The OLPC/XO utopia was more down to the earth than Kurzweil's prediction. The idea looks a lot like their predictions. A for all children computer, non-rotational storage, networking everywhere, and cheap. But even if in my own country are widely used (in Uruguay this year should finally be in all the schools of the country, already are in most of it), the utopia painted on the launch of it wasn't reached, and the technology involved was the one available since the start.
Another miss in Kurzweil predictions could have been patents. Is hard to build the future when you have quicksand patches everywhere. They existed before, existed when he made the predictions, and they are as strong as then now (maybe even stronger, Bilsky or not).
Regarding the Singularity, there is a point I miss there. No matter if the your computer, internet, the planet or all ant colonies in the world becomes suddently sentient. Unless they becomes sentient and close to all mighty (in the "there let be light" sense) how they will manifest themselves? Your computer or any of the world will suddently not do what is programmed in a way or another to do, and "magically" do something else. Computing is too deterministic to enable something in the air to change things. I dont think will be a shortcut to the singularity.. all the road must be built step by step.
Evem with no Windows 7, you have Mac OS X to compete with Linux in the desktop. And even with Windows 7, and supposing that it dont suck as much as Vista (is not a complete MS merit, is just too hard to go as down as Vista), you are missing the point (or at least, some of them). Stability is a plus for Linux, but openness, choice, freedom, security, and its own characteristics are what it still worth, exist windows or not.
My point goes more around work/dont work/worsen things. If both works, solves the problem, fixes global warming, and all live happily ever after, then cost matters and picking the cheap one will be the smart move.
If none works, or one make things worse (specially much worse), then cost wont matter there,
What if the expensive one solves the problem and the cheap one don't? Pick the cheap one without worrying if it really works, and you could end paying for the cheap one now and the expensive one later (or maybe will be too late for any other solution, so you and all will be rich corpses).
Sometimes benefit, as in the difference between survival and extintion, makes any cost worth of it. How much a life worth? and all/most lives in the planet?
But the problem here is not how much it will cost, but if it will work or even make things worse.
Terraforming other planets first have the advantage that if we mess things up, we still have this world to live on.
Now, if "fixing" this we mess things up a lot, we wouldnt be able to run nowhere. How much safety margin we have for playing a bit with the system before it runs wildly out of control? And... how better will be the measures they will take over, i.e. breeding butterflies?
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
But that was said in the old, innocent days. If he were still alive, probably would add something about the order of infinite that describes human stupidity.
I prefer to think in Nanotransistors->far more powerful not-nanoscale computers, at least in mid-term. Molecule sized memory, in example could be a big hit in all areas if an efficient cheap way of production is reached (genetic engineered cows that gives milk of memory? bacterias?).
But about complete computers, well, still dont know if all components could be stick together in a single molecule, or that it retains all the components functionality in that way.
The reasoning look to be around that some conceptual piece of work may lead to real harm to real people. That be computer games, cartoons, tv advertising, or whatever... that is not where the line was already drawn.
- Is ok i.e. drawn child pornography because no real childs harmed. What about more realistic 3d generation of the same scenes? (think in Final Fantasy movie or better quality). Where you draw that line?
- Is NOT ok because eventually could lead to some real childs harm. Then what about 98.5% of the movies/tv shows/comics/mass media in general that actually lead to a lot of real people harm glorifying murder, violence, rape, thief, and a long list of etcs? Not to mention cult to drugs, alcohol, tobacco and even fast foods from the same source that killed/harmed a lot of people too.
- Different cultures have sometimes different moral point of view. Even in this age of globalization few weeks a 8 yo child got denied the request of divorce from a forced marriage. This culture is the right one and theirs is the wrong one? The winners are the ones writting the history? what about most of the past cultures in the history (lets say, 70 years ago and back). What about all the art, books, etc they did that had some point of touch with that moral principles?
If a line must be drawn, that it be straight, or not be there at all.
You are thinking in traditional desktops, a vertical screen, a keyboard, and space. But think in them as tablets, with keyboards that can be unfolded, and you'll get a larger version of the G1, or a touchscreen Kindle, or things like that.
I dont think this models will have multitouch, but would have been a nice addition too.
you managed to make free software alternative to your products to look even more affordable.
Could be debatable if that i.e. OpenOffice/Google Docs features match MSOffice ones, even taking in account what you actually use of them. But you will use the next hour some of the features you think are missing? The hour after it? You could save big bucks before hitting a moment where you need something extra, and maybe in that time you will realize that you don't need them anyway.
