All flames--and all flamers--are not created equal. Generally one can tell within a post's first sentence or two whether its author is giving a thoughtful but critical reply, a hilariously satirical reply, or if they're just another disagreeable jackass. As with any other post, readers can quickly figure out whose flames to pay attention to and whose to ignore. A single, well crafted flame is far more useful--and far more entertaining to bystanders--than a dogpile.
I agree with all this; that's why I started with 'Flamers good'.:) But my point is that some newbies think that all flamers are potentially psychotic stalkers. The fact is that only a very tiny percentage of them are...but newbies don't know that. As long as stalkers exist, people will fear them, and they'll transfer that fear onto the nearest commonly-seen species of antagonist -- the flamer.
I've long been of the opinion that if someone can't defend themselves from a hostile response, they shouldn't be speaking in public. I think that flamers are actually a *good* thing, as they insure that the people in the discussion are thinking and confident about their opinions.
But the problem is when a flamer becomes a kook. A hostile response is something everyone needs to learn how to accept, and 'Please Die' isn't a credible threat. But I have gotten death threats from a person who went on to hire a private investigator to find my address, phone me at 3AM, and write letters to my employer in an attempt to get me fired. Kooks like *that* cause a chilling effect on free speech. And because you never know when a normal flamer will turn out to be a real kook, people tend to be more afraid of flamers than they probably should be.
The right to flame on the internet should be preserved. But true kooks should be eradicated. How do you do both? Not sure.
One rumor is that the VLIW chip is fed by an instruction-morphing cache, where other processor instructions (x86, Motorola, etc.) are turned into VLIW instructions and run natively. If this is true, then you wouldn't *have* to build software for the Crusoe -- it will natively run any software for any other microprocessor they've designed it to handle.
My speculation for 1/18/2000 -- Transmeta showcases a PalmPad-like device that will run PalmOS, WindowsCE, Linux *and* MacOS, all in their own maximizable window. Just a guess.:)
Re:AC always has problems expressing his visions
on
Childhood's End
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· Score: 2
Sir Clarke was pestered by his publishers to write 2061 and 3001, and IIRC he sold both of those books for only one dollar. In any case, he's not nearly as bad as many other sci-fi authors, many of whom take a single idea and turn them into an endless stream of books. Hamilton, in particular, irritates me in this way.
_Childhood's End_ is an important book in the history of science fiction as it introduced the concepts of Graduation and Exodus -- that humanity may change into something now unimaginable, and head for the stars. That this vision was generated during the cold war, when it looked very likely that humanity might suicide with nuclear weapons, gives the book even greater impact for its time.
I'm not informed enough on the Japanese patent system that Mr. Trudel is ranting about, nor have I read the text of H.R. 1907. But the gist of Mr. Trudel's rant is pretty hard to follow. Nowhere does he dissect the new system and point out its failings...instead he throws jingoistic statements about how bad it will be, "especially for our children." Gah. This guy is tabloid trash.
There is one coherent point Mr. Trudel made about the Japanese:
Their patent system tends more to distribute technology than to restrict its use.
He wants us to believe that's a bad thing. I'd say that's exactly what we want.
Amazing. Looking over the posts here, it seems that 90% of Slashdotters have no idea what Bruce Sterling is talking about. Admittedly his manifesto is wordy, but it's not that complicated. At the risk of being a poor reflection of a better author, let me try to explain some parts of what Sterling said:
Sterling is not saying that we don't have problems now. He's saying that the problems we have now will be fixed, while the problems we have in the future will be orders of magnitude larger.
Sterling is not saying that we are mature and competant enough to 'command the material world'. He's saying that soon we will be *able* to...so we better learn how.
Sterling is not saying that Gizmos -- future technological devices -- should be mystical and poorly understood by the user. He's saying that they will be whether we like it or not. Nobody can say that they are fully versed in all aspects of high technology...sooner or later you will use a gizmo that you do not understand. And they're only going to get more complicated. And they're going to be replaced by new gizmos more and more frequently, so don't get too attached to the ones you've got.
