Having recently seen a major project...
on
Programming Ruby
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· Score: 2
...ported from Perl to Ruby, I have no doubts about its value: We had about two years worth of code in Perl, including some difficult problems relating to aspect-oriented programming and code generation. Within weeks our Ruby version caught up and we are now way ahead of where we would have been had we stuck with Perl.
druby saved us a lot, and the Smalltalk-style mix-ins (what others might call "OO interfaces") completed the package.
All of this could not been possible without this book because the Japanese-language docs do not Babelfish well. (Because the concepts are very abstract, the translations become incomprehensible to the point of providing quite a bit of unintentional humor.)
One caveat, however, about the language and this book: Ruby is VERY object-oriented. Otherwise it makes a good first language. But OO languages are not usually taught to beginners, and I haven't seen anyone really figure out a way to explain object-oriented concepts to newbies.
This book makes a cursory attempt to do so in the beginning chapters, but it is less than totally successful. Thus I would recommend this book more to experienced programmers than to beginners.
Perhaps Perl will face this same dilemma with Perl 6 (which is looking more and more like Ruby, as I read the proposals, etc.). I don't think an OO for beginners book is impossible <note target="Tim O'Reilly">I'd even be willing to write it</note> and Ruby is the language to do it for. But this book is not it.
The Ruby archive is still sparse compared to CPAN, but the code is clean and functional. If you are a young programmer looking to make a name, this is a great place to contribute code which will be used. Ruby is fun to use, and you can use CPAN as a guide for what is needed.
The only really big hole in the Ruby archive is the lack of a fully functional DBI equivalent. The DBI architecture (a clearly defined interface which is theoretically usable with all database-specific implementations) is ideal for Ruby's capabilities. Hopefully someone is working on such a class for Ruby. (I also hope the specific implementations will not break the interface quite as often as Perl's DBI is broken. Perhaps we can learn from past mistakes.)
My prediction: As dynamic code generation and meta-objects really come into their own, Ruby will become a major force.
The conversion to digital is not working particularly well. The equipment is very expensive and the benefits are limited (certainly not enough to justify the outrageous expense). People are not flocking to the new technology (as they did when color was introduced) and there is little cachet in a station going digital (or in a home going digital).
Public TV is in a bind because they have been given a deadline for conversion which makes no sense. The commercial TV stations have a large number of options: They can use the larger bandwidth for more stations while they wait for a market to develop for digital (thus bringing in more revenue). Such an option just gives public TV more space to fill.
The WNET lament about interactive content is laughable, however. WGBH in Boston produces the best web sites on the web (check out NOVA and Frontline for good examples of what the future of the web will be like for sites associated with TV shows. WNET is way behind in this, but it has nothing to do with anything except the bureaucracy at WNET.
I ride the train as much as I can because I can get a lot more done on the train than I can on a plane. There's an electrical outlet for a laptop, a nice little private cubicle, a decent restaurant, and even my personal bathroom. I can stretch out my legs and relax and code to my heart's content.
There's only one thing missing: an Internet connection. If they can provide one for the DEA, why can't I have one?
This is especially problematic when you realize that trains often travel through areas not covered by cell phones here in the West.
...is the position XBox developers will be in if it's not ready when they are:
They will have a product they cannot sell, which they've been wondering whether or not they should port to PCs. Their answer will magically appear: We have to!
The port to PCs will be easier than to other consoles. That's what they'll do to raise some quick get-us-through-'til-launch cash. The result: When XBox eventually launches, its exclusive games will no longer be exclusive. (Some will even have already been rejected by the marketplace.)
Releasing a limited number of consoles will be a safer option: Then the we're-willing-to-wait-all-night-in-line crowd will get them. Once you've made a fool of yourself buying console, you're not going to tell everybody it sucks (or that the games suck). You'd just look like a fool. Early adopters always evangelize.
...of the transition between the Institutional Balance and the Interindividual Balance, morality (and even reality) can appear to be relative.
This is because they define themselves as institutions, and they are beginning to see the limitations of such a model. They scream out in their existential angst, "There is no reality because institutions can deceive me about reality!" And yet they cannot let go of their own sense of self long enough to build a new one.
But the reality which they see as socially constructed is, in fact, something more: It is socially emergent. Their own angst-ridden selves have emerged from a social environment and could not have existed in their advanced form without the social institutions from which they have emerged. That does not mean they are socially constructed.
Yet, if they believe they are socially constructed, any other idea (including that idea which their selves most need to find) threatens their very existence.
Once they realize it's possible for rights and principles and even minds to emerge from institutionally-defined reality without being constructed by the institutions, they will be freed into the Interindividual Balance and their need to rail against corporation will dissipate (without giving in to any corporate reality).
All of which does not obviate the need for community because community (as Kiro5hin seems to define it) is, in fact, the institution most conducive to emergence into the intimate state of self.
If I figure out a really neat idea for a faster-than-light drive but there's just one minor problem with it, I write a hard sci-fi novel based on it, glossing over the problem.
If I figure out a really neat idea for a faster-than-light drive with no problem, I don't have time to write the novel. I'm out in the back yard building my spaceship.
But I can assure you that many readers of fiction underestimate just how much of a novel's content is simply made up. There is a common assumption among readers that much of what appears in a novel is thinly veiled and repackaged reality. You can imagine how provoking this is to a novelist who works so hard to invent it.
...especially since the brilliance of The Cryptonomicon is the degree to which it blended clearly historical facts with clearly fictional events. I found myself wondering time and again where the line was drawn between what was made up and what was not. Time and again Neal used a series of facts (say Fact A, Fact B, Fact C, Fact D, and Fact E) the first of which (Fact A) was based on history and the last of which (Fact E) clearly could not have happened. The fiction was blended so well with the fact that I couldn't tell where the transition between fact and fiction began (Fact B? Fact C? Fact D?).
A good example of this was the account of Alan Turing and how he intuited the idea of a digital computer by contemplation of Goedel's Incompleteness Theorem: I knew Turing conceived of the idea of computers long before they were invented. I knew he was very much aware of Goedel (his Noncomputability Theorem rests entirely on Goedel's methods).
But I had never heard it said that he had figured out that computers were possible based on the implications of Goedel. We can see that today, but we have the benefit of hindsight. Was this just something Neal made up based on that hindsight? Or did Turing really see this back then?
There were clearly fictional parts of the book's Turing. We can safely assume the bicycle ride was invented. (Am I the only one who noticed the fact that he introduced the bike-chain explanation of why prime numbers are so key to crypto without ever doing anything with it?) The vicar's wife probably never peeked at her bowl full of balls (I think).
Where did the Goedel inspiration go on this truth-fiction spectrum? Neal's blurring of the line makes it hard to determine from the novel. That's good. It makes for a ripping good yarn. But it also makes me less than sympathetic to the author's complaints about readers. Yeah, those readers just assume more of the novel is real than is actually the case.
That's right. Mess with our minds and then complain that we're confused.
For those who are wondering, yes, Enos Root did die in Sweden in 1944 only to reappear 50 years later in a prison in the Philippines. And, for those who are wondering about my question, I have found evidence that Turing's inspiration was indeed based on Goedel.
Of course, there's always the possibility some reality hacker read the book, decided it was better than the actual story, and started spreading historical references to the Goedellian inspiration of Turing. The universe is, after all, controlled by those who have an understanding of the source code.
Reading is FUNdamental, according to the vicar's wife. I don't think she peeked. Really.
...against scientific creationism does not mean that scientific creationism is, in fact, right.
Note that Caplan (who has said much more interesting things than this: see, for instance, his interview on cloning on the Charlie Rose Show) may not be actually saying as much as some people are assuming he's saying. He specifically states that the Human Genome Project results disprove "scientific creationism," not creationism. Since "scientific creationsim" refers to a specific movement, it is entirely possible they have made statements and predictions which are contradicted by this new evidence. He goes on, however, to imply that the new evidence proves something more broad about creationism in general, which is clearly false.
I believe that the best arguments against scientific creationism are not scientific arguments, but moral and religious arguments. I will offer two below: one theological and one practical.
My theological argument is based on the fact that I believe in a God of truth. If God created the world 4,000 years ago or so, then he created it as if it had existed for billions of years and as if life evolved slowly over time. Thus he is a God of deceit. Since it is more important to me that God be truth than that He created the universe a few thousand years ago, I choose to believe that those who believe the Bible says the universe was created (relatively) recently are wrong. Note that, even if I chose to believe that God was deliberately deceiving me, I would still have to decide whether I should accept that deception as what He wants me to believe.
When I go to the Bible to see what it says, I find that the statements there are vague and contradictory. It is not at all clear that the 7-day creation story is to be taken literally. There are other places where creation appears to take place over a long period of time.
