There is a great difference between producing art in the hopes that you may receive a financial benefit from it, and producing art *because* you receive a financial benefit from it. There certainly can be a value to commercial art, but it rarely, if ever, produces real progress. As far as Bach and his ilk are concerned, perhaps you think a return to the patronage system, whereby only a very select, elite subset of society would have the ability to enjoy original works of art is preferable to the current reality? Of course, in Bach's case (and I should mention that I almost find your Wikipedia link offensive--I was playing Two-Part Inventions when I was 10 years old), the average serf could always go to church to hear him play, but the fact remains that even the religiously inspired works were financed by the great might of the Church, hardly the most egalitarian of institutions.
In any case, the experiences of artists who lived hundreds of years ago in feudal Europe are only marginally relevant to the experiences of artists today facing the technological challenges presented by digital reproduction.
The GP did have a point, but the response is that such points fail to take into account the development of modern society. What these points advocate is not, in fact, progress, but regression to earlier forms of society. Divison of Labor is one of the requirements for a modern society.
Actually, I would argue that the value added to a book by the author's autograph is effectively zero, unless one happens to sell said book, thus depriving one of its tangible benefits.
I thought I'd mention that I've added you to my "Friends" here on Slashdot because I find you posts here, and some of the information on your web sites provocative. I disagree, however, with much of your content.
In this particular post, you again assert the idea that, "Copyright has one intent: to enable the cartels to retain control of the distribution." You've made this assertion multiple times recently, and I have to tell you, you couldn't be more wrong. Copyright does indeed have "one intent", but that intent is, to quote the Constitution, "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."
Unfortunately, this provision in the Constitution, which might I add, was developed by men who possessed a great deal of both insight and foresight, has indeed become polluted by moneyed interests to the point where the restrictions available to copyright holders outweigh the public interest in progress, but I wholeheartedly disagree that, as you put it, "Copyright can't work anymore." Copyright can work, and has served well for the past 200-odd years of the history of our nation. The problem we currently face for copyright is that the barrier to infringement of the copyright privilege has been dramatically lowered by the availablility of low-cost digital reproduction. People who would otherwise remain honest have, in the face of the pollution of the original intent of the copyright and dilution of moral priniciples in our society, begun to infringe upon the privileged grant of authorship because they can do so easily in a relatively anonymous fashion.
Your assertion that content creators must find new avenues of revenue generation may be a prgmatic reaction to the situation, but the end result is the destruction of a viable way of life for many artists. I find that, in general, those who advocate such measures for artists, and particularly, musicians, as you outline above, are generally not themselves the sort of artists who will find their livelihood placed at a disadvantage. It is all very well for you to advocate a life of constant live performance when you yourself do not seem to engage in such performances. Who are you to dictate what my lifestyle, as a publishing musician should be? Do I agree that the "cartels" have a disproportionate amount of power in the music economy? Certainly, but the answer, in my opinion, is not to throw the baby out with the bathwater and relegate my fellow musicians to "walk the long road".
It may be that ultimately, it may become impossible for artists to make a living off of the proceeds of recorded works, whatever their form, but I predict that if this comes to pass, the end result will be a dramatic reduction in artistic output of all forms, with the added reality that under such a system of mandatory live performance, access to artistic works will very quickly become restricted to an elite subset of the population with sufficient means and lesiure time to enjoy them. Now, I'd like to examine some of your suggestions, specifically:
1. You can charge your fans for access to your studio creation time via the web.
Yes, I can, but this requires not only a large expenditure in equipment (as you yourself should know), but a large store of technical knowledge. This of course, does not take into account that artists may not wish to allow access to "unfinished works".
2. You can record your live art performance real time, dump it to DVD and sell it to the fans that were at the performance.
This suffers from all the same problems as #1, but adds the burden of live performance, plus fails to account for the ability of those DVD's to be pirated easily.
3. You can get a job with a larger company and be a salaried artist.
Do I really even need to dissect this idea? A salaried artist? I can imagine the societal and artistic value of the creations produced by such a system.
Fair use is indeed a right, and has always been so. "Copyright" itself, is not in fact a right, but a restriction of publishing rights for any person other than the copyright holder. In fact, a true strict constructionist reading of the Constitution reveals quite clearly that anything not specifically restricted by either the Constitution or statute law is a right retained by the People. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court has for some strange reason taken the stance that rights must be speciically enumerated in order to be protected...which is in clear violation of the text of the Constitution.
I think the point Lovelock is trying to make is that while we may have the power to change Gaia's climate systems, we do not necessarily have the power to regulate them as well, and since (according to Lovelock) we have already pushed Gaia's systems so far that they cannot self-regulate quickly, we may find ourselves in just that position, now.
Think of it like a bullet. The average bullet can be easily accelerated by the human hand (as it is easily possible to emit small amounts of greehouse gases), but if it were somehow possible to keep accelerating that bullet by hand until it reached a velocity equivalent to being shot from a firearm (the equivalent climatic analogy would be many small emissions of greenhouse gases over many years which do not dissipate), you would find it hard pressed to halt its movement with that same human hand in a timeframe which is likely to preserve your life.
Just the same, if Lovelock is correct and the past 150 or so years of human history have been enough to push Gaia over the edge, we may find it exceedingly hard to reverse those effects in time to save a large portion of our population.
You didn't actually read the Wikipedia articles you linked to, did you?
Some quotes from those two articles:
"Malthus did not give a time frame for his catastrophe. Thus far, population growth has been essentially geometric as Malthus predicted. The Malthusian catastrophe, however, has not occurred, principally because food supply growth itself has also been roughly geometric, not arithmetic, owing to vast technological improvements."
"...food supply has outgrown the human population, although this growth has been based heavily on a finite resource, petrochemicals, and may yet prove unsustainable."
"Malthus himself noted that many people misrepresented his theory, and took pains to point out that he did not just predict future catastrophe. He argued '...this constantly subsisting cause of periodical misery has existed ever since we have had any histories of mankind, does exist at present, and will for ever continue to exist, unless some decided change takes place in the physical constitution of our nature.'
