Basically, the proposed system (only proposed, note) would require video games be rated, much like movies are.
Where exactly is the problem with this scheme? What is wrong with marking a disgustingly violent game like Soldiers of Fortune as such?
It's not like those who will buy the game anyway couldn't, and letting parents know what kind of content is to be expected in a game is certainly a perfectly justified proposition.
However, I'm wondering how they are going to go about checking out all possible game situations, looking for violence. They's need awfully good gamers to be able to process the quantities of Quake clone being published these days.
Maybe they're hiring?
/* And you'll never guess what the dog had */ /* in its mouth... */
It is simply a fact of life that handwritten letters on paper get taken much more seriously. Email is for informal frequent and quick back-and-forth communication, and it will stay that way until a reasonable way to enforce identification and authentification is enforced (see this recent/. story).
For example, there was a guy recently who asked me out trough email. Cool. How am I going to tell it's not my viscious cousin Laurie doing a prank? Needless to say I ignored him
Now, my boyfriend did decalre his love to me trough a letter. A handwritten, perfumed (Dune, Christian Dior works wonders) with a extremely seewt poem on it. How could I resist?
/* And you'll never guess what the dog had */ /* in its mouth... */
Everybody knows that Mandrake has surpassed RedHat qualitywise a long time ago, and there update tool is still free. If anything this is going to accelerate the marketshare slide towards Mandrake Linux.
And it's a good thing too.
Advantages of Mandrake vs. RedHat:
- qmail vs sendmail
- rpms compiled for nonarcheologic procs (see 586)
- cute
- no desktop environment bigotry, kde and gnome with a nice default setup
- did I mention cute? and sexy...
Mandrake 8.0 Beta is out now. Test it.
/* And you'll never guess what the dog had */ /* in its mouth... */
Well this article has prompted me to look up some info on SSL certificates and Certificate Authorities. What I've read is disgusting.
We have some very few companies (the number of which is shrinking rapidly, whitness Netsol-Verisign) having a stranglehold on this market because only a select few have agreements or can pay MS and Netscape enough to be included by default into their browsers. If an upstart CA where to try to bypass this, its certificates would appear as untrusted in the browsers, prompting an ugly alarm dialog. Enough to inspire FUD into the customers mind.
However, a certificate has next to no monetary value, it's a proof of identity, and market dynamics should have no role in this process.
My proposal, thus, is to transfer the handling of digital certificates to a governemnt (ideally international, thus UN) sponsored body which achieves thrustworthiness trough legal backing. This anihilates the market and the situation of near-monopoly we presently face.
I mean, your passport is issued by the state and I'd venture to guess nobody even among the most extreme libertarians would challenge that...
/* And you'll never guess what the dog had */ /* in its mouth... */
I must confess I am not an expert on these matters, but lots of information about UCITA can be found here, a very interesting FAQ covering the main points of the UCITA legislation. I read in some time ago and found it really quite informative and useful for my research paper.
Also useful is this interesting coverage of the exact aims of AFFECT, and their issues with UCITA, which I also found to be useful, and so I cited it. -- Clarity does not require the absence of impurities,
The Mystery of Capital. What is Capital, where does it come from? De Soto views capital as not just a proxy for physical assets, but as a side effect of of property laws and infrastructure.
Once upon a time, money was based on physical assets. Now capital has become fiduciary - meaning it is not based on any physical assets at all. To explain, in the UK one Pound Sterling used to be one pound of gold by weight. Now it is just valued for its intrinsic value to people. If noone exchanges money fro gold, the intrinsic value of money is irrelevant. Everyone wants money, therefore money is valuable, QED.
Let us examine what the effect of this will be in the new economy of the internet. Money is an imaginary and intellectual concept, and the internet is an imaginary real. We can then see that money is incompatible, to a certain extent, with the interent, or at least redundant. We are moving into a post-capital society, where the only thing of worth is the posession of knowledge and the spread of ideas.
According to Francis Fukuyama, the respected Japanese economist, the End of History is upon us, as all nations across the globe sink into the western capitalist ideal, and the divisions of old melt away into history.
In susch an environment money is irrelevant.
I predict, with reasonable certainty, that money will not exist in 25 years, and capital will be pure ideas. -- Clarity does not require the absence of impurities,
This is the kind of spasce mission that NASA should do more of. This mission was essentially all about prospecting - going out to check out the asteroids and see what resources they have for us to rape and use for our own ends. Of course, there is nothing wrong with doing that - nothing lives on an asteroid after all - but it is clear that the only possible reason anyone other than a scientist could be interested in an asteroid is for the resources that it contains.
Already Japanese companies are interested, and many have asteroid mining as part of their 100 plans (Japanese companies plan far into the future, unlike western capaitalist companies). Here in the west our companies do not plan beyond the next shareholder AGM, generally speaking, and so our government has to take the lead in making long term plans for our society.
