Try "V" rated tires; you'll be lucky to
get 20,000 miles out of a set of those.
That makes the math work out pretty well.
Maybe this researcher has a sports car.
Cheap 2 megapixel cameras + limited storage
free mailboxes = bad news. Now you have to
train your friends to scale down their
pictures before mailing them. The problem is,
a lot of people are at most dimly aware of the
idea that data actually has a "size".
Put your mind back in the 18th century when
copyrights and patents were first instituted
in this country. Back then, there was no such thing as software, and I believe that if there were, binary-only releases would have been specifically excluded from copyright protection.
Why? Because it is clear that the original
lawmakers were aginst the extensive
use of trade secrets as a form of competetive
advantage. This is the entire reason that
patents were conceived. If you have a secret
formula, you get a patent on it and reveal
the secret in return for a limited time
monopoly on the use of that formula. The
public benefits because your innovation doesn't
disappear when you die, and they
can build on your knowledge as soon
as the patent is published. You benefit because
the risk of somebody reverse-engineering your
formula is eliminated.
The other major form of IP, copyrights, applied
to literature and music, which by its nature
is non-secret. In addition to stimulating
production of new works, copyrights also
encourage people to openly publish works they
might otherwise only release under NDA.
Notice that both forms of IP, as originally
conceived, are intended to reduce
secrecy. Somehow, though, when software
came along, people forgot the original principles
under which IP protections were created.
Software binaries are naturally a secret
formula. The founding fathers wanted to
discourage secret formulas by
granting IP protection.
However, binary-only releases were given full copyright protection with no requirement that
the secret formula ever be released.
The public never gets the benefit of the
secret knowlege that is protected by the
government force that is handed out for free
to the creators of binary software releases.
Software patents are often of little use to the
public because they usually detail only a tiny
detail of the entire system. Enough to block
competetitors from building a competing product,
but not nearly enough to reveal in detail how
all of the APIs and file formats work.
At any rate, I don't think that either
copyrights or patents are a good match for
software, which is a product unlike any physical
good or work of literature. They should have
invented a third form of protection just for
software that balances the interests of the
creators and consumers. Kludging patents
and copyrights (simultaneously) onto software,
then letting the creators keep it all secret
anyway, has created huge distortions in the
marketplace which tends to create monopolies,
buggy code and noninteroperable products.
Perhaps somebody can explain what factors cause people in one of the oldest western countries around to conquer the fear of new technology so well.
Probably it's the same reason that smart cards
are much more popular in Europe than in the
U.S.: because their POTS phone system sucked.
In the U.S., it was cheap, easy and
reliable to authenticate
each credit card purchase with a phone call
to the Visa/Mastercard mother ship.
Since that method wasn't as practical in Europe,
they went with self-authenticating smart
credit cards. Result: they end up looking
more "high tech".
About 10 years ago I was standing
behind a guy who was buying a resistor
or something. I'll always remember the
ensuing exchange:
cashier: Name?
guy: Cash.
cashier: *First* name?
guy: CASH! I'm paying with
cash!
cashier: Ok. I'll need to get
your name and address. What's your full name?
guy: GOD DAMN IT You don't
need to know my name and address!...
... and so on. He proceeded to rip that
clerk a few new ones. The
clerk held his ground for several minutes, but
he eventually relented and let him pay anonymously. Then the guy walked
cussing and swearing out the front door.
It always made me wonder what kind of marketing
genius is willing to piss off some of their
customers that badly.
while the geek factor may be high, what sort of 12-bit software is it going to run ? linux?
In the bottom of a box somewhere in my
basement, I've still got the BASIC source code
for the Star Trek game we used to run on
our high school's PDP-8.
For each player's turn, it printed out
the map of the current galactic sector along
with any Klingon ships on the line printer.
It's funny, I remember when we played that game
we felt like we had godlike control over
a mysterious and powerful machine. Now
when I play computer games, I mostly feel like
a twitching moron.
That's why power users never used it. There
were many excellent full-screen file manager tools available. My favorite was PFM.COM (back
when.COM meant executable file). Even today
I sometimes miss being able to do a few of
the tricks PFM could do.
Midnight Commander comes close,
but since it translates everything through
a seriall TTY, it loses the mysterious solid
feel that you got by programming directly
to the keyboard and screen hardware. It also
tries to offload some hard work into bash, so
there's a bit of an impedance mismatch between
the file manager and the shell beneath it.
