[trying to howl in terror and/or commit suicide] Oh it's worse than that; it howls in terror for a decade of days and nights without end *and they aren't even listening*. No wait... they *are* listening but the organism is deemed to be a machine by virtue of being tissue-on-silicon and stripped of human or even animal rights.
Seriously... how do you QA tissue-on-silicon? How do you conduct unit tests for wetware artifacts like "terrified"? Watch for some kind of regulatory PoC sweetheart bill from the biotechs to make its way through the Legislature that defines all tissue-on-silicon as "inanimate by definition" and hence *legally* incapable of being alive or having thoughts.
FTW. Who are they trying to kid? They are building man/machine interfaces. Unless they plan of replacing human CNS components (brain stem?) with electronics then I don't see the connection at all.
They should just come clean and say what they are doing, which is probably cool in itself, but a little spooky; they are building cyborgs.
But that isn't going to nail any grants from the NIH, so they go with the "aid to the afflicted" thing. Crap. And if they are going to lie and deflect on the basics, I guess they'll not end it there: Who said those are rat neurons? When does it become not rat neurons but human neurons, who decides that, and who advocates for those human neurons? When it is human, what does that make the rolling "machine" under those neurons -- a mobility assistance device? What if the damned thing exhibits delta waves at some point?
Send that whole team to a week-long ethics retreat -- every year -- we can *not* afford any f*ckups on this one.
it's frustrating, isn't it? The debate was over before it got started, because it's too abstract and requires a certain commitment to logical thought and careful analysis. And most of the public, and I'd say all of the politicians, are too mentally lazy to undergo the effort.
If we were talking about the approach of the Mongol horde, where everyone could climb the parapets and see for themselves the rising cloud of dust from thousands of horses, there would be less yammering about the coming problem, yes? Or even in the the case of a deadly pandemic, where cemetaries start to fill up with bodies and the cartman goes through the streets calling "bring out yer dead!" like a scene from Monty Python's "Holy Grail", people would pretty much get it.
But climate... so long as the *weather* is nice today, or tolerable, or tolerable somewhere else that I can reach with little effort, or somewhere else that is easily defended against refuges also seeking better *weather*, then what's to complain about?
As a species we're probably too stupid, in the end, to survive. Or perhaps we're due for another defining bottleneck in our slow evolution.
You have to ask yourself, given our ability to change the world, and therefore our ability to destroy our own supporting habitat right out from under us, what physical or chemical changes must our brain undergo such that the part that allows us to dream up novel tools is tempered by an instinct not to use such tools to our eventual destruction? We're told that "market forces" is the answer, but since the invention of slavery and forced labor we see that the market just makes things worse. We need an outside influence, something apart from the inventive monkey mind, to say "bad monkey no banana" when we go too far.
OK, a prize for first-to-space-in-a-private-rocket sorta made sense. But this "give me 100 gene profiles right now" stuff? What possible use is it to be able to sequence that many individuals of a single species in a short time? The only practical value worth that kind of money is genetic profiling; sort of the Nazi eugenics approach to social purification, but on steroids, with none of that messy subjective stuff like whose brow sticks out the furthest, or nose is largest, or jaw is most rugged.
Look, just because we can doesn't mean we should. Lots of nasty sh1t lurking under the surface of something like this. The smart guy would walk away from it and never look back. But it will be those clever-but-in-a-stoopid-kinda-way guys that will belly up to the trough here. Build it and they will come; pretty soon parents-to-be will be genetically screening their potential offspring (at $5K a pop) for statistical genetic matches against... well Bill Gates and Warren Buffet I suppose... in the completely unrealistic expectation that if they can just (approximately) find out who their child is similar to genetically (by some arbitrary measure) then they can give them (somehow) the training (whatever they think that is) that the child needs to enjoy a similar life experience as that person. Same way they enrole their UNBORN children in prestigious private prep schools, thinking that they've now done their best for them and can relax for 18 years. WTF is the matter with people? 5 million years of evolution and THIS kinda of monkey see monkey do CR4P is all we have to show for it?!?