I congratulate NASA and the government for the foresight they are showing here. It is vital that the USA get a good place in the biggest resource bonanza of the 21st century. Vital for our future.
My only quibble is with them making the results of this mission public, and the data available to all. Would the Chinese do it? No. The Japanese? No. Only the idealistic Americans. We need to close the lid on this, for it is needed for our future in the face of our competitors. -- Clarity does not require the absence of impurities,
Broadband won't be utilised in games for years.
on
The Modem Lives On
·
· Score: 2
Computer games are made for a global market, not for the american market. The European Union now has a bigger economy than the USA by a third, many other countries are developing substantial middle classes (such as India) and the Far East has a huge economic engine.
All these countries share one characteristic: their telecoms infrastructure is years behind that of the USA. This means that computer games will continue to be developed with the old V90 technology as its primary communications engine for some time to come, regardless of broadband developments here in the USA. The USA is only a small part of the global economic picture, and all games that are developed will reflect this. Already they are made with the European and Far Eastern markets as a primary aim - this will ensure that broadband does not get a look in.
Its a shame in a way, but it is true. -- Clarity does not require the absence of impurities,
When Battlestar Galactica came out in the late 70's it was tipped as the next huge SF sensation. It was produced as a kneejerk reaction to Star Trek showing on the other networks, but was only designed to be a couple of episodes at first. Unfortunately, half way through filing the studio bosses decided to greatly increase the length of the series and commissioned a whole load of extra episodes - without increasing the budget. The result was a bit of a mess, and BG was rightly panned by the critics at the time, and the audience viewing digures, although large for the first week, tailed off. In the end it was rescheduled to a different hour. It was one of the most expensive flops of the era.
Many things about it were awful - hairstyles, acting, plot. The bad guys, in the form of the nefarious Silon, were among the worst in TV history, utterly laughably bad.
This means that it now makes an excellent Sunday afternoons viewing. The discriminating fan of super cheesy 1970's SF series will not be dissappointed by a viewing of Battlestar Galactica. The touching scenes involving Jane Seymours death and her childs adoption of a furry proto-Aibo are particulary amusing. And the attempted and very forced insertion of Greek Mythology throughout the series is funny too.
If you feel like going on a nostalgia trip, kobol.com is an excellent site featuring a hell of a lot of BG nostalgia. More than I can handle, thats for sure.
I just hope that this version isn't as bad as the last, though that should be easy. -- Clarity does not require the absence of impurities,
A community site deserves the BBC.
on
Hope For H2G2
·
· Score: 3
The BBC is a government organisation, funded through television liscenses. This action lies in the firm tradition and vision of the BBC conceptualised by Lord Reith, the founder and first controller of the BBC.
I am mightily relieved that the H2G2 site is not going to be controlled by a commercial organisation os corporation. The BBC is fundamentally a socialist organisation, and so we can be sure that H2G2 will not be exploited for money. In addition, the BBC and Adams have a long relationship - HGTTG was first thought of by Adams for BBC Radio 4, as a drama for that station. It was later turned into a television series. We owe the existence of the HHGTTG to the BBC, and the fact that they are willing to give unknowns a chance, regardless of commercial consequences.
H2G2 is going home to its rightful place. If Adam's is its father, the BBC is its kindly grandfather, and we can be assured that they will run it according to the fundamental ideals of the book and site, rather than to make a fast buck. God bless the BBC. -- Clarity does not require the absence of impurities,
Re:Can you Americans take anything seriously ?
on
Web-Based Comics
·
· Score: 1
Speaking as an American, I must say that I agree (surprisingly). American culture is juvenile, and it is self obsessed. However, this is what gives it its vigorous creativity - other nations just cannot compare.
The people of Britain have cjaracter, but little personality. This means that they are good at being brave, at striving and succeeding against the odds. They have character and depth and complexity. However, they are often very boring, except where they rebel, when they are more entertaining than anyone (hence the British penchant for comedy).
Americans have personality, but very little character. We Americans are not good at dealing with the swords and arrows of outrageous fortune. However, we are good at appealing to people on a Prima Facie basis, as we have plenty of personality and have no concept of embarrassment or reserve or humility. Americans make good seaside entertainers, though they can be tiresome dinner guests after a while.
The lesson we learn from this is that we should combine our strengths. The tough and stern absurdity of the British combined with the weak but adorable characteristics of the Americans would create and ideal space team, for a mission to Mars. The British would do all the exploring and heroic stuff, and the Americans would deal with the media and financing and entertainments. They would also be good at making sure the mission actually worked, without crashing. This combination would make it a sure success. -- Clarity does not require the absence of impurities,
The web is reinvigorating comics.
on
Web-Based Comics
·
· Score: 3
Picture this. It is 1970. You want to be a comic drawer. You do it in your spare time, and perhaps do your comics for a couple of fanzines and so on. You have an art degree - you are well qualified. What options do you have? Your only real option id to start sending your portfolio around all the major magazines/comic books/ newspapers and so on, in the hope of being accepted for one. However, this is a competitive environment.