The old DOS file managers were more monolithic,
and therefore felt more unified.
Anyway, with the right tools, I never felt
that I was lacking expressive power when
running DOS.
We shouldn't forget the pioneering research
in this field done by N. Kruschev, who
discovered in the 1960s that one of the most
effective ways to garner attention at
a large meeting is to take off your shoe and
bang it angrily on the table.
Even though his method is much more effective
than eye contact, it is
rarely used today.
I think that in the near future, your life
expectancy after firing at those military
targets will be approximately 30 seconds.
The overhead drones will detect your bullet
on radar, backtrace it to
calculate your position and dispatch
a guided missile instantly.
Information is power. Small arms don't give
you any information.
So there it establishes that I, a male physically capable of acting in concert for the common defense has a right to own and use firearms.
You can shoot and shoot at that Global Hawk
circling high overhead, but you'll never hit it.
The parent post was right. The guns they
give you the right to use are irrelevant in
today's conflicts. The fierce gun debate
is mostly a red herring
to keep you distracted while they remove
your other rights.
since an inside temperature that doesn't make paper burn and/or plastic liquefy, is still a temperature that will probably cook your cdr dye and/or play havoc with other magnetic media.
Not to mention that the walls of fireproof
safes are usually filled with moisture-retaining
material. That helps with fires, but the
humidity inside the safe is always high. Over time, that could degrade the plastic and metal
parts of any digital media stored inside even
without a fire.
Most people just use their Windows systems as administrators, doesn't mean it has to be that way. You need administrator privledges to do things like install drivers and some software, but not to run what's already on there.
At least as of Win2K, so many things break when you try to run as non-administrator, it's just
not worth it for most people.
You answered your own question. IIRC, Rush
Limbaugh just signed the largest radio
syndication deal in history. (Ironically,
he harps about how his
message is marginalized by the
"liberal media" while doing record-breaking
broadcast industry deals.) That's your
right wing centered media outlet: Rush and all
of his clones that dominate talk radio these
days. Their influence is starting to take
over TV as well, starting with the more
obscure cable channels.
It failed at everything. It was tough to use, the menus were cluttered with software you didn't have but you could pay for. It was slow, it couldn't run windows programs the way it advertised.
That description brings back memories of Win95.
Hmmm, If history repeats itself, Lindows could be a runaway success!
It's simple: Vote with your actions.
If you don't like the McDonald's kiosks in your video game, don't use them. You can
use a Burger King or KFC kiosk instead.
Once we develop the technology to accurately move around asteroids, over time we
end up with a bigger risk that somebody intentionally
points one at the earth than we currently
have of random collisions.
Think of how many insane cult and national
leaders there have been in the past century
alone. Now think of how many more we'll see in
the next 100,000 years or so. I'd stick
with the natural odds on this one.
Unfortunately, though, if this technology
is possible, somebody is going to go ahead
and develop it. Given human nature, there is
no way to stop the proliferation of tempting
new powers.
Like hell they havent... All you have is input, process and output. You have sense nodes reporting to some basic decision-making logic. There is no "if I do this..." at all. You spray, it flies away from spray.
OK, when you've developed your working
cockroach prototype that finds food, seeks
out mates, evades danger, flies, crawls
in any orientation with a nice
fluid motion, lays eggs, liberally dispenses brown turd stains,
and generally gets around without looking like
its lost, with a 100% uptime over the several
months of a
cockroach life, all without any help whatsoever
from any source, post a story here on/.
Talking
about how easy it would be to program doesn't
count. Like I said, if it were easy (or
even possible with today's technology), someone
would have done it by now.
I don't know how he calculates that. Maybe
that matches the raw number of logic operations
of a human brain, but a digital computer has
a completely different organization, so it's
like comparing apples and elephants.
The brain's advantage comes through the fact
that the "logic" is embedded within and
mixed up with an
incredibly powerful fully associative storage
system. The keys and values aren't
little byte strings or numbers like digital
computers use, but instead they are high-level
concepts and experiences. We don't even know how
to begin designing a direct emulation of this
kind of hardware.
OTOH, it might take someone 10 minutes to manually do a long division problem that the
computer can solve in under 1 nanosecond.