Oh wait, I changed my mind. Sequence me 100 people who know what the fsck they are doing with their lives.
His predictions sound scary in part because we know that 1) people are weak and gullible and will accept their fate placidly like sheep, and 2) businesses are corrupt, putrescent, immoral, undead zombie lifeforms that will immediately try to eat our brains with these new technologies so they can get our money without our having any will whatsoever to resist.
So yeah, the deck is stacked unless the planet is hit with a asteroid the size of Manhattan. Well that's something to look forward to I guess.
Our neighborhood association is looking at installing a "peoples' network" WiFi network. There is a mesh networking stack out of CU for free, but the hardware is a blocker; needs to be small, efficient, and bulletproof so it can live for many years perched atop peoples' homes and in their attics. And it needs to be CHEAP because you need a LOT of these things scattered all over the place to avoid radio shadows. My perfect vision would be a tiny PC like this that would slip into the antenna mast base so you could mount the entire thing at once, power it up, and forget it. Sorta the "brilliant pebbles" approach DARPA favored at one time (though that was about munitions).
Looking over the comments, I don't see anyone mentioning these:
Vinyl records may actually be more robust than CD media, especially the kind you can burn yourself. And we're not so sure how long the plastic and metal layers on commercial CDs will last.
Vinyl records have no DRM, and since they are not digital they cannot have their DRM modified or added later. This means your vinyl copy of the White Album will always play on any player by any company, forever or at least as long as it holds up, even if some media company desides they want to change that. Cuz unless they come to your house and take it away from you, the vinyl is yours. Something quaint about that.
There is a reason for "steam punk" folks; some of the technology we're promulgating is being turned against us. Bits are nice but like genies they elude control, while atoms know their place.
I'm not concerned that anyone will or won't buy HP products and services as a result of them hiring spies. I'm REALLY worried that every company listed in the Fortune 500 is going to see this little episode pipe itself to/dev/null and realize that while the minor PR disadvantages of getting caught in domestic spying are certainly real, these in no way outweigh the insanely STUPENDOUS advantages to be had from hiring spys in the first place. After all, these are companies that think nothing of violating securities law, violating environmental regulations, using sweatshop labor, and cheating on their taxes. What does it matter if they toss in domestic spying if that can be shown to boost profits?
I'll go a step further, and project that investors will eventually EXPECT a company to have a vigorous spy program in place to protect their investment, and will pressure Boards to adopt the practice.
Yeah, that whole thing sounds nuts, but it follows as a projection from current practices. What the hell kinda world are we living in?
All the most desired jobs are either in the technology field, or work directly with it. Even casual entertainment is being driven by some kick-ass technology. Sure, you don't need to understand the underlying science to use a game machine, but the stuff is everywhere.
Given this, how long do you think it will be until there are "computer" like things built into library tables, hallway walls, and desks in classrooms? In a few years kids will be packing more heat (digitally speaking) than you see in most Fortune 500 Board rooms today, and thinking nothing of it.
Like it or loath it, it's here. Better start talking about how to use it effectively or else you'll be using in ineffectively by default, and who wins there?
[full disclosure: I'm a professional teacher, school technologist, web site engineer, parent, and homeschooler. I get it, and so do my kids.]
If all we have to do is suggest that some minor improvement is easy/obvious/possible, then let's close that hole right now.
I'll start:
"Voice communications systems (mobile and stationary, personal and corporate and public) can stand a lot of improvement. But current technology just needs a few tweeks to make significant progress. Improved signal filtering for one; more integrated electronics; better shielding; water-proofing; better user interfaces in general; smaller packages that integrate with clothing and into automobiles; ubiquitous use of GPS; integration into the environment; low-cost availability of services; novel forms of subscription service like pay-per-phoneme; etc."