Today, however, you can set up your own page and appeal to the viewers directly. If you are succesful, you have your own cult of fans and people start taking notice in the serious press. The web has created an alternative career path for the aspiring cartoonist - even if you are unsuccessful, you can still be noticed and get your work out there.
Also, the freedom from commercial pressures means that todays comics are much more innovative than they once were - the cartoonist is free to create whatever he wishes, without interference. The modern comedic tradition, informed by Saturday Night Live, Monty Python and other such surrealist shows means that the modern comic can be downright bizarre.
This all holds fairly well with the subversive traditions of the comic. The web is reinforing those traditions and bringing them to the fore more than they were.
This is a golden age for comics - they are being reborn. -- Clarity does not require the absence of impurities,
Consider your history. Why are there now two desktop environments for Linux? Well, we have reached this state because of liscensing issues. The Gnome project formed purely because people were unhappy with the KDE qt liscense.
Now however, these issues do not exist. So why keep tow different desktops? Why continue to divide out labor on two projects which both hope to achieve the same thing? Imagine how much more polished the Linux desktop environment would be if all effort were focused on just one. Twice as much effort would be expended on it every day. At present KDE and Gnome both have a somewhat beta-ish feel to them, but this would quickly disappear if there was only one desktop environment.
What are the arguments against this? They are as follows:
Linux needs variety. Having two different desktops environments gives people a choice. For myself, I would say that this does not hold water. It is far better to have one desktop environment that works well, than to effectively repeat the same effort on two different incompatible desktops. Gnome and KDE are very similar anyway - they both hope to achieve the exact same thing. I could understand this argument if they were trying to acheive different things, in a different way, but they arent.
Incompatibility. One of the desktop environments would become redundant, and all its software would be rendered incompatible with the new one. My problem with this is that it happens already. KDE2 is not especially compatible with KDE1. If instead they had created bindings for the gnome desktop environment, and then joined it, we would all be much better off. It is not even an expecially big task - qt is only some 20000 lines of code, for example.
I think that instead of working on KDE3 and Gnome2.0, we should instead be trying to build bridges, and reunifying this fork which has been scarring the Linux community for so long. It is time to extend the olive branch, and heal these old wounds.
The developers may not like it, but it is in the interests of the user and of Linux as a whole. -- Clarity does not require the absence of impurities,
It does not matter 2 cents if gnutella is declared illegal, because it is a decentralised system. I thought that the entire point of gnutella is that it is beyond the bounds of control of government, being run by the people for the people, in the American cooperative tradition.
I would be happy if all other forms of music sharing were declared illegal, as it would mean that the resources of the Open Source community would be flung into decntralised gnutella type systems.
Of course, the quality of gnutella, as it stands, leaves much to be desired, but when wider bandwidths become more commonplace and as the software and methodologies are improved, the situation will get better.
In the end, governments can regulate until they are blue in the face. The simple fact is that there is a demand for a free internet music sharing system, and it will be fulfilled, whether that is morally correct or not.
It is better that they regulate for this new reality, than that they regulate for an old and redundant reality. If they regulate as though we are in the 1980's, they will be regulating themselves out of power, not the end users of such systems, who will simply move on to the decentralised nirvana. -- Clarity does not require the absence of impurities,
The Kairetsu system (a Kairetsu is a huge Japanese conglomorate, something like Walmart, Microsoft, Intel and General Motors all rolled into one), and the close state control (the MITI controls every aspect of business life in Japan, and the politicians have no say) means that Japanese businesses can afford to take risks and take a firm line and think of the far future. They, rightly or wrongly, do not need to worry about whining shareholders - shareholders have very few rights under Japanese law.
The Japanese capitalist system is not really a free market at all in fact. There are only a dozen Kairetsu, which between them control some 95% of the Japanese economy, and do so with the backing of the government. They do not directly compete, operating in a cartel like manner, and are anything but free.
One can see this corporate culture affects how the Japanese do business - they needn't be innovative, and according to our values the entire shebang should collapse, but the fundamental values of Japanese society keep it afloat and ensure it is a success.
It is amusing to note that in the west we assume that Low taxes + Free sink or swim market + no regulation = economic success. Japan breaks all these rules, with a stifleing amount of regulation, huge tax rates and amazing economic performance.
We could still learn a lot from the Japanese, which is why interviews such as this one are very useful. -- Clarity does not require the absence of impurities,
I don't think it will exist in 5-10 years. We can see that it is being torn asunder even now, as the weight of its users grows apace and the number of users exceeds 300k, 400k , 500k where will it stop? Also, there is a migration of the most intelligent users away to kuro5hin, which is a much more innovative weblog than/., and is a community rather than a mob.
