I found it interesting and notable that infants are more sensitive to the speech patterns of human interaction than they are to audio-visual representation of it.
I think there is an important message for modern parents, here. The TV is a poor babysitter. Get the DVD player out of your minivan and start talking to your baby.
I am a single father of an 8-year-old girl, and I've spent her life having conversations with her. We don't have TV reception (how un-American of us), though we do watch movies once or twice a month. I've never used "baby-talk" to relate to her, and she is consistently being praised for her precocious and mature disposition, enunciation, vocabulary, and ability to elucidate her thoughts clearly.
I know that there is a separate division of developmental psychology that deals with the application of these research discoveries, so I hope that all of this will be included in practical articles in parenting periodicals and such. Too many children are being crippled by a dearth of human interaction.
Otto
Before we postulate on the sci-fi products that will be available in a decade, why not implement this technology into current portable units?
A laptop computer with a screen that actually folds out or extends horizontally when the lid is opened would make for great, expansive portable computing. It seems this is imminently more immediate than a producing auto-updating newspapers and the like. Imagine a 12-inch Powerbook G4 with a wide-screen cinema display based on this paper-thin technology.
I understand that this requires waiting for a 24-bit version of this 2-bit display, but i think it's worth considering.
I wonder what would be the possibility of making this technology interactive? Developing a touch screen version of the same display would open up a world of possibilities.
I also seem to remember a fantastic implementation of similar tech in the movie "Red Planet." The computers, voice and touch activated were built like scrolls. The screen was retractable from within a small cylinder.
I know we all agree that the possibilities are seemingly endless... Wow.
Otto
It's refreshing to me to see how many Slashdotters are passionate about the punishment of Microsoft for its abusive practices and the advocation of alternative operating systems on the desktop. What's disturbing, however, is how commonly the same dissenters believe that Slashdot, itself, is a particularly effective forum for argument and proposition!
One of the primary reasons for Microsoft's dominance of the public mindshare (as cited innumerably in various forums) is the lack of education of the average home and office user of viable alternatives. We rant and rave that "Joe Sixpack can't distinguish his OS from his computer!" or "Jane Doe doesn't care about which OS she's using, as long as she gets a fast computer that runs MSOffice!"
What I am not hearing is solutions to this problem! Talking to congress-folk and attorneys-general about the state of the marketplace as a result of Microsoft's continued and largely unpunished dominance will not get us very far if the people in positions of power remain uneducated about alternatives as well! We have to make strong efforts to educate everyone! Especially our average neighbor, who equates "Microsoft" and "Windows" to "computers" and "internet."
I have advocated a strong grassroots education effort on Slashdot before, and I feel it needs repeating. We (programmers, power-users, tech-geeks, computer aficianados, what-have-you) must begin to speak to our communities and politicians about what alternatives are available.
*The most successful social revolutions started and ended with the average citizen!*
And it's not that difficult. Talk to your local library, civic center or school to organize a class. Title it "Introduction to Alternative Operating Systems for Your Home or Office" or something similarly non-intimidating to "Joe Sixpack". Have a simple conversation with your school district's super-indendent. Write editorials for your local newspaper. And simplest of all, just talk to people! Start a non-competitive, purely educational conversation about what computer they COULD have purchased, and WHY. Always, always, always be armed with answers to "WHY?"
The passion is here. The resolve is lacking. I think we all are a bit concerned about what will happen to OUR luxury of choice when Microsoft wrests supreme dominance over multiple markets. What will we do to stop it?
Sometimes the most powerful voices are not the loudest, but the ones that carry.
Schnikies! Can you imagine what treasures will be uncovered every time couches are pillaged for laundry money?
Seriously, though, I know enough people who have a hard time keeping track of Data CDs, much less discs the size of quarters. Why use this technology to create something so miniscule, instead of utilizing it to hammer more data into standard-sized CDs? Admittedly, small size is frequently equated with convenience, but how convenient can this medium be when it accidently falls through the hole in the pocket of my old khakis?
I was under the impression that AMD changed to this new naming scheme to avoid the public's concentration on MHz. Why, then, do I read an article on Slashdot in which AMD's new naming scheme is broken down into MHz equivalents?
Seriously, I think we all agree here that AMD is making a bold and necessary move to diminish the importance of MHz. Unless we follow suit and stop using MHz as our measure of performance, the public will never catch on. I think the importance of attaching a "model number" to a chip name is that we will eventually forget about MHz altogether and focus on pure chip performance. Let's start that now.
The Mhz equivalents for each of these new processors had no place in this article.
It is apparent to me that we are witnessing the effects of answering to a legislature unversed in and unused to the current state of our technological culture. Sure, they understand the effects of technology's cultural advancements on their supporter's bottom lines, but they don't understand the effects of those advancements on the end user. THEY have never really been the end user.
