For those who don't bother to ever read the articles (like this one, which has pictures of Harrison Ford explaining he's Deckard), and don't remember the movie, a replicant is not precisely a cyborg.
If it wasn't completely resolved in the film, it doesn't matter. The uncertainty was made part of the film (a very interesting and important part), the conclusion was not.
It's about as relevant as if George Lucas came out one day and said "Star Wars is actually about a dream Luke had, like Wizard of Oz, except I didn't bother to include the part about him waking up." For that matter, Doug Adams telling us the question to life, the universe, and everything, would add nothing to his stories (though it might add quite a bit to life outside of his stories if he got it right;) ).
Mr. Scott could just as easily say "Deckard was a highschool kid, playing a game in a virtual reality world. Nobody was a replicant, none of it was supposed to be real."
If it's not in the film, it doesn't matter.
A blatant and libellous falsehood!
on
Pirate DNS?
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· Score: 2
He wouldn't mess with the protocol! He's not that kind of egomaniac!
It would, of course, be: http://fsf.www.emacs.domainname.lignux.com.gnu.is. not.unix.stallman
That is seriously bogus!
on
Pirate DNS?
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· Score: 2
Hacking up a DNS to make things go to where some local bigwig thinks they should go, rather than the registered site, is very bad policy.
Sure, it seems harmless on the surface, but breaking the basic URL mechanism could have unforeseen effects.
What if someone wrote an article about how wrong it is for porn sites to grab hits (likely from minors as not) from mistyped URLs? What if they used the whitehouse.gov/whitehouse.com thing as an example? Anywhere it was remapped so both go to the.gov site, they wouldn't understand what the article was talking about.
BTW, I doubt you could get sued by whitehouse.com. They don't have any higher trademark claim to the domain than the US government does.
If you think communism means "no government"...
on
Linux And Beijing
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· Score: 2
...then you can't meaningfully speak about it with the rest of the world.
Yes, communism has that older meaning, but it also means Marxist socialism, which will always turn out to be mass totalitarian slavery because of the fundamental flaws in Marx's reasoning (that production comes from machines and natural resources, not humans).
Perhaps it became known as communism because of Marx's belief that the state would "wither away" over time. It seemed to him so natural that in times of plenty everybody would just take what little they needed and commit not crimes, that it would eventually become a true old-fashioned communism.
Similarly, democracy used to only mean direct democracy, every person voting on every policy decision. Today, republics are called democracies, and few people recognize any distinction between the two.
As I mentioned earlier, "liberal" used to mean what "libertarian" does today. This stuff happens all the time.
I think you'll get a lot more mileage out of recognizing the profound distinction between communes and communist states. Note that nobody ever called Russia or China a "commune", just "communist". Let the word go.
After a hundred years of widespread misuse, the misuse becomes the proper use. Who knows? Maybe fifty years from now we'll all be using "literally" to emphasize metaphors (ugh, I hate that, though).
Communism is inseperable from totalitarianism: 1)because every government that has called itself communist has turned out to be totalitarian (not exactly a logical proof, but if it walks like a duck...) 2)because in a totally communist state, the government controls all productive functions, not just simple industrial or agricultural ones, but also intellectual ones.
Free markets and free speech go together, because speech, thought, and persuasion are really just more market products. Since humans are always the true basic "means of production", communism is total slavery. Communism (especially under it's inexplicably friendlier name, socialism) is always sold under the vague premise that the machines will do the work, and why should anyone but the government own the machines? Marx based his whole theory on endless plenty coming from automation (he didn't anticipate the way human desires grow with every slightest whif of prosperity; what we consider terrible hardship of the modern Russian is a paradise of material wealth compared to the widespread poverty and starvation that Marx saw).
No newspaper regularly prints articles calling its owners crooks and calling on people to attack them, so why would a government-owned newspaper act differently? After all, they own all means of production; even if you go out on your own and build a working newspaper printer out of nothing, they then own it.
Besides,democracy doesn't preclude totalitarianism, only dictatorship. Totalitarianism and libertarianism (used to be called liberalism until that term was converted into a code-phrase for moderate socialism) are the proper opposites.
Totalitarianism/libertarianism is a matter of the degree of government control versus individual choice (the liberty issue).
Democracy/dictatorship is a matter of who sets the laws of the states: the general population, or a single individual (the control of government, meaning violence, issue).