I also note that my belief that God is truth is not unambigously supported in the Bible. While there are several places where "God is truth" is clearly indicated, Jeremiah just as clearly says that he saw God lie to other prophets in order to trick Ahab into an ill-starred battle. The belief on which I found this theological argument is a belief and nothing more. But I think it is preferable to the alternative.
We have seen other times when religious communities believed just as strongly as the creationists that the Bible said things which in the end proved to be untrue. An obvious example was the geocentrism on which many scientists were persecuted during the Copernican revolution and beyond. Today we do not believe that the Bible says the earth is the center of the universe, and it clearly is not. I suspect someday we will see virtually universal agreement that the Bible does not say anything one way or the other about evolution or about Darwinism. And I suspect we will find the current debate as quaint and silly as we now view the torture and excommunication of those who suggested the sun was at the center of our solar system.
This historical perspective leads me to my second argument against scientific creationism: the practical argument.
As a practical matter, it seems like the goal of Christians should be to generally encourage belief in God and to avoid things which discourage belief. I believe this is the central tenet of evangelism, that we should emulate the life of Christ, the Evangelist.
Observing history, it is clear to me that the Copernican revolution did some damage to belief in Western Europe not because Copernicus sought to sow disbelief but because the assumption of the church was that he would. By tying belief to a doctrine which was not in fact clearly indicated by scripture, the church ensured that (when the evidence came in supporting the heliocentric model) the community of Christianity was damaged far beyond what it would have been had it not taken such a dogmatic stand.
It seems to me that, as a practical matter, we Christians have a moral obligation to avoid taking a stand on evolution which will be as damaging to our community as was anti-Copernican dogma.
And it should be made clear this is, in fact, what most Christians believe. The vocal minority of scientific creationists may get the most press. But surveys show that many, if not most, people who believe in God (again a majority) also believe in evolution. Remember that Darwin was trained as a minister and never believed he was attacking the Bible or belief in God.
Indeed, the head of the public effort to decode the human genome, Francis Collins, is very open about his Christianity and his belief that genomics do not in any way threaten God. Here is a quote from him:
God is not threatened by all this, I'm happy to report. I think God thinks it's wonderful that we puny creatures are about the business of trying to understand how our instruction book works because it's a very elegant instruction book indeed.
The metaphor has some value in looking at software design. But it fails to resolve any flame-wars over OS superiority.
"In the Unix philosphy, each little script is totally self-contained, its operation can be analyzed independently of the context, and combining several scripts will just yield the combination of their results.
"Our genes, on the other hand, are not independant from each other: the presence of one given gene can have significant influence on the expression of another gene. A genotype cannot be analyzed gene-by-gene: the result of a genotype cannot be predicted from the result of each gene taken separately."
Complexity theory supposes that both of these things are true: That the individual parts of a complex whole are capable of being analyzed for their own simple behaviors AND that they can interact with each other in ways that cannot be totally predicted or understood from the behaviors of the individual parts.
Note that I have not assumed that genes are prime exemplars of complex phenonena. I believe they are, and Gould has proposed one way in which they might be. But there are other ways in which they might produce complex results. And we do not know for sure whether genes are, in fact, complex phenomena as envisaged under complexity theory. And we certainly do not know, if they are complex phenomena, which of the many possible ways the complexity could arise are in fact true about genes.
It is an interesting point to ponder (whether UNIX or Windows programming is more similar to our genes). But the level of abstraction at which interaction takes place does not answer the question in any final manner. We do not know yet how much one gene can become directly involved in the functioning of another gene.
It is clear that both Windows and UNIX programs have some degree of interaction which is possible between programs. It is also clear the levels of interaction are generally different on the two platforms (although more by culture and economics than by operating-system fiat). What is not clear is whether the level of interaction between individual parts of programs in UNIX or in Windows is more conducive to emergent behavior.
I think I can prove mathematically that both systems will necessarily produce complexity not found in their constituent parts. I don't believe I can prove which is better optimized for complexity.
Perhaps a better question is whether the complexity is being produced efficiently by the code. Here it seems that the human-genome model is very efficient and non-bloated. This hints at some dissimilarity to Windows.
Doesn't that exceed your IP quota for the day? Just watch yourself, buster.
The licensing of personal data would be just about mandatory for the "free market" proposal in the article to work. And, if the technology exists to do it for music, it certainly would work for spammers and telemarketers who could be required to use software that won't violate any license. This might even be a valid use for the DMCA.
I doubt that the GPL would be an appropriate license, however, since it not only allows infinite distribution rights but also REQUIRES the IP covered be published if amended. I don't think I want anyone to be required to publish my personal info if they add a note to their database describing what I said to them when they called me a 6pm. (I work nights and telemarketers almost always wake me from a sound sleep.)
And I really like the idea of a web site which autogens fake but valid addresses. Be sure to let us know when you've got it running. I'd be a little careful about randomly generating apparently valid phone numbers because the rightful owners of those numbers might feel they were being treated unfairly. But, if you could make so it randomly chooses a spammer's home number, I might even be willing to pay for the service.
...article. But its author doesn't seem to realize how close his ideas really are to Lessig's and to the more extreme privacy-as-a-right advocates.
We probably can arrive at some way of painlessly negotiating a privacy agreement with each web site we visit. The degree to which that would produce an Antioch-like solution is more a matter of technology and establishing open protocols for machine negotiation than any legal, moral or social issue. (BTW, it is my personal belief that anyone who cannot figure out a way to ask permission without "breaking the mood" shouldn't be in college, probably doesn't deserve sex, and definitely shouldn't have their genes passed on to the next generation. Not that the Antioch policy is particularly well thought out, but anyone who whines about it probably can't get sex without it or with it.)
The real problem with such a market is not the spectre of the Antioch dean of students writing our pop-up permissions boxes. The real problem derives from the fact that the very people who will pay for the privacy are the only ones the marketers want, while the poor who trade away such rights do not have the addresses and phone numbers which make for valuable mailing lists. But that's a problem for telemarketers and their ilk, not one civilized people will lose much sleep over.
The author of the article, however, fails to realize (as libertarians frequently do) the importance of big government to their free markets. I can only trade in the value of my personal information if I can own it (as Lessig suggests) or if others cannot trade in it (as the more extreme privacy-right advocates urge). These two are probably not as different as the author seems to believe. But maybe he is just being intellectually careful about accurately stating the positions of others (something which is always attractive, especially in libertarians).
If a web site can violate the terms of their agreement with me about my personal data, then only a fairly strong governmental role can enable me to consistently detect such a violation. Much of the trade in personal information is deliberately hidden from the subject of the information. For instance, your credit report (probably the most expensive personal data around) is provided to your bank with the explicit promise on their part not to allow you to see it. You may have the right to ask the reporting service to reveal your report (a right which only exists because the government has legislated it), but the users of that data are explicitly prohibited from making it available to you.
Because the value assigned to each item of personal data are necessarily going to be small, enforcement by individuals is only possible if the government regulates the personal-data industry in such a way that requires fairly complete records of the way the data is acquired, sold and distributed. Such records must be fairly easy for the average person to access (the web suggests itself as an obvious solution) but must themselves be protected from abuse.
In short, as attractive as the liberal arguments put forward by the writer are, the market he imagines cannot be fleshed out without a fairly large governmental presence: both regulatory and judicial (a kind of microclaims court or Privacy Rights Part of the Civil Court).
His arguments are strong and convincing. But, if he imagines he is miles away from Lessig and the others, he is simply looking through the wrong end of his binoculars.
Lanier is not making any predictions here. He is conducting a thought-experiment to try to extrapolate the RIAA-MPAA logic to the necessary extreme.
His purpose is clearly to destroy the industry logic by a technique called "reductio ad absurdum." When you flame him for the absurdity of his conclusions, you are agreeing with him. You are proving his point, which is that the goals of the industries which are trying to exploit the producers of intellectual property cannot be achieved without an absurd result.
BTW, my favorite part of this idea is the concept that geeks who are capable of constructing an analog speaker might become the heroes of an underground economy. (Note to the irony-impaired: I do not believe this will really happen.)
...was Nova Games' "Dragonriders of Pern" which also happened to be a non-zero-sum game.
But "Dragonriders" (based on the McCaffrey series of novels) went beyond that. The two players could cooperate or compete to whatever degree they preferred. But cooperation was always more successful than competition.
The way the game played was you each rode a dragon which had the ability to breathe fire and destroy parasitic thread falling from the sky. Each player independently chose an maneuver simultaneously. Then an ingenious relative movement system allowed the dragons to execute the two maneuvers simultaneously without giving away the action of the first player to call out their action to the other.
If one player maneuvered his dragon between the other dragon and the thread, his dragon got burned. It was even possible to destroy two threads simultaneously, if both players cooperated.