"Social networking system software and user interfaces are nowhere near their potential, and the things waiting to be done are obvious and need only a little creative work. Areas like community-based mapping; ubiquitous presence; integration with common objects like personal apparel; tight integration with multi-player gaming environments; auto-discovery; auto-generated avatars based on what you are wearing today; integration with embedded bioelectronics to sense individual mood and healthy; integration with mobile technology; virus-based personal introductions; etc"
"With our patent on social networking, we really don't need traffic at all. Maybe just enough to have a claim to *be* a valid site so that we can extort... erm... exercise our patent rights with actual... erm... other social networks that have beat us to the... erm... violated our intellectual property at the expense of our feckless... erm... creative leadership."
What does it matter if businessmen use Apple solutions or not? Why hold them up as paragons of taste and class? They also steal their employees' pension funds, evade taxes, buy Congressional leaders, lie about financials, lie about stock options, trade using insider information, illegally leverage their monopolies, illegally hire illegal aliens and visiting foreign students for sub-standard-wage and no benefits, use sweatshop labor to engorge profits, sell State Department listed munitions and products to rogue States, use unlicensed versions of software and kick puppies. Gee-zuz. Who gives a fsck what OS a bunch of asstards like that use.
No, wait, I do care what they use and I'm going to travel 10 miles through the snow uphill both ways just to get my hands on a solution that they DON'T use so nobody will mistake me for a businessman.
And just in case you thought that the scientific name of the organisms was kind of arbitrary string of characters, educate yourself: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priapus
Over the years, a few US states and many individual school districts have experimented with one-student-one-computer, to general positive results. It's not without its detractors, of course, and I suspect that lately these programs have to a degree fallen under the wheels of the "teach toward the test" canflagration now sweeping the nation.
I think anyone who says "feed them first, then give them a computer" misses the point that if all you do is ever feed people and then move on, that's as far as they get. I get the impression that while most people living in poverty will happily accept a meal, they will likewise fight hard and loudly to better their condition even at the risk of someone going without a meal in the process. You don't have to be a rich Western geek to understand that filling your belly today doesn't guarantee a full belly tomorrow, and food aid is notorious for drying up once a current crisis is abated.
These poor people need a leg-up, and they need it now. The emerging information market will forget they even exist if they don't learn how to interact with it on its own terms. Out of sight is out of mind, and out of mind is quickly dead and forgotten.
That would imply that judges have a sense of humor. And perhaps that they are not above cruel irony. Which, if true, speaks highly of the judiciary, in my opinion.
I was about to say "WTF" to this story, then I stopped and thought about it. Clearly they are NOT modeling weather as such, but atmospheric patterns. This isn't even climate modeling; they just want to know what will happen if the sea starts to act in such-n-such a manner at some point. It's the same sort of data mining + modeling that gave us our understanding of the ENSO phenomenon in the southern Pacific. This stuff works.
I took a look at a map of sea currents and noticed that the Japanese Current is a warm water current trending NE from off of China, and no doubt means a lot to the Japanese fishery, coastal weather, and their overall climate. In light of the issue right now with the similar California Current (ie, it's gone and nobody around here knows where it went) the Japanese are maybe wondering "gee, what would happen to us [and our southern neighbors][and the west coast US] if our offshore warm current failed?"
In that context, 30 years is shorting things quite a bit, but I suppose with a puny computational engine like the Earth Simulator 30 years is about all one could expect. The interesting bits are probably 50 years out, but having 30 years to practice tuning your model (and building better engines) is likely a good use of the time.
Maybe they'll be in a good position to tell those of us living in the United States of Denial which coastal region in North America is next in the queue to be smashed into flotsam and washed out to sea. Clearly the Bush administration doesn't care a fig.
Note to self: subscribe to Earth Simulator RSS feed
I am a California credentialed teacher in Life Science. I also hold the MS degree in Biology, and have conducted field research within the UC system. My wife and I homeschool both our children from birth, now ages 10 and 5.
The reason I homeschool is not because I'm a religious wing-nut. The reason is because from my personal and profession experience public schools are much less about education and much more about crowd control. And as to socialization: the kids we meet who attend public school tend to be hyper, violent, obsessed with winning, and can't be around another child for more than 5 minutes without either hitting them or verbally abusing them. It's become such an obvious pattern that even my kids notice it. I believe (from having seen it) that the way schools are operated, and the values they install, are creating these children.