Capitalism/communism is a matter of who owns the property: the government or individuals (the control of means of production, meaning labor, issue).
They are distict, but not completely seperate. Communism and totalitarianism go together like stupidity and ignorance. Democracy tends toward liberty, until the plebs learn that they can vote for bread and circuses... and it works, for a little while ("We, the weak and stupid, contributing little anyway, and unable to earn what we think is our right (since that's what the best and brightest get and we're just as good as they are, right?), vote to have the strong and intelligent do all the work and just give us what they produce." bread and circuses? general purpose welfare and health care? it's the same message either way).
On Pokemon, they aren't afraid to draw stacked chicks in hot outfits to appeal to young adolescent male fantasies, but I think they rightly draw the line at unrealistically convincing crossdressers wearing very skimpy bikinis grabbing their own fake tits to jiggle them at little girls.
Pokemon weirdness isn't exactly subliminal...
on
Anime Moves To DVD
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· Score: 2
race accounts for less than half of the the genetic difference
Isn't that what you'd expect? In fact, I'd be rather surprised if it was anywhere close to half.
Not only can the races interbreed with complete success, there are morons and geniuses, weaklings and strong men, over roughly the same large spread in each race. To me these facts alone suggest that there should be far greater diversity within races than between them.
However, I don't take this to mean that racial differences are necessarily insignificant or uninteresting, though one should naturally expect all but the most blatantly obvious to be lost in the variety of individuals.
But isn't the genome the complete set of genes for the species? Not the genes of one man, but the total genetic catalog of all mankind? If so, the question "Which man?" (to which you replied) is nonsensical.
...would either be a refinement of the language or tool-manipulation interface. You'd either think "Computer: move that file to there" or you'd imagine that file moving there.
Besides, who says you've only got conscious control over your body? Haven't you ever started home and just let your mind wander, then realized you were home without remembering how you got there?
I didn't think you were a troll until (when I posted) you replied to every single reply to your post, and apparently contradicted yourself, to flame at all the people who disagreed with you. I didn't agree with what you said, and I thought you were rude about it, but it was the flames that convinced me.
Since you had posted 3 times in about a half-hour span, but you only had a handful of posts, it seemed reasonable to assume you were a new account. Since you didn't leave any identifying links and generally took an antagonistic flaming tone, rather than one of participating in a reasonable discussion, it seemed to follow that you created the account so you could be a jerk without consequences.
The original post was not too bad (though both inaccurate and rudely put - typical features of a troll), but in better times (before the metamod karma rape campaign) the flames would have been moderated down immediately.
Maybe you have better things to do than conspire to ruin slashdot, but other people don't.
Besides, the BASICs weren't toys. You don't see many programs on the Word/Excel/Visicalc level written in Perl either, but Perl is hardly a toy. You could write command line file-processing utilities of all kinds in BASIC, as well as graphical applications like paint programs and games. When I was a kid, I wrote a simple 3d-model viewer in AppleSoft BASIC (it was slow as hell, but it worked); other people have controlled robots with it and done similar things. It was a general purpose, if crappy, programming language, unlike HyperCard, which does a few things well, but has severe limitations on what you can do with it. You might, as well claim that a spreadsheet is a suitable hacking tool to get people into the guts of computers.
So, you're apparently not a deliberate troll, just rude and stupid. Regardless, I have seen a lot of real trolls moderated up lately, and the trend worries me. However, you not being one does make it seem more likely that it's just part of the general downward trend in the quality of moderation, rather than a deliberate campaign.
Music appreciation is almost purely cultural. People find the music of other cultures weird and unpleasant unless they make a conscious effort to cultivate a taste for it. Parents hate what their children listen to.
It's hard to like unknown bands when their recordings are poorly mixed with cheap equipment, and the most consistent quality of the music you've liked in the past is high production values. I'm not saying you should, but perhaps this explains your preference, rather than the actual bands you like (in other words, perhaps if the obscure bands you don't like had access to the same studios as the bands you do like, you'd like them as well).
There is no question that there are some things that only appear in expensively produced music, and represent significantly different content. For example, the typical garage band can't get an orchestral backup, whether it improves their music or not.
Personally, I like novelty, extremes of complexity and simplicity, and unusual themes. I like them because this is what I decided I should like when I was a teenager. I no longer care about what I should should like (aside from a conscious effort to learn and understand what appeal different entertainments have), but the early self-training based on superficial judgements has remained.