Now, in an atmosphere of self-serving corruption led by gargantuan special interest groups, they are scrambling to pick up pieces and make laws that put this technology in a perspective they can understand. It makes sense that these laws support the big corporations and associations that will benefit most from the regulation. Afterall, who is educating our congressmen? The MPAA, RIAA, Microsoft, etc. These conglomerates have an immeasurable headstart on us, because they've had their foot in the door and hands down the pants of the House and Senate for decades! Anyone you help educate is going to learn what YOU teach them. Imagine what happens when you have a legislature sorely lacking in technological education being educated by people whose agenda includes technological regulation for the sake of their bottom-line?
The question we have to answer is relatively simple: Which of us is going to stand up and begin educating our congressmen as to the REALITY of the cultural advancements of technology? Who is going to teach them what it means to be an end user? I don't think that writing individual letters to our congressmen is the answer. I think that each one of us writing a letter expressing our individual views will water down the message that this kind of regulation is WRONG. It will beget the same reaction as each of us writing to legalize marijuana, LSD, cocaine, etc.
What we need is a single concerted effort--the only way any dissention has ever resulted in success. Imagine if Martin Luther King, Jr. had asked each and every black person in the US to just write a letter to his/her congressman asking for an end to segregation... Sometime soon, all of these voices protesting the immorality of the DMCA must gather together and approach congress in an organized fashion. Begin holding educational workshops for your legislators, giving speeches on the effects of such draconian regulation on end-user's rights, the unconstitionality of the DMCA and its like.
I fear, as do many of you, that unless such an effort is made, we will soon see ourselves fighting this battle beneath an already well-established DMCA.
If the primary argument in the Napster case is that Napster is knowingly allowing the distribution of copyrighted material through their service, why is no one attempting to shutdown services like Hotline or Carracho? I understand that, contrary to these other services, Napster utilizes centralized servers, but the knowing allowance of illegal distribution is still congruent amongst all three.
Aren't Open Source contributors volunteers? Isn't that what's so great about the movement? People are choosing to contribute to the development of the software. In that instance, the basic tenets of Intellectual Property become non-issues! The fantastic, utopian wonder in the Open Source movement is that each developer expects his code to be shared. Isn't that true? So where's the undermining of Intellectual Property rights? No one is laying claim to it!
Slashdot Mirror
I found it interesting and notable that infants are more sensitive to the speech patterns of human interaction than they are to audio-visual representation of it. I think there is an important message for modern parents, here. The TV is a poor babysitter. Get the DVD player out of your minivan and start talking to your baby. I am a single father of an 8-year-old girl, and I've spent her life having conversations with her. We don't have TV reception (how un-American of us), though we do watch movies once or twice a month. I've never used "baby-talk" to relate to her, and she is consistently being praised for her precocious and mature disposition, enunciation, vocabulary, and ability to elucidate her thoughts clearly. I know that there is a separate division of developmental psychology that deals with the application of these research discoveries, so I hope that all of this will be included in practical articles in parenting periodicals and such. Too many children are being crippled by a dearth of human interaction. Otto
Before we postulate on the sci-fi products that will be available in a decade, why not implement this technology into current portable units? A laptop computer with a screen that actually folds out or extends horizontally when the lid is opened would make for great, expansive portable computing. It seems this is imminently more immediate than a producing auto-updating newspapers and the like. Imagine a 12-inch Powerbook G4 with a wide-screen cinema display based on this paper-thin technology. I understand that this requires waiting for a 24-bit version of this 2-bit display, but i think it's worth considering. I wonder what would be the possibility of making this technology interactive? Developing a touch screen version of the same display would open up a world of possibilities. I also seem to remember a fantastic implementation of similar tech in the movie "Red Planet." The computers, voice and touch activated were built like scrolls. The screen was retractable from within a small cylinder. I know we all agree that the possibilities are seemingly endless... Wow. Otto
It's refreshing to me to see how many Slashdotters are passionate about the punishment of Microsoft for its abusive practices and the advocation of alternative operating systems on the desktop. What's disturbing, however, is how commonly the same dissenters believe that Slashdot, itself, is a particularly effective forum for argument and proposition!
One of the primary reasons for Microsoft's dominance of the public mindshare (as cited innumerably in various forums) is the lack of education of the average home and office user of viable alternatives. We rant and rave that "Joe Sixpack can't distinguish his OS from his computer!" or "Jane Doe doesn't care about which OS she's using, as long as she gets a fast computer that runs MSOffice!"
What I am not hearing is solutions to this problem! Talking to congress-folk and attorneys-general about the state of the marketplace as a result of Microsoft's continued and largely unpunished dominance will not get us very far if the people in positions of power remain uneducated about alternatives as well! We have to make strong efforts to educate everyone! Especially our average neighbor, who equates "Microsoft" and "Windows" to "computers" and "internet."