I don't care particularly why the schools are b0rk3n. Blame who you like. It doesn't really matter, does it? My job as a parent is to steer my children clear of dangers such as that, and I do. Thus I would never allow my kids to attend k-8, though I might allow them to attend 9-12 if they really want to and can prove to me that they are ready to face the battlefield that is public education.
Next, someone is going to patent "user-submitted content used to build a web site" and we will have nicely painted ourselves into a fine corner. It's out there somewhere, winding its way slowly thru the patent system. Just wait for it.
... a long time ago, at the exact moment when I recognized that radio broadcast, even assuming other life forms discover it, is just a quick stepping stone toward more efficient/direct means of distribution, like wires or fiber. Or drums. Or pherimones. Or telepathy.
It's happening right now for ourselves. The entire hi-power broadcast radio phenomenon on this planet will have begun and essentially ended within about a single lifetime, maybe two. We've no data to indicate that radio would remain a prefered means of communication anywere in the universe for any race that understands technology *that* well.
SETI has always barked up the wrong tree. Not because there are no intelligent races out there -- and I really do suspect there are -- but because if they *are* intelligent in a way that we would even recognize then they've moved on to other forms of communication, or settled into a fine state of just dealing with everyday as it comes and not worring about events in their version of Iraq.
We're not talking about how things were for the dinosaurs. We didn't develop our coastal cities and argicultural centers during the Triassic, we developed much of what we call Modern Civilization in exactly the last 400 years, and we sure as h3ll didn't grow our species to over 6billion people a million years ago. And to say that this doesn't matter entirely misses the point that everything we thought was steady and sturdy about the earth over the last 395 years is as of recently, apparently, changing and in ways we don't entirely understand and therefore will have a hard time predicting.
But sure, let's sit back and watch what happens. Big experiment in social restructuring, could be fun. Could be hard for someone, but that's the breaks. And maybe in 100 years, after the migrations have started in earnest and whole continents empty into whole other continents, rivers of human flesh and misery passing each other in hopeless crawls from one ecological disaster area to another, maybe our grandchildren won't be digging up and violating our corpses in blind rage at how stupid and cynical we were at the very moment in 400 years of screwing up when we could have turned this ship around and saved them a lot of human misery.
Cuz you know, it's just 400 years of history. Blip in the continuum man. Not my problem.
Good HR and hiring is important, but I'm afraid there is just too much money moving around to finese things. I worked US-side in a company that ran India-side outsourcing. I interacted with the India team every day. It was interesting to watch: The people there seemed happy, but once they worked for a year they left. I suspect it was for money. Can't blame them; when there is so much money coming into an economy and businesses are trying to grow by leaps and bounds, and even small increases in skills earned on-the-job are suddenly of great value, you first demand a raise and then you jump. Hopefully those I knew briefly ended up in quality jobs for good companies. I know they are doing much better financially than just a few years ago.
Me? After 3 years I was encouraged to quit. Essentially, I was outsourced:) But it was well worth my time.
Looks like TS are going after MPAA. They are throwing the book at them. If they get any traction with the courts, they'll likely have someone's head on a plate. It would be so sweet if the courts found the MPAA guilty conspiracy as well, as that would haunt them for EVAR.
I'm glad you took the time to add those points, as they were exactly what I was thinking but didn't want to take time to detail. The idea is that botnets are personal property of the remote operator, and of course they want that platform to be as useful as possible while at the same time rendering it proof against further tampering. Taking wide-open Windows systems and changing them into rock solid Linux systems would give some operator a huge advantage. In fact, he could eventually corner the market if his distro was really well thought out.
Your comment about mitochondria was brilliant. I'm a biologist and caught the implications at once. It means that the botnet users (remote operators and local users together) will serve to keep each other "in business" as it turns out. Heck, the botnet ops might even respond to "user needs" by updating the installed software, installing new apps, closing security holes, etc. to keep the "host" (end user) alive. What a tangled web we weave!