Sterling *is* saying (from what I can see), that philosophy is useless. It can't keep up with technological progress. Better to let technology evolve at breakneck speed, because it will solve more problems than it causes. Philosophy and moral concern serve only to slow the evolution of technology; best to get rid of them. Any bad things that happen will be temporary -- *everything*, including the state of humanity, will become increasing temporary.
I agree with some of these points and disagree with others, but I see how he arrived at them all. Sterling's essay is a rewrite of _Future Shock_...and a call for people to embrace future changes, even if you do not understand or do not like them. The alternative is a world panicked by Future Shock, with chaos and tremendous danger to humanity as a result.
Look at it this way. As technological progress increases in speed, any commodity will be replaced by an improved version, and these improvements will happen with increasing frequency. So everything will become a gizmo -- short-lived, poorly understood by its users, and possibly overqualified for the purpose its used for. This is going to happen whether you like it or not. The only way to avoid it is to buy a cabin in Montana and hold tight to your manual typewriter.
Natural resources have nothing to do with it, as the assumption is that technology will provide means of reclaimation that will support this new production. In fact, the implicit assumption is that technology will solve all our problems if we only allow it to evolve fast enough.
Sterling's manifesto was overly dramatic and wordy, but I think the central message is a good one: "Future Shock is coming. Learn to love it."
The Previews for GalaxyQuest were pretty deceptive. Remember, this is a story about a 60's TV show, and the set of that TV show had crappy, low-budget special effects...and there's several scenes of the original show in the movie. But when they really get into space, the effects are up to modern standards. (The space babies, I thought, were exceptionally well done CGI.)
The coolest scenes and best lines in the movie weren't in the trailer. It's a really fun film.
What you're saying is the corporations are structured so that they must behave unethically. Well, if that's true then it's a good enough reason to protest. The concept of fiduciary duty sounds to me like lawyer-mandated malevolance.
If it helps, consider the Amazon boycott to not be specifically protesting against them, but against the business rules and legal climate that forces corporations to behave in such greedy, unethical ways.
Does anyone remember the unix commands 'write' (which wrote a single line of text on a recipient's terminal) and unix 'talk' (which opened a one-on-one chat session)? I used to use these utilities a lot, and had many conversations via them.
Seems to me that these form all the standards you need for an instant messaging system. Just code up a GUI on Windoze for them, and you've got an established free standard IM service. I still don't see why everyone's chasing AOL over this.
Lasers emit coherent light, but not necessarily of one wavelength. A CO2 laser I once used for atmospheric sounding emitted 72 distinct and separately detectable frequencies.
The real question is how you're going to transmit data over all those frequencies at once. The frequencies of the CO2 laser spectrum were set ratios of one another. To have each frequency transmit independant information, you'd either have to use multiple lasers or have some very interesting frequency gate optics. I do not work with fiber optics or data transmission...perhaps gate optics of that sort already do exist.
In the end, the only way to end Microsoft's dominance is to consciously choose to use non-MS products - which is not something antitrust law can control.
I don't see any type of penalty that would actually make a difference in the way the world worked today.
Thoughts?
I agree with this, but you missed one possible penalty that's been talked about; rebates. Force microsoft to send rebates to every user of Windows or Office. At $10 per rebate and maybe half a billion units sold, that's a chunk of change. It won't kill them, but it would definitely hurt. Probably won't happen, though.
The big fall of microsoft will come if the stock falls to a level where its employees realize their compensation and retirement plans are threatened. Employees will leave the company, driving the stock down more. It's been noted before that MS's stock options plan amounts to a shell game, and could possibly implode upon itself.
You're right that MSFT is barely moving (-3 7/8 at this time). But the stock is incredibly active, with 76,450,096 shares sold as of noon EST. (Next most traded stock was Amazon, with 16,855,600).
MSFT stock is being dumped. It's being dumped with prejudice and as fast as possible. However, it's being bought up as fast as it's being sold...probably by investors who now consider it a buying opportunity. They're probably right.
