The very nature of the LIMP emphasizes the collaborative nature of Linux, with thousands of people and organizations each working in their own way to improve it all the time. In this sense, I would consider it to be one of the best available visuals to represent Linux. --
I confess to owning over twenty Terry Prachett novels, mostly in the Discworld series. I even went to the trouble of ordering several of them from the UK.
I also have Good Omens which he co-wrote with Neil Gaiman. I've also read a couple of Gaiman's books, which were quite good.
Another author I would highly recommend is Matt Ruff. So far he has only written two books: "Fool on the Hill", and "Sewer, Gas & Electric : The Public Works Trilogy", but they're among my favorites. If you like Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams, you'll probably like Matt Ruff. --
It would be impractical to make all of these people move to D.C., so they would probably all "rule" from their homes. This doesn't seem unreasonable to me, given the geographically widespread availability of internet access.
I'm not sure what you mean by accountability here, could you please elaborate?
This is a lot like a direct democracy, with proxies, as you note. I suppose the effects of this system would include: a lot of single issue representatives, fewer bills being put through the system, and probably some less-informed rep's.
The idea of allowing people to change their votes at any time sounds intriguing, but I'm not sure if that can be done without compromising the anonymity of the vote, which is definitely something I would like to keep. Perhaps terms could be shortened to the order of a month?
This would be extremely complex, but it should be within the bounds of implementability. If it were ever implemented, I would definitely advocate trying it out at a local level before doing it at a national level. --
Oddly enough, I just put up a webpage a few days ago which explains, among other things, why this can't work. You can find it here.
The basic reasoning is that many (maybe even most) politicians aren't in it for the money, they're in it for the power. They don't want to get rich, just re-elected. Therefore, direct monetary contributions are not necessary to buy a politician, just convenient. If you ban soft money, direct campaign contributions, etc., then special interest groups will just start buying the commercials directly.
On my web page, I make a case for changing the way the House and the Senate are elected and run, though I seriously doubt that anything of the sort will happen anytime soon, since it would require some serious constitutional ammendments.
Skipjack is not a good choice for several reasons:
Skipjack only has an 80 bit key. Even 3DES, at 112 bits, is better than that. Last year, Deep Crack broke a DES key in 56 hours, and the machine cost under $250,000. Assuming the government spent an even billion on a similar machine for Skipjack, they could brute force a key in 26 years. This is unacceptable for the truely paranoid. Rijndael, or any of the other AES candidates, has key sizes of 128, 192, and 256 bits. With a 256 bit key, a brute force search would require more energy than could be obtained by converting all the matter in the solar system.
Skipjack has a 64 bit blocksize. As long as you're going with a non-standard algorithm, you might as well use one of the AES candidates which all have 128 bit block sizes.
Skipjack doesn't seem to have been sufficiently overengineered to inspire confidence. A version of Skipjack reduced from 32 to 31 rounds can be broken slightly faster than through brute force (look here for details). This isn't a fatal weakness by itself, but it doesn't exactly look good either.
If you're woried about the government trying to read your mail, then not using an algorithm they came up with (and thus know more about than anyone else) is just plain common sense.
You should also have the freedom to make modifications and use them privately in your own work or play, without even mentioning that they exist. If you do publish your changes, you should not be required to notify anyone in particular, or in any particular way.
Modifying a GPL'd program and keeping the changes to yourself is thus explicitly included in the spirit of the GPL.
Am I the only person who wants a sound file of Steven Hawking (or a sound-alike computer generated voice) saying "Man, that shit would be so fucked up."? --
If I'm not mistaken, those laws would just make the anti-reverse engineering clauses in EULAs enforcable. (I wonder how many people would accept a EULA that started out "By installing this virus on your machine you agree to the following conditions:". Probably a depressingly high number of windows users.) --
This will probably increase variety, at least as much because of the business model they seem to be using as because of the technology. With traditional broadcast media (and even cable to an extent), each channel is run by a separate company which is competing with all of the others, mostly for a few of the largest demographics.
These satelite radio businesses, however, seem to be set up so that all the channels on the service are owned by the same company, so they aren't competing with each other. Instead, the service as a whole competes with a different service, and whoever covers the widest set of interests wins. This means that each channel would be targeted at a different interest, so rather than a dozen top 40 pop stations, you get one top 40 pop channel, one punk chanel, one industrial channel, one opera channel, one baroque channel, one reggae channel, etc.