Cooperation always produced the best results. If one player played competitively while the other tried to help him, the competitive player would "score" higher yet not as high as if both cooperated. But, if both players played competitively (each trying to get more than the other), the result was almost always failure with the thread not being destroyed and reaching the ground (where it would destroy crops).
I don't believe this game is still available. I think the publisher has gone out of business. It would probably translate very easily to a web game (two or more players sending in their maneuvers to a central server). I could be wrong about the publisher because they have another game system ("Lost Worlds," featuring fantasy hand-to-hand combat) and occasionally I see a new release based on this system (the most recent being a comic-book-based combat system).
There are actually quite a few non-zero-sum games which have been quite successful through the years. Many have been mentioned here, so I won't repeat with a post so far down on the main thread.
I would like to comment on two groups of these games mentioned in earlier posts: RPGs (role-playing games like "Dungeons and Dragons") and diplomacy games (like "Illuminati" or "Dune" or "Cosmic Encounter").
RPGs are true non-zero-sum games. While they can be played with varying degrees of competition (even competition between the referee and the players), they are intended to be non-zero-sum games and anyone who doesn't play them that way is not really playing the game.
Diplomacy games are games which are fundamentally zero-sum games which are played with so many competing players that a single winner is difficult (sometimes bordering on impossibility if one player threatening to win can always be stopped by a large coalition of opponents). Such games sometimes admit of non-zero-sum solutions by allowing two or more players to share a victory. Thus a cooperative element may become necessary, but this is not quite the same as a non-zero-sum game because a coalition victory still requires that the others lose.
A similar situation occurs in the party game "Mafia" which almost always has more than one winner, but a win still requires losers. (BTW, this game would be another which would make a great web game along the line of "Survivor." Does anyone know if the rights are owned by anyone? Maybe I should create an "Ask Slashdot" question out of this.)
I cannot leave this without mentioning another of the best games ever (whose name I cannot remember). It was a kind of an anthropology simulation published by a non-profit (I'm thinking the publisher may have been associated with the University of Denver, but I could be wrong). I believe there was an adult version and a children's version, but I only played the kids' version.
It was specifically designed for the purposes described by the poster of this question: To provide a non-zero-sum game to teach to a medium-sized group of children. Its only drawback is they could only play it once.
The group of players was divided into two pseudo-cultures. Separated into two rooms, each group was told about their culture and its values. Then each was taught a "game within a game" which reflected those values. Each group practiced their game, separated from the other "culture."
Then, in the next phase of the game, each group sent a party of envoys or anthropologists to observe the other. Each would try to play the other's game. After a time, the envoys would return to their own culture and try to describe what they observed. Armed with these descriptions, another group of envoys would then be sent, playing the other culture's game, and reporting back.
Once everybody gets a chance to play envoy, the two groups get back together and each tries to describe the rules of the other's game and their culture.
I'm sure you can guess how this turns out, but until you try it you will not believe the insights which can be derived from this simple game. If anybody knows how to get ahold of it, I hope they post the resource for this "Ask Slashdot" question-raiser, as I'm sure this would be very appropriate for the situation he describes.
For his
review, Joe Barr actually paid attention during the movie and asked maddog, Linus and Michael about their participation. His comments are more to the point as well.
Movie: three stars; review: zero stars...
on
Antitrust
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· Score: 4
...out of four.
This movie got a lot right. Some of it was silly. But almost everything in these reviews is wrong.
Katz is blatantly lying to say he got the ending from the first 10 minutes. It involves a surprise ending which is only partially telegraphed.
Tim Robbins does a brilliant job of showing both the good and bad side of Bill Gates (to say nothing of the guy who got Ballmer right). The corporate culture at MS is well portrayed, showing the internal competition as well as the unethical practices vis-a-vis outsiders (no, I don't think Microsoft murders anybody). The idea of taking that internal competition a step further (in the surprise ending Katz lied about) was a good filmmaking idea, even if some of the tech reasons for it were plain silly.
To portray this movie as Hollywood exploiting open source ignores the facts of the movie itself. It is clearly outside the Hollywood mainstream, made with a low budget (not a single special effect, that must be why/.ers are slamming it), and has received little promotion from its studio.
This is a good movie. I enjoyed it. It raises issues which the general public may not be aware of (such as accusations of MS stealing code). It presents a naive view of open source (taking "information wants to be free" one more step to "knowledge belongs to all the people"). Silly, naive, but not anything you can't read on Slashdot every day.
The reason why there may never be a good geek movie made is because geeks trash perfectly honest efforts like this with perfectly dishonest reviews like this one and the equally unwarranted attacks on "Mission to Mars."
An interesting side note: The name "Antitrust" is not about antitrust violations or government action against monopolies. It comes from the question of who can be trusted (and is it possible to trust someone who has violated that trust). This is an interesting theme and is explored better in this movie than this movie was explored in these abominable reviews.
...plan to replace all those guys who are leaving because their stock option are worthless.
Now you have to wonder when you sign up with Bill and Steve whether this is the last company you'll ever be able to work for in your profession. That should solve all their recruitment problems.
...may or may not be guilty of unfairly supporting the trial lawyers. But one thing we do know is that the following statement is false:
However, President Clinton has pushed hard against every kind of tort reform effort.
The real problem with tort reform is similar to the problem with campaign-finance reform. Everybody knows something should be done, but the only people making proposals are those with a strong interest in an unfair system: Republicans and Democrats in the case of campaign-finance reform; insurance companies and lawyers in the case of tort reform.
The impasse has been broken on campaign-finance reform by an alliance between a Republican and a Democrat (McCain-Feingold) which addresses the problem without biasing the solution one way or the other. What we need is a similar kind of alliance or an independent group attacking the problem in the area of tort reform.
What it comes down to is this. The insurance companies define tort reform as: "You can't sue our clients. And, if you do, you can only ask for a small amount of money." And the lawyers define it as Prop 219 (or whatever it was that was defeated out in California).
Politicians (like Clinton) don't mind this because they can point out to voters the problems with whatever "solution" they are forced to take a position on and say they would support a reasonable solution. Since no reasonable middle-ground solution has been passed, we cannot know if this is true or not. "Support of reasonable reform" is what Clinton has said is his position (not "I will push hard against every kind of tort reform"). We don't know if he really means this because he has never been forced to take a position on real reform.
The weird thing about this one is that everybody knows what the real solution is (most countries have a version of it): Distinguish clearly in law between lawsuits which are not successful but are not frivolous and lawsuits which are totally without merit and frivolous; and then institute severe penalties for the latter without restricting the former.
This is not necessarily an easy distinction to make. But it is a distinction which already exists in U.S. law (it merely needs a clearer definition and stronger sanctions against the frivolous side of the distinction). And it has proven worthwhile everywhere it has been tried. Everywhere the insurance industry's version of "reform" has been tried it has hurt many people who were not abusers of the system.
BTW, be careful about repeating insurance-industry propaganda (like "Clinton is against all reform"). Early in my career as a journalist, I was taken in by an industry press release which had some great anecdotes about lawsuits, which I used in a story on the subject. I later learned that nearly every one of those stories contained deliberate lies about the actual facts. It is very easy to become a pawn of these people who are very effective at pushing hard for their own interests by convincing you they are working for your interests.
None of this should be taken in any way as supporting the lawsuit against VA Linux. It is a false dichotomy which the insurance industry likes to promote that you cannot oppose these frivolous lawsuits without destroying any right of individuals to seek redress in the courts.
...of exceptionally bright kids (no, I'm not bragging on my genes, they were others' biological children), I have a few insights to offer.
First of all, there is some risk of burnout. Don't concentrate too much on beating academic milestones. This is apparently where this kid excels, but grades and proficiencies may be an inappropriate set of milestones. They can give a combination of a false sense of success and invincibility and a learning style fairly inappropriate to the real world. (I've never had an employer who paid me to take tests. But the daily work I looked down upon as a student was a much better preparation for real life than any test I ever studied for.)
One of the most difficult things for the talented to learn is how to try hard. It's one of the most important lessons around, but the gifted (in sports, intellect, whatever) often have difficulty learning it.
Just think of Ralph Sampson and Slick Watts (sorry about the sports analogies). Sampson was born with a body and coordination which gave him extraordinary opportunities. Slick Watts had the wrong body for basketball, under six foot and then he got some rare disease at 13 and lost all his hair.
But Watts learned something Sampson never did: how to try harder than everyone else he ever met. It's not that the talented cannot learn it (Bill Russell and Michael Jordan spring immediately to mind). It's just a little harder for them.
How should this translate into "tutoring a prodigy"? Many ways: throwing that football around might help, if he's interested; but the key is taking his interests to the nth degree.