Slashdot Mirror
[trying to howl in terror and/or commit suicide] Oh it's worse than that; it howls in terror for a decade of days and nights without end *and they aren't even listening*. No wait... they *are* listening but the organism is deemed to be a machine by virtue of being tissue-on-silicon and stripped of human or even animal rights.
Seriously... how do you QA tissue-on-silicon? How do you conduct unit tests for wetware artifacts like "terrified"? Watch for some kind of regulatory PoC sweetheart bill from the biotechs to make its way through the Legislature that defines all tissue-on-silicon as "inanimate by definition" and hence *legally* incapable of being alive or having thoughts.
"All your SMS are belong to us. Beotches."
FTW. Who are they trying to kid? They are building man/machine interfaces. Unless they plan of replacing human CNS components (brain stem?) with electronics then I don't see the connection at all.
They should just come clean and say what they are doing, which is probably cool in itself, but a little spooky; they are building cyborgs.
But that isn't going to nail any grants from the NIH, so they go with the "aid to the afflicted" thing. Crap. And if they are going to lie and deflect on the basics, I guess they'll not end it there: Who said those are rat neurons? When does it become not rat neurons but human neurons, who decides that, and who advocates for those human neurons? When it is human, what does that make the rolling "machine" under those neurons -- a mobility assistance device? What if the damned thing exhibits delta waves at some point?
Send that whole team to a week-long ethics retreat -- every year -- we can *not* afford any f*ckups on this one.
Enjoy:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=_cZC67wXUTs
it's frustrating, isn't it? The debate was over before it got started, because it's too abstract and requires a certain commitment to logical thought and careful analysis. And most of the public, and I'd say all of the politicians, are too mentally lazy to undergo the effort.
If we were talking about the approach of the Mongol horde, where everyone could climb the parapets and see for themselves the rising cloud of dust from thousands of horses, there would be less yammering about the coming problem, yes? Or even in the the case of a deadly pandemic, where cemetaries start to fill up with bodies and the cartman goes through the streets calling "bring out yer dead!" like a scene from Monty Python's "Holy Grail", people would pretty much get it.
But climate... so long as the *weather* is nice today, or tolerable, or tolerable somewhere else that I can reach with little effort, or somewhere else that is easily defended against refuges also seeking better *weather*, then what's to complain about?
As a species we're probably too stupid, in the end, to survive. Or perhaps we're due for another defining bottleneck in our slow evolution.
You have to ask yourself, given our ability to change the world, and therefore our ability to destroy our own supporting habitat right out from under us, what physical or chemical changes must our brain undergo such that the part that allows us to dream up novel tools is tempered by an instinct not to use such tools to our eventual destruction? We're told that "market forces" is the answer, but since the invention of slavery and forced labor we see that the market just makes things worse. We need an outside influence, something apart from the inventive monkey mind, to say "bad monkey no banana" when we go too far.
Fat chance. We *are* doomed.
OK, a prize for first-to-space-in-a-private-rocket sorta made sense. But this "give me 100 gene profiles right now" stuff? What possible use is it to be able to sequence that many individuals of a single species in a short time? The only practical value worth that kind of money is genetic profiling; sort of the Nazi eugenics approach to social purification, but on steroids, with none of that messy subjective stuff like whose brow sticks out the furthest, or nose is largest, or jaw is most rugged.
Look, just because we can doesn't mean we should. Lots of nasty sh1t lurking under the surface of something like this. The smart guy would walk away from it and never look back. But it will be those clever-but-in-a-stoopid-kinda-way guys that will belly up to the trough here. Build it and they will come; pretty soon parents-to-be will be genetically screening their potential offspring (at $5K a pop) for statistical genetic matches against... well Bill Gates and Warren Buffet I suppose... in the completely unrealistic expectation that if they can just (approximately) find out who their child is similar to genetically (by some arbitrary measure) then they can give them (somehow) the training (whatever they think that is) that the child needs to enjoy a similar life experience as that person. Same way they enrole their UNBORN children in prestigious private prep schools, thinking that they've now done their best for them and can relax for 18 years. WTF is the matter with people? 5 million years of evolution and THIS kinda of monkey see monkey do CR4P is all we have to show for it?!?