Of course, this is all in my arrogant opinion, I-am-not-a-businessman-but-I-play-one-on-the-net, YMMV, void where prohibited, yadda yadda yadda. --
Now what would happen if we terraformed Mars? There'd be liquid oceans again. And again the same problem would arise. CO2 would be absorbed into those oceans, carbonates would settle on the ocean floor, and eventually Mars would again freeze up. Sure, then you could terraform again, or you could introduce other greenhouse gasses to keep Mars' temperature elevated, but eventually you wouldn't be able to keep up.
So you find, breed, or genetically engineer organisms that convert the carbonates back into CO2, and set it loose on the bottom of your oceans.
I think what he meant was that the VFS layer is not 64-bit clean on 32-bit systems. I know I've seen posts claiming that for this reason XFS won't be very useful on 32-bit systems. --
I wouldn't want to be around when a billion artificial brains wake up and think, "What's in it for me?".
Why would an artificial intelligence necessarily be selfish? Humans are selfish because for the past few billion years, anything that wasn't selfish would usually propagate fewer genes. An artificial brain (at least, one that is put into any kind of real use) is going to have the properties that we design/train it to have, and probably behave more or less randomly when subject to inputs that it was neither designed nor trained to deal with. Selfishness of that order is probably much too complex for us to implement any time in the forseeable future even if we try.
One point that I have not seen mentioned so far is that there is a difference between the government of Iran and the people of Iran (just as with any other country). I wouldn't do business with the Iranian government, or one of their millitary suppliers, but I would see no moral problem with, e.g., writing business management applications for ISP's or restaurants. Of course, living in the U.S., I would see a major legal problem... --
The question is whether self-consciousness can derive from electro-chemical processes. I assert that this is absurd: no chemical process has self-consciousness. A fire doesn't say "I am."
Yeah, and a handfull of beach sand won't run Linux no matter how you configure the kernel. The difference is in organization. Fire and sand are organized in ways that aren't well suited to information processing. CPU's and human brains are organized in ways that are fairly well suited to information processing. Admittedly, information processing doesn't tautologically lead to self-conciousness, but in the case of human beings it seems to be the only available component.
Well, you could argue for the existance of the soul and claim that that's where the self-conciousness is introduced, but then you have to have a mechanism which allows the soul to interact with the body, which introduces the possibility of scientifically proving the existance of the soul. I wonder if the soul could be algorithmically simulated?
MediaOne preview channel
on
Saving MST3K
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· Score: 1
I live in Holland Michigan (Hi CmdrTaco!:-P) and MediaOne does in fact have a preview channel on the local cable system. It's on channel 99 though, presumably to make room for the 63 Religious channels they'll be coming out with Real Soon Now (TM).
It's most ironic that you call your response "Software Darwinism". Mostly because free/open source software is what Darwin really wrote about at work.
This brings to mind a metaphor that I think is interesting: Proprietary software corresponds to asexual organisms, while free/open source software corresponds to sexual organisms. Sex is, after all, little more than the sharing of source code.
Slashdot Mirror
This is definitely a good idea.
The very nature of the LIMP emphasizes the collaborative nature of Linux, with thousands of people and organizations each working in their own way to improve it all the time. In this sense, I would consider it to be one of the best available visuals to represent Linux.
--
I confess to owning over twenty Terry Prachett novels, mostly in the Discworld series. I even went to the trouble of ordering several of them from the UK.
I also have Good Omens which he co-wrote with Neil Gaiman. I've also read a couple of Gaiman's books, which were quite good.
Another author I would highly recommend is Matt Ruff. So far he has only written two books: "Fool on the Hill", and "Sewer, Gas & Electric : The Public Works Trilogy", but they're among my favorites. If you like Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams, you'll probably like Matt Ruff.
--
It would be impractical to make all of these people move to D.C., so they would probably all "rule" from their homes. This doesn't seem unreasonable to me, given the geographically widespread availability of internet access.
I'm not sure what you mean by accountability here, could you please elaborate?
This is a lot like a direct democracy, with proxies, as you note. I suppose the effects of this system would include: a lot of single issue representatives, fewer bills being put through the system, and probably some less-informed rep's.
The idea of allowing people to change their votes at any time sounds intriguing, but I'm not sure if that can be done without compromising the anonymity of the vote, which is definitely something I would like to keep. Perhaps terms could be shortened to the order of a month?