Suppose he's asking questions about assembler. Show him how Alan Turing conceived of a programmable computer from mathematical concepts put forward by Goedel. Show him how machine-language derived from the precepts of Principia Mathematica and David Hilbert's famous problems for the 20th century. (If he likes fiction, The Crytonomicon is a good introduction to how Turing conceived of computers long before the technology to build them existed.) Tell him why compiler theory is emphasized in CS programs, despite the fact that so few of us end up designing compilers. Show him how Turing invented computability theory before there were computers or even transistors or microchips. Show him a simple problem he can understand which is NP-complete.
Suppose he's interested in JAVA. Get him started with some good tutorials. Then tell him what object-oriented programming is. Show him the UML. Explain why somebody would want to invent a whole new way of thinking about programming (procedures versus objects). Ask him what thinks might come after OO. Then point out that some languages have a static view of object-oriented-ness, while others are built to change if the theory changes. Ask him if he wants to accept somebody else's paradigm (Bill Joy is a good choice if you want to copy) or if he wants to define the new paradigm. Then tell him to type "aspect-oriented programming" (including the quotes) into Google. Show him Ruby. Ask him to make up a new paradigm just for fun. Then help him try to implement it in Perl (which has a dynamic OO model which forces you to redefine what you mean by "object-oriented" every time you write a program).
Suppose he's interested in physics. Have him read Aristotle's "Physics" and Newton's Principia,. Then give him Feynmann and Einstein. When he thinks that's too easy, show him Aristotle's "Metaphysics." Tell him who the Vienna Circle was and how they sought to complete science. Then give him Ludwig Wittgenstein's Tractatus. When he decides that's the cat's meow, show him how Wittgenstein renounced all that in Philosophical Investigations.
Suppose he's interested in AI. There's plenty of material on the current state of the art which tries to make it easy to understand for the beginner. Show him the Santa Fe Institute's web site (www.SantaFe.edu). Get the NOVA video on chaos theory. Then tell him not all chaos theorists are fully accepted by most scientists. Get him Complexity: The Emerging Science on the Edge of Chaos and Dynamic Memory. Teach him neural nets, then point out how it failed to live up to its promise. Ask him if he thinks that's an inherent limit of the theory or that it's caused by an inadequately developed idea. Then show him genetic programming. Then take him back to Descartes and show him the mind-body problem.
Suppose he's interested in games. Teach him to program them. There are plenty of open-source game-design projects (my web site is www.FaerieMUD.org) where he can find any level of challenge in any kind of game he likes.
Suppose he's interested in the election or social problems or whatever....
It doesn't matter. Whatever the interest, show him that he can take it to some limit which will probably exceed his grasp. Let him fail, even if you have to show him problems which have baffled mankind for millennia.
There are two keys: start with his interests and take it to his limits. Then bring him back and show him that by trying very hard he can make real progress in places where he will make a difference.
Good luck, to you and to him.
Re:Maria Cantwell? No, J@red Polis
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Hacking The City
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I do love your characterization of Gorton as "Skeletor" though. He's something else. Did you know that he used to be a liberal? No, no, I'm not kidding Rippon Society and the whole nine yards.
In fact, as attorney general, he pioneered the tactic of state attorneys general suing on behalf of citizens with a lawsuit against the oil companies. So, the Skeletor transformation is not the only one he's gone through. (Or maybe it's the same one on the ethical as well as the physical plane.)
It's interesting that his precedent is now being used by the state attorneys general to sue Microsoft, while he runs interference for the Redmond boys in Washington. Maybe some day someone will write a play about Slade-the-Younger meeting Slade-the-Senator and recoiling in horror at what he was to become.
MS-DOS 1.0 was licensed from SCP and was out long before CP/M-86
I don't believe I (or anyone else) has claimed that MS-DOS 1.0 (or PC-DOS 1.0) was copied from CP/M-86 or any version of CP/M intended for processors made by Intel. The matter that was litigated (and settled by Microsoft in DRI's favor) was whether earlier versions of CP/M were used in developing that version which was licensed from SCP.
The case was settled when it became clear that Microsoft had the evidence which could have either cleared them of this charge or proved they did it. Since it became clear to the judge they were not going to allow that evidence to be seen by the court or its representatives under circumstances designed to protect their proprietary interests, he had ordered they reveal what they had described as their "crown jewels" to the court. Then they told him they couldn't find those "crown jewels." When it became clear they had lost credibility with the court (first claiming the source code to PC-DOS 1.0 was very valuable, then claiming they lost it), they decided to settle.
I apologize to anyone who objects to my conclusion from this evidence that MS probably stole the CP/M code. But my point was not that they did so, rather that they didn't do so until they had tried to help DRI get a good contract first.
I was trying to point out that the history of Microsoft shows that, even when they seem to be operating honorably in the beginning, their ethics have been known to slip. Thus, IT managers who wish to assume their eventual use of a given technology will be honest simply because they are currently not doing anything unethical with it may find themselves being hurt by that assumption.
AC is welcome to make that assumption, ignore the history, and take "The Road Ahead" to the Microsoft-prescribed future.
Word for Windows, Word for OS/2, WordPerfect for Windows and WordPerfect for OS/2 were all out years before Windows 95. (Microsoft and IBM split in the Windows 3.0 timeframe - five years before Win95)
The accusations of a head-fake by MS with some of the developers with whom they had long partnerships were made roughly one or two years after the release of OS2. Microsoft encouraged their partners to support OS2 while they were planning their own response to it.
Obviously, they could not maintain this dishonesty once they had announced Win95 (which happened long before its release). Traditionally, those who have defended Microsoft on this issue have argued not that it didn't happen, but that the owners of WordPerfect were naive in believing them. In other words, that MS's tactics were simply tough tactics which should be expected in the rough-and-tumble world of business. I've never heard anyone argue it didn't happen. (Or, stranger still, that it didn't happen when it did.)
Once again, I'm merely trying to point out that the relationship between MS and the developers with which it eventually began competing unfairly was entirely ethical and honest for a long time before anyone started claiming dishonest tactics. Indeed, I would argue the fundamental honesty of that set of relationships was largely responsible for the PC boom and the innovation of that period. I would also argue that the destruction of that fundamental honesty is responsible for the lack of innovation since the Internet browser was introduced (the last killer app, in my opinion).
About the only reality in the Netscape story is that there was a company called Netscape.
And that minor inconvenience of an anti-trust consent agreement and a subsequent anti-trust decision, not to mention Bill's testimony in court which serves as a virtual signed admission of guilt.
But don't let any of those facts get in the way of your decision to trust Microsoft. Trust them. Embrace them. Those of us who pay attention to the history know who will be screwed next.
And it's not gonna be us.
Remember the Spanish in the "New World"?
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On Asteroid Mining
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They got here 200 years before the British. They assumed the idea of discovering new territory was stealing gold and shipping it back to Spain.
The guys who really made the big bucks were the ones who decided to move to the New World and create wealth there. The result was a little experiment called "The United States of America." I've heard some rumors it turned out to be a good investment.
The asteriods will produce a new Iron Age as soon as we discover a source of air and water out there. Ice asteroids, anyone? How about the rings of Saturn? (Sure they're a long way out there, but that's a lot of ice.)
Another fact many people don't recognize is that there are three asteroid belts. These appear to be the result of perturbations in the asteroid orbits caused by Jupiter over the millennia.
First, they compete honestly. Then, when they lose that fight, they cheat.
They didn't start out to steal CPM from DRI. First, they recommended IBM buy the operating system from DRI. Then, when they saw their language-compiler deal with Big Blue going up in smoke, they stole the OS, repackaged it, and sold it to IBM.
They didn't start out to screw over developers for their OSes. First, they gave them free rein. Then, they competed outside a "Chinese wall." Then, when they were still losing, they told WordPerfect et al that they were committing to OS2 while secretly planning Win95, which was closely integrated with Office.
They didn't start out to squash Netscape. First, they helped them develop Navigator. Then, they decided to compete with them honestly with IE, promising not to breach their "Chinese wall." Then, when they failed to win with Explorer, they decided to cheat by bundling. Finally, when they were forced to stop bundling because it is illegal, they decided to cheat by calling it "integration."
So, don't be fooled because they seem to be implementing this in an entirely fair and honest fashion at first. They probably are being fair, and they probably intend to avoid cheating. But, when it looks like they may be in trouble with some competitor who is beating them in the future, do not be surprised if they panic and cheat.
They do it so consistently one could almost call it their business model. But that would probably be unfair to them because it implies intentionality from the start.
My prediction: They will be scrupulously honest about this in the beginning and maybe even offer their users some some modicum of security derived from it. Then some killer app will come along and be certified after the code is submitted to them. Then they will decide to compete directly in the space created by the new killer app all the while promising not to use any clues derived from the code they certified. Finally, when they fail to compete in the new market, they will leverage the code submitted to them for all manner of dirty tricks, from finding out about new features before release to stealing code and re-designing APIs to break their competitor's code.
