering wearable computing. Right now they're big and kind of wierd looking. People don't want to look like a freak. (Of course this is the very thing people said about the walkman when it was introduced 20 years ago.)
As killer apps go, I'm a big fan of augmen ted reality and remembe rance agents. This could be the killer app once the technology improves.
Now for my spiel on interfaces. Each computing device, whether it's desktops, PDS, or wearables are used in fundamentally different ways. For a desktop, the desktop-document metaphore works because it's primarly used for "desk work". But for a PDA it doesn't make sense. That's why WinCE failed. People use a PDA like a notepad so a notepadesque interface is the best (like PalmOS). Same thing goes for wearables. People aren't looking for wearables to replace desktops any more than people looked for PDAs to replace desktops. Therefore a new interface needs to be developed. Personally I'd like to see something like the interface used in ohnny Mnemonic. You just need finger/head tracking. No real devices. That's the interface I think people want to use.
DVD player (one of them WITH the decoder)
Mindstorms
a magic-motion LED sign
soda vending machine
roll of alluminum foil
movies movies movies
Just reply and I'll give you all the delivery information you need
When guys are patenting obvious, or worse, prior art like "multimedia transmitted over the internet" and actually getting people to pay up, while other guys are increasing the cost-effectiveness of the information infrastructure by, oh, lets say a factor of 10, and can't receive substantial returns in support their talent for future risk-taking innovation -- the patent of invention has gone the way of the patent of nobility: It is obsolete.
Is the patent system abused? Yes. Obsolete? Hell no.
What, apparently, has made the patent of invention obsolete is the corruption of invention by legalistics.
The problem with is that the threshold for granting them is pathetically low. (See this patent on refrigerator magnets.) Add a Patent Office that doesn't/can't do nearly the research that should be done to determine prior art. Throw in a culture of litigation and fear of litigation; and you have a situation ripe for abuse.
This situation can be corrected removing any of those conditions (However correcting a culture tends to to be alot harder than correcting the others.)
In technological civilization, nobility is in the creative act. The problem is the politicians and lawyers have demonstrated they are, as a cultural phenomenon, hostile to true nobility.
Mmmmm no. It's simple "Buisness is War". Who are the warriors in buisness? No, not the engineers and scientists, but rather lawyers. You create what you can and you hinder your competition <Malcom X> by any means necessary </Malcom X>. Hostile take over. Lawsuits. HR Raids. Patents. It's all the same.
The creative act deserves the respect, reward and protection traditionally reserved for nobles.
Yes creativity deserves resepect. Yes it deserves protection. Guess what? There's already a mechanism to protect products of creativity. It's called "patents".
Nobels on the other hand deserve nothing since all they did to get their title was be born. Those that spout Divine-Right and Divine-Right-eque beliefs are either damn liars or damn fools. (However this does not mean you should go and spit in the face of Queen Elizabeth II or call her "Liz", her title deserves respect. However can lobby for the abolishion of the very monarchy she heads.)
Fortunately, creators, themselves, possess great power.
Wait. Did I miss something? Previously you said that the transistor inventors "can't receive substantial returns in support their talent for future risk-taking innovation" but now you say they have "great power" which is it? If you don't have the abiltiy to follow through with your invention what good is it?
1. Until I get a wireless link for my notebook, it is kind of hard to read the online version during potty breaks.
You don't need that. I found 40 feet of ethernet cable laying in a clump next to my desk works out just fine.
Why not just build some of those rotating thingies from the Lawnmower Man?
Because they don't do anything. Your static while the the "sphere" rotates you along two axes simultaneously. Since your rotating in two directions you don't get disoriented. (I know I went to Space Camp. The idea is just to ride it, not to stop it like they say in that sucky movie.)
I really hope to see some 90's processor technology, no more of Intel's 70's technology. :-)
:)
Yeah but would still be 10 years out of date.
What war are people talking about here?
...) but they are not professional grade tools. (Gimp lacks the ability to draw cricles, lines, and rectangles. (Or at least every installation of Gimp I've seen.)) Only then can we we say we're in the competitive. Proof of Concept != Viable Alternative.
The war on proprietary software, what else?
[The] [b]rowser war? Sure, we could lose that. No big deal really.
Uhh no. To ~99% of the people, the browser is the main way to access the Internet. It's your HTML viewer, it's your FTP client, it's your USENET/mail reader. Hell it's even enables people to chat (with appropriate plugins). If you give up the browser, you're giving up one of the most strategic pieces of software on the planet. Microsoft realized this (eventually) and that's why they licensed Spyglass Mosaic to jumpstart IE.
We've already "won" the war against proprietary software -- we've built a wholly free operating system.
Builing a Free operating system is just showing up for the fight. That's not victory at all. Victory is total anilation of the enemy. Who's the enemy? Currently Redmond, but more generally anything that's proprietary. (Of course we can take the war further, turning on Whoever-is-Not-Us. That's competition, it's a war. Kill or be killed.) What's the penalty for losing? Complete marginalization.
I get the feeling that people in our community feel threatened by proprietary software and I don't understand that reasoning. I use exclusively free software on my systems (except for ssh, but that will hopefully change soon); I have no need for proprietary software, so why should I feel threatened by it?
The fear is marginlization, and marginalization == death in this industry. If we allow ourselves to be marginalized we'll be no different than the Amigans. ("I have an Amiga, I have no need for the PC. Why should I fear it?" Uhh you can't do anything modern with it today?) That is the price of failure.
You use Free Software. That's great. So do I, but would you still use if advancements passed it by? Why doesn't anyone use NCSA Mosaic anymore? It was Free. It was the best thing out there for years. Now if you try and use that you're out in the cold.
To make Free Software worthwhile, it needs to be at least comprable to it's proprietary counterparts. Sure we get lots of times we get close (GNOME, KDE, Gimp, Gnumeric,
Most people don't give a damn about ideals. They want what works. When The Movement has the best product in the market, and so many people uses it,that The Movement gets to set the agenda then we would have won. That is victory.