Ultimately, I don't think Slashdot will exist in 5 years time for technological reasons. Eventually everyone will have huge bandwidth and something else will spring up to take/.'s place. I consider Slashdot to be a hiatus between Usenet and the next big thing.
Regarding Karma, I agree. It really doesn't matter a hoot, and 'Karma Whores' appear to be a thing of the past with the advent of the Karma Cap. However, it really would be better for/. if Karma were invisisble to the user, that way the pointless competitive aspect would not occur.
I just wish the people that harass me would get the message and go away. They really are annoying, and appear to have the wrong end of the stick. -- Clarity does not require the absence of impurities,
The problem with this idea, is that, while a good and workable solution, it is another idea. We should stick to one standard, easily workable, and use it and it alone. That standard is PGP signed email.
It is already used by a large number of people, and is growing all the time.
The big problem with having new ideas like this is that you end up with a fragmented email system, where everyone is using different standards. I realise that variety in some arenas, such as desktop OS's, is to be encouraged, but I can't help but suspect that in the arena of communication, standards are all, and everyone should use the same methods of communication and encryption, otherwise communication breaks down.
Lets stick with PGP. -- Clarity does not require the absence of impurities,
The problem with those computers on a stick that are mentioned is that the OS's that they will end up using, be it Linux, Windows, whatever, are too complicated for any one human mind to comprehend. This means that there are no true hobbyists anymore, as there once were, who understand everything about their creation and build it from scratch.
What I would like to see (and I have no idea whether this is possible, but this is/., so I am sure someone does) is a small home machne that can be used to manufacture silicon chips to your own design.
Of course, this system would not be very modern - it terms of the feature size on what it produces, which may be 20 years or more out of dat - but it would be pretty cool to be able to design your own computer entirely from scratch.
What I would like to ask is, is this possible? -- Clarity does not require the absence of impurities,
Creative soundcards are only adequate. There is no competition, and as a result there have been no really great developments. I would like to see soundcards with support for proper 3dimensional sound - this would do for sound what 3d graphics cards have done for graphics, add a whole extra dimension. But instead we are stuck with stereo, and no prospects of any improvement. There could be a lot of improvements in the world of soundcards, but it doesn't look like Creative will be introducing any anytime soon. Why should they? They don't have any competition. -- Clarity does not require the absence of impurities,
I don't know what the world is coming to when a student can be suspended for taking the mickey out of his principal. Really ridiculous.
Unfortunately, I am not surprised in the slightest. Many of or students seem to be living in an atmosphere of fear on our campuses, and the attitude of radicalism and activism that was prevalent in the 1960's seems to have died, as our modern students are concerned with only their resumes and appearing to be quite the good corporate drone.
The reason that this principal thought he could get away with this is because the modern student, and the modern young American, has become a sheep.
We need to bring alive the radicalism of yesteryear among our young, and have them challenge the establishment as they once did, if we are to see this type of behaviour punished.
I fear that this is a false hope though. The corporations appear to have won. Their carrot, dangled in fron of our sheepish students, is turning our society into a non-confrontational, confirmist nightmare of autonomy, something not unlike Japan.
We need to wake our students up somehow. How, I don't know, but I think that more radical teaching in school may help. -- Clarity does not require the absence of impurities,
In the 1960's, a well respected russian astronomer known as N Kardashev came up with the Kardashev system of determining alien civilisations.
Kardashev Type I Civilisation. One which has utilised all the resources of a planet.
Kardashev Type II Civilisation. One which has utilised all the resources of a star. ie, a Dyson sphere.
Kardashev Type III Civilisation. One which has utilised all the resources of an entire galaxy. Probably the rarest and most powerful.
The scary thing is that a Dyson Sphere would look almost exactly like a red dwarve star. It could well be that many phenomena we see in space and interpret as natural phenomena are in fact megascale engineering projects of distant civilisations.
Another possibility is that these distant civilisations use Matrioshka Brains, big computers in the form of Dyson Spheres, surrounding a star. Everybody would be uploaded into this environment, and would become as gods.
Problem is, we are pumping out radiation all the time, from our television transmitters and our mobile phones and so on. It is like the cheeping of a new born bird, we are alone and naked and letting everyone know where we are. There is no reason to suppose that such civilisations would be friendly. I think we should take enormous and difficult steps to quiet down out interstellar emissions. It is time to start playing interstellar politics.
More info can be found here, a very interesting page on this subject by an esteemed author. -- Clarity does not require the absence of impurities,
Open Source will change our civilisation.
on
Rebel Code
·
· Score: 3
Open Source is a way of thinking about all forms of property, not just software.