Others decide they should like music that is difficult to produce, or that has some deeper message, or what other people they admire like. Most simply learn to like what they hear most often.
There is no arguing about tastes, but you should understand where yours come from. Would you accept being manipulated by distributors to like their music? Would you resist it if you recognize it? Would that change your tastes in music?
There are hundreds of gameboy games to download from the internet. You act a little differently when you can try something for free than when you have to cough up $25 every time you want a game.
I don't think it's right to rip off the game producers that way, but I don't think their distribution model is right either.
I remember hearing some (MS I think) browser developer saying how they wanted to make a main-bar button that would toggle javascript, so you can stop a flood of popups fairly easily.
It got dubbed the "porn button" and was, unfortunately, never included.
I consider something "pointless fluff" when everything in it provokes one of two responses: "of course, that's obvious" and "of course not, that's absurd". This article neither provokes thought nor predicts with any accuracy, just annoys and confuses.
There will be no real revolutions in interface because we've already found the only two possible interfaces: -language (CLI) -(usu. simulated) physical device manipulation (GUI)
That's it. Those are your only choices: tell the computer to do it, or work the buttons and levers on the machine that does it.
Yes, these will evolve. We will teach computers to speak with us more naturally (natural language capability), and we will make more intuitive and useable device simulations (virtual reality). These are not revolutionary changes, just natural and predictable evolutionary changes.
To call either obsolete is foolish, absurd. With the limited capacities of current computers, the language interface is more efficient (for most tasks) for those who work with computers enough to make learning the language worthwhile, and the direct manipulation of simulated machines is easier for those who don't use computers as much (and for those tasks which involve manipulations of simulated physical objects: like drawing and 3D modelling).
Okay, there's one more: direct subconscious control. The computer reads your mind, knows what you want, and gets it for you without you having to consciously communicate with it or even consciously understand what you want. This will happen, but not soon, and likely it will be a failure. People like conscious control, and don't trust computers. At any rate, this more properly considered a form of mind-enhancement than communication.
Similarly, the relationship between computers and networks isn't going to undergo any dramatic revolutionary change. We'll continue to tweak what should be served and what should be processed by the client based on costs and capacities of processing, storing, and transmitting data. The baseline of things that can't be trusted to the network will also be preserved.
And, of course, we'll continue to improve methods of data storage and retrieval. Hierarchical data storage won't go away; it's the natural system for us programmers to work in, it's very useful to have things like file paths and URLs. There'll just be more databases on file contents and better search features.
Timestreams, on the other hand, are just a bad guess. Linear organization? It has its place, but I don't see it gaining any special prominence in the future. Computer use is more timeless than focused on time.
Revolutions will take place in task-areas which do not yet exist, to solve problems we don't yet recognize as problems.
How hard is that to figure out? Don't you think if I wanted to call you a troll, I would have replied directly to your message? Think a little.
I was talking about TWR, the troll who posted an inflamatory comment, then flamed everybody who replied to him for a while. First he totally refuted what you said, claiming that hypercard is better than anything available for Apple ][ or other systems at the time, then he flamed someone who disagreed, refuting himself and claiming that hypercard is only good for toys. What else do you call a person like that?
I looked at his user account, and he barely had any comments. I've seen a lot of this lately: brand new user accounts trolling, then getting moderated up.
What I've said is true: the trolls are organized with their own discussion groups, they are getting moderated up more than they used to, and many moderators are abandoning the system because there's a bunch of trolls meta-modding stuff "unfair" by default (which costs karma, which means eventually ending up posting at -1). That they are conspiring to fill slashdot discussions with garbage is unquestionable. I think the possibility that a conspiracy exists to acquire a large number of moderator-level accounts, with which to promote trolls to the same level as the best serious posts, must be taken seriously.
They already have the capability to flood discussions at low scores so it's a total waste of time to read low-score posts, do you want them to be able to flood with high-score posts and totally destroy slashdot?
E-gold is adequate for micropayments, especially for a busking model (note: I don't use a referrer link when I advocate e-gold, I do this to remain un-biased in case another usable system comes along).
Hell, I'm trying to make a go of it myself, as an entertainment/education software producer (I haven't made any money at it yet, but that's to be expected; I'm still working on the stuff I expect people will like enough to pay for, though I'd appreciate getting a few bucks for the little utilities and learning projects I've been released so far).
