Not that anyone will actually read this, but when I was in college, my friends and I got involved in a Usenet hoax lampooning the (then) soon-to-be-released Windows 95 OS. People on the various warez newsgroups were frothing at the mouth looking for advance cracked copies of Win95... they actually expected someone to UUENCODE >30 1.44 MB floppies and post them onto the newsgroups.
Someone on these groups made a posting about a "new" OS that blew Win95 out of the water - it was called Hamilton 95 (Ham95). The feature list was very interesting. The best part is that we told people they could ftp the whole thing from warez.dsnet.com, which was mapped to 127.0.0.1 back then.:)
This is going to sound like a troll, but I'm really not trying to stir up a fight; this is my honest opinion and the product of a lot of deliberation. This question seems to apply directly to Software Engineering courses... I took a couple of different Software Engineering courses in college, and they only taught me one directly applicable principle of the real world:
When working in a team, the slacker who's just trying to get by recieves the promotions, and the talented individual who cares about his work gets to stay exactly where he is (until he gets fed up and goes for the bare minimum like everyone else).
In my case, I carried my SE team by single handedly finishing the project. The other members passed while I was flunked, even after I complained to the instructor. I think what actually happened was the manefestation of the instructor's "Engineering Ideals". He believed that teamwork was vital to a successful project, so he made sure that teamwork was the only way to pass.
In a broader sense, I think that engineering's typical "teamwork mindset" is far too conventional. You never hear about truly revolutionary advances coming from large group efforts- people like Einstein, Feynman, and Newton worked alone. Genius is never attributed to a team. I'm not trying to cut down great team projects like the Apollo program, or large construction projects; I'm saying that they always take conventional ideas to a grand scale. Even the revolutionary elements of their design can be trace to an individual.
As one of the fore-mentioned quoters of Popular Science (actually, Popular Mechanics, in my case), let me make an addendum to my post.
I'm fully aware of the fact that
1. Popular/Science|Mechanics/ is not a hard core scientific publication, and that no one should take an article published there about physics as Gospel truth.
2. There is a lot more to physics than watching the Sci Fi Channel.
3. I am not qualified to make any judgement on this person's research, not even his spelling.
4. The article mentioned in point 1 above says that the scientists are reputable, and that only after their work had been peer reviewed did they start a company to further develop their invention and conduct research.
So, my point is that I only wanted to bring to attention other, legitimate research on the topic. That way, people who clear your intellectual standards can view this new paper in light of past developments.
About a year ago, I read a short article in Popular Mechanics about something like this... It involves spinning ions in a lattice within a superconductor to produce a "gravity like" force, althrough it isn't actually gravity. Also, this effect is supposed to agree with relativity. A device has already been built, and the researchers are turning down inverstors so they can keep the discovery open. I found the article
online.
Sure, I solved this problem a few months ago. I needed a mapping system for a robot that could look up all the objects contained at any location on a 2-D map in constant time. The system I designed is small, efficient, and extensible. It would work well with your application, too. Since you're working for a new company, I'll give it to ya if you want to hire me.:)
obvious next step for the the entertainment factories to lobby for would be a ban on all encrypted traffic for which no key is in escrow for easy policing.
One thing everybody seems to forget when they get enraged over the various attempts to ban encryption/implement mandatory key-escrow/force key disclosure under a warrant is that the authorities (at least in the USA) still have to prove that the encrypted message even exists. If I RSA-encrypt the Pentagon's top-secret toilet paper usage statistics for the years 1975-1989, then the feds bust through my door, sieze my hard drive (which wouldn't have the keys because I'm not stupid), and ask for the key to this encrypted file, I can always say "What encrypted file? That's 30 seconds of screen capture of static off the TV antenna."
Sure, they could use statitistical methods to figure out that the data isn't quite as random as they would expect it to be, but they can't say definitively that the file is encrypted without decrypting it. Even if I decided to admit that the file is in fact encrypted information, I could just give the authorities a second pair of keys, generated in the same manner as the "real" keys, but with different primes, so they don't decrypt the data. Then, when they try to use them and get garbage, I can make my claim of recording TV-static "in order to try it out".
Besides, I don't see how you can distinguish encrypted packets from any other data packets anyway. Maybe PGP adds a header or something to the file, but if it came down to the above scenarios, you could make your own headerless encryption system with nothing more than a few lines of code.