I think that in the far future, maybe 100 years or so down the line, Open Source will have spread to encompass all parts of our civilisation, the very fundamental way we live, our economy, everything.
In my view, it is inevitable that our economy become communist in the distant future - when we can manufacture anything, anywhere, anytime, for no cost, our present money and job based society breaks down. We shall become a wealthy society of equals. This is the destiny of Open Source.
In the future, as more and more parts of our society become intellectualised, and as the intellectual economy does to Industry what Industry did to agriculture - overshadows it utterly - the pressures for Open Source to extend its aim beyond the software industry will redouble.
I think it will do so, and eventually our entire civilisation will be based around the ethics of the Open Source philosophy, as evinced by RMS and ESR.
And we will all be the better for it. -- Clarity does not require the absence of impurities,
I had not heard of XML-RPC until a few months ago, but I found XML-RPC for Newbies to be an extremely useful site allowing me to get up to speed on an interesting subject.
It is good to hear ESR's views on this subject too - he is an articulate and interesting writer. -- Clarity does not require the absence of impurities,
Well, uh, thanks for the email. I replied to it, but I can't see that it should make any difference.
Additionally, you'll have to choose the attribute for the z-axis carefully as there's really no way to have a 5 dimensional desktop. For complex relationships, you'd be better of using a relational database not a 3d desktop.
You are assuming that there need be one attribute per dimension. Why not have one attribute spread over two dimensions? This would allow the file structure to be more easily comprehended, as there would be more space for pattern recognition by our brains. If the file strucure representation were spread in this way, I am sure it would be a lot easier for us to deal with complex directories and so forth - our brains are built for 3 dimensional thought.
I don't think that the desktop of the future need be fully 3 dimensional, there will always be a place for 2d. Text is unlikely to become 3D, for example, unless we devise a whole new writing system (which is not as unlikely as it may appear, in the long term).
Overall, I just think that people are too unimaginative when it comes to the future. I can imagine people having similar arguments to this in the days of CLI's and monochrome test. How could color possibly be a useful component of a desktop? Thankfully they were proved wrong.
Anyway, thanks for the mail, 'PJ', and thanks for the compliment:) -- Clarity does not require the absence of impurities,
Slashdot Mirror
Basically, the proposed system (only proposed, note) would require video games be rated, much like movies are.
/* And you'll never guess what the dog had */
Where exactly is the problem with this scheme? What is wrong with marking a disgustingly violent game like Soldiers of Fortune as such?
It's not like those who will buy the game anyway couldn't, and letting parents know what kind of content is to be expected in a game is certainly a perfectly justified proposition.
However, I'm wondering how they are going to go about checking out all possible game situations, looking for violence. They's need awfully good gamers to be able to process the quantities of Quake clone being published these days.
Maybe they're hiring?
/* in its mouth... */
It is simply a fact of life that handwritten letters on paper get taken much more seriously. Email is for informal frequent and quick back-and-forth communication, and it will stay that way until a reasonable way to enforce identification and authentification is enforced (see this recent /. story).
/* And you'll never guess what the dog had */
For example, there was a guy recently who asked me out trough email. Cool. How am I going to tell it's not my viscious cousin Laurie doing a prank? Needless to say I ignored him
Now, my boyfriend did decalre his love to me trough a letter. A handwritten, perfumed (Dune, Christian Dior works wonders) with a extremely seewt poem on it. How could I resist?
/* in its mouth... */
Everybody knows that Mandrake has surpassed RedHat qualitywise a long time ago, and there update tool is still free. If anything this is going to accelerate the marketshare slide towards Mandrake Linux.
/* And you'll never guess what the dog had */
And it's a good thing too.
Advantages of Mandrake vs. RedHat:
- qmail vs sendmail
- rpms compiled for nonarcheologic procs (see 586)
- cute
- no desktop environment bigotry, kde and gnome with a nice default setup
- did I mention cute? and sexy...
Mandrake 8.0 Beta is out now. Test it.
/* in its mouth... */
A quick search on google turns up the masters homepage. There.
/* And you'll never guess what the dog had */
The guys seems to be something of a pop star among mathematicians.
And I'm now looking forward for the obligatory halfdozen proofs that 2=1 in the next fifty comments. Yay for Slashdot...
/* in its mouth... */
Well this article has prompted me to look up some info on SSL certificates and Certificate Authorities. What I've read is disgusting.
/* And you'll never guess what the dog had */
We have some very few companies (the number of which is shrinking rapidly, whitness Netsol-Verisign) having a stranglehold on this market because only a select few have agreements or can pay MS and Netscape enough to be included by default into their browsers. If an upstart CA where to try to bypass this, its certificates would appear as untrusted in the browsers, prompting an ugly alarm dialog. Enough to inspire FUD into the customers mind.