Oh wait, I changed my mind. Sequence me 100 people who know what the fsck they are doing with their lives.
His predictions sound scary in part because we know that 1) people are weak and gullible and will accept their fate placidly like sheep, and 2) businesses are corrupt, putrescent, immoral, undead zombie lifeforms that will immediately try to eat our brains with these new technologies so they can get our money without our having any will whatsoever to resist.
So yeah, the deck is stacked unless the planet is hit with a asteroid the size of Manhattan. Well that's something to look forward to I guess.
Our neighborhood association is looking at installing a "peoples' network" WiFi network. There is a mesh networking stack out of CU for free, but the hardware is a blocker; needs to be small, efficient, and bulletproof so it can live for many years perched atop peoples' homes and in their attics. And it needs to be CHEAP because you need a LOT of these things scattered all over the place to avoid radio shadows. My perfect vision would be a tiny PC like this that would slip into the antenna mast base so you could mount the entire thing at once, power it up, and forget it. Sorta the "brilliant pebbles" approach DARPA favored at one time (though that was about munitions).
Looking over the comments, I don't see anyone mentioning these:
Vinyl records may actually be more robust than CD media, especially the kind you can burn yourself. And we're not so sure how long the plastic and metal layers on commercial CDs will last.
Vinyl records have no DRM, and since they are not digital they cannot have their DRM modified or added later. This means your vinyl copy of the White Album will always play on any player by any company, forever or at least as long as it holds up, even if some media company desides they want to change that. Cuz unless they come to your house and take it away from you, the vinyl is yours. Something quaint about that.
There is a reason for "steam punk" folks; some of the technology we're promulgating is being turned against us. Bits are nice but like genies they elude control, while atoms know their place.
I'm not concerned that anyone will or won't buy HP products and services as a result of them hiring spies. I'm REALLY worried that every company listed in the Fortune 500 is going to see this little episode pipe itself to /dev/null and realize that while the minor PR disadvantages of getting caught in domestic spying are certainly real, these in no way outweigh the insanely STUPENDOUS advantages to be had from hiring spys in the first place. After all, these are companies that think nothing of violating securities law, violating environmental regulations, using sweatshop labor, and cheating on their taxes. What does it matter if they toss in domestic spying if that can be shown to boost profits?
I'll go a step further, and project that investors will eventually EXPECT a company to have a vigorous spy program in place to protect their investment, and will pressure Boards to adopt the practice.
Yeah, that whole thing sounds nuts, but it follows as a projection from current practices. What the hell kinda world are we living in?
All the most desired jobs are either in the technology field, or work directly with it. Even casual entertainment is being driven by some kick-ass technology. Sure, you don't need to understand the underlying science to use a game machine, but the stuff is everywhere.
Given this, how long do you think it will be until there are "computer" like things built into library tables, hallway walls, and desks in classrooms? In a few years kids will be packing more heat (digitally speaking) than you see in most Fortune 500 Board rooms today, and thinking nothing of it.
Like it or loath it, it's here. Better start talking about how to use it effectively or else you'll be using in ineffectively by default, and who wins there?
[full disclosure: I'm a professional teacher, school technologist, web site engineer, parent, and homeschooler. I get it, and so do my kids.]
If all we have to do is suggest that some minor improvement is easy/obvious/possible, then let's close that hole right now.
I'll start:
"Voice communications systems (mobile and stationary, personal and corporate and public) can stand a lot of improvement. But current technology just needs a few tweeks to make significant progress. Improved signal filtering for one; more integrated electronics; better shielding; water-proofing; better user interfaces in general; smaller packages that integrate with clothing and into automobiles; ubiquitous use of GPS; integration into the environment; low-cost availability of services; novel forms of subscription service like pay-per-phoneme; etc."
"Social networking system software and user interfaces are nowhere near their potential, and the things waiting to be done are obvious and need only a little creative work. Areas like community-based mapping; ubiquitous presence; integration with common objects like personal apparel; tight integration with multi-player gaming environments; auto-discovery; auto-generated avatars based on what you are wearing today; integration with embedded bioelectronics to sense individual mood and healthy; integration with mobile technology; virus-based personal introductions; etc"
That's all I have time for now. Anyone else?