"The Apple computer was invented in a garage. Same with the Google search engine", and the Doomsday virus. Now the remains of humanity crawls in caves waiting for scientist to develop a cure
You can put a lot of walls around the document, but that will hurt badly its usability. The end user would want to be able to print it? There you already have a leak that no software can control, specially if is a postscript/pdf printer.
You can agree there is no use to copy/paste portions of your documents, no need to use them under any other platform than windows, but printing?
The problem will end being in how many ways you will penalize the rightful users of those documents to avoid someone else to access them
Other approach of the problem is to take the computer and just digital media of that document out of the middle. Maybe you can give your documents in a personalized Kindle-like device that only can be used to see the doc and nothing more, but only will work putting even artificial restrictions on the usability of them.
So we have a system with a vulnerability and we are publishing the full details of the exploit instead of warning the vendor and wait for a patch?
I bet some people could consider this right for real world and wrong for the digital one or viceversa. What about systems where the line dividing digital world from real are more blurry?
fix other problems that could touch the global warming as side effects. Maybe a small percent of banks bailout money would be enough to eradicate several of the biggest deserts. That will give more habitable land, help the people that lives around there and, probably, help with the global warming.
I agree that here could be a bit of exageration (bah, probably most comments will go to the +5 funny direction) and windows with a controlled environment/drivers/applications and safe/closed network could work better than is pictured here.
But security by obscurity is sometimes a bad mistake. Not having the source (and all the freedoms related, like debug/reverse engineering it) dont let the good guys to find the exploits, and stay there for years. And the bad guys keep finding exploits not tied with that. Think in a global scale, not just some IT department with source inspection rights from microsoft.
Now, put "bad guys" at military intelligence level of a potential enemy, and your Borg fleet will get the "sleep" command in the worst possible moment.
Probably learning anything new with so much points that must be considered (military, economy, population, etc) should do the work. Risk is too much simpler than Rise of the Nations to translate this study findings in all those areas, but probably Civilization would be close enough.
But the finding that amazed me more is about the flexibility that still have the brain at 60+ of age, and the changes that you can still get at that age with 40 hrs of the right activity..
Slashdot Mirror
Dont have any sense neither, but at least could be a good excuse to send to Guantanamo all the spammers.
Remember Johnny Lee's Wii remote hacks? It isnt just for games.
The OLPC/XO utopia was more down to the earth than Kurzweil's prediction. The idea looks a lot like their predictions. A for all children computer, non-rotational storage, networking everywhere, and cheap.
But even if in my own country are widely used (in Uruguay this year should finally be in all the schools of the country, already are in most of it), the utopia painted on the launch of it wasn't reached, and the technology involved was the one available since the start.
Another miss in Kurzweil predictions could have been patents. Is hard to build the future when you have quicksand patches everywhere. They existed before, existed when he made the predictions, and they are as strong as then now (maybe even stronger, Bilsky or not).
Regarding the Singularity, there is a point I miss there. No matter if the your computer, internet, the planet or all ant colonies in the world becomes suddently sentient. Unless they becomes sentient and close to all mighty (in the "there let be light" sense) how they will manifest themselves? Your computer or any of the world will suddently not do what is programmed in a way or another to do, and "magically" do something else. Computing is too deterministic to enable something in the air to change things. I dont think will be a shortcut to the singularity.. all the road must be built step by step.
Play with Hyperion's Power Generator and the Shrike will come after you.
Evem with no Windows 7, you have Mac OS X to compete with Linux in the desktop. And even with Windows 7, and supposing that it dont suck as much as Vista (is not a complete MS merit, is just too hard to go as down as Vista), you are missing the point (or at least, some of them).
Stability is a plus for Linux, but openness, choice, freedom, security, and its own characteristics are what it still worth, exist windows or not.
My point goes more around work/dont work/worsen things. If both works, solves the problem, fixes global warming, and all live happily ever after, then cost matters and picking the cheap one will be the smart move.
If none works, or one make things worse (specially much worse), then cost wont matter there,
What if the expensive one solves the problem and the cheap one don't? Pick the cheap one without worrying if it really works, and you could end paying for the cheap one now and the expensive one later (or maybe will be too late for any other solution, so you and all will be rich corpses).
Sometimes benefit, as in the difference between survival and extintion, makes any cost worth of it. How much a life worth? and all/most lives in the planet?
But the problem here is not how much it will cost, but if it will work or even make things worse.
Terraforming other planets first have the advantage that if we mess things up, we still have this world to live on.
Now, if "fixing" this we mess things up a lot, we wouldnt be able to run nowhere. How much safety margin we have for playing a bit with the system before it runs wildly out of control? And... how better will be the measures they will take over, i.e. breeding butterflies?
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
But that was said in the old, innocent days. If he were still alive, probably would add something about the order of infinite that describes human stupidity.