However, even with all of the awesome math
throughput provided by supercomputers
that consume tens of kilowatts of power,
nobody's come up with a system that has the
real-world common sense and precise realtime
control capablities of a 1 milliwatt
cockroach brain. (Did you know that they
can fly? I discovered that one day by spraying
one on the ceiling. Scared the living
shit out of me.)
Obviously, making speed comparisons between
brains and digital computers is utterly
meaningless when the fundamental operations
they perform are so completely different.
There seems to be a trend lately of graphics
adapters kludging ever bigger chips and
heatsinks onto a PCI card. Motherboards seem
to get smaller and more integrated.
I predict that we'll soon be buying big metal
graphics controller boxes from nVidia complete with heavy duty power supplies and massive
cooling capacity. After you get it home, you'll
open up your graphics adapter and insert a little motherboard and CPU into
an option slot
to complete your computer system.
Because doing your own thing doesn't work in the modern world, what matters is interoperability.
Exactly. That's why we have global standards
such as the Metric System. Any country that would
use some other system
would be at a great
disadvantage, and would never be able to achieve
any measure of economic success.
Slashdot Mirror
Try "V" rated tires; you'll be lucky to get 20,000 miles out of a set of those. That makes the math work out pretty well. Maybe this researcher has a sports car.
Cheap 2 megapixel cameras + limited storage free mailboxes = bad news. Now you have to train your friends to scale down their pictures before mailing them. The problem is, a lot of people are at most dimly aware of the idea that data actually has a "size".
Why? Because it is clear that the original lawmakers were aginst the extensive use of trade secrets as a form of competetive advantage. This is the entire reason that patents were conceived. If you have a secret formula, you get a patent on it and reveal the secret in return for a limited time monopoly on the use of that formula. The public benefits because your innovation doesn't disappear when you die, and they can build on your knowledge as soon as the patent is published. You benefit because the risk of somebody reverse-engineering your formula is eliminated.
The other major form of IP, copyrights, applied to literature and music, which by its nature is non-secret. In addition to stimulating production of new works, copyrights also encourage people to openly publish works they might otherwise only release under NDA.
Notice that both forms of IP, as originally conceived, are intended to reduce secrecy. Somehow, though, when software came along, people forgot the original principles under which IP protections were created. Software binaries are naturally a secret formula. The founding fathers wanted to discourage secret formulas by granting IP protection. However, binary-only releases were given full copyright protection with no requirement that the secret formula ever be released.
The public never gets the benefit of the secret knowlege that is protected by the government force that is handed out for free to the creators of binary software releases. Software patents are often of little use to the public because they usually detail only a tiny detail of the entire system. Enough to block competetitors from building a competing product, but not nearly enough to reveal in detail how all of the APIs and file formats work.
At any rate, I don't think that either copyrights or patents are a good match for software, which is a product unlike any physical good or work of literature. They should have invented a third form of protection just for software that balances the interests of the creators and consumers. Kludging patents and copyrights (simultaneously) onto software, then letting the creators keep it all secret anyway, has created huge distortions in the marketplace which tends to create monopolies, buggy code and noninteroperable products.
Probably it's the same reason that smart cards are much more popular in Europe than in the U.S.: because their POTS phone system sucked.
In the U.S., it was cheap, easy and reliable to authenticate each credit card purchase with a phone call to the Visa/Mastercard mother ship. Since that method wasn't as practical in Europe, they went with self-authenticating smart credit cards. Result: they end up looking more "high tech".
They're probably better at grammar, too.
cashier: Name? ...
guy: Cash.
cashier: *First* name?
guy: CASH! I'm paying with cash!
cashier: Ok. I'll need to get your name and address. What's your full name?
guy: GOD DAMN IT You don't need to know my name and address!
It always made me wonder what kind of marketing genius is willing to piss off some of their customers that badly.
In the bottom of a box somewhere in my basement, I've still got the BASIC source code for the Star Trek game we used to run on our high school's PDP-8. For each player's turn, it printed out the map of the current galactic sector along with any Klingon ships on the line printer.
It's funny, I remember when we played that game we felt like we had godlike control over a mysterious and powerful machine. Now when I play computer games, I mostly feel like a twitching moron.
...followed by "Are you hinting my apples aren't what they ought to be?"
That's why power users never used it. There were many excellent full-screen file manager tools available. My favorite was PFM.COM (back when .COM meant executable file). Even today
I sometimes miss being able to do a few of
the tricks PFM could do.