However, a certificate has next to no monetary value, it's a proof of identity, and market dynamics should have no role in this process.
My proposal, thus, is to transfer the handling of digital certificates to a governemnt (ideally international, thus UN) sponsored body which achieves thrustworthiness trough legal backing. This anihilates the market and the situation of near-monopoly we presently face.
I mean, your passport is issued by the state and I'd venture to guess nobody even among the most extreme libertarians would challenge that...
/* in its mouth... */
Also useful is this interesting coverage of the exact aims of AFFECT, and their issues with UCITA, which I also found to be useful, and so I cited it.
--
Clarity does not require the absence of impurities,
Once upon a time, money was based on physical assets. Now capital has become fiduciary - meaning it is not based on any physical assets at all. To explain, in the UK one Pound Sterling used to be one pound of gold by weight. Now it is just valued for its intrinsic value to people. If noone exchanges money fro gold, the intrinsic value of money is irrelevant. Everyone wants money, therefore money is valuable, QED.
Let us examine what the effect of this will be in the new economy of the internet. Money is an imaginary and intellectual concept, and the internet is an imaginary real. We can then see that money is incompatible, to a certain extent, with the interent, or at least redundant. We are moving into a post-capital society, where the only thing of worth is the posession of knowledge and the spread of ideas.
According to Francis Fukuyama, the respected Japanese economist, the End of History is upon us, as all nations across the globe sink into the western capitalist ideal, and the divisions of old melt away into history.
In susch an environment money is irrelevant.
I predict, with reasonable certainty, that money will not exist in 25 years, and capital will be pure ideas.
--
Clarity does not require the absence of impurities,
Already Japanese companies are interested, and many have asteroid mining as part of their 100 plans (Japanese companies plan far into the future, unlike western capaitalist companies). Here in the west our companies do not plan beyond the next shareholder AGM, generally speaking, and so our government has to take the lead in making long term plans for our society.
I congratulate NASA and the government for the foresight they are showing here. It is vital that the USA get a good place in the biggest resource bonanza of the 21st century. Vital for our future.
My only quibble is with them making the results of this mission public, and the data available to all. Would the Chinese do it? No. The Japanese? No. Only the idealistic Americans. We need to close the lid on this, for it is needed for our future in the face of our competitors.
--
Clarity does not require the absence of impurities,
All these countries share one characteristic: their telecoms infrastructure is years behind that of the USA. This means that computer games will continue to be developed with the old V90 technology as its primary communications engine for some time to come, regardless of broadband developments here in the USA. The USA is only a small part of the global economic picture, and all games that are developed will reflect this. Already they are made with the European and Far Eastern markets as a primary aim - this will ensure that broadband does not get a look in.
Its a shame in a way, but it is true.
--
Clarity does not require the absence of impurities,
Many things about it were awful - hairstyles, acting, plot. The bad guys, in the form of the nefarious Silon, were among the worst in TV history, utterly laughably bad.
This means that it now makes an excellent Sunday afternoons viewing. The discriminating fan of super cheesy 1970's SF series will not be dissappointed by a viewing of Battlestar Galactica. The touching scenes involving Jane Seymours death and her childs adoption of a furry proto-Aibo are particulary amusing. And the attempted and very forced insertion of Greek Mythology throughout the series is funny too.
If you feel like going on a nostalgia trip, kobol.com is an excellent site featuring a hell of a lot of BG nostalgia. More than I can handle, thats for sure.
I just hope that this version isn't as bad as the last, though that should be easy.
--
Clarity does not require the absence of impurities,
I am mightily relieved that the H2G2 site is not going to be controlled by a commercial organisation os corporation. The BBC is fundamentally a socialist organisation, and so we can be sure that H2G2 will not be exploited for money. In addition, the BBC and Adams have a long relationship - HGTTG was first thought of by Adams for BBC Radio 4, as a drama for that station. It was later turned into a television series. We owe the existence of the HHGTTG to the BBC, and the fact that they are willing to give unknowns a chance, regardless of commercial consequences.
H2G2 is going home to its rightful place. If Adam's is its father, the BBC is its kindly grandfather, and we can be assured that they will run it according to the fundamental ideals of the book and site, rather than to make a fast buck. God bless the BBC.
--
Clarity does not require the absence of impurities,
- The people of Britain have cjaracter, but little personality. This means that they are good at being brave, at striving and succeeding against the odds. They have character and depth and complexity. However, they are often very boring, except where they rebel, when they are more entertaining than anyone (hence the British penchant for comedy).
- Americans have personality, but very little character. We Americans are not good at dealing with the swords and arrows of outrageous fortune. However, we are good at appealing to people on a Prima Facie basis, as we have plenty of personality and have no concept of embarrassment or reserve or humility. Americans make good seaside entertainers, though they can be tiresome dinner guests after a while.