...we just elected an Internet millionaire to the State Board of Education.
He had enough money to pour millions into his campaign and enough ideas that he didn't get invisible-handed out of his money like Steve Forbes. He also backed an initiative (or maybe it was an amendment to the state constitution) which will increase state spending on education.
I haven't figured out whether it would have been more cost-effective to donate the campaign money to schools. But it's an interesting alternative to burnout.
Slashdot Mirror
...ported from Perl to Ruby, I have no doubts about its value: We had about two years worth of code in Perl, including some difficult problems relating to aspect-oriented programming and code generation. Within weeks our Ruby version caught up and we are now way ahead of where we would have been had we stuck with Perl.
druby saved us a lot, and the Smalltalk-style mix-ins (what others might call "OO interfaces") completed the package.
All of this could not been possible without this book because the Japanese-language docs do not Babelfish well. (Because the concepts are very abstract, the translations become incomprehensible to the point of providing quite a bit of unintentional humor.)
One caveat, however, about the language and this book: Ruby is VERY object-oriented. Otherwise it makes a good first language. But OO languages are not usually taught to beginners, and I haven't seen anyone really figure out a way to explain object-oriented concepts to newbies.
This book makes a cursory attempt to do so in the beginning chapters, but it is less than totally successful. Thus I would recommend this book more to experienced programmers than to beginners.
Perhaps Perl will face this same dilemma with Perl 6 (which is looking more and more like Ruby, as I read the proposals, etc.). I don't think an OO for beginners book is impossible <note target="Tim O'Reilly">I'd even be willing to write it</note> and Ruby is the language to do it for. But this book is not it.
The Ruby archive is still sparse compared to CPAN, but the code is clean and functional. If you are a young programmer looking to make a name, this is a great place to contribute code which will be used. Ruby is fun to use, and you can use CPAN as a guide for what is needed.
The only really big hole in the Ruby archive is the lack of a fully functional DBI equivalent. The DBI architecture (a clearly defined interface which is theoretically usable with all database-specific implementations) is ideal for Ruby's capabilities. Hopefully someone is working on such a class for Ruby. (I also hope the specific implementations will not break the interface quite as often as Perl's DBI is broken. Perhaps we can learn from past mistakes.)
My prediction: As dynamic code generation and meta-objects really come into their own, Ruby will become a major force.
...not a public-broadcasting problem.
The conversion to digital is not working particularly well. The equipment is very expensive and the benefits are limited (certainly not enough to justify the outrageous expense). People are not flocking to the new technology (as they did when color was introduced) and there is little cachet in a station going digital (or in a home going digital).
Public TV is in a bind because they have been given a deadline for conversion which makes no sense. The commercial TV stations have a large number of options: They can use the larger bandwidth for more stations while they wait for a market to develop for digital (thus bringing in more revenue). Such an option just gives public TV more space to fill.
The WNET lament about interactive content is laughable, however. WGBH in Boston produces the best web sites on the web (check out NOVA and Frontline for good examples of what the future of the web will be like for sites associated with TV shows. WNET is way behind in this, but it has nothing to do with anything except the bureaucracy at WNET.
...who ride Amtrak?
I ride the train as much as I can because I can get a lot more done on the train than I can on a plane. There's an electrical outlet for a laptop, a nice little private cubicle, a decent restaurant, and even my personal bathroom. I can stretch out my legs and relax and code to my heart's content.
There's only one thing missing: an Internet connection. If they can provide one for the DEA, why can't I have one?
This is especially problematic when you realize that trains often travel through areas not covered by cell phones here in the West.
...is the position XBox developers will be in if it's not ready when they are:
They will have a product they cannot sell, which they've been wondering whether or not they should port to PCs. Their answer will magically appear: We have to!
The port to PCs will be easier than to other consoles. That's what they'll do to raise some quick get-us-through-'til-launch cash. The result: When XBox eventually launches, its exclusive games will no longer be exclusive. (Some will even have already been rejected by the marketplace.)
Releasing a limited number of consoles will be a safer option: Then the we're-willing-to-wait-all-night-in-line crowd will get them. Once you've made a fool of yourself buying console, you're not going to tell everybody it sucks (or that the games suck). You'd just look like a fool. Early adopters always evangelize.
...of the transition between the Institutional Balance and the Interindividual Balance, morality (and even reality) can appear to be relative.
This is because they define themselves as institutions, and they are beginning to see the limitations of such a model. They scream out in their existential angst, "There is no reality because institutions can deceive me about reality!" And yet they cannot let go of their own sense of self long enough to build a new one.
But the reality which they see as socially constructed is, in fact, something more: It is socially emergent. Their own angst-ridden selves have emerged from a social environment and could not have existed in their advanced form without the social institutions from which they have emerged. That does not mean they are socially constructed.
Yet, if they believe they are socially constructed, any other idea (including that idea which their selves most need to find) threatens their very existence.
Once they realize it's possible for rights and principles and even minds to emerge from institutionally-defined reality without being constructed by the institutions, they will be freed into the Interindividual Balance and their need to rail against corporation will dissipate (without giving in to any corporate reality).
All of which does not obviate the need for community because community (as Kiro5hin seems to define it) is, in fact, the institution most conducive to emergence into the intimate state of self.
...that New Scientist uses coin flips to generate the programs which run their site.
If I figure out a really neat idea for a faster-than-light drive but there's just one minor problem with it, I write a hard sci-fi novel based on it, glossing over the problem.
If I figure out a really neat idea for a faster-than-light drive with no problem, I don't have time to write the novel. I'm out in the back yard building my spaceship.
...at this...
A good example of this was the account of Alan Turing and how he intuited the idea of a digital computer by contemplation of Goedel's Incompleteness Theorem: I knew Turing conceived of the idea of computers long before they were invented. I knew he was very much aware of Goedel (his Noncomputability Theorem rests entirely on Goedel's methods).
But I had never heard it said that he had figured out that computers were possible based on the implications of Goedel. We can see that today, but we have the benefit of hindsight. Was this just something Neal made up based on that hindsight? Or did Turing really see this back then?
There were clearly fictional parts of the book's Turing. We can safely assume the bicycle ride was invented. (Am I the only one who noticed the fact that he introduced the bike-chain explanation of why prime numbers are so key to crypto without ever doing anything with it?) The vicar's wife probably never peeked at her bowl full of balls (I think).
Where did the Goedel inspiration go on this truth-fiction spectrum? Neal's blurring of the line makes it hard to determine from the novel. That's good. It makes for a ripping good yarn. But it also makes me less than sympathetic to the author's complaints about readers. Yeah, those readers just assume more of the novel is real than is actually the case.
That's right. Mess with our minds and then complain that we're confused.
For those who are wondering, yes, Enos Root did die in Sweden in 1944 only to reappear 50 years later in a prison in the Philippines. And, for those who are wondering about my question, I have found evidence that Turing's inspiration was indeed based on Goedel.
Of course, there's always the possibility some reality hacker read the book, decided it was better than the actual story, and started spreading historical references to the Goedellian inspiration of Turing. The universe is, after all, controlled by those who have an understanding of the source code.
Reading is FUNdamental, according to the vicar's wife. I don't think she peeked. Really.
A year or so back when _The Big U_ was pulling down absurd bucks on Ebay Neal made very clear he didn't consider it worth the fuss.
That warning made, I'll probably buy it myself because I'm such a fanboy.
...against scientific creationism does not mean that scientific creationism is, in fact, right.
Note that Caplan (who has said much more interesting things than this: see, for instance, his interview on cloning on the Charlie Rose Show) may not be actually saying as much as some people are assuming he's saying. He specifically states that the Human Genome Project results disprove "scientific creationism," not creationism. Since "scientific creationsim" refers to a specific movement, it is entirely possible they have made statements and predictions which are contradicted by this new evidence. He goes on, however, to imply that the new evidence proves something more broad about creationism in general, which is clearly false.
I believe that the best arguments against scientific creationism are not scientific arguments, but moral and religious arguments. I will offer two below: one theological and one practical.
My theological argument is based on the fact that I believe in a God of truth. If God created the world 4,000 years ago or so, then he created it as if it had existed for billions of years and as if life evolved slowly over time. Thus he is a God of deceit. Since it is more important to me that God be truth than that He created the universe a few thousand years ago, I choose to believe that those who believe the Bible says the universe was created (relatively) recently are wrong. Note that, even if I chose to believe that God was deliberately deceiving me, I would still have to decide whether I should accept that deception as what He wants me to believe.