I have advocated a strong grassroots education effort on Slashdot before, and I feel it needs repeating. We (programmers, power-users, tech-geeks, computer aficianados, what-have-you) must begin to speak to our communities and politicians about what alternatives are available.
*The most successful social revolutions started and ended with the average citizen!*
And it's not that difficult. Talk to your local library, civic center or school to organize a class. Title it "Introduction to Alternative Operating Systems for Your Home or Office" or something similarly non-intimidating to "Joe Sixpack". Have a simple conversation with your school district's super-indendent. Write editorials for your local newspaper. And simplest of all, just talk to people! Start a non-competitive, purely educational conversation about what computer they COULD have purchased, and WHY. Always, always, always be armed with answers to "WHY?"
The passion is here. The resolve is lacking. I think we all are a bit concerned about what will happen to OUR luxury of choice when Microsoft wrests supreme dominance over multiple markets. What will we do to stop it?
Sometimes the most powerful voices are not the loudest, but the ones that carry.
Otto
Schnikies! Can you imagine what treasures will be uncovered every time couches are pillaged for laundry money?
Seriously, though, I know enough people who have a hard time keeping track of Data CDs, much less discs the size of quarters. Why use this technology to create something so miniscule, instead of utilizing it to hammer more data into standard-sized CDs? Admittedly, small size is frequently equated with convenience, but how convenient can this medium be when it accidently falls through the hole in the pocket of my old khakis?
Otto
I was under the impression that AMD changed to this new naming scheme to avoid the public's concentration on MHz. Why, then, do I read an article on Slashdot in which AMD's new naming scheme is broken down into MHz equivalents?
Seriously, I think we all agree here that AMD is making a bold and necessary move to diminish the importance of MHz. Unless we follow suit and stop using MHz as our measure of performance, the public will never catch on. I think the importance of attaching a "model number" to a chip name is that we will eventually forget about MHz altogether and focus on pure chip performance. Let's start that now.
The Mhz equivalents for each of these new processors had no place in this article.
Otto-matic
It is apparent to me that we are witnessing the effects of answering to a legislature unversed in and unused to the current state of our technological culture. Sure, they understand the effects of technology's cultural advancements on their supporter's bottom lines, but they don't understand the effects of those advancements on the end user. THEY have never really been the end user.
Now, in an atmosphere of self-serving corruption led by gargantuan special interest groups, they are scrambling to pick up pieces and make laws that put this technology in a perspective they can understand. It makes sense that these laws support the big corporations and associations that will benefit most from the regulation. Afterall, who is educating our congressmen? The MPAA, RIAA, Microsoft, etc. These conglomerates have an immeasurable headstart on us, because they've had their foot in the door and hands down the pants of the House and Senate for decades! Anyone you help educate is going to learn what YOU teach them. Imagine what happens when you have a legislature sorely lacking in technological education being educated by people whose agenda includes technological regulation for the sake of their bottom-line?
The question we have to answer is relatively simple: Which of us is going to stand up and begin educating our congressmen as to the REALITY of the cultural advancements of technology? Who is going to teach them what it means to be an end user? I don't think that writing individual letters to our congressmen is the answer. I think that each one of us writing a letter expressing our individual views will water down the message that this kind of regulation is WRONG. It will beget the same reaction as each of us writing to legalize marijuana, LSD, cocaine, etc.
What we need is a single concerted effort--the only way any dissention has ever resulted in success. Imagine if Martin Luther King, Jr. had asked each and every black person in the US to just write a letter to his/her congressman asking for an end to segregation... Sometime soon, all of these voices protesting the immorality of the DMCA must gather together and approach congress in an organized fashion. Begin holding educational workshops for your legislators, giving speeches on the effects of such draconian regulation on end-user's rights, the unconstitionality of the DMCA and its like.
I fear, as do many of you, that unless such an effort is made, we will soon see ourselves fighting this battle beneath an already well-established DMCA.
Otto
yeah... kinda makes me wonder why they allow users like you to post here, as well.
If the primary argument in the Napster case is that Napster is knowingly allowing the distribution of copyrighted material through their service, why is no one attempting to shutdown services like Hotline or Carracho? I understand that, contrary to these other services, Napster utilizes centralized servers, but the knowing allowance of illegal distribution is still congruent amongst all three.
Otto-matic
Aren't Open Source contributors volunteers? Isn't that what's so great about the movement? People are choosing to contribute to the development of the software. In that instance, the basic tenets of Intellectual Property become non-issues! The fantastic, utopian wonder in the Open Source movement is that each developer expects his code to be shared. Isn't that true? So where's the undermining of Intellectual Property rights? No one is laying claim to it!
Otto