I think it's horribly hypocritical of people to complain about how unfair and unusual it is for music to be restricted and controlled, while gleefully taking the results of this control - lots of music in a variety of genres - completely for granted.
Hmm... Funny thing, you don't make any argument to support this premise that the variety of music comes from the oppressive domination of the distributors.
I happen to think that the variety is due to improvements in technology: mostly being able to communicate and travel inexpensively over long distances and increased leisure time due to automated production.
Most musicians can't afford to do this professionally if we don't provide them with a mechanism to make money at it.
Circular logic: they aren't professional if they aren't in it for the money, they won't be in it for the money if there isn't money to be had.
Most music that is produced does not make a net profit. For every song that does become popular and makes a fortune, there are a hundred or a thousand that are ignored.
It isn't because it's "better music" either; do you really think Kenny G, Brittney Spears, and the Backstreet Boys make better music than the typical garage band? How about Milli Vanilli? It's all about promotion and image, about training a captive audience to like something, then telling them to pay for it.
The truth is that most musicians don't have an adequate mechanism to make money. They have a carrot held out of reach by a network of distributors and promoters.
I think a busking model is most appropriate. It removes the necessity of the brainwashing step; people will find what they like and share it with their friends. If it's made easy enough (and between paypal and e-gold it certainly can be easy) and it is explained that this is their primary source of revenue, people will pay, just as they tip when it's expected of them.
I seem to remember that Russian homes were required to have hard-wired "radios" for some time. This was probably mostly done to minimize the use of real radio receivers and the possibility of receiving anything that conflicted the official pravda.
However, I've always wondered how many of these things were simply 1-way speakers, and how many were 2-way speaker/microphones, like George Orwell's 2-way TVs.
The ability to append a limited amount of time-marked text to the end of your own posts - not to modify or remove stuff, just to be able to append corrections and related additions, so you don't look stupid replying to yourself.
Slashdot Mirror
For those who don't bother to ever read the articles (like this one, which has pictures of Harrison Ford explaining he's Deckard), and don't remember the movie, a replicant is not precisely a cyborg.
If it wasn't completely resolved in the film, it doesn't matter. The uncertainty was made part of the film (a very interesting and important part), the conclusion was not.
;) ).
It's about as relevant as if George Lucas came out one day and said "Star Wars is actually about a dream Luke had, like Wizard of Oz, except I didn't bother to include the part about him waking up." For that matter, Doug Adams telling us the question to life, the universe, and everything, would add nothing to his stories (though it might add quite a bit to life outside of his stories if he got it right
Mr. Scott could just as easily say "Deckard was a highschool kid, playing a game in a virtual reality world. Nobody was a replicant, none of it was supposed to be real."
If it's not in the film, it doesn't matter.
He wouldn't mess with the protocol! He's not that kind of egomaniac!
. not.unix.stallman
It would, of course, be: http://fsf.www.emacs.domainname.lignux.com.gnu.is
Hacking up a DNS to make things go to where some local bigwig thinks they should go, rather than the registered site, is very bad policy.
.gov site, they wouldn't understand what the article was talking about.
Sure, it seems harmless on the surface, but breaking the basic URL mechanism could have unforeseen effects.
What if someone wrote an article about how wrong it is for porn sites to grab hits (likely from minors as not) from mistyped URLs? What if they used the whitehouse.gov/whitehouse.com thing as an example? Anywhere it was remapped so both go to the
BTW, I doubt you could get sued by whitehouse.com. They don't have any higher trademark claim to the domain than the US government does.
...then you can't meaningfully speak about it with the rest of the world.
Yes, communism has that older meaning, but it also means Marxist socialism, which will always turn out to be mass totalitarian slavery because of the fundamental flaws in Marx's reasoning (that production comes from machines and natural resources, not humans).
Perhaps it became known as communism because of Marx's belief that the state would "wither away" over time. It seemed to him so natural that in times of plenty everybody would just take what little they needed and commit not crimes, that it would eventually become a true old-fashioned communism.
Similarly, democracy used to only mean direct democracy, every person voting on every policy decision. Today, republics are called democracies, and few people recognize any distinction between the two.
As I mentioned earlier, "liberal" used to mean what "libertarian" does today. This stuff happens all the time.
I think you'll get a lot more mileage out of recognizing the profound distinction between communes and communist states. Note that nobody ever called Russia or China a "commune", just "communist". Let the word go.