Blasphemy against God is forgiven. Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is not. Do you understand the meaning of this? It means in a nutshell that if you deny God's power and existence, then you will go to hell. Essentially everything else is forgiven.
Yeah, it's pretty easy to understand. You can be a mass-murderer -- if you like, you can even follow some of the bible's instructions on who and when to murder people -- but as long as you believe in God it's okay. Whereas if you are a kind and good man but you don't believe in God, you'll be tortured for eternity.
You can't win this argument, you know. I'm arguing for logical ethics, and you're arguing with faith. Both of us will lose by the other's measure. The only valid question is which way to live your life is rationally sane.
On the one hand Jon Katz pushes tolerance for those who are different and freedom of speech for all. On the other, as in this article, he seems to be doing the opposite. Why all the venom against Christians Jon?
I don't see any hypocrisy in Jon's writings at all. He takes a firm stand for independant thought and tolerance...a stance that reflects the free-thinking spirit of the internet. Christianity -- in general -- opposes these free-thinking ideals.
It is perfectly reasonable and valid to point to Christianity and Christians as the poster children for intolerance and suppression of independant thought. Because of the actions of the Christian community, and especially the actions of their leaders, the word 'Christian' has become synonymous with 'Intolerant' in the minds of the public. It is a generalization, but a valid one that everyone who has ever been oppressed by a Christian fanatic can understand (*). The religious beliefs themselves have nothing to do with it -- it's the actions of individual Christians over hundreds of years that have ruined the reputation of them all.
Now, you can argue whether it's right for someone who champions tolerance to be intolerant of intolerant people. I'd say yes, personally...having an opinion is worthless if it prevents you from acting upon it.
Don't like how your religion (not just Christianity, but any religion) is viewed by people outside your faith? Do something about it. It's your community, you must be able to influence its actions somehow. Or do they really not permit their members free speech and independant thought?
(* -- Footnote: Yes, I used the word 'fanatic' and 'oppressed'. I am currently one of the targets of a right-wing Christian campaign, and a deliberate mis-quote of something I wrote is on their web page as an example of the kind of "monster" they're fighting. It's sleaze tactics like this and fanatic suppression of innocent and legal activities that gave Christianity their bad name.)
This could probably be done pretty easily with Unreal. UnrealScript is pretty flexible and object-oriented, and any additional classes you'd need could be included as DLLs.
The problem is that Unreal runs on Windows. Not as much freedom to kill things on Windows...and you're more likely to crash your system with a stray bullet.
* Perhaps different rooms could represent different priorities, or alternately UIDs. With the latter, keys can be used to limit power (lock the doors).
Better idea -- Different rooms should represent directories, with processes being in the room that corresponds to their current directory. Then the overhead map becomes a map of your filesystem. Doors become subdirectories. And files can be represented by items laying on the ground!
Wow, this really could be used for system administration.:) DoomOS, anyone?:)
With respect to all the participants in this precognitive discussion, I think they're missing something important, especially about AI.
As first noted by Vernor Vinge, once AI is created that is more intelligent than human beings, the exponential advance of technology will become self-accelerating, as the designers of new technology will be technological constructs themselves. At this point in history, there are only 3 outcomes:
A Singularity, where technology has become so advanced that we cannot envision its effects.
A Stagnation, where society decides to purposely limit technology so that no further advances are made.
A Fall, where society decides to purposely refute technology, and return to a pastoral existance.
Each of these possibilities is a radical shift in society, and any of them would likely be presaged by conflict.
Note also that it won't just be humans going through these changes. It will be normal humans, altered (by cybernetics or genetics) humans, AI machines, and any new species that humans create. (Quick prediction: By 2020, the first intelligent non-human animal will be created. Think 'anthropomorphics'.) It's likely that each of these species will choose a different path.
So, my predictions:
By 2050 there will be war, as the agents of change (the new species) fight against the shackles of normal human society and progress. Only rare human beings will understand and be able to cope with the new species; for the most part they will be unable to live together.