If you want to see a really impressive multimedia production, check out Crewoftwo.com, and download their Star Wars fan film short, Duality. It was done on a shoestring buget by a couple of guys and their friends. They hired a small time studio to shoot the action on DV, then they edited the entire thing on a computer, including the addition of special effects. I think the only "real" objects in the whole movie are the actors themselves; everything else is computer rendered.
Best of all for your purposes is that the web site has all of the storyboards and direction available for download, so you can see how it was put together.
I hate to break it to ya, but the scientific method has never guaranteed the development of new technology, and the scientific community owes no such debt. The problem is that it's impossible to tell where a branch of research is going to lead you, so you can't say that you're going to work on discovering any particular new technology. I don't know how many people remember the "Connections" TV programs by James Burke, but they are a perfect example of how progress is made not by concentrating work in a particular direction, but by conducting all sorts of research and waiting for the unrelated discoveries to merge in unexpected, synergetic ways.
Engineers, OTOH, apply the results of pure science and produce new technology.
Besides, it's not like science has been lax in providing the engineers with discoveries... this century has only seen the greatest growth of technological development in history.
Of course, none of this has anything to do with G. W. Bush. The space station has always been a public relations operation, as has the space shuttle and most of the rest of the manned space program (the technological spin-offs were just pleasant side-effects). You can't really blame George, though- he is just following the popular conception of what the space program is supposed to be. The ISS doesn't really provide the next step toward the moon or Mars- it's more efficient for a Mars mission to head out directly to Mars, rather than stop off at the ISS, but how is a politician supposed to know that when his science advisors are probably in favor of the PR operation?
I think it's a little late to cry about trying to stop the cloning of humans. The problem is that it's always too late to stop advantageous technology because once it's been developed, it will be used! I believe that in all of human history, there has been only one instance of a new, revolutionary technology being successfully supressed for the good of society (feudal Japan didn't like the idea of farmers with firearms being able take down samurai). The day we first saw that it was possible to clone a frog, human cloning became unavoidable.
I also don't think that we should try to stop it; we will never know the true long-term consequences of this technology until we get there, and even though there are guaranteed to be some misteps, society will adapt and learn to live with human cloning as an accepted part of life. Society is not going to do something stupid and self-destructive simply because new technology gets involved. We learned to live with the Bomb, and with cable-TV, and we're still here.
One thing I don't understand is the wacked out predictions that people have made about this. A clone is every bit a person as its donor- slavery and "organ factories" should be non-issues because we already have the technology to create them, yet it isn't being done. After all, someone could use in-vitro fertilization to make an embryo, remove the to-be brain cells, then implant it and use the resulting human body, sans brain, for organs. We don't see it happening, though. Then there are the people who say that humanity will stop reproducing sexually because we can clone ourselves. Right... who really thinks that people will stop doing something that's highly pleasurable because they don't have to?
I think human cloning will only become commonplace if it provides a significant social advantage. If it does, questionable cloning practices will remain on the fringe, with all the other ethically questionable things.
Slashdot Mirror
cannot ping zipper: zipper down
Someone on these groups made a posting about a "new" OS that blew Win95 out of the water - it was called Hamilton 95 (Ham95). The feature list was very interesting. The best part is that we told people they could ftp the whole thing from warez.dsnet.com, which was mapped to 127.0.0.1 back then. :)
This is going to sound like a troll, but I'm really not trying to stir up a fight; this is my honest opinion and the product of a lot of deliberation. This question seems to apply directly to Software Engineering courses... I took a couple of different Software Engineering courses in college, and they only taught me one directly applicable principle of the real world:
When working in a team, the slacker who's just trying to get by recieves the promotions, and the talented individual who cares about his work gets to stay exactly where he is (until he gets fed up and goes for the bare minimum like everyone else).
In my case, I carried my SE team by single handedly finishing the project. The other members passed while I was flunked, even after I complained to the instructor. I think what actually happened was the manefestation of the instructor's "Engineering Ideals". He believed that teamwork was vital to a successful project, so he made sure that teamwork was the only way to pass.
In a broader sense, I think that engineering's typical "teamwork mindset" is far too conventional. You never hear about truly revolutionary advances coming from large group efforts- people like Einstein, Feynman, and Newton worked alone. Genius is never attributed to a team. I'm not trying to cut down great team projects like the Apollo program, or large construction projects; I'm saying that they always take conventional ideas to a grand scale. Even the revolutionary elements of their design can be trace to an individual.