"With our patent on social networking, we really don't need traffic at all. Maybe just enough to have a claim to *be* a valid site so that we can extort... erm... exercise our patent rights with actual... erm... other social networks that have beat us to the... erm... violated our intellectual property at the expense of our feckless... erm... creative leadership."
What does it matter if businessmen use Apple solutions or not? Why hold them up as paragons of taste and class? They also steal their employees' pension funds, evade taxes, buy Congressional leaders, lie about financials, lie about stock options, trade using insider information, illegally leverage their monopolies, illegally hire illegal aliens and visiting foreign students for sub-standard-wage and no benefits, use sweatshop labor to engorge profits, sell State Department listed munitions and products to rogue States, use unlicensed versions of software and kick puppies. Gee-zuz. Who gives a fsck what OS a bunch of asstards like that use.
No, wait, I do care what they use and I'm going to travel 10 miles through the snow uphill both ways just to get my hands on a solution that they DON'T use so nobody will mistake me for a businessman.
Yeah, I'm that sick of businesses.
And just in case you thought that the scientific name of the organisms was kind of arbitrary string of characters, educate yourself: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priapus
Who said scientists have no sense of humor?
Over the years, a few US states and many individual school districts have experimented with one-student-one-computer, to general positive results. It's not without its detractors, of course, and I suspect that lately these programs have to a degree fallen under the wheels of the "teach toward the test" canflagration now sweeping the nation.
I think anyone who says "feed them first, then give them a computer" misses the point that if all you do is ever feed people and then move on, that's as far as they get. I get the impression that while most people living in poverty will happily accept a meal, they will likewise fight hard and loudly to better their condition even at the risk of someone going without a meal in the process. You don't have to be a rich Western geek to understand that filling your belly today doesn't guarantee a full belly tomorrow, and food aid is notorious for drying up once a current crisis is abated.
These poor people need a leg-up, and they need it now. The emerging information market will forget they even exist if they don't learn how to interact with it on its own terms. Out of sight is out of mind, and out of mind is quickly dead and forgotten.
That would imply that judges have a sense of humor. And perhaps that they are not above cruel irony. Which, if true, speaks highly of the judiciary, in my opinion.
I was about to say "WTF" to this story, then I stopped and thought about it. Clearly they are NOT modeling weather as such, but atmospheric patterns. This isn't even climate modeling; they just want to know what will happen if the sea starts to act in such-n-such a manner at some point. It's the same sort of data mining + modeling that gave us our understanding of the ENSO phenomenon in the southern Pacific. This stuff works.
I took a look at a map of sea currents and noticed that the Japanese Current is a warm water current trending NE from off of China, and no doubt means a lot to the Japanese fishery, coastal weather, and their overall climate. In light of the issue right now with the similar California Current (ie, it's gone and nobody around here knows where it went) the Japanese are maybe wondering "gee, what would happen to us [and our southern neighbors][and the west coast US] if our offshore warm current failed?"
In that context, 30 years is shorting things quite a bit, but I suppose with a puny computational engine like the Earth Simulator 30 years is about all one could expect. The interesting bits are probably 50 years out, but having 30 years to practice tuning your model (and building better engines) is likely a good use of the time.
Maybe they'll be in a good position to tell those of us living in the United States of Denial which coastal region in North America is next in the queue to be smashed into flotsam and washed out to sea. Clearly the Bush administration doesn't care a fig.
Note to self: subscribe to Earth Simulator RSS feed
I am a California credentialed teacher in Life Science. I also hold the MS degree in Biology, and have conducted field research within the UC system. My wife and I homeschool both our children from birth, now ages 10 and 5.
The reason I homeschool is not because I'm a religious wing-nut. The reason is because from my personal and profession experience public schools are much less about education and much more about crowd control. And as to socialization: the kids we meet who attend public school tend to be hyper, violent, obsessed with winning, and can't be around another child for more than 5 minutes without either hitting them or verbally abusing them. It's become such an obvious pattern that even my kids notice it. I believe (from having seen it) that the way schools are operated, and the values they install, are creating these children.