Thus, Malthus regarded his Principle of Population as an explanation of the past and the present situation of humanity, plus a prediction of our future."
"Another way of applying the Malthusian theory is to substitute other resources, such as sources of energy for food and resource/energy consumption for population. (Since modern food production is energy and resource intensive, this is not a big jump. Most of the criteria for applying the theory are still satisfied.) Since resources / energy consumption is increasing much faster than population and most of our resources / energy comes from polluting and non-renewable sources, the catastrophe appears more imminent, though perhaps not as certain, than when considering food and population continue to behave in a manner contradicting Malthus's assumptions."
I think that land biomass sequesters a lot more carbon than you give it credit for. After all, when plants decay, the majority of their mass does not become CO2. It ends up as organic detritus on the forest floor. If the biotic theory of petroleum is correct (and I am not suggesting it isn't), then where else would all the oil have come from in the first place?
As far a "highly technological" civilization is concerned, high levels of technological advancement by their very nature are dependent on inexpensive, widely transportable forms of dense energy. The obvious example is petroleum. How on Earth do you think a technological society can be maintained without it's associated energy infrastructure?
Aside from that, bear in mind my original thesis that a man can only possess that which he can successfully defend. In the Real World, this means "defend with deadly force", which in turn means the (physically) strong will rule the weak--ergo feudal and/or pre-feudal forms of government (and I use the term "government" here very loosely), because the weak will seek to *be ruled* by the strong in order to defend their very lives. Democratic and republican forms of government on a large scale require (indeed, are *defined by*) widely distributed sovereign power. This is simply impossible without advanced weapons technology (meaning firearms, the first form of weaponry that places a physically weak man at the same standing as a physically strong man). Freedom in this world would quite simply and quickly cease to exist without the force and the will to keep it intact.
In a world without advanced personal weapons, we would see a return of trade caravans backed by groups of mercenary guards and fortified towns attempting to defend themselves against bands of marauders and other competing interests. The strong and immoral will take what they want by force from more pacifistic communities.
Nearly every aspect of our current form of civilization is wholly dependent on cheap oil. Every other form of currently available energy requires input from petroleum to be viable on a large enough scale to support a highly technological community. Even if you subscribe to the various and dubious theories that claim that we are not running low on gas, we *know* we are depleting our available reserves faster than they can be replaced, which means that they *will* run out, and all the available evidence points to us reaching a crisis point in our energy supply Real Soon Now.
The good news is that this may actually happen fast enough to reverse the effects of human-caused climate change. The bad news is that we're in for some rough times during the transition period.
Again, the only way the planet can support as many people as it does now, let alone the 9-10 billion level where the UN predicts the population wil stabilize, is through highly technological means of increasing our agricultural output. When that support structure is removed, as it will be in either the case of severe global climate change, the depletion of our hydrocarbon reserves, or both, we *will* have a massive problem on our hands. Life *will* become chaos for hundreds of millions of people (if not billions) on this planet. We will probably see the population return to, at most, pre-1850 or pre-1900 levels. Technology won't disappear overnight, but without the ability to replace equipment that has reached its end of life and without the people to replace the operators at their end of life, it will cease to hold the same amount of relevancy in our societies. If all this happens in conjunction with a massive upheaval in our climate, then the picture begins to look all the more bleak.
You seem to be assuming that the heat produced by human use of energy is insignificant compared to solar heat gain, and is therefore irrelevant. This is a dangerous assumption and incorrect because the heat we release in the process of powering our civilization is in *addition* to all the heat we receive from the sun (and from the Earth's core), and the evidence is mounting that Gaia simply cannot cope with the massive amounts of pollutants and excess heat. In no way am I trying to suggest that greenhouse gases are not a problem. I am simply pointing out another source of additional heat that most students of climate change seem to completely ignore.
Actually, survival preparations in the West (and by saying "West" I really mostly mean the US, since that's what I'm familiar with), also went far beyond "duck and cover". "Duck and cover" is just the propaganda that got spread around by the government in a pathetic attempt to pacify the masses. Our government has thought quite a good bit about nuclear was survival, and spent the money to back it up. Our country is littered with underground survival bunkers, some of whose existence has actually been admitted, and some, like the Greenbrier, have been opened to the public as museums. Others are still secret and operational.
Sadly, the more we learn about radiation and its effects, a subject which is receiving new attention thanks to the possibility of a terrorist threat, the more we realize that nuclear war isn't probably as bad as we all thought...which may lead certain people to conclude that the barrier to nuclear weapons usage should be lowered. This is most certainly not a good thing.
Locklock is missing a few points.
on
Forecasting Doomsday
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· Score: 4, Interesting
Disclaimer: I credit SimEarth with indtroducing me to Locklock's theories.:)
Lovelock is a very smart person, and he may in fact be correct about the fate that awaits us, but the reasons for it may not be the particular concerns he's raised. For example, the most prevalent theory that I have seen regarding climate change is that "global warming" may actually have the more immediate effect of "global cooling" in the form of interruption of the thermohaline cycle in the Atlantic Ocean. It would be really helpful if we could figure out if we need to move north (as Lovelock seems to suggest), or south in the face of a cooling trend. These theories are well born out by the archaeological record.
Second of all, it really disturbs me that so-called "greenhouse gases" still receive the majority of the blame for climate change in the first place. I am firmly of the belief that heat emissions may be just as much of a concern. It's not only CO2 and other pollutants coming out my my tailpipe...there's a whole lot of heat released in the process, and it has to go *somewhere*, and even nuclear energy leads somewhere down the chain to thermal inefficiencies.
If you take into account the theories surrounding the Peak Oil phenomenon, we begin to see a more complete picture of what the coming decades may hold. Many people seem to think that technology will somehow save us from ourselves. How then, can we continue to make such great technological innovations in the face of a scarcity of energy? The flip side of this is that as the effects of Peak Oil become more prominent, it is highly likely, if not assured, that we will see a massive reduction in both heat emissions and greenhouse gas emissions. It is only the availability of cheap and plentiful energy, primarily in forms which are relatively easy to transport, that has enabled the massive cancer-like growth of the human population and the resulting positive feedback loop of resource depletion in an environment of fixed bounds (barring interplanetary/interstellar colonization, an idea which is vanishingly unlikely, Earth is all we have).