I'm fully aware of the fact that /Science|Mechanics/ is not a hard core scientific publication, and that no one should take an article published there about physics as Gospel truth.
1. Popular
2. There is a lot more to physics than watching the Sci Fi Channel.
3. I am not qualified to make any judgement on this person's research, not even his spelling.
4. The article mentioned in point 1 above says that the scientists are reputable, and that only after their work had been peer reviewed did they start a company to further develop their invention and conduct research.
So, my point is that I only wanted to bring to attention other, legitimate research on the topic. That way, people who clear your intellectual standards can view this new paper in light of past developments.
About a year ago, I read a short article in Popular Mechanics about something like this... It involves spinning ions in a lattice within a superconductor to produce a "gravity like" force, althrough it isn't actually gravity. Also, this effect is supposed to agree with relativity. A device has already been built, and the researchers are turning down inverstors so they can keep the discovery open. I found the article online.
Sure, I solved this problem a few months ago. I needed a mapping system for a robot that could look up all the objects contained at any location on a 2-D map in constant time. The system I designed is small, efficient, and extensible. It would work well with your application, too. Since you're working for a new company, I'll give it to ya if you want to hire me. :)
obvious next step for the the entertainment factories to lobby for would be a ban on all encrypted traffic for which no key is in escrow for easy policing.
One thing everybody seems to forget when they get enraged over the various attempts to ban encryption/implement mandatory key-escrow/force key disclosure under a warrant is that the authorities (at least in the USA) still have to prove that the encrypted message even exists. If I RSA-encrypt the Pentagon's top-secret toilet paper usage statistics for the years 1975-1989, then the feds bust through my door, sieze my hard drive (which wouldn't have the keys because I'm not stupid), and ask for the key to this encrypted file, I can always say "What encrypted file? That's 30 seconds of screen capture of static off the TV antenna."
Sure, they could use statitistical methods to figure out that the data isn't quite as random as they would expect it to be, but they can't say definitively that the file is encrypted without decrypting it. Even if I decided to admit that the file is in fact encrypted information, I could just give the authorities a second pair of keys, generated in the same manner as the "real" keys, but with different primes, so they don't decrypt the data. Then, when they try to use them and get garbage, I can make my claim of recording TV-static "in order to try it out".
Besides, I don't see how you can distinguish encrypted packets from any other data packets anyway. Maybe PGP adds a header or something to the file, but if it came down to the above scenarios, you could make your own headerless encryption system with nothing more than a few lines of code.
They missed one test case I'd love to see- laptop in the running microwave.
Best of all for your purposes is that the web site has all of the storyboards and direction available for download, so you can see how it was put together.
Engineers, OTOH, apply the results of pure science and produce new technology.
Besides, it's not like science has been lax in providing the engineers with discoveries... this century has only seen the greatest growth of technological development in history.
Of course, none of this has anything to do with G. W. Bush. The space station has always been a public relations operation, as has the space shuttle and most of the rest of the manned space program (the technological spin-offs were just pleasant side-effects). You can't really blame George, though- he is just following the popular conception of what the space program is supposed to be. The ISS doesn't really provide the next step toward the moon or Mars- it's more efficient for a Mars mission to head out directly to Mars, rather than stop off at the ISS, but how is a politician supposed to know that when his science advisors are probably in favor of the PR operation?
I also don't think that we should try to stop it; we will never know the true long-term consequences of this technology until we get there, and even though there are guaranteed to be some misteps, society will adapt and learn to live with human cloning as an accepted part of life. Society is not going to do something stupid and self-destructive simply because new technology gets involved. We learned to live with the Bomb, and with cable-TV, and we're still here.
One thing I don't understand is the wacked out predictions that people have made about this. A clone is every bit a person as its donor- slavery and "organ factories" should be non-issues because we already have the technology to create them, yet it isn't being done. After all, someone could use in-vitro fertilization to make an embryo, remove the to-be brain cells, then implant it and use the resulting human body, sans brain, for organs. We don't see it happening, though. Then there are the people who say that humanity will stop reproducing sexually because we can clone ourselves. Right... who really thinks that people will stop doing something that's highly pleasurable because they don't have to?
I think human cloning will only become commonplace if it provides a significant social advantage. If it does, questionable cloning practices will remain on the fringe, with all the other ethically questionable things.