By 2100 three societies will exist. The First Race (composed mostly of normal humans) will return to a pastoral existance, on Earth or on another suitable planet. The Second Race will return to the post-industrial era and become a stagnant society, intentionally limiting their progress so that they only have access to the technology they need (Mars would suit this society well.) And the Third Race, composed mostly of robots and altered humans, will pick up their bags and move to the stars.
I was diagnosed with CTS in '91. Back then the doctor didn't focus on my computer use as the problem...he gave me some good tips for other ways to keep it under control:
Sleep with your wrists straight, not curled. It's natural for us to sleep with our wrists bent like a praying mantis, which aggravates the problem. Force yourself to keep your wrists and arms straight when you sleep. Doctors can prescribe a wrist brace for sleeping if this applies to you.
Flexibility exercises, especially before you sit down at your desk. I like Chinese medicine balls myself; rolling them around really invigorates my hands.
No contrictive clothing on the wrists. I don't wear shirts with elastic cuffs. I wear a pocketwatch, not a wristwatch. The carpal tunnel is a tunnel of muscle through which blood vessels and nerves go. You have troubles when the muscle inflames...and constricting that muscle only makes the situation worse.
Take breaks. I try to stop typing and take a break when twinges happen.
My carpal tunnel problem has gone from minor paralysis to only occassional pain, without medicine or surgery.
All right, I think it's been proven pretty thoroughly that Open Source methods work for software engineering. Tell me, do you see Open Source being applicable to other real-world problems? Could scientific research/teaching/politics/other endeavours benefit from a 'Bazaar' approach of distributed design? To what other fields would you like to see OSS applied?
( I've also posted this on the local netcom groups, but I thought that./'ers might enjoy a shell user's rantings.:) )
I just felt a need to chuckle, and a good way to do that is to make fun of oneself publically.:)
I've been a Netcom shell user for almost 6 years. I got on the internet well before this multimedia-access 'fad', and just as NCSA was debuting some unlikely scientific tool called Mosaic to browse something that didn't exist yet called the World Wide Web. My shell account has served me through flamewars, mailbombings, death threats, linx searches, gopher queries, and lately convoluted telnet sessions and downloads.
Why the hell am I still here?:)
I moved away from my Netcom POP in 98, turning my major presence on the net into a telnet-only wrestling match for productivity. Mindspring bought us out, making the ever-present worries that shell account were about to become extinct a real danger. Now Earthlink wades in, merging with Mindspring in what -- to a shell user -- might best be described as an end-of-the-world safeword-optional orgy on a bed of leather and stock options. The chance of Earthlink maintaining shell accounts is miniscule. We've gone from being the technocapable rulers of the internet to being an unwanted red-haired step-stepchild who is being sent to an ever-shrinking corner.
Yes, I'm enamored of the pseudonym 'Remus Shepherd', and the simple address remus@netcom.com is a nugget of gold nowadays. But even this nerdish dinosaur can make out the writing on the wall by now. There must be shell accounts out there somewhere, and for my purposes they're still superior to anything that has the potential to display a banner ad. Time to put my data into a carpetbag, and surf into a new home.
Oh I'm staying here, of course. Too stubborn not to. I will deactivate my shell account when Earthlink turns off the telnet access to it...not one second before. I may or may not use the account as much, but I'll be here until the network crashes down around me and every power cord is yanked free. $20 per month is a pittance...we're talking sentimentalism, here. Not to mention the best damn productivity tool on the net, even if 'modern' ISPs decry it as ancient and unweildy. They can't even keep their companies from being bought out in rapid succession -- what do they really know?:)
Just in case I'm not the last one to go -- will someone please remember to turn off the lights?:)
Many illegal activities operate on a cycle of Obsession and Compulsion. Obsession with seeing or knowing about an illegal act, then a Compulsion to perform that act. Thus, viewing child pornography may cause some (already sick) people to act on their pedophilic impulses, and reading the Anarchist's Handbook may cause some (already violent) people to make and use terrorist devices. That's the conjectured mechanism in studies such as those that link pornography to rape, etc. That's why they are saying that speech about illegal acts should be illegal, because human nature means that merely talking about an activity may promote that activity and increase its occurence.