The lesson we learn from this is that we should combine our strengths. The tough and stern absurdity of the British combined with the weak but adorable characteristics of the Americans would create and ideal space team, for a mission to Mars. The British would do all the exploring and heroic stuff, and the Americans would deal with the media and financing and entertainments. They would also be good at making sure the mission actually worked, without crashing. This combination would make it a sure success.--
Clarity does not require the absence of impurities,
Today, however, you can set up your own page and appeal to the viewers directly. If you are succesful, you have your own cult of fans and people start taking notice in the serious press. The web has created an alternative career path for the aspiring cartoonist - even if you are unsuccessful, you can still be noticed and get your work out there.
Also, the freedom from commercial pressures means that todays comics are much more innovative than they once were - the cartoonist is free to create whatever he wishes, without interference. The modern comedic tradition, informed by Saturday Night Live, Monty Python and other such surrealist shows means that the modern comic can be downright bizarre.
This all holds fairly well with the subversive traditions of the comic. The web is reinforing those traditions and bringing them to the fore more than they were.
This is a golden age for comics - they are being reborn.
--
Clarity does not require the absence of impurities,
Now however, these issues do not exist. So why keep tow different desktops? Why continue to divide out labor on two projects which both hope to achieve the same thing? Imagine how much more polished the Linux desktop environment would be if all effort were focused on just one. Twice as much effort would be expended on it every day. At present KDE and Gnome both have a somewhat beta-ish feel to them, but this would quickly disappear if there was only one desktop environment.
What are the arguments against this? They are as follows:
- Linux needs variety. Having two different desktops environments gives people a choice. For myself, I would say that this does not hold water. It is far better to have one desktop environment that works well, than to effectively repeat the same effort on two different incompatible desktops. Gnome and KDE are very similar anyway - they both hope to achieve the exact same thing. I could understand this argument if they were trying to acheive different things, in a different way, but they arent.
- Incompatibility. One of the desktop environments would become redundant, and all its software would be rendered incompatible with the new one. My problem with this is that it happens already. KDE2 is not especially compatible with KDE1. If instead they had created bindings for the gnome desktop environment, and then joined it, we would all be much better off. It is not even an expecially big task - qt is only some 20000 lines of code, for example.
I think that instead of working on KDE3 and Gnome2.0, we should instead be trying to build bridges, and reunifying this fork which has been scarring the Linux community for so long. It is time to extend the olive branch, and heal these old wounds.The developers may not like it, but it is in the interests of the user and of Linux as a whole.
--
Clarity does not require the absence of impurities,
I would be happy if all other forms of music sharing were declared illegal, as it would mean that the resources of the Open Source community would be flung into decntralised gnutella type systems.
Of course, the quality of gnutella, as it stands, leaves much to be desired, but when wider bandwidths become more commonplace and as the software and methodologies are improved, the situation will get better.
In the end, governments can regulate until they are blue in the face. The simple fact is that there is a demand for a free internet music sharing system, and it will be fulfilled, whether that is morally correct or not.
It is better that they regulate for this new reality, than that they regulate for an old and redundant reality. If they regulate as though we are in the 1980's, they will be regulating themselves out of power, not the end users of such systems, who will simply move on to the decentralised nirvana.
--
Clarity does not require the absence of impurities,
The Japanese capitalist system is not really a free market at all in fact. There are only a dozen Kairetsu, which between them control some 95% of the Japanese economy, and do so with the backing of the government. They do not directly compete, operating in a cartel like manner, and are anything but free.
One can see this corporate culture affects how the Japanese do business - they needn't be innovative, and according to our values the entire shebang should collapse, but the fundamental values of Japanese society keep it afloat and ensure it is a success.
It is amusing to note that in the west we assume that Low taxes + Free sink or swim market + no regulation = economic success. Japan breaks all these rules, with a stifleing amount of regulation, huge tax rates and amazing economic performance.
We could still learn a lot from the Japanese, which is why interviews such as this one are very useful.
--
Clarity does not require the absence of impurities,
Ultimately, I don't think Slashdot will exist in 5 years time for technological reasons. Eventually everyone will have huge bandwidth and something else will spring up to take /.'s place. I consider Slashdot to be a hiatus between Usenet and the next big thing.
Regarding Karma, I agree. It really doesn't matter a hoot, and 'Karma Whores' appear to be a thing of the past with the advent of the Karma Cap. However, it really would be better for /. if Karma were invisisble to the user, that way the pointless competitive aspect would not occur.
I just wish the people that harass me would get the message and go away. They really are annoying, and appear to have the wrong end of the stick.
--
Clarity does not require the absence of impurities,
It is already used by a large number of people, and is growing all the time.
The big problem with having new ideas like this is that you end up with a fragmented email system, where everyone is using different standards. I realise that variety in some arenas, such as desktop OS's, is to be encouraged, but I can't help but suspect that in the arena of communication, standards are all, and everyone should use the same methods of communication and encryption, otherwise communication breaks down.