There is also some evidence that a global increase in CO2 concentration is causing a global increase in vegetation, though much, if not all of this, is mitigated by our increasing resource depletion. It seems to me that the real question that Lovelock may not be able to yet answer is, "How quickly can the planet regulate itself, and exactly *where* are the "control points" beyond which the regulation fails?" I would submit that we cannot know this, even though we can look to the archaeological record for evidence of past self-regulation, the exact effect of human "intervention" in the climate remains unknown, even if we can be assured that it must inevitably have *some* negative effect.
As regards the "Max Max"-like society--remember that a man can only possess that which he can successfully defend. Community is a basic human need, though in the future we may find our communities much smaller than we once envisioned. It would not surprise me in the least to see the human population decrease over the next century by a factor of 1,000 (5-6 million people worldwide). Such a population could probably be easily sustained, even in the face of extreme climatic change. However, it is likely that we may revert to feudal, or even pre-feudal, societies in an attempt to preserve what remains of civilization. Of course, this is quite the pessimistic scenario--perhaps, with what we now know after a couple of hundred years, give or take, of technological innovation, that we can maximize the efficiency of pre-Industrial Revolution ways of life so that we can ensure the survival of many more. The real question here is, "How much have we forgotten?" The discontinuity of human history created by the Technology Revolution may mean that while we better understand things at the micro level, we have forgotten how to operate simpler forms of existence at the macro level. How many blacksmiths are there these days? Farmers? Sa
Actually, it wasn't so much the CPU power, but the lack of available memory to store a large enough dictionary for the recognition engine. The early versions had a 10,000 word dictionary. The later versions increased this to 93,000 words. This, coupled with faster processors and a new recognition engine are what enabled the MessagePad 2100 to have a quite usable experience--but it was primarily the larger dictionary that did the trick.
Pay particular attention to the table, "Occupant deaths per million registered passenger vehicles 1-3 years old, 1978-2004". What is obvious from this table is that ladder frame vehicles, particularly pickup trucks (to which I would add any SUV based on a body-on-frame pickup platform, as opposed to SUV's based on a unibody car platform), and older/larger SUV's (which are more likely to be body-on-frame), result in more occupant deaths compared to normal cars. It doesn't take Issac Newton to see the correlation between lack of crash energy dissipation structures/lower maneuverability on trucks and higher fatality rates.
The trend for lower SUV occupant fatalities coincides with the improvements in safety offered by newer SUV's, particularly those with car-based designs. However, as can be seen from the pickup statistics, these types of vehicles are still significantly *less safe to their occupants*. Unfortunately, it is difficult to characterize the "SUV" statistics more accurately because the IIHS makes no distinction between a Subaru Forester SUV and a Ford Excursion when designating an SUV an "SUV".
When you combine the fatality rates for pickups and SUV together, you begin to see the real picture. Even in 2004, with the advantages of better safety and better design in many SUV's, pickups and SUV's together produced a death rate for their occupants significantly higher than cars.
The reader is free to investigate other sources that more directly answer the question.
It's pretty well documented that light trucks are significantly more lethal, even to their occupants, than other types of passenger vehicles. This is primarily due to a light truck's lesser capacity for avoiding accidents in the first place, and secondarily related to the inability of a body-on-frame design to dissipate the energies of impact, resulting in much higher forces on the occupants of light trucks in a crash.
I own a Jeep Wrangler (not ever going to be confused with a safer vehicle), a Ford F-150 (with the 4x4 Off Road package, making it relatively high), a turbo VW Jetta, and a VW Passat. The cars are much safer than either of the trucks. This is why I don't drive the trucks the same way I drive the cars. You have to be much more careful in a truck.
Most of the trouble with light trucks stems from people who do not understand these simple facts, which is to say, the vast number of people in the US who traded in their cars for trucks in the last 15 years for no good reason.
Actually, the chart doesn't show any such thing. You either need to learn how to read, get your eyes checked, or study a bit more about statistics.
What the chart actually shows is that beginning sometime in the early 1990's, US traffic deaths per mile began to decrease at a slower rate than the rest of the world, but they are, in fact, still decreasing. The upper line in that chart refers to the fact that total annual traffic deaths are increasing, but this, in itself, is not a significant datum.
Now, I will admit that this slowing of the rate of decrease is probably due to the increased popularity of light trucks beginning around the same period, but it is still important to note that despite this fact, traffic deaths per passenger mile are *still decreasing*, despite the increased lethality of light trucks.
Except for the fact that the AOpen Mini PC doesn't actually seem to be available, although Engadget has reviewed one on 22 December 2005 that costs 700 quid...the Register's review of the same unit is a bit more extensive, but they rate it somewhere below the Mac mini.
The Linux Devices article, published 1 November 2005, claims the unit will be available throught Tiger Direct "this month", but a search of the Tiger Direct web site turns up no mention of this product.
I still wish Apple would take an iMac G5, rip out the screen, turn it sideways, rackmount it, and sell it as an iServe...
As a diehard Mac user, I've been mulling over buying a couple/few mini's myself for just this reason. I haven't been able to find anything remotly equivalent on the x86 side, but I might go ahead and build a couple of PC's out of standard components anyway. The OS's I plan to run are OpenBSD, Fedora Core, and Mac OS X/Mac OS X Server (have many machines available for this). Here's what I came up with:
Antec SLK1650B case w/350W supply: $100 at CDW Intel BOXD915GAGLK motherboard: $145 at CDW Intel Celeron 2.53 GHz CPU: $110 at CDW Kingston 256MB memory: $35 at Kingston Sony 52x CD-ROM: $25 at CDW Seagate 40GB Barracuda HDD: $65 at CDW
for a grand total of about $480, compared to the Mac mini's $499 in a minimal config.