After a hundred years of widespread misuse, the misuse becomes the proper use. Who knows? Maybe fifty years from now we'll all be using "literally" to emphasize metaphors (ugh, I hate that, though).
Communism is inseperable from totalitarianism:
1)because every government that has called itself communist has turned out to be totalitarian (not exactly a logical proof, but if it walks like a duck...)
2)because in a totally communist state, the government controls all productive functions, not just simple industrial or agricultural ones, but also intellectual ones.
Free markets and free speech go together, because speech, thought, and persuasion are really just more market products. Since humans are always the true basic "means of production", communism is total slavery. Communism (especially under it's inexplicably friendlier name, socialism) is always sold under the vague premise that the machines will do the work, and why should anyone but the government own the machines? Marx based his whole theory on endless plenty coming from automation (he didn't anticipate the way human desires grow with every slightest whif of prosperity; what we consider terrible hardship of the modern Russian is a paradise of material wealth compared to the widespread poverty and starvation that Marx saw).
No newspaper regularly prints articles calling its owners crooks and calling on people to attack them, so why would a government-owned newspaper act differently? After all, they own all means of production; even if you go out on your own and build a working newspaper printer out of nothing, they then own it.
Besides,democracy doesn't preclude totalitarianism, only dictatorship. Totalitarianism and libertarianism (used to be called liberalism until that term was converted into a code-phrase for moderate socialism) are the proper opposites.
Totalitarianism/libertarianism is a matter of the degree of government control versus individual choice (the liberty issue).
Democracy/dictatorship is a matter of who sets the laws of the states: the general population, or a single individual (the control of government, meaning violence, issue).
Capitalism/communism is a matter of who owns the property: the government or individuals (the control of means of production, meaning labor, issue).
They are distict, but not completely seperate. Communism and totalitarianism go together like stupidity and ignorance. Democracy tends toward liberty, until the plebs learn that they can vote for bread and circuses... and it works, for a little while ("We, the weak and stupid, contributing little anyway, and unable to earn what we think is our right (since that's what the best and brightest get and we're just as good as they are, right?), vote to have the strong and intelligent do all the work and just give us what they produce." bread and circuses? general purpose welfare and health care? it's the same message either way).
Those breasts were on a guy!
On Pokemon, they aren't afraid to draw stacked chicks in hot outfits to appeal to young adolescent male fantasies, but I think they rightly draw the line at unrealistically convincing crossdressers wearing very skimpy bikinis grabbing their own fake tits to jiggle them at little girls.
Case in point. The one one the right is James, a male character. More info here. And here.
This was from episode #18 of the original Japanese series. Oddly enough, this episode never appears in the English dub broadcast in the USA...
race accounts for less than half of the the genetic difference
Isn't that what you'd expect? In fact, I'd be rather surprised if it was anywhere close to half.
Not only can the races interbreed with complete success, there are morons and geniuses, weaklings and strong men, over roughly the same large spread in each race. To me these facts alone suggest that there should be far greater diversity within races than between them.
However, I don't take this to mean that racial differences are necessarily insignificant or uninteresting, though one should naturally expect all but the most blatantly obvious to be lost in the variety of individuals.
But isn't the genome the complete set of genes for the species? Not the genes of one man, but the total genetic catalog of all mankind? If so, the question "Which man?" (to which you replied) is nonsensical.
...would either be a refinement of the language or tool-manipulation interface. You'd either think "Computer: move that file to there" or you'd imagine that file moving there.
Besides, who says you've only got conscious control over your body? Haven't you ever started home and just let your mind wander, then realized you were home without remembering how you got there?
I didn't think you were a troll until (when I posted) you replied to every single reply to your post, and apparently contradicted yourself, to flame at all the people who disagreed with you. I didn't agree with what you said, and I thought you were rude about it, but it was the flames that convinced me.
Since you had posted 3 times in about a half-hour span, but you only had a handful of posts, it seemed reasonable to assume you were a new account. Since you didn't leave any identifying links and generally took an antagonistic flaming tone, rather than one of participating in a reasonable discussion, it seemed to follow that you created the account so you could be a jerk without consequences.
The original post was not too bad (though both inaccurate and rudely put - typical features of a troll), but in better times (before the metamod karma rape campaign) the flames would have been moderated down immediately.
Maybe you have better things to do than conspire to ruin slashdot, but other people don't.