When I go to the Bible to see what it says, I find that the statements there are vague and contradictory. It is not at all clear that the 7-day creation story is to be taken literally. There are other places where creation appears to take place over a long period of time.
I also note that my belief that God is truth is not unambigously supported in the Bible. While there are several places where "God is truth" is clearly indicated, Jeremiah just as clearly says that he saw God lie to other prophets in order to trick Ahab into an ill-starred battle. The belief on which I found this theological argument is a belief and nothing more. But I think it is preferable to the alternative.
We have seen other times when religious communities believed just as strongly as the creationists that the Bible said things which in the end proved to be untrue. An obvious example was the geocentrism on which many scientists were persecuted during the Copernican revolution and beyond. Today we do not believe that the Bible says the earth is the center of the universe, and it clearly is not. I suspect someday we will see virtually universal agreement that the Bible does not say anything one way or the other about evolution or about Darwinism. And I suspect we will find the current debate as quaint and silly as we now view the torture and excommunication of those who suggested the sun was at the center of our solar system.
This historical perspective leads me to my second argument against scientific creationism: the practical argument.
As a practical matter, it seems like the goal of Christians should be to generally encourage belief in God and to avoid things which discourage belief. I believe this is the central tenet of evangelism, that we should emulate the life of Christ, the Evangelist.
Observing history, it is clear to me that the Copernican revolution did some damage to belief in Western Europe not because Copernicus sought to sow disbelief but because the assumption of the church was that he would. By tying belief to a doctrine which was not in fact clearly indicated by scripture, the church ensured that (when the evidence came in supporting the heliocentric model) the community of Christianity was damaged far beyond what it would have been had it not taken such a dogmatic stand.
It seems to me that, as a practical matter, we Christians have a moral obligation to avoid taking a stand on evolution which will be as damaging to our community as was anti-Copernican dogma.
And it should be made clear this is, in fact, what most Christians believe. The vocal minority of scientific creationists may get the most press. But surveys show that many, if not most, people who believe in God (again a majority) also believe in evolution. Remember that Darwin was trained as a minister and never believed he was attacking the Bible or belief in God.
Indeed, the head of the public effort to decode the human genome, Francis Collins, is very open about his Christianity and his belief that genomics do not in any way threaten God. Here is a quote from him:
The metaphor has some value in looking at software design. But it fails to resolve any flame-wars over OS superiority.
Complexity theory supposes that both of these things are true: That the individual parts of a complex whole are capable of being analyzed for their own simple behaviors AND that they can interact with each other in ways that cannot be totally predicted or understood from the behaviors of the individual parts.
Note that I have not assumed that genes are prime exemplars of complex phenonena. I believe they are, and Gould has proposed one way in which they might be. But there are other ways in which they might produce complex results. And we do not know for sure whether genes are, in fact, complex phenomena as envisaged under complexity theory. And we certainly do not know, if they are complex phenomena, which of the many possible ways the complexity could arise are in fact true about genes.
It is an interesting point to ponder (whether UNIX or Windows programming is more similar to our genes). But the level of abstraction at which interaction takes place does not answer the question in any final manner. We do not know yet how much one gene can become directly involved in the functioning of another gene.
It is clear that both Windows and UNIX programs have some degree of interaction which is possible between programs. It is also clear the levels of interaction are generally different on the two platforms (although more by culture and economics than by operating-system fiat). What is not clear is whether the level of interaction between individual parts of programs in UNIX or in Windows is more conducive to emergent behavior.
I think I can prove mathematically that both systems will necessarily produce complexity not found in their constituent parts. I don't believe I can prove which is better optimized for complexity.
Perhaps a better question is whether the complexity is being produced efficiently by the code. Here it seems that the human-genome model is very efficient and non-bloated. This hints at some dissimilarity to Windows.
Doesn't that exceed your IP quota for the day? Just watch yourself, buster.
The licensing of personal data would be just about mandatory for the "free market" proposal in the article to work. And, if the technology exists to do it for music, it certainly would work for spammers and telemarketers who could be required to use software that won't violate any license. This might even be a valid use for the DMCA.
I doubt that the GPL would be an appropriate license, however, since it not only allows infinite distribution rights but also REQUIRES the IP covered be published if amended. I don't think I want anyone to be required to publish my personal info if they add a note to their database describing what I said to them when they called me a 6pm. (I work nights and telemarketers almost always wake me from a sound sleep.)
And I really like the idea of a web site which autogens fake but valid addresses. Be sure to let us know when you've got it running. I'd be a little careful about randomly generating apparently valid phone numbers because the rightful owners of those numbers might feel they were being treated unfairly. But, if you could make so it randomly chooses a spammer's home number, I might even be willing to pay for the service.
...article. But its author doesn't seem to realize how close his ideas really are to Lessig's and to the more extreme privacy-as-a-right advocates.
We probably can arrive at some way of painlessly negotiating a privacy agreement with each web site we visit. The degree to which that would produce an Antioch-like solution is more a matter of technology and establishing open protocols for machine negotiation than any legal, moral or social issue. (BTW, it is my personal belief that anyone who cannot figure out a way to ask permission without "breaking the mood" shouldn't be in college, probably doesn't deserve sex, and definitely shouldn't have their genes passed on to the next generation. Not that the Antioch policy is particularly well thought out, but anyone who whines about it probably can't get sex without it or with it.)
The real problem with such a market is not the spectre of the Antioch dean of students writing our pop-up permissions boxes. The real problem derives from the fact that the very people who will pay for the privacy are the only ones the marketers want, while the poor who trade away such rights do not have the addresses and phone numbers which make for valuable mailing lists. But that's a problem for telemarketers and their ilk, not one civilized people will lose much sleep over.
The author of the article, however, fails to realize (as libertarians frequently do) the importance of big government to their free markets. I can only trade in the value of my personal information if I can own it (as Lessig suggests) or if others cannot trade in it (as the more extreme privacy-right advocates urge). These two are probably not as different as the author seems to believe. But maybe he is just being intellectually careful about accurately stating the positions of others (something which is always attractive, especially in libertarians).
If a web site can violate the terms of their agreement with me about my personal data, then only a fairly strong governmental role can enable me to consistently detect such a violation. Much of the trade in personal information is deliberately hidden from the subject of the information. For instance, your credit report (probably the most expensive personal data around) is provided to your bank with the explicit promise on their part not to allow you to see it. You may have the right to ask the reporting service to reveal your report (a right which only exists because the government has legislated it), but the users of that data are explicitly prohibited from making it available to you.
Because the value assigned to each item of personal data are necessarily going to be small, enforcement by individuals is only possible if the government regulates the personal-data industry in such a way that requires fairly complete records of the way the data is acquired, sold and distributed. Such records must be fairly easy for the average person to access (the web suggests itself as an obvious solution) but must themselves be protected from abuse.
In short, as attractive as the liberal arguments put forward by the writer are, the market he imagines cannot be fleshed out without a fairly large governmental presence: both regulatory and judicial (a kind of microclaims court or Privacy Rights Part of the Civil Court).
His arguments are strong and convincing. But, if he imagines he is miles away from Lessig and the others, he is simply looking through the wrong end of his binoculars.
Lanier is not making any predictions here. He is conducting a thought-experiment to try to extrapolate the RIAA-MPAA logic to the necessary extreme.
His purpose is clearly to destroy the industry logic by a technique called "reductio ad absurdum." When you flame him for the absurdity of his conclusions, you are agreeing with him. You are proving his point, which is that the goals of the industries which are trying to exploit the producers of intellectual property cannot be achieved without an absurd result.
BTW, my favorite part of this idea is the concept that geeks who are capable of constructing an analog speaker might become the heroes of an underground economy. (Note to the irony-impaired: I do not believe this will really happen.)
...was Nova Games' "Dragonriders of Pern" which also happened to be a non-zero-sum game.
But "Dragonriders" (based on the McCaffrey series of novels) went beyond that. The two players could cooperate or compete to whatever degree they preferred. But cooperation was always more successful than competition.
The way the game played was you each rode a dragon which had the ability to breathe fire and destroy parasitic thread falling from the sky. Each player independently chose an maneuver simultaneously. Then an ingenious relative movement system allowed the dragons to execute the two maneuvers simultaneously without giving away the action of the first player to call out their action to the other.
If one player maneuvered his dragon between the other dragon and the thread, his dragon got burned. It was even possible to destroy two threads simultaneously, if both players cooperated.
Cooperation always produced the best results. If one player played competitively while the other tried to help him, the competitive player would "score" higher yet not as high as if both cooperated. But, if both players played competitively (each trying to get more than the other), the result was almost always failure with the thread not being destroyed and reaching the ground (where it would destroy crops).