I don't care particularly why the schools are b0rk3n. Blame who you like. It doesn't really matter, does it? My job as a parent is to steer my children clear of dangers such as that, and I do. Thus I would never allow my kids to attend k-8, though I might allow them to attend 9-12 if they really want to and can prove to me that they are ready to face the battlefield that is public education.
Next, someone is going to patent "user-submitted content used to build a web site" and we will have nicely painted ourselves into a fine corner. It's out there somewhere, winding its way slowly thru the patent system. Just wait for it.
... a long time ago, at the exact moment when I recognized that radio broadcast, even assuming other life forms discover it, is just a quick stepping stone toward more efficient/direct means of distribution, like wires or fiber. Or drums. Or pherimones. Or telepathy.
It's happening right now for ourselves. The entire hi-power broadcast radio phenomenon on this planet will have begun and essentially ended within about a single lifetime, maybe two. We've no data to indicate that radio would remain a prefered means of communication anywere in the universe for any race that understands technology *that* well.
SETI has always barked up the wrong tree. Not because there are no intelligent races out there -- and I really do suspect there are -- but because if they *are* intelligent in a way that we would even recognize then they've moved on to other forms of communication, or settled into a fine state of just dealing with everyday as it comes and not worring about events in their version of Iraq.
We're not talking about how things were for the dinosaurs. We didn't develop our coastal cities and argicultural centers during the Triassic, we developed much of what we call Modern Civilization in exactly the last 400 years, and we sure as h3ll didn't grow our species to over 6billion people a million years ago. And to say that this doesn't matter entirely misses the point that everything we thought was steady and sturdy about the earth over the last 395 years is as of recently, apparently, changing and in ways we don't entirely understand and therefore will have a hard time predicting.
But sure, let's sit back and watch what happens. Big experiment in social restructuring, could be fun. Could be hard for someone, but that's the breaks. And maybe in 100 years, after the migrations have started in earnest and whole continents empty into whole other continents, rivers of human flesh and misery passing each other in hopeless crawls from one ecological disaster area to another, maybe our grandchildren won't be digging up and violating our corpses in blind rage at how stupid and cynical we were at the very moment in 400 years of screwing up when we could have turned this ship around and saved them a lot of human misery.
Cuz you know, it's just 400 years of history. Blip in the continuum man. Not my problem.
Good HR and hiring is important, but I'm afraid there is just too much money moving around to finese things. I worked US-side in a company that ran India-side outsourcing. I interacted with the India team every day. It was interesting to watch: The people there seemed happy, but once they worked for a year they left. I suspect it was for money. Can't blame them; when there is so much money coming into an economy and businesses are trying to grow by leaps and bounds, and even small increases in skills earned on-the-job are suddenly of great value, you first demand a raise and then you jump. Hopefully those I knew briefly ended up in quality jobs for good companies. I know they are doing much better financially than just a few years ago.
:) But it was well worth my time.
Me? After 3 years I was encouraged to quit. Essentially, I was outsourced
Looks like TS are going after MPAA. They are throwing the book at them. If they get any traction with the courts, they'll likely have someone's head on a plate. It would be so sweet if the courts found the MPAA guilty conspiracy as well, as that would haunt them for EVAR.
I'm glad you took the time to add those points, as they were exactly what I was thinking but didn't want to take time to detail. The idea is that botnets are personal property of the remote operator, and of course they want that platform to be as useful as possible while at the same time rendering it proof against further tampering. Taking wide-open Windows systems and changing them into rock solid Linux systems would give some operator a huge advantage. In fact, he could eventually corner the market if his distro was really well thought out.
Your comment about mitochondria was brilliant. I'm a biologist and caught the implications at once. It means that the botnet users (remote operators and local users together) will serve to keep each other "in business" as it turns out. Heck, the botnet ops might even respond to "user needs" by updating the installed software, installing new apps, closing security holes, etc. to keep the "host" (end user) alive. What a tangled web we weave!