Using the PC parts I get:
Standard 3.5" HDD (faster than Mac mini 2.5" drive) x86 compatibility (less of an issue nowadays with good PPC distros available, and Apple going to x86 shortly) Easy repairability (compared to Mac mini) Gigabit Ethernet (not *really* needed, but why not?) PCI slots 4 SATA ports
Using Mac mini's, I get:
Smaller form factor (by a huge margin), lower power requirements (probably--need to do more investigation of Pentium M systems)) Mac OS X compatibility (less of an issue nowadays with Apple going x86 shortly) Big company support (may be an advantage for some people)
Right now, for me, the big issue is the repairability, so I'm probably going the PC route right now. All my main desktops are still Mac OS X, however. YMMV. Of course, I won't be buying anything until after Macworld SF...
That can be done. I believe Kyocera has shown working engine concepts made from ceramics. Anyway, the thing that's missing here is that you need a fairly powerful electric motor system to move a car, and I'm not sure such a system as described could provide that kind of power.
I don't any particular reason why this would be difficult to pull off, or necessarily make the car any more unsafe than it already is. After all, the regular cooling system in most cars runs at temperatures which are above the boiling point of water, and under pressure as well. Maybe my calculations are off, but it would seem to me that most of the energy in steam involves the heat of vaporization of water (540 cal/gm? it's been a long time since school). So, if I were to design a steam system, I would be looking to extract that energy rather than trying to extract any additional energy added by raising the steam temperature above 100 deg. C ( 1 cal/gm ). The pressure is another matter, but I imagine that the effect of diminishing returns kicks in rather quickly when dealing with such a small system.
As for the poster that stated the steam system would only work when the engine is hot, well, a 1.8L engine heats up rather quickly. My Jetta's 1.8 turbo engine reaches normal operating temperature within minutes of startup, so you have to define what you mean by "short trips". Anything over a couple of miles, and the steam system will work. Sure, that means that moving your car maybe up to a mile each way won't give the engine enough time to heat up, but at that point you really have to ask yourself whether or not you really need to drive that distance. And in any case, the heat used to run the steam system is extracted from the exhaust, not the regular cooling system, so it should work within seconds of startup.
Wow. Taking a brief look at the responses here, I can't believe how complicated most of the answers are.
You want to know what makes a network tick? Start from the bottom and work your way up. That is, follow the OSI Protocol Stack Model, and start from Layer 1, the Physical Media, and learn why it is that Ethernet (or your choice of PHY) works the way it does. Then move up to Layer 2, the Data Link Layer, which in the case of Ethernet would be CSMA/CD, then move up to Layer 3, the Network Layer, which in most cases these days is TCP/IP (though TCP/IP really sort of covers Layer 4, the Transport Layer, as well).
Allow me to suggest the many excellent books by O'Reilly that will tell you everything you need to know.
Do not use the Cisco or Microsoft books. While most of the information there will be correct, some of it will be specific to Cisco and Microsoft's proprietary implementations. I feel it is always best to learn the generic, standardized protocols before branching out into proprietary protocols.
Check out these books from your library, or buy them. Used or new doesn't really matter all that much, as the basic protocols have not changed much in the past 15 years or so.
1. O'Reilly - Ethernet: The Definitive Guide 2. O'Reilly - Internet Core Protocols: The Definitive Guide 3. O'Reilly - TCP/IP Network Administration 4. O'Reilly - Building Internet Firewalls
That will get you started. Then, you might want to know something about other types of networks:
5. O'Reilly - 802.11 Wireless Networks: The Definitive Guide 6. O'Reilly - T1: A Survival Guide
With those six books, you'll have a solid grounding in how networks network, and how internetworks, internetwork. Once you have that, you'll have a pretty good idea of how to screw up a network. You'll also have a pretty good idea of what more advanced topics you'd like to know more about.
One old book that is out of print and difficult to find that I highly recommend is Inside AppleTalk, 2nd. Edition, from Addison-Wesley. It's the definitive book for AppleTalk, and you might want to know about AppleTalk, even though it is falling out of favor.
Ah, Sweepstakes...the search for the smallest, lightest girls ad the biggest, strongest guys...the scrambles for rubber bits to be analyzed in the lab...
"The computer should do exactly what the user wants, whenever the user wants, without the user having to think about it. This means extensive end-user testing and brutal simplification. The user should never see anything unrelated to exactly what they want to do. The folder heirarchy they see on the drive should ONLY contain things relevant to their activities. They should be able to re-arrange everything on their disk and still have it all work. They should never have to edit a config file. They should have to wade through "interface spam" of a million options which one in a million users will ever actually use. And yes, this means extensive high level architecting of everything that goes into the system, something OSS isn't traditionally good at doing."
Yes.
And additionally:
1. Stop writing code from the kernel up, and start from the user's external experience, and work your way in.
2. Calendaring and Scheduling.
3. Go read Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines.
4. Calendaring and Scheduling.
5. Sleep/Suspend/Hibernate
6. Did I mention Calendaring and Scheduling?
7. Forget everything you know about How Computers Work, and think like a user who has never seen a computer before.
Certainly, I can see how some people might think I'm offtopic, but given that CmdrTaco himself explicitly mentioned the possiblility of archtectural changes, I think I'm not. I'm not responding to the article referenced in the topic, but the topic posting, itself.
Well, it's now "70% Interesting, 30% Offtopic", further proving my thesis.
But, RedWizzard, while offering counter arguments, does not necessarily explain my assumptions as "erroneous", save for one area where he does point out a flaw in my logic. Unfortunately, as a result of the current moderation system, we will never hear real replies from those who took enough interest in my post to moderate it, as they are prevented by that system from commenting further.
It's a shame. I intended to provoke discussion of my points, and to this point, there has been very little discussion. I also find it interesting that RedWizzard's reply does not seem to have attracted any moderation points, at all. I would have expected that there would be others who found his posts interesting enough to attract some moderation or comment action.