To my mind, however, this is the absolute wrong way to go about it. If your child is screwed up enough that they cannot handle fringe concepts and information, then you need to put blinkers on your child...not bulldoze anything in the world that might bother you or your miscreant.
No matter what way you look at it, it's all a monument to human stupidity. Removing information about illegal activity as a means of reducing those activities strikes me as a form of Security Through Obscurity, and we all know how well that works. (I.e: Not at all.)
From reading the details, they suggest removing the NSA backdoor by changing the NSA key but leaving the MS service key intact. Uh, this isn't much of a fix. If MS collaborated with the NSA enough to put a backdoor in there, they'd certainly be willing to provide their service key if the NSA found a machine they couldn't compromise. It sounds to me as if Windows cannot be made secure.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but Linus Torvalds still decides what and when things are included into the Linux kernel, right?
If so, then it all depends upon him. People will keep sending him useful code for obscure but important pieces of the OS if he continues to respect their effort and prioritize well. But if Linus starts caving into pressure by stockholders (relayed to him by Red Hat et al), and making neat but useless bells and whistles his priority, then Suck is right and Linux as a whole will sell out.
The other option for Red Hat (and VA, etc) is to cut Linus out of the loop, and do their own development of useless bells and whistles. That leads to fragmentation. Personally I don't see fragmentation as a threat to Linux as long as a central, unspoiled version of it exists...which again, depends on Linus Torvalds.
I was a netcom customer when Mitnick cracked into their files. He stole my credit card info. Even if he didn't *do* anything with it, the man's still a criminal in my book. It's a shame that he didn't get a prompt trial, but the sentence was too light for his crime IMHO.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree with all this; that's why I started with 'Flamers good'.
I've long been of the opinion that if someone can't defend themselves from a hostile response, they shouldn't be speaking in public. I think that flamers are actually a *good* thing, as they insure that the people in the discussion are thinking and confident about their opinions.
But the problem is when a flamer becomes a kook. A hostile response is something everyone needs to learn how to accept, and 'Please Die' isn't a credible threat. But I have gotten death threats from a person who went on to hire a private investigator to find my address, phone me at 3AM, and write letters to my employer in an attempt to get me fired. Kooks like *that* cause a chilling effect on free speech. And because you never know when a normal flamer will turn out to be a real kook, people tend to be more afraid of flamers than they probably should be.
The right to flame on the internet should be preserved. But true kooks should be eradicated. How do you do both? Not sure.
One rumor is that the VLIW chip is fed by an instruction-morphing cache, where other processor instructions (x86, Motorola, etc.) are turned into VLIW instructions and run natively. If this is true, then you wouldn't *have* to build software for the Crusoe -- it will natively run any software for any other microprocessor they've designed it to handle.
:)
My speculation for 1/18/2000 -- Transmeta showcases a PalmPad-like device that will run PalmOS, WindowsCE, Linux *and* MacOS, all in their own maximizable window. Just a guess.
Sir Clarke was pestered by his publishers to write 2061 and 3001, and IIRC he sold both of those books for only one dollar. In any case, he's not nearly as bad as many other sci-fi authors, many of whom take a single idea and turn them into an endless stream of books. Hamilton, in particular, irritates me in this way.
_Childhood's End_ is an important book in the history of science fiction as it introduced the concepts of Graduation and Exodus -- that humanity may change into something now unimaginable, and head for the stars. That this vision was generated during the cold war, when it looked very likely that humanity might suicide with nuclear weapons, gives the book even greater impact for its time.
There is one coherent point Mr. Trudel made about the Japanese:
Their patent system tends more to distribute technology than to restrict its use.
He wants us to believe that's a bad thing. I'd say that's exactly what we want.