I don't believe this game is still available. I think the publisher has gone out of business. It would probably translate very easily to a web game (two or more players sending in their maneuvers to a central server). I could be wrong about the publisher because they have another game system ("Lost Worlds," featuring fantasy hand-to-hand combat) and occasionally I see a new release based on this system (the most recent being a comic-book-based combat system).
There are actually quite a few non-zero-sum games which have been quite successful through the years. Many have been mentioned here, so I won't repeat with a post so far down on the main thread.
I would like to comment on two groups of these games mentioned in earlier posts: RPGs (role-playing games like "Dungeons and Dragons") and diplomacy games (like "Illuminati" or "Dune" or "Cosmic Encounter").
RPGs are true non-zero-sum games. While they can be played with varying degrees of competition (even competition between the referee and the players), they are intended to be non-zero-sum games and anyone who doesn't play them that way is not really playing the game.
Diplomacy games are games which are fundamentally zero-sum games which are played with so many competing players that a single winner is difficult (sometimes bordering on impossibility if one player threatening to win can always be stopped by a large coalition of opponents). Such games sometimes admit of non-zero-sum solutions by allowing two or more players to share a victory. Thus a cooperative element may become necessary, but this is not quite the same as a non-zero-sum game because a coalition victory still requires that the others lose.
A similar situation occurs in the party game "Mafia" which almost always has more than one winner, but a win still requires losers. (BTW, this game would be another which would make a great web game along the line of "Survivor." Does anyone know if the rights are owned by anyone? Maybe I should create an "Ask Slashdot" question out of this.)
I cannot leave this without mentioning another of the best games ever (whose name I cannot remember). It was a kind of an anthropology simulation published by a non-profit (I'm thinking the publisher may have been associated with the University of Denver, but I could be wrong). I believe there was an adult version and a children's version, but I only played the kids' version.
It was specifically designed for the purposes described by the poster of this question: To provide a non-zero-sum game to teach to a medium-sized group of children. Its only drawback is they could only play it once.
The group of players was divided into two pseudo-cultures. Separated into two rooms, each group was told about their culture and its values. Then each was taught a "game within a game" which reflected those values. Each group practiced their game, separated from the other "culture."
Then, in the next phase of the game, each group sent a party of envoys or anthropologists to observe the other. Each would try to play the other's game. After a time, the envoys would return to their own culture and try to describe what they observed. Armed with these descriptions, another group of envoys would then be sent, playing the other culture's game, and reporting back.
Once everybody gets a chance to play envoy, the two groups get back together and each tries to describe the rules of the other's game and their culture.
I'm sure you can guess how this turns out, but until you try it you will not believe the insights which can be derived from this simple game. If anybody knows how to get ahold of it, I hope they post the resource for this "Ask Slashdot" question-raiser, as I'm sure this would be very appropriate for the situation he describes.
...can be found at LinuxWorld.
For his review, Joe Barr actually paid attention during the movie and asked maddog, Linus and Michael about their participation. His comments are more to the point as well.
...out of four.
/.ers are slamming it), and has received little promotion from its studio.
This movie got a lot right. Some of it was silly. But almost everything in these reviews is wrong.
Katz is blatantly lying to say he got the ending from the first 10 minutes. It involves a surprise ending which is only partially telegraphed.
Tim Robbins does a brilliant job of showing both the good and bad side of Bill Gates (to say nothing of the guy who got Ballmer right). The corporate culture at MS is well portrayed, showing the internal competition as well as the unethical practices vis-a-vis outsiders (no, I don't think Microsoft murders anybody). The idea of taking that internal competition a step further (in the surprise ending Katz lied about) was a good filmmaking idea, even if some of the tech reasons for it were plain silly.
To portray this movie as Hollywood exploiting open source ignores the facts of the movie itself. It is clearly outside the Hollywood mainstream, made with a low budget (not a single special effect, that must be why
This is a good movie. I enjoyed it. It raises issues which the general public may not be aware of (such as accusations of MS stealing code). It presents a naive view of open source (taking "information wants to be free" one more step to "knowledge belongs to all the people"). Silly, naive, but not anything you can't read on Slashdot every day.
The reason why there may never be a good geek movie made is because geeks trash perfectly honest efforts like this with perfectly dishonest reviews like this one and the equally unwarranted attacks on "Mission to Mars."
An interesting side note: The name "Antitrust" is not about antitrust violations or government action against monopolies. It comes from the question of who can be trusted (and is it possible to trust someone who has violated that trust). This is an interesting theme and is explored better in this movie than this movie was explored in these abominable reviews.
...plan to replace all those guys who are leaving because their stock option are worthless.
Now you have to wonder when you sign up with Bill and Steve whether this is the last company you'll ever be able to work for in your profession. That should solve all their recruitment problems.
...may or may not be guilty of unfairly supporting the trial lawyers. But one thing we do know is that the following statement is false:
However, President Clinton has pushed hard against every kind of tort reform effort.
The real problem with tort reform is similar to the problem with campaign-finance reform. Everybody knows something should be done, but the only people making proposals are those with a strong interest in an unfair system: Republicans and Democrats in the case of campaign-finance reform; insurance companies and lawyers in the case of tort reform.
The impasse has been broken on campaign-finance reform by an alliance between a Republican and a Democrat (McCain-Feingold) which addresses the problem without biasing the solution one way or the other. What we need is a similar kind of alliance or an independent group attacking the problem in the area of tort reform.
What it comes down to is this. The insurance companies define tort reform as: "You can't sue our clients. And, if you do, you can only ask for a small amount of money." And the lawyers define it as Prop 219 (or whatever it was that was defeated out in California).
Politicians (like Clinton) don't mind this because they can point out to voters the problems with whatever "solution" they are forced to take a position on and say they would support a reasonable solution. Since no reasonable middle-ground solution has been passed, we cannot know if this is true or not. "Support of reasonable reform" is what Clinton has said is his position (not "I will push hard against every kind of tort reform"). We don't know if he really means this because he has never been forced to take a position on real reform.
The weird thing about this one is that everybody knows what the real solution is (most countries have a version of it): Distinguish clearly in law between lawsuits which are not successful but are not frivolous and lawsuits which are totally without merit and frivolous; and then institute severe penalties for the latter without restricting the former.
This is not necessarily an easy distinction to make. But it is a distinction which already exists in U.S. law (it merely needs a clearer definition and stronger sanctions against the frivolous side of the distinction). And it has proven worthwhile everywhere it has been tried. Everywhere the insurance industry's version of "reform" has been tried it has hurt many people who were not abusers of the system.
BTW, be careful about repeating insurance-industry propaganda (like "Clinton is against all reform"). Early in my career as a journalist, I was taken in by an industry press release which had some great anecdotes about lawsuits, which I used in a story on the subject. I later learned that nearly every one of those stories contained deliberate lies about the actual facts. It is very easy to become a pawn of these people who are very effective at pushing hard for their own interests by convincing you they are working for your interests.
None of this should be taken in any way as supporting the lawsuit against VA Linux. It is a false dichotomy which the insurance industry likes to promote that you cannot oppose these frivolous lawsuits without destroying any right of individuals to seek redress in the courts.
...of exceptionally bright kids (no, I'm not bragging on my genes, they were others' biological children), I have a few insights to offer.
First of all, there is some risk of burnout. Don't concentrate too much on beating academic milestones. This is apparently where this kid excels, but grades and proficiencies may be an inappropriate set of milestones. They can give a combination of a false sense of success and invincibility and a learning style fairly inappropriate to the real world. (I've never had an employer who paid me to take tests. But the daily work I looked down upon as a student was a much better preparation for real life than any test I ever studied for.)
One of the most difficult things for the talented to learn is how to try hard. It's one of the most important lessons around, but the gifted (in sports, intellect, whatever) often have difficulty learning it.
Just think of Ralph Sampson and Slick Watts (sorry about the sports analogies). Sampson was born with a body and coordination which gave him extraordinary opportunities. Slick Watts had the wrong body for basketball, under six foot and then he got some rare disease at 13 and lost all his hair.
But Watts learned something Sampson never did: how to try harder than everyone else he ever met. It's not that the talented cannot learn it (Bill Russell and Michael Jordan spring immediately to mind). It's just a little harder for them.
How should this translate into "tutoring a prodigy"? Many ways: throwing that football around might help, if he's interested; but the key is taking his interests to the nth degree.
Suppose he's asking questions about assembler. Show him how Alan Turing conceived of a programmable computer from mathematical concepts put forward by Goedel. Show him how machine-language derived from the precepts of Principia Mathematica and David Hilbert's famous problems for the 20th century. (If he likes fiction, The Crytonomicon is a good introduction to how Turing conceived of computers long before the technology to build them existed.) Tell him why compiler theory is emphasized in CS programs, despite the fact that so few of us end up designing compilers. Show him how Turing invented computability theory before there were computers or even transistors or microchips. Show him a simple problem he can understand which is NP-complete.