Slashdot Mirror
There is a great difference between producing art in the hopes that you may receive a financial benefit from it, and producing art *because* you receive a financial benefit from it. There certainly can be a value to commercial art, but it rarely, if ever, produces real progress. As far as Bach and his ilk are concerned, perhaps you think a return to the patronage system, whereby only a very select, elite subset of society would have the ability to enjoy original works of art is preferable to the current reality? Of course, in Bach's case (and I should mention that I almost find your Wikipedia link offensive--I was playing Two-Part Inventions when I was 10 years old), the average serf could always go to church to hear him play, but the fact remains that even the religiously inspired works were financed by the great might of the Church, hardly the most egalitarian of institutions.
In any case, the experiences of artists who lived hundreds of years ago in feudal Europe are only marginally relevant to the experiences of artists today facing the technological challenges presented by digital reproduction.
The GP did have a point, but the response is that such points fail to take into account the development of modern society. What these points advocate is not, in fact, progress, but regression to earlier forms of society. Divison of Labor is one of the requirements for a modern society.
Actually, I would argue that the value added to a book by the author's autograph is effectively zero, unless one happens to sell said book, thus depriving one of its tangible benefits.
Adam,
I thought I'd mention that I've added you to my "Friends" here on Slashdot because I find you posts here, and some of the information on your web sites provocative. I disagree, however, with much of your content.
In this particular post, you again assert the idea that, "Copyright has one intent: to enable the cartels to retain control of the distribution." You've made this assertion multiple times recently, and I have to tell you, you couldn't be more wrong. Copyright does indeed have "one intent", but that intent is, to quote the Constitution, "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."
Unfortunately, this provision in the Constitution, which might I add, was developed by men who possessed a great deal of both insight and foresight, has indeed become polluted by moneyed interests to the point where the restrictions available to copyright holders outweigh the public interest in progress, but I wholeheartedly disagree that, as you put it, "Copyright can't work anymore." Copyright can work, and has served well for the past 200-odd years of the history of our nation. The problem we currently face for copyright is that the barrier to infringement of the copyright privilege has been dramatically lowered by the availablility of low-cost digital reproduction. People who would otherwise remain honest have, in the face of the pollution of the original intent of the copyright and dilution of moral priniciples in our society, begun to infringe upon the privileged grant of authorship because they can do so easily in a relatively anonymous fashion.
Your assertion that content creators must find new avenues of revenue generation may be a prgmatic reaction to the situation, but the end result is the destruction of a viable way of life for many artists. I find that, in general, those who advocate such measures for artists, and particularly, musicians, as you outline above, are generally not themselves the sort of artists who will find their livelihood placed at a disadvantage. It is all very well for you to advocate a life of constant live performance when you yourself do not seem to engage in such performances. Who are you to dictate what my lifestyle, as a publishing musician should be? Do I agree that the "cartels" have a disproportionate amount of power in the music economy? Certainly, but the answer, in my opinion, is not to throw the baby out with the bathwater and relegate my fellow musicians to "walk the long road".
It may be that ultimately, it may become impossible for artists to make a living off of the proceeds of recorded works, whatever their form, but I predict that if this comes to pass, the end result will be a dramatic reduction in artistic output of all forms, with the added reality that under such a system of mandatory live performance, access to artistic works will very quickly become restricted to an elite subset of the population with sufficient means and lesiure time to enjoy them. Now, I'd like to examine some of your suggestions, specifically:
1. You can charge your fans for access to your studio creation time via the web.
Yes, I can, but this requires not only a large expenditure in equipment (as you yourself should know), but a large store of technical knowledge. This of course, does not take into account that artists may not wish to allow access to "unfinished works".
2. You can record your live art performance real time, dump it to DVD and sell it to the fans that were at the performance.
This suffers from all the same problems as #1, but adds the burden of live performance, plus fails to account for the ability of those DVD's to be pirated easily.
3. You can get a job with a larger company and be a salaried artist.
Do I really even need to dissect this idea? A salaried artist? I can imagine the societal and artistic value of the creations produced by such a system.
Fair use is indeed a right, and has always been so. "Copyright" itself, is not in fact a right, but a restriction of publishing rights for any person other than the copyright holder. In fact, a true strict constructionist reading of the Constitution reveals quite clearly that anything not specifically restricted by either the Constitution or statute law is a right retained by the People. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court has for some strange reason taken the stance that rights must be speciically enumerated in order to be protected...which is in clear violation of the text of the Constitution.
I think the point Lovelock is trying to make is that while we may have the power to change Gaia's climate systems, we do not necessarily have the power to regulate them as well, and since (according to Lovelock) we have already pushed Gaia's systems so far that they cannot self-regulate quickly, we may find ourselves in just that position, now.
Think of it like a bullet. The average bullet can be easily accelerated by the human hand (as it is easily possible to emit small amounts of greehouse gases), but if it were somehow possible to keep accelerating that bullet by hand until it reached a velocity equivalent to being shot from a firearm (the equivalent climatic analogy would be many small emissions of greenhouse gases over many years which do not dissipate), you would find it hard pressed to halt its movement with that same human hand in a timeframe which is likely to preserve your life.
Just the same, if Lovelock is correct and the past 150 or so years of human history have been enough to push Gaia over the edge, we may find it exceedingly hard to reverse those effects in time to save a large portion of our population.
You didn't actually read the Wikipedia articles you linked to, did you?
/energy consumption for population. (Since modern food production is energy and resource intensive, this is not a big jump. Most of the criteria for applying the theory are still satisfied.) Since resources / energy consumption is increasing much faster than population and most of our resources / energy comes from polluting and non-renewable sources, the catastrophe appears more imminent, though perhaps not as certain, than when considering food and population continue to behave in a manner contradicting Malthus's assumptions."
Some quotes from those two articles:
"Malthus did not give a time frame for his catastrophe. Thus far, population growth has been essentially geometric as Malthus predicted. The Malthusian catastrophe, however, has not occurred, principally because food supply growth itself has also been roughly geometric, not arithmetic, owing to vast technological improvements."
"...food supply has outgrown the human population, although this growth has been based heavily on a finite resource, petrochemicals, and may yet prove unsustainable."