Amazing. Looking over the posts here, it seems that 90% of Slashdotters have no idea what Bruce Sterling is talking about. Admittedly his manifesto is wordy, but it's not that complicated. At the risk of being a poor reflection of a better author, let me try to explain some parts of what Sterling said:
Sterling is not saying that we don't have problems now. He's saying that the problems we have now will be fixed, while the problems we have in the future will be orders of magnitude larger.
Sterling is not saying that we are mature and competant enough to 'command the material world'. He's saying that soon we will be *able* to...so we better learn how.
Sterling is not saying that Gizmos -- future technological devices -- should be mystical and poorly understood by the user. He's saying that they will be whether we like it or not. Nobody can say that they are fully versed in all aspects of high technology...sooner or later you will use a gizmo that you do not understand. And they're only going to get more complicated. And they're going to be replaced by new gizmos more and more frequently, so don't get too attached to the ones you've got.
Sterling *is* saying (from what I can see), that philosophy is useless. It can't keep up with technological progress. Better to let technology evolve at breakneck speed, because it will solve more problems than it causes. Philosophy and moral concern serve only to slow the evolution of technology; best to get rid of them. Any bad things that happen will be temporary -- *everything*, including the state of humanity, will become increasing temporary.
I agree with some of these points and disagree with others, but I see how he arrived at them all. Sterling's essay is a rewrite of _Future Shock_...and a call for people to embrace future changes, even if you do not understand or do not like them. The alternative is a world panicked by Future Shock, with chaos and tremendous danger to humanity as a result.
Natural resources have nothing to do with it, as the assumption is that technology will provide means of reclaimation that will support this new production. In fact, the implicit assumption is that technology will solve all our problems if we only allow it to evolve fast enough.
Sterling's manifesto was overly dramatic and wordy, but I think the central message is a good one: "Future Shock is coming. Learn to love it."
The Previews for GalaxyQuest were pretty deceptive. Remember, this is a story about a 60's TV show, and the set of that TV show had crappy, low-budget special effects...and there's several scenes of the original show in the movie. But when they really get into space, the effects are up to modern standards. (The space babies, I thought, were exceptionally well done CGI.)
The coolest scenes and best lines in the movie weren't in the trailer. It's a really fun film.
If it helps, consider the Amazon boycott to not be specifically protesting against them, but against the business rules and legal climate that forces corporations to behave in such greedy, unethical ways.
Does anyone remember the unix commands 'write' (which wrote a single line of text on a recipient's terminal) and unix 'talk' (which opened a one-on-one chat session)? I used to use these utilities a lot, and had many conversations via them.
Seems to me that these form all the standards you need for an instant messaging system. Just code up a GUI on Windoze for them, and you've got an established free standard IM service. I still don't see why everyone's chasing AOL over this.
Lasers emit coherent light, but not necessarily of one wavelength. A CO2 laser I once used for atmospheric sounding emitted 72 distinct and separately detectable frequencies.
The real question is how you're going to transmit data over all those frequencies at once. The frequencies of the CO2 laser spectrum were set ratios of one another. To have each frequency transmit independant information, you'd either have to use multiple lasers or have some very interesting frequency gate optics. I do not work with fiber optics or data transmission...perhaps gate optics of that sort already do exist.
I don't see any type of penalty that would actually make a difference in the way the world worked today.
Thoughts?
I agree with this, but you missed one possible penalty that's been talked about; rebates. Force microsoft to send rebates to every user of Windows or Office. At $10 per rebate and maybe half a billion units sold, that's a chunk of change. It won't kill them, but it would definitely hurt. Probably won't happen, though.
The big fall of microsoft will come if the stock falls to a level where its employees realize their compensation and retirement plans are threatened. Employees will leave the company, driving the stock down more. It's been noted before that MS's stock options plan amounts to a shell game, and could possibly implode upon itself.
You're right that MSFT is barely moving (-3 7/8 at this time). But the stock is incredibly active, with 76,450,096 shares sold as of noon EST. (Next most traded stock was Amazon, with 16,855,600).
MSFT stock is being dumped. It's being dumped with prejudice and as fast as possible. However, it's being bought up as fast as it's being sold...probably by investors who now consider it a buying opportunity. They're probably right.
Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is not.
Do you understand the meaning of this? It means in a nutshell that if you deny God's power and existence, then you will go to hell. Essentially everything else is forgiven.
Yeah, it's pretty easy to understand. You can be a mass-murderer -- if you like, you can even follow some of the bible's instructions on who and when to murder people -- but as long as you believe in God it's okay. Whereas if you are a kind and good man but you don't believe in God, you'll be tortured for eternity.
You can't win this argument, you know. I'm arguing for logical ethics, and you're arguing with faith. Both of us will lose by the other's measure. The only valid question is which way to live your life is rationally sane.
I don't see any hypocrisy in Jon's writings at all. He takes a firm stand for independant thought and tolerance...a stance that reflects the free-thinking spirit of the internet. Christianity -- in general -- opposes these free-thinking ideals.
It is perfectly reasonable and valid to point to Christianity and Christians as the poster children for intolerance and suppression of independant thought. Because of the actions of the Christian community, and especially the actions of their leaders, the word 'Christian' has become synonymous with 'Intolerant' in the minds of the public. It is a generalization, but a valid one that everyone who has ever been oppressed by a Christian fanatic can understand (*). The religious beliefs themselves have nothing to do with it -- it's the actions of individual Christians over hundreds of years that have ruined the reputation of them all.
Now, you can argue whether it's right for someone who champions tolerance to be intolerant of intolerant people. I'd say yes, personally...having an opinion is worthless if it prevents you from acting upon it.
Don't like how your religion (not just Christianity, but any religion) is viewed by people outside your faith? Do something about it. It's your community, you must be able to influence its actions somehow. Or do they really not permit their members free speech and independant thought?
(* -- Footnote: Yes, I used the word 'fanatic' and 'oppressed'. I am currently one of the targets of a right-wing Christian campaign, and a deliberate mis-quote of something I wrote is on their web page as an example of the kind of "monster" they're fighting. It's sleaze tactics like this and fanatic suppression of innocent and legal activities that gave Christianity their bad name.)
This could probably be done pretty easily with Unreal. UnrealScript is pretty flexible and object-oriented, and any additional classes you'd need could be included as DLLs.
The problem is that Unreal runs on Windows. Not as much freedom to kill things on Windows...and you're more likely to crash your system with a stray bullet.
Better idea -- Different rooms should represent directories, with processes being in the room that corresponds to their current directory. Then the overhead map becomes a map of your filesystem. Doors become subdirectories. And files can be represented by items laying on the ground!
Wow, this really could be used for system administration. :) DoomOS, anyone? :)
As first noted by Vernor Vinge, once AI is created that is more intelligent than human beings, the exponential advance of technology will become self-accelerating, as the designers of new technology will be technological constructs themselves. At this point in history, there are only 3 outcomes:
- A Singularity, where technology has become so advanced that we cannot envision its effects.
- A Stagnation, where society decides to purposely limit technology so that no further advances are made.
- A Fall, where society decides to purposely refute technology, and return to a pastoral existance.
Each of these possibilities is a radical shift in society, and any of them would likely be presaged by conflict.Note also that it won't just be humans going through these changes. It will be normal humans, altered (by cybernetics or genetics) humans, AI machines, and any new species that humans create. (Quick prediction: By 2020, the first intelligent non-human animal will be created. Think 'anthropomorphics'.) It's likely that each of these species will choose a different path.
So, my predictions:
By 2050 there will be war, as the agents of change (the new species) fight against the shackles of normal human society and progress. Only rare human beings will understand and be able to cope with the new species; for the most part they will be unable to live together.
By 2100 three societies will exist.
The First Race (composed mostly of normal humans) will return to a pastoral existance, on Earth or on another suitable planet.
The Second Race will return to the post-industrial era and become a stagnant society, intentionally limiting their progress so that they only have access to the technology they need (Mars would suit this society well.)
And the Third Race, composed mostly of robots and altered humans, will pick up their bags and move to the stars.