Midnight Commander comes close, but since it translates everything through a seriall TTY, it loses the mysterious solid feel that you got by programming directly to the keyboard and screen hardware. It also tries to offload some hard work into bash, so there's a bit of an impedance mismatch between the file manager and the shell beneath it. The old DOS file managers were more monolithic, and therefore felt more unified.
Anyway, with the right tools, I never felt that I was lacking expressive power when running DOS.
Writing a new operating system? I choose C.
Coding up your own desktop environment? I choose C.
Desire to write the next award-winning PC game? I choose C.
You forgot:
Author the unchecked buffer that opens the remote root exploit that enables next blockbuster Internet worm? I choose C.
Even though his method is much more effective than eye contact, it is rarely used today.
Information is power. Small arms don't give you any information.
You can shoot and shoot at that Global Hawk circling high overhead, but you'll never hit it. The parent post was right. The guns they give you the right to use are irrelevant in today's conflicts. The fierce gun debate is mostly a red herring to keep you distracted while they remove your other rights.
Not to mention that the walls of fireproof safes are usually filled with moisture-retaining material. That helps with fires, but the humidity inside the safe is always high. Over time, that could degrade the plastic and metal parts of any digital media stored inside even without a fire.
At least as of Win2K, so many things break when you try to run as non-administrator, it's just not worth it for most people.
You answered your own question. IIRC, Rush Limbaugh just signed the largest radio syndication deal in history. (Ironically, he harps about how his message is marginalized by the "liberal media" while doing record-breaking broadcast industry deals.) That's your right wing centered media outlet: Rush and all of his clones that dominate talk radio these days. Their influence is starting to take over TV as well, starting with the more obscure cable channels.
Oh yeah... implying he's "accurate". ROTFLMAO.
That description brings back memories of Win95.
Hmmm, If history repeats itself, Lindows could be a runaway success!
It's simple: Vote with your actions. If you don't like the McDonald's kiosks in your video game, don't use them. You can use a Burger King or KFC kiosk instead.
Think of how many insane cult and national leaders there have been in the past century alone. Now think of how many more we'll see in the next 100,000 years or so. I'd stick with the natural odds on this one.
Unfortunately, though, if this technology is possible, somebody is going to go ahead and develop it. Given human nature, there is no way to stop the proliferation of tempting new powers.
OK, when you've developed your working cockroach prototype that finds food, seeks out mates, evades danger, flies, crawls in any orientation with a nice fluid motion, lays eggs, liberally dispenses brown turd stains, and generally gets around without looking like its lost, with a 100% uptime over the several months of a cockroach life, all without any help whatsoever from any source, post a story here on /.
Talking about how easy it would be to program doesn't count. Like I said, if it were easy (or even possible with today's technology), someone would have done it by now.
I don't know how he calculates that. Maybe that matches the raw number of logic operations of a human brain, but a digital computer has a completely different organization, so it's like comparing apples and elephants.
The brain's advantage comes through the fact that the "logic" is embedded within and mixed up with an incredibly powerful fully associative storage system. The keys and values aren't little byte strings or numbers like digital computers use, but instead they are high-level concepts and experiences. We don't even know how to begin designing a direct emulation of this kind of hardware.
OTOH, it might take someone 10 minutes to manually do a long division problem that the computer can solve in under 1 nanosecond. However, even with all of the awesome math throughput provided by supercomputers that consume tens of kilowatts of power, nobody's come up with a system that has the real-world common sense and precise realtime control capablities of a 1 milliwatt cockroach brain. (Did you know that they can fly? I discovered that one day by spraying one on the ceiling. Scared the living shit out of me.)
Obviously, making speed comparisons between brains and digital computers is utterly meaningless when the fundamental operations they perform are so completely different.
I predict that we'll soon be buying big metal graphics controller boxes from nVidia complete with heavy duty power supplies and massive cooling capacity. After you get it home, you'll open up your graphics adapter and insert a little motherboard and CPU into an option slot to complete your computer system.
Ummm... it isn't theirs to sell, is it? IIRC, they never bought this spectrum in the first place. It was a freebie, and now they're squatting on it.
Exactly. That's why we have global standards such as the Metric System. Any country that would use some other system would be at a great disadvantage, and would never be able to achieve any measure of economic success.