"Malthus himself noted that many people misrepresented his theory, and took pains to point out that he did not just predict future catastrophe. He argued '...this constantly subsisting cause of periodical misery has existed ever since we have had any histories of mankind, does exist at present, and will for ever continue to exist, unless some decided change takes place in the physical constitution of our nature.'
Thus, Malthus regarded his Principle of Population as an explanation of the past and the present situation of humanity, plus a prediction of our future."
"Another way of applying the Malthusian theory is to substitute other resources, such as sources of energy for food and resource
I think that land biomass sequesters a lot more carbon than you give it credit for. After all, when plants decay, the majority of their mass does not become CO2. It ends up as organic detritus on the forest floor. If the biotic theory of petroleum is correct (and I am not suggesting it isn't), then where else would all the oil have come from in the first place?
As far a "highly technological" civilization is concerned, high levels of technological advancement by their very nature are dependent on inexpensive, widely transportable forms of dense energy. The obvious example is petroleum. How on Earth do you think a technological society can be maintained without it's associated energy infrastructure?
Aside from that, bear in mind my original thesis that a man can only possess that which he can successfully defend. In the Real World, this means "defend with deadly force", which in turn means the (physically) strong will rule the weak--ergo feudal and/or pre-feudal forms of government (and I use the term "government" here very loosely), because the weak will seek to *be ruled* by the strong in order to defend their very lives. Democratic and republican forms of government on a large scale require (indeed, are *defined by*) widely distributed sovereign power. This is simply impossible without advanced weapons technology (meaning firearms, the first form of weaponry that places a physically weak man at the same standing as a physically strong man). Freedom in this world would quite simply and quickly cease to exist without the force and the will to keep it intact.
In a world without advanced personal weapons, we would see a return of trade caravans backed by groups of mercenary guards and fortified towns attempting to defend themselves against bands of marauders and other competing interests. The strong and immoral will take what they want by force from more pacifistic communities.
Nearly every aspect of our current form of civilization is wholly dependent on cheap oil. Every other form of currently available energy requires input from petroleum to be viable on a large enough scale to support a highly technological community. Even if you subscribe to the various and dubious theories that claim that we are not running low on gas, we *know* we are depleting our available reserves faster than they can be replaced, which means that they *will* run out, and all the available evidence points to us reaching a crisis point in our energy supply Real Soon Now.
The good news is that this may actually happen fast enough to reverse the effects of human-caused climate change. The bad news is that we're in for some rough times during the transition period.
Again, the only way the planet can support as many people as it does now, let alone the 9-10 billion level where the UN predicts the population wil stabilize, is through highly technological means of increasing our agricultural output. When that support structure is removed, as it will be in either the case of severe global climate change, the depletion of our hydrocarbon reserves, or both, we *will* have a massive problem on our hands. Life *will* become chaos for hundreds of millions of people (if not billions) on this planet. We will probably see the population return to, at most, pre-1850 or pre-1900 levels. Technology won't disappear overnight, but without the ability to replace equipment that has reached its end of life and without the people to replace the operators at their end of life, it will cease to hold the same amount of relevancy in our societies. If all this happens in conjunction with a massive upheaval in our climate, then the picture begins to look all the more bleak.
You seem to be assuming that the heat produced by human use of energy is insignificant compared to solar heat gain, and is therefore irrelevant. This is a dangerous assumption and incorrect because the heat we release in the process of powering our civilization is in *addition* to all the heat we receive from the sun (and from the Earth's core), and the evidence is mounting that Gaia simply cannot cope with the massive amounts of pollutants and excess heat. In no way am I trying to suggest that greenhouse gases are not a problem. I am simply pointing out another source of additional heat that most students of climate change seem to completely ignore.
Actually, survival preparations in the West (and by saying "West" I really mostly mean the US, since that's what I'm familiar with), also went far beyond "duck and cover". "Duck and cover" is just the propaganda that got spread around by the government in a pathetic attempt to pacify the masses. Our government has thought quite a good bit about nuclear was survival, and spent the money to back it up. Our country is littered with underground survival bunkers, some of whose existence has actually been admitted, and some, like the Greenbrier, have been opened to the public as museums. Others are still secret and operational.
Sadly, the more we learn about radiation and its effects, a subject which is receiving new attention thanks to the possibility of a terrorist threat, the more we realize that nuclear war isn't probably as bad as we all thought...which may lead certain people to conclude that the barrier to nuclear weapons usage should be lowered. This is most certainly not a good thing.
Disclaimer: I credit SimEarth with indtroducing me to Locklock's theories. :)
Lovelock is a very smart person, and he may in fact be correct about the fate that awaits us, but the reasons for it may not be the particular concerns he's raised. For example, the most prevalent theory that I have seen regarding climate change is that "global warming" may actually have the more immediate effect of "global cooling" in the form of interruption of the thermohaline cycle in the Atlantic Ocean. It would be really helpful if we could figure out if we need to move north (as Lovelock seems to suggest), or south in the face of a cooling trend. These theories are well born out by the archaeological record.
Second of all, it really disturbs me that so-called "greenhouse gases" still receive the majority of the blame for climate change in the first place. I am firmly of the belief that heat emissions may be just as much of a concern. It's not only CO2 and other pollutants coming out my my tailpipe...there's a whole lot of heat released in the process, and it has to go *somewhere*, and even nuclear energy leads somewhere down the chain to thermal inefficiencies.
If you take into account the theories surrounding the Peak Oil phenomenon, we begin to see a more complete picture of what the coming decades may hold. Many people seem to think that technology will somehow save us from ourselves. How then, can we continue to make such great technological innovations in the face of a scarcity of energy? The flip side of this is that as the effects of Peak Oil become more prominent, it is highly likely, if not assured, that we will see a massive reduction in both heat emissions and greenhouse gas emissions. It is only the availability of cheap and plentiful energy, primarily in forms which are relatively easy to transport, that has enabled the massive cancer-like growth of the human population and the resulting positive feedback loop of resource depletion in an environment of fixed bounds (barring interplanetary/interstellar colonization, an idea which is vanishingly unlikely, Earth is all we have).