Besides, the BASICs weren't toys. You don't see many programs on the Word/Excel/Visicalc level written in Perl either, but Perl is hardly a toy. You could write command line file-processing utilities of all kinds in BASIC, as well as graphical applications like paint programs and games. When I was a kid, I wrote a simple 3d-model viewer in AppleSoft BASIC (it was slow as hell, but it worked); other people have controlled robots with it and done similar things. It was a general purpose, if crappy, programming language, unlike HyperCard, which does a few things well, but has severe limitations on what you can do with it. You might, as well claim that a spreadsheet is a suitable hacking tool to get people into the guts of computers.
So, you're apparently not a deliberate troll, just rude and stupid. Regardless, I have seen a lot of real trolls moderated up lately, and the trend worries me. However, you not being one does make it seem more likely that it's just part of the general downward trend in the quality of moderation, rather than a deliberate campaign.
Music appreciation is almost purely cultural. People find the music of other cultures weird and unpleasant unless they make a conscious effort to cultivate a taste for it. Parents hate what their children listen to.
It's hard to like unknown bands when their recordings are poorly mixed with cheap equipment, and the most consistent quality of the music you've liked in the past is high production values. I'm not saying you should, but perhaps this explains your preference, rather than the actual bands you like (in other words, perhaps if the obscure bands you don't like had access to the same studios as the bands you do like, you'd like them as well).
There is no question that there are some things that only appear in expensively produced music, and represent significantly different content. For example, the typical garage band can't get an orchestral backup, whether it improves their music or not.
Personally, I like novelty, extremes of complexity and simplicity, and unusual themes. I like them because this is what I decided I should like when I was a teenager. I no longer care about what I should should like (aside from a conscious effort to learn and understand what appeal different entertainments have), but the early self-training based on superficial judgements has remained.
Others decide they should like music that is difficult to produce, or that has some deeper message, or what other people they admire like. Most simply learn to like what they hear most often.
There is no arguing about tastes, but you should understand where yours come from. Would you accept being manipulated by distributors to like their music? Would you resist it if you recognize it? Would that change your tastes in music?
Who is going to steal a mere 18 games?
I expect most would do that in their first day.
There are hundreds of gameboy games to download from the internet. You act a little differently when you can try something for free than when you have to cough up $25 every time you want a game.
I don't think it's right to rip off the game producers that way, but I don't think their distribution model is right either.
...do you really think people will want to use something equivalent that keeps a record of where it was used?
I remember hearing some (MS I think) browser developer saying how they wanted to make a main-bar button that would toggle javascript, so you can stop a flood of popups fairly easily.
It got dubbed the "porn button" and was, unfortunately, never included.
I consider something "pointless fluff" when everything in it provokes one of two responses: "of course, that's obvious" and "of course not, that's absurd". This article neither provokes thought nor predicts with any accuracy, just annoys and confuses.
There will be no real revolutions in interface because we've already found the only two possible interfaces:
-language (CLI)
-(usu. simulated) physical device manipulation (GUI)
That's it. Those are your only choices: tell the computer to do it, or work the buttons and levers on the machine that does it.
Yes, these will evolve. We will teach computers to speak with us more naturally (natural language capability), and we will make more intuitive and useable device simulations (virtual reality). These are not revolutionary changes, just natural and predictable evolutionary changes.
To call either obsolete is foolish, absurd. With the limited capacities of current computers, the language interface is more efficient (for most tasks) for those who work with computers enough to make learning the language worthwhile, and the direct manipulation of simulated machines is easier for those who don't use computers as much (and for those tasks which involve manipulations of simulated physical objects: like drawing and 3D modelling).
Okay, there's one more: direct subconscious control. The computer reads your mind, knows what you want, and gets it for you without you having to consciously communicate with it or even consciously understand what you want. This will happen, but not soon, and likely it will be a failure. People like conscious control, and don't trust computers. At any rate, this more properly considered a form of mind-enhancement than communication.
Similarly, the relationship between computers and networks isn't going to undergo any dramatic revolutionary change. We'll continue to tweak what should be served and what should be processed by the client based on costs and capacities of processing, storing, and transmitting data. The baseline of things that can't be trusted to the network will also be preserved.
And, of course, we'll continue to improve methods of data storage and retrieval. Hierarchical data storage won't go away; it's the natural system for us programmers to work in, it's very useful to have things like file paths and URLs. There'll just be more databases on file contents and better search features.