My carpal tunnel problem has gone from minor paralysis to only occassional pain, without medicine or surgery.
All right, I think it's been proven pretty thoroughly that Open Source methods work for software engineering. Tell me, do you see Open Source being applicable to other real-world problems? Could scientific research/teaching/politics/other endeavours benefit from a 'Bazaar' approach of distributed design? To what other fields would you like to see OSS applied?
I just felt a need to chuckle, and a good way to do that is to make fun of oneself publically. :)
I've been a Netcom shell user for almost 6 years. I got on the internet well before this multimedia-access 'fad', and just as NCSA was debuting some unlikely scientific tool called Mosaic to browse something that didn't exist yet called the World Wide Web. My shell account has served me through flamewars, mailbombings, death threats, linx searches, gopher queries, and lately convoluted telnet sessions and downloads.
Why the hell am I still here? :)
I moved away from my Netcom POP in 98, turning my major presence on the net into a telnet-only wrestling match for productivity. Mindspring bought us out, making the ever-present worries that shell account were about to become extinct a real danger. Now Earthlink wades in, merging with Mindspring in what -- to a shell user -- might best be described as an end-of-the-world safeword-optional orgy on a bed of leather and stock options. The chance of Earthlink maintaining shell accounts is miniscule. We've gone from being the technocapable rulers of the internet to being an unwanted red-haired step-stepchild who is being sent to an ever-shrinking corner.
Yes, I'm enamored of the pseudonym 'Remus Shepherd', and the simple address remus@netcom.com is a nugget of gold nowadays. But even this nerdish dinosaur can make out the writing on the wall by now. There must be shell accounts out there somewhere, and for my purposes they're still superior to anything that has the potential to display a banner ad. Time to put my data into a carpetbag, and surf into a new home.
Oh I'm staying here, of course. Too stubborn not to. I will deactivate my shell account when Earthlink turns off the telnet access to it...not one second before. I may or may not use the account as much, but I'll be here until the network crashes down around me and every power cord is yanked free. $20 per month is a pittance...we're talking sentimentalism, here. Not to mention the best damn productivity tool on the net, even if 'modern' ISPs decry it as ancient and unweildy. They can't even keep their companies from being bought out in rapid succession -- what do they really know? :)
Just in case I'm not the last one to go -- will someone please remember to turn off the lights? :)
Remus Shepherd (remus@netcom.com)
To my mind, however, this is the absolute wrong way to go about it. If your child is screwed up enough that they cannot handle fringe concepts and information, then you need to put blinkers on your child...not bulldoze anything in the world that might bother you or your miscreant.
No matter what way you look at it, it's all a monument to human stupidity. Removing information about illegal activity as a means of reducing those activities strikes me as a form of Security Through Obscurity, and we all know how well that works. (I.e: Not at all.)
From reading the details, they suggest removing the NSA backdoor by changing the NSA key but leaving the MS service key intact. Uh, this isn't much of a fix. If MS collaborated with the NSA enough to put a backdoor in there, they'd certainly be willing to provide their service key if the NSA found a machine they couldn't compromise. It sounds to me as if Windows cannot be made secure.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but Linus Torvalds still decides what and when things are included into the Linux kernel, right?
If so, then it all depends upon him. People will keep sending him useful code for obscure but important pieces of the OS if he continues to respect their effort and prioritize well. But if Linus starts caving into pressure by stockholders (relayed to him by Red Hat et al), and making neat but useless bells and whistles his priority, then Suck is right and Linux as a whole will sell out.
The other option for Red Hat (and VA, etc) is to cut Linus out of the loop, and do their own development of useless bells and whistles. That leads to fragmentation. Personally I don't see fragmentation as a threat to Linux as long as a central, unspoiled version of it exists...which again, depends on Linus Torvalds.
I was a netcom customer when Mitnick cracked into their files. He stole my credit card info. Even if he didn't *do* anything with it, the man's still a criminal in my book. It's a shame that he didn't get a prompt trial, but the sentence was too light for his crime IMHO.