There is also some evidence that a global increase in CO2 concentration is causing a global increase in vegetation, though much, if not all of this, is mitigated by our increasing resource depletion. It seems to me that the real question that Lovelock may not be able to yet answer is, "How quickly can the planet regulate itself, and exactly *where* are the "control points" beyond which the regulation fails?" I would submit that we cannot know this, even though we can look to the archaeological record for evidence of past self-regulation, the exact effect of human "intervention" in the climate remains unknown, even if we can be assured that it must inevitably have *some* negative effect.
As regards the "Max Max"-like society--remember that a man can only possess that which he can successfully defend. Community is a basic human need, though in the future we may find our communities much smaller than we once envisioned. It would not surprise me in the least to see the human population decrease over the next century by a factor of 1,000 (5-6 million people worldwide). Such a population could probably be easily sustained, even in the face of extreme climatic change. However, it is likely that we may revert to feudal, or even pre-feudal, societies in an attempt to preserve what remains of civilization. Of course, this is quite the pessimistic scenario--perhaps, with what we now know after a couple of hundred years, give or take, of technological innovation, that we can maximize the efficiency of pre-Industrial Revolution ways of life so that we can ensure the survival of many more. The real question here is, "How much have we forgotten?" The discontinuity of human history created by the Technology Revolution may mean that while we better understand things at the micro level, we have forgotten how to operate simpler forms of existence at the macro level. How many blacksmiths are there these days? Farmers? Sa
Actually, it wasn't so much the CPU power, but the lack of available memory to store a large enough dictionary for the recognition engine. The early versions had a 10,000 word dictionary. The later versions increased this to 93,000 words. This, coupled with faster processors and a new recognition engine are what enabled the MessagePad 2100 to have a quite usable experience--but it was primarily the larger dictionary that did the trick.
http://www.iihs.org/research/fatality_facts/occupa nts.html
Pay particular attention to the table, "Occupant deaths per million registered passenger vehicles 1-3 years old, 1978-2004". What is obvious from this table is that ladder frame vehicles, particularly pickup trucks (to which I would add any SUV based on a body-on-frame pickup platform, as opposed to SUV's based on a unibody car platform), and older/larger SUV's (which are more likely to be body-on-frame), result in more occupant deaths compared to normal cars. It doesn't take Issac Newton to see the correlation between lack of crash energy dissipation structures/lower maneuverability on trucks and higher fatality rates.
The trend for lower SUV occupant fatalities coincides with the improvements in safety offered by newer SUV's, particularly those with car-based designs. However, as can be seen from the pickup statistics, these types of vehicles are still significantly *less safe to their occupants*. Unfortunately, it is difficult to characterize the "SUV" statistics more accurately because the IIHS makes no distinction between a Subaru Forester SUV and a Ford Excursion when designating an SUV an "SUV".
When you combine the fatality rates for pickups and SUV together, you begin to see the real picture. Even in 2004, with the advantages of better safety and better design in many SUV's, pickups and SUV's together produced a death rate for their occupants significantly higher than cars.
The reader is free to investigate other sources that more directly answer the question.
It's pretty well documented that light trucks are significantly more lethal, even to their occupants, than other types of passenger vehicles. This is primarily due to a light truck's lesser capacity for avoiding accidents in the first place, and secondarily related to the inability of a body-on-frame design to dissipate the energies of impact, resulting in much higher forces on the occupants of light trucks in a crash.
I own a Jeep Wrangler (not ever going to be confused with a safer vehicle), a Ford F-150 (with the 4x4 Off Road package, making it relatively high), a turbo VW Jetta, and a VW Passat. The cars are much safer than either of the trucks. This is why I don't drive the trucks the same way I drive the cars. You have to be much more careful in a truck.
Most of the trouble with light trucks stems from people who do not understand these simple facts, which is to say, the vast number of people in the US who traded in their cars for trucks in the last 15 years for no good reason.
Actually, the chart doesn't show any such thing. You either need to learn how to read, get your eyes checked, or study a bit more about statistics.
What the chart actually shows is that beginning sometime in the early 1990's, US traffic deaths per mile began to decrease at a slower rate than the rest of the world, but they are, in fact, still decreasing. The upper line in that chart refers to the fact that total annual traffic deaths are increasing, but this, in itself, is not a significant datum.
Now, I will admit that this slowing of the rate of decrease is probably due to the increased popularity of light trucks beginning around the same period, but it is still important to note that despite this fact, traffic deaths per passenger mile are *still decreasing*, despite the increased lethality of light trucks.
Nifty.
Except for the fact that the AOpen Mini PC doesn't actually seem to be available, although Engadget has reviewed one on 22 December 2005 that costs 700 quid...the Register's review of the same unit is a bit more extensive, but they rate it somewhere below the Mac mini.
The Linux Devices article, published 1 November 2005, claims the unit will be available throught Tiger Direct "this month", but a search of the Tiger Direct web site turns up no mention of this product.
I still wish Apple would take an iMac G5, rip out the screen, turn it sideways, rackmount it, and sell it as an iServe...
As a diehard Mac user, I've been mulling over buying a couple/few mini's myself for just this reason. I haven't been able to find anything remotly equivalent on the x86 side, but I might go ahead and build a couple of PC's out of standard components anyway. The OS's I plan to run are OpenBSD, Fedora Core, and Mac OS X/Mac OS X Server (have many machines available for this). Here's what I came up with:
Antec SLK1650B case w/350W supply: $100 at CDW
Intel BOXD915GAGLK motherboard: $145 at CDW
Intel Celeron 2.53 GHz CPU: $110 at CDW
Kingston 256MB memory: $35 at Kingston
Sony 52x CD-ROM: $25 at CDW
Seagate 40GB Barracuda HDD: $65 at CDW
for a grand total of about $480, compared to the Mac mini's $499 in a minimal config.