Timestreams, on the other hand, are just a bad guess. Linear organization? It has its place, but I don't see it gaining any special prominence in the future. Computer use is more timeless than focused on time.
Revolutions will take place in task-areas which do not yet exist, to solve problems we don't yet recognize as problems.
How hard is that to figure out? Don't you think if I wanted to call you a troll, I would have replied directly to your message? Think a little.
I was talking about TWR, the troll who posted an inflamatory comment, then flamed everybody who replied to him for a while. First he totally refuted what you said, claiming that hypercard is better than anything available for Apple ][ or other systems at the time, then he flamed someone who disagreed, refuting himself and claiming that hypercard is only good for toys. What else do you call a person like that?
I looked at his user account, and he barely had any comments. I've seen a lot of this lately: brand new user accounts trolling, then getting moderated up.
What I've said is true: the trolls are organized with their own discussion groups, they are getting moderated up more than they used to, and many moderators are abandoning the system because there's a bunch of trolls meta-modding stuff "unfair" by default (which costs karma, which means eventually ending up posting at -1). That they are conspiring to fill slashdot discussions with garbage is unquestionable. I think the possibility that a conspiracy exists to acquire a large number of moderator-level accounts, with which to promote trolls to the same level as the best serious posts, must be taken seriously.
They already have the capability to flood discussions at low scores so it's a total waste of time to read low-score posts, do you want them to be able to flood with high-score posts and totally destroy slashdot?
E-gold is adequate for micropayments, especially for a busking model (note: I don't use a referrer link when I advocate e-gold, I do this to remain un-biased in case another usable system comes along).
My reasoning is here.
Hell, I'm trying to make a go of it myself, as an entertainment/education software producer (I haven't made any money at it yet, but that's to be expected; I'm still working on the stuff I expect people will like enough to pay for, though I'd appreciate getting a few bucks for the little utilities and learning projects I've been released so far).
I think it's horribly hypocritical of people to complain about how unfair and unusual it is for music to be restricted and controlled, while gleefully taking the results of this control - lots of music in a variety of genres - completely for granted.
Hmm... Funny thing, you don't make any argument to support this premise that the variety of music comes from the oppressive domination of the distributors.
I happen to think that the variety is due to improvements in technology: mostly being able to communicate and travel inexpensively over long distances and increased leisure time due to automated production.
Most musicians can't afford to do this professionally if we don't provide them with a mechanism to make money at it.
Circular logic: they aren't professional if they aren't in it for the money, they won't be in it for the money if there isn't money to be had.
Most music that is produced does not make a net profit. For every song that does become popular and makes a fortune, there are a hundred or a thousand that are ignored.
It isn't because it's "better music" either; do you really think Kenny G, Brittney Spears, and the Backstreet Boys make better music than the typical garage band? How about Milli Vanilli? It's all about promotion and image, about training a captive audience to like something, then telling them to pay for it.
The truth is that most musicians don't have an adequate mechanism to make money. They have a carrot held out of reach by a network of distributors and promoters.
I think a busking model is most appropriate. It removes the necessity of the brainwashing step; people will find what they like and share it with their friends. If it's made easy enough (and between paypal and e-gold it certainly can be easy) and it is explained that this is their primary source of revenue, people will pay, just as they tip when it's expected of them.
Some of the trolls have their own chat lines and such, where they discuss how to lower the signal-to-noise ratio.
I wonder how many of them, moderating each other up, and meta-moderating away all the decent moderators, it would take to ruin the system entirely.
I seem to remember that Russian homes were required to have hard-wired "radios" for some time. This was probably mostly done to minimize the use of real radio receivers and the possibility of receiving anything that conflicted the official pravda.
However, I've always wondered how many of these things were simply 1-way speakers, and how many were 2-way speaker/microphones, like George Orwell's 2-way TVs.
Maybe jamie should have wrote it as:
<sarcasm>Fortunately, this could never happen here</sarcasm>
so we wouldn't have to deal with people who can't recognize sarcasm pointing out how naive he (she?) is.
Is there an organized troll program to moderate each other up so they can screw up /. more than they already do?
...what the software world would be like if this was done with MS-DOS in the USA back in the 80's.
The ability to append a limited amount of time-marked text to the end of your own posts - not to modify or remove stuff, just to be able to append corrections and related additions, so you don't look stupid replying to yourself.