Lets stick with PGP.
--
Clarity does not require the absence of impurities,
What I would like to see (and I have no idea whether this is possible, but this is /., so I am sure someone does) is a small home machne that can be used to manufacture silicon chips to your own design.
Of course, this system would not be very modern - it terms of the feature size on what it produces, which may be 20 years or more out of dat - but it would be pretty cool to be able to design your own computer entirely from scratch.
What I would like to ask is, is this possible?
--
Clarity does not require the absence of impurities,
Creative soundcards are only adequate. There is no competition, and as a result there have been no really great developments. I would like to see soundcards with support for proper 3dimensional sound - this would do for sound what 3d graphics cards have done for graphics, add a whole extra dimension. But instead we are stuck with stereo, and no prospects of any improvement. There could be a lot of improvements in the world of soundcards, but it doesn't look like Creative will be introducing any anytime soon. Why should they? They don't have any competition.
--
Clarity does not require the absence of impurities,
Unfortunately, I am not surprised in the slightest. Many of or students seem to be living in an atmosphere of fear on our campuses, and the attitude of radicalism and activism that was prevalent in the 1960's seems to have died, as our modern students are concerned with only their resumes and appearing to be quite the good corporate drone.
The reason that this principal thought he could get away with this is because the modern student, and the modern young American, has become a sheep.
We need to bring alive the radicalism of yesteryear among our young, and have them challenge the establishment as they once did, if we are to see this type of behaviour punished.
I fear that this is a false hope though. The corporations appear to have won. Their carrot, dangled in fron of our sheepish students, is turning our society into a non-confrontational, confirmist nightmare of autonomy, something not unlike Japan.
We need to wake our students up somehow. How, I don't know, but I think that more radical teaching in school may help.
--
Clarity does not require the absence of impurities,
In the 1960's, a well respected russian astronomer known as N Kardashev came up with the Kardashev system of determining alien civilisations.
The scary thing is that a Dyson Sphere would look almost exactly like a red dwarve star. It could well be that many phenomena we see in space and interpret as natural phenomena are in fact megascale engineering projects of distant civilisations.
Another possibility is that these distant civilisations use Matrioshka Brains, big computers in the form of Dyson Spheres, surrounding a star. Everybody would be uploaded into this environment, and would become as gods.
Problem is, we are pumping out radiation all the time, from our television transmitters and our mobile phones and so on. It is like the cheeping of a new born bird, we are alone and naked and letting everyone know where we are. There is no reason to suppose that such civilisations would be friendly. I think we should take enormous and difficult steps to quiet down out interstellar emissions. It is time to start playing interstellar politics.
More info can be found here, a very interesting page on this subject by an esteemed author.
--
Clarity does not require the absence of impurities,
I think that in the far future, maybe 100 years or so down the line, Open Source will have spread to encompass all parts of our civilisation, the very fundamental way we live, our economy, everything.
In my view, it is inevitable that our economy become communist in the distant future - when we can manufacture anything, anywhere, anytime, for no cost, our present money and job based society breaks down. We shall become a wealthy society of equals. This is the destiny of Open Source.
In the future, as more and more parts of our society become intellectualised, and as the intellectual economy does to Industry what Industry did to agriculture - overshadows it utterly - the pressures for Open Source to extend its aim beyond the software industry will redouble.
I think it will do so, and eventually our entire civilisation will be based around the ethics of the Open Source philosophy, as evinced by RMS and ESR.
And we will all be the better for it.
--
Clarity does not require the absence of impurities,
It is good to hear ESR's views on this subject too - he is an articulate and interesting writer.
--
Clarity does not require the absence of impurities,
Additionally, you'll have to choose the attribute for the z-axis carefully as there's really no way to have a 5 dimensional desktop. For complex relationships, you'd be better of using a relational database not a 3d desktop.
You are assuming that there need be one attribute per dimension. Why not have one attribute spread over two dimensions? This would allow the file structure to be more easily comprehended, as there would be more space for pattern recognition by our brains. If the file strucure representation were spread in this way, I am sure it would be a lot easier for us to deal with complex directories and so forth - our brains are built for 3 dimensional thought.
I don't think that the desktop of the future need be fully 3 dimensional, there will always be a place for 2d. Text is unlikely to become 3D, for example, unless we devise a whole new writing system (which is not as unlikely as it may appear, in the long term).
Overall, I just think that people are too unimaginative when it comes to the future. I can imagine people having similar arguments to this in the days of CLI's and monochrome test. How could color possibly be a useful component of a desktop? Thankfully they were proved wrong.
Anyway, thanks for the mail, 'PJ', and thanks for the compliment :)
--
Clarity does not require the absence of impurities,