Using the PC parts I get:
Standard 3.5" HDD (faster than Mac mini 2.5" drive)
x86 compatibility (less of an issue nowadays with good PPC distros available, and Apple going to x86 shortly)
Easy repairability (compared to Mac mini)
Gigabit Ethernet (not *really* needed, but why not?)
PCI slots
4 SATA ports
Using Mac mini's, I get:
Smaller form factor (by a huge margin), lower power requirements (probably--need to do more investigation of Pentium M systems))
Mac OS X compatibility (less of an issue nowadays with Apple going x86 shortly)
Big company support (may be an advantage for some people)
Right now, for me, the big issue is the repairability, so I'm probably going the PC route right now. All my main desktops are still Mac OS X, however. YMMV. Of course, I won't be buying anything until after Macworld SF...
That can be done. I believe Kyocera has shown working engine concepts made from ceramics. Anyway, the thing that's missing here is that you need a fairly powerful electric motor system to move a car, and I'm not sure such a system as described could provide that kind of power.
For the train-lingo challenged, UP=Union Pacific...
I don't any particular reason why this would be difficult to pull off, or necessarily make the car any more unsafe than it already is. After all, the regular cooling system in most cars runs at temperatures which are above the boiling point of water, and under pressure as well. Maybe my calculations are off, but it would seem to me that most of the energy in steam involves the heat of vaporization of water (540 cal/gm? it's been a long time since school). So, if I were to design a steam system, I would be looking to extract that energy rather than trying to extract any additional energy added by raising the steam temperature above 100 deg. C ( 1 cal/gm ). The pressure is another matter, but I imagine that the effect of diminishing returns kicks in rather quickly when dealing with such a small system.
As for the poster that stated the steam system would only work when the engine is hot, well, a 1.8L engine heats up rather quickly. My Jetta's 1.8 turbo engine reaches normal operating temperature within minutes of startup, so you have to define what you mean by "short trips". Anything over a couple of miles, and the steam system will work. Sure, that means that moving your car maybe up to a mile each way won't give the engine enough time to heat up, but at that point you really have to ask yourself whether or not you really need to drive that distance. And in any case, the heat used to run the steam system is extracted from the exhaust, not the regular cooling system, so it should work within seconds of startup.
Wow. Taking a brief look at the responses here, I can't believe how complicated most of the answers are.
You want to know what makes a network tick? Start from the bottom and work your way up. That is, follow the OSI Protocol Stack Model, and start from Layer 1, the Physical Media, and learn why it is that Ethernet (or your choice of PHY) works the way it does. Then move up to Layer 2, the Data Link Layer, which in the case of Ethernet would be CSMA/CD, then move up to Layer 3, the Network Layer, which in most cases these days is TCP/IP (though TCP/IP really sort of covers Layer 4, the Transport Layer, as well).
Allow me to suggest the many excellent books by O'Reilly that will tell you everything you need to know.
Do not use the Cisco or Microsoft books. While most of the information there will be correct, some of it will be specific to Cisco and Microsoft's proprietary implementations. I feel it is always best to learn the generic, standardized protocols before branching out into proprietary protocols.
Check out these books from your library, or buy them. Used or new doesn't really matter all that much, as the basic protocols have not changed much in the past 15 years or so.
1. O'Reilly - Ethernet: The Definitive Guide
2. O'Reilly - Internet Core Protocols: The Definitive Guide
3. O'Reilly - TCP/IP Network Administration
4. O'Reilly - Building Internet Firewalls
That will get you started. Then, you might want to know something about other types of networks:
5. O'Reilly - 802.11 Wireless Networks: The Definitive Guide
6. O'Reilly - T1: A Survival Guide
With those six books, you'll have a solid grounding in how networks network, and how internetworks, internetwork. Once you have that, you'll have a pretty good idea of how to screw up a network. You'll also have a pretty good idea of what more advanced topics you'd like to know more about.
One old book that is out of print and difficult to find that I highly recommend is Inside AppleTalk, 2nd. Edition, from Addison-Wesley. It's the definitive book for AppleTalk, and you might want to know about AppleTalk, even though it is falling out of favor.
Here.
Ah, Sweepstakes...the search for the smallest, lightest girls ad the biggest, strongest guys...the scrambles for rubber bits to be analyzed in the lab...
"The computer should do exactly what the user wants, whenever the user wants, without the user having to think about it. This means extensive end-user testing and brutal simplification. The user should never see anything unrelated to exactly what they want to do. The folder heirarchy they see on the drive should ONLY contain things relevant to their activities. They should be able to re-arrange everything on their disk and still have it all work. They should never have to edit a config file. They should have to wade through "interface spam" of a million options which one in a million users will ever actually use. And yes, this means extensive high level architecting of everything that goes into the system, something OSS isn't traditionally good at doing."
Yes.
And additionally:
1. Stop writing code from the kernel up, and start from the user's external experience, and work your way in.
2. Calendaring and Scheduling.
3. Go read Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines.
4. Calendaring and Scheduling.
5. Sleep/Suspend/Hibernate
6. Did I mention Calendaring and Scheduling?
7. Forget everything you know about How Computers Work, and think like a user who has never seen a computer before.
8. Pervasive distribution of user state.
9. oh, and Calendaring and Scheduling.
Certainly, I can see how some people might think I'm offtopic, but given that CmdrTaco himself explicitly mentioned the possiblility of archtectural changes, I think I'm not. I'm not responding to the article referenced in the topic, but the topic posting, itself.
Well, it's now "70% Interesting, 30% Offtopic", further proving my thesis.
But, RedWizzard, while offering counter arguments, does not necessarily explain my assumptions as "erroneous", save for one area where he does point out a flaw in my logic. Unfortunately, as a result of the current moderation system, we will never hear real replies from those who took enough interest in my post to moderate it, as they are prevented by that system from commenting further.
It's a shame. I intended to provoke discussion of my points, and to this point, there has been very little discussion. I also find it interesting that RedWizzard's reply does not seem to have attracted any moderation points, at all. I would have expected that there would be others who found his posts interesting enough to attract some moderation or comment action.