Suppose he's interested in JAVA. Get him started with some good tutorials. Then tell him what object-oriented programming is. Show him the UML. Explain why somebody would want to invent a whole new way of thinking about programming (procedures versus objects). Ask him what thinks might come after OO. Then point out that some languages have a static view of object-oriented-ness, while others are built to change if the theory changes. Ask him if he wants to accept somebody else's paradigm (Bill Joy is a good choice if you want to copy) or if he wants to define the new paradigm. Then tell him to type "aspect-oriented programming" (including the quotes) into Google. Show him Ruby. Ask him to make up a new paradigm just for fun. Then help him try to implement it in Perl (which has a dynamic OO model which forces you to redefine what you mean by "object-oriented" every time you write a program).
Suppose he's interested in physics. Have him read Aristotle's "Physics" and Newton's Principia,. Then give him Feynmann and Einstein. When he thinks that's too easy, show him Aristotle's "Metaphysics." Tell him who the Vienna Circle was and how they sought to complete science. Then give him Ludwig Wittgenstein's Tractatus. When he decides that's the cat's meow, show him how Wittgenstein renounced all that in Philosophical Investigations.
Suppose he's interested in AI. There's plenty of material on the current state of the art which tries to make it easy to understand for the beginner. Show him the Santa Fe Institute's web site (www.SantaFe.edu). Get the NOVA video on chaos theory. Then tell him not all chaos theorists are fully accepted by most scientists. Get him Complexity: The Emerging Science on the Edge of Chaos and Dynamic Memory. Teach him neural nets, then point out how it failed to live up to its promise. Ask him if he thinks that's an inherent limit of the theory or that it's caused by an inadequately developed idea. Then show him genetic programming. Then take him back to Descartes and show him the mind-body problem.
Suppose he's interested in games. Teach him to program them. There are plenty of open-source game-design projects (my web site is www.FaerieMUD.org) where he can find any level of challenge in any kind of game he likes.
Suppose he's interested in the election or social problems or whatever....
It doesn't matter. Whatever the interest, show him that he can take it to some limit which will probably exceed his grasp. Let him fail, even if you have to show him problems which have baffled mankind for millennia.
There are two keys: start with his interests and take it to his limits. Then bring him back and show him that by trying very hard he can make real progress in places where he will make a difference.
Good luck, to you and to him.
I do love your characterization of Gorton as "Skeletor" though. He's something else. Did you know that he used to be a liberal? No, no, I'm not kidding Rippon Society and the whole nine yards.
In fact, as attorney general, he pioneered the tactic of state attorneys general suing on behalf of citizens with a lawsuit against the oil companies. So, the Skeletor transformation is not the only one he's gone through. (Or maybe it's the same one on the ethical as well as the physical plane.)
It's interesting that his precedent is now being used by the state attorneys general to sue Microsoft, while he runs interference for the Redmond boys in Washington. Maybe some day someone will write a play about Slade-the-Younger meeting Slade-the-Senator and recoiling in horror at what he was to become.
MS-DOS 1.0 was licensed from SCP and was out long before CP/M-86
I don't believe I (or anyone else) has claimed that MS-DOS 1.0 (or PC-DOS 1.0) was copied from CP/M-86 or any version of CP/M intended for processors made by Intel. The matter that was litigated (and settled by Microsoft in DRI's favor) was whether earlier versions of CP/M were used in developing that version which was licensed from SCP.
The case was settled when it became clear that Microsoft had the evidence which could have either cleared them of this charge or proved they did it. Since it became clear to the judge they were not going to allow that evidence to be seen by the court or its representatives under circumstances designed to protect their proprietary interests, he had ordered they reveal what they had described as their "crown jewels" to the court. Then they told him they couldn't find those "crown jewels." When it became clear they had lost credibility with the court (first claiming the source code to PC-DOS 1.0 was very valuable, then claiming they lost it), they decided to settle.
I apologize to anyone who objects to my conclusion from this evidence that MS probably stole the CP/M code. But my point was not that they did so, rather that they didn't do so until they had tried to help DRI get a good contract first.
I was trying to point out that the history of Microsoft shows that, even when they seem to be operating honorably in the beginning, their ethics have been known to slip. Thus, IT managers who wish to assume their eventual use of a given technology will be honest simply because they are currently not doing anything unethical with it may find themselves being hurt by that assumption.
AC is welcome to make that assumption, ignore the history, and take "The Road Ahead" to the Microsoft-prescribed future.
Word for Windows, Word for OS/2, WordPerfect for Windows and WordPerfect for OS/2 were all out years before Windows 95. (Microsoft and IBM split in the Windows 3.0 timeframe - five years before Win95)
The accusations of a head-fake by MS with some of the developers with whom they had long partnerships were made roughly one or two years after the release of OS2. Microsoft encouraged their partners to support OS2 while they were planning their own response to it.
Obviously, they could not maintain this dishonesty once they had announced Win95 (which happened long before its release). Traditionally, those who have defended Microsoft on this issue have argued not that it didn't happen, but that the owners of WordPerfect were naive in believing them. In other words, that MS's tactics were simply tough tactics which should be expected in the rough-and-tumble world of business. I've never heard anyone argue it didn't happen. (Or, stranger still, that it didn't happen when it did.)
Once again, I'm merely trying to point out that the relationship between MS and the developers with which it eventually began competing unfairly was entirely ethical and honest for a long time before anyone started claiming dishonest tactics. Indeed, I would argue the fundamental honesty of that set of relationships was largely responsible for the PC boom and the innovation of that period. I would also argue that the destruction of that fundamental honesty is responsible for the lack of innovation since the Internet browser was introduced (the last killer app, in my opinion).
About the only reality in the Netscape story is that there was a company called Netscape.
And that minor inconvenience of an anti-trust consent agreement and a subsequent anti-trust decision, not to mention Bill's testimony in court which serves as a virtual signed admission of guilt.
But don't let any of those facts get in the way of your decision to trust Microsoft. Trust them. Embrace them. Those of us who pay attention to the history know who will be screwed next.
And it's not gonna be us.
They got here 200 years before the British. They assumed the idea of discovering new territory was stealing gold and shipping it back to Spain.
The guys who really made the big bucks were the ones who decided to move to the New World and create wealth there. The result was a little experiment called "The United States of America." I've heard some rumors it turned out to be a good investment.
The asteriods will produce a new Iron Age as soon as we discover a source of air and water out there. Ice asteroids, anyone? How about the rings of Saturn? (Sure they're a long way out there, but that's a lot of ice.)
Another fact many people don't recognize is that there are three asteroid belts. These appear to be the result of perturbations in the asteroid orbits caused by Jupiter over the millennia.
...of Microsoft's cheating:
First, they compete honestly. Then, when they lose that fight, they cheat.
They didn't start out to steal CPM from DRI. First, they recommended IBM buy the operating system from DRI. Then, when they saw their language-compiler deal with Big Blue going up in smoke, they stole the OS, repackaged it, and sold it to IBM.
They didn't start out to screw over developers for their OSes. First, they gave them free rein. Then, they competed outside a "Chinese wall." Then, when they were still losing, they told WordPerfect et al that they were committing to OS2 while secretly planning Win95, which was closely integrated with Office.
They didn't start out to squash Netscape. First, they helped them develop Navigator. Then, they decided to compete with them honestly with IE, promising not to breach their "Chinese wall." Then, when they failed to win with Explorer, they decided to cheat by bundling. Finally, when they were forced to stop bundling because it is illegal, they decided to cheat by calling it "integration."
So, don't be fooled because they seem to be implementing this in an entirely fair and honest fashion at first. They probably are being fair, and they probably intend to avoid cheating. But, when it looks like they may be in trouble with some competitor who is beating them in the future, do not be surprised if they panic and cheat.
They do it so consistently one could almost call it their business model. But that would probably be unfair to them because it implies intentionality from the start.
My prediction: They will be scrupulously honest about this in the beginning and maybe even offer their users some some modicum of security derived from it. Then some killer app will come along and be certified after the code is submitted to them. Then they will decide to compete directly in the space created by the new killer app all the while promising not to use any clues derived from the code they certified. Finally, when they fail to compete in the new market, they will leverage the code submitted to them for all manner of dirty tricks, from finding out about new features before release to stealing code and re-designing APIs to break their competitor's code.
...we just elected an Internet millionaire to the State Board of Education.
He had enough money to pour millions into his campaign and enough ideas that he didn't get invisible-handed out of his money like Steve Forbes. He also backed an initiative (or maybe it was an amendment to the state constitution) which will increase state spending on education.
I haven't figured out whether it would have been more cost-effective to donate the campaign money to schools. But it's an interesting alternative to burnout.