This would be extremely complex, but it should be within the bounds of implementability. If it were ever implemented, I would definitely advocate trying it out at a local level before doing it at a national level.
--
Oddly enough, I just put up a webpage a few days ago which explains, among other things, why this can't work. You can find it here.
The basic reasoning is that many (maybe even most) politicians aren't in it for the money, they're in it for the power. They don't want to get rich, just re-elected. Therefore, direct monetary contributions are not necessary to buy a politician, just convenient. If you ban soft money, direct campaign contributions, etc., then special interest groups will just start buying the commercials directly.
On my web page, I make a case for changing the way the House and the Senate are elected and run, though I seriously doubt that anything of the sort will happen anytime soon, since it would require some serious constitutional ammendments.
--
Skipjack is not a good choice for several reasons:
--
From http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.ht ml:
Modifying a GPL'd program and keeping the changes to yourself is thus explicitly included in the spirit of the GPL.
--
Am I the only person who wants a sound file of Steven Hawking (or a sound-alike computer generated voice) saying "Man, that shit would be so fucked up."?
--
If I'm not mistaken, those laws would just make the anti-reverse engineering clauses in EULAs enforcable. (I wonder how many people would accept a EULA that started out "By installing this virus on your machine you agree to the following conditions:". Probably a depressingly high number of windows users.)
--
This will probably increase variety, at least as much because of the business model they seem to be using as because of the technology. With traditional broadcast media (and even cable to an extent), each channel is run by a separate company which is competing with all of the others, mostly for a few of the largest demographics.
These satelite radio businesses, however, seem to be set up so that all the channels on the service are owned by the same company, so they aren't competing with each other. Instead, the service as a whole competes with a different service, and whoever covers the widest set of interests wins. This means that each channel would be targeted at a different interest, so rather than a dozen top 40 pop stations, you get one top 40 pop channel, one punk chanel, one industrial channel, one opera channel, one baroque channel, one reggae channel, etc.
Of course, this is all in my arrogant opinion, I-am-not-a-businessman-but-I-play-one-on-the-net, YMMV, void where prohibited, yadda yadda yadda.
--
From Holland.org
Holland actually has 3 theaters, but the Knickerbocker generally only shows foreign/art/independent films.
--
So you find, breed, or genetically engineer organisms that convert the carbonates back into CO2, and set it loose on the bottom of your oceans.
--
I think what he meant was that the VFS layer is not 64-bit clean on 32-bit systems. I know I've seen posts claiming that for this reason XFS won't be very useful on 32-bit systems.
--
Why would an artificial intelligence necessarily be selfish? Humans are selfish because for the past few billion years, anything that wasn't selfish would usually propagate fewer genes. An artificial brain (at least, one that is put into any kind of real use) is going to have the properties that we design/train it to have, and probably behave more or less randomly when subject to inputs that it was neither designed nor trained to deal with. Selfishness of that order is probably much too complex for us to implement any time in the forseeable future even if we try.
--
As opposed to all those daily reminders of man's fallibility, which are merely annoying?
--
Unix older than time! Punchcards at 11:00!
--
One point that I have not seen mentioned so far is that there is a difference between the government of Iran and the people of Iran (just as with any other country). I wouldn't do business with the Iranian government, or one of their millitary suppliers, but I would see no moral problem with, e.g., writing business management applications for ISP's or restaurants. Of course, living in the U.S., I would see a major legal problem...
--
Yeah, and a handfull of beach sand won't run Linux no matter how you configure the kernel. The difference is in organization. Fire and sand are organized in ways that aren't well suited to information processing. CPU's and human brains are organized in ways that are fairly well suited to information processing. Admittedly, information processing doesn't tautologically lead to self-conciousness, but in the case of human beings it seems to be the only available component.
Well, you could argue for the existance of the soul and claim that that's where the self-conciousness is introduced, but then you have to have a mechanism which allows the soul to interact with the body, which introduces the possibility of scientifically proving the existance of the soul. I wonder if the soul could be algorithmically simulated?
I live in Holland Michigan (Hi CmdrTaco! :-P) and MediaOne does in fact have a preview channel on the local cable system. It's on channel 99 though, presumably to make room for the 63 Religious channels they'll be coming out with Real Soon Now (TM).
This brings to mind a metaphor that I think is interesting: Proprietary software corresponds to asexual organisms, while free/open source software corresponds to sexual organisms. Sex is, after all, little more than the sharing of source code.