Towel companies shares should had dropped too. Is a good time to invest in them, that product will have a huge demand soon.
I prefer to think in Nanotransistors->far more powerful not-nanoscale computers, at least in mid-term. Molecule sized memory, in example could be a big hit in all areas if an efficient cheap way of production is reached (genetic engineered cows that gives milk of memory? bacterias?).
But about complete computers, well, still dont know if all components could be stick together in a single molecule, or that it retains all the components functionality in that way.
The reasoning look to be around that some conceptual piece of work may lead to real harm to real people. That be computer games, cartoons, tv advertising, or whatever... that is not where the line was already drawn.
- Is ok i.e. drawn child pornography because no real childs harmed. What about more realistic 3d generation of the same scenes? (think in Final Fantasy movie or better quality). Where you draw that line?
- Is NOT ok because eventually could lead to some real childs harm. Then what about 98.5% of the movies/tv shows/comics/mass media in general that actually lead to a lot of real people harm glorifying murder, violence, rape, thief, and a long list of etcs? Not to mention cult to drugs, alcohol, tobacco and even fast foods from the same source that killed/harmed a lot of people too.
- Different cultures have sometimes different moral point of view. Even in this age of globalization few weeks a 8 yo child got denied the request of divorce from a forced marriage. This culture is the right one and theirs is the wrong one? The winners are the ones writting the history? what about most of the past cultures in the history (lets say, 70 years ago and back). What about all the art, books, etc they did that had some point of touch with that moral principles?
If a line must be drawn, that it be straight, or not be there at all.
You are thinking in traditional desktops, a vertical screen, a keyboard, and space. But think in them as tablets, with keyboards that can be unfolded, and you'll get a larger version of the G1, or a touchscreen Kindle, or things like that.
I dont think this models will have multitouch, but would have been a nice addition too.
you managed to make free software alternative to your products to look even more affordable.
Could be debatable if that i.e. OpenOffice/Google Docs features match MSOffice ones, even taking in account what you actually use of them. But you will use the next hour some of the features you think are missing? The hour after it? You could save big bucks before hitting a moment where you need something extra, and maybe in that time you will realize that you don't need them anyway.
"The Apple computer was invented in a garage. Same with the Google search engine", and the Doomsday virus. Now the remains of humanity crawls in caves waiting for scientist to develop a cure
You can put a lot of walls around the document, but that will hurt badly its usability. The end user would want to be able to print it? There you already have a leak that no software can control, specially if is a postscript/pdf printer.
You can agree there is no use to copy/paste portions of your documents, no need to use them under any other platform than windows, but printing?
The problem will end being in how many ways you will penalize the rightful users of those documents to avoid someone else to access them
Other approach of the problem is to take the computer and just digital media of that document out of the middle. Maybe you can give your documents in a personalized Kindle-like device that only can be used to see the doc and nothing more, but only will work putting even artificial restrictions on the usability of them.
The event will in part about the latest development in artificial intelligence, and that paper could be a good (or very bad) sample on that topic.
Or at least what an artificial intelligence (or natural stupidity) have to say about it.
So we have a system with a vulnerability and we are publishing the full details of the exploit instead of warning the vendor and wait for a patch?
I bet some people could consider this right for real world and wrong for the digital one or viceversa. What about systems where the line dividing digital world from real are more blurry?
fix other problems that could touch the global warming as side effects. Maybe a small percent of banks bailout money would be enough to eradicate several of the biggest deserts. That will give more habitable land, help the people that lives around there and, probably, help with the global warming.
I agree that here could be a bit of exageration (bah, probably most comments will go to the +5 funny direction) and windows with a controlled environment/drivers/applications and safe/closed network could work better than is pictured here.
But security by obscurity is sometimes a bad mistake. Not having the source (and all the freedoms related, like debug/reverse engineering it) dont let the good guys to find the exploits, and stay there for years. And the bad guys keep finding exploits not tied with that. Think in a global scale, not just some IT department with source inspection rights from microsoft.
Now, put "bad guys" at military intelligence level of a potential enemy, and your Borg fleet will get the "sleep" command in the worst possible moment.
They learnt. Thats why they are using it for ships that have "go underwater" as a feature,
Despair saw it coming first
Probably learning anything new with so much points that must be considered (military, economy, population, etc) should do the work. Risk is too much simpler than Rise of the Nations to translate this study findings in all those areas, but probably Civilization would be close enough.
But the finding that amazed me more is about the flexibility that still have the brain at 60+ of age, and the changes that you can still get at that age with 40 hrs of the right activity..
the Machines can't be wrong, they do the modelling using a Matrix